Freight rates on the main ocean trade routes are sinking during what is typically the industry’s peak season after cargo owners shipped holiday goods early and inflation dented consumer demand.



Image link:  https://i.ibb.co/cL0ZfqN/freight-shipping.jpg

The cost to ship a 40-foot container from China to the U.S. West Coast now stands around $5,400 a box, down 60% from January, according to the Freightos Baltic Index. A container shipped from Asia to Europe costs $9,000, 42% less than at the start of the year. The rate for both routes, while still above prepandemic levels, peaked at more than $20,000 last September.

Market conditions have made a sharp reversal from earlier in the pandemic. Freight rates jumped roughly 10-fold in 2021 because supply-chain disruptions, port backlogs and a surge of cargo left importers scrambling for space on box ships. Some big retailers such as Walmart Inc. WMT 0.26%▲ even chartered their own vessels to get around bottlenecks last year.

This year, Walmart and other retailers ended up with too much inventory after they raced to import goods earlier than usual, anticipating shipping delays and demand that didn't materialize. Manufacturers, too, moved goods earlier than usual. Apparel sellers such as Gap Inc. GPS -0.05%▼ and toy makers including Hasbro Inc. HAS 0.40%▲ reported spring surges in inventory levels that normally occur closer to the holidays.

“For spot rates, the party is over,” said Jonathan Roach, a container shipping analyst at London-based Braemar. “The backdrop of a potential global recession, driven by surging energy prices and rapid inflation, is driving down the market. The pandemic boom in demand for consumer products has calmed and spending on travel, leisure, and services made a revival in 2021.”

Shipping rates are set to further ease for the remainder of the year and in 2023, according to shipowners and analysts. A series of new ships will hit the water over the next two years with net fleet growth expected to exceed 9% next year and in 2024. By comparison, container volume growth will be marginally negative next year and rise around 2% in 2024, according to Braemar.

Best Buy Co. BBY 0.55%▲ Chief Executive Corie Barry said in an earnings call last Tuesday that freight-transportation cost pressures are easing. She said the electronics retailer, whose sales are shrinking, is finding it easier to get freight space on ships and trucks.

“This is really a nonpeak season because for the first time ever, volumes moved in the second half are lower than those moved in the first half,” said Peter Sand, chief analyst at maritime-data provider Xeneta. “There is a lot of uncertainty given the continued war in Ukraine and the global economic downturn.”

Spot-market container shipping rates have declined so rapidly, Xeneta said in a report in August, that the prices have come closer to long-term contract prices, which traditionally come at a discount, and were even below contract rates in some markets. Most major importers such as Walmart move their cargo through long-term contracts rather than paying spot prices.

The 10 largest liners have been enjoying bumper profits over the past two years. Recent quarterly earnings at industry bellwether A.P. Moeller-Maersk MAERSK.B -1.52%▼ A/S were $8.59 billion, surpassing what it normally makes in an entire year. But many companies have warned of weakening market conditions in the second half of 2022.

“We need to pay close attention to the impact of inflation on consumer demand and behavior,” said China Cosco Shipping Corp., which runs the world’s fourth-largest box ship fleet, in its first-half report last Wednesday. “Combined with the changes in the delivery of new vessels, the supply side of the industry will face a new situation.”

Shipping executives and analysts said they don’t expect freight rates to return to prepandemic levels, in part because of higher fuel costs. In 2019, the average cost to send a container across the Pacific to the U.S. West Coast was $1,500.

The ocean carriers are investing billions in new technologies and fuels that will substantially cut carbon emissions from their vessels. “The additional cost of cleaner shipping will not go away and will be a factor in elevating rates in the longer term,” Braemar’s Mr. Roach said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ocean-shipping-rates-have-plunged-60-this-year-11662375780

Financial catastrophe is now only a few clicks away, a problem that is showing quiet signs of becoming a crisis. "I can't just get rid of my phone," one problem gambler says.

It didn’t get bad for Jason until recently, when gambling on his phone became both available and socially acceptable.

For most of his life, he had enjoyed betting money here and there—say, during poker with friends as a teen and on the occasional casino trip. He even occasionally bet on sports through foreign-based companies.

