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Part I: Speaker
Why jobs of the future won't feel like work
David Lee at TED@UPS, July 2017
We've all heard that robots are going to take our jobs -- but what can we do about it? Innovation expert David Lee says that we should start designing jobs that unlock our hidden talents and passions -- the things we spend our weekends doing -- to keep us relevant in the age of robotics. "Start asking people what problems they're inspired to solve and what talents they want to bring to work," Lee says. "When you invite people to be more, they can amaze us with how much more they can be."
Source: TED https://www.ted.com/talks/david_lee_why_jobs_of_the_future_won_t_feel_like_work
[Rephrase 1, 10:07]
Part II: Speed
Canada and Brazil stand to be hit hardest by Trump’s proposed tariff on steel import
Trump’s tariffs Myles Udland, May 5, 2018
[Time 2] On Wednesday evening, investors were looking at returns for February that were the worst in two years and looking at historical performance trends which suggested March and April would be better. The market story for the spring was setting up to be about interest rates, earnings, and the potential for a bounce back in stocks.
And then, near noon on Thursday, the story became all about tariffs. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced he would impose 25% tariffs on imported steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports. Markets sold off.The reaction from Wall Street strategists has been somewhat mixed, as Trump’s tariff announcement was a surprise or a long-known risk, depending on who you ask. And because the real thing which appears to be unsettling markets is not the economic impact of these tariffs but the potential for retaliatory tariffs from global trading partners, either the bout of selling at week’s end was a dip to buy or the beginning of something much more serious.
Ben Inker, head of asset allocation at GMO, is in the former camp.
“A trade war is probably more dangerous for investors at this time than at any other time in recent history given the implications it would have for inflation, monetary policy, and economic growth,” Inker writes. Inker adds that, “A trade war would increase prices on a much broader array of goods and services, while simultaneously depressing aggregate global demand. This pushes us in the direction of not just inflation but stagflation, where both valuations and corporate cash flow would be under pressure.
“While there are scenarios that would be worse for financial markets—the proverbial asteroid on a collision path with Earth comes to mind—a trade war has the potential to be very bad for both the global economy and investor portfolios. As I wrote about last December, a significant inflation problem might well be the worst thing that could happen to a balanced portfolio, leading to losses on the order of 40%. A global trade war would be exactly the kind of economic event that could foreseeably lead to losses of that magnitude.” (Emphasis ours.)
[360 words]
[Time 3]
A key risk for markets as we turned to 2018 was the return of inflation. Indeed, the sell-off seen in early February was in part blamed on investor fears over more inflation, higher rates, and a more aggressive Federal Reserve. The impact of tariffs may take time to fully work through the global economy, but higher prices are a certainty. In 2017, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on lumber imports, and prices for lumber have risen 31%, pressuring an already-tight U.S. housing markets.
At Capital Economics, Andrew Hunter writes that if Trump’s tariffs have the desired effect of ramping up U.S. domestic steel production, labor shortages which are already a feature of the economy could become even more pronounced, pressuring wages and, thus, inflation. Higher inflation because of higher wages and an improving economy combined with what you might call “artificially higher inflation” due to tariffs could, then, prove to be a dangerous mix for markets.
Inker also argues that a trade war could cause a psychological shift from investors who seem uniquely assured of long-term outcomes to pull their investment horizons forward and change the mix of assets they’d like to own.
“One of the most striking features of investors today is their apparent willingness to look far into the future in assessing the value of investments,” Inker writes. “Whether this is in the form of high valuations for currently unprofitable but fast growing companies, or real estate and infrastructure investments priced with extremely long payback periods, investors today seem serenely convinced that they can predict what the future will look like. A global trade war could (and probably should) cause investors to shorten their time horizons, which is a negative for long duration risky assets such as equities.” (Emphasis ours.) And it’s this final worry from Inker that will have investors wrestling with the impacts of Trump’s tariffs into the new week and the months ahead.
For so many investors, the market feels like it is in a fragile state. The promised tax cuts that bolstered markets in 2017 have passed and now investors are looking at a landscape of higher interest rates, a new Federal Reserve chair, and a Trump economic agenda that may be less friendly.
[373 words]
Source: Yahoo Finance
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jobs-report-costco-earnings-tariff-fallout-need-know-week-ahead-185508221.html
The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 2, 2018
Trade war fears, Italian election buffet world shares
Sujata Rao, March 5, 2018
[Time 4]
LONDON (Reuters) - World shares slipped for the fifth straight day on Monday and emerging markets weakened sharply, hit by the prospect of a global trade war and political instability in Europe after Italy's inconclusive weekend election. While most markets stabilised after sharp losses early in the day, assets considered low-risk - including gold, the yen and German bonds - remained in demand, with yields on the latter at the lowest in a month.
