« Back

Open thread Nov. 18, 2022

Dan Crawford | November 18, 2022 8:36 am

“Open thread Nov. 15, 2022,” Angry Bear, angry bear blog

27 Comments

Denis Drew says:

November 18, 2022 at 11:34 am

I have come to believe that prescribing Zolpidem/Ambien ought to be reallocated mostly to the realm of psychiatrists — because psychiatrists have the training — and the inclination — to do the necessary work up and careful follow up — and primary doctors, more and more clearly in my hearing, definitely do not.

The clear trend in the “physical illness” medical field – I hear about it over and over – is of medical doctors zapping long running prescriptions for Zolpidem without so much as a five minute, intelligent discussion about how much the withdrawal of their sleeping crutch may upset and or even upend patients’ whole ways of life.

Logically, one would think that interruption of a long running, successful treatment for a seriously debilitating “condition” (we don’t use the word “illness” here) should necessitate a careful work up and follow up.

It is not like there seems available any routine Zolpidem substitute, like switching from antibiotic to antibiotic. Therein lies the patients’ dreaded rub. Candidate substitutes all seem to introduce serious (yucky feeling) drug hangovers for maybe the first half of patients waking hours. Alternately, patients can spend all their waking hours in a sleep deprived haze (w/o drug).

I mostly need help getting my last two hours of sleep. I take a 3-4mg dose cut from a Zolpidem tablet after the first five hours and wake up 2 hours later bright eyed and bushy tailed – zero, ZERO, drug hang over.

Five minutes after I wake up I feel perfectly fit to drive a car. Logistically perfect. Doctors will fret that the “hypnotic” is still in your blood stream even if you cannot sense anything like that – causing you to make mistakes even if you feel perfect.

After trying one Zolpidem “substitute” (Mirtazapine) I made one major driving error and had to concentrate hard to avoid two others — two days after I downed it! But, intellectually I had no problem knowing I was doing some things very wrong. Ditto, if I drive on five hours sleep — I am definitely aware that I am a bit short on patience and judgment. 12 years on Zolpidem; I have never received any “intellectual” message that I am driving incorrectly because of the drug.

So a close look at me, anyway, would seem to obviate extra driving accident concerns.

Even if Zolpidem doubled my accident risk – on the road or slipping and breaking my knee in the kitchen – I prefer that to enduring a drug hangover half the day (from a “substitute”) or to living in a sleep deprived daze all day – every day of my life in my case. I know; I recently did four miserable months alternating between all day sleepiness and half day gradually shedding the feeling of being hit by a truck. That half day was what I lived for.

My OTC “substitute” was Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) – recently reported to bestow the maximum risk of developing dementia.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288546

But, this is the caliber of workup and follow up detail that psychiatrists are primed to ferret out.

Memory loss? Zolpidem doesn’t make you forget anything you have learned already – or anything new about how things work together. Less than 1% of users have clinically significant memory loss (whatever that means).

Somebody should do a study of 1000 insomnia patients who have been bumped off Zolpidem (most, probably without discussion) – and 1000 who had their dose halved (probably from 10mg to 5 mg) – to see how deep an effect this may have had on their lives, up close and personal.

But, this is the caliber of follow up that psychiatrists are primed for. (Did I say that already?)

In one internet conversation, a patient was panicking. He had previously been out of work for three years because he couldn’t sleep. Now, after a year and a half on Zolpidem, his doctor was leaving and he was afraid he couldn’t get his prescription renewed (I’ve been there). Do you think his doctors realized that they were denying him everything else in his life – job, ability to raise a family, pay for entertainment – to make him safer from slipping and breaking his knee in the kitchen? Did they think all that through?

