US President Joe Biden addressing the media about the passage of his vast bipartisan infrastructure bill. EPA
US President Joe Biden addressing the media about the passage of his vast bipartisan infrastructure bill. EPA
US President Joe Biden addressing the media about the passage of his vast bipartisan infrastructure bill. EPA
US President Joe Biden addressing the media about the passage of his vast bipartisan infrastructure bill. EPA


Divided America is not noticing Joe Biden's victories


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November 07, 2021

The past week saw both the low point and the high point, in rapid succession, of Joe Biden's still very young presidency. From here on, his fortunes could go either way, but the American leader probably has considerably more going for him than most people think.

It's been a painful summer for Mr Biden. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was widely criticised, and he has been plagued by surging inflation and supply chain bottlenecks. Although the pandemic is increasingly under control and the economy seems to be gaining strength despite inflation, many Americans simply don't feel good about where the country is right now.

Angst is pervasive.

In their daily lives, they still see pandemic-related problems with schools, inflation – especially at the gasoline pump – and difficulties in buying many consumer products as a result of supply chain issues.

Dissatisfaction reached a crescendo last Tuesday when Terry McAuliffe, a veteran Democrat and former Virginia governor, lost the usually reliably Democratic state to a wealthy Republican upstart, Glenn Youngkin. The defeat was long anticipated, but it still was a stinging rebuke, especially coupled with the difficulty the Democrats had in holding onto the governorship of solidly Democratic New Jersey.

Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin at his election night party last week. Reuters
Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin at his election night party last week. Reuters

Bitter recriminations ensued, and the media, yet again, was eager to pronounce Mr Biden's presidency dead in the water. He has been the recipient of some of the most pessimistic coverage in recent memory, possibly reflecting an effort by the press to balance its undying hostility to his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Yet, Mr Biden and the Democrats did seem to get the message that they had better start delivering, or else.

After months of endless negotiations, which often left the impression that nothing would eventually be accomplished, on Friday the President and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fashioned a remarkable compromise in which progressive Democrats agreed – against all their vows and instincts – to vote for the $1 trillion hard infrastructure bill without simultaneous action on social spending.

Six of the most hard-left Democrats voted against the measure, though. The leftists fear that by supporting the infrastructure bill, they relinquish all their leverage on the also-pending $1.75tn social spending package.

Nonetheless, it is a significant and historic achievement. A whopping $110 billion is allocated for roads, bridges and other surface infrastructure. Another $66bn goes to rail, $39bn to public transport, $11bn for transportation safety, and $65bn for broadband access and additional funds for upgrading power lines and the energy grid, and providing clean drinking water. Airports get $25bn and ports $17bn.

This is the largest-ever federal spending on transportation infrastructure, and the most significant spending on hard infrastructure since the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. The scale of the achievement is underscored by the fact that Mr Trump continuously promised major infrastructure development but never even proposed, let alone passed, such a bill.

Furthermore, this package delivers on another of Mr Biden's promises: resurrecting bipartisanship. Both in the House and the Senate, where the bill passed in the summer, he managed to secure significant Republican support despite the tendency of most Republicans to try to block almost all his initiatives.

Securing such significant spending with no majority in the Senate and only three spare votes in the House is remarkable enough. Doing it with Republican support is even more extraordinary.

Now, progressives will justifiably demand that centrists, with pressure from Mr Biden, Ms Pelosi and others, return the favour and vote for the social spending bill. Despite many reservations, that will probably happen in the House. A vote is scheduled for November 15.

The bigger problem will be in the Senate, where two conservative-leaning Democratic holdouts, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, may be harder to convince. It will be the biggest test yet of Mr Biden's persuasive powers. But the progressives deserve the best effort possible.

Joe Biden will be chasing the support of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, pictured above. AFP
Joe Biden will be chasing the support of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, pictured above. AFP

Theoretically, this bill ought to be a turning point for the Biden administration and the Democrats. Coupled with the $1.9tn pandemic relief bill passed in March, in less than a year they have managed to pass two major pieces of legislation on behalf of the general public.

Moreover, many of the key sources of widespread anxiety and dismay look set to ease in coming months as the pandemic lifts further, with new treatments and vaccines for children, supply chains begin to open, and labour markets regain their balance.

