On the whole, mainland Chinese people just don’t do debt. During this global meltdown I visited a Chinese friend’s Korean restaurant the other day in Nanhui, the somewhat rural end of Shanghai, which is an hour and a half commute from where I live. As I walked through the door just before lunch rush hour […]
Business
Posted inBusiness
The implosion of virtual finance: It had to happen sooner or later …
It is difficult not to feel vindicated in an “I told you so” sort of way, given that I have been labeled an “anti-capitalist clown” on Thought Leader — as I pointed out at the time, clowns or jesters have customarily been allowed to speak the truth, where others could not. It had to happen […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Media
A nightmare called Nedbank
Nedbank will likely deny this till the cows come home, but the truth is they pocketed a large sum from my company 10 days ago and wouldn’t give it back until, in desperation, I asked my journalist wife to rattle their cage. Suddenly, things started to happen. Which raises the question: if you don’t have […]
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Financial markets almost holding central bankers to ransom
Central bankers across the world on Wednesday cut interest rates in a coordinated response to contain the financial turmoil that has gripped global markets with the hope of preventing a global economic meltdown. The US Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and central banks from China, Canada, Australia, Sweden and […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Ten strategic questions to ask about technology
So often conversations about technology tend toward the obvious and taken-for-granted, riddled with assumptions and unsupported conjecture. This post challenges you to think. Think different. Ask the difficult questions. Create interesting insights for yourself. Let me know what you think. 1. You don’t have the right to choose: Why do you have a mobile phone, […]
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On absurd predictions of a recession of the SA economy
The ailing US economy and collapse of leading financial institutions have driven global markets into a collective panic. The ills of globalisation are manifesting themselves in a most spectacular fashion. The interconnectedness of world economies is delivering not the promises of sustainable prosperity, but rather reversing the gains of protracted periods of imprudence. The price […]
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Developing leaders for uncertain times
Few can doubt that we are experiencing uncertain economic times. Martin Wolf, Economics Editor of the Financial Times describes the financial crisis in the West as “a turning point in the world financial system”, while Alan Greenspan, rather more gloomily, predicated that “the financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Media
50th birthday for the credit card: priceless
On this, the fiftieth birthday of the credit card, it’s appropriate to reflect on our relationship with that most fantastic of plastic. The credit card is a global phenomenon, but also a deeply personal issue. Until recently, I was wading unsteadily through glutinous swamps of debt, but I am happy to report that hallelujah, I […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Wall Street worries
The only thing one can predict about the financial crisis presently engulfing Wall Street and spreading outwards is that it will make us all rich in retrospective wisdom. Indeed, I forecast that the wisdom of hindsight will be in inverse proportion to the decline in the Dow Jones index. For the moment, few have dared […]
Posted inBusiness
Fall of the Lehman Wall and the US as hyperpower?
When Mikhail Gorbachev became ruler of the USSR in March of 1985 he was acutely aware of the fact that the Soviet economy had failed to post positive growth for just on a decade. His introduction of firstly “Perestroika”, economic restructuring, and later “Glasnost”, an element of political freedom, could not, however, ward off the […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Of Aids, economics, fortune-telling and black swans
As a director of BusinessMap, a research organisation, it was my task to brief foreign investors about the political and economic challenges they might face in investing in South Africa. A question they often asked was: “What economic impact will the HIV-Aids virus have?” At first I would answer that it was difficult if not […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Diary of an HR manager, aged 35 ½
If you think you’ve had a difficult few days take a minute to think about one poor old HR manager in Pretoria. First the CEO was forced out and then 14 members of Exco resigned on the same day! His succession planning has been blown out of the water and now he’s got to draw […]