Economy

The move by Tefere Gebre, the No. 3 official at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., highlights what many labor and environmental officials say is a need to cooperate.Signaling the growing importance of ties between labor and environmental organizers on climate change, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s third-ranking official has announced that he was leaving to join Greenpeace USA.The official, Tefere Gebre, the labor federation’s executive vice president, will become chief program officer for the environmental group on Tuesday. He will oversee all of Greenpeace USA’s campaigns, communications, direct action and organizing and report to the group’s co-executive directors.“I’m not leaving the workers’ movement — I’m bringing workers to the environmental movement,” Mr. Gebre said in an interview.Labor and environmental groups have forged alliances to reduce carbon emissions while providing a safety net for workers whose livelihoods are threatened by the shift and ensuring that green jobs will pay well. But these coalition-building efforts have occasionally hit snags that have hobbled climate legislation like President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which is stalled in the Senate.Mr. Gebre will continue those efforts, while taking a leading role on other issues related to environmental justice, like elevating the focus on people of color affected by pollution.“I care about little kids in the 110 corridor in Los Angeles without a vote of their own, who wake up with asthma,” he said, referring to the area of South Los Angeles along Interstate 110. “They have nothing to do with polluting the environment, but they pay the price for it. We have to make it a movement for them.”An independent organization affiliated with the international Greenpeace network, Greenpeace USA employs about 150 people with an annual budget of $50 million to $60 million, largely from the organization’s three million members.Among the group’s prominent campaigns, said Annie Leonard, the co-executive director who helped recruit Mr. Gebre, are one focused on democracy, such as protecting the right to protest amid a flurry of bills that could threaten it, and another focused on protecting oceans. Mr. Gebre will oversee all of that work.At the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Mr. Gebre worked extensively on community and civil rights issues and was a key liaison to environmental groups, but he said he had often become frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm of powerful union presidents.Internally, he said, he argued that the looming migration of hundreds of millions of people because of climate change could lead to xenophobia, right-wing populism and increasing authoritarianism and that climate was therefore a top priority for the labor movement.“Our movement will never grow under authoritarianism,” he said, adding, “Everyone shook their head, but there was no action.”Mr. Gebre, who was born in Ethiopia, came to the United States as a teenager after escaping to a refugee camp in Sudan in 1983. He rose to become the executive director of the Orange County Labor Federation in California, and has been executive vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. since 2013.As a top A.F.L.-C.I.O. official, he often clashed with members of the inner circle of Richard Trumka, the longtime president, who died in August. Mr. Gebre said he believed that the federation focused too much on electoral and legislative politics and not enough on movement-building and organizing, and that the labor movement was underinvesting in key industries like technology.Officials including Liz Shuler, the current president, have said that the choice between organizing versus political objectives like passing pro-labor legislation is a false one, and that the federation needs to succeed at both.“We are incredibly grateful for Tefere’s service and leadership as executive vice president,” Ms. Shuler said in a statement. “He understands that worker rights and climate justice can only be achieved together, and we will work closely with him in his new role.” More

