Doctors at nursing homes across the U.S. have written up questionable diagnoses on elderly patients in order to prescribe antipsychotic drugs that have been referred to for decades as “chemical straitjackets,” according to a feature article in The New York Times. The paper pointed out how many nursing homes across the country are facing a...
Tag: sept 14 2021
Post
BLACKROCK’S CHINA FUND RAISES $1 BILLION
Asset manager Blackrock’s China New Horizons Mixed Securities Investment Fund, the first domestic mutual fund the country’s government has permitted a foreign entity to operate, has raised about 6.68 billion yuan, roughly $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The fund took in 111,000 orders from investors during an initial five-day marketing period earlier...
Post
EXPORTS, FOREIGN DEMAND DRIVE CHINA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH
China’s foreign trade grew 23.7 percent from January through August this year, compared to 2020, to a value equivalent to about $3.4 trillion, according to the country’s General Administration of Customs (GAC). Exports grew 23.2 percent over the period and jumped 25.6 percent in August alone, up from July’s 19.3 percent and zooming past analysts’...
Post
EMERGING MARKETS MULL RATE HIKES
In developing nations, people typically pay a significantly higher portion of their incomes for food staples, such as wheat and cooking oil. Now, with food prices soaring around the world to their highest prices in a decade, according to the Financial Times, those governments face a dilemma: do they raise interest rates to tackle inflation...
Post
HIGH NATURAL GAS PRICES SLOW EUROPE’S RECOVERY
Wholesale natural gas prices across much of Europe are now about five times more than they were in 2019, pushing up consumers’ electric bills in Spain by as much as 40 percent, the Financial Times reported. The price has risen from about $4 per million British thermal units to $18, the FT noted. Soaring prices...
Post
INDIA’S BIGGEST CAR MAKER: PRODUCTION WILL FALL 40 PERCENT
Vehicle production at Maruti Suzuki India, which makes and ships more cars than any other maker on the subcontinent, is likely to fall 40 percent below normal this month because of “a supply constraint of electronic components due to the semiconductor shortage situation,” the company reported in a regulatory filing earlier this month. Maruti expects...
Post
FOOD INDUSTRIES DESPERATE FOR WORKERS
Not only restaurants are having trouble hiring: in many parts of the world, farming and food-processing sectors are finding far fewer workers than they need, Bloomberg reported. Brazil’s coffee growers needed 120 days to close this year’s harvest instead of the usual 90, due to a shortage of pickers; Vietnam has drafted army troops to...
Post
WORLD’S SUPPLY CHAIN SNARLED UNTIL WELL INTO NEXT YEAR
The global supply-chain gridlock—a tangle of materials shortages and transport snarls—will remain unsolved until some time next year, according to manufacturers and transport company executives, Bloomberg reported, as did we in “China Closes Key Port Terminal: Trouble Ahead,” 24 August, 2021. The tangles include: The COVID virus’s Delta variant, which is shutting down production in...
Post
HSBC ENDORSES REMOTE WORK MODEL, SLASHES TRAVEL BUDGET
London-based financial services giant HSBC will permanently cut its corporate travel budget in half and look favorably on requests by as many as 70 percent of its employees to work from home at least some of the time, CEO Noel Quinn told Bloomberg in a 1 September interview. (See “Europe’s Banks Permanently Slash Business Travel,”...
Post
ECB “MODERATELY” REDUCES BOND PURCHASES
The European Central Bank (ECB) will continue its €1.85-trillion bond-buying program at a “moderately lower pace” through the rest of this year, bank president Christine Lagarde said last week, but she reassured markets that this was not a formal reduction in the program, which is due to expire early next year. The move only reverses...