Posts by Andy Serwer

Dambisa Moyo: Here's what happens if Donald Trump wins

With all the focus on this over-the-top election campaign here in the US, it’s refreshing to hear from someone who has a global perspective.

Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian-born global economist and author who’s worked at World Bank and Goldman Sachs. Moyo, who now lives in New York City, has been in leadership roles at a number of high-profile companies and is currently on the boards of Chevron and Barclays, among others. In a recent interview she discusses how income inequality, European turmoil and the very contentious US election are just some of the headwinds global markets are contending with.

Does Moyo think that if Trump wins there will be a market shock?

“I think that’s pretty much priced in,” she says. “I think people will be surprised but only because the polls showed [Clinton winning] by a wide margin. I’m not entirely of the mind that the whole world comes to an end [if Trump wins.] We’ll wake up on the ninth and come to work.” What does worry Moyo is that “neither candidate has articulated a very clear idea of the path of economic growth and a lot of the issues we’re dealing with today.”

How Randi Zuckerberg's cartoon aims to change parenting and Silicon Valley

This entrepreneur is getting animated.

The early Facebook employee and sister of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pursuing a number of ventures since she left Facebook five years ago, including writing a children’s book called “Dot,” that’s now being turned into a cartoon for the Sprout network, premiering this weekend.

“I was writing a business book called ‘Dot.complicated’ and I felt very torn writing a book as a tech expert, and then I’d go home to my two-year-old son and I felt very much like an amateur parenting a kid in the digital world,” she says. “So I told my publisher, you have to also let me write a book about the reality of modern childhood.”

And that became “Dot,” which was published in 2013, the protagonist being “a super spunky tech savvy little girl—important for me that she’s a little girl because we need to encourage more girls and women in tech—and she’s navigating when to be plugged in and when to be unplugged,” says R’Zuck.

“People at companies have to put effort into diversity,” she says. “I know, diversity takes a lot of effort. It’s hard. It’s easy to reach for the candidate you know, but it’s worth the effort.”

Dot.complicated indeed.

 

9 states are voting on marijuana — here are the issues

The presidential debates are over and now we can focus on some of the more pressing issues of election 2016 like…evil weed!

Yes, looking beyond the Trump/Clinton squabble-fest, you will see that there are marijuana-related issues on the ballot in nine states, five will vote on out-and-out legalization: Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada, while four, Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota, are looking to make medical marijuana legal to one degree or another.

How likely are likely are these initiatives to pass? Well, you have to go state by state of course to really drill down, but there are a number of broader, national considerations. Here they are in no particular order.

Also U-Haul has reportedly given money to stop legalization in Arizona, presumably because the company is concerned about stoners crashing its trailers. And then there are mixed bag groups like law enforcement (you could argue it both ways) and drug treatment centers (ditto) that could conceivably be either for or against legal marijuana.

This is what makes a town, city or state hot for business

What is it that makes businesses attracted to specific parts of the US—certain regions, states and towns? And what can those states and municipalities do to make themselves more attractive to companies? Figuring this out really is key to regional economic growth in the United States, and I put these questions to a panel of economic experts in Dallas, which focused on the economy of states in that particular region: Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

First off, it’s worth noting that economic conditions are local—for instance what’s going on in northern Maine has very little to do with the economy of San Diego, but I would submit that you actually don’t often hear about specific regions that much. So what’s going on in that five-state region?

“There are a number of factors [that makes the economy in these states strong],” says Don Pierson, Secretary, Louisiana Economic Development, pointing to energy, of course, but also aerospace and trade with international markets. No doubt the decline in energy prices has hurt states like Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, but the panelists suggested the pain is less than it has been in past downturns.

'I would be quite surprised if there wasn’t a recession in the UK'

Is Brexit the "most disastrous single event in British history since the second world war?" So says Martin Wolf, London-based chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, and one of the world’s most thoughtful business columnists. So, could it really be that bad? “I think so, in terms of its economic effects over the short and medium term and its political effect over the longer term. I can’t think of an event comparable. The only one that has come to mind was our decision to invade the Suez Canal back in 1956 which lead to the fall our prime minister and ignominy. But it didn’t do anything like economic damage it looks like this one could likely to do,” Wolf says. Wolf isn’t particularly sanguine about the financial markets, especially Britain’s over the short term: “I think the main point is the uncertainty is unavoidable until this is revolved one way or another, and it’s difficult to see that happening quickly. I think investors will make the decision to delay their decisions. So there will be less investment. That is bound to lower activity [and] demand in the economy significantly. The banks have been very badly hit already in terms of their stock prices. I...

