Sophie Cabot black

“To Burn Through Where You Are Not Ye

Those who take on risk are not those
Who bear it. The sign said to profit

As they do, trade around the one
Particular. Let them credit what you hunt,

Let future perform. Results are for your
Children anyway; returns can be long

To notice, and when wrong, will right
Unless the drawdown is steep, or of your own

Doing. If only to have known then the now:
The thesis did not revert, never worked;

You did not move
Except to the already—

And as the prodigy breaks from the pack,
Disrupts into the new for just one more

Click above the dial, the deal
Downriver is how you will get paid,

Later, further. Out beyond
Where you just see. Trust the flow

Is what he said, sort out the secular
As each day reconciles you

Into a morning of leaving. Or at least going;
Coming back at dark to take off your shoes

And ease into that chair. With that glass. Filled
Again. Not yet paid for. All resting

On an infinitesimal wire you have never seen.
Their wire. Their there. You here. Not there.

What it is like to be human ?

She said being human is being a young child on Christmas day who receives an absolutely magnificent Castle. And there is a perfect photograph of this Castle on the box and you want more than anything to play with the Castle and the knights and the princesses because it looks like such a perfectly human world, but the only problem is that the Castle isn't built. It's in tiny intricate pieces, and although there's a book of instructions you don't understand it. And nor can your parents or Aunt Sylvie. So you are just left, crying at the ideal Castle on the box which no one would ever be able to build--------------------

A wonderful excerpt from " the humans " by Matt haig

How to recycle plastic

INCINERATION TRANSCRIPT
9.20.19 Burn, baby burn

 [THEME]

SEAN RAMESWARAM (HOST): Students across the world today are walking out of school to protest for action on the climate. It's in conjunction with the big U.N. climate summit. Maybe you heard about the 16-year-old climate activist Greta who took a boat across the Atlantic for the occasion. Everyone's focusing on the big, but I'm sort of caught up on the small, and I'm catching up Today, Explained in the small. I asked producer/reporter Noam Hassenfeld to help me on this quest because I heard that there was a chance that my recycling was being burned!

NOAM HASSENFELD (REPORTER): Yeah, Sean you sent me this article in The Guardian from a couple months ago and it was about how Philadelphia was having problems with its recycling system and was sending its recyclables to an incinerator outside the city.

SEAN: Yeah, and I think it was kind of like shocking, right? Because it flies in the face of things that we were taught as children — what happens to your recycling.

NOAM: Yeah, I sort of couldn't believe that it was happening. And so I had to go check it out for myself. I wanted to go to a local incinerator operated by the same company and so I went to an incinerator in Alexandria, Virginia, right outside of D.C.

KEVIN MCGUNNIGLE (Covanta official): This is a view inside the combustion chamber. So this is where we're burning waste at about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. There’s a good view in there.

NOAM (at incinerator): Holy shit!

JAMES REGAN (Covanta official): Yeah. Bend down if you can and look directly up.

NOAM (at incinerator): Oh my god… That’s scary! Yeah, it's just crazy to see this like huge... I mean, that's a bigger fire than I've ever seen in my life, I think.

SCORING - Q TWO

NOAM: The US is in a recycling crisis.

SCORING BUMP



REPORTER 1: Say goodbye to recycling if you live in the city of Deltona. With lower demand for recyclable products and rising cost of recycling, the city decided to suspend its recycling program.

REPORTER 2: The city of Jackson is suspending its curbside recycling program until further notice.

REPORTER 3: In Sierra Vista, concerns over contamination and cost force city leaders to do away with curbside service.

REPORTER 4: “A slow moving recycling crisis.”

REPORTER 5: This comes after China stopped accepting the bulk of American recycling last year.

REPORTER 6: So now we’re sending this stuff to Southeast Asia.

REPORTER 7: So we were doing that for a while, what’s happened is because there’s so much plastic that we’re talking about, a lot of the Southeast Asian countries have now been overwhelmed and they have also put in their own plastic bans. So there's there's all these tons of plastics basically floating around with no clear home.

SCORING OUT

NOAM: The story of this recycling crisis starts at the beginning of 2018.

NOAM: That was when China essentially stopped accepting the world’s crap. The ban was... disruptive.

JENNA JAMBECK (University of Georgia): About half of the plastic that we were recycling was getting exported to China.

NOAM: Jenna Jambeck. She’s a National Geographic Fellow and a professor at the University of Georgia.

JENNA: There were a few reasons why this came to be.

NOAM: Reason number one:

JENNA: Basically in the mid-1990s, recycling was changing in the U.S. and we went to this single-stream system. We could just put all of our recyclables into one bin, and then we designed facilities to separate those materials out.

NOAM: Those facilities didn’t always do the best job….

JENNA: And so they needed sort of this secondary sort.

NOAM: Which China was down to do. In large part because of reason number two:

JENNA: The WTO was really encouraging global trade.

NOAM: China shipped goods to the US, those ships had to make a return trip….

JENNA: And they could go back with this recycled plastic that then could be imported into China.

NOAM: But the profit margins on recycled plastic are tiny, and eventually China said all the extra pollution wasn’t worth it to them. Which basically gets us here.

Reporter 1: “A slow moving recycling crisis.”

NOAM: But, it’s worse than it seems.

SCORING - PLASTIC SONG

NOAM: The U.S. was in a recycling crisis well before China’s ban.

JENNA: Even when we were exporting it, our average recycling rate for plastic has been around 9 percent. So you know that means over 90 percent of our plastic was not getting recycled anyway.

NOAM: To be clear: that means, for the majority of plastic in America…

JENNA: About 79 percent was getting landfilled.

SCORING BUMP

NOAM: It wasn’t that long ago that plastic seemed like a miracle.

THE GRADUATE:

MR. MCGUIRE: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.

BENJAMIN BRADDOCK: Yes, sir.

MCGUIRE: Are you listening?

BRADDOCK: Yes I am.

MCGUIRE: Plastics.

NOAM: Well, I just want to say one word to YOU: COMPLICATED!

SCORING BUMP

NOAM: We all learned that plastic needs to be separated from trash, yeah, sure. And it helps if your city separates plastic from glass and metals. But beyond that… plastic needs to be sorted from other plastic. You know those numbers on the bottom next to the recycling logo? Those are actually different types of plastic, all made from different materials, all of which have to be separated.

JENNA: Ones and twos are more recyclable. Those are things like your beverage bottles, your detergent bottles.

NOAM: Milk jugs, peanut butter jars….

JENNA: Then from there, numbers three through seven are things like polypropylene.

NOAM: Like the container my takeout came in on Thursday...

JENNA: And things like PVC, you know when you think of like water pipes and things like that. And they all have different properties in terms of processing so you can't mix them together.

NOAM: And when you get to some of these higher numbers, more plastic starts ending up in landfills.

JENNA: There's many places that really just even wouldn't accept them in the first place, because again you don't have enough value in capturing those. And then what we are putting into the recycle bin, if it's contaminated then that doesn't get recycled itself and so that percentage that is able to even be recycled just gets smaller and smaller.

NOAM: But great news: even this is way worse than it seems.

        SCORING OUT

NOAM: The US only recycles 9 percent of its plastic. Seems bad. But that’s only plastic we recycle once. And most plastic can only be recycled once or twice.

JENNA: You know really recycling just delays. It doesn't ever really prevent disposal at whatever point and that would be in a landfill or incinerator, and so it really simply only delays that eventual disposal that's needed.

