Is China’s Bubble the Next Financial Crisis?

By Mark Whitehouse – The Chinese credit boom has rapidly turned the country into one of the developing world’s most indebted, according to a new report (pdf) from London’s Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Such credit-fueled growth can’t be sustained for long without causing major distortions and setting the country up for a fall.

The stimulus is already running into diminishing returns. Over the five years through 2013, government and private debt grew by about 3 yuan for each added yuan of economic activity, a level of credit intensity that the U.S. exceeded only in the years leading up to the 2008 crisis. more> http://tinyurl.com/k5985du

How To Trick Your Brain To Hold On To Positive Habit Changes

BOOK REVIEW

Making Habits, Breaking Habits, Author: Jeremy Dean.

By Jane Porter – The notion that a habit takes 21 days to form if you stick to it every day is a myth.

On average, a habit takes more like 66 days to form, with more intensive habits like doing 50 sit-ups every morning taking around 84 days to form. But these figures will often vary greatly from person to person.

Forming habits that stick isn’t about finding a magic number. It’s about being aware of your behaviors and environment and their effects on your brain. more> http://tinyurl.com/orahkqu

How We Think

BOOK REVIEW

How We Think, Author: John Dewey.

By Maria Popova – What separates thinking, a basic human faculty we take for granted, from thinking well?

What it takes to train ourselves into mastering the art of thinking, and how we can channel our natural curiosity in a productive way when confronted with an overflow of information.

A subject urgently relevant today, in our age of snap judgments and instant opinions. more> http://tinyurl.com/knfc3fz

Which candidate should you vote for this fall?

By Matthew Yglesias – Most of American politics can be explained with a single liberal-conservative axis, but that at certain points in time — notably the middle of the 20th century — a second axis related to racial equality issues was also very important.

During the time when the racial axis was scrambled, the parties were not perfectly sorted around liberalism versus conservatism.

A lot of southerners with conservatives views on economics were in the Democratic Party for reasons related to white supremacy, and some northerners with moderate views on economics and liberal views on race were Republicans. more> http://tinyurl.com/pvxv7hb

The Rise (and Likely Fall) of the Talent Economy

BOOK REVIEW

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Author: Roger L. Martin.

By Roger L. Martin – Another, less well-known mechanism that has boosted income for the possessors of talent is the notorious “2&20 formula.”

Its roots lie in a 2,000-year-old practice whereby Phoenician ship captains would take 20% of the value of a cargo successfully delivered.

In 1949, when a fee of 1% to 2% of assets under management was typical in the investment management field, Alfred Winslow Jones, the first acknowledged hedge fund manager, adopted the Phoenician formula. He set himself up as the general partner of what would come to be referred to as a private equity firm and charged the limited partners who invested in his fund a 20% cut of the profits that he generated (“carried interest,” in industry parlance) on top of a 2% asset management fee. more> http://tinyurl.com/o2fndol