Tension between anonymity and identity in web3 is being tested as firms seek a way to control rampant fraud

Web3, blockchain, and decentralized finance (DeFi) technologies, with their famously libertarian users, seem like the last places you'd expect to see a credit-scoring system. But money talks, even in a DeFi world.

If you understand a traditional credit score, you understand the point of a web3 credit score: to ascertain trustworthiness of individuals trying to transact on blockchains. Their basic scheme of operation isn't too dissimilar from centralized finance credit scores either.

Where web3 credit scores differ from their analog ancestor is in how they define identity, and how easy it may be to fool them. Web3, cryptocurrency, and DeFi are all about anonymity, which makes it tough to see how credit scoring – a necessarily intrusive concept – can eliminate rampant web3 fraud without upsetting many of its advocates. 

But what is a DeFi credit score?

Credit scores in the physical world use a variety of metrics to arrive at a picture of an individual's financial state – payment history, length of credit, debt-to-income ratios, and other data points are part of how banks and lenders gain an understanding of the risk a person presents.

Web3 credit scores would ostensibly do the same thing, but for decentralized financial systems.

There's a lot of overlap between web3 credit score companies' methods, which generally involve linking one or more wallets to the company's system and letting an algorithm dig through the wallet's on-chain (and sometimes off-chain) history to build a picture of its owner.

With a score established, the various DeFi credit agencies issue NFTs that serve as a token of creditworthiness. Those NFTs can be attached to any blockchain transaction on a system that supports smart contracts, like Ethereum, and could theoretically be used in place of collateral, which is commonly how DeFi transactions and loans are backed.

The problem with DeFi credit: Identity

It could be argued that the reason why credit scores work is because of their centrality. Banks and lenders report to whichever bureaus handle credit ratings in a particular country, and those bureaus in turn are able to keep an (ideally) accurate record of how borrowers behave.

Not so with decentralized credit scores, and that appears to be a serious problem, DeFi researcher Chris Blec pointed out in a Twitter exchange with Julian Gay, CEO of Cred Protocol, a company developing a web3 credit scoring system.

Discussing the use of multiple wallets, Blec said such users may be expecting a higher degree of privacy. In other words, what's to stop them from simply not linking additional wallets in order to compartmentalize their online activities?

Spectral, a web3 credit score company that recently announced $23 million in funding from companies including SamsungNext, seemingly admits the potential for such abuse in its explanation of its scores, which it said are "created by connecting either a single wallet or a bundle of several wallets to Spectral's App," the company said.

With web3 credit scores apparently requiring voluntary participation, the success of such systems seem to rely on the hope that the incentive to create a pseudonymous, decentralized online identity will overrule an individual's desire to remain anonymous online.

"Web3 wallets include not only financial transactions, but also NFT holdings, gaming transactions, salaries, governance votes etc. So when a user bundles their wallets they are also expressing their pseudonymous identity," Spectral CEO Sishir Varghese told The Register.

Avivah Litan, Gartner distinguished VP analyst covering AI and blockchain, said much the same, but added that the anonymity promised with web3 and blockchain are essentially incompatible with credit scores because establishing a credit score online requires some sort of decentralized identity system, Litan told us.

"Before we get reliable credit scores in Web3, we need more adoption of decentralized identity constructs and application and that hasn't happened yet," Litan told The Register.

Bird, another web3 credit company, has answered that question by relying on off-chain data sources such as social media and web browsing history, as well as traditional banking records, employment status, and other sources of data it might be able to get its hands on in the future. "Given the pace at which new data sources are being created in our daily lives, the sky is truly the limit when envisioning the potential of Bird's prediction products," the company said in a 2021 Litepaper [PDF] about its scoring process.

That sounds an awful lot like traditional credit scores, only perhaps more invasive. Agencies like Experian and Equifax, for all their faults, don't typically look at your internet search history – at least not yet. ®

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/25/defi_credit_scores_blockchain/

In the German state of Lower Saxony, the world’s first network with hydrogen fuel cell trains in passenger service has now gone into operation. On the route between Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervörde and Buxtehude, 14 hydrogen-powered Coradia iLint regional trains are now in operation, replacing 15 diesel trains.

