There Will Be a “Significant Market Event… Something Big Is Going To Happen” Are you prepared for that day?

 

With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs.

But the insiders know different. And if there’s any single person out there who understands U.S. monetary policy and its long-term effects on domestic and global affairs it’s former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. As the head of the world’s most powerful central bank for nearly two decades he’s privy to the insider conversations and government machinations that have brought us to where we are today.

Greenspan recently joined veteran resource analyst Brien Lundin at the New Orleans Investment Conference to share some of his thoughts. According to Lundin, the former Fed chairman made it clear that the central bank is facing a serious problem and one that will have significant ramifications in the future.

We asked him where he thought the gold price will be in five years and he said “measurably higher.”

In private conversation I asked him about the outstanding debts… and that the debt load in the U.S. had gotten so great that there has to be some monetary depreciation.

Specially he said that the era of quantitative easing and zero-interest rate policies by the Fed… we really cannot exit this without some significant market event… By that I interpret it being either a stock market crash or a prolonged recession, which would then engender another round of monetary reflation by the Fed.

He thinks something big is going to happen that we can’t get out of this era of money printing without some repercussions – and pretty severe ones – that gold will benefit from.

If we are in fact staring a major market event in the face as Alan Greenspan proposes then wealth preservation should be a key tenet of any preparedness strategy going forward. Greenspan himself, somewhat ironically, was a gold bug and proponent of sound money prior to his appointment as the chairman of the Fed. And though he didn’t discuss it much during his tenure, he is now actively saying that we can expect to see gold markedly higher within the next five years.

His assessment is likely based on concerns over the U.S. dollar which will, as Lundin notes, more than likely suffer a currency devaluation at some point in the future.

The end has to come at some point… If you look at a chart of the U.S. dollar index it has gone nearly parabolic in the last few months… In any market that is so one sided, that is accelerating so rapidly, that trend will end… it will most likely end in a fairly violent fashion.

And if gold rises as a result, so too will other resource assets in the energy and mining sectors. What it boils down to is that the assets that are necessary to keep our system operating will always have value, and that is especially true in a situation where the U.S. dollar happens to be crashing. Uranium , for example, powers one in five American homes, which means that it will always be a necessary resource, regardless of what the dollar does or doesn’t do. Lundin’s assessment is echoed by Uranium Energy Corp CEO Amir Adnani, who recently said we may well see a “resurgence” in the price of this and natural resources like gold.

The same can be said for oil and agriculture resources.

They will always have value, regardless of whether the dollar is strong or violently collapses under its own weight.

Thus, when we consider ways to preserve wealth and insulate ourselves from the coming destruction of our currency one must consider holding physical assets. For some that means stockpiling food and other supplies in anticipation of Greenspan’s market event that could adversely affect credit flows and delivery of essential goods. For others who may currently hold stocks, U.S. Treasurys, or cash, diversifying your portfolio with well managed resource-based companies will not only preserve wealth during currency volatility, but build it as the value of real, physical assets rises.

The man who is essentially the architect responsible for domestic monetary policy under four U.S. Presidents has now said that a significant market event will take place when the Fed is eventually forced to exit their monetary easing and zero-interest rate policies

Soource : http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/federal-reserve-insider-alan-greenspan-warns-there-will-be-a-significant-market-event-something-big-is-going-to-happen_02222015

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BIG MARKET NEWS WEEK 23 FEB 2015 – 27 FEB 2015

