Sunday, October 14, 2018

Week-end Wrap - October 13, 2018

Week-end Wrap - October 13, 2018
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus


Key Global Bond Index Suffered $916 Billion Loss Last Week
By Sid Verma, October 08, 2018 [thinkadvisor.com, via John Claydon]
The value of the Bloomberg Barclays Multiverse Index, which captures investment-grade and high-yield securities around the world, slumped by $916 billion last week, the most since the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2016. 
American high-grade obligations are down 2.53 percent in 2018 — a Bloomberg Barclays index tracking the debt has dropped in just three years since 1976. 
“Bond investors have rarely seen losses like this over the past 40+ years,” Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management, wrote in a blog post. “Any further moves higher in rates could lead to the worst year since 1976 in terms of overall bond returns.”

By Pam Martens: October 5, 2018 [Wall Street on Parade]
A big drop in Dow Jones Industrial Average futures typically portends a negative open for the stock market. That’s what happened yesterday. When the Dow opened at 9:30 a.m., it initially fell modestly and then tanked by 200 points in less than an hour. At its low of the day, it had lost 356 points and by the closing bell was down 200.9 points. The S&P 500 Index was also negative from the opening bell, closing down 23.90 points.
The big losses in the stock market were predominantly attributable to a big spike in interest rates – particularly the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note. That unusual interest rate spike should have meant that the big Wall Street bank stocks would have led the decliners from the get-go of trading. Instead, in the strangest action I have seen in 32 years, the shares of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs spiked upward at the opening bell and that spike lasted for almost the next half hour. Then, as if someone had pressed another button, all four of the bank titans began to lose ground within minutes of each other. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase entered their downward trajectory at exactly 9:48 a.m.; Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs began their slump four minutes later at 9:52 a.m. (Goldman Sachs closed modestly lower on the day while the other three banks closed modestly higher.) 
And here’s where things really got interesting yesterday. We took a look at two of the insurance companies that were singled out in the 2017 Financial Stability Report from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research for having derivatives exposure to big Wall Street banks: MetLife and Prudential Financial. Those stocks not only also spiked at the open but both companies closed in the green yesterday.

A $1 Trillion Powder Keg Threatens the Corporate Bond Market
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18]
“Bloomberg News delved into 50 of the biggest corporate acquisitions over the last five years, and found: By one key measure, more than half of the acquiring companies pushed their leverage to levels typical of junk-rated peers. But those companies, which have almost $1 trillion of debt, have been allowed to maintain investment-grade ratings by Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings…. ‘The rating agencies are giving companies too much wiggle room,’ said Tom Murphy, a money manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. ‘There’s been some pretty heroic assumptions around cost savings and debt repayments laid out by some borrowers involved in mergers.””

Bernie's "Too Big” proposal to break up the banks Is Too Little
by Nicole M. Aschoff Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18]
As a bill focused primarily on American financial institutions, Too Big does little to address the global nature of financialization, making no attempt to restructure global financial markets or regulate capital flows. This is likely to limit its efficacy, especially considering how the ripple effects of the 2008 financial crisis were felt in nearly every corner of the world. It’s hard to imagine how we could prevent or ameliorate the next big one without addressing the interlocking nature of global finance.... 
Proponents of the bill further contend that by limiting the size of financial institutions, credit will flow more widely and smaller banks will multiply, serving Main Street instead of Wall Street and ameliorating the annoying fact that big banks would rather earn a profit on hedges and derivatives than lend money to communities and households. If we just restore competition, the “free market” will work its magic. 
This is a fantasy. A “healthy financial system” would force banks (no matter their size) to loan money to ordinary people at low interest rates. It would place strict limits on how banks could use federally insured (and publicly backed) deposits. It would guarantee community access to affordable loans. It would ban the predatory practices of banks in poor neighborhoods, especially poor neighborhoods of color, and expand basic affordable financial services to the millions of American households who are either unbanked or are forced to rely on financial predators. The bill does none of these things.

