Perspective

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market – Olga Kharif 12/8

• “Among the coins people invest in, bitcoin has the least concentrated ownership, says Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital. The top 100 bitcoin addresses control 17.3% of all the issued currency, according to Alex Sunnarborg, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Tetras Capital. With ether, a rival to bitcoin, the top 100 addresses control 40% of the supply, and with coins such as Gnosis, Qtum, and Storj, top holders control more than 90%. Many large owners are part of the teams running these projects.”

WEF – This is every US state’s biggest trading partner – Andy Kiersz 11/16

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – What Happens When the Government Uses Facebook as a Weapon? – Lauren Etter 12/7

• “Internet.org was just one part of a decade-long campaign of global expansion for Facebook. In countries such as the Philippines, the efforts have been so successful that the company is able to tout to its advertisers that its network is, for many people, the only version of the internet they know. Repressive governments originally treated Facebook, and all social media, with suspicion—they saw how it could serve as a locus for dissidents, as it had in the Arab Spring in 2011. But authoritarian regimes are now embracing social media, shaping the platforms into a tool to wage war against a wide range of opponents—opposition parties, human-rights activists, minority populations, journalists.”
• Maria Ressa, co-founder of the country’s leading online news site “recalled that she started as a journalist in the Philippines in 1986, the year of the People Power Revolution, an uprising that ultimately led to the departure of Ferdinand Marcos and the move from authoritarian rule to democracy. Now she’s worried that the pendulum is swinging back and that Facebook is hastening the trend. ‘They haven’t done anything to deal with the fundamental problem, which is they’re allowing lies to be treated the same way as truth and spreading it,’ she says. ‘Either they’re negligent or they’re complicit in state-sponsored hate’.”

Bloomberg Businessweek – Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance – Zeke Faux 12/6

• “The concept is centuries old: Inmates of a New York debtors’ prison joked about it as early as 1800, in a newspaper they published called Forlorn Hope. But systematic schemes to collect on fake debts started only about five years ago. It begins when someone scoops up troves of personal information that are available cheaply online—old loan applications, long-expired obligations, data from hacked accounts—and reformats it to look like a list of debts. Then they make deals with unscrupulous collectors who will demand repayment of the fictitious bills. Their targets are often poor and likely to already be getting confusing calls about other loans. The harassment usually doesn’t work, but some marks are convinced that because the collectors know so much, the debt must be real.”
• “Americans are currently late on more than $600 billion in bills, according to Federal Reserve research, and almost one person in 10 has a debt in collectors’ hands. The agencies recoup what they can and sell the rest down-market, so that iffier and iffier debt is bought by shadier and shadier individuals. Deception is common. Scammers often sell the same portfolios of debt, called ‘paper,’ to several collection agencies at once, so a legitimate IOU gains illegitimate clones. Some inflate balances, a practice known as ‘overbiffing.’ Others create ‘redo’ lists—people who’ve settled their debt, but will be harassed again anyway. These rosters are actually more valuable, because the targets have proved willing to part with money over the phone. And then there are those who invent debts out of whole cloth.”

The Guardian – Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart – Julia Carrie Wong 12/11

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – Prime-age male labor-force participation 12/11

Real Estate

FT – New Zealand looks to ban foreigners from buying houses – Jamie Smyth 12/9

FT – Unibail-Rodamco sees €100m annual synergies in $24.7bn Westfield takeover – Jamie Smyth 12/11

FT – Hong Kong investors go defensive in $3bn property auction – Henny Sender 12/11

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 12/11

• “Bitcoin’s volatility is on the rise as the cryptocurrency hit new highs.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity – Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel 12/11

• “Mexico began lifting tariffs and allowing more foreign investment in the 1980s, a transition to free trade given an exclamation point in 1994, when Mexico, the United States and Canada enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Opponents in Mexico warned that the country would lose its cultural and economic independence.”
• “But few critics predicted it would transform the Mexican diet and food ecosystem to increasingly mirror those of the United States. In 1980, 7% of Mexicans were obese, a figure that tripled to 20.3% by 2016, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Diabetes is now Mexico’s top killer, claiming 80,000 lives a year, the World Health Organization has reported.”

China

WSJ – China’s Clean Energy Future Has a $1.2 Trillion Problem – Nathaniel Taplin 12/11

• “China’s enormous coal-power debt overhang limits its ability to shift rapidly to cleaner fuels.”

Europe

WEF – Which countries feel they’ve benefitted from the EU? – Niall McCarthy 11/6

Other Interesting Links

Bloomberg Businessweek – This Crowdfunding Site Runs on Hate – Adam Popescu 12/4