FLASH Nvidia’s market value exceeds Apple 1 Higher interest rates have boosted investment income for wealther Americans... 2 ...and have stressed everyone else 3 ELECTION 2024 Trump requests info from VP candidates 4 Federal regulators to go after AI firms 5 Russian demographics poor 6/7/1932 Bonus March reaches Washington DC
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 Higher interest rates have boosted investment income for wealther Americans...
Growing investment income and household wealth have joined near-full employment and rising wages to keep millions of Americans such as the Hogans spending their way through price hikes. The economy’s charge through higher interest rates is putting unprecedented sums into consumers’ pockets, pushing U.S. asset values to records and helping many high earners avoid the withering effects of inflation. Americans in the first quarter earned about $3.7 trillion from interest and dividends at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, according to the Commerce Department, up roughly $770 billion from four years earlier. In the last quarter of 2023, wealth held in stocks, real estate and other assets such as pensions reached the highest level ever observed by the Federal Reserve.
Article Source: WSJ
2 ...and have stressed everyone else
The spending spree that started with Americans splashing their covid-19 savings on home-exercise bikes has outlasted all expectations. But recent data suggest it may be coming to an end. Consumer spending is down, as are retail sales. And credit-card delinquency is rising. Is America’s economy headed for a credit crunch?
Article Source: Economist
3 ELECTION 2024 Trump requests info from VP canidates
Donald Trump’s campaign has asked for personal information from more than a half-dozen possible vice presidential picks as the former president’s search for a running mate escalates. The Trump operation’s decision to seek vetting records of potential candidates, which is typical for presidential nominees to request, shows that the former president has begun to zero in on a selection and resolve one of the biggest remaining questions of the 2024 race. The requests went out to Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations who were granted anonymity to speak about internal matters.
Article Source: Politico
4 Federal regulators to go after AI firms
Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential discussions. Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behavior of Nvidia, the biggest maker of A.I. chips, has violated antitrust laws, the people said. The F.T.C. will play the lead role in examining the conduct of OpenAI, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and made deals with other A.I. companies, the people said. The agreement signals intensifying scrutiny by the Justice Department and the F.T.C. into A.I., a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential to upend jobs, information and people’s lives. Both agencies have been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies. After a similar deal in 2019, the government investigated Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta and has since sued each of them on claims that they violated antimonopoly laws.
Article Source: NYT
5 Russian demographics poor
Vladimir Putin has portrayed himself as a defender of global stability, leading a powerful nation that offers a robust economic, military and cultural alternative to the West. One challenge to his vision: Russia’s population has been in decline for years, and the war in Ukraine has made matters worse. At least 150,000 Russians are dead on the battlefield, according to Western estimates. Nearly a million fled the country after the war began. The number of births is at its lowest in more than two decades, with bigger-than-average drops in babies born in some regions closest to the fight.
The biggest single boost to Russia’s population in recent years came when the country annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, adding around 2.4 million inhabitants. Russia hasn’t included Ukrainian territories it has claimed in the war in its latest population counts.
The main reasons for the low birthrate date back to declines in the birthrate during World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, he said. The government has had some success in the past with programs to increase births. Before the Soviet Union came apart in 1991, Moscow presided over the world’s third-largest population, including states that became independent. In the midst of the economic and social upheaval that followed, growing numbers of Russians died from cardiovascular disease, suicides, traffic accidents and other causes—often related to heavy drinking—and women had fewer babies.
Article Source: WSJ
6/7/1932 Over 7,000 war veterans march on Washington, D.C., demanding their bonus pay for service in World War I.
Few images from the Great Depression are more indelible than the rout of the Bonus Marchers. At the time, the sight of the federal government turning on its own citizens -- veterans, no less -- raised doubts about the fate of the republic. It still has the power to shock decades later. From the start, 1932 promised to be a difficult year for the country, as the Depression deepened and frustrations mounted. In December of 1931, there was a small, communist-led hunger march on Washington; a few weeks later, a Pittsburgh priest led an army of 12,000 jobless men there to agitate for unemployment legislation. In March, a riot at Ford's River Rouge plant in Michigan left four dead and over fifty wounded. Thus, when a band of jobless veterans, led by a former cannery worker named Walter W. Waters, began arriving in the capital in May, tensions were high. Calling themselves the "Bonus Expeditionary Forces," they demanded early payment of a bonus Congress had promised them for their service in World War I. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur was convinced that the march was a communist conspiracy to undermine the government of the United States, and that "the movement was actually far deeper and more dangerous than an effort to secure funds from a nearly depleted federal treasury." But that was simply not the case. MacArthur's own General Staff intelligence division reported in June that only three of the twenty-six leaders of the Bonus March were communists. And the percentage within the rank and file was likely even smaller; several commanders reported to MacArthur that most of the men seemed to be vehemently anti-Communist, if anything. According to journalist and eyewitness Joseph C. Harsch, "This was not a revolutionary situation. This was a bunch of people in great distress wanting help.... These were simply veterans from World War I who were out of luck, out of money, and wanted to get their bonus -- and they needed the money at that moment." At first, it seemed as though order might be maintained. Walters, organizing the various encampments along military lines, announced that there would be "no panhandling, no drinking, no radicalism," and that the marchers were simply "going to stay until the veterans' bill is passed." The government also did its part, as Washington Police Superintendent Pelham D. Glassford treated his fellow veterans with considerable respect and care. But by the end of June, the movement had swelled to more than 20,000 tired, hungry and frustrated men. Conflict was inevitable. The marchers were encouraged when the House of Representatives passed the Patman veterans bill on June 15, despite President Hoover's vow to veto it. But on June 17 the bill was defeated in the Senate, and tempers began to flare on both sides. On July 21, with the Army preparing to step in at any moment, Glassford was ordered to begin evacuating several buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, using force if necessary. A week later, on the steamy morning of July 28, several Marchers rushed Glassford's police and began throwing bricks. President Hoover ordered the Secretary of War to "surround the affected area and clear it without delay." Conspicuously led by MacArthur, Army troops (including Major George S. Patton, Jr.) formed infantry cordons and began pushing the veterans out, destroying their makeshift camps as they went. Although no weapons were fired, cavalry advanced with swords drawn, and some blood was shed. By nightfall, hundreds had been injured by gas (including a baby who died), bricks, clubs, bayonets, and sabers. Next came the most controversial moment in the whole affair -- a moment that directly involved General MacArthur. Secretary of War Hurley twice sent orders to MacArthur indicating that the President, worried that the government reaction might look overly harsh, did not wish the Army to pursue the Bonus Marchers across the bridge into their main encampment on the other side of the Anacostia River. But MacArthur, according to his aide Dwight Eisenhower, "said he was too busy," did not want to be "bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders," and sent his men across the bridge anyway, after pausing several hours to allow as many people as possible to evacuate. A fire soon erupted in the camp. While it's not clear which side started the blaze, the sight of the great fire became the signature image of the greatest unrest our nation's capital has ever known. Although many Americans applauded the government's action as an unfortunate but necessary move to maintain law and order, most of the press was less sympathetic. "Flames rose high over the desolate Anacostia flats at midnight tonight," read the first sentence of the "New York Times" account, "and a pitiful stream of refugee veterans of the World War walked out of their home of the past two months, going they knew not where."
