Job creation in Davos. Many thanks to Vikram Pandit for so perfectly encapsulating the hypocrisy of Davos with a pair of big announcements, seven weeks apart. December 7, 2011: Citigroup to Cut 4,500 Jobs on Slumping RevenueCitigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit will cut about 4,500 jobs in coming quarters as he seeks to reduce costs amid slumping revenue and “unprecedented” market conditions. January 29, 2012: Jobs are Top Priority, Business Leaders Say as World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012 Closes The 42nd World Economic Forum Annual Meeting closed today, with business leaders urging resolute action to promote growth and employment, particularly among young people. There was a lot of talk about jobs in Davos, in a way which was directly related to the talk of inequality. But beyond that, things got very fuzzy very quickly, and more than a little depressing.
The sad thing is that I think he’s probably right. Why Manufacturing Can't Solve The Jobs Problem. Here in snowy Davos, the topic of job creation has been about as popular as the passed canapés and free champagne. Not surprisingly, President Obama’s latest jobs proposals — a combination of taxing outsourcing corporations and reviving U.S. manufacturing — haven’t been as popular. It’s not hard to see why. Among other things, Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday drove home the idea that U.S. industries need more protection. “Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires,” he said in his speech. That’s all fine and good if your goal is to hold on to U.S. manufacturing jobs. But it’s not going to solve the country’s overall unemployment problem. (MORE: Smack Down at Davos: Merkel and Soros Spar on the Euro’s Future) For one thing, raising trade barriers on imported goods like tires makes tire-buying more expensive for American consumers, which, as Matthew Yglesias points out, only undermines those consumers’ ability to spend elsewhere.
Leveraging Human-Machine Collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University | World Economic Forum-Leveraging Human-Machine Collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University. Thursday 26 January This session was conducted under the Chatham House Rule. How will new forms of human-machine collaboration help improve our lives? Idea 1: Security in digital infrastructureIdea 2: Intelligent machines: When computers readIdea 3: Companion robots and the workplace of the futureIdea 4: Children and the digital world: Partners in learning Key Points Multi-model biometric security will be the access key for the future. Computers are learning to read and understand the vast text-based resources available online, and to use their learning to infer and reason. Symbiotic autonomy for robots occurs when they understand their limitations and are able ask for help to overcome them. Synopsis Idea 1: Security in digital infrastructure Digital security must be managed.
The fort model – Using multiple embedded CPUs, different elements of the computer are isolated and secure, although able to work together: the keyboard, the operating system, the mouse, etc. Other Key Takeaway Disclosures. Web economy in G20 set to double by 2016, Google says. 27 January 2012Last updated at 06:30 By Tim Weber Business editor, BBC News website, Davos More and more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices The value of the web economy in G20 countries will nearly double by 2016, according to Boston Consulting Group. Driving the spurt from $2.3tn (£1.5tn) to $4.2tn (£2.7tn) will be the rapid rise of mobile internet access. The study, supported by web giant Google, assumes that in four years 3bn people will be using the internet, or nearly 50% of the world's population.
The research suggests that the UK is one of the most advanced e-commerce economies. Right now, every year about 200 million people are going online for the very first time. However, traditional internet access via a copper wire and a desktop PC will fade into the background. The rapid fall in the cost of smartphones - with cheap versions now costing about $100 - means that by 2016 about 80% of all internet users will access the web using a mobile phone. The 'new' internet. Davos, disrupted « BuzzMachine. I’m among the disrupted of Davos. Outside, there’s an #OccupyDavos encampment in igloos (really). Down the road, someone will be giving out an award to the worst company of the world. But the disruption is no longer outside. That’s what I sensed in past years; that’s what they wanted to believe here.
