Browsed by
Category: Economics/Business

Trump’s deportations are costing Americans jobs

Trump’s deportations are costing Americans jobs

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has long claimed that mass deportations would deliver more jobs and higher wages to American-born workers. But a new study casts doubt on that assertion, undermining a central tenet of the president’s immigration policy. Recent surges in deportations have led to job losses for both immigrant and American-born workers, while wages have stayed flat, according to the study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan research organization. Construction, which…

Read More Read More

A utility mega-merger is all about data centers

A utility mega-merger is all about data centers

Inside Climate News reports: A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry. The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the U.S. power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas…

Read More Read More

As the American epoch of oil is collapsing, fossil fuel fascists are trying to turn back the clock

As the American epoch of oil is collapsing, fossil fuel fascists are trying to turn back the clock

Jonathan Watts writes: “Farewell,” the flag-waving Chinese children chanted to Donald Trump as he strolled along the red carpet back to Air Force One at the end of his summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing. The US leader claimed he was leaving with a cluster of “fantastic” trade deals to sell US oil, jets and soya beans to China. That has not been confirmed by his smiling host, but one thing was crystal clear from the two days of meetings:…

Read More Read More

Iran eyes a new source of power deep beneath the Strait of Hormuz

Iran eyes a new source of power deep beneath the Strait of Hormuz

CNN reports: Emboldened by its successful wartime blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is turning to one of the hidden arteries in the global economy: subsea cables beneath the waterway that carry vast internet and financial traffic between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf. The Islamic Republic wants to charge the world’s largest tech companies for using the subsea internet cables laid under the Strait of Hormuz, and state-linked media outlets have vaguely threatened that traffic could be disrupted…

Read More Read More

Thieves are cloning trucks and blowing up pipelines to steal $1 billion in Texas crude oil every year

Thieves are cloning trucks and blowing up pipelines to steal $1 billion in Texas crude oil every year

Moneywise reports: West Texas is losing roughly a billion dollars in crude oil each year to theft — and the people taking it have gotten good enough that they clone service trucks, launder barrels through brokers and occasionally blow up the pipeline they’re trying to rob. “It’s like any other commodity,” Jim Wright, chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, told Texas Public Radio. “When the price is high, they just get sexier.” With oil prices elevated by the Iran war…

Read More Read More

Rising diesel costs from Iran war strain U.S. school budgets

Rising diesel costs from Iran war strain U.S. school budgets

Reuters reports: Soaring diesel prices since the onset of the Iran war are draining already tight U.S. school district budgets, making it more expensive to bus students and run generators in a shock officials say they will not be ​able to afford for long. School districts from Yakima, Washington, to Waco, Texas, are tapping emergency funding reserves to keep buses running. In remote Alaska, officials are scrambling to secure enough ‌fuel to keep the lights on, according to Reuters interviews….

Read More Read More

China’s ‘industrial policy of everything’ leaves rest of the world in the dust

China’s ‘industrial policy of everything’ leaves rest of the world in the dust

Greg Ip writes: In the decades since China joined the world economy, U.S. presidents have traveled to Beijing with a predictable list of demands: stop stealing American intellectual property, don’t force technology transfer, open your markets. Donald Trump followed the script on his previous visit in 2017. Whether he does so again this week, it would be pointless. Those demands reflect a view of Chinese industrial policy (broadly, government support for favored sectors) that is woefully out of date. Xi…

Read More Read More

As Trump meets Xi, Iran lets Chinese ships through Strait of Hormuz

As Trump meets Xi, Iran lets Chinese ships through Strait of Hormuz

The New York Times reports: Iran has allowed some Chinese vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz following diplomatic overtures from China’s government, semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported on Thursday. The reports coincided with a visit to Beijing by President Trump, who held talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday that were expected to focus heavily on the crisis over the strategic waterway. Dueling Iranian and U.S. attempts to control traffic in the strait have rattled global energy…

Read More Read More

Meta: What it’s like inside a company where ‘everyone is unhappy’

Meta: What it’s like inside a company where ‘everyone is unhappy’

Wired reports: As Meta employees brace for layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, many say the vibes are horrifically, historically low. “Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally, executives,” says an employee who works on Instagram. The social media giant plans to cut about 10 percent of its workforce, or nearly 8,000 people, “to run the company more efficiently” and “offset the other investments” it’s making, according to a human resources leader. But the layoffs, which…

Read More Read More

Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

The Guardian reports: A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies. The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW…

Read More Read More

Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

The New York Times reports: When President Trump visited China in late 2017, Xi Jinping welcomed him with a grand display of Chinese history and culture: a four-hour private tour of the Forbidden City culminating in a performance by the Peking Opera. Eight years, a pandemic and two trade wars later, Mr. Trump is returning to Beijing, where the theme of future dominance, not ancient majesty, has filled domestic and international headlines with articles about dancing robots, drone swarms and…

Read More Read More

How fertilizer shortages caused by the energy crisis threaten food security

How fertilizer shortages caused by the energy crisis threaten food security

Meihua Yang et al write: Since March, war in the Middle East has disrupted global fertilizer markets. Urea prices jumped by nearly 46% in a month, as geopolitical and energy shocks hit nitrogen supply chains. The disruptions caused by blocked maritime bottlenecks, including the Strait of Hormuz, limiting tanker movements and flows of oil and liquefied natural gas, underscore the coupled nature of global energy and food systems. As a result of the crisis, the World Food Programme has warned…

Read More Read More

Gasoline costs 50% more in the U.S. than it did before the Iran war

Gasoline costs 50% more in the U.S. than it did before the Iran war

The Associated Press reports: The price of a gallon of regular gasoline climbed 31 cents in the past week, spiking to an average of $4.48 per gallon Tuesday, according to AAA, hitting the wallets of drivers after rising 50% since the war with Iran began. The main reason drivers are paying more at the pump is because of the global energy crisis caused by the Iran war. The price of crude oil, which is the main ingredient in gasoline, has…

Read More Read More

Congress is doing little to prepare for job losses caused by AI

Congress is doing little to prepare for job losses caused by AI

The New York Times reports: Economists aren’t sure if or when artificial intelligence will cause widespread job losses. But they do agree on one thing: The federal safety net isn’t ready for such a shock. The nearly century-old unemployment system, which provides out-of-work Americans with up to 26 weeks of benefits in most states, is unlikely to cover many of the workers who are most at risk of being displaced by A.I., labor experts warn. Job-retraining programs and other forms…

Read More Read More

Operation Epic Fury, meet Operation Colossal Blunder

Operation Epic Fury, meet Operation Colossal Blunder

Scott Anderson writes: America’s war with Iran has entered a calmer phase: diplomatic posturing, on-and-off-again negotiations and endless wrangling of a settlement. This, of course, is far preferable to the annihilation of Iranian civilization that President Trump was threatening just a few weeks ago. But it raises the question of just what has spurred this turnabout. The answer is rather straightforward. The American and Israeli bombing of Iran failed to provoke either a popular uprising against the regime in Tehran…

Read More Read More

Confusion in Strait of Hormuz leaves shipping firms guessing

Confusion in Strait of Hormuz leaves shipping firms guessing

The New York Times reports: Shipping companies said on Monday that President Trump’s offer to provide them safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz fell short of the sort of arrangements that would persuade them to make the trip. Mr. Trump said on Sunday that the United States would “guide” commercial vessels through the strait, which Iran has effectively closed since the war in the Persian Gulf started two months ago. But the president provided few details on how the…

Read More Read More