The grim spectacle of Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine has shattered the dream Europe dared to nurture for three decades, that war on this scale would never again be witnessed on the continent. Naked and unprovoked aggression against its neighbour by a country with one of the world’s largest armies recalls the bleakest moments of the 20th century. The overturning of attempts since 1945 to make respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity a founding principle of international relations will have a grave human cost, and repercussions far beyond Europe. The chapter of history opened by the fall of the Berlin Wall, bringing hopes that states could choose their destinies inside a “common European home”, has been closed. A new, darker, chapter has begun.Putin’s aggression, to be clear, is founded on twin untruths. One is that this is a war of liberation, of “denazification” of Ukraine. For eight years, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine has peddled the lie that the overthrow of president Viktor Yanukovych was a “western-backed, neo-Nazi coup”. There were far-right groups among the broad array of protesters against Yanukovych’s pro-Russian kleptocracy. But they have never been among the post-uprising leaders. Ukrainian democracy is far from perfect, but — unlike Russia’s — it is real. The first freely-elected president since 2014 was a tycoon who made much of his money in the confectionery business. The second, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Jewish former actor-comedian whose first language is Russian.The second falsehood is that this conflict was provoked by the west and Nato. In the nearly 14 years since the north Atlantic alliance declared Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members, Kyiv has never been put on a path to joining. The necessary unanimity to admit it never existed, and was unlikely to do so anytime soon. The wisdom of Nato’s post-cold war enlargement to the east will be debated in years to come. But, contrary to Kremlin claims, guarantees were not given that this would not happen. Nor was enlargement something the alliance sought or imposed. It responded to requests from countries which, having spent decades under Soviet domination, wanted to ensure this could not happen again. They will see the invasion of Ukraine as vindicating their fears.The fact that Kyiv is not a Nato member means the west has no obligation to intervene militarily in its defence. The US and European allies have ruled out doing so for fear of triggering the terrifying confrontation of nuclear-armed rivals that the world has striven to avoid for seven decades. Putin has openly threatened “consequences you have never experienced before in your history” against any nations that interfere in his invasion. But western powers have a moral obligation to provide all possible help short of direct military involvement to Ukraine, a country which they have encouraged to integrate more closely with their institutions.Military aid to help Ukrainians defend themselves against Moscow’s advance should be stepped up. Russia’s president claims — though he has lied throughout this crisis — not to plan an occupation. It would be an immense tragedy for Ukraine to be dragged into a prolonged and bloody insurgency. Yet the greater the early cost of Putin’s onslaught, the greater the chance that he limits his objectives — or meets resistance at home from Russians, who have strong family and cultural ties with Ukraine.Western countries need to rediscover the will to contain Moscow that they displayed through the cold war. They should be prepared to use their principal weapon, of economic and financial sanctions, to maximum effect. This is no longer a question of deterring Russia’s president, but of imposing the highest cost for his actions, and squeezing his ability to finance his foolish adventurism. This, too, will involve considerable dangers — of blowback effects, and of Kremlin retaliation, including through threatened “asymmetric” means such as cyber attacks. Accidental or deliberate interruptions to Russian natural gas supplies could send prices to levels that dwarf the highs of recent months, and lead to shortages in Europe. Oil and gas prices are already soaring. Assumptions about economic growth and recovery after the coronavirus pandemic could be overturned.If they are to defend their freedoms and values by non-military means, democratic allies must be prepared to bear economic hardship — and they should be explaining this to their populations. Countries west of Ukraine must also be ready to open their arms to a potential wave of refugees that could far surpass that from Syria and the Middle East in 2015.Those nations that might be tempted to side with Russia and help it to withstand international sanctions should think hard. China’s president Xi Jinping has backed Moscow’s opposition to further Nato enlargement. Its foreign minister, though, has called on all parties to show restraint, and resolve the Ukraine crisis through dialogue. Russia’s assault on a country with which China has economic ties defies Beijing’s espoused principle of respect for territorial integrity. True, China has its own ambitions towards Taiwan — which it considers part of its territory. But a global free-for-all in which borders are no longer respected is not necessarily in Beijing’s interests any more than those of its global counterparts. As in the long years of the cold war, it is vital for democracies to continue their engagement with Russian society and — as far as they can penetrate the fog of Kremlin misinformation — make clear their quarrel is with the country’s leadership, not its people. Russians have been lied to by politicians and state media, but may become increasingly uncomfortable with a war against a “brother” nation. The country’s elites have submitted to Putin as ultimate arbiter for 20 years because he seemed the best guarantor of stability and their own wealth. He has now launched a reckless war to topple the government of a neighbour. It is not impossible that it will ultimately destabilise his own. More

President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Russia’s western neighbour could well slam the brakes on the post-pandemic economic recovery. A surge in the oil price to more than $100 a barrel signals supply shock fears. Higher energy prices will squeeze household incomes and stoke inflation, accentuating central banks’ dilemma over interest rates.News of the invasion pushed prices up 8 per cent on Thursday. Russia is Europe’s most important supplier of natural gas and the world’s third-largest oil producer, producing 10mn barrels daily. Commodity traders had already responded to the rising tensions of recent weeks. Other than European natural gas futures, Brent has been the fastest rising commodity this year, up 35 per cent to more than $105. Worse, oil has quintupled in just two years. That is much faster than anything economies have experienced in more than 30 years, including the two Gulf wars.All that will translate into pocketbook pain for households in the US, globally the largest consumer. The impact of surging oil prices is swiftly passed on to US consumers, as — relative to Europe and Japan — it is lightly taxed at the pump. Already the cost of filling up is approaching 2014 levels, at more than $3 a gallon on average. High prices then caused gasoline demand to falter. Another flashing amber light comes from the metric of oil consumption as a proportion of GDP. Since the Opec oil shocks of the 1970s, any increase in this percentage to much over 4 per cent has signalled problems ahead. Assume that economic growth this year tapers down to low single digits and at today’s Brent price that figure will be roughly there. It is possible that oil supply could surprise. US shale drillers could potentially increase output by 2mn barrels a day or more by 2024, according to Rystad Energy. Saudi Arabia could pump more. Iran’s return to the oil markets is also a possibility, say traders.But the options are limited, given the investment squeeze by big producers in recent years. Europe’s dependence upon Russia’s natural gas is a serious worry. The fossil fuel provides a fifth of the EU’s energy needs, most of that from Russia. Europe is thus at the front line, in more ways than one. Putin’s invasion threatens Europe’s economies. More

Jobless claims for the week ended Feb. 19 totaled 232,000, slightly less than expected.
Continuing claims hit their lowest level in nearly 52 years.
GDP increased at a 7% annualized pace in the fourth quarter, closing out a year with the strongest growth since 1984.

Weekly jobless claims came in slightly less than expected last week and economic growth to end 2021 was slightly better than originally reported, according to government data released Thursday.
Initial filings for unemployment insurance totaled 232,000 for the week ended Feb. 19, the Labor Department said. That was a touch below the 235,000 Dow Jones estimate and down 17,000 from the previous week.

A separate report showed that gross domestic product, a sum of all the goods and services produced in the U.S. economy, increased at a 7% annualized rate during the fourth quarter, according to the Commerce Department.
On the jobs side, continuing claims, which run a week behind the headline number, totaled 1.48 million, a decline of 112,000 from the previous week and good for the lowest total since March 14, 1970.

The total of those receiving benefits through all government programs fell by just over 30,000 to 2.03 million, according to data through Feb. 5. That level has continued to fall as Covid-19 pandemic-associated jobless aid programs have expired.
Despite the improved jobs picture, total employment level remains about 1.7 million below where it was in February 2020, just before the pandemic. The unemployment rate has fallen from a crisis peak of 14.7% to 4%.
On the broader economic side, the slight upward revision of GDP from the initial reading of 6.9% was in line with market estimates. That brought full-year growth to 5.7%, the fastest pace since 1984 that was driven by a strong inventory rebuild in the second half of the year.
The change higher came due to increased contributions from fixed investment and state and local government spending. Downward revisions to consumer spending and exports offset some of the gains.

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The price of oil jumped to more than $105 a barrel for the first time since 2014, European natural gas futures soared 31 percent, and global stock indexes plummeted on Thursday as Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, extending market turmoil in the United States and Europe that had been driven by fears of a full-scale attack.Wall Street was poised for a slide when trading begins, with futures pointing to a 2.5 percent drop in the S&P 500.The devastation in financial and commodity markets from Russia’s overnight attack was immediate and broad, starting in Asia’s markets, where the Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 3.2 percent.By midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX index had fallen nearly 5 percent, and the broader Stoxx Europe 600 was 3.8 percent lower.The price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, rose more than 8 percent to $105.32 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude also jumped 8 percent, moving above $100 a barrel for the first time in over seven years.Dutch front-month gas futures, a European benchmark for natural gas, jumped 31 percent when trading started, to about 116.5 euros a megawatt-hour. Russia provides more than a third of the European Union’s gas, with some of it running through pipelines in Ukraine.With more severe financial sections against Russia in the works, global bank stocks are falling faster than the markets overall. Shares of European banks with the biggest Russian operations are plunging: Raiffeisen of Austria is down 17 percent, while UniCredit of Italy and Société Générale of France have both lost 11 percent of their value in early trading.In Moscow, stocks collapsed and the ruble fell to a record low against the dollar. The MOEX Russia equities index lost nearly a third of its value. The Russian stock exchange resumed trading at 10 a.m. local time after suspending the session earlier in the day.Global markets had broadly been souring in recent days. The Stoxx Europe 600 reversed early gains to fall 0.3 percent on Wednesday. The S&P 500 notched its fourth consecutive day of losses, losing 1.8 percent and sliding deeper into correction territory — a drop of more than 10 percent from a recent high. It is now 11.9 percent off its Jan. 3 peak.The news from Ukraine turned increasingly dire on Thursday. The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered the start of a “special military operation,” and Ukraine’s government confirmed that several cities were under attack. Cyberattacks also knocked out government institutions in Ukraine. The Ukraine Crisis’s Effect on the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6A rising concern. More

Peskov said all necessary measures were being taken to ensure that the market reaction was as brief as possible. The rouble bounced off all-time lows on Thursday as the central bank announced FX interventions after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine, a move expected to trigger new harsh sanctions against Moscow. More

