Men and women swayed to music at Saudi Arabia’s first jazz festival on Friday, the second of a three-day outdoor event that showcases the Kingdom’s recent efforts of shedding its conservative image.

Locals and foreigners flocked to the festival to watch bands from Riyadh, Beirut and New Orleans. The crowd sang along when Lebanon’s Chady Nashef performed the Eagles’ “Hotel California” — an unusual moment in the Islamic country after the religious police last year condemned concerts that feature singing as harmful and corrupting.

On Thursday, the General Entertainment Authority announced it will stage more than 5,000 shows, festivals and concerts in 2018, double the number of last year.

The entertainment plans are largely motivated by economics, part of a reform program to diversify the economy away from oil and create jobs for young Saudis.

They also mark a change in social Saudi life and the gradual relaxing of gender segregation, although restrictions persist.

At the festival, the area in front of the stage was divided into two sections — one for men and one for women — but people mixed in family seating areas on the side and in the back.

“I am so so happy I got up from bed this morning and went to a jazz festival and performed in front of a crowd like me, my countrymen,” said Saleh Zaid, a Saudi musician from the local band Min Riyadh. “It’s a feeling I just cannot explain to you.”

While some showed up out of a love for jazz, many came to enjoy the chance to hear music at an outdoor event, with food trucks, a vintage car display and a relaxed atmosphere.

While reforms have taken place in the Kingdom, with a 35-year cinema ban lifted and women set to drive later this year, the majority of the country is conservative, which is reflected in government decisions.

Earlier this month, authorities detained a man after a video of him dancing with a woman in the street went viral.

But on Friday, women in abayas, loose-fitting robes, moved with the music, unconcerned with the possible backlash.

“This festival shows that the leadership here wants to let the people open up, to see more things, more cultures,” said Salem al-Ahmed, who with his stylish young friends jumped at the opportunity to attend his city’s first-of-a-kind festival.
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From: MeNeedIt

The majority of people believe cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is successful more often than it tends to be in reality, according to a small U.S. study.

This overly optimistic view, which may partly stem from seeing happy outcomes in television medical dramas, can get in the way of decision-making and frank conversations about end of life care with doctors, the research team writes in American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

CPR is intended to restart a heart that has stopped beating, known as cardiac arrest, which is typically caused by an electrical disturbance in the heart muscle. Although a heart attack is not the same thing — it occurs when blood flow to the heart is partly or completely blocked, often by a clot — a heart attack can also cause the heart to stop beating.

Odds of surviving 

Whatever the cause of cardiac arrest, restarting the heart as quickly as possible to get blood flowing to the brain is essential to preventing permanent brain damage. More often than not, cardiac arrest ends in death or severe neurological impairment.

The overall rate of survival that leads to hospital discharge for someone who experiences cardiac arrest is about 10.6 percent, the study authors note. But most participants in the study estimated it at more than 75 percent.

“The majority of patients and non-medical personnel have very unrealistic expectations about the success of CPR as well as the quality of life after patients are revived,” said lead author Lindsey Ouellette, a research assistant at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine in Grand Rapids.

Patients and family members should know about the realistic success rate and survival numbers when planning a living will and considering a “Do Not Resuscitate” order, Ouellette said.

“We think it is best to have the latest and most accurate information when dealing with this life-impacting decision, whether or not to undertake or continue CPR,” she told Reuters Health in an email.

Good TV, not good information

To gauge perceptions of CPR, the researchers surveyed 1,000 adults at four academic medical centers in Michigan, Illinois and California. Participants included non-critically ill patients and families of patients, who were interviewed during random hospital shifts.

In addition to asking about general knowledge of CPR and personal experiences with CPR, the researchers presented participants with several scenarios and asked them to estimate the likelihood of CPR success and patient survival in each case.

One scenario involved a 54-year-old who suffered a heart attack at home and required CPR by paramedics. About 72 percent of the survey participants predicted survival and 65 percent predicted a complete neurological recovery.

In a scenario describing a trauma-related cardiac arrest in an 8-year-old, 71 percent predicted CPR success and 64 percent predicted long-term survival of the child.

“Many people felt if a person was successfully revived, they would return to ‘normal’ rather than possibly needing lifelong care,” Ouellette said.

