…looking at it [DOT 22/3/22]

…you know…I get that these come off as pessimistic…but I should stress that I’d like to think we’re not doomed…I just struggle a little to find much in the headlines that sounds that way

The Australian comedian Bill Kerr used to begin his BBC appearances with: “I don’t want to worry you, but …” Funny how those words came back to me last week as I watched the television coverage of the criminal bombing of homes in Ukraine.
[…]
Quite apart from the inhumanity and carnage, in his infinite folly Putin has set off a process of economic and social disruption which compounds the many obvious crises that the world already faced.

As energy prices soar, memories are being revived in the UK of the 1970s, when the first oil crisis of 1973-74 was a major factor in unseating the 1970-74 government of Edward Heath, and also sowed the seeds of the ultimate failure of the Wilson and Callaghan governments of 1974-79.

The sight of our egregious prime minister Boris Johnson going, oil can in hand, to Middle Eastern dictators to plead for economic help to counteract damage inflicted by another dictator, Putin, evokes an uncomfortable memory. When Labour chancellor Denis Healey was besieged in 1976 by rampant inflation and a balance of payments crisis, the Treasury’s top civil servant, my good friend the late Sir Douglas Wass, tried to lighten the mood by saying: “It could be worse, Chancellor. The Russians might be invading.”

Yes, well, let us not go there.

…after all…the problem with really dumb ideas enacted at really inopportune times is that when the times get worse the ideas don’t get better

True, inflation has been exacerbated by shortages provoked by the pandemic. It has also been aggravated by the serious impact on food, not least grain, and other shortages resulting from Putin’s war. But something else has been driving prices up all over the place, and that is – you have no doubt guessed it – the mounting impact of Brexit.

On which subject I recently had an interesting encounter with a Remainer British expat who was visiting his Brexiter friends in assorted home counties havens. To his surprise, he found that most of them were admitting in private but could not bring themselves to say so publicly: “Brexit is a catastrophe.”

Of course, it has not yet unseated the chief elected culprit, Johnson, because he keeps being let off the hook by other distractions, such as Covid – now apparently reviving – and the awful tragedy of Ukraine.

But the war in Ukraine has highlighted the geopolitical folly of Britain’s departure from the EU. It has brought European nations together, and left the UK trailing behind, while the absurdity of “global Britain” and aircraft carriers being sent to the far east becomes ever more apparent.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2022/mar/20/war-has-highlighted-the-geopolitical-folly-of-britains-departure-from-the-eu

…& when the consequences already span the globe

The war in Ukraine has gone global. Spiking commodity prices are on track to see their sharpest rises since 1970, sending a shock wave of suffering across the world as the prices of essential goods every human needs to survive are surging upwards. Wheat prices are up 60% since February. Food prices are now higher than during the global food crisis of 2008, which pushed 155 million people into extreme poverty. Cheap Ukrainian wheat that vulnerable nations including Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Lebanon rely on lies stranded. If we aren’t careful, the “Ukraine shock” could fast be approaching the awesome scale of the OPEC and Iran shocks that rocked the 1970s.

But the “shock” metaphor is deceptive. This is not a momentary blast; all the warning signs point to the fact that this could turn into an avalanche. If that happens, we are just at the beginning of a decade-long deluge.

Two historical episodes offer a guide to these tumultuous times: the 2010s and the 1970s. Both periods saw commodity spikes trigger a cascade of crises that tumbled year after year. The protracted disorder was powered by a feedback loop between chaos in the markets and chaos in the real world. Conflicts triggered price shocks, and those high prices sparked more conflicts, causing prices to spike again, and so forth.
[…]
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered the third avalanche. The market reactions have been so chaotic that the London Metal Exchange had to cease trading. In the weeks ahead, the commodity price spike could bring a surge in inflation, a global recession, and a rising tide of hunger and poverty. If this crisis isn’t averted, incumbent politicians across the advanced economies will see their approval ratings sink as the cost of living crisis deepens. For the many countries already teetering on the edge of chaos, this will mean protests, riots and perhaps even revolutions, as we have already seen this year in Kazakhstan. Some of these conflicts will become civil wars as they did in 2011.

Oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Iran – and even Russia, if it can find buyers for its oil – will be enriched and emboldened, free to escalate their existing military adventures and start new ones. Mining communities across sub-Saharan Africa will see violence spike as the metal deposits they hold surge in value. The cartels will be looking to expand their operations to agricultural commodities with high prices, as Mexican avocado farmers can attest. These conflicts, whether realised or anticipated in the future, will raise prices as traders factor in the “risk premium”. And, in turn, those high prices will fuel the very conflicts the premium is supposed to hedge against.

Three additional global flows could further power this engine of chaos. Commodity riches may flow into financial assets, especially real estate in the west’s most desirable cities, widening inequality which, as we saw in 2016, could foment political polarisation and populism. Dollars to pay for these commodities will also need to flow from US financial institutions to vulnerable nations, creating the possibility of a new developing-world debt crisis with the austerity and instability that follows. Insecurity – be it from hunger or violence or both – creates flows of people: the 2 million who have already fled Ukraine will soon be joined by others as new crises and new conflicts erupt.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/19/commodity-prices-escalating-global-turmoil

…how much sense does it make to think of things being “confined” to one poor nation stuck between the red army & the black sea?

Sorting out what is real in Ukraine and what is misinformation designed to provoke an emotional response is hard enough for professional journalists. For everyday people seeing photos and videos cascade through their social media feeds, it is even harder.
[…]
“It matters because we all have the right to truth, and the more we do to pollute the information environment, the worse it’s going to get,” said Joan Donovan, the research director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which has studied the proliferation of misinformation.

…I guess I was hoping for some better pointers about checking sources…but at least this time around the NYT seemed to be going with some pretty obvious ones?

Even when you come across verified accounts, look for hints that they have some reason to know what they’re telling you: Are they reporters on the ground or researchers who have studied the area? Or are they a celebrity having the same quick-twitch reaction you’re trying to avoid?

