Economics/Geekonomics

Chinese Companies And Their Huge Debt?

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Quartz notes it’s pretty bloody impressive.  It also seems to be the result of a kind of weird round robin in shadow banking to keep propping them up – shades of Japanese Zombification.

China’s a big economic driver.  We will feel this when it implodes – though my theory is the Chinese government is going to try to kick them into new industries (possibly green power) to try and keep things going.

So keep an eye on this.  What do you thinks up with China’s economy, and how far will the impact go if it slows down?

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

A Bit Of Geekonomics: Oil Prices Aren’t Going Down

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Quartz is there on why they won’t be going down.

A lot – but not all – is unrest and political (with China’s hoarding).  What I find intriguing is the idea this is the end of the Petro-state (which Canada occasionally flirts with being, warning to my Canadian friends).  If one things of it, a petrostate is basically reliant on one resource, and the inherent vulnerabilities within and created by that reliance and its limits.  You can’t eat oil after all.

I’ve seen some talk of an oil shock in 2015.  Seems more and more likely.  There could be some nasty economic issues.

However this probably has more repercussions for solar and green tech, if only because people like to bandwagon-jump.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek As Citizen: Ties To The Community

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Saint Nicholas Charity

I’m sure you’re familiar with the issues of “techies” in San Francisco and the surrounding area. They’re supposedly obnoxious, driving up home prices, Google buses are getting a free pass and blocking traffic, the startup ideas are stupid, etc. If you haven’t heard about it . . . well I live in Silicon Valley and I hear a lot about it.

Though admittedly being south of San Francisco, some of it is probably a sort of bias – there seems to be a kind of SF/San Jose area split here.

Now there are issues of changes in San Francisco and the surrounding areas, but in reality none are as simple, clean cut, or frankly tech related as many people may think.  A lot of attempts to cover it are sadly over simplified and over generalized.  I myself have my own issues with some of what’s going on in San Francisco, but feel a lot of it is blown out of proportion – and population shifts, economic changes, and the like are part and parcel of big cities.

That being said, there’s concerns – and when you get a lot of people moving into an area there is going to be a sense of distance and alimentation. The new population could be totally great people, but they’re still outsiders – and that’s not helped when money and expense is a major issue, and even more so in this economy.

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