I have seen one chart (link below) that shows annual Zolpidem prescriptions have dropped from 45 million to 10 million from 2012 to 2020. Does that mean that 35 million Americans are now walking around in drug hangovers for hours, or in a sleep deprived hazes all day – in insomnia periods? Could that be? (The chart is at the end of a blog post mostly on another topic.)
https://jabberwocking.com/health-update-21/

I am nothing if not grandiose. I envision the day when everyone can go down a checklist that identifies whether or not they likely have what is known as insomnia – and 50 or 60 million patients are taking Zolpidem.
- coberly says:
  
  November 19, 2022 at 2:36 pm
  
  Denis
  
  I really have no idea what other people are up against, so take this with the understanding that I know I may be ignorant of what is very real to you and others.
  
  I don’t sleep all night. ( old age, mostly,…me and my dogs). i am told it is common. on the other hand i don’t have to go to work the next day.
  
  but for what it is worth, i find i can get up in the middle of the night, several times, or just stay up. and i have no problem functioning (as much as my life requires), though i do seem to need a nap about four o’clock in the afternoon. about an hour suffices, and i probably go to bed earlier than i used to. So,what’s the point of this?: I’d rather be drug free and work out my own solution–so far so good–to the problem.
  
  no guarantee this will work for you. but maybe worth a try. (it takes a little will power to get past the first few minutes of “rather be in bed,” but it helps to do a few chores that don’t take much intellectual energy..like taking the dog out, or washing the dishes.
  
  but you are right about doctors, just ike judges they get jaded and don’t think they need to think any more.
  - coberly says:
    
    November 19, 2022 at 5:00 pm
    
    two more that might help. i know the first works. i don’t know about the second because i can never try it:
    
    get as much physical work or exercise as you can. work is better.
    
    avoid tv or computer screens, especially before bed.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 18, 2022 at 2:05 pm

Merrick Garland to Name Special Counsel for Trump Investigations

NY Times – just in

Attorney General Merrick Garland will announce on Friday that he is appointing a special counsel to take over two major criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump, including his role in events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his handling of sensitive government documents.

The announcement, which a senior law enforcement official said Mr. Garland will make later on Friday, came after Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to run for president again, a decision some have claimed was taken to make it more difficult for prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against him.

The appointment of a special counsel was a way for the Justice Department to insulate its investigations against Mr. Trump from political considerations. While special counsels can be fired from their positions, the process is much more arduous than removing ordinary prosecutors from a case. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  November 18, 2022 at 3:44 pm
  
  NY Times: The attorney general named Jack Smith, the former head of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, to the job just days after former President Donald J. Trump announced that he would seek the White House again in 2024. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    November 18, 2022 at 3:50 pm
    
    Who is Jack Smith?
    
    NY Times – just in
    
    … Mr. Smith served from 2010 to 2015 as chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which investigates politicians and other public figures on corruption allegations.
    
    Two of Mr. Smith’s more notable corruption cases against high-profile political figures had opposite results. His team initially won a conviction against the former Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, but the Supreme Court overturned it.
    
    It also won a conviction of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, who was sentenced to three years in prison. (Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Renzi among a flurry of clemency actions in January 2021, in his last hours as president.) …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 18, 2022 at 4:40 pm

The Mystic of Mar-a-Lago

NY Times – Nov 18

… The 45th president, for those who abhor him and those who adore him, is not just a well-utilized object. He is a fetish object. If possessed of any form of brilliance, he is a brilliant synthesizer of low American moments; his presence replays the racial suspiciousness of the 1980s and of “Birth of a Nation” all at once. He is a brilliant manifestation of what a poor, angry man hopes a rich, angry man will be like; he brilliantly demonstrates what an embittered loser hopes winning will feel like — vengeful and delicious. A fetish figure is illogical to those on the outside, but it makes perfect sense to those who venerate it.

The menaces and right-wing fires that Mr. Trump unleashed are now beyond his control and, worse, are all but ready to consume him for being a tactless distraction. He outrages traditional conservatives because his behavior blitzkriegs conventions and conceals nothing. His refusal to act like a reasonable person and play by the rules pulls back the curtains on the greased poles upholding so many American structures that prevent and deter equity and progress. He is brash and indiscreet. He is unnecessary trouble. …

This is as good an explanation as any of what being a Bad Boy president is all about.
Justin Cidertrades says:

November 18, 2022 at 9:37 pm

What the World Needs Now Is Love
~~Jackie DeShannon~

what the world needs now is enough love to finance a better place for the victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. we need to get those poor Ukraine people to a better place, to a NATO Nation, but relieve the overcrowding in the NATO Nation by getting more NATOnian people into the US. Love is a small price to pay. We can do it. And when the NATOnians arrive we have 10 million job openings waiting for them.

