Dear Students,
It's grey in Paris today, so maybe this 20-minute video may interest you:
https://www.ft.com/video/05f5be34-2734-4866-9bb6-65ca9895f6c0
It's about Petrobas, Brazil's huge oil company, which was created in the 1950s as a symbol of national resource independence. Today, the company is a world leader in deep-sea oil drilling. But at the same time, it is a bit of a "political football", being assigned with missions to develop the Brazilian economy. This does not always work very well, when policy is not consistent, and the firm has to achieve too many objectives. It is a problem which nationalised industries faced in Britain in the 1970s, when governments were using them for macroeconomic policy objectives. It was impossible for firms like British Steel or the car company British Leyland to make profits, and at the same time create jobs and apply national "prices and incomes policies".
The video also shows amazing shots of Brazil.
And ladies, you will be interested to see who the CEO is, although again government interference means that turnover in the job is much too high.
Lastly, if you are reading this on your smartphone, you may be interested in an English exercise I have just created on how the world has become "Lonely with smartphones and few children". You can find it here: https://cours.univ-paris1.fr/fixe/english-for-economics#section-1
Kind regards,
Nicholas Sowels