Finance and the American poor: Margin calls

Life on the edges of America’s financial mainstream. Read more in the Economist.

HBR Daily Stat: Big Food Companies Are Training You to Like Less Salt

Several major food companies have launched "stealth" campaigns to reduce salt in processed foods for health reasons, according to Agricultural Research. One firm has removed 2 million pounds of salt from retail brands in less than 10 years, and another plans to reformulate 600 products to reduce sodium. The companies are seeking to "retrain the American palate" but want to give consumers' taste buds time to adapt, the journal says. 80% of Americans' dietary sodium comes from salt added to processed foods.

Read more at USDA. 

10 Brutally Honest Valentines From Kids

Read more at BuzzFeed.

Social Impact Investing Will Be the New Venture Capital

Interviews conducted in 2000 by the Social Investment Task Force in the UK revealed what most nonprofit leaders already know: almost all social-sector organizations are small and perennially underfunded, with barely three months' worth of working capital at their disposal.

And that hasn't changed in the last 12 years. This situation occurs because social entrepreneurs who want to raise funds for private programs have virtually no access to capital markets and little flexibility to experiment at various stages of growth. But this may soon change.

Just as the formation of the venture-capital industry ushered a new approach toward funding innovation within the private sector, impact investment has started to bring opportunities to the social sector. For instance, government agencies in the UK, the US, and several other countries have recently begun exploring the potential of social-impact bonds, which are financial instruments related to social programs sponsored by the private sector.

If the private programs improve a metric, such as the prisoner-recidivism rate, equally or more than a similar government program, investors make money. If there is less improvement, investors lose money.

Read more at HBR. 

Tammy Duckworth’s Deadly Hot Cocoa

Check out NYT's profile on Tammy. (Thanks, Lucy!)

Cat Burglar

Dusty the Clepto! The most crafty burglar I've ever seen. (Thanks, Mom!)

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

Cat yodeling? Crying laughing...

(Great find, mom)