Obsession, by Calvin Klein?…no, Germany!

…still, an understandable obsession!

Source: Der Spiegel

Productivity

The productivity topic in the Italian media is always focused on one indicator: hours worked. Still, the effort or the time do not tell much about the result…if it takes a lot of time to come to a decision on an investment or to drive home a project, this actually tells lots of negative things about productivity. Oder?

Source: corriere.it

 

Markets talking double-dutch

Markets collapsed today in between François Hollande’s victory at the premier tour de la présidentielle and the Dutch PM’s resignation. The come-back of political risk…but, as Cècile Calla puts it on German TV, maybe the lack of charisma of François Hollande could mix well with the lack of charisma of Angela Merkel?…the mayonnaise-hollandaise could keep?

Photo: simplyrecipes

Return on investment

Preparations of London 2012 Olympics. Discussions on the Rome 2020 Olympics. This is what is left of Athens 2004 Olympics. And I am not adding a photo of Italia 90’s wasted projects, like Stazione Ostiense.

I remember thinking, when I saw the opening ceremony led by the very coiffé lady in charge of Olympics in Athens “Who will pay all these debts?”. Because Olympics infrastracture very rarely have a return on investment.

Who knows, maybe Turin had a good payoff from its Winter Olympics. Or Barcelona? These cities seem to have fuelled a positive touristic momentum for many years after the Olympics. But I still would be curious to see a study on the return on investment of Olympics. Beijing included…

The moment of truth

No matter if and when the Bund-BTP spread will narrow, there is another one which is even more meaningful:

8.9% – 5.5% = 3.4% this is the real spread. Unemployment.

Unemployment in Italy vs unemployment in Germany. Understated. Because who does not work in Germany gets access to Harz IV and for this reason is visible to the job market. Whereas in Italy there are many unemployed who, for lack of formal welfare, do not even show up in the stats.

This spread won’t go away just because a few hedge funds change their mind. It’s structural and it needs structural solutions. But we’ve been talking so much about this theme. It becomes boring, right?

Knowledge, training, investing in skills, languages…always the same mantra. Things that Italian companies don’t do. And that the Italian society does not reward. It rewards free riding. Something that you cannot export, actually.

But now, it’s the moment of truth: o mangi ‘sta minestra, o salti la finestra…

 

Photo: reblogged from E.Guerra

Poll position

A poll on the Economist asks “Will the Euro survive 2012 intact?”.

Since December 6th, 72,133 readers answered.

Source: The Economist

Berlin career

The cheeky video is nice…and I really hope that Berlin can boost its employment rate. For sure the quality of life for young people studying or starting their career is higher than all other European’s cities. But job opportunities are still scarce, as Berlin is probably the German city which exports less among other Länder. Still it imports a lot of travellers, art lovers, fashion professionals thanks to the fashion week and Bread and Butter, music producers, movie professionals…this is always a good start. Then, the “boring jobs” in finance, legal, accounting, will follow.

The Davos matrix

Globalization risk in a nutshell means a higher domino-effect. 2011 saw a wild bunch of black swans flocking from environmental and technological disasters like Fukushima and oil tanker spills to societal ones in London, from the environmental and urbanization problems of Liguria and Thailand to the geopolitical ones in Syria and Iran.

Have a look to the World Economic Forum’s matrix of risks (likelihood/impact) across regions and spanning across societal, economic, geopolitical, environmental and technological risks.

The US has a higher risk in cyber attacks and critical systems failure, in line with a higher terrorism likelihood. All regions score high in water and food supply shortage, Europe included. Failure of climate change adaptation score highest in USA, followed by Europe and Asia. Severe income disparity is higher in the Americas compared with Europe and Asia. Pervasive entrenched corruption is higher in South America, Sub-Saharian Africa vs North Africa and ME, the US follow, Europe is less hit and curiously Asia scores low. On chronic fiscal imbalances the US score higher than Europe.

For a global view have a look at the gravity (risk eye of the storm?) map. The diffusion of weapon of mass destruction scores low, as unexpected risks stemming from nanotechnology. Unmanageable inflation and deflation are also estimated to be relatively lower risks than religious fanaticism.

One major stakeholder is missing: populations. Especially when the highest ranking risks are food and water supply shortage…

I am curious to see what Merkel will say at Davos’ opening speech.

Scarcity effect and the sixth wave

Today I was at the annual general meeting of ThyssenKrupp. A few days ago I saw a presentation by Siemens.

The interesting thing is that even if on different sectors and business models, both groups integrate in their strategies the scarcity of resources. In the case of Siemens, the scarcity of public spending for national health systems. And the two groups want to do business not only by selling expensive stuff to clients which can afford it, but also develop “engineered” solutions to scarcity problems – like better and faster diagnosys with lighter RMIs or lighter chassis in cars.

Is this the first shy moving and shaking of Kondratieff’s sixth wave?

 

Slide: ThyssenKrupp

War chest

That this one is World War III there are no doubts. And now we start to see pillage in Europe, with the US war chest is getting richer . The run to valuable assets that will unfold will be similar to the post-USSR collapse one. Just wait and see.

Let’s only hope that the demographics will not follow the same pattern of Russia’s. That asset battle costed many lives.