Rupert, you're right about the media!

OK, if this isn't one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, I don't know what is but yes, on one point, I actually whole-heartedly agree with Rupert Murdoch.

Here is the apocalyptic point:

The key to survival, he said, lies in giving consumers content that they want in the form that they want it — whether that be on a computer screen, mobile device or e-reader — and then charging for it.

"We need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high-quality, reliable news and information does not come free," Murdoch said. "Good journalism is an expensive commodity."

Right! Give people the quality they want, in a form they want it in, at a reasonable price, paid for in a convenient way.

It's worked for other forms of entertainment and while this isn't the silver bullet to save journalism, but it is a good start.

Generating quality journalism is a difficult process and deserves to be paid for. If we're willing to pay 99 cents for a pop tune, we should be willing to pay a similar amount to maintain one of the key pillars to civil society.


Murdoch: Media must get readers to pay for online

Damn the Aid

I was recently directed to what is probably the most damning opinion on foreign aid I’ve come across in a while (hat tip Jodi and Tracy.)

Here’s the bottom line:
Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population -- over 350 million people -- live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades.

The point the author makes is that Africa (and I would add other developing nations) needs investment and not aid. When you accept investment, be it equity or debt, there is significant responsibility attached to provide a return. In other words, you need to make the money work so you can pay back your investors.

Hopefully the money you make with the investment is more than what you need to pay back. If so, you have economic growth and that is good.

It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to work in places like India, SE Asia and more recently in Latin America (the Economist gushed on Brazil in its cover story a few weeks back.)

I’ve touched on this point before, but my view is that the world is awash with capital trying to find its way into places like Africa. Yes, I know there is a credit crunch going on but I think the view still holds.

African countries could start by issuing bonds to raise cash. To be sure, the traditional capital markets of the U.S. and Europe remain challenging. However, African countries could explore opportunities to raise capital in more non-traditional markets such as the Middle East and China (whose foreign exchange reserves are more than $4 trillion). Moreover, the current market malaise provides an opening for African countries to focus on acquiring credit ratings (a prerequisite to accessing the bond markets), and preparing themselves for the time when the capital markets return to some semblance of normalcy.

I would also add multilateral institutions and development banks as potential partners. Yes they have been part of the problem in the past, endlessly financing non-returning projects. But there are factions within these organizations that are now demanding a return and reform for their development financing dollars, and that is a good thing.

Corporations are eager to invest in developing country as well. The problem is there aren’t any good projects to invest in. There is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right time to enter Africa (I’m talking about investment in things other than resource extraction).

So what is everyone waiting for? Institutional reform for one (or even institutional creation in some instances)

Governments need to attract more foreign direct investment by creating attractive tax structures and reducing the red tape and complex regulations for businesses. African nations should also focus on increasing trade; China is one promising partner. And Western countries can help by cutting off the cycle of giving something for nothing. It's time for a change.

I would disagree with the point on China. Yes, China is pouring money into Africa but it is doing so to buy up resources and it is hard to see China making the demands for reform an outside investor has to make on Africa. Recent news from Dubai may make the Middle East a less active investor as well.



Why Foreign Aid Is Hurting Africa - WSJ.com

BRIC? BIIC?

Nouriel Roubini questions whether Russia is solid enough to be a BRIC. I have to admit, I've had the same reservation (not that anyone noticed/cared.)

He makes an case for a number of other countries that should be included in the most famous acronym in the emerging markets; Turkey, Mexico and so on. All good choices, Turkey especially.

He also makes this point:
Indonesia, moreover, has shown resilience not only economically, but also as a nation. In spite of its diverse ethnic makeup and far-flung island territory, the country has made a quick transition from military dictatorship and has recovered from myriad challenges and setbacks, including the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the tsunami in 2004, the emergence of radical Islam, and domestic unrest. While Indonesia’s per capita GDP remains low, it is a country’s potential that matters in economic affairs, and here Indonesia shines.

I couldn't agree more.

