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Federal prosecutors have leveled a legal dropkick on former pro wrestler Ted DiBiase Jr., charging him with stealing millions of dollars meant to feed needy kids in a Mississippi scandal that has also tarnished the reputation of NFL hall of famer Brett Favre.
From the archives (September 2022): NFL star Brett Favre and Gov. Phil Bryant texted about how to use $5 million of welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium
DiBiase,…
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The numbers: The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week rose by 5,000 to 245,000 and pointed to a small erosion in a robust U.S. labor market.
New jobless claims increased from a revised 240,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. The figures are seasonally adjusted.
The number of people applying for unemployment benefits is one of the best barometers of whether the economy is getting better or worse.
New jobless claims are still very low, but they have risen from less than 200,000 in January in a sign the labor market has cooled slightly as higher interest rates dampen U.S. growth.
Key details: Thirty-five of the 53 U.S. states and territories that report jobless claims showed a decrease last week. Eighteen posted an increase.
Most of the increase in new jobless claims were in New York, where new filings typically rise during school breaks and fall immediately afterward.
Other states reported little change.
The number of people collecting unemployment benefits in the U.S., meanwhile, jumped by 61,000 to 1.87 million in the week ended April 8. That’s the highest level since November 2021.
The gradual increase in these so-called continuing claims suggests it’s taking longer for people who lose their jobs to find new ones.
Big picture: Wall Street is watching jobless benefits closely because it’s one of the first indicators to start blinking red when the U.S. is headed toward recession.
New jobless claims have crept higher this year after touching a 54-year low, pointing to some cooling in a hot labor market. But the labor market is still quite strong
The Federal Reserve wants the labor market to cool even further to temper a sharp increase in wages and help the bank combat high inflation. A series of interest-rate increases by the central bank have slowed the economy and eventually should curb the appetite for workers.
Looking ahead: “With talk of deteriorating economic conditions and in the wake of the recent bank failures, businesses may turn more cautious in their hiring practices,” said senior economic advisor Stuart Hoffman of PNC Financial Services.
“Our view remains that layoffs will rise less dramatically than normally might occur as companies do all they can to avoid shedding workers who have been incredibly difficult to recruit and retain,” said chief economist Joshua Shapiro of MFR Inc.
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and S&P 500
SPX,
were set to open lower in Thursday trades.
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Austin Pets Alive! has long been known for innovating, collaborating, and sharing our knowledge of how to save animals’ lives.
But animal welfare is also about humans—the humans who love and own pets, and the humans who work in animal shelters. That’s why we are so thrilled to introduce Pet Pals, our brand new program for at-risk and vulnerable working-age youth to participate in an 8-week paid internship!
The interns, who are between 16 and 21 years old, are learning the ins and outs of shelter management, and gaining the necessary skills and experience to work in animal sheltering—including at Austin Pets Alive!.
Nine interns form our inaugural class. Starting on February 4, every Saturday they are meeting at APA!’s Town Lake Animal Center campus for four hours to explore the world of animal welfare and learn important professional skills.
Each session includes a lesson and/or training, group discussion and activity, one-on-one mentoring, lunch and refreshments, and walking and playing with animals.
The program also involves resume building, mock interviews, and “building up all those interview skills that a young person probably usually doesn’t have access to before they start looking for a job,” says Alexis Telfair-Garcia, APA!’s Social Work Program Development Manager—and one of the country’s very first social workers on staff at an animal shelter.
“Pet Pals gives us and our community an urgently-needed opportunity to close the gap between human and animal services, and develop the next generation of animal welfare leaders,” Alexis says. “We hope, and expect, that this progress won’t stop in Austin, either—but that animal shelters in other communities will start Pet Pals programs of their own.”
Social work students from the University of Texas and St. Edward’s University serve as mentors for the Pet Pals interns, along with Austin Pets Alive! volunteers.
Dr. Ellen Jefferson, President and CEO of Austin Pets Alive!, says her excitement for Pet Pals is in part due to engaging the interns in the urgent work of saving the lives of cats and dogs—and it’s also about helping these young animal lovers realize their dreams.
“One intern told us she’s planning to major in animal science to become a veterinarian, and believes this program can help her get there. Another said they were moved to participate by the death of a beloved dog, and wanting to save the lives of other animals in this pet’s honor,” she says.
“Pet Pals will open doors and new paths for our interns, and change the lives of the cats and dogs who they touch with their work. We’re so proud to be part of the Pet Pals participants’ journey to do great things for people and pets.”
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The numbers: The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week slipped to a three-week low of 191,000, signaling little erosion in a strong U.S. labor market even as the economy faced fresh strains.
New U.S. applications for benefits fell by 1,000 from 192,000 in the prior week, the government said Thursday. .
The number of people applying for jobless benefits is one of the best barometers of whether the economy is getting better or worse. New unemployment applications remain near historically low levels.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast new claims to total 198,000 in the seven days ended March 18. The numbers are seasonally adjusted.
Key details: Twenty-eight of the 53 U.S. states and territories that report jobless claims showed a decrease last week. Twenty-five posted an increase.
Most of the changes were small except in Indiana.
One potential red flag: The number of raw or actual claims — before seasonal adjustments — was much higher last week compared to the same week a year earlier. But so far there’s little sign of a trend.
“Even the tens of thousands of recent [high-tech] layoffs have almost completely been absorbed by a powerful labor market that has plenty of expansion left in it,” contended Robert Frick, chief corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
The number of people collecting unemployment benefits across the country, meanwhile, rose by 14,000 to 1.69 million in the week ended March 11. That number is reported with a one-week lag.
These continuing claims are still low, but a gradual increase since last year suggests it’s taking longer for people who lose their jobs to find new ones.
Big picture: Jobless benefit claims are one of the first indicators to emit danger signals when the U.S. is headed toward recession. It’s still not flashing a red-light, or even a yellow one, as the economy comes under more duress.
The Federal Reserve, for instance, just raised interest rates to a nearly 16-year high. And the failure of Silicon Valley Bank has put more stress on the U.S. financial system.
Both of these actions could constrain the economy in the months ahead, curb hiring and potentially boost a low unemployment rate. If so, watch the trend in new jobless claims.