None of it ever seemed or felt like much of a problem to him—that is, until the pandemic. The previous year, his home state of Illinois had legalized sports betting and expanded casino gambling, flooding the state with advertisements. It didn’t take long before Jason was hearing about gambling “all day every day,” he said. When he started to go through personal issues at home in 2020, he found himself at the casino trying to burn off some steam.

Soon enough, however, he preferred online gambling. The casinos, he came to believe, were less efficient—“too much non-gambling time,” he said—and led to questions about where he had been. By comparison, his phone allowed him to be “100 percent plugged in” from anywhere, without people asking questions. “I could do everything you could do at a casino on my phone,” he said. But, he added, “I didn’t have to explain where I was or anything like that. I didn't have to answer to anybody.”


Unlike sports betting, online casino gambling remained illegal in Illinois, and Jason wasn’t sure if the online games he was playing were legal or not. “But there was never any red tape to get past in order to play those games,” he said.

Regardless of the legality, the growing prevalence of gambling in society helped him legitimize his habit to himself. It felt less “seedy,” he said, even if he would gamble until three in the morning while his kids slept “and then wake up and do it again.” By this year, Jason didn’t go a day without gambling.

“I felt like I had to be gambling at all times,” he said.

He would ultimately blow through “a couple hundred thousand dollars” before admitting he had become a problem gambler in May. Still, Jason considers himself “a slightly better case than average.” Since he joined Gamblers Anonymous, he’s heard stories of people losing homes and living out of their car.

In the U.S. this century, gambling has become more wholly legitimized, released from the confines of Atlantic City and Las Vegas and into the broader culture. Gambling advertisements litter the country, and more than 20 states now allow casinos, compared to just nine in 2001. Roughly the same number have legalized online sports betting and more people are pushing for legal online casinos as well.

Politicians say the legalization of gambling provides states with much-needed additional revenue and allows the government to more adequately oversee gambling and responsibly help those who develop issues. These arguments, as well as ones against prohibitionary schemes generally, are difficult to refute in theory; in practice, it’s not yet clear whether state agencies are taking their oversight commitments as seriously as they should.

The omnipresence of gambling and gambling-like activities has made financial catastrophe a few clicks away for anyone with a phone. Experts increasingly see the simultaneous rise of online sports betting, online casinos (legal or not), cryptocurrency trading, and day trading as the same root thing—gambling—with the same root issues.

Often, they even involve the same people. Survey data out of  the National Council on Problem Gambling last year found a significant correlation between people who trade on a weekly basis and gamble as well. “There's a big overlap there,” said Keith Whyte, the executive director of the organization. The true extent of the issue is only now starting to emerge and is in need of additional study, said Lucas Trautman, the medical director of Oxford Treatment Center in Mississippi and a psychiatrist who has helped people with addictive disorders including gambling.

“It's blown up under our nose,” Trautman said.

Cindi M. has certainly noticed a lot of people like Jason coming to meetings recently. A member of Gamblers Anonymous who now serves as the public relations chair for the group’s board of trustees, she said there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of young men developing compulsive gambling issues and showing up to meetings since online sports gambling became legal in Illinois three years ago.

The effect on young people—and particularly young men—has been noticeable to Cindi, whose own sons have told her that all their friends gamble these days. (After Motherboard published this piece, Cindi asked that we remove her surname so she was not in violation of her program’s rules.)

That lines up with additional survey data from the National Council on Problem Gambling, which has found that over 40 percent of people ages 18-44 gambled online last year—compared to just 21 percent of people ages 45-54—and that over a quarter of them increased the amount they played during the pandemic.


“They have access to it 24/7 in the palm of their hands,” Cindi said. “The temptation is always there. You can stay away from casinos and racetracks but you can't stop using your phone.”

That has made it easy for people like Jason to develop gambling problems and harder for them to resist the impulse to place another big bet, according to Whyte.

“It's pretty conclusively established in the gambling literature that ease of access is a risk factor for the development of gambling problems,” Whyte said. “Ease of access alone doesn't make doesn't make someone a gambling addict. But it certainly can contribute to an increase in the rate and severity.”

