https://twitter.com/jaysbookman/status/1615429477353283589
Jay Bookman
@jaysbookman
The fed'l government spent $21.9 trillion under four budgets signed by Trump, a 46% spending increase over the previous four-year period under Obama.
So basically, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, the House GOP is refusing to pay the bills they themselves had authorized.
2:22 PM · Jan 17, 2023
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/pfbid029mzcbSR7ZMEKgsTTtTciVcvzBx1xvJRFxvE6XQyZoejyuKqBvZKFaos6jPMV5kRl
Robert Reich
Nov. 12, 2022
Corporate profits only accounted for roughly 11% of price growth from 1979 to 2019.
Today, record corporate profits account for 53.9% of price increases.
Folks, corporate greed is driving inflation, not workers asking for better wages or Joe Biden.
Samantha Aschieris / @samantharenck / August 30, 2022
A record-breaking heat wave across China is exacerbating underlying issues that threaten its future role in the global supply chain, an Asian studies expert says.
China has long struggled with water shortages, food prices, power grid issues, and inflation, all of which have been magnified by the record heat wave the country is facing, says Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the media outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Over the past two months, China has been battling its worst heat wave in more than 60 years, with temperatures reaching as high as 113°F in Beibei, which is in the Chongqing province, and 111.2°F in Sichuan province, The Washington Post reported.
“The water shortage is in turn affecting internal transportation … which affects supply chains. The water shortages are affecting power generation, or hydropower, which affect supply chains. The power shortages they’re already having is affecting supply chains,” said Cheng, who characterized China as “water poor.”
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The heat wave has resulted in rolling electrical blackouts for homes and offices, and in factories being shut down, and it has killed thousands of fish and poultry, CNN reported.
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Global supply chains have already been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the heat wave has the potential to have a greater impact than the pandemic, according to Mirko Woitzik, a global director of intelligence solutions for Everstream Analytics.
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We’ve seen a number of factories and businesses closing temporarily. I believe Tesla and Apple temporarily closed some of their manufacturing facilities in China. Given what we’ve seen with the causes of supply chain problems and kind of what happens when those are mucked up—we saw that previously as a result of COVID—this heat wave can either prolong some of those supply chain challenges or exacerbate them.
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Nov. 2, 2022
How can people have free will if they are not able to perceive reality? Anybody who is old enough to remember Obama's presidency should remember that when republicans gained control of Congress, they blocked almost all his attempts to stimulate the economy. They knew people would blame the president if things were not good, and they thought it would help them regain the presidency. They have done this to other presidents. They will do it to Biden. Voting for republicans for Congress because you are unhappy with the economy is self-destructive.
This must be a contributor to inflation.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/mississippi-river-drought-imperils-trade-on-vital-us-waterway-1.1829068
Oct 6, 2022
The Mississippi River is a vital US waterway that ferries key commodities between the heart of America and the Gulf Coast -- and drought is putting waterborne trade in jeopardy.
Drought depleted river levels so much that in some spots vessels are getting stuck. One shipping company said low water levels are causing severe impacts to navigation not seen since 1988. It’s a key concern for transporting goods from a river basin that produces 92% of the nation’s agricultural exports, especially during harvest season.
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The drying Mississippi is reminiscent of this summer’s transportation woes on the Rhine River — and both are functions of a Northern Hemisphere drought worsened considerably by climate change. Drought in root-level soil this summer was roughly 20 times more likely north of the tropics, according to a report this week by World Weather Attribution, a scientific research group. The drought caused rivers to dry up around the hemisphere, and caused particular harm in Western Europe, where summer crop yields plummeted.
The Mississippi River is currently closed near Stack Island, Mississippi, causing a backup of 117 vessels and 2,048 barges in the area as of midday Thursday, while a shutdown near Memphis, Tennessee has caused a smaller logjam, according to the Coast Guard. The US Army Corps of Engineers is dredging near Stack Island and the Coast Guard intends to reopen the waterway with restrictions at some point Friday.
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About 35% of US thermal coal for export travels on the Mississippi, so this will significantly affect the market, said Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC, a major US exporter.
“It will be a big disruption to supply,” he said.
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Where I live, it's a fall drought. Had too much rain this summer, now none for several weeks.
