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bopinion · 2 years

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2022 / 16

Aperçu of the Week:

"Don't look back in anger..."

(Oasis)

Bad News of the Week:

Shanghai has the largest container port in the world. And Shanghai has a strict lockdown. The combination of these two aspects provides, with a little delay (the ships are still on their way for a while), a new, even more comprehensive chapter in the perennial story of "supply chain issues" - apparently the flip side of globalization. If just one of 89 components is missing in a system, it's over. Short-time work, production stop, time off.

Already, several Bavarian vehicle manufacturers are skipping shifts because Ukraine is apparently the monopoly manufacturer of wire harnesses. Anyone who remembers the macroeconomic upheavals caused by a blockade of the Suez Canal that lasted several days will now be scared to death. It is obvious that the gears of a globalized economy only work smoothly if all the small cogs mesh seamlessly with each other. Thus, any delay in one detail leads to the failure of the entire system. Just-in-time is fragile. But it is also beautifully cost-optimized. That's what we get now - congratulations!

Yet we can still consider ourselves lucky with these problems, which are mainly reflected in wage losses, more sparsely filled supermarket shelves and high inflation. For already now there are acute supply shortages of basic foodstuffs in this world - and in the poorest countries in the world, of all places, such as Yemen. Because Ukraine is their main supplier of grain. Which leads to the bitter statement by the UN's World Food Program that food is now being taken away from the hungry so that the starving have a chance of survival. For at the same time, they are suffering from crop losses due to climate change. The world's basic supply is anything but crisis-proof. When three crises come together, things get bleak.

Good News of the Week:

Vive la France! Last night, a sigh of relief could be heard across Europe when the first projection of the runoff election for the French presidency was published shortly after 20h00 - and incumbent Emmanuel Macron was leading clearly enough that the overnight counts could no longer bring a surprise. 58.55% was the official result this morning.

However, 58.55% for Macron also means 41.45% for Marine Le Pen - after all, a right-wing populist who makes no secret of the fact that her political leadership would look very different from what we know of France: foreigners out of France, France out of foreign countries (i.e. out of the euro, the European Union, etc.). Memories of "Taking back control" of the British Brexiteers and of Donald Trump's "America first!" come to mind. And this attraction of right-wing populism, which is difficult for a liberal mind to comprehend, became visible again just the other day when Hungary's Napoleon Viktor Orban was re-elected with a landslide victory.

But it all went well once again: Germany, Europe and the world can continue to rely on a progressive, cooperative and solidary style of government in the Élysée Palace, especially in times of multiple crises. Macron only needs to pay more attention to the mood in his own country in his term in office, which is now beginning. He seemed to have recognized the core message of the yellow vest protests ("gilets jaunes") only in the final spurt of this election campaign: it does you no good to shine on the international stage if the life prospects of your own citizens have lost that shine. Otherwise, there will be every reason to be nervous again on this continent in five years.

Personal happy moment of the week:

The most positive moment this week was a negative one. Which is good when talking about the result of a PCR test for the coronavirus. After the family reunion at Easter, the first participant was positively tested on Thursday, the second on Friday. Accordingly, nervousness increased among the others. Not only because of a possible illness, but also because of the price of isolation: my daughter would miss a one-week seminar for her social work, my wife and I would not be able to go to Italy to see Florence and her favorite aunt. But: on Saturday at 16h44 it went "pling" and all was well again. And I was happy.

I couldn't care less...

...about my hair - haircut that is. On Saturday I was in the "Barbershop" - which is actually called that in our town, a classic men's barber store, which is stylishly run by Turks, who as a pleasant side effect also do not fill your ears with irrelevant babble. What I always do only when the comments of my fellows become too derogatory. Whereby I actually sometimes look as if there had been an explosion in my hair. But I rarely see myself. Now it was time again after four months. And there was the usual short conversation: "How would you like your hair cut?". "So that afterwards they are shorter than before". "And in what style?". "I don't care. You are the professional."

As I write this...

...I'm sitting on the "S-Bahn," the regional train system around Munich, for the first time in a year and a half. Apart from hospitals and old people's homes, public transport is currently the last area where FFP2 masks are still mandatory. And what can I say: on the platforms outside, no one adheres to the rule. But on the trains, I've only seen three "half-hearted refusers" (notably, all young ladies) with the mask hanging under their chin like a tired alibi. There are moments when I actually appreciate the probably typical German well-organized respect for regulations. Thanks a lot for that!

Post Scriptum:

The Munich soccer club FC Bayern has become German champion - in Germany, it's the position in the standings at the end of the season that counts, there are no play offs. Prematurely, because there are actually still three match days to go. For the tenth time in a row, which has never happened before. Nevertheless, the joy is not undimmed, because FC Bayern was knocked out of both the Cup and the Champions League early on - both, it must be admitted, not because of bad luck, but because of poor performance. But apparently the dominance of "the usual suspects" seems to be over. After all, the legendary FC Barcelona was kicked out by the relative nobody Frankfurt, and the star squad from Paris Saint Germain is also no longer in the running. So it's "new game, new luck" for next year. The fact that it could be more exciting than expected can't really hurt.

