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Farhad Manjoo takes us through the origins of News Feed at Facebook, and its origins with Chris Cox who set up the News Feed operation in 2006 after leaving Stanford's computer science program at the age of 24. Manjoo describes the pain in Silicon Valley and many parts of America at the way the News Feed has acted as mere way of reinforcing people's own biases and creating different echo chambers for different biases. It has fragmented more than brought people together. The very idea of wiring people into the app as connecting people to talk to each other from different parts of the world and share different views is now called into question. Social media founders are also questioning whether wiring and connecting mean positive things in the context of what has happened with Google News, Facebook News Feed and Twitter in 2016-2017. The worst impulses have come to the fore, and it has happened to the point of shocking people who believed only positive things would come from technology and its application in news. Algorithm based news is open to error in many more ways than news discerned by human eyes and intuitive sense, and has the dangerous aspect of spreading misinformation like a wild fire on the internet. As Tim Berners-Lee points out the news is taken to the lowest common denominator because it is based on clicks, the social media sites make money on clicks and how often we click on something. Berners Lee says- “ the net result is that these sites show us content they think we’ll click on - meaning that misinformation, or ‘fake news,’ which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases can spread like wild fire.” Worse bots and people with bad intentions can game the system. The view at Lyrarc is that news was never intended to be taken up by algorithm based computer programs in the driver seat. Google started in 1998 and Google News started in 2006 making it only a decade old today,  Facebook started in 2004, and Facebook News is even more recent- less than a decade old. This is a period when “news” is experimenting with new technologies, and social media or search engines may never have been intended to serve as purveyors of news- that may never be their real role or purpose. For corrective action new developments have to take place taking technology out of the driver seat, and yet harnessing technology in other ways to help human eyes and intuitive sense work more productively, which is the vision at Lyrarc.   ...

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Internet company valuations and IPO's in mid- 2012 reach the frenzied levels before the the tech bubble burst in 2000-2001.

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Netherlands is well ahead of other countries in remote working. The percentage of employed persons working from home is about three times that of the U.S. or Britain. It is about 15% in Netherlands compared to 4-5% in the U.S. or Britain. A culture of near universal fast internet connections, a culture of trust with companies knowing the work will get done, and companies providing employees with funds to set up a good working environment from home. In some Dutch companies employees can take vacation freely as long as the work gets done. The idea of a whole work day spent at a desk in the office in some office building is not entrenched in Dutch culture. A U.S. poll shows 59% of remote workers would like to continue working remotely after the pandemic. Companies are shifting to a new culture of work done away from the traditional business office as the economy reopens. In the Netherlands the pandemic is only giving more confidence in the idea of working away from a business office. This can now catch on in the U.S. and other countries. ...

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The merger between U.S. based Omnicom Group and France based Publicis Groupe SA, two of the largest ad agencies. The merger is a response to the increasing shift to digital advertising, the shift to advertising being sold in automated trading, and data driven analysis. In all these shifts digital companies such as Google and Facebook have strong advantages. Around 22% of global ad spending is now digital, according to emarketer, with forecasts showing this going up to 27% by 2017. Automated buying of ad space is taking off. U.S. advertisers are expected to spend $3.4 billion on real-time bidding. Omnicom's CEO, John Wren tells analysts: "Digital buying of media is done by machines, as if you are standing on the floor of the Nasdaq as opposed to traditional media shop. I hold the long term belief that eventually traditional media, or a lot of traditional media is going to be purchased that way." Just as computers have upended the environment for traditional players such as the NYSE creating new opportunities for Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), computers and the internet are changing the advertising environment. CEO Levy of Publicis Groupe SA says the data explosion, Big Data, is also creating a new playing field in which companies such as Google and Facebook have advantages. In a statement about the deal he says: "the communication and marketing landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, including the exponential development of new media giants, the explosion of Big Data, blurring of roles of all players and profound changes in consumer behaviour." The merger will provide the new company the scale to develop these resources to compete with digital companies like Google and new entrants such as Salesforce.com and Adobe Systems. Omnicom has agencies BBDO, TBWA Worldwide, media buyer OMD. Publicis has Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi, media buyer Starcom MediaVest and digital agency Razorfish. The new Publicis Omnicom Group will have combined revenue of about $23 billion for 2012, and passes WPP Group PLC's $15.95 billion revenue. It will still be much smaller than Google with about 3 times WPP's revenue, and Google's advantage in storing trillions of pieces of data about user behaviour....

