Saturday 30 May 2015
War Clouds Over South China Sea As U.S. Declares Right To Waters And U.S. Warship Arrives At Subic
Friday 29 May 2015
Seven Things Only Weak Managers Say
Understand Your Video Analytics to Create Better Explainer Videos
Understanding your video's analytics is half the battle when it comes to building a successful video marketing campaign. SEO is one of the most important parts of that -- even video has metadata. Read through this list of video analytic tools and practices to gain a better understanding of your video's success rate.
Thursday 28 May 2015
A goring concern
THE slowdown in China’s property market has been cruel to makers of wooden flooring. After double-digit growth for much of the past decade, sales have slumped. Kemian Wood Industry, which used to boast of the quality of its composite floorboards, took radical steps to deal with the downturn. It switched its focus to online gaming and changed its name. After its rechristening as Zeus Entertainment in early March, its share price doubled in short order. This past week, though, its transition plan hit a snag. CCTV, the state broadcaster, accused it of being one of a series of companies that are “fabricating themes and telling stories” to inflate their share prices.
Zeus Entertainment denies the allegations. But the wider trend is clear. At least 80 listed Chinese firms changed names in the first five months of this year. A hotel group rebranded itself as a high-speed rail company, a fireworks maker as a peer-to-peer lender and a ceramics specialist as a clean-energy group. Their reinventions as high-tech companies appear to have less to do with the gradual rebalancing of China’s economy than with the mania sweeping its stockmarket.
The...Continue reading
Tuesday 26 May 2015
Finding equations to explain the world
JOHN NASH may be best known for being portrayed by Russell Crowe in the biopic “A Beautiful Mind”, but his essential and lasting contribution is in the world of economics. In 1994 he shared the Nobel prize in the field with two other scholars for work in “game theory”, which helps individuals and firms understand the way their own decisions affect the decisions of others (see article).
Yet until his untimely death on May 23rd, aged 86, Mr Nash was always first and foremost a mathematician. When he and his wife were killed in a car crash in New Jersey, they were on their way home from the airport after a trip to Norway, where days earlier he had picked up the Abel prize, one of the field’s most illustrious, for advances in the theory of “non-linear partial differential equations” (he shared it with Louis Nirenberg of New York University).
In pure maths, where Mr Nash turned his attention after his game-theory work in the early 1950s, such equations are used to analyse abstract geometric objects, such as “submanifolds of...Continue reading
Sotomayor And Roberts Clash As Supreme Court Expands Power Of Bankruptcy Courts
Disney's 'Tomorrowland' Failure Is Not About Audiences Rejecting Originality
Crunch time for Athens
GREECE approaches a real deadline with creditors on June 5th, America's economy shakes and China's stock market wobbles
Meet The Tech CEO Who's Offering Free College Tuition To His Employees' Children
Switzerland Publishes Tax Evader List
Sunday 24 May 2015
NBA Playoffs: Warriors' Curry is Doing Things Only Michael Jordan Did While Sparking a New Debate
Saturday 23 May 2015
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Android Circuit: Galaxy S6's Sales Disaster, New Samsung Galaxy Launch Date, Xperia Z4 Tablet Review
How To Avoid The Five Worst Personal Branding Mistakes
Friday 22 May 2015
Warren Buffett: Stop Blaming The Rich For Income Inequality. If You Really Want To Help, Do This
Wednesday 20 May 2015
Woman Billed $1,000 For Credit Card Error Gets $83 Million Verdict, But IRS Gets Last Laugh
Disney's Best Ever Example Of Motivating Employees
What is austerity?
LOTS of people debate and campaign against austerity, but what exactly is it? Dictionary definitions vary. Merriam-Webster defines it as
a situation in which there is not much money and it is spent only on things that are necessary
or
enforced or extreme economy
An austere individual would be someone who lives within their budget, that is, spends less than their annual income. Anyone who has lived through a round of cost-cutting at a company will know it usually involves absolute reductions in spending; a clampdown on expenses (taxis, overseas trips) and staff redundancies.
But that is not what economists tend to mean when they talk about austerity. A government can impose an austerity programme and still spend far more than it receives in the form of taxes; indeed the British coalition government had a deficit of 9.3% of GDP in the first year of austerity, a very high figure by peacetime standards. But because this was less than the 11% of GDP in the year before, it counts as austerity.
