Attention Economy


Thursday, March 31, 2022

German Economic Miracle

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Tight Labor Market, Wage Pressure, and Rising Interest Rates

U.S. economy adds 431,000 jobs in March, as labor market strengthens
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/01/march-jobs-report-growth/
The unemployment rate fell to a new pandemic low of 3.6 percent, as strong hiring continues
Demand for workers remains brisk, with employers reporting 11.3 million job openings last month
‘I’m in Hot Demand, Baby’: Nebraska Thrives (and Copes) With Low Unemployment
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/business/economy/nebraska-economy-unemployment-labor.html

Rising Wages Could Complicate America’s Inflation Cool-Down
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-fed-has-made-a-us-recession-inevitable/2022/03/29/1c51b9bc-af47-11ec-9dbd-0d4609d44c1c_story.html
Can Home Prices and Interest Rates Soar at the Same Time?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/upshot/home-prices-mortgage-rates.html

The Fed Has Made a U.S. Recession Inevitable
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-fed-has-made-a-us-recession-inevitable/2022/03/29/1c51b9bc-af47-11ec-9dbd-0d4609d44c1c_story.html 

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Russia's Underwhelming Military Performance

How the West Got Russia’s Military So, So Wrong
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/russia-ukraine-invasion-military-predictions/629418/
Good equipment and clever doctrine reveal little about how an army will perform in a war. 

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Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Music and Math

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Strange Behavior

Why People Are Acting So Weird
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/03/antisocial-behavior-crime-violence-increase-pandemic/627076/
Crime, “unruly passenger” incidents, and other types of strange behavior have all soared recently. Why? 

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Tuesday, March 29, 2022

The True Legacy of the British Empire

The British Empire Was Much Worse Than You Realize
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence
 
Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins review – the brutal truth about Britain’s past
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/13/legacy-of-violence-a-history-of-the-british-empire-by-caroline-elkins-review-the-brutal-truth-about-britains-past
 
The East India Company, a trading firm with its own army, was masterful at manipulating governments for its own profit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/opinion/east-india-company.html

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Relentless-Rise-India-Company/dp/1635573955/ 


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Currency Matters

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Standardized Tests Make a Comeback at MIT

Go Tech!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/go-tech-11648580893
MIT brings back standardized testing for admissions.
 
MIT resumes mandate for SAT or ACT scores. Many other colleges have not.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/29/mit-reinstates-sat-act-requirement/
Data from MIT show that for those admitted to the Class of 2025 who reported scores to the school, 75 percent scored at least 780 out of a perfect 800 on the math section of the SAT or 35 out of a perfect 36 on math in the ACT. 

Related:

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Lawrence Summers on the ‘The Ezra Klein Show’

Harvard Economist, Lawrence Summers, on the ‘The Ezra Klein Show’
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-lawrence-summers.html 

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Profile of Adam Tooze – Economic Historian

Galaxy Brain: How the impeccably credentialed, improbably charming economic historian Adam Tooze supplanted the dirtbag left.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/adam-tooze-profile.html 


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Gender Pay Gap - Interesting Development

Younger women now earn at least as much as or more than men in 22 metro areas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/28/gender-pay-gap-young-women/ 

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AI in the Battlefield


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A Positive Application of AI

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Monday, March 28, 2022

Taxing the Super-Rich

Biden Should Tax the Rich to Shrink the Deficit
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-27/to-fight-inflation-biden-should-tax-the-rich-shrink-the-deficit
 
Biden to Include Minimum Tax on Billionaires in Budget Proposal
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/26/us/politics/biden-billionaires-minimum-tax.html
The tax would require that American households worth more than $100 million pay a rate of at least 20 percent on their income as well as unrealized gains in the value of liquid assets like stocks.
 
Biden budget pivots to deficit concerns while boosting military, domestic programs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/03/28/biden-budget-white-house/ 

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Sunday, March 27, 2022

Egypt is Facing a Food Crisis

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Rising Home Values - Are We in a Bubble?

As Home Sale Prices Surge, a Tax Bill May Follow
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/your-money/home-sale-tax.html
Single sellers can exclude $250,000 from their taxable profit and married sellers $500,000. The amounts haven’t changed in 25 years. 

