News Round-Up, August 18, 2023

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Most read…

U.S. Mortgage Rates Jump to Highest Level Since 2002

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has climbed above 7 percent, making it harder for buyers to afford homes, which are already in short supply.

NYT by Gregory Schmidt, Aug. 17, 2023

Hawaiian Electric/wildfires: old business models are no longer viable

Climate disasters were previously events utilities could withstand

Financial Times, Today

Putin fails again as Europe’s gas storage hits 90 percent

The EU has met its gas storage targets more than three months ahead of schedule. But that might not mean lower prices.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL GAVIN, AUGUST 17, 2023

Extreme fires caused by ancient humans wiped out Californian megafauna

A series of catastrophic fires killed off many large mammals in southern California by 13,000 years ago, and they were largely due to the arrival of humans

NEW Scientist by Michael Le Page, 17 August 2023

Unrealistic' global offshore wind expansion target would require $27 billion by 2026, says Wood Mackenzie

Reuters Today

Will the rest of the world feel China’s deflation pain?

Falling prices will lower cost of importe but are unlikely to have a dramatic impact elsewhere

Financial Times by Chris Giles in London YESTERDAY

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The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.

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Source: NYT 

U.S. Mortgage Rates Jump to Highest Level Since 2002

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has climbed above 7 percent, making it harder for buyers to afford homes, which are already in short supply.

NYT by Gregory Schmidt, Aug. 17, 2023

Mortgage rates surged to a 21-year high this week, a jump that will make it even harder for buyers to afford homes in a market hampered by high prices and low inventory.

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage — the most popular home loan in the United States — was 7.09 percent, up from 6.96 percent last week, Freddie Mac said on Thursday. A year earlier, the 30-year rate was 5.13 percent.

Analysts say they expect mortgage rates to remain lofty in the near term, and to start cooling only gradually by the end of the year. The current rate is the highest since April 2002. Since then, home buyers enjoyed years of falling rates, which even dipped below 3 percent at the beginning of the pandemic.

But as mortgage rates began abruptly rising last year, when the Federal Reserve started lifting interest rates to rein in rapid inflation, the housing market has stagnated, as owners with low mortgage rates have been unwilling to put their homes up for sale.

In June, sales of existing homes fell nearly 19 percent from the year before, according to the National Association of Realtors. The scarcity of listings has kept housing prices elevated: The median price of an existing home was $410,200 in June, the second-highest since the organization began tracking the data in 1999, down only marginally from a high of $413,800 a year ago.

And experts do not think the housing market will cool off anytime soon. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs revised upward its forecast for home prices, predicting a 1.8 percent rise in prices this year and 3.5 percent jump in 2024. “Affordability remains burdensome,” analysts at the bank said in a report, citing a tighter housing supply and a steady demand for homes.

The scarcity of existing homes for sale has pushed buyers to consider new construction.Credit...Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

That’s bad news for would-be home buyers like Kathleen Schmidt, who rents a house in Toms River, N.J., with her husband and two teenage children. She said that they were trying to save for a 20 percent down payment on a townhome nearby, and that the jump in mortgage rates was discouraging.

“I just felt in the pit of my stomach: We are never going to be able to buy a home,” said Ms. Schmidt, who owns KMSPR, a public relations firm for authors and publishers.

“My dream forever was to own a home someday because it’s something my parents never did,” she added. “We want something left for our kids.”

Affordability is a persistent challenge for home buyers, said Jeff Ostrowski, an analyst at the personal finance company Bankrate, who predicted that rates would remain elevated for some time.

“I think buyers are going to have to buckle their chin straps and figure out how to make it work,” he said.

The scarcity of existing homes for sale has pushed buyers to consider new construction. The sale of new homes climbed nearly 24 percent in June from the same period a year earlier, the Census Bureau reported. Housing starts, a measure of the construction of new homes, increased about 6 percent in July from the previous year.

“The builders are making profits, and their stock margins have increased from a year ago,” said Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. He added that national builders like KB Home, Lennar and Toll Brothers would continue to add inventory to make Wall Street happy, but that they were focused more on higher-priced homes.

For home buyers, finding affordable options remains difficult. The Federal Reserve has lifted its policy interest rate, which underpins borrowing costs across the economy, to the highest level in 22 years as it tries to slow inflation by cooling the economy. Although price pressures have abated, with the annual rate of inflation moderating from nearly 9 percent last year to just above 3 percent last month, a recent uptick in gasoline prices could prop up inflation figures.

Officials at the central bank have suggested that further rate adjustments could be possible this year. They expect to cut rates in 2024, but they think it could be several years before rates return to the lower levels that were common before the pandemic.

Mortgage rates generally track the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds, which are influenced by a variety of factors, including expectations around inflation, the Fed’s actions and how investors react to it all. On Thursday, the 10-year yield rose above 4.3 percent for the first time since 2007.

For home buyers and market watchers, the question remains, how long will mortgage rates remain high?

Mr. Yun predicted that rates would slowly start to ease by next spring or even by the year’s end, coming down to 6.5 percent, which is still more than double the rate in 2021. But he said the Fed’s fight against inflation and the recent downgrade in the nation’s credit rating continued to put pressure on mortgage rates.

“The housing market is in a tough spot,” he said.

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Image by Germán & Co

Hawaiian Electric/wildfires: old business models are no longer viable

Climate disasters were previously events utilities could withstand

Financial Times, Today

Climate disasters were previously events utilities could withstand Investors fear electricity transmission equipment may be implicated in the deadly wildfires in Hawaii © Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

The securities of US energy utilities are supposed to be safe investments. Consumer prices for power are set by regulators with the aim of producing solid returns. In parts of the US, climate change has upended that bargain. 

Shares of Hawaiian Electric Industries have fallen nearly 70 per cent this month. Investors fear electricity transmission equipment may be implicated in wildfires claiming more than a hundred lives and causing property damage running into billions of dollars.

For the moment, the focus should be on how to best help survivors. Soon enough, questions about the viability of old business models will need answering.

Serious litigation could result in a settlement that leaves alleged victims as shareholders in Hawaiian Electric. Just such an equitisation happened a few years back when northern Californian utility PG&E settled a $13.5bn liability for wildfires. Half was in the form of shares handed to a victims’ trust. 

PacifiCorp, a utility owned by investor Berkshire Hathaway, recently lost a lawsuit over a 2020 wildfire. It could be on the hook for several billions of dollars in claims. Colorado utility Xcel Energy is in the same boat.

Climate disasters were previously events utilities could withstand. They now risk becoming annual events that dictate expensive remediation and retrofitting. These may be beyond the capacity of any private business. 

Northern California is prosperous. Multiple investors, including private equity, were interested in funding the restructuring of PG&E. The state of California itself supported the creation of a specialised insurance fund to socialise risk.

Claims against Hawaiian Electric may be trickier to resolve. The population is smaller. Rebuilding costs will be exorbitant. The Hawaiian average price for electricity is already steep, at 44 cents per kilowatt hour.

Hawaii’s wildfires may therefore prove a tipping point in how the US apportions the costs of an increasingly unstable climate.

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Gas Infrastructure Europe said Thursday that member countries' gas stores are now at more than 90 percent capacity | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP 

Putin fails again as Europe’s gas storage hits 90 percent

The EU has met its gas storage targets more than three months ahead of schedule. But that might not mean lower prices.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL GAVIN, AUGUST 17, 2023 

The EU's reserves of natural gas hit a historic high Thursday, filling up well in advance of the winter heating season as the bloc continues its dash away from Russian energy dependence.

That leaves the Kremlin scrambling to plug a gaping hole in its finances left by its decision to cut off European customers in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

But less Russian gas also opens the EU to the bigger price fluctuations of the global market for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Gas Infrastructure Europe said Thursday that member countries' gas stores are now at 90.12 percent capacity — breezing past the 90 percent filling target that Brussels is legally required to meet by November.

"Today’s confirmation that we have met our gas storage requirements so far ahead of schedule underlines that the EU is well-prepared for winter and this will help to further stabilize markets in the coming months," the bloc's Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told POLITICO.

"The EU energy market is in a much more stable position than it was this time last year," she added, while acknowledging "we have seen in recent weeks that the gas market remains sensitive" and that the Commission will continue to monitor it as the Continent heads toward chillier weather.

The news underlines the EU's success in shedding its dependence on Russian pipeline gas, which before the war supplied about 40 percent of the bloc's demand.

Moscow steadily cut off its EU customers, slashing and then ultimately cutting off deliveries through its Yamal-Europe and Nord Stream pipelines, while also reducing the volumes reaching the EU via Ukraine.

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EUROPE STOCKS UP ON GAS

*Europe's gas stores are filling faster than in previous years. 

*EU gas storage levels, in terawatt-hours and in share of total storage capacity.

*Storage data for some dates listed is estimated

SOURCE: Gas Infrastructure Europe by Lucia Mackenzie and Giovanna Coi.

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The EU responded by shifting to other suppliers and slashing demand.

Russian gas fell to 23.6 percent of EU imports in the first 32 weeks of 2022, and so far this year it's down to just 8.4 percent. That puts the EU's commitment to end purchases of Russian gas by 2027 within reach.

"This is definitely a success story," said Giovanni Sgaravatti, a research analyst at Brussels think tank Bruegel, "for the Commission, for the energy market, but even more so for the governments of member states that responded fairly well to replace 1,000 terawatt hours of missing Russian gas in the space of a year."

Russian gas has largely been replaced by imports from the U.S., Norway, Azerbaijan and others, bringing prices dramatically down from their 2022 peak. The Dutch TTF gas pricing index hit €320 per megawatt hour last August; it hovered around €38 this week.

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IMPORTS OF GAS FROM RUSSIA HAVE HIT HISTORIC LOWS

*The EU27's dependence on Russian gas imports has decreased over the past three years.

*EU natural gas imports from Russia and other trading partners, in share of total imports and millions of cubic meters for the first 32 weeks of each year.

SOURCE: Bruege by Lucia Mackenzie and Giovanna Coi 

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However, the cost of gas still remains higher than before the war, when it fluctuated around €20 per megawatt hour, meaning bigger bills for households and lower productivity for European industry.

"Wholesale gas prices may be significantly lower than a year ago when the market was gripped by Nord Stream coming offline, but they remain still noticeably more expensive than historic gas prices over the last decade," said Tom Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at market analysis firm ICIS, warning that traders are still anxious about supply.

"The fact European storages are nearly full earlier than normal — typically they reach this level around October — doesn't necessarily mean the price will come down further, unfortunately. Stored gas can only get you so far through a winter and if that winter is cold there's a certain amount of risk, and that's what keeps gas price elevated for the time being," he added.

Analysts expect this to be the last winter where shortages are a serious concern, given that increased LNG production capacity from suppliers like Qatar and the U.S. is due to come online midway through 2024.

However, a number of Central European countries, in particular Austria, are still reliant on Russian imports sent through pipelines running across Ukraine. Kyiv has indicated it does not intend to renegotiate the transit deal, which is set to expire at the end of next year. That creates a hard deadline for those still depending on Moscow's fossil fuels.

The loss of its most dependable European customers has been a big blow for the Kremlin; revenues from energy exports were down 41 percent to $43.4 billion in the first seven months of this year, the Russian finance ministry said. Meanwhile, the ruble hit a 16-month low, and this week crashed through a symbolic benchmark of more than 100 to the dollar.

That makes it harder for Russia to continue to prop up its isolated economy, pay its soldiers' wages and purchase weapons from abroad. According to Natasha Kuhrt, a senior lecturer at King's College London's Department of War Studies, "in the end, the government will prioritize military spending," while economic woes are mainly "going to mean hardship" for many ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile, Moscow-based research firm Romir on Wednesday published a poll of 3,500 Russians that found almost one in five is having to reduce their spending on food and essential goods to save money, up three percent from the month before.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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A sabre-toothed cat skull in the Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits, California/ Robert Landau

Extreme fires caused by ancient humans wiped out Californian megafauna

A series of catastrophic fires killed off many large mammals in southern California by 13,000 years ago, and they were largely due to the arrival of humans

NEW Scientist by Michael Le Page, 17 August 2023

A series of catastrophic fires was the immediate cause of the extinction of many large mammals in southern California 13,000 years ago, according to a study of fossils from the La Brea tar pits. The findings suggest these extreme fires were probably a result of humans abruptly changing the ecosystem by killing off herbivores – meaning there was more vegetation to burn – and deliberately starting fires.

“It’s a synergy of the drying climate and the humans, and the fact that they are killing herbivores and increasing fuel loads, and all of those things go together to make a feedback loop that takes the ecosystem to a chaotic state,” says Robin O’Keefe at Marshall University in West Virginia. “The fire event is really catastrophic.”

The tar pits at La Brea in Los Angeles have trapped numerous animals over the past 50,000 years and preserved their bones, providing an extraordinary window into the past. Many of the bones have never been precisely dated because radiocarbon dating was more expensive in the past and required destroying large chunks of bone, and also because results were skewed by the tar inside the bones.

Now, costs have fallen, only tiny quantities of bone are needed and the tar contamination problem can be solved by extracting preserved collagen and dating only this material. As a result, O’Keefe and his colleagues were able to precisely date 172 bones from eight species.

Seven of these species are extinct, including the sabre-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis), the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus), the western camel (Camelops hesternus) and the ancient bison (Bison antiquus), which was even larger than surviving bison. The team also dated coyote (Canis latrans) bones as a control.

The dating shows that the seven species were all gone from the La Brea area by 13,000 years ago, though some survived elsewhere in North America for another millennium or so. Their disappearance from La Brea coincides with massive spikes in the number of charcoal particles in lake sediments, which are deposited during wildfires.

Keep up with advances in archaeology and evolution with our monthly newsletter.

“Some of those spikes for those fires are just enormous, orders of magnitude more than has ever happened before,” says O’Keefe.

Pollen in lake sediments shows that the vegetation had begun changing from woodland to a more open landscape around 16,000 years ago, as the area became drier due to the retreat of the ice sheets. But there was a sudden shift to fire-resistant vegetation around 13,000 years ago.

“The results of this study are consistent with humans increasing fire both directly though ignitions and indirectly through hunting of herbivores,” says Allison Karp at Yale University, who wasn’t involved in the study.

If the tiny number of people alive at the time could do this, the much greater number of people alive now can have a much bigger impact, says O’Keefe. “It’s super relevant to today,” he says.

More extreme wildfires are happening in many parts of the world as it warms, and O’Keefe says his findings show there is a risk this could lead to ecosystems flipping into another state, resulting in many species going extinct. “Hopefully, by learning these things about what happened at La Brea, maybe we can change our trajectory,” he says.

Earlier research had suggested that the development of the Clovis stone tool technology, whose distinctive feature is finely crafted large spear points for tackling big animals, enabled people in North America to wipe out the continent’s megafauna. However, these findings show that some large mammals were going extinct in places before Clovis tools appeared. O’Keefe and his colleagues think Clovis tools were instead a response to the loss of some megafauna.

“The things that seem to get hunted out first are the things that are easier to catch, like camels and horses and bison,” says O’Keefe. “It’s only when you start running out of those that we think that the Clovis technology evolves, because you have to do this really dangerous thing and try to take on a mastodon because all the easier to kill animals are gone.”

“Clovis wasn’t a driver of extinction. It evolves because the extinction was already under way,” he says.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

'Unrealistic' global offshore wind expansion target would require $27 billion by 2026, says Wood Mackenzie

Reuters, August 18, 2023

Aug 17 (Reuters) - Government targets to increase wind power installations would see annual capacity additions reach 80 gigawatts (GW) per year by 2030, requiring $100 billion in secured investment in the supply chain by 2026, Wood Mackenzie said in a report.

The research and consultancy firm forecast annual capacity is more likely to increase by 30 gigawatts (GW) a year by 2030, which would require $27 billion of secured investment by 2026.

"The supply chain is struggling to scale up and will be an impediment to achieving decarbonisation targets if change does not happen," said Chris Seiple, vice chair, power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie.

"Nearly 80 GW of annual installations to meet all government targets is not realistic, even achieving our forecasted 30 GW in additions will prove unrealistic if there isn't immediate investment in the supply chain," Seiple said.

Wood Mackenzie noted that the low profit margins on offshore wind production and uncertainty about project timings resulting in very different supply-chain needs are making it hard to drum up investment in the sector.

According to the Statistical Review of World Energy report in June, global wind and solar power grew to a record share of 12% of power generation last year, surpassing nuclear.

Target setting and plans for power market infrastructure to support offshore wind need to extend beyond 2030 to scale up the offshore wind supply chain, analysts at Wood Mackenzie said.

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Illustrations by Germán & Co.

Will the rest of the world feel China’s deflation pain?

Falling prices will lower cost of imports but are unlikely to have a dramatic impact elsewhere

Financial Times by Chris Giles in London YESTERDAY

Beijing’s economic woes worsened last week after it emerged China had fallen into deflation. The news highlights how the country is struggling to live up to expectations of a strong recovery after emerging from extended Covid lockdowns.

But will falling prices have an impact beyond China’s borders, in places where the bigger risk is still that an extended period of high inflation will endure?

For now, economists say there is little reason for concern, as:

Chinese deflation is likely to prove temporary

Deflation is primarily a concern when it is pervasive and caused by companies desperate to sell to consumers who are unwilling or unable to buy because they have fallen on hard times.

This describes neither China’s economy nor its price movements.

The economic recovery following the reopening has disappointed — the property sector remains a serious concern — but output is still growing and an expansion of close to 5 per cent this year is still on the cards.

“China’s consumption recovery remains soft and uneven, but this a far cry from Japan-style deflation,” said Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, referring to the country’s decades-long experience with falling prices.

While Chinese consumer prices fell 0.3 per cent in the year to July, a small fall in costs also occurred in 2021. Now as then, the deflation appears temporary — more the result of base effects than any deep problems.

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A rise in core inflation signals Chinese deflation is unlikely to linger

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In July alone, prices rose by 0.2 per cent and they have increased 0.5 per cent in the first seven months of 2023. The measured deflation arose because prices — particularly of pork, which has fallen in price by 26 per cent over the past 12 months — did not rise at the pace seen during 2022, when China endured several major lockdowns.

Neil Shearing, chief economist of Capital Economics, said the rise in core inflation — which excludes food and energy, and is seen as a better measure of underlying price pressures — from 0.4 per cent in June to 0.8 per cent in July demonstrated the lack of entrenched deflation in China. “To the extent that chronic demand weakness shows up in the inflation data, it will do so in the core numbers,” he said.

Inflation is seldom as contagious as it seems

The world — bar China — has appeared to suffer an inflation boom during the past couple of years. While the pace of price rises has been high in most countries, the reasons why differ markedly.

Price rises triggered by snarl-ups in global supply chains may have been universal. But they were amplified in the US by extremely strong consumer demand growth. The surge in demand followed a huge fiscal expansion in 2020 and 2021, when the Trump and Biden administrations sent large cheques to households to combat the Covid-19 crisis.

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The US's economic recovery has been far stronger than elsewhere

Change in GDP between Q4 2019 and Q1 2023

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Strong demand was much less an issue in Europe and in emerging economies. These suffered much more from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Europe, the pinch came from soaring natural gas prices. In poorer countries, higher food prices and energy costs sparked a wider rise in the price level.

Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS, said in the case of Chinese deflation, price pressures were as likely to prove “intensely local”.

While the price of Chinese imports was likely to fall as a result of the country’s economic woes, Donovan noted that “an awful lot happens” to exports before they reach their final destination. “Generally most of the price of something made in China and sold in the US will be paid to US workers — in transport or advertising costs, and so on,” he said.

Chinese deflation can help in Europe

The big inflation problem, especially in Europe and emerging economies, has been the higher cost of imports, lowering living standards and sparking a process in which domestic companies try to defend their profit margins by raising prices and workers struggle to catch up.

Chinese factory goods prices were 4.4 per cent lower in July than a year earlier. To a minor extent, this has an effect abroad.

European countries will benefit from a weaker Chinese economy that places less competition on supplies of natural gas as it adjusts to weaning itself off from Russian supplies.

It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that everyone else benefits (at least a little) from a weak Chinese economy.

Recommended Unhedged podcast19 min listen China slows down China has contributed 40 per cent to global growth rates over the past 10 years, according to Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research. Any economic troubles in Beijing will weigh on world output.

But at the moment, the fallout from Chinese deflation looks manageable both for the country itself and the rest of the world.

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News Round-Up, August 17, 2023

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Most read…

EXCLUSIVE: Hawaiian Electric Knew of Wildfire Threat, but Waited Years to Act

Four years ago, the utility said it needed to do more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks. It made little progress, focusing on a shift to clean energy.

WSJ by Katherine Blunt, Dan Frosch and Jim Carlton, Aug. 16, 2023 

Russia’s War-Torn Economy Hits Its Speed Limit

Economists see this week’s currency gyrations not as the beginning of a financial crisis but rather as a symptom of the Kremlin’s sclerotic economic prospects

WSJ by Chelsey Dulaney and Georgi Kantchev, Aug. 17, 2023

Why Hawaiian Electric Is Facing a Lawsuit After Deadly Wildfires in Maui

TIME by SIMMONE SHAH,  AUGUST 16, 2023  | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: AUGUST 15, 2023 

As Brazil's president, Lula is enjoying a favorable period with an approval rating of 60 percent.

Support for the leftist leader is increasing among evangelicals and in the southern part of the country, owing to the economic influence.

"El País" Naiara Galarraga Gortázar, São Paulo, August 17, 2023 - Translation and editing to English by Germán & Co.

THE ANATOMY OF TWITTER

A POLITICAL TSUNAMI BY MILEI

IF THE FAR-RIGHT CANDIDATE WINS THE PRESIDENCY, HE WILL ELIMINATE SEVERAL MINISTRIES. TO CLARIFY HIS PROJECT, HE UPLOADED A VIDEO ON TIKTOK WITH AN IMPECCABLE STAGING THAT MATCHED HIS PROFILE.

"El País" Federico Rivas Molina, 17th August 2023, translation and editing to English by Germán & Co.

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The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.

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Burned cars in front of homes destroyed by the wildfire in Lahaina PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/ Edited by Germán & Co.

Hawaiian Electric Knew of Wildfire Threat, but Waited Years to Act

Four years ago, the utility said it needed to do more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks. It made little progress, focusing on a shift to clean energy.

WSJ by Katherine Blunt, Dan Frosch and Jim Carlton, Aug. 16, 2023 

During the 2019 wildfire season, one of the worst Maui had ever seen, Hawaiian Electric concluded that it needed to do far more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks.

The utility examined California’s plans to reduce fires ignited by power lines, started flying drones over its territory and vowed to take steps to protect its equipment and its customers from the threat of fire. 

Nearly four years later, the company has completed little such work. Between 2019 and 2022, it invested less than $245,000 on wildfire-specific projects on the island, regulatory filings show. It didn’t seek state approval to raise rates to pay for broad wildfire-safety improvements until 2022, and has yet to receive it.

Now, the company is facing scrutiny, litigation and a financial crisis over indications that its power lines might have played a role in igniting the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. The blaze has caused more than 100 deaths, destroyed the historic town of Lahaina and resulted in an estimated billions of dollars in damage. 

Electrical workers repair power lines leading into Lahaina on Tuesday. PHOTO: MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS

The fire’s cause hasn’t been determined, but mounting evidence suggests the utility’s equipment was involved. One video taken by a resident shows a downed power line igniting dry grass along a road near Lahaina. A firm that monitors grid sensors reported dozens of electrical disruptions in the hours before the fire began, including one that coincided in time with video footage of a flash of light from power lines. 

Hawaiian Electric said it would investigate any role its infrastructure may have played and cooperate with a separate probe into the fire launched last week by the Hawaii attorney general. 

“We all believe it’s important to understand what happened. And I think we all believe it’s important to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Shelee Kimura, Hawaiian Electric’s chief executive.

In response to questions about its wildfire-mitigation spending, a spokesman for Hawaiian Electric said the company reduces wildfire risk through its routine utility work, including trimming or removing trees and upgrading, replacing and inspecting equipment. It said it has spent about $84 million on maintenance and tree work in Maui County since 2018.

The utility has long been a force in Hawaii politics and business. In the wake of the fire, its finances are reeling. Its stock has plunged 49% this week, and its credit rating was downgraded to junk by S&P.

Hawaiian Electric is the latest utility in the Western U.S. to struggle following large wildfires, many of which have been sparked by utility equipment in recent years. PG&E, the Northern California utility giant, sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 after its power lines ignited a series of major fires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 84 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, Calif. That had been the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history until the Maui fire. 

In recent days, Hawaiian Electric officials have conferred with their counterparts at PG&E, seeking legal guidance on how to weather a crisis, people familiar with the matter said. The company is speaking with restructuring-advisory firms, exploring options to address its financial and legal challenge, said people familiar with the matter.

Since PG&E’s bankruptcy, Hawaiian Electric has made reference in regulatory filings to the risks of power-line fires, but it waited years to take significant action, documents and interviews show. During that period, the company was undertaking a state-mandated shift to renewable energy. 

Acres burned in Maui County

Source: Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization

The growing risk of wildfire on Maui had been known for years. The number of acres burned on the island soared to 39,000 in 2019, from 150 in 1999, according to data compiled by the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit that works with government agencies and the public. 

Several reports released by the group and others in recent years have said the danger is increasing, in part, because of invasive plants that have overtaken former sugar and pineapple plantations. Roughly one-quarter of state land in Hawaii is now covered by invasive grasses and shrubs, according to a study by the University of Hawaii and think tank East-West Center. 

Wildfires in Maui since 2000

Note: Grasslands as of 2017
Sources: NASA (wildfires); U.S. Geological Survey (grasslands)
Jake Steinberg/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In 2018, winds from Hurricane Lane passing to the south helped fuel fires that burned more than 2,000 acres on Maui. The next year was far worse, with the most acres blackened in decades, data from the wildfire management group show.

That July, a 9,000-acre blaze blew out of control in Central Maui, burning 25 acres a minute, according to the Maui News. The blaze prompted hundreds of evacuations and came within 150 feet of Hawaiian Electric’s power plant on Maui, according to the paper. The plant accounts for as much as 80% of the island’s power supplies.

A view of the devastation in Lahaina. PHOTO: ELYSE BUTLER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

It said it would install heavier, insulated conductors on Maui and Oahu to minimize the risk of sparks when winds picked up, as well as technology to detect disruptions when the conductors came into contact with vegetation or each other. It said it would apply fire retardant on poles in risky areas and consider installing cameras and other devices to monitor weather conditions during fire season.

In filings over the next two years with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, which is tasked with approving utility projects and spending, the company made only passing reference to wildfire mitigation. 

Renewables push

Former regulators and energy company officials said the utility was focused at that time on procuring renewable energy. Hawaii has been on a push to convert to renewables since 2008, when a run-up in oil prices sent electrical rates at Hawaiian Electric—which relied on petroleum imports for 80% of its energy supply—through the roof. In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation mandating that the state derive 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, the first such requirement in the U.S. 

The company dove into reaching the goals, stating in 2017 that it would reach the benchmark five years ahead of schedule. 

In 2019, under pressure to replace the output of two conventional power plants set to retire, the company sought to contract for 900 megawatts of renewable energy, the most it had pursued at any one time.

“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” said Mina Morita, who chaired the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.” 

The drive to reach the renewable goals also preoccupied private energy companies working with Hawaiian Electric and state energy officials, said Doug McLeod, a consultant who served for several years as the Maui county energy commissioner. 

“Looking back with hindsight, the business opportunities were on the generation side, and the utility was going out for bid with all these big renewable-energy projects,” he said. “But in retrospect, it seems clear, we weren’t as focused on these fire risks as we should have been.”

Burned cars in front of homes destroyed by the wildfire in Lahaina PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

A 2020 management audit of the company found that its enterprise risk analysis was largely focused on financial risk, with limited consideration of operational and business risk. And the division within the company that oversaw power line operations had significant management problems, the audit found.

Henry Curtis, who leads an environmental and community group that regularly weighs in on utility projects, said Hawaiian Electric officials told him privately that they didn’t believe Hawaii was prone to the type of devastating wildfires roaring through California. The utility officials thought the state’s parched grasslands were less of an urgent threat than California’s vast and dry timberlands, he said. 

Shirley Daniel, a former Hawaiian Electric board member, said the utility hadn’t seen Hawaiian fires as a major threat. She likened the Maui disaster to the devastation Hurricane Sandy brought in 2012 to a New York City area that hadn’t before experienced so much damage from a tropical storm. 

“I think the world is going to have to be realistic about these things,” she said about the changing nature of natural disasters.

Prompted by the increase in wildfires, a Maui county government commission in July 2021 examined the local prevention and response system and warned county and state officials of the growing fire threat. 

“The investigation found that the number of incidents from a combination of wild/brush/forest fires appears to be increasing, and that this increase poses an increased threat to citizens, properties, and sacred sites,” the commission’s report concluded.

The report said not enough was being done to address the concerns. It recommended a number of solutions, including better management of vegetation around power lines and creating fuel buffers around the lines. 

County and state officials didn’t return calls seeking comment. 

Sweeping Wildfire

Fires started on Tuesday devastated Lahaina.

Sources: Whisker Labs; Maxar Technologies, Planet Labs (satellite images); OpenStreetMap (building footprints)

The month the county report was released, Hawaiian Electric broached wildfire risk with the utilities commission. In a proceeding focused on modernizing the power grid, it proposed some wildfire-mitigation work on Maui, including upgrading power lines and installing weather cameras and smart technology—some of the initiatives mentioned in its 2019 announcement. 

The regulatory proceeding stalled, and only recently resumed.

Jennifer Potter, who served as a state utilities commissioner from 2018 until November 2022, said the utility should have been more aggressive in presenting its plans on wildfire risk. “With the increase in wildfires that did occur, in particular on Maui, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for [Hawaiian Electric] to have a more robust wildfire plan,” she said. 

Potter also said the commission itself could have been more assertive in demanding that the utility give priority to wildfire mitigation. “Because it wasn’t an emergency, it didn’t receive the attention that it needed,” she said. She called it a “missed opportunity.” 

In June 2022, Hawaiian Electric sought regulatory permission to raise rates to fund a more comprehensive plan to prepare the grid for new climate change-related stresses, including elevated risk of wildfire. It said it planned to spend about $190 million across Hawaii on removing potentially hazardous trees, replacing and upgrading power lines, and other protective measures, many of which have been undertaken by other utilities throughout the West. 

As in many regulatory proceedings, the proposal has taken months to advance. The state utilities commission and other stakeholders asked dozens of questions of the company. In responses filed before the Maui fire occurred, Hawaiian Electric said it believed there was an urgent need to complete the upgrades, but that it wouldn’t start on the work until it has state approval to recoup costs from customers—a common occurrence when utilities seek to make large investments.

In a filing in June, the commission said: “In light of the asserted urgency of these transmission and distribution resiliency upgrades, why did Hawaiian Electric not begin to initiate some of these projects sooner?” 

The company hasn’t yet responded.

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This week, the ruble fell to its lowest level since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. YURI KADOBNOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Russia’s War-Torn Economy Hits Its Speed Limit

Economists see this week’s currency gyrations not as the beginning of a financial crisis but rather as a symptom of the Kremlin’s sclerotic economic prospects

WSJ by Chelsey Dulaney and Georgi Kantchev, Aug. 17, 2023

The Russian central bank’s jumbo interest-rate increase to halt a tumbling ruble this week points to a new reality for the Kremlin: Russia’s economy has reached its speed limit.

The government has flooded the Russian economy with money to keep its troops in Ukraine supplied and insulate its businesses and citizens from the war. Thanks to the state’s largess, demand in the economy is rising, helping it recover from last year’s sanctions-induced recession. Supply—increasingly constrained by Russia’s isolation and widespread labor shortages—isn’t.

That growing imbalance of Russia’s wartime economy was thrust into focus this week as the ruble fell to its lowest level since the early days of the war. A senior Kremlin official blamed the currency drop on loose monetary policy. A day later, Russia’s central bank hiked interest rates by 3.5 percentage points at an emergency meeting, citing the need to stabilize the currency and bring down inflation, which it said has been growing at an annualized rate of 7.6% over the last three months.

The ruble has staged a rebound, with $1 now buying roughly 95 rubles compared with as much as 102 on Monday. Economists see this week’s volatility not as the beginning of an imminent financial crisis but rather as a symptom of Russia’s sclerotic economic prospects.

How many rubles by $1

Russian invades Ukraine

Note: The Y-axis is reversed to show the ruble's depreciation against the dollar.

One step Russia’s central bank is now considering to boost the currency would reimpose requirements—used earlier in the war—on exporters to convert foreign earnings back into rubles, according to media reports.

“Russia is one of the few countries that could sustain for the longest. I don’t think they’re necessarily going to run out of money or whatnot,” said Erik Meyersson, chief emerging-market strategist at Swedish bank SEB.  

But the level at which the Russian economy can grow without stoking inflation is now much lower than before Western sanctions. The decline of this so-called potential growth rate sets up a dilemma for President Vladimir Putin as he needs to both boost military production and placate the domestic population ahead of the coming presidential elections in March.

Government spending as part of gross domestic product has jumped by 13.5% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the highest growth rate in data going back to 1996.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that Russia’s potential growth rate was around 3.5% before 2014, the year it seized Crimea from Ukraine.

Analysts at Raiffeisenbank Russia estimate the long-term potential growth of the economy now stands at 0.9%. In the years running up to the 2008 financial crisis, Russia’s economy averaged growth of more than 7% a year.

“The devaluation of the ruble shows that the economic fireworks of booming public spending are not sustainable,” said Janis Kluge, an expert on the Russian economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “The speed limit is not what the government can finance, but what the economy can produce.”

Russia’s ability to increase production at its own factories is already stretched to the limit. In sectors supplying the military, plants are working multiple shifts to cope with orders. Statistical categories associated with military output, such as metal goods, optical products and special clothing, boomed in the first half of the year. 

Nonmilitary industrial sectors, meanwhile, have languished, weighed down by the lack of access to Western parts, inefficiency and a history of weak investment in upkeep of machines and equipment. Auto output is down more than 10% year-over-year. As a result, Russia’s economy has become increasingly centered on its vast natural resources, with profits from energy and metals filling the government’s coffers.

Russia has tried to become more self-sufficient since it invaded Ukraine last February and was cut off from Western supply networks. Those efforts are slow-moving and so far having mixed success. Some 65% of industrial enterprises in Russia are dependent on imported equipment, according to a poll published in June by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. 

“Building up capacity in new sectors takes time,” said Iikka Korhonen, the head of the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies. “You need machinery, you need qualified technicians. All that takes resources and it takes time.”

Russia has turned abroad to fill the gap. Imports of goods were up 18% this year through July, according to data from the finance ministry. Imports from China have surged and Russia’s defense minister recently visited North Korea to view weapons systems. 

Russia’s growing dependence on imports has major implications for its economic stability. The economy still runs a current-account surplus, broadly meaning it receives more from exports than it spends on imports. But that surplus has fallen 85% this year, which means less money is flowing into the economy and a lower demand for rubles. A weakening ruble also makes imports more expensive in ruble terms, driving up inflation.

Russia has been less successful at finding new suppliers for mid-tech and high-tech products such as aircraft parts that have been hit by Western sanctions. Those imports were down $7 billion in the final quarter of 2022 compared with a year earlier, according to an analysis published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Russia’s growing technological isolation is expected to reduce its long-term growth prospects, which were bleak even before the war. The country’s labor force has been shrinking for more than a decade as its population ages. Productivity has been weak owing to a lack of investment and a business climate rife with corruption and bureaucracy.

How might the state of the Russian economy affect the war in Ukraine? Join the conversation below.

Those trends have only worsened over the past year. Russia is facing its worst labor shortage since the 1990s as hundreds of thousands are mobilized for the front or have fled the country. 

“There’s almost no supply left in Russia’s economy, and the inevitable result of that is going to be inflation,” said Liam Peach, senior emerging-market economist at Capital Economics.

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A downed power line in Lahaina on Aug. 14.

David Butow for TIME

Why Hawaiian Electric Is Facing a Lawsuit After Deadly Wildfires in Maui

TIME by SIMMONE SHAH,  AUGUST 16, 2023  | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: AUGUST 15, 2023 

In the wake of wildfires that ripped through Maui last week, many are seeking answers about what caused the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in over a century. That search has put Hawaiian Electric, which serves 95% of the island state’s 1.4 million residents, in the spotlight. The utility provider is facing a lawsuit over alleged inaction in the face of the destructive Lahaina wildfire that has killed at least 99 people on the island of Maui.

Though an official cause of the wildfire has not been reached, Lahaina residents filed a class action lawsuit against the utility company, alleging that, in the days before the fires broke out, the company “chose not to deenergize their power lines during the High Wind Watch and Red Flag Warning conditions for Maui before the Lahaina Fire started.” The filing also claims that the company failed to shut off power lines even after the fires began.

No shut-off plan

Hawaiian Electric did not deploy a public power shutoff plan—an aggressive safety strategy used in other states, such as California, Oregon and Nevada—to proactively shut down power to communities with high wind conditions and increased risks of fire. 

Intense wind gusts knocked down approximately 30 utility poles across the region on August 8, many onto trees and roads, and complicated evacuations, according to Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen, who confirmed that some electrical lines were energized when they hit the ground.

According to the Washington Post, Hawaiian Electric was aware that a power shut-off was an useful strategy, but didn’t include the step in it in its fire mitigation plans. Hawaiian Electric spokesman Jim Kelly, told CNN that the utility company does not have a formal shut-off program in place, since the power is needed to provide water for firefighters.

“Pre-emptive, short-notice power shut-offs have to be coordinated with first-responders and in Lahaina, electricity powers the pumps that provide the water needed for firefighting,” Kelly told the New York Times.

Research firm CoreLogic has estimated that the residential property damages stand at $1.3 billion, but Hawaii Gov. Josh Green estimates the losses “approach $6 billion.” On Friday, Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez announced a “comprehensive review” of the decisions and policies surrounding the fires, which the state’s emergency measures were largely unprepared for. 

An emergency management plan published by the state of Hawaii in February 2022 rated wildfires as low and medium risk across the board for its effect on people, property, the environment, and emergency management program operations.

The state’s outdoor emergency siren system—which it says is the largest in the world—is meant to alert residents to tsunamis and other natural disasters, but it did not activate during the fires. 

Scrutiny and lawsuit

Power lines have been responsible for the spread of many destructive wildfires in the U.S.  From 1992 to 2020 federal, state and local fire services dealt with 32,652 powerline-ignited wildfires across the country, according to Inside Climate News. In California alone, the electric company PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people. The company recently reached a $150 million settlement for its involvement in the 2020 Zogg fires. 

Documents filed in the Hawaiian Electric lawsuit allege that the company had studied wildfire mitigation plans filed by California utility companies, which included a shut-off plan during high wind and so-called “red flag”—when warm temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds combine to produce an increased fire risk—conditions to prevent wildfires. But the documents allege that Hawaiian Electric never created a plan of its own. 

In an emailed statement to TIME, Hawaiian Electric said it does not comment on pending litigation. "Our immediate focus is on supporting emergency response efforts on Maui and restoring power for our customers and communities as quickly as possible," the statement added. "At this early stage, the cause of the fire has not been determined and we will work with the state and county as they conduct their review."

Amid the scrutiny, Hawaiian Electric has seen its share price tumble, plunging over 40% to a 13-year low, on Monday morning following the lawsuit. The company’s shares were down more than 30% on Tuesday.

Government filings show that the company reported its plans to make infrastructure more resilient, including putting lines underground in vulnerable areas, hardening poles and launching a program to remove hazardous trees. 

“The risk of a utility system causing a wildfire ignition is significant,” the company wrote in one filing, noting that a large objective was to “minimize the probability of the Companies’ facilities becoming the origin or contributing source of ignition for a wildfire”.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image by Germán & Co.

As Brazil's president, Lula is enjoying a favorable period with an approval rating of 60 percent.

Support for the leftist leader is increasing among evangelicals and in the southern part of the country, owing to the economic influence.

"El País" Naiara Galarraga Gortázar, São Paulo, August 17, 2023 - Translation and editing in English by Germán & Co.

Eight months after taking the reins of Brazil's presidency, 77-year-old Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently experiencing a favorable period despite facing a coup attempt within the first week. According to the Genial/Quaest poll released on Wednesday, 60 percent of Brazilians approve of Lula's performance as president, marking the highest approval rate of his third term, while 35 percent disapprove. His growing popularity is due to the current economic situation, which his compatriots view optimistically, mitigating the previous reluctance towards left-leaning politicians in the south and among evangelical voters. Both groups overwhelmingly supported his opponent, Jair Bolsonaro, in the elections.

These recent results indicate that, compared to the previous poll two months ago, Lula has gained four points in support for his work as president, and his rejection rate has fallen by five points. These levels of support are a relief for the president, primarily since he has just hosted a major summit in the Amazon and presented his grand investment plan.
Lula has a packed international schedule, which includes his upcoming trip to Africa next week. During a phone conversation on Wednesday that lasted 30 minutes, he spoke with his counterpart, US President Joe Biden, who acknowledged "the obligations of developed countries [in relation to climate change] and the necessity of assisting developing countries [in coping with the consequences]," as per a statement issued by the Brazilian presidency.

The ambitious objective is to inject $350 billion into the economy through public and private works in all states. During the revealed plan, Lula announced that it is no longer the time for ministers to propose new ideas; instead, the objective now is to deliver what has been pledged. A few experts express doubt regarding the consistency of the growth acceleration programme because it needs to elucidate the source of funds or priorities fully.

The federal government's job receives less endorsement and criticism than the president's, with 42 per cent approving, 29 per cent considering it neutral, and 24 per cent negative.

Backing for the leader of the Workers' Party (PT) in the wealthier and less diverse southern region of the country has surged by an impressive 11 points, reaching the national average. Although the south of states are considered strongholds of Bolsonarism, the Safra (harvest) initiative, targeting support for farmers, has had an impact. The far-right leader Bolsonaro maintains a low profile amid daily press reports exposing new insights into the manoeuvres of his closest aides to sell valuable gifts he received while in office.

The economic scenario experienced by Lula since he assumed office has been favorable. Millions of families have welcomed the program he launched to encourage debt negotiation with banks stuck in debt. The unemployment rate is approximately 9%, although the informal sector employs 40 million of the workforce (in a country of 203 million people). In the first quarter, GDP grew by 4% compared to the same period last year.

And among evangelicals, a group that votes fairly homogeneously, for the first time, Lula has more supporters (50%) than opponents (46%), although the difference is small and well below the national average. The leaders of the main evangelical denominations have a political alliance with Bolsonaro that Lula is trying to erode as he seeks to broaden his parliamentary support in search of a majority in Congress, which is currently dominated by Bolsonaro's supporters. While Brazilian legislators are always willing to negotiate, it is a question of agreeing on the price.

In any case, the president's current popularity ratings are a far cry from Lula's record, a fact he likes to point out. When Brazil's first workers' president left power in 2010, he enjoyed more than 80% support. None of his predecessors or successors came close. There was no way of knowing then how strong the anti-Petism would become, fueled by Bolsonaro and his supporters, and that the former president would spend time in prison before staging an equally unexpected political resurrection.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Javier Milei was pictured in Buenos Aires on 14th June after an interview on the television programme 'A dos voces'
Tomas Cuesta

THE ANATOMY OF TWITTER

A POLITICAL TSUNAMI BY MILEI

IF THE FAR-RIGHT CANDIDATE WINS THE PRESIDENCY, HE WILL ELIMINATE SEVERAL MINISTRIES. TO CLARIFY HIS PROJECT, HE UPLOADED A VIDEO ON TIKTOK WITH AN IMPECCABLE STAGING THAT MATCHED HIS PROFILE.

"El País" Federico Rivas Molina, 17th August 2023, translation and editing to English by Germán & Co.

Javier Milei, a figure with curly black hair who pledges to eliminate 'the political elite' in Argentina, has already become a significant phenomenon in his country. On Sunday, August 13th, he emerged as the most-voted candidate in the primary elections and now stands a strong chance to win the initial round of the general elections in October. Self-proclaimed as an 'anarcho-capitalist', he is an ultra-liberal libertarian who advocates for the elimination of the state in a mixture of ideas that include promises of unrestricted firearm ownership, legal trading of organs, and adoption of the US dollar to combat inflation.
Milei is a television product - his continuous staring into the camera while making derogatory remarks amplified his popularity and secured him a spot on talk shows and social media platforms on a daily basis. It was too late by the time the monster fled. While Milei is a provocative figure, he is above all a self-promoter. He is known for wearing black leather and never smiling in front of a camera. He even goes by the moniker 'the lion'. One of his most memorable speeches showcases him smashing a box that represents the Central Bank with a cane. Milei vows to 'set it on fire' in order to put a stop to the issuance of money.

On October 22nd, the economist will compete against the conservative candidate Patricia Bullrich, who came second in the elections for the Juntos por el Cambio alliance, and Sergio Massa, the Peronist candidate and current Economy Minister. At the beginning of the week, Milei unexpectedly gained political fame, and he recently announced some of his proposed policies if he were to assume power. He remembers that controversy fuels his campaign. For instance, Milei stated that he would repeal the abortion law, which has been in force since December 2020, through a referendum. The progressive electorate is opposed to this, making it a particularly sensitive topic. However, the left did not come out to denounce him. Candidate Bullrich, who was the security minister under Mauricio Macri's (2015-2019) government, called it madness to spend time on popular consultations when it is urgent to reduce inflation and address poverty.

Argentina is currently facing its umpteenth economic crisis. Inflation has risen above 110% per month year on year, the value of the peso is declining daily against the dollar, and the Central Bank's reserves are critically low, while the International Monetary Fund awaits. Minister and political candidate Massa will be traveling to Washington this week to finalize a new agreement with the multilateral forum. Milei boasted on television on Tuesday. He stated that he had already received a call from Kristalina Georgieva's offices. He was asked if they are afraid of him at the IMF. He replied, stating that he was not afraid of them as the fiscal adjustment he has in mind is much tougher than the one demanded in Washington to open the financing tap.

Most of this adjustment will be paid for by the state, as per Milei's proposed plan of jibarization. He has said that if he reaches the Casa Rosada, he will eliminate the ministries of education, health, and social development. He argues that "social justice" is a robbery paid for by those who work, and he will fire hundreds of thousands of state employees who are on precarious contracts. He uploaded a video on TikTok with a mise-en-scène suitable for his profile to make his project clear. Milei's state will only handle matters pertaining to defense, internal security, and foreign relations. Its main international partners will be the United States and Israel; he has vowed to relocate the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Milei wave has rocked Argentine politicians. It remains to be seen if he will succeed in sustaining the wave and confirming his triumph in the final election.

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News Round-Up, August 16, 2023

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The Best in the Biz – August 10, 2023

Posted to Energy Centralin the Utility Management Group

EPA Plan Would Impose Drastic Cuts on Power Plant Emissions by 2040

German Toro Ghio

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/ee/epa-plan-would-impose-drastic-cuts-power-plant-emissions-2040

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President Bill Clinton, Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat walking through Camp David.

Deepened lost in diplomacy...

Mr. Henry Kissinger, during his interview for the Portfolio Magazine at the French restaurant Jubilee in downtown Manhattan, New York, on July 27, 2018, warned of the urgent need to broaden global communication channels, particularly with China. He emphasized the potential for global order disruptions if this critical diplomatic work is still pending.
In this interview, in Mr. Kissinger's eyes, French President Emmanuel Macron stands out as a commendable world leader with a unique and expansive vision. Macron's ability to think beyond conventional boundaries has positioned him as a significant influencer on the global stage. Despite this, his attempts to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin have thus far proven unsuccessful. Macron's efforts to establish a productive dialogue with Putin still need to catch up.
Turning to China, Mr. Kissinger acknowledges its professed desire for world peace. However, China's ambivalent position has hindered the establishment of clear pathways towards achieving this overarching goal. While the country may outwardly express aspirations for global harmony, its actions and stances have yet to align with those intentions consistently.
Another wild card is Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who holds an open telephone line with President Putin and Zelensky, has struggled to achieve tangible results in his diplomatic endeavors. Despite the promise of direct communication, President Erdoğan has faced challenges bridging gaps and achieving meaningful progress.
While seeking a resurgence in his political career, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva viewed the ongoing conflicts as an opportunity. Unfortunately, Lula's efforts, similar to his other diplomatic attempts, have failed to yield the desired outcomes. This setback underscores the complexity of navigating international disputes and finding practical solutions. Lastly, Norway, known for its commitment to peace and goodwill, has played a pivotal role in facilitating numerous peace processes and honouring individuals with the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the country's focus on safeguarding its borders against Russian aggression has diverted attention and resources from actively contributing to broader global peacemaking efforts.

In summary, Mr Kissinger's perspective highlights world leaders' challenges in pursuing international cooperation and peace. While Macron's visionary approach is celebrated, his inability to engage successfully with Putin demonstrates the complexities of diplomatic relations.

The paradox of world leaders knowing and accepting Russia's impending invasion of Ukraine two years in advance is a striking revelation that challenges our understanding of international relations and diplomacy. It begs the question of why, despite this knowledge, no significant action was taken to prevent or deter such a devastating military incursion.

The image of President Bill Clinton, Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat walking through Camp David is a powerful symbol of diplomacy and its potential to resolve conflicts. This image refers to a different time: the successful negotiation of the Camp David Accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 2000, facilitated by Clinton's dedication to finding a peaceful resolution.

Similarly, the outstanding diplomatic work of Clinton's Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, deserves recognition. As the leader of Russia, Yeltsin played a crucial role in shaping the country's foreign policy and relations with other nations. His collaboration with Clinton on various issues showcased a commitment to finding common ground and resolving conflicts through dialogue.

The friendship between President Yeltsin and President Clinton was a diplomatic alliance and a genuine bond built on trust and mutual respect. Their relationship was characterized by lighthearted banter and a shared sense of humor. This camaraderie led Yeltsin to playfully describe Clinton as a disaster man. Such words provoked uncontrollable laughter from President Clinton. This clever comment highlighted the strong bond between the two leaders.During President Clinton's final visit to Russia on the 5th of June 2000, he met with newly appointed President Vladimir Putin. Following the meeting, Clinton had the opportunity to reunite with his dear friend, former President Yeltsin. At this reunion, Yeltsin admitted that he had mistakenly designated Putin as his successor. Their friendship is a reminder that laughter and genuine connections can bridge gaps between nations, even in international politics. It reminds us who needs to do the job.

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California’s planning a renewable energy project at a scale never before attempted in the world

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Commodity merchants are pumping natural gas into Ukrainian reservoirs, hoping the war doesn’t disrupt potential profits

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The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.

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Pulp Mill at sunset in Humboldt Bay, California. | Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images / Alamy Stock Photo / Edited by Germán & Co.

California’s planning a renewable energy project at a scale never before attempted in the world

The Newsom administration’s path to net-zero carbon emissions runs through one of the state’s poorer, most remote areas.

POLITICO USA by WES VENTEICHER, August 15, 2023

EUREKA, Calif. — A 300-foot tall smokestack from a defunct paper mill looms over the port in Humboldt Bay, a relic of the timber industry that once defined the northwestern corner of California along with the struggling salmon fishing industry and sputtering marijuana trade.

But a gust of optimism has arrived in Humboldt County over plans to develop offshore wind at a depth and scale never before attempted in the world – sparking hope and anxiety in a region that has lived through repeated boom-and-bust cycles and ended up with one of the lower per-capita incomes in the state.

“This is a generational project,” said Jeff Hunerlach, secretary-treasurer of a council of construction unions for Humboldt and neighboring Del Norte County. “I could work 20 years on this project and my kid could work 20 years on this project.”

The floating offshore wind turbines proposed would barely be visible according to a rendering from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. | Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

The offshore wind proposal, driven by the Biden and Newsom administration efforts to dramatically increase renewable energy, would erect dozens of turbines three times the size of that smokestack with blades as long as a football field in an area of the Pacific Ocean nearly 10 times the size of Manhattan.

The turbines, which would be about 20 miles from shore in water up to 2,500 feet deep, are a key part of the state’s plan to generate enough offshore wind energy to power more than 20 million homes.

Getting the turbines to remote Humboldt County and then assembling them would be a significant undertaking – one that would create the need for heavy investment in an area that has seen little for many years.

“It’s a lot of good-paying jobs if we do it right,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), whose district includes the bay. “This can be part of lifting up the regional economy in a way that is better than anything to come along in decades.”

Rob Holmlund, executive director of the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, likens the endeavor to the moon landing.

A 2023 rendering prepared for the Humboldt Bay Harbor District. | Moffatt & Nichol

“We’re talking about completely transitioning our entire energy system,” Holmlund said. “It’s an ambitious goal for the betterment of humanity.”

But the project faces a host of major challenges. They include not just the obvious economic and bureaucratic hurdles but also a widespread distrust of outsiders in a region where indiscriminate logging engendered deep resentment and where an illegal marijuana industry created a counterculture haven in the fog-shrouded mountains.

The region is still recovering from mistakes of the past. International wind developers are pitching their projects just as many residents celebrate the removal of Klamath River dams the Yurok Tribe and the fishing industry fought for decades. The structures destroyed rich salmon habitat to export hydropower even as many native people lived without electricity.

“It has to be done right,” said Yurok Vice Chairman Frankie Myers. “Because we have to avoid being in the same position we are now 50 years from now. I’ve spent most of my life fighting the dams. I do not want to leave my children a fight to remove offshore wind.”

The destination for agenda-setting coverage of politics, policy and power that shapes the conversation in the world's fifth-largest economy.

The developers — German-based RWE Energy and Danish-backed Vineyard Offshore — secured federal leases in December for a combined $332 million that include decommissioning requirements and set aside a portion of the money for community benefits.

The companies are opening offices in the area, holding meetings and sponsoring local events.

“As a company we believe there are great opportunities ahead, because this can create jobs and other opportunities,” said Lars Pedersen, Vineyard Offshore’s CEO. “But we have to do that being respectful of those who live there and have been living there a long time.”

The Newsom administration’s path to zeroing out the state’s carbon emissions by 2045 runs right through the bay. It’s the only developed port from San Francisco to Coos Bay, Oregon, able to accommodate assembly of the massive turbines. The area could ultimately supply the turbines for both California — which would need around 1,700 to reach its goal — and the rest of the West Coast. Additional leases are expected in Washington, Oregon and offshore from the Northern California counties of Mendocino and Del Norte.

President Joe Biden wants the nation to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Offshore wind is central to both administrations’ plans due to its ability to displace the burning of fossil fuels, particularly in the evening when solar power drops off.

Reaching those goals will require the state and nation to advance offshore wind and accompanying transmission projects at speeds that governments haven’t achieved in generations.

“All of it has to work together in what is a really complex and almost overwhelming set of challenges,” said Huffman.

The Harbor District is partnering with Crowley Wind Services, a division of the international logistics company, to develop a 180-acre terminal on property occupied by a former pulp mill.

The land — which now hosts two seaweed farms, an oyster hatchery and temporary storage for freshly caught hagfish — would be transformed into an industrial terminal with up to 650,000 square feet of building space, lights mounted 150 feet in the air and giant cranes that crawl through the water on tank treads.

The district is in early permitting stages under the California Environmental Quality Act, which can be a lengthy process even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature recently took steps to limit the duration of legal challenges filed under the law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is planning on offshore wind powering roughly 25 million homes by 2045. | Bruce Gilbert/AP Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies

At the same time, the project developers are initiating a federal permitting process that’s expected to take six years. They’re assessing impacts to the economy, tribes and lands.

The projects would affect fishermen the most, impacting the Dover sole, thornyhead, and sablefish fisheries offshore and harvests of Dungeness crab, baitfish and shellfish within the bay. The extent of the threat, along with the effects on birds and whales, is still being assessed.

The companies are addressing technical challenges of operating the floating turbines and transmitting energy to shore from floating platforms connected by cable to the ocean floor 2,500 feet below. While fixed-bottom turbines are common in Europe and are arriving on the East Coast, the floating variety have never been used in such deep water.

Transmission projects of the scale needed to carry 25 gigawatts of wind energy 270 miles from Humboldt to San Francisco have in the past taken more than a decade, and an overland line would need to run through environmentally sensitive areas as well as populated communities that may not welcome them. An undersea cable is being considered, but deep underwater canyons and other features make that option logistically daunting.

On land, leaders such as Yurok Tribal Court Judge Abby Abinanti worry how the expected influx of construction and manufacturing labor, some likely to occupy temporary “mancamps,” will affect vulnerable people such as native women who already go missing and are killed at higher rates than other groups.

“Our concern is that these camps end up elevating those kinds of statistics unless preventative efforts are made,” said Abinanti.

She also wants to make sure women have the same access as men to the new jobs through training.

And then there’s the cost. The price tag to develop 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045 is about $100 billion — not including some major outlays such as transmission upgrades, according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimate.

Costs have ballooned even beyond expectations in New York and New Jersey, prompting developers to seek more money from those states and their electricity customers. Wind developers have canceled some of their plans in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

If they come, the turbines will barely be visible from shore in daylight once they’re towed out to the deep sea. At night, red lights affixed to their tops will line the horizon — a new symbol for an industry that will once again redefine life on the northern coast.

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Photo by Germán & Co.

Energy & Utilities Roundup: Market Talk by WSJ

The latest Market Talks covering Energy and Utilities. Published exclusively on Dow Jones Newswires at 4:20 ET.

1646 ET – The American Petroleum Institute reports US commercial inventories of crude oil fell by 6.2 million barrels last week, while gasoline supplies rose by 700,000 barrels, a source citing the data says. The results were released ahead of official EIA inventory data due tomorrow morning. Average forecasts in a WSJ survey indicate the EIA report will show crude stockpiles fell by 1.7M barrels from the previous week and that gasoline decreased by 1.2M barrels. In late trading, WTI oil prices that were lower before the data were released reduced those declines slightly afterward, down 1.7% at $81.11 a barrel. (dan.molinski@wsj.com)

1457 ET – Natural gas prices in the US drop 4.9% to finish at $2.659/mmBtu as the market gets swept up by a broader sell-off in other energy commodities such as crude oil and gasoline. The past week has seen price movements in the US natural gas market being significantly influenced by markets outside its realm, with European gas markets moving US natural gas futures last week, and WTI oil prices seeming to be impacting natural gas markets in today’s session. This is partly because rising US LNG exports have made the domestic gas market more global. Also, an increase in associated gas production in the US from oil-producing shale regions is linking the two markets, oil and gas, closer together. (dan.molinski@wsj.com)

1448 ET – US crude futures fall for a second straight day, ending the session 1.8% lower at $80.99 a barrel as investors continue to fret over weak US and global demand. Crude-oil production cuts throughout the summer by the Saudi and Russian-led OPEC-plus group are keeping supplies relatively tight, but the mere fact that producers have to keep reducing output to avoid oversupplies is sending a bearish signal to investors regarding the world’s economic health. Data today showing Chinese retail sales and industrial production grew less than expected in July reflected that economic weakness, and with the US manufacturing sector still in recession, WTI oil seems to be struggling to stay above $80. (dan.molinski@wsj.com)

1436 ET – While US exports of liquefied natural gas to places like Europe and Asia have skyrocketed over the past decade, the US is still also exporting massive amounts of natural gas the old-fashioned way—by pipeline. And last month pipelined gas flows to Mexico hit a new all-time high. The EIA, citing Wood Mackenzie data, says in a report that US natural gas pipeline exports to Mexico averaged 6.8 billion cubic feet per day in June, topping a previous record set in June 2021. Mexico is far and away the top recipient of US natural gas, receiving more than one-third of all US natural gas or LNG volumes in 2022, and nearly four times as much as top US LNG recipient France. (dan.molinski@wsj.com)

1119 ET – Class-action lawsuits against Hawaiian Electric Industries are raising the risk around the company’s credit. S&P Global Ratings downgrades the company to BB- following the filing of class-action lawsuits against Hawaiian Electric on behalf of residents who have had their homes destroyed by wildfires. S&P says the total cost to rebuild will be an estimated $5.5 billion, far greater than the company’s book equity of $2.2 billion. S&P also says the wildfires have destroyed a portion of the company’s customer base, which will damage profitability. Shares fall 8.6% to $19.61. (ben.glickman@wsj.com; @benglickman)

0900 ET – Refining cracks, a term for measuring refiners’ profits, are doing better in the second half of 2023 than the first half, and that’s adding some upward momentum to oil prices by firming up demand, says Energy Intelligence. “Refining cracks-diesel in particular-are improving,” it says in a note. “The first half of the year featured a steady decline in diesel and distillate prices/cracks as macro concerns took hold. In Asia, diesel cracks drifted to near zero. Since June, along with the improved macro sentiment as well as a pickup in demand, a gradual rebound has taken shape although margin levels are still well below where they were 6-12 months ago.” (dan.molinski@wsj.com)

0846 ET – Cosan has a lot of cash to make acquisitions after the Brazilian energy and sugar conglomerate’s recent debt issuance, said XP Investimentos analysts André Vidal and Helena Klum in a research note. Cosan said Monday evening that its net revenue declined 19% in 2Q from a year earlier, while it swung to a net profit in the period from a net loss a year earlier. Cosan’s debt level rose slightly, but the current level is still controlled and its cost of debt is low, giving it the firepower it needs to add to its portfolio, the analysts said. (jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com)

0843 ET – The resignation of Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras’s CEO, Wilson Ferreira Junior, will probably be negative at first for the share price of the Brazilian power company known as Eletrobras, but his replacement is also experienced and capable so his departure should only have a short-term impact, said Citi Research analyst Antonio Junqueira in a research note. Eletrobras said Ivan Monteiro, a former CEO of Petrobras, will replace Ferreira at the top of the electric utility. Monteiro has a top-notch resume and is a solid executive, Junqueira says.(jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com)

2245 ET – Ratch Group may benefit from higher-than-expected electricity output at its new wind farms in Australia, Thanachart Securities analyst Nuttapop Prasitsuksant says in a research report. The brokerage lifts its earnings estimates for the independent power producer by 2% for 2024 and 10% for 2025, to reflect the higher-than-anticipated capacity factor of the company’s newly acquired 212-megawatt wind project in Australia. The stock’s valuation has also become more justified at 9 times price-to-earnings with a 5% dividend yield in 2024 following the share price’s sharp year-to-date decline, the analyst says. The brokerage raises the stock’s rating to hold from sell and increases target price to THB36.00 from THB33.00. Shares last quoted at THB35.50. (ronnie.harui@wsj.com)

2229 ET – CSE Global’s 2H earnings outlook appears brighter, driven by its record-high order book of S$522 million in 1H, UOB Kay Hian analysts say in a research report. The technologies company’s 2023 earnings could more than quadruple from a low base of S$5 million in 2022, and it should be able to deliver its contracts faster and enjoy a recovery in margins as supply-chain disruptions ease, the analysts say. CSE Global highlighted that its diversification strategy to invest in and acquire communications businesses has contributed to a better financial performance, the analysts add. They raise the stock’s target price to S$0.61 from S$0.60 with an unchanged buy rating. Shares are unchanged at S$0.465. (ronnie.harui@wsj.com)

2137 ET – YTL Power International is likely to report stronger fiscal 4Q earnings after it raised power tariffs for its Singapore and U.K. subsidiaries, says Kenanga IB analyst Teh Kian Yeong in a note. YTL’s 4Q earnings may rise 10%-20% on quarter to MYR585 million-MYR590 million driven by a 43% hike in Singapore’s electricity retail prices and about a 9% tariff hike for U.K.’s sewerage utility company Wessex Water from April. Teh raises YTL’s FY 2023 and FY 2024’s profit estimates by 26% and 34%, respectively, to factor in higher earnings contributions from its Singapore and U.K. subsidiaries. Kenanga raises the stock’s target price to MYR1.85 from MYR1.48 and maintains an outperform rating. Shares are 0.6% lower at MYR1.56.(yingxian.wong@wsj.com)

1712 ET – Toronto stocks finish with losses, as the benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index falls 117 points, or 0.6%, to 20290. The blue-chip S&P/TSX 60 Index also slips 0.6% to 1215. Gains in the healthcare sector were offset by broad declines elsewhere, particularly in telecommunications and base metals. Among the largest movers of the day was Boralex, with shares climbing more than 6% after the renewable energy producer reported stronger-than-expected 2Q earnings. (will.feuer@wsj.com; @WillFOIA)

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In Georgia and federal indictments, two vastly different approaches

Fani Willis’s sprawling case allows prosecutors to target Trump’s broad scheme. But legal experts and critics say both the scope and specificity could be a problem.

TWP by Amy Gardner, Holly Bailey, Amber Phillips and Shayna Jacobs, updated August 15, 2023 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference regarding the grand jury indictment of former president Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators at the Fulton County government building on Monday in Atlanta. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

ATLANTA — Charges against former president Donald Trump and a raft of others in Fulton County, Ga., over their alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat finally landed Monday, the result of a sprawling investigation that stretched over 2½ years and led to a complex racketeering case featuring 41 criminal counts against 19 defendants in a massive 98-page indictment.

Contrast that with a federal indictment filed against Trump on Aug. 1 in Washington that also accuses him of illegally attempting to subvert and overthrow the election. In that case, Justice Department prosecutors sought charges against Trump alone. They appeared to be aiming for speed and simplicity, producing a 45-page indictment featuring four charges after an investigation of the former president that began well after the Fulton probe.

Unlike the Georgia indictment, which alleges multiple instances of making false statements, witness tampering and impersonating a public officer — among dozens of other counts — the federal indictment avoids potentially complicated accusations that some advocates pushed for, such as seditious conspiracy or insurrection.