Goldman Sachs' seedy underbelly exposed in shocking tapes
By Kevin Dugan, October 11, 2018 [New York Post, , via Naked Capitalism 10-13-18]
David Solomon, who took the helm of the Wall Street giant from Lloyd Blankfein last week, once blew off criticism of Goldman’s double-dealing in a big energy merger as a matter of “perception” — a cheeky dismissal that came despite a class-action lawsuit against the deal that eventually cost Goldman $20 million in fees. 
That’s among the cringeworthy quotes that Carmen Segarra claims she secretly recorded behind closed doors for her new book “Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street.” The 340-page exposé expands on her previous claims that Goldman Sachs has long exploited an improperly cozy relationship with Wall Street.
[Avedon's The Sideshow, September 30, 2018]
These sweeping attacks on financial and consumer protections won't make America greater. They'll make it crater, setting the stage for the next Wall Street crisis and very likely another round of taxpayer-funded bank bailouts.

If the U.S. Doesn’t Control Corporate Power, China Will
by Matt Stoller [Foreign Policy, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18]


A pine glut is crushing timber prices and retiree dreams in the Southeast
[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18]
"Landowners who planted hundreds of acres of trees decades ago are running up against a supply imbalance that began when the housing market crashed and persists to this day…. Seeded by federal reforestation programs, the timber craze was taken up by investors of all sizes, resulting in a motherlode of soft wood that has been a boon for Southern mill owners, who anticipate fat margins for years because their raw material is so cheap.... While big forest landowners can concentrate harvests in areas where prices are better, most have little choice but to sell to the nearest mill—the trunks are so heavy that loaded trucks quickly hit their 80,000-pound highway limit, and loggers paid for each ton they deliver are reluctant to haul timber cross-country.”

The “New NAFTA” [USMCA] and Its Revised Dispute Resolution Mechanisms 
[Mayer Brown, via Naked Capitalism 10-9-18]

A summary from one of the largest law firms in USA, which specializes in international arbitration cases. Democrats will be angrily rebuffed by voters if they respond to this with regurgitations of reasons for globalism and free trade. Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) cases have been some of the most unjust and unpopular aspects of the global trade regime Trump is now attacking. 
Most significantly, the USMCA eliminates ISDS arbitrations between Canadian parties invested in the United States and vice versa (i.e., US parties invested in Canada). This is in line with President Trump’s broader efforts to encourage US investors to spend in the United States rather than abroad and to prevent foreign investors in the United States from avoiding US courts.... 
The USMCA significantly narrows the circumstances under which US parties investing in Mexico or vice versa can bring ISDS actions. Most notably, the revised agreement prevents many US and Mexican investors from asserting claims under the “fair and equitable treatment” standard. That standard is a key protection included in most international investment treaties and is a frequent basis for ISDS claims. 

New Silk Roads define brand
by Pepe Escobar [China Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-7-18]
The New Silk Roads symbolize way more than high-speed rail lines crisscrossing Eurasia, or a maze of highways, pipelines and port connectivity. They represent a Chinese alliance with at least 65 participating nations, responsible for 62% of the world’s population and 31% of its GDP. 
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as it’s formally known, is not a “road” or a collection of roads, like the Ancient Silk Road. It’s a strategic axis embodying the organizing Chinese foreign policy concept for the next three decades. And BRI goes beyond Eurasia and Africa, extending all the way to Latin America as well, as Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed in January at the summit between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean states.... 
Because China is the only nation in the world to have devised a nearly global strategy in terms of trade and investment, BRI is allowing China to shape what Washington defines as the “rules-based” international system closer to its priorities. The global economic context, slowly but surely, will be adapting to what BRI represents.... 
BRI-bashing is inevitably linked to the fact that Western geopolitical and geoeconomic dominance – a brief historical interlude – is coming to an end. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former UN ambassador argues in his latest small tome ‘Has The West Lost It?’ that the rules of the new world order will be set in the East, that international law is bound to change, and the heart of financial institutions and global trading structures will be dominated by China and India.... 
Internally, China is organizing itself around 20 mega-urban environments with tens of millions of people each. Shenzhen, in the Pearl River Delta, is already China’s fourth economic hub, where almost half of all international patents are registered.

