• MegaDrivingSchool - Idiots In Cars Compilation - 355 [USA & Canada Only]:

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    #TrafficCrashes #IdiotsInCars #FoolishDrivers #DriverErrors #RoadRage #WinterTire #DashcamVideo #CarViolence #StopCars #TrafficSafety #Transportation
    MegaDrivingSchool - Idiots In Cars Compilation - 355 [USA & Canada Only]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjzH6btMAyA #TrafficCrashes #IdiotsInCars #FoolishDrivers #DriverErrors #RoadRage #WinterTire #DashcamVideo #CarViolence #StopCars #TrafficSafety #Transportation
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    Childs in Gaza r enduring various hardships,including the winter cold.They need your help to strongly advocate for the entry of aid & an immediate ceasefire.
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    #Humanity #Solidarity #Empathy Childs in Gaza r enduring various hardships,including the winter cold.They need your help to strongly advocate for the entry of aid & an immediate ceasefire. #IsraeliNewNazism #IsraeliTerrorists #ZionistCensorship
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  • November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39
    [email protected] November 14, 2023 ethnic cleansing, gaza hospital, hamas, humanitarian, Israel, israeli weapons, Lebanon
    November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39
    Palestinians leave the northern part of the Gaza to flee the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip on November 08, 2023, under orders from Israel and amid bombing in both the north and the south. (photo)
    Gaza humanitarian & hospital updates, Israeli assaults, magnitude of Israel’s bombing, war crimes, West Bank news, ethnic cleansing

    Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here.

    Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a similarly strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel).

    Latest statistics:

    Palestinian death toll: 11,025* (10,829 in Gaza** (including at least 4,506 children and 3,027 women), and at least 196 in the West Bank). *IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation.

    Palestinian injuries: 30,076** (including at least 27,490 in Gaza** and 2,625 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure.

    It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,500 are missing (1,740 children) and presumed to be under rubble.

    Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined.

    Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200*** (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – 3 killed in West Bank, 49 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (33 of them children) are here.

    ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers.

    Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
    Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

    Humanitarian update: A total of 115 trucks with humanitarian aid items crossed into Gaza on 13 November as of 18:00 hrs. This brings the number of trucks that have entered Gaza since 21 October to 1,096. Prior to the start of hostilities, an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day.

    According to UNRWA, humanitarian operations at Rafah crossing are expected to cease by 14 November, due to the depletion of fuel to operate trucks and machinery to take supplies from the border and unload them in Gaza; if no additional fuel comes in, other supplies will not come in either.

    Israeli authorities continue to ban the entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment.

    People sheltering in tents at UN schools in Rafah, south Gaza, are now facing a new problem as rains have brought heavy flooding. One man at a UN shelter called for urgent intervention saying that people are already suffering from a lack of food, water, electricity and other necessities. “If our children do not die from war, they will die from the cold of winter and hunger,” he said. (09:35 GMT)

    People who can no longer get out of their homes and those who need ambulances for the wounded often wait in vain, due to the lack of fuel for ambulances and intense fighting near hospitals. (09:20 GMT)

    Gaza hospitals update: All but one of the hospitals in Gaza city and northern Gaza are reportedly out of service, as of 13 November, due to the lack of power, medical consumables, oxygen, food and water, compounded by bombardments and fighting in their vicinities. Al Ahli Hospital, in Gaza city, which currently accommodates over 500 patients, is reportedly the sole medical facility able to receive patients, amid increasing shortages and challenges.

    No room for “newborns injured by bombings”: NICU nurse Warda al-Awawda says there has been a rising influx of newborns requiring intensive care amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the enclave. “We have received cases of newborns injured by bombings…There are children who survived but lost both of their parents…We do not have water to wash milk bottles for newborns or premature babies. The beds are full. On one occasion we received eight cases and we placed them in six incubators.” (07:20 GMT)

    RECOMMENDED READING: Int’l medical community must call out Israel’s medical cruelty & war crimes

    Hospital rejects allegations of hostages in basement: Israel’s military released footage of al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital – which its forces entered over the weekend – showing weapons it said were found inside. Images included rooms in the basement where it alleged Palestinian fighters are holding hostages. The video showed what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and ventilation system.

    The health ministry in Gaza rejected the allegations, saying the basement shown was part of the hospital and had been turned into a shelter for war-displaced people. “The hospital was forcefully evacuated at gunpoint … Why didn’t they detain any of the alleged resistance fighters or alleged hostages?” a ministry statement said, denying the facility had anything to do with a tunnel Israeli forces uncovered nearby.

    Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the hospital repeatedly invited international organizations to tour al-Shifa to confirm its neutrality but has not received a response.

    Mass grave: Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, says 179 people have been buried in a “mass grave” in the complex. “We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” he said, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients are among those buried. (08:30 GMT)

    No anesthesia: Gaza surgeon Fadel Naim says patients with injuries “up to the moderate level” are having to undergo surgery without anesthesia because of a lack of medical supplies. “[It’s] to preserve the remaining supply of anesthesia, which is on the verge of depletion at any moment, for major and critical surgeries. The pain experienced by the patients during the surgical interventions without anesthesia is beyond what humanity on this Earth can endure.”

    RECOMMENDED READING: Out of medicines, care: Gaza’s cancer patients face death amid Israel war

    Patient evacuation proposal: Palestinian authorities proposed a Red Cross-supervised evacuation of a hospital beset by fighting in Gaza on Tuesday, as health officials warned that the only way to save three dozen newborns trapped there would be to call a cease-fire and transport them out of the besieged territory.

    The ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since the hospital’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday.

    Hospital surrounded: After days of battles with Palestinian resistance fighters, Israeli forces have encircled Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people are trapped with dwindling supplies and without electricity to run incubators and other equipment.

    The Red Cross tried Monday to evacuate some 6,000 people from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, but said its convoy had to turn back because of shelling and fighting.

    Update on Israeli military actions: Israel has carried out multiple airstrikes in southern Gaza, the so-called “safe zone” for people fleeing the north. There are reports of fatalities; the process of extracting the wounded from the rubble is slow, due to lack of fuel to run equipment. (09:25 GMT)

    Drone attacks: A surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Ghassan Abu Sitta, says more than 20 people have sought treatment for “chest and neck” gunshot wounds in firing from Israeli quadcopter drones. “This is a low-flying sniper drone. When it comes to killing, they are so innovative,” he said on X. (12:10 GMT)

    Southern Gaza: An Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza has left at least 13 dead. Southern Gaza was designated a “safe zone” by Israel. (06:45 GMT)

    Bombing reconstruction HQ: The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned the Israeli army’s bombing of the headquarters of the Qatar Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza.

    RECOMMENDED READING: What media reports fail to tell you about October 7

    “Equivalent to 2 nuclear bombs”: According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes (27,500 tons) of explosives on the Gaza Strip since October 7 – equivalent to two nuclear bombs.

    Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip has been documented, said Euro-Med Monitor, especially the use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, cause severe second- and third-degree burns.

    The rights organization further stressed that Israel’s destructive and arbitrary attacks are in violation of international humanitarian law, and that killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and may amount to a crime against humanity.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Israel’s attacks on Gaza: The weapons and scale of destruction

    Human Rights Watch: Investigate Israel for war crimes: A new HRW report declares:

    The Israeli military’s repeated, apparently unlawful attacks on medical facilities, personnel, and transport are further destroying the Gaza Strip’s healthcare system and should be investigated as war crimes…

    The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that at least 521 people, including 16 medical workers, have been killed in 137 “attacks on health care” in Gaza as of November 12. These attacks, alongside Israel’s decisions to cut off electricity and water and block humanitarian aid to Gaza, have severely impeded health care access…

    “Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure,” said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch.

    West Bank news: Overnight in the Palestinian city of Tulkarem, Israeli special forces, snipers, bulldozers, and drones conducted a major raid in which at least 7 Palestinians were killed. (09:40 GMT)

    Mass arrests continue across the West Bank, with at least 31 overnight – 2 of them children. To date, 2,570 people have been arrested since October 7. Israel’s detention campaigns have been accompanied by torture, intense beatings, threats and house vandalism, according to rights groups. (12:05 GMT)

    20-year-old Muhammad Abd al-Majid al-Halayqa was shot and killed by Israeli forces near the town of Beit Ainun, located northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. (05:20 GMT) Israeli forces alleged that the young man had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The soldiers instead let him bleed to death on the ground. The alleged knife was never found.

    Lebanon front: Washington is apparently concerned that Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah in order to manufacture a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon in what has been described as a cynical move to embroil the US and the region in prolonged conflict. White House officials are said to be alarmed that Israeli strikes in Lebanon are aimed at goading Hezbollah into a response that justifies a full-scale Israeli assault.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Phones ringing off the hooks for a ceasefire, but Congress members aren’t listening

    Israel news: Israel’s military on Tuesday confirmed the death of a soldier held captive in Gaza after Hamas issued video of her alive followed by images of what the Palestinian faction said was her body after she was killed in an Israeli strike.

    In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 49, according to official Israeli sources.

    The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis.

    Ethnic cleansing recommended in Wall Street Journal: On Monday, lawmakers Danny Danon, former ambassador to the UN, and Ram Ben-Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad, published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which they urged the “voluntary” immigration of Gazans to countries around the world:

    The international community has a moral imperative—and an opportunity—to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East…

    We simply need a handful of the world’s nations to share the responsibility of hosting Gazan residents. Even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis.

    The authors went on to make baseless accusations against Hamas, and to criticize the UN for “doing nothing tangible to help Gaza’s residents,” but failed to acknowledge Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid to enter the strip, or to stop the indiscriminate bombing of residential neighborhoods, infrastructure, UN facilities, hospitals, and other civilian sites.

    Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in a Facebook post,

    I welcome the initiative of members of Knesset Ram Ben-Barak and Danny Danon on the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world. This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.

    The reception of refugees by the countries of the world that really want their best interests, with the support and generous financial assistance of the international community, and within the state of Israel is the only solution that will bring to the end of the suffering and pain of Jews and Arabs alike.

    Former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth views Israel’s efforts in Gaza as ethnic cleansing. Many other leading organizations and individuals agree. Ethnic cleansing is a war crime.

    RECOMMENDED READING: More Palestinians killed in past 34 days than in the past 22 years combined






