Jacob Fugger

Um banqueiro dos finais da idade média de Augsburg, do sul da Alemanha, Jacob Fugger nunca foi tão celebrado como Cosimo de Medici os seus filhos e primos de Florença, cuja reputação como banqueiros foi polida pelo seu excelente gosto pela arte renascentista. Mas Jacob Fugger foi o melhor banqueiro. Fosse ele hoje vivo, teria provocado um maremoto de Wall Street à City, e a sua história é ainda pouco conhecida. 

ALBRECHT DÜRER’S portrait of Jacob Fugger

Jacob Fugger nasceu numa família de comerciantes de têxteis e banqueiros de Augsburg em 1459. Cresceu rico e poderoso, arriscando o seu capital e sua reputação para financiar as ambições territoriais dos Habsburgos. Jacob Fugger apreciava o relacionamento (network), que iniciou quando o seu irmão concedeu um empréstimo a Frederick III, o imperador do sacro-império romano, não obstante um terrível rating de crédito. Jacob Fugger tornou-se o principal banqueiro do seu filho, o imperador Maximiliano I, fundador do Império Austro-Húngaro, e de Carlos V de Espanha, cuja vitória na Batalha de Pavia limitou a hegemonia dos Habsburgos. Os seus enormes empréstimos foram cobertos por garantias, e seus clientes Habsburgo pagaram frequentemente em espécie e não em dinheiro.

Jacob Fugger foi capaz de obter o controlo das comodidades, como a prata, da Áustria, e o cobre, a partir de Hungria. Construiu uma fundição para refinar o cobre e comercializou-o de uma forma bastante impiedosa. Juntou-se a um cartel de produtores de cobre de Veneza e estes concordaram em elevar o preço do metal, esmagando a oferta. Mas Jacob Fugger em vez de proceder de acordo com o combinado, colocou pressão nos seus co-conspiradores e rivais. Inundou o mercado com tanto metal que o preço caiu e os seus concorrentes ficaram gravemente enfraquecidos. 

Posteriormente, ajudou a financiar um esquema Português para mudar o local do comércio da pimenta e especiarias para Lisboa, um movimento tão bem sucedido que deu um golpe fatal à dimensão comercial de Veneza.

Tinha também uma grande sede de informação sobre o comércio, que o levou a criar uma rede de mensageiros, cujos relatórios para Augsburg foram impressos e distribuídos aos clientes na forma de um jornal primitivo. Jacob Fugger tinha inventado o primeiro serviço de notícias do planeta.

O financeiro conseguiu dinheiro fresco para seu banco através da exploração de contas de poupança, que foram introduzidos pela primeira vez em Augsburg e remuneradas a 5% ao ano, contrariando, assim, a proibição da usura pela Igreja Católica. Para ultrapassar a situação criada, Jacob Fugger fez chegar a sua argumentação diretamente ao Papa Leão X, que tinha beneficiado pessoalmente da sua generosidade.

Como reconhecimento o Papa foi compreensivo e a proibição da usura foi adequadamente reescrita em 1515, quando o processo foi redefinido como "um lucro que é adquirido sem trabalho, custo ou risco". Assumir riscos com as poupanças dos clientes tornou-se um negócio legítimo.

O relacionamento de Fugger com o Vaticano foi baseado numa extensa rede através da qual ele transferia a colecta dos ofertórios da Alemanha para Roma (em troca de uma comissão de 3%). Mas a sua mais surpreendente e inesperada conquista histórica, acabou por acender o rastilho da Reforma. Fugger uniu-se com outro cliente Habsburg, para quem ele tinha comprado o arcebispado de Mainz, e os dois começaram a vender indulgências (a remissão dos pecados, que previa, através de uma taxa, um atalho para o céu), dividindo os lucros com o Papa Leo, que usou o dinheiro para construir a Basílica de São Pedro. Em 1517 Martin Luther revoltado por este esquema escreveu as "95 Teses" que amaldiçoaram Roma, o que conduziu à Reforma Protestante.

À medida que os anos foram passando, Fugger foi fazendo uma série de inimigos que o queriam ver morto. Primeiro os Cavaleiros Teutônicos, uma ordem militar medieval, e, de seguida, o campesinato alemão levantou-se contra a exploração pelos comerciantes, dos quais Fugger foi a figura de proa. Um dos líderes da Revolta dos Camponeses Alemães em 1520 era um padre comunista primitivo, Thomas Müntzer, que prometeu aos seus seguidores que Deus iria matar Jacob Fugger. (Durante a guerra fria o retrato de Müntzer apareceu num selo da Alemanha Oriental, e o de Fugger num da Alemanha Ocidental ). Mas ele e os seus colegas comerciantes financianciaram os exércitos que combateram a ameaça ao seus negócios. 

Jacob Fugger morreu em sua cama , em 1525.

