财税茶座

经济学人： Feb 28th 2024 2024 年 2 月 28 日 IF YOU’RE A chocoholic you may have noticed that your habit has lately become dearer. The price of cocoa began creeping up in the second half of 2022. Since then it has doubled, reaching an all-time high in January 2024 (see chart 1). That steep rise spells trouble for the chocolate business and sweet-toothed consumers alike. Hershey and Mondelez International, the owner of Cadbury, passed on these costs to shoppers last year. Hershey’s year-on-year profits fell by 11.5% during the fourth quarter. The company recently announced that it would cut 5% of its workforce. Barry Callebaut, the world’s biggest chocolate-maker, said that it would lay off 2,500 people, 19% of its workforce. 如果您是一名巧克力狂，您可能会注意到您的习惯最近变得更加昂贵。可可价格从 2022 年下半年开始攀升。此后价格翻了一番，并于 2024 年 1 月达到历史新高（见图 1）。这种急剧上涨给巧克力行业和爱吃甜食的消费者带来了麻烦。去年，好时和吉百利的所有者亿滋国际将这些成本转嫁给了消费者。好时第四季度利润同比下降 11.5%。该公司最近宣布将裁员 5%。全球最大的巧克力制造商百乐嘉利宝 (Barry Callebaut) 表示，将裁员 2,500 人，占其员工总数的 19%。 Climate patterns are partly to blam

经济学人： No other firm has benefited from the boom in artificial intelligence (ai) as much as Nvidia. Since January 2023 the chipmaker’s share price has surged by almost 450%. With the total value of its shares approaching $2trn, Nvidia is now America’s third-most valuable firm, behind Microsoft and Apple. Its revenues for the most recent quarter were $22bn, up from $6bn in the same period last year. Most analysts expect that Nvidia, which controls more than 95% of the market for specialist ai chips, will continue to grow at a blistering pace for the foreseeable future. What makes its chips so special? 没有其他公司像英伟达一样从人工智能 (ai) 的繁荣中受益。自 2023 年 1 月以来，这家芯片制造商的股价已飙升近 450%。 Nvidia 的股票总价值接近 2 万美元，目前是美国第三大市值公司，仅次于微软和苹果。最近一个季度的收入为 220 亿美元，高于去年同期的 60 亿美元。大多数分析师预计，控制着 95% 以上专业人工智能芯片市场的英伟达将在可预见的未来继续以惊人的速度增长。是什么让它的芯片如此特别？ Nvidia’s ai chips, also known as graphics processor units (gpus) or “accelerators”, were initially designed for video games. They use parallel processing, breaking each computation in

经济学人： In 1991 eight volunteers sealed themselves into a huge greenhouse in the desert near Tucson, Arizona. They were part of an experiment seeking to discover whether a carefully curated selection of plants and animals could develop into a self-sustaining ecosystem: a “Biosphere 2” independent of “Biosphere 1”, aka the outside world. 1991年，八名志愿者将自己封闭在亚利桑那州图森附近沙漠中的一个巨大温室里。他们参与了一项实验，旨在探索精心挑选的植物和动物是否可以发展成为一个自我维持的生态系统：独立于“生物圈 1”（即外部世界）的“生物圈 2”。 In terms of proving grand ecological truths the Biosphere 2 experiments were something of a bust. As an illustration of what can happen when somewhat fringe-y science meets extreme wealth they were fascinating. There were fierce fallings-out on both sides of the glass. In 1994 Ed Bass, an oil dynast who had paid for the facility, threw out the management team and handed the reins to Steve Bannon, later a key adviser to Donald Trump. At the same time, though, there was what some took to be a breakthrough in the science of human ageing. 就证明宏大的生态真理而言，

 经济学人： E verywhere you  look, stockmarkets are breaking records. American equities, as measured by the  S & P  500 index, hit their first all-time high in more than two years in January, surged above 5,000 points in February and roared well above that level on February 22nd when Nvidia, a maker of hardware essential for artificial intelligence ( AI ), released spectacular results. The same day, Europe’s  STOXX  600 set its own record. Even before Nvidia’s results had been announced, Japan’s Nikkei 225 had surpassed its previous best, set in 1989. Little surprise, then, that a widely watched global stockmarket index recently hit an all-time high, too (see chart 1). 放眼望去，股市都在打破纪录。以标准普尔 500 指数衡量的美国股市 1 月份创下两年多来的首次历史新高，2 月份飙升至 5,000 点以上，2 月 22 日，当人工智能（ai），发布惊人成果。同一天，欧洲斯托克斯 600 指数创下了自己的纪录。甚至在 Nvidia 的业绩公布之前，日本日经 225 指数就已经超越了 1989 年创下的历史最高纪录。因此，备受关注的全球股市指数最近也创下历史新高也就不足为奇了（见图 1）。 image: The Economist   图片来源：《经济学家》 This is quite a turnaround. Stocks slumped in 2022, when faced with fast-ri

经济学人：   N azem Ahmad , an art collector and financier, who owns work by Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso, has been under American sanctions since 2019. That may sound like a problem, but it has not stopped him from smuggling half a billion or so dollars for Hizbullah, a Lebanese militant group, according to America’s Treasury. He moves art, cash and gems across borders via galleries in the Ivory Coast, family offices in the   UAE  and portfolio firms in Hong Kong. His financial tapestry is underpinned by bank accounts in America. 艺术收藏家兼金融家纳齐姆 · 艾哈迈德 (Nazem Ahmad) 拥有安迪 · 沃霍尔 (Andy Warhol) 和巴勃罗 · 毕加索 (Pablo Picasso) 的作品，自 2019 年以来一直受到美国制裁。这听起来可能是个问题，但这并没有阻止他为真主党走私 5 亿左右美元据美国财政部称，黎巴嫩激进组织。他通过科特迪瓦的画廊、阿联酋的家族办公室和香港的投资组合公司跨境转移艺术品、现金和宝石。他的金融体系以美国的银行账户为基础。 All of this displeases Western policymakers, who are trying to make sanctions more stringent. Mr Ahmad is one of several magnates on whom sanctions have been adjusted. The  EU ’s 13th wave of measures against Russia, agreed on February 21st, will