The ease of access is clear and growing. In January, the first month mobile sports gambling became legal in New York, people wagered a record $1.6 billion online, more than any other state in its opening month. But Ashley Owen,  a team leader at the NYC Problem Gambling Resource Center, funded by the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports, still has trouble convincing people to take gambling issues seriously. Part of the issue, she said, is that problem gambling has become harder to detect. People with gambling problems less often exhibit physical symptoms compared to people with substance abuse issues.  And now, with the rise of mobile gambling, people can gamble in the privacy of their own home without their loved ones knowing, which has “altered the landscape significantly,” Owen said. 

“We call it the hidden addiction,” she continued. “As long as you have a smartphone, you have access to all sorts of gambling at your fingertips.”

One middle-aged man in the Chicago area— who asked that Motherboard not use his name as his job gives him access to clients’ personal information—was able to hide the true extent of his online gambling addiction from his wife until they wanted to get a new patio.


The problem had begun when the Chicago man lost one of his jobs early in the pandemic and needed extra income to support his wife and three kids. “I got three kids. So when one of my jobs went away, that was a big hole in our budget,” he said. “It was pretty tough for me. Like, where the heck am I going to get this money?” That’s when a friend introduced him to an online poker app where people could host games. At first, he was open with his wife about his play, since nothing he was doing was too notable. Every once in a while, she’d even see a deposit for a couple hundred bucks in their bank account.

But the accessibility of the gambling games made it difficult to stop. “Everything being at your fingertips was just terrible,” he said. Soon, he was playing during work and thought about gambling so much he could barely sleep. “I'd be waiting for the next table to be opened up in the morning by the poker guys,” he said. Sometimes, he found himself physically shaking. “You get to this point where you just can't stop, and you're thinking all the time, I just got to go back on.” he said. 

He also became “really, really secretive.” He opened up his own checking account and multiple credit cards. He went into his payroll account and made sure to take out an extra $200 every two weeks. He even took out a loan to feed his online habit.

“I spun this web that was just awful,” he said.

Then, they applied for a loan to install a new patio in their backyard. The man knew they were going to pull their credit. What he didn’t realize was that they’d give his wife a copy of his. When she saw it, “she almost went insane—and understandably,” the man said. “I thought it was over. I totally thought my life and my marriage was over, and that I was gonna lose my kids.”


His wife stayed with him, and the man installed an anti-gambling app on his phone to try and stop himself from gambling online. The man also joined Gamblers Anonymous, where he was shocked by the number of young people he met there. “I can't believe that I see all these young 20-somethings coming in,” he said. “It's very disheartening.”

Nick, a 21-year-old in California, is one of those young people. He had first gambled as a young teen, when he visited family on the East Coast and one of his cousins introduced him to legal online sports gambling. Nick wasn’t old enough to gamble then, but he found it easy enough to get around the systems the companies had set up. “It really wasn't that hard to create an account under my dad's name,” he said. By the time he was a senior in high school, Nick was gambling on his laptop in class. Then, when he went to college, the situation devolved as he moved from online sports gambling to a bookie he could text at all hours.

“For me, being able to just sit in bed and go on my phone and gamble made it almost impossible to stop,” Nick said. “I can't just get rid of my phone.”


He’d stay up until 4 a.m. gambling on his phone then go to class at 8 a.m. A straight-A student in high school, he earned a 2.2 GPA his first semester of college When Nick eventually realized he had a problem and joined Gamblers Anonymous, he was one of the youngest people there.

He couldn’t help but feel a bit different than the older people he was meeting. For one thing, unlike a lot of them, he had never entered a casino.

Taking a page from social media and online shopping sites, mobile gambling sites employ “very, very aggressive marketing” tactics that can be hard for problem gamblers to escape,  according to Keith Whyte, the executive director at the National Council on Problem Gambling. Third-party data collection, for example, allows the gambling industry to create customized, alluring offers designed to get people to come back and spend more, he said.

Numerous studies have indicated that phone addiction has become prevalent in society, especially among people under 30, but there isn’t yet even a clear and agreed-upon conceptual framework for analyzing the problem of gambling in the mobile-phone era. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association recategorized gambling disorder as “similar to substance-related disorders” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But it’s also proposed internet gaming disorder for potential addition as a distinct disorder, and cited a need for further research.

