European Equities Set for Biggest August Gain Since 2009
Read more at:
European Equities Set for Biggest August Gain Since 2009
Read more at:
European Equities Set for Biggest August Gain Since 2009
Monday, August 31, 2020
Sunday, August 30, 2020
China-US relations: Trump’s China Sanctions Fail Russian History Test-by Clara Ferreira Marques
The U.S. is deploying its economic weaponry as never before, using
unilateral sanctions to punish China for the erosion of Hong Kong's
autonomy and its treatment of Uighur minorities in the country's
northwest. Western experience with Russia suggests Washington's efforts
to force a change of behavior are unlikely to succeed, even if the
measures remain in place for years.
Washington blacklisted a powerful Chinese conglomerate and officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang at the end of July, just as President Donald Trump suggested he would ban popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok. In early August, weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong, the White House took the most dramatic step of all, targeting the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, and a handful of others. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act passed by the U.S. in July may expand that group, and target their bankers, too.
The U.S. sanctions machinery has generally been targeted at smaller, rogue states. Not always, though. Russia has been under progressively tougher measures since 2014, following the annexation of Crimea and the downing of a passenger aircraft over Ukraine. The Russian economy, before punitive action, was twice the size of all others under U.S. sanctions combined. Targeting the world’s second-largest economy represents another step up. Still, experience offers some hints of what can be expected.
Read more at:
Trump’s China Sanctions Fail Russian History Test
Washington blacklisted a powerful Chinese conglomerate and officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang at the end of July, just as President Donald Trump suggested he would ban popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok. In early August, weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong, the White House took the most dramatic step of all, targeting the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, and a handful of others. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act passed by the U.S. in July may expand that group, and target their bankers, too.
The U.S. sanctions machinery has generally been targeted at smaller, rogue states. Not always, though. Russia has been under progressively tougher measures since 2014, following the annexation of Crimea and the downing of a passenger aircraft over Ukraine. The Russian economy, before punitive action, was twice the size of all others under U.S. sanctions combined. Targeting the world’s second-largest economy represents another step up. Still, experience offers some hints of what can be expected.
Read more at:
Trump’s China Sanctions Fail Russian History Test
Saturday, August 29, 2020
China - Netherlands Relations: Free trade and cooperation top Chinese FM Wang Yi's Netherlands visit
Chinese State Council and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday called
on the Netherlands to jointly defend multilateralism and free trade.Wang
made the remarks during a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte
in The Hague.
Wang said China and the Netherlands enjoy a mutual bilateral relationship on the basis of mutual respect, mutual understanding, openness and mutual trust.
As the coronavirus pandemic is normalized in both countries, China is willing to work with the Dutch government to resume the flow of goods and people so as to make their contribution to global economic recovery.
Faced with the rising challenge of unilateralism, China would like to work the Dutch side to defend multilateralism and free trade and build a community with a shared future for mankind, he added.
Rutte said the Netherlands values the ties with China and is willing to expand cooperation in different areas.
He praised China's efforts in fighting against COVID-19, saying the Dutch side is willing to work with China in respective areas.
Read more at:
Free trade and cooperation top Chinese FM Wang Yi's Netherlands visit - CGTN
Wang said China and the Netherlands enjoy a mutual bilateral relationship on the basis of mutual respect, mutual understanding, openness and mutual trust.
As the coronavirus pandemic is normalized in both countries, China is willing to work with the Dutch government to resume the flow of goods and people so as to make their contribution to global economic recovery.
Faced with the rising challenge of unilateralism, China would like to work the Dutch side to defend multilateralism and free trade and build a community with a shared future for mankind, he added.
Rutte said the Netherlands values the ties with China and is willing to expand cooperation in different areas.
He praised China's efforts in fighting against COVID-19, saying the Dutch side is willing to work with China in respective areas.
Read more at:
Free trade and cooperation top Chinese FM Wang Yi's Netherlands visit - CGTN
Friday, August 28, 2020
The Netherlands: How the Netherlands got universal health insurance with a private market - "but polls show citizens still find healthcare too costly for the average citizen"
Critics argue that the Netherlands made a mistake in handing over so
much of its health care to the private market.
