"'Depart from me, you accursed, to the proud one and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and imprisoned, and you did not care.’ Then they will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill, or in prison?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for the these least of these, you did not do for me.’"
Matthew 25:40-46

Maker Faire Tokyo 2014

From Makezine:

Shota Ishiwatari, creator of the popular Raspberry Pi based RAPIRO humanoid robot, was happy to answer questions and share his knowhow with attendees. Ishiwatari has had several successful international Kickstarter projects and told me that designing the product was the easiest part of the Kickstarter cycle. For RAPIRO he ended up spending over 70% of his time making sure that the Kickstarter webpage and offers were optimized to resonate with potential backers.

With two successful Kickstarters already to their credit, and more in the works, the BreadBoardManiacs have a real passion for helping other makers and improving their tools.

 

Dale Dougherty’s presentation on the maker movement attracted a SRO crowd numbering in the hundreds. Japanese makers were particularly interested in Dale’s comments and observations on how making stimulates creativity, discovery, and learning.

http://makezine.com/2014/11/28/maker-faire-tokyo-2014-in-pictures/

The Increasing Cracks In The Silicon Valley Mirror

From Zero Hedge:

There’s probably no other place more enthralled with its own state of being today than Silicon Valley. Now probably more than ever the tech capital just might be believing their own hype more now, than in the “glory days” of the 90’s.

This area is so audacious in its shunning of pure true business models (i.e., making real money via repeatable commerce transactions as opposed to the singularity event of IPO-ing) it would make a Krugman-ite proud. However, as I alluded to earlier: there seems to be cracks appearing in the looking-glass.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-30/increasing-cracks-silicon-valley-mirror

US Debt Level Versus the Price of Gold In Dollars

From Jesse's Cafe:

Another interesting chart from Nick Laird, the data wrangler at Sharelynx.com.

China Takes Out Another 52.5 Tonnes of Gold For the Week Through Shanghai

From Jesse's cafe:

Week by week, month by month, physical gold is flowing from West to East.

Russian Gold Reserves Continue to Expand

From Jesse's Cafe:

Russia added another 600,000 oz to its reserves in October.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

New Intel Report Finds 'Making' Can Engage Girls in Computer Science and Engineering, Potentially Reducing Tech Gender Gap

From Intel Newsroom:

A new global report produced by Intel Corporation indicates that girls and women involved with “making,” designing and creating things with electronic tools, may build stronger interest and skills in computer science and engineering – which could potentially reduce the growing gender gap in these fields.
With 16 million makers in the United States alone, the maker movement – a wave of tech-inspired, do-it-yourself innovation – is extensive and rapidly expanding. Unfortunately, so is the gender gap in computer science and engineering graduates. Intel’s report, “MakeHers: Engaging Girls and Women in Technology through Making, Creating and Inventing,” explores how maker activities can serve as a gateway to computer science and engineering for girls and women, and it identifies ways to better engage girls and women in making in order to increase female representation in these fields.
“Intel believes that making brings ideas to life and spurs innovation, and we want to ensure that girls and women take part in this movement,” said Aysegul Ildeniz, vice president of the New Devices Group and general manager of Strategy and Business Development at Intel. “This report provides key insights on how to better engage girls and women in computer science and engineering and help them access opportunities to invent and create the future.”
The “MakeHers” report, created in consultation with experts including the Girl Scouts* and the Maker Education Initiative*, reflects Intel’s commitment to increase access to and interest in computer science and engineering, especially among girls, women and underrepresented minorities.
“With its groundbreaking new report, Intel is demonstrating how the maker movement has helped turn a generation of tech-savvy girls – nearly all of whom grew up in the digital age – into the leaders and entrepreneurs of the economy of tomorrow,” said Anna Maria Chavez, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.
Key global findings1 from Intel’s “MakeHers” report include:

In the U.S., Making Is Already Popular with Tweens and Teens – Both Girls and Boys

• Girls and boys in the United States are equally likely to be “tech makers”: 1 in 4 tweens and teens have made things with technology during the past year, and 7 in 10 would like to learn to make something with electronics.

