Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (61940)	3/13/2010 3:10:50 PM
From: dybdahl	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217847

Good question. During the cold war, Europe was divided into east and west, and west created a union. Now, things are more blurred, and the division between north and south becomes more evident. Europe is still divided by languages, which reduces mobility and market sizes, and English has become a universal language to a degree never seen with Latin or any other lingua franca. Many old-style politicians still have a lot of power, which means that east Europe is still dominated by people who grew up under communism, and west Europe still judges east European countries using western metrics. For instance, west European politicians often don't understand east European perception of the concepts nationality, borders, law, politics, business etc. One politician recently accused Ukraine's Yanukovich of being a crook, but described Ukraine's Tymochenko as the positive alternative. However, Tymochenko earned her money doing gas trading, hired by the government, under communism... do I need to say more? Cooperation across borders is still rare, I just saw yet another national project with huge economic value go down the drain because "we don't want to import anglo-saxon guidelines". Pan-european news is also virtually non-existent, and I'm quite sure that amazon.com (USA) is still receiving a lot of orders where the product could have been acquired cheaper in amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr or similar. So, European politics is still about having country leaders negotiate, and I guess no population has a good feeling about what is really happening. I guess this is also why the Greek population is so angry - even though they were cheated upon by their previous government and everybody is actually trying to help them out. The current situation demands better economic integration and more efficiency in EU decision-making. I don't know how this will be done, but EU still has a lot of efficiency improvements to be made: Several countries have not done necessary labor market reforms yet, and the incredible strengthening of English as a universal language has yet to show its full potential. I believe that much fewer products will be localized in 20 years when the next generation has grown up, which will basically mean that more product categories will treat EU as one market, instead of 27 markets.