The CEO Game is an online business simulation. The CEO game blog discusses plans for the CEO Game itself, the world of serious games, and a wide range of issues from technology to economics and everything in between.
If you’re getting confused every time you hear all the Mumbo Jumbo about why the financial crisis had occurs than I suggest you watch the following movie. This movie explains in a very simple and easy way, more or less, how the financial system worked and what led to the financial crisis. The movie also explains the roles of different organizations that had a hand in leading the U.S to one of hardest times.
The CEO Game.
Tags: Bank system, Financial Crisis, Financial Gambling, financial institutions
This time on Focus On Brazil, The CEO Game puts the focus on the Brazilian sky high crime rates. Despite of everything said until now, Brazil is still facing tremendous problems related to crime, violence and especially drug trafficking which it must overcome in order to fulfill all its dreams.
Even the most hardcore optimists who dream, think, breath and believe in Brazil and its economy know: Brazil’s root problems aren’t just going to fade away. Brazil is facing some harsh domestic problems, the most protruded and blunt one is the issue of homeland security. Saying that it is a good idea to wonder around in the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo after the sun sets, is an Understatement. The Favelas, which are Portuguese for ‘slums‘, continue to be magnet for crime and violence, and perhaps its cornerstone.
Homeland Security Problems.
Brazil knows, without a dramatic decrease of the Favelas and a solution to its residents’ poverty, Brazil just won’t become the country it wishes to be. And what are these Favelas actually? The Favelas are huge neighborhoods which were built illegally, without any organized plan for the long run. All Favelas suffer from lack of infrastructures, few are lucky enough to have water or electricity. On the contrary, the worldwide famous and legendary Brazilian soccer players such Pele and Ronaldo, grew up on the streets of the Favelas, where they played soccer with ragged balls.
Today, the Favelas’ population is well over 6 million, which is a lot. It is hard to even imagine- nearly five percent of Brazil’s population is spending their lives living like refugees. Again, these are only residents of the Favelas, one must remember that poverty and crime isn’t restricted to their borders.
The phenomenon of the Favelas began in the end of the 19th century, in the era when slavery was abandoned in Brazil. What happened is that slaves the were recruited from the country to go and fight neighboring Paraguay, returned home from the battlefield but had no place to go. The government didn’t provide them with any housing. Having no choice, the returning soldiers settled down anywhere they could. In Rio de Janeiro they seized the beautiful hills surrounding the coastline city.
In the 70’s the numbers of the Favelas’ residents raised dramatically. The cause for this upset was the farmers and other residents of rural areas who streamed to the cities. Along the years, the Brazilian government and humanitarian aid services attempted to improve the situation of the Favelas, the last time was in 2007 during a program initiated by President Lula. Some of the Favelas’ residents actually recovered due to these initiatives, but a significant and profound change is still not in sight.
We will continue to cover these issues which as aforementioned are the ones standing between Brazil and the dream of being all that it can be on the next time. Moreover we will shed more light on Brazil’s battle in crime, and try to answer how the 2016 Olympics will influence it.
More on Brazil: Focus on Brazil, Focus on Brazil: Only Second to the US, Focus on Brazil: The Olympics to Boost Communications, Focus On Brazil: It’s in the Oil, Will the Olympics be a Financial Success Story part one and two.
The CEO Game.
Tags: Brazil, Brazil's economy, Drugs, Favelas, Poverty
May we all have a wonderful new year and may all your wishes come true.
We hope you had a good year and wish the next one will be good as well. We would like to thank all those who sent us emails and messages with ideas and thoughts regarding the CEO game. We hope to see you all in a few weeks once the beta will be publicly lunch.
We wish you a marry Christmas.
Marry Christmas,
The CEO Game Crew.
After discussing Brazil’s communications and how the Olympics would boost Brazil’s communications, we continue to cover the story behind Brazil’s rocking economy: This time the focus is on one of Brazil’s biggest national resources- oil.
If you ask experts where is Brazil’s biggest treasure hidden, they would probably answer- a couple of kilometers offshore, east to Rio’s golden beaches, in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean; and what might it be? The black gold of course. Two years ago, huge deposits of oil and natural gas were discovered there, making Brazil one of the key oil producers in the world. This revelation came a year after Brazilian president Lula announced that Brazil is not going to be reliant on oil importation anymore, after it supplied nearly 70% of Brazil’s needs.
Fueling Brazil's economy.
From the offices of Petrobras, the national oil company, you can see one of the finest views in Rio- Sugarloaf Mountain, which is a part of a ridge of mountains that form the city’s beautiful bays. Behind the thick glass windows you can find the company’s CEOs working hard on development and expansion plans for the next years, which most companies can only dream of. In the past year, Petrobras had raised bonds totaling 32$ billion and in the upcoming decade they plan to purchase some 300 ships and other sea vessels while the whole world seems to be suffering from a crisis in the shipping industry.
