With all the talk of hoarding gold bullion in these turbulent times, a novel article in CNN Money appeared recently that suggested something totally different – print your own money and keep it in the community. As faith in governments is at an all time low, citizens across the globe have either saved their obsolete currencies and are now running into banks with shoeboxes stuffed with pesetas or francs to exchange for the euro – or are starting to reinstate said currencies regionally. Or they’re making up their own. Continue reading
A Safe Bet: Print Your Own Money!
Eurozone: with us or against us?
The dithering continues and it’s proving costly. The latest news from the frontline of the crisis is still uncertainty, and the rescue firewall is not growing with the help of the G20 countries. “We have to see the colour of the eurozone’s money first – and quite frankly, that hasn’t happened,” the British chancellor George Osborne said, as reported by the BBC. And the BRIC countries – the all-important emerging nations of Brazil, China and India have echoed the sentiment, but with the proviso of more power at the roundtable of the IMF. It seems that it’s a ‘put your money where your mouth is’ moment, and many countries’ tenacity toward the idea of this struggling single currency, is being tested. Continue reading
EU Fiscal Treaty: The Right Move
The EU’s 27 leaders
The EU’s 27 leaders have ratified a new “fiscal compact,” aimed at stopping over-indulgent debt accumulation by eurozone nations – the kind of which has landed Ireland, Greece and Portugal in the trouble they’re currently in – from happening again in the future. Is this just a PR gesture, or something more important? The answer is both. Many critics believe this new ‘treaty’ is just a way to mollify German taxpayers, and Great Britain and the Czechs were conspicuously absent from signing. Continue reading
The U.S. Oil Dilemma
It’s a great time to be a political watcher, especially with an upcoming American election. The rhetoric seems to get
oil prices reflect a finite amount of resources, and we need to come up with alternatives...
worse every four years – dooming the country to a spiral of infantilized slogans and more ‘us against them’ scenarios. After having finished an article on CNN recently, covering an Obama rally in Florida, it seems more than ever, that finally the President has woken from his slumber and is telling the nation some brutal truths that they’ve needed to hear for the last three years.
Filed under Business, business news, Economy, politics
Top Tech Show Focuses on the Basics
Marketing mobiles to developing nations was a major issue at the latest WMC, but it is more than just an untapped marketplace.
The recent World Mobile Congress in Barcelona was a chance for many of the world’s leading tech companies (with the exclusion of Apple) to strut their stuff, peacock-like to gadget hounds and the world’s media. But, the latest inventions as reported by CNN, including the obligatory high-resolution updates for camera phones and “super-fast processors,” took the backseat to the issue of expanding mobile broadband to areas of the world without it.
Filed under Global Markets, Tech, Uncategorized
Athens vs. Merkel
Recently, effigies of Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel, dressed as a Nazi, were burned in the in the streets of Greece and the public sentiment couldn't be more poisonous...
Oh, how easy it is for the stereotypes to come out and play. Greece is still in a terrible pickle and the pictures of people living homeless on the streets and even reports of many mothers leaving newborns in the care of the church are rampant. This is a serious mess, and the political infighting is leading to some unpleasant very unpleasant scenes of frustration around Greece.
How We Work
The BBC has been running an interesting series for several weeks about the offices of the future. Most of these article are
Jean-Philippe Courtois, take the reins in a piece about the emerging ‘flexi-hours’ businesses are starting to contend with
commandeered by leading business CEOs and this week’s finds the International President of Microsoft, Jean-Philippe Courtois, take the reins in a piece about the emerging ‘flexi-hours’ businesses are starting to contend with. As we know, with remote cloud services, tablets and smartphones, businesses, however large, will have to accept the idea of employees working remotely. This is potentially a very good thing.
Filed under Business, business news
Murdoch Redoubles with the Sun
Rupert Murdoch, his family and his media empire are very busy at the moment fighting scandals from every angle. The
Murdoch Redoubles with the Sun
press (except his Fox network, unsurprisingly) has been ablaze with the latest Sun newspaper bribe allegations and has seen the old wizard fly back into to London to deal with the fallout. If the U.S. courts get wind of any impropriety with regards bribes, Murdoch will be in a much deeper mess than just closing down a newspaper (News of the World) and moving on with his business.
Myspace is down, but not out
It’s amazing to see the amount of energy people expel critiquing social media platforms and their multitudinous
Myspace is down, but not out
offspring-almost as much as using them. Here I go–I’ll expel some more. I just read a piece in the Guardian about the rebirth of Myspace after Rupert Murdoch let it go in June for a loss of over $500m. It seems that the old (at least by today’s flitting standards) music site has added 1 million new users in the last month and are on a roll. The article says the new owners, ‘digital media firm Specific Media and investors including Justin Timberlake, have promised to shift the ailing social network to focus on music.’ Well, it seems to have worked. But what was the secret? Behold – they’ve joined up with their old enemies, Facebook and Twitter, and users are able to become members of Myspace via both. If you can’t beat them join them, it seems.
Filed under internet, Social Media, Tech
Murdoch’s up against it, again
One wonders what the closed boardroom meetings must be like at News International headquarters. Oh, to be a fly on
One wonders what the closed boardroom meetings must be like at News International headquarters
the wall for those. It seems the alleged unscrupulous world of Murdoch’s empire continues apace. This time the Sun newspaper – Britain’s most widely read rag – is at the heart of a new series of investigations and allegations. The UK loves a solid MI5/Scotland Yard scandal and this one just keeps going.