Legal experts said the difference in strategy comes with some advantages: District Attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling case will allow Fulton County prosecutors to tell the jury a story of a broad conspiracy to reverse election results in multiple states and build a forceful narrative of Trump’s actions in concert with numerous aides, lawyers and local officials. But experts warned that the logistics of putting Trump on trial along with 18 other people — each of whom may file a flurry of pretrial motions — in a racketeering indictment so complex and multilayered could carry unique difficulties.

Trump and his allies have attacked both Willis, a Democrat, and special counsel Jack Smith of the Justice Department for investigating alleged election interference, accusing them of conducting political witch hunts and attempting to interfere with the former president’s 2024 bid for the White House.

But even some of Trump’s critics have questioned the apparent breadth of Willis’s investigation and the challenge she faces in persuading a jury to criminalize statements about election fraud — including portraying a few seemingly innocuous tweets as furthering the conspiracy — that many view as protected speech under the First Amendment. She will also have to convince a jury that Trump and others knew what they were saying was false, and that they are not protected by the fact that in many instances they were following the advice of their lawyers.

Trump is indicted in Georgia on charges of racketeering. What it means, what happens next.

Willis’s ambitious decision to use Georgia’s expansive RICO statute — a law historically employed to prosecute mobsters — to charge Trump with leading a vast criminal enterprise to steal the 2020 election could allow her to target many more of those involved in the alleged conspiracy beyond Trump, potentially transforming the way political wrongdoing is punished.

Alternatively, her gambit to try all 19 defendants together could be seen by jurors as a massive instance of prosecutorial overreach. And despite Willis’s statement late Monday that she’d like to see a trial date within six months, the sprawling nature of the case could push the start beyond the 2024 election and take years — and many appeals — to resolve.

“This is eye-popping,” said John Malcolm, a former federal prosecutor based in Atlanta who is now a constitutional scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, speaking of the contrast between the federal and state indictments. “What about the right — when you believe allegations to be true, or you have some evidence to support the allegations — to seek redress? And all of a sudden they’re perpetrating a conspiracy? I think that’s astonishingly dangerous.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Country Garden’s offices in Foshan, China. Experts fear the company’s troubles could spill over into the financial markets.Credit...Agence France-Presse

Why This Company’s Financial Crisis Threatens China’s Economy

Country Garden was China’s biggest real estate developer. Now it is staring down default, facing billions of dollars in losses and $200 billion in unpaid bills.

NYT by Alexandra Stevenson, Reporting from Hong Kong,  August 15, 2023

Country Garden, a Chinese real estate giant, has lost billions of dollars and racked up $200 billion in unpaid bills. It’s on the hook to deliver, by one estimate, nearly one million apartments across hundreds of cities in China.

The privately owned developer, founded by a farmer three decades ago, is inching closer to default.

In China’s housing market, there are plenty of deadbeat developers no longer paying their bills. The possible collapse of Country Garden is one to pay attention to.

The company has tried to project confidence. “One shall pick himself up from where he has fallen,” Mo Bin, Country Garden’s president, said last week, pledging to “spare no effort.”

But the problem is much bigger than one company, and the timing could hardly be worse. A default by Country Garden would be the latest in a string of collapses in a housing market that has been hurting for years. Emerging from paralyzing lockdowns during the pandemic, China’s leaders badly need the country’s economic engine to pick up. Instead, growth is sputtering as housing prices fall, people spend less and consumer and business confidence wanes.

Now, experts fear that Country Garden’s troubles will spill over into the broader financial markets, thwarting any possible recovery of the real estate industry and spreading the damage through the economy.

How did Country Garden run into trouble?

A year ago, Country Garden was a model corporate citizen in an expanding universe of delinquent real estate companies that borrowed recklessly and then stopped paying their bills.

Country Garden, founded by Yang Guoqiang in 1992, was a beneficiary of the world’s biggest real estate boom. Its success turned Mr. Yang into a billionaire and became a testament to the country’s remarkable growth. Chinese people, having few other reliable options to build wealth, invested their incomes and savings in real estate. Like other big private developers, Country Garden kept borrowing and often borrowed more to pay back its loans, operating on the assumption that as long as it continued to expand, it could keep repaying its debt.

But the bills grew so big that the authorities began to fear the debt would threaten the broader financial system. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, ordered that homes should be for living, not for speculation. In 2020, the government cracked down, limiting the ability of real estate companies to raise money and prompting a series of defaults.

Even as other developers stopped paying their bills, Country Garden continued to make good on its obligations. It began to rely more heavily on the revenue from selling apartments before they were finished and using that money to help finance its operations.

A slump in home buying this year has placed the company in a crisis, facing what it described as the “biggest difficulties since its establishment.”

How big is the problem?

Markets, investors and home buyers are fearing the worst. In early August, Country Garden skipped two interest payments on loans. If it does not pay up by early September or get the creditors to give it more time after that 30-day grace period, it will default. Investors are not likely to lend it more money if that happens. The company’s share price has fallen below $1 in Hong Kong.

Country Garden’s losses are mounting. It has said it expects to report a loss of as much as $7.6 billion in the first six months of the year.

Even if people were still buying Country Garden’s apartments, they would not be able to buy enough of them to make up the financial shortfall, experts said. Besides, who wants to buy an apartment from a company that might not be around to finish building it?

All of this has led to worries that Country Garden will end up like China Evergrande, a real estate behemoth that collapsed in 2021 and set off panic in global markets.

“The Country Garden default could be as influential as Evergrande simply because it is so huge,” said Rosealea Yao, a real estate analyst at Gavekal, a China focused research firm.

And it could be even worse. A handful of big developers have already defaulted. The market is more on edge than it was when Evergrande failed. Policymakers, while recently vowing to support the housing market, have not done enough to bolster confidence.

“Things may get worse before the government reacts,” Ms. Yao said.

Can the government save Country Garden?

Maybe. Chinese policymakers have pulled all the stops before. And after years of tightening the screws, China’s top leadership has signaled a pivot in its approach, pledging to adjust its policy and take steps like lowering interest rates to make it easier to buy apartments.

But the measures so far have not been big enough to reverse the housing slump. Policymakers are unlikely to go back to the days when companies could amass huge piles of debt for speculative projects.

The housing market is also no longer growing like it did during the real estate boom that urbanized much of China in the 1990s and early 2000s.

China’s leaders have made it clear that the country cannot depend so heavily on real estate for economic growth. Gone are the days of real estate bubbles fueled by banks and investors throwing money at developers. More likely, some experts said, is that policymakers will do their best to make sure buyers get the apartments they paid for.

Many big questions remain unanswered. What, for example, happens to the Chinese economy if developers like Country Garden never pay back suppliers like painters and construction workers?

By one estimate from Gavekal Research, unpaid bills from private Chinese developers total $390 billion.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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When the crisis becomes permanent//www.ips-journal.eu

Latest news from Latinamerica

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Tuesday, 15 August 2023

BRAZIL: Surprise resignation of Eletrobras CEO

On 14 August Brazil’s electricity company Eletrobras, which was privatised in June 2022, announced the resignation of its CEO, Wilson Ferreira Junior. 

Tuesday, 15 August 2023

HAITI: Police disperse another protest over insecurity

On 14 August Haiti’s national police (PNd’H) used tear gas to disperse protesters from Carrefour-Feuille, a Port-au-Prince suburb, who were demonstrating against insecurity.

Tuesday, 15 August 2023

MEXICO: Discovery of human remains raises concerns in Veracruz

On 14 August the attorney general’s office (FGE) in Mexico’s Veracruz state confirmed that the remains of multiple people had been found in two buildings in the city of Poza Rica, in the north of Veracruz.

Tuesday, 15 August 2023

CHILE: Key ministerial resignation fails to satisfy opposition

On 14 August Chile’s finance and labour ministers, Mario Marcel and Jeannette Jara respectively, embarked on a tour of 12 cities in the south of the country to promote the government’s tax and pension reforms.

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Workers at the Bilche-Volytsko Uherske facility, one of Ukraine’s gas-storage sites. ALONA NIKOLAIEVYCH/ZUMA PRESS

Vital Natural Gas Is Being Stashed in Caverns Beneath War-Torn Ukraine

Commodity merchants are pumping natural gas into Ukrainian reservoirs, hoping the war doesn’t disrupt potential profits

WSJ by Joe Wallace, updated Aug. 16, 2023 

A daredevil trade is in vogue among commodity merchants: Stashing natural gas in caverns beneath the surface of war-torn Ukraine.

The wager could reap hundreds of millions of dollars collectively for traders such as Trafigura Group, Vitol and Gunvor Group, people familiar with the matter said. Others looking to cash in include oil-and-gas giants such as Shell and utilities such as Switzerland’s Axpo.

Traders are getting paid to stockpile power-generation and heating fuel for Europe ahead of the second winter since Russia pitched the continent into an energy crisis. So much gas has flooded in from the rest of the world to replace Russian fuel that prices have fallen more than 80% over the past year. That will make the trade a lucrative one, if all goes well.

The danger isn’t that the gas itself goes up in smoke. It is housed nearly a mile underground in depleted gas reservoirs and aquifers, mostly away from the front line in the west of Ukraine. But traders’ winnings could evaporate if shells strike pipelines or compressor stations and trap the gas in the country.

Another risk is that “the government says ‘I have to confiscate the gas’” if Ukraine’s energy situation worsens, said Martin Pich, trading director at MND, a Czech energy company. “You are looking at the potential profit, versus the losses that you could face in these scenarios.”

Gas flows picked up speed in recent weeks into the Ukrainian caverns, by far the biggest storage sites in Europe. The gas comes from all over the world: some shipped as liquefied natural gas from the U.S. and Nigeria and into Europe’s pipeline network. Other batches arrive directly from massive fields in Norway and the U.K. There is even a remaining trickle of gas from Russia, some of it U-turning in Slovakia and heading back across the border into Ukraine.

Flows accelerated after a series of meetings between European traders and officials from state-owned Ukrainian energy companies. The Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine gave a presentation in Vienna in mid-June showing that its pipeline network had spare capacity because of the drop in Russian gas since the invasion, said people briefed on the meeting.

As a result, the state company could redirect gas if any blockages occur, enabling traders to get it out of the country, said Chief Executive Dmytro Lyppa. “We are ready for any scenario,” he said.

Volumes flowing into storage are lower than before the war, reflecting the difficulty traders encountered in insuring fuel in a war zone or persuading banks to lend against it. The European Union has failed, so far, in an attempt to create a state-backed guarantee program. Ukrainian officials say foreign traders might store 3.5 billion cubic meters by winter, out of an available 10 billion.

That could prove to be a handy buffer, adding almost 4% to the EU’s storage capacity. Europe remains vulnerable, having swapped dependence on Russia’s Gazprom for reliance on the liquefied-natural gas market. Underlining that vulnerability, gas prices rocketed twice this month on the mere threat of a strike at gas plants in Australia.

Stowing fuel in Ukraine is a variation on a classic commodities trade. The play gained fame on Wall Street when Salomon Brothers made a bonanza by stashing crude on tankers on the eve of the First Gulf War in the early 1990s. It requires a big balance sheet, logistical intelligence and, in this instance, an appetite for risk.

It works like this: The EU’s gas stores are so close to brimming over that traders can buy fuel on the cheap now and sell at higher prices in the forward market, for delivery this winter or later.

Recently, they could earn more than 10 euros per megawatt-hour, said Marco Saalfrank, head of merchant trading at Axpo. That is after taking into account storage and transit fees, as well as interest rates and credit charges.

Shell signed a deal to explore shale gas in Ukraine in 2013. PHOTO: KRISZTIAN BOCSI/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Across 3.5 billion cubic meters, that adds up to more than 340 million euros, or $370 million, in potential profit. The actual figure will differ. Some traders are locking in sales for next summer instead of winter, or not selling forward at all, which amounts to a bet that prices will rise.

The companies involved mostly had extensive dealings in Ukraine before the war. Shell signed a deal to explore shale gas in the country in 2013.

London-based Vitol, the world’s biggest independent oil trader, struck a deal to develop oil-and-gas fields in Ukraine in 2012, while Swiss trader Trafigura had an office in Kyiv. The two traders—fierce competitors—are hunting for new ways to make money after earning billions of dollars in recent years from the upheaval caused by war and the pandemic.

Ukrtransgaz, the storage operator, has checked caverns for bugs, ordered extra patrols of perimeter fences and stocked up on spare parts, said Roman Maliutin, acting director general. The company treats all of the stores as if they were one giant cavern, guaranteeing traders access to fuel even if the site they originally injected it into is damaged.

“The probability that all our underground storages will be taken out of the production, will be destroyed, is very low,” Maliutin said.

The more gas in the depleted gas sites, the higher the pressure, easing the withdrawal of fuel to send back to Europe or burn in Ukraine this winter. Ukrtransgaz, a Naftogaz subsidiary, also gets much-needed cash from storage fees, though it has set them at low levels to encourage the influx. Ukraine also exempts the gas from customs duties for three years.

Inflows of gas from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova mark a reversal of Ukraine’s historic role as a thoroughfare for Russian gas to Europe. The caverns are a legacy of that trade route. Gazprom drew them down to top up exports to Europe in winter, allowing cities in eastern Ukraine to burn newly arrived Russian fuel from a clutch of arterial pipelines in the coldest months of the year.

“Traders are coming to Ukraine without additional insurance, actually bearing this risk as commercial risk, which is a great signal,” said Oleksiy Chernyshov, chief executive of state-owned Naftogaz. He added that Kyiv wouldn’t consider confiscating the fuel.

The caverns, he said, are “the safest place in Ukraine right now.”

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News Round-Up, August 15, 2023

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The Best in the Biz – August 10, 2023

Posted to Energy Centralin the Utility Management Group

EPA Plan Would Impose Drastic Cuts on Power Plant Emissions by 2040

German Toro Ghio

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/ee/epa-plan-would-impose-drastic-cuts-power-plant-emissions-2040

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Editorial…

On the seemingly peaceful and serene day of July 28, 2011, the tranquil city of Oslo, renowned for its picturesque fjords, revered artist Edward Munch, and vibrant Vigeland Park, was struck by an unimaginable horror that no one could have anticipated. On this fateful day, the capital of Norway became the epicenter of deadly acts of terror: Oslo and Utøya Island fell victim to brutal attacks that shook the nation to its core.
The first blast targeted government offices, leaving behind devastation and despair. However, the horrors were far from over. During this chaos, Norway was about to witness an even more horrifying act. On the peaceful Utøya Island, a youth camp was abruptly transformed into a blood-soaked battleground. A lone gunman, chillingly disguised as a police officer, mercilessly opened fire on the unsuspecting camp attendees. Sixty-nine young individuals, filled with hopes and dreams, were ruthlessly torn away from their loved ones, forever etching their names into the darkest annals of Norwegian history.
Over the past few years, criminal activity has become a worldwide threat. The current statistics are alarming, with homicides taking the lives of almost half a million people globally. Surprisingly, this number is higher than the deaths caused by armed conflicts and terrorist attacks during the same period. Latin American criminal groups have played a crucial role in increasing crime rates in the region. These groups frequently operate with a twisted notion of loyalty, engaging in violent conflicts over territories to dominate and control lucrative illegal activities. Their influence goes beyond local communities, spreading into diverse aspects of society and perpetuating cycles of violence.
In Europe, the widespread availability of firearms worsens the hazards of criminal activities. As guns are easily accessible, criminals become more confident, increasing armed robberies, gang violence, and even terrorist attacks. Recognizing the urgency of addressing this crisis, the United Nations implemented the "Sustainable Development Goal 16" to decrease violence and associated deaths by 2030. Nonetheless, the current crime rate persists. Therefore, achieving the goal on time is likely.
A diverse approach is necessary to tackle crime and ensure community safety. Such an approach should involve investing in social programs that address the root causes of crime, encourage education and skills development, enable economic opportunities, and bolster international cooperation to dismantle transnational criminal networks.
On Sunday, this blog took to Twitter to share an article that has since taken the internet by storm. Entitled "Hemingway and the 'Gang' say: 'Farewell To The Arms...'," the story explores the incredible social project known as Project Alcatraz, driven by Santa Teresa Hacienda in Venezuela.
Responding to the escalating challenge of gang-related activities, the visionary minds of Santa Teresa Hacienda decided to establish Project Alcatraz. Little did they know that this decision would begin an extraordinary endeavor that would reshape lives and offer hope to countless individuals.
From its beginnings, Project Alcatraz has undergone notable transformations, blossoming into a comprehensive initiative dedicated to recruiting and rehabilitating individuals involved in criminal gangs. Multifaceted strategies have been used in this program to foster successful reintegration.
Today, we are thrilled to announce that the article has garnered close to 80,000 views and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from readers. This level of engagement is a testament to the power of the story, resonating the well-done impact of Project Alcatraz.

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Most read…

Experts Scrutinize Hawaiian Electric as They Search for the Maui Wildfire Cause

The main utility serving Hawaii did not pre-emptively shut off power before high winds reached Maui, and power lines fell in the windstorm.

NYT by Peter Eavis, Ivan Penn and Thomas Fuller, Aug. 14, 2023

How (Many) Economists Missed the Big Disinflation

NYT by Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist, August 14, 2023 

Far-Right Libertarian Wins Argentina’s Presidential Primary

Javier Milei, who wants to abolish the central bank and adopt the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s currency, is now the front-runner in the fall general election.

NYT by Jack Nicas, Natalie Alcoba and Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Reporting from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Augus 14, 2023

Russia Raises Interest Rates to 12% After Ruble Plummets

The Moscow Time by Jake Cordell, 5 hours ago

Hemingway and the “gang” say: “Farewell To The Arms…

By GERMÁN & CO, August 13, 2023

Trump Indicted in Georgia for Election Interference Scheme Along With 18 Others

TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT AND ERIC CORTELLESSA, AUGUST 14, 2023 

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The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.

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In Lahaina and other towns in West Maui last week, downed power poles and lines littered the highway, blocking roads in some cases. Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Experts Scrutinize Hawaiian Electric as They Search for the Maui Wildfire Cause

The main utility serving Hawaii did not pre-emptively shut off power before high winds reached Maui, and power lines fell in the windstorm.

NYT by Peter Eavis, Ivan Penn and Thomas Fuller, Aug. 14, 2023

In the hunt to determine what caused the fire that consumed Lahaina, the focus has increasingly turned to Hawaii’s biggest power utility — and whether the company did enough to prevent a wildfire in the high winds that swept over Maui last week.

Lawyers for Lahaina residents suing the utility, Hawaiian Electric, contend that its power equipment was not strong enough to withstand strong winds, and that the company should have shut down power before the winds came. Wildfire experts who have studied the catastrophic fires in California over the past two decades also see shortcomings in Hawaiian Electric’s actions.

Nearly a week after the wildfire tore through the island town of Lahaina, state and local officials have not determined a cause for the blaze that killed at least 99 people. But the explosive conditions were similar to those elsewhere in the country where wildfires were sparked by electrical equipment: dry brush, high winds and aging infrastructure.

Many wildfires in the United States occur when poles owned by utilities or other structures carrying power lines are blown down, or when branches or other objects land on power lines and cause them to produce high-energy flashes of electricity that can start fires. That is why utilities in California and other states have at times shut down power in recent years before strong winds arrive.

The National Weather Service expected winds of up to 45 miles per hour last Tuesday, with gusts of 60 miles per hour — conditions that were amplified by Hurricane Dora, which traveled across the Pacific Ocean about 700 miles to the south.

“We allege that many of the regulatory laws that require maintenance of equipment were broken,” said James Frantz, chief executive of the Frantz Law Group, one of several law firms taking action against Hawaiian Electric. “There’s got to be some accountability.” He said his firm was representing five Lahaina residents who were filing lawsuits in a Hawaiian state court on Monday.

Nearly a week after the wildfire tore through Lahaina, state and local officials have not determined a cause for the blaze that killed at least 96 people. Credit...Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Shares in Hawaiian Electric lost over a third of their value on Monday, a sign that investors feared that the company would have to pay out large sums to settle lawsuits filed by homeowners and businesses, and spend enormous amounts to try to fireproof its operations.

“The issue becomes whether they did everything they could that was reasonable to prevent this incident,” said Shahriar Pourreza, an analyst who covers Hawaiian Electric’s stock for Guggenheim Securities. “Was there gross negligence, was there imprudence?”

Hawaiian Electric, established in 1891, operates on Maui through its subsidiary, Maui Electric, and is tiny compared with the Californian utilities that have paid huge wildfire settlements. Its revenue last year totaled $3.7 billion, compared with $21.7 billion at Pacific Gas and Electric of California. Like most other utilities, Hawaiian Electric operates under the scrutiny of public commissioners who have to approve its spending plans.

At a news conference on Monday, Shelee Kimura, the chief executive of Hawaiian Electric, said the company did not have a shut-off program and contended that cutting the power could have created problems for people using medical equipment that runs on electricity.

She also said turning off the power would have required coordination with emergency workers. “In Lahaina, the electricity powers the pumps that provide the water — and so that was also a critical need during that time,” Ms. Kimura said. “There are choices that need to be made — and all of those factors play into it.”

In Lahaina and other towns in West Maui last week, downed power poles and lines littered the highway, blocking roads in some cases. It was unclear how much of the equipment had been tossed over by the strong gusts of wind and how much of it was damaged by the fire.

Power lines have caused catastrophic wildfires in California in recent years, prompting lawsuits that have led to multibillion-dollar payouts by the state’s utilities. Pacific Gas and Electric filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and agreed to pay $13.5 billion to settle claims relating to destructive wildfires, including the Camp Fire, which destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center, a firm based in Hawaii that provides disaster-related analysis, said on Saturday that more than 2,000 structures had been damaged or destroyed by the recent fires on Maui. And they estimated that it would cost $5.52 billion to rebuild. Mr. Pourreza, the analyst, said in a research note that there was a scenario in which Hawaiian Electric’s liability from the fire could exceed $4 billion. It had $314 million in cash at the end of June.

Pre-emptive power shutdowns are unpopular, because of how disruptive they can be to individuals and businesses. But wildfire experts say that they are a necessary measure, and, with planning, they can be deployed in such a way that they don’t prevent emergency services from operating during the blackout.

“It keeps people safe,” said Michael Wara, a scholar focused on climate and energy policy at Stanford University.

Lightning strikes have been another common source of ignition for wildfires in the Western United States. While not definitive, satellite-based lightning detectors operated by NASA did not indicate lightning activity on Hawaii last Monday or Tuesday.

Local and state officials have said little about what might have caused the fire that eventually engulfed Lahaina on the afternoon of Aug. 8. Earlier that day, Maui County said it had completely contained a small brush fire that was first reported that morning, but later announced at 4:45 p.m. that “an apparent flareup” had forced the closure of one main road and sudden evacuations.

Data from Whisker Labs, a private company that monitors the electrical grid in cities across the country looking for problems that might spark a home fire, appears to show significant faults — or major incidents — on power lines near where the Tuesday morning blaze is believed to have started.

On the night of Aug. 7 and into the early morning hours, its data showed, power lines began losing voltage, which can happen when vegetation interferes with wires, lines touch power poles or electrical equipment malfunctions.

The company said it had almost 1,000 sensors in Hawaii and about 70 on Maui. A major fault was felt by all sensors on the island, but was strongest near Lahaina, Whisker Labs found.

And it was a full eight seconds, “which is an eternity in electrical grid time,” said Bob Marshall, co-founder and chief executive of Whisker Labs, based in Germantown, Md. “Something on the grid was very unhappy for eight seconds and trying to recover from a shock.”

Hawaiian Electric, through Jim Kelly, a spokesman, declined to comment on Whisker Labs’ data and findings.

Ken Pimlott, the former chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said in an interview on Sunday that the notion that power lines might have started the fire was plausible.

He said the Maui fire recalled the 2017 Tubbs fire in California, which tore through wine country north of San Francisco. That fire was caused by private electrical equipment and quickly spread through communities lined up and down steep slopes. As was the case in West Maui, the Northern California community was on the edge of wild lands, making it more vulnerable.

Wildfire experts who have studied the catastrophic fires in California over the past two decades see shortcomings in Hawaiian Electric’s actions. Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Hawaii’s attorney general, Anne Lopez, said on Friday that she would be “conducting a comprehensive review of critical decision-making and standing policies leading up to, during, and after the wildfires on Maui and Hawaii islands.”

Mr. Wara, of Stanford, said Hawaiian Electric appeared to have ample time to shut down power. He noted that before the high winds hit, the company took the precaution of turning off reclosers, equipment designed to restart the flow of power after an outage.

Hawaiian Electric in a regulatory filing last year detailed measures aimed at reducing the risk of its equipment causing fires. Among other things, the filing said the company was “hardening” poles to withstand high winds and cutting back vegetation, noting that Lahaina was a priority area.

But such measures can take time to complete and be very expensive. Burying power lines costs $3 million to $5 million per mile, said Mr. Wara, who was a member of a California commission that advised lawmakers after the Camp Fire on how to hold utilities accountable for wildfire costs and risks. Typically, such costs are added to customers’ bills under regulatory rules — and Hawaii’s electricity rates are already by far the highest in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“Why did they not do the cheap thing — turn the power off?” Mr. Wara said.

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Credit...Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Larry Washburn

How (Many) Economists Missed the Big Disinflation

NYT by Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist, August 14, 2023 

In economics, as in life, it’s really important to learn from your mistakes. The learning process begins when you say the magic words “I was wrong,” which sets you free to ask why you were wrong and do better next time.

Those of us who failed to predict the big run-up of inflation in 2021-22 are, I think it’s fair to say, well along on that process. But it’s not clear to me that economists who had predicted that getting inflation under control — it’s down a lot, although not all the way — would require years of very high unemployment are engaging in a similar reckoning.

They should. In particular, they should ask themselves whether inflation pessimism was in part caused by a form of bias that has had negative effects on a lot of economic policymaking — not partisan bias, but the urge to sound serious by calling for hard choices and sacrifice.

Before I get to that, however, let me talk about what went wrong with so many recent economic predictions.

I’ve been looking at what you might call mainstream predictions about inflation and unemployment made late last year — economic projections by the Federal Reserve and by professional forecasters surveyed by the Philadelphia Fed. Perhaps surprisingly, both more or less correctly predicted the inflation decline we’re actually seeing.

The survey of forecasters predicted consumer inflation (excluding volatile food and energy prices) of 3.5 percent for the whole of 2023; given actual price increases so far this year, this would require inflation for the rest of the year to run at 2.7 percent, which seems quite reasonable given recent data. The Fed predicted that the core personal consumption expenditures deflator, a similar measure, would rise 3.5 percent over the course of the year; this will also come close if inflation for the rest of the year is 3 percent or less, which again seems reasonable.

Both forecasts, however, assumed that disinflation would require a substantial rise in unemployment. The professional forecasters predicted 4.4 percent unemployment by the fourth quarter, the Fed 4.6 percent. Since the actual unemployment rate in July was only 3.5 percent, to meet those predictions would require that the economy fall off a cliff starting just about now — and there are no signs that this is happening.

Yet most of the criticism I heard of the Fed and others berated them for excessive optimism. Getting inflation down, a chorus of economists insisted, would require much bigger increases in unemployment. Most famously, Larry Summers declared that we would need something like two years of 7.5 percent unemployment to get inflation down to 2 percent, but others offered broadly similar if less extreme diagnoses.

OK, we haven’t reached 2 percent yet (and it’s not clear that we even should), but surely we’ve seen enough to conclude that such claims were wildly off base. So, have the pessimists come to terms with that reality?

Well, I’m still seeing a lot of excuses — two, in particular.

I’m still seeing a lot of excuses — two, in particular. One is the claim that much of the progress against inflation is in some sense illusory, that underlying inflation is still well above 4 percent. Now, there are enough measures of underlying inflation out there that if you pick and choose you can still manage to be pessimistic, but the preponderance of the evidence — plus the results of hands-free algorithms that use a consistent procedure to extract the signal from the noise — suggests underlying inflation around 3 percent and dropping.

The other is the claim that disinflation pessimists were simply applying standard economic models, so that the fault lay in the models, not themselves.

But that’s simply not true. Standard models say that disinflation is very costly if persistent high inflation has become entrenched in expectations. And it was or should have been clear, even a year ago, that this wasn’t a good description of the current U.S. economy. That’s not 20/20 hindsight: I argued a year ago, at the peak of inflation pessimism, that analogies with the painful aftermath of the 1970s were all wrong. And I was, frankly, shocked to see smart economists blithely ignoring the obvious differences in circumstances.

Did I expect disinflation to come as painlessly as it has? No. Even inflation optimists clearly need to do some rethinking. But inflation pessimists really need to do what inflation optimists did a year ago, and ask how they got it so wrong, effectively calling for policies that would have put millions out of work.

As I said, it wasn’t partisanship; America’s right has become so divorced from empirical reality that it has played no role in this debate. What I do suspect, however, is that some very good economists got caught up in a version of the Very Serious People problem of the 2010s, in which the desire to seem hardheaded led many elite voices to obsess over budget deficits when they should have been focused on inadequate job creation.

The good news is that while the Fed did, in effect, try to engineer a recession to control inflation, it didn’t succeed: Despite rising interest rates, the economy just kept chugging along. Why that happened is another question. But pessimists really need to grapple with the fact that disinflation happened anyway.

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Just Exceptional...

“Words fail to capture the resplendent magnificence of this exquisite beverage. Its qualities transcend the boundaries of human expression, rendering it a true paragon of its kind. Indeed, it stands unequivocally among the most exceptional —-elixir—- concoctions ever produced…

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Source: Media

Far-Right Libertarian Wins Argentina’s Presidential Primary

Javier Milei, who wants to abolish the central bank and adopt the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s currency, is now the front-runner in the fall general election.

NYT by Jack Nicas, Natalie Alcoba and Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Reporting from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Augus 14, 2023

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Who is “don” Javier Milei?

Javier Milei is undeniably a unique character in Argentine politics. Known for his distinctive sideburns, he closely resembles iconic figures in Argentina, such as Sandro, Leonardo Favio, Carlos Menem, and even Diego Armando Maradona. In other words, he is "a sympathetic and curious thing." It is important to note that these resemblances are physical and should not be misinterpreted as ideological or political.
Described by the media as a far-right politician, economist, and former TV personality, Javier Milei recently made waves by winning the most votes in Argentina's primary election. His self-proclaimed label as an anarcho-capitalist and his admiration for former US President Donald Trump have only added to his controversial image. Milei's victory, where he secured an impressive 30% of the votes and defeated more established politicians, has been referred to as a "political earthquake" by the Argentine media. This unexpected success highlights both the growing appeal of far-right ideologies in the country and the dissatisfaction of Argentine voters with traditional political parties.

However, it is important to examine Milei's ideology and political stance critically. While his triumph may have shocked the establishment, his alignment with the far-right raises questions about his policy proposals and potential consequences for social and economic issues in Argentina.
As Milei's influence continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how he navigates the complexities of Argentine politics and whether his ideas will resonate with a broader audience. The political landscape in Argentina appears to be shifting, and it remains to be seen how Milei's rise will impact the country's future.
Milei is known for his anti-establishment views and has launched scathing attacks on his rivals from established political parties. He has stated that if elected, he would abolish Argentina's central bank, replace the peso with the US dollar, and privatize state-run companies that are making a loss. Milei is also recognized for his provocative style and often berates "the left" using expletive-laden outbursts. He is frequently seen wearing his trademark leather jacket and sporting long sideburns.

By Germán & Co

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A far-right libertarian candidate won Argentina’s open presidential primary election on Sunday, a surprising showing for a politician who wants to adopt the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s official currency and embraces comparisons to Donald Trump.

Javier Milei, 52, a congressman, economist and former television pundit, secured 30 percent of the vote with 96 percent of the ballots counted, making him the front-runner for the presidency in the fall general election.

Polls had suggested that Mr. Milei’s support was at about 20 percent, and political analysts had predicted that his radical policy proposals — including abolishing the country’s central bank — would prevent him from attracting many more voters.

But the vote on Sunday made clear that Mr. Milei now has a clear shot at leading Argentina, a South American nation of 46 million with some of the world’s largest reserves of oil, gas and lithium.

“I think these results are surprising even to him,” said Pablo Touzon, an Argentine political consultant. “Up until now, he was a protest candidate.”

Argentina’s general election in October, which could go to a November runoff, will now become a new test of the strength of the far right around the world. Although hard-right forces have gained new influence in several powerful nations in recent years, including the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Finland, they have also suffered some defeats, including in Spain and Brazil.

Mr. Milei has pitched himself as the radical change that the collapsing Argentine economy needs, and he could be a shock to the system if elected. Besides his ideas about the currency and the central bank, he has proposed drastically lowering taxes and cutting public spending, including by charging people to use the public health care system; closing or privatizing all state-owned enterprises; and eliminating the health, education and environment ministries.

Sergio Massa, Argentina’s center-left finance minister, finished second in the primary, with 21 percent of the vote. Patricia Bullrich, a conservative former security minister, finished in third place, with 17 percent.

The general election takes place on Oct. 22, but it appears likely that the race will be decided in a runoff vote on Nov. 19.

The Sunday results showed that Argentina’s three separate coalitions have similar levels of support, making it unlikely that any candidate will reach or exceed the 45-percent threshold necessary to win outright in the first round. (A candidate can also win outright by winning 40 percent of the vote with a margin of victory of at least 10 percentage points.)

The center-right coalition’s candidates received a combined 28 percent of the vote on Sunday, while the center-left coalition received 27 percent — both slightly less than Mr. Milei’s total.

The incumbent center-left party has held power in Argentina for 16 of the past 20 years and has been controlled largely by former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“We’re not only going to end Kirchnerism, but we’re also going to end the useless, parasitic, criminal political caste that is sinking this country,” Mr. Milei told supporters in a speech on Sunday night. He then thanked his sister, who runs his campaign, and his five Mastiff dogs, each named after a conservative economist.

Argentina, which has weathered economic crises for decades, is in the midst of one of its worst. The Argentine peso has plummeted in value, annual inflation has surpassed 115 percent, nearly 40 percent of the population is impoverished and the country is struggling to repay its $44 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Milei has said that his economic policies would represent an austerity package that goes beyond even what the I.M.F. is requesting of Argentina.

He could also have a profound effect on other parts of Argentine society. He and his running mate, a lawyer who has defended the country’s past military dictatorship, have suggested they would loosen gun laws, reverse recent policies allowing abortion and even permit the sale of human organs, an example of commerce that Mr. Milei says the government has no business restricting.

Yet implementing such changes would lead to a major challenge. Sunday’s results suggested that Mr. Milei, if elected, would have limited direct support in Congress. His party, called Liberty Advances, said it would control just 8 of the 72 seats in the Senate and 35 of the 257 seats in the House, according to the results for its other candidates.

Supporters of Mr. Milei in Buenos Aires on Sunday. His outsider status and radical economic proposals appealed to more voters than analysts had expected.Credit...Mario De Fina/Associated Press

Mr. Touzon said Mr. Milei would have less institutional support than far-right candidates who were swept into office elsewhere in recent years, including Mr. Trump and former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. “Bolsonaro leaned on the army. Trump had the Republican Party. Milei has nothing,” he said.

He added that Mr. Milei’s economic plan, while radical, is lacking in details and has been revised frequently. “His dollarization plan was changed 50 times,” Mr. Touzon said. “Today, he does not have a team to govern Argentina.”

Yet Mr. Milei has proved to be a skilled politician in the internet age, with a trademark scowl and head of unruly hair that have given him a larger-than-life persona and made him an easy subject of internet memes, much like Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro.

In a public video posted online ahead of the vote, Mr. Bolsonaro endorsed Mr. Milei and said they were political kindred spirits. “We have a lot of things in common,” he said, citing what he called their support for private property, freedom of expression, the free market and the right to self-defense.

And not unlike supporters of Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro, Argentines who voted for Mr. Milei said on Sunday that they liked him because he was a political outsider who would shake up a broken system and tell it like it is.

“The Argentine people have finally woken up,” said Rebeca Di Iorio, 44, an administrative worker celebrating at Mr. Milei’s election-night street party in Buenos Aires. “Argentina needs that. It needs a change.”

Santiago Manoukian, research chief of Ecolatina, an Argentine economic consulting firm, said that of the different scenarios for primary results that analysts had mapped out, Mr. Milei’s victory was the least expected.

Now Mr. Manoukian said he would have to rethink his predictions of the election, as Mr. Milei has a clear chance to reach the second round, which then could be a tossup.

“He was not seen as a competitive candidate for a runoff,” Mr. Manoukian said. “Now something very different is happening.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of seats in Argentina’s lower house of Congress. It has 257 seats, not 500.

An earlier version of this article misidentified how a candidate could win the election outright and avoid a runoff. A candidate needs either 45 percent of the vote, or 40 percent and a margin of victory of at least 10 percentage points, not 50 percent of the vote.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina.Alexander Koryakov / Kommersant

Russia Raises Interest Rates to 12% After Ruble Plummets

The Moscow Time by Jake Cordell, 5 hours ago

Russia’s Central Bank hiked interest rates from 8.5% to 12% on Tuesday in an emergency meeting after the ruble slid past 100 against the U.S. dollar the day before.

“The decision is aimed at limiting price stability risks,” the Bank said in a statement.

The ruble gained strongly ahead of the decision, rising by more than 2% to around 95 against the U.S. dollar, before paring gains to fall back below 98 after the rate hike was announced, Moscow Exchange data showed.

It was the first extraordinary meeting of the Bank’s board of directors since Feb. 28, 2022, when the regulator raised interest rates to 20% in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine just days earlier.

Kremlin Unfazed as Ruble Crashes Through 100 vs. Dollar

A devaluation in the Russian currency has gathered pace in recent weeks, triggering concerns it could set off an inflationary spiral and panic in Russia’s domestic financial markets.

In its statement, the Bank said surging demand at home — which includes a rapid increase in state spending on the war in Ukraine — was causing the economy to overheat.

“Steady growth in domestic demand surpassing the capacity to expand output amplifies the underlying inflationary pressure and has an impact on the ruble’s exchange rate dynamics,” it said.

Ahead of the move, analysts at Alfa Bank said a key rate of around 12% could help stabilize the currency.

“Perhaps with the help of a rate increase, the Central Bank expects to slow down domestic demand and reduce imports. But this will only have an indirect effect on the ruble exchange rate,” they wrote in a research note.

A fall in Russia’s export sales, a recovery in imports and surging government spending to help fund the invasion of Ukraine have all contributed to a weakening ruble and rising inflation, analysts say. The Central Bank itself has been warning of inflationary pressures for almost a year, following Russia's mobilization of some 300,000 reservists in September. 

Inflation is currently running at 4.4%, the bank said in its statement — above its official 4% target — and is set to accelerate toward 6.5% by the end of this year, according to official forecasts. Other measures of price rises, including core inflation and seasonally-adjusted inflation were running above 7%, the central bank said on Tuesday.

“The pass-through of the ruble’s depreciation to prices is gaining momentum and inflation expectations are on the rise,” it said in a statement, adding there were “substantial” risks that inflation would not be brought back down to 4% until after 2024.

Tuesday’s hike came after Maxim Oreshkin, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, publicly called for higher borrowing costs to address the ruble’s woes, in a rare criticism of the regulator’s policy from the Kremlin. 

Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina, previously an economic advisor to Putin, is seen in Moscow as an astute operator who has been instrumental in helping Russia’s economy weather a barrage of Western sanctions and the economic fallout of the war.

Analysts say the falling ruble is both a blessing and a curse for the Kremlin. 

A weaker currency increases Russia’s revenue from energy sales, which are priced in dollars, helping offset lost income from lower exports. The price in rubles for a barrel of Russia’s Urals oil has more than doubled since the start of the year. 

However, it could also trigger financial panic and inflation at home, by pushing up prices for goods that use imported parts and even for some domestically-produced agricultural products, where the price is dictated by international markets. 

Last week a state TV presenter, Vladimir Solovyov, slammed the Central Bank on a broadcast of his online show, calling on Nabiullina to halt the slide in the ruble ahead of the upcoming presidential election, scheduled for March 2024. Putin is certain to win the race, which independent observers and rights groups say will be neither free nor fair, but the Kremlin would prefer not to have Russians head to the polls against the backdrop of an economic crisis. 

Russia’s economy has become increasingly militarized in the 18 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, with a massive ramp-up in arms production and payments to soldiers offsetting a sharp drop in retail sales, foreign investment and energy exports.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

Hemingway and the “gang” say: “Farewell To The Arms…

By GERMÁN & CO, August 13, 2023

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Project "Alcatraz": A Comprehensive Initiative for Gang Rehabilitation and Reintegration by Santa Teresa...

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“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

―JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

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It is the cruelest reality imaginable...

Criminal activity has become a worldwide threat recently. The current statistics are alarming, with homicides taking the lives of almost half a million people globally. Surprisingly, this number is higher than the sum of deaths caused by armed conflicts and terrorist attacks during the same period.

To deal with the problem effectively, it's crucial to comprehend the intricate relationships between Latin American gangs, the widespread availability of firearms in Europe, and the extent of organized crime. Latin American criminal groups have played a crucial role in the increase of crime rates in the region. These groups frequently operate with a twisted notion of loyalty, engaging in violent conflicts over territories to dominate and control lucrative illegal activities. Their influence goes beyond local communities, spreading into diverse aspects of society and perpetuating cycles of violence.

In Europe, the widespread availability of firearms worsens the hazards of criminal activities. As guns are easily accessible, criminals become more confident, leading to an increase in armed robberies, gang violence, and even terror attacks. Recognizing the urgency of addressing this crisis, the United Nations implemented “Sustainable Development Goal 16”, which aims to decrease violence and associated deaths by 2030. Nonetheless, the current crime rate persists. Therefore, achieving the goal on time is likely.

To effectively tackle crime and ensure community safety, a diverse approach is necessary. Such an approach ought to involve investing in social programs that address the root causes of crime, encourage education and skills development, enable economic opportunities, and bolster international cooperation to dismantle transnational criminal networks.

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A déjà vu of goodness…

On a chilly autumn evening, the “Spirit of Good Hope” entered a bustling café on Rue de l'Abreuvoir in Paris. It seemed familiar. The Spirit felt like he had been there before; he enjoyed the cozy ambiance and was captivated by the café's charm. The air was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, mingling with the gentle buzz of conversation permeating the room. It wasn't fleeting, though. It was a positive repetition that set the tone for the evening. The Spirit felt a profound sense of hope, as if tonight was different from other nights. Approaching the counter, he had a smile spread across his face. He said to the barista, "Un café au lait avec du rhum Santa Teresa, s'il vous plaît," with a hint of excitement in his voice. He ordered this drink every time. It was ideal for this time of year when the weather was cold. In the dimly lit café, a poignant scene unfolded, reflecting the intense emotions of this extraordinary gathering. Ernest Hemingway filled the room with his gray beard, exuding rugged charm. Surrounding him, the young "gang" members held court, their faces bearing tattoos and scars from their struggles and battles fought on the unforgiving city streets.

The conversation drifted through the smoky haze, blending past and present and forging an unexpected connection between two contrasting worlds.  Hemingway acknowledged the profound impact guns have had on gang members.  In the weathered writer, these resilient individuals discovered a kindred spirit who understood their conflicting natures.  The gang's weapons were a source of power and control in a world constantly challenging their lives.  These weapons gave them a semblance of strength and protection through their tumultuous existence.  But beneath the surface, guilt seethed—an undeniable truth they could not escape. The countless lives lost in the crossfire haunted their consciences, leaving scars that would never fully fade.  Hemingway, too, understood the weight of guns on the human soul.  Through his experiences as a soldier first and a writer afterwards, he witnessed the devastating effects of war.  The weapons that once filled his hands had penetrated the depths of his being, leaving scars that time would never heal.  He carried the ghosts of those he had lost, constantly reminding him of the devastating toll of violence.  

As they talked, an unspoken understanding began to develop. Despite the differences that separated them, Hemingway and the gang members found common ground in the profound impact that guns had on their lives. Through their shared experiences, they formed an unlikely bond, providing a moment of relief from the adversity molded by the destructive forces of the past. They yearned to break free from the chains that held them captive. And so, on that fateful night, they conceived a noble path - the Alcatraz Project - with the audacious purpose of bidding farewell to the arms.

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Inspired by the noble soul of Saint Teresa Of Avila…

The teachings and spirituality of Saint Teresa of Avila, a nun renowned for her devotion to praying for the most vulnerable, have had a profound influence on the Wollmer family, who own Hacienda Santa Teresa in the Aragua Valley, a key region in Venezuela's sugar industry. The family, deeply moved by her teachings and spiritual beliefs, embraced the principles that would later be recognized as corporate social responsibility, long before it became a popular trend.

Hacienda Santa Teresa is the home of "Santa Teresa," Venezuela's oldest rum brand, with a rich history dating back to 1796. Originally focused on cultivating coffee, cocoa, and sugarcane, the hacienda ventured into rum production in 1830 and has persevered through numerous challenges, including wars, revolutions, dictators, and even the ongoing pandemic. Although the company produces various rum, only one, the "Santa Teresa 1796 Solera Rum," is designated for exportation. This particular expression was introduced in 1996 to commemorate the bicentennial of the hacienda and is managed internationally by Bacardi Ltd.

Through their commitment to Saint Teresa's teachings and spiritual values, the Wollmer family has nurtured a brand that embodies tradition, resilience, and respect for its community and the environment. Hacienda Santa Teresa's enduring legacy as a producer of exceptional rum highlights the family's dedication to their craft and their unwavering belief in the principles that were inspired by Saint Teresa herself.

The brand has a long history of community involvement. The organization's most renowned endeavour is the ongoing Project “Alcatraz”. In 2003, a criminal gang unlawfully entered the Hacienda premises and launched a surprise attack on a security guard. When apprehended, the perpetrators were presented with an unconventional option:

“Either surrender to the authorities or engage in labour at the Hacienda to restate their transgression…

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Project "Alcatraz"…

In response to the ever-growing challenge of gang-related activities, the offer to establish Project "Alcatraz" was accepted, marking the beginning of a remarkable endeavor. Since its inception, Project "Alcatraz" has evolved into a comprehensive initiative dedicated to the recruitment and rehabilitation of individuals involved in criminal gangs.

Drawing upon a multi-faceted approach, this program employs a range of strategies to foster the reintegration of these individuals into society. One core aspect of Project "Alcatraz" is vocational training, equipping participants with essential skills and expertise necessary for employment and self-sustainability. Moreover, value formation plays a key role in instilling a sense of moral compass and social responsibility.

Recognizing the importance of addressing underlying psychological issues, Project "Alcatraz" also provides psychological counseling to its participants. By addressing the root causes of their involvement with criminal gangs, this counseling plays a pivotal role in guiding them towards positive and productive paths.

Formal education is another vital component of the program. Through academic pursuits, participants have the opportunity to expand their knowledge and develop a solid foundation for future success. By fostering intellectual growth, Project "Alcatraz" helps break the cycle of criminal activity and opens doors to new possibilities.

An unexpected aspect of the rehabilitation process embraced by Project "Alcatraz" is the involvement of its participants in the sport of rugby. Beyond its physical benefits, rugby serves as a powerful tool for instilling discipline, teamwork, and self-esteem. This sport offers a unique opportunity for personal development and camaraderie, contributing to the overall success of the program.

Since its establishment, Project "Alcatraz" has witnessed the participation of numerous young people aiming to leave behind a life of crime. Through its far-reaching initiatives, the program has successfully reintegrated many individuals into society, providing them with a chance for a fresh start. The unwavering commitment and dedication of the Project "Alcatraz" team have paved the way for transformation and hope in the lives of those previously trapped in a cycle of gang-related activities.

Looking forward, as Project "Alcatraz" continues to grow and evolve, it serves as a beacon of progress and renewal in the realm of gang rehabilitation. With its holistic approach and undeniable impact, this initiative stands as a testament to the power of compassion, perseverance, and the belief in the potential for redemption in every individual.

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IMAGE BY GERMAN & Co

Trump Indicted in Georgia for Election Interference Scheme Along With 18 Others

TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT AND ERIC CORTELLESSA, AUGUST 14, 2023 

Agrand jury in Georgia voted to indict Donald Trump on Monday, along with more than a dozen of his allies, for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, marking the fourth criminal case leveled against the former President this year and the second related to his efforts to stay in power.

Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, charged Trump with 13 counts, including violating state racketeering laws and soliciting a public official to violate his oath of office, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiring to file false documents, and making false statements.

"Trump and the other Defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump," the indictment reads.

The sweeping charges in Georgia are almost certain to add to Trump’s already packed court schedule and increase his legal bills as he aims to win the GOP presidential nomination and reclaim the White House.

Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump earlier this month on four federal charges, including knowingly spreading lies about election malfeasance, defrauding the U.S. government by orchestrating a scheme to present fake electors to the Electoral College, and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, which culminated with his supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith is separately prosecuting Trump for mishandling classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, in a case set to go to trial in May. At the same time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is set to take Trump to trial in March on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Several of Trump’s rivals for the GOP presidential nomination have said they would pardon him if elected. Trump has also routinely claimed that a president can pardon himself. But the latest charges out of Georgia present a unique danger to Trump’s future freedom. Notably, no president could grant Trump clemency in the Georgia and New York cases, as presidential pardon power only applies to federal charges. In Georgia, only an independent state board enjoys pardon authority.

The Fulton Country indictment is focused on five main areas of legal impropriety, including the deliberate dissemination of election fraud falsehoods by Trump allies to manipulate the Georgia legislature; Trump’s efforts to intimidate state officials, including Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to overturn Biden’s victory; the breach of voting data in Georgia’s rural Coffee County; the targeted abuse and harassment of state election workers; and the orchestrated attempt to send alternate electors slates to Congress to undermine the will of the voters.

Willis didn’t stop with Trump. A number of his closest associates were also charged under Georgia’s anti-racketeering law for conspiring to nullify the election, including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who was Trump’s personal attorney at the time; former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Cheseboro, both of whom devised a scheme to send alternate Trump electors to the Electoral College; and other lawyers in Trump’s orbit who pushed wild or legally dubious theories for how to reverse the election outcome, such as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. A handful of Georgia-based Trump attorneys and advisers were also included in the indictment.

All in all, the historic indictment brought a grand total of 41 charges against 19 people. They collectively face a gamut of different charges but are all being prosecuted under the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, what are known in legal parlance as RICO Statues, which have typically been used to prosecute members of the mob.

In a statement Monday night, Trump’s campaign dismissed the new indictments as a partisan attempt to kneecap his 2024 campaign. “Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden’s playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign,” it said. “All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail."

The campaign’s comments were less vituperative than Trump’s own attacks on Willis, who he has called a “racist” and “Phoney Fani” and has baselessly accused of having an affair with a gang member she once prosecuted, a claim that Willis has denied and has since been debunked.

Trump has strenuously fought to stop Willis’s case in its tracks. In July, he filed and lost a petition to the Georgia State Supreme Court to bar Willis from prosecuting him. The request, if granted, would have also forced the investigative special grand jury that met last year to toss out the final report. 

The Georgia case will test just how far someone with outsized political power can influence the election process. Trump is being prosecuted under more than a dozen charges  to use his weight as president to illegally change the vote tallies and send fake electors to Washington to alter the election result.

The Willis investigation into Trump dates back to early 2021, shortly after The Washington Post reported on a Jan. 2, 2021 phone call in which Trump asked Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to "find" 11,780 votes—one more than the number he lost by in the decisive swing state. Raffensperger refused. At that point, Georgia officials had already counted the votes three times, won multiple lawsuits over the outcome, and debunked extravagant fraud claims from Trump's team. At each turn, Biden’s victory was confirmed irrefutably. Trump has said he did nothing wrong, calling the phone was “perfect” 

But while many legal analysts have characterized the leaked conversation as something of a smoking gun, Willis has presented a much broader case, as her investigators have examined an extensive and multi-faceted effort by Trump to exert political muscle and disseminate brazen lies to remain in office despite the will of the voters. 

Trump’s allies, including Rudy Giuliani, harassed election workers and propagated patently false claims of a rigged election. On Dec. 14, 2020, the same day Biden’s electors were confirmed, a group of 16 fake electors met separately at the state capitol building to sign a false certificate stating that Trump had won the election. 

A separate grand jury investigated the matter last year, and concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath, recommending indictments in the case, according to its own report, portions of which a Georgia judge released earlier this year. The grand jury in that probe also unanimously found that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning the election.”

Willis’s prosecution against Trump may not only increase his criminal vulnerability liability. It could also provide a road map for other jurisdictions to pursue election interference charges. Special Counsel Smith’s indictment alleges that Trump tried to influence the outcome in Georgia as well as six other states. “It certainly raises the question of whether or not there are going to be investigations in those states and potentially, if there are, if those investigations will lead to further indictments,” says Richard Serafini, a former federal prosecutor.

The more cases Trump faces, the harder it will be for him to maneuver his way out of the justice system’s grip. Some of his most famous tactics—from lying to intimidating potential foes—are more likely to yield far more severe consequences in a court of law than in the political arena. And with the Georgia charges, unlike the federal cases, he can’t hope to win the 2024 election and grant himself a pardon or appoint an attorney general who will squash the matter altogether. It’s why it may be the indictment that scares him the most.

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News Round-up, August 14, 2023

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The Best in the Biz – August 10, 2023

Posted to Energy Centralin the Utility Management Group

EPA Plan Would Impose Drastic Cuts on Power Plant Emissions by 2040

German Toro Ghio

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/ee/epa-plan-would-impose-drastic-cuts-power-plant-emissions-2040

The Biden administration is preparing to unveil a proposal to require power plants to drastically reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040, another attempt to regulate one of the country’s biggest contributors to climate change after the Supreme Court struck down the first effort, according to three people familiar with the plans.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Matt Chester for his immense support, but my appreciation does not end with Matt. I also extend my thanks to everyone of you who has supported me. Your support has made all the difference, and I am forever grateful.

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Most read…

The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think

The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries.

NYT,  David Gelles reported from Tulsa, Okla.; Brad Plumer and Jim Tankersley from Washington; and Jack Ewing from New York to see how an accelerated energy transition is playing out. Photographs by Mason Trinca, August 13, 2023

Electric Vehicle Myths

Electric Vehicles: Will they save or destroy us?

Source: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myth1

The Economic Losers in the New World Order

Giant subsidies and rising protectionism are upending decades of free trade. Smaller countries, from the U.K. to Singapore, are getting left behind.

WSJ by Ed Ballard, Jason Douglas,  and Jon Emont, August 14, 2023 The Economic Losers in the New World Order

Opinion: In Iowa, Mike Pence delivers a powerful message against Trump

TWP by Karen Tumulty, Deputy opinion editor and columnist, August 13, 2023 

The hunt for Russia’s secret ships

Turkey’s strategic straits are a trade superhighway — and a lifeline for the Kremlin’s war machine.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL GAVIN, AUGUST 14, 2023

Oil Firms Face Hard Choices After a Year of Big Spending

The industry’s wartime windfall is dwindling

TWSJ by David Uberti, August 14, 2023

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The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.

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A big shift in the way America produces energy is already underway.

The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think

The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries.

NYT,  David Gelles reported from Tulsa, Okla.; Brad Plumer and Jim Tankersley from Washington; and Jack Ewing from New York to see how an accelerated energy transition is playing out. Photographs by Mason Trinca, August 13, 2023

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This is the first article in a three-part series examining the speed, challenges and politics of the American economy moving toward clean energy.

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Delivery vans in Pittsburgh. Buses in Milwaukee. Cranes loading freight at the Port of Los Angeles. Every municipal building in Houston. All are powered by electricity derived from the sun, wind or other sources of clean energy.

Across the country, a profound shift is taking place that is nearly invisible to most Americans. The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.

A similar energy transition is already well underway in Europe and elsewhere. But the United States is catching up, and globally, change is happening at a pace that is surprising even the experts who track it closely.

Wind and solar power are breaking records, and renewables are now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world’s largest source of electricity. Automakers have made electric vehicles central to their business strategies and are openly talking about an expiration date on the internal combustion engine. Heating, cooling, cooking and some manufacturing are going electric.

As the planet registers the highest temperatures on record, rising in some places to levels incompatible with human life, governments around the world are pouring trillions of dollars into clean energy to cut the carbon pollution that is broiling the planet.

The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal. Private investment is flooding into companies that are jockeying for advantage in emerging green industries.

“We look at energy data on a daily basis, and it’s astonishing what’s happening,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. “Clean energy is moving faster than many people think, and it’s become turbocharged lately.”

More than $1.7 trillion worldwide is expected to be invested in technologies such as wind, solar power, electric vehicles and batteries globally this year, according to the I.E.A., compared with just over $1 trillion in fossil fuels. That is by far the most ever spent on clean energy in a year.

Those investments are driving explosive growth. China, which already leads the world in the sheer amount of electricity produced by wind and solar power, is expected to double its capacity by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. In Britain, roughly one-third of electricity is generated by wind, solar and hydropower. And in the United States, 23 percent of electricity is expected to come from renewable sources this year, up 10 percentage points from a decade ago.

“The nature of these exponential curves sometimes causes us to underestimate how quickly changes occur once they reach these inflection points and begin accelerating,” said former Vice President Al Gore, who called attention to what he termed a “planetary crisis” 17 years ago in his film “An Inconvenient Truth.” “The trend is definitely in favor of more and more renewable energy and less fossil energy.”

Even as the pace of change in the United States is surprising everyone from energy experts to automobile executives, fossil fuels still dominate energy production at home and abroad.

Corporations are building new coal mines, oil rigs and gas pipelines. The government continues to award leases for drilling projects on public lands and in federal waters and still subsidizes the industries. After posting record profits last year, leading oil companies are backing away from recent promises         to invest more heavily in renewable energy.

The scale of change required to remake the systems that power the United States — all the infrastructure that needs to be removed, re-engineered and replaced — is mind-boggling. There are major challenges involved in adding large amounts of renewable energy to antiquated electric grids and mining enough minerals for clean technologies. Some politicians, including most Republicans, want the country to continue burning fossil fuels, even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus that their use is endangering life on the planet. Dozens of conservative groups organized by the Heritage Foundation have created a policy playbook, should a Republican win the 2024 presidential election, that would reverse course on lowering emissions. It would shred regulations designed to curb greenhouse gases, dismantle nearly every federal clean energy program and boost the production of fossil fuels.

And while energy systems are changing fast, so is the climate. It is far from certain whether the United States and other polluting countries will do what scientists say is required to avert catastrophe: stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2050. All of the investment so far has slowed the pace at which emissions are growing worldwide, but the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere is at record levels.

And yet, from Beijing to London, Tokyo to Washington, Oslo to Dubai, the energy transition is undeniably racing ahead. Change is here, even in oil country.

‘Energy Is Energy’

As the workday begins in Tulsa, Okla., the assembly line at the electric school bus factory rattles to life. Crews fan out across the city to install solar panels on century-old Tudor homes. Teslas and Ford F-150 Lightnings pull up to charging stations powered in part by the country’s second-largest wind farm. And at the University of Tulsa’s School of Petroleum Engineering, faculty are working on ways to use hydrogen as a clean energy source.

Tulsa, a former boomtown once known as the “Oil Capital of the World” where the minor league baseball team is the Drillers, is immersed in a new energy revolution.

At the port, an Italian company, Enel, is building a $1 billion solar panel factory. The bus factory is operated by Navistar, one of the biggest commercial vehicle makers in the world. And the city’s main electric utility, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, now harvests more than 28 percent of its power from wind.

Clean energy entrepreneurs are flocking to Oklahoma, too. Francis Energy, a fast-growing maker of electric vehicle charging stations, is based in Tulsa. Canoo, an electric vehicle start-up, is building a 100,000-square-foot battery factory at a nearby industrial park and a manufacturing plant for its trucks in Oklahoma City, though there are questions about whether the company will have enough funding to realize its plans. And teams from Solar Power of Oklahoma are busy fastening photovoltaic panels to the roofs of homes and businesses around Tulsa.

The city is embracing its shifting identity.

“We have a tremendous sense of pride in our history,” said Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., the Republican former mayor of Tulsa who was an oil and gas executive but now helps recruit clean energy companies to the region. “But we also understand that energy is energy, whether it is generated by wind, steam or whatever it might be.”

Around the country, clean energy is taking root in unlikely locales.

Houston, home to more than 500 oil and gas companies, also has more than 130 solar- and wind-related companies. Some of the country’s largest wind and solar farms are in the Texas flatlands outside the city, and a huge wind farm has been proposed off the coast of Galveston.

In Arkansas, a planned solar farm — the state’s biggest — is expected to help power a nearby U.S. Steel factory that is undergoing a $3 billion upgrade. When complete, the plant will use electric furnaces to mold scrap steel into new products. That will result in about 80 percent less greenhouse gases, the company says, and set the pace for an industry that has been a major polluter.

About two-thirds of the new investment in clean energy is in Republican-controlled states, where policymakers have historically resisted renewables. But with each passing month, the politics seem to matter less than the economics.

“We’re the reddest state in the country, and we’re an oil and gas state,” said J.W. Peters, president of Solar Power of Oklahoma. “So it took a lot of time to convince people that this wasn’t snake oil.”

Mr. Peters was broke six years ago, with less than $400 in his checking account after his contracting business slowed down. Then he responded to a help-wanted ad looking for workers to install solar panels, which were becoming more popular in Tulsa. He now employs 61 workers and has $18 million in annual sales. “The environmental benefits are nice,” he said, “but most people are doing this for the financial opportunity.”

‘Something Very Dramatic’

Fifteen years ago, solar panels, wind turbines and battery-powered vehicles were widely viewed as niche technologies, too expensive and unreliable for mainstream use.

But clean energy became cheap far faster than anyone expected. Since 2009, the cost of solar power has plunged by 83 percent, while the cost of producing wind power has fallen by more than half. The price of lithium-ion battery cells fell 97 percent over the past three decades.

Today, solar and wind power are the least expensive new sources of electricity in many markets, generating 12 percent of global electricity and rising. This year, for the first time, global investors are expected to pour more money into solar power — some $380 billion — than into drilling for oil.

The rapid drop in costs for solar energy, wind power and batteries can be traced to early government investment and steady improvements over time by hundreds of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs around the world.

Source: Lazard. Notes: Charts reflect the mean levelized cost of energy, which captures the price of building and running new power plants but excludes other electrical system costs. Lazard did not release data for 2022. In 2023, costs rose because of supply-chain problems, inflation and other issues.

“The world has produced nearly three billion solar panels at this point, and every one of those has been an opportunity for people to try to improve the process,” said Gregory Nemet, a solar power expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And all of those incremental improvements add up to something very dramatic.”

An equally potent force, along with the technological advances, has been an influx of money — in particular, a gusher since 2020 of government subsidies.

In the United States, President Biden signed a trio of laws during his first two years in office that allocated unprecedented funds for clean energy: A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law provided money to enhance the power grid, buy electric buses for schools and build a national network of electric vehicle chargers. The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act set aside billions of dollars for semiconductors vital to car manufacturing. And the Inflation Reduction Act, which marks its first anniversary on Aug. 16, is by far the most ambitious attempt to fight climate change in American history.

The United States is ramping up its capacity to produce electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.

That landmark law provided tax breaks related to electric vehicles, heat pumps and energy efficiency upgrades, solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing and clean hydrogen production. The government is also investing in efforts to capture carbon emissions and store them before they can reach the atmosphere, as well as technology that can remove them directly from the air.

Originally estimated to cost roughly $391 billion between 2022 and 2031, the tax breaks are proving so popular with manufacturers and consumers that estimates now put the cost as high as $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

Combined, the three laws have prompted companies to announce at least $230 billion in manufacturing investments so far. In Georgia, a Korean solar manufacturer, Qcells, is building a $2.5 billion plant. In Nevada, Tesla is building a new $3.6 billion electric truck factory. And in Oklahoma, the Enel and Canoo facilities are primed to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act, as is a new $4.4 billion battery factory being considered by Panasonic, the Japanese conglomerate.

“There’s a lot of appetite to invest in the United States thanks to that law,” said Giovanni Bertolino, an executive at Enel, adding that the plant his company is building in Tulsa would not exist without the Inflation Reduction Act.

Regulations are also hastening the energy transition. Mr. Biden has proposed tough new federal pollution limits on tailpipes and smokestacks, but several states are acting on their own. California, with market muscle that influences the entire auto industry, plans to halt sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and new diesel-powered trucks by 2036 — and a handful of states are following suit. In May, New York became the first state to ban gas hookups in most new buildings, requiring all-electric heating and cooking starting in 2026. Several cities, including New York and San Francisco, have similar prohibitions, although some Republican-controlled states have blocked their municipalities from banning gas.

Heavy investment by the United States has spurred a spirited reaction from other wealthy nations. Countries that initially complained that the United States was unfairly subsidizing clean energy manufacturers have since engaged in a sort of friendly subsidy race.

Canada, South Korea and others have pushed for their companies to have better access to the American incentives, while offering similar subsidies to their domestic manufacturers. After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the European Union moved to lessen its dependence on Russian oil and gas. In May, for the first time ever, wind and solar power in the E.U. generated more electricity than fossil fuels.

And in China, which is currently both the world’s top polluter and the global leader for renewable power, the government continues to invest in every stage of clean energy production, from solar cells to batteries, wind turbines and more. Like the United States, China provides subsidies to buyers of electric vehicles. Last year it spent $546 billion on clean energy, far more than any other country in the world.

With costs falling fast, manufacturing has picked up and installations of solar and wind projects have increased. The U.S. solar industry installed a record 6.1 gigawatts of capacity in the first quarter of 2023, a 47 percent increase over the same period last year.

