“A Buoyant Global Economy Is Starting to Sag… The global economy’s brief run of good luck may be ending.
“Manufacturing activity is weakening across the world. Europe slid into a mild recession earlier this year. China’s much-anticipated rebound from Covid-19 lockdowns is sputtering. Many emerging markets continue to struggle with heavy debt burdens and high interest rates…
““While prospects are mixed in the near term, the medium-term outlook for the global economy remains bleak,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-buoyant-global-economy-is-starting-to-sag-b027f7f8
“China’s economy grew slower than expected in the second quarter as youth unemployment hit a record high.
“Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 0.8 percent during April-June compared with the previous quarter, official data showed on Monday, amid lacklustre demand at home and overseas.”
“The $9 trillion of Chinese local government bonds that helped drag the rest of the world out of the 2008 financial crisis are a growing risk this time around…
“The latest developments add to hurdles for strained local governments in China. A nationwide property slump slashed their income from land sales while public spending jumped during the pandemic.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-murky-debt-corner-faces-200000332.html
“John Kerry steps into searing China heat as world’s two biggest polluters try to fix fractured ties.
““If anything, this is the situation that should most bring China and the US back on the same page,” said Li Shuo, senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace China. “Regardless of their political differences, the impacts of climate change have now become a common experience for both countries — it’s no longer a hypothetical crisis…“”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/15/china/us-china-kerry-beijing-climate-talks-intl-hnk/index.html
“‘We are not prepared’: Disasters spread as climate change strikes…
“From a nearly depleted federal disaster fund to state insurance markets that are faltering under the weight of multiple catastrophes, extreme weather is testing the ability of even a rich nation like the United States to withstand the warming that has arrived faster than many scientists expected.”
“We must stop climate solutions from killing biodiversity…
“There is a real risk that badly planned renewable infrastructure will have an even greater impact on biodiversity than existing fossil fuel infrastructure. A Brookings Institution report says(opens a new window) that wind and solar generation require at least 10 times as much land per unit of power produced as fossil fuel powered plants.”
https://www.ft.com/content/755d794a-7052-4512-86eb-6971cbeda003
“Hydrogen Is the Future—or a Complete Mirage…
“…as the case of hydrogen demonstrates, we must beware the efforts of powerful vested interests to use radical technological visions to channel us towards what are in fact conservative and ruinously expensive options.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/14/hydrogen-is-the-future-or-a-complete-mirage/
“Countries Wage War Over Clean Energy Subsidies…
“Journalists are calling it a subsidy war. Those involved in it are keen to preserve an image of cooperation and agreement. Whatever you call it, it’s hard to deny the obvious: the United States and Europe are locked in a race—a subsidy race for the energy transition.”
“Transatlantic inflation gap set to hit highest level in decades… The gulf between price pressures in the US and the UK is likely to widen to levels not seen since the late 1970s this week, as Britain increasingly becomes a global inflationary outlier.”
https://www.ft.com/content/e1289d64-e939-406a-932c-a8c2780f9bec
“Household favourites have almost tripled in price in the past two years as millions struggle to feed their families, a new report has revealed [UK].
“Analysing over 21,000 food and drink products at eight major supermarkets, consumer group Which? found some products were up to 175 per cent more expensive in the three months to the end of June 2023 than for the same period two years earlier.”
“The Bank of England has engineered the largest contraction in UK household wealth on record by jacking up interest rates in response to scorching inflation, a new report out today has claimed.
“Asset values have collapsed by £2.1 trillion since early 2021, mainly driven by a sharp fall in bond prices in response to UK borrowing costs rising quickly, according to the economic think tank the Resolution Foundation (the Foundation).”
“Record migration sparks backlash in wealthy nations…
“Waves of migrants taking dangerous, unauthorized passages to Europe and the U.S. are fueling a new rush of anti-immigrant policies and deepening political divisions in several wealthy countries.”