[Moon of Alabama, via Naked Capitalism 10-8-18]


[Supply Chain DIve, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18] 
“Of the 718 NAM members surveyed, 45.4% said “the inability to attract and retain workers is the biggest threat to my business.” One in four respondents said they turned down new business due to this challenge, while one in three said they held off on expansion plans for the same reason.”
The solution is blindingly obvious to anyone whose cranium has not been crammed full of modern business management bullshit: "Pay more money. Train people on the job. Make the workplace not shitty. Stop union-busting. None of this is hard."  [Lambert Strether]


Dollar General throws a lifeline to hard-pressed communities. Not all welcome it
[Los Angeles Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18] 
“ ‘Little-box’ stores like Dollar General — and its main competitor Dollar Tree — have taken over a gigantic segment of the American household economy in the last decade by expanding into small towns overlooked by larger operators. Dollar General alone now has more than 15,000 stores nationwide, slightly more than the total number of McDonald’s locations. Its annual sales exceed $6 billion…. The dollar store revolution has thrown a lifeline of food and capital to impoverished pockets in California and elsewhere, but it also raises a compelling question: How much quality is in that lifeline?… In a presentation to investors at a Nashville hotel in 2016, Dollar General Executive Vice President Jim Thorpe identified the American underclass as the company’s ‘best friends forever.’ The chief characteristics of the loyalists, he said, included ‘living paycheck to paycheck,’ and ‘relies on government assistance.’ Thorpe predicted the growing customer demographic — generally Caucasians with household income lower than $40,000 a year — would shortly expand to include large numbers of African Americans and millennials. The average Dollar General shopper is among the last ‘to feel the effects of improving economic conditions,’ the company said in a report to investors.”

Effects Of Minimum Wages On Population Health
by J. Paul Leigh and Juan Du, October 4, 2018 [HealthAffairs.com, via Naked Capitalism 10-9-18] 

This provides a short, concise summary of the studies of the effects of legally mandated minimum wages, in both USA and Britain, including a discussion of methodology, and the problem of selecting a control group. Most studies have tried to determine if minimum wage laws actually increase wages, or -- what conservatives argue is the actual result -- increase unemployment. Not as many studies have looked at the health effects of minimum wage laws.
The preponderance of evidence suggests that increases in minimum wages decrease smoking and the number of days with health limitations and increase birthweights among infants of low-wage or low-skilled workers.
This suggests to me that minimum wage laws do in fact increase wages, with minimal impact on unemployment, with the net result of a significant decrease in stress caused by insufficient incomes to live on. 


[Project Syndicate, via Naked Capitalism 10-13-18]
....because Europe’s just-in-time supply chains deliver small batches of inputs precisely when they are needed, producers have cut their working-capital costs dramatically. One Honda factory near the Southwest English city of Swindon stores its incoming shipments so briefly that it would have to cease production within 36 hours if supplies were disrupted. Honda fears that with the re-introduction of customs checkpoints after Brexit, European parts will take up to nine days to reach Swindon. The problem, notes the Financial Times, is that, “A warehouse capable of holding nine days of Honda stock would need to be 300,000 square meters – one of the largest buildings on earth.”
What? You mean that the "makers", the "entrepreneurs", the management pricks who make hundreds times more than their workers, can't figure out how to rejigger their supply chains faster than the morose British political elites plodding reluctantly toward Brexit?


