Edouard Chazal

What If Banks Didn’t Create Money?

Switzerland to revive the 100 percent reserve banking argument :

The fall of Communism completely discredited the idea of a planned economy; even in the Soviet Union for about two decades before its collapse, few believed state planning could work. Somehow, the idea that governments are less evil and better at making financial decisions than private banks has survived that disaster. It’s mainly the banks’ fault: They have been flagrantly irresponsible. A state monopoly on money could test the theory, and Switzerland, where the central bank is disinclined to do crazy things and democratic institutions are more powerful than in most other places, could be an ideal proving ground.

→ Bloomberg

Growing Old, But Not Together

HP is splitting into two separate companies on the NYSE :

Founded by two tech guys in a garage in Palo Alto in 1939, the giant created by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is remembered as Silicon Valley’s original startup. In its heyday, its flair for innovation was unrivalled, and it devised technologies that shaped people’s work and personal lives, from calculators to cameras to computers. Today it is regarded as a has-been: a reminder of Silicon Valley’s past but not a beacon of its future.

→ The Economist

Can Myanmar’s New Government Control Its Military?

The group was tired, but also optimistic. Yangon is an N.L.D. stronghold and, although the final results wouldn’t be released until the next day, they predicted that Tint would win. All three had spent years in military prisons for resisting the regime. Kyaw, the campaign manager, shared a hundred-square-foot prison cell with two other men for eight years, as punishment for participating in the 1988 student movement against military rule. “Back then prison was the place for people who believed in democracy,” he said, laughing. “Now it’s Parliament.” More than fifty former political prisoners were candidates.

→ The New Yorker

Why Your Phone Battery Is Rubbish

What about the rest of us? Can we expect our gadgets to last longer than a day any time soon? “As long as our batteries are based on a chemical reaction, we will have huge limitations,” Buchmann says. “The health of a battery is almost like the health of a living organism or human being. We have to take care of it.” Limer says: “I don’t think things will change much in 10 years. A realistic future to hope for is one where even in extreme heavy use you can get through a day without losing your battery.” Right now, he adds, what we have is “a battery stalemate”.

→ The Guardian

Warren Buffett: Oracle or Orang-utan?

Buffett has taken the criticism from these fellow giants of finance in his stride, responding with trademark wit and humour. He even compared himself to an orang-utan flipping coins. Joking aside, this is a testable hypothesis: Is Buffett’s performance better than chance? To test it, we will stand on the shoulders of another giant: Jacob Bernoulli.

• • •

Again it is a very small number, but we can use our formula to calculate its value:

The expected value is much smaller than 1, so we can conclude that Buffett is a better investor than the luckiest orang-utan. If stock returns really do follow a random process – as Eugene Fama asserted – then Warren Buffett is more than just lucky. Compared with his competitors in the S&P 500, he’s brilliant.

→ StatsLife