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Category: Economics

CEO pay remains stratospheric, even at companies battered by pandemic

CEO pay remains stratospheric, even at companies battered by pandemic

The New York Times reports: Boeing had a historically bad 2020. Its 737 Max was grounded for most of the year after two deadly crashes, the pandemic decimated its business, and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. Nonetheless, its chief executive, David Calhoun, was rewarded with some $21.1 million in compensation. Norwegian Cruise Line barely survived the year. With the cruise industry at a standstill, the company lost $4 billion and…

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After pandemic, shrinking need for office space could crush landlords

After pandemic, shrinking need for office space could crush landlords

The New York Times reports: As office vacancies climb to their highest levels in decades with businesses giving up office space and embracing remote work, the real estate industry in many American cities faces a potentially grave threat. Businesses have discovered during the pandemic that they can function with nearly all of their workers out of the office, an arrangement many intend to continue in some form. That could wallop the big property companies that build and own office buildings…

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If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

The Wall Street Journal reports: A bidding war broke out this winter at a new subdivision north of Houston. But the prize this time was the entire subdivision, not just a single suburban house, illustrating the rise of big investors as a potent new force in the U.S. housing market. D.R. Horton Inc. built 124 houses in Conroe, Texas, rented them out and then put the whole community, Amber Pines at Fosters Ridge, on the block. A Who’s Who of…

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I have come to bury Ayn Rand

I have come to bury Ayn Rand

David Sloan Wilson writes: My father, Sloan Wilson, wrote novels that would help define 1950s America. I loved and admired him, but the prospect of following in the footsteps of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and A Summer Place was like being expected to climb Mount Everest. My love of nature provided an alternative path. I would become an ecologist, spending my days researching plants and animals, which fascinated me since the summers I spent as a boy…

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Remote work is here to stay. New York City faces a cataclysmic challenge after the pandemic ends

Remote work is here to stay. New York City faces a cataclysmic challenge after the pandemic ends

The New York Times reports: Spotify’s headquarters in the United States fills 16 floors of 4 World Trade Center, a towering office building in Lower Manhattan that was the first to rise on the site of the 2001 terror attacks. Its offices will probably never be full again: Spotify has told employees they can work anywhere, even in another state. A few floors down, MediaMath, an advertising tech company, is planning to abandon its space, a decision fueled by its…

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The world isn’t building back better after the pandemic

The world isn’t building back better after the pandemic

Akshat Rathi writes: The exuberance of vaccine rollouts in rich countries is masking an ugly reality. Greenhouse gas emissions are already creeping higher than before the pandemic as economies come back to life. That shouldn’t be a total surprise. Even as governments around the world have spent trillions of dollars to aid their nation’s recoveries, only a tiny fraction has gone toward initiatives that would also cut pollution. Many politicians, including U.S. president Joe Biden, have adopted the phrase “build…

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Tim Wu’s appointment to the National Economic Council signals a confrontational approach to Big Tech

Tim Wu’s appointment to the National Economic Council signals a confrontational approach to Big Tech

The New York Times reports: President Biden on Friday named Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, to the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, putting one of the most outspoken critics of Big Tech’s power into the administration. The appointment of Mr. Wu, 48, who is widely supported by progressive Democrats and antimonopoly groups, suggests that the administration plans to take on the size and influence of companies like Amazon,…

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Economic growth has become a malignancy

Economic growth has become a malignancy

Here is Dr. Mike Ryan speaking at a @trocaire event yesterday about the catastrophe we're walking into. I genuinely think this is the most important clip you'll ever see. pic.twitter.com/eKxBWEu7SM — Eoghan Rice (@rice_e) February 18, 2021 Mike Ryan, World Health Organization

World’s largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

World’s largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

Bloomberg reports: Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold its entire portfolio of companies focused on oil exploration and production, marking a major step away from fossil fuels for the investing giant. The portfolio, worth about $6 billion in 2019, was fully exited by the end of last year, Trond Grande, the fund’s deputy chief executive, said by phone on Thursday. The move completes a years-long process to reduce the giant investor’s exposure to a sector that has defined Norway’s economy…

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A $7 trillion climate change warning to the stock market from its biggest shareholder

A $7 trillion climate change warning to the stock market from its biggest shareholder

CNBC reports: The evidence of climate change — from global temperature records to Arctic ice melt, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding — is accelerating. So is investment pressure on corporations. In the past week, Exxon Mobil was targeted by activist investors, as well as CalSTRS, one of the nation’s largest pension funds. New York State’s $226 billion pension fund announced a plan to potentially divest from oil and gas stocks in the years ahead. The world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, issued…

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The data economy is facing a social reckoning

The data economy is facing a social reckoning

MIT Technology Review reports: Each innovation challenges the norms, codes, and values of the society in which it is embedded. The industrial revolution unleashed new forces of productivity but at the cost of inhumane working conditions, leading to the creation of unions, labor laws, and the foundations of the political party structures of modern democracies. Fossil fuels powered a special century of growth before pushing governments, companies, and civil society to phase them out to protect our health, ecology, and…

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‘Existential peril’: Mass transit faces huge service cuts across U.S.

‘Existential peril’: Mass transit faces huge service cuts across U.S.

The New York Times reports: In Boston, transit officials warned of ending weekend service on the commuter rail and shutting down the city’s ferries. In Washington, weekend and late-night metro service would be eliminated and 19 of the system’s 91 stations would close. In Atlanta, 70 of the city’s 110 bus routes have already been suspended, a move that could become permanent. And in New York City, home to the largest mass transportation system in North America, transit officials have…

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Asia forms world’s biggest trade bloc, a China-backed group excluding U.S.

Asia forms world’s biggest trade bloc, a China-backed group excluding U.S.

Reuters reports: Fifteen Asia-Pacific economies formed the world’s largest free trade bloc on Sunday, a China-backed deal that excludes the United States, which had left a rival Asia-Pacific grouping under President Donald Trump. The signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) at a regional summit in Hanoi, is a further blow to the group pushed by former U.S. president Barack Obama, which his successor Trump exited in 2017. Amid questions over Washington’s engagement in Asia, RCEP may cement China’s…

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As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street, hoping for stability, welcomes the prospect of a Biden win

As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street, hoping for stability, welcomes the prospect of a Biden win

Politico reports: President Donald Trump loves to say that if Joe Biden wins the White House, stocks will crash, retirement accounts will vanish and an economic depression “the likes of which you’ve never seen” will engulf the nation. But much of Wall Street is already betting on a Biden win — with a much different take on what the results will mean. Traders in recent weeks have been piling into bets that a “blue wave” election, in which Democrats also…

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The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

Dirk Philipsen writes: A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We – young and old, citizen and immigrant – do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have…

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Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

The New York Times reports: If rising seas cause America’s coastal housing market to dive — or, as many economists warn, when — the beginning might look a little like what’s happening in the tiny town of Bal Harbour, a glittering community on the northernmost tip of Miami Beach. With single-family homes selling for an average of $3.6 million, Bal Harbour epitomizes high-end Florida waterfront property. But around 2013, something started to change: The annual number of homes sales began…

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