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Problems in Central and South America

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Netflix and the Law of Diminishing Returns

The Netflix model is destined for a huge crash
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/27/netflix-model-destined-huge-crash/
The law of diminishing returns, one of the most lethal in economics, has already set in 

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Demand-Supply Imbalances - Real Estate and Autos

Car dealers are charging buyers more because that’s capitalism, baby
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22991412/new-car-prices-high-inflation 


Investors Are Buying Mobile Home Parks. Residents Are Paying a Price.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/us/mobile-home-park-ownership-costs.html
Related: 

How to Safely Cash in on Your Home Equity Windfall
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Saturday, March 26, 2022

Time to Abolish the British Monarchy

Down With the British Monarchy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/opinion/meghan-harry-abolish-monarchy.html
America is guilty of many crimes against humanity, but this is one thing we got right. Our presidents may be national embarrassments, but at least Americans are not required to scrape and bow before some utterly random rich wastrel whose claim to legitimacy is being the child of the child of the child of someone who was, centuries ago, the nation’s biggest gangster. Yes, we have our own hypnotic capitalist addiction to celebrity, but monarchy is something altogether more twisted — as if the Bush family, the Kardashians and the Falwells were all rolled into one bejeweled quasi-religious fame cult, topped off with a bracing dose of imperialism.
 
Gaffes and Miscues Mar a Royal Tour of a Republic-Minded Caribbean
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/world/americas/royal-couple-caribbean-visit.html 

William and Kate’s cringeworthy, colonial Caribbean tour
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/24/sehyuhsorry-william-kates-cringeworthy-colonial-caribbean-tour/
After this week’s royal tour in the Caribbean, it’s hard not to root for former British colonies to kick-start their own version of Brexit from ties to the monarchy.

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Kissinger and China

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Military Gear in the News

Understanding the weapons that have drawn the world’s attention since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/23/russia-ukraine-weapons-missiles-nukes-drones/ 

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The Reality of Academic Life

America’s next union battlefield may be on campus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/25/colleges-faculty-unions-labor/
On paper, Asia Leeds had the perfect career. As an assistant professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, she could focus on her passion of studying Afro-Latin American culture.
In reality, she felt like she was doing at least seven jobs — teaching, research, writing, applying for grants, advising students, running a minor, serving on committees — while getting paid for one.
The stereotype of the highly paid professor who delivers an occasional lecture and spends the rest of the time reading books “is an idea that for 90 percent of people doesn’t exist,” Leeds said. “It’s this fantasy you’re sold because it was what your professors were doing when you went to college.” 

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Training Doctors - America's Antiquated System

Why well-qualified medical school graduates can’t get jobs — despite doctor shortages
https://www.vox.com/22989930/residency-match-physician-doctor-shortage-pandemic-medical-school
But despite the great need for more doctors, there are still huge gaps between the number of aspiring physicians and the space available to train them, a dynamic that keeps perfectly well-qualified medical school applicants and graduates out of the pipeline. 

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Energy Consumption and the Metaverse

The metaverse's hunger for energy must be quantified
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-metaverse-s-hunger-for-energy-must-be-quantified
Powering the virtual world has the potential to worsen climate change 

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Friday, March 25, 2022

Geothermal Energy

 

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Turkey's Dilemma

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US Economy: Soft Landing versus Hard Landing


My take (piece was published on Jan 3, 2022):
Can the Federal Reserve engineer a soft landing for the US economy?
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/587953-can-the-federal-reserve-engineer-a-soft-landing-for-the-us-economy 

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A Tragedy – Italy Fails to Qualify for 2022 World Cup

The European champions will miss their second World Cup in a row after also failing to qualify for Russia 2018.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60869847 

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Emerging Markets - Recent Developments

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Rise of Meritocracy at British Schools

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Thursday, March 24, 2022

Big Cities versus Small Cities

Cities Lost Population in 2021, Leading to the Slowest Year of Growth in U.S. History
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/census-2021-population-growth.html 

Cash-Rich Tech Companies Are Remaking Post-Pandemic Manhattan
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2021/10/20/google-amazon-microsoft-takeover-manhattan-real-estate/
 
Big Tech Makes a Big Bet: Offices Are Still the Future
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/technology/big-tech-offices.html

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

The College Admissions Racket

The College-Admissions Process Is Completely Broken
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/change-college-acceptance-application-process/627581/
"Although the average four-year college in the U.S. accepts nearly 60 percent of applicants, many schools indicate they are more selective than they are by telling prospective students that they practice “holistic” admissions, considering factors beyond grades and test scores. This approach, which attempts to measure qualities that aren’t quantifiable and are usually gleaned from an applicant’s extracurricular activities, essays, and recommendations, is loved and hated in equal measure by parents and students. Both favor a method that focuses on the “whole student” until they discover that applicants who had lower GPAs or test scores were accepted.
Holistic admissions may sound great, but many admissions offices at less-selective colleges make the bulk of their decisions by assessing the rigor of an applicant’s high-school courses and grades". 

