From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Over 70% of the labour force in sub-Saharan Africa is involved in agriculture. This means the sector forms a lynch-pin of society.
One way to think about reserve currencies is to liken them to an operating system for a computer. Today, everybody is on Microsoft... but nobody changes... why? because everybody else is on Microsoft and if you want to exchange files and work together, you have to be on the same platform.
We're creating a different type of work. The average Dasher dashes for about four hours a week, and very often they're trying to save-up for something and use it as a supplement to their income.
In the long-term there is no way to reconcile the conflict of interest between serving the user and the advertiser.
Global investors were awash in cash due to current account surpluses in emerging economies and easy monetary policies. Investors from emerging economies first invested their rapidly rising wealth in risk-free Treasuries, but once they had their fill of Treasuries they looked for higher yield in what they thought was the next safest thing, U.S. residential mortgages. Due to shrinking returns on less risky investments, other global investors began to search for yield by taking more risk investing in more complicated securities and derivatives.
These revised capital adequacy guidelines will shield banks from another crisis in the format we have seen but provide little or no protection against events which could occur such as systemic capital disruptions from terrorism and conflict.
The past 10 days have been 'the most dramatic in Wall Street's 216-year history' seeing Lehman Brothers collapse, AIG fall into critical distress, and the US Federal Reserve creating a c. US$1 Trillion rescue plan to 'save the world'.
Milton Friedman had a postulate that capital would move into a region hit by an adverse shock. But as soon as you interrogate this postulate, it's manifestly rubbish. When Sheffield's steel industry collapsed, investment didn't flow in saying 'oh good, a depressed region.' It flowed out to the places which were booming and accentuated the divergence.
We have open and transparent pricing through our futures exchange- that means price is determined by buyers and sellers and not an 'official' selling price set by a producer.
Consider for instance that the bulk of the world's foreign exchange reserves – trillions of dollars – are held by developing economies, and that the US runs a current account and budget deficit of astronomical proportions.
Unless women have the chance to take up an active role in our economies and fulfil their potential, our ambitions for a fairer and more prosperous world simply won't be realised.
The average pay, inflation adjusted, has dropped more than 40% – yet the Gretchen Morgenson's of the world want to write that it's going up and up… that's just wrong.