PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Primavera 2024

[asustadísimos]

[Aviso de 2.ª reedición del comentario...
https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2604.msg229824#msg229824
... para aclarar lo que quería decir. Pero adelanto que veo demasiados nuevos matices en la situación monetaria 'posterminal' y en los 4 grandes frentes bélicos actuales del anglo (Ucrania, Israel, Argentina y EEUU). En España, hemos tenido la mala suerte de que esta nueva inflexión del proceso transicional coincida con el fin del mandato de H. de Cos, que no oculta la alegría que tiene por poder seguir su brillante carrera dejando un trabajo tan bien hecho.]

[Derby]

LA FIESTA SE ESTÁ ACABANDO.—

Si no fuera por la Vivienda, habría deflación de dos dígitos, porque no solo es ella directamente; también lo es anidada en los demás precios vía salarios.

https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2024/06/fbi-agents-say-they-need-more-money-stay-bureau/397333/

FBI agents say they need more money to stay in the bureau

Agents in high-cost cities say they cannot support their elevated expenses on their current salaries.

FBI agents are warning they cannot afford to continue working in the nation’s highest-cost cities, with many saying they may seek out careers outside the bureau as daily expenses grow and their pay remains relatively stagnant.

Nearly 70% of agents assigned to high-cost areas find it difficult to live there with their current salaries, according to a recent survey of its membership conducted by the FBI Agents Association. Much of their membership is reassigned at management’s whim and have little say over where they work, which the group said is exacerbating the problem. The issue has become particularly trying in recent years as housing costs have increased dramatically with inflation.

FBI agents in cities like New York, Boston, Washington and Honolulu are speaking out to warn bureau leadership that they may pursue other careers.

“We are constantly considering moving and changing jobs, even leaving the FBI,” said an FBIAA member living in Boston. “It is getting to the point where we are deciding, ‘What is the point of this?’”

FBI boasts that its agents earn between $81,000 and $129,000 per year on average, though starting salaries are typically slightly lower. Supervisory agents can earn up to $170,000 annually.

FBIAA is particularly concerned that employees could lose their security clearances if they are unable to demonstrate financial solvency. They said turnover has increased to problematic levels in expensive areas and retention is getting more difficult as agents ask to be reassigned to lower-cost regions.

“As FBI agents, we dedicate our lives to protecting our country,” said Natalie Bara, FBIAA president. “The high cost of living in many major cities affects our work today as well as our ability to recruit and retain the talented people we need.”

Many agents said they have difficulty saving for retirement or their kids’ education.

“[We have] lots of anxiety induced by financial stressors and fear of never being able to retire,” said an agent in San Francisco. “Unforeseen events like a car accident or medical emergency can be financially devastating.”

A Brooklyn-based agent said rising costs without commensurate pay adjustments are making the FBI a short-term stopover for many of his colleagues.

“For agents wanting to stay long term and raise a family, it is almost impossible due to costs and availability of housing [and] daycare,” the agent said.

Many agents suggested they could earn significantly more in the private sector, as they maintain specialized skill sets and their FBI experience is valued in security and other fields.

“I question daily if my dream career working as an agent in the FBI was a poor decision in the sense that I cannot provide enough financially for my family,” an agent in New York City said.

To alleviate the situation, FBIAA is working with FBI headquarters, the Justice Department and members of Congress to provide boosted pay for employees in high-cost areas to help offset housing costs. The bureau and Justice have received the proposal warmly, FBIAA said, and some members of Congress are working to identify funding for a pilot program as part of the appropriations process. Those conversations have been ongoing for more than a year, however, and there is no guarantee extra spending will be approved.

In the most recent round of funding, Republicans boasted they cut FBI funding by 6% and the party has derided the bureau after alleging it has conducted politically motivated work. Neither House Republicans nor Senate Democrats have unveiled their proposed funding levels for FBI for fiscal 2025.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

[Derby]

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240612-zelensky-lands-in-saudi-on-unannounced-visit-state-media

Zelensky lands in Saudi Arabia for unannounced visit

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, Saudi state media reported, his latest visit to the Gulf kingdom which has sought to stay neutral in Ukraine's war with Russia.

