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workersolidarity · 1 year

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This is an index of Economic growth of select ex-Communist countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Georgia, with a mention of China.

Poland, among the Eastern European ex-Communist countries, did the best. And it is true that Poland's economy is now more than 2.5x the size it was before the Warsaw Pact countries collapsed, having received ENORMOUS aid funds from the EU and US, and was even brought into the European Union, becoming fully integrated into the Western Imperialist fold.

There's just no way to credibly say that Neoliberalism served the economic growth of Poland. The massive economic intervention by the West into Poland's economy is antithetical to Neoliberalism. And so, we can conclude Neoliberalism was NOT a cause for Poland's economic growth.

Second best, as you can see, is Belarus, having grown to nearly twice the size its economy was in 1989. But what's interesting about this is that Belarus was the one Eastern European nation that did NOT adopt a Neoliberal Capitalist model. It is still to this day a largely publicly-owned economy, depending largely on large State-owned Machining and Manufacturing companies that employ large swaths of the population. Its education system as well has changed little since 1989, and Belarus still has one of the best education systems among Eastern European countries.

Russia is an interesting case because it began down the road to Neoliberalism, oligarchs formed out of the ex-Soviet heartland, with criminal enterprises and private corporations becoming nearly indistinguishable from one another for a time.

However, in very important ways, Russia has begun moving away from the Neoliberal model, even re-Nationalizing certain key resources and vastly increasing Social spending, Healthcare spending, and Infrastructure projects. This increase is reflected in the graph as a sudden stop in Russia's decline in the early 2000's and a steady, if slow, growth since then.

I don't personally know a whole lot about Georgia, and so I will decline to comment on the economic state of the country at this time, and will do some research on the economic system of Georgia.

Last, and certainly least, comes Ukraine, which followed a process similar to Russia's, indulging in the worst Neoliberal impulses for Privatization and Deregulation. With that said, much of Ukraine's previously strong Socialist Labor Protections, broad Union Rights, and huge public assets still remained at the time of the Euromaidan coup.

And what you see since 2014 is the very rapid deregulation, privatization and Union smashing of the Ukrainian economy. The entire country is for sale. Don't take my word for it, take Zelensky's when he made that weird video praising BlackRock and JP Morgan Chase as the future of Ukraine. Zelensky has made it crystal clear: any and all State Assets are up for the highest bidder to take. Mostly Western Corporations that see an opportunity to suck the wealth out of yet another country's working class. And the results have been so far predictable: huge increases in poverty along with economic decline and stagnation. I mean, peeling Ukraine away from its largest trading partner was always going to be bad for Ukraine, and the economic indicators make it clear that Neoliberalism is destroying their Working Class.

And lastly a simple note on China: China's economy has grown 1'480% since 1989. A staggering figure for a Nation that had been among the poorest in the world for the 19th and much of the 20th Centuries. China of course is no longer a Communist style Command economy, or is it? China still has no Private Property, all property must be leased from the State, and though China has opened up its economy, it hasn't exactly followed the Neoliberal model either.

Instead China has led global economic growth as a sort of mixed economy. Much of it remains under Command control, being massive State-owned enterprises, and the CPC has huge stakes in Private companies throughout the Chinese economy. Virtually all of China's resources remain under Govt control, under Public ownership.

I won't go much further into it, the point is clear: China, whatever its economy may be called, it is NOT Neoliberal Capitalism. So for our purposes, China's massive economic growth cannot be attributed to Neoliberalism by any means.

So just something to think about. It seems pretty obvious that Neoliberalism offers nothing to the Working Classes. All it offers is more poverty and stratospheric inequality.

*Update*

Just an added side note: one thing each of the countries that have displayed economic growth since the fall of the Soviet Union have in common is an Industrial Policy. Poland, China and Belarus each have had an industrial policy with large-scale Govt intervention. This is also antithetical to Neoliberalism, and the countries that have not had an industrial policy were also the same countries to follow the Neoliberal model.

A clear Industrial Policy seems like an essential character of an economy growing on Main Street, not Wall Street.

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beardedmrbean · 7 months

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A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened. A BBC undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China.

Astha Sinhaa woke up to her aunt's panicked voice on the phone. "Don't let your mother leave the house."

Half-asleep, the 17-year-old was terrified to find her mum Bhoomi Sinhaa in the next room, sobbing and frantic.

Here was her funny and fearless mother, a respected Mumbai-based property lawyer, a widow raising her daughter alone, reduced to a frenzied mess.

"She was breaking apart," Astha says. A panicked Bhoomi started telling her where all the important documents and contacts were, and seemed desperate to get out of the door.

Astha knew she had to stop her. "Don't let her out of your sight," her aunt had told her. "Because she will end her life."

Astha knew her mother had been getting some weird calls and that she owed somebody money, but she had no idea that Bhoomi was reeling from months of harassment and psychological torture.

She had fallen victim to a global scam with tentacles in at least 14 countries that uses shame and blackmail to make a profit - destroying lives in the process.

The business model is brutal but simple. There are many apps that promise hassle-free loans in minutes. Not all of them are predatory. But many - once downloaded - harvest your contacts, photos and ID cards, and use that information later to extort you. When customers don't repay on time - and sometimes even when they do - they share this information with a call centre where young agents of the gig economy, armed with laptops and phones are trained to harass and humiliate people into repayment.

At the end of 2021, Bhoomi had borrowed about 47,000 rupees ($565; £463) from several loan apps while she waited for some work expenses to come through. The money arrived almost immediately but with a big chunk deducted in charges. Seven days later she was due to repay but her expenses still hadn't been paid, so she borrowed from another app and then another. The debt and interest spiralled until she owed about two million rupees ($24,000; £19,655).

Soon the recovery agents started calling. They quickly turned nasty, slamming Bhoomi with insults and abuse. Even when she had paid, they claimed she was lying. They called up to 200 times a day. They knew where she lived, they said, and sent her pictures of a dead body as a warning.

As the abuse escalated they threatened to message all of the 486 contacts in her phone telling them she was a thief and a whore. When they threatened to tarnish her daughter's reputation too, Bhoomi could no longer sleep.

She borrowed from friends, family and more and more apps - 69 in total. At night, she prayed the morning would never come. But without fail at 07:00, her phone would start pinging and buzzing incessantly.

Eventually, Bhoomi had managed to pay back all of the money, but one app in particular - Asan Loan - wouldn't stop calling. Exhausted, she couldn't concentrate at work and started having panic attacks.

One day a colleague called her over to his desk and showed her something on his phone - a naked, pornographic picture of her.

The photo had been crudely photoshopped, Bhoomi's head stuck on someone else's body, but it filled her with disgust and shame. She collapsed by her colleague's desk. It had been sent by Asan Loan to every contact in her phone book. That was when Bhoomi thought of killing herself.

We've seen evidence of scams like this run by various companies all over the world. But in India alone, the BBC has found at least 60 people have killed themselves after being harassed by loan apps.

Most were in their 20s and 30s - a fireman, an award-winning musician, a young mum and dad leaving behind their three- and five-year-old daughters, a grandfather and grandson who got involved in loan apps together. Four were just teenagers.

Most victims are too ashamed to speak about the scam, and the perpetrators have remained, for the most part, anonymous and invisible. After looking for an insider for months, the BBC managed to track down a young man who had worked as a debt recovery agent for call centres working for multiple loan apps.

Rohan - not his real name - told us he had been troubled by the abuse he had witnessed. Many customers cried, some threatened to kill themselves, he said. "It would haunt me all night." He agreed to help the BBC expose the scam.

He applied for a job in two different call centres - Majesty Legal Services and Callflex Corporation - and spent weeks filming undercover.

His videos captured young agents harassing clients. "Behave or I will smash you," one woman says, swearing. She accuses the customer of incest and, when he hangs up, she starts laughing. Another suggests the client should prostitute his mother to repay the loan.

Rohan recorded over 100 incidents of harassment and abuse, capturing this systematic extortion on camera for the first time.

The worst abuse he witnessed took place at Callflex Corporation, just outside Delhi. Here, agents routinely used obscene language to humiliate and threaten customers. These were not rogue agents going off-script - they were supervised and directed by managers at the call centre, including one called Vishal Chaurasia.

Rohan gained Chaurasia's trust, and together with a journalist posing as an investor, arranged a meeting at which they asked him to explain exactly how the scam works.

When a customer takes out a loan, he explained, they give the app access to the contacts on their phone. Callflex Corporation is hired to recover the money - and if the customer misses a payment the company starts hassling them, and then their contacts. His staff can say anything, Chaurasia told them, as long as they get a repayment.

"The customer then pays because of the shame," he said. "You'll find at least one person in his contact list who can destroy his life."

We approached Chaurasia directly but he did not want to comment. Callflex Corporation did not respond to our efforts to contact them.

One of the many lives destroyed was Kirni Mounika's.

The 24-year-old civil servant was the brains of her family, the only student at her school to get a government job, a doting sister to her three brothers. Her father, a successful farmer, was ready to support her to do a masters in Australia.

The Monday she took her own life, three years ago, she had hopped on her scooter to go to work as usual.

"She was all smiles," her father, Kirni Bhoopani, says.

It was only when police reviewed Mounika's phone and bank statements that they found out she had borrowed from 55 different loan apps. It started with a loan of 10,000 rupees ($120; £100) and spiralled to more than 30 times that. By the time she decided to kill herself, she had paid back more than 300,000 rupees ($3,600; £2,960).

Police say the apps harassed her with calls and vulgar messages - and had started messaging her contacts.

Mounika's room is now a makeshift shrine. Her government ID card hangs by the door, the bag her mum packed for a wedding still lying there.

The thing that upsets her father the most is that she hadn't told him what was going on. "We could have easily arranged the money," he says, wiping tears from his eyes.

He's furious at the people who did this.

As he was taking his daughter's body home from the hospital her phone rang and he answered to an obscenity-laden rant. "They told us she has to pay," he says. "We told them she was dead."

He wondered who these monsters could be.

Hari - not his real name - worked at a call centre doing recovery for one of the apps Mounika had borrowed from. The pay was good but by the time Mounika died he was already feeling uneasy about what he was part of.

Although he claims not to have made abusive calls himself - he says he was in the team that made initial polite calls - he told us managers instructed staff to abuse and threaten people.

The agents would send messages to a victim's contacts, painting the victim as a fraud and a thief.

"Everyone has a reputation to maintain in front of their family. No-one is going to spoil that reputation for the measly sum of 5,000 rupees," he says.

Once a payment had been made the system would ping "Success!" and they would move on to the next client.

When clients started threatening to take their own lives nobody took it seriously - then the suicides started happening. The staff called their boss, Parshuram Takve, to ask if they should stop.

The following day Takve appeared in the office. He was angry. "He said, 'Do what you're told and make recoveries,'" Hari says. So they did.

A few months later, Mounika was dead.

Takve was ruthless. But he wasn't running this operation alone. Sometimes, Hari says, the software interface would switch to Chinese without warning.

Takve was married to a Chinese woman called Liang Tian Tian. Together, they had set up the loan recovery business, Jiyaliang, in Pune, where Hari worked.

In December 2020, Takve and Liang were arrested by police investigating a case of harassment and released on bail a few months later.

In April 2022 they were charged with extortion, intimidation and abetment of suicide. By the end of the year they were on the run.

We couldn't track down Takve. But when we investigated the apps Jiyaliang worked for, it led us to a Chinese businessman called Li Xiang.

He has no online presence, but we found a phone number linked to one of his employees and, posing as investors, set up a meeting with Li.

With his face shoved uncomfortably close to the camera, he bragged about his businesses in India.

"We are still operating now, just not letting Indians know we are a Chinese company," he said.

Back in 2021, two of Li's companies had been raided by Indian police investigating harassment by loan apps. Their bank accounts had been frozen.

"You need to understand that because we aim to recover our investment quickly, we certainly don't pay local taxes, and the interest rates we offer violate local laws," he says.

Li told us his company has its own loan apps in India, Mexico and Colombia. He claimed to be an industry leader in risk control and debt collection services in South East Asia, and is now expanding across Latin America and Africa - with more than 3,000 staff in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India ready to provide "post-loan services".

Then he explained what his company does to recover loans.

"If you don't repay, we may add you on WhatsApp, and on the third day, we will call and message you on WhatsApp at the same time, and call your contacts. Then, on the fourth day, if your contacts don't pay, we have specific detailed procedures.

"We access his call records and capture a lot of his information. Basically, it's like he's naked in front of us."

Bhoomi Sinha could handle the harassment, the threats, the abuse and the exhaustion - but not the shame of being linked to that pornographic image.

"That message actually stripped me naked in front of the entire world," she says. "I lost my self-respect, my morality, my dignity, everything in a second."

It was shared with lawyers, architects, government officials, elderly relatives and friends of her parents - people who would never look at her in the same way again.

"It has tarnished the core of me, like if you join a broken glass, there will still be cracks on it," she says.

She has been ostracised by neighbours in the community she has lived in for 40 years.

"As of today, I have no friends. It's just me I guess," she says with a sad chuckle.

Some of her family still don't speak to her. And she constantly wonders whether the men she works with are picturing her naked.

The morning that her daughter Astha found her she was at her lowest ebb. But it was also the moment she decided to fight back. "I don't want to die like this," she decided.

She filed a police report but has heard nothing since. All she could do was change her number and get rid of her sim card - and when Astha started receiving calls her daughter destroyed hers too. She told friends, family and colleagues to ignore the calls and messages and, eventually, they all but stopped.

Bhoomi found support in her sisters, her boss and an online community of others abused by loan apps. But mostly, she found strength in her daughter.

"I must have done something good to be given a daughter like this," she says. "If she hadn't stood by me then I would have been one of the many people who've killed themselves because of loan apps."

We put the allegations in this report to Asan Loan - and also, through contacts, to Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, who are in hiding. Neither the company nor the couple responded.

When asked for comment, Li Xiang told the BBC that he and his companies comply with all local laws and regulations, have never run predatory loan apps, have ceased collaboration with Jiyaliang, the loan recovery company run by Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, and do not collect or use customers' contact information.

He said his loan recovery call centres adhere to strict standards and he denied profiting from the suffering of ordinary Indians.

Majesty Legal Services deny using customers' contacts to recover loans. They told us their agents are instructed to avoid abusive or threatening calls, and any violation of the company's policies results in dismissal.

#nunyas news #there's likely a fairly simple way to scam the scammers

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mariacallous · 1 month

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On an island in the Singapore Strait, a thicket of apartment blocks peers mournfully over the sea. A corps of green-shirted gardeners dutifully tends the lawns and herbaceous borders along the roadside. A few cars slip along smooth roads to a commercial center with gleaming marble floors. Amidst the hundreds of closed shopfronts three restaurants are open—a fried chicken chain, a small café, and a gleaming and empty hot pot restaurant. Five duty-free shops are doing better business; some young men are stocking up on beer and Copper Dog whiskey at 11 a.m.

Welcome to Forest City: planned residents, 700,000; current residents, roughly 9,000. Launched in 2014 as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the mega-project is headed by once-real estate giant Country Garden, a behemoth that now sits on the edge of bankruptcy.

At first glance, the project seems yet another tale of a ghost-city built on the back of a Chinese real estate bubble—and then doomed by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic slowdown. Yet Forest City’s story is also a deeply Malaysian tale, involving property-speculating sultans, nationalist politicians, and the country’s complex relationship with Beijing and its own ethnically Chinese minority.

Building a new city to lodge hundreds of thousands of residents on four new artificial islands in the Singapore Strait was always an ambitious venture. But the main market was not locals, but rather speculative buyers from the People’s Republic of China. When sales opened in December 2015, buyers flooded in, many of them buying “pre-sales” of uncompleted apartments. “You’d have buses coming over from Singapore every day filled with people who just landed,” said Tan Wee Tiam, head of research at KGV International Property Consultants. “There were over 1,000 agents in the sales hall, and it still wasn’t enough. … You felt like you were in China.”

Buyers were often looking for not a permanent residence but an investment that could also be a potential holiday home, or accommodation for children who were headed to study in Singapore. Some were reportedly even offered the opportunity to buy a flat in China and get one free in Forest City, said Christine Li, head of research in the Asia-Pacific for Knight Frank.

Yet this reliance on the Chinese buyers also left the project brutally exposed to changes in Chinese policy. The first blow came in 2017, when the Chinese government suddenly imposed capital controls preventing individuals from moving more than $50,000 out of the country annually. The minimum price of a Forest City apartment sits at around $75,000 and can be as much as $3.5 million. Then came the pandemic years which froze international travel—and stamped hard on Chinese real estate and growth.

Yet, Forest City’s staff seem to be holding out hope. Shane Lim, a hire from Singapore, showed me around and assured me that the place is working to attract buyers from across the world, including the Middle East, Indonesia, and Thailand. Still, he estimated that about 70 percent of his colleagues in the sales team are from China.

Halfway through my tour, a Malaysian man calling himself Ozzy introduced himself and his two wives. Now living in the United States, he’s searching for a place to buy in Malaysia that he can use to visit his daughter in Singapore and rent out when he’s away. Looking around, though, he’s unconvinced.

