Standard Bank Sees South African Coalition Surviving Budget Saga
Trump DEI Purge Hits Affordable Housing Groups
Electric Construction Equipment Promises a Quiet Revolution
NYC Congestion Pricing Toll Gains Support Among City Residents
Open Philanthropy Launches $120 Million Fund To Support YIMBY Reforms
Prospect Medical's Pennsylvania Hospitals at Risk of Closure
Although the members of the so-called government of national unity are divided over budget policy, the coalition will likely ride out the storm intact.
'The base case is that the GNU in South Africa remains and continues to operate,' Tshabalala said in an interview with Bloomberg TV's Jennifer Zabasajja. 'The evidence in South Africa is that the coalition will subsist.'
Last year's national election failed to produce an outright winner, forcing the African National Congress — which had held a parliamentary majority for three decades after apartheid ended in 1994 — to seek partners to get it past the 50% threshold needed to form a government.
Lawmakers called off last month's presentation of the budget after the partners refused to back Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana of the ANC over plans to increase value-added tax by two percentage points this year.
A new proposal presented on March 12 trimmed the increase to 1 percentage point spread over two years. Still, the second-biggest party in the coalition, the Democratic Alliance, maintains it won't support any permanent tax hikes or back the budget in its current form, but remains open to further negotiations.
Read: South African Minister Seeks Budget Support as Coalition Frays
Standard Bank's Tshabalala said that such disagreements are normal within governments. He cited Germany — where a failure to agree on a budget resulted in the collapse of the coalition government — and the US, where Republicans and Democrats are wrangling over a spending bill to avert a government shutdown on Saturday.
'It's normal in a country that is democratic for these conflicts to happen,' Tshabalala said, adding that the parties will likely seek a consensus on the budget.
He said the VAT proposal was 'creative and careful' because it sought to ensure the government was able to generate much-needed revenue, without subjecting businesses and workers to higher income taxes.
The government's commitment to reducing its debt to 76.2% of gross domestic product over the next year surpassed estimates from ratings companies, showing authorities' focus on revenue and cost management, he said.
'The big question of course is 'will the budget pass? Will it be supported by the GNU,'' Tshabalala said. 'I don't know. We will see.'
How America Got Hooked on H Mart
How Trump's 'No Tax on Tips' Could Backfire for the Working Class
How Natural Gas Became America's Most Important Export
Germany Is Suffering an Identity Crisis 80 Years in the Making
Disney's Parks Chief Sees Fortnite as Key to Its Future
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Long-Term Unemployment Rises In Worrying Sign For U.S. Labor Market
WASHINGTON – Signals of labor market weakness go beyond the headline numbers that prompted President Donald Trump to fire the government's head statistician last week. The jobs report released Friday showed a slowdown in hiring, a slight uptick in the national unemployment rate, and a few other clues that the economy is softening — including an increase in long-term unemployment. The number of people jobless for six months or more increased from 1.6 million to 1.8 million in July, representing 24% of the unemployed. It's the most people experiencing long-term joblessness since the end of 2021 and the highest percentage since February 2022, when the economy was still recovering from coronavirus lockdowns. Valerie Wilson, a labor economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said the modest rise in long-term joblessness could reflect employers getting pickier about hiring as President Donald Trump's tariff regime changes the cost of doing business. 'People who have been unemployed for longer have clearly had some challenges in getting back into the labor market,' Wilson told HuffPost. 'I think that as things have softened, and employers are facing more uncertainty given the sort of chaotic nature of economic policy in this country, that it would be harder for those people to find new jobs.' The president's tariffs on goods imported from other countries are tantamount to a $1,219 tax increase on American households this year, according to an estimate by the conservative Tax Foundation. HuffPost readers: Dealing with long-term unemployment? Tell us about it – email arthur@ Please include your phone number if you're willing to be interviewed. Persistently high long-term joblessness was a hallmark of slow recovery from the Great Recession that officially ended in 2009. It disproportionately affected older workers, becoming a self-perpetuating problem as employers sought job applicants with minimal or no gaps on their resumes. Some economists worry another recession could be around the corner. The overall unemployment rate remained low in July, at just 4.2%, and the economy has continued to add jobs, albeit at a slower pace than previously estimated. Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggest the last three months were the weakest for job growth since the pandemic. Trump fired the BLS commissioner on Friday, claiming without evidence that the numbers were somehow 'rigged' to make him look bad. The labor force shrank slightly in July, helping hold down the unemployment rate even as the number of employed workers declined. Wilson noted the unemployment rate for Black Americans rose to 7.2%, up from a recent historical low of 4.8% in April 2023. 'Over the last two months, we're seeing the black unemployment rate pick up, which is another one that as that starts to rise, we start to look for signals of a broader slowing in the economy,' Wilson said.
