Wednesday, 14th September, 2022

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The quarter shekel coin, dated to 69 AD,
is one of only four of its kind known to exist
It took nearly 20 years of
dogged detective work and a
trail which crossed continents
before the case of the
missing $1m relic could be
closed.
"A cherished piece of history
[is] finally going home," said a US
official at a ceremony marking the
occasion.
Fast rising prices continued
to trouble the US economy
last month, though a drop
in petrol costs provided
some relief.
The annual inflation rate, the
pace at which prices rise, fell to
8.3% in August, the Labor Department
said.
That was down from 8.5% in
July, marking a second month of
decline.
But the costs of food, housing
and medical care continued to
surge, disappointing economists
expecting more widespread easing.
Shares in the US dropped
sharply following the release. The
Dow Jones was down more than
2.5% in mid-morning trade, while
the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell more
than 3%.
The report also renewed pressure
on US President Joe Biden,
whose approval ratings sank below
40% earlier this year, reflecting
concerns about the rising cost of
living.
While his ratings have recovered
slightly in recent weeks as
petrol prices have subsided, the
issue remains "a huge problem" for
the president and for the Democratic
party more broadly, said
pollster Chris Jackson.
"Americans have been telling
us for months now that it's the
number one concern they have
and rightly or wrongly they blame
whoever's running the country for
that," said Mr Jackson, senior vice
president at the Ipsos polling firm.
The next round of national
elections is scheduled for November,
a contest that will determine
whether Mr Biden's Democrats
maintain their slim control of
Congress.
For a president with approval
ratings like Mr Biden's to see his
party pick up seats in the midterms
would be unprecedented, Mr
Jackson said.
Kenny Shorne is among the
many Americans to have been
affected by inflation, which peaked
at 9.1% in June, the fastest pace
since the early 1980s.
The 23-year-old, who supports
himself with construction and
photography jobs, lives in New Jersey
with his family to try to keep
expenses down. He also recently
took a break from his master's
degree programme in communica-
That piece of history is a small
silver coin rich in symbolism,
minted during a Jewish revolt
nearly 2,000 years ago.
Looted in Israel in 2002, it was
eventually tracked down, seized
and is being returned to where it
came from.
The saga began when the
Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)
DAILY ANALYST Wednesday, 14th September, 2022
learned from informants that the
coin had been taken by Palestinians
from a hoard unearthed in the
Ella Valley, south of Jerusalem.
The IAA says it spent the next
decade and a half trying to locate
the coin, which passed through
illicit antiquities markets in Israel,
Jordan and the UK. It was eventually
exported to the US for sale at
an auction in Denver, Colorado, in
2017
Ṫhe IAA alerted US Homeland
Security Investigations (HSI),
which then took administrative
custody of the coin. The investigation
was passed to the Manhattan
District Attorney's Antiquities
Trafficking Unit (ATU), which
obtained a court order to repatriate
the coin based on information
from informants in five countries
along with help from authorities
in Europe and the Middle East.
US inflation remains high
despite lower petrol prices
tions, concerned about being able
to afford it as other costs climb.
He said high petrol prices
were among the items presenting
a problem, despite the fact that
they have come down in recent
weeks.
"Inflation makes it hard for
me to see a liveable future," he
said. "It really gets to me because I
don't know what the answer is."
The cost of groceries in the US
jumped 13.5% in the 12 months
to August, while housing costs
climbed 6.2% and medical care
rose 5.6%.
Energy costs - one of the big
drivers of inflation - also remain
far higher than a year ago, but
they have dropped sharply in the
past two months, falling more
than 10% from July to August, the
Labor Department said.
Overall the consumer price
index, which tracks goods and services
across the economy, was up
0.1% from July to August, as the
fall in petrol costs was offset by
increases in other areas.
While economists remain
concerned as prices outside of energy
continue to rise, the annual
number typically matters most
in terms of shaping people's perceptions,
said Betsey Stevenson,
professor of economics and public
policy at the University of Michigan,
who served in the White
House under former president
Barack Obama.
"It's really good news that
gas prices are coming down. it
gives people a little bit more room
in their budget, a little bit more
breathing room and I think it also
makes people feel a little bit better,"
she said.
But she added: "I don't think it
speaks to being out of the woods".
She expects inflation to remain
higher than the US central bank's
2% inflation target even at the end
of next year.
