TV is a mess. It is hard to navigate to what you want to watch without having to deal with a mess of technology and diverse business plans rooted in crappy copyright laws. Everyone knows it and for ages we have waited for someone to cut through it and fix it.

Apple has had ambitions on this for years and has offered a few contributions. First, it put TV and movies on iTunes so you could watch a computer connected to a TV. Second, it put TV and movies on iPads and let you play them on a TV. Third, it developed Apple TV — a glorified iPod — to do the same thing. Each has helped but each suffers from the overall flaws in the system. Read more »

Apple introduced a new social network yesterday — Ping. Ping basically allows you to share your iTunes music, video and other interests with you friends. On paper, it is a great idea as it integrates an existing social network into an existing payment and shopping network. This provides a route to monetisation that has eluded many others. Do this for apps and books as well and this might be significant. As I have written before, sharing your electronic tastes is a gap waiting to be filled. Read more »

There are at the moment some unconfirmed reports that China’s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, has defected to the United States. Among the reasons given for his possible defection are large losses made by the central bank on investments in US Treasury Bonds. One can only speculate at this stage, but presumably the next central bank governor would be a lot more reluctant to invest in US assets! Which will make the financing of the US public debt much more challenging, as well as lead to a much weaker USD. A story worth watching! Read more »

Michael Stutchbury, Economics Editor of the Australian, dedicated his column in this weekend’s paper to warning of the economic dangers of multi-party democracy. Apparently minority governments mean “policy drift” as opposed to “decisive policy-making”. Stutchbury doubts that a “splintered duopoly” could deliver “the sort of reform agenda business leaders say Australia needs”. Setting aside the question of whether business leaders’ wishes should trump those of the people, it’s worth having a look at Stutchbury’s claim that multi-party government delivers poor economic outcomes. Read more »

As part of my on-going commitment to keep you up to date with the latest urinal and toileting thinking, I have to report today to this Dear Economist quandary posed to Tim Harford:

When I travel I am faced with a difficult choice: which of the toilet booths to use in offices or hotels. I always try to guess which one is the least used.

Harford responds by appealing to the efficient markets hypothesis that suggests that there will be an equilibrium whereby all toilets will on average be equally clean. Of course, this equally suggests that there is nothing special about traveling: toilets will be on average equally clean at your own office too. Note that with a sufficient amount of use this will be true even if there are toilet choosing biases of the form Harford speaks about. After all, it takes a number of rational choosers to balance this out. Read more »