marketmaker's blog

An interesting story about holiday shopping and mobile phones - it seems that the Internet is truly on the way to create a perfect market.

This of course would have great impact on very many retail business models. In particular the Internet can create an environment where we have near perfect information about products and prices.

Our blog is primarily about economics and business, yet we cannot ignore big issues such as the latest Wikileaks disclosures, that have taken over headlines in electronic and printed media worldwide.

In case you have spent the last week under a rock somewhere - on Sunday 28th, the Guardian , New York Times and 3 other newspapers started publishing a hacked/stolen leaked collection of US State Department embassy cables / documents.

The story is still in development and only a small portion of the more than 250 000 documents have been shown to the public.

The Euro's scary fairytale continues. After the "Greek drama" that was much more of a surprise for the Greek people and government ( or at least acted so ) , than anyone else; Ireland accepted its debt crisis in a much more collected, albeit melancholic way.

Once commentator compared it to the stages of grief, and now, that Acceptance has set it, the markets have somewhat calmed so as to move onto the last two little Piigs that seem to be earmarked to fall before Christmas - Portugal and Spain.

CNN is running a series of specials on the Sub-prime crisis with a focus on some of the hardest hit - the black community in America. A very interesting and provocative discussion with two African American leaders - Pastor Soaries and Bishop T.D. Jakes .

In the except here they discuss Should Pastors provide financial advise.

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Futurology and Economics don't mix very readily it seems. Which is a pity, since rigidity is a big problem with many of the current economic research and approaches.

A very englightening talk by Richard Watson from 1,5 years ago gives a basic overview of the dynamics behing predicting the future. The video mentions some obivous economic trends such as the aging trend, the power shift to the East.

There are somewhat good news for the EU economy today insofar that only 7 of the 91 tested European banks failed their stress tests, coordinated by the European Commission office. The failures are mainly concentrated in Spain and the reason for this may be not so much the bad state of the Spanish economy but the peculiar way the whole exercise was devised.

There is one common theme between the Bush administration, Hugo Chavez and the new UK Government. They all seem to have constructed the implementation and not the goals of their economic policies on political dogmas.

Thanks to IGLU (see here), we are happy to share a timeline graphic of the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oilspill. The graphics help put this oilspill into perspective and also shows a revealing comparison with previous accidents.

Undoubtedly the worst environmental disaster in the US in recent years, it seems that on a global scale the spill itself is not unprecedented:

With the spotlight still very much on the state (some would even say fate) of the Eurozone, we are pleased to present an in-depth look into the political realities that will decide the EU's fate. Mr. Vihar Georgiev from EU Law Blog gives his views on the current big unknown unknown - the political uncertainty that has been the main driver behind market volatility recently: