Publised: FD november 19th 2008

In this article is quoted from “The future of finance” a new book written by Adjiedi Bakas and Roger Peverelli: “Google has a banking license in a lot of countries, also in Holland; you know for what they are going to use it?” Google is only one of the new competitors in the financial sector. No one realizes that IBM at this moment is already one of the largest commercial banks in the world because of the credit they supply to their clients. Potential others are: Virgin Money, GE Money, GMAC and Gazprom Bank, later on maybe Veolia, Apple and carlease companies.

The book – based on dozens of interviews with financial managers – points out that the present financial crisis gives a lot of opportunities and challenges. Referring to the Kondratieff-wave they say: “in the last 50 years our central concern was prosperity; the next decennia will give a concern for well-being.

In this trend technology plays a very important role: robots, “powderchips”, web 2.0 and also initiatives in peer2peer-websites like Zopa, Kiva, Prosper, MyC4.com and Boober, a.o..

Banks i.e. the financial sector have lost the connection with their core-business. The next years banks, insurance-companies and pension funds return to their roots and have to play a bigger and bigger role in the solution of the problems of the world: climate/environment, food crisis, unsafety and unlivability.

A new consumerbank CheBanca! (‘what a bank!’) in Milan. This ‘bankconcept of the future’ targets on young people. Experience, sense, aroma and flavour are the essence.

The complete article:
http://www.fd.nl/artikel/10522629/pensioen-via-playstation-rekening-google

Although I’m not an American I’m really happy to see that now for the first time in the history of the USA a man with Afro American roots became president.

I think this decision has greatly improved the image of the USA in the. The image which has suffered under the government of George W. Bush, is now back with a new message: “Change”. But what can the U.S. and the rest of the world expect from the new president and, much more interestingly, which parts of the economy will benefit from him? First of all we shouldn’t expect too much from Mr. Obama, although he is a great speaker with fire in the eyes. The President-elect is facing some of the biggest problems the U.S ever had: The national debt has reached the incredible amount of $10,600,000,000,000.