It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, September 18, 2022
WHO OWNS THE U$A
China raises holdings of Treasuries in July,
Japan cuts holdings -Treasury data
NEW YORK (Reuters) - China increased its holdings of Treasuries in July for the first time in eight months, while Japan reduced its U.S. government debt load, data from the U.S. Treasury department showed on Friday.
China's stash of Treasuries rose to $970 billion in July, from $967.8 billion in June, which was the lowest since May 2010 when it had $843.7 billion.
Japan, on the other hand, reduced its Treasury debt holdings to $1.234 trillion in July from $1.236 trillion the previous month. Japan remains the largest non-U.S. holder of Treasuries.
The fall in Japan's holdings was more or less in line with moves in the currency market. The yen firmed in July against the greenback, ending the month at 131.6 yen per dollar, from 135.22 yen at the beginning.
The yen's steep fall against a resurgent dollar this year has raised the prospect of Japan intervening in the market to boost the Japanese currency. Since the beginning of 2022, the yen has fallen 19.5% versus the dollar.
Overall, foreign holdings of Treasuries rose to $7.501 trillion in July, from 7.430 trillion in June.
On a transaction basis, U.S. Treasuries saw net foreign inflows of $23.12 billion in July, down from $58.9 billion the previous month. U.S. Treasuries have posted foreign inflows for a third straight month.
The inflows generally tracked price action in the Treasuries market. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield started July at 2.904%, and ended the month at 2.642%.
In other asset classes, foreigners sold U.S. equities in July for a seventh straight month amounting to $60.32 billion, from outflows of $25.36 billion in June. July's outflow was the largest since March.
U.S. corporate bonds posted inflows in July of $8.78 billion, slightly down from $13.99 billion in June. Foreigners were net buyers of U.S. corporate bonds for seven straight months.
The Treasury data also showed U.S. residents once again sold their holdings of long-term foreign securities, with net sales of $27.2 billion, from sales of $50.5 billion in June.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)
Wall Street Rush Into Single-Stock ETFs Takes Risky Foreign Turn
Elaine Chen
(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street watchdogs already concerned about the risks of single-stock ETFs won’t like what’s coming next: funds offering exposure to individual foreign shares unbound by US listing standards.
Issuers have filed plans for at least 129 ETFs targeting non-US companies in the past month, most of which don’t have depository receipts trading on American exchanges. That generally means the underlying firms don’t have to meet the same financial reporting standards as a US-listed business.
It raises the prospect of American investors gaining easy access to foreign companies whose finances may not be fully transparent -- putting people at risk of making ill-informed trades.
“It seems problematic to allow exchange trading on products that contain nothing but unvarnished exposure to companies that can’t normally be traded on those exchanges,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. The US tends to have more stringent rules than other countries, and those standards “are designed to ensure that companies offer adequate disclosure of a company’s profits, losses and risks,” he said.
The proposed funds are still under review, meaning the US Securities and Exchange Commission could yet block them. However, it’s unclear whether that will happen. Regulators were vocally unhappy with the very idea of single-stock exchange-traded funds, but didn’t prevent the launch of the first products in July. Since then, about two-dozen have debuted.
The SEC declined to comment.
Big Names
The planned funds come from three issuers -- Roundhill Investments, Kelly Intelligence and Tema Global Ltd. -- and mostly target well-known large-cap names like Samsung Electronics Co., Saudi Aramco and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
Will Hershey, CEO of Roundhill, said the proposed ETFs make sense for investors since such large companies have robust investor relations and are already held by many thematic or country-specific funds. He noted that institutional investors with prime brokerage relationships are already able to invest in them -- the ETFs would simply expand access to retail investors.
Kevin Kelly, CEO of Kelly Intelligence, said the new products “can be helpful capital market tools for US investors.”
At this stage, only Tema has filed plans that go beyond large-cap names. It has proposed products that track several smaller-cap companies based in India and Indonesia like Zomato Ltd., Marico Ltd. and Bank Jago. The firm is also focusing on some Chinese companies that already have receipts listed in the US, such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Baidu Inc.
Those names are among the roughly 200 Chinese companies that currently face the prospect of being delisted if they don’t allow American regulators to fully review their audits. Tema may be planning the funds in anticipation that the companies’ receipts will be removed from exchanges, said Athanasios Psarofagis, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst.
