May 24 2024
230x US capacity
FLASH DOJ sues to breakup Ticketmaster, citing antitrust
1 Americans financial wellbeing unchanged from 2022, down from 2021: Fed
2 ELECTION 2024 Despite talk, AI has little impact on campaign
3 Norfolk Southern to pay $310M for OH train derailment
4 Gaza aid pier ineffective
5 US shipbuilding capacity dwarfed by China
Sports
5/24/1844 Telegraph first used
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1 Americans financial wellbeing unchanged from 2022, down from 2021: Fed
The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday issued its Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023 report, which examines the financial circumstances of U.S. adults and their families. Overall, the report shows that financial well-being was nearly unchanged from 2022 as higher prices remained a challenge for most households and workers continued to benefit from a strong labor market. The report draws from the Board's eleventh annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), which was fielded in October 2023. It analyzes topics including financial well-being, income, employment, expenses, banking and credit, housing, higher education and student loans, and retirement and investments. The report indicates that overall financial well-being was nearly unchanged from 2022. During 2023, 72 percent of adults reported either doing okay or living comfortably financially, similar to the 73 percent seen in 2022 but down 6 percentage points from the recent high of 78 percent in 2021. Despite the moderating pace of inflation, higher prices continued to be a top financial concern. Sixty-five percent of adults said that changes in the prices they paid compared with the prior year had made their financial situation worse, including 19 percent who said price changes made their financial situation much worse. Some groups continued to experience financial stress at higher rates than others. In particular, low-income adults were more likely to face material hardships, including not paying all bills in full, sometimes or often not having enough to eat, and skipping medical care because of cost. Seventeen percent of adults said they did not pay all their bills in full in the month prior to the survey.
Federal Reserve
2 ELECTION 2024 Despite talk, AI has little impact on campaign
Artificial intelligence helped make turnout predictions in the Mississippi elections last year, when one group used the technology to transcribe, summarize and synthesize audio recordings of its door knockers’ interactions with voters into reports on what they were hearing in each county. Another group recently compared messages translated by humans and A.I. into six Asian languages and found them all to be similarly effective. A Democratic firm tested four versions of a voice-over ad — two spoken by humans, two by A.I. — and found that the male A.I. voice was as persuasive as its human equivalent (the female voice outperformed her A.I. equivalent). The era of artificial intelligence has officially arrived on the campaign trail. But the much-anticipated, and feared, technology remains confined to the margins of American campaigns. With less than six months until the 2024 election, the political uses of A.I. are more theoretical than transformational, both as a constructive communications tool or as a way to spread dangerous disinformation. The Biden campaign said it has strictly limited its use of generative A.I. — which uses prompts to create text, audio or images — to productivity and data-analysis tools, while the Trump campaign said it does not use the technology at all. “This is the dog that didn’t bark,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political adviser to one of the Democratic Party’s most generous donors, Reid Hoffman. “We haven’t found a cool thing that uses generative A.I. to invest in to actually win elections this year.” Mr. Hoffman is hardly an A.I. skeptic. He was previously on the board of OpenAI, and recently sat for an “interview” with an A.I. version of himself. For now, though, the only political applications of the technology that merit Mr. Hoffman’s money and attention are what Mr. Mehlhorn called “unsexy productivity tools.” Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist who runs an investment fund for campaign technology, agreed. “A.I. is changing the way campaigns are run but in the most boring and mundane ways you can imagine,” he said.
NYT
3 Norfolk Southern to pay $310M for OH train derailment
The Justice Department announced Thursday that Norfolk Southern has agreed to a settlement of about $310 million to resolve a lawsuit over the railroad’s discharge of toxic substances following last year’s fiery train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Under the agreement, Norfolk Southern will pay an estimated $235 million to cover the costs of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to clean up contaminated air, water and soil in and around where the train derailed and where toxic fumes were later vented. In addition, the railroad will pay a $15 million civil penalty to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.