Dutch patients face higher financial barriers to care than their peers in more socialized systems, like Germany, Britain, Spain, and spending has accelerated in recent years, trends the critics blame on the privatized market. average cost to a Dutch citizen for health insurance is about 1,400 euros, or $1,615, annually.People with lower incomes get additional government assistance to reduce their payments.
The government also collects contributions from employers to help fund the insurance scheme and covers the cost for children; revenues are spread among the insurers based on the health status of their customers. Public financing covers about 75 percent of the system’s costs; the insurers have also generally operated as nonprofits.< The benefits are designed to encourage cost-efficient use of medical care by patients. Dutch patients can visit a primary care doctor for free. For a visit to the hospital, they will need to pay toward their deductible.
The annual deductible is today capped at €385 ($429), although people can choose to pay a lower monthly premium in exchange for a higher deductible — up to €885 ($980). That is still well below the typical deductible in America (more than $1,600 on average for workers on their employer’s plan, and many people have a higher deductible than that).
The system has more or less delivered universal coverage. More than 99 percent of Dutch people have insurance; people with conscientious objections are exempted from the mandate to buy insurance. The system is designed to funnel people with minor problems to a general practitioner to free up the ER for more emergencies. But Dutch patients weren’t thrilled with the idea of the co-ops when they first started nearly 20 years ago, wary about seeing somebody other than their normal physician.
Dutch patients face higher financial barriers to care than their peers in more socialized systems, like Germany, Britain, Spain, and spending has accelerated in recent years, trends the critics blame on the privatized market. average cost to a Dutch citizen for health insurance is about 1,400 euros, or $1,615, annually.People with lower incomes get additional government assistance to reduce their payments.
The government also collects contributions from employers to help fund the insurance scheme and covers the cost for children; revenues are spread among the insurers based on the health status of their customers. Public financing covers about 75 percent of the system’s costs; the insurers have also generally operated as nonprofits.< The benefits are designed to encourage cost-efficient use of medical care by patients. Dutch patients can visit a primary care doctor for free. For a visit to the hospital, they will need to pay toward their deductible.
The annual deductible is today capped at €385 ($429), although people can choose to pay a lower monthly premium in exchange for a higher deductible — up to €885 ($980). That is still well below the typical deductible in America (more than $1,600 on average for workers on their employer’s plan, and many people have a higher deductible than that).
The system has more or less delivered universal coverage. More than 99 percent of Dutch people have insurance; people with conscientious objections are exempted from the mandate to buy insurance. The system is designed to funnel people with minor problems to a general practitioner to free up the ER for more emergencies. But Dutch patients weren’t thrilled with the idea of the co-ops when they first started nearly 20 years ago, wary about seeing somebody other than their normal physician.
Read more at: How the Netherlands got universal health insurance with a private market - Vox
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Capitalism: if it can still be revived, needs a complete overhaul
Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first
is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the
quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses
without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably
to environmental calamity.
Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. A paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.
This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.
There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism. Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.
From March to June 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise by an estimated $48 billion. The journal might also have added that 40 million workers had filed for unemployment compensation and that prison labor was being paid $1 per hour to fight deadly forest fires in California.
Bezos describes his strategy similarly, asserting that “the stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model…we will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has conveyed the same approach, but more to-the-point; for many years, he allegedly ended staff meetings shouting, “Domination!”
The cliché is that we are all in this together. This is so only in the sense that some of us own luxury yachts capacious enough to hold luxury lifeboats while the bottom third clings to leaky life preservers. The mortgages of even many middle-class citizens are soon to be underwater.
What does it mean to have wealth approaching six-figure billions? Sen. Everett Dirksen once famously quipped “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.” It is helpful to translate these highly abstract big numbers into the real goods and services one could command with this money.
A state-of-the-art naval destroyer costs about one billion, about the cost of an NBA franchise. One can add a few luxury homes and still have spent only a small fraction of one’s wealth. Clearly possession of an ever-growing stream of goods seems to be an unlikely motivator of the mega wealthy.
