Twitter, er, X, just brought a whole new meaning to clearing a check.
The blue verified check, which Elon Musk put behind a paywall after buying the company, quickly went from a symbol of authentication to one of derision. Now, blue-check users have been given a new exclusive feature: They can hide the check so nobody knows they paid for it — begging the question, why pay for it in the first place?
Morning Brief
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Latin America was quicker than most to fight inflation.
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China wants kids off their darn phones.
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The race to build a commercial ISS is hotting up.
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International
Latin American Countries Take the Lead in Whipping Inflation
The early bird gets the worm — and a less whipsawed economy.
As the entire world faced rampant inflation, several Latin American nations took to the fight earlier than most with central bank interest-rate hikes. The question now is whether those countries are letting up too soon.
Fight or Flight or Freeze
Central banks in Europe, the UK, and the US initially took more of a wait-and-see approach as inflation started to jump in 2021. But a year later, it was clear rising prices were something more than a transitory pandemic hangover, and they began to join their Latin American counterparts.
Central banks in Brazil, Mexico, and Chile, on the other hand, acted fast by raising interest rates as early as 2021, eventually hitting double digits in some cases. Those are scary numbers to most folks, but sometimes you’ve got to face your fears:
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Latin America is now reaping the benefits of its quick actions. Brazil’s inflation rate has retreated to around 3%, besting the nation’s goal, and in Chile, it’s been cut in nearly half over the past year to 7.6%. The Mexican peso has reached its strongest value against the dollar in nearly a decade, and the country’s GDP is seeing healthy growth bolstered by robust exports, service, and manufacturing sectors.
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In the US, 11 hikes in the last 12 months by the Federal Reserve have successfully brought the inflation rate back down to 3%, but that’s still above the Fed’s 2%, as the cost of food, housing, and healthcare remains high. Chairman Jerome Powell & Co. likely won’t start lowering rates until after the start of 2024. It’s even worse in the EU and UK, where inflation rates sit at 5.5% and 8%, respectively.
Too Close to the Sun: Latin America is riding so high that a few nations there have already started lowering interest rates. In July, Uruguay was the first to jump into the fray, cutting its interest rates by 50 basis points to 10.75%, Chile dropped its rates to 10.25% just last week, and Brazil is likely to make a similar move this week. That all sounds great on paper, but some economists believe it could be heading toward an Icarian scenario. “The central banks can’t declare victory yet,” Eric Parrado of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington told the Financial Times. “They must be careful since there is still a lot of uncertainty over whether the measures of core inflation, without energy and food costs, have established a clear falling trend.”
– Griffin Kelly
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Policy
China Makes Law to Limit Kids’ Phone Time
And you thought hyperventilating Washington politicos were TikTok’s biggest problem.
The Chinese government on Wednesday unveiled new regulations capping the time minors can spend on their smartphones. The best part? They lay the task of enforcing the new law at the feet of online platforms, not parents. The move is a fresh blow in China’s long-running crackdown on tech companies, which had been surprisingly dormant lately until now, and it bruised the stock of gaming giant Tencent and Bytedance, owner of TikTok and its sister-app Douyin.
Think of the Children
China’s government has been stoking fears about various forms of online overuse for a while now. In 2019, it mandated that gaming companies limit children’s daily play time to 90 minutes and cut them off completely after 10 pm. In 2021, it clamped down even harder on gaming, cutting the limit to 60 minutes and only on Fridays, weekends, and holidays. It also withheld licenses for games for 8 months between 2021 and 2022, imposing a stranglehold on the industry’s supply of new games.
Last year, the ruling Communist Party announced it had vanquished what it termed youth gaming addiction, and now it’s turning its attention to social media and its most direct conduit to young users, their smartphones:
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The Cyberspace Administration of China said Wednesday that minors won’t be allowed to access the internet from their phones between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Minors aged 16 to 18 will only be allowed two hours of phone time per day.
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It’s unclear exactly how these laws will be enforced, although China’s government has once again placed the onus on platforms to make sure they’re booting kids off.
Moral Panic: Professor Andy Przybylski, a psychologist at the Oxford Internet Institute, told The Daily Upside there’s no reason to think internet addiction is a real thing. “There’s no compelling evidence that this is actually anything but well-being theater,” he said of China’s regulations. He added that South Korea attempted to impose similar laws on children’s internet usage in the last decade, but the company ended its online gaming curfew law in 2021. “When studies were done to test the effectiveness, it showed that it did not work either in terms of improving school grades or saving young people sleep,” he said. You heard it here first, kids: Game as much as you can!
– Isobel Asher Hamilton
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There are reasons to go to space beyond letting billionaires boldly check something off their bucket list.
Aircraft heavyweight Airbus and US space startup Voyager announced Wednesday they’re teaming up as part of a bid to build a commercial successor to the International Space Station (ISS), with Airbus shouldering Voyager’s former big partner Lockheed Martin out of the way in the process.
Subsidy Quest
The first astronauts to start residing on the ISS went up in 2000, and NASA plans to decommission it in 2031. The next phase of the agency’s history looks like it will play out over multiple commercially funded space stations. The agency has already handed out subsidies to companies just to develop their designs, and firms are scrambling to show their design is the best.
The ISS isn’t a stranger to private and commercial ventures, SpaceX has flown astronauts there and the research conducted onboard is often commercial. The ISS is essentially a big lab that lets you perform research in microgravity, which gives scientific benefits as well as just being plain fun. The question is whether pure commercial activity would be enough to keep the lights on — not to mention the oxygen — in a similar station:
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Voyager chair Dylan Taylor told the Financial Times that the commercial work being done at the ISS would be enough to financially support a space station.
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Airbus’ Defence and Space executive Mike Schoellhorn told the FT there are other ways to bolt on extra selling points. “Don’t forget about dual use, military use of space stations as well. If you put all that together we are pretty confident,” he said.
Stiff Upper Lip: The UK’s space ambitions stalled this year with the failed satellite launch and subsequent bankruptcy of Virgin Orbit. Undeterred, the UK Space Agency announced Wednesday it’ll provide £15 million ($19 million) in funding Earth Observation tools. No doubt because getting an accurate weather forecast is of national importance.
– Isobel Asher Hamilton
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Extra Upside
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Paid to play: Mattel seeks a chief Uno player and the salary starts at £3,500 a week.
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Back to diet and exercise: Employers cut insurance coverage for Ozempic and Wegovy.
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