What Happens When Inflation Hits 8%… And What Must Happen For Inflation To Fall
Last week, DB’s Jim Reid published a note looking at what normally happens next, when inflation hits 8% through history using 50 DM and EM countries, around 320 unique observations, and covering up to a 100 years of data.
The reason for the study, which even grabbed the attention of Larry Summer who has repeatedly been warning in recent months the Powell Fed will never be Volcker 2.0 and instead will repeat Arthur Burns’ mistakes and pivot sooner than it should…
Almost never does high inflation come down fast. Today’s consensus view that inflation will come way down is, as this figure from Jim Reid at Deutsche illustrates, outside the range of normal historical experience. pic.twitter.com/Mbnb4yg3UV
… was because as Reid put it, “with consensus being so bad at predicting inflation in this cycle we thought we’d look at what history says.”
So what does history suggest? According to the DB strategist, and in keeping with the Fed’s hawkish view, it would be unusual to see inflation now fall back as quickly as consensus believes over the next 2 years. In fact using data from the last 50 years (the fiat money era), current consensus forecasts would be in the most optimistic decile of observations over this period. As an aside, Reid notes that in most inflationary cycles rates don’t normally only start rising after inflation hits 8% (as they did in this one) and fiscal policy doesn’t normally loosen (e.g. across Europe given the gas crisis).
Needless to say, but Reid says it anyway, “whether consensus or the median observation through history is correct will have profound implications for assets over the next few months and years. So this is crucial to have a view on.”
So if history suggest it will take a long time for inflation to normalize, is there a way to short-circuit the process?
The answer is, of course, yes… but it’s painful. Reid, who next looks at 100 years of US inflation around recessions, found that while there is a big range, on average inflation only starts declining when the recession starts.
To be sure, in this cycle headline US CPI has already declined from its peak in June – even without the US officially entering recession – and may continue to do so due to energy rolling over but maybe the all-important core print – which is the core pilled behind Fed monetary policy – will only see serious declines once a recession hits.
Indeed on this, DB economist Matt Luzzetti recently published a note (available to pro subs), suggesting that only in their base case of a recession and US unemployment hitting 5.5-6% next year will inflation get close to the Fed’s objective by end-2024.
The implications are that Fed Funds will probably need to go to at least 5% to achieve this, which incidentally is what the market has been pricing in for the past month (although the recent dovish comments from Wikileaks and Mary Daly have seen a notable drop in the Fed’s peak target rate)…
It’s that time of year again – Halloween and time for the Bond Vigilantes’ usual round up of the scariest charts in global finance! With rising inflation and the cost of living crisis, 2022 has been a scary year for everyone. Turning our focus to markets, rising bond yields and CPI prints mean we have certainly found no shortage of scary charts either.
While spooky for bond investors, 2022 has also made fixed income a more interesting place to be an investor. After years of low, rangebound bond yields, markets have finally escaped the zero bound – in the case of the German 10 year yield, going from below zero just months ago at the start of 2022 to close to 2.5% over recent days.
Rising yields have been driven higher in the UK too by the return of the eponymous Bond Vigilantes, challenging the government’s tax-cutting policies in a time that many households will require fiscal support.
Likewise, as we wrote last week, after many years of a Halloween ‘treat’ for markets in the form of QE, it will soon be time for the ‘trick’ (QT)!
With all this in mind, here are the Bond Vigilantes’ scariest charts for 2022. Happy Halloween!
1. No sofa to hide behind in 2022
One of the scariest charts for investors this year will be a look at their 2022 portfolio returns. Whether in government bonds, corporate bonds, emerging market bonds, currencies or equities, there really were very few places to hide this year from the spectre of rising interest rates and a ghostly slowdown in growth. The dollar was one of the few assets in our chart to see a positive return so far this year.
We have previously compared the long end of the US Treasury market to a giant anaconda: drawing little attention during its long slumber, but making markets shake the moment it wakes and rears its head.
For many years, long-dated Treasury bonds have made investors smile: a multi-decade bull market in yields made financing cheap and gave investors healthy returns. The moves in long-dated Treasury yields can be poisonous though, as they affect mortgage rates and the price of debt around the world. This year, the whole Treasury curve has risen, and the giant anaconda may finally have awoken…
3. Inflation linked bond investors hoping for a treat may have received a trick instead
One place investors may have tried to shelter from the headwinds of 2022 is in inflation linked bonds. These may sound like the perfect place to hide in a year that has seen CPI reach double digits in the UK, and not far off it in Europe and the US. But a quick look at year to date returns of the FTSE Actuaries UK Index-Linked Gilts All Stocks Index makes for scary viewing – this index is down over 30% year to date.
