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Category: Economy (Page 7 of 21)
UN »
Last year global public debt reached a record $92 trillion, of which developing countries shoulder 30 per cent – a “disproportionate amount”, the UN chief stressed.
He warned that 3.3 billion people suffer from their governments’ need to prioritize debt interest payments over “essential investments” in the Sustainable Development Goals or the energy transition.
“And yet, because these unsustainable debts are concentrated in poor countries, they are not judged to pose a systemic risk to the global financial system,” the UN Secretary-General added.
Inflation (mostly driven by corporations looking to increase profits off the backs of their customers) is starting to have a significant impact on spending.
Despite surging inflation, shoppers kept spending thanks to income gains and government stimulus. But those benefits are waning, and now Americans are skimping, even on everyday items such as toilet paper and toothpaste. More insights on the economic environment come on Wednesday with the release June’s consumer price index. That measure is anticipated to show annual inflation slowed to 3.1%, its lowest level since March 2021.
“The strains that the consumer is under have been exacerbated over the last couple of months,” said Morningstar analyst Erin Lash. The reduction of food assistance programs, lower tax returns and using up extra savings and stimulus funds have an impact, she said.
Bloomberg »
It’s a scene that is steadily being replicated all over the Nordic country, offering a glimpse of what may be in store for drivers the world over in the years ahead.
When it comes to electric vehicles, Norway is very much a trailblazer. It has moved much more rapidly away from the internal combustion engine than its neighbors thanks to generous tax breaks and incentives, which made Tesla Inc.’s battery-powered Model Y cost competitive with a gasoline-burning Toyota Motor Corp. RAV4.
Most countries can’t afford to move quite as fast as wealthy Norway — the nation’s government estimates that various supports measures cost it some $1.8 billion annually in lost revenue. But the International Energy Agency says the rest of the world is going in the same direction, bringing peak oil demand before the end of the decade.
Quartz »
Biden’s wind power goals, by the digits
- 380,000: Homes the Ocean Wind 1 project can power with its energy, according to the interior department
- 3,000: “Good-paying” jobs the New Jersey project will generate “through development and a three-year construction cycle,” the federal agency said
- 98: The number of wind turbine generators the Ocean Wind 1 project has permission to construct, according to the Record of Decision (ROD) documents. Additionally, it can build three offshore substations within its lease area
- $695 million: How much Ørsted expects to spend on the Ocean Wind 1 project in New Jersey. It has some federal help—the New Jersey legislature narrowly approved a bill last week to let Ørsted keep federal tax credits to insulate it from rising costs due to inflation and the covid-19 pandemic hangover
- 30 gigawatts (GW): President Biden’s offshore wind power generation goal by 2030, which will power 10 million homes, and create 77,000 jobs
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California and Canada must absolutely not give in to the tech giants’ tantrum. This is a bluff, and not a particularly convincing one. For the sake of the beleaguered news industries in both places (yes, including this media outlet), the Canadian and Californian governments must absolutely call it.
For assurance, we should look to Australia, where a like-minded bill went into law in 2021, even after Google and Facebook made the same exact threats. Facebook did initially restrict access to news, but the ploy lasted barely a week before it backfired wildly, and Facebook agreed to comply, albeit after extracting some concessions.
That bill has already restored tens of millions of dollars in revenue to Australia’s troubled newsrooms, and, while far from perfect, has transformed the media environment dramatically.