Wanna Fun Flying? - Avoid Ryanair!

The 'Verbatim' section of Time Magazine quoted Michael O'Leary, chief executive of the European budget airline Ryanair, as follows: "We're all about finding ways of raising discretionary revenue." He dropped this hint when talking about his thoughts about charging passengers to use the toilets on board of his aircrafts....(issue 19 March 2009) O'Leary is such a dinosaur when it comes to business: greedy, greedy, greedy with no sense for people and modernity. (Photo: Guardian)

Bailout

Bailingout might be the most-used and most-hated word of 2009 and 2010, most-hated at least by those countries which have to pay the bailout bill. Last year governments in Europe and America had to bailout their banks. Now bailing-out has reached the highest ever form of preventing total and utter ruin: countries bailing out other countries. The bailout contenders in the moment of truth: Germany and Greece. The Germans - with utmost reluctance  and unwillingness - were forced to give billions to the Greeks because the Greek system had gone bust. It happened in April 2010.

There is one man who had predicted exactly that: Nouril Roubini, Economist. That was in March 2009! Time Magazine published his assessment.

EU to Bail out East European Countries?

Time Magazine in March 2009 incidentally reported in a few lines that the European Union dismissed a request of bailing out nine East European countries, which claimed to be hit too hard by recession in order to cope. They would need $240 billion. Hungary led this initiative, insisting that Europe soon would have a "New Iron Curtain" because of the unequal economic stands. Hopefully, the European Union with the strongest nations Germany, France and Great Britain at its centre will not become the cow that all countries in Europe can milk when they are hungry! (Source image: howstuffworks.com)

What China Bought

China is big, China is colourful, China is attractive, China is booming and China has been THE nation sought after by nations seeking economic stimulation themselves in the first decade of the 21st century.


How rich China has become during the new millenia shows the following list of purchases:
-2009: $770 million: Chinese steelmaker Hunan Valin bought 16.5% of the Australian iron-ore mining company Fortescue Metals.
-2007: $ 3 billion: China Investment Corp bought 10% of shares of a New York-based private equity firm.
-2007: $ 5 billion: China Investment Corp bought 9.9% of shares of Morgan Stanley.
-2009: $ 19.5 billion: Aluminium Corp of China bought 18% of Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining companies in the world.
-2009: $390 million: China National Petroleum Corp bought the Canadian company Verenex Energy.
-2009: $10 billion: China Development Bank and China Petroleum  & Oil Corp invested in Petrobras, Brazil's oil company.
-2009: $15 billion: China's loan to Russia's Rosneft, the oil magnate.
-2009: $10 billion: China's loan to Transneft, Russia's pipeline company.


Total: $ 59.16 billion