Podzept - With Deutsche Bank Research

This year's National People's Congress (NPC) will start on Friday, March 5, and will last for about 2 weeks. In this podcast we provide a preview of the key policy issues for the NPC where we expect the government will set a floor growth target at 7-7.5% for 2021, leaving sufficient room to pursue its longer-term policy priorities. The 2021 budget will likely roll back about 60% of Covid-19 related stimulus measures. Nevertheless, government spending will likely increase 7% over last year, thanks to a strong fiscal revenue outlook.

Covid-19 disruption to business has reshuffled priorities for CFOs and treasurers. They must address how to: maintain access to liquidity/credit; implement back-up procedures; create visibility to total cash in global locations; determine cash requirements in the short and medium term; and assess current exposures. Astrid Poussel, Global Corporate Coverage, Corporate Bank, joins the conversation.

Back in early December most thought the chance of Republicans losing both Georgia Senate run-off seats was pretty low. That has now happened, with a so-called blue sweep upon us. About a week until inauguration, we discuss how we think Biden’s initial 100-day+ plan might look like.

Even prior to the pandemic, there was an inevitable shift to online purchasing. But how do we ensure this widening acceptance of online buying does not backfire on the planet in the form of unsustainable delivery levels? We propose a system to bring all parties in the delivery value chain to the table, and suggest an incentive system that grades rewards with the intention of sending non-urgent deliveries to specific areas on specific days.

As the pandemic has accelerated the digital cash revolution, there are several things companies and policymakers need to do to respond.

We look at what to expect from the Biden administration and discuss the implications for the US economic outlook for 2021.

The pandemic has shown how the ‘haves’ are more resilient than the ‘have-nots’. Much of this is based on the gap between the two groups based on their access to technology. The divide in the US runs deepest along race and location (urban versus rural). To narrow this gap, we lay out our vision to develop an initiative that covers the more than half of households without proper broadband connection and a computer.

The 2020 election is now less than a week away. While all elections have implications for the economic outlook, the two candidates for this year’s contest have historically divergent views on essentially all important aspects of economic policy. In this podcast, we consider the implications for the economic outlook of the possible combinations of president and Senate.

The exponential growth of the digital economy is going to leave large chunks of minorities with little or no access to jobs. We conduct a bottom up societal study and it shows that 76% of Blacks and 62% of Hispanics could get shut out or be under-prepared for 86% of jobs in the US by 2045. If this digital racial gap is not addressed, in one generation alone, digitization could render the country’s minorities into an unemployment abyss.

The widening generational divide should be a key source of alarm for investors, financial markets and society as a whole. Young people perceive themselves as the losers on issues ranging from housing to climate change to student debt. In turn, this anger is manifesting itself into political outcomes, with elections around the world increasingly fought along generational lines.

As long as they are covered by salary protection schemes, those on low incomes have seen their paycheque relatively more insulated than those on higher incomes. Other redistributionist measures also mean the rich are likely to face a higher burden, thus reducing inequality.

The US-China Tech Cold War remains one of the biggest tail risks of the current market rally. We have conducted a top-down analysis to quantify the impact of a complete decoupling. Our study on stock price correlations with the DB Tech Cold War Index yields a surprising and counter-intuitive finding, Semiconductors. Listen to a new podcast with Apjit Walia Tech Strategist and Matthew Barnard, Head of Company Research US.

Children, interruptions, loneliness, and an unsuitable workplace has left many frustrated as they attempt to work from home. We do the sums to see if businesses should subsidise their employees’ housing costs so they can save on expensive office space.

We are going through a tremendous volatile market with investors looking for stable returns. According to a few news outlets some of the quant funds have performed less well. Caio Natividade, Head of QIS Research and Sorin Ionescu, Head of QIS Structuring share their insights on common misconceptions.

A confluence of factors - a pandemic, high education costs, environmental concerns, and new instructional technology - could rapidly increase the popularity of online education. Moreover, because online platforms transcend political boundaries, top universities could gain more market share on a global level, leading to the disappearance of many lesser-known schools.

The unique nature of the pandemic shock and the wide uncertainty surrounding it, meant there was no one historical playbook that fit easily. So inevitably there were going to be some surprises. In the event, there have been many.

Machine learning, with all of their processing power, they’re able to more quickly highlight or find patterns in big data that would have otherwise been missed by human beings. Machine learning is a tool that can be used to enhance humans’ abilities to solve problems and make informed inferences on a wide range of problems, much wider than financial services for example helping diagnose diseases to coming up with solutions for global climate change.

Online food ordering (both grocery delivery and meal kits) was already seeing steady growth before covid-19. Since the outbreak, it has taken off. While some people may revert back to their old habits when the pandemic recedes, many have been introduced to the concept and will continue to enjoy the benefits.

While history shows us that it can take over two years for an aviation demand shock to return to normal, many people now forecast a permanent drop in travel, particularly for business. We argue business and personal travel will remain, however, the way people book will change the transport industry.

With European football leagues on hold, clubs are facing severe losses that will likely continue over into next season. The transfer market has also been highly disrupted. Not all clubs have shareholders with deep pockets and so there is likely to be a widening of inequality between the big and small clubs.