Fixing Facebook, Feedback Loops and the Bitcoin Scam

(Bloomberg View) -- My back-to-work morning train reads:

• A stoner's guide to federal marijuana policy under Jeff Sessions (Vice) but see The Cannabis Industry Is Well-Armed to Fight Jeff Sessions: And Congress may help it. (Slate)
• Why Bitcoin Is the Most Dangerous Global Scam in 20 Years (Inc.)
• The unmourned death of the sellside analyst (Financial Times)
• The Great Fund Fee Divide (Barron's)
• The Cashless Society Has Arrived -- Only It's in China (Wall Street Journal)
• Massive new data set suggests economic inequality is about to get even worse (Wonkblog)
• How to fix Facebook -- before it fixes us (Washington Monthly)
• I've Studied the Trump-Fox Feedback Loop for Months. It's Crazier Than You Think. (Politico)
• The year climate change began to spin out of control (MIT Technology Review); see also On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming (the Guardian)
• The Michelangelo Sculpture That Was Sold for Scrap (Daily Beast)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview with Bruce Bartlett, domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and Treasury official under George H.W. Bush and author of "The Truth Matters: A Citizen's Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks." 

The stock market rose higher in two previous terms

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Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg View columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He blogs at the Big Picture and is the author of “Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy.”

To contact the author of this story: Barry Ritholtz at britholtz3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net.

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