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Financial Times (March 17)

2024/ 03/ 18 by jd in Global News

“A strange thing happened this week: calm.” U.S. data revealed higher than expected price inflation. “This time around, however, government bonds wobbled only slightly and both US and global stocks held it together around record highs.” The absence of drama indicates “interest rates are shedding their suffocating dominance over global markets, and that stocks are climbing not because they are huffing the speculative fumes of imminent and aggressive potential rate cuts but because they’re worth it.”

 

Financial Times (June 6)

2023/ 06/ 05 by jd in Global News

“The world’s trading system needs to ditch its paper trail.” The current global trading system “is suffocating under a mountain of billions of paper documents.” A recent survey “found 35 per cent of UK companies trading internationally say bureaucracy is a barrier to their business overseas. At the same time, 65 per cent said they will remove paper as soon as laws enable them to do so.” Estimates show that removing paper barriers to trade in the Commonwealth alone, “would deliver $1.2tn in economic growth by 2026. It would also reduce trade transaction costs by 80 per cent and enable more SMEs to participate. If combined with customs digitalisation, this number increases to $2tn.”

 

The Guardian (February 26)

2023/ 02/ 27 by jd in Global News

“Germany’s economic miracle was built on debt relief.” Today “unconditional debt relief” would help the poorest economies, countries that can’t reasonably repay their debts. “The biggest losers” should be private bondholders. “The UK and US should pass legislation requiring bondholders to take part in internationally agreed debt relief. The globalisation currently being orchestrated by the world’s richest countries is suffocating poor nations. What the German experience revealed is that removing the economic straitjacket would allow developing countries to breathe again.”

 

Fortune (February Issue)

2018/ 02/ 26 by jd in Global News

The cost of “suffocating air pollution” is higher than imagined. The World Bank had estimated in 2016 that air pollution resulted in health costs of $5 trillion a year, but other losses could especially hit developing countries. “High pollution levels are capable of causing net out-migration of 5%—a potentially devastating economic blow, especially because those most likely to leave are wealthy and educated.”

 

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