Saudi Arabia flexing its muscles; Want to be the last coal investor?; Tesla unveils Snakebot recharger

1 Saudi Arabia flexing its muscles (Frank Gardner on BBC) Something is stirring in Saudi Arabia. Gone is the historically conservative, don't-rock-the-boat, tip-toeing approach to the big, strategic issues of the Middle East. In its place has come a new, assertive attitude that is seeing the oil-rich kingdom set off on previously untried and potentially risky ventures.

In Yemen, the Saudi military has now been at war with Houthi rebels for more than four months. In Syria, Saudi patronage for Islamist rebels opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad has been stepped up dramatically - and, on the Iran nuclear deal, well-placed Saudi sources have let it be known that if they assess Tehran as likely to acquire nuclear weapons in the future, then Saudi Arabia will go down the same path, triggering a Middle Eastern arms race.

The Saudis felt utterly let down by their long-time American allies. They had been hoping that combined international military action against the Assad regime in Syria would finally turn the corner in that country's civil war, removing Iran's only allied Arab ruler, President Assad, and replacing him with a Sunni-led government.

When this did not happen, the senior Saudi princes and decision-makers resolved that, from then on, they would have to take matters into their own hands. Step forward the young, militarily inexperienced, but highly ambitious Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the most favoured son of King Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. At about 30 years old, he is possibly the world's youngest defence minister.

After four months of relentless pounding of Houthi positions with air strikes, the blockading of Yemeni ports and airports and the landing in Aden of an entire UAE armoured brigade, the Houthis are now on the back foot. For Saudi Arabia, this is about more than just securing its southern flank. The Saudis fear they are being steadily encircled by Iranian allies and this is something they want to reverse.

So how will this end? Badly, say Saudi Arabia's detractors. They think the country is over-reaching itself and backing some dangerous players in places like Syria, feeding into a wave of Sunni jihadism that will bring more violence from IS supporters to the streets of Saudi Arabia, as well as elsewhere. But some seasoned observers say that, in the wake of the disastrous Arab Spring that has brought such misery to much of the Arab world, Saudi Arabia had no choice but to look after its own interests, irrespective of what Washington is up to.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33825064

2 Want to be the last coal investor? (Graham Ruddick in The Guardian) Henri de Castries is chief executive and chairman of one of the world’s biggest insurers, Axa, and a member of France’s illustrious noble house of Castries. He is also chairman of the Bilderberg group, a collection of political and business leaders from Europe and North America that meets in private every year to debate “megatrends and major issues facing the world”.

With this in mind, De Castries’s penchant for making dramatic comparisons is worth taking seriously. The charismatic Axa boss compares investing in fossil fuels to investing in asbestos-related companies in the 50s or 60s, the rise of the internet to the advent of electricity at the end of the 19th century and, perhaps most alarmingly, the recent fall in Chinese share prices with the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

De Castries says the stock market slump in China is “more worrying” than the Greek debt crisis. An estimated 100m Chinese households have invested in shares, he explains, meaning there could be an impact on consumer spending. This would hurt western companies that have become reliant on Chinese consumers for growth, such as carmakers and luxury brands.

However, the Frenchman believes that policy makers have learnt from the mistakes of 1929, and from how the 2008 financial crisis was handled. “The Chinese economy of 2015 is not the US economy of ‘29,” he adds. “A lot of decision makers are much more aware of what the consequences of monetary policies are, and the efficiency of the Chinese government in 2015 and its grip on the civil society is probably higher than the grip the US authorities had on their own public opinion at the time. So we will see. It is interesting. History in the making.”

“If the cost of investing in non-clean technologies goes up because there are less people willing to invest, then it is going to lead to a natural reorientation of the investments. Look back and would you have been a conscious investor in the 50s or in the 60s in asbestos-related companies, had you known what would come afterwards? Probably not. Do you really want to be the last investor?”

