Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 1 pm in association with NZ Mint.
I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.
My must listen today is Satyajit Das on Radio Live at #5. He talks about how Europe and America's banks are exchanging the heroin of easy lending growth for the methadone of easy central bank funding.
1. A loonie idea - The Globe and Daily Mail reports Icelandic business leaders want to adopt the Canadian dollar or 'loonie' as their currency, arguing it tracks 'Iceland's commodity prices', including aluminium and fish, and is more liquid and less volatile.
The Canadians are not keen.
A speech scheduled for the weekend by Canada's ambassador to Iceland to a conference on the subject was cancelled when the powers-that-be in Canada got wind of it.
The ambassador was going to warn it meant Iceland would give up its monetary sovereignty.
And anything is better than the euro...
I'd stick with the krona if I was them.
Here's the thinking:
“The average person looks at it this way: Canada is a younger version of the U.S. Canada has more natural resources than the U.S., it’s less developed, has more land, lots of water,” explained Heidar Gudjonsson, an economist and chairman of the Research Centre for Social and Economic Studies, Iceland’s largest think tank.
“And Canada thinks about the Arctic.”
Officially, the Icelandic government is targeting membership in the 27-member euro zone. But support among Icelanders is slipping.
2. True innovation - The New York Times Sunday magazine has an excellent long piece here on the culture of innovation behind Bell Labs, which gave the world lasers, transistors, satellites, CCD memory and a whole bunch of essential technology.
The conclusion is that a soft monopoly planning long term and letting its scientists run riot does better than regular companies, or even the government.
An interesting piece because some argue the reason the global economy has struggled in recent years is a lack of truly innovative technology that creates high paid jobs and incomes, as happened in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
3. Three German brothers cloning the web - Here's a stunning BusinessWeek story about three truly frightening German brothers who are cloning successful e-commerce websites in a truly ugly fashion.
They use the word 'blitzkrieg'.
In December the blog TechCrunch published an internal e-mail from Oliver Samwer to his employees. In it, Oliver exhorts his team to do business like “a blitz-krieg invasion.” The e-mail continues (punctuation Samwer’s): “i do not accept surprises. i want this planned confirmed by all three of you: you must sign it with your blood … I am the most aggressive guy on internet on the planet. I will die to win and i expect the same from you!” The e-mail went viral in Germany, even inspiring a song called Blitzkrieg, the New Single By Oliver Samba, in which Samwer’s manic commands are set to a throbbing techno beat.
4. Punk economics - Irish economist and broadcaster David McWilliams explains the European plan for austerity and 'cash for trash'. HT Donald via email.
"We have insolvent banks lending to insolvent governments and that is called a success."
5. The problem with Europe's 'cash for trash' - Satyajit Das, the author of Extreme Money, speaks here with Andrew Patterson on Radio Live's Sunday Business about why the European Central Bank's lolly scramble won't work in the long run.
Well worth a listen.
6. How Britain's bankers really operated - Paul Moore, the former Head of Group Regulatory Risk at Halifax Bank of Scotland, whose claims about risk taking at HBOS led to the resignation of its former boss Sir James Crosby from the UK's financial watchdog, reveals some very interesting insider experiences with the practices of bank lending and sales culture in this video. HT
7. Not so easy - One of the ways the Greeks are increasing taxes is to connect a tax payment to electricity bills.
Not for much longer, it seems. Greece's constitutional court has ruled the power can't be cut off if Greeks don't pay.
In its ruling the CoS, whose plenary convened behind closed doors on Friday, said that the imposition of the emergency tax through the power bills is constitutional and legal provided it is not a permanent tax, as it has been imposed for just two years: 2011 and 2012.
However, cutting the electricity supply cannot be justified and runs against the country's constitution, the plenary of the CoS ruled.
8. Eventually the public says enough - Bloomberg has an interesting story about a nun in Spain who is helping home owners avoid foreclosure when they miss mortgage payments.
Youth unemployment in Spain is almost 50%.
Sister Inmaculada Torano, a 47-year- old Spanish nun, stepped in to negotiate when Bankia (IBEX) SA tried to repossess the home of a student at the school where she works over missed mortgage payments.
“The bank may have a right under the law to evict, but there’s a difference between what’s legal and moral,” said Torano, who teaches at a school run by the Sisters of Charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the working class Madrid suburb of Villaverde. The intervention helped persuade Bankia, led by former International Monetary Fund head Rodrigo Rato, to delay eviction until the student finishes the school year in June, she said.
With Spain’s economy set to contract in 2012 for the third year out of five and unemployment at 23 percent, banks are increasingly easing terms for customers who are missing payments on mortgages underwritten during the country’s decade-long housing boom. Pressure to renegotiate debt and delays in repossessions are raising doubts that default rates on Spain’s 613 billion euros ($817 billion) of mortgages have stabilized.
9. Another reason why Europe is not solved - The likely (Socialist party) winner of the French Presidential race, Francois Hollande, wants to relax the Germanic focus on austerity if he wins in May.
The problem for the grand German plan to squeeze Southern Europe into a Germanic straightjacket of austerity and falling wages is that eventually the masses revolt in democracies.
Here's Bloomberg on the latest French plan:
Francois Hollande, the Socialist candidate in France’s presidential election, repeated his promise to renegotiate Europe’s latest fiscal treaty, saying it puts undue emphasis on austerity and offers little about the need for growth measures.
European Union leaders signed a German-inspired deficit- control treaty on March 2 that puts a tighter curbs on spending and mandates automatic corrections of deficits that stray from targets. It is due to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, and must be ratified by at least 12 of the 17 euro-area countries. All 17 countries in the euro area, including France, and eight EU members outside the currency bloc signed the treaty.
“If tomorrow I’m president, I’ll say there are parts of this treaty we can accept, but we won’t accept sanctions that are against countries’ interests and, second, we’ll add growth, activity, big industrial projects, Eurobonds to pull the economy ahead.”
Hollande’s comments came the same day that Der Spiegel reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti had all agreed not to host the Socialist candidate before this year’s presidential election because they are angry about his plan to renegotiate the new budget pact.
10. Totally a funny p.... take on the TED talks that I regularly link to. - There's something about rich, bright people thinking they can solve the problems of the world with technology... Hasn't worked so far. In fact, all it's done is made a few people very, very rich and has pressed down wages for the middle....
"We're going to invent our way out..."
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