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Category: Economics

The yuan’s the new dollar as Russia rides to the redback

The yuan’s the new dollar as Russia rides to the redback

Reuters reports: Chinese entrepreneur Wang Min is delighted about Russia’s embrace of the yuan. His LED lights company can price contracts to Russian customers in yuan rather than dollars or euros, and they can pay him in yuan. It’s “win-win”, he says. Wang’s plans have been transformed by the conflict in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Moscow that have shut Russia’s banks and many of its companies out of the dollar and euro payment systems. His contract manufacturing…

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How West Africa’s emerging megalopolis will shape the coming century

How West Africa’s emerging megalopolis will shape the coming century

Howard W French writes: It has long been said that no one knows with any certainty the population of Lagos, Nigeria. When I spent time there a decade ago, the United Nations conservatively put the number at 11.5 million, but other estimates ranged as high as 18 million. The one thing everyone agreed was that Lagos was growing very fast. The population was already 40 times bigger than it had been in 1960, when Nigeria gained independence. One local demographer…

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Deglobalization is a threat to climate action

Deglobalization is a threat to climate action

Raghuram G. Rajan writes: The deliberations at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) suggest that while policymakers realize the urgency of combating climate change, they are unlikely to reach a comprehensive collective agreement to address it. But there is still a way for the world to improve the chances of more effective action in the future: hit the brakes on deglobalization. Otherwise, the possibilities for climate action will be set back by the shrinkage of cross-border trade and…

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The wreckage of neoliberalism

The wreckage of neoliberalism

Chris Murphy writes: For millions of Americans—especially those who don’t live in the high-income urban mega-economies—it feels like life itself is unspooling. This sense of dislocation is what Donald Trump’s politics of grievance seized upon when he launched his campaign for the presidency in 2015. He offered easy scapegoats—immigrants, Muslims, and economic elites—to blame for the loss of meaning and economic autonomy felt by many Americans. He signaled an intent to break America apart from the world economy and the…

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The global economy is in chaos. Nobody’s coming to the rescue

The global economy is in chaos. Nobody’s coming to the rescue

Politico reports: America is driving the West’s response to the war in Ukraine. But U.S. officials are struggling to project a global response to a worldwide economic slowdown. A sense of dread surrounded meetings of finance ministers and central bankers in Washington this week, amid one of the most foreboding moments for the world economy in years. The list of worries was alarmingly long: stubbornly persistent inflation, crippling interest rates, panic around the worsening energy supply crisis, manic markets and…

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The Saudi-Russian oil axis snubs Biden with production cuts

The Saudi-Russian oil axis snubs Biden with production cuts

Javier Blas writes: Coming four weeks before the US midterm elections, many in Washington took the unexpectedly large output cut as a personal attack on President Joseph Biden. The fact that OPEC+ hastily gathered in person in Vienna, rather than via video-conference as scheduled, reinforced that perception. The form of the meeting mattered as much as the substance. As Roger Diwan, a veteran OPEC watcher noted, it was “eerie” to observe the cartel jumping into major action on Yom Kippur,…

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The capitalist transformations of the countryside

The capitalist transformations of the countryside

Sven Beckert and Ulbe Bosma write: Sometimes, what is most common is most remarkable. For those of us living in a city or suburb, a typical day starts with rising from (cotton) sheets, hopping under the shower for a quick wash with (palm oil-based) soaps, dressing in (cotton) shirts and pants, drinking a hot beverage (coffee or tea) and then eating a (sugary) cereal or jam, perhaps followed by a (soy-fed) processed meat sandwich, wrapped in (fossil-fuel-based) plastic. What describes…

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Rebuke from IMF is a global embarrassment for British government

Rebuke from IMF is a global embarrassment for British government

Larry Elliot writes: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have taken on the economic orthodoxy. They have announced extra borrowing to pay for tax cuts. They have sacked the Treasury’s top mandarin. They have insisted they will press on with their dash for growth despite a hostile reaction in the markets. Now the economic orthodoxy has struck back – and in the most high-profile way possible: a public and stinging rebuke from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is hard to…

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China reins in its Belt and Road program, $1 trillion later

China reins in its Belt and Road program, $1 trillion later

The Wall Street Journal reports: China has spent a trillion dollars to expand its influence across Asia, Africa and Latin America through its Belt and Road infrastructure program. Now, Beijing is working on an overhaul of the troubled initiative, according to people involved in policy-making. A slowing global economy, combined with rising interest rates and higher inflation, have left countries struggling to repay their debts to China. Tens of billions of dollars of loans have gone sour, and numerous development…

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More bosses are spying on so-called quiet quitters. It could backfire

More bosses are spying on so-called quiet quitters. It could backfire

The Wall Street Journal reports: In the battle against “quiet quitting” and other obstacles to productivity in the workplace, companies are increasingly turning to an array of sophisticated tools to watch and analyze how employees do their jobs. The sobering news for America’s bosses: These technologies can fall short of their promises, and even be counterproductive. Patchy evidence for the effectiveness of workplace monitoring tech hasn’t stopped it from sweeping through U.S. companies over the past 2½ years. Since the…

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To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

Elizabeth Bryan, Claudia Ringler, and Nicole Lefore write: In the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the global community is scrambling. The World Bank, the G7 group of the world’s largest developed economies, the European Union and the United States have collectively pledged more than US$40 billion to avert food and humanitarian crises (see Supplementary information). Yet these massive funds are unlikely to get women and girls the help they need. The investments might even exacerbate inequalities. Crises hit women…

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U.S. corporate profits soar with margins at widest since 1950

U.S. corporate profits soar with margins at widest since 1950

Bloomberg reports: A measure of US profit margins has reached its widest since 1950, suggesting that the prices charged by businesses are outpacing their increased costs for production and labor. After-tax profits as a share of gross value added for non-financial corporations, a measure of aggregate profit margins, improved in the second quarter to 15.5% — the most since 1950 — from 14% in the first quarter, according to Commerce Department figures published Thursday. The data show that companies overall…

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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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