Links for 3/9

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According to a Federal Reserve post written by Tomaz Cajner and David Ratner, the prospects for the long-term unemployed are still relatively dim.“Their monthly probability of moving from unemployment to employment has recovered only modestly and still remains depressed relative to its pre-recession level… The long-term unemployed are about twice as likely to move to nonparticipation (that is, to drop out of the labor force) as to employment.”

What 27 Weeks of Unemployment Does to the American Worker - Yahoo Finance

Some robots do not cause a productivity explosion because they replace low productivity workers and the quality of the task done does not improve much after the initial introduction of robots. The automated equipment that turns a worker into a zero marginal productivity (ZMP) ex-worker does not need to offer a large and growing impact on the firm's total productivity. It just has to lower total costs.

FuturePundit: Thinking About Robots And ZMP Workers

It’s easy to mock the beards, tattoos and fixed-wheel bicycles of east London, but its ‘flat white economy’ is here to stay. Ed Cumming on the revolution that’s changing Britain

Can hipsters save the world? | UK news | The Guardian

Perhaps the greatest threats to American pre-eminence are domestic. As pundits often point out, young American workers score terribly on cross-country comparisons of numeracy, and Americans are disillusioned with their government.

Why the end of American power is not nigh - Business Insider

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All this puts the IMF in an interesting position. By forcing the warring parties in Ukraine to seek peace as a condition of economic survival, the IMF can also help the recovery of the European economy by removing obstacles to intra-regional trade that are costing hundreds of thousands of jobs.

IMF could do more for EU than ECB’s QE

I read recently in respectable German media that they invented an "austerity growth model," with "Spain and Portugal as examples of the model's resounding success." They call these countries' rising poverty and respective unemployment rates of 23.7 percent and 13.5 percent a "resounding success?" Try cruelty. That might be a more fitting model description.

IMF could do more for EU than ECB’s QE

The conclusion: Britain might take a radical step to the left, it might take a radical step to the right, it might leave the European Union, it might break up altogether. In other words, no one could predict anything, except that Britain would be occupied by its own internal arguments for a very long time.

Britain vanishing from the world stage - Business Insider

The robots recently replaced 14 workers on the plant’s assembly line for remote controls. And soon, according to Midea’s home-air-conditioner division deputy general manager Wu Shoubao, more robots will arrive to replace the quality-control supervisors.

China’s factories are building a robot nation - MarketWatch

Starting Monday, the European Central Bank will start pouring €60 billion a month into the eurozone to kickstart the economy and that means lots of buying opportunities for investors, analysts at Société Générale said.

The stocks to buy as ECB kicks off QE: SocGen - MarketWatch

What's great about the book is how it picks up the story of what happened to the people after the media attention disappeared. Frequently, their lives were ruined. They lost their jobs. They became paranoid or depressed. They were punished out of all proportion to their "crimes."

Lindsey Stone — So You've Been Publicly Shamed - Business Insider

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Rather, it’s been caused by a widening gap between the labor incomes of top-earners and the rest of Americans. That in turn can be explained by “exploding” compensation for top company managers, large cuts in the maximum tax rates and more access to higher education by those better off, he said.

French Economist Piketty Clarifies Findings on Rising Inequality - Bloomberg Business

That left question marks for some economists. "There is a lot of slack left in the labor market," Megan Greene, chief economist at John Hancock Asset Management, told The Journal. "As long as you don’t have upward pressure on wages, you won’t have upward pressure on inflation."   Consumer prices fell 0.1 percent in the year through January. The Fed has an inflation target of 2 percent, and its favored inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, rose a mere 0.2 percent in the 12 months through January.

Brisk Jobs Growth Puts Focus on Fed as Some See 'a Lot of Slack'

Newton's laws are astonishingly successful at describing the world. They explain why apples fall from trees and why the Earth orbits the Sun. But they have an odd feature: they work just as well backwards as forwards. If an egg can break, then Newton's laws say it can un-break.

BBC - Earth - Why does time always run forwards and never backwards?

In an all-new report from BI Intelligence, we examine the industries currently driving growth in the enterprise Internet of Things and how various sectors of the economy will embrace IoT innovations.

Top 'The Internet of Things' Industries - Business Insider

Some physicists think they can explain why the universe first formed. If they are right, our entire cosmos may have sprung out of nothing at all

BBC - Earth - Why is there something rather than nothing?

