Putin's BRIC Power Play

By Qineqt:In addition to the catchy BRIC acronym, a new one is being coined by Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill in order to promote a list of four nations in line to be the next high-growth countries. The 'MIST' includes Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey. The MIST economies have the right mix of stimuli in terms of favorable demographics and rising productivity, which are needed for high growth.

By Roger Nusbaum: Barron's has a reference to a new emerging market acronym this weekend; MIST which stands for Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey.

There's speculation that Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky was murdered in his estate outside London this weekend.

The Problem with the Quick Fix Here’s a question that I get too often: How can you build an innovation capability really fast? I’ve told the story before of one typical example: I had lunch a while back with two executives from an organization that the Business School does a fair bit work with. They wanted to improve innovation and that’s what triggered our meeting.

Russia is much poorer than the United States and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Russian wages, likewise, will not approach US levels anytime soon, at least in any plausible scenario. But as Yglesias accurately noted, when you're responding to an economic crisis you're responding to a n economic crisis, you're not worrying about the decades-long economic outlook.

By Mike Konczal So part of the financial reform package is allowing regulators to wind down large financial firms in a way similar to the way they wind down commercial banks. One question is, "When do you wind these firms down?" Is it when all hope is lost and everyone is running for the door? No, ideally it should be before that, when the firm still has some value.