1/9. There are many problems with this rule. Pruitt/Wheeler threw out EPA's own established procedures to short-circuit the science review: changes to the review process since 2017 undermined its quality, credibility, and integrity.

🚨🇬🇧🇪🇺💄👠👗💅🏻🕺💃🇪🇺🇬🇧🚨
UK’s £35bn fashion industry warns of “decimation” from #brexit - big names sign open letter to @BorisJohnson urging action. Many of 50,000 SMEs on the rack due to VAT, customs and work permit issues. Stay with me/1


You can read the full text of the letter here, co-ordinated by Fashion Round Table @FashionRoundTab, but tl;dr it says that #Brexit has left a "gaping hole" in an industry that relies of free movement of professionals. It's a familiar cry /2



@FashionRoundTab The industry, already whacked by #COVID19, is now discovering that cross-border sales are a horror (VAT, Customs, long delays) and models, stylists, photographers that used to blat around Europe can't any more. They need permits, for themselves, for their gear /3

It is on one level amazing that this is only just fully dawning - as the musician industry found out recently - but fashion is not just big names and big companies. It's actually a mountain of small companies and sole traders often that feed into a huge (£35bn) industry /4

I've written about fashion models issue before (they need tier-5 sponsorship visas) and how that will erode London's status as a hub, but this goes so much wider than this - hence the #dontmakefashionhistory campaign - and comes down the lack of a mobility chapter in the deal /5

The US election news has largely overshadowed a seismic moment in global finance: Ant, a fintech company that spun out of Alibaba/Alipay, was scheduled to have the world's largest IPO, topping even Aramco, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

Then Chinese regulators canceled it.

1/

As @yvessmith writes in her excellent @nakedcapitalism breakdown, the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot

To understand it, you need to understand the difference between the Chinese and American "money story." In the US, there is widespread, unquestioning faith in the fairytale that money predates the state and is separate from it.

3/

In this story, people come together to trade but are plagued by disparate goods: if I want to pay for your chickens with a cow, how do you make change? They spontaneously decide that something (gold?) is money and price their cows and chicks in it.

4/

Then, governments come along tax our gold away, and then to add insult to injury, governments abandon gold and insist that paper is as good as gold, print too much of it and crash the economy!

This probably sounds familiar to you, but it's just not true.

5/

My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
1/n

But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.

Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.

When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).

So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.

Today’s GDP release, and in particular how the economy has adapted, a thread.👇

After 6 months of growth, the economy started shrinking again in November as tighter restrictions were in place. (Though there were variations across Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.) (1/n)

The economy shrank by 2.6% in November. In normal times this would be a significant downturn, but it is much smaller than the falls seen with the first restrictions in the spring: April GDP fell by around 20%. In that sense it is good news. But why the smaller fall? (2/n)

Firstly, some industries remain very depressed. Airlines (air transport in the chart) for example, were operating at very low levels in October so there wasn’t much further for their output to fall. This is different from the picture in Mar/Apr. (3/n)

The same is true, though perhaps less pronounced, for bars/restaurants and other parts of the service sector. (4/n)

It's out! The @EU_Commission winter economic forecast for 2021 📊
🇪🇸 +5.6% GDP
🇫🇷 +5.5% GDP
🇭🇷 +5.6% GDP
🇸🇮 +4.7% GDP
🇲🇹 +4.5% GDP
🇵🇹 +4.1% GDP
🇸🇰 +4.0% GDP
🇭🇺 +4.0% GDP
🇧🇪 +3.9% GDP
🇷🇴 +3.8% GDP
💶 +3.8% GDP
🇪🇺 +3.7% GDP
🇬🇷 +3.5% GDP
🇱🇻 +3.5% GDP
🇮🇪 +3.4% GDP
🇮🇹 +3.2% GDP

🇩🇪 +3.2% GDP
🇨🇾 +3.2% GDP
🇱🇺 +3.2% GDP
🇨🇿 +3.2% GDP
🇵🇱 +3.1% GDP
🇩🇰 +2.9% GDP
🇫🇮 +2.8% GDP
🇧🇬 +2.7% GDP
🇸🇪 +2.7% GDP
🇪🇪 +2.6% GDP
🇱🇹 +2.2% GDP
🇦🇹 +2.0% GDP
🇳🇱 +1.8% GDP

Vs📈 2020:

🇪🇸 -11.0% GDP
🇬🇷 -10.0% GDP
🇲🇹 - 9.0% GDP
🇭🇷 - 8.9% GDP
🇮🇹 - 8.8% GDP
🇫🇷 - 8.3% GDP
🇵🇹 - 7.6% GDP
🇦🇹 - 7.4% GDP
💶 - 6.8% GDP
🇪🇺 - 6.3% GDP
🇧🇪 - 6.2% GDP
🇸🇮 - 6.2% GDP
🇸🇰 - 5.9% GDP
🇨🇾 - 5.8% GDP
🇨🇿 - 5.7% GDP
🇭🇺 - 5.3% GDP
🇩🇪 - 5.0% GDP
🇷🇴 - 5.0% GDP
🇧🇬 - 4.9% GDP

🇳🇱 - 4.1% GDP
🇱🇻 - 3.5% GDP
🇩🇰 - 3.5% GDP
🇱🇺 - 3.1% GDP
🇫🇮 - 3.1% GDP
🇮🇪 - 3.0% GDP
🇪🇪 - 2.9% GDP
🇸🇪 - 2.9% GDP
🇵🇱 - 2.8% GDP
🇱🇹 - 0.9% GDP

Commissioner @PaoloGentiloni says the forecast is based on the assumption that restrictive measures to contain the #coronavirus will be eased in the second quarter of 2021.