It’s also expected that Trump-side politicians will pressure the Fed. Regardless of why rates were raised in the first place, this is an election year. The theory is that rate cuts will be a plus for Biden. So rates stay high, and Biden can be blamed for high rates.

This has nothing to do with reality.

Reality wasn’t invited.

Higher rates were inevitable. Trump said in 2019 that he wanted rates at zero. These are charity rates for big borrowers who then give retail credit at credit card rates, which aren’t exactly zero.

Any moron could make big money on those terms, and a lot of morons have. They’ve also cranked up prices for food and rent for the last nearly two years.

What’s moronic is that these rises and tantrum-based economics effectively devalue money. Your money buys less. Bills increase. The entire economy is subject to these bizarre whims.

The Fed doesn’t and can’t work like that. Those rates bring in money to help with government debt and expenditures. The Trump side are the ones who think debt and expenditure are critical. The fact that their guy Trump caused the biggest increase in US debt ever isn’t a topic for discussion.

The demand for money to pay debt and not destroy the entire global credit system isn’t negotiable. The US needs the money. It’d need a lot less money if these idiot savants of fiscal restraint paid taxes, but that’s hardly news.

The hysteria is less excusable. Check out this link on the history of US interest rates. See the percentages. At the absolute top, now, we’re talking about 5%. Interest rates in the real economy, the one you eat and pay bills in, are a lot higher.

When interest rates were lower, many depositors didn’t get any interest. That drained a lot of income for some people who thought they could survive on those rates.

Mortgages on fixed rates are usually ballpark for something like the 5% figure. We’re talking about levels of personal financial commitment and obligations. That’s not a topic, either.

The USA recently lost its AAA credit rating thanks to endless government spending “debates”. Cut spending, they say. OK – How about no new defense contracts, etc.? That’d cut spending, a lot. They normally prefer to cut social security.

The US bond market is now looking very menacing. A lot of money, meaning a lot of billions, is piling into that market. It’s been a 100% predictor of recessions, and those patterns of bond behavior are forming again. Bonds are debt issued by governments and businesses. The rates they pay must be good to be competitive and receive money from investors. So, rates rise.

This is a political and business culture that is effectively illiterate. If you borrow, you have to pay. If you lend, you have to receive interest of more than zero. How does anyone not know that?

For more avoidable disasters, contact your smiling local political ignoramuses.

The post Op-Ed: Interest rates and US politics – A terrible mix appeared first on Digital Journal.

Both parties contesting the vote are committed to a constitutionally enshrined philosophy of a government that measures its success by the “happiness and well-being of the people”.

Some voters are expected to have trekked for days to cast their ballots in the landlocked mountain nation of about 800,000 people, similar in area to Switzerland.

In the freezing early morning mountain air, only a few voters lined up as polls opened in the capital Thimpu, an AFP reporter said.

Booths will stay open until 5:00 pm (1100 GMT), with results likely to be announced the following day.

Foremost in the minds of many are the struggles facing the kingdom’s younger generation, with chronic youth unemployment and a brain drain.

Bhutan’s youth unemployment rate stands at 29 percent, according to the World Bank, while economic growth has sputtered along at an average of 1.7 percent over the past five years.

Young citizens searching for better financial and educational opportunities abroad have left in record numbers since the last elections, with Australia as their top destination. 

Around 15,000 Bhutanese were issued visas there in the 12 months before last July, according to a local news report — more than the preceding six years combined and almost two percent of the kingdom’s population.

The issue is front and centre for both parties contesting the poll.

– ‘Mass exodus’ –

Career civil servant Pema Chewang, 56, leader of the Bhutan Tendrel Party (BTP), said the country was losing the “cream of the nation”.

His opponent, former prime minister and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chief Tshering Tobgay, 58, sounded the alarm over Bhutan’s “unprecedented economic challenges and mass exodus”.

His party’s manifesto quoted government statistics showing that one in every eight people were “struggling to meet their basic needs for food” and other necessities.

