I will be doing proper links tomorrow once I get back to full strength. Here is what I have from the preceding 4 or 5 days. I am still wading through the news and will have much more coming forward.
Clouds lifting over the UK economy | Gavyn Davies
“the tribulations of the euro area in 2011-12 clearly crossed the Channel and damaged British consumer confidence, so the European Central Bank’s efforts to remove the risk of a euro break-up has helped the UK almost as much as southern Europe. With US domestic demand also recovering, UK exports have been rebounding, too.
Then there is fiscal policy. The Treasury, deliberately or not, has slowed the overall pace of fiscal tightening in the past 18 months.”
Here, Nick Rowe, a monetarist economist tries to put the endogenous money views of Steve Keen into a neoclassical framework. Could be the beginnings of a better understanding of the issues
“Indonesia is now running a hefty trade deficit after years of surplus came to an abrupt end last year. The rapid deterioration since 2012 has largely been a result of weaker prices for commodities such as coal and palm oil, undermining the notion that Indonesia’s economy is not export-dependent.
India, in common with Indonesia, has not developed a sufficiently sophisticated manufacturing industry capable of generating big foreign exchange receipts or, just as important, jobs. Both countries share a supposed demographic dividend. Yet unless the economy can create enough employment, a young, restless population can be more of a curse than a benefit.”
I believe polls may underestimate this party’s strength. I expect them to make the hurdle. This will be a big problem for Merkel.
“A big package of financial sector reforms has been launched by India’s high-profile new central bank chief as the country battles a currency crisis and slowdown in economic growth.
On his first day at the helm of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan unveiled moves to liberalise banking and spread services across the nation of 1.3bn people. “
“Poor countries are typically at a huge disadvantage in bargaining with big multinational lenders, which are usually backed by powerful home-country governments. Often, debtor countries are squeezed so hard for payment that they are bankrupt again after a few years.
Economists applauded Argentina’s attempt to avoid this outcome through a deep restructuring accompanied by the GDP-linked bonds. But a few “vulture” funds – most notoriously the hedge fund Elliott Management, headed by the billionaire Paul E. Singer – saw Argentina’s travails as an opportunity to make huge profits at the expense of the Argentine people. They bought the old bonds at a fraction of their face value, and then used litigation to try to force Argentina to pay 100 cents on the dollar.”
“The composite PMI rose to 51.5 from 50.5 in July, according to survey compilers Markit, below a consensus forecast of 51.7 but still the highest level since June 2011. “The eurozone recovery is looking increasingly broad-based, with more sectors and more countries emerging from recession,” said Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit. “
The crux here is that email is an intrinsically insecure way of communicating.
“The QX10 and QX100 were officially unveiled in a presentation by Phil Molyneux, president and chief operating officer with Sony. Both devices are set to launch later this month, and are available to preorder now through Sony’s online store, Amazon and other authorized resellers.
Both are wireless cameras that lack extensive controls or even a dedicated screen or viewfinder. Instead, those duties are relegated to a smartphone that is connected to the device over peer-to-peer Wi-Fi.
Both cameras are compatible with Apple’s iPhone when running the latest version of Sony’s PlayMemories Mobile application, available for free on the iOS App Store. The cameras will also work with an iPad, if users want an exceptionally large viewfinder.”
“The Galaxy Gear, Samsung’s latest foray into the smartwatch category, is now official and it’s quite unlike anything you’ve seen before. Yes, it’s a smartphone accessory that can pick up notifications, control music playback, and keep time with a rich variety of watch faces, but Samsung takes it a few steps further by integrating a 1.9-megapixel camera, a speaker, and two microphones – allowing you to shoot short 720p movies and even conduct phone calls with the Galaxy Gear.
“It’s not a standalone phone, but you can use it to make phone calls”
Importantly, the Galaxy Gear is not a phone in its own right – it relies on a Bluetooth connection to your Samsung Galaxy device in order to do most of its connected work.”