“The fact that it's on the phone is so crucial in the cultivation of an addictive disorder,” said Trautman, the psychiatrist who treats people with gambling disorders, of online gambling.

Whyte has been trying to get politicians to take his issue seriously since 1998. These days, he’s seeing even less interest from Washington D.C. in talking about the downsides of gambling. When they do talk to him, the politicians and policymakers are often still prone to place the blame on the individual, who they see as immoral or weak-willed, he said.

“They're still trapped in our traditional, moral, and religious cultural views around gambling,” he said.

Part of the problem comes from the fact that so many gamblers struggle quietly and alone, making problem gambling seem like less of an issue. Less than 1 percent of people with a gambling problem seek help, according to Whyte.

But another is that sports gambling looks increasingly like good politics. According to recent polls, as many as two-thirds of Americans believe sports betting should be legal, and the tax revenue can be substantial. Illinois has already generated over $100 million for itself, and New York this year has already earned $267 million in tax revenue from sports betting. The money will help fund education programs, as well as problem gambling prevention, treatment, and recovery services, though so-called “sin taxes” have been criticized as regressive in nature.


Since he stopped gambling in May, Jason has noticed with fresh eyes just how prevalent the gambling industry has become. Nationally, entire sports shows are now dedicated to gambling, and others don’t go long without mentioning an exciting potential parlay bet. Gambling commercials play all the time on the radio and when he watches sports, and the leagues themselves have signed official partnerships with companies like FanDuel and DraftKings.

“It is everywhere now,” Jason said. “It's kind of disgusting when you start to look at it from the outside in.”


https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake7gk/the-rise-of-mobile-gambling-is-leaving-people-ruined-and-unable-to-quit

are you suggesting that the US might find a reason to invade Afghanistan again in order to pillage their lithium?  

Climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act put the U.S. back on track toward significant emissions reductions, potentially reducing greenhouse gas output by 40% of 2005 levels.

But one miner warned that when it comes to the transportation sector, domestic resources for lithium, the most critical mineral used for electric vehicle production, may not be sufficient enough to meet some of the most ambitious targets. The Biden administration, for instance, aims to slash the sale of gas-powered vehicles to 50% of all new purchases by 2030.

“Yes, we’ll [eventually] have enough, but not by that time,” Keith Phillips, CEO of Piedmont Lithium (PLL), said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “There’s going to be a real crunch to get the material. We don’t have enough in the world to turn that much [lithium] production in the world by 2035."

With the average electric car battery requiring roughly 8-10kg of the metal, lithium remains a crucial material in the transition to emission-free vehicles. Growing demand has caused the price of lithium carbonate to nearly double this year alone, and the IEA projects demand to grow by 40 times in the next two decades, with a majority of that supply coming from outside of the U.S.

That has complicated climate targets set by the Biden administration. The president has called for half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric, setting aside billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to incentivize drivers to make the shift.

But those same tax credits come with requirements calling for parts and components to be largely sourced in North America, leading some EV makers to push back against the goals on the grounds that they are not realistic.

Piedmont Lithium is looking to cash in on the demand, as one of only a handful of U.S.-based lithium miners. On Thursday, the mining company announced plans to open a lithium processing operation in Tennessee, with construction set to begin in 2023.

Once fully operational, the plant will process 30,000 metric tons of lithium per year. The company is also planning another plant in North Carolina, which will allow the firm to supply lithium for 1 million electric vehicles per year.

“The world has changed,” Phillips said. “We're now in an era where everyone's going to want an electric car. The car companies can't make them fast enough, and people are now looking for the lithium they need for the batteries to go in those electric cars.”

While carmakers like General Motors (GM) have rushed to secure partnerships with domestic mining operations in anticipation of the demand, the Albemarle (ALB) Silver Peak mine in Nevada remains the only operational lithium mine with meaningful output.

Phillips said a slow permitting process has stalled approvals for new production sites. Meanwhile, China has continued to dominate the industry, refining more than half of all lithium supply while Australia and Chile remain the largest producers in the world.

