Currency Unions

Around 120 years ago, the editor of The Economist Mr. William Bagehot expressed his vision of forming a single currency union for the entire Europe. When two or more nations share the same currency without any economic integration or technical deviations, then those countries form a currency union.

Informal currency unions are composed of countries that have adopted a foreign currency unilaterally. Formal currency unions adopt a foreign currency by the virtue of some bilateral agreements. A formal currency union with common policies is always composed of many countries that have adopted a currency on the basis of a formal agreement by an issuing authority.

Currently, there are around 19 currency unions in the world, with the latest being the EURO. It seems that the Eurasian Economic Forum (EEF), comprising Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia, are seriously considering the establishment of a new currency union when Kyrgyzstan joins EEF. The largest currency union is the EURO and the smallest one is Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU).


Discussions are currently being conducted on future currency, for example, the Russian President Putin has directed the Central Bank of Russia to work with other central banks to determine the terms of future integration. The deadline for establishing these terms and conditions is September 2015. Past trade stipulations by Eurasian countries show that they are going ahead with the plan for a currency union and the first step is to remove trade tariffs.

The new currency will look almost like the Ruble but with certain features of the Euro. The Eurasian Economic Union which was established on January 1, 2015 by a treaty between Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Russia has created a powerful regional market that unites more than 170 million people.

Social Commerce and Related thoughts

In 2014 December, FB conducted a test on ” Sell Something” button, which will help people and groups to sell and trade products via FB. Another feature “Dynamic Product Ads ´’ allows merchants to load the product catalogue into FB page that can lead to direct purchase in the future. Another rumor is that FB is going to have its own mobile payment platform.

Pinterest already announced a “Buy’ button which helps the clients to make transactions within the platform and it will be live in late 2015. Social commerce may take some more time to become popular, but no one can deny the importance of companies using their social media pages for more conversions


Toronto based Turnstyle solutions has developed a cell phone tracker which tracks the radio signals from client’s mobile phone to determine the physical location of the client. It gives the information about where the client goes and what he prefer and where he spends maximum time and this data is used in designing a product effective marketing.
Marketwired is a pres release distribution company, which helps client by letting them know which the best time is to tweet.

Companies already have new strategies to attract more clients like community based market place, in this; individuals directly communicate and sell the products. They are almost like personal advertisements. There are other e commerce sites which sell products in a discounted rate when enough number of buyers agrees to buy the same product. Other ecommerce companies use the client testimonials and reviews to market themselves.

As the technology enable us by helping to have more conversions and sales there are many other concerns which arise, especially in this post-Snowden era. All of them are evolving around privacy issues. The details of the clients should be kept private, privacy setting should be embedded in design, and user privacy should be the priority.

Cyber Attacks and Related Concerns

We witnessed many cyber attacks on various companies in 2014, but the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment was the most fatal and the hacker’s identity is not yet confirmed. FBI is blaming North Korean Electronic army because few North Korean IP addresses were traced during the investigation. Sony Pictures were about to release a comedy “The Interview” and the plot is the assassination of North Korean President King-Jo-Un , who is equal to God for North Koreans.

Hackers introduced themselves as ‘Guardians of Peace” GOP, sent a malware “Wiper” in Sony’s computer system infrastructure and deleted entire data from the servers. Hackers took all the official and personal emails and data. The impact was very controversial that Sony’s Co- Chairperson Ms Amy Pascal’s racial mail communications were also published by the hacker and she was fired.

According to Kaspersky main threat comes from external sources as Spam and then from
malware attacks in the form of viruses, worms and Trojans. Priority is always given to protect confidential data because from just one data security attack an average of $80000 is lost. Damages caused by one targeted attack are $2.4 million in an average. When a company’s IT infrastructure is attacked, the amount of data loss from internal operations is calculated as43%, financial data as 22% and client data as31%

Main concerns for a company should be protection of sensitive data, prevention of IT security breaches, mobile device management, unreliability of IT systems, and client management. Obstacles to maintain IT security are heavy expenditure, lack of IT awareness among stakeholders, complexity of IT products and services, lack of support from IT vendors, lack of staff training facilities, co-ordination issues between business administration department and IT department, and access to the corporate network through personal devices like mobile and laptop.

