Financial Markets and Economy
The Fed robbed the poor and made the top 25% wealthier (Business Insider)
When the next recession hits the US, the Fed will likely want to print more money to relieve the suffering. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that the last QE experiment boosted the economy, and I don’t think the next will, either.
A Forecast About GDP Nowcasts (Bloomberg View)
For some time now, economic data geeks have had a fun little tool to play around with — the GDPNow forecast by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta of quarterly gross domestic product growth. Rather than wait three months for the official GDP data, the wonks at the Atlanta Fed broke GDP into its component parts.
This nasty oil rivalry is why a genuine output freeze is a long shot (Market Watch)
Investors awaiting Sunday’s meeting of major oil producers in Doha are eyeing signs of a pact that could freeze oil production in a bid to stabilize prices. But they are also mindful of a political dynamic that threatens to derail an agreement: Saudi Arabia and Iran don’t like each other.
U.S. Companies Dodge Paying Billions In Taxes—And You're Paying For It (Co. Exist)
Tax dodging by multinational companies is estimated to cost the U.S. government up to $111 billion a year. At the same time, companies avoid paying$100 billion in taxes to developing countries, UN figures show. Tax "leakage" (the polite term if you don't want to ascribe any agency to the companies that are very intentionally doing this) has reached epidemic dimensions, and we really ought to care more than we do.
The On-Demand Economy Is Growing, and Not Just for the Young and Wealthy (HBR)
The on-demand economy is large, and getting larger. Economic activities centered around online platforms, where independent sellers can offer goods or services to customers, are attracting significant consumer attention and spending, according to new data from the National Technology Readiness Survey* (NTRS), which has tracked technology behaviors and beliefs in the U.S. since 1999. The most recent study, conducted in October 2015, surveyed 933 U.S. adults sampled at random from a consumer research panel.
Revenue Down? No Problem: Bank Stocks Climb With Cost Cuts (Bloomberg)
Banks found a way to please investors when they couldn’t increase revenue: cut pay, fire employees and shut branches.
People hate the stock market, and that might not change for 'decades' (Business Insider)
People just don't like the stock market, and they probably won't for a long time.
Pimco 'BOND' ETF flows stagnating as asset class grows (Reuters)
One of the most popular actively managed ETFs, the Pimco Total Return Active Exchange-Traded Fund, has seen its assets stagnate as investors have gravitated toward rival funds and lower-cost passive bond ETFs, Morningstar data show.
An Oil-Price Recovery? We're Not There Yet (Forbes)
Oil prices have increased 60% since late January. Is this an oil-price recovery?
There's talk that Wall Street's nightmare stock is already in default (Business Insider)
For the most part, the market is waiting for SunEdison, the world's largest renewable-energy company, to file for bankruptcy any day now.
Monetary policy has done everything it can (CNBC)
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that monetary policy has reached the outward bounds of its effectiveness without another round of quantitative easing.
Why Wells Fargo's Quarterly Profit Is Down So Much (Fortune)
Wells Fargo & Co reported a 7 percent fall in quarterly profit as it set aside more than $1 billion to cover bad loans, saying its energy portfolio remained under “significant stress.”
Deutsche Bank Admits It Rigged Gold Prices, Agrees To Expose Other Manipulators (Zero Hedge)
Earlier today when we reported the stunning news that DB has decided to "turn" against the precious metals manipulation cartel by first settling a long-running silver price fixing lawsuit which in addition to "valuable monetary consideration" said it would expose the other banks' rigging having also "agreed to provide cooperation to plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages, and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement"
Fight for $15 protesters across US demand living wage in day of action (The Guardian)
Billboards in Times Square shone bright on Thursday morning as hundreds of workers huddled in front of a nearby McDonald’s. The early hour of 6am was not enough to dim the joyous feel of this gathering, taking place just weeks after California and New York became the first states to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022.
Bank of Japan’s Kuroda Calls Yen’s Recent Rise ‘Excessive’ (Wall Street Journal)
Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said Thursday that the yen’s recent rise has been “excessive,” using his strongest language yet to warn traders against driving up the currency.
New York Commercial-Property Market Goes Cold After Record Year (Bloomberg)
Deals for a piece of New York’s iconic skyline are drying up.
The MacBook is becoming more and more popular (Business Insider)
Slowly but surely, Apple has been growing its global PC market share every quarter for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, the mature PC market continues to stagnate, although global unit volumes have stabilized for the most part. Even though Mac unit shipments declined by 4% in the fourth quarter, that still outperformed the broader market's 11% drop, according to IDC. So Apple gained share.
Chipotle's Stock Just Got a Big Boost Today (Fortune)
Despite its crippling food safety crisis, the Chipotle brand is so strong that customers will slowly gravitate back to the chain, according to analysts from J.P. Morgan.
