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Open thread May 31, 2022

Dan Crawford | May 31, 2022 5:44 am

Comments (12) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
12 Comments
  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 31, 2022 at 7:10 am

    Europe dials up the cost of war for Russia and financial support for Ukraine

    NY Times – May 31

    After working late into the night on Monday to secure agreement on the oil embargo, leaders returned Tuesday morning to confront a thicket of complicated issues related to Ukraine, including looking for ways to unblock huge amounts of grain stuck at Ukrainian ports that are under Russian blockade.

    Ukraine produces around 12 percent of the world’s wheat, 15 percent of its corn and half its sunflower oil. The United Nations has warned that shortages created by the Russian blockade could lead to famine in some of the world’s most fragile nations.

    At the same time, European leaders are working to expand broad economic support to bolster the Ukrainian economy. …

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      May 31, 2022 at 7:14 am

      At an intense summit that ended around midnight Monday, European leaders agreed to ban the vast majority of Russian oil imports, delivering billions’ worth of pain to the Kremlin’s finances.

      “We want to stop the Russian war machine and stop the financing of this Russian military capacity by implementing sanctions which aim to put pressure on the Kremlin,” said Charles Michel, president of the European Council, which brings together the bloc’s national leaders, late Monday after the deal was announced.

      The measure is the capstone of the bloc’s sixth package of sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. It includes other measures that will hurt Russia’s economy, notably barring the country’s largest lender, Sberbank, from the Swift messaging platform that facilitates international transactions alongside two more banks.

      The European Union will also phase out the offer of various services such as insurance to Russian entities by European Union companies, and ban E.U. firms from insuring Russian oil transfers.

      With the European Union and others preparing to hand over billions to Ukraine in the middle of a war, Ms. von der Leyen stressed the importance of monitoring the funds — a demand by governments in Europe.

      “Reform of the administrative capacity, the judicial independence, to fight corruption, to create a conducive environment for the business sector,” she said, adding: “Here, it is important that we really stand together to give Ukraine a fair chance to rise from the ashes and to be able to really leapfrog forward what reconstruction is concerned in investment, but also in the improvement of the state of Ukraine.”

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 31, 2022 at 7:20 am

    US Retakes Top Spot in Supercomputer Race

    NY Times – May 30

    A massive machine in Tennessee has been deemed the world’s speediest. Experts say two supercomputers in China may be faster, but the country didn’t participate in the rankings. 

    The United States has regained a coveted speed crown in computing with a powerful new supercomputer in Tennessee, a milestone for the technology that plays a major role in science, medicine and other fields.

    Frontier, the name of the massive machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was declared on Monday to be the first to demonstrate performance of one quintillion operations per second — a billion billion calculations — in a set of standard tests used by researchers to rank supercomputers. The U.S. Department of Energy several years ago pledged $1.8 billion to build three systems with that “exascale” performance, as scientists call it.

    But the crown has a caveat. Some experts believe that Frontier has been beaten in the exascale race by two systems in China. Operators of those systems have not submitted test results for evaluation by scientists who oversee the so-called Top500 ranking. Experts said they suspected that tensions between the United States and China may be the reason the Chinese have not submitted the test results. …

     

  • EMichael says:
    May 31, 2022 at 8:21 am

    The EU stopping of oil from Russia is something that should be done, but its effect is nonexistent on Russia. It is a world market. There are even signs that these bans have increased Russia’s income from oil.

    • EMichael says:
      May 31, 2022 at 8:34 am

      ” For all the hardships visited on consumers at home and the financial chokehold put on the government from abroad, Bloomberg Economics expects Russia will earn nearly $321 billion from energy exports this year, an increase of more than a third from 2021. It’s also on track for a record current-account surplus that the Institute of International Finance says may reach as high as $240 billion.”

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-01/putin-may-collect-321-billion-windfall-if-oil-gas-keep-flowing

      • coberly says:
        May 31, 2022 at 11:45 am

        EMichael

        hmm.  Russians blockade Ukraine’s wheat: we blockade Russian oil.  pain all around, but might shorten the war.  everybody is afraid of nukes, but Kennedy became a hero for calling Soviet bluff, and Chamberlain became a dog for failing to call Hitler’s bluff.

  • coberly says:
    May 31, 2022 at 11:54 am

    open thread

    an imaginable number: 6.03 time 10 to the 23 power.  about the number of air molecules in a basketball.  I can imagine that, even though I can’t count that high,   

    American GDP about 20 Trillion [please note the “about”]; i can imagine that, though I note the number could be a lot smaller if the dollar was a lot bigger.

    or you could take the 20 Trillion dollar (or so) “unfunded debt” of Social Security.  It turns out to be about a dollar per week per worker over the seventy five year actuarial window.  has something to do with the 250 million or so taxpayers making an average of “about” 50,000 dollars per year.  I can imagine that, though it would take me a long time to count it one dollar at a time.  [note the “math” suggested in this comment is very, very rough, but the precise math gives the same result.  of course the precise math is a little harder to imagine if you don’t have the taste for that sort of thing.

