Where and how governments must now invest to redeem the failure of past climate policy. The ordinary Chinese citizen turned property investor (apartment purchaser) could be the hardest hit by the Evergrande debacle. An ugly tale of an investment strategy that is wreaking havoc in the newsrooms of the US. The ten tech trends currently attracting most attention and investment. Healthy lifestyle habits are by far the best investment we can make in terms of achieving greater and healthier longevity.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“While optimism is about 25 percent heritable, the rest is attributable to environmental influences.” Lewina Lee, a Boston university psychologist, about the association between optimism and exceptional longevity – in the last article of this weekly selection
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Why Climate Policy Has Failed And How Governments Can Do Better
(Foreign Affairs, 12 October 2021)
This is a must-read to grasp what is at stake. On the eve of the COP26 meeting, the world-famous economist does a great job at explaining what the policy imperatives are. The key question for him is whether our political systems can catch up with the geophysical realities that threaten our lives and livelihoods. The challenge boils down to a necessary mix of policies: (1) High carbon prices (currently, the price of carbon dioxide emissions across the world is essentially zero), combined with (2) investment in low-carbon technologies (current inadequate investment in low-carbon technologies is the result of misaligned innovation incentives), and (3) international participation in a climate club because the entire structure of international policy is hampered by free-riding (metered paywall, free registration may be required – reads in less than 10 min).
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Lynn Parramore, Jim Chanos: China’s “Leveraged Prosperity” Model is Doomed. And That’s Not the Worst
(Institute for New Economic Thinking, 14 October 2021)
This interview with the famed short-seller and perma-bear on China offers an interesting take on the Evergrande’s debacle and perspective on China. For more than 10 years, Chanos has been short China, warning that it was building a real estate-driven economy on a “feeble house of cards”. In his opinion, the chickens are coming home to roost. A valuable insight about Chinese property developers: “The biggest amount of liabilities is not necessarily to banks and bondholders. It’s to apartment buyers” (free access – reads in 7-9 min).
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McKay Coppins, A secretive hedge fund is gutting newsrooms
(The Atlantic, 14 October 2021)
This is the story of Alden Global Capital, a secretive American hedge fund that specializes in acquiring newspapers and has become in the process one of the largest newspaper operators in the country. Its model is simple: “gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring out as much cash as possible”. An investment strategy that comes with harsh social consequences and a textbook example of vulture capitalism (metered paywall – reads in 10 min +).
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Jacomo Corbo and al., The top trends in tech
(McKinsey, October 2021)
A primer to understand what’s going on in tech! These, according to the McKinsey tech council, are the top 10 tech trends that will shape the coming decade and currently attract the most attention / interest from investment funds and technologists: (1) Process automation and virtualization, (2) The future of connectivity; (3) Distributed infrastructure; (4) Next-generation computing; (5) Applied AI; (6) Future of programming; (7) Trust architecture; (8) Bio Revolution; (9) Next-gen materials; and (10) Future of clean technologies. Naturally, they are all intertwined (free access – reads in around 10 min and contains lots of useful graphs).
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Matt Fuchs, Want to add healthy years to your life? Here’s what new longevity research says
(The Washington Post, 11 October 2021)
Recent research points to interventions in diet, exercise and mental outlook that could slow down aging and age-related diseases without risky biohacks such as unproven gene therapies. According to a biochemist who runs the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, a multidisciplinary approach involving these evidence-based strategies “could get it all right.” What’s now become clear is that certain lifestyles help individuals live longer than they otherwise would — including the genetically blessed. According to Harvard researchers, healthy habits add nearly 15 years of life expectancy – equivalent to $ trillions in health-care savings (metered paywall – reads in 7-8 min).
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