Microsoft will fiddle with prices as euro burns, UK biz fears Microsoft's partners are braced for further changes in volume pricing this year as the euro flutters wildly in the economic storm. The Windows 8 maker tore up its licensing price list and rewrote it in euros for a 1 July Europe-wide relaunch. At the current exchange rate with the pound sterling, UK customers will pay on …
Maybe so, but that;s how the lovely people in the CIty make their money - by taking money off fools who think the people in the CIty are going to make money for their "investors" (or "muppets" as the occasional honest City spiv calls them).
Go have a read about credit default swaps.
And don't forget, we the taxpayer are not bailing out Greece, we are bailing out the banksters who colluded with Goldman Sachs in lending far more to Greece than was sensible for either banksters or Greece (and getting paid megadosh up front for that lending).
Go look up "credit default swap", and if you like what you find, try "hypothecation" and "rehypothecation" while you're at it.
Austerity for the 99%
Megadosh for the 1%
And don't forget, we the taxpayer are not bailing out Greece, we are bailing out the banksters who colluded with Goldman Sachs in lending far more to Greece than was sensible for either banksters or Greece (and getting paid megadosh up front for that lending).
Agreed 100%, and also there should be no bailout of any kind. Let the banks eat the losses, that is the only way to reign in the stupidity.
He's trying to blame Italy's woes on the city of London. Much like its the Anglo-Saxons' fault that the Spanish banks engaged in wild property speculation in Spain, the French banks lent money they didn't have to everyone in the Eurozone and the German Landesbanks moved state funds to Ireland for speculative purposes.
One of thse days the "Europeans" might accept that the Euro and all the damage done by it to everyone within EMU is in fact THEIR fault and not some UK-USA plot. Our politicians (and bankers) don't have the brains for that.
Sadly I suspect that will take a revolution in Spain or Greece before any politician in the Eurozone faces the truth. Neither country is far off the 60% or so youth unemployment which triggers these things and neither country has been "democratic" for very long.
Anyway way off-topic.....
You're right. I didn't make myself clear.
I found a nice example of what shall be done on the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/opinion/ban-pure-speculators-of-oil-futures.html. Tricks similar to the ones described are used constantly to raise or lower euros against dollars against ... you name it.
Greece is on the verge of collapse - no matter what currency they use - but in fact they use euros, so why don't we bet against it.
Stronger regulation against betting money you don't have is a wise move anytime, and even today.
However, I am pretty certain that banks and traders will not accept stronger regulations, since, for better or for worse, they live and make profit this way.
Back to Microsoft.... They want to simplify their price catalogue using the same figures by stating that 100 USD = 100 EUROS. They're not alone in this.
> Stronger regulation against betting money you don't have is a wise move anytime, and even today.
I guess that means that banks should no longer give out loans. I mean every loan is a gamble and it is the depositors money the banks are lending out, not their own.
Here's a novel idea. How about not spending money you don't have? It is always a good idea to live within your means. Perhaps if Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland etc did this then the euro might stand a chance.
We all know what happens when you charge more than consumers are prepared to stomach (see media industry). The UK wil find ways to get software from the continent (or US), and if that means 'circumventing' agreements then so be it. If MS play hard-ball on this consumers will probably just say 'well if I'm going to break the rules I may as well do it properly' and piracy will rise dramatically - or there will be a massive shift to Linux, etc.
PS. doesn't EU law mean that a person in the UK can purchase from any other EU state anyway? The only people who I see losing are the UK MS-resellers.
"The UK wil find ways to get software from the continent... "
"doesn't EU law mean that a person in the UK can purchase from any other EU state anyway?"
Erm... isn't that exactly the point? Microsoft are creating a single price for the single market, hence the Euro pricing....
Buy it from a French reseller, and then try sorting out any problems with the added following complications:
Reseller pretends not to speak English when they feel like it
Reseller shrugs at your problem ("bof, iz Microsoft probleem")
Reseller office hours don't match with yours, and they take a long lunch and Friday afternoon off
national stereotypes, moi?
Just quote your customers in Euros instead of Pounds and you've solved your end of the problem. You'll have to pump up your resistance to the locals moaning that you're not using their currency, but no one really makes you use the Pound for anything. Just specify this in the footnote: "Currency exchange rate = BoE on the day of purchase + 2.5%". That's how they used to do it in a 2nd hand country like Romania when the rate was very volatile day-to-day. Back then the base currency was the other continent-wide currency that will never break up: the US dollar.
VAT has to be paid in sterling and use published rates, you can't use a forward rate. Charging folks in the UK in Euros can be a somewhat "fun" experience if you're not careful. An ex-customer of mine ran up a £40K bill by using forward bought currencies see section 7.7 of VAT guide 700.
Its not like Microsoft has to recover some costs incurred in the local currency. There isn't a mine somewhere in Whales were they have to dig up copies of Windows and incur the associated wage and overhead costs (its more likely Windows comes from under old outhouse sites).
Their marginal cost per Windows/Office license is close to zero. Pricing in each market is pretty much an issue of maximizing revenue in that market. Expenses are a matter of accounting gymnastics to spread the development costs across each copy sold. And we all know how easily MS (and other IT firms) can open branch offices and magically move chunks of expenses and revenues into markets with tax and/or exchange rate advantages.
So, what's with the screwball pricing structure?
How about Goldman Sachs not fiddling the books for the Greek government? As described in various places including BBC Radio 4's excellent "More or Less" series:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2011/09/more_or_less_debt_-_a_european.html
How about investment/casino banks not indulging in behaviour which would result (in any other trade) in them going bust? How about keeping retail bank money separate from casino bank money, like it legally had to be after the Depression and until Thatcher/Clinton repealed the relevant laws?
If my business is widgets, and someone wants to buy widgets on credit, my business has a credit control department who work out (sometimes with the help of external reference companies) how many widgets I can afford to supply on credit to any given organisation. Basically, I'm making short term loans.
If my credit control people decide an organisation is a bit risky for me to supply, I don't supply them many widgets on credit (they can have them in return for cash up front though). If I supply widgets to an outfit that turns out to be unable to pay, it's my problem. If my credit control people make a big enough mistake, my company can go bankrupt. I don't expect my company to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Them's the rules, them is.
Now imagine my company doesn't make widgets, it makes loans.
Suddenly, since the Crash of 2008, I am able to rely on the taxpayer to bail me out every few months when it becomes obvious again that I've made far too many loans to outfits with no chance of paying them back, in part because my credit control department relied on completely fabricated credit references which everyone with any sense knew were a pack of lies (see "More or Less" above), in part because every "banking stress test" since 2008 has also been a pack of lies.
Nice work, if you can get it.
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