The Browser - Business, Finance & Economics

Note To Our Readers: RSS Feeds | Robert Cottrell | The Browser | 28 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:06:01 +0000

As part of our move to a new platform and new hosting today, we are consolidating our RSS feeds into a one full feed, to which you can subscribe at this address (if it's not live now it will be soon): http://thebrowser.com/feed

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William Davies, on learning

The Browser — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:39:39 +0000

William Davies, on learning

"One of the gratifying aspects of a major financial crisis is that public understanding of capitalism increases significantly"

The Best Way To Save Banking Is To Kill It | Matthew Klein | Bloomberg | 27 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:29:29 +0000

Enough pussy-footing. Time for a radical remedy. "Rip all banks, large or small, in two — separate deposit-taking from credit-creation. Back the deposits one-for-one with reserves at the central bank. Then fund loans not with deposits or other money-like liabilities but by tapping investors who understand they've put their savings at risk"

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Google No Longer Needs The Media | Paul Ford | FT | 26 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:06:43 +0000

On the closure of Google Reader. "This is the downside to apps: Your ability to labour along in familiar ways is contingent upon money coming to the app provider. This works when we remain consumers. But when we work inside these systems we increase our levels of risk. Users of free services get what they pay for" (Metered paywall)

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Remember: A Country Is Not A Company | Stephen Kinsella | Harvard Business Review | 25 March 2013

The Browser — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 06:03:33 +0000

"For countries the notion of national insolvency is a newer, and potentially very misleading, idea. Countries aren't corporations. Technically almost every country would be insolvent if if was asked to pay all of its debt using its available assets. All governments in practice secure their national debts on their abilities to levy taxes"

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Everything You Need To Know About Moleskine | Zachary Seward | Quartz | 20 March 2013

The Browser — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:06:32 +0000

Profile of Italian firm that makes expensive pseudo-French notebooks. Full of interesting detail. "The term 'moleskine' was used by British writer Bruce Chatwin to describe the notebooks in his 1986 novel The Songlines. In 1997, a Milanese stationer, Modo & Modo, began producing the notebooks again, using Chatwin’s coinage"

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Paul Graham, on disruption

The Browser — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:34:20 +0000

Paul Graham, on disruption

"If you can figure out a way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much the better, if all fifty million go to you"

Google Was Worth 1,838,389 Workers In 1998, Maybe | Ethan Herdrick | Ethan Herdrick | 18 March 2013

The Browser — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:04:52 +0000

Valuing Google in terms of human labour needed to do the same job otherwise. By this calculation, you would need 262,627 workers to do one internet search and return a result within three minutes. "It gives you an upper limit on the value of the innovation, since, if it paid to do it the labor intensive way, that would have been happening"

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Banco de Mattress Looms For Cypriots | John Dizard | Financial Times | 22 March 2013

The Browser — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 05:55:10 +0000

Cyprus crisis sees return of capital controls within supposedly borderless Eurozone. So, when in doubt, get your money out — and fast. “The financial institution that comes out ahead is the Banco de Mattress ... European authorities have shown that you better think ahead and prepare, since it’s clear that they don’t" (Metered paywall)

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Ask Me Anything — I Am Nassim Taleb | Nicholas Nassim Taleb | Reddit | 20 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:56:49 +0000

Online Q&A with Black Swan author. Good questions, good answers: "Are there cases where Skin-In-The-Game is the wrong heuristic? Should judges, jurors, and prosecutors have skin in the game? Also, the whole idea behind corporations is to remove skin from the game. This has made possible large scale enterprises. Isn't this a good thing?"

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