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What is gerrymandering? How a centuries-old political tactic sparked a redistricting firestorm in Texas.
Republicans are threatening to remove Democrats from office or even have them arrested. Democrats have declared 'we are at war' and pledged to go 'nuclear' in response. All of this over maps. How can something so seemingly basic spark such intense rhetoric? That's because, thanks to a process known as gerrymandering, political fights over maps can become high-stakes contests over power, how it's wielded and how far the parties are willing to go to protect it. The current standoff over gerrymandering centers around Texas, where the state's Republican majority is hoping to approve new maps that redraw the congressional districts to secure their party up to five additional seats in Congress if the maps are in place by next year's midterm elections. Dozens of Democratic legislators have fled the state to prevent the legislature from considering the maps. So far the tactic has worked, but it's unclear how long they can hold out or what authority Republicans have to overcome their holdout. What is gerrymandering? Every 10 years, the Census determines how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided among the states. That decision is made at the federal level, but it's the states themselves that choose how to carve up their territory into their allotted number of districts. In most cases, district maps are approved by the state legislature, which creates an obvious incentive for the party in power to manipulate the maps to their advantage. That's what gerrymandering is: the process of drawing maps in a way that concentrates one party's power while diluting the power of the opposition. Gerrymandering is nothing new. In fact, it has been around longer than either of today's major political parties. The term was coined all the way back in 1812 after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry approved congressional maps that included a winding district that critics said looked like a mythical salamander. Gerry plus salamander became gerrymander, even though Gerry himself found the map to be 'highly disagreeable.' Click the arrows to cycle through different gerrymandering scenarios to see how it works in practice. How does gerrymandering work? Voters for the two parties aren't spread out evenly across the states. They tend to cluster together with others who hold similar political views. Democratic voters are concentrated in big cities, while Republicans usually dominate rural areas. This creates the opportunity for lawmakers to draw lines that tactically distribute their voter base across districts so they can win as many seats as possible. There are two primary techniques that are used in gerrymandering: cracking and packing. Cracking splits a dense area of one party's voters into small pieces that are spread out across several districts where they are outnumbered by their political opposition. In Utah, for example, the lines are drawn so the state's lone Democratic stronghold of Salt Lake City is cracked into four pieces that are each part of larger, mostly rural districts. The other gerrymandering strategy is called packing, which is when maps cram as many of one party's voters as possible into a small number of districts so seats elsewhere in the state are safe. Is gerrymandering legal? Yes, but with some important caveats. The Supreme Court has ruled that there is nothing in the Constitution barring legislators from designing their state's districts to give themselves a partisan advantage. Gerrymanders based on race — maps designed to weaken the voting power of a specific minority group — are unconstitutional, however. The distinction between the two types of gerrymandering can be fuzzy because minorities, particularly Black voters, tend to vote for Democrats. In those cases, the court has found that a gerrymander can still be constitutional as long as it was created with a clear intent to dilute minority votes. Other than the rules against racial gerrymandering, which could change as soon as the next Supreme Court term, the only other nationwide mandate for congressional map drawing is that districts must have roughly the same population. Many states also set additional guidelines for their maps, including the principle that districts should be as geographically compact as possible and that all parts of a district have to be connected. How did gerrymandering become such a big deal? There have been complaints about gerrymandering for centuries, but nothing in the past compares with the intensity of the fight over district lines over the past decade and a half. Things began to escalate after the 2010 Census, when Republicans across the country mounted a coordinated effort to use redistricting to increase GOP control over both state and federal legislatures. The campaign utilized sophisticated mapping technology that had not been available during previous redistricting cycles. The new maps were credited with helping Republicans maintain a strong majority in the House of Representatives in 2012 despite receiving 1.4 million fewer votes than Democrats in House races nationwide. Republicans kept control of the House during the next two election cycles, in part because of partisan maps that helped them secure more than a dozen seats than they would have otherwise won, according to analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice. Though Democrats were largely caught off guard in 2012, blue states passed their own gerrymanders following the 2020 Census. As a result, the GOP's districting advantage had been largely erased by the 2022 midterms, according to the Associated Press. Even in the context of recent gerrymandering, Analysts say the scope and timing of Texas Republicans' redistricting effort stands out. States usually redraw their districts every 10 years, after the new census determines where House districts will be apportioned. The Texas GOP has opted to create new maps just five years after the state's last round of redistricting, with the goal of having them in place ahead of the midterms. Republicans currently control 25 of Texas's 38 congressional districts. The new map would put them in position to hold 30 House seats after next year, which would give them 80% of the state's representation in Congress in a state where President Trump secured 56% of the vote in last year's presidential race, according to the official tally from the Texas Secretary of State. That plan is on hold, however, until the standoff with Democrats who have fled the state is resolved. Democratic governors in California, New York and Illinois have pledged to gerrymander their own states if the new Texas map does go into effect, but experts say they would face serious hurdles if they do try to go tit-for-tat with the GOP on redistricting. The outcome of the current redistricting fight could have a huge impact on President Trump's final two years in the White House. Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats to gain a majority in the House, which would give them veto power over any legislation Trump wanted to pass and the authority to launch high-profile investigations into his actions in office. If Republicans keep control, Trump would enjoy two more years of a Congress that is steadfastly aligned behind his vision for the country.
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Number of US ETF Issuers Surges as Industry Grows: Bloomberg
The exchange-traded fund ecosystem keeps growing: There are now 268 ETF issuers in the United States—roughly double the number of issuers there were three years ago, according to data from Bloomberg. The ETF industry saw 45 issuers debut last year and is on pace for 50 new ones in 2025, according to Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas, who shared the data in a post on X. 'It's where the fish are biting,' Balchunas said. FactSet data analyzed by show 289 unique issuers as of August 2025, up from 252 in 2024, which puts the projected number of new issuers closer to 60 by year's end. A Large Appetite for Niche Strategies The explosion of new ETF issuers represents the fact that there is investor appetite for ETFs, and firms are eager to meet that demand, Zach Evens, analyst of passive strategies at Morningstar, told He added that a lot of the ETF launches from new issuers have been in non-traditional or niche strategies. Invest in Gold American Hartford Gold: #1 Precious Metals Dealer in the Nation Priority Gold: Up to $15k in Free Silver + Zero Account Fees on Qualifying Purchase Thor Metals Group: Best Overall Gold IRA 'These types of strategies attempt to capture a specific market, or trade, and deliver select clients the specific exposures they desire,' Evens said, adding that many of the issuers use options to achieve those exposures. Examples include covered-call and derivative-income ETFs, including single-stock funds: Derivative-income strategies saw more than $29 billion in net flows in the first six months of the year, and it was the top category for all active ETF flows, according to data from Morningstar. Other examples are leveraged or inverse ETFs—also sometimes with single-stock funds—crypto-related ETFs and defined outcome or buffer ETFs. Many of these ETFs are relatively expensive compared to index ETFs, which lowers the bar for profitability, Evens added. Relative Ease for New ETF Issuers Another trend behind the surge of new ETF issuers is that it's now relatively easy for firms to launch new ETFs with the rise in white label providers like Tidal Financial and ETF Architect, which handle much of the administration and operations associated with launching and running an ETF, Evens said. That means that, while there's more demand, there's also more ability for firms to meet that demand. Editor's note: This article has been updated to add issuer data from | © Copyright 2025 All rights reserved
