Economics | The Guardian

Incoming Treasury secretary’s speech boosts markets with call on Republicans to back Joe Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus planJanet Yellen, the economist picked by Joe Biden to run the US Treasury, has said America needs to “act big” to revive its flagging economy and protect itself against long-term scarring with a major stimulus package.The former chairman of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, underlined the new administration’s determination to press ahead with plans to boost government spending when she told a Senate committee that the benefits of action by Washington outweighed the costs.Related: Goldman Sachs profits surge; EU car sales in record fall – business live Continue reading...

Environmental issues are biggest danger in coming years, says international organisation

CBI calls for immediate £7.6bn injection from Treasury to help economy through lockdown

Executives from 30 major firms hear about plans for ‘green industrial revolution’

Rapid economic recovery from Covid recession could help ministers avoid increasing taxes, says Jesse NormanA Treasury minister has downplayed the need for immediate tax rises to tackle record levels of government borrowing caused by the coronavirus pandemic.Jesse Norman said a rapid economic recovery from the worst recession for more than three centuries could help ministers avoid increasing the tax take in response to record borrowing levels. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Country was expanding at a faster rate than before the coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2020China’s economy has posted its strongest growth in two years after completing a rapid recovery from the slump caused by the Covid-19 pandemic at the start of 2020.Although the 2.3% annual increase in activity for the world’s second biggest economy was its slowest since 1976, by the final three months of last year China was expanding at a faster rate than before the crisis. Continue reading...

Economically, 2020 was a terrible year for the UK, but the real damage will not be easy to assessNext month it will be official. Figures will provide the first estimate of how much the UK economy shrank by in 2020. Depending on what happened when lockdown restrictions were temporarily eased in December, the likelihood is that there was a fall of about 10%.That will be the signal for all sorts of comparisons. Germany, which has already released data, contracted by 5% last year. Numbers for the US are not yet out but will probably show the world’s biggest economy suffered a 4%-5% drop in gross domestic product. China grew by about 2%.Related: 'How many more lockdowns can we go through?' Bosses on Covid double-dip recession Continue reading...

The new business secretary could come up against cabinet opposition if he takes a stance against employee protectionsTensions inside the cabinet are emerging and the likelihood is that they are going to spark an almighty row about the government’s attitude to business.On one side are the free marketers and authors of Britannia Unchained: the 2012 manifesto for an economy stripped of burdensome regulations. Continue reading...

In El Salvador, violence and murders fell after rivals agreed a non-compete deal, but extortion rates soaredEconomists generally like competition. It helps consumers get a better price if sellers know they could go elsewhere. But economists aren’t usually talking about armed violence or organised crime. So those of you not regularly involved with the mafia should have lots to learn from new research examining competition between El Salvador’s criminal gangs.El Salvador is a dangerous place. The murder rate was 103 per 100,000 people in 2015, in large part due to two competing gangs: Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. But in 2016 they agreed a non-aggression pact, ending competition for territory. As a result, murders fell by almost half. Beyond the violence, the other big cost of gangs is economic, via the extortion payments they rely on, estimated at more than $700m (£515m) a year, or 3% of El Salvador’s GDP. Continue reading...

Peter Turchin, an entomologist-turned-historian, offers insight into the battle between elitesPeter Turchin is not the first entomologist to cross over to human behaviour: during a lecture in 1975, famed biologist E O Wilson had a pitcher of water tipped on him for extrapolating the study of ant social structures to our own.It’s a reaction that Turchin, an expert-on-pine-beetles-turned-data-scientist and modeller, has yet to experience. But his studies at the University of Connecticut into how human societies evolve have lately gained wider currency; in particular, an analysis that interprets worsening social unrest in the 2020s as an intra-elite battle for wealth and status.Related: 'Incited by the president': politicians blame Trump for insurrection on Capitol Hill Continue reading...

Younger employees know what works in the workplace – and that outmoded ways of doing things are bad for our healthA snowflake millennial is tougher than you think, especially in the workplace. They have watched their parents cope with an increasingly insecure jobs market since the turn of the century and in growing numbers told their friends and family that long hours, short term contracts and a shouty boss is not for them.They don’t join trade unions or argue with the boss about a pay rise, though some do. Their confidence – however much they appear to quiver and quake – gives them the steel to quit and search for a different job that comes – they hope – without the debilitating stress that wrecks everyone’s physical and mental health.Stressed millennials that get a doctor’s note are as strong as those that move jobs Continue reading...

