There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Google revisited

In January 2006, Google was valued at about US$130 billion. But by January 2007 it had added another US$10 billion and was worth US$140 billion.

Indonesia has also done well. A year ago, Indonesia’s listed companies were valued at US$80 billion. Now they are valued at around US$125 billion. Pretty impressive really - and if the trends continue it shouldn’t be long before Indonesia is worth more than Google: actually, according to my regression calculations, probably sometime in June/July this year. Not long to go now.

But it could be even sooner. Because in what is one of the biggest lawsuits ever, Viacom (the owner of the MTV music channel), has filed an incredible US$1 billion lawsuit against the internet company over copyright infringement. And if the lawsuit is successful, Google could really be in trouble. Just think about it: Google owns Blogger, and every day there must be tons of copyright text, pics and videos illegally posted by bloggers from around the world. So if Viacom does win, the way could be paved for an avalanche of lawsuits like the world has never seen. The once invincible Google to be sunk like the ill-fated Titanic.

But for now Google is still God.

And some people want it to remain that way. Like some dude who received a cheque for US$901,733 from Google for just two months work!

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