Nearly 30% of firms in Europe and the Middle East have weak balance sheets after companies loaded up on debt during the Covid-19 pandemic, and now face serious pressure due to rising interest rates and soaring inflation, Bloomberg reports, citing Alvarez & Marsal.

About 28% of companies were considered to be in this category in 2022, while 8.4% were deemed to be in distress, the consultancy firm said in a report, highlighting the Middle East, Spain and Germany as the regions with the highest proportion of distress. -Bloomberg

When compared to last year, the number of firms with balance sheet weakness is up slightly – and up 12% vs. pre-pandemic levels, according to the report.

This reflects the amount of state-backed debt that companies took on during the pandemic, leaving balance sheets “increasingly stretched by hefty debt loads and higher interest rates.” according to the report.

“Companies’ ability to generate profits to pay for higher levels of debt is gradually being reduced,” wrote the report’s authors, which includes Paul Kirkbright, head of EMEA financial restructuring, and managing director Allesandro Farsaci.

What are the main drivers of the weakness? Metrics such as net debt-to-Ebitda, debt service coverage and interest coverage ratios.

Meanwhile, companies have been grappling with the ECB’s 400-basis-point increase in key rates over the past year, compounded by record-breaking inflationary pressures across the eurozone. As such, weaker borrowers have found themselves locked out of capital markets and less able to roll over existing debt.

The A&M study looked at 7,000 listed and private companies with at least $22 million of annual revenues across 33 countries in Europe and the Middle East.

What are the weakest sectors?

• Non-food consumer businesses
• Media
• Entertainment
• Energy and Utilities

Businesses which rely on consumer discretionary spending saw their percentage of distress rise to around 13% in 2022 vs. 8.5% in 2021.

For energy and utility companies, the turmoil in Europe’s commodities markets had a “binary effect,” the report said. While some achieved higher operating margins following the surge in oil and gas prices, many utility companies struggled to pass on higher rates to customers. The percentage of gas companies in distress rose to 19% in 2022 from from 6.5% the prior year, according to the report.

On country-by-country basis, the authors pointed out that Germany could be “ahead of the curve” when it comes to restructuring activity due to tests around liquidity imposed by the country’s legal framework. In Spain, while there is a high proportion of companies in distress, levels have declined year-on-year, in part due a “spectacular rebound in tourism,” the report said. -Bloomberg

According to Kirkbright and Farsaci, even tighter financial conditions and recession will be compounding issues in the coming year, writing “We expect that tougher conditions will force more companies to actively pursue deleveraging and restructuring measures.“

Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com,

German conglomerate Siemens was reportedly the first company to process euro-denominated payments using JPM Coin…

The United States-based investment bank JPMorgan is expanding the implementation of one of its major blockchain projects into traditional banking.

JPMorgan has deployed its blockchain-based payment system, JPM Coin, to introduce euro-denominated payments for corporate clients, Bloomberg reported on June 23. A spokesperson for JPMorgan confirmed to Cointelegraph that the bank had expanded the JPM Coin blockchain platform from U.S. dollars to euros.

According to Basak Toprak, JPMorgan’s head of coin systems for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, JPM Coin went live with euro transactions on June 21.

German conglomerate Siemens conducted the first euro payment on the platform, Toprak reportedly said.

The system enables wholesale payments for clients, including large multinational firms, to transfer euros to and from their JPMorgan accounts instantly and 24/7.

That significantly improves traditional banking transactions, which are usually only processed during business hours.

“There are cost benefits to paying at the right time,” JPMorgan’s Toprak said.

“This could mean they could earn more interest income on their deposits,” he added.

Launched in 2019, JPM Coin is a live application aiming to provide an alternative payment rail running on blockchain. Since its launch, JPMorgan has reportedly processed about $300 billion of transactions in JPM Coin. The bank is yet to scale the system, as its overall daily payments volumes reportedly amount to roughly $10 trillion.

JPM Coin is part of JPMorgan’s blockchain-based platform known as Onyx Coin Systems. As previously reported, JPMorgan launched Onyx in 2020, aiming to improve the quality of wholesale payment transactions. The bank reportedly processed nearly $700 billion in short-term loan transactions via Onyx as of April 2023.

The news comes amid JPMorgan reportedly being fined $4 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over mismanagement of internal communications. In 2019, the bank reportedly mistakenly deleted about 47 million emails of its retail banking group dated from Jan. 1 to April 23, 2018. According to U.S. securities laws, financial firms must keep business records for three years.

The UK housing market is in trouble. More explicitly, it is Britain’s mortgage borrowers that are directly impacted from higher and higher rates flowing through the capital markets from The Bank of England.