“Projects get permitted [in Australia] in under a year,” Phillips explained. “Here, it's two, four, six, seven, eight years, which is a problem, especially in a business that's booming so fast.”

The White House has moved to accelerate the process by invoking the Defense Production Act to bolster the production of minerals critical to EV manufacturing, including lithium and cobalt. The IRA also established the Advanced Production Investment Tax Credit for domestic production.

But with the demand for EVs far outpacing supply and new mining operations working within a five- to 10-year timeline before coming online, Phillips said that, as it stands, the U.S. cannot meet its clean energy targets with the domestic sourcing priority.

“Energy security is a national issue,” Phillips said. “I think you'll see companies that are thinking about battery plants in different parts of the world or lithium conversion plants coming to America because this investment tax credit will be very valuable…The market opportunity is huge.”


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lithium-supply-ev-targets-miner-181513161.html

Rare Earth: Afghanistan Sits on $1 Trillion in Minerals

The aerial surveys determined that Afghanistan may hold 60 million tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements such as lanthanum, cerium and neodymium, and lodes of aluminum, gold, silver, zinc, mercury and lithium. For instance, the Khanneshin carbonatite deposit in Afghanistan's Helmand province is valued at $89 billion, full as it is with rare earth elements.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/rare-earth-afghanistan-sits-1-trillion-minerals-n196861

(CNN)Antarctica's so-called "doomsday glacier" -- nicknamed because of its high risk of collapse and threat to global sea level -- has the potential to rapidly retreat in the coming years, scientists say, amplifying concerns over the extreme sea level rise that would accompany its potential demise.

The Thwaites Glacier, capable of raising sea level by several feet, is eroding along its underwater base as the planet warms. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists mapped the glacier's historical retreat, hoping to learn from its past what the glacier will likely do in the future.

They found that at some point in the past two centuries, the base of the glacier dislodged from the seabed and retreated at a rate of 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) per year. That's twice the rate that scientists have observed in the past decade or so.

That swift disintegration possibly occurred "as recently as the mid-20th century," Alastair Graham, the study's lead author and a marine geophysicist at the University of South Florida, said in a news release.

It suggests the Thwaites has the capability to undergo a rapid retreat in the near future, once it recedes past a seabed ridge that is helping to keep it in check.
"Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future -- even from one year to the next -- once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed," Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist and one of the study's co-authors from the British Antarctic Survey, said in the release.

The Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, is one of the widest on Earth and is larger than the state of Florida. But it's just a faction of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which holds enough ice to raise sea level by up to 16 feet, according to NASA.

As the climate crisis has accelerated, this region has been closely monitored because of its rapid melting and its capacity for widespread coastal destruction.

The Thwaites Glacier itself has concerned scientists for decades. As early as 1973, researchers questioned whether it was at high risk of collapse. Nearly a decade later, they found that -- because the glacier is grounded to a seabed, rather than to dry land -- warm ocean currents could melt the glacier from underneath, causing it to destabilize from below.
It was because of that research that scientists began calling the region around the Thwaites the "weak underbelly of the West Antarctic ice sheet."

In the 21st century, researchers began documenting the Thwaites' rapid retreat in an alarming series of studies.

In 2001, satellite data showed the grounding line was receding by around 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per year. In 2020, scientists found evidence that warm water was indeed flowing across the base of the glacier, melting it from underneath.

And then in 2021, a study showed the Thwaites Ice Shelf, which helps to stabilize the glacier and hold the ice back from flowing freely into the ocean, could shatter within five years.

"From the satellite data, we're seeing these big fractures spreading across the ice shelf surface, essentially weakening the fabric of the ice; kind of a bit like a windscreen crack," Peter Davis, an oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN in 2021. "It's slowly spreading across the ice shelf and eventually it's going to fracture into lots of different pieces."

Monday's findings, which suggest the Thwaites is capable of receding at a much faster pace than recently thought, were documented on a 20-hour mission in extreme conditions that mapped an underwater area the size of Houston, according to a news release.

