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

Since 2009 , it’s been a personal tradition to reflect on the passing year and share insights into upcoming global trends. Delighted to continue this tradition by presenting my latest article, “Global Trends in 2024”! Join me as I explore the events that shaped our world and offer personal thoughts and predictions for the coming year. Your thoughts and comments are most welcome. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year! Another year has come to an end, bringing with it many developments, both locally and internationally. Taking a brief look at the most significant events that dominated public discourse, media, and social media references, let’s start with the dominance of artificial intelligence. The term “dominance” might disturb some as it can be interpreted as a predetermined evolution. However, continuous research in machine learning, neural networks, and the automation arising from artificial intelligence has already started to affect and replace a significant portion of human work an...

Η συζήτηση για τον επόμενο γύρο αύξησης των επιτοκίων συνεχίζεται σε επίπεδο κεντρικών τραπεζών τόσο στις ΗΠΑ όσο και στην Ευρώπη και τη Μεγάλη Βρετανία. Μια νέα, 10η ή 11η αύξηση των επιτοκίων θα καταφέρει να τιθασεύσει τον πληθωρισμό ή θα συνεχιστεί αυτό το παιχνίδι αύξησης των επιτοκίων και παρακολούθησης της αντίδρασης των τιμών καταναλωτή που δημιουργούν πληθωριστικές πιέσεις; Όλοι περίμεναν τι θα πει ο κύριος Jerome Powell στο συνέδριο οικονομικής πολιτικής στο Jackson Hole. Δυστυχώς δεν άφησε περιθώρια για παρερμηνείες εφόσον ανέφερε πως παρά τις εμφανείς προσπάθειες μείωσης και σταθεροποίησης του πληθωρισμού όπως αποτυπώνεται και στο παρακάτω διάγραμμα, παραμένει ακόμα σε υψηλά επίπεδα ιστορικά, γκρεμίζοντας τις φρούδες ελπίδες ότι θα σταματήσει η αύξηση των επιτοκίων που στο τέλος αναπόφευκτα θα προκαλέσει βαθιά ύφεση στην Αμερικανική και Ευρωπαϊκή οικονομία. Αντίστοιχα και στην Ευρώπη πληθαίνουν οι φωνές οι οποίες αναμένουν μια νέα ώθηση στα επιτόκια. Κάποια στιγμή η αυστηρή ...

Dear friends, here's another short documentary (around 45 minutes) which I found extremely interesting to share with you about Wagner and its leader Prigozhin, following the recent coup events in Russia. This was produced by WSJ. Russian government's paramilitary group? Private army of mercenaries? Let's find out:

Dear readers, here's an interesting excerpt from the current book I read by Adam Tooze, "How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World". Amidst the current banking crisis (see the recent crush of  First Republic Bank) and the monetary tigheting policies of central banks in USA, Europe, the study of this book might shed some light on your understanding of the next global recession (!) "Το μήνυμα που περνούσε στις κατώτερες βαθμίδες της τροφικής αλυσίδας ήταν απλό: θέλουμε ακόμα περισσότερα ενυπόθηκα δάνεια για διεκπεραίωση, και όσο χειρότερη είναι η ποιότητά τους τόσο το καλύτερο. Χάρη στη μαγεία των ανεξάρτητων πιθανοτήτων, όσο χειρότερη ήταν η ποιότητα του χρέους που εισερχόταν στη διαδικασία διαμερισμού και ομαδοποίησης τόσο πιο εντυπωσιακό ήταν το αποτέλεσμα. Μεγάλες ποσότητες δανείων χαμηλής διαβάθμισης και υψηλού κινδύνου, που είχαν χορηγηθεί χωρίς δικαιολογητικά, παρουσιάζονταν ως ΑΑΑ. Σε κάθε άνθηση είναι αναμενόμενο ότι θα προκύψουν σχεδόν εγκληματικές ή...

