Bloomberg QuickTake: Climate Change

By Bloomberg News

Hot subjects in business, politics (and much more) untangled with easy-to-understand prose and smart graphics, from the world's leading financial media company. This volume of Bloomberg QuickTake has a special section that focuses on how climate change is influencing where we live, how we invest, and even what clothes we buy. Other sections include Finance & Capital Markets; Trade; Global Governance; Urbanization; Inclusion; and Technology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamscape Media
• Release date: Mar 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781974942664

Bloomberg News

Bloomberg journalists in more than 150 bureaus worldwide cover breaking news, market-moving developments, and report in-depth enterprise and investigative stories that have garnered more than 700 editorial awards in the 24 years since Bloomberg News began.

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Calendar

GUIDE TO 2019

By Anne Cronin and Phyllis Halliday

QuickTakes can be your guide to events in 2019. Related QuickTakes in this book are noted with a link. Others can be accessed via the Bloomberg Terminal or by searching for the name and QuickTake in your web browser.

JANUARY

The trade war ratchets up as the U.S. raises tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent.

QuickTake: Trade War

U.S. taxpayers divorced on or after Jan. 1 can no longer deduct payments for alimony from their income taxes.

Pope Francis attends World Youth Day events in Panama Jan. 23-27.

FEBRUARY

Nigeria’s general election is Feb. 16.

QuickTake: Nigeria’s Horrors and Hopes

Three major video games are released Feb. 22: Electronic Arts’s Anthem, Sony’s Days Gone and Koch Media’s Metro: Exodus. Competitive video gaming, or esports, becomes a billion-dollar industry in 2019.

Thailand’s first election since a 2014 coup could come as early as Feb. 24.

MARCH

The Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington March 11-12 explores ways to limit nuclear risks.

The 30th anniversary of British scientist Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal for a World Wide Web is March 12. His boss at the time wrote, Vague but exciting …

The U.K. quits the European Union March 29, though many Brexit details are still to be determined.

QuickTake: No-Deal Brexit

APRIL

SpaceX sends two NASA astronauts into orbit on the first crewed space flight launched by a commercial provider.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization turns 70 April 4.

QuickTake: International (Dis)Order

Emperor Akihito of Japan, 85, abdicates April 30; Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the next day. It’s the first retirement from the Chrysanthemum Throne in about 200 years.

MAY

India must hold its general election by this month.

QuickTake: India’s Aspirations

The fourth Avengers film, based on the Marvel Comics superhero team, is released. Worldwide box-office sales for the first three in the franchise totaled about $5 billion.

The European Parliament holds elections May 23-26. Populist parties are expected to gain seats, which could mean tougher restrictions on refugees.

QuickTake: Refugees and Asylum

JUNE

The Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1; it ends Nov. 30.

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York is June 28. Gay bar patrons battling a police raid launched the gay-liberation movement.

The G-20 Summit of world leaders is held in Osaka, Japan, June 28-29. Trade issues could be at the top of the agenda.

JULY

The four-month monsoon season peaks in India. Its thunderous downpours provide water for drinking, farming and hydroelectric power.

The final of the Women’s World Cup soccer tournament in France is July 7.

United Nations World Population Day is July 11, commemorating the day in 1987 when the global tally reached 5 billion. There are now 7.5 billion people on the planet, and growth has slowed.

QuickTake: Fertility Falloff

AUGUST

South Africa must hold its general election by Aug. 4. Support for the ruling African National Congress party faded after multiple corruption scandals.

The 50th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival in Bethel, New York, is Aug. 15-18. Three days of peace and music began with a performance by Richie Havens and closed with a Jimi Hendrix set that included The Star Spangled Banner.

SEPTEMBER

The UN holds a climate summit to review how nations are doing on their pledges to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

QuickTake: Climate Change

Sept. 11 is Catalan National Day, marked by demonstrations calling for the region’s independence from Spain.

The U.S. ends its fiscal year Sept. 30 with a budget deficit near $1 trillion, driven by tax cuts and spending increases.

OCTOBER

Japan raises its consumption tax to 10 percent from 8 percent Oct. 1 to reduce the government’s debt.

Greece’s legislative election must be held by Oct. 20. The nation’s economy shrank by more than a quarter under the spending constraints of its EU bailout.

The final possible date for Canada’s national election is Oct. 21.

NOVEMBER

A new president of the European Central Bank will succeed Mario Draghi and begin a five-year term Nov. 1.

QuickTake: Central Bank Independence

Australia must hold parliamentary elections no later than Nov. 2.

The Transit of Mercury occurs Nov. 11-12, when observers can see the dark disk of Mercury moving across the face of the Sun. This rare event won’t occur again until 2032.

DECEMBER

India hopes to open the first runway at its new Mumbai International Airport.

QuickTake: Public-Private Partnerships

The phase-out of plastic straws in U.K. and Irish McDonald’s restaurants should be complete. The switch to paper straws seeks to reduce plastic waste.

Tiger Woods captains the U.S. team against Ernie Els’s international squad at the Presidents Cup golf event in Melbourne Dec. 12-15.

chapter title

Buzzwords

The language of finance and markets includes terms new and old. Here’s your guide to the argot.

By Alessandro Giovanni Borghese and Christopher Anstey

For a decade, investors around the world rode a rising tide of more than $12 trillion — the extra cash pumped in by key central banks to counter the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Now the flow of so-called quantitative easing, or QE, is reversing into quantitative tightening. The U.S. Federal Reserve stopped buying government bonds as a way of nudging banks to do more lending in 2014, and began letting up to $50 billion of its bonds mature every month without replacing them. That takes money out of the financial system, tightening monetary conditions. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have scaled back their bond purchases, as well. The amount of liquidity injected into markets dropped by almost $1.8 trillion in the first half of 2018. The effect? Increased volatility. Yields climbed on benchmark government debt; emerging-market stocks and corporate bonds fell. The damage sparked calls for the Fed to be more careful how it tightens.

By Jeanna Smialek

As the U.S. unemployment rate touched a 48-year low, economists wondered whether monopsony helped explain why salaries weren’t getting a bigger boost. A monopsony arises when employers gain dominance and become wage-setters, rather than wage-negotiators. This means workers lose the bargaining power they need to push for higher pay. Monopsony was once only an issue in company towns where everyone worked for the same employer. But in recent years, industry concentration has been spreading. Chain stores have supplanted mom-and-pop shops. As technology giants have grown, illegal agreements not to recruit or hire each other’s workers have spread. The jury is still out on how much monopsony might be holding wages back, but with unions declining and huge corporations gaining market share, there are reasons to worry.

By Heather Smith

Know your customer is more than an old sales adage. For banks around the world, KYC refers to a broad set of requirements designed to vet clients and fight ever-more-sophisticated financial crimes, especially money laundering. KYC has taken on new significance in the debate about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, with their emphasis on anonymity. Europe is reeling from revelations that some of its biggest banks, including Deutsche Bank, ING and Danske Bank, channeled billions in illegal funds in violation of anti-money-laundering, or AML, rules. The idea is that banks bear a special burden to know who exactly they’re serving and where a client’s money comes from. Much of the world’s know-your-customer architecture grew out of the U.S. Patriot Act, enacted following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Although practices differ by country, banks generally must obtain some form of government identification from customers seeking to open accounts, as well as documentation showing where their money came from. Banks often complain that the rules are onerous and compliance costly. They must continuously track customer transactions to look for red flags, such as a