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Category: Economics/Business

BP will slash oil production by 40% and pour billions into green energy

BP will slash oil production by 40% and pour billions into green energy

CNN reports: BP is planning to slash oil and gas production and pour billions of dollars into clean energy as part of a major strategic overhaul unveiled on Tuesday, alongside a huge second quarter loss and dividend cut. The London-based company said that it plans a 10-fold increase in annual low carbon investments to $5 billion by 2030 as it tries to deliver on its promise of net zero emissions by 2050 and prepares for a world that uses much…

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One-third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever

One-third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever

The New York Times reports: In early March, Glady’s, a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, was bringing in about $35,000 a week in revenue. The Bank Street Bookstore, a 50-year-old children’s shop in Manhattan, was preparing for busy spring and summer shopping seasons. And Busy Bodies, a play space for children in Brooklyn, had just wrapped up months of packed classes with long waiting lists. Five months later, those once prosperous businesses have evaporated. Glady’s and Busy Bodies are closed for…

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U.S. economy contracted at fastest quarterly rate on record

U.S. economy contracted at fastest quarterly rate on record

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. economy shrank 9.5 percent from April through June, the largest quarterly decline since the government began publishing data 70 years ago, and the latest, sobering reflection of the pandemic’s economic devastation. The second quarter report on gross domestic product covers some of the economy’s worst weeks in living memory, when commercial activity ground to a halt, millions of Americans lost their jobs and the nation went into lockdown. Yet economists say the data should…

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EU reaches ‘truly historic’ deal on pandemic recovery after fractious summit

EU reaches ‘truly historic’ deal on pandemic recovery after fractious summit

Reuters reports: European Union leaders clinched an “historic” deal on a massive stimulus plan for their coronavirus-throttled economies in the early hours of Tuesday, after a fractious summit lasting almost five days. The agreement paves the way for the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to raise billions of euros on capital markets on behalf of all 27 states, an unprecedented act of solidarity in almost seven decades of European integration. Summit chairman Charles Michel called the accord, reached at a…

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National mask mandate could save 5 percent of GDP, economists say

National mask mandate could save 5 percent of GDP, economists say

The Washington Post reports: After a late-spring lull, daily coronavirus cases in the United States have again hit record highs, driven by resurgent outbreaks in states such as Florida, Arizona and California. Hospitals in Houston are on the brink of being overwhelmed, and public health experts worry the pandemic’s death count will soon be climbing in tandem with the daily case load. The dire situation has raised the specter of another round of state-level stay-at-home orders to halt the pandemic’s…

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Jim Cramer: The pandemic led to ‘one of the greatest wealth transfers in history’

Jim Cramer: The pandemic led to ‘one of the greatest wealth transfers in history’

CNBC reports: The coronavirus pandemic and corresponding lockdown made way for “one of the greatest wealth transfers in history,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Thursday. The stock market is rising as big business rebounds from state-ordered stoppage of nonessential activity, while small businesses drop like flies, the “Mad Money” host said. “The bigger the business, the more it moves the major averages, and that matters because this is the first recession where big business … is coming through virtually unscathed, if…

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White supremacy as the economic engine of American history

White supremacy as the economic engine of American history

Nicholas Lemann writes: Before the Civil War, Southern slaveholders used to claim that their labor system was more humane than “wage slavery” in the factories of the industrializing North. They didn’t win that argument, but the idea took root that the South, during and after slavery, did not have a true capitalist economy. In 1930, twelve Southern writers (all white men) published a collection of essays, titled “I’ll Take My Stand,” that opened with a declaration that they “all tend…

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‘We’re not in this together’: Anand Giridharadas on how inequality has shaped the impact of the pandemic in America

‘We’re not in this together’: Anand Giridharadas on how inequality has shaped the impact of the pandemic in America

  The pandemic has prompted many to reflect on how the world works and, importantly, for whom it works. This is at the heart of a new program on Vice TV called “Seat at the Table,” hosted by best-selling author Anand Giridharadas. He has made a career of questioning the seat of power and money in America, and explains to Hari Sreenivasan why society must adapt or fail.

