Stuck on repeat: why we love repetition in music
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/29/why-we-love-repetition-in-music-tom-service

Leicester City: Dirty Dozen or Harvard Case Study?
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-26/leicester-city-dirty-dozen-or-harvard-case-study

The Greatest Poet Alive
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/the-greatest-poet-alive/476376/

Singapore
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/21/story-cities-singapore-carefully-planned-lee-kuan-yew

Why Haven’t Bankers Been Punished? Just Read These Insider SEC Emails
https://www.propublica.org/article/why-havent-bankers-been-punished-just-read-these-insider-sec-emails

Offshore in central London: the curious case of 29 Harley Street
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/19/offshore-central-london-curious-case-29-harley-street

Top ten trends in Fintech
http://www.futuresmag.com/2016/04/15/top-10-trends-fintech

What the great degree rip-off means for graduates: low pay and high debt
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/19/degree-graduates-low-pay-high-debt-students

good points against a 'Brexit'
https://medium.com/@DuncanWeldon/brexit-the-trade-deficit-is-not-a-source-of-strength-345f88026723#.6gjmupa5s

The whole point of the debate at the moment is that we know — at least in the short term — what Remain looks like, we don’t know what Leave looks like. That creates the kind of uncertainty which delays investment decisions and which would get worse after a Leave vote as we entered into months or years of talks.

And it’s this uncertainty which takes me to my biggest problem with the “the trade deficit is a strength” argument. It ignores the elephant in the room which the large UK’s current account deficit 

That to me, is the best economic argument against a Leave vote — why trigger an event that could lead to a reassessment of UK risks by global investors when you are “dependent to the kindness of strangers” for funding? 

FT on Bullshit
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2e43b3e8-01c7-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62.html?siteedition=uk 

Such careful statistical spin-doctoring might seem a world away from Trump’s reckless retweeting of racially charged lies. But in one sense they were very similar: a political use of statistics conducted with little interest in understanding or describing reality

Good essay on Bitcoin and money
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/john-lanchester/when-bitcoin-grows-up

Impartial coverage of the Brexit and Bremain navies.
{http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-eu-referendum-and-media.html}

and

{http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/01/bbc-brexit-too-timid-impartial-on-eu-not-enough?CMP=twt_gu}

25 Incredibly Useful Free Sites And Services

http://www.fastcompany.com/3058645/25-incredibly-useful-free-sites-and-services/9

The epistolary novel that is this blob....
Salman Rushdie: how Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule book
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/04/salman-rushdie-how-cervantes-and-shakespeare-wrote-modern-literary-rule-book

Panama Papers
The 1% hide their money offshore – then use it to corrupt our democracyhttp://www.theguardian.com/news/commentisfree/2016/apr/10/money-offshore-corrupt-democracy-political-influence

Panama

Panama Papers The Power Players {https://projects.icij.org/panama-papers/power-players/}

{http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/05/panama-papers-pull-fifa-uefa-chief-gianni-infantino-corruption-scandal}

{http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/05/panama-papers-world-leaders-tycoons-secret-property-empires}

The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption
{http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opinion/the-panama-papers-sprawling-web-of-corruption.html?_r=0}

The World's cheapest stocks

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/shares/where-are-the-worlds-cheapest-stock-markets/

Blockchain and the holy real-time settlement grail
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/02/26/2154510/blockchain-and-the-holy-real-time-settlement-grail/

too much of everything
{http://thereformedbroker.com/2016/02/25/abundance/}

Bitcoin the sewer rat
http://boingboing.net/2016/02/22/bitcoin-is-the-sewer-rat-of-cu.html

What will P2P lending look like 5 years from now?
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/02/19/2119569/what-will-p2p-lending-look-like-5-years-from-now/
'The really interesting thing about the potential for P2P to displace traditional banks and their clones is that it shows how easy it is to separate the business of taking deposits and running the payments system from the fundamentally unrelated business of allocating credit. Banks like combining these business lines to extract rents from the rest of society but there isn’t really any good reason why we let them do it. (Also, it’s not even clear they do a particularly good job at allocating credit to productive investments.)'

The worrying signal from US online lending
{http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/02/22/2153904/the-worrying-signal-from-us-online-lending/}

Help to Buy? More like Help to Cry for London’s first-time buyers
{http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0989bc0c-d0b0-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz40FCwNGnM}

Monopoly spoiled {http://imgur.com/topic/The_More_You_Know/vX3zm}

and
Monopoly Ultimate Banking Eliminates Cash With a Tiny ATM That Scans Property Cards
{http://toyland.gizmodo.com/monopoly-ultimate-banking-eliminates-cash-with-a-tiny-a-1759240688}

Unobtainium
The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age
{https://literaryreview.co.uk/unobtainium}

Broader questions to be asked about the efficacy of capitalism...

Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs Says It May Be Forced to Fundamentally Question How Capitalism Is Working
{http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/goldman-sachs-says-it-may-be-forced-to-fundamentally-question-how-capitalism-is-working}



The NIM force awakens ft

So what the hell is going on? Is capitalism broken? Or is the simpler answer that global capital availability isn’t what we thought it was?

Is the capital stock we think we have actually illusion? And does negative NIM represent not a capital glut …. but perhaps weirdly enough the exact opposite: a large liquid layer atop a very slim capital share?

Perhaps what’s really been happening is that the digitisation of the market since the 1980s has led to the creation of a Gosplan 2.0 mechanism for the world? Which is to say, market signals have been entirely contaminated by the digital sector’s obsession with “eco-systems” and conglomerisation — a Silicon Valley euphemism for cross-subsidisation.

If that’s true, it’s entirely possible the cost of essential goods (internet, telecoms, base foods, base clothes, base transport) has been massively underpriced for years versus their true cost of production at the same that the price of quality goods has been entirely overpriced versus their cost of production as well?

{http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/02/04/2152160/the-nim-force-awakens/}

top 100 jokes
http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/100-jokes-shaped-modern-comedy-c-v-r.html