What to expect from the markets Monday morning, and beyond

Even if markets don’t tank Monday morning — the second trading day after Britain’s historic Brexit vote — it will likely be a very bumpy ride. That’s because most analysts expect the best-case scenario on Monday — and in fact over the near and medium term — to be instability.

Worst case is a downright bloodbath, not so much in the US market and economy, but especially of course in Britain, and in Europe and emerging markets. Yes, fortress America will most likely be less affected, but ironically, globalism, the very mega-trend that was at the root of the Brits voting to decamp from the European Union, means that those of us in the US are more tied than ever to destabilization in Europe.

As the Brits are so famous for saying: “Keep calm and carry on.” No doubt that will be put to the test.

Read more:

How Trump benefits from Brexit

How Trump benefits from Brexit

UK voters shocked just about everyonewhen they voted Thursday to leave the European Union. The Brexit shows the weakness not only of the EU and globalization — but also of polling. And doesn’t Donald Trump love that!

Wall Street too was caught completely off guard because it appeared that firms did independent polling that they believed showed the "remain" votes would win, traded the pound sterling up on that notion and then got crushed when the news came out the other way. It really was a rejection of the British establishment by the voters, with a great deal of voting falling along class lines. There are many exceptions, but generally Brexit voters tended to be working class while the "stay" crowd was more upper-crusty.

 

 

As deadline looms, here's how to fix Puerto Rico

With all the hullabaloo over Brexit, Americans may forget there is another sovereignty controversy simmering much closer to home, that being Puerto Rico’s dire economic straits. It’s a crisis that could be coming to a head—or perhaps on the road to resolution—over the next few days. I recently sat down with Richard Ravitch, former Lieutenant Governor of New York and a longstanding authority on restructuring who helped fix the New York City debt crisis of the 1970s. Now Ravitch has been offering his expertise to help resolve the Puerto Rican crisis. “I’m a kibitzer,” he explains. “I talk to everybody about the subject giving them the benefits of my experience, such as it may be.” I asked Ravitch a fundamental question: Why is Puerto Rico in so much trouble? “Because the politicians did the same thing they did 40 years ago in New York and what they did the last 15 years in Illinois and New Jersey,” Ravitch says. “They prefer to borrow rather than tax or cut expenditures in order to meet the obligations that they and their predecessors incurred…Puerto Rico was an egregious case of that.” Ravitch points to excessive borrowing, the withdrawal of a federal subsidy that was key to...

‘Stairway to Heaven’ case could mean millions for Led Zeppelin

Hey, man! Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” isn’t a ripoff! Or so says one prominent rock critic. And if he’s right, that could mean tens of millions dollars for the band. In case you haven’t heard, the estate of an obscure rock musician, Randy California, who played in a rather obscure rock band, Spirit, is suing Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement, alleging that the first few bars of the rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven” – released in 1971 – were cribbed from, you guessed it, an obscure Spirit song. (You can hear both tunes in the interview above.)

Here's why the government should give you $1,000 a month

It sounds more like a pipe dream than government policy. It’s called Universal Basic Income, a proposed government program that would essentially give every citizen a guaranteed floor income of say $1000 a month from Washington. It’s an idea that’s been around for a while and has more credibility than you might think—and not just from left-wingers. Richard Nixon and conservative uber-economist Milton Friedman were both proponents.

So too is Andy Stern, former president of the powerful Service Employees International Union and now a professor at Columbia University. In his new book ‘Raising the Floor,’ Stern lays out the case for UBI, and he suggests that it isn’t some pie-in-the-sky notion that would never see the light of day. I sat down with Stern to discuss.

“It is an old idea,” Stern points out. “Thomas Paine proposed it early on when we were forming the nation.”

As for why we need the program, Stern says that “at a time when our anti-poverty programs aren’t really working,” and with technology bringing massive job disruption, “we need to provide a safety net, a floor for every single American.”

Bottom line: UBI is an interesting idea and even better grist for debate.