Category: Personal Finance

Can Lawyers Be Replaced By Computers?


Lawsuits are expensive with lawyers and paralegals working at high hourly rates to comb over documents. So can smart software cut out the costly legal fees – or lawyers altogether.

“From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” said Bill Herr, who as a lawyer at a major chemical company used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.”

The 10 Richest Young People in the World


What is the one thing the world’s youngest billionaires have in common? For one, most of our top list – have made their money from the internet, and started with – not a lot.

Perhaps there is something to be said for the vast opportunities the world wide web has opened up for the ingenious entrepreneurs, and many more that walk in their footsteps.

Here is Forbes list of youngest billionaires:

The 10 Richest People on the Planet: Where All that Stimulus Money Went


11 March 2011.

All that Glitters: Gold and Silver Prices Soar to an All-Time High


 

Gold prices peaked at $1,440.32 per ounce on Wednesday, while silver struck a 30-year high of $35.36 on Friday. Investors who foresaw gold – and more recently, silver as top investment bets to eclipse crude oil were right on the money. But did they anticipate the spike in the commodity prices off the back of the crisis in Libya?

The Bangkok Post reported: 

India Union Budget 2011: The Net Effect for Indians and India Inc


1 March 2011.

India’s 2011 Union Budget was announced yesterday by Finance Minister Pranab Muhkerjee. The good news: no big changes in headline rates of taxation. The bad news: no big changes on outstanding reforms.

However, Mukherjee continues to show commitment to reforms.

Indians counting on a budget rich in new opportunities were sorely disappointed, although those in corporate India may come off happy – things might not be any better, but they haven’t gotten any worse.

Ant Tribe: China University Grads Not Finding Jobs


 

16 February 2011.

Liu Yang, a coal miner’s daughter, arrived in Beijing this past summer with

a freshly printed diploma from Datong University, $140 in her wallet and an air of invincibility.

Her first taste of reality came later the same day,

as she lugged her bags through a ramshackle neighborhood, not far from the Olympic Village,

where tens of thousands of other young strivers cram four to a room.

Yunus: Re-Orienting Micro-Credit for People, Not Profit


15 February 2011.

Here at EconomyWatch, we consider micro-credit to be a key issue in one of our main concerns:

the impact of world political economy on ordinary people’s lives.

We have looked at the situation from the perspective of those promoting micro-credit for profit,

John A. Paulson’s Gold Bets Net Handsome $5 Billion Profit


 

John A. Paulson is a hedge fund manager known for having the Midas touch. 

Founder and president of Paulson & Co., a New-York based hedge fund, Paulson is best-known for his tidy $5 billion profit in 2010 (according to two investors in his company) – when the housing market collapsed.

Paulson believed the dollar would lose its value in the coming years and so invested in gold via a gold exchange-traded fund (ETF), SPDR Gold Shares one of the largest ETFs in the world that holds 1,230 metric tons of gold bars in HSBCs vault in London.

Reliance “Family Tower” Highlights Mumbai Wealth Gap


25 January 2011.

Mumbai’s Ambani family — founders of Reliance, India’s largest and most powerful company —

has long been known for its “larger than life” story / ambitions / and success.

And now that quality has been embodied in a cantilevered sheath of steel and glass,

soaring 27 floors into the sky —

in which five — that’s right, 5 — people will hold court.

Still, it does seem they’re expecting guests.

The parking garage fills six levels.

Online Credit Card Fraud: Prevention and Detection Advice


Credit card scams and fraud have become widespread and common with the use the internet where credit cards are used for transactions and payments everyday.

Fraudsters do everything from stealing credit cards to stealing entire identities to create new credit card accounts and create false payment pages online to capture credit card details – and then go in for the loot.

 In the UK alone, fraud was estimated at US$800 million in 2006.