At the same time, more than 70 percent of respondents said they watched TV medical dramas regularly, and 12 percent said these shows were a reliable source of health information.

“Tempering unrealistic expectations may not make for ‘good TV,’ but perhaps we can get a better idea of just how these dramas may impact the views people hold about CPR and other aspects of medicine,” she said.

Medical act, not miracle

“People think about CPR as a miracle, but it’s another medical act,” said Dr. Juan Ruiz-Garcia of Hospital Universitario de Torrejon in Madrid who wasn’t involved in the study. “I’m not really sure what people would choose if they knew the real prognosis of it,” he told Reuters Health by phone.

CPR should be part of the conversation about end-of-life care and advanced directives among families, said Carolyn Bradley of Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut.

“When doing CPR at a hospital, we tend to move the family away, but we’ve created a situation where families may not be there for the final moments,” she said in a phone interview.

“Have a critical conversation with your health care provider and go with questions about what would happen during CPR,” she said. “What does it look like? What happens to my body? Who will be around? It could be the end-of-life. Statistically, it is.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A North Korean women’s ice hockey player who defected in 1997 was flooded with memories of her tough sports training as she watched a team from North and South Korea skate through their Olympic matches earlier this month.

Speaking with VOA Korea after the team’s fifth and final loss earlier this week, Hwangbo Young lauded the effort it took the blended team to come together to play as a single force, given that they began practicing together less than a month before the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

“I sensed that the team wasn’t able to fully demonstrate what the players prepared,” Hwangbo said. “I heard that during practice, the North Korean players were visibly very zealous and wanted to learn from the South Korean players.” 

Neither the North Korean nor the South Korean team was a serious medal contender, but Hwangbo said the combined team did better than expected in matches, which ended Tuesday.

“I thought they would lose all games by double digits,” Hwangbo told VOA during an interview in Seoul after the team’s final loss on Tuesday. “But they did better than I first expected, although they lost all matches.”

Overcoming differences

For the first time in Olympic history, the two divided Koreas fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team with 23 players from the South and 12 from the North. The move was seen as a peace initiative led by South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

North Korea and South Korea split after Japan, which occupied Korea, surrendered to end World War II. 

Although Hwangbo hopes to see her relatives and friends who remain in North Korea, she doubts if unification will occur in her lifetime and doesn’t expect that to change because of the united hockey team.

She pointed out that despite a similar, earlier effort — the united table tennis team of South Korean Hyun Jung-hwa and North Korean Li Pun Hui that played in the 1991 World Championship in Chiba, Japan — there are still two Koreas.

At the rink, melding the teams meant overcoming differences in training and approaches to diet, and building team spirit. Off the rink, there was criticism that sports was being used as a political tool.

“With everything that happened to them, prior to the Olympics, for them to come together like this and compete like this in the Olympics, it’s remarkable,” Sarah Murray, the Canadian who coached the South Koreans, and then the joint team. 

Now coaching in South Korea, Hwangbo watched the games, which evoked memories of her training in North Korea. After her family’s defection two decades ago, she also competed against the North Korean team in the 2003 Aomori Asian Winter Games as a South Korean player. 

Her training in North Korea was tough, Hwangho recalled, very tough. There were long runs with weights, there were runs in the mountains — but there were no ice rinks.

“Unless water was poured over frozen ground to freeze into ice in the wintertime, we had to do all our tactical training on bare ground with soccer balls, volleyballs and basketballs,” she said.

​Start in hockey

Hwangbo, the daughter of two government workers, started playing hockey as a 12-year-old and was recruited by a coach from the North Korean national team. 

“At the time, I didn’t know what ice hockey was,” she said. “I just began because I liked sports. During gym class in school, a coach asked if I wanted to play in an ice hockey team. I said ‘yes’ without knowing what it was, because I liked playing sports. Later, I found out I said yes to ice hockey.” 

In 1997, Hwangbo and her family boarded a small boat and crossed the Tuman River, North Korea’s northern border, into China before settling in South Korea. 

Three years after her defection, she began playing for South Korea’s national ice hockey team and became a member of the team that played against the North Korean team in the 2003 Aomori Asian Winter Games in Japan. North Korea finished fourth and South Korea fifth.

