By Kimberly Amadeo 3 June 2019 (The Balance) – During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump promised he would eliminate the nation’s debt in eight years. Instead, his budgets would add $9.1 trillion during that time. It would increase the U.S. debt to $29 trillion according to Trump’s budget estimates. […] Trump has a cavalier attitude about the […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters 6 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – In early 2018, a three-year drought pushed Cape Town, South Africa, within weeks of experiencing “Day Zero”—the day when the city would run out of water and the taps be shut off. Fortunately, extreme water conservation efforts and the arrival of timely rains pushed “Day […]
5 June 2019 (AFP) – The noxious air hanging over India’s towns and cities kills more than 100,000 children under five every year, a damning study published Wednesday for World Environment Day found. India has repeatedly failed to address environmental concerns. Last year a UN report found 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities […]
By Ben Steverman 23 May 2019 (Bloomberg Businessweek) — Gabriel Zucman started his first real job the Monday after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Fresh from the Paris School of Economics, where he’d studied with a professor named Thomas Piketty, Zucman had lined up an internship at Exane, the French brokerage firm. He joined a […]
By Nick Cunningham 12 May 2019 (OilPrice.com) – The world spent a staggering $4.7 trillion and $5.2 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2015 and 2017, respectively, according to a new report [pdf] from the International Monetary Fund. That means that in 2017 the world spent a whopping 6.5 percent of global GDP just to subsidize the […]
By Josie Garthwaite 22 April 2019 (Stanford University) – A new Stanford University study shows global warming has increased economic inequality since the 1960s. Temperature changes caused by growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere have enriched cool countries like Norway and Sweden, while dragging down economic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria. […]
By Aimee Picchi 13 May 2019 (CBS News) – Four in 10 Americans sometimes face what economists call “material hardship,” struggling to pay for basic needs such as food and housing, according to a new study from the Urban Institute. Even middle-class families routinely struggle financially and are occasionally unable to pay their bills. The finding is […]
By Michael Weissenstein and Andrea Rodriguez 10 May 2019 HAVANA (AP) – The Cuban government announced Friday that it is launching widespread rationing of chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other basic products in the face of a grave economic crisis. Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez told the state-run Cuban News Agency that various forms […]
6 May 2019 (IPBES) – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was […]
18 April 2019 (Gallup) – Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes measure life’s intangibles — feelings and emotions — that traditional economic indicators such as GDP were never intended to capture. Each index provides a real-time snapshot of people’s daily experiences, offering leaders insights into the health of their societies that they cannot gather from […]