Recent events have again put equity markets, barely recovered from their February selloff, under a cloud. The European Union, Canada and China are among those threatening to retaliate with tit-for-tat duties if U.S. President Donald Trump proceeds with hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
Such a full-blown trade war could significantly damage company profits, equity returns and economic growth, all of which have benefited from the trade upswing of recent years. World shares have risen around 50 percent since early-2016. Jitters grew further after Sunday's Italian election, where voters delivered a hung parliament, flocking to anti-immigrant and eurosceptic parties in record numbers, potentially endangering stability and wider European integration."There is nothing in the global set-up that's positive for equities at the moment especially as (share) prices are still out of whack with latest developments," said Salman Ahmed, chief investment strategist at Lombard Odier Investment Managers.
Wall Street, where the Dow Jones index fell 3 percent last week, was set to open weaker, futures indicated. While Italian stocks remained 1 percent lower at six-month lows, broader European markets reversed opening losses to rise 0.5 percent. That left MSCI's all-country equity index marginally in the red, though emerging equities fell 0.7 percent, near three-week lows.
Ahmed said developments in Italy represented a "a medium-to-small shock" with implications for asset prices, while the risk of trade wars was a far bigger issue. "Markets are not priced for trade wars and now you are also seeing a negative reaction to the U.S. moves from Europe and Canada," he said. "The major vulnerability is in emerging markets," he added, referring to the developing world's reliance on trade. Most emerging currencies weakened around 0.3-0.5 percent to the dollar. Export-reliant Asian bourses such as Hong Kong and Seoul closed 1-2 percent lower
[371 words]
[Time 5]
OVERSHADOWING GERMANY
The growth concerns pushed investors towards Bunds, with 10-year German yields falling to nearly six-week lows. Gold likewise benefited from the turbulence, rising to one-week lows.
Yields on 10-year Italian government bonds jumped 10 basis points at the open, reversing some of the gains they had enjoyed in the run-up to the election but they later clawed back some losses to trade 6.5 bps higher. Yields on other lower-rated European bonds from Spain and Portugal also were up on the day.
Investors noted Italy had overshadowed positive news from Germany where Social Democrats on Sunday decisively backed forming a coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, ending a five-month stalemate. Also, unlike past crises as in 2012, Europe's robustly growing economy was seen mitigating some political risks. "Investors still believe that politics appear less likely to upset the apple cart than only a year ago and Eurozone growth could be hitting three percent this year," said John Taylor, fixed income portfolio manager at Alliance Bernstein in London.
The euro which earlier in the day fell 0.7 percent to six-month lows versus the yen, erased some losses to stand 0.2 percent lower by 1200 GMT while against the dollar too, it rose to trade flat.The dollar meanwhile rose slightly off one-week lows against a basket of currencies and stayed a touch off November 2016 lows plumbed versus the yen immediately after Trump's trade threats last week.Dollar traders might hold fire, however, until this Friday's U.S. jobs data, the very dataset which triggered a selloff at the end of January by stoking expectations of faster rate rises by the Federal Reserve.
(Reporting by Sujata Rao; additional reporting by Swati Pandey in Sydney; Abhinav Ramnarayan and Dhara Ranasinghe in London; Editing by Toby Chopra)
[295 words]
Source: Yahoo Finance
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-markets-asian-shares-subdued-euro-choppy-amid-021635846--finance.html
Warren Buffett close up with people out of focus behind him.
The Trump tax cut earned Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway $29 billion in 2017
Myles Udland, February 24, 2018
[Time 6]
Warren Buffett says the Trump tax cuts passed late last year were a huge win for him and his company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B). "Berkshire’s gain in net worth during 2017 was $65.3 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 23%,” Buffett wrote in his latest letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. “Over the last 53 years (that is, since present management took over), per-share book value has grown from $19 to $211,750, a rate of 19.1% compounded annually,” he said. “But 2017 was far from standard: A large portion of our gain did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire. The $65 billion gain is nonetheless real — rest assured of that. But only $36 billion came from Berkshire’s operations. The remaining $29 billion was delivered to us in December when Congress rewrote the U.S. Tax Code.”
In its annual report filed alongside Buffett’s letter, Berkshire details exactly how it got to the $29 billion tax bill-related benefit.
“Upon the enactment of the[Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017], we recorded a reduction in our deferred income tax liabilities of approximately $35.6 billion for the effect of the aforementioned change in the U.S. statutory income tax rate. As a result, we recorded an income tax benefit of approximately $29.6 billion and we increased regulatory liabilities of our regulated utility subsidiaries by approximately $6.0 billion for the portion of the deferred income tax liability reduction that we will be required to, effectively, refund to customers in the rate setting process. We also recognized an income tax charge of approximately $1.4 billion with respect to the deemed repatriation of the accumulated undistributed post-1986 earnings of our foreign subsidiaries. Thus, upon the enactment of the TCJA, we included a net income tax benefit in our 2017 earnings of approximately $28.2 billion.”
Back in May 2017 at the most recent Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Buffett had hinted at how a potential tax cut could impact the bottom line of the company. “The deferred taxes that are applicable to unrealized gains on securities would all be applicable to us,” Buffett said during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting. “We have $90 or $95 billion in gains, and our owners, dollar for dollar, will participate in that… If the rate were to drop 10%, that $9.5 billion is real.”
