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Top Financial Stories 2020




At this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the year ending in business/financial news. This year, the answer "Covid-19 and its Consequences" must dominate, as completely as the Wall Street centered financial crisis dominated 2008.

Breaking that down by month as usual, I've given Covid-related stories to four of the twelve. That still rather understates its significance, but blame that on the ease with which I am bored. And I could have called my December entry Coronavirus (5), but chose to go with something more specific for that one. 

Let's start with those innocent days of January, when few people very far from Wuhan had any clue what was coming. Instead, there was a lot of talk about pipelines that month. 

January
Pipelines.  The TurkStream pipeline illustrates the continued viability of fossil fuels.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-russia-pipeline/turkey-russia-launch-turkstream-pipeline-carrying-gas-to-europe-idUSKBN1Z71WP 

February
Coronavirus (1). Early news on the spread of this plague and still-incipient concerns about its impact on the world economy
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-impact-on-global-economy-more-muted-than-expected-11582285372

March
Coronavirus (2). On the stock exchanges the long US bull market turns into a bear (those impacts are no longer incipient.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-markets/investors-prepare-for-more-market-swings-as-virus-spreads-in-the-u-s-idUSKBN21114Q

April
Coronavirus (3). There is a crony-capitalist lobbying frenzy as corporations seek to be considered "essential," and subsidizable. Winners and losers start getting sorted out. Politically, of course. 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-airlines-subsidies/exclusive-coronavirus-hit-airlines-in-push-for-divisive-route-subsidies-idUSKCN21S1FC

May
Social media. President Trump tweets get flagged, fact-checked. Trump says he'll have to review the law that protects Twitter and other social media concerns from content scrutiny. There is a genuine issue here but, from this POTUS, it just sounds like narcissism.   https://www.npr.org/2020/05/30/865813960/as-trump-targets-twitters-legal-shield-experts-have-a-warning (Late in the year, Trump will use the issue of the law on social media to justify vetoing a defense appropriations bill. The logic escapes me, but it seems to have occured to him between one swing of the golf club and the next.)

June
Financial blow-ups. The ginormous German payments firm Wirecard collapses, owing billions.
https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/wirecard-scandal-puts-regulators-ey-in-h-id714812010?chan=9qsux198 Fun old-fashioned stuff. 

July
Zimbabwe.  A new course for the country as the post-Mugabe govt starts compensating dispossessed (white) farmers.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/29/africa/zimbabwe-compensation-white-farmers/index.html

August
Technology. Space-X Crew Splashes Down, Gulf of Mexico.
Could this be the end of a transitioning phase in space exploration? It does seem that private enterprise is ready to take over the "routine stuff" in space, stuff that can be costed out and done for profit like repairing satellites in their orbits. Sovereigns and unions of sovereigns such as the EU will continue to compete over the cutting age stuff like landing ever more sophisticated robots on asteroids or Mars. Or maybe, in the not-too-distant future, human footprints on the latter.  
 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/science/spacex-astronauts-splashdown.html 

September
Third-world debt. The success of the long struggle to restructure the long-disastrous state of Argentina's public finances.
Intellectual property. The US Supreme Court, short handed, opens a new term and hears arguments about what may prove to be an extraordinarily consequential IP case, GOOGLE v. ORACLE. Even the name has that clash-of-giants sound.  

November
Coronavirus (4). A Covid vaccine is at hand! I have to think of this as a mixture of good news and bad. The good news -- terrible deaths-by-suffocation will be averted. The bad news -- Big Pharma and the world's leading nation-states will get ever more deeply intertwined. The good news which we probably should not describe as such -- Big Pharma held off the big announcements until after election day. 


December
The Delivery Sector. With many people effectively confined to their homes, the part of the economy that is taking off is the part dedicated to delivering products to those homes. The successful IPO of DoorDash this month is a striking illustration of this point.  
 
 
    






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