Latest Insights
Shocks, sheikhs and shale
The price of oil peaked at $145 a barrel in July 2008 and is now below $50. The cause: Saudi oil sheikhs refuse to slash production to stabilize prices, while American shale production soars.
This provides background for controversy over Israel’s natural gas resources; Antitrust Commissioner David Gilo announced he is rescinding an agreement that effectively gave Noble and Delek a monopoly on gas production from the Tamar and Leviathan fields. Experts believe Israel should explore converting natural gas to the equivalent of crude oil.
Tel Aviv white elephant
The ‘New’ Central Bus Station languishes in semi-neglect, a strange, partly unseen, humming underworld of activity.
This is the story of an enormous white elephant in south Tel Aviv, the New Central Bus Station. However, it is neither new – it is now a half-century old – nor central.
Oil price reductions should not make us too complacent
OPEC, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, decided last week not to reduce oil production. This means, in a world of supply and demand, falling prices. Why such decision was made? It can be assumed that the decision, in part, was made to reduce the profitability of gas production from gas shale in the US and to “put to sleep” the Americans in their bid to become energy self-productive. In Israel, as well, one cannot ignore the need to become more energy efficient and promote more renewable energy into the market.
Israel, by the numbers
According to the statistics, Israel is quite well off, fairly cheerful, healthy, and great place to live and raise children.
Not to lower the price of electricity
In an era of oppressive living cost, in an era of social protest and a call from the middle class to reduce prices, Prof. Ayalon suggests and explains why a reduction in the price of electricity is a wrong decision.
The dismal science meets the shrinks
WHAT HAPPENS when economics, known for over two centuries as the dismal science, meets psychology, whose practitioners often called “shrinks”?
Economics become a whole lot less dismal and a great deal more useful and interesting.
The way to integrate the Haredim
There is no choice. The assumed tolerable status quo must change. Israel must address the integration of Haredim to society in the same way she addressed the mass immigration waves. A strategig decision must be made to establish a coordinating body and harness all the government offices for the operation, while granting the lifestyle and characteristics of the Ultra-Orthodox community, and without trying to change their beliefs.
Atop Mt. Intel
David Perlmutter, who rose to become the most senior Israeli corporate executive, shares his insights on implementing radical innovation at very big companies.
The battle of the budget
Who will pay for the Gaza war? A three-way conflict between security, social and fiscal considerations. A Netanyahu-Lapid compromise leaves taxes unchanged for the 2015 budget and defines added defense spending as “one-time only”.
Start-up Nation’s dark side
Israel may top the tables in innovation, but the benefits need to be more widely diffused.
