#economic woes

[selkiecoded]

my fav storytelling moment in NITW is the little easter egg where grandpa borowski's ghost watches over mae while she naps at the church! cute moment w some interesting in-universe implications

night in the woods is pretty careful to never pick a side on whether the whole thing is ghost/demon/god related, or just a combination of mental health issues/economic stressors/searching for meaning, which i appreciate. gives players a lot of leeway to interpret everything. so factoring in the ghostly grandpa is just another little supernatural mystery to try and work into the puzzle... but most importantly its super cute!

[fluorescentbrains]

i know i’m insufferable for complaining about living in a progressive bubble but my brain works in a way such that it really does get taxing on me when i hear people constantly say things i generally agree with like “capitalism bad” and “punch nazis” and “acab” and “trans rights” and then go on to demonstrate they don’t truly comprehend let alone live by what they’re saying and are just repeating things they’ve sensed will increase their social credit. not even in an intentionally malicious or deceptive way like i’m glad bigotry is considered so deeply uncool but it’s gotten to the point where i’m so jaded and cynical people will start complaining about “capitalism” and i’ll just mentally check the fuck out. because the conversation is now intellectually on the same level as complaining about the weather

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Stephen Brodner

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 18, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 19, 2024

It seems to me that the news tends to be slow on weekends during the Biden administration, while Mondays are a firehose. (In contrast, Trump’s people tended to dump news in the middle of the night, after Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity’s show was over, which may or may not have been a coincidence.) 

So, lots going on today as the Biden administration continues to make the case that a democratic government can work for ordinary Americans while Trump and his supporters insist that a country run by such an administration is an apocalyptic nightmare. 

First, economic analyst Steven Rattner reported today that according to The Economist, since the end of 2019 the American economy has grown about 8%, while the European Union has grown about 3%, Japan 1%, and Britain not at all. Rattner and economist Brendan Duke reported that entrepreneurship in the U.S. is booming, with 5.2 million “likely employer” business applications filed between January 2021 and December 2023, more than a 33% increase over those filed between 2017 and 2019. 

Economists Justin Wolfers and Arin Dube noted that, as Wolfers wrote, “[f]or the first time in forever, real wage gains are going to those who need them most.” Wages have gone up for all but the top 20% of Americans, whose wages have fallen, reducing inequality. 

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) head Lina Khan announced that after the FTC challenged a set of AstraZeneca inhaler patents last September as being improperly listed, today AstraZeneca said it would cap patients’ out-of-pocket costs for its inhalers at $35, down from hundreds. Earlier this month, Boehringer Ingelheim did the same.

The Environmental Protection Agency today announced it was banning asbestos, which is linked to more than 40,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and was already partly banned, but which is still used in a few products. More than 50 other countries already ban it. 

Also today, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to advance women’s health research to integrate women’s health into federal research initiatives, strengthening data collection and making funding available for research in a comprehensive effort to equalize attention to men’s and women’s health across their lifespans. The federal government did not require women’s health to be included in federally funded medical research until 1993. In a speech today, First Lady Jill Biden recalled that in the early 1970s, researchers studying estrogen’s effect in preventing heart attacks selected 8,341 people for the study. All of them were men. 

Last month, First Lady Biden announced $100 million in funding for research into women’s health, and last Thursday Vice President Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic that provides abortion care in addition to breast cancer screening, fibroid care, and contraceptive care. She noted that women’s reproductive health has been in crisis since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, with women in some states unable to access the care they need.

Former president Trump, who is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, prompted some of the economic reporting I noted above when he tried to spark attacks on President Joe Biden by asking on social media if people feel better off now than they were four years ago. This was perhaps a mistaken message, since four years ago we were in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Supermarket shelves were empty, toilet paper was hard to find, healthcare professionals were wearing garbage bags and reusing masks because the Trump administration had permitted the strategic stockpile to run low, deaths were mounting, the stock market had crashed, and the economy had ground to a halt. 

On this day four years ago, I recorded that “more than 80 national security professionals broke with their tradition of non-partisanship to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for president, saying that while they were from all parties and disagreed with each other about pretty much everything else, they had come together to stand against Trump.”

