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I had been asking myself how on earth the Greeks could have amassed debt of €30 million per citizen until last night talking to someone in German (and using “Milliarden” the German for US-billions) I realized I had been working in British billions instead of American billions. The actual debt per citizen is . . . → Read More: National debt per citizen The Daily Telegraph, yesterday: Euro bail-out in doubt as ‘hysteria’ sweeps Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer has enough coalition votes in the Bundestag to secure backing for Europe’s revamped rescue machinery, threatening a consitutional crisis in Germany and a fresh eruption of the euro debt saga. Merkel is – in my . . . → Read More: Incompetent Ronald Sherman, the president of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents 28 large fleet owners, said he had seen would-be taxi passengers ignore Chevrolet Malibu or Ford Escape cabs, opting for a longer wait in order to grab the more spacious Crown Vic. “These minis are ridiculous; passengers do not get . . . → Read More: “These minis are ridiculous…” If global warming hasn’t frightened your socks off yet, then take a look at these two news items: 1. The UK is likely to run out of soil in the next 60 years. Other countries are similarly affected: An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per . . . → Read More: Running out of… Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, gave a speech at the University of Exeter this week. He uses an example of “Sudoku for Economists” (pdf file, 47 kB) to illustrate why the mess the world economy is in is unlikely to get any better. He produces a small 9-celled “sudoku table”, . . . → Read More: Mervyn King: Sudoku for Economists I noticed an article in the Daily Mail today about what Spanish air traffic controllers earn (here). I thought that must be typical exaggeration by the popular press, but decided to see if I find out what they “really” earn. It turns out that the figures are probably accurate – here’s an article in . . . → Read More: Very well paid Wal-Mart gave up trying to compete in Germany in 2006, unable to compete effectively against Aldi and Lidl. Nonetheless, I was surprised to read in the latest Harvard Business Review (link to a summary of the article), that six German “hard discounters” (their term for discounters like Aldi and Lidl) are in the top ten global players. Between them, these six make $178,6 billion annual revenue out of the $220,2 billion that the top ten make between them. That is pretty impressive. Given the effort the music industry puts into chasing file downloaders for lost revenue, you would think that they would be punctilious about setting a good example to their customers. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The Canadian Recording Industry Association is currently being sued for not paying copyright on some 300 000 songs, . . . → Read More: Do as I say, not as I do! There’s an article in ars technica about “big content”: Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are lobbying Congress to legislate the payment of performance fees into downloaded music. If music publishers get their way, they’ll be able to extract additional licensing fees from music downloads, movies, and TV shows containing their music, and even 30-second . . . → Read More: Suicidal Music Industry I wouldn’t have thought you need to have a degree from the LSE to realise that the most effective way to reduce global CO2 emissions is to reduce the population. However that is what they have just stated in a new report (Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost): It’s always been obvious that total . . . → Read More: No brainer |
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