Beware TwitterBot120362824. A user name consisting of a noun followed by a long series of numbers is often a sign that an account has been created inauthentically, Dr. Donovan said. A brand-new account with few prior or unrelated tweets or a low follower count might be a sign to move along.

[…or…although they aim it at instagram…the over-hashtag-ed thing]
When an Instagram post seems a bit desperate for engagement, adding unrelated hashtags that might be popular like #catoftheday, it’s likely the post is coming from a disreputable place, Dr. Donovan said.
[…]
If you do a quick web search and can’t find any news articles about what you’re seeing, it’s possible you could be looking at miscaptioned images from a previous war, Dr. Wardle said. If you’re feeling especially Sherlockian, you can search for the original source of a viral image yourself.
[…]
Many news organizations have special teams to fact-check or debunk claims that spread during high-intensity news moments. Reuters, The Associated Press, the BBC and Agence France-Presse all have dedicated hubs that you can check first to see if that post you’re about to share was debunked days ago.

…& it’s easy to see why availing yourself of some fact-checking might be a good idea where things in ukraine are concerned…but, really…when isn’t this stuff true?

Scammers prey on creating emotional responses and might say they’re raising funds for victims. Carefully look into any organization you’re tempted to donate to or post about by using a site like Charity Navigator to ensure it is legitimate.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/ukraine-fake-news-russia.html

…for that matter…when the idea that information…bad, good or indifferent…operating like a virus is basically ubiquitous…do we do enough to develop an immune system?

Since Gen Z began entering college in 2015, a growing number of academic institutions have started to look critically at their own campus culture. They’re asking how, amid intense national polarization, divergent student voices can speak and be heard. The answer has taken shape as a civil dialogue movement — a collection of courses, orientation programs, workshops and events — that help students communicate across differences.

This is an initiative that undergraduates say they want. In a 2022 Knight Foundation-Ipsos study on free expression and campus speech, a large majority of students said that exposure to diverse opinions is very important to a healthy democracy. But would they actively seek out such exposure themselves? At Penn, for instance, the civil dialogue seminar is a small class whose success depends on attracting an ideologically and racially diverse cohort of students. And if they do come, what impact can a 10-person class — or even a 50-person Red and Blue Exchange event — really have on an undergraduate population of 10,000?
[…]
There’s ample evidence that today’s college students are concerned about free expression. In 2021, half of undergraduates in the Knight-Ipsos survey said they felt comfortable disagreeing with their instructor or peers in the classroom. Sixty-five percent said their campus climate prevented them from speaking freely for fear they’d be seen as offensive, an 11-point increase from 2016.

Conservative pundits and politicians claim this chilling effect is intentional, with colleges overtly pushing liberal groupthink. But Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, director of the Campus Free Expression Project at the D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center, says the reality is more complicated. “Students aren’t seeing examples of how you have respectful conversations with people you disagree with,” Merrill says. From school boards to cable news to Congress, young people see local and national leaders modeling poor behavior.

Also, today’s undergraduates are more likely to come from politically, socioeconomically and racially homogeneous communities.[…]

Finally, social media has changed the game. It not only “silos people into more think-alike communities,” Merrill says, but it “doesn’t support nuanced conversation.”
[…]
“If you live in a bubble and you have no sense about other legitimate viewpoints that are different from yours and you just deal with straw men, you’ll think you’re objective,” says Chris Satullo, a veteran journalist and dialogue consultant who co-teaches the seminar. “We’re trying to give students skills to pierce their bubble.”

…& it’d be nice to think it’s just teenagers who think they already know it all…but it sure feels like it’s a lot more people than that who feel like nobody can tell them anything?

Still, some students are skeptical. “It feels patronizing … teaching students how to have conversations,” says Cecelia Vieira, a White Penn senior who has interned for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I’ve tried to convince my friends who are progressive to come to [dialogue] events I’ve hosted,” she says. “They’re like, ‘For what?’ ”

…but when even in this context the examples confirm expectations

[Lindsey Perlman] arrived freshman year galvanized around liberal politics, especially women’s rights. After watching Brett Kavanaugh join the Supreme Court, she became so outspoken in her high school history class that some kids called her a “feminazi.” At Penn she hoped to find people who understood her passion. The people she met were passionate, she says, but not so understanding. She’d applied to an orientation program, which she thought was focused on community service. Instead, students spent three days talking about identity and privilege. When the student facilitator asked them to list the harms caused by capitalism, Perlman raised her hand and asked why they were assuming that capitalism was bad. She didn’t have strong opinions on the subject, but she didn’t like to make presumptions. In response, the facilitator told Perlman to be more sensitive, she says, because “capitalism was objectively harmful to minorities.”

…that confirmation bias is hard to avoid?

“We’re trying to put civic dialogue conversation in the context of American history,” Chris Satullo says. “We bring it up to date. This is a rolling conversation where every generation has to figure out how to resolve tensions among the founding ideals.” The class includes a crash course in social psychology — how people often let emotion dictate reason and the benefits and drawbacks to working as a group. Groupthink can “compound errors,” Satullo says. On the other hand, “All of us can be smarter than one of us.” The class teaches practical approaches to navigating a heated discussion. These aren’t all as obvious as “avoid stereotypes” or “use ‘I’ statements.” They cover how to frame contrary points of view, to be aware when your emotions are flaring, and how considering which perspectives aren’t present might change the whole discussion. Students receive facilitation training and are given the chance to moderate Red and Blue Exchange events.
[…]
Still, the class sometimes frustrated Perlman. There was so much talking about talking, she says. The discussions often felt academic and theoretical. Occasionally, small groups would discuss prompts from the Red and Blue Exchange, like what to do with Confederate statues or buildings named after George Washington. The discussions sometimes felt stilted, even when people disagreed. The most consistently animated person in the room was Satullo, who took up the need for constructive conversation with an urgency usually associated with cable news pundits.

