Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 03January 2021

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

News posted last week about economic effects related to the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some articles are summarized here. We cover the latest economic data, especially the coronavirus relief bill and stimulus checks, government funding, the latest employment data, housing market reports, mortgage delinquencies & forbearance, layoffs, lockdowns, and schools, as well as GDP. The bulk of the news is from the U.S., with a few articles from overseas at the end. (Picture below is morning rush hour in downtown Chicago, 20 March 2020.) News items about epidemiology and other medical news for the virus are reported in a companion article.

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Congress Passed Legislation Making the Treasury Secretary the Boss of the Federal Reserve During a Financial Crisis: That’s Creating Its Own Crisis – Pam Martens – Following the financial crisis of 2007 to 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law on July 21, 2010. At the time, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and could have put teeth into the law, had they chosen to do so. The Act did not reform Wall Street nor did it protect American consumers from the looting practices of the Wall Street banks. Dodd-Frank allowed Wall Street’s private justice system to continue, where both customers and employees must waive their rights to bring claims in a court of law; it allowed Wall Street banks to continue using depositors’ money to make wild gambles in derivatives; it permitted Wall Street banks to continue buying triple-A credit ratings from the ratings agencies for dodgy securitized products; [..] We could go on and on, but you get the point: Dodd-Frank was a grand show that accomplished next to nothing in the way of meaningful structural reform of Wall Street. Now Americans are learning that the Dodd-Frank Act did one other very dangerous thing: it legally authorized the U.S. Treasury Secretary to take the Federal Reserve hostage during a financial crisis. Section 1101 of the Act provides that the Federal Reserve Board, “may not establish any program or facility under this paragraph without the prior approval of the Secretary of the Treasury.” The referenced paragraph pertains to the Fed’s ability to enact emergency lending facilities during a financial crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on December 1 indicates that he is very much aware of who’s now in charge of calling the shots on emergency loans by the Fed in a time of crisis. Powell testified as follows: “Our actions taken together have helped unlock almost $2 trillion of funding to support businesses, large and small, non-profits and state and local governments since April. This in turn has helped keep organizations from shuttering and has put employers in a better position to keep workers on and to hire them back as the economy continues to recover. These programs serve as a backstop to key credit markets and have helped restore the flow of credit from private lenders through normal channels. We’ve deployed these lending powers to an unprecedented extent. Our emergency lending powers require the approval of the Treasury and are available only in very unusual circumstances, such as those we find ourselves in.” Today, we have a Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who spent 17 years as a Goldman Sachs banker; co-founded the hedge fund Dune Capital Management; then got a sweet deal from the FDIC to buy the failed bank, IndyMac, together with the infamous hedge fund tycoons John Paulson and George Soros, renamed it OneWest and proceeded to become rich on the deal while foreclosing on tens of thousands of struggling families during the financial crisis, including active military members. Is Mnuchin really the person Americans want overseeing emergency loan programs at the Fed, an institution that can legally create trillions of dollars electronically out of thin air? Mnuchin has already demonstrated that he’s unfit for this job by demanding in aNovember 19 letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell that the Fed stop making emergency loans by December 31 under certain emergency loan programs, including the Main Street Loan Facility that benefits small and medium size businesses and the Municipal Liquidity Facility that supports local and state governments. Mnuchin is fine with the Fed continuing the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, and the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, all of which benefit Wall Street. Mnuchin is also fine with the Fed continuing its Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility, which reimburses banks for the Small Business Administration loans they make (which are already guaranteed by the SBA). That Fed program has quietly sluiced more than $3 billion to mega Wall Street bank Citigroup.

Fed extends Main Street program to process more loans – The Federal Reserve is extending its middle-market business rescue program to Jan. 8 in an effort to give the central bank more time to process loans that have been submitted leading up to the program’s close. The Main Street Lending Program was previously set to end Dec. 31, after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin requested that the Fed return all unused funds appropriated by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to backstop several emergency lending programs, including Main Street. The Fed initially pushed back on the request, arguing that the programs should stay in place until the economy was on a more certain path to recovery, but later agreed to return the money. The disagreement drew the attention of lawmakers, who passed a stimulus package last week that included a provision to prevent the Fed from restarting any of the CARES Act-funded facilities. Still, Mnuchin approved the Fed extending the Main Street Lending Program – which offers loans to companies with either up to 15,000 employees or up to $5 billion in annual revenue – for an additional week into 2021. The extension will “allow more time to process and fund loans” that were submitted to the Fed on or before Dec. 14, the Fed said in a press release Tuesday. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which is administering the Main Street program, had previously instructed lenders to submit loans by Dec. 14, adding that it was unlikely any loans submitted after that date would be able to be processed in time. As of Dec. 23 the Main Street program had purchased almost $15 billion in loans, according to the Fed’s weekly balance sheet. Though a far cry from the $600 billion allocated for the program, activity picked up in recent weeks. Data the Fed released earlier this month showed that as of Dec. 2 the program had purchased about $6 billion in loans.

Goldman Now Sees Q1 GDP Surging 5% Thanks To $900BN Covid Stimulus – It was just one month ago when Wall Street’s best and brightest – which these days also means most clueless – personified in this case by JPMorgan’s chief economists, predicted that GDP in the first quarter of 2021 would contract by 1%,effectively putting the US on collision course with a double dip recession.Just before Thanksgiving, JPM economist Michael Feroli wrote that while the economy powered through the July coronavirus wave, “at that time the reopening of the economy provided a powerful tailwind to growth. The economy no longer has that tailwind; instead it now faces the headwind of increasing restrictions on activity.” Meanwhile, “the holiday season – from Thanksgiving through New Year’s – threatens a further increase in cases. This winter will be grim, and we believe the economy will contract again in 1Q, albeit at “only” a 1.0% annualized rate.” The bottom line, or rather square, is shown in the table below: Well, in a world in which even the top economists are blindsided by every single event – events which it is their job to anticipate, predict and price in – just one month later everything has changed once again and in a note from Goldman’s economists this time, we read that contrary to JPM’s dour forecasts, Q1 GDP will (should) actually be a great quarter for the economy, and as a result of the just approved $900BN stimulus bill and ongoing vaccine rollout, Goldman now expects G1 GDP to grow 5.0%, up from 3.0% previously, and sees full year GDP rising to 5.8% (from 5.3% previously), to wit: President Trump approved a COVID relief package worth roughly $900bn (4% of GDP). The package is slightly larger and comes earlier than the roughly $700bn package we had previously assumed in our forecasts…. we upgrade our 2021 growth forecasts to incorporate this additional fiscal stimulus.

Trump signs $2.3T relief, spending package –President Trump on Sunday signed the government funding and coronavirus relief package, the White House said, averting a government shutdown and delivering economic aid as the pandemic worsens. Trump signed off on the $2.3 trillion package from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., days after he expressed displeasure with the spending outlined in the omnibus and complained that the coronavirus relief measure should include direct payments of $2,000 per person, up from $600. But the delay came after Trump single-handedly brought the government to the brink of a shutdown and unemployment benefits expired for millions of Americans Saturday as the bill went unsigned. Trump has visited his golf club in Florida each day since arriving in the state on Wednesday and has made no public appearances. He did so again on Sunday both before and after signing the legislation. “I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed,” Trump said in a statement upon signing the legislation. “I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.” Trump’s demand that Congress clawback some of the spending greenlighted under the deal is already facing pushback, in a sign that congressional leaders are likely to ignore it. “The House appropriations committee has jurisdiction over rescissions, and our Democratic majority will reject any rescissions submitted by President Trump,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. Trump’s statement was at times self-congratulatory despite his role in the uncertainty of the past week. The president credited his work with Congress in passing the CARES Act earlier this year, which he said helped the country avoid “another Great Depression,” though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was the lead negotiator for the White House. Trump boasted that he was signing the bill “to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP [the Paycheck Protection Program], return our airline workers back to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more.” But unemployment benefits lapsed on Saturday, and eviction moratoriums would have done the same had Trump not signed the bill soon. The president, as part of his statement formally announcing the decision, said the Senate had agreed to tee up several of his priorities, including his push for $2,000 checks and repealing a tech shield that has emerged as a top target for Trump and his conservative allies.

Millions in US face weeks without income due to delay in paltry “relief” bill – On Sunday night, President Donald Trump signed a $2.3 trillion bill that combines a $900 billion bipartisan coronavirus “relief” package with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill. Trump had been withholding his signature, claiming to oppose the minuscule size of the $600 direct payment included in the bill. The delay in signing the bill has already caused confusion regarding the resumption of unemployment payments to some 14 million people. On Saturday, two programs created by last March’s CARES Act, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, expired. PUA was designed to provide relief for workers who wouldn’t normally qualify for state benefits, such as contractors, the self-employed and so-called “gig” workers. PEUC provided up to 13 weeks of unemployment aid to workers who had exhausted their state benefits, which for most last 26 weeks, but for others, depending on the state where they reside, can last a mere 12 weeks. The legislation specifies that payments are to begin after December 26, 2020 and end no later than March 14, 2021. States are not allowed to begin disbursing the $300 weekly unemployment payments until the bill becomes law, and with the one-week delay, millions may be receiving only 10 weeks’ worth of payments instead of 11, beginning in 2021. In an email to the Hill, Elizabeth Pancotti, a policy adviser at Employ America, estimated it could take up to six weeks for jobless workers to begin receiving payments again. “Some states may be able to stand this up in a week or two if we get guidance quickly from [the US Labor Department] but allowing the programs to lapse has created such a mess at many state UI [unemployment insurance] offices, so it could be 4-6 weeks before workers receive payment,” Pancotti wrote. This means that some 14 million unemployed workers will not be receiving anything for at least a week and perhaps considerably longer. Among them are millions who will be unable to put food on the table or pay for needed health care, prescription drugs, gasoline, cell phone bills and other basic necessities.

Jobless Benefits Won’t Lapse After Delay, Labor Department Says – Unemployed people claiming federal benefits won’t see a one-week gap in their payments, despite the delay in President Donald Trump signing the program extension into law, according to the Department of Labor.States are implementing the provisions as quickly as possible, and the Labor Department doesn’t anticipate that claimants will miss a week of benefits due to the timing of the new law’s enactment, a spokesman for the Department said in a statement Tuesday. Trump signed a bipartisan stimulus and government funding bill, which included an 11-week extension of unemployment benefits, into law on Sunday, a day after benefits expired. That prompted concern that jobless Americans would lose out on benefits for the last week of December. Trump held off signing the bill for several days as he demanded bigger stimulus payments for individuals and action on two unrelated issues involving election security and removing a liability shield for technology companies.The pandemic relief law provides a $300-a-week payment for jobless individuals and extends benefits for self-employed and gig workers through mid-March. The $300 federal payments are on top of benefits that state unemployment offices provide. The state benefits vary by income and jurisdiction, but the average state payment was $378 a week, according to Labor Department data.The measure largely extends programs with few changes, meaning that existing guidance will continue to apply, making it easier for the states to implement, the Labor Department spokesman said. “Millions of jobless workers will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that they will not lose a week’s worth of income,” Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “Now, Donald Trump’s needless delay in signing the relief bill still means unnecessary administrative headaches and late payments, but workers will not lose income.” About 14 million Americans have been receiving benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs extended in the law. The uninterrupted jobless benefits could help bolster the economy that has struggled as consumer spending has been falling and unemployment claims remain at elevated levels. Consumer spending, which accounts for a majority of the economy, dropped 0.4% in November — the first decline since April, according to Commerce Department data. Personal income decreased 1.1%, reflecting the winding down of several pandemic aid programs.

GOP Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair says he’ll vote in favor of $2,000 checks — Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), the Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair, said Sunday that he will vote in favor of House Democrats’ bill to provide the $2,000 relief checks that President Trump has demanded. Reed, who co-chairs the bipartisan group of about 50 members, released a statement indicating his support for larger stimulus checks than the $600 ones currently allotted in the almost $1 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that passed both chambers of Congress. The Republican co-chair said he will support the Democrats’ bill that the House will vote on Monday and that boosted the check amounts to $2,000. “The American people are hurting,” he said. “Economic stagnation and lockdowns have left many in difficult financial situations.” “I’ve communicated to the President my support for his directive to increase the total size of stimulus checks to $2,000 per individual and will be voting in favor of the CASH Act tomorrow to do so,” Reed added. “It is only fair that we act decisively now to deliver the comprehensive relief individuals desperately need.” Reed’s signal of support for bigger check amounts came minutes after Trump tweeted that there was “Good news on Covid Relief Bill,” adding “Information to follow!” The president did not provide additional details on these comments. The Problem Solvers Caucus, co-chaired by Reed and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), was key in creating bipartisan legislation for COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress last week, after negotiations between Democrats, Republicans and the White House had stalled for months.

