Facebook and "Twitter" have reached just about everyone by now, including your business. But in using these sites, called "social networks," for the purposes of marketing our businesses or our books, we should keep in mind that in a way we are twisting the original purpose of those sites to suit our own needs.
As 2010 draws to a close, it is worth reflecting on what an extraordinary year it has been, and on what lessons the global financial crisis teach us. First, let’s recap some of the ups and downs of the world economy. For the first time in more than half a century, global gross domestic product (GDP) contracted (by about 0.5 percentage points) in 2009. The epicenter of the crisis was the United States, where sub-prime mortgage loans had been sliced, diced, and repackaged into securities bearing triple-A labels—only to dissolve into worthless bits of paper as the housing bubble burst.
In recent years, countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have increasingly turned to independent power projects (IPPs) and independent water and power projects (IWPPs) as alternatives to government-financed power and cogeneration plants. If projections hold true and IPPs account for 34 percent of regional capacity by 2015, with virtually all of that capacity serving base load, then IPPs will account for nearly 60 percent of regional energy production. To support such an increase, changes in the way that IPPs are structured need to be made to preserve the benefits of the IPP model.
