The Economist - 10 сентября 2022

Год выпуска: сентябрь 2022

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 88

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE TRUMP: Bolsonaro prepares his Big Lie in Brazil

• Brazil’s president threatens democracy: leader, page 13.
• Jair Bolsonaro is poised to lose the election. He will not go quietly: briefing, page 22.

Our us midterm election model

• The Republicans will do worse in November than they should. Donald Trump is to blame: leader, page 16.
• Our statistical forecast, page 25.

China’s digital dollar dodge

• The digital yuan offers a way to reduce financial dependence on America, page 74.
• Why the dollar is strong—and what might threaten its supremacy in the long run: leader, page 16.

Can Liz Truss fix Britain?

• The new prime minister must eschew pantomime radicalism: leader, page 19.
• Ms Truss is a small-state conservative in a big-state era, page 59.
• The new chancellor is brainy, but odd: Bagehot, page 62.

The spy in your sewage

• Wasterwater surveillance can spot health problems, but is open to abuse: leader, page 18.
• The power of snooping on sewage, page 63.

The world this week Politics

• Liz Truss won the leadership contest of Britain’s Conservative Party, thus becoming prime minister. Ms Truss appointed loyalists to the top jobs in her cabinet. Kwasi Kwarteng was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, James Cleverly foreign secretary and Suella Braverman home secretary. There was no place at the table for Rishi Sunak, her opponent in the Tory race. Ms Truss’s most pressing task is helping Britons through the cost-of-living crisis. She unveiled plans to cap energy prices in order to protect households and firms from surging bills.

Feeling the heat

• Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, proposed a set of measures to cushion the impact of rising energy prices on Europe’s economy. They include mandatory consumption cuts, taxing the windfall profits of energy firms to provide rebates to consumers and capping the price of Russian gas. European energy ministers will meet on September 9th to discuss the proposals. Russia has slashed gas deliveries to Europe to exert pressure on it to stop supporting Ukraine.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency published its assessment of the situation at the Zaporizhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, following a visit by its inspectors. The report said that continued shelling in the area was causing damage, including to the building that houses “fresh nuclear fuel”. The IAEA suggests it is urgent to establish a protection zone around the facility.
• Vladimir Putin approved a foreign-policy doctrine based on protecting the “Russian world”, which in essence means allowing the Kremlin to interfere in other countries with Russian-speaking populations. Meanwhile, a court in Moscow sentenced Ivan Safronov, a widely respected former journalist, to 22 years in prison after a closed-doors trial. Mr Safronov was arrested in 2020 on charges of treason, which he denies. He had written about Russia’s defence industry.
• Russia is reportedly buying millions of rockets from North Korea to deploy in Ukraine. A Pentagon official said turning to North Korea for weapons was a sign the Russians were facing “challenges on the sustainment front”.
• Kenya’s Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Raila Odinga against his narrow loss in a recent presidential election to William Ruto. Mr Ruto will be sworn in to office on September 13th.
• The ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, better known as the mpla, was officially deemed to have won an election on August 24th, defeating the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (unita) by 51% to 44%, the closest result since the mpla came to power in 1975. Angola’s president, Joao Louren^o, will remain in office. But civil-society groups said the true result was a tie or a narrow victory for unita.
• Jihadists were suspected of planting a bomb that killed at least 35 civilians travelling on a road in northern Burkina Faso. The country's military ruler had recently met his counterparts from Mali and Ivory Coast to discuss ways of tackling the jihadist threat in the region.
  Israel’s army admitted that there was a “high probability” that one of its soldiers had killed a prominent Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Aqleh, in May by mistake. It said the soldier had not identified her as a journalist.
• Almost 62% of voters in Chile rejected a new constitution. The referendum came after a year’s deliberation by a constitutional convention that was plagued by scandal and heavily influenced by the hard left. At 388 articles, the proposed charter would have been one of the world’s longest. Gabriel Boric, the new left-wing president, had backed the process. His disapproval rating has risen from 20% to 56%.

