Новости за 10.03.2022

As gas prices climbed to over $4 per gallon in the United States and oil traded at highs of $130 per barrel this week amid war in Europe, a new report from the U.K.-based think tank Common Wealth finds that the top five oil and gas producers in the U.S. are getting a wildly good deal from the U.S. government: While they rake in massive profits, their tax burden remains shockingly low. Since the Paris Agreement was signed, top producers have, on average, gotten money back from the IRS. Thursday afternoon... Читать дальше...

In just under two weeks, the international community has imposed a dizzying array of international sanctions on Russia, following its military invasion of Ukraine. Prohibitions on banks and technology exports were followed by Russia’s removal from the SWIFT financial payments system; the seizure of personal fortunes from Russian oligarchs; and perhaps most significantly, a freeze on Russia’s access to tens of billions in foreign bank reserves. This week, the United States cut off oil and gas exports from Russia. Читать дальше...

People are still quitting their jobs in droves, and the Pew Charitable Trust had the bright idea to ask them why. Their answers suggest that management needs the labor movement to revive itself at least as much as workers do.

Ukraine has emerged as a global fault line over democracy. In invading his democratic neighbor, authoritarian dictator Vladimir Putin threw down the gauntlet for his kind. The symbolism of an autocrat violating the territorial sanctity and right to self-determination of a smaller, weaker neighbor forced democratic countries, which had previously seemed content to focus inward, into a tightening alliance. The global order is shifting as we speak.

There’s a moment in Our Country Friends, a 2021 novel by Gary Shteyngart, when all the paranoia, uncertainty, and disagreement comes to a blissful end. The central figure, a failing writer named Sasha, has returned to New York City with his friends and family after months at his compound upstate, where they tried to hide from Covid-19. Now summer is ending, his daughter’s school is set to reopen, and while they’re all still masking, the group’s bond is solid, the future comparatively bright. “At long last,” Shteyngart concludes... Читать дальше...

In June 2020, a few months after Covid-19 landed on America’s shores, a tech entrepreneur published an article in Forbes warning that pandemic conditions were leading to a dramatic rise in fraud and cybercrime. With much commerce, social life, and work moving online, she warned, scammers had more opportunities to extort innocent people. And with the advent of online payment networks and cryptocurrencies, it was easier than ever for criminals to steal and launder money from victims all over the world. Читать дальше...

In 2005, the historian John Lewis Gaddis proposed in these pages that the United States adapt its Cold War strategy to the “war on terror,” as it was then termed. Even though he recognized that stateless terrorists posed a very different kind of threat than the Soviet Union’s multinational empire did, he nonetheless strove to salvage a series of lessons. He was far from alone in drawing such analogies: In the decades since the Berlin Wall fell, foreign policy elites have looked back on the Cold War with longing. Читать дальше...