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Invading Crimea May Have Cost Russia $200 Billion So Far

by BrandyCremor Posted on April 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Russia’s military actions are costing it dearly:

Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region last month and the instability it created in Russian financial markets were cited by government officials for record capital flight and sharply downgraded growth forecasts for the country. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that instead of projected 2.5% growth this year, Russia’s economy might show no growth at all.

….U.S. and European sanctions to punish Russia for occupying and annexing Crimea have so far targeted only a few dozen officials and businessmen. But the prospect of broader penalties, such as a Western boycott of Russian oil and gas, have scared investors into cashing out their ruble-denominated assets for hard currency and taking their money abroad. Russia’s foreign exchange reserves were drained of a record $63 billion in the first quarter of the year, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Wednesday in an address to the lower house of the parliament.

….Russian stocks fell 10% last month, wiping out further billions in capital. The ruble has lost 9% of its value since the start of the year, boosting prices for the imported food and manufactured goods on which the Russian consumer market is heavily dependent. “The acute international situation of the past two months” was the cause, Ulyukayev said, referring to the Ukraine unrest.

That’s a helluva big drop in economic growth. Just by itself, it represents a cost of $50 billion. Add in the flight of cash and the stock market decline, and you’re somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 billion.

Is that enough to make Russia blink? Maybe not. But it hurts, and the prospect of losing even more has got be enough to give even Vladimir Putin a few second thoughts.

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Invading Crimea May Have Cost Russia $200 Billion So Far

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Gallup Confirms Further Fall in Uninsurance Rate

by Dorcas82Euh Posted on April 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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The latest Gallup poll on the uninsured is out, and it shows that the uninsurance rate continues to drop. Using the same 2011-12 baseline I’ve used before, uninsurance has now dropped about 1.8 percentage points since the rollout of Obamacare. Since the Gallup poll includes everyone, not just the nonelderly, this amounts to about 5.6 million people. However, note that this 5.6 million drop doesn’t include sub-26ers who are on their parents’ insurance, since that policy change had already taken effect by 2011. Nor does it include the entire late surge in Obamacare enrollment. Add those in and the real number is probably in the neighborhood of 8-9 million. By the end of the year, we should hit 10 million or so.

The biggest declines in uninsurance were among the young, among blacks, and among the low-income. More details at the link.

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Gallup Confirms Further Fall in Uninsurance Rate

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S&P 500 Sets Yet Another Fake Record This Year

by HarrietAMRO Posted on April 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. stocks kicked off the second quarter with broad gains Tuesday, propelling the S&P 500 index to a seventh record close of the year.

I’ll cop to being sort of pedantic here, but no, the S&P 500 didn’t set a record today, let alone its seventh of the year. Time series like this only make sense if you adjust for inflation, and if you do that the S&P closed 10 percent below its August 2000 peak. Granted, the S&P 500 has more than doubled since 2008, an immensely more impressive performance than, say, median income or the unemployment rate, but it’s still not in record territory.

If you’re curious to see what the real S&P 500 looks like, it’s in the chart below.

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S&P 500 Sets Yet Another Fake Record This Year

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What’s Wrong With the Fed?

by DaneLabynm Posted on March 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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That’s the question Ryan Avent asks today. The reason is simple: In 2012, the Fed announced an inflation target of 2 percent per year, as measured by the PCE index. But they haven’t come close to hitting it. Why not?

The chart on the right shows the most recent inflation data. In 2011, PCE inflation measured 2.4 percent. In 2012, it came in at 1.8 percent. That’s a little low—especially during a supposed economic recovery—but it’s easy to see why no one was alarmed. It’s something to keep an eye on, but no one ever said the Fed could fine tune inflation to a few tenths of a point.

But then came 2013. There was a fair amount of monthly variability in the data, but the year-end number clocked in at 1.1 percent. That’s way too low, especially considering that (a) the previous year had come in below target, (b) inflationary expectations were still well anchored, and (c) the labor market was still noticeably loose. What this means is that the Fed has failed to meet its employment mandate for six full years and is now failing to meet its inflation target too. Avent wants to know what’s going on:

This is an extraordinary period of time during which the Fed has failed to meet even the rather lax definition of the mandate it has set for itself by a rather substantial margin. How can we explain this? Some possibilities are:

1) The Fed is technically unable to meet its mandate.

2) The Fed is staffed by incompetents.

3) The Fed is actually pursuing a goal outside its mandate without explaining what that goal is and what the justification is for pursuing it.

