It may be counter intuitive but Microsoft actually increased output by 40% in its 2500 person Japanese operations by mandating three day weekends in August 2019. Most of the performance gains came from: reduced meeting length the majority of meetings changed from one hour meetings to 30 minute meetings having more remote meetings primarily using Microsoft Teams More than 90% of staff said they preferred the 4 day work week to the traditional 5 day and Microsoft intends to run…
The “Yield Curve” is nothing more than a line between the dots on a graph of interest rates. At the start of the graph (on the left) is very short term interest rates and at the end of the graph (on the right side) is longer term interest rates. When long term interest rates are lower than short term rates it means business is expected to DECREASE over time. When the graph trends down, it is called an “inverted yield…
You might have heard that British people are fond of tea and to buy tea from China in the 1800’s they needed something to trade. However, the Chinese wanted very little the Brits had to offer. One thing Chinese citizens did like was opium (yes, that is the same drug that is behind the opioid crisis today). Fortunately for Britain, it effectively ruled India from the 1750’s on and took control of India’s opium business from that point on. This…
This topic is a departure from our usual focus on politics, tech and China but we thought it made an excellent point in a funny way you would like. As a… lets go with ‘gruff’ person myself, I sadly see tiny parts of Coleman Sweeney in me (pun intended!) and I have signed up for organ donation too. Be an asshole and sign up! In most countries you just have to fill our an organ donor card or sign the…
There are many that think Huawei is just a puppet of the Chinese government and an equal number that think the Huawei bans and bad talk are nothing more than hype designed to stifle a non-Western competitor. We recently wrote two articles explaining some of Huawei’s background: 10 Short Answers To Why Huawei is so Scary To Western Countries Who Owns Huawei? A Fascinating Story but neither our previous articles nor the political hype have clearly explained why countries should…
The goal of a trade war is to increase access to some other countries markets. However, we can simplify the logic by reducing down from a country scale to an individual business scale. At the single company scale, Company A withholds a key product or increases price on that product because they want something from Company B, perhaps increased sales effort of some key line. At some point the cost becomes too much for one or both of the parties…
Here are the numbers supporting what you likely already knew. George W Bush was not well liked or respected in the international community, largely because he polarized world leaders into “…those who are with (the US), or with the terrorists” Obama softened the US stance on international issues. He had been called the Consoler In Chief. Trump’s lack of foreign policy planning and his penchant for grandstanding has lead him to take hard line on almost everything. Thus far, he…
The cover of this weeks “The Atlantic” prompts a well logic’d article by David Frum (son of Barbara Frum and former speech writer for George W Bush), in which he explains two key points: the history and intent of refugee / asylum laws voters around the globe will select near fascists as a way to protect their borders As Mr. Frum correctly points out, the number of refugees (largely from Central America countries like Nicaragua) to the United States has…
Nearly 60% of people in the US, Canada and Britain believe in at least one notable conspiracy theory. This includes: 5% of Americans think airplane vapor trails are poison gas controlled by the government 46% of Americans believe in haunting’s or ghosts 60% of Americans believe the US Government had something to do with the murder of John F Kennedy 55% of Americans believe the US Government is withholding critical information about 9/11 attacks or was directly involved in the…
It is understandable that people often prefer to associate with people of their own groups. It is just easier to converse, live with and do business with people that share a similar background. Personally, I find that boring, but understandable. The Great Browning is the notion that over the next few hundred years the concepts of White, Black, Asian, … will all be relegated to the history books as nearly everyone’s skin will be some light shade of brown. The…
There is much talk about “Deferred Prosecution Agreements” because of the SNC Lavalin bribery scandals. The insinuation from many media outlets is that a Deferred Prosecution Agreement lets companies go without punishment. This is far from how DPA’s actually work. Here are the top five things everyone should know about Deferred Prosecution Agreements: 1 – What a Deferred Prosecution Agreement Is: A Deferred Prosecution Agreement effectively has the company plead guilty and do whatever the Government prosecutor wants them to…
Huawei is the massive Chinese telecom company that has mysterious financing and ownership. Their murky connections to the Chinese Government and military are of such great concern that some Western nations and companies have severed ties with Huawei. This is our third report in our series on the largest telecom company in the world. Our other two are: 10 Short Answers To Why Huawei is so Scary To Western Countries Who Owns Huawei? A Fascinating Story Which Countries Have Banned…
PartisanIssues.com has taken position that Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) will not actually occur likely because the current Conservative government will fall, forcing an new election in which Brexit is the big issue resulting in British citizens voting to stay in the EU. The main logic to this argument is that the ruling Conservative Party is a minority government that needs the support of a group of non-Conservative Irish MP’s from the Deomocratic Unionist Party that will bring down…
When we watch the TV or read the newspaper we often see something like “OIL IS UP TODAY” but we really don’t know what that means because there are so many different types of crude oil, each with its own price. Below we briefly explore the 6 oil products that are common to Canadians and Americans and at the bottom of this article we show 60 crude oil types and their prices from around the globe. You can see that…
This short clip from the author of “Prius or Pickup?” Jonathan Weiler, explains that political parties on the left and the right have stopped defining themselves by the size of government and instead focused in emotional responses to identity politics. The discussion uses the US system of Democrat vs Republican but it applies to nearly all parties globally. Political parties now energize there voters by vilifying the other side based on their identity: immigrant vs multi-generation citizen rural vs urban…
For many years I have argued that the solution to high health care costs with universal access is “Single Payer” with “Private Providers”. In other-words, the government collecting taxes from everyone for prescribed services though provided private health care companies that compete for those dollars through their own hospitals, clinics, home care… . And before you get your twitter-rage up, yes, I know that “prescribed services” is a particularly thorny phase that will cause many to recoil, but I think we…
In an era of apparently undeniable Russian state sponsored interference in American and UK Elections social media companies like Facebook, Twitter & Google have been called to account for their part in the ‘attacks’. This begs the question, how much responsibility do internet and social media companies really have for blocking misinformation by primarily foreign entities? In this video Bloomberg explores Keith Rabois’, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and PayPal Vice President, opinion that social media is just another form…
Joanna Coles on CNN’s “GPS with Fareed Zakaria” explains that people are transitioning from the classical method of meeting potential mates to an electronic process. She explains that there are serious positives to using apps to find potential spouses including: Drawing from a much larger pool Eliminating the effort required rule out a potential mate if there are characteristics you will not tolerate (i.e. Like Trump vs Hate Trump or Meat Eater vs Vegetarian) Reducing the frustration of not finding…
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