As usual, these are my favorite recent articles.
Energy
- Bill Ryerson – Dealing With The Elephant In The Room: Overpopulation [very inspiring podcast / article; it’s all about education]
Now, I’ve heard a lot of environmentalists say ‘Well, population doesn’t matter’ because the real culprits in climate change are the high consumers of the West who each have a huge carbon footprint. But in fact, if you take the median projection of population growth by the UN Population Division from now to 2050 — an additional 2.5 billion people — and multiply that times the admittedly low per capita carbon emissions of a citizen in the developing world, it’s the climate equivalent of adding two United States to the planet.
Put another way, projections show that whether we have a major effort to promote family planning and small family norms and delayed marriage and stopping child marriage, or a minor effort, that will result in a difference, from a climate standpoint, of 2 United States by 2050.
- Bank of England must do more to tackle climate change, says report | The Independent [ZH is of course not found of the proposal; c.f. article here. I personally love it, but unfortunately I find many other proposal by the organization Positive Money dubious.]
- Finanzmärkte und Klimawandel: Perestroika in Kapitalistan – taz.de [German article]
- McCrone: Warp Speed to More Storage, Less Dark Energy, Summit 2018 | Bloomberg New Energy Finance [Again, energy storage is the holy grail]
- Hedge Funds Have Never Been More Bullish Oil, But The “Ghost Of 2008” Looms
- Eight Geopolitical Risks That Could Send Oil Prices Surging [An a recent example of how it might look like: Saudi-led Coalition Destroys Houthi Boats Threatening Oil Tanker]
- California Mandates Solar Panels For Most New Homes
- A New Geo-Engineering Scheme to Prevent Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise – The Atlantic
- Visualizing U.S. Energy Consumption In One Chart [Wish they would update it for the world!]
Geopolitics
Here are a few figures to give you some idea of just how worried Washington is by Beijing’s active involvement in the international arena as a financial donor.
The information is taken from a study by the AidData research lab at the College of William & Mary in America in conjunction with experts from Harvard University in the US and Heidelberg University in Germany. Data was gathered and analysed from a total of 4300 projects that received Chinese funding in 140 countries around the world. The time frame of the study is 2000–2014 (fifteen years).The total amount of funding these projects received from China during this time period was $350 billion, and the scale of the funding increased steadily over the fifteen years, from $2.6 billion in 2000 to $37.3 billion in 2014. The largest amount was $69.6 billion in 2009.
The amount of funding given to foreign countries under various arrangements by the United States during the same period equalled $394.6 billion.
[The Chinese model] is more immediately appealing in those parts of Africa and Asia where breakneck economic growth is both a realistic prospect and a pressing need. Rapid economic development, coupled with national self-assertion, has an obvious attraction for states that need to deliver results in a relatively short period of time. In these places, democracy often looks like the riskier bet.
- North And South Korea Declare End To War, Proclaim “New Era Of Peace” [However, might the collapse of their nuclear facility be the catalyst? c.f. article below.]
- North Korean Nuclear Test Site Has Collapsed, Explaining Kim’s “Suspension” Of Further Tests [Confirmation of the collapse later and subsequent dismantling of the site by North Korea]
- Green Berets Are Now On The Ground Assisting The Saudi War On Yemen In “A Marked Escalation”
- Clapper: The U.S. Meddled In Foreign Elections And Conducted Regime Change In The “Best Interests Of The People”
- Leaked Doc Reveals White House Planning “Regime Change” In Iran
- Clapper: The FBI Wasn’t Spying On Trump, It Was “Benign Information Gathering”
- Second Spy Tried To Infiltrate Trump Campaign Says Former Adviser: “This Is Just The Beginning” [Not following the internal US politics too closely, but the daily headlines suggest lots of fireworks.]
- Here’s When China Will Win The Arms Race With The US, And How BofA Is Trading It [Spoiler alert: buy defense stocks… War Is A Racket.]
- How To Bankrupt A Nation
Simple…
“When ur loading a $70,000 missile onto a $28 million drone, so it can fly at the cost of $3,624 an hour to kill some people in Yemen who live on less than $1 per day…”
- “Everything Has Gone Wrong”: Soros Warns “Major” Financial Crisis Is Coming
- Oettinger Apologizes After Saying “Markets Will Teach Italians” Not To Vote For Populists
What democracy really means to Europe: keep voting until you get the outcome we want.
