It’s budget day in this fine country. Has anybody else realized that George Osborne looks like “the voice of London” Lewis Prothero in V for Vendetta? It’s too early to say much (because the man is still talking), but public sector wages are meant to rise 1%, while public sector debt will be reduced from £100m in 2012/2013 to £24m in 2016/2017. Follow #AS2011 on Twitter, if you care.
Today, Europe’s finance ministers are meeting to discuss future action of the EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility), something that was called “eindspel”, final [game for the euro], in the Dutch media. While Italy is worrying everyone again with its record high yields and €340bn debt that needs to be refinanced next year, Standard&Poor’s is putting more pressure on France and threatened to downgrade the country within the next 10 days (this is actually a rumor reported by French press, but it’s not exactly unlikely). And because of all that, the happy round of EU ministers need to approve of how to bolster the stability fund. Answer: public and private investors (as opposed to governments). read article
But all this rating business makes you wonder… should there be ratings for rating agencies by other rating agencies? Recursion, what? read article
Someone in or around Facebook leaked that the company is considering to go public in the near future to raise $10bn. That would bring its value up to $100m (for comparison, Google is valued at $190m). But considering how much Groupon talked about their IPO before anything happened, let’s just wait and see. Since 2011, Facebook has more than 500 shareholders and claims to have 800 million users. Reuters calls the recent interest in internet companies the new dotcoms: yay, let’s get a bubble to get us out of the burst! read article
The Atlantic on new ideas and innovations that could revolutionize the world as we know it, if they’re being pursued. Personally, I want PARC’s uber-fast internet by tomorrow, and would even switch to MasterCard if they’d be offering the PayPass now. read article
So long.
