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☆ Britain Shakes Off Recession as Economy Grows Faster Than Expected
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-10 | by ( Eshe Nelson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the first three months of the year, economic growth was driven by the services sector, which expanded for the first time in a year, statistics agency said. Transport services, legal services and scientific research all grew strongly, but services that include hotels and restaurants fell slightly, and the construction sector contracted sharply. per person grew 0.4 percent in the first quarter, following seven consecutive quarters of decline. Some sectors like professional services and technology have been doing well, but others like hospitality have struggled, she said. Household spending, adjusted for inflation, grew 0.2 percent, following two quarters of declines, the statistics agency said.

Persons: ”, Tera Allas, Ms, Allas Organizations: Transport Locations: McKinsey’s Britain, Ireland

☆ America Is Writing Checks That Mere Optimism Won’t Cover - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Interest rates have risen. According to The Wall Street Journal, America is expected to spend $870 billion, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product, this year on interest payments on the federal debt. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government will spend more on interest payments than on the entire defense budget. When money is tight, as it is now, government borrowing competes with private borrowing, driving interest rates up for everybody. ratio results in an increase in interest rates of two-tenths to three-tenths of a percentage point.

Organizations: Wall Street Journal, Federal Budget, Social Security Locations: America

☆ Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-03 | by ( Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine. It’s a messy patchwork that has been assembled over decades, and is held together with the digital equivalent of Scotch tape and bubble gum. Last week, one of those programmers may have saved the internet from huge trouble. Recently, while doing some routine maintenance, Mr. Freund inadvertently found a backdoor hidden in a piece of software that is part of the Linux operating system. The backdoor was a possible prelude to a major cyberattack that experts say could have caused enormous damage, if it had succeeded.

Persons: Andres Freund, He’s, Freund Organizations: Microsoft, Linux Locations: San Francisco

Politicians and auto executives on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for more protectionist measures. After Tesla lost its crown to BYD as the world’s biggest E.V. Otherwise, the Tesla C.E.O. said, Chinese E.V. The continent’s auto sector employs 13 million people and generates 8 percent of the bloc’s G.D.P.

Persons: China Tesla, —, Warren Buffett, Tesla, Elon Musk, ” Luca de Meo, Vivienne Walt, DealBook, ”, June’s E.U Organizations: Renault Group’s, Airbus Locations: China, Europe, June’s

☆ Russia’s Brutal War Calculus
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-24 | by ( Paul Sonne | Josh Holder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +7 min

Russia’s Brutal War Calculus Freedoms Wages The costs of two years of war in Ukraine have been enormous. Here is a look at how Russia at war has changed — suffering enormous costs by some metrics but faring better than expected by others. But Mr. Putin has convinced many that in invading Ukraine, Russia is defending itself against an existential threat from the West. Blood and TreasureIn the early months of the war, Mr. Putin’s military made grave mistakes, but it has regrouped. But despite their stated support for the war, many Russians would be happy for it to end.

Persons: languish, Instagram, Vladimir Putin, Putin, ”, “, Putin’s, Aleksei A, Navalny Organizations: Daily Life People, Facebook, Travel, Trade, Russia, Military Locations: Ukraine, Russia, China, Soviet Union, India, Moscow, Europe, Turkey, Ukrainian

☆ U.K. Economy Shrank as 2023 Ended, Tipping Into Recession
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-15 | by ( Eshe Nelson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Why It Matters: Little or no economic growth. Other Economic Data: Inflation stuck at 4 percent in January. report was the last in a trio of key economic data about the British economy published this week. On Tuesday, the nation’s statistics office reintroduced official estimates for unemployment and other labor market measures after a four-month hiatus because of difficulties collecting data. It showed that the labor market was tighter than previously thought, with the unemployment rate at 3.8 percent at the end of last year.

Persons: Rishi Sunak, Thursday’s G.D.P Locations: Britain, United States

☆ U.S. Economy Grew at 3.3% Rate in Latest Quarter
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-25 | by ( Ben Casselman | More About Ben Casselman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The U.S. economy continued to grow at a healthy pace at the end of 2023, capping a year in which unemployment remained low, inflation cooled and a widely predicted recession never materialized. Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was down from the 4.9 percent rate in the third quarter but easily topped forecasters’ expectations and showed the resilience of the recovery from the pandemic’s economic upheaval. Instead, growth accelerated: For the full year, measured from the end of 2022 to the end of 2023, G.D.P. (A different measure, based on average output over the full year, showed annual growth of 2.5 percent in 2023.)

