New York Times (February 24)
“Investors often see Berkshire as a bellwether of the American economy, given the breadth of its business.” Marking a sharp reversal from a $22 billion loss in 2022, the conglomerate recorded net earnings of $97.1 billion in 2023, “its highest-ever annual profit last year.” Moreover, “Berkshire also reported $37.4 billion in operating earnings, the financial metric that Mr. Buffett prefers because it excludes paper investment gains and losses, for the year, up 21 percent from 2022.”
Tags: 2022, 2023, Bellwether, Berkshire, Conglomerate, Economy, Investment gains, Investors, Loss, Net earnings, Operating earnings, Profit, Reversal, U.S.
The Economist (February 3)
Between 2012 and 2022, half of the Americans who adopted EVs and PHEVs were “living in the 10% of counties with the highest proportion of Democratic voters.” Polarization may best the biggest obstacle limiting “the American market for electric vehicles.” Polarization “is cursing not only America’s politics but, increasingly, its culture and marketplace.”
Tags: 2012, 2022, and PHEVs, Culture, Cursing, Democratic, EVs, Limiting, Market, Obstacle, Polarization, Politics, U.S., Vehicles, Voters
Washington Post (January 9)
“After rebounding sharply in 2021 from the depths of the pandemic, the global economy grew by 3 percent in 2022, dipped to a 2.6 percent rate last year and is expected to post a tepid 2.4 percent this year” according to the World Bank. “Those rates lag the 3.1 percent average for the decade of the 2010s.”
Tags: 2.4%, 2.6%, 2010s, 2021, 2022, 3.1%, 3%, Global economy, Lag, Pandemic, Rebounding, Tepid, World Bank
Bankrate (October 10)
“Recession odds between now and September 2024 have dropped to 46 percent, according to experts’ average forecast in Bankrate’s latest quarterly survey of economists. Those probabilities are still close to a coin flip, but they’re down from an average forecast of 59 percent just last quarter. They’re also the lowest odds since the first quarter of 2022.”
Tags: 2022, 2024, 46%, Economists, Experts, Forecast, Lowest, Odds, Probabilities, Quarterly survey, Recession
The Economist (August 24)
“Whatever has gone wrong? After China rejoined the world economy in 1978, it became the most spectacular growth story in history…. Yet instead of roaring back after the government abandoned its ‘zero-covid’ policy at the end of 2022, it is lurching from one ditch to the next.” It is unlikely to be fixed soon because “an increasingly autocratic government is making bad decisions.”
Tags: 1978, 2022, Autocratic, Bad decisions, China, Fixed, Government, Growth story, Lurching, Rejoined, Spectacular, World economy, Wrong, Zero-Covid
The Guardian (July 26)
“Every one of Japan’s 47 prefectures posted a population drop in 2022, while the total number of Japanese people fell by nearly 800,000,” marking “two new unwelcome records for a nation sailing into uncharted demographic territory, but on a course many other countries are set to follow.”
Tags: 2022, Demographic, Drop, Japan, Population, Prefectures, Records, Uncharted, Unwelcome
Wall Street Journal (May 12)
“Job satisfaction hit a 36-year high in 2022, reflecting two effects of the tight pandemic labor market: The quality of jobs improved as wages and work flexibility increased, and workers moved into positions that were a better fit.” The Conference Board found that worker satisfaction increased from 56.8% in 2020 to 62.3% in 2022.”
Tags: 2022, Conference Board, Flexibility, Job satisfaction, Labor market, Pandemic, Quality, Wages, Work
Financial Times (April 28)
“Deprived of investment opportunities abroad, Russians have piled their savings into the likes of Lukoil, Gazprom and Sberbank, which combined account for about 40 per cent of the stock market’s total value.” Marking a rebound, “Russia’s stock market has climbed to its highest level in more than a year as domestic retail investors with nowhere else to go snap up the dividend-paying stocks that sold off heavily following the invasion of Ukraine”.
Tags: 2022, Banking crisis, Bracing, Economy, Fears, Growth, Interest rates, Q1, Q4, Recession, Slowdown, U.S., Wall Street, Wobbled
American Banker (March 20)
“After bank merger-and-acquisition activity slowed substantially in 2022, it could reach a standstill following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York.” Their “sudden demise… injected hefty doses of uncertainty into the financial system and raised doubts about the veracity of regulatory oversight.” Because they missed vulnerabilities, “bank supervisors are likely to further ramp up reviews of banks’ potential weaknesses,” which is likely to “extend to bank M&A.”
Tags: 2022, Bank, California, Doubts, Financial system, M&A, New York, Regulatory oversight, Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, Standstill, Sudden, Uncertainty, Veracity
OilPrice.com (March 7)
There is scant “spare oil production capacity globally.” This mostly lies with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. shale firms “are expected to raise oil production this year compared to 2022,” but might surprise on “the downside due to supply chain and labor bottlenecks, cost inflation, and the industry’s strategy to reward shareholders and pay down debts instead of taking on more debts to boost output.”
Tags: 2022, Cost inflation, Debts, Downside, Labor, Oil, Production capacity, Saudi Arabia, Shale, Shareholders, Supply chain, U.S., UAE
