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#borrowing

1 post1 participant0 posts today
Public
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋

🔴 :youtube: **Why governments are 'addicted' to debt. FT Film**

“_This film examines what some are calling the biggest issue in global finance today, the role of the 'bond vigilantes', and whether government borrowing could spiral out of control._”

#Video length: twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

🔗 youtube.com/watch?v=n1jhoU9Mp_

#FT #FinancialTimes #Film #Markets #Debt #Borrowing #Bonds #Trading #Investment #Finance #BondVigilantes #BondMarket #Economics @economics @finance

YouTubeWhy governments are 'addicted' to debt | FT FilmBy Financial Times
Public
BerlinFokus

" The #debt is growing because the country keeps #Borrowing to finance an increasingly large gap between #GovernmentSpending and #Revenue. (..) What’s the Solution? "

🤔 Judging by their actions, the solution of the #Trump - #Junta is to slash revenue drastically while raising expenditure to unprecedented levels.

(While their other "solution" is to declare bancruptcy [#MarAlLagoAccord] - because the daddy of the United States will of course bail the country out as he always did in the past. 🙄)

Public
Lifestyle | The Guardian US

Actor Michael Sheen on paying off £1m of his neighbours’ debts; Marina Hyde on ‘grotesque’ JD Vance; and ‘how the Beatles helped my autistic son find his voice’ – podcast theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/a #Trumpadministration #Borrowing&debt #Lifeandstyle #MichaelSheen #USpolitics #TheBeatles #JDVance #Poverty

The Guardian · Actor Michael Sheen on paying off £1m of his neighbours’ debts; Marina Hyde on ‘grotesque’ JD Vance; and ‘how the Beatles helped my autistic son find his voice’ – podcastBy Savannah Ayoade-Greaves
Public
WIST Quotations

A quotation from Will Rogers

The trouble with the farmer up to now has been that every time somebody has thought of relief for him it has been to make it so he could borrow more money. That’s what’s the matter with him now. What he needs is some way to pay back. Not some way to borrow more.

Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1927-02-27), “Weekly Article: Big Bouts for Farm Relief”

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/rogers-will/75676/

#quote#quotes#quotation
Public
richard

The Allure of Public Libraries with E-Books

Reading Time: 2 minutes

By joining a book club and hearing people speak about borrowing books, rather than buying them I was at once asking myself the question "Why wouldn't you buy a book when you can afford it?" and "Why wouldn't you want to own the books you read?" Since then I have changed my mind.

Paid for Lending Libraries

As I wrote two or three days ago Audible, Kindle, Kobo and other platforms allow you to borrow books. Usually the cost is from 10-12 CHF except for Audible where the cost is over a hundred CHF per year.

The key point with Audible is that you pay a subscription to buy books at either a member price or in exchange for credits. I calculated that once a book is more than 12 CHF or so it's worth paying for with a credit.

Audio books are expensive compared to normal e-books and paperbacks. A book might cost 10 CHF and the audio version will cost 20-30 CHF per book, if not more.

Free Libraries

If you like books, as I do, then it is easy to buy books faster than you can read them. I often say that it takes a few seconds to choose to buy a book, or borrow it, but each book takes 7 or more hours to read. That's why it is so easy to get a long back log of books that you own but haven't read yet.

If you borrow books from a physical library then you need to wait for them to open, and you need to return the books before the return date. If you fail to do this you may get fined.

I was testing e-bibliomedia and I enjoy that it is so easy to browse and borrow books. The experience is smooth and efficient. You can do it directly from the website or you can do it via the Cantook app. Borrowing books and audio books is quick and intuitive. You can then download and read a book. It will self-delete once the 28 day lending period is over.

With audio books the experience is good too but it requires playing from a web browser, rather than an app. You can't delete audio books so you need to have a data plan if you're on a walk, driving or doing something else. It does not keep your progress so it makes sense to stop at the end of a chapter and remember which chapter you are on. You can access your audio books from the cantook app by pressing read online and logging in.

A Smaller Collection

When I searched through the collection I noticed that a few books I looked through were not available. Having said this their collection added one hundred and fifty books in January and has almost ten thousand books in total across at least four languages.

When you compare ten thousand compared to half a million, it seems like a small collection, but when you consider that this library is ten years old it has a broad choice and it is constantly growing.

And Finally

More often than not I don't know what I want to read so having a choice of new books is an advantage. It means that I can choose what to read more easily, and if I do not like a book I can return it early. I can borrow and return books within seconds without waiting for opening times. I used to love borrowing books and finally I can return to this habit.

A building covered in Autumn leaves
#audioBooks#books#borrowing
Public
richard

Lending Libraries in the Twenty First Century

Reading Time: 2 minutes

There was a time when you got an Audible Subscription and you had access to 24 credits per year. You could choose 24 books per year. That's a new book every two weeks. Eventually, after many years the plan and offer changed. You can now buy books from Audible, or you can borrow others from the Audlbe plus catalogue. In this manner you have access to thousands of books for "free", as if you had a paying library membership.

Kindle and Kobo also offer a "free" lending library for people who pay about 10 CHF per month. In the case of Kobo, for 12 CHF per month they throw in a selection of audio books. Unlike me some people like to buy one book at a time, and then read that book.

I prefer to buy a book, and then another, and then a third. In the end I have a collection of books that I am reading, and that I still have to start reading. With the Kindle Unlimited plan, the Kobo Unlimited plan and others I get to read up to 12 books at a time that I haven't bought specifically and if I give up it doesn't matter, because I don't own the book. I just borrowed it.

You might ask "Who cares" and the answer is "almost everyone" for a simple reason. Within two weeks Kindle will block book downloads to computers. This means that any book you bought now relies on Kindle remaining in business. If they go bankrupt or give up on books you could lose 30 CHF per book. With a subscription you never "owned" books you borrowed anyway.

People are right to ask "Why should I pay the same price for a virtual book as a physical book. Nexus costs 30 CHF as an e-book and as a physical book. It is absurd to pay 30 CHF for a small computer file.

Public Libraries

Recently two or more people have talked about public libraries and free access to books so I am in the process of setting this up. By gaining access to public libraries I gain the opportunity to borrow books, both physical, and electronic, and in some cases audio books too.

The process of getting a library card is simple and efficient. With a little more effort you can then gain access to two e-libraries which expands the choice further. Interestingly kindles do not play well, but other e-readers do.

And Finally

I love buying and owning books, but I also like to read and explore books that are sometimes more expensive. I have been tempted to buy a specific book for months, by now, that costs 26 CHF but didn't. I found it in the library so now I saved 26 CHF and I can find new hiking ideas.

Light reflected in a glass of coke to create the illusion of a camino shell
#audible#books#borrowing
Public *
LilMikeSF

#IMF warns #Global #PublicDebt to pass $100 Trillion by end of this year. #FiscalMonitor #Report urges govts to put through #TaxHikes and make drastic cuts to #PublicSpending and #BudgetCuts despite well publicized plans to do just the opposite.

Both #USElection #PresidentialCandidates are committed to policies that will add trillions in #debt to a fragile US #economy while in #EU govt #bonds have experienced sell offs, and #UK seeks to "tweak the definition of public debt used for the UK’s #fiscal
rules to allow for more #borrowing."

Global debt will be almost 20% points of GDP higher next 3 years than previously projected: "Much more substantial fiscal adjustments are needed".

on.ft.com/3YnU6NB via @ftworldnews #GiftLink #FinancialTimes

Global public debt forecast to exceed $100tn by the end of this year, IMF warns
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