Aurelia Butler

“Damage assessments are continuing in other areas, and additional areas may be designated for assistance after the assessments are fully completed,” the White House said in a statement ahead of Biden’s visit to FEMA headquarters later on Thursday for an updated briefing on the storm. The move allows access to federal grants to help affected residents and businessowners secure temporary housing, repair homes, get low-cost loans for uninsured property losses and otherwise recover, it said. It also allows local governments and other groups to share the costs of debris removal, according to the White House. The funds were designated for the counties of Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Hardee, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Pinellas and Sarasota. Biden is scheduled to visit the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters in Washington at noon (1700 GMT). FEMA’s chief on Thursday said damage from the Category 4 storm was “catastrophic.” More

MOSCOW/BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Russia said on Thursday leaks spewing gas into the sea from pipelines to Germany appeared to be the result of state-sponsored “terrorism”, as an EU official said the incident had fundamentally changed the nature of the conflict in Ukraine.The European Union is investigating the cause of the leaks in the Gazprom-led Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines under the Baltic Sea and has said it suspects sabotage.It remains unclear who might be behind any deliberate attack on the pipelines that Russia and European partners spent billions of dollars building.”This looks like an act of terrorism, possibly on a state level,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.”It is very difficult to imagine that such an act of a terrorism could have happen without the involvement of a state of some kind,” Peskov said. “This is a very dangerous situation which requires an urgent investigation.”U.S. news channel CNN, citing three sources, reported that European security officials had observed Russian navy support ships and submarines not far from the sites of the leaks.Asked to comment on the CNN report, Peskov said there had been a much larger NATO presence in the area.Russia has also said the leaks off the coasts of Denmark and Sweden occurred in territory that is “fully under the control” of U.S. intelligence agencies.EU leaders will discuss next week at a summit in Prague what the bloc has denounced as sabotage of the gas pipelines, an EU official said, as gas continued to spew into the Baltic Sea for a fourth day since leaks were first detected.”The attack on strategic infrastructure means that the strategic infrastructure in the entire EU has to be protected,” the EU official in Brussels said.”This changes fundamentally the nature of the conflict as we have seen it so far, just like the mobilisation … and the possible annexation,” the EU official said, referring to Russia’s mobilising of more troops for the war and expectations President Vladimir Putin will annex Ukrainian regions.Russia’s war with Ukraine and the resulting energy standoff between Moscow and Europe, which has left the EU scrambling to find alternative gas supplies, are set to dominate the EU summit on Oct. 7 in Prague.The European Union on Wednesday warned of a “robust and united response” should there be more attacks and stressed the need to protect its energy infrastructure, but EU officials have avoided pointing a figure directly at possible perpetrators.The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were not supplying gas to Europe when the leaks were first detected on Monday but still had gas in them. Russia had halted deliveries via Nord Stream 1, saying Western sanctions had hampered operations. Nord Stream 2 had not started commercial operations.Next week, EU leaders will discuss an eighth sanctions package on Russia which European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has proposed, including tighter trade restrictions, more blacklistings and an oil price cap for third countries.The EU official said he expected the 27-nation bloc to agree parts of the sanctions package before the Prague summit, such as the blacklisting of additional individuals and some of the trade restrictions with regard to steel and technology.Other topics such as the oil price cap or the sanctioning of banks may not be solved before the summit, he added.EU states need unanimity to impose sanctions and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has been a vocal critic, saying sanctions have “backfired”, driving up energy prices and dealing a blow to European economies.”Hungary has done a lot already to maintain European unity but if there are energy sanctions in the package, then we cannot and will not support it,” Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas told a briefing on Thursday. More

LONDON (Reuters) – Crypto companies were undeterred by initial failure to obtain licences to operate in Britain and were submitting new applications, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday.The FCA has been criticised by lawmakers and the crypto sector for being slow in processing licence applications and for rejecting swathes of applicants despite the UK government’s push to make London a global crypto hub.”It’s no surprise that I still see many crypto firms still seeking to get licences here in the UK even though some have been denied those licences at the first pass,” FCA executive director for competition and consumers Sheldon Mills told a City & Financial conference.”They know we have a good system of regulation and if they meet our standards that’s important for every jurisdiction that they seek to apply for around the world,” Mills said.”That is a benefit to the UK economy and UK financial service industry, and is good for competition, inward investment and growth.”Crypto firms are scrutinised by the FCA for their ability to stop their operations being used for money laundering or financing terrorism.In March, the FCA said that 90% of crypto firms seeking approval for their anti-money laundering controls have either withdrawn their applications or been refused because they could not meet the standards.Mills said 95 people have been hired to the watchdog’s authorisations team and the pending caseload has fallen by 40%.”Over time, we expect faster, better decisions will support us in bringing down the costs of the regulatory system,” Mills said.Jean-Marie Mognetti, chief executive of crypto asset manager CoinShares, said the company chose to list in European Union member state Sweden because Britain and the FCA were “not very keen” to see any crypto companies in London.Mognetti said the European Union’s new set of ‘MiCA’ rules for fully licensing crypto firms will put the EU at an advantage over Britain.”If you talk about attractiveness from a regulated activity [perspective], the fact that London is not part of MiCA and will not have passporting in Europe… is going to be a massive handicap,” Mognetti said.Under a draft law now before parliament, Britain will licence stablecoins, but leave the rest of the cryptoasset industry for a later date. More