Enquanto jovem, Jacob Fugger prometeu a si próprio que iria fazer lucros durante o todo tempo que pudesse. E assim ele fez. Na sua morte, era um multimilionário . Viveu no luxo e dormia bem num palácio em Augsburg. Entre outros, do seu legado ficou em Augsburg o Fuggerei. No início de 1516, Jacob Fugger iniciou a construção de 52 casas, que constituem o mais antigo bairro social em ainda em utilização.

The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger. By Greg Steinmetz. Simon and Schuster; 283 pages; Amazon Price: $27.95.

Gestão de Crise na Volkswagen - Como não lidar com uma crise

Ainda é cedo, mas a história Volkswagen configura-se já como um caso de estudo de como não lidar com uma crise.

A Volkswagen reconhece que tem um grande problema entre mãos. Na Alemanha o Welt am Sonntag cita Hans Dieter Potsch, o novo presidente, designando-o como uma "crise ameaçadora para a existência da empresa."

Mas o facto de Potsch, diretor financeiro da VW desde 2003, ter sido nomeado presidente, bem como outro insider da empresa, Mathias Muller, nomeado CEO, sugere que o board está a circular os seus Volkswagens. O FT contrasta essa posição defensiva com a forma como Siemens tratou o escândalo de suborno em 2006, trazendo um presidente e CEO de fora da Companhia e, finalmente, tomar medidas legais contra ex-executivos

Evidências deixam claro que a instalação do software para mascarar os controlos de emissões, não foram o resultado de alguma operação clandestina - foi impulsionada por decisões tomadas por engenheiros de topo da empresa e aprovadas ao mais alto nível da VW. É um brilhante sinal de néon apontado para uma cultura corporativa doente. Isso não será fácil de mudar, e não será resolvido através de papering meio mundo com apologéticos anúncios de jornal.

Potsch e Muller podem querer aprender com a Maria Barra da GM, também uma insider, que, quando confrontada com o escândalo da chave de ignição e cercada por colegas executivos que também disseram: Isso é ruim, mas podemos superar isso. Barra respondeu: I don’t want to get over it.

"I don't want to set it aside and explain it”, disse ela à Fortune no ano passado, “because I think it has uncovered some things in our company that it's critical we challenge ourselves to change and to fix.”

"To keep and bear arms"

WITH one of the highest murder rates among OECD countries—second only to Mexico—America retains its reputation as a disproportionately dangerous country. The number of violent assaults in America is comparable to those of other western countries, yet murders are much more common. The prevalence of guns goes a long way toward explaining America's terrible record—they are used in two-thirds of all murders. Americans are five times as likely to be murdered as Brits but over 40 times as likely to be murdered with a gun.

INTERACTIVE: ”The means to an end”, American gun ownership and suicide rates America has become a much safer place over the past two decades however, but public sentiment has yet to catch on to the fact. In 1993, near the peak of America's crime wave, 7 out of every 100,000 people aged 12 and up were gunned down. That number has since halved. But guns play a large role in suicides too. In 2013, 21,175 Americans killed themselves with guns, while 11,208 were killed by others. Men are four times as likely to kill themselves despite making fewer attempts, in no small part because their preferred method (guns) of suicide is so much more reliable than the alternatives. The rate at which people kill themselves with guns has increased since 2006.

There is no national database of gun ownership, because the gun lobby sees that as a first step towards disarmament. The number of guns in America therefore has to be inferred from survey data, commercial records and background checks. None of these measures are perfect: a gun owner may not necessarily need a background check if he or she buys a weapon at a gun show; a customer may have one background check and buy three weapons; or have a background check and decide not to buy any weapon at all. Put them together, though, and these different sources become more useful. In 2007 the Small Arms Survey estimated that 270 million guns were in the hands of American civilians, or 0.9 per person. That number has almost surely risen since. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives publishes annual data on how many guns are manufactured and (legally) imported in the United States. Their figures suggest a sharp increase in gun sales since Barack Obama was elected president. In 2013 about 16 million new guns entered circulation, FBI background checks corroborate this trend.

Mr Obama’s presidency has stirred up anxiety among gun owners, which gun makers have profited from handsomely. The share prices of America’s two largest publically traded gun manufacturers, Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson, have increased over 700% and 450% respectively since Mr Obama was elected. The increase in sales seem to be driven by a relatively small slice of the population—individuals seemingly amassing personal stockpiles—as The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey shows that an ever smaller percentage of households have guns.

What keeps America’s firearms in headlines around the world (and perhaps also what keeps news of decreasing overall gun murders out of them) are mass shootings. In the last decade, media reports of incidents such as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and the June 2015 Charleston church killings have resonated around the world with increased frequency. Even so, such atrocities are still drastically underreported. There’s no comprehensive government database of mass shootings as there is with homicides in general, and for every Sandy Hook, dozens fail to get the country's attention. One group that tries to make up for the gap in the numbers is the Stanford University Geospatial Centre, which aggregates data from the FBI and from news reports. Their findings support the idea that mass shootings are indeed on the rise in the United States.