During the pandemic, as during the world finance crisis, power has been both the means and the end of domestic and international economic policy. During the early stages of the global economic crisis, government responded by creating a $700 billion facility to purchase troubled assets from banks, but only about 10 percent of these expenditures went to lowering mortgage interest rates.
Federal Reserve treatment of the big finance center banks was much more generous. It lowered the interest rate charged member banks to near zero, a figure it held for almost a decade. The effects of this policy were not neutral.
Lower rates in the financial sector were supposed to encourage new investment in the real economy but instead did little more than stimulate a bull market in stocks and cheap money to finance stock buybacks and leveraged mergers and acquisitions. (Yves Smith , founder of the blog Naked Capitalism, points out that the only industry for which cheap money is a resource that might encourage further investment is finance. So much for restoring the productivity of main street.)
Monopoly power and concentrated wealth do immense harm to the bottom third of the wealth spectrum. We have returned to Franklin Roosevelt’s one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. Late last year The Los Angeles Times reported: “New research establishes that after decades of living longer and longer lives, Americans are dying earlier, cut down increasingly in the prime of life by drug overdoses, suicides, and diseases such as cirrhosis, liver cancer, and obesity… the authors of the new study suggest that the nation’s lifespan reversal is being driven by diseases linked to social and economic privation, a healthcare system with glaring gaps and blind spots, and profound psychological distress.”
So what does a better system look like? There is no complete answer, and it also seems no one person does have. But a rough framework is emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
The moral case for egalitarian reforms is overwhelming. Obscene wealth disparities are a product of political and economic power, not virtue or extraordinary talent. On the center Left the most popular proposals are various versions of a wealth tax. Such proposals should surely be part of any reform package.
A wealth tax would begin to redress the damage inflicted by four decades of socialism for the rich. And it should be framed that way in order to counter in advance the inevitable carping that tax reformers are motivated by envy. Nonetheless more needs to be promoted in order to address the causes as well as consequences of this inordinate wealth concentration.
Trying to address wealth inequality without addressing monopoly power is like trying to stop a boat with a hole in the bottom from sinking by bailing out the water, but not plugging up the hole.
In addition, it is essential to develop policies that give working-class citizens more voice in designing the economic instruments that will produce future wealth for us all. Antitrust law, cooperatives, labor rights to organize, and democratization of the Fed would all be parts of such reform packages.
The moral choice seems to be, do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
The window of opportunity to make radical changes to the defunct Capitalist system is getting smaller by the day, and if not dealt wih rapidly, is surely to result in civil unrest and violence of which the likes have never been seen before.
Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. A paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.
This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.
There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism. Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.
From March to June 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise by an estimated $48 billion. The journal might also have added that 40 million workers had filed for unemployment compensation and that prison labor was being paid $1 per hour to fight deadly forest fires in California.
Bezos describes his strategy similarly, asserting that “the stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model…we will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has conveyed the same approach, but more to-the-point; for many years, he allegedly ended staff meetings shouting, “Domination!”
The cliché is that we are all in this together. This is so only in the sense that some of us own luxury yachts capacious enough to hold luxury lifeboats while the bottom third clings to leaky life preservers. The mortgages of even many middle-class citizens are soon to be underwater.
What does it mean to have wealth approaching six-figure billions? Sen. Everett Dirksen once famously quipped “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.” It is helpful to translate these highly abstract big numbers into the real goods and services one could command with this money.
A state-of-the-art naval destroyer costs about one billion, about the cost of an NBA franchise. One can add a few luxury homes and still have spent only a small fraction of one’s wealth. Clearly possession of an ever-growing stream of goods seems to be an unlikely motivator of the mega wealthy.
During the pandemic, as during the world finance crisis, power has been both the means and the end of domestic and international economic policy. During the early stages of the global economic crisis, government responded by creating a $700 billion facility to purchase troubled assets from banks, but only about 10 percent of these expenditures went to lowering mortgage interest rates.
Federal Reserve treatment of the big finance center banks was much more generous. It lowered the interest rate charged member banks to near zero, a figure it held for almost a decade. The effects of this policy were not neutral.
Lower rates in the financial sector were supposed to encourage new investment in the real economy but instead did little more than stimulate a bull market in stocks and cheap money to finance stock buybacks and leveraged mergers and acquisitions. (Yves Smith , founder of the blog Naked Capitalism, points out that the only industry for which cheap money is a resource that might encourage further investment is finance. So much for restoring the productivity of main street.)