Organizations: Gross, Commerce Department Locations: U.S, G.D.P

☆ Opinion | China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Paul Krugman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Many economists (though not me) argued that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment; instead, we’ve experienced immaculate disinflation, rapidly falling inflation at no visible cost. But the story has been very different in the world’s biggest economy (or second biggest — it depends on the measure). Instead, China has underperformed by just about every economic indicator other than official G.D.P., which supposedly grew by 5.2 percent. Democratic nations like the United States rarely politicize their economic statistics — although ask me again if Donald Trump returns to office — but authoritarian regimes often do. Even the official statistics say that China is experiencing Japan-style deflation and high youth unemployment.

Persons: we’ve, Donald Trump, It’s Organizations: Democratic Locations: U.S, China, United States, Japan

☆ It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (for the Economy)
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Ella Koeze | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

This shows inflation-adjusted monthly retail spending for the past three decades. You can see the pattern even more clearly by looking at each month’s spending as a percentage of the yearly total. In the midst of the Great Recession, people cut back on nonessential holiday spending, and end-of-the-year purchases took a significant hit. This seasonal trend is robust enough that it’s visible in our economy beyond just end-of-the-year retail shopping and food. Americans’ ability to spend their way through the darkest months of the year is a key component in the health of the economy.

Organizations: ust

☆ A Major Economic Challenge
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There is one change, so simple it can be described in just six words, that could lift millions of people out of poverty and expand the world’s fifth-largest economy: Get more Indian women paid jobs. In many other countries, female labor-force participation has propelled economic growth. But India has one of the world’s lowest rates of formal employment for women. The percentage of women doing paid work has dropped sharply in recent years. Much of the country’s recent economic growth has been concentrated in small, family-owned firms that employ few outsiders.

Persons: ”, Shrayana Bhattacharya Organizations: World Bank Locations: India, China, “

☆ Opinion | I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-18 | by ( Kate Marvel | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every four years or so. But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too. I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report.

Persons: I’m Organizations: United Nations, Renewables Locations: United States

☆ Why Great G.D.P. Growth Isn’t Good Enough for Bidenomics - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-16 | by ( Karen Petrou | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Bidenomics’ mortal enemy isn’t Donald Trump — it’s a reliance on aggregate and average numbers that masks the nature of the economy Americans experience. Although the Fed’s most recent Survey of Consumer Finances showed that wealth inequality has dipped a bit because of recent, generous fiscal spending, income inequality is worse than ever. In a nation this unequal, the income generated by a growing G.D.P. may look robust, but 64 percent of households live paycheck to paycheck from time to time, according to a March consumer survey. These families are barely making it through the week, let alone accumulating the wealth essential for financial resilience and, over time, financial security.

Persons: Donald Trump — Organizations: Consumer Finances, White, Harris Locations: United States

☆ What Long-Term Care Looks Like Around the World
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-14 | by ( Jordan Rau | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Provinces and territories fund long-term care services through general tax revenue. Notably, Canada’s long-term care system is separate from its national health care system, which pays for hospitals and doctors with no out-of-pocket costs to patients. on long-term care, 80 percent more than the United States spent. Britain has also taken steps to shield people from losing all of their wealth to pay for long-term care. Singapore recently instituted a system of mandatory long-term care insurance for those born in 1980 or later.

Persons: D.P., 🇸 🇬, ove, —, Kath l Organizations: Uni, pla, Citi, emi Locations: D. data, nis

☆ U.K. Economy Stagnates as High Interest Rates Take Toll
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-10 | by ( Eshe Nelson | More About Eshe Nelson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

The services sector contracted last quarter as the highest interest rates since 2008 have weighed on the housing industry. Britain’s weak economy mirrors the stagnation in Europe, where eurozone economies contracted 0.1 percent in the third quarter. Across the region, high interest rates intended to drive down inflation are weakening economic activity, with demand for loans dropping and consumer spending slowing. This contrasts with the United States, where the economy is growing strongly and defying expectations for a slowdown prompted by high interest rates. This weak outlook is driven by high interest rates, which are expected to have an increasingly heavy toll on the economy.

