Scholastic, a publishing company, announced that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", the latest book in J.K. Rowling’s saga due to be released on July 21, will be printed in 12 million copies in its first run. The book’s list prices are $34.99 for the standard edition and $65 for the deluxe edition. (News Source)
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On January 1st, the European Union has grown to 27 member states and 23 official languages. As a result, the European Commission’s translation and interpretation services - which gobbled up 1.1 billion euros last year - now need to cover as many as 506 language pairs. (News Source)
At last I understand why the United States has no official language!
(Contributed by Al Borzee, San Mateo, CA, USA)

Transparency International just released its annual "Corruption Perceptions Index" ranking countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. The governments of Finland, Iceland and New Zealand are perceived as the most honest in the world, Haiti’s as the most corrupt. (News Source)
With the index ranging from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt), countries such as Italy, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Greece, Poland, they all got a score below 5: countries applying for EU membership need not worry about their level of corruption.
(Contributed by Ares Palamidis, Athens, Greece)

Jim Cramer, a stock-picking star, is the target of CramerWatch.org’s sarcasm. The site pits Mr Cramer’s "buy" and "sell" recommendations against those of a monkey - that is, completely at random. It is claimed that the monkey has a better overall stock-picking record. (News Source)
Not only the monkey does better than Mr Cramer, it would probably do better than many stock analysts, any finance professor would say - and it would cost just a few bananas a day...
(Contributed by Brit Butler, Hamburg, Germany)

On September 7, Amazon.com launched Unbox, a video downloading service. Just five days later, Disney started distributing its movies on Apple’s iTunes Store. In less than a week, Disney has sold 125,000 digital movies, generating $1 million. No figures are available for Unbox. (News Source)
In order to be first-to-market ahead of Disney and Apple, Amazon launched a flawed service - a software upgrade to its video player is already available. Amazon won the race, Disney and Apple got the customers!
(Contributed by Jeff Wycoff, Ottawa, Canada)

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest lender, plans to raise up to $21 billion from international and domestic markets next month in what is said will be the world’s largest initial public offering ever. (News Source)
Only a month ago, Air China was forced to slash its one-billion-dollar share sale by almost 40% due to a collapse in investor demand... If ICBC goes below 40%, it will surely set a record!
(Contributed by Arthur Prescott, Hong Kong)

The World Bank just released “Doing Business”, a report ranking 175 economies by their business environment. Italy ranked a poor 82th, also because contract disputes take on average 1,210 days to resolve there, compared to 109 days in New Zealand and 520 days in Iraq. (News Source)
I’m glad to see that France ranked 35th. And we could be even higher in the list, if only it didn’t take 183 days to register property here, against an OECD average of 32 days...
(Contributed by Georgia Pruvost, Bordeaux, France)

Thanks to "a better trend in the financial markets of exchange", the Vatican ended the 2005 financial year with a positive balance of €9.7 million - an improvement of €6.6 million over 2004. (News Source)
The Italian Treasury Minister should embark on a two-mile pilgrimage to see Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani, head of the Vatican's Office for Economic Affairs, and appeal for divine intervention for Italy's budget.
(Contributed by Valentina Viconi, Milan, Italy)

The 2006 Back-To-School Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, just released by the US National Retail Federation, projects a 31% overall spending increase compared to 2005, with spending on electronics and computer-related equipment up 85%. (News Source)
If the actual numbers resemble the survey results, this will be the best back-to-school retailing season in the United States in at least 30 years. Who believes this will actually happen?
(Contributed by Mark Lilien, Management Consultant, Retail Technology Group, Stamford, CT, USA)

David Carruthers, CEO of BetOnSports, an online gambling firm, was arrested on Sunday while changing planes in Texas after arriving from London, where his company is listed, and heading to Costa Rica, where it is based. His arrest highlights US authorities' resolve to prevent US citizens from gambling over the Internet. (News Source)
The authorities are right: online gambling is immoral and you should quit. US authorities are also understanding: if you are unable to quit, you can always place online bets on horse races and participate in online state lotteries...

In March, the Economics Department of ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank, published a report claiming that "An Italian World Cup victory would make a contribution to an economic upswing in Europe, which would help to reduce the imbalances in the world economy." The day after Italy's win, an Italian Treasury official stated that, "Italy's victory could add 0.5% or more to its economic output for this year." (News Source)
A perfect example of the "butterfly effect": a small ball bouncing in Berlin gives an economic thrust to Italy that goes on to spread throughout Europe and the whole planet! It is no surprise that cunning policymakers make use of such nonsense. What’s really surprising is ABN AMRO's willingness to publish it under its own name.