House passes bill boosting stimulus checks to $2,000 in bipartisan vote — The House on Monday passed legislation that would increase the amount of direct payments in the recently signed coronavirus relief package from $600 to $2,000. The bill passed in a 275-134 vote, with support from more than 40 Republicans. It needed a two-thirds majority under the procedures that were used for consideration. The measure faces an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled Senate. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of Senate Republican leadership, said last week that he didn’t think a bill to increase the stimulus checks to $2,000 could pass in the upper chamber. But bringing up the measure on Monday allowed Democrats to force Republicans to take a recorded vote on an issue that is popular with Democratic lawmakers and the public and supported by President Trump. The vote came after Trump last week criticized the relief package over the size of the direct payments, creating uncertainty about the fate of the legislation. When he ultimately signed the relief package on Sunday, Trump said in a statement that he “told Congress that I want far less wasteful spending and more money going to the American people in the form of $2,000 checks per adult and $600 per child.” Trump brought up Monday’s previously planned House vote in his statement over the weekend and said the Senate would “start the process” for a vote that would increase the size of the direct payments to $2,000. However, a statement from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued Sunday made no mention of a Senate vote. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) said Monday he would try to pass the House measure on Tuesday. His attempt is likely to be thwarted by Republicans, despite support from some GOP senators. Monday’s bill in the House, known as the CASH Act, would increase the size of payments for both eligible adults and children from $600 to $2,000. Individuals with income of up to $75,000 and married couples with income up to $150,000 would be eligible for the full amount. The amounts would decrease above those income thresholds. The bill would also allow adult dependents, such as college students, disabled adults and elderly relatives, to be eligible for both $2,000 payments and the $500 payments authorized by the CARES Act in March. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the bill would cost about $464 billion. That’s on top of the $164 billion estimated cost of the $600 payments. Democrats emphasized Trump’s support for $2,000 direct payments during the House floor debate on the bill Monday. “The president of the United States has put this forth as something that he wants to see, in part of his signing the legislation yesterday,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. “I hope that that view will be shared by the Republicans in the Senate.” Republicans generally opposed the bill, expressing concerns about its impact on the deficit and arguing that the checks would not be well targeted.

Neoliberal Champion Larry Summers Opens Mouth, Inserts Both Feet: Taibbi – Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, president of Harvard, and Chief Economist at the World Bank, wrote a post-Christmas editorial forBloomberg entitled, “Trump’s $2000 Stimulus Checks are a Big Mistake.” It’s a classic:Some argue that while $2,000 checks may not be optimal support for the post-Covid economy, taking stimulus from $600 to $2,000 is better than nothing. They need to ask themselves whether they would favor $5,000, or $10,000 – or more. There must be a limiting principle.The genesis of this Summers article is a perfect tale in microcosm about how America’s intellectual elite manages to lose elections to people like Donald Trump. It’s a two-step error. First, they put people like Summers in charge of economic policies. Then, they let them talk in public.Summers the day before Christmas appeared on Bloomberg to offer his initial thoughts on why $2000 checks must be bad: he looked at which politicians were supporting the plan, and worked backward. “When I see a coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind an idea, I think that’s time to run for cover,” he said, adding: “When you see the two extremes agreeing, you can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air.”Seeing that his comments “lit up the Twittersphere,” Summers then sat down to compose an article doubling down on his reasoning. Essentially, he argued that from an econometric point of view, we’re already overdoing it on the help front. If you were under the impression that huge numbers of people are living off meals from food banks and/or are at risk in an eviction crisis, you were wrong.Noting that “total employee compensation” is “only running about $30 billion per month behind the Covid baseline,” he insisted that $200 billion more in tax rebates per month over the next quarter would “equal an additional seven times the loss of household wage and salary income over the next quarter.”He then showed a graph explaining that “because of the legislation passed in 2020, total household income … has exceeded normal levels relative to the economy’s potential more or less since the pandemic began.” The good news, as a result, is that “the existing stimulus bill is sufficient to elevate household income relative to the economy’s potential to abnormally high levels – unheard of during an economic downturn.”The whole piece reads like an extended New Yorker cartoon, in which an evictee with empty pockets is about to dive after a rotten apple core in a dumpster, only to be blocked by a cauldron-bellied Harvard economist in a $3000 Zegna suit. Caption: “Actually, total household income relative to the economy’s potential sits at abnormally high levels.”

Rubio backs Trump’s push for $2,000 direct payments | Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on Monday that he backs President Trump’s push to increase the direct payments to Americans for COVID-19 relief to $2,000, up from the $600 allocated in the package that Trump signed Sunday. “I agree with the President that millions of working class families are in dire need of additional relief, which is why I support $2,000 in direct payments to Americans struggling due to the pandemic,” Rubio said in a statement that came shortly before the House voted in support of the increase. The Florida senator sided with the president after Trump criticized the relief package passed by Congress last week for not providing enough direct payments to Americans making less than $75,000 per year. The measure currently faces an uncertain future in the GOP-controlled Senate. Rubio placed blame on Democrats for the lack of relief this year after negotiations between both parties and the White House stalled for months before the legislation passed last week. “For months, Republicans tried to pass additional relief for workers, families, and small businesses – only to be rejected by Democrats at every turn,” he said. “Remember, months ago Speaker Pelosi and Democrats rejected the Administration’s previous offer of $1,200 per adult and $1,000 per child. Thankfully, she’s finally stopped holding working families hostage.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) previously rejected other proposals from the White House and Republicans for not offering enough money in the last several months. But Republicans, especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have expressed reluctance to funnel larger amounts of money for relief and stimulus checks. “I share many of my colleagues’ concern about the long-term effects of additional spending, but we cannot ignore the fact that millions of working class families across the nation are still in dire need of relief,” Rubio said in his statement. “Congress should quickly pass legislation to increase direct payments to Americans to $2,000.”

Sanders to slow down NDAA veto override in bid to get vote on $2K checks proposal – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is planning to slow down the Senate’s vote on overriding President Trump’s veto of a mammoth defense policy bill unless leadership agrees to hold a vote on increasing the amount of recently passed coronavirus relief checks from $600 to $2,000. Sanders announced his plans in a tweet Monday as the House passed legislation to boost the amount of the direct payments included in the $2.3 trillion package signed by Trump on Sunday night. “This week on the Senate floor Mitch McConnell wants to vote to override Trump’s veto of the $740 billion defense funding bill and then head home for the New Year. I’m going to object until we get a vote on legislation to provide a $2,000 direct payment to the working class,” Sanders tweeted. A spokesman for Sanders confirmed that he will object to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) setting up a vote on the veto override of the defense bill until a proposal to increase the amount of the direct payments to $2,000 is also voted on. Sanders can’t ultimately prevent the Senate from voting on whether to override Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which initially passed the Senate earlier this month in a 84-13 vote, with Sanders voting “no” at the time. But McConnell is likely to have to move to break a rare filibuster of the veto override effort, forcing it to overcome a 60-vote procedural hurdle and delaying a final vote on Trump’s veto message for days until later this week. The veto override will ultimately need a two-thirds vote to pass the Senate. In addition to Sanders, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said he would similarly slow down the NDAA vote in an effort to get one on increasing the amount of direct assistance provided as part of the $2.3 trillion package. “I will be j oining @BernieSanders in blocking the defense bill until we get a vote on $2000 in direct cash relief. That relief passed in the House today with 44 Republicans voting for it. Senate Republicans must do the same and get the American people the help they need,” Markey tweeted.

McConnell blocks vote on $2K checks, signals new package — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday blocked an attempt by Democrats to set up a stand-alone vote on increasing the amount of recently passed stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) both tried to get consent for the Senate to bring up legislation that passed the House in a 273-134 vote on Monday. The GOP leader did not directly address why he objected. But he signaled separately that he could package the increase in direct stimulus checks, with a repeal of a tech shield that has emerged as a top target for Trump and election-related investigations. “During this process, the president highlighted three additional issues of national significance he would like to see Congress tackle together,” McConnell said. “Those are the three important subjects the president has linked together. This week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus,” McConnell added. McConnell did not provide additional details about how he might bring the measures up. But tying the stimulus checks push to Section 230, a legal shield for tech companies, or to Trump’s unproven claims that widespread election fraud cost him his reelection would almost certainly undermine Democratic support for such legislation. Schumer in his remarks Tuesday pressed for a vote on the $2,000 checks. “The fastest way to get money into Americans’ pockets is to send some of their tax dollars right back from where they came. Two-thousand dollar stimulus checks could mean the difference between American families having groceries for a few extra weeks or going hungry,” Schumer said.

McConnell says push by Democrats, Trump for $2,000 stimulus checks has ‘no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate’ -Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to deliver a political death blow to a last-minute push to authorize $2,000 stimulus checks for most Americans, arguing he would not be “bullied” into action despite pressure from President Trump, congressional Democrats and even some Republicans for the more generous payments.With only days left on the legislative calendar – and significant business still pending on the Senate floor – McConnell said Wednesday that the chamber would not vote on a House-passed stimulus bill, a move that threatened to render it impossible for lawmakers to broker a compromise before the end of the year.The GOP leader’s stance threatened to carry broad political repercussions, coming only a day after Trump said it would be a “death wish” for Republicans if they did not boost stimulus payments beyond the $600 lawmakers authorized as part of a broader, $900 billion relief package signed into law earlier this week.”The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.In addition to Trump and most Democrats, a growing number of Senate Republicans had called for the larger payments. That includes Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two Georgia Republicans who face reelection votes next week.McConnell said a House-passed bill authorizing the $2,000 checks had “no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate.” Instead, he said he would bundle the $2,000 checks into a broader bill that would include curbs on technology companies as well as an effort to study the 2020 election, nodding to complaints raised by Trump about his loss. Democrats said such a package had no chance of passing and accused McConnell of deliberately seeking to kill the stimulus payments.”In blocking it, they are in denial of the hardship the American people are experiencing now, health-wise, financially and every way,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a news conference.McConnell’s move could be one of his last as majority leader, pending the outcome of the Georgia runoffs next week. If Democrats capture both seats, they will seize control of the Senate. After he spoke Wednesday afternoon, several other Republicans rushed to backstop McConnell’s strategy, suggesting he had support from several members of his party even as others wanted to vote with Democrats on the larger checks.

Frustrations flare as $2,000 checks blocked for fourth straight day – Frustrations flared in the Senate during a rare New Years Day session as lawmakers battled for the fourth day in a row over a proposal to increase the amount of recently approved coronavirus relief checks. Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed bill to increase the stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 on Friday, as well as an attempt by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to set up votes on the House bill and a competing proposal from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that would link the money to a unrelated tech fight and creating a new elections commission. The stalemate formally closes the door on the already unlikely chance that Congress could get an agreement to President Trump’s desk before the end of the current Congress. The House has already left town for the remainder of the session, which ends Sunday morning, and the Senate took its last votes on Friday when it handed Trump his first veto override. “That means today is the last chance to take up and pass the House bill to provide $2,000 checks to the American people. If the Senate does not take action today, $2,000 checks will not become law before the end of Congress and they will know that Leader McConnell and the Republican majority have prevented them from getting the checks,” Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) said from the floor. He added that he believed McConnell had blocked the House bill from getting a vote “because he’s afraid it will pass.” McConnell blocked the House-passed bill on three separate days this week and blasted the proposal on Friday as “socialism for rich people.” “While this huge new aid package takes effect, a bipartisan caucus in both chambers is not keen to let Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Sanders to have universal cash giveaways regardless of needs,” he said. The House passed legislation to increase the amount of the checks on Monday before leaving town until the start of the 117th session of Congress on Sunday. Trump has urged Senate Republicans to pass legislation, but the idea garners fierce pushback from several Republicans. Under the Senate’s rules, any one senator can try to set up a vote or pass a bill, but any one senator can also object. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s No. 2, blocked Schumer’s request on Friday. Responding to Democrats, he dryly thanked them for having the Senate in session on New Year’s Day – Sanders and others had slow-walked a defense bill unless they got a checks vote, forcing Friday’s session. “I know that’s something that has always been on my bucket list, maybe not on top of the bucket list, but nevertheless, thank you for that opportunity,” Thune said. Thune argued that while Republicans are willing to look at additional aid, the House-passed bill was not “efficient” or “an effective way to spend the American taxpayer’s dollars.”