NOAM: So, only some plastic can be recycled, and during the process, more and more gets disqualified. And all of this only delays the inevitable, which is plastic going to an incinerator, a landfill, or likely even worse, the ocean. And this is all happening while plastic production is skyrocketing.

MR. MCGUIRE: There’s a great future in plastics.

JENNA: That has been rapidly increasing since we started recording this in 1950, and annually now it's over 330 million tons. We also calculated the cumulative amount of plastic that we had produced and that was equal to 8.3 billion metric tons. It's very hard to imagine and even when we turned it into something like it's actually equal to 80 million blue whales it's still very hard to imagine.

        SFX: WHALE SOUNDS

NOAM: But here’s a twist: contrary to everything you’ve been taught, throwing your recycling in the trash might actually be better for the planet.

THOMAS KINNAMAN (Bucknell University): A question that was always on our minds was what would be the optimal recycling rate.

NOAM: Thomas Kinnaman. Economics. Bucknell University.

THOMAS: We were hearing that a complete circular economy with 100 percent recycling was a goal. And that sounded great. But we were concerned about the environmental costs of recycling combined with the economic costs.


NOAM: If you care about recycling, you probably throw your plastic in a bin and you feel like, “Great. I did my part!” But your plastic goes on a journey, it has to be transformed, and all that effort makes your good deed… complicated.

SCORING - SILVERWARE

NOAM: At each stop in the recycling journey, there are both economic and environmental costs.

THOMAS: So that recycling bin is put out on a Monday morning….

        SFX

THOMAS: With all of your other recycled materials and probably a different truck than the garbage truck will come down and collect those recycled materials.

        SFX

THOMAS: The truck dumps it at some local processing facility where all the plastic is separated. Ideally….

SCORING AND SFX OUT

THOMAS: This is all ideal because a lot of the plastic ends up in a landfill at this stage. Because they open up the recycling truck and there’s plastic wrap in there and you know vegetable containers and different types of plastic that buyers don't want in their plastic. And so the buyer comes and looks at it and says, I won’t take that. And it ends up going to the landfill. Um...

        SCORING BACK IN

THOMAS: But if it is being truly recycled then it will be put in a container with other exact materials like it….

SFX

THOMAS: And that container will then be trucked somewhere else, probably far from your home.

SFX

THOMAS: So that's a long truck drive, probably shredded into little bits which required energy, and those little plastic bits then could be used in some type of….

SFX OUT

THOMAS: New product.

NOAM: Think about every individual cost in that journey.

THOMAS: The cost of the trucks, the equipment, the labor, the gasoline necessary to go around and collect the recycled materials to transport them to market the materials and then processed.

        SFX

THOMAS: This requires energy, as well as additional labor.

NOAM: All of that energy and all of that labor has a significant environmental cost.

        SCORING OUT

NOAM: In the end, adding it all up...

THOMAS: Plastic is one of those materials where the benefits are outweighed by the costs. My results suggest maybe we shouldn't even be considering recycling for plastic. Given that the social costs seem to be higher than if we were to do other things with it.

NOAM: You're, you’re basically saying that recycling can be bad for the environment. Not just like neutral or forgettable, but actually bad.

THOMAS: It can be. Landfills tend to be closer to a municipality than a final recycling outlet is. Or you take it to the coast and have it shipped to a developing country which still does ocean dumping… you know which bottle is more likely to end up in the ocean: the one you sent to your Missouri landfill or the one that's being shipped to a developing country that still dumps in the ocean? So in some cases recycling could actually be bad for the planet. Absolutely.

NOAM: And why do you think these sort of second-layer questions about, you know, whether recycling can actually be good or bad are not necessarily being asked by most people?

THOMAS: I think it became more of a social question than an economic question. The idea was that we produce too much garbage, it's not sustainable. Recycling is a way of kind of entering into a more circular economy and therefore it just makes sense to do this.

NOAM: Yeah.

THOMAS: And I think recycling maybe at some point was considered to be sort of like a gateway activity, a gateway into the world of responsible environmental living that you know we can get people starting to recycle, this will trigger other questions: How else can I help the environment? Maybe I'll stop driving everywhere and get my bike working and use that more often or I'll walk, and I'm not sure that’s taken off like that. Instead of a gateway maybe it’s been used as an excuse, like hey, I recycle, now I don’t need to do anything else.

NOAM: Mmhm.

THOMAS: And so now I can continue to drive my SUV to work and keep my house nice and cold in the summer because I recycle my plastic. I’m… I’m ok, you know I’m doing something.

NOAM: Let’s say I'm putting you in a situation where you're standing in front of a trash can and recycling bin and you're holding that one water bottle. For you the cost is exactly the same, you know you can put it in either bin. Which would you decide to put it in yourself?

THOMAS: Well you know I'm a... I'm a creature of habit like so many of us. So I still find myself putting it in the plastic bin. It’s possible that if we want to keep this supply chain going just in case there is technological innovation that occurs soon, we’re all hoping for that, right?

NOAM: But to be clear, for right now, it’s better to throw that bottle away?

THOMAS: With plastic, yeah, it's better to landfill or incineration.

        SFX - FIREBALL

        SCORING - GALAXY

SEAN: After the break I started off this whole thing was like incineration is shocking, that absolutely cannot be the thing that we should do, right.

But what if it is?

This is Today, Explained.

SEAN: I started off this whole thing saying incineration is SHOCKING. That absolutely cannot be the thing we should do, right?

But what if it is?

Noam stares down the fire after the break on Today, Explained.

     [MIDROLL]

SCORING - LOCKED IN THE PANTRY

NOAM: Before we get to incineration, let’s just set the stage:

Our recycling system is broken.

The vast majority of America’s plastic is not getting recycled. It’s mainly ending up in landfills. Or worse — the ocean.

So what do we do?

Well, to figure it out, I hopped on a bus...

Stop requested...

NOAM: And headed down to the Covanta Incinerator in Alexandria.

It’s one of about a hundred waste to energy plants in the US, and like the name says, it’s designed to do two basic things.

Get rid of waste. And generate energy.

SCORING OUT

KEVIN: All right, it can be a little dusty out there and you know we have a few thousand tons of trash so there will be an odor, too.

NOAM: Kevin McGunnigle. Environmental Compliance Specialist. He also gives the tours.

NOAM (at incinerator): Yeah, there’s an odor.

NOAM: To be honest, though, it’s not that bad. Like, it’s certainly not as bad as where I used to live in New York.

KEVIN: So, yeah, the crane operator is operating the crane, or claw using a series of joysticks.

NOAM: We’re in a giant warehouse. There’s a guy on a perch operating a jumbo version of that arcade claw game, picking up mountains of crap instead of teddy bears.

There’s a huge wall of mixed waste on either side of us. Plastic. Cardboard. Furniture. Banana peels. You name it. And right in front of us, there’s maybe a 30-, 40-foot drop down to where trucks are dumping waste.

In the waste-to-energy process, this is the beginning.

Step 1: Sorting.

KEVIN: Waste comes in, it’s dumped onto the tipping floor, before being pushed into the refuse storage pit.

NOAM (at incinerator): So Kevin I just saw the claw like lift up and then sort of drop a chunk down was that the mixing process?

KEVIN: Yeah that's... we call it fluffing the waste. It's preventing you from just having all of one kind of material, all cardboard, or all paper. You know, we know some waste has more heating value like plastics, wet  cardboard is going to have less heating value. So that's why they're mixing it before feeding it.

