Written by Econintersect

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries (and sometimes longer ones) of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

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Topics today include 17 articles and 17 graphics:

• ​Leveraged Loans – The New Subprime Mortgages?
• How Fraudulent Domains ‘Hide in Plain Sight’
• Report: Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining
• Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy
• A Massive Freshwater Sea Is Buried Beneath the Atlantic Ocean
• An extraordinary Twitter Exchange with Richard Tol
• 2020 Democrats spar over socialism ahead of first debate
• Robert Mueller subpoena isn’t a ‘friendly’ one: Intelligence Committee Chair tells Maddow
• Gorsuch joins liberal justices in ruling against federal criminal statute
• How judges added to the grim toll of opioids
• New poll shows Trump is the only U.S. president to never reach 50% approval
• Trump Has Received 50% Aproval Ratings
• Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
• The most commonly spoken language in every US state, excluding English and Spanish
• At Least a Million Sub-Saharan Africans Moved to Europe Since 2010
• Germany (and Europe) Suffering ‘Saharan Bubble’ Heat Wave
• No ‘boots on the ground’ in Iran dispute, Trump says; cites ‘unlimited time’ for new deal
• And More

Articles about events, conflicts and disease around the world

Global

• An extraordinary Twitter Exchange with Richard Tol (Steve Keen, Patreon) SK has contributed to GEI. Richard Tol is one of the leading economists working on climate change. Steve Keen says he “was simply gobsmacked” by how “monstrously stupid” the assumption is upon which the economic effects of climate change have been estimated. Here are a couple of the interesting graphic items from this post:

1. Illustration of 500 million years of earth temperature history.
2. Time-lapse video of the earth starting at the peak of the last ice age 21,000 years ago. Besides watching the glaciation recede, other interesting things are found, such as the greening of Australia, the U.S. southwest, and the Sahara desert about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago.

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U.S.

• 2020 Democrats spar over socialism ahead of first debate (The Hill) Democratic presidential candidates on Wednesday battled over socialism ahead of the first presidential debate, the latest sign that contenders are grappling over the future direction of the party and the message they believe is best suited to defeat President Trump in the general election. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) walked through the spin room at the Ziff Ballet Opera House, telling reporters that embracing socialism is a surefire general election loser for Democrats.
• Robert Mueller subpoena isn’t a ‘friendly’ one: Intelligence Committee Chair tells Maddow (Raw Story) Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D, CA) joined with Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D, NY) in subpoenaing former special counsel Robert Mueller. But according to Schiff, this wasn’t exactly an agreement the committees came to with Mueller or the special counsel’s investigators. Schiff said:

“I don’t think the special counsel’s office would characterize it as a friendly subpoena. He did not want to testify. He made that very clear. Nonetheless, they will respect the subpoena. He will appear. He’ll be testifying before our committee in open session. Each of our members will have an opportunity to ask questions of the special counsel. And the American people get a chance to hear directly from him and have their questions answered. So I think it’s a good result.”

• Gorsuch joins liberal justices in ruling against federal criminal statute (The Hill) Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with the court’s liberal bloc on Wednesday to rule 5-4 against a federal statute, finding it violated a sex offender’s constitutional right to a trial by jury. Andre Haymond had previously been convicted of possessing child pornography, and the government discovered that he may have been in possession of the illegal images while he was on supervised release.

The judge overseeing his case found a “preponderance of evidence” that Haymond was in possession of the child porn, rather than using the standard of “reasonable doubt.” As a result, the judge sentenced Haymond under a federal law that required a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

A federal appeals court found that while parts of the lower court ruling were incorrect, there was still enough evidence to find that Haymond had possessed the images, in violation of that federal statute.

But a divided Supreme Court found Wednesday that the statute violated his right to a trial by jury.

• How judges added to the grim toll of opioids (Reuters) For years, judges sealed evidence about the risks of using opiod prescriptions as the body count mounted. And as a Reuters analysis found, opiods are only one of many big product-liability cases in which judges have countenanced a lethal and often unlawful secrecy.

• New poll shows Trump is the only U.S. president to never reach 50% approval (MSNBC) A Monmouth poll puts Trump’s approval rating at 41 percent, making him the only U.S. leader to never hit 50% approval. The same survey shows 59% say he should not be re-elected. See also next article.