Looking ahead: “Most companies are either still hiring or are holding onto their employees and seeking other ways to cut costs,” said chief economist Joshua Shapiro of MFR Inc.
“This is consistent with our view that layoffs will rise less dramatically than normally might occur as companies do all they can to avoid shedding workers who have been incredibly difficult to recruit and retain.”
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and S&P 500
SPX,
were set to open higher in Thursday trades. Stocks have been under pressure since the failure of SVB earlier this month.
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There’s a very real possibility the government will stop issuing Social Security payments after the debt limit is hit.
Scary as that prospect is, however, the alternative might be even worse: A little-known provision of a 1996 law could be interpreted to allow the Social Security trust fund to be used not only to pay Social Security’s monthly checks but also to circumvent the debt limit and pay all the government’s otherwise overdue bills.
If that happens, any short-term relief to Social Security recipients would come with a potentially huge long-term price tag: The Social Security trust fund could be exhausted much sooner than currently projected—in just a couple of years, in fact.
These dire possibilities emerge from an analysis conducted by Steve Robinson, the chief economist for The Concord Coalition, a group that describes itself as “a nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating the public and finding common sense solutions to our nation’s fiscal policy challenges.”
An issue brief he wrote, entitled “Social Security’s Debt Limit Escape Clause,” is available on the group’s website.
Let me hasten to add that Robinson is not advocating that the Social Security trust fund be used in this way. In an interview, he instead stressed that he wrote his issue brief because we need to be aware not only that this “escape clause” exists but that its use could have unintended consequences. Though hardly anyone outside Washington knows that it even exists, and relatively few on Capitol Hill, the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration are very much aware of it.
Read: ChatGPT is about to make the business of retirement planning and financial advice profoundly human
Before reviewing the details of this escape clause, it’s worth focusing on the political dynamics that surround it. Because the escape clause lessens the pressure on Congress and the president to come up with a solution to the debt crisis, neither side has an incentive to publicize its existence. But if the government is otherwise pushed to the edge of the fiscal cliff, and it’s facing the potentially huge consequences of an outright default (including the nonpayment of monthly Social Security checks), the political pressure to use the escape clause could be intense.
The 1996 law that creates the escape clause was passed in the wake of the government hitting its debt limit in 1995 and 1996. Ironically, the intent of that law was to prevent the Social Security trust fund from being used for anything other than paying Social Security benefits. But, Robinson explains, that’s unworkable in the real world. That’s because Social Security checks are sent out by the Treasury’s general account, and if that account is in default the checks would bounce.
Read: These 3 things will bring you happiness in retirement — and life
If and when the debt limit is hit, therefore, the only way—in practice—for Social Security checks to continue being issued and cleared through the banking system would be for the Social Security trust fund to “lend” the Treasury sufficient funds that it could pay all the government’s unmet obligations. (I put “lend” in quotes because that’s not exactly how it works; the key is that the “loan” can be structured in ways that don’t count against the debt limit. If you’re interested in reading more about the complex logistics involved, you should read Robinson’s issue brief.)
Therefore, if the debt limit is hit, which it is projected to do perhaps as early as June, Congress and the president will be on the horns of a huge dilemma:
You can appreciate why Congress and the president don’t want us to know that this escape clause exists. Once we are aware of it, they are put in a no-win situation.
So fasten your seat belts for a wild ride in coming months as both parties play political brinkmanship over the debt limit and, by extension, Social Security. With both sides by the day hardening their stances, there’s a very real possibility that the debt limit will be hit.
If that happens, we’ll be hearing a lot more about the little-known provision of a nearly 30-year-old law.
Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at mark@hulbertratings.com.
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PARIS — France is bracing for a day of severe disruptions and strikes on Thursday as trade unions and opposition parties vow to force the government to abandon French President Emmanuel Macron’s flagship pensions reform.
Schools, universities and public administrations are expected to close, public transport will be severely affected and demonstrations are planned in major cities across the country.
“It’s going to be a [day] of hassles… It’ll be a Thursday of great disruption of public services,” warned Transport Minister Clément Beaune.
Workers are protesting the government’s decision to raise the legal retirement age to 64 from 62. As part of the proposed overhaul, the number of years of contributions needed for a full pension will also rise faster than previously planned and will be set at 43 years from 2027.
This is one of the biggest tests for Macron since losing outright majority in parliament in June. Macron was reelected last year on promises he would reform France’s public pension system and bring it in line with European neighbors such as Spain and Germany where the legal age of retirement is 65 to 67 years old. According to projections from France’s Council of Pensions Planning, the finances of the pensions system are balanced in the short term but will go into deficit in the long term.
“Whatever pension projection you look at, the system will be go into the red within 15 years… it is difficult to deny the funding issues … The level of expenditure has stabilized but it’s simply higher than the revenues,” said Antoine Bozio, director of the Institute of Public Policy in Paris.
French polls suggest that the French are opposed to the reform but are aware of the need to overhaul state pensions. There is, however, deep disagreement on how to achieve that. Both the far-right National Rally party and the leftwing NUPES coalition staunchly oppose pushing back the age of retirement to 64 and argue that it will unfairly hit French working classes. Both groups vow to fight the government and stall debates as the pensions bill goes through parliament.
“The Macron-Borne reform is a serious step back for French welfare,” tweeted Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France unbowed party — which is planning a second day of protests on Sunday.
Macron is hoping to get the votes of the conservative Les Républicains to get the reforms passed in parliament, where he does not have absolute majority.
In the battle to win over public opinion, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who unveiled the reform last week, has repeatedly maintained that the changes include several measures that benefit the poorest. The government plans to increase the minimum monthly pension by close to 10 percent to €1,200 for low-income earners, and vows to improve access to early retirement schemes for employees who work in difficult professions.
According to Bozio, while the government’s aim is primarily to balance the books amid increased funding needs for health, education and support for businesses, there are legitimate questions over the fairness of the reform.
“Pushing back the retirement age will not hit the poorest in France, so in that sense the reform is fair,” said Bozio referring to precarious workers who have checkered careers and often leave the workforce later at 67 years old.