Trump says he won’t close the country if second wave of coronavirus hits

Trump says he won’t close the country if second wave of coronavirus hits

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump on Thursday said “we are not closing our country” if the U.S. is hit by a second wave of coronavirus infections. “People say that’s a very distinct possibility, it’s standard,” Trump said when asked about a second wave during a tour of a Ford factory in Michigan. “We are going to put out the fires. We’re not going to close the country,” Trump said. “We can put out the fires. Whether it is an ember…

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America’s billionaires got $434 billion richer during the lockdown

America’s billionaires got $434 billion richer during the lockdown

CNBC reports: America’s billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the U.S. lockdown between mid-March and mid-May, according to a new report. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had the biggest gains, with Bezos adding $34.6 billion to his wealth and Zuckerberg adding $25 billion, according to the report from Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies’ Program for Inequality. The report is based on Forbes data for America’s more than 600 billionaires between…

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Lockdowns trigger dramatic fall in global carbon emissions

Lockdowns trigger dramatic fall in global carbon emissions

The Guardian reports: Carbon dioxide emissions have fallen dramatically since lockdowns were imposed around the world due to the coronavirus crisis, research has shown. Daily emissions of the greenhouse gas plunged 17% by early April compared with 2019 levels, according to the first definitive study of global carbon output this year. The findings show the world has experienced the sharpest drop in carbon output since records began, with large sections of the global economy brought to a near standstill. When…

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Preventing a Great Depression will cost $10 trillion. Here’s how it can happen

Preventing a Great Depression will cost $10 trillion. Here’s how it can happen

Derek Thompson writes: Last week, House Democrats unveiled their latest pandemic-relief package. The bill combines aid for families, a bailout for struggling cities and states, and additional funds for testing, tracing, and hospitals. The price tag is about $3 trillion—and it comes just weeks after the president signed an economic-relief package worth about $2 trillion. Republicans have assailed the bill as a profligate wish list. Even Americans who are suffering from the health and economic ravages of the pandemic may…

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Biden campaign and Democratic Party develop plans for sweeping economic transformation

Biden campaign and Democratic Party develop plans for sweeping economic transformation

The New York Times reports: More than 36 million Americans are suddenly unemployed. Congress has allocated $2.2 trillion in aid, with more likely to be on the way as a fight looms over government debt. Millions more people are losing their health insurance and struggling to take care of their children and aging relatives. And nearly 90,000 are dead in a continuing public health catastrophe. This was not the scenario Joseph R. Biden Jr. anticipated confronting when he competed for…

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A $74 billion investment in testing, tracing and isolation could quickly rescue the economy

A $74 billion investment in testing, tracing and isolation could quickly rescue the economy

Alex Tabarrok and Puja Ahluwalia Ohlhaver write: With the unemployment rate at its highest level since the Great Depression — 14.7 percent and climbing — many Americans are clamoring to reopen the economy, even if it means that thousands of daily covid-19 deaths become part of the backdrop to life. It’s time to move on as “warriors,” President Trump has said, because “we can’t keep our country closed down for years.” We, too, favor markets and share the president’s eagerness…

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The economy is in free fall but Wall Street is thriving

The economy is in free fall but Wall Street is thriving

By Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica, May 10, 2020 Ten weeks into the worst crisis in 90 years, the government’s effort to save the economy has been both a spectacular success and a catastrophic failure. The clearest illustration of that came on Friday, when the government reported that 20.5 million people lost their jobs in April. It marked a period of unfathomable pain across the country not seen since the Great Depression. Also on Friday, the stock market rallied. The S&P 500…

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Why U.S. jobless figures don’t capture the true state of the coronavirus economy

Why U.S. jobless figures don’t capture the true state of the coronavirus economy

MarketWatch reports: ‘The virus is still spreading throughout much of the country. We have to continue to be very measured and not reopen too quickly because we may pay the price for that.’ That’s the cautious view Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari shared on NBC’s Today Show in an interview ahead of Friday’s monthly employment report, which he says won’t give the clearest picture of job losses amid the coronavirus pandemic. “That bad report tomorrow is actually going…

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