Vox Sentences - The good and bad news on the economy

The GDP is up, but so is inflation — meaning interest rate hikes are coming; Western diplomats met with Taliban leadership to talk about Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes. 

Good news, bad news: The GDP and interest rate hikes

Graeme Jennings/Pool via Getty Images

• The US economy grew 1.7 percent adjusted for inflation during the fourth quarter of 2021, the Commerce Department announced Thursday. The full year showed a 5.7 percent expansion, the largest since 1984, coming on the heels of the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. [NYT / Talmon Joseph Smith]
• The nation’s gross domestic product, or GDP — the measure of goods and services produced by a country within a particular timeframe, like a year or a quarter — rose 6.9 percent over the previous time last year. But the increase was significantly driven by rising inventories and by personal consumption, which could trend downward as inflation continues to rise. [FT / Mamta Baker and Colby Smith]
• Consumption and overall demand have been driving inflation, which over the past year has reached levels not seen in decades as Americans with a bit of extra cash, thanks to aggressive government stimulus during the pandemic, and few opportunities to spend it on experiences like travel and entertainment, changed their consumption habits. But serious disruptions to the global supply chain, also pandemic-related, significantly decreased the supply of available goods, contributing to inflation. [NBC / Ben Popken]
• Inflation is certainly on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s list of priorities. On Wednesday, Powell reaffirmed the central bank’s commitment to ending its bond purchases from the government in March, and indicated that an interest rate hike would take place that same month, “assuming that the conditions are appropriate for doing so,” he said. While the Fed has been clear for months that there would be additional hikes throughout the year, how many raises there will be — and how large — hasn’t yet been decided. [Reuters / Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir]
• Powell did indicate that the first hike could come after the Fed’s two-day policy meeting on March 15-16. He also said that subsequent hikes could come faster than they have over the past decade. [WSJ / Nick Timiraos]
• One of the indicators that the Fed uses to time rate hikes, in addition to inflation measures.,is the labor market. Once the economy reaches maximum employment — essentially, low unemployment and a tight labor market — the central bank is inclined to raise interest rates. [Bloomberg / Olivia Rockeman and Reade Pickert]

Western diplomats meet with Taliban to discuss humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan

• Diplomats from the US, Italy, Norway, the EU, Germany, France, and the UK released a 10-point statement Thursday regarding relief for the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan following a meeting with Taliban leadership and civil society actors earlier this week. The statement doesn’t offer any specifics about funding but says that the nations involved are stepping up aid efforts. [Reuters]
• “The main problem today in Afghanistan is the lack of cash at all levels of the society,” Florian Seriex, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Vox in an email. "In recent months, thousands of people have lost their jobs and their source of income, and those who continue to work haven’t been paid in 4 or 5 months, including public servants who are running vital services, like health workers, teachers, employees in water and power stations.”
• One of the obstacles to getting humanitarian aid where it’s so desperately needed is US sanctions on members of the Taliban and its freeze on about $9.5 billion in Afghan currency reserves, since the US doesn’t recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government. While the Western diplomats’ statement reiterated that they don’t, either, it allows that there must be mechanisms to get crucial humanitarian aid to the millions of Afghan people in dire poverty. [US-Europe Joint Statement on Afghanistan]
• The statement also expressed serious concern about the state of education for girls, particularly secondary education, in Afghanistan. To try and incentivize the Taliban to allow girls to go to school, the diplomats plan to fund teachers’ salaries only in provinces where girls are educated, absent a pledge from the Taliban to allow girls across the country to attend school. [Guardian / Patrick Wintour]
• While humanitarian aid is critical to keep millions from starvation in the near term, it’s not the solution to Afghanistan’s crisis, Seriex told Vox. “What will be key in the future is how the international community will relax more or less the capacity of the cash to be injected into the economy, salaries to be paid in the public sector and the private sector, to be able to rely on a working and functioning banking system in order for the wheels of the economy to start turning again,” he said.

The graphic novel Maus, which tells the story of the Holocaust, has been banned in a Tennessee school district due to “inappropriate language” and nudity. [AP]

• Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will visit Turkey in March after decades of tension due to Turkey’s role in the Armenian genocide. [Reuters]
• The Department of Homeland Security announced the availability of 20,000 new H-2B temporary work visas for the first half of 2022. [DHS]
• Biden calls on Congress to immediately pass the Equal Rights Amendment as the House of Representatives announces a resolution on the measure, which was first drafted in 1923 by suffragists Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman. [The White House]

“They’re totally focused on some bad words that are in the book. I can’t believe the word ‘damn’ would get the book jettisoned out of the school on its own.”

[Maus author Art Spiegelman, reacting to the news that his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel had been banned from a school district in Tennessee]

Tiny wobbles and faint twinkles have led astronomers to discover nearly 5,000 new worlds. Here’s how. [YouTube]

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