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Increased lockdown measures in Germany, France and China dent prospects for rapid recovery in 2021The FTSE 100 has recorded its worst week since late October as concerns increased about the economic fallout from tougher lockdown measures around the world.The index of leading UK company shares ended the week down by 138 points compared with the previous week, a fall of about 2%, at 6,735, after official figures showed the British economy edged closer to a double-dip recession in November. After a strong start to the year, gaining by about 6% since the start of January, the performance was the worst weekly decline for the FTSE 100 since the last week of October as England headed for a second national lockdown. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as UK GDP falls for the first time in six months

Joe Biden inherits dual crises but few people a year ago would have put much money on him becoming president

From Burnley to London, those in hospitality sector tell of pressures they and staff face, and dismay at UK government

More of the economy stayed open, Brexit talks boosted stockpiling and firms are developing some immunity to lockdowns

Second national Covid lockdown in November ends six months of growth but decline not as bad as fearedThe UK economy has edged towards a double-dip recession after official figures confirmed a renewed slump in November fuelled by the second national coronavirus lockdown in England.Related: UK economy shrank 2.6% during November lockdown – business live Continue reading...

Only Joe Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan can create the long-term demand the US economy so badly needsWith the Democrats’ stunning sweep of Georgia’s two Senate run-off elections giving them control of both houses of Congress as of 20 January, the idea of $2,000 stimulus cheques for every household is sure to be back on the agenda in the US. But although targeted relief for the unemployed should unquestionably be a priority, it is not clear that $2,000 cheques for all would in fact help to sustain the US economic recovery.One post-pandemic scenario is a vigorous demand-driven recovery as people gorge on restaurant meals and other pleasures they’ve missed for the past year. Many Americans have ample funds to finance a splurge. Personal savings rates soared following the disbursement of $1,200 cheques last spring. Many recipients now expect to save their recent $600 relief payments, either because they have been spared the worst of the recession or because spending opportunities remain locked down.Related: The US is the new focus of global instability | Nouriel Roubini Continue reading...

Lobby group calls for a new package of financial help as figures expected to confirm a double-dip recession

Manufacturing and ‘decisive’ fiscal action behind smallest anticipated fall in Europe

Fishing industry plunged into crisis as smaller firms face huge post-Brexit obstaclesDeliveries of Scottish seafood to the EU from smaller companies have been halted until Monday, 18 January, after post-Brexit problems with health checks, IT systems and customs documents caused a huge backlog.Scottish fishing has been plunged into crisis, as lorry-loads of live seafood and some fish destined for shops and restaurants in France, Spain and other countries have been rejected because they are taking too long to arrive.Related: Brexit costs and delays push Scottish seafood firms into crisis Continue reading...

Millions of jobs and drastic cuts to already struggling services on the line as health and economic crisis worsensAs the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep across the country state and local governments across the US are bracing for severe economic impacts in 2021 that could force layoffs of government employees and swingeing cuts to services.The last few months have offered a more detailed picture of what the pandemic’s economic recession will look like for state and local governments. While some have been spared the doomsday scenarios predicted at the outset of the pandemic, others have been “savaged”. On the line are millions of jobs and drastic cuts to already struggling services in the midst of a national health and economic crisis that is only getting worse.Related: 'All my plans were ruined': Covid's economic toll on young AmericansThe cutback at the state and local government level really delayed the recovery from the Great Recession Continue reading...

Joseph Rowntree Foundation says lockdowns have hit incomes of those in insecure work the hardestPeople who were trapped in poverty before the pandemic have suffered the most financial damage during the crisis, according to a report warning the government that more support is needed to help hard-pressed families.The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said those who had been struggling to make ends meet before March last year were more likely to work in precarious jobs or sectors of the economy that had been hardest hit by lockdowns.Related: Lives are falling apart. Enough talk about inequality, it’s now time to act | Kenan Malik Continue reading...

Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds ‘guarantees’ value for money spending to rebuild voter trust

The underlying causes of Trump’s rise to power must be addressed, from taming social media to tackling inequalityThe assault on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, incited by the president himself, was the predictable outcome of his four-year-long assault on democratic institutions, aided and abetted by so many in the Republican party. And no one can say that Trump had not warned us: he was not committed to a peaceful transition of power.Many who benefited as he slashed taxes for corporations and the rich, rolled back environmental regulations and appointed business-friendly judges knew they were making a pact with the devil. Either they believed they could control the extremist forces he unleashed, or they didn’t care.Related: Why the Democrats should not impeach Donald Trump | Simon Jenkins Continue reading...