Satullo recalled that two days after the 2016 election, he presented to a room of Philadelphia liberals who were still in shock. He told the audience, “ ‘Your first assignment is to take a Trump voter to lunch and find out why they voted for him.’ And they booed me out of the room.” Satullo said it himself one day in class: In any conversation, consider which voices aren’t in the room.

…& of course…many truisms do hold true

According to a Pew Research Center survey published in 2020, Americans ages 18 to 23 lean less conservative than their elders. Republicans in this demographic are more likely than older Republicans to have certain liberal attitudes: about what role government should play in solving problems, about the unfair treatment of Black Americans and about the causes of climate change. Delli Carpini, who chairs Pew’s governing board, says this research was conducted between 2018 and 2019, and that the findings likely haven’t changed much.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/16/college-students-have-become-fearful-expressing-their-views-new-civil-dialogue-movement-may-restore-healthy-debate/

…after all…we need context

The War for the Rainforest [NYT]

…but when some threats seem that much more abstract than others…even that can be tricky

For some liberal lawmakers, there is reluctance to use the bloody conflict in Ukraine — and the soaring U.S. gas prices stemming from it — to make the case that America needs to wean itself off fossil fuels and fully embrace electric vehicles and renewable energy.
[…]
“The human misery and the attacks on Ukraine are overwhelming to my district and the American public. I’m getting tremendous amount of mail asking me what are we going to do,” [Rep. Alan] Lowenthal told NBC News, while noting the dual economic and military challenges. “Right now, the focus is on the cost of gasoline and Ukraine, and the fear that we could be in a war ourselves. Fear has gripped the nation.”
[…]
Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal conceded that how Democrats talk about the climate crisis during a horrific, violent war is “definitely a needle to be threaded.” But she said she has been making the case, in TV interviews and press conferences, that this is a crisis Democrats should capitalize on to preserve the planet — and democracies around the world like Ukraine.

“This situation has showed us how dependent the world is on oil from dictators,” Jayapal told NBC News on Friday, adding “That should be even more of a reason to focus on the transition” away from fossil fuels.
[…]
New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who heads House Democrats’ campaign arm, said his party can walk and chew gum at the same time, focusing on both the immediate crisis in Eastern Europe and the long-term fight against climate change.
[…]
“And if I were down at the White House,” Maloney said, “I would bring the oil company executives in … and go around that table like Al Capone with a baseball bat and say you better lower gas prices for the American public because you’re not going to profit off of Putin’s war.”

…joe might be a bit old to go swinging a bat…but it does seem like it’s going to take more than a strongly worded tweet

Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too.

Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31.

Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans. pic.twitter.com/uLNGleWBly

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 16, 2022

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed this week to call major oil and gas company executives before Congress in the coming weeks and question them about high gas prices and potential price gouging.

With all eyes on Ukraine, Biden’s domestic agenda remains stalled just eight months out from a critical midterm election. So on Thursday, Jayapal’s Progressive Caucus unveiled a slate of more than 50 areas where they said the president could use executive orders to enact liberal policies, including declaring a National Climate Emergency to increase renewable energy production and ending domestic and international federal fossil fuel subsidies.

Republicans, who are increasingly confident they are on the cusp of taking back control of the House this fall, say it’s a huge political blunder for top Democrats to talk up a transition to clean energy at a time when consumers are paying more for gas and groceries.

…but with friends like these

Some Republicans have been working closely with the Biden administration and progressives on clean-energy alternatives. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., joined Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy at a summit Thursday on the future of nuclear fusion, what he called “an incredible event.”

But Fleischmann blasted Democrats who are trying to use the surge in gas prices to wean America off oil.

“We need to drill. We need to utilize our fossil fuels, an all-of-the-above approach,” he said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/progressives-torn-pushing-green-agenda-shadow-ukraine-war

…I don’t know

Big oil has hit a gusher. Even before Vladimir Putin’s war, oil prices had begun to rise due to the recovery in global demand and tight inventories.

Last year, when Americans were already struggling to pay their heating bills and fill up their gas tanks, the biggest oil companies (Shell, Chevron, BP, and Exxon) posted profits totaling $75bn. This year, courtesy of Putin, big oil is on the way to a far bigger bonanza.

How are the oil companies using this windfall? I can assure you they’re not investing in renewables. They’re not even increasing oil production.

As Chevron’s top executive, Mike Wirth, said in September, “We could afford to invest more” but “the equity market is not sending a signal that says they think we ought to be doing that.”

Translated: Wall Street says the way to maximize profits is to limit supply and push up prices instead.

So they’re buying back their own stock in order to give their stock prices even more of a boost. Last year they spent $38bn on stock buybacks – their biggest buyback spending spree since 2008. This year, thanks largely to Putin, the oil giants are planning to buy back at least $22bn more.

Make no mistake. This is a direct redistribution from consumers who are paying through the nose at the gas pump to big oil’s investors and top executives (whose compensation packages are larded with shares of stock and stock options).

Though it’s seldom discussed in the media, lower-income earners and their families bear the brunt of the burden of higher gas prices. Not only are lower-income people less likely to be able to work from home, they’re also more likely to commute for longer distances between work and home in order to afford less expensive housing.

Big oil companies could absorb the higher costs of crude oil. The reason they’re not is because they’re so big they don’t have to. They don’t worry about losing market share to competitors. So they’re passing on the higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, and pocketing record profits.
[…]
Republicans will balk at any tax increase on big oil, of course. They and the coal-industry senator Joe Manchin even tanked the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to the Fed because she had the temerity to speak out about the systemic risks that climate change poses to our economy.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/20/big-oil-gas-prices-windfall-tax-russia-ukraine

…you get it, I expect

The war in Ukraine risks putting global targets on the climate out of reach, the UN secretary general has warned, if countries respond to Russia’s aggression by increasing their use of fossil fuels.
[…]
“The fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine risks upending global food and energy markets, with major implications for the global climate agenda. As major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5C,” he warned, in a video address to a conference on sustainability run by the Economist newspaper in London on Monday.

“Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use,” he went on. “This is madness. Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction.”
[…]
Faced with high petrol prices, the US is also seeking to expand its imports of oil, even considering countries previously regarded as pariah states, such as Venezuela and Iran. Domestic US oil and gas production from fracking and drilling is also set to ramp up. Around the world, oil and gas companies see a bonanza from the ongoing crisis, driven by first the rebound after Covid-19 and now by countries moving imports away from Russia.
[…]
Guterres said turning to fossil fuels would only store up further problems. “As current events make all too clear, our continuing reliance on fossil fuels puts the global economy and energy security at the mercy of geopolitical shocks and crises,” he said. “Instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonisation of the global economy, now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future.”

The UN secretary general acknowledged widespread concern among climate experts that the progress on display at the Cop26 summit was in danger of dissipating under the pressure of soaring energy prices and greenhouse gas emissions.

The International Energy Agency found that annual carbon dioxide emissions from energy jumped by 6% last year to their highest levels in history, as economies rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic. The “green recovery” that many governments promised from the crisis has not materialised.

Guterres warned: “If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5C goodbye. Even 2C may be out of reach. That would be catastrophe.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/21/ukraine-war-threatens-global-heating-goals-warns-un-chief

…but I for one am struggling to see what “gets it done”…where “it” isn’t “making things worse”

Earth’s poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer than average.
[…]
It caught officials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, by surprise because they were paying attention to the Arctic where it was 50 degrees warmer than average and areas around the North Pole were nearing or at the melting point, which is really unusual for mid-March, said center ice scientist Walt Meier.

“They are opposite seasons. You don’t see the north and the south (poles) both melting at the same time,” Meier told The Associated Press Friday evening. “It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/antarctica-arctic-undergo-simultaneous-freakish-extreme-heat

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/21/extremes-of-40c-above-normal-whats-causing-extraordinary-heating-in-polar-regions

…at some point you have to take someone’s word for things you can’t verify

Despite being published late on a Friday evening in the Carter Center’s US-China Perception Monitor, Hu Wei’s essay soon gained a million views in and outside China, and was republished into Chinese blogs, non-official media sites and social media accounts.

Then came the backlash, as the article was criticised for being “reckless and dangerous” vitriol. Personal attacks on Hu and the USCPM followed. By Sunday morning, their websites were blocked in China.

“Usually when the government or the censors don’t like a particular article – like [something published by] FT Chinese – they’ll just block that particular article, they don’t block the website,” said Liu Yawei, the director of the China programme at the US-based Carter Center.

“So this is highly unusual.”
[…]
Published in English and Chinese, Hu’s essay argued that Russia’s advancement was faltering and China needed to cut ties with Putin “as soon as possible” to avoid being on the losing side and facing “further containment” from the US and the west.
[…]
Hu is among a number of significant Chinese voices to challenge the official line. Wang Huiyao, the president of the Beijing-based thinktank the Center for China and Globalization, argued in the New York Times that western alliances would grow stronger and closer as the war dragged on. “That is not good for China,” he said, calling for the west to bring Beijing on as a mediator and “offer the Russian leader an offramp”, which in turn could repair China’s international standing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/20/chinese-article-urging-country-to-cut-ties-with-putin-gets-1m-views

…& there goes that context again

China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby, a top US military commander said Sunday.

US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C Aquilino said the hostile actions were in stark contrast to the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s past assurances that Beijing would not transform the artificial islands in contested waters into military bases. The efforts were part of China’s flexing its military muscle, he said.

“Over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military buildup since world war two by the PRC,” Aquilino told the Associated Press in an interview, using the initials of China’s formal name. “They have advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region.”

There were no immediate comments from Chinese officials. Beijing maintains its military profile is purely defensive, arranged to protect what it says are its sovereign rights. But after years of increased military spending, China now boasts the world’s second-largest defense budget after the US and is rapidly modernizing its force with weapons systems including the J-20 stealth fighter, hypersonic missiles and two aircraft carriers, with a third under construction.
[…]
China sought to shore up its vast territorial claims over virtually the entire South China Sea by building island bases on coral atolls nearly a decade ago. The US responded by sending its warships through the region in what it calls freedom of operation missions. The US has no claims itself but has deployed navy ships and aircraft for decades to patrol and promote free navigation in international waterway and airspace.

China routinely objects to any action by the US military in the region. The other parties – the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei – claim all or part of the sea, through which approximately $5tn in goods are shipped every year.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/china-has-fully-militarized-three-islands-in-south-china-sea-us-admiral-says

…& it’s not like I’m trying to claim that putin raining destruction on ukraine is some kind of storm in a teacup…but when it comes to rocking the boat…I dunno…still waters run deep?

A small number of countries have declared unqualified backing for Russia since its forces rolled into Ukraine, including regimes in Syria, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. But a longer list of governments, including China, have avoided using the word “invasion,” abstained from U.N. votes castigating Russia or declined to take part in punishing sanctions on Russia’s economy.

