hypnophant posted:

"developed, underdeveloped, Japan, and Argentina"

bob dobbs is dead posted:

spain portugal and greece show that sovereign defaults are a get one get 7 sorta deal

The New York Times posted:

After Russia’s ruble hit a 16-month low against the U.S. dollar, raising fears of rising inflation, even one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s top cheerleaders in state media lashed out at the country’s financial authorities on Thursday over an exchange rate that he said was a subject of global mockery.

The Russian central bank took measures on Thursday to stabilize the currency, amid the latest squall of financial volatility unleashed by Mr. Putin’s war against Ukraine. This time, the challenges are seen in both a struggling ruble that is fueling inflation, but also in government budget deficits that raise concerns about the sustainability of Russia’s intense spending on the war.

The weakening ruble neared an exchange rate of 100 per U.S. dollar earlier this week, down by roughly 25 percent since the start of the year. The decline prompted the Bank of Russia on Thursday to halt purchases of foreign currency for the remainder of the year “to reduce volatility.”

The central bank’s move should help shore up the ruble, because when the bank spends rubles to buy foreign currency, it increases the supply of rubles in circulation, lowering their value. The ruble was roughly flat in trading on Thursday.

quote:

1 United States Dollar equals
100.00 Russian Ruble
Aug 12, 9:00 PM UTC · Disclaimer

LanceHunter posted:

Clearly this means that the BRICS will be the dominant currency union of the 21st (and 22nd) century.

Hadlock posted:

Global economics and current events no-tweet megathread: R.I.P. U.S.D.

pseudanonymous posted:

Yeah I mean there will have to be so many more BRICS bucks, like for every dollar in the world there will be 100 BRICS bucks

mrmcd posted:

I feel like clocking in at Alabama's level even with London isn't something to be too proud of either.

Lockback posted:

That is some chart.

Cities, states, regions and countries all being measured against each other in GDP is always going to give weird comparisons.

The Wall Street Journal posted:

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.

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.

LanceHunter posted:

I was about to fire off a post about how we should remember that Mississippi, Alabama, and the rest of the Deep South is insanely agriculturally productive and how that probably accounts for their relative wealth compared to the UK. Then I was looking further into it and found that actually manufacturing, of all things, is the biggest part of Mississippi's economy. Nissan and Toyota have big plants there, there's Ingalls Shipbuilding doing a bunch of contracts for the Navy, and Ashley Furniture also has a big operation there.

quote:

The UK imports around 46 percent of the total food it consumes and is reliant on both imports and its agricultural sector to feed its population and drive economic growth. The UK’s geography, climate, and relatively wealthy population mean it will always be a significant importer, especially of fresh produce.

quote:

Hadlock posted:

How is the US solar panel import tariff system working so far

Seems like China is producing them at half to a quarter the price of US factories

quote:

In just 12 short months, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has spurred more than 100 new cleantech manufacturing announcements and nearly $80B in private investment.

quote:

Solar manufacturing is headed for the South, too. Planned factories are concentrated in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, with some also coming to Ohio and solar giant Texas.

China-based Longi and U.S.-based Invenergy announced a plant in Ohio that they claim ultimately will be the largest U.S. solar manufacturing facility. And three Chinese companies have announced plans to construct their own plants in the U.S. JA Solar is building a 2-gigawatt solar panel factory in Arizona. Hounen Solar is planning a 1 GW solar panel plant in South Carolina. And Gotion is building a $2.4 billion battery plant in Michigan.