WATCH: Sanders Refutes McConnell Claim That $2,000 Direct Payments Amount to ‘Socialism for Rich People’ – After sardonically commending Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his sudden concern about “socialism for the rich,” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday rejected the Kentucky Republican’s attempt to attach that description to the push for $2,000 direct payments, which the Vermont senator noted would overwhelmingly benefit middle- and working-class Americans.”I’m delighted that after talking on the floor of the Senate for years about socialism for the rich, apparently that has gotten across to my Republican friends,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon. “Of course, that’s what we do every single day. That’s why we have the incredible level of income and wealth inequality that exists in this country… Decade after decade, we have used this body to provide massive tax breaks to the rich, to provide corporate welfare to corporations who don’t need it.” “But the Vermont senator said McConnell’s claim that the $2,000 relief payments – as proposed in a House-passed bill – amount to “socialism for rich people” is false, pointing to a new Tax Policy Center analysisshowing that less than one percent of the benefits of the checks would flow to the top five percent of the income distribution.The “overwhelming majority of those funds,” said Sanders, would “go to the middle class, the working class, low-income people who in the midst of this pandemic, are in desperate economic condition.”By contrast, 52% of the benefits of the $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – a 2017 bill that McConnell enthusiastically supported – went to the top five percent in 2020.”Now, again, I am delighted to hear the majority leader talking about socialism for the rich,” the Vermont senator continued. “And I hope we will continue that discussion in the next session.” Watch:

These Are the Very Real Dangers to the U.S. Economy of Not Issuing $2,000 Stimulus Checks — Pam Martens – The question of just how much fiscal stimulus and COVID-19 relief payments are needed right now in order to prevent the U.S. economy from going off a cliff requires a recognition of what we do not know about the actual fragility of the U.S. economy over the next 12 months and the current fragility of the financial system of the United States. We start from the factual premise that the current financial crisis did not originate as a result of the pandemic. The plumbing of the financial system broke on September 17, 2019, months before the first COVID-19 case was discovered anywhere in the world. We know this because this is the date that the Federal Reserve announced it would begin acting as lender of last resort to the repo loan market on Wall Street. (Repos are a form of borrowing where banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds and mutual funds engage in short term loans, typically overnight, which are collateralized with safe securities such as Treasury notes.) The demand for short-term repo borrowing dramatically outpaced amounts offered for loans on September 17. This drove the overnight repo loan rate to an unprecedented high of 10 percent rather than the typical range of 2 to 2.25 percent, which was where the Fed was targeting the Fed Funds rate at that time. The Fed was forced to race to the rescue, injecting $53 billion into the repo market via the New York Fed on that date and promising to make another $75 billion available the next morning. The repo loans from the Fed continued in massive amounts through the fall. By January 6 we were reporting, using the Fed’s own data, that the “Federal Reserve Admits It Pumped More than $6 Trillion to Wall Street in Recent Six Week Period.” Until the American people understand why the Fed was bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $6 trillion in cumulative loans before the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the U.S., we are simply spectators of the barbarians at the gate rather than citizens in a representative democracy. Now let’s examine the darkness surrounding the economic impact from the pandemic itself. Larry Summers wrote in his opinion piece for Bloomberg News on Sunday, where he argued against $2,000 stimulus checks, that “Without new stimulus, things would have normalized in 2021.” Seriously?Now take a look at the graph at the top of this article which comes directly from the state of California. The most populous U.S. state and fifth largest economy in the world looks more like a petri dish for breeding COVID-19. The data, which is current as of December 29, shows that California has a positivity rate of 14.5 percent; it has a population of more than 40 million people and zero ICU beds available; and the pandemic is considered to be spreading widely in 54 of its 58 counties. As of yesterday, there was a Regional Stay at Home Order in 47 of California’s 58 counties. One aspect of that order requires that “all retailers may operate indoors at no more than 20% capacity … .” California is also reporting that the increase in new cases and deaths is going in the wrong direction, as the charts below indicate.Throwing money at Wall Street and random people, who may or may not be unemployed or need the money, is not a plan. But until there is an administration in Washington that takes this crisis seriously and develops a decisive plan based on a transparent set of facts, $2,000 checks should be considered a critical insurance policy that things won’t get a lot worse until a meaningful plan emerges.

Under Trump, America’s Nuclear Weapons Industry Has Boomed – While the country has been coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, economic decline, and the election, President Donald Trump’s administration quietly and steadily steered America’s nuclear weapons industry to its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War, increasing spending on such arms by billions of dollars with bipartisan congressional support. Overall, the budget for making and maintaining nuclear warheads has risen more than 50 percent since Trump was elected in 2016, substantially outpacing the rates of increase for the defense budget and overall federal spending during his presidency before the pandemic. On Monday, Congress approved Trump’s proposal to increase spending next year alone for the production of such weaponry by roughly $3 billion. But the creation of a larger and more modern nuclear warhead complex of factories, laboratories, and related businesses is already playing out around the country, despite slowdowns in other federal projects due to the pandemic. Four factories in Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee and New Mexico dedicated to producing warheads are being modernized. Four existing warheads are being substantially rebuilt with modern parts, on top of another such upgrade – costing $3.5 billion – that was completed last year. This pace compares with an average modernization of one type of warhead at a time during the Obama administration. “Over the next five years, the [nuclear weapons-related] costs start going up dramatically,” Mackenzie Eaglen, a former congressional staff member who is now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said at a recent defense conference. “These are sharp, significant increases, and we are not seeing sharp, significant increases in defense spending overall.” Jon Wolfsthal, a White House adviser on nuclear weapons issues while Biden was serving as vice president, said in an interview that the new Democratic administration may adopt different policies. He predicted, for example, that “there will be some broad thinking about the defense budget and how quickly we need to replace” existing land-, air-, and sea-based nuclear forces, possibly revisiting the aggressive timetables set by Trump over the past four years.

Pentagon brass on “red alert” over Trump’s coup plotting – The senior US military command is operating at what amounts to a state of high alert in anticipation of a possible coup attempt by President Donald Trump over the next month aimed at overturning the results of the November presidential election. This heightened sense of danger was triggered by an extraordinary December 17 interview given by Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), Trump’s first national security adviser and now pardoned felon, to Newsmax, the far-right cable television outlet that has faithfully backed Trump’s fraudulent claims of a stolen election. Flynn asserted the president’s power to declare martial law and suggested that he could deploy “military capabilities” in the swing states where he lost to “basically rerun an election.” In other words, voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and other “battleground” states where Democratic candidate Joe Biden won would be herded back to the polls at the point of a bayonet to ensure that they sustained Trump’s grip on the White House. Even more ominously, the retired three-star general was invited to the White House the next day – along with Sydney Powell, Trump’s former election fraud lawyer who pushed theories that the vote had been rigged by, among others, the deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez – where the feasibility of imposing martial law was the subject of a heated debate. The extraordinary tension within the Pentagon’s top brass has been made clear over the past several days in a series of reports by media commentators with close ties to the US military-intelligence apparatus. Prominent among these warnings is a Washington Post column by David Ignatius titled “Until Biden’s win is certified, the US remains vulnerable.” Ignatius has long served as a conduit for information that the Pentagon and the CIA want leaked to the public. The United States “will be in the danger zone until the formal certification of Joe Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, because potential domestic and foreign turmoil could give President Trump an excuse to cling to power,” Ignatius writes.

Trump’s final days try to turn the military into a political pawn – The Pentagon is not a happy place these days. The military has been dragged into political quarrels not of its making. Those include President Trump‘s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as well as his determination to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany – and, who knows, perhaps South Korea – regardless of military advice and the tactical situation on the ground in each of those places. Worst of all, Trump has not denied that he is giving serious consideration to retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn‘s mad proposal to invoke martial law in order to overturn election results in battleground states where President-elect Biden was the clear winner. That numerous workers in the five-sided building have contracted COVID-19 has hardly helped morale, either. The president gave four reasons for vetoing the NDAA. A veto, he tweeted, “will make China very unhappy,” without explaining why that was the case. He went on: “Must have Section 230 termination, protect our National Monuments and allow for removal of military from far away, and very unappreciative, lands.” Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects social media companies; they have incurred the president’s wrath for adding warnings to some of his assertions about his loss to Biden. The so-called National Monuments are military bases named after Confederate generals, whose renaming Trump opposes. And Trump opposes the bill’s restrictions on his ability to withdraw overseas military forces, especially those based in Germany. Congress is likely to override the president’s veto of the military authorization bill, in part because it includes the pay tables that set military salaries for the coming fiscal year. It is for that reason – paying the military – that NDAAs have passed in timely fashion for each of the past 59 years. But an override is not guaranteed; Trump supporters in the House could team up with other members who have called for a 10 percent cut in defense spending to block the override. The NDAA then would be a dead letter. Should that be the case, the Biden administration certainly will oppose efforts to use the NDAA as a vehicle for repealing Section 230. It likewise will oppose efforts to withdraw troops from Germany or, for that matter, from South Korea; and it will revisit the speed with which forces in Iraq and Afghanistan should be brought home. Finally, whereas the NDAA calls for a commission to review the question of bases named for Confederate officers, Biden could simply order that the bases be renamed immediately. On the other hand, apart from incorporating pay tables and a few other elements of the NDAA, it may be exceedingly difficult to reconstruct all parts of the massive bill once the Biden administration takes office. There simply are too many provisions that were the subject of difficult negotiations that will have to wait another year. The military certainly would be the worse off as a result.

Pentagon leaders exchange lobbyists for Christmas – Leaders across the Department of Defense celebrated the Christmas holiday by exchanging lobbyists, sources confirmed today. “Ooh, is that a Raytheon? I’ve always wanted a Raytheon!” Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said during the annual Pentagon Christmas party while shaking a man-sized box sitting under a Christmas tree in the Pentagon courtyard. “My mom gets me a General Dynamics every year, and I’m soooo bored of it.” The gift exchange, dubbed “TS/SCI Santa,” was classified at the highest levels, and each participant was only allowed access to see the specific gift that they’re given. To keep the atmosphere light and playful, contracts signed during the lobbyist exchange were limited to 5 years and 3.5 billion dollars. “We all remember that one time we did a lobbyist white elephant and it led to us signing off on the F-35 program. What a mess,” said Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I think there was a little too much Lockheed Martin-brand rum in the eggnog that year.” According to officials, this year every Pentagon leader was expected to acquire a lobbyist, wrap it, and place it under the tree. Then on Christmas morning, gifts were exchanged at random, adding to the element of surprise, which is one of the principles of war. Miller said the exchange added some much-needed cheer into a usually stern work environment. “All year-round, we’re so serious about the fact that this whole system is just a racket to ensure money and contracts keep flowing, that we never just sit back and have some holiday laughs at the expense of taxpayers,” said Miller. “We forget that the military-industrial complex is supposed to be joyful and fun.”

Congress Overturns Trump Veto On Defense Bill After Political Detour -The Senate voted Friday to overturn President Trump’s veto of the mammoth annual defense bill in an unprecedented act that assures the decades-long continuity for that legislation. It follows a House vote earlier this week. The Senate vote, 81-13, came after an unusual political detour for the National Defense Authorization Act, which establishes policy and handles myriad other issues for the military services. The popularity of the military, together with the scale of the bill, means it passes virtually every year and has for decades – until this one hit a snag. It is the first veto override by Congress in the Trump presidency. Congress, with bipartisan agreement, included provisions in the bill that would rename military bases and other facilities that have Confederate names. The support for that gesture followed this year’s national movement on behalf of racial equality and police reform following the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and other Black citizens at the hands of police. Trump, however, supports preserving the names of figures such as Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg and others on Army bases and other military infrastructure that now bear them. The president dismissed his last Senate-confirmed defense secretary, Mark Esper, in part over a split on that issue. So Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act and also complained that Democrats wouldn’t agree to a deal that might include the removal of some legal protections for Big Tech companies. The president’s choices were called “an act of staggering recklessness” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who led the House in overturning the veto on Monday. And Trump’s intransigence led to awkward politics for his ostensible allies, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who arranged the Senate’s vote on Friday. Trump not only put McConnell and majority Republicans into the position of needing to overturn a presidential veto. But the president also came out against the position McConnell and his members took on direct cash payments to qualified Americans as coronavirus relief. That put Trump, Pelosi and Democrats onto the same side and required McConnell to arrange an outcome in which he quashed the higher payments but also ensured the passage of the defense bill – on, as it transpired, a national holiday when many Americans are paying more attention to celebrations and hangovers than congressional byplay. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont led a bid to hold up the defense bill to force action on the relief payments, but that fizzled. McConnell torpedoed the higher relief payments with a measure on Thursday that chained them to issues he knew Democrats wouldn’t support, including the Big Tech legal revisions and the prospect for a commission that would sustain Trump’s baseless claims about widespread election impropriety. The majority leader also said the support Congress already has authorized was generous enough and, in his telling, sending out more cash only would help the well-off.

In Potential Final Protest Targeting UN, Trump Administration – Joined by Just Israel – Votes Against 2021 Budget – In what could be the Trump administration’s final act of protest targeting the United Nations, the United States – joined by Israel – voted on Thursday against the intergovernmental organization’s $3.231 billion budget for 2021 based on alleged “anti-Israel bias” and global refusal to reimpose previously lifted sanctions on Iran.Throughout President Donald Trump’s nearly four years in office, he and key members of his administration have repeatedly attacked “globalism” and various U.N. bodies, notably ditching the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2018 and the World Health Organization (WHO) earlier this year, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.Ambassador Richard Mills, the deputy at the U.S. mission to the U.N., explained the administration’s opposition to elements of the budget during a Wednesday meeting before Ambassador Kelly Craft – a GOP donor and former envoy to Canada whom Trump appointed after Nikki Haley left the post – delivered similar remarks Thursday.”We object strongly to U.S. taxpayer dollars going to support a follow-up event to the Durban conference,” said Mills. The Durban Declaration and Program of Action,adopted at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in South Africa, aimed to “combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance.”As Reuters reported in 2009 – when the Obama administration, under pressure from Israel, boycotted a U.N.-organized meeting dubbed Durban II – the U.S. and Israel “walked out of that 2001 conference when Arab states tried to define Zionism as racist.”Craft charged that the new U.N. budget “extends a shameful legacy of hate, anti-Semitism, and anti-Israel bias.” She and Mills also pushed back against “those who continue to challenge the United States’ ability to trigger the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran,” citing the snapback mechanism in U.N. Security Council resolution 2231, which enshrined the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal. Considering that Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal – officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – in 2018, Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council said in September that the administration’s snapback claims “are a farce that defy the international community and a basic comprehension of facts.”

