The Economist (April 25)
“The BBC is having a good pandemic, but the loss of young audiences poses a mortal threat to its funding.” Viewing by 16- to 24-year-olds is just 85 minutes versus the nearly 6 hours watched daily by those over 65. “Those aged 16-24 spend more time on YouTube than live TV” while “the next generation should terrify them. Children aged 12-15 are more likely to have heard of Netflix than the BBC.”
The Guardian (April 24)
“Amid the misery and chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there are some short-term consolations. The precipitous drop in road and air traffic has left the air cleaner and the skies clearer.” Hopefully, when it is finally “safe to emerge from economic survival mode,” we will reflect “on which kinds of productive activity actually enrich our lives – and which among these our planet can sustain.”
Washington Post (April 21)
“When the price of oil seemingly stepped through the looking glass Monday and tumbled into negative value, it summoned up an image of the world of petroleum turned wrong-side-round.” This shocker “was fleeting, and symbolic, more than anything, and it won’t have much effect on the price of gasoline at the pump. But it showed just how much the coronavirus pandemic has crushed the world’s energy markets — and how the global effort to stabilize them was failing.”
Tags: Coronavirus, Energy markets, Failing, Fleeting, Gasoline, Negative value, Oil, Pandemic, Petroleum, Price, Symbolic
Reuters (April 20)
“Income tax was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1799 to fund the Napoleonic Wars against France. America imposed the tax in 1861 to pay for its civil war. The coronavirus pandemic is not literally a war. But it will lead to massive debts and eventually higher taxes.”
Tags: Civil war, Coronavirus, Debts, France, Fund, Income tax, Napoleonic Wars, Pandemic, Taxes, U.S., UK
South China Morning Post (April 17)
“China’s economy shrank by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020, the first contraction since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, confirming the economic damage done by the coronavirus pandemic.” The massive contraction “was worse than predictions of minus 6.0 per cent from a survey of analysts’ forecasts by Bloomberg.”
Tags: Analysts, China, Contraction, Coronavirus, Cultural Revolution, Economic damage, Economy, Pandemic
LA Times (April 15)
“The worst pandemic in a century won’t solve climate change. We have to do that for ourselves.” Thanks to the pandemic, “global carbon output could fall by 5% this year,” but “emissions have to drop 7.6% per year — for decades — to stave off the worst effects of climate change.”
Tags: Carbon output, Climate change, Emissions, Pandemic
USA Today (April 12)
With the postponement of the Masters, Tiger Woods was “rewarded with another seven months to reign as the king of the green jackets.” But recovery time could be an even bigger benefit. “This long, uncertain break as the nation has shut down due to the pandemic has to be helping the oft-injured Tiger gear up for what very well could be the most bizarre golf season we have ever seen.”
Tags: Bizarre, Golf, Green jacket, Injured, Masters, Pandemic, Postponement, Recovery, Tiger, Tiger Woods
Chicago Tribune (April 10)
“The coronavirus crisis maddens in myriad ways, and for many victims one of the most vexing is the inability to get tested…. Broader-scale testing is beginning to occur, but the progress is unacceptably slow.” We need to ramp this up to provide “more detail about where exactly the pandemic has struck.” Until we do, “the country will never be able to defeat the coronavirus — and get the economies of Illinois and the rest of the country back on track.”
US News & World Report (April 6)
The Covid-19 pandemic has “exposed gaping cracks in our social, political and economic systems. The most pervasive of those cracks is discrimination against women, which persists in every country in the world.” But the pandemic might also “be the watershed we need to upend the systems that hold girls and women back. It brings a chance to make health care and education truly universal, to improve conditions and pay for millions, and to strengthen safety nets.”
Tags: COVID-19, Cracks, Discrimination, Economic, Education, Health care, Pandemic, Social, Upend, Watershed, Women
Wall Street Journal (April 5)
“At least one-quarter of the U.S. economy has suddenly gone idle amid the coronavirus pandemic… an unprecedented shutdown of commerce that economists say has never occurred on such a wide scale.”
Tags: Commerce, Coronavirus, Economy, Idle, Pandemic, Quarter, Scale, Shutdown, U.S., Unprecedented
