No business is ever set up to fail. No business can survive a government fiat that mandates the entire sector to be shut down and negates the ability to do business. Yet this is exactly what millions of businesses throughout the world, both large and
You can almost hear the irony dripping as the echoes of comments reverberate throughout the ecosystem. The nation that led the data revolution and invented the job title of data analyst – the US – is, at this critical moment in history, without data. Meanwhile,
Economic crises do not call for half measures. As the impact of the virus makes its way throughout the world economy, government after government will be forced to react in extreme ways to counter the after-effects of this carnage. Most will simply be overwhelmed. However,
“We have magneto trouble …” wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1931. The Central Bank of the UAE has responded with a monetary stimulus package that will bolster confidence in some sectors. But how do we start up again with renewed vigour and confidence? The fundamental
“No one believes where the bottom is anymore. No one believes the original assumptions anymore …” These words were uttered by an embittered investor in the aftermath of the 1929 market crash. Similar words have been spoken at every moment when markets have tumbled. As
“Like being chained to a corpse isn’t it?” … This remark was offered to John Bayley by a fellow sufferer in a loveless marriage. Similar comments have been offered in recent years throughout the world when it comes to the question of real estate commissions.
Once upon a time, in the fictional kingdom of assets, the prevailing doctrine was that the acquisition of financial and real estate assets were a form of savings – the ability to get higher “coupon clippings” for taking a higher amount of risk. And that
In an “American Economic Review” paper, Peter Kennedy complained that statisticians often use formulas to get answers – but lack the understanding for their practical application. In today’s world, we see the output of this confusion in many forms when headlines scream “Growth accelerates even
There are few fields today that would not benefit from large, carefully selected data sets. However, lots of people – including scientists, businessmen and economists – put more stock in Big Data than they should. Understanding the data implies that we have to understand its
The law of unintended consequences is often associated with American sociologist Robert Merton, though its general spirit appears in many forms. Not least in Adam Smith’s notion of the “Invisible Hand”. The idea is that when people intervene in systems with a lot of moving