However, De Castries is reluctant to go a step further and sell off oil investments, claiming it is a different case to coal. “It is way too early to say,” De Castries says. “It is clear that oil is a different case, shale gas is a different case. What we say today, and it is a relatively new approach is that for us the coal case is clear.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/07/axa-boss-henri-de-castries-on-coal-do-you-really-want-to-be-the-last-investor

3 Tesla unveils Snakebot recharger (David R Baker in San Francisco Chronicle) Depending on where you fall on the geek spectrum, it’s either the coolest or creepiest thing you’ll see this week.

Tesla Motors posted online a brief video clip of its ‘Snakebot’, a recharging system for the electric Model S sedan that plugs itself in, no hands required. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has mentioned the technology before, but this is the first time the Palo Alto company has offered a glimpse of it.

Why creepy? Two reasons. One: it makes humans seem even more like the irrelevant lumps of flesh we probably are. If our machine masters don’t even need us to plug them in anymore, what’s left? And two: Snakebot turns out to bear an uncanny resemblance to the Borg Queen’s spine in “Star Trek: First Contact.” Even Musk noted the inherent creepiness, tweeting that Snakebot “Does seem kinda wrong.”

It’s probably no coincidence Tesla released the video — perfect viral fodder — on Thursday. The company’s stock dropped nearly 9 percent Thursday after Tesla warned that it may not make quite as many cars this year as forecast.

http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2015/08/07/be-very-afraid-tesla-unveils-its-snakebot-recharger/

Ultra-low interest era may be ending; Brazil inflation at 12-year high; Africa's strife is Europe's pain

1 Ultra-low interest era may be ending (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The symbolism would be perfect. When the Federal Reserve announces its decision on US interest rates on 17 September it will be almost seven years to the day since Lehman Brothers went bust. That was the moment when the financial crisis went nuclear, ushering in the era of ultra-low interest rates.

That era now looks to be coming to an end. The latest set of US unemployment figures were unspectacular, and would have been seen as modest in previous economic cycles. But that’s not the issue. What the financial markets wanted to know was whether the unemployment data would be weak enough to push back the timing of the first Fed rate rise since the summer of 2006 from September to December. They weren’t.

If the Fed was of a mind to delay a rate rise until December there was nothing in the payrolls to prevent them from doing so. But, equally, there was nothing to prevent them tightening policy either. And all the signs are that the Fed does want to move in September unless there is compelling evidence to do otherwise.

Certainly, the less-than-sparkling payroll numbers point to rates rising only slowly. But the Fed would only have abandoned its September timetable had the increase in jobs been 150,000 or lower, rather than 215,000.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/07/steady-us-job-figures-could-end-era-ultra-low-interest-rates

2 Brazil inflation at 12-year high (BBC) Inflation in Brazil has hit a 12-year high of 9.56%. The rising cost of electricity, in particular, has pushed the rate to its highest level since November 2003. The country's central bank targets an inflation rate of 4.5% and has raised interest rates to 14.25% - among the highest of major economies - to combat rising prices.

High inflation is compounding Brazil's economic woes. According to the International Monetary Fund, the country's economy is set to shrink by 1.5% this year. Weaker demand for Brazil's commodities, particularly from the slowing Chinese economy, is the main reason behind the slowdown. 

The country's President, Dilma Rousseff, is also trying to force through measures to cut the country's deficit by cutting spending and raising taxes. Brazil is currently the world's seventh largest economy.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33826934

3 Africa’s strife is Europe’s pain (Khaleej Times) How can Europe's migrant crisis end with Africa in turmoil - its people homeless and destitute? The continent's angst is now Europe's griping pain. Critics of the European Union say the 28-nation bloc has a duty to take in more refugees. We say Africa should find solutions to her own woes and stop this surge of masses.

But how can a seemingly ungovernable continent set its house in order when it lacks an effective system of administration? Civil strife, political dissent and religious hate are engulfing different countries in the continent. Business is struggling to stay afloat because violence has taken root in Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, even Kenya, Chad and Nigeria. Blame it on leaders, many of them despots, who have clung to power for decades.

Africa has been exploited in the past by colonial powers, its people were shipped to different parts of the world to work as slaves, its minerals and resources were drained. The scars are seen on the psyche of these people on the brink. They have nothing to lose on the passage across the Mediterranean, because they've given up on home and everything at home. It's a loss that's hard to fathom for the ordinary global citizen.

