Omicron latest: Omicron and the global economy
Jan 28th 2022IF THERE IS one lesson the covid-19 pandemic has taught the world, it is that acting early pays off. So when news emerged on November 25th in South Africa of a worrying new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, countries immediately began scrambling to tighten the rules on international travel. By November 29th suspected…
The new government hopes to cure Germans’ distaste for the stockmarket
Jan 15th 2022THE 177-PAGE coalition agreement between Germany’s Social Democrats, Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens contains grand plans to combat climate change and covid-19, and to speed up digitisation. Tucked away on page 73 is a more modest promise, to fund a small part of its public-pension scheme by investing in stocks. Reactions in…
Afghans are more pessimistic about their future than ever
Jan 29th 2022WHEN AFGHANS were asked in 2016 to rate their lives on a scale of zero to ten, with zero representing the “worst possible life” and ten the best, they gave themselves a respectable 4.2, the same as Indians and only a little below the median of 5.4 for 142 countries. By the summer…
Myanmar’s generals have united the country—against themselves
Z N HTET AUNG had always loathed the Rohingyas, a Muslim ethnic group from Rakhine, a state in western Myanmar. When the Burmese army led mobs on a rampage through Rohingya villages in 2017, burning, raping and killing and prompting some 700,000 Rohingyas to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, he believed the military campaign was justified.…
The war in Yemen reaches Abu Dhabi
AFTER SEVEN years of fighting in Yemen, the roar and thump of missile interceptors is a familiar sound in Saudi Arabia. But it was a shock for residents of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Early on January 24th the UAE said it had shot down a pair of ballistic missiles fired from Yemen. Videos posted…
Uganda’s most influential economist has died
SOMETIMES CHANGING an economy starts with a metaphor. In 1992 Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile, the top civil servant in Uganda’s finance ministry, began comparing inflation to indiscipline in the army. He knew that would resonate with Yoweri Museveni, a rebel who had fought his way to power six years earlier. Soon the president was declaring that “inflation…
Personal finance is a hit on TikTok
VIDEOS TAGGED #moneytok have had 10.6bn views on TikTok—more than #tacotuesday, #gossip and #cookingtiktok. Creators can use the tag to signal that their posts are part of a genre on the short-video platform that offers financial advice. In posts lasting less than a minute, Mandi Woodruff-Santos posts career and investment tips to her 27,500 followers.…
The reasons behind the stockmarket turmoil
Jan 29th 2022AS THE STOCK-TRADING screens turned red, one trader was heard to quip that at least some things are falling in price. By the market close on Wednesday, January 26th, the cumulative loss on the S&P 500 index had moved towards 10% for this year, barely four weeks in. The year-to-date decline in the…
How sanctions really can improve respect for human rights
Jan 29th 2022THERE ARE good reasons why women are less likely than men to be at the front of student-led protests making a stand against the regime of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Bangladesh’s steely prime minister, which is wielding truncheons and a patronage system based on graft to extend its 13 years in power. Young men…
How Kazakhstan became more Kazakh
LIKE MOST autocrats Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for three decades, thought a lot about how best to honour himself. The 81-year-old resigned as president in 2019 and took on a role pulling strings from behind the scenes, but not before ensuring that the capital city would bear his name. At the start of January…