Economy
In landmark shift, Fed rewrites approach to inflation, labor market (tmn)
The change suggests the U.S. central bank’s key overnight interest rate, already near zero, will stay there for potentially years to come as policymakers woo higher inflation.
“It’s no news that (Fed Chair Jerome) Powell doesn’t want to raise interest rates,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Mellon. What is news, Reinhart said, is that the Fed has now enshrined a degree of tolerance for inflation in its guiding document.
At the end of July, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill that would have extended federal unemployment benefits but cut the $600 a week amount to $200 through the rest of 2020. The bill never made it to the House of Representatives.
Senate Republicans also shut down a $3 trillion stimulus measure Democrats tried to pass. The measure was approved in the House in May and would have included an extension on the full $600 a week benefit until January 2021.
REPORT: Gilded Giving 2020: How Wealth Inequality Distorts Philanthropy and Imperils Democracy (000)
Over the last two decades, charitable giving has been on a steady upward trajectory. But this growth has masked a troubling trend: Charity is becoming increasingly undemocratic, with organizations relying more on larger donations from a smaller number of wealthy donors, while receiving shrinking amounts of revenue from donors at lower-and middle-income levels.
Ailing Abe quits as Japan PM as COVID-19 slams economy, key goals unmet (tmn)
Despite the deepening concerns about his health, news of Abe’s resignation sent tremors through Tokyo financial markets. Japan’s main stock market, which has more than doubled under Abe, fell some 2% before recovering, while the yen rose on concerns of a return to deflation.
“I cannot continue being prime minister if I do not have the confidence that I can carry out the job entrusted to me by the people,” Abe, 65, told a news conference as he announced his decision.
Nikkei tumbles, yen firms on news Japan’s Abe will resign (Sparky1)
“It is hard to see much of a silver lining (of Abe’s term as PM) but he did provide stability and managed (U.S. President Donald) Trump, which other world leaders have found has not been easy. He did stand up for free trade with his EU deal and rescued TPP, but those stand out as small accomplishments given his bold promises that ‘Japan is Back’.”
Definitive Eurasian Alliance Is Closer Than You Think (westcoastjan)
Comparing China’s economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more – Confucianist – social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going.
Banks eye layoffs as short-term crisis ends, long-term costs emerge (Sparky1)
“No question, layoffs (will) come across the board for all the banks,” said Barry Schwartz, chief investment officer at Toronto-based Baskin Wealth Management, which invests in JPMorgan Chase and other large Canadian banks.
Banks have to cut costs because of expected credit issues, as well as low interest rates and regulatory pressure to trim dividends, he said.
A scroll down the Portland Police twitter feed shows stabbings, shootings, and robberies occurring across the city every day, sometimes multiple shootings in a single day.
And who does vichy “mayor” Ted Wheeler blame for the downfall of the city? Right wing Trump supporters, of course, using strawman arguments of “white nationalists” who “threaten” Portlanders, while saying nothing of the violent leftists who have been engaging in violence and destruction 90 consecutive nights.
Minneapolis Law Preventing Business Owners from Protecting Their Own Property Backfires Horribly (thc0655)
Now, many business owners are running up against this regulation as they seek to protect their reopened stores from future flare-ups of violence. (The earlier riots destroyed at least 1,500 Minneapolis businesses.) Liquor store owner John Wolf saw his store looted after rioters broke in through his windows and stole more than $1 million in alcohol. He’s fuming at the city regulations that stop him from protecting his property.
“Times have changed,” Wolf told the Star-Tribune. “I am going to spend millions of dollars to bring my business back, and I don’t want to buy 20 window panes and have them broken the first day. Property owners should have options on how to protect themselves.”
Coca-Cola to cut thousands of jobs as coronavirus hits sales (Sparky1)
The plan to cut jobs come at a time when the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits hovered around 1 million last week, with the government confirming that the economy suffered its sharpest contraction in at least 73 years in the second quarter.
United Airlines Holdings Inc (UAL.O) signaled on Thursday it was preparing the biggest pilot furloughs in its history, saying it needed to cut about 21% of total pilot jobs due to a slump in air travel.