I promise that you will never regret

doing this

.
- coberly says:
  
  November 19, 2022 at 2:43 pm
  
  Justin
  
  I think you are probably right. I would point out that Ukranians have essentially the same culture as Americans, and not being racially identifiable should be acccepted more readily than the other immigrants we are afraid of.
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    November 21, 2022 at 9:34 am
    
    This may be instructive.
    
    cross-cultural differences between Americans and Ukrainians
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    November 21, 2022 at 9:46 am
    
    (Personally, I have at times believed that Russians and Americans have a lot in common also, but sort of like opposite sides of a coin perhaps, both being ‘bulls in a china shop.’)
    
    Anyway, it would seem that Ukrainians have more in common with Russians.
    
    Wikipedia: Kievan Rus’, also known as Kyivan Rus’ was a state in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century. Encompassing a variety of polities and peoples, including East Slavic, Norse, and Finnic, it was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, founded by the Varangian prince Rurik. The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus’ as their cultural ancestor, with Belarus and Russia deriving their names from it. At its greatest extent in the mid-11th century, Kievan Rus’ stretched from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south and from the headwaters of the Vistula in the west to the Taman Peninsula in the east, uniting the East Slavic tribes. ..
    
    Unfortunately, Ukraine came to be known (by Russia) as ‘Little Russia’.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 19, 2022 at 11:02 am

What the Unusual Midterm Elections Mean for Climate Action

NY Times – Nov 17

The Democrats’ strong showing in the midterm elections — both their defense of their Senate majority and their gains in important state races — essentially ensures that President Biden’s signature climate change law, passed in August, will be fully implemented despite threats from some Republicans to block or undo it.

Republicans, who have won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, are still expected to scrutinize and slow down some elements of Mr. Biden’s climate change agenda, particularly his pledge to send climate aid to developing nations suffering from the effects of extreme weather.

And despite the divided Congress, some lawmakers from both parties say they hope to advance a narrow bill that would make it easier to build all forms of energy infrastructure — both pipelines to carry oil and electrical transmission lines to carry wind and solar power. …

The new Inflation Reduction Act includes $370 billion in tax incentives for wind and solar power, electric vehicles and energy-efficient home improvements. The full enactment of these measures means the president can guarantee on the world stage that the United States will cut up to 40 percent of its emissions by 2030, backed by the force of law. That is something no previous president has been able to do.

It still won’t be enough for him to meet his target of cutting emissions in half by 2030. For that, Mr. Biden would need congressional support, but now he faces a divided Congress.

Instead, over the next two years, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to put out three major new regulations aimed at cutting planet-warming pollution from cars, power plants and oil and gas wells. It remains to be seen whether those rules will survive legal challenges or a future Republican administration, raising the possibility that climate change will once again be a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential campaign. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 20, 2022 at 6:49 am

Elon Musk Reinstates Trump’s Twitter Account

NY Times – Nov 20

Mr. Musk, who had asked Twitter users about whether to bring back the former president to the service, said, “The people have spoken.” …

(I’m off Twitter, as of last night.)
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 20, 2022 at 8:34 am

Republicans sweep Ohio raising questions about whether its a swing state

Columbus Dispatch – Nov 9

Ohio voters made a clear choice in this year’s election: They want Republicans in charge.

GOP candidates swept the statewide offices, picked up all three seats on the state Supreme Court and are on track to expand their supermajority in the state Senate.

“We have a mandate for continued Republican leadership in Ohio for the next four years,” Ohio Republican Party Chair Bob Paduchik told a jubilant crowd at the GOP watch party Tuesday night.