Petrobras controls the oil business from A to Z: from production of oil and alternative energies, to running the refineries and finally selling fuel in gas stations. The company, the 2nd largest in the world in its field, is traded in a total of 200$ billion. Today the company is making 2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and until 2020 they promise to double that amount. They also plan to triple the production of natural gas. Talk about ambitions.
A big part of the company’s agenda is devoted to creating green and alternative energies, such as ethanol, which is a natural fuel that can be made out of sugar canes. Petrobras plans to invest 4$ billion in the close years on research and development and moreover to spend 2.8$ billion on bio-diesel. At the same time, the company plans to increase ethanol fuel production times four. This fuel, is meant to decrease the pollution of carbon, but there is some controversy surrounding if it is really environment friendly (cost effective in Brazil), since the vast areas of land which are used in the south for growing the sugar canes, cause land prices to rise, hence pushing all other farmers north to the Amazon- which increases the destruction of the rain forest.
The “green gas” continues to be an important part of the Brazilian driver’s daily routine. This is the only country in the world where fuel consumption and ethanol consumption are almost equal: 49% of the cars consume fuel, while 51% consume ethanol. Wow. In 95% of the cars there is an option to increase the amount of ethanol at the expense of the regular fuel. Each day the drivers compare the prices and then decide which to consume more.
Despite this abundance of energy, oil prices will continue to swing and remain unstable for the next few years. Although oil consumption will decrease due to the usage of alternative energies, there is still going to be a need to increase oil production because of the natural rise in the amount of consumers. Also, the president of Petrobras has predicted that the world’s daily oil production- 85 million barrels per day, will multiply itself by 2030 in order to meet these demands.
In conclusion, if companies like Petrobras in particular and Brazil in general fulfill their plans, Brazil will become the biggest energy powerhouse in the world after Saudi Arabia, all while leading a change in green energy production and consumption.
More on Brazil: Focus on Brazil, Focus on Brazil: Only Second to the US, Focus on Brazil: The Olympics to Boost Communications, Will the Olympics be a Financial Success Story part one and two.
Omer Shachnai.
The CEO Game.
Tags: Brazil, Brazil's economy, Energy, Green gas, Oil Prices, Petrobras
The CEO Game continues its coverage of the fascinating COP15 Climate Change Conference: Experts claim that the breakthrough that was achieved by American President, Barak Obama, is somewhat limited. African countries object bluntly and beyond all doubt: Sudan even disgracefully compared the agreement to the Holocaust.
COP15: African Disaster?
Many developing countries feel that the agreements made, were achieved without them and have announced that they object the draft and plan to block the road to a final consent. Sudan’s representative stirred up a storm when saying a despicable yet concerning remark: “solution is based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channeled six million people in Europe into furnaces”. Obama replied: “If we would have waited for a full obligatory consent we wouldn’t have made any progress at all”.
Even though, the document that Obama agreed upon with the primary leading countries is considered a turning point, it encountered strong and blunt criticism in the conference. It now looks like a true agreement is a bit farfetched. Half of the criticism is coming as mentioned above, from the poor and developing countries, who claim that the document isn’t ambitious enough and doesn’t include any specified rates to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Moreover, they claim the treaty isn’t legally binding and doesn’t provide any promise to assist them with dealing with the climate change, when all along they are the ones who will suffer first from it. They are saying that if the rich and developed countries don’t agree to significantly decrease the emissions, the agreement won’t help stop and prevent global warming at all. According to them, the draft’s suggested action- to lay under a 2 degrees rise in temperatures, is just not enough. They fear that goal is too low, and would condemn to death.
This sort of criticism was already made by Tuvalu, an archipelago country that might sink in the ocean when sea levels rise, but the Sudanese representative was the harshest. He, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping, claimed that COP15 agreement will bring a “holocaust” to Africa. He claimed that the results of this type of treaty will be fatal: more floods, more droughts, more avalanches and finally the rise of sea levels. He criticized Obama for choosing to form a discriminatory agreement and doing it “intimately”, instead of a wide forum that included more countries.
The different delegations are now holding marathon discussions concerning the draft. The question that now remains is whether to adopt the draft agreement or to reject it- which means to lock the conference with no agreement at all.
The CEO Game.
Tags: Africa, Barak Obama, COP15, developing countries, Environment, global warming, Sudan
Ben Barnanke which is currently Chairman of the US Federal Reserve was chosen by the New York Times as man of this year. In their article the New York Times explains that although that Ben Barnanke might not have charismatic personality, like other personalities that were chosen such as Mohammed Ahmenijad or Bill Clinton, he currently did had a tremendous affect on the US and international economy.
Added is interview with New York Time’s managing editor to explain the reasons for choosing Bernanke.
Ailon.
The CEO Game.