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/16/record-migration-backlash-us-europe
“Extraordinary map reveals how millions across Europe are shifting towards populist Right-wing parties and abandoning the EU’s traditional social democrats and green ideologues…
“The rebellion has been growing — and the dominos continue to fall. Right-wingers have gained power in Sweden, then in Italy, Finland and Greece. The Spanish could be next…”
“Greece wants the EU to stop migrant boats before they even get to Europe.
“In an interview with POLITICO, newly appointed Greek Migration Minister Dimitris Kairidis called on the EU to resume an operation that aims to halt migrants before leaving Libya, a common departure point for asylum seekers coming to Europe.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/3344121/
“German food banks in crisis.
“Germany’s over 900 food banks, overseen by charitable organization Tafel e.V., support anyone who can prove they’re facing financial hardship. But fewer and fewer companies are donating to these food banks, although demand is growing amid high inflation and the influx of Ukrainian refugees.”
https://www.dw.com/en/german-food-banks-in-crisis/a-66244397
“Credit Suisse inquiry will keep files secret for 50 years…
“”After the completion of the investigation, the files shall be handed over to the Federal Archives and shall be subject to an extended protection period of 50 years,” the committee said in a strategy paper outlining its communication policy.”
“Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters.
“…the plant’s operator said …the temperature of the Danube, whose water is used to cool the plant, reached 29.72 degrees Celsius on Thursday, forcing the cut in output from 1430 GMT. The operator did not specify when power could be restored to nominal levels.”
“Ukraine war: Last grain ship leaves Odesa as deal deadline looms.
“Russia has not agreed to extend the UN-brokered deal unless its demands on its own grain and fertilisers are met. The 2022 deal was struck amid fears of global food shortages after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Both Ukraine and Russia are among the world’s top grain exporters.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66216782
“Cocaine growers in Colombia give up as crop price plunges 75pc.
“A near 75 per cent crash in the price of coca, the chief ingredient in cocaine, is contributing to food insecurity in Colombia and causing displacement, as people leave areas that depend on the illicit crop, according to an internal United Nations presentation seen by Reuters.”
“Six Signs That Argentina’s Economy Is Entering a Recession.
“While the peso’s depreciation — it’s declined more than 50% against the dollar in the last 12 months — fuels some consumption, Argentina’s economy is expected to enter recession in the third quarter, and contract by more than 3% for all of 2023. Here are six warning signs of recession in Argentina.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/six-signs-argentina-economy-entering-140158965.html
“Turkey triples petrol taxes as Erdoğan tries to repair public finances.
“Turkey has tripled petrol taxes as the government tries to raise money to recoup the cost of huge giveaways in the run-up to May’s election and to fund a reconstruction effort costing up to $100bn after February’s devastating earthquake.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f1471f30-9819-4f86-870b-d1768e4eb843
“Sudan refugees face soaring rent prices in Cairo…
“Mohannad, 35, signed a six-month lease for a furnished apartment for 6,000 Egyptian pounds ($195) per month… But “my landlady told me that the rent had gone up to 18,000 pounds,” said Mohanna… Many others reported similar ordeals in Egypt, where its worst-ever economic crisis has pushed property owners to squeeze a profit wherever they can — including from war refugees.”
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230717-sudan-refugees-face-soaring-rent-prices-in-cairo
“Insight: Fighting in Sudan leaves farmers struggling to get crops planted.
“A war between military factions in Sudan is putting at risk the production of staple crops this year, farmers in several states say, threatening to drive the African nation deeper into hunger and poverty.”
“Kenya’s looming hyperinflation: CBK’s headache to manage domestic, external borrowing.
“Borrowing plans, crowding out, high debt stock: Economic policy is unforgiving and continues to chalk merciless lessons for Kenya’s new regime on both sides of the policy isle – fiscal and monetary.”
“South Africa deployed the army in four of its provinces after at least 21 trucks carrying goods were set on fire in various parts of the country in the span of five days.
“In numerous instances, armed men forced drivers out of their vehicles before setting the trucks alight in the middle of major roads.”
“Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has declared a state of emergency to tackle rising food prices and shortages.
“Some of the initiatives include using money saved by the recent removal of a fuel subsidy to provide fertiliser and grain to farmers.”
