Duvet-Dayz.com: use this bar code to access our RSS feeds and posts on your mobile phone
Archive for the 'Economics' Tag
1 post(s) are associated with this Tag
USA: Elizabeth Warren at the Democrats in Massachusetts
Elizabeth Warren at the first debate of Democrats in Massachusetts:
“…Everyone has to follow the law. That has to be the story in place. But no one understands better what the frustration is right now.
The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there is still no basic accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it…”
Continue reading…
Life: We are the 99 percent
This is not about right versus left … about the poor versus the rich … It’s about right versus wrong. When people are loosing their homes, their pensions or their jobs having worked whole lives often multiple jobs at the same time while those very few who profit from the current “business climate” often have never really worked all their life, breaking and bending the law left, right and back, not paying or paying nearly no taxes while those who have nearly nothing pay most, something is substantially wrong and must change very quickly before the overall situation explodes. But this is maybe what some of those few “really” want besides bringing back fascism and slavery…
Continue reading…
Portugal: Where you have to study to be a slave – Parva Que Sou – Deolinda
Not only in the Arabic world where young protesters have overturned regimes installed decades ago and kept alive by generous aid from abroad and oppression of their citizens, this summer also in Europe young people in many countries were filling the streets with their protest and anger.
In Lisbon, Portugal earlier this year about 300’000 people were protesting against so-called austerity cuts and the way how current politicians want to remedy the damages from the global financial crisis on the back of the poorest and the young. These were the biggest protests in Portugal since the Carnation Revolution in 1974 that overturned dictatorship.
A song that got accidentally famous on the Internet in Portugal is currently making its way across Europe. It strongly expresses the feelings of …
Continue reading…
Finance: The Indian Venture Capital Industry – Interview with Pravin Khatau
Mr Pravin Khatau, a native Indian and a former Executive Director with Goldman Sachs, has a distinguished track record in Venture Capital investing globally and particularly into the Indian markets. He was previously on the board of a well known VC firm in India and is currently also serving as a Board member of the MVCA in Europe.
Mr Pravin Khatau was kind enough to share his insights into the Venture Capital industry with Duvet-Dayz as part of our Venture Capital series…
Continue reading…
Finance: Are technology VCs coming back? (Part 1)
After quite a few years of dull runs since the 2000 IT bubble burst and together with it many hopes and portfolios of high flying Venture Capital firms in Silicon Valley, it seems they getting back again into full swing.
While many of the smaller VCs still struggling to get new funds in, last week’s successful placement of a new USD 650 Million fund by Andreessen Horowitz, basically tripling their capital for investment, speaks a different language.
With nearly zero return on treasuries, negative yields on TIPS and very low coupons on newly emitted corporate bonds, the huge increase of capital available through Quantitative Easing and money presses running non stop around the globe, more and more capital seems to seek investments that provide income beyond such meager returns. Private Equity and Venture Capital funds have demonstrated this in the past.
Investors putting money into Private Equity or Venture Capital funds that are considered an illiquid asset class, do certainly believe that holdings in companies even within the less mature ones VCs normally invest into will provide (more) tangible assets for their money than by investing into such companies via the stock markets which in the U.S. have endured an constant outflow of retail investors funds over the last year.
And the battle for investments between VC funds looks like heating up again (like it’s 1999 ???) when following the bidding war of various VC funds over a 6 month old small New York start-up called GroupMe that Khosla “won” during the last days by valuating it at a hefty USD 35 million.
There are nevertheless many changes since the 2000s – particularly for VCs investing into technology start-ups.
First with cloud services from Amazon and …
Continue reading…
Climate-Change: Copenhagen and now?
So the vast “show and photo opportunity” meeting in Copenhagen is coming to an end now and could someone please tell what has actually been achieved in this huge media event.
A 3 page document with some teasers but now clear road-map on who-does-what-and-when. The talks on atomic weapons between the U.S. and Russia that happened at the same venue might prove to be more outcome oriented then that other show.
Will the bankster be allowed to expand their casino games with derivatives / virtual money creation for them to the so-called “Cap & Trade” certificates and thereby will most certainly create a world-wide crisis that will be bigger by orders of magnitude than the current financial crisis?
Will someone start to limit the global levels of pollution instead of fostering opaque trading schemes that are only good for story telling and profiteering – read: the industrialized nations reduced their pollutions – e.g. by 30% while at the same time the polluters have just shifted those factories somewhere else where these are then for whatever reason not counted into the scheme?
Will the whole thing like in other areas e.g. pandemics be handled by some kind of fund or financial instrument that in the past have regularly proven to be the most inefficient way, without any accountability or actual transparency, blowing money on themselves and their buddies, often institutionalized corruption and rates as bad as US$ 1000 put in and a mere US$10 arriving at the actual cause?
Well let’s see what the soon to happen next meeting in Berlin will bring…
Continue reading…