News tries to Bing Google... may get Bonged

So play this WSJ/Bing drama out in your head (which is what I’m doing past midnight, so please forgive any fatigued leaps of logic)…

Bing pays NewsCorp some amount of money to be the exclusive search engine for its news properties, including the WSJ. It probably wouldn’t be a huge amount because Murdoch has it in for Google and being a thorn in the Googlers’ side is probably payment enough.

What happens next? WSJ traffic drops because about 75% of the searching population can’t find it? Maybe.

Or maybe other newspapers try to get a piece of the goods and start demanding either Bing or Google shell out some dough to search their sites.

If all the newspapers band together and demand payment for search from Bing or Google, that would be pretty powerful. That is a pretty big if, to assume that all media outlets would bandy together like that. Maybe the market would fracture and WSJ would go with Bing and NYT would go with Google.

Take this thought process one step farther and you have Bing as the conservative search site and Google as the liberal one. This may be stretching the thought process a bit but if this happens, it would royally suck and instead of the internet being a free forum of ideas, it would be bifurcated into two enormous echo chambers. But I digress….

Anyway, back to earth …. So Bing and Google begin to recoup their additional costs by charging advertisers a premium for placement on news related.

Of course, then some cottage industry would spring up of mirroring stories across the Net so any exclusivity to Bing or to Google would really only last a very short while. Like 2 seconds. That would lessen the incentive for advertisers to pay premium ad rates for exclusive content that isn’t really exclusive.

Anyway, you could continue to game this out back and forth in your head until you’re exhausted (as I was, when I first started this ramble.)

Bottom line, content is still king. You can play around with these funny web restrictions but ultimately, it is hard to imagine how they will work in a scalable fashion. The music industry tried all sort of “too-clever-by-half” legal and technical means to try to stop music pirating. Ultimately, they came to the realization of “hey, why don’t we give the customer what they want in a form they want it?” (epiphany courtesy Mr. Jobs)

This NewsCorp/Bing deal has the same feel to it. Instead of giving people the news in a manner and format that is of value to them (ie, that they will pay for) large companies with more money than savvies are trying to come up with ways to restrict content in the online world, which inherently defies restriction.

But then again, Rupert has shown his online chops by making MySpace such a success….

Bing Tries To Buy The News - washingtonpost.com

Climbing out of the Aid Trap

Although I would probably disagree with Glenn Hubbard about a lot of things, I am very eager to read his new book questioning the efficacy of past international aid initiatives.

The simple truth is that billions have been spent on aid, and billions are still left in poverty. Something clearly isn’t working. I understand that Hubbard looks at the post WWII Marshall Plan for inspiration on what could be done in the 21st century to address global poverty. Interesting idea.

Here’s a great quote talking about why microfinance isn’t enough. I’ll pre-empt the quote to say that I agree. Microfinance is great in certain instances, the rural poor for example, to help people on the path to economic development. But microfinance doesn’t really help SMBs and there is a real gap in the market there. Often SMBs are too big for microfinance, but too small for a regular bank loan, so they’re stuck. Happily, this gap seems to be filling in in many countries

Microfinance can be a catalyst for entrepreneurship up to a certain stage of business development, but the businesses launched through microfinance need to develop into full-fledged small businesses if they are to promote greater economic growth. Small and medium-sized businesses are the source of growth in all countries. Eighty percent of China’s employment, for example, is in small business — not in microfinance.

The barriers to growing past micro-entrepreneurship are formidable. Starting a formally-recognized business can require months of waiting, and paying enormous fees — including bribes — as the Doing Business rankings show. An example we use in the book is Mozambique, where starting a business requires forms 12 government agencies; you also have to pay bribes to each of the 12 government employees who stamp your documents. When you have 12 stamps, you can — at last — run your business without fear of being shut down. Similar hurdles in other countries mean that micro-entrepreneurs have a very difficult time becoming a political or economic force strong enough to challenge the status quo.

The bright spot is that micro-lenders are increasingly expanding their loan programs to serve not only individuals, but also established small and medium-sized businesses. Our proposal includes provisions for supporting existing small and medium-sized businesses through microfinance institutions.

