The Trump administration has frozen, terminated or delayed billions in congressionally approved research grants since last year. Proposition 38 aims to backfill some of that loss by creating a stable source of money to fund immunology and immunotherapy research.
The basics
Proposition 38 would authorize the state to issue $8.4 billion in bonds to fund immunology and immunotherapy research to uncover treatments that help the immune system fight diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease more efficiently.
The impact
The measure would require at least $4.2 billion of the funds to be used for immunology research on cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. It also would authorize the state to enter a partnership with an immunology and immunotherapy research institute selected by the California Department of Public Health and allocate half of the bond revenue to it. The remaining funds would be used for competitive grants that focus solely on immunology and immunotherapy research.
Californians would take on an increased cost of $500 million to $600 million annually to repay the bond for about 20 years, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The Yes on 38 campaign says the proposition pays for itself: 10% of all proceeds from the licensing of immunotherapies must be returned to the state to offset the total cost of the bond measure, including interest.
However, it’s difficult to predict whether any research projects will lead to marketable treatments.
Dig deeper
Proposition 38 is backed by organizations including the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the ALS Assn., as well as a majority of local chapters of Democratic organizations across the state. Supporters say the proposed funding could give those afflicted with chronic illness hope and potentially more options for treatment.
Its opponents have said the proposed criteria for awarding the grant funding would appear to create an extremely small pool of qualified recipients. Only the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, co-founded by billionaire Gary K. Michelson, would qualify under the proposed criteria, according to No on 38, the campaign against the proposition.
Robin Swanson, spokesperson for the Yes on 38 campaign, said “lots of institutions would qualify for funds under this measure.”
But she said at a virtual news conference in mid-September that it was “very likely” that the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy “will qualify for half of the funds under the current criteria.”
Ultimately, Swanson said, the decision lies with the California Department of Public Health.
Demonstrators allege Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his coalition’s proposed reforms pose a threat to press freedom.
Published On 25 Oct 202625 Oct 2026
Several thousand people have taken to the streets in Prague to protest against plans to change the funding system for the Czech Republic’s public media, accusing the government of stifling press freedom.
On Sunday, protesters demanded the withdrawal of legislation seeking to abolish household licence fees and replace them with state budget allocations for public radio and television.
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The Czech lower house of parliament approved fast-tracking the bill in a rare overnight vote on Saturday after governing coalition lawmakers rushed to open the issue, limiting the opposition’s ability to engage in debate before the vote was held.
The bill, proposed by the governing coalition led by billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis, which includes two far-right parties, must still be passed by the upper house before becoming law.
The opposition has pledged to challenge the legislation in the constitutional court. The plan would cut funding for public media by about 15 percent, possibly as early as next year.
Czechs protest against a parliamentary vote to approve public media reforms in Prague, Czech Republic, on October 25, 2026 [Gabriel Kuchta/Getty Images]
At the protest in Prague’s Old Town Square, demonstrators chanted, “We’ve had enough”, “This must not be allowed to pass”, and “4:36”, referencing the early morning hour when the draft was approved by parliament.
Babis has said the plan is not an attack on media independence but a matter of funding transparency.
Critics warn the proposed change would allow the governing coalition to take control of the media. They compare it with the actions of populist governments, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Babis and his coalition, whose agenda includes reducing support for Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion, have a record of attacks against the media.
Public media staffers announced they would go on strike on November 3. They are backed by labour unions, university rectors, churches, international media organisations and many others.
A rally is also planned at Prague’s Letna park on November 15, two days before the anniversary of the 1989 anti-communist Velvet Revolution that ended more than 40 years of totalitarian government.
Journalists prepare to strike as politicians push through changes that critics say threaten independence.
Published On 24 Oct 202624 Oct 2026
The Czech Republic’s governing coalition has advanced changes to the funding of public media, despite criticism that it could weaken broadcaster independence.
In a rare overnight vote in the early hours of Saturday, the coalition voted to send the bill to committees for further discussion.