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As Michael Pettis would explain, the risk of all these bad loans isn’t that any large Chinese banks would fail — an authoritarian government with a closed capital account has many tools at its disposal to prevent runs. Rather, the danger is that the forced transfer of income from regular Chinese workers to unproductive businesses so that they can service their bad debts would create a prolonged period of slow growth.

The Fed on China’s stimulus binge | FT Alphaville

For the LNG market, 2015 will be marked by increasing volatility as new waves of supply start to add volume together with new markets opening up, according to BG Group’s annual Global LNG Market Outlook. Andrew Walker, BG Group V.P. of Global LNG, commented, "After four years of flat supply we are entering a period of supply growth. 2014 marked the start-up of a new wave of supply from Australia. This will be joined by the first volumes from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico around the end of 2015. This new supply will be absorbed by continued growth in Asian demand, together with the creation of up to six new markets in 2015, further diversifying the LNG trade and opening up new sales opportunities."

Volatility lies ahead for LNG market, BG Group says

Russians have become familiar with the so-called "Chechnya trace" of high profile killings. Investigations by the authorities into the murders of prominent individuals in Russia invariably find a connection to Chechnya, or its neighbouring Caucasus republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan. Russia fought two wars in the 1990s against the Chechens.

The Russian press are raising doubts over Boris Nemtsov murder - Business Insider

The European economy may appear mired in low growth and low-flation, but shares there are poised to surge as much as 70 percent by the end of 2016, Citigroup said.

Stocks here may surge 70% by end-2016

The humble cockroach can display surprisingly complex personality traits, according to research conducted in Belgium. By attaching microchips to their backs, scientists were able to monitor the roaches' behaviour in an enclosed arena and observe varying personalities among the insects.

Cockroaches have personalities, study finds | Watch the video - Yahoo Finance

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An ABS is basically bond that might be collateralized by a number of things like loans, credit card debt, or a company's receivables. Many experts blamed a boom in ABS for helping inflate the credit bubble as it quickly turned liabilities into cash, while offering investors what appeared to be high yield at relatively low risk. China's trust companies have started buying ABS at a stunning rate, and with the same vigor with which they once bought infamously dangerous wealth management products (WMP), which are now on the decline.

There's a new ticking time bomb inside China's economy - Yahoo Finance

Scientists are developing ways to edit the DNA of tomorrow’s children. Should they stop before it’s too late?

Germ Line Engineering with CRISPR Leads to Designer Human Embryos | MIT Technology Review

Fed policy makers have been on something of a crusade lately about bank behavior. In addition to assessments of the banks' capital plans, this week's exams include so-called qualitative judgments the Fed makes on how the banks identify and manage risk, and whether they have good corporate governance and internal controls. It's akin to a character test, and the outcome can be hard for banks to predict. Capital can be quantified; the quality of a firm's board of directors can't be.

The Fed's Fight to Change the Culture of Wall Street - Bloomberg Business

Williams is aware that his identity and livelihood are based on killing a beloved and magnificent animal, but he argues frankly for subsistence – the cultural and economic right of Alaska Natives, which is legally recognised, to live off the land and the sea. He understands that fur carries a lingering stigma, particularly for liberal North Americans and Europeans and partly as a legacy of Peta’s famous 1994 campaign “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur”, which featured supermodels. But Williams holds that conservation, imposed from the outside, can look a lot like colonialism. A small-scale, Native-run hunt can be sustainable and empowering, he tells anyone who will listen – and it is the thing that saved him.

Why would anyone want to shoot a sea otter? | Ross Perlin | World news | The Guardian

People who lose their jobs are less willing to trust others for up to a decade after being laid-off, according to new research from The University of Manchester. Being made redundant or forced into unemployment can scar trust to such an extent that even after finding new work this distrust persists, according to the new findings of social scientist Dr James Laurence. This means that the large-scale job losses of the recent recession could lead to a worrying level of long-term distrust among the British public and risks having a detrimental effect on the fabric of society.