And those low costs have led many of the United States’ biggest corporations, such as Alphabet, Amazon and General Motors, to purchase large amounts of wind and solar power, because it burnishes their reputations and because it makes good economic sense.

“We’re seeing the nonlinear change happen before us,” said Jon Creyts, chief executive of RMI, a nonprofit organization that promotes the energy transition. “And that’s important, because we’re facing a climate crisis right now.”

‘A National Phenomenon’

Steve Uerling’s Tulsa home is a model of energy efficiency. He replaced all his incandescent light bulbs with LEDs. He installed a heat pump and rooftop solar panels this year. And he drives a plug-in hybrid Ford Fusion and a Tesla Model 3.

Mr. Uerling, a mechanical engineer, said he wanted to see renewable power take off in Oklahoma and was trying to do his part. But he was also driven by his wallet.

Source: International Energy Agency

Note: Sales share of battery electric vehicles excludes plug-in hybrids. By The New York Times

“My fuel cost is equivalent to getting 200 miles a gallon on gasoline,” he said. “We charge at night, when we get a much cheaper rate on our electricity.”

Millions of people around the country are making similar calculations. Electric vehicles are by far the fastest-growing segment of the auto industry, with record sales of 300,000 in the second quarter of 2023, a 48 percent increase from a year earlier. Teslas are now among the best-selling cars in the country, and Ford has expanded its production of the F-150 Lightning, the electric version of its popular pickup truck, after a surge of initial demand created a waiting list.

Concerns among consumers about the availability of charging stations as well as the cost of some models have helped to cool sales somewhat, leading some automakers to slash prices. Still, federal tax credits of up to $7,500 have made the least expensive electric vehicles competitive with gas-powered cars. And about two dozen states offer additional tax credits, rebates or reduced fees, further pushing down their cost.

Government action is also helping heavier vehicles go electric. Sales of electric school buses are soaring, largely because of $5 billion in federal grants that can cover 100 percent of the cost for low-income communities. The Postal Service plans to spend nearly $10 billion to purchase 66,000 electric mail trucks — roughly 30 percent of its fleet — over the next five years.

Electric vehicles sales are growing quickly, but consumers are still concerned about high upfront costs and charging availability.

In the private sector, Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric delivery trucks from Rivian. Tesla has an electric semitruck, as do several other manufacturers, including Peterbilt.

Companies that provide charging stations are springing up to meet the demand. Francis Energy has more than 400 chargers across Oklahoma and is expanding nationwide. EVgo, which has one of the largest fast-charging networks in the United States, plans to more than double the 3,000 charging stalls it operates.

“It is not a red-state, blue-state thing,” said Cathy Zoi, EVgo’s chief executive. “It is a national phenomenon.”

In an unusual move, seven carmakers — BMW Group, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz Group and Stellantis — are spending $1 billion in a joint venture to build 30,000 charging ports on major highways and other locations in the United States and Canada.

The shift is happening so quickly that some of America’s most iconic automakers are preparing for a world beyond gasoline-powered cars and trucks.

General Motors, which has the largest market share of any carmaker in the United States, has committed to selling only zero-emissions vehicles by 2035. It’s a “once-in-a-generation inflection point” for the 114-year-old automaker, according to Mary Barra, G.M.’s chief executive.

In an interview, Ms. Barra said her company began to consider an all-electric future in 2020. “We started to see this happening with the consumer research we did,” said Ms. Barra, who has subsequently bet billions on G.M.’s efforts to reorient its engineering, overhaul its manufacturing facilities and processes and build new battery plants.

As the cost of batteries comes down, and the number of charging stations nationwide goes up, Ms. Barra expects exponential growth. “I think it’s going to be definitely an upward trajectory,” she said. “It’ll be a little bumpy, but bumpy growing.”

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Source: Media

Electric Vehicle Myths

Source: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myth1

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Electric Vehicles: Will they save or destroy us?

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

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Myth #1: Electric vehicles are worse for the climate than gasoline cars because of the power plant emissions.

• FACT: Electric vehicles typically have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars, even when accounting for the electricity used for charging.

  Electric vehicles (EVs) have no tailpipe emissions. Generating the electricity used to charge EVs, however, may create carbon pollution. The amount varies widely based on how local power is generated, e.g., using coal or natural gas, which emit carbon pollution, versus renewable resources like wind or solar, which do not. Even accounting for these electricity emissions, research shows that an EV is typically responsible for lower levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) than an average new gasoline car. To the extent that more renewable energy sources like wind and solar are used to generate electricity, the total GHGs associated with EVs could be even lower. (In 2020, renewables became the second-most prevalent U.S. electricity source.1 ) Learn more about electricity production in your area by visiting EPA’s Power Profiler interactive web page. By simply inputting your zip code, you can find the energy mix in your region.

  EPA and Department of Energy's (DOE’s) Beyond Tailpipe Emissions Calculator can help you estimate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with charging and driving an EV or a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) where you live. You can select an EV or PHEV model and type in your zip code to see the CO2 emissions and how they stack up against those associated with a gasoline car.

Myth #2: Electric vehicles are worse for the climate than gasoline cars because of battery manufacturing.

• FACT: The greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those from an average gasoline-powered vehicle, even when accounting for manufacturing.

  
  Some studies have shown that making a typical EV can create more carbon pollution than making a gasoline car. This is because of the additional energy required to manufacture an EV’s battery. Still, over the lifetime of the vehicle, total GHG emissions associated with manufacturing, charging, and driving an EV are typically lower than the total GHGs associated with a gasoline car. That’s because EVs have zero tailpipe emissions and are typically responsible for significantly fewer GHGs during operation (see Myth 1 above).

  For example, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory estimated emissions for both a gasoline car and an EV with a 300-mile electric range. In their estimates, while GHG emissions from EV manufacturing and end-of-life are higher (shown in orange below), total GHGs for the EV are still lower than those for the gasoline car.

Source: EPA

Estimates shown2 from GREET 2 2021 are intended to be illustrative only. Estimates represent model year 2020. Emissions will vary based on assumptions about the specific vehicles being compared, EV battery size and chemistry, vehicle lifetimes, and the electricity grid used to recharge the EV, among other factors.

Above, the blue bar represents emissions associated with the battery. The orange bars encompass the rest of the vehicle manufacturing (e.g., extracting materials, manufacturing and assembling other parts, and vehicle assembly) and end-of-life (recycling or disposal). The gray bars represent upstream emissions associated with producing gasoline or electricity (U.S. mix), and the yellow bar shows tailpipe emissions during vehicle operations.

Recycling EV batteries can reduce the emissions associated with making an EV by reducing the need for new materials. While some challenges exist today, research is ongoing to improve the process and rate of EV battery recycling.

Myth #3: The increase in electric vehicles entering the market will collapse the U.S. power grid.

• FACT: Electric vehicles have charging strategies that can prevent overloading the grid, and, in some cases, support grid reliability.

  It is true that the increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs) on the road will lead to increased electricity demand. Yet, how that impacts the grid will depend on several factors, such as the power level and time of day when vehicles are charged, and the potential for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging 3 among others.

  • EVs can be charged at off-peak times, such as overnight, when rates are often cheaper. Even with a mix of charging times (so not all nighttime charging), research indicates that sufficient capacity will exist to cover EVs entering the market in the coming years.4 And further down the road, when renewables make up a larger part of our energy mix in many regions, switching to more daytime charging (when some renewables like solar generate energy) with some energy storage capability should allow the grid to handle increases in EV charging.5 California leads the country with more than 1 million electric vehicles and EV charging currently makes up less than 1% of the state’s grid total load, even during peak hours.6

  • Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging allows EVs to act as a power source that may help with grid reliability by pushing energy back to the grid from an EV battery. This is done by allowing EVs to charge when electricity demand is low and drawing on them when that demand is high.

  Long term, higher electricity demand from EV growth may drive the need for upgrades to transmission and distribution infrastructure. Planning for this possibility is underway. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Build a Better Grid Initiative, launched as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will provide over $13 billion towards improving the reliability and efficiency of the grid over the next decade. Visit DOE’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Programs and search “grid infrastructure” to see where the initial investments will be made.

Myth #4: There is nowhere to charge.

• FACT: Electric vehicles can be plugged into the same type of outlet as your toaster! When you need to charge while on the road, you’ll find over 51,000 stations in the U.S. available to the public.

  
  Many people can meet their driving needs by plugging in only at home. Most EVs can be charged with a standard 120 Volt (Level 1) outlet. To charge the vehicle more quickly, you can install a dedicated 240 Volt (Level 2) outlet or charging system. And for those who live in apartments or condominiums, EV charging stations are becoming a more common building amenity.

  Access to EV charging will increase significantly in the coming years as a result of government initiatives put in place as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including an investment of up to $7.5 billion to build out a national network of electric vehicle chargers along highways, and in communities and neighborhoods. In February 2023, the White House announced major progress toward a made-in-America national network of EV chargers.

  Interested in seeing how many chargers may be needed in your area? Use DOE’s EV Pro Lite Tool to get an estimate on charging needs in your state or metropolitan area as EV adoption grows.

  For up-to-date information on EV charging locations, visit DOE’s Alternative Fuel Data Center.
   

Myth #5: Electric vehicles don’t have enough range to handle daily travel demands.

• FACT: Electric vehicle range is more than enough for typical daily use in the U.S.

  
  EVs have sufficient range to cover a typical household’s daily travel, which is approximately 50 miles on average per day.7 The majority of households (roughly 85%) travel under 100 miles on a typical day. Most EV models go above 200 miles on a fully-charged battery, with nearly all new models traveling more than 100 miles on a single charge. And automakers have announced plans to release even more long-range models in the coming years.

  Range estimates for specific EVs are available from the Find A Car tool on www.fueleconomy.gov—click on the car you are interested in, and check out the “EPA Fuel Economy” line in the table.

  How you drive your vehicle and the driving conditions, including hot and cold weather, also affect the range of an EV; for instance, researchers found on average range could decrease about 40% due to cold temperatures and the use of heat.8

Myth #6: Electric vehicles only come as sedans.

• FACT: Electric vehicles now come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

  
  EVs and PHEVs are now available in many vehicle classes, extending beyond small sedan/compact models. There are currently more than 50 PHEV and EV models on the market. More models are being released in the coming years, so vehicle class options are likely to expand.

Myth #7: Electric vehicles are not as safe as comparable gasoline vehicles.

• FACT: Electric vehicles must meet the same safety standards as conventional vehicles.

  
  All light duty cars and trucks sold in the United States must meet the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. To meet these standards, vehicles must undergo an extensive, long-established testing process, regardless of whether the vehicle operates on gasoline or electricity. Separately, EV battery packs must meet their own testing standards. Moreover, EVs are designed with additional safety features that shut down the electrical system when they detect a collision or short circuit.

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Just Exceptional...

“Words fail to capture the resplendent magnificence of this exquisite beverage. Its qualities transcend the boundaries of human expression, rendering it a true paragon of its kind. Indeed, it stands unequivocally among the most exceptional —-elixir—- concoctions ever produced…

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Source: Media

The Economic Losers in the New World Order

Giant subsidies and rising protectionism are upending decades of free trade. Smaller countries, from the U.K. to Singapore, are getting left behind.

WSJ by Ed Ballard, Jason Douglas, and Jon Emont, August 14, 2023 The Economic Losers in the New World Order

The world’s biggest economies are offering  huge subsidies in a cutthroat race to win the industries of the future. The losers: all the countries that can’t pay up. 

New tax credits for manufacturing batteries, solar-power equipment and other green technology are drawing a flood of capital to the U.S. The European Union is trying to respond with its own green-energy support package. Japan has announced plans for $150 billion of borrowing to finance a wave of investment in green technology. All of them are working to become less dependent on China, which has a big lead in areas including batteries and the minerals to make them.

Foreign direct investment flowsSource: United NationsNote: EU figures exclude Luxembourg

Now, some smaller players are getting left behind. Many are nimble economies that were on the rise during decades of free trade, but are at a disadvantage in a new era of aggressive industrial policy. Industrialized nations such as the U.K. and Singapore lack the scale to compete against the biggest economic blocs in offering subsidies. Emerging markets such as Indonesia, which had hoped to use its natural resources to climb the economic ladder, are also threatened by the shift.

Intel has been offered $11 billion in subsidies from the German government to build two semiconductor plants, in what Prime Minister Olaf Scholz called the largest foreign direct investment in German history. The pledged government financing is substantially more than the annual budget of Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry. 

“Let me tell you plainly: We cannot afford to outbid the big boys,” deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong told supporters at a recent political rally. 

For many tech companies nurtured in the U.K., growth lies elsewhere. British battery-technology startup Nexeon, which developed its technology near Oxford, helped by government funding, raised over $200 million last year. Its first commercial factory will be in South Korea, likely followed by a plant in North America. 

“But not the U.K., sadly,” said Scott Brown, Nexeon’s chief executive. Nexeon doesn’t see that changing without more government support for the battery industry. 

AMTE Power, one of the U.K.’s few homegrown battery manufacturers, has said it may rethink plans to locate a proposed $200-million-plus factory in Scotland given the difference in subsidies on offer in the U.S. and Europe. Arrival, an electric-vehicle startup, said last year it wants to focus its manufacturing in the U.S. instead of the U.K, citing the tax breaks. 

The U.S., which is offering $369 billion in incentives and funding for clean energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is seeing a windfall of foreign investment. German carmaker BMW just broke ground for a new battery plant in South Carolina. South Korean firms Hyundai and LG announced a $4.3 billion battery plant in Georgia. Panasonic of Japan is building a plant in Kansas. 

Unwinding globalization

The subsidy race marks a step away from the economic integration that for decades broke down barriers to trade and investment between countries. 

Globalization transformed once-poor countries such as South Korea and Taiwan into high-tech, developed economies, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Western consumers got an abundance of affordable consumer goods and a higher standard of living. Technological advances and new management ideas also moved more freely between countries, along with goods and financial resources.

The model also had steep costs. Once-thriving communities in the U.S. and Western Europe were hollowed out as manufacturing jobs moved to Asia or the former Soviet states. Environmental concerns mushroomed as the global economy consumed more natural resources. Some economies faced destabilizing bouts of capital flight as foreign money flooded in and out. 

Unwinding that global integration—whether for reasons of national security, geopolitical rivalry or supply-chain anxieties—comes with its own problems, economists say. Especially at risk are smaller, developing economies that need access to global markets if they’re to trade their way to greater prosperity. 

“The world as a whole is becoming more inward and turning away from open trade and investment,” said David Loevinger, a former U.S. Treasury official who is managing director for emerging markets at asset manager TCW Group. “Europe, the U.S. and China are in a subsidy competition and the losers in that competition are poorer economies with less fiscal resources.” 

The Western embrace of industrial policy could be especially painful for countries that had hoped to exploit the adoption of green technologies to turbocharge their own economic development. 

Indonesia has ambitions to parlay its abundant nickel resources into a world-leading battery industry. But U.S. rules, put in place as part of the IRA, deny subsidies for EV batteries that contain large amounts of minerals from nations that are not American free-trade partners. Indonesia is among them.

“We have all the natural resources. We have the human resources. And we are a country that’s a democracy,” said Arsjad Rasjid, the head of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in an interview. “Please don’t shut us down.”

The winners

As a leader in the subsidy race, the U.S. is experiencing an investment boom. The U.S. took in about 22% of global foreign direct investment last year, making it the world’s top recipient, according to United Nations data. That is slightly lower than the 26% it received in 2021 when global investment bounced back after a lull during the pandemic, but significantly higher than the 13% it got in 2019. Spending on construction related to manufacturing rose 76% in May compared with a year earlier, to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of $194 billion, Census Bureau data show.

In the U.K., Nexeon’s funding underscores the power of the U.S. purse to skew the playing field. As well as the private capital it raised last year, Nexeon received two million pounds, worth about $2.55 million, from a U.K. government EV-industry fund. 

Weeks later, two U.S. rivals, Sila Nanotechnologies and Group14 Technologies, both got $100 million from the Energy Department under a battery-industry funding program introduced in the 2021 infrastructure law. Like Nexeon, those companies are making silicon-based materials to be used in battery anodes to improve performance.

“The economics of projects in the U.S. are just out of sight,” said Guy Debelle, a former deputy governor of Australia’s central bank and now director of Fortescue Future Industries, the green energy unit of West Australia miner Fortescue Metals. The company is scouting investment opportunities and currently sees the U.S. as the most likely location due to subsidies that could knock up to 60% off a project’s price tag, said Debelle.

The European Union is preparing its own support package, relaxing limits on subsidies member countries can give industry. By 2030, the EU wants 40% of the key technologies needed for the green transition to be manufactured in the bloc, including solar equipment—a sector currently dominated by China—wind turbines and batteries.

The U.S. battery production pipeline, which measures capacity from projects in the works, has jumped 67% since the IRA was announced and now matches the size of Europe’s, which grew by 26% over that period, according to estimates by Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, a U.K. based firm that gathers industry data.  

The Brexit problem

The shift in global trade comes at a particularly awkward time for the U.K., which has been struggling to chart a new course in the global economy after leaving the European Union in 2020, which meant it no longer had easy access to its giant single market.

Brexit proponents said the U.K. could strike bilateral trade deals with other countries  and double down on globalization. Since then, momentum for free trade has stalled and now appears to be in retreat. 

“Back during the Brexit vote, nobody had any idea that we’d see a resurgence of industrial policy in the U.S.,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. 

Now, the U.K. government is facing calls from all corners of the country’s economy to respond to the interventionist turn in global economics with its own reinvigorated industrial strategy. 

The U.K.’s auto sector got a boost recently when the owner of Jaguar Land Rover chose to build a new EV-battery plant there, but the overall scale of green subsidies lags far behind the U.S.

Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt has promised to unveil the U.K.’s response this fall, but has downplayed expectations and said Britain will not “go toe-to-toe with our friends and allies in some distortive global subsidy race.” He said the U.K. will look to target funding to areas where Britain has a clear competitive advantage.  

New alliances

One solution for countries that can’t compete is to draw rich trade partners closer and benefit from their industrial policies, as Canada and Mexico have done through their free-trade deal with the U.S., said Chad Bown, a trade expert and former World Bank official at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Indonesia’s government is participating in the American-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, an economic pact that it hopes will improve market access for its minerals.

Last year, Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia said Indonesia would seek to form an OPEC-like cartel for nickel, a battery mineral whose production Indonesia dominates, as a response to protectionism by countries that make EVs. An OPEC-modeled organization would coordinate nickel production levels with other major exporters to ensure elevated prices. 

Analysts doubt the plan, in part because other nickel producers don’t want to alienate powerful trading partners such as the U.S. and China. Similar ideas for an OPEC-like organization of lithium producers have been floated by left-wing leaders in Latin America, but haven’t been enacted.

Indonesia and Zimbabwe have put in place export restrictions on minerals such as nickel, bauxite and lithium, along with requirements that foreign companies build processing facilities in the country as a condition for exporting. 

“I’m not a fan of these policies but they’re clearly very popular,” said Simon Evenett, a professor of international trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “Clearly it will drive up prices and it will increase uncertainty and risk.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Former vice president Mike Pence speaks at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Aug 10. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Opinion: In Iowa, Mike Pence delivers a powerful message against Trump

TWP by Karen Tumulty, Deputy opinion editor and columnist, August 13, 2023 

DES MOINES — When former vice president Mike Pence took his turn on the Des Moines Register’s soapbox at the Iowa State Fair last Thursday — a quadrennial ritual for presidential contenders — there were, as expected, some hostile shots from the audience.

One man asked Pence why he committed “treason” on Jan. 6, 2021. Another, referring to a brutal interview he had recently done with the right’s favorite provocateur, mocked: “How’s life going since Tucker Carlson ruined your career?”

But afterward, as Pence lingered to shake hands, there came quieter encounters. Nathaniel Gavronsky, 41, pushed forward to thank Pence for standing on principle that day in the Capitol and refusing Donald Trump’s demands that the vice president, in what was a ceremonial role, toss out the electoral votes that made Joe Biden president.

Even as rioters were swarming the Capitol chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” he performed what the Constitution required, Gavronsky told me. “I’ve researched the heck out of it, and I don’t believe there was anything else he could have done.”

So will he vote for Pence at January’s Republican caucuses in Wayne County, where he lives? Not a chance, Gavronsky said. Which I had already figured out, given that he was wearing a T-shirt that said: TEAM TRUMP.

There has rarely, if ever, been a candidacy more bound in conundrum than this one. As Trump continues to hold what looks like an insurmountable lead in the polls, his once-devoted lieutenant has reluctantly become an essential witness for the prosecution in the Justice Department’s case against the former president for criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Pence’s struggling campaign has barely gained enough traction to qualify for the stage of the first GOP primary debate.

It doesn’t help that social media comes to life every time a heckler calls Pence a traitor or worse. But just as frequent are those rarely recorded moments of affirmation for what history will surely regard as his highest service to the nation during the four years he held its second-highest office.

“Really, from the time we moved home to Indiana, began to travel the country with some regularity, my overwhelming experience has been very humbling expressions of gratitude — standing in an aisle on an airplane, stopped at a grocery store,” Pence said when we sat down for an interview a couple of days later in Ankeny. “And now that we’ve got a campaign going on, more and more people are coming up and saying that now.”

His wife, Karen, added: “People at the fair came up with tears in their eyes, just holding back emotion, saying, ‘Thank you for saving our country.’”

He is more eager than he once was to remind voters of what he did that day, and his criticism of Trump is increasingly direct and pointed.

The day after the Justice Department released its second indictment, Pence told reporters that his former boss had surrounded himself with “a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.” His campaign has started selling red-lettered T-shirts that say “TOO HONEST” — a reference to an episode mentioned in the 45-page document, in which Trump berated his vice president for refusing to buckle, saying: “You’re too honest.”

But, ultimately, Pence maintains, the events of Jan. 6 will not be what voters have uppermost when they go to the polls. “Elections are about the future,” he said.

And therein lies another conundrum, one that Pence will have an even harder time overcoming. It is possible that there will be enough voters in the Republican base looking for a way to move on from Trump. But it is hard to imagine that a vice president who never expressed a significant disagreement with Trump in public until Jan. 6 will be the choice amid a slate of fresher faces in 2024.

Still, Pence assured me, there will be plenty to distinguish him from others on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, as well as from the front-runner, who is likely to be absent.

He is solidly in favor of supporting Ukraine and is dismayed “when I see the former president, when I see others in the field that are walking away from American leadership on the world stage, beginning to embrace the kind of a rising tide of isolationism on the populist right.”

Whereas most of the others — including Trump — have put Social Security and Medicare off-limits, Pence regularly argues that the nation’s long-term debt problem cannot be solved unless spending for those programs can be brought under control. And even amid growing evidence that the abortion issue is becoming a drag on his party’s prospects, he is pushing for nationwide restrictions, rather than leaving the question to the states.

All of this, he said, represents a return to the classic conservatism of his idol, Ronald Reagan. That there is an appetite for that in the GOP is a dubious proposition in the era of Trumpism, a transformation that took place in the party as Pence stood unwaveringly at the president’s side. His four years of fealty to Trump are also the reason he is hardly the ideal tribune for what he said is a longing in the country “for us to restore a threshold of civility in public life. Washington has lost a sense of treating one another the way you want to be treated.”

Given how doubtful his prospects, it is fair to ask why Pence is running. “I believe I am the most qualified candidate on the stage to bring this country back to the mainstream conservative agenda that always made America strong and prosperous and free,” Pence said.

And I, for one, am glad he will be there when the candidates get together in Milwaukee. Because no one could serve as a better reminder of how close the country came to losing that freedom, which starts with respecting its democratic institutions. Now comes his best chance to make that case, even if many in the Republican base don’t want to hear it.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Yörük Işık has been watching the waters in his native Istanbul for over a decade | Ozan Kose/AFP

The hunt for Russia’s secret ships

Turkey’s strategic straits are a trade superhighway — and a lifeline for the Kremlin’s war machine.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL GAVIN, AUGUST 14, 2023

ISTANBUL — Yörük Işık puts down his espresso cup suddenly and picks up his camera. “This one is carrying diesel,” he says, training the long lens on a rusted red tanker bobbing into view in the distance. “Maybe in violation of the price cap.”

For more than a decade, he’s watched the waters in his native Istanbul, tracking the comings and goings of the tens of thousands of grain carriers, container vessels and warships that chart a course along the Bosphorus Strait every year. The natural canal flowing through the heart of Europe’s largest city links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, connecting Russia and Ukraine to the rest of the world.

“I’m obsessive,” he explains, “I don’t like to go too far inland because I have this fear I’ll miss something. You never know what’s going to happen and often you don’t realize it’s suspicious until afterwards. Even when I have free time or I’m writing a report, I sit on my balcony so I can keep an eye out.”

With his long hair and grey beard, Işık doesn’t stand out among the fishermen, tug captains and dock workers making a living in Turkey’s ports. But as a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think-tank, the 52-year-old has built up unparalleled evidence of Russia’s efforts to quietly acquire sanctioned goods and military hardware — while keeping energy and agricultural exports flowing to help pay for them. A regular analyst in Turkish media and on television, his Bosphorus Observer site has become a go-to resource for those tracking the Kremlin’s supply routes.

Ultimately, it’s a battle that could decide the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

“It’s all about finding out what they’re hiding,” he said, looking out from the café on the Bosphorus as the call to prayer wafts across the water from the half-dozen or so white minarets that dot the hillside.

“Sometimes they’ll lie and say a ship is going from one perfectly innocent place to another. They’ll turn their tracking off and go dark in the Black Sea or spoof their location. Along the waterway is endless traffic, it’s like watching an Istanbul taxi rank, but when you look closer and see the ship physically isn’t there, that tells you a lot. The camera doesn’t lie.”

Troubled waters

Just 500 kilometers away across the Black Sea, Russia’s war is raging in Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Western nations have imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow in an effort to cut it off from luxury products and dual-use goods that could be repurposed for use on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the G7 club of nations has imposed a $60 per barrel cap on Russian crude oil, threatening steep penalties for traders who flout the rules.

But analysts and policymakers fear not enough is being done to make the restrictions stick and helping Russia get hold of what it wants has become big business for middlemen — both companies and countries — prepared to take the risk.

“It’s very difficult to track what’s coming from Europe to Russia and vice versa,” said George Voloshin, an expert in sanctions circumvention with financial crime watchdog ACAMS. “We have a very incomplete picture because Russia is trying to adapt to increasingly stringent sanctions and once you have a control in place, they find a way around it. Turkey is the gateway for that kind of trade — particularly for European consumer goods.”

According to statistics collated by analytics platform Trade Data Monitor, seen by POLITICO, Turkey is the fifth-biggest source of Russia’s imports, shipping more than $3.6 billion worth of goods and commodities last year alone. Machinery and electronic components are among its top exports for 2023, up 200 percent and 183 percent respectively in the first six months of this year. And that doesn’t even include the supplies that simply transit the Bosphorus without ever formally entering Turkey.

“Ankara has carved a role for itself where on one hand it’s an intermediary in the conflict, but on the other a convenient geographical hub for the re-export of things that Moscow needs,” said Maria Shagina, a senior fellow working on sanctions policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Yörük Işık has spent years building evidence on Russia’s efforts to circumvent sanctions and move military hardware into and out of the Black Sea | Gabriel Gavin/POLITICO

“That ranges from oil and diesel shipments to military hardware. For Russia, this comes at a cost — but, at the moment, it’s profitable and it’s hell-bent on winning a war of attrition this way over time.”

Chasing a shadow

Meanwhile, a so-called shadow fleet of hundreds of aging tankers has emerged on the global market over the past year to haul embargoed Russian energy exports and buy oil above the price cap, giving the Kremlin much-needed revenues to pay its troops and purchase weaponry. Without proper maintenance or insurance, they frequently turn off their transponders to hide the origin of their fuel or carry out ship-to-ship transfers to confuse those watching from afar.

In June, the EU moved to bar these vessels from its ports — but many continue to sail through the Bosphorus.

“The shadow fleet was all under the flag of the Marshall Islands, and they were all deregistered thanks to successful U.S. diplomacy,” said Işık. “Then, in one night, the whole shadow fleet moved to Gabon registration. Maybe next it will move to Cameroon or Palau. When you see these flags, it’s not that they’re immediately guilty, but there’s a higher chance you’ll find something compared to others.”

With warnings that circumvention could prolong the war, costing more Ukrainian lives, Brussels is ramping up pressure to tighten existing loopholes. According to Voloshin, those like Işık who monitor ports and waterways can be “very useful” in piecing together the full scale of the problem and helping target sanctions against those involved. “You need people like that at every single dock and airport, but unfortunately that’s impossible.”

Worse still for the maritime industry, unprecedented Western sanctions mean unsuspecting companies could fall foul of the existing rules inadvertently. “The EU’s latest sanctions package has introduced the first ban on spoofing anywhere in the world,” said Ami Daniel, co-founder of Windward, an Israeli tech firm that tracks vessels suspected of sanctions circumvention using satellite imagery.

“Anyone doing business with vessels suspected of that kind of activity as well as vessel who turn off transmissions or conduct unreported ship-to-ship transfer could face criminal charges, fines or see their goods impounded. If a container under the transit ban — chemicals, automotive, technology — makes an unscheduled stop in Russia, it becomes untradeable, and without due diligence major companies could be caught up in that.”

Playing both sides

Of even greater concern are the ships said to be covertly supplying Russia’s armed forces.

“With naval ships, you can see their flags, it’s not something secret. But some are now disguising themselves as merchant vessels — they might do commercial jobs, or hire civilian crews to hide it, but they’re carrying Russian Armed Forces equipment and not flying a naval flag,” said Işık.

“Turkey isn’t inspecting these ships. During the Syrian war, when there was lots of tension with Russia, Turkey created lots of headaches for naval auxillary vessels, and there’s plenty of evidence put out by people like me that these ships are operating in this way. But Ankara isn’t being creative or coming up with new approaches at the moment.”

Despite being a member of NATO, Turkey has refused to impose sanctions on Moscow, instead hosting a series of ill-fated peace talks and stepping up economic relations with both sides. That policy seems to reflect public opinion inside the country where, according to a poll last year from Aksoy Research, nearly two thirds of Turkish people worry that the war is having a negative impact on their country — but 80 percent believe they still need to stay neutral.

As part of efforts to insulate itself from the consequences of the conflict, Ankara also underwrote the U.N.-brokered grain deal, credited with helping get food supplies from Ukraine’s blockaded ports to the developing world. Its collapse following the Kremlin’s withdrawal last month has sparked fears of famine and led to a spate of Russian attacks on Ukrainian export infrastructure. Turkey’s National Security Council has since warned tension in the Black Sea “is not in anyone’s benefit,” but stopped at calling for the two sides to return to the negotiating table.

“The Turkish government would rather see predictability than not, but it’s clear their government has been compensated from the conflict,” Ryan Gingeras, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, told POLITICO. “They’ve abetted stolen shipments of grain out of Ukraine — they’ve made sure they’ve stayed on good relations with Moscow, as well as Kyiv, but the collapse of the grain deal shows the limits to which Ankara can exert influence over the Black Sea.”

War on the waves

Ukraine is now evidently intent on dealing with the threat Russia poses itself.

Last week, Kyiv declared the waters around Russia’s Black Sea ports a “war risk area” from August 23 until further notice. Speaking to POLITICO, Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that his country views “everything the Russians are moving back and forth on the Black Sea [as] our valid military targets.”

Hours earlier, the Ukrainian armed forces reportedly hit a Russian fuel tanker, the Sig, with a sea drone, causing it serious damage. The ship, sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2019, had been sailing close to Ukraine’s occupied Crimean peninsula, carrying 43,123 barrels of fuel oils.

“The target they chose was the most wonderful one,” Işık beamed.

“The Sig is a ship that, along with its sister ship Yaz, has been assisting the Russian armed forces for more than half a decade now. Hitting the Sig, which is a secret Russian naval auxillary vessel carrying kerosene from refineries in occupied Crimea, hits Russian logistics in Syria, it hurts the profits of the Kremlin-linked elites making money from that trade and cuts the money being used to pay their private militaries.”

“If my work helped Ukraine identify it then I’m proud, because I’ve been after it for a long, long, long time,” he said.“There’s 15-20 other targets like that, and I think Ukraine knows about them all. Given the world has chosen not to take action, they have acted.”

But for Işık, Istanbul isn’t just a place to watch the war unfold — it holds the key to ending it.

“This city has been here for thousands of years because of the waterway,” he said, swilling coffee grounds around the bottom of his cup. “If you control the water, you control the trade — and then you get to decide how the world works.”

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TREVOR PAULHUS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Oil Firms Face Hard Choices After a Year of Big Spending

The industry’s wartime windfall is dwindling

TWSJ by David Uberti, August 14, 2023

Wall Street wants Big Oil’s cash. Washington wants it to drill more. Keeping them both happy is about to get a lot tougher.

Armed with a mountain of cash after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices skyrocketing, U.S. oil-and-gas firms cranked up production near record levels while also raining money on shareholders with dividends and buybacks.

The continuing investor windfall and a recent run-up in oil prices helped make the energy sector the S&P 500’s best performer over the past month. 

But oil prices are still considerably below last summer’s highs, dragging down producer revenues. That is going to mean hard choices for businesses such as international major oil companies and independent drillers, as well as for energy investors and policy makers who have benefited from the past year’s largess.

“It is moving toward companies spending what they can while they can,” said Mark Young, a senior analyst at data-analytics firm Evaluate Energy. 

How the industry uses its cash in coming years has huge implications for U.S. drivers and energy investors. Oil executives last year buoyed their stock prices by funneling most of their wartime windfalls to investors—not new drilling. As a surge in fuel costs supercharged inflation to 40-year highs, President Biden accused oil firms of profiteering and urged them to invest in boosting capacity.

Higher oil prices gradually encouraged the industry to do just that. Exxon Mobil and Chevron increased capital spending last quarter from a year ago while paying a combined $15.2 billion in dividends and buybacks.

But companies’ ability to keep investing while extending shareholder returns will get harder as their cash piles dwindle from spending and acquisitions. Exxon Mobil and Chevron have a combined $39.4 billion in cash, down from $48.4 billion at the end of the first quarter, according to FactSet.

Investment in the American oil patch last quarter outpaced shareholder returns for the first time since the Kremlin’s invasion, according to Evaluate Energy. The more than 40 oil-and-gas producers tracked by the firm boosted capital spending to $28.4 billion, while funneling a combined $25.4 billion to investors.

In 2019, that group spent an average of $24.3 billion per quarter on projects and $11.3 billion on shareholder returns. Capital spending fell sharply after the pandemic derailed U.S. demand for fuels, only recently surpassing pre-Covid levels.

Better-than-expected production in recent months led federal officials to bump their U.S. output projections for this year to a record 12.8 million barrels of crude a day. A gusher of oil this year blunted the impact of Russian and Saudi production cuts and pushed down gasoline and diesel costs in the first half of 2023.

Smaller exploration and production companies have continued to spend a greater portion of their cash on new projects. 

“We never said that we didn’t want to grow. We just don’t want growth to be the target,” Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, told analysts during an earnings call. 

Cash is concentrated among six firms in the​S&P 500 energy sector. Source: FactIva

Many Wall Street analysts expect the recent rebound in oil prices to continue, potentially giving an incentive for more drilling. The tightening market has contributed to what Goldman Sachs recently described as a turning point in capital spending—fueled by a promise of higher returns and a growing focus on energy security.

Other investors remain wary about boosting production. The U.S. and European Union are encouraging more clean energy with a wave of subsidies intended to curb fossil-fuel use in the coming decades. Some experts warn that the best land for oil-and-gas extraction in the U.S. has already been drilled. 

That has left many companies trumpeting cost cuts and new technologies that can more quickly drill longer wells through shale rock. The message to investors: Oil-and-gas producers can increasingly do more with less. 

“This is not just one-off execution,” Toby Rice, CEO of independent natural-gas producer EQT, told analysts last month.

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Hemingway and the “gang” say: “Farewell To The Arms…

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Project "Alcatraz": A Comprehensive Initiative for Gang Rehabilitation and Reintegration by Santa Teresa...

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“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

―Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Just Exceptional...

“Words fail to capture the resplendent magnificence of this exquisite beverage. Its qualities transcend the boundaries of human expression, rendering it a true paragon of its kind. Indeed, it stands unequivocally among the most exceptional —-elixir—- concoctions ever produced, enrapturing discerning palates with unparalleled flavors and nuances. Its profound impact lingers long after consumption, leaving an indelible impression that implores one to partake in its delights time and time again. Indeed, it is a gem of unrivaled brilliance, a testament to the artistry and craftsmanship that define the realm of fine spirits…

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It is the cruelest reality imaginable...

Criminal activity has become a worldwide threat recently. The current statistics are alarming, with homicides taking the lives of almost half a million people globally. Surprisingly, this number is higher than the sum of deaths caused by armed conflicts and terrorist attacks during the same period.

To deal with the problem effectively, it's crucial to comprehend the intricate relationships between Latin American gangs, the widespread availability of firearms in Europe, and the extent of organized crime. Latin American criminal groups have played a crucial role in the increase of crime rates in the region. These groups frequently operate with a twisted notion of loyalty, engaging in violent conflicts over territories to dominate and control lucrative illegal activities. Their influence goes beyond local communities, spreading into diverse aspects of society and perpetuating cycles of violence.

In Europe, the widespread availability of firearms worsens the hazards of criminal activities. As guns are easily accessible, criminals become more confident, leading to an increase in armed robberies, gang violence, and even terror attacks. Recognizing the urgency of addressing this crisis, the United Nations implemented “Sustainable Development Goal 16”, which aims to decrease violence and associated deaths by 2030. Nonetheless, the current crime rate persists. Therefore, achieving the goal on time is likely.

To effectively tackle crime and ensure community safety, a diverse approach is necessary. Such an approach ought to involve investing in social programs that address the root causes of crime, encourage education and skills development, enable economic opportunities, and bolster international cooperation to dismantle transnational criminal networks.

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A déjà vu of goodness…

On a chilly autumn evening, the “Spirit of Good Hope” entered a bustling café on Rue de l'Abreuvoir in Paris. It seemed familiar. The Spirit felt like he had been there before; he enjoyed the cozy ambiance and was captivated by the café's charm. The air was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, mingling with the gentle buzz of conversation permeating the room. It wasn't fleeting, though. It was a positive repetition that set the tone for the evening. The Spirit felt a profound sense of hope, as if tonight was different from other nights. Approaching the counter, he had a smile spread across his face. He said to the barista, "Un café au lait avec du rhum Santa Teresa, s'il vous plaît," with a hint of excitement in his voice. He ordered this drink every time. It was ideal for this time of year when the weather was cold. In the dimly lit café, a poignant scene unfolded, reflecting the intense emotions of this extraordinary gathering. Ernest Hemingway filled the room with his gray beard, exuding rugged charm. Surrounding him, the young "gang" members held court, their faces bearing tattoos and scars from their struggles and battles fought on the unforgiving city streets.

The conversation drifted through the smoky haze, blending past and present and forging an unexpected connection between two contrasting worlds.  Hemingway acknowledged the profound impact guns have had on gang members.  In the weathered writer, these resilient individuals discovered a kindred spirit who understood their conflicting natures.  The gang's weapons were a source of power and control in a world constantly challenging their lives.  These weapons gave them a semblance of strength and protection through their tumultuous existence.  But beneath the surface, guilt seethed—an undeniable truth they could not escape. The countless lives lost in the crossfire haunted their consciences, leaving scars that would never fully fade.  Hemingway, too, understood the weight of guns on the human soul.  Through his experiences as a soldier first and a writer afterwards, he witnessed the devastating effects of war.  The weapons that once filled his hands had penetrated the depths of his being, leaving scars that time would never heal.  He carried the ghosts of those he had lost, constantly reminding him of the devastating toll of violence.  

As they talked, an unspoken understanding began to develop. Despite the differences that separated them, Hemingway and the gang members found common ground in the profound impact that guns had on their lives. Through their shared experiences, they formed an unlikely bond, providing a moment of relief from the adversity molded by the destructive forces of the past. They yearned to break free from the chains that held them captive. And so, on that fateful night, they conceived a noble path - the Alcatraz Project - with the audacious purpose of bidding farewell to the arms.

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Botlle Waxing / Image courtesy of Santa Teresa Editing by Germán & Co

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Inspired by the noble soul of Saint Teresa Of Avila…

The teachings and spirituality of Saint Teresa of Avila, a nun renowned for her devotion to praying for the most vulnerable, have had a profound influence on the Wollmer family, who own Hacienda Santa Teresa in the Aragua Valley, a key region in Venezuela's sugar industry. The family, deeply moved by her teachings and spiritual beliefs, embraced the principles that would later be recognized as corporate social responsibility, long before it became a popular trend.

Hacienda Santa Teresa is the home of "Santa Teresa," Venezuela's oldest rum brand, with a rich history dating back to 1796. Originally focused on cultivating coffee, cocoa, and sugarcane, the hacienda ventured into rum production in 1830 and has persevered through numerous challenges, including wars, revolutions, dictators, and even the ongoing pandemic. Although the company produces various rum, only one, the "Santa Teresa 1796 Solera Rum," is designated for exportation. This particular expression was introduced in 1996 to commemorate the bicentennial of the hacienda and is managed internationally by Bacardi Ltd.

Through their commitment to Saint Teresa's teachings and spiritual values, the Wollmer family has nurtured a brand that embodies tradition, resilience, and respect for its community and the environment. Hacienda Santa Teresa's enduring legacy as a producer of exceptional rum highlights the family's dedication to their craft and their unwavering belief in the principles that were inspired by Saint Teresa herself.

The brand has a long history of community involvement. The organization's most renowned endeavour is the ongoing Project “Alcatraz”. In 2003, a criminal gang unlawfully entered the Hacienda premises and launched a surprise attack on a security guard. When apprehended, the perpetrators were presented with an unconventional option:

“Either surrender to the authorities or engage in labour at the Hacienda to restate their transgression…

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Project "Alcatraz"…

In response to the ever-growing challenge of gang-related activities, the offer to establish Project "Alcatraz" was accepted, marking the beginning of a remarkable endeavor. Since its inception, Project "Alcatraz" has evolved into a comprehensive initiative dedicated to the recruitment and rehabilitation of individuals involved in criminal gangs.

Drawing upon a multi-faceted approach, this program employs a range of strategies to foster the reintegration of these individuals into society. One core aspect of Project "Alcatraz" is vocational training, equipping participants with essential skills and expertise necessary for employment and self-sustainability. Moreover, value formation plays a key role in instilling a sense of moral compass and social responsibility.

Recognizing the importance of addressing underlying psychological issues, Project "Alcatraz" also provides psychological counseling to its participants. By addressing the root causes of their involvement with criminal gangs, this counseling plays a pivotal role in guiding them towards positive and productive paths.

Formal education is another vital component of the program. Through academic pursuits, participants have the opportunity to expand their knowledge and develop a solid foundation for future success. By fostering intellectual growth, Project "Alcatraz" helps break the cycle of criminal activity and opens doors to new possibilities.

An unexpected aspect of the rehabilitation process embraced by Project "Alcatraz" is the involvement of its participants in the sport of rugby. Beyond its physical benefits, rugby serves as a powerful tool for instilling discipline, teamwork, and self-esteem. This sport offers a unique opportunity for personal development and camaraderie, contributing to the overall success of the program.

Since its establishment, Project "Alcatraz" has witnessed the participation of numerous young people aiming to leave behind a life of crime. Through its far-reaching initiatives, the program has successfully reintegrated many individuals into society, providing them with a chance for a fresh start. The unwavering commitment and dedication of the Project "Alcatraz" team have paved the way for transformation and hope in the lives of those previously trapped in a cycle of gang-related activities.

Looking forward, as Project "Alcatraz" continues to grow and evolve, it serves as a beacon of progress and renewal in the realm of gang rehabilitation. With its holistic approach and undeniable impact, this initiative stands as a testament to the power of compassion, perseverance, and the belief in the potential for redemption in every individual.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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“Sex", Madonna's banned book, which broke every rule of hypocrisy

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Image by Germán & Co

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Just Exceptional...

“Words fail to capture the resplendent magnificence of this particular rum fully. Its exquisite qualities transcend the boundaries of human expression, rendering it a true paragon of its kind. Indeed, it stands unequivocally among the most exceptional rum concoctions ever produced, enrapturing discerning palates with unparalleled flavors and nuances. Its profound impact lingers long after consumption, leaving an indelible impression that implores one to partake in its delights time and time again. Indeed, it is a gem of unrivaled brilliance, a testament to the artistry and craftsmanship that defines the realm of fine spirits…

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Primary source "El Pais", translation, adaptation, and editing by Germán & Co. Karlstad, Sweden, July 12, 2023

In a truly intriguing encounter that took place in 1991, a group of individuals hailing from various nations - an Englishman, an Italian, a Japanese, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard - found themselves gathered in a hotel room located in the bustling city of Frankfurt. Embarking on an adventure that might seem like the beginning of a witty anecdote, little did they know that this would mark the commencement of an extraordinary and unforgettable publishing endeavor, destined to leave an indelible mark on the literary landscape of recent times.

Bound by a confidentiality agreement, meticulously crafted to prevent the divulgence of its contents, these individuals voluntarily subjected themselves to an intensely stringent security protocol. The agreement necessitated undergoing thorough searches upon both entry and exit, ensuring a complete absence of cameras and any potential means of recording. Their mission? To meticulously survey a collection of striking photographs and captivating texts within the limited span of a solitary hour.
Amidst this clandestine rendezvous, one member of the esteemed publishing house, Ediciones B, assumed the role of informant. With a steadfast resolve, the Spaniard returned to the very venue occupied by her publishing company during the esteemed Frankfurt Book Fair. Determined to shed light on the enigmatic proceedings she had borne witness to, she divulged the nature of the captivating item that lay at the heart of this secret affair.
Bearing witness to the artistic prowess of none other than Steven Meisel, the renowned photographer credited with birthing the concept of supermodels during the iconic 1990s, the item in question housed a stunning anthology of explicit photographs showcasing the incomparable Madonna. This awe-inspiring collection belonged to a book, the creation of which was a collaboration between the illustrious musician and a scriptwriter, writer, and journalist extraordinaire by the name of Glenn O'Brien. It was through mutual connections, namely their encounters with the legendary Jean Michel Basquiat, that Madonna and Glenn O'Brien's collaborative journey commenced.
To elevate the stature of this publication, it was graced with the creative inputs of Fabien Baron, an esteemed designer renowned for his extraordinary talents in graphic design. Madonna, an iconic figure of the 1980s, made an indelible impression by skillfully blending pop music, religious themes, and subsequently, exploring sexuality in her immensely successful hit "Justify My Love." Fueling her fearless spirit, she fearlessly unleashed the boundary-pushing masterpiece "Sex" in 1992.

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The featured poster highlights the 'Erotica' album, which has been exclusively crafted for the Japanese audience.

In a detailed account provided by Sureda, it becomes clear that Madonna's team had specific design requirements for the book. The layout had to be faithfully followed, including using the same font and maintaining the original text's placement. However, some pages, particularly those with Madonna's handwritten notes and crossed-out sections, were forbidden from being translated. These pages would only appear in the Spanish edition's final epilogue. To further enhance the book's allure, it was published with a metal spiral-bound cover and a metal back cover, and it was packaged in cellophane, keeping its contents hidden until purchased and opened. Remarkably, despite the risks involved, Ediciones B boldly invested in the book back in 1992, a year in which they had already achieved significant success with notable titles like the sequel to "Gone with the Wind," 'Scarlett,' the Nobel Prize-winning work by Nadine Gordimer, and the groundbreaking end-of-century novel, 'American Psycho' by Bret Easton Ellis.
During a time when the internet was not yet prevalent, the book managed to generate tremendous excitement. Today, it's worth exploring why it was deemed so taboo. Perhaps it was because society was still relatively naive back then. Mark Snyder, a writer and public relations professional in New York, recalls his experience as a 16-year-old in 1992. He vividly remembers the book being wrapped in cellophane and sealed, only accessible through special shelves that required assistance from bookstore staff. For Mark, who saved up his birthday money and asked an older friend to purchase it on his behalf, the $50 price tag was a significant investment. The high demand for the book quickly led to it being sold out within weeks of its October release, leaving eager buyers unable to purchase it during the holiday season. Presently, Snyder and his friend Kenny Finkle (50), an author and drama professor at Marymount Manhattan College, run a podcast named 'All I Wanna Do Is Talk About Madonna'. In this podcast, they analyse and discuss Madonna's discography song by song.

Sarah Lee, a Madonna look-alike, posed with a copy of 'Sex' at a launch party in London. Photo: NEIL MUNNS

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Madonna, with cleavage and a stuffed sheep, looked like a German shepherdess in an erotic version at the launch party for 'Sex' in New York, October 1992. Photo: ALLAN TANNENBAUM

Reality often fails to live up to the imagination, and one's fantasies about forbidden books remain unmatched. According to rumors, Madonna had engaged in sexual activities with dogs within the book. However, upon investigation, it is revealed that the images merely depict a dog alongside nude individuals. The book showcases photographs of Madonna in a state of undress, frequently capturing her reflection in a mirror or portraying her being restrained by both men and women. It also explores simulated acts such as black kissing and showcases Madonna engaging in affectionate moments with celebrities including Naomi Campbell, Isabella Rossellini, and Vanilla Ice, her former boyfriend. Remarkably, the book embraces diversity by including representations of various races, genders, and sexual orientations. Within the written content, Madonna, adopting the pseudonym Dita in homage to German actress Dita Parlo, delves into a discussion about the female body. She states, "I adore my cat, for it encompasses the entirety of my existence. It serves as the breeding ground for both my most agonizing experiences and my most unimaginable pleasures. My “cunt” is an everlasting source of enlightenment.”

A discussion on the topic of consent…

Snyder said, "Madonna was well aware that her images catered to sexual fantasies, but she did not aim to create any pornographic content." "I believe the book effectively addresses the concept of consent. In this regard, the book extends beyond sexual activities by emphasizing that any activity based on mutual consent is likely to be a satisfying experience, which, as a result, promotes trust and freedom." Sureda explicitly states that he did not edit a book containing pornographic content. Despite its reputation, this is primarily an artistic book. The images show consensual sex, gazes, play, and nudity, all within a design and concept of erotic daydreams. During her promotion in 1992, Spain had the highest number of new AIDS cases: "I believe sex is still possible if done carefully, and masturbation is the safest form of sexual activity." That's the reason why it features frequently in my book. It is a collection of erotic fantasies rather than a guide encouraging promiscuity.

The promotion was successful. According to Sureda, multiple bookshops in Barcelona and Madrid opened the night before the book's release. "I recall seeing a queue of twenty people at the Virgin Megastore on Gran Vía in Barcelona." This achievement is notable considering that the book was priced at 7,500 pesetas. The cost was 50 euros according to the exchange rate; however, considering inflation, it would currently amount to almost 140 euros. The cost was set globally, with minor variations. In the US, it was priced at 50 dollars; in France, it was 36 euros; in Germany, it was 42 euros. To promote the book, Madonna gave television interviews at the Michelangelo Hotel in Milan, where she spoke with several European channels. The interview she gave for Spain would go down in history.

Where does Madonna put her thermometer when she has a fever?

"Who didn't like Madonna? She was Madonna!" exclaims Millán Salcedo on the other end of the phone. On Monday 5th October 1992, he was in Milan with Josema Yuste, his partner in the comedy duo Martes y 13, and a delegation from Radio Television Española (RTVE) to interview Madonna. It was to be the highlight of their new weekly show, "Seeing us". "A woman from our team watched the interviews and kept us updated while we waited our turn. At the start of the first interview, she came down in a frenzy and said, 'He's just punched the interviewer! Don't ask him about sex or Antonio Banderas!' And I'm like, 'Don't ask him about sex?' And I think, 'Don't ask him about sex when he's promoting sex? That's what we're here for.

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Madonna converses with designer Jean-Paul Gaultier while on a promotional visit to Paris for her album 'Erotica' and book 'Sex' in October 1992. Photograph: YVES SIEUR (AFP)

As per her recollection, Madonna appeared to be angry because she had barely slept. "Thank goodness I was out of the role then since Josema [Yuste] passed," Salcedo continues. "He looked at me and made me understand that it wasn't working," Salcedo explains further. After asking a few questions that Madonna answered vaguely, Millán scattered popcorn throughout the room, barked like a dog, and, in the most remarkable moment of the interview, he brought out a pair of huge panties, placed them on Madonna's head, and then jumped onto her sofa - despite it being forbidden according to the singer's requests - and started mimicking a dog by humping her. "I can't believe I'm being harassed!" she laughed. Salcedo remembers how she was probably the first person ever in the country, and from that moment on, she became charming. "Amazing! She transformed from being edgy to an incredibly beautiful being with big blue eyes that are beyond imagination. The entire incident took only four minutes. During the interview, she was asked, "Where does Madonna place her thermometer when she has a fever?" Referring to the title of one of Erotica's songs and a sketch by the Feber toy duo, the performance could be even better. Millán had intended to perform a reading of a couple of erotic poems, imitating Gloria Fuertes, while holding a fake copy of 'Sex'. However, the performance did not take place due to last-minute tension. Despite the setbacks, the performance still carries a Dadaist essence: two Spanish comedians presenting an incomprehensible act to an international star who mutters, "I think I'm having a nightmare" in bewilderment. Nevertheless, the interviewer seems to have pleased her by not bowing down to her fame, even gifting her a pair of panties and simulating intercourse with her.

We did it all with Spain in mind because the program was going to be aired here. However, she did not understand Spanish, we did not understand English, and the simultaneous translator did not understand either of us. Salcedo has not seen the interview again. He loathes it. He does recall, "When the cameras stopped rolling, while we were leaving, she kissed us, revealing her human side. I kissed her, gazed into her eyes, and declared, 'Madonna, I love you'. She gazed at me, appearing disarmed and fragile, and responded: Thank you.

Power in the context of sexuality, personal life, and politics

Mark Snyder and Kenny Finkle answer Madonna-related questions promptly and passionately, as they do on their podcast. Mark Snyder concedes that Madonna's Erotica era is among the most fascinating of her profession. Kenny Finkle adds that after the Blonde Ambition Tour, Madonna recognized her potential to go even further and address uncomfortable topics, having overcome several obstacles during the tour. Continuing his point, "This moment's wonder lies in the fact that a woman in her thirties realized she was at the peak of her beauty and power and utilized it to her advantage." Over the ensuing years, she remained beautiful, yet not merely in her physical appearance. In 1992, her body was of great significance, and Sex commemorates youth, pristine beauty, and the ultimate power - both personal and political - that stems from it." Mark concludes, stating, "The present generations are much more harmonious with this message." Additionally, Kenny claims, "That is the actual heritage of this book." The sexual freedom of today's generation is a legacy of "Sex".

Madonna paid a heavy price for her boldness. Although "Sex" sold 800,000 copies, Madonna's album "Erotica" received mixed reviews and was considered a minor flop by her standards. According to Finkle, Madonna covered up and avoided discussing this era on her next album. When she did, she displayed a particular fear. In the following years, Madonna became more restrained and kept quiet. Subsequently, Madonna appeared in musicals, adopted a spiritual persona, embraced cowboy culture, and became a disco diva.

Madonna appears in a scene from the 'Erotica' music video, which was released in the autumn of 1992. Image courtesy of the Everett Collection.

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Three decades later…

"Erotica" is considered one of Madonna's boldest and most innovative albums, featuring a somber sound and audacious lyrics that deal with themes of love, AIDS, and grief. In addition, "Sex" has become a cult object that has never been reissued and is traded on the second-hand market for prices as high as 700 euros. According to Sureda, it was a strategic decision. "It was a visionary product that inspired the trend of limited editions, which are now ubiquitous in the worlds of publishing and fashion," said Sureda. Furthermore, according to Kenny, "the limited number of copies produced and the absence of any subsequent editions significantly enhance its perceived value and contribute to the mystique surrounding that period."
Recently, Madonna has revisited the topic of "Sex," as evidenced by her Instagram account. Furthermore, she continuously discusses sex and displays nudity on Instagram. The wild blonde showcases her naked body on Instagram, talks about sex persistently, and does not dress according to her age. By doing so, she manages to elicit the same response as she did thirty years ago when she was younger. Kenny explains that as she did in 1992, Madonna continues to pave the way for upcoming female stars who aim for long-lasting careers and do not want to compromise their identity. Mark elaborates that Madonna considers it essential to incorporate all her prior versions into her current identity. "Why do women encounter resistance when they live, indulge in sexuality, and exult without inhibition?" In that regard, Madonna has much work to undertake.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

News Round-up, August 10, 2023

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Try to understand the controversy surrounding the Sahel region in a single paragraph

The Sahel region faces complex challenges including poverty, conflict, and climate change, leading to food insecurity, displacement, and underdevelopment. The United Nations Integrated Strategy for the Sahel (UNISS) defines the Sahel political region as a group of ten countries, including Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Nigeria. In the vast Sahel region, stretching across ten countries, a deep-seated resentment persists towards France, stemming from its historically flawed colonial policies. The arduous quest for a stable and enduring democracy in this area remains besieged by numerous obstacles. Amidst this delicate state of affairs, Russia has adroitly capitalized on the prevailing discontent by shrewdly engaging in arms trading and offering military assistance in exchange for valuable resources. The formidable presence of the Wagner Group has further complicated the situation. Consequently, in the case of Niger, France finds itself at the forefront, suffering significant losses due to the repercussions of its colonial past and the imminent threat to its vital uranium reserves.

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Most read…

Wildfires in Hawaii’s Maui Leave Six Dead as Evacuations Continue

Tourist town of Lahaina on Maui’s west coast among worst-hit areas; three fires still burning.

WSJ by Alicia A. Caldwell and Jennifer Calfas, Aug. 9, 2023 

Oil dips as demand concerns mount; eyes on US inflation data

China's post-COVID economy has yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel and is virtually "impossible" to revive.

Reuters by Muyu Xu, edited by Germán & Co, August 10, 2023

Trump Is Spooked and His 2024 Rivals Know It

Donald Trump Pleads Not Guilty to 2020 Election Charges in Federal Court.

TIME bY PHILIP ELLIOTT, August 8, 2023

Ecuador declares a state of emergency after the killing of a presidential candidate at a campaign event

The victim, Fernando Villavicencio, a 59-year-old MP running on an anti-corruption platform, was one of eight candidates in the first round of the presidential election, which will are to be held as scheduled on August 20.

Le Monde Whit AP, published today at 3:38 am (Paris)

Fallout from the Putsch in Niger Anger Against France Grows in Africa's "Coup Belt"

With the coup in Niger, Europe and the United States are losing their last reliable partner in the Sahel as Russia's influence grows. The development could severely inhibit the West's ability to fight terrorism in the region.

Spiegel by Matthias Gebauer, Christina Hebel, Marina Kormbaki, Britta Sandberg and Fritz Schaap, August 9, 2023

Leaders of Amazon nations gather in Brazil for summit on rainforest’s future

Conclave represents handbrake turn in Brazilian government policy since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power

The Guardian Tom Phillips in Belém, August 8,  2023

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The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.

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Smoke and flames filled the air from wildfires on Lahaina’s Front Street in Maui. PHOTO: ALAN DICKAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wildfires in Hawaii’s Maui Leave Six Dead as Evacuations Continue

Tourist town of Lahaina on Maui’s west coast among worst-hit areas; three fires still burning

WSJ by Alicia A. Caldwell and Jennifer Calfas, Aug. 9, 2023 

Six people have been confirmed dead after wildfires fueled by hurricane winds began burning in Maui overnight, destroying much of the popular tourist town Lahaina.

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a press conference Wednesday that it was too early to know how many homes, businesses or other structures had been destroyed or damaged. He said “many have been burned to the ground,” particularly in the Lahaina area on Maui’s west coast.

Three wildfires caused the damage and were still burning Wednesday afternoon, Bissen said. More than 1,000 acres of the island’s Upcountry, an agricultural inland area that includes Haleakala National Park, have been charred.

Evacuations have been ordered in 13 communities and towns and many roads closed around Maui, while roughly 2,100 people have taken refuge in shelters. State and county authorities have urged tourists to stay away from the region or leave Maui if they can.

Bissen said he didn’t know how the six people killed in the fires died and whether they were local residents or tourists.

Earlier Wednesday, smoke and fire caused people to flee to the ocean, Maui County officials said. The U.S. Coast Guard transported 12 people from the waters off Lahaina to safety.

Videos posted online show flames on both sides of a single lane of fleeing vehicles. Buildings, palm trees and cars are engulfed in flames. Others show wind-whipped walls of fire and smoke spreading through Lahaina. Devastated areas include Front Street, an eclectic road popular with tourists that is lined with shops, businesses and historic architecture.

Maui County officials said early Wednesday that all roads were closed in Lahaina. “Do NOT go to Lahaina town,” the County of Maui said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke issued an emergency proclamation Wednesday encouraging the suspension of all nonessential air travel to Maui. Luke, who is serving as acting governor while Gov. Josh Green returns from a trip, activated Hawaii’s National Guard to help with response efforts.

Ed Sniffen, director of the state’s Transportation Department, said Maui airports remained open and at least 2,000 people stayed in them overnight because they couldn’t get flights out. An additional 4,000 visitors were trying to leave the island, he said.

Hawaiian Airlines issued a waiver allowing travelers to receive a refund or change their plans without penalty. The airline is operating its full flight schedule and is working with the state of Hawaii to support the transfer of first responders and supplies as needed, a spokesman said.

Three wildfires were also burning on the island of Hawaii on Wednesday, though authorities didn’t report any deaths there.

Authorities said they had prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Dora on Tuesday, but not for the wildfires that followed. “We never expected a hurricane which did not touch down on our land would cause this kind of wildfires,” Luke said.

Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, adjutant general of Hawaii’s Department of Defense, said the wildfires were fueled by long-running dry conditions, low humidity and high winds. “That set the conditions for the wildfires,” said Hara, adding that he didn’t know how the blazes were sparked.

About 6,200 people were without power Wednesday in Maui, and cellphone service was down. At least 29 utility poles were knocked down amid the fires and sections of fiber-optic cables were also burned. Authorities said it was unclear how long power and phone lines might be down, but that the repair of fiber-optic cables could take a month or more.

Maui is the second-most visited Hawaiian island, after Oahu. In the first half of the year, there were nearly 1.5 million visitors to Maui, up 5.7% from the same period in 2022, according to the state’s department of business, economic development and tourism. Total visitor spending during that time was $3.47 billion, up about 25% from last year.

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A view of the Johan Sverdrup oilfield in the North Sea, January 7, 2020. Carina Johansen/NTB Scanpix/via REUTERS File Photo

Oil dips as demand concerns mount; eyes on US inflation data

China's post-COVID economy has yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel and is virtually "impossible" to revive.

Reuters by Muyu Xu, edited by Germán & Co, August 10, 2023

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Oil retreated on Thursday from multi-month peaks hit in the previous session as higher U.S. crude inventory and sluggish economic data from China raised concerns about global fuel demand.

Brent crude fell 9 cents, or 0.1%, to $87.46 a barrel by 0408 GMT, after settling at its highest since Jan. 27 in the previous session.

West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) dropped 6 cents, or 0.1%, to $84.34, after settling at its highest since November 2022.

U.S. crude inventories (USOILC=ECI) rose by 5.9 million barrels in the last week to 445.6 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 0.6 million-barrel rise, U.S. Energy Information Administration data showed on Wednesday.

U.S. crude oil exports fell by 2.9 million barrels per day last week, the steepest fall on record, to 2.36 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the data. But the market is going to expect crude exports to go up because of the U.S. crude futures and Brent spread, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group.

Weighing on market sentiment, the consumer sector in China fell into deflation, and factory-gate prices extended declines in July, as the world's second-largest economy struggled to revive demand.

"A 5% growth forecast from China, which looked way too modest to digest at the beginning of 2023 has started to look way too optimistic as China is failing to hold economic revival post-COVID," said Priyanka Sachdeva, senior market analyst from Phillip Nova.

The market is awaiting July's Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the United States, due on Thursday, which will indicate the Fed's future monetary policy. Market watchers expected the CPI to show a slight year-over-year acceleration, while on a month-to-month basis, consumer prices are seen increasing 0.2%, the same rate as in June.

Meanwhile, Chevron (CVX.N) and Woodside Energy Group (WDS.AX) said on Thursday they are holding talks with unions to avert threatened strikes at gas facilities that together supply about 10% of the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market.

Concerns over LNG supply drove European gas prices to a nearly 2-month high on Wednesday and buoyed the demand outlook for diesel as alternative fuel.

However, oil prices remained supported by supply tightness worries as tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea region could threaten shipment of Russian oil.

"Oil prices have been resilient to a weak economic showing out of China in recent weeks, with market participants choosing to place their focus on the tighter supplies conditions from Saudi Arabia and Russia's output cuts to continue their unwind from previous bearish positioning," wrote Yeap Jun Rong, market analyst at IG, in a note.

Top exporter Saudi Arabia's plans to extend its voluntary production cut of 1 million barrels per day for another month to include September. Russia also said it would cut oil exports by 300,000 bpd in September.

Reporting by Muyu Xu in Singapore and Laura Sanicola in Washington; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman

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Illustrations by Germán & Co

Trump Is Spooked and His 2024 Rivals Know It

Donald Trump Pleads Not Guilty to 2020 Election Charges in Federal Court 

TIME bY PHILIP ELLIOTT, August 8, 2023

Back during the first months of the Trump presidency, then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich made a prescient—if not entirely original—observation about his one-time rival for the Republican nomination: “You don't put an animal in the corner without the animal striking back, [and] you don't put a politician in the corner … without them expecting to strike back at you.”

