AI as systemic financial risk. The economics of famine. Mexico's wealth panic & how H1B visas are upending the global cricket rankings.
Great links, reading and images from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
Vilja Celmins Tulip Car #1 (1966) Source: Wikiwand
At what point does the market’s obsession with AI mutate from being a good-news tech story to a systemic financial risk?
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“Staying alive is so expensive”: Economics of the Gaza famine
Prices for basic goods in the Gaza Strip have spiralled after the closure of its border crossing with Egypt worsened wartime scarcity, sending the cost of a single cigarette as high as $20 and forcing families to sell jewellery and other possessions to buy food. Vegetables, frozen meat, medication, petrol and cooking fuel have leapt in price to at least triple their prewar levels. Some items now cost dozens of times what they did before Israel’s war with Hamas began … The outbreak of war in October sharply constrained the flow of goods into Gaza, but the situation worsened last month after Israel’s military launched an offensive into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, seizing a key border crossing with Egypt and targeting a network of smuggling tunnels. A kilo of frozen chicken thighs, only available once or twice a week, has leapt to the equivalent in Israeli shekels of $20, more than 10 times its prewar price. Cooking gas, when available, costs $35 a kilo, up from $1.60; car batteries, used for charging phones and electric lamps, sell for more than $500 each; and a litre of petrol, when available, sells for $22. … the asking price for one Egyptian Karelia brand cigarette peaked at $140 earlier this year and is at present about $20. These are ruinous prices even for the few who can afford them. Per capita income in Gaza before the war, when almost half the population was unemployed because of the Israeli blockade, was about $1,200 a year, according to the World Bank. By February, 90 per cent of Gazans were unemployed, according to estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as the enclave’s GDP fell more than 80 per cent. … “Things have become nastier as the situation grows increasingly desperate, the Bedouin clans are more ruthless than ever before [with the looting of convoys]. It’s still Mad Max,” said a person familiar with Gaza humanitarian issues. Soaring profits from the high prices have resulted in local, Egyptian and West Bank-based Palestinian businessmen seeking to get more commercial trucks into Gaza. Two people familiar with the situation said there was a period last month in which commercial goods made up a large portion of incoming convoys. Palestinian businesspeople can pay exponentially more for truck hire than aid groups, they said. Commercial operations, bringing items such as soft drinks and cigarettes, pay as much as $2,500 per truck for armed local security, something international aid groups are barred from doing.
Source: Mehul Srivastava and Neri Zilber in FT
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The Mexican peso has abruptly ended its long run up against the dollar.
Source: Bloomberg
“Time to “move to the house in Houston”” - panic amongst Mexico’s wealthy
Mexico has one of the highest levels of inequality in the OECD and a recent report by the Paris-based organisation found that almost 90 per cent of Mexicans favoured policies to narrow the income gap.
One meme posted in a 35,000-strong Facebook group supporting Gálvez vowed to stop tipping waiters, donating to victims of natural disasters or giving money to people who help park your car because “they voted for Morena, so Morena should support them now”. A litigation lawyer called the country “Moronstan”, while another disappointed voter called for a national strike and a recount. One user shared on Facebook a meme with a picture of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata saying: “Mexicans, you make me sad that for a handout, a water tank, or a sheet roof you buy slavery.” Morena supporters and independent analysts say Mexico’s election result is not hard to explain: after decades of high poverty, glaring inequality and low wages, López Obrador — the founder of Morena — more than doubled the minimum wage, expanded social programmes and sent a consistent message that he was on the side of Mexico’s long-neglected have-nots. …The anti-Morena backlash has become a political talking point. Miguel Treviño, the independent mayor of one of the wealthiest districts in Latin America, San Pedro Garza García in Monterrey, wrote on X: “Your WhatsApp chats: Do they talk about going to live in the US? Are there apocalyptic predictions? A conspiracy theory competition? It’s time to delete [them].” Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a prominent government critic, said the opposition had to accept the results, but also struck a more ominous note as he warned that the winners should not act vengefully. They did not have the right to “barbecue the bodies of the losing players”, he said. … After a crushing electoral defeat in 2018, one senior opposition politician told the Financial Times how he had spent the night in a “humble home” to learn what it was like, proudly showing pictures he had taken on his mobile phone. “After I returned to Mexico City, it struck me that perhaps my maid lived in a similar sort of home, so I showed her the photos and sure enough it turned out that her home was very similar,” he beamed.
Source: FT
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Choosing poverty and precarity - UK’s unemployment benefit system is now that of a hard knocks EM economy
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Vilja Celmins, Burning Man 1966
Fascinating thread this on molecular biology - when I read this stuff I glimpse what a large part of my family spend their lives thinking about.
Twitter Philip C Ball
Amazing stories like this:
And this is how the Indian Express sees it:
Inspiration like this:
Corinthians 15:51-57
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
Or in German, Korinther 15,55-57: Tod, wo ist dein Sieg? Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?
Inspired by being taken to experience immersion in Brahms’s Human (German) Requiem:
restaged and arranged by Jochen Sandig and a team from Sasha Waltz & Guests is a milestone in the Rundfunkchor Berlin’s successful interdisciplinary series. Since its premiere in 2012 the »human requiem« has received overwhelming response all over the world. The production has made guest appearances in New York, Hong Kong, Athens, Brussels, Amsterdam, Granada and Adelaide. In 2016 »human requiem« made the New York Times’ »The Best Classical Music” list and received the Classical:NEXT Innovation Award.
»I’m in tears … in the darkness, I heard your voice giving me the light, the hope, the love … this is the best that I have had in years.«
Composer Tan Dun, Brüssel 2016Music, up close and personal: With »human requiem« the Rundfunkchor opened up a new dimension of musical experience. The division between the spaces for stage and audience is dissolved, the listening public does no longer sit in front of the sound but instead right in the middle of it, creating a new set of interrelationships between the text, the actual bodies of performers and listeners, the space and the sound. »Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.« Jochen Sandig takes Brahms’ Requiem by its word. The proximity of the singers offers a sublime communal experience, thus enabling the audience to grasp the message of humanity with all senses. Within the community of singers and listeners this message becomes a space-filling and personal event: a »human requiem«. In an oft-cited letter to the conductor Carl Reinthaler, Brahms wrote in 1867: »As regards the text, I must confess that I would gladly leave off the ›German‹ and replace it simply with ›human‹.«
Source Wikipedia and Rundfunkchor Berlin
It really is a unique experience of music. Go if you ever get the chance. This youtube video gives only a vague sense of the spatial effects.
h/t Kathrin Happe and Joerg Haas
Vija Celmins, Brennendes Flugzeug (1965) Source: Arthive
If you have scrolled this far you know what you should think about!