Democratic candidates were more circumspect, saying the fight for what they believe in must continue. …

Democratic Senate Loss in Ohio Raises Bar for Sherrod Brown in 2024

NY Times – Nov 20

Tim Ryan’s loss to J. D. Vance is another reminder that Ohio is no longer a swing state. Can Mr. Brown, the Democratic incumbent, hold the seat in what’s shaping up as a crucial Senate election in 2024? …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  November 20, 2022 at 8:39 am
  
  Despite voter-approved anti-gerrymandering reforms, Ohio GOP still draws lopsided map
  
  NPR – Nov 21, 2021
  
  Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has signed into law a congressional map that creates 15 new districts in the state, but anti-gerrymandering advocates are slamming the map saying it was drawn to keep a Republican stronghold in Ohio.
  
  The plan has 12 seats that either heavily favor or lean in favor of Republicans. That’s 80% of the districts in a state that voted for former President Donald Trump with 53% of the vote in 2020.
  
  Voter rights groups say Republican lawmakers went out of their way to carve the map in a way that gives them an advantage.
  
  “It is full of weird shapes and squiggly lines,” says Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “Maps don’t look like this unless you’re trying to secure a partisan outcome rather than fairly representing voters.” …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 20, 2022 at 9:05 am

The midterms and Trump’s return show why we need a third party

Boston Globe – Nov 14

(This appeared in the Globe last week. The link above is probably not free.)

… Last week’s midterm elections are proof that Trump has completed his ruination of the GOP. The Party of Lincoln has been overrun by low-quality candidates,rampant conspiracy theories, and a vile culture of intimidation.

As the twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president prepares to announce his candidacy again this week, conservatives of conscience should quit the party and join a new one.

A third party may not seem like the obvious solution. Indeed, American history is littered with the tombstones of party experiments that never gained popular support. But the environment has changed dramatically.

For the first time in history, roughly half of Americans now saythey are political independents, rather than Democrats or Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of voters report that they would vote for a third party. And a movement is underway across the nation to enact political reforms — like ranked-choice voting, open primaries, and anti-gerrymandering — that will make it easier for third-party candidates to win. …

For conservatives frustrated with the takeover of the GOP by radicals, the Democratic Party is not an alternative home. Progressives have no hope of luring wayward Republicans as they, too, are grappling with their own fringe elements. Republicans aren’t going to join a party that wants to federalize health care, create new government giveaways, ramp up regulation on entrepreneurs, and continue bank-breaking federal spending sprees that have put America in an alarming financial position. (Not to mention the left’s fondness for identity politics.)

That’s why it’s time to give voters somewhere else to go. If not, common-sense GOP voters risk staying in a party that is aiding and abetting the return of Donald Trump and the perpetuation of his destructive movement. …

(Well, good luck with that. The GOP shows no signs of doing away with itself, let alone changing for the better. Eventually, by some odd chance, enuf of them will become enlightened & join the Dems, and/or the GOP will go the way of the Whigs.)
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  November 20, 2022 at 9:17 am
  
  “For the first time in history, roughly half of Americans now say they are political independents, rather than Democrats or Republicans.”
  
  Support for Third US Political Party at High Point
  
  Gallup – February 15, 2021
  
  Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults say the “parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed,” … Support for a third party has been elevated in recent years, including readings of 60% in 2013 and 2015 and 61% in 2017.
  
  Meanwhile, 33% of Americans believe the two major political parties are doing an adequate job representing the public, the smallest percentage expressing this view apart from the 26% reading in October 2013. …
  
  (Obviously, this is not exactly new news.)
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    November 21, 2022 at 8:07 am
    
    The political future of the US seems to depend on which party (old or new) can seize or summon the loyalty of the ‘masses’ (*), presumably the working class. It’s not really clear which party has the greater claim at this point. Since the GOP mainly seems to represent wealth & capitalism, one might think the answer is clear, but that doesn’t explain Trumpism. The Dems may be left as the party of suburbia & academia, if not intelligentsia. Of course, global climate change or world/nuclear war might change this picture drastically.
    