    https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-14-todays-news-on-palestine-israel-day-39/
    November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39 [email protected] November 14, 2023 ethnic cleansing, gaza hospital, hamas, humanitarian, Israel, israeli weapons, Lebanon November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39 Palestinians leave the northern part of the Gaza to flee the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip on November 08, 2023, under orders from Israel and amid bombing in both the north and the south. (photo) Gaza humanitarian & hospital updates, Israeli assaults, magnitude of Israel’s bombing, war crimes, West Bank news, ethnic cleansing Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here. Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a similarly strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel). Latest statistics: Palestinian death toll: 11,025* (10,829 in Gaza** (including at least 4,506 children and 3,027 women), and at least 196 in the West Bank). *IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation. Palestinian injuries: 30,076** (including at least 27,490 in Gaza** and 2,625 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure. It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,500 are missing (1,740 children) and presumed to be under rubble. Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined. Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200*** (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – 3 killed in West Bank, 49 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (33 of them children) are here. ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers. Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org Humanitarian update: A total of 115 trucks with humanitarian aid items crossed into Gaza on 13 November as of 18:00 hrs. This brings the number of trucks that have entered Gaza since 21 October to 1,096. Prior to the start of hostilities, an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day. According to UNRWA, humanitarian operations at Rafah crossing are expected to cease by 14 November, due to the depletion of fuel to operate trucks and machinery to take supplies from the border and unload them in Gaza; if no additional fuel comes in, other supplies will not come in either. Israeli authorities continue to ban the entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment. People sheltering in tents at UN schools in Rafah, south Gaza, are now facing a new problem as rains have brought heavy flooding. One man at a UN shelter called for urgent intervention saying that people are already suffering from a lack of food, water, electricity and other necessities. “If our children do not die from war, they will die from the cold of winter and hunger,” he said. (09:35 GMT) People who can no longer get out of their homes and those who need ambulances for the wounded often wait in vain, due to the lack of fuel for ambulances and intense fighting near hospitals. (09:20 GMT) Gaza hospitals update: All but one of the hospitals in Gaza city and northern Gaza are reportedly out of service, as of 13 November, due to the lack of power, medical consumables, oxygen, food and water, compounded by bombardments and fighting in their vicinities. Al Ahli Hospital, in Gaza city, which currently accommodates over 500 patients, is reportedly the sole medical facility able to receive patients, amid increasing shortages and challenges. No room for “newborns injured by bombings”: NICU nurse Warda al-Awawda says there has been a rising influx of newborns requiring intensive care amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the enclave. “We have received cases of newborns injured by bombings…There are children who survived but lost both of their parents…We do not have water to wash milk bottles for newborns or premature babies. The beds are full. On one occasion we received eight cases and we placed them in six incubators.” (07:20 GMT) RECOMMENDED READING: Int’l medical community must call out Israel’s medical cruelty & war crimes Hospital rejects allegations of hostages in basement: Israel’s military released footage of al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital – which its forces entered over the weekend – showing weapons it said were found inside. Images included rooms in the basement where it alleged Palestinian fighters are holding hostages. The video showed what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and ventilation system. The health ministry in Gaza rejected the allegations, saying the basement shown was part of the hospital and had been turned into a shelter for war-displaced people. “The hospital was forcefully evacuated at gunpoint … Why didn’t they detain any of the alleged resistance fighters or alleged hostages?” a ministry statement said, denying the facility had anything to do with a tunnel Israeli forces uncovered nearby. Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the hospital repeatedly invited international organizations to tour al-Shifa to confirm its neutrality but has not received a response. Mass grave: Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, says 179 people have been buried in a “mass grave” in the complex. “We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” he said, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients are among those buried. (08:30 GMT) No anesthesia: Gaza surgeon Fadel Naim says patients with injuries “up to the moderate level” are having to undergo surgery without anesthesia because of a lack of medical supplies. “[It’s] to preserve the remaining supply of anesthesia, which is on the verge of depletion at any moment, for major and critical surgeries. The pain experienced by the patients during the surgical interventions without anesthesia is beyond what humanity on this Earth can endure.” RECOMMENDED READING: Out of medicines, care: Gaza’s cancer patients face death amid Israel war Patient evacuation proposal: Palestinian authorities proposed a Red Cross-supervised evacuation of a hospital beset by fighting in Gaza on Tuesday, as health officials warned that the only way to save three dozen newborns trapped there would be to call a cease-fire and transport them out of the besieged territory. The ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since the hospital’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. Hospital surrounded: After days of battles with Palestinian resistance fighters, Israeli forces have encircled Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people are trapped with dwindling supplies and without electricity to run incubators and other equipment. The Red Cross tried Monday to evacuate some 6,000 people from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, but said its convoy had to turn back because of shelling and fighting. Update on Israeli military actions: Israel has carried out multiple airstrikes in southern Gaza, the so-called “safe zone” for people fleeing the north. There are reports of fatalities; the process of extracting the wounded from the rubble is slow, due to lack of fuel to run equipment. (09:25 GMT) Drone attacks: A surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Ghassan Abu Sitta, says more than 20 people have sought treatment for “chest and neck” gunshot wounds in firing from Israeli quadcopter drones. “This is a low-flying sniper drone. When it comes to killing, they are so innovative,” he said on X. (12:10 GMT) Southern Gaza: An Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza has left at least 13 dead. Southern Gaza was designated a “safe zone” by Israel. (06:45 GMT) Bombing reconstruction HQ: The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned the Israeli army’s bombing of the headquarters of the Qatar Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza. RECOMMENDED READING: What media reports fail to tell you about October 7 “Equivalent to 2 nuclear bombs”: According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes (27,500 tons) of explosives on the Gaza Strip since October 7 – equivalent to two nuclear bombs. Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip has been documented, said Euro-Med Monitor, especially the use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, cause severe second- and third-degree burns. The rights organization further stressed that Israel’s destructive and arbitrary attacks are in violation of international humanitarian law, and that killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and may amount to a crime against humanity. RECOMMENDED READING: Israel’s attacks on Gaza: The weapons and scale of destruction Human Rights Watch: Investigate Israel for war crimes: A new HRW report declares: The Israeli military’s repeated, apparently unlawful attacks on medical facilities, personnel, and transport are further destroying the Gaza Strip’s healthcare system and should be investigated as war crimes… The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that at least 521 people, including 16 medical workers, have been killed in 137 “attacks on health care” in Gaza as of November 12. These attacks, alongside Israel’s decisions to cut off electricity and water and block humanitarian aid to Gaza, have severely impeded health care access… “Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure,” said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch. West Bank news: Overnight in the Palestinian city of Tulkarem, Israeli special forces, snipers, bulldozers, and drones conducted a major raid in which at least 7 Palestinians were killed. (09:40 GMT) Mass arrests continue across the West Bank, with at least 31 overnight – 2 of them children. To date, 2,570 people have been arrested since October 7. Israel’s detention campaigns have been accompanied by torture, intense beatings, threats and house vandalism, according to rights groups. (12:05 GMT) 20-year-old Muhammad Abd al-Majid al-Halayqa was shot and killed by Israeli forces near the town of Beit Ainun, located northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. (05:20 GMT) Israeli forces alleged that the young man had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The soldiers instead let him bleed to death on the ground. The alleged knife was never found. Lebanon front: Washington is apparently concerned that Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah in order to manufacture a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon in what has been described as a cynical move to embroil the US and the region in prolonged conflict. White House officials are said to be alarmed that Israeli strikes in Lebanon are aimed at goading Hezbollah into a response that justifies a full-scale Israeli assault. RECOMMENDED READING: Phones ringing off the hooks for a ceasefire, but Congress members aren’t listening Israel news: Israel’s military on Tuesday confirmed the death of a soldier held captive in Gaza after Hamas issued video of her alive followed by images of what the Palestinian faction said was her body after she was killed in an Israeli strike. In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 49, according to official Israeli sources. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis. Ethnic cleansing recommended in Wall Street Journal: On Monday, lawmakers Danny Danon, former ambassador to the UN, and Ram Ben-Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad, published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which they urged the “voluntary” immigration of Gazans to countries around the world: The international community has a moral imperative—and an opportunity—to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East… We simply need a handful of the world’s nations to share the responsibility of hosting Gazan residents. Even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis. The authors went on to make baseless accusations against Hamas, and to criticize the UN for “doing nothing tangible to help Gaza’s residents,” but failed to acknowledge Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid to enter the strip, or to stop the indiscriminate bombing of residential neighborhoods, infrastructure, UN facilities, hospitals, and other civilian sites. Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in a Facebook post, I welcome the initiative of members of Knesset Ram Ben-Barak and Danny Danon on the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world. This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region. The reception of refugees by the countries of the world that really want their best interests, with the support and generous financial assistance of the international community, and within the state of Israel is the only solution that will bring to the end of the suffering and pain of Jews and Arabs alike. Former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth views Israel’s efforts in Gaza as ethnic cleansing. Many other leading organizations and individuals agree. Ethnic cleansing is a war crime. RECOMMENDED READING: More Palestinians killed in past 34 days than in the past 22 years combined https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-14-todays-news-on-palestine-israel-day-39/
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    November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39
    Gaza humanitarian & hospital updates, Israeli assaults, magnitude of Israel's bombing, war crimes, West Bank news, ethnic cleansing
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  • Stay strong during this spiritual dark winter! Bless you my friends
    Stay strong during this spiritual dark winter! Bless you my friends ❤️
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  • Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?
    The scale of US intelligence support for Kiev’s murderous operations has been brought to light at a very interesting moment

    By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent

    Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?
    As Ukraine slips quietly from the top of the Western media’s news agenda, fascinating insights into the granular nature of the CIA’s involvement in Kiev’s assassination program are being revealed. By the very same outlets that had previously suggested Ukraine was on a solo run with its slew of extrajudicial killings and terror attacks.

    Western media has routinely ignored the brutal exploits of Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU. When they are reported upon, instead of calling out the illegal killing of journalists and activists, the press seeks to frame them as masterful operations of a band of freedom fighters administering tough justice to the “enemies of Ukraine.” A key element of that narrative was that while the US, British, and French intelligence services worked closely with the SBU, they didn’t have any direct control of its actions, particularly when those actions involved assassinating unarmed civilians. However, a recently published article in the Washington Post has now revealed that the CIA had, and continues to have, a central role in the group's most disturbing activities.

    Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists READ MORE: Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists
    A Washington Post article “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia” outlines a labyrinthine relationship between the two intelligence agencies, and while the CIA still maintains it doesn’t sanction particular operations, the details revealed in the telling article suggest that this is nothing more than the usual stock disclaimer which accompanies most of Langley's covert operations. The article is based on interviews with “more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, US and Western intelligence and security officials” and its revelations are both shocking and fascinating.

    One of the first claims it makes is that the relationship between the Ukrainian SBU and the CIA has been developing for decades with the latter working to “develop” Ukraine’s abilities to carry out sabotage and “operations” since at least 2014. The CIA has also been providing detailed intelligence, equipment and training to the SBU during that period and continues to spend “tens of millions” of dollars developing its capabilities. The sources quoted also confirm that the CIA even designed and built a new headquarters for the SBU in Kiev and currently share “levels of information and intelligence unthinkable” prior to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

    According to the Washington Post, the CIA also now maintains a significant presence in Kiev, not only in terms of men and materiel but also information flow, all of which suggests that despite maintaining an overt distance, the CIA is in fact intimately involved in all aspects of SBU operations including the planning and execution of operations outside the state.

    One such operation, and probably the most infamous carried out by the SBU since February 2022, was the assassination of Daria Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The Washington Post article goes into great detail to outline the complexity of the “operation” performed by the SBU that resulted in the death of the unarmed 23-year-old non-combatant in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. It tells of the use of a pet carrier to transport explosives into Russia, and of the surveillance of the deceased woman’s home by the assassin, who then fled across the border soon after the horrendous killing, which was cynically referred to by the SBU as a “liquidation.”

    The granular details outlined in the article suggest sources either within the CIA or SBU have now confirmed that their relationship, once presented as purely advisory and business-like, is in fact a deep and long-standing partnership. The article goes on to confirm the SBU’s involvement in several other targeted murders on Russian territory, including the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky with a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe and the murder of ex-submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was shot in the back while jogging unarmed in a park in Krasnodar.

    The revealing article also refers to “uneasiness” in Kiev and Washington regarding the SBU’s penchant for this kind of assassination, noting concern that they could tarnish Ukraine’s image abroad especially among donor countries who recently admitted that without their help Ukraine would collapse within weeks.

    What is most interesting about this piece is probably not its confirmation that the CIA is intimately involved in the operations of the SBU, what’s most fascinating is why a newspaper widely recognized as itself having an intimate relationship with the CIA has suddenly decided to basically confirm what many analysts already knew when it comes to Langley and the SBU.

    Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US READ MORE: Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US
    The Washington Post’s revelation comes not only in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas incursion into Israel and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza but also as international attention, and more importantly, appetite to support Kiev, wanes. This shift in attention, not only in the media but also potentially in the scale of aid, bodes poorly for President Vladimir Zelensky's regime, as it faces increasing domestic pressures and war-weary neighbors.

    Couple this with the oncoming winter and the view looks increasingly grim for Zelensky even before mentioning Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and recent Russian battlefield gains. It now also looks inevitable that Ukraine will find itself playing second fiddle to an emerging political and potentially military crisis in the Middle East while competing for the vital US aid that keeps the Kiev regime afloat. Crucially, all of these woes offer a beleaguered NATO an opportunity to apply pressure on Zelensky to seek peace, potentially solving an increasingly difficult puzzle for Kiev’s backers as they head towards elections that will be decided by populations ever more vocal in their disdain for the conflict.

    So as Kiev’s woes compound and the world’s gaze shifts towards Gaza, it seems the truth about the West’s intimate relationship with the SBU is now being pulled out of the closet, not by a whistleblower or dissenting investigative journalist, but by a stalwart of the US intelligence community, the Washington Post. The question we should all be asking is why? How does this benefit or promote a Western 'victory' in Ukraine? The answer may well be that it’s not a victory that these revelations are supposed to facilitate. It’s more likely that it’s part of a strategy of edging Kiev towards accepting the undeniable reality that the entire US project in Ukraine is set to fail, and for Zelensky to seek accommodation before there’s nothing left to negotiate with.

    The task now is to end it as painlessly as possible for NATO and Kiev’s exhausted backers, and to move on to the next crusade, leaving a devastated and dysfunctional Ukraine to be consigned to the growing graveyard of bloody US foreign policy misadventures.

    The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

    You can share this story on social media:

    RT
    Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign? The scale of US intelligence support for Kiev’s murderous operations has been brought to light at a very interesting moment By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign? As Ukraine slips quietly from the top of the Western media’s news agenda, fascinating insights into the granular nature of the CIA’s involvement in Kiev’s assassination program are being revealed. By the very same outlets that had previously suggested Ukraine was on a solo run with its slew of extrajudicial killings and terror attacks. Western media has routinely ignored the brutal exploits of Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU. When they are reported upon, instead of calling out the illegal killing of journalists and activists, the press seeks to frame them as masterful operations of a band of freedom fighters administering tough justice to the “enemies of Ukraine.” A key element of that narrative was that while the US, British, and French intelligence services worked closely with the SBU, they didn’t have any direct control of its actions, particularly when those actions involved assassinating unarmed civilians. However, a recently published article in the Washington Post has now revealed that the CIA had, and continues to have, a central role in the group's most disturbing activities. Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists READ MORE: Zelensky’s terror team: Why the West looks the other way when Ukraine’s secret murder squad kills journalists and activists A Washington Post article “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia” outlines a labyrinthine relationship between the two intelligence agencies, and while the CIA still maintains it doesn’t sanction particular operations, the details revealed in the telling article suggest that this is nothing more than the usual stock disclaimer which accompanies most of Langley's covert operations. The article is based on interviews with “more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, US and Western intelligence and security officials” and its revelations are both shocking and fascinating. One of the first claims it makes is that the relationship between the Ukrainian SBU and the CIA has been developing for decades with the latter working to “develop” Ukraine’s abilities to carry out sabotage and “operations” since at least 2014. The CIA has also been providing detailed intelligence, equipment and training to the SBU during that period and continues to spend “tens of millions” of dollars developing its capabilities. The sources quoted also confirm that the CIA even designed and built a new headquarters for the SBU in Kiev and currently share “levels of information and intelligence unthinkable” prior to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. According to the Washington Post, the CIA also now maintains a significant presence in Kiev, not only in terms of men and materiel but also information flow, all of which suggests that despite maintaining an overt distance, the CIA is in fact intimately involved in all aspects of SBU operations including the planning and execution of operations outside the state. One such operation, and probably the most infamous carried out by the SBU since February 2022, was the assassination of Daria Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The Washington Post article goes into great detail to outline the complexity of the “operation” performed by the SBU that resulted in the death of the unarmed 23-year-old non-combatant in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. It tells of the use of a pet carrier to transport explosives into Russia, and of the surveillance of the deceased woman’s home by the assassin, who then fled across the border soon after the horrendous killing, which was cynically referred to by the SBU as a “liquidation.” The granular details outlined in the article suggest sources either within the CIA or SBU have now confirmed that their relationship, once presented as purely advisory and business-like, is in fact a deep and long-standing partnership. The article goes on to confirm the SBU’s involvement in several other targeted murders on Russian territory, including the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky with a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe and the murder of ex-submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was shot in the back while jogging unarmed in a park in Krasnodar. The revealing article also refers to “uneasiness” in Kiev and Washington regarding the SBU’s penchant for this kind of assassination, noting concern that they could tarnish Ukraine’s image abroad especially among donor countries who recently admitted that without their help Ukraine would collapse within weeks. What is most interesting about this piece is probably not its confirmation that the CIA is intimately involved in the operations of the SBU, what’s most fascinating is why a newspaper widely recognized as itself having an intimate relationship with the CIA has suddenly decided to basically confirm what many analysts already knew when it comes to Langley and the SBU. Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US READ MORE: Yesterday’s man: Why Ukraine’s Zelensky is in danger of being left behind by the US The Washington Post’s revelation comes not only in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas incursion into Israel and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza but also as international attention, and more importantly, appetite to support Kiev, wanes. This shift in attention, not only in the media but also potentially in the scale of aid, bodes poorly for President Vladimir Zelensky's regime, as it faces increasing domestic pressures and war-weary neighbors. Couple this with the oncoming winter and the view looks increasingly grim for Zelensky even before mentioning Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and recent Russian battlefield gains. It now also looks inevitable that Ukraine will find itself playing second fiddle to an emerging political and potentially military crisis in the Middle East while competing for the vital US aid that keeps the Kiev regime afloat. Crucially, all of these woes offer a beleaguered NATO an opportunity to apply pressure on Zelensky to seek peace, potentially solving an increasingly difficult puzzle for Kiev’s backers as they head towards elections that will be decided by populations ever more vocal in their disdain for the conflict. So as Kiev’s woes compound and the world’s gaze shifts towards Gaza, it seems the truth about the West’s intimate relationship with the SBU is now being pulled out of the closet, not by a whistleblower or dissenting investigative journalist, but by a stalwart of the US intelligence community, the Washington Post. The question we should all be asking is why? How does this benefit or promote a Western 'victory' in Ukraine? The answer may well be that it’s not a victory that these revelations are supposed to facilitate. It’s more likely that it’s part of a strategy of edging Kiev towards accepting the undeniable reality that the entire US project in Ukraine is set to fail, and for Zelensky to seek accommodation before there’s nothing left to negotiate with. The task now is to end it as painlessly as possible for NATO and Kiev’s exhausted backers, and to move on to the next crusade, leaving a devastated and dysfunctional Ukraine to be consigned to the growing graveyard of bloody US foreign policy misadventures. The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. You can share this story on social media: RT
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  • The Age of Megathreats
    Nouriel RoubiniNov 4, 2022
    op_roubini3_Getty Images_worlddisaster Getty Images
    NEW YORK – Severe megathreats are imperiling our future – not just our jobs, incomes, wealth, and the global economy, but also the relative peace, prosperity, and progress achieved over the past 75 years. Many of these threats were not even on our radar during the prosperous post-World War II era. I grew up in the Middle East and Europe from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, and I never worried about climate change potentially destroying the planet. Most of us had barely even heard of the problem, and greenhouse-gas emissions were still relatively low, compared to where they would soon be.

    Moreover, after the US-Soviet détente and US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, I never really worried about another war among great powers, let alone a nuclear one. The term “pandemic” didn’t register in my consciousness, either, because the last major one had been in 1918. And I didn’t fathom that artificial intelligence might someday destroy most jobs and render Homo sapiens obsolete, because those were the years of the long “AI winter.”

    Similarly, terms like “deglobalization” and “trade war” had no purchase during this period. Trade liberalization had been in full swing since the Great Depression, and it would soon lead to the hyper-globalization that began in the 1990s. Debt crises posed no threat, because private and public debt-to-GDP ratios were low in advanced economies and emerging markets, and growth was robust. No one had to worry about the massive build-up of implicit debt, in the form of unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go social security and health-care systems. The supply of young workers was rising, the share of the elderly was still low, and robust, mostly unrestricted immigration from the Global South to the North would continue to prop up the labor market in advanced economies.

    Against this backdrop, economic cycles were contained, and recessions were short and shallow, except for during the stagflationary decade of the 1970s; but even then, there were no debt crises in advanced economies, because debt ratios were low. The kind of financial cycles that lead to crises were contained not just in advanced economies but even in emerging markets, owing to the low leverage, low risk-taking, solid financial regulation, capital controls, and various forms of financial repression that prevailed during this period. The advanced economies were strong liberal democracies that were free of extreme partisan polarization. Populism and authoritarianism were confined to a benighted cohort of poorer countries.

    Goodbye to All That

    Fast-forward from this relatively “golden” period between 1945 and 1985 to late 2022, and you will immediately notice that we are awash in new, extreme megathreats that were not previously on anyone’s mind. The world has entered what I call a geopolitical depression, with (at least) four dangerous revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the United States and its allies created after WWII.

    There is a sharply rising risk not only of war among great powers but of a nuclear conflict. In the coming year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine could escalate into an unconventional conflict that directly involves NATO. And Israel – and perhaps the US – may decide to launch strikes against Iran, which is on its way to building a nuclear bomb.


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    With Chinese President Xi Jinping further consolidating his authoritarian rule, and with the US tightening its trade restrictions against China, the new Sino-American cold war is getting colder by the day. Worse, it could all too easily turn hot over the status of Taiwan, which Xi is committed to reuniting with the mainland, and which US President Joe Biden is apparently committed to defending. Meanwhile, nuclear-armed North Korea has once again been seeking attention by firing rockets over Japan and South Korea.

    Cyberwarfare occurs daily between these revisionist powers and the West, and many other countries have adopted a non-aligned posture toward Western-led sanctions regimes. From our contingent vantage point in the middle of all these events, we don’t yet know if World War III has already begun in Ukraine. That determination will be left to future historians – if there are any.

    Even discounting the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the risk of an environmental Apocalypse is becoming increasingly serious, especially given that most of the talk about net-zero and ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing is just greenwashing – or greenwishing. The new greenflation is already in full swing, because it turns out that amassing the metals needed for the energy transition requires a lot of expensive energy.

    There is also a growing risk of new pandemics that would be worse than biblical plagues, owing to the link between environmental destruction and zoonotic diseases. Wildlife, carrying dangerous pathogens, are coming into closer and more frequent contact with humans and livestock. That is why we have experienced more frequent and virulent pandemics and epidemics (HIV, SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19) since the early 1980s. All the evidence suggests that this problem will become even worse in the future. Indeed, owing to the melting of Siberian permafrost, we may soon be confronting dangerous viruses and bacteria that have been locked away for millennia.

    Moreover, geopolitical conflicts and national-security concerns are fueling trade, financial, and technology wars, and accelerating the deglobalization process. The return of protectionism and the Sino-American decoupling will leave the global economy, supply chains, and markets more balkanized and fragmented. The buzzwords “friend-shoring” and “secure and fair trade” have replaced “offshoring” and “free trade.”

    But on the domestic front, advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more and more jobs, even if policymakers build higher protectionist walls in an effort to fight the last war. By both restricting immigration and demanding more domestic production, aging advanced economies will create a stronger incentive for companies to adopt labor-saving technologies. While routine jobs are obviously at risk, so, too, are any cognitive jobs that can be unbundled into discrete tasks, and even many creative jobs. AI language models like GPT-3 can already write better than most humans and will almost certainly displace many jobs and sources of income. In due course, some scientists believe that Homo sapiens will be rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of artificial general intelligence or machine super-intelligence – though this is a highly contentious subject of debate.

    Thus, over time, economic malaise will deepen, inequality will rise even further, and more white- and blue-collar workers will be left behind.

    Hard Choices, Hard Landings

    The macroeconomic situation is no better. For the first time since the 1970s, we are facing high inflation and the prospect of a recession – stagflation. The increased inflation in advanced economies wasn’t “transitory.” It is persistent, driven by a combination of bad policies – excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies that were kept in place for too long – and bad luck. No one could have anticipated how much the initial COVID-19 shock would curtail the supply of goods and labor and create bottlenecks in global supply chains. The same goes for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which caused a sharp spike in energy, food, fertilizers, industrial metals, and other commodities. Meanwhile, China has continued its “zero-COVID” policy, which is creating additional supply bottlenecks.

    While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that the supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters for the economic outlook, because supply-driven inflation is stagflationary and thus increases the risk that monetary-policy tightening will produce a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession).

    What will follow from the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ current tightening? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street belonged to “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, that a soft landing will be “very challenging,” and that everyone should prepare for some “pain” ahead. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s model shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views about the United Kingdom. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have also now made a recession their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant).

