Back in 2011, I was asked to give my thoughts on what I thought would trend in mobile within between then and 2020.
One of my predictions was that: “Mobile money will shift economies on a large-scale and across borders.”
Value Blog
How a $1,000 test could destroy the health-insurance industry
March 9th, 2012 | Source: Washington Post
The New York Times reports that the cost of sequencing an individual genome will soon be less than $1,000. That’s not nothing, but given what most health care costs, it’s not much. And it means that an individual mandate — or something much like it — is inevitable.
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Thanks Mitt! Why private equity is under fire
March 7th, 2012 | Source: FT.com
The tax status of buyout executives is under scrutiny as politicians look beyond bankers
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The Credit Card Is The New App Platform
March 1st, 2012 | Source: Forbes Blogs
Credit and debit cards are ubiquitous, but they’re mostly pretty dumb. That’s about to change. Over 170 million people in the U.S. have credit cards, and the average card holder has 3.5 of them.
And those totals are not even counting debit cards, which are roughly 40% of the total market and growing. That’s a crap load of plastic! In spite of the promise of mobile payments, plastic cards are not going away any time soon.
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U.S. Was Net Oil-Product Exporter in 2011!!
February 29th, 2012 | Source: Bloomberg
The U.S. exported more gasoline, diesel and other fuels than it imported in 2011 for the first time since 1949, the Energy Department said today.
Shipments abroad of petroleum products exceeded imports by 439,000 barrels a day, the department said in the Petroleum Supply Monthly report. In 2010, daily net imports averaged 269,000 barrels.
U.S. refiners exported record amounts of gasoline, heating oil and diesel to meet higher global fuel demand while U.S. fuel consumption sank.
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Kenya's Startup Boom
February 24th, 2012 | Source: Technology Review
Local programmers and homegrown business models are helping to realize the vast promise of using phones to improve health care and save lives.
Erick Njenga, a 21-year-old college senior wrapping up his business IT degree at Nairobi's Strathmore University, has a gap-toothed grin and a scraggly goatee. A mild-mannered son of auditors, he didn't say much as we tucked into a lunch of grilled steak, rice, and fruit juice at an outdoor café amid the din of the city's awful traffic. But his code had done the talking.
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Membership in Co-operative Businesses Reaches 1 Billion
February 23rd, 2012 | Source: World Watch.org
Co-ops offer democratic alternative to shareholder-owned businesses.
The United Nations has designated 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, providing a great opportunity to raise the profile of an important organizational tool for spreading human rights and equality worldwide. Membership in co-operative businesses has grown to 1 billion people across 96 countries, according to new research published by the Worldwatch Institute for its Vital Signs Online publication.
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Publishing and the Environment : New 'Green' Publishing Certification
February 20th, 2012 | Source: Book Business
It's one thing to use a little recycled paper here and there and say you're into sustainability; it's another to get your company certified as environmentally responsible. In January, the Green Press Initiative (GPI)—a nonprofit that works with the book and newspaper publishing industries to conserve natural resources, announced its long-awaited Environmentally Responsible Publisher Certification (ERPC).
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As Old Francs Expire, France Makes a Small Mint
February 18th, 2012 | Source: NYT.com
Greece may be scrambling for revenue, but the French treasury has just banked some 550 million euros for doing nothing — simply letting the French franc, created in 1360, finally perish.
Friday was the last day that French francs could be turned into the Bank of France, the central bank, in exchange for the common European currency, the euro, a little more than a decade after it was introduced as bills and coins.
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The Wall Street Bombing That Made Hoover and the FBI
February 18th, 2012 | Source: Bloomberg
Shortly after noon on Thursday, Sept. 16, 1920, a powerful bomb hidden in a horse-drawn wagon exploded at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in Manhattan. It was a pleasant late-summer day, and throngs of people had been out enjoying a lunchtime stroll, a brief respite from the great money machine, the center of American capitalism.
Now blood ran in the streets where the first U.S. Congress had convened and the Bill of Rights became law.
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