Futuríveis

But the long-run trend looks unstoppable. One big reason is the continuing march of privatisation. The more enterprises are sold off in Russia, China and India, the more liquid capital is drawn to those countries and the more local expertise is created in managing it.

One powerful illustration of this is the share that the developed economies hold in the world’s stock of quoted equity. Thirty years ago, the big five markets – the US, Japan, the UK, Germany and France – between them accounted for 90 per cent of the world by value. The figure is now 64 per cent and falling steeply.

One way of slowing this trend, of course, is for the older markets to shore up their credentials – that is, to ensure that a London or New York listing is a desirable badge of quality. This lies at the heart of the squabbles between the London and New York stock exchanges and gives extra edge to the debate over whether London has become too permissive in its listing requirements.

But in general, for London to imagine it has inherited New York’s former power is an illusion. That power is being distributed around the world. London’s best hope is to hang on to its share.

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Financial Times - Tony Jackson

While most of today’s DRM schemes that come embedded on CDs and DVDs are likely to disappear over the next year or two, the need to protect copyrighted music and video will remain. Fortunately, there are better ways of doing this than treating customers as if they were criminals.

One of the most promising is Audible Magic’s content protection technology. Google is currently testing this to find the “fingerprints” of miscreants who have posted unauthorised television or movie clips on YouTube.

The beauty of such schemes is that they don’t actually prevent anyone from making copies of original content. Their purpose is simply to collect royalties when a breach of copyright has occurred. By being reactive rather than pre-emptive, normal law-abiding consumers are then left in peace to enjoy their music and video collections in any way they choose. Why couldn’t we have thought of that in the beginning?

The Economist

Europe has eclipsed the US in stock market value for the first time since the first world war in another sign of the slipping of the global dominance of American capital markets.

Europe's 24 stock markets, including Russia and emerging Europe, saw their capitalisation rise to $15,720bn (£7,950bn) at the end of last week, according to Thomson Financial data. That exceeded the $15,640bn market value of the US.

The rise of the euro against the dollar, growth of east European markets such as Russia and stock market outperformance spurred on by improving profitability have seen Europe close a long-held gap with the US.

Ian Harnett at Absolute Strategy Research, who identified the move, said this marked a "seismic shift" in markets.

The last time Europe eclipsed the US in market capitalisation was likely to have been before the first world war, said Mike Staunton, stock-market historian at London Business School. The shift mirrors a trend in the debt world, where European activity has caught up, and in some cases overtaken the US.

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FT.com