Graham said that this research "was truly a once in a lifetime mission," but that the team hopes to return soon to gather samples from the seabed so they can determine when the previous rapid retreats occurred. That could help scientists predict future changes to the "doomsday glacier," which scientists had previously assumed would be slow to undergo change -- something Graham said this study disproves.
"Just a small kick to the Thwaites could lead to a big response," Graham said.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/world/thwaites-doomsday-glacier-sea-level-climate/index.html

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Bitcoin City, in El Salvador:

I'm wondering if a city design can effectively benefit Bitcoin usage. Besides of fast Internet, a government facilitating tax payments in BTC, I can't find much. Maybe citizen-owned mining facilities powered by renewable energy?

A Korean Couple Let a Baby Die While They Played a Video Game

Real nurturing, however, was something Sarang's parents knew nothing about. The mother only went to a doctor once before delivery and then returned to gaming almost immediately, though they claimed later it was for financial reasons. (Skilled players can barter their virtual money for real dough in what's known as "Gold Farming.") "They were unaware what they'd been doing, had no information about raising children," says Salmon.

"The saddest thing about the story is that they weren't bad parents," says Veatch; "they just applied the parenting skills they learned from raising this Anima to raising this baby: feed it, game for ten hours, come back, feed it.... And the baby lacked the interface to communicate with them what it needs; it didn't have display buttons on it that said, more this! They didn't know how to read the needs of their baby because they could only read an online environment."

In the wake on Sarang's death and the parents' trial (the father served a year, the mother's sentence was suspended) Korea came to face its internet gaming problem. Laws were passed meant to keep minors offline, or at least out of the gaming parlors, from midnight to six a.m. But far more intriguing than the legal possibilities raised by the case is the research Veatch did into one of Korea's ancient cultures: shamanist religion.

https://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/15/korean-couple-let-baby-die-while-they-played-video-game-261483.html

Russia on Friday indefinitely halted natural gas imports to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, adding to fears of a looming European energy crisis.

Energy company Gazprom, which The Wall Street Journal notes is controlled by the Kremlin, said it would not restart the pipeline on Saturday (as planned) due to an oil leak; the company also did not give an estimate as to when service might resume. The pipeline had been closed since Wednesday for maintenance.

"Until the issues on the operation of the equipment are resolved, gas supplies to the Nord Stream gas pipeline have been completely stopped," Gazprom wrote in a statement, per CNN.

Notably, the announcement from Gazprom arrived not long after G-7 countries said they'd be imposing a cap on the price of Russian oil so as to ding Moscow (and its war in Ukraine) financially. The level of that cap will be discussed at a future meeting, the Journal notes.

Europe is decently dependent on Russian gas and a blow to its supply just before winter is the last thing the continent needs, CNN adds. Plus, Moscow has already retaliated against certain European countries who refused to pay for supplies in rubles, while Gazprom has kept flows through Nord Stream 1 "to just 20 percent of its capacity" since June, "citing maintenance issues and a dispute over a missing turbine caught up in Western export sanctions."

https://news.yahoo.com/russia-shuts-off-nord-stream-213253802.html

Russia demands sanctions are lifted before it resumes gas supplies

Russia won’t resume gas supplies to Europe until western sanctions are lifted, the Kremlin has warned.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/05/ftse-100-markets-live-news-oil-russia-gas-euro/

For the first time ever, the median rent in the U.S. topped $2,000 a month in June — and the increases show no sign of stopping.

Those rising rents mean that households representing a total of 8.5 million people were behind on their rent at the end of August, according to Census Bureau figures. And 3.8 million of those renters say they’re somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.

The combination of soaring inflation, the end of most eviction moratoriums and rental assistance payments and an extremely low vacancy rate has pushed rents up — and many renters out.

Rents up nearly 25% since before the pandemic

Since 2006, rents have risen faster than home prices, but at the same time, the shortage of available rental units has been steadily increasing since the Great Recession.

In the year before the pandemic, the country recorded a shortage of seven million affordable housing units for low-income renters, according to the Center for American Progress, creating a crisis that left just 37 affordable rental homes for every 100 low-income households looking to rent.

And the homes that are available are often still out of reach. Rent rates are up nearly 25% since before the pandemic, with an increase of 15% in just the past 12 months, according to the real estate tracking service Zillow.

