Juggling Dynamite

Fake emission readings, fake financial results, fake trades in security markets, fake economic data, fake reports, fake eyeballs on line…fraud is currently a leading business model. Buyer beware.

Increasingly, digital ad viewers aren’t human. A study done last year in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers embedded billions of digital ads with code designed to determine who or what was seeing them. Eleven percent of display ads and almost a quarter of video ads were “viewed” by software, not people. According to the ANA study, which was conducted by the security firm White Ops and is titled The Bot Baseline: Fraud In Digital Advertising, fake traffic will cost advertisers $6.3 billion this year. Here is a direct video link.

Henley is a thoughtful and articulate speaker in this far-ranging discussion: from ‘being in the moment’, creative process and the power of political lobbyists, to challenges of the modern music business.

Don Henley discuses his newest album, “Cass County”.

Here is a direct video link, advance the play bar to 24:10 for the start of the interview.

China is not ending, its growth trends are simply mean reverting following the secular credit boom that pushed global consumption well beyond historical norms between 2001-2011 and allowed many developing economies to leap (temporarily).  The world finally hit a debt limit around 2011 and must now ‘payback’ by working financial leverage back down over several years. Mean-reverting prices for assets–commodities, energy, equities, bonds, real estate–and many services–like education, are all par for the course.

Since we can no longer add more credit to ‘afford’ high prices we will have to go back to old fashioned ‘tricks’ like paying off debt, building up savings and finally wage growth for the masses before consumption can start the next secular boom.  The credit-fueled consumption boom was a hell of a ride up, but equal and opposite in the other direction should now be expected.

Axiom Capital managing director of research Gordon Johnson discusses China’s economic growth. Here is a direct video link.