Thursday, January 21, 2016

People trust Google for their news more than the actual news

And get a load of this:
People trust Google for their news more than the actual news - Quartz

Users will be able to text friends or a chatbot that will scour the Web and other sources to answer a question Google begins rolling-out the ability to install Cold River apps

Owner of Philadelphia Media Network transfers newspapers and website to nonprofit
“In a democracy,” foundation President and CEO Pedro Ramos said at the Constitution Center, “great cities need and depend on quality journalism.” Lenfest’s gift will support and enhance “nothing less than an essential element of our democracy,” Ramos said.The new alignment – while unique and untested – sets out mechanisms by which public-interest reporting can be preserved and enhanced while new electronic distribution methods are developed….”
Via Philly.com

Good interview with the highly intelligent George Soros, mostly on geopolitics.  And Krugman on Bernie Sanders. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.BIjW3W87.dpuf
Good interview with the highly intelligent George Soros, mostly on geopolitics.  And Krugman on Bernie Sanders. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.BIjW3W87.dpuf





In Plate 18 from Metamorphosis, Merian portrays the ruthless nature of the food chain. (Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium /Albion Prints)

Where others sought separation, Maria Sibylla Merian saw connection.
Good interview with the highly intelligent George Soros, mostly on geopolitics.  And Krugman on Bernie Sanders. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.BIjW3W87.dpuf
Good interview with the highly intelligent George Soros, mostly on geopolitics.  And Krugman on Bernie Sanders. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.BIjW3W87.dpuf
Does it matter if the world is beautiful? It does to Frank Wilczek. His laws of nature are exuberant, harmonious, and symmetrical...Bawa's Physics  

Abu Haleema was arrested on terrorism offences in Britain last year and has had his passport cancelled, Fairfax Media reported this morning. It’s unclear why he has chosen to focus on Australia, but his online sermons, in which he recently attacked moderate Sydney sheikhs Shady Alsuleiman and Wesam Charkawi, are apparently being well received.
Home Office officials are to go to Middlesbrough on Thursday as part of an investigation into the housing of asylum seekers in the north-east of England after claims that they are identifiable by their red doors.

By Nicholas Shaxson, the author of Treasure Islands, an award-winning book about tax havens. Originally published at Tax Justice Network
Tax treaties are an arcane but important part of the international trade and investment system. When a business from one jurisdiction invests in another, the question then arises as to which jurisdiction gets to tax which bits of the income that the investment generates. So countries have for years signed Double Tax Treaties or Double Tax Agreements (DTAs) with each other, to sort out these and other questions. Since the global treaty system began to emerge (after Austria-Hungary signed one with Prussia in 1899), the core aim of the system’s designers has been to make sure that multinationals don’t get taxed twice on the same income: so-called ‘double taxation’. Countries sign them because they think they will attract and smooth the flow of inward investment. It will make their country more ‘competitive,’ the thinking goes.  New Paper Makes Powerful Case Against Tax Treaties

BEPS: Everything asset managers need to know 

Every year the SEC delivers an annual report right around the holidays that gets virtually forgotten by everyone. But a tipster highlighted one part of the document that matches recent research about the way in which the agency plays with numbers.
Urska Velikonja, assistant professor at Emory School of Law, released the study late last year, showing that the SEC artificially over-counts and inflates its enforcement statistics to position itself as a tough regulator. Once you weed all that out, you find that the agency has not increased its enforcement numbers significantly since 2002, financial crisis be damned. Here’s a sample of the SEC’s statistical schemes:
For example, the SEC includes in its enforcement statistics what Velikonja calls “follow-on” actions, such as barring offenders from various professional associations, or revoking registrations of broker-dealers or investment advisers, or preventing individuals from appearing as an attorney or auditor before the SEC. These follow-on actions are all based on a “primary enforcement action against the same offender based on the same set of facts,” Velikonja writes. Yet they are counted separately.
The SEC, for instance, followed a civil action against Robert A. Gist in 2013 for defrauding clients of $5.4 million with an associational bar and a suspension of Gist’s ability to practice law before the SEC. All three of these actions are counted in the SEC’s 2013 tally.
Plenty more on this at the link

How can we help the wealthy part with their wealth? 

How can we end the UK's fat cat culture?


 
 
Working a ‘gig’? It’s not as romantic as it seems TreeHugger. Huh? There are people who believe that a “gig” is “romantic”? Only perhaps in its original sense, of being an artist who works on an ad hoc basis.