[el malo]

A mí me da la risa floja cuando se habla de dominar la inflación, tanto aquí como en EEUU. Como diría el Sr. Lobo, hemos empezado a chuparnos las ..... porque no se qué índice dice que los alimentos sólo suben un 2% ó un 3%, y nos olvidamos de todo lo que ha pasado hasta la fecha, como si la Historia empezara hoy.

Cuando el aceite de oliva vuelva a estar a 5€/litro, me creeré que se ha vencido a la inflación. Cuando un currito que gane 1960€ mensuales (que es lo que se considera un "buen sueldo en Madrid"*) pueda permitirse mantener una familia de 4 miembros sin pasar estrecheces volveré a confiar en el sistema.

A ver cuándo ese currito "con buen sueldo" puede permitirse al menos 3 habitaciones en un bloque con garaje y piscina (que para eso tiene "un buen sueldo"). 


* https://es.jooble.org/salary/buen-sueldo/Madrid#:~:text=%C2%BFCu%C3%A1nto%20gana%20Buen%20sueldo%20en,o%2014%20%E2%82%AC%20por%20hora.

[Derby]

https://www.asiafinancial.com/russia-halts-trade-on-main-bourse-after-latest-us-sanctions

Russia Halts Trade on Main Bourse After Latest US Sanctions

The new sanctions caused stocks and the ruble to plunge initially, and led to former president Dmitry Medvedev calling for citizens to “inflict maximum harm” on Western societies

Russia was forced on Thursday to suspend trading in dollars and euro on the Moscow Exchange, its top financial bourse, after a further round of US sanctions.

The escalation in sanctions by the US Treasury led to former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who is now a senior security official, to call on the population to “inflict maximum harm” on Western societies and infrastructure in retaliation.

“Every day we should try to do maximum harm to those countries that have imposed these restrictions. Harm their economies, their institutions and their rulers. Harm the well-being of their citizens, their confidence in the future,” Medvedev wrote on his official Telegram channel*, which has over 1.3 million followers. Critics say he has become a  “scaremonger, whose job is to deter Western action over Ukraine.”

The latest US move targeted 300 entities and individuals – including dozens of Chinese components suppliers – in a bid to cut off Russian access to products and services needed to sustain military production for its war in Ukraine.

Secondary sanctions target entities doing business with Russian companies or individuals who have been put under sanction. They apply to entities working with Russia’s defence industry or any sanctioned Russian business or individual, including Russia’s biggest banks.

US officials timed the move so that sanctions were in place ahead of G7 summit of world leaders in Italy.

It led to several leading Russian banks and brokerages blocking access to corporate hard-currency accounts.

Stocks on the Moscow exchange sank initially on Thursday, but recovered later. The ruble, which was under 90 to the US dollar on Wednesday, shot up to 200 to the dollar, Kommersant newspaper said.

Economists said the ban on trading in dollars and euros would significantly raise the cost of doing business with Russia and may stoke inflation, which is already about 8%.

The exchange and the central bank rushed out statements on Wednesday, a public holiday in Russia, within an hour of Washington announcing the new sanctions.

“Due to the introduction of restrictive measures by the United States against the Moscow Exchange Group, exchange trading and settlements of deliverable instruments in US dollars and euros are suspended,” the central bank said.

Businesses forced to do over-the-counter deals

The move means banks, companies and investors will no longer be able to trade either currency via a central exchange, which offers advantages in terms of liquidity, clearing and oversight.

Instead, they will have to trade over-the-counter (OTC), where deals are conducted directly between two parties. The central bank said it would use OTC data to set official exchange rates.

Many Russians hold part of their savings in dollars or euros, mindful of periodic crises in recent decades when the rouble has crashed in value. The central bank reassured people that these deposits were secure.

“Companies and individuals can continue to buy and sell US dollars and euros through Russian banks. All funds in US dollars and euros in the accounts and deposits of citizens and companies remain safe,” it said.