Main strategies companies adopt are installing anti malware protection, software update management, encryption of highly sensitive data, physical security of IT system against theft and calamities, implementation of disaster recovery policy, creating separate IT policy for laptops, pc s and notebooks and regular audits. IT threat is considered as the number one threat for any businesses, than economic instability, and brand reputation. IT threat also includes computer fraud, industrial espionage and intellectual property theft.

Economy of Apps

App industry is showing a high growth rate with huge number of downloads over the years. By June 2014 more than 75 billion apps were downloaded from Apple and 50 billion from Google Play.

Apple paid more than $10 billion to their app developers in 2014 but by the very first week of January 2015 Apples has already spent around $500 million for app development. In the US itself more than 627,000 app developer jobs were created in 2014 and across 155 countries 1.4 million app catalogues were distributed.

Global app economy was worth around $53Bn, in 2012 and the growth rate from 2012 -2016 is supposed to be at 66%. This sis made under the presumption that smart phone penetration in APAC and Latin American countries will grow than ever.

There are more than 3 million app developers in the world and majority of them are Asians. Amongst them android developers are about 71%, HTML5 51%, Apple ios developers are 50%.

As per the records every Indian has 17 apps and South Koreans lead with 41 apps per person. By the end of 2015 Indian app industry is supposed to grow by 66%. Department of Telecom is also trying to make use of this opportunity by setting up an app development centre within 3 years. They have already invested Rs 1000 crore for this purpose. This centre will give importance for local app distribution as Indians will be more interested in local apps.

In 2014more than 9 billion apps were downloaded by Indians compared to the 1.5 billion in 2012. The rollout of 4G network is going to the add the number of download in 2015. Major players in the app industry will be forced to change their business strategies as the competition increases.

At the same time those who think about app development business should also do a profit analysis. There are people more than 60% who said they are below the app poverty graph. Earnings are less and work is not steady and most of the contracts were short term. More than 30% of app developers are working on commission too.

Illegal Blood and Organ Farming

According to WHO statistics every country needs at least 1% of blood reserve but for the entire population of India only 9 million unit is collected whereas 12 million unit of blood is annually required, which shows a deficit of 25%. Some times the deficit rise up to 50% and this leads to the rise of illegal blood farming in India. In 2011, blood was sold for $337 per unit in international market, and blood was taken out even from children and prisoners.

In blood farms people are caged and extracted blood at least 16 times a month and they are just fed twice daily. In India the blood is sold for $18/unit which is 15 times higher than the government rate. Due to the lack of a Central Blood Agency authenticity of the reports are not confirmed. Rough estimate says that India needs 3 million units of blood and when it is multiplied by $15, the worth of illegal blood donation business is $45 million annually.

Health issues are also reported along with illegal blood donation that too at a higher rate. The National Thalassemia Welfare Society estimates say that 6.8% of Thalassemic patients contracts fatal diseases including HIV. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics reported that 23 Thalassemic children contracted HIV due to illegal blood donation in 2011. Non profit blood banks under clubs like Rotary clubs are costlier and available only in limited cities. Public interest litigation filed in Gujarat revealed that the voluntary blood donation levels are too high and earnings of blood banks have gone up to $1.9 million by selling blood and blood components.

Organ and blood farming records from International segment is really scary. Among all the nations only Iran allow organ trade, even then 2 million products from human tissue are sold annually in the US. In the US alone more than 1 lakh patients are in waiting list for organ transplantation. One gram of bone marrow costs $23,000. In India a surrogate womb is available for $23,000 to $30000. Even dead bodies are not spared where as skin costs $10 per inch, skeleton for $2300, hearts cost $11, 9000 in illegal market. Altogether a human body has the value of $45 million.