    History, too, points to deeper problems ahead. For the past 60 years in the US, whenever inflation has been above 5% (it is above 8% today), and unemployment has been below 5% (it is now 3.5%), any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down toward its 2% target has caused a recession. Thus, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing, both in the US and across most other advanced economies.

    Sticky Stagflation

    In addition to the short-term factors, negative supply shocks and demand factors in the medium term will cause inflation to persist. On the supply side, I count eleven negative supply shocks that will reduce potential growth and increase the costs of production. Among these is the backlash against hyper-globalization, which has been gaining momentum and creating opportunities for populist, nativist, and protectionist politicians, and growing public anger over stark income and wealth inequalities, which is leading to more policies to support workers and the “left behind.” However well-intentioned, such measures will contribute to a dangerous wage-price spiral.

    Other sources of persistent inflation include rising protectionism (from both the left and the right), which has restricted trade, impeded the movement of capital, and heightened political resistance to immigration, which in turn has put additional upward pressure on wages. National-security and strategic considerations have further restricted flows of technology, data, and talent, and new labor and environmental standards, as important as they may be, are hampering both trade and new construction.

    This balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save more, whereas older people spend down their savings and require many more expensive services in health care and other sectors, this trend, too, will lead to higher prices and slower growth.

    Today’s geopolitical turmoil further complicates matters. The disruptions to trade and the spike in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion were not just a one-off phenomenon. The same threats to harvests and food shipments that arose in 2022 may well persist in 2023. Moreover, if China does finally end its zero-COVID policy and begin to restart its economy, a surge in demand for many commodities will add to the global inflationary pressures. There is also no end in sight for Sino-Western decoupling, which is accelerating across all dimensions of trade (goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information). And, of course, Iran, North Korea, and other strategic rivals to the West could soon contribute in their own ways to the global havoc.

    Now that the US dollar has been fully weaponized for strategic and national-security purposes, its position as the main global reserve currency could eventually begin to decline, and a weaker dollar would of course add to inflationary pressures in the US. More broadly, a frictionless world trading system requires a frictionless financial system. But sweeping primary and secondary sanctions have thrown sand in what was once a well-oiled machine, massively increasing the transaction costs of trade.

    On top of it all, climate change, too, will create persistent stagflationary pressures. Droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and other disasters are increasingly disrupting economic activity and threatening harvests (thus driving up food prices). At the same time, demands for decarbonization have led to underinvestment in fossil-fuel capacity before investment in renewables has reached the point where they can make up the difference. Today’s large energy-price spikes were inevitable.

    The increased likelihood of future pandemics also represents a persistent source of stagflation, especially considering how little has been done to prevent or prepare for the next one. The next contagious outbreak will lend further momentum to protectionist policies as countries rush to close borders and hoard critical supplies of food, medicines, and other essential goods.

    Finally, cyberwarfare remains an underappreciated threat to economic activity and even public safety. Firms and governments will either face more stagflationary disruptions to production, or they will have to spend a fortune on cybersecurity. Either way, costs will rise.

    The Worst of All Possible Economies

    When the recession comes, it will not be short and shallow but long and severe. Not only are we facing persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks, but we are also heading into the mother of all debt crises, owing to soaring private and public debt ratios over the last few decades. Low debt ratios spared us from that outcome in the 1970s. And though we certainly had debt crises following the 2008 crash – the result of excessive household, bank, and government debt – we also had deflation. It was a demand shock and a credit crunch that could be met with massive monetary, fiscal, and credit easing.

    Today, we are experiencing the worst elements of both the 1970s and 2008. Multiple, persistent negative supply shocks have coincided with debt ratios that are even higher than they were during the global financial crisis. These inflationary pressures are forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy even though we are heading into a recession. That makes the current situation fundamentally different from both the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone should be preparing for what may come to be remembered as the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis.

    While central banks have been at pains to sound more hawkish, we should be skeptical of their professed willingness to fight inflation at any cost. Once they find themselves in a debt trap, they will have to blink. With debt ratios so high, fighting inflation will cause an economic and financial crash that will be deemed politically unacceptable. Major central banks will feel as though they have no choice but to backpedal, and inflation, the debasement of fiat currencies, boom-bust cycles, and financial crises will become even more severe and frequent.

    The inevitability of central banks wimping out was recently on display in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the Truss government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE had to launch an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds. That sad episode confirmed that in the UK, as in many other countries, monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture.

    Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in 2019, when the Fed, after previously signaling continued rate hikes and quantitative-tightening, stopped its QT program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but, in a world of excessive debt and risks of an economic and financial crash, there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate.

    With governments unable to reduce high debts and deficits by spending less or raising revenues, those that can borrow in their own currency will increasingly resort to the “inflation tax”: relying on unexpected price growth to wipe out long-term nominal liabilities at fixed interest rates.

    How will financial markets and prices of equities and bonds perform in the face of rising inflation and the return of stagflation? It is likely that, as in the stagflation of the 1970s, both components of any traditional asset portfolio will suffer, potentially incurring massive losses. Inflation is bad for bond portfolios, which will take losses as yields increase and prices fall, as well as for equities, whose valuations are hurt by rising interest rates.

    For the first time in decades, a 60/40 portfolio of equities and bonds suffered massive losses in 2022, because bond yields have surged while equities have gone into a bear market. By 1982, at the peak of the stagflation decade, the average S&P 500 firm’s price-to-earnings ratio was down to eight; today, it is closer to 20, which suggests that the bear market could end up being even more protracted and severe. Investors will need to find assets to hedge against inflation, political and geopolitical risks, and environmental damage: these include short-term government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds, gold and other precious metals, and real estate that is resilient to environmental damage.

    The Moment of Truth

    In any case, these megathreats will further contribute to rising income and wealth inequality, which has already been putting severe pressure on liberal democracies (as those left behind revolt against elites), and fueling the rise of radical and aggressive populist regimes. One can find right-wing manifestations of this trend in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the US (under Donald Trump), post-Brexit Britain, and many other countries; and left-wing manifestations in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and now Brazil (which has just replaced a right-wing populist with a left-wing one).

    And, of course, Xi’s authoritarian stranglehold has given the lie to the old idea that Western engagement with a fast-growing China would ineluctably lead that country to open itself up even more to markets and, eventually, to democratic processes. Under Xi, China shows every sign of becoming more closed off, and more aggressive on geopolitical, security, and economic matters.

    How did it come to this? Part of the problem is that we have long had our heads stuck in the sand. Now, we need to make up for lost time. Without decisive action, we will be heading into a period that is less like the four decades after WWII than like the three decades between 1914 and 1945. That period gave us World War I; the Spanish flu pandemic; the 1929 Wall Street crash; the Great Depression; massive trade and currency wars; inflation, hyperinflation, and deflation; financial and debt crises, leading to massive meltdowns and defaults; and the rise of authoritarian militarist regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, culminating in WWII and the Holocaust.

    In this new world, the relative peace, prosperity, and rising global welfare that we have taken for granted will be gone; most of it already is. If we don’t stop the multi-track slow-motion train wreck that is threatening the global economy and our planet at large, we will be lucky to have only a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s. Far more likely is an echo of the 1930s and the 1940s, only now with all the massive disruptions from climate change added to the mix.

    Avoiding a dystopian scenario will not be easy. While there are potential solutions to each megathreat, most are costly in the short run and will deliver benefits only over the long run. Many also require technological innovations that are not yet available or in place, starting with those needed to halt or reverse climate change. Complicating matters further, today’s megathreats are interconnected, and therefore best addressed in a systematic and coherent fashion. Domestic leadership, in both the private and public sector, and international cooperation among great powers is necessary to prevent the coming Apocalypse.