The operation is carried out by Eisenbahnen und Verkehrsbetriebe Elbe-Weser (evb) on behalf of the public transport operator Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LNVG). The order for the 14 Coradia iLints was placed back in 2017, and the first two were already in service on the route between Cuxhaven and Buxtehude in September 2018. At that time, however, they were still pre-series trains.

This week, the complete fleet of 14 Coradia iLint trains in series trim has now gone into passenger service, and the project has a total volume of over 93 million euros to date. “This project is a role model worldwide, it is an excellent example of a successful transformation Made in Lower Saxony,” says Minister President Stephan Weil. “As a state of renewable energies, we are thus setting a milestone on the path to climate neutrality in the transport sector.”

A hydrogen filling station was built in Bremervörde for the H2 trains, which is operated by Linde. The facility has a storage capacity of 1,800 kilograms of hydrogen, distributed over 64 500-bar high-pressure storage tanks. Six hydrogen compressors supply the two dispensers where the trains can refuel with hydrogen around the clock. For the time being, the hydrogen will be supplied, later it will be produced on site by means of electrolysis and regeneratively generated electricity – corresponding expansion areas for this plant are available.

Since the trains have a range of 1,000 kilometres with one tank of hydrogen, they can cover their daily mileage without a refuelling stop – which takes place once a day outside operating hours. In this way, 1.6 million litres of diesel should no longer be consumed per year.

The state subsidiary LNVG had already started looking for alternatives to diesel trains in 2012. The company still operates 126 diesel trains, but according to Carmen Schwabl, spokesperson for the LNVG management, it does not want to buy any more new diesel vehicles. Because of the early commitment to H2 technology, Schwabl is convinced that they “have thus given an impulse to the development of hydrogen trains in Germany”. “We are also convinced that diesel trains will no longer be economical to operate in the future. We are pleased to have now reached another milestone with our partners Linde and Alstom as well as evb,” says the LNVG Managing Director.

“Emission free mobility is one of the most important goals for ensuring a sustainable future and Alstom has a clear ambition to become the world leader in alternative propulsion systems for rail. The world’s first hydrogen train, the Coradia iLint, demonstrates our clear commitment to green mobility combined with state-of-the-art technology. We are very proud to bring this technology into series operation as part of a world premiere, together with our great partners,” says Henri Poupart-Lafarge, Chairman and CEO of Alstom.

https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/25/hydrogen-train-network-goes-live-in-germany/

Billionaire Marc Lore is fleshing out his plan to build a utopian city called Telosa for 5 million people in the American desert — and he's not the only one with such ambitions.

Why it matters: There are about a dozen projects worldwide to create sustainable, hypermodern cities-from-scratch. While they may never come to fruition, the proposals themselves hint at what the city of the future might look like.

Driving the news: Telosa is set to be built on 150,000 acres in either Nevada, Utah or Arizona, and 50,000 "diverse" people will call it home by 2030, according to newly released details from Lore — a serial entrepreneur who sold Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3 billion and the parent company of Diapers.com to Amazon for $545 million.

• "We're not just building a new city — this is a new model for society," Lore said at a Telosa "town hall meeting" in July, adding that he wants his new city to be "sustainable and equitable to all."
• It'll be governed by a principle he calls "equitism," which seems to be a mashup of democracy, capitalism and socialism.

In Lore's vision, vehicles will be electric and autonomous, and roads won't have curbs (which could hinder differently-abled people), or on-street parking.

• Telosa's 36 districts will each be "15-minute cities," where everything a resident needs is a short walk away.
• Every building will be "green," with rooftop panels producing renewable energy.
• The design calls for fresh water to be "stored, cleaned and reused on site," creating a "diverse and efficient water system that is resistant to drought."

How it'll work: A nonprofit called the Telosa Community Foundation will purchase the land to build the city — "land that is virtually worthless," as Lore put it.

• The hope is that development will increase the land's value, and then the foundation eventually would be able to create a market for it — investing the proceeds in an endowment-style vehicle that would fund education, job training, health care, housing and more.
• This structure "allows us to offer these incredible social services without having to increase taxes. That is the Holy Grail," says Lore.

Among those working to make Telosa happen: Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a childhood friend of Lore's, and Bjarke Ingels, the prominent Danish architect whose firm is designing the city.