What is going on here? It is important to remember that, while inflation linked bonds do contain a treat, in having their principle and coupons linked to inflation, they also carry a potential trick: they can have a lot of interest rate duration. In inflationary environments, in which central banks tend to hike rates, rising interest rates is bad news for bonds with a lot of duration as linker investors may have found to their peril this year. One way to mitigate this effect is to invest in much shorter dated linkers.
4. Boo! IG issuers now have to pay HY borrowing costs
Turning now to those companies issuing bonds, 2022 had a spooky surprise for investment grade issuers, who are now having to pay what the market recently would have priced as high yield borrowing costs. From as low as 1.6% all-in yields at the start of 2021, BBB-rated investment grade issuers are now having to pay eye-watering borrowing costs of 6.1% – not far off the 6.4% that CCC-rated high yield issuers were being charged that same year.
This chart may send ghostly shivers down the backs of any IG companies with approaching refinancing risks.
There are some frightening ghouls hiding behind this chart, which shows the US Conference Board leading indicators index. From jobless claims data and production measures, to new orders and consumer expectations, this index is a combination of the most used leading economic indicators and makes for grim viewing. Recently it plunged below zero, which in the past has suggested a recession is about to come.
6. Recession forecasts give investors pumpkin to worry about
Perhaps these leading indicators, along with the inflationary pressures being felt around the world, help explain this next alarming chart. Economists’ forecasts for the probability of a recession coming over the next year have been steadily creeping up in 2022. This chart makes for terrifying viewing, with forecasts now having reached 80% in the UK and Eurozone.
7. And finally… a sweet treat may not bring investors cheer this year
Finally, the cost of Halloween may be going up this year for those hoping some sweet treats may cheer them up after seeing these scary charts. The US CPI Candy & Chewing Gum Index (!) reveals inflation here at over 13% in the year from September 2021 to September 2022 – to put this in perspective, it took around seven years to see the same level of inflation in the candy index in the period up to 2021.
The value of investments will fluctuate, which will cause prices to fall as well as rise and you may not get back the original amount you invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
At first, Duncan’s son thought his longtime classmate was joking when she told him to say she was a man. He refused.
“You can’t do that! You can’t call somebody by something that they’re not,” Duncan said school administrators in Grants Pass chastised the boy.
“Just so you know, if you do it again, you’re gonna get in trouble,” they warned his son, Duncan said.
After the school year ended, Duncan transferred his two children to a private school.
Grants Pass is a small, conservative town, but locals have found they can’t control what their children get taught in public school. Families have found directives from Oregon’s governor trample their own beliefs. Teachers who want a politically neutral curriculum say local schools have actively promoted LGBT ideology.
“There was never a push towards dominance and control like it is now,” said Duncan. “You can’t voice your opinion.”
In response, many families in Grants Pass have withdrawn their children from public school, enrolling them in private school or starting to homeschool, Grants Pass teachers, school administrators and parents told The Epoch Times.
But those solutions can be expensive and inconvenient, and private schools sometimes don’t have enough space to absorb the exodus of students.
Boys Aren’t Girls
In just a few years, LGBT ideology has swept into Oregon schools, said Betty, a former school employee who used her first name only to avoid backlash within the community. She retired early because she was tired of trying to help kids, while simultaneously fighting left-wing ideology, she told The Epoch Times.
Just a few years ago, there wasn’t any LGBT indoctrination in her school, Betty said. Then, education workers slowly and quietly filled schools with pro-LGBT material.
“I mean, we’re out in the country. It’s conservative. And it’s like [the truth is], ‘Beware! It’s not!’” she said.
One day, Betty discovered a poster in the library that stated left-wing talking points.
“We believe black lives matter, no human is illegal, love is love, women’s rights are human rights, science is real, water is life, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” it read.
It didn’t seem like education to provide just one perspective on controversial issues, she said. So she put up her own poster next to it.
“We believe all lives matter, legal immigration, marriage is one man & one woman, unborn female and male babies have rights, God’s creation supports science, water is life, return to law abiding Constitutional America,” Betty’s poster read.
Then she got called to the principal’s office.
“They said, ‘You know what? This is unacceptable. You need to clear everything with us,’” Betty recalled.
The school forced her to take her poster down, but allowed the left-wing poster to remain, she said.
In another incident, when Betty stopped a young elementary school boy from walking into the girls’ bathroom by mistake, administrators expressed their disapproval.
“Oh, did I get it for that!” she exclaimed. “They said, ‘Betty, don’t you understand? They can walk wherever they want.’”
Radical gender ideology broke into schools after younger teachers embraced it in their training in college.
“They bought the propaganda,” Betty lamented. “They were immersed in the propaganda at the college level, so they’re just spewing that out. My sense is that they don’t have the same morality that us oldsters do.”
Another conservative teacher, Deborah, left her job after facing pressure to resign, she said. Deborah chose not to use her real name because she was concerned about drawing criticism.
Before she left, a school-mandated lecture told all teachers to raise their hands if they had “white privilege,” she said. She was the only one not to signal affirmation.
“No one else, as far as I know—no one else spoke up,” she said.
In another incident, a student expressed panic after Donald Trump was elected president. The girl said she feared Trump would put her in a concentration camp because she was a lesbian, Deborah recalled.
Deborah assured her it wouldn’t happen, she said. The student filed a complaint, and the school’s administration talked with Deborah about the incident.
“It was so ridiculous,” she said. “It never went anywhere, and is not even documented in my employment file. But I was visited by the administration because of it.”
Then, after Deborah accidentally handed a graded test to the wrong student, the student filed a complaint against her. Documents she provided to The Epoch Times show that the school assigned her “focus goals” that included passing out papers to the correct students.
Deborah has 22 years of teaching experience. She said she believes the school used the complaint to make her job so frustrating that she would quit. She suspects the school wanted her out because of her political beliefs.
“I think that people knew that I probably wouldn’t call a girl a boy,” Deborah said.
After the complaint, the school subjected all her work to intense scrutiny, she said.
“I would have to email my every single detail [in a] plan, at 5 in the morning to the principal and the personnel director,” Deborah recalled. “And then they would have people coming in my class every day. Different administrators were picking apart everything. And I found that many of the things that they said were just flat-out lies.”
Tired of the pressure, Deborah retired in 2019.
Local Kids, State Standards
Some in the community believe schools have also swung left in towns like Grants Pass, because Oregon’s state government sets educational standards that promote radical gender ideology.
“The whole system is set up to reprogram the kids. I mean, that’s what they’re doing. They’re literally destroying these innocent little brains,” said Betty.
The Oregon State Board of Education (OSBE) sets educational policies and standards for the state. The governor selects the board’s members.
Democrats have controlled the governor’s office since 1986. Oregon’s current governor, Kate Brown, is the nation’s first openly bisexual politician.
Some have accused the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) of pushing left-wing ideology at the expense of educational excellence. Its website urges administrators to educate while focusing on race and ethnicity.
Oregon’s health education standards also say children should learn there are “many ways to express gender” in kindergarten. They should learn about sexual orientation in third grade, the standards state, and they should be taught how to prevent the spread of AIDS in third grade as well.
By third grade, the guidelines continue, students should “recognize differences and similarities of how individuals identify regarding gender or sexual orientation.”
From kindergarten, students should learn to “recognize the importance of treating others with respect including gender expression,” the standards read. Students of the same age should also “identify different kinds of family structures.”
Sometimes, Oregon state curriculum is pornographic, in the opinion of Heidi Napier, a Grants Pass local who works with the area’s Republican Party education committee.
Napier paid for a copy of the state’s curriculum and discovered it included photographs of diseased genitals and line drawings of people having sex.
When Napier showed the pictures to a police officer, he told her that it would be a crime if she distributed them to children.
It’s legal, however, to use the same materials in the classroom.
“These are from the CDC,” the officer told her. “And as long as they’re used by a schoolteacher, they’re not pornography. But if anybody else used them, they would be considered pornography.”
Napier wondered if she could even show them at a school board meeting without facing repercussions.
The outside of Grants Pass High School suggests the school promotes left-wing gender ideology. The school has a rainbow LGBT pride heart above its main entrance and LGBT pride stickers on the windows of its classrooms.
