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Category: Economics/Business

The economic shock from the pandemic continues to assault global fortunes

The economic shock from the pandemic continues to assault global fortunes

The New York Times reports: This past week brought home the magnitude of the overlapping crises assailing the global economy, intensifying fears of recession, job losses, hunger and a plunge on stock markets. At the root of this torment is a force so elemental that it has almost ceased to warrant mention — the pandemic. That force is far from spent, confronting policymakers with grave uncertainty. Their policy tools are better suited for more typical downturns, not a rare combination…

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Janet Yellen’s global campaign to defund Russia’s war machine

Janet Yellen’s global campaign to defund Russia’s war machine

The Washington Post reports: Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was feted by Japan’s leaders after arriving here on Sunday, lunching with the country’s top economists, meeting with senior executives from Sony and Panasonic and lighting incense at the wake of former prime minister Shinzo Abe. But beneath the public bonhomie, Yellen’s hosts quietly expressed concerns about potential fallout from her push to create a new global price cap on Russian oil. Japanese officials have communicated that they are worried that…

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Nature is in crisis. A UN report says short-sighted economics is to blame

Nature is in crisis. A UN report says short-sighted economics is to blame

Grist reports: When governments make decisions, economic considerations often trump everything else — human well-being, social connections, the health of the environment. According to a new report from the United Nations, this imbalance is driving the global biodiversity crisis and the human suffering associated with it. “Despite the diversity of nature’s values,” the report says, “most policymaking approaches have prioritized a narrow set of values at the expense of both nature and society, as well as future generations.” It calls…

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States with abortion bans risk paying an economic price

States with abortion bans risk paying an economic price

The New York Times reports: As a group of conservative states enacted severe abortion restrictions last year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois sent letters to a handful of corporate executives with close ties to Texas. Mr. Pritzker, a Democrat, urged executives to rethink basing their companies in “a state that strips its residents of their dignity.” Most workers, he wrote, did not want to live under a rigid abortion ban. There was no immediate response to his overture. Companies thriving…

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China’s May oil imports from Russia soar to a record, surpass top supplier Saudi

China’s May oil imports from Russia soar to a record, surpass top supplier Saudi

Reuters reports: China’s crude oil imports from Russia soared 55% from a year earlier to a record level in May, displacing Saudi Arabia as the top supplier, as refiners cashed in on discounted supplies amid sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Imports of Russian oil, including supplies pumped via the East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline and seaborne shipments from Russia’s European and Far Eastern ports, totalled nearly 8.42 million tonnes, according to data from the Chinese General Administration…

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Unions might not be Amazon’s biggest labor threat

Unions might not be Amazon’s biggest labor threat

Recode reports: Amazon is facing a looming crisis: It could run out of people to hire in its US warehouses by 2024, according to leaked Amazon internal research from mid-2021 that Recode reviewed. If that happens, the online retailer’s service quality and growth plans could be at risk, and its e-commerce dominance along with it. Raising wages and increasing warehouse automation are two of the six “levers” Amazon could pull to delay this labor crisis by a few years, but…

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Inflation is poised to ease according to three key indicators

Inflation is poised to ease according to three key indicators

Bloomberg reports: Three of the key supply-side factors driving today’s global inflation levels have already turned around, meaning relief could be on the horizon for shoppers worldwide. A bellwether semiconductor price — a barometer of costs of finished electronics products as diverse as laptops, dishwashers, LED bulbs, and medical devices delivered worldwide — is now half its July 2018 peak and down 14% from the middle of last year. The spot rate for shipping containers — which tells us more…

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Economic recession fears could be overblown

Economic recession fears could be overblown

The Washington Post reports: If there is a recession brewing in the United States, it would be news to Doug Johnson. The president of Marion Manufacturing Co. in Cheshire, Conn., Johnson is enjoying some of the best times in his company’s 76-year history. Sure, he’s heard the negative chatter about rising prices, sinking stocks and mounting risks from trouble overseas. And he’s seen the polls showing that most Americans think the economy is headed for a tumble. But as Johnson…