However, lower-income groups, who start work early, will be disadvantaged compared to higher-income groups who have later careers.
“Those hit by the reform will be qualified factory workers, less qualified office workers … Senior managers, the intellectual classes who have done long studies, will be less affected,” he said.
There were other options on the table. In 2020, Macron’s government worked on a more balanced reform, which had the backing of one of France’s main trade unions the CFDT, but was forced to shelve it following months of strikes along with the COVID-19 pandemic which brought the country to a halt.
France has a long history of showdowns between government-led pension reforms and the public backlash on the street in the form of mass protests and walking off the job. In his second term, Macron has settled for a less aggressive, more topical reform focused on raising the legal age of retirement in the hope that it would be easier to pass through parliament. The breadth of Thursday’s protests will be a first test of that choice.
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When I moved to Austin in the 90s, the city looked much different than it does today. The population stood under 600,000, what would become a booming tech culture was in its infancy, traffic was manageable, and the city’s weirdly famous motto wasn’t even a thing. Austin was also more than a decade away from being heralded as a leading No Kill city in the United States.
I can still feel the revulsion that jolted through me when I learned that 85% of pets—more than 25,000—were killed in the city shelter each year. Wriggly, energetic puppies and kittens. Healthy cats. Sweet dogs who were licking people’s faces as they were being injected with lethal doses of pentobarbital. The state of animal welfare in late 1990s Austin sat in stark contrast to the city’s identity as a burgeoning epicenter of innovation.
Austinites knew their city could do better, and the community fought and won a battle to become one of the nation’s leading No Kill cities. We went from 85% of pets being killed to more than 95% of pets leaving the shelter alive. Austin’s No Kill status—11 years running—is one of the gems that makes Austin, Austin. And it’s at risk.
Now the 11th largest city in the nation, Austin is at a pivotal moment in history. With rapid growth has come pain points such as affordability, housing limitations, and unintentional neglect of the things that make Austin stand out. The effects of these pain points extend to animal welfare.
From the bats under Congress Avenue bridge that have been dying off year after year, to Austin’s renowned status as the largest No Kill city in the U.S. being under fire, we know that now is the time to protect what so many people in Austin care deeply about.
With a new council coming in, there is tremendous potential for progress to be made or progress to be lost.
To keep Austin No Kill we must develop a comprehensive, citywide approach to animal welfare. There is no other city that has done this, and Austin can and should be the first.
If we lean into progress, it can mean an even larger economic impact than No Kill alone has realized, and it can be a crown jewel of Austin that ties many of the city’s major initiatives together.
On the surface, this challenge appears daunting. But if we look deeper we can see that animal welfare leaders do not have to work alone. Seven out of 10 Austin households have pets and almost all view their pets as family members. This is one of the largest and most passionate groups of people in Austin.
As a city, we need to do more to engage with pet owners and utilize animal welfare issues to secure support for Austin overall. If we band together as a community to implement community-wide solutions, we can ensure that all pets are given the chance to live.
The following steps will bring us closer to creating that approach and making No Kill permanent in Austin:
Conduct a comprehensive study of Austin pet owners.
To better support people with pets, there should be an Austin-wide study to really understand how major systemic societal problems affect pet owners and their companion animals.
We know that pet ownership transcends all demographics. We also know that many pet owners are struggling under the weight of significant financial burdens that have increased because of Austin’s dramatic and rapid growth. Now we need to know more about the specific struggles so we can support residents in ways that keep them with their pets.
When we help pets in crisis we are also helping humans in crisis. For example, over 70% of women in domestic violence shelters report that their abuser threatened, injured, or killed a pet as a means of control. Nearly half of domestic abuse survivors delayed leaving their abuser because they could not take their pets with them. People’s worries about pet care can lead them to put off medical treatment, or to leave the hospital early.
There are many more examples, involving people experiencing housing insecurity, at-risk older residents and youth, and groups facing numerous other challenges that demonstrate the interconnectedness between people’s and pets’ well-being. These clearly make the case for helping pets, while helping the people who love them.
Once we understand more, we can dive deep into solutions to support pet owners with the top problems that humans and pets face together.
Weave pet ownership through a wide range of city communications.
Pet ownership in Austin translates into lower crime rates, and greater mental and physical health of community members, leading to decreased healthcare costs, and a lot more money entering the local economy. Let’s look at the key drivers and obstacles for pet owners, and work on talking to and about them in many more of our citywide communications. More pet owners means a healthier city overall.
Form an economic development task force to make Austin the epicenter of the booming corporate pet industry.
The pet industry is poised to almost double to $240B by 2030. But no city is yet capitalizing on this enormous opportunity.
Austin is a natural fit to become the corporate headquarters for so many pet-related companies as progress is made in this relatively new industry. The city could provide incentives for green programming in areas such as pet food, which is a top contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and for for-profit companies to form partnerships with sheltering nonprofits to modernize the archaic dog pound industry to save more lives. Austin-based companies could be incentivized to develop fireworks that don’t kill native wildlife and create pet products that are earth-friendly and recyclable.
Making Austin the epicenter of the booming pet industry would put Austin on the map in yet another distinct way and contribute to the local economy through conferences, even more pet-friendly businesses, and local spending.
Create an innovation task force to make Austin the home of the first wraparound human + animal welfare system in the world.
Austin has been the largest No Kill city in the U.S. for 11 years. It is time for Austin to lead in a much more comprehensive and effective way. This city should be the home of the next social innovation in animal welfare, where the community, animal services, and human services operate as one.
Right now, animal services tend to be reacting to what has been historically viewed as an “irresponsible public.” When someone is struggling to care for their pets, due to job loss, housing insecurity, or for another reason, they may not know about or have access to options beyond giving up their pet to an overcrowded shelter.
With a comprehensive makeover focused on dignity and preservation of the human-animal bond, the city shelter could instead be the go-to place for support—including crisis boarding for owned pets whose owners are hospitalized or otherwise temporarily can’t care for them; support for fighting housing restrictions; pet sitting for people experiencing homelessness who need a safe place for their dog to stay while they attend a job interview or court date; full spectrum veterinary care for low-income pet owners; at-risk youth programs to introduce careers in animal welfare; other workforce development opportunities; and much more.
