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A majority of the nation’s business economists expect a U.S. recession to begin later this year than they had previously forecast, after a series of reports have pointed to a surprisingly resilient economy despite steadily higher interest rates.

Fifty-eight percent of 48 economists who responded to a survey by the National Association for Business Economics envision a recession sometime this year, the same proportion who said so in the NABE’s survey in December. But only a quarter think a recession will have begun by the end of March, only half the proportion who had thought so in December.

The findings, reflecting a survey of economists from businesses, trade associations and academia, were released Monday.

A third of the economists who responded to the survey now expect a recession to begin in the April-June quarter. One-fifth think it will start in the July-September quarter.

The delay in the economists’ expectations of when a downturn will begin follows a series of government reports that have pointed to a still-robust economy even after the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates eight times in a strenuous effort to slow growth and curb high inflation.

In January, employers added more than a half-million jobs, and the unemployment rate reached 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.

And sales at retail stores and restaurants jumped 3% in January, the sharpest monthly gain in nearly two years. That suggested that consumers as a whole, who drive most of the economy’s growth, still feel financially healthy and willing to spend.

At the same time, several government releases also showed that inflation shot back up in January after weakening for several months, fanning fears that the Fed will raise its benchmark rate even higher than was previously expected. When the Fed lifts its key rate, it typically leads to more expensive mortgages, auto loans and credit card borrowing. Interest rates on business loans also rise.

Tighter credit can then weaken the economy and even cause a recession. Economic research released Friday found that the Fed has never managed to reduce inflation from the high levels it has recently reached without causing a recession.
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Twitter Inc has laid off at least 200 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, the New York Times reported late on Sunday, in its latest round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over the micro-blogging site last October. 

The layoffs on Saturday night impacted product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which helps keep Twitter’s various features online, the NYT report said, citing people familiar with the matter. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. 

The company has a headcount of about 2,300 active employees, according to Musk last month. 

The latest job cuts follow a mass layoff in early November, when Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees in a cost-cutting measure by Musk, who had acquired the company for $44 billion. 

Musk said in November that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation. 

Twitter recently started sharing revenue from advertisements with some of its content creators. 

Earlier in the day, The Information reported that the social media platform laid off dozens of employees on Saturday, aiming to offset a plunge in revenue. 
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In its latest ambitious roadmap to tackle climate change, California relies on capturing carbon out of the air and storing it deep underground on a scale that’s not yet been seen in the United States.

The plan — advanced by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration — comes just as the Biden administration has boosted incentives for carbon capture projects to spur more development nationwide. Ratcheting up 20 years of climate efforts, Newsom last year signed a law requiring California to remove as much carbon from the air as it emits by 2045 — one of the world’s fastest timelines for achieving so-called carbon neutrality. He directed the powerful California Air Resources Board to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels and build massive amounts of carbon dioxide capture and storage.

To achieve its climate goals, California must rapidly transform an economy that’s larger than most nations’, but opposition to carbon capture from environmental groups and concerns about how to safely transport the gas may delay progress — practical and political obstacles the Democratic-led Legislature must now navigate.

Last year, the California state legislature passed a law that says no carbon dioxide may flow through new pipelines until the federal government finishes writing stronger safety regulations, a process that could take years. As a potential backup, the law directed the California Natural Resources Agency to write its own pipeline standards for lawmakers to consider, a report now more than three weeks overdue.

While there are other ways to transport carbon dioxide gas besides pipelines, such as trucks or ships, pipelines are considered key to making carbon capture happen at the level California envisions. Newsom said the state must capture 100 million metric tons of carbon each year by 2045 — about a quarter of what the state now emits annually.

“We do not expect to see (carbon capture and storage) happen at a large scale unless we are able to address that pipeline issue,” said Rajinder Sahota, deputy executive officer for climate change and research at the air board.

State Sen. Anna Caballero, who authored the carbon capture legislation, said the state’s goal will be to create a safety framework that’s even more robust than what the federal government will develop.

Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act increased federal funding for carbon capture, boosting payouts from $50 to $85 per ton for capturing carbon dioxide from industrial plants and storing it underground.

