With FCO spending focused on middle-income trading partners, the world’s poorest countries may end up with lessTony Blair used to have a line in his speeches to the effect “every Labour government has created a department for international development, and every Tory government has got rid of it”.It has taken a while for this Conservative government to fulfil this historic mission. David Cameron saw the preservation of the department, and the commitment to spend on 0.7% on aid as central to giving the Conservatives a modernising message. He often cowered in front of the Daily Mail, but not on the issue of aid, and its contribution to Britain’s reputation. On Tuesday he took the unusual step of branding the merger as a mistake. Continue reading...

Live rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as stocks rise strongly in Europe and futures point to Wall Street gains

The pandemic-induced collapse has brought a formal declaration faster than in 2008On 8 June, the business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that economic activity in the US had peaked in February 2020, formally marking the start of a recession. But we already knew that we were in a recession that had likely begun around that date. So, why does the NBER’s formal declaration matter?It is no secret that measures of employment fell sharply from February to March. Real (inflation-adjusted) personal consumption expenditure (PCE) and real personal income before transfers both peaked in February as well. Official measures of GDP are released only quarterly but the economic free-fall in late March was enough to pull first-quarter GDP growth down to an annualised rate of -4.8% (relative to the last quarter of 2019).Related: US has officially entered first recession since 2009 Continue reading...

Experts say coronavirus outbreaks are almost inevitable given the close-knit nature of college life, and many social events might not returnWhen Nicole Spriggs-Moye of Washington DC imagined what her first year in college at Louisiana State University would look like, she imagined meeting new people and exploring new places. She envisioned bonding with her new roommate and joining the Black Student Union and student radio station. She planned to find mentors in her professors, who would teach her mass communication and pre-law.Related: 'Adapt and overcome': class of 2020 inherits worst labor market since the Great DepressionA lot of us feel displaced right now being at home and not having our friends, peers and professors close with usRelated: Ivanka Trump complains of 'cancel culture' after university cancels her speech Continue reading...

The furlough scheme has given employers breathing space, but its impact will be reduced by autumn

Why would households spend savings when unemployment is a distinct possibility?

Two senior civil servants say Whitehall did not devise economic plan after 2016 simulation

Caroline Lucas MP and Prof Richard Murphy on the need for all political parties to support green initiatives, Christopher Tanner on reimagining the idea of economic growth and Dave Young on the importance of building social infrastructureYour editorial (9 June) rightly calls for the post-coronavirus economy to be rebuilt in a fairer, labour-intensive and environmentally sustainable way. What wasn’t addressed, however, was the crucial question of how such an enormous transition could be paid for.In the short term, the government’s sensible response to the crisis has been to turn on the spending taps, maybe to the tune of £300bn. Expanding this to tackle the climate emergency is made easier by the government’s ability to borrow money at negative interest rates. Green quantitative easing could also help, while members of the Green New Deal group have also proposed that private savers’ money be used to help fund the green transition by changing the rules on Isas and pensions, so that some of the £170bn saved annually in such accounts and pensions might be invested in government-backed green bonds. Continue reading...

Oil company says it may be forced to leave some of its fossil fuel discoveries in the ground

Global stocks fall as investors fear that a fresh wave of Covid-19 may be on the horizon, just as lockdowns start to ease

Tory MPs are missing the point: lifting restrictions won’t ease this recession, people need to feel the outbreak is under control

Group of 57 organisations says bailouts must be on condition of firms reducing carbon footprint

EY Item Club further downgrades UK economic prospects with full recovery unlikely until 2023The British economy will shrink by 8% this year and is unlikely to recover from the damage wrought by the coronavirus crisis until 2023, according to a leading economic forecaster.After official figures showed Britain’s economy shrank by a record 20.4% in April – putting the country on course for the worst recession in more than three centuries – the EY Item Club was moved to produce its first interim report between two quarterly updates to reflect the deteriorating outlook. Continue reading...

Devastated high street needs sales to survive coronavirus crisis, retail groups say

Governments now know the economic, social, health and educational costs of full Covid-19 lockdowns scar too deeply

The high street is open again. But an explosive rise in unemployment is

The vacuum left by the G20 will leave the world’s poorest nations battered by Covid-19 and with a fraction of the wealth required to revive themselvesNo country is emerging unscathed from the Covid-19 pandemic, but the impact on the world’s poorest countries is especially severe. Extreme poverty is on the rise and underfunded health systems are woefully ill-prepared to cope with the virus. The number of children in Africa dying of preventable diseases is increasing. The gains made in development since the turn of the millennium are being reversed.The international community is well aware of what’s happening. More than 100 countries have sought financial help from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF’s sister organisation, the World Bank, says emerging market and developing economies will shrink by 2.5% this year, their first collective contraction in 60 years. The G20 – the body that brings together the biggest players from the developed and developing worlds – has recognised that oppressively high debt levels make it impossible for low-income countries to boost health spending. Continue reading...