Making and Inventing Provides Multiple Entry Points to Engage and Interest Girls and Women in Computer Science and Engineering

• Girls and women who make, design and create things with electronic tools may build stronger interest and skills in computer science and engineering.
• Female makers come to making through multiple pathways that include arts, design, crafting and textiles.
• Making can help girls and women learn new content and technologies and provide an avenue for them to engage in scientific and engineering problems that align with their interests.

Girls and Women Face Constraints to Participating in Making

• Female and male makers face similar challenges to making, such as lack of money, information and access to tools and materials. However, female makers experience additional challenges:
  • 1 in 3 female makers say lack of mentorship is a challenge.
  • 1 in 6 have been excluded from making because of their gender.
  • 1 in 6 face cultural biases about the appropriateness of women in making.
  • 1 in 14 don’t feel safe going to the places where maker activities are held.

Key Recommendations to Engage Girls and Women in Making

• Build more girls- and women-inclusive maker environments in public places, such as libraries and schools.
• Design makerspaces that enable open-ended investigation of projects meaningful to girls and women.
• Develop initiatives that give girls more access to makers their own age and female mentors.
• Encourage parents to “embrace the mess” and engage in making with their children.
• Align making activities, such as coding and making hardware, with current trends and personal interests to attract girls.
• Include facilitators in makerspaces to create a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for girls and women.

The report’s findings were drawn from three online surveys2 conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Intel. Intel also conducted interviews with leading U.S. experts on STEM, girls and STEM, and the maker movement, as well as interviews and participant observation in makerspaces in the United States.

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/11/13/new-intel-report-finds-making-can-engage-girls-in-computer-science-and-engineering-potentially-reducing-tech-gender-gap

Teaching kids to program with wooden blocks

From Makezine:

How do you teach programming to children with no prior programming experience? How do you teach programming to children that can yet read or write?

Primo kickstarted at the tail end of last year with the goal of building a robot that was programmable using a tactile interface. Children place coloured tiles representing simple directional commands (forward, back, left, right) as well as a function command—which calls the last line of commands in the board every time it is encountered.

Not only does this teach children programming, it changes their perspective on problem solving and logic in general.

The Primo is available for pre-order and should be shipping in April next year, but if you can’t wait that long all the instructions, source files and other things you need to make your own are available online.

http://makezine.com/2014/11/15/teaching-kids-to-program-with-wooden-blocks/

Here Is Your "Global Recovery" In 24 Charts

From Zero Hedge:

No, this is not a joke: this is, sadly, the big picture of the "global economic and profitability recovery."

Source: JPM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-17/here-your-global-recovery-24-charts

Abenomics Officially Leads Japan Into A Triple-Dip Recession

From Zero Hedge:

Japanese GDP fell for the 2nd quarter in a row making it official - as we warned a month ago - that Japan has entered a triple-dip recession. Againstr hope-strewn expectations that the rebound from a sales-tax-driven slump would create a magical 2.2% (annualized) expansion, Japanese GDP slumped 1.6% in Q3 - missing by the most since March 2011. So no tax increase... and thus fiscal responsibility goes out the window. Abe dissolves government and bails on another failure? The initial kneejerk reaction sent USDJPY surging back over 117.00 (and NKY followed) but that has quickly reversed and NKY futures are 600 off their highs (and S&P futures are back to last Monday's lows).

Missing by the most in 42 months!!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-16/abenomics-officially-leads-japan-triple-dip-recession

Richard Koo: Abenomics Creates "Potential For Economic Collapse Triggered By Bond Market Crash"

Given Japan's recent shenanigans, one cannot help but wonder "Is Japan a sovereign state?"

