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Today’s El País contains a cartoon, of a minister saying: Ampliaremos la edad de jubilación a los setenta, pero no os preocupeis, a partir le los cuarenta ya no os contrataremos (“We’ll raise the retirement age to 70, but don’t worry, we won’t hire anyone over 40.”) Which is reflects perfectly the current . . . → Read More: Broken down There’s a good, short piece by Maurice Saatchi in today’s Times on how the property bubble crept up on us without being noticed. It criticizes the focus – at least in the UK – on the consumer price index, which measures the rate of inflation on the weekly shopping basket, but doesn’t take account . . . → Read More: Lord Saatchi on property bubble blindness It annoys me that governments in many countries charge you an involuntary license fee for public service TV, whether you actually watch it or not. This might have been a good idea many decades ago, when the infrastructure for TV broadcasting needed to be built up. But these days, when public TV largely duplicates . . . → Read More: Keep your hands out of our pockets If you thought the current financial crisis was bad news, things are looking even worse for 2030, says an article in the Guardian today: A “perfect storm” of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions, the . . . → Read More: More disturbing news Knight Frank have a handy service, if you want to keep an eye on how property (residential or commercial) prices are developing world wide. They publish a trend summary for around 50 countries twice a year. Here’s a list of many of their regular reports (scroll down for the international ones). Jonathan Jarvis has produced a clear animated explanation of how the credit crisis came about. The work was part of his thesis at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Worth watching. (via Daring Fireball) An interesting article in the New York Times last week, about the complete and on-going irresponsibility of retail banks and credit card companies in the USA. If you’ve been reading the financial press for the last month or two, you’ll have read that after the mortgage crisis, we are going to have the credit . . . → Read More: Why the finance crisis isn’t over yet Inditex, based in A Coruña (N. Spain), has overtaken Gap to become the world’s number one fashion retailer. You probably know at least one of their brand names, although I admit I hadn’t realised that all the following stores are part of the Inditex Group: Zara Bershka Pull and Bear Massimo Dutti Stradivarius Not . . . → Read More: Inditex overtakes Gap to become leading fashion retailer GMO, a successful American investment fund management group with a good track-record for long-term forecasts has been looking at the property markets in the USA and UK. Their conclusions are not going to cheer up house-owners in those countries, the Economist reports: …By using the ratio of the median house price to the median . . . → Read More: US / UK housing still massively overvalued Following up on the last posting I made here, I see that Cory Doctorow has written an article in today’s Guardian, about how the music industry is slowly commiting suicide: This month’s announcement of a back-room deal between ISPs (internet service providers) and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and . . . → Read More: Cory Doctorow: A suicide note from the music industry |
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