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 …

Norway’s oil fund shows responsible investor pressure is getting results

Norway’s $810bn oil fund has stepped up its push for more responsible investing. In doing so it voted against the resolutions recommended by 9,000 of the companies it holds investments in, including Apple, General Electric and JPMorgan. The fund also completely sold out of a record 73 companies last year, many of which were related to the coal …

Beijing Enterprises buy German waste-to-energy group

Beijing is surrounded by rubbish dumps so large that they have been described as the city’s “seventh ring”. On Thursday Beijing Enterprises completed the largest ever Chinese acquisition of a German business, purchasing a German waste management company for €1.44bn. The target company is regarded as an industry leader in advanced technologies for filtering emissions. The firm currently converts 4.7m …

Obama proposes $10 per barrel oil tax — unlikely to happen

President Obama’s White House has proposed “bold” $10 per barrel tax on imports of oil. “The White House said that the tax would encourage a shift away from an oil-dependent transportation system and provide revenue that it would use to pay for much-needed infrastructure investment.” With a current price of $30-$40/bbl this represents a tax …

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 …

The oil bubble: bursting in slow motion

Bubbles are created when buyers overpay in the hope of finding a ‘greater fool’ to sell to later. This has happened lately in the Chinese stock and property markets. Apartments were built on borrowed money, bought and left empty as prices rose, in the hope they could be offloaded later on to a greater fool before the bubble burst. The same approach was applied in the …

Paul Mason argues that capitalism is failing

Journalist Paul Mason, economics editor for Channel 4 News, argues that the neoliberal capitalist model “is broken” — has had its day, is systemically unsustainable — and can be replaced with a new model. His solution? Use technology to reduce the hours of work we all do, and “consign the coercive bullshit that takes place at the precarious end of …

Regenerative farming

This recent article on Ozy.com discusses a growing number of both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises that are finding new ways for farmers to make money, and in the process to renew the land they use. In a Zambian valley 61,000 small scale farmers are paid 20% over the market price in return for not killing certain animals. …

Only one way to save the oceans

  Some people think we can keep extracting fossil fuels and later use some techno-fix to extract the carbon back out of the atmosphere. Researchers in Germany have found that even if we did that, the fact that the oceans absorb CO2, then transport it to the deep ocean, means that the oceans would stay …

Creating abundant villages in Rajasthan

There is a village in Rajasthan where until recently there were only 928 women for every 1,000 men. To address this situation the head of the village began a new tradition: every every time a girl is born, 111 trees are planted. (Every time a person dies, 11 more are planted.) Over the past six years the …