Numbers that count in 2010

National Pride

Some countries have higher self-esteem than others. Less than 50% of the Japanese are happy with their country, say pollsters from the Reputation Institute who surveyed residents of 33 countries. Germany and Britain rank somewhere in the middle, about US$14 trillion (a quarter of global GDP) 70% of them are proud to be citizens. Australians are the most contented of all – some 90% of the country.

Is It Over Yet?

“We are immensely far from any sort of normal financial situation… Above all, what we’re not seeing is a really strong private sector-led return of demand – my own guess is that we’re years away from that.” Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator, Financial Times, speaking at Singapore Institute of International Affairs’ first Global Insight Series on 2 December, 2009.

US$14 trillion (a quarter of global GDP) Value of total state intervention to support UK, US and euro-area banks in current crisis. Taken from Nov 2009 paper, Banking on the State, by the Bank of England’s Piergiorgio Alessandri & Andrew G Haldane

What Do They Want to Know?

Yahoo! Singapore’s “2009 Year in Review”, which accounts for billions of searches, revealed its top-five overall search terms:

1. Singapore Budget

2. SGX (Singapore Exchange)

3. Ris Low (the de-crowned Miss Singapore World 2009)

4. Manohara Odelia Pinot (Indonesian model who escaped an allegedly abusive marriage with a Malaysian prince)

5. AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research; Singapore’s leading women’s rights advocacy group)

Fighting the Good Fight

A poll of 15 mainly developing world nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org for the World Bank found that the majority of people want their governments to take steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions, even if that entails costs.

From 13,518 respondents in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, Senegal, Turkey, the US and Vietnam, majorities in China (68%), Vietnam

(59%), Japan (53%), Iran (51%) and Mexico (51%) said they are willing to pay 1% of per capita GDP towards this end.

The Mars and Venus of Business Travel

Men and women differ on business-travel needs

According to the Quest Serviced Apartments Business Travel Survey conducted in Australia end-2009, only 11% of women value internet access as their top business-travel priority, compared to 24% of men. When it comes to choosing accommodation, 60% of women picked safety and security as their number one feature, while 36% of men preferred friendly staff and great service.