Wednesday, January 26, 2022

FOMC Press Conference January 26, 2022

TRUTH IN ACCOUNTING New Annual Report on Mesa 2022

Intro: A new report on the financial condition of the 75 most populous cities ranked Mesa no. 42 in the nation for fiscal health.

The report is based on the cities' 2020 annual comprehensive financial reports, which are not analyzed on this scale by any other organization.

The bottom line is that Mesa did not have enough money to pay its bills, which is why it received a "D" grade for its fiscal health.

The analysis by Truth in Accounting (TIA), a nonprofit government finance watchdog group, found Mesa needed $984.1 million to get out of the red, or $6,200 from each city taxpayer.

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You can read the full report here.

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Politics & Government

Mesa, AZ received 'D' grade for fiscal health

New report released by Truth in Accounting

<div class=__reading__mode__extracted__imagecaption>(Alex Binroth | Pexels)

Truth in Accounting, News
Truth in Accounting, News Partner
Across Arizona, AZ Patch | Posted Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 2:29 pm MT

Posted Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 2:29 pm MT

SUMMARY OF TRUTH IN ACCOUNTING ANALYSIS:

". . .According to the watchdog's annual Financial State of the Cities report, Mesa had $2.4 billion in bills and only $1.4 billion in available assets to pay those bills after capital and restricted assets were excluded. This resulted in a $984.1 million shortfall, or a $6,200 Taxpayer Burden™, which is each taxpayer's share of the municipal debt after the city's available assets have been tapped.

TIA's Taxpayer Burden indicator incorporates both assets and liabilities, including all retirement liabilities. This analysis surveys the fiscal health of the 75 most populated U.S. cities during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Financial State of the Cities 2022

January 25, 2022

**To read the full report, please click here to download the PDF**

Truth in Accounting has released its sixth annual Financial State of the Cities report. This comprehensive analysis surveys the fiscal health of the 75 most populated U.S. cities during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report found that 61 cities did not have enough money to pay all of their bills. Despite receiving federal assistance from the CARES Act and other COVID-19 related grants, the majority of cities’ finances worsened.

Total debt among the 75 largest U.S. cities amounted to $357 billion at the end of the fiscal year 2020, which was $23.5 billion worse than the last fiscal year.

Like What You See? Support Us!

Truth in Accounting believes truthful accounting is the key for citizens, legislators, and the press to clearly understand the truth about government finances. To keep the truth coming, consider contributing with a direct donation.

IMF FORECASTS FOR 2022 + 2023: New Report Warning Subject to High Level of Uncertainty

A PROGNOSIS: Slowdowns in the world’s two biggest economies — the United States and China — are likely to be larger than expected this year, dragging down output on every continent and reducing global growth, a new report warned on Tuesday. . .

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The fund emphasized that the forecast was subject to a high level of uncertainty — about the course of Covid, the prospects of climate-related natural disasters, supply chain disruptions and rising political tensions, particularly around Ukraine. With the pandemic entering its third year, a note of pessimism underlay the report. “Risks overall are to the downside, . ."

International Monetary Fund Lowers Global Economic Growth Forecast

By Patricia Cohen Jan. 25, 2022

nytimes.com

"The continuing global recovery faces multiple challenges as the pandemic enters its third year. The Omicron variant has led to renewed mobility restrictions in many countries and increased labor shortages.

Supply disruptions still weigh on activity and are contributing to higher inflation, adding to pressures from strong demand and elevated food and energy prices.

Moreover, record debt and rising inflation constrain the ability of many countries to address renewed disruptions.

We project global growth this year at 4.4 percent, which is 0.5 percentage point lower than previously forecast, mainly because of downgrades for the United States and China.

> Now, in the case of the United States, this reflects lower prospects of legislating the Build Back Better fiscal package and earlier withdrawal of extraordinary monetary accommodation, and continued supply disruptions.

> China’s downgrade reflects continued retrenchment of the real estate sector and a weaker than expected recovery in private consumption.

We expect global growth to slow to 3.8 percent in 2023. Now the forecast is subject to high uncertainty and risks overall are to the downside.

> The emergence of deadlier variants could prolong the crisis.

China’s zero-Covid strategy could exacerbate global supply disruptions, and a financial stress in the country’s real estate sector spreads through the broader economy. The ramifications would be felt widely.

