Some analysts have attributed this rise a sudden surge of interest by retail investors, reporting a surge in demand for bars and coins. This had a short-lived impact, with Bullion broker Apmex reporting delays in transactions due to the increased demand.

The following day, however, the value had dropped by eight per cent to $27 per ounce. This follows a similar rise – and subsequent fall – in the value of GameStop shares, led by a forum on Reddit named r/WallStreetBets. The chain video game store was at the focus of small traders aiming to expose the corruption at the heart of wall street stocks; they stipulated that the fall of GameStop’s value had occurred due to bets within the market to this end.

To challenge this, many bought shares into the company, which saw shares hit a high of $482 last week. The value has since dropped as the trading effort lost momentum. It is thought that silver was swept up within this retail frenzy; the hashtag #silversqueeze was trending on Twitter, with some predicting that they would be able to throw corrupt hedge funds off-kilter.

It seems that the aim was to make large banks in the futures market suffer for supposed bets that the value of silver would fall, as was the case with GameStop. The Guardian, however, reports that the size of the silver market makes ‘much harder to influence than a single stock’. Henry Sanderson and Neil Hume of the Financial Times further point to the fact that ‘unlike GameStop, which had been the target of negative bets among hedge funds, there was no large short position in silver futures’. They suggest that bets had been placed on prices rising.

Some Reddit users strictly advised against buying silver, one detail in a post that ‘Buying silver will make you likely lose money and give it to the hedge funds and Citadel’, another stating ‘there is no sentiment among WSB members to buy SLV stock and the little that exists is under the scrutiny of WSB members’. Some go further to claim that the rise in silver prices had not been affected by the community at all and that media outlets reporting it as such were questionable in their credibility. Whether other small-time investors were influenced by internet trends is still up for debate.

Either way, it has been pointed out that buying SLV shares does not directly impact the value of physical silver. The value of silver was set to increase steadily over the coming years as the global economy slowly recovers from the pandemic.

Banks and governments have a vested interest in maintaining a stable value of gold and silver, as the value of precious metals is still intrinsically, though indirectly, linked to our monetary system. If anything, the short-lived nature of the surge in silver reveals that the odds are stacked against small investors attempting to influence the global market. If the spike was indeed caused by Redditors and such aiming to destabilise the market, the choice of SLV shares has ironically proved to be an untimely silver bullet to their efforts.

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Cloud computing is simply the availability of a variety of computing services – including networking, databases, analytics and intelligence, storage, and servers, to name a few – over the internet. This effectively allows for data centers to be available to many users, which can be hugely useful for companies. Cloud computing can benefit firms and corporations as their up-front IT infrastructure costs can be minimized as they don’t have to purchase their hardware and software.

Further, applications can both run and be set up faster and more effectively in times of peak demand. This is because, typically, consumers only pay for the amount of cloud ‘space’ or storage as they are using at one time on a pay-as-you-go model. There are different types of cloud computing, which can broadly be speaking be separated into public, private, and hybrid categories.

A public cloud is both owned and operated by a third-party provider, who delivers their services over the internet. Within this category, all supporting infrastructures are managed by the cloud provider; Amazon Web Services are an example of this.

In the private cloud, resources are used and accessed by a single company only, which can still be hosted by a third-party service. Nonetheless, a private cloud is found within the company’s on-site data center, and its services are run and upheld on a private network. A hybrid cloud allows for further flexibility, as services can be shared between the private network and that of the public.

Originally, notions of ‘time-sharing’ came about in the 1960s. Funding for a project at MIT allowed for the development of technology that allowed for a computer to be used by two or more people simultaneously. According to Keith D. Foote, in its early developmental stage, “‘the cloud’ was used to express the space between the end-user and the provider”. Now, cloud computing is a multi-billion dollar industry and one which continues to grow.

Steve Ranger notes that in 2021, around “one-third of enterprise IT spending will be on hosting and cloud services this year, indicating a growing reliance on external sources of infrastructure, application, management and security services”. He suggests that global spending on such services will reach $260bn this year.

International Business Machines Corporation (also known by the acronym IBM) is an international tech company, who was hugely fundamental to the development of cloud computing services. IBM Cloud includes Infrastructure as a service [IaaS], software as a service [SaaS], and platform as a service [PaaS]. These services are offered through hybrid, public, and private modes. They announced a partnership with Google in 2007 to promote cloud computing within universities. Now know as the IBM SmartCloud brand, they offer their customers infrastructure and software are services of three types: SmartCloud Foundation, SmartCloud Services, and SmartCloud Solutions.