International Organisation for Migration figures show more than 2,000 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea this year. In 2014, the total dead was 1,607. The number is rising this year because more people have been put on rickety boats by human smugglers operating with impunity from Africa's lawless shores. With some luck and help from the elements, these hapless boat people make it to Italy, to slip in to the night, and deep into Europe.

Africa's strife is turning into Europe's law and order problem and there's no solution because the Union is a house divided. A naval pushback will mean these refugees are thrown into the waters which will arouse activists' zeal. Before we blame Europe, African countries should do some soul-searching and target human trafficking networks on its shores. Second, they should improve coastal security. Last, but not the least, it should focus on effective governance and development.

http://khaleejtimes.com/editorials-columns/if-africa-has-will-europe-can-find-way-for-migrants

America on the wrong side of history; Russia bulldozes cheese mountain; Crazy-rich tech moguls

1 America on the wrong side of history (Joseph Stiglitz in The Guardian) The Third International Conference on Financing for Development recently convened in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. The tasks that these countries are undertaking – investing in infrastructure (roads, electricity, ports, and much else), building cities that will one day be home to billions, and moving toward a green economy – are truly enormous.

At the same time, there is no shortage of money waiting to be put to productive use. Just a few years ago, Ben Bernanke, then the chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, talked about a global savings glut. And yet investment projects with high social returns were being starved of funds. That remains true today. The problem, then as now, is that the world’s financial markets, meant to intermediate efficiently between savings and investment opportunities, instead misallocate capital and create risk.

Much has changed in the 13 years since the first International Conference on Financing for Development was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002. Back then, the G7 dominated global economic policymaking; today, China is the world’s largest economy (in purchasing-power-parity terms), with savings around 50% larger than that of the US. In 2002, western financial institutions were thought to be wizards at managing risk and allocating capital; today, we see that they are wizards at market manipulation and other deceptive practices.

Today, developing countries and emerging markets say to the US and others: if you will not live up to your promises, at least get out of the way and let us create an international architecture for a global economy that works for the poor, too. When China proposed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to help recycle some of the surfeit of global savings to where financing is badly needed, the US sought to torpedo the effort. President Barack Obama’s administration suffered a stinging (and highly embarrassing) defeat.

The US is also blocking the world’s path towards an international rule of law for debt and finance. The vast majority of countries have called for the creation of a framework for sovereign-debt restructuring. The US remains the major obstacle.

Developing countries and emerging markets, led by India, argued that the proper forum for discussing global tax issues was an already established group within the United Nations, the Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters, whose status and funding needed to be elevated. The US strongly opposed: it wanted to keep things the same as in the past, with global governance by and for the advanced countries.

New geopolitical realities demand new forms of global governance, with a greater voice for developing and emerging countries. The US prevailed in Addis, but it also showed itself to be on the wrong side of history.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/06/joseph-stiglitz-america-wrong-side-of-history

2 Russia bulldozes cheese mountain (BBC) Russia has bulldozed a pile of Western-produced cheese and tonnes of other foodstuffs imported in violation of sanctions. The country has also steamrollered fruit and burnt a huge pile of bacon.

The actions come a year after Russia banned some Western food products in retaliation to EU and US sanctions applied after Moscow annexed Crimea. The destruction has caused an outcry from anti-poverty campaigners who say it should have been given to the poor.

One steamroller took an hour to crush nine tonnes of cheese. Another consignment was due to be burnt. Boxes of bacon have been incinerated. Peaches and tomatoes were also due to be crushed by tractors.

Religious leaders expressed outrage. One called the actions "insane, stupid and vile". Russia has suffered notorious famines in its recent history which saw millions starve. More than 285,000 people have backed an online petition calling on President Putin to give the food away. Food price inflation is running at around 20%.

The EU is providing aid for European exporters of dairy produce, fruit and vegetables to ease the impact of the Russian ban on those goods. The EU Commission said last week the "safety net" for Europe's dairy sector would remain in place until March 2016 and for fruit and vegetable growers until July 2016.

