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Tag: feb 1 2022
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THIS WEEK IN SURVEILLANCE
COVID SNITCHING ANOTHER BRICK IN SURVEILLANCE STATE WALL. Cell phones, computers, street cams and drones can’t do everything. Authorities have been promoting “human intelligence” gathering, in the form of people snitching on others, as a means of enforcing COVID dictates. Workers and school attendees have been encouraged to report on violations including mask wearing, and...
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SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
AMAZON MAPS CAMPAIGN TO CONQUER BRICK-AND-MORTAR RETAIL On 18 January, Amazon unveiled the newest iteration of its Go stores: a “multimission” convenience store suitable for the suburbs, with upscale food, possibly with wines and craft beers, and lounges with workstations and USB ports. Customers will need an Amazon app on their phones to enter the...
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SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION
LITHIUM PRICES SOAR ON CHINA’S EV BOOM Lithium prices in China have risen fivefold in the past 12 months on the strength of the country’s electric vehicle boom, Bloomberg reported. The price in China of lithium carbonate, the active ingredient in EV batteries, notched a new record on 17 January, according to data from Asian...
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TURKISH LIRA PAUSES ITS DECLINE; ERDOGAN FIRES STATISTICS CHIEF
The Turkish lira lost about 44 percent of its value against the dollar last year but recently has stabilized after the government unveiled a new savings scheme and the central bank flooded the economy with cash. Under the savings program, the government guarantees to make up any loss to savings accounts’ value due to inflation...
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CHILE HIKES INTEREST RATES MOST IN 20 YEARS
Chile’s central bank raised its overnight interest rate by 1.5 percentage points to 5.5 percent, surprising analysts’ expectations of no more than a 1.25-percent bump. In its December meeting, the bank had indicated that rate increases would be no more than 1.25 percentage points at a time. It was the bank’s biggest rate hike since...
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GLOBAL JUNK BOND MARKETS REELING
The prospect of imminent higher interest rates has spun the world’s junk bond markets into turmoil, with overborrowed companies facing higher costs to refinance debt and other businesses seeking new financing seeing their prospects dim. In the U.S., new sales of high-yield or “junk” bonds have fallen 45 percent, year over year, Bloomberg reported; in...
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FRANCE’S 2021 ECONOMY UP, GERMANY DOWN
France’s GDP expanded by 7 percent last year, topping pre-COVID output as consumer spending drove the economy’s best annual growth in 52 years. In December, the economy grew 0.7 percent above November’s level. “There are still some sectors having trouble, like tourism and hotels, but most are recovering very strongly and that’s creating jobs,” finance...
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EUROZONE’S BUSINESS PACE SLOWS
Business activity in the 19-country Eurozone began this year at its slowest pace since February 2021. IHS Markit’s Eurozone purchasing managers index (PMI), a measure of business activity’s momentum, slowed from 53.3 in December to 52.4 last month, slightly worse than analysts had expected. A score above 50 signals growth, with higher numbers indicating more...
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STOCKS, CRYPTO FACE BUMPY FUTURE, IMF SAYS
Stocks and cryptocurrencies face a more volatile future as the two become increasingly linked and the U.S. Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the International Monetary Fund warned last week. “The Fed needs to tighten financial conditions,” Tobias Adrian, IMF’s director of monetary and capital markets, said in a Yahoo! Finance interview. “That means interest rates...