The city could also be the best in the world when it comes to how our hospitals, our police, our builders, and our fire/EMS services operate, by including pet specifics in training, metrics, and vision.
Tackling comprehensive citywide problems through the lens of pet ownership offers a manageable vein of solutions and can serve as an example for the next lens of comprehensive problem solving.
Bring civic engagement departments and organizations together to find common ground with pet owners.
Pet owners are passionate about their pets. Pets are linked to higher self confidence and increased civic engagement. Pet owners report stronger neighborhood social connections than non-pet owners, with greater degrees of trust between neighbors.
The trust inherent in these connections can be used to create mutual aid channels for pet owners in crisis and to increase civic engagement in areas that are tangentially related to animals, such as increasing participation and recruitment in Austin’s 100 boards and commissions. Every single one touches animals in some way and building excitement about topics that don’t generally drive the most participation leads to a stronger community led by community members.
Task the Austin Animal Advisory Commission with developing a plan for Austin Animal Center to sustainably operate as a No Kill facility, and also to lead, support, and mentor other jurisdictions on No Kill.
In 2010, the City Council approved a No Kill plan that they had tasked the Austin Animal Advisory Commission to create, using cities with an over 90% live release rate as their only resource. That single resolution has now resulted, conservatively, in over $200M in economic impact for the city of Austin and hundreds of thousands of lives saved.This figure is based on a 2017 report measuring the economic impact of the No Kill resolution from 2010 until 2016. At that time, the figure was over $157,000,000. In the six years since, it is fair to estimate that number has at least doubled.
Now the city council can have the same groundbreaking No Kill success by tasking the commission with a similar request—this time two-fold:
1. Create a plan to develop the most important standard operating procedures for saving the myriad lives that enter the Animal Center doors, using only cities/programs that have the same or higher live release rates as models for each type of at-risk animal population or program.
2. Create a plan to teach these standard operating procedures to shelters all over the country. This not only solves the chronic problems that are inevitably associated with saving lives instead of killing them by offering quality assurance and oversight internally, but also positions Austin as the city to watch as No Kill becomes stronger and even more successful.
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LIVERPOOL, England — On the long picket line outside the gates of Liverpool’s Peel Port, rain-soaked dock workers warm themselves with cups of tea as they listen to 1980s pop.
Dozens of buses, cars and trucks honk in solidarity as they pass.
Dockers’ strikes are not new to Liverpool, nor is depravation. But this latest walk-out at Britain’s fourth-largest port is part of something much bigger, a great wave of public and private sector strikes taking place across the U.K. Railways, postal services, law courts and garbage collections are among the many public services grinding to a halt.
The immediate cause of the discontent, as elsewhere, is the rising cost of living. Inflation in the United Kingdom breached the 10 percent mark this year, with wages failing to keep pace.
But the U.K.’s economic woes long predate the current crisis. For more than a decade, Britain has been beset by weak economic growth, anaemic productivity, and stagnant private and public sector investment. Since 2016, its political leadership has been in a state of Brexit-induced flux.
Half a century after U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger looked at the U.K.’s 1970s economic malaise and declared that “Britain is a tragedy,” the United Kingdom is heading to be the sick man of Europe once again.
Here in Liverpool, the “scars run very deep,” said Paul Turking, a dock worker in his late 30s. British voters, he added, have “been misled” by politicians’ promises to “level up” the country by investing heavily in regional economies. Conservatives “will promise you the world and then pull the carpet out from under your feet,” he complained.
“There’s no middle class no more,” said John Delij, a Peel Port veteran of 15 years. He sees the cost-of-living crisis and economic stagnation whittling away the middle rung of the economic ladder.
“How many billionaires do we have?” Delij asked, wondering how Britain could be the sixth-largest economy in the world with a record number of billionaires when food bank use is 35 percent above its pre-pandemic level. “The workers put money back into the economy,” he said.
What would they do if they were in charge? “Invest in affordable housing,” said Turking. “Housing and jobs.”
The British economy has been struck by particular turbulence over recent weeks. The cost of government borrowing soared in the wake of former PM Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget on September 23, with the U.K.’s central bank forced to step in and steady the bond markets.
But while the swift installation of Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, as prime minister seems to have restored a modicum of calm, the economic backdrop remains bleak. Spending and welfare cuts are coming. Taxes are certain to rise. And the underlying problems cut deep.
U.K. productivity growth since the financial crisis has trailed that of comparator nations such as the U.S., France and Germany. As such, people’s median incomes also lag behind neighboring countries over the same period. Only Russia is forecast to have worse economic growth among the G20 nations in 2023.
In 1976, the U.K. — facing stagflation, a global energy crisis, a current account deficit and labor unrest — had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. It feels far-fetched, but today some are warning it could happen again.
The U.K. is spluttering its way through an illness brought about in part through a series of self-inflicted wounds that have undermined the basic pillars of any economy: confidence and stability.
The political and economic malaise is such that it has prompted unwanted comparisons with countries whose misfortunes Britain once watched amusedly from afar.
“The existential risk to the U.K. … is not that we’re suddenly going to go off an economic cliff, or that the country’s going to descend into civil war or whatever,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London. “It’s that we will become like Italy.”
Portes, of course, does not mean a country blessed with good weather and fine food — but an economy hobbled by persistently low growth, caught in a dysfunctional political loop that lurches between “corrupt and incompetent right-wing populists” and “well-intentioned technocrats who can’t actually seem to turn the ship around.”
“That’s not the future that we want in the U.K,” he said.
Reviving the U.K.’s flatlining economy will not happen overnight. As Italy’s experience demonstrates, it’s one thing to diagnose an illness — another to cure it.
Experts speak of an unbalanced model heavily reliant upon Britain’s services sector and beset with low productivity, a result of years of underinvestment and a flexible labor market which delivers low unemployment but often insecure and low-paid work.
“We’re not investing in skills; businesses aren’t investing,” said Xiaowei Xu, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “It’s not that surprising that we’re not getting productivity growth.”