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Bill Clinton, Federal Reserve, Mohammed Ahmenijad, New York Time
The last of the major Wall Street banks to not have repaid its US bailout funds — though certainly not the last organization to hold onto parts of the $245 billion of total bailout money – announced a plan yesterday to return its share. Citigroup has not yet repaid $20 billion of the money it received. It plans to begin doing so this week by selling around $17 billion in common stock and $3.5 billion in tangible equity units. Pending regulators’ permission, it will also facilate the sale of $25 billion that the government holds in bank stock by directly replaying $20 billion of TARP trust preferred secrities and helping the US Treasury in its sale of up o $5 billion of its common shares concurrent with its own stck offering. Finally, Citigroup will end a loss-sharing agreement regarding approximately $250 billion of problematic credit card and real estate assets.
Paying back.
The plan would provide Citigroup with one of the largest capital cushions of any of the major banks. This is necessary in order for the bank to avoid the need for government assistance in the future. Repaying the bailout money also frees Citigroup from many of the restrictions, especially restrictions on executive pay, that came with the acceptance of the funds. Though the move is hoped to aid the economy, create new business, regain the trust of stockholders, and ingratiate the bank to legislators, it comes with its own costs. The return will cause a $10.1 billion loss to Citigroup in the fourth quarter and the new stock offering will dilute the value of shares currently held by stockholders.
Tamar.
The CEO Game.
Tags: citibank, citigroup, economic bailout package, financial bailout package, Financial Crisis
Following our latest article on Brazil, Brazil Only Second to the US, in which we discussed just how Brazil has become the leading and biggest economy in South America, The CEO Game moves the focus to the Brazilian communications and the possible effects of the 2016 Olympic games to be held in Rio de Janeiro, on them.
Brazilians are the world's surf champions.
Beside being well famous for their wave surfing skills, the Brazilian people are also the world’s record holders of web surfing. Why are we telling you this? Good question. The answer is that Brazil is booming in terms of communication, everywhere you look around there are investors who are bringing in big bucks. Take GVT’s acquisition for instance, GVT is a communications company operating in Brazil, which was bought last month for 4.2$ millions. Big bucks indeed. Their success is protruded by the country’s status ten years ago, when vast areas of Brazil lacked telephony infrastructure like the rain forests and the Amazonas.
Until a couple of years ago, the situation in the big cities resembled the one of a developing country in the 70’s: the citizens would have to wait for years in order to get a phone line in home and would suffer from poor and sluggish services. Today, Brazil has got 140 million mobile users, 40 million registered phone lines and more than 10 million broadband Internet users.
Considering the fact that 192 million people live in Brazil, these three “quotes” are still far from fulfilling their potential. In the field of mobile phones, the most satiated field of all three, 80% of the users- most of them belonging to the low class, do it by a prepaid card. If Brazil continues to grow, it is obvious that the number of users who pay monthly to the cellular companies will rise. In the end of the 90’s, the government had decided to expand the wired communications infrastructure in the country by increasing the competition.
Therefore, Brazil began creating “mirror auctions“, which allowed private companies to found all across Brazil, rival phone companies that will compete with the big government’s companies which ruled over all the place. “The transition that Brazil has made in the field of telecommunications, goes hand in hand with the vast changes the country is going through in the last decade”, explains the CEO of the aforementioned GVT. “What happened in GVT- couldn’t happen in a different developing country- the rise in the life quality of entire demographic layers, created a huge demand and market, which is growing on a daily basis” he added.
One of the reasons for the competitiveness in the field is the very existence of a strong and independent regulator. This regulator answers to the name of Anatel and is composed from 5 officials that where appointed by the Brazilian congress and cannot be fired. Sweet working conditions. “A strong regulator can make decisions that don’t serve the companies’ interests and no communications company can stand in the way“, the CEO says. The Brazilians are notorious for being web addicts, like mentioned above they lead in the number of surfing hours per person. Yet, only 10 million citizens are surfing via a broadband connection and even in the main cities it is sometimes hard to find wireless networks.
They surf by using a regular phone line. This antique method of surfing, has a different tariff from a regular phone call and in the weekends and nights the prices are real low. The Brazilians simply prefer this because the price for a broadband connection is 30$ a month. Many companies earn millions of dollars just from the customers who use the phone line in order to surf the web.
The Olympics and the World Cup soccer games are expected to give a huge bolster to the broadband connection. In fact, the government has initiated a new national project its goal- in the year 2014 some 90% of the population will have a broadband connection (hurray). The project is just another step for the telecommunication market in Brazil.
In conclusion, as far as the Brazilian communications go, there is still a huge potential. After the mobile phones and Internet bandwidth, the next profitable area will be cable TV. Because of legal problems, there is only a small infiltration of cable TV in Brazil. In spite of it, there are signs that things are starting to change and there is a big chance for profits.
The CEO Game.
Tags: Brazil, Brazil's economy, Financial, Globa, Global, Global Economy, Internet, Mobile companies, South America
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