The ambivalent response from governments around the world reflects how Russia has been able to use its oil wealth, defense industry and historic ties to retain a degree of influence in foreign capitals. It remains unclear if countries that are straddling the fence can offer a valuable lifeline to Moscow, or whether these states can play a meaningful role mediating an eventual end to the conflict.
[…]
Russia supplies about 60 percent of the weapons and equipment for India’s military, the cornerstone of a decades-long friendly relationship between Moscow and Delhi. Experts say that explains in part why India has used muted language in response to the war in Ukraine, avoiding sharp criticism of Russia and urging a diplomatic solution. India also avoided criticizing Russia after its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
[…]
In a move that will frustrate Washington, India’s central bank is exploring a trade arrangement with Moscow that would use only Indian rupees and Russian rubles, bypassing Western sanctions, according to the Financial Times and other media. India also plans to purchase three million barrels of oil from Russia at a discount.
[…]
Russia’s attack on Ukraine has placed Israel, a staunch U.S. ally, in a delicate position. Initially cautious in its reaction, Israel has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in increasingly tough language, but so far has not joined with other democracies in imposing economic sanctions against Moscow. Under Israeli law, sanctions can only be imposed on a country designated as an enemy state.
[…]
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have shied away from backing the Biden administration in its bid to isolate and punish Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, and the two regional powers have avoided criticizing Moscow since Russian forces began what Putin calls a “special military operation.”
[…]
The wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies see Russia as a crucial actor in a coalition of oil producers designed to manage the global oil market. In 2019, the Saudis and other oil powers invited Russia to form an expanded group known as “OPEC+,” to control output and ensure a stable, profitable oil market. The group was created to counter the effect of America’s boom in shale production.
[…]
“These Gulf countries want to maintain the OPEC alliance with Russia because it makes OPEC more powerful as a market manager,” [Ellen] Wald [a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and author of Saudi, Inc.] said. “They’re looking beyond this Ukraine issue and they don’t want to blow up this good thing they have going.”
[…]
Turkey, a member of NATO, voted for a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Russia over its actions in Ukraine, but it has not slapped sanctions on Moscow or closed its airspace to Russian aircraft.
[…]
China’s response to the war in Ukraine could shape the conflict’s outcome and the larger clash between Moscow and the West. China portrays itself as neutral on the “crisis” in Ukraine, but its state media echoes Russian propaganda and it has endorsed Moscow’s view that the war was caused by NATO’s expansion since the end of the Cold War.
[…]
Since U.S. and European governments imposed sanctions on Russia after the invasion, China’s exports to Russia have surged, including electrical equipment, vehicles and machinery, while Moscow has sent China petroleum products and lumber. But it’s unclear whether China would be ready to send Russia military hardware to replenish spent stocks.
[…]
The war has complicated China’s ambitions in Europe, a key market in Beijing’s long-term plans, and its effects on the global economy could have major fallout for China’s economy, which was already sputtering before the Russian invasion.

Although India and other countries appear ready to continue to trade with Russia and to refrain from criticizing it publicly, only China has the power to throw Moscow a lifeline as sweeping Western sanctions squeeze its economy.
[…]
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine and said he would resist calls to condemn Russia.

South African political leaders retain loyalty to Moscow from the Cold War era, when the Soviet Union trained and armed anti-apartheid activists while the United States supported the apartheid regime for years.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/even-us-allies-are-reluctant-confront-russia-invasion-ukraine

…still…it’s not always the devil lurking in the detail

It’s so easy to be cynical about Washington. Yet, amid the bickering and tumult in the headlines, something remarkable is happening. The United States is on the verge of enacting bipartisan, landmark anti-corruption reform.

Last week, with veto-proof majorities in both chambers, Congress passed the annual defense spending bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill is expected to soon become law. Folded into the bill is the Corporate Transparency Act — a major bipartisan measure that, for the first time, would end the formation and use of anonymous shell companies in the United States. It’s the most significant anti-money-laundering and anti-corruption upgrade the U.S. has seen in a generation.

While many Americans assume that money laundering and financial crimes are primarily problems for small Caribbean islands or mountainous European countries, the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index currently ranks the United States as the second-largest financial secrecy hub in the world, ahead of Switzerland and behind only the Cayman Islands.

Right now, you can form a shell company (an entity with no real assets or operations) in any state without disclosing the identity of the true owners. In some states, you don’t need to list the name of any person associated with the business. Amazingly, in all 50 states, more information is needed to receive a library card than to form an anonymous company that can facilitate money laundering, tax evasion and corruption.
[…]
Experts at the World Bank and United Nations investigated 150 of the largest corruption cases over the past several decades and found that the vast majority of them used anonymous shell companies to launder and hide their illicit funds, with U.S. entities being the most common.
[…]
Fortunately, thanks in large part to the work of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition — a collection of hundreds of nongovernment organizations that back transparency — and our allies in Congress, who have spent the past decade educating and recruiting a powerful alliance of ideologically diverse constituencies to support reform, the days of abusing anonymous companies in the United States are numbered.
[…]
Now, this act will take the simple yet effective step of requiring companies to report the names of their true owners at the time of formation and update the data upon any changes in ownership. The information will be kept private in a secure directory and only made available to law enforcement for use in authorized investigations and, with customer consent, to financial institutions to help them ensure they are not opening accounts for money launderers.

Despite the bill’s simplicity, its significance is grand. After more than a decade of debate and inaction in Washington, criminals, kleptocrats, tax cheats and terrorists will no longer be able to hide behind the veil of secret companies formed in the United States.

At a time when so many are fed up with Washington, the bipartisan process that led to this moment is an example of Congress at its best — with lawmakers doggedly working across the aisle for years in good faith negotiations. It’s not only a landmark anti-corruption victory, it’s a reminder that good things sometimes still happen in Washington.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/congress-passes-bipartisan-bill-actually-fights-corruption-how-did-that-happen

…&…speaking of good faith & the elephant in the room…you know what they say about a picture painting a thousand words?

If confirmed, Jackson will be the first justice with experience as a federal public defender and the first one since Justice Thurgood Marshall with significant experience as a criminal defense attorney on behalf of poor defend­ants.

Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice, founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1940 and worked within the legal system to improve rights for minorities. Jackson worked at the federal public defender’s office in D.C. for 2½ years representing indigent clients in criminal cases and detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
[…]
Federal judges with public defender exper­i­ence are less rep­res­en­ted on federal and state courts, in favor of those with prosec­utorial and corpor­ate experience.
[…]
If confirmed, Jackson will also be the only justice on the new court with experience on the U.S. Sentencing Commission — a bipartisan, independent agency created by Congress in 1984 to reduce disparity and promote transparency and proportionality in sentencing.
[…]
Jackson and all sitting justices except for Kagan served as a federal judge before being nominated to the high court.

But Jackson spent almost nine years as a federal district and appeals court judge — more than Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, who each served less than three years before being nominated.