The big picture: Telosa, a name derived from the ancient Greek word meaning "highest purpose," is one of a growing number of dewy-eyed ambitions to build centrally planned and sustainable communities on a blank landscape — despite obvious impediments, like a lack of fresh water.

• In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is constructing a megacity named The Line, part of a larger development called Neom.

• The Line's plan calls for a city 105 miles long but only 220 yards wide, enclosed by mirrored walls and powered entirely by renewable energy, according to newly released designs.
• Water will be plentiful, according to the project's claims, through desalinization, wastewater and seawater processing, and smart metering.
• "Saudi projections call for 1.5 million people to live in The Line by 2030," NPR reports, with eventual plans for 9 million residents.
• But recent Businessweek reporting suggests the broader Neom project has been plagued by indecision at the top and other problems.

• Floating City in the Maldives is envisioned as a large cluster of hexagonal structures that rise and fall with the sea, with room for up to 20,000 people. It's set to be completed in 2027.
• Toyota Woven City is a company town being built in the foothills of Japan's Mount Fuji. The proposal calls for a 2,000-person city where Toyota "will test autonomous vehicles, smart technology and robot-assisted living," per CNN.
• Masdar City in Abu Dhabi is a "master-planned eco-complex designed to show off the UAE’s commitment to sustainability," Bloomberg has reported.
• Net City in Shenzhen, China, is another company town being built by tech giant Tencent. It'll be a Monaco-size metropolis for 80,000 workers, CNN reports.

Other billionaires with city-building aspirations include Bill Gates, who wants to build a "smart city" called Belmont in the Arizona desert, and Elon Musk.

• On Earth, Musk has discussed creating a city called Starbase in southernmost Texas, as a hub for space exploration — and, of course, he aims to one day build a "self-sustaining city on Mars."

Reality check: Some of the claims being made by the utopian planners strain credulity — like Telosa's assertion that it'll eventually be a net exporter of water and energy.

• In the real world, the promise of smart cities — where intelligent sensors, cameras, and Big Data combine to improve everything from traffic flow to city services — has been a consistent disappointment.

The bottom line: The road to utopia is littered with shattered dreams.

• "We still haven't figured out how to make utopian environments work for people," Professor Sylvie Albert of the University of Winnipeg writes in The Conversation.
• She reviews the flaws in experiments like Brasília, Levittown, Celebration, Songdo, Eko Atlantic and Sidewalk Toronto.

https://www.axios.com/2022/08/25/city-of-the-future-neom-telosa-lore-mbs

"They don't want the defendant to tell this side of the story," says Clark Neily of the Cato Institute.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doesn't just regulate the country's financial institutions: As a censor of books, it has no peer. Take its successful suppression of Bob's memoir.

In the early 2000s, the pseudonymous Bob developed a new financial technology to make a lot of money in Texas' energy markets. He made so much money, in fact, that the SEC became suspicious and sued him. To avoid the ruinous penalties and potential criminal charges he was facing, Bob agreed to a favorable settlement with the agency.

A nonnegotiable term of that settlement, and all SEC settlement agreements, is that Bob must never publicly profess his innocence. That's why we can't even use his real name in this story. Given that 98 percent of the people sued by the SEC settle with the agency, these gag orders have proven remarkably effective at shutting down critical speech.

Bob maintains that his business was perfectly legal. He would have happily proved that in court if not for the severe penalties he was facing. He's so adamant about this that he wrote an entire book defending himself and attacking the SEC for its accusations.

In 2018, he went about getting his book published through the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

"I read the memoir and thought, 'This story needs to be told,'" says Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at Cato. But publishing the book would open up Bob, and potentially Cato, to legal liability for violating the agency's gag order.

"This guy has been through hell with the SEC and [the Department of Justice] and didn't want to put a target on him again," says Neily.

So in 2019, Cato sued the SEC. It argued that any attempt to enforce the commission's gag orders violates the First Amendment's free speech protections.

It lost. In June 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Cato Institute did not have standing to sue. That means Bob's book will go unpublished.

It also means that his and countless other accusations of SEC maliciousness and incompetence will never see the light of day.

"They don't want the defendant to tell this side of the story," says Neily. "They know that virtually every defendant is going to settle, so they have a strong interest in making sure that no one ever gets to assess the quality of their investigations or the validity of their allegations."

https://reason.com/2022/07/21/redacted/

If you were in this position, what would you do? Are you sure the savings you have so far can minimize your financial problems from rising inflation?