The 2023 budget aims to consolidate fiscal positions after the deficit was allowed to stretch beyond a legally-mandated 3% ceiling in the last three years for emergency response to the pandemic. Indonesia’s economic growth and inflation targets for next year were set at 5.3% and 3.6%, respectively. Total revenues were approved at 2,463 trillion rupiah, slightly higher than proposed by the president last month at 2,443.6 trillion rupiah.Southeast Asia’s largest economy has been recording a trade surplus every month since May 2020, on the back of strong commodity exports and the government expects to end this year with growth of about 5%.Bank Danamon economist Irman Faiz said that spending and revenue targets were “realistic”, but inflation could be higher than 4% due to ongoing disruptions in global supply chains.Details of the approved 2023 budget: Budget assumptions 2023 budget 2022 budget outlook Economic growth (%) 5.3 5.1-5.4 Inflation (%) 3.6 4.0-4.8 10-year bond yields (%) 7.9 6.85-8.42 Rupiah exchange rate/$ 14,800 14,500-14,900 Indonesia crude $90 $95-$105 price/barrel Oil lifting (bpd) 660,000 625,000-630,000 Gas lifting (boepd) 1.100mln 956,000-964,000 (in trillion rupiah) 2023 budget 2022 budget Revenues 2,463 2,266.2 – Tax revenues 2,021.2 1,784 – Non-tax revenues 441.4 481.6 Expenditure 3,061.2 3,106.4 – Energy subsidies 211.98 208.9 Surplus/deficit -598.2 -840.2 – as of GDP -2.84 -4.5 Deficit financing 598.2 840.2 Debt issuance 696.3 943.7 ($1 = 15,250.0000 rupiah) More

The disdain for economic orthodoxy was dripping from Liz Truss’s lips in the first big interview of her campaign to become Conservative party leader. “We have had a consensus of the Treasury, of economists, with the Financial Times, with other outlets, peddling a particular type of economic policy for 20 years. It hasn’t delivered growth,” she said. This column is not a defence of the FT, but an explanation to the UK’s new prime minister of what economic orthodoxy is and what it is not. Having had a crash course in financial market punishment after the “mini” Budget last Friday, her new government might benefit from taking note. Despite accusations that economic orthodoxy is driven by a cosy cabal of the Davos-attending global elite, the truth is much more mundane. Economic orthodoxy is not ideological but simply the accumulated knowledge and experience of what tends to work best. It is not the slave of some defunct economist, but a constantly evolving body of thinking and experimenting in the real world. It is always open to challenge. There is no doubt that the orthodoxy can get things wrong. But it learns from its mistakes. Far from every element of the “Washington consensus” — the economic orthodoxy of the 1990s — survived the Asian financial crisis in the latter part of that decade. The lesson from 2010 to 2015, now accepted by the IMF, OECD and European Commission, is that there was a little too much focus on deficit reduction and austerity in the post-global financial crisis years. There should have been more leeway in light of rock-bottom interest rates and high unemployment. More recent evidence suggests there are nevertheless limits on economic stimulus with inflation constraints closer and harder than the orthodoxy imagined. The Biden administration has found that running a “high-pressure economy” was much riskier than the consensus believed. Compare this flexibility of thinking with recent bouts of economic populism tried in many countries and ask these questions. Was Greece better off under the Syriza government in 2015, which sought a crisis and the country’s near ejection from the euro, or with its strong recovery now? Is Brexit and the erection of trade barriers with the UK’s neighbours helping or harming the nation’s prosperity? Did Donald Trump’s tariffs cow Beijing into submission and make the US a great exporting nation?Economic populism suffers from all the diseases it falsely attributes to economic orthodoxy. It is rigid in its beliefs, highly ideological and unable to adapt as the facts change. It has an inability to consider trade-offs or unforeseen consequences of policy actions and that is why it performs so badly.Take the UK’s sorry performance in financial markets over the past week, with a tumbling currency, spiking government borrowing costs, households unable to secure mortgages and the near collapse of UK pension funds. When ministers are itching to smash the orthodoxy, would it not have been sensible for the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, to have considered whether people in financial markets are part of the economic orthodoxy? The fact that they are — because that way money has been shown to be better looked after — should have given him pause for thought before implementing unfunded tax cuts at a time of high inflation which were bound to stoke concerns. With a twin budget and current account deficit, the UK needs the global economic orthodoxy to keep lending it money. So it is not wise to denigrate its thinking, nor to sack the respected top Treasury civil servant nor to refuse to allow independent assessment of the public finances. In fact, the past week has shown the only problem with the economic orthodoxy is its name. Call it knowledge and experience [email protected] More