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tomorrowusa · 3 months

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Just so nobody can say this is out of context, here's a vid of the entire interview.

The Obama administration successfully contained the Ebola outbreak in the United States. The death toll for Ebola in the US was under a dozen. So before leaving office, the Obama National Security Council created a 69-page handbook on how to deal with a pandemic. Trump and his flunkies ignored it with disastrous results.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

The US death toll from COVID-19 is in seven digits. Other industrialized countries with advanced technological infrastructure such as Canada, Taiwan, Germany, and New Zealand had lower fatality rates per capita.

Trump largely ignored the virus until well into March when it had a chance to spread across the US.

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life The president was aware of the danger from the coronavirus – but a lack of leadership has created an emergency of epic proportions

The Trump administration, at best, was in denial; at worst, it sabotaged the pandemic response.

youtube

Trump White House made 'deliberate efforts' to undermine Covid response, report says

Trump zombies who claim the economy was marvelous under Trump conveniently forget about everything that happened after February of 2020. Trump's early bungling of the pandemic plunged the economy into recession. The COVID supply chain problems and the economic stimulus required to prevent a depression led to the spurt in inflation which is finally receding.

People who are nostalgic about taking hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, drinking bleach, and sticking UV lights up their butts must be excited about the opportunity to vote for Trump again.

#donald trump #botched pandemic response #covid-19 #coronavirus #public health #anniversary of trump's awful covid-19 response #gross incompetence of the trump administration #the trump recession #trump tanked the economy #trump is a loser #vote blue no matter who #election 2020 #election 2024

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dc-polls · 5 months

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"That Really Happened?!" DC Comics Tournament Entry #33

Catwoman and the Penguin Cure COVID And Run Away Together

[ID: Four comic panels of Catwoman and Penguin in a round bed, curled up facing each other and holding hands as they tenderly look into each others eyes. Catwoman says, "Saving birds... saving kids... what's next?" Penguin responds, "They'd burst at the seams, oh, puss of my dreams... if they only knew... our love is so true." /END ID]

What Happened?

Have you ever wondered why the DCU doesn't have coronavirus? No? You just assumed it had to do with it being a fictional universe with aliens and superheroes? Well, uh ... the Gotham City Villains Anniversary Giant (2021) has an explanation for this thing which totally didn't need an explanation, anyway.

We start with Catwoman and the Penguin. They're so in love! (Were Catwoman and the Penguin in love before this? Glad you asked. They absolutely were not.) They save some kids from getting hit by a car! But they want to do more to secure the future of our planet. They plan some sort of massive heist, which they fund using the proceeds of smaller heists that involve things like carting massive pallets of gold bricks away in also-stolen helicopters and dosing.

Gasp! It turns out they were plotting to steal the entire world's supply of COVID vaccines! They do this using "hundreds of circus performers wearing surgical masks," for some reason. However, it turns out to be for a good cause, as they merely wanted to distribute the vaccine to the entire world in an equitable manner, using high-velocity winds at the tops of mountains for . . . some scheme that I honestly don't understand after reading it.

After they inoculate the entire planet, they adopt six kids -- three kittens, three baby penguins. The end.

Tournament polls will be posted after all entries are up. As always you can find all posts related to the tournament using #dc-polls-trh

#dc-polls-trh #dc comics #catwoman #selina kyle #the penguin #oswald cobblepot

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iww-gnv · 9 months

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Lear Corp. workers in Hammond will vote on whether to authorize a strike, a step in the collective bargaining process in which workers could walk off the job if negotiations break down and the union believes the company is continuing to bargain in bad faith. The strike vote will be held from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday in the break room of the Lear factory in Hammond, according to United Auto Workers Local 2335. UAW Local 2335 members recently voted 314-18 to reject Southfield, Mich.-based Lear's contract proposal. The union represents approximately 1,000 workers at the Lear seat-making factory in Hammond, which supplies seats just-in-time to the Chicago Assembly Plant that are used in the Ford Explorer, Lincoln Aviator and Police Interceptor Utility vehicles. Any strike would disrupt work for thousands of auto workers across the Calumet Region as the plant does not stockpile parts but installs them in vehicles on the assembly line as it gets them. Union members at Lear have voiced concerns about pay raises not keeping pace with inflation, about not sharing in significant company profits and not being rewarded for working at the factory as essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

#news #lear corp #unions #union #union strong #hot strike summer #hot labor summer

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primerosauxiliospanama · 2 years

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BRIGADAS

View On WordPress

#Brigadas #brigadas de emergencias #brigadas de emergencias en Panamá #brigadas de emergencias Panamá #brigadas de primeros auxilios #Brigadas Panamá #Conformación de brigadas Panamá #coronavirus #covid-19-Panamá #curso básico de primeros auxilios #curso de primeros auxilios #minsa #Primeros Auxilios #Primeros Auxilios Panamá #primeros auxilios PATS #primeros auxilios training and supplys #primerosauxiliospanama