    Yet there are many domestic and international obstacles standing in the way of policies that would allow for a less dystopian (though still contested and conflictual) future. Thus, while a less bleak scenario is obviously desirable, a clear-headed analysis indicates that dystopia is much more likely than a happier outcome. The years and decades ahead will be marked by a stagflationary debt crisis and related megathreats – war, pandemics, climate change, disruptive AI, and deglobalization – all of which will be bad for jobs, economies, markets, peace, and prosperity.
    The Age of Megathreats Nouriel RoubiniNov 4, 2022 op_roubini3_Getty Images_worlddisaster Getty Images NEW YORK – Severe megathreats are imperiling our future – not just our jobs, incomes, wealth, and the global economy, but also the relative peace, prosperity, and progress achieved over the past 75 years. Many of these threats were not even on our radar during the prosperous post-World War II era. I grew up in the Middle East and Europe from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, and I never worried about climate change potentially destroying the planet. Most of us had barely even heard of the problem, and greenhouse-gas emissions were still relatively low, compared to where they would soon be. Moreover, after the US-Soviet détente and US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, I never really worried about another war among great powers, let alone a nuclear one. The term “pandemic” didn’t register in my consciousness, either, because the last major one had been in 1918. And I didn’t fathom that artificial intelligence might someday destroy most jobs and render Homo sapiens obsolete, because those were the years of the long “AI winter.” Similarly, terms like “deglobalization” and “trade war” had no purchase during this period. Trade liberalization had been in full swing since the Great Depression, and it would soon lead to the hyper-globalization that began in the 1990s. Debt crises posed no threat, because private and public debt-to-GDP ratios were low in advanced economies and emerging markets, and growth was robust. No one had to worry about the massive build-up of implicit debt, in the form of unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go social security and health-care systems. The supply of young workers was rising, the share of the elderly was still low, and robust, mostly unrestricted immigration from the Global South to the North would continue to prop up the labor market in advanced economies. Against this backdrop, economic cycles were contained, and recessions were short and shallow, except for during the stagflationary decade of the 1970s; but even then, there were no debt crises in advanced economies, because debt ratios were low. The kind of financial cycles that lead to crises were contained not just in advanced economies but even in emerging markets, owing to the low leverage, low risk-taking, solid financial regulation, capital controls, and various forms of financial repression that prevailed during this period. The advanced economies were strong liberal democracies that were free of extreme partisan polarization. Populism and authoritarianism were confined to a benighted cohort of poorer countries. Goodbye to All That Fast-forward from this relatively “golden” period between 1945 and 1985 to late 2022, and you will immediately notice that we are awash in new, extreme megathreats that were not previously on anyone’s mind. The world has entered what I call a geopolitical depression, with (at least) four dangerous revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the United States and its allies created after WWII. There is a sharply rising risk not only of war among great powers but of a nuclear conflict. In the coming year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine could escalate into an unconventional conflict that directly involves NATO. And Israel – and perhaps the US – may decide to launch strikes against Iran, which is on its way to building a nuclear bomb. Subscribe to PS Digital now to read all the latest insights from Nouriel Roubini. Digital subscribers enjoy access to every PS commentary, including those by Nouriel Roubini, plus our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content, including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More. For a limited time, save $15 with the code ROUBINI15. Subscribe Now With Chinese President Xi Jinping further consolidating his authoritarian rule, and with the US tightening its trade restrictions against China, the new Sino-American cold war is getting colder by the day. Worse, it could all too easily turn hot over the status of Taiwan, which Xi is committed to reuniting with the mainland, and which US President Joe Biden is apparently committed to defending. Meanwhile, nuclear-armed North Korea has once again been seeking attention by firing rockets over Japan and South Korea. Cyberwarfare occurs daily between these revisionist powers and the West, and many other countries have adopted a non-aligned posture toward Western-led sanctions regimes. From our contingent vantage point in the middle of all these events, we don’t yet know if World War III has already begun in Ukraine. That determination will be left to future historians – if there are any. Even discounting the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the risk of an environmental Apocalypse is becoming increasingly serious, especially given that most of the talk about net-zero and ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing is just greenwashing – or greenwishing. The new greenflation is already in full swing, because it turns out that amassing the metals needed for the energy transition requires a lot of expensive energy. There is also a growing risk of new pandemics that would be worse than biblical plagues, owing to the link between environmental destruction and zoonotic diseases. Wildlife, carrying dangerous pathogens, are coming into closer and more frequent contact with humans and livestock. That is why we have experienced more frequent and virulent pandemics and epidemics (HIV, SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19) since the early 1980s. All the evidence suggests that this problem will become even worse in the future. Indeed, owing to the melting of Siberian permafrost, we may soon be confronting dangerous viruses and bacteria that have been locked away for millennia. Moreover, geopolitical conflicts and national-security concerns are fueling trade, financial, and technology wars, and accelerating the deglobalization process. The return of protectionism and the Sino-American decoupling will leave the global economy, supply chains, and markets more balkanized and fragmented. The buzzwords “friend-shoring” and “secure and fair trade” have replaced “offshoring” and “free trade.” But on the domestic front, advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more and more jobs, even if policymakers build higher protectionist walls in an effort to fight the last war. By both restricting immigration and demanding more domestic production, aging advanced economies will create a stronger incentive for companies to adopt labor-saving technologies. While routine jobs are obviously at risk, so, too, are any cognitive jobs that can be unbundled into discrete tasks, and even many creative jobs. AI language models like GPT-3 can already write better than most humans and will almost certainly displace many jobs and sources of income. In due course, some scientists believe that Homo sapiens will be rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of artificial general intelligence or machine super-intelligence – though this is a highly contentious subject of debate. Thus, over time, economic malaise will deepen, inequality will rise even further, and more white- and blue-collar workers will be left behind. Hard Choices, Hard Landings The macroeconomic situation is no better. For the first time since the 1970s, we are facing high inflation and the prospect of a recession – stagflation. The increased inflation in advanced economies wasn’t “transitory.” It is persistent, driven by a combination of bad policies – excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies that were kept in place for too long – and bad luck. No one could have anticipated how much the initial COVID-19 shock would curtail the supply of goods and labor and create bottlenecks in global supply chains. The same goes for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which caused a sharp spike in energy, food, fertilizers, industrial metals, and other commodities. Meanwhile, China has continued its “zero-COVID” policy, which is creating additional supply bottlenecks. While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that the supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters for the economic outlook, because supply-driven inflation is stagflationary and thus increases the risk that monetary-policy tightening will produce a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession). What will follow from the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ current tightening? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street belonged to “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, that a soft landing will be “very challenging,” and that everyone should prepare for some “pain” ahead. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s model shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views about the United Kingdom. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have also now made a recession their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant). History, too, points to deeper problems ahead. For the past 60 years in the US, whenever inflation has been above 5% (it is above 8% today), and unemployment has been below 5% (it is now 3.5%), any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down toward its 2% target has caused a recession. Thus, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing, both in the US and across most other advanced economies. Sticky Stagflation In addition to the short-term factors, negative supply shocks and demand factors in the medium term will cause inflation to persist. On the supply side, I count eleven negative supply shocks that will reduce potential growth and increase the costs of production. Among these is the backlash against hyper-globalization, which has been gaining momentum and creating opportunities for populist, nativist, and protectionist politicians, and growing public anger over stark income and wealth inequalities, which is leading to more policies to support workers and the “left behind.” However well-intentioned, such measures will contribute to a dangerous wage-price spiral. Other sources of persistent inflation include rising protectionism (from both the left and the right), which has restricted trade, impeded the movement of capital, and heightened political resistance to immigration, which in turn has put additional upward pressure on wages. National-security and strategic considerations have further restricted flows of technology, data, and talent, and new labor and environmental standards, as important as they may be, are hampering both trade and new construction. This balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save more, whereas older people spend down their savings and require many more expensive services in health care and other sectors, this trend, too, will lead to higher prices and slower growth. Today’s geopolitical turmoil further complicates matters. The disruptions to trade and the spike in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion were not just a one-off phenomenon. The same threats to harvests and food shipments that arose in 2022 may well persist in 2023. Moreover, if China does finally end its zero-COVID policy and begin to restart its economy, a surge in demand for many commodities will add to the global inflationary pressures. There is also no end in sight for Sino-Western decoupling, which is accelerating across all dimensions of trade (goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information). And, of course, Iran, North Korea, and other strategic rivals to the West could soon contribute in their own ways to the global havoc. Now that the US dollar has been fully weaponized for strategic and national-security purposes, its position as the main global reserve currency could eventually begin to decline, and a weaker dollar would of course add to inflationary pressures in the US. More broadly, a frictionless world trading system requires a frictionless financial system. But sweeping primary and secondary sanctions have thrown sand in what was once a well-oiled machine, massively increasing the transaction costs of trade. On top of it all, climate change, too, will create persistent stagflationary pressures. Droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and other disasters are increasingly disrupting economic activity and threatening harvests (thus driving up food prices). At the same time, demands for decarbonization have led to underinvestment in fossil-fuel capacity before investment in renewables has reached the point where they can make up the difference. Today’s large energy-price spikes were inevitable. The increased likelihood of future pandemics also represents a persistent source of stagflation, especially considering how little has been done to prevent or prepare for the next one. The next contagious outbreak will lend further momentum to protectionist policies as countries rush to close borders and hoard critical supplies of food, medicines, and other essential goods. Finally, cyberwarfare remains an underappreciated threat to economic activity and even public safety. Firms and governments will either face more stagflationary disruptions to production, or they will have to spend a fortune on cybersecurity. Either way, costs will rise. The Worst of All Possible Economies When the recession comes, it will not be short and shallow but long and severe. Not only are we facing persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks, but we are also heading into the mother of all debt crises, owing to soaring private and public debt ratios over the last few decades. Low debt ratios spared us from that outcome in the 1970s. And though we certainly had debt crises following the 2008 crash – the result of excessive household, bank, and government debt – we also had deflation. It was a demand shock and a credit crunch that could be met with massive monetary, fiscal, and credit easing. Today, we are experiencing the worst elements of both the 1970s and 2008. Multiple, persistent negative supply shocks have coincided with debt ratios that are even higher than they were during the global financial crisis. These inflationary pressures are forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy even though we are heading into a recession. That makes the current situation fundamentally different from both the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone should be preparing for what may come to be remembered as the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis. While central banks have been at pains to sound more hawkish, we should be skeptical of their professed willingness to fight inflation at any cost. Once they find themselves in a debt trap, they will have to blink. With debt ratios so high, fighting inflation will cause an economic and financial crash that will be deemed politically unacceptable. Major central banks will feel as though they have no choice but to backpedal, and inflation, the debasement of fiat currencies, boom-bust cycles, and financial crises will become even more severe and frequent. The inevitability of central banks wimping out was recently on display in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the Truss government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE had to launch an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds. That sad episode confirmed that in the UK, as in many other countries, monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture. Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in 2019, when the Fed, after previously signaling continued rate hikes and quantitative-tightening, stopped its QT program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but, in a world of excessive debt and risks of an economic and financial crash, there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate. With governments unable to reduce high debts and deficits by spending less or raising revenues, those that can borrow in their own currency will increasingly resort to the “inflation tax”: relying on unexpected price growth to wipe out long-term nominal liabilities at fixed interest rates. How will financial markets and prices of equities and bonds perform in the face of rising inflation and the return of stagflation? It is likely that, as in the stagflation of the 1970s, both components of any traditional asset portfolio will suffer, potentially incurring massive losses. Inflation is bad for bond portfolios, which will take losses as yields increase and prices fall, as well as for equities, whose valuations are hurt by rising interest rates. For the first time in decades, a 60/40 portfolio of equities and bonds suffered massive losses in 2022, because bond yields have surged while equities have gone into a bear market. By 1982, at the peak of the stagflation decade, the average S&P 500 firm’s price-to-earnings ratio was down to eight; today, it is closer to 20, which suggests that the bear market could end up being even more protracted and severe. Investors will need to find assets to hedge against inflation, political and geopolitical risks, and environmental damage: these include short-term government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds, gold and other precious metals, and real estate that is resilient to environmental damage. The Moment of Truth In any case, these megathreats will further contribute to rising income and wealth inequality, which has already been putting severe pressure on liberal democracies (as those left behind revolt against elites), and fueling the rise of radical and aggressive populist regimes. One can find right-wing manifestations of this trend in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the US (under Donald Trump), post-Brexit Britain, and many other countries; and left-wing manifestations in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and now Brazil (which has just replaced a right-wing populist with a left-wing one). And, of course, Xi’s authoritarian stranglehold has given the lie to the old idea that Western engagement with a fast-growing China would ineluctably lead that country to open itself up even more to markets and, eventually, to democratic processes. Under Xi, China shows every sign of becoming more closed off, and more aggressive on geopolitical, security, and economic matters. How did it come to this? Part of the problem is that we have long had our heads stuck in the sand. Now, we need to make up for lost time. Without decisive action, we will be heading into a period that is less like the four decades after WWII than like the three decades between 1914 and 1945. That period gave us World War I; the Spanish flu pandemic; the 1929 Wall Street crash; the Great Depression; massive trade and currency wars; inflation, hyperinflation, and deflation; financial and debt crises, leading to massive meltdowns and defaults; and the rise of authoritarian militarist regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, culminating in WWII and the Holocaust. In this new world, the relative peace, prosperity, and rising global welfare that we have taken for granted will be gone; most of it already is. If we don’t stop the multi-track slow-motion train wreck that is threatening the global economy and our planet at large, we will be lucky to have only a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s. Far more likely is an echo of the 1930s and the 1940s, only now with all the massive disruptions from climate change added to the mix. Avoiding a dystopian scenario will not be easy. While there are potential solutions to each megathreat, most are costly in the short run and will deliver benefits only over the long run. Many also require technological innovations that are not yet available or in place, starting with those needed to halt or reverse climate change. Complicating matters further, today’s megathreats are interconnected, and therefore best addressed in a systematic and coherent fashion. Domestic leadership, in both the private and public sector, and international cooperation among great powers is necessary to prevent the coming Apocalypse. Yet there are many domestic and international obstacles standing in the way of policies that would allow for a less dystopian (though still contested and conflictual) future. Thus, while a less bleak scenario is obviously desirable, a clear-headed analysis indicates that dystopia is much more likely than a happier outcome. The years and decades ahead will be marked by a stagflationary debt crisis and related megathreats – war, pandemics, climate change, disruptive AI, and deglobalization – all of which will be bad for jobs, economies, markets, peace, and prosperity.
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  • The Age of Megathreats
    Nouriel RoubiniNov 4, 2022
    op_roubini3_Getty Images_worlddisaster Getty Images
    NEW YORK – Severe megathreats are imperiling our future – not just our jobs, incomes, wealth, and the global economy, but also the relative peace, prosperity, and progress achieved over the past 75 years. Many of these threats were not even on our radar during the prosperous post-World War II era. I grew up in the Middle East and Europe from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, and I never worried about climate change potentially destroying the planet. Most of us had barely even heard of the problem, and greenhouse-gas emissions were still relatively low, compared to where they would soon be.

    Moreover, after the US-Soviet détente and US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, I never really worried about another war among great powers, let alone a nuclear one. The term “pandemic” didn’t register in my consciousness, either, because the last major one had been in 1918. And I didn’t fathom that artificial intelligence might someday destroy most jobs and render Homo sapiens obsolete, because those were the years of the long “AI winter.”

    Similarly, terms like “deglobalization” and “trade war” had no purchase during this period. Trade liberalization had been in full swing since the Great Depression, and it would soon lead to the hyper-globalization that began in the 1990s. Debt crises posed no threat, because private and public debt-to-GDP ratios were low in advanced economies and emerging markets, and growth was robust. No one had to worry about the massive build-up of implicit debt, in the form of unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go social security and health-care systems. The supply of young workers was rising, the share of the elderly was still low, and robust, mostly unrestricted immigration from the Global South to the North would continue to prop up the labor market in advanced economies.

    Against this backdrop, economic cycles were contained, and recessions were short and shallow, except for during the stagflationary decade of the 1970s; but even then, there were no debt crises in advanced economies, because debt ratios were low. The kind of financial cycles that lead to crises were contained not just in advanced economies but even in emerging markets, owing to the low leverage, low risk-taking, solid financial regulation, capital controls, and various forms of financial repression that prevailed during this period. The advanced economies were strong liberal democracies that were free of extreme partisan polarization. Populism and authoritarianism were confined to a benighted cohort of poorer countries.

