#economic recovery after covid

[monicascot]

Weekly Overview: Chinese data still not convincing as to a recovery

In today's video, we'll be diving into some crucial topics impacting the global economy. We'll start by discussing the recent US Consumer Price Index (CPI) data and its implications for the Federal Reserve's interest rate decisions. Then we'll shift our focus to China, examining the concerning signs of a slowdown in their post-COVID recovery. Additionally, we'll explore the economic situation in New Zealand, which has entered a recession.

#natural gas market #trading opportunities #global economic impact #natural gas futures #impact of covid 19 on global economy #chinas economic recovery after covid #economic recovery after covid #stock market news #weekly overview #us consumer price index cpi #global economy #economic slowdown in china #us cpi #us cpi inflation data #eto markets #Youtube

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week

⚡ - Charging Towards a More Electrifying Future

1. The Kissimmee River has been brought back to life—and wildlife is thriving

The Kissimmee River in Florida was straightened in the 1960s, causing a sharp decline in wildlife and ecological problems. But in the 1990s, a $1 billion restoration project was initiated to restore the river's natural state.

Today, nearly half of the river has been restored, wetlands have been reestablished and rehydrated, and wildlife has returned, including rare and threatened species. Already the biological impact of the project has become clear. As the wetlands have come back, so have the birds.

2. Plastic wrap made from seaweed withstands heat and is compostable

A cling film made from an invasive seaweed can withstand high temperatures yet is still easily compostable. The material could eventually become a sustainable choice for food packaging.

Scientists started with a brown seaweed called sargassum. Sargassum contains long, chain-like molecules similar to those that make up conventional plastic, which made it a good raw material. The researchers mixed it with some acids and salts to get a solution full of these molecules, then blended in chemicals that thickened it and made it more flexible and pliable.

3. An Eagle Who Adopted a Rock Becomes a Real Dad to Orphaned Eaglet

Murphy, a bald eagle that had been showing fatherly instincts, has been sharing an enclosure with an eaglet that survived a fall from a tree during a storm in Ste. Genevieve. Murphy, his rock gone by then, took his role as foster parent seriously. He soon began responding to the chick’s peeps, and protecting it.

And when, as a test, the keepers placed two plates of food in front of the birds — one containing food cut into pieces that the chick could eat by itself, and another with a whole fish that only Murphy could handle — the older bird tore up the fish and fed it to the eaglet.

4. World's largest battery maker announces major breakthrough in energy density

In one of the most significant battery breakthroughs in recent years, the world’s largest battery manufacturer CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg which it says will go into mass production this year.

“The launch of condensed batteries will usher in an era of universal electrification of sea, land and air transportation, open up more possibilities of the development of the industry, and promote the achieving of the global carbon neutrality goals at an earlier date,” the company said in a presentation at Auto Shanghai on Thursday.

This could be huge. Electric jets and cargo ships become very possible at this point.

5. Cat with '100% fatal' feline coronavirus saved by human Covid-19 medicine

A beloved household cat has made an “astonishing” recovery from a usually fatal illness, thanks to a drug made to treat Covid-19 in humans – and a quick-thinking vet.

Anya​, the 7-year-old birman cat, was suffering from feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a “100% fatal” viral infection caused by feline coronavirus. That was, until Auckland vet Dr Habin Choi​ intervened, giving Anya an antiviral used to treat Covid-19 called molnupiravir.

6. Kelp forests capture nearly 5 million tonnes of CO2 annually

Kelp forests provide an estimated value of $500 billion to the world and capture 4.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from seawater each year. Most of kelp’s economic benefits come from creating habitat for fish and by sequestering nitrogen and phosphorus.

7. Medical Marijuana Improved Parkinson’s Disease Symptoms in 87% of Patients

Medical cannabis (MC) has recently garnered interest as a potential treatment for neurologic diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD). 87% of patients were noted to exhibit an improvement in any PD symptom after starting medical cannabis. Symptoms with the highest incidence of improvement included cramping/dystonia, pain, spasticity, lack of appetite, dyskinesia, and tremor.

----

That's it for this week :)

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Also don’t forget to reblog

#best news of last week

[contemplatingoutlander]

Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery

The European economy, hobbled by unfamiliar weakness in Germany, is barely growing. China is struggling to recapture its sizzle. And Japan continues to disappoint. But in the United States, it’s a different story. Here, despite lingering consumer angst over inflation, the surprisingly strong economy is outperforming all of its major trading partners. Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a new recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting. “The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.” On Friday, President Biden hailed fresh government data showing that annual inflation over the second half of 2023 fell back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. Coupled with Thursday’s news that the economy grew by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months, the Commerce Department report showed that the United States appears to have achieved an economic soft landing. The post-pandemic recovery challenged long-standing economic beliefs, such as the idea of an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation. (As one rose, the other was expected to fall.) Expressed in what economists call the Phillips curve, this nostrum proved nearly useless in explaining the economy’s recent behavior. [...] “Putting money in people’s hands vs. moving around interest rates, which is monetary policy, fiscal policy is going to be stronger,” Sahm said. “We cannot go into the next crisis being, like, ‘Oh, the Fed’s got this.’” Consumer spending is driving the economy: Real consumption rose by 0.5 percent in December, its fastest pace since last January. Pending home sales jumped, too. Following the flurry of good news, JPMorgan Chase economists said they raised their first-quarter growth forecast.

Biden deserves credit for turning the economy around. This was a front page headline article on the WaPo website for a short time on Sunday Jan. 28th. I didn't see anything about this on The New York Times front page website. The mainstream media should do a better job of conveying this good news about the economy. Certainly, the right-wing media won't do so.

#us economy is booming #world economy #biden administration #inflation is coming down #david j lynch #the washington post

[reasonsforhope]

Toledo City Council just approved a plan to turn $1.6 million in public dollars into as much as $240 million in economic stimulus, targeted at some of the Ohio metro’s most vulnerable residents.

“It’s really going to help people put food on the table, help them pay their rent, help them pay their utilities,” says Toledo City Council Member Michele Grim, who led the way for the measure. “Hopefully we can prevent some evictions.”

The strategy couldn’t be simpler: It works by canceling millions in medical debt.

Working with the New York City-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, the City of Toledo and the surrounding Lucas County are chipping in $800,000 each out of their federal COVID-19 recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The combined $1.6 million in funding is enough for RIP Medical Debt to acquire and cancel up to $240 million in medical debt owed by Lucas County households that earn up to 400% of the federal poverty line.

“It could be more than a one-to-100 return on investment of government dollars,” Grim says. “I really can’t think of a more simple program for economic recovery or a better way of using American Rescue Plan dollars, because it’s supposed to rescue Americans.”

How It Works

Under the RIP Medical Debt model, there is no application process to cancel medical debt. The nonprofit negotiates directly with local hospitals or hospital systems one-by-one, purchasing portfolios of debt owed by eligible households and canceling the entire portfolio en masse.

“One day someone will get a letter saying your debt’s been canceled,” Grim says. It’s a simple strategy for economic welfare and recovery.

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by a pair of former debt collection agents, and since inception it has acquired and canceled more than $7.3 billion in medical debt owed by 4.2 million households — an average of $1,737 per household...

