| |  | TOGETHER WITH |  | | | Good morning.
Just because you’re good enough to get accepted into Brown or Dartmouth, doesn’t mean you’re getting accepted into the UK. On Monday, the United Kingdom announced a new immigration program, the “High Potential” Individual visa, allowing graduates from a select list of top global universities to move there without a job offer.
While the six other Ivy League universities and elite US schools including MIT, Duke, Northwestern, and Stanford made the cut, Brown and Dartmouth were conspicuously absent. Consider yourself waitlisted by Boris Johnson. | | | • | | US pandemic stimulus for small businesses is going out a year late. They might still need it to brace for what’s coming. | | • | | Seven years after its creation, Israel’s sovereign wealth fund is finally getting off the ground. | | • | | Oil prices are crushing Hawaiians. | | | | |  | US Economy | One Year Late, the US is Releasing Pandemic Small Business Stimulus | | If there’s no pandemic downturn left to stimulate, can you still call it a pandemic stimulus?
That’s the existential quandary of the $10 billion State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), passed in Congress last year as part of a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. The Treasury Department only began distributing funding from the initiative — designed to funnel capital to small businesses — this month.
With the economy already on the mend, the question becomes: was the stimulus even needed in the first place? | Macro Boom Spells Micro Headache | | After the short, pandemic-induced recession of 2020, the US economy is bigger than it was before “Covid-19” was added to every spell-check dictionary across the globe. The unemployment rate is at a two-year low of 3.6% and small business creation is on a tear. The US census reported 5.4 million applications to start companies in 2021, a 53% increase from pre-pandemic 2019 — and that pace has continued in 2022, with 423,000 applications in April.
Now that the government is getting around to handing out the first $200 million from the SSBCI, critics and supporters are weighing in: | • | | “The economic recovery that has occurred despite not a single dollar of SSBCI money reaching its intended beneficiaries proves that this program was not needed in the first place,” Pat Toomey, the Pennsylvania Senator who voted with GOP colleagues against SSBCI, told The Wall Street Journal. | | • | | Proponents point to the struggles of small businesses — the share of US small-business owners forecasting to grow revenue in the next year fell to 61% last month from 79% in May 2020, according to a Vistage Worldwide survey. Small businesses are also struggling to hire — according to HR firm ADP, employment at firms with under 50 people fell in February and April. | | | | “In the immediate term, things are good, but looking out ahead, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty,” William Dunkelberg, chief economist at small business group the National Federation of Independent Business, told the WSJ.
Race to the Base Case: Recent profit misses by retail giants Walmart and Target are being called harbingers of an economic slowdown, which could add to the woes of high inflation and rising interest rates already wearing on small businesses. Two weeks ago, Wells Fargo said a mild US recession is now the bank’s base-case scenario for the end of 2022 and early 2023, meaning pandemic stimulus doled out too late could, paradoxically, arrive right on time. | | | | | | Global Economy | Israel’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Launches Today After a Long Wait | | It only took eight years to say “Mazel Tov.”
Almost a decade after it was founded, Israel’s long-delayed sovereign wealth fund launches today. For a country with famously volatile politics where governments can fall like Jenga blocks (last year, Israel held its fourth national election in two years) the launch marks an unwavering commitment to make good on a windfall. | Lucky Number Eight Years Later | | In 2010, Israel discovered massive fields of liquid natural gas containing enough supply to meet thirty years' worth of the country’s needs, according to Max Stern Yezreel Valley College research.
Parliament voted in 2014 to set up the wealth fund to invest surplus tax revenues from the nascent gas industry, but only once its holdings reached $300 million — and therein lies the reason for the delay. Ironically, a drag on commodity prices held gas industry revenues lower than expected for years, keeping the milestone out of reach.
It will take another year before Israel’s new fund starts paying dividends: | • | | A year from today, the fund — which will make investments around the world — will be allowed to allocate 3.5% of annual revenues to social, economic, and educational proposals. "The profits from Israel's natural resources must be for the benefit of the citizens," Avigdor Liberman, Israel's finance minister, told the financial newspaper Globes. | | • | | The model is smaller but similar to Norway’s famous $1.3 trillion Oil Fund and Saudi Arabia’s $580 billion Public Investment Fund, which deploys its oil riches into investments across the globe. | | | | The timing ended up fortuitous: with energy prices trending higher, Israel's natural gas and oil revenues were a record $380 million in 2021 according to the country’s Energy Ministry.
