Finanzas
False news items are not the only problem besetting Facebook
“MARK ZUCKERBERG, dead at 32, denies Facebook has problem with fake news.” The satirical headline, which made the rounds online this week, nicely encapsulates the most recent woes of the world’s largest social network: its algorithms, critics say, filled users’ newsfeeds with misinformation—and in the process influenced the American election result. But this is not the only problem the firm is grappling with. A volatile share price, privacy policies and advertising metrics have also kept Mr Zuckerberg (pictured) busy.
“News” that the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump or that a pizzeria in Washington, DC, is the home base of a child-abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton, were not confined to Facebook (nor were fake stories only a right-wing phenomenon). They often originate elsewhere, for instance on fake-news websites in Macedonia, which make good money via online ads, and on Twitter. But Facebook’s algorithms give prominence to such misinformation. They are tuned to maximise “engagement”, meaning they present users with the type of content that has already piqued their interest, as outrageous headlines tend to do.
Yet despite…Continue reading
Samsung is sucked into South Korea’s political crisis
IT WAS the third raid on the Samsung group in as many weeks. On November 23rd state prosecutors combed more offices of the South Korean consumer-electronics firm, part of a probe into an influence-peddling case that could be the undoing of President Park Geun-hye’s administration. The deepening inquest compounds a miserable few months for Samsung, which recently recalled 3m faulty washing machines and killed a new line of Galaxy Note phones after dozens exploded due to flawed batteries.
Last week prosecutors accused Ms Park of conspiring to coerce 50-odd companies to funnel 80bn won ($70m) to two foundations, Mir and K-Sports, controlled by Choi Soon-sil, a confidante indicted for abuse of power. The biggest grant, 20.4bn won, came from Samsung. Prosecutors suspect that it funnelled a further €2.8m ($3m) to Ms Choi through Widec Sports, a German company she used to buy horses and equestrian lessons for her daughter, a dressage athlete.
Investigators had said that the firms, including many in the pantheon of South Korean business, such as Lotte, a retail giant, and SK Group, a conglomerate, both of whose offices were raided this week,…Continue reading
The global bond-market sell-off tests Japan’s ability to keep yields down
HARUHIKO KURODA is not a man to be put off by an unexpected setback. On November 17th the governor of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) gave his defiant take on the implications for Japanese monetary policy of the global market gyrations that have followed the surprise election of Donald Trump. Interest rates, he noted, have risen in America. “But that doesn’t mean that we have to automatically allow Japanese interest rates to increase in tandem.”
A sell-off triggered by Mr Trump’s win wiped more than $1.2trn off the value of the world’s bond markets as investors bet that his administration will stoke America’s economic engines and drive up inflation. Bond yields rose sharply around the world as investors sold assets to buy dollar-denominated ones. In Japan the yen weakened and the yield on ten-year government bonds (JGBs) crept above zero for the first time in nearly two months. Since he was appointed by Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, in March 2013 as custodian of the monetary wing of “Abenomics”, Mr Kuroda has been fighting to end years of debilitating deflation. Keeping bond yields down is an important part of that…Continue reading
El Gobierno salva el nombramiento de Albella en la CNMV gracias al PNV
El nuevo presidente del organismo supervisor se niega a revelar a qué empresas asesoró
¿No entiendes el recibo de la luz? Dedos y cebollas para descifrarlo
El autor de ‘Presume de entender (a fondo) las facturas de la luz y del gas’ explica qué hay detrás del precio de cada kilovatio
You may be higher up the global wealth pyramid than you think
IF YOU had only $2,220 to your name (adding together your bank deposits, financial investments and property holdings, and subtracting your debts) you might not think yourself terribly fortunate. But you would be wealthier than half the world’s population, according to this year’s Global Wealth Report by the Crédit Suisse Research Institute. If you had $71,560 or more, you would be in the top tenth. If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400 you could count yourself a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against.
