Economics, Globalization and News Focus

Economics deals with distribution of scarce resources amongst their seekers. Globalization has brought about a subtle competition between nations in pursuing smart economic policies. Sometimes they group together or raise barriers. Countries often attempt to replicate another country's successful policies. Sometimes desperate times invites pressure from other nations that force a country to follow certain policies.

In the past few years the term BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa has been used more and more often. The reasons being that these are the growth markets that attract investors. Also, they attract sellers of various products & services from across the world because of their size and potential.

Now, some very interesting commentary on what long term and short term of economics in human history is and how effects of changes being done today will manifest in future is discussed in this NYTimes article. What I find particularly interesting is the author's comment that a nation should consider the option of being dislodged from being the top one in the long run as acceptable.

The article is also relevant to nations which are aspiring to be leaders in the new world order. It certainly takes courage to make decisions that sometimes feel incorrect in short term but help the nation and the world in the longer run. I guess, when a nation transforms at core, it also is able to muster the courage needed to make such decisions.

The article correctly points out on how news is generally focussed around major events. Now, we in India, exactly know how news on items like Economy and BRICS is played. Hype on everything is the norm, a small M&A activity by an Indian company and media may conclude that India has dislodged every other country in everything including baking croissants. The second problem is the excessive focus by business media on the stock market. Stock market is one of the indicators on how the economy is doing, but it is not the only indicator. Stock market is also correlated to international markets and foreign fund flows. So using only stock movements to understand the state of economy is obviously not correct.

Telecom Market Evolution & Part 3 of Nortel's Story

Nortel has sold its GSM business. This article from LightReading summarizes the sales so far and the expected asset sales.

Telecom Market Discussion

Now check this article from Economist on forecasted mobile subscriber base. 2 things of note:

1. Check the forecast by 2011 when the mobile broadband subscriber base passes fixed broadband subscribers.

2.  The costing of the netbooks and other low cost computing devices meant to improve internet penetration.

Another point is that as 3G is made available across the world, the mobile eliminates the need of a separate computing device. This matters a lot to 2 types of subscribers - convenience oriented and cost oriented. The convenience oriented market has been more or less addressed.

The cost oriented ones are the ones that are forming a very large part of the mobile broadband forecast in the Economist article.

Finally, fixed broadband has a role to play in rural and other emerging areas. That is described in the intern-kiosk model that is there in Economist. And of course the folks who are already onto it in established markets.

Indian newspaper and news websites

The Hindu, one of India's oldest and better newspapers, has a new beta website (Hat tip - tipblog.in). This blog is not to review it but I need to use it as one of the examples for this post.

Now what is most important in newspapers? For my generation, probably the last generation in India to have read newspapers that fed news and intelligent analysis/investigation, the frontpage is the most important part. Next, for the serious readers, the editorial and columnists sections.

If that is agreed upon, then the homepage and edits should be the most important on a website. Check any of the major Indian news or newspaper websites - You need to scroll to find the opinion page. There may be an exception....but just that exception.

Next, the most irritating part of these websites is the barrage of advertisements that hits you when you open the homepages. The advertisements actually interfere between you and the news. I am all for the ads but when they are placed at one side. Let the reader click if he/she is interested...just like you have the ad in newspapers where a reader chooses to read it. It is like those advertisements that make you lose interest in a cricket match because the ads gobble up the first and last balls being bowled in an over.

Also, many news sites have completely irrelevant pictures / videos like those of some fashion show etc. Who cares? Keep them restricted to the entertainment section.

Here is where news aggregation like Google News works wonderfully well. It extracts headlines for the reader and allows the reader the freedom to choose.

Coming back to the new Hindu website....it is elegant. Simplicity of a website is important for news readers and this website gives that. Hopefully this new site will not succumb to the temptation of allowing advertisements to hijack reading experience. In fact I liked their old site too...it has the old internet charm and is effective news providing site.

If we consider worldwide sites, of the sites I have visited, my favourites are NewYork Times and BBC News. NY Times is fast and shows columns on the top right side. BBC News has a very nice front page.

As a reader, my request to the newspapers and news sites is to create sites that create stickiness amongst readers. They should swear by your site's content. Most people are found searching for that close button or trying to find the news they want to. The longer a person takes to find content of his/her choice, the lesser is the chance that you will be his/her choice the next time he/she wants to find something.

Economics Conundrum - Case of Information Over-supply?

I read this amazing article in BusinessWeek - "Why No One Knows Where the Economy Really Stands".

Check this excerpt about the Jobs Data during the boom, "BLS overstated the strength of the economy during good times, and now that fiction will come crashing down on our heads in the first quarter of next year."

The next excerpt of note is on the Stock Markets, "But using what the stock market is doing now as factual data is potentially treating another asset bubble as financial reality."

Just makes me think if the if we are living in a world of Information oversupply where every little bit boosts one section of investor or another? It is Irrational Exuberance, but is it just unavailability of well organized data? Reminds me of our MicroEconomics Professor - Prof. Gupta's favorite phrase, "Garbage In, Garbage Out". :)

Sometimes one feels so much information just leads to more confusion. But then, without it we have the information asymmetry problem. Not sure what we can do of this paradox.

I guess, the author concludes well when he says that real issues can be tackled once accurate data is obtained and analyzed.