“Ketanji Brown Jackson brings more experience as a judge than four of the current justices did combined at the time they joined the court,” said [University of Texas School of Law professor Steve] Vladeck.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/ketanji-brown-jackson-school-career/

…but…as ever…who pays the piper & all that

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, set to kick off this morning, is the latest showdown in the two parties’ long-running struggle over the composition of the court.

It’s also a battle between the well-funded advocacy groups on both sides that pour millions of dollars into modern Supreme Court confirmation fights — and which are drawing increasing attention from lawmakers looking to defeat the other side’s nominees.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has criticized Jackson for being backed by “fringe groups” that are “spending dark money to raise her profile” — a reference to her support from Demand Justice, a progressive group started in 2018 to push Democrats to the left on judicial issues.
[…]
McConnell’s line of attack echoes criticisms made by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in 2020 during Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Whitehouse decried the influence of conservative groups that don’t disclose their donors over Supreme Court nominations — a criticism he repeated last month in a Washington Post op-ed.

Democrats have responded by criticizing McConnell as hypocritical. But Demand Justice and other progressive legal groups have also deployed an unusual rebuttal: We’re not as powerful as you think we are.
[…]
Whitehouse, who held a hearing last year on the influence of “dark money” on the Supreme Court, said he agreed with Fallon that liberal groups have been outmatched by conservative ones.

“They’re the ones who have been effectual in controlling the makeup of the court and planting selected justices onto the court,” he told The Early in an interview on Friday. “There’s no such achievement on the progressive side. Yes, some groups have anonymous donors. But they haven’t accomplished much other than to express themselves.”

They’re also not spending as much backing Jackson as conservative groups did supporting Barrett — at least so far.

Demand Justice has said it plans to spend about $1 million on ads on backing Jackson. Building Back Together, an outside group that supports Biden, will spend another $1 million in partnership with the Black Women’s Leadership Collective and She Will Rise. Another progressive judicial group, the Alliance for Justice Action Campaign, plans to spend $250,000 to $300,000.

Judicial Crisis Network alone, meanwhile, said it spent $10 million on ads backing Barrett in 2020.
[…]
“If you try to compete against the right for money and resources, and it’s an O.K. Corral or a winner-take-all approach where there are no rules, the odds are that progressives will lose out,” [former senator Russ] Feingold [who served on the Judiciary Committee and is now president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive counterpart to the Federalist Society] said. “The best thing for progressives — and, I think, for all Americans and for the Supreme Court — is if the process returns to a series of norms and rules where big money can’t dominate the process.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/21/dark-money-showdown-over-this-week-supreme-court-confirmation-hearing/

…it’s a nice idea…but a lot of things sound nice…& talk is cheap

Our society claims to love children, admire parents and revere the family. But our public policies send the opposite message.

A June 2021 UNICEF report on where rich countries stand on child care found that the United States ranked 40th.

Yes, you read that right.

Unlike every other well-off democracy, the United States has “never adapted to the needs of families in today’s labor market and economy,” said Olivia Golden, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy. “We’ve never responded to so many women with young children being in the workforce.”

It’s hard to think of work more important to a society’s long-term well-being and prosperity than raising children. Yet the market economy values work outside the home that produces goods, services and profits far more than the work of parenting. While parenting’s value is, well, infinite, it goes largely unmeasured in our gross domestic product.

This is why a hearing Tuesday of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on child care and preschool deserves more attention than it will probably get.
[…]
Child care is often cast as a “women’s issue,” which it is, since our society continues to place the largest parenting responsibilities on women. But it should also be seen as a family issue and an economic issue.

No one can claim to be “pro-family” without being willing to deal with the stresses the modern economy places on family life. In Europe, effective child-care policies have been championed not only by Social Democrats, in keeping with their long history of egalitarianism, but also by Christian Democrats and other moderately conservative parties concerned with strengthening the family.

Adjusting the work-family balance is also good politics, as research by Kimberly J. Morgan, a political scientist at George Washington University, has shown.
[…]
Our country needs a sensible family policy. That’s why child care, universal pre-K, family leave and an expanded child tax credit were central components of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. But our debate last year about his proposal rarely got to the merits. It focused instead on the overall size of the plan, what package might get 60 votes in the Senate, and how the resulting legislative train wreck would affect Biden’s poll ratings and the November elections.

This week’s Senate hearing should be part of a larger effort to pull us out of the mire of abstractions and political punditry. There is still time before this Congress closes its books to do something significant for parents and kids, even if it’s not all that Biden wanted. Is it too much to ask politicians of various ideological orientations to align their glowing tributes to family life with the world in which families actually live — and struggle?

And have we entirely forgotten the gratitude we expressed during the pandemic’s worst moments for “essential workers”? They’re the people in our labor force who face some of the toughest work-family challenges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/20/policies-on-families-working-parents-dont-match-rhetoric/

…& given the way “think of the children” is a well that’s been gone to so many times you’d think it in danger of running dry

Since the Republican Glenn Youngkin scored an upset win in Virginia’s race for governor by making education a central campaign issue, Republicans in state after state have capitalized on anger over mask mandates, parental rights and teaching about race, and their strategy seems to be working. The culture wars now threatening to consume American schools have produced an unlikely coalition — one that includes populists on the right and a growing number of affluent, educated white parents on the left. Both groups are increasingly at odds with the Democratic Party.

For the party leaders tasked with crafting a midterm strategy, this development should set off alarms. Voters who feel looked down on by elites are now finding common cause with those elites, forming an alliance that could not only cost the Democrats the midterm elections but also fundamentally realign American politics.
[…]
Today, as the middle class falls further behind the wealthy, the belief in education as the sole remedy for economic inequality appears more and more misguided. And yet, because Democrats have spent the past 30 years framing schooling as the surest route to the good life, any attempt to make our education system fairer is met with fierce resistance from affluent liberals worried that Democratic reforms might threaten their carefully laid plans to help their children get ahead.
[…]
Mr. Youngkin was one of the first to recognize that these anxieties could be used for political gain, and he carefully tailored his messaging to parents from both affluent families and the conservative movement. In his appeals to the Republican base, he railed against critical race theory and claimed that allies of George Soros had inserted “operatives” on local school boards. To centrist parents, he pledged to undo admissions policy changes aimed at bolstering diversity at Virginia’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where graduates regularly go on to attend Ivy League universities.
[…]
How can Democrats claw out of this bind? In the near term, they can remind voters that Republican efforts to limit what kids are taught in school will hurt students, no matter their background. The College Board’s Advanced Placement program, for example, recently warned that it will remove the AP designation from courses when required topics are banned. Whatever the limitations of the AP program, students from all class backgrounds still use it to earn college credit and demonstrate engagement in rigorous coursework. Democrats could also take a page from Mr. Youngkin’s playbook and pledge, as he did, to invest more “than has ever been invested in education,” an issue that resonates across party lines.