Kasich was correct in his assessment of Trump’s approach to leading Washington, and it’s a strategy that’s re-emerged as the ex-President faces increasingly urgent risks coming at him from all directions. Luck, it turns out, is a finite commodity. And a ginned-up gerbil can do more damage than a complacent cheetah. 

Trump is under indictment in three separate criminal cases and is out on bond. A fourth criminal case out of Georgia could come as soon as this week, and preparations underway in Fulton County sure look like prosecutors in Atlanta are bracing for a chaotic scene. The trials would derail Trump for weeks if not months at the exact time he would need to be pandering to voters. And, despite being atop the polls of Republicans looking to be the presidential nominee in 2024, the risks to both his frontrunner status and his freedom are real enough that it’s sending him spiraling in search of a distraction.

“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” That’s what Trump posted on his Truth Social account over the weekend, prompting Justice Department lawyers to ask a judge in the case involving election interference to issue a protective order. The not-at-all-subtle warning was part of a litany of all-caps threats that brought to mind various unhinged stretches of posts when he used to frequent the platform previously known as Twitter. When Trump wasn’t complaining that he was a victim of a politically motivated prosecution (“WHAT THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE IS DOING TO ME IS THE SAME THING DONE BY THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES ALL OVER THE WORLD.”), he was going after the U.S. team for its loss in the Women’s World Cup, singling out star player (and Trump critic) Megan Rapinoe for an errant foot: “WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA.” 

Sure, Trump’s social-media footprint has never been a particularly sophisticated logic-based realm. But for the first time since he joined the presidential fray back in 2015, Trump sounds genuinely scared, like he finally seems to be realizing his luck may be unique but not limitless. His knack for defying political gravity has been evidenced since his first campaign, when any other nominee would have been felled by the same series of missteps, scandals, and self-immolation; Trump instead somehow rode the fire-engulfed dumpster all the way to the North Lawn of the White House. 

Trump has long enjoyed lashing out at those he perceives as insufficiently loyal. No one has been immune, be they real challengers like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or just perceived threats, as were the cases of Pope Francis, George W. Bush, and Megyn Kelly. But these latest attacks, somehow, feel different in a changed environment that no longer guarantees fearful fealty from his rivals. Where he previously launched his rockets with abandon, he is now being more direct to respond to would-be usurpers.

To Trump’s credit, his reflex appears to be more tactical than in the past. 

Take, for instance, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the closest thing that Trump has to a rival for the nomination next year. While Trump enjoys a massive lead over the Anti-Woke Warrior from the Sunshine State, DeSantis has been working on retooling a failure-to-launch bid, and it seems like he’s rethinking his deference to Trump. In an interview that aired on NBC News this week, DeSantis for the first time finally stopped pussyfooting around whether Trump won in 2020. "No, of course he lost," DeSantis said. "Joe Biden’s the President." After more than 1,000 days of playing coy games and dodging any declaration about Biden’s legitimacy, DeSantis has finally concluded it is time to treat Trump like the man to dethrone.

DeSantis, who on Tuesday replaced his top political hand, had been walking the line. For months, the default has felt like a backhanded defense of Trump at every turn, living both in contempt and cower of the ex-President. But two weeks ago, during a swing through Iowa, DeSantis subtly jabbed his one-time self-considered patron. “I don’t consider myself to be an entertainer,” DeSantis said in Osceola. “I’m a leader. And that’s what you get for me, somebody that will deliver results.” The ceiling of the distillery where he spoke didn’t collapse, and DeSantis marched on. (Trump, naturally, told a conservative radio host that DeSantis should drop out for the good of the party.)

DeSantis’ footing—and Trump’s counter-punch—has seemed to grow stronger in recent days. Until recently, only former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been an unabashed critic of Trump’s return to power, a lonely spot but one that is starting to have some pals testing its viability. After all, 78 looming felony charges gives even the most mild of candidates permission to at least raise the question of Trump’s true viability in a rematch against Joe Biden. “This election needs to be about Jan. 20, 2025, not Jan. 6, 2021,” DeSantis said in Waverly, Iowa, during that weekend bus tour.

Similarly, former Vice President Mike Pence—the one who spent four years as Trump’s loyal and self-censoring understudy—has started to rev up his critique of the ex-boss, and thus draw his ire. While Pence has hinted at his antipathy toward Trump and, in particular, his former boss’ conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, the intensity has increased of late. And not coincidentally, Trump has targeted more of his public attacks on Pence, as he realizes that his former vice president poses a real threat to his legal woes, given his first-hand access to the West Wing during the final weeks of Trump’s tour there.

Pence predicted Trump’s realization was coming, telling The New York Times on July 30: “I think we’re coming to a fork in the road.”

It’s more of a pitchfork, based on Trump’s reaction. “He’s delusional, and now he wants to show he’s a tough guy,” Trump sniped at his former running mate, who testified for more than five hours before the federal grand jury back in April and spoke candidly about the events before and during the Jan. 6 uprising. Should Trump move forward to trial, Pence may end up testifying—a development that could move the actual argument against a third Trump nomination away from the theater-focused debate stage and to a far more extraordinary courtroom testimony, one where Trump would have to sit in silence and hear his one-time loyalist turn over all of their secrets.

Trump’s allies have started to pick up on the shift, too. During a stop last week in Londonderry, N.H., hecklers stood outside the American Legion post and held signs calling Pence a traitor. Inside, skeptics asked Pence point-blank why he didn’t take steps to keep Trump in power, even in electoral defeat.

Unflinching, Pence said he followed the Constitution and, ever one to cite Scripture down to chapter and verse, urged voters in that lead-off primary state to look up Article Two, Section One, Clause Three.

Similarly, Trump’s best ally in the field vowed to find everyone involved in investigating Trump and fire them. The maneuver won Vivek Ramaswamy applause and tracks with his larger strategy of running against Trump while also being his biggest booster in the field. Other rivals, all the while, have picked up the House Republicans’ chorus that the Department of Justice has been weaponized by Biden and his cronies.

Elsewhere, of course, criticism of Trump has been a moderated rumble through the GOP campaign to this point. With the first debate scheduled for Aug. 23—and Trump’s participation an open question—the GOP will be watching closely if Christie’s open antagonism is no longer the clear loser of a strategy that it seemed a few months ago. The party remains loyal to Trump, but the sober reality of nominating a thrice-indicted ex-President is finally sinking in. And Trump, it seems, is starting to sense that and responding to the threats he had previously—and maybe wrongly—assumed were immaterial.

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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Image by Karen Toro/Reuters

Ecuador declares a state of emergency after the killing of a presidential candidate at a campaign event

The victim, Fernando Villavicencio, a 59-year-old MP running on an anti-corruption platform, was one of eight candidates in the first round of the presidential election, which will are to be held as scheduled on August 20.

Le Monde Whit AP, published today at 3:38 am (Paris)

A woman is assisted after being wounded after shots were fired at the end of a rally of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Quito, on August 9, 2023. STR / AFP

An Ecuadorian presidential candidate known for speaking up against cartels and corruption was shot and killed Wednesday, August 9, at a political rally in the capital, an attack that comes amid a startling wave of gang-driven violence in the South American country.

President Guillermo Lasso confirmed the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio and suggested organized crime was behind his slaying. Villavicencio was one of eight candidates in the August 20 presidential vote, though not the frontrunner.

"I assure you that this crime will not go unpunished," Lasso said in a statement. "Organized crime has gone too far, but they will feel the full weight of the law." Ecuador’s attorney general’s office said that one suspect died in custody from wounds sustained in a firefight after the killing, and police detained six suspects following raids in Quito.

In response to the attack, Lasso declared a state of emergency for 60 days throughout the country on Thursday, August 10. "The Armed Forces as of this moment are mobilized throughout the national territory to guarantee the security of citizens, the tranquility of the country and the free and democratic elections of August 20," Lasso said in an address broadcast on YouTube after a meeting of the Security Cabinet and other senior officials.

The announcement came as part of a joint statement with Diana Atamaint, the head of the National Electoral Council, who said: "The date of the elections scheduled for August 20 remain unalterable, in compliance with the constitutional and legal mandate."

Authorities said that at least nine others were injured in the Wednesday shooting, including officers and a congressional candidate, in what they described as a “terrorist act.”

The President also declared three days of national mourning "to honor the memory of a patriot, of Fernando Villavicencio Valencia."

Brave final words

In his final speech, before he was killed, Villavicencio promised a roaring crowd that he would root out corruption and lock up the country’s “thieves.” Prior to the shooting, Villavicencio said he had received multiple death threats, including from affiliates of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, one of a slew of international organized crime groups that now operate in Ecuador. He said his campaign represented a threat to such groups. “Here I am showing my face. I'm not scared of them,” Villavicencio said in a statement, naming detained crime boss José Adolfo Macías by his alias “Fito.”

The killing comes as Ecuador is rattled by rising violent killings and drug trafficking. As drug traffickers have begun to use the country’s coastal ports, Ecuadorians have reeled from violence not seen for decades. The sounds of gunfire ring in many major cities as rival gangs battle for control, and gangs have recruited children. Just last month, the mayor of the port city of Manta was shot and killed. On July 26, Lasso declared a state of emergency covering two provinces and the country's prison system in an effort to stem the violence.

Supporter Ida Paez said that Villavicencio's campaign had given her hope that the country could overcome the gangs. At the rally, she said, “We were happy. Fernando even danced. His last words were, if someone messes with the people, he is messing with my family.”

Videos of the rally on social media appear to show Villavicencio walking out of the event surrounded by guards. The video then shows the candidate getting into a white pickup truck before gunshots are heard, followed by screams and commotion around the truck. This sequence of events was confirmed to The Associated Press by Patricio Zuquilanda, Villavicencio’s campaign adviser. The politician, 59, was the candidate for the Build Ecuador Movement.

He was married and is survived by five children.

A critical voice against corruption

Zuquilanda told the Associated Press the candidate had received death threats before the shooting, which he had reported to authorities, resulting in one detention. He called on international authorities to take action against the violence, attributing it to rising violence and drug trafficking. "The Ecuadorian people are crying and Ecuador is mortally wounded," he said. "Politics cannot lead to the death of any member of society."

Other candidates echoed Zuquilanda in their demands for action, with presidential frontrunner Luisa González of the Citizen Revolution party saying: “When they touch one of us, they touch all of us." Former vice president and candidate Otto Sonnenholzner said in a news conference, "We are dying, drowning in a sea of tears and we do not deserve to live like this. We demand that you do something".

Villavicencio was one of the most critical voices against corruption, especially during the government of former President Rafael Correa from 2007 to 2017. He was also an independent journalist who investigated corruption in previous governments, later entering politics as an anti-graft campaigner.

He filed many judicial complaints against high-ranking members of the Correa government, including against the ex-president himself. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for defamation over his criticisms of Correa, and fled to indigenous territory in Ecuador, later receiving asylum in neighboring Peru. Edison Romo, a former military intelligence colonel, said the anti-corruption complaints made Villavicencio “a threat to international criminal organizations.”

A context of political turmoil

President Lasso, a conservative former banker, was elected in 2021 on a business-friendly platform and clashed from the start with the left-leaning majority coalition in the National Assembly. A snap election was called after Lasso dissolved the National Assembly by decree in May, in a move to avoid being impeached over allegations that he failed to intervene to end a faulty contract between the state-owned oil transport company and a private tanker company.

Ecuador’s constitution includes a provision that allows the president to disband the assembly during a political crisis, but then requires new elections for both the assembly and the presidency. The country has faced a series of political upheavals in recent years.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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A demonstrator in Niamey, Foto: Sam Mednick / dpa

Fallout from the Putsch in Niger Anger Against France Grows in Africa's "Coup Belt"

With the coup in Niger, Europe and the United States are losing their last reliable partner in the Sahel as Russia's influence grows. The development could severely inhibit the West's ability to fight terrorism in the region.

Spiegel by Matthias Gebauer, Christina Hebel, Marina Kormbaki, Britta Sandberg and Fritz Schaap, August 9, 2023

It has been just a few hours since the gate to the French Embassy went up in flames, thousands paraded through the streets of Niamey and Russian flags flew under the hot Savannah sky. Boubaca Adamou is sitting in his small house in the Fada-Loubatou district with around 20 of his fellow campaigners, rejoicing in the destruction.

A 54-year-old teacher wearing a green shirt and khaki pants, Adamou is an anti-French activist and a supporter of the M62, a movement eager to expel all foreign troops from Niger. In his view, the July 26 military coup that swept democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum out of office was redemption. The mood in the room is cheerful, with the men sitting on white plastic chairs drinking tea, some smoking. They all agree that France has no place in Niger.

"Bazoum was a French puppet," Adamou says. He and his friends claim that the democratic elections won by Bazoum in 2021 were marred by irregularities and manipulated by the French. They believe that only France actually profits from Niger's uranium deposits and not the country itself.

Now, they believe, Niger's sovereignty is at stake. The former colonial power, Adamou explains, may have granted the country independence in 1960, but the French continue to subjugate Niger to this day. Corruption is rampant across the country, and that, he says, must come to an end.

6,000 Kilometers of Military Rule

On July 26, the spokesman for the Nigerien military stated that security forces had decided to "put an end to the regime" – allegedly because of the deteriorating security situation and bad governance.

It was the fifth military coup in Niger since the country's independence, but this overthrow is different from the previous ones. It is the latest in a series of such putsches: Almost the entire Sahel, a strategically important region of Africa, is now ruled by regimes installed by a coup, with six successful overthrows in the region since 2020. The area some are calling the "Coup Belt" stretches south of the Sahara, nearly 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) long, from Guinea on the west coast of the continent to Sudan on the east coast. In Mali, where an estimated 1,500 mercenaries from Russia's Wagner Group are stationed, and in Burkina Faso, Moscow has established itself as an important supporter of the new rulers, with both countries now positioning themselves explicitly against the former colonial power France.

And once again, following the coup in Niger, the question is unavoidable: What role might Russia and its Wagner mercenaries have played? And: Could the new regime turn to Russia? So far, the Nigerien junta hasn't suggested it will go in that direction. Shortly after the coup, it promised to honor international commitments – and on Friday, it ended military cooperation with former colonial power France.

In Niger, as in much of the Sahel area, France played a significant role until recent years. Paris released its African colonies into independence in the 1960s, yet it continues to exert massive influence to the present day through military and economic cooperation and close ties with elites. This intricate web of corruption and old dependencies in France's ex-colonies is referred to as "Françafrique."

Russia's Opportunity

Niger, like the entire Coup Belt, has now become a theater of geopolitical power struggles. Russia has emerged as the continent's largest arms supplier, sending Wagner mercenaries to autocrats in need. After Mali and Burkina Faso turned to the Kremlin, the French withdrew from those countries as well.

Representatives of the Russian leadership officially condemned the coup in Niger. But Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner troops, praised the coup in an audio message as the Nigerien people's righteous "struggle" against their country's "colonizers" and offered his services. The coup is a good opportunity for the unscrupulous entrepreneur to expand his business in Africa. And after his failed uprising against the Russian army leadership, he can prove to President Vladimir Putin that he continues to be of service to the Kremlin in Africa. Niger, with its rich uranium deposits, is precisely the kind of country that Prigozhin is keen to exploit.

Indeed, that is another reason why Western governments, including that of Germany, are extremely concerned following the coup. With Niger, they have to fear not only losing their most important partner in the Sahel, but also the last reliable one. Around 1,500 French and 1,100 American soldiers are still stationed in the country, and Niger is of significant geostrategic importance to the U.S. The American military operates several drone bases in the country, which it uses for reconnaissance missions throughout the region, including Libya and Sudan. Around 100 soldiers with Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, are also stationed in the country. The European Union, too, has long regarded Niger as an important partner and Brussels has long been seeking the country's help in curbing irregular migration from Africa. Niger is home to a number of refugee camps.

Misjudgment in the West

In a strategy paper published by the German government this spring, Niger is still highlighted as a prime example of security and development cooperation. The federal government in Berlin viewed it as an anchor of stability in the region. Indeed, Germany spent years training Nigerien elite soldiers in a mission called Gazelle, which began in 2018 and ended at the end of 2022. Now, the Bundeswehr is organizing its withdrawal from Mali.

The German government's crisis team has met several times at the Foreign Ministry since the upheaval. And whereas the French are flying their compatriots out on special planes due to fears of violent attacks, the German government has only issued a travel warning.

According to an internal analysis, the anger of the Nigeriens is directed against former colonial power France and not against the Germans. One representative of the German government even expresses quiet understanding for the resentment against Paris. The source says the French continued to behave in an arrogant and patronizing manner in the region.

The Demise of Democratic Governments

Niger is one of the world's poorest countries. The elites have a reputation for corruption, and the state has no presence in many areas of the country, which ranks 189th out of 191 on the United Nations' Human Development Index. Furthermore, Islamist terror plagues the population, and offshoots of both the Islamic State and al-Qaida continue to spread in the Sahel. Still, unlike its neighboring countries, Western aid contributed to some improvement of the security situation in Niger in the past year.

"What we are witnessing is the demise of democratic governments in this region," says Alain Antil, director of the Center for Sub-Saharan Africa at the Institut français des relations internationales in Paris (IFRI).

In June, IFRI published a study on anti-French sentiment in many African countries, concluding that anti-French sentiment in the region is growing. But it is also increasingly being fomented and tapped by the political elites of these countries to explain grievances or their own failures. France has been turned into the scapegoat.

The study identifies another factor for the growing anti-French sentiment in the targeted propaganda spread on social media channels, a campaign which is financed and nourished by Russia. "Still, it would be a mistake to say that Russia in particular created the anti-France attitude in these countries in the first place," says Antil. "It was already there, but it was tapped and exploited by the Russians as well as by the rulers of the respective countries when it served their interests."

A Russian Disinformation Campaign

Since the passage of a law in April 2022 allowing the long-term deployment of foreign troops to fight terrorism, there have been several anti-French protests in Niamey as well. Experts agree that Moscow was not involved in the coup, but they say that Russian disinformation campaigns have likely influenced the mood among the populace.

The group M62, which also supports Boubaca Adamou, appears to have played an important role. According to experts, the group was long ago infiltrated by Wagner people, and its actions are supported by Russian propaganda.

Moreover, according to French military expert Pierre Servent, the movement pays participants in anti-French demonstrations and provides them with flags: Russian ones to wave, French ones to burn. In Mali, too, say diplomatic sources, the leading anti-French movement is co-financed through the Russian Embassy.

Power Struggles with the Military

The cause of the coup in Niger appears to be a conflict between the president and some of his commanders. Bazoum, it is said, didn't want to extend the term of General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the commander of his presidential guard. In addition, Bazoum reportedly rejected closer cooperation with the military rulers of neighboring countries – ties that many in the Nigerien military were in favor of. A short time later, General Tchiani declared himself the country's leader.

The situation has been escalating ever since. A week ago Sunday, the West African economic alliance ECOWAS announced it would use force if necessary for the reinstatement of President Bazoum and issued an ultimatum of one week for that to happen. That deadline passed with nothing but the scheduling of a meeting on Thursday of this week to discuss developments. The German government considers it unlikely that fighting will break out, an assessment is based on the fact that ECOWAS has no troops of its own. And the alliance's major troop contributors, such as Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire, are already at the limits of their capabilities, he said.

The military juntas in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which are already tied to Russia, announced they would interpret any intervention in Niger as a declaration of war. The military rulers in Guinea joined the chorus as well. It would appear that an alliance of the coup plotters is already forming.

Early last week, on August 1, France began evacuating its own citizens and other Europeans. That same evening, M62 began calling for the borders to be closed and for foreigners to be held in a hostage-like state until the foreign troops left the country.

A New Anti-Terror Plan

Then, on Wednesday, a Nigerien delegation visited the Malian capital of Bamak, followed by speculation that it might have asked for Wagner mercenaries to be sent. Mali works closely with the Russian mercenary group.

For Europe and the United States, the coup now raises the question of how to fight Islamist terrorism in the region in the future. According to the Global Terrorism Index, the Sahel has surpassed the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia to become the epicenter of global terrorism. Its data shows that almost half of the approximately 6,700 people killed in terrorist acts around the world in 2022 were located in the Sahel. In 2007, the region accounted for just 1 percent of such deaths.

The West must find new ways of preventing jihadists from spreading further in the region, says Cameron Hudson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. He says the international approach so far has largely been to fight them on the ground. But now, he argues, it is necessary to move to a containment strategy. "That means recognizing that the jihadist forces will continue to exist," he says. Some might think that means giving up on the Sahel. But how can you help in the fight against terrorism in the region if you aren't welcome?"

It's Sunday, July 30, and an aide to ousted President Bazoum named Adamou Amadou is sitting in his home in a white undershirt and chain-smoking. He would actually like to welcome all of the West in the country. He keeps looking at his mobile phone, which won't stop ringing, with an expressionless face. "The international community must remain strong," he says. "And if necessary use force to restore constitutional order in Niger." Only a minority of Nigeriens, he says wearily, actually oppose France. He says Niger needs its partners to survive. That the coup will set the country back economically by up to 20 years.

Niger, the aide sitting lonely and sweating in his quiet house fears, will now descend into chaos.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

---

Image by Germán & Co

Leaders of Amazon nations gather in Brazil for summit on rainforest’s future

Conclave represents handbrake turn in Brazilian government policy since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power

The Guardian Tom Phillips in Belém, August 8,  2023

The leaders of Amazon nations including Brazil, Colombia and Peru have gathered in the Brazilian city of Belém for a rare conclave about the future of the world’s largest rainforest amid growing concern over the global climate emergency.

The environmental summit – convened by Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – represents a handbrake turn in Brazilian government policy after four years of Amazon destruction and international isolation under the country’s previous leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

Those who have flown into Belém for the meeting include Bolivia’s president, Luis Arce, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, Guyana’s prime minister, Mark Phillips, and Peru’s Dina Boluarte. Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, pulled out at the last minute blaming an ear infection. The other members of the eight-country Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), Ecuador and Suriname, have sent senior representatives.

“This is a landmark moment,” Lula tweeted on Tuesday morning as his guests were shepherded to the talks by police motorcycle outriders. “What we are doing in defence of the Amazon and its population is historic.”

The Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte (left) talked with the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Amazon summit meeting. Photograph: Ricardo Stuckert/Brazilian Presidency/AFP/Getty Images

At the summit’s opening session, Lula said the “severe escalation of the climate crisis” meant the need for regional cooperation was “more pressing than ever before”.

As politicians began to arrive in the sweltering riverside city on Monday, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, said: “We come here with the clarity … that the Amazon is drastically threatened … that we cannot allow it to reach a point of no return … and that it will be impossible to reverse this process if we work in isolation.”

Among the issues to be discussed at ACTO’s first such meeting in 14 years are a possible deal to halt deforestation by 2030 and joint efforts to fight rampant illegal mining and the organised crime groups which are tightening their grip on the rainforest region. Colombia’s president has been pushing for an end to oil and gas exploration in the Amazon, although Brazilian moves to develop an oilfield near the mouth of the Amazon River complicate those efforts.

A final communique, known as the Belém Declaration, is expected to be unveiled by ACTO members of at the end of the two-day meeting. Experts say it is likely to contain collaborative strategies for fighting deforestation and financing sustainable development initiatives, and the creation of a law enforcement centre in the Brazilian city of Manaus to promote cooperation among regional police forces.

The challenges facing the group’s members are almost as immense as the Amazon itself – a sprawling 6.7m sq km region that, if it was a single country, would be the seventh largest on Earth. As well as nearly 50 million people, the region is home to an estimated 400bn trees belonging to 16,000 different species, more than 1,300 species of bird, tens of thousands of species of plant, and 20% of the world’s freshwater resources. It is also estimated to contain more than 120bn tonnes of carbon, making it a vital carbon sink.

But over the past half-century, the advance of cattle ranching, logging, mining, soy farming and oil exploration has devastated huge swathes of the region, pushing it towards what scientists fear could be an irreversible tipping point which would cause the forest to die off.

Transnational mafia groups have also expanded their footprint, with one senior Brazilian police chief recently warning “criminal insurgents” could commandeer parts of the Amazon with dire consequences for the rainforest and its inhabitants.

Indigenous activists called for protection ahead of the presidents’ Amazon summit. Photograph: Filipe Bispo/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In the days leading up to Tuesday’s summit, thousands of Indigenous activists gathered for a parallel summit in Belém to demand greater government support for their quest to defend the rainforest. The perils of such efforts were laid bare last year with the murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. Activists are also pushing for a pledge to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025.

Campaigners voiced a mix of relief that Lula had brought an end to Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon chaos, and anxiety that Brazil’s conservative-dominated congress might prevent the president from enacting his ambitious environmental agenda, which has already achieved a 42.5% drop in deforestation.

“We know we have so many enemies in congress who don’t like us,” said Alessandra Korap, a leader of the Munduruku people.

Korap urged Lula to oppose oil exploration in the Amazon and take a stand against highly controversial draft legislation that would invalidate Indigenous claims to lands such groups could not prove they occupied when Brazil’s 1988 constitution was enacted. “This would mean the death of our peoples,” Korap said.

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Offshore Wind Runs Into Rising Costs and Delays

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Image by Germán & Co

Some troubled projects are raising concerns about the role to be played by offshore wind farms in tackling climate change.

NYT By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, Aug. 7, 2023

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“Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, has for years been doing preliminary work for what would be one of the world’s largest offshore wind complexes, in the North Sea off eastern England.

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Now, there are questions about whether this project will ever be built. Last month, Vattenfall said it would halt the first of three phases of the wind farm complex, the Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone, which is projected to provide power for about four million homes in Britain.

Vattenfall blamed rapidly escalating costs for equipment and construction expenses, which they said had climbed as much as 40 percent over the past few quarters. The estimated price tag for the three phases has risen to 13 billion pounds, or about $16.6 billion, from £10 billion.

“With the new market conditions, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue the project,” Helene Bistrom, head of business area wind at Vattenfall, said during a video presentation. The decision led Vattenfall, which is owned by the Swedish government, to write-down more than $500 million.

Vattenfall’s pullback added to the widespread alarm unfolding across the offshore industry about rapidly increasing costs, due partly to supply chain issues and rising demand.

In recent months, several developers in the United States have sought to renegotiate power supply contracts, scrapping them in at least one case, and Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest offshore wind developer, warned that a major project, Hornsea 3, in Britain could be “at risk” without more government support.

With interest rates shooting up, financing the billions of dollars in investment that go into these installations has also become far more expensive.

On Monday, the turbine maker Siemens Energy reported a net loss of 2.9 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for the April-June quarter, largely because of problems tied to “increased product costs and ramp-up challenges” in its offshore energy business.

“There’s very few projects that are immune to the inflationary impact,” said Finlay Clark, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.

---

Europe’s Shift Away From Fossil Fuels

The European Union has begun a transition to greener forms of energy. But financial and geopolitical considerations could complicate the efforts.

•  A Competitive Field: The E.U. is trying to assemble the building blocks to produce electric cars, but incentives offered by the Biden administration are luring companies to the United States.

• A Wind Pioneer: Henrik Stiesdal helped design the first modern wind turbines. A thousand patents later, he’s a green tech entrepreneur rolling out new innovations.

• Nuclear Power: Germany shut down its three remaining reactors, just as other European countries look to expand their reliance on nuclear energy.

• Ban on Gas-Powered Cars: Germany has reached an agreement with the E.U. to allow the sale of vehicles that burn fuels made from renewable energy past 2035, resolving a dispute over a proposed ban on internal combustion engines.

---

Rising costs for wind developers are a problem for governments in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Many countries are counting on an enormous and rapid expansion of offshore wind to achieve a significant portion of their renewable energy goals.

“We are wasting time here,” Morten Dyrholm, group senior vice president for corporate affairs at Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish turbine maker, said of the industry’s problems. “We need to grow the sector quite dramatically.”

Mr. Dyrholm and others in the industry say the inflation problems are a warning sign that governments need to change their system of awarding offshore wind licenses.

The procedures for obtaining the rights to build wind farms vary in different countries but often involve an auction of seabed leases followed, sometimes years later, by agreements that set the price paid by power companies for the electricity generated.

These arrangements, designed to drive down power prices for consumers and, often, to maximize revenues from lease sales, should be broadened to take into account other factors, some industry leaders say. An auction for seabed rights awarded by Scotland in 2022 is cited as a model because it put greater emphasis on factors like the ability of wind companies to develop suppliers, and the experience of the companies.

The debate could open the way for more power deals with corporations like Amazon and Microsoft, whose data centers are hungry consumers of electricity. Large businesses might be more flexible partners for wind developers than government officials who tend to say “this is the rule,” said Deepa Venkateswaran, a utilities analyst at Bernstein, a research firm.

Renewable energy programs like Britain’s — which is designed to encourage financial backing by providing a guaranteed price to wind developers, and also to gradually drive down charges paid by consumers — attracted billions in investment when inflation was low. Now, in a very different world, after the disruptions of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Britain is taking fire for policies that could make wind projects uneconomical.

“I am afraid the U.K. has gone from being one of the best governments in Europe on offshore wind to one of the worst,” said Giles Dickson, chief executive of WindEurope, a trade body.

Turbine parts at Orsted’s pre-assembly site in Taichung Port in Taiwan, in March.Credit...Ann Wang/Reuters

A British government spokesman responded: “We understand there are supply chain pressures for the sector globally, not just in the U.K., and we are listening to companies’ concerns.”

The inflation problems are mainly hitting offshore wind farms in late stages of development rather than those already generating power.

Offshore projects can require a decade to progress from planning stages to generating power. That means agreements on issues like the power price may be years old before the turbines are in place and generating electricity.

That system worked when inflation was negligible and demand for turbines and other equipment was relatively subdued. Now, as a growing number of developers look to secure everything necessary to undertake the projects — from wind turbines, which cost millions of dollars, to the services of specialized construction ships, to bank financing — they discover that the price tags have suddenly soared. Mr. Dyrholm estimates that prices of wind turbines alone have increased 30 percent in the past year.

“The costs have risen, and you have a mismatch,” said Bernard Looney, chief executive of BP, which is an investor, with Equinor, a Norwegian company, in three offshore wind projects in the Atlantic that would supply power to around two million households in New York State. Equinor and BP have petitioned state authorities to renegotiate their power contracts.

Similarly, developers in Britain and elsewhere don’t seem to want to completely jettison projects. Many are trying to renegotiate the deals or push governments to alter the formats of future auctions. Some are terminating existing contracts to supply power to utilities and seeking new ones — or threatening such moves, figuring there will be plenty of demand for clean power in the future.

Walking away from contracts signed years ago has become “the prudent commercial course” even with the risk of financial penalties, SouthCoast Wind, a project part-owned by Shell that would be located in the Atlantic near Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, said in a statement in June.

Another Massachusetts proposal, Commonwealth Wind, which is owned by Avangrid, a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, has terminated its power supply contract and plans to seek a new deal in a future auction, the company said.

“The economics are challenging,” said Stephanie McClellan, executive director of Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy organization in the United States.

Equinor’s floating wind turbines about 25 miles off the Scottish coast, in 2021.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Despite the soured deals, interest in offshore wind remains strong. In a recent auction in Germany, BP and TotalEnergies in France agreed to pay around $14 billion over three decades for offshore tracts.

The German deals differ from others because the companies are simply paying for the rights to develop sea bottom, and they will negotiate what they get paid for the electricity at a later day.

Such deals are attractive to a corporate giant like BP, which has the financial firepower to make them happen and would be freer to do what it wants with the power. Mr. Looney said he hoped to steer away from the long-term power contracts, preferring instead to try to squeeze more value from wind-generated electricity by using it to make green hydrogen, a still scarce clean fuel, or charge electric vehicles.

“We’d like to do something with those electrons; take them and put them to use,” he said.

But there are only a handful of companies with the heft of BP and TotalEnergies. Whether nations can achieve their offshore ambitions through such commercial deals remains to be seen. Critics say that charging high prices for leases will lead to higher power prices for consumers.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News Round-up, August 8, 2023

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Most read…

Offshore Wind Runs Into Rising Costs and Delays

Some troubled projects are raising concerns about the role to be played by offshore wind farms in tackling climate change.

NYT By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, Aug. 7, 2023

Climate Is Now a Culture War Issue

The issue of anti-environmentalism is undeniably influenced by true greed. However, climate denial has morphed into something more than just a battle against acknowledging the science of climate change. It has become a front in the culture wars, with right-wing individuals rejecting scientific consensus not only due to their general aversion to science but also out of a visceral opposition to anything that liberals support.

NYT By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 7, 2023

Biden Plans to Run on Protecting Democracy, as Trump Faces Charges of Subverting It

President Joe Biden speaks about his economic plan "Bidenomics" at Auburn Manufacturing Inc. in Auburn, Maine, on July 28, 2023.

TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT, AUGUST 7, 2023 

How a Former Oil Guy Is Using Fracking Tech to Boost Geothermal Energy

TIME BY ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA, AUGUST 7, 2023

Brazil’s Lula pushes end to deforestation, stumbles on fossil fuels

Summit will be a major political and diplomatic test for the Brazilian leader.

POLITICO EU BY LOUISE GUILLOT, AUGUST 7, 2023 

Exclusive: Defying war risk, European traders store gas in Ukraine

REUTERS By Jan Lopatka and Marek Strzelecki, August 8, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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Image by Germán & Co

Offshore Wind Runs Into Rising Costs and Delays

Some troubled projects are raising concerns about the role to be played by offshore wind farms in tackling climate change.

NYT By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, Aug. 7, 2023

---

“Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, has for years been doing preliminary work for what would be one of the world’s largest offshore wind complexes, in the North Sea off eastern England.

---

Now, there are questions about whether this project will ever be built. Last month, Vattenfall said it would halt the first of three phases of the wind farm complex, the Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone, which is projected to provide power for about four million homes in Britain.

Vattenfall blamed rapidly escalating costs for equipment and construction expenses, which they said had climbed as much as 40 percent over the past few quarters. The estimated price tag for the three phases has risen to 13 billion pounds, or about $16.6 billion, from £10 billion.

“With the new market conditions, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue the project,” Helene Bistrom, head of business area wind at Vattenfall, said during a video presentation. The decision led Vattenfall, which is owned by the Swedish government, to write-down more than $500 million.

Vattenfall’s pullback added to the widespread alarm unfolding across the offshore industry about rapidly increasing costs, due partly to supply chain issues and rising demand.

In recent months, several developers in the United States have sought to renegotiate power supply contracts, scrapping them in at least one case, and Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest offshore wind developer, warned that a major project, Hornsea 3, in Britain could be “at risk” without more government support.

With interest rates shooting up, financing the billions of dollars in investment that go into these installations has also become far more expensive.

On Monday, the turbine maker Siemens Energy reported a net loss of 2.9 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for the April-June quarter, largely because of problems tied to “increased product costs and ramp-up challenges” in its offshore energy business.

“There’s very few projects that are immune to the inflationary impact,” said Finlay Clark, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.

---

Europe’s Shift Away From Fossil Fuels

The European Union has begun a transition to greener forms of energy. But financial and geopolitical considerations could complicate the efforts.

•  A Competitive Field: The E.U. is trying to assemble the building blocks to produce electric cars, but incentives offered by the Biden administration are luring companies to the United States.

• A Wind Pioneer: Henrik Stiesdal helped design the first modern wind turbines. A thousand patents later, he’s a green tech entrepreneur rolling out new innovations.

• Nuclear Power: Germany shut down its three remaining reactors, just as other European countries look to expand their reliance on nuclear energy.

• Ban on Gas-Powered Cars: Germany has reached an agreement with the E.U. to allow the sale of vehicles that burn fuels made from renewable energy past 2035, resolving a dispute over a proposed ban on internal combustion engines.

---

Rising costs for wind developers are a problem for governments in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Many countries are counting on an enormous and rapid expansion of offshore wind to achieve a significant portion of their renewable energy goals.

“We are wasting time here,” Morten Dyrholm, group senior vice president for corporate affairs at Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish turbine maker, said of the industry’s problems. “We need to grow the sector quite dramatically.”

Mr. Dyrholm and others in the industry say the inflation problems are a warning sign that governments need to change their system of awarding offshore wind licenses.

The procedures for obtaining the rights to build wind farms vary in different countries but often involve an auction of seabed leases followed, sometimes years later, by agreements that set the price paid by power companies for the electricity generated.

These arrangements, designed to drive down power prices for consumers and, often, to maximize revenues from lease sales, should be broadened to take into account other factors, some industry leaders say. An auction for seabed rights awarded by Scotland in 2022 is cited as a model because it put greater emphasis on factors like the ability of wind companies to develop suppliers, and the experience of the companies.

The debate could open the way for more power deals with corporations like Amazon and Microsoft, whose data centers are hungry consumers of electricity. Large businesses might be more flexible partners for wind developers than government officials who tend to say “this is the rule,” said Deepa Venkateswaran, a utilities analyst at Bernstein, a research firm.

Renewable energy programs like Britain’s — which is designed to encourage financial backing by providing a guaranteed price to wind developers, and also to gradually drive down charges paid by consumers — attracted billions in investment when inflation was low. Now, in a very different world, after the disruptions of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Britain is taking fire for policies that could make wind projects uneconomical.

“I am afraid the U.K. has gone from being one of the best governments in Europe on offshore wind to one of the worst,” said Giles Dickson, chief executive of WindEurope, a trade body.

Turbine parts at Orsted’s pre-assembly site in Taichung Port in Taiwan, in March.Credit...Ann Wang/Reuters

A British government spokesman responded: “We understand there are supply chain pressures for the sector globally, not just in the U.K., and we are listening to companies’ concerns.”

The inflation problems are mainly hitting offshore wind farms in late stages of development rather than those already generating power.

Offshore projects can require a decade to progress from planning stages to generating power. That means agreements on issues like the power price may be years old before the turbines are in place and generating electricity.

That system worked when inflation was negligible and demand for turbines and other equipment was relatively subdued. Now, as a growing number of developers look to secure everything necessary to undertake the projects — from wind turbines, which cost millions of dollars, to the services of specialized construction ships, to bank financing — they discover that the price tags have suddenly soared. Mr. Dyrholm estimates that prices of wind turbines alone have increased 30 percent in the past year.

“The costs have risen, and you have a mismatch,” said Bernard Looney, chief executive of BP, which is an investor, with Equinor, a Norwegian company, in three offshore wind projects in the Atlantic that would supply power to around two million households in New York State. Equinor and BP have petitioned state authorities to renegotiate their power contracts.

Similarly, developers in Britain and elsewhere don’t seem to want to completely jettison projects. Many are trying to renegotiate the deals or push governments to alter the formats of future auctions. Some are terminating existing contracts to supply power to utilities and seeking new ones — or threatening such moves, figuring there will be plenty of demand for clean power in the future.

Walking away from contracts signed years ago has become “the prudent commercial course” even with the risk of financial penalties, SouthCoast Wind, a project part-owned by Shell that would be located in the Atlantic near Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, said in a statement in June.

Another Massachusetts proposal, Commonwealth Wind, which is owned by Avangrid, a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, has terminated its power supply contract and plans to seek a new deal in a future auction, the company said.

“The economics are challenging,” said Stephanie McClellan, executive director of Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy organization in the United States.

Equinor’s floating wind turbines about 25 miles off the Scottish coast, in 2021.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Despite the soured deals, interest in offshore wind remains strong. In a recent auction in Germany, BP and TotalEnergies in France agreed to pay around $14 billion over three decades for offshore tracts.

The German deals differ from others because the companies are simply paying for the rights to develop sea bottom, and they will negotiate what they get paid for the electricity at a later day.

Such deals are attractive to a corporate giant like BP, which has the financial firepower to make them happen and would be freer to do what it wants with the power. Mr. Looney said he hoped to steer away from the long-term power contracts, preferring instead to try to squeeze more value from wind-generated electricity by using it to make green hydrogen, a still scarce clean fuel, or charge electric vehicles.

“We’d like to do something with those electrons; take them and put them to use,” he said.

But there are only a handful of companies with the heft of BP and TotalEnergies. Whether nations can achieve their offshore ambitions through such commercial deals remains to be seen. Critics say that charging high prices for leases will lead to higher power prices for consumers.

---

Source: NYT/Editions by Germán & Co 

Climate Is Now a Culture War Issue

The issue of anti-environmentalism is undeniably influenced by true greed. However, climate denial has morphed into something more than just a battle against acknowledging the science of climate change. It has become a front in the culture wars, with right-wing individuals rejecting scientific consensus not only due to their general aversion to science but also out of a visceral opposition to anything that liberals support.

NYT By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 7, 2023

Understanding climate denial used to seem easy: It was all about greed. Delve into the background of a researcher challenging the scientific consensus, a think tank trying to block climate action or a politician pronouncing climate change a hoax and you would almost always find major financial backing from the fossil fuel industry.

“Those were simpler, more innocent times, and I miss them.

True, greed is still a major factor in anti-environmentalism. But climate denial has also become a front in the culture wars, with right-wingers rejecting the science in part because they dislike science in general and opposing action against emissions out of visceral opposition to anything liberals support.

And this cultural dimension of climate arguments has emerged at the worst possible moment — a moment when both the extreme danger from unchecked emissions and the path toward slashing those emissions are clearer than ever.

Some background: Scientists who began warning decades ago that the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere would have dangerous effects on the climate have been overwhelmingly vindicated.

Worldwide, July was the hottest month on record, with devastating heat waves in many parts of the globe. Extreme weather events are proliferating. Florida is essentially sitting in a hot bath, with ocean temperatures off some of its coast higher than body temperature.

A changing climate, a changing world

At the same time, technological progress in renewable energy has made it possible to envisage major reductions in emissions at little or no cost in terms of economic growth and living standards.

Back in 2009, when Democrats tried but failed to take significant climate action, their policy proposals consisted mainly of sticks — limits on emissions in the form of permits that businesses could buy and sell. In 2022, when the Biden administration finally succeeded in passing a major climate bill, it consisted almost entirely of carrots — tax credits and subsidies for green energy. Yet thanks to the revolution in renewable technology, energy experts believe that this all-gain-no-pain approach will have major effects in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But not if Republicans can help it. The Heritage Foundation is spearheading an effort called Project 2025 that will probably define the agenda if a Republican wins the White House next year. As The Times reports, it calls for “dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels.”

What’s behind this destructive effort? Well, Project 2025 appears to have been largely devised by the usual suspects — fossil-fueled think tanks like the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute that have been crusading against climate science and climate action for many years.

But the political force of this drive, and the likelihood that there will be no significant dissent from within the G.O.P. if Republicans do take the White House, has a lot to do with the way science in general and climate science in particular have become a front in the culture war.

About attitudes toward science: As recently as the mid-2000s, Republicans and Democrats had similar levels of trust in the scientific community. Since then, however, Republican trust has plunged as Democratic trust has risen; there’s now a 30-point gap between the parties.

We saw the effect of this anti-science trend when Covid vaccines became available: Vaccination was free to the public, so there was no economic cost to individuals, yet getting vaccinated was widely perceived as something “experts” and liberal elites wanted you to do. As a result, Republicans disproportionately refused to get their shots and suffered substantially higher rates of excess deaths — deaths over and above those you would normally have expected — than Democrats.

Does anyone seriously doubt that similar attitudes are driving rank-and-file Republicans to oppose action on climate change? The other day my colleague David Brooks argued that many Republicans dispute the reality of climate change and push for fossil fuels as a way to “offend the elites.” He’s right. Look at the hysterical reaction to potential regulations on gas stoves, and while it’s clear that special interests were, um, fueling the fire, there was also a strong culture-war element: The elites want you to get an induction cooktop, but real men cook with gas.

The fact that the climate war is now part of the culture war worries me, a lot. Special interests can do a great deal of damage, but they can be bought off or counterbalanced with other special interests. Indeed, an important part of President Biden’s climate strategy is the idea that renewable energy investments, which have been soaring since his legislation passed, will give many businesses and communities a stake in continuing the green transition.

But such rational if self-interested considerations won’t do much to persuade people who believe that green energy is a conspiracy against the American way of life. So the culture war has become a major problem for climate action — a problem we really, really don’t need right now.

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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Image by Germán & Co

Biden Plans to Run on Protecting Democracy, as Trump Faces Charges of Subverting It

President Joe Biden speaks about his economic plan "Bidenomics" at Auburn Manufacturing Inc. in Auburn, Maine, on July 28, 2023.

TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT, AUGUST 7, 2023 

President Joe Biden was on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware when Donald Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. As TV news anchors chewed over the meaning of the four felony charges, bringing the total number of criminal charges Trump’s facing across multiple investigations to 78, Biden went on bike rides along a scenic salt marsh, ate out at a seafood restaurant and saw the film Oppenheimer in a movie theater.

The next day, as Biden rode his bike past a scrum of reporters, one from the Associated Press shouted out, “Indictments?” The President kept riding.

Biden was adopting the same strategy for Trump’s third indictment as he had for the previous two: staying out of the way. White House officials say that Biden wants to avoid weighing in on Trump’s charges because he doesn’t want to influence the judicial process.

Yet those two earlier indictments were about Trump’s use of hush-money payments to cover up an affair and his handling of classified documents. The latest charges speak to the heart of Biden’s political message to voters in 2024: that the extreme ideas embodied by Trump and championed by much of the Republican Party pose a threat to American democracy.

Biden “will be measured in how he approaches all this given there are many ongoing court cases,” says Simon Rosenberg, a long-time Democratic strategist. 

In his first successful bid for President in 2020, Biden traveled to events with the slogan, “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” painted on the side of his campaign bus. Two years later, made the idea that America’s democracy was at stake a major part of his pitch to midterm voters, when control of both the Senate and the House were up for grabs.

He is preparing to employ a similar strategy for his 2024 campaign, while also emphasizing what he’s done to create manufacturing jobs and raise wages.

It’s likely to be a tight race. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Biden and Trump neck and neck in a possible head to head general election. 

Last November, Attorney General Merrick Garland named special counsel Jack Smith to lead the federal investigations into Trump in order to keep the prosecution of Biden’s chief political rival at arm’s length. 

Pushing back on autocratic ideas that undermine legitimate voting results will be a key part of Biden’s pitch to voters in 2024. But Biden may be hemmed in on how far he can go in pressing that point. Not only is he reluctant to seem like he’s cheering on the prosecutors, Trump and his allies have framed all of Trump’s legal problems as being orchestrated by Biden as a campaign strategy.

“The entire Biden Administration knows that I’m the ONLY candidate who would defeat Crooked Joe in a free and fair election,” Trump wrote in a fundraising email to supporters last week. “So, their only hope is to try and send me to JAIL for the rest of my life.”

Rosenberg notes that Republicans have already gone to the polls defending Donald Trump’s election lies and performed poorly. Every Republican candidate for secretary of state who denied the legitimate 2020 election results lost their races, he says.

“These issues were heavily litigated in the battleground in 2022 and it didn’t go well for Republicans and it’s not going to go well for them again in 2024 because Trump represents a far more clear and present danger to our democracy than he did even in the last election,” says Rosenberg.

This time around, Trump is running as a former President who is defending himself against charges related to his efforts to cling to power, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. While the prosecution will be an unavoidable issue in next year’s presidential race, it will be up to Biden to decide how much his campaign intends to talk about it.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Project Red, Fervo Energy’s full-scale commercial pilot project in northern Nevada, Fervo Energy

How a Former Oil Guy Is Using Fracking Tech to Boost Geothermal Energy

TIME BY ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA, AUGUST 7, 2023

Of all the technological progress of the past few decades, there is a good argument to be made that a series of fossil fuel industry innovations that helped spark the U.S. shale oil boom have had the single largest effect on the course of global geopolitics, and the world’s biosphere. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking shifted the U.S. from being a net fuel importer to exporter—a realignment of the world’s strategic chessboard currently being demonstrated in the fleets of American oil and natural gas tankers helping circumvent Russia’s energy blockade of Europe. At the same time, all that new, cheap fuel helped prolong the U.S.’s carbon addiction for years, with incipient renewables unable to compete against natural gas.

But that drilling technology may yet have a climate upside. Last month, Houston-based startup Fervo announced the successful test of a first-of-its kind commercial-scale power plant, which uses the shale oil drilling innovations to produce zero-emission geothermal energy. While horizontal drilling allows oil producers to access new seams of fossil fuels, in Fervo’s case, the company is drilling sideways into hot, porous rocks heated by tectonic activity. The company then pumps water through those rocks in order to generate steam and produce electricity. Right now, its project in northern Nevada is capable of producing about 3.5 megawatts of energy, or enough electricity to power about 2,600 homes. Once the plant gets hooked up to the grid later this year, that electricity will be used to power Google data centers and other Alphabet operations.

Unlike solar and wind energy, which only generate energy when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, geothermal plants can provide a constant stream of power, which is crucial to balancing the grid. Currently, geothermal energy accounts for about 0.4% of U.S. electricity. But, like in the U.S. fracking boom, Fervo’s technology could make it feasible to develop geothermal power plants in many more areas where it wouldn’t have made financial sense before, a change that could help raise geothermal energy as a serious player in decarbonizing the U.S. grid.

Tim Latimer started his career in the oil and gas industry, before co-founding Fervo in 2017. He spoke with TIME about finding a way to use oil industry technology for the planet, and his vision for the future of geothermal energy. 

TIME: Can you tell us about how Fervo’s technology works? Why is it important?

Tim Latimer: Geothermal power generation has been around for over 100 years. The first geothermal power plant was built in Italy around the turn of the last century. All geothermal [power] kind of works the same way: you drill to high temperature geology, and then you produce hot water or steam out of wells that you drill into, and then capture that at the surface to create electricity. There's been plants built all over the world. It's a huge part of the electricity mix in places like Iceland, New Zealand, and Kenya. But traditionally, the struggle has been that you [have to] tap really hot, shallow, productive, natural basins to be cost-effective. But those sites got tapped [decades] ago, and we had to drill deeper to less hot places and less productive wells, and technology really didn't keep up. So the reason geothermal hadn't expanded was that once you cherry pick these geologic hotspots and try to move on to other places, the tech didn't exist to make it cost effective.

Traditionally, you would drill simple vertical wells, and you would flow [water] between injection wells and production wells. What's novel about our site is we drilled down about 8,000 ft., and then we turned and drilled horizontally for 4,000 ft. And then we flowed [water] from one horizontal well to the other across several hundred feet in that high temperature rock 8,000 ft. beneath our feet. That solves some of these economic challenges and allows us to go to deeper places and still make the economics work. 

What was the biggest challenge of making that oil and gas technology work for geothermal power?

Our geology requirements are quite a bit different. In the U.S., there's been well over 100,000 horizontal oil and gas wells drilled, but generally, those are in shallower places where the rock is softer, and it's not as hot. So it has taken a lot of work to be able to adapt the equipment. Our wells are much higher temperature—the project that we did here was nearly 400℉. We're also drilling through granite, and so that's much harder rock. 

What sort of new technology did you need to drill through harder rock and higher heat?

Some of it is better tools, like drill bits with harder surfaces, and motors and electronics that are built to deal with higher temperatures. And some of it is just better techniques. One of the things that we drove forward was a way of pumping fluid down while we're drilling that cools your drilling system more efficiently than in an oil and gas operation.

Where are these hot rocks that you need? How much more geothermal energy could your technology open up?

Our current projects are in states like Utah and Nevada that have good natural geology for geothermal, where we can still drill relatively shallow wells and get to high temperature [rock]. But we're not limited to those geologies. We're just starting there first because it's the low-hanging fruit. Principally, there's virtually an unlimited amount of geothermal energy. The world is really big, and the world is really hot. We've got billions of years of energy under our feet. It's all a question about how much you can access economically. We think with existing technology, drilling down to about 4,000 meters [over 13,100 ft.] is probably cost effective.

As part of the [U.S.] Energy Secretary's enhanced geothermal Earthshot that she announced last year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory did a study looking in detail at the Western United States, and determining how much high temperature rock can you find at 4,000 meters [over 13,100 ft.] or shallower, and found over 200 gigawatts of [potential power] that was just in that shallow depth. That would represent as much as 20% of U.S. electricity supply, if we can develop that amount. But what we think is, as we expand this technology, we won't have to be just limited to the western United States. We can get so cost effective that we can come to the Eastern United States where we would have to drill deeper, but still make it cost effective. And so there's really no practical limit to how much geothermal [energy] there can be. It's just a question of how quickly we can get more efficient at drilling and repeat the results that we did in our pilot, and just continue to bring costs down every time we build a new power plant.

Was there a particular day where you got out of bed, and said, “I'm done with oil and gas, and I’m going to use this drilling technology for renewables instead?” 

I've always been really passionate about the environment. I love the outdoors. And so even when I started my career in oil and gas, it was something I was thinking about a lot. I'm from Houston. The oil and gas industry has been a big part of my life and my community. But the more I got passionate about climate change, the more I really wanted to start looking at new solutions.

There's two things that happened for me that were important. I realized that a lot of my friends, a lot of my family, and a huge part of our city all had our employment prospects tied up in the oil and gas industry. And I started realizing this energy transition is real, and if we're going to take serious action on climate, we need to make sure that there's something that Houston is doing. And not just Houston, but other major oil and gas places around the world. People in places where oil and gas is the primary economic driver need to find a way to transition. And so I wanted to figure out how somebody from the oil and gas industry could apply their skills to climate change. When I discovered geothermal, I felt really excited. This is a field that needs drilling engineers, but to produce a carbon-free energy source.

And then another thing for me was I lived in Houston during this series of floods we got in the 2010s. Year after year, we got these one-in-1,000 year events. Everybody knows about Hurricane Harvey in 2017. But for me, in 2015, there was a flood and they canceled my work. And I walked outside my apartment, and the road outside had 20 ft. of water on it. Everything was underwater. It was this moment where [climate change] went from being this thing that I was intellectually curious and about to being like, “This is not normal. This is a pretty urgent crisis.”

I ended up quitting my job just a couple of months after that to go to graduate school, and ended up pursuing this new geothermal path. I wrote in my application essay to Stanford Business School that my goal was to learn the entrepreneurial skills to launch a geothermal company that can take technology from the oil and gas industry to disrupt the geothermal sector. So it was a pretty calculated move.

I imagine that a lot of people you're working with also come from an oil and gas background, and maybe decided to leave because that industry is not really going to be viable anymore for us as a species. Does that play into recruiting folks?

Totally. 60% of the employees at Fervo come from a background in the oil and gas industry. Growing up here [in Houston], oil and gas is just a massive employer. I really get frustrated when people demonize the people that work in oil and gas. They are some of the best people. It's an incredibly diverse group with people from all over, and a lot of them are also passionate about climate change. We’re able to tap into that growing part of that workforce that is thinking deeply about climate change. If we want to deploy geothermal energy as quickly as we need to to actually have an impact on global carbon emissions, we need to recruit tens of thousands of people to come work with us. And so recruiting from the oil and gas industry is a major part of our strategy.

What does the future look like for Fervo? 

We're going into full deployment mode. Technologies like this only make a difference if we deploy them at large-scale in a way that can reduce carbon emissions and increase the reliability of the grid. Our next project that we're breaking ground on is going to be nearly 100 times bigger than our pilot. We're targeting a 400 megawatt project [in Utah] that we're going to be constructing over the next four years. And then beyond that, it's our ambition to unlock that full multi-hundred gigawatt resource that the National Renewable Energy Lab has identified. The goal here is to be 20% of U.S. electricity supply by 2050, and then to repeat that around the world.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

Brazil’s Lula pushes end to deforestation, stumbles on fossil fuels

Summit will be a major political and diplomatic test for the Brazilian leader.

POLITICO EU BY LOUISE GUILLOT, AUGUST 7, 2023 

Under pressure from the EU to rein in deforestation or face trade restrictions, Amazon countries must figure out how to bring prosperity to the region without destroying the forest. And that’s proving difficult.

At a two-day summit starting Tuesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is looking to corral countries to speed up efforts to stop deforestation and decide on a common strategy to save the rainforest.

But it's likely to be an uphill climb, with countries disagreeing on whether they should commit to a zero deforestation goal and on whether oil and gas drilling should be banned in the region.

The summit comes as the EU is rolling out new rules to ban commodities’ imports driving deforestation abroad and is asking countries to police their supply chains against environmental and human rights violations.

That's increasing pressure on the Amazon region — and particularly on Brazil, one of the largest exporters of agri-food products to the EU and home to 60 percent of the rainforest — to commit to ambitious action at this week's meet-up.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has argued that phasing out fossil fuels is essential for the forest's protection. “Even if we get deforestation under control, the Amazon faces dire threats if global heating continues to climb,” he wrote in an op-ed last month, adding that “to avoid the point of no return, we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels.”

But Lula isn’t pushing to phase out fossil fuels domestically, highlighting a tension between conservation efforts and ensuring economies stay on track.

The Brazilian leader told local media ahead of the summit he wants to “keep dreaming” about drilling in the region. His comments come as Brazilian oil major Petrobras is looking to open new fields near the mouth of the Amazon River despite receiving a negative opinion from the national institute for the environment.

If fossil fuels are kept underground, Amazon countries will need alternative activities to keep their economies afloat. Observers have suggested using this week's summit as a way to promote greener farming and sustainable forest management, as well as discuss potential schemes to pay farmers and indigenous people to help protect the forest.

“The bioeconomy is the key to unlocking the region's economic potential while preserving its ecological heritage and, as such, needs to be at the center of any sustainable and inclusive development plan for the Amazon,” said Vanessa Pérez, global economics director at the World Resources Institute.

Indigenous groups are also watching the summit closely, and want their contribution to climate protection, as well as their rights and territorial claims recognized by country leaders.

“It is not possible to plan the future of the Amazon without indigenous peoples, without guaranteeing our territorial rights,” said Ângela Kaxuyana, political adviser at the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon.

High stakes

The outcome of the summit is a major political and diplomatic test for Lula, who has pledged to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon.

Since taking office last year, Lula has stepped up efforts to crack down on illegal miners, protect indigenous groups and boost conservation efforts in the Amazon, with the government reporting a 66 percent drop in the rate of deforestation in July compared to the same month last year.

But not all Amazon countries are ready to commit to a similarly ambitious goal; Bolivia and Venezuela failed to sign a pledge made at the COP26 climate talks to end global deforestation by 2030.

Scientists have warned that the continued deterioration of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is likely to have a profound impact on global climate efforts.

“If [Lula] doesn't come out of this summit with agreement from other countries that they also see this goal as important, it really undermines Brazil's efforts to reach this [zero deforestation] goal,” said Diego Casaes, campaign director at the NGO Avaaz.

The regional meet-up is also a key opportunity for Lula to assert his credibility as a climate leader both domestically and internationally as Brazil prepares to host the COP30 summit in 2025, Casaes added.

The outcome is "a test of how far Lula can go given the constraint that he has from the congress,” he said, given the Brazilian legislative body has pushed back against measures to boost policing and protection of the rainforest.

Scientists have warned that the continued deterioration of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is likely to have a profound impact on global climate efforts | Victor Moriyama/Getty Images

European lawmakers will be looking for signals for how the region is preparing to adapt to new rules to police imports driving deforestation, tackle human rights abuses and green trade.

Under the EU Deforestation Regulation, imports of commodities like soy and beef produced on deforested land will be forbidden from 2024, while under the new corporate sustainability due diligence rules companies will be forced to scrutinize their supply chains for environmental damage and human rights abuses.

And although the trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur countries isn’t officially on the agenda, it will certainly come up.

That’s because the EU is currently negotiating a sustainability addendum to the trade deal with his Latin American counterparts, which should give reassurances — notably to France — the agreement will not have negative consequences on the environment and worsen deforestation.

The summit is an opportunity to see whether Amazon countries "are able to coordinate efforts" and to ensure policies related to the forest "are aligned with [global] climate goals," said Caseas.

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Pressure gauges, pipes and valves are pictured at an "Dashava" underground gas storage facility near Striy, Ukraine May 28, 2015. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich//File Photo

Exclusive: Defying war risk, European traders store gas in Ukraine

REUTERS By Jan Lopatka and Marek Strzelecki, August 8, 2023

PRAGUE/WARSAW, Aug 8 (Reuters) - European gas traders have begun storing natural gas in Ukraine to take advantage of lower prices and available capacity there, regardless of the risks from the ongoing war, three traders and company officials said.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, begun in February last year, the European Union (EU) has sought high levels of gas storage to compensate for reduced Russian supply, especially during the peak demand winter months.

The bloc is expected to reach a target of filling its storage facilities to 90% full by Nov. 1.

Traders said there was commercial logic in storage in Ukraine, in addition to on EU soil, to take advantage of cheaper prices now versus for future delivery.

Gas for September delivery is priced at 30 euros ($32.96) per MWh compared with forward prices for first quarter of 2024 at 49 euros, according to prices from the TTF Dutch gas futures market.

Czech EPH group told Reuters its decision to use Ukrainian storage was also a sign of confidence in the country.

"EP Commodities transports natural gas to Ukraine and uses Ukrainian gas storage facilities," Miroslav Hasko, chairman at EPH's EP Commodities, said.

"We believe in the reliability of the Ukraine’s gas transport and storage systems, which proved themselves even in such an immensely difficult wartime situation."

He did not disclose volumes.

EU countries' gas storage facilities were 87% full on Aug. 7, according to transparency platform GIE.

"We see a positive trend in gas injection by foreign traders into our (storage) facilities," said Ukriane's state-owned Ukrtransgas, part of Naftogaz Group.

Naftotgaz said foreign customers could use more than 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of storage of the country's around 30 bcm capacity, mostly in the country's west, which is far from the front lines.

Slovakia state-owned SPP, which supplies most of the Slovak market, in part with Russian gas, said it was looking at the possibility of using Ukrainian storage given Slovak storage was already 90% full.

"We consider gas storage in Ukraine as one of the interesting business opportunities that we are currently considering," SPP told Reuters.

Other European traders said there are risks due to possible military strikes or questions over what happens to the network if Russia stops pumping the gas it still sends westward via Ukraine.

"Imagine a well-targeted missile hits a compressor station or some other infrastructure. You have to take that risk," said Martin Pich, head of trading at Czech firm MND.

He said volumes at current spreads may not be large but could pick up if spot prices drop. He did not comment on MND's trading.

The Bruegel think tank said last month Ukraine could increase Europe's storage capacity by about 10%.

"Utilising the extra 100 TWh capacity available in Ukraine will provide a nice boost to Europe’s winter outlook, and a welcome boost to Ukraine’s income," Bruegel said.

Gas for storage in Ukraine can be purchased anywhere and pumped using real or virtual flows in pipelines from Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

Nominations have risen for the pipeline that transports Russian gas from Ukraine to Slovakia at the Velke Kapusany border for flows into Ukraine - virtual reverse flows. They have been up to 10 mcm per day since July.

Physical flows from Slovakia into Ukraine also started in August through the Budince point with daily volumes of around 17 mcm.

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News Round-up, August 7, 2023

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Latest news:

“China shows it is 'not backing Russian aggression'; Peskov denies comment about Putin re-election. China's attendance at peace talks in Saudi Arabia show it is not backing Vladimir Putin's aggression, an analyst has told Sky News - but the talks conclude without concrete plan to end the war.

Sky News Now

Most read…

U.S. lab says it repeated fusion energy feat — with higher yield

Scientists are striving to harness the potential of fusion energy, yet they still face significant challenges.

TWP By Ben Brasch, Kyle Rempfer and Shannon Osaka, August 6, 2023 

Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough

Energy companies scramble to attract engineers as young workers fret over climate and job security

WSJ By Mari Novik, and Collin Eaton, Aug. 6, 2023

Rising Money Flows, Fueled by Record Migration, Prop Up Autocrats

Remittances to the developing world hit record $647 billion, aiding the poor but helping keep strongmen from Nicaragua to Tajikistan in power African migrants recently sailed in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea toward Europe.

WSJ by Ryan Dubé, Aug. 6, 2023

“Pope” calls for action on migrant deaths calling the Mediterranean 'a cemetery'

Euronews Digital  with AP, AFP, EVN, August 7, 2023

Colombia in —Petrified State—

The initial year of Gustavo Petro's administration has been full of ups and downs, with the government demonstrating both boldness in breaking paradigms and disappointing periods, creating a sense of freefall.

"El Pais", written by Maria Jimena Duzan on August 7, 2023/ Translations and English editions provided by Germán & Co.

Siemens Energy books $2.4 billion in charges on wind turbines

A significant increase in its net loss for 2023, projecting a more than six-fold jump to 4.5 billion euros.

Reuters By Christoph Steitz and Alexander Hübner, August 7, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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An illustration provided by the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory depicts a target pellet inside a hohlraum capsule with laser beams entering through openings on either end. The beams compress and heat the target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur. (AP)

U.S. lab says it repeated fusion energy feat — with higher yield

Scientists are striving to harness the potential of fusion energy, yet they still face significant challenges.

TWP By Ben Brasch, Kyle Rempfer and Shannon Osaka, August 6, 2023 

A group of U.S. scientists say they have repeated their landmark energy feat — a nuclear fusion reaction that produces more energy than is put into it. But this time, they say the experiment produced an even higher energy yield than one in December that got international attention for making a major step forward toward the long elusive goal of producing energy through fusion.

This second achievement by researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is another crucial step — albeit in a journey that may still take decades to complete — in the quest for an unlimited source of cheap and clean power. The successful effort was initially reported by the Financial Times on Sunday.

“We have continued to perform experiments to study this exciting new scientific regime. In an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at (the National Ignition Facility),” Paul Rhien, a spokesman for the federal laboratory, said in a emailed statement. “Analysis of those results is underway, but we can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.”

