Money Category
Money in the news and how you are going to pay and pay and pay
European Union is looking into imposing import duties on cheap Chinese solar panels: facepalm
THE European Union is looking into imposing import duties on cheap Chinese solar panels. If they go ahead with this it will be one of the most ludicroulsy stupid things any government has ever done: yes, worse than a land war in Asia. Not as bloody or wasteful, but more stupid:
The UK could lose billions of pounds and thousands of jobs in the solar industry if the EU imposes tariffs on cheap imported panels from China, a report has claimed.
The European commission is investigating if solar panels coming into Europe from China are being sold below market value – known as “dumping” – and benefiting from unfair Chinese government subsidies.
The move by the commission, instigated last year, is the largest of its kind, with solar panels and key components worth more than £18bn exported from China to the EU in 2011.
It followed complaints from European solar manufacturers and could lead to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties being imposed on Chinese-made panels to stop the cheap imports harming Europe’s domestic industry.
Facepalm.
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Posted: 25th, February 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Apple and Microsoft gadgets are more expensive in Australia because of politicians and their taxes
THE Aussie politicians are getting all angry at the tech companies because Australians have to pay more for their shiny shiny tech than do Americans. But you would think that someone devious enough to actually get elected would have the brains to work this out, wouldn’t you?
The IT Pricing Inquiry being conducted by Australia’s House Committee on Infrastructure and Communications has issued summons to Apple, Microsoft and Adobe.
The inquiry kicked off in 2012 and is investigating why Australians pay more for hardware and software than those overseas.
At current exchange rate one Australian dollar buys $US1.03. Yet Australians often pay more in Australian dollars than Americans are charged in their currency.
An example of the discrepancy can be seen in the price of a 16GB WiFi iPad with Retina Display. In the USA the fondleslab costs $US499. In Australia it’s $AUD539.
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Posted: 22nd, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Why do we contract out public services – and lifeboats?
WHY do we contract out public services? Zoe tells us in The Guardian that it’s all just a terrible idea:
What happens when these firms, with their inexorable expansionist logic, bite off more than they can chew? We pay anyway. We paid G4S; we will pay it again when its prisons catch fire. We will pay A4e when it finds no jobs, we will pay Serco when its probation services fail. We will pay because even when they’re not delivered by the public sector, these are still public services, and the ones that aren’t too big to fail are too important. What any government creates with massive-scale outsourcing is not “new efficiency”, it is a shadow state; we can’t pin it down any more than we can vote it out. All we can do is watch.
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Whinging about salaries at tech companies is plain stupid
THIS does get depressing, vaunted media experts pronouncing on matters economic without actually understanding anything about economics. The Observer’s John Naughton wants us to get all upset about the way that these vast fortunes being made in hte tech comapniues only go to the entrepreneurs and the engineers. The average staff doing the average jobs just get the usual crap.
Well, yes, that’s how the system is supposed to work:
These vast revenues, however, are not being widely shared. Instead, they are mostly enriching the founders and shareholders of Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook et al. Of course, those who work at the heart of these organisations – the engineers, developers and the executives who manage them, for example – are richly rewarded in salaries, stock options and lavish perks. But these gilded employees constitute only a minority of the workforces of the big tech companies and most of their colleagues have decidedly more mundane terms of employment – and remuneration.
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Posted: 19th, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Demonising Tewkesbury mum-of-11 Heather Frost
HEATHER Frost, mother to 11 at just 36-years young – she started at 14 – is moving into a £400,000, 6-bedroom council house. The Sun says it’s a “PALACE FIT FOR A DOLE QUEEN“.
Frost is the “jobless mum on benefits” looking to move into a 1,850 sq-ft house in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
The Express also looks at the mum of 11, only it gives her age as 37.
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Posted: 19th, February 2013 | In: Money, Reviews | Comments (6)
Dell does go private – but why?
IT’S been announced that Michael Dell is going to buy back his company and take it private. The buyout price is $13.65 a share for a total just north of $24 billion. The big questions is: why?
Clearly, the obvious answer is that they think the company is worth more than the stock market thinks the company is worth. That’s why you buy things: because other people value them at a lower price than you do. But why do they think this?
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Posted: 18th, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Business fashions do move in cycles: Another World on BB 10
THAT old DOS computer game, Another World. has just been ported over to the new BlackBerry operating system, BB 10. Which just goes to show that fashions in the business world really do go in cycles.
Eric Chahi’s seminal game work, Another World, is now available on BlackBerry 10 devices (so … uh, those of you with a Z10, though it also works on PlayBook). And not just any version, but the 20th Anniversary Edition, which adds updated graphics, a remastered soundtrack, and some gesture controls. The game’s one of several titles that publisher DotEmu is bringing to BB10, including notoriously difficult shooter R-Type.