The Epoch Times requested an interview with the Grants Pass school district, but one had not been scheduled by press time.
Pushing Private School
In response to ideological teaching, many Grants Pass parents have removed their children from public schools.
Admissions for Grants Pass New Hope Christian School have skyrocketed in the last three years, according to school administrator Annie Burnham.
Since 2020, the school has gone from 190 students to 340, with about 30 students on a waiting list, she said. To meet the need, New Hope more than doubled its staff. This switch is part of a nationwide post-COVID-19 trend.
The latest China data continue to show an overall downtrend, although some rebound is seen. The domestic economy, as represented by internal demand (private and government consumption expenditure and investment), remains weak under deleveraging (paying off debts). One possible way to improve the situation is to rely on external demand, which is net exports. At first glance, this seems sensible because the outside world is in a much better shape economically than China. However, the global cyclical pulldown effect can offset this completely.
The standard way to counter such a headwind is to “lower the price;” it can be done actively by policymakers or automatically under market mechanisms. A worsening outlook ahead will lead to a fall in prices, be they prices of goods, assets, or others. This is a market outcome that is the most natural yet the most uncontrollable. In order to take a more active approach, policymakers often cut interest rates or depreciate exchange rates to restore competitiveness. Here the interest rate affects the price of an investment, while the exchange rate affects the price of net exports.
Given both interest and exchange rates are sector-specific, the impact of changing either is different. Lowering interest rates benefits the borrowers while sacrificing the savers (or lenders). This affects who holds or loans money over time. However, depreciating the exchange rate impacts not over time but across borders: those within the border will gain an advantage in exporting yet will be disadvantaged in importing. While those outside the border will gain by paying less for goods.
As China is undergoing prolonged housing and debt crises, the interest rate tool would be ineffective because deleveraging to eliminate the debts usually takes longer than the effective duration of the interest rate cut. Similar classic examples are in post-1990 Japan and the post-2007 U.S., where even a zero interest rate with quantitative easing did not help.
However, exchange rate depreciation may make more sense (given the sharp contrast in economic performance between China and the rest of the world), as competitiveness in exports would be improved.
This is a traditional argument, but hold on. Now the global supply chain in production is so lengthy that countries might contribute only a portion of the total goods value at a lower exchange rate. Also, for a country importing $100 of raw materials or semi-finished goods and adding value then exporting it at $110, the exchange rate change affects the $10 value-added part only rather than the total exports of $110—China falls into this category. This is why exchange rate depreciation might not be as effective as one might think in helping China’s export figures.
As the accompanying chart shows, China’s share of world exports moves in unison with its real effective exchange rate. This means a cheaper Yuan does not boost exports. Instead, the opposite is seen—when the exports boom, it drives capital inflow, and the exchange rate appreciates. Depreciation is not a way out, either.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
World Series Errors: Watch As Eric Burton Flubs Anthem Lyrics
Friday night’s thriller of a World Series Game 1 started with a flurry of errors…by Grammy-nominated Black Pumas singer Eric Burton, who made a wreck of the national anthem by repeatedly botching the lyrics.
Things went south quickly, as Burton sang “what so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last streaming” rather than “gleaming.” Two lines later, instead of “o’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?” he reverted to a repeat of the erroneous “What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last streaming.”
Burton’s bomb bursting on air likely gave at least a few fans of the host Houston Astros a jinxy feeling. Their worst fears would be realized over the ensuing game.
Things started out great for Houston, a team with a reputation permanently stained by a 2017-18 cheating scandal in which video cameras were used to steal opposing catchers’ signals, and the banging of trash cans — or silence — was used to tell Astros batters what pitch to expect.
The Astros, previously undefeated this postseason, rocketed out to a 5-0 lead over the Philadelphia Phillies in the third inning. At that point, ESPN’s analytics put the Astros’ win probability at 94%.
However, the scrappy sixth-seed Phillies, well-practiced at resolutely overcoming adversity, stormed back to tie the game in the fifth inning before scoring a winning sixth run in the 10th. The Phillies are now 4-0 in Game 1’s this postseason — with every one of those wins coming in hostile territory.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is under federal criminal investigation … again. The voters of New Jersey reelected Menendez despite his accepting lavish gifts from a businessman who was later convicted of fraud. Menendez was also charged but the case was dismissed after a jury hung on the verdict. As I noted at the time of the trial, Menendez was a “juror” in a trial that I handled in the Senate and he maintained a position completely at odds with his own later defense.
