May 17 2024
The Gathering Storm
1 BATTLE FOR EURASIA Putin in Beijing as China and Russia increase military cooperation
2 BATTLE FOR EURASIA NATO considers sending military trainers to Ukraine
3 ELECTION 2024 Supreme Court sides with Biden, protects federal power
4 Hedge fund manager sees “35-40%” chance of US civil war
5 US exurbs boom
5/17/1954 Brown v. Board of Ed is decided
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1 BATTLE FOR EURASIA Putin in Beijing as China and Russia increase military cooperation
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin pledged to intensify cooperation against US “containment” of their countries, as they warned of growing nuclear tensions between rival powers. Putin and Xi accused the US of planning to station missile systems around the world that “pose a direct threat to the security of Russia and China,” in a joint declaration after more than two hours of talks in Beijing on Thursday. They agreed to tighten coordination, including between their militaries, against what they called Washington’s “destructive and hostile course.”
Putin’s in China on the first foreign visit since his inauguration last week for a fifth presidential term, indicating the importance of the relationship with Xi in enabling Moscow to resist unprecedented sanctions from the US and its allies over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Xi said China was “ready to work with Russia as a good neighbor, friend and partner with mutual trust,” state broadcaster China Central Television reported after the pair had met. China was prepared “to consolidate the friendship between the two peoples for generations to come,” he added. Putin described the nations’ cooperation as “one of the main stabilizing factors in the international arena,” according to a video posted on a Kremlin social media account. The two leaders declared a “no-limits friendship” just weeks before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and have met more than 40 times since Xi came to power in 2012. Driven by Russian oil and gas sales and purchases of electronics, industrial equipment and cars, Moscow’s trade with China hit a record $240 billion in 2023.
Bloomberg
For two years, Chinese backing for Russia’s war in Ukraine has been western governments’ biggest concern about the two countries’ burgeoning relationship. But two weeks ago, US officials raised alarm over their co-operation in another key security theatre: the seas around Taiwan. “We see them, China and Russia, for the first time exercising together in relation to Taiwan,” Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, told US lawmakers. “[We are] recognising that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t.” The US has had to adapt to closer co-operation between the Chinese and Russian militaries, Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the same Senate hearing.
Their comments reflect how deep the military relationship has become under Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are meeting this week in Beijing.
FT
2 BATTLE FOR EURASIA NATO considers sending military trainers to Ukraine
NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war. Ukraine’s manpower shortage has reached a critical point, and its position on the battlefield in recent weeks has seriously worsened as Russia has accelerated its advances to take advantage of delays in shipments of American weapons. As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment.
NYT
3 ELECTION 2024 Supreme Court sides with Biden, protects federal power
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a broad challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reversing a lower-court ruling that would have undermined the watchdog agency Congress created in the wake of the financial crisis to protect borrowers from predatory lenders, junk fees and other abuses. In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said the CFPB’s funding mechanism is constitutional. The agency draws its budget through profits of the Federal Reserve, not an annual appropriation by Congress. The CFPB ruling is the first of a series of closely watched decisions the justices will issue this term that could broadly reshape the power and reach of federal agencies. Thursday’s decision was praised by consumer advocates and President Biden, who called it “an unmistakable win for American consumers.” An adverse ruling could have raised broader questions about how Congress funds the Federal Reserve — and even Social Security and payments to the national debt. It might have also opened challenges to more than a decade of enforcement actions and more than $20 billion recovered by the CFPB on behalf of consumers. Some legal experts said the victory likely ensures the long-term survival of the powerful and controversial CFPB — which has long been a target of conservatives and some corporate interests — if not an end to attacks on the way it regulates industry.
“That Justice Thomas authored the opinion suggests how weak the industry’s argument was,” said Joann Needleman, an attorney who specializes in financial services regulation and is a former member of a CFPB board. Needleman noted that Thomas has long been skeptical of federal regulation.
WaPo
4 Hedge fund manager sees “35-40%” chance of US civil war
Among the risks identified by his research is what Dalio believes is the growing likelihood of a US “civil war” — the probability of which he puts at somewhere between 35-40 per cent. “We are now on the brink,” he said. But we “don’t yet know if we will cross over into much more turbulent times”. The civil war Dalio imagines was not necessarily one in which people “grab guns and start shooting”, although such a scenario was possible, he said. Instead he sees it as an acceleration of the political polarisation in American politics that has taken place in recent decades. This civil war would be one in which “people move to different states that are more aligned with what they want and they don’t follow the decisions of federal authorities of the opposite political persuasion”. He also believes this year’s US presidential election is the most important one in his lifetime and will determine whether the risks he sees — which also include climate change and the impact of the more widespread use of artificial intelligence — will spiral out of control.
Dalio, 74, stepped down as chair of Connecticut-based Bridgewater, which is the world’s largest hedge fund and manages $112.5bn in assets, in 2021. He remains an adviser to the three co-chief investment officers and is a member of the board, while his research, supported by a team at Bridgewater, is shared with investors.
FT
5 US exurbs boom
Some of America's fastest-growing places aren't cities themselves but their outer suburbs, or exurbs. Late-pandemic shifts in where Americans live are still shaking out — with big implications for cities seeing massive growth or rapid decline. The exurb trend is particularly pronounced in the Phoenix metro area, where four exurbs made up a third of the area's population growth in 2023”. Fewer of the fastest-growing places between 2022 and 2023 were inner suburbs than in 2019 ... and more were on the far outskirts of metro areas — 30, 40 and even more than 60 miles away from the largest city's downtown," according to a U.S. Census Bureau analysis. Atlanta, Fort Worth and Raleigh are America's fastest-growing cities with more than 250,000 residents. Souhern cities dominate the list of the fastest-growing big metros, with Florida and Texas alone accounting for eight of the top 20.
Axios
5/17/1954 Brown v. Board of Ed is decided
Sources
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-15/putin-starts-china-visit-seeking-xi-s-support-for-his-new-term?srnd=homepage-americas&sref=nXmOg68r; https://www.ft.com/content/9ca965a9-2eb2-424b-a836-0224a4c14535
[3]https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/16/supreme-court-cfpb-funding/
[4]https://www.ft.com/content/d54e5886-7f9a-49c4-a915-61ca506e4514
Thanks for reading!