But any attempt to address the country’s ailments will require its economic stewards to understand their underlying causes — and those stretch back at least to the first truly global crisis of the 21st century.
The 2008 financial crisis hammered economies around the world, and the U.K. was no exception. Its economy shrunk by more than 6 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009. Five years passed before it returned to its pre-recession size.
For Britain, the crisis in fact began in September 2007, a year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when wobbles in the U.S. subprime mortgage market sparked a run on the British bank Northern Rock.
The U.K. discovered it was particularly vulnerable to such a shock. Over the second half of the 20th century, its manufacturing base had largely eroded as its services sector expanded, with financial and professional services and real estate among the key drivers. As the Bank of England put it: “The interconnectedness of global finance meant that the U.K. financial system had become dangerously exposed to the fall-out from the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market.”
The crisis was a “big shock to the U.K.’s broad economic model,” said John Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. Productivity took an immediate hit as exports of financial services plunged. It never fully recovered.
“Productivity before the crash was basically, ‘Can we create lots and lots of debt and generate lots and lots of income on the back of this? Can we invent collateralized debt obligations and trade them in vast volumes?’” said James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum and a former adviser to Labour’s left-wing former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.
A post-crash clampdown on City practises had an obvious impact.
“This is a major part of the British economy, so if it’s suddenly not performing the way it used to — for good reasons — things overall are going to look a bit shaky,” Meadway added.
The shock did not contain itself to the economy. In a pattern that would be repeated, and accentuated, in the coming years, it sent shuddering waves through the country’s political system, too.
The 2010 election was fought on how to best repair Britain’s broken economy. In 2009, the U.K. had the second-highest budget deficit in the G7, trailing only the U.S., according to the U.K. government’s own fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The Conservative manifesto declared “our economy is overwhelmed by debt,” and promised to close the U.K.’s mounting budget deficit in five years with sharp public sector cuts. The incumbent Labour government responded by pledging to halve the deficit by 2014 with “deeper and tougher” cuts in public spending than the significant reductions overseen by former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
The election returned a hung parliament, with the Conservatives entering into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The age of austerity was ushered in.
Defenders of then-Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity program insist it saved Britain from the sort of market-led calamity witnessed this fall, and put the U.K. economy in a condition to weather subsequent global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine.
“That hard work made policies like furlough and the energy price cap possible,” said Rupert Harrison, one of Osborne’s closest Treasury advisers.
Pointing to the brutal market response to Truss’ freewheeling economic plans, Harrison praised the “wisdom” of the coalition in prioritizing tackling the U.K.’s debt-GDP ratio. “You never know when you will be vulnerable to a loss of credibility,” he noted.
But Osborne’s detractors argue austerity — which saw deep cuts to community services such as libraries and adult social care; courts and prisons services; road maintenance; the police and so much more — also stripped away much of the U.K.’s social fabric, causing lasting and profound economic damage. A recent study claimed austerity was responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.
Under Osborne’s plan, three-quarters of the fiscal consolidation was to be delivered by spending cuts. With the exception of the National Health Service, schools and aid spending, all government budgets were slashed; public sector pay was frozen; taxes (mainly VAT) rose.
But while the government came close to delivering its fiscal tightening target for 2014-15, “the persistent underperformance of productivity and real GDP over that period meant the deficit remained higher than initially expected,” the OBR said. By his own measure, Osborne had failed, and was forced to push back his deficit-elimination target further. Austerity would have to continue into the second half of the 2010s.
Many economists contend that the fiscal belt-tightening sucked demand out of the economy and worsened Britain’s productivity crisis by stifling investment. “That certainly did hit U.K. growth and did some permanent damage,” said King’s College London’s Portes.
“If that investment isn’t there, other people start to find it less attractive to open businesses,” former Labour aide Meadway added. “If your railways aren’t actually very good … it does add up to a problem for businesses.”
A 2015 study found U.K. productivity, as measured by GDP per hour worked, was now lower than in the rest of the G7 by a whopping 18 percentage points.
“Frankly, nobody knows the whole answer,” Osborne said of Britain’s productivity conundrum in May 2015. “But what I do know is that I’d much rather have the productivity challenge than the challenge of mass unemployment.”
Rising employment was indeed a signature achievement of the coalition years. Unemployment dropped below 6 percent across the U.K. by the end of the parliament in 2015, with just Germany and Austria achieving a lower rate of joblessness among the then-28 EU states. Real-term wages, however, took nearly a decade to recover to pre-crisis levels.
Economists like Meadway contend that the rise in employment came with a price, courtesy of Britain’s famously flexible labor market. He points to a Sports Direct warehouse in the East Midlands, where a 2015 Guardian investigation revealed the predominantly immigrant workforce was paid illegally low wages, while the working conditions were such that the facility was nicknamed “the gulag.”
The warehouse, it emerged, was built on a former coal mine, and for Meadway the symbolism neatly charts the U.K.’s move away from traditional heavy industry toward more precarious service sector employment. “It’s not a secure job anymore,” he said. “Once you have a very flexible labor market, the pressure on employers to pay more and the capacity for workers to bargain for more is very much reduced.”
Throughout the period, the Bank of England — the U.K.’s central bank — kept interest rates low and pursued a policy of quantitative easing. “That tends to distort what happens in the economy,” argued Meadway. QE, he said, is a “good [way of] getting money into the hands of people who already have quite a lot” and “doesn’t do much for people who depend on wage income.”
Meanwhile — whether necessary or not — the U.K.’s austerity policies undoubtedly worsened a decades-long trend of underinvestment in skills and research and development (Britain lags only Italy in the G7 on R&D spending). At British schools, there was a 9 percent real terms fall in per-pupil spending between 2009 and 2019, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Xu. “As countries get richer, usually you start spending more on education,” Xu noted.
Two senior ministers in the coalition government — David Gauke, who served in the Treasury throughout Osborne’s tenure, and ex-Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable — have both accepted that the government might have focused more on higher taxation and less on cuts to public spending. But both also insisted the U.K had ultimately been correct to prioritize putting its public finances on a sounder footing.
It was February 2018 before Britain finally achieved Osborne’s goal of eliminating the deficit on its day-to-day budget.
