Previews: The Economist Magazine – August 20, 2022
Tag Archives: The Economist Magazine
Preview: The Economist Magazine – August 13, 2022
Target: Taiwan
- The new Germany – Europe’s most important country has woken up
- Target: Taiwan – How to prevent a war between America and China over Taiwan
- Spending the Gulf’s oil wealth – One last chance to splurge
- Britain’s summer of discontent – Almost nothing in the country seems to be working
Covers: The Economist Magazine – July 23, 2022
ESG is often well-meaning but it is deeply flawed. The industry is a mess and needs to be ruthlessly streamlined.
If you are the type of person who is loth to invest in firms that pollute the planet, mistreat workers and stuff their boards with cronies, you will no doubt be aware of one of the hottest trends in finance: environmental, social and governance (esg) investing. It is an attempt to make capitalism work better and deal with the grave threat posed by climate change. It has ballooned in recent years; the titans of investment management claim that more than a third of their assets, or $35trn in total, are monitored through one esg lens or another. It is on the lips of bosses and officials everywhere.
Preview: The Economist Magazine – July 18, 2022
The Economist, July 18, 2022 – Europe’s winter of discontent
Even as temperatures soar Europe faces a bitter energy crisis later this year
There may be a heatwave in Europe, but winter is coming. It promises to be brutal and divisive: the energy crisis is rapidly worsening as Vladimir Putin strangles gas supplies https://econ.st/3aJz3ir
Preview: The Economist Magazine – July 9, 2022
The hype about TikTok is justified—and so are the concerns. There’s a reason why the world’s most exciting app is also its most mistrusted https://econ.st/3bQE9JX
Preview: The Economist Magazine – July 2, 2022
Ukraine won the short war. Now comes the long war, and so far, Russia is winning. But it does not have to be fought on Vladimir Putin’s terms
Ukraine won the short war. Mobile and resourceful, its troops inflicted terrible losses and confounded Russian plans to take Kyiv. Now comes the long war. It will drain weapons, lives and money until one side loses the will to fight on. So far, this is a war that Russia is winning.
In recent days its forces have taken the eastern city of Severodonetsk. They are advancing on Lysychansk and may soon control all of Luhansk province. They also threaten Slovyansk, in the north of next-door Donetsk. Ukrainian leaders say they are outgunned and lack ammunition. Their government reckons as many as 200 of its troops are dying each day.
Read more: https://econ.trib.al/tGgFvii
Preview: The Economist Magazine – June 25, 2022
How to fix the world’s energy emergency without wrecking the environment
Even as they firefight, governments must resolve the conflict between safe supply and a safe climate.
This year’s energy shock is the most serious since the Middle Eastern oil crises of 1973 and 1979. Like those calamities, it promises to inflict short-term pain and in the longer term to transform the energy industry. The pain is all but guaranteed: owing to high fuel and power prices, most countries are facing soggy growth, inflation, squeezed living standards and a savage political backlash. But the long-run consequences are far from preordained. If governments respond ineptly, they could trigger a relapse towards fossil fuels that makes it even harder to stabilise the climate. Instead they must follow a perilous path that combines security of energy supply with climate security.
Preview: The Economist Magazine – June 11, 2022
Artificial intelligence’s new frontier
The promise and perils of a breakthrough in machine intelligence
Jun 9th 2022ShareGive
Picture a computer that could finish your sentences, using a better turn of phrase; or use a snatch of melody to compose music that sounds as if you wrote it (though you never would have); or solve a problem by creating hundreds of lines of computer code—leaving you to focus on something even harder. In a sense, that computer is merely the descendant of the power looms and steam engines that hastened the Industrial Revolution. But it also belongs to a new class of machine, because it grasps the symbols in language, music and programming and uses them in ways that seem creative. A bit like a human.
The “foundation models” that can do these things represent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, or ai. They, too, promise a revolution, but this one will affect the high-status brainwork that the Industrial Revolution never touched. There are no guarantees about what lies ahead—after all, ai has stumbled in the past. But it is time to look at the promise and perils of the next big thing in machine intelligence.
Previews: The Economist Magazine – May 21, 2022
The Economist Magazine, May 21, 2022 – War is tipping a fragile world towards mass hunger. Fixing that is everyone’s business.
Previews: The Economist Magazine – May 14, 2022
The Economist, May 14, 2022 – The Indian economy is being rewired. The opportunity is immense—and so are the stakes.
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