Biden is revving a US economy already enjoying a vaccine-inspired recovery
Detroit’s giant carmakers were among the US businesses tottering as the Great Recession took hold. About 2.6 million Americans lost their jobs over the four months from when the global financial crisis erupted in September 2008 until President Barack Obama assumed office at the start of 2009. The modelling of Christina Romer, Obama’s chair of…
The pivotal fight between China and the US is over the microchip
The campaign for dominance in semiconductors could hurt both countries. Japan’s Kioxia Holdings, which in the early 1980s invented flash memory computer chips, was set for one of the country’s biggest initial public offers for 2020. In September, however, the semiconductor maker reduced the asking price of its offer by 25%. Days later, the company…
Japan has trailblazed on economic stimulus, to not much avail
Will Japan under Suga try the reflationary option Abe didn’t? In 2006, 52-year-old Shinzō Abe of the almost-always-in-power Liberal Democratic Party became Japan’s youngest-ever prime minister. In 2007, however, the son of a foreign minister and the grandson and grand-nephew of prime ministers resigned due to ill health. Abe recovered soon enough. In 2012, the…
Super low interest rates come with side effects
Ultra-loose monetary policy could even be counterproductive for economies. Sitting on the desk of Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe most days when he arrives at work are letters from the public. Many are from retirees who have one complaint in this world of low interest rates. “It’s not uncommon for people to say…
US senate result could reverberate for decades
The US senate result could reverberate for decades if under Democrat control the filibuster goes. Any quest to alter the constitutional order would be more proof of how primary contests are destabilising US politics. Mitch McConnell, first elected to the US senate in 1984, became senate majority leader in 2015 when Republicans regained control of…
China and the US are headed towards a ‘decoupling’
But any rupture is likely to fall short of the separation the word implies. (Reading time: 4 min) The ‘Line of Actual Control’ is the name for the unformalised border that separates Indian-controlled and Chinese-controlled territory in the disputed area where the Asian neighbours meet and where in 1962 the pair fought a war. In…
The populations of key countries are shrinking
This new, yet largely ignored, trend comes with underrated economic and social costs. Released by US film producer Mike Moore and timed for the 50th Earth Day in April, the documentary Planet of the Humans tells how renewable sources of energy are flawed replacements for fossil fuels as a way to mitigate the dangers of…
Apps, backed by ‘dark kitchens’, are changing food delivery
Even though the platform attack is hobbled by poor economics, restaurants are under threat – especially during a pandemic. In 2004, Matt Maloney and Mike Evans were working in Chicago as web developers for appartment.com, a platform that allows people to find rental flats online. The pair often worked late enough to order takeaway. “We…
The psychological effects of the pandemic
These social, political and economic changes can be grouped into four categories; new, accelerated, busted and possible trends. In 1930, 1,028 economists signed a letter to Herbert Hoover urging the US president to veto a bill that would raise tariffs once it became law. Hoover refused and the US raised taxes on about 20,000 imports…
Covid-19 tearing at the fragilities of Italy and Eurozone
Solutions to appease the crisis face political hurdles. A default or euro exit are possible. ‘il Boom’ is how Italians describe the ‘great transformation’ of Italy over the 1950s and 1960s when a poor country turned itself into a modern industrial powerhouse with a stable currency, the lira. During those decades, rural southern Italians flocked…