“Global hunger enters a grim ‘new normal’…
““Recovery from the global pandemic has been uneven, and the war in Ukraine has affected the nutritious food and healthy diets,” Qu Dongyu, director general of the FAO, said in a statement. “ This is the ‘new normal’ where climate change, conflict, and economic instability are pushing those on the margins even further from safety.””
“With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth…
“We face an epochal, unthinkable prospect: of perhaps the two greatest existential threats – environmental breakdown and food system failure – converging, as one triggers the other.”
You can read the previous “Economic” thread here. I’ll be back tomorrow with a “Climate” thread.
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Oh my, all this devastating news. I’ve been waiting for the food news. All that heat, drought and flash-floods etc must be having an effect on agriculture all over. But Im not hearing/seeing it. Enough for ourselves maybe, but not enough left over.
Might partly explain why Australia has lost out on a FTA with the EU. Talks collapsed this week. Again.
Seems the EU wont budge on claiming IP royalties, effectively disallowing too many of our food and wine export “names”, like feta, parmesan, champagne (seriously?), brie, calamari, fettucine, ravioli etc etc. But our Trade Minister has just shrugged it off, we can sell plenty of other places closer to home, and there’s not much produced in the EU that we are all that keen on importing, now that a) shipping so far away is so costly and b) Germany, famous for its engineering, but now their manufacturing sector is tanking.
Close your markets to protectionist trade, see if we care. LOL
Besides Ukraine loved our additional shipment of armoured ATVs. They are pretty impressive engineering for all-terrain, all climate mobility.
Movements to the right in Europe are only to be expected, been slowly drifting that way for years. People worried about housing, food, jobs and energy .. its perfectly understandable to say, “no more”.
Any populist promising jobs, food, energy etc to increasing numbers of masses falling into the “precariat” is bound to win votes.
But I have just finished Turchin’s latest book. I have long, long thought that left and right became meaningless (at least economically) and had dissolved into intra-elite warfare decades ago, probably starting around the Reagan/Thatcher era.
The more I learned about “wealth pumps” and “elite over-production”, the more I felt my recent resolve to never vote again is appropriate.
Good comment, Rain. I agree with all. And yes, voting is pointless.
“The more I learned about “wealth pumps” and “elite over-production”, the more I felt my recent resolve to never vote again is appropriate.”
I too will never vote again.
“Besides Ukraine loved our additional shipment of armoured ATVs. They are pretty impressive engineering for all-terrain, all climate mobility.”
Yup, good equipment (or so I hear) … until the Russians blew them up.
“Yup, good equipment (or so I hear) … until the Russians blew them up.”
Hahahaha, yep – more money for us to replace them, and we don’t care who ultimately pays, as long as they do 🙂
We need to pay down a few tonnes of debt too..
we even had a surplus in national Budget! yay…
And we have another cold-war fight with China over the Solomon Islands…. *grrrr*…
Their PM has loudly and publicly threatened they will go to China, if we don’t pay up…
Thanks for your thoughts, Rain.
“… I have long, long thought that left and right became meaningless.”
One of the interesting phenomena of this era is the way each issue du jour, like climate change or the pandemic or Ukraine, becomes highly politicised with left and right tending to take strongly opposing positions. This in turn creates more and more politically disenfranchised individuals, whose understanding of such issues does not correlate with that of their natural political bedfellows.
I think more than a lurch to the populist right, what we may see is a wild seesawing between left and right with ever more drama, as each newly elected political party fails to solve problems that are at this point insoluble, and is blamed for that. Here in the UK it looks like we are about to lurch from Conservative to Labour, as Sunak’s government crashes and burns over the cost of living crisis and the probable failure of his rash promise to halve inflation this year.
“…I think more than a lurch to the populist right, what we may see is a wild seesawing between left and right with ever more drama, as each newly elected political party fails to solve problems that are at this point insoluble, and is blamed for that. Here in the UK it looks like we are about to lurch from Conservative to Labour, as Sunak’s government crashes and burns over the cost of living crisis…”
Exactly. Turchin mentioned that’s what he figures happened in Ukraine for years before and after the 2014 uprising, lurching from one faction of “aspirant elite” oligarchs or plutarchs ((always get those 2 mixed up! LOL)… to another and then to another faction of economic looters, saying whatever necessary to get the ‘precariat’ to vote for them.
