(Bloomberg) -- Blackouts that hit millions of Californians in 2019 could be doubly calamitous this year with tech giants Google, Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. among the many companies keeping offices closed until the fall or later in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic.If utilities cut power again, home offices set up during the pandemic could go dark and stay dark for days, and they’ll have no corporate offices to flee to for power. In October 2019, more than 3 million people were affected by a series of rolling blackouts over more than a week as PG&E Corp. and Edison International tried to prevent live wires from sparking wildfires.Call it a collision of crises. Blackouts could limit California’s push to revive an economy largely paralyzed by stay-at-home orders this spring. The state, utilities and individual companies are all seeking ways to deal with blackouts before a wildfire season forecast to be...
(Bloomberg) -- A slump in nitrogen prices could be a sign U.S. farmers planted less corn.Spot prices of ammonia and urea in the U.S. Gulf region are trading near the lowest in more than two years amid a global glut as the coronavirus pandemic withered industrial demand for the chemicals and Chinese producers ramped up production. Higher inventories at the end of planting season also may suggest that American farmers sowed fewer than the 97 million acres the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast in March, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Daniel Cole.Nutrien Ltd., the world’s largest crop-nutrient supplier, said in May it expects U.S. corn acres in the range of 94 million to 96 million while CF Industries Holdings Inc. is forecasting 92 million to 94 million acres.“That seems to be the consensus: a big crop, but not as big as USDA projected,” Cole said by phone. “I think that’s a factor.”Corn...
(Bloomberg) -- Tuesday afternoon, a smallish Chinese real-estate firm, ticker symbol DUO, went crazy on the Nasdaq. Out of the blue, in a vacuum of news, depositary receipts of the Shenzhen-based outfit shot up 13-fold, taking its market capitalization to $4 billion.Nobody had a definitive reason why. But people could guess. Its name: Fangdd Network Group Ltd., sounds like the acronym for that amalgamation of American megacaps, the “Faangs,” comprising Facebook Inc. and others. Those shares were rallying, and it was easy to believe people had gotten it into their heads that Fangdd could -- somehow -- move along with them.A lot of the stock market has this tinge of late. Get people to believe that other people will believe that a stock will go up, and fear-of-missing-out will take over. More than 15,000 retail clients of the Robinhood investing app added DUO to their account last week, a phalanx of...
(Bloomberg) -- After a record-breaking week with a market milestone reading one trillion euros, European investors are getting ready for a busy Thursday that could feature the same number.That’s when the European Central Bank will dish out cheap loans to banks, with take-up expected to reach the eye-catching amount. The ECB sweetened terms of its so-called TLTROs in April, in an effort to boost lending and further ease stress in Europe’s money markets.Such take-up would come soon after last Tuesday’s bond bonanza, when almost 32 billion euros ($36 billion) of sovereign debt was sold. It took Europe’s primary market issuance to over one trillion euros this year -- a milestone passed 12 weeks faster than in 2019 -- as governments rushed to fund their ever-increasing stimulus packages in an effort to avert the threat of economic depression from the coronavirus.Two other major monetary policy institutions also have Thursday announcements.The Bank of...
In the last decade, the smartphone has become a tool for witnessing police violence toward African Americans. From the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant to the 2020 killing of George Floyd, we reviewed the footage and talked to the people who captured it, to see how the accounts of racial injustice became clearer as the phones evolved. Photo illustration: Preston Jessee for The Wall Street Journal...
