Archives of “Humans” tag

rss

Germany’s Scholz: Don’t expect a massive lockdown even if second virus wave comes

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #  #

Comments by German finance minister, Olaf Scholz

  • We still have fiscal room to do more in case of second virus wave

I’ve made mention to this a few times already. For all countries around the world, the threshold to reinforce such strict lockdown measures back in March to April may only happen if the secondary outbreak threatens to be much, much worse than the initial one.

Otherwise, it is going to be the case of putting the fire out whenever there is one because the economic and social damage is just too heavy a burden to bear for governments.
The issue with the initial lockdown measures is that once they committed to it, they have to stick it all the way through if not it would have been for naught. Not to mention that there was a case in point when looking at China and the political pressures were overbearing.
Going out to four to five years from now, you can expect the next set of lawmakers to deem all these lockdown measures as being a big mistake in their political campaigning.

Germany’s daily coronavirus case count has nearly tripled – harsh lockdowns may be reintroduced

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #

Justin updates the German count each day, and its getting ugly again.

In brief:
  • Germany reported 933 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday
  • That is just about 3 times as many as the day before (admittedly coming off a weekend the numbers can be skewed)
  • rising figure comes 6 days after the country reopened shops, some schools
  • Germany’s “R” rate has  climbed above 1 for the past 3 days (see below for what R is)
Authorities are considering reintroducing lockdown measures
  • Trigger for this is if there are more than 50 cases per 100,000 people
Watch this not just in German, but other countries. Yesterday I posted on a rise in cases in South Korea:
  • Coronavirus – South Korea seeing a cluster infection linked to clubs and bars in Seoul
—
R rate of 1 means that on average an infected person infects one other
Above 1 means that the outbreak is worsening
Justin updates the German count each day, and its getting ugly again.

France plans to hand out €1,500 to small independent workers

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Comments by French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire

  • Calls on workers who can, to keep working
So far, there are a lot of big plans touted by governments across the globe to try and tackle the economic fallout from the virus outbreak but how effective is the execution and transmission of all this remains to be seen.

Coronavirus outbreak – World Bank initial package of up to $12bn in immediate support

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #

COVID-19 outbreak has hit >60 countries

World Bank announce:
  • making available an initial package of immediate support to assist countries coping with the health and economic impacts
  • new fast track package
  • financial package will be globally coordinated
  • will make available initial crisis resources of up to $12 billion in financing – $8 billion of which is new – on a fast track basis.
More at that link above

Think it’s too late? The world’s greatest fund manager didn’t make money until he was 52

  
Analysis, Education
#  #  #  #  #  #

Jim Simons had modest wealth at 52; now he’s worth $23 billion

Jim Simons
Financial markets — and risk taking in general — are largely the domain of the young. Early adulthood is the time to swing for the fences while middle age is a time for prudence, perhaps risking a manageable part of the nest egg.
Yet that’s not always true. It’s particularly untrue of some of the world’s greatest investors.
Among them is Jim Simons, the king of quants. Yesterday Gregory Zuckerman published “The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution.”
It details how a 40-year old math professor walked away from a job at Stony Brook University to try trading currencies. He had no idea what he was doing but raised $4 million with a few partners. He recruited renowned mathematicians to help him. It didn’t work and losses topped $1 million.
“If you make money, you feel like a genius,” he told a friend. “If you lose, you’re a dope.”
He gathered more data and persevered through the 1980s with a mixed record. In 1989 he lost 4%.
Finally, Simons along with recently recruited colleagues Henry Laufer and Elwyn Berlekamp, started to focus on short-term patterns — Monday’s price action often followed Friday’s, while Tuesday saw reversions to earlier trends.
It worked and the Medallion fund gained 55.9% in 1990. It hasn’t stopped. His fund as generated average returns of 66%, racking up gains of $100 billion. No other fund or manager is even close. A $10,000 investment 30 years ago excluding fees would be worth $40 billion today. Even after fees, it would be worth $195 million.
How the fund makes money is one of the world’s most-closely guarded secrets but it’s story isn’t. Simonds certainly had mathematical talents but he know almost nothing about markets when he started out at age 40 and managed to amass one of the world’s great fortunes.

