Tom Hill Website

 

The resource-rich South American economy has surged on exports to China, unhampered by the 2008 financial crisis that has hit growth in the UK.

CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams said: “Brazil has beaten the European countries at soccer for a long time, but beating them at economics is a new phenomenon. Our world economic league table shows how the economic map is changing, with Asian countries and commodity-producing economies climbing up the league while we in Europe fall back.”

However over the next 10 years, Britain is expected to fare better than France, which is currently the fifth-largest economy behind the US at number one, China, Japan and Germany.

The CEBR forecasts that the UK will be the eighth largest economy by 2020, with France in ninth spot, Germany in seventh spot and Russia and India in fourth and fifth place.

Growth in Europe is expected to be slow next year, restricted by austerity measures to reduce huge government debts.

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Here’s some uplift­ing news for the hol­i­day sea­son. A new study finds that in 2011 Amer­i­cans were the most gen­er­ous peo­ple in the world. The U.S. rose from fifth place on the “World Giv­ing Index” in 2010 to num­ber one this year. Ire­land placed sec­ond, fol­lowed by Aus­tralia, New Zealand and Great Britain. What tipped the scale in the U.S.’s favor this year was not just mon­e­tary dona­tions, but vol­un­teer work and kind­ness to strangers.

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Readers, you might want to check out the TEDtalk by Ron Gutman on SMILES – now I understand there is a Kindle book based on Ron’s talk called: Smile: The Astonishing Power of a Simple Act.

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Following a report in Digitimes, blogs repeated the rumor late yesterday that the iPad and iPhone will have a complete overhaul in 2012. The anonymous source: the guys in Asia who supply the parts. So get ready – should be exciting. Tom

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By JOHN MACKEY

Is the United States exceptional? Of course we are! Two hundred years ago we were one of the poorest countries in the world. We accounted for less than 1% of the world’s total GDP. Today our GDP is 23% of the world’s total and more than twice as large as the No. 2 country’s, China.

America became the wealthiest country because for most of our history we have followed the basic principles of economic freedom: property rights, freedom to trade internationally, minimal governmental regulation of business, sound money, relatively low taxes, the rule of law, entrepreneurship, freedom to fail, and voluntary exchange.

The success of economic freedom in increasing human prosperity, extending our life spans and improving the quality of our lives in countless ways is the most extraordinary global story of the past 200 years.

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This is from Rich Coral guard Karrlgaard.

“It’s one thing to fall into a ditch. It’s quite another to paint and decorate the ditch and call it home. That’s where we are with the US economy.”

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Focus—”It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We are $100bn in revenue with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.”

Simplicity—”Make complex things simple. A lot of people think it means take something simple and leave it at its core essence. But it isn’t that. When you start to build something, it quickly becomes really complex. But that is when a lot of people stop. If you really know your product and the problems, then you can take something that is complex and then make it simple.”

Courage—”Courage drives a lot of decisions in business. Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you. You don’t build a product just because everyone else has one. ”

Best—”If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it. You need that differentiation. At Apple if we can’t be the best then we are not interested in it.”

Summary of Steve Jobs business philosophy

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• Ronald Johnson, is the new chief executive of, J.C. Penney  (founder J.C. Penney started in small Missouri town) said Monday that he is out to “re-imagine” the department store. Mr. Johnson is the former retail chief of Apple Inc. If you’ve ever been in an Apple store, it will be really interesting to see what he does. Tom

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Tim Tebow.
I thought you would be interested in the following story from The Wall Street Journal. http://tiny.cc/gplkv

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Every day we are reminded of more things Tim Tebow can’t do. He cannot throw a proper pass. He cannot stand still in the pocket. He can’t run a conventional offense. He runs, but he doesn’t run gracefully. He runs upright and frantic. He runs like he’s stealing a toaster from the mall.

He’s a cavalcade of failures. Why the Denver Broncos give him a paycheck, nobody knows.

Because Tim Tebow never lets you relax. He never puts a football game away in the first quarter. He forces you to watch the whole thing, with commercials and no fast-forwards. It’s never pretty.

Tim Tebow never, ever makes everybody happy. He can’t really do anything besides win football games. Since when did anyone care about that?

http://tiny.cc/gplkv

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A recent national poll showed the following results: Congress approval rating fell to 12% – disapproval is 80% and 8% who said they didn’t know what Congress was. Sad but probably true.

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