David Cameron will have his first face-to-face meeting with newly elected French President Francois Hollande today, at a G8 summit in the US. There has been some fuss about Cameron and Hollande not getting along. Cameron snubbed Hollande during a visit to London. And, most importantly, one is a French Socialist, the other a British [...]
You’ll have heard this before, no doubt: infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. It’s something of a mantra for environmentalists and is used as absolute proof that we’re just going to have to do without that pesky economic growth thing. The problem here is that the conclusion isn’t justified by the premise: it’s [...]
At a recent briefing IBM raised the idea that in any number of ways the Internet, Web—online computing—badly needs refreshing. Just look at what you are doing with online. Does it seem stale?
Consider this: the online experience now encompasses mobile, cloud, big data, social networking, and gamification. You probably didn’t deal with any of [...]
Those hoping for something genuinely new from David Cameron’s speech on the state of the UK economy will have been sadly disappointed. Naturally, he was keen to put his best foot forward. We’ve already cut the deficit by more than a quarter, he crowed, and the number of people in work grew by 100,000 in [...]
Bank of America has a nice twist on a Greek exit, or “Grexit” as everybody now calls it. The euro would shoot up to $1.40 against the dollar (after first falling to $1.20 in the immediate panic). It is $1.27 now. Risk assets would enjoy a “powerful short squeeze”. Bond yields in Spain, Italy, and [...]
Apparently something terrible happens when we get to peak oil. I’ve never really quite understood the argument myself, but when we’ve used half of all the oil then civilisation collapses or something. I’m not sure why this should happen: we don’t start starving when there’s only half a loaf of bread left. But I am [...]
