July 29, 2010
Jul 21 2010
I’m not a socialist, but articles such as this one make me wonder how much longer before we are all socialists (and poor). As long as trends such as this one (ie. the rich getting richer) go unchecked, we’re heading for a major showdown. It’s time for clever people (many of whom are also rich) to do something. I mean, something else than making yet more money.
Jul 14 2010
Jun 25 2010
There is always fire where there is smoke. I refer to this post of mine (dated 18/3/2010) and this Fin24 article (22/6/2010).
Jun 17 2010
…rather late than never.
What the SA government under Mbeki should have done already in the late 90s, the Zuma government has now finally done: acknowledged the importance of the internet to economic development and (important) published a plan to get cheaper, faster internet to more people in SA. Eureka! [Read on]
Jun 14 2010
On June 22, 2009 I first commented on the dreadful Vuvuzela. Four days into the World Cup it is even more controversial than I’d expected it would be. So I decided to “re-publish” my original comments and hope SA football fans will come to realize NOT blowing the horn at non-Bafana Bafana games is a form of respect they simply HAVE to pay foreign fans.
May 31 2010
As readers might realise by now, I like to be the first to write about things which might impact the economy (be it the German, EU, or global economy) in futute (tomorrow, this year, or in the next five years). Today I want to be the first to go on record as having said that Germany’s highly-respected and much-liked minister of finance Wolfgang Schäuble doesn’t have what it takes to be the minister of finance of the biggest economy in the EU. And that he won’t survive in that position until the end of 2010. [Read on]
May 14 2010
When the economic environment changes too fast for economists to follow, that’s always a bit disappointing to me – big economist fan that I am. [Read on]
Apr 28 2010
I wrote this article in 2005 (for the original click here, then scroll five stories down). Today, it’s as relevant as all hell. So, I thought I’d “re-publish” it. Back then I mentioned the Italians by name and not the Greeks, or Portuguese, but in the context they were included. [Read on]
Apr 12 2010
I wrote this article for an American client, who published it on 19 June 2009.
Private “sales” of houses and apartments by way of online lotteries (or raffles) continue to hit the headlines in Europe. This week the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) reported about the 38-year old London sharetrader Andrew Paul, who is raffling “his whole life” on the site Winanewlife.com, including a villa, sports car and luxury motor boat. He hopes to sell 200,000 tickets at £20 each before 19 August, when the winning ticket will be drawn and the winner will walk away with all. [Read on]
Apr 12 2010
Thanks to a flood of innovative smart phones and declining costs for mobile Internet use (minus 24 percent in 2009, as measured by the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft), the much-hyped medium mobile Internet finally sprang to life in Germany in the second half of 2009.
“The number of mobile Internet users is doubling every month,” dr. Hagen Sexauer, principal of Bad Homburg-based strategy consultant Sempora, told the iPhone Developers Conference in Cologne on 2 December. [Read on]