4) America’s statistics are all wrong. The Fed knows this but has refused to tell anyone else.

Whichever of the above you favour as an explanation, it suggests a need for meaningful reform, either to the personnel at the Fed or to the distribution of macroeconomic responsibilities across government.

My own guess is a little bit of #1 and a lot of #3. I suspect the Fed really is having technical trouble meeting its goals—at least, in a way it’s comfortable with. But that’s just a guess.

It’s less of a guess that the Fed is pursuing goals outside its mandate. It’s hardly a secret that there are plenty of Fed governors who are still living in the 70s, petrified of inflationary spirals and determined to keep inflation as low as possible. Not 2 percent. As low as possible. What’s more, they consider full employment not a virtue, but a threat. It leads to higher inflation, after all.

I think 2014 is something of a watershed year for the Fed. The hawks can argue that a single year of 1 percent inflation is nothing to worry too much about. This stuff bounces around. But at the very least, they should be on board with getting the inflation rate back up to their stated goal. Given the current employment level and the state of the global economy, this poses little risk. If they aren’t willing to do it, they need to come clean that they don’t really care about their statutory mandates and are simply substituting their own timeworn fears and class loyalties for the expressed will of Congress.

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What’s Wrong With the Fed?

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

by JacelynZ96 Posted on March 27, 2014

Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

By

Kaj Iversön

America’s fossil fuel-smitten Congress helped China blow the U.S. out of the water last year when it came to installing new wind energy farms.

A little more than 16 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online in China in 2013 — nearly half of the 36 gigawatts installed around the world. Compare that with a little more than 1 gigawatt that was installed in the U.S. — down alarmingly from 13 gigawatts the year before.

That means American wind installations plummeted in a single year despite the falling price of wind energy, which is becoming lower than the price of electricity produced by burning natural gas in some parts of the country.

Dude, where’s our wind? Well, the latest figures were calculated by Navigant Research, and it blamed a “politically divided Congress” in a new paywalled report for the faltering wind growth in the U.S.

Congress allowed wind energy tax credits to blow away at the end of 2013 — so why would 2013′s installation figures be so bleak? According to the report, it was all about uncertainty. Lawmakers ”failed to extend tax incentives in time to positively impact the 2013 development and construction cycle.”

(Needless to say, Congress, which failed to extend the tax credits amid fossil fuel lobbyist whining that the wind energy industry needs to stand on its own feet, failed to do anything about the billions of dollars in subsidies doled out to fossil fuel companies every year.)

The new report contains some bleak news for those accustomed to reading about runaway growth in renewables. Less wind capacity was installed around the world in 2013 than had been the case in 2012 — the first time that such a decline has been recorded in eight years.

Still, thing are looking bright — particularly for the emerging offshore wind sector. Thirteen new offshore projects added 1.7 gigawatts of capacity last year — up by 50 percent compared with 2012. And 6.6 gigawatts of new offshore capacity is currently under construction.

The researchers forecast that the sector will rebound globally this year, with new installations expected to better last year’s effort by 30 percent. By the end of 2014, the researchers say wind energy will be meeting 2.9 percent of the world’s demand for electricity — a figure they expect to rise to 7.3 percent by 2018.

Navigant ResearchClick to embiggen.


Source
World Market Update 2013, Navigant Research

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for March 25, 2014

by CLQOrlando Posted on March 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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A soldier with the 829th Engineer Company, 1st squad, fires off a magazine of blank rounds from his M249 Machince gun during their annual training at Fort McCoy, Wis., March 22. The company’s annual training was conducted as preparation for their mobilization to Afghanistan this year. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Christopher Enderle)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for March 25, 2014

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Chart of the Day: Social Security Is More Important Than Most People Think

by ShelbyNorthcott Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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EBRI’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey is out, and you can find it here if you want to read the whole thing. In a nutshell, retirement confidence dropped sharply in 2008 when the Great Recession started, and finally started to increase a bit this year for the first time since then. Nonetheless, the number of people who are confident they have enough to retire on is still around 55 percent, way below the 70 percent number that felt this way during the 90s and aughts.

There are plenty of interesting facts and figures about retirement in the report, and I’ve excerpted an interesting pair of charts about worker expectations below. These numbers have bounced around a bit over the years, but generally speaking, only about a third of active workers think Social Security will be a major part of their retirement. In reality, about two-thirds of actual retirees report that Social Security is a major part of their income. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone blithely talking about cutting Social Security benefits, especially among low-income workers.