Three businesses explain the challenges presented by Covid-19, lockdown and an end to furlough

It goes without saying that the 20.4% contraction in April is the worst on record

Latest figures are double the drop during the miners’ strikes and winter of discontent in the 1970s

Right now, the burden is manageable – but that doesn’t mean we should take our eyes off the deficit clock

Former cabinet minister sent financier furious email over delay in payment of £5m in feesThe prominent businesswoman Amanda Staveley fell out with the former cabinet minister David Mellor as the pair worked on securing the billions of pounds that saved Barclays during the 2008 financial crisis, the high court has heard.Staveley is suing Barclays for up to £1.5bn after her client, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, invested £3.25bn as part of an emergency fundraising 12 years ago. She claims that the UK bank was secretly offering superior terms to Barclays’ largest investor, the state of Qatar. Continue reading...

Dow Jones loses more than 1,800 points while S&P down 5% after US coronavirus infections hit 2mStock markets tumbled in the US and Europe on Thursday amid growing fears over the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.The sell off started after the US labor department announced another 1.5 million people had filed for unemployment benefits and the number of coronavirus infections passed 2m even as states across the US continued to relax their quarantine measures.Related: 'An American fiasco': US hits grim milestone of 2m Covid-19 casesRelated: US economy will shrink 6.5% this year, Fed forecasts Continue reading...

Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as gloomy central bank forecasts make investors wary

Rolling coverage of the latest financial news, as the OECD projects a 6% contraction for the global economy in 2020

First coronavirus, now the OECD says Britain will top the developing world’s recession league table. Here’s why

Forecast slump in GDP of 11.5% will exceed falls by France, Italy, Spain and Germany

The pandemic is an opportunity to tackle the climate emergency by creating productive green jobs for those made redundant by the crisisBritain needs a green job-filled recovery from the coronavirus crisis. Unlike Germany and South Korea, it is far from clear that we will get one. While Berlin and Seoul are retooling their fossil fuel-reliant economies to be greener and cleaner, the UK has yet to announce a policy that deals with the environmental emergency and the spectre of mass unemployment.Unless a vaccine for coronavirus is found soon, Britain faces a surge in joblessness at the end of October, when all forms of wage support stop. The size of this spike in unemployment will determine how long it is before we may return to normal. Currently, 12 million people are covered by the job retention scheme for furloughed workers and its equivalent for the self-employed. There are few takers for the idea that there will be a sharp bounce-back to business as usual. Continue reading...

Loans for 830,000 firms have been signed off but banks can’t keep up with demand for emergency fundsUK banks have approved nearly £35bn worth of government-backed loans for more than 830,000 businesses hit by the Covid-19 crisis, but lenders are still struggling to keep up with demand for emergency funding.Figures released by the Treasury on Tuesday showed that banks granted a further £3.6bn worth of loans to 85,000 businesses in the week to 7 June, with the 100% state-guaranteed bounce-back loans (BBLS) for small firms logging the largest rise.By midnight on 7 June there's been a total of:

Google, M&S and PwC among companies giving three-day remote training experiences

Debt fuelled by pandemic and job losses will stifle nation’s recovery, StepChange claims

Pascal Soriot heroically defended the company against Pfizer, but now he needs to calm his investorsIt’s hard to keep AstraZeneca out of the headlines. A booming share price made the company the biggest in the FTSE 100 index last month, albeit Shell is now marginally in front again. More significantly, the group is in the vanguard of Covid-fighting efforts by helping Oxford University develop a vaccine and then, we hope, produce a successful product in massive volumes.Now, though, comes something different: a Bloomberg report of an approach last month to Gilead of the US to create a new pharma giant. Nobody expects a deal to happen, it should be said. The proposal, if that’s what it was, seems to have been tentative and no talks are in progress now. Continue reading...

National Bureau of Economic Research says economic growth in the US peaked in February and has since entered its first downturn since 2007 to 2009The United States is officially in a recession, ending the longest economic expansion in US history, the committee that calls downturns announced on Monday.The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) said that economic growth in the US peaked in February and has since entered its first downturn since 2007 to 2009. Continue reading...