The droughts and flood which have been occurring around the globe have reduced crop yields and contributed to inflation, which the news media doesn't mention when talking about inflation.
Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Wed 5 Oct 2022 17.00 EDT
The climate crisis made the record drought across the northern hemisphere this summer at least 20 times more likely, scientists have calculated. Without human-caused global heating, the event would have been expected only once every four centuries.
The drought hit crop production and power supplies, exacerbating the food and energy crises already sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Droughts will become even more severe and more frequent unless the burning of fossil fuels is phased out, the researchers warned.
The dry conditions, assessed using data on soil moisture, largely resulted from the heatwaves that struck across North America, Europe and Asia, with lower rainfall relatively less important. The scientists said a summer as hot as that of 2022 would have been “virtually impossible” without global heating and in Europe alone there were 24,000 heat-related fatalities.
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The dry conditions caused widespread water shortages and wildfires, with a record number of blazes in Europe, the first national drought alert in China and more than half of the US being declared in drought. In the UK, temperatures hit 40C for the first time on record, shocking scientists, and hosepipe bans are still in place across much of the country.
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Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London, UK, and also part of the team, said: “In Europe, drought conditions led to reduced harvests. This was particularly worrying as it followed a climate change-fuelled heatwave in [India and Pakistan] that also destroyed crops, and happened at a time when global food prices were already extremely high due to the war in Ukraine.”
The scientists had already found that the deadly South Asian heatwave was made 30 times more likely by the climate crisis and that the intense rainfall, which caused devastating floods across Pakistan, was made 50% worse by global heating.
-----The scientists found the record northern hemisphere drought of 2022 would be expected once every 20 years in today’s climate but only every 400 years without climate change. The drought in western and central Europe was made at least three to four times more likely by global heating. But they said this does not mean that climate change has had less influence in Europe as the fingerprint of climate change is harder to discern in smaller regions.
The analysis is complex and carries uncertainties, but the researchers said the estimates in the study are conservative, with the real influence of human activities likely even higher.
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“We’re also seeing the impacts compounding and cascading across regions and sectors,” he said. For example, the drought cut hydropower production, as well as power from nuclear and coal plants, due to lack of cooling water. “That compounded a situation where electricity prices were already under stress, due to the Russia-Ukraine war and when we needed lots of electricity for air conditioning all across Europe to deal with the high heat.”
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Sept. 20, 2022
Pay of members of the federal reserve board and Congress should be tied to the median wage. Maybe a multiple of the bottom 20%. The only way the fed has to bring down inflation is to slow the economy, causing job losses for some. Since they think this is a price worth paying, they should be willing to be good patriots and share in the pain. And Congress would be motivated to take other measures to cool inflation.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20220826a.htm
August 26, 2022
Monetary Policy and Price Stability
Chair Jerome H. Powell
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While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.
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An example of how climate disruption is contributing to inflation, in this case by increasing shipment costs and reducing supplies.
https://news.yahoo.com/europes-mightiest-river-drying-amid-101906498.html
The River Rhine, one of Europe's most important rivers which is used to transport cargo including chemicals, grains, and coal across the continent, is drying up amid record-breaking summer heatwaves.
Germany's Federal Institute of Hydrology has warned that rivers in Central Europe are at "unusually low" levels and are continuing to fall.
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Southwest Germany news outlet SWR reported that the low level of water is limiting shipping on the Rhine south of Duisburg and Cologne and that for days, freight ships haven't been able to travel fully-loaded.
A representative for Germany's Federal Institute of Hydrology told Bloomberg that if the level at Kaub dips down to 40 centimeters (15.7 inches), it's uneconomical for vessels carrying commodities to sail past it given how little cargo they'd be able to carry.
The low water levels already impacting energy supplies. The supply of coal to two power stations in Germany – one in Mannheim and another in Karlsruhe – has been "affected" by low water levels in the Rhine since July 13, according to the EEX exchange.
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Low water levels on the Rhine having an economic impact has not been uncommon in recent years, with a lack of water in the river attributed in 2019 to causing a short-lived recession in Germany at the tail end of 2018.
Pantheon Macroeconomics said in January 2019 that low river levels effectively amount to a "supply shock in German manufacturing," by lowering the availability of key goods needed for the sector.