Persons: ”, Stephen Millard, Jeremy Hunt, Hunt Organizations: Bank of England, National Institute of Economic, Social Research Locations: Europe, United States, Germany

☆ Opinion | Why Voters Are So Down on the Biden Economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Peter Coy | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

When she thinks about the direction of the country right now, what she’s most worried about is the economy. On diabetic medication, for example, there’s actually good news. But the part I want to focus on is what Sara and other Americans who aren’t economists mean when they use terms like economy, inflation and unemployment. It’s often not what economists mean. Ask a macroeconomist how the economy is doing and you might get a number, such as 4.9, which is the percentage increase in G.D.P.

Persons: Sara, Donald Trump, they’re, there’s, Lilly, It’s, Biden Organizations: Republican, Washington , D.C, Trump, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi Locations: South Carolina, Washington ,, G.D.P

☆ Israel Is in Crisis. These Authors See Reason for Hope.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-01 | by ( Ethan Bronner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The citizens’ faith in their political leader, a prime minister charged with bribery and fraud, was plummeting even before the attack. The answer: a mix of risk-taking newcomers and the culture of innovation fostered among young Israelis by their mandatory military service. “Israel has been exposed to constant trauma,” the authors write, and yet the country has some of the lowest rates of alcohol abuse, opioid death and suicide in the world. Israel’s citizens also consistently rank among the happiest on the planet. They have long lives and produce, far and away, the most children per family of any rich country.

Persons: Dan Senor, Saul Singer, Israel, Singer, Israel’s, “ Organizations: Jerusalem, “, Nasdaq Locations: United States, Britain, France, Japan, “ Israel, Canada

☆ Opinion | What Happened to the American Dream?
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Ross Douthat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

number — third-quarter growth at a 4.9 percent rate — coexists with data showing disposable personal income actually dipping just a bit, suggesting that the post-Covid stagnation in real earnings hasn’t fully broken yet.) Whereas the Trump era was less complicated: For a few short years, the American economy performed in ways Americans once took for granted, closer to the long post-World War II boom than to the decades of recession-punctuated deceleration we’ve experienced since the 1970s. Lately, I’ve been reading a portrait of that long age of disappointment — “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream,” a new book by my Times colleague and former podcast sparring partner David Leonhardt. The book’s argument belongs to a genre, reconsiderations of neoliberalism, that’s somewhat familiar by now but is usually more narrowly polemical, where my colleague offers sweep and detail and depth of historical narrative. And the genre’s entries usually come from predictable “outsider” ideological perspectives, from the far left or lately the populist right, assailing the neoliberal age in the voice of its traditional enemies.

Persons: Donald Trump, Trump, Covid, Trump’s, they’ve, I’ve, —, David Leonhardt, It’s, Leonhardt, Wright Mills, Robert Bork, Barbara Jordan, that’s Organizations: White House, Biden, Times

☆ The Restaurant Industry Is Undergoing a Badly Needed Revolution - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( Anthony Strong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I eventually struck out on my own, deciding to play it safe by opening a restaurant with a normal business model. in the United States but has been stuck in a deeply flawed business model with sadly outdated practices. It was also emptying grocery shelves; a friend asked to buy three flats of eggs. My egg friend also desperately needed paper towels, since evidently grocery stores were out of those, too. I took his order, took this as a sign and flipped our space into a general store.

Persons: affordably Locations: United States

☆ Longer Commutes, Shorter Lives: The Costs of Not Investing in America
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( David Leonhardt | More About David Leonhardt | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The stagnation of investment does not stem only from the size of government. But the United States has effectively starved programs focused on the future at the expense of those focused on the present. For decades, incomes and wealth have grown more slowly than the economy for every group other than the very rich. Net worth for the typical family shrank during the first two decades of the 21st century, after adjusting for inflation. The trends in many noneconomic measures of well-being are even worse: In 1980, life expectancy in the United States was typical for an industrialized country.

Persons: Eugene Steuerle, “, —, Biden, Eisenhower Organizations: Republicans, Democrats, Social Security, Urban Institute, Democrat, Republican, Republican Party Locations: United States, Washington, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Greece, China

Goldman Sachs economists have estimated that a shutdown would reduce growth by about 0.2 percentage points for each week it lasts. But the Goldman researchers expect growth to increase by the same amount in the quarter after the shutdown as federal work rebounded and furloughed employees received back pay. That estimate tracks with previous work from economists at the Fed, on Wall Street and prior presidential administrations. Trump administration economists calculated that a monthlong shutdown in 2019 reduced growth by 0.13 percentage points per week. Because growth and confidence tend to snap back, previous shutdowns have left few permanent scars on the economy.