Rhien said the lab “won’t be discussing further details” of the July experiment until after more analysis. But the team plans to “share the results at scientific conferences and peer-reviewed publications as part of our normal process for communicating scientific results.”

What you need to know about the U.S. fusion energy breakthrough

Right now, nuclear power plants use fission, which creates energy by splitting atoms — the science at the center of the current blockbuster “Oppenheimer.” While nuclear power produces bountiful clean energy, it has long drawn concerns over safety, though it is getting renewed attention amid an international push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.

Fusion, on the other hand, creates energy by merging atoms together. It’s long been a dream because it could create limitless clean energy without the radioactive byproducts of nuclear power or the risk of meltdown. Plus, the fuel to make fusion happen is simply heavy hydrogen atoms, which can be found in something that Earth has in abundance: seawater. No mining of uranium is required.

Researchers have produced fusion reactions before, but it has taken more energy to cause the reaction than they could get back. The key thing about these last two experiments is that they get more energy back than they put in to create the reaction. That efficiency has been the elusive holy grail of fusion research.

(Still, it is limited in the sense that they are considering the amount of energy required to power lasers that were used to smush the hydrogen atoms together — not the power that’s necessary to make the whole project work.)

The White House praised the work at the time of the first breakthrough in December.

“This is such a wonderful example of a possibility realized, a scientific milestone achieved, and a road ahead to the possibilities for clean energy,” Arati Prabhakar, the White House science adviser, said during a news conference.

U.S. announces milestone on fusion energy, sparking hopes for clean power

Still, scientists are far away from using the energy produced by fusion.

Researchers can only create a fusion reaction about once a day because they have to let the lasers cool and replace the fuel target. But a commercially viable fusion plant would need to be able to do it several times per second, Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT, previously told The Washington Post.

“Once you’ve got scientific viability,” he said, “you’ve got to figure out engineering viability.”

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Source: www.energyportal.eu 

Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough

Energy companies scramble to attract engineers as young workers fret over climate and job security

WSJ By Mari Novik, and Collin Eaton, Aug. 6, 2023

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“The Shrinking Pool of Petroleum Engineers

energyportal.eu By Howard Rhodes, AUG 6, 2023

…European universities, which have traditionally provided engineers for companies operating in the Middle East and Asia, are also witnessing a decline in interest.

The decrease in interest from students and high-skilled workers is primarily driven by concerns about the industry’s impact on climate change and the long-term job security. As global economies transition away from fossil fuels, many individuals are wary of choosing a career path that may become obsolete. This shift in perspective marks a departure from previous cycles, where the industry’s workforce fluctuated with oil prices.

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Good news from the oil patch: Jobs are plentiful and salaries are soaring. 

The bad news is that young people still aren’t interested.

Even as oil-and-gas companies post record profits, the industry is facing a worsening talent drought.

At U.S. colleges, the pool of new entrants for petroleum-engineering programs has shrunk to its smallest size since before the fracking boom began more than a decade ago. European universities, which have historically provided many of the engineers for companies with operations across the Middle East and Asia, are seeing similar trends. 

Diverging Paths

Numbers of U.S. undergraduate students studying petroleum engineering have traditionally fluctuated with the price of oil, but that hasn't been the case recently.

Change since 1990

Source: Lloyd Heinze/ *Brent crude spot price a barrel, annual average.

Students and high-skilled young workers are concerned about the industry’s role in climate change, as well as long-term job security given that global economies are transitioning away from fossil fuels to other energy sources, according to executives, analysts and professors. 

The trend is a stark departure from previous cycles, when the industry’s workforce ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall of oil prices.

Between 2016 and 2021—a period when the Brent crude price nearly doubled—the number of petroleum-engineering graduates more than halved, according to the U.S. Department of Education. 

The number of undergraduates pursuing petroleum engineering has dropped 75% since 2014, according to Lloyd Heinze, a Texas Tech University professor. 

It is a trend that has continued even as other recent studies have shown that the average graduate earns 40% more than a peer with a computer science degree.

That puts students, including Hayden Gregg, in high demand. 

The 21-year-old Kansas City, Mo., native is studying petroleum engineering at Colorado School of Mines. His graduating class of 36 students is down from around 200 in the years before oil prices collapsed in the mid-2010s, according to a college official. 

Encouraged by his roommates and a visit to the oil-and-gas heartland of Texas, he became convinced that the industry offers a range of engineering possibilities as it transitions to a broader mix of energy sources.

“Even if oil and gas is going away, I can deploy my skills in other engineering fields,” he said.

Jennifer Miskimins, head of the petroleum engineering department at Colorado School of Mines, said Gregg’s graduating class is benefiting from a pickup in oil-industry hiring and many have gotten good internships. “They’re a hot commodity,” she said. “I think this class is going to be sitting pretty.” 

Oil-and-gas companies are pouring money into fellowships and other programs designed to cultivate a new generation of talent. Much of the focus is on white-collar careers that tend to attract college graduates, but the trend is broadly true among the industry’s blue-collar workers as well.

A big part of the pitch is that the industry is increasingly dynamic and creative, requiring employees who can run carbon capture, hydrogen and geothermal projects, said Barbara Burger, who served in several leadership roles at Chevron and is now a senior adviser at investment bank Lazard.

Part of the challenge, she said, is that there are more startups and fast-growing companies in those fields that don’t carry the same baggage as the giants that earn most of their profits from fossil fuels.

“There’s competition in a way that probably wasn’t there 15 years ago,” she said. 

Burger recently attended an event hosted by Fervo Energy, a startup that uses the shale boom’s horizontal drilling and fracking techniques to develop geothermal wells for electricity generation. Around 60% of Fervo’s employees previously worked at oil-and-gas outfits, the company said.

To attract workers, she said, oil-and-gas companies need to better articulate their energy transition strategies, including efforts to carve out new businesses or curb emissions. 

“That’s a hook for employees—current and future,” Burger said. “They want to know there’s a future in the actual companies, the industries and the skill sets they have.”

The talent shortage represents a long-term problem at a moment when energy security—largely dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future—is increasingly a global priority. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Europe has become desperate for new supplies of oil and gas, though countries around the world are trying to keep fuel affordable.

Darian Kane-Stolz said that growing up in New York, she was always concerned with climate change. She taught neighbors how to recycle. 

When Kane-Stolz, 25, enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, she felt that joining the petroleum-engineering program was consistent with her desire to have a positive impact on the planet.

Now a BP engineer bringing wells online in the Gulf of Mexico, she said the attitude toward the industry has drastically shifted within her cohort. Before she goes out with friends, she sometimes prepares talking points in case someone attacks the industry.

“There’s definitely a negative perception out there,” said Kane-Stolz.

BP this year launched a new $4 million fellowship program with U.S. universities to provide students with exposure to the energy industry. It also said last year that it planned to double the size of its apprenticeship program to 2,000 people this decade. 

“To achieve our goal of reimagining energy, we need the brightest talent,” said a BP spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Kane-Stolz’s alma mater, the University of Texas, is working on adding a new master’s degree without the word “petroleum” to capture a broader group of students who still want to work in energy-related engineering, said Jon E. Olson, the department chair of petroleum and geoscience at UT. 

Other universities are ending their petroleum engineering degrees or rebranding them. Imperial College London—formerly housing the Royal School of Mines—shut its program last year and replaced it with one in geo-energy with machine learning and data science. 

Analysts and company officials say a steady flow of talent is critical to company efforts to build out infrastructure needed to curb emissions and develop clean-energy and low-carbon businesses.

“One of the scarcest resources at the moment seems to be people,” said Aslak Hellestø, a business adviser for Northern Lights, a carbon capture and storage project off the coast of Norway operated by European energy companies Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.

“This is groundbreaking technology and we cannot afford to try and fail,” he said. “We need young people with new ideas and bright minds to make it right the first time.”

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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African migrants recently sailed in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea toward Europe. JOAN MATEU PARRA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rising Money Flows, Fueled by Record Migration, Prop Up Autocrats

Remittances to the developing world hit record $647 billion, aiding the poor but helping keep strongmen from Nicaragua to Tajikistan in power African migrants recently sailed in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea toward Europe.

WSJ by Ryan Dubé, Aug. 6, 2023

LIMA, Peru—More people than ever are migrating worldwide, with millions of people sending home record amounts of cash that fund small businesses in Uganda and feed families from Ecuador to Nepal. 

But the remittances also provide critical support to fragile states and autocratic regimes which rely on money earned by their citizens abroad to keep their economies afloat.

In Venezuela, a third of households depend on money transferred home from the more than 7.3 million migrants who fled the country’s economic collapse, according to the Inter-American Dialogue policy group in Washington. In Central Asia, where many former Soviet officials rule, migrants send so much money that the funds cover their nations’ trade deficits, economists say. In Nicaragua, remittances have become so vital to the tax revenue of President Daniel Ortega’s regime that some economists say reducing the flow of the funds would be a form of political resistance. 

“If you didn’t have remittances, the national economy would collapse,” said Enrique Sáenz, an exiled Nicaraguan economist. “And in macroeconomic terms, Ortega would be in deep trouble.”

The growing flow of money creates a challenge for reformers seeking to exert economic pressure on autocratic leaders. But limiting remittances would hurt the vulnerable families of migrants who remain back home and reliant on money transfers.

“Remittances are one of the most difficult issues we can deal with,” said Ryan Berg, a political scientist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Nobody really wants to touch that issue because who would ever, from a policy standpoint, try to interfere with remittances as a point of pressuring dictatorships when we all know people are suffering.”

Since 2010, remittances to the developing world have nearly doubled, rising to a record $647 billion last year, more than foreign direct investments to those countries and more than international development aid, according to the World Bank. 

In Nepal, a young and fragile democracy where remittances account for close to a quarter of GDP, inflows from migrant workers have helped keep a lid on bubbling anger at the government over its handling of the pandemic and a recent recession, said Jeevan Baniya, an expert on migration at the Kathmandu-based research institute Social Science Baha. 

“Had it not been for the inflow of remittances, we would have likely experienced some kind of social or political upheaval,” Baniya said. “Remittances end up reinforcing the existing power structure.” 

In Egypt, money sent by migrants provides three times more revenue than the government takes in from the state-owned Suez Canal, while remittances to Mexico surpassed the dollars generated by international tourism and oil exports. 

 “Remittances have become a financial lifeline for developing countries,” said Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist and remittances expert.

The millions of money transfers a year, each one often just a few hundred dollars at a time, are being spurred by soaring migration to the U.S. and Europe since the Covid-19 pandemic. Migrants are arriving in affluent countries that have labor shortages, allowing them to find higher-paying jobs and send more money home. 

Some economists say that if remittances become too big, they can hurt longer-term development and create governance problems. 

Connel Fullenkamp, a Duke University economist, said remittances can start to become problematic once they go above 5% to 10% of a nation’s gross domestic product. The money can reduce incentives to work for those who receive the funds, he said. They can also curb demands on the government to fix domestic problems that cause migration in the first place.

“If you get remittances, it causes you to care less about what is really going on in your own backyard, because you can always tap your relatives overseas for more transfers,” said Fullenkamp, who has written studies on remittances for the International Monetary Fund. “Politicians are well aware.”

Some of the world’s most remittance-dependent nations are ruled by autocratic regimes where people have few economic opportunities—save for leaving.

“These countries have stronger currencies than they would otherwise have, and they have less inflation than what they would otherwise have,” said Roman Mogilevskii, an economist at the Philippines-based Asian Development Bank. 

In the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan, money from migrants mainly working in Russia make up close to half of the country’s GDP, according to the World Bank.

Remittances there have helped authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon maintain his three-decades-old grip on power, according to scholars on the country. Navruz Nekbakhtshoev, a political scientist from Tajikistan who lives in Nebraska, said the remittances calm grievances and demands on officials by feeding families back home. The mass outflow of young people to fund the cash flow also removes people who might otherwise challenge the political status quo.

“It works to stabilize the regime,” he said. “As long as this exit path exists for the people, the autocratic regime can basically stay in power.”

With Russia’s economy struggling because of the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions, migrants could have fewer job opportunities, affecting remittances, economists say. 

That is prompting Tajikistan and other Central Asian governments to try to reduce their dependence on Russia by promoting migrant paths to other places such as Turkey and England, said Zachary Witlin, an expert on the region at the Eurasia Group. 

In fragile, democratic countries, a large drop in remittances can contribute to unrest. In Sri Lanka, where more money arrives from the diaspora than what is earned from tea exports, remittances fell by nearly half from 2020 to 2022. That contributed to a balance-of-payment crisis that drained the country’s foreign-exchange reserves and left it unable to pay for imports or service its external debt. Amid mass unrest, the president fled the country last year. 

Elsewhere, a decline in remittances could just push more people to leave as rulers repress dissent. 

Cuba first allowed remittances after the unraveling in the 1990s of its benefactor, the Soviet Union, brought about a sharp economic contraction. The Western Hemisphere’s lone Communist country realized that allowing some people to leave could serve as an important source of hard currency, historians say.

“Remittances can in some ways grease the wheel of a system that doesn’t work,” said Ted Henken, author of books on Cuba and a professor at New York’s Baruch College. “A Cuban in Miami or Madrid might be worth more to the Cuban government just in terms of GDP.”

Then from 2019 to 2021, remittances to Cuba fell more than 70% as a result of the pandemic and tougher U.S. sanctions designed partly to block the Cuban military from profiting from the transfers. The Cuban military was taking a cut of the “well-intentioned, generous funds” that Cuban-Americans sent back to their families, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in 2020. 

With tourism to Cuba also drying up, people took to the streets to demand an end to a regime in power since 1959. 

Today, remittances remain far below prepandemic levels and Cuban immigrant families in the U.S. increasingly bankroll the departure of their relatives from the island, said Emilio Morales, president of the Havana Consulting Group, a Miami-based firm that tracks Cuba’s economy.

“The situation is so chaotic that people prefer to invest in getting their family out of Cuba,” he said. 

In Venezuela, an economy that has contracted 75% over the past decade, remittances are crucial for the people who have stayed in the country under the autocratic and bankrupt government of President Nicolás Maduro, said Angel Alvarado, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Pennsylvania.

“You can ask, ‘How are people not dying of hunger in Venezuela?’” Alvarado said. “The answer is that they have at least one child living abroad, sending money for food and medicine.”

In Nicaragua, remittances more than doubled from 2018 to 2022 after President Ortega violently put down protests. This year, they are expected to account for about 33% of the country’s GDP, one of the highest rates in Latin America, said Manuel Orozco, a Nicaraguan economist at the Inter-American Dialogue. 

Marta Ortega, 45, a Nicaraguan who found work cooking in homes in Costa Rica, said she never considered her transfers could support a regime she opposes. She just wanted to help her mother.

“It wasn’t a lot,” said Ortega. “But it was really important.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image by Germán & Co

“Pope” calls for action on migrant deaths calling the Mediterranean 'a cemetery'

Euronews Digital  with AP, AFP, EVN, August 7, 2023

Pope Francis calls for action to save the lives of migrants who perish in the Mediterranean, or the deserts of North Africa, trying to reach Europe

Pope Francis has expressed his concerns for the welfare of migrants trying to reach Europe, saying the seas of the Mediterranean and the deserts of North Africa have become ‘cemeteries’ for them.

The Pope was speaking to journalists on his flight home from Portugal where he had held a mass for 1.5 million people to mark World Youth Day.

He told reporters the migration issue would be discussed thoroughly when the Diocese of Marseille holds its Mediterranean Meetings event from 18 to 24 September. Pope Francis will participate in some of the meetings in September where senior clerics and politicians will discuss economic equality, migration and climate change.

The remarks come two weeks after the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Roman Catholics called on global leaders to help migrants stranded in the deserts of North Africa, and also recalled extreme climate events and the need to address global warming.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Nicolás Petro with his father, President Gustavo Petro, in an image shared on his social networks on 14 January 2023, under the slogan "You have the floor".
NICOLASPETROBURGOS (COURTESY)/Editions by Germán & Co

Colombia in —Petrified State—

The initial year of Gustavo Petro's administration has been full of ups and downs, with the government demonstrating both boldness in breaking paradigms and disappointing periods, creating a sense of freefall.

"El Pais", written by Maria Jimena Duzan on August 7, 2023/ Translations and English editions provided by Germán & Co.

The first year of Gustavo Petro's administration has been like riding a rollercoaster. Sometimes an ascent can be exhilarating, especially if the government is eager to break from convention. But one cannot ignore the feeling of despair during a descent. His first year in power ends amidst a disaster, leaving us feeling helpless.

On this occasion, the fall from grace happened due to an unexpected betrayer - his son Nicolás. He, an anguished young man who was deprived of his father's affection, recently accused him of a non-existent offence. Nicolás told the prosecutor's office that he had evidence suggesting that his father, President Petro, knew about unreported financial contributions made to his campaign, which is an offence in Colombia.

So far, Nicolás Petro has not provided any evidence incriminating his father in the alleged corruption and his narrative has been inconsistent. At first, he stated that his father was not aware of the illegal funding of his campaign, however, he later contradicted himself by claiming the opposite. In a recent interview, Nicolás partly excused his father from involvement in the case by stating that he did not inform him about the funds he had solicited from unreliable sources under his father's name. Nevertheless, he implied that President Petro was aware of donations made to his campaign by established contractors, which were not reported in the accounts. Despite Nicolás Petro's contradictory statements, his accusations against his father have triggered a crisis that has left the country in a state of fear.

The political crisis unleashed by Nicolás Petro, without exaggeration, has turned into a Greek tragedy, being the product of an act of spite.

Nicolás' ex-wife Day Vásquez revealed his corruption in an interview with Semana magazine. She was hurt and envious after he abandoned her for her best friend. Day revealed that Nicolás had set up a corruption network behind his father's back. He took advantage of being the president's son and diverted money from unscrupulous contractors. Nicolás and his accomplices claimed that the money was intended for his father's presidential campaign, but it was diverted for their own personal gain. Nicolás is under investigation by the Attorney General's Office.

When Nicolás was seeking support from his father during this difficult time, the president withdrew his support. The president guaranteed the nation that he wouldn't exercise his authority to manipulate the proceedings against his son. Following the declaration of his dedication to the Constitution, he wished his son good luck in these challenging moments.

In a country more accustomed to seeing presidents use their power to protect family members who have run afoul of the law, Petro's reaction came as a refreshing balm, but the calm did not last long. His son Nicolás felt that his father had left him alone. He tried to call him several times but got no answer and according to his own confession in an interview, he even tried to threaten him, letting him know that if he was left alone, he could tell many things about the campaign, but he did not get an answer either.

Then came another freefall, after he was captured together with his ex-wife. Shattered, he decided to plunge the knife and point the finger at his father.

This act of revenge hits Petro where it hurts the most because it equates him with traditional and corrupt politics, which moves clienteles and buys votes and is nourished by a perverse network of contractors, a political world from which Petro has wanted to dissociate himself.

His son has given his enemies new incentives and they will surely use this family tragedy to take advantage of it, magnify the scandal and fill it with superlatives, especially now that the regional elections are coming up.

Presidential campaign finance scandals in Colombia have always been a circus. The control bodies in charge of investigating have been quick to shelve these processes, despite the evidence. This happened with the presidential campaign of pro-Uribe candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga in 2014, which was investigated for having received money from Odebrecht under the table. It was shelved by the National Electoral Council for lack of evidence, even though there was evidence that the campaign had received 1.6 million dollars from Odebrecht under the table (six years later, without knowing why, the Attorney General's Office dusted off this evidence and has just charged Óscar Iván Zuluaga).

Something similar happened with Juan Manuel Santos' re-election campaign. Despite evidence showing how the campaign had been financed with money from a mega highway to be built by Odebrecht and its partner Episol, part of the Sarmiento group, the investigation was shelved by the National Electoral Council due to expiry of time limits, and the Attorney General's Office did not even investigate it. Even more grotesque is what the current attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, did when the scandal about possible illegal financing of the campaign of Iván Duque, his university roommate, was uncovered. According to the complaint, a criminal gang led by a —narco— businessman who was later murdered in Brazil had collected money to finance the second round of Iván Duque's campaign. The Prosecutor's Office closed the investigation without having made any arrests.

With Petro, things seem to be going to be at a different price. On this occasion, the regulatory bodies do not want to turn a blind eye as they did in the past, and they have their antennae up. This should be good news if it were not for the fact that they are not very interested in investigating in accordance with the law. In an unprecedented act, the prosecutor Barbosa raided the Casa de Nariño (Presidential Palace) as if it were Ali Baba's cave, with the aim of obtaining information that he could have requested through official means. Without evidence, he insinuated that there were illegal interceptions from the Casa de Nariño, when he has shelved an investigation that was opened based on a complaint made by Petro's campaign at the time. There is evidence that it was intercepted by police agents operating from the Casa de Nariño when Duque was president.

Nicolás Petro was captured when he had not even been charged, but in other cases in which those under investigation are right-wing politicians, the Attorney General's Office is generous and condescending. In the hearing of the president's son, the Prosecutor's Office arbitrarily designed a flow chart to show the connections that Nicolás Petro had, in which it included half the government. This organigram was later presented by several media outlets as if all these names were part of a criminal network. The Prosecutors investigations were so arbitrary that they had the luxury of not including the name of Alex Char in the organigramme, the dauphin of the powerful “Char” clan, Corrected version: Whom the Barbosa Prosecution has decided not to touch even with the petal of a rose, despite the fact that he has more than thirty investigations for corruption and that he also appears in Day Vásquez's chats.

Many predict that the same thing will happen to Petro as happened to Ernesto Samper, the progressive president whose campaign was accused of having been financed by the “Cali cartel” in the 1994 elections. He was unable to push through his agenda for change because he ran out of time defending himself.

If this country were the same as it was 30 years ago, the comparison would be valid, but it is not. Samper managed to stay in power because he always had the support of the big economic powers that kept him in power even though the US embassy and many of us media and journalists were on the other side. Petro, who is Colombia's first left-wing president, has (curiously) good relations with the Americans, but he is still viewed with distrust by the economic groups, which now also own the few remaining media outlets. Several of these media outlets have become the main mouthpieces of an increasingly selective Attorney General's Office, generous to its friends but implacable towards anything that has to do with Petro's government. The president does not have it easy.

Despite this panorama, it would be foolish to say that the ones to blame for Petro's reformist agenda being stuck are the media and the elites who oppose the reforms. So far, the main culprit for his reforms not seeing the light of day is Petro's lack of leadership when it comes to putting together a coalition government.

However, this tragedy that exposes a dysfunctional presidential family, which navigates between revenge, hatred, feelings of guilt, jealousy, betrayal, and power, is the best ammunition Petro's enemies must strike at his political project. Anything that moves the baser instincts is worth gold in this world governed by digital networks.

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The logo of energy technology company Siemens Energy is displayed during the LNG 2023 energy trade show in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo

Siemens Energy books $2.4 billion in charges on wind turbines

A significant increase in its net loss for 2023, projecting a more than six-fold jump to 4.5 billion euros.

Reuters By Christoph Steitz and Alexander Hübner, August 7, 2023

FRANKFURT/MUNICH, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Siemens Energy (ENR1n.DE) on Monday said problems recently unveiled at its wind turbine unit would cost it 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion), well short of worst-case estimates but still casting doubt over the future of the business.

The charges will inflate Siemens Energy's net loss more than six-fold in 2023 to 4.5 billion euros, the company said, as it published third-quarter results showing a record order backlog of 106 billion euros due to strong demand.

The company also cut its sales outlook, and issued a new, lower profit outlook after withdrawing it in the wake of the disclosed issues, which include faulty components for its newer onshore turbines and ramp-up problems for offshore production.

Siemens Energy shares reversed an opening fall of as much as 7% to stand 2.7% higher at 0819 GMT, with analysts saying that the price tag should provide relief to those that feared even higher financial fallout.

"While the results are negative, they are not as bad as feared by some investors," JP Morgan analysts said, adding an additional 700 million euro writedown on deferred tax assets meant the group may take the opportunity to "clear the decks".

Siemens Energy shocked markets in late June when it announced a wide set of problems at Siemens Gamesa, one of the world's biggest wind turbine makers, just weeks after it managed to fully acquire the business it formerly only partly owned.

While in line with Siemens Energy's own estimate of more than 1 billion euros, Monday's cost tally for the issues is below the most pessimistic market estimate of more than 5 billion euros issued by UBS.

Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch said that while the situation at Siemens Gamesa was a "massive setback", the performance of the group's remaining units, including gas turbines and power converter stations, provided a silver lining.

The new set of problems at Siemens Gamesa, including faulty blades and gears at some of its 4.X and 5.X onshore models, have cost the company around a third, or more than 6 billion euros, in market value.

Siemens Energy, which has drafted in Alix Partners to help fix quality issues with Siemens Gamesa's newer onshore models, said it was currently reviewing its wind strategy and would update markets at a capital markets day in November.

Bruch said wind remained a strategically relevant growth market but added that it was paramount that the business is profitable, something which Siemens Gamesa has failed to achieve in recent years.

Thank Goodness It is Friday, For Others, a Time of Deep Loneliness

Yes, for some, thank goodness it is Friday; for others, the encounter with loneliness is a mysterious force that can sneak into even the liveliest lives. It resides in the hidden depths of our minds, waiting for unexpected circumstances to amplify its presence. Whether triggered by the painful loss of loved ones, the breakdown of cherished relationships, or the sudden onslaught of overwhelming hardships, loneliness paralyzes the spirit with an unwavering hold. Like an unseen ghost, loneliness erodes the fabric of human connection, leaving individuals grappling with a profound sense of disconnection. The once-familiar bonds of relationships unravel, replaced by a void of emptiness. Its impact penetrates the soul, reverberating through one's existence and permeating every aspect of life like a chilling winter breeze.

In this desolate landscape, mental health struggles emerge, casting a long shadow over individuals. Anxiety, a relentless companion, tightens its grip around the heart, planting seeds of doubt that offer a dark temptation to escape from the eternal pain.

This enigmatic blonde, Marilyn Monroe has captivated the world as one of the most beautiful women in history. However, behind her glamorous facade lies a complex and troubled existence, often categorized as a myth by some. Monroe's genetic inheritance from her mother proved to be a double-edged sword, as it played a significant role in her battle with depression and bipolar disorder. The priest Ernesto Cardenal, a Trappist monk, was unjustly denied the Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy. The academy has made many mistakes in its history. However, thanks to the forces of nature, Sweden remains a country where everyone must be held accountable for their sins, regardless of their position in society. Consequently, the Swedish Academy is now embarking on a new, transparent path. Ernesto and the stunning blonde —- Norma Jeanne Mortenson —- shared a platonic love in this place. She herself passionately sings "Happy Birthday To You" to President John F. Kennedy; adly and mysteriously, Kennedy was killed in Dallas one day in November 1963, among other stories. Ernesto delved into her mind to write "Pray for Marilyn Monroe," which becomes a radiograph of the interior of a person tormented by feelings of anguish, who, in the end, can no longer bear the suffering.

Here, we delve into the life of Ernest Hemingway, a man renowned for his toughness and resilience. However, beneath his rugged exterior lay a soul scarred by the horrors of war, forever leaving an indelible mark. This story holds profound significance in our present era, as the echoes of a new Cold War resonate throughout our world. Hemingway's spirit, already weakened by the atrocities he witnessed, eventually succumbed to the demons that plagued him within this chaotic world. His battles were not confined solely to the physical realm but extended into the depths of his being, where war wounds had taken root.

As we embark upon the weekend, we are implored to seek respite and inner peace amidst the clamour and turmoil of everyday life. Let us embrace the Sabbath and allow its tranquillity to permeate our weary souls. By doing so, we can nourish our spirits and find the fortitude to confront the challenges that lie ahead. Hemingway's story serves as a cautionary tale, reminding us of the fragility of the human psyche and the paramount importance of safeguarding our mental and emotional well-being.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, August 4, 2023

Thank goodness it is Friday…

Yes, for some, thank goodness it is Friday; for others, the encounter with loneliness is a mysterious force that can sneak into even the liveliest lives. It resides in the hidden depths of our minds, waiting for unexpected circumstances to amplify its presence. Whether triggered by the painful loss of loved ones, the breakdown of cherished relationships, or the sudden onslaught of overwhelming hardships, loneliness paralyzes the spirit with an unwavering hold. Like an unseen ghost, loneliness erodes the fabric of human connection, leaving individuals grappling with a profound sense of disconnection. The once-familiar bonds of relationships unravel, replaced by a void of emptiness. Its impact penetrates the soul, reverberating through one's existence and permeating every aspect of life like a chilling winter breeze.
In this desolate landscape, mental health struggles emerge, casting a long shadow over individuals. Anxiety, a relentless companion, tightens its grip around the heart, planting seeds of doubt that offer a dark temptation to escape from the eternal pain.

This enigmatic blonde, Marilyn Monroe has captivated the world as one of the most beautiful women in history. However, behind her glamorous facade lies a complex and troubled existence, often categorized as a myth by some. Monroe's genetic inheritance from her mother proved to be a double-edged sword, as it played a significant role in her battle with depression and bipolar disorder. The priest Ernesto Cardenal, a Trappist monk, was unjustly denied the Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy. The academy has made many mistakes in its history. However, thanks to the forces of nature, Sweden remains a country where everyone must be held accountable for their sins, regardless of their position in society. Consequently, the Swedish Academy is now embarking on a new, transparent path. Ernesto and the stunning blonde —- Norma Jeanne Mortenson —- shared a platonic love in this place. She herself passionately sings "Happy Birthday To You" to President John F. Kennedy; adly and mysteriously, Kennedy was killed in Dallas one day in November 1963, among other stories. Ernesto delved into her mind to write "Pray for Marilyn Monroe," which becomes a radiograph of the interior of a person tormented by feelings of anguish, who, in the end, can no longer bear the suffering.

Here, we delve into the life of Ernest Hemingway, a man renowned for his toughness and resilience. However, beneath his rugged exterior lay a soul scarred by the horrors of war, forever leaving an indelible mark. This story holds profound significance in our present era, as the echoes of a new Cold War resonate throughout our world. Hemingway's spirit, already weakened by the atrocities he witnessed, eventually succumbed to the demons that plagued him within this chaotic world. His battles were not confined solely to the physical realm but extended into the depths of his being, where war wounds had taken root.

As we embark upon the weekend, we are implored to seek respite and inner peace amidst the clamour and turmoil of everyday life. Let us embrace the Sabbath and allow its tranquillity to permeate our weary souls. By doing so, we can nourish our spirits and find the fortitude to confront the challenges that lie ahead. Hemingway's story serves as a cautionary tale, reminding us of the fragility of the human psyche and the paramount importance of safeguarding our mental and emotional well-being.

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Most read…

Why There Will Be No Negotiating with Putin

The Moscow time By *Konstantin Sonin, TODAY

The U.S. and Europe Are Growing Alarmed by China’s Rush Into Legacy Chips

TIME BY JENNY LEONARD, IAN KING AND ALBERTO NARDELLI / BLOOMBERG, TODAY

Son of Colombia's president admits illegal money entered election campaign, prosecutor says

Reuters By Carlos Vargas, August 4, 2023

ConocoPhillips signs 20-year LNG supply deals with Mexico Pacific

Reuters by Arathy Somasekhar, August 3, 2023

Britain’s creaking energy grid isn’t ready for net zero

Government-ordered report says UK should compensate people living near new pylons in bid to speed up development.

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER, AUGUST 4, 2023

U.S. Employers Added 187,000 Jobs in July

Hiring held steady and unemployment rate fell to 3.5%

WSJ By Gabriel T. Rubin, Aug. 4, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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Image by Germán & Co

Why There Will Be No Negotiating with Putin

The Moscow time By *Konstantin Sonin, TODAY

“No one wants to negotiate with Russia,” President Vladimir Putin has complained several times on camera in recent days. He would like to reach a peace agreement or a ceasefire, he claims, but there are no negotiations.

Why are there no negotiations with Putin? This question is not as simple as it may appear. Nevertheless, there are two main reasons.

The first reason, the "image of the war," is obvious, but Putin does not understand it, and no one can explain it to him.

The second reason, which is much more significant, is structural: Putin lacks the ability to take on binding commitments. In reality, it's precisely this structural reason that impedes negotiations.

The image of the war

Since Feb. 24, 2022, the first day of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the main images of the war in the international media have been of residential buildings in Ukrainian cities destroyed by Russian rockets; civilians killed and wounded; and women, children and elderly refugees. For any ordinary person, this war is associated with photographs of peaceful Ukrainian civilians executed by Russian soldiers in Bucha, mass graves uncovered in liberated Lyman and Irpin, and flooded houses after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. And the responsibility for all of this falls on Putin and his ministers and generals. No matter how cynical a Western politician might be, they cannot negotiate with Putin, because the average person in their country sees what is happening on the frontlines and in the rear. How can you negotiate with those who are responsible for this war?

The fact that the war is being broadcast in real-time was obviously something that those who prepared and launched it did not expect. Columns of Russian tanks on Ukrainian roads, missile and bomb strikes on residential areas and civilian infrastructure — all of this is shown on television screens and newspaper front pages at the frequency at which they happen. While not shown live, the murders of civilians in Bucha and Irpin have since been documented by dozens of news agencies and international organizations. This is the first war in human history that the world is observing live, as it unfolds. Those who initiated this war are naturally perceived as criminals, not as partners for negotiation.

The difficulty for Putin and his closest associates is that they, of course, do not understand the image of the war that is seen by the whole world. They live in their own specially crafted reality, in which there were no cameras for torturing detainees during the occupation of Kherson, no executions of civilians and unarmed Russian prisoners of war in Bucha, and no Russian aerial strike on the Mariupol theater, where women and children sought refuge from bombings. Not only does this not exist in Putin's world, but even if he had an adequate adviser now, he couldn't tell Putin about it! In Putin's Russia, speaking the truth about the war is forbidden — even if it is necessary for cynical, pragmatic reasons.

Putin should be told that in order to create a possibility for negotiations, he needs to publicly appoint investigations into the crimes committed in the occupied and subsequently liberated territories. The leadership of the 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade and perhaps the entire 35th and 36th Armies of the Eastern Military District, the 331st and 137th Airborne Regiments, the 104th and 234th Assault Landing Regiments, and other military units responsible for the killings of civilians in Bucha should be brought to trial. Officers and soldiers directly responsible for these crimes should be appropriately punished. The same goes for other key episodes.

The same applies to those who could engage in negotiations. Who would negotiate with Lavrov, Polyanskiy, Antonov, and other “diplomats” who lied to the whole world about Bucha with a straight face? 

But who can say this to Putin? Who can answer his question, “Why aren't they negotiating with us?” if the answer to this question is considered a crime under his laws? The “information bubble” in which Putin and his entourage live is not a journalistic metaphor. It consists of a powerful institutional structure, laws, and people who are imprisoned based on those laws. Putin does not know how the whole world perceives the Russo-Ukrainian war, and he cannot find out.

The structural reason

"The war's image" is an important reason why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western politicians are not negotiating with Putin, but it is not the most important. Yes, negotiating with someone who ordered an aggressive war and demands recognition of his conquered territories is difficult due to internal political constraints. It's challenging but possible. Negotiations were once conducted with Pol Pot, a bloodthirsty maniac worse than Stalin or Mao; with Gaddafi, a dictator almost as bloody; with Arafat, responsible for terrorist attacks against civilians; and other leaders too toxic to negotiate with publicly. After all, professional diplomats are essentially doctors who treat patients regardless of their moral qualities.

The difficulty lies in the fact that negotiations with Putin are currently pointless because he cannot make any meaningful commitments. He can make promises in words, but in reality, these promises are worthless. Over his 20-year rule, he has practically promised everything — his signature is on the border treaty with Ukraine, for example. And he violated it all. Over the past two years, he has broken almost every promise he made. Again, Putin himself may not even know about this. I suspect it would be a terrible risk for his subordinates to remind him of what he said a month, a year, or even a week ago. But everyone else knows that he breaks all of his promises. No matter how pragmatic and cynical a negotiator might be, what is the point of such negotiations?

Of course, Putin's inability to make binding commitments is not his personal problem. It is an institutional one. This is where the parliament would come in handy, but it is completely destroyed — in the sense that everyone knows that whatever laws the deputies may pass, they can cancel them tomorrow at the administration’s request.

Unlike countries where parliaments work, in the Russia of 2023, the parliament is not a source of independent guarantees. It is not a mechanism that can provide binding commitments. The same applies to any Russian institution, be it ministries or regional administrations. They cannot be a source of independent guarantees. Putin's promises, whatever they may be, cannot be backed up by anything.

It is not surprising that no one in the West counts on negotiations with Putin. See above; how can you negotiate with someone who will inevitably violate the agreements? Even if he does not want to violate them now and genuinely believes in them, nothing in Russia can compel him to keep those agreements. That is precisely why the current plan — no negotiations until the defeat of Russian forces on Ukrainian territory, and post-war guarantees of Ukraine's security through NATO membership — appears to be the only realistic option, even for the most hardened cynics.

*Konstantin Sonin is a professor at the University of Chicago

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The 2023 World Semiconductor Conference at Nanjing International Expo Center on July 19 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province of China.

The U.S. and Europe Are Growing Alarmed by China’s Rush Into Legacy Chips

TIME BY JENNY LEONARD, IAN KING AND ALBERTO NARDELLI / BLOOMBERG, TODAY

President Joe Biden implemented broad controls over China’s ability to secure the kind of advanced chips that power artificial-intelligence models and military applications. But Beijing responded by pouring billions into factories for the so-called legacy chips that haven’t been banned. Such chips are still essential throughout the global economy, critical components for everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to military hardware.

That’s sparked fresh fears about China’s potential influence and triggered talks of further reining in the Asian nation, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The U.S. is determined to prevent chips from becoming a point of leverage for China, the people said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo alluded to the problem during a panel discussion last week at the American Enterprise Institute. “The amount of money that China is pouring into subsidizing what will be an excess capacity of mature chips and legacy chips — that’s a problem that we need to be thinking about and working with our allies to get ahead of,” she said.

While there’s no timeline for action to be taken and information is still being gathered, all options are on the table, according to a senior Biden administration official. A U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman declined to comment, while a European Commission spokesperson said the agency will take necessary measures to preserve its interests and was working to reduce the region’s dependence on foreign firms for both mature and advanced chips.

The most advanced semiconductors are those produced using the thinnest etching technology, with 3-nanometers state of the art today. Legacy chips are typically considered those made with 28-nm equipment or above, technology introduced more than a decade ago.

Senior E.U. and U.S. officials are concerned about Beijing’s drive to dominate this market for both economic and security reasons, the people said. They worry Chinese companies could dump their legacy chips on global markets in the future, driving foreign rivals out of business like in the solar industry, they said.

Western companies may then become dependent on China for these semiconductors, the people said. Buying such critical tech components from China may create national security risks, especially if the silicon is needed in defense equipment. 

“The United States and its partners should be on guard to mitigate nonmarket behavior by China’s emerging semiconductor firms,” researchers Robert Daly and Matthew Turpin wrote in a recent essay for the Hoover Institution think tank at Stanford University. “Over time, it could create new U.S. or partner dependencies on China-based supply chains that do not exist today, impinging on U.S. strategic autonomy.”

The importance of legacy chips was highlighted by supply shocks that roiled companies at the height of the Covid pandemic, including Apple Inc. and carmakers. Chip shortages cost businesses hundreds of billions of dollars in lost sales. Simple components, such as power management circuits, are essential for products like smartphones and electric vehicles, as well as military gear like missiles and radar. 

The U.S. and Europe are trying to build up their own domestic chip production to decrease reliance on Asia. Governments have set aside public money to support local factories, including the Biden administration’s $52 billion for the CHIPS and Science Act.

But domestic producers may be reluctant to invest in facilities that will have to compete with heavily subsidized Chinese plants. The Biden administration and its allies are gauging the willingness of Western companies to invest in such projects before they decide what action to take. 

While the U.S. rules introduced last October slowed down China’s development of advanced chipmaking capabilities, they left largely untouched the country’s ability to use techniques older than 14-nanometers. That has led Chinese firms to construct new plants faster than anywhere else in the world. They are forecast to build 26 fabs through 2026 that use 200-millimeter and 300-mm wafers, according to the trade group SEMI. That compares with 16 fabs for the Americas.

Heavy investments have allowed Chinese companies to keep supplying the West, despite rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. China’s chipmaking champion, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., got about 20% of last year’s sales from U.S.-based clients, including Qualcomm Inc., despite being blacklisted by the American government.

“When you think about electrification of mobility, think about the energy transition, the IoT in the industrial space, the roll-out of the telecommunication infrastructure, battery technology, that’s all — that’s the sweet spot of mid-critical and mature semiconductor,” Peter Wennink, chief executive officer of Dutch chipmaking equipment supplier ASML Holding NV, told analysts in mid-July. “And that’s where China without any exception is leading.”

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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Nicolas Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, speaks at the Atlantic Assembly in Barranquilla, Colombia on March 14, 2023, in this screengrab taken from a handout video. Asamblea del Atlantico / Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Son of Colombia's president admits illegal money entered election campaign, prosecutor says

Reuters By Carlos Vargas, August 4, 2023

BOGOTA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Nicolas Petro, the eldest son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, on Thursday admitted that illegal money entered his father's election campaign last year, the prosecutor handling the case said on Thursday.

Nicolas Petro, 37, was arrested on Saturday in the city of Barranquilla alongside his ex-wife, Daysuris del Carmen Vasquez, who was quoted in the media in March saying that two people accused of having ties to drug trafficking gave her former spouse cash to support the president's election campaign.

"Mr. Nicolas Fernando Petro Burgos gave relevant information that was unknown until now by the attorney general's office, including ... about the financing of the past presidential campaign of the current president, Mr Gustavo Petro Urrego," prosecutor Mario Burgos said during the hearing, where Nicolas Petro was present.

The information pertained to campaign funding, which appeared to exceed legal limits, and some of which was not reported to electoral authorities, Burgos added.

Although Vasquez said the president was not aware of the dealings, the scandal could hamper the Petro administration's pursuit of peace-and-surrender deals with armed groups and its ambitious reform agenda.

The president insisted he will remain in office until 2026, citing the mandate of his election victory.

"No one but the people can end this government," Petro said during a speech in Sincelejo, in Colombia's Sucre province.

Petro denied accusations that he was aware of the illegal activities and said he hoped any claims to the contrary would "vanish quickly."

"The president has never asked any of his sons or daughters to commit the crime to win or finance campaigns, or for anything that has to do with power," Petro said.

According to the charges, Nicolas Petro, a lawmaker in Atlantico province, received money from accused drug traffickers in exchange for including them in the president's peace plans.

He has pleaded not guilty, but said he would collaborate with prosecutors, who accuse him of buying properties valued at the equivalent of about $394,000 with money that did not come from his lawmaker salary.

The charges could lead to sentences of 12 and 20 years in prison.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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The logo of American oil and natural gas exploration and production company ConocoPhillips is seen during the LNG 2023 energy trade show in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren

ConocoPhillips signs 20-year LNG supply deals with Mexico Pacific

Reuters by Arathy Somasekhar, August 3, 2023

The deals, which are subject to the project getting the final go-ahead from Mexico Pacific, would grant Conoco access to LNG from Mexico's Pacific coast, the U.S. company said in a release.

Mexico Pacific last month announced a similar deal to supply 1 million metric tons of LNG a year to China's Zhejiang Energy.

The Saguaro facility will process low-cost gas arriving from the Permian Basin through a dedicated pipeline. Most of the resulting LNG is expected to be bound for the Asian market through a significantly shorter shipping route avoiding the Panama Canal, Mexico Pacific has said.

"We are really interested in adding West Coast LNG into our portfolio," Conoco Chief Financial Officer William Bullock told investors on Thursday on a call about the company's quarterly results. Conoco chose Saguaro over other LNG facilities under construction in Mexico because a final investment decision on that project will come sooner, he said.

"Saguaro is in a quite competitive supply location for deliveries, particularly into Asia, and fits very nice if you think of an acquisition cost for LNG," Bullock added.

Conoco continues to see strong demand for LNG, he said. "We are kind of laddering our build out of market and supply."

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

Britain’s creaking energy grid isn’t ready for net zero

Government-ordered report says UK should compensate people living near new pylons in bid to speed up development.

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER, AUGUST 4, 2023

LONDON — The U.K.’s energy grid is just not ready for the shift to clean power.

That’s the stark finding of a year-long, government-commissioned review published Friday, which warns the country’s existing energy policies are “badly out of date” as a crucial decarbonization deadline looms and Britain eyes a future of electric cars in every driveway and heat pumps in every home.

Getting buy-in for the major changes needed will be a mammoth task, it warns — and could even require cold hard cash payments to a pylon-skeptic British public.

Despite recent anti-green noises, the British government has strict net zero targets, including an interim goal of decarbonizing its power grid by 2035.

Overhauling and expanding the electricity network — the swathes of cables and pylons covering the U.K. — will be central to determining whether the government hits or misses those lofty aims.

In his long-awaited report, Nick Winser, the government’s electricity networks czar, warns that tens of billions of pounds worth of new grid infrastructure will be needed by 2030 in order to hit the country’s climate goals. That’s no easy task.

The National Grid, which oversees Britain’s network, estimates that five times as many high-voltage transmission lines — suspended from pylons or buried underground — will need to be installed before 2030 as were built in the past three decades combined.

This additional infrastructure may require £54 billion of investment, according to forecasts.

Grid capacity will have to expand in the years ahead to meet higher electricity consumption, as more people move to electric vehicles and electric heating in their homes. The grid also needs to be rewired to accommodate more of the U.K.’s electricity coming from offshore wind farms rather than inland gas power stations.

Winser’s report finds it will be “very hard” for the U.K. government to meet its 2035 deadline without building more quickly — and he floats one suggestion for speeding up delivery.

People living near new pylons and other net zero infrastructure should, he argues, get cash compensation. He pitches a combination of both “lump sums” paid to households near new pylons and community funds managed locally and spent on decarbonization schemes.

Pylon backlash

Existing grid projects have sparked fierce opposition in many parts of the U.K., while estate agents have said proximity to power lines can affect house prices.

In a letter to Energy Secretary Grant Shapps, who is expected to endorse the findings, Winser warns that Britain lacks a clear strategic plan for the future of its grid and asks whether, without that: “Is it so surprising that such alarm, emotion and controversy is aroused by the schemes?”

Despite recent anti-green noises, the British government has strict net zero targets, including an interim goal of decarbonizing its power grid by 2035 | Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Speaking ahead of the report’s publication, Winser did not put a figure on how much compensation households could receive.

But he pointed out that it can be 10 times cheaper to build an overhead transmission line than to bury the cables underground, arguing that some of the difference in cost could go towards compensating local people “generously.”

Winser is calling for the creation of a new “Strategic Energy Plan for Great Britain” — backed by government — to help forecast likely locations of electricity supply and demand and set out where power lines are actually needed.

He argues that this could unlock investment in infrastructure ahead of actual electricity need, while making it clear to planning authorities — and local communities — that projects have full political and regulatory support.

But a national public information campaign is also required to set out the changes ahead and explain the link to net zero, he warns.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Then-Climate Change Committee chair John Gummer — tasked with scrutinizing Britain’s climate plans — told POLITICO earlier this year that if the U.K. has any hope of fulfilling its big promises, “we need to face up to three words. It’s not education, education, education … It’s grid, grid, grid.’”

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Source: WSJ

U.S. Employers Added 187,000 Jobs in July

Hiring held steady and unemployment rate fell to 3.5%

WSJ By Gabriel T. Rubin, Aug. 4, 2023

Hiring has slowed in recent months to near the lowest pace of the pandemic recovery. PHOTO: SOREN LARSON/REUTERS

Hiring held steady as employers added 187,000 jobs last month. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%

• Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimated that employers in July added 200,000 jobs, essentially unchanged from June, and that the unemployment rate remained at 3.6%. Adjusted for seasonality, that payroll gain would represent cooler growth than earlier in the pandemic recovery.

• Forecasters estimated wage gains eased very slightly in July. Other recent data showed employer spending on pay and benefits rose more slowly in the second quarter than last year. The Federal Reserve is closely watching wage growth as a sign of inflationary pressures, especially among services providers.

• Economists are dialing back their recession expectations after many had projected a downturn, along with job losses, would start midyear in response to Fed interest rate increases. The central bank raised its benchmark rate to a 22-year high last week. Fed Chair Jerome Powell didn’t rule out another increase, but noted that the labor market had come into “better balance” in recent months, with fewer open positions and a larger share of Americans working or seeking jobs.

Hiring is likely to slow further later this year, but gradually, said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West. “We’re not seeing or expecting the sort of mass layoffs like we had at the beginning of the pandemic,” he said.

The Hiring Boom Is Hiding a Recession Signal

The Hiring Boom Is Hiding a Recession SignalPlay video: The Hiring Boom Is Hiding a Recession Signal

While some economists are optimistic as hiring booms, employees are actually working fewer hours. Usually, reducing working hours has been a reliable sign of incoming layoffs – and a possible recession. WSJ explains what it may mean moving forward. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

Demand for workers slowly eases

After a jump in January, hiring has slowed in recent months to near the lowest pace of the pandemic recovery. Last year employers added an average of around 400,000 jobs a month, a historically robust rate.

In June, employers reported fewer job openings, including in transportation, warehousing and government. 

A fall in demand for workers that doesn’t drive unemployment significantly higher would constitute the rosiest possible outcome for the Fed, which is trying to tamp down inflation without wrecking the labor market. The unemployment rate remains near half-century lows.

Wages in focus

As demand for workers has lessened, their pay gains have slowed. Employers spent 4.5% more on wages and benefits in April to June compared with a year earlier, the Labor Department said last week. That marked a slowing from a 4.8% increase the prior quarter. 

Still, wage gains exceed both their prepandemic pace and a rate economists believe lines up with low, stable inflation. Fed officials would likely see 3.5% annual wage growth as consistent with inflation near their 2% target, assuming that worker productivity grows modestly.

“We do expect to see some further moderation in wage growth because of the fact that you see less labor demand,” said Lydia Boussour, senior economist at EY-Parthenon.

Signs of weakness

Labor demand varies significantly by industry compared with the widespread job gains that were common earlier in the pandemic recovery.

What do recent employment reports say about the economy? Join the conversation below.

Tech companies, retailers and temp agencies have all slowed hiring or cut jobs of late. Restaurants and bars have added jobs at a slower pace this year after rapidly staffing up in prior years as pandemic restrictions eased.

Hiring is now more concentrated among some employer groups, including healthcare and government. Public-sector employers haven’t yet fully recovered from all the jobs lost during the first months of the pandemic.

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News round-up, August 3, 2023

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Understanding Poland's Concern

Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is intricate and rooted in historical, economic, and political factors. The refusal of the Kremlin to acknowledge Ukraine as an independent nation adds an extra layer of complexity to the situation. This non-recognition is seen as a direct challenge to Western powers and as an attempt by Russia to regain control over Eastern Europe.

One consequence of the occupation of Ukraine is the potential for territorial expansion into neighboring countries, such as Poland, Moldova, and Lithuania. This scenario is not hypothetical; it is crucial to understand its historical context. It is impossible to overlook the influence of Gorbachev on the Soviet Union and the consequent fall of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev's efforts to modernize the Soviet Union ultimately led to its downfall. The collapse of the Soviet Union had far-reaching effects beyond Russia's borders. As a result, the United States emerged as the dominant global power. This power shift forced the US to reevaluate its military strategies and prioritize modernization to maintain its advantage and safeguard its interests.

The negative outcome of the Cold War had a profound impact on the Soviets, fueling their determination to never be militarily inferior again. If the expansion of the Russian Empire were to occur, it would undoubtedly result in the establishment of a new Iron Curtain, reminiscent of the Cold War era ("As Long as It Takes: Biden Adds to Talk of a New Cold War," published on July 13, 2023, subscribed by David E. Sanger, world's media). This possibility raises significant concerns, particularly for Poland, given its history of invasions. The specter of territorial expansion instills reasonable alarm about potential consequences and destabilization in the region.

Finally, China emerges as the big winner in this crisis. Although it has not explicitly voiced full support for the Kremlin's military operations, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the Chinese economy and on economies worldwide. Consequently, a Russian incursion holds the potential for China to exploit the abundant natural resources of Eurasia, including valuable energy sources, oil, and gas reserves.

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Quote of the day…

“Censorship is not what it used to be

“The United States has taken freedom of speech further than any other modern democracy, but today it is a contradictory society, embroiled in implausible culture wars where various kinds of prohibition flourish.

"El País, from Spain, is perhaps the most important newspaper in the Spanish language.

Translation from Spanish to English by Germán & Co

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Most read…

What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?

NYT, Aug. 2, 2023 by David Brooks

America’s Fiscal Time Bomb Ticks Even Louder

Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S. debt rating only caused a flutter in markets, but fiscal strains will soon get harder to ignore

WSJ by Spencer Jakab, Aug. 2, 2023

China's oil and uranium business in Niger

In 2009, the Nigerien government secured a significant loan worth 650 million yuan ($90.93 million) from the Chinese state-owned Eximbank.

REUTERS By Andrew Hayley,/Editing by Germán & Co, July 31, 2023

Why China is not as powerful as the West might think

Xi Jinping’s brand of economic policy is less and less convincing to Western companies. Politicians are waking up, too.

POLITICO EU BY STUART LAU AND PHELIM KINE, AUGUST 3, 2023

America is heavily reliant on Russia for nuclear fuel. Congress might change that.

WSJ Analysis by Maxine Joselow with research by Vanessa Montalbano, August 3, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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Source: TWP/Editing by Germán & Co

What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?

NYT, Aug. 2, 2023 by David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

Donald Trump seems to get indicted on a weekly basis. Yet he is utterly dominating his Republican rivals in the polls, and he is tied with Joe Biden in the general election surveys. Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020.

What’s going on here? Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s done?

We anti-Trumpers often tell a story to explain that. It was encapsulated in a quote the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington gave to my colleague Thomas B. Edsall recently: “Republicans see a world changing around them uncomfortably fast, and they want it to slow down, maybe even take a step backward. But if you are a person of color, a woman who values gender equality or an L.G.B.T. person, would you want to go back to 1963? I doubt it.”

In this story we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians. Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that’s what matters to them most.

I partly agree with this story; but it’s also a monument to elite self-satisfaction.

So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.

This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam, but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston, but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where they themselves lived.

The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.

The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.

Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.”

The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his presidency Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid.

Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.

Writing in Compact magazine, Michael Lind observes that the upper-middle-class job market looks like a candelabrum: “Those who manage to squeeze through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation.”

Or, as Markovits puts it, “Elite graduates monopolize the best jobs and at the same time invent new technologies that privilege superskilled workers, making the best jobs better and all other jobs worse.”

Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas: San Francisco, D.C., Austin and so on. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Once we find our cliques, we don’t get out much. In the book “Social Class in the 21st Century,” sociologist Mike Savage and his co-researchers found that the members of the highly educated class tend to be the most insular, measured by how often we have contact with those who have jobs unlike our

Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we support policies that help ourselves. Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China. Open immigration makes our service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put downward pressure on our wages.

Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.

We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.

After this social norm was eroded, a funny thing happened. Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that. As Adrian Wooldridge points out in his magisterial 2021 book, “The Aristocracy of Talent,” “Sixty percent of births to women with only a high school certificate occur out of wedlock, compared with only 10 percent to women with a university degree.” That matters, Wooldridge continues, because “The rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility in the country.”

Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No, most of us are earnest, kind and public spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject.

It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Trump understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we rode in on.

If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem as just another skirmish on the class war between the professionals and the workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take down the man who most aggressively stands up to them. Of course, the indictments don’t cause Trump supporters to abandon him. They cause them to become more fiercely loyal. That’s the polling story of the last six months.

Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.

But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.

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Media/Editing by Germán & Co

America’s Fiscal Time Bomb Ticks Even Louder

Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S. debt rating only caused a flutter in markets, but fiscal strains will soon get harder to ignore

WSJ by Spencer Jakab, Aug. 2, 2023

“Everybody who reads the newspaper knows that the United States has a very serious long-term fiscal problem.”

That wasn’t a quote by some financial talking head in the aftermath of Fitch’s downgrade of America’s credit rating on Tuesday. It was a reaction by then chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke the last time a major rating agency took that action back in August 2011. Investors could google hundreds of such warnings over the decades and conclude that the hand-wringing is best ignored or even viewed as a buying opportunity. 

For example, a funny thing happened when Standard & Poor’s shocked the financial world 12 years ago: Stocks plunged, getting close to an official bear market, yet investors rushed to buy bonds, the very thing that had supposedly become more risky. Stocks remained unsettled for another couple of months, but an 11-year bull market marched onward.

Investors are drawing false comfort from the past and from the perception that fiscal scolds have cried wolf so often.

True, Treasurys remain the most liquid, coveted asset on earth and the risk-free bedrock off which everything else is priced. And, aside from the temporary plunge in stocks back in 2011, America’s fiscal excess has rarely been an immediate pocketbook issue for its citizens. Fitch’s warning comes at a time when it is getting harder to ignore, though.

Ironically, it was the 2008-09 financial crisis and the emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic that both accelerated that reckoning and also helped to delay the pain. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office projected that federal debt held by the public would fall to about 22% of gross domestic product in a decade. In 2011 it was seen reaching about 76% by this fiscal year. It will soon exceed 100%.

But, because the Federal Reserve helped keep interest rates so unexpectedly low in the interim, even slashing its overnight borrowing rate to zero in 2020, taxpayers’ bill for financing debt accumulated in the past was modest. Net interest as a share of fiscal outlays was higher in the early 1990s. That is because the interest rate on the pile of outstanding debt is still a long way from what it was then. 

But it is rising quickly as the Fed has raised rates to counter inflation that reached a four-decade high last year. The CBO predicts net interest will reach $745 billion in the 2024 fiscal year—about three quarters of all discretionary spending excluding defense.

That isn’t an immediate problem, but for what it is worth, the reaction in the bond market Wednesday morning to Fitch’s move was the opposite of what it was back in 2011—yields rose close to their highest of the year. A flood of short-term debt issuance to refill the Treasury’s coffers after the debt-ceiling standoff is another short-term strain.nting press. As rising rates push that financing need higher, though, the ability of the U.S. government to change the fiscal path without politically disastrous measures like cutting entitlements or by overtly printing money is becoming more limited.

If no such radical steps are taken then it almost certainly means paying more to borrow. That rising risk-free-rate will crowd out private investment and dent the value of stocks, all else being equal.

Even worse, losing that room for maneuver could also make responding to the next crisis, whether it is financial, health or military in nature, more than a matter of Uncle Sam whipping out his checkbook. For example, defending our allies against an attack by China, also a major owner of our debt, might require not just putting Americans’ lives in danger but a serious trade-off on the home front in the form of higher taxes, inflation, benefit cuts or some combination of those.

This sort of problem was described by policy analyst Michele Wucker in her 2016 book “The Gray Rhino,” which was an English-language bestseller in China. Unlike an out-of-the-blue crisis dubbed a “black swan,” a gray rhino is a very probable event with plenty of warnings and evidence that is ignored until it is too late. 

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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A PetroChina petrol station is pictured in Beijing, China, March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo/Editing by Germán & Co

China's oil and uranium business in Niger

In 2009, the Nigerien government secured a significant loan worth 650 million yuan ($90.93 million) from the Chinese state-owned Eximbank.

REUTERS By Andrew Hayley,/Editing by Germán & Co, July 31, 2023

BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) - China, Niger's second-largest foreign investor after former colonial power France, has in the past two decades ploughed billions of dollars into the landlocked West African nation, mainly for the exploration of oil and uranium.

Since last week's coup, in which military leaders detained Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum and established a military government, China says it is closely monitoring the situation, and urges parties in Niger to safeguard stability.

China's total foreign direct investment (FDI) into Niger stood at $2.68 billion as at the end of 2020, according to the U.S. Embassy in Niger.

OIL ASSETS

Niger became an oil producer in 2011 when the Agadem oilfield, a joint venture between the government and PetroChina (601857.SS), started production.

PetroChina entered a production sharing agreement in 2008 with the Nigerien government to develop the field, located some 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of the capital Niamey, with estimated reserves of 650 million barrels.

As part of the deal, PetroChina invested in the construction of the SORAZ refinery, located 460km away in the southern city of Zinder, near the border with Nigeria. PetroChina holds a 60% stake in the refinery, which has a capacity of 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) and mostly supplies the Nigerien domestic fuel market. The remaining share is held by the Nigerien government.

In September 2019, PetroChina entered into another agreement with the Nigerien government to lay a 2,000-km (1,200 miles) pipeline between the Agadem field and the Beninese port city of Cotonou.

The pipeline investment is twinned with a second phase of development of the Agadem field. Taken together, total investment into the pipeline and second phase development is expected to reach $4 billion, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.

The pipeline, the longest of its kind in Africa, is planned to mitigate the security and logistical challenges of exporting crude from the troubled area, and designed to carry 90,000 barrels per day, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.

The project was 63% complete as of February this year, according to a PetroChina statement.

PetroChina did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

In May this year, state oil and gas major Sinopec (600028.SS) entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerien government paving the way for further potential cooperation between Beijing and Niamey in oil and gas.

URANIUM MINE

In 2007, state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) (601985.SS) entered a joint venture with the Nigerien government to develop the Azelik uranium mine in the centre of the country.

CNNC owns 37.2% of the project, with a further 24.8% owned by Chinese investment entity ZXJOY Invest, according to a 2010 filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The Nigerien government received a 650 million yuan ($90.93 million) loan from Chinese state-owned Eximbank to support development of the project in 2009.

The mine has estimated total reserves of 11,227 metric tons, and annual production capacity of 700 tons, according to the filing. The project was halted in 2015 due to unfavourable market conditions.

Niger, which has Africa's highest-grade uranium ores, produced 2,020 metric tons of uranium in 2022, about 5% of world mining output, according to the World Nuclear Association.

CNNC did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image by Germán & Co

Why China is not as powerful as the West might think

Xi Jinping’s brand of economic policy is less and less convincing to Western companies. Politicians are waking up, too.

POLITICO EU BY STUART LAU AND PHELIM KINE, AUGUST 3, 2023

President Xi Jinping wants to project China as a powerful trade partner — or dangerous adversary — to virtually any country hoping to be successful in the 21st century. 

“The rise of the East, and the decline of the West” is his motto. As Chinese growth rocketed and Western politicians fretted over how to respond, it became a national catchphrase, too.

But among the Chinese people — and increasingly in the chancelleries and boardrooms of Europe — a different story is beginning to be told: Beijing’s march toward global economic domination may not be invincible after all. 

China managed only weak GDP growth after belatedly liberating itself from pandemic restrictions. The property market is in crisis and youth unemployment has risen to hazardous levels, with one estimate putting it at 50 percent. Private entrepreneurs increasingly live in fear of what the state will do to their businesses and consumers have stopped spending the way they did in the pre-COVID good times. 

In Shanghai, London and New York, Chinese and foreign businesses alike are now grappling with a new scenario: What if the slowdown is here to stay? 

“The risks of a major economic crisis in China, or perhaps more probable an imminent stagnation in sustainable economic growth, are […] rising,” Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute For International Economics, told POLITICO. 

What happens to China’s economy matters hugely for the world. 

According to the latest statistics, the Chinese economy grew at a weak pace in the second quarter of this year, with GDP just 0.8 percent up in April-June from the previous quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Year-on-year, GDP expanded 6.3 percent in the second quarter — below the 7.3 percent forecast. 

These numbers are still far healthier than most Western economies can boast.

But the uncertain outlook adds to doubts over how Beijing will approach the West. For now, the jury is still out on whether Xi will put on a friendlier face or if instead tougher economic times will embolden Communist Party hardliners to seek out flashpoints with the U.S. or Europe to distract public opinion and shore up nationalistic sentiment. 

President Xi Jinping wants to project China as a powerful trade partner — or dangerous adversary — to virtually any country hoping to be successful in the 21st century | Pool photo by Leah Millis via AFP/Getty Images

Even the Communist Party leaders aren’t hiding their problem. At their annual pre-summer Politburo meeting, which sets the tone for the economic work for the remainder of the year, party officials judged that the economy “is facing new difficulties and challenges, mainly due to insufficient domestic demand, difficulties in the operation of some enterprises, many risks and hidden dangers in key areas, and a grim and complex external environment,” state news agency Xinhua quoted the Politburo as saying. 

Getting out 

In Europe, as well as the U.S., governments are reassessing their own economic vulnerabilities radically. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked EU governments into revising their dependence on supply chains controlled by potentially unfriendly regimes. 

Europe mostly has decoupled itself from imports of Russian fossil fuels but remains reliant on China for critical raw materials that make up battery components that will be vital for the green energy transition, among other areas. 

Western leaders from the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen to U.S. President Joe Biden now routinely talk about economic “de-risking” from China. The peril of linking too closely to the Chinese economy has even hit home with Olaf Scholz, traditionally seen as Europe’s leading dove on China policy.

Behind closed doors in the October summit of the European Council last year, Scholz shared his fears about China’s outlook. Speaking shortly before his first trip as German leader to Beijing, he told his EU counterparts that “a massive financial crisis” could be triggered if Beijing failed to manage its property crisis, according to two diplomats briefed on the conversation, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly. 

Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is preparing to pull out of a deal under which Rome signed up to be part of Xi’s global infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative. And the government of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has in recent weeks taken a more critical line toward Beijing, especially over its stance on Ukraine.  