 Michael Lewis Wonders Who’s Really Running the Government 
By Joe Klein, October 8, 2018 [The New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-9-18]

A review of Michael Lewis's new book, The Fifth Risk (W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95).
Lewis's first book was Liar's Poker, a blockbuster inside look at the Wall Street bond trading colossus, Salomon Brothers, now defunct. His books about college football, The Blind Side, the adoption of statistical analysis by major league baseball, Money Ball, and the 2007 financial crash, The Big Short, have all been made into major motion pictures. 
Lewis has taken on his most difficult challenge: He has chosen to apotheosize three obscure government agencies — the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. In “The Fifth Risk,” his heroes are federal bureaucrats. 
Why these departments? Well, they are enormous data collection and analysis factories. And Donald Trump either doesn’t care about them or understand what they do, or doesn’t like what he imagines he understands, and has sent minions intent on crippling their work. Lewis believes that essential government functions like protecting nuclear waste (Department of Energy), food safety and feeding the poor (Agriculture) and predicting the weather (Commerce) are under threat.... 
[The title of the book refers to] “The risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term risks with short-term solutions. … ‘Program management’ is the existential threat that you never really even imagine as a risk. … It is the innovation that never occurs and the knowledge that is never created, because you have ceased to lay the groundwork for it. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.” 
....At a moment when the president of the United States is under frontal assault, Lewis takes a more oblique route. He doesn’t bother with Trump’s flagrant character deficiencies; he is horrified by the practical effects of the president’s ignorance. And so he deploys his skills to make the history of the National Weather Service’s ability to predict hurricanes — and its difficulty in predicting tornadoes — into a page-turner....
But there is more than lost data at stake. “The Fifth Risk” raises the most important question of the moment: Have we grown too lazy and silly and poorly educated to sustain a working democracy? We live in a moment when tribal bumper stickers — both left and right — pass for politics, when ignorance and grievance drive policy. The federal government exists at a level of complexity most people just can’t be bothered to understand. We have little idea what it does, only the vague sense that it doesn’t do anything very well. Michael Lewis has taken on the task of rectifying that misconception, and he has done so with refreshing clarity — and a measured sense of outrage — which makes this his most ambitious and important book.
[Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18] 
“After a 50-year siege, the great strategic fortress of liberalism* has fallen. With the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court seems secure for constitutionalism—perhaps for decades…. And the triumph is President Trump’s. To unite the party whose nomination he had won, Donald Trump pledged to select his high court nominees from lists prepared by such judicial conservatives as the Federalist Society. He kept his word and, in the battle for Kavanaugh, he led from the front, even mocking the credibility of the main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. Trump has achieved what every GOP president has hoped to do since the summer of ’68….”
Lambert Strether comments:
Leaving aside “constitutionalism,” Buchanan, that horrible old reprobate, is correct; Trump delivered bigly for his party and his base. Sometime one wonders who the real revolutionaries are, eh? NOTE * I would have thought the strategic fortress was the New Deal, but liberal Democrats keep trying to make a Grand Bargain to get rid of it, so I guess not.

Donald Trump And The Return Of Rockefeller Republicanism
[Ed Harrison, Credit Writedowns, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18]. (From 2016, recently boosted by Harrison on the Twitter.)
 “What Trump has promised to do is ‘drain the swamp’ and stamp out this corporatism while returning some semblance of certainty and dignity to working class people. He hasn’t said exactly how he intends to do that. But he won the Presidency on this promise. I would suggest that to do as he wants, he will have to force the Republican Party out of one of its default economic positions. There are four: 1. Less government is good. 2 Deficits are bad. 3. Lower taxes are better than higher taxes 4. Free trade is good.”
Lambert Strether, again:
"In fact, he forced them out of #2 and #4…."

Trump’s Patron-in-Chief: Casino Magnate Sheldon Adelson 
[ProPublica, via The Big Picture 10-12-18]
[World Socialist Web Site, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18]. 
“[T]he Democrats chose to focus entirely on a 36-year-old unproven and likely unprovable allegation of sexual misconduct, dating back to the nominee’s teenage years. They embraced this issue eagerly in the hopes of currying favor in the November elections with a narrow stratum of upper-middle-class women for whom the #MeToo campaign has become the vehicle for gaining status, influence and access to wealth and power. This has allowed the Republicans—a party that fervently supports police violence, the persecution of immigrants and massive domestic spying—to posture as the defenders of such core democratic rights as the presumption of innocence.”