Port Protection: The US doesn’t have a federal sovereign wealth fund, but 10 states including Texas and New Mexico, do. The Alaska Permanent Fund pays out an annual dividend to residents based on the fund’s performance — last year, everyone got $1,114 — and has been cited by some as the first example of a Basic Income. | | | | | | Sponsored by #Paid | One Channel Marketers Simply Cannot Ignore | Fleetwood Mac’s legendary hit Dreams reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1997. More than four decades later, all it took was one silly — yet incredibly viral — TikTok clip to catapult Dreams back to the top of the charts. Indeed, TikTok has an incredible influence over consumers, and the average TikTok user spends a stunning 52 minutes on the app, per day. And when it comes down to pure dollars and cents, over 37 million adults have made a purchase after watching a TikTok about it. For brands, marketers, and product owners — it’s an attractive new frontier. At the same time, it can be difficult to get started. Lucky for us, #paid is here to help solve our woes with their influencer marketing platform. #Paid helps everyone from DTC startups to Fortune 500 brands turn TikTok marketing into a scalable, trackable, and incredibly efficient media channel. And the best part? It’s shockingly simple: - Build your campaign
- Pick your creators
- Launch your content organically through their channels
“Influencer marketing” and “simple” in the same paragraph? We never thought we’d see the day. Find the right influencers for your brand today with #paid. | | | | | | Energy | Hawaii Turns to Solar to Replace Fossil Fuels |  | (View of Honolulu from Diamond Head Crater, Oahu, Hawaii by Ken Lund) The perks of tropical island life on Hawaii are obvious and plentiful: serene beaches, show-stopping sunsets, gorgeous flora and fauna, and a relaxed, worry-free culture. Unfortunately, the economics of life in Hawaii can turn Maui into owie. With oil prices skyrocketing, the island is turning toward one of its signature natural resources: the sun. And unlike in much of the contiguous 48 United States, when it comes to solar power, traditional Hawaiian energy companies have decided to play ball. | Here Comes the Sun | | Oil-burning power plants fueled nearly two-thirds of Hawaii’s electricity in 2021, about a 10% dropoff over the past decade, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s far higher than the national average, due in large part to the high cost of importing natural gas. But a reliance on imports from Russia — supplier of a third of the state’s oil last year — has turned the state’s hefty appetite for oil into a costly proposition.
According to The NYT, Hawaii’s electricity rates are currently triple the national average. Fortunately, aggressive government incentives and buy-in from energy firms are helping residents turn to solar to combat the rising prices: | • | | On Oahu, home to Honolulu and 70% of the state population, the government offers $4,250 — about a third of the overall cost — to homeowners installing solar systems equipped with batteries. Utility companies, which have long lobbied against such incentives, have embraced the pivot because they’re allowed to tap the excess energy stored in the batteries during peak energy hours. | | • | | Roughly one-third of Hawaiian homes are solar-equipped, double that of California. Rooftop solar supplies 14% of the state’s energy, up from 6% in 2014, according to Times reporting. | | | | Kauai Not? On Kauai, 70% of electricity comes from carbon-free sources, and the island believes it can reach 90% by 2025. As if mainlanders needed more reason to envy island life... | | | | | | Extra Upside | • | | A new patent filing suggests a virtual reality headset from Apple is on the way. | | • | | Terra launched a new version of its Luna cryptocurrency that infamously collapsed this month — it’s already crashing. | | • | | Take it From a Credit Card Junkie. The fine print of most credit card programs would (let’s face it) make most people’s eyes glaze over. Nathan Hamilton, on the other hand, spends all his waking hours scouring for maximum value. Here’s a direct quote: “ this card has “the highest cash back potential I’ve ever seen.” With up to 5% cash back at places people actually shop, we’d tend to agree with him. Apply now and pay no annual fee. *Partner | | | | | | |  | Just For Fun | | | | | Written by Sean Craig and Brian Boyle. | | No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065 | | | | |
Movie-Time Available! 
Free Download Available!
Beef Jerky YouTube Video Site 
How To Make Wine YouTube Video Site 
Movies, News & YouTube Live
0 Comments:
Post a Comment