Like central banks in other
countries, including the UK, policymakers
at the Federal Reserve
have been raising interest rates
since March to tackle the problem.
By making borrowing more
expensive, the hikes are intended
to cool demand from households
and businesses, helping to reduce
some of the pressures pushing up
prices.
The Fed is widely expected to
announce another large increase
this month, a move analysts said
was all but confirmed by latest
report.
"Investors should brace themselves
for even higher rates than
they anticipated before today's
release," said Ronald Temple, managing
director, co-head of multi-asset
and head of US equity at Lazard
Asset Management.
"Despite the sharpest tightening
of monetary policy in decades,
the Fed still has more heavy lifting
ahead."
Joe Biden has called bringing down inflation his top priority
Global News
Looted coin worth $1m returned
to Israel after years-long hunt
The coin was handed over on
Monday in a ceremony at the Manhattan
District Attorney's office
attended by US and Israeli officials,
including Israel's ambassador to
the UN Gilad Erdan.
"Today we join our partners to
return an incredibly rare piece of
Israel's history, the quarter shekel
coin, a symbol of independence
from the time of Roman presence
in what is now modern Israel,"
HSI agent Ricky J Patel told the
gathering.
The silver coin, embossed with
Jewish motifs, is one of only four
of its kind known to be in existence.
The IAA dated it to 69 AD -
the fourth year of the Great Revolt.
Switching from fossil fuels
to renewable energy could
save the world as much as
$12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050, an
Oxford University study
says.
The report said it was wrong
and pessimistic to claim that moving
quickly towards cleaner energy
sources was expensive.
Gas prices have soared on
mounting concerns over energy
supplies.
But the researchers say that
going green now makes economic
sense because of the falling cost of
renewables.
"Even if you're a climate denier,
you should be on board with what
we're advocating," Prof Doyne
Farmer from the Institute for New
Economic Thinking at the Oxford
Martin School told BBC News.
"Our central conclusion is that
we should go full speed ahead with
the green energy transition because
it's going to save us money,"
he said.
The report's findings are based
on looking at historic price data
for renewables and fossil fuels and
then modelling how they're likely
to change in the future.
The data for fossil fuels goes
from 2020 back more than 100
years and shows that after accounting
for inflation, and market
volatility, the price hasn't changed
much.
Renewables have only been
around for a few decades, so there's
less data. But in that time continual
improvements in technology
have meant the cost of solar and
wind power have fallen rapidly, at
a rate approaching 10% a year.
The report's expectation that
the price of renewables will continue
to fall is based on "probabilistic"
modelling, using data on how
The minting of a such a coin
was "in fact a declaration of independence
by the Jews in the land
of Israel, a statement against the
mighty empire that stood before
them", said Ilan Hadad of the IAA.
The Great Revolt saw a rebellion
by Jews in Judea against oppressive
rule by the Romans, who
had ended Jewish independence
there a century earlier.
The uprising culminated with
the Romans' destruction of Jerusalem
and the second Jewish temple
in 70 AD.
Estimates put the number of
Jews killed from hundreds of thousands
to more than a million.
Switching to renewable energy
could save trillions - study
The cost of green energy like wind and
solar has been falling for decades
massive investment and economies
of scale have made other
similar technologies cheaper.
"Our latest research shows
scaling-up key green technologies
will continue to drive their costs
down, and the faster we go, the
more we will save," says Dr Rupert
Way, the report's lead author from
the Smith School of Enterprise and
the Environment.
Wind and solar are already the
cheapest option for new power
projects, but questions remain
over how to best store power and
balance the grid when the changes
in the weather leads to fall in renewable
output.
Cost of net zero
Back in 2019 Philip Hammond,
then Chancellor of the Exchequer
wrote to the prime minister to say
that the cost of reaching net zero
greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
in the UK would be more than £1tn.
This report says the likely costs
have been over-estimated and have
deterred investment.
It also says predictions by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) that the cost
of keeping global temperatures
rises under 2 degrees would correspond
to a loss of GDP by 2050 were
too pessimistic. The transition
to renewables was, it says, likely
to turn out to be a "net economic
benefit".
The research has been published
in the journal Joule and is
a collaboration between the Institute
for New Economic Thinking
at the Oxford Martin School, the
Oxford Martin Programme on the
Post-Carbon Transition, the Smith
School of Enterprise & Environment
at the University of Oxford,
and SoDa Labs at Monash University.