Without clarity on the state’s pipeline plans, the state is putting itself at a “competitive disadvantage” when it comes to attracting projects, said Sam Brown, a former attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency and partner at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth.

The geology for storing carbon dioxide gas is rare, but California has it in parts of the Central Valley, a vast expanse of agricultural land running down the center of the state.

Oil and gas company California Resources Corp. is developing a project there to create hydrogen. It plans to capture carbon from that hydrogen facility and the natural gas plant that powers it. The carbon dioxide would then be stored in an old oil field. That doesn’t require special pipeline approval because it’s all happening within the company’s property.

But the company also wants to store emissions from other industries like manufacturing and transportation. Transporting that would rely on pipelines that can’t be built yet.

“These are parts of the economy that have to be decarbonized,” said Chris Gould, the company’s executive vice president and chief sustainability officer. “It makes economic sense to do it.”

Safety concerns increased in 2020 after a pipeline in Mississippi ruptured in a landslide, releasing a heavier-than-air plume of carbon dioxide that displaced oxygen near the ground. Forty-five people were treated at a hospital, and several lost consciousness. There are thousands of miles of carbon dioxide pipelines operating across the country and industry proponents call the event an anomaly. But the Mississippi rupture prompted federal regulators to explore tightening the existing rules for carbon pipelines.

Lupe Martinez, who lives in California’s Kern County, worries about what will happen as developers target the region for carbon storage.

He used to spray fields with pesticides without protective equipment. On windy days, he’d be soaked in chemicals. Martinez, who watched some of his fellow workers later fight cancer, says he was lied to about safety then and doesn’t believe promises that carbon capture is safe now.

“They treat us like guinea pigs,” said Martinez, a longtime labor activist.

The oil and gas industry’s emissions are a main cause of climate change and in the past the industry undermined sound evidence that greenhouse gases are deeply disturbing the climate. Now carbon capture — unproven as a major climate solution — will help the industry keep polluting places that are already heavily polluted, environmentalists argue. Instead of shutting down fossil fuel plants, carbon capture will increase their profits and extend their life, said Catherine Garoupa, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition.

But advocates of carbon capture say it’s essential for Kern County oil and gas companies to find new ways to make money and keep people employed as California moves away from fossil fuels, an industry that is the “very fabric” of the region’s identity, said Lorelei Oviatt, director of Kern County Planning and Natural Resources.

Without a new revenue source like carbon capture, “Kern County will be the next Gary, Indiana,” she said, referring to the rust belt’s years-ago collapse.

There are currently no active carbon capture projects in California. To demonstrate the technology is viable and people can get permits for it, it’s essential to build the first projects, said George Peridas, director of carbon management partnerships at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

Peridas said one area with potential to store carbon dioxide is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a vast estuary on the western edge of the Central Valley that’s a vital source of drinking water and an ecologically sensitive home to hundreds of species.
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Mexico is undergoing a fevered competition among states to win a potential Tesla facility in jostling reminiscent of what happens among U.S. cities and states vying to win investments from tech companies.

Mexican governors have gone to extremes, like putting up billboards, creating special car lanes or creating mock-ups of Tesla ads for their states.

And there’s no guarantee Tesla will build a full-fledged factory. Nothing is announced, and the frenzy is based mainly on Mexican officials saying Tesla boss Elon Musk will have a phone call with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The northern industrial state of Nuevo Leon seemed to have an early edge in the race.

It painted the Tesla logo on a lane at the Laredo-Colombia border crossing into Texas last summer and is erecting billboards in December in the state capital, Monterrey, that read “Welcome Tesla.”

The state governor’s influencer wife, Mariana Rodriguez, was even shown in leaked photos at a get-together with Musk.

However, López Obrador appeared to exclude the semi-desert state from consideration Monday, arguing he wouldn’t allow the typically high water use of factories to risk prompting shortages there.

That set off a competitive scramble among other Mexican states. The governors’ offers ranged from crafty proposals to near-comic ones.

“Veracruz is the only state with an excess of gas,” quipped Gov. Cuitláhuac García of the Gulf Coast state, before quickly adding “gas … for industrial use, for industrial use!”