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The risks of coming up with a higher share price for Chinese social networking site Renren based on Facebook's IPO. Price to sales ratio for Renren was high at 22 before a rally, its even higher at 33, and increasingly risky. Larger operating costs and a less developed online advertising market mean Renren will barely breakeven in 2012. Sina's Weibo microblog has 200 million registered users, larger than the 137 million users for Renren at the end of third quarter 2011.

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Sudhir Venkatesh, a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, talks about how constructive expressions of anger that help us get out on the streets and talk to one another, to have stormy discussions in townhall meetings, and other constructive ways of expressing anger can help us overcome all those feelings bottled up inside us. Anger has a positive role to play in promoting catharsis and fostering real healing says Venkatesh. He even says we will recover our public life this way, by storming out onto the streets and then actually talking to one another. That is not so easy in a world of electronic devices and electronic communication like email and text messaging, and in a world where one tends to one's own little world with its daily frustrations and that credit card bill and the mortgage payment and the kid's tution payment. He actually invites the public to go out and do this rather than retreat each person into his own world of humiliation and struggles, or let the anger build up in an impersonal world of Internet, and with sporadic outbursts in small group protests. He doesn't see the Obama administration doing the broad and intensive campaign to shore up the housing, food and welfare safety nets which will be required, or the sustained committments from mayors, service providers and civic leaders. And he sees anger growing and its expression taking place only later on, as the public is patient for a long time, and then the anger just rushes out when it cannot be contained, as happened in the Great Depression. ...

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Friedman says Putin acted emotionally by letting impulsive reaction to the anti-Russian feelings in western Ukraine determine Russian policy following the collapse of the Yakunovych government. The months long Russian response in Crimea and eastern Ukraine may have secured Russian pride at a large cost. This includes the damage to the relationship with Germany, seting the EU on a path to look for other sources of energy to reduce dependence on Russian gas, a natural gas deal with China in which the price was kept "a secret" and may have provided China with a bargaining edge considering the timing of the negotiations. The most severe impact is in the loss of confidence within Russia, reminding the Putin administration that though the economy has grown in the Putin years it is still fragile and connected to the global economy. The capital outflows of the magnitude of $160 billion at a time of high inflation and sharply slowing growth actually put at risk the gains Putin and Russia made in the last decade, and risk the future agenda to improve the standard of living of the Russian people eyond the major cities. Putin's own assessment would eventually be closer to that of Alexei Kudrin. Kudrin, finance minister in Putin's previous term, correctly saw the dangers of impulsive policy concentrated in one figure, and the suppression of other voices including the opposition needed for Russia to be governed in a manner similiar to western Europe, to attain a similiar level of economic progress and standards of living. In today's global economy even the U.S., France, UK and states inside Germany need foreign investment for jobs, new ideas and technology, and the opinion expressed on media television and internet shapes investor sentiment to a larger degree than fully understood....

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Issues raised by UN control of Icann and the internet.

