Italy's entry, glam rock band Maneskin, won the Eurovision song contest, as the world's most popular live music event was held in the Netherlands after being canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Italian's raucous "Zitti E Buoni" beat out professional jury favourites Switzerland and France, sweeping the public vote which counts for half the points.
Victoria de Angelis of Maneskin told a press conference the win was an important boost for Italy, one of the European countries worst hit by COVID-19.
Read more at:
Italy's raucous glam rock takes Eurovision by storm | Reuters
Showing posts with label Decline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Decline. Show all posts
Sunday, May 23, 2021
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.
Saturday, June 6, 2020
US Economy: Another drain on the U.S. economy: The long, painful road toward deglobalization
With political leaders and publics rejecting openness in a mannerunlike anything seen since the tariff wars and competitive devaluations of the 1930s.
The byproduct will be not just slower growth, but a significantfall in national incomes for all but perhaps the largest and most diversified economies.
Read more at:
Another drain on the U.S. economy: The long, painful road toward deglobalization - MarketWatch:
The byproduct will be not just slower growth, but a significantfall in national incomes for all but perhaps the largest and most diversified economies.
Read more at:
Another drain on the U.S. economy: The long, painful road toward deglobalization - MarketWatch:
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
USA: The Coronavirus is exposing major flaws in America's political and economic structures
 |
| Staggering Food Bank lines across America |
It showed, that the Coronavirus pandemic had not only brought turmoil to America, but also that it had exposed major flaws, as to how Right Wing US politicians have manipulated Capitalism and turned it into a corrupt system of Government.
You can't escape the reality that America today is the land of great disparity, and inequality, without a social net to help those which need help, without proper healthcare for those who can't afford it, or free education for everyone, and the list goes on and on.
America needs to change for the better, and the status quo is absolutely not the answer anymore.
If not, the disparity will get worse and worse, and eventually "the party will suddenly be completely over" for the US and its lopsided Wall Street driven economy.
EU-Digest
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Tourist Industry: Coronavirus concerns, anxiety send US travel industry into a spiral - by Curtis Tate, Dawn Gilbertson and Morgan Hines
A government warning not to board a cruise ship or long flight if
you're frail. Convention and event cancellations from coast to coast.
Global travel warnings.
The travel and tourism industry has taken hit after hit since the coronavirus outbreak began in January. It's still early for concrete data, but economists and industry executives fear 9/11- or recession-like repercussions. Travel demand plummeted, then and was slow to recover.
"Unfortunately, they're on the front lines on the effect of this virus. They're getting pummeled,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics.
He said the travel and tourism impact from coronavirus could be greater than the fallout from 9/11, or the 2003 SARS outbreak, because of the global nature of the crisis.
"Global travel is effectively shutting down,'' he said. "It's going to take a while to get it back up and running again. This is going to be a very tough year for the travel and tourism industry.''
The International Air Transport Association, which represents global airlines, last week boosted its estimates of the global financial hit from COVID-19 from $29.3 billion to between $63 billion and $113 billion as the bookings falloff has spread beyond Asia.
That would put airlines in their most precarious position since after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the U.S. alone, the travel industry lost $40 billion from 2001 to 2005.
Read more at: Coronavirus concerns, anxiety send travel industry into a
The travel and tourism industry has taken hit after hit since the coronavirus outbreak began in January. It's still early for concrete data, but economists and industry executives fear 9/11- or recession-like repercussions. Travel demand plummeted, then and was slow to recover.
"Unfortunately, they're on the front lines on the effect of this virus. They're getting pummeled,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics.
He said the travel and tourism impact from coronavirus could be greater than the fallout from 9/11, or the 2003 SARS outbreak, because of the global nature of the crisis.
"Global travel is effectively shutting down,'' he said. "It's going to take a while to get it back up and running again. This is going to be a very tough year for the travel and tourism industry.''
The International Air Transport Association, which represents global airlines, last week boosted its estimates of the global financial hit from COVID-19 from $29.3 billion to between $63 billion and $113 billion as the bookings falloff has spread beyond Asia.
That would put airlines in their most precarious position since after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the U.S. alone, the travel industry lost $40 billion from 2001 to 2005.
Read more at: Coronavirus concerns, anxiety send travel industry into a
Sunday, June 16, 2019
USA Economy: Morgan Stanley says business conditions are at their worst level since the 2008 financial crisis
Business conditions are at their worst level since the 2008 financial crisis, says Morgan Stanley -
Read more at:
https://on.mktw.net/2RgwWoa
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For additional information, including advertising rates:
e-mail: Freeplanet@protonmail.com
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
US Labor Unions 200 years of struggle and final decline: History of Labor Unions in the US, incuding VIDEO
The lifespan of American labor unions is shaped like a bell-curve struggling to climb at first, then riding high, and finally today crashing out.
