The U.S. federal government’s partial shutdown, starting on October 1st, will cost the economy at least $300 million a day in lost output, according to a Bloomberg report, with close to 1 million federal employees now on unpaid leave, while national parks and some government services have all been closed.
Senior bankers at top U.K. financial institutions could be fired, or even sent to jail for up to seven years, if theirs bank fails to meet new stress test requirements proposed by the Bank of England on Tuesday, according to a report by The Telegraph.
The Japanese government has called on local authorities and state-run universities to stop using Google Maps on their websites, after it took issue with the fact that Google had used the non-Japanese names to refer to islands still contested by Japan and their neighbouring countries.
The Indian government is drafting a new law that would make it tougher for foreigners to hire surrogate mothers in the country, according to a Reuters report on Monday, as concerns grow over whether the unregulated industry was exploiting women in poverty.
In the 1920s, Shanghai was THE major centre of international trade and finance in East Asia. The position of the “Pearl of the Orient” though eroded with the turmoil of the 1930s. Shanghai’s new free trade zone however could restore the city’s past glory – with the expected competitive impact to be felt in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The British Pound (GBP) is rallying back toward its highest levels in nearly eight months versus the Dollar (USD), as the September retail sales report showed evidence of strengthening consumer activity in Europe’s third largest economy. This is an important development, mostly because markets are in flux with respect to UK interest rate expectations. Last week, we saw the release of the September meeting minutes from the Bank of England, which showed that members voted unanimously to suspend additional stimulus injections on signs of continued recovery.
Most economists today seem to think we can rely heavily on past patterns to forecast future growth. We however live in a finite world, so that even if growth can go on for a while, there are likely to be barriers at some point. Energy limits for instance could screw up all our growth models.
What will the world economy be like ten years from now? Or fifty years from now? Is it something that we can forecast by looking at the past, assuming that past trends will continue?
China intends to launch its very own orbiting space station by 2023, announced officials at the 64th International Astronautical Congress in Beijing on Thursday, with an initial mission to study the effects of long-term weight loss in space, the effects of radiation on astronauts, in-orbit medical monitoring and the application of traditional Chinese medicine in space.
Once a significant global carbon sink, Indonesia’s tropical peatlands now emit around 1 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, as a result of slash-and-burn techniques to clear land for oil, palm and paper plantations. And while the government has fought hard to address the problems of peatland loss, corruption and lack of enforcement has seen deforestation and carbon emissions continue to rise.
The U.S.-Europe “friendship” helped shape the 20th century; but as Europe becomes increasingly fragmented – while showing greater divergence to American foreign policy, as demonstrated with the Syrian issue – does a strong transatlantic relationship still bear any significance in the 21st century?