Portrait of a Campaign
[Idle Words, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18] 
“While claiming to seek victory, the Democratic leadership has instead created a consulting and fundraising complex that incentivizes narrow defeat. The people responsible for losing the 2016 election were promoted, not purged. If we somehow manage to win in spite of them in 2018, we need to bring the whole corrupt edifice down.” • Well worth a read for the devastating description of the Democrat party apparatus.

[Current Affairs, via Naked Capitalism 10-9-18] 
“The criticisms of the [Sanders] ‘Stop BEZOS’ bill are interesting in light of the outcome. I think they show how a lot of people confuse ‘politics’ with ‘policy’: the bill was not a good policy, therefore it was not good. That’s not necessarily the case though, and I think one of the reasons liberals have failed politically is that they think of politics as ‘designing the optimal policy’ and have no clue how to actually build the political power that allows you to pass and implement the optimal policy. Bernie Sanders does know a thing or two about building political power—that’s why he managed to be the ‘Amendment King’ in the House of Representatives, passing more roll call votes in a Republican Congress than any other member despite being a radical democratic socialist. Sanders’ bill was criticized as a stunt. But that shouldn’t be a criticism, and we on the left need to try more stunts.”

A third of Maryland Democrats are backing the Republican governor.
[The New Republic, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18]
"Former NAACP president Ben Jealous, Maryland’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee, is one of 2018’s most compelling candidates. He’s also running one of the cycle’s most challenging campaigns, taking on Republican Larry Hogan, who consistently polls as one of America’s most popular governors—despite the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans by a two-to-one margin in the state. On Tuesday, a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that Jealous is trailing Hogan by 20 points—58 percent to 38 percent. Most troubling for Jealous is that Hogan is winning 35 percent of Democrats. Hogan, moreover, has a slightly higher favorability rating among Democrats than Jealous does, 58 percent to 52 percent.” 
A commentator the next day wrote
As Lambert has noted, it is totally hypocritical for them to criticize Bernie Sanders voters who stayed home if Establishment Democrats would choose a Republican over the Berniecrat. They also have no grounds now for criticism of people who have voted Green or the so called “deplorable” voters, some of which were Obama Trump voters. 
However this has other implications. If Sanders or another left wing voter were to win against the Establishment neoliberal Democrat, and the Republicans nominated a “Jeb!” Bush type candidate the Clinton base would go for the Bush candidate. I think that it became clear that a lot of upper middle class professional voters were going to go Clinton because their class interests are aligned with Wall Street and the 1 percent. This Jacobin article discusses it.
I would enshrine Lambert Strether's comment on his posting 10-12 of “Two Cheers for Socialism: Why Liberals Need Enemies on the Left” [Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine]: 
Anyhow, Chait doesn’t mention my litmus test: If you’re on the left, you put the working class first as a matter of principle. If you’re a liberal (or a conservative) you put markets first. (My emphasis).

The Democrats Have a Latino Problem
[Slate, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18]
“While Trump was enacting his anti-immigrant agenda, Latino voters seemed to have slowly warmed up to the president. In last week’s NPR/PBS/Marist poll, 41 percent of Hispanics approved of Trump’s performance (black Americans? 12 percent). This is no outlier. Another recent poll put Trump’s approval among Latinos at 35 percent. An average of both would put Trump—again, an overtly nativist president—within about 10 points of Barack Obama’s 49 percent approval among Hispanic at roughly the same time in his presidency. This does not mean Donald Trump is a popular president among Hispanics. He is not. But he is not repudiated, either, not by a mile.”

