First round went to Government and Media.

It all happened Down-Under: Google backed away from fighting the new Oz rules, and settled after coming to suspiciously chummy terms with Murdoch’s News Corp and others. Earlier this week Google’s head of country basically threatened to shut down Google in Oz. She got a storm of contempt from parliament. Ozzie politicians were furious: how dare a big tech firm lecture a nation on what its laws should be. Just a few days later, Google does a deal (by all accounts a huge one) with the Dirty Digger.

In contrast, Facebook has followed through on a threat to effectively close Australian media posting anything, anywhere on the planet. The result was Australia, from weather reports to traffic news, ceased to exist in Facebook’s digital world. In response to the Facebook shut off, Oz Premier Scott Morrison said: “These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behaviour of big tech companies who think they are bigger than governments and the rules should not apply to them.”

Who wins?      Full Story

An illustrated guide to bitcoin mining, blockchains, and the “minting” process of cryptocurrency’s most popular coin.

Every time bitcoin is proclaimed to be dead, it seems to surge back, buoyed by bullish investors, favorable legislation, and tech titans’ tweets.

At this point, nearly everyone has heard of bitcoin. But many folks still don’t quite understand how the currency is created.

It’s not printed like cash. It’s not a physical object like a gold bar. It’s not stored on a piece of plastic like a debit card. It just exists somewhere in a vast digital expanse until it’s excavated into circulation by a so-called bitcoin miner.

In this illustrated guide, we’ll cover the following:

• How bitcoin is created (a process called mining)
• How the economics of mining have changed over time
• The effects this process has on power consumption

To help explain all of this, we’d like to introduce you to a man named Willy “Wild Eyes” Tibbs.

Wild Eyes made a fortune in the California Gold Rush in 1849. Now — 170 years later — he’s back from the grave for his next prospecting adventure. Click to meet Willy

There is a fascinating article in the FT this morning: Joe Biden’s huge bet: the economic consequences of “acting big”. Much the same debate is being hammered across learned journals, the economic departments of central banks, and investment firms: what are the risks of massive reflationary stimulus measures, and what are the economic opportunity costs of not enacting them?

There is no simple answer – except to try it.

Economists still can’t even agree how money works – although there are plenty of theories. Some involve complex equations, but its largely art rather than science. Trying to predict how the economy will react to money, more money and yet more money is largely about behaviour – which isn’t always rational nor lends itself to difficult maths. The global economy is incredibly complex, effectively the sum of inter-reactions between 7.8 billion individuals. Everything from prices, taxes, rates, fashion and taste influences the way the economy and crowds function.

Here is the key thing: Markets are about the ways in which traders perceive the global economy, and the sentiment of crowds, to be working.  Read More