In the prior case against the Senator, prosecutors accused Menendez of accepting close to $1 million in contributions and lavish gifts in exchange for political favors. The trial ended with a hung jury and the charges were dismissed in 2018.
That history did not prevent the Democrats making Menendez the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
ABC and other outlets have confirmed the new investigation. Reports indicated that the investigation raised similar allegations to the 2018 case.
In 2018, I noted that the most poignant and powerful case against Menendez was made in his own words.
It was 2010, and Menendez was voting against my client federal Judge Thomas Porteous in Porteous’s impeachment trial.
The charges were laid out plainly before U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.):
“… engag[ing] in a corrupt relationship [and] as part of this corrupt relationship … solicit[ation] and accept[ance] of numerous things of value, including meals, trips, home repairs, and car repairs, for his personal use and benefit while at the same time taking official actions that benefitted [his friend].”
Menendez was resolute. He stood up in front of his colleagues and declared that receiving gifts ranging from free meals to wedding gifts was, plain and simple, corruption.
Notably, while many of his colleagues voted “not guilty” on Dec. 8, 2010, to Count Two (which focused on the gifts and travel benefits) against Judge Porteous, Menendez did not. He voted “guilty” on that and all of the other counts.
Menendez ultimately escaped conviction based on the very arguments that he rejected when another man stood accused in the well of the U.S. Senate. In his own trial, he called a couple dozen witnesses, including Cory Booker, New Jersey’s junior Democratic U.S. senator, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to his good character.
The one witness who did not appear was Menendez himself.
Gitmo’s Oldest Detainee Freed After 20 Years With No Charges
The United States on Saturday released the oldest prisoner who was held for two decades at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – after his arrest in Thailand in 2003 soon after the so-called “Global War on Terror” was launched.
75-year old Saifullah Paracha was transferred to his home country of Pakistan. Amazingly, he spent nearly 20 years in US detention at the high-secure military prison without trial, nor was he ever formally charged. He was suspected of being an al-Qaida financier.
“The Foreign Ministry completed an extensive inter-agency process to facilitate the repatriation of Mr Paracha,” Pakistan’s government said in a statement soon after his release. “We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family.”
The US Department of Defense said Paracha’s transfer is part of broader efforts to close down the secretive Gitmo prison, saying on Saturday: “the United States appreciates the willingness of Pakistan and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility.”
Businessman Paracha was arrested in 2003 in Thailand and accused of financing the armed group, but he has maintained his innocence and claimed a love for the US.
In May, the US approved Paracha’s release concluding only that he was “not a continuing threat” to the US.
It remains that most inmates who spent years at the notorious facility were never actually charged or saw trial, with international outlets noting that out of a total 780 inmates held there throughout the post-9/11 war on terror, 732 have been ultimately released without charge.
Authorities claimed he helped two of the September 11 conspirators with a financial transaction as an Al Qaeda “facilitator” for the organization. However, despite having a number of illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, Paracha has denied any involvement in terrorism, claiming he was unaware the persons he was interacting with were members of Al-Qaeda.
However, the US has long claimed that under international laws of war, it is allowed to detain people without trial for an endless period of time. Paracha’s son had also been arrested on the charge of helping suspected militants to get into the US through faulty documents months before his father’s arrest.
He was sentenced to 30 years in jail in 2005 by the federal court in New York, however, a judge threw out witness accounts in March 2020.
The oldest detainee in Guantánamo Bay, Saifullah Paracha, 75, has been released today after almost two decades of being held without charge, trial, or conviction.
A human rights group who helped work on Paracha’s case, Reprieve, had this to say following his Saturday release: “Saifullah is returning to his family as a frail old man, having been taken from them in the prime of his life. That injustice can never be rectified.”
Europe has relied on U.S. LNG imports to offset the loss of Russian gas, with nearly 70% of U.S. LNG exports heading to Europe in September.
In the long term, Europe will have to find other sources of natural gas as its inventories are likely to drain over the upcoming winter.
Ultimately, Europe will have to reduce demand for natural gas going forward as there is very little available supply left.