Local Governments Get Involved

The partnership with Toledo and Lucas County is the third instance of the public sector funding RIP Medical Debt to cancel debt portfolios.

Earlier this year, in the largest such example yet, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a plan to provide $12 million in ARPA funds for RIP Medical Debt to purchase and cancel an estimated $1 billion in medical debt held by hospitals across Cook County, which includes Chicago.

“Governments contract with nonprofits all the time for various social interventions,” Sesso says.

“This isn’t really that far-fetched or different from that. I would say between five and 10 other local governments have reached out just since the Toledo story came out.”

What's the Deal with Medical Debt?

An estimated one in five households across the U.S. have some amount of medical debt, and they are disproportionately Black and Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau...

Acquiring medical debt is relatively cheap: hospitals that sell medical debt portfolios do so for just pennies on the dollar, usually to investors on the secondary market.

The purchase price is so low because hospitals and debt buyers alike know that medical debt is the hardest form to collect...

The amount of debt canceled for any given household has ranged from $25 all the way up to six-figure amounts. Under IRS regulations, debts canceled under RIP Medical Debt’s model do not count as taxable income for households...

Massive Expansion Coming Up

After not one but two donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, totaling $80 million, RIP Medical Debt is planning for expansion.

It’s using a portion of those dollars to create an internal revolving line of credit to expand to places where it can find willing sellers before it has found willing funders.

The internal line of credit means the nonprofit now has new, albeit still limited, flexibility to acquire debt portfolios from hospitals first, then begin raising private or public dollars locally to replenish the line of credit later and make those funds available for other locations.

“People often ask, do you only work with nonprofit hospitals, or do you work with for-profit hospitals? And I’m like, I just want to get the debt, regardless of who created the debt. If it’s out there, I want it,” Sesso says.

Fundamentally, they are not solving the issue of medical debt, but easing its pressure from as many lives as possible — while also upping the pressure on lawmakers and the healthcare industry.

“We’re intentionally taking the stories of the individuals whose debt we have resolved, and putting their stories out into the world with intention in a way that tries to push and create more of that pressure to fundamentally solve the problem,” she says.

-via GoodGoodGood, 4/6/23

#toledo #ohio #chicago #cook county #new york #medical debt #healthcare #healthcare access #united states #us politics #debt crisis #debt relief #hospital #nonprofit #good news #hope

[zvaigzdelasas]

Inflation has pulled back significantly from its pandemic-era peak. In fact, some categories have fallen into outright deflation, meaning consumers are seeing the prices decline instead of rise.[...]

Demand for goods soared early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as consumers were confined to their homes and couldn't spend on things such as travel or concerts. The health crisis also snarled global supply chains, meaning volume couldn't keep pace with demand for those goods. Such supply-and-demand dynamics drove up prices.

Now, they're falling back to earth.[...]

"Supply chains are going back to normal," said Jay Bryson, chief economist for Wells Fargo Economics. "And on the demand side, there's been somewhat of a rotation from goods spending back toward services spending."

"We're kind of reverting back to the pre-Covid era," he added.[...]

14 Feb 24

Deflation may soon start biting into Chinese growth, as Beijing looks at another three to six months of a "very painful economy," according to one analyst who covers the country.

"This is something investors need to be cautious of. The economy here is bad, it's pretty ... it's really bad. I've been in China for 27 years, and this is probably the lowest confidence I've ever seen," Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Monday.

“So deflation is starting to wield its ugly head[sic]. Consumers are waiting for discounts. They’re very nervous.”

Linked to a decline in the prices of goods and services, deflation is generally associated with an economic slowdown — raising questions over the growth outlook for China, whose post-Covid-19 recovery has already fallen short of some expectations in 2023. In December, depressed prices for pork — which makes up around a fifth of China’s CPI basket — heralded the possible advent of deflation.

“Deflation is a serious issue, I know the Chinese government doesn’t want me saying it, but it’s an issue that we need to be worried about,” Rein stressed. [...]

Economic slowdown is widely seen as a potential threat to Xi Jinping, whose Chinese Community Party has cultivated national political legitimacy through rapid growth.[...]

″[Buyers] think housing prices might continue to drop, so even if there’s pent-up demand for housing, a lot of home buyers are telling us, we’re not going to buy this month, we’re not going to buy this quarter, because we’re scared prices are going to drop another couple [of] percent in the coming months,” Rein said Monday.

22 Jan 24

Curious 🤔

#deflation (good) vs deflation (bad comma chinese)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wall Street Journal goes to bat for the vultures who want to steal your house

Tonight (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Tomorrow (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

The tacit social contract between the Wall Street Journal and its readers is this: the editorial page is for ideology, and the news section is for reality. Money talks and bullshit walks — and reality’s well-known anticapitalist bias means that hewing too closely to ideology will make you broke, and thus unable to push your ideology.

That’s why the editorial page will rail against “printing money” while the news section will confine itself to asking which kinds of federal spending competes with the private sector (creating a bidding war that drives up prices) and which kinds are not. If you want frothing takes about how covid relief checks will create “debt for our grandchildren,” seek it on the editorial page. For sober recognition that giving small amounts of money to working people will simply go to reducing consumer and student debt, look to the news.

But WSJ reporters haven’t had their corpus colossi severed: the brain-lobe that understands economic reality crosstalks with the lobe that worship the idea of a class hierarchy with capital on top and workers tugging their forelacks. When that happens, the coverage gets weird.

Take this weekend’s massive feature on “zombie mortgages,” long-written-off second mortgages that have been bought by pennies for vultures who are now trying to call them in:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zombie-mortgages-could-force-some-homeowners-into-foreclosure-e615ab2a

These second mortgages — often in the form of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) — date back to the subprime bubble of the early 2000s. As housing prices spiked to obscene levels and banks figured out how to issue risky mortgages and sell them off to suckers, everyday people were encouraged — and often tricked — into borrowing heavily against their houses, on complicated terms that could see their payments skyrocket down the road.

Once the bubble popped in 2008, the value of these houses crashed, and the mortgages fell “underwater” — meaning that market value of the homes was less than the amount outstanding on the mortgage. This triggered the foreclosure crisis, where banks that had received billions in public money forced their borrowers out of their homes. This was official policy: Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted that forcing Americans out of their homes would “foam the runways” for the banks and give them a soft landing;

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

With so many homes underwater on their first mortgages, the holders of those second mortgages wrote them off. They had bought high-risk, high reward debt, the kind whose claims come after the other creditors have been paid off. As prices collapsed, it became clear that there wouldn’t be anything left over after those higher-priority loans were paid off.

The lenders (or the bag-holders the lenders sold the loans to) gave up. They stopped sending borrowers notices, stopped trying to collect. That’s the way markets work, after all — win some, lose some.

But then something funny happened: private equity firms, flush with cash from an increasingly wealthy caste of one percenters, went on a buying spree, snapping up every home they could lay hands on, becoming America’s foremost slumlords, presiding over an inventory of badly maintained homes whose tenants are drowned in junk fees before being evicted:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

This drove a new real estate bubble, as PE companies engaged in bidding wars, confident that they could recoup high one-time payments by charging working people half their incomes in rent on homes they rented by the room. The “recovery” of real estate property brought those second mortgages back from the dead, creating the “zombie mortgages” the WSJ writes about.

These zombie mortgages were then sold at pennies on the dollar to vulture capitalists — finance firms who make a bet that they can convince the debtors to cough up on these old debts. This “distressed debt investing” is a scam that will be familiar to anyone who spends any time watching “finance influencers” — like forex trading and real estate flipping, it’s a favorite get-rich-quick scheme peddled to desperate people seeking “passive income.”

Like all get-rich-quick schemes, distressed debt investing is too good to be true. These ancient debts are generally past the statute of limitations and have been zeroed out by law. Even “good” debts generally lack any kind of paper-trail, having been traded from one aspiring arm-breaker to another so many times that the receipts are long gone.

Ultimately, distressed debt “investing” is a form of fraud, in which the “investor” has to master a social engineering patter in which they convince the putative debtor to pay debts they don’t actually owe, either by shading the truth or lying outright, generally salted with threats of civil and criminal penalties for a failure to pay.

That certainly goes for zombie mortgages. Writing about the WSJ’s coverage on Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith reminds readers not to “pay these extortionists a dime” without consulting a lawyer or a nonprofit debt counsellor, because any payment “vitiates” (revives) an otherwise dead loan:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/wall-street-journal-aids-vulture-investors-threatening-second-mortgage-borrowers-with-foreclosure-on-nearly-always-legally-unenforceable-debt.html

But the WSJ’s 35-paragraph story somehow finds little room to advise readers on how to handle these shakedowns. Instead, it lionizes the arm-breakers who are chasing these debts as “investors…[who] make mortgage lending work.” The Journal even repeats — without commentary — the that these so-called investors’ “goal is to positively impact homeowners’ lives by helping them resolve past debt.”

This is where the Journal’s ideology bleeds off the editorial page into the news section. There is no credible theory that says that mortgage markets are improved by safeguarding the rights of vulture capitalists who buy old, forgotten second mortgages off reckless lenders who wrote them off a decade ago.

Doubtless there’s some version of the Hayek Mind-Virus that says that upholding the claims of lenders — even after those claims have been forgotten, revived and sold off — will give “capital allocators” the “confidence” they need to make loans in the future, which will improve the ability of everyday people to afford to buy houses, incentivizing developers to build houses, etc, etc.

But this is an ideological fairy-tale. As Michael Hudson describes in his brilliant histories of jubilee — debt cancellation — through history, societies that unfailingly prioritize the claims of lenders over borrowers eventually collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Foundationally, debts are amassed by producers who need to borrow capital to make the things that we all need. A farmer needs to borrow for seed and equipment and labor in order to sow and reap the harvest. If the harvest comes in, the farmer pays their debts. But not every harvest comes in — blight, storms, war or sickness — will eventually cause a failure and a default.

In those bad years, farmers don’t pay their debts, and then they add to them, borrowing for the next year. Even if that year’s harvest is good, some debt remains. Gradually, over time, farmers catch enough bad beats that they end up hopelessly mired in debt — debt that is passed on to their kids, just as the right to collect the debts are passed on to the lenders’ kids.

Left on its own, this splits society into hereditary creditors who get to dictate the conduct of hereditary debtors. Run things this way long enough and every farmer finds themselves obliged to grow ornamental flowers and dainties for their creditors’ dinner tables, while everyone else goes hungry — and society collapses.

The answer is jubilee: periodically zeroing out creditors’ claims by wiping all debts away. Jubilees were declared when a new king took the throne, or at set intervals, or whenever things got too lopsided. The point of capital allocation is efficiency and thus shared prosperity, not enriching capital allocators. That enrichment is merely an incentive, not the goal.

For generations, American policy has been to make housing asset appreciation the primary means by which families amass and pass on wealth; this is in contrast to, say, labor rights, which produce wealth by rewarding work with more pay and benefits. The American vision is that workers don’t need rights as workers, they need rights as owners — of homes, which will always increase in value.

There’s an obvious flaw in this logic: houses are necessities, as well as assets. You need a place to live in order to raise a family, do a job, found a business, get an education, recover from sickness or live out your retirement. Making houses monotonically more expensive benefits the people who get in early, but everyone else ends up crushed when their human necessity is treated as an asset:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Worse: without a strong labor sector to provide countervailing force for capital, US politics has become increasingly friendly to rent-seekers of all kinds, who have increased the cost of health-care, education, and long-term care to eye-watering heights, forcing workers to remortgage, or sell off, the homes that were meant to be the source of their family’s long-term prosperity:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

Today, reality’s leftist bias is getting harder and harder to ignore. The idea that people who buy debt at pennies on the dollar should be cheered on as they drain the bank-accounts — or seize the homes — of people who do productive work is pure ideology, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on the WSJ’s editorial page, but which sticks out like a sore thumb in the news pages.

Thankfully, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is on the case. Director Rohit Chopra has warned the arm-breakers chasing payments on zombie mortgages that it’s illegal for them to “threaten judicial actions, such as foreclosures, for debts that are past a state’s statute of limitations.”

But there’s still plenty of room for more action. As Smith notes, the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement — a “get out of jail for almost free” card for the big banks — enticed lots of banks to discharge those second mortgages. Per Smith: “if any servicer sold a second mortgage to a vulture lender that it had charged off and used for credit in the National Mortgage Settlement, it defrauded the Feds and applicable state.”

Maybe some hungry state attorney general could go after the banks pulling these fast ones and hit them for millions in fines — and then use the money to build public housing.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in London and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets

[Image ID: A Georgian eviction scene in which a bobby oversees three thugs who are using a battering ram to knock down a rural cottage wall. The image has been crudely colorized. A vulture looks on from the right, wearing a top-hat. The battering ram bears the WSJ logo.]

#pluralistic #great financial crisis #vulture capitalism #debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid #zombie debts #jubilee #michael hudson #wall street journal #business press #house thieves #debt #statute of limitations

[covidsafehotties]

Just a "mild" neuron infection you got from brunch with the girlies :)

Highlights

"Our study shows that the increase in serum biomarkers of neuronal and glial damage, sNfL and sGFAP, was present one week after resolution of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection or mild COVID-19 and was more pronounced in patients with cognitive impairment. Furthermore, 10 months after resolution of the infection, levels of these biomarkers were still significantly higher than in healthy controls, although reduced from those observed at baseline. At the same time, self-reported cognitive impairment appeared to worsen in the same subjects, suggesting that early neuronal and glial damage may have resolved by 10 months post-infection, although subjective cognitive impairment may persist or become more pronounced."

"The second relevant finding of our study is represented by the higher sNfL and sGFAP levels in the eleven COVID-19 patients complaining of cognitive failures at T0. Cognitive deficits are common after COVID-19 and can impair executive functions, attention, and episodic memory. Studies on the neuropsychological alterations during acute COVID-19 and in the post-COVID-19 phase show inhomogeneous results, particularly for the variable time of the evaluation, ranging from two to five weeks after the onset, up to one year after the recovery. Most of these studies, however, mainly focus on hospitalized patients, being non-hospitalised patients somehow overlooked."