One person at a large, non-sanctioned Russian commodities exporter said: “We don’t care, we have yuan. Getting dollars and euros in Russia is practically impossible.”

With Moscow pursuing closer trade and political ties with Beijing, China’s yuan has ousted the dollar to become MOEX’s most traded currency, accounting for 53.6% of all foreign currency traded in May.

Dollar-rouble trading volume on MOEX tends to be around 1 billion roubles ($11 million) a day, according to LSEG data, while euro-rouble trading hovers at around 300 million roubles daily. For yuan-rouble trading, daily volumes now regularly top 8 billion roubles.

Central bank prepared for sanctions 2 years ago

On the eve of the national holiday, the rouble closed at 89.10 to the dollar and at 95.62 against the euro. But following the sanctions news, some banks immediately jacked up their dollar rates.

Norvik Bank said it was offering to buy dollars for just 50 roubles but sell for 200 roubles, though it later adjusted the rates to 88.20/97.80. Tsifra Bank was buying dollars at 89 roubles and selling at 120.

Other major banks were quoting narrower spreads of 6-7 roubles between their buy and sell rates.

The US Treasury said it was “targeting the architecture of Russia’s financial system, which has been reoriented to facilitate investment into its defence industry and acquisition of goods needed to further its aggression against Ukraine”.

Russia’s central bank has been bracing for such sanctions for around two years. In July 2022, the bank said it was modelling various sanctions scenarios with forex market participants and infrastructure organisations.

“This is bad, but expected news,” Russian broker T-Investments said on Telegram.

Forbes Russia had reported in 2022 that the central bank was discussing a mechanism for managing the rouble-dollar exchange rate should exchange trading be halted in the event of sanctions against MOEX and its National Clearing Centre, which was also hit by the new sanctions.

Dollar and euro trades cease

MOEX said share trading and money market trades settled in dollars and euros would also cease.

The sanctions will hit the exchange’s profits by slashing trading volumes. In May, total volume on MOEX was 126.7 trillion roubles ($1.43 trillion), up more than a third on the same month of the previous year.

In 2023, MOEX recorded net profit of 60.8 billion roubles, a year-on-year increase of 67.5%.

Yevegeny Kogan, an investment banker and professor at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, urged people against panicking.

“You know, it’s genetic for us – if we’re scared, we run to buy currency. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s 100, 120 or 150. You mustn’t rush,” he warned people on Telegram, saying things could get very serious if people ignored that advice.

“Friends, it looks like tomorrow will be a very nervy day.”

*

[Urederra]

En los últimos meses la oferta de vivienda en idealista.com se ha reducido en Madrid un 25 %.

Menos vivienda y cada vez menos accesible.

Todo. Hoy en día chirría todo.

[Derby]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/14/business/house-prices-impossibly-unaffordable-intl-hnk/index.html

These cities are now so expensive they’re considered ‘impossibly unaffordable’

CNN — Anyone with half an eye on the housing market over the last two decades will know that in many countries, not least the United States, it’s become much more difficult to buy a home.

But a new report sums up the feeling of many potential home buyers by creating a category that labels some major cities as “impossibly unaffordable.”

US cities on the West Coast and Hawaii occupied five of the top 10 most unaffordable places, according to the annual Demographic International Housing Affordability report, which has been tracking house prices for 20 years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most expensive US cities to buy home are in California, where San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego have all made the top 10.

The Hawaiian capital of Honolulu also rates a mention in sixth place of 94 major markets surveyed in eight countries.

Australia is the only other country besides the US to dominate the “impossibly unaffordable” list, led by Sydney and the southern cities of Melbourne in Victoria and Adelaide in South Australia.

But topping the global leaderboard is Hong Kong, the compact Asian financial hub known for its tiny apartments and sky-high rents. Notably, it’s the only Chinese market covered in the report.

A regular entrant on the “most expensive” tables, Hong Kong has the lowest home ownership rate of all the cities surveyed, at just 51%, compared to its Asian rival Singapore where home ownership tops 89% due to the government’s decades-long commitment to public housing.

