National News:
October 29th:
Is Atlasian credit about to be downgraded?
Budget Woes: With a deadline of October 31st almost upon us and despite having existed for over a month, it appears the Budget Process Committee is not yet ready to present a final report despite having already missed its original deadline of 30 days as stated by the Budget Process & Control Act. Even more concerning, only two days remain until S&P downgrades Atlasian credit from "AAA" to "AA" in an act that could cause significant economic damage to our Republic. Only two days remain for that deadline, and despite the brave efforts of Speaker Yankee to put together a more complete version it seems clear the October 31st version won't be met as their final report requires majority support in the Committee.
The Crusader, while understanding of the fact officeholders may be busy or facing other dilemmas, feels forced to condemn the lack of a stronger effort to get the budget done before further economic chaos is inflicted on Atlasia. Having said that, we also recognize the work placed on the issue by Speaker Yankee, and we express our hope a budget can at least be completed before our credit is downgraded yet again to "A" on December 31st.
95% of what is left to be done is the estimates that have to be provided by the Game Moderator for the revenues, which have been sitting since October 14th. Also I believe AZ said that he pushed the deadline back to November 11th.
While I would have preferred a greater level of involvement from the committee as a whole, the notion that the hold up is on our end is flat wrong. Once we fill in the remaining gaps on the spending portion, our portion will be 100% done and the hold up will be entirely one of getting the Revenue estimates from the Game Moderation Team.
Part of the problem is that the Game Moderators in the past have used an activity factor to determine unemployment numbers, but this has created a substantial disconnect between the GDP numbers as posted and the unemployment rate as posted. So it is difficult to calculate revenues and even some expenses, when GDP would dictate basically 2016 RL revenue levels, and unemployment would probably dictate 2014 RL revenues or 2013 numbers. So I cannot calculate them myself, the Game Moderation Team has to decide how to calculate the numbers and whether or not to make changes to either the GDP or Unemployment calculations as well.
Without the activity factor, unemployment would be 5.5% or in that ball park, instead of the recessionary levels over 7% that the GM team has been using basically for the past year over the course of several Game Moderators.
I am encouraged to see AZ taking the lead to reform the way things operated with past GMs, and this is something that needs to be established firmly before we get further away from the reset, but that being said, you cannot punish the players with a deadline set by the GM when the Game Moderation Team has to rework the rules.
It was pushed back to November 10th.
As for revenue estimates encke is currently working on that and should complete that task soon.
