Part 3: Fire and Economic Brimstone!

WITH tensions over Taiwan shaping up towards another possible global supply-chain blockage against Chinese exports, Guyana and the Caribbean have every reason to again start taking more steps to be more safe than sorry.

The region needs to ponder, as of now, on the future implications of current Economic and Climate Change effects on Europe.
Several Eurozone states are suffering a triple whammy of inflation leading to recession, unpleasant economic blowbacks from Ukraine and the unprecedented successive heatwaves causing Europe to bake and burn — the latter taking lives by the hundreds, leaving two-thirds of the continent parched and drying-up rivers from the Thames to the Rhine.

Facts and figures are changing too fast-and-furious to keep-up with, but just a few of the international business headlines between August 4 and 12 highlight the economic chaos on both sides of the Atlantic, easily tell the big story — and show the bigger picture.

Starting with the UK, the Financial Times featured ‘How (the) cost of living crisis (is) pushing Brits to breaking point!’ while CNN Business UK published an analysis by Anna Cooban headlined: ‘The frontrunner to become the UK’s next leader has a risky economic plan’ and The Express heralded: ‘Eurozone collapse! Recession warning with biggest financial crisis in its history (is) near’.
Regarding Europe’s post-Ukraine energy crisis and how states are responding, US Business Insider highlighted: ‘Norway draws up plans to slash energy supplies to Europe, driving power prices to record highs’ while Oilprice.com revealed: ‘UK electricity theft breaks records as energy bills soar.’
Not much different across the ocean in the US.

The United States Census Bureau, in a report on ‘Wealth inequality in the US by household,’ says: ‘2019 data show baby boomers nearly 9 times wealthier than millennials’ and a New York Times report headed: ‘In an unequal economy, the poor face inflation now and job loss later.’

Meanwhile, FOX Business News underlined: ‘Inflation climbed 8.5 per cent in July as prices cool, but remain near record high’ across the US.
Over in Canada, the Financial Post featured a David Rosenberg article headlined: ‘Roof is about to cave in on the Canadian economy’, also explaining how: ‘Shaky housing market and high household debt point to a more pronounced recession than many are calling for…’

In Australia, News.com revealed ‘How many hours Australians need to work to cover the cost of living”, the article pointing out that ‘New research has shown the huge amount of hours Aussies need to work just to pay for their living expenses’; and ABC News featured a headline of interest to the rest of the world: ‘Cooking oil shortages pushing up food prices and creating headaches for manufacturers.

Higher food, energy and other costs of living across Europe are also leading to previously unreported trends now making front-page news.
For example, the BBC reported on August 11 on a campaign encouraging UK consumers ‘Not to pay electricity bills’, with charities warning against taking such advice.

Eurozone headlines this past week also featured successive heatwaves sparking blazing wildfires and severe drought, most acute in France, Spain and Portugal, but affecting life across the continent in different ways, hundreds dying from heat stroke, towns suffering water shortages – and droughts affecting essential river transport.

Under a Free Enterprise system allowing businesses to freely pass extra costs to consumers, more Europeans than ever are forcibly resorting to electricity theft and other street-smart and/or criminal ways of ‘beating the system’ to survive.

The week ended with debate over which was worse, but the combined costs of the Eurozone’s current Economic and Climate Change crises will naturally be huge, which can give traditional European donors perfect excuses to not only cut already-small overseas aid budgetary allocations, but also (like so often) to renege on earlier pledges and promises to poor and developing nations (like with COVID vaccines since 2020).

Such possible eventualities would not only have serious implications for recent trade, aid and investment agreements between the UK and Guyana, but also for the rest of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

The region must therefore start bracing for the overlapping and extended implications and cumulative effects and costs of the current multiple and connected changes on and to this part of the world, while gearing-up faster to undertake the necessary adjustments — and simultaneously creating necessary new mechanisms to deepen functional regional collaboration, all to mitigate and reduce the inescapable ripple effects on Caribbean shores.

Guyana is already leading the region’s response to Agriculture and Food Security challenges, while taking several steps to not only improve and extend agricultural production through introduction of new crops and innovative processes, but also to ensure it develops a long-term capacity to never have to entirely depend on Oil & Gas.

Georgetown is also expanding its bilateral and multilateral ties with CARICOM partners and exploring cooperation on regional energy issues.
Meanwhile, even as the international headlines painted dim and grim pictures for businesses, not so for the world’s richest men, who made more money during COVID than before and are sailing with the winds into greater fortunes, while scores of nations and more hundreds of millions of people have to bite the dust to stay alive.

Australia’s News.com headlined with a big story that many following the fortunes of the world’s super rich are still following: ‘Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway hit by $63 Billion loss’

It said: ‘Almost half of Buffet’s fortune was wiped out, but the billionaire who owns 90 companies said the focus should be on earnings made…’
And Autoevolution, in an August 4 article that also tracked the ways of the wildly-wealthy, revealed: ‘Jeff Bezos $500 Million Megayacht Launches Under the Cover of Darkness’.