News roundup for Fri, Sep 17, 2021

10 Comments on News roundup for Fri, Sep 17, 2021
Did El Salvador adopt Bitcoin as its national currency

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power after the Nicholas storm surge. That particular region of Texas has been slammed over and over again:

https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1437779838559993879?s=20

Meat, produce, floral, deli, and bakery goods are all seeing price rises. The White House is monitoring large conglomerates that control the costs of these goods and notes that price-gouging and profiteering on the part of these companies will be met with anti-trust actions. It’s clear that companies like Kroger are making profits despite supply chain woes, but the Food Price Index is also rising sharply. One thing to keep in mind is that when this index spikes, global conflict also tends to spike.

The US Treasury Department is recognizing that there’s a big gap between the price of childcare and what Americans can actually afford. The Department is arguing for more assistance for Americans struggling to get the childcare they need.

El Salvador switches to Bitcoin as its national currency? Am I reading this right?

The US, UK, and Australia are forming a military alliance to counter China’s growing power:

Japan is strengthening and flexing its military capabilities as well:

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1438124235042566144?s=20

We’re hearing repeated reports of people being unable to repair or replace large appliances like refrigerators and washers/driers. Folks are waiting for months. This is a concerning trend:

The National Guard is being called in in Massachusetts to help bus kids to school in the midst of a bus driver shortage. Vaccination status might be the cause of the shortage. I’m not arguing against mandating vaccines for these workers—I wouldn’t knowingly put kids on a bus with an unvaccinated driver.

The world has had 227.7 million COVID cases. The world has gained 3.7 million cases in the last seven days. There have been nearly 4.7 million deaths in total. The US has had a cumulative 42.6 million cases—over one million cases were added in the last seven days. Over 686,000 Americans have died—about 12,000 in the last week. The US added over 164,000 new cases on Wednesday and over 2,200 deaths that day as well. The US is still leading global daily case gain.

A pre-print study of over 600 healthcare workers in India also found evidence of waning immunity a few months after vaccination. Memory immune cells can still help fight disease even if antibodies wane, so more work is needed to determine the roll of boosters in this case (these workers had the AstraZeneca shot).

Moderna joins Pfizer in calling for boosters:

1 in 500 Americans has died from COVID. Not 1 in 500 infected, 1 in 500 of all Americans. This is a very somber milestone:

The US is now mandating COVID vaccination for all immigrants into the country. I’m shocked this is only now being required. This should have been required from the moment vaccines were available to the public.

Raytheon Technologies is mandating vaccines for all its US workers (about 180,000) by mid-December.

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 10 Comments
    • Hardened September 17, 2021

      “El Salvador switches to Bitcoin as its national currency? Am I reading this right?”

      Not quite.  El Salvador uses the US Dollar as its national currency and recently added Bitcoin as well.  I work in the blockchain industry and I can tell you this is a good thing.  Bitcoin was designed to be more resilient than the US dollar by someone with a prepper mindset.  The legacy financial system is feeling increasingly threatened by it so you can expect to see sensationalist and alarmist reporting in publications like the Wall Street Journal.  Take them with a grain of salt.

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Hardened September 17, 2021

        It’s an interesting development, for sure. A lot of volatility there. Some folks won’t want the risk. I’m kind of nomming proverbial popcorn over it. Thoughts?

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      • Hardened Stephanie Arnold September 18, 2021

        From a US resident-centric perspective, sure, our expenses are in dollars so we wouldn’t want to expose ourselves to foreign exchange risk.

        For El Salvador, “the country of 6.4 million people is heavily dependent on remittances from its estimated 1.5 million expats — the transfers represent almost a quarter of its GDP.”.  They see Bitcoin “as a way to prevent losses amounting to ‘millions of dollars’ in transaction fees for remittances from abroad, traditionally sent in dollars via agencies such as Western Union.” (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210622-el-salvador-is-banking-on-bitcoin-but-will-it-work).

        Whether or not this will work for them is an open question but it’s so incredibly threatening to the current financial system that you can expect media coverage to make it seem like it’s so bad that the ground will open up beneath El Salvador and swallow it whole, taking it straight to hell.  I don’t expect them to allow El Salvador to get away with this but it’s only the first country to make this move and it won’t be the last.  The game clock is now ticking for the central banks of the world to come up with their own versions of Bitcoin in order to stave off more defections.

