Edouard Chazal

The Semiotics of “Rose Gold”

Am I the only one to see the yet-to-be released iPhone 6S Rose Gold as Red Gold or Rolex Everose ?

Rose gold, however, has quite a different symbolic valence. Deliberately adulterated, it is gold that has an inclination to be something else. Rose gold is perverse. Unlike yellow gold—but like its cooler cousin, white gold, which is an alloy with nickel or manganese that has also risen and declined in popularity throughout the years—rose gold is subject to the vagaries of fashion. The desire it stimulates is inherently temporary. In rose gold, a substance of enduring value is transformed into a consumer item with the half-life of all things modish. Rose gold is decadent. It is gold for people who already have enough gold gold.

For the sake of colour-comparaison, here are three watches in different gold cases :

From left to right : Patek 1518 (rose gold), Cartier Santos Dumont Squelette (red gold), Rolex Day-Date (everose gold)

→ The New Yorker

Why Personality Tests For Bank Loans Are A Bad Idea

It’s much more likely that, if people want a loan, they will try and game the system. There is a strong chance they would give the answers that they think reflect a better credit trustworthiness: “I definitely pay attention to financial details. I am perhaps, if anything, too cautious.” As opposed to: “Oh, I don’t care, just give me the cash.” Any psychological assessment scheme would have to be robust to such game-playing, perhaps by asking more opaque questions.

→ The Conversation

Goldman vs. Bloomberg

Will Goldman ever turns Bloomberg into Blackberry ? Ain’t a sure thing.

It’s something like the social register for the global one percent, mixed with the Gutenberg press and a little bit of the iPhone. Getting even more reductive, it’s the ball in tennis: it’s hard to imagine the financial industry without it. As such, many banks and hedge funds gladly shell out the $21,000 or so per unit. Some trading floors, in fact, resemble primal villages in which the biggest bosses can be identified as the guys with the most terminal screens mounted on their desk. Bloomberg L.P. throws off around $9 billion in revenue, making it about as valuable as the N.F.L.

→ Vanity Fair

Rain Man In Trouble

The Unraveling of Tom Hayes, Pt. One :

Ms. Tighe printed out the settlement documents and went through them with a yellow highlighter, with Joshua balanced on her lap. She was relieved. They made it clear that Libor manipulation was widespread. Her husband wasn’t even named.

That evening, as she prepared a joint of roasted lamb for dinner, Mr. Hayes sat nearby, puttering on his Apple laptop. A news alert popped up. Mr. Hayes clicked the link. A video of the U.S. attorney general at a news conference in Washington started playing.

“Sarah, I’ve been charged by the U.S.,” Mr. Hayes announced.

Credit : Peter Mlekuz, Janko Klavora

→ The Wall Street Journal

How Europe Crushed Greece

Op-Ed by Yanis Varoufakis :

The fact that few people ever got to hear about the Greek plan is a testament to the eurozone’s deep failures of governance. If the “Athens Spring” — when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts — has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from “We the states” to “We the European people.”

Across the Continent, people are fed up with a monetary union that is inefficient because it is so profoundly undemocratic. This is why the battle for rescuing Greece has now turned into a battle for Europe’s integrity, soul, rationality and democracy. I plan to concentrate on helping set up a Pan-European political movement, inspired by the Athens Spring, that will work toward Europe’s democratization.

Credit: Death of Euros, Goin

→ The New York Times