PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Otoño 2023

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2023-10-14/abrazar-la-incertidumbre.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2023-10-14/la-segunda-oportunidad-para-un-fondo-de-soberania-europeo-de-tecnologias-criticas.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2023-10-14/los-desafios-que-tienen-por-delante-los-bancos-europeos.html

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-14/kenya-replaces-numerical-debt-ceiling-with-limit-at-55-of-gdp

Kenya Replaces Numerical Debt Ceiling With Limit at 55% of GDP

Kenya has approved changes to the way it determines the maximum amount of debt the government can hold, as it seeks to improve transparency in the accounting and management of the country’s loans.

President William Ruto signed into law a bill that sets the measure at 55% of gross domestic product, from the previous numerical limit of 10 trillion shillings ($67 billion). The law defines total public debt as all loans and guarantees incurred by the nation and its 47 county governments.(...)

[sudden and sharp]

Otros que han aprendido a falsear estadísticas.

[asustadísimos]

[¡Documento importantísimo! Las tres grandes asociaciones del sector (construcción, hipotecas e intermediación) le dirigen una admonición a la Fed, para coaccionarla en el endurecimiento monetario:
https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-priorities/mba-nar-nahb-fed-letter
Lo que más interesa:
In July, shelter inflation was responsible for 90% of the gain for consumer prices. The most effective approach to tame shelter costs, and assist on the broader inflation fight, is to facilitate the construction of attainable, affordable housing... Housing activity accounts for nearly 16% of GDP. We urge the Fed to take steps to ensure that this sector does not precipitate the hard landing.
Se reconoce que el capitalismo ha fracasado en la provisión de vivienda básica y que ese fracaso es la causa de la inflación-IPC.
Conteste lo que conteste la Fed, será malo para el sector, porque es ella la que ostenta el poder económico conjuntivo, junto con el fisco y el capital.
El sector ladra al unísono, luego cabalga el Requetecatacrack.
Realmente el destinatario de la carta es el público. Le notifican que, para ellos, la culpa la tiene a la Fed. He leído un comentario crítico —algo difícil de que se dé—: Yes, MBA, yes NAHB, yes NAR—but, you should have been doing something about that years ago. We’re paying the price right now for everybody’s lack of building affordable housing. Jerome can’t fix that. He can’t fix the facilitation of construction of attainable, affordable housing.
En cualquier caso, no falta vivienda porque no se haya construido suficiente, sino porque se retiene, se acapara, se raciona. El problema solo es el precio.]


[El esquema llamado 'Cómo la subida de tipos de interés reduce la inflación. Principales canales', del Banco España, que hemos incluido en el comentario...
https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2596.msg220425#msg220425]
... es más importante de lo que parece. Aunque ya lo vimos cuando glosamos 'Banco España, Informe Anual 2022, pág. 172 del pdf', fíjense que ahora, supersintéticamente, pone sin pudor alguno, a continuación de la caída del precio de la vivienda, la apreciación de su antagonista, el euro. No están avisando de lo que viene, sino describiendo los procesos en los que ya estamos. Se trata de una crisis 'de tijeras' (cfr. la llamada crisis de las tijeras en la URSS de los 1920), solo que, en vez de darse entre sectores de la Producción, se da entre activos reales y financieros. Lo importante del endurecimiento de la política monetaria no era el encarecimiento de los préstamos y la mayor rentabilidad del Ahorro —consecuencias inmediatas—, sino en lo que estamos ahora —consecuencias mediatas sobre la bolsa, vivienda y divisas—.]

[Derby]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/cash-is-the-new-coupon/ar-AA1idGGE

Cash Is the New Coupon

Shoppers once had to fish in their wallets for a coupon to save a few bucks at checkout. These days, a $20 bill often does the trick.

Discounts for paying cash are now on the menu at coffee shops, restaurants and other stores as businesses search for ways to skirt rising credit-card transaction fees. The share of all cash purchases that came with a discount climbed 66% between 2015 and 2022, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

But cash isn’t always king, even in the world of high fees. Just as with the expanding range of cards and mobile-payment options shoppers now have to choose from, deciding when and whether to pay cash can be confusing. Lincoln and Jackson can haggle down the price for you in some situations, but for rewards and convenience, plastic often beats dead presidents.

Retailers are nudging us to use cash in two main ways. Some impose surcharges if you want to pay by credit card. Others offer cash discounts, but those deals might not be as good as they seem.

Thea Landen, a romance writer in upstate New York, says she taps her phone to pay for most things. But when she wants a taco salad, she takes a $20 bill from her husband’s drawer to take advantage of the cash discount at her favorite Mexican restaurant.

“I figure I might as well do the right thing and sleep better at night thinking, ‘Hey, look at me doing this great thing for my family,’” she said.

But the discounted price she got for paying for her lunch in cash is the same price as listed online. “This menu reflects a 3.5% cash discount,” reads the small red text at the bottom of the page. “If you choose to pay by card, this discount will be removed.”

The restaurant, Sangria’s, is one of a growing number of merchants using cash-discount programs. Many businesses offer customers cash discounts to lower payment-processing fees, which cost owners roughly 1.5% to 3.5% of each card transaction. More than 80% of all purchases were made by card or app in 2022, according to the San Francisco Fed.

New apps on modern point-of-sale devices make it easy to build the discounts into digital menus and to mask higher prices for card customers. One popular version of these apps merchants use is called #1 Cash Discount App.

According to merchant tutorials viewed by The Wall Street Journal, this is how the app works: First, the software lets businesses increase the prices for their entire inventory by the same percentage; the company suggests 4%. Merchants are then prompted to set a discount; here again, the company suggests 4%. Now, when customers check out, they will see both the new higher price and a “discounted” price, usually equal to the original listing price.

Raising all of the prices before implementing the discount circumvents restrictions set by state laws and card networks such as Visa and Mastercard on fees merchants can charge customers for card payments, developers of cash-discount apps say.

You have rights as a consumer, and you can bring this up with the merchant if you notice any surprise fees during checkout. In fact, the Biden administration plans to crack down on what it calls junk fees in favor of clearer pricing.

Federal law prohibits businesses from charging consumers additional fees to pay with a debit card. If you pay with debit, ask that any surcharges be removed from your bill before completing a transaction.

For credit cards, if it costs more than the listed price to pay with a card, that is a fee.

Consumers can report businesses they suspect might be violating card policies to the payment networks directly. Businesses caught breaking these rules might have to pay fines.

Also, many credit cards offer rewards that can offset potential savings from using cash. For example, Landen’s Discover card gives her 5% cash back on dining transactions from April through June. During those months, she can earn 98 cents in cash back on her taco salad compared with saving 66 cents using cash.

Typically, mom-and-pop businesses were more likely to nudge customers to use cash than chain stores or corporations, said Kevin Foster, a survey director at the Atlanta Fed.

Most businesses are hesitant to offer cash discounts and surcharges out of fear of alienating customers since most people prefer to pay by card, payment-industry executives said. That is why cash discounts and surcharges are more common for essential transactions such as gasoline purchases than discretionary ones.

That dynamic changed after the pandemic made shoppers more sympathetic to small businesses and rampant inflation forced merchants to look for ways to keep costs down, said Paul Hadfield, founder of TRNXN, a payments company that offers an app similar to #1 Cash Discount. Today, 80% of his clients use cash discounting or surcharges compared with none two years ago. They save about $3,000 a month on average, he said.

“In a very short time, I went from dissuading businesses from using cash discounting to now promoting it to every business,” Hadfield said.

TRNXN clients that implemented card surcharges or discounts reported that fewer than 1% of customers complained and that it had no impact on overall sales. The majority of complaints that did come in were about fees, not discounts, he said.

Mike Emanuel, another regular at Sangria’s in upstate New York, said he would rather deal with higher prices than with card-processing fees he has been seeing at more local businesses since 2020. He still mostly pays with his credit card because of the rewards and payment protection. Unless, of course, the price is right. His favorite sushi restaurant, Koi 21, gives a 15% discount for paying in cash.

“I will absolutely go to the ATM every time just for that discount.”

[Derby]

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3237992/israel-gone-beyond-self-defence-gaza-chinese-foreign-minister-wang-yi-says-calls-stop-collective

Israel ‘gone beyond self-defence’ in Gaza, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says, calls to ‘stop collective punishment’

Israel ‘should seriously listen to the calls of the international community and UN’, Wang Yi tells Saudi counterpart in phone call on conflict

China ‘communicating intensively with all parties’ for a ceasefire, top priority is ‘safety of civilians’, Chinese readout quotes Wang as saying

Israel should stop its “ collective punishment” of Gaza’s civilians with actions beyond self-defence, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, warning it would worsen regional tensions and lead to humanitarian disaster.

In a call with Saudi Arabian counterpart, Wang also condemned the continued Israeli retaliation to a shock attack a week ago by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
“Israel’s actions have gone beyond self-defence,” Wang told Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout released early on Sunday.

“It should seriously listen to the calls of the international community and the United Nations secretary general and stop collective punishment of the people of Gaza.”

“China opposes and condemns all actions that harm civilians because they violate basic human conscience and basic norms of international law,” Wang said.

He also urged all parties to refrain from escalating the situation and to return to negotiations as soon as possible, the readout added.

“China is communicating intensively with all parties to urge for a ceasefire. The top priority now is to ensure the safety of civilians, open humanitarian aid channels and safeguard the basic needs of Gaza’s people,” Wang said.

Al Saud said Saudi Arabia was deeply concerned about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He condemned all attacks on civilians and opposed Israel’s forcible relocation of Gaza residents.

On Friday, the Israeli military told the 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza to to relocate southwards within 24 hours ahead of an expected ground offensive, prompting a mass exodus.

After days of intense bombardment of Gaza and cutting off electricity and water supplies, the Israel Defence Forces on Saturday said it was preparing to implement “combined and coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land”.

The UN has said it “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences”.

UN chief Antonio Guterres, who earlier said the situation in Gaza had “reached a dangerous new low”, has been urging Israeli authorities “to avert a humanitarian catastrophe”.

Humanitarian organisation Norwegian Refugee Council has also called on Israel to reverse the evacuation order, saying the “collective punishment of countless civilians” amounted to a war crime.

“My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire,” council chief Jan Egeland said on Friday.

“The loss of civilian lives caused by deliberate or indiscriminate use of force is a war crime.”

Some 1,300 people were killed and dozens taken hostage by Hamas fighters after they attacked a music festival and border towns in southern Israel early on October 7. Retaliatory air strikes launched by Israel have killed more than 2,200 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.

China’s special envoy for Middle East affairs Zhai Jun, who will visit the region this week, warned that the conflict was spilling over, with armed clashes with pro-Palestinian groups on Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria.

“The international community must be highly vigilant and work together to control the situation and prevent it from getting out of control with objectivity and fairness,” Zhai told state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday.

He said Chinese citizens in Israel could take commercial flights back or to third countries as needed, and Beijing would continue to monitor air and land routes and provide help.

Zhai said his upcoming visits would aim to push for a ceasefire, protection of civilians, de-escalation of the situation and the promotion of peace talks. He did not specify “the relevant countries” to be included on the trip.

His trip will follow the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s ongoing diplomatic tour of the Middle East covering Israel, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as well as Saudi Arabia.

Blinken has urged Beijing to use its influence in the Middle East to prevent other state or non-state actors from attacking Israel and widening its war with Hamas, the State Department said in reporting a call between him and Wang.

Wang said the “two-state solution”, a proposed framework to establish an independent Palestine alongside the Jewish state, remained the “fundamental way out” for the conflict, according to the Chinese readout of the call. Blinken agreed, it noted.

[Lem]

Por continuar mi "anecdata" ladrillera en UK... tras un "flurry" inicial de visitas (5) durante las tres primeras semanas para comprar la casa que alquilo, la cuarta se pararon en seco. Esta semana ha habido una nueva visita. Se dejaron atrás un "flyer" con los datos del inmueble, y al mirarlo me di cuenta de que han bajado el precio inicial. Esto lo pude confirmar al visitar la web.

Ilustrado:

Mi landlord preguntándome si me interesaba y lo que consideraba por lo que lo podría colocar (no pongo captura del chat en IMGUR porque nunca se sabe dónde acaban las cosas):

Sounds like the joy of Victorian plumbing  . I know it's an unusual
question but would you be interested in buying the house for yourself? Current valuation is £900k-£1M.

[El comentario cachondo de "joy of Victorian plumbing" es porque la salida aguas de la cocina se atasca cada año inundando de aguas pestilentes el "conservatory" roñoso y para que no sucediese habría que repararlo con obra. Fíjense que ni si quiera se para a pensar en cómo queda una frase junto a la otra en cuanto a percepción de valor ]

Precio de salida (hace un mes):



Nuevo precio:



No sólo ha cambiado el precio, sino que ha pasado de "exijo más de X" a "me gustaría X".

Valoración automatizada actual en Rightmove (portal más importante de UK):



Lo mismo pero en un par webs "independientes" que se dedican sólo a ello:





El más escandaloso y que ya he compartido un par de veces pero no con los datos actuales, Zoopla el segundo portal inmobiliario de UK:



Tras una ligera bajada, la valoración ha vuelto al pico!

Según ellos el alquiler debería estar £1000 de lo que pago! Y les aseguro que me conozco el mercado al dedillo y ni la valoración baja del arco podrían pedir.

[puede ser]

(...) Se trata de una crisis 'de tijeras' (cfr. la llamada crisis de las tijeras en la URSS de los 1920), solo que, en vez de darse entre sectores de la Producción, se da entre activos reales y financieros. (...)

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_de_las_tijeras

La históricamente denominada La crisis de la tijera de precios (en ruso Но́жницы цен, transliterado como Nózhnitsy tsen o académicamente como Nóžicy cen) es el nombre con el que se conoce un suceso que afectó a la economía de la Unión Soviética en sus primeros años y que consistió en la existencia de un gran diferencial entre el precio de los productos industriales y agrícolas.

Del mismo modo que las dos hojas de una tijera, los precios de los bienes industriales y agrícolas divergieron, alcanzando la máxima diferencia en 1923 cuando los precios industriales llegaron a ser nada más y nada menos que un 276% más altos que en 1913 mientras que los bienes agrícolas "solo" o "únicamente" aumentaron un 89%.

La crisis se debió a que la producción agrícola había aumentado mucho desde la hambruna rusa de 1921-1922 y la propia Guerra civil rusa, pero la industria necesitó más tiempo para recuperarse debido a la necesidad de reconstruir las infraestructuras. El problema solo se acabó solucionando a partir de la intervención económica directa del entonces joven régimen comunista soviético en particular.

Para superar la crisis, el gobierno redujo los costes industriales mediante disminuciones de plantillas, la racionalización de la producción, el control de los salarios y la reducción de la influencia de los intermediarios.

Para finalizar, como resultado de estas medidas en especial el desequilibrio comenzó a disminuir. En el mes de abril de 1924 los precios agrícolas aumentaron un 92 % con respecto a 1913, mientras que los precios industriales terminaron descendiendo en nada menos que en un 131%.

[sudden and sharp]

Líderes indígenas australianos piden una semana de silencio tras el triunfo del NO en el referéndum
https://www.vozpopuli.com/internacional/lideres-indigenas-australianos-semana-silencio-no-referendum.html
Los líderes indígenas recibieron un no mayoritario (60,5% del total de los votos) en el referéndum celebrado en Australia sobre la creación de un organismo consultivo que les diera voz frente al Legislativo y el Ejecutivo

"Es el momento de analizar las razones de este trágico resultado", subraya un comunicado de los líderes indígenas divulgado tras los resultados del referéndum, según publica hoy la cadena australiana ABC y recoge EFE. "Ahora es momento para el silencio, el luto y considerar sus consecuencias", añade.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/10/14/6526e05ae5fdeaf3018b45b0.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/ahorro/2023/10/14/652ae12f468aebd1148b4602.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/fiscal/2023/10/13/65298d2fe5fdeab5418b458a.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/opinion/2023/10/14/6529c3fd468aebb3708b45fa.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/10/13/6528eaf2e5fdea55748b461f.html

Saludos.