Can you feel it? The current optimism on today’s financial markets is almost palpable. Roughly two months after Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, uttered the words “green shoots” of recovery in a television interview, stock markets are up more than 30% across the globe. It doesn’t matter that everyone agrees that the worst is still to come, that unemployment rates are skyrocketing and that the current account deficit of the US will still have to be rebalanced. That is all in the now. What matters is what will happen tomorrow. And we’re seeing green shoots.

Compared with the start of the year – when the global economy was falling off a cliff in a synchronised contraction of unprecedented rapidity – the situation may have improved, but not dramatically. The fact that almost all of the world’s leading economies are still shrinking, some at a still very rapid pace, doesn’t account for much. Today, we have something to look forward to.

Interestingly enough, that’s just what we need to get the economy going again (beside some tremendous fiscal and monetary stimulus that already is in the pipeline). A sustainable recovery will require private investment and consumption. Job cuts in factories and reduced salaries for many others are likely to drag on consumer demand for months. So let’s hope that our expectations of a better future will shorten this recession to a minimum…

…which seems to be the case in India where India Today reports that Tata Motors already has received more than 2 lakh (200 000) bookings for the car Nano several months before it will be released. To keep the hype going, Tata has decided to not manufacture more than 100 000 cars initially and instead randomly distribute them among the potential buyers. The company released a statement concluding that among the three variants of the car, 20 per cent bookings are for the Nano Standard, 30 per cent for the Nano CX and the remaining 50 per cent for the top-end Nano LX.

I was going to write about something completely different tonight, but the story I ran across is just too good to pass. It’s about names.

Few things can be so sensitive, so filled with status and so many alluring promises as your name. No wonder then that parents all over the world tear their hair off trying to find that perfect name that certainly will decide the future of their unborn child. And all in vain…

Steven Levitt famously wrote in Freakonomics about the two brothers named Winner and Looser (that’s a pretty cruel parental experiment if you ask me). What do you think happened to them? Winner became a lifetime criminal and Looser joined the force and became a detective with the NYPD. That matches the findings of Levitt’s older research, which concluded that a child’s name has absolutely no impact on her life.

Now the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel also tells a similar story of three sisters: Kimberly, Robin, and Marijuana Pepsi Jackson. Just like Loser before her, Marijuana Pepsi has – despite her name –  made something of her life, by overcoming her difficult youth and recently earning a master’s degree in education.

So parents, relax…

…unless you live in China, where the government is cracking down on uncommon names. The New York Times reports that seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips.

The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common.

In other words, name your child whatever feels right, just make sure it’s covered by the most common Chinese characters.

Thank you MD, after that introduction even I’m looking forward to hear what I’ve got to say!   

So let’s start off with some easy stuff: I have a simple solution to how we can make the world a better place. It will only take a few moments of your time. All that we need to do is, at some point during the day, think of our favourite superheros. That’s it. It’s that simple.

Here’s how it works: Imagine some superheros, maybe two or three. Think about the characteristics that unites them. Think hard. Done? Great, now we’ve influenced your future behaviour.

If a local non-profit organisation called you right now you would be much more likely to help or donate than you were before you began reading this – all according to this study. If fact, the likelihood that you would donate, or help out in other ways, just increased by 100%. Just by thinking of superheros.

Although the study itself is limited to future volunteerism, the basic principle applies to most non-cognitive information processing. For example, Malcolm Gladwell designed an experiment (and wrote about it in Blink) where he let one group of subjects read a list of words such as “gray”, “Florida” and “wrinkled” and another group of subject read a list of random words. The first group were found to walk more slowly to the building’s elevator after the apparent conclusion of the experiment than the second group – just because they had read words related to old age.

Make an effort this week to make the world a better place. Oh, and don’t worry if you forget thinking about superheros for a day or two, the effects seem to endure for at least three weeks.