Business and Media

Awareness about development solutions and innovations create the actual bridge to access to vital resources. Webster University helps create awareness about the crisis of resources for the world’s poor by supporting global relations. Through academic conferences and student volunteers Webster is building relationships within the international community.

The U.S. government bailed out several major banks in the financial crisis and is now starting to move away from the driver’s seat, handing the wheel of fortune back to the CEOs of those same banks who caused the problem in the first place.

This is the second part of our special series on the banking system. In this episode we will be focusing on the U.S. banking system in the context of the Federal Reserve System, the Fed. In our previous episode [VR, March 2010] we highlighted the major duties of the Fed, highlighting clear boundaries within the U.S. Banking System. This time we would like to focus on the U.S.

People no longer want to read Headlines of “Financial Crisis,” “Bankruptcy,” and “Losses.” Spring is coming, the recession now appears to be over, but the economy is still weak and the unemployment rate is much too high.

Paul Robin Krugman, born in New York in 1953, a US Professor in Economics from Princeton University received attention when whistle blowing in April 2009 warned that Austria could be a leading candidate for state bankruptcy. Krugman himself made it clear in an essay about his “life philosophy” that he has no intention of following instructions since he does not claim to know anything special about life in general, but challenges people to think outside the box.

Finally it is my time to brag about Facebook! Our love relationship has turned into a love-hate relationship. I like(d) social networks: I am home in two different countries. I went to an international school and then an international university. Later, I worked in international business, so my friends are scattered all around the world. For people like me, the social networks are the easiest way to keep in touch.

In Orson Scott Card’s classic science fiction fantasy Ender’s Game, the protagonist Ender Wiggin sits absorbed at a digital “desk”: a flat display-based computer connected to an intergalactic network, featuring access to the internets, interactive games and endless amounts of content for the young geniuses stationed at the “Battle School” space-station. Although the novel first appeared in 1977 and came to the screen in 1985, the real thing – if it is the real thing – made its first appearance this Jan. 27, when that Steve Jobs and Apple presented the iPad.

When the 39-year-old farmer’s son Wolfgang Kulturer took over as managing director of the Carinthian Hypo Bank, he formulated the bank’s destiny as follows: “Expand or die.” In order for the institution with 220 employees and total assets of €1.9 billion to balance the books, the Carinthian regional government had to take over. Three employees were put in charge of foreign business transactions. This was on Nov. 1, 1992.

Down a side street off Gumpendorferstrasse in the hip 6th District, in the sort of elegantly faded structure Vienna seems to specialize in (and which developers in London or New York can only dream of), I enter a huge hall with swish music and 600 of Vienna’s beautiful people. It’s late October and the smart suits have turned out in force to hear the future marketing strategy for Vienna up to 2015.

Markets are receiving headwinds after racing ahead of fundamentals once again. In the meantime, Obama is struggling to keep the cork on the bonus bottle, limiting payments to top bank executives. The system is starting to get scary. Happy Halloween.

“Deposit Your Trust” is our topic this month. Which banks are still trustworthy? Where should you deposit your cash, besides your mattress? What alternatives can a savvy investor consider? Is there a solution?

While many continue to blame the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US for the financial crisis, it is becoming increasingly obvious that tax havens play a contributing role. These havens, especially in Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, and Switzerland foster the availability – and protection – of hidden ‘Treuhand’ accounts. These are a special form of trusts created in tax havens that operate under very different rules than other forms of custodial accounts.