Maurits Pot, portfolio manager of the Tema products, declined to comment.
‘Particular Risk’
Facing an increasingly saturated ETF market, issuers have been rushing to launch single-stock products since the first breakthrough funds arrived in July. That batch delivered leveraged or inverse exposure on the daily performance of several major US companies.
They were greeted with warnings from SEC officials. Chair Gary Gensler said the ETFs “present particular risk,” while Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw cautioned investment advisors against recommending them to retail traders. Yet -- presumably because the funds didn’t break any rules -- they were able to list.
It’s unclear if the outcome will be the same for the proposed ETFs, which provide one-to-one exposure to foreign companies through swaps.
Regulators “would be concerned about whether there was sufficient disclosure about the underlying company to US investors,” said Chris Schell, a capital markets lawyer and partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. “The SEC would review any ETF like that quite carefully.”
Sosnick of Interactive Brokers said even though the risks of ETFs that track well-known, large-cap companies aren’t likely to be high, his concern is that allowing the products would pave the way for funds tracking smaller, more opaque companies.
“It will be interesting to see how the SEC staff responds to the volume of filings,” said Aisha Hunt, a lawyer specializing in ETFs and principal of Kelley Hunt. “I would think that the staff would contemplate to what extent other floodgates might be opened with certain other types of exposure.”
SEC, Ripple Call for Immediate Ruling in Suit Over Whether XRP Sales Violated Securities Laws
Nikhilesh De
Sun, September 18, 2022
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs each want a federal judge to rule either that the crypto company affiliated with the XRP cryptocurrency violated federal securities laws or otherwise dismiss the lawsuit without requiring a lengthy trial.
The SEC and Ripple both filed motions for summary judgment in the Southern District of New York, asking District Judge Analisa Torres to make a ruling based on the arguments filed in accompanying documents. The documents were posted to a federal court database Friday.
The SEC sued Ripple Labs, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chairman Chris Larsen in December 2020 (a day before former SEC Chair Jay Clayton stepped down from the role) on allegations that it had raised over $1.3 billion by selling XRP in unregistered securities transactions. Ripple maintained that XRP sales and trading did not meet the tenets of the Howey Test, a Supreme Court case that has acted as a way to determine whether something is a security for the last several decades.
The parties have filed various discovery motions over the past two years, without really litigating the actual underlying issue – whether Ripple violated securities law by selling XRP. The motions for summary judgment mean the parties are asking the court to actually decide whether either the SEC or Ripple has provided enough to prove one way or another whether there was a violation.
The SEC argued, among other things, that various statements by Ripple's executives demonstrate that Ripple sold XRP, and XRP investors bought the cryptocurrency with the belief that their holdings would spike in value over time.
"Ripple publicly touted the various steps it was taking and would take to find a 'use' for XRP and to protect the integrity and liquidity of the XRP markets," the SEC said in its filing.
For its part, one of Ripple's arguments was that there was no contract between the company and XRP investors, and that there was no common enterprise, one of the requirements under Howey.
Many XRP holders buying through exchanges wouldn't have known who they were purchasing the tokens from, the company's filing said.
"Even if the SEC were to engage in a belated, post-discovery transaction-by-transaction analysis to identify XRP offers and sales with contracts, its claim would still fail as a matter of law. Not one of those contracts granted post-sale rights to recipients as against Ripple or imposed post-sale obligations on Ripple to act for the benefit of those recipients," the filing said.
DIRTY CUBICLES, SICK TECHIES
Almost 100 Facebook janitors laid off as Silicon Valley service-worker cuts continue
The number of job cuts was actually supposed to be closer to 120, but about 30 janitors are being placed elsewhere, according to workers who spoke with MarketWatch as well as the union that represents them, SEIU United Service Workers West.
Janitors at Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., and the company’s other offices in the Bay Area, were affected. According to a roster of workers seen by MarketWatch, about 193 janitors and other service workers were retained by SBM, the vendor that directly employs them.
The terminations come after the janitors and other service workers at Meta kept their jobs through the first two-plus years of the COVID-19 pandemic, even when the company closed its campuses during shelter-in-place lockdowns. Meta, along with other big Silicon Valley employers such as Alphabet Inc. Apple Inc. and Intel Corp. touted their commitment to keeping their service workers employed at the time.