U.S. slaps tariffs on French and German wines, aircraft parts amid EU dispute(Reuters) -The U.S. government on Wednesday said it would raise tariffs on certain European Union products, including aircraft components and wines from France and Germany, the latest twist in a 16-year battle over aircraft subsidies between Washington and Brussels. In a statement, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said it was adding tariffs on aircraft manufacturing parts and certain non-sparkling wines as well as cognacs and other brandies from France and Germany. The USTR did not say when the tariffs would take effect but noted that additional details would be “forthcoming.”The U.S. action comes as U.S. and European negotiators continue talks about ending the long-runnig dispute over government aid to Europe’s Airbus SE, which is politically backed by Britain, France, Germany and Spain, and U.S. aid to planemaker Boeing Co. The USTR said on Wednesday the EU had unfairly calculated tariffs against the United States allowed by a September World Trade Organization ruling in the ongoing dispute: “The EU needs to take some measure to compensate for this unfairness.” Representatives for the European Union and Airbus could not be immediately reached for comment on the USTR action. Ben Aneff, president of the US Wine Trade Alliance, said the action would cause further hardship for U.S. companies already hit hard by previous tariffs, and urged President-elect Joe Biden to quickly reverse course. “This action is a body blow for American companies. U.S. restaurants and small businesses are already struggling to survive; this decision will only destroy more jobs and shutter more doors,”

Congressional staff now eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccine –A limited number of congressional staffers are now eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine, according to a memo from Congress’s in-house physician. The Office of the Attending Physician (OAP) said it is offering the vaccine to two staffers in the personal office of every House member and senator, plus four staffers in the offices of every committee chairperson and ranking member. Members of Congress have been receiving their first doses of a vaccine against COVID-19 for the past two weeks. The doses were part of a limited batch that was made available specifically for Congress under “continuity of government” national security protocols. Officials serving in the executive branch and the Supreme Court, as well as other top government leaders including Vice President Pence and President-elect Joe Biden, are also getting doses, along with health care workers and nursing home residents across the nation in recent days. But the number of available vaccines is extremely limited, and some members of Congress have publicly turned down the opportunity to be vaccinated. It is not clear what happens to the allocated doses if a member declines to be vaccinated, and the OAP has not responded to requests for clarification. In addition to staff, the new memo from Brian Monahan to all congressional offices says vaccines will be available for some “critical” employees of the House; people whose jobs are essential for “continuity of operations,” require physical presence or are likely to involve in-person interactions. The memo did not specify who those critical employees are, stating only that they will be notified separately.

Hiding Covid-19: How the Trump Administration Suppresses Photography of the Pandemic – As Covid-19 tore through the United States in the spring, a senior official in the Trump administration quietly reinforced a set of guidelines that prevented journalists from getting inside all but a handful of hospitals at the front line of the pandemic. The guidelines, citing the medical privacy law known as HIPAA, suggested a nearly impossible standard: Before letting journalists inside Covid-19 wards, hospitals needed prior permission from not only the specific patients the journalists would interview, but also other patients whose names or identities would be accessible. The onerous guidelines were issued on May 5 by Roger Severino, who worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation before Donald Trump appointed him to direct the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. The guidelines made it extremely difficult for hospitals to give photographers the opportunity to collect visual evidence of the pandemic’s severity. By tightening the circulation of disturbing images, the guidelines fulfilled, intentionally or not, a key Trump administration goal: keeping public attention away from the death toll, which has surpassed 300,000 souls. “The last thing hospital patients need to worry about during the Covid-19 crisis is a film crew walking around their bed shooting B-roll,” Severino said dismissively in a short press release accompanying the guidelines. In the pandemic’s early days, when hospitals were first inundated with media requests, the prevailing HIPAA guidelines were quite restrictive, even on matters that had nothing to do with media access. Those guidelines predated the Trump administration and were not written for a pandemic. But the scale of the Covid-19 crisis quickly forced the Trump administration to loosen a wide range of privacy restrictions on medical providers – except, as it turned out, the ones that kept Americans from viscerally seeing the ailing and the dying.

Trump ‘did not want anyone tested for Covid unless they were in hospital and vomiting’ – In a closer look at President Donald Trump’s last few months in office, The New York Times has published a detailed new report around how the outgoing US leader wanted to approach the worsening coronavirus pandemic.Overheard yelling at his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner on 19 August, Mr Trump reportedly demanded to “do what Mexico does” when it comes to testing for Covid-19.”They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting,” he said during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office. The statement mirrors Mr Trump’s past thinking around how the US coronavirus cases should appear: specifically, the fewer tests conducted, the fewer positive cases on record.The New York Times also reports that Trump was frustrated that Dr Francis S Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, had said that it would still be a matter of days before the government could give approval for using convalescent plasma to treat Covid.”They’re Democrats! They’re against me! They want to wait!” Trump said, arguing that the government’s top medical professionals were conspiring against him.According to interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials, Mr Trump’s main concern around managing the public health crisis in the last quarter of his presidency essentially boiled down to how he could stand to benefit.For example, as he made public promises around vaccine availability by Election Day, Mr Trump expressed worry that Joe Biden would receive credit if that deadline was hit.

Massachusetts GOP leader says he likely got covid-19 at a White House Hanukkah party: ‘I’m paying the price’ – Earlier this month, Tom Mountain, a Massachusetts Republican Party leader, posed for a maskless photo in front of a silver menorah as dozens of other guests without face coverings mingled nearby at a White House Hanukkah party. Three days later, the vice chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee was rushed to the hospital with a severe case of covid-19 that later left him close to needing a ventilator.Now, as Mountain recovers at home in Newton, Mass., he says he likely contracted the virus at the White House event. “Lets put it this way: when I went down to Washington, D.C. for the White House Hanukkah event, I was perfectly fine,” Mountain, 60, told WJAR. “And three days later after that event, I was in the hospital . . . ready to be put on a lifesaving ventilator.” The Dec. 9 event where Mountain believes he contracted the novel coronavirus was one of at least 25 indoor holiday celebrations the White House scheduled despite warnings from the Trump administration’s public health experts to avoid large gatherings and travel to mitigate the spread of a virus that has killed more than 333,000 Americans. The White House holiday parties came months after a Rose Garden introduction for then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett became a ‘super spreader’ event that left President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and more than a dozen attendees and administration officials with the virus. Asked to comment on Mountain’s claim that he likely contracted the virus at the Hanukkah celebration, a spokeswoman for the first lady referred The Washington Post to earlier statements touting safety measures at the holiday events, including reduced crowd sizes and mask requirements. Mountain attended the first of two Dec. 9 Hanukkah celebrations, which were split up to reduce the crowd size, Mountain told the Globe. Attendees were required to wear a mask while waiting in line but Mountain said many guests removed them once inside. Mountain, sporting a “Trump” jacket and a red-white-and-blue tie, also strolled through the East Wing without a mask. “People would just leisurely and gingerly take off their mask to mingle, to schmooze,” he told WJAR. “I don’t even think some people wore masks the entire time. And again, I was guilty as anyone else. I just wasn’t wearing a mask.”

The US is vaccinating people way too slowly. A top doctor says the federal government is to blame. – Dr. Ashish K. Jha, a top US doctor and the dean of Brown University School of Public Health, on Tuesday shared in a Twitter thread why he believed the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in the US was flawed, and he said the issue begins with the federal government. The US Food and Drug Administration in December authorised two different vaccines for COVID-19 aeuro ” one created by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, and another created by Pfizer and BioNTech aeuro ” for emergency use in the US. While people across the US have already begun to receive the vaccine, a limited supply means the vaccine won’t be widely available to all who need it well into 2021, prolonging the pandemic that has so far killed more than 336,000 people in the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. According to an analysis published Tuesday by NBC News, at the current pace, it could take the US nearly a decade to vaccinate enough Americans to meaningfully bring the pandemic under control. The White House previously said it aimed to vaccinate 80% of Americans by the end of June, which would require more than 3 million vaccinations per day, according to the report. So far, the US has vaccinated just about 2 million people in 16 days. President-elect Joe Biden, who last week received the first dose of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine, on Tuesday said the Trump administration is falling “far behind” on vaccinations. “As I long feared and warned, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” Biden said. “A few weeks ago, the Trump administration suggested that 20 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of December. With only a few days left in December, we’ve only vaccinated a few million so far,” he added. The president-elect on Monday said he plans to invoke the Defence Production Act, a wartime production law giving the president authority to pressure US industries to produce supplies, to speed up vaccine production once he takes office in January. In his Twitter thread, Jha first noted that Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said in October that the US would be prepared to have 100 million doses of the vaccine ready to ship by December, and that Azar later reduced that number to 40 million. Jha pointed out that Operation Warp Speed, the White House effort centered around the vaccine, had further reduced the estimate, saying there would be 20 million doses ready by the end of this year.

Romney: Lack of comprehensive vaccine distribution plan is ‘inexcusable’ – Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) slammed federal distribution of the coronavirus vaccine on Friday, calling the lack of a comprehensive strategy “inexcusable.” Romney called the unprecedented rapid vaccine development “a tribute to the [National Institutes of Health], the [Food and Drug Administration] and to the professionals in the pharmaceutical industry.” However, he said, “unlike the development of the vaccines, the vaccination process itself is falling behind. It was unrealistic to assume that the health care workers already overburdened with COVID care could take on a massive vaccination program. So too is the claim that CVS and Walgreens will save the day: they don’t have excess personnel available to inoculate millions of Americans.” The senator went on to suggest a plan in which “every medical professional, retired or active, who is not currently engaged in the delivery of care” is trained to administer the shot, with states establishing vaccination sites throughout their borders. A schedule could then be established based on patient risk and birthdate. “The current program is woefully behind despite the fact that it encompasses the two easiest populations to vaccinate: frontline workers and long-term care residents,” he said. “Unless new strategies and plans are undertaken, the deadly delays may be compounded as broader and more complex populations are added. We are already behind; urgent action now can help us catch up.” London primary schools to close temporarily as COVID-19 cases surge Photo shows Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter sharing New Year’s kiss National public health officials have also expressed concerns about the handling of vaccine distribution thus far. “We would have liked to have seen it run smoothly and have 20 million doses into people today by the end of the 2020, which was the projection,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, told “Today” earlier this week. White House testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir, meanwhile, told CNN Thursday that officials “need to be doing a better job, but all vaccine programs start somewhat slow.”

Romney urges sweeping vaccine plan as U.S. surpasses 20 million COVID-19 cases (Reuters) -U.S. Senator Mitt Romney on Friday urged the U.S. government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in an all-out national campaign to administer coronavirus vaccinations and slow a surging rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. The Utah Republican, who ran unsuccessfully for president as his party’s nominee in 2012, called for greater action as the Trump administration fell far short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans with a first of two required doses by the end of 2020. As of Friday, the first day of the new year, an estimated 2.8 million vaccine doses have actually been given, mostly to front-line healthcare workers as well as staff and residents of nursing facilities. “That comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable,” Romney said in a statement. The United States has lost more than 345,000 lives from COVID-19 to date, equal to one in every 950 Americans, and ranks 16th in national per capita coronavirus deaths in the world. Meanwhile, the tally of known U.S. infections reached another sober milestone on Friday, surpassing 20 million confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, and the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients exceeded 125,000, setting a daily record once more.

Biden to use Defense Production Act for vaccine production: adviser -President-elect Joe Biden plans to use the Defense Production Act to boost production of the coronavirus vaccines, an adviser said on Monday. Celine Gounder, a member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory team, said to expect Biden to invoke the law, which gives the president broad authority to increase the manufacturing output of critical items in a national emergency, once he is sworn in next month. “You will see him invoking the Defense Production Act. The idea there is to make sure the personal protective equipment, the test capacity and the raw materials for the vaccines are produced in adequate supply so that those aren’t limiting steps in all of this,” Gounder told CNBC in an interview. Biden’s advisory team was reportedly consulting with experts earlier this month on if the law should be invoked to help produce and administer more vaccines over concerns the Trump administration has been too optimistic that mass vaccination will occur by the spring. Trump has used the Defense Production Act during the COVID-19 pandemic, first in March to order General Motors to ramp up the production of life-saving ventilators. He also invoked it in April to order meat processing plants to stay open.