There have been daily road blockades by French farmers - and on Thursday similar protests erupted in Belgium. They want higher prices for their produce, saying they are struggling to stay in business.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33814362

3 Crazy-rich tech moguls (LA Times/San Francisco Chronicle) Forbes has released its World’s Richest in Tech, a list of the top 100 wealthiest individuals in the industry, with Silicon Valley leaders making up half of the top 10.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the richest person in the world, was No. 1 with a $79.6 billion net worth. He was followed by Oracle founder Larry Ellison with $50 billion and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with $47.8 billion.

Rounding out the top 10: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Apple and Disney’s Laurene Powell Jobs and family, and Michael Dell.

Forbes noted that the top 100 are younger than the average billionaire and most likely to be American and living in California. Fifty-one of the people on the list are Americans and 33 are Asian. Just eight are Europeans and only seven are women.

Altogether, the world’s 100 richest tech billionaires are worth $842.9 billion. The average age is 53 — which Forbes said is a decade younger than the average age of all billionaires — and 15 of the top 100 are under 40.

The youngest member of the list is Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, who is 25 and worth an estimated $2.1 billion. The oldest is Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who is 86 and worth an estimated $6 billion. “Nearly all of the 100 are self-made billionaires: 94 made their own luck, three inherited their fortunes and three have inherited fortunes but have been actively expanding them,” Forbes said.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Gates-Ellison-Bezos-top-Forbes-World-s-6427426.php

Seventy years since Hiroshima; Samsung's glamour days are over; Grappling with the 'How do I quit my job?' question

1 Seventy years since Hiroshima (BBC) Residents in the Japanese city of Hiroshima are commemorating the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb being dropped by a US aircraft. The bombing - and a second one on Nagasaki three days later - is credited with bringing to an end World War Two. But it also claimed the lives of at least 140,000 people in the city.

A US B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb, exploding some 600m above the city, at around 08:10 on 6 August 1945. On that day alone, at least 70,000 people are believed to have been killed. Many more died of horrific injuries caused by radiation poisoning in the days, weeks and months that followed.

Addressing those who attended a commemoration ceremony at Hiroshima's peace park near the epicentre of the 1945 attack, Japanese prime minister Shinto Abe called for worldwide nuclear disarmament. "Seventy years on I want to re-emphasise the necessity of world peace."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33792789

2 Samsung’s glamour days are over (Khaleej Times) For four years Samsung Electronics has basked in the success of its Galaxy smartphones, making billions of dollars competing with Apple in the premium mobile  market. The coming years are set to be more sombre for the South Korean tech giant, as it is forced to slash prices and accept lower margins at its mobile division in order to see off competition from rivals including China's Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi in the mid-to-low end of the market.

Behind Samsung's reality-check is the fact it is stuck with the same Android operating system used by its low-cost competitors, who are producing increasingly-capable phones of their own. "The writing has long been on the wall for any premium Android maker: as soon as low end hardware became 'good enough', there would be no reason to buy a premium brand," said Ben Thompson, an analyst.

Samsung remains the world's biggest smartphone maker but it is Apple that is reaping most of the rewards. While the US giant's smartphone sales in its last financial quarter fell short of market expectations, it is still estimated by some analysts to earn 90 per cent or more of the industry's profits.

Investors and analysts say Samsung will not be able to compete with Apple in the premium market based on hardware and will continue to trail the US firm in the absence of a major technological breakthrough. Nomura analyst C.W. Chung says Samsung still has the economies of scale to outlast rivals, adding the smartphone industry will face a consolidation similar to the one in the memory chip industry that the South Korean firm now dominates.

"The ones that ultimately survive will then have plenty to be happy about," said Chung. "When everybody comes out to dig for gold, jeans and pickaxes are what make MONEY; that's what Samsung's semiconductor business is doing through the smartphone market," said Chung.

http://khaleejtimes.com/business/technology/samsungs-glamour-days-are-over

3 Grappling with the ‘How do I quit my job?’ question (Peter Fleming in The Guardian) It turns out that things are not so simple. When you enter “how to quit …?” into the Google search engine, the number of results on how to quit your job are exceeded only by “how to quit smoking” and “how to quit smoking weed”.

