3 charts for you today:
Uncle Sam spent a lot of money last year. About $6.5 trillion in US federal spending to be exact. That figure is not far from double what the federal government collected in revenue from taxes — meaning that the US federal deficit broke through the $3 trillion mark for the first time in history.
Much of that deficit can be attributed to COVID-19 relief efforts. Federal spending jumped ~45% compared to FY2019, mostly thanks to support for businesses, unemployment insurance, stimulus checks and other forms of COVID-related aid. Revenues decreased by 3%.
I O U $27 trillion
If you're not that familiar with government finances you might be wondering where they got the cash after coming up a little short. The simple truth is that the government borrowed it, adding a few trillion to its already enormous tab (AKA the national debt) — which at the end of 2020 was about $27 trillion and change.
That works out to about $82k for every man, woman and child in the United States. As alarming as that number sounds, the US gets about as good a rate on its debt as any borrowing institution in the world, and it's hard to make a case for frugality in the middle of a global pandemic.
Oh, great, another streaming service. That might have been your reaction this week to the news that AT&T and Discovery are planning to merge their media assets together, to better take on the streaming giants of Netflix, Disney & Amazon.
For the companies involved, this deal makes a lot of sense on paper. Both AT&T and Discovery, the former of which has a sprawling telecoms business, have seen relatively lacklustre corporate performance in the last 5 years — which has been reflected in their share prices. This deal hopes to take the underperforming media assets from AT&T, which includes HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. studio (responsible for Harry Potter and many other titles) and combine it with Discovery's relaxing cooking, home renovation and nature content.
Streaming together
Although it may take a while to happen, presumably the plan is to merge the assets under one big streaming brand. That brand, which lets call WarnerHBODiscoveryMaxBros for now, would have an ~80 million strong streaming subscriber base, with 15 million coming from Discovery, and the rest from HBO and HBO Max. That's a long way from Netflix's 208 million, but not so far from Disney+, which has 104 million.
In the battle for eyeballs, scale and focus matter. WarnerHBODiscoveryMaxBros would have both.
This week the International Energy Agency put out a comprehensive report on the steps and actions needed for the world to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Among the many charts and hopeful projections about solar installations, electric vehicles, bio-energy and coal shutdowns one piece of data struck us as particularly important - which we've reproduced in the chart above. That is, for all of the countries that have been talking a big game on climate change, how many have actually already passed legislation to go for net-zero? The answer is only 10.
That was surprisingly low, but the good news is that more countries look set to follow. In fact, another 34 countries have pledged to shoot for net zero, even if it's not yet been enshrined legally. Overall the countries that have made some kind of pledge account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions.
For more information on the specifics of how we get to net zero by 2050 we highly recommend checking out the full report from the International Energy Agency.
1) Amazon is reportedly looking at buying film and content studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $9bn. MGM has been responsible for the James Bond series, The Handmaid's Tale, Rocky and many more titles throughout its 97 year history.
2) The Plastic Waste Makers Index reveals that just 20 firms are responsible for producing ~55% of the world's single-use plastics.
3) Lamborghini has announced that every car they produce will be a plug-in hybrid by the end of 2024, with the company set to invest $1.8bn to fund the project over the next 4 years. Separately, Ford also unveiled its new electric pick-up during a visit by President Biden.
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5) The biggest dating app you've never heard of: Azar. The spontaneous video chat app from Korea was acquired by Match Group for $1.7bn in February, and was downloaded more than 40 million times last year.
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