“Look at how empty this place is,” he said. “I’d only be able to rent it out for one or two months a year. … When I visited in 2018 this place was packed. Now there’s no one here. It’s like it’s haunted.” Lim stared at his shoes until Ozzy moved off. He then firmly assured me that the sales hall is busier on weekends.

A wet Wednesday afternoon might not be a peak sales period, but it is hard to escape the reality that the putative new city is barely lived in. Surveying one of the towers I descend from the 34th floor to the first, looking for signs of occupancy—a pair of shoes at the door, furniture seen through the windows that face the corridor, or even just curtains drawn over said windows. The place is eerily well maintained but empty. Just 25 of the 390 flats show any signs of current occupancy.

I met a single resident, a Malaysian Indian woman who said she lived in Forest City with her husband. Declining to give her name, she informed me a neighboring tower is busier. That would not be hard to believe. Some floors in this tower were completely empty with flats whose doors open to the touch, revealing light-filled marble interiors into which dead leaves have blown. Others had notices of a residents’ meeting dated October 2022 still taped to the door.

According to Li, there are signs that buyers may be slowly coming back. But she also suggested that Country Garden might have aimed too high, used to China’s experience of breakneck speed urbanization, supported by strong government support for infrastructure development. That policy created plenty of “ghost cities” in China itself—but until the recent real estate crisis, also huge profits.

Forest City has also suffered from being a political football since its launch, something Country Garden may well not have anticipated. “I did notice Chinese developers tend not to focus on the political climate,” Li said. “They are not used to the idea of general elections, change of government, and change of policies overnight.”

Despite its vast scale, the first time locals heard about Forest City was in 2014, when fisherman woke up one day to find barges dumping sand off the coast. Newspapers dug into the story, revealing that Country Garden’s main partner was none other than the sultan of Johor state, Ibrahim Ismail.

The tie made sense. Many businesses take on Johor royals as partners, benefiting from the influence they wield in the state. The Malaysian government is also bent on transforming southern Johor into a new economic hub, the Shenzhen to Singapore’s Hong Kong. The city was made a duty-free zone. When further investigations also revealed rushed environmental reviews, it took diplomatic protests from Singapore for the central government to intervene and ensure the proper process was followed.

However, things began to shift when the Malaysian government’s grip on power loosened. Rocked by the world’s largest corruption scandal, the China-linked 1Malaysia Development Berhad, voters turned against it. And at 93 years old, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad exited retirement to lead an opposition filled with former opponents, previously imprisoned under his watch, against a government coalition he once led for 22 years.

Forest City became one of Mahathir’s favorite targets. Inveighing against government corruption and waste, he accused the government of planning to sell out Malaysia to foreigners. Most provocatively, he claimed that the thousands of mainly Chinese buyers of Forest City apartments would be allowed to settle, become Malaysian citizens, and vote in its elections. In a country where ethnically Chinese make up 23 percent of the citizenry—and are often stereotyped as wielding undue political influence due to their wealth—the claim was explosive.

After his shock triumph in the 2018 elections, then-Prime Minister Mahathir followed through on his threats declaring that foreigners would not be allowed to buy property in Forest City. Despite legal challenges, the announcement apparently hit Forest City sales hard.

Five years and a series of dizzyingly complex political maneuvers later, the current Malaysian government is led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. His support is mainly built by ethnic minority-backed parties that triumphed in 2018. To secure his grip on power he needs two things. The first is economic growth. The second is increased support from Malay voters, to which end he has courted the sultans who act as power brokers in their states and take turns acting as Malaysia’s head of state. Perhaps none is more influential than the sultan of Johor, who started his five-year tenure in February this year.

In this context, Anwar seems to have rediscovered the charm of Chinese investment, and Forest City. He has repeatedly praised the Belt and Road Initiative, and in August last year he announced Forest City would be designated a special financial zone with residents offered multiple-entry visas, fast-track entry for those working in Singapore, and a flat income tax rate of 15 percent.

The sultan of Johor has also suggested reviving a proposed high-speed rail link between Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, with an extra stop at Forest City. And who knows what will happen. After, all the $10.5 billion Melaka Gateway project—launched under the Belt and Road Initiative and apparently scrapped in 2020—is also back underway, after finding new support from the state and federal governments. The developer behind the project recently acquired a major new shareholder, the sultan of Johor.

But the heyday of Chinese investment in Malaysia may well not be coming back. Ten years since China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, it has begun to pull back sharply on its overseas investments. China’s own economic slowdown and business wariness about the increasingly capricious regulatory environment is part of the story. But, the large number of projects gone sour also appears to have made Chinese investors more wary.

Meanwhile, Malaysia is struggling not to get left holding the bag. Should Country Garden go bankrupt, it’s uncertain what will happen to Forest City. At that point the Malaysian government could face the unpalatable option of a potential bailout by the Chinese government, leaving a chunk of Malaysian land in Beijing’s hands. Alternatively, it could step in itself—becoming the proud proprietor of what the developers still proclaim to be “A Prime Model for Future Cities.”

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frihetkanske · 1 year

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After having devotedly cared for Crozier for two long weeks running on less than four hours of sleep per night and minimal sustenance until the Captain has dried out and regained his strength, Jopson's body shuts down.

He collapses in the midst of some mundane task — polishing a china tea set, let's say — while the Captain is filling the logbook at the table; one moment on his feet, the other his head almost collides with the edge of a piece of furniture if it wasn't for Crozier catching him in the last moment.

The Captain's terrified.

He's seen men in Jopson's age, young lads in their prime dying like this, their hearts giving up all of a sudden. The doctors call this apoplexy.

He calls for help and his First Lieutenant comes rushing.

Together with Little he takes Thomas to the sick bay, where the lad wakes, although still dizzy, and keeps apologizing for the mess he's caused (the accident's only victims were a handful of Crozier's own teacups and saucers - of the uglier kind. the Captain would break every single one of them on Terror if it means Jopson will be alright), swearing he'll indemnify his Captain once they're back in England and he's got the money, nearly breaking into tears from being ashamed of himself for damaging the Captain's property.

Crozier has never seen him in such distress, not even when he nearly lost his right leg in that accident in Antarctica.

Dr. McDonald can't calm him down and Jopson refuses to take any drug. It's only Crozier's soothing hand on this forehead that makes the steward fall back into sleep.

The diagnosis: extreme fatigue. Jopson’s heart is strong, the doctor explains, the lad will live. But he’s been skipping meals and taking on extra errands that could have been run by Mr. Gibson or the ship boys. He's put on bedrest for the remainder of the day for safety's sake. Today a swoon, tomorrow something worse, perhaps.

Later, in the evening Crozier visits Jopson, bringing him dinner, which consists mostly of his own ration, which means that the origin of the meat is less questionable as well as its quality and value are definitely higher than what the lad usually eats. Crozier heard the anecdote from Lieutenant Little about that one time when Jopson wolfed down the contents of a tin cold before the bell rang and he hurried to the Captain's cabin. He can't even imagine how hungry the boy must have been.

Jopson, unsurprisingly, claims that he can't accept the food, that it's not proper for a steward to eat an officer's ration. Crozier threatens to make the offer an order. They compromise and end up sharing a meal.

#the terror #the terror amc #thomas jopson #francis crozier #jopzier #I eat captain x steward hurt/comfort for breakfast

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argumate · 2 years

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oh and one more similarity between the American and Chinese real estate bubbles (and the crypto bubble and almost every other speculative bubble) is that they both involved a lot of fraud, aka crime, and it's tempting to see that and assume that the crime caused the bubble when in fact really the bubble caused the crime, or at least attracted it: you see a bubble attracts suckers and suckers attract fraudsters and when prices keep going up who cares where the money is coming from??

if you have a guaranteed money maker then that attracts a lot of dodgy money, and if other people think you have a guaranteed money maker then that attracts a lot of painfully trusting money that you then run off with, and either way a lot of people end up sad and angry when the bubble bursts and the pyramids collapse and all the fraud is revealed.

but the fraud didn't cause the bubble and the bubble can't be blamed on fraud and even an entirely non-fraudulent bubble would still be a problem!

(in a way you can say that a non-fraudulent bubble is a problem because it means the regulator is asleep at the wheel and the incentives are all buggered up as a result, but that also means that most of the fraud-adjacent behaviour is technically not literal fraud and thus difficult to prosecute people for).

so a lot of people latch onto the examples of Real Genuine Fraud that do come to light and blame them for all of the other messy systemic problems that are more awkward to think about, which in America of course means the GFC ends up being blamed on racial minorities and wokeness gone mad because of course it does -- innocent Wall Street banks couldn't have known that they were lending money to people who couldn't pay it back! (as part of a securitisation ponzi scheme that enriched those banks enormously).

and in China it similarly gets blamed on A Few Bad Apples, whether it's property developers who let greed run away with them or corrupt local officials or just plain old gangsters who took over a bank somehow, either way it's definitely not a systemic problem and the central government is not responsible for stoking it or failing to catch it earlier.

