2021 brings a new administration to the White House and, with it, a more favorable outlook toward sustainability, especially climate change. How much this shift in policy will influence financial regulations and ultimately banks, especially in the US, is not yet certain. But banks should prepare for stronger pressure on the financial industry to contribute to the effort to foster sustainable development through stricter disclosure requirements and redirected investment goals.
The term fake news is true and becoming truer as technology creates more channels to deceive recipients, including deepfake. A form of artificial intelligence, deepfake can fool even the most discerning viewer, and fraudsters are seizing on it as another opportunity for illicit gain. What can financial businesses do to protect themselves against this new line of attack, and what can we all do to prevent ourselves from being hoodwinked?
And so, after perhaps the most turbulent election and transition period in American history, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was finally confirmed as the new president of the United States. Despite numerous unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, dozens of rejected lawsuits and an unprecedented assault on the nation’s Capitol building
Is the current cure, in the form of lockdowns, for the COVID-19 plague worse than the pernicious virus itself? This hotly debated question has vocal supporters on both sides, as the pandemic continues to attack lives and livelihoods worldwide. Many believe that preserving human health and economic health need not be at odds but can both be achieved in the short term until a permanent solution for the virus arrives.
Signs continue to emerge that the United States’ economy is past the worst of the coronavirus pandemic economic downturn, as official figures for August show the unemployment rate fell considerably, and nonfarm payroll employment also rose.
In January, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, unveiled his $222.2-billion budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year for his state. “It’s often said that budgets are statements of values,” Newsom noted in his budget letter to the California State Legislature. “In America’s most populous and productive state, our state budget is more than that.
On April 5, Lars Idermark resigned from his position as the chairman of Swedbank, headquartered in Sweden. Idermark stepped down from his position only a week after the chief executive officer, and previously the supervisor of Swedbank operations in the Baltic states, Birgitte Bonnesen, was fired.
The construction industry in the United States does a lot more than build buildings. It undergirds the prosperity of the country’s economy as a whole in multiple ways. How are contractors, the industry’s key players, feeling these days? Overall, they are optimistic, as survey results show—and economic data supports their buoyancy—but not without reservations about future uncertainties, especially in three main areas: trade, labor and interest rates.
Relations are growing frostier globally, as political leaders become more nationalistic. And this change in climate is impacting economies, rendering them less cooperative. Two significant changes affecting the global business cycle include the US Fed’s tighter monetary policy, the impacts of which have rippled throughout the world, as well as the geographical shift of the centre of manufacturing production to the East, to the dismay of some Western leaders.
At the end of August, leading ratings agency Moody’s downgraded 18 banks and two finance companies in Turkey. According to the agency, the downgrades “primarily reflect a substantial increase in the risk of a downside scenario, where a further negative shift in investor sentiment could lead to a curtailing of wholesale funding”.