Entire websites are dedicated to helping us send that special email to the boss. Philip Larkin nicely captured the futility that often accompanies exit fantasies like these in his ode to the despondent office worker, Toads: Ah, were I courageous enough, To shout Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff, That dreams are made on.

The “how” part of the question is easy to answer. Just resign. So that’s not the real issue. The real question being asked is how we can quit an intolerable job or workplace without incurring all the risks that this implies. According to a 2013 Gallup survey, around 63% of the global workforce is disengaged (compared to 13% who are engaged). These people definitely hate their jobs, and for whatever reason cannot leave.

To keep a society fixated and obsessed with work, especially when the problem of collective material wellbeing has long been solved, it is redelivered to the public in strict, black-and-white terms. The rationale goes like this: if you are not willing to put up with your job the alternative is complete penury.

This forces us into a false double-bind. You either do the “right thing” and put up with your own private nightmare or, by default, consider yourself a privileged whining snob who is just one step away from social oblivion. The choice is yours.

In the end no one can tell you “how” to quit your job. It might seem like a mere technical problem but it is really an ethical one. However, it is worthwhile being aware of the ideological traps that lie in wait, carefully designed to preserve a world of work that is slowly spinning out of control.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/05/how-do-i-quit-my-job-google-answers

Greek shares nosedive; Obama unveils 'biggest' clean energy plan; Five things to know about pitch meeetings

1 Greek shares nosedive (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The full extent of the damage caused by the Greek crisis was laid bare when the first day of stock market trading after five weeks of economic paralysis saw shares lose a sixth of their value.

Bank stocks bore the brunt of a wave of pent-up selling that eclipsed anything seen in the past three decades on the Athens stock market, with three of the leading Greek financial institutions losing the maximum 30% permitted in a single day’s trading.

The plunge in the stock market came as the first snapshot of the economy during the period when Greece teetered on the brink of leaving the single currency showed the manufacturing sector coming to a virtual halt last month. With the banks shut, confidence shattered and firms unable to secure supplies from abroad, Greek industry endured tougher conditions than during the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008-09.

The Markit purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell from 46.9 in June to 30.2 in July, the weakest since data for Greece was first collected in 1999 and well below its previous low of 37.2 points reached in early 2012. Any reading below 50 indicates that activity is contracting rather than expanding.

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at consultancy Capital Economics, said the scale of the damage to the economy caused by the crisis and the imposition of capital controls “looks set to be worse than most forecasters, including ourselves, had envisaged”.

Greece’s problems failed to prevent most other eurozone countries from enjoying a continued pick up in manufacturing activity last month. Every other country apart from France experienced industrial expansion, although the final eurozone PMI of 52.4 was down slightly on June’s 52.5

.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/03/greek-shares-nosedive-as-manufacturing-data-reveals-economic-crisis

2 Obama unveils ‘biggest’ clean energy plan (BBC) US President Barack Obama has unveiled what he called "the biggest, most important step we have ever taken" in tackling climate change. The aim of the revised Clean Power Plan is to cut greenhouse gas emissions from US power stations by nearly a third within 15 years.

The measures will place significant emphasis on wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources. However, opponents in the energy industry have vowed to fight the plan. Those opponents say Mr Obama has declared "a war on coal". Power plants fired by coal provide more than a third of the US electricity supply.

The revised plan will aim to cut carbon emissions from the power sector by 32% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. "We are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change, and the last generation to be able to do something about it," Mr Obama said. He likened the plan to taking 166 million cars off the road in terms of environmental impact. He called taking a stand against climate change a "moral obligation".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33753067

3 Five things to know about pitch meetings (William Hsu in San Francisco Chronicle) I’ve had a number of crazy investor meetings over the course of my career, and each of these extreme cases has yielded some valuable insights of what to do, and more importantly, what not to do, when raising venture capital.

