News Items.
Tuesday, 30 July 2019. By John Ellis.
1. Borrowing by the federal government is set to top $1 trillion for the second year in a row as higher spending outpaces revenue growth and concern about budget deficits wanes in Washington and on Wall Street. The Treasury Department said Monday it expects to issue $814 billion in net marketable debt in the second half of this calendar year, bringing total debt issuance to $1.23 trillion in 2019. That would represent a slight decline from borrowing in 2018, when the Treasury issued $1.34 trillion in debt— more than twice as much as the $546 billion it issued in 2017.
2. President Trump said that the Federal Reserve’s expected small interest-rate cut this week is “not enough,” but he expressed optimism that the country would do well regardless of what is decided. In tweets on Monday morning, the president accused the U.S. central bank of making “all the wrong moves” and said that Fed officials were leaving the U.S. vulnerable to global competitors like the European Union and China.
3. A curious thing has happened,” the IMF observed in a blog post last week, noting that the $100 bill had overtaken the $1 bill in circulation for the first time. The number of $100 bills has doubled since the global financial crisis. This climb has surprised some because of the march towards a cashless society, in which nearly a third of Americans use no cash at all on a weekly basis, Pew Research Center data show. Nearly 80 per cent of these bills are held overseas, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Ruth Judson, an economist at the Fed board of governors, said the trend can be attributed, at least in part, to geopolitical instability. “Overseas demand for US dollars is likely driven by its status as a safe asset,” she said. “Cash demand, especially from other countries, increases in times of political and financial crisis.”
4. Lawmakers were up in arms this month about whether Libra, Facebook’s proposed new cryptocurrency, would be a haven for money launderers and other criminal activities. Facebook, though, says Libra could be a valuable tool for law enforcement, partly because of the vast amounts of information that will be generated about its users. That was the message Facebook executive David Marcus took to Congress during hearings this month. The ability to use crypto to help catch criminals is ingrained in its structure. Cash is valuable to criminals because there is no transaction or ownership record. Bitcoins carry an unalterable transaction record with them, but not always an ownership record. With Libra, both the transactions made and who made them will be recorded.
5. Sterling faced a fresh blow on Tuesday, deepening its losses for July to more than 4 per cent amid rising expectations in currency markets that the UK will drop out of the EU without a deal. Britain’s currency dropped 0.51 per cent to $1.2154. It has shed 4.3 per cent since the end of June, leaving it on track for its worst month since October 2016.
6. There’s no reprieve in sight for the ailing euro area, with economic confidence dropping to its lowest level in more than three years and French growth providing less support than expected. The European Commission’s monthly reading of sentiment fell as executives in industry worried about production and orders, and managers in the services sector became more pessimistic about future demand. In France, economic expansion slowed as consumer spending growth weakened despite President Emmanuel Macron’s tax cuts.
7. Citigroup Inc. is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs in its trading division -- stark new evidence that an industrywide slump in revenue this year may be more permanent than the tweets and policy moves rattling clients. The New York-based bank plans to slash jobs across its fixed-income and stock-trading operations over the course of 2019, according to people familiar with the matter. That includes at least 100 jobs in the equities unit, which would amount to almost 10% of the division’s workforce.
8. A burst of radioactive ruthenium-106 detected in the atmosphere across Europe in 2017 has been traced to a Russian nuclear facility, which appears to have been preparing materials for experiments in Italy. The leak released up to 100 times the amount of radiation into the atmosphere that the Fukushima disaster did, but this wasn’t high enough to affect human health across Europe. By analyzing monitoring data, researchers have now found clear evidence that the release happened in the Southern Urals – the location of the Mayak facility, which also suffered the third most serious nuclear accident in history in 1957.
9. China appears on track to reach its carbon goals up to nine years earlier than planned under the Paris agreement, in a potential huge boost for efforts to tackle climate change. The world’s biggest polluter accounts for a quarter of humanity’s emissions today, making the nation a crucial part of any efforts to avoid dangerous global warming. Now an analysis has found that China’s emissions could peak at 13 to 16 gigatonnes of CO2 between 2021 and 2025, making what the researchers call a “a great contribution” to meeting the Paris deal’s goal of limiting temperature rises to 2°C.
10. To feed its 1.4 billion people, China is betting big on genome editing of crops. Scientists there are forging ahead with CRISPR, even as regulations remain unclear. Read the whole thing. It's a peek into the future of food.
11. New research has found that antibiotic-resistant strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae, an opportunistic pathogen that can cause respiratory and bloodstream infections in humans, are spreading through hospitals in Europe. Certain strains of K. pneumoniae are resistant to the carbapenem antibiotics that represent the last line of defense in treating infections and are therefore regarded as extremely drug resistant (XDR).
12. While fungal diseases have devastated many animal and plant species, humans and other mammals have mostly been spared. That’s probably because mammals have body temperatures too warm for most fungi to replicate as well as powerful immune systems. But climate change may be challenging those defenses, bringing new fungal threats to human health, a microbiologist warns.
13. A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year. Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi's ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.
14. Hospitals would have to disclose the discounted prices they negotiate with insurance companies under a Trump administration rule that could upend the $1 trillion hospital industry by revealing rates long guarded as trade secrets. Hospitals that fail to share the discounted prices in an online form could be fined up to $300 a day, according to the proposal. The price-disclosure requirements would cover all the more than 6,000 hospitals that accept Medicare, as well as some others, and is likely to face fierce industry opposition.
15. For farmers battered by floods and blizzards and one of the rainiest springs on record, this has been a year tainted by too much water. But suddenly, across more than 100,000 acres of Nebraska and Wyoming, there is no water to be found. The countryside is suddenly parched because a century-old tunnel that carries irrigation water across more than 100 miles, from Wyoming to Nebraska, collapsed this month. The cause of the collapse was not yet clear but the effect has been immediate.
16. Alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has opened the door to helping victims of the terrorist attacks in their lawsuit against Saudi Arabia if the U.S. government spares him the death penalty at a Guantanamo Bay military commission, according to court documents.
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Quick Links: Stanford researchers developing technologies that run on light. To feed its 1.4 billion, China bets big on genome editing of crops. Huge hidden canyon under Greenland ice sheet may have flowing water. Sweden’s economy unexpectedly contracts. Capital One reports data breach affecting 100 million customers, applicants. An operating system bug exposes 200 million critical devices. Hackers could use connected cars to gridlock whole cities. It’s looking like it’s going to be another rough quarter for Apple. Netflix splurges on big-budget movies. 2 million people streamed the Fortnite World Cup finals. Positive attitudes about aging may pay off in better health. Japanese life expectancy hits record high. At least 57 inmates dead, with 16 beheaded, in grisly Brazil prison riot. There are so many grasshoppers in Las Vegas right now you can see them from space. Three new planets orbiting a star 73 light years from Earth have been discovered.
Political Links: Democratic debate (part one) is on CNN tonight. Part two is tomorrow night. Tonight's telecast is being billed as Sanders v. Warren. It might not be that. Warren releases her trade plan. Rivals unload on Kamala Harris’ health plan from left and right. Trump widens war on black critics. Republican Senators are cool to Trump's choice for top intelligence post. What’s good for funding infrastructure is bad for pensions—and in the long run, bad for infrastructure, too. Headwinds at home push Xi to show progress in US trade talks. China says it has released most Muslims held in camps. Hong Kong is a flashpoint in the new cold war. Beijing mouthpieces blame the West for Hong Kong disorder. US plans new naval base in Australia to thwart Chinese. A growing presence: India in Africa. Amlo takes on Mexico’s institutions.
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