Ben Winck
May 26, 2022, 1:40 PM
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The US's industrial concentration problem isn't anything new. The economy is at least 50% more concentrated now than it was in 2005, according to the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a commonly used measure of industry concentration. That means a smaller group of companies control the lion's share of their respective sectors.
Companies typically pass higher input costs on to consumer prices. Yet that pass-through "becomes about 25 percentage points greater when there is an increase in concentration similar to the one observed since the beginning of this century," Fed economists Falk Bräuning, José L. Fillat, and Gustavo Joaquim said. Put simply, dwindling industry competition leads to companies raising prices at a much faster pace.
The pass-through happens through a variety of channels, according to the paper. The rise in concentration over the past two decades has been an "amplifying factor" to cost shocks from supply shortages, energy price spikes, and the labor shortage, the team said.
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https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1534585671007907840
Robert Reich
@RBReich
If you really want to understand skyrocketing prices, take a look at monopoly power.
The economy is at least 50% more concentrated now than it was in 2005.
In a market with only a few massive corporations who can coordinate price hikes, everyone gets shafted.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/uoc--mpi041521.php
News Release 15-Apr-2021
University of California - Davis
An estimated 334,000 COVID-19 cases are attributable to meatpacking plants, resulting in $11.2 billion in economic damage, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of California, Davis. The study was published in the journal Food Policy.
It found that beef- and pork-processing plants more than doubled per capita infection rates in counties that had them. Chicken-processing plants increased transmission rates by 20 percent. The study looked specifically at large meatpacking plants generating more than 10 million pounds per month.
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https://news.yahoo.com/aid-bill-13-billion-food-003232726.html
NBC News
Martha C. White
Wed, December 23, 2020, 7:32 PM EST
The $13 billion boost in food stamp benefits in the new coronavirus aid bill isn't some kind of giveaway to the poor — it's some of the best stimulus government money can buy.
Economists say the new increase for food stamps, known as SNAP, for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, through June wouldn't just help those going hungry during the pandemic. It would also boost the economy more than other kinds of stimulus spending.
Every dollar spent on SNAP turns into $1.73 in economic activity, compared to $1.36 for every dollar spent on federal aid to state governments and $1.29 for every dollar allocated for a payroll tax holiday, according to Moody's Analytics researchers.
Meanwhile, cutting the corporate tax rate yields a paltry 30 cents per dollar.
"Every dollar in SNAP benefits boosts the economy," said Luis Guardia, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center. "It helps strengthen the existing food supply and the mechanisms that support that."
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The Agriculture Department found that SNAP spending has 10 times the job creation impact of other transfer payments or federal expenditures, particularly in rural areas.
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SNAP benefits are based on the Agriculture Department's Thrifty Food Plan, which calculates weekly food costs of about $40 a week for single adults, or $134.50 for a family of four.
The budget assumes that shoppers can buy in bulk to get lower prices. That isn't always possible for families who live paycheck to paycheck.
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Because of the pandemic, the number of Americans estimated to be at risk of going hungry has risen from 35 million to nearly 50 million, according to estimates by the nonprofit Feeding America.
Much of that new need is coming from people who've never had to reach for food stamps before.
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https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/CCA3EBC0-49CB-11EA-BE18-993E793EE3B3
This appears to be a normal lag in getting the facts, since it follows the normal pattern. Of course, the way the Trump administration behaves, many will suspect a deliberate coverup. But I try to be fair and honest.
I remember during a recession, I think the one before the big one, the Georgia Dept. of Labor was showing Georgia doing better than other states. It turned out they weren't opening and recording reports from employers that showed the real number of layoffs, in that case to deliberately make the state look better.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50234626
A conservative friend posted something a day or two ago from FOX about the economy being great. Heard today that the Fed is lowering interest rates because of slowing economy. I have noticed from Trump fans that when there is something that might reflect badly on Trump, they often post a link or meme that claims the opposite situation from what is happening. It appears to me that the Trump machine, including his media supporters, are creating such fake news, knowing that people tend to believe the first thing they hear, even if it is contradicted by later facts.
If the economy were really so great, the Fed wouldn't have to be keeping interest rates so low.