But if Democrats want to stop bleeding working-class votes, they need to begin telling a different story about education and what schools can and can’t do. For a generation, Democrats have framed a college degree as the main path to economic mobility, a foolproof way to expand the middle class. But now kids regularly emerge from college burdened with crushing student debt and struggling to find stable jobs. To these graduates and to their parents it is painfully obvious that degrees do not necessarily guarantee success. A generation ago, Mr. Clinton may have been able to make a convincing case that education could solve all people’s problems, but today Democrats risk irrelevance — or worse — by sticking with that tired mantra.

So, yes, strong schools are essential for the health and well-being of young people: Schools are where they gain confidence in themselves and build relationships with adults and with one another, where they learn about the world and begin to imagine life beyond their neighborhoods. But schools can’t level a playing field marred by racial inequality and increasingly sharp class distinctions; to pretend otherwise is both bad policy and bad politics. Moreover, the idea that schools alone can foster equal opportunity is a dangerous form of magical thinking that not only justifies existing inequality but also exacerbates our political differences by pitting the winners in our economy against the losers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/opinion/democrats-public-education-culture-wars.html

…it sure doesn’t seem hard to find these kinds of stories?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/20/intergenerational-wealth-middle-class-spiral

…& if that sounds bad…the headline they went with was “The death spiral of an American family”…so…yeah…optimism can be thin on the ground

Financial markets rallied Friday after Russian officials made vital transfers to foreign investors, sidestepping what would have been Moscow’s first sovereign debt default in nearly two and half decades. But despite the collective sigh of relief on the floors of global stock exchanges, the risk of a new Russian debt crisis still looms large.

The problem with Russian debt today is far different than in 1998, when financial turmoil and a cash crunch forced Moscow to renege on payments to domestic bondholders in a financial event that rippled across the globe. This time, Russia has plenty of cash — but a big chunk of its reserves has been frozen by U.S., European and Japanese officials as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine.

To blunt the negative impact on the global financial system, the U.S. Treasury has said it will allow Moscow to transfer frozen funds to cover its foreign bond payments until May 25. But think of that as only a limited insurance policy — one could run out at any minute.

That’s partly because Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested foreign creditors in “hostile” nations may be paid in undesirable rubles instead of dollars or euros.

Importantly, the Russians didn’t move in that direction last week. But Moscow has nearly $2.86 billion in interest and bond payments due by April 4, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), an industry association. If Moscow does try to pay in the lowly ruble, such a move will be tantamount to a sovereign default, rating agencies have said. It would be Russia’s first on its foreign-held debt since the Bolsheviks halted payments in 1918.

Such events in the past have infected the global system through “contagion,” or a financial domino effect that spreads as panicked investors yank money from foreign countries, upending their borrowing costs, stock markets and currency rates.
[…]
We live now in an era of exotic financial instruments such as credit default swaps — or contracts that allow investors to hedge their financial bets — that can go toxic quickly and cause a financial crisis to mushroom, as the world learned during 2008 U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown. Few are predicting a repeat of that now. But the full extent of the global exposure to swaps and other liabilities tied to Russian debt is still hard to assess.

Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank’s chief economist, raised the specter of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a hedge fund that required a massive bailout due to the 1998 Russian default.

“Remember LTCM? That wasn’t necessarily on anyone’s radar screen at the outset of the Russian default in August 1998,” Reinhart told Bloomberg News. “Those things start to surface. Exposures are opaque.”
[…]
The bigger war fallout on the global economy remains Russia’s impact on commodity prices. Moscow is a major exporter of oil, gas, metals and grains — and trade disruptions because of the war and Western sanctions have already sent commodity prices soaring, worsening an already bad bout of global inflation. Domestically, Russia is also now likely to face years of financial isolation, as foreign investors avoid it. Its heavily indebted corporations are also confronting new barriers to credit, and fears are mounting over the climbing risks of Russian corporate defaults.

Russian defaults — either by its government, its corporations or both — could have other knock-on effects by accelerating currency fluxes and already climbing borrowing rates in a host of countries, putting pressure on the ability of nations to finance social programs, build infrastructure and pay back their own debts. In 1998, the Russian debt crisis sparked a run on the Brazilian real and soaring interest rates. Even the U.S. dollar took a massive plunge against the Japanese yen following LTCM’s Russia-related losses.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/21/russia-default-debt-risks/

…it’s almost like nothing happens in a vacuum

Fallout from the war in Ukraine and a coronavirus outbreak in China’s manufacturing heartland are putting fresh kinks in global supply chains, dashing hopes of a return this year to reliably smooth freight shipments and adding to pressure on consumer prices.

Allied financial sanctions and the closure of Russian airspace are forcing cargo planes to fly longer, costlier journeys from Asia to Europe. Dozens of Chinese factories and port warehouses that supply the United States remain shuttered amid the country’s worst coronavirus flare-up since the original wave in Wuhan. And triple-digit oil prices are inflating fuel bills for ocean carriers and truckers.

[…] supply chain specialists said they expect conditions to deteriorate, reversing the recent improvement in the container ship backlog off the California coast and complicating the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation.
[…]
Over the past 30 years, ocean-spanning supply lines fueled prosperity, enabling the global economy to grow almost 2½ times larger, according to World Bank data.