France’s Le Maire: There is a glimmer of hope for a Brexit deal

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Comments by French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire

  • Reiterates that it is more preferable to have a Brexit deal than no-deal
  • Will have to see what concessions have been made in Brexit negotiations
  • Red line remains the importance of protecting European single market
Nothing that really stands out here from Le Maire but for now, we could be still headed towards some form of draft deal ahead of the summit tomorrow.
That said, it remains to be seen whether or not the deal will fly with the UK parliament. I reckon that’s more of the spot to watch rather than how things will play out with the EU.

India’s worst-kept secrets, told by Rajan

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Raghuram RajanFormer Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan has said that people in authority have to tolerate criticism and that any move to suppress it “is a sure fire recipe for policy mistakes”.

“What makes India strong is its diversity, debate and tolerance. What makes it weak is narrow-mindedness, obscurantism and divisiveness,” Rajan said in a long LinkedIn post on Monday, two days ahead of the 150th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation.

He said governments that suppress public criticism do themselves a gross disservice.

“If every critic gets a phone call from a government functionary asking them to back off, or gets targeted by the ruling party’s troll army, many will tone down their criticism. The government will then live in a pleasant make-believe environment, until the harsh truth can no longer be denied,” he said.

“Undoubtedly, some of the criticism, including in the press, is ill-informed, motivated, and descends into ad-hominem personal attacks. I have certainly had my share of those in past jobs. However, suppressing criticism is a sure fire recipe for policy mistakes,” he added.

Last week, the Narendra Modi government had removed Rathin Roy and Shamika Ravi from the economic advisory council to the Prime Minister. Both had criticised some of the government’s policies. (more…)

China state media on the US’ “utile trade war” – stop acting as a “school bully”

  
Analysis, Politics
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Xinhua News Agency the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China urges Washington to start learning at least four lessons from their futile trade war with China

You can click the link here for the four lessons if you like, but in brief its not a conciliatory piece. Some snippets:
  • China is an unbent nail in face of U.S. tactic of maximum pressure
  • China’s determination to fight against the U.S. economic warmongering has only grown stronger
  • their trade war is hurting the American people and businesses
  • the United States should learn how to behave like a responsible global power and stop acting as a “school bully.”
Finishes with a dig at the guy with the little red hat:
  • Only then can America become great again.

12 ways the world could end

  
Analysis, Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Since the dawn of civilisation people have speculated about apocalyptic bangs and whimpers that could wipe us out. Now a team from Oxford university’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Challenges Foundation has come up with the first serious scientific assessment of the gravest risks we face.

Although civilisation has ended many times in popular fiction, the issue has been almost entirely ignored by governments. “We were surprised to find that no one else had compiled a list of global risks with impacts that, for all practical purposes, can be called infinite,” says co-author Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenges Foundation. “We don’t want to be accused of scaremongering but we want to get policy makers talking.”

The report itself says: “This is a scientific assessment about the possibility of oblivion, certainly, but even more it is a call for action based on the assumption that humanity is able to rise to challenges and turn them into opportunities. We are confronted with possibly the greatest challenge ever and our response needs to match this through global collaboration in new and innovative ways.”

There is, of course, room for debate about risks that are included or left out of the list. I would have added an intense blast of radiation from space, either a super-eruption from the sun or a gamma-ray burst from an exploding star in our region of the galaxy. And I would have included a sci-fi-style threat from an alien civilisation either invading or, more likely, sending a catastrophically destabilising message from an extrasolar planet. Both are, I suspect, more probable than a supervolcano.

But the 12 risks in the report are enough to be getting on with. A few of the existential threats are “exogenic”, arising from events beyond our control, such as asteroid impact. Most emerge from human economic and technological development. Three (synthetic biology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence) result from dual-use technologies, which promise great benefits for society, including reducing other risks such as climate change and pandemics — but could go horribly wrong.

Assessing the risks is very complex because of the interconnections between them and the probabilities given in the report are very conservative. For instance, extreme global warming could trigger ecological collapse and a failure of global governance.

The authors do not attempt to pull their 12 together and come up with an overall probability of civilisation ending within the next 100 years but Stuart Armstrong of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute says: “Putting the risk of extinction below 5 per cent would be wildly overconfident.” (more…)

Go to top