"A recent study showed that more than one-third of hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients after COVID-19 experienced a perceived cognitive deficit after 30 days after hospitalization or outpatient infection. It should be noticed that, differently from our population, this patient cohort included mainly hospitalized patients with remarkable comorbidities. Our study shows cognitive failure immediately following the recovery in a not negligible percentage (7.5%) of COVID-19 patients, suggesting a clinical impact of SARS-CoV-2 even in individuals with the mildest forms of the disease."

"The previous literature on mild or non-severe COVID-19 cases clearly indicates their significant impact on cognitive function, particularly in domains such as working memory and processing speed, with a good potential for recovery over time though some impairments may persist. Cognitive failures, therefore, may interfere with highly complex working activities, particularly those that require attending to and remembering large amounts of information, like academic or administrative jobs."

"Our patients with CFQ scores higher than 43 could experience high difficulties when returning to their work. The negative impact on daily functioning and quality of life of post-COVID cognitive dysfunction has been highlighted by Quan et al. emphasizing the economic, health, and social burden associated with. In fact, Beck and Flow demonstrate that individuals who had contracted SARS-CoV-2 infection reported cognitive failures at work and difficulty performing their tasks, highly detrimental to their performance, and may leave a job looking for other sources of employment."

"This evidence provides support for the need to perform careful neuropsychological evaluations for all the workers following SARS-CoV-2 infection, to allow both an adequate resumption of work activities and to monitor the onset of any cognitive impairment even in workers with a previous mild COVID-19 or asymptomatic infection."

#mask up #covid #covid 19 #covid isn't over #pandemic #covid conscious #long covid #covid is airborne #wear a mask #coronavirus

[mightyflamethrower]

he post-Joe McCarthy era and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater once prompted liberal political scientist Richard Hofstadter to chronicle a supposedly long-standing right-wing “paranoid style” of conspiracy-fed extremism.

But far more common, especially in the 21st century, has been a left-wing, hysterical style of inventing scandals and manipulating perceived tensions for political advantage.

Or, in the immortal words of Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

The 2008 economic emergency crested on September 7, with the near collapse of the home mortgage industry.

Obama took office on January 20, 2009, more than four months after the meltdown. In that interim, the officials had finally restored financial confidence and plotted a course of economic recovery.

No matter. The Obama administration never stopped hyping the financial meltdown as if it had just occurred. That way, it rammed through Obamacare, massive deficit spending, and the vast expansion of the federal government. All that stymied economic growth and recovery for years.

In 2016, Donald Trump was declared Hitler-like and an existential threat to democracy.

Amid this derangement syndrome, any means necessary to stop him were justified: the Russian collusion hoax, impeachment over a phone call, or the Hunter laptop disinformation farce.

Eventually, the left sought to normalize the once unthinkable: removing the leading presidential candidate from state ballots and indicting him in state and local courts.

Nothing was off limits—not forging a federal court document, calling for a military coup, rioting on Inauguration Day, or radically changing the way Americans voted in presidential elections.

In October 2017, allegations surfaced about serial sexual predation by liberal cinema icon Harvey Weinstein.

The #MeToo furor immediately followed.

At first, accusers properly outed dozens of mostly liberal celebrities, actors, authors, and CEOs for their prior and mostly covered-up sexual harassment and often assault.

But soon, the once legitimate movement had morphed into general hysteria. Thousands of men (and women) were persecuted for alleged offenses, often sexual banter or rude repartee, committed decades prior.

#MeToo jumped the shark with the left-wing effort to take down conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Would-be accusers surfaced from his high school days, 35 years earlier, but without any supporting evidence or witnesses for their wild, lurid charges.

#MeToo hysteria ended when too many liberal grandees were endangered. Most dramatically, former Joe Biden senatorial aide Tara Reade came forward during the 2020 campaign cycle with charges that front-runner Joe Biden had once sexually assaulted her—and was trashed by the liberal media.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States during the winter of 2020 prompted an even greater hysteria.

Without scientific evidence, federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were able to convince the Trump administration to shut down the economy in the country’s first national quarantine.

Suddenly, it became a thought crime to question the wisdom of six-foot social distancing, of mandatory mask wearing, of the Wuhan virology lab’s origin of the COVID virus, or of off-label use of prescription drugs.

Left-wing politicians and celebrities, from Hillary Clinton and Gavin Newsom to Jane Fonda, all blurted out the political advantages that the lockdowns offered—from recalibrating capitalism and health care to ensuring the 2020 defeat of Donald Trump.

The COVID hysteria magically ended when Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Suddenly, the lies about the bat or pangolin origins of the virus faded. The damage from the quarantines could no longer be repressed. And herd immunity gradually mitigated the epidemic.

The lockdown caused untold economic chaos, suicides, and health crises.

One result was the 120 days of looting, arson, death, destruction, and violence spawned by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd while in police custody in May 2020.

Suddenly, a hysterical lie took hold: American police were waging war against black males.

The details around Floyd’s sudden death—he was in the act of committing a felony, resisting arrest, suffering from coronary artery disease and the after-effects of COVID, and being high on dangerous drugs—were off limits.

The riot toll reached $2 billion in property damage, over 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law enforcement officers. A federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church were torched.

Police forces were defunded. Emboldened left-wing prosecutors nullified existing laws.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion commissars spread throughout American higher education as meritocracy came under assault.

Racial essentialism triumphed. Racially segregated dorms, campus spaces, and graduations were normalized.

Everything from destroying the southern border to dropping SAT requirements for college admission followed.

Sometimes real, sometimes hyped crises lead to these contrived left-wing hysterias—like the January 6 violent “armed insurrection” or the “fascist” “ultra-MAGA” threat.

Otherwise, the progressive movement cannot enact its unpopular agendas. So it must scare the people silly and gin up chaos to destroy its perceived enemies—any crisis it can.

[kp777]

By Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams

Oct. 13, 2023

"As the scale of climate change impresses itself more and more on us, we are going to need bolder things," Stiglitz said at the IMF and World Bank's annual meeting in Morocco.

The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, should give poorer nations $300 billion a year to respond to the climate emergency, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

Stiglitz outlined his recommendation in an interview with The Guardian as he attended the fund's annual meeting with the World Bank in Marrakesh, Morocco, which runs from Monday, October 9 to Sunday, October 15.

"As the scale of climate change impresses itself more and more on us, we are going to need bolder things," Stiglitz said.

In his call, Stiglitz joined the push for the IMF to release more Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a reserve asset that can be exchanged for cash. Wealthy nations also have the option of placing their SDRs in a fund for poorer countries.

"Basically, it is printing money," Stiglitz said. "It wouldn't be inflationary but it would be transformative."

Stiglitz' remarks came about a week after nearly 60 U.S. Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking them to support a new allocation of SDRs. The IMF issued $650 billion in SDRs in 2021 to help with the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the legislators wanted it to issue the same amount to help nations address the climate crisis, war, and future pandemics.

Stiglitz's call is even bolder at $300 billion a year, because the lawmakers limited themselves to an amount that the IMF could approve without a vote from Congress. While Stiglitz acknowledged his plan was ambitious and unlikely to pass through the current U.S. Congress, it was worth pushing for given the urgency of the moment.

