Kasi-Blog

I recently bought two shirts which were called iron-free. After they came out of the dryer, they had more wrinkles than a young Shar-Pei.

I have to come up with a decision about my Master-Thesis. I want to write about Global Governance in the financial markets, but I have to be more specific. Financial markets are very interesting. It takes some time to understand the basic mechanisms, but analysing financial markets can be fun. It’s a weird combination of economics, math, psychology, gambling, political science and business studies.

When I started my MPhil in Cambridge, I thought that the financial markets were mainly regulated through the bodies created by the G7/G8 throughout the years.

My supervisor John Forsyth made me aware of the BIS as a main coordinating body of Central Banks. Then I read “Central Bank Coordination at the Bank of International Settlements, 1930-1973” by Prof. Toniolo and Piet Clement from the BIS.

The book is great for understanding economic history. It also shows that there was considerable bargaining to create cooperation of the regulators of Financial Markets. Since the BIS acted as a clearing house and deposit bank for the Central Banks, it created its own income, was fairly independent from the governments and provided technical expertise when creating the Basel System of Banking Supervision.

In the 1970ies a new actor emerged on the field of financial regulation: the Library Group of the Finance Ministers which later became the G7-System. The G7 often created policy responses to financial crises and established several bodies, like the Financial Action Task Force.

There are three main ideas that I have:

• What did the Central Bank governors think about the emergent coordination between finance ministers and later head of governments in the field of finance? Was there general support or skepticism? Recently, the Archives of the BIS opened until 1977 and this might be the opportunity to research on a topic that no one had the chance to explore yet.
• I would suspect that the cooperation between G7/G8 and BIS was quite cooperative in many cases throughout the years and an intricate network of coordinating bodies evolved. Mapping that network would also provide an interesting research project.
• Learning from history, it is likely to expect new regulation in the field of financial markets after this financial crisis. It might be an interesting research to see which regulation is planned and who takes the regulatory initiative – BIS or G8.

I pretty much have to make a decision of going into an historic analysis or trying to research a contempary issue. The first topic is certainly more focused, the second and third topic bring along a high degree of uncertainty. Hmm….

Today, I had to give a presentation about the Basel System. Due to recent events, I discussed the origins of the subprime crisis and how is it related to a certain deficiency in Basel II. I explained how the cooperation of Central Banks to regulate Banking Supervision was a result of banking failures in the 70ies and 80ies which speculated heavily in the currency markets.

I showed how Basel I introduced risk-weighted minimal capital requirements to have a global standard for assessing the risks banks were taking in the increasingly global financial markets. Prof. Kuczynski explained how Basel I indirectly brought about the Asian crisis because Interbank-Lending was given zero risk weight despite considerable real risks taken by some of the Asian commercial banks. I also brought forward the argument (raised here) that Basel II made banks rely too much on rated securities which made them fall into the subprime trap.

The handout from my presentation can be downloaded here.

Jérôme Kerviel, who has alleviated Societé General of about 5 billion pounds, has a Facebook profile and a group searching for him. Difficult to hide these days…

… are the Black Swan, the Tipping Point, the Wisdom of the Crowd, and the Paradox of Choice. Philosophy of Science could be so much more interesting.

This is the situation for German students: StudiVZ is the biggest player on the market but is going to use penetrating advertising strategies to refinance their expenses.

There are only a few ways to avoid this advertisements. Firstly, StudiVZ allows to exclude yourself from advertising, but the smarties have hidden this functions well.

Signing off completely and switching to another network is also an option. Facebook has more to offer than StudiVZ because the German network there is growing fast, but at the same time their marketing strategies are just as penetrating.

Kaioo says there are an non-commercial alternative because they will donate all revenues to charity. The problem is: when it comes to functionalit, it is even less satisfying than StudiVZ. For instance, it is impossible to administrate jointly a group in Kaioo – so much said about networking.

On Monday, classes start again and I am using the rest of the weekend to get some reading done. The weather outside is distracting. It changes fast from stormy rains to bright sunny blue skies.

The whole day I have this feeling of jetlag, even though my arrival here is already a week gone. I wanted to get up at 8 in order to arrive at the library early, walk into town and buy me a new suit (everything is on sale right now), go the Boat House for a small stroll up the Cam. But instead I woke up at 11, scrambled into the city, got lost in the library.

It seems that my body does not want to change back from the work cycle of 2 to 5, meaning 2 in the afternoon til 5 at night. Is that possible to have a Jet lag, even after a week of flying and without crossing a time zone?

See Report by Fortinet and blog post by Programmable Web.

Drawing a Family Tree is difficult

Genealogy is a fascinating hobby not only available to the upper classes. Through Internet Archive and Google Search it is fairly easy to contact distant relatives. A few blogs discuss genealogy, such as Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.

But how to draw a family tree? Bottom-Top starting with me and listing my ancestors? Or Top-Bottom starting with one of my ancestors and listing all his offspring? In the first case, I get a complete lists of all people whose genes I have in my body, in the second case I get a list of people who share some of my genes. In the first case, the siblings of my ancestors are ignored, in the second case the parents and siblings of the partners of offspring.

Family Trees with Web 1.0

Several programs allow creating famility trees (such as Wingeno). With these programs it is possible to visualize family trees from different perspectives. The problem is: somewhere you have to save the file with all connections and only one person can edit the file. With this method, Family Trees develop isolated from each other.

Family Tree are compact social networks: Each relation can be generated via the Parent-Child-Relationship because most peopke have only one biological father and only one biological mother.

Family Trees are ideal for collaborative work Each family member has a set of local knowledge about their relatives. Together we can create a more comprehensive family tree.

One possibility for cooperation is offered by Wikitree, yet the editing of Wikis seems to be a big hurdle for many: even though Wikitree existed since 2005, only 46.262 profiles have been created.

Other platforms are Ancestry.com (Blog, 5 billion entries), OneGreatFamily.com (see comment), Kinjunction, Genesreunited or Myheritage.com (for a comparison see Wallstreet Journal).

Family Tree Social Networks

David Sacks, former Board Member at Paypal and inventor of geni.com wanted to simplify the creation of family trees by using a visual user interface to “create a family tree of the whole world”. The Social Network allows to inviterelatives by email in order to collaborate on the same family tree. More than 10 million profiles have been created on Geni so far.

Geni also receives good reviews in the blogosphere (see Kevin Lim, MaunTech, Jason Unger, Alexis Brion, Web2.0Directory, Stefani Twyford, Whippleworld, TechcoastReview, PeoplesearchDigest, James Seng or Mark Buzinkay).

Can Geni compete with more established firms which can easily copy its functions but have more profiles available? Geni at the moment is estimated to be worth 100 million US-Dollarsgrowing market.

Geni was adapted by Sven Schmidt with the name verwandt.de (related), but it is also available in English at itsourtree.com. Verwandt grows faster then Geni.

Verwandt has received a good press coverage and blog coverage (Robert Basic, Burkhard Schneider, Mike Lima, Volker Hepp, Mark Buzinkay). Verwandt was participant in the competition for the German Start Up of the Year 2007.

A third network follows a similar path: Kindo.com. Kindo is produced by an international team of young software engineers and webdesigners working in London. Even though it started last, it has made quite a wave in the blogosphere (Mutado, Internet-Business, Digital Passports, Mike Stopforth, Josh Lowensohn, Interment, The OpenPress, Xboxservice, Ruben Colomer, Deutsche Startups, Alexander Trust, Silvio Ströver, Comdao, Mark Buzinkay) and in the press.

Advantages and disadvantes of Geni.com, Verwandt.de und Kindo.com

Creating a family tree is very simple: starting with one person you add parents, siblings, kids or partners (see video-tutorial from Kindo).

Since all three networks were created with Flash, the graphics are quite nice. You click on any person in the network and see their ancestors, siblings and offspring. Further branches of the trees are in the background and can be retrieved through clicking on a person.

Additional information can be saved – marriage-, birth- and death-dates which are shown in a calendar. Address data, Photos and much more can be saved for each person. In these general functions, the three social networks barely differ although it is obvious that Verwandt copied directly from Geni while Kindo changed a few things.

Export, Delete, Change

Geni and Verwandt allow export into a gedcom-file, Kindo doesn’t (yet). Neither of them allow to import Gedcom-Files. Geni plans to release a Share-Version for your own website, Facebook or Myspace.

None of the three social networks allow to merge existing familiy treems, but Geni thinks about it.

You cannot delete people which you have invited via email. Also Persons can only be deleted if they are not a knot in the network, in other words if they have only one contact. If you have more than two contacts, first your contacts have to be deleted. The aim is to keep the network intact, but at the same time small mistakes can have a big impact.

Data Security

Everyone working on a family tree can edit and delete profiles – theoretically the whole family tree. The management of editing rights is not satisfactory solved in all three networks.

Another questions remains as well: what happens with the data? Family data is valuable and users should be aware that nothing can prevent the owners of these networks to sell the complete data set – even if they claim that they have no intention to do so.

Circles and Single Parents

Verwandt assigns people to each other without being asked to because it does not consider single parents. At Geni or Kindo Single Parents” are possible.

Complex family relationships are not mapable in Verwandt. Notwithstanding Inbreeding of the Royal Nobility, it is possible to create very simple cases for instance when two sisters marry two brothers. At Geni it is possible to create “Family Cycles”.

Communication and Performance

All three companies have corporate blogs to be in touch with their users. Geni has a forum to discuss errors and bugs. The support of all three companies is quick and effective.

Verwandt and kindo are sometimes a little bit slow – this creates errors. Geni is often faster and has less bugs.

Summary

If you don’t mind English, then use Geni. If you need a German network, then with Verwandt and Kindo you will have platforms which are to some extent sufficient but still have some drawbacks.

A German Version of this Article can be found here