A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading this morning on the World Wide Web.
Back in 2011, the New York Times published a long feature suggesting, mostly correctly, that the U.S. fracking-based natural gas revolution was much more of a finance boom than a productive contribution to the country's energy strategy. Thursday, the Financial Times Alphaville blog provided similar analysis on U.S. crude production with the much different conclusion that "Shale is not a Ponzi scheme."
Writer Izabella Kaminska notes the improving balance sheets in the sector and also an interesting phenomenon that only applies to energy providers. "Unlike a conventional business which goes bankrupt if it expends too much energy creating products that may never be needed, and detracts from the global energy reserve pointlessly as a result, a shale producer — even if he doesn't break-even immediately — is always operating with the objective of replacing all the energy he consumes. That, weirdly enough, makes his model much more sustainable — even with negative cash-flows — than most other businesses which only consume energy rather than replace energy."
Shale is not a ponzi – Kaminska, FT Alphaville
Technology news site Wired wonders whether Apple Inc. is about to wipe out the credit card business in the same way iTunes destroyed music publisher profitability. The story concludes that it's possible, but probably a few years out. "The prevailing sentiment in the media is what Apple has planned is game-changing and will finally move mobile wallets towards mass adoption…[but] At the end of the day, the swipe — the three seconds it takes me to swipe my card — is no less convenient than using a mobile phone to transact. And what if the phone dies? It's just as bad as losing my wallet."
Will Apple Kill Off the Credit Card Like It Did the Compact Disc? – Wired
U.S. album sales hit lowest weekly figure since records began – NME
Columnist Matthew Klein presents compelling evidence that China, not technology, is the primary reason for the slow recovery in U.S. (and by extension Canada) employment. Mr. Klein writes, "recent research [shows] that trade with China, and by extension with other low-wage countries, has cost Americans jobs, increased government spending, and permanently lowered wages for people forced out of well-paying manufacturing employment."
Yes, trade with poor countries has cost US jobs –Klein, FT Alphaville
The American Enterprise Institute finds the hype surrounding driverless vehicles hugely overdone, especially for the Canadian economy. The story quotes an Massachusetts Institute of Technology study showing the limits of driverless cars which includes, "It knows almost nothing about parking, and can't be taken out in snow or heavy rain."
If you are excited about driverless cars, you will find this very depressing – AEI
Tweet of the day includes an excellent chart, "@qz M&A skipped its usual summer vacation and hit record highs instead qz.com/257301 pic.twitter.com/gUaFqCIk0d "
Diversion: 10 of the best improvised scenes in movie history – Sploid
Scott Barlow