> Higher inflation surprises in the U.S. could elicit aggressive monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve and sharply tightened global financial conditions.

Rising geopolitical tensions and social unrest also pose risks to the outlook. . ."

DO READ MORE INTO THE REPORT: DETAILS

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/business/imf-world-economic-report.html

Why America Isn't Ready for the Next Pandemic

NEW CONCEPT: Google abandons FLoC, introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies

Intro: Walking back is a figure of speech, a transitive verb

Walk-back Meaning - YourDictionary

www.yourdictionary.com › walk-back

What does walk-back mean?

To withdraw or back-pedal on a statement or promise; retract. (verb)

Report by Emma Roth updated yesterday:

Google abandons FLoC, introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies

By Emma Roth Updated Jan 25, 2022, 2:45pm EST

The Verge

Google’s new concept assigns users five interests per week based on web activity

" Google is walking back plans to replace third-party cookies with FLoC by instead proposing the Topics API, a new system for interest-based advertising. Topics works by pinpointing five of your interests, such as “Fitness” or “Travel & Transportation,” based on your web activity, as measured by participating sites, for one week.

Your browser will store these topics for three weeks before deleting them. Google says that these categories “are selected entirely on your device” and don’t involve “any external servers, including Google servers.” When you visit a website, Topics will show the site and its advertising partners just three of your interests, consisting of “one topic from each of the past three weeks.”

As noted on the Topics API GitHub page, there are currently about 350 available topics in its advertising taxonomy (although Google plans on adding anywhere from “a few hundred” to “a few thousand” eventually). Google says Topics won’t include any “sensitive categories” like race or gender. And if you’re using Chrome, the company is building tools to let you view and delete topics, as well as turn off the feature.

*Cookies (left) compared to Topics (right), which Google says will be easier to manage and understand.*

Google’s running out of time to replace third-party cookies in Chrome by 2023, as promised. The company plans on launching a developer trial for Topics in Chrome, but there’s no information on when exactly that will begin.

“Browsers have traditionally worked only for the users — remember how great it was when they all started blocking pop-up ads?” John Bergmayer, the legal director at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit that promotes an open internet, points out. “Google’s concepts on this topic seem to flip that.”

Google’s previous replacement for third-party cookies, FLoC (or Federated Learning of Cohorts), is a form of interest-based tracking that identifies you based on your “cohort,” or a group of people that share similar interests.

Privacy critics, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), argued the system poses additional privacy risks, such as making it easier for advertisers to identify you with browser fingerprinting, a tool used by sites to gain specific information about your device and browser, and may also expose information about your demographics, potentially resulting in discriminatory targeted ads.

> Due to these concerns, browsers like Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, and Mozilla have all refused to use it.

“It definitely improves on FLoC in some important ways,” Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist at EFF told The Verge. “Being less scary than FLoC doesn’t mean it’s ‘good.’ It will tell third-party trackers about what kind of sites you browse, and it could help websites and advertisers ID you across devices.”

> But Google’s idea of assigning topics to users isn’t exactly new. As EFF points out, Google’s Privacy Sandbox weighed the idea of PIGIN in 2019, otherwise known as “Private Interest Including Noise.” Like Topics, it would work by sharing a list of interests with advertisers, but as Cyphers of EFF explained at the time, it could still “provide trackers with a massive new stream of information they could use to build or augment their own user profiles.”

> A recent update says a newer version of that approach, under the name FLEDGE, is in early testing on Chrome and Chrome Canary. Google will share more details on that plan and “measurement technical proposals” later this week.

Update January 25th 2:45PM ET: Updated to add a statement from Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist at EFF.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

How to stop Google from tracking your location

IN THE LOWER CHAMBERS: Mesa Council Study Session - 1/20/2022

It lasted just under an hour-and-a-half where - as you can see - only one city official was wearing an optional mask. Vice-Mayor Jennifer Duff is presiding over the session in the absence of Hizzoner John Giles attending the annual Winter Conference of U.S. Mayors in Washington D.C. There's a cast of characters called to appear on various agenda items. Agendas for all city council public meetings are on the calendar...

MesaZona > Table of Contents : Here's The Menu. Enjoy

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

FOMC Press Conference January 26, 2022

TRUTH IN ACCOUNTING New Annual Report on Mesa 2022

Politics & Government

Mesa, AZ received 'D' grade for fiscal health