Related:

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China Threatens Regional Stability

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Deglobalization

Unless the U.S. and its allies mobilize to save it, the second great age of globalization is coming to a catastrophic close.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-24/ukraine-war-has-russia-s-putin-xi-jinping-exposing-capitalism-s-great-illusion

Ukraine War and Pandemic Force Nations to Retreat from Globalization
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/us/politics/russia-china-global-economy.html
 
Chain Reaction: Why Global Supply Chains May Never Be the Same
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/chain-reaction/why-global-supply-chains-may-never-be-the-same-a-wsj-documentary/4EFE56B6-8A1D-4478-9F88-8F055AFBF675
 
Cold War 2.0? The Global Economic Impact of Sanctions Against Russia
 


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Tuesday, March 22, 2022

The Mirage of the Rules-Based Order

What Rule-Based International Order?
https://bostonreview.net/articles/what-rule-based-international-order/
Putin’s war in Ukraine breaks the rules, but powerful states always do. Far from dying, a just global order remains to be built.
 
Putin’s war and the mirage of the rules-based order
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/putins-war-and-the-mirage-of-the-rules-based-order/
Leaders and observers around the world often speak of strengthening or defending the ‘rules-based international order’. But that order was always more aspirational than real. Countries that possess military or economic might reserve the right not only to make and enforce the rules, but also to break them.
 
Western Hypocrisy: Targeting India for buying Russian oil smacks of hypocrisy
https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-targeting-india-for-buying-russian-oil-smacks-of-hypocrisy/a-61212821
Ashutosh Pandey:
If anything, it's the manner in which sanctions are adopted unilaterally by the world's richest and most powerful countries that should be called out.
For far too long, Western countries, led by the US, have slapped sanctions on governments without consulting their economically weaker allies or studying their impact on other countries. The West must come up with ways to reduce the burden of sanctions on others to ensure they have an incentive to tag along.
Otherwise, sanctions in support of one country make less sense if they lead to hardships elsewhere, as we are seeing in Egypt, where people are struggling to put bread on their plates; or India, where exporters are waiting for over $500 million in payments from Russian clients unable to use the SWIFT payments system. 

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Extraordinary Resilience of Ukrainians

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Monday, March 21, 2022

A More Hawkish Turn at the Fed

Powell Says Fed Could Raise Rates More Quickly to Tame Inflation
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/business/economy/powell-fed-inflation.html
 
Restoring Price Stability by Jerome Powell
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/powell20220321a.pdf


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Canada - A Good Long-Term Bet

Toronto, the Quietly Booming Tech Town
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/technology/toronto-tech-boom.html
For all the excitement around places like Austin and Miami, the biggest tech expansion has been in Canada’s largest city.
 
The Second-Largest Country in the World Is Running Out of Land
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/the-second-largest-country-in-the-world-is-running-out-of-land
Canadian dream of a house with a yard is becoming unaffordable as real estate prices surge and space to build runs short. 

We’re witnessing the continuing cultural divergence of Canada and the United States
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-were-witnessing-the-continuing-cultural-divergence-of-canada-and-the/  

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Evolution of Ukraine’s Economy

Ukraine’s economy went from Soviet chaos to oligarch domination to vital global trader of wheat and neon – and now Russian devastation
https://theconversation.com/ukraines-economy-went-from-soviet-chaos-to-oligarch-domination-to-vital-global-trader-of-wheat-and-neon-and-now-russian-devastation-178971
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Quantedge Presidential Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, states:
Beyond its importance to feeding, fueling and supporting its own citizens, Ukraine is also a vital part of the global economy with its exports of wheat, corn and neon. As a native of Ukraine and economics professor, I’d like to provide a primer on the Ukrainian economy, how much it has changed since it was a Soviet republic and the consequences of Russia’s war. 

