Wednesday, October 12: Cost of Living
Is that truly the best term to measure the cost of surviving today's world?
In the movies, the IMF (International Monetary Fund *NOT to be confused with the Impossible Mission Force) is always a bunch of white guys in suits broadly gesturing at how supply isn’t meeting demand or how the banks are no longer solvent. In reality I imagine they have the same conversations, but there are a few people of color or maybe a woman or two mixed in among the crowd of suits. Yesterday, the IMF released their World Economic Outlook Report, and folks, the outlook is bleak. The report predicts that the global economy is headed for “stormy waters” as it warned of a harsh worldwide recession and downgraded next year’s growth projections.
Global economic activity is experiencing a broad-based and sharper-than-expected slowdown, with inflation higher than seen in several decades
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t get too caught up in the musings of the IMF, however the constant references to the ongoing “cost of living crisis” have me curious about what alternatives they might suggest. Even the term “cost of living” suggests that the alternative is to simply let people die because it’s cheaper, and I don’t like that. The report places the bulk of the blame for the shambolic state of the economy at the feet of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and “the lingering Covid-19 pandemic” which is still killing thousands of people a month.
The IMF report then goes on to claim that the global economy’s priority is “the protection of vulnerable groups (doubtful) through targeted near-term support (rarely) to alleviate the burden of the cost of living crisis felt across the globe. But its overall stance should remain sufficiently tight to keep monetary policy on target.” So the IMF’s advice boils down to keeping calm and carrying on in the face of growing certainty of global economic recession.
Somebody get Tom Cruise on the line, we need the other IMF, this one’s broken.
Side Items
Big Bad Biden takes on Saudi: In response to the recent OPEC decision to raise oil prices by cutting production, President Bag O’ Bones Biden is playing his version of hardball with the Saudi government. In an interview, Biden threw out the classic line of a kid too scared to fight, “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be consequences.” We’ll see just what kinda consequences he can conjure up for the bone-saw aficionados in Saudi Arabia. This article details how Saudi Arabia conspired with Russia to cut oil production reaching the US, timing their decision with the pending elections
Brett Favre Speaks Out: Y’all, I think we hurt his feelings. In his first real comments since being exposed as a thieving scumbag, Favre claims he is being “unjustly smeared by the media”. Let’s remember these comments follow his alleged but almost certain involvement in a scheme to defraud the Mississippi government of millions of dollars of welfare money
RIP to a Real Queen: Angela Lansbury, of Murder She Wrote fame and, equally importantly, the voice of the iconic Mrs. Potts, the tea kettle in Disney’s animated Beauty & the Beast, passed on this week just days short of her 97th birthday. If anyone is deserving of a two week international mourning period, it’s this Irish-English-American winner of five Tonys, 18 Emmys, and three Oscar nominations
Correction: Yesterday’s Mourning referred to Christopher Columbus as having the blessing of the Italian crown, but one of our diligent readers (my father) was correct to point out that it was actually the Spanish king and queen (Ferdinand II & Isabella) that helped fund Christopher’s murderous campaign of “discovery” (colonization & destruction)