'Big Short' Burry Warns That a Repeat of the 2008 Crisis Is in Sight

For several days, investors appear to be exhausted. They seem ready to panic at the slightest bad news.

Everything gives the impression that all it takes is a spark to ignite everything.

The reason for this fragility and vulnerability is the fear that the U.S. economy and the world economy will fall into recession due to actions by central banks and governments to quell inflation at multi-decade highs in many Western countries.

The Federal Reserve promised to continue raising interest rates after a jumbo hike of 75 basis points or 0.75% at the end of its monetary meeting on Sept. 22. The Fed funds rate is in a range of 3%-3.25%, and is expected to increase to 4.5% by the end of 2022.

For many economists, including Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel, this policy is a monumental mistake.





https://www.thestreet.com/technology/big-short-burry-warns-that-a-repeat-of-the-2008-crisis-is-in-sight

OPEC+ to consider oil cut of over than 1 million barrels per day

DUBAI, Oct 2 (Reuters) - OPEC+ will consider an oil output cut of more than a million barrels per day (bpd) next week, OPEC sources said on Sunday, in what would be the biggest move yet since the COVID-19 pandemic to address oil market weakness.

The meeting will take place on Oct. 5 against the backdrop of falling oil prices and months of severe market volatility which prompted top OPEC+ producer, Saudi Arabia, to say the group could cut production.




https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/opec-consider-oil-output-cut-over-1-mln-bpd-sources-2022-10-02/

Young and Homeless in Rural America

There is very little data tracking homelessness in rural areas around the country, and it is the McKinney-​Vento liaisons who most often, if sometimes imperfectly, fill the gap. In 2018, Montana, for example, experienced a 145 percent increase in the number of homeless students not because many more kids suddenly became homeless but because a new statewide McKinney-Vento coordinator upped her efforts. The district right next to Plantz’s, which is demographically similar, still reports fewer than 10 homeless students a year. And Ohio as a whole reported that 1.8 percent of its students experienced homelessness in the 2019-20 school year, a number that Valerie Kunze, assistant director of vulnerable youth programs for the Ohio Department of Education, acknowledges is an undercount. “You have places reporting 0 percent, and there’s just no 0 percent,” she told me.

But even with its many flaws and inconsistencies, the reporting by McKinney-Vento liaisons, aggregated by the Department of Education, represents a crucial and rare effort to quantify the problem of student homelessness, especially in rural areas. The D.O.E. definition of homelessness is broader than the one used by, for instance, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and better able to capture what homelessness usually looks like for rural youth and families — Blake’s family living in a cramped camper on a hill or families doubled up sometimes in unsafe situations hidden from sight — as opposed to living on a street or in a shelter. In 2019, the last year of reporting before the pandemic, HUD’s annual “point in time” count on a single night found 53,692 parents and children experiencing homelessness. Over the course of the same school year, the D.O.E., using data from McKinney-Vento liaisons, counted 1.4 million school-age children as homeless.

But even with its many flaws and inconsistencies, the reporting by McKinney-Vento liaisons, aggregated by the Department of Education, represents a crucial and rare effort to quantify the problem of student homelessness, especially in rural areas. The D.O.E. definition of homelessness is broader than the one used by, for instance, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and better able to capture what homelessness usually looks like for rural youth and families — Blake’s family living in a cramped camper on a hill or families doubled up sometimes in unsafe situations hidden from sight — as opposed to living on a street or in a shelter. In 2019, the last year of reporting before the pandemic, HUD’s annual “point in time” count on a single night found 53,692 parents and children experiencing homelessness. Over the course of the same school year, the D.O.E., using data from McKinney-Vento liaisons, counted 1.4 million school-age children as homeless.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/magazine/rural-homeless-students.html

Bonus Tweet of the Day

Tweet of the Day

AZ-GOV: GOP Candidate's Staffer Has a Murder-for-Hire Past

The Salon report laid out Ulibarri’s violent criminal history, including targeting law enforcement, which The Daily Beast has independently confirmed through state and federal court records.

According to a superseding federal indictment, the Justice Department alleged in 2014 that Ulibarri had “attempted to kill” an FBI informant to stop the informant from testifying at a cocaine distribution and money laundering trial. Ulibarri later admitted in a plea agreement that he had in fact told an undercover FBI informant—while trying to sell him heroin—that Ulibarri knew that the first informant was working for the feds and that he and others “were hiring a hitman to kill” him, for $20,000.

Ulibarri claimed in his agreement that he had not been serious about the murder plot, but was only using it to try to get more money out of his supposed heroin client.

“In May 2014, I met with a confidential source (CHS1) to discuss selling heroin to CHS1. In those meetings, I told CHS1 that I and some others were hiring a hitman to kill another confidential source (CHS2) for $20,000,” Ulibarri wrote in his agreement, noting that “CHS2” was a “testifying cooperator” in the trial.





https://www.thedailybeast.com/arizona-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-kari-lakes-staffer-has-a-murder-for-hire-past?ref=wrap

McKinsey Charged in South African Corruption Case

The South African branch of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm, was charged in a corruption scandal involving work the company completed advising the country’s state-owned freight rail and port operator. It may be the first time in McKinsey’s 96-year history that the firm has faced criminal charges.

South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority added McKinsey and one of its former top consultants in the country to a long list of defendants in a case involving a locomotive purchase contract for the state-owned operator, Transnet, the authority said in a statement on Friday. McKinsey oversaw work on the bid, which, at the time it was announced in 2012, was the country’s largest-ever public procurement.

The other defendants, including the former chief executive of Transnet, are facing charges including fraud, corruption and money laundering. It was not clear from the statement what specific charges McKinsey and its former senior partner, Vikas Sagar, would face. A spokesperson for the authority was not available to comment.

“We believe the charges filed against our South Africa office are meritless and we will defend against them,” a spokesman for McKinsey said in a statement.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/africa/mckinsey-corruption-case-south-africa.html