Hong Kong may be the least affordable city worldwide, but potential home buyers may be encouraged to know that it’s not as unaffordable as it once was.

House prices slipped during the pandemic in 2020, when the government closed the city’s borders and imposed a zero-Covid policy — that’s on top of new national security laws that have had a chilling effect on the city.

Why so high?

The report measures affordability using a price-to-income ratio of the median house price divided by the gross median household income.

It links the rise in working from home during the pandemic to a “demand shock” for houses outside city centers, which have more outside space. But it also blames soaring house prices on land use policies, including “urban containment,” a kind of planning designed to stop urban sprawl.

“The middle-class is under siege principally due to the escalation of land costs. As land has been rationed in an effort to curb urban sprawl, the excess of demand over supply has driven prices up,” the report said.

Prices were driven up even further as investors jumped into the market to make a profit.

One solution, the report’s author wrote, is to look to New Zealand.

In an opinion piece for Canada’s Financial Post, Wendell Cox, a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, advocated for Canada, in particular, to follow New Zealand’s lead and free up more land for immediate development.

Both Vancouver and Toronto made the list of the cities that are “impossibly unaffordable.”

Cox points to a policy, “Going for Housing Growth,” introduced by New Zealand’s coalition government that requires local authorities to immediately zone for 30 years of housing growth.

“Toronto and Vancouver show that the cost of taming expansion is unacceptably high: inflated house prices, higher rents and, for increasing numbers of people, poverty,” Cox wrote.

For those who can’t wait for a change in policy or for demand to fall, the report also identifies the most affordable cities of the 94 surveyed worldwide.

They are Pittsburgh, Rochester and St Louis in the US; Edmonton and Calgary in Canada; Blackpool, Lancashire and Glasgow in the United Kingdom; and Perth and Brisbane in Australia.

The report was compiled by researchers from the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in California and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an independent public policy think tank in Canada.

Top 10 “impossibly unaffordable” cities

1 Hong Kong
2 Sydney
3 Vancouver
4 San Jose
5 Los Angeles
6 Honolulu
7 Melbourne
8 San Francisco/Adelaide
9 San Diego
10 Toronto

[Derby]

https://www.asiafinancial.com/evergrande-liquidators-probing-pwc-others-to-recoup-losses

Evergrande Liquidators ‘Probing PwC, Others to Recoup Losses’

A Hong Kong law firm is working with court-appointed liquidators to see if they can recoup creditor losses from its auditor PwC or other firms that provided services to the developer

[sudden and sharp]

3a3.
Dios es trino.
Y el presidente voto cualificado.
Expulsados.

Por cierto, la democracia formal ya no mola? Puedo volverme autoritario?
Cómo sé si voy con los autoritarios buenos o con los malos?

Yo lo sé, pero hay muchos confundidos.



Sds.

3 a 3... la cosa se queda como está. No hay expulsión.

[sudden and sharp]

En los últimos meses la oferta de vivienda en idealista.com se ha reducido en Madrid un 25 %.

Menos vivienda y cada vez menos accesible.

Todo. Hoy en día chirría todo.

La oferta de idealista es una oferta "de catálogo".

[Derby]

https://www.cato.org/blog/krugmans-cold-comfort-federal-debt

Krugman’s Cold Comfort on the Federal Debt

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says we shouldn’t obsess about the federal debt*. If his is the best case for not worrying, perhaps we really should panic.

As John Arnold noted, Krugman’s argument is essentially three‐​pronged. First, he notes that other countries have had similarly high or even higher debt levels before, including Britain after World War II. Second, he thinks stabilizing debt relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is economically simple—it “just” requires reducing the federal deficit by 2.1 percent of GDP every year (that’s about $600 billion right now). Third, he concludes that Republicans who express concern about the debt usually advocate tax cuts that worsen the debt outlook, so why should anyone else bother?

As Arnold noted dryly, “well, that alleviates my concerns”!

