Finance

Boeing’s share price rose more than 4% in pre-market trading after European aviation regulators signaled an imminent return to the skies for the currently-grounded 737 Max.

On Tuesday morning the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) published its draft approval for an end to the aircraft’s forced hiatus, which has lasted nearly two years—the 737 Max was grounded worldwide in 2019 following a pair of crashes that killed hundreds of people.

The move is now subject to a 28-day consultation period, meaning the plane could be formally ungrounded in mid-January. However, EASA first wants changes made to the aircraft that are mostly in line with those demanded last week by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA also cleared the Boeing aircraft for service, leaving China’s aviation authority as the big hold-out on that front.

“Objective and independent”

“EASA made clear from the outset that we would conduct our own … Read the rest

Last year it was “climate emergency.” The previous year, it was “toxic.” But for 2020, the U.K.’s Oxford University Press (OUP) could not come up with one definitive “word of the year”.

Instead, the venerable publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen to reflect 2020’s decade-crammed-into-one-year nature by highlighting its rapid and wide-ranging effect on the English language.

The details can be found in a report published Monday by the OUP, but if it’s words you crave, here are some that are unsurprisingly given prominence in that report: coronavirus, lockdown, social distancing, superspreader, mail-in, moonshot, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, bushfires, impeachment and acquittal.

And, of course, doomscrolling.

“As our Word of the Year process started and this data was opened up, it quickly became apparent that 2020 is not a year that could neatly be accommodated in one single ‘word of the year,’ so we have decided … Read the rest

Elizabeth Martin is betting on engineers to automate trading but not necessarily to make things faster.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s global co-head of futures and equities electronic trading says that the ‘Flash Boys’ era of the past decade has ceded some ground to customizing trading for clients.

“I’ve never in my career bet against innovation or smart people being able to make things faster,” she says. “There will be some amount of improvement in speed and latency but in terms of the differentiated drivers of what a broad base of clients need in order to deliver execution for them, it’s less important, because most of the big scale providers offer those services.”

Martin, a 20-year Goldman veteran, relocated to London three years ago and oversees the Wall Street bank’s electronic stock trading business. Martin spoke with Bloomberg about the pandemic, the future of finance and zipping around the city in … Read the rest

The recent election gave voice to millions of Americans frustrated with their economic circumstances—a concern that predates the devastation wrought by COVID-19. On one side are the blue-collar victims of deindustrialization who, as in 2016, voted for Donald Trump. On the other side are young college graduates struggling to get ahead who, unable to vote for Bernie Sanders, plumped for Biden. 

Whatever their political leanings, a vast number of Americans have lost faith in capitalism. A May 2020 JUST Capital and Harris poll found that only 25% of those surveyed agreed that “capitalism works for the ordinary American.” Doubts about capitalism are not limited to the U.S. In a 2020, pre-COVID Edelman survey of 34,000 individuals across 28 countries, 56% of respondents agreed with the statement that “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good.”

Capitalism is charged with being fixated on shareholder returns, myopically short … Read the rest

With cases of COVID-19 surging across the country, there has been incredible urgency for a safe and effective vaccine. But there are sobering messages from public health officials and vaccine company executives in recent days that the vaccine likely won’t be available to a majority of the U.S. population until well into 2021.

The approval of a vaccine, however, will only be the first step toward restoring the health and security of our nation. There is an important distinction between the creation of a vaccine designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and a successful process of manufacturing, distribution, and administration. 

The development of a vaccine—particularly at the scale of supporting the needs of the entire population—takes time. In addition, manufacturing and distributing this vaccine is a monumental logistical and security challenge. A safe and efficient vaccination effort presents one of the most complex logistical challenges the nation has ever … Read the rest