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laundryandtaxes · 7 days

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I genuinely suspect that the FEC knocking down noncompete clauses is one part of a desperate attempt by the US to whip up private tech innovation in order to compete with the last (at least) decade of Chinese investment in microchip development, production, and use. Interest rates are still pretty low, and Tesla's collapse alone should free some relevant thinkers to work with whomever they please. There's no real appetite in the US (currently, though it could always be cooked up) for attacking China over a territory that the US officially recognizes as part of China and which is vital in the microchip business, and there is basically no chance of the US catching up given that the current Chinese position is only the result of a decade of work specifically on this issue, utilizing the full force and all available tools, including massive public funding, of the Chinese state to get where they are today. What's especially rich is that noncompete clauses have been one way not just of stifling talent but literally of protecting intellectual property such that individuals couldn't just show up, learn proprietary trade techniques and secrets, and use them elsewhere- which is exactly what so many Americans have claimed to find offensive about China's disrespect for intellectual property.

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 5 months

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By Michael Roberts

While the leaders ‘talked turkey,’ the economic reality is that U.S. efforts to strangle the Chinese economy are not working. Western ‘experts’ continue their never-ending message that China is close to a debt collapse. If this were really so, then Biden and American capital would have nothing to worry about – but they do worry, and rightly so.

In previous posts, I have argued that it was a big mistake by the Chinese CP leaders to adopt the Western capitalist model for urban development. But this does not mean China is about to have a deflationary crash. China’s net debt to GDP ratio (debt burden) is only 12% of the average in the G7 economies. The state holds huge financial assets, so it can easily manage this property slump.

#China #xi jinping #joe biden #apec #imperialism #socialism #cpc #capitalist reforms #New Cold War #economy #Struggle la Lucha

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cosmicanger · 11 months

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You almost never hear about the yellow fever outbreak of 1793. Wealthy slave owners brought it to Philadelphia that year, fleeing revolutions in the Caribbean. During its peak, a hundred people were dying every day. Back then Philadelphia was a city of 50,000 people. The city government collapsed under the pressure, and almost everyone evacuated. Doctors thought it was spread by rotting vegetables. They were wrong. It didn’t end until a cold front came through in October, killing off carrier mosquitoes. The death toll settled to 20 or so a day, and people began to return. In the end, the epidemic killed more than 5,000 people.

It was 10 percent of their population.

You hear this a lot: Apparently humans have lived with germs and diseases for millions of years. There’s no need for masks or vaccines. Nobody needs clean air. Natural immunity works just fine.

It’s wrong.

It couldn’t be more wrong.

We’ve never been able to live with diseases, not like we do now. Most westerners have no idea. Before medicine, life looked different.

You couldn’t even drink the water.

As an article in Scientific American points out, “water was unsafe to drink for most of human history.” According to Paul Lukacs, humans had to drink wine. It wasn’t fun, either. Ancient texts describe wine as “wretched, horrible, vinegary, foul.” The only thing worse was plain water. You often had no idea if it was safe to drink. For thousands of years, humans opted for beer and wine instead. There was just enough alcohol to kill germs. Even coffee had antiviral and bacterial properties, so it became a preferred beverage in other parts of the world.

When Jesus turned water into wine, he wasn’t throwing a party.

He was killing germs.

Scientists and historians from all disciplines agree on this point: For most of our history, our lives were short. Average life expectancy remained well below 50 for millennia. We didn’t get eaten by tigers.

We got eaten by plagues.

When you look at the last 2,000 years across the world, you see the same thing. About half of all children died before reaching adulthood. Scientists confirm this trend all the way back to the stone age. As Oxford scholar Max Roser says, “Whether in Ancient Rome, in hunter-gatherer societies, in the pre-Columbian Americas, in Medieval Japan or Medieval England, in the European Renaissance, or in Imperial China, every second child died.”

Epidemics have upended countless civilizations, from Rome to the Akkadian Empire. These societies didn’t just live with it. Death and grief played a central role in their cultures, because it happened all the time. It was a different world that most people today can’t wrap their heads around.

They didn’t shrug it off.

They chased answers.

History is full of doctors and scientists who devoted their entire lives trying to treat and cure diseases that plagued us. It’s also full of quacks and charlatans who made fortunes by selling fake miracle cures. There’s a reason why historical novels and movies feature apothecaries and snake oil salesmen. Almost everyone was sick or scared of getting sick and dying.

They got desperate.

Doctors even tried bleeding their patients. Women often bore several children to offset the astonishing infant mortality rate. Despite that, global population growth remained close to zero.

It was flat.

Politicians and billionaires complain about declining birthrates now. Well, that was the norm before modern medicine.

Societies didn’t grow.

They treaded.

Historians say we’re probably underestimating child mortality. During certain periods, it was higher than 50 percent. Every few years, an outbreak of disease drove infant deaths upward to 75 percent.

During the 18th century, big cities like London actually shrank due to awful sanitation and living conditions. More people died in a given year than were born. They relied on a steady stream of gullible migrants from the countryside. Raw sewage frequently contaminated the drinking water. Garbage rotted in the streets. Rats and fleas nested practically everywhere, even in rich homes. Graveyards overflowed. The city buried their excess dead in “poor holes” next to homes and businesses. If you lived anywhere near a cemetery, decaying corpses could leach into your wellwater and poison you. Nobody really understood how disease spread. Doctors operated with dirty surgical instruments and unwashed hands.

These conditions persisted through the 19th century.

In the 1830s, a series of especially bad outbreaks of cholera, flu, and typhoid ravaged London. Social activists and public health experts pushed for sanitation. The city finally started listening in the late 1840s. They passed laws and formed a board of public health. Even then, it took several more outbreaks to motivate investment in a modern sewer system. Politicians waited until the stench of human waste became unbearable in every corner of the city.

The 19th century was a brutal time.

As city populations grew, diseases flourished and wiped out millions of people. Most of them died in agony, without medicine or painkillers, literally puking themselves to death. The world spent decades fighting endless pandemics. Mortality rates for a disease like cholera ranged between 3 and 10 percent. At any given moment, there were three or four major killers circulating.

Before modern medicine, there was a good chance you’d die from plague, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, malaria, polio, flu, tuberculosis, or scarlet fever. Every single one of these diseases terrified people. Without treatment, you might as well flip a coin as to whether you’d live, die, or wind up with lifelong illness. In many places, life expectancy hovered around 40.

Diseases have always hit the poor worse than everyone else. Throughout history, the rich have invested in sanitation for themselves first while leaving everyone else behind and blaming them for their own deaths. According to an article in Science, “the mortality rate from infectious diseases among nonwhite people living in the U.S. was a shocking 1,123 deaths per 100,000 people.” That’s more than the death rate for white people during 1918 flu pandemic. As one sociologist says, it was like living through the 1918 flu, every year.

The last 100 years changed everything.

We’ve developed vaccines and treatments. We’ve learned how diseases spread. We’ve educated the public on sanitation. We’ve done it despite resistance from a vocal minority who thought it wasn’t necessary or couldn’t be done. They wanted us to keep watching half our children die every year.

We made major progress.

Now we’re backsliding.

Life expectancy is falling. Infant mortality is rising. Vaccine skepticism grows by the year, egged on by sociopaths in politics and media who think they’re practicing their free speech. We face crucial shortages of antibiotics and other drugs, with predictions we’ll run out later this year. Healthcare workers are quitting. ER departments are closing over staffing shortages. Everywhere you look, the healthcare systems we spent generations building are falling apart.

That’s not fear talking.

As history shows, we’ve been here before. We’ve seen life without vaccines and masks. We’ve seen life without clean air and drinkable water. That’s how humans lived for 95 percent of our existence.

We hated it.

Humans invested in public health and sanitation because they got tired of dying from diseases. They dragged their leaders kicking and screaming into public health, after it became painfully clear there was no alternative.

Well, here we are again. It would be nice if we could pay attention to history instead of constantly repeating it.

We don’t have to speculate about what our dystopian future looks like. It’s a return to the 18th and 19th centuries when life expectancy hovered in the mid 40s and deadly outbreaks of diseases shut down entire cities and civilizations. The only difference is that many of us will remember a brighter past.

A massive reinvestment in public health would stop this, but it can’t be just for rich people. It has to be for everyone.

We’ll see.