On-off trade wars between the US and the rest of the world. Trump’s point of view is best summarized in the following tweet:
However, the rest of the world is not too happy about it, with common headlines looking like this: “This Is A Red Line”: Beijing Warns Trump Trade Deal Is Off If US Imposes Tariffs or “Just Days Left” To Avoid Trade War France Says, As G-7 Condemn Trump or. The most important question is, who has the highest leverage? It may not be the US in the end:
or maybe not?
Adding the US withdrawal from the Iran deal into the mix (with the EU and now also China siding against the US):
- China “Regrets” Trump’s Decision, Vows To Protect Iran Nuclear Deal
- EU Launches Rebellion Against Trump’s Iran Sanctions, Bans European Companies From Complying
- Putin: The Whole World Sees The “Dangerous Dollar Monopoly”
- As Russia’s Gold Hoard Soars, Putin Warns “US Sanctions Hurt Trust In Dollar As Reserve Currency”
- Turkey Repatriates All Gold From The US In Attempt To Ditch The Dollar [Though good luck to Turkey… With such a high current account deficit the country might soon be forced to sell it’s gold too, as Venezuela recently had to do.]
- Erdogan Urges Turks To Stick With Collapsing Lira, Warns Financial Speculators “Will Pay A Heavy Price”
- Mass Exodus: Venezuelan Army Troops Desert In Droves Ahead Of Presidential Election
- Hyperinflation Meets Free Electricity: Venezuela’s Crypto-Mining Mania Goes Mainstream
- Five “Most Wanted” ISIS Leaders Captured, Trapped Using Smartphone App
Economics
- Economists Are Evolving, But Old-School Textbooks Aren’t – Bloomberg
- Economists understand little about the causes of growth – Free exchange: Root and branch [What a surprise!]
- Labor Unions Are About To Go Extinct, But An Unintended Consequence Emerges
Technology
- Google I/O 2018 keynote in 14 minutes – YouTube [And a deeper dive into Google’s AI here]
- Step Aside Uber, Tesla: Waymo Will Launch World’s First “Self-Driving Transportation Service” This Year [And it’s coming faster than “everyone” thought.]
According to media reports, Waymo is going to be launching 62,000 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which it will be adding to its fleet in anticipation of launching its self driving transportation service as soon as this year.
- Who Is Going To Make Money In AI? Part I – Towards Data Science
- AI Learns Painterly Harmonization | Two Minute Papers #249 – YouTube
- AI-Based Large-Scale Texture Synthesis | Two Minute Papers #252 – YouTube
- Amazon Admits Hackers Could Turn Echo Speakers Into Listening Devices [Other “funny” stories here and here]
- Cell Phone Carriers Are Secretly Selling Your Real-Time Location Data [Another article closely related]
- Russia’s Nuclear Underwater Drone Could Trigger 300-Foot Tsunamis, Headed For Battlefield By 2027
- This Is The ‘Depressing’ Chart Mark Zuckerberg Does Not Want You To See
- Pentagon Spends $1 Billion To Acquire More War Robots
- In 1995, Steve Jobs Explained Exactly How Apple Will Fail
- Google Abandons Pentagon’s AI-Drone ‘Project Maven’ After Employee Revolt
- The Long Road to Self-Driving Trucks – Member Feature Stories – Medium
- Chinese Factories Employ “Brain Scanners” To Stop Workers’ Mistakes Before They Happen
Some random cool tech coming to markets:
- If You Want to ESCAPE with Me…Beat Saber – YouTube
- Introducing Microsoft Surface Hub 2 – YouTube
- DJI – Introducing the Ronin-S – YouTube
Tesla
Very interesting and entertaining play-out of current events. While I really like Tesla and to some extend Elon Musk’s vision, I do think he is playing with fire on a absurdly high level and in a somewhat dishonest way. With 20% of Tesla’s stock short, disastrous financials, a lousy AI for its autopilot but Elon having very deep pocked friends, the show is guaranteed to be exciting going forward.
