Can an economy double overnight? In this day and age an economy can effectively double in size without effort – except maybe from the employees of the statistical office. The case at hand is one of Nigeria, where the Gross Domestic Product soared from around $260 bn in 2013 (situated between Egypt and Hong Kong in global rankings) to around $500 bn– Africa’s largest, and globally in the region of Poland and Sweden. The reason for such miracle lies in of the country’s GDP measure to account for new products and services – done normally every five-or-so years in developed countries and overdue for over twenty in Nigeria. Rebasing has included into the measure the soaring telecom and film industries (ever heard of Nollywood?), along with wide sections of services, previously underestimated – thereby making the economy not just larger, but more diversified. However, we now face a rather fundamental question: if Nigeria’s economy has been so dramatically underestimated, how are we now to trust estimates for the other developing – or even developed – economies? Ghana’s recent rebasing took it straight from ‘poor’ to ‘lower mid-income’ label. Behind such labels rest political influence and business appeal –we should now look at the political and economic picture of the region more critically. Somewhat generally, we may be better off treating all estimates we face with a degree of doubt – including those we produce ourselves. DATA passes through the US Senate US Senate has passed the DATA act, which will oblige the US Government to publish all the federal spending details in a searchable database available online. The database is set to be published on www.usaspending.gov – which already hosts a share of the spending data. Why should the non-Americans amongst us care? Mainly, because such database can serve as a useful precedent, which could be replicated with other countries around the World. Insight into the details governmental spending will be an invaluable opportunity for academic research into the efficiency of the economic policy – or any policy for that matter (now obstructed by data access issues). Business forecasting can be affected, too, as governmental spending and wealth transfers make a world of difference to the market performance of companies, industries and the economy as a whole – for the good and the bad. Last but not least, we do believe that a dash of transparency is always a good thing. The Greek Bonds are back For the first time since 2010, the year of the first bail-out, the Greek government has issued sovereign bonds. A small issue amounting to approx. $4.1 bn in 5-year bonds was oversubscribed and sold at a yield of almost 5%. This is merely a token symbol of normalisation following the period of spectacular economic downfall of almost half a decade, during which the Greek economy has shrunk by nearly a quarter, and its governmental bond yield has almost reached 40% (at the time of the second bail-out in 2012). The symbolism is almost all there is to it, as the Greek debt still stands at 175% of the GDP – just a single bad omen out of many. Rush for Greek bonds is to us a sign of two market trends, neither of which is trust in Greece itself. Firstly, as we reached a period of cheap money and low yields, investors will crowd after anything that offers more substantial returns. Secondly – and by far more importantly – this is a sign of confidence in the European institutions, at which mercy the Greek survived the crisis – and the German financial firepower behind them. Stanford applications record One of the famous Ivy League university – Stanford University – received a record during the students application process (42,167 applications this year). Nonetheless, school restricted the number of students. Important fact is that it was the largest number of applications ever received by the university and also better score than Harvard admission statistics. According to The Paolo Alto Weekly, Stanford is more selective than Harvard, which accepted 5,9 percent of the 34,295 applicants for its Class of 2018. Some say that this growing popularity of Stanford higher education is strictly related to great demand of technological industry from Silicon Valley. Stanford University has always been the inspiration of Silicon Valley, the motor of progress and parent of many widely recognisable companies. New opportunities in IT sector especially the growing market of mobile applications is definitely one of the reason why so many students choose Stanford rather than other Ivy League universities. Mozilla CEO and anti-gay reputation Very shortly after Brendan Eich was elected as CEO of Mozilla, well-known open-source computing company, famous especially for its Firefox web browser, he was publicly associated with his donation $1000 to anti-gay marriage legislation in California in 2008. Few days later Eich resigned, the officially note given by Mozilla representatives was striking: “didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech… Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.” This situation shows something alarming about today’s political correctness. Donation is obviously a form of support but in this case not from the company but only from individual person. It is clearly obvious fact that the politics of Mozilla Company is not about gay marriage or heterosexual movement of support, it is about IT improvements. It is also another fact, however less important, that it was in 2008, now we have 2014 – six years is a very long time for every individual. For all defenders of liberty CEO personal beliefs, especially these showed several years ago, should not be associated with the company and people should not assume that the company – particularly IT company as Mozilla – must also hold that view. However, strong political correctness seems to be far from these basic facts, as Mr Brendan Eich knows very well.