The Airport Express can connect to a USB-equipped printer, and then any computer hooking up to the wireless network can print to it. This allows the Airport Express unit to relay any music on a user’s Mac or PC – as long as it is in Apple’s iTunes software – and play it on a hifi.AirTunes is a fun feature, but built-in support for printer sharing will be more useful in the office. Plug in an ethernet cable to the office network, or to a cable or DSL modem, and setting up a wireless network takes just a few minutes.The Airport Express works with both Macs and PCs, and Apple’s software makes setting everything up easy The software also includes support for AirTunes. day boys.” Even this is stretching it: I’ve never met anyone black or female at a senior level at Cazenove. Day boys I’m less able to verify.The truth is, this contorted old-fashioned courtship is less about preserving the culture than about hanging on to Cazenove’s corporate advisory roles to 50 of the FTSE 100 companies. When a chief executive gets that final call to be told the grey men in suits no longer need his services, it is Mr Mayhew on the other end of the phone.
And it is he, or his colleagues, who organise the grey suits.It is this key, delicate role, which is unique, which the Morgan men are keen to grasp and exploit – something those 50 companies must consider.It would appear that what Philip Augar, Schroder’s ex-boss, called the “death of gentlemanly capitalism” is about to reach its final chapter. For the fogeys at Cazenove this may be a long-overdue reality check. But it is also a sad day for British financial independence.christopher.walker tiscali.co.uk. Washington DC – The macroeconomic US story catches the headlines but the microeconomic experience perhaps has more lessons for the rest of us. The state of the recovery or what the US does about interest rates matters, but the great challenge to the rest of us is American productivity.
Why has the US managed to outpace Europe and indeed the rest of the world?
Washington DC – The macroeconomic US story catches the headlines but the microeconomic experience perhaps has more lessons for the rest of us. With Gordon Brown’s criticism that slow European growth is holding up the world economy ring in their ears, they are meeting to consider why Europe’s Lisbon Agenda has failed. At its summit in Portugal in March 2000, the European Council set out a 10-year strategy to make the EU the world’s most dynamic economy. Hans Eichel, the German finance minister, admitted last week that Europe had failed. Indeed the EU, far from gaining ground vis-?is the US, seems to have fallen further behind.Here in the US, you catch a feeling for the answer: the pressure to perform placed on employees.
Americans work longer hours than Europeans and face other pressures to stay in jobs; often their access to healthcare depends on being employed. People are under greater discipline as a result – one of the less agreeable aspects of US life. If you adjust for hours worked, the productivity gap between the US and France and Germany is not significant.Other explanations for higher US productivity,range from greater application of technology to higher business start-up rates. The problem is pinning down the differences.But how far is Europe behind? A paper by Jean-Philippe Cotis, the chief economist of the OECD, a few weeks ago shows the differences in growth. As you can see from the bar chart (above left), the US has grown at the same rate as other English-speaking countries (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) over the past decade, an average 3.3 per cent a year. That compares with 2.1 per cent for the eurozone and only 1.7 per cent for the Continent’s “big three”: Germany, France and Italy.