Bolsonaro emboldened

• Brazil’s right-wing populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, whipped up big crowds at independence-day parades in Brasi'lia and Rio de Janeiro. He said that an election on October 2nd would be a struggle of “good versus evil”, and that polls showing that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former leftwing president, is ahead in the race were “lying”.
• Ten people were fatally stabbed in Saskatchewan, a rural province of Canada. It was one of the country’s deadliest mass killings. One of the two suspects was later found dead with knife wounds. The other died after being captured by police, reportedly from self-inflicted injuries.
• A judge agreed that an independent lawyer, or “special master”, should be appointed to review the papers that were taken from Donald Trump’s home in Florida by the fbi. The decision will delay the Justice Department’s evaluation of the classified files that Mr Trump removed from the White House. Documents on the nuclear capabilities of an unnamed country were reportedly among the stash of papers confiscated by the fbi.
• Nasa’s Artemis unmanned mission to the Moon may not be launched now until midOctober, after a second attempt was called off, this time because of a fuel leak.
• Californians were told to conserve power in order to avoid blackouts, as the state sweltered under recordbreaking temperatures. Some cities reached the mid - 40s Celsius (110°F).
• A bomber attacked the Russian embassy in Kabul, killing six people, including two members of the diplomatic mission. Russia is one of the few countries to keep a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return to power. Scores of bombs this year have killed hundreds of people.
• Faced with a labour shortage, Australia raised the annual cap on permanent immigration to the country by a fifth, to 195,000 people. It was the first increase in a decade.
• The government of Kiribati suspended three appealscourt judges. The three had ruled against a decision to deport a high-court judge who is also the husband of the opposition leader. The country of 32 Pacific atolls now has no judges in the high court or appeals court. Observers worry that Kiribati could slide into authoritarianism, just as China gains influence.
• China extended a lockdown in Chengdu, home to 21m people. It is the biggest city to close since Shanghai locked down earlier this year. Dozens of Chinese cities have imposed restrictions to stem outbreaks. New cases have topped 1,000 per day for the past month. A 6.8 magnitude earthquake, felt in Chengdu, added to the suffering, killing scores of people.
• Volkswagen said it would list Porsche in an ipo on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange that will take place in either late September or early October. The German carmaker is offloading only a portion of the stock, some of which will go to the Porsche-Piech families, vw’s biggest shareholders. The rest will be sold to individual investors. vw will retain the remaining shares. The flotation could raise as much as €io.6bn ($io.5bn), which would make it the biggest stockmarket listing in Europe since Glencore in 2011.
• opec+ decided to cut output by 100,000 barrels of oil a day, a slap in the face for Western governments that have urged the cartel to increase production in order to keep prices down. The cut is small (global demand is about 100m barrels a day), taking output back to where it was in August, and reverses a small increase in production that was agreed after Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia to plead for more oil on the market. Amid talk of a recession in the West, the price of oil has in fact dropped, from almost $125 in early June for a barrel of Brent crude to under $90 this week for the first time since February. opec is signalling that it does not want the price to fall much further.
• South Africa’s economy shrank by 0.7% in the second quarter (over the previous quarter), when the country had to contend with flooding that disrupted production at car factories and washed away infrastructure, and power cuts. Unions have been calling for a general strike to protest against high living costs, poverty and unemployment.
• Fresh covid lockdowns in China’s cities last month lay behind a drastic slowdown in the country’s exports, which rose by 7.1%, year on year, compared with 18% in July.

The mighty greenback

• China’s central bank moved to shore up the limp yuan by reducing the amount of foreign currency that banks need to hold. Meanwhile the yen fell to ¥144 against the dollar, its weakest level since 1998. Officials hinted that they were ready to intervene to head off a further decline. The euro sank to a new 20-year low amid the turmoil in European energy. And the pound plunged to $1.14, its lowest level since 1985, amid dire forecasts about the British economy.
• The Biden administration gave more details about its plans for subsidising the production of semiconductors in America. Around $28bn will be provided for cutting-edge logic and memory chips, $10bn for current-generation chips, and $11bn for a new technology centre and other institutes. The government wants to boost domestic expertise in semiconductors, and reduce the reliance on chips from South Korea and Taiwan.
• In a deal that further diversifies its health-care business, cvs Health agreed to buy Signify Health, which provides virtual and at-home help to patients, for $8bn. Amazon was one of several companies said to have bid for Signify. cvs was known mostly for its retail pharmacy chain until 2007, when it expanded into the administration of prescription-drug programmes and then, in 2018, health insurance.
• Juul reached a settlement with 33 American states to resolve claims that it targeted its vaping products at under-age users. Under the agreement it will pay out $438.5m and will be banned from portraying users under the age of 35 in its marketing materials. The company, which denies wrongdoing, is appealing against a ruling from the Food and Drug Administration that would stop it from selling its e-cigarette merchandise in the United States.
• Apple launched the iPhone 14 at its annual product event. Like previous models, the latest iPhone includes pricier Pro versions, which have helped increase revenue for Apple. Smartphone sales have declined considerably this year, but the one “bright spot”, according to Counterpoint Research, is the market for phones priced above $900.

Force majeure

• The judge overseeing the forthcoming trial between Elon Musk and Twitter ruled that evidence will be allowed from a whistleblower that Mr Musk says backs his claim that Twitter misled him about fake user accounts, the reason why he wants to back out of his $44bn takeover. A text was revealed at the hearing in which Mr Musk said he wanted to “slow down” the deal just two weeks after it was announced, in case world war three breaks out in Ukraine.
• The chairman of Lukoil reportedly died after falling out of a hospital window in Moscow. The Russian oil giant said he had passed away following a severe illness. A number of senior Russian businessmen, mostly connected to energy, have died in mysterious circumstances this year. In May Russian media reported the death of another senior executive at Lukoil, who was found in a room used for voodoo rituals at the house of a shaman. Reports at the time said he had been given venomous toad poison to cure a hangover.

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