"When the time comes and we are frying and somebody says: 'How do we get out of the frying pan?,' this [annual SDR allocations] is one way of doing so," he told The Guardian.

Stiglitz said the money should be used to help poorer nations fund their equivalent to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act—which invested $370 billion in renewable energy. But it's impossible for less wealthy countries to make that kind of investment on their own, Stiglitz said.

"Developing countries can't do it on any scale," he told The Guardian. "Unless developing countries and emerging markets reduce their emissions, no matter what pieties we do in the U.S. and Europe, we will get global warming. The rhetoric is about doing something about climate change and then rather than getting onboard [the people] you most need to get onboard, you alienate them."

In a report published Thursday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) agreed that many poorer nations are not in the financial position to take ambitious climate action, and proposed more SDRs as one potential remedy. What's holding them back, CEPR said, was a large debt burden: Almost 80 low-to-middle-income countries face debt distress, and three-fourths of these are especially vulnerable to climate impacts. This creates a "vicious cycle" in which countries struggle to both service debt and respond to extreme weather events, leaving them unable to either get out of debt or recover from disasters and invest in the future.

"Most of the world is going through what many have termed a 'polycrisis,' facing down high levels of external debt, combined with interlocking crises of food insecurity, fluctuating energy prices, impacts of war, and of course, the climate crisis," report coauthor Ivana Vasic Lalovic said in a statement. "Countries are limited in what they can do to respond to the climate crisis, though, when they are forced to divert so much of their resources toward servicing their debts."

The report, titled The Growing Debt Burdens of Global South Countries: Standing in the Way of Climate and Development Goals, called on major financial institutions to address the situation by updating debt resolution frameworks, providing debt relief, financing through grants instead of loans, and allocating more Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

"The international finance community needs to accept that the current dynamic, which prioritizes debt service–no matter how burdensome–over human needs and the urgency of climate crisis preparedness and response is unsustainable," coauthor Lara Merling said in a statement. "They need to step forward with solutions. Millions of lives may depend on it."

#IMF #Special Drawing Rights #SDR #climate crisis #climate change #joseph stiglitz #Center for Economic and Policy Research #CEPR

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 5, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 06, 2024

Today offered yet more evidence that Biden’s rejection of the Republicans’ supply-side economics in favor of investing in ordinary Americans is paying off with high growth, low unemployment, and strong wages. 

Today’s jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor for the month of March showed higher job growth than analysts anticipated. Instead of the 214,000 jobs expected, the U.S. added 303,000. The government also revised its estimate of job growth in January and February upward by a combined number of 22,000. President Joe Biden noted that this report meant that the administration had created more than 15 million jobs since he took office.

The unemployment rate was also good, dropping slightly to 3.8% in March. According to economist Steven Rattner of Morning Joe, the United States has now had 26 consecutive months—more than two years—of unemployment under 4%, the longest stretch of unemployment that low since the late 1960s. 

Rattner pointed out that immigrants have helped to push U.S. growth since the pandemic by adding millions of new workers to the labor market. As native-born workers have aged into retirement, immigrants have taken their places and “been essential to America’s post-COVID labor market recovery.” 

Heather Long of the Washington Post added that wage growth has been 4.1% in the past year, which is well above the 3.2% inflation rate.

“My plan is growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, investing in all Americans, and giving the middle class a fair shot,” Biden said in response to the new jobs report. That system, which resurrects the economy the United States enjoyed between 1933 and 1981, has been a roaring success. 

Biden was in Baltimore, Maryland, today, where he flew over the remains of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, spoke with the response teams there, and met with the families of those who died when the bridge fell. Apparently trying to demonstrate that government can be both efficient and effective, the administration has emphasized speed and competence in its response to the bridge collapse of March 26, 2024.

Kayla Tausche of CNN reported today that the U.S. Coast Guard was onsite within minutes of the collapse, and that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was working the phone as soon as he heard. He had spoken with Maryland governor Wes Moore, Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott, and White House chief of staff Jeff Zients by 5:00 a.m. Biden was briefed early that morning, before he began to reach out to state and local leaders. 

Baltimore County executive Johnny Olszewski told Tausche: “[Biden] demonstrated a clear understanding of the importance of the port, had a real empathy for myself and all the individuals impacted…. And he was unequivocal that he was going to do whatever he can, legally and within his power to expedite a response.”

The collapse of the bridge not only affected traffic around Baltimore, but also shut the Port of Baltimore. For 13 years, that port has led the nation in carrying cars and light trucks, as well as tractors and cranes, handling more than 847,000 vehicles in 2023. In that same year, the port handled more than 444,000 passengers and $80 billion worth of foreign cargo. The damage to the port is of national significance. 

Less than four hours after it received an official request for funding for repairs on March 29, the Department of Transportation authorized funds to begin to address immediate needs, which officials say is a record. The Army Corps of Engineers says it expects to restore a narrow navigation channel for use by the end of April and to have the port reopened fully by the end of May. Until then, the federal government is improving the infrastructure at nearby Sparrows Point to enable it to handle more ships. 

But the Republican Party remains committed to the idea that the government must be kept small and that private enterprise must be privileged over public investments. Today, the far-right House Freedom Caucus announced that it would not consider funding the bridge repairs until foreign shipping companies had paid in all they owe (Biden has called for funding the bridge immediately rather than waiting for insurance funds, which will come much later).  

They also say that they want the repairs to come out of money Congress has appropriated for other initiatives they dislike, that any new funds must be fully offset by other cuts, and that “burdensome regulations” such as labor agreements must be waived “to avoid all unnecessary delays and costs.” 

They are also demanding that Biden reverse the administration’s “pause on approvals of liquified natural gas export terminals” before Congress will consider any funding for the bridge reconstruction. In January, under pressure from climate activists, Biden paused the construction of such terminals. Liquid natural gas is a valuable export, but it is also made up primarily of methane, a greenhouse gas significantly worse for the planet than carbon dioxide. Oil and gas interests are strongly in favor of developing the liquid natural gas industry while ignoring its effects on climate change.

One of the proposed plants affected by the pause would have been the largest in the U.S. It is planned for Louisiana, the home state of House speaker Mike Johnson. Johnson has already tried to tie funding for Ukraine to lifting the pause on liquid natural gas export terminals, and the White House refused. Now, apparently, extremist Republicans are trying the same gambit with repairs to the Francis Scott Key Bridge and access to one of the nation’s most important ports, although slowing repairs at that key juncture will directly affect many of their constituents.  

Indeed, despite the solid demonstration that government support for ordinary Americans is the best way to build the economy, Republicans continue to maintain that the way to promote economic growth is to concentrate money among a few men at the top of the economic ladder. The idea is that those few people will invest their money more efficiently than the government can, and that the businesses they create will employ more and more workers. To that end, Republicans since 1981 have focused on tax cuts and deregulation in order to give those they see as job creators a free hand. 

That system, so-called “supply-side economics,” has never actually worked, but it has become an article of faith for Republicans. It is a system that is popular with the very wealthy, and Biden called that out today in a video he recorded with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

In the video, the two men comment on a video clip in which former president Trump, speaking at a private event, promises wealthy donors another tax cut. Biden says: “That’s everything you need to know about Donald Trump. When he thinks the cameras aren’t on, he tells his rich friends, ‘We’re gonna give you tax cuts.’” 

