Tag: current events

If this was financial assistance, I’d hate to see the opposite

The European support program for Greece ends today. Some called the program a bailout, others assistance or solidarity. Whatever you call it, the outcome has been abysmal.

Greece fared worse than the US during the Great Depression. Emerging markets recovered faster from financial crises than Greece did. The only countries that have shrunk more than Greece in the past ten years are failed states like Libya, Yemen, and Venezuela.

“Congratulations” to all who were responsible for this “success”.

Three news stories

I wrote Bankers are people, too to help non-economists put the financial news into perspective.

Three recent news stories were no surprise to readers of my book.

  • Articles about the Paradise Papers showed how global elites hide their wealth in tax havens.

I covered previous leaks in the chapter ‘Tax evasion and offshore services’ (p. 100).

Continue reading “Three news stories”

WannaCry about cybersecurity? Consider this first

In an event that has been called the WannaCry ransomware attack, hackers encrypted data on computers all around the world. The victims – which included hospitals and car factories – had to pay ransom in Bitcoin to get their files back.

Computers without up to date operating systems were particularly vulnerable to the attack.

People who have never come into contact with the internal IT operations of a large company find this hard to understand. Why don’t companies just install the latest patches, like private persons do on their home computers?

Software engineer Jürgen ‘tante’ Geuter has a nice blog post that explains why things are not so simple in the real world: “Why don’t they just update?” Continue reading “WannaCry about cybersecurity? Consider this first”