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The changes include scrapping the 205 crown ($9.45) household broadcasting fee, and replacing it with funding from the state budget.
The populist government of billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis, backed by the far-right SPD party, has frequently criticised public and private media coverage of its policies and accused some outlets of bias.
Babis promised to scrap the broadcasting fee before taking office last December, and says his three-party government is now fulfilling that pledge to voters.
Public media employees staged a strike against the move in June, saying it would make broadcasters vulnerable to government pressure.
Opposition parties have compared the changes with reforms under neighbouring Hungary’s former Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.
Babis has said the new funding model would be fairer to poorer households and encourage outlets to become more efficient.
“There is no war for independent media,” Babis said on Facebook late on Friday. “There is no fight for democracy and no nationalisation of media is being prepared.”
The proposal would cut funding for Czech Television and Czech Radio by about 15 percent and keep nominal funding unchanged for several years.
Public media are among the most trusted news sources in the Czech Republic, with Czech Television the most-watched broadcaster across several age groups.
A civic group has called a public protest for Sunday, while journalists and other employees at the broadcasters announced a strike for November 3.
Public sector workers and teachers joined student protesters, amid growing youth-led demonstrations across Europe.
Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
Thousands of students and teachers have rallied across cities in Greece, demanding more funding for education, including better facilities and smaller class sizes.
The demonstrations echo a wave of youth-led protests across Europe this month, including in France and Albania, where anger over rising costs and alleged corruption has led to clashes with police and major property damage.
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Greek police said about 10,000 demonstrators, including school and university students, rallied peacefully in central Athens and the capital’s suburbs on Wednesday.
“From Greece to France, we want public, free education,” protesters chanted as they gathered outside Parliament, where students staged an overnight sit-in nearby before the rally.
Others joined the protests in Thessaloniki, Patras, Larissa and other cities across Greece in solidarity with growing demonstrations in France and elsewhere in Europe, where rallies demanding educational resources have morphed into angry demonstrations over soaring living costs.
Cost-of-living crisis
In Greece, the protests add pressure to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his centre-right government as the country prepares to hold elections in mid-2027 amid a weakening economy.
Greece struggled with a serious debt crisis from 2009 to 2018, during which the government agreed to spending cuts in exchange for three European Union and International Monetary Fund bailouts worth about 290 billion euros ($326bn).
But the measures have impacted Greek workers, who are among the poorest in Europe and struggle with stagnant wages, high rents and rising energy costs.
The average monthly salary of 1,500 euros ($1,685) sits at 2009 levels, with many young Greeks having been priced out of housing in cities by skyrocketing rents.
“Surviving here is very difficult; the rent is really high, the houses are really small. Our parents can’t make ends meet to pay for our rent, the electricity, for our life here,” university student Georgia Foukidou, 21, who joined the protest in Athens, told the Reuters news agency.
The protests on Wednesday included strikes by primary and secondary school teachers protesting low pay and staff shortages, while substitute teachers demanded permanent positions and reduced class sizes. Public sector workers and other unions also joined the demonstrations.
Education Minister Sofia Zacharaki said prior to the protests that she was listening to student demands, noting that the government was spending more than 733 million euros ($823m) on new student residences and facilities upgrades.
Mitsotakis’ government has also pledged about one billion euros ($1.12bn) in state subsidies and other benefits to offset increased energy costs for households and businesses due to the Iran war and inflation.
HSBC’s ‘sharia-compliant’ fund invested over $100 million in companies linked to Israel’s military, raising questions about where the savings and investment of Muslims might end up going. Al Jazeera’s Lina-Serene explains.
The UN agency says funding shortages threaten to reverse ‘modest and fragile’ progress on food security.
Published On 19 Oct 202619 Oct 2026
The World Food Programme (WFP) has announced major cuts to its Gaza response due to a funding shortage, leaving about 500,000 people without critical support as much of the population of the war-ravaged Palestinian territory struggles to get enough to eat.