From Zero Hedge:

"Overseas views on the BOJ’s surprise easing announcement can be broken down into two camps: the reflationists, who commend the BOJ for its bold actions, and those critical of the policy, who say it is a symptom of the final stages of Japan’s economic decline. The critics can further be divided into two groups: those who believe that continuing the current policy of “Banzainomics” will lead to a collapse of the Japanese economy and government finance triggered by a crash in the JGB market, and those who worry that the ongoing devaluation of the yen under this policy will hurt their own countries’ industries.... The first group’s scenario, in which the BOJ’s reckless attempts to achieve a 2% inflation target trigger a bond market crash and an eventual collapse of the Japanese economy, is of greater concern. After all, it is the same scenario the world’s QE pioneers—the US and the UK—are desperately trying to avert at this very moment."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-11/richard-koo-slams-abenomics-it-creates-potential-economic-collapse-triggered-bond-ma

"Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves that they are righteous... those who look into the perfect law of liberty and persevere by action will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are of the Way, and do not restrain their speech and deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. What is pure and undefiled before the Father is to worship by caring for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep one's life untainted by worldliness."
James 1:22-27

Layoffs Explode In America’s Big Old Tech

From Wolfstreet:

The employment situation in the US has been outright rosy. Initial unemployment claims have been bumping along near record lows. Whether or not companies are hiring, at least they’re not axing people in massive numbers. The unemployment rate of 5.8% is practically comfort inducing. OK, we can smell the odor of the details underneath, but hey. And for September, the Challenger Job Cut Report raved about 2014 being “on pace to be the lowest job-cut year since 1997.”

Got it. Things are good.

Then came October, and announced job cuts jumped 68% from September, and 12% from a year ago, to 51,183. Year to date, job-cut announcements of 414,591 were still down 4.3% from the same period last year. And just as we’re exhaling, we read in the report that this “may mark the kick-off to a fourth-quarter surge in job cuts.” More pain? “It is not unusual to see the pace of downsizing accelerate in the final months of the year, as employers take measures to meet year-end earnings and profit goals.”

So companies are getting their announcements out of the way, including the charges that come with the layoffs – these pesky “one-time items” that keep recurring – so that analysts can focus on metrics they’re supposed to focus on, rather than actual earnings.

Biggest sinner? Retail, with 6,874 planned layoffs for the month, a big jump from September. For the year, announced job cuts were up 5%, to 38,948, following an ongoing epidemic of store closings, restructurings, and bankruptcies [read... What NCR just Said about the American Retail Quagmire].

But the trouble in retail pales compared to what’s going on at the paragon of corporate America, the brilliant hope for the future, the core of innovation: the tech industry. The report divides tech into three segments.

There’s the computer industry which includes permanent layoff queen HP; it layered another 5,000 job cuts on top of the 16,000 it had announced earlier in the year, and on top of the tens of thousands it had announced in prior years. The segment also includes Microsoft which is now implementing its own mega job cuts. In October, the segment announced 6,509 job cuts for a total so far this year of 55,511. That’s up 92% from a year ago!

The electronics industry – Cisco among them – announced 1,648 job cuts for the month, bringing them to 18,153 year-to-date. Up a stunning 136%!

The telecommunications industry – which includes money-losing Sprint, now 80% owned by SoftBank of Japan – announced 5,217 job cuts for the month, which brought the year-to-date total to 20,038. Up 81% from the same period last year.

All three tech segments combined clocked in with 13,374 job cuts in October and 93,702 for the year so far. Up 97% from the same period last year!

That’s more than just the routine tweaking of the work force, where some people get laid off in one area of the company and other people get hired elsewhere. This time it’s serious. And they’re all doing it: Microsoft (18,000), layoff-meister HP (21,000), Cisco (6,000), Intel (5,350), Sprint (2000 on top of the 5,000 by which it already reduced its workforce so far this year), TI (1,100), Dell (1,000), EMC (1,000)…. You keep going like this, and pretty soon you’re talking real numbers.

Tech’s layoff announcements are likely to blow past 100,000 for the year, on track to be the worst year since 2009, when it announced 174,629 job cuts.

So is this the end of the tech bubble? Nope. In 2001, the last time a tech bubble blew up, Challenger reported nearly 700,000 job-cut announcements. Countless startups that were going to change the world ran out of money and were shuttered – without even making layoff announcements. Others slashed their workforce and survived or were absorbed. Large tech companies went through wholesale workforce reductions.