Monopoly power and concentrated wealth do immense harm to the bottom third of the wealth spectrum. We have returned to Franklin Roosevelt’s one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. Late last year The Los Angeles Times reported: “New research establishes that after decades of living longer and longer lives, Americans are dying earlier, cut down increasingly in the prime of life by drug overdoses, suicides, and diseases such as cirrhosis, liver cancer, and obesity… the authors of the new study suggest that the nation’s lifespan reversal is being driven by diseases linked to social and economic privation, a healthcare system with glaring gaps and blind spots, and profound psychological distress.”
So what does a better system look like? There is no complete answer, and it also seems no one person does have. But a rough framework is emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
The moral case for egalitarian reforms is overwhelming. Obscene wealth disparities are a product of political and economic power, not virtue or extraordinary talent. On the center Left the most popular proposals are various versions of a wealth tax. Such proposals should surely be part of any reform package.
A wealth tax would begin to redress the damage inflicted by four decades of socialism for the rich. And it should be framed that way in order to counter in advance the inevitable carping that tax reformers are motivated by envy. Nonetheless more needs to be promoted in order to address the causes as well as consequences of this inordinate wealth concentration.
Trying to address wealth inequality without addressing monopoly power is like trying to stop a boat with a hole in the bottom from sinking by bailing out the water, but not plugging up the hole.
In addition, it is essential to develop policies that give working-class citizens more voice in designing the economic instruments that will produce future wealth for us all. Antitrust law, cooperatives, labor rights to organize, and democratization of the Fed would all be parts of such reform packages.
The moral choice seems to be, do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
The window of opportunity to make radical changes to the defunct Capitalist system is getting smaller by the day, and if not dealt wih rapidly, is surely to result in civil unrest and violence of which the likes have never been seen before.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
The Netherlands: Coronavirus decimates train travel but there will be more services next year
Despite the fall in the number of travellers caused by the coronavirus
crisis, Dutch rail infrastructure company ProRail is expecting an
increase in the number of services in 2021.
Next year railway companies plan to add nearly 2,800 more services – for both goods and passenger trains – taking the total up to 2,172,187. This means more trains on the tracks,
ProRail said, including an additional train between Groningen and Leeuwarden and a night train from Amsterdam to Vienna.
‘These new services have to be scheduled in in such a way that they don’t clash with other services,’ ProRail spokesman Sybren Hazenberg told broadcaster NOS. The new schedule also means existing services will operate faster, Hazenberg said.
Read more at:
Coronavirus decimates train travel but there will be more services next year - DutchNews.nl
Next year railway companies plan to add nearly 2,800 more services – for both goods and passenger trains – taking the total up to 2,172,187. This means more trains on the tracks,
ProRail said, including an additional train between Groningen and Leeuwarden and a night train from Amsterdam to Vienna.
‘These new services have to be scheduled in in such a way that they don’t clash with other services,’ ProRail spokesman Sybren Hazenberg told broadcaster NOS. The new schedule also means existing services will operate faster, Hazenberg said.
Read more at:
Coronavirus decimates train travel but there will be more services next year - DutchNews.nl
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
USA - Coronavirus update: U.S. death toll tops 177,000 as FDA head acknowledges he misspoke on convalescent plasma
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus illness COVID-19 climbed
above 177,000 on Tuesday, as experts continued to question claims made
about the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment for hospitalized
COVID-19 patients and a leading government official conceded he misspoke
at a Sunday press briefing.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn acknowledged in a tweet posted late Monday that his comment that a study had shown plasma achieving a 35% improvement in survival was inaccurate. Hahn made the comment, accompanied by President Donald Trump, while announcing an emergency-use authorization for convalescent plasma.
Read more at:
Coronavirus update: U.S. death toll tops 177,000 as FDA head acknowledges he misspoke on convalescent plasma - MarketWatch
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn acknowledged in a tweet posted late Monday that his comment that a study had shown plasma achieving a 35% improvement in survival was inaccurate. Hahn made the comment, accompanied by President Donald Trump, while announcing an emergency-use authorization for convalescent plasma.