Covid Variant in U.S.; Biden to Speed Vaccinations: Virus Update – The Covid-19 variant discovered in the U.K. has arrived in Colorado, the state’s governor said on Tuesday. And U.S. President-elect Joe Biden criticized vaccine-distribution efforts under President Donald Trump as too slow, repeating his pledge to deliver 1 million doses a day after he takes office. Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease doctor said the country’s vaccination rate is lagging and expressed concern about a post-holiday coronavirus surge. The doctor, Anthony Fauci, said on CNN that U.S. officials had hoped to have more people vaccinated by now. The European Union will take an additional 100 million doses of the vaccine developed by BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc. A new strain of the virus that’s taking hold in the U.K. is a potential “game changer,” according to Ireland’s health minister. Denmark extended its lockdown by two weeks. Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced the state’s first case of the Covid-19 variant that was discovered in the U.K. It’s the first time the strain has been found in the U.S., according to the Washington Post. The person infected is a male in his 20s who is in isolation in Elbert County and has no travel history, Polis said on Twitter. He will remain there until cleared by public health officials. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden slammed the slow rollout of the coronavirus vaccine by President Donald Trump’s administration Tuesday, saying the plan was falling “far behind” where it needs to be. “As I long feared and warned, the effort to distribute the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” he said. “If it continues to move as it is now, it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”

Biden predicts surge in deaths, proposes no measures to stop it, and pledges to reopen the schools – On Tuesday, Democratic President-elect Joe Biden gave what was billed as a “major speech” on the coronavirus pandemic. He spoke following a meeting with his coronavirus advisory panel. In perfunctory remarks that lasted barely 15 minutes, Biden provided a grim description of the mass death already occurring and predicted that things would get only worse in the coming months. “We will lose tens of thousands more lives in the months to come,” he said. “Hospitals are being stretched beyond capacity. That is data before the impact of cases coming from the holidays and this coming holiday of New Year’s Eve. “We have to anticipate that infections over the holidays will produce soaring death tolls in February. Turning this around is going to take time. We might not see improvement until we are well into March.” If anything, Biden’s grim portrayal was a serious underestimation of the scale of death and suffering, not to mention the devastating economic crisis impacting tens of millions of workers and small business people. In many cities across the US, intensive care units are at 100 percent of capacity. Freezer trucks are being used to stack bodies that cannot be accommodated by morgues. Only hours after Biden’s speech, NBC Nightly News reported that overwhelmed hospitals in Los Angeles are beginning to ration care, deciding to withhold treatment from patients less likely to survive. Ambulances are waiting hours to deliver patients to triage wards. The broadcast showed an LA nurse tearfully saying, “Patients are dying like flies.” Biden reiterated his earlier prediction that 400,000 Americans will have died of COVID-19 by the end of the Trump administration in mid-January. But once again, he presented this catastrophic wave of death and suffering as something inevitable and unalterable. He proposed no emergency measures to prevent tens of thousands of additional deaths over the next few weeks. He incongruously combined cliches, happy talk and hollow exhortations – “Brighter days are coming. It’s going to take all the grit and determination we have as Americans to get it done” – with an acknowledgment that the process of distributing and administering vaccines has already virtually collapsed.

Severed Pig’s Head Left On Nancy Pelosi’s Driveway As Vandals Tag Garage — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco house was vandalized on Friday morning, after angry activists spray-painted “$2K,” “Cancel Rent,” and “We Want Everything” on the garage door – leaving a severed pig’s head on the ground in a pool of red paintAccording to KPIX, police received a call about the incident around 2:00 a.m. on Friday at the 2600 block of Broadway. “I don’t think that this is a useful way to go about it and it’s a terrible start to this new year, when we are hoping for less anger and hatred than we’ve had to deal with for the last year,” said Pelosi’s neighbor, Audrey Carlson. San Francisco police have not released any information about suspects in the case. Also, no one has come forward claiming responsibility for the vandalism. Some of the graffiti mentions UBI (universal basic income) and “cancel rent,” so it is possible the culprit is someone associated with those movements. Pelosi helped spearhead the passage a bill last Monday to increase the $600 stimulus checks to $2,000, with 275 members of the House of Representatives voting for the bill and 134 voting against it. – KPIX

Larry Wilkerson: No Evidence of Massive Russian Hack –Yves here. For this Christmas-New Year period, we’ve been working out way through worthy pieces that warrant the extra time and attention it takes to digest them properly. One is this Thenalysis.news interview with Larry Wilkerson that gives a long form debunking of the latest Russian scare story taken up uncritically by just about every media outlet. Both tech experts and Russia beat watchers like Aaron Mate have challenged it, but it’s useful to have Wilkerson take the it apart. (with Paul Jay, video interview and transcript)

The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump – Glenn Greenwald – Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power – a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities – and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbfln quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes – rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies – enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside. But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power. The lockdowns from the pandemic have ushered in a collapse of small businesses across the U.S. that has only further fortified the power of corporate giants. “Billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes,” reported The Guardian in September. A study from July told part of the story: The combined wealth of the world’s super-rich reached a new peak during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBC on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 billionaires around the world managed to amass fortunes totalling around $10.2 trillion (euro 8.69 trillion) by July, surpassing the previous record of $8.9 trillion reached in 2017. Employees are now almost completely at the mercy of a handful of corporate giants which are thriving, far more trans-national than with any allegiance to the U.S. A Brookings Institution study this week – entitled “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers” – found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders – but next to nothing for workers.” These COVID “winners” are not the Randian victors in free market capitalism. Quite the contrary, they are the recipients of enormous amounts of largesse from the U.S. Government, which they control through armies of lobbyists and donations and which therefore constantly intervenes in the market for their benefit. This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options.

Judge throws out Gohmert suit aimed at empowering Pence to overturn 2020 election results – A federal judge on Friday dismissed a GOP-led lawsuit aimed at empowering Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, contending that the plaintiffs – Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and 11 Arizona Republicans who would have been electors for Donald Trump – lacked standing to sue.U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee based in Tyler, Texas, said the suit, which was filed against Pence, couldn’t be brought by an individual member of Congress, since it alleged an injury that would apply to the entire House and Senate.Gohmert had asked the court to declare that Pence, who is constitutionally required to preside over the Jan. 6 session of Congress to certify the results of the 2020 election, had the sole authority to decide whether some of Biden’s electoral votes should be rejected – and whether alternative slates of Trump votes could be introduced instead. But Kernodle said Gohmert’s argument relied on entirely speculative circumstances.”Congressman Gohmert’s alleged injury requires a series of hypothetical – but by no means certain – events,” the judge wrote in his 13-page ruling issued Friday evening. “Plaintiffs presuppose what the Vice President will do on January 6, which electoral votes the Vice President will count or reject from contested states, whether a Representative and a Senator will object under Section 15 of the Electoral Count Act, how each member of the House and Senate will vote on any such objections, and how each state delegation in the House would potentially vote under the Twelfth Amendment absent a majority electoral vote.””All that makes Congressman Gohmert’s alleged injury far too uncertain to support standing under” the Constitution, Kernodle added. Kernodle’s decision did not completely slam the door on the possibility that Gohmert or the would-be electors might be able to get some relief in court. The judge dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning that Gohmert’s lawyers could try to reframe the suit so it will pass legal muster. Gohmert, who filed the suit on Sunday, had asked for a final ruling from Kernodle by Jan. 4 in order to have time for potential appeals.

Giuliani, Trump Jr. among guests at Mar-a-Lago New Year’s party ditched by Trump: report — President Trump’s two adult sons and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani were reportedly among the guests at a New Year’s Eve party at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club, which the president himself did not attend despite previously planning to do so. The president returned to Washington from Florida early with no official explanation, but his Thursday arrival came days before Congress is set to certify the results of the Electoral College vote amid the president’s repeated attempts to overturn its results. Without the president, the highest-profile attendees included Giuliani and Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, as well as Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and performers Berlin and Vanilla Ice, CNN reported Friday. The latter’s name trended on Twitter after a clip of his performance surfaced. A person familiar with preparations told CNN that numerous bookings were made when the buyers believed the president would be at the party, with some performers reluctant to commit to attending without knowing whether he would be there. Trump, who forewent his usual Thanksgiving visit to the club, was expected to ring in the new year in Florida as late as Wednesday before it became clear that evening that he and first lady Melania Trump would leave for Washington. The club set tables for 10 people with no social distancing measures, according to the network, and few party attendees wore masks.

Stimulus battle stands in way of AML measure becoming law – A key legislative change to the nation’s anti-money-laundering framework still hangs in the balance as Congress remains at an impasse over the size of stimulus checks. Congress voted with a veto-proof majority earlier this month to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes an amendment requiring businesses to report their true owners to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The legislation would spare banks the burden of reporting their customers’ beneficial owners to Fincen. The bill is on the verge of becoming law. Although President Trump vetoed the NDAA due to its lack of restrictions for social media companies, the bill had garnered support from more than two-thirds of each chamber, setting up a potential override of Trump’s veto. The House voted Monday to override the veto, but a vote in the Senate has been held up over whether to increase the amount of direct payments to Americans to provide pandemic relief. Some Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, say they won’t allow an override vote to proceed until Republican lawmakers support $2,000 stimulus checks, an idea already backed by Trump. The recent pandemic relief law signed by Trump only provided $600 checks. The holdup over the NDAA delays enactment of one of the banking industry’s key legislative priorities. While the sector had pushed for more aggressive reforms of the AML framework, industry representatives remained in full support of passing the more moderate beneficial ownership measure. Some experts believe the Senate could still vote as early as this week to override the veto if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell secures 60 votes for a procedural motion to break the Democratic-led filibuster. “We applaud House lawmakers for twice advancing this critical, bipartisan anti-corruption reform by veto-proof margins,” Ian Gary, executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, said of the beneficial ownership measure in a statement. “We ask senators to similarly support these critical transparency reforms when they come up for a final vote this week.” Bankers still hope that Congress will eventually consider increasing the minimum transaction thresholds for suspicious activity reports and currency transaction reports as part of broader AML reforms. Some are also holding out hope that banks could receive more relief through the implementation of the NDAA provision.

Stimulus law may put disputes over PPP agent fees to rest for banks – The new stimulus package may finally put an end to a class of litigation that has pestered banks for months. A provision in the law signed this week by President Trump states explicitly that the only agent fees that Paycheck Protection Program lenders are required to pay are those “which the lender directly contracts with the agent.” The provision, moreover, is backdated to March 27, potentially driving a final nail in the coffin of dozens of lawsuits that borrower agents have filed seeking a cut of banks’ PPP fees. That revenue stream is significant. The stimulus legislation directs the Small Business Administration to pay lenders the lesser of $2,500 or 50% of proceeds on loans under $50,000, 5% on loans between $50,000 and $350,000, 3% on loans between $350,000 and $2 million, and 1% on loans greater than $2 million. Borrower agents, many of them small accounting firms, have filed more than 60 suits involving more than 100 banks – including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Truist Financial and other major banks – seeking payment from lenders for assistance they provided clients who received PPP loans. Though courts have repeatedly ruled against the agents, litigation has persisted, according to Richard Gottlieb and Brett Natarelli, attorneys at the law firm Manatt who blogged on the issue last week. “It’s still being litigated,” Gregory Cook, a partner at Balch & Bingham in Birmingham, Ala., said in an interview. “It has not been abandoned by plantiffs’ counsel.” The roots of the disputes between banks and the professional firms that sought agent fees can be traced back to PPP’s early days, when both groups were struggling to process an avalanche of applications from desperate borrowers. In the program’s first phase, between April 3 and April 16, the SBA, which is administering the Paycheck Protection Program as part of its 7(a) program, approved nearly 1.7 million loans for $342 billion.

Travel Insurers Likely To Make Vaccination A Requirement, New Report Finds –Yet another sector of the travel industry has signalled that it could mandate vaccination against coronavirus to provide services to travellers, according to a report that notes insurers may demand to see proof of vaccination before covering those wishing to go on holiday.The international Travel and Health Insurance Journal reports that “If the EU obliges travellers to vaccinate, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover those who decline to have the vaccination.”The report notes that the European Union has previously indicated that travellers and anyone applying for a visa could be mandated to get the vaccine in order to enter and move between EU countries.“If EU makes vaccines mandatory, travel insurers will likely follow suit,” the journal emphasises.Elvio Chilelli at insurer Europ Assistance commented that while vaccination is currently not a requirement, if the EU does mandate it then the insurer will adopt the same policy.AXA insurance also plans to make COVID vaccination a compulsory requirement if the EU does so.“It is likely that countries are going to require people to have had the vaccine to enter. Therefore, if customers haven’t been inoculated, they will not be covered,” the company stated.“If there is no requirement from the entering country, we cannot enforce that people have had the vaccine – as customers may not have had the opportunity to get one,” a Axa spokesperson said.EU news website Schengenvisainfo also reported on the likely move by insurers, pointing out that anti-vaxxers will likely be specifically targeted by the mandates.

