No Quick Recovery for Europe

Just before the weekend, Germany nosedived into a recession after the Statistisches Bundesamt, the country’s statistics bureau, announced a 2.2 percent contraction of GDP over the first three months of 2020. The economy shrank 0.1 percent in Q4 2019. A

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Sobering Words from Fed Chairman Powell

This morning, investors are taking stock after being administered a measure of sobering realism by Jerome H Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank. Exchanges in Asia and Europe opened on a low and showed little oomph as the

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Carmakers Running on Fumes

French car manufacturer Renault can be bought for a mere €5.7 billion, a trifling sum in an environment defined by trillions gushing from central banks and state coffers to troubled businesses. Already before the pandemic hit, the company was suffering.

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Otaviano Canuto: Shapes of the Post-Coronavirus Economic Recovery

Data recently released on the first-quarter global domestic product (GDP) performance of major economies have showed how significant the impact of COVID-19 has been on economic activity and jobs, with large contractions across the board. The ongoing global recession is

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Caught in a Bind: Tax Avoiders Excluded from Corona Relief Funds

Consider a company that has furloughed a quarter of its workforce, and now intends to fire these 1,100 workers, all the while screaming for the UK government to throw it a £150 million lifeline yet unwilling to scrap a £267

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A Famine of ‘Biblical Proportion’

The worst humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II. That is how World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley described the impact of the corona pandemic on vulnerable people in countries suffering war and drought. According to

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Optimism in the Face of Disaster

Xavier Becerra Don’t apply for benefits, ask for a job. US unemployment centres are now hiring. In a single month, a virus invisible to the naked eye has wiped out a decade’s worth of job creation. In April, more than

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A Troubling Edict from Karlsruhe

The European Union is facing the sharpest contraction of economic output since its founding in 1957. This year, the EU’s GDP is set to shrink by 7.4 percent. The steepest declines occur along the northern rim of the Mediterranean in

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Private Equity Takes Care of Its Own

The creativity displayed by private equity fund managers when snapping up companies and squeezing out profits has apparently evaporated into thin air. The industry claims to have no clue how to help the companies sitting on its books. Most of

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Schalke 04 Fighting for Its Life and Soul

Ausgliederung. What wrecked the deep emotional bond between British football fans and their club is now coming to Germany: The privatisation of the beautiful game. Diehard supporters would probably prefer to describe the trend as a ‘corporate sell-out’ that changed

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