In 1994 and 1995 I attended two Summer Schools on International Political Economy, the second whose official title was “The Politics of Global Finance” (albeit we agreed on a slightly more “neutral” title for the diploma, “International Political Economy”).
In July 1995 I had to prepare a short essay- and my assigned title was: “Hegemony in an Era of Turmoil” (the focus was in global finance, not on military issues).
This article has been in an eternal “draft” state since, well, forever- at least few months.
Actually, the title has been on my whiteboard for at least one week.
Why the wait? Because I live in Brussels, and I wanted to wait the results of the negotiations.
This week it was reported that the CEO Google predicts the end of privacy on the internet.
But, in part, the announce was an element within a campaign on “network neutrality”, i.e. ensuring that providers cannot filter and decide which content is published and distributed, controlling how the available resources are used.
The interesting issue is: part [...]
An interesting, curious article on the Wall Street Journal about the 500 EUR banknotes and seignorage made me think about the headless chicken.
As no revisions to the article have been published, I assume that the information that it contains is confirmed- and I wanted to share some comments.
Why this title? Because recent Italian news intertwined with the past, present, and future of the Balkans.
At the end, a short story to summarize the article.
The inspiration for this article came from a twitter-war between some of my online friends, siding either with Nokia or with Apple in their fight about who should license what.
The last round? Apple asking US Courts to block the sale of Nokia products in the USA (as a side-effect of Nokia request that Apple licenses its innovations that have been allegedly used for the iPhone etc).
Inspiration, I said.
The real issue is: are our business development and FDI (foreign direct investment) attraction models, created for an industrial era, sustainable when we shift toward a knowledge economy based on the WTO legal framework?
The title of this article is both a provocation and a simple statement of facts.
It is funny to observe as something that was often the most critical issue with startups and growing SMEs is now visible in sensibly larger organizations.
The issue? The temptation of reducing risk by spreading too thin across multiple line of activities.
In theory, this could mean having multiple “fall-back” opportunities, should one or more of the alternatives fail to deliver the expected results.
In reality, this implies that you have multiple initiatives to coordinate- a tough call, made even more difficult to manage if you are within a competitive environment, where external issues could require a constant refocus.
In this article, taking the lead from the first public speech of the European President, a “what if” story on the application of the streamlining approach to the external relations of the EU 27.
XXI century encyclopedias and knowledge processing.
How Google, WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, and Eurostat process a query.
Or: models of knowledge processing and distribution.
Fair weather friendship
Monday, November 23rd, 2009If you read newspapers from around Europe over the last few days, you found an almost unanimous “thumbs down” on the choices for first European President and the first Foreign Affairs Secretary (it will be clear later why I use “alternative” job titles).
It is quite funny: the consensus bridges the Euro-sceptics and the Euro-nationalists.
Personally, I believe that the Euro-sceptics do not realize that the train already left the station, and now the issue is only how fast and where it will go.
As for the Euro-nationalists: do you really believe that it is possible in the XXI century to rebuild a Charlemagne-style empire?
Tags: affairs, eu, fair, foreign, friendship, president, weather
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