Suju Mukkatira’s Post

"Some of the major commodities grown in affected parts of North Carolina include apples, tomatoes, dairy and beef cattle, trout and Christmas trees, Ashby said. Other key crops include corn, soybeans, tobacco, sweet potatoes and cotton. ... In Georgia, the storm left catastrophic damage to poultry farms, pecan orchards and peanut fields. President Joe Biden, who toured a pecan farm in Ray City, Georgia, said he saw “acres of orchards wiped out,” with “trees uprooted [and] debris everywhere.” “Decades of progress gone in a single instant,” the president said during a press briefing Thursday. ... The affected areas from Helene cover over 4.8 million acres and encompasses more than 38,000 crop insurance policies, the USDA said. The department has instructed crop insurance companies to expedite payments and added new flexibilities for producers to speed up recovery efforts. However, the process for recouping financial losses in the immediate aftermath of the storm has proved difficult: Many Farm Service Agency offices, which administer disaster programs and commodity payments, are themselves closed or damaged by the storm ... ... While corporations do their part, some farmers and ranchers are taking matters into their own hands, using their agricultural drones to deliver supplies and even help locate missing individuals. After clearing trees from his own operation, Russell Hedrick, of Hickory, North Carolina, organized a group to deliver pallets of water and food using their drones to communities in Asheville and Marion, Farm Journal reported. Hedrick also pinpointed survivors using a drone with thermal imaging. “These weren’t just any farmers,” Cody Jarvis, who joined Hedrick’s cause, told Farm Journal. “They came from North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Wisconsin, stepping away from their crops to offer their assistance and equipment free of charge.” https://lnkd.in/edubmy_R

"The report found that overall in the two years to August, portfolio companies of the top dozen buyout groups defaulted at a rate of 14.3%, a figure twice as high as that for companies not backed by private equity. ... ‼️ Nearly a quarter of the Apollo-owned companies that Moody’s rates have defaulted since 2022, while 47 per cent of Ares-backed companies they follow are distressed, the agency said. ‼️"

“According to our adjustments, cumulative inflation since 2019 has been understated by nearly half. This has resulted in cumulative growth being overstated by roughly 15%. This is a large amount for just 5 years – for perspective, peak-to-trough drop in real GDP during the 2008 crisis was 4%. Moreover, these adjustments indicate that the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022. ... The phenomenon of undercounting inflation is particularly concerning today given how high the official inflation measurements have been for the last several years. The inflation itself has increased the nominal values of several key economic metrics without resulting in any real change. This is why there has been such a disparity between the rapid rise in nominal, pre-inflation GDP and the relatively slow increase in real, after-inflation GDP. ... Implications for Incomes - Moreover, these are all official numbers. When disposable personal income is deflated with a more accurate inflation metric (detailed below), the real increase of 12.9 percent in disposable income from the first quarter of 2019 through the second quarter of 2024 becomes a real decrease of 2.3 percent over that period – an aggregate 15% difference. ... The housing component has had the largest impact in terms of adjusting for the true cost of living; in the second quarter of 2024, it increased the cumulative change in the GDP deflator by roughly 75 percent. This was due to the combination of not only higher home prices but also higher interest rates. That is, a mortgage payment is made of the amount borrowed and the interest rate, and if both house prices and interest rates are rising then the cost of home ownership rises on both fronts. Conversely, using this accurate method the relatively low interest rates in 2019, 2020, and early 2021 actually have a negative impact on the GDP deflator. That is to say, the adjustment reduced inflation during those years.” https://lnkd.in/eHSmZrRc

"Toronto-Dominion Bank has been ordered to pay a total of $3.09 billion US in fines after pleading guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and commit money laundering. The bank has also received a cease-and-desist order and non-financial sanctions from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), including an asset cap that put limits on its growth in the U.S. after it was found that TD had "significant, systemic breakdowns in its transaction monitoring program." U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said TD created an environment "that allowed financial crime to flourish." "By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one," he said in a press conference Thursday. "Today, TD Bank became the largest bank in U.S. history to plead guilty to Bank Secrecy Act program failures, and the first bank in history to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering." He said TD admitted in its plea agreement it allowed three money-laundering networks to transfer more than $670 million US through TD Bank accounts over a six-year period, actions which many employees were aware of, yet went unaddressed. ... On one occasion, David deposited more than $1 million US in cash in a single day, then moved the funds out of the bank using official bank cheques and wire transfers. More than $57,000 US in gift cards was provided to other bank employees as bribes.  Many employees were aware of the probable illegality of these actions.  In August 2021, a TD Bank store manager sent an email to another store manager, commenting, "You guys really need to shut this down. Lol," Garland said. On another occasion, a store manager implored their supervisor to do something, stating that their tellers didn't feel comfortable handling the suspicious transactions. TD Bank's own internal audit group repeatedly highlighted concerns about the bank's transaction monitoring program between 2014 and 2022, according to the DOJ, but the program remained largely stagnant nonetheless, suffering with chronic underfunding and understaffing."

The report also says there are cases where “outlaw motorcycle gangs are armed with firearms.” It concurs with fishery officers that “a number of the illegal fishers that officers deal with regularly are convicted violent criminals and have threatened officers directly and on social media.” Doug Wentzell, the federal Fisheries Department’s regional manager for the Maritimes, said in an interview last week that a number of officers have refused field work, but he declined to say how many. ... The investigator's directive to the federal Fisheries Department concludes current protective equipment and tactical protocols are inadequate and therefore the officers' enforcement duties "could reasonably be expected to present a serious threat to their life and health." "Therefore, you are hereby directed ... to take measures to correct the condition that constitutes the danger immediately," the document said. ... However, Debbie Buott-Matheson, a spokeswoman for the Fisheries Department, said in an email that "our officers are returning to full duties." "We have taken action to address the [Labour Program] direction received," she wrote. "The health and safety of our fishery officers remains our top concern. Fishery officers are dedicated, well-trained professionals, and acts of violence and threats towards them will not be tolerated." ... Veronique Chadillon-Farinacci, a professor of criminology at the University of Moncton ... who is currently carrying out studies on conflicts within the fishing industry, said "there are some signs, anecdotal signs, of a very serious situation" in parts of the Maritimes. "Maybe fisheries officers' jobs are changing and ... they are being exposed to situations that are closer to what police officers are exposed to," she said."

"Wind Speed - Surface winds in the Arctic are also experiencing noteworthy changes ... In sum, as the extent of ice covering the ocean diminished, the wind speeds increased. Subsequently, the researchers utilized various models and numerous future scenarios to predict future changes. Their findings indicate an overall strengthening of wind speeds, within the range of 0.4 to 0.8 meters per second, and an approximate 13 percent overall increase in windiness across the entire Arctic region. Seasonally, this research indicates that the Arctic will experience its most significant winds during the winter months, accompanied by notable increases in wind strength during the fall. Regions projected to experience substantial increases include the Chukchi–East Siberian Seas, Franz Josef Land, and Hudson Bay. A particularly striking observation is the predicted peak in mean wind speeds, reflecting a 23-percent increase in the vicinity of Wrangel Island, northwest of the Bering Strait. This heightened wind activity, especially during the winter season, is expected to result in a 1.5 meters per second (m/s) increase, carrying considerable implications for communities in Siberia and Alaska. Similar conclusions were reached by Mirseid Akperov and colleagues, albeit employing a different ensemble of climate models. Looking at future periods of 2020–2049 and 2070–2099, these researchers’ findings also indicated an overall increase in wind speeds across the Arctic Ocean, with regional peaks in the Bering and Chukchi Seas and around Greenland. One curious finding was a modeled outcome showing significant decreases in wind speeds in both the Barents Sea and around Norway, despite predictions of diminished sea ice in the area. Of importance to maritime industries are the predicted regional differences in mean wind speeds along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and the NWP. Both routes are undergoing increased scrutiny as shipping lanes and are likely to see more traffic in the coming years due to diminished sea ice. The models indicate that the NSR is poised to experience a more gradual increase in wind conditions when compared to the NWP. This discrepancy stems from variances in sea ice depletion, characterized by accelerated ice loss along the northern coast of Russia and more gradual losses along North America, and the intricate interplay of wind patterns across diverse Arctic regions." https://lnkd.in/e2UJgX3G

"For the most part, our moral systems end up with a similar basic set of rules. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie. The problems arise in weighing conflicts between rules within our value system, or between multiple value systems. Common sense allows us to easily resolve some of these conflicts. Don’t lie, but if the alternative would result in the murder of your children, lie until your lips turn numb. More often, the units we must weigh are irreducible and incompatible. How many lies offset an act of generosity? The answers to these questions are non-falsifiable, even if various ethical systems purport to have adopted more objective means to answer them. That means that we will disagree. It also means that, as much as we might like to say ‘the ends don’t justify the means’, we are often left with no choice but to judge the rightness of actions by calculating their expected consequences, and by weighing unweighable goods and bads. This ground was well-trod among ethicists hundreds of years ago. You need a 4,000-word, dime store survey version of it from me today like you need a hole in the head. But if we would be students of the Widening Gyre of politics and the black hole of financial markets, there is one ethical topic we must grapple with directly and urgently. It is the thing which Thucydides considered a prerequisite for union within a community. It is what Hannah Arendt considered the first casualty of a state veering toward totalitarianism. Honesty. Like any other ethical idea, honesty may inevitably come into conflict with other principles. It is these conflicts and how they are resolved or justified, whether rightly or wrongly, that empower the widening gyre. In simpler terms: our differing reasons for becoming liars are what are causing us to fall apart. Understanding those reasons will play a large role in how we chart a path back to sanity. The way I see it, there are three reasons a person becomes a liar: he believes that he must, he believes that he may, or he believes it serves a Greater Truth. ... But here’s something that does matter: If 40% of us believe that the other 40% is irredeemably hateful and bigoted, and that 40% of us believe the other 40% hates us, our country and its values, we have no country. As well-intentioned and well-founded as our Greater Truths may be, if we press ahead with our willingness to pursue fundamentally dishonest strategies with one another in support of those Greater Truths, we have no country. Or, as Thucydides put it: "There can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each other’s honesty." Unfortunately, I think we’re beyond that. Could you really be persuaded? Could I? No. The question for those who still want to be a country together is this: What must I do to convince you of my honesty?" https://lnkd.in/eUriJ9qP