    Goodbye to All That

    Fast-forward from this relatively “golden” period between 1945 and 1985 to late 2022, and you will immediately notice that we are awash in new, extreme megathreats that were not previously on anyone’s mind. The world has entered what I call a geopolitical depression, with (at least) four dangerous revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the United States and its allies created after WWII.

    There is a sharply rising risk not only of war among great powers but of a nuclear conflict. In the coming year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine could escalate into an unconventional conflict that directly involves NATO. And Israel – and perhaps the US – may decide to launch strikes against Iran, which is on its way to building a nuclear bomb.


    Subscribe to PS Digital now to read all the latest insights from Nouriel Roubini.

    Digital subscribers enjoy access to every PS commentary, including those by Nouriel Roubini, plus our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content, including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More.

    For a limited time, save $15 with the code ROUBINI15.

    Subscribe Now

    With Chinese President Xi Jinping further consolidating his authoritarian rule, and with the US tightening its trade restrictions against China, the new Sino-American cold war is getting colder by the day. Worse, it could all too easily turn hot over the status of Taiwan, which Xi is committed to reuniting with the mainland, and which US President Joe Biden is apparently committed to defending. Meanwhile, nuclear-armed North Korea has once again been seeking attention by firing rockets over Japan and South Korea.

    Cyberwarfare occurs daily between these revisionist powers and the West, and many other countries have adopted a non-aligned posture toward Western-led sanctions regimes. From our contingent vantage point in the middle of all these events, we don’t yet know if World War III has already begun in Ukraine. That determination will be left to future historians – if there are any.

    Even discounting the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the risk of an environmental Apocalypse is becoming increasingly serious, especially given that most of the talk about net-zero and ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing is just greenwashing – or greenwishing. The new greenflation is already in full swing, because it turns out that amassing the metals needed for the energy transition requires a lot of expensive energy.

    There is also a growing risk of new pandemics that would be worse than biblical plagues, owing to the link between environmental destruction and zoonotic diseases. Wildlife, carrying dangerous pathogens, are coming into closer and more frequent contact with humans and livestock. That is why we have experienced more frequent and virulent pandemics and epidemics (HIV, SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19) since the early 1980s. All the evidence suggests that this problem will become even worse in the future. Indeed, owing to the melting of Siberian permafrost, we may soon be confronting dangerous viruses and bacteria that have been locked away for millennia.

    Moreover, geopolitical conflicts and national-security concerns are fueling trade, financial, and technology wars, and accelerating the deglobalization process. The return of protectionism and the Sino-American decoupling will leave the global economy, supply chains, and markets more balkanized and fragmented. The buzzwords “friend-shoring” and “secure and fair trade” have replaced “offshoring” and “free trade.”

    But on the domestic front, advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more and more jobs, even if policymakers build higher protectionist walls in an effort to fight the last war. By both restricting immigration and demanding more domestic production, aging advanced economies will create a stronger incentive for companies to adopt labor-saving technologies. While routine jobs are obviously at risk, so, too, are any cognitive jobs that can be unbundled into discrete tasks, and even many creative jobs. AI language models like GPT-3 can already write better than most humans and will almost certainly displace many jobs and sources of income. In due course, some scientists believe that Homo sapiens will be rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of artificial general intelligence or machine super-intelligence – though this is a highly contentious subject of debate.

    Thus, over time, economic malaise will deepen, inequality will rise even further, and more white- and blue-collar workers will be left behind.

    Hard Choices, Hard Landings

    The macroeconomic situation is no better. For the first time since the 1970s, we are facing high inflation and the prospect of a recession – stagflation. The increased inflation in advanced economies wasn’t “transitory.” It is persistent, driven by a combination of bad policies – excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies that were kept in place for too long – and bad luck. No one could have anticipated how much the initial COVID-19 shock would curtail the supply of goods and labor and create bottlenecks in global supply chains. The same goes for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which caused a sharp spike in energy, food, fertilizers, industrial metals, and other commodities. Meanwhile, China has continued its “zero-COVID” policy, which is creating additional supply bottlenecks.

    While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that the supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters for the economic outlook, because supply-driven inflation is stagflationary and thus increases the risk that monetary-policy tightening will produce a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession).

    What will follow from the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ current tightening? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street belonged to “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, that a soft landing will be “very challenging,” and that everyone should prepare for some “pain” ahead. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s model shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views about the United Kingdom. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have also now made a recession their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant).

    History, too, points to deeper problems ahead. For the past 60 years in the US, whenever inflation has been above 5% (it is above 8% today), and unemployment has been below 5% (it is now 3.5%), any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down toward its 2% target has caused a recession. Thus, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing, both in the US and across most other advanced economies.

    Sticky Stagflation

    In addition to the short-term factors, negative supply shocks and demand factors in the medium term will cause inflation to persist. On the supply side, I count eleven negative supply shocks that will reduce potential growth and increase the costs of production. Among these is the backlash against hyper-globalization, which has been gaining momentum and creating opportunities for populist, nativist, and protectionist politicians, and growing public anger over stark income and wealth inequalities, which is leading to more policies to support workers and the “left behind.” However well-intentioned, such measures will contribute to a dangerous wage-price spiral.

    Other sources of persistent inflation include rising protectionism (from both the left and the right), which has restricted trade, impeded the movement of capital, and heightened political resistance to immigration, which in turn has put additional upward pressure on wages. National-security and strategic considerations have further restricted flows of technology, data, and talent, and new labor and environmental standards, as important as they may be, are hampering both trade and new construction.

    This balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save more, whereas older people spend down their savings and require many more expensive services in health care and other sectors, this trend, too, will lead to higher prices and slower growth.

    Today’s geopolitical turmoil further complicates matters. The disruptions to trade and the spike in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion were not just a one-off phenomenon. The same threats to harvests and food shipments that arose in 2022 may well persist in 2023. Moreover, if China does finally end its zero-COVID policy and begin to restart its economy, a surge in demand for many commodities will add to the global inflationary pressures. There is also no end in sight for Sino-Western decoupling, which is accelerating across all dimensions of trade (goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information). And, of course, Iran, North Korea, and other strategic rivals to the West could soon contribute in their own ways to the global havoc.

    Now that the US dollar has been fully weaponized for strategic and national-security purposes, its position as the main global reserve currency could eventually begin to decline, and a weaker dollar would of course add to inflationary pressures in the US. More broadly, a frictionless world trading system requires a frictionless financial system. But sweeping primary and secondary sanctions have thrown sand in what was once a well-oiled machine, massively increasing the transaction costs of trade.

    On top of it all, climate change, too, will create persistent stagflationary pressures. Droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and other disasters are increasingly disrupting economic activity and threatening harvests (thus driving up food prices). At the same time, demands for decarbonization have led to underinvestment in fossil-fuel capacity before investment in renewables has reached the point where they can make up the difference. Today’s large energy-price spikes were inevitable.

    The increased likelihood of future pandemics also represents a persistent source of stagflation, especially considering how little has been done to prevent or prepare for the next one. The next contagious outbreak will lend further momentum to protectionist policies as countries rush to close borders and hoard critical supplies of food, medicines, and other essential goods.

    Finally, cyberwarfare remains an underappreciated threat to economic activity and even public safety. Firms and governments will either face more stagflationary disruptions to production, or they will have to spend a fortune on cybersecurity. Either way, costs will rise.

    The Worst of All Possible Economies

    When the recession comes, it will not be short and shallow but long and severe. Not only are we facing persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks, but we are also heading into the mother of all debt crises, owing to soaring private and public debt ratios over the last few decades. Low debt ratios spared us from that outcome in the 1970s. And though we certainly had debt crises following the 2008 crash – the result of excessive household, bank, and government debt – we also had deflation. It was a demand shock and a credit crunch that could be met with massive monetary, fiscal, and credit easing.

    Today, we are experiencing the worst elements of both the 1970s and 2008. Multiple, persistent negative supply shocks have coincided with debt ratios that are even higher than they were during the global financial crisis. These inflationary pressures are forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy even though we are heading into a recession. That makes the current situation fundamentally different from both the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone should be preparing for what may come to be remembered as the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis.

    While central banks have been at pains to sound more hawkish, we should be skeptical of their professed willingness to fight inflation at any cost. Once they find themselves in a debt trap, they will have to blink. With debt ratios so high, fighting inflation will cause an economic and financial crash that will be deemed politically unacceptable. Major central banks will feel as though they have no choice but to backpedal, and inflation, the debasement of fiat currencies, boom-bust cycles, and financial crises will become even more severe and frequent.

    The inevitability of central banks wimping out was recently on display in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the Truss government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE had to launch an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds. That sad episode confirmed that in the UK, as in many other countries, monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture.

    Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in 2019, when the Fed, after previously signaling continued rate hikes and quantitative-tightening, stopped its QT program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but, in a world of excessive debt and risks of an economic and financial crash, there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate.

    With governments unable to reduce high debts and deficits by spending less or raising revenues, those that can borrow in their own currency will increasingly resort to the “inflation tax”: relying on unexpected price growth to wipe out long-term nominal liabilities at fixed interest rates.

    How will financial markets and prices of equities and bonds perform in the face of rising inflation and the return of stagflation? It is likely that, as in the stagflation of the 1970s, both components of any traditional asset portfolio will suffer, potentially incurring massive losses. Inflation is bad for bond portfolios, which will take losses as yields increase and prices fall, as well as for equities, whose valuations are hurt by rising interest rates.

    For the first time in decades, a 60/40 portfolio of equities and bonds suffered massive losses in 2022, because bond yields have surged while equities have gone into a bear market. By 1982, at the peak of the stagflation decade, the average S&P 500 firm’s price-to-earnings ratio was down to eight; today, it is closer to 20, which suggests that the bear market could end up being even more protracted and severe. Investors will need to find assets to hedge against inflation, political and geopolitical risks, and environmental damage: these include short-term government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds, gold and other precious metals, and real estate that is resilient to environmental damage.

    The Moment of Truth

    In any case, these megathreats will further contribute to rising income and wealth inequality, which has already been putting severe pressure on liberal democracies (as those left behind revolt against elites), and fueling the rise of radical and aggressive populist regimes. One can find right-wing manifestations of this trend in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the US (under Donald Trump), post-Brexit Britain, and many other countries; and left-wing manifestations in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and now Brazil (which has just replaced a right-wing populist with a left-wing one).

    And, of course, Xi’s authoritarian stranglehold has given the lie to the old idea that Western engagement with a fast-growing China would ineluctably lead that country to open itself up even more to markets and, eventually, to democratic processes. Under Xi, China shows every sign of becoming more closed off, and more aggressive on geopolitical, security, and economic matters.

    How did it come to this? Part of the problem is that we have long had our heads stuck in the sand. Now, we need to make up for lost time. Without decisive action, we will be heading into a period that is less like the four decades after WWII than like the three decades between 1914 and 1945. That period gave us World War I; the Spanish flu pandemic; the 1929 Wall Street crash; the Great Depression; massive trade and currency wars; inflation, hyperinflation, and deflation; financial and debt crises, leading to massive meltdowns and defaults; and the rise of authoritarian militarist regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, culminating in WWII and the Holocaust.

    In this new world, the relative peace, prosperity, and rising global welfare that we have taken for granted will be gone; most of it already is. If we don’t stop the multi-track slow-motion train wreck that is threatening the global economy and our planet at large, we will be lucky to have only a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s. Far more likely is an echo of the 1930s and the 1940s, only now with all the massive disruptions from climate change added to the mix.

    Avoiding a dystopian scenario will not be easy. While there are potential solutions to each megathreat, most are costly in the short run and will deliver benefits only over the long run. Many also require technological innovations that are not yet available or in place, starting with those needed to halt or reverse climate change. Complicating matters further, today’s megathreats are interconnected, and therefore best addressed in a systematic and coherent fashion. Domestic leadership, in both the private and public sector, and international cooperation among great powers is necessary to prevent the coming Apocalypse.