Read more at:
Coronavirus update: U.S. death toll tops 177,000 as FDA head acknowledges he misspoke on convalescent plasma - MarketWatch
Monday, August 24, 2020
The Netherlands: Record number of infections in one week in the Netherlands
The Netherlands recorded 574 new coronavirus infections in the last 24
hours, the largest increase since 15 August. Some 3,600 new cases have
been reported in the last 7 days.
The Dutch authorities recorded 457 new infections on Sunday and 508 on Saturday. However, the total number of new cases is slowly but surely decreasing: more than 600 cases had been recorded on
15 August.
Read more at:
Record number of infections in one week in the Netherlands
The Dutch authorities recorded 457 new infections on Sunday and 508 on Saturday. However, the total number of new cases is slowly but surely decreasing: more than 600 cases had been recorded on
15 August.
Read more at:
Record number of infections in one week in the Netherlands
Sunday, August 23, 2020
America's economy just had its worst quarter on record
The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.
Read more at:
America's economy just had its worst quarter on record - CNN
Read more at:
America's economy just had its worst quarter on record - CNN
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Coronavirus: Humidity key to minimize virus transmission — study
Relative humidity "strongly influences" the spread of viruses among people indoors, especially in dry rooms. That's the conclusion reached by an Indian-German research team which evaluated 10 mostly recent international studies.
"The role of humidity seems to be extremely important to the airborne spreadof COVID-19 in indoor environments," according to the report, which was also based on findings derived from past tests with similar viruses, H1N1 for influenza and MERS-CoV.
Read more at:
Coronavirus: Humidity key to minimize virus transmission — study | News | DW | 20.08.2020
"The role of humidity seems to be extremely important to the airborne spreadof COVID-19 in indoor environments," according to the report, which was also based on findings derived from past tests with similar viruses, H1N1 for influenza and MERS-CoV.
Read more at:
Coronavirus: Humidity key to minimize virus transmission — study | News | DW | 20.08.2020
Friday, August 21, 2020
Turkey: 'Natural gas find could close Turkey's current account gap'
Friday’s big announcement of a natural gas find in the Turkish Black
Sea could eliminate the country’s current account deficit issue, said
Turkey’s treasury and finance minister on Friday.
“With the current exploration and potential here, I hope in the coming days we will talk about a current account surplus,” said Berat Albayrak, speaking alongside Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez on the Turkish drill ship Fatih off the Black Sea province of Zonguldak.
The discovery of significant gas resources in the Black Sea could reduce Turkey’s reliance on energy imports, he added.
Some 320 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves were found after the drill ship Fatih started work on July 20 off the Black Sea coast, as announced Friday by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Read more at:
'Natural gas find could close Turkey's current account gap' | TurkishPre
“With the current exploration and potential here, I hope in the coming days we will talk about a current account surplus,” said Berat Albayrak, speaking alongside Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez on the Turkish drill ship Fatih off the Black Sea province of Zonguldak.
The discovery of significant gas resources in the Black Sea could reduce Turkey’s reliance on energy imports, he added.
Some 320 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves were found after the drill ship Fatih started work on July 20 off the Black Sea coast, as announced Friday by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Read more at:
'Natural gas find could close Turkey's current account gap' | TurkishPre
Thursday, August 20, 2020
The Netherlands: Dutch economy expected to grow again next year, Covid-19 effects to linger
The Dutch economy will shrink by 5.1 percent this year, but recovery
will start at the end of the year and in 2021 the economy will grow b3.2
percent, according to central planning office CPB's draft-macroeconomic
foresight studies. The effects of the Covid-19 crisis will linger,
however, with unemployment rising to 7 percent next year.
The CPB expects all parts of the economy to recover somewhat nextyear. Household consumption will decrease by 5.9 percent this year, and increase by 4.1 percent next year. Investments will go from -7.5 percent his year, to plus 4.4 percent next year. Exports will decrease by 5.2 percent this year, but increase by 4.7 percent next year, and imports will go from -3.7 percent this year to plus 5.4 percent in 2021. Government consumption is the only factor that won't see a decrease this year. It is expected to increase by 2.9 percent this year and by 2.0
percent next year.