What economists generally mean by austerity is a reduction in the "structural deficit" of the government, that is, ignoring the effects of the economic cycle. The automatic stabilisers of the economy...Continue reading
New Advertising Opportunities Available on Pinterest
For those who use Pinterest to reach an audience, there is good news -- the image and link database is rolling out new advertising solutions that include video ads. The big news is the unveiling of "Cinematic Pins", Pinterest's take on the autoplay video ad. Will your business be the next in line to advertise on Pinterest?
Monday 18 May 2015
Uber Tests Taking Even More From Its Drivers With 30% Commission
Sunday 17 May 2015
Stephanie's Coming Back - But Will That Be Enough?
Has 'Game of Thrones' Already Peaked?
Saturday 16 May 2015
Android Circuit: New Samsung Leaked, Galaxy S5 Outshines Galaxy S6, LG G4 Rivals Galaxy S6 Edge
How Many Job Interviews Are Too Many?
Friday 15 May 2015
Ten Stupid Things I Have Fired People For Doing
Thursday 14 May 2015
How To Meet Amazing People Without Sleazy Networking: Insights From 6,220 Conversations
Wednesday 13 May 2015
Millennial-Friendly Career Site The Muse Raises $10 Million Series A, Passes 3 Million Monthly Users
How will we cope with another downturn?
HOW strong is the American economy? Forecasters are pretty confident; the average prediction is for 2.6% GDP growth this year and for 2.8% next. But actual growth was just an annualised 0.2% in the first quarter and, after disappointing retail sales numbers for April, the Atlanta Fed's GDPnow model, which was pretty accurate about Q1, is going for just 0.7% annualised in Q2. Citigroup's economic surprise index (which shows whether data have been better or worse than forecasts) has been relentlessly negative since the start of the year.
Does this mean the US is heading towards recession? Not necessarily. Whether or not you call it "secular stagnation", the developed economies are in an era where growth seems to be stuttering; last year's first quarter dip in GDP was a case in point. However, as HSBC points out, it is now six years since the US economy bottomed - a reasonably long cycle by pre-1980 standards. Suppose that developed economies did slip back into recession. What could the authorities...Continue reading
Uncertain times
WITH inflation at 0%, setting interest rates at the Bank of England may at first look like an easy job. Launching its latest Inflation Report today, Mark Carney, the bank's governor, confirmed that inflation should be back on target at 2% by 2017. This suggests market expectations of a first rate rise in the middle of 2016 are roughly right. Yet two important messages in the report suggest that setting interest rates is a much harder task for the bank than it may first appear. One area of uncertainty is the scale and impact of the budget cuts that the new Conservative government, elected on May 7th, seeks to implement. The other is the bank's expectation that in the long run, rates will be lower than before the crisis as a result of a long-run stagnation in demand. The size and scale of the responses needed to guard against these risks are uncertain.
Top of the list of challenges facing the bank, according to Mr Carney, is responding to fiscal policy. To meet its inflation target, the bank has to respond to cuts in government spending which would weaken demand, lower growth and...Continue reading
Alexander The Great's Father Found In Tomb With Foreign Princess
Tuesday 12 May 2015
Monday 11 May 2015
With Tom Brady Suspended, Patriots Losing Picks And Fined, How Long Till Roger Goodell Is Fired?
Powerful Victims
Sunday 10 May 2015
The Best Big Data And Business Analytics Companies To Work For In 2015
Saturday 9 May 2015
Indonesia's economy, the fintech revolution and why grannies aren't responsible for inflation in Japan
THIS week's print edition has an array of economics articles that may be of interest. The following have particularly caught our eye:
Indonesia's economy: Spicing up growth (Finance)
Financial services: The fintech revolution (Leaders)
The economics of landlocked countries: Interiors (Americas)
Britain's economy after the election: The climb to come (Britain)
And don't forget to take a glance at this week's Free Exchange column, which looks at why the relationship between ageing and...Continue reading
Friday 8 May 2015
The Top Cities For Finding Employment Right Now
An incorrect dial?
WITH today's good news from the Labour Department's jobs report, markets are pondering when the Federal Reserve’s first rate hike might take place. The Fed has said that it will begin raising short-term interest rates once the economy is starting to reach full employment and inflation no more than 2%. With inflation running below target, the labour market is likely to factor heavily in the Fed’s decision.