The case study of how Britain reduced its extraordinarily high post–World War II public debt (at 270 percent of GDP, falling to less than 50 percent by the mid‐​1970s) alone shows why these points are of scant comfort. The federal government debt held by the public, at 99 percent of GDP today, is certainly lower than Britain’s was. Even on unchanged policies it is projected to rise to “only” 166 percent of GDP by 2054. Yet none of the conditions that saw Britain reduce its massive debt burden quickly and steadily apply to us now:

1.- British public spending plummeted from 62.4 percent of GDP in 1944–45 to 39.6 percent of GDP in 1954–55 as the country demilitarized and spending then remained relatively stable compared to GDP for two decades afterwards; in contrast, US spending is projected to rise from 23.1 percent of GDP to 24.1 percent by 2034 and then further to 27.3 percent by 2054.

2.- Britain’s politicians committed to balancing budgets, running large primary budget surpluses (i.e., surpluses excluding interest payments) for a near quarter of a century after the war ended that led to modest overall deficits (less than 1 percent of GDP) throughout that period; in contrast, the United States is running a 2.5 percent of GDP primary deficit today and has an extremely large and growing overall deficit (already above 5 percent of GDP) that will grow as debt costs rise with all this new borrowing.

3.- Britain experienced reasonable economic growth in the three decades after World War II, with real GDP growth averaging 2.3 percent per year; in contrast, the Congressional Budget Office projects the headwinds of an aging population and slow trend productivity growth will see sustainable real GDP growth fall to 1.8 percent annually for the United States within a decade.

4.- Britain saw some major bursts of damaging inflation immediately after World War II and then again in the 1970s that eroded the real value of government debt. In fact, inflation averaged 6.2 percent per year for the three decades after the war ended; in contrast, while the recent inflation alone may have eased the federal debt burden somewhat, the key long‐​term drivers of debt—Social Security and Medicare—are inflation‐​protected, meaning unexpected inflation won’t much help to ameliorate our debt path.

5.- Britain used financial repression policies to help force government interest rates below inflation, meaning the government benefited from negative real interest rates for 24 of the 30 years after World War II; in contrast, American financial markets are more sophisticated, and although it’s unclear where borrowing costs will end up, real interest rates are positive right now.

In essence, we have been borrowing as if we’ve faced an existential war but have no prospect of the equivalent of demilitarization, or any of the other favorable conditions that allowed Britain to reduce its debt burden sustainably. In fact, we still face the risks of future unforeseen wars, pandemics, or other sharp economic downturns that could blow up debt further and precipitate the implicit or explicit debt crisis that Krugman dismisses.

All these fundamentals suggest that, to avoid ever‐​escalating debt (which nobody thinks is sustainable), we are going to have to see substantive spending cuts or tax revenue rises. Krugman is relaxed that stabilizing the debt path through “just” $600 billion in deficit reduction today is achievable, but his own piece then argues against that premise. He believes that Republicans won’t raise taxes, but just this week even relative deficit hawk Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑CA) said he wouldn’t countenance any cuts to social spending to reduce deficits. In fact, House Democrats regularly introduce bills to increase old‐​age entitlements.

So how, exactly, will the debt be defused? That seems to me a challenge worth obsessing about.

*https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/opinion/national-debt-us-taxes.html

[Derby]

https://www.fastcompany.com/91140540/china-europe-trade-war-tariffs-what-to-expect?

How China could retaliate against Europe if a trade war breaks out

Analysts warn that an escalating trade war could break out, raising prices for consumers and hurting exporters and their workers on both sides.

Now that Europe has announced tariffs on China-made electric cars, the continent is bracing to see if the other shoe drops.

Will China retaliate with tariffs on European cars, taking aim at Germany’s BMW and Mercedes? Would it put tariffs on agricultural products, targeting Europe’s politically influential farmers? Or luxury goods from Italy and France?

Analysts warn that an escalating trade war could break out, raising prices for consumers and hurting exporters and their workers on both sides. Both are major markets for each other—China, a rising economy of more than 1-billion people, and Europe with its relatively well-off population of more than 400 million.

“It’s a little bit like seeing a slow motion traffic accident unfolding,” Jens Eskelund, the president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China said earlier this year. “The accident has not happened yet and . . . it is still possible to find an off-ramp. It is getting urgent.”

