Your are not alone!

How many times in the last twelve months have you been told your country's economy has a poor investment return, you have a growing current account deficit, and your savings record is 'pathetic'!

How often recently have your central bankers, your investment advisors, your Treasury, and of course, your politicians lectured you on how you should change your habits?

How many times have these media-labelled experts told you that your country faces a perilous economic future unless you cut back on your spending now! And you were repeatedly told this was just a problem in our country.

Good news for you! The USA has the same problem as the rest of the western world (WW), and the WW thinks it is a giant problem!

The fundmental question is: Are we measuring the right aspects of our individual economies?

Let us take the USA situation.
"...what if we told you that the doomsayers, while not definitively wrong, aren't seeing the whole picture? What if we told you that businesses are investing about $1 trillion a year more than the official numbers show? Or that the savings rate, far from being negative, is actually positive? Or, for that matter, that our deficit with the rest of the world is much smaller than advertised, and that gross domestic product may be growing faster than the latest gloomy numbers show?..."

BusinnessWeek Online further reports that:"The statistical wizards at the Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington can whip up a spreadsheet showing how much the railroads spend on furniture ($39 million in 2004, to be exact). But they have no way of tracking the billions of dollars companies spend each year on innovation and product design, brand-building, employee training, or any of the other intangible investments required to compete in today's global economy. That means that the resources put into creating such world-beating innovations as the anticancer drug Avastin, inhaled insulin, Starbuck's (SBUX ), exchange-traded funds, and yes, even the iPod, don't show up in the official numbers."

Need we say more?

BusinnessWeek Online
Why The Economy Is A Lot Stronger Than You Think

Hype versus Life?

In what appears to be a life-threatening version of the Wikipedia vs Encyclopedia Britannica debate, Yahoo has launched its 'Yahoo! Answers'. The service allows users to:

1. Ask questions;
2. Answer them; and
3. Discover and browse through all of the answered questions that others have posed.

And that's not all! The service is free, questions are grouped into categories, and there’s a search function.

But wait, there's more...the 'service' has a rating system built in....and how does that work? Well the person who asks the question rates the answers! Experts evaluating experts of course...why would you think any differently?

Does this sound like an internet version of over-the fence gossip?

Are there questions that are beginning to nag at you? Like what constraints (such as no medical or legal advice) apply? A quick (and truly random) search of the website revealed the following question:

"Is it safe to give a young child an immunization when they're already sick?".

The 'Asker' had a serious medical ethics and practice question.

Two answers (at the time of writing) - neither from a registered medical practitioner, but one respondent claims to be a nurse with twenty years experience.

And the rating system? Well the 'Asker' rates the non-nurse as 5-star...the nurse did not even get measured!

Confidence building?

Competitor Google has its 'Answers' which uses "More than 500 carefully screened Researchers" to reply to questions. Their second difference is that the 'Asker' pays a fee for the inquiry.

Specialty sites are also available. But they avoid the problem areas. Guru, for instance, sticks to business and public sector advice.

Storm-in-a-Browser?

It might appear on the surface that this is no different to old-wives-tales vs visiting the doctor? Not so!

Performance-Eye's attention was drawn to this situation by Charlene Li, a principal analyst on the Devices, Media, & Marketing team of Forrester Research, a (Nasdaq: FORR) listed independent technology and market research company. Charlene is a former strategy consultant for Monitor Company, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, and holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She is a leading blogger in the IT sector.

And this is the scarey bit!

She has concerns about the Google researcher approach because "...it is a lot more cumbersome to use and also raises the stakes for both the asker and the answerer".

And she clearly favours Yahoo..."By keeping it free, Yahoo! keeps it light but also pretty darn useful. Also, the universe expands tremendously with Yahoo’s service. Two other ways Yahoo! benefits: 1) It encourages users to become active, participating Yahoo! community members; and 2) it creates new content that can be indexed and searched by Yahoo! (as well as other search engines)."

So it all boils down to the almighty dollar...!

"How will Yahoo! benefit?" Charlene asks..."Well, I don’t think they were leaving much money on the table by foregoing the ability to charge. In fact, there’s probably quite a bit more opportunity in the form of advertising, especially since advertisers could potentially buy ad inventory in specific categories or target ads by specific keywords".

Cashing in on crisis?

And the stinger is in the tail!

"One key area to watch: local advice. This has the potential of causing a huge dent in start-ups like Insider’s Guide or Judy’s Book, primarily because it’s so easy to use and doesn’t require forming a formal social network.

So financial leverage from the internet appears to be the primary purpose, and legal and social accountability are key elements to be avoided?

I wonder who cares about the life of the two-year old child in the serious 'immunization' question?