Indeed, inflation appears to be the only major immediate issue to which they may not have an obvious answer.

If Democrats can pass any version of the social spending bill before the midterms, they will have an enormous set of governance achievements, with virtually no majorities and an extremely polarised environment, to set before the public.

There are, however, two major challenges beyond that.

First, Democrats have traditionally been strikingly inept at selling their achievements. Mr Biden, too, has suffered from this phenomenon, with Democrats and the media focusing on conflicts within the party and the difficulties of passing the legislation, not the achievement it means. So, he will have to become a much better salesman, and move attention from the messy sausage-making to the tasty sausages.

A more alarming question runs even deeper. Mr Biden's broad political strategy is based on the idea that Americans really want effective governance, and for politics to deliver improvements in their daily lives. But is that true of enough Americans to prove a winning strategy?

Counterintuitively, given the polarised times and the deep social fissures, there are reasons to suspect that large segments of the American public aren't paying as much attention to what government is doing or isn't doing on practical policies. Many, instead, seem more invested in cultural divides and prefer politics as spectacle – a performative routine based on identity-signalling, trolling, stunts and one-upmanship of the kind Mr Trump has specialised in and which has become the particular stock-in-trade of the Republican Party.

The Democrats may go to the midterms with many significant achievements under their belt but it's possible key American constituencies simply won't care. Those Americans may only respond to tribal affirmations that express their grievances.

The more Mr Biden achieves, the more clearly this terrifying possibility will be tested in the 2022 and 2024 elections. So far, governance versus the politics of spectacle is emerging as the biggest contest on those upcoming ballots.

THE SPECS

Aston Martin Rapide AMR

Engine: 6.0-litre V12

Transmission: Touchtronic III eight-speed automatic

Power: 595bhp

Torque: 630Nm

Price: Dh999,563

The biog

Title: General Practitioner with a speciality in cardiology

Previous jobs: Worked in well-known hospitals Jaslok and Breach Candy in Mumbai, India

Education: Medical degree from the Government Medical College in Nagpur

How it all began: opened his first clinic in Ajman in 1993

Family: a 90-year-old mother, wife and two daughters

Remembers a time when medicines from India were purchased per kilo

THE NEW BATCH'S FOCUS SECTORS

AiFlux – renewables, oil and gas

DevisionX – manufacturing

Event Gates – security and manufacturing

Farmdar – agriculture

Farmin – smart cities

Greener Crop – agriculture

Ipera.ai – space digitisation

Lune Technologies – fibre-optics

Monak – delivery

NutzenTech – environment

Nybl – machine learning

Occicor – shelf management

Olymon Solutions – smart automation

Pivony – user-generated data

PowerDev – energy big data

Sav – finance

Searover – renewables

Swftbox – delivery

Trade Capital Partners – FinTech

Valorafutbol – sports and entertainment

Workfam – employee engagement

Key developments

All times UTC 4

The White Lotus: Season three

Creator: Mike White

Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell

Rating: 4.5/5

Final scores

18 under: Tyrrell Hatton (ENG)

- 14: Jason Scrivener (AUS)

-13: Rory McIlroy (NIR)

-12: Rafa Cabrera Bello (ESP)

-11: David Lipsky (USA), Marc Warren (SCO)

-10: Tommy Fleetwood (ENG), Chris Paisley (ENG), Matt Wallace (ENG), Fabrizio Zanotti (PAR)

GAC GS8 Specs

Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo

Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm

Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm

Transmission: 8-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km

On sale: Now

Price: From Dh149,900

What is a robo-adviser?

Robo-advisers use an online sign-up process to gauge an investor’s risk tolerance by feeding information such as their age, income, saving goals and investment history into an algorithm, which then assigns them an investment portfolio, ranging from more conservative to higher risk ones.

These portfolios are made up of exchange traded funds (ETFs) with exposure to indices such as US and global equities, fixed-income products like bonds, though exposure to real estate, commodity ETFs or gold is also possible.

Investing in ETFs allows robo-advisers to offer fees far lower than traditional investments, such as actively managed mutual funds bought through a bank or broker. Investors can buy ETFs directly via a brokerage, but with robo-advisers they benefit from investment portfolios matched to their risk tolerance as well as being user friendly.

Many robo-advisers charge what are called wrap fees, meaning there are no additional fees such as subscription or withdrawal fees, success fees or fees for rebalancing.

Dust and sand storms compared

Sand storm

  • Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
  • Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
  • Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
  • Travel distance: Limited 
  • Source: Open desert areas with strong winds

Dust storm

  • Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
  • Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
  • Duration: Can linger for days
  • Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
  • Source: Can be carried from distant regions
AUSTRALIA SQUAD

Aaron Finch, Matt Renshaw, Brendan Doggett, Michael Neser, Usman Khawaja, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Tim Paine (captain), Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Jon Holland, Ashton Agar, Mitchell Starc, Peter Siddle

MATCH INFO

Manchester City 1 Chelsea 0
De Bruyne (70')

Man of the Match: Kevin de Bruyne (Manchester City)

New UK refugee system

 

  • A new “core protection” for refugees moving from permanent to a more basic, temporary protection
  • Shortened leave to remain - refugees will receive 30 months instead of five years
  • A longer path to settlement with no indefinite settled status until a refugee has spent 20 years in Britain
  • To encourage refugees to integrate the government will encourage them to out of the core protection route wherever possible.
  • Under core protection there will be no automatic right to family reunion
  • Refugees will have a reduced right to public funds

Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World by Michael Ignatieff
Harvard University Press

ALRAWABI%20SCHOOL%20FOR%20GIRLS
%3Cp%3ECreator%3A%20Tima%20Shomali%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EStarring%3A%C2%A0Tara%20Abboud%2C%C2%A0Kira%20Yaghnam%2C%20Tara%20Atalla%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ERating%3A%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The Greatest Royal Rumble card as it stands

The Greatest Royal Rumble card as it stands

50-man Royal Rumble - names entered so far include Braun Strowman, Daniel Bryan, Kurt Angle, Big Show, Kane, Chris Jericho, The New Day and Elias

Universal Championship Brock Lesnar (champion) v Roman Reigns in a steel cage match

WWE World Heavyweight ChampionshipAJ Styles (champion) v Shinsuke Nakamura

Intercontinental Championship Seth Rollins (champion) v The Miz v Finn Balor v Samoa Joe

United States Championship Jeff Hardy (champion) v Jinder Mahal

SmackDown Tag Team Championship The Bludgeon Brothers (champions) v The Usos

Raw Tag Team Championship (currently vacant) Cesaro and Sheamus v Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt

Casket match The Undertaker v Chris Jericho

Singles match John Cena v Triple H

Cruiserweight Championship Cedric Alexander v tba

Europe's top EV producers
  1. Norway (63% of cars registered in 2021)
  2. Iceland (33%)
  3. Netherlands (20%)
  4. Sweden (19%)
  5. Austria (14%)
  6. Germany (14%)
  7. Denmark (13%)
  8. Switzerland (13%)
  9. United Kingdom (12%)
  10. Luxembourg (10%)

Source: VCOe 

Queen

Nicki Minaj

(Young Money/Cash Money)

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The%20US%20Congress%20explained
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MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League, semi-final result:

Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona

Liverpool win 4-3 on aggregate

Champions Legaue final: June 1, Madrid

Our legal columnist

Name: Yousef Al Bahar

Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994

Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers

THE TWIN BIO

Their favourite city: Dubai

Their favourite food: Khaleeji

Their favourite past-time : walking on the beach

Their favorite quote: ‘we rise by lifting others’ by Robert Ingersoll

Company profile

Name: Dukkantek 

Started: January 2021 

Founders: Sanad Yaghi, Ali Al Sayegh and Shadi Joulani 

Based: UAE 

Number of employees: 140 

Sector: B2B Vertical SaaS(software as a service) 

Investment: $5.2 million 

Funding stage: Seed round 

Investors: Global Founders Capital, Colle Capital Partners, Wamda Capital, Plug and Play, Comma Capital, Nowais Capital, Annex Investments and AMK Investment Office  

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The Settlers

Director: Louis Theroux

Starring: Daniella Weiss, Ari Abramowitz

Rating: 5/5

Zakat definitions

Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.

Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.

Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.

Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.

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Updated: November 07, 2021, 2:38 PM