Here in the present, Trump appears to be getting more desperate as his problems, including his apparent growing difficulty speaking and connecting with his audience, mount. Last week, in an interview, he echoed Republican lawmakers and pundits when he suggested he was open to cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, something Republican lawmakers try to avoid saying to general audiences because it is hugely unpopular. Trump has since tried to repair that damage, for example, when he insisted on Saturday that it was he, rather than Biden, who would protect those programs. (In fact, Biden has called for expanding the social safety net, not contracting it, and last year forced Republicans to back off from proposed cuts.)  

Saturday’s speech illustrated the degree to which Trump’s rhetoric has become more profane and apocalyptic as he vows revenge on those he sees as his enemies. Campaigning in Vandalia, Ohio, for his chosen Senate candidate, Trump suggested that certain migrants “are not people.” Then he said he would put tariffs of 100% on cars manufactured in Mexico by Chinese companies for sale in the U.S., “if I get elected. Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

By Sunday, Trump’s embrace of the word “bloodbath” had created a firestorm. Surrogates insisted that he was talking about the auto industry alone, but as scholar of rhetoric Jen Mercieca and legal commentator Asha Rangappa note, Trump is a master at giving himself enough plausible deniability for his supporters to claim that, as Rangappa put it, “he wasn’t saying what he was saying. I know what he meant. He knows what he meant. You know what he meant.” In the same speech Saturday, Trump called those convicted of violence on January 6, 2021, “hostages” and “patriots,” and has said he would pardon them, appearing to endorse violence to return him to power.

This morning, Trump’s lawyers told a court that Trump cannot come up with either the money or a bond for the $454 million plus interest he owes in penalties and disgorgement after he and the Trump Organization were found guilty of fraud in a Manhattan court earlier this year. The lawyers say they have approached 30 different companies to back the bond, and they have all declined. They will not issue a bond without cash or stock behind it. Trump's real estate holdings, which are likely highly leveraged, aren’t enough.

Last year, Trump said under oath that he had “substantially in excess of 400 million in cash,” and that amount was “going up very substantially every month.” Apparently, that statement was a lie, or the money has evaporated, or Trump doesn’t want to use it to pay this court-ordered judgment on top of the $91.6 million bond he posted earlier this month in the second E. Jean Carroll case.

Timothy O’Brien of Bloomberg notes that Trump’s desperate need for cash makes him even more of a national security threat than his retention of classified documents made it clear he already was. “[T]he going is likely to get rough for Trump as this plays out,” O’Brien writes, “and he’s likely to become more financially desperate with each passing day,” making him “easy prey for interested lenders—and an easy mark for overseas interests eager to influence US policy.”

This morning, Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post reported that Trump is turning to his 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort to advise him in 2024. Dawsey notes that the campaign’s focus appears to be on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, which suggests Trump’s people are concerned that his nomination will be contested. Manafort has been known as a “convention fixer” since 1976.

Manafort is also the key link between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Manafort worked for many years for Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovich, who was closely tied to Russian president Vladimir Putin. When Ukrainians threw Yanukovich out of office in 2014, Manafort was left with large debts to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. In 2016, Manafort began to work for Trump’s campaign. An investigation by a Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee into the links between Trump’s campaign and Russia determined that Manafort had shared polling data from the Trump camp with his partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, who the senators assessed was a Russian operative.  

In 2018, as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Manafort was found guilty of hiding millions of dollars he had received for lobbying on behalf of Yanukovych and his pro-Russian political party, then getting loans through false financial records when Yanukovych lost power. A judge sentenced him to more than seven years in prison.

Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020, shortly after losing the presidential election.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[beevean]

I finally beat Castlevania: Symphony of the Night!

The boss battles were fairly simple (though I regret not giving myself more of a challenge with Dracula; I used the Alucard Shield spell, and he died in the blink of an eye). Shaft was an interesting fight! Too bad I wiped out Drac before he could do anything. I should come back sometime and actually fight him, so I can actually have an opinion on the fight. His demonic form has a sick design, though! The Xenomorph-esque heads were cool!

The credits song sounds really sentimental; I ought to look up the lyrics.

The only hard part was 200.6%-ing the map. Towards the end, it felt like a game of Spot the Difference from hell. At least I’m playing this in an era where the internet is ubiquitous!

The only question I have is why Castlevania Requiem wasn’t ported to Xbox One and Switch. It’s Konami that has the rights to SotN and RoB, not Sony (unless I’m missing something)! Did Sony cut a console-exclusivity deal with Konami regarding those games or something?

Also, what’s the level cap for Alucard? I was at Level 46 when I beat the game.