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Historical Background: Rise of Islamic Extremism in South Asia

Religion-Fueled Mobs on the Rise Again in Pakistan
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/world/asia/pakistan-blasphemy-religious-violence.html
Instances of mob violence, and state-enforced criminal blasphemy cases, are more frequent in Pakistan than anywhere else, according to a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.


The mob killing of a factory manager in Pakistan comes amid surge in anti-blasphemy violence
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/24/pakistan-blasphemy-violence-labbaik/

Historical Background – America’s Role:
30 years on, Zia ul-Haq’s extremist, military legacy alive and well in Pakistan
https://theprint.in/india/governance/30-years-on-zia-ul-haqs-extremist-military-legacy-alive-and-well-in-pakistan/100329/
But it was Zia’s measure aligning Islamic radicalism along with the sophisticated weaponry that was given to Pakistan by the US to help overthrow the Soviets in Afghanistan that will remain his unfortunate, lasting legacy. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, badly bruised and beaten, the Americans stopped their gun-funding and Pakistan lapsed back into the Third World.
But the guns remained and the Islamic parties proliferated. By now, millions of Afghan refugees had streamed into Pakistan and they brought heroin with them. The preacher’s extremist fatwa was backed by boys with guns. Pakistan’s moderate, civilian space began to shrink.
 
 
The Forgotten Genocide – The Persecution of Hindus in Kashmir
The Kashmir Files: When a Movie Makes You Cry
https://indiacurrents.com/the-kashmir-files-when-a-movie-makes-you-cry/  
The Kashmir Files - Trailer 
https://youtu.be/A179apttY58
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Sunday, March 20, 2022

Global Economy - Short-Term and Long-Term Challenges

Why the world faces a serious paradigm crisis
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/Why-the-world-faces-a-serious-paradigm-crisis
 
‘Another year of crazy hiccups’: Russia and China pose new threats to global supply chain
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/18/russia-ukraine-war-china-covid-supply-chain/

After Ukraine, how will the world replace Russia’s oil products?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/19/after-ukraine-how-will-world-replace-russia-oil-products
 
What happens when a major economy can’t pay its debts in dollars? Russia is about to show us

Unless we act, escalating commodity prices will cause a decade of global turmoil
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/19/commodity-prices-escalating-global-turmoil 

U.S. imports little from Ukraine and Russia, but food and farming costs are expected to rise
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/19/farming-food-costs-ukraine/
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Specialty Coffee Wave in India

A specialty coffee wave is brewing in India
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60427016 

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Saturday, March 19, 2022

Cancel Culture and Identity Politics

We need to reach a cancel-culture truce
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/19/yale-law-school-protest-free-speech-cancel-culture/
Megan McArdle:
At the moment, we have the opposite of a truce. The right birthed Donald Trump, who has never met a civic norm he wouldn’t trample. The left, which at this point basically has total control over the centers of cultural production, has managed to get media, academia and a lot of large corporations to adopt a narrow progressive orthodoxy. Those institutions don’t just endorse that orthodoxy, but enforce it — on employees, customers and even local governments.
Just as the right should never have expected the left to calmly pretend things were business as usual while Trump was ripping up the old social contract, the left should never have expected the right to leave them alone while they used their cultural and economic power to drive conservative viewpoints out of the public square. Conservatives were going to use whatever levers they could find — including their outsized political power — no matter how sincerely the left insists that no, that’s not fair, government power is different.
 
Identity politics is eroding the values which set the West apart from Putin
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/19/identity-politics-eroding-values-set-west-apart-putin/
 
Against Identity Politics: The New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2018-08-14/against-identity-politics-tribalism-francis-fukuyama 

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Weird America

Nearly half the country requires no permit to carry a concealed weapon — and it’s a growing trend
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/19/concealed-carry-gun-law-ohio/ 

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Career Outcomes and College Choice

Florida Helps Families See Behind the College Curtain
https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-helps-families-college-earnings-degree-choice-debt-loans-higher-education-11647624190
“… the state university system now maintains an interactive online database, My Florida Future, that lets students and parents see average actual earnings for degree programs one, five and 10 years after graduation; average student loan burdens; comparisons of earnings across all 12 state universities; and other helpful information”.
 
My Thoughts:
Is the US higher education bubble about to burst?
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/590971-will-the-us-higher-education-bubble-finally-burst
Does US higher education need fundamental reforms to survive and thrive? [with B. Kench]
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/534350-does-us-higher-education-need-fundamental-reforms-to-survive-and-thrive 

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Another Covid Surge?

