The official blog of Stathis Kassios for Business, Media, Economics & Arts

''The EU has just passed the Copyright Directive: now small sites and tech giants alike will have to deal with the fallout and recriminations.'' Read the full article by MIT Technology Review here

''The newspaper’s digital subscriber base increased by 20 percent in 2018, to 180,000, and online sales are outpacing print. If traditional media can grab back some of the territory lost to the social networks, while retaining political influence and avoiding losing money, it will justify this new wave of wannabe Citizen Kanes.'' Read the full article at Bloomberg here

The economic recovery in Greece is accelerating and broadening. Growth and job creation in Greece are expected to accelerate further in 2019. Public sector financing needs remain manageable under the baseline due to strong fiscal balances, low debt servicing costs, and a large cash buffer. While access to external funding is improving, spreads remain high, and domestic credit growth remains negative. In this scenario, Greece’s capacity to repay the Fund is assessed to be adequate. However, vulnerabilities remain significant and downside risks are rising. Greece’s crisis legacies - high public debt, impaired private balance sheets - along with a still-weak payment culture make the economy vulnerable to increasing external (e.g., global slowdown, sharp tightening of financial conditions) and domestic risks (e.g., ongoing court cases challenging key reforms, and reform fatigue). If selected fiscal risks materialize, the sovereign’s repayment capacity could become challenged over th...

Would you delete your social media accounts to feel healthier? Share your thoughts in the comments section. ''Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist, and composer of classical music. Considered a founding father of the field of virtual reality, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. In 2006 he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist. Lanier has composed classical music and is a collector of rare instruments; his acoustic album, Instruments of Change (1994) features Asian wind and string instruments such as the khene mouth organ, the suling flute, and the sitar-like esraj. Lanier teamed with Mario Grigorov to c...

Encouraged by upgrade, Greece plans 10-year bond issue. Click HERE to read more via Reuters.com