Smog in Harbin, northeast China © Getty Images
When the leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather this weekend at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, they must recognise the real scale of subsidies for fossil fuels and accelerate their eradication.
In 2009, G20 leaders agreed to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest”. They acknowledged that “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.
While that commitment has been restated at many summits since, action to implement it has been unacceptably slow. Read more
Traders in Chicago after the Fed's October decision on rates © Getty Images
Last Friday’s blockbuster US jobs report has done more than significantly raise market expectations of a December interest rate rise by the Federal Reserve, the first in almost 10 years. It is also starting to fuel a narrative that the US economy may be on the verge of leaving behind an unusually prolonged period of frustratingly low growth. As much as I would like this to be the case, this is — unfortunately — premature.
The October report was indeed encouraging. Monthly job creation came in at a robust 271,000, prior months were revised to the upside and earnings growth picked up to an annualised rate of 2.5 per cent. Absent a particularly disappointing set of interim data/or and the return of global financial market instability, the figures give a green light for the Fed to raise rates when its FOMC policymaking committee next meets on December 15-16. Read more