Investment Week (June 28)
“Confidence in the UK meeting its legally-binding decarbonisation targets from 2030 onwards has fallen ‘markedly’, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has today warned in a landmark report that delivers a damning verdict on the paucity of new climate action from the government over the past 12 months.” The report concludes “the government now faces a huge uphill challenge to attract the necessary green investment and get decarbonisation progress back on track this decade so as to ensure legally binding emissions targets are met.”
Tags: 2030, CCC, Climate action, Confidence, Decarbonisation, Emissions targets, Government, Green investment, Legally-binding, UK, Uphill
American Banker (June 22)
“Companies and government agencies have been added in recent days to the list of institutions victimized by a supply chain cyberattack by a ransomware gang that exploited a weakness in file transfer software popular with enterprises.” Cl0p, a ransomware gang, “started exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Progress Software’s product MoveIt to steal data from at least 91 organizations, including state and federal agencies and at least 10 U.S. banks and credit unions. Data compromised in the leaks included names, addresses, birthdates, Social Security numbers and more.”
Tags: Banks, Companies, Compromised, Credit unions, Cyberattack, FTP, Government, Institutions, MoveIt, Ransomware, Supply chain, U.S., Victimized, Weakness, Zero-day vulnerability
New York Times (January 16)
“Intent on reversing America’s decline in the world’s production of cutting-edge semiconductors, the federal government has begun what is arguably the government’s largest foray into the private sector since World War II.” This “more muscular approach to industrial policy” is “pockmarked with risks. On balance, the record of government trying to improve the functioning of the private sector is poor, and particularly in complex sectors like semiconductors, the challenges are great.”
Tags: Complex, Cutting edge, Decline, Government, Industrial policy, Intent, Private-sector, Production, Reversing, Risks, Semiconductors, U.S., WWII
Reuters (December 22)
Despite official government figures citing just 1,800 Covid cases and only seven resulting deaths last week, more realistic estimates place the true figures at over one million daily infections, with “more than 5,000 people … dying each day from COVID-19 in China.”
Tags: Cases, China, COVID-19, Deaths, Estimates, Figures, Government, Infections, Official, One million, Realistic
Reuters (December 9)
“Wherever you think inflation is coming from, it’s not China – not yet at least…. China said its factory-gate prices showed an annual fall for a second month in a row last month – the latest in stream of numbers revealing the impact of the government’s draconian COVID curbs, now being gradually lifted.”
Tags: China, COVID curbs, Draconian, Factory-gate, Fall, Government, Impact, Inflation, Prices
Reuters (November 28)
“Thousands of people are taking to the streets in several cities across the country in an unprecedented protest against the government’s stringent COVID restrictions.” This sort of unrest “does not happen very often, and the world is watching intently to see how Beijing handles the brewing crisis.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Cities, COVID restrictions, Government, People, Protest, Stringent, Thousands, Unprecedented, Unrest
Bloomberg (November 25)
“Since the Brexit vote in 2016, the UK government is yet to deliver major legislative change with significant benefits for businesses. Instead, companies have had to grapple with higher paperwork costs on trade, a tighter labor market spurred by a reduction in EU migration and a weaker pound increasing import costs. Brexit has also had a political cost of aggravating tensions in Northern Ireland and hurting diplomatic relations with the EU.”
Tags: Benefits, Brexit, Businesses, Costs, EU, Government, Import, Labor market, Migration, Northern Ireland, Paperwork, Pound, Trade, UK, Weaker
The Guardian (August 22)
“England currently feels like an eerie, unpoliced, ungoverned, unstable country after a coup. One government is gone but another hasn’t replaced it, and opposition cannot rise to the challenge.” A macro analyst recently wrote that the UK increasingly looks like “an emerging market country…. Brexit coupled with Covid and high inflation have succeeded…. The UK economy is crushed.”
Tags: Analyst, Brexit, Challenge, Coup, Covid, Economy, Eerie, Emerging market, England, Government, Inflation, Opposition, UK, Ungoverned, Unpoliced, Unstable
Washington Post (May 17)
With May “more than half over,” Russia’s Plan B is clearly “fizzling” with a notable retreat from Kharkiv. Russia “now appears to be aiming to take, at most, the entirety of a single Ukrainian region, Luhansk. And even that might be beyond the capability of Russia’s depleted, poorly led forces.” Instead, “a widening Ukrainian counteroffensive” might succeed in bringing “more of the Russian-held south and east of Ukraine back under the control of its legitimate government.”
Tags: Control, Counteroffensive, Depleted, Fizzling, Government, Kharkiv, Legitimate, Luhansk, May, Plan B, Retreat, Russia, Ukraine
Wall Street Journal (April 14)
“Events in Hong Kong and Shanghai have demonstrated that a ‘zero Covid’ strategy can look very effective for a long time—until suddenly it isn’t, either because a more infectious variant changes the game or because success itself breeds overconfidence.” Unless the Chinese government moves “quickly to vaccinate and boost its elderly, and start spending much more heavily on hospital capacity, then the human and economic consequences could be disastrous.”
Tags: Boost, China, Consequences, Disastrous, Elderly, Events, Government, Hong Kong, Hospital capacity, Infectious, Overconfidence, Shanghai, Vaccinate, Variant, Zero COVID