    * most of the voters.
    - Fred C. Dobbs says:
      
      November 21, 2022 at 8:11 am
      
      Remembering of course, that for the time being, US political sentiments are apparently driven mostly by the notion of a diminishing white majority, on the part of the diminishing white majority.
      - Fred C. Dobbs says:
        
        November 21, 2022 at 8:28 am
        
        “The Dems may be left as the party of suburbia & academia, if not intelligentsia.”
        
        Personally, I think most non-white voters will stick with the Dems, and the Dems are counting on this.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 21, 2022 at 8:18 am

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/russia-putin-opposition.html?smid=url-share

NY Times – Nov 21

… To change the country, however, it is not enough for Mr. Putin to die or step down. Russia’s future leaders must dismantle and transform the structures over which he has presided for more than two decades. The challenge, to say the least, is daunting. But a group of politicians is devising a plan to meet it.

Composed of well-known opposition figures as well as younger representatives from local and regional governments, the First Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia met in Poland in early November. The location, Jablonna Palace outside Warsaw, was symbolic: It was the site of early negotiations in the round-table talks that led to the end of Communist rule in Poland. There, over three days of intense debate, participants laid out proposals for rebuilding their country. Taken together, they amount to a serious effort to imagine Russia without Mr. Putin.

The first and most pressing priority, of course, is the invasion of Ukraine. Everyone at the congress opposes the war, which they assume will be lost or lead to nuclear disaster. To deal with the consequences and to prevent a repeat tragedy, they propose an “act on peace” that would demobilize the army and end the occupation of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea; create a joint group for the investigation of war crimes; pay reparations for damaged infrastructure and the families of the dead; and reject future “wars of conquest.” In addition to offering a deterrent to future expansionism, this wide-ranging pledge would provide an essential reckoning with Russia’s history of imperialist invasion. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  November 21, 2022 at 8:22 am
  
  What Will Russia Without Putin Look Like?
  
  … The officials responsible for the devastation will need to be rooted out, too — something that never happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Congress would bar from working in state and educational institutions those who belonged to “criminal” organizations — such as the Federal Security Services or state television channels — or publicly supported the war, as well as restricting their voting rights. It would also create a “de-Putinization” commission to consider the rehabilitation of certain groups, including those who publicly recant and did not commit especially serious crimes, and open the archives of the security services.
  
  Then there’s the structure of Russia itself. The Russian Federation is highly centralized, with a patchwork of over 80 republics and regions that are strongly subordinate to the president, enabling the accumulation of enormous power. The Congress, drawing on decentralized visions from around the time of the Soviet collapse, proposes to dissolve the Russian Federation and replace it with a new parliamentary democracy. According to a broadly worded draft provision on “self-determination,” the future Russian state should be “joined on the basis of free choice by the peoples who populate it.”
  
  This break with the present could correct the failed promises of the past. From Vladimir Lenin to Boris Yeltsin, modern Russian leaders have a history of offering decentralization to win support and then reneging once they consolidate power. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 22, 2022 at 6:45 am

Inside the Saudi Strategy to Keep the World Hooked on Oil

NY Times – Nov 21

Shimmering in the desert is a futuristic research center with an urgent mission: Make Saudi Arabia’s oil-based economy greener, and quickly. The goal is to rapidly build more solar panels and expand electric-car use so the kingdom eventually burns far less oil.

But Saudi Arabia has a far different vision for the rest of the world. A major reason it wants to burn less oil at home is to free up even more to sell abroad. It’s just one aspect of the kingdom’s aggressive long-term strategy to keep the world hooked on oil for decades to come and remain the biggest supplier as rivals slip away.

