· January, 2008

Stories about Economics & Business from January, 2008

China: Internet Privacy

  31 January 2008

Vincent points out that many social networking sites have violated the protection of privacy. For example the fact that spokeo.com can track down hundreds of friends’ online activities via their email accounts is a form of surveillance, probably against the account holders’ will to be left alone.

Citizen Uganda: Smart and very, very pretty

  30 January 2008

Citizen Uganda is the best new online source of information about Uganda, and it's also very, very pretty. To scroll down the main page of Citizen Uganda is to indulge in a visual symphony: carefully selected photos align harmoniously with well-crafted blocks of text. Thick lines in complementary colors separate commentary from current events.

Louis Michel Heckled by Congolese Protestors at the London School of Economics

  30 January 2008

Le renouveau congolais posts a YouTube video which shows Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid and formerly Belgian's foreign minister, as he was confronted by Congolese protesters during a talk given earlier this month on the EU and Africa at the London School of Economics. Read the reactions from Congolese netizens and a video response that will make you move your feet.

Barbados, Bermuda, USA: Standing for Change

  30 January 2008

Cheese-on-bread! notices a similarity between the new Barbados government's campaign slogan and Barack Obama's – and hopes that the “rallying cry will work for him as well as it did for PM Thompson et al…”; while Politics.bm thinks Bermuda's government “represents everything Obama rejects.”

Latvia: Law Firm's Name Change Attempt

  29 January 2008

Can you imagine a law firm with a name like this: “Viss mainījies skaļi klusēja migla virs pļavām aiz upes un jenotiņš to sajuta tik skaidri ka aizrāvās elpa un nosvīda uz ceļgaliem rātni uzliktās ķepiņas.” Latvian authorities cannot, either, according to Latvian Abroad.

Ukraine: Tymoshenko's Ideologies

  29 January 2008

Ukrainiana is somewhat confused about Yulia Tymoshenko's position: “Here we go again, cruising the ideological avenues of the world: from solidarism to Thatcherism; from pondering membership in the Socialist International to praising Sarkozy; from advocating aggressive privatization to promoting the idea of mild government-subsidized mortgage rates. How does it all...

Dubai: Getting to Grips with Inflation

  29 January 2008

“I've been banging on about the effects of inflation on business, and the economy in general, for a while, so it's good to see that important people are now going public with their concerns. And it's very good to see the media actually reporting it,” notes Seabee, who is based...

Bahrain: Are Gulf Arabs Lazy?

  29 January 2008

Earlier this week the Bahraini Labour Minister Majid Al Alawi was interviewed in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, and in the interview he said that the Gulf was facing an 'Asian tsunami' because Gulf nationals are 'lazy' and 'spoilt' and depend on imported labour to do even simple tasks. He said that that the nearly 17 million foreign workers in the Gulf, mostly Asian, represented 'a danger worse than the atomic bomb or an Israeli attack'. What do Bahraini bloggers think?

India: NRIs and Remittances

  29 January 2008

churmuri writes on the importance of NRIs given the size of remittances that flow into the country, as compared to the FDI inflows.