The Bank of Japan says it will dramatically expand money supply in a key policy shift, as it tries to stimulate growth in the world’s third-largest economy.
Follow this link: Japan central bank makes growth move
Google does have the momentum right now. But as we’ve witnessed with Apple, it may not take much for sentiment to shift.
Follow this link: Opinion: Google tops $800. It’s the new Apple…for now
Category : Business
Co-founder Larry Page reflects on ‘not a bad achievement’ after search engine firm made $50bn last year
Google reported $14.4bn (£9bn) in revenues for the fourth quarter of 2012 as the company announced its first ever $50bn year. The revenues comfortably beat analysts’ expectations and were 36% higher than the same quarter last year but the firm also provided fresh evidence of how the shift to mobile is hitting the value of online advertising.
“We ended 2012 with a strong quarter,” said Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and CEO. “Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50bn in revenues for the first time – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half.”
Total advertising revenue improved 19%, compared with 25% growth a year ago. Google’s own sites generated revenues of $8.64bn, or 67% of total Google revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2012, an 18% increase over 2011. Google’s partner sites generated revenues of $3.44bn, or 27% of total revenues, in the quarter. This represents a 19% increase from the fourth quarter of 2011.
Google posted a quarterly profit of $2.89bn, up from $2.71bn a year earlier. Paid clicks increased 24% year on year and were up 9% from the last quarter. But this growth was tempered by a 6% fall in cost-per-click, the price paid by advertisers. Like other businesses dependent on online ads, including Facebook, Google is finding the value of its business eroded by the shift to mobile.
In the third quarter Google missed analysts’ expectations by a wide margin, and its results were accidentally leaked hours early. The firm’s share price tumbled as Google warned that a growing shift toward mobile searches could hit revenues.
Google’s shares had wobbled ahead of this quarter’s release. Last Friday, the company said analysts were not accounting properly for the sale of Motorola’s set-top box division, bought as part of its $12.5bn merger with Motorola Mobility.
Uncertainty out of Washington is still the stock market’s biggest headwind as lawmakers shift their focus to the debt ceiling debate and a long-term debt reduction plan.
Read more: Wall Street’s biggest headwind: Washington
Uncertainty out of Washington is still the stock market’s biggest headwind as lawmakers shift their focus to the debt ceiling debate and a long-term debt reduction plan.
Link: Wall Street’s biggest headwind: Washington
No state will replace US militarily, says National Intelligence Council, but climate change will create great instability
A US intelligence portrait of the world in 2030 predicts that China will be the largest economic power, that climate change will create instability by contributing to water and food shortages, and that there will be a “tectonic shift” with the rise of a global middle class.
The National Intelligence Council’s five-yearly Global Trends Report says the world is “at a critical juncture in human history”. It says US power will be greatly diminished but no other individual state will rise to replace it. “There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multipolar world,” the report says.
It draws a distinction between what it calls “megatrends” – things that are highly likely to occur – and “game-changers”, which are far less certain.
Among the megatrends is growing prosperity across the globe.
“The growth of the global middle class constitutes a tectonic shift: for the first time a majority of the world’s population will not be impoverished, and the middle classes will be the most important social and economics sector in the vast majority of countries,” it says.
With spreading prosperity will come shifts in influence and power. “The diffusion of power among countries will have a dramatic impact by 2030. Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment. China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030,” the report says.
The megatrends also point to increased instability because of increasing demand for insufficient supplies of water, food and energy compounded by climate change.
“Demand for food, water, and energy will grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50% respectively owing to an increase in the global population and the consumption patterns of an expanding middle class. Climate change will worsen the outlook for the availability of these critical resources,” the report says.
The report says that a world of scarcities is not inevitable but “policymakers and their private-sector partners will need to be proactive to avoid such a future”. It says any solution will require more able countries to help more vulnerable states.
Young Americans Showed an Historic 11-Point Swing Away From President Obama, Only Demographic to Distance Itself From the President at That Level
Millennials Demonstrate Shift in Views on Solutions to Unemployment and the Bad Economy, Favoring Lower Taxes and Less Government Involvement
Read more: Young Voters and the 2012 Election, the Top 3 Things to Know
 Wall Street Journal |
How Race Slipped Away From Romney
Wall Street Journal The election pointed to the nation's demographic future: white men had no purchase in the presidential election and for the first time they will be a minority in the House Democratic caucus. Neil King reports on The News Hub. Photo: AP Images. Romney campaign gives up in Florida The Polls Shift Toward Obama Romney advisor concedes Florida to Obama Category : Business The world’s second biggest bottler of Coca Cola is moving from Greece to Switzerland and will shift its primary stock listing to London. See the article here: Coca-Cola bottler quits Greece Category : Stocks, World News Apple (AAPL) and Qualcomm (QCOM) reportedly offered TSMC (TSM) more than $1B apiece to secure chip production capacity, only to have TSMC reject them in the name of maintaining flexibility. Qualcomm, which is expected to provide a baseband chip for the next iPhone that uses TSMC’s 28nm process, has struggled to deal with TSMC’s 28nm supply constraints, and has begun eying alternate sources. Apple has been reportedly planning to shift production of its app processors from Samsung to TSMC. Go here to see the original: Apple (AAPL) and Qualcomm (QCOM) reportedly offered TSMC (TSM) more than $1B apiece to secure chip production capacity, only to have TSMC reject them in the name of maintaining flexibility. Qualcomm, which is expected to provide a baseband chip for… |
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