CPB director Pieter Hasekamp told NOS that the coronavirus blow to the Dutch economy is "unprecedentedly hard" and "largely yet to befelt". "The corona crisis also has major consequences or things that affect the quality of life: we miss celebrating a wedding oranniversary, the theater and concert stages are empty, and there are serious concerns about loneliness in nursing homes."
Read more at:
Dutch economy expected to grow again next year, Covid-19 effects to linger | NL Times
The CPB expects all parts of the economy to recover somewhat nextyear. Household consumption will decrease by 5.9 percent this year, and increase by 4.1 percent next year. Investments will go from -7.5 percent his year, to plus 4.4 percent next year. Exports will decrease by 5.2 percent this year, but increase by 4.7 percent next year, and imports will go from -3.7 percent this year to plus 5.4 percent in 2021. Government consumption is the only factor that won't see a decrease this year. It is expected to increase by 2.9 percent this year and by 2.0
percent next year.
CPB director Pieter Hasekamp told NOS that the coronavirus blow to the Dutch economy is "unprecedentedly hard" and "largely yet to befelt". "The corona crisis also has major consequences or things that affect the quality of life: we miss celebrating a wedding oranniversary, the theater and concert stages are empty, and there are serious concerns about loneliness in nursing homes."
Read more at:
Dutch economy expected to grow again next year, Covid-19 effects to linger | NL Times
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
EU Economy: As eurozone records 3.8% slump ECB chief warns of worse to come
Former ECB president Mario Draghi
claimed last year that the majority in favour of further loosening was so large
that it was unnecessary even to count the votes. Never mind that the
countries opposing the decision hold 56% of the ECB’s paid-in equity
capital and account for 60% of eurozone output.
Counting their compatriots on the ECB governing council, however, they
have only seven out of 25 potential votes (subject to a rotating
limitation). Draghi did have a majority, then, but it represented a very
clear minority of the ECB’s liable capital. This raises considerable
concerns about the governing council’s decision-making process.
Todays head of the ECB Christine Lagarde has warned that the eurozone could be on course for a 15% collapse in output in the second quarter as evidence of the economic toll caused by Covid-19 pandemic started to emerge, with France and Italy falling into recession.
After news that the 19-nation monetary union area had contracted a record 3.8% in the first three months of 2020, Christine Lagarde said much worse was possible in the April to June period, when the impact of lockdown restrictions would be most severe.
Todays head of the ECB Christine Lagarde has warned that the eurozone could be on course for a 15% collapse in output in the second quarter as evidence of the economic toll caused by Covid-19 pandemic started to emerge, with France and Italy falling into recession.
After news that the 19-nation monetary union area had contracted a record 3.8% in the first three months of 2020, Christine Lagarde said much worse was possible in the April to June period, when the impact of lockdown restrictions would be most severe.
Read more at:
Monday, August 17, 2020
UAR: Mystery no more: Spain's ex-king, Juan Carlos, has been in UAE since August 3
Former Spanish king Juan Carlos, who left Spain under a cloud ofscandal, has been in the United Arab Emirates since Aug. 3, a royalhousehold spokesman said on Monday, putting an end to an international guessing game over the 82-year-old’s whereabouts.
Read more at:
Mystery no more: Spain's ex-king, Juan Carlos, has been in UAE since August 3 - Reuters
Read more at:
Mystery no more: Spain's ex-king, Juan Carlos, has been in UAE since August 3 - Reuters
Sunday, August 16, 2020
Pollution and the Global Car Market: It’s time to recognise that SUVs are the big bad villains of vehicle air pollution
The growing worldwide love affair with larger, heavier Sports Utility
Vehicles has all but wiped out the motor industry’s gains in fuel
efficiency over the past 20 years
Read more at:
It’s time to recognise that SUVs are the big bad villains of vehicle air pollution | Business Post
Saturday, August 15, 2020
US economy: U.S. closes in on something it hasn't done since WWII — borrow more money than it raises
Amid the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. government is nearing a new — and potentially ominous — fiscal milestone: it will borrow as much or more this year than it raises through taxes and other means.