Now the disruption is inside. Every institution is challenged. Every. The World Economic Forum issued a list of global risks (though Google’s Eric Schmidt countered on his Google+ page that he’s optimistic; that’s because he’s a disruptor). I began this trip to Europe with my pilgrimage to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz (blogged earlier). Ask those questions today. Welcome to Davos 1472. Guess What — I Met an Optimist at Davos! In a world economy gripped by fear and smothered in uncertainty, I managed to meet someone here able to shine a bright light through the gloom – Steve Ellis, worldwide managing director of consulting firm Bain & Co. Sure, we might be facing the possibility of a collapse of the euro, an emerging markets slowdown, persistent unemployment in the West, a U.S. housing crisis, growth-killing fiscal austerity, and so on and so on. But Ellis is looking a bit further out into the future, and he likes what he sees. Yes, he says, we’re facing a pretty rough two or three years.
All sorts of difficult structural reforms have to be put into place. But looking beyond that, there are sound reasons to believe health will return to the global economy: It’s very easy to get caught up in the headlines of the day, the doom and gloom. In fact, Ellis believes that global GDP will increase by some 40% by 2020. What’s he looking at? (LIST: The Heavy Hitters of Davos 2012) Fear in Davos. It’s highly unscientific and anecdotal, but the winner of the most-talked-about-person-in-Davos award, at least when it comes to people in my earshot, is George Soros.
Soros is out of the investing game, living now as a full-time philanthropist and sage, while still keeping an eye on the fund company which bears his name and which provides him with a ten-digit income each year. Because he doesn’t have a financial book to talk, because he’s happy being brutally honest , and because he’s giving voice to the plutocrats’ darkest fears, Soros seems to encapsulate Davos 2012 like no one else.
Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. Silicon Valley Newcomers Are Still Dreaming Big. Hot times in Silicon Valley. THE San Francisco Bay area is undergoing one of its periodic tech booms on the back of the flourishing of social networking firms.
That boom, the Wall Street Journaltells us, is very good for local tech workers: Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. said salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California's Silicon Valley rose 5.2% to an average $104,195 last year, outstripping the average 2% increase, to $81,327, in tech-workers' salaries nationwide. It was the first time since Dice began the salary survey in 2001 that the wage barometer broke the $100,000 barrier, said Tom Silver, a Dice senior vice president.The findings come amid a Web boom that has fueled companies such as Facebook Inc., Zynga Inc. and Twitter Inc.
Last year, several of the companies—including LinkedIn Corp. and Zynga—went public, with Facebook poised for an initial public offering this year. The question is: why is the battle for talent in Silicon Valley so fierce? Emerging-market multinationals: The rise of state capitalism. The Book of Jobs | Politics. What this transition meant, however, is that jobs and livelihoods on the farm were being destroyed. Because of accelerating productivity, output was increasing faster than demand, and prices fell sharply. It was this, more than anything else, that led to rapidly declining incomes. Farmers then (like workers now) borrowed heavily to sustain living standards and production. Because neither the farmers nor their bankers anticipated the steepness of the price declines, a credit crunch quickly ensued.
Farmers simply couldn’t pay back what they owed. The financial sector was swept into the vortex of declining farm incomes. The cities weren’t spared—far from it. The value of assets (such as homes) often declines when incomes do. Given the magnitude of the decline in farm income, it’s no wonder that the New Deal itself could not bring the country out of crisis. The parallels between the story of the origin of the Great Depression and that of our Long Slump are strong. Has capitalism got a future? 24 January 2012Last updated at 00:22 By Tim Weber Business editor, BBC News website, Davos Could the future of capitalism be decided in this Swiss mountain resort? Has capitalism got a future? Is it fit for the 21st Century? And if it has and is, how must capitalism change? The organisers of this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) have put some pretty crunchy questions on the agenda. But as more than 2,600 of the world's richest and most powerful people come to the Swiss mountain village of Davos to discuss the state of the world, is it a topic that they want to talk about?
For some, these are clearly the right questions. "I'm really interested in hearing people talk about that," he says. Mr Griffiths-Jones talks of the need to find a "concept of responsible capitalism" and worries that even if Davos man and woman find a consensus, it will not be one that is very clear to people in the wider world. The founder and driving force of the forum, Prof Klaus Schwab, is even blunter. Occupy WEF.