Evictions are up, too, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In August, evictions were 52% above average in Tampa, 90% above average in Houston and 94% above average in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

While the federal government has distributed the bulk of pandemic-related rental assistance grants, some states and cities have been slow to make the money available to landlords on behalf of tenants who can’t pay their rent.

As of May, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported that 12 states and the District of Columbia had distributed half of their last assistance allocation, while Idaho, Iowa and Ohio hadn’t spent any of that money. Two states — Nebraska and Arkansas — refused to accept the federal rent assistance money.

Nearly half of renters have seen rent hikes

The annual median household income for all renters in the U.S. is about $42,500, according to Zillow, 37% lower than the national median income of $67,500.

As of early August, the Census Bureau reported that while 56% of renters had household incomes of less than $50,000, 24% of renters surveyed were paying more than $2,000 a month in rent.

Nearly half of all renters — more than 30 million people — had been hit with rent hikes in the past 12 months, with 19% paying a monthly increase of $100 to $250, 7% paying $250 to $500 more and 4% needing to find another $500 a month to stay in their apartments.

To meet higher rents, 57% of renters said they relied on credit cards, loans, savings or selling off some assets, including raiding their retirement accounts.

Despite that, 14% of renters told the survey that they weren’t completely caught up on back rent.

Rising rents hurting some more than others

Rising rents are hitting minorities harder than others, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

Among households headed by Black adults, 58% are renters, while 52% of those headed by Latino adults rented. That compares to a rental rate of slightly less than 40% of Asian-led households and 25% for households led by non-Hispanic white adults.

While inflation gets the blame for much of the problem with high rents, the cure for high inflation also may be contributing to the tight rental market, as renters who wanted to become homeowners are increasingly being priced out of the housing market.

As the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates to cool off the economy and bring down inflation, that move has pushed U.S. mortgage rates up from less than 3% a year ago to 5.13% by mid-August.

The combination of higher home loan rates and already high home prices has resulted in an 18% drop in mortgage applications from August 2021 to a 22-year low.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/census-bureau-3-8-million-100000978.html

• Russia is close to pushing legislation for the use of cryptocurrency in international trade.
• In current conditions “it is impossible to do without cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency,” the Bank of Russia and Ministry of Finance have reportedly agreed.
• The necessary regulatory framework will still need to be introduced.

The Bank of Russia and the country’s Ministry of Finance have reconsidered their positions toward cryptocurrency, acknowledging it to be necessary to legalize the use of cryptocurrencies in cross-border settlements, per a report by local news outlet TASS.

According to TASS, the two government bodies have agreed that “it is impossible” to continue without enabling cryptocurrency as a legal payment method for international trade.

The move comes as Russia dabbles on how to best regulate the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets. Swamped in Western sanctions, the world’s largest country has sought alternatives to the U.S. dollar so as to guarantee the efficient trade of its commodities.

In March, the chairman of the country’s Congressional energy committee, Pavel Zavalny, said the country was open to taking payments for natural gas and other natural resources exports in bitcoin.

“When it comes to our ‘friendly’ countries, like China or Turkey, which don’t pressure us, then we have been offering them for a while to switch payments to national currencies, like rubles and yuan,” Zavalny said at the time. “With Turkey, it can be lira and rubles. So there can be a variety of currencies, and that’s a standard practice. If they want bitcoin, we will trade in bitcoin.”

In May, it was reported that Russia was “actively discussing” using cryptocurrency in international trade.

Now, the imminent actualization of such a move shifts the tide as President Vladimir Putin last year had dismissed the possibility in an interview at the Russian Energy Week event in Moscow.

“I believe that it has value,” Putin said at the time, referring to bitcoin. “But I don’t believe it can be used in the oil trade.”

According to TASS, the necessary regulatory framework to enable cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency in Russia will still be introduced.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/russia-to-legalize-use-of-crypto-in-international-trade

Seriously Though

Oxford quantum physicist Nikita Gourianov tore into the quantum computing industry this week, comparing the "fanfare" around the tech to a financial bubble in a searing commentary piece for the Financial Times.

In other words, he wrote, it's far more hype than substance.

It's a scathing, but also perhaps insightful, analysis of a burgeoning field that, at the very least, still has a lot to prove.

