Curated articles from various sources.
The Economist equates the hit television series “Game of Thrones” with an epic battle going on between some of the world’s largest technological firms. Indeed, the tech industry has a history of bitter rivalries, including past battles between IBM and Apple, Microsoft and Netscape. But the rivalries shaping the market today are even richer and…
As the Economist proposes: Germans are avid savers, but they do not like to invest. For as history reveals, at the beginning of 1923 the German mark stood at 7,260 to the dollar, and soon after hyperinflation struck – fixed incomes and savings became worthless. Come ninety years later, and it is the converse –…
The Economist attempts to explain how economic uncertainty dulls investment. It certainly takes a cool head to invest, because a firm’s decision to build up capacity or spend cash on research pays out tomorrow – and must be paid for today. This flow of things makes for uncertain investment returns, influenced by factors—from oil prices to politics—that…
The Economist means that security guards worth their salt are paid to be paranoid – and computer-security researchers are no different. Many had long suspected that governments use the internet not only to keep tabs on particular targets, but also to snoop on entire populations. And now, stung by revelations of ubiquitous surveillance and compromised software, the…
According to the Economist, there can be few better places to talk about complexity than Vienna. In the capital of the most complicated political organisation ever to exist, hundreds of management enthusiasts converged recently to debate the subject of complexity. In their discussions, they were preoccupied with two points: that business is more complicated than ever before;…
Not long ago, before the financial crisis and the global recession it triggered, economists referred to America itself as fulfilling the role of consumer of last resort. American consumers were fueling demand for the goods China and other nations produced, and so, they kept the world economy humming. However, as Bloomberg reports, it may not quite…