The whole up-and-down took about 200 years total. We need to go back to the 1830s. UC Santa Cruz Professor William Domhoff writes, "Industrial development in the early nineteenth century slowly widened the gap between employers and skilled workers, so the workers began to think of industrial factories as a threat to both their wages and status."
Craft unions began to form but stayed mostly local, focused on clout and working conditions. Then in 1869, Domhoff says, the Knights of Labor was founded as "a secret society by a handful of Philadelphia garment cutters, who had given up on their own craft union as having any chance to succeed" and turned to galvanizing other workers through meetings and parades.
Eventually, violence became part of the picture.The Great Railroad Strike of 1877,sparked by railroad companies slashing wages by10% and doubling some workers' responsibilities.
And while no major law ultimately clamped down on the groups, "unions came under attack — in the workplace, in the courts, and in public policy. As a result, union membership has fallen and income inequality has worsened — reaching levels not seen since the 1920s," says the,Economic Policy Institute.
Read more at: History of Labor Unions in the US (VIDEO)
The whole up-and-down took about 200 years total. We need to go back to the 1830s. UC Santa Cruz Professor William Domhoff writes, "Industrial development in the early nineteenth century slowly widened the gap between employers and skilled workers, so the workers began to think of industrial factories as a threat to both their wages and status."
Craft unions began to form but stayed mostly local, focused on clout and working conditions. Then in 1869, Domhoff says, the Knights of Labor was founded as "a secret society by a handful of Philadelphia garment cutters, who had given up on their own craft union as having any chance to succeed" and turned to galvanizing other workers through meetings and parades.
Eventually, violence became part of the picture.The Great Railroad Strike of 1877,sparked by railroad companies slashing wages by10% and doubling some workers' responsibilities.
And while no major law ultimately clamped down on the groups, "unions came under attack — in the workplace, in the courts, and in public policy. As a result, union membership has fallen and income inequality has worsened — reaching levels not seen since the 1920s," says the,Economic Policy Institute.
Read more at: History of Labor Unions in the US (VIDEO)
Monday, April 15, 2019
USA - Capitalism: Slowly but surely Capitalism is committing suicide
Peter Georgescu — a refugee-turned-C.E.O. who recently celebrated his 80th birthday — feels deeply grateful to his adopted country.
He also feels afraid for its future. He is afraid, he says, because the American economy no longer functions well for most citizens. “For the past four decades,” Georgescu has written, “capitalism has been slowly committing suicide
Read more at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/opinion/peter-georgescu-capitalism.html
Monday, February 11, 2019
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
US Economic Freedom Is in Decline, Libertarians Warn
The United States is the 16th freest economy in the world, according to
the Libertarian Cato Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World
report. Produced in conjunction with the Fraser Institute, the report
looks at various factors, including the size of government, government
regulations, rule of law, and trade and monetary policies to develop a
composite score for 159 countries around the world.
On a scale of 0 to 10, the world average rose slightly to 6.85, while the US scored 7.75. Despite the fact that it puts the US in the top 10 percent of countries for freedom, as defined by CATO, the score was treated as reason for alarm in a commentary accompanying the report.
“The United States still ranks relatively low on economic freedom and is below Chile (13), the United Kingdom (10) and Canada (5),” writes Cato’s Ian Vasquez, noting that the top 4 countries remain Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Switzerland.
“The long-term U.S. decline beginning in 2000 is the most pronounced among major advanced economies,” Vasquez continues. “It mirrors a pattern among OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations of steady increases in economic freedom in the decades leading into the 2000s, a fall in freedom especially in response to the global economic crisis, and a subsequent slight increase from the low. Neither the United States nor the average OECD country has recovered the high levels of economic freedom that they reached last decade.”
US Economic Freedom Is in Decline, Libertarians Warn | The Fiscal Times
On a scale of 0 to 10, the world average rose slightly to 6.85, while the US scored 7.75. Despite the fact that it puts the US in the top 10 percent of countries for freedom, as defined by CATO, the score was treated as reason for alarm in a commentary accompanying the report.
“The United States still ranks relatively low on economic freedom and is below Chile (13), the United Kingdom (10) and Canada (5),” writes Cato’s Ian Vasquez, noting that the top 4 countries remain Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Switzerland.