How far left will CFPB swing in 2021? -With a new Democratic president set to take office in January, the biggest question facing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau entering 2021 is: How far will the pendulum shift back? After three years of Trump-appointed officials at the bureau undoing much of the agency’s Obama-era policies, the CFPB’s focus could boomerang back to tough enforcement and aggressive rule writing rather quickly, some officials said. Now that a Supreme Court ruling has made it easier for presidents to install CFPB chiefs of their choosing, President-elect Joe Biden is expected to appoint a new acting CFPB director either on or shortly after Jan. 20. Current Director Kathy Kraninger is expected to be fired or resign, although some Republicans are pushing for a legal battle over who would succeed her. With a change in leadership, many predict the agency’s agenda for the new year could quickly resemble that pursued by former CFPB Director Richard Cordray during the Obama administration. “Everybody is expecting a more aggressive and active CFPB on a number of fronts,” The immediate focus will be on aiding consumers who have been harmed financially during the COVID-19 pandemic, observers said. Mortgage servicers, credit bureaus, debt collectors and auto lenders are expected to land in the CFPB’s crosshairs. “There will likely be more mortgage-related investigations and a laser beam focus on what servicers are doing not to harm consumers,” Moran said.

Wall Street Mega-Landlord Blackstone Prepares to Reap the Spoils of Another Crisis – Back in 2008, Blackstone emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the subprime crisis, becoming a trailblazer in financializing rents. As that crisis went global, so too did Blackstone’s property empire. By the time the dust had settled, it was the biggest commercial real estate company on the planet, according to Fortune magazine. . Now, Blackstone wants to repeat the feat, albeit using a somewhat different playbook. At the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference, held on December 9, Blackstone’s CEO, Stephen Schwarzman, gave a few hints about how it plans to do just that. Asked if he thought large firms such as Blackstone would once more gain more market share during this crisis, he responded: I think something similar will happen. You always have winners and losers. Blackstone was a huge winner coming out of the global financial crisis. And I think something similar is going to happen. During the last crisis, Blackstone pioneered the buy-to-rent scheme by snapping up, for cents on the dollar, huge batches of foreclosed homes from struggling and bailed-out banks and then turning them into rental properties. In short order, Blackstone’s subsidiary Invitation Homes became the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the United States. It also took the meaning of “absentee landlord” to a whole new level, as accusations of ill repair and poor maintenance quickly mounted. Tenants also complained about excessive rent increases and fees. Once the model was up and running in the U.S., it was quickly exported to cities in Canada (Toronto) and Europe (Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona, Dublin, Stockholm … ). Since going public in 2007, Blackstone has multiplied eightfold the equity capital it devotes to real estate, to $163 billion. As Scharzman himself put it, the company’s strategy in post-crisis Europe essentially involved “waiting to see how beaten up people’s psyches get, and where they’re willing to sell assets … You want to wait until there’s really blood in the streets.” Now, around half of Blackstone’s earnings come from real estate, with much of it coming from commercial property. In its role as commercial landlord the company holds the fate of hundreds of thousands of struggling small and large business tenants in its hands. In the UK, it is already facing a growing backlash after its commercial real estate subsidiary, the Arch Company, began hiking rents for some tenants in the midst of a global pandemic. Those tenants include florists, cafes, breweries, gyms and mechanics, many of whom have been sledgehammered by the recent crisis. But they’re unlikely to find a sympathetic ear from their landlord.

FHFA sets new end date for multifamily forbearances – The Federal Housing Finance Agency on Wednesday gave property owners more leeway to postpone payments on multifamily mortgages for coronavirus-related hardships if they provide relief to their renters as well. “Due to the continued presence of COVID-19 in our communities and its disproportionate impact on renters, FHFA will extend forbearance multifamily offerings and tenant protections beyond the end of the year and through the first quarter of 2021,” said Director Mark Calabria in a press release. The announcement by the government-sponsored enterprises’ regulator and conservator followed a push for clearer advance notice on federal forbearance deadlines from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. Multifamily forbearance recipients can’t charge penalties for, or engage in evictions, solely for nonpayment, must provide all tenants with a written notice of rights, flexibility in repayment, and where applicable, 30-day notices to vacate, according to the FHFA. Repayment of back rent over time should “not necessarily” be in a lump sum. Congress has agreed on a relief bill that would provide some broader rental and other assistance for hardships related to the pandemic, including an extended eviction ban, but at press time it was still pending President Trump’s signature. Certain jurisdictions also have other related coronavirus-related contingencies in place for rental and owner-occupied housing markets. For single-family loans, forbearances related to coronavirus-related hardships are offered on more of an ongoing basis through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s programs, spokespersons for the two government-sponsored enterprises said Tuesday. Also, the FHFA earlier this month extended the ban on evictions for single-family foreclosures and real-estate owned properties through “at least” Jan. 31, 2021. The Federal Housing Administration also has a ban on single-family evictions and foreclosures that has been extended until Feb. 28, 2021. There are generally exceptions allowed for vacant and abandoned properties.

Fannie Mae: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate Decreased in November –Fannie Mae reported that the Single-Family Serious Delinquency decreased to 2.96% in November, from 3.05% in October. The serious delinquency rate is up from 0.66% in November 2019.These are mortgage loans that are “three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure”. The Fannie Mae serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 5.59%. By vintage, for loans made in 2004 or earlier (2% of portfolio), 5.87% are seriously delinquent (up from 5.82% in October). For loans made in 2005 through 2008 (3% of portfolio), 10.00% are seriously delinquent(up from 9.84%), For recent loans, originated in 2009 through 2018 (95% of portfolio), 2.48% are seriously delinquent (down from 2.57%). So Fannie is still working through a few poor performing loans from the bubble years.Mortgages in forbearance are counted as delinquent in this monthly report, but they will not be reported to the credit bureaus.This is very different from the increase in delinquencies following the housing bubble. Lending standards have been fairly solid over the last decade, and most of these homeowners have equity in their homes – and they will be able to restructure their loans once they are employed.

Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Increased Slightly – Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance.This data is as of December 29th. From Black Knight: The U.S. Sees its Third Consecutive Week of Forbearance Plans Increases: In the past week, our McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker found that forbearance plan volumes ticked upwards for the third week in a row, rising by 15,000 from the prior week and pushing the number of active plans to its highest level since early November.We saw FHA/VA forbearances increase by 11,000 this week, with portfolio/PLS forbearances increasing by 4,000 while GSE volumes remained flat. This week’s increase was primarily the result of limited forbearance plan removal activity, with removals falling to their lowest level since the start of the pandemic, likely due (at least in part) to the holiday week. On a bright note, forbearance plan starts also hit their lowest level since the pandemic began, a number also likely impacted by the holidays. Forbearance start volumes have now fallen in each of the last three weeks running. Despite three consecutive weekly rises, the number of active plans only stands 13,000 higher than the same point last month, and with nearly 270,000 forbearance plans still set to expire at the end of December, it’s possible that we could see an inflow of forbearance plan removals over the first week of January, a situation Black Knight experts will continue to monitor. As of Dec. 29, some 2.83 million (5.3% of) homeowners remain in COVID-19-related forbearance plans, including 3.5% (964,000) of GSE mortgages, 9.6% (1.16 million) of FHA/VA loans and 5.4% (700,000) of portfolio-held and privately securitized loans.

Mortgage rates end year at record low, even as Treasury yields rise – Mortgage rates yet again have dropped to a record low, even as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury flirts with breaking back above the 1% mark, according to Freddie Mac. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.66% for the week ending Dec. 24, down from last week when it averaged 2.67%, the lowest point since Freddie Mac started tracking this data in 1971. A year ago at this time, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.74%. However, the 10-year Treasury yield rose over the prior seven day period. It closed at 0.955% on Dec. 23, up 3.5 basis points compared with one week earlier. In fact, at one point during Dec. 23, the 10-year yield was at 0.973%, its highest level since Nov. 10. Still, the low mortgage rates have made for a nice holiday surprise for what is normally a slow time of the year for the housing market. Purchase applications were up 26% and refis up 124% compared with the same week last year, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported on Dec. 23. “The housing market is poised to finish the year strong as low mortgage rates continue to fuel homebuyer demand and refinance activity,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in a press release. “Moving into 2021, we expect rates to hold steady, but the key driver in the near term will be the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and the execution of the vaccine.” The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.19%, down from last week when it averaged 2.21%. A year ago at this time, the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.19%. The five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 2.79% with an average 0.2 point, unchanged from last week. A year ago at this time, the five-year adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 3.45%.

Median home purchase mortgage payment sank to 2020 low in November -The median mortgage payment for a newly purchased home fell to a low point for 2020 in November, even as sellers were pricing properties at an all-time high, Redfin reported. November’s nationwide median mortgage payment was $1,094, down from $1,124 in October and the 2020 high point of $1,163 in February. The median list price for November was $336,000. November’s low payment amount was driven by an average mortgage rate of 2.77% for the month, according to Freddie Mac data cited in Redfin’s report. “The relationship between historically low mortgage rates and surging home prices has been fascinating to watch this year,” Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, said in a press release. “We’ve seen mortgage rates drive unforeseen levels of homebuyer demand, which has pushed prices up by upwards of 15% in recent weeks. The good news for those buyers who are persevering through a dearth of homes for sale and fierce bidding wars is that once you do land a home, today’s sub-3% mortgage rates are largely cancelling out the high prices,” Fairweather continued. November was also the low point in 2020 for the median newly bought home in 35 out of the 50 largest metro areas in the nation. That list includes three of the four markets with the highest median payment in November, all in California: San Francisco at $4,420, San Jose at $3,828 and San Diego at $2,128. The only exception within that group of markets was Los Angeles. That market’s median payment was at its low for the year in April at $2,382. Last month, the median payment in Los Angeles was $2,453. At the other end of the scale is Detroit, where November’s median monthly payment of $491 was the lowest for any metro in the country that month. However, in both January and February, before the pandemic hit, the monthly payment for a new purchase in this Michigan metro area was even lower, at $438 and $483, respectively.

Case-Shiller: National House Price Index increased 8.4% year-over-year in October – S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for October (“October” is a 3 month average of August, September and October prices). This release includes prices for 20 individual cities, two composite indices (for 10 cities and 20 cities) and the monthly National index. From S&P: S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index Shows Annual Home Price Gains Soared to 7% in September:; The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported an 8.4% annual gain in October, up from 7.0% in the previous month. The 10-City Composite annual increase came in at 7.5%, up from 6.2% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a 7.9% year-over-year gain, up from 6.6% in the previous month. Phoenix, Seattle and San Diego continued to report the highest year-over-year gains among the 19 cities (excluding Detroit) in October. Phoenix led the way with a 12.7% year-over-year price increase, followed by Seattle with an 11.7% increase and San Diego with an 11.6% increase. All 19 cities reported higher price increases in the year ending October 2020 versus the year ending September 2020. … The National Index posted a 1.4% month-over-month increase, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites both posted increases of 1.4% and 1.3% respectively, before seasonal adjustment in October. After seasonal adjustment, the National Index posted a month-over-month increase of 1.7%, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites both posted increases of 1.6%. In October, all 19 cities (excluding Detroit) reported increases before and after seasonal adjustment. “The surprising strength we noted in last month’s report continued into October’s home price data,” says Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “The National Composite Index gained 8.4% relative to its level a year ago, accelerating from September’s 7.0% increase. The 10- and 20-City Composites (up 7.5% and 7.9%, respectively) also rose more rapidly in October than they had done in September. The housing market’s strength was once again broadly-based: all 19 cities for which we have October data rose, and all 19 gained more in the 12 months ended in October than they had gained in the 12 months ended in September. “We’ve noted before that a trend of accelerating increases in the National Composite Index began in August 2019 but was interrupted in May and June, as COVID-related restrictions produced modestly decelerating price gains. Since June, our monthly readings have shown accelerating growth in home prices, and October’s results emphatically emphasize that trend. The last time that the National Composite matched this month’s 8.4% growth rate was more than six and a half years ago, in March 2014. The first graph shows the nominal seasonally adjusted Composite 10, Composite 20 and National indices (the Composite 20 was started in January 2000). The Composite 10 index is up 1.6% in October (SA) from September. The Composite 20 index is up 1.6% (SA) in October. The National index is 24.3% above the bubble peak (SA), and up 1.7% (SA) in October. The National index is up 68% from the post-bubble low set in December 2011 (SA).

Zillow Case-Shiller House Price Forecast: “Nothing Short of Remarkable”, 9.5% YoY in November –The Case-Shiller house price indexes for October were released today. Zillow forecasts Case-Shiller a month early, and I like to check the Zillow forecasts since they have been pretty close. From Matthew Speakman at Zillow: October Case-Shiller Results & November Forecast: Nothing Short of Remarkable The path of home prices in recent months has been nothing short of remarkable. In many places across the country, and in the nation overall, home prices are growing by some measures at their fastest pace in decades. Record low mortgage rates, a wave of households aging into homeownership and a limited number of homes for sale all combined to stoke competition for houses and placed consistent upward pressure on prices for the better part of the last calendar year. These factors appear likely to remain in place in the near term, and an incrementally improving economy should encourage more buyers to enter the market. Taken together, this torrid pace of home price appreciation appears primed to continue well into 2021….Monthly growth in November as reported by Case-Shiller is expected to slow slightly from October in all three main indices, while annual growth is expected to accelerate across the board. S&P Dow Jones Indices is expected to release data for the November S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices on Tuesday, January 26.The Zillow forecast is for the year-over-year change for the Case-Shiller National index to be at 9.5% in November, up from 8.4% in October.The Zillow forecast is for the 20-City index to be up 8.9% YoY in November from 7.9% in October, and for the 10-City index to increase to be up 8.4% YoY compared to 7.5% YoY in October.

