2020 was a milestone in increasing energy production in China. China has commissioned new lignite plants that produce a total of about 38.4GW of electricity. China is the country that builds factories to increase the use of lignite for electricity generation while at the same time as a country invests most of the capital in …
Teleworking and Cyber Security Gaps in Business
A large percentage of CEOs believe that their current cybersecurity budget should increase to 40% of their total annual business budget. Recent global research of the EY Global Information Security Survey 2021 (https://www.ey.com/en_gl/ cybersecurity/cybersecurity-how-do-you-rise-above-the-waves-of-a-perfect-storm by Kris Lovejoy) showed that the forced shift of companies to teleworking in order not to reduce or interrupt their productivity …
Evergrande Group: Will Destroy China?
Evergrande Real Estate Group or Evergrande Group, a real estate giant with 200,000 employees and 3.8m jobs indirectly dependent on its operations and with debts more than $300 billion, forced Fitch to downgrade the company to the CC investment grade it shows high probability default. Moody’s did the same the day before. The company is …
Why Demand for Investment in European Bonds Is Growing
The fact that the ECB, through its programmes of the type of quantum easing (QE) and Pandemic Emergency Purchases Program (PEPP) respectively, provides the market with money, making it the main buyer of European government bonds, forces investors to create an informal queue to buy the remaining and smaller volume of European bonds offerings left …
What Business Borrowing with ESG Criteria Means?
The pressure to put green development and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria at the heart of corporate decision-making has led to the creation of two new types of loans, Green Loans and Sustainability Linked Loans. The basic principles of both types of loans were created by the EU Loan Market Association. More specifically: In …
China’s Labour shortage continues to rise
In addition to the rapidly aging percentage of the Chinese population, China is facing a growing labor shortage even for unskilled jobs. This twin problems will slowly and steadily, if continued, create a deficit in China’s social security and pension fund revenues and as the need for pensions and old-age services increases exponentially. The period …
Smaller in Absolute Size but, Bigger the US Budget Deficit
Due to the rapid recovery of the US economy, the Biden government predicts that this year the Federal Budget deficit will be $555 billion lower than the corresponding budget in May. In absolute numbers, the forecast is for a deficit of $3.12 trillion for the financial year ending September 30, 2021. The deficits are not …
Fixed-Income Markets for the rest of 2021
Due to the pandemic measures, governments have borrowed too much, but so have businesses, with very low borrowing costs due to low interest rates. However, both the low interest rates on the bonds and their yields create an ever-increasing climate of concern for a possible “explosion” of collapse. Debts of non-financial corporations in developed economies …
Commodities forecasting for the rest of 2021
Commodities are moving upwards. Both supply chain fragmentation problems (globally) and climate change problems (e.g., prolonged droughts in Central and South America and Africa) have pushed commodity prices soaring. The increased prices observed in futures in basic commodities in the summer editions, have not yet passed to the consumer markets. These price increases will come …
Stocks forecasting for the rest of the 2021
The US S&P index has very quickly covered the lost ground lost by its fall caused by the implementation of measures to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is constantly growing, breaking one record after another. The Fed expects inflation to be transient and monetary tapering to be implemented smoothly, causing mild corrections in the …