Hwangbo has said that facing the North Korean team in Aomori was one of the most painful experiences of her life.

The initial excitement of seeing some of her former teammates after seven years dissipated as they taunted her as a traitor throughout the game, even hurling insults when she approached them for a handshake after the game.

But she said she understood their antagonism, because any signs of warmth toward her could have resulted in severe punishment when the team returned to North Korea. 
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From: MeNeedIt

Australia appears to be failing in its efforts to crack down on bribery, according to the latest survey conducted by Transparency International, a non-governmental organization based in Germany.

The group said developed countries – including Australia – appeared to be lagging in their efforts to combat corruption in the public sector.  It pointed to an inadequate regulation of foreign political donations in Australia, conflicts of interest in planning approvals, revolving doors and improper industry lobbying in large-scale mining projects.  

While Australia’s ranking is unchanged – it remains ranked 13th out of 180 countries – its corruption score has slipped eight points since the index started in its current form in 2012.

Concern about Australia’s ranking comes as debate continues about the need for a nationwide anti-corruption body similar to the Independent Commission Against Corruption in the state of New South Wales.  It was set up in 1989 and has scored many notable victories, including the jailing of corrupt state politicians.

Professor A.J. Brown, who leads a project called “Strengthening Australia’s National Integrity System” for Transparency International, says much more work needs to be done.

“We do not have a federal anti-corruption body amongst other things, so it is also about the fact that our track record in terms of government commitment to controlling foreign bribery or money laundering and some of the things that the private sector is also involved in internationally is not that strong.  We are moving but we have been moving very slow and very late, and not very comprehensively,” Brown said.

This year, New Zealand and Denmark were ranked highest in the Transparency International survey, the U.S. is ranked 16th, while South Sudan and Somalia were the lowest-ranked nations. The best performing region was Western Europe, while the most corrupt regions were Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The survey found that more than 6 billion people live in countries that are corrupt. Transparency International said most countries failed to protect the independence of the media, which plays a crucial role in preventing corruption.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Three more companies say they have ended marketing programs with the National Rifle Association (NRA), as gun control advocates stepped up pressure on firms to cut ties to the gun industry following last week’s school shooting in Florida.

Activists have posted petitions online, identifying businesses that offer discounts to NRA members, in a push to pressure the companies to cut ties to the gun rights organization.

Corporations that ended their discount programs with NRA members on Friday included insurance company MetLife, car rental company Hertz, and Symantec Corp., the software company that makes Norton Antivirus technology.

The move comes after several other companies cut their ties to the NRA earlier this week, including car rental company Enterprise, First National Bank of Omaha, Wyndham Hotels and Best Western hotels.

The NRA is one of the country’s most powerful lobbying groups for gun rights and claims 5 million members.

Florida shooting renews debate

Last week’s shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead has renewed the national debate about gun control.

Gun control activists have been mounting a campaign on Twitter, including using the hashtag #BoycottNRA as well as using social media to pressure streaming platforms, including Amazon, to drop the online video channel NRATV, which features gun-friendly programming produced by the NRA.

On Thursday, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that those advocating for stricter gun control are exploiting the Florida shooting.

Receiving a rousing reception, LaPierre said, “There is no greater personal individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself and the right to survive.”

Arming teachers

On Friday, President Donald Trump reiterated to CPAC for the third time this week the need to arm teachers with concealed weapons to prevent more shootings in U.S. schools.

“It’s time to make our schools a much harder target for attackers. We don’t want them in our schools,” Trump said.

Trump has also proposed raising the age to buy assault-style rifles from 18 to 21, which is opposed by the NRA.

In his speech to CPAC, Trump indicated he does not intend to battle the powerful organization.

“They’re friends of mine,” Trump said of the NRA, which gave more than $11 million to his presidential campaign in 2016 and spent nearly $20 million attacking his Democratic Party general election challenger, Hillary Clinton.

