Seattle Times (September 29)
“The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed 1 million on Tuesday, nine months into a crisis that has devastated the global economy, tested world leaders’ resolve, pitted science against politics and forced multitudes to change the way they live, learn and work.”
Tags: 1 million, Coronavirus, Crisis, Death toll, Devastated, Economy, Leaders, Politics, Science, Work, Worldwide
New York Times (September 28)
“Strict enforcement should start with the president, to show that no American is above the law.” In 2010, Donald Trump “claimed a tax refund of $72.9 million,” which sparked an ongoing investigation. “The government must move urgently to resolve this question…. Americans deserve to know that the president has paid his taxes, too.”
Tags: Enforcement, Government, Investigation, Law, Strict, Tax refund, Trump, U.S., Urgent
WARC (September 28)
“COVID-19 and recession mean the next 18-24 months will be a difficult time in which resilience planning will be essential for businesses everywhere.” Corporate strategies will need to align with the five “consumer sentiments that will be uppermost in a changed world,” namely: Financial Anxiety, Health Concerns, Loneliness Syndrome, Quest for Truth and Safety Fears.
Tags: Anxiety, Businesses, Consumer sentiments, COVID-19, Health, Loneliness, Planning, Recession, Resilience, Safety, Strategies, Truth
The Economist (September 26)
“The pandemic could lead governments to prolong the life of many undeserving firms. Keeping the growth of the undead in check will be vital to the long-term economic recovery…. Marginally profitable firms were central to Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s…. Zombie-infested industries suffered from inert labour markets and lower productivity growth. Since then, the rich world as a whole has begun to look more zombified.”
Tags: Economic recovery, Governments, Growth, Inert, Japan, Labour markets, Lost decade, Pandemic, Productivity, Profitable, Undeserving, Zombie, Zombified
The Guardian (September 25)
“It doesn’t take an Einstein to observe the folly of Johnson doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result. Delaying inevitable tougher rules will likely do what it did before. Prolonging the pandemic worsens the economy as well as the roll-call of death and serious long-term Covid illness. But nothing in Johnson’s reckless life suggests any precautionary DNA in his selfish genes.”
Tags: Covid, Death, Delaying, Economy, Einstein, Folly, Illness, Inevitable, Johnson, Pandemic, Prolonging, Reckless, Selfish, UK
Wall Street Journal (September 24)
“Finance chiefs and investors are trying to figure out how to account for coronavirus-related expenses as the pandemic transforms how companies operate in ways that may become a permanent cost of doing business.” The effects of COVID-19 are now expected to last for months, if not years, but “some companies continue to treat virus-related costs as special, one-time items, which can give the impression that a business’s costs are lower than they actually are,” boosting, for example, adjusted Ebitda. Some professionals believe it is now time for “treating these items as regular costs of doing business as they close the books for the third quarter and not adjust their non-GAAP earnings.”
Tags: Account, Adjusted Ebitda, Coronavirus-related expenses, COVID-19, Finance, Investors, Non-GAAP earnings, One-time items, Pandemic, Permanent cost, Q3
Bloomberg (September 24)
“As the likelihood of additional federal stimulus fades, U.S. stock investors are returning their focus to the coronavirus pandemic and not liking what they see.” Consumers are again cutting back and “the prospects for a vaccine in the next few months have also waned just as the latest data shows an uptick in cases.” Moves by the Federal Reserve and “$3 trillion of federal stimulus helped fuel a torrid five-month rally that began in March,” but “their limitations have become clear.”
Tags: Consumers, Coronavirus, Cutting back, Fed, Limitations, Pandemic, Rally, Stimulus, Stock investors, U.S., Uptick, Vaccine
Time (September 22)
“England’s COVID-19 reopening went terribly wrong.” Britain hit 4,422 new cases on September 19, “the most in a single day since late May, when the country was still under national lockdown. The vast majority of those new cases (3,638) were in England…. On Monday, the government’s scientific advisors warned on television that, at current rates, the U.K. could be recording as many as 50,000 new cases per day by mid-October.”
Seeking Alpha (September 21)
“More and more countries/regions have succumbed to Japanification” with “the process of rapid debt accumulation, followed by monetary easing, which shields the government from the normal consequences of overspending.” And now, “the United States is following lockstep down the economic trail blazed by Japan.”
Tags: Consequences, Debt accumulation, Government, Japan, Japanification, Lockstep, Monetary easing, Overspending, Succumbed, U.S.
The Science Times (September 21)
“The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitory Service in Europe has monitored over 100 wildfires in the Arctic” since June. “The ‘zombie fires’ have been the worst this year since reliable monitoring began in 2003.” In June alone, the Arctic fires had already released an amount of carbon comparable “to how much the greenhouse gas is emitted in an entire year from smaller nations like Cuba and Tunisia.”
Tags: Arctic, Carbon, Copernicus, Cuba, Emitted, Europe, GHG, Monitoring, Wildfires
