We have another week of data on the US commercial banks’ assets and liabilities. Deposits rose by 2.6% in the week to 25th March, after a (revised) increase of 2.2% in the previous week. The increase in the fortnight to 25th March may have been the highest ever in such a short period of time. The implied annualised rate of increase was not much less than 250%.
 

The microscopic pathogen that is threatening global health and wreaking havoc from Singapore to Seoul, Tokyo to New York and Berlin to Milan is clearly reshaping the 2020 global outlook. But it should not derail the current momentum driving sustainability investing and corporate governance. 

Covid-19 is our wake-up call. Deadly pandemics are expected to keep growing in the future and our innovation system for life-saving drug development is ill equipped to deal with it. Here is why and how to fix it.

The ongoing Covid-19 crisis can probably be seen as a “black swan” not only for China but also the whole world. It is largely unpredictable but with severe consequences.

There is no doubt that China has suffered the most from this crisis economically, socially and politically. However, it is highly debatable whether China or the Communist Party is approaching an inflection point of possible breakup or imminent revolution.

The outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus is so potentially impactful that we are devoting this entire edition to the epidemic, to an attempt to gauge its seriousness. Some stories are so big that it is hard to get your arms around them and this one definitely fits that category. Social media wasn't a factor during the 2003 SARS epidemic. The Chinese economy was a much smaller percentage of global GDP, and travel to and from China was far less common. So a simple comparison to SARS is not enough.

This is a response to Marsha's piece here.

“The purposes of money are constant, the way it operates varies hugely” says Paul Wilson at the outset  – and few authors have illustrated this as interestingly as he does. Impressively erudite, he never lets his command of detail hold up the story, so that the reader is swept up in the stormy history of money’s role in some of the greatest social, political and military conflicts from ancient Rome to the cyber warfare of the 21st century.

Forrest Capie, Professor Emeritus of Economic History, Cass Business School and author of the modern History of the Bank of England writes:

“Robert Pringle has written a book on money that is different from any other.”

He “draws on a long life in the worlds of money, banking, and central banking and on his wide-ranging interests beyond economics and the social sciences to history and the arts to reflect on the strange relationship money and society have on and to each other.”