BBC (September 16)
America’s standing in the world has tumbled to “its lowest point in nearly two decades.” The most recent Pew Research Center poll of 13 countries found that only 34% of respondents had positive views of the U.S. and only 16% had confidence in President Trump. Interestingly the Belgians had the lowest confidence in Mr. Trump (just 9%) while “the president’s highest rating among the countries polled was in Japan, where a quarter of those surveyed said they trusted Mr Trump.”
Tags: Belgians, Confidence, Lowest, Pew Research, Positive, Standing, Trump, Tumbled, U.S.
Washington Post (September 15)
President Trump claims “America’s cities are in flames” and a Biden election would leave the suburbs engulfed in flames. Meanwhile, wildfires have refocused attention on the issue of climate change. Speaking to the real “fires of the present and future” which are “raging across much of the Western states, devouring towns and turning the sky red,” Joe Biden is now “going further than any party nominee has before and talking like someone with a genuine commitment to strong action on climate.”
Tags: Biden, Climate change, Commitment, Election, Flames, Genuine, Strong action, Suburbs, Trump, U.S., Wildfires
Investment Week (September 14)
The “Next Generation EU” deal provides ESG investors with much to watch. The €550bn “centerpiece of the stimulus” focuses on fighting climate change through “expenditures earmarked for promoting energy efficiency and developing renewable energy resources, emission-free vehicles, and sustainable transport, alongside other measures of environmental protection designed to help meet Europe’s 2050 climate neutrality pledge.”
Tags: 2050, Climate change, Climate neutrality, Efficiency, ESG, EVs, Investors, Next Generation EU, Renewable energy, Stimulus, Transport
San Francisco Chronicle (September 14)
“Recent research shows that warmer weather and less precipitation has more than doubled the frequency of autumn days with extreme fire danger in California. The situation is expected to worsen.” Tackling climate change would help as would better forest management, but climate change complicates thinning the forests. “The state’s fire season has grown by an estimated 75 days in recent decades,” narrowing the window then “crews can safely light fires to manage forest health.”
Tags: California, Climate change, Fire danger, Forest health, Forests, Precipitation, Research, Thinning, Weather, Worsen
Chicago Tribune (September 13)
Chicago “like other major cities around the world, is a global city, a hub in the global economy, and that economy is on the ropes.” But “globalization is no unalloyed blessing.” Some would rather say goodbye to this “powerful economic force that richly rewards some and impoverishes others.” We can’t. “For better or worse, the global economy is the only economy we’ve got. Like the industrial economy before it, it is flawed, often cruel, but it pays the bills. If Chicago is to mend its divisions, it will have to do it with the money it reaps from its status as a global city.”
Tags: Chicago, Cruel, Economic force, Flawed, Global economy, Globalization, Impoverishes, Industrial economy, Major cities, Powerful, Rewards
Financial Times (September 11)
“To global portfolio managers, the Tokyo stock market has spent the past few years looking ever more like an old curiosity shop. Everyone knows there are bargains galore in there but who can be bothered to study the cluttered and poorly labelled shelves.” Perhaps Warren Buffett will finally show money managers the way into “overlooked Japan.”
Tags: Bargains, Bothered, Buffett, Cluttered, Curiosity shop, Global, Money managers, Overlooked Japan, Portfolio managers, Stock market, Tokyo
Reuters (September 10)
“Wildfires across the U.S. West are among the sparks from climate change that could ignite a U.S. financial crisis by damaging home values, state tourism and local government budgets.” This was just one of the findings of an advisory panel to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Tags: Budgets, CFTC, Climate change, Financial Crisis, Findings, Home values, MRAC, Sparks, Tourism, U.S., Wildfires
New York Times (September 10)
The Social Progress Index “finds that the quality of life has dropped in America over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else.” Steeper than any other country’s, the decline “is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.”
Tags: Acceleration, Festered, Malaise, Quality of life, Social Progress Index, Structural problems, Symptom, Trump, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (September 9)
“If the race comes down to a character contest, Mr. Trump will lose.” Nobody dislikes Joe Biden. “Americans have also seen Mr. Trump in office for 42 months, and even millions of his supporters dislike the way he conducts himself.”
Boston Globe (September 8)
The shift to online learning has been filled with challenges and pitfalls. For professors, “reinvention has meant reworking syllabuses, prerecording lectures, and reconsidering how to test students’ knowledge of material – and even how to bond with them virtually.” The universities want “to avoid a repeat of last spring, when disgruntled parents and students filed lawsuits claiming the online learning experience was not worth the thousands of dollars in tuition costs.” Meanwhile, one survey showed that roughly half of the students “feel that higher education is no longer worth the cost, and 40 percent believe it’s a bad deal now that It has moved online.”
Tags: Challenges, Disgruntled, Lawsuits, Online learning, Parents, Pitfalls, Professors, Reinvention, Students, Tuition, Universities