#article #long read

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paganminiskirt · 2 years

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It may be just me, but people are weirdly harsh about their dislike of fc6 to the point where they cuss out anyone who asks them about it.

With the Far Cry games, I’ve found it helps to give the public opinion some extra time to form, but as things stand now I’d be willing to believe it’s not just you.

Far Cry 6, judged as a singular entity, is hardly a bad game. It sold well enough to be credited for one of Ubisoft’s best financial years ever, and it has most of the drawing points of a successful Far Cry property but on a much broader scale, with little more than the usual drawbacks installments in this franchise have.

If you want my opinion, I had a lot of fun with it. The scenery was lovely, the setting very intense, the characters entertaining if not exactly engaging. Even so, I found myself resenting the way they capitalized on Giancarlo Esposito’s success in their marketing only to turn around and give his character the short shrift when it came to number of appearances and quality of dialogue in the actual game. Anton is cool, his motivations are uncomfortably rational given the perspective he’s approaching from and he possesses a level of open pathos that’s always enjoyable in this series, but at the end of the day both he and his lieutenants were woefully half-baked. The people around him, especially Maria, needed more depth, and he needed more time to shine. (And they should’ve gotten rid of McKay altogether. Full stop. Like what was he even for.)

That said. Whatever Far Cry 6′s issues, it’s obviously not unplayable; note the aforementioned record sales. But at the same time, you are right, it seems like once people actually sat down and played Far Cry 6 they had a lot more vitriol to throw at it than they ever had for the last few installments.

And that vitriol, like most things Ubisoft-related, was a fairly predictable step in a long term pattern. When Far Cry 5 came out, it garnered more negative press than the previous two games combined, though it’s gotten a light redemption in recent years. (Remember what I said about giving the public opinion some extra time to form?) New Dawn’s sales numbers were absymal by any standard, it’s reviews much of the same. The Insanity DLC was well received, with reviews in the high seventies, but as the nostalgia of the old characters and the novelty of the roguelite formula wore off, that average slowly began to go down: Control’s reviews rounded out in the mid sixties, Collapse’s in the fifties. The three Rite of Passage comics were more or less ignored after Vaas left the building.

(Spoilers: it’s better that way. The first and third were little more than okay; the second was flat out subpar. Pagan Min got whitewashed, Yuma Lau was depicted as an adult wearing a full Kyrati military uniform in scenes where she was supposed to be living in China as a sixteen year old girl, and the already self-contradictory timeline of the Far Cry games grew messier by the page as Anton “leader of a functioning society that exists in conjunction with modern America” Castillo went around retelling the stories of characters who are supposed to have canonically witnessed the apocalypse. But I’ll get back to that later.)

That’s not to say that all of the backlash against Far Cry 6 has been reasonable. As you pointed out, the level of aggression people are willing to levy at anyone who does have a favorable view of Far Cry 6 is both completely uncalled for and symptomatic of one of those ravenous internet outrage machines that swarm around any game that draws sufficient ire. Part of the negativity about Far Cry 6 is, in essence, more shallow tripe than genuine criticism.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that Far Cry 6's poor reception lacks precedent. Over the past few years, the Far Cry series has started to lose it’s shine in the eyes of the public. Not because any one major installment in the series was, in and of itself, significantly worse than the others, but because the company producing this series refuses to deviate even slightly from the repetitive, masturbatory formula it’s been relying on for what’s now a decade.

If there are few parts of Far Cry 6 that are bad, there are even fewer parts that are original. This is the sixth major game in the series, and the biggest one to date, being released with a marketing campaign designed to generate as much hype as possible alongside supplementary content that revisits old games. And while that succeeded in fulfilling Ubisoft’s main objective - to make them a lot of money - the content that was actually waiting at the end of all that build up was tragically uninspired.

Anton’s character is a retread. His status as dictator is a retread. The DLCs are a retread. The fatherhood theme, the cost of war being dealt unto children theme, the nationalism theme, the animal symbolism, the jungle setting, the colonizer character, the torturer character, the hellbent-on-revenge character, the funny unconventional throwable, the drug trip mission, the crop burning mission, the casual misogynoir, the roadblocks, the vehicles and aircrafts and animal riding - hell, the scene where someone gets shot at the big bad’s opulent dinner table! All of this has been done at least once in the Far Cry games, if not two, three or four times by now.

Dani is easily the best protagonist this series has seen since Jason Brody, but like... Dani’s character is passable, but it isn’t especially good. Definitely not as good as Jason’s was, and definitely not good enough to stand out amongst other franchise’ protagonists. Even as this series serves up a rehash of a rehash - like the production company is just that confident that it will keep being satisfying time and time again - Far Cry 6 manages to meet neither the standards of it’s oh-so-similar predecessors or those of it’s competitors.

The story refuses to change, the quality of the animation has gone down. The lore is in complete and utter shambles, with each new addition answering zero questions and creating five new ones. This issue in particular makes the current timeline much more difficult to get invested in, when it’s not retroactively butchering the old ones. (Did you hear? Apparently, Mohan Ghale was raising Lakshmana Min as his own when he murdered her! No, this is not what the text of Far Cry 4 says happened, but that’s okay. The makers of Far Cry 6, who were responsible for the Control DLC, didn’t actually write Far Cry 4. Or play it. Or seem to know a lot of important stuff about it.)

I’ve noticed a phrase that’s been bandied about more and more since 6′s release: “Peak Ubisoft.” The notion that this company’s products (all of them, not just Far Cry) are reaching a breaking point in their ability to stretch across various different games with different narratives without really changing anything significant. The usage of a standardized formula for every new game means most of the old flaws are not only still present, but exaggerated to the point of new unbearableness after getting copied and recopied for years on end without any installment thinking to address them.

Far Cry 6 is a good game, it’s worth playing. But it’s also the target of a collective discontent that has been brewing since Far Cry 4 - a game which, while generally agreed upon to be great, was also noted as a bit too similar to it’s predecessor, a criticism which would later prove to be a bad omen. Ubisoft never changed, they just doubled down, and now, three games into this formula, whatever hopes may have been persisting that the company would fix this - the lore problem, the repetition problem, you name it - have dwindled enough that the community is a lot less forgiving than it was the last couple times around.

Which is discouraging to say the least. But hey, give it time. Like I said, these games often look better in hindsight. Far Cry 6 stands on it’s own two feet pretty well, and if it can do that, then there will probably come a time when it will be judged as an individual, instead of as the least attractive of a set of quadruplets. (Sextuplets? I don't know. Everyone seems to have silently agreed to ignore one and two.)

The YouTuber responsible for one of the best Far Cry 3 breakdowns to date, DJ Peach Cobbler, has made one full length review of Far Cry 6 (ignore the title.) I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested, as well as another popular review of his where Far Cry 6 came up briefly as an example of a video game made by a company that’s suffering from stagnation. Neither video is accusatory, disparaging, or particularly brutal, which I appreciated.

#far cry 6 #anton castillo #asks #princess-sparklebutt

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katzkinder · 2 years

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While You Were Sleeping

Back during the collapse of Tokyo's C3 base, Kuro experienced something strange, something akin to a premonition. One by one, he wants to ask his fellow Servamps about it... Starting with Lily.

In the wake of everything, of Lily returning to himself and the fall of Germaine and life, slowly, slowly, returning back to normal, Kuro sits with his sixth sibling. He alternately stews over a cup of tea and watches while his brother’s Eve attempts to school his own in the ways of chess, with some success, but mostly, he muses over the past.

The expensive white and floral cup was warm in his hands, an equally fine and floral tea wafting up towards him with mild, fragrant notes. (Limoges, Lily had informed him when he saw Kuro inspecting the painstakingly hand painted patterns, as if the beautifully lilting syllables rolling off the other vampire’s tongue contained anything of value to him other than the clear pride they held. Kuro handled the fine china with care for that and that alone.)

… He looks better than ever, Kuro thinks, then worries his lip because the question he’s about to ask could ruin the calm, comfortable, lazy afternoon they’ve set up. But he needs to ask.

“Lily…” Rough and low, his voice carries easily in the space between them, quiet as the drawing room is save for the chatter of their Eves. The Servamp of Lust flicks his gaze towards him, inclines his head.

He’s wearing different earrings, Kuro notes. They still dangle, and they’re still pink, but they’re crafted from delicate silver filigree and ever so carefully hand painted ceramic, stargazer lilies that stand out beautifully against the pale of his hair.

“Yes?”

A deep breath. “Have you ever…" He trails off to a mumble and Lily turns his attention towards him more fully, makes an encouraging noise. Kuro hates the way his brother’s brows furrow, ever so slightly. "...Never mind."