The mass shooting in Florida on Feb. 14 has sparked a wave of rallies in Florida, Washington and in other areas of the United States in an attempt to force local and national leaders to take action to prevent such attacks.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

There is no clear and easy way to tell when a person’s thinking process has peaked, but most scientists agree that intelligence starts slowly deteriorating somewhere around age 70. However, some individuals’ minds stay sharp well beyond that age and researchers would like to know why. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Some diabetics with plaque buildup in their arteries might have less debris in these blood vessels after adding wine to their diets, a recent study suggests.

For the study, researchers examined data on 224 people with type 2 diabetes who normally didn’t drink alcohol, but were randomly assigned to follow a Mediterranean diet and drink approximately one glass of red wine, white wine or water for daily. Among the subset of 174 people with ultrasound images of their arteries, 45 percent had detectable plaque at the start of the study.

Two years later, researchers didn’t see any significant increase in plaque for any of the participants with ultrasounds, regardless of whether they drank wine or water.

However, among the people who started out with the most plaque in their arteries, there was a small but statistically meaningful reduction in these deposits by the end of the study, researchers report in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“Among patients with well-controlled diabetes and a low risk for alcohol abuse, initiating moderate alcohol consumption in the context of a healthy diet is apparently safe and may modestly reduce cardiometabolic risk,” said lead study author Rachel Golan, a public health researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel.

“Our study is not a call for all patients with type 2 diabetes to start drinking,” Golan said by email.

Cardio-metabolic risk factors can increase the chances of having diabetes, heart disease or a stroke. In addition to plaque in the arteries, other risk factors include high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, high cholesterol, smoking and having poor diet and exercise habits.

Previous research

Some previous research has linked drinking moderate amounts of wine or other alcohol to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy people as well as diabetics.

In the current study, all of the participants had the most common form of the disease, known as type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and aging and occurs when the body can no longer produce or use the hormone insulin to convert sugars in the blood into energy.

Participants were part of a larger study looking at people with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

They were typically in their late 50s or early 60s and most of them were overweight or obese. Roughly 65 to 70 percent of them took medications to lower cholesterol or other blood fats and the majority of them also took diabetes drugs to control blood sugar.

Mediterranean diet

Patients were told to follow a Mediterranean diet, which typically includes lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and olive oil. This diet also tends to favor lean sources of protein like chicken or fish over red meat, which contains more saturated fat.

Participants were provided with wine or mineral water throughout the study period along with a 150-milliliter (5.07-ounce) glass to measure their daily dose of their assigned beverage, which was consumed with dinner.

Some previous research has linked a Mediterranean diet to weight loss and a reduced risk of heart disease and some cancers as well as better management of blood sugar in people with diabetes.

One limitation of the current study is the potential for the apparent beneficial effect of the wine to have been at least partially caused by the Mediterranean diet.

Another drawback is that researchers only had ultrasound images of plaque buildup for a small proportion of patients, and the two-year follow up period might not be long enough to detect meaningful differences in plaque accumulation.

There is a risk

Alcohol may help, but it also isn’t risk free, noted Dr. Gregory Marcus, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who wasn’t involved in the study. It can increase the risk of heart rhythm problems, which can cause stroke, Marcus said by email.

Even though alcohol might help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in some circumstances, there isn’t enough evidence yet to suggest that people who avoid alcohol should start drinking, Marcus said.

“I would certainly recommend against starting to drink alcohol in the hopes of obtaining beneficial health effects among anyone that currently abstains,” Marcus said. “And among those who drink, these sorts of positive results should never be used to consume more alcohol, particularly beyond drinking in moderation.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The heaviest, the largest, the most impactful —  those were the superlatives the Trump administration used to describe its latest sanctions against North Korea.

But were the Treasury Department designations of more than 50 companies and ships accused of illicit trading with the pariah nation really the toughest action yet by the U.S. and the wider world?

Probably not.

Here’s a look at how President Donald Trump and a top lieutenant described Friday’s sanctions to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles — and how they stack up against past economic restrictions that have been piled on Kim Jong Un’s government in response to its illegal weapons tests.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin: “The Treasury Department is announcing the largest set of sanctions ever imposed in connection with North Korea.”

Trump: “I do want to say, because people have asked, North Korea — we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before.”

