California: Pension Needs Increase

The Sacramento Bee posted an article up about a month ago regarding public employee pensions:

California state government’s bill for public employee pensions is set to rise by $676 million. CalPERS on Tuesday advanced a scheduled increase in employer contribution rates, bringing the state’s total bill for the 2019-2020 budget year to about $7 billion.

From what I can tell, the increase is driven by:

1. $340 million increase due to paying down the current unfunded liability. The article states that California has $287 billion in unfunded liabilities that it is trying to pay down over 30 years. Governor Newsom wants to add an additional $3 billion to that amount.

2. $229 million will have to come from various public agencies as the rate of return is being reduced from 7.25% to 7.0%.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Excavating The Past: Writing International Histories.

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'll be posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The fourth panel discussion I attended was "Excavating The Past: Writing International Histories."

Here is an edited panelist biography via the LA Times website.

Ruby Lal is Professor of South Asian Studies at Emory University, Atlanta. Her fields of study include feminist history and theory, and the question of archive as it relates to writing about Islamic societies in the precolonial and colonial world. "Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan" is her latest book.

A third-generation journalist, Scott Martelle is currently a member of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times. His newest book is "William Walker's Wars: How One Man's Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras."

Priya Satia is a professor of British History at Stanford University. "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" is her newest book.  

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion: 
 
Ruby Lal. Nur Jahan (1600s) has been lost to history. She is a household name in South Asia, but she is known for her love story. People don’t know who she was. Why was she lost to history? She has coins minted under her name. She has portraits of her loading a musket, which is something women didn’t do.

Algeria Update: Military Makes Arrests, what does it mean?

What is currently going on in Algeria? According to Reuters, there are still protests but . . .

The demonstration was peaceful but smaller than those that have shaken Algiers over the past weeks.

There have been a number of arrests amount the political and business elites. Interestingly, Reuters and Fox News interpret the developments differently.

Reuters interprets these arrests as the military trying to gain support among the protestors by detaining those suspected of corruption:

Last week, Bouteflika’s youngest brother, Said, and two former intelligence chiefs were placed in custody by a military judge over “harming the army’s authority and plotting against state authority”. At least five businessmen, including the country’s richest man, Issad Rebrab, who is active in food industry and sugar refining, have been detained for alleged involvement in corruption scandals.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. John Carreyrou, Author of “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.”

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'll be posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The third panel discussion I attended was "John Carreyrou, Author of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.."

Here is an edited panelist biography via the LA Times website.

John Carreyrou is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. For his extensive coverage of Theranos, Carreyrou was awarded the George Polk Award for Financial Reporting, the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism in the category of beat reporting, and the Barlett & Steele Silver Award for Investigative Business Journalism.

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion: 

Elizabeth Holmes left Stanford during her sophomore year. She wanted to build a medical device. She also wanted to be like Steve Jobs. She created Theranos. The goal was to invent a bracelet that would have needles that would diagnose your diseases and then give you the necessary medication. This was very Sci-Fi and when they finally gave up on that idea, they shifted to doing blood tests. In the end, it was never ready and that’s where it all became a lie.

Venezuela: April 30th Coup Attempt

Last week had an interesting coup attempt occur in Venezuela. From various articles, it appears that opposition leader Juan Guaido thought he had the support of the following Maduro loyalists:

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino
Supreme Court Chief Judge Maikel Moreno
Presidential Guard Commander Ivan Rafael Hernandez Dala
Spy Chief Manuel Figuera

How did things unfold on Tuesday, April 30th?

From Reuters:

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday made his strongest call yet to the military to help him oust President Nicolas Maduro but there were no concrete signs of defection from the armed forces leadership. Early on Tuesday, several dozen armed troops accompanying Guaido clashed with soldiers supporting Maduro at a rally in Caracas, and large anti-government protests in the streets turned violent. But by Tuesday afternoon an uneasy peace had returned and there was no indication that the opposition planned to take power through military force.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. American History: Leaders & Moments that Shaped Our Modern Country

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'm posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The second panel discussion I attended was "American History: Leaders & Moments that Shaped Our Modern Country."

Here are edited panelist biographies via the LA Times website. 

Susan Page is the Washington Bureau chief of USA Today, where she writes about politics and the White House. Susan has covered six White House administrations and ten presidential elections. Her book "The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty" was recently released.

Miriam Pawel is the author of "The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation," a finalist for the 2018 L.A. Times Book Prize in History and a Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She is a Pulitzer-prize winning editor and reporter who spent twenty-five years at Newsday and the Los Angeles Times.

Jon Ward has chronicled American politics and culture for two decades, as a city desk reporter in Washington D.C., as a White House correspondent who traveled aboard Air Force One to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and as a national affairs correspondent who has traveled the country to write about two presidential campaigns and the ideas and people animating our times. His most recent book of nonfiction, "Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party," was released earlier this year.

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion: 

Libya: Haftar in Tripoli - World Powers Standing on the Sidelines?

The Libyan National Army (LNA -- power base in Eastern Libya) is now fighting in Tripoli.

From Reuters:

Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), which is allied to a rival administration in eastern Libya, mounted an offensive on Tripoli three weeks ago but has failed to breach defenses in the city’s south despite heavy fighting. The battle for the capital has all but wrecked U.N.-backed efforts for a peace deal between the rival factions and threatened to further disrupt Libya’s oil industry.

One thing I've mentioned in previous blog posts on the subject of the LNA launching an attack on Tripoli I just didn't see this as some easy victory for the LNA (unless the LNA was really able to buy the support of various militias around Libya; currently, it would seem this support isn't at the level needed).

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Exposing Truths: The Stories Affecting America

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'll be posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The first panel discussion I attended was "Exposing Truths: The Stories Affecting America."