In a statement on Monday, the United Nations agency said it received less than half as much funding for its Palestine operation in 2026 as in previous years. It said it urgently needs a further $450 million to maintain critical operations in the occupied Palestinian territory over the next six months.
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As a result, the WFP said it would reduce the number of people receiving monthly assistance in Gaza from 1.6 million to 1.1 million. Rations will be cut from two food parcels per family to one, and bags of flour will be smaller.
The UN agency said it would also reduce the number of hot meals provided, from 250,000 to 150,000 a day. Families living in hard-to-reach areas, including near the so-called “yellow line” demarcating Israeli military control, will receive a hot meal every other day instead of daily.
More than three years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, have brought the collapse of education, healthcare and the economy, while access to food, water, shelter and other basic necessities has become a daily struggle.
More than 74,245 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
UN estimates show more than 80 percent of people are unemployed and unable to afford fresh or protein-rich foods when they are available. Only one in five children consumes a sufficiently diverse diet while access to health services remains limited.
An estimated 1.4 million people, or 67 percent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse. This figure is down from 1.6 million people, or 77 percent of the population, at the end of 2025, however the WFP said the improvement “remains modest and fragile.”
Funding shortfalls had already affected operations in the occupied West Bank, where the number of people receiving assistance was halved in September, from 400,000 to 200,000.
Protesters clashed with police in Buenos Aires as students and teachers vented fury at the government’s refusal to enact a law to boost education funding. President Javier Milei says implementing the law would threaten his budget-balancing plan.
President Trump is promising more payments to voters just ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections — this time, to more than 20 million seniors, who each would get $90 to help pay for Medicare premiums.
The announcement, made late Friday night by Trump on social media, comes after he said last month about 1 million people would get rebate checks of $500 for Affordable Care Act premiums. It also comes after his One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year slashed funding for Medicare, disqualifying thousands from eligibility and raising fees for the rest, and for the ACA, raising premiums for millions by eliminating tax credits.
Trump has also promised on the campaign trail to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections.
His latest promise — which, like the others, would require approval from Congress — would probably cost more than $1 trillion, adding to the ballooning deficit and worsening inflation.
Polls show Americans increasingly blame Trump for the high cost of gasoline and groceries, with just 17% approving of his handling of inflation. Rising healthcare costs are also a key component of the affordability struggles many face across the country.
The president has sought to shrug off concerns about affordability, claiming the economy is booming.
The White House said the $90 payments for seniors would come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, established by Congress in 2008 as flexible funding to improve program operations and payments to healthcare providers.
As proposed, Medicare Part B enrollees would receive a one-time payment in October, either through direct deposit or by check, the White House said. Total monthly costs for the program — which covers costs like doctor’s visits, ambulance services and lab tests — start around $200 and vary with income.
To be eligible, seniors must be living in the U.S. and not be already receiving premium assistance from Medicaid or paying adjusted monthly premiums based on income, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage, a private plan alternative to traditional Medicare coverage, would not be eligible for the payment. More than half of eligible Medicare beneficiaries have Medicare Advantage, according to healthcare research nonprofit KFF.
Previous administrations have not used the Medicare Improvement Fund in this way, although Congress has periodically taken out money from the fund to pay for other priorities, said Larry Levitt, KFF’s executive vice president for health policy. For example, $20.74 billion was used for the creation of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
“The Medicare Improvement Fund language is quite broad and gives substantial discretion to the administration,” Levitt said.
Hong Kong listing reforms and surging deposits show regional markets funding Asia’s future.
This article appears in the October issue of Global Finance Magazine.
When the International Monetary Fund and World Bank convene their annual meetings in Bangkok this October, it will be the first time the joint gathering has returned to the city in 35 years. IMF officials have taken to calling Asia the “driving force” of the global economy — shorthand for a region that accounts for one-third of global gross domestic product, 29% of global public equity market capitalization, 56% of listed companies and 52% of global venture capital activity, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Asia Capital Markets Report
The question for chief financial officers isn’t whether Asia is growing — it’s whether the region can finance that growth on its own terms, or whether it still depends on capital, listings, and liquidity from the West. The answer, based on bank data, exchange records, and conversations with practitioners and economists on the ground, turns out to be both.
