Tag economy

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Can Hacking Be A Financial Instrument?

Nov 26, 11 7:18 PM
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As financial instruments that keep nations stay healthy find to be less effective, nations are facing direr prospects of having to see their economies slowly inch closer to unsustainable conditions.  Imagine China continues to see United States prints more dollars out of thin air to devalue the dollar so United States’ exports can be competitive against the rest of the world, and China will face higher import costs to produce lesser profitable export goods since Chinese yuan is pegging against dollar.  As China isn’t so willingly to revalue yuan and allowing yuan to appreciate against dollar, China forces United States to print more money than ever to devalue the dollar so United States can stay competitive in exporting its goods.  United States knowing that exporting more will create jobs at home, consequently taming the wild beasts of deflation and unemployment that will lead to a healthier economy in near term or however long the United States can print money and China won’t scream foul.

Let assume China and United States are going to be locked in a currency war for a long time to come, and the financial instruments of both sides aren’t that effective since both sides might be able to dish out comparable damages, a tic for tac kind of things.  Seeing from this perspective, one can see why United States is so concerning about cyber security.  Once the usual financial instruments aren’t that effective, an oppose entity (e.g., nation, country, faction, coalition, and so on) can try to use a stealthier and more malicious mean to gain some advantages in regarding to world trade and a nation’s financial matters, and we’re talking of hacking.  Of course, there are many other means that might be as vicious as hacking or even more vicious than hacking such as intentionally manipulating an opposing nation’s derivative market to a point that such market would crash and create havocs within a nation’s economy.  Nonetheless, hacking is probably one of the easiest maneuvers which one nation can carry out against another nation.

Hacking can be inexpensive for the hackers and yet sometimes hackers can get more than what they want.  Hackers can also stay anonymous if they’re good, therefore hacking can be stealthy if stealth is important to the hackers.  Knowing hacking can be carried out with precision and with almost no consequence at state sponsor level, I don’t see why hacking is not one of the desirable methods in acquiring financial information and gaining sensitive data to manipulate another nation’s economy.  This is why it’s not unimaginable for the United States to consider hacking as an act of war and might lead to military actions.  As more facets of an economy come online or digitize, hacking can become an evermore dangerous and powerful instrument among other financial instruments to be used by nations.  Of course, hacking isn’t always motivating by financial means, sometimes it’s more about gaining military advance weaponries.  This is why hacking can become even more important than just a covert financial instrument for any nation.

So, I guess we can expect China and United States to continue playing a game of blaming each other on how they got hacked by the opposing nation.  I suspect that the United States and China won’t go as far as declaring war on each other if indeed they find out that the opposing party is hacking them, but I can see United States and China won’t be hesitating in punishing weaker opposing enemies in all means, even things has to boil down to carrying out some military actions.  Don’t be surprised to see more headlines of how one nation is hacking another in the news, because hacking can be quite a useful financial instrument and more.  It’s that serious!

Source —  Currency Wars:  The Making of the Next Global Crisis by James Rikards (book).

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How Disruptive Smartcar To The Economy? Can Smartcar Save Lives?

Sep 24, 11 12:51 PM

How disruptive can it be for the economy if today we don’t drive cars, but we let cars drive us?  OK, it sounds silly, because when we drive cars, cars do drive us around such as from point A to point B.  Nonetheless, I don’t mean in the context of wordplay, but I mean in the context that today technology has become so advance that in few years more or so, we can expect humans not to sit in the driver seat and rather have the cars to be smart enough to drive themselves, that’s without human intervention at the driver seat.  So, when we get there, will our economy worse off or better?

Some people say it’s a stupid question.  I think not.  According to NPR podcast “Out Of Economic Chaos, A New Order May Be Rising,” guest Mike Hawley (formerly of MIT’s Media Lab) suggests that what if humans don’t even need to own cars at all.  Instead, humans just use their smartphones and have smartcars pick them up at any location.  So, taxi cab job, valet parking, car dealerships, car salesmen, and other various functions that are in relation with the idea of having a car or need a car will be outdated (i.e., disappear from the market).  Is that chaotic enough to disrupt the economy that we know of?

Then there comes a question of how do we pay for our smartcar transportation?  If it will be a public transportation kind of service, then it will definitely be affordable to all through taxation, right?  Higher tax will then be encountered by the population?  If it will be private kind of transportation service, how affordable will it be?  Will it be more affordable than owning a car?  Perhaps one will have to pay huge price increase per drive if one has the desire of let a Lamborghini smartcar to whisk one away to a location B, right?

Let put some of the negatives away, and think about the positives when such transportation model might occur.  Once again, according to the podcast I’d mentioned earlier, Mike Hawley suggests there were more dead people from car accidents than there were dead people from 300 years of warfares.  So, I guess besides of having the luxury of eating a sandwich, watching an instant streaming movie, reading a book, and so on inside a smartcar as one goes from point A to point B, one can also be happy to know that a smartcar won’t likely to drive into someone else to cause an accident of any sort, right?

Anyhow, I think it’s a very interesting question and it does give rise to some interesting speculations on the what if(s) in regarding to smartcar versus the economy and how lives would be safe if we use a smartcar over dumbcar.  I don’t think we necessarily have the strong confidence for smartcars in regarding to safety yet, but as we speak, I think smartcar technology is being improved and so its safety measures, too.  What’s your opinion in this matter?

Source:  http://www.npr.org/2011/09/24/140766796/out-of-economic-chaos-a-new-order-may-be-rising?ft=1&f=1001

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It’s Not So Wise For Netflix To Raise Prices By 60 Percent In A Down Economy

Jul 12, 11 3:48 PM

In a time when economy isn’t doing so well, services such as Netflix wants to raise prices would not win customers, I think.  It’s totally understandable for any business to tweak their service prices so bigger profit can be made, but doing it subtly might be wiser than doing it so boldly.  According to Yahoo’s finance news, Netflix raises DVD and streaming plan price by 60 percent.  In a good time, I think it’s totally doable, but in a bad economic time such as our, I think it’s a very bad decision for Netflix to push service prices 60 percent higher.

Netflix isn’t a bank where people absolutely need to borrow money to survive.  When people are feeling they need to cut back on spending most, Netflix is the easiest among all addictions to abstain from.  Also, Netflix is facing tough competitions such as Amazon and Redbox and Apple and Google and others…  I think customers will not hesitate to flock to cheaper services in a heartbeat.  Anyhow, what in this blog post are my opinions, and so you should not take them as facts.  Time will tell if I’m right about how people will react to Netflix’s raising service prices up to 60 percent or not.

Source:  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Netflix-raises-DVD-streaming-rb-4144370502.html;_ylt=Akxf6Q4JxfzLIcrx3gqt8ae7YWsA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1c
3Awb3NnBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN0b3BTdG9yaWVzBHNsawNuZXRmbGl4cmFpc2U-?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

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