Tourism, a small share of Bhutan’s economy but a key earner of foreign currency, has yet to recover from the disruptions of the Covid pandemic.

The previous government pursued several projects to diversify the economy, including a special economic zone on the Indian border and plans with a Singapore-based company to raise funds for a cryptocurrency-mining scheme.

Both parties have pledged a huge ramp-up of investment in hydropower, its primary source of energy.

Bhutan held elections for the first time in 2008 after political reforms established a bicameral parliament soon after the start of the reign of the present king, who remains hugely popular.

Campaigns in the Buddhist-majority nation have always been subdued affairs, with strict rules mandating that election materials can only be posted on public notice boards. 

A primary contest in November narrowed the race down to two parties, with both the previous government’s lawmakers and their former opposition knocked out.

Bhutan lies sandwiched between the globe’s two most populous countries, China and India, with both neighbours watching with keen interest as they eye strategic contested border zones.

The post Bhutan votes as economic strife hits ‘national happiness’ appeared first on Digital Journal.

There were chaotic scenes as the feverish march got underway before dawn following an open-air mass for the so-called Black Nazarene statue in a seaside park in Manila. 

Many Filipinos believe the icon has miraculous healing powers and that touching it, or the ropes attached to its float, can heal previously incurable ailments and bring good fortune to them and their loved ones.

As a light rain fell over the massive crowd, some barefoot devotees risked injury to reach the float by clambering over others and clinging to the clothes of guards protecting the icon, causing some to fall off the float.

Other guards on the float pushed unruly devotees to the ground to keep them away from the icon enclosed in a glass case and allow the parade to continue on its journey of several kilometres. 

More than 15,000 security and medical personnel have been deployed along the route of the procession, which authorities estimated would attract over two million people as it crawled towards its destination, Quiapo Church. 

It is the first time the traditional parade featuring the life-sized statue has been held since 2020, after Covid-19 forced officials to drastically downsize the event.

“I believe that the Nazarene will give what we are all praying for — we just have to wait, but he will give everything,” Renelinda de Leon, 64, told AFP at the start of the procession. 

“He gave me good health. I don’t have an illness, I’m always healthy.”

The original wooden statue was brought to the Philippines in the early 1600s when the nation was a Spanish colony.

Many Filipinos believe it got its dark colour after surviving a fire aboard a ship en route from Mexico.

Authorities did not report any specific threat to the procession, but took the precaution of blocking mobile phone signals to prevent the remote detonation of explosive devices, and imposed a no-fly and no-sail zone near the route.  

First-aid stations lined the streets on Tuesday to treat people suffering from heat stroke, abrasions or other medical problems during the procession, which in previous years has taken up to 22 hours to finish due to the huge crowds. 

This year, the icon has been placed in a glass case for the first time and participants were banned from getting on the float — though some ignored the directive in their desperation to wipe a towel on the glass in the hope of receiving a miracle.

Tonton Ruz, one of the guards protecting the statue as it makes its slow journey, said Thursday he was happy the parade had resumed, but hoped it would be “more peaceful” than in the past. 

“Before, you can’t see him (the statue) with so many people on top of the float blocking the view,” Ruz, 36, told AFP as he prepared for the march.

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“For weeks I haven’t been able to reach the wheat I planted in November,” Ahmed al-Amin, 43, told AFP from his farm 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of state capital Wad Madani.

After war erupted in April last year between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Al-Jazira — just south of Khartoum — became a sanctuary for more than half a million people, according to the United Nations.

But the front line has been edging southwards for months, and in December the fragile peace in Al-Jazira was shattered.

The fight for Wad Madani began, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee from the state.

When the army quickly retreated from the state capital, the RSF took over swathes of agricultural land, laying siege to entire villages and leaving farmers unable to tend to vital crops.

Amin says his crops need water and fertiliser that he and other farmers in the area can no longer provide.

His farm is part of the Gezira agricultural scheme, an important irrigation project that is a key source of food for the northeast African country.

Local officials had announced plans in October to plant 600,000 acres of wheat — vital to fend off widespread hunger.