A. Dancing seals: Perhaps the most memorable investor meeting I ever had was when the founders showed up wearing dancing seal suits. They thought that this tactic would be the best way to attract attention and be memorable. They certainly achieved their goal on that front, and I have to give them credit for creative marketing but creativity points only get you so far. I did not invest.

B. Burn baby, burn:  We have had multiple entrepreneurs ask if we will burn pitch materials or sign confidentiality agreements, even before meetings start. While I understand the fear that someone will “steal” a precious idea, these requests speak to one of the biggest problems I see over and over again in pitch meetings: Entrepreneurs often think that the idea they have is everything. The idea is about 1 percent of the project. The other 99 percent is having the knowledge to run and follow through with a business.

C. Stalkers: There is a fine line between persistence and stalking. Being persistent about a pitch is often necessary, and even admirable. Stalking is neither, and entrepreneurs who hope to get anywhere with investors need to navigate that line carefully. When founders have crossed this line in the past, we are polite and tell them to be patient.

D. Time and place: If you do happen to encounter an investor you would like to meet with in an unconventional setting (vacation, bathroom or restaurant, to name a few), then at the very most, ask for a more formal meeting where a pitch is more appropriate and welcome.

E. 'Moral' support: About one out of every 50 meetings, a founder brings his or her significant other in with them. This person often has no ties to the business. Despite this, they will still answer questions and speak for the entrepreneur. From my side of the table, this gives the impression that the entrepreneur can’t even handle a pitch meeting. If they can’t handle a pitch meeting, how will they handle running a business? Bringing a significant other shows unpreparedness and a lack of confidence. 

At the end of the day, the most important factor in a VC meeting is to be well-prepared, with a strong idea, pitch and case for how your team can execute on your vision. When it comes down to it, what we are looking for is rather simple and does not require panda suits or stalking. Entrepreneurs’ goal should be to convince investors of your competence (and sanity), and these crazy tactics often have the opposite effect.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/What-Entrepreneurs-Can-Learn-From-the-5-Craziest-6383487.php

Fearing a 'Made in China global recession'; Greece worries of stock plunge; Big tech's big problem -- its role in rising inequality

1 Fearing a ‘Made in China global recession’ (Matein Khalid in Khaleej Times) Every global recession since the Opec oil shocks of 1973-74 was triggered by a contraction in the $17 trillion US economic colossus. Yet as I scan the world of late-summer 2015, I am convinced the next global recession will originate from the $10.4 trillion Chinese economy, whose growth rate has slumped to its slowest pace since 1990.

China's trillion-dollar shadow banking system, Marxist-Leninist wealth management Ponzi schemes and Beijing/local government borrowing have built up the biggest debt load in the history of humankind, now a staggering 250 per cent of GDP. The $4 trillion bloodbath in the Chinese stock market this summer has not been amplified by draconian state intervention. Unfortunately, this "Beijing put" will not prevent a Chinese economic bust and history's first "Made in China" global recession.

President Xi Jinping has consolidated more political power than any Chinese leader since the death of Deng Xiao Ping. Yet his frequent purges, economic restructuring and anti-corruption campaign has had a chilling impact on consumer spending/capex. Think October 1929 in New York, December 1989 in Tokyo. Not even monetary largesse from the People's Bank of China will prevent a growth decline in China and a "Chinese lost decade" that will transform the global economy, asset prices, power politics and financial markets.

China had periodic boom bust cycles/cash crunches in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet China's domestic economic convulsions had minimal global impact since China's economy had not yet joined the World Trade Organisation, or become the $10 trillion monster that is the largest export destination for 40 countries worldwide, the world's largest importer of copper, coal and steel.