NOAM: They need to get it just right. There’s this sea of waste out here, but they’re always burning one-third plastic, two-thirds non-plastic. And on the upper ledge with us is a series of hoppers, which are basically these huge buckets with slanted ramps for the waste to slide down on its way to the combustion chamber. Once the claw picks up a good mix….

KEVIN: It's gonna be dropped into that hopper, where it’s going to be gravity-fed. This waste will be reduced to ash in about one hour to two hours.

NOAM (at incinerator): All the trash in the hopper gets burnt up?

KEVIN: Yeah, it's going directly into the municipal waste combustor.

NOAM (at incinerator): Can we see some fire?

KEVIN: Absolutely.

NOAM: Step 2: Combustion.

KEVIN: This is a view inside the combustion chamber. So this is where we're burning waste at about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The way we're generating electricity is we have water-walled tubes lining the inside of the boiler; they’re heating up water to convert steam, steam goes to a generator and turns the blades to generate electrical energy. There’s a good view in there.

NOAM (at incinerator): Holy shit!

KEVIN: By the time the waste get to this wall it's reduced to ash.

NOAM: At this point we’ve taken a pile of mixed waste, burned it, and what’s leftover is ash and chunks of unburnt metal. Which brings us to….

Step 3: Metal recovery.

KEVIN: Basically ash passes off the end of this vibrating pan and falls into one truck. Then metal is picked up and dropped into a separate box, which is eventually sent to a scrap metal yard. So we should see some recovery here; I'm sure you'll see some spoons and knives and stuff like that coming through.

NOAM (at incinerator): So this is just like an enormous rotating magnet.

KEVIN: Yes. There’s a bicycle just went by. A shopping cart.

NOAM: It’s hard to picture just how crazy this all looks. There are big chunks of metal, like mattress springs, bed frames, silverware, all just going zhhooOOP! And sticking to this huge rotating magnet.

KEVIN: We get about 30 tons a day of that material, 11,000 tons per year.

NOAM: That’s 11,000 tons of metal that’s being recycled every year instead of heading to a landfill.

KEVIN: The air pollution control, I'll walk you through it. We’ll just go outside.

NOAM: Step 4: Pollution control.

KEVIN: See that ductwork there? That's where all the flue gases come. So you burn trash, you've got gases that come off of that. That's where that ductwork is. Basically you're injecting a lime slurry.

NOAM: A lime slurry is basically a chemical mist that reacts with the flue gas to reduce acid gas emissions.

KEVIN: Then it goes to a bag house.

NOAM: Kevin walks over to the bag house, which handles the bigger pieces of flying ash.

KEVIN: There are six compartments where gases are going through. It’s designed that way so they go through a cleaning cycle one at a time: just blasts air, knocks ash down, down into a hopper here and drops it back into the boiler. So it's kind of a closed-loop system. You've got combined ash sent into a truck which is eventually at this at this site, it’s sent to a monofill or ash landfill.

NOAM: That ash goes to a landfill, but that’s only about 10 percent of the size of the original waste.

Finally we get to step 5. Energy creation.

KEVIN: So the steam enters the turbine, which generates electricity goes to a switch yard owned by Dominion Virginia Power who will sell that to the end user.

        SFX - LIGHT SWITCH

        SCORING - 8 LEG DOWN

NOAM: OK. That’s how they work. So should we be burning all our plastic?

MARCO CASTALDI (City College of New York): It's not ideal. The ideal situation is to reduce waste.

NOAM: Marco Castaldi. Chemical engineering. City College of New York.

MARCO: The ideal situation after that is to reuse it. And then whatever cannot be reduced or reused or recycled, you have to extract the energy from it. And converting it with waste-to-energy has a lower environmental impact than landfilling.

NOAM: There’s something called the waste hierarchy.

MARCO: The waist hierarchy starts with reduce, reuse, recycle...

NOAM: And that’s all most of us got in school. Just the first three words of the waste hierarchy.

And that’s best to worst: reduce, then reuse, then recycle.

But guess what’s next?

THE GRADUATE: PLASTICS!        


NOAM: NO! Go away. It’s INCINERATION!

SCORING OUT

NOAM: Then, all the way at the bottom, the worst thing we can do with our waste is drop it in a landfill.

MARCO: When you’re putting material into a landfill, you're releasing methane….

NOAM: ...which is 86 times stronger than CO2 over a 20-year time frame, which means….

MARCO: For every one ton that you convert in waste energy facility, you have offset one ton of nominally one ton of CO2. So greenhouse gas emissions, definitely a benefit with waste-to-energy.

NOAM: Still, there’s obviously the whole burning waste thing.


MARCO: Anytime you're dealing with this garbage there's gonna be emissions in one form or the other whether it's air emissions or solid emissions. But the amount of dioxin that's released from waste to energy facilities is minuscule. You will get more exposure to dioxins looking at a firework display for 15 or 20 minutes then you will be exposed to dioxins of a waste to energy facility processing waste for 100 years.

NOAM: And there have been studies that examined the effects of living near these plants.

MARCO: In fact one that's just come out where there was a seven-year study on facilities in the UK that looked at infant mortality, you know, birth outcomes in terms of you know abnormalities and it showed that there was none.

NOAM: Even so. Incineration is really controversial.

ANA BAPTISTA (New School in New York): Most of the incinerators in the U.S. today are located in communities of color and low-income communities that are often referred to as environmental justice communities. And they contribute pollution to local communities that are already overburdened by other pollution sources.

NOAM: Ana Baptista runs the Environmental Policy program at the New School in New York.

ANA: It's very difficult if not impossible to trace public health outcomes to any one particular facility. What I am confident about is incinerators are definitely contributing to the overall pollution burden in a community. Environmental justice communities if you ask them what their target is that they would say that they don't prefer landfills or incinerators.

NOAM: Professor Baptista wants the world we were promised. Ideas like….

ANA: Zero waste solutions that divert a lot more of the waste stream to composting and to recycling and in some cases looking at opportunities to reduce the overall burden and load on waste systems.

SCORING - NIGHTTIME

NOAM: I should point out that this particular debate is very American. In Europe, it’s a whole different ball game.

SCORING BUMP

NOAM: First of all, they’re just way better at recycling. They’re also wayyyyyy more into incinerating. There’s about 500 incinerators in Europe. America’s got under 100.

NEWS: In Greater Paris, garbage that can't be recycled is converted into energy, some of which the plants use to run themselves.

NOAM: Sweden burns half its waste and even imports some from the UK just to burn it.

NEWS: Sweden is considered the world leader in the field of waste-to-energy.

NOAM: In Vienna, the incinerator is featured on postcards.

PERSON IN VIENNA: I think it's a pretty remarkable step that the city of Vienna did this.

NOAM: But the most original plant is probably in Copenhagen.

NEWS: Downhill, downtown. This is the city center power station the neighbors don't object to.

NOAM: The Danish plant has an actual ski slope on its roof. Seriously.

DANISH PERSON: Our ski slope here at Copenhill is a lot different than when visit a mountain.

        SCORING OUT

DANISH PERSON: Ah, that was so good!

NOAM: There’s a lot of reasons why the US and Europe are so different when it comes to le waste.

Europe needs the energy from incineration more than the US does, because it’s not as rich in fossil fuels. And they have much, much less cheap land for landfilling. Most European countries even have landfill bans.

But most noticeably, incinerators are right there in the middle of some of the ritziest neighborhoods.