Germany Monday, Feb.23, 2015 10:00  
EUR IFO – Business Climate (Feb)
Germany Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 08:00  
EUR     Gross Domestic Product s.a (QoQ) (Q4)
European Monetary Union Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 11:00  
EUR     Consumer Price Index – Core (YoY) (Jan)
European Monetary Union Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 11:00  
EUR Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
European Monetary Union Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 15:00  
EUR ECB President Draghi’s Speech
United States Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 16:00  
USD Consumer Confidence (Feb)
United States Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 16:00  
USD Fed’s Yellen testifies
Canada Tuesday, Feb.24, 2015 20:00  
CAD BoC Governor Poloz Speech
China Wednesday, Feb.25, 2015 02:45  
CNY       HSBC Manufacturing PMI (Feb)Preliminar
European Monetary Union Wednesday, Feb.25, 2015 15:30  
EUR ECB President Draghi’s Speech
United States Wednesday, Feb.25, 2015 16:00  
USD Fed’s Yellen testifies
United States Wednesday, Feb.25, 2015 16:00  
USD New Home Sales (MoM) (Jan)
New Zealand Wednesday, Feb.25, 2015 22:45  
NZD Trade Balance (YoY) (Jan)
Australia Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 n/a  
AUD Private Capital Expenditure (Q4)
European Monetary Union Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 11:15  
EUR Targeted LTRO
Canada Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 14:30  
CAD Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
Canada Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 14:30  
CAD Bank of Canada Consumer Price Index Core (YoY) (Jan)
United States Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 14:30  
USD Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
United States Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 14:30  
USD Consumer Price Index Core s.a (Jan)
United States Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 14:30  
USD     Consumer Price Index Ex Food & Energy (YoY) (Jan)
United States Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 14:30  
USD Durable Goods Orders (Jan)
Japan Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 00:30  
JPY National Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
New Zealand Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 01:00  
NZD ANZ Activity Outlook (Jan)
United Kingdom Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 10:30  
GBP Gross Domestic Product (YoY) (Q4)Preliminar
United Kingdom Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 10:30  
GBP Gross Domestic Product (QoQ) (Q4)Preliminar
United States Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 14:30  
USD Gross Domestic Product Annualized (Q4)Preliminar

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Greece’s Debt Due: What Greece Owes When

Facing a cash crunch, Greece is seeking to extend its bailout program with eurozone creditors before it expires on Feb. 28. Here’s what Greece owes, when.

Skärmavbild 2015-02-20 kl. 12.47.14

 

Source : http://graphics.wsj.com/greece-debt-timeline/

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Download Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2015 and actually read it ..

There is a reason why I recommend everyone download (and read) this document. Not only is it free but it provides both novice and experienced investors with some perspective on some very basic issues. For example, the next time some one says you should divest your portfolio of so-called “sin stocks” you can say….

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BIG MARKET NEWS WEEK 16 FEB 2015 – 20 FEB 2015

Japan Monday, Feb 16, 2015 00:50  
JPY       Gross Domestic Product (QoQ) (Q4)Preliminar
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Australia    Tuesday, Feb 17, 2015 01:30  
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GBP       Core Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
United Kingdom Tuesday, Feb 17, 2015 10:30  
GBP     Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
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EUR ZEW Survey – Economic Sentiment (Feb)
New Zealand Tuesday, Feb 17, 2015 n/a  
NZD GDT Price Index
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CHF SNB Chairman Jordan Speech
Japan Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 n/a  
JPY BoJ Press Conference
United Kingdom Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 10:30  
GBP BOE MPC Vote Hike
United Kingdom Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 10:30  
GBP BOE MPC Vote Unchanged
United Kingdom Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 10:30  
GBP BOE MPC Vote Cut
Canada Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015    14:30  
CAD Wholesale Sales (MoM) (Dec)
United States Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 14:30  
USD Building Permits (MoM) (Jan)
United States Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 14:30  
USD Producer Price Index (MoM) (Jan)
United States Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015 20:00  
USD FOMC Minutes
United States Thursday, Feb 19, 2015 14:30  
USD Initial Jobless Claims (Feb 13)
United States Thursday, Feb 19, 2015 16:00  
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Germany Friday, Feb 20, 2015 09:30  
EUR Markit Manufacturing PMI (Feb)Preliminar
United Kingdom Friday, Feb 20, 2015 10:30  
GBP Retail Sales (MoM) (Jan)
Canada Friday, Feb 20, 2015 14:30  
CAD Retail Sales ex Autos (MoM) (Dec)

 

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Good and Bad Reasons to Become an Entrepreneur

Source : https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/good-and-bad-reasons-to-become-an-entrepreneur-decf0766de8d

Recently we hosted a Q&A at Asana that I participated in with Ben Horowitz, Matt Cohler, and Justin Rosenstein. Marcus Wohlsen from Wired attended and wrote an article that discussed our views on the culture of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. This is an important topic, so I want to take some time to clarify what we meant in this blog post. Before I do, I’d like to emphasize that we were talking exclusively about Silicon Valley culture and not the more general ‘small business entrepreneur.’ So for our audience at the time, entrepreneur meant “Silicon Valley startup technology entrepreneur.”

