Tausi Insider

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, in London, on Nov. 9. ANDY BAILEY/AFP/Getty Images Britain has been in managed – or mismanaged – decline since its costly victory in the Second World War, a quarter-century after the British Empire reached its peak. That decline seems to be accelerating as Brexit, the pandemic, the energy crisis and seemingly endless political turmoil work their dark magic. Every decade or so since the war ended, a currency or economic crisis or an epically bad political decision has pushed Britain’s economy – and global stature – ever lower. The pound’s devaluation in 1949 ensured the rise, and ultimate dominance, of the U.S. dollar. The chaos of the 1970s – strikes, social unrest, gaping budget deficits, soaring oil prices and inflation – intensified the country’s tribulations and triggered a bailout by the International Monetary Fund. Then came another currency crisis – “Black Wednesday” of 199...

Walmart WMT-N proposed a $3.1-billion legal settlement on Tuesday over the toll of powerful prescription opioids sold at its pharmacies, becoming the latest major drug industry player to promise major support to state, local and tribal governments still grappling with a crisis in overdose deaths. The retail giant’s announcement follows similar proposals on Nov. 2 from the two largest U.S. pharmacy chains, CVS Health CVS-N and Walgreen Co. WBA-Q, which each said they would pay about $5-billion. Most of the drugmakers that produced the most opioids and the biggest drug distribution companies have already reached settlements. With the largest pharmacies now settling, it represents a shift in the opioid litigation saga. For years, the question was whether companies would be held accountable for an overdose crisis that a flood of prescription drugs helped spark. With the crisis still raging, the focus now is on how the settlement dollars – now totalling more than $50 billion – will be use...

Airbnb Inc ABNB-Q said on Wednesday it had recorded a “disproportionate” 31 per cent rise in single-room listings on its platform in the third quarter, as more people sought extra income in the face of a cost-of-living crisis. The company said property listings rose across regions, without disclosing specific numbers, and to aid the growth, it unveiled an app update on Wednesday to make the process easier. “We have seen a lot of people being more interested than even before in hosting to defray their cost of living,” Airbnb Chief Executive Brian Chesky said, as high inflation due to the Ukraine war puts fragile household budgets under pressure. About 46 per cent of hosts on Airbnb said they used the extra money from renting out properties to pay for food and other items, while one in 10 said it helped them avoid eviction or foreclosure, the company said, citing a survey. Some popular tourist destinations have, however, blamed the company for aggravating housing shortages, as landlord...

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra appears as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission, in Ottawa, on Nov. 23. PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press Transport Minister Omar Alghabra met with members of the air transport sector to discuss measures to modernize and digitize the industry and to learn from the mistakes that led to major travel disruptions this summer. Alghabra, alongside minister Randy Boissonnault and parliamentary secretary Annie Koutrakis, led a national summit on the recovery of the air sector Thursday to discuss improvements to Canada’s air transportation, including transparency, accountability and passenger rights. Alghabra says that after the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, last summer the air industry faced a new crisis of congestion and delays. He says government officials and air transport actors discussed plans to improve ahead of the winter travel surge including modernizing the security screening process and digitizing the sharing of information. Over th...

Dawn Calleja, editor of ROB magazine, Dec 2021 Steph Martyniuk/Tausi Insider Each December for the past few decades, this magazine has named one lucky leader our CEO of the Year. For the most part, we’ve had a good run, from the somewhat staid (Michael Medline) to the brash (Hunter Harrison) to the downright controversial (Bill Ackman). But there’s one thing I’ve always regretted, and that’s not giving the title to Maple Leaf Foods chief executive Michael McCain in 2008. McCain was certainly in the running—in fact, he appeared on that month’s cover—but the general consensus was that the timing was wrong: It was just a few months after tainted meat from a Maple Leaf plant killed 22 people and made hundreds more ill. “Going through the crisis,” McCain told reporters at the time, “there are two advisers I’ve paid no attention to. The first are the lawyers, and the second are the accountants. It’s not about money or legal liability—this is about our being accountable for providing consum...