“The long-term U.S. decline beginning in 2000 is the most pronounced among major advanced economies,” Vasquez continues. “It mirrors a pattern among OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations of steady increases in economic freedom in the decades leading into the 2000s, a fall in freedom especially in response to the global economic crisis, and a subsequent slight increase from the low. Neither the United States nor the average OECD country has recovered the high levels of economic freedom that they reached last decade.”
US Economic Freedom Is in Decline, Libertarians Warn | The Fiscal Times
Sunday, September 11, 2016
US Economy: Big Business Is Killing Innovation in the U.S
Botanists define a rheophyte as an aquatic plant that thrives in
swift-moving water. Coming from the Greek word rhéos, meaning a flow or
stream, the term describes plants with wide roots and flexible stalks,
well adapted to strong currents rather than a pond’s or pasture’s
stillness. For most of the 20th century, U.S. lawmakers worked to
maintain just these sorts of conditions for the U.S. economy—a dynamic
system, briskly flowing, that forced firms to adapt to the unpredictable
currents of the free market or be washed away.
In the past few decades, however, the economy has come to resemble something more like a stagnant pool. Entrepreneurship, as measured by the rate of new-business formation, has declined in each decade since the 1970s, and adults under 35 (a?k?a Millennials) are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation on record.
This decline in dynamism has coincided with the rise of extraordinarily large and profitable firms that look discomfortingly like the monopolies and oligopolies of the 19th century. American strip malls and yellow pages used to brim with new small businesses. But today, in a lot where several mom-and-pop shops might once have opened, Walmart spawns another superstore. In almost every sector of the economy—including manufacturing, construction, retail, and the entire service sector—the big companies are getting bigger.
In the US the share of all businesses that are new firms, meanwhile, has fallen by 50 percent since 1978. According to the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank dedicated to advancing the ideals of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, “markets are now more concentrated and less competitive than at any point since the Gilded Age.”
Read more: Big Business Is Killing Innovation in the U.S. - The Atlantic
In the past few decades, however, the economy has come to resemble something more like a stagnant pool. Entrepreneurship, as measured by the rate of new-business formation, has declined in each decade since the 1970s, and adults under 35 (a?k?a Millennials) are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation on record.
This decline in dynamism has coincided with the rise of extraordinarily large and profitable firms that look discomfortingly like the monopolies and oligopolies of the 19th century. American strip malls and yellow pages used to brim with new small businesses. But today, in a lot where several mom-and-pop shops might once have opened, Walmart spawns another superstore. In almost every sector of the economy—including manufacturing, construction, retail, and the entire service sector—the big companies are getting bigger.
In the US the share of all businesses that are new firms, meanwhile, has fallen by 50 percent since 1978. According to the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank dedicated to advancing the ideals of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, “markets are now more concentrated and less competitive than at any point since the Gilded Age.”
Read more: Big Business Is Killing Innovation in the U.S. - The Atlantic
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Manufacturing Industry: Plunging Manufacturing Numbers Mean That It Is Time To Hit The Panic Button - By Michael Snyder,
We haven’t seen numbers like these since the last global recession. I recently wrote about how global trade is imploding all over the planet, and the same thing is true when it comes to manufacturing. We just learned that manufacturing in China has now been contracting for seven months in a row, and as you will see below, U.S. manufacturing is facing “its toughest period since the global financial crisis”.
Yes, global stocks have bounced back a bit after experiencing dramatic declines during January and the first part of February, and this is something that investors are very happy about. But that does not mean that the crisis is over. All bear markets have their ups and downs, and this one will not be any different. Meanwhile, the cold, hard economic numbers that keep coming in are absolutely screaming that a new global recession is here.
Just consider what is happening in China. Manufacturing activity continues to implode, and factories are shedding jobs at the fastest pace since the last financial crisis…
But it isn’t just China. Right now manufacturing activity is slowing down literally all over the planet, and this is exactly what we would expect to see if a new global recession had begun.
Read more: Plunging Manufacturing Numbers Mean That It Is Time To Hit The Panic Button For The Global Economy
Yes, global stocks have bounced back a bit after experiencing dramatic declines during January and the first part of February, and this is something that investors are very happy about. But that does not mean that the crisis is over. All bear markets have their ups and downs, and this one will not be any different. Meanwhile, the cold, hard economic numbers that keep coming in are absolutely screaming that a new global recession is here.
Just consider what is happening in China. Manufacturing activity continues to implode, and factories are shedding jobs at the fastest pace since the last financial crisis…
But it isn’t just China. Right now manufacturing activity is slowing down literally all over the planet, and this is exactly what we would expect to see if a new global recession had begun.
