UK public debt exceeds £ 2 trillion – real-time updates

Jeff Wilke, chief executive of Amazon’s vast consumer business, said on Friday he plans to retire early next year after more than two decades with the company, in a rare change guard atop the e-commerce giant.

Mr Wilke, 53, was one of two Amazon-specific business leaders led by Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO.

(The other business leader is Andy Jassy, ​​who runs Amazon’s cloud computing business.) Mr. Wilke is the oldest executive to leave Amazon in recent years amid a wave of departures. . from Mr. Bezos’ management team, along with the men who built the company are retiring or going to other companies.

In an email to staff, Mr. Wilke wrote:

“So why leave? It is only now. “He said he had no other job planned and was” as happy and proud of Amazon as ever. He added that he was ready to have ‘time to explore personal interests that have remained in the background for more than two decades’.

Mr Bezos, also in an email to the company, said Mr Wilke “is just one of those people without whom Amazon would be completely unrecognizable”.

Dave Clark, the senior vice president who managed Amazon’s operations, including logistics and supply chain, will assume the role of CEO of Wilke’s consumer sector.

TOP REVENUE Jeff Wilke joined Amazon in 1999, eventually becoming an executive in the wider retail industry.

The discovery of the Turkish gas field is good news for its economy, if it can produce.

Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak and Energy Minister Fatih Donmez applaud after announcing the discovery of the gas field on the deck of the Black Sea drilling ship on Friday.
Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak and Energy Minister Fatih Donmez applauded Friday after announcing the discovery of the gas field on the deck of the Black Sea drilling ship. Credit Turkish Ministry of Finance, via Reuters
A Turkish drilling ship has discovered a major gas field in the Black Sea, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, potentially reducing the country’s dependence on imported energy and bringing relief to the besieged economy.

But analysts have warned that it would take several years for the field to start producing, and warned the project could encounter the same technical issues that have hampered further attempts to mine reserves in the region.

“This is the biggest discovery Turkey has ever made – by far – and one of the world’s biggest discoveries of 2020,” Thomas Purdie, analyst at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said in a statement. Mr Erdogan estimated the size of the field at 320 billion cubic meters, a figure which Mr Purdie said should have been confirmed by further drilling.

Mr Purdie noted that a Romanian project just 60 miles away was plagued by logistical problems.

Erdogan’s claim that the newly discovered Turkish field will begin production in 2023 is “ambitious,” Purdie said.

The Turkish lira rebounded briefly this week on news of the discovery, but declined after Friday afternoon’s announcement, a sign that investors were disappointed. The lira has lost a quarter of its value this year, causing severe economic disruption in part because imported energy becomes more expensive for those who pay with local currency.

US stocks weaken as global markets collapse.

Wall Street shares fell at the start of trading on Friday; European markets were slightly higher before falling into negative territory; Asian markets ended the week on a rally.

A new set of data from purchasing manager indices has called into question the strength of the European economic recovery. “The eurozone’s rebound lost momentum in August, highlighting inherent weaknesses in demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Andrew Harker of IHS Markit.

For the first time ever, the UK’s national debt has exceeded £ 2 trillion ($ 2.6 trillion)., reflecting the heavy debt that continues to support the country during the pandemic.

The United States is also borrowing a lot of money, and the national debt recently crossed a significant threshold – it is now larger than the economy as a whole. But the doomsday scenario that the deficit hawks long predicted has not materialized and more loans are on the way.

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Britain’s public debt topped £ 2 trillion ($ 2.6 trillion) for the first time, official statistics showed on Friday.

Debt reached 100.5% of gross domestic product at the end of July as the government spent heavily to tackle the severe economic shock of the pandemic and tackle falling tax revenues. This is the first time that the national public debt has exceeded the size of the economy since 1961, the Bureau of National Statistics said. In the United States, debt exceeded the size of the economy in June.

Even as debt levels rise, the government costs less to pay interest due to insanely low or even negative interest rates.

Although the pandemic has had an ‘unprecedented’ impact on UK public finances, government statisticians have lowered their estimates of the amount of loan needed between April and June, the blocking months, due to higher than expected tax revenues .

Separate data showed further evidence that Britain’s economic recovery, which tentatively started in May, was still underway.

Retail sales volume in July was 3% higher than in February, before the pandemic, as the vast majority of businesses resumed operations. Online and food sales remained at unusually high levels, but data showed a pickup in spending on fuel and clothing, two items that had been particularly hard hit at the close. And a survey of business activity recorded a second month of expansion in August.

The US national debt has exceeded the G.D.P., but no one seems to care.

At the end of June, the US national debt exceeded gross domestic product.
At the end of June, the national debt of the United States exceeded the gross domestic product.Credit … Olivier Douliery / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
Economists and deficit hawks have warned for decades that the United States is borrowing too much money. Federal debt was growing so rapidly, they said, that economic ruin was inevitable: interest rates would skyrocket, taxes would rise, and inflation would likely go crazy.

The death spiral could set in once debt outgrows the size of the US economy, a tipping point that would likely occur years into the future.

It actually happened much earlier: sometime before the end of June.

The coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse that followed sparked a historic rush of government loans – billions of dollars in incentive payments, extensions of UI, and loans to support small businesses and keep large businesses afloat .

But the economy hasn’t drowned in the deluge of red ink – and there is a growing sense that the country can cope with even more without serious consequences.

“At this point, I believe, no one is very worried about debt,” said Olivier Blanchard, senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “It’s clear that we can probably go where we’re going, which is a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 100% in many countries. And it’s not the end of the world.”

This nonchalant attitude to what were once considered major breaking points reflects a shift in the way investors, economists and central bankers view public debt.

As debt levels between rich countries like the United States and Japan have grown inexorably over the past decades, the cost of supporting that debt – reflected in interest rates – has fallen, leaving little to indications that markets are losing confidence in availability. and the capacity of these countries to bear their financial burdens.

Critics of DOOM LOOP have argued that circular tax financing will lead to inflation, higher interest rates or loss of confidence. It was not so.
What we heard on income calls.
DealBook newsletter editors and reporters go through numerous corporate reports and hear numerous results conference calls. Here are some of the things that caught our attention this week that are important to retailers explaining changing consumer habits during the pandemic:

“We think about 25 million Americans would go fishing regularly before February and that number is now pa

The pandemic, which has shut down theaters around the world, has taken its toll on the premiere dates of films like “Tenet” and “Wonder Woman 1984”.

But unlike dozens of other films, “Unhinged,” a raw action flick starring Russell Crowe, hits theaters this summer in the United States, signaling a return to business for Hollywood.

The original plan was for a July 1 premiere.

The date was postponed two more times before the film was scheduled to hit more than 1,800 theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday, a release which is largely due to the stubbornness of Mark Gill, a film producer. independent. who was determined to bring it to the big screen.

“Unhinged” will be the biggest new offering in North American theaters this weekend, as 26% of theaters in the United States and Canada are expected to open, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade association.

While other Hollywood executives decided they had no choice but to postpone, Mr. Gill gave priority to beating the competition in film. “There is no doubt that the ‘first player’ advantage was a big deal,” he said.

He believes in the film – a throwback to the thrillers of decades ago that sent Charles Bronson into a stomping mode – but said he couldn’t predict how many viewers would show up this weekend, when theaters across the country have stepped up restrictions. security.