Investors bought nearly a quarter of U.S. single-family homes that sold last year, often driving up rents for suburban families in the process.

The issue is especially acute in some Sun Belt states amid evidence that investors often can outbid other buyers, keeping starter homes out of the hands of would-be owners, especially suburban Black and Hispanic families. Some local officials in those states are pushing for increased regulation of investor purchases, but many Republican lawmakers oppose such controls.

Investors bought 24% of all single-family houses sold nationwide last year, up from 15% to 16% annually going back to 2012, according to a Stateline analysis of data provided by CoreLogic, a California-based data analytics firm. That share dipped only slightly in the first five months of 2022 to 22%.

Investor purchases doubled or more in Florida, Nevada, Vermont and Washington state from 2020 to 2021. In Vermont, they grew from 7% of sales in 2020 to 17% last year and in Nevada from 18% to 30%.

Five states saw the highest share of investor purchases. Investors bought a third of single-family homes sold in Georgia (33%) last year, with Arizona (31%), Nevada (30%), California and Texas (both 29%) not far behind.

Investor ownership began to grow after the Great Recession of 2008-2009, when large swaths of overbuilt Sun Belt homes went into foreclosure, and investors snapped them up. Investor ownership grew again last year as pandemic-related demand for suburban housing rose, and investors saw a chance to win bidding wars with cash offers.



Image link:  https://i.ibb.co/jD4NFy8/investor-home-purchases.jpg

Across most states, investor purchases of homes spiked in 2021 and remained elevated in the early months of 2022. Investors made 29% or more of the home purchases last year in Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Nevada, and investor purchases doubled or more from 2020 for Florida, Nevada, Vermont and Washington.

The Sun Belt also appealed to investors because there are fewer statewide restrictions than in a state such as California, which heavily regulates landlord-tenant issues, said Jenny Schuetz, a housing policy expert at the Brookings Institution who has testified at congressional hearings on investor ownership of homes.

Local governments need help to identify problem landlords and write new regulations, she added, such as landlord registries and boilerplate lease language requirements that protect tenants.

“They’re not prepared to deal with this. We need to get more tools into their hands,” Schuetz said.

In North Las Vegas, Nevada, which is mostly Hispanic and Black, residents have gathered petitions for a ballot initiative limiting rent increases, saying they’ve been outbid by investors who have raised rent sharply in recent years.

The controls were supported by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who blamed “out-of-state speculators coming in buying up homes in our neighborhoods Michael Malcolm, 65, said he struggled to find affordable rent in College Park as a retired, disabled telemarketing executive. When a landlord raised his rent from $750 to $1,500 two months ago, he found a relative with whom to share his three-bedroom house after searching in vain for something more reasonable.

“One house we looked at was fine when we looked at it. Our budget was $1,500, but then in two days, it went to $2,000,” he said. “It’s crazy. Yet there are people coming in and paying those rents.”

The Georgia Municipal Association, representing Georgia municipalities, opposes the preemption bills that were introduced, partly so that cities can decide for themselves about “build to rent” policies, said Charlotte Davis, the association’s deputy director of governmental relations, speaking at an Atlanta-area housing forum in June.

“This has been a very heavy-handed approach, going to the state legislature to preempt mayors and county commissions and ultimately local residents, because it’s easier to strong-arm the state,” Davis said.

Sponsors of the state bills did not return Stateline calls for comment.

Large-scale rental house landlords often are blamed for rent hikes but still represent a tiny portion of single-family homes, said David Howard, director of the National Rental Home Council in Washington, D.C., a trade group representing single-family home landlords.

“The idea that large, faceless, deep-pocketed out-of-town investors are taking over every housing market and dictating rents is just not true,” Howard said, speaking of what he called a half-dozen companies with tens of thousands of homes nationwide.

The CoreLogic data shows that what it calls “mega” investors, with a thousand or more homes, bought 3% of houses last year and in 2022, compared with about 1% in previous years, with the bulk of investor purchases made by smaller groups.

U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, defended landlords at a U.S. House committee hearing on the issue of investor-owned homes in June. Racially diverse suburbs in Minnesota are among those targeted by investor home purchases, according to a report last year by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

“We must not forget that single-family rental homes fill a gap for a large population of our country who either prefer or need to rent,” Emmer said. “We cannot demonize institutions for facilitating this supply of quality housing that otherwise would be out of reach for many Americans.”

