In May of 2023, President Biden faced a crisis of debt. The debt ceiling was about to be breached, while House Republicans demanded cuts of $3.5 trillion if they were to raise the ceiling. President Biden refused. The case consists of excerpts from President Obama's and President Trump's Economic Report of the President, and from President Biden's Fiscal Budget for 2024, as well as charts and tables describing the U.S. economy.
South Africa, like most other countries, is in the process of reducing its carbon emissions to comply with COP26 and, hopefully, reach net zero emissions by 2050. However, because South Africa relies almost wholly on coal (93%) for electricity, and on coal for artificial gasoline, this is a huge task. Furthermore, its state-owned utility - ESCOM - is just recovering from a period of corrupt, "state capture," and requires state support to cover its debt service. Finally, because of the country's high unemployment and strong labor unions, a "just energy transition" is essential. Jobs and retraining for thousands of coal miners and energy workers, their families and communities, will dominate the process of energy transition.
Colombia, once the fastest growing country in Latin America, continues to struggle with productivity. Both labor productivity and total factor productivity have been low for the past decade, despite economic growth of 4.7% annually. Many factors contribute, which President Duque, and President Santos before him, have tried to address. But now, however, President Duque has even larger institutional problems to solve-implementation of the peace treaty, dealing with Venezuelan refugees and COVID-amidst a macroeconomic and political crisis induced by the pandemic.
In January 2012, the government of India faced significant challenges to achieving three key objectives of high growth, inclusive development, and improved governance. The economy was experiencing a growth slowdown, persistently high inflation, and infrastructure and energy deficits. Policy reforms were hampered by several recent corruption scandals, widespread citizen protests against corruption, and disagreements with coalition partners. Could India make the right decisions needed to lift hundreds of millions of citizens out of poverty?
Since its expulsion from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore had transformed itself from a third world island nation into a vibrant city-state with one of the highest levels of GDP per capita in the world. However, sluggish demand among Singapore's major trade partners began testing the nation's export-driven growth model. It was also becoming clear that the Singaporean government could no longer focus single-mindedly on economic growth. Was Singapore facing a mid-life crisis? If so, how could the government revive optimism in the nation's future?
For the past few decades, Australia has dealt with the benefits and costs of repeated mining booms-inflation, a housing bubble, a current account deficit, and growing dependence on China. Between 1996 and 2007, however, Australia had most of these issues under control and grew at impressive rates, becoming one of the richest of developed countries. Yet competitiveness in its non-mining sectors declined. Since the financial crisis, additional challenges associated with climate change, minerals taxes, migration, fiscal deficits, and currency fluctuations have complicated the issues facing both Labor and Liberal administrations, with a very thin majority. Meanwhile, Australia's non-mineral competitiveness continues to recede.
This is an industry note on renewable energy-wind, solar, governmental incentives and storage. It covers the recent history of both the wind and solar industries, an extensive look at governmental policies in the United States, including the Green New Deal, and supply-demand-price developments in those sectors.
On May 9th, 2018, in an extraordinary upset, Mahathir Mohamad again became Malaysia's Prime Minister. Najib Razak, who had headed the government since 2009, had been swept up in the 1MDB scandal - perhaps the biggest state-corruption incident in history. Although Malaysia's growth had remained solid since the financial crisis, the scandal undermined the budget, the country's debt position, and foreigners' willingness to invest. What was it in the history, culture and institutional structure of the country that had allowed 1MDB to happen. And could the 93 year-old Mahathir get the country back on track?
In the last decade, Noble Energy and the Delek Group have discovered almost 40 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, offshore of Israel. For Israel, this has been an extraordinary turnaround, from energy dependence on Arab producers to energy independence and exporter. For Prime Minister Netanyahu, this abundance poses a huge foreign-policy opportunity to lock in national relationships. For Noble, it poses significance operational challenges, funding issues, and long-term political risk.
In April 2018, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was again in Washington to petition Donald Trump. After years of rapid, export-led growth, Japan had slumped into recession in 1991 and never really recovered. For the past 27 years, it's economy has grown at 1.1% annually, plagued by deflation. After several attempts at quantitative easing, Abe had commenced a radical program in 2012 called Quantitative and Qualitative Easing - the first of "three arrows" to repair the Japanese economy. But in early 2018, inflation was still far below the 2% goal, growth had turned negative, and Abe faced the highest debt among the OECD. Together with demographic, energy and security problems, Abe had his hands full, while President Trump roiled the waters in China and North Korea.
Portugal was not ready to join the European Monetary Union in 1999. With strong unions, weak competitiveness and a legacy of socialism, it could not compete with north-European countries. After borrowing extensively to fund deficits, Portugal went into debt crisis in 2011 and had to borrow from the Troika. As banks failed, structural adjustment followed. Today several structural issues and the threat of external risks continue to cast a shadows on its otherwise remarkable recovery.
Saudi Arabia's King Salman faces several challenges, both domestic and foreign. Domestically, he need to build the country's economy to accommodate a "youth bulge" while balancing between liberals and conservatives. And he needs to diversify the economy away from its reliance on oil. Internationally, he must cope with the Arab Spring, with war in Syria and Yemen as well as the threats from Iran and ISIS and continuing friction between Palestinians and Israelis. The key to these issues is Vision 2030 - the plan his son, the Crown Prince, has introduced and begun implementing.
The American shale revolution has upended oil and gas markets for nearly a decade...Prices have risen then plunged, production has surged and then waned, LNG has boomed and technology and productivity have improved. U.S. energy policy, under the Obama administration,authorized a handful of gas exporters, despite pressure from domestic chemical and utility interests, and approved oil exports for the first time in 40 years. Environmental issues and questions remain unresolved. No one knows for certain what America's energy trajectory will look like in the next decade.
Energy - both petroleum and electricity - had been terribly managed for decades in Mexico. The two national monopolies - PEMEX and CFE - were inefficient, overstaffed, corrupt, rife with subsidies, and losing money. Finally, in 2012, President Enrique Pena Nieto announced his intent to drastically reform both. Over the next two years, the Mexican constitution was amended, and a dozen implementing laws were passed, to break up the CFE, reorganize PEMEX, and impose competition between the pieces. By 2017, tracts of offshore oil were auctioned, renewable contracts were auctioned, and new regulators were trying to impose competition downstream in electricity.