But now, as hybrid or remote work become a permanent plan for some companies — and as layoffs hit a range of industries — Big Tech companies are looking to cut costs. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has warned of tough economic times ahead, and he’s not alone. At Meta, that means engineers are bracing for job cuts, and service workers are getting laid off. Before the janitors were laid off, about 40 bus drivers had lost their jobs on the company’s campuses in the past several months, according to a Teamsters union official.
Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton denied that the company asked for job cuts in its janitorial ranks, and as recently as August said the company was not aware of any pending job cuts by its vendor partners.
But David Huerta, president of SEIU United Service Workers West, the union that represents the janitors, told MarketWatch that Meta is “very well-informed about all of this” and that “it’s not true that they don’t have control over this.”
Meta relies on vendors to directly employ janitors, security guards, shuttle drivers and more. The company switched janitorial providers in July, about a year after MarketWatch reported that its previous vendor, ABM Industries Inc. had changed the amount of vacation that some janitors had been receiving, which Facebook representatives said they were unaware of at the time. SBM Management Services took over the janitorial contract, and Huerta said both Meta and SBM “made commitments” that no one would be laid off back then.
Asked for further comment, a Meta spokesman referred MarketWatch to SBM, which has not returned repeated requests since early August for comment.
Raquel Avalos, who had worked as a janitor at Meta for three years, said she was told she would be given a job at a Google campus that would’ve paid her a little bit more than her hourly wage at Meta, which was $20.50.
“It was a dollar and something more,” she said. “That was a win-win for me. I was excited.”
Then the single mother of four was told she would be out of a job after all.
“I can’t afford not to have a job,” Avalos said, adding that she was ready to take whatever she was offered, and planned to also look for a part-time job to make ends meet. “I pay for a two-bedroom apartment by myself.”
Like Avalos, another janitor at Meta who got laid off described the past couple of months of uncertainty about their jobs as stressful. Erick Miranda said that before he finally lost his job this week, he had to take some days off to deal with the physical and mental effects of being so worried about whether he would keep his job.
Miranda, who worked at Meta for four years, said he had headaches, as well as pain in his neck, back, shoulder and arms. He had to seek medical care.
“My nervous system is all tense due to all the worries this situation carries,” he said.
Now he plans to apply for unemployment benefits and look for a new job, he said. He has a wife, who’s also unemployed, and his 87-year-old father to support.
As for the janitors who kept their jobs at Meta, they’re worried about heavier workloads because of the 40% reduction in their workforce. One janitor who didn’t want to be named said she and others are already being asked to work night shifts and overtime. She also said that in certain buildings that used to have five janitors assigned to them, there are now only two.
Japan – More than four million evacuated in Japan due to the arrival of an «unprecedented» typhoon.
Daniel Stewart - 7h ago
At least 4,030,000 people from 1.94 million households have been ordered to evacuate on the Japanese island of Kiushu, in the southwest of the archipelago, due to the arrival of typhoon 'Nanmadol', an "unprecedented" storm, according to Japanese authorities.
Local authorities have issued a Level 5 alert, the highest on the Japanese disaster alert scale, in Kiushu as well as in the prefectures of Kagoshima and Miyazaki, according to Japanese public television, NHK. In the latter two areas, more than 110,000 people in 55,000 households have been alerted.
Japan's meteorological agency has issued a special warning on Sunday for an "unprecedented" typhoon because of the imminent danger of flooding, river flooding and landslides.
The typhoon, which is expected to make landfall on Monday and has been named 'Nanmadol', could bring "unprecedented storms, high waves and storm surges," the Japanese weather agency said in a statement.
"Be very cautious of storms, high waves and storm surges. In addition, the south and north of (the island of) Kiushu are likely to experience record torrential rainfall, so be on the lookout for landslides, lowland flooding, rising rivers and flooding," Japanese authorities have warned.
Specifically, on the island of Kiushu, rainfall records from 400 to 600 millimeters are expected in just 24 hours. In the prefectures of Tokai and Kinki --both in central Japan-- rainfall of 300 and 250 millimeters, respectively, is expected.
However, although the typhoon, the 14th this season in the region, had weakened by 3 a.m. (local time) Sunday, there is still the possibility of gusts of 250 kilometers per hour, the Kyodo agency reported. Winds of up to 156 kilometers per hour have already been recorded on the island of Yakushima.