JANEK VAHK (Zero Waste Europe): The most well known like the one in Vienna, the Copenhagen, the one in Amsterdam, in Paris. It's not necessarily areas where you have poverty. I mean, most plants in Europe, I would not say that they are kind of hidden somewhere.

NOAM: Janek Vahk. Zero Waste Europe. Brussels. Not a fan of incinerators. But not because of the pollution.

JANEK: I don't think the air pollution is the main issue nowadays. It's mainly the lock-in effect. The fact that these are plants to be there for, in order to pay back, at least 25, 30, 40 years, and that locks the waste management system into burning.

NOAM: Even though countries in Europe are some of the best recyclers on Earth, Janek wants even more government investment in recycling. Like Professor Ana Baptista at the New School, he wants the world we were promised: Reduce. Reuse. Maybe even recycle. In Europe it doesn’t feel nearly as out of reach.

        SCORING - FIVE YEARS IN A MINUTE

NOAM: Back in the United States. Things are a little more dire. China doesn’t want our plastic. We’re using more and more if it every day. Only 9% of it is getting recycled. And then… people are scared of incineration. But maybe that’s because people don’t understand just how bad waste really is. And who can blame them? Europe is burning things out in the open. We’re mostly doing it in poor neighborhoods and communities of color. Europe talks about landfill bans. The US talks about plastic straw bans. And that is NOT putting much of a dent in those 80 million blue whales worth of plastic.

Incineration can and should be part of the solution, but we can’t just go burning all of our plastic. Plants can’t handle it, which is why Covanta stopped burning recyclables outside of Philly and has rejected similar offers from other cities too.

What’s left is a choice with no easy answer. Either we stop making so much plastic, or somehow we innovate our way out of the problem.

In a sense, China forcing our hand here might have been a good thing. It might force us to confront the ugly realities of incineration. Or the even uglier realities of landfills. Or the ugliest reality of floating plastic islands the size of Texas. Whatever the less than ideal scenario is, we’re living it right now. And most of us don’t even know it.

SCORING OUT

SEAN: Noam Hassenfeld. Reporter. Producer. Today, Explained.

I’m Sean Rameswaram.

Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of the show.

Efim Shapiro’s the engineer.


Brigid McCarthy, Amina Al-Sadi and Haleema Shah produce.

And Will Reid has been our summer intern, but all good summers come to an end. What he’s taught us is that where there’s a Will, there’s a way.

Shout outs to Jelani Carter for being our best friend in New York City.

And the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, who I can only assume is heading to Area 51 right now.

Today, Explained is a 401-episode co-production of Stitcher and Vox. We’re part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

 [THEME/CREDITS]

China is turning Pakistan into the next srilanka

IMF Won't Stop China From Turning Pakistan Into The Next Sri Lanka

Panos Mourdoukoutas Contributor forbes

 A $6 billion loan approved from the International Monetary Fund this week will ease Pakistan’s debt problems, for now. But it won’t stop China from turning the country into the next Sri Lanka. China has been very close to Pakistan in recent years, for a couple of reasons. One of them is that Pakistan is a “natural” ally in Beijing’s long-time efforts to contain India. The other reason is that Pakistan offers a “natural corridor” between western China and the Indian Ocean, and, therefore, an alternative route to Middle East oil supplies and the riches of Africa.

 Pakistan Underperforms Emerging Markets KOYFIN That’s why Beijing has been helping Pakistan build the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which stretches from Western China to the Indian Ocean. While CPEC benefits China, this project benefits Pakistan too. It’s a big leap forward, as the country strives to transition from an emerging to a mature economy, creating a lot of jobs in the process. But China’s involvement in the project hurts Pakistan, too. It adds to Pakistan’s corruption, since it involves state owned companies on both sides of the partnership. Pakistan’s Corruption Index Pakistan’s Corruption Index KOYFIN Meanwhile, corruption keeps pushing the costs of the project higher by the day. As of 2019, the cost of CPEC projects is $62 billion, up from the original value of $46 billion back in 2014. And that makes Pakistan more indebted to China, which has been financing the project. In fact, Pakistan’s external debt took off shortly after CPEC was launched. Growing indebtedness comes at a time when the country is already living beyond its means, as evidenced by persistent current account deficits, government debt, and external debt.


 Pakistan recorded a Current Account deficit of 5.8% of GDP in 2018, according to Tradingeconomics.com. The country’s Current Account to GDP averaged -2.35% from 1980 until 2018, reaching an all-time high of 4.90% in 2003 and a record low of -8.50% in 2008. Pakistan accumulated a government debt equivalent of 72.5% of GDP in 2018, up from to 67.20% in 2017. The country’s government debt to GDP averaged 69.30% from 1994 until 2018, reaching an all-time high of 87.90% in 2001 and a record low of 56.40% in 2007. Pakistan’s external debt jumped to 105841 USD Million in the first quarter of 2019 from 99086 USD Million in the fourth quarter of 2018.The country’s external debt averaged 53029.34 USD Million from 2002 until 2017, reaching an all-time high of 88891 USD million in the fourth quarter of 2017 and a record low of 33172 USD million in the third quarter of 2004.


Meanwhile, Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves and foreign capital flows have been falling rapidly. That’s why the country had to appeal to China and Saudi Arabia for loans to deal with the situation. But these funds haven’t been sufficient to ease Pakistan’s Current Account crisis so the country had to appeal to IMF for the $6 billion loan. The trouble is that the CPEC project is far from over, and the costs of completing it keeps on rising. And that makes it very likely that Pakistan will have to reschedule its debt several times before it’s over, and share the same fate with Sri Lanka — swapping debt with equity, which in essence will hand CPEC to Beijing. That’s the model China used in rescheduling Sri Lanka’s debt, turning the country’s Hambantota port officially into China’s own port, for 99 years. A milestone deal signed early last year gives China Merchants Ports Holdings—an arm of the Chinese government—70% stake in the Indian Ocean’s prominent outpost. Like CPEC, the Hambantota port construction began with loans from China. But when Sri Lanka could not repay the loans, Beijing converted these loans to equity, in essence turning Sri Lanka into a “semi-colony,” in a subtle way. That’s what will eventually happen to Pakistan when China assumes ownership and control of CPEC, and collect tolls from vehicles that pass through.

Panos Mourdoukoutas I’m Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York. I also teach at Columbia University. I’ve published several articles in professional…

The professor - last monologue

I'm gonna die. Yeah... [laughs] - I'm gonna die, - [indistinct chatter] and I'm gonna die much sooner than I had imagined. - [man gasps] - [indistinct chatter] Oh, my goodness. I know, dear. - What is he talking about? - Shh. So in preparing for what lies ahead, I've come to realize that for much of my life, I've been mistaken, and I failed. I failed, not only to comprehend my mortality, but I've failed to appreciate it. And as a result, I've failed to make the most of my life. Veronica, you're one hell of a sport. You are a very worthy adversary. Proud... to have been able to call you my wife. Because life without you would've been, uh, far less rich. And for that, I thank you. For whatever it's worth... I love you... deeply. I know. We've turned our backs on the most important duty that we possess, to live a life that is rich in experience that's of our own independent choosing. Seize your fucking existence, folks. Why don't we make death our closest fucking companion, so that we can finally have a second, a millisecond to appreciate that little bit of time that we have left. And most important of all, let us live well, so that we may fucking die well, because we've never been so close to death than this very moment.

War Voyeurs by Juan Felipe Herrera

War Voyeurs
By Juan Felipe Herrera
for Clara Fraser


I do not understand why men make war.

Is it because artillery is the most stoic example
of what flesh can become?
Is it because the military plan is the final map
drawn by the wisest hunter?
Is it because the neutron ray is the invincible finger no one will disobey?

or

Is it because the flood of blood is the proper penance
workers must pay for failing tribute at the prescribed
hour?

I do not understand why men make war.

Is it because when death is multiple and expanding, there
among the odd assemblages, arbitrary and unnamed, there
among the shrivelled mountains, distorted and hollow, there
among the liquid farms and cities, cold and sallow, there
among the splintered bones of children, women, men and cattle
there and only there, the eerie head of power is being born?


Is it because submission is the only gesture to be rehearsed,
to be dressed, to be modeled, to be cast, to be chosen
in the one and only one drama to be staged in the theater of
this world, where everyone must act with the backbone humbled
with the mascara of bondage, with the lipstick of slaves under
the light of gentle assassination with applause piercing the ground
forever?

or

Is it because war is the secret room of all things to be kept
sealed and contained, to be conquered and renamed woman
enclosed by an empire of walls, vaults, hinges and locks with
the hot key that men and only men must possess for an eternal
evening to visit and contemplate, to snap open a favorite window
and gaze at the calibrated murder as lovers of beauty?

Open Banking

Open banking: the quiet digital revolution one year on

Low public awareness of the many benefits that come with the new rules Lucy Warwick-Ching January 11, 2019

Imagine a world in which, with a few swipes on a smartphone, you could find a better mortgage, compare household bills, cancel unwanted subscriptions, control direct debits and track payments across each of your accounts.It’s not a fantasy. A new wave of apps powered by our personal financial data already exists and has done for the best part of a year — but comparatively few people know about them.This weekend marks a year since the launch of open banking, a government-backed initiative that introduced a secure way for consumers to give financial providers the ability to access their financial information. The rules require UK banks to share their current account holder data through an integration technology called application programming interfaces (API). These APIs can then be used — with the customers’ permission — by third parties, including challenger banks, fintech firms, tech companies and credit reference agencies to open up the financial services industry, and provide consumers with products better suited to their individual needs

.Despite the hype around the launch, public awareness remains low. Just one in four people have heard of open banking, according to a survey of 2,000 people by Splendid Unlimited, a company that helps banks design and build digital platforms. Worse, only one in five of those who had heard of open banking said they knew what it meant or entailed.Here, FT Money presents a user’s guide to this quiet digital revolution, highlighting apps that could save you time and money, future innovations and how the industry is addressing security concerns.Connected Money This app allows HSBC customers to see all their accounts in one place — including those with rival banks — in order to assess where their money goes and see how much cash they will have to spend once bills have gone out.Chip This app uses an algorithm to analyse a person’s spending and work out how much they can afford to save each month — then it siphons that cash away into a separate savings pot.Open for businessWhen asked to describe open banking in their own words, the top two responses in Splendid’s survey were “banks sharing your information” and “all accounts in one place”. Beyond this, understanding of the rules was hazy.

 Respondents were also cynical that open banking was more self serving for finance companies than beneficial to customers. “Open banking has been a bit of a damp squib until now,” says James Daley, managing director of consumer group Fairer Finance. “One year since launch we’ve seen very few of the banks make good use of the new technology and some have struggled even to keep up with the pace required by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). There’s very little that can be shown for all the work that has gone into open banking at this stage. But hopefully there is plenty to come this year.”The concept was dreamt up in 2016 by the CMA which ruled that nine of the biggest banks and building societies would have to allow customers to share their financial data securely with other banks. The rate of bank switching is very low in the UK. It is said that you are more likely to get divorced than break up with your bank. It follows that when looking for an overdraft, loan, credit card or mortgage it is more likely that customers will resort to their existing bank, rather than shop around.The idea was that by opening up data to third-party apps, customers would easily be able to compare competing products from different providers.

 The CMA hoped this would lead to more choice and better products to help manage people’s finances.Open banking allows customers to log into one website, or open one app on their phone or tablet, and see all of their current accounts, savings and credit cards in one place — regardless of who they bank with.Yolt Yolt gives you oversight of your current and savings accounts, plus credit cards, on a single interface. It sends customers insights into how they are spending money and what their major expenses are.Bean By using this app, customers can compare deals on all of their household bills, cancel any unwanted subscriptions and track payments across every account, all from within a single dashboard.

According to research by PwC, more than 33m people are expected to have signed up to open banking driven services by 2022. However, PwC said customers had been slow to do so because of concerns over companies they had never heard of having access to details of what they have spent and when they spent it.“The idea of open banking was to drive competition and innovation and to give consumers the ability to save money and give them more financial choices, but it’s been overshadowed by fears over privacy and security of personal data,” says Andrew Hagger, personal finance expert at MoneyComms. “It was always going to be a slow burn, and people need to recognise a real benefit before they are prepared to dip their toe in the water.”Mr Hagger said the launch had not been helped by the fact that some UK banks “have a poor record of keeping existing computer systems up and running, so bolting on new applications may not be a priority and seen as a bit of a risk.”But the landscape is changing and experts predict that this year will see challengers, fintechs, and the high street banks continue to invest in open banking products — which most believe will result in tangible benefits for consumers. The company overseeing the rollout, the Open Banking Implementation Entity, revealed this week that more than 100 regulated financial companies have enrolled in open banking. It says it has another 100 waiting to join.

Imran Gulamhuseinwala, one of its trustees, says consumers are gradually being offered products and services which will securely help them move, manage and make more of their money.Credit Kudos A free online service which uses an individual’s financial data to assess their financial behaviour and work out whether they are eligible for a range of financial services and demonstrate their creditworthiness. Plum Plum connects to your current account and monitors your spending habits, setting aside an amount of money every few days that it has worked out is affordable for each user to save.“Banks have very firmly moved from viewing open banking as a compliance exercise to an opportunity to compete and innovate,” he says. “They have worked hard to implement the standards despite many challenges and an ambitious timescale.”The tipping point is likely to be when consumers feel such apps are not a gimmick and can usefully save them money or time. Examples could be giving an app permission to make an automatic “sweep” from a savings account into a current account to avoid unnecessary overdraft fees, or “informative nudges” that can save consumers money on their mortgage when new rates are released, says Samantha Seaton, chief executive of Moneyhub, a financial management platform.She says such changes will “empower consumers and businesses in the UK and across Europe to achieve greater financial wellbeing” and adds that “as the potential is realised, the next few years will be transformational”.

High street versus superhighway Traditional UK high street banks have been slowly but surely working on new digital services for customers. HSBC was one of the first to release an open banking app last year, Connected Money. By using the app, HSBC customers can see their current account as well as online savings, mortgages, loans and cards held with any other bank. The app is able to group customers’ total spending across 30 categories including grocery shopping and utilities, making it a nifty budgeting tool. Santander has partnered with the Moneybox app to offer its customers the chance to connect their accounts and “round up” their spare change from banking transactions into a savings account. Barclays customers can also view all of their bank accounts — even ones held with rival banks — in one app. The service uses new open banking technology to ensure that customers’ accounts are linked into the app securely without ever asking for sensitive details such as passwords. And as per open banking rules customers will be able to switch off access instantly at any time, at the touch of a button, through the same app.Moneybox With this app, users can invest their spare change by rounding up the cost of digital payments. For example, if you pay £2.79 for a coffee, you can round up the transaction to £3 and swipe to invest the extra 21p into a stocks and shares Isa or Lifetime Isa. It is designed to help people with little spare cash to build savings via micro-payments.Money Dashboard This app brings together your “accounts and assets” on a central dashboard, including current accounts, credit cards and savings. The app lets you seamlessly analyse your income and outgoings, see where your money is being spent, and understand how much progress you’ve made towards your financial goals. However, it is new fintech savvy digital-only banks such as Monzo and Starling that have truly embraced open banking, according to experts. “It’s easier for them with in-house IT capability and without all the headache of big bank legacy IT systems — so at least they know they are not building on sand,” says Mr Hagger.Starling Bank is particularly innovative, and allows customers access to its “Marketplace” where they can choose from a range of products and services that can be integrated with their account. So far, the offering includes Wealthify, a place to go for your Isas and investments, Pension Bee to view pension balances, Yoyo Wallet, which allows customers to collect rewards and points automatically, online mortgage broker Habito and Kasko, a travel insurance app where people can compare policies.Debt management The latest development in the open banking arena, says Mr Gulamhuseinwala, is the move towards apps that “help address some of society’s issues, in particular in the debt advice area”.


Credit scoring companies such as Experian and Equifax report that fintech companies have approached them to talk about how data sharing can enhance their own products and services — especially where it can be used to increase financial inclusion and help people access more affordable, streamlined services. “We’ve seen a number of exciting new personal finance management tools emerge, helping people manage their money more effectively with the extra insight provided through open banking,” says Jon Roughley, director of innovation at Experian. “This additional source of data can also be particularly helpful for building out the financial records of the ‘credit invisible’ population — people with little or no viable financial information to draw upon — helping them to access both mainstream finance and crucial public services online.”Flux This app digitises, automates and organises receipts from a growing range of retail partners, including Eat, Itsu and Costa, and enables users to collect loyalty stamps and special offers digitally through their smartphones. To use Flux, customers must have a mobile banking app from one of Flux’s banking partners, including Starling, Monzo and Barclays.Trussle This online-only mortgage broker’s switching alert helps property buyers find the best home loan, and lets existing users know when they should remortgage to find a better deal. It monitors factors including the value of the home, fees for an early exit and charges on a new loan to identify when the time is right. Experts believe open banking may even bring access to financial advice to those who need it most — people in debt. “If you make things more efficient, it makes it easier to reach people who might otherwise ignore their finances,” says Sean Hawkins, strategic partnerships manager at Ascentric, an online platform that brings together investments and pensions from different providers. Speaking at a recent roundtable hosted by technology provider Bravura Solutions, he added that people leaving university with debts “might simply think their finances are bad and ignore the issue. Open banking makes advice more inclusive.

A question of trust Despite the numerous applications of the new technology, concerns about security that are yet to be dispelled and the industry is seeking ways to reassure customers. The promises that open banking pioneers have made are easier budgeting, better deals and more control. If these translate into pounds and pence gains, trust is maintained and data are respected, experts say we can expect the mass adoption of innovations like budgeting apps, digital money assistants and dashboards in the future. Becky O’Connor, a personal finance specialist at life insurer Royal London, said: “At the moment, what we have is a lot of competing apps that, to the average user, do roughly the same thing — track and categorise spending, add savings goals and let you see if you are on course to achieve them. Many providers are not on board. The industry is still finding its feet, working out how to be most useful to banking customers and there are kinks to iron out.”Although awareness of open banking is still low one year on, Ms O’Connor says: “In a way, people don’t really need to know the term. What matters more is that as more people sign up to services that have adopted open banking, they actually see some financial benefit — and their data are not misused.”For open banking to gain traction in the year ahead, banks and app providers will need to build trust and educate customers on the safety of their data — and to prove that by sharing this information it delivers value. Listen: Open Banking: what is it and how can you benefit from the new rules Get alerts on Personal Finance when a new story is published Get alerts Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2019. All rights reserved.

NBA finals game 1

Strength in numbers: The Raptors beat the Warriors at their own game

JACKIE MACMULLAN
ESPN Senior Writer
9:44 PM IST7 Minute Read

Leonard, Siakam lead Raptors to Game 1 winKawhi Leonard and Pascal Siakam combine for 55 points as the Raptors beat the Warriors 118-109 in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
TORONTO -- When you are champions, you stick with what got you here. For the Golden State Warriors, the formula in these 2019 playoffs had been fairly transparent: identify the best player on the opposing team -- see James Harden and Damian Lillard -- and harangue him into a night of frustration and disappointment.

Thus, the blueprint against the Toronto Raptors was to reduce Kawhi Leonard's basketball life to misery, or at the very least considerable discomfort. Blitz him, double him, triple him if necessary, force him to give up the ball and dare the others to beat you.

It was a sound strategy on paper -- except the "others" were not only expecting it, they were aiming to exploit it. So, it was a collection of "complementary" Raptors who vaulted Toronto to win Game 1 of the NBA Finals 118-109 in a raucous Scotiabank Arena, delivering a roundhouse right to a team that so often has seemed invincible.

On a night when Leonard, who had been the most transcendent player in the playoffs, was a mere mortal, players such as Pascal Siakam happily filled the void. Siakam, the 24-year old forward who once was on a path to the priesthood -- until a visit, on a lark, to a summer basketball camp in his native Cameroon detoured him on an improbable basketball journey -- scored 32 points on 14-of-17 shooting. It was a prolific performance that would have been unthinkable two short years ago, when he was a raw, unpolished player who couldn't shoot.

At all.

"I was joking with him the other day," teammate Fred VanVleet told ESPN. "We used to shoot together in my rookie year, and me and the guy rebounding used to duck sometimes because his shots would come off the rim so hard.

"He had some bad misses. But what you are seeing now is the result of a lot of hard work. You can just see his confidence soaring."

The same can be said of VanVleet, who struggled mightily in earlier rounds of the playoffs but, following the birth of his son, has rediscovered his shooting stroke.


Pascal Siakam's team-high 32 points -- on 17 shots -- helped Toronto secure a clutch Game 1 win.
John E. Sokolowski/USA TODAY Sports
Then there's center Marc Gasol, who heard all the chatter about how this was a poor matchup for him, particularly if DeMarcus Cousins found his way onto the court (he did, in an unremarkable eight-minute cameo). Gasol was also a benefactor of the exorbitant amount of attention paid to Leonard, scoring 20 points and stretching the floor for his teammates on what Warriors coach Steve Kerr termed "dare shots."

"Dare, no dare, if you are open, you shoot them," Gasol said.

Said VanVleet: "Kawhi has been having such an unbelievable playoff run, I think it would have been disrespectful not to give him a lot of attention. We know that. We've been dealing with that all of these playoffs.

"You can see teams try to balance it -- 'should we help too much; are we not helping enough?' For the rest of us, it means we've got to be ready for the opportunity when the kickouts come."

Even Danny Green, who hadn't drilled a 3-pointer since Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, hit three of them Thursday night.

And yet, in a spirited Raptors locker room after the game, the topic of discussion was not their marksmen, but a collective defensive effort that held a terrifying Golden State lineup in check.

Stephen Curry (34 points), per usual, got his, but the Raptors took turns bumping and chasing him and his Splash Brother Klay Thompson. They weren't stopped, but contained, and that was good enough.

"We've tried to hang our hat on our defense all year,'' Kyle Lowry said. "One thing about Golden State is you can't give them space. When we did, Steph and Klay made every shot."