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 Aims Not at Trump But at Those Who Created the Conditions That Led to His Rise 
[Avedon's The Sideshow, September 30, 2018]
@MMFlint has a new movie out, and Glenn Greenwald reviews it at The Intercept.:
Fahrenheit 11/9 the title of Michael Moore's new film that opens today in theaters, is an obvious play on the title of his wildly profitable Bush-era Fahrenheit 11/9 but also a reference to the date of Donald J. Trump's 2016 election victory. Despite that, Trump himself is a secondary figure in Moore's film, which is far more focused on the far more relevant and interesting questions of what — and, critically, who — created the climate in which someone like Trump could occupy the Oval Office. For that reason alone, Moore's film is highly worthwhile regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum. The single most significant defect in U.S. political discourse is the monomaniacal focus on Trump himself, as though he is the cause — rather than the by-product and symptom — of decades-old systemic American pathologies. Personalizing and isolating Trump as the principal, even singular, source of political evil is obfuscating and thus deceitful. By effect, if not design, it distracts the population's attention away from the actual architects of their plight. [...] Embedded in the instruction of those who want to you focus exclusively on Trump is an insidious and toxic message: namely, removing Trump will cure, or at least mitigate, the acute threats he poses. That is a fraud, and Moore knows it. Unless and until the roots of these pathologies are identified and addressed, we are certain to have more Trumps: in fact, more effective and more dangerous Trumps, along with more potent Dutertes, and more Brexits, and more Bolsonaros and more LePens." 

Widespread fish kills predicted to continue for weeks in NC, experts say. Here’s why.
[Charlotte Observer, via Naked Capitalism 10-8-18]


Warm Gulf waters spawned Hurricane Michael’s intensity: scientists 
[Reuters via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18] 
The NC reader who contributed the link wrote, “More interesting than the somewhat humdrum headline suggests.”

Climate politicking isn’t working. We need climate civil disobedience 
[Bill McKibben, Los Angeles Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18]
“[M]uch of what progress has been made toward mitigating climate change has largely come through protest. When demonstrators went to jail in record numbers against the Keystone XL pipeline, they not only stopped its construction but fired up people around the world to take similar steps against every new piece of fossil fuel infrastructure: Kayakers blocked Shell’s drilling rigs in the Seattle harbor, for example, which led to the company’s retreat from plans to open the Arctic to oil drilling. Pension funds and endowments worth $7 trillion have begun divesting their holdings in fossil fuel companies — Shell said in a recent report to shareholders that that movement had become a ‘material risk.’ In other words, protest has weakened the very industry that has made political progress on climate change all but impossible. And like peaceful protest during the civil rights movement, civil disobedience has helped shift the zeitgeist away from the idea that coal, oil and gas are the natural and obvious sources of power for our societies. Protest helps overcome the inertia that is slowing our transition to cheaper solar and wind power. If normal politics ever does work on the issue of climate change, it will be in part because it’s been prodded by the unconventional kind.”

Response to the IPCC 1.5°C Special Report
By Kevin Anderson, October 8, 2018 [University of Manchester Policy Blog, via Naked Capitalism 10-7-18]
The responsibility for global emissions is heavily skewed towards the lifestyles of a relatively few high emitters – professors and climate academics amongst them. Almost 50% of global carbon emissions arise from the activities of around 10% of the global population, increasing to 70% of emissions from just 20% of citizens. Impose a limit on the per-capita carbon footprint of the top 10% of global emitters, equivalent to that of an average European citizen, and global emissions could be reduced by one third in a matter of a year or two. 
Ignoring this huge inequality in emissions, the IPCC chooses instead to constrain its policy advice to fit neatly within the current economic model. This includes, significant reliance on removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere much later in the century, when today’s senior scientists and policy makers will be either retired or dead.... 
To genuinely reduce emissions in line with 2°C of warming requires a transformation in the productive capacity of society, reminiscent of the Marshall Plan. The labour and resources used to furnish the high-carbon lifestyles of the top 20% will need to shift rapidly to deliver a fully decarbonised energy system. No more second or very large homes, SUVs, business and first-class flights, or very high levels of consumption. Instead, our economy should be building new zero-energy houses, retrofitting existing homes, huge expansion of public transport, and a 4-fold increase in (zero-carbon) electrification.

