In response to Vivan Lee’s blog post on IBM and Twitter’s alliance, I agree that this poses as a competitive advantage but I believe that the combination of social data and enterprise may soon become a point of parity what with Facebook and Google offering consumer data to businesses as well. Further partnerships may consolidate this data into one complete source that allows businesses to market to their customer segments at their full potential.

Making a Deal (Source: UniversalFunding)

Although this may not be a lasting competitive advantage, I see it as a good move for these two firms. Integrating the components that make up a person’s life is a smart move to improve business strategies in the current digital age.

Once again, the consumer data that is being sold may raise privacy issues for many people, but these internet platforms are extremely public and I’m sure that we have all breezed past the terms of service without much thought. My thought on this is that I don’t particularly mind if it means that businesses will be catering to our potential needs and knowing what we want based on our personal data.

The First Nations peoples of Canada are self-governed groups that have obtained rights to reserve lands where many Aboriginal peoples live with a tax-free advanatage. The Canadian government acts as a large revenue source to fund these communities so that they can provide services to their people that include education, housing, and many programs that would be typically provided by the municipal or provincial government.

The First Nations Transparency Act is a recent legislation by the Canadian government that requires all Indian bands make their financial documents available annually to the members of their community as well as to publish on a website after being audited. This comes from the government’s 2011 committment to support democratic, transparent and accountable First Nations governments. Many band members collect salaries from the funds provided by the Canadian government and their have been cases in the past, notably Attawapiskat, where these salaries have been inflated and come at the cost of not supporting their community and forcing them to face below average living conditions.

As a member of the X’axlip band in BC, I recognize many issues that this act may resolve and am all for more democratic First Nations governments. Although I live off-reserve, I am still a part of this First Nations group, but I am unsure as to how the council members are elected and how they use their financial resources. I understand that there are many challenges that face the on-reserve populations and hope that I will see changes in the unfortunate statistics that include suicide, high school completion or post-secondary education, crime and poverty rates in my lifetime. These social issues can’t possibly be resolved by pouring funding into them, but that could be a first step.

 

It is in our nature to label everything with a price tag and apparently Ebola has one too. On September 16, the cost for stopping Ebola was $987.8 million, 2 months later and that cost has risen to $6.18 billion if Obama’s request for emergency funds to combat ebola is a correct estimate.

Besides the evident toll that Ebola has taken on the world, the international economy could become unstable from the effects of the virus. The countries that are financially secure enough to contribute to the cause are spending huge amounts of resources that may never be recouped and the countries where the disease is running rampant may have extreme difficulties returning to their past state.

Prior to the outbreak, Sierra Leone and Liberia were experiencing rapid economic growth with high expectations for Guinea as well. Any prospective projects that these countries had are being hurt by dwindling investor confidence. Their economy barely exists as it is with halts to trade, tourism and agriculture.

There is an extreme estimate of 1.4 million lives being at stake if this continues, not to mention a future at stake if the outbreak is not stopped soon. Pouring funds into the situation now will stop the situation from being drawn out or spiralling out of control, and will allow the world to start its recovery.

Consumer social responsibility is a term that is thrown around by businesses as well as everyday people who believe that it is a major value that firms should stand by. But is this really only something that concerns the decisions of senior level management in well-grounded corporations who have the funds to make a difference?

Rachel Rosenthal writes that Ethical Investing in Emerging Markets adds to the territory of social responsibilty and is actually an extremely difficult task due to a lack of transparency and reporting standards. In our globalized world and economy, this is an issue that should be taken care of to allow information to flow through to stakeholders.

What is interesting about this is that social responsibility is a major driving force to making this happen because firms are benefiting from exposure and the draw in investment. Quantitatively, funds that incorporate ESG (Environmental, Social, Governmental) standards are leading in stock performance by approximately 25% with total asset growth nearly tripling.

For those of us starting to get involved in trading, perhaps it will be a good idea to follow this trend and create our portfolio wisely. Our decisions to invest in certain companies reflect the values that we carry and also determine the trends of successful companies.