Remarkable!

Remarkable stories from the web in a new, easier format.

“It is the best moving video experience I have ever seen,” says Recombu Digital editor, Alex Lane. “The sheer level of detail, smoothness, the sharpness and colour are completely lifelike, and on occasions create an almost three-dimensional image.

What are Super Hi-Vision, Ultra HD, 4K and 8K TV? – Recombu

Worse, the current BRIC thinking goes in the wrong direction. All have large state sectors and are relatively protectionist. Because of their recent economic successes and the West’s financial crisis, their policymakers increasingly see state capitalism as the solution, and private enterprise and free markets as problems.

The BRICs party is over | vox

As many people have noted, a disproportionate share of the jobs being created in this upturn are in low-paying sectors like restaurants and retail trade. This means that even the people who are able to find work in the current labor market conditions are unlikely to get a job that will provide enough income to support a family. This is clearly bad news for large segments of the workforce. The question is why are we seeing so many bad jobs?

Restaurant Work in the States and the Loss of Middle Class Jobs | Beat the Press

Essentially, Mankiw’s argument (OK, he’s placing it in the mouths of “Republicans,” but he’s a Republican, too) is that a carbon tax is good, but additional tax revenue that would reduce the deficit is bad. This is absurd.

Who Cares About the National Debt? | The Baseline Scenario

With half a decade’s hindsight, it is clear the crisis had multiple causes. The most obvious is the financiers themselves—especially the irrationally exuberant Anglo-Saxon sort, who claimed to have found a way to banish risk when in fact they had simply lost track of it.

The origins of the financial crisis: Crash course | The Economist

As he watched American car plants in action, he realised that the existence of the firm compensated for a critical flaw in the price-setting mechanism. In the real world it is often costly for buyer and seller to arrive at a final price. “Transaction costs”, like the need to negotiate or draw up contracts, prevent the price mechanism from working smoothly. Firms would exist, he reckoned, when it was cheaper and easier to co-ordinate activity within a centrally planned organisation than to spell out contract details for every step in the production process. Mr Coase first presented his proposition in a lecture in Dundee in 1932, at the tender age of 21.

Free exchange: One of the giants | The Economist

Thanks to its capital control and state ownership of banks, China does not face an imminent financial meltdown (since the government can maintain liquidity), but Chinese banks will have to be recapitalized at some point

China on verge of worst economic crisis in decades – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs

A cat which was elected mayor of an Alaskan town 15 years ago has been badly injured in a dog attack.

BBC News – Alaska feline mayor Stubbs the cat suffers dog attack

Lots of reporting on the new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of what we know so far (pdf) about premiums under Obamacare. It definitely looks as if there will be a mild “rate shock” — in the right direction. KFF: While premiums will vary significantly across the country, they are generally lower than expected.

What’s going on here? Partly it’s a vindication of the idea that you can make health insurance broadly affordable if you ban discrimination based on preexiting conditions while inducing healthy individuals to enter the risk pool through a combination of penalties and subsidies. But there’s an additional factor, that even supporters of the Affordable Care Act mostly missed: the extent to which, for the first time, the Act is creating a truly functioning market in nongroup insurance.

It Takes A Government (To Make A Market) – NYTimes.com

As we do each month, we asked a handful of our top analysts across sectors for one stock that looks especially compelling right now. Here are the companies they singled out.

Roundtable: 1 Stock to Buy in September

Yesterday, NYU professor Aswath Damodaran published his valuation of Tesla. The valuation expert, even though he doesn’t like the title, thinks Tesla is worth $67.12 today. That’s significantly below its current price of $169.93 (closing price on Thursday).

Aswath Damodaran On Tesla Bulls – Business Insider