NEWS YOU CAN USE

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”  – Elon Musk Spirit Of Success Exactly 10 years ago to the day, shortly before 1 pm on March 21, 2006 in California, then 29-year-old software developer Jack Dorsey tapped out a simple message: “just setting up my twttr”. The message itself is not of importance, but …

The 10 most expensive cities in the world 2016 Singapore is the world’s most expensive city for expatriates according to the ‘2016 worldwide cost of living’- survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The study compared more than 400 individual prices across 160 products and services from food, drink, clothing, household supplies and personal care items to home rents, transport, utility …

Trump is more dangerous than terrorism Each month, The Economist Intelligence Unit publishes a report with top-events that could destabilize the global economy. The just released ‘April 2016’-report marks for the first time ever a potential election of an US- presidential candidate as a top global risk. Here is the complete list in order of impact and probability: China experiences …

Intellectual Property – The Key to Economic Success ‘WIPO’ stands for ‘World Intellectual Property Organization’ and is one of 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations. The main purpose of WIPO – founded is 1967 in the ‘Nobel prize’ town of Stockholm –  is to encourage creative activity and to promote the protection of ‘intellectual property’ worldwide. WIPO has 188 members-states …

With tonight’s games Barcelona vs Arsenal and Bayern vs Juventus, the UEFA-Champions League (CL) is once again the talk of the town all over Europe. A unified Europe – what the EU so terribly misses to achieve – the ‘beautiful game’ of football gathers millions of europeans from Sweden to Sicily to barock-composer Georg Frederic Handel’s CL-anthem “Die Meister, Die Besten, Les …

When You Hack Your Central Bank   Over a weekend at the beginning of February 2016, unknown computer-hackers managed to get access to the internal systems of ‘Bangladesh Bank’, the central bank and monetary authority of the South Asian country.   The cyber-attack of the bank’s headquaters in the country’s capital Dhaka was planned and executed quite professionally. The perpetrators …

  “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – Albert Einstein A few remarks to the European Central Bank’s strategy and the impact for you as an investor or saver The 10th of March 2016 could be the date in (financial) history, when the once almighty and highly respected institutions of …

In financial markets, a high gold/oil ratio indicates ‘problems ahead’ The prices of gold and oil usually rise and fall in sync. Conventional wisdom is that rising oil prices push up inflation, thereby increasing demand for gold as a hedge and vice versa. Since 1980, the median gold/oil-ratio (that’s how many barrels of oil can be bought with one ounce …

The dangerous interest-experiment by the European Central Bank This week, the area of negative interest rates in Europe was remarkably widened. While investors were just getting used to negative yields for government-bonds, on Tuesday german bank ‘Berlin Hyp’ set a new landmark. The relatively small bank became the first ever non-state borrower who issued an EUR-denominated debt (of 500 million …

This week, China reported its largest monthly drop in exported goods since May 2009. China’s ‘February-2016-trade performance’ was far worse than economists had expected, with exports falling 25.4% reflecting the current downturn in global demand for chinese products. Although this figure looks pretty bad, one has to consider the week-long Chinese new year holidays – with factories closed for seven …