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Europe’s Golden Eleventh Hour
In true EU fashion, a compromise solution is taking shape for member states unable to power up their economy for the post-corona recovery. French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel have proposed the creation of a €500 billion
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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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ISID, McGill University: Updating the DFIs’ Operating Models to Achieve the UN 2030 SDG Agenda
The UN General Assembly set the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) five years ago. The estimated annual amount of investment needed to achieve them is short — by $2.5tn to $3tn. The stakeholders that play a key role in directing and
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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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