Crisis. Why Poor Countries Are Poor. They call Douala the "armpit of Africa. " Lodged beneath the bulging shoulder of West Africa, this malaria-infested city in southwestern Cameroon is humid, unattractive, and smelly. On a torrid evening in late 2001, I was guided out of the chaotic Douala International Airport by my friend Andrew and his driver, Sam, who would have whisked us immediately to the cooler hillside town of Buea if Douala were at all conducive to being whisked anywhere. It isn't. Douala, a city of 2 million people, has no real roads.... It's the Inequality, Stupid. Want more charts like these? See our charts on the secrets of the jobless recovery, the richest 1 percent of Americans, and how the superwealthy beat the IRS. How Rich Are the Superrich? A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household.
The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244. Note: The 2007 data (the most current) doesn't reflect the impact of the housing market crash. Winners Take All The superrich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades' gains. Download: PDF chart 1 (large) PDF chart 2 (large) | JPG chart 1 (smaller) JPG chart 2 (smaller) Out of Balance A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States.
Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller) Capitol Gain Why Washington is closer to Wall Street than Main Street. Congressional data from 2009. BRIC Country Super-Rich Worth $4 Trillion - The Wealth Report. By Robert Frank The future of wealth will be built with BRICs. According to new data from Wealth-X , the wealth research and consulting firm, Brazil, Russia, India and China now have a combined 25,600 people with $30 million or more in net worth (which includes shares in publicly traded and closely held companies, residential and investment real estate, art, planes, cash and other investible assets).
That is about half the number of ultra-high-net individuals in the U.S., according to Wealth-X. The BRIC ultrarich have a combined net worth of $4.125 trillion, compared to $6.4 trillion for the U.S. Source: Wealth-X What is most interesting about the BRIC data is the concentration of wealth at the very top of the wealth pyramid. In Brazil, the nation’s 50 billionaires account for less than 1% of the ultrarich population but a third of the group’s $890 billion in wealth. China’s billionaires account for 1% of the ultrarich and about a third of their wealth of $1.65 trillion. Global Rich List. Building private-sector diplomacy - McKinsey Quarterly - Marketing - Strategy.
In the wake of the financial crisis, many companies are finding that they must rebuild more than just their balance sheets—they must also confront the challenge of rebuilding trust, relationships, and corporate reputations. In this video interview, PR expert Richard Edelman discusses what he calls “private-sector diplomacy”: the range of actions and behavior that companies can use to engage the widening network of consumers, organizations, communities, and governments that make up stakeholder groups. He sees opportunities for improvement along the entire spectrum, from innovative corporate responsibility initiatives to increased use of social media. His insights come in part from his firm’s ongoing research initiative, the Edelman Trust Barometer, which conducts a study of trust levels among companies and industries across the globe. The most recent results are available at edelman.com/trust/2009.
Watch the video, or read the transcript below. Video Building private-sector diplomacy. RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation. Hayek vs. Keynes: The Hip-Hop Version - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com. The Profit Calculator. You can’t live in New York—arguably, you can’t spend an hour in New York—and remain oblivious to the machinery of profit pumping away under every surface.
This city makes money, loses money, houses money; lately, with luxe condos stacking up like casino chips along the waterfront, the city looks like money. What’s amazing, then, is how little we truly know about the inner workings of this beast we feed, and milk, daily: How does New York make its money? Every company setting up in the city finds itself plugged into its myriad historical, cultural, and regulatory quirks. The biggest one, of course, concerns our island’s most precious commodity and its most enduring obsession: real estate. New York businesses live and die by the rent; if you’re a retailer leasing here, “making the rent” becomes the yardstick of solvency.
The unofficial golden rule of restaurants dictates that the rent be made in a week and take up no more than a quarter of revenue. Hayek, vrai et faux individualisme. The Twelfth Finlay Lecture. [1] par Friedrich August Hayek traduit par François Guillaumat 1. - Quiconque défend aujourd'hui des principes clairs d'organisation sociale est presque assuré de se voir traiter d'irréaliste et de doctrinaire. Refuser, en théorie sociale, toute adhésion à des principes préétablis, juger des problèmes soi-disant "à partir des faits", voilà où l'on a fini par voir la marque de la sagesse : se laisser guider par l'opportunité et être disposé à faire des compromis entre des positions contradictoires.
Or, les principes, même lorsqu'ils ne sont pas explicitement perçus alors qu'une décision particulière les engage, ou ne sont là que comme de vagues idées sur ce qui se fait ou ne se fait pas, ont une manière bien à eux de se rappeler à notre attention. Ainsi, à suivre le slogan "Ni l'individualisme ni le socialisme" nous dérivons rapidement d'une société d'hommes libres à une autre, d'essence parfaitement collectiviste. Keynes for the 21st century. Economists Who Did Their Homework (800 Years of It) The capitalist network that runs the world - physics-math - 19 October 2011. AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears.
An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable. The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power.
The Zurich team can. 1. Fifty Essential Topics on Economics. Economic is an essential topic for life. If you are working, understanding economics will help you understanding how are the products and services of your company relate to the markets and consumers. Why some products can mark the price so high and still there are demands on purchase? How services and products decrease its value? All of those questions can be answered by basic economics knowledge. Arnold Kling has done a set of note pages for economics. Those 50 pages provide an overview on the best economics that you should learn about. Growth Theory Saving, Finance, and Social Security Markets (Microeconomics) Macroeconomics Information Economics The Best of Economics – [Arnold Kling]