U.S. Can Maintain Top Economic Spot With Innovation

Image @Wikipedia

By Jason Koebler – “I’m not sure that [China] is doing such a better job than we do,” Fred Guterl, executive editor of Scientific American, told a group of manufacturing executives at today’s MAKE: An American Manufacturing Movement conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Council on Competitiveness, a consortium of CEOs dedicated to keeping America in the top manufacturing spot worldwide.

According to the report, “Americans are makers–a nation of tinkerers, inventors, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs … We remain deeply concerned that the United States has yet to understand and fully respond to the challenges affecting the American economy.” more> http://tinyurl.com/bqw47kc

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• Alexander Hamilton’s manufacturing message (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
• Chinese Expansion Stepping on US Toes in the Pacific (dakotavoice.com)
• U.S. Commercial Exceptionalism Can Level the Playing Field With China (bigthink.com)

EU summit: le crunch

Editorial – David Cameron went to Brussels promising to safeguard the City, when financial regulation is not remotely on the agenda. Angela Merkel joined him with a plan that avoids the real issues. Each is convinced they are playing clever national politics. In fact, both are playing poor European ones.

There is only one direction of travel for British Eurosceptics. They can pull Britain further away from the core Europe that is being created, but they can not simultaneously exert more influence over it. It’s nothing to do with economics or politics. It’s physics. more> http://tinyurl.com/bojreuj

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• Europe moves ahead with fiscal union, UK isolated, Paul Taylor and Julien Toyer, Reuters
• Britain stands alone against EU deal, Gregg Benzow, Richard Connor, AP/Reuters/AFP/Deutsche Welle
• The Birth of a Two-Speed Europe, Carsten Volkery, SPIEGEL ONLINE
• Half-Baked Treaty Deal Could Lead to Collapse of Euro Zone, Felix Salmon, Daily Beast
• Cameron ‘in the corner’ as EU strikes euro treaty deal, EurActiv.com
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• EU Summit: Live, EurActiv.com
• Britain, not leaving but falling out of the EU (economist.com)
• Cameron isolated as leaders meet to save euro (independent.co.uk)
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• EU summit and debt crisis: live (telegraph.co.uk)

Social networking, ignorance, and apathy

Image by IvanWalsh.com @Flickr

By Mark Gibbs – The problem of trusting social networking services with your personal data has been much discussed over the last couple of years and the issues are straightforward: They (the social networking services) want you (the consumer) to tell them everything about yourself, including who your friends are, where you go, and what you do, and provide pictures and videos of yourself and your friends … oh, and could you invite all your friends so we know your connections and label those faces for us? Honest, we promise we won’t do anything you wouldn’t like with all of the data; honest!

Despite the fact that we know that social networking services have had major privacy failures, most users either believe, ignorantly, in the services’ abilities to maintain their privacy or, apathetically, they don’t care or can’t be bothered and thereby ignore the failures. more> http://tinyurl.com/7upvm4p

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Bloomberg’s Plan for World Domination

By Nick Summers – As most of the news industry withers, Bloomberg is booming. Terminal money, which accounts for 80 percent of revenue, has helped the company hire more reporters and editors than anyone else on the planet—more than 2,700 of them—over the last 20 years, from Abuja, Nigeria, to Zagreb, Croatia. More recently it has launched powerful new tools for lobbyists, lawmakers, and other power brokers. Long averse to acquisitions, Bloomberg has also started buying up things it covets, like Businessweek magazine and, just this August, the legal-political research behemoth BNA. There is talk that the Financial Times might be its next meal. more> http://tinyurl.com/6wyclz6

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• Bloomberg Agrees to Acquire Researcher BNA for $990 Million (businessweek.com)