A latecomer to the race, García had to try harder: He noted Veracruz was home to Mexico’s only nuclear power plant. And he claimed Veracruz had 30% of Mexico’s water, though the National Water Commission puts the state’s share at around 11%.

The governor of the western state of Michoacan wasn’t going to be left out. Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla quickly posted a mocked-up ad for a Tesla car standing next to a huge, car-sized avocado — Michoacan’s most recognizable product — with the slogan “Michoacan — The Best Choice for Tesla.”

“We have enough water,” Ramírez Bedolla said in a television interview he did between a round of meetings with auto industry figures and international business representatives.

Michoacan also has an intractable problem of drug cartel violence. But similar violence in neighboring Guanajuato state hasn’t stopped seven major international automakers from setting up plants there.

Nuevo Leon Gov. Samuel García had to think fast to avoid being shut out entirely.

García reached out to the western state of Jalisco, whose governor, Enrique Alfaro, belongs to the same small Citizen’s Movement party. Together, the two came up with an alliance Thursday that would allow trucks from Jalisco preferential use of Nuevo Leon’s border crossing, the same one where a “Tesla” lane appeared last year.

Jalisco has a healthy foreign tech sector, but most importantly, it has more water than Nuevo Leon.

López Obrador’s focus on water might be more about politics than about droughts, said Gabriela Siller, chief economist at Nuevo Leon-based Banco Base. She said the president appeared to be trying to steer Tesla investment to a state governed by his own Morena party, like Michoacan or Veracruz.

That could be a dangerous game, Siller said.

“Tesla could say it’s not somebody’s toy to be moved around anywhere, and it could decide not to come to Mexico,” she said.

There are doubts that whatever Musk eventually does announce will be an auto assembly plant. Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said his understanding is that it won’t be a plant, but rather an ecosystem of suppliers.

Musk at times has floated the idea of building a $25,000 electric vehicle that would cost about $20,000 less than the current Model 3, now Tesla’s least-expensive car. Many automakers build lower-cost models in Mexico to save on labor costs and protect profit margins.

A Tesla investment could be part of “near shoring” by U.S. companies that once manufactured in China but now are leery of logistical and political problems there. That those companies will now turn to Mexico represents the Latin American country’s biggest foreign investment hope.

“The fight among states to attract investments from this nearshoring phenomenon is going to be tough, complicated,” Michoacan’s Ramírez Bedolla said.

As Ramírez Bedolla put it, “wherever Tesla sets up, it is going to be big news in Mexico.”
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Pakistan has to unwillingly accept the strict conditions of a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide a lifeline for an economy in turmoil, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday.

Sharif was speaking to top security officials at his office in Islamabad in a meeting that was telecast live.

“We have to accept unwillingly the strict conditions for the IMF deal,” he said, adding that an accord was still a “week, 10 days” away.

Pakistani authorities have been negotiating with the IMF since early February over policy framework issues and are hoping to sign a staff-level agreement that will pave the way for more inflows from other bilateral and multilateral lenders.

Once the deal is signed, the lender will disburse a tranche of more than $1 billion from the $6.5 billion bailout agreed to in 2019.

Pakistan has already taken a string of measures, including adopting a market-based exchange rate; a hike in fuel and power tariffs; the withdrawal of subsidies, and more taxation to generate revenue to bridge the fiscal deficit.

Officials say the lender is still negotiating with Islamabad over power sector debt, as well as a potential increase in the policy rate, which stands at 17%.

The strict measures are likely to further cool the economy and stoke inflation, which was 27.50% in January.

The South Asian country’s economy has been in turmoil and desperately needs external financing, with its foreign exchange reserves dipping to about $3 billion, barely enough for three weeks’ worth of imports.

A “friendly country” is also waiting for the deal to be confirmed before extending support to Pakistan, Sharif said without elaborating.

Longtime ally China this week announced refinancing of $700 million, according to Pakistan’s Finance Ministry.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Friday said Pakistan’s central bank has received the money.

“Thank God,” he said in a tweet.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago has profoundly affected how the world powers itself.
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