Institutional buying in Georgia has focused on a ring of middle-class Black suburbs south of Atlanta, according to research by Brian An, an assistant professor of public policy at Georgia Tech. An said buying since 2007 was concentrated in southern Atlanta suburbs with mostly Black populations, low poverty, good schools and small affordable houses considered good starter homes.

and raising the rent,” and says the North Las Vegas plan could become a template for statewide rent controls.

In Georgia, local officials are fighting for more regulation of rental homes, but some Republican lawmakers seek a more hands-off policy. GOP leaders in the legislature, joined by some Democrats, sponsored bills in February that would have preempted local regulation of landlords and rents.

The bills would have prohibited “any restrictions” by local government on rental housing, threatening to withhold state funding for violations. The legislation immediately drew protests from many cities and counties.

The state Senate and House bills both died in committee but could come back in another session, said Mayor Bianca Motley Broom of College Park, a mostly Black suburb south of Atlanta.  

“It really has been one of the defining issues of the last couple of years,” Motley Broom said.

Most of her constituents are renters hoping to buy homes, and they were disappointed when a new development of more than 200 houses announced a change to “build to rent,” meaning the units would be long-term rentals, she said.

“Preemption laws tie our hands and essentially force 537 cities, each with unique dynamics, to be force-fed a cookie-cutter approach,” said Motley Broom.

Institutions began investing in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods near Atlanta when untenable subprime mortgages led to foreclosures after the Great Recession, said another Georgia Tech assistant professor, Elora Raymond. Raymond’s studies found investor ownership in some Atlanta-area neighborhoods led to evictions, gentrification and displacement of longtime Black residents as investors sought higher-income renters who could pay more rent to boost profits.

Schuetz said investor ownership may not be a bad thing in itself, if landlords treat tenants well. Investor interest in houses is a symptom of a larger problem — low supply of houses, she stressed.

“If 50 people are bidding for a house, 49 are going to lose, but they still need a place to live,” Schuetz said.

She said states and localities could create landlord registries, like one adopted last year by Los Angeles County to help local governments recognize which corporations or other investors have patterns of abusing tenants with quick evictions or excessive fees, or who neglect property maintenance.

States and cities could increase legal protections for tenants, since some professional landlords have been quick to evict when tenants fall behind on rent, said Desiree Fields, a University of California, Berkeley associate professor who studies single-family rental issues.

“The states where investor ownership [of rental homes] is most prominent are also states where there are hardly any tenant protection measures,” Fields said.




https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/07/22/investors-bought-a-quarter-of-homes-sold-last-year-driving-up-rents

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made hazardous chemicals that are spread globally in the atmosphere and as a result they can be found in the rainwater and snow in even the most remote locations on Earth. During the last 20 years, guideline values for PFAS in drinking water, surface waters and soils have decreased dramatically due to new insights into their toxicity. As a result, the levels in environmental media are now ubiquitously above guideline levels.

A perspective article by researchers from Stockholm University and ETH Zurich that is published today in Environmental Science & Technology suggests that PFAS define a new planetary boundary for novel entities that has been exceeded.

“There has been an astounding decline in guideline values for PFAS in drinking water in the last 20 years. For example, the drinking water guideline value for one well known substance in the PFAS class, namely the cancer-causing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has declined by 37.5 million times in the U.S.” said Ian Cousins, the lead author of the study and professor at the Department of Environmental Science, Stockholm University.

“Based on the latest U.S. guidelines for PFOA in drinking  water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink. Although in the industrial world we don’t often drink rainwater, many people around the world expect it to be safe to drink and it supplies many of our drinking water sources,” Cousins continue.

The Stockholm University team have conducted laboratory and field work on the atmospheric presence and transport of PFAS for the past decade. They have noted that the levels of some harmful PFAS in the atmosphere are not declining notably despite their phase out by the major manufacturer, 3M, already two decades ago. PFAS are known to be highly persistent, but their continued presence in the atmosphere is also due to their properties and natural processes that continually cycle PFAS back to the atmosphere from the surface environment. One important natural cycling process for PFAS is the transport from seawater to marine air by sea spray aerosols, which is another active research area for the Stockholm University team.