Congrats! Now Maria is impressed with your map-filling skills and will chase Alucard <3 jokes about Maria's tastes aside, I find interesting that this game establishes that map percentage in CV is more important than completion time, unlike Metroid.

His cap is 99. It's very much not worth reaching it, because by level 80 all enemies give you 1 EXP. The game is more than beatable at lv 50.

Yeah, the Alucard Shield spell is beyond broken. I usually enjoy game breakers à la Super Sonic, but this one actively drains enjoyment from the game. The Crissaegrim is a better game breaker because at least you have to put in the effort to obtain it. But yes, Dracula's form is very cool!

It's hard to notice, but Dracula didn't turn into a monster: his cape/throne did! He's still chilling there, legs crossed and all! Talk about flexing.

If you're asking "why don't Konami do this thing that will obviously drown them in money?", don't even bother with an answer. They could do so much to revive the series, but they don't, aside from the occasional collection. Not even the sheer success of the show motivated them to actually capitalize on it lmao.

[saw5]

kind of lame and fascinating how even though my job is usually quite decent and at times good beyond words i still start feeling caged and listless after about hour 5 out of 8.5 of being here. i would take tense and antsy over in pain or exhausted or beleaguered by customers or higherups, obviously, and i know i'm very fortunate. But it's wild how even the nicest workplace can start feeling unpleasant two thirds of the way through a "regular"-length workday.

[bellshazes]

Ive known this for a while but after an 11 hour in person day with my team I think I have to start writing that Systems of Care For the Common Man series I keep dreaming of. Because the only way out is through, together.

[burymeinblack2022]

We need to banish the queens body to another realm before more demons start spawning lest it attract monsters from other dimensions

[marbleheavy]

cinquains my beloved

[prabodhjamwal]

Delhi's dilemma: a growing economy and growing unemployment

“India’s inability to pull more of its workforce away from agriculture towards more productive and better-paying employment remains a pressing challenge. While the services sector has contributed to growth, its share in employment (approximately 29 percent) is a little more than half of its share in GDP.” Rajat Kathuria*, Shiv Nadar University in Greater Noida India is on its way to becoming the…

[jaideepkhanduja]

Shadows in the Global Economy: Unraveling China's Financial Crisis and the Looming Threats in the US

Shadows in the Global Economy: Unraveling China's Financial Crisis and the Looming Threats in the US #China #ChinaCrisis #GlobalEconomy #ChinaBankingCrisis #ChinaFinancialCrisis #USCrisis

China’s financial woes are escalating as its banks, anticipating significant loan losses, take drastic measures to bolster loan loss reserves by tapping into the bond markets for 30% more funds than the previous year. This predicament stems from the unfolding crisis that began over a year ago when Evergrande, a major property developer, declared its inability to support around $300 billion in…

[yakamozarda]

Kdkdldkf living in sweden for 2 years as a turkish citizen whose whole life purpose was to leave turkey from a young age probably is one of the reasons that im more mentally unstable. Like i look at these people and all i can think about is "they didnt have to deal with having to leave their culture and working their ass off for it. And i have to be twice as good as them to get a fraction of what they take for granted"

[impriindia]

The Gulf-Pakistan Camaraderie Amid the Economic Woes - IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute

Anil Trigunayat In recent times, Pakistan has gone through an unenviable predicament of natural and man or politician-made disasters.  It has gone through a regime change or a transfer of power depending on the way one looks at it. The army being the real arbiter cast the dice against a yelling Imran Khan and his coterie as they felt being challenged by a political minion of their own…

[kazifatagar]

Malaysians Have A Thirst For Cheap Booze?

The cheap booze is produced with water, caramel, sugar, and flavouring in addition to 40% alcohol. A typical bottle of beer with a 5.0% alcohol content costs around RM18. With the epidemic and economic downturn ravaging the country, it caused a rise in the number of people who turn to alcohol as a stress reliever. The cost of imported alcohol has increased as a result of currency exchange, says…

[havatabanca]

[sayruq]

The following is a Google translation of the article

The international media is not there yet but the local media in Israel has acknowledged that it lost the war in Gaza and Israel is now a pariah state. This is what everyone told them would happen if they initiated a ground invasion. Israel didn't listen.

This military defeat coupled with a collapse in support for Israel globally due to the genocide and economic woes means we're closer than ever to the end of the occupation.

[marbleheavy]

in the two weeks i’ve spent home i have become strongly anti-tiny home