As for Trump’s blanket assertion, in sheer dollar terms, the U.S. has actually imposed much costlier restrictions on countries such as Iran, a far richer economy than North Korea’s. Washington and its allies cut off tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian oil exports and shut the country’s central bank out of the international financial system, among other steps, before eliminating those restrictions under a 2015 nuclear deal.

Correct on number

In terms of the number of entities targeted Friday, Mnuchin is probably correct about the history of sanctions on North Korea.

The department blacklisted “one individual, 27 entities and 28 vessels” located, registered or flagged in North Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Marshall Islands, Tanzania, Panama and Comoros. That appeared to be the most companies or individuals designated by the U.S. at a single time. According to Mnuchin, there are now more than 450 U.S. sanctions against North Korea, about half of them levied in the last year.

But in purely economic terms, both Mnuchin and Trump are well wide of the mark.

The latest designations are primarily intended to crack down on North Korea’s evasion of wider-ranging sanctions adopted by the U.N. Security Council and the United States that are more economically significant.

Over the past year, the council has adopted three sets of sanctions banning North Korean exports of coal, iron ore, textiles, seafood products and other goods. If those measures are properly implemented, that would reduce the North’s export revenues by 90 percent from 2016 levels, or by $2.3 billion annually. Those sanctions are also heavily restricting North Korean fuel supplies. They capped refined oil imports at 500,000 barrels a year. That’s a reduction from the 4.5 million barrels North Korea imported in 2016.

It’s because of those draconian restrictions that North Korea wants to conduct trade on the quiet with “ship-to-ship” transfers that the U.S. is determined to stop. With Friday’s measures, Mnuchin said, the U.S. has gone after “virtually all their ships that they’re using at this moment.”

That’s certainly a significant increase in pressure on North Korea as its foreign trade diminishes. But the Treasury Department did not give an overall figure for how much revenue the North would be deprived of because of the latest actions, other than to say that nine of the newly blacklisted foreign vessels “are capable of carrying over $5.5 million worth of coal at a time.”

‘Underwhelming’ in scope

The conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation did not think much of the new steps.

“As impressive as the list is in length, it is underwhelming in its scope and fails to live up to the hype,” it said. “Like his predecessors, President Trump remains reluctant to go after Chinese financial entities aiding North Korea’s prohibited nuclear and missile programs.”

China is said to account for about 90 percent of North Korea’s external trade and be its main access point to the international financial system. Past U.S. sanctions that have targeted Chinese companies have probably had a much bigger impact on North Korea’s revenue streams.

In November, the Treasury Department blacklisted three Chinese companies that it said had “cumulatively exported approximately $650 million worth of goods to North Korea and cumulatively imported more than $100 million worth of goods from North Korea.”

An even bigger Chinese trading partner of the North was blacklisted in September 2016: Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Co. According to a report by the U.S.-based research group C4AD and South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, Hongxiang carried out imports and exports worth a total of $532 million in 2011-15. It had also supplied aluminum oxide and other materials that can be used in processing nuclear bomb fuel.
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From: MeNeedIt

They were little girls with dreams of Olympic gold when they started in gymnastics. Now they’re women with lifelong injuries, suffocating anxiety and debilitating eating disorders. 

They are the other victims of USA Gymnastics. 

Thirteen former U.S. gymnasts and three coaches interviewed by The Associated Press described a win-at-all-cost culture rife with verbal and emotional abuse in which girls were forced to train on broken bones and other injuries. That culture was tacitly endorsed by the sport’s governing body and institutionalized by Bela and Martha Karolyi, the husband-and-wife duo who coached America’s top female gymnasts for three decades.

The gymnasts agreed to speak to AP, some for the first time, after the recent courtroom revelations about USA Gymnastics’ former team doctor, Larry Nassar, who recently was sentenced to decades in prison for sexually assaulting young athletes for years under the guise of medical treatment.

The Karolyis’ oppressive style created a toxic environment in which a predator like Nassar was able to thrive, according to witness statements in Nassar’s criminal case and a lawsuit against USA Gymnastics, the Karolyis and others. Girls were afraid to challenge authority, Nassar was able to prey on vulnerable girls and, at the same time, he didn’t challenge the couple’s harsh training methods.

