On the one hand, regulators turn a blind eye to these schemes, until they get in trouble, and then a bailout.
Might as well go all-in and nationalize everything
Biden to announce federal bailout for troubled union pension fund
WASHINGTON â President Joe Biden on Thursday will join labor leaders to announce a federal bailout for a pension fund largely benefiting Teamster workers and retirees.
The $36 billion for the Central States Pension Fund will prevent benefits from being cut more than in half for more than 350,000 truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction workers and others, according to the White House.
Financially struggling multiemployer pension plans can apply to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation for assistance.
Before the act passed, more than 200 pension plans were on pace to become insolvent in the near term, according to the White House. Now, those plans are projected to remain solvent through at least 2051.
The $36 billion for the Central Pension Fund is the biggest boost from the program, and the largest ever federal financial assistance for troubled pension funds, according to the White House.
What's about to happen
Teamster workers and retirees will join Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh at a White House event announcing the assistance. Biden has said heâs goal is to be âthe most pro-union presidentâ in U.S. history. He held the first public event of his presidential campaign at a Teamsters hall in Pittsburgh in 2019.
Critics, like George Mason Universityâs Charles Blahous, say the bailouts encourage âmore of the irresponsible behavior that got pensions into trouble in the first place.â
Who is being helped?
Most states have workers or retires expected to benefit. The states with the most beneficiaries are:
Michigan: 40,300
Ohio: 39,900
Missouri: 27,800
Illinois: 25,000
Texas: 22,500
Wisconsin: 21,900
Indiana: 19,600
Minnesota: 19,300
Florida: 18,700
Tennessee: 14,200
I think this is the right thing to do. But it is especially ironic, as most of the beneficiaries of these policies are against 'socialism' and any government 'handouts' for people who are not them. Pretty typical "I don't care until it affects me personally" politics.
Edit to add: We should pay for this by taxing Amazon/Walmart/ other major retailers who have made trillions of dollars in no small part by utilizing these workers.
On the one hand, regulators turn a blind eye to these schemes, until they get in trouble, and then a bailout.
Might as well go all-in and nationalize everything
Biden to announce federal bailout for troubled union pension fund
WASHINGTON â President Joe Biden on Thursday will join labor leaders to announce a federal bailout for a pension fund largely benefiting Teamster workers and retirees.
The $36 billion for the Central States Pension Fund will prevent benefits from being cut more than in half for more than 350,000 truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction workers and others, according to the White House.
Financially struggling multiemployer pension plans can apply to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation for assistance.
Before the act passed, more than 200 pension plans were on pace to become insolvent in the near term, according to the White House. Now, those plans are projected to remain solvent through at least 2051.
The $36 billion for the Central Pension Fund is the biggest boost from the program, and the largest ever federal financial assistance for troubled pension funds, according to the White House.
What's about to happen
Teamster workers and retirees will join Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh at a White House event announcing the assistance. Biden has said heâs goal is to be âthe most pro-union presidentâ in U.S. history. He held the first public event of his presidential campaign at a Teamsters hall in Pittsburgh in 2019.
Critics, like George Mason Universityâs Charles Blahous, say the bailouts encourage âmore of the irresponsible behavior that got pensions into trouble in the first place.â
Who is being helped?
Most states have workers or retires expected to benefit. The states with the most beneficiaries are:
Bentley CEO: âNever seen spending patternsâ like this before with luxury consumer
Pras Subramanian·Senior ReporterWed, November 2, 2022 at 10:24 AM
For British luxury automaker Bentley (VOW.DE), 2022 may leave a strong 2021 in the dust.
Through the first nine months of 2022, Bentley reported record operating profit of â¬575 million ($577,129,608), more than double the amount from a year ago. The previous full-year record high for operating profit was â¬389 million ($383,651,250.00). Revenue through the first nine months came in at â¬2.490 billion ($2,455,762,500.00), a jump of 28% from a year ago.
For Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark, the results are astonishing because the automaker only increased sales of cars by 3%, yet profitability soared.
âThe exciting part for me is that we've doubled the profit year to date, with only a 3% increase in , and that's all about quality of margin,â Hallmark says to Yahoo Finance. âIt's all about these higher price cars with more personalization, order bank driven, not stock build driven; and we've got the right formula, and we're going to be ruthless about maintaining that pool.â
"I've been in this industry and in this sector for nearly 28 years. I've never seen spending patterns like it and not just in Bentley,â
The Russian economy has suffered. Wealth has suffered. The Russian economy will likely suffer for years, possibly decades to come.
As an aside, please do note that not all Russians wanted this war. Think of the subcultures in the USA and other rich western countries that have opposed war or the nuclear arms race and one finds the same subcultures in Russia.
The important point from the perspective of the welfare of Europeans and North Americans is that Russia can economically last for a very long time. That has to be part of the strategic calculation on the part of US-lead NATO going forward. Any illusions of a quick, inexpensive military victory in Ukraine should be dismissed or assigned an extremely low probability of materializing.
This conflict could easily escalate with conventional weapons alone into highly destructive and risky directions.
Yeah, well Putin seems to long for the days of the cold war. Last one took around 40 years. That's his choice until someone figures out how to get rid of him, provided someone as bad doesn't take his place. Putin could fix this easily but he won't.
