Corruption Perceptions Index 2013
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corruption. The index draws on 13 surveys covering expert assessments and views of businesspeople. The John Maynard Keynes Revisited
Keynes’ mother Florence was the first female Mayor of Cambridge, England. The family were earnest and filled wih a sense of civic duty. They had a responsibility to improve society.
During the two decades following the First World War, the tranquil world that Keynes had grown up in disappeared. He was trying to understand the new world and that became his central work. It is the fault line of the First World War, and today’s Technology Fault Line that make the tone and feeling of our periods the same. Anxiety and questions abound. So too do cowboys who milk every nook and cranny of possibility available as long as it benefits them and without regard to the polity.
Here is the trick with Keynes that is often forgotten. His theory takes one form in a society in crisis and another for managing a society in basically good shape. We are not distinguishing bandaides and long term solutions. Keynes did. A Keynes for all seasons
John Maynard Keynes married a ballerina and understood the world and human nature well.
Women and Financial Advisers: A Rocky Relationship
Not long after my husband, Cliff, and I got married, he asked me to join him for a meeting with his financial adviser. Cliff had invested with this adviser for about a decade and was happy with the results.
So I went along — and instantly regretted it. As the adviser and Cliff bantered about my husband’s portfolio’s returns, I felt invisible. When I asked why he wanted Cliff to buy stock in a particular company, the adviser glanced in my direction — never directly in my eyes — and responded in a tone that I interpreted as, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Women and financial advisers a rocky relationship
Predicting the Impact of Trade Reform in the US
This paper develops a methodology for predicting the impact of trade liberalization on exports by industry. Predictions for industry-level changes in trade for the United States and Korea following the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) are made. As a test for our methodology, we show that it performs significantly better than the applied general equilibrium models originally used for the policy evaluation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Impact of Trade Reform
Bitcoin Rage Hits Silicon Valley
While the W-T-W editors struggle to define the bitcoin, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are rushing to invest in bitcoin related startups. The Financial Times reports. Silicon Valley Catches Bitcoin Fever
South African Women Entrepreneurs Share the Wealth
Research confirms that when a woman entrepreneur is funded, the opportunities and wealth which they create with this funding is likely to be spread further than when a male is funded. South African Women Entrepreneurs Share the Wealth
Senator Warren Continues to Press Her Case that Some Banks are Too Big
Senator Warren says, “We have got to get back to running this country for American families, not for its largest financial institutions.”
The four biggest Wall Street banks are 30% larger than before the financial crisis, she said, while the five biggest institutions hold more than half the bank assets in the country.
Warren claimed this amounted to an $83bn-a-year taxpayer subsidy for some Wall Street institutions, because they were so large that they could safely rely on a government bailout in the event of a future crisis, and were therefore able to take bigger risks than rivals. She cited research that suggests the crash cost up to $14tn, or $120,000 for each American household.
“Where are we in making sure behemoth institutions on Wall Street can’t bring down the economy again? And make wild gambles that suck up all the profits in the good times? And stick the taxpayer with the bill when it goes wrong?” she demanded.
“Three years since Dodd-Frank was passed, the biggest banks are bigger than ever, the risks to the system have grown and the market distortions continue.” She said current regulators do not give “much reason for confidence” and added: “It is time to act: the last thing we should do is wait for another crisis.” Cost of Financial Crisis 21stCenturyGlassSteagall
How Much Does Location Impact on Your Business
Apple is building a huge, 5 billion dollar campus in the suburbs in California. Bikers in the mountains behind Denver work in New York via the internet. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg built Silicon Alley. United stayed in Chicago when it merged with Continental. Does the internet free you to live in Xanadu? The Impact of Location
British Channel Island in Bid to Manufacture Bitcoins
News around this move by the finance minister of the tiny British crown dependency has a curious mix of definitions of the bitcoin, which soared to over $1200 today.
An independent company will provide the Bitcoins. If the price plunged, neither Alderney nor the Royal Mint would lose anything. The company would put the Bitcoins in an escrow account at an agreed price. Meanwhile, the Royal Mint would take customers’ orders for its minted Bitcoins and receive money from those coin sales. The virtual Bitcoins backing the physical coins would be held in digital storage facilities by Alderney.
The Mint would issue the commemorative Bitcoin, paying for the value of the gold content itself. Alderney would receive royalties from sales of the coins.
Coins could be redeemed for sterling at any point in Alderney for the price of a Bitcoin on that day.
It seems to be currency (it is backed by sterling), it is called a ‘commemorative coin’ by the mint, and if worse came to worse, could be melted down for the small amount of gold the coin itself contains. So it is currency, commemorative and gold rolled into one…what? Alderney to Manufacture Bitcoins The Financial Times Reports:
ALDERNY, LITTLE MORE THAN A ROCK
India: Optimistic or Realistic?
Suddenly, the mood has turned more upbeat in India. The news media brim with confidence that India has “turned the corner.” The stock market rose more than 9 percent last month, to an all-time high. A few weeks ago, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said he saw many signs of “green shoots” in India’s economy.
Objectively, not much has changed. Growth remains slow, deficits remain unsustainable, and inflation is impervious to high interest rates that are further subduing growth. India Optimistic or Realistic