Being 'laid off' leads to a decade of distrust | EurekAlert! Science News

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An investigation into the cleanliness of rivers feeding Washington's Potomac River has revealed the presence of sex-changing chemicals. Pollutants which contain the chemicals, known as endocrine disrupters, were found in several tributaries and in the smallmouth bass fish living within. The US Geological Survey (USGS) study followed the discovery of high numbers of intersex fish in the Potomac basin.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Sex-change chemicals in Potomac

There are 25 people who sit on the European Central Bank's governing council. The big players, like ECB President Mario Draghi and Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, are well-known. But there are dozens of other council members whose views have a huge impact on the central bank's decisions.  We've judged each member's importance on a scale of 1-5 (based on things such as the size of the country they represent and whether they sit on the executive board) and presented them in order from the most hawkish to the most dovish. ITC Markets and Credit Suisse produced similar rankings in the past.

ECB dove hawk scale - Business Insider

Conventional wisdom holds that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has a gargantuan monetary arsenal, given that the country has the world’s largest stash of foreign reserves at $3.89 trillion. This cash mountain is routinely used to justify how Beijing has nearly unlimited firepower to backstop its economy. But according to some analysts, this reserve accumulation is merely a byproduct of another form of quantitative easing. Rather than strength, its size indicates just how staggeringly large China’s domestic credit expansion has become in recent decades.

Will China’s ‘money garrote’ strangle the global economy? - MarketWatch

At VantagePointTrading we take that stance that monitoring fundamentals (and even knowing about the economy and what is going on the world) isn’t required to trade successful. In fact, listening to main stream ideas and “truisms” about making money in the financial markets is more likely to lead you astray. Below is a case and point. We don’t care what the economy does…we trade markets…up, down or sideways…doesn’t matter. When or why trends occur, and why or when they reverse we don’t care about…we just trade ‘em. Reasons don’t make you a better trader, they just make you sound smarter to people who don’t know any better.

Here's What Stock Market Bulls Might Be Overlooking

There is little better than catching a trending trade just as it is taking off, and you can do it with some consistency, if you know how to spot trading opportunities. Okay, there are some other things that may be better, but still, it’s pretty awesome.

Trend Trading: How to Spot Trading Opportunities

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According to Credit Suisse - a 10% year-on-year fall in the trade weighted currency should raise GDP growth by 0.7%. That's almost as much as a 35% drop in the price of oil. (In fact, the euro has now dropped by more than 13% in the last year).

The falling euro is fantastic news for Europe's recovery - Business Insider

These claims have been widely disproven by multiple studies, but the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has for the first time thoroughly reviewed 225 research papers on homeopathy to come up with its position statement, released on Wednesday.

Homeopathy is not effective - Business Insider

Now, Google is taking a leaf out of the Cupertino company's playbook, and has — for the first time ever — established its own bricks-and-mortar retail outlet. It's situated on Tottenham Court Road, in London, England.

Inside Google's first ever retail store - Business Insider

As analysts were waiting to see how fast the euro reaches parity against the U.S. dollar, one foreign exchange pro told CNBC he saw the common currency dropping even further, with the dollar strengthening another 20 percent.

Euro could fall to 85 cents against US dollar: Pro

Just three ETFs comprise nearly 87% of Dalio's Bridgewater Associates public equity portfolio as of the end of the fourth quarter. In other words, one of the most analytical, mechanical minds in investing -- and the manager of the biggest hedge fund in the world -- is placing nearly all of his eggs in three exchange-traded baskets.

Three ETFs Billionaire Ray Dalio Loves and Why You Should, Too - TheStreet

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If it makes good sense to invest in value stocks (it does), and if it makes good sense to invest in small-cap stocks (it does), why not combine the two and invest in small-cap value stocks? Based on 87 years of performance data, it’s a sound strategy.

Buy the best performing stock sector for 87 years - MarketWatch

This is a hyper-ambitious company, and the only one we cover whose stock price can realistically multiply by ten. It can also get cut in half. But we think patient investors will be rewarded if they can hang on for a wild ride

Morgan Stanley: Tesla is the world's most important car company - Business Insider

Sitting on the desks of central bank governors and regulators across the world is a scholarly report that spells out the vertiginous scale of global debt in US dollars, and gently hints at the horrors in store as the US Federal Reserve turns off the liquidity spigot.

Global finance faces $9 trillion stress test as dollar soars - Telegraph

Sometimes you don't want to take notes on your laptop. Sometimes only pen and paper will do. Rocketbook is a standard notebook that digitises your notes and sends them to the cloud. Want to erase your notes and have a clean sheet? Pop it in the microwave. Seriously.

