A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading this morning on the World Wide Web.
Josh Brown, an investment adviser at Ritholtz Wealth Management, has always been great at bluntly skewering both the finance industry and investors. Mr. Brown provided a helpful list of investing truths that investors refuse to believe on his new blog, Welcome to Kindergarten. This one stuck out:
"The self-interest of investment professionals can manifest itself in many ways, from their proclivity to recommend transactions to their allegiance to a particular fund family to their opinions on the future promise of a given geography, sector or asset class. Charles Schwab wants you to think your active trading is going to help you, Vanguard wants you to think you should never place a trade so long as you live. Everybody has an axe to grind."
"Seven truths investors simply cannot accept " – The Kindergarten
Most of us assume that technological progress is synonymous with higher standards of living. The Guardian's J.R. Hennessy throws a wrench into this optimistic meme by suggesting technology is becoming detrimental to society's mental health.
Mr. Hennessy argues that the "technorati" are developing products that amuse themselves but nobody wants, "We trained ourselves to value Facebook's 'open society' without privacy; we accepted the furtive mobile phone check as appropriate punctuation for a face-to-face conversation; we even put up with 3D cinema for a time. But this is too much."
"The tech utopia nobody wants: why the world nerds are creating will be awful" – Guardian
FT Alphaville's brilliant Izabella Kaminska makes a similar point with a focus on the autocratic, monopolistic, vision of today's technological leaders:
"Not to say, … that the U.S. government should be dissolved and replaced with the corporate management of Google. But the point stands. Monopolies and absolute systems do have a constructive place in the cycle. What's more, once corporate monopolies become the only doers of good long-term work, perhaps there is an argument for some form of nationalisation or at least closer government supervision?"
"When are monopolies a good thing?" – FT Alphaville (registration, but not subscription required)
See also: "When all the jobs belong to robots, do we still need jobs?" - Boing Boing
The ridiculously well-sourced Peter Spiegel uncovered EU plans for really, really tough financial sanctions on Russia. In effect, the proposed measures would prohibit European banks and companies from investing in the debt of Russian banks. Banks, if it needs to be said, can't function without constant debt financing.
The Americans are unlikely to help out Russian banks with financing and the Chinese will also think twice before risking the disapproval of the entire western world. In all likelihood, if these sanctions are imposed, the Russian financial system will stop functioning.
"Leaked Russia sanctions memo: the details" – Spiegel, Financial Times
Former U.K. finance executive turned pundit Frances Coppolla attempts to turn the economic policy discussion on its head by suggesting that the Fed's Quantitative Easing policy is actually a fiscal spending initiative. The post is wonky but fascinating.
"QE is fiscal policy" – Coppolla Comment
Tweet of the Day from Twitter finance king @thestalwart, "Dang RT @jyarow: Where Facebook's money comes from" – Twitter
Diversion: "A sommelier explains how to tell if your wine is high quality" – Business Insider
Scott Barlow