Crooked Media - What A Day: Bank shot

I know, I know: The economy. Again.
 

• The World Economic Forum held its annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland last week, where all of the globe’s leading scary-rich people gathered to talk about what’s supposedly in store for the global economy (a.k.a. which demographics they’ve decided are wholly expendable). Their report, released on Sunday, estimated that employers will create 69 million new jobs by 2027 and eliminate 83 million, for a net loss of 14 million jobs, or two percent of the current global workforce. 
   

• There are several competing factors behind these projections. The ever-accelerating shift to renewable-energy systems will continue creating jobs at an impressive clip, but those effects will be offset by persistent inflation and slower economic growth in other sectors. Artificial-intelligence tools present a double-edged sword: Companies will need workers to help implement and manage the technology, but the proliferation of A.I. will also put an untold number of jobs at risk. According to these projections, there could be 26 million fewer administrative jobs by 2027. But the “Will workers be replaced by robots?” debate is as old as industrialization itself, and it’s important to remember that technology is not in the driver’s seat. Humans control technology, and any changes it makes to employing will reflect choices by those in power.
   

• Adding to global fears of rising unemployment is the knowledge that in the United States, Federal Reserve officials are on track to increase interest rates yet again at their meeting this week as part of the fastest rate-raising cycle in 40 years. How close we are to the end of the line for these staggering rate hikes is a matter of internal debate within the Fed. Should interest rates increase by another .25 percent, it would take the federal benchmark to a 16-year high, up from nearly-zero in March 2022.

Compounding the gloom hanging over the global economy? Honey, it’s the banks.
 

• Well, it’s a few banks in particular. Following its failure back in March, regulators officially seized First Republic Bank and sold its assets to JPMorgan Chase on Monday in order to limit federal losses from the largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. Major banking institutions like JP Morgan already enjoyed a boost after First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank’s failures, when droves of depositors panicked over the prospect of more mid-sized banks collapsing, then again last week when the public learned that First Republic saw more than $100 billion in outflows in the first quarter of this year.
   

• What we’ve known for months now based on the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, then the faltering of Credit Suisse in Europe, is that the ground is not stable. Former Goldman Sachs executive and Donald Trump’s NEC director Gary Cohn (so, you know, take the following with a grain of salt) said, “There will be other issues out there in the banking world,” and many experts see even tighter credit conditions ahead that will continue to weigh heavily on consumer spending, which comprises 68 percent of all economic activity. 

These developments will fit into a fuller context by week’s end. Between the Fed’s interest-rates decision, a highly-anticipated earnings report from Apple, and a new monthly employment report from the Labor Department, we might soon know whether the Davos plutocrats are on to something or (once again) talking out of their asses.

Fashion's biggest night is here, and just like every other year Anna Wintour is sure to make this year's Met Gala unforgettable. But did you know that before she was editor-in-chief of Vogue,  Anna Wintour ran the fashion section for a little known porn magazine called Viva in the 1970s? 

Check out Crooked's latest limited series podcast called STIFFED to learn about the rise and fall of Viva, the erotic magazine for women that rocked the publishing world in 1973 New York City. With a team of feminist writers and editors behind it and porn king publisher at the helm, were they always destined for failure? 

Find out now by listening to  STIFFED, available for free on your favorite podcast platform. 

Documents obtained by the Associated Press show that two hospitals that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a pregnant woman who was experiencing premature labor put her life in jeopardy, violating federal law. The documents stem from an unprecedented investigation by the federal government in the wake of last year’s Dobbs ruling and represent a shot across the bow of hospitals around the country as they struggle to reconcile barbaric state laws that ban or severely restrict abortions with the federal mandate that doctors must provide abortions to patients at severe health risk. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said of the case, “Fortunately, this patient survived, But she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place,” and promised to “investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority, in accordance with orders from the courts.” The case centers around a Missouri woman whose water broke early at 17 weeks of pregnancy, and even though doctors at both hospitals (in Missouri and Kansas) told her that the fetus would not survive and that she was at risk of developing a serious infection or losing her uterus, they would not terminate the pregnancy because a fetal heartbeat was still detectable. Ultimately, the woman was forced to travel to an abortion clinic in Illinois. This case echoes stories that have poured in from women across the country who have been turned away from hospitals for abortions, despite doctors telling them that continuing their toxic, unviable pregnancies untreated would put them at additional risk for infection, or could even be fatal.

Welp, a new estimate from the Treasury Department anticipates that the U.S. government could default on its loans “as early as June 1” unless Congress raises the debt ceiling. Thanks, Kevin McCarthy! Great stuff!

A new study based on a Chinese rover suggests that water may be more widespread and recently-available on Mars than previously thought. 

Federal Judge Greg Guidry has decided to recuse himself in the New Orleans Roman Catholic Church bankruptcy case after it was revealed that he has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church in a case involving nearly 500 victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy. 

State and federal authorities still have not captured a Texas man who killed five of his neighbors with an AR-15 style rifle, all of whom were Honduran immigrants. At this time, the killer is believed to be 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza. 

Florida’s Disney oversight board, a group hand-selected by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), is counter-suing Disney in state court, after Disney sued the state and accused the DeSantis government of illegally using its powers to punish the company for its vocal opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law, further escalating tensions between the two powerhouses. 

The Allied Pilots Association (APA), representing 15,000 American Airlines pilots, said on Monday that its members have approved a strike mandate ahead of the summer travel boom to put pressure on the airline for higher salaries and better working conditions. 

Film and television studios are running out the clock trying to avert a worker strike in the Writers Guild of America, which would be the first such action by the WGA in 15 years. Studios are making record profits and most writers are working at minimums and can’t afford even middle-class lives—seems pretty simple to me!

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton is sometimes referred to as “The Godfather of A.I.” because of his pioneering work in artificial intelligence. Back in 2012, Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created the technological foundation for the A.I. systems that have already begun revolutionizing the tech industry. But on Monday, he announced that he quit his job at Google, where he has worked for over a decade, so that he can freely voice his concerns about risks he sees in the technology. Like something out of a sci-fi novel, industry insiders believe releasing generative A.I. into the wild has already proven dangerous. A.I. as it exists currently can be used for misinformation.  It could soon pose a serious risk to a huge swaths of jobs, and some believe it could even pose a true risk to humanity down the line. In March, more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of new systems following OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT. Days later, current and former leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence released their own letter warning of the risks of A.I. Among them was Eric Horvitz, the chief scientific officer at Microsoft, which has already deployed OpenAI’s technology across a wide range of the company’s products. 

Following Hinton’s departure, Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean released a statement saying that the company remains “committed to a responsible approach to A.I.” and is “continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.” Dr. Hinton and his collaborators received the Alan Turing Award in 2018—a distinction often compared to the Nobel Prize in the computing world—for their work on “neural networks.” But now, Hinton says he regrets some of his life’s work, and believes that in the immediate future, A.I. will flood the internet with false photos, videos, and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” He believes global regulation is needed right away, and that the technology should not be scaled further until scientists understand whether or not they can control it. Since no for-profit industry has ever been successful in self-regulating, governments will have to step in before it’s too late. Okay happy Monday!

Let’s face it, we put our moms through a lot…There’s no way we're letting Mother’s Day slip by this year. We're thanking our moms with farm-fresh flowers from BOUQS.


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State-Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D-MT) sued on Monday in the hope of forcing Montana Republicans to allow her to return to the House floor after they silenced her and barred her from the chamber for criticizing their anti-trans legislation. 

Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), a former NFL player and civil-rights attorney, plans to run for Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).