Mercury News (February 17)
“Despite an unprecedented 2.4 million jobs lost in the spring, Californians joined fellow Americans in paying down interest-heavy debt such as credit card bills while acquiring wealth-building loans by taking out mortgages…. But looks can be deceiving.” Aggregate figures can obscure real suffering. “Millions of Californians suffering job losses have accumulated crippling debt that goes uncounted in national measures: unpaid rent, utility bills, borrowed money from loved ones and, in some cases, predatory loans.”
Tags: California, Credit card, Debt, Interest, Jobs, Loans, Mortgages, Predatory, Rent, Suffering, U.S., Uncounted, Unprecedented, Utility bills, Wealth-building
Wall Street Journal (February 17)
“Continental governments have spent trillions during the pandemic keeping firms alive and people in jobs, but that safety net could be putting off the economic deep cleaning that normally comes with recessions.” Concern is growing that “mothballing the economy for so long will leave it struggling to adapt to the seismic business and social changes the crisis is driving. That could stall an economic recovery.”
Tags: Adapt, Crisis, Economic deep cleaning, Firms, Governments, Jobs, Mothballing, Pandemic, Recessions, Recovery, Safety net, Struggling
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (February 16)
“Once again, Texans are suffering because of a failure of disaster planning and investment to prepare for the worst. First, it was the pandemic…. This time, it’s an unprecedented — but, importantly, not unpredictable — stretch of cold weather and storms blanketing the entire state.” The resulting power outages could have been prevented. “There must be accountability. People must be fired. Companies must be fined and required to do better. Winterization of power plants must be a priority.”
Tags: Accountability, Cold, Disaster planning, Failure, Fined, Fired, Investment, Pandemic, Power outages, Prepare, Storms, Suffering, Texans, Unprecedented, Weather, Winterization
Reuters (February 15)
“Brexit-supporting City figures hoping for a regulatory bonfire seem likely to be disappointed…. The BoE’s first deviation from EU law was to make the rules tighter, not looser. The supervisor also recently ruled out a big capital reduction for insurers. London may end up being smaller, but at least it will be safer.”
Tags: BOE, Brexit, Capital reduction, Deviation, Disappointed, EU law, Insurers, London, Looser, Regulatory, Rules, Safer, Smaller, Supervisor, Tighter
The New Yorker (February 14)
“Trump’s defense was an insult to the impeachment proceedings and an assault on reason…. Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial was an artifact of his Presidency. It was a battle of meaning against noise, against nothing-means-anything-and-everything-is-the-same nihilism—and nihilism won.”
Tags: Assault, Defense, Impeachment, Insult, Meaning, Nihilism, Noise, Proceedings, Reason, Trump
Washington Post (February 14)
“It’s a sign of how far and how fast the ex-president has fallen that opponents of impeachment rationalized their votes by saying, as McConnell did, that Trump must still confront the “criminal justice system” and “civil litigation.” You’re in trouble when your would-be friends are saying you should be prosecuted rather than impeached.”
Tags: Civil litigation, Criminal justice, Ex-president, Fallen, Impeached, Impeachment, McConnell, Prosecuted, Trouble, Trump
Financial Times (February 13)
“Investors poured a record $58bn into stock funds this week while slashing their cash holdings, in the latest sign of the fervor sweeping global financial markets…. Historically low interest rates and expectations for a big rebound this year in global economic growth have whet investors’ appetite for riskier assets,” but this is creating unease among some that “asset prices have become overextended.”
Tags: Assets, Cash holdings, Economic growth, Expectations, Fervor, Financial markets, Interest rates, Investors, Rebound, Riskier, Stock funds
Bloomberg (February 12)
“GameStop is only the most public manifestation of a trend that radically departs from all precedents. Some of the potential consequences are worrying…. The most heavily shorted stocks have been doing well ever since the recovery from the initial shock of the pandemic got under way last March.” This has created “a historic ‘black swan’ disaster for short sellers.”
Tags: Black swan, Consequences, Disaster, GameStop, Historic, Pandemic, Precedents, Recovery, Shock, Shorted stocks, Trend, Worrying
Institutional Investor (January 11)
“Less than 10 percent of institutional investors currently outsource their trading desks,” but a recent survey suggests they are starting to warm to the once ‘unthinkable’ practice. “Out of the 84 traders polled, 32 percent called outsourced trading desks a ‘good solution’ for managing flow and achieving the best execution, up from 20 percent in last year’s survey.”
Tags: Execution, Flow, Institutional investors, Outsource, Survey, Traders, Trading desks, Unthinkable
Guardian (February 10)
“Across the UK, firms and consumers are discovering costs of Brexit that Mr Johnson denied. That denial was born of a failure to understand the trade-off between regulatory autonomy and market access. The prime minister swapped seamless trade for notional sovereignty and passed the cost on to unsuspecting businesses. Naturally, he wants to blame the EU for any pain. These are not teething troubles in implementation of the deal. They are the deal.”
Tags: Blame, Brexit, Consumers, Costs, Denial, EU, Failure, Firms, Johnson, Market access, Regulatory autonomy, Seamless trade, Sovereignty, Trade-off, UK