In the event of a funding emergency for Tesla, Musk might be comfortable selling his voting shares to a trusted friend, like Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Larry Page (net worth: $50 billion). In 2013, Page and Musk had a handshake deal for Google to buy Tesla. Page also once said he would rather leave all his money to Musk when he dies, rather than give it to charity. Google Ventures is already an investor in SpaceX.
- Tesla Will Need Over $10 Billion In New Capital By 2020: Goldman
- “Musk Meltdown”: Tesla Tumbles After Elon Cuts Off Conference Call Question
- Tesla Almost Out of Stock—for Short Sellers – Barron’s
- Will Elon Musk Be the Next CEO to Face A Margin Call Death-Spiral? [Though Elon Musk has a lot more stock to pledge as collateral… Still welcome to shadow banking 101!]
- Tesla Burns $12 Million Per Day As It Scrambles To Ramp Model 3 Production
- Are Tesla Claims That Its Autopilot Reduces Crash Rates By Up To 40% Exaggerated?
- Tesla Model S With Autopilot Slams Into Fire Truck At 60mph As Another Key Exec Departs
- Morgan Stanley Has Had Enough, Slashes Tesla Price Target To $291 From $376
- The Revolving Door Continues: Tesla Loses Two More Executives
- Yet Another Tesla Autopilot Executive Leaves For Yet Another Tesla Rival
- Elon Musk’s Great Model 3 Bait and Switch
- Tesla In Autopilot Accelerated Before Slamming Into Parked Firetruck
Finance
- An Unexpected Warning From Goldman Sachs: “Something Is Not Quite Right” [Another ZH master piece on High Frequency Trading and market structure (on of my favorite topics!). It took Goldman Sachs 9 years to catch up, c.f. the linked ZH old classic in the above article: The Incredibly Shrinking Market Liquidity, Or The Upcoming Black Swan Of Black Swans]
- Fed Chair Powell To Emerging Markets: You Are On Your Own
- “This Is Highly Unusual”: Why Goldman Thinks The VIX Is Suddenly “Too Low”
- An “Audible Gasp” Was Heard When The Chicago Fed Unveiled Its “Solution” To The Pension Problem
- Deutsche: “Every Fed Tightening Cycle Creates A Crisis”
- JPMorgan’s Stunning Conclusion: An Italian Exit May Be Rome’s Best Option [Includes some nice Target2 charts, c.f. below]
- Here Are The 500 Million Real Reasons Why Italian 2-Year Bond Yields Plunged Today [And also use algo momentum to your advantage!]
- Italy’s Sovereign Risk Curve Inverts For First Time Since 2011 EU Crisis
- Argentina Haunted By Ghosts Of Crises Past [I found this comment of the article particularly interesting]
- So You Want To Short The Student Loan Bubble? Now You Can
- Freddie Mac Launches “3% Down” Mortgage With No Income Restrictions
- Orphan CDS, Manufactured Credit Events, Insufficient Deliverables: What The Hell Is Going On In The CDS Market? [Deep dive into the CDS market]
- Prop Trading Returns As Volcker Rewrite Allows Banks To Engage In Short-Term Trades
- Apple Spent A Record $22.8BN On Buybacks In Q1, More Than Market Cap Of Most Companies [Or how to misallocate capital on a gargantuan scale… but Apple has never been really good at managing its cash pile anyways… (most of it is invested in short term treasuries and has been for years)]
- “Overwriting” Madness
- Goldman Vice President Charged With Insider Trading Scheme
Cryptocurrencies
- DOJ Launches Criminal Probe Into Bitcoin Price Manipulation
- Mysterious Trader With “Nearly Unlimited Bankroll” Said To Manipulate, Dominate Price Of Bitcoin [Older article, market manipulation 101]
Ted Talks
- Kate Raworth: Doughnut Economics: How to Think Like a 21st Century Economist [We had the pleasure to host a lecture from her here in Göttingen last month, c.f. blog post here. The link given above is actually a TedX Talk of her. I found it better than her now “original” Ted Talk. A version of her full lecture is available here.]
- Gwynne Shotwell: SpaceX’s plan to fly you across the globe in 30 minutes [Not sure what that might do to future energy demand, but still very cool.]
- Why we should all stop saying “I know exactly how you feel” [Ted Ideas article]
- Steven Pinker: Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers
- Aaswath Raman: How we can turn the cold of outer space into a renewable resource
Gordon Schücker 