Many flights have been canceled in the southern part of Japan, as have bullet train services between Hiroshima City Station and Hakata. The frequency of trains between Hiroshima and Osaka in central Japan has also been reduced.
The Catholic Church is increasingly diverse – and so are its controversies
Mathew Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross Tue, September 13, 2022 German Bishop Georg Bätzing talks with members of various Catholic youth organizations holding up umbrellas reading "Consecration for All" and "Jesus had two fathers." Sebastian Gollnow/Picture Alliance via Getty Images
There is a lot of talk about “synodality” in the Catholic church these days. Synodality refers to a process in which bishops and priests consult with lay Catholics about issues in the church.
In 2021, Pope Francis called for the “Synod on Synodality,” a worldwide discussion of issues that impact the church, which will culminate with a bishops’ meeting in Rome. A final report is scheduled for October 2023.
The Catholic Church in Germany has also moved forward with a national “synodal path” to restore trust after its own sexual abuse scandal.
The German synodal path has been controversial. On Sept. 8, 2022, a minority of German bishops blocked a motion to redefine Catholic teaching on homosexuality, bisexuality, gender identity and masturbation. In response, some proponents of these liberalizations warned they would “take it to Rome.”
Church leaders around the world and in the Vatican have closely watched the German meetings. There has been sharp debate over calls by German Catholics for priests to ordain women and bless same-sex unions. These proposals have been embraced by some German church bishops, but criticized by the Vatican as well as by an international group of 74 bishops.
As a scholar of global Catholicism, I believe this controversy reflects much wider tensions within Catholicism. In 1910, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics lived in Europe. Today, just one in four do. The church’s numbers have grown most quickly in Africa and Asia. As more power shifts to the global south, the church sometimes struggles to chart a path forward for all regions, each of which has its own distinct perspectives.
The German meeting spotlights particularly difficult topics about sexuality and women’s roles, where some Catholics in Europe, North America and Australia clash with Catholics elsewhere. Continental divides
The Catholic Church is often assumed to look and feel the same everywhere. But Catholicism is culturally quite diverse.
The most public disagreement involves African Catholics and those in the United States and Europe. For example, Ghanaian Catholic bishops have criticized advocates for LGBTQ rights for imposing “their so-called values and beliefs.” Other African bishops have said they feel betrayed by liberal sentiments in European Catholicism, such as the push to allow Holy Communion for divorced church members.
A bishop blesses worshippers during an early morning mass at
Polygamy continues to be a pressing issue in some regions of Africa. While Catholic doctrine prohibits polygamy, polygamous unions are still common in many countries with significant Catholic communities.
Tribalism also remains a challenge. For example, a Nigerian priest published a social media video asserting the superiority of the Igbo tribe. In rejecting such attitudes, other African priests have emphasized that African Catholics should draw on the philosophy of “ubuntu” that affirms collective belonging to humanity. Looking East
In Japan, for example, where Catholics make up less than 1% of the population, the main dilemma is how Catholics can maintain their community identity. In the Catholic-majority Philippines, recent meetings for the Synod on Synodality have focused on how poverty and corruption impact the Catholic community and the nation as a whole.
In India, where 20 million Catholics live, the Dalit Catholic community is especially important. Dalit means “oppressed” or “crushed” and refers to the marginalized groups once known as India’s “untouchables.” It was only recently that a Dalit, Anthony Poola of Hyderabad, was named a cardinal, even though Dalits have long made up a majority of India’s Catholics. Caste discrimination in the church is a reality that Dalit Catholics have joined together to protest.
In parts of Oceania, climate change is an existential concern. The spread of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea remains an important issue as well.
Stronghold no longer?
Latin America is home to almost 40% of the world’s Catholics. But the rise of Protestantism has concerned many priests and laity. Many new Protestants in Latin America believe that evangelical and Pentecostal communities are more sensitive to their needs, prompting soul-searching for Catholics.
Another crucial question in Latin America is whether to ordain married men in regions where priests are scarce, like the Amazon. The Catholic church in Latin America still struggles with its colonial past and calls to apologize for that violent history. This legacy makes it particularly important to hear the voices of Indigenous peoples.
It would be a mistake to see this “walking together” from an exclusively Western perspective. The debate in Germany reflects how ideologically divided Catholicism has become in the Western world alone. And it is not as though churches elsewhere are simply areas of potential problems or disagreements; their faith and rich theological traditions are an important resource for Catholics worldwide.