Sanders chimes in: “Can anybody in America imagine that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality—billionaires are doing phenomenally well—that he’s going to give them huge tax breaks? And then at the same time, he’s going to cut Social Security, Medicare, and programs that our kids need….”

“That makes me mad as hell, quite frankly,” Biden says. “There are 1,000 billionaires in…this country. They pay an average of 8.2% [in] federal taxes. So…we have a plan: Asking his good buddies to begin to pay their fair share.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Biden Economy #supply side economics #trickle down economics #failed Republican ideas #income inequality

[monicascot]

Weekly Overview: Chinese data still not convincing as to a recovery

In today's video, we'll be diving into some crucial topics impacting the global economy. We'll start by discussing the recent US Consumer Price Index (CPI) data and its implications for the Federal Reserve's interest rate decisions.

#natural gas market #trading opportunities #global economic impact #natural gas futures #impact of covid 19 on global economy #chinas economic recovery after covid #economic recovery after covid #stock market news #weekly overview #us consumer price index cpi #global economy #economic slowdown in china

[mariacallous]

China’s recently announced GDP target for 2024  remains unchanged from last year, at 5 percent. But even if the country hits that number, its economic problems run deep. In January, China published economic data for the last quarter of 2023 which put its annual GDP growth rate at 5.2 percent, beating the government target. Yet, to put things in perspective, China’s real GDP growth rate from 2011 to 2019 averaged 7.3 percent while 2001-10 saw average growth of 10.5 percent.

After the figures dipped in 2020 to 2.2 percent owing to COVID-19, expectations for post-pandemic recovery were high. This was rooted in the assumption that China lifting its dynamic zero-COVID policy in January 2023 would unlock pent-up demand in the economy, which remained suppressed during the two-year-long lockdown. But that hasn’t happened. Some observers even doubt the recently released GDP data’s authenticity and suspect the numbers are far below the official figures.

But even if the figures are accurate, the wider trends of the Chinese economy suggest a worrying state of affairs. To begin with, this was the first time since 2010 that China’s real GDP growth rate exceeded its nominal GDP growth rate (4.8 percent). The nominal growth rate is calculated on the previous year’s numbers without accounting for inflation. Discounting inflation is necessary to remove any distortion arising from a mere increase in the prices of goods and services. Thus, the real GDP figure is calculated after adjusting for inflation to reflect the increase in output of goods and services. This is also the number economists and governments refer to when stating GDP growth numbers.

Usually, the nominal growth rate should be higher than the real growth rate. But in a deflationary year, the real growth rate can give a distorted picture, because deflation or negative inflation amplifies the real numbers. Thus, the fact that China’s real GDP number exceeded its nominal number indicates that Beijing’s gross value of output in real terms was amplified thanks to negative inflation, i.e. a general decrease in the prices of goods and services. If not for deflation, China’s real GDP growth in 2023 would have been even lower and would have certainly missed the national target of 5 percent.

The news on China’s gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) isn’t encouraging either. The term refers to the acquisition of fixed assets such as land and machines or equipment intended for production of goods and services. It is one of the four components of GDP (besides exports, household consumption, and government expenditure) and a measure of investment in the economy. For decades, China relied on a high GFCF rate to power its economy, but it has witnessed a sustained decline under President Xi Jinping’s leadership. For reference, the GFCF growth rate in the last 9 years (2014-22) averaged 6.7 percent as compared to 13 percent in the 21 years before that (1994-2014). It hit over 10 percent only on four occasions in the last nine years, once  in 2021 thanks only to a significantly low base due to the pandemic year.

The bulk of this investment came from the real estate sector, which constituted a quarter of China’s total investments in fixed assets. Between 1994 and 2014, the sector witnessed a year-on-year growth rate of around 30 percent. But in the last eight years, the property sector has witnessed average growth of only 4.2 percent—and shrank by 10 percent from 2021 to 2022.

In part, the drop in investment can be attributed to the conscious decision of the central leadership under Xi to deflate the property bubble, which had become unsustainable, and reallocate and redirect capital from speculative to more productive forces. The decelerating impact this decision has had on China’s GDP has forced leadership to reverse its policies to some degree, trying to prop up the bubble. But the forced deflation is now proving too resistant to change, as is evident from the 2023 numbers that suggest the real estate sector shrunk by 9.6 percent.

But that’s not the only reason for the drop in investment. In the past year, China’s economy has witnessed an increasing securitization of its development. On numerous occasions, including at the 20th Party Congress in 2022 and the Two Sessions in 2023, Xi has underlined that the idea of development cannot be isolated from that of security. In a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s National Security Commission last year, Xi reiterated the need to “push for a deep integration of development and security.”

Consequently, in the first half of 2023, Chinese authorities carried out a series of crackdowns on foreign and domestic consultancy companies that offered consultancy services to help overseas businesses navigate China’s challenging regulatory environment. The infamous instances included raids on U.S. companies Mintz in March and Bain & Company in April. In May, Shanghai-based consultancy Capvison saw its offices raided for stealing state secrets and transferring sensitive information to its foreign clients. Weeks later, China’s Cyberspace Administration announced that U.S. chip giant Micron failed to obtain security clearance for its products.

This need to put security over the economy further became apparent in China’s revision of its counter-espionage law, which came into effect in July 2023. The updated law not only broadens and dilutes the definition of espionage but also confers wide-ranging powers on local authorities to seize data and electronic equipment on account of suspicion. China’s new developmental security approach, which manifested in its crackdown on foreign and domestic consultancies alike, has spooked private investors since then.

The government has issued repeated assurances to both domestic and foreign investors to improve the business environment and spur investment. However, investment in fixed assets by private holding companies has been declining since 2018. It briefly rebounded in 2021, only to drop again in 2022. The data for 2023, although not yet updated, is unlikely to pick up.

In contrast, investment by the state has gone up to compensate for the decline in private investment. But this can’t be a substitute in the long run for two reasons. First, rising government debt at a time when private investment is declining can lead to crowding out of capital, thereby shrinking the resource pool for private businesses. And second, the government has already stretched itself as its debt-to-GDP ratio rose to 55.9 percent in 2023. Given the mounting debt situation, there exists very little room for the government to even sustain, let alone expand, its current expenditure.

The data on China’s net exports suggests their contribution to GDP, although steadily picking up since recording a low in 2018, is unlikely to return to the glory years of 2001-14. While China will continue to be a leading export nation, the contribution of net exports to its growth rate might not be high. Poor external demand also means that export-oriented investments will see a decline, thereby pulling the overall investment rates further down albeit with a lag.

China’s strategy in the wake of this situation has been to seek to boost domestic consumption and household spending. Yet for domestic consumption to emerge as a new engine of growth requires not only sustaining its previous momentum but also increasing its share as a percentage of GDP to compensate for the loss of growth due to falling investment (in property and export-oriented sectors) rate.

However, a look at China’s household consumption expenditure as a percentage of GDP suggests that it has remained significantly low compared to other consumption-driven advanced and emerging economies. For instance, in both the United States and India, household consumption makes up more than 55 percent of GDP. In contrast, China’s household consumption has historically hovered around 40 percent—and dropped to 37 percent in 2022.