Alex Ibrahim, until recently corporate CFO of Yanolja, the Seoul-headquartered travel technology company, said Asia is a picture of change. Its financial sector has matured in the decades since the 1960s to 1990s, when headlines proclaimed the rise of the Asian Tigers and countries became synonymous with rapid, export-driven industrialization funded largely from abroad.
“Back then, the economies were growing very fast, and a lot of the money was coming from the U.S. to invest,” said Ibrahim, who before joining Yanolja spent nearly a decade running international capital markets at the New York Stock Exchange. “If you look now, capital has developed locally and the financial infrastructure in Asia is much more robust.”
Marc Iyeki, a board advisor who formerly led the NYSE’s Asia-Pacific listing sector and shepherded about 100 companies to market, said the shift reflects a change in decision-making. “Decades ago, the money was in New York. Decisions were made in New York,” he said. Since then, regional private equity and venture firms have placed people on the ground in Asia who understand the home market and make the calls themselves, often after training at global firms and bringing that experience back. The region has also produced homegrown standouts such as PAG, Hillhouse Investment, MBK Partners, and Peak XV Partners.
That evolution is seen in how Asia’s own exchanges are performing. Over the past ten years, Hong Kong’s equity market has moved through cycles in liquidity and new issuance, but 2025 marked a rebound from the post-pandemic slowdown. Average daily turnover on the Hong Kong stock exchange rose from HK$66 billion in 2016 to HK$248 billion in 2025, nearly 3.7 times the level a decade earlier. Initial public offering proceeds were more volatile: HK$194 billion was raised in 2016, followed by several weak years before rebounding to HK$285 billion in 2025.
Japan’s exchange has risen more steadily. On the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime Market, average daily trading value for domestic common stocks rose from 3.2 trillion yen in fiscal year 2022 to 4.3 trillion yen in fiscal year 2023, and 6.7 trillion yen in fiscal year 2025.
Iyeki recalled that when Alibaba first wanted to list in Hong Kong in 2013, the exchange turned it away over governance requirements — and New York landed the IPO. Losing a flagship company forced a reckoning. Some in Hong Kong worried that loosening listing rules would weaken protections for retail investors; others warned the market would be “hollowed out,” as local companies sought listings in New York and London. Hong Kong changed its rules, and years later Alibaba came back for a dual listing. The infrastructure now absorbing record IPO volumes and Alibaba-scale capital was built, in part, out of that earlier loss.
One of the people behind that financial infrastructure is Larry Li, a Hong Kong-based fintech founder who worked on Stock Connect, a market access program that links the stock markets of mainland China and Hong Kong. It has become a major cross-border equity trading tie between China and international investors. Its northbound turnover more than doubled to 345 billion yuan in the first half of 2026; southbound turnover hit a new high of $123 billion yuan. “It’s a closed loop, so capital cannot fly out of the system,” Li said.
Li, a director of Digital Asset Clearing Center, which aims to develop a financial settlement and clearing infrastructure that can integrate digital and tokenized assets into mainstream capital markets, argued that areas like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai have pockets of innovation in financial AI. Li said the region’s token economy “drives market infrastructure upgrades, attracts capital globally, and enjoys support from governments as a strategic force of growth.”
Fintech, Banking, and Innovation
Li pointed out that the region’s tokenized economy fosters “co-opetition” between the banking industry and fintech enterprises. Consumers across the region have largely turned to fintech-developed super apps like Alipay and WeChat Pay, while banks have doubled down on the regulated back end: cross-border settlement, know your customer, and other compliance rules.