Here are edited panelist biographies via the LA Times website. 

Mona Hanna-Attisha. Author of What the Eyes Don't See, a first-hand account of the Flint water crisis, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is an associate professor of pediatrics and human development at Michigan State University.

Eliza Griswold’s latest book, "Amity and Prosperity," was released in June 2018. It recounts the true story of how fracking shattered one Pennsylvania town, how families brought it to light, and how, after years of fighting against the abuses of the oil and gas industry, the people finally prevailed.

Beth Macy is the author of three New York Times-bestselling books. Her latest book, "Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America," is short-listed for the Carnegie Medal and was described as a "masterwork of narrative nonfiction" by The New York Times.

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion:

Wall Street Journal: Public Pension Problems

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article up on government pensions. The basic direction is that even though we've had a significant bull market, public pensions are still having issues.

Liabilities of major U.S. public pensions are up 64% since 2007 while assets are up 30%, according to the most recent data from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research . . . In the 1980s and 1990s, double-digit stock and bond returns convinced governments they could afford widespread benefit increases . . . The Illinois Supreme Court in 2015 threw out cuts by the legislature that were expected to save tens of billions of dollars . . . The Maine pension fund, which back in the early 1980s assumed a long-term investment return of 10%, now assumes a rate of 6.75%. If that rate were just 1 percentage point higher—where it was about 10 years ago—the projected $2.9 billion shortfall, most of which must be paid off over the next decade, would drop by more than half to $1.1 billion.

Algeria and Sudan: Populist Uprisings and the Military

The LA Times and The Atlantic both take a look at recent events in Algeria and Sudan where protests have recently occurred and presidents have fallen. Both presidents have been pushed out by the military. The LA Times takes a more negative view of recent events while The Atlantic takes a more positive view.

Until events go in a different direction, I believe the LA Times slant is more accurate:

“There’s definitely an effort on the part of the old regimes to maintain power, just as we saw in the previous rounds of uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere,” said Timothy Kaldas, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, in a phone interview on Friday . . .  Meanwhile, Western nations, wary of the post-2011 turmoil that brought the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and millions of refugees to Europe’s shores, appear likely to fall in line, despite their lip service in support of democratic reform.

Libya: Haftar March to Tripoli Supported by the Saudis?

Per the Wall Street Journal, but quoting from Al Jazeera as I don't have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal:

Days before Libya's renegade General Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive on the country's capital, Tripoli, Saudi Arabia offered tens of millions of dollars to help pay for the operation, the Wall Street Journal has reported . . . Citing senior advisers to the Saudi government, the Journal said the offer of funds - accepted by Haftar - was intended to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders, recruit and pay fighters, and other military purposes.

I have held the position that Haftar was just bluffing. His allies (United States, France, Britain, Italy and the United Arab Emirates) were telling him to halt his advance. There were other coastal cities in Libya (Misrata and Zawiya) that were coming to the aid of Tripoli.

Algeria: President Abdelaziz Bouteflika forced out of power

Quick summary of what is going on in Algeria:

Protests are currently ongoing in Algeria. The protests revolve around demands for their President, Adbelaziz Bouteflika, to resign and be replaced. He has been the president since 1999, two decades. He suffered a stroke in 2013 and has rarely been seen in public. He decided to run for a fifth term, which resulted in the protests.

With that . . .

On Tuesday (April 2nd), Lt. Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, the army chief of staff, told President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to leave office.

This is only my second blog post on Algeria and in my first one I speculated that the military would wait until they had a successor in place who would be acceptable to both the elite and the protestors. I guess not.

Libya: Haftar currently heading to Tripoli

I don't know much about Libya. I recently argued that Haftar (leader of the Libyan National Army - LNA) was simply trying to negotiate a higher percentage of the oil revenue with his threats of marching to Tripoli. Other than wanting more oil revenue, I felt there were two drawbacks to him marching on Tripoli: first, various nations that back the LNA are telling Haftar not to march on Tripoli; second, various cities around Tripoli are not eager to support Haftar. Oh well, currently, it looks like his troops are on the march towards Tripoli.

Al Jazeera has the following:

"Haftar would like to force the hand of the UN and those attending in a way that does not exclude him, fearing that this conference may start a whole new path for Libya in the next few years and that he may not be included in that process," said Hafed Al Ghwell, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University.

IMO 2020: Council of Economic Advisers

Oil Price has an article up from Economist Philip Verleger where he discusses IMO 2020. IMO 2020 is the new fuel standard issued by the International Maritime Organization that starts in January 2020. It requires the sulfur content used by ships must be at 0.5 percent. Current limits are at 3.5%. Verleger believes that a large disruption will result due to this transfer. His article looks at a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers. The key quote from the CEA report can be found on pages 294/295.

The shortfall will likely trigger higher prices, though estimates of price shocks to fuels including diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel vary substantially.

The reason behind this is that they see a short-fall ranging from 0.2 MMbpd to 0.6 MMbpd. I'm not exactly sure how they're coming up with that range.

Algeria Protests: Military Position

Protests are currently ongoing in Algeria. The protests revolve around demands for their President, Adbelaziz Bouteflika, to resign and be replaced. He has been the president since 1999, two decades. He suffered a stroke in 2013 and has rarely been seen in public. He decided to run for a fifth term, which resulted in the protests.

As Al Jazeera wrote:

Despite his ailing health, Bouteflika continued enjoying the support of Algeria's powerbrokers, including the military, and went ahead to win presidential elections in 2014. 

So though I don't know anything about what is going on Algeria (as this is my first blog post ever on Algeria), I have to suspect that there is a high degree of corruption going on in the country.

It appears that the military in Algeria holds a large amount of power. Below I have various quotes from three articles.