Professional Pensions (August 20)
“If we want our savers to make informed choices, we need to get them to understand the products and devices we’re using to help them save for when they aren’t working any more. That’s because they are going to have to make decisions (even if we created a limited choice framework), so we need to start using clear language now and getting used to it.” We must jettison the jargon. Those in the pensions world should no longer “languish in the luxury of our familiar phraseology understood only by cosy insiders.” It is time “to get into” their “hearts and minds and use the language of our saving community who need to know at all times what we’re talking about.”
Tags: Clear language, Decisions, Devices, Familiar, Hearts, Informed choices, Insiders, Jargon, Jettison, Minds, Pensions, Phraseology, Products, Save, Savers
Wall Street Journal (June 3)
“As exports of rare-earth magnets have virtually ground to a halt, carmakers face hard decisions about whether they can continue to keep some plants operating.” Major U.S. automakers are considering work arounds like “producing electric motors in Chinese factories or shipping made-in-America motors to China to have magnets installed.” If they do “end up shifting some production to China, it would amount to a remarkable outcome from a trade war initiated by President Trump with the intention of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.”
Tags: Automakers, Carmakers, China, Decisions, Electric motors, Exports, Factories, Halt, Manufacturing, Plants, Production, Rare-earth magnets, Trade war, Trump, U.S.
Forbes (July 29)
“As central bank decisions go, the one Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda will make this week may be the toughest in modern history.” He is faced with deciding “whether to break with 25 years of zero interest rates and 23 years of quantitative easing by putting a notable rate hike on the scoreboard…. Making matters worse, smart economists can make nuanced abstractions compelling arguments for taking any of the three doors sitting before him.”
Tags: 25 years, BOJ, Central bank, Decisions, Economists, Quantitative easing, Rate hike, Toughest, Ueda, Zero interest
New York Times (March 21)
“The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and three other lenders over the past 11 days” have “put the Fed in a difficult position as it prepares to deliver on Wednesday one of the most consequential decisions on interest rates of the Jay Powell era.” In addition to tightening rates to curb inflation while somehow avoiding a recession, the “banking crisis hands the central bank a third crucial challenge: how to steer the banking sector out of the predicament and restore confidence in the sector.”
Tags: Banking crisis, Consequential, Decisions, Failures, Fed, Inflation, Interest rates, Powell, Predicament, Recession, SVB
Irish Examiner (December 1)
“Why did Elon Musk purchase Twitter? His official answer — to defend free speech and democracy — is so unconvincing that the question won’t go away. Musk’s repeated appeals to these ideals to justify important decisions he has made since taking over are so confounding that they raise deep suspicions about his motives.”
Tags: Confounding, Decisions, Deep suspicions, Democracy, Free speech, Ideals, Important, Justify, Motives, Musk, Purchase, Twitter, Unconvincing
Wall Street Journal (June 5)
“Every President has breakups with advisers, but Mr. Trump has gone through them like an assembly line. His demand for personal loyalty and his thin skin clash with people who care about larger causes and have strong views. Mr. Trump’s habit of blaming others for policy decisions or events that go wrong also builds resentment. This was bound to boomerang as he ran for re-election, and so it is.”
Tags: Advisers, Assembly line, Blaming, Boomerang, Breakups, Clash, Decisions, Demand, Personal loyalty, Re-election, Resentment, Thin skin, Trump
Bloomberg (March 25)
“It’s the worst epidemic of our times, a health emergency that has now left more than 420,000 infected, 18,800 dead and paralyzed the global economy. The scale has been clear for weeks.”Yet the same “baffling” decisions are “being repeated, over and over again. From Italy to the U.S. and Britain, each government first believes its country to be less exposed than it is, overestimates its ability to control the situation, ignores the real-time experience of others and ultimately scrambles to take measures.”
Tags: Baffling, Dead, Decisions, Emergency, Epidemic, Global economy, Health, Infected, Italy, Paralyzed, Repeated, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (October 12)
“President Trump prides himself on one-on-one diplomacy, but too often it results in rash and damaging decisions like his abrupt order Sunday for U.S. troops to retreat from northern Syria. Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now dictating terms to the American President, and the consequences are likely to be felt far beyond Syria and Turkey.”
Tags: Abrupt, Damaging, Decisions, Diplomacy, Erdogan, Pride, Rash, Retreat, Syria, Troops, Trump, Turkey, U.S.
Washington Post (July 17)
With China’s economy decelerating, “ the world waits to see if it will make hard reforms. “Most big developing countries — China, India, Brazil, South Africa — have slowed down in the past few years. In almost all cases, the cause was the same. When their the economies were booming, these countries’ leaders avoided tough decisions. China had been the exception to this rule. But now it faces its biggest test…. If it fails, well, China becomes just another emerging market with a model that worked for a while.”
Tags: Boom, Brazil, China, Decelerating, Decisions, Developing countries, Economy, Emerging market, India, Leaders, Reforms, South Africa