Now, they seem snakebit.
[…]
After declining late last year, the cost of sending a standard shipping container from China to Los Angeles rose by 20 percent over the past two months to $16,353, according to the Freightos index.

That’s more than 12 times what it cost in the months before the pandemic.

The recent surge in oil prices hasn’t helped. The price of a metric ton of the low-sulfur bunker fuel used by oceangoing cargo ships topped $1,000 earlier this month, roughly twice its pre-pandemic mark.
[…]
Major cargo carriers have stopped accepting new shipments to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Maersk has offloaded goods that were midway to Russia when the war began at a small Danish port, in Kalundborg, according to Jan Tiedemann, senior shipping line and port analyst for Alphaliner, an information and research firm.

Inspections by European customs authorities of goods intended for Russia are causing cargo to stack up at regional hubs and spread delays across the carrier’s global network, “impacting our customers’ supply chains,” Maersk said in an advisory posted on its website.

Hapag-Lloyd is dropping Russia-bound cargo at ports in the Black Sea, such as Constanta in Romania, Burgas in Bulgaria and Turkey’s Gemlik, the shipping line said in a customer advisory.

Sanctions have basically erected a wall around Russia. Cargo that normally traveled on rail links between China and Europe now is being shifted to ships or planes. On an annual basis, about 1.5 million containers could be affected, according to Niels Larsen, who heads North American operations for DSV, a Danish transport and logistics company.

But those shipments will add to existing congestion. Space aboard container ships already is at a premium. Aircraft traveling from China to Europe must divert around closed Russian airspace, adding up to six hours to travel time and requiring, in some cases, an additional refueling stop, Larsen said. That effectively reduces capacity on airfreight channels that are already operating well below pre-pandemic levels. And when the aircraft land, they will disgorge their loads at already crowded airport cargo-handling operations.

“This will have enormous ripple effects that no one has prepared for,” Larsen said. “We’ll be back to the early days of covid, when it really became bad.”
[…]
“The risk that global supply chains’ links within China get severed is the highest that it has been in two years,” Capital Economics warned clients this week.
[…]
“We’re anticipating six to eight weeks of manufacturing backlogs, shipping delays and congestion,” said Julie Gerdeman, Everstream’s chief executive. “We’ll feel the impact of this probably in four weeks.”

Chinese cargo already is taking longer than ever to move from the factory gate to its port of departure, almost three times as long as before the pandemic, according to data from Flexport, a freight forwarder based in San Francisco.

In the short term, a slowdown in goods coming from China will be good news for California ports that still face a traffic jam of inbound vessels. But once Chinese factories and ports return to normal operations, a surge of seaborne traffic will head for the West Coast, executives said, probably aggravating existing jams.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/18/russia-ukraine-war-china-covid-supply-chain/

…least of all debt

A bloodied man empties his wallet to his creditor while being mercilessly attacked by an unprovoked assailant. This is the plight of Ukraine, which recently made a scheduled interest payment to private lenders as tanks rolled over its land and missiles struck its cities. Even before Vladimir Putin started bombing apartment blocks and maternity hospitals, Ukraine was Europe’s poorest country as measured by GDP per capita – significantly poorer than Albania. Yet this war-ravaged country is saddled with unsustainable debt – and as the piles of rubble grow, so do the repayments. That’s debt for Ukraine, but profits for western hedge funds. War, for some, is the ultimate money-spinner.

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 – triggering a conflict in the east that had claimed thousands of lives before the current invasion – Ukraine has been forced to borrow $61bn (£46bn) from external lenders, according to calculations by the Jubilee Debt Campaign; a small sliver has been paid off, but what remains represents about a third of the country’s total economy. Ukraine was due to cough up $7.3bn this year alone – more than its annual education budget. For a rich country blessed with peace, that would be manageable, but Ukrainians are poorer today than when the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago. At least $100bn worth of damage has already been inflicted to infrastructure – from roads to bridges, hospitals to schools – and, as you read this, that figure only mounts. Yet almost all of the financial assistance being given to Ukraine is in the form of loans. Precious funds will be diverted from rebuilding a shattered country, instead filling the coffers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and private bondholders.
[…]
That’s why Ukrainian civil society organisations have launched a petition demanding Ukraine’s debt is cancelled. They note, too, that much of the supposed assistance given to the country has been accompanied by strict conditions: the IMF calls it “economic restructuring”, but it’s more honestly described as the imposition of free-market dogma, resulting, for instance, in a 650% surge in household gas prices since 2014. “Previous governments had two options: either to fairly tax the fat cats and bring them out of the shadows, or to borrow from the IMF and others,” Ukrainian economist Oleksandr Kravchuk told me. “They chose the latter.”
[…]
So why hasn’t this commonsense demand been taken up by the powerful? In part, perhaps, it’s because Ukraine’s own government hasn’t officially called for it, although some high-ranking officials have. “They were quite keen before the war to pay debts and push forward their standing in Europe and the world,” suggests Chow. Applying for any form of debt relief is a complicated and drawn-out process. Any fears that their ability to borrow and their global reputation may be damaged clearly need alleviating.

Yet the grisly fact is that as yet more loans are granted – even though now without conditions – vast profits are to be made. Ukrainian bonds are trading at about 25 cents on a dollar, and so if repayments continue, hedge funds and banks are set to make profits of more than 300%. That the profit margins of the already obscenely rich are being inflated by the bloody slaughter of civilians should surely be a cause of universal revulsion – and sufficient impetus to action.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/21/help-ukraine-without-military-escalation-cancel-foreign-debt-russia

…although…that shit is complicated…so beware the rabbithole…among other things

I’ve previously warned about the potential that Russia could conduct malicious cyber activity against the U.S. Today, I’m reiterating those warnings based on evolving intelligence that the Russian Government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks. https://t.co/wO2jJgg5SJ

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 21, 2022

…so…umm…well…at least I’m pretty sure it’s tuesday?

[…& at some point there will be tunes]