DaimlerChrysler announced plans to sell the two-seat Smart mini-car in the United States. The 8-foot long, agile city car is a familiar sight on the streets of European cities such as Paris and Rome. (News Source)
Many industry analysts say that small cars have no market in a country of SUV enthusiasts. In the early 1980s, however, industry analysts said that McDonald's had no market in gourmet countries such as France and Italy - where the fast-food giant later opened hundreds of profitable outlets.

Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest man, made a stunning gift of $31 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which will double in size as a result. According to Mr Buffett, "You need to seek out people with a talent to distribute money in the same way as you do for those to accumulate it." (News Source)
Mr Buffett's ability to predict stock markets gained him the nickname "The Oracle of Omaha". In fact, only an oracle would place such enormous bet on Mr and Mrs Gates' untested philanthropic talent.

In 1995, Craig Newmark created "Craigslist", a website about cool events in San Francisco. Today, Craigslist is a free-classifieds website serving local communities in the US and abroad - the seventh most popular site in the world. Despite such amazing success, Craigslist's 2005 revenues were as little as $25 million. According to an industry analyst, Craigslist could generate $500 million by simply posting a couple of ads on each of its pages. (News Source)
Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster undoubtedly are not in the business for the bucks. But in 2004, the online auction giant eBay acquired a 25% stake in Craigslist: the day we see those few ads on Craigslist, we'll know eBay’s stake just reached 50.1%.

Some 20,000 German doctors employed in state-run hospitals and university clinics started a series of strikes in March, demanding a 30% pay increase and a reduction in working hours. As their requests have not yet been met, thousands of doctors have just decided to go on indefinite strike, delaying operations at hospitals even in those cities hosting the World Cup. (News Source)
The world's biggest sporting event is expected to attract one million foreign guests to Germany and billions of TV viewers. Did anyone tell German doctors that a medical strike under these conditions sounds like blackmail?

For the first time in its history, IBM, the world’s largest provider of computer services, held its annual analyst meeting outside the United States in the Indian city of Bangalore. The company announced it will triple its investment in India to $6 billion over the next three years. With 43,000 local employees, IBM is already the largest foreign employer in the Asian subcontinent. (News Source)
After the 2004 sale of its PC division and this move, not much will be left of the original “International Business Machines”. IBM might as well stand for “Indian Business Mantras”.

On May 24, Vonage, a voice-over-internet-protocol company, held its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Vonage shares were offered at $17, but dropped to $14.69 by mid-morning, dipped below $13 two days later and are now traded at around $12.50 - more than a 25% loss in one week. (News Source)
The media instantly dubbed it the "worst tech IPO in two years". But since its inception in 2001, Vonage has incurred losses in every quarter, accumulating a deficit of $455 million. Still, the company managed to raise $531 million from a market that valued it at $2.6 billion. This is an astonishing magic trick!

On the occasion of OECD's annual ministerial meeting, its Secretary-General, Donald Johnston, in an interview with Radio France International, said it was surprising that high oil prices had not hurt the economy. (News Source)
We expected the chief of the prestigious think tank to give us explanations rather than just share his surprise.

During his two-day trip to the United Kingdom, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's radical president, warned that "if the US attacked Iran, the English middle classes would have to stop using their cars, as oil could reach $100 a barrel or more." (News Source)
Mr Chávez avoided saying that the price of petrol in Venezuela is below $0.04 per liter: perhaps he was worried that car-addict Britons would flock to relocate to such an idyllic country.

Small shareholders in GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company, received menacing letters from extremist activists for animal rights, demanding that they sell their shares since GSK continues to rely on animals for testing. “Should you choose not to sell your shares within the next 14 days,” warned the letters, “your details will be published and within weeks a web site will be hosted with all remaining shareholders listed." (News Source)
We suggest that shareholders fight back by asking extremists to sell their animals because they heal them with drugs. Nonsense for nonsense, it might work.

On Monday, CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo reported that during a formal dinner, Ben Bernanke, the economics professor recently appointed as chairman of the US Federal Reserve, told her that the markets had misinterpreted his congressional testimony, and the Fed, after a pause, might start raising rates again. Soon after the report was released, stocks fell, bonds rose to a four-year high and the dollar jumped. (News Source)
If you are in charge of a country's monetary policy, you'd better specify when your remarks are to be off the record, rather than assuming it. Talking to students as a professor is one thing - talking to the media as a central banker is something else.