Read more at:
U.S. closes in on something it hasn't done since WWII — borrow more money than it raises - MarketWatch
Read more at:
U.S. closes in on something it hasn't done since WWII — borrow more money than it raises - MarketWatch
Friday, August 14, 2020
INDIA: Amazon launches online pharmacy in India
According to a report by EY, pharmaceutical players in the e-commercespace in India are expected to reach a combined market size of $2.7billion by 2023. The report cited rising internet penetration, smartphone ownership, and increased healthcare spending as some of the reasons for the expansion.
The US online retailer's entry in e-pharmacy comes at a time when demand for buying medicines online has increased in India owing to the lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more at
Amazon launches online pharmacy in India | News | DW | 14.08.2020
The US online retailer's entry in e-pharmacy comes at a time when demand for buying medicines online has increased in India owing to the lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more at
Amazon launches online pharmacy in India | News | DW | 14.08.2020
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
USA;The recovery is faltering, top forecasters say -
After a sharp rebound in the economy in May and June, the economic recovery has slowed as consumers, workers and businesses remain extremely cautious, say the economists at UBS who won the MarketWatchForecaster of the Month contest for July.
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The recovery is faltering, top forecasters say - MarketWatch
Read more at:
The recovery is faltering, top forecasters say - MarketWatch
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
USA: Super Stores Competition: Walmart and Instacart Partner for Same-Day US Delivery in Fight Against Amazon’s Whole Foods
- Walmart is partnering with Instacart to offer same-day delivery starting in a few U.S. markets, making it the latest major grocery chain to team up with Instacart in its fight against Amazon and Whole Foods.
The partnership is currently in a pilot phase in four markets across California and Oklahoma.
Read more at: Walmart and Instacart Partner for Same-Day US Delivery in Fight Against Amazon’s Whole Foods – NBC 6 South Florida
Monday, August 10, 2020
Coronavirus: What's happening around the world on Monday
The confirmed number of coronavirus cases in the world has passed 20 million. That's what according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Read more at:
Coronavirus: What's happening around the world on Monday | CBC News
Read more at:
Coronavirus: What's happening around the world on Monday | CBC News
Sunday, August 9, 2020
US Economy: Morgue Testing the US Economy - by J. Bradford DeLong
US national income and output in the first quarter of 2020 was 1.25% below what it had been in the fourth quarter of 2019, but still 9.5% above what it would be by the second quarter of this year. Now that US national income has plunged 12% below what it was at the start of the year, what should we expect for the third quarter?
America could always turn out to be lucky; but betting on that would not be prudent. According to Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, it was voluntary self-protection, rather than legislated restrictions on activity, that drove most of the decline in consumer spending this spring. Moreover, they warn that, “If repealing lockdowns leads to a fast enough increase in COVID infections and deaths and a concomitant withdrawal of consumers from the marketplace,” doing so “might ultimately end up harming business activity.”
Read more at:
Morgue Testing the US Economy by J. Bradford DeLong - Project Syndicate
America could always turn out to be lucky; but betting on that would not be prudent. According to Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, it was voluntary self-protection, rather than legislated restrictions on activity, that drove most of the decline in consumer spending this spring. Moreover, they warn that, “If repealing lockdowns leads to a fast enough increase in COVID infections and deaths and a concomitant withdrawal of consumers from the marketplace,” doing so “might ultimately end up harming business activity.”
Read more at:
Morgue Testing the US Economy by J. Bradford DeLong - Project Syndicate
Saturday, August 8, 2020
USA: Trump bypasses Congress, signs executive orders extending some coronavirus benefits
Britain’s top minister overseeing Brexit talks said on Friday he was
confident a free trade deal would be clinched with the European Union as
there had been a distinct change of tone from the bloc in recent weeks
allowing progress to be made.
Friday, August 7, 2020
EU-sustainable food startups: 5 of Europe’s most promising sustainable food startups
A sustainable future for the food we eat is so important that the EIT Food has just invested over €5 million in high-impact sustainable foodstartups. The money is intended to help businesses which aren't transforming the way our food systems work, to survive the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more at:
5 of Europe’s most promising sustainable food startups | Living
Read more at:
5 of Europe’s most promising sustainable food startups | Living
Thursday, August 6, 2020
Canada- US Trade - Tariffs: US reimposes aluminum tariffs on Canada
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he had reimposed 10%
tariffs on some Canadian aluminum products, accusing Canada of "taking
advantage" of the US.