Like you, I also suspect the rest of Europe, including UK, will do the same – I hear Spain is about to lean to the right in its upcoming election – and Le Pen is a rising star in France.
In Australia, I suspect our current Labor govt (and our economy) will last awhile longer, its stable for the moment, as Tim Morgan says on Surplus Energy Economics, many governments will seek to “lower expectations” – as, ours are saying yes, its going to be painful, but seem to be trying to “share the pain” more evenly.
People will vote for food and shelter security. Full stop. End of.
I see the bs is getting worse here in the states now weather channel is saying renewables are cheaper than oil and when we reach net zero we will go in reverse. Drink time no mention of the arctic melting or Antarctic collapse. So hold your hat as the bs continues. But wait ai will save us now! While they want to do mini bombs in our backyard for power no way! So lets forget about Fukushima waste I mean pollution right but it doesn’t give you cancer either and only half of us will get cancer. Yeah i stopped voting years ago it’s pointless at this stage.
“…the bs is getting worse here in the states…” I would assume that the magical thinking will intensify in direct proportion to how screwed we are.
Yep so true that is
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/16/hollywood-strikes-could-lead-to-an-absolute-collapse-iacs-diller.html Hollywood could collapse due to the strike of both writers and actors guild. Wow how about those berries. It must be pretty fragile.
Mark Twain — ‘If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.’
“Mark Twain — ‘If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.’”
And in my country? Its MANDATORY voting.
But since around 2012ish? I started showing up and just scribbling on the ballot paper, sometimes a slogan on the issue de jeure, sometimes just a feminist Women’s Rights symbol.
Old-fashioned Luddite, I wont use the electronic voting booths 🙂
But I often felt guilty, for my mother, and grandmother –
As a young girl I went backpacking, hitchhiking around Oz and SE-Asia and missed an election and didn’t vote in something or other.
When I returned home, I got a nasty letter with a $50 fine unless I had a good excuse.
I threw it in the bin, Some other election, I rocked up but found I had been struck from the electoral rolls – *shrug*.
Off for my “Democracy Sausage” and white elephant sale.
One thing about Australia though – because it is mandatory, it is made so super-easy, and ‘Voting Day” is always on a Saturday, held in public schools, public libraries, community centres, they even have mobile booths around the hospitals, prisons, homeless centres etc.
And its a neighbourhood Party Day, games & jumping castles for the kids, local school and charity fundraising, home made cake bakes and most importantly “SAUSAGE SIZZLES” to fund raise for local charities. People watching, it is heart-warming to see some of the immigrants with their big smiles, from war-torn countries with horrific violence on their voting days …. they get so excited at Australia’s cultural tradition of “democracy sausages” and the family-friendly voting days…
A couple years later I applied for my first passport, and got a 2-page long, long emotionally intense letter about not being registered to vote,
made me feel so bad, like I was killing koalas by not doing my Citizen’s “Obligation and Duty”.
The bottom line? No voter registration, no passport!!!!
My mother happened to be there when I got the letter, and she figuratively ‘Tore me a New One’ if you get my meaning ???
…. her mother in England had been a suffragette at the turn of the century, and a long, very loud English women’s history lecture “Don’t you know, women died to get the vote? they died in front of horses, they bombed buildings, they fought the Trade Union men, they died on hunger strikes in prisons with the Cat & Mouse laws…”
So for many years, decades after – every time I pushed my ballots in the box, I nodded to myself thought “This one’s for you Mum and Gran”
Took me a long time, to overcome the guilt, but no more 🙂
Starvation is a tough weight loss program. 😉
Wonder if overpopulation has anything to do with the problems the Clever Ape faces? Unlimited growth in a finite habitat?
Sorry to use the word that is to remain unspoken.
“Your children aren’t special.” – Bill Hicks
“So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key” – Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund