Brazil's size, the pain of long COVID, IG Farben's empire & how Storm Shadow actually worked.
Great links, reading and images from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
Hans Hartung, (Leipzig 1904 – Antibes 1989) Rayonnement, 1962 Source: Musei Vaticani
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Brazil has basically the same surface area as China or the United States
Migration and population growth/decline in the G7 2011-2021: dark blue net migration v. light blue population growth/decline
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The costs of long COVID - estimated for the UK
• While Long Covid remains inadequately understood, the evidence is clear on the adverse effects on people’s lives. The most recent ONS estimates from early March 2023 suggested that there were almost 2m people living with Long Covid in the UK, representing some 3% of the UK population. While diverse in its symptoms, around 80% of people reported Long Covid as affecting their ability to carry out day-today activities in at least some way. For those more severely affected, people have reported being unable to live alone without assistance and either a reduced ability to work or having to leave work altogether. The financial implications for individuals and families may be substantial. • Early hopes that Long Covid might prove to be short-lived have not been realised and at this point, Long Covid should be considered a long-term condition that requires investment in long-term solutions. UK government commitments to addressing Long Covid remain uncertain, with current funding in England of clinics for assessment and rehabilitation only recently extended to March 2025, with no commitment to longer-term support. • With Long Covid now established in the population and clearly affecting health and livelihoods, there are questions about what Long Covid means in the longer term for the UK economy. This report takes the available evidence to examine future scenarios of Long Covid to 2030, considering trends such as future prevalence, effects on the ability to work and the costs of Long Covid treatment. • Using our E3ME macroeconomic model to simulate a Long Covid future, the results suggest that Long Covid may have macroeconomic costs of some £1.5bn of GDP each year, with the impacts increasing if future prevalence were to rise. The main driver of this result is the way in which Long Covid reduces people’s ability to work, leading to lower household incomes and lower economic growth overall. Lower employment of around 138,000 by 2030 follows as a consequence. The pattern of these impacts across the economy reflects a mix of sectors in which more people have Long Covid, leading to reductions in and exits from work; and lower economic activity, which tends to affect market services in an economy such as the UK.
Source: Camecon
IG Farben’s factory network in 1943
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T 47 – 21, 1947 Hans Hartung Source: Mlfineart
World of drones
source: World Of Drones by New America
Humiliating evacuation - Myanmar’s military dictators are losing control of critical border crossings in the North with China and India and now with Thailand
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Storm Shadow: How European defense cooperation actually worked, for once
When the British military needed new cruise missiles in the mid-1990s, the government passed over established US weapons makers in favour of a nascent company with little record. The lucrative order for the air-launched missile called Storm Shadow, and its French version Scalp, was key to cementing a groundbreaking marriage between the UK and France formed by the merger of British Aerospace’s missile manufacturing division and France’s Matra.
A German-led initiative, European Sky Shield, enraged French officials who saw it as ill-conceived because it omitted European-made air defence systems, including the Franco-Italian made SAMP/T from MBDA, in favour of US/Israeli technology.
Source: FT
A thumb of ice
1994 BY LUCILLE CLIFTON i was leaving my fifty-eighth year when a thumb of ice stamped itself hard near my heart you have your own story you know about the fears the tears the scar of disbelief you know that the saddest lies are the ones we tell ourselves you know how dangerous it is to be born with breasts you know how dangerous it is to wear dark skin i was leaving my fifty-eighth year when i woke into the winter of a cold and mortal body thin icicles hanging off the one mad nipple weeping have we not been good children did we not inherit the earth but you must know all about this from your own shivering life
Source: Poetry Foundation
Hans Hartung T1962-U8 (1962) Source: Musee d’Art Moderne de Paris
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