The current discussions between friends or experts about the war in Ukraine, usually lead to past reports of the mistakes, responsibilities and aggressive actions of the West in the Balkans, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, military involvement in Ukraine and the periphery region of Russia. It seems that all those who try to justify Russia's indisputably murderous, criminal actions on European soil, with the daily deaths of children and civilians, have been finding it difficult for years to adopt the Western narrative, for deeply ideological reasons, not to mention the psychoneurotic empathy towards the Western order of things and perception of the reality of which they are -unfortunately for them- part. They live and breathe in a country of the European Union that is Greece for example, but their minds and souls are attracted to Mother Russia, the undefined East, because they do not like the Americans, NATO, Germany, France, UK, the established political-economic-social formations...

'' Hopkinton Massachusetts is a sister city with Marathon Greece and today I'm launching my Hellenic Voices initiative where I'll be featuring creative work from Greek authors, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs on a regular basis. First up is my friend Stathis Kassios aka "Zorba the Entrepreneur" who has written this new book in Greek called "Casino Nights" which tells a fascinating story of how the lure of gambling can create alternative realities. More information about the book and how to order are in the comments'' - via George Dratelis  *** I would like to publicly thank George Dratelis and congratulate him for his new initiative ''Hellenic Voices'' - Stathis Kassios

Dear readers, I know that you are used reading topics around business, media, arts, and economics in my blog but I consider this following interview very important because of the current global geopolitical dangers and the increasing nuclear arms race. People in power should act now. Our lives, the planet, civilization and the global economy would be totally destroyed if a nuclear war takes place.

Recently watched the documentary film ''The Great Hack'' which was pretty good I think as it raises important questions about the endless personal data we provide online as individuals and internet users of web platforms and consumers-contributors of social media. Questions about who owns our personal data, who has access to these data, how third parties exploit our online data in order to benefit economically, create political campaigns and target people strategically.  I believe that the film spurs an ongoing conversation for the hot topic about US elections-facebook-Cambridge Analytica-Russia but at the same time it can also manipulate your view to look through the lense and the filters of the film in order to agree with the narrators.  -Stathis Kassios

Currently reading again ''Think and grow rich'' by Napoleon Hill. This book grows on you and needs a lot of self-meditation to grasp the inner meanings of its pages. Don't read this book if you have no personal goals for life or don't care about how globalization is affecting your local secure space. Here's an excerpt: ''The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs, are, generally, easily influenced by the ''opinions'' of others. They permit the newspapers and the ''gossiping'' neighbors to do their ''thinking'' for them. ''Opinions'' are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by ''opinions'' when you reach decisions, you will not succeed in any undertaking, much less in that of transmuting your own desire into money. If you are infl...

The following excerpt is from a paper on macroeconomics by Emi Nakamura and Jon Steinsson, Columbia University October 25, 2017: ''throughout the period between early 1930 and March 1933, the Fed failed to act and instead allowed the money supply to fall by large amounts and allowed a substantial fraction of the banking system to fail. Eichengreen (1992) argues that an important reason why the Fed did not act was that it felt constrained by the gold standard. The idea is that effective action almost surely would have been inconsistent with remaining on the gold standard and those that favored remaining on the gold standard prevailed until Roosevelt took office. One of President Roosevelt’s first policy actions was to take the US off the gold standard in April 1933. Industrial production immediately sky-rocketed. The weakness of this observation is that the Roosevelt administration, of course, changed a number of polices.'' Greece's economy is going throug...

My current read is ''The Price of Inequality'' written by Joseph E. Stiglitz (winner of the Nobel prize for Economics). I am sharing some excerpts from the book that I believe will provide some food for thought on global markets, their impact on local economies and why there is so much inequality  nowadays between rich and poor people,  stemming from bad government policies or market regulations that favor the top 1%. ''The theory that came to dominate, begininning in the second half of the nineteenth century-and still does-was called ''marginal productivity theory'';those with higher productivities earned higher incomes that reflected their greater contribution to society. Competitive markets, working through the laws of supply and demand, determine the value of each individual's contributions. If someone has a scarce and valuable skill, the market will reward him amply, because of his greater contribution to output. If he has no ski...