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THE LIST of complaints against the leading web platforms runs long, from privileging their own products and operating both sides of an advertising exchange, to ignoring the problems that result from their activities. Applying conventional rules like antitrust law is difficult, since it is hard to show consumer harm when the service is free. But there is another way to regulate big tech: treat the companies like big banks.
The American banking industry learned much from the financial crisis of 2008, the regulatory crackdown and the collapse of return on equity as banks had to build up reserves of capital and liquidity under the new, Dodd-Frank regulations. Today, banks lend to clients and make markets for them, with occasional stresses but no panic. Although many bankers look back longingly at their pre-2008 returns on capital, they still operate lucrative businesses.
The Global Debt Problem
It has been recently estimated that global debts stand at $284 trillion equivalent, representing 355% of global GDP. Estimates such as these must be treated with caution, and they probably underestimate financial sector debt. Furthermore, no allowance in these figures is made for OTC derivatives, which according to the Bank for International Settlements have a gross value of $15.48 quadrillion(!), netting out at $609 trillion.
This article comments on the different debt sectors: government, finance, non-financial corporate and consumer debt. It finds the dangers of excessive corporate debt have had the least attention, and that systemic risk in commercial banks is grossly underestimated.
by Nina-Sophia Miralles (Quercus £20, 352pp)
In 2006, I was at a screening of The Devil Wears Prada with a friend who was a senior executive at British Vogue. In the film, based on a roman-a-clef by a former Vogue assistant, Meryl Streep plays terrifying fashion editor Miranda Priestly, all put-downs, scathing one-liners and fierce black-rimmed spectacles.
It was widely accepted as a thinly veiled portrait of the equally terrifying Vogue editor Anna Wintour. I asked my friend what she thought of the film. ‘It was something of an understatement,’ she said.
Wintour, famed for her thinness and implacable silence, is capable of producing fear and fascination, even if you’re not especially fashion-conscious. Highly ambitious, she moved to New York in 1975 and after blistering through various magazines was appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue.
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