Despite recent tragedies, support for stronger gun control has wavered. A 2014 Gallup poll showed that just 26% of people wanted to ban handguns, down from 60% in 1959. Moreover, an increasing number of Americans believe that having a gun in the house would make them safer. Some states have actually relaxed their gun laws in recent years. Even given the link between guns and gun violence, which seems obvious to the rest of the world, America is unlikely to implement significant gun control in the near future.

Aug 10th 2015, 10:09 BY THE ECONOMIST THE DATA TEAM

"The 2015 World University rankings: Are these really the planet’s best schools?"

The 2015 “World University” rankings were released by Times Higher Education in London on Wednesday, but don’t confuse them with the “2015 World University Rankings” issued in July by a Saudi Arabian group, or the U.S. News & World Report’s “2015 Best Global University Rankings,” or the 2015 “Academic Ranking of World Universities” put out in August by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, or … well, you get the idea. Be very, very careful with school rankings.

And to answer the question you are about to ask: No, the results aren’t identical.

Harvard is No. 1 on three of the four rankings mentioned above — all but the Times Higher Education list, which gives the top spot to the California Institute of Technology, for the fifth straight year. Harvard ranks sixth on the Times list. Caltech is seventh on the list from China as well as on the U.S. News list but 12th on the list from Saudi Arabia. The University of Oxford in England is No. 2 on the Times Higher Education list, but No. 5 on the list from Saudi Arabia as well as U.S. News, and No. 10 on the list from China.

Each list has its own methodology and its own criteria, though there is overlap. Naturally, each claim to be extra-special. For example, The Times Higher Education Web site says:

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-2015 list the best global universities and are the only international university performance tables to judge world class universities across all of their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

And the Web site of the Academic Ranking of World University says:

Starting from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world Top 500 universities annually based on a set of objective indicators and third-party data. ARWU has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy league table.

Let’s look at the release of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-15, which offers good and bad news for the United States. The good news: 147 U.S. institutions are on the list of 800 schools.  That’s far more than Britain, with 78; Japan, with 41; China, with 37; and Germany, also with 37. What’s more the California Institute of Technology is No. 1 for the fifth straight year. The bad news: The U.S. dominance may be threatened in “years to come.” (As bad news goes, that’s not so bad.)

In the release, Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, said:

“The United States still dominates the World University Rankings, with a staggering 147 institutions featured in this prestigious list, including California Institute of Technology, which has held on to pole position for the fifth year in a row. Despite this achievement, the US will have to watch out for countries in continental Europe, such as Germany and the Netherlands, and Asia, such as China, that may threaten its status in years to come. While 47 states in the US have implemented higher education funding cuts since the recession in 2008, including California, which cut its university system’s budget by $900 million, or 27 per cent, these standout performers in Europe and Asia are continuing to invest heavily in higher education. The US will have to raise its game to ensure its dominance does not erode.”

Note: Despite his warning about California’s disinvestment in higher education, which is real and unacceptable, it turns out that the U.S. News list of world-class universities includes three public schools from California — the University of California at Berkeley at No. 3, the University of California at Los Angeles is No. 8 and the University of California at San Diego is No. 18.  Meanwhile, the University of Michigan is in a tie for No. 14 with two other schools, including the University of Washington. That makes a total of five public U.S. universities on the U.S. News list — one fourth of the top 20.

Here are the top 20 schools in THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS 2015-16:

Rank 2015-16 Institution Country

1 California Institute of Technology US

2 University of Oxford UK

3 Stanford University US

4 University of Cambridge UK

5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US

6 Harvard University US

7 Princeton University US

8 Imperial College London UK

9 ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Switzerland

10 University of Chicago US

11 Johns Hopkins University US

12 Yale University US

13 University of California, Berkeley US

14 University College London UK

15 Columbia University US

16 University of California, Los Angeles US

17 University of Pennsylvania US

18 Cornell University US

19 University of Toronto Canada

20 Duke University US

How was this list created? Thirteen performance indicators are grouped into five areas:

Teaching: the learning environment (worth 30 percent of the overall ranking score)

Research: volume, income and reputation (worth 30 percent)

Citations: research influence (worth 30 percent)

Industry income: innovation (worth 2.5 percent)

International outlook: staff, students and research (worth 7.5 percent).

As you can see, reputation matters, as does money. Measuring reputation can be tricky, it is worth noting, giving that it is entirely subjective and all of these listings claim to be using objective measures based on solid data.