Cashing In

Despite billions of dollars being poured into quantum computing, Gourianov argues, the industry has yet to develop a single product that's actually capable of solving practical problems.

That means these firms are collecting orders of magnitude more in financing than they're able to earn in actual revenue — a growing bubble that could eventually burst.

"The little revenue they generate mostly comes from consulting missions aimed at teaching other companies about 'how quantum computers will help their business,'" Gourianov wrote for the FT, "as opposed to genuinely harnessing any advantages that quantum computers have over classical computers."

Contemporary quantum computers are also "so error-prone that any information one tries to process with them will almost instantly degenerate into noise," he wrote, which scientists have been trying to overcome for years.

Gourianov also took aim at other assumptions about the field, arguing that fears over quantum computers being able to crack even the securest of cryptographic schemes are overblown.

Notably, the piece comes just weeks after a group of researchers found that a conventional computer was indeed able to rival Google's Sycamore quantum computer, undermining the tech giant's 2019 claims of having achieved "quantum supremacy."

Pure Hype

Despite the industry's less-than-stellar results, investors are still funneling untold sums into quantum computing ventures.

"In essence, the quantum computing industry has yet to demonstrate any practical utility, despite the fanfare," Gourianov wrote. "Why is then so much money flowing in? Well, it is mainly due to the fanfare."

The money, he argues, is coming from investors who typically don't have "any understanding of quantum physics," while "taking senior positions in companies and focusing solely on generating fanfare."

In short, Gourianov believes it's only a matter of time until the "bubble will pop" and the "funding will dry up" — at which point, it's already too late.



https://futurism.com/the-byte/oxford-physicist-unloads-quantum-computing

Texas is banning 10 large banks and 348 investment funds for allegedly boycotting fossil fuel-based energy companies critical to the state's economy, a move critics said could cost taxpayers in the Lone Star State hundreds of millions annually in higher interest costs.

The state's blacklist released Aug. 24 follows West Virginia's decision in July to ban five banks for the same reason. Such actions come as some Republican-led states are cracking down on corporate social and environmental policies the states perceive to be politically driven.

Banks that Texas put on notice earlier this year went to great lengths to show that they are, in fact, investing tens of millions in the fossil fuel industry, but some failed to convince the state. Texas and West Virginia have now banned BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, from doing business with the state.

Texas' exclusion list of so-called Annex I companies also includes BNP Paribas SA, Credit Suisse AG, Danske Bank A/S, Jupiter Fund Management PLC, Nordea Bank Abp, Schroders PLC, Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ), Swedbank AB (publ) and UBS Group AG. The 348 investment funds belong to banks in the U.S. and Europe.

Large pension funds such as the Teacher Retirement System of Texas will now be required to divest from companies and funds on the list, as will a multibillion-dollar public school fund.

"A vibrant Texas oil and gas industry is a stabilizing force in today's economic and geopolitical environment," Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said in a statement. "My greatest concern is the false narrative that has been created by the environmental crusaders in Washington, D.C., and Wall Street that our economy can completely transition away from fossil fuels, when, in fact, they will be part of our everyday life into the foreseeable future."

The Texas crackdown came on the heels of Florida's Aug. 23 decision to bar the state's $186 billion pension fund from considering environmental, social or governance factors in investment decisions. Other Republican-led states are expected to follow suit.

Loan costs soared

Steve Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, said such state efforts are escalating in part because of the groundswell of investors demanding change. For example, in 2021 ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, investors managing $52 trillion in assets urged nations to phase out coal, and many institutional investors have pledged to gradually reduce their carbon footprints.

"The market is speaking, and there are some states that want to put their thumb on the market," Rothstein said in an interview. "Texas taxpayers, unfortunately, will have a burden of hundreds of billions of dollars based on this decision."

A July study from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School estimated that municipalities and other public entities in Texas paid between $303 million and $532 million more in interest on the $32 billion they borrowed during the first eight months after the anti-ESG laws Texas enacted in 2021 took effect and some large banks had to cease bond underwriting.

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/texas-bans-10-banks-348-investment-funds-over-fossil-fuel-policies-71842914

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120457153/texas-ban-on-firms-who-dont-invest-in-firearms-and-fossil-fuels-are-cost-taxpaye