Still, given the cultural diversity of Catholicism, there are many potential flash points as the Synod on Synodality moves forward: poverty, adapting to local culture, sexuality and gender, church governance and the continuing sexual abuse crisis – just to name a few.
This has left some commentators wondering if anything meaningful can be discussed or achieved. In my view, whether Synod conversations turn into controversies will ultimately depend on how Catholics see themselves as part of a church that is truly global.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/cngcoins.com/ Filipovic et al.
In 1054, the people of Earth were treated to an uncommon sight. A strange light exploded and lit up the sky. For no fewer than 23 days the explosion—caused by a star running out of fuel and blowing up—was visible in the sky. For several hundred nights after the event the supernova remained visible in the sky. Stargazers around the world commented on the extraordinary celestial event, but Europe fell strangely silent. As far as contemporary historians were concerned, it never happened. Some have speculated that it was deliberately erased from history for religious reasons. But perhaps some hint of the censored event slipped through the cracks. A team of scholars claim to have discovered evidence of the mysterious event hidden in the symbols on a limited-edition gold coin.
The supernova event known as SN 1054 made proverbial headlines around the world. The first naked-eye sighting during the daytime was recorded on July 4, 1054, in East Asia. By mid-August the brightness of the explosion began to sharply decline, with the last nighttime sighting recorded on April 6, 1056. Astronomers in China, Korean, and Japan commented on the star and scholars have connected Native American paintings from Arizona, an Anasazi petroglyph from New Mexico, and Aboriginal oral traditions to the event.
But in Europe, most agree, the archival evidence is negligible. The celebrated astrologer Ibn Butlan, who was in Constantinople during the explosion, only reported it once he had left his well-compensated position and returned to Cairo. Part of the reason for Europe’s silence on this event, scholars have speculated, was the theological problems that astrology and the star represents. Europe was not always silent on astrological events—SN 1006 was recorded in numerous documents—but clearly there was something different about this potential portent.
Perhaps the solution lies in the complicated political and religious situation of the time. July 1054 was a busy time for European Christians. The church was torn apart by the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Churches (what are, today, known as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches). The schism, which was centuries in the making, is usually dated to July 16, 1054, when three papal legates excommunicated the Eastern Patriarch Michael Cerularius. The timing of the excommunication corresponds to the period when the supernova would have been most visible in the morning sky.
In a recently published article in the European Journal of Science and Theology, and reported on by Livescience, an international team of scholars examined a set of small coins minted during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX. Most of the coins show the head of the emperor accompanied by a single bright star, but one set shows him flanked by two. The emperor’s head they argue, represents the sun. The eastern star is a reference to Venus (or the Morning Star) and the second star is a cipher for the supernova. Going further, they suggest that subsequent minting of this two-starred limited-edition coin may actually show the star’s light waning over time.
The study’s authors explore the possibility that the double-starred coin represents a cryptic interpretation on the Great Schism. Perhaps, they suggest, “the eastern star represents the stable and well-known Venus and the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the western star represents the short-lived ‘new star’ and the ‘fading’ Western Catholic church.” That’s a strong message that would not have gone over well with Church leaders in the West. There was, thus, a need for discretion. While, as Collins, Claspy, and Martin noted in an earlier study, “this [kind of] argument is largely circumstantial, it does provide a basis for understanding the lack of subsequent reference to the supernova of A.D. 1054 in the largely clerical European literature” of the time.
There are other explanations for the iconography on the coins. In the eastern part of the Roman empire there was a long tradition that placed stars on either side of the emperor’s image. As such, it’s possible that the stars have nothing to do with the supernova. But it’s not necessary to choose between these two options. It’s possible that those responsible for minting the coins found an acceptable way to articulate their interest in the celestial event. By utilizing traditional iconography the coin-maker may have struck upon a “hidden way of commemorating the appearance of SN 1054.”
While ciphers and hidden symbols may sound like the stuff of conspiracy theories, adapting the dominant cultural script is one way in which people could express themselves and push back against structures of power without putting themselves at risk. Because they are shaped by cultural conventions, these acts of self-expression could fly under the radar. Take, for example, the rebranding of the sacred mescaline containing plant huachuma with the more religious name “San Pedro.” The psychoactive cactus, which was used in Moche and Chavin indigenous culture, was renamed for the Roman Catholic Saint to make the use of the plant more acceptable to ecclesiastical authorities. The name also makes a veiled cryptic reference to Peter’s role as the holder of the keys of heaven and the plants psychoactive properties.