Austerity was coming to an end, at last. But Osborne had already left the Treasury, 18 months earlier — swept away along with Cameron in the wake of a seismic national uprising.
***
David Cameron had won the 2015 election outright, despite — or perhaps because of — the stringent spending cuts his coalition government had overseen, more of which had been pledged in his 2015 manifesto. Also promised, of course, was a public vote on Britain’s EU membership.
The reasons for the leave vote that followed were many and complex — but few doubt that years of underinvestment in poorer parts of the U.K. were among them.
Regardless, the 2016 EU referendum triggered a period of political acrimony and turbulence not seen in Westminster for generations. With no pre-agreed model of what Brexit should actually entail, the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU became the subject of heated and protracted debate. After years of wrangling, Britain finally left the bloc at the end of January 2020, severing ties in a more profound way than many had envisaged.
While the twin crises of COVID and Ukraine have muddled the picture, most economists agree Brexit has already had a significant impact on the U.K. economy. The size of Britain’s trade flows relative to GDP has fallen further than other G7 countries, business investment growth trails the likes of Japan, South Korea and Italy, and the OBR has stuck by its March 2020 prediction that Brexit would reduce productivity and U.K. GDP by 4 percent.
Perhaps more significantly, Brexit has ushered in a period of political instability. As prime ministers come and go (the U.K. is now on its fifth since 2016), economic programs get neglected, or overturned. Overseas investors look on with trepidation.
“The evidence that the referendum outcome, and the kind of uncertainty and change in policy that it created, have led to low investment and low growth in the U.K. is fairly compelling,” said professor Stephen Millard, deputy director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Beyond the instability, the broader impact of the vote to leave remains contentious.
Portes argued — as many Remain supporters also do — that much harm was done by the decision to leave the EU’s single market. “It’s the facts, not the uncertainty that in my view is responsible for most of the damage,” he said.
Brexit supporters dismiss such claims.
“It’s difficult statistically to find much significant effect of Brexit on anything,” said professor Patrick Minford, founder member of Economists for Brexit. “There’s so much else going on, so much volatility.”
Minford, an economist favored by ex-PM Truss, acknowledged that “Brexit is disruptive in the short run, so it’s perfectly possible that you would get some short-run disruption.” But he added: “It was a long-term policy decision.”
Plenty of economists can rattle off possible solutions, although actually delivering them has thus far evaded Britain’s political class. “It’s increasing investment, having more of a focus on the long-term, it’s having economic strategies that you set out and actually commit to over time,” says the IFS’ Xu. “As far as possible, it’s creating more certainty over economic policy.”
But in seeking to bring stability after the brief but chaotic Truss era, new U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has signaled a fresh period of austerity is on the way to plug the latest hole in the nation’s finances. Leveling Up Secretary Michael Gove told Times Radio that while, ideally, you wouldn’t want to reduce long-term capital investments, he was sure some spending on big projects “will be cut.”
This could be bad news for many of the U.K.’s long-awaited infrastructure schemes such as the HS2 high-speed rail line, which has been in the works for almost 15 years and already faces a familiar mix of local resistance, vested interests, and a sclerotic planning system.
“We have a real problem in the sense that the only way to really durably raise productivity growth for this country is for investments to pick up,” said Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. “And the headwinds to that are quite significant.”
For dock workers at Liverpool’s Peel Port, the prospect of a fresh round of austerity amid a cost-of-living crisis is too much to bear. “Workers all over this country need to stand up for themselves and join a union,” insisted Delij.
For him, it’s all about priorities — and the arguments still echo back to the great crash of 15 years ago. “They bailed the bankers out in 2007,” he said, “and can’t bail hungry people out now.”
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Sebastian Whale and Graham Lanktree
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Rent growth is beginning to cool. But it’s descending from a heck of a peak.
Rental prices climbed 7.2% between September 2021 to September of this year, the largest annual increase since 1982, according to consumer price data released Thursday. Overall, shelter costs were also among the most significant drivers in rising consumer prices, along with the cost of food and medical care, the Labor Department said.
Still, it’s not all bad news for tenants. A new report from Realtor.com out Thursday found that nationwide, median rental prices in 50 large metros grew at their slowest annual pace in 16 months in September — at 7.8%. That marked the second consecutive month of single-digit year-over-year growth for 0-2 bedroom properties, and it meant that median asking rents fell by $12 in a month, Realtor.com said.
Housing inflation in the Consumer Price Index lags trends in the rental market, though, meaning the slowdown in rent growth might not register in the data for a while.
While median rental prices are still nearly 23% higher than they were two years ago, they’re no longer climbing at breakneck speeds with no end in sight. These days, economists say, that counts as a silver lining.
“After more than a year of double-digit yearly rent gains and nearly as many months of record-high rents, it’s especially important to see consistency before we confirm a major shift like the recent rental market cool-down,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said in a statement. “But September data provides that evidence, as national rents continued to pull back from their latest all-time high registered just two months ago.”
“This return of more seasonal norms indicates that rental markets are charting a path back toward a more typical balance between supply and demand, compared to the previous year,” Hale added. “We expect rent growth to keep slowing in the months ahead, partly driven by the impact of inflation on renters’ budgets.”
Affordability, however, is worsening, Realtor.com said. Blame the fact that consumer prices are rising faster than wages.
(Realtor.com is operated by News Corp
NWSA,
subsidiary Move Inc., and MarketWatch is a unit of Dow Jones, which is also a subsidiary of News Corp.)
A Redfin
RDFN,
report out Thursday, meanwhile, said rents grew 9% year-over-year in September — the slowest pace since August 2021. Rents were still way up year-over-year in cities like Oklahoma City (24.1%), Pittsburgh (20%), and Indianapolis (17.9%.)
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BIRMINGHAM, England — So in the end, Liz Truss was for turning. But the damage to her faltering administration may already have been done.
On Monday, Truss’ Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng bowed to pressure from Conservative Party colleagues and dumped his flagship cut to the top rate of tax from 45p to 40p — a central component of last month’s so-called mini-budget.
“We get it, and we have listened,” Kwarteng said as he announced the dramatic U-turn on Twitter.