Most of its food is imported, and with a war-crippled economy and 5.8 million people displaced within the country, the spectre of famine has stalked Sudan for months.

– Widespread hunger –

According to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), nearly 18 million people are currently facing acute hunger, with five million at “emergency levels of hunger”.

Although a famine has not been officially declared, “there is no other way around what’s about to happen in Sudan”, according to Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) country director William Carter.

On Saturday, US agency USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network said “fighting in central and eastern Sudan, which is the country’s most important region for crop production, is a serious threat to national food availability”.

The NRC’s Carter is more direct.

“Unless peace magically descends on Sudan, there is going to be famine. At this point, it’s not just air strikes and urban warfare killing people,” he told AFP.

The fighting has killed more than 12,190 people, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

There are no figures for indirect casualties, including those who have died due to the nationwide breakdown of essential services, infrastructure and hospitals — 80 percent of which remain out of service.

All along the highway from Khartoum to Wad Madani, the RSF has set up checkpoints, seized land and besieged entire communities.

Kamel Saad, 55, saw this happen to his village, 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Wad Madani.

He had just begun to collect his vegetable crop — on which he had spent his life savings — in a last-ditch effort to make it through this year’s harvest season.

“My crop rotted because of the RSF deployment on the road,” Saad told AFP. He now has nothing left to his name.

– Rotting crops –

Others were lucky enough to have gathered in their harvest before the tanks arrived. But now they have nowhere to take their produce.

At this time of year, markets across the state would usually be teeming with farmers and merchants moving their crops, feeding millions.

Now most of these markets are abandoned, looted or closed for fear of attack.

According to officials, local activists and farmers, the RSF fighters have left nearly nothing untouched in their wake.

In a statement, Gezira scheme head Omar Marzouk said “the project’s cars and machinery have been looted and workers in every department are unable to reach their work”.

Last month, the WFP said paramilitary fighters looted its warehouse in Al-Jazira, stealing “enough stocks to feed nearly 1.5 million severely food insecure people for one month”.

By the end of December, “300 cars and farm vehicles” had been looted from the Junaid project on the east bank of the Nile, according to project head Mohamed Gad al-Rabb.

Fertiliser and pesticide warehouses stood empty, their contents looted, and water pumps came to a halt.

“Already we hadn’t been paid our profits from the government for two years. Now the water pumps have stopped and our crops are at risk of rotting,” farmer Khader Abbas told AFP.

Sudan was already suffering before the war, with triple-digit inflation and a third of the population needing humanitarian aid.

Now, as the fighting spreads southeast, local experts have warned that the damage to the country’s agriculture sector could cripple its food security for years to come.

The post Harvest lost as war expands in famine-threatened Sudan appeared first on Digital Journal.

Carrying a banner that read “Exodus from poverty” and chanting “We are not criminals. We are international workers,” the migrants set off at dawn from the town of Arriaga in the southern state of Chiapas.

The same group of migrants had decided to disband a previous caravan that set off from Chiapas on Christmas Eve, after immigration officials agreed to address demands that included visas that would allow them to travel freely through Mexico.

Authorities “failed to fulfill” the pledge, said Luis Garcia Villagran, an activist accompanying the caravan.

“They left them (the migrants) in shelters… they separated the families and caused serious problems,” he told reporters.

The migrants, who include families with children, many of them from Central America and Venezuela, complained that they had been misled.

“Immigration lied to us. They made a promise that they didn’t keep. They just wanted to break up the group,” said Rosa Vasquez from El Salvador.

A surge in migration was top of the agenda when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior US officials visited Mexico last month seeking increased efforts to curb the flow.

Right-wing US Republicans in Congress have blocked President Joe Biden’s request for additional funding to Ukraine and Israel, demanding he agree to sweeping new measures against illegal migration in exchange.

In the weeks before Blinken’s visit, US border police had reported around 10,000 crossings every day by migrants, many of them fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries.