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• Trump Has Received 50% Aproval Ratings (Twitter) See Daily Presidential Tracking Poll (Rasmussen Reports). The second graphic below shows history of strongly approve and strongly disapprove.

• The most commonly spoken language in every US state, excluding English and Spanish (Business Insider)

• Americans speak a lot of languages.
• Using individual-level census data, we found the most commonly spoken language at home other than English and Spanish in each state and Washington, D.C.
• German, French, and Vietnamese are common in several states.

EU

• At Least a Million Sub-Saharan Africans Moved to Europe Since 2010 (Pew Research Center) International migration from countries in sub-Saharan Africa has grown dramatically over the past decade, including to Europe and the United States. Indeed, most years since 2010 have witnessed a rising inflow of sub-Saharan asylum applicants in Europe, and lawful permanent residents and refugees in the U.S.

Germany

• Germany (and Europe) Suffering ‘Saharan Bubble’ Heat Wave (Twitter) For those with ‘third world’ measurement systems, 29C = 102F and 47C = 117F.

Iran

• No ‘boots on the ground’ in Iran dispute, Trump says; cites ‘unlimited time’ for new deal (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he was “not talking boots on the ground” should he take military action against Iran and that he had “unlimited time” to try to forge an agreement with Tehran.

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Other Scientific, Health, Political, Economics, and Business Items of Note – plus Miscellanea

• Leveraged Loans – The New Subprime Mortgages? (Advisor Perspectives) We face a situation where business debt is at historic highs relative to the size of the economy. And the recent growth in business debt has been concentrated in riskier forms of debt: Leveraged loans, often repackaged into collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). The author (Maria Davis) questions the wisdom of the Fed to basically watch and wait on these risky assets rather than “actively working towards … curbing excesses and taking aim at loose underwriting standards.”
• How Fraudulent Domains ‘Hide in Plain Sight’ (Dark Reading) Cybercriminals use new types of top-level domains, topical keywords, and targeted emails to trick victims into clicking malicious links. Domain fraud is an old cybersecurity risk manifesting in new ways as cybercriminals take advantage of new top-level domains, privacy regulations, and social engineering tactics. More than three-quarters of businesses found “lookalike” domains posing as their brand, researchers at Proofpoint Digital Risk Protection discovered as part of the 2019 Domain Fraud Report. Nearly all (96%) found exact matches of their brand-owned domain with a different top-level domain (TLD); for example, “.net” tacked on the end of the URL instead of “.com.” Kevin Epstein, vice president of threat operations at Proofpoint says:

“This is a huge brand problem, both from a direct revenue standpoint and indirect loss standpoint. In a best-case scenario, a consumer may happen upon a blank website with a domain similar to yours. Worst-case scenario, they end up on a fake website, engage in a transaction, and their money and credit card information is sent to a cybercriminal. They’re angry at the attacker – and the brand. “I’d associate this brand, now, with something negative. Spoofed domains can tarnish a business’ reputation, resulting in customer loss and indirect financial impact.

• Report: Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining (Grist) For more than a decade, indigenous communities in Alaska have been fighting to prevent the mining of copper and gold at Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and a crucial source of sustenance. The proposed mine, blocked under the Obama administration but inching forward under the Trump administration, has been billed by proponents as necessary to meet the growing demand for copper, which is used in wind turbines, batteries, and solar panels. Similar stories are playing out in Norway, where the Sflmi community is fighting a copper mine, and in Papua New Guinea, where a company is proposing mining the seabed for gold and copper. Weighing those trade-offs – between supporting mining in environmentally sensitive areas and sourcing metals needed to power renewables – is likely to become more common if countries continue generating more renewable energy. See Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy (Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney). Pictured below, Freeport’s Chino copper mine in New Mexico and lithium mining in Salinas Grandes salt desert, Jujuy province, Argentina.

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• A Massive Freshwater Sea Is Buried Beneath the Atlantic Ocean (Live Science) A gigantic freshwater aquifer is hiding under the salty Atlantic Ocean, just off the northeastern coast of the United States, a new study finds. While the aquifer’s exact size is still a mystery, it may be the largest of its kind, taking up a region stretching from at least Massachusetts to southern New Jersey, or nearly 220 miles (350 kilometers). The area includes the coastlines of New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. This aquifer may contain about 670 cubic miles (2,800 cubic kilometers) of slightly salty water. This water isn’t young, either. The researchers said they suspect that much of it is from the last ice age.

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