Against that backdrop, the Beijing government is now focused on engaging with the West in a less frosty manner, even when it comes to its arch-rival in Washington. Several U.S. officials — from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen — have visited China in recent months, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is expected to go later this summer. An EU-China summit is also in the pipeline, according to one diplomat speaking anonymously because the plans are yet to be finalized.

Beijing is also keen to reassure private businesses in China, but it doesn’t seem to be working. 

“What we saw was actually a decrease in the overall confidence level” among 570 EU companies operating in China who took part in a recent survey, according to Jens Eskelund, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “And a lot of that has to do with an increased level of uncertainty where China is, in particular about the Chinese economy,” said Eskelund, whose chamber represents 1,700 mostly European companies and entities in China.

Xi consistently demonstrated a preference for the state-owned sector. His most radical moves against the private sector have been targeted at tech giants, even though they’re widely considered the best hope for China to compete with the West. On Xi’s watch, the Chinese bureaucracy has cracked down on multinational e-commerce platform Alibaba’s billionaire-founder Jack Ma, restricted the development of online gaming and private tutorial classes, and heavily regulated data even for foreign companies. 

Some Western companies are already looking elsewhere. According to Eskelund, the EU chamber chief, 11 percent of businesses surveyed last year said they were weighing up whether to leave China. This year, the exact same share of companies reported they had already taken the decision to go.

“When you’re sitting in an economy that is growing 10 percent per year, it’s good for everyone,” Eskelund said. “If you’re slowing down to 5 percent, 5.5 percent, then there will be sectors of the economy that will not be growing the same way as before.”

Xi has accrued vast personal power at the apex of China’s political system. Whether Xi-conomics works in the end will depend to a large extent on him.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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The Plant Vogtle nuclear site in Georgia. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)

America is heavily reliant on Russia for nuclear fuel. Congress might change that.

WSJ Analysis by Maxine Joselow with research by Vanessa Montalbano, August 3, 2023

Nearly a year-and-a-half after Russia launched a brutal invasion of Ukraine, Congress appears poised to reduce America’s reliance on Moscow for uranium, the main fuel used by nuclear power plants.

Lawmakers took swift action to ban Russian oil and gas imports a month after the February 2022 invasion. But stemming the flow of Russian uranium imports has taken much longer, in part because Moscow provides more than 20 percent of U.S. nuclear fuel.

Yet before leaving town last month, the Senate took a key step toward bolstering domestic uranium supply chains and displacing the Kremlin as a key supplier.

The Senate last week passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes an amendment aimed at boosting U.S. uranium production and enrichment. The amendment passed by a nearly unanimous vote of 96-3, suggesting it could be included in the final version of the Pentagon policy bill that could head to President Biden’s desk this year.

Leaders in the nuclear industry, which provides nearly one-fifth of U.S. electricity without any carbon emissions, cheered the proposal’s passage as a win-win for America’s national security and climate goals.

It was “a kumbaya moment,” said Daniel Poneman, president and CEO of the nuclear fuel supplier Centrus Energy and the former deputy secretary of energy under President Barack Obama. 

Jeff Navin, director of external affairs at TerraPower, a Bill Gates-backed nuclear energy firm that has worked with Centrus, said the vote sent a strong statement. “You can’t get 96 senators to agree that the sun is going to come up tomorrow or the color blue exists,” he said.

TerraPower announced in December that an advanced nuclear reactor proposed for southwestern Wyoming would probably be delayed at least two years, given the difficulty of securing fuel from non-Russian sources. The amendment could address this delay and others like it.

Russia ranks as the biggest supplier of enriched uranium in the world. Its state-owned nuclear power conglomerate, Rosatom, has earned billions from U.S. and European customers, even as it works to supply the Russian arms industry with components, technology and raw materials for missile fuel.

The details

The amendment mirrors the Nuclear Fuel Security Act, which was introduced by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and James E. Risch (R-Idaho).

• The bipartisan bill directs the Energy Department to establish a program aimed at ensuring a disruption in Russian uranium supplies would not harm the development of advanced nuclear reactors or the operation of the existing nuclear fleet.

• The agency would need to acquire at least 20 metric tons per year of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, from at least two U.S. nuclear energy firms by 2028. HALEU is needed to fuel advanced reactors such as small modular reactors.

“We spend nearly $1 billion each year on Russian uranium. Russia uses these revenues to fund its invasion of Ukraine,” Barrasso said on the Senate floor last week. “Here in America we have the resources to fuel our own reactors.”

The three lawmakers who voted against the amendment were Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Sanders has long opposed building new nuclear plants, given the lack of a federal plan for storing nuclear waste, while Markey has raised concerns about contamination from uranium mining on tribal lands.

The Senate approved another nuclear bill, the Advance Act, as an amendment to the NDAA by a vote of 86-11. The bipartisan measure would prohibit U.S. nuclear plants from receiving a license for enriched uranium from Russia or China if the Departments of Energy and State determine that the fuel poses a national security risk.

In the House

The House has not yet passed its version of the NDAA or approved the Nuclear Fuel Security Act as an amendment. But there appears to be some bipartisan support for doing so.

ower announced in December that an advanced nuclear reactor proposed for southwestern Wyoming would probably be delayed at least two years, given the difficulty of securing fuel from non-Russian sources. The amendment could address this delay and others like it.

Russia ranks as the biggest supplier of enriched uranium in the world. Its state-owned nuclear power conglomerate, Rosatom, has earned billions from U.S. and European customers, even as it works to supply the Russian arms industry with components, technology and raw materials for missile fuel.

In the states

New York, long a leader on climate policy, is set to miss a key clean-energy goal unless the state significantly accelerates its efforts, according to a report released this week by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Zack Budryk reports for the Hill. 

In 2019, New York passed a landmark climate law that calls for reaching 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040. The report found that to meet the 2030 target, the state would need to add an additional 20 gigawatts of renewables over an eight-year period. For context, the state added 12.9 gigawatts of total generation, including both fossil fuel and renewable sources, over the past 20 years.

DiNapoli cited the length of the permitting process for new projects as a major obstacle, echoing the concerns of many lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Only about 3 percent of renewable generation contracted since 2015 has actually come online, which DiNapoli attributed to the length of the state Public Service Commission’s siting process, local opposition and delays in connecting to the grid.

The state will be able to achieve its 2030 goal if the projects currently under contract speedily pass through the permitting pipeline, but “this is a big ‘if,'” the report says.

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News round-up, August 2, 2023

Quote of the day…

British director of ‘Napoleon’ compares French emperor to Hitler, Stalin

‘He’s got a lot of bad shit under his belt,’ filmmaker Ridley Scott says of the military leader.

In a recent interview, renowned British director Ridley Scott made controversial comparisons between Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military leader, and dictators Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Scott, widely acclaimed for his directorial work on films such as "Gladiator" and "Blade Runner," did not mince words when discussing Napoleon, stating that the former emperor had "a lot of bad shit under his belt."

POLITICO EU BY NICOLAS CAMUT, AUGUST 1, 2023 

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Most read…

Trump charged in probe of Jan. 6, efforts to overturn 2020 election

The indictment alleges four different crimes and describes six unnamed, uncharged co-conspirators

TWP by Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey, and Jacqueline Alemany,  August 1, 2023 

The U.S. Clean-Energy Company That Hit the Subsidies Jackpot

First Solar stands out among beneficiaries of Biden’s climate legislation, but lots of green energy companies are ‘trying to get on the gravy train’

TWJ By Phred Dvorak, July 31, 2023 

Focus: For investors, green companies still hard to find with new emissions reporting rules

REUTERS By Simon Jessop and Huw Jones, August 2, 2023

The Race for Resources

British director of ‘Napoleon’ compares French emperor to Hitler, Stalin

‘He’s got a lot of bad shit under his belt,’ filmmaker Ridley Scott says of the military leader.

POLITICO EU BY NICOLAS CAMUT, AUGUST 1, 2023 

China and Russia Are Beating the West in Africa

This week, leaders from 17 African countries will be guests of Vladimir Putin. Alongside Russia, all the major powers are vying for influence and raw materials on the continent. The conditions are increasingly dictated by the Africans themselves, with the West often coming away empty-handed.

Spiegel by Heiner Hoffmann, Maximilian Popp and Fritz Schaap, August 2, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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Source: TWP/Editing by Germán & Co

Trump charged in probe of Jan. 6, efforts to overturn 2020 election

The indictment alleges four different crimes and describes six unnamed, uncharged co-conspirators

TWP by Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey, and Jacqueline Alemany,  August 1, 2023 

A grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump on Tuesday for a raft of alleged crimes in his brazen efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory — the latest legal and political aftershock stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol two and a half years ago.

The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump, who is again running for president, of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiring against people’s civil right to have their vote counted. The maximum potential sentence on the most serious charge is 20 years in prison.

“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” special counsel Jack Smith told reporters after the indictment was filed. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.”

Smith also praised the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol, saying that they “did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people.”

The charges represent the third indictment of the former president filed since March — setting the stage for one of the stranger presidential contests in history, in which a major-party front-runner may have to alternate between campaign stops and courtroom hearings over the next year and a half.

A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Trump last month on charges of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to get them back. A state grand jury in New York has charged him with falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments during the 2016 campaign. And a state grand jury in Georgia is weighing whether to charge Trump for his efforts to undo the 2020 election results there.

Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the documents case, denies all wrongdoing related to the 2020 election as well. His spokesman, Steven Cheung, accused the Justice Department of trying to interfere with the 2024 election by targeting the GOP front-runner, and he compared the Biden administration to some of the worst authoritarian regimes in history.

“President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys,” Cheung said in a statement that compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany. “Three years ago we had strong borders, energy independence, no inflation, and a great economy. Today, we are a nation in decline. President Trump will not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting!”

Tuesday’s indictment paints Trump in late 2020 as a sore loser and an inveterate liar, willing to say almost anything to try to reverse his defeat at the hands of his Democratic rival.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment charges, accusing Trump of unleashing a blizzard of false claims about purported mass voter fraud and then trying to get state, local and federal officials to act to change the vote results.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false,” the indictment states. “In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue — often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts — and he deliberately disregarded the truth.”

The former president was ordered to appear in federal court in Washington on Thursday. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, a 2014 Obama appointee and a former D.C. public defender.

While Trump’s legal woes have grown exponentially in recent months, he has only solidified his early lead over the field of 2024 GOP presidential contenders. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), an ardent Trump supporter, issued a statement criticizing the Justice Department, claiming that the indictment was an effort to “attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination” and distract the public from stories about President Biden while his son Hunter is trying to plead guilty to tax charges.

In broad strokes and specific scenes, the indictment recounts much of what was already known about Trump’s efforts to stay in the White House despite losing the election, actions that were the focus of extensive hearings last year by a House select committee investigating Jan. 6.

The indictment frames that conduct as a criminal conspiracy to demolish a bedrock function of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of political power.

No one else is charged alongside Trump, but the indictment describes six unnamed co-conspirators, who appear to be in significant legal jeopardy. Smith said the investigation was ongoing.

At the top of that list is Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and former lawyer for Trump. He appears in the indictment only as Co-Conspirator 1, but his identity is clear from the document’s descriptions of that person’s actions.

Most of the other uncharged co-conspirators are identifiable based on details in the indictment and previous reporting by The Washington Post and other outlets. That reporting shows that Co-Conspirator 2, described in the indictment as “an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding,” is John Eastman.

The indictment describes Co-Conspirator 3 as “an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud” Trump himself said sounded “crazy” — a description that matches Trump ally Sidney Powell. Co-Conspirator 4 is described as a then-Justice Department official who “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations.” Other details of that person’s actions match Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump considered appointing as attorney general in the final days of his administration.

Co-Conspirator 5 is described in the indictment as a lawyer who tried to implement a plan “to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding” — a reference that appears to match Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney who worked on the scheme involving false presidential electors.

Eastman attorney Charles Burnham said in a statement that Eastman is not involved in any plea bargaining and would decline any such invitation, casting Trump’s indictment as an effort by the Biden administration to attack a political opponent and “cast ominous aspersions on his close advisors.” Attorneys for other uncharged co-conspirators did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday night. An attorney for Powell declined to comment, and a Giuliani spokesman questioned the basis for the allegations.

Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said an unindicted co-conspirator is, by definition, someone prosecutors already believe has committed a crime.

“There are many reasons why prosecutors refer to unindicted co-conspirators, some of them evidentiary and some of them strategic, but it most often is used to send a strong message to a potential defendant who the prosecution wants to turn into a cooperating witness, but who is holding out,” said Mintz. “It is essentially like being in the on-deck circle for the superseding indictment in that prosecutors are no longer deciding if they can bring charges, but only if they want to.”

Tuesday’s indictment says Trump used private phone calls, memos and other meetings to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to help him overturn the election.

There were at least four calls before Jan. 6, the indictment says, including a call on Dec. 25, 2020, and one on New Year’s Day. On Christmas, Pence told Trump he did not have the “authority” to overturn the election. On Jan. 1, he repeated that to Trump, according to the indictment.

“You’re too honest,” Trump allegedly responded.

Pence rejected Trump again on Jan. 3, according to the indictment. The indictment says Pence and his team were also pressured by Eastman in the days leading up to Jan. 6. After that conversation, the indictment says, a Pence adviser told Trump that even Co-Conspirator 2 “had conceded that his plan was ‘not going to work.’”

The indictment also alleges that on the night of Jan. 6, after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to prevent the formal certification of Biden’s victory, “the White House counsel called the Defendant to ask him to withdraw any objections and allow the certification. The Defendant refused.”

Trump for more than two weeks had publicly predicted that he would be indicted, announcing on social media on July 18 that his attorneys had been told he might be charged in the case. On Tuesday, the grand jury panel hearing evidence in the case gathered early at the D.C. courthouse, within sight of the U.S. Capitol. The jurors were seen leaving in the afternoon.

About 5 p.m., reporters in the courthouse saw a prosecutor with Smith’s office and the grand jury foreperson deliver the indictment to a magistrate judge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya accepted the grand jury return, saying, “I do have one indictment return before me, and I have reviewed the paperwork in connection with this indictment.”

A short time later, the document was available on the federal court computer system for all to see.

Smith was tapped in November to take charge of the Justice Department’s classified-documents probe and 2020 election investigation, after Trump launched his 2024 campaign and Attorney General Merrick Garland — a Biden appointee — concluded that an independent prosecutor should oversee the probes.

A state grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., is also considering whether to file broad charges against Trump and his lawyers, advocates and aides over their efforts to undo the 2020 election results. A decision is expected this month, although previous plans to announce a charging decision have been delayed. Michigan and Arizona are also investigating aspects of the efforts to block Biden’s victory in their states.

Trump is scheduled for trial in March on the New York state charges of falsifying business records, and a federal judge in Florida has scheduled the classified-documents trial to start in late May.

Smith vowed Tuesday to seek a speedy trial in Washington on the election conspiracy charges.

That investigation proceeded along multiple tracks in recent months, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post, with prosecutors focused on ads and fundraising pitches claiming election fraud as well as plans for “fake electors” who could have swung the election to Trump.

Smith sought to navigate thorny issues of where the line should be drawn between political activity, legal advocacy and criminal conspiracy.

A key element of the investigation was determining to what degree Republican operatives, activists and elected officials — including Trump — understood that their claims of massive voter fraud were false at the time they were making them. The indictment is peppered with instances in which prosecutors try to show that Trump knew he was spewing lies, including times when the nation’s top intelligence officials and White House lawyers allegedly told Trump that there was no evidence of voting fraud or irregularities.

A spokesman for Giuliani suggested that prosecutors cannot prove that Trump knew he was lying when he claimed voter fraud.

“Every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith basis President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment,” said the spokesman, Ted Goodman. He said the indictment “eviscerates the First Amendment and criminalizes the ruling regime’s number one political opponent for daring to ask questions about the 2020 election results.”

At a community event in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, Garland briefly addressed reporters outside a police district headquarters. He did not discuss the specifics of the indictment but expressed confidence in how the investigation has been handled.

“Mr. Smith and his team are experienced, principled career agents and prosecutors” who “follow the facts and the law wherever they lead,” said Garland.

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A First Solar plant in Walbridge, Ohio. The solar-panel maker expects to receive as much as $710 million this year from U.S. government subsidies./Editing by Germán & Co

The U.S. Clean-Energy Company That Hit the Subsidies Jackpot

First Solar stands out among beneficiaries of Biden’s climate legislation, but lots of green energy companies are ‘trying to get on the gravy train’

TWJ By Phred Dvorak, July 31, 2023 

Of all the beneficiaries of the U.S.’s green-energy push, few have hit the jackpot like First Solar FSLR -2.28%decrease

The Arizona-based solar-panel manufacturer expects to receive as much as $710 million this year—nearly 90% of forecast operating profit—from subsidies the U.S. government rolled out a year ago to encourage domestic renewables production. One analyst estimates the incentives could be worth more than $10 billion for the company over the next decade.

First Solar expects to have as much as a 60% share of the U.S. market for large-scale solar installations this year, largely a result of government policies that are pushing clean-energy developers to buy more made-in-America components. 

The company’s shares have more than doubled to $208.40 in Friday trade since the beginning of 2022, despite a string of earnings disappointments during that period. Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last August, First Solar has promised so far to plow more than $2.8 billion into new manufacturing and research facilities in the U.S., including a new factory announced on Thursday. 

Some industry executives attribute the company’s good fortune to luck and sharp elbows as it pushed for policies that would give it an advantage against low-cost competitors from countries such as China, which controls more than 80% of the global supply chain for solar panels.

First Solar Chief Executive Mark Widmar credits persistence and smart strategy, saying the company has worked for years to build factories and a supply chain in the U.S. He says the current U.S. energy policy is helpful. 

The Biden administration’s signature climate legislation could ultimately provide $1 trillion in support for clean-energy projects, largely through tax credits tied to benchmarks such as the amount of wind power generated or solar panels produced. So far, it has helped spur around $110 billion in announcements for factories and other facilities to make everything from wind turbines to battery components, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal. 

Most of those projects involve overseas clean-energy giants; many won’t be finished for years. First Solar is one of a handful of big U.S.-based manufacturers with sizable U.S. factories that are already eligible for the incentives.

First Solar photovoltaic panels lined up at the Desert Stateline Solar Facility in California. PHOTO: BING GUAN/BLOOMBERG NEWS

“Lots and lots of companies are trying to get on the gravy train—in the solar industry, in the battery industry, in lithium mining,” says Pavel Molchanov, a renewables analyst at Raymond James. But in terms of the amount of incentives it can reap now, “First Solar really stands out.”

Making solar panels, like a lot of other clean-energy components, is a commoditized, low-margin business where companies vie to drive down prices. For years, that meant factories fled to low-cost places such as China or Southeast Asia.

First Solar, which was founded in 1999, makes solar panels using a technology called thin-film, where layers of photovoltaic chemicals are spread onto glass in a process that is faster, cheaper and simpler than the procedure for common silicon-based panels. That technology helped the company compete with the big Chinese solar-panel makers and their suppliers.

First Solar also changed business models when needed, says Widmar, who joined the company in 2011 and has steered it through several slumps. The company built factories in cheaper locations such as Malaysia and Vietnam, where it hosted more than 80% of its manufacturing capacity as late as 2018. 

At the same time, the company lobbied in the U.S. against cheap Asian imports, pushing to slap duties on solar components made by Chinese companies. Some in the industry say such policies have boosted solar costs in the U.S. and could slow the rollout of renewables. 

Those protectionist measures combined with pandemic shipping bottlenecks to boost First Solar’s U.S. sales. The company is likely to provide more than half of the panels sold for large-scale solar installations in the U.S. this year, compared with around a third before the pandemic, Widmar estimates.

During the first three months of this year, as the U.S. government considered green tax-credit details, the company spent $270,000 on lobbying—nearly 80% of its entire 2022 spend, according to data collated on OpenSecrets.org.

First Solar’s lobbying efforts have primarily been aimed at securing a level playing field versus cheap Chinese manufacturers that get subsidized by their government, Widmar says. The U.S. needs to focus on goals beyond lowering panel costs, such as energy security, he says. “We believe that this should not be an environment of solar at any cost.”

Rules governing the tax credits are still being completed. First Solar says it should be able to qualify for a series of lucrative credits linked to its U.S. panel production. The credits could be worth $11 billion over the next decade, according to a report by Philip Shen, managing partner at boutique investment bank Roth Capital Partners. That is roughly equivalent to the last four years of sales.  

First Solar hasn’t received any credits yet, but it is already counting future credits’ value on its books.

A key question is the definition of a U.S.-made solar panel for tax-credit purposes, which could unlock a lucrative incentive meant to spur renewables developers to buy more homemade equipment. Rules favoring First Solar could help boost the company’s sales further, because the company estimates 90% of the pieces that go into its newest panel are already made in America.

First Solar is trying to take advantage of its moment. The company is tapping into buyers’ demand for U.S.-made equipment by amending contracts to stipulate that its panels will be produced domestically, charging a premium for that feature. It is pushing customers hungry for panels to sign multiyear contracts, accumulating an order backlog the company estimates at more than $20 billion.

The company also is investing heavily in research into new solar technologies, and it is building new factories fast. First Solar expects to have more than 20 gigawatts of global manufacturing capacity by the end of 2025, four times what it had at the end of 2018 and one-and-a-half times the amount of large-scale solar the U.S. installed last year. Nearly half of that will be in the U.S. 

“It’s a moment of opportunity,” Widmar says.

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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An exhaust pipe of a car is pictured on a street in a Berlin, Germany, February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/File Photo/Editing by Germán & Co

Focus: For investors, green companies still hard to find with new emissions reporting rules

REUTERS By Simon Jessop and Huw Jones, August 2, 2023

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Is Ford (F.N) doing a better job of cutting emissions than rival Toyota (7203.T)? Is BP (BP.L) greener than Shell (SHEL.L)?

For investors looking to weed out climate laggards from portfolios, these are vital questions but existing guidelines on emissions reporting and new rules due to come in for the United States and Europe are unlikely to provide hard answers.

Most major Western companies use the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) Corporate Standard for reporting emissions and the guidelines will form part of the framework for compulsory EU standards set to take effect next year.

The United States is on track to announce similar rules this year and the corporate standard, first launched in 2001 and revised in 2004, is also embedded in other international emissions reporting standards.

But the guidelines, which are overseen by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and World Resources Institute, define the three main categories of emissions companies should report broadly, leaving plenty of room for interpretation.

Half a dozen investors interviewed by Reuters said while the GHGP has been crucial in shining a light on corporate emissions, it can be hard to compare companies given the potential for differences in disclosures, and this will remain the case to some extent even with new mandatory norms.

"More companies are disclosing, but at what quality are they actually going to disclose?" said Vanessa Bingle, director at Alpha Financial Markets Consulting, which advises asset managers on sustainable investing.

LIFETIME EMISSIONS

Take the autos sector.

Although 20 of the top 30 automakers report emissions linked to their supply chains – known as Scope 3 under the protocol - analysis by research firm Signal Climate Analytics (SCA) seen by Reuters showed a range of approaches in how they disclose the data and for the assumptions underpinning their calculations.

For example, as of March 2023, only five carmakers have disclosed their assumptions for the average life of their vehicles and grams of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per kilometre driven.

That makes comparisons problematic. An unrealistically low lifetime figure could make cars appear less polluting than they really are, SCA Executive Chairman David Lubin said.

In its 2021 public submission to CDP – a non-profit that runs the global disclosure system on environmental impacts for investors, companies and governments - Japanese carmaker Subaru (7270.T) said its cars run for 130,000 km (80,000 miles) over their lifetime. In 2022, it did not disclose a figure.

A search of the British version of second-hand car site AutoTrader on July 31 showed 988 Subarus for sale, of which 263, or a quarter, had done at least 80,000 miles.

Subaru told Reuters the 130,000 km figure referred to vehicles sold in Japan. For the EU, it used 162,500 km and for North America, where it books most of its sales, 228,800 km, information it has not previously made public.

A spokesperson said Subaru did not include a lifetime number in its 2022 disclosure because it wanted to avoid confusion with an incomplete description.

"We now believe it's better to disclose the lifetime distance assumptions by region in our next disclosure (2023)."

APPLES AND ORANGES

Experts said Scope 3 emissions were the hardest of the three areas to assess as companies have to rely on data from customers and suppliers for their calculations.

SCA's Lubin said Scope 3 data was quite limited in its usefulness without researching how firms come up with their numbers and how reasonable the assumptions underpinning their data are.

Nonetheless, many investors scrutinise carbon emissions data to gauge how polluting a company is, how it compares with rivals and how this might affect its bottom line and share price.

For Laura Kane, head of ESG research at Voya Investment Management, which is part of Voya Financial (VOYA.N) and oversees about $323 billion in assets, in many cases, it's like comparing apples to oranges.

Kane said her firm buys third-party data from ratings providers, which aim to normalise and score the data, making it more comparable across sectors, yet this brings its own challenges. She declined to name the providers.

"There is quite a bit of variation among providers ... due to inconsistent reporting from companies, as well as different estimation and aggregation methodologies."

Only big investors have deep enough pockets to pay for such data and employ teams to assess it, leaving smaller investors at a disadvantage, experts say.

PATCHWORK OF RULES

The EU has made carbon disclosures mandatory for about 50,000 companies operating in the bloc from next year while new U.S. rules should come this year as governments look to replace a patchwork of private sector norms with binding rules, making it easier to crack down on greenwashing or exaggerated climate-friendly claims by companies.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), a standards-setter established by the IFRS Foundation that produces international accounting norms, has also approved rules any country can adopt. Some countries, including Britain, have said those guidelines will become mandatory.

Jimmy Jia, researcher at the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, said as well as differences in defining what should be counted under existing GHGP guidelines, companies may use different calculation processes or present data in different ways.

"Investors need to understand if a difference is due to an operational difference, or because the entities applied different accounting methodologies," said Jia said, co-author of a study on emissions data comparability.

Another area of investor concern is how companies account for their own energy use, or Scope 2 emissions.

The GHGP allows companies to buy green energy to offset their emissions, using contractual instruments such as renewable energy certificates, and reflect this in their reporting.

But the protocol also allows different accounting methods - market-based or location-based - to be used when companies calculate Scope 2 numbers. The market-based approach, however, may not accurately reflect how used energy was generated, potentially resulting in investors concluding a company is less polluting than it is, some investors said.

"Market-based methods open up the door to creative accounting," British asset manager abrdn said in its response to a GHGP consultation that closed on March 14.

Of 8,400 companies to report data globally to CDP, 70% reported Scope 2 data, with 31% giving both market and location-based figures, 33% only a location-based number and 6% just market-based, CDP data shared with Reuters showed.

Reuters Graphics

CONSULTATION ON CHANGES

European and U.S. regulators and officials at the ISSB interviewed by Reuters acknowledge the criticisms of GHGP but argue that the new EU, U.S. and global standards are just the start of a journey to more accurate reporting.

Best-practice, pressure from markets, and peers, along with bespoke sector disclosures, will emerge over the next five years or so to improve accuracy, as will countries requiring disclosures to be independently audited, as they do for financial reports, regulators say.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment.

Pedro Faria, environmental leader at EFRAG, the EU body that drafted the bloc's disclosure standards, said the priority was to make disclosures mandatory before improving the quality, and that they are just one piece of the puzzle.

"Ultimately, the thing that you need from (companies) is the big chunk of emissions and yes, there are methodological issues there, but also their investments, their transition plans, changes in strategy, and some of those aspects are even more important than precise carbon numbers," Faria said.

The GHGP's consultation on possible changes to its framework drew over 230 proposals, of which 150 were made public while the others requested privacy. Any changes would likely take effect from 2025, at the earliest, according to GHGP.

"All feedback shared during that process will be reviewed by GHG Protocol including its Technical Working Groups and will inform the scope and potential approaches to make updates to existing standards or development of additional guidance," said Pankaj Bhatia, director of GHG Protocol.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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British director Ridley Scott has said France’s first Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is like Adolf Hitler | Hulton Archive

British director of ‘Napoleon’ compares French emperor to Hitler, Stalin

‘He’s got a lot of bad shit under his belt,’ filmmaker Ridley Scott says of the military leader.

POLITICO EU BY NICOLAS CAMUT, AUGUST 1, 2023

France’s first Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is like Adolf Hitler, British director Ridley Scott said ahead of the release of his biopic movie on the French military leader in the fall.

“I compare him with Alexander the Great. Adolf Hitler. Stalin,” Scott said in the upcoming September edition of the British monthly magazine Empire.

Napoleon — who reinstated slavery and whose military campaigns ranged from Spain to Russia and were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths on the battlefield — has got “a lot of bad shit under his belt,” Scott said.

“At the same time, he was remarkable with his courage, and in his can-do and in his dominance. He was extraordinary,” Scott added.

After first rising to power following a coup in 1799, Corsica-born Napoleon Bonaparte led France through a series of bloody wars to briefly become a hegemonic power in continental Europe, until he was finally defeated by an alliance of European nations led by Britain in the 1815 Battle of Waterloo in Belgium.

The first French emperor then died in exile in Saint Helena, a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in 1821.

Focusing on the rise to power of the French military leader, Scott’s movie — the poster of which shows the emperor wearing a two-pointed hat — will come out in November and features Hollywood legend Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon.

In his Empire interview, Scott said he first thought of Phoenix for the role while watching the actor’s Oscar-winning performance in “The Joker.”

“I’m staring at Joaquin and saying, ‘This little demon is Napoleon Bonaparte.’ He looks like him.”

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Spiegel

The Race for Resources

China and Russia Are Beating the West in Africa

This week, leaders from 17 African countries will be guests of Vladimir Putin. Alongside Russia, all the major powers are vying for influence and raw materials on the continent. The conditions are increasingly dictated by the Africans themselves, with the West often coming away empty-handed.

Spiegel by Heiner Hoffmann, Maximilian Popp and Fritz Schaap, August 2, 2023

African leaders don't often travel by train. But in mid-June, four heads of government from Africa boarded a train in Poland headed for Ukraine. In a group photo, the travelers look a bit lost in the imposing compartment, with only the leader of the mission, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, offering a contented smile.

The delegation traveling with Ramaphosa wanted to achieve what many large and middle powers had thus far failed to accomplish: to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. The Africans met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and later with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The African initiative didn't produce a breakthrough, but from the perspective of Ramaphosa and his colleagues from Senegal, Uganda and Congo, among others, it was a success, if only because of the images it produced. Their message: We Africans no longer just look on helplessly, we get involved. Heads of state from the global north used to come to Africa to mediate crises and conflicts, but now it's the other way around.

The trip is an example the continent's growing self-confidence and desire to decisively get rid of its reputation as a passive recipient of development aid.

Despite their claim to be pursuing "policy at eye level," Western nations are still searching for the right way of dealing with this emerging partner, and Africa often still isn't taken seriously.

But nearly all major powers are showing a huge interest in Africa, not just because of the war in Ukraine. The continent, once largely perceived as a trouble spot, is now increasingly seen as a strategic partner.

Moscow is sending Wagner mercenaries to, among other countries, Mali, where they are propping up the junta, to the dismay of former colonial power France. The European Union and the United States have launched a charm offensive on the continent to avoid losing more countries to Russia and China.

Raw materials from Africa – oil and gas, but also lithium and cobalt – are becoming increasingly important. Heads of state and companies from around the world are lining up in countries like Senegal, Congo and Namibia. China, Turkey and now Europe are trying to build up influence in Africa through infrastructure projects. Some are speaking of a new "scramble for Africa" – a reference to the colonial conquests in the 19th and 20th centuries and the bloc politics of the Cold War.

But one thing is different now, as the leaders' peace mission in Russia and Ukraine show – the African countries are now self-confident. They can choose their partners and are doing so. It matters who makes the best offer: Russia, China, the U.S., the EU – in many cases, it's less a question of ideology than of cost-benefit calculations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is aggressively courting the Africans. He is not expected to attend a meeting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the so-called BRICS countries – in Johannesburg in late August. He is apparently concerned that the host could execute an arrest warrant against him from the International Criminal Court. But this Thursday, he will host representatives from around 50 African states, including 17 heads of the state and government, at a summit in St. Petersburg.

The Europeans don't seem to have found an answer yet to this shift, having for decades primarily seen Africa as a boogieman full of potential migrants. The new race for Africa is a global power shift – with an open outcome.

The ceiling tiles in Manono's community hall are rotten. There is a crack in the concrete floor. There is no electricity, so the organizers have set up a generator outside, which powers the speaker and microphone inside. But most participants at this event don't need microphones, they are voicing their concerns loudly. In Manono's "Grande Salle," in southeastern Congo, the issue at hand is global geopolitics. It is about who will have access to the metal of the future: "The Chinese" or "the ones from the West." The residents of Manono and the employees of the Australian mining company AVZ Minerals have gathered here. The company, which wants to mine lithium, set up the meeting.

Lithium is one of the most sought-after raw materials in the world, and experts believe that demand will far exceed supply. Lithium is used in battery production and is necessary for the transition to green energies. Geologists believe that the world's largest lithium deposit could lie under Manono, untapped. "Manono can play a significant role in meeting the world's demand for lithium," says Nigel Ferguson, the CEO of AVZ Minerals. Some believe that whoever controls Manono might have a say in the prices on the global markets.

"Chinese President Xi Jinping has issued the directive: Go out and get what you can."

AVZ CEO Nigel Ferguson

Africa is full of raw materials that the rest of the world depends on – lithium, cobalt but also gold and diamonds. The world' largest deposit of platinum is also on the continent. Ever since the revival of nuclear energy in many places, uranium is once again in demand, and eyes are turning especially to Namibia and Niger, which are home to large deposits. In short, the global north's industrial growth wouldn't be possible without Africa.

Colonial powers ruthlessly exploited the continent's resources and shipped them to Europe. After the countries' independence, this carried on: Countries from the north profited, leaving behind poverty and environmental damage, as well as a frequently corrupt elite. By contrast, China, which is increasingly investing in mines in Africa, and Russia, which exploits the raw materials in countries like the Central African Republic, are comparatively new to the game.

It remains the continent's paradox that resource-rich countries are often the poorest, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Decades of civil war, driven by greed for raw materials, have destabilized the country. These days, the fight for the raw materials is rarely fought with weapons but with more subtle methods, as Manono shows.

The residents of the small town could be living in wealth, but they aren't, and that's why they assembled in the community hall early this year to vent their anger. "Why hasn't anything happened?" one resident yells. "We want to work," another says.

Balthazar Tshiseke sits in front of the angry crowd in a white T-shirt and a white baseball cap. Thiseke heads Dathcom, a joint venture that was meant to have been extracting lithium from the ground for the past year. He gets his salary from AVZ minerals, the Australians who hold a majority stake in Dathcom. The attendees call him "directeur." He patiently listens to the tirades, occasionally nodding. His voice is firm as he says, "the government simply isn't giving us the mining license. We aren't allowed to mine anything yet."

The Australians found large amounts of lithium-rich rock in Manono in 2018. Because it's expensive to mine the metal, they teamed up with another company, in which the Chinese battery giant CATL has a stake. For $240 million, the Chinese were promised a 24-percent stake in the Dathcom joint lithium venture. "We would have loved to have worked with European or American companies, but unfortunately, they're afraid of investing in countries like Congo," says AVZ head Ferguson.

Europe and the U.S. are afraid of losing influence in Africa. But nobody wants to invest large amounts of money in an instable country. According to experts, most of Congo's raw materials exports go to China. "Chinese President Xi Jinping has issued the directive: Go out and get what you can. And now we're experiencing exactly that," says Ferguson.

In the meantime, another Chinese company has tried to obtain shares in Dathcom against AVZ's will. The Chinese might be benefiting from their close political connections in the capital city, Kinshasa. There are suspicions that the Congolese government is in part withholding the mining license to wear down the Australians.

The subject in the Grande Salle has now turned to major political issues. "It's about who is in charge here, the people from the West or the Chinese!" one participant says. "We don't want the Chinese!" others yell. Balthazar Thiseke nods approvingly. The event has been a success for him, with the residents of Manono coming together to support the Australian company. But it is only a small triumph, given that the government in Kinshasa has the upper hand. And there, Beijing is still a welcome partner.

It is now questionable whether AVZ will ever get a license for Manono. The Congolese mining minister did not answer a request for comment from DER SPIEGEL. For the people of Manono, the battle for the raw material of the future is leaving behind one thing above all else: frustration.

A wave washes water on board the wooden pirogue, flooding the floor. Moustapha Dieng calmly leans against a wooden plank. He's wearing a wool hat, his shaggy beard turning grey. In the village of Guet Ndar, they merely call him "father." He's the chairman of the Association of Traditional Fishermen in Senegal.

Dieng has fought many battles in his life – against storms and tides, against the trawlers from China. But his adversaries have never been as powerful as they are now. He has declared war against the world's biggest oil and gas companies. He pilots his pirogue toward a monster of steel and concrete weighing tons. At the end of the year, gas is to be extracted here, and a large part of the facilities are already in place.

A large deposit of the fossil fuel was discovered under the seabed in 2015 on the border between Senegal and Mauritania. Since then, the two countries have been working together to produce it and are hoping to derive billions in revenue. The natural gas is to be extracted for at least 30 years, with the profits shared by energy giants BP and Kosmos together with Senegalese and Mauritanian state-owned companies.

"Look how they're just waiting here!" the captain shouts, pointing first to the left at a ship of the Senegalese Coast Guard, and then to the right, toward the horizon, where a further ship of the Mauritanian Coast Guard is anchored. "If we keep going, they'll probably arrest us." Even though there is no buoy or markings, this is where the exclusion zone around the GTA gas platform begins, 500 meters in every direction. "It's exactly where we caught the most fish," Dieng says.

Thierno Seydou Ly is familiar with these complaints, he hears them on a regular basis. The general director of Petrosen, the state oil and gas company, speaks in an interview in a hotel in the capital of Dakar. It's important to him that his message is understood, so he expresses himself in a calm manner. "Gas is an enormous opportunity for our country," he says, "also because there is a huge need for new producers as a result of the war in Ukraine." Senegal is thus trying to fast track its way to becoming a gas nation. Processes that normally take years need to be completed in months. "At the moment, everyone is knocking on our door," says Ly.

A fossil-fuel boom has broken out in many African countries. In Uganda, the French company Total wants to extract oil in a nature preserve together with a Chinese state company. There are plans for a pipeline that can transport the oil through the Tanzanian Serengeti to the Indian Ocean. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, oil fields are being auctioned off to the highest bidders. Drilling is also taking place off the southern coast of Namibia, where several platforms are already installed in the water, even though the country is presenting itself as a trailblazer in the green energy revolution. Countries are taking what they can.

Many projects are still in the early stages, but hopes on the continent are high, as is the interest of oil and gas corporations from industrialized nations. In 2021, the African countries altogether produced 260 billion cubic meters of gas. According to the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries, that volume is expected to rise to as much as 585 billion cubic meters by 2050.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Senegal last May. The visit was remarkable. The chancellor said that it makes sense to "intensively pursue" a partnership for gas extraction. Berlin is under pressure to find alternatives to Russian natural gas, and the West African nation is potentially prepared to help fill the void.

Senegal President Macky Sall and his cabinet currently have their pick of European partners: France, Portugal, Poland, Italy – all are currently vying for his country's natural gas, even though it's not even ready for production.

This despite the fact that, as recently as last year, European governments called for a shift to renewable energies on the African continent. Sall was always against it, anyway. At the UN General Assembly, Senegal's president said: "The continent that is contributing the least to pollution and is the furthest behind in industrialization should extract its natural resources." After all, he said, Europe had done this decades ago, and now, despite their past warnings, the Europeans want to immediately extract Senegalese gas. Necessity, it turns out, is preventing the transition to green energy.

Petrosen head Ly looks out over the Atlantic from the chic Terrou-Bi Hotel in Dakar. He doesn't accept the criticism from the Saint Louis fishermen. "The anger of the people affected is above all a communication problem," he claims. "The site where the gas platform is located wasn't even a fishing ground."

But the discontent in Senegal is widespread, and it's not just coming from Moustapha Dieng and his fellow fishermen. The GTA project had been overshadowed by claims of corruption from the start. There is great concern in the country that only the elite will profit from the windfall of resources. Greenpeace has warned of an incalculable risk for the ecosystem given that important protected marine areas are located near the gas facilities.

Senegal's government isn't letting itself be fazed. Elections are scheduled for 2024, the country is grappling with debt and the rising cost of living is becoming a problem. Against that backdrop, the new government revenues are coming at a convenient time. "We're certainly not going to become Qatar or the Emirates, but gas and oil could be huge drivers of Senegal's development," says Ty.

Germany and France have just signed an agreement to develop renewable energies together with Senegal. More than 2 billion euros are at stake, with fossil fuels to be gradually replaced by solar energy, among other sources. Gas is described as a transitional technology in the agreement, but the Green Party has ensured that no German tax money is to flow into its extraction. This restraint has its price: The West could now have to wait at the back of the line. Africa isn't waiting for Europe – the Africans moved on years ago.

A few months before his biggest victory thus far, the lawyer and activist Drissa Meminta steps up to a lectern in a courtyard in Bamako, the capital of Mali. He's wearing a dark-blue suit with a breast pocket handkerchief. Around him, in a semi-circle, his fellow members of the anti-colonial, pro-Russian Yerewolo movement have gathered for an internal meeting. A banner displays their goal in the national colors: "The liberation of Mali."

Meminta recalls what his movement has achieved so far. It helped bring the military junta to power in 2021, which helped spur the withdrawal of the French military one year later. Now, he wants the United Nations peacekeepers to leave the country as well. "It has to be the aspiration of every country to take its fate into its own hands," says Meminta.

As it turns out, the UN declared a short time later that their MINUSMA peace mission would come to an end this year.

The decision represents a turning point for the relationship between Mali and the international community. In 2013, France began sending soldiers to help the government in Bamako fight against Islamist terror. In the context of the BARKHANE antiterrorism operation, they stationed up to 5,100 soldiers in the Sahel region. The international community established MINUSMA in 2013, with a mandate for 12,600 blue-helmet soldiers, including some from Germany.

Nevertheless, the stabilization of Mali proved impossible. Ever larger parts of the country fell under the de facto control of the jihadists. Elements of the military carried out a coup against the government in 2020 and 2021.

What is happening in Mali is tantamount to a changing of the guard: The Europeans are leaving; with the Russians arriving in their place. Up to 1,600 mercenaries belonging to the Wagner Group are already stationed in Mali, and their influence is growing.

Yerewolo leader Meminta has welcomed the development. European diplomats, meanwhile, are convinced that his movement is being financed with money from Russia. "Anyone can come here and do business, so long as they respect the sovereignty, independence and interests of our country," he says.

"We want to completely wipe out our opponents. We don't want prisoners. We want it as brutal as possible."

An adviser to the Central African president

Long before the Wagner militia, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, waged war in Ukraine, it served as an instrument with which the Kremlin could expand its influence in Africa. Wagner mercenaries are supporting the warlord Khalifa Haftar in Libya. In Sudan, they run gold mines together with the warlord Hemeti. The Wagner network is active in at least a dozen African countries. No other state has as many bilateral agreements with governments on the continent as Russia. And no other country sells more weapons to sub-Saharan Africa.

The Russian government recently announced plans to compensate African countries for the loss of Ukrainian wheat – a loss caused, admittedly, by Russia's decision to opt out of the existing agreement. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin repeated the promise shortly before the Africa Summit in St. Petersburg this week.

Moscow is spreading the propaganda that it is the former colonial powers, like France, who are exploiting the continent, while the Russians themselves are aiming for a more equal partnership.

In fact, European diplomats in Bamako say that EU contracts in the country were steered toward French companies. They also claim that France, in turn, supplied the Malian armed forces with inadequate materiel and that civilians have repeatedly died as a result of attacks by the French military in the country. Little, if anything, has been done to address those mistakes.

There is no debate that Russia is itself carrying out an imperial war of aggression in Ukraine and, for the most part, nefariously pursuing its interests in Africa.

In the Central African Republic, for instance, the Wagner mercenaries have succeeded in infiltrating part of the state following the French retreat. Experts speak of a "state capture." They reportedly looted raw materials like gold and timber. The Sentry, an investigative website, has accused the Wagner Group of committing war crimes. Wagner mercenaries allegedly wiped out villages, raped, tortured and killed their inhabitants. An adviser to the Central African president openly explains why the government is working with Wagner. "We want to completely wipe out our opponents," he says. "We don't want prisoners. We want it as brutal as possible."

For many African despots, the Wagner mercenaries, whose "engagement" in Africa continues regardless of their boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, are a convenient partner. They help them face down political opponents and insurgents and they receive access to raw materials in return. Unlike the Europeans, they don’t ask questions about democracy or human rights.

For Wagner, on the other hand, the commitment in Africa is above all a PR victory, says Samuel Ramani of RUSI, a British think tank. "They're very good at promoting autocracies and promoting Russia as a brand on the continent," he says. "They aren’t all that successful in the war on terror."

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s seat of government, the past and the future are never far apart. There’s the old train station, built by the Germans when the region was their colony, with its battered red roof shingles. Next to it, a modern glass building rises into the sky, the new train station built by a Turkish company.

Masanja Kadogosa is standing on the platform, which is still empty, and looking contentedly into the distance. "Moving traffic from road to rail will improve people’s lives in Tanzania," he says.

As the director of Tanzania Railways, Kadogosa is overseeing what is currently one of Africa's largest infrastructure projects. The Tanzania Standard Gauge Railway, or SGR, will connect Tanzania with Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Congo. Ten billion dollars have been earmarked for investment in the project. The route will be built by Turkish and Chinese companies. The Tanzanian clients have changed partners several times to get a better deal. "It’s our choice who we work with," says Kadagosa. "We know exactly what we want. And that has also made us more picky."

The SGR is a symbol of the new balance of power on the continent. Just over three decades ago, more than eight out of 10 construction contracts in Africa went to American or European firms. Ten years ago, it was still around one out of three, but by 2020, it will only be around one in 10. Chinese companies now implement one-third of all infrastructure projects.

The Turks are also gaining a foothold in Africa. Since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took office as prime minister in 2003, the volume of trade between Turkey and African countries has increased more than a sixfold to $34.5 billion in 2021. The number of embassies has almost quadrupled to 44 in the same period.

Whether it's the Turks in Tanzania, the Russians in Mali or the Chinese in the Democratic Republic of Congo, African countries are reorienting themselves. One reason is that, for years, the West wasn’t very interested in Africa politically. The U.S. has cut development programs and withdrawn troops. Former President Donald Trump left the State Department's Africa envoy position vacant for nearly a year and a half. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Africa envoy, meanwhile, faced accusations of racism.

During those years, the Chinese pulled past Western countries to take the lead in Africa. From 2000 to 2020, Chinese financiers lent $160 billion to African governments, two-thirds of which flowed into infrastructure projects. In recent years, Beijing has relied more on direct investment and trade than lending.

But Russia's war against Ukraine, the systemic competition between China and the U.S. and the increased demand for raw materials as countries transition to clean energies is all leading to a rethink in the West. Africa is suddenly perceived as a "geopolitical marketplace," as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell recently put it.

With its $150 billion Africa-Europe Global Gateway Investment Package, much of which will go into infrastructure, the EU wants to create an alternative to the Chinese Silk Road. Roads, ports and power lines, internet cables and solar parks are planned to drive the economies of developing and emerging countries – and at the same time help Europe gain new influence. The U.S. has also announced plans to provide $200 billion in grants, financial assistance and investment to developing countries over the next five years.

Fonteh Akum of the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa doubts that this alone will be enough to make up for the ground the Europeans have lost to other players. He says they will have to convince Africans that they are interested in an equal partnership and not just in outdoing their competitors.

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News Round-up, August 1, 2023

We need a recession to bring down inflation', says former Bank of England chief

The recession is around the corner?

On Thursday, 27th July, the Wall Street Journal reported that low-interest rates in the US are crucial in supporting consumer spending. Consumers have maintained their spending habits, with many Americans securing low rates on mortgages, car loans, and other debts before the Federal Reserve began raising rates. This is because most household debt consists of fixed-rate loans, meaning that interest payments do not increase as the Federal Reserve raises its federal funds rate. Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, has emphasized that this is a significant factor enabling consumers to continue spending despite the rate hikes. Simultaneously, in Frankfurt, Germany, Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), made an important announcement regarding the economic situation in the Eurozone. Lagarde acknowledged the complexity of the current landscape and revealed that the ECB's Governing Council has decided to raise the three primary interest rates by 25 basis points later this year. While Lagarde expressed confidence in the decision, she also raised concerns about ongoing challenges, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its potential impact on the energy industry. These factors will undoubtedly impact the Eurozone's economic stability and require careful monitoring in the coming months. In addition to these developments, today, the former chief of the Bank of England, Alex Brazier, has put forth an intriguing perspective. Brazier believes that a recession is necessary to decrease inflation in the UK. Despite the economy performing better than expected and experiencing accelerated growth rates, this performance is only considered sustainable in the short term.

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Twitter "News Round-up" Blog Achieves Phenomenal Results…

Yesterday, the "News Round-up" achieved a remarkable milestone by breaking previous records for impressions. The blog's tweets received a total of 1,394 impressions, marking a significant increase compared to the respectable 1,147 impressions received on June 6th. The significant increase in impressions of the "News Round-up" is a clear testament to its expanding audience and strong engagement. What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that it was accomplished organically, without any external promotion or boosting.

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Most read…

We need a recession to bring down inflation', says former Bank of England chief - latest updates

The Bank of England will need to force Britain into recession to bring inflation back down to its 2pc target, a former member of its financial policy committee has warned.

The telegrpah, Updated 8 minutes ago

BP’s £2bn profits cause anger amid climate crisis

Oil and gas company to return another $1.5bn to investors through a share buyback

The Guardian by Jillian Ambrose and Rob Davies, August 1, 2023

Germany's bailed-out Uniper plans billions in green investments

In recent years, Uniper faced a significant challenge when it had to replace the missing Russian gas volumes, especially during times of high demand. This situation often led to a surge in spot market prices, exposing the company to substantial financial risk.

Reuters by Vera Eckert and Rachel More, editing by Germán & Co, August 1, 2023

Why More House Republicans Are Flirting With Impeaching Biden

*There has been a surge in support for Trump among the MAGA base due to the Republicans investigating Biden's family and presidency. With each new indictment, Trump's popularity has increased, making him one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

*By Germán & Co

TIME by ERIC CORTELLESSA, JULY 31, 2023

Why Did Economic Forecasters Get Their Recession Call Wrong?

Not only has the economy outperformed predictions but it’s growing at a faster rate than experts think is sustainable in the long run.

The New Yorkers by John Cassidy, July 28, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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The Bank of England will need to push the economy into recession to bring down inflation, according to Alex Brazier CREDIT: REUTERS/Hollie Adams

We need a recession to bring down inflation', says former Bank of England chief - latest updates

The Bank of England will need to force Britain into recession to bring inflation back down to its 2pc target, a former member of its financial policy committee has warned.

The telegrpah, Updated 8 minutes ago

*Alex Brazier, now deputy head of the BlackRock Investment Institute, acknowledged that the Bank has already hit the brakes on the economy “pretty hard” having raised interest rates for 13 consecutive meetings.

However, if inflation is to fall, interest rates will need to rise further from their present level of 5pc, he said, which will bring in “weak growth and higher unemployment.”

Official figures showed inflation in the UK fell to 7.9pc in June, which was down from 8.7pc in May but still nearly four times the Bank of England’s target, which it is not forecast to meet until early 2025.

Mr Brazier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Inflation has now become entrenched and so, to be honest, getting inflation to 2pc - the Banks target - probably does entail a further growth slowdown or recession and higher unemployment.

“The trick for the bank is to do that in as moderate a way as possible.”

Mr Brazier, who left the Bank of England in 2021, predicted the peak for interest rates will be “probably below 6pc”.

*Alex Brazier is an expert in policy, strategic planning, management, and governance. He has played a crucial role in implementing post-crisis reform and providing guidance in micro-prudential supervision. He's proficient in economic analysis and has supported the Governor on monetary policy matters.

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“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.

Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy

“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.

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BP’s £2bn profits cause anger amid climate crisis

Oil and gas company to return another $1.5bn to investors through a share buyback

The Guardian by Jillian Ambrose and Rob Davies, August 1, 2023

BP has angered climate campaigners by reporting profits of $2.6bn (£2bn) for the second quarter of the year as the climate crisis triggers extreme heatwaves.

The company blamed falling oil and gas markets for the drop in profits from $8.5bn in the same period last year when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ignited a rise in global energy markets.

BP willincrease its shareholder dividends by 10% to $2.3bn, despite the fall in profits. It will also return a further $1.5bn to investors through a share buyback over the next three months.

The BP chief executive, Bernard Looney, said the payouts reflected the company’s confidence in its strategy and the outlook for its future cashflows.

BP’s profits have fuelled growing anger at fossil fuel companies among green groups, which have accused the oil companies of “obscene” profits at the expense of hard-pressed families and the environment.

Tommy Vickerstaff, a lead UK campaigner for 350.org, said: “We’re almost desensitised to BP’s profits at this point because the government has continuously failed to take action to redistribute them. But there is nothing normal or routine about BP’s profit margins or about the destructive heatwaves we’re seeing across Europe that BP is directly responsible for causing.”

Global Witness said BP’s multibillion-dollar shareholder payouts stand in contrast to the millions of households pushed into fuel poverty by the rise in global energy prices.

Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said: “This is what a broken energy system looks like – oil giants get richer because the rest of us get poorer. For BP the energy crisis has been a giant cash grab; for parents across the country it has been an impossible choice between feeding their children and paying their bills.”

In a recent report, the IPPR, a left-leaning thinktank, argued that share buybacks are a direct cash transfer away from hard-pressed households to already wealthy shareholders at the expense of the environment.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Plants hang from lights at a display of German energy firm Uniper during the LNG 2023 energy trade show in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/file/Editing by Germán & Co

Germany's bailed-out Uniper plans billions in green investments

In recent years, Uniper faced a significant challenge when it had to replace the missing Russian gas volumes, especially during times of high demand. This situation often led to a surge in spot market prices, exposing the company to substantial financial risk.

Reuters by Vera Eckert and Rachel More, editing by Germán & Co, August 1, 2023

DUESSELDORF, Aug 1 (Reuters) - German utility Uniper (UN01.DE) mapped out plans to diversify its portfolio on Tuesday with billions of euros in green investments, hailing record earnings in the first half of 2023 as a turnaround following its bailout just a year earlier.

"Uniper is back on track," said new CEO Michael Lewis, who was installed to steer the company, once Germany's biggest importer of Russian gas, out of the crisis triggered by an end in deliveries from Russia's Gazprom GAZP.MM.

He presented plans to invest 8 billion euros ($8.79 billion) through 2030 on a green transformation, triple the company's average annual investments of the past three years.

Uniper's turnaround was largely driven by the company hedging its gas supply commitments for the years 2023 and 2024 at lower prices, after being forced to replace missing Russian volumes at surging prices on spot markets last year.

In May, the company, in which the German government owns a 99% stake, flagged a profit of more than 2 billion euros expected from hedging its gas supply commitments.

Expecting no further financial losses from procuring replacement gas volumes, Uniper said on Tuesday no further capital increases from the German state would be necessary.

Its credit line from the KfW state lender has been reduced ahead of schedule to 11.5 billion euros from 16.5 billion euros, the company said.

Uniper on Tuesday reiterated its 2023 outlook, which foresees operating earnings and net profit in a mid single-digit billion euro range, but warned that this result was largely based on exceptional circumstances.

PATH TO INDEPENDENCE

Asked by investors for a timeline on the German government's exit, CFO Jutta Doenges called for patience and pointed to the terms of the bailout, which requires Berlin to reduce its stake to no more than 25% plus one share by the end of 2028.

The German government has welcomed Uniper's strong half-year performance, which saw adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of 3.7 billion euros, after a 757-million-euro loss a year earlier.

The government plans to present an exit plan by the end of this year.

"We're confident that we're doing our part of the necessary steps to bring Uniper back to the market," Lewis said, painting the green investment plan as a chance to diversify the utility's portfolio to shield it against future volatility.

The new strategy includes targeted growth in solar and wind farms, with 80% of Uniper's installed generating capacity to be zero-carbon by 2030, the company said, adding it would end coal-fired power generation by 2029 at the latest.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

Why More House Republicans Are Flirting With Impeaching Biden

*There has been a surge in support for Trump among the MAGA base due to the Republicans investigating Biden's family and presidency. With each new indictment, Trump's popularity has increased, making him one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

*By Germán & Co

TIME by ERIC CORTELLESSA, JULY 31, 2023

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has long resisted calls from the hard right to impeach President Joe Biden, citing the lack of evidence of any crimes committed by Biden during Congressional investigations. McCarthy initially expressed concerns that using impeachment for political purposes would not be beneficial. However, McCarthy recently changed his stance under pressure from the MAGA flank, new revelations about Hunter Biden, and the influence of Donald Trump.

The California Republican didn’t quite call to impeach Biden, but he escalated that prospect by floating an impeachment inquiry into the President over unproven claims of financial misconduct. “What an impeachment inquiry does, when you vote on the floor, is it gives you the apex of power of Congress,” McCarthy told reporters on Thursday.

The proceedings, which would be the first step before bringing articles of impeachment, could be as fast or as slow as the House GOP would like—meaning it could stretch well into the 2024 campaign season. While the effort is destined to go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, it’s a sign that the coming election will be fought beyond the conventional venues of the campaign trail. It will play out in courthouses throughout the country, where former President Donald Trump will defend himself against multiple criminal prosecutions, and the halls of Congress, where Republicans hope to put Biden on trial simultaneously. 

That, say Democrats, and some Republicans in private, is the point. Trump and his supporters, they insist, want an answer to the courtroom dramas he will face with the election in full swing, and an impeachment proceeding on the House floor fits the bill.  “It's all about protecting Trump and stirring up the waters and blurring the differences between Trump and Biden,” says Jim Manley, a former aide to the late Democratic Senators Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy. 

Republicans argue that McCarthy’s evolution on impeachment was triggered by a set of recent discoveries: two IRS whistleblowers who allege the Department of Justice gave Hunter Biden a sweetheart deal, which subsequently collapsed when it came before a federal judge; news that a Democratic donor who bought an expensive painting from the younger Biden also received a cushy posting from the President; and closed-door testimony expected on Monday from Hunter Biden’s long-time friend Devon Archer, who GOP lawmakers say will corroborate claims that Biden, as vice president, participated in his son’s business dealings. “The evidence and stuff that's come out is what is causing him to change his tune,” a senior Republican House staffer familiar with the matter tells TIME.

Since Republicans took over the House last January, they have conducted myriad probes into Biden’s family and presidency. The confluence of investigations and allegations have created a groundswell among the MAGA base that Biden should face retribution. That hunger has only grown as Trump—who wants to see Biden impeached—has soared in the polls following each indictment, making him the clear frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Now, some of his fiercest allies in Congress are pushing for Biden’s comeuppance. “It must happen,” Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida tells TIME. “He’s the most corrupt President in our nation’s history. It’s absolutely warranted.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House GOP Conference Chair, told Fox Business on Thursday that she would “absolutely” support an impeachment, saying she’s “in conversations with Speaker McCarthy and all of our members” about it. 

The push comes against a backdrop of Trump’s mounting legal woes. He’s facing criminal charges in New York for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to a porn star. At the same time, he’s under federal indictment for allegedly hoarding national-security secrets and blocking the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Special Counsel Jack Smith added new counts against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case on Thursday, alleging he deleted video evidence to obstruct the investigation. More prosecutions also appear to be in the offing. One is from a separate special counsel investigation by Smith into Trump’s role leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The other is from Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who’s probing Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state.

But one problem McCarthy faces on the Hill is that he doesn’t have buy-in from his entire conference. “I don't think it’s responsible to talk about impeachment, because we have these ongoing investigations that are gathering material,” Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado tells TIME. “When they gather the material that indicates that there’s an impeachable offense then we should open an inquiry. But at this point in time, it’s premature.”

With Republicans having a slim 222-212 House majority, only a small number of defections could sink the effort. And Buck is not alone. Behind closed doors, some GOP Hill staffers and members worry that impeachment proceedings against Biden could boomerang against them in the next election.  

Buck thinks McCarthy’s flirtation with impeachment is due to more than Trump’s grip over the party and Hunter Biden’s misadventures. Last week, Congress left for its August recess without passing crucial appropriations measures to fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. When lawmakers return in September, they will need to pass 12 such bills to keep the government funded, or risk a government shutdown on October 1. “This has been done to distract from those appropriations bills and the lack of consensus on those appropriations bills,” he says.

But even if some Republican lawmakers are resistant to impeaching Biden, some Capitol Hill veterans suspect the wrath of Trump and his supporters could change their minds in the coming months. Says Manley: “The blowback from Trump and Trump supporters and the rest of the caucus will be brutal.”

A similar dynamic played out last month, when Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida forced a vote to censure Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who led Trump’s first impeachment and served on the Jan. 6 committee. The first attempt failed after 20 Republicans voted against it. But then, Luna and Trump mobilized a social media backlash. A week later, Luna forced another vote. This time, it was successful. Not a single Republican voted against the measure.

While Schiff became the 25th House member to face such a reprimand and will now be subject to a House Ethics investigation, the ordeal came with some upside for him. His Senate campaign raised $8.1 million afterwards.

It’s a reason why Democrats believe the GOP impeaching Biden could help the President’s reelection campaign. “Impeachment hearings would make for good television. They would make for spectacle,” a senior Democratic Hill staffer tells TIME. “But what we already know is that voters are tired of hyper partisanship.” Moreover, the official adds, Democrats would use the proceedings to try to emphasize a contrast between the parties: “Democrats are here to lower costs and build bridges. Republicans are here to perform political theater.”

Of course, Republicans have only a razor-thin House majority and remain blocked by Biden’s veto power. That leaves them with not much they can do beyond messaging. The question looming over the caucus is whether a Biden impeachment inquiry would amount to a political winner or an election-season misfire.

Democrats are betting it would be the latter. “This is playing into the political circus that helped them lose four years ago and underperform two years ago,” the Hill staffer says. “If you give them enough rope, they’ll hang themselves.”

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Image by Germán & Co

Why Did Economic Forecasters Get Their Recession Call Wrong?

Not only has the economy outperformed predictions but it’s growing at a faster rate than experts think is sustainable in the long run.

The New Yorkers by John Cassidy, July 28, 2023

Earlier this week, the Conference Board said that its index of consumer confidence had reached the highest level in two years.Photograph by Angela Weiss / Getty

Last October, the Wall Street Journal published a survey of more than sixty economic forecasters from universities, businesses, and Wall Street. Citing the results of the survey, the Journal reported that the United States was “forecast to enter a recession in the coming 12 months as the Federal Reserve battles to bring down persistently high inflation, the economy contracts and employers cut jobs in response.” The story went on to say that the economists surveyed expected inflation-adjusted G.D.P. “to contract at a 0.2% annual rate in the first quarter of 2023 and shrink 0.1% in the second quarter.” The economists were also predicting that the unemployment rate, which was then 3.5 per cent, would rise to 4.3 per cent by June.

These forecasts turned out to be off—way off. On Thursday, the Commerce Department announced that G.D.P. rose at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent in the second quarter of this year, after growing at 2.0 per cent in the first quarter. Far from plunging into recession, the U.S. economy has grown at a faster rate than many experts think is sustainable in the long run. Employers have continued to create jobs at a healthy clip, and the unemployment rate has remained steady, climbing just one-tenth of a percentage point in the past nine months, to 3.6 per cent in June.

The latest from Washington and beyond, covering current events, the economy, and more, from our columnists and correspondents.

In the forecasters’ defense, they never said that a recession was certain. But they did say it was the most likely outcome, assigning it a probability of sixty-three per cent. And private-sector forecasters weren’t the only ones who got fooled by the economy’s resilience in the face of sharply higher interest rates: until recently, the staff economists at the Federal Reserve were also predicting a recession for this year. At a press conference on Wednesday, after the central bank raised the federal funds rate again, to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 per cent, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said that his staff has now changed its forecast to moderate growth for the rest of 2023.

It almost goes without saying that making economic forecasts is a difficult, and often thankless, task. Modern economies are extremely complex organisms. The aggregate outcomes they generate reflect many factors, including some external ones that are innately unpredictable, such as the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Since last October, though, there haven’t been any colossal surprises. Global supply chains have continued to recover from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine has continued, and the Fed has followed through on its pledge to keep raising rates until inflation is brought under control. Why, then, has the economy outperformed the forecasters’ predictions?

The proximate answer is that consumer spending and capital investments by businesses have held up stronger than expected. In the three months from April to June, personal consumption expenditures, which make up more than two-thirds of G.D.P., rose at an annual rate of 1.6 per cent, and gross private domestic investment rose at a rate of 5.7 per cent. Together, these increases accounted for nearly all of the quarterly rise in G.D.P. (The rest was largely due to higher spending by state and local governments.) But merely reciting these figures raises a deeper question: How have households and businesses been able to shrug off higher prices and higher interest rates, at least so far?

One reason is that prices are now rising less rapidly than wages (another development many economists failed to predict), which means workers’ purchasing power is rising, albeit slowly. Combined with healthy job growth, the sharp fall in the inflation rate—from 9.1 per cent in June, 2022, to three per cent this past month—has made many consumers feel better about things. Earlier this week, the Conference Board said that its index of consumer confidence had reached the highest level in two years.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal highlighted another element that is supporting consumer spending: many Americans were able to lock in low interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and other debts before the Fed started raising rates. According to Moody’s Analytics, nearly ninety per cent of household debt is fixed-rate debt, which means the interest payments attached to it don’t increase as the Fed hikes the federal funds rate. “It’s one reason why consumers are hanging tough and the Fed’s rate hikes have taken less of a bite out of the economy,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the Journal.