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Posted: 15th, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Consumerism, Eh? The £7,000 mobile phone
THIS did rather make me giggle. A company that makes outrageously expensive mobile phones. Their latest model costing £7,000.
The Vertu Ti costs 7,900 euros (£6,994) and is made at the firm’s headquarters in Church Crookham, Hampshire.
The device had a titanium frame and sapphire screen but was not 4G-enabled, said its designer Hutch Hutchison.
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Posted: 13th, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Is Microsoft’s Excel the most dangerous software in the world?
IS Microsoft’s Excel the most dangerous software in thewWorld? It could be actually. That is, that the very existence of Excel itself makes it the most dangerous software in the world.
There’s two parts to this. One is that we’ve got the regulators trying to warn banks on the dangers of using it badly.
Both the Switzerland-based Basel Committee on Banking Supervision1 (BCBS) and the Financial Services Authority2 (FSA) in the UK have recently made it clear that when relying on manual processes, desktop applications or key internal data flow systems such as spreadsheets, banks and insurers should have effective controls in place that are consistently applied to manage risks around incorrect, false or even fraudulent data. The citation by the BCBS is the first time that spreadsheet management has ever been specifically referenced at such a high level, a watermark in the approach to spreadsheet risk.
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Posted: 13th, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Now that’s what I call tax avoidance: the Cup Trust
THIS story is really rather mindboggling. A charity that raked in £176 million over two years and then donated £55,000 to other charities. The rest of the £176 million went on fund raising costs. I have to say that I’m stunned by the audacity of it to be honest.
It’s entirely different from all of the various bits of corporate tax avoidance that the newspapers have been full of. Starbucks, as an example, simply didn’t make UK profits so they shouldn’t be paying any UK profit tax. The Vodafone thing was about who rules? UK law or EU? To which the answer is EU. And it’s possible to go on down the list of all of the UK Uncut campaigns and point out that they’re just not tax avoidance.
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Those tax dodging swine at Amazon!
GRRR! Amazon! Coming over here, making vast sales, and not a penny of tax do we see out of them. Or something like that. You know, all they’re doing is providing people with what they want, cheap, and where’s the public value in that?
Unfortunately the Guardian seems to be running their corporate tax pieces on boilerplate language these days. For they tell us that Amazon doesn’t pay tax because:
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John Redwood Does Sarcasm
JOHN Redwood can be sarcastic:
The top 1% took home 11.2% of the nation’s net income under unequal Labour in 2009-10, and a much lower 7% this year under the much more equal Coalition. This fall goes all the way down through the top half of earners. The top 50% received 75% of total net income in 2009-10, and only 60% this year. Meanwhile the bottom half receives a bigger share of the income than at any time this century.
All those who wanted a more equal society should rejoice. Indeed, they should be voting for Coalition parties out of gratitude. The Coalition has done something Labour was quite unable to do during its period in office, when the UK became less equal.
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Posted: 6th, February 2013 | In: Money, Politicians | Comments (2)
This is a damn good way to spend the education budget: more orgasms
THIS is a damn good way to spend the education budget:
The University of Minnesota is spending $3,400 to host a symposium this spring specifically designed to help its female undergraduate students achieve bigger, better and more orgasms.
No, really, Apple still isn’t avoiding UK tax
THE Sunday Times has done yet another of its pieces on how tech comapnies are avoiding tax in the UK. Given that that paper’s gated, here’s the Telegraph telling us all about it. The real problem here is that Apple just isn’t indulging in tax avoidance: this is what the system is set up to encourage it to do
Apple is estimated to have avoided more than £550m in tax in Britain in 2011. Its latest accounts show UK turnover at just over £1bn and profit at £81.3m, generating a tax bill of £14.4m.
However, analysis of its filings in America suggest a more realistic figure for UK turnover is £6.7bn. This would imply an estimated profit of £2.2bn and, at the then corporation tax rate of 26pc, a £570m tax bill, the Sunday Times reports.
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Posted: 5th, February 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Why is David Beckham only playing in France for 5 months: tax
A VERY nice little catch here by The Mirror on why David Beckham is only playing in France for five months:
The star’s contract at PSG runs for only five months.
If he stayed any longer than six he could become liable to a proposed 75% tax on his entire multi-million pound earnings by the socialist French government.
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Behavioural economics: oh yes the French do move because of taxes!
ONE of the great current tropes is that the rich must pay more in taxes because that is fair. One of the current answers is that try taxing too much and the rich will leave. Which gets called unfair again.
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Posted: 1st, February 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Oh Noes! EU carbon price is too low!
I’M not sure what hope there is for the human race when even the FT gets things like this wrong. Everyone and their mother is complaining that the carbon credits price under the EU scheme to deal with climate change is too low. We’ve even had our won government insisting that there must be a carbon floor price.
The EU carbon market has been miserable for most of the past few years, with prices staggering downwards from their c.€30 levels on the scheme’s launch in 2005. But it’s become very gloomy in the past couple of weeks, with mid single digits prices falling as much as 40 per cent to a record low of €2.81 last Thursday.