While some pay people smugglers to transport them in trucks through Mexico, others join caravans undertaking the long journey on foot, enduring hunger, exhaustion and insecurity.

The post Migrants resume caravan march in Mexico, say misled by officials appeared first on Digital Journal.

Using a recently invented technique, scientists counted on average 240,000 detectable fragments of plastic per liter of water in popular brands — between 10-100 times higher than prior estimates — raising potential health concerns that require further study.

“If people are concerned about nanoplastics in bottled water, it’s reasonable to consider alternatives like tap water,” Beizhan Yan, an associate research professor of geochemistry at Columbia University and a co-author of the paper told AFP.

But he added: “We do not advise against drinking bottled water when necessary, as the risk of dehydration can outweigh the potential impacts of nanoplastics exposure.”

There has been rising global attention in recent years on microplastics, which break off from bigger sources of plastic and are now found everywhere from the polar ice caps to mountain peaks, rippling through ecosystems and finding their way into drinking water and food.

While microplastics are anything under 5 millimeters, nanoplastics are defined as particles below 1 micrometer, or a billionth of a meter — so small they can pass through the digestive system and lungs, entering the bloodstream directly and from there to organs, including the brain and heart. They can also cross the placenta into the bodies of unborn babies.

There is limited research on their impacts on ecosystems and human health, though some early lab studies have linked them to toxic effects, including reproductive abnormalities and gastric issues.

To study nanoparticles in bottled water, the team used a technique called Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy, which was recently invented by one of the paper’s co-authors, and works by probing samples with two lasers tuned to make specific molecules resonate, revealing what they are to a computer algorithm.

They tested three leading brands but chose not to name them, “because we believe all bottled water contain nanoplastics, so singling out three popular brands could be considered unfair,” said Yan.

The results showed between 110,000 to 370,000 particles per liter, 90 percent of which were nanoplastics while the rest were microplastics.

The most common type was nylon — which probably comes from plastic filters used to purify the water– followed by polyethylene terephthalate or PET, which is what bottles are themselves made from, and leaches out when the bottle is squeezed. Other types of plastic enter the water when the cap is opened and closed.

Next, the team hopes to probe tap water, which has also been found to contain microplastics, though at far lower levels.

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Here is a look at the exhibit and the work undertaken to fix — or not — the scars left when thousands of supporters of far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court that day.

– ‘Marks of history’ –

The works are on display in the “Green Room” of the lower house of Congress, one of the three buildings by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer that rioters trashed on January 8, 2023.

Thirty photographs of the day’s destruction are also on display.

The lower house said in a statement some damaged objects would not be repaired but “will intentionally be left with the marks of history.”

“Artworks live in time and go through various things, which we record and sometimes decide to leave. January 8 is a part of history. These works bear witness to that day,” Aline Rabello, head of restoration work for the lower house, told newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.

– Vases, ostrich egg –

The pieces include the fragments of a gold and porcelain vase given to Brazil by China in 2012, and another vase gifted by Hungary in 2011.

Both were shattered during the riots. Some of the pieces were never found.

An engraved ostrich egg given by Sudan in 2012 to then lower house speaker Marco Maia is also on display — with missing pieces, as well.

At a ceremony to mark the anniversary Monday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who narrowly beat Bolsonaro in Brazil’s bitterly divisive 2022 elections, will present a restored tapestry by iconic Brazilian artist and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx.

Rioters ripped it from a wall in the Senate, tore it and urinated on it.

– Millions in costs –

Some of the worst destruction took place at the Supreme Court, a frequent target of outrage from the far-right over its investigations into alleged crimes by Bolsonaro.

Authorities registered 951 items stolen, broken or destroyed in the high court.

The cost of restoring its main chamber reached 12 million reais ($2.4 million), the court said.

The lower house reportedly restored 54 of the 64 objects vandalized there, including a giant mosaic by Brazilian master Athos Bulcao, at a cost of more than $280,000.

At the Senate, where some 20 works were damaged, a spokesperson told AFP that restoring one iconic painting alone — a sprawling depiction of the signing of the Brazilian republic’s first constitution, by 19th-century artist Gustavo Hastoy — will cost around $163,000.