Amazon is the owner of one of the largest cloud computing platforms, ‘Amazon Web Services’, which was launched in 2002. It’s seen steady growth, reporting 37 per cent yearly growth in 2019, and accounting for 12 per cent of Amazon’s total revenue; all of Amazon’s retail sites having been moved to the platform back in 2012. Amazon Web Services’ customer base includes NASA, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and Netflix.

There is a growing market for cloud computing, and companies such as IBM and Amazon have done well to keep abreast of the rising tide of consumer demand. There are, however, limitations. Bruce Schneier states that “cloud computing is cheaper because of economies of scale […] fewer options at a much cheaper price”. Further factors for considerations include privacy and confidentiality, as there is the potential for sensitive data to be accessed by non-intended uses. Ultimately, cloud computing has the advantages of lowering costs and allowing organisations to focalise on competence rather than infrastructural and technological issues: though some issues may arise, there is little doubt that the Cloud has become a necessity in most of our everyday lives.

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Although there has been public dissent following the election, fuelled by President Donald Trump’s unverified claims of election fraud, the inauguration last Wednesday went off without a hitch. There had been significant concerns that public violence may erupt, due to the Capitol riots earlier this month, wherein virulent supporters of Trump stormed the building whilst the senate was in session. Donald Trump elected not to attend the inauguration: making him the first president since 1869 not to attend his successor’s inauguration.

President Joe Biden, former Vice President under the Obama administration, is a representative of the Democrat party. Since taking office, he has been busy already, signing over 30 executive orders before the end of his first week. Some of these executive orders directly reverse policy decisions made by Trump under his term in office. Some key areas that Biden has already targeted include the environment, the approach to tackling the coronavirus, and certain social justice issues, including tackling xenophobia and discrimination based on gender.

Where regarding the environment, Biden has made two major moves in the last week: Firstly, he reversed Trump’s decision to remove the US from the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty which came into effect in 2016. The Paris Agreement, so named due to its being signed by United Nations member states in Paris, aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees celsius, although preferably 1.5.

Further actions taken by the Biden administration include revoking the permit that was granted to the TC Energy Corporation for the fourth phase of the Keystone XL Pipeline development. This new development would consist of 526km of a new pipeline from Canada, crossing over the border in Montana, then travelling through South Dakota and Nebraska. The pipeline was opposed by environmentalists, citing concerns over climate change, and indeed disruptions to national landmarks such as the Sandhills in Nebraska. Further concerns were raised by Indigenous activists, who feared their territories and livelihoods would be disrupted. Biden has been criticised by some right-wing politicians who cite job losses as a result of this executive order.

Also in the last week, large actions concerning the coronavirus pandemic have been made. Biden signed an executive order making mask-wearing compulsory on all public transport and in all federal buildings. According to the BBC, the US has suffered approximately 417,500 deaths as a result of the virus; fewer Americans died during the entirety of the Second World War, hence Joe Biden’s reference to the new pandemic response as a “wartime undertaking”. The President aims to roll out 100 million doses of the vaccine in 100 days. Initially, critics of this plan deemed the high figure unrealistic; now, though, Biden faces criticism for not planning to roll out more vaccines. Also reversed was the decision to remove the US from the World Health Organisation.

Other crucial actions taken by Biden’s administration include reversing Trump’s so-called ‘Muslim ban’, in which restrictions were placed on passport holders [from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen] attempting to enter the US. Biden has also halted the construction of the border wall between the USA and Mexico. In terms of gender identity, an executive order signed on January 20th prevents workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Further, CBS reports that Biden may repeal Trump’s transgender military ban as soon as the 25th January.

It will be interesting to explore what Biden manages to achieve in his first 100 days in office; clearly, his administration has been quick to repeal certain legislation by Trump’s government and to induce new policy of their own. It seems clear currently that Biden’s government is focussing on a more positive international policy, and attempted restriction on discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, or immigration status, and a massive effort to bring the pandemic under control.

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As it stands, the Italian government is due to receive €209bn in European Union economic recovery funds; the largest share of all member states. Italy suffered greatly under the coronavirus pandemic, being the first European country to experience a mass wave. Though Conte was generally supported and praised for his management of the pandemic and consequential lockdown in the first half of 2020, his popularity began to decrease following the autumn resurgence of the virus. Italy’s coronavirus death toll of 84,674 is the second-highest in Europe; only Britain shows a higher toll. Matteo Renzi raised concerns that this money was to be “squandered” under Conte’s leadership.