Obama ignored Russian aggression in Crimea and that just lead to aggression in the rest of Ukraine. The alternatives appear to be either Russia takes over Ukraine and probably the rest of Eastern Europe or support Ukrainian self-determination, even if it means digging in for the long haul. Yeah, it is dangerous but so are the other options.
The Russian economy has suffered. Wealth has suffered. The Russian economy will likely suffer for years, possibly decades to come.
As an aside, please do note that not all Russians wanted this war. Think of the subcultures in the USA and other rich western countries that have opposed war or the nuclear arms race and one finds the same subcultures in Russia.
The important point from the perspective of the welfare of Europeans and North Americans is that Russia can economically last for a very long time. That has to be part of the strategic calculation on the part of US-lead NATO going forward. Any illusions of a quick, inexpensive military victory in Ukraine should be dismissed or assigned an extremely low probability of materializing.
This conflict could easily escalate with conventional weapons alone into highly destructive and risky directions.
Surprise, dumping massive amounts of currency into the military sector raises GDP—hence the durable fallacy that wars are good for the economy.
An awful lot of Russians who should be doing productive work are either dodging shrapnel in Ukraine or already casualties, and the work they should be doing is going undone. But GDP counts their military pay and the expenditures for weapons and fuel and boots, even if the soldiers they're being bought for never get them because they were stolen by a corrupt procurement apparatus or blown up on the way.
So GDP looks great! Money is being spent! The fact that it is buying nothing of any earthly use matters not at all to that tabulation. Russia is becoming poorer by the minute, squandering its future to run in place, but the number look great.
The EU economy is getting hammered. But the USA is not that far behind in terms of heading into recession (if not already there).
Well done President Biden. Chalk up another victory for US Exceptionalism. Please continue to target a military victory in Ukraine and let's see where the chips fall.
Comment from Matt Maley at Miller Tabak sums it (current and recent past economy) up:
âIf we had tried maintain what we had a year ago, it would have been like getting drunkâ¦and then trying to stay drunkâ¦to avoid a hangover. What the Fed is trying to do is to keep a bad hangover from becoming a horrendous oneâ¦but theyâre also trying to make sure we donât get drunk againâ¦â¦â¦.Itâs a very tough job,â
And all it has in the medicine cabinet is more alcohol. But this time is different!
Comment from Matt Maley at Miller Tabak sums it (current and recent past economy) up:
âIf we had tried maintain what we had a year ago, it would have been like getting drunkâ¦and then trying to stay drunkâ¦to avoid a hangover. What the Fed is trying to do is to keep a bad hangover from becoming a horrendous oneâ¦but theyâre also trying to make sure we donât get drunk againâ¦â¦â¦.Itâs a very tough job,â
Last Friday (October 7), the 82-year old French writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature, for what the panel described as an âuncompromisingâ 50-year body of work exploring âa life marked by great disparities regarding gender, language and classâ. A feminist and politically committed writer, Ernaux is the first French woman to win the award.
âFor 50 years, Annie Ernaux has written the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is the voice of
the freedom of women and forgotten figures of the centuryâ.
Ernaux herself responded to the news by describing writing as a political act, a means of opening our eyes to social inequality. To that end, she uses language like âa knifeâ, to tear apart the veils of imagination. The next day (October 8), she turned that knife on Macron. (...)
isn't there something delightfully ironic about our in-house communist wailing about government intervention and making a desperate plea for a return to a free market?
Sorry, even with an open market, a return to business as usual ain't going happen. Russia breached trust. That's not something you can easily repair.
You are such a high priest of elevated morality.
And your understanding of economics and international relations is pretty damn weak.
What is interesting here in Germany is the pattern of dissension. You get a number of academics and Russian apologists still punching above their weight in public discussion and keep plugging the Kremlin's line, like this plonker. But the real hands-on business people know exactly what the situation is. The loss of Russian and Ukrainian markets has been factored into budgets for the coming year. The more pressing issue is supply chain issues which are hard to predict.
The actual cost of energy OTOH is something you can factor into your pricing. Some succeed better than others. The key point though is that all of these distortions are temporary until the market settles back into place with new parameters. Russia has basically cooked its goose.
Oil & gas dependency on Russia is never going to happen again.
has "tankie" which was originally a tease or mocking pejorative now morphed and crystalized into a badge of honor?
is it being embraced by intellectual western keyboard warriors? apparently so
surely he has reached out to putin and demanded that he cease fire, go home and make reparations to ukraine, no?
will this prompt the world to expedite its transition off of fossil fuels and onto greener sources?
what happens after putin?
will the next person in line reject violence/war for peaceful leadership?
acknowledge human rights and voluntary makets?
i would say yes
isn't there something delightfully ironic about our in-house communist wailing about government intervention and making a desperate plea for a return to a free market?
Sorry, even with an open market, a return to business as usual ain't going happen. Russia breached trust. That's not something you can easily repair.
um, I think you are missing the point. Nobody wants to do business with Russia until they get their shit sorted. It's got nothing to do with whether they are allowed to do business with Russia.
And if you think the sanctions aren't working, then what's your beef?