Even given that context, it is notable that we all said you “probably” shouldn’t be an entrepreneur, not that you definitely shouldn’t. This is explicitly a directional position; we believe there are too many startups and entrepreneurs in the SV ecosystem, but that is very different from saying there shouldn’t be any. Many people think there should be more, and we are counterbalancing that view. Whenever you counterbalance an extreme view, you tend to also come off extremely, and certainly do in the media (which is related to the point I made about integration in my last post).

The reason we like best for becoming an entrepreneur is that you are extremely passionate about an idea and believe that starting a new company is the best way to bring it into the world. The passion is important because entrepreneurship is hard and you’ll need it to endure the struggle, as well as to convince other people to help you. Believing that starting a new company is the best way to bring it into the world is important to ensure that resources—including most importantly your own time — are being put to the best possible use. If the idea is best brought into the world by an existing team, then it is tautologically optimal for the world for it to happen that way. Of course, not everyone is actually trying to optimize their impact, but many entrepreneurs are, by their own admission, and it is important for those people to consider this angle.

If you’re not trying to maximize impact, then it seems like a reasonable assumption that you are instead optimizing around personal lifestyle preferences of some kind. You want total freedom to choose how you make your living, regardless of if it necessarily provide large amounts of value to other people or perhaps is even redundant with something that already exists. Or you want extreme flexibility in your schedule, maybe including the ability to stop working altogether for long periods of time at short notice. Or you want to work on a certain kind of problem or with certain kinds of people. For many kinds of preference, you likely can actually find a company able to give them to you, but certainly starting your own is a great shortcut and I personally think that’s totally reasonable. I like people who are seeking to have big impact on the world, but it is not the only path worth taking, and I have no reason to denigrate this type of entrepreneur.

So with all that in mind, here are some of the bad reasons to become an entrepreneur that we were actually trying to speak to:

“People have this vision of being the CEO of a company they started and being on top of the pyramid. Some people are motivated by that, but that’s not at all what it’s like.

What it’s really like: everyone else is your boss – all of your employees, customers, partners, users, media are your boss. I’ve never had more bosses and needed to account for more people today.

The life of most CEOs is reporting to everyone else, at least that’s what it feels like to me and most CEOs I know. If you want to exercise power and authority over people, join the military or go into politics. Don’t be an entrepreneur.”

  • You think it’s glamorous. The media does a great job idolizing various entrepreneurs, crowning Kings and designating Godfathers of various mafias, but this is all colorful narrative. The reality is years of hard work, throughout which you usually have no idea if you’re even moving in the right direction.
  • You believe you’re extremely talented and that this is the way to maximize your financial return on that talent. Why wouldn’t you want more of the cap table? This is flawed logic, since the 100th engineer at Facebook made far more money than 99% of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Small slices of gigantic pies are still themselves gigantic. If you’re extremely talented, you can easily identify a company with high growth potential and relatively low risk and get an aggressive compensation package from them. If you turn out to be wrong after a few years, you can try again. Within 2 or 3 tries, and likely on the first one, you’ll have a great outcome and can be confident you contributed serious lasting value to the world. If you instead try to immediately start “the next Google or Facebook”, there is a very high likelihood that you will fail completely, or be forced to settle for a much smaller outcome. It will take a long time to reach success or failure, so you won’t have many tries.

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Greek finance minister says euro will collapse if Greece exits

 

Feb 8 (Reuters) – If Greece is forced out of the euro zone, other countries will inevitably follow and the currency bloc will collapse, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Sunday.

Greece’s new leftist government is trying to re-negotiate its debt repayments and has begun to roll back austerity policies agreed with its international creditors.

In an interview with Italian state television network RAI, Varoufakis said Greece’s debt problems must be solved as part of a rejection of austerity policies for the euro zone as a whole. He called for a massive “new deal” investment programme funded by the European Investment Bank.

“The euro is fragile, it’s like building a castle of cards, if you take out the Greek card the others will collapse.” Varoufakis said according to an Italian transcript of the interview released by RAI ahead of broadcast.

The euro zone faces a risk of fragmentation and “de-construction” unless it faces up to the fact that Greece, and not only Greece, is unable to pay back its debt under the current terms, Varoufakis said.

“I would warn anyone who is considering strategically amputating Greece from Europe because this is very dangerous,” he said. “Who will be next after us? Portugal? What will happen when Italy discovers it is impossible to remain inside the straitjacket of austerity?”

Varoufakis and his Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras received friendly words but no support for debt re-negotiation from their Italian counterparts when they visited Rome last week. But Varoufakis said things were different behind the scenes.