Prime Minister Conte had been in discussion with Renzi from December 2020 to January 2021 but had refused to make changes called for by Renzi, on the grounds that he still had a majority in government. Renzi’s move, in announcing the resignation of two Italia Viva ministers, essentially set in motion a collapse of the government. Conte’s cabinet, sworn in on the 5th September 2019, is formed of a coalition, consisting of the anti-establishment ‘Five Star Movement’, the centre-left Democratic Party, and the leftist group ‘Free and Equal’. Italia Viva had announced its support of the government by Septemeber 17th 2019.

The government was formed of nine ministers from Five Star Movement, nine from the PD (Democratic Party), two from Italia Viva, one from Free and Equal, and three Independents, including Giuseppe Conte – formerly a lawyer. Once Renzi announced the resignation of two ministers from the cabinet (Teresa Bellanova, Minister of Agriculture; Elena Bonetti, Minister for Family and Equal Opportunities), Conte himself undertook these positions in an interim capacity, in order to maintain his government.

In order to stay in place, Conte’s government had to win a vote of confidence in both the lower house and the senate, which it succeeded in doing last week. Since, Matteo Renzi has come under significant fire, labelled by Italian media outlet ‘thelocal.it’, the ‘wrecker of Italian politics’. PD Leader Nicola Zingaretti has named Italia Viva as displaying “political unreliability”, by causing the government such distress.

According to The Guardian, Italian citizens themselves are widely unimpressed with Renzi for throwing the country into political jeopardy: Angela Giuffrida reports that in a survey conducted last week, “73 per cent said it was not the time for a political crisis and believed Renzi was merely pursuing his own interests”. Renzi himself has defended his move, claiming that “Italia Viva did not start the crisis. It has been going on for months”, in regard to mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent recovery funds.

Although Conte’s government has maintained its hold- and a snap election does not seem likely in the coming weeks- Renzi’s move has greatly weakened the government. Though winning a vote of confidence, Conte lost his majority in the upper house (the senate) and now, in leading a minority government) will be far more vulnerable to future attacks by the opposition.

Italy’s political and economic balance have both been threatened, impacted indubitably by the coronavirus pandemic. In the last year, Italy opted to make use of EU funds, which France and Germany both strongly opposed. Many now wonder, both Italians themselves and other European member states, how Italy can conceive of recovery with such political infighting and grandstanding as displayed by Matteo Renzi.

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In his early career, he co-founded Zip2 and X.com, both of which were acquired for centimillions in the early noughties. In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, a company dedicated to manufacturing cheaper aerospace transportation options, with an eye to enable human colonisation of Mars. By 2008, Musk had become the CEO of Tesla, Inc, which manufactures electric cars.

(Source: The Mercury News)

It is the swift success of Tesla which has contributed to Musk’s wealth; surging in value throughout the last year, Tesla hit a market value of $700bn last week. BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones estimates that Tesla’s worth has increased seven-fold in the course of a year, a staggering increase.

Musk responded to a tweet announcing his new status as world’s wealthiest person (overtaking Jeff Bezos of Amazon) with two tweets, ‘How strange’ and ‘Well, back to work’. In following days, he tweeted again: ‘Btw [abbreviation: by the way], critical feedback is always super appreciated, as well as ways to donate money that really make a difference (way harder than it seems).’ This indicates Musk’s desire to share his wealth; journalist Justin Rowlatt reporting that ‘his desire to solve technical problems […] rather than dollars in the bank […] is his yardstick of progress’.

In recent years, Elon Musk has proved a controversial figure. In July 2020, he tweeted ‘Pronouns suck’, which has been interpreted as a transphobic comment, one which his partner, musician Grimes, publicly condemned. Also in 2020, he garnered criticism for purporting that by April, there would be ‘close to zero’ cases of the coronavirus: Politico named this one of the “most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year”.

Despite raising such public vitriol in certain instances, Musk has clearly navigated economic success admirably, mostly through shareholding and owning Tesla, SpaceX and Paypal. In a world wherein billionaires, indeed, centibillionaires, are on the rise, forcing the public to ask where such personal wealth should be distributed. In the eyes of Elon Musk, the most exciting prospect is that of terraforming Mars. Whether he can muster the technology and subsequent funds for such a feat remains to be seen – although $185bn hardly seems like a bad place to start.

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