Keyword: deathspiral
-
The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses. The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse.
-
U.S. economy is resting atop a public debt exceeding $34 trillion, with its debt-to-GDP ratio sitting at around 120%. Perhaps not the blessing the Founding Fathers had once envisioned. Now, alarm bells are beginning to ring with increasing frequency and volume. Jamie Dimon says Washington is facing a global market "rebellion" because of the tab it is racking up, while Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan believes it's time to stop admiring the problem and instead do something about it.. The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb says the economy is in a "death spiral", while Fed chairman Jerome Powell says...
-
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that out-of-control spending in Washington that keeps adding to the growing pile of U.S. government debt threatens to trigger a reckoning in the form of a market “rebellion.” Mr. Dimon made the remarks while speaking on a panel at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington last week alongside former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a self-proclaimed deficit hawk. At one point in the discussion, Mr. Ryan said that the “most predictable crisis we’ve ever had” is the looming debt spiral as the U.S. government faces increasing levels of indebtedness, threatening America’s ability to pay...
-
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Hugh Hewitt on Thursday morning that he has the campaign resources to stay in the race through at least the end of March, meaning he will not drop out of the race before Super Tuesday. RD: Look, my goal is to, is to win the nomination. If we’d won Iowa, we would have been in a great spot. You know, coming in second gives us the ticket to continue, but I told me people this from the very beginning. I don’t want to be V.P. I don’t want to be in the cabinet. I don’t...
-
Viewing of linear television fell below 50% for the first time in July as streaming viewing hit a new record, according to Nielsen. Total broadcast viewing last month finished at 20% of TV, a new low for the category. On a year-over-year basis, broadcast usage was down 5.4%. Cable viewing slipped to 29.6% of viewing for July, with a year-over-year drop of 12.5%. The top-viewed cable programs of the month were the Home Run Derby and College World Series on ESPN, followed by Hallmark’s “When Calls the Heart.” Streaming accounted for 38.7% of all TV viewing, a new record led...
-
San Francisco-based companies leaving The Golden City because of drop in revenue ... San Francisco, California-based tech CEO Mark Benioff says the city will never go back to the way it was ... ... Golden City is struggling to keep businesses intact, leaving many buildings vacant.. office vacancy rates in San Francisco were 24.8% in the first quarter, more than five times higher than pre-pandemic levels and well above the average rate of 18.5% for the nation’s top cities, ... For San Francisco, the three-year exile resulted in empty storefronts with large "going out of business" signs hanging from windows....
-
The Federal Reserve Chairman’s testimony to Congress next week is likely to be very succinct and can be summed up neatly as ” the risks of doing too little are far greater than the risks of doing too much,” economists said Friday. “The Fed is getting a little more hawkish than we pictured them at the end of last year,” said Michael Gregory, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. Powell will testify on Tuesday to the Senate Banking Committee and on Wednesday to the House Financial Services panel. Both hearings are set to begin at 10 a.m. Eastern. Recent...
-
Since the federal government, with the consent of both parties, just lit another 1.7 trillion dollars of imaginary money on fire, the generally quiet period between Christmas and the new year might be an opportune time to consider an important matter that has been almost completely ignored by both elected officials and the media. That would be the national debt. In case you hadn’t noticed, America’s debt has now reached a staggering level of 31.3 trillion dollars. That’s a figure so huge that it’s almost impossible to wrap your brain around it. In the Boston Globe this week, business and...
-
Roughly a dozen states are proposing sending tax rebate checks to their residents to offset the highest inflation in four decades, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pointing to high gas and food prices as prompting their actions. Among them is Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who on Wednesday signed a law to send checks of up to $500 to state residents. The reason, he said in a statement, is to soften the impact of inflation on household budgets — and also return some of money amid a record state budget surplus.
-
I’ve been tempted to tweak my liberal friends with the mischievous thought that COVID-19 is actually a Trump five-dimensional chess plot to destroy universities, unionized K-12 public education, and Hollywood (since TV and movie production is largely shut down too). Colleges and universities were already facing mounting financial pressure because enrollment is steadily declining and certain to get much worse in the coming decade (the result of falling birthrates back at the time of the housing crash in 2008-09). Add to this the financial hit they are taking right now because of the virus, on top of the huge loss...
-
In April 2019, analysts at Rhodium Group in Hong Kong sat down to assess the financial viability of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What they found surprised them. The second Belt and Road Forum had just wrapped up in Beijing and policymakers in the mainland and beyond were starting to voice their concerns. Western leaders feared that China was drowning the emerging world in general, and Africa in particular, in a new wave of debt. Officials in Beijing pushed back against charges of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, but they were beginning to stick.China had internal reasons to fret. From the outset,...
