Consumer spending in the United States increased to pre-pandemic levels of around $13.4 trillion in the first quarter of 2021 from $13.0 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2020. If the pandemic can be characterised as the economic engine being parked rather than broken, pent up demand could quickly cause consumer spending to overshoot the trend from recent years.
Today is Environment Day and it is time to take stock of how the private sector is contributing to reducing the carbon footprint. Greenhouse gas emissions play an important role in global warming and, although business has long been trying to reduce them through energy efficiency programmes and similar initiatives, the urgency of the climate crisis is raising the bar significantly. In this article Roland Rott, director of La Française Sustainable Investment Research, analyses the real problem in achieving net zero carbon claims.
Luis Alcaide | The world is gradually moving towards a multiple reserve system. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF notes that when the euro made its appearance, the dollar accounted for 71% of foreign exchange reserves. In the last quarter of 2020, dollar reserves held by central banks had fallen to 59%, the lowest share in the last 25 years. The complaints in 1960 from the then French…
According to the prime minister, Marrero, despite the economic opening, “the state enterprise is the main subject of the economy”, and the expansion of activities to non-state forms of management does not lead to a process of privatisation. “There are limits that cannot be exceeded,” he said.
In the first quarter of 2021 cannabis companies raised nearly USD 4.3 billion in debt and equity. Cannabis is making a comeback and enjoying popularity and acceptance it hasn’t seen in thousands of years – but caution is advised.
“At the global level, currently only 22% of carbon is being priced, which is really insufficient,” says climate change strategist Lucian Peppelenbos. “And the average global price of about USD 2/t CO2e is nowhere close to being serious.”
Guy Standing via The Conversation | Wales has become the latest country to explore the idea of a universal basic income, which gives every adult a fixed amount of money, regardless of their employment status.Since COVID-19, there has been a global surge in support too. In the USA, Los Angeles has become the latest city to launch an experiment, and there have been trials in Canada, South Korea and Kenya. In Europe, a poll last year, covering France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, found that more than two-thirds of people were in favour of a basic income.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attend the G7 summit in London next week (4-5 June) with the idea of pushing for agreement on a global minimum corporate tax rate. The US authorities would be willing to accept a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, instead of the 21% they had previously advocated, in order to facilitate the agreement. This US decision may already precipitate an agreement at G7…
According to the Russian economist Kondratieff and his scholars, it is possible to identify five long cycles of growth since the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century, each triggered by the emergence of new technologies. The burning question now is: what will shape the next long wave of growth?
The US has proposed to sign an agreement on a global corporate minimum tax of 21%, with the aim of achieving a fair distribution of taxes between the jurisdictions where multinationals are based and the countries where their clients actually are. Europe’s reaction to the proposal has been positive. The aim is to sign an agreement at the G20 summit in July.