Andrew Bailey says unemployment thought to be over 6% and talks down prospect of negative interest rates

Impact of Covid lockdowns and shifting spending habits result in 0.3% drop from 2019 level

A progressive politics with a strong commitment to family relationships is certainly possible, but needs more detailsSir Keir Starmer’s sincerity when he talks about family is palpable. On Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last year, as in a speech given on Monday, he appeared most animated when speaking of his feelings towards his parents, wife and children. The bonds between generations, and couples, clearly mean a great deal to him, as they do to most people. In 2021 our society is more honest than it used to be about the degree to which such relationships can and do go wrong. But our ties to the people we share our lives with remain, for most of us, an enormously important aspect of who we are.Policies geared towards families have always been part of social democratic politics. The Child Poverty Action Group, one of the charities supported by the 2020 Guardian and Observer appeal, helped persuade Harold Wilson’s Labour government to introduce a new child benefit, paid to mothers, in the 1970s. Under New Labour, the Sure Start programme channelled funding at under-fives as part of a successful effort to reduce child poverty. More recently, the Labour peer Alf Dubs led a campaign to give child refugees the right to be united with family members. Continue reading...

Tougher Covid rules will have impact before vaccine improves outlook, says chancellor

Silvana Tenreyo says negative rates worked elsewhere and would help UK recovery from Covid slumpCutting the UK’s official interest rate below zero would be good for growth and could be done without crippling commercial banks, a Bank of England policymaker has said.Silvana Tenreyro, one of the nine members of Threadneedle Street’s monetary policy committee, said negative rates had worked in other countries and would assist the UK’s recovery from its Covid-19 slump.Related: Is 'hysterical' market speculation pushing us towards another crash? Continue reading...

More than 250,000 small businesses expect to fail in 2021 as state support ‘dwindles’Small businesses and manufacturers are bracing themselves for a fight for survival this year, according to fresh survey data, as they negotiate the twin threats of Covid-19 and weaker post-Brexit trade with the EU.More than 250,000 small firms expect to fold without further government financial support, according to a quarterly poll by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). Continue reading...

QE is fuelling huge speculation with investors trusting central banks will step in if markets diveThere was plenty of bad news in America last week. A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building. The number of new Covid-19 infections hit a record high. Employment fell by 140,000.None of it fazed Wall Street which continued to climb to dizzying new heights. That’s the way with financial markets. When they are in that sort of mood they go up when the news is good and they go up when the news is bad.Related: Is 'hysterical' market speculation pushing us towards another crash?Related: Why global markets appear impervious to bad news Continue reading...

Johnson’s agreement has only managed to save Britain from what would have been a catastrophic economic lockdownDonald Trump’s starring role in the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday marked a fitting end to the courtship of the US president by Boris Johnson. Just think: before the president lost convincingly to Joe Biden, our prime minister – a master of procrastination and prevarication – was holding out for a Trump victory and a world-beating UK-US trade deal, which might well have involved a no-deal Brexit.Johnson enthusiasts tell us what a brilliant tactic it was for the prime minister to take the negotiations with the EU to 11th hour, but the likelihood is that a deal of some sort was only decided on when the US option disappeared. As it is, the deal is most certainly thin, as described by Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer: it does not cover the 80% of our economy accounted for by services, and involves massive increases in bureaucratic form-filling for businesses from manufacturers to road hauliers and wine merchants, not to mention British citizens in general. It particularly hurts the young, who are overwhelmingly against Brexit.Single market? Those crazed Brexit ministers had to have the single market explained to them when they met after the referendum result Continue reading...

The resurgence of coronavirus means renewed hardship, which the chancellor must once again spend to ameliorateWith the development of the coronavirus vaccine, there had been light emerging at the end of the tunnel after a long and difficult year. After the worst year for growth since the Great Frost of 1709, the post-Covid thaw this spring seemed as if it was set to launch the UK economy into a roaring 2020s.Now, clear signs are emerging that Britain’s economy will be hit hard by tougher restrictions needed to contain the surge in Covid-19 infections, fuelled by a new faster-spreading variant first identified late last year in southern England. Far from a boom in 2021, the economy is destined for a double-dip recession. Continue reading...

Despite Covid, global stocks started 2021 on a high. But some analysts warn of an ‘epic’ bubble, amid fears that the flow of stimulus has created a monsterInsurrections are not usually seen by investors as buy signals. Yet even as rioters stormed the seat of US legislative government last week, stock market indices hit new highs in New York, adding another chapter to 12 months of apparent defiance of economic gravity.Wall Street, measured by the benchmark S&P 500, was not alone in starting 2021 with a bang. London’s FTSE 100 jumped by more than 6% in the first week of the year as investors took in a heady cocktail of a President Joe Biden ready and able to spend money, cheap borrowing costs, and the hopes that vaccines will end the coronavirus lockdowns. Yet amid the exuberance a serious concern looms: are we on the cusp of another colossal crash? Continue reading...

A recession is coming but damage this time from ‘artificial hibernation by government diktat’ may prove shortlived, say economistsHarold Wilson was prime minister and Margaret Thatcher the newly elected leader of the opposition. Lord’s hosted the first cricket world cup final, David Bowie released Young Americans and inflation reached a post-war high of more than 25%. That was Britain in 1975, the last time the economy endured a double-dip recession.Until now, in all likelihood. When the Office for National Statistics releases growth figures for November next Friday the data is expected to show UK on course to contract in the final three months of 2020. An economy that was already losing momentum in the early autumn was further hampered by the four-week lockdown in England that ended in early December.Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the total value of activity in the economy over a given period of time. Continue reading...