“He was their little puppet,” Jeanette Antolin, a former member of the U.S. national team who trained with the Karolyis, said. “He let us train on injuries. They got what they wanted. He got what he wanted.”

Young girls were virtually starved, constantly body shamed and forced to train with broken bones or other injuries, according to interviews and the lawsuit. Their meager diets and extreme training often delayed puberty, which some coaches believed was such a detriment that they ridiculed girls who started their menstrual cycles.

USA Gymnastics declined to answer questions for this story, and the Karolyis didn’t reply to requests for comment. The Karolyis’ Houston attorney, Gary Jewell, said the Karolyis didn’t abuse anyone.

Some female gymnasts in the U.S. were subjected to abusive training methods before the Karolyis defected from their native Romania in 1981. But other coaches and former gymnasts say the Karolyis’ early successes — starting with Romania’s Nadia Comaneci becoming the first woman gymnast awarded a perfect score in competition — validated the cutthroat attitudes that fostered widespread mistreatment of American athletes at the highest levels of women’s gymnastics.

The Karolyis, who helped USA Gymnastics win 41 Olympic medals, including 13 gold over three decades, trained hundreds of gymnasts at their complex in rural Huntsville, Texas, known as “the ranch.” They selected gymnasts for the national team and earned millions from USA Gymnastics. 

A congressional committee investigating the gymnastics scandal said in Feb. 8 letters to the Karolyis, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee that they were all “at the center of many of these failures” that allowed Nassar’s sexual abuse to persist for more than two decades.

It’s unclear what the Karolyis knew about Nassar’s sexual abuse and whether they took any action to stop it.

Martha Karolyi, in a deposition given last year as part of the lawsuit against the Karolyis and numerous others, acknowledged that “in or around June 2015” she received a phone call from the then-head of the national gymnastics organization, Steve Penny, informing her that the organization had received a complaint that Nassar had “molested a national team gymnast at the ranch.”

The deposition was included in a Feb. 14 letter to two U.S. senators from John Manly, an attorney representing Nassar victims in a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages and court oversight of USA Gymnastics.

Manly cited the deposition in accusing the sport’s governing body of lying to Congress. 

In a timeline submitted to a congressional committee investigating the scandal, the organization said it was told in mid-June of an athlete “uncomfortable” with Nassar’s treatment, but that it was not until late July 2015 that it decided to notify law enforcement “with concerns of potential sexual misconduct.”

Penny, the former USA Gymnastics chief, said in a statement that Martha Karolyi was mistaken about the timing of his call.

Texas has one of the strongest child abuse reporting laws in the nation, requiring anyone who has reason to believe abuse has occurred to immediately alert authorities. Failure to do so is a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and a fine.

In the deposition, Martha Karolyi said she did not discuss what she learned about Nassar with anyone but her husband, her lawyers and the USA Gymnastics official who called her. 

Jewell, the Karolyis’ attorney, said the couple didn’t know about any sexual assault complaints involving Nassar until Martha Karolyi was contacted by a USA Gymnastics official in the summer of 2015.
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From: MeNeedIt

Federal Reserve policymakers fretted on Friday that they could face the next U.S. recession with virtually the same arsenal of policies used in the last downturn and, with interest rates still relatively low, those will not pack the same punch.

In the midst of an unprecedented leadership transition, Fed officials are publicly debating whether to scrap their approach to inflation targeting, how much of its bond portfolio to retain, and how much longer they can raise interest rates in the face of an unexpectedly large boost from tax cuts and government spending.

After years of near-zero rates and $3.5 trillion in bond purchases all meant to stimulate the economy in the wake of the 2007-09 recession, the Fed has gradually tightened policy since late 2015. Its key rate is now in the range of 1.25 to 1.5 percent, and while the Fed plans to hike three more times this

year it has also forecast that it is about halfway to its goal.

That could leave little room to provide stimulus when the world’s largest economy, which is heating up, eventually turns around.

“We would be better off, rather than thinking about what we would do next time when we hit zero, making sure that we don’t get back there. We just don’t want to be there,” Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren told a conference of economists and the majority of his colleagues at the central bank.