In recent days, Saudi representatives pushed at the United Nations global climate summit in Egypt to block a call for the world to burn less oil, according to two people present at the meeting, saying that the summit’s final statement “should not mention fossil fuels.” The effort prevailed: After objections from Saudi Arabia and a few other oil producers, the statement failed to include a call for nations to phase out fossil fuels. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  November 22, 2022 at 6:49 am
  
  The kingdom’s plan for keeping oil at the center of the global economy is playing out around the world in Saudi financial and diplomatic activities, as well as in the realms of research, technology and even education. It is a strategy at odds with the scientific consensus that the world must swiftly move away from fossil fuels, including oil and gas, to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
  
  The dissonance cuts to the heart of the Saudi kingdom. The government-controlled oil company, Saudi Aramco, already produces one out of every 10 of the world’s barrels of oil and envisions a world where it will be selling even more. Yet climate change and rising temperatures are already threatening life in the desert kingdom like few other places in the world. …
  
  … Behind closed doors at global climate talks, the Saudis have worked to obstruct climate action and research, in particular objecting to calls for a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels. In March, at a United Nations meeting with climate scientists, Saudi Arabia, together with Russia, pushed to delete a reference to “human-induced climate change” from an official document, in effect disputing the scientifically established fact that the burning of fossil fuels by humans is the main driver of the climate crisis.
  
  “People would like us to give up on investment in hydrocarbons. But no,” said Amin Nasser, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive, because such a move would only wreak havoc with oil markets. The bigger threat was the “lack of investment in oil and gas,” he said.
  
  In a statement, the Saudi Ministry of Energy said it expected that hydrocarbons such as oil, gas and coal would “continue to be an essential part of the global energy mix for decades,” but at the same time the kingdom had “made significant investments in measures to combat climate change.” The statement added, “Far from blocking progress at climate change talks, Saudi Arabia has long played a major role” in negotiations as well as in oil and gas industry groups working to lower emissions.
  
  Saudi Arabia has said it supports the Paris climate agreement, which aims to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and intends to generate half its electricity from renewables by 2030. The kingdom also plans to plant 10 billion trees in the coming decades, and is building Neom, a futuristic carbon-free city that features speedy public transit, vertical farms and a ski resort. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 22, 2022 at 6:53 am

In a First, Rich Countries Agree to Pay for Climate Damages in Poor Nations

NY Times – Nov 19

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — Negotiators from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of talks early Sunday in which their main achievement was agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the pollution spewed by wealthy nations that is dangerously heating the planet.

The decision regarding payments for climate damage marked a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at United Nations climate negotiations. For more than three decades, developing nations have pressed for loss and damage money, asking rich, industrialized countries to provide compensation for the costs of destructive storms, heat waves and droughts fueled by global warming.

But the United States and other wealthy countries had long blocked the idea, for fear that they could be held legally liable for the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.

The agreement hammered out in this Red Sea resort town says nations cannot be held legally liable for payments. The deal calls for a committee with representatives from 24 countries to work over the next year to figure out exactly what form the fund should take, which countries should contribute and where the money should go. Many of the other details are still to be determined. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

November 22, 2022 at 7:19 am

Ukraine War Continues to Slow Global Growth, New Report Says

NY Times – Just in

Higher inflation and slower growth are the heavy price that the global economy is paying for Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Tuesday.

Record inflation, fueled by the largest energy crisis since the 1970s, is creating financial hardship for millions, the Paris-based organization said in a new report. Governments and policymakers must make it their top priority to bring inflation down, while shielding households and businesses with targeted spending, the O.E.C.D. added. …

The global economy won’t tumble into an outright recession. But global growth will decline to 2.2 percent in 2023 from 3.1 percent this year, before rebounding to a 2.7 percent pace in 2024, the report forecast. Inflation in most of the world’s developed and developing economies will cool slightly, to 6.4 percent next year from a blistering 9.4 percent rate in 2022, but continue doing economic damage.

The whirlwind of problems — high energy and food costs, rising interest rates and growing government debt to pay for the fallout — will take the biggest toll on Europe, North America and South America next year, with those regions expected to face painful economic slowdowns and stubbornly high prices, the O.E.C.D. said.

The economies of both the United States and Europe are forecast to expand at an anemic pace of just 0.5 percent next year.

China’s economy is likely to expand by 4.6 percent in 2023, following a pandemic-induced slowdown this year that has slashed its growth rate by more than half. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  November 22, 2022 at 7:24 am
  
  Confronting the Crisis