Plan for tough rules on foreign takeovers comes as UK clashes with China on Hong Kong

As many as 90% of the 183 economies are expected to suffer from falling levels of GDP in 2020

CEO tells staff company is responding to economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic

Report finds businesses will have £97bn-£107bn worth of unsustainable debt by MarchA City taskforce is warning that up to £36bn worth of government-backed business loans could turn toxic by next year, as companies struggle to repay growing debts during the Covid-19 crisis.An interim report by the Recapitalisation Group, led by EY and lobby group TheCityUK, projects that businesses will be saddled with £97bn-£107bn worth of unsustainable debt by March 2021. A third of that total will come from government-backed loans. Continue reading...

The US stimulus programme looks to have been a success: one that has political as well as economic consequencesThe political obituaries of Donald Trump were all prepared. At the end of a week that has seen American cities convulsed by protests over the killing of George Floyd, the president would be faced with an increase in unemployment worse than anything seen in the Great Depression.Well, it didn’t turn out like that. The US economy actually created 2.5 million jobs in May and the unemployment rate went down rather than up. The consensus among analysts was that it would shed 7.5 million jobs, a colossally wrong call. And a deeply significant one.There’s no getting away from the fact that this was good news for Trump at a time when he appeared to be overwhelmed by a triple-whammy Continue reading...

A new survey reveals they’re opposed to a new bout of austerity to pay for the damage done by the coronavirus crisisThe government is going to borrow a lot this year – probably more £300bn, the highest since the Second World War. Pandemics are expensive, with tax revenues plummeting, health costs surging and government paying 80% of the wages of 8.7 million workers.It’s not surprising that people suspect we’re in for a repeat of the austerity of the 2010s. After all, borrowing will be much higher than during the last financial crisis. Many worry that evil economists, caring only about the public finances, will browbeat politicians into spending cuts. Continue reading...

It will take a concerted effort to avoid huge job losses in the leisure sector – but the government isn’t very good at themTo save your local cafe and beat the virus, dine at well-spaced tables in the street. To watch films on a big screen, take your car to the local drive-in cinema. And to get fit, join an open-air Pilates class.All that is easier done in Greece and Spain than in the UK, but that shouldn’t stop Britons thinking about new ways to enjoy ourselves over the coming years with an ever-present virus. If we don’t, unemployment is going to be as bad as it was in the 1980s, when the Thatcher government “let go” the steel and mining industries without any consideration for people’s livelihoods, scarring large parts of the country for decades. This time the worst-hit sectors will be leisure, travel, tourism, hospitality and retail.Customers may resist a return to normal, feeling that however enjoyable it is to go out and spend, the risk is too high Continue reading...

Germany amazed the whole continent with last week’s stimulus package, but it paves the way for countries such as France to agree an effective coronavirus responseFrom champion of austerity to Europe’s biggest spender – Germany has travelled a long way in just a few months. The notoriously frugal ministry of finance has agreed to spend €130bn – a sum equal to 4% of national income – on more than 50 initiatives to promote growth across the country.This breathtaking investment programme comes on top of the almost 30% of GDP the government has so far spent on rescuing businesses and protecting jobs during the coronavirus crisis.Society is facing a profound upheaval, so we couldn't just offer a traditional stimulus packageThe government has managed to turn a corner just in time and given up on a subsidy for combustion engines Continue reading...

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the US economy, costing 42 million people to file for unemployment insuranceThe coronavirus pandemic has wrought destruction on US workers at a scale and speed that is almost unfathomable.It was only in February that Donald Trump was touting an unemployment level of 3.5%, a 50-year low. The unemployment rate dropped on Friday to 13.3% – but is still at its highest level since the 1980s – and many economists fear the real figure is far higher. Continue reading...

The labor department’s monthly report indicates unemployment is probably higher than official data and racial disparities remainFriday brought hope that the US economy is finally digging its way out of the rubble after Covid-19 wiped out millions of jobs – with no indication of when they would be coming back. But beneath the surface, deep problems remain.Related: US unemployment hits 40m – in picturesThese #JobsDay numbers highlight the damage of the coronavirus ression—a recession that has caused greater job loss in black households than white households and that will, as a result, exacerbate existing racial inequalities. 10/Here's a simple but important picture of what's happening to jobs. Extremely welcome reversal, of course, if it sticks, but the magnitude of the losses means that even if this uptick pace continues, it would take almost a year just to make up lost ground. pic.twitter.com/kClNyb5kUz Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest financial news, as the US jobs report unveils the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown

Boss of left-leaning thinktank who warned about financial risks of Covid-19 earmarked as OBR boss

As current and former central bankers, we believe the pandemic offers a unique chance to green the global economy

Move will accelerate recovery from coronavirus crisis, says Policy Exchange thinktank

Rolling coverage of business, economics and markets as pharma giant AstraZeneca strikes a deal for its potential Covid-19 vaccine