Reuters (August 31)
“Parents will feel the change” of new restrictions limiting minors to a single hour of video game time on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. “Workaholics will find it harder to … use addictive games and apps as de-facto babysitters, but then the government is trying to reduce overtime too. Over the longer term, this could be healthy for Chinese families, but not so much for businesses.”
Tags: Addictive, Apps, De-facto babysitters, Families, Government, Healthy, Hour, Minors, Overtime, Parents, Restrictions, Video games, Workaholics
Washington Post (August 30)
“Enormous as it is, the number of people evacuated by air from Kabul since the end of July — about 122,000 — is not large enough.” Countless others, who are vulnerable, did not escape. “This is a moral disaster.”
Tags: Air, Enormous, Escape, Evacuated, July, Kabul, Moral disaster, Vulnerable
New York Times (August 28)
“Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s most powerful leader since Mao, China has taken a hard ideological turn against unfettered private enterprise. It has set out a series of strictures against “disorderly” corporate expansion. No longer will titans of industry be permitted to march out of step with the party’s priorities and dictates.”
Tags: China, Communist, Corporate expansion, Dictates, Disorderly, Ideological, Industry, Leader, Mao, Powerful, Private enterprise, Strictures, Unfettered, Xi
Barrons (August 27)
“It has been a rough year for investors in China, especially those who forgot that it’s still a Communist nation.” Investors are fleeing in the wake of “some surprising, and very anticapitalist, moves.” The Chinese market has fallen by “20% in the past six months, while some of its biggest names have dropped more than 40%. Has China become uninvestible? No—but it has gotten a lot more complicated.”
Tags: Anticapitalist, China, Communist, Complicated, Investors, Market, Plummeting, Stocks, Surprising, Uninvestible
Chicago Tribune (August 27)
“Citing a rapid uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations due to the delta variant among the unvaccinated, Illinois Gov. JB. Pritzker on Thursday issued a sweeping vaccination mandate for all healthcare workers, college students, schoolteachers and staff from pre-kindergarten through college, and required indoor masking for people age 2 and older staring Monday.”
Tags: Indoor masking
San Francisco Chronicle (August 24)
“San Francisco has long reigned as the priciest rental market in the U.S.—but it has officially been dethroned…. New York’s one-bedroom median rent rose a whopping 4.9% in August to $2,810, slightly more than San Francisco’s median of $2,800, which reflected a month-over-month increase of 2.9%.” San Francisco had been the priciest rental market since at least 2014 when Zumper began tracking data.
Tags: Dethroned, New York, One-bedroom, Priciest, Rental market, San Francisco, U.S., Zumper
Philadelphia Inquirer (August 24)
“This is a new phase of vaccinations’ Get tough. Restaurants, cruise lines, colleges, and a growing number of employers—hospitals, municipal governments, Amtrak, Citigroup—are telling workers and customers to prove they’ve been vaccinated or go elsewhere. And all that was before Monday’s full authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”
Tags: Amtrak, Authorization, Citigroup, Colleges, Cruise lines, Customers, Employers, Hospitals, Pfizer-BioNTech, Phase, Restaurants, Vaccinations, Workers
Institutional Investor (August 23)
“With an influx of cash from nontraditional investors, average late-stage valuations could hit $1 billion this year, according to PitchBook,” which attributed the surge in “valuation growth to a positive economic outlook and cash influx from nontraditional investors, including mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, and corporate venture capitalists.”
Tags: $1 billion, Cash, Economic outlook, Hedge funds, Influx, Investors, Late-stage valuations, Mutual funds, Nontraditional, PitchBook, Sovereign wealth funds, Surge, VC
Wall Street Journal (August 23)
The Government of Japan “is already on the hook to pay out nearly $10 trillion to its creditors.” This may appear *an impossibly large sum to rustle up” when annual tax collections amount to “less than $600 billion.” But today’s “economists talk more about the risk of issuing too little debt” and the U.S. may soon follow Japan’s lead. “Congress is debating trillions of dollars more in proposed spending that would push America’s borrowing toward levels policy makers in Tokyo have long embraced.”
Tags: $10 trillion, Borrowing, Congress, Creditors, Debt, Economists, Government, Japan, Risk, Spending, Tax collections, U.S.
New York Times (August 21)
“The speed and scope of the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan has prompted introspection in the West over what went wrong…. China, though, is looking forward. It is ready to step into the void left by the hasty U.S. retreat to seize a golden opportunity.”
Tags: Afghanistan, China, Hasty, Introspection, Opportunity, Retreat, Scope, Speed, Takeover, Taliban, U.S., Void