Later it emerged he will also bring forward an announcement on how the tax cuts will be funded, having initially insisted the public — and the markets — must wait until November 23.
A parliamentary insurrection, which was rapidly gaining pace as MPs met for their annual party conference in Birmingham on Sunday, appears to have been quelled, for now.
Asked if he would now support the mini-budget in parliament following the abandonment of its most controversial measure, rebel ringleader Michael Gove said: “Yeah I think so, on the basis of everything that I know. There were lots of good things that they announced … The debate over the 45p tax increase obscured that.”
The market reaction was also mildly positive, with the bond and currency markets rallying somewhat following the announcement.
But most MPs and delegates in Birmingham believe it will take significantly more than a single U-turn to rebuild the political and fiscal credibility of the fledgling Truss administration, with some MPs fearful a revival is already out of reach.
“She started very poorly, and in my experience, what you see is what you get. People aren’t mysteriously really shit, and then become really good,” one senior Tory MP said.
While a Tory rebellion appears to have been averted for now, few MPs believe it will be the last Truss faces in the difficult weeks and months ahead.
Even before Kwarteng’s now-infamous ‘fiscal event,’ Truss had plenty of detractors on Conservative benches. Only around a third of her own MPs backed her in the leadership contest, and after taking office she almost exclusively chose loyalists for her ministerial ranks. Those who backed her opponent Rishi Sunak were left out in the cold.
“Her party management has pissed people off,” the senior Tory MP quoted above said, with many of what they described as talented MPs questioning whether it was even worth backing the government in the long-term.
But while the “lightning rod” of the 45p tax rate had now been “neutralized,” according to one minister, backbenchers could soon find another hot topic and “push on that next.”
Two potential major flashpoints will be the new government’s approach to welfare payments, and funding public services. Ministers are currently undecided over whether to uprate benefits in line with inflation — as pledged by Boris Johnson’s administration — while also dropping heavy hints that cuts to the state are on their way.
The opposition Labour Party, now surging ahead in the polls, see political capital too in Truss’ stated plans to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses and abandon a hike to corporation tax.
“They’ve still got a totally unfunded £17 billion [corporation] tax giveaway for the wealthiest businesses at a time when people and businesses are struggling with the cost of living.” one Labour official said, in a taste of the messaging Tory MPs will likely be up against at the next election.
Few Tory MPs are optimistic Truss can turn things around.
“Politics works as a pendulum. If it swings towards the middle it’s possible to pull it back. But if it swings too far it can become irreversible,” the minister quoted above said.
Writing for POLITICO, Boris Johnson’s former No. 10 comms chief Lee Cain said it was “unlikely” Truss’ reputation would ever recover.
“It didn’t need to be this way,” he wrote. “Many of the unforced errors could have been avoided if the PM had understood how to talk to the audience that matters most — the electorate.:
But voters may yet be more forgiving than some of Truss’ critics in the party, according to pollsters and focus group experts keeping a close eye on public opinion.
“We consistently find voters don’t mind a U-turn on an unpopular policy,” said Luke Tryl, director of the More in Common consultancy, which regularly hosts focus groups across the country.
“In fact one of the things we found during the leadership contest was that people quite liked the fact that Liz Truss changed her mind, because they felt that’s what normal people do,” he said.
But he cautioned that while voters don’t mind U-turns as one-offs, “a series of them starts to look chaotic and will worry voters about whether the government knows what it is doing to see the country through the turmoil.”
Crucially, reversing just £2 billion of the proposed £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts seems insufficient, in isolation, to restore trust in the U.K. economy and bring down spiraling interest rates.
“When market trust has been shattered, as we saw last week, the uphill task of restoring credibility is extremely hard and even harder when strategies shift,” Charles Hepworth, investment director at GAM, said.
“The market currently has little faith that the prime minister and chancellor can restore credibility in the short term, and this puts further renewed pressure on U.K. risk assets.”
Neil Birrell, chief investment officer at Premier Miton Investors, agreed the U-turn would not solve the turmoil in financial markets.
“High inflation and high interest rates are not going away quickly, and economic growth is under severe threat,” he said.
“Markets still need to hear how the package will be funded,” added Iain Anderson, executive chairman at H/Advisers Cicero, who said the next fiscal statement planned for November 23 must be brought forward as a matter of urgency.
The first senior Tory MP quoted above lamented that the market turmoil following the mini-budget meant the Tory party would now “own interest rate rises — a lot of which were going to happen anyway.”
“I cannot remember in my life when any politician has recovered from such a savage self-inflicted wound,” Giles Wilkes, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and partner at Flint Global, said.
“Gordon Brown recovered somewhat from the multiple slip-ups of 2007-08 with his commanding response to the global financial crisis, but even that wasn’t enough.”
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Annabelle Dickson, Esther Webber and Emilio Casalicchio
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Austin Pets Alive! is proud to join forces with Mars Petcare and leading animal welfare organizations to launch the State of Pet Homelessness Index. This first-of-its-kind tool pulls together credible, consistent data from 200+ sources to measure the scale of the pet homelessness issue at a country level and uncover its possible root causes. We hope this data will be used by animal welfare organizations, policymakers, pet professionals, academics, researchers, and others to better understand where and how to direct action to drive change. Click here to learn more! #EndPetHomelessness
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Austin Pets Are in Crisis. Supporting Families Through Partnership Is the Answer.
We must work together to keep pets with people and out of the shelter.
Here in Austin, 38,000 pets could be displaced by evictions in the coming months. Nationally, that number could be as high as eight million.
After speaking with American Pets Alive! and Human Animal Support Services project director Kristen Hassen, NBC shared this story about how the looming eviction crisis could impact overcrowded shelters by displacing the pets of families who lose their homes.
Austin Pets Alive!, the parent organization to AmPA! and AmPA!’s HASS project, is already seeing the effects of the financial strain so many families have faced during the pandemic. Our APA! Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrender Facebook page is currently receiving around 1,000 requests for help each month, with countless owners faced with the possibility of having to give up their pets.
We help as many of these families as we can. But the situation for our community’s pet owners is growing increasingly dire. It will get much worse as more families are evicted.