While fixed-rate borrowers are protected from the immediate impact of rate-hikes, variable-rate (or interest-only/resettable) borrowers are directly impacted and given the velocity and size of the hiking cycle so far, more pain is to come and more pressure on the housing market overall.

David Hollingworth, associate director at L&C, said:

“I don’t think we’re out of the woods in terms of the movement in fixed rates at the moment.”

Hollingworth is correct, as we noted last year, 26% of mortgage payments are at risk of imminent increases, 37% at risk over the next two years if rates don’t rapidly fall, and 37% can ride out this storm for a few more years.

And as The FT reports, lenders began announcing changes to their variable rates after the decision on Thursday.

The impact of higher rates on house purchase activity was not yet apparent, estate agents said. Matt Thompson, head of sales at estate agent Chestertons, said:

“At this stage, we haven’t yet encountered homeowners who have been forced to sell up but, if rates continue to rise, some owners may be forced to review the situation and weigh up their options.”

However, he added that heavily mortgaged buy-to-let landlords, who typically hold interest-only loans, could face higher payments that would threaten their ability to make a profit.

“This could result in some landlords deciding to offload their assets.”

In fact, as Adrian Anderson, director at broker Anderson Harris, points out, “most people are maxing out on affordability now.”

The calls for ‘help’ are already growing, and the Tory government – facing a shellacking in the polls – have been quick to step up.

As Bloomberg reports, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt and the UK’s largest lenders have agreed people should be given a 12-month grace period if they miss mortgage payments as fears grow about the burden on millions of homeowners of rapidly rising mortgage rates.

For those people at risk of losing their home, lenders have “agreed there will be a minimum 12-month period before there’s a repossession without consent,” Hunt said in a statement after meeting bank executives earlier.

The statement also noted a new agreement that gives customers the ability to switch to an interest-only mortgage for six months, or extend their mortgage term to reduce their monthly payments and then return to their original arrangement without penalty or impact on their credit scores within the first six months.

Hunt said: “There are two groups of people that we are particularly worried about.”

“The first are people who are at real risk of losing their homes because they fall behind in their mortgage payments.”

“The second are people who are having to change their mortgage because their fixed rate comes to an end, and they are worried about the impact on their family finances of higher mortgage rates.”

Consumer champion Martin Lewis said he was “pleased to see it looks like the chancellor has listened and those measures are going to be put in practice by the banks.”

However, many suggest this is yet another policy mistake at a time of considerable doubt about UK policymakers credibility. As Adam Posen – president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee – wrote in an op-ed recently at The FT, policymakers must act as if they are under an emerging market style stabilisation programme. One of his suggestions is harsh but fair:

“…calls for aid for mortgage holders need to be largely ignored.

There are few unfairnesses greater than the fact that property owners get all the benefits of real estate price booms and low interest rates, but demand bailouts, often successfully, when rates rise and prices fall.

In a stabilisation, hard choices have to be made. Let property prices fall, which is disinflationary, and force any restructuring of mortgages to come out of the private sector lenders, not the public budget.”

Of course, opposition leaders are claiming the government’s actions don’t go far enough.

Labour said the measures were “weak”.

The party argues that mortgage lenders should be forced to allow borrowers to temporarily switch to interest-only payments or lengthen their mortgage period – an idea that the government has resisted.

The Lib Dems described the measures as a “sticking plaster for a gushing wound”.

However, as Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid concluded, while much can change very quickly in politics and markets, if markets are correct, “the UK housing market is in for a huge amount of pain ahead,” unless the BOE were to somehow monetize all the upcoming debt issuance and sends rates back to zero.

For now, the plan is temporary debt extension and easing of terms… but as ever, temporary government actions have a habit of becoming permanent because. Instead of more band-aids, maybe just rip this band-aid off, as Posen suggests, and force the cleansing process of the over-lending credit markets. Especially at a time when the encumbent government faces a serious defeat at best.

Authored by Vijay Prashad via ConsortiumNews.com,

Europe has every reason to support the development of an independent foreign policy that rejects U.S. dominance and militarisation in favour of embracing international cooperation and a more democratic world order…

It is difficult to make sense of many events these days.

France’s behaviour, for instance, is hard to square. On the one hand, French President Emmanuel Macron changed his mind to support Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

On the other hand, he said that France would like to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in South Africa in August.

Europe is, of course, not an entirely homogeneous continent, with problems afoot as Hungary and Turkey have refused to ratify Sweden’s desire to enter NATO at its annual summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) in July.

Nonetheless, the European bourgeoisie looks westward to Wall Street’s investment firms to park its wealth, yoking its own future to the regency of the United States. Europe is firmly wedded to the Atlantic alliance with little room for an independent European voice.

At the No Cold War platform, we have been carefully studying these elements of Europe’s foreign policy. Briefing no. 8, which will form the bulk of this newsletter, has been drafted along with European Parliament member Marc Botenga of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, or PTB–PVDA. You will find it below.

The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a strengthening of the U.S.’s grip and influence on Europe. An important supply of Russian gas was replaced by U.S. shale gas. European Union (EU) programmes originally designed to fortify Europe’s industrial base now serve the acquisition of U.S.-made weapons.

Under U.S. pressure, many European countries have contributed to escalating war in Ukraine instead of pushing for a political solution to bring about peace.

At the same time, the U.S. wants Europe to decouple from China, which would further reduce Europe’s global role and run counter to its own interests. Instead of following the U.S.’s confrontational and damaging New Cold War agenda, it is in the interests of Europe’s people for their countries to establish an independent foreign policy that embraces global cooperation and a diverse set of international relations.

Europe’s Growing Dependence on the U.S.

The Ukraine war, and the ensuing spiral of sanctions and counter sanctions, led to a rapid decoupling of EU-Russia trade relations. Losing a trade partner has limited the EU’s options and increased dependence on the U.S., a reality that is most visible in the EU’s energy policy.

As a result of the war in Ukraine, Europe reduced its dependence on Russian gas, only to increase its dependence on more expensive U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG). The U.S. took advantage of this energy crisis, selling its LNG to Europe at prices well above production cost.

In 2022, the U.S. accounted for more than half of the LNG imported into Europe. This gives the U.S. additional power to pressure EU leaders: if U.S. shipments of LNG were diverted elsewhere, Europe would immediately face great economic and social difficulty.

Reza Derakhshani (Iran), White Hunt, 2019.

Washington has started pushing European companies to relocate to the U.S., using lower energy prices as an argument. As German Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck said, the U.S. is ‘hoovering up investments from Europe’ – i.e., it is actively promoting the region’s deindustrialisation.

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (2022) and the CHIPS and Science Act (2022) directly serve this purpose, offering $370 billion and $52 billion in subsidies, respectively, to attract clean energy and semiconductor industries to the U.S..

The impact of these measures is already being felt in Europe: Tesla is reportedly discussing relocating its battery construction project from Germany to the U.S., and Volkswagen paused a planned battery plant in Eastern Europe, instead moving forward with its first North American electric battery plant in Canada, where it is eligible to receive U.S. subsides.

EU dependence on the U.S. also applies in other areas. A 2013 report by the French Senate asked unambiguously: “Is the European Union a colony of the digital world?”

The 2018 U.S. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act and the 1978 U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allow U.S. companies extensive access to EU telecommunications including data and phone calls, giving them access to state secrets. The EU is being spied on continuously.

Cle?ment Jacques-Vossen (Belgium), Lockdown, 2020.

Rising Militarisation Is Against Europe’s Interests

EU discussions on strategic vulnerabilities focus mostly on China and Russia while the influence of the U.S. is all but ignored. The U.S. operates a massive network of over 200 U.S. military bases and 60,000 troops in Europe, and, through NATO, it imposes ‘complementarity’ on European defence actions, meaning that European members of the alliance can act together with the U.S. but not independently of it.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously summarised this as ‘the three Ds’: no ‘de-linking’ European decision-making from NATO, no ‘duplicating’ NATO’s efforts, no ‘discriminating’ against NATO’s non-EU members. Furthermore, in order to guarantee dependence, the U.S. refrains from sharing the most important military technologies with European countries, including much of the data and software connected to the F-35 fighter jets they purchased.

For many years, the U.S. has been calling for European governments to increase their military spending. In 2022, military spending in Western and Central Europe surged to €316 billion, returning to levels not seen since the end of the first Cold War. In addition, European states and EU institutions sent over €25 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

Prior to the war, Germany, Britain, and France were already amongst the top ten highest military spenders in the world. Now, Germany has approved €100 billion for a special military upgrading fund and committed to spend 2 percent of its GDP on defence.

Meanwhile, Britain announced its ambition to increase its military spending from 2.2 percent to 2.5 percent of its GDP and France announced that it will increase its military spending to around €60 billion by 2030 – approximately double its 2017 allocation.

This surge in military spending is taking place while Europe experiences its worst cost of living crisis in decades and the climate crisis deepens. Across Europe, millions of people have taken to the streets in protest. The hundreds of billions of euros being spent on the military should instead be redirected to tackling these urgent problems.

Decoupling from China Would Be Disastrous

The EU would suffer from a U.S.-China conflict. A significant part of EU exports to the U.S. contains Chinese inputs, and conversely, EU goods exports to China often contain U.S. inputs. Tighter export controls imposed by the U.S. on exports to China or vice versa will therefore hit EU companies, but the impact will go much further.

The U.S. has increased pressure on a variety of EU countries, companies, and institutions to scale down or stop cooperation with Chinese projects, in particular lobbying for Europe to join its tech war against China. This pressure has borne fruit, with ten EU states having restricted or banned the Chinese technology company Huawei from their 5G networks as Germany considers a similar measure.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands has blocked exports of chip-making machinery to China by the key Dutch semiconductor company ASML.

In 2020, China overtook the U.S.’s position as the EU’s main trading partner, and in 2022, China was the EU’s largest source for imported goods and its third largest market for exported goods.

The U.S. push for European companies to restrict or end relations with China would mean limiting Europe’s trade options, and incidentally increasing its dependence on Washington. This would be detrimental not just to the EU’s autonomy, but also to regional social and economic conditions.

Georgi Baev (Bulgaria), Name, 1985.

Europe Needs Global Cooperation, Not Confrontation

Since the end of the Second World War, no single foreign power has wielded more power over European policy than the U.S. If Europe allows itself to be locked into a U.S.-led bloc, not only will this reinforce its technological dependence on the U.S., but the region could become de-industrialised.

Moreover, this will put Europe at odds not only with China, but also with other major developing countries, including India, Brazil, and South Africa, that refuse to align themselves with one country or another.

Rather than follow the U.S. into conflicts around the world, an independent Europe must redirect its security strategy towards territorial defence, collective security for the continent, and building constructive international links by decisively breaking away from paternalistic and exploitative trade relations with developing countries.

Instead, fair, respectful, and equal relationships with the Global South can offer Europe the necessary and valuable diversification of political and economic partners that it urgently needs.

An independent and interconnected Europe is in the interests of the European people. This would allow vast resources to be diverted away from military spending and towards addressing the climate and cost of living crises, such as by building a green industrial base.

The European people have every reason to support the development of an independent foreign policy that rejects U.S. dominance and militarisation in favour of embracing international cooperation and a more democratic world order.

Aida Mahmudova (Azerbaijan), Non-Imagined Perspectives, 2018.

The No Cold War briefing above asks an important question: is an independent European foreign policy possible? The general conclusion, given the balance of forces that prevail in Europe today, is no.

Not even the far-right government in Italy, which campaigned against NATO, could withstand pressure from Washington. But, as the briefing suggests, the negative impact of the Western policy of preventing peace in Ukraine is being felt daily by the European public.

Will the European people stand up for their sovereignty or will they continue to be the frontline for Washington’s ambitions?

*  *  *

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

Authored by Zachary Steiber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A U.S. law that bars encouraging illegal immigration for advantage or gain is lawful, the Supreme Court ruled on June 23.

“After concluding that this statute criminalizes immigration advocacy and other protected speech, the Ninth Circuit held it unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment. That was error,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, wrote for the majority.

“Properly interpreted, this provision forbids only the intentional solicitation or facilitation of certain unlawful acts,” she added.

The law in question prohibits encouraging or inducing illegal immigration for “commercial advantage or private financial gain.”

The case was brought to the nation’s highest court by the government.

A man named Helaman Hansen was convicted in 2017 by a jury in California of violating the law as well as committing wire fraud. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

According to evidence disclosed during the trial, Hansen from 2012 to 2016 sold memberships to a “migration program” that falsely promised people they could become U.S. citizens.

“A central feature of the program was the fraudulent claim that immigrant adults could achieve U.S. citizenship by being legally adopted by an American citizen and completing a list of additional tasks,” U.S. prosecutors said previously.

Not one of the approximately 500 people who paid Hansen as much as $10,000 became a citizen. Federal authorities had told Hansen as early as 2012 that aliens adopted after turning 16 could not obtain citizenship.

Hansen’s lawyers argued that the law infringes on rights conferred by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment so much that it should not apply to anyone.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2022, agreed, vacating the convictions for inducement.

“It is clear that subsection (iv) covers a substantial amount of protected speech. Many commonplace statements and actions could be construed as encouraging or inducing an undocumented immigrant to come to or reside in the United States. For example, the plain language of subsection (iv) covers knowingly telling an undocumented immigrant ‘I encourage you to reside in the United States,’” U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ronald Gould, a Clinton appointee, wrote for the majority.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Daniel Collins, a Trump appointee, joined in the ruling while U.S. Circuit Court Judge Patrick Bumatay, another Trump appointee, dissented.

