Scrutiny over Facebook continues to gain steam. The EU is implementing a new data protection regulation in May that may become a global standard, but the bigger risk to Facebook and other members of the FAANGs are of the antitrust variety. As the Roger McNamee writes in the FT today, Facebook, Google, and Amazon have built near monopolies by limiting choice. Facebook, Google and Amazon have built monopolies that are limiting consumer choice, while also creating a chilling effect on innovation and entrepreneurship. They have snapped up potential competitors, including YouTube, Instagram … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2018
Your Retirement Life: It’s OK to Take It Easy
When you retire, the feeling that you need to always be doing something will be there. It’s important to remember you’ve earned the luxury to “Take it Easy.” David Ekerdt writes: Instead, I believe that the mantra should be: Let retirement be retirement. Studies of people who pass from work to retirement consistently find that they prize sovereignty over time—freedom—as the great gift of their new stage of life. This should include the freedom to shrug off any pressure to conform to a busy standard. Our society has a sufficient number of retirees who feel driven to pass their later years … [Read more...]
Long Needed Rise in Worker Compensation Emerges
The Employment Cost Index, reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 2.71% increase in the cost of employing American labor in the first quarter, the fastest rise since the third quarter of 2008. The first quarter of 2018 was the fastest growing quarter for the index since the fourth quarter of 2007. … [Read more...]
Cryptocurrencies: The Kolion
“Mr. Shlyapnikov has launched a cryptocurrency, the kolion, named after his hamlet some 80 miles southeast of Moscow, buoyed by an initial investment of a half-million dollars from investors in Russia and abroad,” writes Thomas Grove in the WSJ. It is an example of a crypto doing what it’s supposed to do: offer a trading network where money and trust are scarce. Grove continues: “Banks don’t want to lend to small farmers,” said Mr. Shlyapnikov. “So we created our own currency.” He said he wasn’t personally profiting, and appeared to live frugally. The tactic is popular in a part of … [Read more...]
Bonds Break Through 3%
10-year Treasury yields cracked through 3% for the first time since 2013. With short-term yields on the rise, and now long-term yields starting to follow suit, the yield drought appears to be coming to an end. … [Read more...]
Electric Buses: ‘Everyone Has One’
Bloomberg's Jeremy Hodges explains the explosion in the use of electric buses in China and how the trend could affect the oil industry. He writes: Electric buses were seen as a joke at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago when the Chinese manufacturer BYD Co. showed an early model. “Everyone was laughing at BYD for making a toy,” recalled Isbrand Ho, the Shenzhen-based company’s managing director in Europe. “And look now. Everyone has one.” Suddenly, buses with battery-powered motors are a serious matter with the potential to revolutionize city transport—and add to the … [Read more...]
The Rise of the Robot Bond Trader?
For years PIMCO was driven by the investing acumen of Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian. After an acrimonious split with El-Erian in 2014, and unceremoniously dumping Gross the same year, PIMCO's plan is to replace these titans of the bond industry with some algorithmic software and an office in trendy Austin, Texas. The Wall Street Journal's Justin Baer writes: Pimco’s mutual funds had $33 billion in net inflows in 2017, reversing a four-year stretch of client withdrawals, Morningstar said. While Pimco remains one of the world’s biggest investors, with about $1.7 trillion in assets, the firm … [Read more...]
Your Retirement Life: Enjoy Monet like a Rockefeller
“In 1883, Monet and his family settled at Giverny, northwest of Paris. Three years later he acquired an adjacent piece of land and applied for permission to dig a pond, which he hoped would be a source of artistic inspiration,” writes Rebecca Wei, President of Christie’s Asia. “In his petition to the local authorities, Monet specified that the pond would serve ‘for the pleasure of the eyes and also for the purpose of having subjects to paint.” One of Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) “Water Lilies” or Nympheas en fleur, painted circa 1914-1917 will be offered to bidders in “The Collection of David … [Read more...]
Billionaire Says Amazon Won’t Enter Drug Business
Julia La Roche reports at Yahoo Finance: Billionaire hedge fund manager Larry Robbins, the CEO of healthcare-focused Glenview Capital Management, seriously doubts that Amazon (AMZN) is going to get into the pharmaceutical business. “[We] don’t believe Amazon’s entry is imminent,” Robbins told a room of 3,000 investors at the Sohn Conference in New York on Monday. “We don’t think that it’s going to destroy the industry.” He added that some of the vertical integrations currently taking place between companies are “not reactive to Amazon.” Instead, they are “proactive to the … [Read more...]
Is Solar and Storage Competitive with Gas Peakers in Minnesota?
A recent report published by the Energy Transition Lab at the University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment suggests that a mix of renewable energy and lithium ion storage could be competitive in price with natural gas "peaker" turbines. The peaker turbines fire up during the times of highest demand on the grid. The electricity they produce is some of the most expensive. The high cost of peaker electricity coupled with the rapidly falling cost of renewables and batteries may combine to make the solar + storage combination less expensive than the natural gas fired peakers. MIT … [Read more...]
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