Some of the same banks figuring out Asia’s patchwork of KYC and settlement rules are also among the world’s fastest-growing lenders. Banking data makes the same point in numbers. S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 2026 ranking of Asia-Pacific’s 50 largest lenders by assets found China’s big four — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Bank of China — grew assets about 16% year over year in US-dollar terms as of December 31, 2025. S&P also singled out Singapore’s three largest banks — DBS, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., and United Overseas Bank — for strong double-digit asset growth, driven by regional deposit inflows rather than capital raised abroad.
China’s financial system is bank-led and primarily state-directed, according to Standard & Poor’s. The country’s household savings, pensions, and corporate liquidity flow into banks rather than capital markets, giving lenders a large, stable funding base that the government then channels toward priority sectors. Beijing has supported that base with a 520 billion yuan capital injection into four state-owned banks in 2025, followed by plans announced in March 2026 to issue another 300 billion yuan in special bonds to recapitalize ICBC and Agricultural Bank of China.
“As the primary liquidity conduit for fiscal stimulus, state-owned banks increased their financial investments by 19% in 2025,” Iris Tan, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in the S&P report. These financial investments were “fueled by a record 28% surge in government bond issuance,” according to Tan.
Vietnam as a Case Study
None of this means that Asia’s approximately 48 countries are growing equally. Sam Van, managing partner of SRO Partners and an advisor on Vietnamese capital markets, said the region is still layered by tier. Blue-chip regional companies can borrow cheaply from local banks at rates set by well-capitalized central banks — sometimes so cheaply, he said, that “it’s better to borrow money from the bank than actually issue a bond.” Midsize companies, those earning under $50 million in revenue, are a harder sell to credit officers weighing thin margins against career risk, which pushes some smaller businesses toward informal lenders. Van sees this gap as a reality in a still-maturing system rather than evidence that the system isn’t working.
Van, who recently co-authored a book that chronicles Vietnam’s economic rise, said the country illustrates how quickly a market can mature once the incentives align. Vietnam’s IMF-linked compliance upgrades — the product of what Van calls the government “consistently wanting to meet that standard” since joining the IMF in the 1990s — helped it earn an upgrade to FTSE Russell’s emerging-market status in September.
Critical Economic Views
Two economists watching from outside the deal room caution against overstating the region’s financial self-sufficiency. Bala Ramasamy, professor of economics at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, argued that “the driver in Asia, for Asia and by Asia is definitely China” — its outbound foreign direct investment to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations alone can match what comes from the EU or the US, and the reconfiguration of trade around geopolitical frictions is relocating supply chains in ways that are boosting growth across Southeast and South Asia. Japanese and Taiwanese capital, he noted, is increasingly heading toward the US to secure market access and stay aligned with Trump-era industrial policy, even as flows from Europe and the US slow elsewhere. “I don’t think Asia can do without it,” he said.
Prema-chandra Athukorala, emeritus professor of economics at the Australian National University, said Asia’s growth is substantial, but its export-driven economy still relies heavily on the rest of the world. Domestic savings rates across the region dwarf the emerging-market average of roughly 25% — Singapore’s is near 58%, China’s near 49.5%, India’s around 30% — and in most Asian economies, investment rates run below those savings rates, meaning the region is, on balance, a net exporter of capital rather than an importer of it. Intraregional FDI from China, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore has grown substantially over the past two decades. However, Athukorala said that extra-regional FDI still accounts for the larger share of investment in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, where Western multinationals remain central to “China+1” supply-chain strategies, and even domestically financed activity depends heavily on global demand. “Over two-thirds of the regional exports are still destined to extra-regional markets,” he said.
Taken together, the practitioners and the professors describe a region that finances far more of its own growth than it used to, yet remains clearly reliant on the rest of the world.
Weld Royal is a contributing writer based in the U.S.
![Czechs gather during a protest against a vote to approve reforms over public media in Prague, Czech Republic, October 25, 2026 [Gabriel Kuchta/Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/getty_6ade7e841f-1792966276.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