The appeals court refused to rehear the case, resulting in the government asking the Supreme Court to overrule the lower court.

The appeals court ruling ruled wrongly, authorities said, pointing to how it did not identify a single instance in history when the law has been applied to speech protected by the Constitution. Previous rulings have found that speech “used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute” is not constitutionally protected.

A majority of the Supreme Court agreed with the government.

“To the extent that clause (iv) reaches any speech, it stretches no further than speech integral to unlawful conduct,” Barrett wrote.

She was joined in the 7–2 ruling by Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.

Read more here…

By John Cheng, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

Losses in Chinese assets are mounting again as Beijing’s modest stimulus disheartens investors.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of Hong Kong-listed Chinese firms slumped more than 6% last week to cap its steepest drop since March. The CSI 300 Index of mainland shares fell 2.5% through Wednesday before markets closed for holidays. The yuan also tumbled to the weakest since November, with analysts bracing for more declines.

There’s little reason for mainland traders to be optimistic when markets reopen on Monday. China’s travel spending during the dragon boat festival holiday fell short of pre-Covid levels, underscoring the slowdown in consumption. Preliminary estimates from the Passenger Car Association showed over the weekend that passenger vehicle sales for June are expected to drop 5.9% year-on-year.

Gloom is setting in after authorities refrained from adding major policy support even as the economy has lost momentum. Beijing is making it clear that any easing will be targeted and measured, bidding farewell to the days of massive stimulus that drove leveraged buying and inflated asset prices — a distortion that the nation’s leaders are determined not to repeat.

“This is an expectation mismatch in my opinion,” said Zhikai Chen, head of Asian and global emerging-market equities at BNP Paribas Asset Management. “It is a very awkward situation where positioning is light, valuation is undemanding yet sentiment is very bearish.”

To be sure, China has been rolling out measures to stimulate its economy, including a series of reductions in interest rates and extended tax breaks for consumers buying clean cars. Market reactions have been muted as traders are skeptical whether these steps will reinvigorate an economy weighed down by record debt levels, slowing global demand, and weak confidence among businesses and consumers rattled by years of unpredictable policy shifts.

An analysis by Morgan Stanley’s quantitative team shows active long-only managers have remained net sellers of China’s growth and tech stocks in May and June. Meanwhile, hedge funds have been adding bearish bets as outstanding short positions by the cohort jumped 32% in June, they found.

“It is telling that the market has been unable to put up a sustained rally year-to-date despite policy easing,” said Eli Lee, head of investment strategy at Bank of Singapore Ltd. “The incremental easing approach taken by policymakers, as they remain determined to curtail the long-term rise of leverage in the economy, may not move the needle.”

That’s not to say bulls are giving up. Goldman Sachs’ strategists including Kinger Lau said in a June 19 note that a tactical trading window for Chinese stocks is “open once again” given inexpensive valuations. They recommended buying policy-easing beneficiaries, as well as artificial intelligence themes and state-owned companies. The MSCI China Index is trading at 10.1 times forward earnings, below the five-year average of around 12.1.

“There’s a lot of negativity but I think a lot of it is built into the price already,” Ken Peng, head of Asia Pacific investment strategy at Citi Global Wealth Investments, said in a press briefing last week. “The prospect of better growth in the second half is there, but it’s coming at a much more gradual pace.”

While some careers can be relatively stress-free, maintaining a healthy work-life balance can seem impossible for many.

The easy access to technology, blurred boundaries around work and personal time, and fear of job loss push many to work overtime, and fail to use vacation time or sick leave.

However, in some cities across the world, the situation is very different. In top-ranked locales, companies offer working professionals an opportunity to maintain a work-life balance through good healthcare, ample vacation time, and so on.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Freny Fernandes and Bhabna Bannerjee use the Forbes Advisor 2023 ranking to highlight the top cities in the world that encourage work-life balance. The ranking compares data from 128 cities to form the Work-Life Balance Score, which is marked on a scale of 100. The higher the score, the better work–life balance workers in a city have. We’ve covered the top 25 in the graphic below.

Europe Tops the Chart

Twenty of the 25 cities with the best work-life balance fall in Europe. The diverse range of cultures and lifestyles in these cities offers its residents a balance between work and personal life.

The top city on this list, with a work-life balance score of 70.5/100, is Copenhagen, Denmark. The city’s high standard of living, low unemployment rate, 52-week-long parental leave, and focus on sustainability and green spaces all contribute to the city’s top score. It also helps that the Danish lifestyle focuses on taking time for self-care and relaxation.

Healthy lifestyles along with generous vacation and parental leave policies also placed the European cities of Helsinki, Stockholm, and Oslo in the top five in this list. In fact, the average employee work week in these cities falls below 30 hours. The proportion of remote jobs in Helsinki, Finland is over 50%.

Many companies in Europe prioritize employee well-being, which has led to the emergence of a wellness culture. This culture includes practices such as remote work and mental health support.

Balancing Work and Life in Oceania

Although Europe dominates the top 25 list, some cities in Oceania also boast of healthy work-life balance scores.

Ranked 5th on the list of cities with the best work-life balance, workers in Auckland, New Zealand, have a 26.3-hour work week on average and a year’s worth of parental leave.

Meanwhile, the cities of Brisbane (53.3), Melbourne (53.1), and Sydney (51.4) in Australia follow an average work week of 32.4 hours to 38 hours. The sunny weather in these cities also positively influences their scores.

For Some, Safety is Key

UAE’s capital city is the only Asian city to make it to this top 25 list, and this is despite its high property prices and relatively low number of vacation days available to workers. On the flip side, the city is safe, sunny, and boasts a high quality of life.

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Instead of proper rule of law we are living with that Orwellian alternative, Our Rule of Law – an arbitrary enforcement of the laws and use of the coercive power of the state…

Like some other commentators, I have in recent years several times quoted a famous exchange from Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Recent developments in the Biden family money laundering scheme, the implosion of a boutique underwater expedition to the Titanic, and a possible coup in Russia prompt me to wheel it out once again.

“‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually, then suddenly.’”

It fits the long-running drama over Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell, I think.

Miranda Devine broke news of that scandal in the New York Post in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. It languished in the doldrums of official nonrecognition for years as the regime went into overdrive to keep people, especially voters, from paying any attention to it. 

Gradually, however, the truth leaked out. First, the authenticity of the laptop was acknowledged. Turns out it was not “Russian disinformation,” as those 51 intelligence experts insisted. Nope, it belonged to Hunter all right. At first, the public was titillated by all the sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll that pervaded that digital trove. Gradually, very gradually, however, the publicly important stuff—the money angle with news of foreign payments apparently to dear-old-dad from various foreigners—began leaking out. 

Then suddenly, just this last week, the House Ways and Means Committee began dropping bombs.

Material from an IRS whistleblower—no, two IRS whistleblowers—got fed into the mix and we got such Hunter Biden classics as this WhatsApp message from July 2017 addressed to Henry Zhao, a member of the Chinese Communist Party and, wouldn’t you know it, a business partner of Hunter’s: 

I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment [the commitment being millions of the crispest] made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight, And, Z, fi [sic] get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.

I enjoyed reading that over the morning coffee while gazing at the accompanying photograph of Hunter all got up in black tie for a big to-do at the White House the other day. That was right after he, miraculously, managed to wangle the plea bargain of the century. He failed to report millions in income, yet the prosecutor agreed to reduce felony charges to misdemeanors and, essentially, to forget about the fact that Hunter lied on his application for a firearm, a felony. Nice work, Hunter!

There are some people who insist that we are still in the he-said she-said phase of this drama. It’s happened before. 

Remember, years ago, when FBI lovebirds Lisa Page and Peter Strzok had their little back and forth a few days after the Trump-Russia hoax got started? Page cooed to Strzok: “Trump should go f himself.” Strzok responded, “F Trump.” Two days later, Page texted, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok replied, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” “We” being not just Peter and Lisa but also the FBI. Somehow, that got diluted and interpreted out of relevance, though, and the fact that the premier police power of the country interfered in a presidential election got swept under the proverbial rug.

It might happen this time, too. We have credible allegations galore, not only of Hunter’s lawbreaking, but his father’s. According to the whistleblower testimony that the House Ways and Means Committee just released, the Justice Department tipped off Hunter Biden about a plan to search his storage unit, thus allowing him to clean it out before the feds arrived. The Justice Department also declined to execute a search warrant of Joe Biden’s guest house when Hunter was living there. They hid allegations about foreign bribery from the IRS lawyers overseeing an investigation of Hunter’s finances and lost or “slow walked” other aspects of the government’s investigation into his tangled affairs for some five years.

Preferential treatment? Assuredly not! At least not according to our American Gothic Attorney General Merrick Garland. After this latest spate of revelations dropped into the news cycle and seemed to be getting traction, even in the legacy media, Garland held a press conference in which he said, in essence, if you criticize the Justice Department you are betraying “democracy.” 