The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America: December Update on House Price Inflation Gone Wild – Wolf Richter -Prices of single-family houses jumped 8.4% in the US, the biggest year-over-year jump since March 2014, according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Indexfor October, released today. The index is based on the “sales pairs” method, comparing the price of a house that sold in the current month to the price of the same house when it sold previously, going back decades. By comparison, the National Association of Realtors’ house price index, which is based on “median prices,” has skyrocketed 15%. In this terrible economy with 9 million to 20 million people out of work, house prices have been fired up by record low interest rates, the $3 trillion the Fed has handed the markets, the shift of working from home and not wanting to live in an apartment or condo tower, and by a dose of panic-buying. House prices in the Los Angeles metro rose by 1.1% in October from September and by 8.4% year-over-year, which put them 14.1% above the peak of the insane Housing Bubble 1. The Case-Shiller index was set at 100 for January 2000 across all 20 cities it covers. Today’s index value for Los Angeles of 312 means that house prices in the metro have more than tripled since January 2000 (+212%), making it the most splendid housing bubble on this list. Today’s release of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, named “October,” is a rolling three-month average of closings that were entered into public records in August, September, and October.The Case-Shiller Index provides sub-indices for some cities. For Los Angeles, in addition to overall house prices, it provides data on condos, and for high-, mid-, and low-tier house prices.Prices in the low-tier segment (black line) jumped 10.4% year-over-year and have nearly quadrupled since January 2000 (+281%). During Housing Bubble 1, this segment surged the most, and during the Housing Bust, it collapsed the most (-56%). High-tier prices (green line) jumped 8.0% year-over-year and are up 188% from January 2000. Condo prices (red line) have been increasing at the slowest rate of the four categories (0.5% month-over-month and 5.0% year-over-year):

NAR: Pending Home Sales Decrease 2.6% in November – From the NAR: Pending Home Sales Slide 2.6% in NovemberPending home sales declined in November, according to the National Association of Realtors. Month-over-month contract activity fell in each of the four major U.S. regions. However, compared to a year ago, all four areas achieved gains in pending home sales transactions.The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, fell 2.6% to 125.7 in November, the third straight month of decline. Year-over-year, contract signings climbed 16.4%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001….The Northeast PHSI slid 3.3% to 108.6 in November, a 15.3% increase from a year ago. In the Midwest, the index fell 3.1% to 115.9 last month, up 14.1% from November 2019.Pending home sales in the South decreased 1.1% to an index of 150.0 in November, up 21.3% from November 2019. The index in the West fell 4.7% in November to 111.3, which is up 10.4% from a year ago. This was below expectations for this index. Note: Contract signings usually lead sales by about 45 to 60 days, so this would usually be for closed sales in December and January.

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 33.0% Year-over-year, 2020 Worst Year on Record – This is the end of the worst year on record for hotel occupancy. The average weekly occupancy rate was 44.2%, far below the occupancy rate for the previous worst year of 55.0% in 2009. The normal annual average weekly occupancy rate is around 63%. From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US hotel results for week ending 26 December: U.S. weekly hotel occupancy fell to its lowest level since early May, according to STR’s latest data for the week of Christmas.

20-26 December 2020 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019):

Occupancy: 32.5% (-33.0%)

Average daily rate (ADR): US$92.08 (-28.8%)

Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$29.94 (-52.3%)

The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. The red line is for 2020, dash light blue is 2019, blue is the median, and black is for 2009 (the worst year since the Great Depression for hotels – before 2020).Seasonally we’d expect the occupancy rate to decline into the new year, and then, usually, business travel would start to pick up in the new year. Since there is a seasonal pattern to the occupancy rate – see graph above – we can track the year-over-year change in occupancy to look for any improvement. This table shows the year-over-year change since the week ending Sept 19, 2020: This suggests no improvement over the last several months.

Consumer Confidence Decreases in December – The headline number of 88.6 was a decrease from the final reading of 92.9 for November. This was below the Investing.comconsensus of 97.0.”Consumers’ assessment of current conditions deteriorated sharply in December, as the resurgence of COVID-19 remains a drag on confidence,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “As a result, consumers’ vacation intentions, which had notably improved in October, have retreated. On the flip side, as consumers continue to hunker down at home, intentions to purchase appliances have risen. Overall, it appears that growth has weakened further in Q4, and consumers do not foresee the economy gaining any significant momentum in early 2021.” Read more The chart below is another attempt to evaluate the historical context for this index as a coincident indicator of the economy. Toward this end, we have highlighted recessions and included GDP. The regression through the index data shows the long-term trend and highlights the extreme volatility of this indicator. Statisticians may assign little significance to a regression through this sort of data. But the slope resembles the regression trend for real GDP shown below, and it is a more revealing gauge of relative confidence than the 1985 level of 100 that the Conference Board cites as a point of reference. For an additional perspective on consumer attitudes, see the most recent Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. Here is the chart from that post.

U.S. gasoline prices reach 9-month high as refiners cut more output(Reuters) – U.S. gasoline prices hit a nine-month peak as drivers took to the roads on holiday travel, crude oil prices kept climbing and refiners further cut fuel production due to weak margins. Prices at the pump topped $2.25 a gallon this week, according to the American Automobile Association, the highest since March when COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. Supplies fell to the lowest in a month at 236.6 million barrels, according to U.S. government data released on Wednesday. U.S. rush-hour traffic this holiday season reached pandemic highs, with a congestion index posting the biggest month-on-month increase since July, according to location technology company TomTom. Still, no U.S. city is above 2019 levels. Stay-at-home orders to stop the spread of COVID-19 have weighed on fuel demand all year, sinking demand and prices for gasoline and other motor fuels. Refineries are running at average utilization rates below 80% this year, the latest Energy Information Administration data showed.

Flying During Christmas Travel Period? Still in Collapse Mode – Wolf Richter — The days around the Christmas holidays have always been huge for leisure travel. Last year was huge too. But this year, with all the discouragements about traveling, the exhortations to stay at home, and with lots of people refusing to set foot inside an airport? TSA checkpoint screenings of passengers that entered the secured areas at US airports during the Christmas travel period from Friday, December 18, through Sunday, December 28, ranged from 616,000 on Christmas Day to 1.28 million yesterday, the largest day since the collapse of airline traffic in March. But that biggest day yesterday was still down by 50% from Sunday after Christmas last year (2.58 million).The seven-day moving average (bold line) was down 57% over the last few days, compared to a year ago. But it was the smallest plunge since the collapse of the air passenger business in March. The chart shows the daily percent decline (fine line) from the same weekday in the same week last year, and the 7-day moving average (bold line): The Pandemic has given rise to numerous high-frequency data sets, including daily data sets that are reported the next day. They give an immediate picture of the that segment of the economy, but they’re somewhat raw.One of them is the TSA’s data set on checkpoint screenings, released every morning for screenings the prior day. It compares these daily number of air passengers to the same weekday in the same week last year. This metric gets caught up in calendar shifts; for example, Christmas Day, which fell on Friday this year, is being compared to Friday, December 27, last year. The seven-day moving average irons out most of those calendar shifts.In mid-December, TSA checkpoint screenings of passengers had dropped sharply as they normally do after the Thanksgiving travel burst, but they did so even more sharply than last year, and were between -67% and -72% compared to 2019, with the seven-day moving average at around -68% for nine days in a row. But then the ramp-up of the Christmas leisure travel burst began. The chart below shows the number of TSA checkpoint screenings in 2020 (red) and 2019 (green) for each day and the seven-day moving average (bold): Health experts may consider the travel numbers this year a big risk factor in spreading the virus – not necessarily being on an airplane, as we’re constantly being re-re-reassured, including by the airlines themselves, that the risks of contagion on an airplane are minimal; but the risks associated with the rest of the trip, including being in an airport, and whatever mixing and mingling people are doing at their destination with people that are not in their household.But even the biggest travel days this year in terms of checkpoint screenings were still a pale imitation of last year. For the airlines, this is tough. But fear not for the airlines. We the taxpayers will hand them another $15 billion via the new stimulus package just signed into law over the weekend, in addition to the tens of billions of dollars from the prior stimulus package, to bail out and enrich shareholders and creditors.

After Covid, Plane Makers Are Even More Dependent on China – WSJ – With airlines in the West expecting to take years to recover from Covid-19, aircraft manufacturers depend on the resilience and growth potential of the Chinese market. But China’s own aerospace ambitions and the geopolitical tensions that surround them could make it a turbulent ride. China has recovered from the pandemic to become the world’s largest domestic aviation market. Traffic is 8% higher than a year ago, data by Oliver Wyman’s PlaneStats show. In the U.S. and Europe, it is still down 41% and 68%, respectively. With another 500 million Chinese expected to join the middle classes over the next few years, the country is also the industry’s big growth opportunity. The International Air Transport Association predicts 5% average annual growth in passenger journeys in the Asia-Pacific region between 2019 and 2039. Mature Western markets are expected to expand at a 2.2% rate. Following a mild liberalization of its airline industry in 2004, China has become the second largest source of revenues for the two major plane makers, Boeing and Airbus, which have since opened plants there. It is one of their few bright spots too: In November, Boeing downgraded its 20-year global aircraft demand forecast by 2%, but upgraded China’s by 6.3% to 8,600 planes. Relative to the rest of the world, China is especially important for the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families, which are the backbone of low-cost airlines. It has accounted for a quarter of deliveries for the 737 MAX, which Boeing is scrambling to remarket after a 20-month grounding. China’s true catch-up potential, though, is in long-haul routes, and thus the wide-body jets worst-hit by Covid-19. Traditionally, only the A330 had broad acceptance among the big Chinese state-owned carriers. Current orders, however, are finally skewed toward the nimbler A350 and 787 jets that Airbus and Boeing are focused on. Backlogs underplay how many planes China will end up needing. The country represents 4.4% of Boeing and Airbus’ combined firm orders, which seems far too low. As Barclays analysts point out, this suggests fewer than 20 deliveries of the A320 in 2023, compared with a recent annual average of 120. To be sure, the C919 is delayed and unlikely to enter service before late 2021, with limited initial production capacity. Its international adoption is constrained by a shorter range and worse customer service than its peers. But it is key for Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial plan. This shouldn’t be underestimated, especially in the later half of the decade. The Chinese government can sell the plane at very discounted prices, and it owns a big chunk of the customers. The outcome may be determined by geopolitics. A few days ago, the Department of Commerce published a list of Chinese companies with military ties that will be banned from buying a range of U.S. goods and technology. It included some Comac subsidiaries, potentially dealing the C919 a heavy blow. It is unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden will keep such a hard line, but Beijing may retaliate by refusing to unground the MAX. Western aerospace’s dependence on the Chinese market has never been greater. Neither have the risks to its continued dominance.

Dallas Fed: “Texas Manufacturing Activity Expands at a Faster Pace” in December – From the Dallas Fed: Texas Manufacturing Activity Expands at a Faster Pace: Expansion in Texas factory activity picked up in December, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, rebounded from 7.2 to 25.5, indicating an acceleration in output growth. Other measures of manufacturing activity also point to stronger growth this month. The new orders index pushed up 11 points to 17.8, and the growth rate of orders index rose from 9.7 to 16.5. The capacity utilization index moved up 11 points to 17.7, and the shipments index advanced from 13.7 to 21.9. Perceptions of broader business conditions continued to improve in December. The general business activity index remained positive but edged down from 12.0 to 9.7. Meanwhile, the company outlook index pushed further into positive territory, rising from 11.0 to 16.8. Uncertainty regarding companies’ outlooks continued to rise; the index increased six points to 13.4. Labor market measures indicated an increase in employment and work hours. The employment index increased from 11.7 to 19.6, suggesting a pickup in hiring. This was the last of the regional Fed surveys for December. Here is a graph comparing the regional Fed surveys and the ISM manufacturing index: The New York and Philly Fed surveys are averaged together (yellow, through December), and five Fed surveys are averaged (blue, through December) including New York, Philly, Richmond, Dallas and Kansas City. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) PMI (red) is through November (right axis). The ISM manufacturing index for December will be released on Monday, January 4th. Based on these regional surveys, the ISM manufacturing index will likely decrease slightly in December from the November level. Note that these are diffusion indexes, so readings above 0 (or 50 for the ISM) means activity is increasing (it does not mean that activity is back to pre-crisis levels).

