Solar geoengineering is becoming a respectable idea - The Economist   

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a decade makes. That, roughly, is how often the Open Science Conference, run by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), comes along. At the previous get-together in 2011, says Jim Hurrell, a climate scientist and WCRP member, almost no one was talking about geoengineering. This is the idea of deliberately meddling with the Earth’s climate to try to make it cooler, and thus to offset the worst effects of another type of climatic meddling—namely greenhouse-gas-driven global warming.

At this year’s event, held in Rwanda, Dr Hurrell gave a keynote address on the subject. There were “dozens of papers and talks and posters”, he says. That reflects a broader shift in thinking. Although geoengineering has for many years been the subject of serious, albeit small-scale, scientific interest, it has been largely shunned by environmental NGOs and politicians. Now that is starting to change.

Since the start of this year, solar geoengineering, sometimes known as solar radiation modification (SRM), has been the whole or partial focus of reports published by the European Commission and Parliament, America’s government, the Climate Overshoot Commission (COC; a collection of global bigwigs and worthies), and four separate bits of the UN. A common thread in all of them was that, given the world’s failure to cut greenhouse-gas emissions fast enough, the risks and benefits of SRM should be properly examined.

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Xi Jinping’s grip on Chinese enterprise gets uncomfortably tight - The Economist   

AS THE HEAD office of Northern Heavy Industries (NHI) comes into view, so does a huge slogan fixed permanently to its roof in metre-high red Chinese characters, where you might usually see a company name. The 22-character mouthful reads: “Wave High the Great Banner of Xi Jinping Thought in the New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” A billboard-sized image of Mr Xi, China’s leader, waves to visitors as they enter the lobby. In a nearby factory NHI’s tunnel-boring machines, used for digging metro lines, rise four storeys into the air. The company was founded by the state many decades ago. Today more than ever it embodies an archetypal image of a state-owned enterprise (SoE).

Except that on paper NHI is private. A company called Fangda Group, which is listed in Shenzhen and fully privately owned, took a 47% stake in NHI in 2019, in a rare instance of a private company bailing out a state one. This made Fangda by far the largest single shareholder. The deal should have privatised NHI.

But in China’s corporate sector nothing is so straightforward. Fangda is not the controlling shareholder. Executives say it does not have one. Some staff in its factories call it a state firm; some say it is private. When asked about Fangda’s involvement in NHI, a manager says the investment was a “policy decision”. An investment adviser says that, for reasons he cannot divulge, investors should approach Fangda itself as if it had the backing of the state—even though the state does not feature in its shareholder register. Fangda’s website is covered in Communist Party imagery such as sickles and hammers. It describes its corporate mission as “listening to the party and following the party”.

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What a third world war would mean for investors - The Economist   

Europe had been moving towards the slaughterhouse for years, and by 1914 a conflict was all but inevitable—that, at least, is the argument often made in hindsight. Yet at the time, as Niall Ferguson, a historian, noted in a paper published in 2008, it did not feel that way to investors. For them, the first world war came as a shock. Until the week before it erupted, prices in the bond, currency and money markets barely budged. Then all hell broke loose. “The City has seen in a flash the meaning of war,” wrote this newspaper on August 1st 1914.

Could financial markets once again be underpricing the risk of a global conflict? In the nightmare scenario, the descent into a third world war began two years ago, as Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border. Today Israel’s battle against Hamas has the frightening potential to spill across its borders. American military support is crucial to both Ukraine and Israel, and in Iraq and Syria the superpower’s bases have come under fire, probably from proxies of Iran. Should China decide it is time to take advantage of a distracted superpower and invade Taiwan, America could all too easily end up being drawn into three wars at once. The rest of the world risks those wars interlocking and turning into something even more devastating.

This scenario would of course place financial damage a long way down the list of horrors. Even so, it is part of an investor’s job to consider exactly what it would mean for their portfolio. So far the possibility of a world war has barely caused a tremor in the markets. True, they have for some time now been more seized by fear than greed. Bond prices have been turbulent, even for supposedly “risk-free” American Treasuries, and yields have been climbing for most of this year. Stock indices in America, China and Europe have fallen for three consecutive months. Yet this choppiness can all be plausibly explained by peacetime factors, including outsized government borrowing, interest-rate expectations and shareholders whose previous optimism had got the better of them.

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How to Woo Last Minute Shoppers? It Helps to Have Festive Snacks and Customer Service on High Alert - Inc.com   

Exclusive: The Ample Hills Co-Founders Have Been Let Go--Less Than 6 Months After They Returned to the Company

Black Friday was a hit, but the holidays aren't over. To capture would-be, in-person buyers this year, give them something to see.

Consumers planned to spend an average of $567 during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday  shopping events, up 13 percent across the shopping holidays from last year, according to Deloitte. What's more, over 130 million people say they plan to shop in person on Black Friday, according to the National Retail Federation.

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