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ralphlanyon · 7 months

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i was going through my notes and found an old write-up from 2020 of modern au headcanons for "the charioteer" characters during covid-19 quarantine (back when "how would fandom X characters handle quarantine?" was a tumblr trend). apparently this was how i was coping with the stress of peak corona times, lol. anyway finally publishing this, three years later!

laurie: his introverted homebody ass is THRIVING in social isolation and wfh. no more awkwardly dodging party invites from people he hates, being dragged to nightclubs, or having to see his stepfather. he gets to stay home all day with ralph and their dog and finish all the books he meant to read, and he is LOVING it. receives a lot of requests to show off his dog during his work zoom meetings.

ralph: is Doing His Duty by staying home on furlough but also going completely stir-crazy. tries to stay sane by feverishly working on dozens of home improvement projects and cleaning the house several times. basically the epitome of that ben wyatt “do you think a depressed person could do THIS???” meme. has gotten into numerous arguments with people at the supermarket who refuse to wear masks or are hoarding enormous supplies of toilet paper (one of these ends up going viral).

andrew: is very sad about being separated from the rest of his religious community now that the churches are closed, but tries to keep a positive outlook on things. shares a lot of resources online about how to help out and staying in touch with one’s faith during “unprecedented times.”

alec: overworked and sleep-deprived nhs junior doctor directly taking care of covid-19 patients. hasn’t physically seen most of his friends or family in months. writes lengthy screeds on social media decrying the dearth of ppe for health care workers and ranting about politics. frequently gets into online fights with strangers who think coronavirus isn’t a big deal. sends ralph unsolicited articles about self-care and mental health tips during a pandemic that ralph pointedly ignores.

sandy: also overworked and sleep-deprived, but much better at concealing it online than alec. has a popular medical instagram where he posts selfies of him and alec with lots of hashtags. obsessively binge-watches cooking videos on youtube in his spare time.

bunny: an essential retail worker who brings this fact up constantly in conversation. secretly flouting social distancing guidelines on his off days to go to parties and hook-up with men on grindr. has the most aesthetically pleasing cloth masks but can’t bother to wear them properly.

#the charioteer

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zvaigzdelasas · 2 years

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It has been around six months since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine. During this time, the world has keenly witnessed seismic shifting trends across economic, geopolitical and cultural lines. But perhaps the most profound impact the conflict has had (and continues to have) on the world is the acceleration it has inspired towards multipolarity—that is, global power more evenly distributed amongst several advanced economic nations rather than contained within a single hegemonic power, which in this case is the United States. Underpinning much of this acceleration, moreover, is the trend of de-dollarisation.

It should be highlighted from the outset that de-dollarisation has been, observably, a long-term process that emerged over the last two decades. A March paper from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that the dollar still plays “an outsized role” in global markets despite the US economy representing a shrinking share of global output over the last two decades and that its dominant role in global trade, international debt and non-bank borrowing still far outstrips the US’ share of trade, bond issuance, and international borrowing and lending.

But the IMF also noted that central banks today are not holding the greenback as reserves in the same quantities as yesteryear. “The dollar’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves fell below 59 percent in the final quarter of last year, extending a two-decade decline, according to the IMF’s Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves data,” the paper stated. “Strikingly, the decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro, other long-standing reserve currencies…. Rather, the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies.”

Why is this the case? Seemingly, a multitude of factors are responsible. For one, it appears the world has reached something of a tipping point this year. With around one-quarter of the global population suffering from the direct impact of US-led economic sanctions, which invariably diminishes their ability to trade and perform other necessary economic and financial activities that are often priced using the dollar, it should perhaps come as no surprise that de-dollarisation has intensified across the world. Indeed, this trend often simply reflects the desperation of some countries to survive, let alone thrive, with brutal sanctions having remained on countries during the COVID-19 pandemic proving devastating in some cases.

“The destructive impact of said measures at the national level, plus their extraterritorial implication, together with the phenomenon of over-compliance and the fear for ‘secondary sanctions’, hinder the ability of national governments in procuring even basic medical equipment and supplies, including coronavirus test kits and medicine,” a joint March 2020 letter from the governments of China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Venezuela—all bearers of US-led sanctions—to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) read. The letter called for an end to sanctions, which “illegal[ly] and blatantly violate international law and the charter of the United Nations”, and that it was a “hard if not impossible deed for those countries who are currently facing the application of unilateral coercive measures” to cope.

Sanctions have also played a critical role in the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe. Indeed, as the schism has continued to widen this year between the West, dominated by the United States, the European Union (EU) and Japan, versus the Eastern powers of China and Russia, there have been a number of concerted moves by the latter to wean themselves off their reliance on the greenback. For Russia, de-dollarisation began around 2014 after it annexed Crimea, which was executed in response to what it perceived was a US-backed coup d’état in Ukraine. The Western sanctions that followed the annexation drastically reduced Russian entities’ ability to raise capital in Western markets, which forced Moscow to reduce its dollar holdings and dramatically increase its exposure to alternative assets, such as gold.

