PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Verano 2022

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.lavanguardia.com/natural/20220825/8482619/europa-peor-sequia-500-anos.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/mercados-cotizaciones/noticias/11917802/08/22/Una-Fed-mas-agresiva-en-Jackson-Hole-llevara-al-bono-al-37-en-solo-un-mes.html

Saludos.

[cujo]

El éxito del teletrabajo arruina al sector inmobiliario: Londres se ahoga en oficinas vacías
Noticia de : el economista

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/11917401/08/22/El-exito-del-teletrabajo-arruina-al-sector-inmobiliario-Londres-se-ahoga-en-oficinas-vacias.html

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/transportes-turismo/noticias/11916900/08/22/El-Gobierno-no-descarta-prorrogar-mas-alla-de-diciembre-los-abonos-ferroviarios-y-la-ayuda-al-combustible.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

El euribor marca nuevo record en la década por encima del 1,4%

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

UGT reclama a la patronal un incremento del 10% del SMI

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/11917567/08/22/Von-der-Leyen-Europa-esta-con-Ucrania-a-largo-plazo.html

Saludos.

[Benzino Napaloni]

El éxito del teletrabajo arruina al sector inmobiliario: Londres se ahoga en oficinas vacías
Noticia de : el economista

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/11917401/08/22/El-exito-del-teletrabajo-arruina-al-sector-inmobiliario-Londres-se-ahoga-en-oficinas-vacias.html

Y si no el teletrabajo al 100%, sí se afianzan otras formas de trabajo flexible. Atom Bank, uno de bancos pioneros en Reino Unido en ser exclusivamente online, se convirtió en noviembre de 2021 en el mayor empleador británico en introducir la semana laboral de cuatro días para su plantilla de 430 trabajadores sin reducir los salarios.

Su valoración meses después es muy positiva, según ha indicado la entidad en un comunicado difundido este miércoles. Ha logrado retener talento, ha visto mejorada la productividad de la plantilla, se han reducido las bajas por enfermedad e incluso el servicio al cliente está ahora mejor valorado que antes. Para Anne-Marie Lister, directora de personal del banco, la semana de cuatro días "es el futuro de la vida laboral".

Con el paso al frente Atom Bank se convirtió en un 'caramelo' en el sector: las solicitudes para trabajar en el banco aumentaron un 49% en enero en comparación con el año anterior.

Se suprime el gasto absurdo en el tocho, y sorpresa. Queda para mejorar sueldos, o reducir la jornada a cuatro días sin bajar sueldos, el personal trabaja más contento, y sobra para pipas y golosinas .

En España la cosa será más lenta, pero hay empresas de fuera que ya van montando aquí la sede legal, y dejan trabajar en cualquier sitio con tal de que haya internet y sea en España. Algunas directamente en cualquier sitio con +-2 de diferencia horaria.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/dfb90cca-cd02-4add-8378-86fddae2aefc

Europe is becoming a global political power

The crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered new forms of co-operation among EU member states

The writer is France’s minister of state for Europe

(...) We are not naive: we know that the EU must reform to be able to operate efficiently and effectively in a wider Europe. This concerns institutional governance, as well as decision making, such as reconsidering the unanimity rule and qualified majority voting in certain areas of common European security policy, or in tax matters.

This is the aim of the European Political Community proposed by Macron: to consolidate European stability through co-operation on matters of foreign policy and security, and interconnections in trade, research and education.

Jean Monnet, one of the original architects of European integration, famously said: “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.” Russia’s assault on Ukraine and European values has made the transformation of Europe into a global political power an urgent collective priority for us all.

[Greco]

World Economic Forum adviser claims the planet no longer needs the ‘vast majority’ of the population
As a potential remedy to economically 'obsolete' people, Yuval Noah Harari proposed government redistribution of wealth, not just nationally, but globally.

Emily Mangiaracina | Fri Aug 12, 2022

Yuval Harari in a June 17, 2022 TED talk on Climate Change | YouTube screenshot

Top World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser Yuval Noah Harari recently declared that the world does not “need the vast majority” of the current population due to technological advances.

Harari made the bold declaration in an interview with Chris Anderson, head of the popular TED media group, echoing past predictions of a “useless class” of “unemployable” humans.

Yuval Noah Harari Reveals the Real Dangers Ahead | The TED Interview

Harai suggested that, in a departure from the 20th century, when the “big heroes” of political systems’ prevailing narratives were always “the common people,” now in the 21st century, people “are no longer part of the story of the future.” Instead, according to Harari, they have been replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) and displaced by a high-tech economy.

The author and lecturer presented to Anderson the “hypothesis” that anxiety about being displaced in the future economy by AI and a highly educated “tech” class is partly at the root of the world’s “disillusionment and backlash against the liberal order.”

“Part of what might be going [on] is people realize — and they’re correct in thinking that, ‘The future doesn’t need me. … Maybe if they are nice, they will throw some crumbs my way, like universal basic income.’ But it’s much worse psychologically to feel that you are useless than to feel that you are exploited,” Harari said.

“Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” Harari continued, “because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering.”

Harari added that “these technologies increasingly will make redundant” “whatever people are still doing which is useful,” and will thus “make it possible to replace the people.”

While he conceded to Anderson that technologies such as AI will open up new and “more interesting jobs,” Harari argued that “it’s not clear that many humans will be able to do them, because they will require high skills and a lot of education.”

Anderson doggedly proposed ways in which human beings could — and he suggested, should — continue to play a valuable part in the world economy, or at least society.

“So again, trying to desperately apply some sort of more hopeful spin on this … a lot of the jobs that are being displaced are actually kind of boring jobs that don’t really tap into the core of what the human is,” Anderson said.

He went on to point out that “When you step back, there’s no shortage of things that need to be done,” including addressing the world’s “millions of lonely people.”

“People are really good at making lonely people not feel lonely, and pretty much anyone can do that,”  Anderson noted. “You know, communities are a mess. Pretty much anyone who lives somewhere could do, in principle, something to make a community better. They could paint a fence, or do some voluntary service, or whatever.”

Harari in turn argued that in order to “recogniz[e] activities like community building and raising families as jobs,” “we need a new economic and social model.”

When Anderson asked Harari whether he sees “any solution to that problem other than” more tax redistribution by the government, Harari replied, “That’s the traditional role of government. When the market isn’t efficient enough in redistributing the wealth, then this is the job of the government.”

Harari went so far as to suggest that wealth would need to be redistributed globally, so that the profits of tech companies in the U.S. and China could benefit people in countries less advanced in the tech domain.

“I would say that the biggest problem by far is not on the national level. It’s on the global level,” said Harari, who added that while he can envision redistribution of wealth from “tech giants in California” to “mothers in Pennsylvania,” he does not see that wealth being redistributed to “Honduras or Mexico or Brazil.”

Eventually, Anderson pointed to the irreplaceable role of human beings, asking Harari:

“Is there any scenario where we could write ourselves back into this story in quite an important way as being the only things in the universe that we know of that are actually capable of the things that matter most in the universe — i.e., love, joy, creativity, the sort of that feeling of peace you talked about.

Technology can’t advise us on what are the things deepest in our hearts. We should not let it, we should retain control, in fact make our technology in service to those things. And in a sense, the relationship between technology and us — [technology] should regard sentient things as gods, that have superpowers it knows nothing of. No? Is that ridiculous?

Harari did not directly address Anderson’s point, but honed in on “the question of sentience and consciousness” as “the most important question in this regard,” and “the greatest riddle of science.”

Harari’s evasion of the question may stem from his less transcendent view of human beings, as reflected in his claim that “Homo sapiens rule the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money, and human rights,” a backbone idea of his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.”

This idea is echoed in his famous assertion that we “should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls,” but are “now hackable animals.”

As a top adviser to the WEF’s head and founder Klaus Schwab, Harari’s view that the world now holds an abundance of “useless” people, together with his open degradation of human beings as equivalent to animals, raises the question of whether the WEF’s aims are shaped by such a view, and if so, to what extent.

Indeed, the WEF arguably places the environment, and not human beings per se, at the center of its priorities. It has partnered with the heavily pro-abortion and pro-contraception United Nations (U.N.), and the WEF’s Great Reset agenda has raised concerns of collateral damage to the livelihoods and well-being of people around the world.

For instance, some argue that the WEF seeks the premature relinquishing of fossil fuel sources in favor of “green” but expensive and unreliable energy sources in such a manner as to curb overall energy usage and hurt entire economies via a ripple effect.

More evidence of such a worldview is the WEF’s endorsement of COVID lockdowns, which resulted in waves of lost jobs, massive spikes in depression, upticks in domestic abuse, and other harmful effects. In fact, the WEF called for “more stringent” lockdowns, despite such worldwide misery, and praised the lockdowns for their effect of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.

Saludos.

Por si alguien no había visto nunca un perro judío, aquí tiene a uno paradigmático, para el que el valor del ser humano, consiste únicamente en el superávit económico que pueda producir (para otros).

[sudden and sharp]

No tientes (tanto) a la suerte.








...

[sudden and sharp]

[Derby]

Pero ya se están viendo las alternativas a la inversión en el ladrillo...fin del negociete inmobiliario. La demografía no ayuda, no 

https://www.ft.com/content/d7cdd672-79cd-4487-9a37-b0abfa86dc04

China’s distressed asset funds struggle to profit from collapsing property sector

Groups reluctant to invest when there is still no bottom in sight for real estate market

Distressed asset managers in China’s private sector are struggling to profit from the country’s slowing economy, with no bottom in sight for its collapsing property sector and lenders reluctant to write off bad loans.

Almost a dozen distressed investment funds told the Financial Times they had not increased their exposure to residential and commercial properties, usually the most popular form of collateral in Chinese debt restructurings, despite soaring defaults in the real estate sector.

“A lot of us are standing by not knowing where to spend our money,” said an executive at Qingdao Huba Asset Management Co, which specialises in trading bad loans.

China is suffering one of its worst economic slowdowns in decades after government efforts to reduce debt in the property sector, which accounts for about one-third of economic output, led to a collapse in real estate prices.

This has combined with the negative impact of the government’s strict zero-Covid policy and a regulatory blitz against high-flying technology companies to depress domestic demand. Even property companies once considered financially reliable, such as the country’s largest real estate group, Country Garden, are reporting falling profits.

Although Beijing has announced interest rate cuts and some bailout initiatives for the property sector, it has failed to arrest the meltdown: house prices fell for 11 months consecutively up to July. This has left asset managers reluctant to enter the market for fear they will not recoup investments.

“[Distressed asset management] only works when you think there is going to be mark-to-market pricing and a cyclical improvement,” said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Partners in Hong Kong. “But if you don’t have accurate pricing and you have a structural downturn that could go on for another decade, then there is no way you can sell your assets.”

Banks are offloading existing bad debt but are mostly transferring it to large state-run asset managers, such as China Huarong Asset Management and Great Wall Asset Management. Official data show the country’s banking system disposed of Rmb1.4tn ($204bn) in non-performing loans in the first half of this year, up 18 per cent from a year before.

But rather than profiting from the disposals, many private sector distressed asset managers have been making losses. Shanghai Greencourt Investment Group, once an industry leader, reported an 86 per cent drop in profits in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier before being delisted in May. Its rival GI Technologies Group lost Rmb113mn in the first quarter of this year, following steeper losses in 2021.

The consultancy PwC said in a report this month that China’s “bad banks” — as its distressed asset management companies are known — are becoming less “active” even though they are supposed to thrive in a recession.

Local authorities want the asset management companies to bail out hundreds of unfinished residential projects left by cash-strapped developers, particularly in smaller “under-developed” cities.

But James Li, owner of a Beijing-based bad bank, said it was taking at least twice as long as normal to sell foreclosed apartments in under-developed cities, such as Zhengzhou in central Henan province where there are many unfinished projects thanks to rising supply and lukewarm demand.

Official data show the number of foreclosed homes in Zhengzhou almost doubled in the six months to the end of March. The situation had shown little signs of easing in recent months, said local officials. Meanwhile, the city’s housing sales dropped more than a third in the first seven months of this year from a year earlier.

“I avoid economic backwaters as much as I can,” said Li. “That leaves a small number of cities still worth investing in.”

Even commercial real estate, ranging from shopping malls to office buildings, has lost its lustre as Beijing’s tech sector crackdown and zero-Covid policy have boosted vacancy rates and hit rents.

Jackie Wang, a Shenzhen-based distressed asset manager, said he had stopped looking at office buildings in the southern city. Large tech groups were scaling back following a regulatory crackdown on education and internet platforms that has wiped billions of renminbi from their market value.

“We don’t know when the worst days for technology platforms will be over,” said Wang. “That means their demand for office space, a main driver of the market, will continue to weaken.”

The problem is exacerbated by the slow pace of bad debt write-offs among Chinese lenders despite a rise in defaults. Official data show the country’s banking system added Rmb107bn new non-performing loans in the first half of this year — slightly more than the same period of 2021 but much lower than the previous six years when the economy was strong.

A government adviser said the regulator, led by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, had relaxed bad debt ratio requirements for lenders so they could support the economy. “You won’t get punished for covering up a few billion yuan NPLs as long as you provide liquidity for cash-strapped small businesses,” said the person.

As a result, many lenders had put off writing down bad debt even though their asset quality had deteriorated rapidly along with the broader economy, said officials at two state-owned banks.

“We can’t accurately price bad loans when the market is rigged by the state,” said Li, the Beijing-based distressed asset manager.

Creditors’ avoidance of write-offs meant there were fewer bankruptcy proceedings, which distressed asset managers need to price toxic loans. Shanghai-based bad bank 01 Asset Management Co estimated that fewer than 10 per cent of distressed real estate developers had gone through bankruptcy restructuring because that would require lenders to write off their loans.

For distressed asset managers, the upshot is they will probably have to wait until the government finds the political will to launch a full bailout of the property sector, said industry operators.

“We become valuable when the government wants to solve the bad debt problem once and for all,” said the head of a distressed asset management firm in Qingdao. “[But] they [always] end up trying to delay the day of reckoning.”

[sudden and sharp]

El banano nunca baja... (je, je.)

[Greco]

https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/sociedad/2022/08/19/teoria-volcanica-sobre-calor-extremo-2022/00031660922239332913833.htm

La teoría volcánica sobre el calor extremo del 2022

Los efectos de la erupción del Tonga el pasado febrero podrían estar favoreciendo que aumente la temperatura global
21 ago 2022 . Actualizado a las 09:31 h.

Es de sobra conocido que las grandes erupciones volcánicas tienen un impacto brutal en el sistema climático. La historia está poblada de casos de cómo afectaron a la vida en la Tierra desde sus inicios. También a los seres humanos. Hay una relación, por ejemplo, entre la explosión del volcán islandés Laki en 1783 y la Revolución Francesa que ocurrió solo seis años después.

Las partículas que se liberan tras una erupción violenta llegan hasta la estratosfera. Desde ahí pueden recorrer todo el planeta y crear una capa que bloquea la radiación solar. Como consecuencia se produce un enfriamiento. Sin embargo, dependiendo de la naturaleza de la carga que expulse el efecto puede ser justo el contrario.

Un artículo publicado en la revista Journal of Geophysical Research sostiene que la violenta explosión del volcán Tonga ocurrida el 15 de enero del 2022 emitió una enorme cantidad de vapor de agua. Mientras que la liberación de otros gases como el dióxido de azufre fue comparable a erupciones anteriores, la magnitud de la inyección de vapor de agua no tiene precedentes en la era de los satélites. Envió alrededor de 146 teragramos (1 teragramo equivale a un billón de gramos) de vapor de agua a la estratosfera, lo que supone el 10 % del agua ya presente en esa capa atmosférica. Es cuatro veces la cantidad de vapor de agua que los científicos estiman que la erupción del Monte Pinatubo de 1991 en Filipinas arrojó a la estratosfera. «Nunca habíamos visto algo así», confirma Luis Millán, científico del Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro de la NASA y autor del artículo.

La erupción del Tonga no solo fue una de las más violentas de la historia reciente, también fue anómala. La cuestión es que ocho meses después, la concentración de vapor de agua en la atmósfera sigue muy alta, el doble de los valores normales, un gas que al igual que el dióxido de carbono y el metano es de efecto invernadero.

La propia NASA asegura que la concentración actual es lo suficientemente importante como para generar un calentamiento global de carácter temporal. Y dado que las temperaturas de los últimos meses están siendo muy altas, no solo en Europa, sino en todo el hemisferio norte, se piensa que puede haber una influencia. Los efectos podrían permanecer durante los próximos cinco años.

Mira que hay que ser gañan para no convertir 146 teragramos en 146 hectómetros cúbicos, y compararlo con algún embalse pequeñito, como por ejemplo https://www.embalses.net/pantano-1237-eume.html. En fin.