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tag > Economics
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India plans to fell ancient forest to create 40 new coalfields
Modi’s dream of a ‘self-reliant India’ comes at a terrible price for its indigenous population.
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China sets trial run for digital yuan in top city hubs
Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong added to pilot project amid US tensions
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#Comment: Those who scream "future!" the loudest, support the past the hardest. Once they are done, all left of this planet will be rubble and a few shitty robots. But the leaders of such corporations are too busy to notice, as they are having fun with their child-slavery friends.
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In China, fears of financial Iron Curtain as U.S. tensions rise
A sharp escalation in tensions with the United States has stoked fears in China of a deepening financial war that could result in it being shut out of the global dollar system - a devastating prospect once considered far-fetched but now not impossible. Chinese officials and economists have in recent months been unusually public in discussing worst-case scenarios under which China is blocked from dollar settlements, or Washington freezes or confiscates a portion of China’s huge U.S. debt holdings.
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The Monster Exane BNP Paribas Note On Electric Cars
...And Exane BNP Paribas has a monster note on electric cars that downgrades BMW and Schaeffler, raises Valeo and hikes its Tesla target to $1,550. “Your next car may not be electric. But the one after could well be”, it begins, before moving on to a dictionary definition of disruption. Better batteries mean electric vehicle margins will be above internal combustion within two to three years” meaning “dramatic market share shifts lie ahead”, it says:
The collision of a green new political era with the arrival of ‘million mile’ batteries is set to turn EV economics on its head. As EV residuals and margins rise above that of ICE, radical market share shifts lie ahead. We look for those that can thrive – and those that may struggle to survive. Green New Politics: Europe’s New Deal meets a US Blue Wave
This autumn could mark a defining moment for decarbonisation as Europe’s Green New Deal and a potential US Blue Wave drive radical policy changes. We now expect Europe’s 2030 CO2 targets to be further tightened, with a review due by June 2021. To comply, we see European BEV penetration at 40% by 2030. Meanwhile a Biden Administration looks set to kick-start US EV adoption – the Democrats climate crisis plan even recommends 100% ZEV sales by 2035....
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Why a small town in Washington is printing its own currency during the pandemic
In a bid to lessen the blow of COVID-19, the town of Tenino has started issuing its own wooden dollars that can only be spent at local businesses. Will it work? The project has driven enough local excitement that the Tenino Chamber of Commerce is interested in making the wooden dollars a permanent fixture of Tenino — even after the pandemic passes.
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China’s biggest banks are testing the digital yuan ‘on a large scale’
Selected employees at China’s largest banks are trialing the country’s much-anticipated digital currency “on a large scale” (our translation), Caijing reported on Wednesday.
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Oil giants' production cuts come to 1 million bpd as they post massive writedowns
The world’s five largest oil companies collectively cut the value of their assets by nearly $50 billion in the second quarter, and slashed production rates as the coronavirus pandemic caused a drastic fall in fuel prices and demand.
Saudi Aramco's second-quarter net profit plunges 73.4% on lower oil prices
Saudi Arabian state oil group Aramco (2222.SE) on Sunday reported a 73.4% fall in second-quarter net profit, a steeper drop than analysts had expected, hit by lower crude oil prices and declining refining and chemicals margins, as the coronavirus hit demand.
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China's energy infrastructure mapped
Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy has released its latest China Energy Map, an open-source, interactive chart of the country's energy infrastructure. The map was created by Shih Yu (Elsie) Hung, a research manager at the Baker Institute Center for Energy Studies, and Gabriel Collins, the Baker Botts Fellow in Energy and Environmental Regulatory Affairs at the institute. "We are releasing the Baker Institute China Energy Map in the hope that an open, comprehensive and regularly updated source of vital China energy infrastructure data can help facilitate improved analysis by a broad range of participants," they wrote. The map, first released in February 2019 as the China Oil Map, "tracks nearly 4,000 energy facilities in China—it serves as a great resource of facility-level data to both academia and general public," Hung said. Project Website. Map.
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One football pitch of forest lost every second in 2017, data reveals
Global deforestation is on an upward trend, jeopardising efforts to tackle climate change and the massive decline in wildlife
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Study Finds Stronger Links Between Automation and Inequality
New research by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows that since 1987, automation has taken away jobs from lower-skill workers without being replaced by an equivalent number of labor-market opportunities.
"Automation is critical for understanding inequality dynamics" says Acemoglu, detailing the findings.
Does the US tax code favor automation?
"We find that the U.S. tax system favors excessive automation. In particular, the heavy taxation of labor and low taxes on capital encourage firms to automate more tasks and use less labor than is socially optimal."
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Jeff Bezos Adds Record $13 Billion in Single Day to His Fortune
Amazon.com Inc. shares surged 7.9%, the most since December 2018 on rising optimism about web shopping trends, and are now up 73% this year.
Bezos, Amazon’s 56-year-old founder and the world’s richest person, has seen his fortune swell $74 billion in 2020 to $189.3 billion, despite the U.S. entering its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. He’s now personally worth more than the market valuation of giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Nike Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. Mackenzie Bezos, his ex-wife, gained $4.6 billion Monday and is now the 13th-richest person in the world.
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Shale boss says US has passed peak oil
"The shale sector has not been gifted with discipline" - Matt Gallagher
US crude production has already peaked, according to one of the country’s leading shale executives, as producers battered by the price crash shun new output growth and start trying to become profitable. Matt Gallagher, chief executive of Parsley Energy, one of Texas’s biggest independent oil producers, said the record output level struck earlier this year would be the high-water mark. “I don’t think I’ll see 13m [barrels a day] again in my lifetime,” the 37-year-old Mr Gallagher told the Financial Times.
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China, Iran deal eyes a future decoupled from US
In recent weeks, Iran and China have been hammering out the details of a potentially momentous cooperation deal meant to span the next quarter-century and chart a future decoupled from the United States. Under the terms of a draft viewed by Asia Times, China will invest tens of billions of US dollars in Iran as part of Beijing’s ambitious Road and Belt Initiative. The 25-year agreement includes economic, security, and military dimensions. Such a deal is particularly important for Iran’s ailing energy sector, which is in dire need of substantial investment to refurbish an aging oil industry, which requires upwards of $150 billion for much-needed modernization of wells, refineries and other infrastructure.
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Shown is how the global material footprint (MF, equal to global raw material extraction) and global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and industrial processes (CO2 FFI) changed compared with global GDP (constant 2010 USD). A group of researchers, led by a UNSW sustainability scientist, have reviewed existing academic discussions on the link between wealth, economy and associated impacts, reaching a clear conclusion: technology will only get us so far when working towards sustainability – we need far-reaching lifestyle changes and different economic paradigms. During the past 40 years, worldwide wealth growth has continuously outpaced any efficiency gains. “Technology can help us to consume more efficiently, i.e. to save energy and resources, but these technological improvements cannot keep pace with our ever-increasing levels of consumption,” Prof Wiedmann says.
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Comedy of the day: In sign of the times, Ayn Rand Institute approved for PPP loan
The institute promoting the “laissez-faire capitalism” of writer Ayn Rand, who in the novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” introduced her philosophy of “objectivism” to millions of readers, was approved for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan of up to $1 million, according to data released Monday by the Trump administration. The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism in Santa Ana, California, sought to preserve 35 jobs with the PPP funding, according to the data.
