The Economist - 28 September 2024

Год выпуска: September 2024

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: 80

CRUNCH TIME FOR UKRAINE

• The war in Ukraine is going badly. President Zelensky and his allies need to change course: leader, page 9, and briefing, page 16.
• China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are growing worryingly close, page 51.

War fever in Lebanon

• Israel and Hizbullah have come close to all-out war. They must find a way to step back: leader, page 10, and analysis, page 37.
• Iran’s new president wants to stop the escalation, page 39.
• Israel’s economy looks vulnerable, page 63.
• A Lebanese novelist and activist for the Palestinian cause: Obituary, page 78.

What Donald Trump taught J.D. Vance

• How the vice-presidential candidate sees the truth: Lexington, page 26.
• Kamala Harris is spending more. Will it matter? Page 19.
• Positive pointers for Democrats, page 22.

Is the big state failing its citizens?

• Governments are bigger than ever. They are also increasingly useless, page 59, and leader, page 10.

YouTube v Hollywood

• The do-it-yourself crowd is coming for the television industry: leader, page 12.
• The lines between social media and television are blurring, page 53.

The world this week Politics

• Israeli troops were told to prepare for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon, after Israel pounded Hizbullah’s operations in the south of the country. Lebanese officials said 600 people had been killed in the bombardment, but gave no breakdown of civilians and combatants. At the start of the campaign an Israeli strike killed 45 people in Beirut, including Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hizbullah commander who was wanted for the bombings of the American embassy and marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Hizbullah fired a ballistic missile at Israel for the first time. It was shot down over Tel Aviv. America and 11 of its allies called for a 21-day ceasefire.
• An explosion at a coal mine in Iran killed at least 50 people. Unsafe levels of methane gas hampered the rescue effort.
• Police in Tanzania arrested three opposition leaders ahead of a planned anti-government protest. Although they were later released, critics worried that the detentions were the latest sign that the country is reverting to the repression which Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president, had promised to break. Earlierthis month an opposition figure was found dead after bei ng abducted by armed men.
• Joe Biden gave his final speech to the UN General Assembly, where he insisted that a diplomatic solution to Israel’s war with Hamas and Hizbullah was still possible. Volodymyr Zelensky struck a more martial tone, telling the delegates that Russia must be “forced into peace”. The Ukrainian president spoke to the UN before unveiling his plan for victory to the Americans.
• Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, visited Kyiv, where she announced that the EU would loan Ukraine €35bn ($39bn). The loan is backed by a G7 plan to tap profits of frozen Russian assets. Meanwhile, Russia claimed that 56 civilians had been killed up until September 20th in Ukraine’s incursion over the border into the Kursk region, and that 131,000 people had fled their homes.

Starmer’s no charmer

• Labour held its first annual conference as Britain’s governing party foris years. Things have not gone smoothly for the new government since July’s election, and its poll ratings are sliding fast. In his conference speech Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said his policies would be “tough in the short term” but that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Businesses and households must wait for the budget on October 30th to find out whether their taxes will rise.
• Germany’s government saw off a challenge from the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a state election in Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin. The Social Democrats (SPD), the party of Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, took 31% of the vote and the AfD 29%. The Greens and the Liberals, the SPD’s coalition partners, failed to muster enough support to get into the local assembly. After a string of poor results in local elections the two со-leaders of the Green party stepped down.
• The new prime minister of France, Michel Barnier, named his cabinet, which has a distinctly conservative feel compared with the previous government’s centrist character. The new interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, pledged to crack down on illegal immigration and Islamists. The finance minister is Antoine Armand, who hails from Emmanuel Macron’s moderate Renaissance party. He takes over from Bruno Le Maire.
• The Swedish Security Service revealed that Iran was behind a cyber-attack on Sweden’s text platforms last year, and had sent out messages urging people to respond to a spate of Koran burnings. Iran’s purpose was to sow discord, said the security agency.
• Swiss police arrested several people in connection with the first reported death of someone in a suicide pod. Assisted dying is legal in some instances in Switzerland, but concerns have been raised about the pod, which slowly fills with liquid nitrogen, cutting off oxygen supply.
• China fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific, the first time it has made such a test public since 1980. The exercise is likely to raise international concerns about China’s increased long-range nuclear capabilities.
• Anura Kumara Dissanayake won Sri Lanka’s presidential election in the country’s biggest political shake-up since independence in 1948. Mr Dissanayake comes from a party with a Marxist history. He promises to uphold democracy, tackle corruption and cronyism and alleviate poverty, but also wants to re-examine the terms of the IMF’s bail-out. Shortly after his victory Mr Dissanayake dissolved parliament and called a general election for November 14th.
• In an unexpected twist, S. Iswaran, a former transport minister in Singapore, pleaded guilty to obtaining valuable items from a Formula One racing promoter while he was in office. It is the first corruption case involving a Singaporean minister since 1986.
• The king of Thailand signed a bill into law, that paves the way for gay marriage to become legal on January 22nd.