Read more: Plunging Manufacturing Numbers Mean That It Is Time To Hit The Panic Button For The Global Economy
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Canada economic growth slows to 0.8% in Q4 -
Canada's economy slowed at the end of 2015 as both local sales and exports took a downswing, the government statistics agency said Tuesday.
Following a relatively robust 2.4 percent growth rate upon exiting a mild recession the previous quarter, the Canadian economy expanded 0.8 percent from October to December, according to Statistics Canada.
Read more: Flash - Canada economic growth slows to 0.8% in Q4 - France 24
Following a relatively robust 2.4 percent growth rate upon exiting a mild recession the previous quarter, the Canadian economy expanded 0.8 percent from October to December, according to Statistics Canada.
Read more: Flash - Canada economic growth slows to 0.8% in Q4 - France 24
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Global Trade: World trade records biggest reversal since crisis - by Shawn Donnan and Joe Leahy
Weaker demand from emerging markets made 2015 the worst year for world trade since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, highlighting rising fears about the health of the global economy.
The value of goods that crossed international borders last year fell 13.8 per cent in dollar terms — the first contraction since 2009 — according to the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis’s World Trade Monitor. Much of the slump was due to a slowdown in China and other emerging economies.
The new data released on Thursday represent the first snapshot of global trade for 2015. But the figures also come amid growing concerns that 2016 is already shaping up to be more fraught with dangers for the global economy than previously expected.
Those concerns are casting a shadow over a two-day meeting of G20 central bank governors and finance ministers due to start on Friday. Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, was set to warn the gathering that the global economy risked “becoming trapped in a low growth, low inflation, low interest rate equilibrium”.
His comments will echo the International Monetary Fund, which this week warned it was poised to downgrade its forecast for global growth this year, saying the world’s leading economies needed to do more to boost growth.
The Baltic Dry index, a measure of global trade in bulk commodities, has been touching historic lows. China, which in 2014 overtook the US as the world’s biggest trading nation, this month reported double-digit falls in both exports and imports in January. In Brazil, which is now experiencing its worst recession in more than a century, imports from China have collapsed.
Exports from China to Brazil of everything from cars to textiles shipped in containers fell 60 per cent in January from a year earlier while the total volume of imports via containers into Latin America’s biggest economy halved, according to Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping company.
“What we are seeing right now from China is not only a phenomenon for Brazil; we are seeing the same all over Latin America, declining [Chinese export] volumes into all the markets,” said Antonio Dominguez, managing director for Maersk Line in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. “It has been going on for several quarters but is getting more evident as we move into the year [2016].”
Read more: World trade records biggest reversal since crisis - FT.com
The value of goods that crossed international borders last year fell 13.8 per cent in dollar terms — the first contraction since 2009 — according to the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis’s World Trade Monitor. Much of the slump was due to a slowdown in China and other emerging economies.
The new data released on Thursday represent the first snapshot of global trade for 2015. But the figures also come amid growing concerns that 2016 is already shaping up to be more fraught with dangers for the global economy than previously expected.
Those concerns are casting a shadow over a two-day meeting of G20 central bank governors and finance ministers due to start on Friday. Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, was set to warn the gathering that the global economy risked “becoming trapped in a low growth, low inflation, low interest rate equilibrium”.
His comments will echo the International Monetary Fund, which this week warned it was poised to downgrade its forecast for global growth this year, saying the world’s leading economies needed to do more to boost growth.
The Baltic Dry index, a measure of global trade in bulk commodities, has been touching historic lows. China, which in 2014 overtook the US as the world’s biggest trading nation, this month reported double-digit falls in both exports and imports in January. In Brazil, which is now experiencing its worst recession in more than a century, imports from China have collapsed.
Exports from China to Brazil of everything from cars to textiles shipped in containers fell 60 per cent in January from a year earlier while the total volume of imports via containers into Latin America’s biggest economy halved, according to Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping company.
“What we are seeing right now from China is not only a phenomenon for Brazil; we are seeing the same all over Latin America, declining [Chinese export] volumes into all the markets,” said Antonio Dominguez, managing director for Maersk Line in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. “It has been going on for several quarters but is getting more evident as we move into the year [2016].”
Read more: World trade records biggest reversal since crisis - FT.com
Monday, January 11, 2016
China: Don't blame the economy for China's latest market meltdown - by Xiaoyi Shao and Pete Sweeney
A renewed plunge
in Chinese stock markets has stoked concerns among global investors
about the health of the world's second-biggest economy, but there is
little evidence that the outlook for China has darkened dramatically in
recent weeks.