Persons: Gregory Daco, ” Biden, Goldman Sachs, Goldman, Trump Organizations: Administration, shutdowns, Congressional, Office Locations: EY

☆ What Happens When Global Human Population Peaks? - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-18 | by ( Dean Spears | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +13 min

Over the past 100 years, the global population quadrupled, from two billion to eight billion. Some will inexcusably claim that restricting reproductive choice is a way to curb long-run population decline. If an inclusive, compassionate response to population decline emerges someday, it need not be in conflict with those values. It’s in no one’s hands to change global population trajectories alone. Six decades from now is when the U.N. projects the size of the world population will peak.

Persons: demographers, Wittgenstein, Spears, Grandma, humanity’s, They’ve, birthrates, everyone’s, It’s, it’s Organizations: Human, The Institute for Health Metrics, University of Washington, University of Texas, Population Research, New York Times, White, won’t Locations: Vienna, Austin, United States, Europe, East Asia, Latin America, Guinea, Africa, China, Brazil, India, birthrates, Chile, Thailand, Canada, Germany, Japan, Saharan Africa, Israel

The earthquake that struck Morocco on Friday night hit near Marrakesh, a popular tourist destination, sending both residents and visitors scrambling for safety. “We didn’t know if we had to stand up, to sit down, to run,” Mr. Ait Chari said. Ms. Lorang and hundreds of others found refuge in a courtyard, where some brought out rugs and blankets to sleep. “It was very chaotic.”Mr. Ait Chari, the tour guide, said he was supposed to pick up more clients on Sunday but was unsure flights would be maintained. Many people were still in shock, he said, but there had also been “great solidarity,” as residents cleared roads.

Persons: “, Jen Lorang, ” Ms, Lorang, “ I’ve, Mr, Ait, ”, Jean, Baptiste Guinet Organizations: Big, ”, UNESCO, Heritage, Tourism, Organization for Economic Cooperation, Development Locations: Morocco, Marrakesh, Ait Chari, Massachusetts, Seattle, San Francisco, ” Morocco, Agadir, ”, Taroudant

A Huge Threat to the U.S. Budget Has Receded. For decades, runaway Medicare spending was the story of the federal budget. Budget news often sounds apocalyptic, but the Medicare trend has been unexpectedly good for federal spending, saving taxpayers a huge amount relative to projections. In a recent letter to the Senate Budget Committee, economists at the Congressional Budget Office described the huge reductions in its Medicare forecasts between 2010 and 2020. Medicare is growing more slowly than ever, but still more quickly than the rest of the federal budget.

Persons: Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, that’s, ”, David Cutler, Cutler, haven’t, I’ve, Melinda Buntin, Buntin, Simpson, Bowles, aren’t, Trump, Joshua Gordon, Mitt Romney’s, “, Sherry Glied Organizations: Medicare, ”, U.S, Budget, Harvard, Obama, Affordable, Senate, Congressional, New York Times, Office, White, Office of Management, Johns Hopkins, Social Security, Congress, Federal, Veterans, NASA, Wagner School Locations: Iraq, Afghanistan, N.Y.U, Washington

☆ Opinion | What Can Replace China as a Global Economic Engine?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-23 | by ( David Wallace-Wells | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

To an extent that few Americans genuinely appreciate, global growth has been powered by the so-called Chinese miracle for almost half a century now. grew by 30 percent and China’s by 263 percent — China accounted for more than 40 percent of all global growth. If you excluded China from the data, global G.D.P. In 1992, China’s G.D.P. Quite likely not somewhere great, even if the world’s great powers manage to avoid direct conflict.

Persons: —, China’s, David Oks, Henry Williams, Ricardo Hausmann, Tim Sahay, Narendra Modi Organizations: World Bank, Harvard Kennedy School Locations: China, Asia, United States, India

The renewed discussion hasn’t done much to revive the prospects of Japan’s own Communist Party, however. Mr. Saito is not a fan of the group, which he sees as well-meaning but stale. And even in rich nations, he does not call for people to give up their creature comforts. He recently moved into a three-story home in an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of Tokyo and drives a compact Toyota. Achieving degrowth communism, he believes, is less about personal choices and more about changing overarching political and economic structures.

Persons: Saito, Mahbub ul Haq Organizations: Communist Party, Chinese Communist Party, Toyota, United Nations Locations: Soviet Union, Tokyo, G.D.P

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