Chinese government officials reiterated Thursday that they would take “all necessary measures” to protect the rights and interests of Chinese companies.

“China reserves the right to file complaints to the World Trade Organization,” said He Yadong, a Commerce Ministry spokesperson. He called on the EU to “correct its wrong practices.”

China fired a warning shot in January, launching an anti-dumping investigation into European brandy exports including French cognac. France was a leading supporter of the European Union investigation that resulted in Wednesday’s EV tariff announcement.

The EU is also investigating subsides given to Chinese wind and solar companies and whether China is unfairly restricting access to the market for medical devices, a long-running complaint of European manufacturers.

The European Union said it had reached out to China to discuss the findings of the EV investigation, and that the tariffs would take effect on July 4 if the two sides fail to resolve the issue. The tariffs would be provisional and finalized only after four months.

China’s state-owned Global Times newspaper has reported that Chinese companies are planning to ask the government to launch an anti-dumping investigation into certain EU pork products and an investigation into subsidies for some dairy products.

He, the commerce ministry spokesperson, said the authorities would review any applications for investigations and initiate a case if the requirements for one were met.

The Global Times also quoted a leading Chinese auto industry expert calling for raising the tariff on imported vehicles with larger engines to reduce carbon emissions, a move that would hit high-end German exports from Mercedes and BMW.

Volkswagen expressed concern that the EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles could escalate trade conflicts and said the European Union is promoting an ongoing trend toward protectionism, nationalism and isolationism.

“The negative effects of this decision outweigh any potential benefits for the European and especially the German automotive industry,” VW said in a statement.

Research firm Sanford C. Bernstein noted that the impact on German makers would be muted by the fact that most of their cars sold in China are made locally. Only 2% of Volkswagen’s China sales are imports vulnerable to higher tariffs, along with 15% for BMW and 19% for Mercedes-Benz.

China could also impose retaliatory tariffs on French and Italian luxury goods, cosmetics, wine, chocolate, or furniture, wrote Gabriel Wildau, a China analyst at the Teneo consultancy, in an analysis ahead of the announcement.

While Germany fears retaliation against its automakers and chemical producers, France and Italy have been advocates within the EU for tariffs on electric vehicles, he wrote.

How big an impact the provisional tariffs would have on Chinese EV sales is unclear. Some Chinese companies might still be able to make a profit, even with duties as high as 30%.

The provisional tariffs range from 17.4% to 38.1%, depending on the carmaker, and come on top of an existing 10% tariff on vehicles. The new rates would pose a serious market barrier to Chinese EV exports, the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU said.

Calculations by the Rhodium Group found that that five of six models from BYD, China’s largest EV maker, would earn a profit with a 30% tariff, while a made-in-China Tesla Model 3 would sell at a loss.

[asustadísimos]

En la clasificación de 'hypercars' de las 24h de Le Mans, ni Molina (4.º, Ferrari) ni Palou (7.º, Cadillac) han brillado. Por contra, en el Cielo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMwDBzwOKI

 

[Negrule]

Son los que controlan el mercado (las plataformas),hacen y deshacen a su antojo, evidentemente con el apoyo de las inmobiliarias, la manipulación del mercado es brutal. Quien las ojee de vez en cuando habrá tenido la misma sensación que yo. Otra de las diferencias con la anterior crisis, estaban, pero ni mucho menos tan normalizadas o con tanta relevancia como tienen ahora.

Salut

En los últimos meses la oferta de vivienda en idealista.com se ha reducido en Madrid un 25 %.

Menos vivienda y cada vez menos accesible.

Todo. Hoy en día chirría todo.

[Zugzwang]

La generación Z comparte esto en Twitter.

https://niveloculto.com/columna-muerte-a-los-caseros/

Voy en tren y no soy capaz de compartirlo, se me cae la conexión, pero el debate ya ha llegado a los más jóvenes y perjudicados. Tiene tintes izquierdistas por evidentes motivos vinculados a la edad, pero señalan a las bravas el problema: los caseros y la usura.