via The Conversation | It is almost too easy to bash Facebook these days. Nearly a third of Americans feel the country’s most popular social media platform is bad for society. As the company approaches its 15th birthday, Americans rate its social benefit as better than Marlboro cigarettes, but worse than McDonald’s.
Shaun Riordan | It now appears obligatory for major companies to issue strategic plans explaining what they will do over the next two or three years, at least in Spain. Market analysts scramble to evaluate them, inventing “objective prices” on the basis of these evaluations. What neither the companies nor the analysts seem to understand is that “strategic plan” is an oxymoron. It is either a plan or it is a strategy. It cannot be both.
Alberto J. Lebrón (Beijing) | The pig, in Chinese culture, has always been a symbol of abundance. Given that the pig is an essential element in their diet – Spain is the country that exports most pork to the China market – explanations abound. But what is significant is that this year of the pig is going to be far less abundant than previous years.
AXA IM outlook for the US economy, which was below consensus back in November, was a herald of subsequent market fears. Since the relationship between the recession risk and the market sell-off goes both ways, the question was whether market events had overtaken the economic outlook and threatened an even sharper slowdown in activity. Now, they have updated our probabilistic model of US recessions.
In addition to the losses from the 34 day US administrative shutdown, which were set at $11 Bn, there are other reasons to expect a less positive tone in the US than the positive current one. For the analysts at Intermoney, the only aspect able to explain this is the so called Powell put whose effect will be temporary. But where does this concept come from?
Last night the US Justice Department announced criminal charges against Chinese telecommunications company Huawei. These focus on the theft of intellectual property from the US and evading US sanctions against Iran. Also the US government has launched a ferocious campaign to persuade allies not to adopt Huawei’s 5G mobile phone technology.
Chandra Roy | The likely catalyst to trigger the widely forecast turn in global stocks is still firmly parked in the ballpark of the US economy, where current general consensus points to a downturn in GDP growth of around 2.5% this year 2019, and close to 2.0% for the next. Leverage loans are made to companies of a risky credit profile, the suitors who have traditionally focused on the issuance of high yield debt in search of funding. Clearly, one to watch out for in the current year.
Athanasius Dimadis and María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés | The United Nations is often criticized for bureaucratic inefficiency. Despite this, it still wields influence in its mission to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the president of the 73rd General Assembly of the UN, has pledged to maintain the institution’s commitment to multilateral relations while proposing crucial reforms more in tune with the “needs and quests” of an ever more connected world.
José Ramón Díez Guijarro (Bankia Estudios) | Economic cycles are inexorable, reflecting the dynamics of economic markets, summed up by Schumpeter as the process of “creative destruction”. After the initial recovery of the expansionary phase comes the tipping point, with growth superior to potential, to later enter in the slowdown phase, in which there is a gradual convergence with trend rhythms of growth and the negative output gap closes.
via The Conversation | New Year’s Day 1999 saw the largest monetary changeover in history. On that date, just 20 years ago, 12 members of the European Union formally adopted a brand-spanking-new currency, the euro. Today seven additional EU member states use it, along with Montenegro, Kosovo, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City. If survival is the ultimate gauge of success, then this grand monetary experiment can be said to have succeeded.