Green Shoots and the Fruits of Summer

Any keen gardener will tell you that the combination of an extremely bitter winter and a progressively warmer spring, means that the UK is expecting to experience a phenomenal plum harvest.

But the main concern on many peoples minds does not relate to the UK's plum harvest but rather to the recession that seems to be gripping so many countries around the world.

Some signs suggest that green shoots are appearing, The Financial Times reported today that hedge funds have seen a surge in investments with over $142.5bn being allocated in their direction over the past three months. First and foremost what this suggest is that investors are actually believing that the major economies around the world are bottoming out and thus these individuals are predicting a change in fortunes. When the markets can go down no more, there's only one way left to go.

Some critiques may say that these investors are stuck in a dream world but better then expected results from the likes of Goldman Sachs have done well to lighten the mood, proliferating the whisper which suggest that a turnaround is coming.

A case of sibling rivalry? or does Apple now predict tough competition??

A new update available from Apple for its popular iTunes application has now done away with the hole which allowed non Apple devices to pretend to be iPods. Thus these devices can no longer use the program to sync music and other content. Apple suggested in June that it did not support non Apple media devices and that changes could be made in the the future to its software which would prevent such devices from syncing with iTunes.

The newly updated version of iTunes (8.2.1) does just that. Apple will obviously stress the fact that this is done with the best customer experience in mind, but skeptics such as myself see it as a direct response to the popularity of Palms new helping the Pre, currently selling in the USA on Sprint and due out in the UK exclusively on 02 in time for the holiday season the Pre is turning heads on both sides of the Atlantic. The Pre offers users the ability to seamlessly jump from application to application with the convenience of not having to close each application. The Pre allows for multiple application to be open at the same time, and apart from looking dashing the Pre is also equipped with a full slide out qwerty keyboard, as well as a multi-touch screen.

The Palm Pre does sound like a dashing offering, and Apple seem to know it, what other reason would there be for Apple to block of such a large selection of potential iTunes users.

From the looks of it, the battle stations are manned, and the war paint has been applied, will Apple continue to dominate? only time will tell.

How maths killed Lehman Brothers - The Beginning of the End

"On a sunny morning in 2001, a piece of investment plan landed on the desk of Dick Fuld, the then Chief Executive of Lehman Brothers. The document, compiled by a team of maths and physics PhDs, included a calculation to show how the bank will always end up with a profit if they invest on the real estate markets. Fuld was impressed. The next five years saw the bank borrowing billions of dollars to invest in the housing market. It worked. The housing market boom had turned Lehman Brothers from a modest firm into the world's fourth largest investment bank. "

Horatio Boedihardjo.

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