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The Octopus card is a reusable contactless stored value smart card for making electronic payments in online or offline systems in Hong Kong. Launched in September 1997 to collect fares for the territory's mass transit system, the Octopus card system is the second contactless smart card system in the world, after the Korean Upass, and has since grown into a widely used payment system for all public transport in Hong Kong, leading to the development of Oyster Card in London.

Johannesburg, the financial capital of South Africa

The economy of South Africa is a mixed economy, emerging market, and upper-middle-income economy, one of only eight such countries in Africa. The economy is the most industrialized, technologically advanced, and diversified economy in Africa. Following 1996, at the end of over twelve years of international sanctions, South Africa's nominal gross domestic product (GDP) almost tripled to a peak of US$416 billion in 2011. In the same period, foreign exchange reserves increased from US$3 billion to nearly US$50 billion, creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class, within two decades of ending apartheid.

Although the natural resource extraction industry remains one of the largest in the country with an annual contribution to the GDP of US$13.5 billion, the economy of South Africa has diversified since the end of apartheid, particularly towards services. In 2019, the financial industry contributed US$41.4 billion to South Africa's GDP. In 2021, South Africa-based financial institutions managed more than US$1.41 trillion in assets. The total market capitalization of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is US$1.28 trillion as of October 2021. (Full article...)

"A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.

But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline — argued economic interventionists — why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks ("paper reserves") could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.

When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's."

—Alan Greenspan, Gold and Economic Freedom, 1966

• ... that women- and minority-owned businesses built the Frequent Express high-capacity bus line in Portland, Oregon?
• ... that according to witnesses, the plutonium charge in the bomb used in the nuclear weapons test Gerboise Verte was transported in an economy car?
• ... that Daniel Davis was the first person in the United States to work with gold and silver electroplating as a business?
• ... that East Lake Square, a failed shopping mall in Tampa, Florida, was converted into a business park known as NetPark Tampa Bay in 1999?
• ... that Chicony, known primarily as a keyboard manufacturer, entered the computer-manufacturing business with the Rabbit 286 in 1988?
• ... that Indian philanthropist and business executive T. Mohandas Pai has been called the "architect of modern Manipal"?

May 10:

• 1904 - David Brown, an English entrepreneur, managing director of his family firm David Brown Ltd. and one time owner of shipbuilders Vosper Thorneycroft and automobile manufacturer Aston Martin, died on this day.

• ...that Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman of Biocon, is India's richest woman?

• ...advertising management is a function of marketing starting from market research, continuing through advertising, leading to actual sales or achievement of objectives?

• ... that a value-added service (VAS) is a telecommunications industry term for non-core services or, in short, all services beyond standard voice calls?

• ...that EID Parry is one of the oldest business entities in the Indian subcontinent and owes its origin to Thomas Parry, a Welshman who came to India in late 1780s?

• ... that an agrarian society is one that is based on agriculture as its prime means for support and sustenance?

• ... that the expression Hindu rate of growth is used to refer to the low annual growth rate of the economy of India, which stagnated around 3.5% from 1950 to 1980?

• ...that Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daron Acemoğlu received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal for his work on Skill Acquisition and Technological Change, Investment and Growth, Directed Search and Unemployment, The Role of Institutions in Economic Development and Political Economy?

Wikinews Economy and business portal

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour