Notes today:

• Fed Chair Powell: "We’re waiting to become more confident that inflation is moving sustainably at 2%. When we do get that confidence — & we’re not far from it — it’ll be appropriate to begin to dial back the level of restriction” ..  

• Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he expects to see some banks fail due to their exposure to the commercial real estate sector.

• German industrial production rose in January for the first time in nine months, though its protracted weakness has probably already dragged the economy into a recession.

• El Niño Scorches Southern Africa With Driest February on Record

• United Airlines Boeing 777 bound for Japan loses a tire as it takes off from San Francisco - crushing cars below.
  

• It’s official – Sweden is now the 32nd member of NATO.

• 
  
  Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom : Who secures the port? Who distributes the aid within Gaza? And if you answer those questions and this works at scale, America winds up absolving Israel of its own responsibility to provide aid to civilians in areas it controls.

• António Guterres @antonioguterres  :  I was deeply moved by the horrifying testimonies I heard of family members of victims of the war in Gaza today. Some lost over a hundred relatives.
• This horror must stop now.   A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait.

Problem with these notes: some tend to run up against a deeply rooted feature of human cognition - the desire not to think about anything unpleasant…Sorry about that.

Btw, humans can only think about 4 things at once – according to the research team led by University of Oregon psychology professors Edward Awh and Edward Vogel. So, to help, we limit notes. 😉

"Everything will be all right. And, even if it won't be, we'll have the consolation of having lived honest lives." Alexei Navalny