"Nii-san..." Lily sighs, perfect lips, highlighted with a simple gloss, pulling awry. The guilt turns his stomach. "I won't force you.” Kuro doesn’t dare feel relief, knowing how his brother is, ”But now you've made me curious, and I will be annoying you until I get what I want."

There it is.

"You're such a pain..." Kuro groans without much heat, frustrated more with himself than he is with Lily. The younger vampire seems to understand his meaning and only smiles in a way that makes his heart twist. He wants to talk. He really does, but the words get stuck in his throat and it’s all so…

Difficult…

"Fufu... That I am." Well manicured nails tap the table, glossy with the faintest pink tint. The action belies the casual tone with which Lily speaks, and Kuro wishes he hadn’t spoken at all. "...Well?” he finally prods, and Kuro pulls his cup towards him since he can’t pull himself away. “Are you going to talk, or am I going to have to pester you?"

"Isn't that the same as forcing?" he asks with a wrinkled nose, and Lily beams at him.

"Not the way I do it~"

"Ugh."

Silence falls between them once more, and Kuro tunes back in to the conversation Misono and Mahiru are having. Something about how castling isn’t actually a useful move.

“Then why did you explain it to me?”

“Because it’s a fundamental move!”

“But it’s not useful!”

“It can be, but the circumstances under which you’d…”

About what he expected.

“They certainly are lively, aren’t they?” Lily’s sincere smile is back again, demure and sweet.

“Yep. A little too lively…”

A laugh, politely hidden behind the curve on his fingers. “Of course you’d say that…” Lily’s next words are almost too soft to catch, and the next moment, Misono has shouted for his Servamp to come help him demonstrate some property or other of a strategy he’s attempting to execute, so Kuro doesn’t get the chance to reply. “Some other time then.”

He knows Lily means it.

Can’t deal…

***

The text comes late in the evening, Lily’s phone giving a little ding right as he’s fresh from the bath and Misono has already gone to bed. Lately, his Eve has taken to trying to stay up long enough to see Lily to bed, and as touching as it is, Lily truly wishes he wouldn’t push himself so much so fast. For now, Misono eventually gives in by the time his yawns nearly become jaw cracking, knowing he’ll regret if he doesn’t relent to his body’s needs, but he still worries. The young man doesn’t stir at the noise, he chest rising and falling softly beneath downy quilts, and Lily takes another moment to admire the smoothness of that sleeping face, baby fat yet clinging to Misono’s cheeks and a healthy rosiness tinting them rather than the splotchy red of a fever.

It won’t be long until those last remnants of childhood melt off Misono’s body, though judging by his brother, he’ll still be almost cherubic in his features. He doubts either of them will really ever lose that roundness entirely, even when they’re old men.

With some effort, he tears himself away from Misono’s bedside to see who might be contacting him at this time of the night, and frowns at the message Kuro has sent him.

‘Has there ever been a time where even though you couldn’t possibly know, you just knew something had happened to your Eve? Something bad?’

Was this what he had wanted to ask?

Lily’s fingers hover over the digital keys, mulling over his reply, and eventually, he gives his answer.

‘Can you sneak out? I think this is better to talk of in person.’

‘Oooh, rebellious phase. Where to?’

The answer makes him crack a wry smile, but the immediacy of it lets him know that Kuro was waiting for him.

‘Front of the complex?’

‘Thank god’

Ah, of course. Walking too far from home would be troublesome for someone who sleeps as much as his eldest brother.

While he waits, though… He can’t help but ponder the question. It’s an odd one, for sure, but even odder still… He knows exactly what his eldest brother means. The contract between Eve and Servamp connects their hearts in ways he still has yet to come to understand, but he knows one thing for certain.

Misono shouldn’t be alive right now.

***

“What do you mean?” Kuro blinks, baffled, and Lily can’t blame him. He’s not sure about it himself, but he knows it happened.

It’s surprisingly difficult to talk about. The way his even younger Eve’s face had looked back then, pale and struggling for breath… Lily draws his jacket more closely around his shoulders as a shiver that has nothing to do with the chill night’s breeze takes him. Softly, he speaks. “Exactly what I said. If I had never become Misono’s Servamp…” His eyes search out Kuro’s, find that ever so slightly muddled red and hold them. It’s comforting, the concern there, but his voice still catches, still breaks on how dry his throat has become. “I think he would have died that day. No one could have found him. No one but me would have known where he was in time.”

Something he didn’t understand had pulled him along, had dragged the Servamp of Lust up and down corridors while fear that wasn’t entirely his own pulsed through his veins. He supposed that he must have had a scary look on his face back then, because no one had stopped to question his erratic behavior, and any thoughts that may have led the people who lived under his protection to ask after it vanished when he returned cradling Misono in his arms and a freshly used asthma inhaler clutched in one shaking hand.

“He was in a closet,” Lily confesses softly. “One that hadn’t been cleaned in… Well. Since Himiko-san’s death. All her needlework supplies were still in there, untouched. She was very particular about that sort of thing… All the materials she would use, kept in order, kept in the same space. Mikuni-san inherited that kind of banal attitude from her, you know.” He pauses, then shakes his head as a wry smile twists at his lips. “Sorry. I’m getting off track.”

“No, it’s fine,” Kuro quickly assures him, and truly it is. He can tell that these are words, an event, that weighs heavily on Lily for whatever reason. Well. Maybe it’s a combination of both what had happened then, and the reminder of the time he had failed once before.

Of course he’s smart enough not to say anything. No matter how close they might be, Lily is still a coward, a term he uses without malice. It’s just who he is. A big scaredy cat who needs to be gently nudged towards facing his fears.

They’re similar like that.

“So, what happened?”

“Somehow, the contents of that little closet had become unsteady. Misono was only playing a game… Hide and seek, you know? But when he hid, some of the objects toppled and not only trapped him, but kicked up an awful cloud of dust. Between that and how scared he was, it’s unsurprising that he had an asthma attack worse than any we’d seen from him before, but… He couldn’t reach his inhaler. I think it was his fear that told me something was wrong. But…”

“You don’t know how you found him,” Kuro finishes for him, and Lily nods.

“I don’t know why, but somehow… It frightened me. If I think back…” He narrows his eyes, words thoughtful and a strong craving for a cigarette to calm his nerves thrumming in his veins. “It almost felt like… Someone had been holding my hand.”

***

Slipping back inside and curling up next to Mahiru, who sleeps, who dreams, unaware of the conversation that had been held below between two Servamps, Kuro, too, is unaware of the second shadow watching them from the walls.

Prey safely secured, the core of Sloth blows out his candlelight, and returns to his own bed.

Much like Lust, he has something to protect now.

The stitches on his face pull harmlessly as he wonders how long it will take for them to realize the truth.

It’s not just the Servamp who loves the Eve.

#servamp #pawprints #kat's katerwauling #servamp kuro #snow lily

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nicklloydnow · 8 months

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“Is China about to have its ‘Lehman’ moment? After Chinese property developer Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., that’s been the question some have whispered. The country’s debt crisis that’s rumbled on for two years is coming to a head, with China’s shadow bank sector now defaulting on payments.

(…)

Last week, Evergrande filed for protection in the U.S. under Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code, which helps keep creditors at bay when a company is restructuring. Evergrande’s debt is held mainly by Western investors, hence filing in Manhattan.

It’s been at the center of the Chinese property sector’s debt crisis, which first unfolded in 2021 and has reared its head again this summer. Nearly two years ago, Evergrande defaulted on making interest payments on bonds, which sparked a set of failures across the Chinese property sector.

Companies accounting for roughly 40% of China’s home sales have now defaulted on debt since the crisis first unfolded. This has led to unfinished homes and ‘ghost cities’, supply chain disruptions and institutional investors out of pocket.

(…)

It’s not the only property developer struggling this week. China’s Country Garden Holdings is looking to restructure its bond repayments totaling $535 million over three years to stave off financial trouble.

(…)

Given real estate is estimated to make up 30% of China’s GDP, there are fears the contagion in China’s real estate market could spread and create a downward spiral of the property market depressing growth.

Last week, there were rare protests in Beijing after bank subsidiary Zhongrong defaulted on several investment products without immediate plans to repay its clients. Its parent company, Zhongzhi, manages $138 billion in assets, 10% of which are exposed to the real estate market.

Moody’s has previously stated that the increased amount of defaults from property developers has raised Chinese banks’ non-performing loan rate to 4.4% by the end of last year, up from 1.9% in 2020. China’s property sector is also considered the world's largest asset class, worth around $62 trillion, so any further signs of trouble could lead to the Chinese government intervening.

(…)

As for the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong, it’s officially entered a bear market. Around half the stocks on the index are now oversold, and it’s lost 11% of its value in August so far, which sets the scene for the Hang Seng’s worst performance since October.