“Italian officials, I can’t tell you from which big institution, approached me to tell me they backed us but they can’t tell the truth because Italy also risks bankruptcy and they are afraid of the reaction from Germany,” he said.

“Let’s face it, Italy’s debt situation is unsustainable,” he added.

Italy’s public debt is the largest in the euro zone after Greece’s and Italian bond yields surged in 2011 at the height of the euro zone crisis. They have since fallen steeply and have so far come under little pressure from the renewed tensions in Greece.

Varoufakis said his government would propose a “new deal” for Europe like the one enacted in the United States in the 1930s. This would involve the European Investment Bank investing ten times as much as it has so far, Varoufakis said.

If Europe continues to pursue counterproductive austerity policies the only people who will benefit will be “those who hate European democracy,” he said, citing the Golden Dawn party in Greece, the National Front in France and the United Kingdon Independence Party in Britain.

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BIG MARKET NEWS WEEK 09 FEB 2015 – 13 FEB 2015

Australia Monday, Febr. 9, 2015 01:15
AUD     RBA’s Governor Glenn Stevens Speech
Australia Tuesday, Febr. 10, 2015 01:30
AUD     National Australia Bank’s Business Confidence (Jan)
China Tuesday, Febr. 10, 2015 02:30
CNY       Consumer Price Index (YoY) (Jan)
China Tuesday, Febr. 10, 2015 02:30
CNY       Consumer Price Index (MoM) (Jan)
China Tuesday, Febr. 10, 2015 02:30
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United Kingdom Tuesday, Febr. 10, 2015 10:30
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China Wednesday, Febr. 11, 2015 03:00
CNY New Loans (Jan)
United Kingdom Wednesday, Febr. 11, 2015 11:30
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Australia Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 01:30
AUD Employment Change s.a. (Jan)
Australia Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 01:30
AUD Unemployment Rate s.a. (Jan)
United Kingdom Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 11:30
GBP       BOE’s Governor Carney speech
United Kingdom Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 11:30
GBP BOE Inflation Letter
United States Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 14:30
USD Retail Sales (MoM) (Jan)
United States Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 14:30
USD     Retail Sales ex Autos (MoM) (Jan)
United States Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 14:30
USD Initial Jobless Claims (Feb 6)
Australia Thursday, Febr. 12, 2015 23:30
AUD     RBA’s Governor Glenn Stevens Speech
Germany Friday, Febr. 13, 2015 08:00
EUR Gross Domestic Product s.a (QoQ) (Q4)Preliminar
European Monetary Union Friday, Febr. 13, 2015 11:00
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Canada Friday, Febr. 13, 2015 14:30
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The Weight of Geopolitics. Is Democracy in Decline?

Politics follows geopolitics, or so it has often seemed throughout history. When the Athenian democracy’s empire rose in the fifth century B.C.E., the number of Greek city-states ruled by democrats proliferated; Sparta’s power was reflected in the spread of Spartan-style oligarchies. When the Soviet Union’s power rose in the early Cold War years, communism spread. In the later Cold War years, when the United States and Western Europe gained the advantage and ultimately triumphed, democracies proliferated and communism collapsed. Was this all just the outcome of the battle of ideas, as Francis Fukuyama and others argue, with the better idea of liberal capitalism triumphing over the worse ideas of communism and fascism? Or did liberal ideas triumph in part because of real battles and shifts that occurred less in the realm of thought than in the realm of power?

These are relevant questions again. We live in a time when democratic nations are in retreat in the realm of geopolitics, and when democracy itself is also in retreat. The latter phenomenon has been well documented by Freedom House, which has recorded declines in freedom in the world for nine straight years. At the level of geopolitics, the shifting tectonic plates have yet to produce a seismic rearrangement of power, but rumblings are audible. The United States has been in a state of retrenchment since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. The democratic nations of Europe, which some might have expected to pick up the slack, have instead turned inward and all but abandoned earlier dreams of reshaping the international system in their image. As for such rising democracies as Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa, they are neither rising as fast as once anticipated nor yet behaving as democracies in world affairs. Their focus remains narrow and regional. Their national identities remain shaped by postcolonial and nonaligned sensibilities—by old but carefully nursed resentments—which lead them, for instance, to shield rather than condemn autocratic Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, or, in the case of Brazil, to prefer the company of Venezuelan dictators to that of North American democratic presidents.