One key indicator to assess the health of this is America's unemployment rate. But this may be less useful now than it once was. Although the number of jobless Americans has fallen, the share of the working-age population in the labour force has also dropped considerably, from 66% before the financial crisis to less than 63% now. Temporary factors have affected the statistics, but much of the change has been driven by structural factors, such as retirement of the baby-boomer generation and rising college enrollment. These developments may explain why, as the unemployment rate has fallen from 10% in 2009 to 5.4% today, the Fed’s target...Continue reading
Returning To Work After The Devastating Loss Of A Loved One
Thursday 7 May 2015
Soaring sterling
THE pound jumped in the foreign exchange markets as soon as the exit poll was released last night, and it consolidated its gains as the actual election results confirmed the initial news of a Tory romp. Having started the night at $1.5263 and €1.3541, the pound had jumped to $1.5521 and €1.3831 by 5.45am. Investors had clearly expected a much more muddled result, with days or weeks required to form a government. They were thus pleased both at the relatively decisive nature of the result and that a business-friendly Conservative party had been returned.
The result was also expected to give a boost to the equity market, with spread betters indicating that the FTSE 100 index would open almost 90 points, or 1.3% higher. The result was likely to be positive for the banking and energy sectors, which were expected to be hit by higher taxes and price freezes under a Labour government.
Nevertheless, both the pound and...Continue reading
Wind Power Without The Mills
The Top Cities For Employee Engagement
Breastfeeding In Public: Illinois Restaurant Shows How To Right A Wrong
Money for old folk
WHEN it comes to the economic impact of demography, Japan is the wizened canary in the world’s coal mine. It has become older faster than any other big country: its median age went from 34 in 1980 to 46 today, and will continue rising for decades. But it will soon have plenty of greying company, from wealthy countries such as Finland and South Korea to developing giants, including China and Russia. Economists generally agree that the ageing of populations leads to slower growth, because a country’s potential output tends to fall as its labour force shrinks. They also expect heavier fiscal burdens, with governments providing for more pensioners from a smaller tax base.
Until recently, though, there had been little research into how demography affects inflation. The Japanese example of persistent deflation over the past two decades was seen as evidence enough that prices fall when countries age and their growth slows. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, has sought to disprove that, espousing massive monetary easing to get prices rising. With inflation slumping far below the Bank of Japan’s 2% target in recent months, it is tempting to conclude...Continue reading
Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight: "Fraud Of The Century"
Wednesday 6 May 2015
How to make money from Britain's general election
WHILE lovers of political theatre will be glued to their televisions on election night, traders will be glued to their Bloomberg terminals. If the last election is anything to go by, there will be plenty of opportunity for those looking make money on foreign-exchange markets, which remain open throughout the night.
A key lesson from the last election, held on May 6th 2010, is that exit polls matter. Back then, just after the main 10pm polls were published, sterling rallied for two minutes on the back of the news that the Tories had won (see first chart). But it then dipped sharply, by 1.5% within 15 minutes, as the markets realised that they did not have a majority (panic)—and that there could even be a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition (double panic). Then, as results began to trickle in throughout the night, sterling strengthened whenever there...Continue reading
Things Innovative Entrepreneurs Do That You Don't
Tuesday 5 May 2015
Five Rude Emails You Send Every Day
The Eight Types of Video Content That Will Captivate Your Audience
Building videos into your content marketing strategy is a great way to engage and attract new audiences. These eight types of video content are guaranteed to speak to B2B clients and businesses. If you're stuck on the "what kind of video should I make?" question, this post will start your brainstorming session. And, remember, video content can also be easily reused for other purposes, so this is just a starting point for your content marketing strategy.
Pricey
THERE was an interesting factoid that we did not have room to mention in our recent piece on the rouble. Though it is still much less valuable than it was a year ago, by some measures it is still very overvalued. The chart below, from Zsolt Darvas of Bruegel, a think-tank, shows the “real effective exchange rate” for four currencies: the rouble, the dollar, the “German euro” and the “Greek euro” (the last two indices adjust the value of the euro for inflation in Germany and Greece). It is indexed to May 2000, the month that Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia.
The real effective exchange adjusts the market exchange rate for inflation. This is an important adjustment. If the exchange rate between two countries is fixed, but their inflation...Continue reading