by Erica Gies, October 9, 2018 [Nature, via Naked Capitalism 10-10-18]
...The goal is to try to create a natural buffer to protect the heavily populated waterfront, by sapping energy from storm surges and blocking the highest tides. San Francisco Bay’s salt ponds are part of a much broader story. After a century of human development destroyed most of the area’s wetlands, the region did an about-face in the 1970s. It became a leader in marsh restoration, moving into high gear after a groundbreaking plan published in 1998. In recent years, local leaders have tackled these efforts with a new-found sense of urgency. Sea levels here could rise by as much as 2.1 metres by 2100, the California Natural Resources Agency estimates, and that would threaten electricity plants, transportation infrastructure and drinking-water facilities in the region — many of which lie low and close to the bay. 
Marshes have a superpower in the fight against sea-level rise. Unlike artificial barriers such as sea walls and levees, they can evolve, growing progressively higher as they trap more sediment and their vegetation decomposes and regrows. “Marshes are in a dynamic equilibrium with the water level,” says John Bourgeois, executive manager of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, a public–private partnership that manages wetlands restoration in Eden Landing and other sites in the South Bay. “It’s been clearly shown that, even at pretty high rates of sea-level rise, if there’s enough suspended sediment, they can keep pace.”
....Turning to natural systems for such protection is a radical shift from the concrete engineering that dominated the last century. But as human populations expand and climate impacts intensify, the costs and limitations of the artificial approach are becoming more apparent. Sea walls, for example, are brittle; they break rather than flex and have unwanted effects on surrounding areas by, for instance, diverting wave energy to unprotected locations. Coastal ecosystems not only protect inland areas but also provide habitat for endangered species, fish nurseries and natural water-cleaning services. In addition, they can help to combat climate change by storing carbon as they grow.
....What’s more, there’s a major sediment deficit. Salt ponds such as those at Eden Landing have subsided so far below the level of surrounding marshland that, in order to speed up their recovery, restorers will need to fill them with extra sediment from elsewhere before opening them to the tide. Researchers think that it will also be necessary to feed existing marshes to help them keep pace with rising sea levels. Scott Dusterhoff, the SFEI’s lead geomorphologist, estimates that existing marshes, along with the oyster-bearing mudflats between them and the bay, will face a deficit of roughly 100 million metric tonnes of sediment by 2100 if sea levels rise by 1 metre, a middle-of-the-road scenario. If current trends continue, scientists fear that most of the bay’s marshes will be damaged or destroyed by 2100.

Energy Dept.: US carbon emissions are down, renewables are up
[Houston Chronicle (tiered subscription model) (10/8), via American Wind Energy Association 10-9-14]
Carbon emissions in the US declined for the seventh time in 10 years in 2017, falling by nearly 1% as wind and solar expanded to account for 22% of the nation's non-carbon electrical generation, according to the Energy Department. (Emphasis mine.)

Opinion: Clean energy is integral to the US energy mix
[FastCoDesign (10/11), via American Wind Energy Association 10-12-14]
Americans must prioritize clean energy in the US energy mix because it makes sense economically, is good for public health and benefits the economy in other ways compared to traditional energy sources, write Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance Communications Director Michael Shank. Make a difference now, they write, by filing comments on the Environmental Protection Agency's emissions policies before the Oct. 30 deadline.

Turbine-makers, industry look to standardize wind development
[Offshore Wind Journal (U.K.) (10/12), via American Wind Energy Association 10-12-14]
MHI Vestas, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Vestas are participating in a research project with the Danish wind industry to bring standardization to the turbine design and production process. "The industry needs to find common ground on future cost reduction," according to the Danish Wind Industry Association.

GE Renewable unveils ground-based blade inspection system
[North American Windpower online (10/9), via American Wind Energy Association 10-10-14]
GE Renewable Energy has released a ground-based system for inspecting turbine blades that uses thermal imaging and wide-band acoustic spectral analysis to analyze a single unit in less than 15 minutes. The company says the solution is suited for both GE and non-GE machines, and has been deployed at 1,500 turbines, to date.
100% renewables by 2050 is on the horizon for GM
[Detroit Free Press (10/9), via American Wind Energy Association 10-10-14]
General Motors is working to source 100% of its electricity needs from renewables by 2050, and will likely hit the 20% mark by the year's end, the company said this week. "You don't get the price spikes this way, like you do with fuel, and it reduces the environment footprint of the vehicle you're driving," Global Manager of Renewable Energy Rob Threlkeld said.