Meanwhile, insofar as there is energy in the international system, it comes from the great-power autocracies, China and Russia, and from would-be theocrats pursuing their dream of a new caliphate in the Middle East. For all their many problems and weaknesses, it is still these autocracies and these aspiring religious totalitarians that push forward while the democracies draw back, that act while the democracies react, and that seem increasingly unleashed while the democracies feel increasingly constrained.

It should not be surprising that one of the side effects of these circumstances has been the weakening and in some cases collapse of democracy in those places where it was newest and weakest. Geopolitical shifts among the reigning great powers, often but not always the result of wars, can have significant effects on the domestic politics of the smaller and weaker nations of the world. Global democratizing trends have been stopped and reversed before.

Consider the interwar years. In 1920, when the number of democracies in the world had doubled in the aftermath of the First World War, contemporaries such as the British historian James Bryce believed that they were witnessing “a natural trend, due to a general law of social progress.”[1] Yet almost immediately the new democracies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland began to fall. Europe’s democratic great powers, France and Britain, were suffering the effects of the recent devastating war, while the one rich and healthy democratic power, the United States, had retreated to the safety of its distant shores. In the vacuum came Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy in 1922, the crumbling of Germany’s Weimar Republic, and the broader triumph of European fascism. Greek democracy fell in 1936. Spanish democracy fell to Franco that same year. Military coups overthrew democratic governments in Portugal, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Japan’s shaky democracy succumbed to military rule and then to a form of fascism.

Across three continents, fragile democracies gave way to authoritarian forces exploiting the vulnerabilities of the democratic system, while other democracies fell prey to the worldwide economic depression. There was a ripple effect, too—the success of fascism in one country strengthened similar movements elsewhere, sometimes directly. Spanish fascists received military assistance from the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. The result was that by 1939 the democratic gains of the previous forty years had been wiped out.

The period after the First World War showed not only that democratic gains could be reversed, but that democracy need not always triumph even in the competition of ideas. For it was not just that democracies had been overthrown. The very idea of democracy had been “discredited,” as John A. Hobson observed.[2] Democracy’s aura of inevitability vanished as great numbers of people rejected the idea that it was a better form of government. Human beings, after all, do not yearn only for freedom, autonomy, individuality, and recognition. Especially in times of difficulty, they yearn also for comfort, security, order, and, importantly, a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, something that submerges autonomy and individuality—all of which autocracies can sometimes provide, or at least appear to provide, better than democracies.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the fascist governments looked stronger, more energetic and efficient, and more capable of providing reassurance in troubled times. They appealed effectively to nationalist, ethnic, and tribal sentiments. The many weaknesses of Germany’s Weimar democracy, inadequately supported by the democratic great powers, and of the fragile and short-lived democracies of Italy and Spain made their people susceptible to the appeals of the Nazis, Mussolini, and Franco, just as the weaknesses of Russian democracy in the 1990s made a more authoritarian government under Vladimir Putin attractive to many Russians. People tend to follow winners, and between the wars the democratic-capitalist countries looked weak and in retreat compared with the apparently vigorous fascist regimes and with Stalin’s Soviet Union.

 

Read more here :  http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2015/01/democracy-in-decline-weight-of-geopolitics-kagan

 

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Google’s mission is to organize the worlds’ information, but they won’t stop there

( Source : http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2015/02/03/google-enters-the-collaborative-economy-in-a-big-way/ )

Here comes Google, with a series of five market moves injecting them as a central player for the collaborative economy.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information. But it doesn’t just start and stop there. They also want to organize the world’s logistics, commerce, local transportation, service economy, and even how people obtain and receive loans.

In the past, our perspective of the Collaborative Economy has been through startups, like Airbnb, oDesk, Lyft, Uber and Lending Club that enable people to get what they need from each other, using commonly available technologies like online marketplaces and mobile apps.

Today, Google has entered the Collaborative Economy with a series of announcements that leave a casual reader scratching their. But placing the announcements line by line, you can see an organized attempt to enter this space traditionally dominated by early stage startups.

