Podzept - With Deutsche Bank Research

We interview Daianna Karaian, Founder and CEO of Today Do This, a firm that works with Blue Chip global corporates to help them achieve specific sustainability goals. We address several big questions that corporates have about exactly how to implement sustainability processes.

We discuss the US economy, in particular what President Biden has done in his first 100 days in office, including the enormous fiscal stimulus package. Is the package politically possible as Washington looks forward to mid-term elections next year?

We discuss the key trends of digital currencies; which central banks are leading and lagging the race; the different sets of opportunities, or hurdles even, faced by different countries; and what to expect in terms of regulatory framework looking ahead. Katharina Paust-Bokrezion, Head of payments policy, Political Affairs, joins the conversation.

Being ‘asset-light’ has been Wall Street dogma for years. And no wonder. Over the last decade, US stocks with low levels of Property, Plant, and Equipment (PPE) have seen double the stock market returns of high PPE stocks. In Europe, the returns have been triple. But could it all come to an end?

A deep dive into what we are expecting from the Fed and why the market is pricing in a different path than the Fed's guidance.

A year ago, markets were in freefall. The Covid pandemic was still largely in its infancy, but investors were quickly realizing that a massive recession was looming. Fast forward to today and the conversation is very different as we contemplate if growth will run too hot, how high will inflation get and could the Fed fall behind the curve.

Listen to a podcast episode where we discuss the highlights from a recent ESG conference where sustainability leaders and asset managers discussed key ESG topics as part of focused panels and presentations.

This year's National People's Congress (NPC) will start on Friday, March 5, and will last for about 2 weeks. In this podcast we provide a preview of the key policy issues for the NPC where we expect the government will set a floor growth target at 7-7.5% for 2021, leaving sufficient room to pursue its longer-term policy priorities. The 2021 budget will likely roll back about 60% of Covid-19 related stimulus measures. Nevertheless, government spending will likely increase 7% over last year, thanks to a strong fiscal revenue outlook.

Covid-19 disruption to business has reshuffled priorities for CFOs and treasurers. They must address how to: maintain access to liquidity/credit; implement back-up procedures; create visibility to total cash in global locations; determine cash requirements in the short and medium term; and assess current exposures. Astrid Poussel, Global Corporate Coverage, Corporate Bank, joins the conversation.

Back in early December most thought the chance of Republicans losing both Georgia Senate run-off seats was pretty low. That has now happened, with a so-called blue sweep upon us. About a week until inauguration, we discuss how we think Biden’s initial 100-day+ plan might look like.

Even prior to the pandemic, there was an inevitable shift to online purchasing. But how do we ensure this widening acceptance of online buying does not backfire on the planet in the form of unsustainable delivery levels? We propose a system to bring all parties in the delivery value chain to the table, and suggest an incentive system that grades rewards with the intention of sending non-urgent deliveries to specific areas on specific days.

As the pandemic has accelerated the digital cash revolution, there are several things companies and policymakers need to do to respond.

We look at what to expect from the Biden administration and discuss the implications for the US economic outlook for 2021.

The pandemic has shown how the ‘haves’ are more resilient than the ‘have-nots’. Much of this is based on the gap between the two groups based on their access to technology. The divide in the US runs deepest along race and location (urban versus rural). To narrow this gap, we lay out our vision to develop an initiative that covers the more than half of households without proper broadband connection and a computer.

The 2020 election is now less than a week away. While all elections have implications for the economic outlook, the two candidates for this year’s contest have historically divergent views on essentially all important aspects of economic policy. In this podcast, we consider the implications for the economic outlook of the possible combinations of president and Senate.

The exponential growth of the digital economy is going to leave large chunks of minorities with little or no access to jobs. We conduct a bottom up societal study and it shows that 76% of Blacks and 62% of Hispanics could get shut out or be under-prepared for 86% of jobs in the US by 2045. If this digital racial gap is not addressed, in one generation alone, digitization could render the country’s minorities into an unemployment abyss.

The widening generational divide should be a key source of alarm for investors, financial markets and society as a whole. Young people perceive themselves as the losers on issues ranging from housing to climate change to student debt. In turn, this anger is manifesting itself into political outcomes, with elections around the world increasingly fought along generational lines.

As long as they are covered by salary protection schemes, those on low incomes have seen their paycheque relatively more insulated than those on higher incomes. Other redistributionist measures also mean the rich are likely to face a higher burden, thus reducing inequality.

The US-China Tech Cold War remains one of the biggest tail risks of the current market rally. We have conducted a top-down analysis to quantify the impact of a complete decoupling. Our study on stock price correlations with the DB Tech Cold War Index yields a surprising and counter-intuitive finding, Semiconductors. Listen to a new podcast with Apjit Walia Tech Strategist and Matthew Barnard, Head of Company Research US.

Children, interruptions, loneliness, and an unsuitable workplace has left many frustrated as they attempt to work from home. We do the sums to see if businesses should subsidise their employees’ housing costs so they can save on expensive office space.