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A few events in the last 50 years are rewriting the rules for business, finance and economics, says the WSJ in this analysis. The admitting of China to the World Trade Organization under president Clinton in 2001 was one, another was the global financial crisis in 2009 with the selling of bad mortgages by the financial industry, the euro currency financial crisis with the bad accounting, real estate industry speculation, and lack of financial oversight in countries such as Greece, Ireland, Spain. The coronavirus pandemic is one more addition to this string of crises and events that have made the working class and middle class in US and Europe poorer and in worse shape after the recovery following World War II.  The changes indicated here are some of the surface changes- such as the shift to the suburbs for cleaner air and better living, the work at home as a serious option, the new focus on health care, wellness, exercise, nutrition and mental health, remote learning and community college as a realistic option to high tuition costs by the education industry, and a pharmaceutical industry refocused on public health and vaccines as it was in its early years before its shift into a simply profit driven industry. The underlying thread for all these changes on the surface is a deeper change in the public mind- a change that redefines what the people believe in just as happened after World War II. Rebuilding the devastated economies of Europe, America and Asia required a new vision at the time after World War II. And reconstruction could only happen with all the people involved and working for the public interest.  This also created a new hope for the future. President Biden's vision is for a new set of priorities that make child care, women's position in the economy, community college education as a right for all as a first step to opening the access to education that existed after the war in 1945. Investment in infrastructure, in building new roads, bridges and rail, water, internet connections, public services in transport, better layout of urban areas, better lives for retirees, are all part of an effort to improve quality and ease of living for all parts of society, not just those who can afford it.  This is uppermost on people's minds and administrations or governments that fail to deliver or simply talk with no action, will not have the support of ordinary working men and women in all countries. This is true for countries and regions as varied in their level of development as the US, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico, and African nations. Democracy, government adminstration, technology and business structures exist for the people, to improve the ease of living, quality of life, through better health, education and public services.  ...

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Prof. Jeffrey Wasserstrom of UC Irvine reviews Henry Paulson's "Dealing With China." Paulson was head of Goldman Sachs investment bank and Secretary of the Treasury 2006-2009, the period of the global financial crisis. He made 70 visits to China since his days at Goldman Sachs and calls Chinese leaders Jiang Zemin and Jinping "old friends." He established the Strategic Economic Dialogue in the Bush administration for dialogue on economic issues with China, and setup the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago to focus on China-U.S. relations. One of Paulson's points is that China's financial system faces a day of reckoning, with large losses and many restructurings. Wasserstrom's review looks at Paulson's view of dealing with China and points to a sense that it needs updating because by the time the book is published a lot has changed with the new Jinping administration. The new administration in China is more assertive in foreign affairs, and less tolerant of both the corruption that became part of the Chinese capitalist development inside a state run one party system, and of the voices for more openness. It also has placed tight controls on the Internet. Jinping sees a constructive role for the Communist party in the future as China makes economic reforms away from state run enterprises, and is working to strengthen the party through discipline and anti-corruption initiative. The reckoning Paulson mentions, Krugman and other experts have described in other language- not as a reckoning but that China was no exception and would face the same problems that the U.S. and the eurozone faced since 2008 from financial excesses. In this sense Paulson's views and interactions with the Chinese leadership may represent another era, a period of exuberance when some of these financial excesses were being built up. Today's economic team of Jinping and Li Keqiang is more focussed on making sure the transition through a economic crisis is managed carefully, keeping in mind the risks for China considering its history, and the situation where China is still a "middle income country" with aspirations for further development to improve incomes and living standards. Their view is that tight control is needed as China makes this transition to a less state enterprise dependent, and more consumer economy, so that there is no loss of the gains made so far. A different set of skills and deft management of the economy is needed, making Paulson's views from another era less relevant. External influences such as managing the complex China-Japan relationship as both countries become more assertive are creating another dynamic in Asia, which Chinese leaders may see as requiring careful management, making Paulson's experience less relevant for a new period with new challenges. For the U.S. the economic cooperation with China now occurs with an added political dimension. Of concern for the tight control, seen as not forward looking and not bringing more constructive voices into the system, and the new complexities of carefully managing the changing U.S.-China-Japan relationship in Asia. ...

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Dealogic reports show 64 U.S. listed IPO's raised $16.8 billion in the first 5 months of 2013, up from the $13.1 billion raised by 73 companies in the same period in 2012. Recent price gains by IPO's are driven by the lack of alternatives to stocks for investors in a low interest rate environment.

