Quote:The war in Ukraine is set to cause the "largest commodity shock" since the 1970s, the World Bank has warned. In a new forecast, it said disruption caused by the conflict would contribute to huge price rises for goods ranging from natural gas to wheat and cotton. The increase in prices "is starting to have very large economic and humanitarian effects", Peter Nagle, a co-author of the report, told the BBC. He said "households across the world are feeling the cost of living crisis". "We're particularly worried about the poorest households since they spend a larger share of income on food and energy, so they're particularly vulnerable to this price spike," the senior economist at the World Bank added.Ukraine war to cause biggest price shock in 50 years - World Bank - BBC News
Quote:Trust. Without it, Adam Smith’s invisible hand stays in its pocket; Keynes’s “animal spirits” are muted. “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust,” the Nobel Prize–winning economist Kenneth Arrow wrote in 1972. But trust is less quantifiable than other forms of capital. Its decline is vaguely felt before it’s plainly seen. As companies have gone virtual during the coronavirus pandemic, supervisors wonder whether their remote workers are in fact working. New colleagues arrive and leave without ever having met. Direct reports ask if they could have that casual understanding put down in writing. No one knows whether the boss’s cryptic closing remark was ironic or hostile. Sadly, those suspicions may have some basis in fact. The longer employees were apart from one another during the pandemic, a recent study of more than 5,400 Finnish workers found, the more their faith in colleagues fell. A Trust Recession Is Looming Over the American Economy - The Atlantic