Twitenomics! The economy according to the people of the Internet.

The World of Facebook economists was remarkably sparse with only one story, that of China announcing the disappearance of 44,000 ancient ruins in its first heritage census in 20 years. This remarkable news provoked the thoughts of Laven Photography Products, who remarked “That really sucks,” well at least they’re straight to the point. Aloysius Kaswy Ho summarised the definition of economics, that of allocating scarce resources to infinite wants, by saying “You can’t have it both ways” before going on to say “wish we could have the cake and eat.”

Meanwhile, back on twitter the rich and the famous were imparting their words of wisdom. Ed Miliband used his 140 character limit to hit out at David Cameron claiming the “PM is wasting £3.45billion on NHS restructuring whilst cutting 48000 nursing jobs” and even creating a petition surrounding it. Meanwhilst Lord Sugar contemplated whether “Rupert Murdoch is eyeing up Twitter to buy or invest in it,” mentioning how Murdoch missed on an acquisition of Facebook and Myspace, other than that Lord Sugar was to busy arguing with Piers Morgan over the sale, and abandoning, of their books.

The Dragons were at it too. Duncan Bannatyne expressed his opinion that Diane Abbott should resign for having no common sense,” referring to Mrs Abbot’s after she used Twitter to express comments, which many took as racist. She remarked “White people love playing “divide and rule” we should not play their game”. Fellow Dragon Theo Paphitis was, however, still mourning the death of LaSenza but was hopeful as, in response to an article by Graham Hiscott in the daily Mirror, “Lasenza staff have been in touch re BouxAvenue” essentially saying that loads of LaSenza staff are transferring to Paphitis’ new venture in BouxAvenue.

Jimmy Carr’s regular twitter jokes this week included one on David Cameron putting “a cap on immigrants coming into the UK”. Carr remarked that they “should be aloud to wear what they like”.

After all of this what did self-proclaimed businesswoman Paris Hilton have to say on the economy? Well, although I often make fun of her, this week Ms Hilton revealed, on Twitter, that she had earned over $1.3billion dollars since 2005 claiming it to be down to her being involved in her products every step of the way. “It’s great to be an independent business woman!” she remarked. Well done Paris, although please stop spamming my timeline with updates on you new chiropractor! 

24 hours of economics in 240 words! An economic snapshot number 16!

For January 6th
0:12 a.m. Toyota unveils new safety technology with the hopes of bringing back customers.
2:59 a.m. Samsung are expecting profits 73% higher than the previous year.
5:15 a.m. Japan airlines has plans to relist its shares on the Tokyo stock exchange, with predicted share sales of 1trillion Yen.
7:16 a.m. Business leaders and economists have backed plans to link Birmingham to London with a new high speed railway.
7:56 a.m. HTC's fourth quarter are down 28%
8:10 a.m. Former Olympus head, Michael Woodford, has abandoned his bid to take over the firm, after failing to win over shareholders.
9:31 a.m. According to Halifax, house prices fell 1.3% in 2011.
10:51 a.m Unemployment has stayed at record highs in Eurozone countries with the jobless rate at 10.3%.

Today Blacks announced it would be going into administration
before then confirming a takeover by JD sports.

11:09 a.m. Houser registrations fell 4.4% in 2011, to 1.94million.
1:50 a.m. After the rail fair price hike, it is suspected that the UK has the highest rail fairs in Europe, if not the world!
2:56 a.m. 1.4million customers of doorstep lenders have had their details lost!
4:29 p.m. Blacks leisure has announced that it will go into administration, albeit briefly during a takeover procedure.
9:31 p.m. JD sports is set to to purchase Blacks leisure, who employs over 3,000 employees, the company recently went into administration.

24 hours of economics in 240 words! An economic snapshot number 15

For January 5^th

5:02 a.m.  Britain’s £5billion-a-year scrap metal industry is going to get tougher restrictions, to prevent metal theft.

7:37 a.m.  Clinton Cards has reported with the like-for-like sales falling 1.4% in the months leading up to the New Year.

9:50 a.m.  Waitrose claims it’s sales rose 3.8%, during the Christmas period, with the online operation’s sales rising 49%!

10:49 a.m. JJB reports a 5% rise in sales for the Christmas period, with a cash margin increase of 6%. Their like-for-like sales, however, fell around 7.8% in the months leading up to it, which was still a 10% improvement on the months before that period.

A bitter health pill: Unite union continues
to oppose NHS pensions!

11:38 a.m. Hungarian currency, the forint, has fallen to 323.40 against the euro, a record low.

1:51 p.m.  China’s largest airlines will not pay the EU tax on carbon emissions, according to their trade body.

4:14 p.m.  Mercedes-Benz has had record sales as the company’s sales rose 8% last year!

4:56 p.m.  The Euro has fallen to $1.2780 dollars, a 16-month low!

5:18 p.m.  Shell has closed its final-salary pension scheme, being replaced by a 2013 pension membership scheme.

5:32 p.m.  Cameron and Clegg have hopes for progress on an “anti-avoidance” tax rule in the budget and have pledged a crack down on tax avoidance.

6:43 p.m.  Petroplus has had its credit lines blocked, after borrowing freeze.