Here are the 13 performance indicators:

Industry income – innovation

1. Research income from industry/academic staff. Yes, income matters here.

Teaching – the learning environment

2   Reputation survey – teaching. Yes, reputation matters, as if reputation always matches reality.

3.  Staff-to-student ratio

4.  PhDs/undergraduate degrees awarded

5.  PhDs awarded/academic staff

6.  Institutional income/academic staff

Citations – research influence

7.  Citation impact (normalized average citations per paper)

Research – volume, income and reputation

8.  Reputation survey – research

9.  Research income/academic staff

10. Scholarly papers/academic staff and research staff

International outlook – staff, students and research

11.   International students/total students

12.   International academic staff/total academic staff

13.   Scholarly papers with one or more international co-authors/total scholarly papers

The Academic Ranking of World Universities — which includes a basic list and then sub-lists based on subject — is conducted by researchers at the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, which has been focusing on the study of world-class universities for many years,  hosting the “First International Conference on World-Class Universities” in 2005 and organizes the conference every second year. The center also builds databases of major research universities in the world and clearinghouse of literature on world-class universities, and provide consultation for governments and universities.

Here are the top ARWU 20 on its rankings of 500 universities:

1. Harvard University

2. Stanford University

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

4. University of California, Berkeley

5. University of Cambridge

6. Princeton University

7. California Institute of Technology

8. Columbia University

9. University of Chicago

10.University of Oxford

11. Yale University

12. University of California, Los Angeles

13. Cornell University

14. University of California, San Diego

15. University of Washington

16. Johns Hopkins University

17. University of Pennsylvania

18. University College London

18. University of California, San Francisco

20. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

The Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Web site says, “adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of Highly Cited Researchers, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per-capita performance. More than 1,200 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 500 universities are published.”

The king of college rankings, U.S. News & World Report, got into the world ranking business in October 2014, with its “2015 Best Global University Rankings.” Here’s the U.S. News list:

1. Harvard University

2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

3. University of California–Berkeley

4. Stanford University

5. University of Oxford

6. University of Cambridge

7. California Institute of Technology

8. University of California–Los Angeles

9. University of Chicago

10. Columbia University

11. Johns Hopkins University

12. Imperial College London

13. Princeton University

14. University of Michigan

14. University of Toronto

14. University of Washington

17. Yale University

18. University of California–San Diego

19. University of Pennsylvania

20. Duke University

U.S. News is famous for using reputation as a key criteria in its listings of U.S. colleges and universities — and it uses it, too, in the global university rankings, as the chief factor — 12.5 percent for global research reputation and 12.5 percent for regional research reputation. The rest of the criteria:

Publications 12.5%

Normalized citation impact   10%

Total citations  10%

Number of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited 12.5%

Percentage of total publications that are among the 10 percent most cited 10%

International collaboration 10%

Number of Ph.D.s awarded  5%

Number of Ph.D.s awarded per academic staff member  5%

This past July, a different list of the world’s best universities was released as an annual exercise by something called the Center for World University Rankings. What is the Center for World University Rankings? The Web site doesn’t exactly spell it out, but it is a Saudi-based consulting group that puts out university rankings, or, at least has done every year since 2012. The president of the center is Nadim Mahassen, an assistant professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The center says it publishes “the only global university ranking that measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions.”

Measuring prestige? Hmmm. Take a look at what the center calls “eight objective and robust indicators” that it uses to rank what it says are the world’s top 1000 universities:

1) Quality of Education, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university’s size [25%]

2) Alumni Employment, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies relative to the university’s size [25%]

3) Quality of Faculty, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals [25%]

4) Publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals [5%]

5) Influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals [5%]

6) Citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers [5%]

7) Broad Impact, measured by the university’s h-index [5%] [which attempts to measure the quality and impact of a scholar of scientist’s body of work]

8) Patents, measured by the number of international patent filings [5%]

Apparently, being a great teacher to students doesn’t factor into the “quality of education.”

Here are the top 20, in order of ranking, as measured by the indicators above:

1. Harvard University

2. Stanford

3. MIT

4. University of Cambridge

5. University of Oxford

6. Columbia University

7. University of California, Berkeley

8. University of Chicago

9. Princeton University

10. Cornell University

11. Yale University

12. California Institute of Technology

13. University of Tokyo

14. University of Pennsylvania

15. University of California, Los Angeles

16. Johns Hopkins University

17. Kyoto University

18. New York University

19. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

20. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

In these rankings, the United States had 229 schools ranked in the top 1,000, by far more than any other single country. China had 83; Japan, 74; the United Kingdom had 65; Germany, 55; France, 49; Italy, 47; Spain, 40; South Korea, 36; Canada, 33; Australia, 27. Russia had only five, fewer than Israel’s seven.

And the lesson in all of this? Once again, beware of school rankings.

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.

The Washington Post