China's economy lost steam steadily through 2015 and economists are split over when they expect it to bottom out. Auto and property sales are showing signs of life, however, and few are predicting the kind of "hard landing" that the recent tumble in share prices might suggest.
"I think there is little connection between the falling stock markets and the real economy," said Shen Lan, an economist at Standard Chartered in Beijing. "Actually, economic indicators in November already showed the economy gained more momentum."
China has topped investors' concerns at the start of 2016, with a 10 percent slide in Chinese equities last week triggering a broad sell-off in riskier assets. China's benchmark share indexes fell a further 5 percent on Monday.
Manufacturing and investment, the twin engines of China's breakneck growth over three decades, have been suffering a prolonged slowdown as Beijing attempts to guide its economy on to a more sustainable path led by domestic consumption.
The problem for policymakers has been that consumers have not been able to pick up the slack fast enough to offset falling industrial demand.
"The economy is likely to slow further in 2016 as a result of persistent excessive capacity problems," wrote analysts at OCBC Bank in their outlook for the current year.
"On a positive note, the transition toward a service and consumption-driven economy is likely to provide a buffer to China's growth. Therefore, we expect China to grow around 6.7 percent in 2016.
Read more: Don't blame the economy for China's latest market meltdown | Reuters
China's economy lost steam steadily through 2015 and economists are split over when they expect it to bottom out. Auto and property sales are showing signs of life, however, and few are predicting the kind of "hard landing" that the recent tumble in share prices might suggest.
"I think there is little connection between the falling stock markets and the real economy," said Shen Lan, an economist at Standard Chartered in Beijing. "Actually, economic indicators in November already showed the economy gained more momentum."
China has topped investors' concerns at the start of 2016, with a 10 percent slide in Chinese equities last week triggering a broad sell-off in riskier assets. China's benchmark share indexes fell a further 5 percent on Monday.
Manufacturing and investment, the twin engines of China's breakneck growth over three decades, have been suffering a prolonged slowdown as Beijing attempts to guide its economy on to a more sustainable path led by domestic consumption.
The problem for policymakers has been that consumers have not been able to pick up the slack fast enough to offset falling industrial demand.
"The economy is likely to slow further in 2016 as a result of persistent excessive capacity problems," wrote analysts at OCBC Bank in their outlook for the current year.
"On a positive note, the transition toward a service and consumption-driven economy is likely to provide a buffer to China's growth. Therefore, we expect China to grow around 6.7 percent in 2016.
Read more: Don't blame the economy for China's latest market meltdown | Reuters
Sunday, November 15, 2015
US Economy: The decline and fall of America's working people - by Noah Smith
One big piece of news in
the past couple of weeks has been the release of a new paper by recent
economics Nobel-winner Angus Deaton and his co-author, Anne Case.
The paper highlights a very disturbing trend -- death rates are increasing for white people in America, especially for working-class, middle-aged whites. The increase looks like it has been going on since the late 1990s.
Among other American groups, such as Hispanics and blacks, mortality has fallen across all age and income groups during the past decade and a half.
The trend is concentrated among the less educated. For college-educated whites, mortality fell, much as it did for other racial groups and other nations. For those with some college, mortality was unchanged -- a poor result, but not disastrous. But for white Americans with no college education, deaths have soared.
Something very troubling and very unique is happening to American working-class whites.
The immediate causes of the increase are not hard to identify. Drugs and suicide are the culprits. There is an epidemic of prescription painkiller, alcohol and heroin abuse among American whites. Deaths from alcohol and drug poisoning among middle-class whites have skyrocketed. White suicide rates have also risen dramatically to more than 20 per 100,000 people in the 45-54 age cohort.
Re
The paper highlights a very disturbing trend -- death rates are increasing for white people in America, especially for working-class, middle-aged whites. The increase looks like it has been going on since the late 1990s.
Among other American groups, such as Hispanics and blacks, mortality has fallen across all age and income groups during the past decade and a half.
The trend is concentrated among the less educated. For college-educated whites, mortality fell, much as it did for other racial groups and other nations. For those with some college, mortality was unchanged -- a poor result, but not disastrous. But for white Americans with no college education, deaths have soared.
Something very troubling and very unique is happening to American working-class whites.
The immediate causes of the increase are not hard to identify. Drugs and suicide are the culprits. There is an epidemic of prescription painkiller, alcohol and heroin abuse among American whites. Deaths from alcohol and drug poisoning among middle-class whites have skyrocketed. White suicide rates have also risen dramatically to more than 20 per 100,000 people in the 45-54 age cohort.
Re
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