Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and staff at Capital Fund Management in Paris studied the news feeds from Dow Jones and Reuters that provide real-time reports of items of potential interest to investors. Looking at over 90,000 news items in a two-year period, they investigated how sudden movements in stock prices were linked to the ticker reports. . . . → Read More: Why the economy keeps crashing
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In Germany, if something is ridiculously expensive for what it is, we refer to it having an Apothekenpreis (pharmacy price). If you’ve seen a typical Germany pharmacy (or chemist), you’ll understand why. They are usually fitted out with the top-of-the-market shop fittings and very well-staffed. Which means that we pay 2 or 3 times . . . → Read More: ‘Apothekenpreise’ – soon history? The Economist thinks that although last year was terrible for the music industry, things will soon be even worse: IN 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI . . . → Read More: Music industry woes to deepen Downside 1: When the cheapest source in Germany for two CDs by Gianmaria Testa (an Italian singer) ships the CDs from New Zealand (with a packing slip printed with an address in New Jersey, USA). Downside 2: The demand for cheap meat results in keeping chickens in overcrowded, insanitary conditions. Free-range birds cost . . . → Read More: Downsides of too much capitalism? The US lobby group for the music industry, the RIAA, has excelled itself this time in its heavy-handed dealing with a customer. They are suing a customer who bought 2000 tracks on CDs and copied them to his computer for his own use. He didn’t upload them to the internet, just listened to them . . . → Read More: How (not) to treat your customers The Economist has its regular table showing how property prices world wide have developed: Graph from this week’s Economist As you’d expect, given the US sub-prime crisis, the US prices have dropped by around 5% in the last 12 months. More surprisingly, the UK prices, despite the concern in the British press about their . . . → Read More: The latest global house price trends Bought DVDs drive me nuts already with the unskippable beginning where the film company warns you that copying or broadcasting the DVD is illegal. But things can get worse – IBM has patented a way to stop the films periodically and disable the DVD controls, forcing you to watch canned adverts: …15 minutes or . . . → Read More: What are they thinking of? While the New Yorker pontificates on whether more fuel-efficient cars will ever happen, and the British government appears to be about to go back on recent commitments to increase the use of renewable energy, the European Commission has published several papers and maps on their website showing how they expect the average precipitation, average . . . → Read More: Heating up Europe The front page in today’s Observer: Britain’s house price growth will be halved next year as the global financial crisis exacerbates the impact of rising mortgage rates, according to Nationwide, the biggest mortgage lender. Continue reading Who is trying to pull the wool over our eyes? The Economist has a short article with the graphic above showing the additional costs and fees associated with buying property in different countries. Britain and Denmark are cheap, costing under 5% of the purchase price; Korea, Italy, France, Greece, Spain and Germany are expensive at 12% – . . . → Read More: How high are the fees when you buy property? |
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