Covid-19 disruption to business has reshuffled priorities for CFOs and treasurers. They must address how to: maintain access to liquidity/credit; implement back-up procedures; create visibility to total cash in global locations; determine cash requirements in the short and medium term; and assess current exposures. Astrid Poussel, Global Corporate Coverage, Corporate Bank, joins the conversation.

Back in early December most thought the chance of Republicans losing both Georgia Senate run-off seats was pretty low. That has now happened, with a so-called blue sweep upon us. About a week until inauguration, we discuss how we think Biden’s initial 100-day+ plan might look like.

Even prior to the pandemic, there was an inevitable shift to online purchasing. But how do we ensure this widening acceptance of online buying does not backfire on the planet in the form of unsustainable delivery levels? We propose a system to bring all parties in the delivery value chain to the table, and suggest an incentive system that grades rewards with the intention of sending non-urgent deliveries to specific areas on specific days.

As the pandemic has accelerated the digital cash revolution, there are several things companies and policymakers need to do to respond.

We look at what to expect from the Biden administration and discuss the implications for the US economic outlook for 2021.

The pandemic has shown how the ‘haves’ are more resilient than the ‘have-nots’. Much of this is based on the gap between the two groups based on their access to technology. The divide in the US runs deepest along race and location (urban versus rural). To narrow this gap, we lay out our vision to develop an initiative that covers the more than half of households without proper broadband connection and a computer.

The 2020 election is now less than a week away. While all elections have implications for the economic outlook, the two candidates for this year’s contest have historically divergent views on essentially all important aspects of economic policy. In this podcast, we consider the implications for the economic outlook of the possible combinations of president and Senate.

The exponential growth of the digital economy is going to leave large chunks of minorities with little or no access to jobs. We conduct a bottom up societal study and it shows that 76% of Blacks and 62% of Hispanics could get shut out or be under-prepared for 86% of jobs in the US by 2045. If this digital racial gap is not addressed, in one generation alone, digitization could render the country’s minorities into an unemployment abyss.

The widening generational divide should be a key source of alarm for investors, financial markets and society as a whole. Young people perceive themselves as the losers on issues ranging from housing to climate change to student debt. In turn, this anger is manifesting itself into political outcomes, with elections around the world increasingly fought along generational lines.

As long as they are covered by salary protection schemes, those on low incomes have seen their paycheque relatively more insulated than those on higher incomes. Other redistributionist measures also mean the rich are likely to face a higher burden, thus reducing inequality.