It was Curry's 11 first-quarter points that kept Golden State within striking distance in the opening frame. In fact, for all the good vibes the Raptors' shooters were experiencing, the Warriors were constantly lurking. Because the defending champions can score so quickly and in such explosive fashion, even when Toronto pushed the lead to double digits, it never quite felt safe.

But as Siakam continued to wreak havoc in transition, the Raptors were able to maintain their lead wire to wire.

The most critical shot of the night came courtesy of VanVleet with 3:20 to play, shortly after the Warriors had cut the deficit to 10, 108-98. With the shot clock ticking down, VanVleet found himself pinned in the corner and let one fly. The shot rolled halfway down, halfway back up, and finally settled on counting after all.

"Klay didn't leave me as much as I thought he would, so I didn't have a clean look right away,'' VanVleet said. "By the time I thought about it, there was only one second left, so I got a little separation, a little look, a little bit of luck.

"About time, you know? I was in a little slump, but now I've got some of those in the bank."



VanVleet gets friendly roll on jumper
Fred VanVleet pulls up for a long jumper and the ball bounces on the rim before rolling through to beat the shot clock.

The Warriors were hardly devastated by the events of Game 1, though they were most certainly irritated by them. They once again exhibited their maddening tendency to be careless with the basketball, and the Raptors transformed their 16 turnovers into 17 points.

Golden State also recognizes it needs to do a better job of limiting Siakam in the open floor and identifying Toronto's shooters.

"Our transition D was horrible,'' Draymond Green said. "You give guys those type of shots, they get comfortable and it's a different beast."

Said Curry: "You can't give [Siakam] any dare shots, and you can't give him any straight-line drives to the basket. That's just an effort thing we all can be more mindful of."

No coach wants to hear their players admit they need to be mindful about more effort; the Warriors' swagger has always been their greatest strength -- and their greatest weakness. And while acknowledging being up 1-0 is better than being down 1-0 -- something this group has never experienced in the Finals -- Shaun Livingston insisted his team embraces these moments. "I like the vibe," Curry said.

The Game 1 loss did one thing, for sure: It quelled the notion the Warriors will cruise to a title with or without Kevin Durant, who probably will miss Game 2 as he continues to heal from his calf strain. Toronto expects to see KD at some point in the series -- and will plan accordingly. As Leonard pointed out, Durant "can score 30 in his sleep."

After Thursday, the Raptors can be sure of one thing: The champions might have been slumbering before. But they are most definitely awake now.

Indian household debt is rising

India’s household debt has risen 80% in 2017-18. It could bite if incomes don’t grow

Illustration by Arindam Mukherjee | ThePrint

We have heard these last few years about the twin-debt problem faced by companies and banks. We’ve read reports like Credit Suisse’s ‘House of Debt’, on companies that don’t have the earnings to pay interest on debt, let alone the principal. And of course we have read more than we would wish to about how banks have been writing off record sums of bad loans. So far, though, no one seems to have looked at the extent of money that is being borrowed by individuals, and the rising levels of household debt. Time to look at it when the consumption engine that has kept the economy going through a multi-year investment slowdown has stopped firing as before.

Individual or household financial stress is usually the result of lost jobs or livelihoods, and there is some of that. Look at depressed farm incomes, the fate of Jet Airways, or the effects of demonetisation. But there seems to be a deeper problem building up, one that is not linked to economic downswings or disruptions. Personal debt has been climbing and we must ask whether the burden of repayment is eating into disposable incomes — especially if loans taken for housing have to be repaid even when the housing project is stuck. Take a look at the numbers.

Between 2013-14 and 2017-18, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) ‘Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy’, personal loans given by banks went up in by 89 per cent to Rs 19.1 lakh crore. This, when private consumption increased by only 53 per cent, and overall non-food credit went up by an even more sedate 39 per cent. There was an increase of 82 per cent in borrowing for housing, 54 per cent for consumer durables, and 78 per cent for vehicles. The most striking was a 154 per cent increase in “other personal loans”, even as credit card outstanding went up by an even bigger 176 per cent. The only modest increase was for education loans (up about 16 per cent).

These numbers on borrowings are compelling when placed against the figures for household savings, which, in the three years to 2016-17, went up by just 18 per cent, while physical household savings actually declined, though fractionally. The household figure for savings includes unincorporated enterprises, so the numbers are not strictly comparable. 

Nevertheless, the growing tendency to borrow more to consume is clear: The ratio between borrowings and overall consumption (including of the daily necessities) moved up in four years from 15.6 per cent to 19.3 per cent.

That’s just bank credit. There is then the money that people borrow from non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), usually for housing and cars but also for consumer durables and spending occasions like weddings. RBI numbers suggest that banks account for only about two-thirds of household financing, and the overall financial liabilities of households went up by Rs 6.7 lakh crore in 2017-18. This was an astonishing 80 per cent step up from the increase in (not total) liabilities of a year earlier.

India’s household debt in relation to its GDP is low — barely 11 per cent — compared to the other BRICS countries: 17 per cent in Russia, 26 per cent in Brazil and 48 per cent in China. But loans have to be repaid out of disposable income. This will be lower in India, where most people still live hand-to-mouth, than in the rest of BRICS, which has per capita income about five times India’s. For that reason, straight comparisons with such countries on the levels of personal debt can be misleading. That apart, at their present rates of growth, personal loans in India could well become the largest category of bank credit in just two or three years, replacing large industry and services which lead the tables now. Bank credit to all of industry, for instance, grew just 7.3 per cent in the four years to 2017-18. The financing of households is fine if incomes keep growing. If not, high debt levels could begin to bite, and we will have a double whammy.

Uber drivers are not employees

Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says
For The New York Times
By Noam Scheiber
May 14, 2019
The National Labor Relations Board, handing an important victory to Uber, has concluded that the company’s drivers are contractors, not employees.

The move, outlined by the board’s general counsel in a memorandum released Tuesday, deals a blow to drivers’ efforts to band together to demand higher pay and better working conditions from Uber and its main rival in the ride-hailing business, Lyft. It is the first major policy move the board has made concerning the so-called gig economy under President Trump.

Contractors lack the protection given to employees under federal law — and enforced by the labor board — for unionizing and other collective activity, such as protesting the policies of employers. As a practical matter, the conclusion makes it extremely difficult for Uber drivers to form a union.

The board’s general counsel, Peter B. Robb, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, does not have purview over other laws applying to employees, such as minimum wage and overtime protections.

Still, had Mr. Robb’s office found that drivers were employees rather than contractors, the decision could have put pressure on the regulators who enforce such laws to reach the same conclusion.

The labor costs of companies like Uber and Lyft would probably rise 20 to 30 percent, according to industry estimates, if regulators or courts forced them to treat drivers as employees. Both businesses have seen their stock prices fall after recent public offerings amid questions about their financial prospects.

The companies appear to be walking a delicate line: Investors and analysts have suggested that the businesses might have to slash their labor costs to become profitable. Drivers frequently complain that pay is already unacceptably low.

Uber lost nearly $2 billion last year, and Lyft lost nearly $1 billion.

“We are focused on improving the quality and security of independent work, while preserving the flexibility drivers and couriers tell us they value,” Uber said in a statement on Tuesday.

The memo follows an opinion last month by the Labor Department arguing that workers at an unnamed company with a business model like Uber’s were contractors, not employees.