Rot in the Big Apple

• Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, said that charges brought against him by the federal government were “entirely false” and “based on lies”. Mr Adams has been under investigation formore than a year. Prosecutors had confiscated phones from several officials. The police and health commissioners and schools chancellor recently resigned.
• Morena, Mexico’s ruling party, appointed a son of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to a party job. Andres Lopez Beltran has been a quiet player behind the scenes. His new position adds to fears that Mr Lopez Obrador will continue to influence the presidency after Claudia Sheinbaum takes office on October 1st.
• A court in Argentina ordered the arrest of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic president, for alleged crimes against humanity. This came hours after the Venezuelan Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, on charges connected to the seizure of a Venezuelan cargo plane. Mr Maduro is clingingon to power despite losing July’s election.
• Kenya said it would deploy another 600 peacekeepers to Haiti, boosting its force there to 1,000. The transitional government in Haiti recently created an electoral council with the aim of holding an election by February 2026, which would be the country’s first in a decade.

The world this week Business

• It emerged that Qualcomm has approached Intel about a friendly takeover. Intel has fallen behind rivals such as Nvidia and AMD in the market for artificial-intelligence processors. In August a poor earnings report and tepid forecasts rattled investors, wiping $32bn off its market value. The company recently announced a turnaround plan, which focuses on turning its foundry business into an independent subsidiary. Intel’s share price rose on the news of Qualcomm’s offer, but the stock is still down by over 50% this year.

Resistance to a banking union

• UniCredit, Italy’s second-biggest bank, sought regulatory approval to increase its stake in Commerzbank, the second-largest lender in Germany, to 21%. The idea of a takeover is opposed by Commerzbank and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, who described the Italian bank’s actions as an unfriendly attack. Commerzbank’s deputy chairman said “I feel like vomiting” when he hears UniCredit’s promises of cost savings. Meanwhile, the bank announced that Bettina Or-lopp, the chief financial officer, would soon succeed Manfred Knof as chief executive.
• China’s central bank unveiled a raft of measures aimed at boosting stockmarkets and providing more help to the country’s beleaguered property market. The bank is lowering its policy interest rate by 0.2 percentage points, and the rate on existing mortgages by half a point, and reducing reserve requirements for banks. Analysts noted the relatively large size of the cuts and the unexpected guidance on future policy. China’s stockmarkets surged in response.
• The Bank of Japan left its key interest rate unchanged at 0.25%. The central bank’s governor, Ueda Kazuo, has indicated that it won’t lift rates again until December at the earliest.
• Nike’s share price retained the gains it made after the sportswear maker ditched John Donahoe as chief executive and replaced him with Elliott Hill, a veteran executive who has come out of retirement to lead the company.
• Once considered the future of car-battery manufacturing in Europe, Northvolt announced that it would cut its workforce by 20% and suspend a planned expansion. Some of the Swedish startup’s problems are of its own making, though it has struggled to attract investors amid slowing demand for electric vehicles in Europe. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association has noted that the EV market is on a “continual downward trajectory”, and called on the EU to rethink its timeline for banning petrol-powered cars.
• Mira Murati, w'ho oversaw the development of ChatGPT as OpenAI’s chief technology officer, resigned from the startup. OpenAl is preparing to begin a process that will see it eventually ditch its non-profit status to become a “publicbenefit corporation”, according to reports.
• The head of Boeing’s defence and space division stepped down with immediate effect, the first big senior departure since Kelly Ortberg took over as chief executive in August. The division has been losing money for years. Meanwhile, the union representing striking workers at Boeing’s factories in the Pacific north-west rejected the company’s latest pay offer.
• Underscoring the huge amounts of energy needed to power data centres. Microsoft signed a deal that will reopen a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility to supply it with carbon-free electricity for 20 years. Unit 1 was closed five years ago for economic reasons. It is adjacent to Unit 2, w'hich w as permanently shut in 1979 following a meltdow'n in w'hat remains America’s worst-ever nuclear accident. Microsoft will buy energy from the reopened plant, which will be connected to the pjm grid, a regional transmission organisation covering 13 states.
• America’s Justice Department lodged an antitrust complaint against Visa, accusing it of using its dominance in debitpayment networks to thwart competition. Visa said the lawsuit was “meritless”

Bad news for Kamala?

• The Conference Board’s index of American consumer confidence plunged from 105.6 in August to 98.7 in September, the biggest decline in three years. People are worrying more about jobs and inflation, according to the survey.
• Palantir was one of three companies added to the S&P 500 stockmarket index, as American Airlines and twro other companies were booted off. Palantir, best and controversially known as a provider of data analytics to America’s intelligence and defence establishment, has seen its share price soar by 160% over the past year. Its name is a reference to magical stones in “The Lord of the Rings” that allow characters to w'atch events in other parts of the world.

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