Climbing out of the Aid Trap

Woman passes 950th driving test

Valuable lesson in persistence. She narrowly beats my record for most driving tests attempted.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Woman passes 950th driving test

What the credit crisis should tell us about climate change

Given how well excessive financial engineering seems to have buggered the economy, I’m amazed that there are some who advocate “climate engineering” to address the issue of global warming.

I’m all for trying out new technologies, in addition to reducing carbon emissions, as a way to try to mitigate some of the potential damage that climate change could have on the very fabric of humanity.

But thinking that there are some quick and easy gadget-driven fixes such as, and I quote: “one proposal would have boats spray seawater droplets into clouds above the sea to make them reflect more sunlight back into space” seems a little...ahem...pie-in-the-sky.

To further quote:
Some economic models find that target impossible to reach without drastic action, like cutting the world population by a third. Other models show that achieving the target by a high CO2 tax would reduce world GDP a staggering 12.9% in 2100—the equivalent of $40 trillion a year.

Some may claim that global warming will be so terrible that a 12.9% reduction in GDP is a small price to pay. But consider that the majority of economic models show that unconstrained global warming would cost rich nations around 2% of GDP and poor countries around 5% by 2100.

Right, because, as we’ve noticed with a credit crisis, economic models have served us so well.

Again, I’m not trying to be anti-intellectual here. I greatly respect the models economists do as a guide to help us think about the possible consequences of our actions. But that is all they are, models and guides, which do, and should, change as new data becomes available. I greatly respect technology as a fundamental tool for human advancement. But that is all technology is, a tool used by intelligent people, not a deus ex machina, bailing us out at the critical moment of tragedy.

In a time when we worry about how government action will have “unintended consequences” on the global economy, I’m amazed at how readily people accept the notion of climate engineering. The Earth’s climate is an infinitely more complex system than the global economy. The climate is the poster child for Chaos theory and how small perturbations can lead to enormous and unexpected results.

I defer here to Black Swan Nicholas Nassim Taleb who has had some of the most fascinating comments on our current economic crisis. Of climate change he said:

I am hyper-conservative ecologically (meaning super-Green). My position on the climate is to avoid releasing pollutants in the atmosphere, on the basis of ignorance, regardless of current expert opinion (climate experts, like banking risk managers, have failed us in the past in foreseeing long term damages and I cannot accept certainty in a certain class of nonlinear models). This is an extension of my general idea that one does not need rationalization with the use of complicated models (by fallible experts) to the edict: "do not disturb a complex system" since we do not know the consequences of our actions owing to complicated causal webs. (Incidentally, this ideas also makes me anti-war). I explicitly explained the need to “leave the planet the way we got it” .



Bjorn Lomborg: Technology Can Fight Global Warming - WSJ.com

Inversion of Statements Made During My Meeting With David Cameron

Global warming money for Africa... great idea.. in concept....

So here's the jist of the deal:

Experts say Africa contributes little to the pollution blamed for warming, but is likely to be hit hardest by the droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels forecast if climate change is not checked.

The draft resolution, which must still be approved by the 10 leaders, called for rich countries to pay $67 billion annually to counter the impact of global warming in Africa.

Kinda makes sense, doesn't it? Africa contributed least to global warming yet they might get hit hardest, so they want something for their troubles.

Sure, who could argue that it isn’t only fair? In concept anyway….

Trying to figure out how this would be deployed in practice makes my head hurt (or maybe my head hurts from the other work I should be doing, instead of goofing off and reading the news off the Internet). As I've said here a few times, the world is not short of cash for emerging countries. Between development banks, organizations and thoughtful individuals, there is actually a lot of cash floating around.

The problem is, how do you reasonably deploy and track that cash? Therein lies the rub. As someone who spends time on issues such as this, I can say there is far more cash than deployment models out there.

I hope this global warming reimbursement idea comes with some deployment and monitoring ideas. If so, it will have a higher probability of success.

Africa wants $67 bln a year in global warming funds | U.S. | Reuters