Another Covid Surge May Be Coming. Are We Ready for It?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/19/health/covid-ba2-surge-variant.html 

A covid surge in Western Europe has U.S. bracing for another wave
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/16/covid-ba2-omicron-surge/ 

Can Ashish Jha, ‘a Comforting Voice,’ Tamp Down Covid’s Political Divide?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/us/politics/ashish-jha-covid-biden.html

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Climate Change Consequences

It’s 70 degrees warmer than normal in eastern Antarctica. Scientists are flabbergasted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/03/18/antarctica-heat-wave-climate-change/
 
A drowning world: Kenya’s quiet slide underwater
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/17/kenya-quiet-slide-underwater-great-rift-valley-lakes-east-africa-flooding 

Climate Change Is Making Allergy Season Even Worse
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/03/climate-change-allergies-pollen/627103/
Temperatures are rising, and they're taking pollen counts with them.

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Friday, March 18, 2022

Why Geography Matters

Why Russia is a prisoner of geography
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/03/why-russia-is-a-prisoner-of-geography
Tim Marshall notes:
Russian leaders have long attempted at least to control the flatlands to their west, or even occupy them as part of the Russian empire, most recently in its formation as the USSR. Russia lacks its own warm-water ports with direct access to the oceans. Some of the Arctic ports freeze for several months each winter, and Russian ships must contend with the ice packs to the north of the Arctic coastline. The routes to the ocean lanes for the Baltic and Black Sea fleets are difficult at the best of times, and nigh on impossible in the worst.
These two preoccupations – vulnerability on land and lack of warm-water ports – came together in Ukraine in 2014. As long as a pro-Russian government held sway in Kyiv, Russia could be confident that its most important buffer zone would remain intact and guard the European Plain along with Belarus. Even a neutral Ukraine, which promised not to join the EU or Nato and would uphold the lease Russia had on the warm-water port at Sevastopol in Crimea on the Black Sea, could be tolerated. But when a pro-Western government came to power after the Kyiv uprising in 2014 the Kremlin was horrified.



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Kleptocracy: The Role of Western Financial Institutions

Kleptocracy isn’t just a Russian problem
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2022/03/kleptocracy-isnt-just-a-russian-problem
The West’s enabling of international oligarchy needs to stop now – and it extends far beyond London.
 
How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putins-oligarchs-bought-london
 
Swiss commodities traders help fill Putin's war coffers
https://www.dw.com/en/swiss-commodities-traders-help-fill-putins-war-coffers/a-61179410 

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New Global Alliances

Kishida heads to India for talks with Modi, as Ukraine war, China problems show Japan that US military backing is ‘no longer enough’
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3170990/kishida-heads-india-talks-modi-ukraine-war-china-problems-show

India-UAE-Israel trade deals set up a US-backed Western Quad ‘alternative to China’, as Abraham Accords bring new reality to the Middle East
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3168338/india-uae-israel-trade-deals-set-us-backed-western-quad 

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Fed's Monetary Policy Challenges


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Calm, Cool, and Collected – The Need for a Measured Foreign Policy

Ukraine’s Cause Is Righteous. That Shouldn’t Shape Policy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/opinion/ukraine-russia-war-nato-iraq-policy.html
Tanner Greer notes:
Any realistic assessment of the policy options available to the Western powers must begin with a sober appraisal of the situation on the ground — even if that means contemplating a settlement that falls short of justice. Despite the heroic resistance of Ukrainians and repeated operational blunders by the invading force, there are powerful reasons for Mr. Putin to remain optimistic about achieving his war aims. Ukraine is large; war, even the modern mechanized variety, is slow. But the most successful Russian advances have brought Russian troops more than 200 miles into Ukraine. 

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Politics, History, and Education

My favorite American historian, Jill Lepore, on the School Wars:
Why the School Wars Still Rage
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/21/why-the-school-wars-still-rage
From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.
 
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: 

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Significance of Academic Free Speech

A university’s purpose isn’t to rally support. It’s to provide a haven for debate, including dissent.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-inquiry-suffers-as-war-fever-grips-harvard-public-position-university-college-students-11647461748
Todd Henderson (University of Chicago Law Professor):
Especially in an age of ideological fads and Twitter mobs, we need boundaries that protect the pursuit of truth. Bad ideas will sometimes have a home on campus. But the risks to truth from kowtowing to popular opinion are simply too great. 