Construction workers use a lift along a wall of bitcoin mining at Bitfarms in Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec. Bitcoin was born from the 2008 financial crisis. Now crypto has its own crisis. LARS HAGBERG/AFP/Getty Images There’s a certain irony in the saga of the FTX Trading Ltd. cryptocurrency exchange – an irony that, perhaps, might be a good thing for the industry. Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency and progenitor of the industry, was created in the wake of 2008 financial crisis. Its creation was fuelled by a disdain for what the banks did, their questionable accounting practices and rampant risk-taking that caused the crisis. Bitcoin, which envisions a currency system without intermediaries or overseers, had wanted to cut out the financial institutions, central banks and governments. The utopia promised was a world in which a financial crisis could not happen (and if one did, the ones responsible would not be rewarded with bailouts). Now, though, FTX, a leading institution in crypto, s...

Wind turbines at the Saint-Nazaire offshore wind farm, off the coast of the Guerande peninsula in western France, on Sept. 22, 2022. STEPHANE MAHE/The Associated Press Climate change is the global economy’s biggest long-term challenge but one the world is least prepared to tackle because of short-term problems led by a cost-of-living crisis, the World Economic Forum said in a report Wednesday. The group’s Global Risks Report, released ahead of its annual gathering of government leaders and business elites next week in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, offers a bleak outlook. The report based on a survey of 1,200 risk experts, industry bosses and policy-makers says the biggest challenges over the next decade involve the environment, yet more immediate challenges are distracting world leaders, some of whom will be in Davos for panel discussions and schmoozing at an event that has faced criticism for not producing concrete action. “The coming years will present tough trade-offs for gove...

A report by Royal LePage says the median price of a home in Canada in the fourth quarter of 2022 posted the first year-over-year decline since the end of 2008 during the financial crisis. In its house price survey, the real estate company says the median aggregate price of a home was $757,100 in the final quarter of last year, down 2.8 per cent compared with the end of 2021. Royal LePage says the aggregate price was down 2.3 per cent on a quarter-over-quarter basis to mark the third consecutive quarterly decline. Home prices fell in 2022 as mortgage rates pushed higher, driven by the Bank of Canada’s interest rate hikes to fight inflation. However, Royal LePage noted that home prices remain above pre-pandemic levels. It says the national aggregate home price in the fourth quarter of 2022 was up 13.8 per cent compared with the same quarter in 2020 and 17.2 per cent higher than in the fourth quarter of 2019. https://www.tausiinsider.com/canadian-home-prices-in-fourth-quarter-down-...

A severe fragmentation of the global economy after decades of increasing economic integration could reduce global economic output by up to 7%, but the losses could reach 8-12% in some countries, if technology is also decoupled, the International Monetary Fund said in a new staff report. Tne IMF said even limited fragmentation could shave 0.2% off of global GDP, but said more work was needed to assess the estimated costs to the international monetary system and the global financial safety net (GFSN). The note, released late Sunday, noted that the global flows of goods and capital had levelled off after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, and a surge in trade restrictions seen in subsequent years. “The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have further tested international relations and increased skepticism about the benefits of globalization,” the staff report said. It said deepening trade ties had resulted in a large reduction in global poverty for years, while ben...

A different type of energy transition has taken place at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting. Unlike 2021′s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, where oil and gas executives were personae non gratae, fossil fuel chiefs and renewable energy bosses sat cheek by jowl in Davos. Activists like Greta Thunberg don’t like it. But some in the solar, wind and hydro industry are warming to the carbon crowd. Tejpreet Chopra, who heads one of India’s clean energy firms Bharat Light and Power, was surprised to be invited to a side-event with more than 60 top oil and gas executives. “The course of this transition will have to take a more inclusive approach until we all get to the finish line of where we all want to be,” he told Reuters. This shift, partly triggered by the energy crunch after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has been front and centre in Davos, where United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dedicated his speech to it. As soaring prices drove up inflation, forced indu...