8:25 p.m.  The Unite union continues to reject the government’s public-sector pensions for NHS workers, despite latest offer, even threatening to strike during the Olympics.

an Economic Problem for Dummies! Todays problem: the future of Britain!

“I hear there’s another recession on the way. Tea anyone?”

Last year Britain’s political programs and opinionated shows all rang out with talks of the Big Society, free schools and health reforms. So… What happened? Well long story short Britain was just barely emerging from a recession so the government essentially scrapped those policies. Now politics, in the UK at least, is all about the economy and good job too as there’re economic storm clouds brewing.

            Well, how bad are things going to get. The short version: bad. The long version: very bad. The OBR’s forecast predicts a narrow escape from a looming recession and that’s assuming that the Euro crisis resolves itself with little to no complications. Which isn’t especially likely. The EU, our main traders, are having their banks struggling to shed assets, there are budget cuts and the threat of credit shortages are incredibly likely. Back home, we have our own problems. Our wage growth is half that of the level of inflation and our power of spending is scarce. Plus, workers in the public-sector are facing lower pays, this may even cause more strikes and, subsequently, more economic problems.

George Osborne's well thought out plans for UK's future may
actually give him something to smile about!

            Is the chancellor improving things though? And what does Britain generally have planned for this oncoming storm. The plans that were, this week, announced suggest that the public-spending cuts will last for another five years and it is hoped that growth can be stimulated by boosting the spending on schools, roads and other common public goods by over £5billion, over the course of the next three years. This seems sensible, although one would think that more capital spending could be made without putting our financial credibility in danger. Plus encouraging investments would provide a more certain boost than a temporary cut. Guaranteeing bank bonds to foster £20billion of small business lending bonds seems sensible too.

            So Britain’s outlook looks pretty dire. But we can take comfort in the fact that the chancellor is doing a good job, maybe not quite perfect but quite possibly. And it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to do much better at circumnavigating this potential double dip recession but at least we know we are ready, even if the recovery will then be another long and painful road.

            

24 hours of economics in 240 words! An economic snapshot number 14

For January 4^th

0:08 a.m.  Labour has said that the tax break plan, designed to give 400,000 businesses relief, has been a “total flop”.

6:51 a.m.  Ecuador has appealed against a court ruling for Chevron to pay £11.5billion for Amazon oil damage.

7:31 a.m.  China has uncovered £54billion of irregularities in its local government debts.

7:43 a.m.  The US Federal Reserve said it’d publish regular interest rate forecasts.

10:16 a.m. The downturn in services in the Eurozone has slowed up to 48.8 from 46.4 in November.

11:38 a.m. John Lewis has large sales rise over Christmas period, household goods up 16.6% and fashion 10.3%.

Windows creator, Microsoft is suing British high street firm Comet

11:48 p.m. Nissan produced 480,000 vehicles at it’s Sunderland plant, last year, up 14% from 2010, with the Qashqai models accounting for 300,000 of them.

1:26 p.m.  Benefit and tax changes will hit families with children.

4:16 p.m.  Comet is being sued by Microsoft for, apparently, selling 94,000 fake windows recovery CDs.

4:23 p.m.  Yahoo has named Scott Thompson, the head of PayPal, as its new head.

4:52 p.m.  Swiss Bank Central has claimed that it’s chairman his wife made some “partly incorrect” dealings. Kashya Hildbrand bought 500,000 dollars before a reduction in the franc and then sold them on, and used the profit to buy a house.

5:33 p.m.  The government has appealed against high court ruling to cut solar panel subsidies.

6:36 p.m.  Next’s sales rose 3.1% and are on target with an outperformance of online sales.

24 hours of economics in 240 words! An economic snapshot number 13

For January 3^rd

0:01 a.m.  Finance chiefs fear that by the end of 2012 at least one country will have left the euro.

1:04 a.m.  Singapore’s growth slowed in the last quarter, only growing 3.6% from 5.9% previously, as it’s manufacturing industry is hurt by reduced demand.

3:10 a.m.  Iran’s rial has dropped 12% against the US dollar.

5:11 a.m.  Asian stocks get off to a good start with South Korea’s rising 2.5%

10:15 a.m. BP has asked for Halliburton to pay for the damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Could Iran have plans for nuclear weapons?

10:20 a.m. France is convinced Iran is developing nuclear weapons and wants to impose stricter sanctions on them.

10:35 a.m. Britain’s manufacturing rose to 49.6 despite predictions of a fall in the number.

11:57 a.m. Sales in the PS Vita have fallen further in Japan down to weekly sales of just 72,000, from originally 325,000 units.

1:02 p.m.  Bentley saw sales rise 37%!

2:06 p.m.  Germany’s unemployment level is at a record low with the number of unemployed people in the country falling 22,000 in December.

3:51 p.m.  There are fears that 550 jobs could be lost at seafood sites as Cambrian seafood were bought by Young’s seafood limited.

4:19 p.m.  ECB names Peter Praet its chief economist.

7:06 p.m.  Spain has approved legislations to block sites trading pirated material.

7:35 p.m.  Britain urges all businesses to stop doing business with Iran!

11:20 p.m. US crude Oil prices rose, up $4.13 per barrel.