APA! is currently working with the City of Austin to renegotiate our partnership agreement so we can focus even more of our efforts on innovation and progress to support families and shelters in crisis. We want to ensure Austin Pets Alive! and Austin Animal Center can, with our complementary roles, develop our partnership to protect our city’s animals and families.
We come to this partnership with deep experience. AmPA!’s Human Animal Support Services program leads nationwide efforts to develop and implement community-centered animal services programs to keep pets with people, and out of shelters.
What we have learned while bringing this model to hundreds of communities across the country, is this is never a solo effort. Success requires government shelters to partner with other organizations.
That means we and Austin Animal Center must work together, and be based together here in Austin, to ensure that the eviction crisis does not overwhelm AAC and lead to pets needlessly losing their homes, and even their lives.
For a decade now, Austin has been looked to as a model for how to save animals. We are the country’s largest no kill city, and this is largely thanks to the longstanding partnership between Austin Animal Center and Austin Pets Alive!
Other communities look to us for guidance, and inspiration. This is, as it should be, a source of pride for our residents.
Now we need that partnership to sustain and evolve, to meet the tremendous challenges we face together, today, as animal welfare organizations and as a city.
Thirty-eight thousand Austin pets are in danger of losing their homes to eviction, in the coming months. Working together, in our shared city, we can face this.
We are proud to be the leader in animal welfare innovation and now we need a true partnership with our city, so together we can keep Austin pets with their families.
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Evictions are on track to be the number one reason cats and dogs enter the public shelter in Austin. Based on our Pet Eviction Calculator, in Travis County alone a whopping 37,340 pets are at high risk of eviction.
If these evictions span the course of 60-90 days, as is expected, our shelters will be overwhelmed. The shelters are not able to absorb even a fraction of this number of displaced pets, without invoking mass euthanasia. We need your help to prevent the senseless loss of animals’ lives.
People are already giving up their animals in anticipation of being evicted, and with the federal eviction moratorium expiring on October 3 we have a very short window to act and prevent catastrophe.
There are two actions we are asking of Austinites today:
When you reach out, please say or write that we need real solutions for the whole family, including pets, and animal welfare leadership must play a key role in the city’s eviction response.
You may have heard Austin Pets Alive! championing the Human Animal Support Services (HASS) model that turns industry-facing, shelter-based Animal Services into outward-facing, community-centered Human Animal Support Services.
This fundamental reimagining of Animal Services addresses the root causes of animal shelter intake, in order to serve more pets in their communities and homes and to reduce the number of pets entering the shelter system. HASS partner shelters across the country are preparing for the eviction crisis by expanding community-based sheltering options, like temporary safety net fostering programs, right now. You can read more about HASS’s tools and resources for keeping families together through the eviction crisis here.
We have two choices in the face of this catastrophic looming eviction crisis: let it happen and bemoan the senseless waste of pet life, or do something about it. I hope you will join APA! and do something about it, starting today.
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Each year, we save thousands of lives of pets right here in Austin and Travis County, and in the counties immediately surrounding Austin. We also provide support, education, and animal transport guidance to shelters all over Texas and beyond. Our ultimate goal is to focus on animals who, without APA’s help, would die or face being killed in a shelter. For this reason, we ask shelters we support to do everything they can to keep as many pets as possible in their homes and communities, in order to reduce shelter intake. We also ask that they learn and follow American Pets Alive! best practices, in order to save as many lives as they can and to serve as many pets as possible within their own cities and towns.
Consultations: Our American Pets Alive! instructors are proven professionals, with a decade or more of experience in the animal welfare field. We offer consultative support for shelters, in order to make recommendations to streamline operations, increase lifesaving, prevent needless pet intakes, and keep all shelter pets healthy. If our team does help your organization transport pets OR if we ‘pull’ animals from you into our organization, we ask that you receive and implement recommendations from our AmPA! team so you can achieve long term solutions to the root causes of the challenges in your organization.
Transport: If your shelter faces chronic overcrowding and you are severely limited on resources to save them, our team can assist you in finding viable transport solutions. Transport is not a ‘magic’ solution to difficulties faced by underfunded, high-volume shelters, but it can be tremendously helpful for some organizations. Here is an example of how El Paso Animal Services is utilizing transport to prevent overcrowding. Reach out if you have a question about how we can help you create a transport relationship with a receiving shelter, get connected to existing transport solutions, or ask anything else about transport.
Transfers to Austin Pets Alive!: In some cases, we may be able to take animals into our organization, with most pets arriving in Austin and heading immediately to loving foster homes. We primarily focus on animals who do not have any other viable options, including pets with contagious illnesses, injured and sick animals, pets with special needs, and in some cases, pets who are otherwise healthy but face imminent euthanasia for any reason. These spaces are very limited, and the need always exceeds our ability to help. If you need help, or are an organization that wants to contribute to our efforts, contact us.
What we ask our partner organizations: Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund Family Foundation, as well as the tireless support from our Austin community, we are able to offer support and guidance free of charge. Our team is made up of just a few folks and we’re aiming to help organizations all over the nation, so we ask our partners to be part of the solution. If we assist your organization in any way, we ask you to commit to the following:
What AmPA!-supported shelters have to say:
“AmPA! brings hope. Animal Welfare is a very emotional and lonely existence. Even with us all being in the same field of work, AmPA! gives validation and hope to our everyday lives at the shelter and on the streets.”
“Our live outcomes have changed drastically! Before AmPA! training our local shelter was as 33% live release, since June 2019 it has been at 90+%!”
“The best part of AmPA! visits is how inspired our staff is after they leave. We are a rural small non-profit so being able to see the big picture has been game changing for our team.”
“I appreciate that you provide one on one conversations to help with specific questions and problems in OUR shelter. It’s better than doing research because a live person is hearing your issues and giving ideas on what to do next.”
“Our staff LOVES when AmPA! staff visit. All the AmPA! staff who have visited us are members of our internal organizational page and often participate. Our team gets so excited when they visit and everyone learns so much while they are here. Most of our staff have had no prior exposure to the national scene so feeling a part of a larger movement has been great for their self-identities and commitment to our organization. The presence of AmPA! staff has been invaluable.”
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