The post Scarred artworks from Brazil’s Jan 8 riots tell their stories appeared first on Digital Journal.

The leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, Jose Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, was reported missing on Sunday by authorities who launched the search of the penitentiary in the port city of Guayaquil.

“The most likely” scenario is that he fled several hours before a planned police operation in the prison, said government spokesman Roberto Izurieta.

“The full force of the State is being deployed to find this extremely dangerous individual.”

Authorities have not confirmed the escape of the 44-year-old criminal boss.

Izurieta bemoaned “the level of infiltration” of criminal groups, and said the Ecuadorian prison system had “failed.”

Long a peaceful haven between top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

Gang wars largely play out in the country’s prisons, where criminal leaders such as Fito wield immense control.

The battles have left some 460 people dead inside the country’s prisons since 2021, their bodies often found dismembered, decapitated, or incinerated.

Fito has been held since 2011, serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

In a massive operation involving thousands of security forces, he was transferred to the 150-person La Roca prison in August last year, after the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

A week before his death, Villavicencio said he had received threats from the gang.

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In an annual report, the political risk consultancy said that the November 5 election “will test American democracy to a degree the nation hasn’t experienced in 150 years,” a reference to the country’s civil war.

“The United States is already the world’s most divided and dysfunctional advanced industrial democracy. The 2024 election will exacerbate this problem no matter who wins,” it said.

“With the outcome of the vote essentially a coin toss (at least for now), the only certainty is continued damage to America’s social fabric, political institutions and international standing.”

If Donald Trump — currently the Republican front-runner — again loses to President Joe Biden, the real estate mogul will likely once more allege massive fraud and “incite widespread intimidation campaigns” against election officials and workers, the report said.

The United States in a Biden second term could also face an “unprecedented political crisis” if Trump goes to jail on one of myriad cases in which he is charged, although large-scale violence remains unlikely, it said.

Biden has cast his campaign as a struggle to save democracy against Trump, whose supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in hopes of stopping the formalization of Biden’s victory.

If he loses, Biden would be expected to concede. But many Democrats will also view Trump as illegitimate and some will refuse to confirm his victory citing the constitutional prohibition against anyone who has “engaged in insurrection” taking office, the Eurasia Group said.

Meanwhile, a second-term Trump would be expected to “weaponize” the US government to go after rivals and crush dissent, it added.

The Eurasia Group ranked the violence in the Middle East as the second greatest global risk, with the Israel-Hamas war “likely to be only the first phase in an expanding conflict in 2024.”

The third greatest risk was Ukraine, with the study predicting the country in 2024 will in effect become partitioned with Kyiv struggling to retake remaining areas seized by Russia.

It said Ukraine would face another major blow if the United States elects Trump, who opposes the billions of dollars in US aid to Kyiv.

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“Over 27 years ago, I was fortunate to start a partnership with one of the most iconic brands in the world,” the golf legend said on Facebook. “Yes, there will certainly be another chapter.”

Woods, 48, a 15-time major champion who has struggled with injury in recent months, posted a picture with his mother, Kutilda Woods and Nike Founder Phil Knight, whose “passion and vision” he credited with bringing to fruition the Nike Golf partnership.

Nike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Although Woods has employed Nike shoes, hats and other items, he is perhaps best recognized for donning the swoosh in the fire engine red polo shirt worn in his first Masters triumph in 1997.

In Woods, whom the brand first sponsored in 1996 when the golfer was just 20, Nike identified a global superstar identified with his sport in a similar way to Michael Jordan in basketball and Roger Federer in tennis.

More than 20 years after he stopped playing, Jordan’s name still sells basketball products for the brand. Federer, by contrast, shifted from Nike to Japanese brand Uniqlo in his last playing years.

Nike’s golf business has amassed more than $10 billion in sales, withe the peak year in 2013 with $791 million in revenues.

Woods has received an estimated $500 million through the venture, according to estimates.

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