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Apple’s sales rise, profits rise, shares tank: WTF?
A USEFUL little reminder of something that economists keep trying to tell people but which often doesn’t seem to get through. Stock markets are forward looking.
So, we have Apple reporting its financial results for the most recent quarter. Profits were up (only very slightly, but they were). Sales were well up. Everything’s looking pretty rosy in hte Cupertino garden. At which point the shares drop 10% in minutes.
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Posted: 29th, January 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
This sexual equality thing’s gone a bit too far now, hasn’t it?
IT’S most certainly true that we didn’t go far enough with this equality thing in the past. Heck, it was only in the 1970s that a woman could have a bank account without some bloke signing for her. Only in the 80s that mortgages became unisex. And only in the late 80s that the tax system started to treat women as economic individuals rather than just hangers on to any household they belonged to. So, Hurrah! Civilisation has improved.
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Posted: 28th, January 2013 | In: Money | Comments (7)
China shows why Microsoft is screwed
THERE been some recent whining from Microsoft about how they get to sell bugger all in China. As opposed to Apple who can’t make things fast enough. Some of this is of course because Microsoft sells software, something often ripped off in that lovely country. But there’s something else as well: and it’s a neat illustration of why Microsoft is, essentially, screwed.
China’s Internet population surges to 564 million, 75 percent on mobile
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Posted: 25th, January 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comments (3)
Now That Europe’s Got A Robin Hood Tax Let’s Not Have One
THE Robin Hood Tax people are all ever so excited. Half the countries over in the eurozone have now been given permission to have one and it looks like France will get one around the end of 2014. The argument is thus that because they’re all getting such a lovely financial transactions tax therefore we should immediately run off and do the same thing.
However, the correct argument would be, well, seeing as they’re doing this experiemtn why don’t we wait and see what the results are? You know, just check that all hte claims being made about such a tax are in fact correct?
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Posted: 24th, January 2013 | In: Money | Comments (6)
Comment is free? Guardian worker writes of executives lavish excess
THE Guardian is heading Down Under to Australia. What do the workers think of the idea? This letter appeared on the Guardian/Observer Weekend section:
”Afternoon Alan – I’m a member of Guardian staff, posting anonymously.
As you know, it’s a tough time for your journalists at the moment – especially for those of us way down the food chain: the production grunts, the desk-bound, the ones who actually produce the content.
We’re working harder and harder (because we love the papers), coping with dwindling resources and morale, we’re badly mismanaged, and trying to cope with the life-changing threat of compulsory redundancies – all a result of the company’s long-term financial illiteracy and lavish excess at the top.
So I just want to say thanks for the series of articles – three now, isn’t it? – about learning to play your Fazioli piano. They’re brilliantly timed, and I know they’ll lift spirits. We always wondered how you filled your days, how you spent your fortune. Now we know.”
Posted: 23rd, January 2013 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Verizon worker outsources own job to China
BORED in your job? Don’t worry. Someone in China will do it for less. This man outsourced his own job:
It’s a worst-case scenario for most employees: There’s someone in China who can do your job quickly, efficiently and for about one-fifth of your salary, and your boss absolutely loves his work.
But one U.S. software developer turned this nightmare on its head and actually benefited from outsourcing, a report says. That’s because, unbeknownst to his bosses, he hired a Chinese developer to do his job, allowing him to take home impeccable performance reviews while actually spending the day watching cat videos and shopping on EBay.
According to Andrew Valentine, who works on the Verizon Risk Team investigating data breaches, the employee, who Valentine calls Bob, had pulled off the stunt for some time, allowing him to relax and earn a good salary while someone in China did his job for him. . . . Suffice it to say, Bob is no longer working for the company. It’s possible that he is missed, though. His performance reviews were impeccable, and his company considered him the best developer in the building.
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Posted: 21st, January 2013 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Let’s tax fuel to reduce fuel poverty!
THERE really are loons out there. Here’s a case in point. The argument is that energy is getting more expensive. This puts some people into “fuel poverty” where they are spending more than 10% of their incomes on fuel. Hmm.
So, what might we do to address this situation? Hey, why don’t we put a tax on fuel to make it more expensive! That’ll work, right?
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Posted: 21st, January 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Law graduate robs bank to pay student loan debt
WHY did Randall H. Hubatch, 49, of Madison, dress up to rob a bank? To pay his student loan debt:
A man who wore a three-dimensional Bucky Badger hat when he allegedly robbed an East Side credit union last week told police that he wants to go to prison and needed the money because he has $250,000 in student debt…
An online UW-Madison directory lists Hubatch as a lead custodian at Union South on the UW-Madison campus. University spokesman John Lucas said Hubatch is not a current student but earned a bachelor’s in English in 1998 and a law degree in 2004.
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