Bloomberg Opinion

What if you fell asleep a year ago and woke up today? What did you miss in the US economy? Kyla Scanlon asks and answers in her year in review 🎥📊

There are many reasons why Latin America should unite to seek a democratic & peaceful Venezuela. One of them is its own interest: the longer Maduro is allowed to run free, the bigger the devastation will be for the region Here's something I wrote for Bloomberg Opinion about the authoritarian dangers https://lnkd.in/datZ6g2Y

Attempts to boycott Costco over its DEI efforts are unlikely to be successful because customers are obsessed with the brand. And they are obsessed with the brand precisely because its diverse workforce and supplier base help make it so special. 🔗 Read my column for Bloomberg Opinion on why Costco knows diversity is a critical business imperative, not a PR initiative, something that companies bowing to the anti-woke mob seem to have forgotten — or perhaps never really understood. https://lnkd.in/eTsHR9Bj 📽 And watch this video for the highlights:

California's devastating wildfires are a stark demonstration of how climate change is testing the limits of home insurance as we know it. My video for Bloomberg Opinion - based on my free column, if you'd rather read than watch me talk: https://lnkd.in/ebdS5KTH #LAFires #PalisadesFire #Climate #EatonFire

The wildfires terrorizing Los Angeles this week have been like something out of a movie: vast, fast-moving, unpredictable, merciless. Their scope and nature have surprised even fire-jaded California. They are also evidence of the sort of consequences that can be expected as the planet continues to heat up, consequences for which traditional risk-management tools — like, say, home insurance — are increasingly obsolete. My free column for Bloomberg Opinion #PalisadesFire #ClimateChange #LAFires https://lnkd.in/et5RstBB

Whenever I write about my frustration with full return-to-office plans, I hear from skeptics who say “but what about the people ‘shirking’ from home?” I agree the shirkers are a problem, even if they don’t make up the majority of those who WFH. The problem is that the shirkers are often not the people who really need that flexibility; they are just the ones ruining the group project for those — often working moms — who absolutely do. #wfh #remotework #rto

Biden's rejection of Nippon Steel is a slap in the face. The president's blocking of the Japanese firm's takeover of US Steel was not just hamfisted in execution. It was an insult to maybe its most vital ally -- and with a China-curious prime minister in Tokyo, couldn't have come at a worse time. My latest for Bloomberg Opinion, free to read for the next week: https://lnkd.in/gTjR2RSN

According to Bloomberg News, JP Morgan is preparing to tell employees to return to the office five days a week. Brace for yet more "end of WFH" headlines! But beware the hype -- hybrid work is far from dead, as I write in this Bloomberg Opinion column about workplace trends to watch in 2025. Another workplace trend to watch out for? DEI rollbacks. Yes, some companies -- most recently McDonalds -- have said they're pulling back on diversity. But read the fine print -- McDonalds is replacing diversity with "inclusion." So reports of the death of "DEI" may be a bit exaggerated. I talk about that in this piece, too, as well as the froth around AI. (Gift link!) #wfh #remotework #rto

VIDEO COLUMN: New Year Preview. Before it’s too late, order your espresso. It will be more expensive in 2025, and anyone trading — or observing — energy and commodity markets into the new year will need caffeine to survive. Bloomberg Opinion

[No paywall with this link] As world leaders come to grips with the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House, they should weigh immediate but also second-order scenarios. The first category includes hot wars already blazing (in Ukraine and the Middle East, say) or threatening to ignite (in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean peninsula): Will Trump douse them, as he promises, or inadvertently fan the flames? The second category — of delayed changes whose consequences may become clear only after Trump’s presidency — is just as important. Topmost on my list is what Trump, with his “trash-talking” as much as his actual polices, will do to a tenet of American foreign policy for the past six decades: to limit, and eventually to reverse, the spread of nuclear weapons. My fear is that he’ll unwittingly undo the meager achievements of his predecessors and accelerate the descent into a dystopia of ever more leaders wielding ever more nukes, with an ever greater risk of Armageddon.... [Read the whole column, about the problematic history of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and what might happen to it under Trump.] Bloomberg Opinion https://bit.ly/40qa4I0