Business

Men are cheaper than shingles.

This problem originated in the most sophisticated and advanced financial markets because those are the markets where leverage was the greatest and people took the most advantage of it.

Unknown.

In a highly emotive and risk-averse market, rationality seems to fall by the wayside, with investors trigger-happy to pull immense volumes of liquidity out of assets at the earliest risk warning.

The USD is the world's most liquid currency, used as the tool of choice for global finance. It is for that reason that we, as observers, must pay great attention to policy changes such as this.

Toyota's reputation for long-term quality is finished. People aren't going to buy Toyotas, period. It doesn't matter which model. What's happened is sufficient to keep people out of the stores.

Automotive industry analyst and consultant, known for expertise in car manufacturing.

For commercial markets, a shift to collaborative economies is not far behind, and businesses must change their thinking about the nature competition, defending value, and other strategies if they wish to grow in an uncertain future.

Participants in each market, faced with threats, had to put competitive behaviour aside and realise the strength of collaboration.

Yahoo Inc. is aligned with Google in condemning the kind of cyber attacks that Google Inc. said Tuesday it experienced from China.

The proposed link-up between Microsoft and Yahoo has been approved by European regulators, paving the way for the two companies to combine their search engines and take on Google together.

It is the sinusoidal movement of economies between stage 1 and stage 2 which contributes to growth, while the participants in stage 3 very rarely contribute to any real economic growth as their entire theatre is virtual.

In December 2007, Listed credit derivatives stood at USD 548 trillion - to put that in context, The GDP of the entire world is USD 50 trillion. On top of the listed credit derivatives, there was also an OTC derivatives bubble which had a notional face value of USD 596 trillion.

And the overall picture that's emerging is that the controls which still work operate more along corporate boundaries than along national boundaries. In order to censor YouTube, for example, countries like Turkey and Pakistan had to block access to the whole site; it's not practical just to block selected content.

Cambridge computer scientist specializing in security engineering and cryptography

we are moving towards a global theatre where even though each actor (country) may be at different levels of economic growth, the technologies which exist to enable the globalisation stimulate high levels of transparency, meaning that each agent (companies, customers, suppliers, politicians, etc) will be accountable for their practices, and so must act with greater consideration (and less arrogance!)

organisations will often behave in international economic theatres (such as China) with the same operational processes and assumptions as their 'home' environments (such as Australia) with the assumed protection of the legal, political and other systems of their 'home' environments.

Asia region countries are able to shave not just 10% off process-costs versus their western counterparts, but often 60-80%, often bringing great improvements and advantages in the process. This ensures they are more agile and able to sustain competitive advantage through continual innovation.

Western societies have to heed the strategies of the east where innovation and progress are fundamental parts of their attitudes to business. Japanese carmakers built their sustainability from their constant ability to innovate rather than being cheaper.