        Back to the US resident-centric worldview, Bitcoin is most interesting to us as a hedge against inflation and that concern is more alive now than it has been during the last decade of Bitcoin history.  This benefit may balance concerns regarding volatility.

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    • EzlyAmuzzed September 17, 2021

      I unfortunately have recent personal experience on the supply issues with large appliances. It took 4 months for us to have a working refrigerator, but before that encountered issues ranging from lack supply, lack of staffing, and retail chains not knowing how to adjust to the first two issues.

      The long boring rant starts at least 4 months ago (losing track of time) when our refrigerator compressor stopped working due to compressor going out. We could not find a repair person and hearing parts are hard to come by anyhow so we opted for a used refurbished one since we have had luck in this area in the past…well until now since that only lasted 1 month.

      So off to a large well known retail chain, the first one only having two refrigerator models in stock. Then we move to the second one where there was more supply, however most were on backorder. Adding to the challenge is we have a historic home with a small opening to the kitchen and require the counter saver size, so we pick the only one of that size and didn’t even look what features it had. Of course it was with a two week back order. After two weeks we were put on a waiting list for delivery. Three weeks later delivery date came and went with no refrigerator and no call. We called, and called again, finally told we are put on the bottom of the delivery list instead of next day like you would expect and are told there are staffing shortages. OK so three weeks later a repeat with no refrigerator.

      Alright had enough with that company, go back to the first one that now has stock with no wait, delivery in two days, and this time we are in luck it is delivered!…but wait, we aren’t so lucky…fridge stops cooling in the first 24 hours. Ugh back to calling and calling again and going in person trying to find some good customer service ha! Finally we are on the list for when it is in stock again…this is two months. My husband keeps looking online and sees 4 coming in stock at the local store and tries to secure it, this is a very lengthy multi-call process but worth it since we did get one of the four and as you would expect all sold out that same day. 

      Happy to say that we have had a new working refrigerator for a week now. On the positive side we have a bug out vehicle/mini bus conversion with a mini fridge so we had a backup and learned we really can survive on a smaller fridge. Now a regular sized one seems large!

      If you made it to the end thank you for reading my rant 🙂 and if you need refrigeration for medicine and have a refrigerator break, I strongly suggest you just go buy yourself a minifridge until you get a full sized working one.

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      • Molly N. 😆 EzlyAmuzzed September 17, 2021

        How did you not just explode!? 😡

        I hope this one lasts for you!

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      • EzlyAmuzzed Molly N. 😆 September 17, 2021

        Haha thank you!

        I’m not one to post long rants but when Stephanie posted specifically about long wait times on refrigerators I really resonated with it as you would guess and wanted to share.

        We kind of just adapted and got used to it, and having a garden helped a lot. Plus it was a helpful exercise because we were thinking about next year traveling in the bus for several months and now we know we can live with a smaller refrigerator. 

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor EzlyAmuzzed September 17, 2021

        I know folks that picked up a fridge from moving college students and are using in place of a much larger built-in fridge they’re waiting to repair/replace. They are told the fancy fridge won’t be a reality until next year. Next year!

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    • EzlyAmuzzed September 17, 2021

      In Florida, it is 1 in every 400 that have died of Covid.

      Florida surpasses 50K COVID deaths after battling delta wave (apnews.com)

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    • River September 17, 2021

      We had to replace our fridge too and it was such a pain! Nothing we wanted was in stock and the ship / order time was “hopefully 12 weeks, but we can’t be sure”. We ended up with a selection of 2 different fridges – based on the size that would fit and availability. 

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    • Karl Winterling September 17, 2021

      The Punchbowl News podcast (a podcast that covers Congress) said it’s estimated that the US will hit the debt ceiling around October 22 through October 26. I don’t want to get too into politics or ideology, but the situation looks worse than in 2011 or 2013 because there have been absolutely no bipartisan or “single party” negotiations so far. Any deal (whether it involves 60 or more Senators or 51) would involve smart political maneuvering to get the process to work and get the votes. The bottom line is that Congress has to deal with this as soon as possible (preferably right now) and it doesn’t really matter who votes for it so long as something passes.

      The main risks are either someone will decide a default is worth it for some other political benefit or people will make horrendously wrong calculations about the game of “chicken.”

      So how the debt ceiling plays out really is another “black swan” event. The fair solution to this is that Congress should have to “own” future spending beforehand. Congress would likely increase the debt ceiling after a “technical default” and avoid a self-inflicted Mad Max scenario. But even letting the “technical default” happen can do a lot of damage that can’t be reversed.

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