Since the outbreak of war this year and the imposition of further economic sanctions against Russia in response, Moscow has only further expedited this de-dollarisation process. Having been excluded from the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system, which banks use globally to transfer funds, Russia first hiked its key interest rate to 20 percent to protect the ruble, imposed further capital controls to prevent excessive currency from leaving its shores and insisted that all “unfriendly” countries pay only in rubles for its vast exports of fossil fuels.

More recently, Russia has been busy agreeing on bilateral fuel deals with several countries involving at least partial payment in rubles rather than dollars. For instance, it signed a roadmap for economic cooperation and trade with Turkey worth $100 billion a year, with Ankara agreeing to pay for gas imports in rubles. Turkey also confirmed that five of its commercial banks would use the Russian Mir payment system, helping Russian tourists in Turkey to use their currency.

Domestically, meanwhile, Russia’s largest exchange, Moscow Exchange, announced on August 8 that it would halve the maximum threshold of dollars it can accept as collateral to underwrite transactions from 50 percent to 25 percent. Any sums exceeding this limit would have to be converted into “friendlier” alternatives. And Moscow Exchange has also started trading bonds denominated in the Chinese yuan to attract Asian investors and further diversify away from the greenback. “Debt instruments denominated in the Chinese yuan open up an additional source of forex liquidity for Russian borrowers,” said Gleb Shevelenkov, head of the debt market at Moscow Exchange.

Speaking of the yuan, China’s rapidly growing global economic might may pose the biggest threat to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. And its recent forays into Middle Eastern markets—Saudi Arabian oil in particular—could ultimately go a long way towards tipping the scales in favour of widespread adoption of the Asian superpower’s currency. Indeed, part of how the US dollar rose to global supremacy in the first place has been down to its role as the de facto currency used in global commodities markets. Commonly known as the “petrodollar”, the requirement for the massive value of global oil sales to be denominated in the dollar has gone a long way towards guaranteeing the credibility of the currency, particularly after the US left the Bretton Woods system of monetary management in 1971, which severed the dollar from its backing of gold bullion.

Since then, the petrodollar has thus been crucial in maintaining global dollar hegemony. “The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency,” economist Gal Luft, co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and co-author of the book De-Dollarization: The Revolt Against the Dollar and the Rise of a New Financial World Order, explained to the Wall Street Journal. “If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”

Cue the “collapse”? Perhaps not completely or imminently, but relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have visibly soured in recent years at the same time as the world’s largest oil exporter has demonstrated a distinct warming to China. Over one-quarter of Saudi oil exports were snapped up by China in 2020, while state oil behemoth Saudi Aramco also recently concluded a $10-billion deal with Chinese petroleum companies. And with reports suggesting that oil transactions between the two countries could well be priced in yuan in the near future, this would dramatically raise the Chinese currency’s global profile and severely dent the petrodollar’s worldwide dominance.

With China extending billions of dollars of investment funding to Saudi Arabia this year and relations between President Xi Jinping and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the rise, therefore, things could develop rather quickly in favour of the East. “The dynamics have dramatically changed. The US relationship with the Saudis has changed. China is the world’s biggest crude importer, and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” an unnamed Saudi official told the Wall Street Journal in March. “China has been offering everything you could possibly imagine to the kingdom.” And while some analysts believe a wholesale shift onto yuan pricing is unlikely, others believe that a partial shift would enable payments to Chinese contractors currently involved in mega projects within the kingdom.

Other than the petrodollar, the US has also historically propped up its currency by issuing government debt to other nations, which has helped to finance its budget deficit. During the 2008 global financial crisis, China came to the US’ rescue by purchasing enormous quantities of US Treasury bills. Indeed, by 2010, China held more than $1 trillion in US Treasuries, and between 2008 and 2013, its foreign-exchange reserves—US debt-instruments holdings—expanded by a mammoth $2 trillion.

But in July, it was revealed that China’s holdings of US debt had fallen back under $1 trillion for the first time in 12 years, extending a trend of offloading US Treasuries that began in 2017 as the trade war waged by the US against China intensified. Given the further deterioration in relations between the two economic heavyweights that has transpired this year, it would thus appear that China is now keener than ever to rid itself of its dollar exposure. “They’re unhappy with the way the U.S. keeps using financial sanctions around the world,” David Dollar of the Brookings Institution’s China Center told Marketplace in July. Referring to the decision to kick Russia off SWIFT, Thomas Hogan of the American Institute for Economic Research added that this was “a major wake-up call” for China and other nations not fully aligned with Western political goals. “They realize that the SWIFT system could be used as a political weapon to harm them economically.”

Even developing nations are getting in on the act in clear acts of defiance against the dollar empire. Egypt, for example, has suffered greatly under the weight of borrowing as it seeks to stabilise its economy and prop up the value of the Egyptian pound. Indeed, the country’s sovereign debt has roughly quadrupled in the last 10 years as it has repeatedly sought financial support from US-led development institutions such as the IMF. But the cost of servicing this dollar-denominated debt has seriously dented Egyptians’ living standards amidst a deteriorating global economic landscape.