Vaccine optimism, central bank action and Bidenomics keep prices above pre-Covid peakThe global economy has just had its worst year of the modern age and 2021 has not got off to the best of starts either. Yet stock markets appear impervious to bad news, with the MSCI World Index of developed market shares 10% above its pre-crisis peak. There are a number of reasons why equity markets are so hot.Central bank action. Led by the US Federal Reserve, central banks were quick to respond to the market turmoil that accompanied the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in February and March last year. Interest rates were cut and money was pumped into the global economy through asset-purchase schemes known as quantitative easing. Just as importantly, the Fed gave the impression that it would not allow share prices on Wall Street to fall too far. Continue reading...

Port congestion and skeleton staffing cause shortage of freight containers while consumer demand reboundsThe cost of importing containers filled with consumer goods from Asia into the UK has reached a record high after a surge in demand in the weeks before Christmas and the UK’s exit from the EU.Shipping experts believe the UK has been dealt a double blow by the impact of the coronavirus, which has disrupted global shipping supply chains, and the end of the Brexit transition period, which caused a large increase in imports in the last months of 2020.Related: UK food freight firms warn of looming 'catastrophe' from clogged portsRelated: 'Humanitarian crisis': UN panel decries Covid rules that trapped crews at sea Continue reading...

British Retail Consortium says London hardest hit in December and seeks further business rates relief

The chancellor is abjectly failing to rise to the economic challenges posed by this public health emergencyA few days into 2021, and a large European country imposed yet another lockdown on its weary public. The leader of the governing rightwing party held out hopes for a mass vaccination programme, but insisted that in the meantime, non-essential shops and services must close and school pupils study from home. Not the UK, but Germany. Not Boris Johnson, but Angela Merkel. Our overwhelmingly parochial political debate nearly always ignores how countries very similar to our own can take far more imaginative and helpful measures. One of the first moves Chancellor Merkel announced this week was an extra 10 days’ leave for parents to look after children – double that for single parents. As policymaking, it is a modest but useful step. As politics, it is smart. And as an attempt to gain beleaguered families’ trust and their acceptance of the inevitable difficulties to come, it is deft.Compare that with the tin-eared response from London’s ministers. The day after Mr Johnson’s imposition of a third lockdown, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, unveiled a £4bn package of one-off grants for retail, hospitality and leisure companies. If your firm does the laundry for a big leisure centre or supplies crockery to cafes, you will have to jostle with every other business for a part of a far smaller £594m contingency fund. All the new support is aimed at businesses rather than their workers. For anything else, the Treasury will wait until its March budget. Continue reading...

Vaccinations are key to Britain’s economic recovery. But the government’s repeated failures suggest this won’t be simple

Carbon border taxes alone will not encourage poorer countries to meet climate goalsWith the US president-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration promising a fresh, rational approach to climate change, now is an ideal time to make the case for a World Carbon Bank that would transfer and coordinate aid and technical assistance to help developing countries decarbonise. The proposed Green New Deal in the US and the European commission’s European Green Deal have laudable environmental goals but are too inward-looking. When an entire building is burning, to concentrate firefighting resources on one floor would only delay, not prevent, its destruction.According to the International Energy Agency, almost all the net growth in carbon dioxide emissions over the next two decades will come from emerging markets. Although China recently pledged to achieve zero net emissions by 2060, it is sobering to consider that it accounts for half of the world’s coal output and half of its coal consumption.Related: The three most misused phrases in US politics in 2020 | Jeffrey FrankelDeveloping economies have neither the resources nor the technology to transform themselves overnight Continue reading...

Jeremy Grantham’s warning that an ‘epic bubble’ has formed on Wall Street should not be ignoredJeremy Grantham, a wise old investor with an excellent record in calling time on wild stock market exuberance, picked his moment well this week to warn that a “fully fledged epic bubble” had formed on Wall Street. On cue, world share prices hit all-time highs as investors seemingly looked beyond the pandemic and decided everything was about to go very right.Hopes for a Democratic clean sweep of US Congress were priced up before Senate election results in Georgia were even confirmed. The talk now is of great “reflation” trade – serious US government spending to stimulate economic growth, coupled with a pleasant level of inflation (but not enough to panic the Federal Reserve). Continue reading...

Index climbs close to pre-Covid level despite concerns over ‘hysterical’ investor behaviour

Institution says pandemic has led to sharpest rise in government debt in more than 30 years

Many stretched businesses and workers are wondering how they can survive