Yes, We Love To Watch TV

Nielsen Media announced the Media Index Survey for Indonesia. The figure shows a slow down penetration for print media. Newspaper reader down from 28% of population in 2005 to 19% of population in 2009. The same thing happen for the magazine and tabloid.

Nielsen Media researcher said that this decreasing print media penetration indicate a lowering in reading activity. But in my opinion the data isn’t telling us that. The lowering penetration in print media is due to the shift in people’s media habit. An advance in technology has made people change their behavior in interact with the medium. In this case, people are more getting along with online media rather than print media. This is shown by dramatically increment in Internet penetration from 8% in 2005 to 17% in 2009.

Terror and Country Risk Premium

Today, 17th July 2009, two bombs explode in Ritz Hotel and JW Marriot Hotel, Jakarta. The incident took at least 9 people dead and lots of injured victims. Meanwhile, the case is still under investigation by the police.

In response to this bombing terror, Fitch Rating stated that they wouldn’t degrade Indonesia country rating. Fitch gave Indonesia “BB” rating, two grades below investment grade. Other Rating company such as Moody’s gave Indonesia “Ba3” and S&P gave “BB-“.

Then, what’s the implication?

Economic Disaster

Michelle Zanini on Mckinsey Quarterly Report discusses about what natural and economic disasters have in common. Many scientists in the field of complexity theory argue that earthquake, forest fires, power blackouts, and the like are extremely difficult or even impossible to foresee because they are the products of many interdependent “agents” and cascades of events in inherently unstable systems that generate large variations.

This is just in line with chaos theory which defined as sensitivity to the initial condition. This is happened on a dynamic system (a system that changed over time).

Then, how do we use this kind of analysis in practice?

Economic Society – Part 1

Robert L. Heilbroner on The Making of Economic Society argued that the economic problem is related with the individual and its society. That is how the individual interact with the society. The individual needs each other just to stay survive. This is called the struggle for existence.

The basic problem of economics is how societies forge and maintain the bonds which guarantee their material survival. Scarcity came not as a natural caused but it’s “human nature”. Humans are limited in using and managing the nature to fulfill their needs.