Cairo’s solution? Issuing yuan-denominated debt to raise funding in the Chinese bond market for the first time, a move announced as a realistic option by the Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait in May 2022. “The growing mountains of debt and high cost of borrowing in USD is forcing Egypt to seek alternative windows for funding to avert a potential sovereign debt crisis and a collapse in EGP’s purchasing power, which could destabilise society and the government,” Magdy Abd Alhadi, an Egyptian economist, told The New Arab news publication. Independent analyst Firas Modad added, “Egypt imports a large amount of goods and services from China, including for the construction of the New Administrative Capital. This requires Egypt to have access to the yuan. It is likely cheaper to borrow in yuan than to borrow in dollars and convert to the yuan.”

What does all this say about the dollar’s credibility in 2022? For some, de-dollarisation can be viewed as an expression of a loss of confidence in the US currency as a safe haven—a status that the dollar has enjoyed for decades—and a preference for seeking safety in alternative assets, such as gold and other currencies.

A survey published in June by the World Gold Council (WGC), for instance, found that 80 percent of the 57 central banks it surveyed expect to expand their gold reserves within the next year, particularly those within emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). “More EMDE respondents regard ‘shifts in global economic power’ as a relevant factor in their reserve management decisions, which could indicate growing concerns over the threat of a decoupling between major economies amid ongoing tensions,” the report stated, adding that 42 percent of respondents expect the dollar to decline as a proportion of total reserves in the next five years as they—EMDE central banks in particular—are now less confident in the role of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.

Of course, one might well scoff at the notion of the world being governed by any currency other than the US dollar in the near future. But as this year has shown, global dynamics can shift quickly. As one of Russia’s most revered figures [lol] famously said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” We are now observing such “weeks”. Given the massive power plays undertaken by the US, China, Russia and many other nations, the seemingly unstoppable rise of global multipolarity can only mean the further weakening of the dollar’s supremacy. One wonders whether the US has the wherewithal to successfully pivot away from its prevailing foreign-affairs approach to prevent it.

even demons know

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mariacallous · 5 months

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International sanctions failed to stop the Russian economy from recovering to near prewar levels earlier this year, according to the latest statistics from the nation’s Federal State Statistics Service. Western news outlets and analysts now acknowledge it, too. Vladimir Putin is dancing on the bones of John McCain, declaring that Russia is no “gas station,” while presidential economic adviser Maxim Oreshkin insists that Europe has suffered more from its sanctions against Moscow than Russia itself. But not everything is sunshine and lollipops; millions of Russians are paying for the surge in military production as inflation reaches 7.5 percent. Amid indications of an overheating economy, a slowdown or perhaps even a recession is expected in 2024.

Western sanctions sent Russia into a recession after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but the economy has bounced back, at least in certain metrics, and the downturn ended in August after a mere 10 months, according to the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting. While TsMAKP perhaps isn’t the most objective think tank (its director, Dmitry Belousov, is the brother of First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov), Russia’s gross domestic product did grow 5.5 percent in the third quarter of 2023 and rose 3.2 percent in the first 10 months of the year. GDP was 1.1 percent greater in 2023 than during the same period in 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the West’s supposedly crippling sanctions.

Russia has outperformed the forecasts of its own Economic Development Ministry and Central Bank, which said in the spring that GDP growth on the year wouldn’t exceed 2 percent. Now even analysts at Bloomberg Economics say the rise in 2023 will surpass 3 percent.

This week, Vladimir Putin declared triumphantly that Russia’s annual GDP growth will exceed 3.5 percent. “Any intelligent person must agree that this is a good indicator for the Russian economy,” the president explained, adding that only 2 percent of the country’s growth came from resource extraction.

The spike in economic output this year is remarkable, but these indicators capture the nation’s recovery from a slump, like in 2021 after the coronavirus pandemic. In other words, Russia’s surging GDP isn’t the evidence of sustainable development that Putin claims.

From subsidized recovery to overheated economy

Russia’s manufacturing output has been booming, but money from the oil and gas industries nevertheless made up roughly a third of all federal budget revenue between January and October 2023. Yes, oil and gas production declined by 2 and 5 percent, respectively, but this was due primarily to obligations Russia accepted in a deal with OPEC to cut supplies. According to former Central Bank Deputy Chairman Sergey Aleksashenko, the primitive structure of Russia’s reliance on oil and gas exports has actually insulated its economy against international sanctions and helped the Kremlin sustain the war in Ukraine.

The federal deficit in 2023 is expected to be just 1 percent of GDP — half the authorities’ original estimate — despite skyrocketing allocations to military production. At the same time, annual spending on “national defense” and “national security” will exceed 6.2 percent of annual GDP and rise to almost 8 percent of GDP in 2024, reaching nearly 40 percent of all budget expenditures.

Russia finances its deficit spending through reserves held in the National Wealth Fund (the liquidity of which the Finance Ministry currently estimates to be 6.94 trillion rubles, or 4.6 percent of GDP) and through government loans. By November 1, the total volume of soft loans had reached 11 trillion rubles — 7 percent of GDP and more than 14 percent of the credit portfolio of Russian banks. Major enterprises with state ownership (including Russian Railways, AvtoVAZ, Aeroflot, and Roscosmos) have started lobbying for preferential terms on loans.

Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has warned that the government fuels inflation by subsidizing more and more borrowing, which forces her office to maintain a high key rate. In November, inflation in annual terms reached 7.5 percent and showed no signs of slowing. Something that is slowing: Russia’s economic growth. According to the Central Bank, the recovery peaked in the third quarter of 2023.

Russia’s human problem

Shortages of industrial capacity and labor will also limit Russia’s manufacturing development, says Raiffeisenbank analyst Stanislav Murashov. Additionally, further hikes to the key interest rate will slow the growth of wages and complicate the work of upgrading enterprises technologically. With nearly full employment, labor will redistribute across sectors, driving workers from areas hit by rising interest rates like construction, retail, and finance into enterprises in Russia’s military-industrial complex, predicts Bloomberg Economics chief economist Alexander Isakov, who says future rate hikes will reduce lending and, in turn, consumer demand, raising the risk of another recession in the next six months to more than 70 percent.

More than 85 percent of companies are experiencing staff shortages, and skilled workers are the most scarce of all. Wages rose nominally by 13.2 percent in the first nine months of 2023, and unemployment fell to 2.9 percent (the lowest level in post-Soviet history), but these impressive statistics conceal major problems with labor productivity, which fell by 3.6 percent compared to 2021 — the worst decline since 2009. The emigration of skilled workers fleeing the war and political repressions, not to mention the participation and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the war, has removed from Russia’s labor pool another million or so workers.

While the invasion remains the government’s top priority, there will be relatively less funding for developing Russia’s human capital through spending on education and healthcare. The longer this continues, the harder it will be for the Kremlin to return to solving complex “civilian” issues, and the easier it will be to drag out the war.

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leviathangourmet · 9 months

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A series of government reports have documented how much of the trillions of dollars purportedly spent on “Covid relief” went to waste — ranging from the hundreds of billions in fraud (i.e., the “Great Grift”) to extravagant local government expenditures (e.g., renovating a minor league baseball stadium and replacing irrigation systems at golf courses).

But out of all that waste, most Americans would consider money spent on countering pandemic learning loss a legitimate use of government resources. (Mind you, many Americans, including this one, would question why public school unions insisted on keeping schools closed for endless periods of time, but that’s a separate story.)

Now several new data points suggest that much of this money has likewise been frittered away, leaving a generation of American students far worse off.

Wasteful School Spending

An in-depth investigation by the education organization The 74 demonstrated that much of the $190 billion in federal funds has gone to projects that often will not directly help students learn. A series of public records requests discovered just some of the ways districts spent their federal relief dollars.

To begin, in Colorado, a charter school network “spent about $70,000 for an exterior fence at its Aurora campus so students and staff could eat outside despite concerns about proximity to the community’s rising homeless population.” While this expenditure says much about social policy in Colorado, it has practically nothing to do with reversing learning losses.

In California, Oakland’s school district used $1.6 million for a payment on a $100 million loan the district took out from the state of California in 2003 — well before the coronavirus hit. What’s more, the district in Stockton, California, “spent over $2 million on high-level central office positions, like a facilities director.”

Youngstown, Ohio, frittered away $5 million on equipment and supplies to provide free WiFi from utility poles — a project the district could never implement because the city didn’t own all of the utility poles in question.

And in Utah, the Granite Public Schools spent $86,000 on “accommodations” for a conference held at — wait for it — Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Call me crazy, but when the federal government gave out money to help public schools, I don’t think that sending a bunch of administrators to meet Donny Osmond was at the front of most taxpayers’ minds. What’s more, the school district publicly advertised and bragged about this extravagant expenditure of government funds, which demonstrates that public school employees need some lessons in political science — either that or they just don’t care.

In some respects, it’s a miracle that The 74 could even compile these examples of wasteful public school spending. In many states and districts, citizens can’t even track where districts’ share of the $190 billion in federal funding went — let alone how (if at all) it is countering the effects of pandemic learning loss.

As one Fairfax County, Virginia, parent noted, districts’ reports on their spending are often “full of jargon and gobbledygook.”

Poor Quality Teaching

An even more troubling sign came in the form of another recent report, this one by the Center for Reinventing Public Education. Its study focused on in-depth interviews with leaders at five public school districts and found that even in districts that have dedicated resources toward stemming Covid-related learning loss, teachers and administrators faced an uphill battle to regain lost ground.

Broadly speaking, the report indicated that districts cannot keep up with the current curriculum, let alone try to undo the effects of Covid closures. Many teachers have left, substitutes and replacements remain scarce, skills have atrophied, and administrators lacked the time or ability to supervise teachers’ instructional methods until very recently.

Consider the following quotes from the report:

“$500,000 for tutoring, basically. Are you kidding me? That’s a lot of money. And nothing to show for it [in terms of impact on student learning].”

