Links 22 January 2018

Global Macro/Investing/Economics

• The effect of age on willingness to take risks – VOX
• How Warren Buffett’s billionaire deputy became an “expert-generalist” – QZ
• From Energy To Transport To Healthcare, Here Are 8 Industries Being Disrupted By Elon Musk And His Companies – CBInsights
• Can We Be Brutally Honest About Investment Returns? – WSJ
• 5 ways GDP gets it totally wrong as a measure of our success – WE Forum
• How Economics Survived the Economic Crisis by Robert Skidelsky – Project Syndicate

Americas

• The Government Shutdown Effect: Big In The Short Term, Small After That – Fivethirtyeight
• ‘Negotiating with Jell-O’: How Trump’s shifting positions fueled the rush to a shutdown – WaPo
• No, Apple Is Not Creating 20,000 Jobs Because of the Tax Bill – Slate
• Fine, Trump Doesn’t Have Dementia. He’s Just a Moron. – NYMAG
• ‘We loot or we die of hunger’: food shortages fuel unrest in Venezuela – As the country’s economic problems mount, towns and cities have been hit by an outbreak of looting and violence – The Guardian

Europe/Middle East/Subcontinent

• Donald Trump signs $110 billion arms deal with nation he accused of masterminding 9/11 – Independent
• US Congress asks if Russian money funded Trump golf courses: ‘Enormous amounts of capital’ flowed into UK and Ireland projects, analyst tells inquiry – The Guardian
• India Test-fires Nuclear-capable missile amid tensions with Pakistan – AWD
• The German government said on Friday that it would “immediately” stop approving arms exports to anyone participating in the war in Yemen including Saudi Arabia, a major buyer of German weapons. – DW
• Putin cast as national saviour ahead of Russia election – With elections looming in March, leading state-controlled TV channels are roping in religion to cast him as a national saviour who healed Russia’s historical divisions and rescued the nation from chaos. – BBC

Asia

• Suicides in Japan decline for 8th-straight year amid a stronger economy and improvements in counseling programs – NHK
• Jared Kushner Is China’s Trump Card – New Yorker
• China orders banks to stop financing cryptocurrencies as noose tightens around disrupter – SCMP
• China ‘warns off’ US destroyer near South China Sea’s strategic Scarborough Shoal – SCMP
• The staggering scale of China’s Belt and Road initiative – Axios

Australia/New Zealand

• New Zealand becomes the 11th country to achieve orbit, Rocket Labs successfully launches three satellites. – Newshub (Great news! Well done Unzud!)
• Australia’s biodiversity strategy a global embarrassment, green groups say – The Guardian
• Jacinda Ardern: For female PMs, having a baby is an offence only rivalled by not having one – ABC
• Apartment owners face $60,000 cladding-removal costs after court ruling protects builders – The Age
• David Jones, Myer: The decline of the Australian department store – News.com

….and more

• Alibaba’s AI Outguns Humans in Reading Test – Bloomberg
• ‘The Snowman’ Makes No Sense, According to the Director of ‘The Snowman’ – The Wrap
• Binghamton University researchers have been working on a self-healing concrete that uses a specific type of fungi as a healing agent. When the fungus is mixed with concrete, it lies dormant until cracks appear, when spores germinate, grow and precipitate calcium carbonate to heal the cracks. – Binghamton
• Creative People’s Brains Are Uniquely Wired, Scientists Discover. Researchers discovered is that when we’re being creative, a certain neurological pattern or signature occurs inside the brain – BigThink
• NVIDIA Tells Retailers To Sell To Gamers, Not Cryptominers As GPU Shortage Causes Extreme Price Gouging – Hothardware
• The male Y chromosome is progressively degenerating. Studies have shown that the chromosome is undergoing a structural rearrangement in order to slow the effects of decline. In the future, genetic engineering may be able to replace the gene function of the Y chromosome. – BI