In 2014, China contributed 38 per cent to global growth. As the vicious bear market in crude oil, Dr Copper and iron ore ($190 a metric tonne two years ago, $48 now), the Middle Kingdom is going bust. History will rank the Chinese stock market bubble in 2014-15 in the same league as Kuwait's Souk Al Manakh crash, Dutch tulip mania, the Nikkei Dow bubble, dot-com craze in late-1990s Silicon Valley or the Jazz Age financial madness on Wall Street. Only the Chinese bust will trigger a global recession.

http://khaleejtimes.com/business/economy/a-made-in-china-global-recession

2 Greece worries of stock plunge (BBC) The Athens Stock Exchange is set to plunge by as much as 20% on Monday when trading finally resumes after a five-week closure, traders have predicted. The bourse was shut just before the Greek government imposed capital controls at the height of the debt crisis.

Takis Zamanis, chief trader at Beta Securities, is among the pessimists. "The possibility of seeing even a single share rise in tomorrow's session is almost zero," he said. Shares in banks are likely to be particularly hard-hit because Greece's financial sector needs to be recapitalised.

A report in Avgi newspaper, which is close to the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, suggested Athens was asking for about 10 billion euros this month for bank recapitalisation. Banks account for about a fifth of the main Athens index.

Although Greece struck a bailout deal with its creditors last month, political in-fighting in Athens over the conditions could still result in Mr Tsipras calling an early election. The Greek economy has begun to reverse the gains it was making before Mr Tsipras's Syriza-led coalition took power in January on an anti-austerity platform.

The European Commission expects Greece to go back into recession this year, with the economy contracting by between 2% and 4%. The Greek economy was in recession for six years until 2014.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33754005

3 Big tech’s big problem – it’s role in rising inequality (Katie Allen in The Guardian) Look around and it seems pretty obvious that technology has made daily life easier. But, for all the convenience that new innovations afford us, what if this rise of technology is actually exacerbating inequality? There are certainly some red flags right now.

The first warning signs come from financial markets where technology stocks have soared this year. Search engine Google’s shares recently hit a record high of over $700, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world, second only to that other tech giant Apple. The moves have fired up the tech-heavy Nasdaq index and taken it back to the giddy heights of the dotcom bubble 15 years ago.

The problem is not rising share prices per se, but rather what they are telling us about the power of shareholders and the consequences in terms of what is left over to be invested in wages and innovation. This question of how the profits of technology trickle down is explored in the recent book iDisrupted by economist Michael Baxter and entrepreneur John Straw.

Analysing the economic impact of emerging technologies, they highlight two potential agents for rising inequality. Firstly, patents, and the way they ensure that profits from innovation accrue to larger companies and their owners. Secondly, the fact more goods are being offered for free online. The problem with this is that just about the only means left to fund digital products is advertising, a sector where revenues are increasingly dominated by a handful of companies such as Google and Facebook.

The authors of iDisrupted also look to Ford in their argument on the importance of profits trickling down. They cite the carmaker’s doubling of wages at his factory to $5 a day and the oft-disputed claim that his motivation was the hope other manufacturers would follow suit and so the potential number of car buyers would rise.

It may be the stuff of myths, but a century later the story provides a neat way of explaining how a rising gap between the few haves and the many have-nots could stop technological advances in their tracks. Baxter and Straw sum this up: “Those who suggest that technology may create a world of extreme inequality may be right, but equally it may be that unless the profits from technology trickle down, pushing up wages and creating demand, then further technological evolution may be impossible.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2015/aug/02/big-techs-big-problem-rising-inequality

Microsoft's $7.5bn Nokia lesson; Why Twitter isn't flying high; Canada rally for topless rights

1 Microsoft’s $7.5bn Nokia lesson (James B Stewart in Sydney Morning Herald/NYT) Let's call it the $7.5 billion lesson. That's the amount Microsoft wrote off on Nokia's phone unit, which it bought a little over a year ago for what it said was $9.5 billion. Considering that the deal included $1.5 billion in cash, the write-off means Microsoft now values a business that once controlled 41 per cent of the global handset market at just a small fraction of the purchase price.

Thanks in large part to the huge accounting charge, Microsoft reported its largest quarterly loss ever last week ($3.2 billion). It was only the third loss in its history as a public company. This being the technology business, Microsoft's still relatively new chief executive, Satya Nadella, gets credit for swiftly confronting reality and taking the hit to earnings.