    • coberly says:
      May 31, 2022 at 11:59 am

      thats an extra dollar per week per year….and, again, this is only a rough guide to how to get a big number from a small number.  the actual details are not hard, but require some thought, or at least a willingness to follow the thought of someone who can “do the math.”

      • coberly says:
        May 31, 2022 at 3:16 pm

        continuing in that vain

        41 Trillion is about 42 Trillion (to make the math easier)

        divided by 60 years (to make the math easier) is about 700 billion

        compared to a GDP of about 21 Trillion (to make the math easier)

        is about 3% of GDP (if I have kept track of the numbers), which is someting I can imagine.

        but i feel uneasy about because it looks too small (doesn’t allow for inflation?), but i can imagine a much bigger number than 3% as at least arguably reasonable for a great nation to spend on “defense” in a world in which other countries are “militaristic.”

        not that i like it.  in a country with a more equitable distribution of income we would all be able easily to afford without pain a much safer level of “military preparedness” than, say, Great Britain in the 1930’s.( and we all know what happened then.) And we could do it without even thinking about it, much less driving ourselves into a culture of violence.

        that is, if we understood that “inevitably” is not an argument but an assertion.

        and here i lose the thread of the honorable representative from the loyal opposition, but just saying there is not much violence in my life, except the potemkin violence i get from people who don’t like being disagreed with and imagine that the “obvious” connection they make in their own minds does not “obviously” reflect either reality or what most people think when they are not led by their leaders to seeing commies under the bed or capitalism-crazed mass shooters in every school.

        • coberly says:
          May 31, 2022 at 7:15 pm

          open thread continued

          still, it puzzles me that i recentlly created a hate storm by saying that an essay published here was a common, or standard ( I forget my exact words and don’t have the due diligence to look them up since the author of the referenced essay deleted them) “leftist” screed (i.e. the essential violent and racist nature of America since the beginning). i was severly (not politely) criticized for not doing due dilligence which would have discovered that the essay was in fact written by a right wing (“christian”) source. there was no notice of this in the post itself, but the person critcizing me had, in a post of his own, identified this source. He suggested that without discovering this myself through due dilligence i had a right to remain silent. he then, because he had the power, proceded to enforce my “silence.”

          yet since then he has taken pains to demonstrate the “confluence” of the right and the left..in agreeing that capitalist militarism is reponsible for the violence that runs through American culture.

          So I stand corrected for failing to identify the right wing source of an unattributed essay repeating the standard left wing screed about the capitalism-violence connection.

          makes me dizzy to think about.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 31, 2022 at 12:19 pm

    Wall Street’s Losing Streak Ends, but Uncertainty That Drove It Lingers

    NY Times – May 31

    The stock market’s staggering run of losses came to an end last week, with the S&P 500 snapping a seven-week losing streak and pulling away from the brink of a bear market with a 6.6 percent bounce through Friday.

    But the concerns that drove Wall Street’s panic this year remain unresolved. It’s far too soon to know if skyrocketing consumer prices have peaked, if the Federal Reserve has charted the right path for interest rates, or how well the economy will be able to hold up in the face of fast inflation and rising borrowing costs.

    Until there’s clarity on those issues, analysts say, it would be a mistake to presume that this year’s drop in stocks was over. As share prices have tumbled, falling about 13 percent since early January, predictions that the selling has run its course have repeatedly turned out to be wrong, with the market changing direction as each new piece of data on the economy came in. …

    (The headline is inaccurate, if not misleading. The market – or at least the Dobbs Index – has been lower each month so far this year. May is no exception. It’s down about 14% since the beginning of the year, and even then it was down from the 2021 high in October.  It was up as of last Friday’s close,  but down significantly for the month, and will be down again at today’s close most likely.)

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    June 1, 2022 at 11:36 pm

    If some college loans can be forgiven, why not all?

    $5.8 Billion in Loans Will Be Forgiven for Corinthian Colleges Students

    NY Times – June 1

    The Education Department said it would wipe out the debts of 560,000 borrowers who had enrolled in the for-profit college chain, which collapsed in 2015. 

    In its largest student loan forgiveness action ever, the Education Department said on Wednesday that it would wipe out $5.8 billion owed by 560,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges, one of the nation’s biggest for-profit college chains before it collapsed in 2015.

    The debt cancellation will be automatic, meaning former Corinthian students will not have to apply to have their debts canceled. The Education Department will eliminate any remaining balance on the federal student loans of those who attended any Corinthian campus or online program during the chain’s 20-year existence.

    “For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. …

    (That averages about $10K per student borrower.)

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