1 Signs of economic slowdown as consumer spending falls 2 Hospital consolidation has led to high healthcare costs 3 ELECTION 2024 Biden-Trump tied in previously uncontested VA 4 In EU elections, center holds but populists surge 5 Afrighanistan: Al Qaeda and other terror groups reconstitute in Africa has America withdraws 6/10/1692 First Salem witch hanging
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1 Signs of economic slowdown as consumer spending falls
Nothing has been able to top American consumers. At first they splashed covid-19 savings on home-exercise bicycles; now they are more likely to plump for beachside holidays. Predictions made by bank bosses last summer that households would be squeezed by inflation have been confounded. Instead, their outlays have powered American gdp ever higher, at a pace beyond the country’s g7 peers. But are the predictions at last coming true? Monthly consumer-spending growth fell from 0.7% in March to just 0.2% in April. Overall spending shrank in real terms. Retail sales have weakened, with brands from McDonald’s, a burger purveyor, to 3m, a maker of sticky tape, warning that customers are closing their wallets. The recent spending data, released on May 31st, helped wipe almost a percentage point off the prediction of annual gdp growth from the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve, cutting its “nowcast” for the second quarter of the year to 1.8%.
Article Source: Economist
2 Hospital consolidation has led to high healthcare costs
If the fries at your local burger joint are soggy or if you’re suddenly charged $25 for ketchup, you’ll probably eat somewhere else next time. That’s the beauty of competition. Healthcare doesn’t quite work that way. For starters, you don’t always get to choose your medical provider—your insurer often does by contracting with them. And even the insurer can’t easily walk away, either: Giant hospital systems are swallowing up big chunks of the country’s healthcare system through vertical and horizontal integration. That leaves fewer parties with which to negotiate. If McDonald’s bought Burger King and then Wendy’s, you could always cook at home instead, but nearly everyone needs to go to the doctor or the hospital at some point. Patients also aren’t nearly as cost sensitive as they would be with other purchases because employers and insurers pick up much of the tab. They often don’t even know the price ahead of time. Hospital executives argue that mergers lead to improved efficiency and better outcomes for patients. But, after years of rampant consolidation between hospitals, most regions in the U.S. are now dominated by a few large players. That has led to higher prices and no significant improvements in patient care. Rising costs don’t just lead to alarmingly high medical bills—they also make all of us worse off by increasing premiums, the bulk of which are paid by the nation’s employers. That affects even people who rarely visit a doctor. As those premiums soar and employers look to offset the cost, they indirectly eat into people’s paychecks. Over the past two decades, there have been more than 1,000 mergers among the country’s approximately 5,000 hospitals, according to a forthcoming paper in American Economic Review: Insights. During that period, the Federal Trade Commission took action against only 13 transactions, even though more than 200 of the deals would have met the FTC’s bar for lessening competition.
Article Source: WSJ
3 ELECTION 2024 Biden-Trump tied in previously uncontested VA
Virginia is not widely considered a battleground state this election cycle -- or perhaps just not yet. After winning the state by more than 10 points four years ago, President Biden finds himself in a tie with former President Donald Trump, according to a new Fox News survey of Virginia registered voters. The poll, released Thursday, shows Biden and Trump with 48% each in a head-to-head matchup in the Old Dominion State. Biden gets strong backing from Black voters (73%), suburban women (58%), and college-educated voters (56%). While Biden leads among Black voters, it is nowhere near where he was in 2020 – according to the Fox News Voter Analysis. In 2020, Biden won Blacks by 81 points, compared to 48 points in the new survey. Trump nearly triples his share among Black voters: 9% in 2020 to 25% today. Trump’s support comes from White evangelical Christians (80%), rural voters (63%), voters without a college degree (56%), and White voters (54%). There is no age gap, as voters under 30 (48% each) and those 65 and over (48% each) split their support. Independents are also torn (45% Biden, 43% Trump). The gender divide is small but still evident, as men are more likely to go for Trump (+5), while the opposite is true among women (Biden +6).
Article Source: Fox News
4 In EU elections, center holds but populists surge
Anti-establishment earthquakes in France and Germany
Far-right parties have made significant gains in the EU elections, performing well in Germany and comfortably winning the vote in France, prompting Emmanuel Macron to call a snap parliamentary election. An initial projection by the European parliament suggested that far-right and hard-right parties were on course to hold almost a quarter of the seats when the body next sits, up from a fifth in 2019. The French president shocked his allies on Sunday by calling an immediate election for the National Assembly after exit polls gave France’s Rassemblement National more than double the vote share of Macron’s centrist alliance. “I’ve decided to give you back the choice,” Macron said in an address to the electorate from the Elysée palace. The results delivered a stinging blow to the domestic standing of the French president and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, and are expected to help tilt the European parliament towards a more anti-immigration and anti-green stance. But parties of the centre retained a majority in the new parliament. Exit polls put the centre-right European People’s party on track to win 189 seats, leaving the Socialists and Democrats in second place with 135 seats, with the liberal Renew group on 83, holding on to third place. The Greens are set to be the biggest losers falling from 71 seats in 2019 to 53, the estimates show. In France, the RN party led by Marine Le Pen was expected to have come first with around 32 per cent of the country’s vote, according to exit polls on Sunday. “This result is emphatic. Our countrymen have expressed a desire for change and a path for the future,” said Jordan Bardella, who led the RN’s campaign list. In Germany, the three parties in Scholz’s coalition were all overtaken by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came in second behind the conservative CDU-CSU opposition. Ultraconservative and nationalist parties also won or made significant gains in Austria, Cyprus, Greece and the Netherlands, exit polls showed. FT
From Politico EU last Thursday:
On the brink of Continent-wide elections for the European Parliament, populist right-wing movements appear to be surging in ways that could have a loud global echo. In recent days, far-right parties have been showing startling strength in polls in countries across the European Union. If this translates to major electoral gains, as now appears likely, it would deliver an embarrassing rebuke to the two most prominent leaders on the continent: French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, both struggling with lackluster poll numbers. Across the Atlantic, where U.S. President Joe Biden is facing his version of the same struggle, people who would normally be too confused or indifferent to follow EU elections may wish to take note. Nearly a decade ago, the Brexit earthquake in the spring of 2016, in which voters in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, was an early sign of a global trend toward conservative nationalism. In retrospect, it seems clear this movement was part of what powered Donald Trump to a surprise upset over Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. presidential election of the same year. If the right performs well in Europe this week, it will suggest this same movement — once regarded as a momentary spasm — has enduring power. Politico EU
Article Source: FT, Politico EU
5 Afrighanistan: Al Qaeda and other terror groups reconstitute in Africa as America withdraws
In the shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States rushed troops and military aid to a swath of West Africa to help French forces stop the spread of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. More than a decade later, and with hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance spent, that regional counterterrorism effort has largely failed. Groups that have declared allegiance to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are on the march. Military coups have toppled civilian-led governments in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger. The new leaders have ordered American and French troops out, and in some cases invited Russian mercenaries in to take their place. As the United States withdraws 1,000 military personnel from Niger and shutters a $110 million air base there by September, American officials are scrambling to work with a new set of countries in coastal West Africa to battle a violent extremist insurgency that they perceive is steadily seeping south. “Of course, it’s frustrating,” Christopher P. Maier, the Pentagon’s top official for special operations policy, said in an interview. “Our general desire to promote democratic governments and having healthy governance there has not gone particularly well.”