    Yet there are many domestic and international obstacles standing in the way of policies that would allow for a less dystopian (though still contested and conflictual) future. Thus, while a less bleak scenario is obviously desirable, a clear-headed analysis indicates that dystopia is much more likely than a happier outcome. The years and decades ahead will be marked by a stagflationary debt crisis and related megathreats – war, pandemics, climate change, disruptive AI, and deglobalization – all of which will be bad for jobs, economies, markets, peace, and prosperity.
    The Age of Megathreats Nouriel RoubiniNov 4, 2022 op_roubini3_Getty Images_worlddisaster Getty Images NEW YORK – Severe megathreats are imperiling our future – not just our jobs, incomes, wealth, and the global economy, but also the relative peace, prosperity, and progress achieved over the past 75 years. Many of these threats were not even on our radar during the prosperous post-World War II era. I grew up in the Middle East and Europe from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, and I never worried about climate change potentially destroying the planet. Most of us had barely even heard of the problem, and greenhouse-gas emissions were still relatively low, compared to where they would soon be. Moreover, after the US-Soviet détente and US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, I never really worried about another war among great powers, let alone a nuclear one. The term “pandemic” didn’t register in my consciousness, either, because the last major one had been in 1918. And I didn’t fathom that artificial intelligence might someday destroy most jobs and render Homo sapiens obsolete, because those were the years of the long “AI winter.” Similarly, terms like “deglobalization” and “trade war” had no purchase during this period. Trade liberalization had been in full swing since the Great Depression, and it would soon lead to the hyper-globalization that began in the 1990s. Debt crises posed no threat, because private and public debt-to-GDP ratios were low in advanced economies and emerging markets, and growth was robust. No one had to worry about the massive build-up of implicit debt, in the form of unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go social security and health-care systems. The supply of young workers was rising, the share of the elderly was still low, and robust, mostly unrestricted immigration from the Global South to the North would continue to prop up the labor market in advanced economies. Against this backdrop, economic cycles were contained, and recessions were short and shallow, except for during the stagflationary decade of the 1970s; but even then, there were no debt crises in advanced economies, because debt ratios were low. The kind of financial cycles that lead to crises were contained not just in advanced economies but even in emerging markets, owing to the low leverage, low risk-taking, solid financial regulation, capital controls, and various forms of financial repression that prevailed during this period. The advanced economies were strong liberal democracies that were free of extreme partisan polarization. Populism and authoritarianism were confined to a benighted cohort of poorer countries. Goodbye to All That Fast-forward from this relatively “golden” period between 1945 and 1985 to late 2022, and you will immediately notice that we are awash in new, extreme megathreats that were not previously on anyone’s mind. The world has entered what I call a geopolitical depression, with (at least) four dangerous revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the United States and its allies created after WWII. There is a sharply rising risk not only of war among great powers but of a nuclear conflict. In the coming year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine could escalate into an unconventional conflict that directly involves NATO. And Israel – and perhaps the US – may decide to launch strikes against Iran, which is on its way to building a nuclear bomb. Subscribe to PS Digital now to read all the latest insights from Nouriel Roubini. Digital subscribers enjoy access to every PS commentary, including those by Nouriel Roubini, plus our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content, including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More. For a limited time, save $15 with the code ROUBINI15. Subscribe Now With Chinese President Xi Jinping further consolidating his authoritarian rule, and with the US tightening its trade restrictions against China, the new Sino-American cold war is getting colder by the day. Worse, it could all too easily turn hot over the status of Taiwan, which Xi is committed to reuniting with the mainland, and which US President Joe Biden is apparently committed to defending. Meanwhile, nuclear-armed North Korea has once again been seeking attention by firing rockets over Japan and South Korea. Cyberwarfare occurs daily between these revisionist powers and the West, and many other countries have adopted a non-aligned posture toward Western-led sanctions regimes. From our contingent vantage point in the middle of all these events, we don’t yet know if World War III has already begun in Ukraine. That determination will be left to future historians – if there are any. Even discounting the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the risk of an environmental Apocalypse is becoming increasingly serious, especially given that most of the talk about net-zero and ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing is just greenwashing – or greenwishing. The new greenflation is already in full swing, because it turns out that amassing the metals needed for the energy transition requires a lot of expensive energy. There is also a growing risk of new pandemics that would be worse than biblical plagues, owing to the link between environmental destruction and zoonotic diseases. Wildlife, carrying dangerous pathogens, are coming into closer and more frequent contact with humans and livestock. That is why we have experienced more frequent and virulent pandemics and epidemics (HIV, SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19) since the early 1980s. All the evidence suggests that this problem will become even worse in the future. Indeed, owing to the melting of Siberian permafrost, we may soon be confronting dangerous viruses and bacteria that have been locked away for millennia. Moreover, geopolitical conflicts and national-security concerns are fueling trade, financial, and technology wars, and accelerating the deglobalization process. The return of protectionism and the Sino-American decoupling will leave the global economy, supply chains, and markets more balkanized and fragmented. The buzzwords “friend-shoring” and “secure and fair trade” have replaced “offshoring” and “free trade.” But on the domestic front, advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more and more jobs, even if policymakers build higher protectionist walls in an effort to fight the last war. By both restricting immigration and demanding more domestic production, aging advanced economies will create a stronger incentive for companies to adopt labor-saving technologies. While routine jobs are obviously at risk, so, too, are any cognitive jobs that can be unbundled into discrete tasks, and even many creative jobs. AI language models like GPT-3 can already write better than most humans and will almost certainly displace many jobs and sources of income. In due course, some scientists believe that Homo sapiens will be rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of artificial general intelligence or machine super-intelligence – though this is a highly contentious subject of debate. Thus, over time, economic malaise will deepen, inequality will rise even further, and more white- and blue-collar workers will be left behind. Hard Choices, Hard Landings The macroeconomic situation is no better. For the first time since the 1970s, we are facing high inflation and the prospect of a recession – stagflation. The increased inflation in advanced economies wasn’t “transitory.” It is persistent, driven by a combination of bad policies – excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies that were kept in place for too long – and bad luck. No one could have anticipated how much the initial COVID-19 shock would curtail the supply of goods and labor and create bottlenecks in global supply chains. The same goes for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which caused a sharp spike in energy, food, fertilizers, industrial metals, and other commodities. Meanwhile, China has continued its “zero-COVID” policy, which is creating additional supply bottlenecks. While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that the supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters for the economic outlook, because supply-driven inflation is stagflationary and thus increases the risk that monetary-policy tightening will produce a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession). What will follow from the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ current tightening? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street belonged to “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, that a soft landing will be “very challenging,” and that everyone should prepare for some “pain” ahead. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s model shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views about the United Kingdom. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have also now made a recession their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant). History, too, points to deeper problems ahead. For the past 60 years in the US, whenever inflation has been above 5% (it is above 8% today), and unemployment has been below 5% (it is now 3.5%), any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down toward its 2% target has caused a recession. Thus, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing, both in the US and across most other advanced economies. Sticky Stagflation In addition to the short-term factors, negative supply shocks and demand factors in the medium term will cause inflation to persist. On the supply side, I count eleven negative supply shocks that will reduce potential growth and increase the costs of production. Among these is the backlash against hyper-globalization, which has been gaining momentum and creating opportunities for populist, nativist, and protectionist politicians, and growing public anger over stark income and wealth inequalities, which is leading to more policies to support workers and the “left behind.” However well-intentioned, such measures will contribute to a dangerous wage-price spiral. Other sources of persistent inflation include rising protectionism (from both the left and the right), which has restricted trade, impeded the movement of capital, and heightened political resistance to immigration, which in turn has put additional upward pressure on wages. National-security and strategic considerations have further restricted flows of technology, data, and talent, and new labor and environmental standards, as important as they may be, are hampering both trade and new construction. This balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save more, whereas older people spend down their savings and require many more expensive services in health care and other sectors, this trend, too, will lead to higher prices and slower growth. Today’s geopolitical turmoil further complicates matters. The disruptions to trade and the spike in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion were not just a one-off phenomenon. The same threats to harvests and food shipments that arose in 2022 may well persist in 2023. Moreover, if China does finally end its zero-COVID policy and begin to restart its economy, a surge in demand for many commodities will add to the global inflationary pressures. There is also no end in sight for Sino-Western decoupling, which is accelerating across all dimensions of trade (goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information). And, of course, Iran, North Korea, and other strategic rivals to the West could soon contribute in their own ways to the global havoc. Now that the US dollar has been fully weaponized for strategic and national-security purposes, its position as the main global reserve currency could eventually begin to decline, and a weaker dollar would of course add to inflationary pressures in the US. More broadly, a frictionless world trading system requires a frictionless financial system. But sweeping primary and secondary sanctions have thrown sand in what was once a well-oiled machine, massively increasing the transaction costs of trade. On top of it all, climate change, too, will create persistent stagflationary pressures. Droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and other disasters are increasingly disrupting economic activity and threatening harvests (thus driving up food prices). At the same time, demands for decarbonization have led to underinvestment in fossil-fuel capacity before investment in renewables has reached the point where they can make up the difference. Today’s large energy-price spikes were inevitable. The increased likelihood of future pandemics also represents a persistent source of stagflation, especially considering how little has been done to prevent or prepare for the next one. The next contagious outbreak will lend further momentum to protectionist policies as countries rush to close borders and hoard critical supplies of food, medicines, and other essential goods. Finally, cyberwarfare remains an underappreciated threat to economic activity and even public safety. Firms and governments will either face more stagflationary disruptions to production, or they will have to spend a fortune on cybersecurity. Either way, costs will rise. The Worst of All Possible Economies When the recession comes, it will not be short and shallow but long and severe. Not only are we facing persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks, but we are also heading into the mother of all debt crises, owing to soaring private and public debt ratios over the last few decades. Low debt ratios spared us from that outcome in the 1970s. And though we certainly had debt crises following the 2008 crash – the result of excessive household, bank, and government debt – we also had deflation. It was a demand shock and a credit crunch that could be met with massive monetary, fiscal, and credit easing. Today, we are experiencing the worst elements of both the 1970s and 2008. Multiple, persistent negative supply shocks have coincided with debt ratios that are even higher than they were during the global financial crisis. These inflationary pressures are forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy even though we are heading into a recession. That makes the current situation fundamentally different from both the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone should be preparing for what may come to be remembered as the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis. While central banks have been at pains to sound more hawkish, we should be skeptical of their professed willingness to fight inflation at any cost. Once they find themselves in a debt trap, they will have to blink. With debt ratios so high, fighting inflation will cause an economic and financial crash that will be deemed politically unacceptable. Major central banks will feel as though they have no choice but to backpedal, and inflation, the debasement of fiat currencies, boom-bust cycles, and financial crises will become even more severe and frequent. The inevitability of central banks wimping out was recently on display in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the Truss government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE had to launch an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds. That sad episode confirmed that in the UK, as in many other countries, monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture. Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in 2019, when the Fed, after previously signaling continued rate hikes and quantitative-tightening, stopped its QT program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but, in a world of excessive debt and risks of an economic and financial crash, there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate. With governments unable to reduce high debts and deficits by spending less or raising revenues, those that can borrow in their own currency will increasingly resort to the “inflation tax”: relying on unexpected price growth to wipe out long-term nominal liabilities at fixed interest rates. How will financial markets and prices of equities and bonds perform in the face of rising inflation and the return of stagflation? It is likely that, as in the stagflation of the 1970s, both components of any traditional asset portfolio will suffer, potentially incurring massive losses. Inflation is bad for bond portfolios, which will take losses as yields increase and prices fall, as well as for equities, whose valuations are hurt by rising interest rates. For the first time in decades, a 60/40 portfolio of equities and bonds suffered massive losses in 2022, because bond yields have surged while equities have gone into a bear market. By 1982, at the peak of the stagflation decade, the average S&P 500 firm’s price-to-earnings ratio was down to eight; today, it is closer to 20, which suggests that the bear market could end up being even more protracted and severe. Investors will need to find assets to hedge against inflation, political and geopolitical risks, and environmental damage: these include short-term government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds, gold and other precious metals, and real estate that is resilient to environmental damage. The Moment of Truth In any case, these megathreats will further contribute to rising income and wealth inequality, which has already been putting severe pressure on liberal democracies (as those left behind revolt against elites), and fueling the rise of radical and aggressive populist regimes. One can find right-wing manifestations of this trend in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the US (under Donald Trump), post-Brexit Britain, and many other countries; and left-wing manifestations in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and now Brazil (which has just replaced a right-wing populist with a left-wing one). And, of course, Xi’s authoritarian stranglehold has given the lie to the old idea that Western engagement with a fast-growing China would ineluctably lead that country to open itself up even more to markets and, eventually, to democratic processes. Under Xi, China shows every sign of becoming more closed off, and more aggressive on geopolitical, security, and economic matters. How did it come to this? Part of the problem is that we have long had our heads stuck in the sand. Now, we need to make up for lost time. Without decisive action, we will be heading into a period that is less like the four decades after WWII than like the three decades between 1914 and 1945. That period gave us World War I; the Spanish flu pandemic; the 1929 Wall Street crash; the Great Depression; massive trade and currency wars; inflation, hyperinflation, and deflation; financial and debt crises, leading to massive meltdowns and defaults; and the rise of authoritarian militarist regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, culminating in WWII and the Holocaust. In this new world, the relative peace, prosperity, and rising global welfare that we have taken for granted will be gone; most of it already is. If we don’t stop the multi-track slow-motion train wreck that is threatening the global economy and our planet at large, we will be lucky to have only a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s. Far more likely is an echo of the 1930s and the 1940s, only now with all the massive disruptions from climate change added to the mix. Avoiding a dystopian scenario will not be easy. While there are potential solutions to each megathreat, most are costly in the short run and will deliver benefits only over the long run. Many also require technological innovations that are not yet available or in place, starting with those needed to halt or reverse climate change. Complicating matters further, today’s megathreats are interconnected, and therefore best addressed in a systematic and coherent fashion. Domestic leadership, in both the private and public sector, and international cooperation among great powers is necessary to prevent the coming Apocalypse. Yet there are many domestic and international obstacles standing in the way of policies that would allow for a less dystopian (though still contested and conflictual) future. Thus, while a less bleak scenario is obviously desirable, a clear-headed analysis indicates that dystopia is much more likely than a happier outcome. The years and decades ahead will be marked by a stagflationary debt crisis and related megathreats – war, pandemics, climate change, disruptive AI, and deglobalization – all of which will be bad for jobs, economies, markets, peace, and prosperity.
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  • Home Heating Service: Keep Your Home Warm And Comfortable For Winter

