What if I told you that there was a period in history where oil demand declined by 5 million barrels per day and non-OPEC supply increased by 5 million barrels per day, yet oil price rallied more than 50 percent? Would you believe me? If your answer is yes, then you guessed right. This was the period from 1979 to 1985.
If the UK government’s ability to deliver its childhood obesity strategy reflected the significance of the issue, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was not a big deal. Quite the opposite. As a health select committee report reminds us:
Treating obesity and its consequences is currently estimated to cost the NHS £5.1 billion every year. It is one of the risk factors for type 2 diabetes, which accounts for spending of £8.8 billion a year, almost 9% of the NHS budget.
Back in the early 1980s, when I started researching the field of careers, the notion of “work-life balance” was decidedly embryonic. It certainly had almost no resonance among women, who were still expected to work both at work and at home. Now it’s an acknowledged part of the zeitgeist and central to how we arrange our lives.
Seeing greater challenges for the energy sector, investment banks are starting to cut off credit to oil producers.
JPMorgan, a U.S.-based investment bank, announced it would limit credit availability to energy firms by cutting their credit lines by about 15% to 20%, on average. JP Morgan commercial bank head, Doug Petno, said at an investor conference that some energy firms might see even less access to cash in the coming months. “Some [credit lines] may go down by 50 percent,” he said.
This is a financial cold war—nothing more, nothing less.
While there are billions of reasons to cut output, and every major producing country is reeling from the loss of revenues, some are weathering the current bust better than others are, but the devil is in the details, and the details contain tons of variables.
Production cost and breakeven figures that analysts enjoy bandying can trap you in bubble of black-and-white mathematics that is a few brush-strokes shy of a full picture.
Plans have been afoot for a new sports newspaper for Scotland. The proposed paper would be weekly and big names such as tennis coach Judy Murray and football pundit Pat Nevin signed up as columnists. All it requires is £50,000 in crowdfunding pledges by February 25 and the first copy will drop in May. Developed by a group of Scottish journalists and fronted by media news site AllMediaScotland, those who pledge money would be rewarded with the first edition of the paper.
We will soon get a much closer look at the gender pay gap in Britain. Around 8,000 companies with more than 250 employees will have to publish details of salaries received by men and women by 2018. However, will this legislation help to close the gap?
The focus of debates about social media is increasingly about the risks involved with its use. This is particularly true when it comes to large companies. Combined with the use of smartphones, social media is, for many, blurring the lines between work and private life in ways that are legally complex and difficult to control.
The social media transformation has accelerated to the point where companies need to find the balance between allowing freedom of expression on one hand, and exercising some control on the other.
Apple has been ordered to help FBI investigators access data on the phone belonging to San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook. The technical solution proposed by the FBI appears to undermine Apple’s earlier claim that they would be unable to help.
However, in a strongly worded reply, Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that Apple is unwilling to comply with this order, as it would do irreparable damage to all iPhone owners’ security and privacy.
Slowing growth in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) – the world’s second largest economy – is grabbing the headlines with some suggesting a third wave of the 2008 global financial crisis. While this topic deserves attention because of its global economic implications, there is insufficient analysis of firms in global production networks (GPNs), which were at the forefront of the economic transformation in PRC and the rest of East Asia, and lessons for latecomers to GPNs.
