[Majorityrights News] KP interview with James Gilmore, former diplomat and insider from first Trump administration Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 05 January 2025 00:35.
[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
“If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound,
Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound,
And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.”
— “Mary Poppins,” 1964
When “Mary Poppins” was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks’ advice to his son was sound. The banks were then paying more than 5% interest on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years.
Now, however, the average savings account pays only 0.10% annually—that’s one-tenth of 1%—and many of the country’s biggest banks pay less than that. If you were to put $5,000 in a regular Bank of America savings account (paying 0.01%) today, in a year you would have collected only 50 cents in interest.
That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve. These deposits, called “excess reserves,” include the reserves the banks got from our deposits, and on which they are paying almost nothing; and unlike with our deposits, there is no $250,000 cap on the sums banks can stash at the Fed amassing interest. A whopping $1.5 trillion in reserves are now sitting in Fed reserve accounts. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and interest paid to banks is one of those costs. That means we, the taxpayers, are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world—parking them, rather than lending them out.
The banks are getting these outsize returns while taking absolutely no risk, because the Fed, as “lender of last resort,” cannot go bankrupt. This is not true for other depositors, including large institutions such as the pension funds that hold our retirement money.
The business world has undergone considerable change in the last two decades.
While some fortunes are always reliably passed on to their respective heirs and heiresses, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardinsnotes that there are also entirely new industries that rise out of nowhere to shape the landscape of global wealth.
As the wealth landscape shifts, so does its geographical distribution.
We’ll start here by looking at the most recent data from 2019:
The most recent billionaires list features Jeff Bezos at the top with $131 billion, although it’s likely his recent divorce announcement will provide an upcoming shakeup to the Bezos Empire.
Bezos is just one of 21 Americans that find themselves in the top 50 list, which means that 42% of the world’s top billionaires hail from the United States.
Billionaire Geography Over Time
If we compare the top 50 list to that from 1999, it’s interesting to see what has changed over time in terms of geographical distribution. Here’s the distribution of top countries on both lists, compared:
In the last 20 years, Russia and China have stockpiled the most top billionaires, adding five and four to the top 50 list respectively. The United States added three, going from 18 to 21 billionaires over the timeframe. On the other end of the spectrum, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland have lost the most billionaires from the top 50 ranking.
“Only vote for a candidate that will support moving the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem.” - Michelle Bachmann
Josimar Salum
Published on Aug 19, 2018
FOR A PRESIDENT THAT WILL TRANSFER THE BRAZILIAN EMBASSY IN ISRAEL FROM TEL AVIV TO JERUSALEM. Michelle Bachmann was a congresswoman and candidate for the United States Presidency. Last week she was in Belo Horizonte to participate in the 70th anniversary celebration of Israel at Lagoinha Baptist Church. She asks in this video all Christians in Brazil to vote for the presidential candidate who promises to move the Brazilian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. So far we only have two options: Daciolo & Bolsonaro #BrasilLIVRE
Nooriel Aboab
4 months ago
I’m Brazilian Jewish…Are new president Bolsonaro will movie the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem -
Yan Silva
5 months ago
Make no mistake. Brazilians ARE conservative, pro-market and pro-Israel. We are Christians and we were one of the founder states of Israel.
Hearing these speeches at AIPAC’s Policy Conference 2019, you’d think it was a cartoon meant to parody exaggerations of US politicians beholdenness to Israel.
The title of the conference, “Connected for Good”...
Subtitle, advanced parasitism (before the host dies).
The morning general session of The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference 2019 takes place in Washington DC on Tuesday, March 26.
The forum is held annually and includes the presence of activists, members of Congress and Israeli and American policymakers.
LIST OF SPEAKERS INCLUDES
- Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha,
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA),
- Ambassador David Friedman,
- Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY),
- Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ),
- Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
Video on Demand: http://www.ruptly.tv
Contact: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
The mainstream media has been bombarding Western countries with news about the need for a more circular economy and slow phasing out of plastic from our daily lives in order to protect the environment, focusing on the World’s oceans. But how much of that plastic pollution is actually the West’s fault?
It’s easy to see awareness campaigns about animals trapped in all sorts of trash and to then want to do something in order to prevent such a terrible thing from happening again. In the past few weeks, the mainstream media has been on a crusade against the horrors of plastic in developed nations, targeting everyday, easily dischargeable items such as plastic bags and plastic straws.
Are they preaching to the right audience though?
IFLScience@IFLScience
Shocking Images Of Marine Life Being Suffocated Highlight The Problem Of Plastics In The Oceanhttps://www.iflscience.com/environment/shocking-images-marine-life-suffocated-highlight-plastics-ocean/ …
13:40 - 22 Mar 2019
161 people are talking about this
These distressing images are of great shock value, they create awareness for a major problem that affects all sorts of ecosystems and in this case, marine and sea life, but surprise, surprise, if they want this campaign to be effective, these slogans should be written in Mandarin, Hindi or any African language.
First of all, the disposal of waste in Western nations (and also other developed countries such as Japan or South Korea) is treated very differently than those in developing nations in continents such as Africa and Asia. Not even emerging nations such as India, China or Brazil recycle or treat their waste as much as their Western counterparts, with Brazil being the country who is doing a better jon of treating and recycling these sorts of dischargeable items.
This graph, although from 20 years ago, depicts a good image of how solid waste was and still is treated worldwide.
In 1998, few were the countries that cared or could afford to recycle their solid waste. As we can see, most of the waste being recycled was done in Western nations such as the US, Canada, European countries, Australia, New Zealand and a few East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.
Recycling has evolved a lot in the last 15-20 years, but still, Western nations are at the forefront on the treatment and re-use of plastic, glass, card or paper, more so than any other Latin American, Asian or African country (Take into account that the graph only shows OECD countries).
In the graph below we can see the ten most polluting rivers on the planet. Two of them are in Africa: the Niger and Nile rivers. The other two in South Asia: the Indus and Ganges rivers. The remaining six are in East and Southeast Asia.
95% of the plastic polluting the World’s oceans comes from just these 10 rivers.
And finally, we finish up where we started, we already know that the ten most polluted rivers are in Africa and in Asia, but which countries are the ones who are actually polluting our oceans with plastic the most, thereby threatening ecosystems and sea life?
Well, the answer is, above all, Asian countries, with China being by far the most polluting country on the planet, followed by Southeast Asia and Pacific countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and more far below, Thailand and Malaysia.
To finalise, seeing turtles with straws up their noses or sea lions asphyxiating in plastic bags is sad, it is far from reality. Researchers came to the conclusion that what traps the most animals actually is fishing gear, lots and lots of fishing gear. The data presented is clear, Third World nations are by far the ones who most pollute our World Oceans due to bad infrastructure, not having facilities in order to treat their waste, and if you want to help animals not getting trapped, pushing for policies that punish commercial fishermen who leave or dispose of nets and other gear in the water might be the way to go.
