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Category: Economics

U.S. debt will overtake GDP next year for the first time since 1946, CBO says

U.S. debt will overtake GDP next year for the first time since 1946, CBO says

CNN reports: The US debt is projected to exceed the size of the entire country’s economy next year, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. It will be the first time the federal debt could be bigger than the US gross domestic product since 1946, just after World War II. The CBO also projected that the federal budget deficit will hit $3.3 trillion this year, more than triple the shortfall recorded in 2019. That would be the largest deficit as a…

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Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

George Monbiot writes: When a major study was published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse. Next week the BirthStrike movement – founded by women who, by announcing their decision not to have children, seek…

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Oil companies wonder if it makes economic sense to continue oil exploration

Oil companies wonder if it makes economic sense to continue oil exploration

Bloomberg reports: A few dots near the bottom corner of the world map in the southern Atlantic, the Falkland Islands were once at the forefront of a new era for the oil industry as companies scoured the planet for resources. Yet a decade after the discovery of as much as 1.7 billion barrels of crude in surrounding waters, the British overseas territory known for sheep rearing and tension with Argentina looks as remote as ever. Rather than the next frontier,…

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The next global depression is coming and optimism won’t slow it down

The next global depression is coming and optimism won’t slow it down

Ian Bremmer writes: The world is confused and frightened. COVID-19 infections are on the rise across the U.S. and around the world, even in countries that once thought they had contained the virus. The outlook for the next year is at best uncertain; countries are rushing to produce and distribute vaccines at breakneck speeds, some opting to bypass critical phase trials. Meanwhile, unemployment numbers remain dizzyingly high, even as the U.S. stock market continues to defy gravity. We’re headed into…

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To rebuild our world, we must end the carbon economy

To rebuild our world, we must end the carbon economy

Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, Mariana Mazzucato, Clair Brown, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Robert Reich, Gabriel Zucman and others write: From deep-rooted racism to the Covid-19 pandemic, from extreme inequality to ecological collapse, our world is facing dire and deeply interconnected emergencies. But as much as the present moment painfully underscores the weaknesses of our economic system, it also gives us the rare opportunity to reimagine it. As we seek to rebuild our world, we can and must end the carbon economy. Even…

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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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