Rocketbook is a paper notebook that syncs to the cloud - News - Trusted Reviews

Over the past decade, more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 corporations’ net earnings have been funneled to investors. The great shareholder shift has affected more than employees’ incomes. As Luke A. Stewart and Robert D. Atkinson noted in a 2013 report for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, business investment in equipment, software and buildings increased by just 0.5 percent per year between 2000 and 2011 — “less than a fifth that of the 1980s and less than one-tenth that of the 1990s.”

Why salaries don’t rise - The Washington Post

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Six years ago, Sason was living in his parents’ house on Long Island, doing clerical work for a debt-collection law firm and dreaming of becoming a pop star. Then a family friend showed him a trick that seems to have earned him millions in the stock market. He won’t say exactly what he does or how much he’s made, but regulatory filings by dozens of companies show that Magna has invested more than $200 million since 2012.

Josh Sason Made Millions From Penny-Stock Financing - Bloomberg Business

"In an era where the average stock sells at about 18 times earnings, it's out and out ridiculous that Apple sells at merely 14 times earnings given its balance sheet, sustainability of earnings, breadth of product, and wondrous engineering," said the "Mad Money" host.

Apple is worth a lot more than you think

The widely reported case of a 27-year-old naked and unarmed veteran shot dead by an Atlanta-area police officer on Monday is raising questions about how law enforcement is trained to deal with suspects who may be suffering from mental illness.

More than half of suspects shot and killed by police are mentally ill - Business Insider

All hail the Euroglut, that oh so corpulent result of Europe’s (read: Germany’s) huge excess savings — which hit a record €234bn at the end of last year as oil prices collapsed and are projected to hit €300bn over the course of 2015 if oil prices stay that way.

That euroglut outflow and the real Japanisation of Europe | FT Alphaville

Corporate America's profit engine may be running out of steam. Wall Street analysts, expecting two quarters of declining earnings, are banking on a second-half recovery to keep 2015 from becoming the worst year for profits since the last recession.

U.S. 2015 profits forecast to grow 1.7 percent; oil, dollar are concerns - Yahoo Finance

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Bioengineers at the University of Berkeley aim to create all of the human organs on-a-chip then connect them with micro-fluidic channels to create a complete human-being on-a-wafer.

Heart on-a-chip beats - Electronics Eetimes

Imagine a major metropolis where traffic flows quickly on green highways; where streets are sparkling clean and restoration is nearly as vigilant as sanitation; where four main ethnicities (Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian) co-exist in tropical tolerance with a large community of foreigners who live and raise kids without fear of crime or the slightest impolite slight. Parks, museums, art spaces and architectural icons are world class.

BBC - Capital - Why expats call this utopia

Even before the new Greek crisis blew up, Europe was starting to resemble Japan without the social cohesion: within the eurozone, the working-age population is shrinking, investment is weak and much of the region is flirting with deflation. Markets have responded to those poor prospects by pushing interest rates incredibly low. In fact, many European bonds are now offering negative interest rates.

Strength Is Weakness - NYTimes.com

It's an American mystery story: More people have jobs and extra pocket money from lower gas prices, but they aren't buying as much as economists expected.

American Mystery Story: Consumers Aren't Spending Even In a Booming Job Market - Bloomberg Business

St. Kitts and Nevis had run a citizenship-by-investment program—had sold passports—since 1984, but it didn’t get much attention and was never a moneymaker. Then a Swiss lawyer named Christian Kalin showed up. Christian Kalin in St. Kitts, where he developed the citizenship program that inspired an industry João Canziani/Bloomberg Markets Thanks to Kalin, St. Kitts has become the world’s most popular place to buy a passport, offering citizenship for $250,000 with no requirement that applicants ever set foot on the island’s sun-kissed shores. Buyers get visa-free travel to 132 countries, limited disclosure of financial information, and no taxes on income or capital gains. The program became so successful that St. Kitts emerged from the global financial crisis far ahead of its neighbors in the Caribbean. “It’s been a complete transformation,” says Judith Gold, head of an International Monetary Fund mission to the country.

Passport King Christian Kalin Helps Nations Sell Citizenship - Bloomberg Business