WaPo
4 Gaza aid pier ineffective
In the week since the U.S. military and allies attached a temporary pier to the Gaza shoreline, Pentagon planners have come face to face with the logistical nightmare that critics had warned would accompany the endeavor. The Defense Department predicted that a steady stream of humanitarian aid would be arriving in Gaza via the pier by now, but little relief has reached Palestinians in the besieged strip, officials acknowledged this week. Several trucks were looted as they made their way to a warehouse, the U.N. World Food Program said, and the complexity of operating the pier project in a war zone is continuing to slow distribution. The problems, as expected, are on the back end of the operation. Looting of aid trucks has continued, officials said, and forced the World Food Program to suspend operations for two days. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, suspended food distribution in Rafah on Tuesday, citing lack of security. It added that it had not received any medical supplies for 10 days because of closures and disruptions at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.
NYT
5 US shipbuilding capacity dwarfed by China
In shipbuilding, according to a conservative analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Security, China offered $132 billion in subsidies to the shipbuilding and shipping industries between 2010 and 2018. These industries are buttressed by policies like debt forgiveness, low-interest bond issuance, equity infusions and barriers to foreign competition. Functionally, China’s shipbuilding industry is state-owned and leveraged to accelerate military-vessel construction. China has also invested nearly $60 billion into port projects around the world, including in such countries as Peru. Beijing makes the vast majority of cranes in these ports, including 80% in U.S. ports. Predatory lending practices enable it to gain control over facilities when poor nations can’t pay their debts, as happened in Sri Lanka in 2017. Meanwhile, America’s commercial maritime industry has faltered. At the end of World War II, the U.S. boasted a fleet of more than 5,000 ships, which made up more than 40% of the world’s shipping capabilities. Today there are only about 90 U.S.-flagged ships involved in international trade, owing to increased international competition and scant support for the commercial maritime sector at home. At the same time, America’s maritime industrial base is shrinking. The U.S. doesn’t subsidize commercial shipbuilders. Partially as a result, the U.S. lost 300 shipyards between 1983 and 2013. Today, only 20 U.S. shipyards can produce oceangoing vessels. Most of them, moreover, exclusively produce vessels for the U.S. Navy. The U.S. trade representative is currently investigating potentially unfair trade practices by China in shipbuilding, shipping and maritime logistics sectors, but such inquiries won’t rebuild the U.S. merchant fleet or production capabilities. Since the end of the 1970s, the U.S. has increasingly relied on other nations to conduct trade. Today, 98% of America’s trade is done via foreign-flagged ships. Such reliance has left America less able to guarantee free access to the world’s economy.
WSJ
Meanwhile, our strategic competitor, the People’s Republic of China, became the world’s top shipbuilding and shipping nation, boasting 230 times more shipbuilding capacity than the United States, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Congressional Report
Sports
NCAA Agrees to Share Revenue With Athletes in Landmark $2.8 Billion Landmark Settlement
The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the five most prominent athletic conferences agreed to a $2.77 billion settlement of a class-action lawsuit on Thursday, ushering in a new era of college sports in which schools can pay athletes directly. The move marks a dramatic shift for the NCAA, breaking with its century-old stance that college athletes are amateurs and therefore cannot share in any of the money they generate for their universities. The settlement will resolve a case that began in 2020 and was seeking back pay for athletes who were barred from earning compensation from endorsements, as well as a cut of future broadcast revenues. It also marks the latest rule the NCAA has been forced to change amid an onslaught of legal challenges in recent years. First, the NCAA allowed athletes to receive academic bonuses and profit from their name, image and likeness. Now, the biggest domino of all has fallen: For the first time ever, some players are going to be paid directly by their schools for playing their sports—a seismic shift that will completely reshape the business model for the top end of this billion-dollar industry. The result is the creation of a system that will give Division I schools the ability to distribute roughly $20 million a year to their athletes, said people familiar with the matter.
WSJ
5/24/1844 Samuel Morse demonstrates the telegraph with the message, “What hath God wrought?”
Sources
[1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/other20240521a.htm
[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/us/politics/ai-technology-campaigns.html
[5] https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-sea-power-leaves-u-s-adrift-e6a8681f?mod=opinion_lead_pos5;https://waltz.house.gov/uploadedfiles/congressional_guidance_for_a_national_maritime_strategy.pdf
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