The fear has spread to the U.S. markets in August, with the S&P 500 suffering three straight weeks of decline. The Nasdaq lost 5.5% in value in the same period, while the Dow Jones has seen a 3.2% decline.

Several banks have also downgraded China’s GDP growth outlook, which was previously estimated at 5% for 2023. Nomura now predicts 4.8% growth, with the likes of Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Barclays all following suit.”

“Country Garden Holdings Co., the distressed Chinese developer that earlier this month missed interest payments on some dollar bonds, is leaving investors in the dark about the exact date the grace period ends.

That’s adding to signs of opaqueness in the nation’s offshore junk debt market, which has lost $87 billion in the past two years.

One of China’s biggest developers, Country Garden must repay a combined $22.5 million in two coupons within the grace period, otherwise creditors could call a default that would be the developer’s first on such debt. That would threaten even worse impact than defaulted peer China Evergrande Group given Country Garden has four times as many projects.

(…)

China’s worsening property debt crisis has prompted a slew of developers including Evergrande to use grace periods in recent years. In many cases, doing so has only bought time before they eventually went on to default, adding to record debt failures.

Growing concerns that the same fate could strike Country Garden, which had 1.4 trillion yuan ($192 billion) of total liabilities at the end of last year, have dragged Chinese junk dollar bonds deeper into distress under 65 cents. The market value of Bloomberg’s index for the securities, mostly issued by builders, has shrunk to only about $44.7 billion from some $131.8 billion two years ago.”

#evergrande #bankruptcy #china #economy #contagion #realestate #country garden

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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All the books I reviewed in 2022 (Part IV: Nonfiction part 2)

VIII. Adventure Capitalism by Raymond Craib

The history the Libertarian Exit movement(s), separatist projects that seek to find a truly empty land, or a land that can be non-coercively acquired (through a free purchase from a rightful owner) and undo the original sins of property. When all you’ve got is John Locke’s hammer, everything looks like empty lands.

The thought-experiment of a coercion-free life where the marketplace of free exchange produces the most wealth and freedom our species can create always founders on reality’s shores. The original sins of property — genocide and enclosure — can never be washed away. The desire to found a land where your luck (of achievement and/or birth) is untainted by coercion is understandable, but doomed.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

IX. Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff

The wealthiest, most powerful people in the world understand on a deep level that they way they live has a good chance of causing civilizational collapse, mass die-offs, and terminally poison the only planet in the universe known to be capable of supporting human life. Our society, our lives, and our planet are viewed as the booster stage of a rocket — a disposable thruster made to get us into orbit before it is discarded. We might wipe out our planet and civilization, but they can retreat to islands. Or orbit. Or Mars. Or the metaverse. Survival is an inquiry into the origins of this bizarre and suicidal impulse, asking how psychedelics, cybernetics, and techno-liberation movements could have resulted in this bizarre embrace of the end of the world

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

X. The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas

A fantastic, energizing and exciting book about what it means to really change peoples’ minds — how, on an individual, institutional and societal scale, new ideas take hold; and what can and should be done about the proliferation of conspiracies and hate. Giridharadas offers series of case studies of remarkable “persuaders” — people who are doing hard work to change minds at every level.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

XI. A Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville

Billed as an “introduction” to *The Communist Manifesto* — though it is substantially longer than the work itself — it is brilliant, even dazzling. Miéville sets out to prove that the *Manifesto* is no historical curiosity — that it remains relevant today, not merely as a foil for arguments about Marxism’s role in previous struggles but as a vital guide to present-day ones.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html?unlocked_article_code=idh9E6LUl7SWxUFjxz3VD2t0_0BTvosKQl4YDTcaQcnY6Pwm6c76rS1QF_iX-WcS7cybJUagf8fgdE2ahx4klABBiJgTVdAehfBaaYl7iSCxQRzacc_cRkfSwjrAevC6jxz7npEMLUCxzVjdEcT1Gmjq0I_5cPcetzpLe6R6s8l6SG6ZgZ72j1vnKQH0gfl1RpI1WE4nxrohLUL35OKqVL34lcz-xAXGmcAjYUNTDAmKObzEJ0oK3_clHL9US0g5qe7NuiyuBAmP-HXD2jFCAREGqNcTVu4ODLVvGuoxPBAhgI_L_HSVqqqf1nPrlbKwp7jlYeo1dg5Eh0Im1lbq0RMw0_azjVDltGrBChv1UA&smid=share-url

XII. Tracers in the Dark by Andy Greenberg

A fascinating, horrifying, and complicated story of the battle over Bitcoin secrecy, as law enforcement agencies, tax authorities and private-sector sleuths seek to trace and attribute the cryptocurrency used in a variety of crimes, some relatively benign (selling weed online), some absolutely ghastly (selling videos of child sex abuse). In theory, if you are careful about not linking a wallet address to your real identity, then your transactions are not traceable to you. In practice, this is really, really, really hard.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/15/public-immutable-crimes/#andy-greenberg

XII. War Against All Puerto Ricans by Nelson A. Denis

For generations, Puerto Rico was a classic imperial periphery, the place where eminent families sent their failsons for a second chance. The most rapacious corporations in American – along with the US military – established operations in PR and staffed them with a clown cavalcade of idiots and sadists, who, by dint of birth, were put in a position of power over the people of Puerto Rico.

Each of these men came to Puerto Rico to seek their fortune, and, by and large, they found it – extracted it, rather, from the sweat and blood of Puerto Ricans. They committed gaffes, scams and atrocities and then went back to the mainland, where they were celebrated. These are the antagonists of Denis's narrative, with the failsons serving as foils, villains, and color.

Apart from their Puerto Ricanness, the protagonists of this story would make great American folkloric heroes, Horatio Algers who came from humble beginnings, succeeded through thrift, tireless striving and indomitable will, devoted themselves to justice, and stood up to bullies – and paid with their lives for a righteous cause.

But because the bullies they stood up to were operating as agents of America, they are forgotten. Not even reviled – erased. On the American mainland, the Puerto Rican revolution isn't even a footnote. Indeed, Puerto Rico itself is often forgotten by America, despite the many sons and daughters of the island who have fought for its military.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#que-viva-albizu

Next up: What’s coming in 2023

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/702452433144676352/all-the-books-i-reviewed-in-2022-part-v-next

Image: Matthew Petroff https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George-peabody-library.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Interior of the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.]

#pluralistic #book reviews of 2022

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 1 year

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Volcano-like rupture could have caused magnetar slowdown On Oct. 5, 2020, the rapidly rotating corpse of a long-dead star about 30,000 light years from Earth changed speeds. In a cosmic instant, its spinning slowed. And a few days later, it abruptly started emitting radio waves. Thanks to timely measurements from specialized orbiting telescopes, Rice University astrophysicist Matthew Baring and colleagues were able to test a new theory about a possible cause for the rare slowdown, or “anti-glitch,” of SGR 1935+2154, a highly magnetic type of neutron star known as a magnetar. In a study published this month in Nature Astronomy, Baring and co-authors used X-ray data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) and NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) to analyze the magnetar’s rotation. They showed the sudden slowdown could have been caused by a volcano-like rupture on the surface of the star that spewed a “wind” of massive particles into space. The research identified how such a wind could alter the star’s magnetic fields, seeding conditions that would be likely to switch on the radio emissions that were subsequently measured by China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). “People have speculated that neutron stars could have the equivalent of volcanoes on their surface,” said Baring, a professor of physics and astronomy. “Our findings suggest that could be the case and that on this occasion, the rupture was most likely at or near the star’s magnetic pole.” SGR 1935+2154 and other magnetars are a type of neutron star, the compact remains of a dead star that collapsed under intense gravity. About a dozen miles wide and as dense as the nucleus of an atom, magnetars rotate once every few seconds and feature the most intense magnetic fields in the universe. Magnetars emit intense radiation, including X-rays and occasional radio waves and gamma rays. Astronomers can decipher much about the unusual stars from those emissions. By counting pulses of X-rays, for example, physicists can calculate a magnetar’s rotational period, or the amount of time it takes to make one complete rotation, as the Earth does in one day. The rotational periods of magnetars typically change slowly, taking tens of thousands of years to slow by a single rotation per second. Glitches are abrupt increases in rotational speed that are most often caused by sudden shifts deep within the star, Baring said. “In most glitches, the pulsation period gets shorter, meaning the star spins a bit faster than it had been,” he said. “The textbook explanation is that over time, the outer, magnetized layers of the star slow down, but the inner, non-magnetized core does not. This leads to a buildup of stress at the boundary between these two regions, and a glitch signals a sudden transfer of rotational energy from the faster spinning core to the slower spinning crust.” Abrupt rotational slowdowns of magnetars are very rare. Astronomers have only recorded three of the “anti-glitches,” including the October 2020 event. While glitches can be routinely explained by changes inside the star, anti-glitches likely cannot. Baring’s theory is based on the assumption that they are caused by changes on the surface of the star and in the space around it. In the new paper, he and his co-authors constructed a volcano-driven wind model to explain the measured results from the October 2020 anti-glitch. Baring said the model uses only standard physics, specifically changes in angular momentum and conservation of energy, to account for the rotational slowdown. “A strong, massive particle wind emanating from the star for a few hours could establish the conditions for the drop in rotational period,” he said. “Our calculations showed such a wind would also have the power to change the geometry of the magnetic field outside the neutron star.” The rupture could be a volcano-like formation, because “the general properties of the X-ray pulsation likely require the wind to be launched from a localized region on the surface,” he said. “What makes the October 2020 event unique is that there was a fast radio burst from the magnetar just a few days after the anti-glitch, as well as a switch-on of pulsed, ephemeral radio emission shortly thereafter,” he said. “We’ve seen only a handful of transient pulsed radio magnetars, and this is the first time we’ve seen a radio switch-on of a magnetar almost contemporaneous with an anti-glitch.” Baring argued this timing coincidence suggests the anti-glitch and radio emissions were caused by the same event, and he’s hopeful that additional studies of the volcanism model will provide more answers. “The wind interpretation provides a path to understanding why the radio emission switches on,” he said. “It provides new insight we have not had before.” IMAGE....An artist's impression of a magnetar eruption. Image courtesy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #news #stellar evolution #magnetar