Europe cannot rely solely on imports of U.S. LNG to offset the pipeline gas supply it will have lost from Russia when it starts rebuilding inventories after the end of this winter, according to BloombergNEF.
So far this year, American LNG has been crucial in meeting demand in Europe, which is scrambling for gas supply and willing to pay up for spot deliveries, outbidding most of Asia.
The United States is shipping record volumes of LNG to Europe to help EU allies and nearly 70% of all American LNG exports were headed to Europe in September, according to Refinitiv Eikon data cited by Reuters.
However, the significant drop in Russian gas supply this year occurred only in June, meaning that Europe could still stock up on some Russian gas earlier this year.
Ahead of the 2023/2024 winter, however, the gap in gas supply in Europe will be much wider without Russian gas. Europe will not be importing much Russian gas—or none at all if Russia cuts off deliveries via the one link left operational via Ukraine and via TurkStream—compared to relatively stable imports from Russia in the first half of this year, before Moscow started gradually cutting volumes via Nord Stream in June until shutting down the pipeline in early September.
“The year-on-year increase is not sufficient to offset a total cut in Russian piped supply with under half of these volumes met by LNG increases,” BNEF analyst Arun Toora said.
“The good news is that Russia looks close to having played its last card in terms of gas leverage over Europe. However Europe’s challenges will not disappear with the daffodils next spring,” London-based consultancy Timera Energy said in a winter gas market outlook at the beginning of October.
Without most of the Russian gas supply, Europe will likely need to offset around 40 bcm of additional lost Russian flows next year. LNG alone cannot meet this volume, considering a lack of new global liquefaction capacity in the short-term, including in the U.S., limited further demand elasticity in Asia, and European regasification capacity constraints. Therefore, European demand will need to fall, Timera Energy said.
The Coordinator of Strategic Communications for Washington’s National Security Council, John Kirby, said on 28 October that the US has no plans to either ease the Caesar Act sanctions against Syria or to withdraw its illegally occupying forces from the country.
The Caesar Act, passed by Congress in 2019, imposes harsh sanctions against Syria and targets any state, business, or individual involved with the Damascus government.
In an attempt to justify the US presence in Syria, Kirby said that “only a thousand American soldiers” were stationed there, whose mission he claimed was solely to combat ISIS.
The US official also claimed that Washington does not wish to shift “the balance of power” in Syria, suggesting that it has abandoned its regime change policy against Damascus.
Despite this claim, the US continues to support and arm militant groups in the country, including the CIA-trained, anti-government Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT) faction, which holds positions within the Al-Tanf base. Last month, a Russian official claimed that MaT was planning an indiscriminate, false flag operation against civilians in order to pin the blame on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
Despite also claiming that its presence in Syria aims to deter ISIS, US forces only carry out superficial strikes and operations against the extremist group, killing civilians in the process, while the SAA continues to pursue the organization thoroughly.
Instead, US troops in Syria are preoccupied with their persistent and illegal oil-looting operations, the latest of which took place on 26 October. Lately, Washington has even stepped up its looting of Syrian oil in order to alleviate the man-made energy crisis it faces, as well as to ease the effect of the latest decision by OPEC+ to cut output production levels.
According to the Syrian Oil Ministry, US forces have stolen more than 80 percent of the country’s daily oil output. Damascus and Moscow have both repeatedly and strongly condemned the US occupation, as well as its sanctions and policy of looting Syria’s natural resources.
Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzya, said on 10 August that a US withdrawal from Syria would facilitate the end of terrorism in the country.
“Chief Twit” Musk Reportedly Orders Job Cuts Across Twitter
Twitter’s workforce is expected to be gutted as soon as today, four people with direct knowledge of the matter told NYTimes. Managers of the social media platform have been asked to create lists of employees to cut.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who became “Chief Twit” on Thursday after finalizing the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, immediately ordered company-wide cuts. The people in the know weren’t entirely sure about the scale of the layoffs.
Musk has recently said that he planned to cut 75% of the company’s 7,500 employees, leaving a workforce of approximately 2,000.
The layoffs would occur before Nov. 1, when employees are scheduled to receive stock grants as compensation. Musk could avoid paying the grants by laying off workers before that date.
On Wednesday, Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters carrying a kitchen sink in preparation for his takeover. He tweeted: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