“The extreme persistence and continual global cycling of certain PFAS will lead to the continued exceedance of the above-mentioned guidelines,” said Professor Martin Scheringer, a co-author of the study based at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and RECETOX, Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.

“So now, due to the global spread of PFAS, environmental media everywhere will exceed environmental quality guidelines designed to protect human health and we can do very little to reduce the PFAS contamination. In other words, it makes sense to define a planetary boundary specifically for PFAS and, as we conclude in the paper, this boundary has now been exceeded,” said Scheringer.

PFAS are harmful to health and the environment

PFAS is a collective name for per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances or highly fluorinated substances that have a similar chemical structure. All PFAS are either extremely persistent in the environment or break down into extremely persistent PFAS, which has earned them the nickname “forever chemicals.”

PFAS have been associated with a wide range of serious health harms, including cancer, learning and behavioral problems in children, infertility and pregnancy complications, increased cholesterol, and immune system problems.

Dr. Jane Muncke, Managing Director of the Food Packaging Forum Foundation in Zürich, Switzerland, and not involved in the work, points out: “It cannot be that some few benefit economically while polluting the drinking water for millions of others, and causing serious health problems. The vast amounts that it will cost to reduce PFAS in drinking water to levels that are safe based on current scientific understanding need to be paid by the industry producing and using these toxic chemicals. The time to act is now.”



https://www.su.se/english/news/it-s-raining-pfas-even-in-antarctica-and-on-the-tibetan-plateau-rainwater-is-unsafe-to-drink-1.620735

With more people owing more money, utility companies are getting more aggressive about shutoffs.

A “Tsunami of Shut-Offs” Is Coming

US electricity prices surging and more people than ever are struggling to pay the power company. More than 20 million American households have fallen behind on their utility bills, about 1 of every 6 homes, and the amount they owe has doubled since before the pandemic. 

With more people owing more money, utilities are getting more aggressive about cutting off delinquent customers. Many states imposed shutoff moratoriums during the pandemic, but those policies wound down just as record inflation made power – and almost everything else — more costly.

That’s going to trigger a “tsunami of shutoffs,” Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg News for a story I co-wrote this week on the coming crisis. 

The basic problem is that electricity is more expensive, up 15% from a year ago, and there's no sign of relief. That’s because power prices are linked to the cost of natural gas, which has more than doubled in the past year and is expected to remain high at least into next year.

Meanwhile, climate change has triggered extreme heat around the world, driving up power consumption, and power bills, as people seek refuge in air-conditioning. And in many hot regions, cooling isn't just for comfort — people who lose power during a stifling heat wave can die. While 41 states have some kind of protection against winter shutoffs for exactly this reason, only 19 have similar policies for the sweltering summer months. New Orleans last month asked its local utility to halt summer shutoffs as temperatures climbed, and this is going to become more urgent amid the global climate crisis.

Government aid is helping avert some shutoffs, and Congress this month asked for additional emergency funding on top of the $4 billion already set aside for a federal assistance program this year. Many states also have assistance programs, and utilities are generally willing to work with struggling customers. Most will agree not to shut off power to people who have applied for assistance or signed up for some kind of payment plan.

But that help is just a band-aid that masks the underlying issue, according to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Low-income families already face a high energy burden, with a greater portion of their income needed to cover utility bills than wealthier families. For some, electricity is becoming too expensive to afford at all. 

“The bills just aren’t affordable,” says Wolfe. “People on the bottom, they can’t pay this.” —Will Wade

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-25/more-americans-than-ever-can-t-afford-to-pay-their-electric-bill

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - British consumer price inflation is set to peak at 18.6% in January, more than nine times the Bank of England's target, an economist at U.S. bank Citi said on Monday, raising his forecast once again in light of the latest jump in energy prices.

"The question now is what policy may do to offset the impact on both inflation and the real economy," Benjamin Nabarro said in a note to clients.

Consumer price inflation was last above 18% in 1976.

The front-runner to become Britain's next prime minister, Liz Truss, is likely to come up with measures to support households hit by surging energy prices, which might slightly lower the peak rate of inflation, Nabarro said.

Energy regulator Ofgem is due to set out new maximum tariffs for households on Friday, which will take effect in October.