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Bitcoin Mining - Environmental Footprint

An Appalachian town was told a bitcoin mine would bring an economic boom. It got noise pollution and an eyesore.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/18/bitcoin-mining-noise-pollution-appalachia/ 

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Global Energy and Supply Dislocations

The neon shortage is a bad sign
https://www.vox.com/recode/22983468/neon-shortage-chips-semiconductors-russia-ukraine
 
Nations Should Conserve Fuel as Global Energy Crisis Looms, Agency Warns
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/climate/global-energy-crisis-conserve.html
 
Asia stands to lose the most under emerging world energy order
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Asia-stands-to-lose-the-most-under-emerging-world-energy-order 

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India's Foreign Policy Balancing Act

Why India isn’t denouncing Russia’s Ukraine war
https://www.vox.com/22982698/india-russia-ukraine-war-putin-modi
New Delhi’s balancing act reflects its interests in keeping a longstanding relationship with Russia.
Jen Kirby notes:
India can offer what a lot of countries can’t: a genuine claim to having good dealings with Washington and Moscow. “The US wants India to be able to leverage its close relationship with Russia in a way that would help serve [our] goals right now,” Kugelman said. “Which means that the US wants India to do what it can to convince Putin to end this war.” 

For reasons to do with history and strategy, India will not abandon Russia.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/india-military-support-russia-ukraine-war/627035/
So, the Biden administration’s democracy-versus-autocracy framing has few takers in India. New Delhi’s Russia policy will change, gradually, but not because of American or Western pressure. Instead, it will change as a result of the growing strategic dissonance between the two, as Russia finds itself more and more beholden to China and uncomfortable questions are raised about India’s enormous dependence on Russian arms and how vulnerable it is to Russian behavior. 

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Post-Soviet Developments: Why History Matters

Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/17/western-values-enthroned-monster-ukrainians-putin
Aditya Chakrabortty notes:
Spotting the flaw here doesn’t require history, it just needs a working memory. The west has already tried regime change in post-communist Russia: Putin was the end product, the man with whom Bill Clinton declared he could do business, rather than the vodka-soused Boris Yeltsin.
Indeed more than that, London and New York are not just guilty of hosting oligarchs – giving them visas, selling on their most valuable real estate and famous businesses – they helped create the oligarchy in Russia. The US and the UK funded, staffed and applauded the programmes meant to “transform” the country’s economy, but which actually handed over the assets of an industrialised and commodity-rich country to a few dozen men with close connections to the Kremlin.
In 1993, the New York Times Magazine ran a profile of a Harvard economist it called “Dr Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist”. It followed Sachs as he toured Moscow, orchestrating the privatisation of Russia’s economy and declaring how high unemployment was a price worth paying for a revitalised economy. His expertise didn’t come for free, but was bankrolled by the governments of the US, Sweden and other major multinational institutions. But its highest cost was borne by the Russian people. A study in the British Medical Journal concluded: “An extra 2.5-3 million Russian adults died in middle age in the period 1992-2001 than would have been expected based on 1991 mortality.” Meanwhile, the country’s wealth was handed over to a tiny gang of men, who took whatever they could out of the country to be laundered in the US and the UK. It was one of the grandest and most deadly larcenies of modern times, overseen by Yeltsin and Putin and applauded and financed by the west. 

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Rethinking the Global Monetary Order

Putin’s War Could Make Central Banks a Crypto Battlefield
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-17/putin-s-war-will-put-central-bankers-on-the-cryptocurrency-frontlines
Tough times will push stablecoin adoption in Russia, just as it did in Turkey. That could further erode the powers of central banks everywhere.

Why India Is Losing Faith in the West
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-17/ukraine-invasion-why-india-is-angry-about-russia-sanctions
Mihir Sharma:
Meanwhile, those same Western nations are proving themselves poor stewards of the global commons. Take the cutoff of several Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system. We have grown accustomed to thinking of interbank communications as a global utility; they’ve now been turned into a tool of Western foreign policy.
This was a unilateral decision by the countries that control SWIFT which, besides the U.S. and Japan, are all European. Little thought was given to how countries such as India, which rely on SWIFT to pay for oil and fertilizers from Russia, would manage the fallout. It should come as no surprise that India’s reaction has been to look for a way around the sanctions by settling trade with Russia in rupees and rubles.
Criticizing India for continuing to buy oil from Russia is especially galling, given that European nations have yet to wean themselves off Russian energy supplies either. And, unlike them, India can hardly afford such bills. If oil remains above $70 a barrel for months, the rupee will collapse, the government will run out of spending money, inflation will skyrocket and the country will have to start worrying about a balance of payments crisis.