Alternatively, a late fifth- or early sixth-century baptistery in Ravenna, Italy, which depicts a heretical Jesus. Known as the “Arian Baptistery,” the artwork in the mosaic shows a young, clean-shaven Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan. Many scholars maintain that this reflects the non-Trinitarian now-heretical views of the Arians, who saw Jesus as inferior to God-the-Father. Though the reference is subtle, the fact that the octagonal baptistery was commissioned by the Arian and Gothic King Theodoric the Great means that there is not much debate about the identification. Though Theodoric was both powerful and openly Arian, the gilded mosaic was not recrafted or censored later on. Like the renaming of the huachuma plant, it’s an example of how “unorthodox” practices or perspectives can hide in plain sight if they are presented in familiar terms.
Perhaps the small limited-edition coins of Constantine IX’s reign do a similar kind of work. A clever astronomer, artisanal worker, or both could have used the cipher to record an otherwise censored celestial event. If you believe that there are Freemason symbols hidden on U.S. currency then none of this should seem far-fetched.
Bill Gates: Technological innovation would help solve hunger
A man carries a sack of wheat flour imported from Turkey in the Hamar-Weyne market in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Thursday, May 26, 2022. Bill Gates urged world leaders not to give up on the goals they set to reduce hunger and poverty despite huge recent setbacks documented in a new report released Tuesday, Sept. 13 by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
(AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)
THALIA BEATY Mon, September 12, 2022
NEW YORK (AP) — Bill Gates says the global hunger crisis is so immense that food aid cannot fully address the problem. What’s also needed, Gates argues, are the kinds of innovations in farming technology that he has long funded to try to reverse the crisis documented in a report released Tuesday by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates points, in particular, to a breakthrough he calls “magic seeds," crops engineered to adapt to climate change and resist agricultural pests. The Gates Foundation on Tuesday also released a map that models how climate change will likely affect growing conditions for crops in various countries to highlight the urgent need for action.
In assigning technology a pre-eminent role in addressing the world’s food crisis, Gates puts himself at odds with critics who say his ideas conflict with worldwide efforts to protect the environment. They note that such seeds generally need pesticides and fossil fuel-based fertilizers to grow.
Critics also contend that Gates' approach doesn't address the urgency of the crisis. Developing “magic seeds” takes years and won’t immediately deliver relief to countries currently enduring widespread suffering because they rely on food imports or are experiencing historic droughts.
It’s a debate that could intensify international pressure to meet the shared goals for global prosperity and peace, known as the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, ahead of a 2030 deadline. The 17 goals include ending poverty and hunger, battling climate change, providing access to clean water, working toward gender equality and reducing economic inequality.
"It’s pretty bleak relative to our hopes for 2030,” Gates, 66, said in an interview with The Associated Press. He added, though, “I'm optimistic that we can get back on track.”
Gates pointed to the war in Ukraine and the pandemic as the main causes for the worsening hunger crisis. But his message to other donors and world leaders convening for the U.N. General Assembly this September is that food aid won't be enough.
“It’s good that people want to prevent their fellow human beings from starving when conflicts like Ukraine interrupt the food supply,” Gates writes in the new report. But the real problem, he says, is that many food insecure countries don’t produce enough of their own food — a problem sure to be exacerbated by the consequences of climate change.
“Temperature keeps going up," Gates said. "There is no way, without innovation, to come even close to feeding Africa. I mean, it just doesn’t work.”
As he has for more than 15 years, Gates called for investment in agricultural research, highlighting corn seeds that thrive at higher temperatures and in drier conditions than other varieties. Those seeds were developed under a program of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation to which the foundation has given $131 million since 2008.
Since then, the Gates Foundation has spent $1.5 billion on grants focused on agriculture in Africa, according to Candid, a nonprofit that researches philanthropic giving. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is by some measures the largest private foundation in the world and is best known for its work on global health, including vaccines. It began in its current form in 2000, after Gates left his CEO position at Microsoft, the tech giant he co-founded. Forbes estimates his net worth to be around $129 billion.