“We spent a lot of money on retention bonuses and ‘please stay’ payments. … You might as well burn that money because it didn’t bear out. People left anyway.”

“All these [tutoring] companies … accelerated their hiring and probably didn’t have time to appropriately train people up or go in and coach people on the job. They’re just placing people. And so we’re probably getting some B Team members.”

“I do think the first and foremost issue is ‘Do we have enough high quality teachers in our schools to do this work?’ And the answer is no right now for us.”

“There’s been a lot of protectivist [attitudes among district staff], like we can’t ask teachers to do anything else.”

“[We have teachers who lack] expectations for kids; that kids can be excellent.”

A demoralized workforce that cannot keep pace, and in many cases lacks the initiative to demand high standards of either its students or itself — that’s what $190 billion in federal funds has bought the American people.

Of course, teachers unions have no one but themselves to blame for the problems in public education post-Covid, having lobbied extensively to keep schools closed for most (if not all) of the pandemic. But the next generation of Americans deserves far better from their educational system.

Some are getting it, even if they have to go outside the traditional public school system to do so. Here’s hoping that states will continue to expand school choice — a far better investment of taxpayer resources — to give people more options other than a sclerotic, wasteful, and ineffective public school bureaucracy.

#article #covid19 #coronavirus #education #government spending #money laundering #public schools #public education

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 26 days

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This political cartoon by Louis Dalrymple appeared in Judge magazine in 1903. It depicts European immigrants as rats. Nativism and anti-immigration have a long and sordid history in the United States.

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 28, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 29, 2024

Yesterday the National Economic Council called a meeting of the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, which the Biden-Harris administration launched in 2021, to discuss the impact of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the partial closure of the Port of Baltimore on regional and national supply chains. The task force draws members from the White House and the departments of Transportation, Commerce, Agriculture, Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, and Homeland Security. It is focused on coordinating efforts to divert ships to other ports and to minimize impacts to employers and workers, making sure, for example, that dock workers stay on payrolls.

Today, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg convened a meeting of port, labor, and industry partners—ocean carriers, truckers, local business owners, unions, railroads, and so on—to mitigate disruption from the bridge collapse. Representatives came from 40 organizations including American Roll-on Roll-off Carrier; the Georgia Ports Authority; the International Longshoremen’s Association, the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots; John Deere; Maersk; Mercedes-Benz North America Operations; Seabulk Tankers; Under Armour; and the World Shipping Council.

Today the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced it would make $60 million available immediately to be used as a down payment toward initial costs. Already, though, some Republicans are balking at the idea of using new federal money to rebuild the bridge, saying that lawmakers should simply take the money that has been appropriated for things like electric vehicles, or wait until insurance money comes in from the shipping companies.

In 2007, when a bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed, Congress passed funding to rebuild it in days and then-president George W. Bush signed the measure into law within a week of the accident.

In the past days, we have learned that the six maintenance workers killed when the bridge collapsed were all immigrants, natives of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Around 39% of the workforce in the construction industry around Baltimore and Washington, D.C., about 130,000 people, are immigrants, Scott Dance and María Luisa Paúl reported in the Washington Post yesterday.

Some of the men were undocumented, and all of them were family men who sent money back to their home countries, as well. From Honduras, the nephew of one of the men killed told the Associated Press, “The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.”

In the Philadelphia Inquirer today, journalist Will Bunch castigated the right-wing lawmakers and pundits who have whipped up native-born Americans over immigration, calling immigrants sex traffickers and fentanyl dealers, and even “animals.” Bunch illustrated that the reality of what was happening on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed creates an opportunity to reframe the immigration debate in the United States.

Last month, Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post noted that immigration is a key reason that the United States experienced greater economic growth than any other nation in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The surge of immigration that began in 2022 brought to the U.S. working-age people who, Director Phill Swagel of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office wrote, are expected to make the U.S. gross domestic product about $7 trillion larger over the ten years from 2023 to 2034 than it would have been otherwise. Those workers will account for about $1 trillion dollars in revenues.

Curiously, while Republican leaders today are working to outdo each other in their harsh opposition to immigration, it was actually the leaders of the original Republican Party who recognized the power of immigrants to build the country and articulated an economic justification for increased immigration during the nation’s first major anti-immigrant period.

The United States had always been a nation of immigrants, but in the 1840s the failure of the potato crop in Ireland sent at least half a million Irish immigrants to the United States. As they moved into urban ports on the East Coast, especially in Massachusetts and New York, native-born Americans turned against them as competitors for jobs.

The 1850s saw a similar anti-immigrant fury in the new state of California. After the discovery of gold there in 1848, native-born Americans—the so-called Forty Niners—moved to the West Coast. They had no intention of sharing the riches they expected to find. The Indigenous people who lived there had no right to the land under which gold lay, native-born men thought; nor did the Mexicans whose government had sold the land to the U.S. in 1848; nor did the Chileans, who came with mining skills that made them powerful competitors. Above all, native-born Americans resented the Chinese miners who came to work in order to send money home to a land devastated by the first Opium War.

