Posts From Ray Pierce
The Economist: Finance & economics
COUNTY IN New York, outside the city and Long Island, has seen more cases of covid-19 than Westchester, just north of the Bronx. For weeks tens of thousands of would-be commuters have been staying home. Bars, restaurants and other
THE FIGURES are staggering, even to those hardened by the experience of the global financial crisis. Disney will furlough 100,000 of its hotel and theme-park workers. Uber may slash its staff by a fifth. Fully 26m new claims for unemployment
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Oil markets have a timing problem
FOR MORE than a century, oil has been among the world’s most vital commodities. On April 20th it became less than worthless. The price of the May futures contract for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude plunged to the hitherto unfathomable
CENTRAL BANKS have had a busy pandemic. Along with injecting vast amounts of money into the financial system, they have cleaned vast amounts of it—literally. From America to South Korea, central banks have quarantined and disinfected potentially contaminated banknotes. This
IF DOCTORS AND nurses are on the front-line of the health crisis caused by the pandemic, then bankers are on the front-line of the economic response. Investors dumping stocks have stuffed the money into bank deposits. Cash-strapped businesses are
How sick might banks get?
FROM EBENEZER SCROOGE to Gru in “Despicable Me”, the villain redeemed is a time-honoured trope in fiction. There has been much talk lately of bankers enjoying a similar rehabilitation. Reckless overextension by lenders was the root cause of the financial
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see
TO MOST WORKING Americans, the first of the month brings both joy and sorrow. It is payday, but also when rent and mortgage payments—their biggest bills—are due. Businesses must shell out wages and rent from revenues earned over the past
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For more coverage, see our coronavirus hub