Incidents of widespread looting and soaring homicide figures in Chicago have made national news during an already tumultuous year. As a result, some say residents in affluent neighborhoods downtown, and on the North Side, no longer feel safe in the city’s epicenter and are looking to move away. Aldermen say they see their constituents leaving the city, and it’s a concern echoed by some real estate agents and the head of a sizable property management firm.
It’s still too soon to get an accurate measure of an actual shift in population, and such a change could be driven by a number of factors — from restless residents looking for more spacious homes in the suburbs due to COVID-19, to remote work allowing more employees to live anywhere they please.
CDC warned the public against wearing valved facemasks — while recommending them to health workers (Jonathan H.)
To be fair, no face covering, short of a properly-fitted N95 respirator, can claim to completely prevent coronavirus’ spread. Surgical masks are not designed to create a perfect seal, or to filter out 95 percent of virus particles, and they cannot be fit-tested. Those masks, as well as loose-fitting cotton masks, leave gaps that leak air. They could also leak virus particles, as people breathe in and out. It doesn’t take scientists in a lab to see this. Look at just about any random group of mask-wearing people in a store or on the street and observe that large gaps beside the nose or under the ears are visible, and that these are obviously far larger and probably of far greater consequence than the tiny vents on an exhale valve. The zealous focus on valves seems to be a case of missing the forest for a few trees.
Antiviral used to treat cat coronavirus also works against SARS-CoV-2 (000)
The work to test the drug against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was a co-operative effort between four U of A laboratories, run by Lemieux, Vederas, biochemistry professor Howard Young and the founding director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, Lorne Tyrrell. Some of the experiments were carried out by the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource Structural Molecular Biology program.
Coronavirus in Vacant Apartment Implicates Toilet in Spread (Sparky1)
The scientists conducted “an on-site tracer simulation experiment” to see whether the virus could be spread through waste pipes via tiny airborne particles that can be created by the force of a toilet flush. They found such particles, called aerosols, in bathrooms 10 and 12 levels above the Covid-19 cases. Two cases were confirmed on each of those floors in early February, raising concern that SARS-CoV-2-laden particles from stool had drifted into their homes via plumbing.
The End of the Oil Age Is Upon Us (Roger B.)
Villamizar is currently Head of Strategy for the Americas at Kaiserwetter Energy Asset Management, an energy investment firm based in Hamburg, Madrid, and New York. His analysis is co-authored with Randy Willoughby, a professor of political science at San Diego University, and Vicente Lopez-Ibor Mayor, previously founding Chairman of Europe’s largest solar energy company Lightsource BP (owned by oil and gas giant BP) and a former Commissioner at Spain’s National Energy Commission. Their study is due to be published later this year by Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs.
After the COVID-19 crisis, they revised their forecasts—finding that the pandemic has reinforced the trends they had previously identified. In their updated text, they argue that the remaining years of the 21st century and beyond will be marked by a “slow but permanent decline in demand for plenty of oil resources.”
California’s Green Energy Dark Age (thc0655)
Green advocates insist that their ‘virtual power plants’ can still handle everything, routing power from the solar panels on Bob’s roof in Marin to compensate for a wind farm going offline. This power shell game looks very futuristic in presentations, but the energy grid isn’t data. Power can’t just be treated like file sharing no matter how much energy consultants insist that it can.
The Democrats and their media allies who caused this mess are pretending to be baffled.
Hurricane Laura smashes parts of Louisiana and Texas, killing 6 and leaving widespread wind damage (tmn)
Laura, later downgraded to a tropical storm, was about 35 miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas, with sustained winds of 40 mph as of 7 p.m. CT Thursday. But it made landfall around 1 a.m. with sustained winds of 150 mph, devastating southern Louisiana communities for miles.
While there were widespread reports of wind damage, some communities were also beset by storm surge. US Coast Guard aerial video showed flooding in Cameron along the coast.
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The post Daily Digest 8/29 – Banks Eye Layoffs As Short Term Crisis Ends, Millions Struggling To Make Ends Meet Without Additional Unemployment Benefits appeared first on Peak Prosperity.
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