The final thing that many economists underestimated was the impact of the fiscal policies that the Biden Administration introduced during its first two years. The lingering effects of the 1.9-trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 can still be seen in improved finances of households and local governments, which is supporting their spending. But the most striking example is the surge in business investment, particularly in manufacturing facilities, since the passage last year of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided generous financial incentives for manufacturers of electric vehicles and other green technology, and the chips and Science Act, which provided similar incentives for manufacturers of semiconductors.

I’ve written about this surge before, and the new G.D.P. report confirms it. During the second quarter of this year, business investment in structures grew at an annual rate of 9.7 per cent, following an increase of 15.8 per cent in the first quarter. The entirety of this spending wasn’t carried out by manufacturers, but a good deal of it was. The White House Council of Economic Advisers pointed out that “about 0.4 percentage point of real Q2 GDP growth came from investment in private manufactured structures, the largest such contribution since 1981.” This is good news for the economy’s immediate prospects and for the longer-term energy transition, which is essential.

And the bad news? As a worrywart, I can always find things. The Fed could still tank the economy by keeping rates too high for too long. The renewed bubble in technology stocks, driven by optimism about A.I., could end in a stock-market crash. There could be another banking crisis, or something out of the blue, such as a conflict in the Middle East that creates another run-up in energy prices. I could also point to the sight of economic forecasters getting more optimistic, but that would be mean. For now, let’s just celebrate the fact that their predictions turned out to be wrong. ♦

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News round-up, July 31, 2023

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Thoughts of a day on Monday the 31st

Lagarde’s Eurozone “Crisis” Press Conference on July 27, Resembles “Lord of the Flies”

On Thursday, July 27th, Mrs Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank, delivered a significant announcement from Frankfurt, Germany. Stepping onto the stage with her Vice-President, Luis de Guindos, Lagarde’s solemn countenance suggested the severity of the impending situation to be disclosed. Without delay, Lagarde tackled the complicated economic environment in the Eurozone. She disclosed that the Governing Council had resolved to raise the three primary ECB interest rates by 25 basis points once again this year.

Lagarde seemed concerned as she spoke confidently, without her usual French accent. She emphasized that challenges still needed to be addressed despite the ongoing difficulties. She brought up the Russian invasion of Ukraine ("Natural Gas War"), which has made the already unstable economic situation even more complex. This could have implications for the global energy industry, which we must closely monitor.

Lagarde’s discourse evoked vivid imagery reminiscent of the classic novel, “The Lord of the Flies,” writted by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding in 1954. The parallels between Golding’s literary masterpiece and the current geopolitical climate are striking. We find ourselves confronted with deep-rooted social divisions not limited solely to Europe. These divisions arise from conflicting religious ideologies, diverse political systems, and an innate human tendency towards avarice and ambition.

Just as the characters in “The Lord of the Flies” grapple with their instincts and desires, the world faces similar struggles in navigating these societal divides. However, the consequences of these divisions extend beyond the realm of survival on a deserted island. Our interconnected global community demands unity and cooperation to overcome such challenges. Lagarde’s allusion to this profound connection between literature and the present situation reminds us of the underlying complexities plaguing our civilization.

Golding’s novel, set on a deserted island, is an allegory that highlights the flaws of human nature. It showcases how the moral order disintegrates, and chaos ensues when individuals are devoid of societal norms and structures. In the global environment, we observe the breakdown of international alliances, the emergence of populist movements and a decline in institutional trust. These divisions and conflicts have consequences not only in politics but also in the economy.

Lagarde discussed the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, emphasizing the impact on the energy sector and the vulnerability caused by the interdependence of economies. Similarly, William Golding’s novel, “The Lord of the Flies,” showcased his understanding of the future implications of geopolitical dynamics, evident even back in 1954. Reflecting on his experiences as a soldier during World War II, Golding concluded that all humans possess an innate capacity for evil. The aftermath of the war prompted the author to contemplate whether humanity could establish order in the wake of a nuclear conflict.

In “The Lord of the Flies,” written during the height of the “atomic age” marked by the post-WWII fear of nuclear attacks, the novel grapples with humanity’s anxieties. The onset of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia intensified these concerns, as people worldwide lived in constant dread of another catastrophic bombing resembling Oppenheimer’s project in Japan. Against this backdrop, the novel raises vital questions about human nature and its inclination toward self-destruction. It explores universal themes, considering the possibility of a moral movement emerging for the greater good. Can humans overcome their inherent self-destructive tendencies? This thought-provoking novel seeks answers to these pressing questions.

Now, what does Mrs. Lagarde tell us?

Inflation remains a concern despite decline
This is why we are committed to ensuring that inflation returns to our target of two percent in the medium term. As a result, the Governing Council has decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points.

Eurozone's economic outlook worsens
”The economic outlook for the eurozone is deteriorating due to various factors such as weaker domestic demand, inflation, and tighter credit conditions. These issues are impacting consumer spending and manufacturing output. Additionally, inflation and tighter credit conditions are dampening consumer spending, which in turn is affecting manufacturing output and weak external demand. Housing and business investment are also deteriorating, while the services sector remains resilient. Consequently, the economy is expected to remain weak in the short term.

Withdrawal of support measures crucial
”As the energy crisis starts to fade, it is important for governments to withdraw related support measures in a timely and coordinated manner. This is critical in order to prevent medium-term inflationary pressures from escalating. Failure to do so would require a more aggressive monetary policy response.

Inflation figures for June
”The inflation rate for the month of June continued to decrease, reaching 5.5 percent compared to 6.1 percent in May. Energy prices experienced a significant drop of 5.6 percent year on year. However, although food price inflation slowed down, it still remained high at 11.6 percent. Excluding energy and food, inflation rose to 5.5 percent, with goods and services showing opposing trends.

Economic Growth and Inflation Outlook Remains Uncertain
”The global economic growth and inflation outlook are uncertain, with several downside risks. One major concern is Russia's unjustified war against Ukraine, which contributes to geopolitical tensions that could fragment global trade and impact the euro area economy, leading to slower growth. On the other hand, there are upside risks to inflation. Russia's withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative could lead to upward pressure on energy and food costs. Additionally, the climate crisis and adverse weather conditions may raise food prices beyond projections, contributing to higher inflation. Other factors like a rise in inflation expectations, higher wages or profit margins, and stronger transmission of monetary policy could also drive inflation higher over the medium term. Furthermore, there has been significant tightening in financial and monetary conditions recently, adding to the complexity of the economic landscape. In conclusion, both economic growth and inflation face uncertainty, with downside risks to growth and upside risks to inflation.

Why have we found ourselves in this predicament?

The predictions made by William Golding in his book “The Lord of the Flies” in 1954 are of such magnitude that they must be examined. Lagarde's X-ray of the European economy is clear but a cause for concern. In this way, the deep political divisions within countries are a significant source of concern. However, the global geopolitical framework has undergone significant transformations in recent times, shifting from a bipolar structure to a much more interconnected and complex world. The current stage is distinguished by a state of multipolarity characterized by political and religious extremism, raising concerns about the potential disintegration of the global nation-state system. Aggression in imperialist crusades exacerbates the situation.
Plato, in his seminal work on political principles written over two millennia ago, outlined the art of statecraft. His principles, however, must still be considered in modern political decision-making. Plato believed that conflicting interests within society could be reconciled. It is critical to inquire as to why certain politicians do not comprehend the fundamental logic of this philosophy.

Source: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/tvservices/podcast/html/ecb.pod230727_episode65.en.html

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Most read…

Trump Crushing DeSantis and G.O.P. Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds

The twice-indicted former president leads across nearly every category and region, as primary voters wave off concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy.

NYT By Ashley Wu, By Shane Goldmacher, July 31, 2023

Elon Musk’s Latest Mission: Rev Up the Electricity Industry

‘My biggest concern is that there’s insufficient urgency,’ the billionaire tells energy executives

TWSJ by Tim Higgins, July 29, 2023 

Sunrun CEO Mary Powell Loves Big Problems

The solar-power executive says the energy industry is facing a ‘consumer-led revolution’

WSJ by Emily Bobrow, July 28, 2023

UK will issue hundreds of new oil and gas licenses in North Sea

The British government said the plan is to secure energy reserves while still aiming for net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Le Monde with AFP, today at 9:15 am

The climate law the EU (conveniently) forgot 

Talks on the Energy Taxation Directive have stalled over fears of political backlash.

POLITICO EU by VICTOR JACK AND ZIA WEISE, JULY 26, 2023 

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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Source: NYT 

Trump Crushing DeSantis and G.O.P. Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds

The twice-indicted former president leads across nearly every category and region, as primary voters wave off concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy.

NYT By Ashley Wu, By Shane Goldmacher, July 31, 2023

Former President Donald J. Trump is dominating his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, leading his nearest challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by a landslide 37 percentage points nationally among the likely Republican primary electorate, according to the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the 2024 campaign.

Mr. Trump held decisive advantages across almost every demographic group and region and in every ideological wing of the party, the survey found, as Republican voters waved away concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy. He led by wide margins among men and women, younger and older voters, moderates and conservatives, those who went to college and those who didn’t, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas.

The poll shows that some of Mr. DeSantis’s central campaign arguments — that he is more electable than Mr. Trump, and that he would govern more effectively — have so far failed to break through. Even Republicans motivated by the type of issues that have fueled Mr. DeSantis’s rise, such as fighting “radical woke ideology,” favored the former president.

Overall, Mr. Trump led Mr. DeSantis 54 percent to 17 percent. No other candidate topped 3 percent support in the poll.

Below those lopsided top-line figures were other ominous signs for Mr. DeSantis. He performed his weakest among some of the Republican Party’s biggest and most influential constituencies. He earned only 9 percent support among voters at least 65 years old and 13 percent of those without a college degree. Republicans who described themselves as “very conservative” favored Mr. Trump by a 50-point margin, 65 percent to 15 percent.

Still, no other serious Trump challenger has emerged besides Mr. DeSantis. Former Vice President Mike Pence, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina each scored 3 percent support. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, each received support from just 2 percent of those polled.

Yet even if all those candidates disappeared and Mr. DeSantis got a hypothetical one-on-one race against Mr. Trump, he would still lose by a two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 31 percent, the poll found. That is a stark reminder that, for all the fretting among anti-Trump forces that the party would divide itself in a repeat of 2016, Mr. Trump is poised to trounce even a unified opposition.

The survey comes less than six months before the first 2024 primary contest and before a single debate. In an era of American politics defined by its volatility, Mr. Trump’s legal troubles — his trials threaten to overlap with primary season — pose an especially unpredictable wild card.

For now, though, Mr. Trump appears to match both the surly mood of the Republican electorate, 89 percent of whom see the nation as headed in the wrong direction, and Republicans’ desire to take the fight to the Democrats.

The 2024 G.O.P. Presidential Candidates

Donald Trump. The former president is running to retake the office he lost in 2020. Though somewhat diminished in influence within the Republican Party — and facing several legal investigations — he retains a large and committed base of supporters, and he could be aided in the primary by multiple challengers splitting a limited anti-Trump vote.

Ron DeSantis. The combative governor of Florida, whose official entry into the 2024 race was spoiled by a glitch-filled livestream over Twitter, has championed conservative causes and thrown a flurry of punches at America’s left. He provides Trump the most formidable Republican rival he has faced since the former president’s ascent in 2016.

Chris Christie. The former governor of New Jersey, who was eclipsed by Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, is making a second run for the White House, setting up a rematch with the former president. Christie has positioned himself as the G.O.P. hopeful who is most willing to attack Trump.

Mike Pence. The former vice president, who was once a stalwart supporter of Trump but split with him after the Jan. 6 attack, launched his campaign with a strong rebuke of his former boss. An evangelical Christian whose faith drives much of his politics, Pence has been notably outspoken about his support for a national abortion ban.

Tim Scott. The South Carolina senator, who is the first Black Republican from the South elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, has been one of his party’s most prominent voices on matters of race. He is campaigning on a message of positivity steeped in religiosity.

Nikki Haley. The former governor of South Carolina, who was a U.N. ambassador under Trump, has presented herself as a member of “a new generation of leadership” and emphasized her life experience as a daughter of Indian immigrants. She was long seen as a rising G.O.P. star, but her allure in the party has declined amid her on-again, off-again embrace of Trump.

Vivek Ramaswamy. The multimillionaire entrepreneur describes himself as “anti-woke” and has made a name for himself in right-wing circles by opposing corporate efforts to advance political, social and environmental causes. He has promised to go farther down the road of ruling by fiat than Trump would or could.

More G.O.P. candidates. The former Texas congressman Will Hurd, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder have also launched long-shot bids for the Republican presidential nomination. Read more about the 2024 candidates.

“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” said David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis maintain strong overall favorable ratings from Republicans, 76 percent and 66 percent. That Mr. DeSantis is still so well liked after a drumbeat of news coverage questioning his ability to connect with voters, and more than $20 million in attack ads from a Trump super PAC, demonstrates a certain resiliency. His political team has argued that his overall positive image with G.O.P. voters provides a solid foundation on which to build.

But the intensity of the former president’s support is a key difference as 43 percent of Republicans have a “very favorable” opinion of Mr. Trump — a cohort that he carries by an overwhelming 92 percent to 7 percent margin in a one-on-one race with Mr. DeSantis.

By contrast, Mr. DeSantis is stuck in an effective tie with Mr. Trump, edging him 49 percent to 48 percent, among the smaller share of primary voters (25 percent) who view the Florida governor very favorably.

In interviews with poll respondents, a recurring theme emerged. They like Mr. DeSantis; they love Mr. Trump.

“DeSantis, I have high hopes. But as long as Trump’s there, Trump’s the man,” said Daniel Brown, 58, a retired technician at a nuclear plant from Bumpass, Va.

Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician, said he was supporting Mr. Trump.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

“If he wasn’t running against Trump, DeSantis would be my very next choice,” said Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician in Washington Township, Ohio.

A number of respondents interviewed drew a distinction between Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments in Tallahassee and Mr. Trump’s in the White House.

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Image by WSJ

Elon Musk’s Latest Mission: Rev Up the Electricity Industry

‘My biggest concern is that there’s insufficient urgency,’ the billionaire tells energy executives

TWSJ by Tim Higgins, July 29, 2023 

Elon Musk wants more power—literally. 

The man behind the race to replace gasoline-fueled cars with electric ones is worried about having enough juice. 

In recent days he has reiterated those concerns, predicting U.S. consumption of electricity, driven in part by battery-powered vehicles, will triple by around 2045. That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence.

“You really need to bring the time scale of projects in sooner and have a high sense of urgency,” Musk told energy executives Tuesday at a conference held by PG&E, one of the nation’s largest utilities. “My biggest concern is that there’s insufficient urgency.”

Musk’s participation with PG&E Chief Executive Patti Poppe at the power company’s conference marked the third major energy event the billionaire has appeared at in the past 12 months. He has played the part of Cassandra, trying to spark more industry attention on the infrastructure required for his EV and AI futures as he advocates for a fully electric economy.  

“I can’t emphasize enough: we need more electricity,” Musk said last month at an energy conference in Austin. “However much electricity you think you need, more than that is needed.” 

The U.S. energy industry in recent years already has struggled at times to keep up with demand, resorting to threats of rolling blackouts amid heat waves and other demand spikes. Those stresses have rattled an industry undergoing an upheaval as old, polluting plants are being replaced by renewable energy. Utilities are spending big to retool their systems to be greener and make them more resilient. Deloitte estimates the largest U.S. electric companies together will spend as much as $1.8 trillion by 2030 on those efforts. 

Adding to the challenge is an industry historically accustomed to moving slowly, partly because of regulators aiming to protect consumers from price increases. 

And that has been mostly OK. For the past 20 years, U.S. electricity demand has grown at an average rate of 1% each year, according to a Deloitte study. 

“If you have a fairly static electricity demand, which has been the case in the U.S. for a while, it hasn’t changed a lot, then having projects take a long time is OK,” Musk said Tuesday. “But in a rapidly changing scenario, where electricity demand is increasing, we have to move much faster.”

Executives and consultants do see stark change coming—but not as dramatic as what Musk predicts. 

Deloitte estimates the top U.S. electric companies together will spend as much as $1.8 trillion by 2030 to revamp their systems to be greener and more resilient. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

PG&E expects electricity demand will rise 70% in the next 20 years, which, the California company notes, would be unprecedented. Similarly, McKinsey expects U.S. demand will double by 2050. 

“This is an opportunity of the century for the power sector, and they could blow it if they don’t get it right,” Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas, Austin, said of the industry. “This demand growth is partly from EVs, but also heat pumps, data centers, AI, home devices…you name it.”

PG&E’s Poppe seemed receptive to Musk’s warning, if not exactly leaping to update her plans. “We are definitely taking notes here,” she told Musk. “I’m going to be the last person to doubt your predictions for the future.”

Part of the differing views of growth may boil down to how Musk wants the world to change. He wants cars and heating systems running on electricity. 

His push for tripling output is part of his advocacy for a transition to a fully electric economy, a more ambitious step than many in the industry are pursuing.

Beyond seeking a greener future, Musk is also warning that a lack of electricity could be crippling, much like the recent chips shortage that damaged the tech and auto industries. This time, it might stunt the burgeoning development of AI. 

“My prediction is that we will go from…an extreme silicon shortage today to…an electricity shortage in two years,” Musk said during an event earlier this month to discuss his new startup, xAI, which aims to develop advanced intelligence. “That’s roughly where things are trending.”

Rabble-rousing isn’t new for Musk. His entrepreneurial career has long involved jawboning entrenched industries, attempting to bend their plans and spending to his will and ambitions.  

A decade ago, his predictions for electric-car growth were seen by some as wildly optimistic, but his determination helped make him the world’s richest man and Tesla the world’s most valuable automaker. 

As the chief executive of Tesla, Musk does have a vested interest in more electricity, especially as he chases the goal of being able to build 20 million EVs annually by 2030. Tesla is centered around the mission of ushering in renewable energy and has smaller parts of its business selling solar panels and battery storage, including to utilities. 

One of Musk’s solutions is to better optimize the grid by running power plants around-the- clock and storing the energy not used during peak hours in battery packs for use later. “I’m not sure it might be as much as a 2x gain…but it’s at least 50% to 100% increase in total energy output,” Musk said recently.

He is advocating for more electricity at the same time he is stoking demand. And no place in the U.S. better illustrates that than in California, where car buyers continue to embrace EVs sold by him and others. 

The success of Tesla helped EVs make up 21% of new vehicle registrations in the state through the first half of this year, an increase from just 5.2% in all of 2019. Nationally, EVs haven’t yet grabbed market share like they have in California, but sales are growing. Musk predicts half of all new vehicles sold globally by 2030 will be electric. 

The rate of EV load on the energy grid has surprised Edison International, company CEO Pedro Pizarro said. 

At the June conference, Pizarro was on stage with Musk, who told the energy executive that his prediction of 60% demand growth in California by 2045 wasn’t enough, saying, “I think it’s much more load than that.”

“It may be,” Pizarro responded as awkward laughter erupted in the auditorium full of energy executives.

“Uh, by like a lot,” Musk continued. “It’s just, everything is going to be electric.”

Elon Musk Rolls Out New X Logo as Twitter Rebrands

A few weeks later, in an interview, Pizarro said he was still thinking about the exchange. 

While he still doesn’t see demand tripling, Pizarro said, the company’s predictions for electricity demand will likely be higher than 60% once it finishes reviewing what changes state mandates and consumer preferences are having on their assumptions, which were originally made in 2019. 

“Right now,” Pizarro said of Musk, “we may have, maybe, a little different view in terms of a matter of degree in what is a practical approach but I appreciate that he is putting a marker out there.”

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At the Energy Summit 2923 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Edwin De los Santos, President of AES DOMINICANA, emphasized the company's strong commitment to global environmental preservation.

“The relationship between energy and development is symbiotic and interdependent. “

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Source: Mary Powell photographed at her home in Vermont, July 2023. OLIVER PARINI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sunrun CEO Mary Powell Loves Big Problems

The solar-power executive says the energy industry is facing a ‘consumer-led revolution’

WSJ by Emily Bobrow, July 28, 2023 

As Texans suffer record-breaking heat, many are staying cool thanks to an unexpected savior: solar energy. New solar farms and panels on homes have increased solar capacity in Texas sixfold since 2019, supplying around 15% of the state’s electricity during peak hours, according to the state’s grid operator. When some coal and gas plants suffered outages in June, Texas’s solar panels, wind turbines and giant batteries helped keep air conditioners humming.

This, says Mary Powell, is a taste of the future. As the CEO of California-based Sunrun, the largest residential solar and energy storage company in the U.S., she hopes to help lead what she calls “a consumer-led revolution to a different kind of energy system.” Powell, 62, notes that volatile fuel prices and catastrophic weather events have raised demand for technology that liberates people from the uncertainty of aging power grids: “We have to remember we have an energy system that is essentially over 100 years old, and it wasn’t built for economic efficiency.” Sunrun operates in Texas and 21 other states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Only around 4% of U.S. homes generate solar electricity today, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Many electric and gas utilities are lobbying for regulations and fees that would hinder further investments in renewables, out of concern that customers who use solar power may end up abandoning the grid entirely. Powell, who ran Green Mountain Power (GMP), Vermont’s largest utility, for over a decade, argues that this is “such a short-sighted view.” She compares the opposition of utilities to the heel-dragging of traditional phone companies in the face of cellular technology decades ago: “You don’t resist innovation that consumers want and that can improve society. You figure out how to lean into it.”

Growing up in an artsy household on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Powell didn’t aspire to a corner office. “I call myself the accidental executive,” she says. The youngest child of Addison Powell, an award-winning actor, she used to pity anyone who wore a suit to work. Yet she learned to be practical at a young age, in part because her father was often between jobs. She did a lot of babysitting and dog-walking for neighbors: “I knew I needed to be self-supporting.”

Powell used her savings to earn an associate degree at Keene State College in New Hampshire, where she studied art but did not see a future in it. She pondered a bartending course, but the $850 fee put her off. Instead, in 1980 she got a job as a technical writer and administrative assistant at the Manhattan-based Reserve Primary Fund, a pioneering money-market fund, whose assets grew from $200 million to $3.5 billion in her eight years there. She rose to associate director of operations, and while she admits the business itself didn’t fascinate her, she took pride in “disrupting the banking model” by giving customers better returns than they could get through their banks.

By 1989 Powell wanted off the treadmill, so she and her husband Mark Brooks, a chef, moved to Vermont. She directed human resources for the state government, serving three governors in less than four years. “Seeing how individuals could shape policy has informed so much of the work I have done,” she says.

Powell didn’t much like telling people what they should be doing: ‘I actually want to be the one doing it.’

Powell started her own human resources consulting firm in 1997, hoping for a new start after a difficult year in which she lost her mother, gave birth to her daughter and saw her home destroyed in a fire. Yet she soon learned that she didn’t much like telling people what they should be doing: “I actually want to be the one doing it.”

She sought GMP as a client, but they wanted to hire her instead. Powell declined job offers from its CEO three times but then relented, joining as vice president of HR in 1998. Without an engineering background, she worried that she would find the work of a utility hard to master. Instead, she says, “What struck me was how ripe it was for disruption.” Powell used the threat of bankruptcy to restructure the company, flattening the hierarchy and reducing the staff through buyouts and retirements.

After she became CEO in 2008, GMP built solar and wind farms and offered financing for some customers to install residential solar panels and batteries, which allowed them to sell excess energy back to the grid at times of peak demand. “You’re leveraging assets that consumers have invested in to help make the entire grid more affordable and resilient,” she explains. By using energy from residential batteries, GMP sometimes “saved half a million bucks in a few hours.”

During Powell’s tenure, GMP was named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list four years running. But she says “the awards let a complacency set in when we need to be scaling faster.” She stepped down as CEO in 2019: “I found out how fast the fastest-moving utility could move in America and it wasn’t fast enough for me,” she says. In 2021 she took the top job at Sunrun, having served on the company’s board since 2018.

Today Sunrun controls 18% of the residential solar market, ahead of competitors such as SunPower and Tesla. Tax credits from last year’s climate bill are making solar panels more attractive to homeowners, and in May the company reported a 20% rise in sales year over year. But high interest rates and rising equipment costs have been challenging for a business that relies on installing rooftop solar systems for little money up front and then charging a monthly fee. Another obstacle is the permitting process for installing solar panels, which varies from place to place. “For someone who loves big problems,” Powell says, “it’s been right up my alley.”

With heat waves challenging energy grids across the country, Powell sees a growing demand for new options. She points to Sunrun’s partnership with Ford as a sign of what’s to come. The company’s bidirectional charger makes it possible to juice up Ford’s new electric F-150 pickup truck with solar power, and also to use the truck’s battery to power a home through a blackout for around 10 days. “More people,” she says, “want more control over how they power their homes.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Source: Media

UK will issue hundreds of new oil and gas licenses in North Sea

The British government said the plan is to secure energy reserves while still aiming for net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Le Monde with AFP, today at 9:15 am

The UK government said on Monday, July 31, it would issue "hundreds" of new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea to secure energy reserves while still aiming for net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

"Investment in the North Sea will continue to unlock new projects, protect jobs, reduce emissions and boost UK energy independence," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's office said in a statement. It added that "a more flexible application process" would be applied for the license requests, which would still be subject to a "climate compatibility" test for carbon reduction goals.

"The government is taking steps to slow the rapid decline in domestic production of oil and gas, which will secure our domestic energy supply and reduce reliance on hostile states," it said.

Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, saw a global surge in energy prices as Western nations imposed sanctions against Moscow, targeting in particular its massive oil and gas exports.

"We have all witnessed how Putin has manipulated and weaponized energy – disrupting supply and stalling growth in countries around the world," Sunak said in the statement, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Now more than ever, it's vital that we bolster our energy security and capitalize on that independence to deliver more affordable, clean energy."

A study released Monday by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) said the carbon footprint from domestic UK gas production was one-fourth the footprint from imported liquified natural gas. It also confirmed plans to build two more carbon-capture facilities along the North Sea coast, at Acorn in northeast Scotland and Viking near Humber, England, alongside two already under construction. It said the four clusters could support up to 50,000 jobs by 2030.

Sunak is due to visit an energy infrastructure site later Monday in Aberdeenshire to "highlight the central role the region will play in strengthening the UK's energy independence and meet the next generation of skilled apprentices key to driving this work forward."

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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“In Brussels, they’re already pretty much in election mode and so pushing this one forward in the time of high consumer prices and high energy prices is considered not very opportune” | Simon Maina/AFP

The climate law the EU (conveniently) forgot 

Talks on the Energy Taxation Directive have stalled over fears of political backlash.

POLITICO EU by VICTOR JACK AND ZIA WEISE, JULY 26, 2023 

With next year's European election fast approaching and policy work slowly drawing to a close, Brussels lawmakers have largely managed the Herculean task of pushing through the bloc’s Green Deal climate laws.

But gathering dust deep inside the EU's labyrinthine legislative machine lies one green law largely forgotten by the bloc’s politicians.

Talks on revising the 20-year-old Energy Taxation Directive, proposed as part of the European Commission’s Fit for 55 climate package that aims to slash emissions by 55 percent by 2030, have stalled.

Critics argue that negotiations ground to a halt because policies seen to add to already high energy prices have become politically toxic, especially as Brussels moves into campaign season. Others say striking a deal was never going to be easy, given changing EU tax rules requires unanimous backing from all 27 of the bloc’s members. 

“It’s stalling … because [the EU’s] member states are not calling for an agreement and because the Commission is not putting enough pressure,” said a diplomat from one EU country involved in negotiations, who was granted anonymity to speak freely on the dynamics between countries.

“In Brussels, they’re already pretty much in election mode and so pushing this one forward in the time of high consumer prices and high energy prices is considered not very opportune,” the diplomat added, putting the chances of a deal in the next two years at “under 50 percent.”

Others go further, arguing the legislation should be condemned to the scrapheap. “We see a need for a new Energy Tax Directive because the current one is outdated,” said a second national diplomat, adding that more than one EU capital was pushing for the same outcome.

In limbo

The original directive, implemented back in 2003, sets out minimum rates of tax for different types of energy products including diesel, gasoline and electricity. 

Currently, the EU sets a fixed rate of tax based on the volume — or euros per liter — of fuel, which the Commission now argues is incompatible with the bloc’s green ambitions since it doesn’t account for the environmental impact of fuels and exempts polluting sectors like aviation. 

In 2021, the EU executive proposed changes that would see new rates based on the energy content and environmental performance of fuels, and scrap several long-held exemptions.

But the file has remained at the technical working party level since, the first diplomat said, arguing the problem was political since the actual legislative discussions are “quite advanced.”

It’s not the first time the law has faced challenges. In 2015, the Commission was forced to withdraw its previous proposed revision after four years of disagreement among EU countries.

MEPs have limited powers to amend the law and can only give an opinion | Julien Warnand/EFE via EPA

In the European Parliament, too, the file is facing prolonged delays.

Although MEPs have limited powers to amend the law and can only give an opinion, the Parliament’s chief negotiator on the file, Belgian MEP Johan Van Overtveldt, sent a letter earlier this month asking the Commission to carry out a new impact assessment before talks proceed, claiming that the current one, issued in 2021, was outdated.

“The decision was taken to suspend the discussions on the ETD until we get a clear impact assessment from the Commission,” said Van Overtveldt, a lawmaker from the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group. His letter was co-signed by Socialists & Democrats MEP Irene Tinagli, who chairs the economic affairs committee.

A Commission spokesperson said the EU executive would “reply soon” to Van Overtveldt’s letter, and insisted that the current impact assessment ensured “coherence with other Fit for 55 proposals.”

The Commission is pressing countries "to continue now working constructively towards an adoption of the proposal as soon as possible," the spokesperson added.

Taxing debate

Despite the delays, a reform of tax rules has gained widespread support from industry and NGOs.

“The current version … reflects the power system of the past,” said Savannah Altvater, a policy officer at electricity lobby Eurelectric, since it sets higher minimum rates for electricity than for gas and thereby “disincentivizes electrification” — and by extension decarbonization.

The taxes set under the ETD account for about 2 percent of EU electricity tariffs on average; any reduction under a reformed directive would help consumers as all the taxes currently charged by governments add up to 41 percent of total power bills

That’s “really hurting the industry,” she said. “If the gas bill is a lot lower than the electricity bill, then at the end of the day, you're going to keep the gas boiler over the heat pump.”

The reform would give a clear, immediate incentive for consumers to switch to products running on greener fuels since these would be cheaper, said Luke Haywood, climate policy manager at the European Environmental Bureau NGO. Failure to clinch a deal on the file "would make it more difficult" for the EU to hit its climate targets, he added.

Even the fuel industry, which would likely see its tax rates — including for gasoline and diesel — increase under the plans, is supportive. 

“We've been pushing very hard for a revision because … it would have been a good incentive for the production and the use of renewable fuels” such as biodiesel, said Alain Mathuren, communications director at the FuelsEurope lobby.

But that’ll mean overcoming stiff opposition from some countries. 

“What has probably ... played a role in all this is that there certainly was no appetite for this at the Council level,” said Van Overtveldt.

Particularly amid the rising cost of living, he added, “I got the impression that the general feeling was 'OK, this is not a moment to do it' ... If the purchasing power of citizens has already been that much attacked, if I may use that word, you should be very hesitant about going any further down that road at this particular point in time.”

Even before inflation spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, EU capitals were sharply divided, according to the first diplomat, with Western European countries including France pushing for the changes and Central European countries largely resistant.

Mediterranean countries with maritime and tourism industries, including Greece, Cyprus and Malta, are also concerned about the reform meaning new taxes for shipping and aviation, they added.

Now, as the EU’s Green Deal faces a growing political backlash, “more progressive” countries “are scared to bring it up at the political level,” according to the diplomat.

“That could be the death bed of it.”

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News round-up, July 29, 2023

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In 2022, coal contributed approximately 36% of the world's electricity generation, with a total of 10,440 terawatt hours produced from coal.

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In 2022, coal contributed approximately 36% of the world's electricity generation, with a total of 10,440 terawatt hours produced from coal. 〰️

The UFO Enigma…

Historic Testimony Uncovers Secret Defence Program and —Nonhuman Biologics— print at UFO Crash Sites

Former intelligence official David Grusch captivated the nation on July 26, these years, when he testified before Congress, revealing a clandestine defense program solely dedicated to the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grusch's astounding revelations have pushed the enigmatic field of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) to the forefront of national security concerns, promoting transparency and shedding light on the enigmatic field. UFO sightings have increased in recent years, particularly among military personnel and pilots. These accounts have prompted lawmakers from all political parties to recognize the significance of UFOs as a pressing national security issue. During his testimony, Grusch shocked the nation once again by divulging the existence of —Nonhuman Biologics— discovered at alleged crash sites of UFOs. This revelation has ignited a renewed fascination with the possibility of extraterrestrial life and created an urgent need for further investigation. The emergence of this truth has placed intelligence agencies under unprecedented pressure to disclose information that has long been shrouded in stigma, confusion, and secrecy. In conclusion, as attention is drawn to this once-obscure topic, people demand transparency and more comprehensive information about the ongoing research.

Source: Time

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Most read…

Witness Tells Congress 'Nonhuman Biologics' Were Found at Alleged UFO Crash Sites

Whistleblower Tells Congress U.S. Is Concealing Program That Captures UFOs

TIME BY NIK POPLI,  JULY 26, 2023 

Social poison

The Editorial of Le Monde Diplomatique for August by *Benoît Bréville

*Benoît Bréville is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique

Strong gas business helps to cushion Eni profit fall

Italian energy company Eni reported adjusted net profit of 1.94 billion euros ($2.13 billion) for the period, a decrease from the exceptional result of 3.81 billion euros recorded the previous year.

Reuters By Francesca Landini, july 28, 2023

IEA says coal use hit an all-time high last year — and global demand will persist near record levels

In 2022, coal contributed approximately 36% of the world's electricity generation, with a total of 10,440 terawatt hours produced from coal.

CNBS  by Anmar Frangoul, Editing by Germán & Co, JUL 27 2023

Rhodes to ruin — fleeing the Greek inferno

“In Lindos, we marvelled at the panoramic acropolis and relaxed on stunning beaches, but little did we know that devastating fires would shatter our tranquil experience.

EUObserver by ARTHUR NESLEN, RHODES/BRUSSELS, July 24, 2023

Trump charged with seeking to delete security footage in documents case

Unsealed indictment charges second aide at Mar-a-Lago and brings new counts against the former president and longtime valet Walt Nauta

TWP by Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, Spencer S. Hsu and Josh Dawsey, July 27, 2023 

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Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES 

He's responsible for creating social responsibility and sustainability at AES

Andrés Gluski is the leader who introduced corporate social responsibility as a priority for AES. The result of these efforts has been extraordinary: AES was named one of the "World's Most Ethical Companies" by the Ethisphere Institute and has received this distinction for four consecutive years. There is nothing more to say about his leadership; it is commendable. In addition, he set goals for the company that culminated in the inclusion of the company in the North American Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Source: Moneyinc.com

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Image by Germán & Co

Witness Tells Congress 'Nonhuman Biologics' Were Found at Alleged UFO Crash Sites

Whistleblower Tells Congress U.S. Is Concealing Program That Captures UFOs

TIME BY NIK POPLI, JULY 26, 2023

A former intelligence official claimed the U.S. government has been covering up a longstanding defense program that collects and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and has found "nonhuman biologics" at alleged UFO crash sites.

The highly anticipated testimony from David Grusch, a former member of a U.S. Air Force panel on unidentified anomalous phenomena—also known as unidentified aerial phenomena—(UAP), was part of an effort by Congress to pressure intelligence agencies for more transparency into the existence of UFOs, a subject of heightened scrutiny following an increase in reported sightings by military personnel and pilots in recent years. Although extraterrestrial life has long been shrouded in stigma, confusion, and secrecy, lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum have been rallying around the push for more research on the topic as a national security matter.

“UAPs, whatever they may be, may pose a serious threat to our military and our civilian aircraft, and that must be understood,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California said. “We should encourage more reporting, not less on UAPs. The more we understand, the safer we will be.”

Testifying under oath at a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Grusch told lawmakers he believes the U.S. government is in possession of UAPs based on his interviews with 40 witnesses over four years, claiming that he was informed of "a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program" during the course of his work examining classified programs. He said he was denied access to those programs when he requested it, and accused the military of misappropriating funds to shield these operations from congressional oversight.

The Pentagon denies Grusch’s claims about a UAP crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program. "To date, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently," Sue Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson, tells TIME in a statement. "The Department is fully committed to openness and accountability to the American people, which it must balance with its obligation to protect sensitive information, sources, and methods," the statement continued in part. "DoD is also committed to timely and thorough reporting to Congress."

During his testimony, Grusch added that he knows of “multiple colleagues” who were physically injured by UAP activity and by people within the U.S. government, but declined to share more details. He also said that “nonhuman biologics” were found at alleged UAP crash sites when asked about the pilots of the craft.

No government officials testified at Wednesday’s hearing, though Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Pentagon’s office focusing on UAPs, told a Senate subcommittee in April that the U.S. government was tracking 650 potential cases of unidentified aerial phenomena, playing video from two of the episodes. During that public testimony, Kirkpatrick emphasized there was no evidence of extraterrestrial life and that his office found “no credible evidence” of objects that defy the known laws of physics.

The House Oversight subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs heard additional witness testimony Wednesday from former U.S. Navy fighter pilots Ryan Graves and retired Commander David Fravor, who both claimed they had encountered aircraft of a nonhuman origin. “These sightings are not rare or isolated,” said Graves, who served in the Navy for over a decade. “Military aircrews and commercial pilots, trained observers whose lives depend on accurate identification, are frequently witnessing these phenomena.”

Graves told lawmakers that his aircrew encountered UAP during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va, when their lead jet came within 50 feet of what he described as a “dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere.” He estimated it to be five to 15 feet in diameter, motionless against the wind, fixed directly at the entry point. The mission was immediately terminated, and his squadron submitted a safety report that he claims received no official acknowledgement of the incident.

While the hearing marked a significant moment in shining light on unexplained objects in the sky, it was short on providing answers. National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby admitted last week that UFOs have been causing problems for the U.S. Air Force, particularly for pilot training exercises. “When pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they’re not sure what they are and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills. So it already had an impact here,” Kirby said at a White House press briefing. “We want to get to the bottom of it. We want to understand it better.”

There’s growing, bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill for reform. Provisions in the Senate’s version of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act would require federal agencies to hand over records related to UAP to a panel with the power to declassify them.

“If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem,” Graves said. “If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety.”

The federal government has recorded 510 UFO sightings since 2004, according to an unclassified report Office of the Director of National Intelligence released in January.

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The Power Of Protest Art/Félix Vallotton, “La Charge” (1893), Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, gift of Adèle and Georges Besson in 1963, on long-term loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon (© Centre Pompidou / MNAM; photo by Pierre Guenat, Besançon, Musée des beaux-arts et d’archéologie)

Social poison

The Editorial of Le Monde Diplomatique for August by *Benoît Bréville

*Benoît Bréville is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique.

Vaulx-en-Velin, Lyon, 6 October 1990. Thomas Claudio, 21, was riding his motorcycle when he was hit by a police car. He died instantly. Riots erupted in the city and lasted four days. Shops were looted, cars set alight, schools ransacked, firefighters injured and journalists attacked. ‘Unemployment and lack of education for young people are responsible for these events,’ according to Nicolas Sarkozy, then a rightwing deputy mayor (1).

Clichy-sous-Bois, Paris, 27 October 2005. Two teenagers being chased by the police, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, took refuge in an electricity substation and died from electrocution. Clashes broke out in Seine-Saint-Denis and soon spread nationwide. After three turbulent weeks, President Jacques Chirac expressed regret that ‘some places accumulate too many disadvantages, too many problems’ and called for a fight against ‘the social poison of discrimination’. He also condemned ‘illegal immigration and the trafficking it generates’ and ‘families that refuse to take responsibility’.

Nanterre, Paris, 23 June 2023. Nahel Merzouk, 17, was shot in the chest during a traffic stop. Riots spread at lightning speed across the country. The episode was short (five days) but intense: 23,878 fires on public roads, 5,892 torched vehicles, 3,486 arrests, 1,105 buildings attacked, 269 police stations targeted, 243 schools damaged. ‘These events have nothing to do with a social crisis’ but everything to do with ‘the disintegration of the state and the nation’, according to the likely rightwing candidate for the next presidential election, Laurent Wauquiez (Les Républicains, LR) (2). And woe betide anyone claiming otherwise: they are instantly accused of justifying violence, fuelling a ‘culture of excuses’, or even being guilty of sedition and a ‘threat to the Republic’ (3).

In the reactions they provoke, these successive urban riots reflect how the French political landscape has been flattened by the steamroller of security and identity politics. The social explanation, which was once put forward as self-evident, however disingenuously, has been relegated to the background; mentioning it is now off-limits. In the past, any government that faced such events would announce a plan for the banlieues, to address the multiple disadvantages these areas suffer. Once public attention had subsided, this would be scaled back — a few subsidised jobs, grants to local organisations, credits for building refurbishments...

There have been around a dozen such plans since the 1980s, and they’ve solved nothing: not unemployment, not segregation and certainly not the tensions between young people and the police. Yet as each one follows the last, they have created the sense that the state has already done too much for the banlieues and that it’s now time to refocus on the ‘real’ problems: immigration, Islam, parental neglect, the leniency of the justice system, video games, social media... A discourse tailor-made to artificially set banlieues against the countryside — when both are abandoned territories where the working class live.

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The AES Corporation's Andes Solar IIb

The facility's start-up in the region of Antofagasta, Chile, represents a —-unique—- milestone in the renewable energy sector. With an installed capacity of 180 MW and 112 MW of five-hour duration energy storage, this facility is now the largest system of its kind in Latin America. The Andes Solar IIb facility's capacity comprises 170 MW of bifacial solar panels and 10 MW of 5B's Maverick technology. 
The construction of this facility utilized Maverick technology and pre-made modular components, resulting in a 33% reduction in installation time compared to other traditional solar systems. Adding Andes Solar IIb to AES Andes brings the total number of solar facilities managed in the Antofagasta region to 429 MW. 
Reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and efficient power generation, AES Corporation continues to make significant strides in the renewable energy sector.

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Image by Germán & Co

Strong gas business helps to cushion Eni profit fall

Italian ener

gy company Eni reported adjusted net profit of 1.94 billion euros ($2.13 billion) for the period, a decrease from the exceptional result of 3.81 billion euros recorded the previous year.

Reuters By Francesca Landini, july 28, 2023

Eni's logo is seen in front of its headquarters in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, Italy, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo

MILAN, July 28 (Reuters) - Italian energy group Eni (ENI.MI) reported a 49% fall in its adjusted net profit in the second quarter because of weaker commodity prices but a strong performance from its gas business helped it to beat forecasts.

Adjusted net profit in the period came in at 1.94 billion euros ($2.13 billion) down from a bumper result of 3.81 billion euros a year ago, but above an analyst consensus of 1.64 billion euros.

The state-controlled group raised its 2023 guidance for its gas business (GGP) after it underpinned the group's results in the second quarter with an adjusted operating profit of 1.1 billion euros, more than double the 0.5 billion analysts had pencilled in.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, Eni moved quickly to replace Moscow's gas supplies with fuel it extracts in African countries, strengthening its position on the gas markets.

Trading activity related to its large gas portfolio and re-negotiations and settlements related to contracts were the factors behind the good performance of the division in the last three months, it said.

Eni now expects the gas business to reach an adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) figure of between 2.7 billion and 3.0 billion euros for the year versus previous guidance of 2.0-2.2 billion euros.

It also improved its full-year outlook for its low-carbon unit Plenitude and trimmed plans for capital expenditure this year to below 9 billion euros from a previous estimate of 9.2 billion euros.

Group's expectation for adjusted EBIT for this year is confirmed at 12 billion euros even after taking into account a weaker oil and gas prices.

REWARDING INVESTORS

On Thursday Shell (SHEL.L) and TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) reported sharp falls in second-quarter profit from bumper 2022 earnings as oil and gas prices, refining margins and trading results all weakened.

"Eni has reported a strong set of second-quarter results, with adjusted EBIT and net income coming in well ahead of market expectations," said Royal Bank of Scotland in a note, adding the new guidance for the gas division was a significant move up relative to market expectations.

Shares in the group were up 1%, outperforming a flat Milan's blue-chip index (.FTSEMIB) at 0740 GMT.

In the second quarter Eni and other energy groups had to cope with a 30% fall in crude oil prices and a drop of more than 60% in the gas price and refining margins compared with the same period last year.

Despite a weaker outlook for commodity prices, Eni said it would continue a share buy-back programme started in May.

"Considering our first-half results and continuing business

performance that drives raised guidance, we have a solid position from which to pay our first quarterly instalment of the raised 0.94 euros per share 2023 dividend in September and continue our 2.2 billion euro buy-back," Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image by Germán & Co 

IEA says coal use hit an all-time high last year — and global demand will persist near record levels

In 2022, coal contributed approximately 36% of the world's electricity generation, with a total of 10,440 terawatt hours produced from coal.

CNBS  by Anmar Frangoul, Editing by Germán & Co, JUL 27 2023

Coal consumption increased by 3.3% to hit a fresh record high of 8.3 billion metric tons in 2022, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.

According to the Paris-based organization’s Coal Market Update, demand increased “despite a weaker global economy, mainly driven by being more readily available and relatively cheaper than gas in many parts of the world.”

Overall, the IEA said 10,440 terawatt hours were generated from coal in 2022, a figure that accounted for 36% of the planet’s electricity generation.

Looking ahead, the IEA said coal consumption in 2023 would remain near last year’s record levels.

Geographically, the picture in 2023 is mixed. “By region, coal demand fell faster than previously expected in the first half of this year in the United States and the European Union — by 24% and 16%, respectively,” the IEA said in a statement accompanying its report.

“However, demand from the two largest consumers, China and India, grew by over 5% during the first half, more than offsetting declines elsewhere,” it added.

“Coal is the largest single source of carbon emissions from the energy sector, and in Europe and the United States, the growth of clean energy has put coal use into structural decline,” Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s director of energy markets and security, said Thursday.  

“But demand remains stubbornly high in Asia, even as many of those economies have significantly ramped up renewable energy sources,” he added.

Going forward, Sadamori said “greater policy efforts and investments” were needed in order to “drive a massive surge in clean energy and energy efficiency to reduce coal demand in economies where energy needs are growing fast.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

Rhodes to ruin — fleeing the Greek inferno

“In Lindos, we marvelled at the panoramic acropolis and relaxed on stunning beaches, but little did we know that devastating fires would shatter our tranquil experience.

EUObserver by ARTHUR NESLEN, RHODES/BRUSSELS, July 24, 2023

My family and I left Rhodes on Saturday morning (22 July) — just as the island's forest fire escaped all control. But ominous warnings had been in the (35 degree celsius) air all week.

The apologetic manager at the astronomy café on a hilltop who couldn't serve water as it was being siphoned to fight the fires further south; the taxi driver from Apollona in a state of shock and fear after his home village was evacuated, and of course the water-carrying helicopters at Rhodes airport as we departed, taking off from runways as if in some Vietnam movie pastiche.

Beyond counting our blessings — and our fears for those still trapped in the fire zone — we were left dazed and disoriented by the blazing spike which had punctured our tourist bubble. Last Monday we were in Lindos, marvelling at its panoramic acropolis and enjoying its beaches. Now it is the site of tourist evacuations. No relocation is possible though for the island's natural treasure trove.

With its dense, mixed, verdant interior, Rhodes is as rich in biodiversity as it is in fuel for fires. Endemic European fallow deer — popularised on the plinths of Rhodes' former colossus statue — roam its pine and cypress forests.

How many will be left when the embers have cooled?

Ten kilometres due north of the current inferno lies the valley of the butterflies, a 2km ravine lined by rare and medicinal oriental sweetgum trees that host millions of orange, white and brown Panaxia butterflies which swarm like clouds of Spanish flags at a fiesta. The destruction of this Natura 2000 sanctuary would spark another headline for a news cycle, and a loss that can never be made good.

As an environmental journalist in Brussels, this shouldn't surprise me. I am used to traveling to the frontlines of climate breakdown but now they are travelling to me, to all of us and, crazily, still catching us off guard. My daily twitter feed is full of climate cartographs showing the Mediteranean in flame red and ash brown hues. But the graphs' stitch-like plot lines are usually projected into an abstract future with years on axes too small to read.

What's playing out on Rhodes is a real-time process of climatic transition — and perhaps desertification — that we should see coming, again and again.

France, Spain and Ireland were all scorched by wildfires in the Spring, and the warning signs flashed crimson in June, when plumes from Canada's largest ever forest fire reached Europe. The smoke from 160 megatonnes of carbon emissions was literally on the water, and on the horizon.

Last month, the European Environment Agency reported that up to 145,000 people had been killed by extreme weather in Europe over the last 40 years, 85 percent of them by heatwaves.

A more detailed EU risk assessment is due out this autumn, possibly as early as October, and officials expect it to pull no punches. The need for strategic, funded, preventative measures in places like Rhodes is self-evident.

But the appetite for climate action is clearly waning at the European Parliament and within the Commission, where one official told me two weeks ago that an overwhelming backlash against the Green Deal was underway.

But Spain, the current council president, faces intransigent domestic opposition from an agribusiness lobby that spurred the Popular Party to turn shrug at the draining of the Donana wetland into an electoral motif.

Fire-fighting cuts due to austerity

More importantly, whatever Brussels says, its actions will speak louder. Greece's former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, told me two years ago that in negotiations with 'the troika' in 2015, two commission officials threatened to effectively shut down the country's banking system if it re-hired 2,000 firefighters and doctors. An austerity-based decision in 2011 had axed 20 percent of the firefighters budget.

Varoufakis said the officials told him: "If you hire one more fire brigade man or woman, we will consider this casus belli." The commission denies this claim, which Varoufakis has since repeated.

Around 100 people died in blazes around Athens in 2018. The chief of Greece's firefighting federation said that 5,000 more firefighters were needed, after yet another deadly fire season in 2021,

The increased fires are in line with IPCC predictions and the lackadaisical response — to the extent that the UK government seems more keen to reduce its climate commitments than its citizens' exposure to fire risk in Rhodes — underlines how package tourists themselves may become sacrificial lambs on the altar of our fossil fuel economy. Ironically, the increased visibility of their suffering could deal a savage blow to future July/August bookings in the Med that the UK government presumably wishes to prevent.

If governments will not curb emissions and protect their citizens, sadly, that may be one of the few positives to come out of this latest climate tragedy.

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Image by Germán & Co/Shutterstock

Trump charged with seeking to delete security footage in documents case

Unsealed indictment charges second aide at Mar-a-Lago and brings new counts against the former president and longtime valet Walt Nauta

TWP by Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, Spencer S. Hsu and Josh Dawsey, July 27, 2023 

Prosecutors announced additional charges against Donald Trump on Thursday in his alleged hoarding and hiding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, accusing the former president and a newly indicted aide of trying to keep security camera footage from being reviewed by investigators and bringing the number of total federal charges against Trump to 40.

Trump already faced 31 counts of illegally retaining national defense information, but federal prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith have added a 32nd to the list. That count centers on a now-infamous conversation Trump allegedly had at his golf club and summer residence in Bedminster, N.J., in July 2021, focused on what has been described by others as a secret military document concerning Iran.

In that conversation, which was recorded, Trump said: “As president I could have declassified it. … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still secret.”

The new indictment also levels accusations of a broader effort by Trump and some of those around him to cover their tracks as the FBI sought to retrieve highly classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and private club, long after his presidency ended. The indictment charges that Trump and two aides, Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, requested that another Trump employee “delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”

While Trump has publicly claimed he was happy to hand over the footage in response to a grand jury subpoena, others close to him have said he was upset about it, and the indictment suggests a scramble among his aides soon after they received the demand for the footage. Prosecutors say that Nauta, Trump’s longtime valet, changed plans to travel with Trump to Illinois around the time the subpoena was sent, instead traveling to Florida to talk to other Trump employees about the camera footage. He appeared to try to keep the reason for the trip to Mar-a-Lago under wraps, the indictment says, telling others he was going there for different reasons.

Nauta was initially indicted alongside the former president in the documents case in June, accused of helping him mislead investigators as they sought to retrieve all of the classified material in Trump’s possession.

Both Trump and Nauta have pleaded not guilty to the charges in that initial indictment. The federal judge overseeing the case in Fort Pierce, Fla., has set the trial to begin in May, though it is not uncommon for such schedules to be delayed to deal with pretrial disputes and issues.

In audio recording, Trump says he did not declassify secret Iran documents

People familiar with the investigation have told The Washington Post that Smith’s team repeatedly pressed De Oliveira to explain his actions from June and July 2022, when he was recorded helping Nauta move boxes around Mar-a-Lago and allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss secret grand jury proceedings, have said investigators grew increasingly skeptical of De Oliveira’s answers as the investigation proceeded.

De Oliveira’s attorney, John Irving, declined to comment Thursday evening. De Oliveira has worked for Trump for nearly 20 years, beginning as a car valet and becoming a property manager in January 2022. As the investigation progressed, he has told colleagues, his phone was seized. He has continued to work at Mar-a-Lago since the initial charges against Trump and Nauta were filed.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the charges unveiled Thursday “a continued desperate and flailing attempt” to harass the former president — who is again seeking the GOP nomination for the White House — and those around him. A lawyer for Nauta declined to comment on the new charges against his client.

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News round-up, July 28, 2023

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We reached a new record of 1800 visitors in the United States yesterday, surpassing 1600 visitors daily. We were able to reach this milestone without any external assistance (booster), relying completely on our dedication, objectivity, and hard work..

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We reached a new record of 1800 visitors in the United States yesterday, surpassing 1600 visitors daily. We were able to reach this milestone without any external assistance (booster), relying completely on our dedication, objectivity, and hard work.. 〰️

The Personality of the Day

“Abramovich” journeyed 858 km from the Saratov catacombs to Kremlin's champagne glasses.

The enigmatic figure, Roman Abramovich, is well-known for his business and survival skills. His journey to success began long before that. In the late 1990s, Abramovich embraced his elusive persona, likened to that of a —-silver Siberian wolf—-. He skillfully evaded the spotlight, refusing to be photographed and instead represented through rough illustrations. So legendary was his secrecy that a reward of 1 million roubles was offered for a genuine photograph of him. Eventually, a blurry image surfaced, catapulting Abramovich into fame.
Beneath his mysterious facade, Abramovich artfully cultivated influential alliances. Notably, he formed a close bond with Tatyana Dyachenko, the daughter of President Boris Yeltsin. This relationship not only facilitated his ascension in Russian politics but also in society at large. With such powerful connections and his own shrewdness, Abramovich became a significant figure in the Russian elite.

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Most read…

Insight: Obscure traders ship half Russia's oil exports to India, China after sanctions

To export crude oil to Asia, Moscow relies on little-known trading companies. According to data gathered from conversations with ten trading sources, analysis from Kpler, and non-public information from Refinitiv and shipping companies, 40 intermediaries were involved in Russian oil trading between March and June.

By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Nidhi Verma/Editions by Germán & Co, July 27, 2023

Biden’s ‘Made in America’ Pledge Collides With His Climate Goals

Companies, lawmakers are trying to influence how the government gives out billions in subsidies

WSJ by Andrew Duehren, July 26, 2023 

Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue.

Gregory Garrabrants, a GOP donor and CEO of online Axos Bank, approved the loans after the former president’s main lender had cut ties.

The Washington Post by Michael Kranish, July 27, 2023 

Roman Abramovich the 'invisible man,' a business and survival specialist

One million roubles for a photograph of him... A blurry photo eventually emerged, making Abramovich famous...

By Lucas Minisini  (London, New York, Tel Aviv, special correspondent), Benoît Vitkine  (Moscow, correspondent) and Aureliano Tonet  (London, Rome, Tel Aviv, special correspondent), Published yesterday of 26 of July, 2023.

US power regulator to weigh plans to speed up green energy connection

Reuters by Valerie Volcovici and Nichola Groom, July 27, 2023

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Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES 

He's responsible for creating social responsibility and sustainability at AES

Andrés Gluski is the leader who introduced corporate social responsibility as a priority for AES. The result of these efforts has been extraordinary: AES was named one of the "World's Most Ethical Companies" by the Ethisphere Institute and has received this distinction for four consecutive years. There is nothing more to say about his leadership; it is commendable. In addition, he set goals for the company that culminated in the inclusion of the company in the North American Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Source: Moneyinc.com

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Image: Word "Oil" and stock graph are seen through magnifier displayed in this illustration taken September 4, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Insight: Obscure traders ship half Russia's oil exports to India, China after sanctions

To export crude oil to Asia, Moscow relies on little-known trading companies. According to data gathered from conversations with ten trading sources, analysis from Kpler, and non-public information from Refinitiv and shipping companies, 40 intermediaries were involved in Russian oil trading between March and June.

REUTERS By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Nidhi Verma/Editions by Germán & Co, July 27, 2023

MOSCOW/LONDON/NEW DELHI, July 27 (Reuters) - A Liberian-flagged oil tanker set sail in May from Russia's Ust-Luga port carrying crude on behalf of a little-known trading company based in Hong Kong. Before the ship had even reached its destination in India, the cargo changed hands.

The new owner of the 100,000 tonnes of Urals crude carried on the Leopard I was a similarly low-profile outfit, Guron Trading, also based in Hong Kong, according two trading sources.

The number of little-known trading firms relied on by Moscow to export large volumes of crude exports to Asia has mushroomed in recent months, since sanctions over the Ukraine war led major oil firms and commodity houses to withdraw from business with producers in Russia, reporting by Reuters has found.At least 40 middlemen, including companies with no prior record of involvement in the business, handled Russian oil trading between March and June, according to a Reuters tally after speaking to 10 trading sources along with analysts from think-tank Kpler and analysing data from Refinitiv and the non-public books of shipping companies.

The new players have shipped at least half of Russia’s overall crude and refined products exports of 6-8 million barrels per day (bpd) on average this year, turning the little-known companies collectively into some of the world's largest oil traders, according to Reuters calculations based on private information from the 10 trading sources and Eikon data.

The companies began appearing after Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a special military operation, with as many as 30 middlemen involved in trades over the course of last year, according to the tally.

The network marks a major departure from the handful of well-established oil majors such as BP and Shell and top trading houses including Vitol, Glencore, Trafigura and Gunvor that handled Russian crude and oil products for decades.

There is no suggestion the trades break sanctions, although they may make it difficult for sanctions enforcement agencies in Europe and the United States to track Russian oil transactions and prices.

Earlier this month, Urals prices jumped above a price cap of $60 a barrel on Russian exports imposed by the Group of Seven nations, Australia and the European Union from Dec. 5 that was intended to punish firms involved in any trade above that level.

When prices are above the cap, the rapidly changing trading network could make it hard to identify those involved in moving the oil, five traders involved in handling Russian oil said.

The reporting shows that in May, Russia, one of the world's top three oil producers, supplied record volumes to China and India, which have not imposed sanctions on Moscow and became its leading buyers after sanctions by Europe, the United States and other powers limited their own purchases.

Neither Guron Trading or Bellatrix Energy, the company that originally chartered the Leopard I and bought the cargo from Russian oil company Rosneft, responded to requests for comment. Rosneft did not respond to questions.

The websites for Guron Trading and Bellatrix Energy appeared to have been taken down recently. Both were online prior to the companies being contacted by Reuters.

TRADING AT SEA

Along with the emergence of the new companies, once rare multiple trades while ships are at sea have become widespread, the five sources involved in Russian oil trading said. The sources described at least 10 such trades, which happen with little public documentation and aim to make Russia's oil exports more difficult to track, they said.

One buyer of Russian oil likened the rise and fall of the new traders to the brief careers of TikTok stars, while another trader described a "kaleidoscope" of new players. In some cases, a single cargo will pass through at least three traders, the oil buyer said.

Under the previous system, oil cargoes were generally handled by one well-known trader from source to destination.

Reuters could not establish the ultimate owners of the new trading companies.

The growing network of pop-up traders overlaps with a booming market for old oil tankers supplied by new companies to carry Russian oil that Western shippers are avoiding.

The new trading network and practices raise financial risks for Russian oil companies dealing with unknown entities with limited credit history.

Some of the companies that emerged as major traders of Russian oil last year, such as Coral Energy and Everest Energy, have since exited the business.

Responding to questions from Reuters, both denied they left the trade because of sanctions risks. Everest said "it was a strategic business decision based on various factors specific to our company". Coral said "we made a decision to source outside of Russia thanks to the diversified footprint in MENA region'.

The U.S. Treasury department's sanctions enforcement agency, OFAC, and its EU and UK counterparts did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In July, a U.S. Treasury official said sanctions were designed to keep Russian oil in the market, dampening prices for consumers while limiting oil revenues Moscow uses to finance the war in Ukraine.

"We recognise that (sanctions on Russia are) going to change the shape and structure of the Russian oil markets," the official told reporters.

The official also said Washington was unconcerned that sanctions were resulting in more trades in currencies other than the dollar - after a rise in the use of yuan and UAE dirham to settle Russian oil transactions as Moscow finds itself shut out from international banks.

MULTI-YEAR EXPORT HIGH

Owned and operated by the Dubai-based Leopard I Shipping, the Leopard I arrived at Visakhapatnam port on June 15, where Indian refiner Hindustan Petroleum took delivery of the cargo from Guron Trading, data from the two trading sources showed.

Hindustan Petroleum didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The emerging companies have played a key role in keeping Russia's oil exports moving, and even growing, as its leading crude producers Rosneft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz and Gazprom Neft diverted shipments to India and China.

Helped by this network, Russian oil exports from all sea ports reached a multi-year high in April and May at nearly 4 million bpd, according to Reuters calculations based on polling of 10 traders as well as Russian port loading programmes and Refinitiv data.

In May, Russian seaborne oil supplies to India, which was a rare buyer of Russian oil before the war, reached a record of 1.95 million bpd while China imported 2.29 million bpd.

Only Lukoil continues to market oil through its trading division - Litasco - which it relocated to Dubai from Geneva. The other companies sell to the new trading firms, which are mostly registered in China, Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai, according to the five sources and local public company registers.

From March to June, the top traders who bought oil from Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz and Gazprom Neft included Dubai-based Petroruss, Hong Kong registered Guron Trading, Bellatrix Energy and Covart Energy, Dubai-registered Voliton, Demex Trading, Nestor Trading, Orion Energy and Singapore-headquartered Patera, according to the five traders, shipping data and company registers.

Some companies, such as Voliton, had no websites or contact numbers that Reuters could find. None of the others responded to requests for comments.

Media representatives for Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz and Gazprom Neft didn't answer Reuters requests for comment.

PAYMENT DELAYS

The strategy brings risk for Russian producers. Venezuela, which uses a similar system to move oil, has suffered payment problems, fraud and losses.

While there have been no reports to date of non-payment, delays have caused some problems, the five traders involved in the Russian oil business said.Russian exporters waited between three to five months to get paid after their cargoes sailed, the sources said. Normally, buyers pay for the cargoes about a month after the ship sails, they said.

One source said such delays created a fiscal gap for exporters who were having to pay taxes to the Russian state before even being paid for their oil.

A source with one major Russian oil company said his company was prepared to deal with higher credit risks from buyers for the sake of having stable and rising oil exports.

"Last year, we were facing output cuts as marketing was bad. Now it's alright – we have buyers, we have sales," the source said.

Reporting by Reuters in MOSCOW, Dmitry Zhdannikov in LONDON and Nidhi Verma in NEW DELHI. Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington and Laura Sanicola in New York; Editing by Simon Webb and Frank Jack Daniel

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Image by Germán & Co via Shutterstock

Biden’s ‘Made in America’ Pledge Collides With His Climate Goals

Companies, lawmakers are trying to influence how the government gives out billions in subsidies

WSJ by Andrew Duehren, July 26, 2023 

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration’s plans to quickly reduce carbon emissions are colliding with its pledge to revitalize manufacturing in the U.S.

The Inflation Reduction Act unleashed a gusher of tax breaks and credits for producing clean energy, purchasing electric vehicles and developing new low-carbon technology. Many of the incentives require companies to source materials for the projects from the U.S., setting off a lobbying campaign to shape how the Biden administration defines “made in America.”

The debate pits some U.S. manufacturers and lawmakers, who want to strictly enforce the law’s requirements that many parts and materials come from the U.S., against automakers and foreign allies who warn that could make it more expensive to deploy technology lowering carbon emissions. 

In the latest salvo, a group of the largest steelmakers in the U.S., as well as the United Steelworkers union, criticized the Treasury Department’s proposed approach to a bonus tax credit for clean-energy projects that rely largely on U.S.-made metal and components. 

They argue that the department’s treatment of a key component of solar panels would let firms use steel from abroad and still qualify for the 10% credit, which would be available on top of other subsidies for building solar and wind farms. 

President Biden has courted unions such as the United Steelworkers. PHOTO: JEFF SWENSEN/GETTY IMAGES

“If the current Guidance were to be made final, it would significantly damage U.S. domestic steel producers, putting at risk 1.5 million tons of production and jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of Americans who depend on our industry,” wrote the union and the companies, including U.S. Steel and Nucor. 

The group sent the letter, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Tuesday. 

