In honor of the Lisbon Agenda
[T]here’s just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you’ll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don’t do. And if you don’t make something users want, then you’re dead, whatever else you do or don’t do. So really this [...]

- New York Times
When Microsoft and the European Commission meet next week in a Luxembourg courtroom for the latest stage of their long-running antitrust dispute, they will each argue that time has proved them right.

Escape From New York - Will Luxembourg replace Manhattan as the world’s financial capital? By Daniel Gross

Dan Drezner asks WTF? Data on the US economy are all over the map, and people he respects are wondering if the data aren’t missing important intangible things entirely, leading to a misleading picture of the economy as a whole.
Don’t look here for answers, but at least the questions are interesting.

Interesting news from the Czech Republic in this week:
The Czech republic has joined Slovenia among new member states with higher levels of wealth per capita than old member Portugal, according to European Commission statistics.
The central European country enjoyed gross income per capita of 73 percent of the EU 25 average last year compared to 71 [...]

This is the first really concrete piece of news we’ve had on the UK housing situation. George Wimpey Plc, Britain’s second-biggest homebuilder by revenue have just announced that full-year pretax profit probably fell for the first time in a decade:
U.K. sales slipped 1 percent to 12,100 homes, with the average selling price dropping 4 percent, [...]

It is surely welcome news to find the German citizenry content with Angela Merkel, and that this new found contentment is feeding into more positive views about immediate economic prospects. But oughtn’t we to remember that there is a thing called the first hundred days, and a phenomenon known as the ‘honeymoon period’.
There is [...]

Two bits of news this week appear to be unrelated. The interesting question is whether appearances are once more deceptive.
Firstly the US Treasury note situation:
At 6:23 am ET. the 10-year note yielded 4.393 percent while the two-year note yielded 4.396 percent.
Or as the FT puts it:
Yields on 10-year US Treasuries briefly fell below those on [...]

An intereresting piece in the FT today about 3g standards and China. Basically there are three competing technologies: the European-backed WCDMA and US-supported CDMA-2000 standards, and the Chinese TD-SCDMA technology. There is a wikipedia entry on TD-SCDMA. Basically the Chinese system doesn’t imply the payment of license and patent fees (what a surprise) and it [...]

Today’s news is of course welcome news for everyone who cares about poverty in the third world, but going back to my Evo Morales post during the week, this policy will only really bring the benefits it could do if it is combined with a systematic drive to change the demographic profile of these [...]