New York Times (August 30)
“The iconic American worker of the 20th century—a man making cars in a Detroit factory—remains the focus of political debate about work in America. But the real face of the modern working class is a woman caring for that retired autoworker somewhere in the suburban Sun Belt. Half of the 10 fastest growing jobs in America are low-paid variants of nursing.”
Tags: Autoworker, Debate, Detroit, Factory, Nursing, Real face, Retired, Suburban, Sun Belt, U.S., Woman, Worker, Working class
The Guardian (August 29)
“There is plenty of constitutional outcry on the front pages of the British papers today, which all lead with Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament ahead of the looming Brexit deadline. Front pages from abroad show the international press is transfixed too.”
Tags: Brexit, Constitutional outcry, Deadline, Front pages, Johnson, Parliament, Transfixed, UK
Bloomberg (August 28)
“India’s economic numbers have for some time looked better than the facts warranted, feeding an overconfidence in New Delhi about the country’s prospects. Thankfully, that’s begun to change. The Reserve Bank of India, the International Monetary Fund, investment banks and ratings agencies have all recently cut their estimates of 2019 growth sharply.” This is “best news in years… India’s government finally seems to recognize the scale of the problems it faces.”
Tags: Economic, Estimates, Government, IMF, India, Investment banks, Overconfidence, Ratings agencies, Reserve Bank of India, Scale
Washington Post (August 26)
President Trump has recently “vacillated back and forth between praising China and harshly criticizing it, all while claiming that the trade war he initiated is going great for the United States as evidence mounts that it is pushing us toward recession.” He seems to labor “under a series of misconceptions, bred by ignorance and what appears to be a complete lack of interest in grasping how the trade war appears from China’s perspective.” It is becoming painfully obvious that “Trump is in fact the world’s worst negotiator. And the price Americans are paying for his weakness keeps getting higher.”
Tags: China, Criticizing, Ignorance, Misconceptions, Praising, Recession, Trade war, Trump, U.S., Vacillated, Worst
Financial Times (August 26)
“British society is so deeply divided—politically, socially, geographically and generationally—that it is unable to react. The UK has become a mere chessboard, a toy in the hands of a force far greater than that of its inhabitants; the geopolitical interests of the Trump administration,” which seeks to use the UK “as the latest battlefield on which to achieve its twin goals of undermining the EU, and challenging its rival China.”
Tags: Battlefield, Chessboard, Divided, EU, Geopolitical interests, Society, Trump administration, U.S., UK
The Independent (August 25)
On Sunday, British Airways should have been celebrating 100 years of flight, instead BA was experiencing “one of the worst weekends in its 21st-century history.” When the Pilots’ Association called three days of strikes, “the airline told tens of thousands of passengers that their flights were cancelled–only to admit many of the messages were sent in error” because the wrong date range was used in sending the alerts.
Tags: BA, Cancelled, Date, Error, Flights, Passengers, Pilots’ Association, Strikes, Wrong
Market Watch (August 24)
“U.S. China tensions over trade policy have reached a boiling point, the only question remaining is whether business executives — and the stock market — can stand the heat…. The further upping of trade barriers, along with Trump’s forceful response, threatens to further erode already sagging business confidence and trigger more weakness in U.S. business investment, which could eventually lead to rising unemployment.”
Tags: Barriers, China, Confidence, Investment, Stock market, Tensions, Trade, Trump, U.S., Unemployment, Weakness
LA Times (August 23)
“The real threat to the U.S. economy Friday wasn’t Powell,” the Federal Reserve Chairman. “It was Trump’s trade policies and public outbursts. Having righted itself by the end of Powell’s speech, the Dow dropped sharply immediately after the president’s Friday tirade. As of this writing, it was down 455 points.”
CNN (August 22)
“Fires are raging at a record rate in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and scientists warn that it could strike a devastating blow to the fight against climate change.” If the Amazon is “the planet’s lungs,” then they are turning black. Brazil’s space agency estimated “more than 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being destroyed every minute of every day” and 1,700 miles away Sao Paulo was engulfed in mid-afternoon darkness with “the sky pitch-black…the sun blanketed by smoke and ash.”
Tags: Amazon, Brazil, Climate change, Devastating, Fires, Raging, Rainforest, Sao Paulo, Scientists, Smoke
USA Today (August 21)
“The labor market seemed to defy gravity last year, generating more than 200,000 jobs a month despite a historically low unemployment rate that made it harder for employers to find workers. Turns out job growth wasn’t as robust as it appeared.” The Labor Department just issued its “largest downward revision in a decade.” Total job gains in the year ended March 2019 were revised downward by half a million. Based on this average monthly job growth was closer to 170,000, than the initial estimates of 210,000.
Tags: Defy, Employers, Gravity, Job growth, Labor Department, Labor market, Unemployment rate, Workers