Saturday, July 22, 2006

surplus From Business Week, July 31, 2006 Iran's annual oil and gas revenues:     $60.000 billion annual aid contribution to Hezbollah: $   .180 billion annual aid contribution to Hamas:      $   .040 billion and from Business Week, July 31, 2006 Russia's government owned Gazprom gas company: annual revenue: $60.000 billion Some customers and their reliance on Gazprom: Finland:            100% Latvia:              100% Lithuania:         100% Slovkia:            100% Greece:               87% Czech Republic:    81% Austria:               73% Turkey:               66% A Revolution in Wealth, by the Tofflers What most business, political and civil leaders have not yet clearly understood is a simple fact: An advanced economy needs an advanced society. For every economy is a product of the society in which it is embedded and is dependent on its key institutions. (chapter 5) in another place in the book, they mention the concept of: surplus complexity. more on that later. 5:10:13 PM    comment []

	Sunday, November 23, 2003

Who Will Pay? Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change, and OtherLong-Term Fiscal Challenges: Bradford Delong writes Notes: Long-Term Budgeting Yet another book to add to the must-read-soon pile: Which links to an Economist article, In the long run we are all broke, How to stop governments going bust. ...Most countries' explicit net debt - issued as bonds and traded every day in financial markets - is at manageable levels, relative to GDP. However, embodied in current tax and expenditure policies are a lot of obligations for which governments have not yet had to make explicit provision. This implicit liability arises mainly from future increases in spending on pensions and health care. Include it, and total debt vaults to levels last seen (for explicit debt) in wartime. Governments often fall into bad habits when their debts are so high, usually by resorting to the printing press and using inflation to cut the real value of their liabilities.... So what is to be done? First, governments must look much farther ahead than they do now. An increasing number of western countries are planning their public finances on a basis of three to five years, but this is nowhere near enough, argues Mr Heller. They need to incorporate a long-range perspective (of at least 25 years and preferably more) into their budgets. Second, these projections should be vetted by independent agencies such as America's Congressional Budget Office, because of governments' tendency to see the silver lining and not the cloud.... That links to an IMF publication, Who Will Pay? Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change, and Other Long-Term Fiscal Challenges: 7:41:45 PM    comment []

	Saturday, November 1, 2003

High Tech Energy Crisis. According to the San Jose Mercury News, a recent survey by Deloitte & Touche demonstrates that increased scrutiny of option issuance has resulted in a notable decrease in option use by tech companies. 73% of the public companies surveyed said that they have reduced or will reduce the number of options they issue in the coming 12 months. And two thirds anticipate overhauling their compensation plans if the accounting rules require the expensing of options. To my mind, those are devastating numbers. Stock options are the fuel upon which tech companies are propelled. They give everyone in a company the incentive to strive to make the most of that company. If those incentives are dismantled, I fear that startups will no longer achieve the same velocity that has historically been the case in the United States. And that is not an economic advantage this country can afford to lose. [VentureBlog] 7:18:25 PM    comment []

The Fiscal Problem of the 21st Century. Charles Jones, Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, writes about the fiscal challenges ahead. The fiscal problem of the 21st century, then, is this: Under current policies, the fraction of resources society devotes to health care appears likely to rise substantially over the next 50 years. Reasonable projections suggest that spending on Medicare and Medicaid as a percentage of GDP may well rise from 3.4% in 2000 to nearly 15% by 2075. [Scott Loftesness] 2:03:25 PM    comment []

	Saturday, April 5, 2003

GREENspan points to the place in the middle. Thanks to Scott Lazerwith and Murry Chapman for sending along this bit of good news: Alan Greenspan has signaled what other smart economists have been saying for a long time: That this race to protectionism in the field of intellectual property is not without cost. As Greenspan said, “If our objective is to maximize economic growth, are we striking the right balance in our protection of intellectual property rights? Are the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so broad as to shut down follow-on innovation?“ This is good news for all things happy and light, for it helps a meme that we should be pressing hard: IP is of course good; but it does not follow that more IP is better. [Lessig Blog] 3:31:46 PM    comment []

	Thursday, March 13, 2003

Tiny Transactions, Without the Coins. TOKYO. By Ken Belson. [New York Times: Technology] 5:25:43 AM    comment []

	Thursday, March 6, 2003

Contactless Payments. Earlier today I posted an announcement about the Smart Card Alliance's new white paper on contactless payments. I read through the paper this afternoon and would like to highly recommend it as very useful background for anyone wanting to understand what's happening in this important emerging technology arena. By the way, I've been calling them "proximity payments" -- and have set up a separate weblog category to cover that subject. [Scott Loftesness] Smart Card Alliance: Contactless Payments White Paper. The Smart Card Alliance has released a new white paper on contactless payments. The latest trend in retail payment applications is contactless payment. Contactless payment systems are used successfully in Asia, Europe and North America and offer a number of advantages to issuers, retailers, and consumers. Contactless payment allows issuers to penetrate the cash payment market, enjoy increased customer transaction volume, and improve customer retention and loyalty. Retailers realize benefits due to faster transaction times, increased revenue, improved operational efficiency, and lower operating costs. Consumers enjoy the convenience of hands-free payment, the ability to pay for multiple services using one device, and the security of not having to display a card for payment. [Scott Loftesness] 4:40:40 AM    comment []

	Friday, February 28, 2003

So this salesman comes into a bar with a portable MRI... Looking Inside the Brains of the Stingy "...The Player 1's who do not follow the presumably rational strategy often wind up better off. Even without communicating with fellow players, they are able to cooperate for mutual benefit. "Why do people react differently to the same situation? And why do so many people give up money to punish anonymous cheapskates? "Experimental economists have mapped out these anomalies and tested how much they affect economic interactions. Now a new field, called neuroeconomics, is using the tools of neuroscience to find the underlying biological mechanisms that lead people to act, or not act, according to economic theory. "In neuroeconomics, volunteers go through exercises developed by experimental economists studying trust or risk. Instead of simply observing subjects' behavior, however, researchers use imaging technologies, like M.R.I.'s, to see which brain areas are active during the experiment...." [New York Times] 5:36:31 AM    comment []

New Mobile Payment Services Association announced. Orange, Telefonica Moviles, T-Mobile and Vodafone have announced that they are forming a new Mobile Payment Services Association. For customers, the aim is to provide the opportunity to purchase a wide range of digital and physical goods and services with their mobile phones using an easy, secure solution. The solution aims to become the industry standard for m-commerce payments. Merchants and merchant acquirers will benefit from a standard set of interfaces through which they will gain access to a potentially huge international customer base. Software and solution vendors will benefit from published technical interfaces enabling the development of compliant m-payment products and services. Operators will benefit from a standard way of integrating and efficiently managing their relationships with merchants, merchant acquirers and content providers. Former NatWest executive Tim Jones will be CEO of this new organization. [Scott Loftesness] Credit Card Cos. Watch Own Backs. MasterCard, Visa, American Express and the banks that issue credit cards don't do enough to protect merchants and consumers from the perils of fraud, reports analyst firm Gartner. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] Plastic is on a payroll The next time payday rolls around, imagine going without a paycheck or direct-deposit slip. Instead, your money essentially is downloaded onto a piece of plastic that resembles a credit card. From that, you make ATM withdrawals and debitlike purchases [The Arizona Republic] 5:10:41 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Russ Savage. Last update: 7/22/06; 5:19:56 PM.