Winning Trader, Whining Trader (New Trader U)
There are two very different types of traders, one that wins and one that whines. Whiners hardly ever win and winners rarely whine. Trading is a tough business and you have to be able to keep the right mind set to get you through the rough spots. When the markets start trying to knock you off your trading plan and system. Mental strength more than any other one thing will determine your success. You can come bac
Inside the Fall of SunEdison, Once a Darling of the Clean-Energy World (Wall Street Journal)
Last June, two dozen SunEdison Inc. senior managers gathered at the Park Hyatt near Paris’s Place Vendôme to hear a forecast from Chief Executive Ahmad Chatila. By 2020, he said, the renewable-energy startup would be worth more than $350 billion. Some day it would be as big as Apple or Google.
Politics
The Little-Known Movers Behind North Carolina’s Anti-Gay Law: Ted Cruz’s Advisers (Mother Jones)
As he worked to rally evangelical voters a week before North Carolina's March 15 primary, Ted Cruz gave a speech at a church in the Charlotte suburb of Kannapolis, where he was joined by a trio of prominent local social conservative supporters: Charlotte pastor and congressional candidate Mark Harris and the Benham brothers, the telegenic real estate entrepreneurs whose house-flipping show on HGTV was canceled in 2014 when their history of anti-gay activism came to light. At the event, Cruz thanked Harris for "calling the nation to revival," and called David and Jason Benham "an extraordinary voice for the Christian faith."
Sanders and Clinton in an Empire State of Mind (The Atlantic)
The Democrats will debate in Brooklyn, New York, ahead of the state’s primary. The Democratic Party, and both the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns plan to sue the state of Arizona over alleged voter suppression. Florida authorities announced that Corey Lewandowski won’t face charges for battery. And Canada introduced a historic assisted suicide bill.
Panama Papers Offer More Evidence That Free Trade Isn’t Really Free (Bill Moyers)
You might wonder what the connection is between a friendly game of golf last summer in Martha’s Vineyard and the Panama Papers. Read on.
As anyone who hasn’t been in a cave – or otherwise away from the Internet — knows, last week the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, working with more than a hundred publications around the world, broke news of the biggest data leak in history, from an anonymous source tapping into the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Technology
Electric car firm Faraday aims to start $1bn Nevada mega plant by 2018 to rival Tesla (Telegraph)
Upstart electric car company Faraday Future hopes to have its first vehicles rolling off the assembly line in 2018, a company executive said on Wednesday, as officials marked the start of construction on a planned $1 billion (£700 million) Las Vegas-area production plant.
The Beautiful Complexity of the Cosmic Web (Scientific American)
Scientists first discovered the so-called “cosmic web” less than a decade ago. Since then, various questions have lingered, perhaps foremost among them: What does the cosmic web look like? A new visualization by Kim Albrecht at the Center for Complex Network Research helps to address this intriguing mystery.
Health and Life Sciences
Malaria resistance 'unable to spread' (BBC)
The first case of the malaria parasite being unable to spread its resistance to drugs has been discovered by scientists in Australia.
Tests showed the parasite can learn to shrug off the effects of the drug atovaquone, but in doing so it cripples a later part of its life cycle.
Living Near Greenery May Help You Live Longer (NY Times)
Researchers monitored 108,630 women who completed biannual questionnaires on their health and lifestyle from 2000 to 2008. During that time, 8,604 died. Using satellite imagery, they tracked the extent of seasonal vegetation where the women lived. The study controlled for socioeconomic status, age, race, body mass index, physical activity, smoking, education and other health and behavioral factors.
Newly discovered hormone could fight type 2 diabetes and obesity (New Scientist)
It’s managed to evade our detection until now, but a natural hormone made by fat cells could help us fight diabetes and obesity.
The hormone was finally identified by analysing the DNA of two people with a rare disease called neonatal progeroid syndrome (NPS), which leaves them with unhealthily low levels of fat.
Life on the Home Planet
Fracking’s Total Environmental Impact Is Staggering, Report Finds (Think Progress)
The body of evidence is growing that fracking is not only bad for the global climate, it is also dangerous for local communities.
And affected communities are growing in number. A new report, released Thursday, details the sheer amount of water contamination, air pollution, climate impacts, and chemical use in fracking in the United States.
Sinking Atlantic Coastline Meets Rapidly Rising Seas (Scientific American)
The 5,000 North Carolinians who call Hyde County home live in a region several hundred miles long where coastal residents are coping with severe changes that few other Americans have yet to endure.
Geological changes along the East Coast are causing land to sink along the seaboard. That’s exacerbating the flood-inducing effects of sea level rise, which has been occurring faster in the western Atlantic Ocean than elsewhere in recent years.
Dark Matter Dwarf Galaxy Found Hidden in Spacetime Warp (Discovery)
In 2014, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile observed a striking cosmic quirk during its Long Baseline Campaign. It saw a distant galaxy, warped beyond recognition, by the gravitational field of a massive galaxy in the foreground. This “Einstein ring” is so-called after Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which predicts spacetime can become bent by the presence of a powerful gravitational field.