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mariacallous · 8 months

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Valery Garbuzov and his colleagues aren’t going quietly. Last week, after penning an essay about Russia’s “post-imperial syndrome” and the Putin regime’s reliance on anti-American myths, Garbuzov lost his job as the director of the U.S. and Canada Studies Institute at Russia’s Academy of Sciences. Roughly a week later, the institute’s staff issued a public statement in Garbuzov’s defense, published simultaneously with a second article about Kremlin propaganda. All three texts initially appeared in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, but the newspaper quickly unpublished the faculty’s letter without explanation. Meduza reviews what happened after a respected scholar accused Russia’s “ruling elite and the oligarchy integrated within it” of using propaganda to “retain power and property, indefinitely at any cost.”

Valery Garbuzov joined the U.S. and Canada Studies Institute (ISKRAN) in 2000 and became its director in 2016. The institute is considered one of Russia’s leading think tanks on U.S. matters, particularly during the Soviet period when it exerted significant influence on Moscow’s foreign policy. Today, ISKRAN employs more than 130 people, including 85 research experts. “By the founder’s decision,” Garbuzov was replaced on September 1, 2023, by Sergey Kislitsyn, the 33-year-old head of the Center for the Study of Strategic Planning at the National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

ISKRAN’s press service directly linked Garbuzov’s dismissal to his August 29 article, “On the Lost Illusions of a Bygone Era,” published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (a newspaper owned and run by Konstantin Remchukov, who’s worked closely over the years with Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, managing his reelection campaign in 2018 and heading the city’s Public Chamber since 2016).

What did Garbuzov say in his contentious essay?

Garbuzov argues that “expansionism” was fundamental to the formation of the Russian state and continues to shape its foreign policy today in the “tragic pattern” of collapsed empires failing to reconcile with diminished stature. He characterizes this as a typical post-imperial development, albeit with a unique delay in Russia that largely concealed its “menacing character” for some 30 years.

Perhaps even more controversially, Garbuzov says Russia’s contemporary ruling elite exploits anti-American “myths” to keep itself in power. In the past, writes Garbuzov, the Soviet regime “plunged society into a world of illusions” built on the utopia of “global revolution” and the dogma of “capitalism’s general crisis.” Contemporary Russian state propaganda has resurrected these old myths in rhetoric about supposed Western decline and resistance to globalization and “Anglo-Saxon” dominance.

Garbuzov says the United States and China are the only two remaining “informal empires,” but Russia maintains its own “special orbit” as a “hostage of its own imperial complex.” This, he argues, explains Moscow’s current foreign policy “and the problems it inflicts on the world.” Garbuzov compares the Kremlin’s attitude today to the frustrations of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, who struggled to “overcome their imperial feelings” in WWII’s aftermath.

Not only is Russia’s current mythology dogmatic and illusionary, says Garbuzov, but it’s also based on an “unstable and eclectic” “jumble” of conservative ideas that are too antiquated to suit the country’s modern society or serve as a “timeless and universal” global platform for Moscow. Garbuzov warns that the embrace of Tsarist notions of power has conflated the ruler with the nation, robbing the country of its more lasting identity:

The nation’s current minions of authoritarianism (similar to the satraps of ancient Eastern despotisms that have receded into oblivion) apparently completely without historical consciousness, shamelessly, tenderly, and sincerely identify the head of the state with the state itself — the country’s temporary ruler with the great national and historical constant.

The scandal

Russian state propagandists recognized Garbuzov’s essay for the indictment it is and responded by dragging him in the media and online. Pundit Vladimir Solovyov has been particularly outspoken in his criticism, attacking Garbuzov in detail during his August 30 evening television broadcast. On his Telegram channel, Solovyov has also advocated a financial audit of the U.S. and Canada Studies Institute, encouraged others to scrub Garbuzov’s other work for “echoes of the Nezavisimaya Gazeta article,” and suggested that the U.S. State Department will defend him before an American university eventually offers him a job.

On September 5, Garbuzov returned to Nezavisimaya Gazeta with another essay where he thanked his colleagues for their support against the harassment and “use of administrative artillery” he’s faced since writing the article on Russia’s “lost illusions.” Garbuzov stressed that his earlier essay, while written for a wide audience in the style of “political journalism,” nevertheless reflects ideas that have appeared in hundreds of academic articles by Russian historians, political scientists, and sociologists. “Don’t be lazy; go and read them!” he told the “false patriots” who accuse him of kowtowing to foreign academic trends.

Garbuzov denies any connections to NATO, emphasizing his personal roots in the cities of Pskov and St. Petersburg, and defends his time as a Fulbright scholar as a normal experience the Russian government once supported. “And I myself am not a secret Western intelligence agent; I’m not an Anglo-Saxon spy; and I’m not a domestic enemy of my own Fatherland,” wrote Garbuzov, adding that his critics are apparently unaware that the “open and contentious nature” of knowledge in the humanities “plays the role of oxygen” in the generation of new ideas.

Defending his colleagues, Garbuzov wrote:

The institute’s research team has never been and is not now a nest of foreign spies or a cell of cunning Carbonari [revolutionaries active in Italy during the early 1800s] making secret plots against the Soviet state or its successors.

In this second article, Garbuzov also further developed some of the arguments he raised earlier about how myths can bolster political regimes (at least briefly): “[…] myths, created at different times and introduced into the mass public consciousness, contribute (along with other factors) to a temporary social consolidation around the current authorities to achieve a specific goal. Russia’s 20th-century history and present realities demonstrate this well.”

Garbuzov insists that “stamping out Western influence” in Russia is no more feasible than erasing the impact of Russian culture in the West. Looking to the future, he says “a different time” will come eventually, and today’s animosity will change. “Evolution is inevitable, including in this sphere,” Garbuzov explains, adding, “I hope this isn’t a subversive thought.”

Colleagues speak up

Also on September 5, former colleagues at the U.S. and Canada Studies Institute released a statement in support of Garbuzov, denouncing the “unbridled smear campaign” unleashed against him and arguing that Vladimir Solovyov’s comments “are built on blatant lies and presented in the form of disgusting, classic Goebbels propaganda.” ISKRAN researchers warned that such defamation is an assault on scholars everywhere in Russia:

The false, groundless, and shamelessly exaggerated allegations against ISKRAN’s academic team and its director are nothing more than a crude, incompetent attempt to undermine and discredit a Russian school of American studies that it’s taken decades to build and establish around the world.

Within a few hours, the ISKRAN team’s statement disappeared from Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s website, though archived copies are still available elsewhere. At the time of this writing, Garbuzov’s two articles are still published in the newspaper.

A source familiar with the situation at ISKRAN told the newspaper Vedomosti that the new director, Sergey Kislitsyn, might begin “modernizing the institute” to raise academic publication rates and improve the organization’s financial condition. The source claimed that the incident with Garbuzov’s article may become a catalyst for changes at ISKRAN but isn’t the reason for them.

Garbuzov told Vedomosti that he doesn’t know if his replacement will keep him employed at the institute in another role.

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