This Wednesday turns out to be the 35th anniversary of the introduction of those machine-readable stripes now found on every packet and tin in every store.

Here is a brief history of the Universal Product Code according to GS1 US, the organisation responsible to administering (and updating) the system:

“One of the world’s best-known symbols, the U.P.C. comprises a row of 59 machine-readable black and white bars and 12 human-readable digits. Both the bars and the digits convey the same information: the identity of a specific product and its manufacturer.

Originally developed to help supermarkets speed up the checkout process, the first live use of a U.P.C. took place in a Marsh Supermarkets store in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974, when a cashier scanned a package of Wrigley’s gum. It ushered in extraordinary economic and productivity gains for shoppers, retailers and manufacturers alike, with estimated annual cost savings of $17bn in the grocery sector alone, according to one study.

Replacing individual price-labeling with the U.P.C. resulted in faster, more accurate checkouts, saving consumers time and money. Shelves were replenished more quickly, and stores were able to increase the frequency and variety of sales incentives. It also simplified product returns and rebates.”

I must admit that I find it curiously satisfying to scan my own groceries at the local supermarket these days, although it adds to my respect for check-out workers.

The barcode is one of those pieces of US technology that are deceptively simple yet produce huge benefits from a combination of standardisation and computerisation. TCP/IP is another, of course.

I spent today at court in lower Manhattan watching Bernie Madoff being jailed. Here is my account of it for the FT:

The end of Bernie Madoff’s liberty came swiftly. “It is my intention to remand Mr Madoff. I do not need to hear from the government,” said Judge Denny Chin briskly, a second after Ira Sorkin, Mr Madoff’s attorney, had ended his hopeless plea for his client to remain on bail.

There were a few claps from some of Mr Madoff’s victims in the courtroom in the 24th floor federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, swiftly muted in deference to the no-nonsense judge. After a minute or two for Judge Chin to deny Mr Sorkin’s appeal for a stay, the hour-long hearing was over.

Mr Madoff rose from his seat in the green-carpeted courtroom and held both his hands steadily behind his back to be handcuffed. Then he was led from the court to prison for the first time, for a massive Ponzi scheme which lasted decades and crossed continents; and was uncovered in December.

During the hearing Mr Madoff had sat still, except when he rose to make his guilty plea and give a serene account of his crimes, but it took handcuffs to still his hands.

They darted and fluttered constantly, adjusting his tie, buttoning and unbuttoning the jacket of his suit, smoothing his grey hair, and moving his papers around on the table in front of him. Even the act of twisting off the top of his water bottle with his left hand to drink was executed with deft precision.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

In these tough economic times, it is sometimes hard to think of a silver lining. But Richard Florida proposes an interesting one: that what is bad for financial services firms may be good for artists and psychiatrists. I think he may be on to something.

In an essay in the latest Atlantic magazine, Florida suggests that New York City may not be as badly affected as some other US cities by the recession - despite being the home of Wall Street - because a lot of New Yorkers work in other industries, some of which are counter-cyclical.

Lean times undoubtedly lie ahead for New York. But perhaps not as lean as you’d think—and certainly not as lean as those that many lesser financial outposts are likely to experience. Financial positions account for only about 8 percent of the New York area’s jobs, not too far off the national average of 5.5 percent. By contrast, they make up 28 percent of all jobs in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois; 18 percent in Des Moines; 13 percent in Hartford; 10 percent in both Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Charlotte, North Carolina. Omaha, Nebraska; Macon, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio, all have a greater percentage of population working in the financial sector than New York does.

New York is much, much more than a financial center. It has been the nation’s largest city for roughly two centuries, and today sits in America’s largest metropolitan area, as the hub of the country’s largest mega-region. It is home to a diverse and innovative economy built around a broad range of creative industries, from media to design to arts and entertainment. It is home to high-tech companies like Bloomberg, and boasts a thriving Google outpost in its Chelsea neighborhood. Elizabeth Currid’s book, The Warhol Economy, provides detailed evidence of New York’s diversity. Currid measured the concentration of different types of jobs in New York relative to their incidence in the U.S. economy as a whole. By this measure, New York is more of a mecca for fashion designers, musicians, film directors, artists, and—yes—psychiatrists than for financial professionals. (via Felix Salmon)

These certainly seem to be boom times for psychiatrists, to judge by the number of suicides and evidence of acute stress in the financial industry and, anecdotally at least, New York is second to none as a centre for psychiatry and therapy.

Artists and creative types also seem to flourish in cities, particularly in the poorer and less developed areas where rents are cheap. That was the origin of the Manhattan loft, which went from being a preserve of poor artists in the 1970s to rich bohemians in the 1990s.

On the other hand, rents have to go down quite a lot first before the city becomes conducive to the kind of renaissance New York enjoyed in the wake of the 1973 crash. The New York Times this morning has a very bleak photograph of Bushwick in 1992, 15 years after the blackout riots.

