Time for a Ban on Congress Trading
Due to the pandemic and a lack of trust in the U.S. government, the ban on trading for the members of Congress has surfaced as one of the top issues within our borders. The proposal called the Ban Conflicted Trade Act has gained a lot of traction and backing from government officials, so it is just a matter of time before it is enforced. Proposed over a year ago, the bill “prohibits a Member of Congress from (1) purchasing or selling specified investments, (2) entering into a transaction that creates a net short position in a security, or (3) serving as an officer or member of any board of a for-profit entity” (“H.R.1579 - Ban Conflicted Trading Act,” 2021). This issue entered into the spotlight due to members of Congress making trades directly before and during the pandemic. This claim is backed by the multiple cases of suspect trading activities occurring at optimal times.
The EV Effect
Innovation and popularity of the electric vehicle industry has reached new heights recently, as the push for saving our environment through cleaner emissions are taking root in America. The United States is behind in the EV industry when compared to their competitors, but is beginning to take initiative and eliminate gas-powered cars from their roads. Currently, China’s EV market is three times as large as the United States’, but this could soon change as President Biden is proposing a substantial $174 billion investment in the EV market, with hopes to increase domestic supply chains, create American jobs in the industry, and provide sale rebates and tax incentives to encourage both consumers and producers (“The American Job Plan” 2021). Although this infrastructure package is still being debated, the Biden administration has already taken many other steps in promoting a cleaner and more fuel-efficient future.
Ethiopia Industrial Policies Part 2: Importance of Private Entrepreneurship in Export-Oriented Strategies
In part 1 of our discussion, we talked about how import-substituting strategies have their unique and crucial contributions to the progress of a developing country, like Ethiopia. Domestic control over far-reaching input capital goods, such as cement, metal, natural resources, etc. provides robust support to virtually all other industries. Contrary to import-substituting policies, export-oriented ones provide fast rides to advanced technologies, mature management, and a larger market, though at a high cost of local control and path certainty.
Ethiopia Industrial Policies Part 1: Value of Import-Substituting Industrial Policies
Ethiopia is one of the few countries in Africa that pursues an active and comprehensive industrial policy. Ethiopia is looking to position itself as the new low-cost manufacturer of the world. To achieve its goal, Ethiopia needs proper industrial policies consideration which comprise “more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate” (Hayek 1973). The objective of the “Industrial Policies Series” is to examine current outcomes of Ethiopia’s endeavor to identify key elements in the Ethiopia-specific complexity that are pivotal to both success and failure. Targeted sectors used for our examinations are the leather sector, horticulture sector, and cement sector. In part A, a comparison between the leather, horticulture sector and the cement sector will be made to stress on the value of import-substituting policies.
Indebted Eight-Year Olds
It used to be that one of the main initiations into adulthood was opening up a checking account in your late teens or early twenties. All those years of begging your parents for their spare change so you could buy a soft pretzel at the mall with your friends or pestering them to make the payment for your annual summer camp were now gone. Like cell phones and other maturing privileges, the timeline to receiving a debit card has been sped up as well. Now, companies across the country are extending their services to children of all ages. With this early start to banking, parents and bankers are also faced with unforeseen risks as children begin to swipe their cards.
The World at Our Fingertips
The average human attention span is 8 seconds. The amount seems minuscule, especially considering that the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. However, this was not always the case; in 2000, the average human attention span was 12 seconds (Stefanski 2020). It seems that people are unable to concentrate without multitasking or being distracted. It may be easy to simply accept this fact as inevitable human nature, but it’s worth considering how this decline in attention span came to be. It’s no coincidence that this substantial change in average human attention span occurred from 2000 to 2013, exactly matching the exponential rise in technological growth. Over the past few decades, devices have provided over 4.93 billion people with the ability to access countless websites and apps (Broadband Search). Even more recently, social media has risen to prevalence as the most popular apps for teens and adults alike. Despite the overabundance of information available on the internet, people seem to have become lazier and unable to focus for more than a few seconds. However, laziness has driven the growth of innovations such as artificial intelligence that have automated simple tasks and revolutionized the world.