facebook rss twitter

The HEXUS.channel week in review

by Scott Bicheno on 3 October 2008, 18:48

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), US Treasury

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qapmk

Add to My Vault: x

High drama

The week started with the business world holding its collective breath in anticipation of a vote by US congress on the big bailout. In case you've been living in a cave until today, this involves the US taxpayer handing over ten zillion dollars to the finance sector so that bankers can keep their jobs in spite of almost universally sucking at them.

It's the job of a banker to turn money into more money. When they do the opposite it's fair to say they're bad at their job. We don't protect footballers who can't kick, tone-deaf singers or politicians who can't lie, but we've become so dependent on credit that we can't afford to let bankers go under, no matter how incompetent they are.

Anyway, it was all a bit of an anticlimax on Monday after congress decided it too was appalled by the prospect of the bailout and voted to reject it. Cue wailing, gnashing of teeth and general hyperbole from the media, hilariously summed up by Private Eye's front page headline: "END OF THE WORLD SPECIAL".

As we write, an amended version of the bailout has now been approved, so everything's going to be fine now.

The technology industry clearly didn't get the memo about the end of the world and continued to make technology, which is its job, take note bankers. We started the week by speaking to the makers of a special GPS antenna for mobile phones and asked if GPS is the next must have feature for phones. So far, sentiment in the HEXUS.community seems to be in favour of it.