[Ganfeng Lithium executive Wang Xiaoshen, Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 10-7-18] 
“Not in the near term, but in the longer term there is still risk of a shortage. Especially 2023 and 2024 — that’s the period we’re a little bit concerned about. That will be the time when EV production will be ramping up quickly and that’s when most of the battery makers will be expanding their capacity. The OEMs want to secure long-term supply. They probably share the same view that come 2023-2024 there will be tight supply when everyone is ramping up the EV production. But in the short term we have to fasten our seat belts and be careful.”

Russia, Belarus seek to boost China-Europe-China freight
[Railway Age 10-12-18]
Russian Railways unit RZD Logistics and Belarussian Railway have agreed to cooperate on China–Europe–China services by developing container shipments at the Brest-Terespol, Svisloch-Semyanuvka, and Bruzi-Kuznica Belostockaya borders. Full Article

Marta (Atlanta) board approves $US 2.7bn transit expansion
[Railway Age 10-11-18]
Light rail leads the $US 2.7bn in expansion projects unanimously approved by Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s board of directors on October 4. The plan for 17 projects, under development for two years, encompasses 35km of light rail. Full Article

Facebook’s head lobbyist Joel Kaplan hosted a Kavanaugh celebration party last night for those who worked on his nomination
[The New Food Economy, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18] 
“It’s impossible to pin down exactly how many retailers were banned from accepting SNAP dollars due to fraud charges that the government can’t actually prove. But court testimony by a USDA official indicates that, just last year, hundreds of retailers were permanently disqualified from the program based primarily on an algorithmic assessment of their transaction patterns… The USDA does not bother to justify or even explain the precise sales figures or thresholds that cause retailers to be flagged for investigation. In fact, officials appear not to know how they were developed in the first place. Douglas Edward Wilson, a USDA program analyst who has worked with the ALERT system for more than a decade, testified in a 2017 deposition that he had no idea who originally set the parameters for flagging fraudulent transactions.”

45 Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After Independent Repair, Sting Operation Finds

[Motherboard, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-18]


Driving across the US gave me a different perspective on the American economy
by Larry Summers [larrysummers.com, via Naked Capitalism 10-10-18]

I had expected Summers to express dismay at the poverty and dilapidation he found, but apparently he avoided these types of areas. If you really want to see how terribly USA has suffered under deindustrialization, financialization, and the rise of the professional class, you have to drive a mile or two beyond the restaurant, hotel, and gas station chains clustered at each interstate exit, and get to the actual original "downtown." Still, Summers nicely summarizes a point I've tried to make with my HAWB How America Was Built series.
Starting with the federal government’s 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, and the federally funded Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the West, the free market had little to do with the settling and economic progress of the American West. The economy of many of the places we visited was the creation of the U.S. government. Depression-era programs paid for power plants, built hiking trails and helped cut roads through mountains. Western tourist economies are based around national parks, forests and monuments, and government land grants funded many of the universities.

Neoliberal epidemics: the spread of austerity, obesity, stress and inequality
[Avedon's The Sideshow, September 30, 2018] 
In our new book, we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies. Focusing on the social determinants of health — the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives, while it is all but impossible for others — we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. They are epidemics because they are observable on such an international scale and have been transmitted so quickly across time and space that if they were biological contagions they would be seen as of epidemic proportions."

[MIT Technology Review, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-18] 
“A material designed by MIT chemical engineers can react with carbon dioxide from the air, to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself. The polymer, which might someday be used as construction or repair material or for protective coatings, continuously converts the greenhouse gas into a carbon-based material that reinforces itself…. The material the team used in these initial proof-of-concept experiments did make use of one biological component — chloroplasts, the light-harnessing components within plant cells, which the researchers obtained from spinach leaves. The chloroplasts are not alive but catalyze the reaction of carbon dioxide to glucose.”

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