U.S. News & World Report recently published its influential ranking of full-time MBA programs. Harvard comes out on top, followed by Stanford, Wharton... (News Source)
These "beauty contests" are very influential, but only on the strategies of some business school deans - worried about their programs being downgraded, they resort to short-term, quick fixes while their students are being taught how to focus business strategies in the long term.

Set at $252 an ounce in April 2001, the price of gold has been rising ever since, surpassing $600 an ounce a few days ago. Some analysts suggest that gold could reach its 1981 peak of $850 an ounce by the end of the year. (News Source)
Gold is regaining its glittering image as a "safe haven investment". Before throwing all your money into this precious metal though, we suggest you talk to someone who did the same in the early 1980s - they'll remind you that safe investments are not of this world.

A few days before last week-end’s elections, Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi distributed The True Story of Italy, a propagandistic magazine in support for his re-election, to millions of families. Among other things, the magazine claimed that “Italy’s per capita income is now $27,119 (it was $24,670 in 2001)". This corresponds to a 10% increase in five years. (News Source)
Italians are paid in euros, not dollars, and the dollar depreciated by more than 30% against the euro over the same period. Knowing their True Income in Euros, Italians did not re-elect Mr Berlusconi.

Fortune 500, an annual ranking of America's largest corporations, has just been published for the fiscal year 2005. Exxon Mobil, an oil company, is No. 1 in both revenue (nearly $340 billion) and profits (over $36 billion). (News Source)
How big is big? We took the ten largest companies in terms of profits and estimated their total payroll. We then summed up their entire profits and payroll, obtaining a rough measure of their value added: $276 billion. In 2005, Switzerland's GDP, calculated at purchasing power parity, amounted to $257 billion. In other words, last year ten US companies created more wealth than Switzerland as a whole... let's hope the comparison won't dent Swiss pride.

The legal dispute between eBay, the leading online auction house, and MercExchange, a small technology firm, has reached the Supreme Court. MercExchange successfully argued in a lower court in 2003 that eBay had infringed two of its patents with the popular “Buy It Now” feature. Only three weeks ago, Research In Motion, the maker of the Blackberry device, agreed to pay NTP, a small patent-holding firm, $612.5 million to settle a similar dispute. (News Source)
Intellectual property does deserve to be protected: still, if the patent system is not quickly reformed, a “Sue It Now” feature will soon appear on your screen.

France's National Assembly has just passed a law requiring companies that sell digital-music files in France to open up their digital rights management systems so that music downloads can be played on any device. This measure, if cleared by the Senate, will particularly hit Apple Computer, which controls 40% of the French digital music download market. (News Source)
Apple's management is enraged - it would like to keep iPod owners locked into the iTunes Music Store, and iTunes buyers locked into the iPod. Has a company known for monopoly-busting now become a would-be monopolist?

In 1984, US antitrust authorities mandated the breakup of AT&T, monopolistic provider of both local and long distance telephone services: AT&T's local operations were split into seven independent companies - the so-called "Baby Bells". Last year, the US Government approved the merger between AT&T and SBC - a company comprising three Baby Bells. A few days ago, AT&T announced plans to acquire BellSouth, another Baby Bell. (News Source)
Doesn't it sound more like a giant puzzle game than the outcome of consistent government regulation?

After leaving Red Hat, a company that pioneered the open source software revolution, Bob Young started Lulu.com, a website that allows artists to publish and sell their own creations in the form of books, CDs and DVDs with no upfront investment. Lulu.com, which publishes more than 1,000 titles a week, has announced plans to start five new European websites. (News Source)
We bet the Canadian entrepreneur hasn’t got many friends in the software, publishing, music and movie industries...

Last week Enel, an Italian utility company, revealed it was considering a hostile bid for Suez, a French private utility company. Three days later, France's Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced that state-controlled Gaz de France would merge with Suez. On Monday, the two companies' boards approved the merger; the French government will retain a 34% stake in the combined company. (News Source)
Mr de Villepin is now trying to sell the deal to the unions as a partial nationalization of Suez, and to the European Commission as a partial privatization of Gaz de France. The good news is that protectionism isn't an easy sell nowadays.