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What America needs is a liberalism that builds

What America needs is a liberalism that builds

Ezra Klein writes: In April, Brian Deese, the director of Biden’s National Economic Council, gave an important speech on the need for “a modern American industrial strategy.” This was a salvo in a debate most Americans would probably be puzzled to know Democrats are having. Industrial strategy is the idea that a country should chart a path to productive capacity beyond what the market would, on its own, support. It is the belief that there should be some politics in…

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Taking decolonisation beyond Eurocentrism

Taking decolonisation beyond Eurocentrism

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven writes: With the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Edward Said would become one of the most influential scholars of our era. The book transformed the study of the history of the modern world, as it offered insights into how racist discourses created and maintained European empires. As much for his political activities, Said and his work attracted a number of Right-wing critics, most notably perhaps Bernard Lewis. Less well known in the West is Samir Amin, the…

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California pushing for 32-hour workweek at larger companies as part of pandemic-driven shift

California pushing for 32-hour workweek at larger companies as part of pandemic-driven shift

USA Today reports: California is trying to become the first state in the nation to make a four-day workweek a state law. The state introduced a bill that would make the official workweek 32 hours and no longer 40 hours for companies with 500 employees or more, giving higher raises and time-and-a-half pay to any worker who surpasses that cutoff. A typical workday would remain eight hours. The bill – AB 2932 – also states that 12 hours past the…

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How many billionaires are there, anyway?

How many billionaires are there, anyway?

Willy Staley writes: In 1981, Malcolm Forbes, the eccentric and fabulously wealthy magazine publisher, came to his editors with a request: Could they pull together a special issue about the 400 richest Americans? The idea was inspired by Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, the doyenne of Gilded Age New York, who regularly hosted the city’s high society in her Fifth Avenue ballroom, which was said to fit about 400 people. It’s quite possible Forbes saw something of himself in Astor. This was…

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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

James Livingston writes: Work means everything to us Americans. For centuries – since, say, 1650 – we’ve believed that it builds character (punctuality, initiative, honesty, self-discipline, and so forth). We’ve also believed that the market in labour, where we go to find work, has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes. And we’ve believed that, even if it sucks, a job gives meaning, purpose and structure to our everyday lives – at any rate, we’re pretty sure that it…

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Russia’s Ukraine invasion could be a global economic ‘game changer’

Russia’s Ukraine invasion could be a global economic ‘game changer’

The Washington Post reports: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the financial reckoning imposed on Moscow in response are proof that the triumphant globalization campaign that began more than 30 years ago has reached a dead end. Fallout from the fighting in Ukraine will take a meaningful bite out of the global economic recovery this year, with the greatest impact in Europe, economists said. A spike in oil prices to more than $110 per barrel and renewed supply chain disruptions —…

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Can Germany function without Russian natural gas?

Can Germany function without Russian natural gas?

The Guardian reports: The Ukraine crisis has plunged Germany into an intense debate about how it will heat its homes and power its industry in future, summed up in the short question: can Europe’s largest economy function without Vladimir Putin’s gas? The Green federal economics minister, Robert Habeck, answered with a decisive “yes it can”, a day after the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, announced the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was meant to deliver from Russia as much…

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How Larry Summers became the preeminent critic of the Biden era’s economic consensus

How Larry Summers became the preeminent critic of the Biden era’s economic consensus

Eric Levitz writes: There’s a story that progressives like to tell about Larry Summers. The doyen of Establishment economics is dining out with a populist politician. The two have made it through the meal with minimal awkwardness — their ideological tensions eased by booze and food — when Summers leans back in his chair and offers his left-wing foil a hard-won insight. There are two kinds of political actors in this world: insiders and outsiders. Outsiders are free to speak…

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