Singapore is one of the most competitive economies in the world. Despite its small physical and demographic size, the country takes immense pride in its ability to stand among the world’s economic giants as one of the best countries in the world for businesses and investments. However, according to Bill Rylance – founder and CEO of WATATAWA – Singapore’s competitive nature has led to a nation-wide obsession with global rankings.
Here’s a weekly look at the top business, finance and world economy news.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised a hard-won deal to rescue heavily indebted Greece from its financial woes, insisting Friday that it will steady the wobbly euro and showed that Europe could cope with the crisis despite having asked the International Monetary Fund to join in on a bailout package.
The European economy is not doing so well, and it’s no laughing matter – especially for Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain as they struggle to cope with debt and rest their hopes on a bailout, or exit from the Euro.
But every cloud has a silver lining and economies are resilient and always do – and will – find a way to bounce back. In the meantime, it’s Friday and with the weekend around the corner, here’s some light hearted humor to relieve some tension on what is a bad situation:
There are now more millionaires in Asia than there are in Europe, according to the 2011 Merrill Lynch-Capgemini World Wealth Report.
Bolstered by the economic growth in China and India, the rank of Asian millionaires grew by 10 percent to 3.3 million – coming in behind North America’s 3.4 million millionaires and ahead of Europe’s 3.1 million.
In a move that would seem to underscore the prevailing influence of the Internet, the Bank of England is now turning to Internet search data as a key source for tracking the latest economic trends and indicators.
[quote]According to its Q2 2011 Quarterly Bulletin:
Hundreds of species of marine life are facing mass extinction as pollution, climate change and overfishing threaten to create a catastrophe “unprecedented in human history”, according to the latest report by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Amidst growing concern over an inevitable new technology bubble burst, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz has come out in the Economist recently to argue that not only were we NOT in a technology bubble, but internet companies may actually still have potential for even more significant growth in their valuations.
The debt crisis in Greece is increasingly turning into a Greek tragedy, in both the literal and figurative sense, as Euro-zone finance ministers emerged from two days of discussion at the Luxembourg Summit to announce that the next tranche of aid to Athens would not be approved until the Greek parliament passes new austerity measures.
The Bitcoin movement suffered two major setbacks in a week – with two hacking incidents threatening to derail what Michael Suede of Libertarian News has described as “the most important creation in the history of men”
Malaysia is the latest nation seeking to tap into the African continent’s massive economic potential – following the success of countries such as China and India.