(Reuters) -Ukraine closed its airspace to civilian flights on Thursday after Russia launched a land, sea and air invasion of its neighbour, while Europe’s aviation regulator warned about hazards to flying in bordering regions.Moldova, southwest of Ukraine, also closed its airspace, while Belarus to the north said civilian flights could no longer fly over part of its territory after Russian President Vladimir Putin authorised the military operation. Ukraine State Air Traffic Services Enterprise said on its website that the country’s airspace was closed to civilian flights from 0045 GMT on Thursday. Air traffic services were suspended.The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said airspace in Russia and Belarus within 100 nautical miles of their borders with Ukraine could also pose safety risks.”In particular, there is a risk of both intentional targeting and misidentification of civil aircraft,” the agency said in a conflict zone bulletin. “The presence and possible use of a wide range of ground and airborne warfare systems poses a high risk for civil flights operating at all altitudes and flight levels.”The aviation industry has taken heightened notice of the risks conflicts pose to civil aviation since Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, when fighting in the region flared. EASA said Russia’s defence ministry had sent Ukraine an urgent message warning of a high risk to flight safety, due to the use of weapons and military equipment from 0045 GMT, and asked Ukraine’s air traffic control to stop flights.Websites, which before the escalation had shown intelligence-gathering flights over or near Ukraine as the West showcased support by transmitting detectable signals in recent weeks, showed empty space on Thursday as aircraft left and Ukraine was declared a conflict zone.Early morning airline traffic skirted the whole country in crowded corridors to the north and west. An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Toronto made a sudden U-turn out of Ukraine’s airspace around the time of its closure, flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed. A LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Kyiv turned back.Safe Airspace, set up to provide safety and conflict zone information after the downing of MH17, had hours earlier raised its risk level over Ukraine to “do not fly.”It warned of the potential for a cyberattack on Ukraine’s air traffic control.Russia said on Thursday it had suspended domestic flights to and from several airports near its border with Ukraine, including Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar and Stavropol, until March 2.Russia closed some airspace in the Rostov sector “in order to provide safety” for civil flights, according to a notice to air crew, known as a NOTAM.Before Ukraine’s announcement, Britain, Canada, France, Italy and the United States told their airlines to avoid certain airspace above eastern Ukraine and Crimea but stopped short of a total ban.London-listed budget carrier Wizz Air said it was halting operations out of Ukraine in an announcement released after Ukraine shut its airspace. Germany’s Lufthansa and KLM suspended flights days earlier.Two Ukrainian airlines said last week they had faced problems securing insurance for some flights, as foreign carriers began avoiding the airspace amid Russia’s military build up on the border. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. banks were well-prepared for the Western sanctions announced so far over Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, but they are still nailing down details and worry that new measures could increase the cost and complexity of enforcing the new restrictions, lawyers and industry executives said.Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized a military operation in eastern Ukraine on Thursday in what appeared to be the start of war in Europe over Russia’s demands for an end to NATO’s eastward expansion.U.S. President Joe Biden said he would announce further sanctions on Russia on Thursday, in addition to financial measures imposed this week.The United States, the European Union and Britain on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Russia after Moscow’s recognition of two separatist regions in Ukraine. Chief among their targets: Russian banks and their ability to operate internationally.Washington imposed the harshest measures on Monday prohibiting trade and investment between U.S. individuals and the two breakaway Ukraine regions and moving on Tuesday to cut off Russia state-owned Promsvyazbank and Vnesheconombank and 42 of their subsidiaries from the U.S. financial system. The U.S. Treasury also barred trading in newly-issued Russian sovereign debt, and ordered that assets relating to a handful of Russian elites and their family members be frozen.Financial institutions are the primary enforcers of sanctions.In the past they have paid hefty fines for falling down on the job but since 2014 when countries sanctioned Russia for annexing the Crimea, banks have pulled back from the region and beefed up their sanctions compliance programs.U.S. banks spent an estimated $35.2 billion on financial crime compliance – including sanctions, anti-money laundering checks and controls against other illegal activities – in 2020 alone, according to a LexisNexis survey.As tensions in the region rose, the Biden administration was in touch with the industry for several weeks on potential measures and alerted banks ahead of Tuesday’s announcement so the industry could prepare, three industry sources said.”The new U.S. sanctions should not be hard to implement because, at least for now, the Russian bank designations are fairly discrete and, post-Crimea, U.S. and global banks have had ample time to address the nuances of these kinds of sanctions,” including identifying beneficial asset owners, said Mario Mancuso, international trade partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP.Still, industry executives starting to implement the rules on Wednesday said they were seeking additional clarity from the Treasury on some details, most importantly the precise geographic boundaries of the breakaway territories.”Those jurisdictions are defined under Ukraine law but they may or may not be what the breakaway jurisdictions assert is within their alleged sovereignty and that may change,” said Andrew Shoyer, a partner at law firm Sidley Austin. He added that the 30-day deadline the Treasury had given companies to comply was the toughest it dishes out. A spokesman for the Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment.MORE TO COME The White House and other nations said Tuesday’s measures are just the start. Some additional sanctions, like expanding their scope to include more Russian banks or individuals would be relatively simple to handle.But executives flagged concerns that jurisdictions might diverge in their sanctions approach if disputes arose over how to address Russian aggression. Reuters reported last week that the U.S. and its allies are not agreed on how they should respond to non-military Russian aggressions, like identifiable cyber attacks. “I think more financial sanctions on big Russian banks are probably inevitable, and that will hurt everyone in Russia who relies on them to do business with the outside world,” said Nick Turner, a lawyer specializing in sanctions and anti-money laundering at Steptoe and Johnson in Hong Kong.”It’s hard to predict the consequences because it’s not often you see major institutions being carved out of the financial system. As far as the U.S. and E.U. banks are concerned it is the equivalent of having a major counterparty disappear, and whatever financial impact that would have would be the same.”Conflicting sanctions regimes would be more complex and expensive to implement, executives said. Another major question is whether Biden imposes “secondary sanctions” on overseas parties that do business with the underlying sanctioned entities. Those are also trickier to implement because of the complexity of identifying business ties. Some financial industry executives have also told the administration that they oppose any sanctions that would target Russia’s access to payment provider SWIFT, which is used by more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries.Such a move could hurt Russian banks but it would also be disruptive for the global payments system and make it tough for creditors to get their money back from Russia.While the White House has downplayed that option, lawmakers could pursue it. Although Congress is on recess this week, Isaac Boltansky, policy director for brokerage BTIG, said he expected lawmakers to advance legislation to challenge Russia’s action soon.”There will also be an effort to ban Russia from the international payments infrastructure SWIFT, but there are concerns that doing so could harm Russian creditors awaiting funds,” he added. More