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That said, market watchers are increasingly concerned about recent weakness in the financial sector.

“The Party Is Over” for Housing — and Bank Earnings: Chris Whalen | Daily Ticker – Yahoo Finance

But before buying into the building, investors should know who’s already renting it.

Empire State Building goes public: Here are its tenants

You see, Joseph was not saving for himself. Joseph worked for Pharoah. And Pharoah and his court were the Government of Egypt. So Joseph was a Government minister. Rather a senior one, actually: he was the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of the Prime Minister. He “ran the land of Egypt” on Pharoah’s behalf.

Coppola Comment: Joseph, John and Gideon

There were a few gasps late on Tuesday when the SEC declared that it was awarding more than $14m to an unnamed whistleblower, whose information had helped the US authorities recover “substantial” investor funds in an unnamed case.

A coming bubble in whistleblowing? | FT Alphaville

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided to go ahead with an increase in consumption taxes from 5% to 8% in April 2014, with a further increase to 10% planned for later. Will this be the first step to reducing the very high level of government debt in Japan (in net or gross terms, the highest in the developed world), or will it derail the recovery? In many ways the answer depends on whether you like your macro state of the art, or more antique.

mainly macro: Japan’s consumption tax: a test of modern macro?

people have been predicting that technology would create mass unemployment. However, these predictions were consistently wrong because they ignored the offsetting benefits of automation. For example, during the 19th century, machines took over tasks performed by weavers, eliminating 98 percent of the labor needed to weave a yard of cloth. But this mechanization also brought a benefit: It sharply reduced the price of cloth, so people consumed much more. Greater demand for cloth meant that the number of textile jobs quadrupled despite the automation.

Technology isn’t taking all of our jobs.

The furore over Obamacare is baffling to the rest of the world. Most rich countries have universal coverage; developing countries are trying to introduce it. Yet in America, home to the world’s biggest health system, the fight over insurance is vicious enough to bring government to a halt.

America’s health-care upheaval: Will it get better? | The Economist

Looking through Twitter’s financial results, one number seems potentially out of whack for a major, public tech company, especially one that could soon have a stock market value of $15 billion to $20 billion. Twitter spent a whopping 44% of its revenue, or almost $112 million, on research and development through the first half of 2013.

Here’s Why Twitter Isn’t Profitable, and It’s Not Getting Better | The Exchange – Yahoo Finance

Edwards said in a note that a recent decline in the benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yield below 0.65 percent – not far from all-time lows of 0.43 percent – could be a worrying sign for Japan as well as global markets. The benchmark 10-year yield was trading at 0.657 percent on Friday.

Don’t let the shutdown distract you from Japan – Yahoo Finance

The ministry said Spain’s public debt in 2014 is expected to be the equivalent of 98.9 percent of total economic output, not the 99.8 percent figure that was originally published on Monday. The spokeswoman said the error was not due to mathematical computations but the person typing the figures simply mixing up the last two digits.

Slip of the finger adds $14 billion to Spain debt

The rebound in the yen is a worrying sign for Japan’s policy makers who have been hoping a weak currency would underpin the economic recovery, fuel business sentiment and a rally in Japanese stocks. This in turn is seen encouraging companies to spend or increase wages to help spur spending in the world’s third biggest economy.

What happened to a weak yen?

Honeybees’ ability to find flowers could be hampered by a chemical in diesel exhaust, say scientists.

BBC News – Bees’ foraging for flowers ‘hampered by diesel exhaust’

1. One person maintaining the Canada border

BBC News – US shutdown: 10 unexpected consequences

The fact is that since the end of the Great Recession, the trend in part-time employment has been down, not up.

Obamacare Isn’t Causing an Increase in Part-Time Employment, In One Chart | Economic Policy Institute

This week a Tesla Motors Model S electric vehicle caught on fire after the driver ran over a chunk of metal in the road, an incident that’s been reported all over the place now. And this is news, why? After all, vehicle fires are very common. One battery researcher, Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University, pointed out to me this afternoon that there were 187,000 vehicle fires in the United Statesin 2011. That’s one fire for every 1,738 cars on the road. With Tesla this fire makes one out of almost 20,000. “That’s 10X less frequent,” he told me in an email, typing in all caps.

What the Tesla Battery Fire Means for Electric Vehicles | MIT Technology Review

But there’s something even more contradictory about a campaign that purports to tackle unrealistic representations of women in the media, when it comes from a man who founded one of the biggest media companies—and when that company employs some of the most conventionally attractive female anchors on television. The female anchors on Bloomberg TV are, across the board, a good-looking bunch. MTV.com’s Guy Code Blog has even argued that Bloomberg TV has the “hottest” anchors of any channel—even more than Fox News.

Bloomberg’s NYC Girls Project Fights What Bloomberg TV Perpetuates | New Republic

To say Batista overreached would be to seriously undersell what has happened in the 18 months since that self-regarding presstravaganza of hubris and magical thinking. In what is shaping up to be one of the largest personal and financial collapses in history—if not the largest—Batista may be nearing bankruptcy.

Eike Batista: How Brazil’s Richest Man Lost $34.5 Billion – Businessweek

T.J. Gentle, chief executive officer of Smart Furniture, an online custom furniture maker in Chattanooga, employs 250 people, has seen sales grow 25 percent this year, and was planning another round of hiring—until Republican hard-liners forced the federal government to close on Oct. 1. Gentle is the embodiment of moderate, business-minded pragmatism: He voted for President Obama and Tennessee’s Republican Senator Bob Corker, splits his donations between the parties, and prefers divided government as a check on partisan excess. Like his plan to hire more workers, this too may change as a result of the shutdown. “It’s as if House Republicans are playing suicide bomber with the U.S. economy,” he says. “As a businessman, it defies all reason and logic.”

Republicans Are No Longer the Party of Business – Businessweek

In addition, Toyota is bypassing EVs and betting on fuel cell technology, where hydrogen is ran through the fuel cell with only water as a byproduct. The company wants to release its first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in 2015. “I personally expect a lot from this hydrogen fuel cell technology,” said Uchiyamada. “If government and industry work together, this might be part of the long-term solution.”

DailyTech – Toyota Passing Over EVs for More Hybrids, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

One mystery of the government shutdown is why Republicans are so apoplectic about the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation that aims to make health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans.

A Republican Discovers He Likes Obamacare – Business Insider

Researchers tried to find out what was in chicken nuggets from two fast food chains, with disconcerting results.

What’s Really In Chicken Nuggets – Business Insider

But it looks like some investors are a bit confused. A company called TWTR Inc., which as far as we can tell has nothing to do with Twitter, was up as much as 1,500% today, but fluctuating wildly.

TWTR Stock Up 1,500 Percent – Business Insider