Hadlock posted:

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufacturing/the-us-climate-law-is-fueling-a-factory-frenzy-heres-the-latest-tally





As I understand it, when they say "1GW solar panel plant" that means the factory will be able to produce 1GW worth of solar panels annually, in perpetuity. 1GW is equivalent to 2.5 million 400w solar panels or 3.33 million 300w solar panels which seems to be about the average size installed on roofs these days. There's about 82 million SFHs in the US

Hadlock posted:

Car factories seem to do a re-tool every 6-8 years

Hadlock posted:

They're claiming 25 year warranty but I've been looking at second hand panels on Craigslist (there's an unused spot in my yard that gets awesome sunlight 8+ hours a day) and a lot of them are from 2015 and having trouble making 60% of their nameplate capacity

Science posted:

Two studies show how interfaces between perovskite layers and silicon cells in tandem solar cells can be modified to improve performance (see the Perspective by De Wolf and Aydin). Mariotti et al. showed that an ionic liquid, piperazinium iodide, improved band alignment and enhanced charge extraction at the interface of a trihalide perovskite and a C60 electron-transporting layer by creating a positive dipole. With these modifications, a 2.0-volt open circuit voltage was achieved in a silicon tandem cell. Chin et al. report the uniform deposition of the perovskite top cell on the micropyramids of crystalline silicon cells to achieve high photocurrents in tandem solar cells. Two different phosphonic acids improved the perovskite crystallization process and also minimized recombination losses. These modifications yielded perovskite/silicon tandem cells with certified power conversion efficiencies of more than 31% for active areas of at least 1 square centimeter. —PDS

Leperflesh posted:

I'm gonna bet that that 25 year warranty is against factory defects and absolutely not against the unavoidable decline in capacity that is an inherent part of current solar panel chemsitry.

Panasonic website posted:

TripleGuard warranty covers your HIT® and EVERVOLT® Series standalone panels for performance output, parts, labor and shipping for 25 years.

street doc posted:

The job market in life science is brutal right now. Somehow none of this turmoil is being reflected in unemployment rates.

Really confusing.

Hadlock posted:

So two questions

1) what logical fallacy am I falling victim to when I look at the price shiller index since ~2019 and make this face

Hadlock posted:

2. What fundamentals about the US economy have changed since 2022 that are somehow decreasing pressure on inflation? We still seem to have a ~2%* global labor shortage and I feel like prices need to go up way more than 10% before increased wages bring enough people back in to the market.

*Permanent 2%

Hadlock posted:

So two questions

1) what logical fallacy am I falling victim to when I look at the price shiller index since ~2019 and make this face



2. What fundamentals about the US economy have changed since 2022 that are somehow decreasing pressure on inflation? We still seem to have a ~2%* global labor shortage and I feel like prices need to go up way more than 10% before increased wages bring enough people back in to the market.

*Permanent 2%

pseudanonymous posted:

Fundamentals weren’t he fundamental driver of the inflation. The idea has been debunked repeatedly in this thread.

One fundamental that has actually changed is the combination of housing prices and interest rate mean the velocity of housing sale is way down as people can’t afford to buy or sell.

pseudanonymous posted:

the velocity of housing sale is way down as people can’t afford to buy or sell.

Lockback posted:

This is impacting the M&A market too, which is adjusting but looks different than it did in early 2022.

quote:

Linerlytica said trans-Pacific deployments are down 12.1% to date, while Asia-Europe capacity is up 7.6%, “with further divergence expected in the coming months as even more capacity is added to Europe while capacity is withdrawn from the trans-Pacific market.”
...
West Coast indexes up 28%-50% since late June
Spot rates are still believed to be at loss-making levels in the trans-Pacific and recent double-digit gains are off a low base. Yet rates are moving closer to breakeven and they’re already above or in the vicinity of pre-COVID levels, according to most spot indexes.
...
US import bookings remain healthy
U.S. imports were up by single digits versus prepandemic levels during the first half of 2023. The bookings index data from FreightWaves SONAR’s Container Atlas implies U.S. imports should remain at healthy levels through August and into the first half of September.

The index covers a portion of overall bookings (not loadings) and is based on the date of scheduled departure. The index of bookings scheduled to depart Tuesday from all overseas ports was up 27% from the recent low hit on May 8 and up 9% from the index on the same date in 2019, pre-COVID.