The foundation's spending on agricultural development is why Gates’ view on how countries should respond to food insecurity has taken on heightened importance in a year when a record 345 million people around the world are acutely hungry. The World Food Program said in July that tally represents an increase of 25% from before Russia invaded Ukraine in February and a 150% jump from before the pandemic struck in the spring of 2020.
In Ghana, field trials for four varieties of modified seeds began in 2013. But only this past summer has one been approved for commercialization, said Joeva Rock of the University of Cambridge. Activists there, she said, have asked whether those resources could have been better spent elsewhere.
“What would happen if those went into increasing funds to the national research centers in Ghana, to building roads, to building storage, to building silos or helping to build markets?” said Rock, who has written a book about food sovereignty in the country.
When asked, Gates acknowledged the importance of infrastructure like roads and other transportation systems.
“If you want your inputs like fertilizer to come in, if you want your output to go out, it’s just too expensive in Africa without that infrastructure,” he said, adding that building and maintaining roads is highly expensive.
Some researchers question the wisdom of pursuing the fundamental premise that Gates has embraced: Increasing agricultural production through the use of modified seeds along with fertilizers and pesticides. They point to the environmental footprint of industrial agriculture, including the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, the degradation of soil quality and the diminishing of biodiversity.
Alternatives could include agroecological interventions, like developing locally managed seed banks, composting systems to promote soil health and pesticide interventions that don’t rely on chemicals, experts said. Over time, those approaches can reduce the need for food aid and build more resilient farming systems, according to Rachel Bezner Kerr, a professor of global development at Cornell University.
Kerr, a lead author of the food chapter of the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change, said that while the panel doesn’t make recommendations, “overall, the kind of focus on a few technologies and reliance on fossil fuel-based inputs isn’t in line with ecosystem-based adaptation” or a biodiverse future.
Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, defends its approach warning that limiting access to fertilizers means farmers cannot increase their yields.
“Fertilizer is necessary. You simply cannot meet the overall productivity gains without it,” Suzman said, speaking on a call with reporters.
In his interview with the AP, Gates himself dismissed criticisms of the foundation’s emphasis on modified seeds.
“If there’s some non-innovation solution, you know, like singing ‘Kumbaya,’ I’ll put money behind it," Gates said. “But if you don’t have those seeds, the numbers just don’t work." He added, "If somebody says we’re ignoring some solution, I don’t think they’re looking at what we’re doing."
Another project the foundation has funded is the development of computer models that try to measure crop loss caused by disease or pests. The idea is to direct research and responses to where they are needed most.
“It’s not just, how do we get through this crisis and get back to normal? It’s, what does the future normal look like?” said Cambria Finegold, the director of digital development for CABI, an intergovernmental nonprofit that is developing the models.
Melinda French Gates, the other co-chair of the Gates Foundation, highlighted in a separate letter the halting progress toward gender equity worldwide. Since January, the foundation has expanded its board, adding six new members to help direct its work, a move that followed the announcement of the Gateses' divorce last summer.
French Gates has agreed to step down after two years if the two decided they could not continue to work together. French Gates, who also founded an investment organization called Pivotal Ventures, was not available for an interview.
Gates said he is lucky that his former wife has continued to put her time and energy into the foundation. In July, Gates said he would contribute $20 billion to the foundation in response to the significant setbacks caused by the pandemic, raising its endowment to approximately $70 billion.
Through his giving, investments and public speaking, Gates has held the spotlight in recent years, especially on the topics of vaccines and climate change. But he has also been the subject of conspiracy theories that play off his role as a developer of new technologies and his place among the highest echelons of the wealthy and powerful.
Gates said he does not spend time thinking about conspiracies and that his foundation’s work has nothing to do with his personal reputation.
“If you go into these countries, they’ve never heard of me or the foundation,” Gates said. “Maybe in the rich world somebody is reading some internet thing, but the people we care about have never, will never, and it’s not important that they ever know who I am.”
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Bill Gates says he’s taken the brunt of COVID conspiracy abuse because people don’t know Anthony Fauci outside the U.S.
Sophie Mellor
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Bill Gates through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent over $2 billion to strengthen the global response to the pandemic by making vaccines available to lower-income countries and funding the development of antivirals or immunotherapies.
But in the minds of a small sector of the population, the Microsoft founder, along with Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the U.S. President, did a lot more: They orchestrated the whole pandemic as a way of controlling the population.