Unlike many studies of prosperity and inequality, this one counts household assets rather than income. The data are patchy, particularly at the bottom and apex of the pyramid. But with some assumptions, the institute calculates that the world’s households owned property and net financial assets worth almost $256trn in mid-2016. That is about 3.4 times the world’s annual GDP. If this wealth were divided equally it would come to $52,819 per adult. But in reality the top tenth own 89% of it.
Internet on trains hits the buffers
THE train is often the best way to travel for business. Anyone heading to Paris from London for a meeting, for example, would be mad to choose an Airbus over a Eurostar. The journey time by rail may be more than twice as long—two hours and forty minutes compared with an hour and a quarter in the air—but that doesn’t take into account the fact that passengers must mope about the airport for a couple hours before boarding their flight. (Eurostar suggests turning up 30-45 minutes before the train leaves; for domestic trains you just need a few minutes.) Furthermore, unlike St Pancras station and Gare du Nord, Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle are some distance from the centre of town. In fact passengers will probably need to board a train to get there.
But time-saving is the least of it. In most instances, travelling by rail is simply more pleasant. Assuming that they have booked a seat and don’t have to squat in the aisles, passengers get more space, get a full-size window through which they can watch the world fly by and are able to get up and wander about. They may even get a table big enough to allow them to spread out their papers, laptop and a sandwich at the same…Continue reading
Technology firms may struggle to disrupt the food business
THE office parks of Silicon Valley boast many firms that are trying to change the world. But there are plenty with more modest goals. Zume Pizza, a tiny startup that is located a few miles from the sprawling headquarters of Google, wants to redesign the way pizzas are made. Zume has programmed robots to make pizzas that are then baked inside vans as they hurtle towards customers. Ovens are timed to finish cooking in sync with the vehicles’ arrival at their destination, so the pies are always piping hot.
In recent weeks spies from rival pizza companies and from food-delivery firms have been driving by in unmarked cars taking photographs of the office and the vans, says Julia Collins, one of Zume’s co-founders. To protect its business, the startup has patented the process of cooking food in ovens while a vehicle is moving (the patent probably gives Zume fairly defensible intellectual property, according to one patent lawyer). The company only operates in Mountain View, but has expansion plans. Since its founding last year it has reportedly raised $6m from investors, among them Jerry Yang, a co-founder and former boss of Yahoo, an early giant of the…Continue reading
The sharing economy brings tycoon lifestyles within reach of some
LAMENTING the rise of inequality is one of the few growth industries in an age of stagnation. One authority on the American wealthy, Robert Frank of CNBC, a TV channel, worries that the rich are “floating off” into their own country. Chrystia Freeland, a journalist-turned-politician, frets about the rise of the “new global super-rich” and the fall of everyone else. Charles Murray, America’s gloomiest social scientist, warns that society is “coming apart” as the rich retreat into their gated communities.
At the top of the income scale, however, a small counter-trend is observable. Never before have so many people been able to get access to the accoutrements of tycoonery—private planes, luxury yachts, fancy cars and interior-designed, exclusive homes. There is only so much comfort to be had from the fact that it is easier for the merely rich to lay claim to the lifestyle of the super-rich. But as a result of a combination of new technologies and businesses, that is nonetheless what is happening.
Tycoon living begins with a private jet. Whereas yachts are dispensable (not everyone wants to float around for weeks with the…Continue reading
The changing face of global trade
TRADE has changed a lot in the last 25 years. Indeed, we are still struggling to understand why trade growth was so rapid before the 2008 crisis, and has been relatively sluggish since. Richard Baldwin’s new book «The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization» was reviewed in last week’s issue (and here are the thoughts of the FT’s Martin Wolf). But the book is so important that it is worth looking again at some of its insights.
The first is that we tend to think of competitiveness of individual states (particularly in an era of populist nationalism) – the US is competing against China and Germany. But goods are no longer assembled entirely within the bounds of one factory in one country. Instead, many goods are assembled in «global value chains» in which products are designed in one country, but made from parts built in several countries and assembled in another country. As Mr Baldwin…Continue reading