Alibaba is the beginning of a new global trade system

Interesting article here that sees Alibaba not simply as another ecommerce company like Amazon or ebay but as a trading platform for any business, and hence a strategic tool for China to take over world trade and banking. The platform not only provides a front end for customers to interact with businesses, the businesses deliver products …

Applying Blockchain to the Music Industry

A very interesting article here about how Imogen Heap is applying Blockchain (the technology behind Bitcoin) to the music industry. If it works, it we redefine the industry, changing how we share and pay for music, and who makes how much money from doing so. And it will also transform other industries that involve publishing creative information, such …

Brics create their own development bank

The five ’emerging’ BRICS economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa account for a quarter of the world economy (24.5%). Their voting power at the IMF is only 10.3 percent. They have decided to stop waiting for the US Congress to ratify reforms to that voting structure. At their sixth summit recently they announced …

Increasing issuance of corporate green bonds

French utility giant EDF this week set a new high in the market for corporate ‘green bonds’, issuing £1.2 billion (euros 1.4 bn) worth of bonds tied to returns from its renewable assets. Although the bond is only a small fraction of the total market, the fact that the issue was two-times over-subscribed suggests there is …

Local currency — Berkshares

There are now hundreds of thousands of local currencies operating around the world. They serve their local economies, and all are small in scale (even in comparison with alternatives such as Bitcoin). But one of the largest and most successful examples of a local currency, ‘Berkshares‘, just got bigger — with a $500,000 grant to …

The ‘resource constrained world’

Switzerland is a country with a strong brand: renowned for its chocolate, its clocks, its banks, the wealth of its citizens, and the efficiency of its public transport system. But Switzerland, like the rest of us, is a country with limited resources, limited land, different populations, speaking different languages, in different cantons, and surrounded by …