In both cases, the conclusions reversed the approach adopted by the Obama administration, which had suggested that people who found work through apps were likely to be considered employees. In 2016, the labor board issued a complaint against Postmates, an app-based delivery service, over allegations that the company had interfered with workers’ ability to exercise their labor rights.

The agency could not have issued that complaint without first concluding that Postmates couriers were employees.

The memo released on Tuesday, which was dated April 16, has no long-term value as a precedent and can be reversed by a future general counsel. But it carries considerable weight in how the board enforces federal labor law.

The general counsel is the labor board’s chief prosecutor and has authority over whether or not to issue formal complaints against employers, which are analogous to indictments in criminal law. The memo essentially tells Uber drivers and many other gig-economy workers that they should not bother reporting a labor rights abuse to the board because Mr. Robb has deemed them to be outside its jurisdiction.

Mr. Robb has had a long career in labor law largely spent representing employers. He was involved in the Reagan administration’s legal fight with the air traffic controllers’ union, which went on strike illegally in 1981. Labor experts have said the government’s decision to fire the controllers contributed to organized labor’s decline.

The immediate consequence of the memo is to render moot three formal accusations, filed in different parts of the country, that Uber had violated federal labor law. The memo instructs the board’s regional offices to dismiss the charges if the people who made them do not withdraw them first.

In its analysis, the general counsel’s office listed 10 factors that collectively determine whether a worker is an employee or a contractor, including the extent to which the company can control how the work is performed and whether the company or the worker provides equipment.

But, citing a federal appeals court decision, the memo also said the “animating principle” used to make the determination of contractor status was whether the worker had an opportunity to profit from the activity in the way an entrepreneur would.

“The drivers had significant entrepreneurial opportunity by virtue of their near complete control of their cars and work schedules, together with freedom to choose login locations and to work for competitors of Uber,” the memo stated.

Marshall Babson, a former labor board member appointed by President Ronald Reagan who is now a labor lawyer representing management, said the general counsel’s conclusion had largely been dictated by the limitations of federal law.

While the conclusion may not be satisfying to those who believe the National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935, does not reflect the realities of today’s workplace, Mr. Babson said the board did not have the authority to expand the boundaries of the act on its own.

“Congress has to do it, not the N.L.R.B.,” Mr. Babson said.

But Wilma Liebman, a board chairwoman under President Barack Obama, said the memo elevated the importance of factors that indicate a contractor relationship, like whether both the company and worker believe the person is a contractor, and underplayed factors that suggest employment, like the fact that drivers perform a function that is central to Uber’s business.

Ms. Liebman added that the memo took an extremely permissive view of entrepreneurship, given that drivers cannot set prices or market their personal services to potential customers. The driver’s entrepreneurial opportunities are almost “completely circumscribed by the company’s control of the price,” she said.

Some labor groups insisted that drivers would not be deterred from mobilizing for better treatment, even without the protections of federal labor law.

“Drivers across the globe are organizing and demanding rights,” Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said in response to the memo. “The road may be long and difficult, but one way or another Uber will have to answer to its workers.”

Dark matter season 1

This is the series which I hopped onto when I had the inkling for a sci fi series. There is a scarcity of good science fiction nowadays . Nope the superhero series don't count

Looks like I missed it when it aired in 2015 and the only familiar face is Roger cross from continuum.

My opinion

After finishing the thirteen episodes of the first season I can safely conclude that this is a solid  series

There was never a dull moment in the entire 13 episodes kudos to the writers who made it as engaging as possible. The fact that the primary characters still call themselves by a number which they gave themselves when they woke up with their memories erased at the start was interesting. They continued to follow the same even after they learn of their real identities. It gets the question whether sometime in the future humans will have a service to erase their memories to escape a traumatic past or guilt. This would be the real pursuit of happiness. Imagine every day is a new day  wouldn't that be exciting


One has a past of Fortune and tragedy which he is trying to piece together

Two is a criminal with a bio mod which her almost invulnerable to anything

Three is a journeyman criminal who seems to be the only one who behaves the same way before losing his memory I.e he doesn't have any emotional baggage

Four is royalty and is the first one to learn his past and act on it

Five is the free loader to the criminal spaceship

Six is the man with morals which is contrary to his criminal past

Despite it's very thin budget , the special effect in this series is a joke ,the selling point is the manner in which they maintain intrigue in every episode by adding layers to each character

Somehow they make the audience invest in their stories and would like to unfold the story along with them

The acting is good and there was no moment where I had to facepalm which is impressive for a cast which I haven't seen anywhere else

Wonderbread by Alfred corn

Wonderbread
BY ALFRED CORN
Loaf after loaf, in several sizes,
and never does it not look fresh,
as though its insides weren’t moist
or warm crust not the kind that spices
a room with the plump aroma of toast.

Found on the table; among shadows
next to the kitchen phone; dispatched
FedEx (without return address, though).
Someone, possibly more than one
person, loves me. Well then, who?

Amazing that bread should be so weightless,
down-light when handled, as a me
dying to taste it takes a slice.
Which lasts just long enough to reach
my mouth, but then, at the first bite,

Nothing! Nothing but air, thin air .... 
Oh. One more loaf of wonderbread,
only a pun for bread, seductive
visually, but you could starve.
Get rid of it, throw it in the river—

Beyond which, grain fields. Future food for the just
and the unjust, those who love, and do not love.

Nicholas brothers

Parkour twins

Chelsey minnis - clown

Clown

BY CHELSEY MINNIS

It seems like I'm growing more and more like a clown. First of all, I'm always

sad. Secondly, all my knives are made out of rubber. Thirdly, it's like my house 

is on fire.

No, I'm definitely becoming more like a clown. I have a tendency to want to put

on clown clothes. As soon as I put the clown clothes on I feel faintly happier...

Another sign is that I constantly feel like I'm alone in a dressing room. Most 

of the time I feel amused. Anyway, the only thing good about the circus is 

the tigers.

I realize that I could get both legs cut off by the circus train or get frightened

by an elephant. But it's very depressing to sit around in a clown suit and think

about death.

Sometimes I don't feel happy unless I'm in my clown suit. And I enjoy hitting

people on the head with a foam club. I really do...

When people see me they realize that it looks very sophisticated to wear a clown

suit and smoke a cigarette. This is how I get all the ladies because they think I'm

very droll.

People don't understand how you turn into a clown. You turn into a clown 

because you feel more and more like putting on a clown suit. When you're 

around people you sense a kindliness. It makes you so nervous you can't 

stay calm. Which is why it feels perfectly normal to wear orange pants.

Plus, it's very subversive to wear bow ties. You can't imagine how jolly 

everything is. And the fright wigs... I don't want to be a clown but I'm 

sure to be one. My mother was a clown.

Ode to Teachers

BY PAT MORA

I remember

the first day,

how I looked down,

hoping you wouldn't see

me,

and when I glanced up,

I saw your smile

shining like a soft light

from deep inside you.

“I'm listening,” you encourage us.

“Come on!

Join our conversation,

let us hear your neon certainties,

thorny doubts, tangled angers,”

but for weeks I hid inside.

I read and reread your notes

praising

my writing,

and you whispered,

“We need you

and your stories

and questions

that like a fresh path

will take us to new vistas.”

Slowly, your faith grew

into my courage

and for you—

instead of handing you

a note or apple or flowers—

I raised my hand.

I carry your smile

and faith inside like I carry

my dog's face,

my sister's laugh,

creamy melodies,

the softness of sunrise,

steady blessings of stars,

autumn smell of gingerbread,

the security of a sweater on a chilly day.