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Chart of the Day: Social Security Is More Important Than Most People Think

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How “Green” is Your “Suite” Spot?

by Almer Veloso Posted on March 11, 2014

It’s that time of year again; time to sit through that never-ending conversation with my wife sifting through the travel websites trying to figure out where we are going to spend our precious time and money on this years vacation.

A vacation is supposed to help me get away from it all; a respite from the drudgery of the day-to-day minutia that eventually drives us all insane. So being the eco-friendly guy I am and wanting to make sure the only footprint I leave behind is in the sand, I went looking for the retreat that gives me what I want and won’t be damaged by what I leave behind.

My first dilemma: The accommodations. I said I was eco-friendly, but can I at least have some of the comforts of home? My wife, whose idea of roughing it is “no room service,” is fundamentally opposed to camping of any sort. In fact, the Best Western or the Howard Johnson don’t even make the “short” list of potential lodgings.

So the Google search begins

earth911

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How “Green” is Your “Suite” Spot?

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"24: Live Another Day" Will Deal With US Drone Warfare

by KristinaRosenba Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, Fox posted a new trailer for 24: Live Another Day, the upcoming limited event series that continues the famous Jack Bauer action saga (which wrapped its initial eight-season run in 2010). The show, starring Kiefer Sutherland as counterterrorism agent Bauer, came on the air just two months after 9/11, and frequently incorporated the political debates and context of the post-9/11 world. 24 got a reputation for right-wing Bush-era messaging (Bauer tortures a whole lot of people, and often extracts the world-saving information he needs very quickly), but also featured oilmen, shady business interests, and Republican politicians at the center of terrorist conspiracies.

Flash-forward to 2014, and you’ll find 24‘s political framing has adjusted accordingly with the times. In the new trailer, you’ll catch a brief shot of an anti-drone protest in London during the US president’s visit. “Drones DESTROY our Humanity,” and so forth, the placards read:

Fox/YouTube

“We have analogues for the Snowden affair and the drone issue is a backdrop,” executive producer Howard Gordon said earlier this year.

In Live Another Day, the drone-warrior president is James Heller (played by William Devane), who served as Secretary of Defense under two Republican presidents, and first appeared in season four. (Devane also played the President of the United States in The Dark Knight Rises.) During the fourth season of 24, Heller criticizes Michael Moore, and later signs off on the torture of his gay, anti-American son on suspicions that he’s in contact with Muslim extremists.

Watch the new 24: Live Another Day trailer here:

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"24: Live Another Day" Will Deal With US Drone Warfare

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The Best Oscar of Last Night Was the Screenplay Award for "Her"

by EllaBlocker Posted on March 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today presents a blogging problem: The news cycle is devoted almost entirely to events in Ukraine—as it should be—and I’ve already probably said more about this than I should. I don’t have any special expertise in the area, and I really hate the phenomenon of instant expertise that takes hold of pundits everywhere whenever something like this happens. I’m keenly aware of all the big underlying issues—Russia’s long cultural ties to Ukraine; the eastward spread of NATO and the EU; anti-Russian sentiment in Kiev; the weakness of Russia’s military; Putin’s one-note thuggishness; Ukraine’s endemic corruption and its internal fights over who gets to profit from the Russian gas trade; etc. etc.—and also keenly aware that a bare knowledge of all this stuff doesn’t really make me worth reading on the subject. For what it’s worth, I’ve already made a prediction that Putin will stop at Crimea because (a) the Russian army doesn’t have the strength to do much more, and (b) Putin isn’t willing to pay the price both in military and diplomatic terms for a broader intervention in eastern Ukraine. But I could be wildly wrong. Who knows?

So then, what should I write about today? I’m not sure, though I imagine that I’ll end up writing more about Ukraine despite everything I just said.

In the meantime, how about a nice Oscars thread? No? Oh come on. I’ll toss out a provocation to get everyone started: the best award of the night was the Best Original Screenplay win for Her. Not because it was my favorite movie of the year or anything, but because it was the first screenplay in ages that genuinely surprised me. Not in the sense of a last-minute twist that comes out of nowhere—that’s common enough—but in the sense of a narrative that shifted directions smoothly and naturally into something much more interesting than I thought it would be. The art of Hollywood screenwriting has deteriorated so badly that this doesn’t happen very often anymore. I won’t say more in case you haven’t seen the movie and still plan to, but feel free to discuss in comments.

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The Best Oscar of Last Night Was the Screenplay Award for "Her"

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