In the end Berkshire’s gains from tax cuts ended up being far larger.
[409 wods]
Source: Yahoo Finance
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-tax-cut-earned-warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-29-billion-2017-132156623.html
Part III: Obstacle
40 Years of Data Suggests Ways to Fix the Problems Caused by Globalization
Lucas Chancel , March 02, 2018
[Paraphrase 7]
Three beliefs about globalization have propagated since the early 1980s. First, that globalization leads to a reduction in global inequality. Second, that high income growth among the richest will lift the incomes of the poorest. Third, that there is no alternative to rising inequality without turning our backs on trade and technology. The recently released World Inequality Report, the first research study to comprehensively examine wealth and income inequality trends across rich and emerging countries over approximately 40 years, dispels these notions.
Globalization has led to a rise in global income inequality, not a reduction
Inequality between individuals across the world is the result of two competing forces: inequality between countries and inequality within countries. For example, strong growth in China and India contributed to significant global income growth, and therefore, decreased inequality between countries. However, inequality within these countries rose sharply. The top 1% income share rose from 7% to 22% in India, and 6% to 14% in China between 1980 and 2016.
Until recently, it has been impossible to know which of these two forces dominates globally, because of lack of data on inequality trends within countries, which many governments do not release publicly or uniformly. The World Inequality Report 2018 addresses this issue, relying on systematic, comparable, and transparent inequality statistics from high-income and emerging countries.
The conclusion is striking. Between 1980 and 2016, inequality between the world’s citizens increased, despite strong growth in emerging markets. Indeed, the share of global income accrued by the richest 1%, grew from 16% in 1980 to 20% by 2016. Meanwhile the income share of the poorest 50% hovered around 9%. The top 1% — individuals earning more than $13,500 per month — globally captured twice as much income growth as the bottom 50% of the world population over this period.
Income doesn’t trickle down
The second belief contests that high growth at the top is necessary to achieve some growth at the bottom of the distribution, in other words that rising inequality is necessary to elevate standards of living among the poorest. However, this idea is at odds with the data. When we compare Europe with the U.S., or China with India, it is clear that countries that experienced a higher rise in inequality were not better at lifting the incomes of their poorest citizens. Indeed, the U.S. is the extreme counterargument to the myth of trickle down: while incomes grew by more than 600% for the top 0.001% of Americans since 1980, the bottom half of the population was actually shut off from economic growth, with a close to zero rise in their yearly income.
In Europe, growth among the top 0.001% was five times lower than in the U.S., but the poorest half of the population fared much better, experiencing a 26% growth in their average incomes. Despite having a consistently higher growth rate since 1980, the rise of inequality in China was much more moderate than in India. As a result, China was able to lift the incomes of the poorest half of the population at a rate that was four times faster than in India, enabling greater poverty reduction.
The trickle-down myth may have been debunked, but its ideas are still rooted in a number of current policies. For example, the idea that high income growth for rich individuals is a precondition to create jobs and growth at the bottom continues to be used to justify tax reductions for the richest, as seen in recent tax reform in the U.S. and France. A closer look at the data demands we rethink the rationale and legitimacy of such policies.
Policy – not trade or technology – is most responsible for inequality
It is often said that rising inequality is inevitable — that it is a natural consequence of trade openness and digitalization that governments are powerless to counter. But the numbers presented above clearly demonstrate the diversity of inequality trajectories experienced by broadly comparable regions over the past decades. The U.S. and Europe, for instance, had similar population size and average income in 1980 — as well as analogous inequality levels. Both regions have also faced similar exposure to international markets and new technologies since, but their inequality trajectories have radically diverged. In the U.S., the bottom 50% income share decreased from 20% to 10% today, whereas in Europe it decreased from 24% to 22%.
Rather than openness to trade or digitalization, it is policy choices and institutional changes that explain divergences in inequality. After the neoliberal policy shift of the early 1980s, Europe resisted the impulse to turn its market economy into a market society more than the US — evidenced by differences on key policy areas concerning inequality. The progressivity of the tax code — how much more the rich pay as a percentage — was seriously undermined in the U.S., but much less so in continental Europe. The U.S. had the highest minimum wage of the world in the 1960s, but it has since decreased by 30%, whereas in France, the minimum wage has risen 300%.
Access to higher education is costly and highly unequal in the U.S., whereas it is free in several European countries. Indeed, when Bavarian policymakers tried to introduce small university fees in the late 2000s, a referendum invalidated the decision. Health systems also provide universal access to good-quality healthcare in most European countries, while millions of Americans do not have access to healthcare plans.
Re-examining these pervasive beliefs around globalization and its impacts on global inequality is more important now than ever before. Using new data from the World Inequality Report is the first step in rectifying these myths and generating a new public discourse that has the potential to effect long-lasting, systemic change.
[946 words]
Source: Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2018/03/40-years-of-data-suggests-ways-to-fix-the-problems-caused-by-globalization
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发表于 2018-3-7 02:38:37
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