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Analysts raised questions about the 57% of IPO shares in the Facebook IPO that are being sold by private holders. By comparison the figure was 28% for Google and 38% for LinkedIn.

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The huge potential for online university courses.

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Experts at Stanford Law School say the fewer IPO's expected in coming years will be a good thing as it reduces the boom and bust cycles in tech and internet IPO's of previous years. New technologies enable firms to reach breakeven at a much earlier stage with smaller investment- using founders money and capital from angel investors and less reliance on venture capital- so that companies can focus on the long term. The result will be fewer jobs created in investment banking and more in other places.

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Zweig gives the example of Palm Pilot IPO shares in March 2000, which the parent company 3Com priced at more than 1,350 times net earnings for the Palm shares. He cites George Akerlof, who writes about identity economics, and points to the fact that users of a product can be so fanatically devoted to it so as to drive up the price for an extended period of time. In the case of Palm Pilot its users were fanatically devoted to the product. This appears to be true for Facebook with users who see their identity enhanced as they put up pictures of themselves and share with friends. Over time users may realize that it is their private information that Facebook is using to generate revenue. It also sets up the shares for a sharper reversal over time.

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The SEC requirement that companies disclose the ratio between median worker pay and the pay of senior executives. The SEC says it is putting out the rule as part of implementing Dodd-Frank legislation to control excessive executive pay. Companies will be allowed to survey a fraction of their workforce as appropriate for companies with global operations. Executive pay will include pension benefits and stock options under the new rule. A WSJ chart using information from the University of Southern California and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the ratio between what CEO's on average make and rank and file workers make remained at about 30 times in the post war period till about 1970, a period of rapid growth in the U.S. economy. By 1980 this climbed to about 60 times and exceeded 100 times by 1990. The period of stratospheric growth for CEO pay and extreme widening of the gap then occurs between 1990 and 2000. By 2000 the dot com boom- telecom boom and the internet- creates a surge in executive pay reaching over 500 times. This drops to about 280 times in 2008 and picks up again to reach about 320 times in 2011. Many of the poor business practices, the excessive leveraging and risktaking in the financial industry, take place against this background of excessive pay for senior executives. Some of that risk was passed on to others through such methods as securitization in the period leading to the 2008 financial crisis, so that executives were compensated with higher pay for taking excessive risk that they personally or their companies did not assume. Dodd-Frank legislation following the 2008 financial crisis sought to correct this imbalance by having pay information disclosed. The excessive pay has also coincided with an increase in the frequency of boom-bust cycles in the economy. The busts prompted the needs for intervention by the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, to drop interest rates more than would otherwise have happened during this decade, culminating in the huge bond purchases and monetary easing by the Bernanke Fed. The SEC under Mary Jo White is mindful of these distortions in the economy as a result of misallocation of resources based on excessive executive pay, and the need to take action before the next crisis. ...

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Pakistan has moved ahead in developing its nuclear arsenal. The production of uranium and plutonium for bombs and developing new weapons to deliver them has actually been accelerated during the recent period of unrest in Pakistan. Four years ago Pakistan had an estimated 30 to 60 weapons. Hans Kristensen, is the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists and author of the annual global nuclear weapons inventory published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Kristensen says it is not unreasonable to say that Pakistan has produced at least 100 weapons. Simon Gregory, Director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Britain's University of Bradford, puts the number at between 100 and 110. India is estimated to have 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. A 2008 agreement that lets India purchase nuclear fuel for civilian purposes was a motivation for accelerating nuclear weapons development in Pakistan. In December 2008, Peter Lavoie, the US intelligence officer for South Asia, told NATO officials that despite impending economic catastrophe, Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world," according to classified State Department cables released late last year by the Intenet site WikiLeaks. This leak angered the Pakistan army chief Gen. Kayani who said "the real aim of US war strategy is to denuclearize Pakistan."...