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Category: Economics

An Italian financial crisis is certain – the big question is how contagious it is

An Italian financial crisis is certain – the big question is how contagious it is

Larry Elliott writes: The Italian government’s decision to suspend mortgage payments for its quarantined citizens is a drastic step in the battle to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus, but commensurate with the predicament the country finds itself in. Italy is the eurozone’s weak link. Even before the current lockdown it was facing a fourth recession in little more than a decade and there has been only minimal growth in living standards in two decades. Its manufacturing sector is dominated…

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The oil shock of 2020 appears to be here – and the pain could be wide and deep

The oil shock of 2020 appears to be here – and the pain could be wide and deep

Suffering from sanctions, Russia is trying produce more and gain market share. Yegor Aleyev via Getty Images By Scott L. Montgomery, University of Washington The world is again undergoing an oil shock. Prices, already on a downward trend, have collapsed 30% in less than a week, bringing the total fall to nearly 50% since highs in early January. Consumers, of course, can expect gasoline prices to go down, but the story is far more complicated than that. Having researched energy…

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Coronavirus will test the resilience of economies that have over-invested in fragile efficiency

Coronavirus will test the resilience of economies that have over-invested in fragile efficiency

Charlie Warzel writes: Constant connectivity defines 21st-century life, and the infrastructure undergirding it all is both digital (the internet and our social media platforms) and physical (the gig economy, e-commerce, global workplaces). Despite a tumultuous first two decades of the century, much of our connected way of life has evaded the stress of a singular global event. The possibility of a global pandemic currently posed by the new coronavirus threatens to change that altogether. Should the virus reach extreme levels…

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Global downturn looms as countries struggle to contain coronavirus outbreak

Global downturn looms as countries struggle to contain coronavirus outbreak

Reuters reports: The coronavirus spread further on Friday, with cases reported for the first time in at least six countries across four continents, battering markets and leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise its impact risk alert to “very high.” Hopes that the epidemic that started in China late last year would be over in months, and that economic activity would quickly return to normal, have been shattered. World shares were on course for their largest weekly fall since…

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Could coronavirus really trigger a recession?

Could coronavirus really trigger a recession?

Coronavirus seems to be on a collision course with the US economy and its 12-year bull market. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan By Michael Walden, North Carolina State University Fears are growing that the new coronavirus will infect the U.S. economy. U.S stocks are headed for their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; companies including Apple and Walmart have been warning of potential sales losses from COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to prepare for…

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How JPMorgan Chase became the Doomsday Bank

How JPMorgan Chase became the Doomsday Bank

Bill McKibben writes: Bankers like numbers. Numbers tell the story. No emotion gets in the way. So let’s look at the numbers: Over the past three years — that is, in the years after the world came together in Paris to try to slow climate change — JPMorgan Chase lent $196 billion to the fossil-fuel industry. Over the past three years, JPMorgan Chase lent more money to the fossil-fuel industry than any bank on Earth — 29 percent more. And…

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JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race

JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race

The Guardian reports: The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document. The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences. The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions…

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Once again, why fossil fuels are on the wrong side of history

Once again, why fossil fuels are on the wrong side of history

Jim Cramer writes: Tesla plus 80, Exxon Mobil minus a dollar and a half. On a huge up day, doesn’t that say it all? I’ve gotten a lot of blowback about my stand on fossil fuels. It’s been roundly criticized by many even as so many others are grateful for my new stand. The funny thing is that the stance itself is often poorly described by others so let’s unpack my comments. First, I have spent a great deal of…

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The climate crisis is reshaping the world of finance

The climate crisis is reshaping the world of finance

Bill McKibben, Alec Connon and Elana Sulakshana write: Historians should mark the date. On Jan 14, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, with more than $7.4 trillion under management, announced that the climate crisis has now grown so severe that it has become a force that will “fundamentally reshape” the world of finance. In his annual letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and one of the most powerful corporate executives in America, warned that BlackRock now expects to…

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Inequality makes climate crisis much harder to tackle

Inequality makes climate crisis much harder to tackle

Larry Elliot writes: Almost 15 years ago, Nick Stern, then head of the Government Economic Service, produced a report on the economics of climate change in which he called the failure to deal with a heating planet the greatest market failure of all time, and argued that the benefits of early action outweighed the costs. Last week, Professor Stern, now chair of both the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change…

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Venture capital shaped the past decade. It could destroy the next

Venture capital shaped the past decade. It could destroy the next

Nathan Heller writes: For a certain sort of nineteenth-century person—the sort with high risk tolerance and little revulsion to brutality—a natural career lay in whaling. The odds of success here were, by almost every measure, poor. An expedition first needed to find whales in the vastness of the oceans. If it succeeded, it had to approach the whales in silence, with a small craft; strike with a harpoon; stay afloat, intact, engaged, and oriented as the poor creatures thrashed about,…

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The nightmare economy created by Silicon Valley’s overlords

The nightmare economy created by Silicon Valley’s overlords

Lia Russell writes: Vanessa Bain was less than a year into her gig as an Instacart shopper when the company announced it would no longer allow tipping on its app. Instacart instead began imposing a 10 percent “service fee” that replaced the previous default tip of 10 percent. The change had no impact on customers, who could be forgiven for assuming that the new fee would still go to the workers who shopped for their groceries and delivered them to…

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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: Climate crisis will reshape finance

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: Climate crisis will reshape finance

The New York Times reports: Laurence D. Fink, the founder and chief executive of BlackRock, announced Tuesday that his firm would make investment decisions with environmental sustainability as a core goal. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with nearly $7 trillion in investments, and this move will fundamentally shift its investing policy — and could reshape how corporate America does business and put pressure on other large money managers to follow suit. Mr. Fink’s annual letter to the chief…

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Want to do something about climate change? Follow the money

Want to do something about climate change? Follow the money

Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Bill McKibben write: If you asked us why a dozen people sat on the floor next to the A.T.M. in a Chase Bank branch on Friday, waiting for the police to arrest us for this small act of civil disobedience, we would come up with the same answer as the famous robber Willie Sutton: “Because that’s where the money is.” We don’t want to empty the vaults. Instead, we want people to understand that the money…

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At Davos we will tell world leaders to abandon the fossil fuel economy

At Davos we will tell world leaders to abandon the fossil fuel economy

Greta Thunberg and others write: We have just entered a new decade, a decade where every month and every day will be absolutely crucial in deciding what the future will look like. Towards the end of January, chief executives, investors and policymakers will gather in Davos for the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum. Young climate activists and school strikers from around the world will be present to put pressure on these leaders. We demand that at this year’s…

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Economists greatly underestimate the price tag on climate change

Economists greatly underestimate the price tag on climate change

Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern write: For some time now it has been clear that the effects of climate change are appearing faster than scientists anticipated. Now it turns out that there is another form of underestimation as bad or worse than the scientific one: the underestimating by economists of the costs. The result of this failure by economists is that world leaders understand neither the magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods, nor the urgency of action. How…

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