“US Bonds Flag Recession Risk,” says today’s headline on Bloomberg.com. “Futures Put S&P 500 on Course to Enter Bear Market,” reads today’s headline of The Wall Street Journal. Other newspapers, too, devote their business sections to the worsening economic outlook, and everyone…
Norway has just joined the group of European countries that implemented a 2019 European Union and UN Security Council resolution that establishes an obligation to label products originating in “Israeli settlements”—areas Israel gained control of in the West Bank and…
In an interview for CBS News on March 8, 2009, during the financial crisis that became known as the Great Recession, then Wachovia Corp. economist Mark Vitner said that untying the world’s entangled economies is “like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. It…
The rising inflation seems to have caught everyone off guard. The US inflation rate of 8.3% in April, while representing a slowdown compared to previous months, is still far too high for comfort. The situation is not much better in…
What will we do when robots take over our jobs? In many areas of the labor market, this is already the case. From cashiers to lawyers, computerized machines are replacing humans at an alarming rate that is only accelerating. It…
We need balance between us and nature. We need to take care of our necessities—to kill animals for food, and burn coal, oil and gas in order to reasonably use mechanisms, equipment and heating. We cannot avoid doing so. We…
Much has been said about globalization. On the one hand, it gave everyone access to amenities that until a few decades ago only the rich could have. It opened us to new cultures and places, and improved the material life…
Pundits around the world are warning that a food crisis is either imminent or is already happening. In its 2022 report, the United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) stresses the “remarkably high severity and numbers of people in crisis or…
“When temperatures in Antarctica soared to 38 degrees Celsius above normal—around 70 Fahrenheit—in March, a teetering ice shelf the size of Los Angeles collapsed,” wrote CNN. “The heat rushed in through what’s known as an atmospheric river,” the story continued, “a…
The United Nations recently celebrated the International Mother Earth Day as a reminder to protect the environment. Heat waves, droughts, fires and heavy rains that cause severe flooding have become more frequent in many parts of the world due to…
Despite trying to resume normalcy after two years of intermittent lockdowns and vaccine and mask mandates, reality seems to have different ideas for humanity. The latest is a shortage in those silicon chips called “semiconductors,” which operate not only computers,…
Putting food on the table has become a luxury these days. U.S. inflation soars to 8.5%, the highest annual level in 40 years and grocery prices are particularly hit, up to at least 10 percent higher from last year. For…