As to London, maybe the picture is more mixed. I imagine it has just as great an opportunity for the creative industries to offset the financial one. On the other hand, the economy is probably more dependent on City jobs even than New York is on Wall Street.

The news of cholera outbreaks in Zimbabwe reminds me of reading The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson’s gripping account of the discovery of the causes of cholera in London in the 19th century. This was my review of it in the FT.

It seems improbable now that there could be cholera in Soho in the middle of London, but an outbreak there in 1854 led to the proof that the deadly illness was caused by drinking sewage-infected water.

It followed that cholera was entirely preventable, given clean drinking water. But the public water systems are breaking down in Zimbabwe, which marks a further downward step in that country’s deterioration under Robert Mugabe.

Update: As Derek Tunnicliffe notes in the comments below, cholera prevention is one of the aims of WaterAid, the charity the FT is supporting in its seasonal appeal this year. There is an article describing its work here.

Since I am the father of two members of the target demographic, I have just been to the cinema in Manhattan to see Walt Disney’s High School Musical 3. I quite enjoyed it (as did the demo) but the main thing that struck me as was how apposite it was to Barack Obama’s election.

A summary of the plot: a multi-racial bunch of kids at a high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, put on a musical, indulge in innocent romance and plan to go off to college. The end.

Troy Bolton, the basketball-playing hero, is white. Gabriella Montez, his girlfriend and the leading lady, is Hispanic. His best friend, Chad Danforth, is black, as is Chad’s girlfriend Taylor McKessie, who is going to Yale to study political science and intends to become the US president.

They are, in other words, a perfect representation of the amiable multi-racial fantasy of many youth films in which the realities of discrimination do not intrude. They make the audience feel good about itself by presenting a sanitised version of reality.

Continue reading "What High School Musical says about Obama"

This is not about business but, since it is a historic occasion, I will make an exception.

I watched Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential campaign tonight with friends in Fort Greene, a mixed race, gentrified district of Brooklyn. Then I walked back home after midnight.

I expected the atmosphere to be festive but it was more than that. There were crowds of people thronging the streets, whooping, singing and dancing. On one street corner, a bunch of drummers were beating out a rhythm and people were chanting “Ob-am-a” and “Yes, we can” to the beat.

It was made more colourful by a few police cars which turned on their sirens and flashing lights in an effort to clear the way, which only provoked more dancing and chanting.

People were hanging out of cars cheering and exchanging slaps of the hand with passers-by as they drove by. On another street corner, several people were amiably letting off firecrackers.

The whole thing felt like an explosion of pent-up emotion, like a city that had just been liberated. New York is, of course, a solidly Democratic city in a state that has Hillary Clinton as a senator.

It was an extraordinary sight.

There is a fascinating analysis of how the financial crisis is affecting the United Arab Emirates - including Abu Dhabi and Dubai - in the FT this morning, co-written by Lionel Barber, our editor, who was visiting when a bank bail-out was being crafted.

It makes me think that my recent note on the booming residential property market in Abu Dhabi may have coincided with the top of the market. (I also like the photograph that goes with the article, of Roger Federer playing Andre Agassi on a helipad on top of the Burj Al Arab hotel.)

Indeed, the charts accompanying the piece show that residential property prices rose by 42 per cent between the first quarter of this year and the last quarter of 2007, while the rise from first to second quarter was 16 per cent. That is still zippy but the rate of growth is abating.

The thing that interested me most was the way in which Abu Dhabi, which has most of the UAE’s oil wealth, held its nose and came to the rescue of Dubai, its flashier and more debt dependent fellow emirate when doubts surfaced.

It shows that, even if there are many in Abu Dhabi who look askance at Dubai’s wilder and more thrusting side, the family of emirates came together at the crucial time.

Crises are relative. Another chart with the article records the current account surpluses of Gulf countries, with the UAE’s 22 per cent of GDP surplus this year more than matched by Kuwait (44 per cent) and Qatar (43 per cent).

These surpluses, however, depend to varying degrees on the oil price, which has been in rapid retreat recently. When I was in Dubai last year, the conventional wisdom was that the local economy, which depends heavily on trade in the region, would be fine while oil remained above $40 a barrel.

The futures market is now predicting that oil could reach $50 a barrel by the end of this year, which is getting uncomfortably close.

As an antidote to the property-related crisis sweeping over Lehman Brothers, I went over to the Javitz conference centre in Manhattan yesterday to learn about one property development that is not short of money.

It is Saadiyat Island, the mind-boggling $27bn project to develop an island next to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. At about $1bn per square kilometre, the emirate is not stinting on Saadiyat.

I suppose the falling oil price may crimp the style of Abu Dhabi and its next-door emirate Dubai a little. But it is not stopping the creation of Saadiyat, which will not only have nine resort hotels along a 9 kilometre beach but a cluster of world-class museums.

Continue reading "No property crash so far in Abu Dhabi"