To add to the misery, the growth of China’s household consumption expenditure is also declining in the wake of a pandemic that left the public deeply insecure about their financial future. For ten years (2010-19), growth remained stable at around 10 percent before the pandemic forced the household consumption growth rate to drop to zero in 2020. After recording an uptick in 2021from that low, the growth rate dropped again in 2022. The negative difference between the nominal and real GDP in 2023, indicative of deflation, further confirmed the sluggish demand in the economy.

Thus, domestic consumption seems unlikely to be able to fuel China’s growth. The rising unemployment rate, declining consumer confidence, aging population, and rising dependence ratio will further burden any attempt to raise China’s consumption.

These trends may be baked in the near to medium term. China will not see a return to the high growth rates witnessed in 1980-2010 and will instead stabilize near 4 percent. This will likely derail China’s plan to transition from a middle- to a high-income country and certainly dent Xi’s dream of transforming China into an advanced socialist country. The much-dreaded fear of the “middle-income trap” is real for China.

[freehawaii]

SLAP IN THE FACE - MAUI SET TO REOPEN FOR TOURISM - RESIDENTS OUTRAGED

ABCNews.Go.com - September 19, 2023

West Maui, an area devastated by wildfires that ravaged the historic town of Lahaina less than two months ago, is set to reopen for visitors on Oct. 8. Lahaina will remain fully closed to the public until further notice, according to the Hawaiian Tourism Authority. The decision to open up for tourism has prompted outrage from some residents, many of whom remain displaced and have yet to pick up the pieces of their destroyed homes. Jeremy Delos Reyes, one of the roughly 7,500 displaced residents, is living with his family at a nearby hotel and is angered to learn that the state is planning for the return of visitors to the disaster area. Reyes has lived on Maui for 48 years. "Why am I stuck at a resort right now every day, waking up wondering if me and my wife and my family are going to get kicked out because tourists need a place to stay?" he told ABC News in an interview. He continued: "Why do these displaced people that lost family members -- lost everything they own -- have to go to work now and put on a smile to serve cocktails, to bring towels, to clean their room? How would that make you feel if you lost your family and everything you own?” Oct. 8 will mark two months since the wildfires began their destruction. Displaced residents say they have yet to revisit their old homes, as they await clearance from federal and local agencies to clear the areas as safe from hazardous materials and poor air quality. The disaster area is restricted to authorized personnel only, and many areas still don't have access to clean, safe drinking water. Many children from the region are still being transported to schools outside of West Maui, with expectations that schools will start up around Oct. 13 if they prove to be safe for return.

Jordan Ruidas, a resident and community organizer, has created a petition to delay the reopening of West Maui that has gathered more than 5,000 signatures. Tiny.One/DelayTheReopening "With it being exactly two months after the tragic fires … it seemed like a slap in the face honestly," she told ABC News in an interview. Ruidas said she and others know that West Maui will eventually need to open, "but what's concerning to me is our government officials have not hit certain benchmarks that a lot of us working class, Lahaina locals feel like we need before we can even start to get back to some kind of normalcy.” However, some business owners in the region are anxious for economic support. Noah Drazkowski, who was born and raised in West Maui and owns a local business, said his feelings are mixed about the reopening. The majority of his income comes from tourism, he says. The impact of the fire has compounded on top of the economic hit the COVID-19 pandemic had on his business. "Being born and raised here, it's difficult to want to reopen and that tourism is going to come back in," Drazkowski said. "But as a business owner, I know that we need it. I know that our families need it. You know, we need to be able to get back to some kind of normalcy to help push forward.” Tourism accounts for a large chunk of Maui County's economy. According to the Maui Economic Development Board, approximately 70% of every dollar is generated directly or indirectly by the visitor industry. The board calls tourism the “economic engine” for the County of Maui. Some residents don't want it to be this way, arguing that the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands has impacted the ownership of land and water for Native Hawaiians. Maui has been under water restrictions in recent years amid an ongoing drought and has been facing a housing crisis, as costs skyrocket. As residents continue to grieve, some fear the devastation will be exploited by visitors gawking at the tragedy. Those who do decide to come when West Maui opens, residents ask that they be respectful of the grieving city. Drazkowski recommends volunteering in the recovery efforts while on vacation if possible. "We went through a crisis. We went through a natural disaster. A lot of families are still grieving and still processing and they don't really want to see, they don't really want to see anyone on the side of the road trying to take pictures of what happened to their home," said Drazkowski.

#maui wildfire #maui strong #lahaina strong #delay the reopening #free hawaii #hawaiian kingdom

[wormeats]

I fell for propaganda and was turned against those I have always wanted to root for

I wanted to send this to the CDC somehow, but the email contact form on their website has a character limit and I'm incapable of being concise. I thought this might be helpful for some people to see because it took me a while to reflect on.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, living in Florida, being young and trans and traumatized by the current political climate and dangers posed by the pandemic, I was swayed by likely a mix of propaganda and a fear and anger response to the amount of stress that time came with. I found myself trusting in the CDC less because of several things that I never fully examined until now recently. It was all just a mix of fear and hopeless rage about public health and my fears about our political climate, and much of that was directed at the CDC. Upon examining this recently, I think this was because I assumed the CDC had more power than it may actually have in enforcing public health. I thought isolation periods could be more solidly mandated, that mask wearing could be solidly mandated, and so on. I assumed the CDC had more control over when schools reopened for children (I now realize a lot of this is controlled by states individually or even more locally), and in my fear of the pandemic and distrust in the CDC sowed by being worried about the country as a whole, I even failed to fully weigh the consideration that virtual learning has a significant impact on Anyone’s mental health and that for children especially, social and emotional development should be fostered and that is an issue that gravely concerns mental health extending to the rest of their lives. I thought the CDC could require employers to keep allowing employees to have sick days when testing positive, so they wouldn't have to make a choice between risking their job and livelihood versus strangers’ physical health and possibly risking permanent damage or death for some with no way to tell (I'm grateful that the risk has been reduced so much by vaccines/boosters and being cautious with masking and washing hands, but I feel it is so important to allow isolation away from work when it concerns transmission and health and recovery). I particularly was swayed more into distrust when I heard that Delta airlines wrote a letter asking the CDC to update isolation periods for vaccinated individuals who would still be required to mask, believing there was no new data to give confidence to such a change in recommendations (10 day isolation period to 5 day isolation and next 5 days with a mask), but found there explicitly was reasoning given on the CDC update from that time available to view on the website’s archives (these have been very helpful because the time of all of this was an emotional traumatizing blur, so specifics are hard to remember). Before I examined this all more after the fact, this led me to believe that the CDC was influenced by economic concerns and the workforce instead of public health and keeping those workers alive and healthy, and furthered my distrust.