“You don’t want to make fun of it. Although it’s the only way rationally to deal with it, it is pretty serious stuff,” Gates told the Guardianon Tuesday, as he addressed the COVID conspiracies surrounding him.
While the theories were founded in the U.S.—mainly by QAnon conspiracy theorists—and have engulfed both Gates’ and Fauci’s domestic work in the COVID-19 response, when the rumors spread to Europe, it was Gates who bore the brunt of the abuse due to his global status as Microsoft founder.
“It was quite a phenomenon; here in the U.S., it focused on myself and Tony Fauci, and internationally it was more just me because they didn’t know who Tony was—he really missed out on that!” Gates said.
“There have been a few cases where I’ve run into people in public where they are yelling at me that I’m putting chips into people and that’s kind of strange to see: Wow, those people really exist, it’s not just some robot sending out crazy messages."
Gates himself has mocked such claims, sarcastically tweeting that Microsoft “finally ran out of microchips” when the company retired its 27-year-old Internet Explorer browser. But the conspiracy theories have sinister undertones and dangerous repercussions in the form of vaccine hesitancy.
“I think it is starting to die down,” he said. “I hope so; it’s tragic if it made people more reluctant to trust vaccines or to wear a mask where they should have.”
Headwinds ahead
As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, the global stage is fraught with a new set of problems. The war in Ukraine has sent the price of food and fuel soaring, sending hundreds of millions into poverty.
And as countries in Europe look insularly to protect their own citizens from the rising cost of living, their commitment to international aid and climate action is threatened, according to Gates.
Speaking to the Financial Times, he warned the world is on track to miss almost all of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals its leaders committed to hit by 2030.
“This is the toughest set of challenges global development has faced,” Gates said, arguing that while the COVID-19 pandemic response has made navigating international aid more difficult, “the Ukraine war is even worse.”
“Absolutely, we’re feeling that pressure—just the Ukraine war alone, you want to spend more money on defense, you want to subsidize electricity, you want to fund refugees, you want to help with the acute food crisis."
Reason for optimism
Gates, though, remains optimistic despite the disheartening news engulfing the world.
“Failure is not inevitable,” he said.
“When we set the goals, we definitely did not expect something like the pandemic, it would be awful to turn away just because we’re getting bad grades due to unexpected setbacks."
The key is to keep the funding flowing.
Bill and Melinda Gates have committed another $20 billion to their foundation to continue fighting global problems. “In the face of all these bleak developments, the need to invest, to get the better tools, to get back on track, is very important.
“In the long run I still am an optimist, that the war will end, the innovation pipeline and the kind of progress we saw until the pandemic in reducing malnutrition, reducing child death and getting digital bank accounts for women, will return. We were making progress and we can again.”
Bill Gates says some people yell at him in public, accusing him of 'putting chips into people'
Britney Nguyen
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Bill Gates said he's run into people in public who yell at him for "putting chips into people."
He called the conspiracy theory "tragic" if it caused people to be hesitant of vaccines or masks.
Gates joked that he was targeted more than Anthony Fauci because he's more known internationally.
Bill Gates talked in a recent interview with The Guardian about being targeted by conspiracy theorists during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it's led to some people even approaching him in real life.
"There have been a few cases where I've run into people in public where they are yelling at me that I'm putting chips into people and that's kind of strange to see: 'Wow, those people really exist, it's not just some robot sending out crazy messages,'" Gates told the publication.
The billionaire said he thinks the conspiracy theory that he put microchips in the coronavirus vaccine is "starting to die down," but said "it's tragic if it made people more reluctant to trust vaccines or to wear a mask where they should have."
Conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines predate the coronavirus pandemic. The conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 vaccine is injecting a microchip connected to 5G mobile networks that can track people, started on 4plebs, a community-run channel on 4chan.
In June, when Microsoft shut down Internet Explorer, Gates quipped on Twitter that the service had to be shut down because Microsoft "ran out of microchips" from putting them in the coronavirus vaccine.
In his interview with The Guardian, Gates joked that Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president of the United States, "missed out" on most of the targeting because people around the world "didn't know who Tony was." In the US, the targeting mostly focused on both men.
Gates said he didn't want to make too much fun of the conspiracy theories around the vaccine because it's "pretty serious stuff."
"The innovations on how you get the truth have to be as interesting as the big lie — we face that in a number of domains, and I haven't seen as good a solution as I think we'd all like to see," he said.