    There's a certain solace in knowing that you're coming home to a cozy, welcoming house as the winter chill sets in. Having a functional heating system is crucial for our comfort and for leading an environmentally responsible lifestyle for those of us who are dedicated to sustainable living. I hope to assist you navigate the world of home heating services with my advice, which is based on years of expertise as a sustainable construction specialist builder. We will cover all the bases, so your winter is comfortable, sustainable, and worry-free—from expert maintenance to do-it-yourself advice and emergency readiness.

    Read the blog for more information: https://www.otherarticles.com/business/small-business/253314-home-heating-service-keep-your-home-warm-and-comfortable-for-winter.html



    Home Heating Service: Keep Your Home Warm And Comfortable For Winter There's a certain solace in knowing that you're coming home to a cozy, welcoming house as the winter chill sets in. Having a functional heating system is crucial for our comfort and for leading an environmentally responsible lifestyle for those of us who are dedicated to sustainable living. I hope to assist you navigate the world of home heating services with my advice, which is based on years of expertise as a sustainable construction specialist builder. We will cover all the bases, so your winter is comfortable, sustainable, and worry-free—from expert maintenance to do-it-yourself advice and emergency readiness. Read the blog for more information: https://www.otherarticles.com/business/small-business/253314-home-heating-service-keep-your-home-warm-and-comfortable-for-winter.html
    WWW.OTHERARTICLES.COM
    Home Heating Service: Keep Your Home Warm And Comfortable For Winter
    Clima Heating and Cooling is a company that provides professional and reliable heating and cooling services in San Diego
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  • The Enchanting World of Tulip Flowers: History, Meaning, and More!!

    Tulips, with their vibrant colors and graceful petals, have captured the hearts of flower enthusiasts and gardeners around the world for centuries. These enchanting blooms have a rich history, deep symbolism, and a unique allure that makes them a favorite in gardens, bouquets, and floral arrangements. In this post, we’ll dive into the fascinating world of tulip flowers, exploring their history, meanings, and more.

    Historical Roots: Tulips have a long and illustrious history that traces back to the Ottoman Empire, where they were cultivated as early as the 10th century. The name “tulip” itself is believed to have been derived from the Turkish word “tülbent,” which means turban, a reference to the flower’s resemblance to a turban’s shape. Tulips were introduced to Europe in the 16th century, igniting a craze known as “Tulip Mania” in the Netherlands during the Dutch Golden Age. At the peak of the tulip frenzy in the 1630s, tulip bulbs were sold at exorbitant prices, and they even became a form of currency in speculative trading. Though the bubble eventually burst, tulips remained an enduring symbol of beauty and luxury.

    Symbolism and Meanings: Tulips are rich in symbolism, with different colors carrying distinct meanings.

    1𖠵 Red Tulips: Often associated with love and passion, red tulips convey deep romantic feelings and are often given as a declaration of love.
    2𖠵 Yellow Tulips: Symbolizing cheerful thoughts and sunshine, yellow tulips represent happiness and positivity.
    3𖠵 White Tulips: White tulips are emblematic of purity and forgiveness, making them a common choice for weddings and as gestures of apology.
    4𖠵 Purple Tulips: Regal and elegant, purple tulips signify royalty and admiration. They can also symbolize a sense of calm and tranquility.
    5𖠵 Pink Tulips: Pink tulips are a symbol of affection and caring, making them suitable for expressing admiration and appreciation.
    6𖠵 Orange Tulips: Vibrant and energetic, orange tulips represent enthusiasm, desire, and passion.

    Cultural Significance: Tulips have left their mark on various cultures and have been featured prominently in art, literature, and festivals. In the Netherlands, the Keukenhof Gardens host an annual tulip festival, showcasing millions of tulips in breathtaking displays. Tulips have also been celebrated in the poetry of Persian and Dutch poets, adding to their cultural significance.

    Growing and Caring for Tulips: Tulips are relatively easy to grow, making them a popular choice for gardeners. They thrive in well-drained soil and require a period of cold dormancy to bloom. Planting tulip bulbs in the fall allows them to establish roots before the winter chill sets in. Come spring, these resilient flowers burst forth with a riot of color.

    In conclusion, tulips are more than just beautiful blooms; they are a testament to history, a language of emotions, and a source of inspiration. Whether you’re tending to a garden, sending a bouquet, or simply admiring their beauty, tulips continue to enchant us with their timeless elegance and symbolism that transcends borders and generations. So, the next time you encounter a tulip, take a moment to appreciate its rich heritage and the myriad of meanings it can convey.

    #Tulips #Knowledge #LouisKim
    The Enchanting World of Tulip Flowers: History, Meaning, and More!!🌷💗 Tulips, with their vibrant colors and graceful petals, have captured the hearts of flower enthusiasts and gardeners around the world for centuries. These enchanting blooms have a rich history, deep symbolism, and a unique allure that makes them a favorite in gardens, bouquets, and floral arrangements. In this post, we’ll dive into the fascinating world of tulip flowers, exploring their history, meanings, and more. Historical Roots: Tulips have a long and illustrious history that traces back to the Ottoman Empire, where they were cultivated as early as the 10th century. The name “tulip” itself is believed to have been derived from the Turkish word “tülbent,” which means turban, a reference to the flower’s resemblance to a turban’s shape. Tulips were introduced to Europe in the 16th century, igniting a craze known as “Tulip Mania” in the Netherlands during the Dutch Golden Age. At the peak of the tulip frenzy in the 1630s, tulip bulbs were sold at exorbitant prices, and they even became a form of currency in speculative trading. Though the bubble eventually burst, tulips remained an enduring symbol of beauty and luxury. Symbolism and Meanings: Tulips are rich in symbolism, with different colors carrying distinct meanings. 1𖠵 Red Tulips: Often associated with love and passion, red tulips convey deep romantic feelings and are often given as a declaration of love. 2𖠵 Yellow Tulips: Symbolizing cheerful thoughts and sunshine, yellow tulips represent happiness and positivity. 3𖠵 White Tulips: White tulips are emblematic of purity and forgiveness, making them a common choice for weddings and as gestures of apology. 4𖠵 Purple Tulips: Regal and elegant, purple tulips signify royalty and admiration. They can also symbolize a sense of calm and tranquility. 5𖠵 Pink Tulips: Pink tulips are a symbol of affection and caring, making them suitable for expressing admiration and appreciation. 6𖠵 Orange Tulips: Vibrant and energetic, orange tulips represent enthusiasm, desire, and passion. Cultural Significance: Tulips have left their mark on various cultures and have been featured prominently in art, literature, and festivals. In the Netherlands, the Keukenhof Gardens host an annual tulip festival, showcasing millions of tulips in breathtaking displays. Tulips have also been celebrated in the poetry of Persian and Dutch poets, adding to their cultural significance. Growing and Caring for Tulips: Tulips are relatively easy to grow, making them a popular choice for gardeners. They thrive in well-drained soil and require a period of cold dormancy to bloom. Planting tulip bulbs in the fall allows them to establish roots before the winter chill sets in. Come spring, these resilient flowers burst forth with a riot of color. In conclusion, tulips are more than just beautiful blooms; they are a testament to history, a language of emotions, and a source of inspiration. Whether you’re tending to a garden, sending a bouquet, or simply admiring their beauty, tulips continue to enchant us with their timeless elegance and symbolism that transcends borders and generations. So, the next time you encounter a tulip, take a moment to appreciate its rich heritage and the myriad of meanings it can convey. #Tulips #Knowledge #LouisKim
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  • Greywarden > This is my first post on the SoMee main platform in weeks now. As you all can see i changed my username back to Greywarden as it has always been. My original profile picture on SoMee is also back. Dragon Age Origins is my favorite RPG ever. I really enjoyed Dragon Age 2 as well, as whatever decison you made, and how you completed Dragon Age Origins, along with all of the added quests and how you complete them, affects the story line of Dragon Age 2. Same goes from 2 to Dragon Age 3 and so forth.

    I have been retired from gaming for 5 years now. My game for the past 6 years has been crypto, and for the most part SoMee and now Hive. I promised my wife that i won't return to gaming until i become very rich. I am a man of my word as i have proven to her since we got married. I won't lie however, even after 5 solid years of not playing video games i still get big time cravings. Especially Massive online role playing games like Neverwinter. I also miss the days when i was ranked 800 out of the top 100,000 best Madden Players on XBOX1. I was even invited to tournaments. Those days are over for now lol.

    How many of you enjoy gaming as much as i do, or did rather?
    Greywarden > This is my first post on the SoMee main platform in weeks now. As you all can see i changed my username back to Greywarden as it has always been. My original profile picture on SoMee is also back. Dragon Age Origins is my favorite RPG ever. I really enjoyed Dragon Age 2 as well, as whatever decison you made, and how you completed Dragon Age Origins, along with all of the added quests and how you complete them, affects the story line of Dragon Age 2. Same goes from 2 to Dragon Age 3 and so forth. I have been retired from gaming for 5 years now. My game for the past 6 years has been crypto, and for the most part SoMee and now Hive. I promised my wife that i won't return to gaming until i become very rich. I am a man of my word as i have proven to her since we got married. I won't lie however, even after 5 solid years of not playing video games i still get big time cravings. Especially Massive online role playing games like Neverwinter. I also miss the days when i was ranked 800 out of the top 100,000 best Madden Players on XBOX1. I was even invited to tournaments. Those days are over for now lol. How many of you enjoy gaming as much as i do, or did rather?
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  • A place to relax
    When winter passes and the temperature rises above 20°C, this is the favorite place to relax - the terrace.
    Where to drink coffee? Where to read a book? Where to surf SoMee?
    On the terrace, of course :-)
    A place to relax When winter passes and the temperature rises above 20°C, this is the favorite place to relax - the terrace. Where to drink coffee? Where to read a book? Where to surf SoMee? On the terrace, of course :-)
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