Nadella opposed the proposed deal in an initial poll of top Microsoft officials. But his predecessor, Steve Ballmer was determined to push the deal through as a capstone to his long tenure as chief executive. Microsoft is also in good company. Google abandoned its foray into smartphones when it sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo last year. But it has written off just $378 million related to the $12.5 billion Motorola acquisition. Amazon wrote off an even more modest $170 million, acknowledging that its Fire phone was a flop.

But far more was at stake for Microsoft than for Google or Amazon, since the main point of the Nokia deal was to support Microsoft's Windows operating system, which, in turn, was a crucial element in Microsoft's "mobile first" strategy. Now both handset operating systems and hardware are pretty much global duopolies, with Google and Apple dominating software and Samsung and Apple dominating hardware. Microsoft has jettisoned the strategy.

Microsoft has now embarked on what Nadella said is no less than a "reinvention" of the company. In an email to employees this month explaining the shift, Nadella said, "We are moving from a strategy to grow a stand-alone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem."

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/microsofts-75-billion-nokia-lesson-20150801-gipgcd.html

2 Why Twitter isn’t shining (Charles Arthur in The Guardian) How many tech companies are saddled with the problem of enjoying global fame but struggling with lacklustre performance? Not Facebook, which revealed in its results that it has nearly 1.5 billion users logging in each month around the world. Twitter, however, is an example where participation is lagging behind reputation.

So why is Twitter struggling financially? Last week the two companies’ results showed their widely divergent fortunes. Facebook’s second-quarter revenue hit $4bn, up 39% year-on-year, with operating income of $1.3bn, down 8%. Twitter, by contrast, had revenues of $502m – up 61% from last year – but an operating loss of $131m. Facebook is gigantic, growing fast and profitable. Twitter is smaller, growing faster, but loss-making.

Meanwhile, in the past year around 450 people have left the company. That constitutes about 12% of the firm, and includes senior figures. Jack Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder, took over as “interim CEO”, a job that resonates in Silicon Valley because it is the title that Steve Jobs held for a while after he returned to a wounded Apple in 1996. There he ejected the incumbent, shook the company back into shape and eventually took on the title of full CEO.

Investors, and 38-year-old Dorsey, would like a repeat. Like Jobs, Dorsey was Twitter’s founding chief executive, but was forced out by Williams in 2008. He returned as executive chairman in 2011, appointed by Costolo, and then took back the reins, so he is not taking over from a standing start. But the board has yet to give him the full-time role.

According to Dorsey, using Twitter should be “as easy as looking out of your window”. He added: “You should expect Twitter to show you what’s most meaningful in the world, to live it first, before anyone else and straight from the source. And you should expect Twitter to keep you informed and updated throughout your day.”

But as Anthony Noto, the chief financial officer, admitted on the earnings call: “The number one reason users don’t use Twitter is because they don’t understand why to use Twitter. They don’t understand the value.” if only resolving that problem was as straightforward as a 140-character tweet.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/01/twitter-isnt-flying-fast-global-engaged-influential

3 Canada rally for topless rights (BBC) Hundreds of Canadian woman joined a topless protest march after three sisters were allegedly stopped by police for cycling without shirts. Saturday's "Bare with us" march took place in Waterloo, Ontario. The women say that police told them to cover up whilst cycling in the neighbouring town of Kitchener last month. They have filed a formal complaint with the police.

It is legal for women to be topless in Ontario after a court ruling in 1996. Protestors held signs that included the slogans "They are boobs not bombs, chill out" and "Nudity isn't sexual." The three sisters, Tameera, Nadia and Alysha Mohamed, say that they took their shirts off because it was a hot summer day. However, they allege that a police officer approached them and told them to cover up. 

But when they challenged this, the officer said he was stopping them for bike safety reasons.

One of the sisters is an award nominated Canadian singer under her stage name Alysha Brilla. 

Ontario passed legislation confirming the right of women to go topless in 1996, after the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned a woman's conviction for removing her shirt. Gwen Jacobs had been fined in 1991, but on appeal the court found that there was "nothing degrading or dehumanising" about her going topless in public.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33750417