iamdanw / tags / money

Tagged with “money” (5) activity chart

  1. Nils Gilman: Deviant Globalization

    Nils Gilman describes deviant globalization as "the unpleasant underside of transnational integration."

    There’s nice tourism, and then sex tourism, such as in Thailand and Switzerland. The vast pharmacology industry is matched by a vast traffic in illegal drugs. The underside of waste disposal is the criminal dumping in the developing world of toxic wastes from the developed world. Military activities worldwide are fed by a huge gray market in weapons. Internet communications are undermined by floods of malware doubling every year. Among the commodities shipped around the world are exotic hardwoods, endangered species, blood diamonds, and stolen art worth billions in ransom. Illegitimate health care includes the provision of human organs from poor people — you can get a new kidney with no waiting for $150,000 in places like Brazil, the Philippines, Istanbul, and South Africa. Far overwhelming legal immigration are torrents of illegal immigrants who pay large sums to get across borders. And money laundering accounts for 4-12% of world GDP — $1.5 to 5 trillion dollars a year.

    These are not marginal, "informal" activities. These are enormous, complex businesses straight out of the Harvard Business Review. The drug business in Mexico, for example, employs 400,000 people. A thousand-dollar kilo of cocaine grows in value by 1400-percent when it crosses into the U.S. — nice profit margin there.

    http://fora.tv/2010/05/10/Nils_Gilman_Deviant_Globalization

    —Huffduffed by iamdanw 2 years ago

  2. What Next? Surviving the 21st Century

    The list of challenges facing the world is proliferating rapidly from climate change to nuclear proliferation and nobody seems to have much of a grip on what is going on. In this public dialogue hosted by Global Policy, a new innovative and interdisciplinary journal, Chris Patten and Professor David Held will discuss what we know in each of these areas and how progress can be made.

    —Huffduffed by iamdanw 3 years ago

  3. Cambridge Forum: Cornelius Vanderbilt - The First Tycoon

    T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon, discusses the life of 19th century railroad magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Born humbly on Staten Island, an un-schooled fist fighter, he lived to earn the respect of New York’s social elite and amassed one of the nation’s first impossibly vast fortunes. Stiles contends that Vanderbilt did more than any other individual to shape the economic world today.

    What business innovations, including the modern corporation, did Vanderbilt successfully create? How did he rout every competitor? What did President Lincoln ask of him in the Civil War? Why did he, one of the North’s leading business man, embrace the philosophy of the southern Jacksonian Democrats?

    http://forum-network.org/lecture/first-tycoon

    —Huffduffed by iamdanw 3 years ago

  4. Stephen J. Dubner | SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

    Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner spent more than two years on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. The book offered surprising insights into hot-button issues like cheating, crime, parenting, and class consciousness, in a compelling and readable style. Now, with SuperFreakonomics, the "rogue economist” and the award-winning journalist delve into the hidden agendas of all kinds of individuals, and the incentives that drive them. Featuring: Stephen J. Dubner is an author and journalist, formerly a writer and editor for The New York Times Magazine. The author’s Freakonomics blog on the New York Times website receives more than 1 million unique hits each month.

    http://libwww.freelibrary.org/podcast/?podcastID=452

    —Huffduffed by iamdanw 3 years ago

  5. PlanetMoney - MySpace Was Born of Total Ignorance. Also Porn and Spyware.

    "If you find MySpace more chaotic than Facebook, that’s no accident. Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson wanted to create a site that’s just as disorienting as your average nightclub, a crazy landscape of musicians and models and Hollywood desire, says Julia Angwin, author of Stealing Myspace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America.

    DeWolfe and Anderson came to their social networking juggernaut from the world of porn and spyware. Their greatest asset? Complete ignorance, Angwin says. Not knowing what to fear, the entrepreneurs just dove in. It gave them a great beginning, Angwin says, but became an Achilles heel."

    From http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/08/podcast_myspace_was_born_of_to.html

    —Huffduffed by iamdanw 3 years ago