Rosengren, one of only a few sitting policymakers who also served during the last downturn, said the expanding U.S. deficits could further erode the government’s ability to help curb any future recession. “With the deficits we are running up, it’s not likely [fiscal policy] will be helpful in the next

recession either,” he said.

Since mid-December, the Republican-controlled Congress and U.S. President Donald Trump aggressively cut taxes and boosted spending limits, two fiscal moves that are expected to push the annual budget deficit above $1 trillion next year and expand the $20 trillion national debt.

Overheating

That stimulus, combined with synchronized global growth, signs of U.S. inflation perking up, and unemployment near a 17-year low could set the stage for overheating that ends one of the longest economic expansions ever.

“We want more shock absorbers out there and really … the main shock absorber is the ability to reduce the fed funds rate, which means that you want to get to a higher inflation rate so that the pre-shock fed funds rate is 4 and not 2,” said Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor at City University of New York.

In a speech to the conference hosted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Krugman said every recession since 1982 has been caused by “private sector over-reach” and not Fed tightening, as in decades past.

The conference’s main research paper argued the central bank should focus on cutting rates in the next recession and avoid relying on asset purchases that are less effective in stimulating investment and growth than previously thought.

In October the Fed began trimming some of its assets and it has yet to decide how far it will go. William Dudley, president of the New York Fed, told the conference that, to be sure, the ability to again purchase bonds if and when rates hit zero “seems like a good tool to have.”

The Fed’s approach to any economic slowdown would likely be to cut rates, pledge further stimulus, and only then buy bonds.

Rosengren and others dismissed the possibility of adopting negative interest rates, as some other central banks have done.

Yet five years of below-target inflation, combined with an aging population and slowdown in labor force growth, has sparked a debate over ditching a long-standing 2 percent price target.

Some see this month’s succession of Fed Chair Janet Yellen by Jerome Powell as ideal timing to consider new frameworks that could help drive inflation, and rates, higher. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, whom the White House is considering for Fed vice chair, told the conference the central bank could begin to reassess the framework later this year, though she added that the threshold for change should be high.
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From: MeNeedIt

European Union leaders staked out opening positions Friday for a battle over EU budgets that many conceded they are unlikely to resolve before Britain leaves next year, blowing a hole in Brussels’ finances.

At a summit to launch discussion on the size and shape of a seven-year budget package to run from 2021, ex-communist states urged wealthier neighbors to plug a nearly 10 percent annual revenue gap being left by Britain, while the Dutch led a group of small, rich countries refusing to chip in any more to the EU.

Germany and France, the biggest economies and the bloc’s driving duo as Britain prepares to leave in March 2019, renewed offers to increase their own contributions, though both set out conditions for that, including new priorities and less waste.

Underlining that a divide between east and west runs deeper than money, French President Emmanuel Macron criticized what he said were poor countries abusing EU funds designed to narrow the gap in living standards after the Cold War to shore up their own popularity while ignoring EU values on civil rights or to undercut Western economies by slashing tax and labor rules.

Noting the history of EU “cohesion” and other funding for poor regions as a tool of economic “convergence,” Macron told reporters: “I will reject a European budget which is used to finance divergence, on tax, on labor or on values.”

Poland and Hungary, heavyweights among the ex-communist states which joined the EU this century, are run by right-wing governments at daggers drawn with Brussels over their efforts to influence courts, media and other independent institutions.

The European Commission, the executive which will propose a detailed budget in May, has said it will aim to satisfy calls for “conditionality” that will link getting some EU funding to meeting treaty commitments on democratic standards such as properly functioning courts able to settle economic disputes.

But its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned on Friday against deepening “the rift between east and west” and some in the poorer nations see complaints about authoritarian tendencies as a convenient excuse to avoid paying in more to Brussels.

At around 140 billion euros ($170 billion) a year, the EU budget represents about 1 percent of economic output in the bloc or some 2 percent of public spending, but for all that it remains one of the bloodiest subjects of debate for members.

Focus on payments

The Commission has suggested that the next package should be increased by about 10 percent, but there was little sign Friday that the governments with cash are willing to pay that.

“When the UK leaves the EU, then that part of the budget should drop out,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who leads a group of hawks including Sweden, Denmark and Austria.

