Disintermediate a Nobel Prize winning business and lend money to villagers around the world directly. There does not seem to be a revenue model for investors (i.e. the loans do not pay interest), and obviously there are verification costs, but it’s an interesting start – Kiva.org Even without a revenue model for investors there has …
Category Archives: Global Macro Trends
Ban incandescent bulbs – not a no brainer..
No Right Turn suggests we follow Australia’s lead and ban incandescent bulbs. While I think this is a clear case of Government intervention helping consumers reduce total cost of ownership it is not a total ‘no brainer’. While the short term increase in spend will eventually be matched by reduced electricity bills, this will be …
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Food miles
New blog Celsias makes a point about food grown locally being more beneficial to the environment as it reduces ‘food miles’. A catchy phrase, but one that avoids much of inputs into the energy or carbon balance of providing food, as he alludes to. To be fair to farmers in NZ, for example, the total …
Housing is expensive. Again.
It seems that it take Kiwi’s much longer to buy a house than it does for those living in the US, Ireland and Canada. (Australia is worse off). The measure used is average price of a house over average income in the region. Three points from the great article: 1: It’s not the lack of …
Real Estate online
Bid4Assets is bragging that they sold $239m in California real estate online since 2000, and $40m in 2006 alone. gee – right now there are 27,930 residential properties listed on Trade Me. At an average price of $300,000 per house that’s $8.379 billion worth of real estate listings. Kinda makes that US$239m in 6 years …
media old and new
Fantastic commentry on one aspect of how old media is migrating the new – by someone that straddles both worlds. I especially like the bit about bloggers with 100 viewers displacing old media types with millions. That isn’t really true (or it depends upon who those viewers are), but bloggers with millions of viewers should …
Oldest newspaper moves online
A sign of the times – the world’s oldest newspaper The Post Och Inrikes Tidningar, a Swedish daily list of bankruptcies, governemnt and corporate announcements has moved online. That’s 361 years of tradition turned on it’s head, but the logical move for an announcement-led paper. The online mast-head still states ‘since 1645’.
Reselling tickets takes a step backwards
Two disturbing articles today – one that eBay UK will not allow reselling of tickets to the giant Concert for Diana, and the second that New Zealand is introducing laws restricting re-sales of tickets to “big events” to a maximum of face value. People – you cannot fight economics, and you will lose in the …
46% of Asian internet users have a blog…
The blogging stats get bigger and bigger it seems, but this one comes via an online survey from Microsoft MSN & Windows Live in seven markets in Asia – notably excluding China. With a self selected respondant set – it isn’t surprising to see bloggers over-respond to a survey on blogging – these numbers have …
no coke, but what about the rest?
Coke is on the way out from schools, and well done to get the sugary syrup kings to the table. But hang on – fruit juices are also pretty high in sugar – if not higher than Coke and Pepsi. And diet drinks are pretty nasty… What is going on here? This seems like a “feels …
Watch radiation detector – not a toy?
A watch-radiation dectector attracts mirth on gizmodo, and perhaps justifiably so. However considering the difficulty that various authorities are having installing industrial scale radiation detectors in airports and ports, perhaps issuing a portable detector to all staff could a cheaper alternative. It also changes the security paradigm from relying on technology run by barely trained …
How to fight poverty
Absolutely stunning article by Tina Rosenberg in the NYTimes on how to fight poverty. Sadly it is behind their paywall, which is reprehensible considering its import. The people care, Governments do not Not only is US foreign aid pathetically small versus it’s GDP, but 39% of it goes to military aid to Israel, Egypt etc, …
NZ online ads spend has world’s highest growth
According to the latest stats from WARC (and via my father Glen Wiggs), NZ had the highest year on year growth for online advertising expenditure last year. NZ online ad spend rose by 184.8%, well in excess of number 2 Lithuania, at 69.4%. Next was the UK, where online ad spend growth was a solid …
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My Portfolio
An unpleasant drop in the US market yesterday, but for me the damage was minimal. Since 2000 I’ve had a relatively neutral approach to the market, and seek alpha by going long on companies I like in sectors I like, and short on the reverse. (I have other money with Gareth Morgan who has a …
Floating (ARM) rate mortgages are on the rise
CalculatedRisk has created a lovely chart of the rise in popularity of Adjustable Rate Mortgages in the USA. It is scary is that around 30% of mortgages in the last few years are ARM’s. This is bad as 1: ARM’s are easier for home buyers to get than fixed rate mortgages, indicating that the quality …
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Lance Wiggs 