Economy

The future of the EU
German investment to lift the EU: “Abyss cry of relief”

Germany is investing almost 5,500 billion kronor in upgrading bridges, roads, railways and digital infrastructure, writes SvD Näringsliv in a report. That is four times as much as the Swedish state budget.

When the announcement was made this spring, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange surged and investors turned their attention back to Germany.

“It was [...] an abyssal cry of relief,” says Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at major bank ING, to SvD Näringsliv.

The government hopes for economic growth that benefits the whole of Europe, while critics warn of misallocation and that the investment is not enough.

The AI ​​race
AI frenzy lifts Silicon Valley's richest – Musk tops

The hype around AI has led the ten richest people in Silicon Valley to increase their combined wealth to $2.5 trillion, equivalent to 23107 billion kronor, writes the Financial Times.

–This is speculative and correlated with the success of AI. There is a big question mark over whether all this will pay off, but investors are betting that it will, says Jason Furman, professor of economics at Harvard University and consultant for Open AI, to the FT.

Elon Musk tops the list with $654 billion, followed by Nvidia founder Jensen Huang with $156 billion.

The streaming war
Analysis: Subscribers lose out on the Warner deal

Both Netflix and Paramount are fighting over Warner Bros and regardless of the outcome, consumers will lose out, according to analyses in the Financial Times and The Atlantic.

After the deal, all subscribers will likely receive a series of emails about more expensive repackaged content, believes the Financial Times' Brooke Masters.

"If Netflix wins, consumer groups fear that WBD's main streaming service HBO Max will disappear into a larger package [...] If Paramount overcomes the WBD board's objections, it could chain HBO to its less popular Paramount+ service," she writes.

The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin and the magazine's film critic David Sims are on the same track on Radio Atlantic. The loser will be the film world.

- This is clearly a looming nightmare that Hollywood has been worrying about for more than the last few months. The Hollywood studios will continue to condense into a larger and larger lump, which does not really bode well for the arts, unfortunately, says David Sims,