“In any case, we do not want our contribution to rise and we want modernization,” he added, saying that meant reconsidering the EU’s major spending on agriculture and regional cohesion in order to do more in defense, research and controlling migration.

On the other side, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said his priorities were “sufficient financing of cohesion policy” a good deal for businesses from the EU’s agricultural subsidies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there had been broad agreement that new priorities such as in defense, migration and research should get new funding and she called for a “debureaucratization” of traditional EU spending programs.

Summit chair Donald Tusk praised the 27 leaders — Prime Minister Theresa May was not invited as Britain will have left before the new budget round starts — for approaching the issue “with open minds, rather than red lines.” But despite them all wanting to speed up the process, a deal this year was unlikely.

Quick deal unlikely

Although all agree it would be good to avoid a repeat of the 11th-hour wrangling ahead of the 2014-20 package, many sounded doubtful of a quick deal even early next year.

“It could go on for ages,” Rutte said. He added that it would be “nice” to finish by the May 2019 EU election: “But that’s very tight.”

Among the touchiest subjects will be accounting for the mass arrival of asylum-seekers in recent years. Aggrieved that some eastern states refuse to take in mainly Muslim migrants, some in the west have suggested penalizing them via the EU budget.

Merkel has proposed that regions which are taking in and trying to integrate refugees should have that rewarded in the allocation of EU funding — a less obviously penal approach but one which she had to defend on Friday against criticism in the east. It was not meant as a threat, the chancellor insisted.

In other business at a summit which reached no formal legal conclusions, leaders broadly agreed on some issues relating to next year’s elections to the European Parliament and to the accompanying appointment of a new Commission for five years.

They pushed back against efforts, notably from lawmakers, to limit their choice of nominee to succeed Juncker to a candidate who leads one of the pan-EU parties in the May 2019 vote. They approved Parliament’s plan to reallocate some British seats and to cut others altogether and also, barring Hungary, agreed to a Macron proposal to launch “consultations” with their citizens this year on what they want from the EU.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. stocks rallied on Friday, lifted by gains in technology stocks and a retreat in Treasury yields as the Federal Reserve eased concerns about the path of interest rate hikes this year.

The U.S. central bank, looking past the recent stock market sell-off and inflation concerns, said it expected economic growth to remain steady and saw no serious risks on the horizon that might pause its planned pace of rate hikes.

Investors largely expect the Fed to raise rates three times this year, beginning with its next meeting in March, the first under new Chair Jerome Powell. Traders currently see a 95.5 percent chance of a quarter-percentage-point hike next month, according to Thomson Reuters data.

“Certainly bond yields pulling back today is helpful for stocks, at least for the short term, that has been the narrative that is out there — that higher bond yields are weighing on stocks and this preoccupation with three percent,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird in Milwaukee. “So moving away from that, for today at least, provides a bid for equities.”

Powell’s first public outing will be on Tuesday, when he will testify separately before the House and Senate committees.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 347.51 points, or 1.39 percent, to 25,309.99, the S&P 500 gained 43.34 points, or 1.60 percent, to 2,747.30 and the Nasdaq Composite added 127.30 points, or 1.77 percent, to 7,337.39.

Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes last rose 13/32 in price to yield 2.8714 percent, from 2.917 percent late on Thursday.

The dip in yields helped boost bond proxy sectors such as utilities, up 2.66 percent, and real estate, up 1.72 percent. The sectors have been among the worst performers so far this year on expectations of climbing rates.

Tech shares climbed 2.17 percent led by gains in Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which rose 10.5 percent and HP Inc, up 3.5 percent.

The two companies created from the split of Hewlett Packard Co in 2015, reported strong results and HPE also announced a plan to return $7 billion to shareholders.

For the week, the Dow rose 0.37 percent, the S&P advanced 0.56 percent and the Nasdaq gained 1.35 percent.

Blue Buffalo Pet Products jumped 17.23 percent after General Mills said it would buy the natural pet food maker for $8 billion. General Mills was the biggest percentage decline on S&P 500, falling 3.59 percent.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 4.54-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.82-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 10 new 52-week highs and one new low; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 64 new highs and 57 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.05 billion shares, well below the 8.38 billion average over the last 20 trading days.

Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak.
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From: MeNeedIt