“The screen has grown to 5.7 inches from the Note II’s 5.3, and it weighs in at a slightly lighter 168g. It’s 8.3mm, about a millimeter thinner than its predecessor, with 3GB of RAM, a 2.3GHz quad-core processor on its LTE model — another 3G version will use a 1.9GHz octocore processor — and a 13-megapixel rear camera. Samsung has even promised that the phone can shoot 4K video.”
“A U.K. record label is suing Spotify AB for using playlists from some of its dance music compilation albums, posing new questions for online streaming services as they look to gain a bigger role in the music industry.
Ministry of Sound Group Ltd., known in the U.K. for its nightclubs and dance music remixes, said Spotify had infringed copyright laws by replicating the track order of its compilation albums.
The company is seeking an injunction requiring the removal of the playlists—which are made by Spotify users, not Spotify itself—as well as damages and costs.”
“We love Android, but rooting your phone can give you the opportunity to do so much more than your phone can do out of the box—whether its wireless tethering, speeding it up with overclocking, or customizing the look of your phone with themes. Here’s what you need to know about the rooting process, and where to find a guide for your phone”
“It seems like a whole lot of Google stuffage is happening today. Today ushered in the unveiling of a new Android operating system name, Android 4.4 KitKat. Coinciding with that news, Google also let everyone know that now that the 8GB Nexus 4 has run out of stock, it won’t be resupplied. With all the signs pointing to one thing, it seemed inevitable that the leaks of the new Nexus 4 would be forthcoming. And interestingly enough, it seems that the first credible glimpse of the device comes from El Goog itself.”
Microsoft buying Nokia’s phone business in a $7.2 billion bid for its mobile future | The Verge
This was the right move. Nokia was toast and totally dependent on Microsoft. Now, the two businesses are merged, god help them.
“We can also use a percentile analysis to put today’s market valuation in the historical context. As the chart below illustrates, latest P/E10 ratio is approximately at the 89th percentile of the 1592 data points in this series.”
This is an old but interesting story:
“Security researchers in Germany have discovered that physically freezing an Android smartphone can grant access to encrypted data.”
Renting cheaper than buying in London, the South East and Scotland – Telegraph
China Aug. Manufacturing PMI Beats Estimates With 51.0 Reading – Bloomberg
China Factory Activity Hits 16-Month High – WSJ.com
The precarious nature of corporate profits
The Triumph of Parliament – Telegraph Blogs
ekathimerini.com | Banks post August gains of 14.24 pct
Apple Begins IPhone Trade-In Program to Boost Sales – Bloomberg
Swype vs. SwiftKey vs. Google Android Keyboards | 2FatDads
What everyone gets wrong about monetary policy
Hyper-Endogeneity | New Economic Perspectives
Guest post: Why the Fed is a marginal player in US debt | FT Alphaville
“While the Fed certainly have been purchasing extensive amounts of government debt in the secondary markets it is perhaps misleading to assume that these markets would not otherwise be buoyant without such intervention.”
“Getting old often means getting lonely. Five pensioners from Hamburg tried to improve their lives by moving into a shared apartment. SPIEGEL journalist Barbara Hardinghaus, seeking options for her own parents, explored how they fared. She found that old age and happiness can go together. “
The cloud reduces the number of server clients and therefore gives those clients more pricing power. That means prices will come down.
“The conflicting signs point to a fundamental question facing hardware makers: Will the ballyhooed shift to what the industry calls cloud computing actually reduce server sales, or possibly just change who buys them?
“There will absolutely be fewer buyers of physical machines,” predicts Bryan Cantrill, a senior vice president at Joyent Inc., another company that hosts computing operations. “But we don’t know if there will be fewer physical machines sold.””
This happened because the new Nexus 4 was coming out:
“The Nexus 4 by LG and Google has always been a steal at it’s low price of $299. Now El Goog is sweetening the deal even further with a price drop down to a mere $199 for the 8GB model and $249 for the 16GB model. At that price, you’re getting a phone that still has relatively great specs, stock Android and is blessed with the Nexus name, thus ensuring speedy software updates in the future. If you’re on a GSM carrier, you have absolutely no reason not to buy one of these at this bargain price.”
Comments are closed.