Month: October 2023

The unprecedented ouster of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, generated headlines about “chaos” engulfing Congress. Indeed, that is true, as far as it goes. The budget crisis was not resolved, but kicked down the road until mid-November (cf. SAS 40/23); the increased funding requested by Joe Biden for the Ukraine war was temporarily derailed — […]

Paulo Nogueira Batista is a highly-respected Brazilian economist who served as Vice President of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) from 2015-2017. In a sharp speech delivered on Oct. 3 at the Valdai Club Dialogue meeting in Sochi, Russia, he both reiterated his proposal for creating a BRICS-linked new currency to issue development credit, and addressed the mistakes that led to […]

In his Oct. 3 remarks to the Valdai Club, Paulo Nogueira Batista also put into focus the strategic significance of the policy fight ongoing in Russia around the role of the Central Bank. Why was progress with both the NDB and the CRA so slow, Nogueira asked: “Having participated intensely in the two years of negotiations that led to the CRA, […]

Last week we drew attention to the effect of central bank interest rate increases on the banking system, and in particular to the devaluation of bank assets as a consequence of higher yields on government bonds. The rise in yields is ascribed to inflation fears and to increased government debt, i.e., an increased bond supply on the market – both […]

The Oct. 8 elections for a new state parliament in Bavaria and in Hesse delivered a resounding blow to the federal government, with all three parties losing votes. While economic and migration issues were at the center of both election campaigns, Berlin’s pro-war policy was only opposed by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. More than Bavaria, Hesse was a […]

During a discussion at the Valdai Club’s annual conference on Oct. 5 in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected any notion of lowering the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons. He was responding to a question from Sergei Karaganov, a founding member of the Valdai Club, who suggested the government should modify its doctrine and move “steadily and sufficiently quickly […]

As part of the new transitional government’s efforts to make Gabon safe for development, Lee White, the Minister of Water and Forests under the Bongo government that was just ousted in a coup and a close friend of the British King, was put under house arrest on Oct. 4. He is accused of “complicity in illegal logging” and “embezzlement of funds”. […]

The new Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum is not only an assault on science, it also threatens to undermine the credibility of the Vatican just as it is conducting efforts to arrange peace negotiations over Ukraine. The paper was published on Oct. 4, St. Francis’ Day, and presented as a continuation of the Laudato sì Encyclical written by Commander of the […]

The United Kingdom’s new Defence Minister Grant Shapps told the Telegraph (Sept. 30) that he had held talks with Army leaders about moving “more training and production” of military equipment into Ukraine, while calling on British defense firms to set up production there. He also revealed that, during his visit to Kyiv on Sept. 27, he had talked to Volodymyr […]

Just hours before the deadline of midnight, the U.S. Congress averted a government shutdown on Sept. 30, when the Senate voted 88-9 to pass a clean continuing resolution, providing for the temporary extension of government funding until Nov. 17. The vote came several hours after the House of Representatives had voted 335-91 in favor of a similar clean bill (clean […]