The last tariff increase in April raised the annual bill for a typical household to 1,971 pounds ($2,322) from 1,278 pounds, following a surge in natural gas prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The next increases are likely to be steeper still, after a 15% rise in natural gas prices over the past week.

Citi forecasts Ofgem will raise the tariff cap to the equivalent of 3,717 pounds from October, with further increases to 4,567 pounds in January and 5,816 pounds in April 2023.

Energy analysts Cornwall Insight also raised their forecasts for Ofgem's regulated tariffs to 3,554 pounds for October, 4,650 pounds for January and 5,341 pounds for May.

"It is difficult to see how many will cope with the coming winter," Cornwall Insight consultant Craig Lowrey said.

In its forecasts at the start of August, the BoE assumed the cap would rise to around 3,500 pounds in October and that energy prices would then stabilise. Consumer price inflation would thus peak at 13.3% in October.

With inflation now set to peak substantially higher, the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee was likely to conclude that the risks of more persistent inflation had intensified, Citi said.

"This means getting rates well into restrictive territory, and quickly," Nabarro said. "Should signs of more embedded inflation emerge, we think Bank Rate of 6-7% will be required to bring inflation dynamics under control. For now though, we continue to think evidence for such effects are limited."

The BoE announced a rare half-percentage-point interest rate increase earlier this month and investors expect another big move when the MPC makes its next scheduled monetary policy announcement on Sept. 15.

Nabarro forecast retail price inflation, which is used to set the return on index-linked bonds, would peak at 21.4%.

($1 = 0.8487 pounds)



https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-inflation-hit-18-early-2023-citi-forecasts-2022-08-22/

Two-thirds of Europe is under some sort of drought warning, in what is likely the worst such event in 500 years.

The latest report from the Global Drought Observatory says 47% of the continent is in "warning" conditions, meaning soil has dried up.

Another 17% is on alert - meaning vegetation "shows signs of stress".

The report warns that the dry spell will hit crop yields, spark wildfires, and may last several months more in some of Europe's southern regions.

Compared with the average of the previous five years, EU forecasts for harvest are down 16% for grain maize, 15% for soybeans and 12% for sunflowers.

The drought observatory is part of the European Commission's research wing. Responding to it, the Commission warned that preliminary data suggests "the current drought still appears to be the worst since at least 500 years".

The ongoing heatwave and water shortages have "created an unprecedented stress on water levels in the entire EU", Research Commissioner Mariya Gabriel said.

"We are currently noticing a wildfire season sensibly above the average and an important impact on crops production. Climate change is undoubtedly more noticeable every year," she added.

The report warned that nearly all of Europe's rivers have dried up to some extent.

Apart from the obvious impact on boats, dry rivers are also hitting the energy sector, which is already in crisis. Hydroelectric power has dropped by a significant 20%, according to the report.

A "severe drought" has been present in many places all year, but "has been further expanding and worsening as of early August" it says. The conditions are likely to last until at least November this year along the European Mediterranean.

The report warns that the situation is worsening in countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Romania, Hungary, northern Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova, Ireland and the UK.

The researchers' stark warning follows rapidly-sinking river levels across Europe which have exposed relics of the past - including so-called "hunger stones" warning of potential famine and the sunken remains of World War Two Nazi ships.

And in the UK, which had an official drought declared in several regions, some trees have turned an autumnal shade of auburn - in what's considered a "false autumn" due to the heat.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62648912

sellers can get together and try to discuss prices, to either lower it or push it up from an original price.

This is the different between the rich and the poor. The rich invest in what can fetch them more money (asset) e.g buying land, investing in reputable businesses but the poor out of fashion keep buying liabilities (goods that they keep on spending their little earnings on for maintenance). If 70%- 80% of your income goes to liability then one is preparing for a poor life.

Is it possible to dissipate completely the use of cash? What plans should be put in place to bring to speed our aging folks who have little or no orientation about the advent of the use of crypto currency? Is the emergence of crypto currency a revolution of cash/fiat?

Because once you have unscrupulous individuals calling the shorts in the world, you can expect there is going to be a lot of injustice, inequality, power abuse, greed, false promises, distrust, and many other factors which eventually lead to economical disbalance, being impossible to create a propitious environment for its healthy development.