This isn’t what’s happening now. The culprit is Big Old Tech. These are the mastodons that have been around for decades, the tarnished American stars. Many of them are revenue challenged. So they’re on an acquisition spree, trying to grow that way, instead of developing their own products and markets. With a cost of capital near zero after inflation and taxes, thanks to the Fed’s machinations, it doesn’t really matter on what this free money gets blown, so long as it doesn’t get invested in people. Each acquisition has led to layoffs, and still, revenues are mired down. And some of these tarnished stars rack up big losses.

In addition to perfecting their financial engineering, these companies are playing the layoff game. Announcements are impeccably timed, issued with maximum fanfare, and expressed in immaculate corporate speak liberally sprinkled with hype. There would be future savings and efficiencies, it would make the company more nimble, etc. etc. The purpose of these announcements is to goose the stock price. And it works.

The job cutting debacle in Big Old Tech contrasts with the hiring battles in other areas. Facebook and Google don’t have to brag about decimating their workforce and throwing out brains and experience in order to boost their stock price. They are hiring, and their expenses are soaring, but what the heck, in this climate, nothing matters. Then there is a myriad of startups that have neither revenue nor business model, and certainly no profits, but as long as they’re awash in other people’s money, they’re hiring too. But when the money dries up, 2001 will play out all over again, even if to a slightly different tune. Meanwhile, it’s Old Big Tech that’s singing the blues.

http://wolfstreet.com/2014/11/07/layoffs-explode-in-big-old-american-tech/

Death Of The Working Class In 12 Charts

From Zero Hedge:

They say a picture is worth one thousand words.  And so here’s a twelve thousand word equivalent essay that quite clearly depicts how the policies of the new millennium are shaping the new world order.  The powers that be have looked at these same charts, understand their implications and yet continue on the current path.  The objective then is clear.  The death of the working class.

With almost 100% of ‘savings’ having been forced into the stock market we are getting ever closer to what will be described as an epic collapse of wealth.  However, the more fitting description will be an epic and final transfer of wealth from the working class to the burgeoning aristocracy as assets are picked up for pennies on the dollar.  Pay particular attention to data from the end of the 1990′s through the new millennium.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-07/death-working-class-12-charts

4.954

A Signal of Coming Collapse

From Zero Hedge:

I proposed seven drivers of financial implosion in my dissertation. My recent writing has focused on two of them. One is the falling rate of interest on the 10-year government bond. As interest falls, the burden of debt rises. Since the falling rate incentivized more and more people to borrow, the number of indebted people, businesses, corporations, and of course governments is large. When the rate gets to zero, the burden of debt becomes theoretically infinite.
In the US, the downward trend is still in a deceptively mild phase (though there was a vicious spike down on Oct 15 to 1.87%). The rate on the 10-year Treasury is 2.3% today. In Germany, it is down to 0.82% and in Japan the metastatic cancer is much closer to causing multiple organ failures, with a yield of just 0.46%.
Two is gold backwardation, which has also been quiescent of late. Although it is worth noting that with these lower gold prices, temporary backwardation has returned. The December gold cobasis is over +0.2%).
I haven’t written much about a third indicator yet. What proportion of government bond issuance does the central bank have to buy? I theorized that when the central bank is buying all of the bonds issued by the government, that this is another sign of imminent collapse. I phrased it, as with the other indicators, as a value that is falling. Collapse happens when it hits zero, if not earlier. Here is what I wrote:

“the average amount of new Treasury bond issuance minus new central bank Treasury bonds falling towards zero (i.e. the central bank is buying a greater and greater proportion of Treasury bonds issued).”

Bloomberg recently published an article about the Bank of Japan’s announcement of a new bond-buying program. Bloomberg presents two facts. One, the Bank plans to buy ¥8 to ¥12 trillion per month. Two, the government is selling ¥10 trillion per month in new bonds. This is an astonishing development.
The Bank of Japan will buy 100 percent of the new government bond issuance.
Popular theory holds that a currency’s value falls as the quantity issued rises. In this view, the yen falls as the yen supply increases. While admittedly not scientific, here are graphs of the Japanese yen supply and the price of the yen in dollars from 1970 through present.