It was an extraordinary performance. But here we are. Nancy Pelosi and others kept going on about Our Democracy™ when what they meant was “our oligarchy.” More recently, Joe Biden has been nattering on about “our children,” as if children belonged to the government. Now we have the attorney general of the United States insisting that the Justice Department dispenses justice impartially even though grandmothers with cancer who happened to traipse through the Capitol on January 6 are tossed into jail while Hunter Biden skates. The two-tier deployment of justice in this country is patent for all to see, but what are you going to believe, your lying eyes or the pronunciamentos of this gray-on-gray bureaucrat from hell? 

Yes, Nancy Pelosi was happy to substitute Our Democracy™ for democracy plain and simple. Now we have Merrick Garland attempting the same thing with the rule of law. That went out with the advent of predawn raids by the FBI on opponents of the regime. Instead we are living with that Orwellian alternative Our Rule of Law™, which is to say their arbitrary enforcement of the laws and use of the coercive power of the state. 

The end, as Hemingway’s character observed, came gradually at first. We’ve moved on now to the “suddenly” part. It’s not, I fancy, unlike what happened aboard that swank, if ultimately unseaworthy submersible, the part described in headlines everywhere as a “catastrophic implosion.” Descent by PlayStation was gradual until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Around the time the senile vegetable reading from the White House teleprompter was calling China’s Xi Jinping a democrat, destroying all the goodwill his Secretary of State did just days earlier during his visit go Beijing – and throwing Blinken under the bus in the process – a Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Geng Shuang, backed Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands and called on countries to abandon “colonial thinking”, and warning of its serious implications for the international order.

Geng, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, made the comments on Tuesday to a special committee on decolonisation, which adopted a resolution calling on Britain and Argentina to resume negotiations over the islands, also known as the Malvinas.

“The issue of the Malvinas Islands is a historical legacy of colonialism. Although the colonial era has passed, hegemonism and power politics that are in line with colonial thinking still exist today,” he said, quoted by the SCMP.

Geng said this way of thinking has a “serious impact” on international relations and order and “seriously damages” the sovereignty, security and development interests of the countries involved.

“The international community must remain highly vigilant and resolutely resist this,” he said.

Argentina maintains that the islands – about 600km (370 miles) from its coastline in the South Atlantic – were illegally taken by Britain, which argues that it has territorial claims dating back to 1765.

The centuries-old dispute flared into a two-month war between the two countries in 1982, after an attempt by Buenos Aires to take the territory prompted Britain to dispatch a naval taskforce to regain the islands. The issue was revived again this past March, when Argentina walked away from a 2016 cooperation agreement – covering issues such as energy, shipping and fishing, but not sovereignty – and demanded a return to negotiations over the islands.

British foreign secretary James Cleverly said firmly that the islands are British territory, pointing out on Twitter that the islanders “have chosen to remain a self-governing UK overseas territory” similar to what Russia did with residents in Crimea in the Donbass but the western media was less enthused back then.

A 2013 referendum on the islands resulted in a 99.8 per cent vote to remain British, again – similar to Crimea referendum outcome.

Argentina’s secretary of Malvinas affairs Guillermo Carmona flagged last year that the South American country intended to “take advantage” of the geopolitical climate – including the war in Ukraine – to bolster international support for its claim. In an interview with Reuters in August, Carmona said the world had “seldom spoken so much about the territorial integrity of countries as it has since Russia invaded Ukraine in February”.

“This has shown up the double standard of some Western powers such as Britain that apply one criteria in Europe and another in South America,” he said.

At the UN committee meeting on Tuesday, Geng said Beijing “firmly supported” Argentina’s claim over the disputed territory and advocated for the settlement of disputes through peaceful negotiations.

“We urge the UK … to avoid measures that may aggravate tension and confrontation, and at the same time actively respond to Argentina’s request to resume dialogue and negotiations,” he said.

While Geng’s remarks focused on the Falkland Islands, they echoed the Chinese foreign ministry’s long-standing argument that the US and other Western nations are trying to maintain their own dominance when they push back against China’s military presence in the South China Sea.

The resource-rich waterway is the subject of competing claims by China and a number of countries in the region which have increasingly aired their concerns over Chinese actions and military build-up in the disputed areas. In February, the ministry published a 4,000-word article condemning US hegemony and listing the ways in which Washington has “abused its dominance” politically, militarily and economically.

Authored by David Parker via The Epoch Times,

Living on the streets is a crime. A violation of law.

To force citizens to react, or worse, not react to the plight of their fellow man, and pretend not to notice, ultimately may force everyone to leave. This includes those born and raised in San Francisco, and this author.

