Mergers are notorious for producing bad returns for investors. Another example of this has emerged today with Hewlett-Packard writing off $5bn in its latest accounts from its 2011 merger with Autonomy, a British technology and software company. HP are claiming accounting irregularities (fraud), which meant that it overvalued the company. Autonomy's founder, however, is claiming that HP simply destroyed value after the merger! You can read BBC and Guardian coverage here and here.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.