The yen has been falling since 2012, but not because of its quantity. It has been falling because the market is questioning its quality. One way to do this is to borrow yen, trade the yen for another currency, and buy an asset in that currency. This carry trade is equivalent to shorting the yen. So long as the yen is falling, and the interest rate on the bond in the other currency is higher than the interest rate paid to borrow the yen, this is a good trade.
What happens as the yen falls faster? Contrary to populist economics, it’s not good for Japanese businesses. However, it is a free transfer of wealth to those engaged in the carry trade. They can repay the borrowed yen at a cheaper and cheaper cost. When the yen goes to zero (which may take a while to play out), their debt is wiped out.
That’s what a currency collapse is. It’s a total wipeout of debt denominated in that currency. Since the currency itself is just a slice of debt, the currency itself loses all value. While on the surface it may seem good for debtors, it’s a horrific catastrophe. No one who understands the human toll, the cost in terms of the lives wrecked (and lost) would look forward to this with anything but dread.
The objective of my writing is to try to prevent it from happening. We need a graceful transition to gold, not an abrupt collapse like 476AD. It may be too late for the hapless Japanese. I hope it’s not too late for the rest of the civilized world.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-05/signal-coming-collapse

Government, Not the Private Sector, Leads Innovation?

 Mazzucato certainly raises some critical issues, yet tends to overlook the dangers and downsides of government-led innovation.

The state goes through different stages in its industrialization.  The role of state in economic development and innovation may differ accordingly.

Korea has heavily funded chaebols' innovation undertaking.  The bottom line is who has benefited most from this?

A few president including the current one have attempted to nurture SMEs and entrepreneurship, yet failed..  They don't seem to understand that it takes a systemic approach to do so.  It boils down to moral obligation and social responsibility as well as intellectual capacity.

It would be naive to undermine the complexity of political greed and big business interests involved in government-led innovation.

I have a lot to say about the role of state in innovation and entrepreneurship which is one of the major theses in my upcoming book .  I have addressed some on this blog and I'll do it again some other time.

From Naked Capitalism:

This video, in which economist Mariana Mazzucato discusses her book The Entrepreneurial State, explains how most of what you think you know about innovation is wrong. Innovation is not led by the private sector; it lacks the long term horizons and risk appetite to do so. Instead, the most innovative countries and regions have the state playing a very active role, not just in funding basic research or making sure markets work properly, as in limiting anti-competitive practices that can stymie new entrants. Instead, the state plays an active role along the entire value chain. One result of the wide-spread misperception that the private sectors deserves most of the credit is that businesses are able to skim a disproportionate level of the returns for themselves.

From the introduction to this interview with Marshall Auerback at the INET website,
Typically the private sector only finds the courage to invest in breakthrough technologies after a so-called “entrepreneurial state” has made the initial high-risk investments.
This can be seen today in the green revolution, the development of biotech and pharmaceutical industry, and the technological advancements coming out of Silicon Valley. Mazzucato argues that by not giving due credit to the state’s role in this process we are socializing the risks of investing, while privatizing the rewards.
So who benefits from the state’s role in the development of technology? Consider Apple’s iPhone and Google’s search engine. In both cases these extremely popular consumer products benefitted mightily from state intervention. For the iPhone, many of the revolutionary technologies that make it and similar devices “smart” were funded by the U.S. government, such as the global positioning system (or GPS), the touchscreen display, and the voice-activated personal assistant, Siri. And for Google, the creation of its algorithm was funded by the National Science Foundation. Plus, of course, there’s the development of the Internet, another government funded venture, which enables the iPhone to be a valuable tool and makes Google searches possible.
But despite the fact that these companies directly benefitted from taxpayer-funded technologies, they and other high tech outfits have strategically “underfunded” the tax purse that helped lead to their success. This is a troubling development.
So how should the government recoup the benefits from the fruits of its research? And what role should the government play going forward in important areas such as clean tech? Mazzucato seeks to address these issues

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/government-private-sector-leads-innovation.html