The weaponization of finance threatens the future of the dollar standard | The Hill
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/596116-the-weaponization-of-finance-may-threaten-the-future-of-the-dollar-standard

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Thursday, March 17, 2022

International Affairs – History Lessons

Ukraine has long been shaped by the rise and fall of empires
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/ukraine-has-long-shaped-rise-fall-empires/

Settler colonialism helps explain current events in Xinjiang and Ukraine – and the history of Australia and US, too
https://theconversation.com/settler-colonialism-helps-explain-current-events-in-xinjiang-and-ukraine-and-the-history-of-australia-and-us-too-176975

The Industrial Revolution and British Imperialism, 1750-1850
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598220

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The Absurdity of College Rankings

A professor identified several data discrepancies that Columbia University provided to U.S. News & World Report, renewing the debate over the value and accuracy of college rankings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/columbia-university-rank.html 

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Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Significance of Oil

The Global Oil Market Is Based on a Fiction
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/03/russian-oil-sanctions-gas-prices/627074/
 
What happened the last time high gas prices dominated US politics
https://www.vox.com/22970811/gas-prices-biden-russia-election 

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Fed Signals Gradual Rate Hike Path

Fed raises interest rates modestly, plans seven rate hikes in total this year
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/03/16/fed-rate-hike/

Bond Traders Stunned by a Hawkish Fed Are Sounding Growth Alarms
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/bond-traders-stunned-by-a-hawkish-fed-are-sounding-growth-alarms
Defying their stock-market counterparts, Treasury traders aren’t buying Jerome Powell’s upbeat pronouncements on growth. In fact, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s policy decision, one bond-market indicator of economic hardship is flashing red for the first time since the darkest days of the pandemic.
After the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and signaled hikes at all six remaining meetings this year, a section of the Treasury curve -- the gap between five- and 10-year yields -- inverted for the first time since March 2020. Meanwhile the flattening trend between two- and 10-year yields continued.

 
What a Federal Reserve Rate Increase Means for You
https://www.nytimes.com/article/federal-reserve-rate-increase.html

 
FOMC Statement – March 16, 2022
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20220316a.htm
Indicators of economic activity and employment have continued to strengthen. Job gains have been strong in recent months, and the unemployment rate has declined substantially. Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher energy prices, and broader price pressures.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is causing tremendous human and economic hardship. The implications for the U.S. economy are highly uncertain, but in the near term the invasion and related events are likely to create additional upward pressure on inflation and weigh on economic activity.
The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. With appropriate firming in the stance of monetary policy, the Committee expects inflation to return to its 2 percent objective and the labor market to remain strong. In support of these goals, the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/4 to 1/2 percent and anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate. In addition, the Committee expects to begin reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities at a coming meeting.
In assessing the appropriate stance of monetary policy, the Committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook. The Committee would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee's goals. The Committee's assessments will take into account a wide range of information, including readings on public health, labor market conditions, inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and financial and international developments. 



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US Auto Market

Owning and operating a car is getting more expensive in the US – but the largely ineffective public transport means many have little choice but to use cars
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/13/us-car-vehicle-expenses-rise

How Surging Used-Car Prices Are Turning Vehicles Into a Profitable Investment
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/used-car-prices-are-surging-here-s-how-people-are-making-a-profit 

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Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Fed's Dilemma: Growth versus Inflation Trade-off

We Were Worried About Inflation. Then Russia Invaded Ukraine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/opinion/when-inflation-meets-a-war.html

Powell Admires Paul Volcker. He May Have to Act Like Him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/business/economy/powell-fed-inflation-volcker.html
The Federal Reserve is facing the fastest inflation most Americans have ever seen. Its chair says policymakers will do what it takes to tame prices.

The Inflation Hits Just Keep Coming, Raising Stakes for the Fed
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-war-oil-gas-prices-inflation-federal-reserve-11647268257
 
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