Category: Personal Finance

The country’s extraordinary economic vigour keeps the threat alive Source link

Ensconced in a lorry, hidden from the enemy by the brow of a hill, the young Robert Solow decoded the radio signals of Nazi platoons across Italy. “We were very, very good at it,” he said. The trick was to get close to the enemy but not too close: near enough to pick up their […]

It is the first trading day of the year. The stockmarket opens a whisker away from an all-time high. American equities have soared over the past 12 months, up by around 25%, with a handful of technology giants leading the charge. There is a big move in the share price of Apple, the world’s most […]

What it would take for another bout of mayhem Source link

Many economists believe that generative artificial intelligence (AI) is about to transform the global economy. A paper published last year by Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu of Epoch, a research firm, argues that “explosive growth”, with gdp zooming upwards, is “plausible with ai capable of broadly substituting for human labour”. Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University […]

China’s leaders are obsessed with lithium-ion batteries, electric cars and solar panels. These sorts of technologies will, Xi Jinping has proclaimed, become “pillars of the economy”. He is spending big to ensure this happens—meaning, in the years to come, that his ambitions will be felt across the world. A manufacturing export boom could very well […]

In late 2021 Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, called for the retirement of “transitory” as a description for the inflation afflicting America. The word had become a bugbear, having been taken by many to mean that the inflation which had bubbled up early in the year would fade away as supply shortages eased. […]

A new Communist Party slogan was born on January 9th. The phrase, which appeared on the front page of the People’s Daily, a party mouthpiece, defies easy interpretation. A loose translation might read “nine issues that must be grasped”. As is typical of party-speak, it has been abbreviated into a three-syllable catchphrase: jiu ge yi. […]

Disruption in the Suez and Panama canals is prompting concern Source link

As with every skirmish in America’s culture wars, how you view the ousting of Harvard University’s president has much to do with where you are sitting. Claudine Gay resigned on January 2nd. Progressives see her as a competent administrator who, as Harvard’s first black president, was subjected to a smear campaign. Conservatives, meanwhile, spy a […]