Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

At past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever-changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy under high uncertainty. Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct.

The Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) overarching focus right now is to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal. Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them.

Conservatives on social media reacted to President Joe Biden’s recent divisive political speech, in which he referred to “MAGA Republicans” as a “threat” to “the very soul of this nation,” by sarcastically explaining how they are threats to the nation as well.

“I go to work. I work hard. I go to the gym. I hunt. I fish. I spend time with friends and family. I pay my taxes and don’t break the law. I play disc golf. I am a threat to the very soul of this nation,” one Twitter user wrote.

International travellers using Qantas face potential delays as baggage handlers prepare to walk off the job.

Ground handlers from Dnata, who are contracted to Qantas and other airlines, will walk off the job for 24 hours on Monday, September 12.

The industrial action was agreed to by Dnata workers on Friday with some 350 crew to strike.

It follows calls by the Transport Workers Union for Dnata to lift pay and conditions, including minimum guaranteed work hours.

Qantas sacked its own ground crew staff at the height of the COVID pandemic and moved to outsourcing roles to companies such as Dnata.

An airline spokeswoman said the negotiations were a matter for Dnata and the carrier had contingency plans in place to curb disruptions.

Former US president Barack Obama will need to get a bigger mantelpiece now that he has picked up an Emmy to go with his two Grammys.

Obama was named winner on Saturday of the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks.

The five-part show, which features national parks from around the globe, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground.

He was the biggest name in a category full of famous nominees for the award handed out at Saturday night’s Creative Arts Emmys, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough and Lupita Nyong’o.

Barack Obama is the second president to have an Emmy. Dwight D. Eisenhower was given a special Emmy Award in 1956.

The Greens are threatening to block the referendum on the ‘Voice’ which promises to give effect to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The Green’s spokesperson on Indigenous Affairs, Senator Lidia Thorpe has described the Voice as a ‘waste of money’ and a ‘wasted exercise’.

Instead the Greens want priority for a Truth and Justice Commission.

This could spell the end or the defeat of the referendum on the Voice.

Don’t the Greens ever learn?

BY JOHN MENADUE

We are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that led to the war in Ukraine. We’re organising alliances, building up weaponry, trash-talking China, having Speaker Pelosi fly to Taiwan, when the Chinese government said, “Please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions.” We say, “No, we do what we want,” and now send more arms. This is a recipe for yet another war. And to my mind, it’s terrifying.

A new database that Tufts is maintaining has just shown that there have been more than 100 military interventions by the United States since 1991. It’s really unbelievable.

More than six months into Russia-Ukraine war, peace seems increasingly out of reach. The United States, for its part, is continuing to send tens of billions of dollars to fund Ukrainian military spending—money that often circles back to the American weapons industry—without so much as a dissenting voice in Congress or U.S. corporate media, laments “Scheer Intelligence” host Robert Scheer. On American streets, there are few remnants of the anti-war movement that Scheer himself helped shape in the 1960s and 70s. 

The energy crisis, exacerbated in recent months by Washington’s anti-Russian sanctions policy, is perhaps the worst such crisis since 1973, when Arab countries imposed an oil embargo to protest Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It has affected all Western states by now. While the search for new energy sources and improvements to existing relatively environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity on an industrial scale continues, nuclear power plants remain something of a lifeline for many of the world’s leading states.

All of this has prompted countries to revisit the possibility of using nuclear energy to combat the energy crisis, to analyze the state of the nuclear fuel market and their own capabilities in this field.

BY Vladimir Danilov

It’s Back to the Future for U.S. Grand Strategy

By Angela Stent, author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

BACK TO THE FUTURE? GRAND STRATEGY???? THIS IS PROPAGANDA MALAISE AND CLICHE GALORE.....

Angela IS A FULL-ON PRODUCT OF THE US HEGEMONY. Her comments are in normal type, GUS'S COMMENTS ARE IN CAPS....

Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine ended the first phase of the post-Cold War era. 

The Warrior Games is a multi-sport event for wounded, injured or ill service personnel and veterans organized by the United States Department of Defense (DoD).

The Army hosted the games for the second time in 2022, August 19–28. 

In 1990, scientists from around the world published a report that spelled out that the climate was changing and that we — human beings — were the cause.

If we continued polluting, with business as usual …

"Emissions of greenhouse gases … will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 degree Celsius above the present value by 2025, and 3C before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady."

This is a story about a story that nobody else seems to think is a story.

When the story is about the Governor-General’s rather odd support of an $18 million charity, hot on the heels of the Governor-General’s rather odd silence at the time of Scott Morrison’s rather odd secret ministerial job collection, well, this old journalist finds it rather odd.

BY Michael Pascoe

What is with politicians and tanks and other armoured vehicles?

In 1988, Michael Dukakis doomed his already slim US presidential hopes by allowing himself to look ridiculous in a 68 tonne Abrams Main Battle Tank. Liz Truss, possibly the next Tory PM, was ridiculed for appearing in full military gig in Estonia. Kim Beazley (Bomber Beazley to colleagues) was often perched on military vehicles.

Scott Morrison, in between squeezing into Bathurst 500 cars, squeezed into a fighter jet and even Malcolm Turnbull was pictured in a Victorian-built armoured vehicle – albeit a tad uncomfortably – while dressed in an elegant suit rather than combat gear.

On Aug. 17 Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky ratified Law 5371, which removes rights for workers at small and medium-sized companies. It will be effective for as long as the country is under martial law — a qualification added at the last minute, under pressure from trade unions.

Under the new law, people who work for firms with up to 250 employees will now be covered by contracts they negotiate as individuals with their bosses, rather than the national labour code.

By ODR Team
openDemocracy

In practice, this means that around 70 percent of workers in Ukraine have been stripped of many labour protections.

The Ukraine war has generated great controversy, but of one point there can be no doubt, and Benjamin Abelow, a physician with a longstanding interest in public affairs, has properly emphasized this in his brief and excellent book. The policy of the United States toward the war, and more generally toward the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin, has been one of direct confrontation rather than peaceful accommodation.