Eshe Nelson

Norway is pulling ahead in the race to become the first country to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars. Its goal is ambitious: By 2025, the Nordic nation wants to price out the sale of the polluting cars. And it is well on its way to achieving this. In 2017, 52% of the new cars sold were electric or hybrid cars, up from 40% the previous year, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (link in Norwegian).

If you’re worried about the future and where technology might lead us, 2017 didn’t help. The warnings kept rolling in about potential job losses from automation and machine learning. More than 375 million of us will need to completely change occupations to avoid being replaced by robots, a recent report estimated. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence keeps getting smarter: The world got its first robot citizen, another robot learned to do backflips, and DeepMind’s AI has mastered chess.

Early in 2017, Donald Trump was worried the dollar was getting too strong. At the start of 2018, he has nothing to worry about. This year, the US dollar recorded an annual decline for the first time in five years.

Europe didn’t head into 2017 under the best circumstances. Brexit was still relatively new and troubling, Italy’s oldest bank had just collapsed, and a series of upcoming elections were making investors nervous. Twelve months later, the success of Europe’s economy this year has been such a standout surprise it’s even been enjoying its own hashtag: #euroboom.

After Catalonia formally declared independence from Spain in October, Madrid quickly responded by imposing direct rule over the region and instigating new elections on Dec. 21. A record number of people turned out to vote in yesterday’s snap election and handed pro-independence parties another majority in the region’s parliament.

When the Brexit process was triggered and it was determined that the UK would formally leave the European Union in March 2019, many worried a regulatory and operational nightmare was awaiting businesses. The fear: that on March 31, 2019 the UK would be subject to all the rules and regulations of the EU. Then, on April 1, 2019, business would fall off a cliff-edge as new rules, trade agreements, and regulations wouldn’t have been completed. Since then, it’s been widely agreed that the UK would enter into a “transition period” after Brexit in 2019 to allow time for a new trading relationship to be worked out with the EU.

Less than three months ago, Catalonia held a hard-fought referendum on independence from Spain, reigniting an old and messy battle. In a ballot the Spanish central government called illegal, the region’s government said that 90% of voters opted for independence.

2017 belonged to cobalt.

Bitcoin futures started trading last night on CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange, and prices so far signal traders think the digital asset could climb higher. Last week, Cboe Holdings also launched bitcoin futures, which give traders a way to speculate on what prices will be at some later date. Both futures contracts traded at $19,400 or higher today UK time, compared with bitcoin’s actual spot price of around $18,860.

Three and a half years ago, the English publication of Thomas Piketty’s surprise bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, sparked an international debate about the roots of rising inequality. Today, his publication of new data on inequality makes for equally sobering reading: The gap between rich and poor has increased in nearly every region in the world over the past few decades.

Bond traders have had a rough time recently, as their ranks have thinned since the financial crisis due to stricter regulations and the decline in manually intensive voice trading. They now face their toughest challenge yet, with AI-enabled automation threatening jobs across the industry.

Everyone has one foot out of the door, trying to wrap up their work before the holidays, and the same applies to central bankers. This week, no fewer than 20 central banks around the world will make decisions about interest rates. The big day is Thursday (Dec. 14), when there will be 12 rate-setting decisions, the single busiest day of the year.

For at least 70 years, the US dollar has been the world’s dominant currency. Central banks around the world hold a large portion of their reserves in the US currency, while private companies use it for international transactions. The trade in US Treasury bonds is the world’s deepest, most liquid market. As a result, the American economy benefits from a currency that greases the wheels of the global financial system.

The US economy added 228,000 new jobs last month, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Before the announcement, the consensus among analysts was for 200,000 jobs, according to Reuters. That’s a good forecast to make pretty much any month.

It took nearly five years for the price of bitcoin to finally cross the first $1,000 mark. Comparatively, the next $1,000 increase was a relatively swift three-and-a-half year journey. In the past few months, though, bitcoin has broken through $1,000 thresholds every few weeks. In the past few days, it has taken mere hours.

In the US, the proportion of women participating in the workforce peaked in 2000 and has been drifting lower ever since. As the country tries to figure out ways to boost productivity growth and improve living standards, a report by Standard & Poor’s argues that the solution can be found in an underused economic resource: women.

Venezuela might be about to get a second currency, and it could be just as mismanaged as the first. Amid a severe social and economic crisis, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said his government plans to launch the “petro,” a cryptocurrency backed by oil, gas, gold, and diamond reserves.

Are we so constantly distracted by our smartphones that it’s making us less productive? This is not an idle thought, but a serious question recently posed by the Bank of England.

What does it take to stop a mega rally in US stock markets in its tracks? The promise of a conspiracy against the US reaching the White House could do it. Just not for long.

After years of industrial decline in the world’s advanced economies, manufacturing is now experiencing a solid revival. The global manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI), a measurement of the sector’s health, rose to 54 in November, up from 53.5 the previous month, and the highest reading since March 2011. Readings above 50 signal expansion.

All good things must come to an end and Goldman Sachs wants investors to remember that message. Right now, record-high stock markets, low interest rates, and high demand for credit are making it a pretty comfortable time to be an investor in almost anything. A balanced portfolio of US stocks and bonds—a 60:40 ratio—hasn’t had a 10% decline since the financial crisis in 2009, making it the longest bull market for a balanced portfolio since the 1920s, analysts at the bank wrote in a recent note.

Over the past decade, reams of research by economists has been devoted to investigating why they failed to foresee the financial crisis, among other things economics has recently gotten wrong. This soul-searching has produced new theories, models, and policies, but it hasn’t fully repaired the reputation of the field. As time passes and the effects of the crisis fade, people still find it hard to trust economists.

Fears that automation and machine learning will cause massive job losses and make people obsolete are starting to wane (well, unless you ask Stephen Hawking). Instead, there’s a more optimistic prediction taking hold: that the new technology could actually lead to job gains. But the transition won’t be easy.

Ten years on from the global financial crisis, bankers are facing another dilemma destined to destroy tens of thousands more jobs. New technologies, particularly automation, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, are disrupting the world’s banking centers.