Read more at:
US reimposes aluminum tariffs on Canada | News | DW | 06.08.2020
Read more at:
US reimposes aluminum tariffs on Canada | News | DW | 06.08.2020
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Deutsche Bank in Trump probe
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been seeking
President Donald Trump’s tax records, subpoenaed his longtime lender
Deutsche Bank last year, suggesting its criminal investigation into
Trump’s business practices is more wide-ranging than previously known,
the New York Times said on Wednesday.
The prosecutors issued the subpoena last year, seeking financial records that the Republican president and his company had provided to the bank, the Times said, citing four unnamed people.
Read more at:
New York prosecutors subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in Trump probe - New York Times - Reuters
The prosecutors issued the subpoena last year, seeking financial records that the Republican president and his company had provided to the bank, the Times said, citing four unnamed people.
Read more at:
New York prosecutors subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in Trump probe - New York Times - Reuters
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
USA: White House, Democrats agree to try to reach coronavirus-aid deal by week's end - by J. Nicholsen
After more than a week of almost daily face-to-face meetings, Trump administration officials and congressional Democratic leaders have agreed to try to reach a coronavirus-aid bill deal by the week’s end.
Read more at:
White House, Democrats agree to try to reach coronavirus-aid deal by week's end - MarketWatch
Read more at:
White House, Democrats agree to try to reach coronavirus-aid deal by week's end - MarketWatch
Monday, August 3, 2020
EU Explainer: Why is the EU Commission betting on hydrogen for a greener future?
The coronavirus pandemic has diverted public attention away from many pressing issues, not least the climate crisis. But behind the scenes,the EU appears to be keeping its foot on the gas in dealing with climate change.
Read more at:
Explainer: Why is the EU Commission betting on hydrogen for a greener future? | Euronews
Read more at:
Explainer: Why is the EU Commission betting on hydrogen for a greener future? | Euronews
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Dateline US: Economic Power for the 99%
The American dream has been lost. A tiny parasitic upper class has
managed, with the aid of a political party adept at cultural division,
to suck away the benefits of a generation of economic growth from the
vast majority who produced it.
The loss of economic opportunity has dealt a near-fatal blow to U.S. democracy. Popular support for democracy may not require breakneck economic growth, but it does require fairness.
Read more at:
Dateline US: Economic Power for the 99% - The Globalist
The loss of economic opportunity has dealt a near-fatal blow to U.S. democracy. Popular support for democracy may not require breakneck economic growth, but it does require fairness.
Read more at:
Dateline US: Economic Power for the 99% - The Globalist
Saturday, August 1, 2020
Coronavirus and the airline industry: Air travel’s sudden collapse will reshape a trillion-dollar industry
Like most international jamborees these days the Farnborough air show wrapped up
on July 24th as a virtual event. Webinars featuring grim-faced
executives were not as entertaining as noisy acrobatic displays by
fighter jets. But commercial aviation’s most important showcase at least
marked a point when heads began to turn away from the devastation
wrought by covid-19 and towards what comes next
As airlines sell fewer tickets, owing to pandemic travel restrictions or travellers’ fear of infection, the industry that makes flying possible faces a reckoning. Aircraft-makers will make fewer passenger jets and so need fewer parts from their suppliers. Ticket-sellers will see less custom and airport operators, lower footfall. Many firms have cut output and laid off thousands of workers. The question now is how far they will fall, how quickly they can recover, and what will be the long-lasting effects.
As airlines sell fewer tickets, owing to pandemic travel restrictions or travellers’ fear of infection, the industry that makes flying possible faces a reckoning. Aircraft-makers will make fewer passenger jets and so need fewer parts from their suppliers. Ticket-sellers will see less custom and airport operators, lower footfall. Many firms have cut output and laid off thousands of workers. The question now is how far they will fall, how quickly they can recover, and what will be the long-lasting effects.
Read more at: The Economist
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