Remarkable stories from the web in a new, easier format.
What I’m getting at is that we’re often poor arbiters of our own emotions and desires. We lie to ourselves. And we do it for one obvious reason: to feel better.
Lies We Tell Ourselves – Business Insider
My Sunday column on the potential consequences of Obamacare’s botched rollout ended by sketching a scenario in which the program’s Medicaid expansion is deemed a success while its reform of the individual market leads to much-higher-than-expected costs and much-lower-than-expected participation rates
Why Not Medicaid For All? – NYTimes.com
UK bank Barclays has suspended six traders as part of a probe into suggestions that currency markets could have been rigged, the BBC has learnt.
BBC News – Barclays suspends currency traders
India’s main stock index, the Sensex, has hit a record high, propelled by an increased inflow of foreign capital.
BBC News – Indian stock market hits record high
Two fundamental institutions that undergird our economy are markets and government. And both are in trouble.
Market Failure and Government Failure – NYTimes.com
In America Foxconn has become a symbol of the economic threat posed by cheap foreign labour. Yet workers in China and America alike, it turns out, face a shared threat: they have captured ever less of the gains from economic growth in recent decades.
Workers’ share of national income: Labour pains | The Economist
Some 6,000 of the town’s poorest residents take part in Bolsa Família, a cash-transfer scheme started by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president from 2003-10, who was born near Timbaúba. Thanks partly to this cash injection, the town now boasts car and motorbike dealers, new shops, a bank and restaurants.
Brazil’s north-east: The Pernambuco model | The Economist
The tea party’s answer to the GOP establishment threats: Bring it on—we aren’t backing down. That’s the message I gleaned from recent interviews with three of the movement’s most prominent leaders
The Tea Party Battles to Come – WSJ.com
Of the economic issues facing November’s plenum of the Chinese Communist Party, none looms larger than land reform in the countryside
Chinese land reform: A world to turn upside down | The Economist
Garcia’s admiration for Cruyff is obvious, and understandably so, as part of his “Dream Team” of the early 1990s. “One of the amazing things I remember was before matches when he explained what he thought would happen in the game. The players, we thought it was crazy. But most of the time, it happened.
Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers – including the nation’s largest, Walmart – now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead.
The Shiller P/E is now 24.8. As the figure shows, it is higher than at any time except the peak of the dot-com boom and its aftermath, and Black Tuesday back in 1929 at the front edge of the Great Depression.
CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: A Price/Earnings Ratio Blinking Yellow?
In the US, things have been worse. In the last 10 years, non-financial companies have been net buyers of shares – to the tune of $345bn (£225bn) a year on average.
Investors Chronicle – The market’s uses
The immediate implication for inflation is that it makes no sense to wonder whether incomes will keep up with inflation. Here are two ways to think about it, which of course are different versions of the same way.
EconoSpeak: Still Confused About Inflation after All These Years
Goldman yesterday, issued research formalizing none other than going long the most shorted stocks in a piece titled “Investors focused on the results of high short interest stocks.”
Goldman Now Pitching Most Shorted Stocks | Zero Hedge
In a sane world, “This health reform plan will make America like France!” would be praise, not a dire warning.
The American Health Care System Sucks – Business Insider
