September 17 2024

1 U.S. Budget Deficit on Track to Hit $1.9 Trillion, Public Debt Nears $28 Trillion
2 Inflation Has Outpaced Wages Growth Since 2021
3 Moderna to Launch Melanoma Vaccine by 2025, Co-Developed with Merck
4 OpenAI acknowledges new models increase risk of misuse to create bioweapons
5 China Escalates South China Sea Tensions with Philippine Boats, Fears of U.S.-China Showdown Grow
9/17/2011 Occupy Wall Street begins

See the new Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 9a CST.

1 U.S. Budget Deficit on Track to Hit $1.9 Trillion, Public Debt Nears $28 Trillion

This year’s budget deficit is on track to top $1.9 trillion, or more than 6% of economic output, a threshold reached only around World War II, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. Publicly held federal debt—the sum of all deficits—just passed $28 trillion or almost 100% of GDP.  If Congress does nothing, the total debt will climb by another $22 trillion through 2034. Interest costs alone are poised to exceed annual defense spending. 

Article Source: WSJ

2 Inflation Has Outpaced Wages Growth Since 2021

Workers’ wages will take longer to recover from inflation than previously expected, as actual prices rose more than projected and worker compensation fell short of expectations so far this year. Pay will finally outpace pandemic-era inflation in the second quarter of 2025, a timeline that was pushed back from the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a recent Bankrate analysis of federal inflation figures and employee wages and salaries released Monday. Since January 2021, inflation has risen 20%, while wages increased 17.4% in the same period, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the second quarter of this year. While Bankrate had previously estimated that wages would finally catch up with inflation by the end of this year, a slowing job market has made that scenario less likely, the personal finance firm found.

Article Source: Quartz

3 Moderna to Launch Melanoma Vaccine by 2025, Co-Developed with Merck

U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna could have a vaccine to treat melanoma, a form of skin cancer, on the market as soon as next year, CEO Stephane Bancel told Nikkei on Wednesday. The company is co-developing a messenger RNA vaccine that targets cancer cells with U.S.-based Merck. The launch is targeted for 2027 under the company's basic plan but this can be moved forward, according to Bancel. "Phase 2 data is available. We have a factory that is almost finalized, and usually for cancer, those products are ready in six months versus 12 months. So that's why '25 is still possible," Bancel said.  He said the company is in discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for accelerated approval to sell the vaccine under certain conditions.

Article Source: asia.nikkei.com

4 OpenAI acknowledges new models increase risk of misuse to create bioweapons

See yesterday’s story #3

OpenAI’s latest models have “meaningfully” increased the risk that artificial intelligence will be misused to create biological weapons, the company has acknowledged. The San Francisco-based group announced its new models, known as o1, on Thursday, touting their new abilities to reason, solve hard maths problems and answer scientific research questions. These advances are seen as a crucial breakthrough in the effort to create artificial general intelligence — machines with human-level cognition. OpenAI’s system card, a tool to explain how the AI operates, said the new models had a “medium risk” for issues related to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons — the highest risk that OpenAI has ever given for its models. The company said it meant the technology has “meaningfully improved” the ability of experts to create bioweapons. AI software with more advanced capabilities, such as the ability to perform step-by-step reasoning, pose an increased risk of misuse in the hands of bad actors, according to experts.

Article Source: FT

5 China Escalates South China Sea Tensions with Philippine Boats, Fears of U.S.-China Showdown Grow

China’s coast guard ships have swarmed and collided with Philippine boats. They have doused Philippine vessels with powerful water cannons. Chinese crew members have slashed inflatable crafts, blared sirens and flashed high-powered lasers at Filipino troops. As China pushes to dominate the South China Sea, it is increasingly willing to use force to drive out the Philippines, a treaty ally of the United States. In recent months, China’s tactics have damaged Philippine boats and injured personnel, and raised fears of a superpower showdown in the strategic waterway. The encounters were not only becoming more frequent, but they were also taking place in a new location — Sabina Shoal, a resource-rich atoll close to the Philippine mainland. The two countries had in earlier months been facing off near another atoll in the disputed Spratly Islands, the Second Thomas Shoal, where Chinese ships regularly harass Philippine boats trying to resupply sailors stationed on a beached warship. Now, their feud has expanded. The Philippines wants to control Sabina Shoal, an unoccupied atoll inside its exclusive economic zone. Sabina Shoal, which lies just 86 miles west of the Philippine province of Palawan and over 600 miles from China, is near an area rich in oil deposits, and on routes Manila considers crucial for trade and security. China, which claims almost all of the South China Sea, says its tactics are needed to defend its sovereignty. Beijing has rejected a ruling by an international tribunal in 2016 that China’s sweeping claim to the waters had no legal basis.  

Ed note: I view the South China Sea as more likely to trigger a US-China crisis than Taiwan

Article Source: NYT

9/17/2011 Occupy Wall Street begins

Ed note: this was the first stirring of our current populist moment  

Your humble editor at Occupy Wall Street in a blazer in 2011

Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/federal-debt-deficit-trump-harris-5a0d30d2?st=HeVUPo&reflink=article_copyURL_share

2. https://qz.com/wage-growth-inflation-salary-jobs-labor-market-1851647780

3. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Pharmaceuticals/Moderna-to-launch-skin-cancer-vaccine-as-soon-as-2025-CEO

4. https://www.ft.com/content/37ba7236-2a64-4807-b1e1-7e21ee7d0914

5. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/15/world/asia/south-china-sea-philippines.html