  1. Google is a major investor in Uber and Lending Club. They started with investments, a great way to test the waters. Google Ventures made their largest investment in Uber ($258 million), lending promise for a future of a lifestyle and logistics app which enables people to bypass car ownership and more. Then, Google invested in the P2P money-lending platform, Lending Club ($110 million), which enables individuals to bypass traditional banks. This gives Google additional market insight and a foothold from which to deploy.
  2. Google plans to roll out self-driving cars, competing with car manufactures. Last year, Google unveiled their friendly-looking, self-driving car, which they suggest will enable anyone to be mobile, reclaim time driving, and reduce the need for car ownership. In Silicon Valley, I often see self-driving Google cars whizzing around in Mountain View and on the major freeway, U.S. 101. Google suggests that these will be available in mass production for the public within five to 10 years.
  3. Google now resells P2P loans, competing with banks. P2P marketplaces of buyers and sellers are in every aspect of society. Take a look at the Collaborative Economy version 2.0 to see over twelve industries that are impacted. Last month, Google announced they’re going to resell bank loans from Lending Club, reducing the need for individuals to get loans from banks, competing directly on ease and price.
  4. Google partners with Airbnb and Lyft, challenging hotels and taxis. Last week, Google announced the expansion of “Google Now,” a mobile app that intends to be the starting point for our daily needs. They will aggregate Airbnb and Lyft data and more, enabling us to quickly and efficiently find the right on-demand services in real time. Don’t expect the partnership to stop there. Just as Google leaned into Open Social to connect with many social networks, they’ll partner with many startups who want to connect their API. Imagine Homejoy, Yerdle, Sprig, Instacart, TaskRabbit, Munchery SpoonRocket, and others.
  5. Google is reportedly building a ride hailing app to compete with Uber. It has been suggested that self-driving cars could be idling in our neighborhoods, waiting for us to order food, groceries, electronics, or even get a ride. With this new system, people are sharing ownership of cars with neighbors, hailing them on demand. It’s worth noting that Uber was absent in last week’s announcement of Google Now, although a partnership with Lyft was announced.

What it means to the Ecosystem:
Google’s announcements, in sequence spell considerable impacts to the entire ecosystem of startups, purists, investors, businesses, merchants, and of course, to the people, here’s how each ecosystem player is impacted:

  • Google will be in a dominant position if they can successfully deploy. Google is the homepage of the internet and, as a result, the start of the Collaborative Economy, as they own the ‘intent’ phase with Google Search. In the future, they’ll organize information about what people need, and be able to deliver in real time, dolling out links and customers to startups, sometimes through their self-driving vehicles.
  • Google and Uber are in a tenuous relationship. Over a year ago, I predicted that Uber + Google is a threat to Amazon. In reality, it looks more like Google may be a threat to Uber and Amazon, as they could potentially offer the same things, but on a broader scale. Google has greater ambitions and, perhaps, the business models (or egos) don’t align at Google and their investment, Uber.
  • Startups have no choice but to evaluate partnering with Google. By connecting to Google Now’s API, they can quickly gain market expansion by potentially being listed in search results, tapping a verified set of Google users, accessing new data types (like intent and location), and accessing historical customer data, all on a proven platform that will stand the test of time.
  • Sharing economy idealists feel threatened as large, tech companies embrace the concept. The notion of quaint neighborhood sharing will quickly be supplanted as Google makes it easy for ordinary people to participate in this new economy. The one difference is that, when sharing is efficient, it actually looks like an on-demand delivery model. I’ll stand firm, that this is tech-based commerce and capitalism, not neo-socialism.
  • Investors embrace Google’s streamlining of the market. This injection of such a large entity further validates the investment thesis that collaboration of unwanted resources in two-sided marketplaces is a profitable business. With Google’s multi-million dollar cash injection and shared offerings of search, apps and self-driving cars, they’ll provide additional market acceleration.
  • Brands seek to separate hype from reality with new commerce models. Many are already deeply hooked into Google’s ad business. Eventually, they’ll have the opportunity to offer their wares, services and solutions on the Google Now platform, as well as connect to various APIs to expand their business reach. Google+ self-driving cars spells opportunity for local merchants, restaurants, and retailers who seek solutions for the ‘final mile’ of delivery.
  • For the people, this mainstreams access to real-time services rather than ownership. Most importantly, for the public, and I mean mainstream, normal people, this provides validity for the Collaborative Economy. Using commonly available search tools or apps, people can quickly get services, rides and products from companies in one trusted space: Google.

Google’s mission is to organize the worlds’ information, but they won’t stop there. They’ll also organize our delivery, our transportation, our food service, our money, and our lives.

Here comes Google. Get ready.

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