It’s not okay for people to live on the streets. Earlier generations of American homeless had some integrity. Hobos during the Great Depression had the courtesy to live on the outskirts of town. There’s the solution: the outskirts of town. Abandoned housing, abandoned factories, abandoned military bases.

Build new housing for the homeless? Completely wrong.

In a market economy, housing is built for those willing to pay. Pre-pandemic, a small unit might have cost $140,000, but today that unit costs $420,000. Out of the question. Build 6,000 units in San Francisco, and immediately an additional 6,000 applicants will show up.

As a song goes, “If you’re going to San Fran-cis-co, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Flowers or not, no one has the right to walk around dirty and diseased. Young and old will get sick, even die, from touching park benches or picking up something from the sidewalk—which is why, when working with the homeless, mental health workers are instructed to always wear disposable gloves.

What about the effect on children forced to observe drug addicts with needles stuck in their open-skinned arms?

Still, beware of collective solutions, what progressives and fascists always offer: “Round ’em up,” or “Give ’em all a home.”

In San Francisco, it’s Housing First.

No, the solution must be individual: “Keep moving.” Out of sight, out of mind. Escort them to a shelter on the outskirts. If they come back, escort them again, but this time fence them in.

Should they get social services? Of course, but it’s too late. People are homeless as the result of a series of bad decisions. Coupled with mental illness and drug addiction, they have problems that are way too complicated. They’re dying. Force them into mental health facilities? Sure, if society agrees and is willing to pay. Think Amsterdam and Vienna.

What The New York Times prints is a crime. Every edition includes full-page color photographs of slums in Africa, India, or the United States (plus every refugee camp around the globe). Every morning, readers are bombarded, exhausted, with human misery that they can do nothing about. Unacceptable. Stop subscribing to a business, a newspaper, that sells a product to its captive readers by appealing to emotion: “All the News Unfit to Print.”

Progressivism is a crime. Progressives’ every thought is like The New York Times: a full-page photo of the problems of the world. Their every anxiety is relieved by a government program. Except, Americans aren’t a poor depressed people. A self-selected responsible citizenry, Americans themselves fled slums precisely because they felt a duty to make a better life for themselves and their children. They don’t want to be reminded.

Progressives should reread “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville (1835). Rather than hate, you’ll feel proud of America. De Tocqueville (as interpreted by this author) starts: “America, get rid of slavery; you’re out of your mind; you are about to become the greatest nation on Earth. Sitting in log cabins in the backwoods of Kentucky, reading the newspaper, discussing world affairs, Americans are the most independent and responsible citizens in the world. Nothing like that exists in Europe.”

Americans know that no one can do for others those things they must do for themselves, like get up in the morning.

In other words, before 1933, Americans would never have asked the government for a handout—which is why it was so wrong in 1964 for President Lyndon Baines Johnson to declare War on Poverty, that it was unconscionable for a nation as wealthy as the United States to have a poverty rate of 15 percent. Because it’s not something government can cure.

For 60 years, on average, for all the expenditure, the needle didn’t move. Poverty is still 15 percent. Total cost: $23 trillion, three times the cost of all wars America has ever fought.

Worse, the war today is paid for by borrowing. Except that today, interest on the federal debt absorbs two thirds of the nation’s tax revenue. After paying the military, there is nothing left for Social Security, Medicare, or the Affordable Care Act.

In A.D. 476, Rome, Western civilization, fell because there was no money to pay Rome’s military to stop the Huns. All tax revenue serviced interest on the debt. America is not going to fall, but government payments will soon be cut. That is how Greece solved its Eurozone crisis. Social Security payments were cut in half. Half!

Societies have rules. Progressives feel they don’t have to live by them. Precisely why progressive cities are weak on law enforcement. That is the unconscious attraction to living in a “progressive” city, and it is why civic leaders—Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for example—were able to declare, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up,” his justification for Brown v. Board of Education.

It’s why progressive cities are magnets for gun-slinging police: Lax law enforcement also means lax monitoring of police departments. Think of Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York.

The laxness, which allows people to live on the sidewalks, also allows mugging and robbery. The consequence: Residents are chased away and do not come back. A progressive’s fear of enforcing the law, of passing judgment, is destroying the nation’s cities.

San Francisco progressives are the perfect example. Rather than eliminating the problem, they think in terms of harm reduction: provide clean needles, supervise dope injections, decriminalize drug use. San Francisco’s Housing First gives life support but doesn’t give people back their lives. Stop it!

These people are disaffiliated from their family and friends, despiritualized from the family of man (and Earth), isolated, and disconnected. Giving cash to the mentally ill and drug addicted is not sound psychiatry. Give them a home? Yeah, where the buffalo roam.