Democrats and the new anti-immigrant American Party (more popularly known as the “Know Nothings” because members claimed to know nothing about the party) turned against the new immigrants, seeing them as competition that would drive down wages. In the 1850s, Know Nothing officials in Massachusetts persecuted Catholics and deported Irish immigrants they believed were paupers. In California the state legislature placed a monthly tax on Mexican and Chinese miners, made unemployment a crime, took from Chinese men the right to testify in court, and finally tried to stop Chinese immigration altogether by taxing shipmasters $50 for each Chinese immigrant they brought.

When the Republicans organized in the 1850s, they saw society differently than the Democrats and the Know Nothings. They argued that society was not made up of a struggle over a limited economic pie, but rather that hardworking individuals would create more than they could consume, thus producing capital that would make the economy grow. The more people a nation had, the stronger it would be.

In 1860 the new party took a stand against the new laws that discriminated against immigrants. Immigrants’ rights should not be “abridged or impaired,” the delegates to its convention declared, adding that they were “in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.”

Republicans’ support for immigration only increased during the Civil War. In contrast to the southern enslavers, they wanted to fill the land with people who supported freedom. As one poorly educated man wrote to his senator, “Protect Emegration and that will protect the Territories to Freedom.”

Republicans also wanted to bring as many workers to the country as possible to increase economic development. The war created a huge demand for agricultural products to feed the troops. At the same time, a terrible drought in Europe meant there was money to be made exporting grain. But the war was draining men to the battlefields of Stones River and Gettysburg and to the growing U.S. Navy, leaving farmers with fewer and fewer hands to work the land.

By 1864, Republicans were so strongly in favor of immigration that Congress passed “an Act to Encourage Immigration.” The law permitted immigrants to borrow against future homesteads to fund their voyage to the U.S., appropriated money to provide for impoverished immigrants upon their arrival, and, to undercut Democrats’ accusations that they were simply trying to find men to throw into the grinding war, guaranteed that no immigrant could be drafted until he announced his intention of becoming a citizen.

Support for immigration has waxed and waned repeatedly since then, but as recently as 1989, Republican president Ronald Reagan said: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation…. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday “were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’” Will Bunch wrote, quoting Trump; “they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#immigration #history #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Know Nothings #supply chains #economic growth

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grandmaster-anne · 1 year

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Princess Anne’s Country Life guest edit: The inside story of putting together a magazine with The Princess Royal

Country Life | Published 29 July 2020

Paula was the Co-ordinating Editor of the special issue, which was guest-edited by The Princess to mark her forthcoming 70th birthday — a 172-page edition of the magazine highlighting The Princess’s deep love for and thorough understanding of the countryside and those who live and work in it.

‘Working with a small team from The Princess’s office at Buckingham Palace, we overcame the challenges of working from home across the country due to the Coronavirus pandemic to pull together an eclectic edition that truly reflects the issues and the country people that The Princess holds dear,’ says Paula, who compiled the magazine from her kitchen table in Dorset.

‘Working to a list of features supplied by The Princess in February, we quickly marshalled our best writers and photographers to write about and photograph all the subjects requested, while adhering to social distancing rules,’ Paula continues.

‘This involved commissioning one of the very best Scotland-based gardens photographers to illustrate a beautiful, but far-flung garden, surrounding the Ruuval lighthouse on Islay, plus our Picture Editor, Lucy Ford, organising lots of individual open air photo shoots with The Princess’s nominated champions of the countryside.’

The magazine’s Deputy Editor Kate Green and freelance photographer Sarah Farnsworth were also delighted to be invited to The Princess’s home at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, to illustrate her dedication to organic farming and rare breeds.

Once all the words and pictures were ready, the work of putting together the pages could began.

‘Once we’d gathered all articles and images, our talented design team — led by our Art Editor, Emma Earnshaw — set to work creating a series of eye-catching layouts, which were then expertly fitted by our Chief Sub-Editor, Octavia Pollock’ Paula continues. ‘It was a massive effort on behalf of the entire team, including our Photographic Library Manager, Melanie Bryan, who met me just off the A303 to hand over the page proofs ahead of our meeting with The Princess.

‘Having sent nigh on 1,000 emails and made countless telephone calls, we are really proud of the edition and the way it reflects The Princess’s commitment to the countryside and more than 300 patronages,’ enthuses Paula, who, along with Country Life’s Editor-in-Chief Mark Hedges met The Princess at Gatcombe in mid-July to go through the final page proofs.

The issue also includes a 2,000-word leader article, which The Princess wrote on her own iPad, in which she credits her parents for instilling her appreciation of Nature — ‘Both my parents had a love and understanding of the natural world through their own experiences’ — and explains how fortunate she feels to have spent ‘most of my life in the countryside’.

Mark Hedges concludes: ‘It was an absolute delight to have The Princess Royal as our guest editor. Her passion for the countryside shines through with every feature, combined with her concerns that the right action is taken to safeguard the rural way of life for future generations, from providing affordable housing to dealing with fly tipping. We do hope our special edition makes a very fitting 70th birthday present.’

#princess anne #princess royal #country life #article #guest edit

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