-
Fearful Americans and overconfident Chinese both believe that China is an unstoppable economic juggernaut “rising” across the Pacific—and poised to displace the U.S. The Chinese government’s willingness to court international condemnation over its violent subjugation of Hong Kong and the Trump administration’s efforts to limit Chinese access to U.S. technology and research universities can both be understood as consequences of this shared belief. Anything is possible. Yet the likelier outcome is that China’s relative economic power will soon hit its zenith before entering a sustained period of decline. American officials should be more sanguine about their global position, while their...
-
It’s not easy being an advocate for the Affordable Care Act right now. Health care advocacy groups are making an against-all-odds effort to sign people up despite confusion and hostility fostered by Republicans opposed to President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. The Trump administration has taken numerous steps to undermine the law, and many states are doing little to promote coverage as health insurance open enrollment begins this week. Health care advocates are particularly concerned about people in Republican-led states with hundreds of thousands of uninsured residents, like Florida, Texas and Georgia. Many of these groups are scrambling to...
-
A federal judge on Wednesday denied an attempt by the state of California to force the Trump administration to pay billions of dollars to insurance companies to subsidize health plans for low-income Americans. California and 17 other states sued the Trump administration, arguing that its decision to end the payments was unlawful. As part of the lawsuit, the states sought an emergency temporary restraining order from the U.S. District Court. Attorneys for the states failed to convince U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria that there would be immediate harm to consumers if the payments are not reinstated. “It appears that because...
-
NFL player protests during the national anthem continued this week, defying pleas by Commissioner Roger Goodell and some team owners to have everyone stand for the song. While fewer teams had mass protests this week than in the early games, some players still kneeled, while others stayed in the locker room for the pre-game national anthem. The prior protests have sparked fan outrage and might have hurt television ratings, with some angry observers and at least one sponsor vowing to boycott the league in a counter-protest. A meeting is set this coming week between NFL management, ownership, and the NFL...
-
New Mexico residents enrolled in Medicaid may have to cough up more money for their health care costs by the end of the year or early next year under a proposal that aims to offset state spending on the program. New Mexico’s Medicaid rolls have swollen since Gov. Susana Martinez expanded low- or no-cost health insurance in 2014 to cover adults with incomes slightly above the federal poverty level, up to about $16,600. As of July, more than 250,000 New Mexicans had enrolled in Medicaid under the program expansion. A single patient earning $12,060 a year could end up having...
-
Vice President Pence on Monday said congressional Republicans should pass a “repeal only” bill if they can’t come to a consensus on legislation to replace ObamaCare. “If they can’t pass this carefully crafted repeal and replace bill — do those two things simultaneously — we ought to just repeal only,” Pence said in an interview with Rush Limbaugh. Pence’s comments echoed those made by President Trump, who last month suggested that he was open to repealing ObamaCare first and developing a replacement plan later. However, White House legislative director Marc Short on Monday said, "we still believe that the bill...
-
California’s low-income residents continue to head straight for the emergency room — instead of their doctor’s office — for expensive treatment, a practice that the Affordable Care Act was supposed to curb. Three years into Obamacare, new figures show, ER visits by the state’s Medi-Cal patients rose 44 percent from early 2014 to late 2016. That’s pretty much the opposite of what architects of the nation’s health care law had predicted: The Obamacare provision expanding Medicaid was designed to get low-income people to start going to doctors in cost-efficient “managed care” plans. The Affordable Care Act’s architects had predicted that...
-
For Linda Dearman, the House vote last week to repeal the Affordable Care Act was a welcome relief. Ms. Dearman, of Bartlett, Ill., voted for President Trump largely because of his contempt for the federal health law. She and her husband, a partner in an engineering firm, buy their own insurance, but late last year they dropped their $1,100-a-month policy and switched to a bare-bones plan that does not meet the law’s requirements. They are counting that the law will be repealed before they owe a penalty. “Now it looks like it will be, and we’re thrilled about that,” Ms....
-
Last year, two national insurance companies dropped out of the marketplace in Alabama, leaving just one option for individuals who purchase insurance through the federal exchange set up under Obamacare. Lack of competition in areas with just one or two insurance providers has been linked to higher premiums in a recent study by the Urban Institute. Median benchmark monthly premiums in areas with just one insurance company averaged $451, compared to $270 for areas with six companies or more. Rural areas and Southern states tend to have less competition, according to the study. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama is...
|
|
|