I am glad that now I have further examined where this distrust has come from and found that it was irrational on my part, and I regret that I carried on with this tainted view of the CDC for so long. I have struggled with this because I did have a strong trust in the CDC and felt more unsure of where I should find reliable information, knowing the CDC certainly has more expertise than I and has likely devoted a lot of time and research to any particular consideration I might come up with. I hope if others were similarly swayed by political propaganda that sought to utilize fear and stress from the pandemic, that they too come to reexamine how they came to think that way and find trust in this institution of scientists who are clearly passionate about public health and finding ways to keep all of us safe with many unpredictable variables to consider. I feel very ashamed that I allowed my trust in the CDC to be shaken to this extent. I hope scientific research, public health concerns, environmental concerns, and any crisis that requires humanity to understand facts and cooperate is taken more seriously and listened to from experts in each respective field and not turned into political opinions one way or the other. I am so devastated by all the damage COVID has done that feels like it could've been so preventable if this didn't become a political issue and remained a public health crisis to work through cooperatively. I have now come to see that I think the CDC did as much as it could through all of this with all of the consideration at the time and with its limited influence amidst political stress.

Thank you everyone at the CDC, I am sorry that I fell for this propaganda, and I would like to talk to as many people in my life about addressing propaganda and fully considering that no one is fully safe from falling prey to propaganda and biases we don't realize are tainting our full view. Thank you again so much for everything incredible that you have done for humanity. Be kind to yourselves everyone, shit has been so hard honestly.

#cdc #center for disease control and prevention #propaganda #covid #covid19 #covid-19 #covid 19 #coronavirus #public health #idk what to tag aaaaaa #also i was Pretty Sure from everything i was looking at and trying to find that the CDC didnt have as much power to set mandates and stuff #But in case i missed something and am wrong on anything i said here plsss let me know i would wanna look into that :o #bc i kept trying to dig further and find if the cdc did anything i actually disagreed with or thought was irresponsible #and i think most of it was just i thought they could do more Oop and the trump administration did not make shit easy

[ailelie]

The thing about being a millennial

In technology, we have experienced the rise of computers, cell phones, social media, and AI. Computers happened when we were kids. Cell phones hit when many of us were teens. Social media hit in college. AI now that we're working. In each case (except maybe computers), we experienced these transitions when they would have maximum impact on our lives.

Culturally, we've experienced a somewhat normal push toward widespread liberty and justice (e.g., interracial marriage first got majority approval across the US in 1997; homosexuality is less taboo than it was when we were kids) and, more importantly and tragically, we have also experienced the very harsh push-back (e.g., anti-trans laws, police killings and brutality).

Culturally, while we matured in the shadow of 9/11, we remember what the world was like before it happened.

There are so many other cultural shifts--the sudden pushback against birth control, the rise of the Religious Right, etc.

Economically, many of us entered the workforce during the Great Recession. We hadn't yet recovered financially from that when COVID hit. According to the Washington Post, millennials were most affected long-term by job less during COVID. (Zoomers lost more jobs, but WaPo points out they're just entering the workforce and should have an easier recovery, plus they've not had to deal with the previous recessions). That's another thing--recession after recession wasn't normal when we were kids.

And then environmentally, climate change has gotten increasingly wild over the course of my life.

These are not all bad things. In fact, some (e.g., the push toward justice and liberty) are downright good. A lot of them are major, though.

But, this is not an argument that we've had it harder or better. My point is this:

Life as a millennial is defined by instability.

We cannot trust that anything we've known to be true would or will remain true. The moment we start to feel comfortable, the world changes in another huge way.

#millennial #generations

[collapsedsquid]

As for the second part of your question—how a Biden presidency would have gone—speculation is a little more difficult, but I’ll try my best. First things first, Democrats would have been near-certain to win the Senate with him leading the ticket, so he’d start his term by finally assembling a moderate-to-liberal Supreme Court majority. Past this point, the real x-factor is how the House went in 2016. If Democrats failed to take the chamber, which could have very well happened even with a large Biden victory, it’s unlikely that Biden’s first term would have been all that different from Obama’s presidency after the 2010 midterms. Republicans would be able to obstruct his domestic agenda at will, so most of his attention would have ended up going to court appointments and foreign policy. Perhaps a third consecutive Democratic victory may have led them to consider being more productive to look better to voters, but make no mistake: they still would have held the keys to the car. If Democrats won the House, though, things could have actually gotten real. The filibuster rules would have meant that, just like in his first term in real life, Biden’s ambitions would be limited to fiscal policies, with big social reforms being off the table. But we also know from Biden’s first term in real life that there’s quite a lot you can do with just fiscal policies. With no COVID (yet) and no Trump victory causing Democrats to re-evaluate their priorities, it’s certain that any proto-BBB plan for 2017 would have certainly been smaller than the bills Biden passed in our timeline. Something the size of the original BBB bill, or even the IRA, would not have been in the cards. Still, a big spending bill of any kind would have been excellent policy. The conditions of the economy in the 2010s—low interest rates coupled with low aggregate demand—were absolutely perfect for something like an infrastructure bill. That something like that was never passed was a big reason why it was such a lost decade economically. Biden-style spending could have rectified that, boosting the economy right as it was about to enter the famous goldilocks period it did under Trump. The post-recession recovery, although horrifically delayed, would have been finally completed during Biden’s first term. As for electoral politics under Biden, there’s a big difference in forecasting a 2018 under him and a 2020 under him. The former race is hard to map out. Given the state of the economy at the time, it’s pretty likely that Biden would have been popular by election day. Whether that would give his party a boost is a bit hard to tell. Biden has never been the kind of figure to absolutely dominate politics, so it’s likely that a 2018 under him would revolve more around a general sense of party fatigue and the need for checks and balances than his performance. How far the GOP would have gone with that is anyone’s guess. Maybe a Trump loss would have led the party’s establishment to reassert itself and clean up their brand to be more competitive than the party we’ve known since 2016. Maybe the party would have fallen into an outright civil war that guaranteed Democratic dominance. In any case, I doubt that 2018 would have been a truly massive wave for them even in the best-case scenario for the party. The public discontent that fueled their waves in 2010 and 2014 just wouldn’t have been there. They’d probably pick up some seats, but it wouldn’t be any kind of epochal sea change.

This excerpt from an ettingermentum piece about a counterfactual 2016 Biden presidential win I think really reflects how young he is, the Zoomers don't really remember Obama and how things were back then.

With Trump not being elected, there is no "populist wave" and the democrats would not have gone for a spending bill, there would be a good chunk of the democratic party continuing to strike some sort of inane "Grand Bargain." Now Biden is a different president than Obama, he was always less into the grand symbolic gesture West Wing shit than Obama, but the recent spending stuff is IMO a recent conversion as a result of Trump's election and covid. Without Trump there is no big Biden spending bill, even if Biden wanted something congressional democrats would not have gone for it.

I also think that if Biden is elected there is an economic downturn during his presidency. The end of the Trump presidency while strong was already weirdly fragile economically, there is a decent chance covid pre-empted a recession we were entering. With whatever stupid austerity shit the democrats get roped into and without the Trump tax cuts, Steve Mnuchin, and the euphoria of the small business owner over having a president who sticks it to the libs holding up the economy then I think the economy crashes sometime between 2016 and 2020. and that hurts him in elections.

(There is a point where I also do think that covid is not guaranteed to happen in 2020, not so much due to specific policies or prevention but due to just general changes, but I think that's not really a relevant/useful comparison)