“We’re going to refine and look at the comments that we get, but directionally, we’re seeing firms make decisions to make investments in the United States to get access to the domestic-content boost,” Wally Adeyemo, deputy Treasury secretary, said.

China is the dominant supplier of many clean-energy products, as well as the largest global producer of steel by far. The Biden administration is seeking to reduce U.S. dependence on China in key areas, but it has at times found its goals at odds as it irons out the details of tax incentives offered under the IRA.

President Biden has made rebuilding American manufacturing a central talking point in his re-election bid. He has courted unions such as the United Steelworkers, who endorsed him in 2020, and he has tried to win back rank-and-file union members who moved toward the Republican Party in recent years. 

At the same time, lowering carbon emissions is another priority for the Biden administration. Imports from China are often cheaper for companies trying to stand up new clean-energy facilities in the U.S. The domestic-sourcing rules have also unnerved allies in Europe and Asia, who say the subsidies for U.S.-made components will hurt their products.

“There’s a general theme where they are clearly trying to balance the two goals but the leaning has historically been towards decarbonization,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners. 

At issue for the steel industry is the Treasury Department’s classification of photovoltaic trackers, which rotate solar panels so they follow the sun’s movement over the course of the day. In guidance released in May, the department said those trackers were a “manufactured product,” meaning they could include foreign metals and still potentially qualify for the bonus credit. 

The steelmakers want the metal used to build the trackers to instead be deemed as “iron and steel products,” which must come from the U.S. in order for the project to be eligible for the incentive. 

“Categorization of tracking systems as manufactured products would permit many of the structural steel components of new solar projects in the U.S. to be imported from China,” the companies said. 

The Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents companies that develop solar farms, praised Treasury’s guidance when it was released in May. The group’s CEO said Treasury’s approach would “spark a flood of investment in American-made clean energy equipment and components.”

Other battles over IRA subsidies have involved electric vehicles. For example, for consumers to get the full $7,500 tax credit to buy an EV, much of the minerals in its battery must come from the U.S. or a country with a free-trade agreement with the U.S. 

Many close allies, however, don’t have traditional free-trade agreements with the U.S. To get around that, administration officials crafted a special deal with Japan for minerals used in clean-energy technologies, and they are in talks with others about similar arrangements.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), a centrist whose support was critical to the passage of the climate law, has repeatedly lambasted the Treasury Department’s implementation of the electric-vehicle tax credit, including criticizing its decision to consider Japan a free-trade partner.

Automakers, including Ford Motor, have pushed for looser interpretations, including a requirement that none of an EV battery’s minerals or components be linked to a “foreign entity of concern,” which could potentially include any Chinese company. Ford has joined with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology to build a battery factory in Michigan. 

Yellen said in a recent interview that the climate law’s goals of reducing emissions and boosting domestic production can be difficult to navigate.

“We want to see a lot of electric vehicles be on the road,” she said. “But having more resilient supply chains is also clearly a goal of the legislation, and sometimes the two things do come into tension.”

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The AES Corporation's Andes Solar IIb

The facility's start-up in the region of Antofagasta, Chile, represents a —-unique—- milestone in the renewable energy sector. With an installed capacity of 180 MW and 112 MW of five-hour duration energy storage, this facility is now the largest system of its kind in Latin America. The Andes Solar IIb facility's capacity comprises 170 MW of bifacial solar panels and 10 MW of 5B's Maverick technology. 
The construction of this facility utilized Maverick technology and pre-made modular components, resulting in a 33% reduction in installation time compared to other traditional solar systems. Adding Andes Solar IIb to AES Andes brings the total number of solar facilities managed in the Antofagasta region to 429 MW. 
Reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and efficient power generation, AES Corporation continues to make significant strides in the renewable energy sector.

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Source media editing by Germán & Co

Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue.

Gregory Garrabrants, a GOP donor and CEO of online Axos Bank, approved the loans after the former president’s main lender had cut ties.

The Washington Post by Michael Kranish, July 27, 2023 

Gregory Garrabrants is president and CEO of Axos Bank, which made two loans worth $225 million to Donald Trump in 2022 after the former president's main lender and several of his banks had cut ties with him. (Sandy Huffaker)

SAN DIEGO — As Donald Trump considered another White House run last year, his company’s finances were at risk of spiraling into crisis.

The former president’s longtime lender and several banks with his deposits had cut ties in the days around the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, at a time when Trump had hundreds of millions in loans coming due. In February 2022, the accounting firm that had worked for him for two decades dropped Trump and advised against relying on his “statement of financial condition,” a metric banks use to evaluate the risks of a loan.

Unless he found a new lender, Trump’s business empire could have been in jeopardy.

Then a new partner came to the rescue: A little known, online-only financial firm headquartered in a suburban San Diego office park.

Axos Bank, formerly known as Bank of Internet USA, had grown from one of the first digital banks into a profitable, publicly traded company in part by specializing in loans to borrowers other banks had shied away from — all while navigating federal regulator scrutiny over its internal operations and a congressional hearing that cited its involvement in high interest rates on some loans.

One day after the warning by Trump’s accounting firm became public, Axos’s blunt-spoken president and CEO — a Republican donor named Gregory Garrabrants — signed off on a $100 million loan for Trump Tower, the 58-story Manhattan skyscraper that had long been Trump’s home and base of operations, according to the bank.

Three months later, Garrabrants approved a second deal that provided $125 million for Trump’s Doral resort, a sprawling golf course complex in Miami-Dade County he had owned since 2012. Axos also financed part of a loan that helped facilitate the $375 million purchase of Trump’s D.C. hotel by a group of investors.

The Axos loans to Trump were vital to stabilizing his post-presidential finances and enabling him to mount the campaign that now has him leading the GOP pack for the 2024 presidential nomination, according to disclosure records, loan documents and financial experts.

“It was crucial … that someone gave him credit or he could have had loans going into foreclosure,” said Bert Ely, a longtime independent banking analyst. “And that was also an important factor for him politically.”

Former president Donald Trump speaks to staff and reporters aboard his airplane on June 10. “I don’t need banks,” Trump said in April, while not mentioning the Axos loans. “I have a lot of cash. I built a great business with my family.” (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The loans have drawn scrutiny from New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) as part of her broader suit that accuses Trump of “falsifying” records to inflate the value of his properties on financial statements to obtain earlier loans at lower interest rates. Trump “sought to avoid submitting a statement of financial condition” to Axos and instead pushed the bank to calculate his worth, James asserted in the suit, which does not accuse Axos of wrongdoing.

For more than a year, Garrabrants, 51, has refrained from speaking publicly about his decision to approve the loans. But in his first interview about the matter, he told The Washington Post in June at the bank’s headquarters and a telephone follow-up in July that the deals had nothing to do with his Republican politics. He said he made the loans because they will be profitable for his bank, adding that he did not agree with other bankers who stayed away from Trump due to allegations that he had incited the insurrection or concerns about his honesty.

It was “not my job or my role” to judge Trump’s actions, said Garrabrants, who donated $9,600 to support Trump’s 2020 campaign but said he’s never met the former president, dealing instead with Trump’s son Eric, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

The $100 million Trump Tower loan was made at a 4.25 percent interest rate and the $125 million loan for the Doral property at a 4.9 percent interest rate, with both maturing in 2032, according to property records. The rates are within the range of commercial loans during that period, according to Federal Reserve data, and came before much of the interest rate spike occurred last year; public records do not say whether the rates will change over the life of the loan, which analysts said makes it difficult to directly compare them to other commercial loans.

Garrabrants declined to discuss some details of the loans, including the long-term interest rate or how they are secured, while saying they were done on “market terms.” The Trump loans, which represent about 1 percent of the bank’s $20 billion in assets, are structured to guarantee profits for Axos, Garrabrants said.

“It wouldn’t matter if I was friends with someone, I’m not going to make a loan that’s no good,” he said. “I don’t like anyone that much.”

When he left the White House, Trump’s businesses faced head winds. Trump Tower was put on a “watch list,” an indication of concern about the ability to repay a loan as its occupancy rate fell, according to a Wells Fargo analysis reported by Bloomberg. (Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post)

As president, Trump tried to head off claims of potential conflicts of interest with his business by handing control of the family firm to his son and pledging to avoid deals with foreign entities. But those rules no longer apply post-presidency, and Trump and his family have struck up significant business with Saudi Arabia and other partners abroad in the last two years.

If Trump returns to the White House, Axos could face intensifying scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers about the loan terms, his relationship with the bank and its treatment by regulators, observers said.

In his interview with The Post, Garrabrants rejected James’s claims that Trump had sought to avoid providing certain financial information when applying for Axos loans, saying he received all relevant details he needed to review the deals.

“He never refused any information we asked for,” Garrabrants said. “We asked for a series of items in a specific format … and he delivered the items in the specific format we asked for.”

Garrabrants declined to comment when asked if he or the bank had been contacted by anyone from James’s office regarding her case against Trump.

Trump and his spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. He has denied James’s allegations and described her lawsuit as a political attack. The former president has recently downplayed the importance of loans to his finances.

“I don’t need banks,” Trump said in April, while not mentioning the Axos loans. “I have a lot of cash. I built a great business with my family.”

Edward Hemmelgarn, who closely follows Axos as president of Shaker Investments, which invests in the bank, said it likely was able to secure the loans with much stiffer terms than Trump usually accepts because of his urgent need for a lender.

“I assume the only reason Donald Trump was willing to put up with it is because no one else was willing to make a loan,” Hemmelgarn said, adding, “I am assuming the bank has been very careful about this because of the high profile of Donald Trump.”

‘It was the banks’ problem’

Trump had a long history of relying on banks for hefty loans to shore up his business, shifting the risk to others as much as possible.

While portraying himself as a business genius, Trump filed six corporate bankruptcies. He created a publicly traded company that eventually saw its share price tumble from $36 to 17 cents. By the early 1990s, long before he got into politics or starred on reality TV, Trump faced numerous financial crises as he tried to keep afloat a New York-based real estate empire.

So when he first came to Deutsche Bank in the 1990s seeking massive loans, a managing director at the bank, Mike Offit, knew it was a risk.

“He’d had problems with a bunch of properties,” Offit recalled in an interview. “Your immediate response is, 'God, why would I want to get involved in that?’”

But after examining a proposed $125 million loan on a New York City office building and a separate deal on a condominium project, Offit calculated that the reward vastly outweighed the risk and signed off.

“You look at the property and if the property is great and meets the criteria for making a loan, absent some horrific reason not to, you make it because that’s how you make money,” he said. The deal was so favorable that Offit concluded “I can make 10 times the normal profit” at a low risk.

Donald Trump, center, and George Ditomassi, right, president of Milton Bradley, stand behind the board game, “Trump, The Game,” at a news conference in New York on Feb. 7, 1989. (Mario Suriani/AP)

Both deals proved hugely profitable for the bank, said Offit, who left Deutsche in 1999. With Deutsche on his side, Trump rebuilt his brand and played the starring role in “The Apprentice,” the NBC series that presented precisely the titan image he wanted the world to see.

But the relationship soured after Offit left Deutsche and the 2008 financial crisis crashed real estate values. Facing difficulties repaying a massive loan on a 92-story Chicago tower, Trump sued Deutsche Bank by claiming it helped to cause the recession, and the bank countersued, noting that Trump had written in a book of his about his loans, “I figured it was the banks’ problem, not mine. What the hell did I care?”

After resolving the suit, Trump later borrowed another $170 million from Deutsche for his D.C. hotel. But the bank, which declined to comment for this story, finally refused his request for another $50 million in 2016, citing his presidential run as posing “an unacceptable level of reputation risk.”

And after Trump sought reelection in 2020, Deutsche cut ties with him, citing his company’s failure to answer the bank’s questions about James’s investigation — a decision made public after the Jan. 6 attack.

Signature Bank, where Trump had deposits, announced shortly after Jan. 6 that it was closing his account and urged Trump to resign, according to an archived version of its website. Two other banks where Trump held deposits also closed his accounts after the attack on the Capitol, The Post reported.

As he left the White House, Trump’s businesses also faced head winds. Trump Tower was put on a “watch list,” an indication of concern about the ability to repay a loan as its occupancy rate fell, according to a Wells Fargo analysis reported by Bloomberg. His Doral resort, meanwhile, had seen its revenue plummet by more than 40 percent in 2020, according to Forbes.

By February 2022, when his accounting firm, Mazars, issued its warning about Trump’s financial statements and ended its relationship with him, the former president’s family company faced having to repay more than $300 million to Deutsche and $55 million to another bank, according to Trump’s financial disclosure and other public records.

Failing to pay, in the worst case scenario, could have led to lawsuits and foreclosures.

Growing scrutiny into practices

As Trump searched for a new lender in the months after Jan. 6. A broker came to an Axos official with a proposal: giving Trump a new $100 million loan on Trump Tower.

Unlike many other bankers, Garrabrants was not put off by the risk. That’s how he’d made his career.

A former attorney who had clerked for a Republican-appointed federal judge, Garrabrants was a senior vice president of IndyMac bank before it failed during the 2008 housing collapse. He told the Los Angeles Business Journal that “they got caught on the wrong side of the tsunami,” leading the bank to be undercapitalized, a lesson that would guide his career. He said his role at IndyMac was in a division unrelated to the problems that led to the failure.

Garrabrants was appointed CEO and president of Bank of Internet in October 2007, helping boost the decade-old bank into a formidable institution by continuing to forego storefront locations and leaning into a lower cost, online-only operation. But Garrabrants’s approach drew intensifying scrutiny.

A former attorney who had clerked for a Republican-appointed federal judge, Garrabrants was a senior vice president of IndyMac bank before it failed during the 2008 housing collapse. He said his role at IndyMac was in a division unrelated to the problems that led to the failure. (Sandy Huffaker for The Washington Post)

In 2016, the Houston Municipal Pension System filed a shareholder suit alleging in part that years earlier the bank and Garrabrants were “routinely overriding … internal controls.” The suit, which echoed some allegations in a lawsuit filed by a former Axos auditor, said the bank “issued loans to foreign nationals who had criminal or suspicious background” and claimed Garrabrants had threatened to “destroy” an ex-employee if they shared damaging information. A lawyer for the pension system declined to comment.

The bank denied the allegations, saying it had never revised a financial statement, had received “clean audits” and won approvals from regulators. Last year it settled the case for $14 million without admitting wrongdoing, according to court filings and the bank. Garrabrants said in the interview that the bank’s insurance company paid the settlement, which he said was less than the potential cost of litigation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department also opened probes into matters related to the bank’s practices, according to public documents; both were closed without charges.

After the SEC closed its probe in 2017, Garrabrants’s bank purchased an interest in a $57 million loan to Fortress Investment Group, which had backed a project linked to the family firm of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, according to the bank and contemporaneous media reports. Asked by reporters at the time about whether there was any connection between the loan and the SEC’s decision, Garrabrants described the claim as a “tin-hat conspiracy.” The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.

Garrabrants told The Post that it was not a loan to Jared Kushner or the family company directly, and that he didn’t talk at the time to Kushner. A Kushner spokeswoman, asked via email for comment, said in a statement that “Jared never spoke to Axos Bank, Bank of the Internet, or the SEC about any of this. He had no knowledge of this matter until this email.” Fortress did not respond to a request for comment.

One of Axos Bank's branches is in San Diego. The bank, formerly known as Bank of Internet USA, was one of the first digital banks. (Sandy Huffaker for The Washington Post)

Axos practices also drew scrutiny in a 2021 hearing where Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the bank had evaded a state rate cap by partnering with a firm that charged a family business 92 percent interest. Garrabrants said in The Post interview that the bank is no longer involved in such loans.

As the bank grew, Garrabrants became one of the best-compensated executives in the industry. Garrabrants’s 2018 compensation package had the potential to reach as much as $34.4 million, due in part to performance awards, the Los Angeles Times reported. When the pandemic hit in 2020, digital-only Axos was well-positioned to pick up customers, and its customer base grew exponentially.

Garrabrants, meanwhile, consistently contributed to Republican candidates, though he was not initially a Trump donor. After backing Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz, respectively, in the 2012 and 2016 presidential cycles, he backed Trump in 2020 as well as making contributions to the Republican Party and other GOP candidates, totaling about $66,000 between 2012 and 2022, according to filings.

“I’m a Republican,” Garrabrants said. “I’m not particularly politically active. But you can look at my political leanings from my donations.”

While the bank continued to be little known to the general public, it was gaining notice as a place where big borrowers who faced pushback from mainstream banks could find a willing lender — albeit sometimes at a higher interest rate and stiffer terms. Garrabrants said the image was unfair, stressing that the bank had specialized in large single-family loans to individuals with complex finances.

If any borrower had complex finances, it was Trump.

A willing lender

As Garrabrants pondered whether to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the former president, he decided to personally investigate the risks.

In early 2022, Garrabrants met Eric Trump for the first time, and the pair went for a tour of Trump Tower. The bank CEO said his due diligence led him from upper-floor offices to the bowels of the building, where he even poked around the mechanical room.

He was impressed. “I walked the building and went through each individual plan, went through some of the underlying data. I walked the neighborhood, looked at other projects in that area, went through the lease,” Garrabrants said, noting the mechanical room was “clean as a whistle.”

Police officers stand outside Trump Tower in New York in March. (Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)

Garrabrants personally signed off on the $100 million loan, he said. James, in her suit against Trump said the Trump Organization in February 2022 pushed the bank to “leave it to the lender” to determine his worth, rather than submitting the same kind of “statement of financial condition” he had provided for prior loans.

Three months later, Garrabrants authorized the $125 million loan to Trump for his Doral property. Unlike Trump Tower, Garrabrants was familiar with Doral after attending financial conferences there, he said.

While banks are required to obtain a company’s financial statement before making a loan, there is no industry-wide standard document and it is up to each institution to determine how to collect the information, according to Kyle Welch, an associate professor of accounting at George Washington University.

Garrabrants told The Post his bank had verified Trump’s information by its own methodology and was at the head of the line for repayment. He also discounted the value of statements of financial condition in general, saying, “I’ve never run into a borrower who thinks their property is worth what I think it’s worth.”

Eric Trump did not respond to an interview request, instead sending a statement to The Post: “Axos is an amazing bank and it is a pleasure to work with them.”

Garrabrants said he was barred for privacy reasons from disclosing certain conditions of the two loans. But he said that in loaning to the former president, he knew it would “be subject to additional scrutiny.”

“So what we wanted to make sure we did was structure the loan in a manner that was even at a higher bar than it normally would be, because I expected that there would be folks who would be interested in it,” he said. He declined to say what higher conditions were imposed.

Axos also played a role in another key deal: the sale of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The May 11, 2022 purchase of that money-losing property fetched $375 million, much more than analysts had expected, enabling Trump to pay off his $170 million Deutsche Bank loan and make a profit of more than $100 million.

Axos had gotten involved in the deal two months before the closing.

CGI Merchant Group, the buyer of the hotel’s lease, got some of its financing from an investment group called MSD Partners. That group’s investors include computer mogul Michael S. Dell. MSD, which has often done business with Axos, asked the bank to help provide financing for the deal. They signed an agreement on March 1, 2022, MSD said in a statement to The Post. Dell was a passive investor and was not involved in the decision to provide the financing, his spokesman said.

MSD and Axos declined to specify the amount provided by the bank, but the bank is described in property records as having a “senior participation interest” in the loan, meaning it would be repaid ahead of others.

CGI Merchant Group, which partnered with Hilton to relaunch the hotel, did not respond to a request for comment. MSD Partners declined to comment beyond confirming the timing of its participation.

Garrabrants, asked whether the hotel deal could have happened without Axos’s support, responded that he believed it would have occurred regardless because he had to compete with other institutions before closing the deal.

Timely loans bolster net worth

Trump says that his finances have improved from the perilous days after Jan. 6, 2021, according to his latest personal financial disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics.

Trump claimed in his July report that he has earned more than $1 billion in the past two years, with millions from speaking fees and significant revenue from new business partners — including new ventures tied to Saudi investors. Trump claimed he has paid off three of his four loans from Deutsche Bank, the disclosure said. He also reported earning $159 million from the Doral golf resort, indicating it has recovered from the pandemic lull.

While Trump provided more information than required in the disclosure, his family company is privately held, making it difficult to fully assess his claims of vast wealth.

Axos, meanwhile, has performed better than many other financial institutions. As of June 30, the stock of parent company Axos Financial has grown 2,128 percent since Garrabrant’s appointment in October 2007, compared to the Nasdaq Composite, which has increased 380 percent during that time, the bank said. Nonetheless, its long-term rating was downgraded by Moody’s Investors Service in March, in part due to the bank’s real estate exposure. The stock has dropped from around $61 a share in January 2022 to $47 as of Wednesday, following a broader decline in banks. The Moody’s report did not mention the Trump loans and the company declined to comment on its rating. Garrabrants said that action was part of a broad downgrade of the banking sector and stressed Axos is still “investment-grade rated,” which he said shows the bank is financially solid.

It has been growing steadily in recent years and now is the nation’s 101st-largest bank as other banks have suffered failures — including Signature Bank, which was closed by regulators in March.

Trump’s Axos loans are being repaid on schedule, Garrabrants said.

The civil fraud case instituted by James is scheduled for trial in October, with the state seeking to fine him $250 million and stop him from doing business in New York. Among the state’s allegations is that Trump’s falsifying of statements of financial condition saved him $150 million over a 10-year period in lowered interest costs.

The case could force Trump to reveal more about his finances and how he has obtained his loans. James has included the sale of his D.C. hotel in her complaint, alleging that it was the result of a Deutsche loan “he was able to obtain by using his false and misleading statements.” Trump was deposed by James’s office in April, but the contents so far have not been made public.

Separately, Alvin Bragg (D), the district attorney in New York City, is continuing to investigate a similar financial fraud case but has not decided on whether to file charges.

The James case could also draw more scrutiny, even indirectly, to Trump’s business with Axos. Ely, the banking analyst, said it is inevitable that the Axos loans will be viewed in a political lens, with questions asked about whether a borrower or lender has leverage over the other. In past instances, Trump’s lenders have been drawn into an array of investigations, most recently with Deutsche probed by congressional Democrats.

“Trump is like flypaper,” Ely said. “He draws regulatory attention, and there is reputational risk in that for a bank.”

Offit, the former Deutsche banker who once approved loans for Trump, said the negative publicity would have dissuaded him from getting into business with the former president.

“It’s just not worth it,” said Offit. “At some point, you can’t make enough money.”

But Garrabrants said his job is “not to be politicizing banking … would it really be the case you’d want a society where somebody who was prominent would be denied financial services from any institution? … I think the answer is, ‘No.’”

Asked his views about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021 — which the former president indicated earlier this month had made him the target of a federal grand jury probe — Garrabrants declined to respond directly, saying, “if I ever decide to run for political office, which I have no intention to do so, but if I do that, I’ll make sure that I am prepared to answer a wide variety of questions about different political events that occur.”

Nor did Garrabrants express concern about Trump’s history of corporate bankruptcies, his lawsuit against Deutsche, or his statement that “what the hell did I care” if banks were repaid.

“All I can say is that, if people don’t pay, I take their stuff,” Garrabrants said. “And I make sure their stuff is worth way, way more than enough to pay me.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Source. Le Monde/Editing by Germán & Co 

Roman Abramovich the 'invisible man,' a business and survival specialist

One million roubles for a photograph of him... A blurry photo eventually emerged, making Abramovich famous...

Le Monde By Lucas Minisini  (London, New York, Tel Aviv, special correspondent), Benoît Vitkine  (Moscow, correspondent) and Aureliano Tonet  (London, Rome, Tel Aviv, special correspondent), Published yesterday of 26 of July, 2023.

Investigation'Roman Abramovich, the most secretive of oligarchs' (3/6). The oligarch managed to survive in the turmoil of the Russian business world and capitalize on all his experiences, including political ones, to bolster his invulnerability.

Roman Abramovich had never revealed his face. He had never let anyone photograph him. In the late 1990s, when his name flooded the Russian media, the young oligarch remained invisible. The press had to commission rough illustrations of the businessman, who ran the oil giant Sibneft, employing tens of thousands of people across the country. "During a lecture the politician Boris Nemtsov delivered at Oxford University in 1998, he was even asked if Abramovich really existed," said Nigel Gould-Davis, a former British diplomat in Russia (2003-2007) and ambassador to Belarus (2007-2009).

Also in 1998, the NTV channel launched a competition for its viewers to debunk conspiracy theories, offering a prize of 1 million roubles (around $2,000) for the very first photo of the enigmatic 30-something. Less than two months later, NTV received a photo, but the man in the picture had a mustache: It wasn't Abramovich. The prize would ultimately be won thanks to a blurry photo, where the tycoon's face, calm eyes, his composed demeanor were barely even discernible. It was enough to make headlines in every paper. He had become a public figure.

Behind the scenes, the businessman had the best allies, and secured a prominent place among the national elite. In 1996, President Boris Yeltsin was re-elected for a second four-year term. Together with Boris Berezovsky, Abramovich had financed part of his campaign, with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in charge of gathering the funds. Abramovich began spending entire days in the Kremlin's corridors with Tatyana Dyachenko, the president's daughter. The 36-year-old former Soviet aerospace worker acted as an informal adviser to her father, a role inspired by Claude Chirac's position alongside her father Jacques Chirac, the French president who came to Moscow on an official visit at that time.

'Roman, think of the family'

As Yeltsin's health declined after multiple heart attacks, his youngest daughter asserted herself in the various power struggles. The "tsarina" and"little princess of the Kremlin," as she was nicknamed by the press, consolidated the support of loyal followers, including Alexander Voloshin, the deputy head of the presidential administration, and Valentin Yumashev, Yeltsin's new spokesman, who Dyachenko married in 2001. Yumashev, a journalist and author of the president's memoirs, became friends with Abramovich as soon as they met in 1994, at the home of Boris Gryzlov, Vladimir Putin's future interior minister. "Together with the restaurateur Arkady Novikov, they sometimes cooked shashlik, meat brochettes," said Yuri Feklistov, a photographer who was close to Yumachev. "Valentin introduced him to me as his 'friend Roman, one of the richest in Russia,' in 1997."

In the newspapers owned by banker Vladimir Gusinsky, which were highly critical of the Kremlin, this circle was referred to as "the family." The nickname was a criticism of the petty arrangements of the president and his entourage, suspected of financial embezzlement, while the young democracy was going through a serious economic crisis. Leading figures, including Dyachenko, were accused of taking bribes in return for public contracts.

According to several witnesses from the time, their funds were managed by Abramovich, who excelled as Yeltsin's cash handler. "When he was upset with the president, Alexander Korzhakov, his head of security, would repeat that the family's money had to be taken 'from Abramovich,'" said the photographer Feklistov. In July 1998, a billboard appeared for a few hours on Kutuzov Avenue, in the heart of the Russian capital, before it was taken down. It displayed a photomontage of the oligarch wearing a black suit with his hands crossed and surrounded by coins. In the center of the image, three lines of text stated, seemingly as a provocation: "Roman thinks of the family. The family thinks of Roman."

Just how far did the Yeltsin clan protect the oil tycoon? The highly advantageous terms on which Abramovich's oil company Sibneft was acquired aroused suspicion. How was the oligarch able to win the bidding for this lucrative business with an offer ($100.3 million) almost identical to the starting price ($100 million)? A parliamentary inquiry was opened in 1997. Prosecutor Yuri Skuratov suspected there was a vast corruption operation. A confidential legal document, dating from the 1990s and published by the BBC in March 2022, suggested that the Russian state lost $2.7 billion in the deal, to Abramovich and his two associates, Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili. According to the BBC, the document says ''The Dept. of Economic Crimes investigators came to the conclusion that if Abramovich could be brought to trial he would have faced accusations of fraud... by an organized criminal group." But the legal proceedings were never launched. They were said to be stopped by none other than Yeltsin. To this day, Abramovich and his lawyers deny the accusations of financial crimes.

Also in Prosecutor Skuratov's sights were banker Alexander Mamut, a close associate of Abramovich; the head of the president's Property Management Department, Pavel Borodin; and his deputy at the time, Vladimir Putin. Did they also take or pay bribes? After a few months, in the spring of 1999, a video recording of Prosecutor Skuratov with two prostitutes was broadcast on the main public TV channel. This kompromat, a Russian word meaning "compromising materials," was authenticated by the highest echelon of the state during a spirited press conference, attended by Putin, who had become head of the Russian Federation's intelligence service, the FSB. The prosecutor was suspended and then lost his job the following year. "This whole thing was obviously political," he explained to the BBC in early 2022. "In my investigations I came very close to the family of Boris Yeltsin."

Parliamentary immunity

Abramovich's activities were also being scrutinized by the courts abroad, as the 1990s drew to a close. In Switzerland, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development began legal proceedings for forgery and fraudulent practices due to the non-repayment of a loan exceeding $17 million to Runicom, one of the entrepreneur's early oil ventures. At the same time, a Bank of New York employee was accused of laundering $7.5 billion from Russia. The oligarch was one of many people mentioned in the case. "Roman was very afraid of the law," said Feklistov, who at the time was the only photographer permitted to follow the "invisible man" on his travels.

To avoid prosecution, what could be better than parliamentary immunity? In 1999, Abramovich obtained this safeguard by getting elected as a representative of Chukotka, in the far east of the country. At the same time, his associate Berezovsky became the representative for a constituency in Karachay-Cherkessia, in the North Caucasus. According to several people Le Monde interviewed, this political ambition provided a cover, to be protected from the law. This view was always dismissed by Abramovich: "It was actually Chukotka that chose me," he told Ekaterina Kuznetsova, a researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in 2002, in the journal Politique Internationale. "I ran in this region's parliamentary elections at the request of the former governor, Alexander Nazarov."

The following year, the oil tycoon coveted the governorship of this "godforsaken country." With just 50,000 inhabitants and a surface area larger than France, the territory, frozen for more than eight months of the year and separated from Alaska by the Bering Strait, embodied all the problems of the former Soviet bloc: poverty, lack of modern infrastructure, alcoholism and corruption. Accompanied by a young, international team from his business empire, including his close friend Evgeny Shvidler, Abramovich led a daring campaign, chartering planes full of food from Moscow to supply local supermarkets. Led by Sergei Kapkov, Russia's future culture minister, the campaign communications were tightly controlled: The candidate prohibited journalists who accompanied him from recording interviews or even jotting down notes.

Benedict Allen, an English explorer who met Abramovich during an expedition among the Indigenous populations of Russia's Far East in late 2000, believed that, despite his rigid methods, he embodied a "new hope" on the ground, symbolic of a "new Russia." "He wanted me to tell him what people really thought of him," said Allen. "People thought he was incorruptible, because he already had so much money." Abramovich won the election with 92% of the vote. He brought in a famous Moscow rock band, Mashina Vremeni, for the handover ceremony and set up a sophisticated but alcohol-free buffet – he doesn't drink.

Across the strait

As soon as he took office, the young decision-maker restored the telephone network and renovated the Soviet-era buildings, repainting their facades in bright colors. He made sure that salaries were paid on time, by bank transfer, to limit the purchase of alcohol in cash. "With his own money, he paid for thousands of children under 14 to go on holidays by the Black Sea," said Allen, who returned to Moscow in a jet loaned by the businessman. "He seemed to have great ambitions for the region." Interviewed by Le Monde, Yumashev, Yeltsin's former spokesman, said that Abramovich made sacrifices himself for this mandate, drawing on his personal funds. "He transformed the territory," said the former journalist. "But it didn't help his business at all, and he dreamed of becoming free again."

Anadyr, the capital of Chukotka, is nicknamed the "city of flying dogs," in reference to its strong winds. Abramovich, who had a house built in the region, returned every six months, no more. Indeed, when asked what his favorite place in the Russian Far East was, he usually answered "the chic suburbs of Moscow," with a smile. The rest of the time, around 80 Sibneft employees managed the day-to-day business. In 2002, in Time, Abramovich confessed that his employees "followed the leader" without question, even though he never revealed his full political strategy to them.

Each trip – almost 10 hours by plane from Moscow – was also an opportunity for him to cross the Bering Strait to Anchorage, Alaska, in the United States. He would fly there by private plane and often stayed in the Captain Cook Hotel presidential suite, on the waterfront. According to Jeff Berliner, a former economic advisor to Tony Knowles, Alaska's Democratic governor (1994-2002), he regained a "sense of normalcy" on American soil, which was unattainable in Russia because of his new-found notoriety.

Abramovich, with his jeans and three-day beard which made him look like a "university lecturer's assistant," was discreet and strolled around without a bodyguard and "had dinner at McDonald's." His goal was symbolic, but also geopolitical: He wanted to bring closer together the Russian and American regions, separated by the Ice Curtain (in reference to the Iron Curtain) during the Cold War.

In both Chukotka and Alaska, Abramovich supplied weapons and ammunition to Indigenous peoples to organize whale hunts. While he had one meeting after another with Alaska's political and business elite, he preferred the oil fields to the top dogs of finance. "We took him to an investment fund that works 21 hours a day, to make use of every time zone," said Berliner. "He turned to me, and said in slightly broken English, 'This is boring! Can we leave?'" Even so, his stays seemed a little too regular for the taste of both American intelligence and the federal law enforcement. Berliner was warned: "'Watch out with Abramovich!' the CIA and FBI people used to tell me, 'He's an influent oligarch.'"

Gifts to Putin

His role as governor strengthened his ties with a key partner, whom he had met thanks to Berezovsky: Putin. Following his role in shaping Sergei Stepashin's government (May 1999-August 1999), Abramovich actively supported the former FSB director's appointment as prime minister on August 9, 1999. "Roman was one of the people I consulted," said Yumashev, who would be an adviser to Putin until 2022. Yumashev also recalled a meeting in the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's office, with "around 20 businessmen," including Abramovich. In tune with "the family" made up of Yumashev, Voloshin and Dyachenko, he supported Putin's candidacy in the 2000 presidential election. Putin pledged that the Yeltsin clan would never be prosecuted.

The relationship between the two men first took the form of a yacht, the Olympia, which Abramovich gave to the Russian president at the start of his first term. Measuring 57 meters, with 12 cabins and several decks, it was constructed in the Netherlands for $35 million. Long the subject of wild rumors, this gift was described in detail in an English court in 2010 by whistleblower Dmitry Skarga, a former shipping company executive.

There may have been other gifts along these lines. Also in the early 2000s, Abramovich was said to have suggested to Berezovsky to offer Putin a new boat, for the sum of $10 million per person or thereabouts. Berezovsky reportedly refused outright. As a result of this largesse, by his own admission, the generous Abramovich was regularly invited by the president to the Kremlin, where they discussed Chukotka among other things.

Abramovich openly supported the president's forceful methods, including the constitutional reform passed during the initial months of his term (2000-2004), enabling him to remove regional representatives who did not please him. "Do you really believe that it is possible to reform a state in a totally democratic way? I don't think so!" the oligarch said, clearly unconvinced by the rule of law, in the 2002 interview with the researcher Kuznetsova. At the end of 2004, Putin also approved the law abolishing direct elections to the post of governor. This autocratic shift was not met with the slightest resistance from Abramovich the governor.

Meetings at the Kremlin

Above all, this conciliatory attitude helped the oil tycoon to expand his business empire. In 2002, he wanted to consolidate Sibneft by absorbing Slavneft, another oil company put up for auction by the state. A more substantial Chinese offer displeased the Russian authorities, who began aggressive negotiations. On arrival at Moscow airport, a member of the Chinese delegation was kidnapped. He mysteriously reappeared unscathed as soon as China withdrew its offer, enabling Slavneft to join Abramovich's fold.

Just after that, the oligarch bought 70% of Russian aluminum through a substantial investment in Rusal, alongside businessman Oleg Deripaska, the big winner of the "aluminum wars" – an expression referring to the period lasting several months at the end of the 1990s, when mafias linked to prominent businessmen killed over a hundred people in order to control the production of this metal. Abramovich wasn't overly worried. In the same interview with researcher Kuznetsova, he talked about how Putin's government was "really economically competent, and knows exactly what it has to do." According to him, "The previous team was much weaker and lacked professionalism. What's good for business is good for the state." Then ranked as the second richest individual in Russia and the 49th wealthiest globally, at just 36 years of age, Abramovich often had the chance to talk it over with the main man: He met with Putin every week, in the Kremlin.

Their good relations became all the more visible when the president decided to create a vacuum around him, by targeting several oligarchs from the Yeltsin era. Summoned by the courts on charges of tax fraud, Berezovsky was forced into exile in the UK, where he was granted political asylum in 2003. Through the ORT television channel, which he owned for many years, he had openly criticized Putin's leadership since the Kursk nuclear submarine accident (118 deaths). Berezovsky would never be forgiven for this affront. In London, Abramovich's former ally, who was once dubbed the "Godfather of the Kremlin," would never again travel without his bodyguards.

Khodorkovsky, the other oil oligarch and Russia's richest mogul, admired by the international elite, was not allowed to question the Kremlin's policies either. In August 2003, he signed a deal to merge Yukos – his oil company – with Sibneft, owned by Abramovich, who pocketed around $3 billion in the process. Two months later, the plan was abandoned. Khodorkovsky was arrested at a Siberian airport. Following several controversial trials, he was sentenced to a total of 13 years in prison for tax fraud and money laundering.

Invisibility cloak

In Russia and abroad, these lawsuits against the renowned entrepreneur were regarded as a politically motivated decision bearing Putin's signature. In the hope of securing his release, some Yukos shareholders sought the support of Abramovich, their short-lived partner. They asked Natalia Gevorkyan, author of the book Putin's Prisoner (co-written with Khodorkovsky), to offer him "any deal" if he would help the Yukos boss get out of prison, said the former journalist from the newspaper Kommersant.

During a meeting in London, she said, Abramovich told her that he couldn't help: "If you think Putin is the same person he was when he was elected in 2000, you're wrong. I can't walk into his office, rip off my T-shirt and ask him to release Khodorkovsky..."

Behind this act of allegiance, it was hard not to see the most ancient of ploys: the art of saving one's skin. Abramovich mastered this metis, as the ancient Greeks called the intelligence of survival.

The explorer Allen, who witnessed his adventures in Chukotka, strongly agreed: "To survive in a hostile environment, whether it's the Arctic, the primeval forest or Russian politics, you need a certain kind of mentality. Roman, from what I've observed, is an authentic survivor." Orphaned at the age of three, the oligarch very quickly understood that to survive, there's nothing like disappearing, as if draped in an invisibility cloak. He has applied that lesson from the circles of power to the Arctic Circle.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image by Germán & Co

US power regulator to weigh plans to speed up green energy connection

Reuters by Valerie Volcovici and Nichola Groom, July 27, 2023

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES, July 27 (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Thursday will vote on proposals to speed up the connection of new energy projects to the electric grid, which could ease a growing backlog of requests from renewable energy developers and deliver more green energy to consumers.

Long waits for transmission interconnection have slowed efforts to ease wild pricing and tight power supply in some markets, and hobbled the deployment of big solar and wind projects that the Biden administration wants built to combat climate change.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will bring up its proposed improvements for the grid interconnection process at its monthly meeting later on Thursday, according to its agenda. The planned vote comes nearly one year after landmark legislation aimed at boosting renewable energy projects called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) became law.

FERC Chairman Willie Phillips said in May that the commission could address the problem in part by shifting the approval process from a “first come, first serve” approach to a “first ready” approach – meaning projects that are ready with land rights and permits could move ahead instead of waiting behind developers that are less prepared.

New renewable generators and battery storage resources currently must go through a complex process before they can be connected. That process, which includes multiple studies of how their projects will affect the grid, can be costly and time consuming.

An April analysis by the government-funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the average interconnection process takes five years, more than double the time than in 2008. Meanwhile, last year's passage of the IRA, which offers tax credits for renewable energy, has spurred major investment in new projects.

The interconnection proposal is part of a broader package of reforms FERC is working on in coming months to help hasten the deployment of renewable energy and storage. It is also seeking to finalize proposals this year to improve planning and cost allocation for transmission lines.

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News round-up, July 27, 2023

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Editorial…

Extraordinary but Dangerous "Phenomenon": "It's So Hot, They're Growing Mangoes in Italy"

The challenges faced by farmers in the Mediterranean offer a glimpse into the difficulties of feeding a planet that is getting warmer. Rising sea levels, dry spells, and heatwaves are causing disruptions to food production in this region, which is known for its unique diet. The recent heatwave has affected food production in many ways, such as causing cows to produce less milk and reducing honey production in Italy. The Ebro Delta, which has around 20,000 hectares of paddy fields, is particularly vulnerable to the warming climate due to rising sea levels and drought. Some farmers are already considering switching to hardier crops, while others are considering seaweed and clams due to the excess salt in the soil. Short-term solutions include processing more wastewater and limiting water evaporation. However, scientists warn that adaptation has limits; at some point, farmers will have to change their crops altogether.

Source: WSJ, today

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Most read…

TOP NEWS/Focus: In Mexico, private cash races to plug nearshoring energy crunch

The Energy Dilemma: Mexico's Nearshoring Industry Struggles Amidst Infrastructure Roadblocks

While companies in Mexico appreciate the advantages of operating in the country, they face significant challenges due to the inadequate energy infrastructure. The absence of sufficient investment in constructing new transmission lines and substations has impeded their progress, forcing them to rely on outdated and underdeveloped systems. The primary concern stems from the limited scope of investment by the Mexican government in this critical sector.

REUTERS by Isabel Woodford/Editing by Germán & Co July 26, 2023

Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

Damian Carrington Environment editor,  Jul 26, 2023

China adds flexibility to power grids, builds storage capacity to avoid outages

REUTERS by Andrew Hayley, July 26, 20232

Fed poised to hike rates as markets anticipate inflation endgame

REUTERS by Howard Schneider, July 26, 2023

One dead in cargo ship fire, electric car suspected source, Dutch coastguard says

Reuters, July 26, 2023

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At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.

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Image by Germán & Co via Shutterstock

Focus: In Mexico, private cash races to plug nearshoring energy crunch

The Energy Dilemma: Mexico's Nearshoring Industry Struggles Amidst Infrastructure Roadblocks

While companies in Mexico appreciate the advantages of operating in the country, they face significant challenges due to the inadequate energy infrastructure. The absence of sufficient investment in constructing new transmission lines and substations has impeded their progress, forcing them to rely on outdated and underdeveloped systems. The primary concern stems from the limited scope of investment by the Mexican government in this critical sector.

REUTERS by Isabel Woodford/Editing by Germán & Co July 26, 2023

/3]A general view shows high voltage power lines owned by Mexico's state-run electric utility known as the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), in Santa Catarina, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico February 9, 2021. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo

MEXICO CITY, July 26 (Reuters) - For Mexican industrial park owners like Sergio Bermudez, business is booming amid a wave of U.S businesses setting up over the border.

So-called nearshoring has pulled over $9 billion into Mexico since last October by manufacturers like Unilever (ULVR.L) , Barbie maker Mattel (MAT.O) , and Tesla (TSLA.O) , lured by its proximity to the giant U.S market, cheap labor, and geopolitical stability.

Yet Bermudez and many of his 400-strong cohort have a serious cost issue on their hands: energy.

Industrial parks are under pressure to spend millions of dollars to build federal power transmission lines and substations amid government underinvestment, growing energy demand, and aging infrastructure which is at capacity.

While these parks have long contributed to state infrastructure, the lines and specifications now required are getting much longer and costlier in Mexico's manufacturing north, according to nearly a dozen sources.

"Federal funds can't keep up with the growth we're seeing… so the developers or companies have to absorb the cost," said Eduardo Martinez, an official for the state of Nuevo Leon, pointing to austerity and the unpredicted nearshoring boom.

Sergio Arguelles, president of the Mexican Association of Private Industrial Parks (AMPIP), said parks' investment in state energy assets today is unprecedented. The group is yet to calculate exact amounts, but said it is "very significant."

The lure of new clients for parks is strong, but it is still a bitter pill: with regulation restricting private ownership, park owners essentially donate the infrastructure to the state.

"It's the biggest challenge...We are thinking about how are we going to reach an agreement with the government to manage this for the good of the country," said Aaron Gallo, the real estate director at American Industries, whose multiple Mexican industrial parks cater to foreign clients like Danish toymaker Lego.

American Industries is currently building a $12 million 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) line. Gallo said such investments mean they have as much as tripled energy costs for clients in recent years, complicated by lengthy permit processes.

"It's very bureaucratic, it does slow us down," said Gallo. "But there’s no other option."

The issue underscores the holes in President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's attempt to concentrate power in the state energy utility company, CFE, which critics say is unfit to support Mexico's major growth opportunity.

Though private sector assistance may help bolster Mexico's energy security in the short term, much more is needed accommodate the wave of new demand, said David Gantz, a fellow on U.S -Mexico trade at the Baker Institute.

"Mexico would be very well positioned to take advantage of nearshoring if it didn't have such an energy problem," he said.

CFE did not respond to a request for comment.

THE SHRINKING STATE

Mexico's approach to its groaning electricity grid is in contrast to its fast-growing peers, which tend to either incentivize private energy contractors or have state utility companies with deep pockets.

Last year, CFE investment slid to 35.3 billion pesos ($2 billion), or 0.15% of GDP, a fraction of manufacturing rival China's planned investment in the grid of 0.9% of GDP, per Reuters analysis.

Meanwhile, CFE built just under 150 km of transmission lines last year, more than 10 times less per 100,000 square km than in Brazil, where Electrobras said it added 8,679 km to the network.

"We needed a lot more," said AMPIP's Arguelles, noting the bulk of CFE's budget has gone to power generation rather than distribution and transmission infrastructure.

Lopez Obrador has pressed hard to tighten state control of the energy sector, arguing that past governments rigged the market in the favor of private companies.

Yet with billions dedicated to the heavily indebted state-oil company Pemex, industry observers say Mexico lacks the funds to support upgrades to the electricity network.

"The CFE had a very different vision and budget before," said Bermudez, whose family has been in the "maquiladora" or remote manufacturing business for decades. "It used to be much easier."

Indeed, 91% of parks report issues related to energy supply, according to a recent AMPIP survey, including line congestion and being forced to turn away new clients.

Meanwhile, Ramses Pech, CEO of energy consultancy firm Group Caraiva estimated 80% of infrastructure built in industrial areas is now privately funded.

Still, there is some hope for the new wave of 47 planned industrial parks. The energy ministry said it plans to build around 3,000 km of transmission lines next year, as well as new substations, particularly in the north.

FOOTING THE BILL

Some argue that it is only right that the private sector pay its own way, especially given Mexico's relatively low corporation tax, and parks' healthy return on investment.

Hans Joachim Kohlsdorf, an electricity wholesale executive in Mexico, argues that park owners often do not think strategically when setting up remote manufacturing hubs, and understands why the government is reticent to pay.

"There needs to be better planning," he said. "We're in a Catch 22: (the parks) want everything free, and the other party doesn't want to pay."

Zonia Torres, a commercial director of an industrial park in the state of Guanajuato, which has paid for federal infrastructure, agrees.

"The CFE doesn't want to bet on future (energy) demand," she said, adding that Mexico is still "an emerging market" with limited resources.

Yet critics say Mexico's push for state control over energy distribution while also neglecting it is self-sabotage.

"The network provider should be capable of building the infrastructure...The public policy does not take into account the reality, and the level of (foreign) demand." said Alfredo Nolasco, founding partner of nearshoring consultancy Spyral.

"The lack of foresight is likely to be disastrous.

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Image by Germán & Co via Shutterstock

Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

Damian Carrington Environment editor,  Jul 26, 2023

The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts.

Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global heating and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021.

The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050, if global carbon emissions are not reduced. Evidence from past collapses indicates changes of temperature of 10C in a few decades, although these occurred during ice ages.

Other scientists said the assumptions about how a tipping point would play out and uncertainties in the underlying data are too large for a reliable estimate of the timing of the tipping point. But all said the prospect of an Amoc collapse was extremely concerning and should spur rapid cuts in carbon emissions.

Amoc carries warm ocean water northwards towards the pole where it cools and sinks, driving the Atlantic’s currents. But an influx of fresh water from the accelerating melting of Greenland’s ice cap and other sources is increasingly smothering the currents.

A collapse of Amoc would have disastrous consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and west Africa. It would increase storms and drop temperatures in Europe, and lead to a rising sea level on the eastern coast of North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

“I think we should be very worried,” said Prof Peter Ditlevsen, at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and who led the new study. “This would be a very, very large change. The Amoc has not been shut off for 12,000 years.”

The Amoc collapsed and restarted repeatedly in the cycle of ice ages that occurred from 115,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is one of the climate tipping points scientists are most concerned about as global temperatures continue to rise.

Research in 2022 showed five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating to date, including the shutdown of Amoc, the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost.

The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used sea surface temperature data stretching back to 1870 as a proxy for the change in strength of Amoc currents over time.

The researchers then mapped this data on to the path seen in systems that are approaching a particular type of tipping point called a “saddle-node bifurcation”. The data fitted “surprisingly well”, Ditlevsen said. The researchers were then able to extrapolate the data to estimate when the tipping point was likely to occur. Further statistical analysis provided a measure of the uncertainty in the estimate.

The analysis is based on greenhouse gas emissions rising as they have done to date. If emissions do start to fall, as intended by current climate policies, then the world would have more time to try to keep global temperature below the Amoc tipping point.

The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century. But Ditlevsen said the models used have coarse resolution and are not adept at analysing the non-linear processes involved, which may make them overly conservative.

The potential collapse of Amoc is intensely debated by scientists, who have previously said it must be avoided “at all costs”.

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Prof Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, revealed the early warning signs of Amoc collapse in 2021.

“The results of the new study sound alarming but if the uncertainties in the heavily oversimplified model [of the tipping point] and in the underlying [sea temperature] data are included, then it becomes clear that these uncertainties are too large to make any reliable estimate of the time of tipping.”

Prof David Thornalley, at University College London, UK, agreed the study had large caveats and unknowns and said further research was essential: “But if the statistics are robust and a relevant way to describe how the actual Amoc behaves, then this is a very concerning result.”

Dr Levke Caesar, at the University of Bremen, Germany, said using sea surface temperatures as proxy data for the strength of the Amoc currents was a key source of uncertainty: “We only have direct observational data of the Amoc since 2004.”

The extrapolation in the new analysis was reasonable, according to Prof Tim Lenton, at the University of Exeter, UK. He said the tipping point could lead to a partial Amoc collapse, for example only in the Labrador Sea, but that this would still cause major impacts. Ditlevsen said he hoped the debate would drive new research: “It’s always fruitful when you do not exactly agree.”

Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the University of Potsdam, Germany, said: “There is still large uncertainty where the Amoc tipping point is, but the new study adds to the evidence that it is much closer than we thought. A single study provides limited evidence, but when multiple approaches have led to similar conclusions this must be taken very seriously, especially when we’re talking about a risk that we really want to rule out with 99.9% certainty. Now we can’t even rule out crossing the tipping point in the next decade or two.”

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At the Energy Summit 2923 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Edwin De los Santos, President of AES DOMINICANA, emphasized the company's strong commitment to global environmental preservation.

“The relationship between energy and development is symbiotic and interdependent. “

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Electrical pylons and power lines are seen in Yanqing district of Beijing, China December 17, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo

China adds flexibility to power grids, builds storage capacity to avoid outages

REUTERS by Andrew Hayley, July 26, 20232

BEIJING, July 26 (Reuters) - China is introducing more flexible power transmission arrangements into its national grid system, helping to avoid a repeat of the outages that plagued parts of the country last year, according to central government officials.

In response to decreased output from hydropower plants, authorities have "rationally optimised" power transmission between provinces to send more power to the country's drought-stricken southwest, Guan Peng of the National Development and Reform Commission told a press conference on Wednesday.

This has included sending more power from China's sparsely populated northwest, Guan added.

China's grid system predominantly distributes power between provinces through fixed medium-to-long term contracts, which do not accommodate changes in regional demand and supply conditions.

More than 90% of market-based power trading in China is conducted through these mid-to-long term contracts, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.

After a drought last August, fixed, unidirectional power trading agreements led hydro-dependent southwestern Sichuan province to export power out of the province to fulfil these contracts, even as consumers in the province endured power cuts.

In addition to adding flexibility to grid transmission, authorities have increased water storage at hydro facilities in advance in order to guarantee their operation during periods when temperatures were high, Guan said.

The region has not seen widespread power outages this year, despite similarly hot and dry weather conditions.

Weather-dependent hydropower is expected to remain the primary power source in Sichuan and neighbouring Yunnan, with the Sichuan provincial government forecasting it to account for more than 77% of province's installed generation capacity in 2025.

China has also extensively developed its 'new type' energy storage capabilities this year, officials said. 'New type' energy storage in China is overwhelmingly comprised of lithium-ion battery storage, and contrasts with older pumped-hydro storage technologies.

The installed capacity of this 'new type' energy storage reached 12 gigawatts (GW) as of the end of May, said National Energy Administration official Liu Mingyang. This represents a roughly 37% increase on the 8.7GW in installed capacity reported at the end of last year.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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The U.S. Federal Reserve building is pictured in Washington, March 18, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo

Fed poised to hike rates as markets anticipate inflation endgame

REUTERS by Howard Schneider, July 26, 2023

WASHINGTON, July 26 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, marking the 11th hike in the U.S. central bank's past 12 policy meetings and possibly a last move in its aggressive battle to tame inflation.

The increase, anticipated by investors with nearly a 100% probability, would raise the benchmark overnight interest rate to the 5.25%-5.50% range. That would bring it to roughly the highest level since the approach to the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession.

Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics

There's little sense a similar collapse is on the horizon. Far from it, the economy is proving more resilient to rising interest rates than expected, with ongoing growth and an unemployment rate that is currently pinned at a low 3.6%.

In assessing where policy may move next, in fact, the Fed will be balancing whether the economy remains too strong to return a still-elevated rate of inflation to the central bank's 2% target against evidence that a process of "disinflation" may be underway that is likely to continue even without any further rate increases.

After a rapid series of rate hikes over the last year, with the central bank moving in unusually large three-quarters-of-a-percentage-point steps at one point, policymakers say they are now making meeting-by-meeting judgments based on incoming data, an approach meant to keep their options open and one likely to be emphasized by Fed Chair Jerome Powell in a press conference shortly after the 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) release of the policy statement.

A key question, said Steve Englander, head of G10 FX research and North America macro strategy at Standard Chartered, is whether the Fed "puts more emphasis on weaker-than-expected inflation or stronger-than-expected activity in determining policy" moving forward.

NEARING THE END

The Fed will not update quarterly economic and interest rate projections at this week's meeting, though policymakers will have a chance to discuss quarterly bank survey data that has taken on heightened importance since a string of regional bank collapses earlier this year.

Policymakers' projections in June showed the Fed likely nearing the end of its hiking cycle, with a majority of them seeing the need for only one further quarter-percentage-point increase beyond the expected hike on Wednesday.

Data since June, if anything, has lowered expectations that further rises in borrowing costs will be needed, with headline inflation data coming in weaker than expected, and information about producer prices and other aspects of the economy suggesting further moderation is developing. Indeed, as policymakers began their two-day meeting on Tuesday, the Conference Board reported U.S. consumers' 12-month inflation expectations sank to the lowest level since November 2020.

New data on the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, will be released on Friday. A Reuters poll showed economists expect the measure, stripped of volatile food and energy prices, to have increased at a 4.2% annual rate in June, which would be the lowest since September 2021.

That is a significant decline in a data point that has been stuck at around 4.6% since December. But it is still more than double the Fed's target, and officials including Powell have said they will not shift gears on policy until progress on inflation is sustained over several months and they are convinced the pace of price increases will return to 2%.

The Fed will have a larger-than-usual amount of data to assess before its next meeting on Sept. 19-20, some eight weeks away. The typical gap between meetings is six weeks. The longer span allows a full two months of information on jobs and inflation to accumulate, and in this case will also provide the first two of three reports on economic growth in the second quarter.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…

…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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After a rally this year, the S&P 500 has climbed about 27% from its recent bottom. PHOTO: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

One dead in cargo ship fire, electric car suspected source, Dutch coastguard says

Reuters, July 26, 2023

AMSTERDAM, July 26 (Reuters) - One person died and several others were hurt when a fire broke out on a cargo ship carrying cars off the northern tip of Netherlands, forcing several crew members to jump overboard, the Dutch coastguard said on Wednesday.

The Panama-registered Fremantle Highway was transporting 2,857 cars from Germany to Egypt, 25 of them electric.

An electric car was the suspected source of the blaze, a coastguard spokesperson said, adding that the ship was still burning.

The 199-metre ship, which had departed from the German port of Bermenhaven, was successfully towed out of shipping lanes early on Wednesday, Dutch broadcaster NOS reported.

The ship was sailing 27 km (17 miles) north of the Dutch island of Ameland, with 23 crew onboard, when the fire started on Tuesday night, a statement said.

The crew had tried, but failed, to extinguish the fire, the coastguard statement said.

The injured crew were taken by helicopter to medical facilities on the mainland. They suffered smoke inhalation, or were hurt during the evacuation, a spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Shoei Kisen Kaisha, a Japanese ship leasing company that manages the Fremantle Highway, was not immediately available for comment.

It is the latest fire to hit a car carrier.

Earlier this month, two New Jersey firefighters were killed and five injured while battling an intense blaze on a cargo ship carrying hundreds of vehicles. A fire destroyed thousands of luxury cars on a ship off the coast of Portugal's Azores islands in February last year.

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Image by Germán & Co

Putin appeared paralyzed and unable to act in first hours of rebellion

TWP By Catherine Belton, Shane Harris and Greg Miller, July 25, 2023 

LONDON — When Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, launched his attempted mutiny on the morning of June 24, Vladimir Putin was paralyzed and unable to act decisively, according to Ukrainian and other security officials in Europe. No orders were issued for most of the day, the officials said.

The Russian president had been warned by the Russian security services at least two or three days ahead of time that Prigozhin was preparing a possible rebellion, according to intelligence assessments shared with The Washington Post. Steps were taken to boost security at several strategic facilities, including the Kremlin, where staffing in the presidential guard was increased and more weapons were handed out, but otherwise no actions were taken, these officials said.

“Putin had time to take the decision to liquidate [the rebellion] and arrest the organizers” said one of the European security officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. “Then when it began to happen, there was paralysis on all levels … There was absolute dismay and confusion. For a long time, they did not know how to react.”

This account of the standoff, corroborated by officials in Western governments, provides the most detailed look at the paralysis and disarray inside the Kremlin during the first hours of the severest challenge to Putin’s 23-year presidency. It is consistent with public comments by CIA Director William J. Burns last week that for much of the 36 hours of the mutiny Russian security services, the military and decision-makers “appeared to be adrift.”

It also appears to expose Putin’s fear of directly countering a renegade warlord who’d developed support within Russia’s security establishment over a decade. Prigozhin had become an integral part of the Kremlin global operations by running troll farms disseminating disinformation in the United States and paramilitary operations in the Middle East and Africa, before officially taking a vanguard position in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Post that the intelligence assessments were “nonsense” and shared “by people who have zero information.”

The longtime symbiosis of the two men, who first met in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, has exposed the weaknesses of Putin’s crony system of management, where rival clans are pitted against each other, and which has been stretched to breaking point by the war.

Who is Yevgeniy Prigozhin, Wagner chief who stirred a crisis in Russia?

The lack of orders from the Kremlin’s top command left local officials to decide for themselves how to act, according to the European security officials, when Prigozhin’s Wagner troops stunned the world by entering the southern Russian city of Rostov in the early hours of June 24, seizing control of the Russian military’s main command center there, and then moved into the city of Voronezh, before heading further north toward Moscow.

Without any clear orders, local military and security chiefs took the decision not to try to stop the heavily armed Wagner troops, the security officials said.

Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin leaves the headquarters of the Southern Military District amid the group's pullout from the city of Rostov, Russia, on June 24. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Many on the local level could not believe the Wagner rebellion could be happening without some degree of agreement with the Kremlin, the security officials said — despite Putin’s emergency televised address to the nation on the morning of the mutiny in which he vowed tough action to stop the rebels, and despite a warrant issued for Prigozhin’s arrest for “incitement to insurrection” on the eve of his march to Moscow.

“The local authorities did not receive any commands from the leadership,” said a senior Ukrainian security official. “From our point of view this is the biggest sign of the unhealthy situation inside Russia. The authoritarian system is formed in such a way that without a very clear command from the leadership, people don’t do anything. When the leadership is in turmoil and disarray, it the same situation at the local level and even worse.”

The intelligence information helps explain what’s been seen as the biggest debacle of Putin’s rule — how Prigozhin’s armed band of fighters, demanding the ouster of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and armed forces chief of staff Valery Gerasimov, were able to proceed to within 120 miles of Moscow without facing resistance, before eventually agreeing to turn around after a deal was brokered with the help of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president.

The disarray in the Kremlin also reflects a deepening divide inside Russia’s security and military establishment over the conduct of the war in Ukraine, with many including in the upper reaches of the security services and military supporting Prigozhin’s drive to oust Russia’s top military leadership, the European security officials said.

“Some supported Prigozhin and the idea that the leadership needs to be cleaned up, that the fish is rotting from the head,” one of these officials said.

One senior NATO official said some senior figures in Moscow appeared ready to rally behind Prigozhin had he succeeded in achieving his demands. “There seem to have been important people in the power structures … who seem to have even been sort of waiting for this, as if his attempt had been more successful, they would also” have joined the plot, this official said.

Prigozhin’s increasingly vitriolic tirades blaming corruption and mismanagement by the Russian military command for battlefield setbacks and high casualties in the war against Ukraine had resonated with many sectors of Russian society. Many in the rank and file of the Russian army also wanted Prigozhin to succeed in forcing change at the top of the Russian military, believing that then “it would become easier for them to fight,” this official said.

But others in the security establishment were horrified at the mutiny attempt, and at the Kremlin’s toothless reaction, convinced it was leading Russia toward a period of deep turmoil, officials said.

“There was disarray. You could argue about the depth of it, but there really was lack of agreement,” said a senior member of Russian diplomatic circles. “We heard all these statements. They were not always consistent … For some time, they did not know how to react,” he said. Putin had vowed to crush the rebellion on the morning the rebellion began but by the time he finally emerged in public more than 48 hours later, he said all steps had been taken on his “direct order” to avoid major bloodshed.

Members of the Russian elite said the division over the conduct of the war and its handling by the Russian military leadership, will continue, despite a public relations drive by the Kremlin to demonstrate Putin is in control and the start of a campaign to purge the ranks of the Russian military of critics and Prigozhin’s supporters among Russian ultranationalists.

On Friday Igor Girkin, a controversial former Russian commander in Ukraine who has been vocal in denouncing the Russian military leadership, was arrested. Several high-ranking generals perceived to be close to Prigozhin, including Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who was often praised by the Wagner leader, have disappeared from public view.

The lack of direction from the Kremlin during the crisis has left Putin significantly weakened, according to his critics. “Putin showed himself to be a person who is not able to make serious, important and quick decisions in critical situations. He just hid,” said Gennady Gudkov, a former colonel in the Russian security services who is now an opposition politician in exile. “This was not understood by most of the Russian population. But it was very well understood by Putin’s elite. He is no longer the guarantor of their security and the preservation of the system.”

“Russia is a country of mafia rules. And Putin made an unforgivable mistake,” said a senior Moscow financier with ties to the Russian intelligence services. “He lost his reputation as the toughest man in town.”

Ukraine is now the most mined country. It will take decades to make safe.

The conflict between Prigozhin and the Russian military leadership had been building up for months, and the possibility of conflict increased sharply when the Russian Defense Ministry decreed June 10 that Wagner fighters had to sign contracts with the ministry from July 1, essentially ending Prigozhin’s control of the mercenary group — and the billions of dollars in government contracts attached to it.

When the security service warnings appeared that Prigozhin could be mounting some kind of rebellion, some in the security establishment believed the preparations could be no more than a bluff to increase pressure and gain more leverage to secure his control of Wagner, one of the European security officials said.

To some degree, if Prigozhin’s mutiny was an attempt to gain leverage, it worked. Putin was apparently forced into compromise with the renegade leader, allowing him to travel around Russia for days after the mutiny, because Prigozhin’s work for the Kremlin was too deeply intertwined with the interests of Putin’s state, according to several of the security officials, and Vladimir Osechkin, an exiled human rights activist who has interviewed several former Wagner fighters. Instead of prosecuting Prigozhin for leading the armed insurrection, Putin agreed to drop the charges. In exchange, Prigozhin halted the march on Moscow, withdrew his men from key military installations and agreed to decamp to Belarus, keeping at least part of Wagner intact.

Russia has deployed private mercenary groups as a shadow arm of the state to protect Kremlin interests, “where the state is without strength or cannot officially act,” according to a report drawn up for a Russian parliamentary roundtable on legalizing the private paramilitary organizations in 2015. The report was obtained by the Dossier Center, an investigative group founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Putin opponent, and shared with The Post.

“Private paramilitary groups can become effective instruments of state foreign policy,” the report states. “The presence of private military groups in the planet’s ‘hot spots’ will increase Russia’s sphere of influence, win new allies for the country and allow the obtaining of additional interesting intelligence and diplomatic information which ultimately will increase Russia’s weight globally.”

The intertwining of Wagner with the interests of Russian intelligence, with its upper ranks staffed with former members of Russian military intelligence, and its leading role in operations in Syria, Libya and across Africa, where it gained access to extensive mining rights, has meant it was impossible for Putin to swiftly bring the curtain down on Prigozhin’s operations, Osechkin said. Prigozhin “worked for more than 20 years for Putin’s team. He did a lot for their interests in a whole series of countries. He has a huge amount of information” about them, Osechkin said.

“They created a monster for themselves,” one of the European security officials said.

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