December Regional Fed Manufacturing Overview – Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. Regional manufacturing surveys are a measure of local economic health and are used as a representative for the larger national manufacturing health. They have been used as a signal for business uncertainty and economic activity as a whole. Manufacturing makes up 12% of the country’s GDP. The other 6 Federal Reserve Districts do not publish manufacturing data. For these, the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book offers a short summary of each districts’ manufacturing health. The Chicago Fed published their Midwest Manufacturing Index from July 1996 through December of 2013. According to their website, “The Chicago Fed Midwest Manufacturing Index (CFMMI) is undergoing a process of data and methodology revision..” Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. The latest average of the five for December is 11.74, down from the previous month’s 14.12. It is well below its all-time high of 25.1, set in May 2004.

Worker opposition grows as US manufacturers ramp up production amid pandemic upsurge – According to recent reports, US manufacturing output has increased for seven consecutive months and is now close to pre-pandemic levels, despite an uncontrolled and continuing increase of COVID-19 infections and deaths. The US Federal Reserve reports that manufacturing output is now just five percent below the level of February, even as infections spike and the death toll from COVID-19 nears 350,000, the highest number in the world.Leading the resurgence in production has been the auto industry, which saw a 5.3 percent increase in output in November. According to a Ford Motor spokesman, the auto company is now operating at 98 percent of pre-pandemic levels.Manufacturing profits, again led by the auto industry, are approaching pre-pandemic highs. Auto company stock prices have also rebounded, rising steadily since May and beating analysts’ expectations.The corporations and both big business parties have used economic blackmail to keep workers on the job. While handing trillions to Wall Street, the airlines, major hospital chains and other giant corporations, Congress voted to provide a pittance to tens of millions of workers who are facing levels of evictions, hunger and poverty not seen since the Great Depression.Despite this there are growing signs of opposition to the sacrifice of workers’ lives for corporate profit. Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to block a strike by 8,000 Union Pacific Railroad (UP) workers, which was scheduled to start Monday, over the lack of COVID protections and pay for quarantined workers. Hundreds of UP and other railway workers have been infected and at least 10 have died. In riding roughshod over the right to strike, the judge absurdly declared that the pandemic was not “a work-specific safety concern” for the Union Pacific workers. An attempt by Fiat Chrysler management to address the COVID-related manpower shortage at its Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) outside Detroit by establishing a 12-hour, seven-day work schedule for skilled trades, with the support of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, had to be scrapped in the face of an outpouring of opposition.The attitude of workers to the UAW was expressed in a comment received by the Autoworker Newsletter from the FCA Tipton, Indiana transmission plant. “Transmissions in the Chrysler plants in Indiana are not a necessity and it’s truly unbelievable how little [UAW President] Rory Gamble and his associates care about anyone but themselves'” the worker wrote. “They live the life of the rich and it truly shows how little we the workers actually mean to these people, who have done absolutely nothing to protect the union workers in Indiana.”

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decreased to 787,000 – The DOL reported:In the week ending December 26, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 787,000, a decrease of 19,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 3,000 from 803,000 to 806,000. The 4-week moving average was 836,750, an increase of 17,750 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 750 from 818,250 to 819,000. This does not include the 308,262 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that was down from 396,948 the previous week. The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971. The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 836,750. The previous week was revised up. The second graph shows seasonally adjust continued claims since 1967 (lags initial by one week). At the worst of the Great Recession, continued claims peaked at 6.635 million, but then steadily declined. Continued claims decreased to 5,393,440 (SA) from 5,457,941 (SA) last week and will likely stay at a high level until the crisis abates. Note: There are an additional 8,459,647 receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that decreased from 9,271,112 the previous week (there are questions about these numbers). This is a special program for business owners, self-employed, independent contractors or gig workers not receiving other unemployment insurance. An additional 4,772,853 are receiving Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) that decreased from 4,793,230 the previous week. This was close to expectations.

U.S. Jobless Claims Post Surprise Drop, Shadowed by Virus Risks – U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell to a one-month low, though the recent increases in coronavirus cases and business closures threaten to keep layoffs elevated through early 2021.Initial jobless claims in regular state programs declined by 19,000 to 787,000 in the week ended Dec. 26, according to a Labor Department report Thursday. That was less than the 835,000 median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The figures are often volatile around holidays and last week included Christmas. Without adjustments, claims dropped by 31,736. Continuing claims for state programs, which roughly correlates to the total number of people receiving state unemployment benefits, also decreased, to 5.22 million in the week ended Dec. 19. Economists projected an increase to 5.37 million.Underscoring the pandemic’s damage to the job market as 2020 draws to a close, claims for benefits have averaged 1.45 million a week this year compared with about 220,000 in 2019.The surprise decline in claims is a welcome sign, though the level remains elevated as economic fallout from the coronavirus continues to reverberate. While the stimulus package recently signed into law should cushion the blow of further shutdowns and closures, it may take some time for funds to reach consumers and without a widely available vaccine, is only a temporary measure.

New Mexico fines two megachurches $10K each over packed Christmas Eve services –New Mexico officials fined two megachurches $10,000 each after they hosted packed Christmas Eve services last week. Legacy Church and Calvary Church in Albuquerque, N.M., were shown in photos on the church’s Instagram accounts to have held services with large crowds of people, many of whom were not wearing masks, city station KOB 4 and ABC affiliate KOAT reported. The packed services were held despite state restrictions instituted Dec. 15 that limit worship services to 25 percent capacity and require masks. Each violation amounted to a $5,000 fine. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham condemned the churches, saying they violated “the state public health order and common sense” in a statement obtained by NBC News. “These two churches and their leaders endangered the lives, livelihoods and health of not only their parishioners but their entire communities – and, given how quickly this virus can spread, potentially our state as a whole,” she said. “These illegal and selfish gatherings will directly contribute to more suffering and illness in our state,” she added. “These church leaders should reflect on the danger they’ve unleashed in their communities.” Legacy Church told NBC News on Wednesday that state officials overstepped “their constitutional authority” and were countering “what we are called on by God to do.”

Texas’ most populous county tells residents to ‘cancel all gatherings’ for New Year’s – Texas’s most populous county on Wednesday issued a public safety alert warning residents against celebrating New Years with anyone other than those in their immediate household. KHOU-11, a local CBS-affiliate, reports the warning from Harris County, which contains Houston, told residents to “protect yourself, family and healthcare workers.” Dr. Ali Mokdad, a researcher who helped create the COVID-19 model used by the White House, told the television station that a rise in cases and mobility has been observed but mask-wearing has remained stagnant. “The concern for New Years Eve is totally different,” Mokdad told the station. “It’s a different kind of celebration. People celebrate with friends, family and sometimes people they don’t know. It could be a super spreader event on top of what you’re seeing in Texas.” Over 60 percent of ICU beds in Texas are currently occupied by COVId-19 patients KHOU reports, with cases not expected to peak until some time in January. According to Mokdad’s model, if trends continue the way they’re going Texas could experience as many as 35,000 deaths by the beginning of February. “Many hospitals are facing a shortage of ICU beds. If you put such a pressure on hospitals we may have to start referring patients to other hospitals far from where they live,” said Mokdad. KHOU notes that the vaccine rollout has been much slower than expected. Trump officials on Wednesday defended the pace of vaccine distribution, claiming up to 20 million doses will be made available for all 64 U.S. territories. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) more than 2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered so far. “Mask 95 percent wearing will do much better between now and April 1 especially when compared to the rapid rollout of the vaccines simply because we don’t have enough vaccines,”

The New York Times scapegoats medical workers in the tragic death of Dr. Susan Moore – On December 20, Dr. Susan Moore passed away in Indianapolis, Indiana, one of the nearly 350,000 women and men who have lost their lives to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The New York Times has used Dr. Moore’s tragic death to promote its racialist narrative of American society and the COVID-19 pandemic. On December 23, the Times published a sensationalist article by John Eligon under the headline, “Black Doctor Dies of COVID-19 After Complaining of Racist Treatment.” Without any investigation into the circumstances of the case, the Times sought to hold up Dr. Moore’s death as an example of a vicious form of racism that pervades the health care industry. “Lying in a hospital bed with an oxygen tube hugging her nostrils,” Eligon begins his article, “the Black patient gazed into her smartphone and, with a strained voice, complained of an experience all too common among Black people in America.” Not only does the Times accept, without providing any evidence, that the attending physician, Dr. Eric Bannec, is racist, but it implies that he is only part of a health care system that is pervaded with racism. Going even further than the Times, an opinion piece in the Washington Post compared Dr. Moore’s death to that of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May. “Say her name: Dr. Susan Moore,” read the headline, echoing a chant in this year’s protests against police violence. “No matter how well-intentioned our health-care system is,” the authors write, “it has not rooted out the false idea of a hierarchy of human valuation based on skin color and the falser idea that, if there were such a hierarchy, ‘White’ people would be at the top.” Officer Derek Chauvin deliberately strangled George Floyd by keeping his knee on his neck for nine minutes as bystanders begged him to stop. To compare the doctors showing up to work day after day to save lives in a yearlong mass casualty incident to the actions of murderous police officials is so absurd as to hardly merit a rebuttal.

Social media use tops list of child health concerns among parents in 2020; COVID ranked tenth! – For American parents, you may think the constant concern overCOVID-19 is their biggest fear when it comes to their child’s health. A new survey finds that’s not actually the case, not even close. Researchers from the University of Michigan say quarantine and lockdowns have parents worrying more about their kids overusing digital devices than contracting coronavirus. According to a national poll from C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, a staggering 72 percent of U.S. parents say their biggest health concern in 2020 is that their child is on social media too much. In fact, the top three health concerns for moms and dads are all concerns about their child’s screen time. Worries over cyberbullying and internet safety both finished as a concern for 62 percent of respondents. Surprisingly, COVID-19 only ranked 10th among 2020 health concerns for parents. Just 48 percent say they’re greatly concerned about the virus infecting their children. Fears finishing above coronavirus in the poll included children developing unhealthy diets in quarantine, lack of physical activity, increased stress, and concerns teensmay start drinking or smoking during isolation. “This is an especially challenging time for families, with many children experiencing significant changes in routine that may negatively impact their health and wellbeing,” says Mott Poll co-director and pediatrician Gary Freed in a university release. “Parents’ biggest concerns for young people seem to be associated with changes in lifestyle as a result of the pandemic. COVID-19 has turned the world of our children and teens upside down in many ways and this is reflected in how parents rate health issues in 2020.” While the overwhelming majority of white and Hispanic parents are focused on the internet’s negative impact on their children, researchers find Black parents have much different priorities. The survey finds the top health concern among Black parents is the impact of racism on their kids (82%). Fears over COVID-19 ranked second for Black parents (73%), with overuse of social media falling to third. For Hispanic parents, racism comes in as the sixth-highest health concerns for their children and COVID-19 finishes eighth. Neither issue makes the top 10 health concerns for white parents.

As COVID-19 spreads, New York City schools prepare to reopen Monday after holiday break – On Wednesday, authorities announced that New York City’s seven-day rolling average for the positivity rate for COVID-19 tests rose to 7.93 percent. Cases have increased 25 percent and deaths 64 percent in the last 14 days. Nevertheless, the city’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio assured the media that schools would reopen on January 4 after the holiday break. In response to Wednesday’s announcement of the COVID-19 figures, one educator tweeted to the mayor: “Stop acting like you’re concerned about the virus. You have teachers working in unsafe environments.” Another commented, “You can’t be planning on opening schools at this rate, right? By January 4 it will be at least 10%, just getting to the school is a huge risk for kids and teachers.” At a Tuesday press conference, de Blasio said, “Look at the amazing success we’ve had in our schools, keeping them safe. Clearly New York City public schools one of the safest places to be in all of New York City.” De Blasio then touted the fraud of school testing, noting that between December 7-23 nearly 100,000 tests were conducted among students and staff, and the rate of positive tests was 0.68 percent. Students and educators are randomly tested in each open school building once a week, and the monthly total of those tested must add up to 20 percent of the school’s total population. This testing regime – including the frequency, quality and reliability of results – is largely considered a joke by New York City educators and parents. One city educator, noting that the Department of Education posted COVID-19 testing results on Monday, asked on Twitter, “Who’s being tested on 12/28, since the schools have been closed since 12/23?” A second New York educator commented, “There are teachers saying they’ve been waiting for days for results. Maybe this is how long the huge backlog is taking? Really confidence-inspiring as we’re a few days away from even more staff and student cases and closures.” An art teacher told the WSWS, “Teachers are not informed of test results. The problem [of cases in schools] is bigger than what we thought, and testing twenty percent is not enough; that leaves eighty percent that can have COVID to slip through into class. It can be a week and a half before we get test results.”

12,000 NYC Students Banned From School For Not Consenting To Random Covid Testing –About 12,000 New York City students are being prevented from attending in-person learning because their parents “failed to sign consent forms for weekly random testing”, Bloomberg reported last week. The students are part of a larger group of 190,000 pre-school through elementary students who returned to classrooms in December. While about 60,000 pre-school and kindergarten students are exempt from testing, there are still about 130,000 students who are required to participate in random testing. Nathaniel Styer, a spokesman for the city Department of Education, said: “Due to the extensive efforts of our staff, 91% of students who need a consent form have one on file. Students without consent forms, and who do not have approved exemptions, are transitioned to remote instruction.” Random testing is conducted on 20% of everyone in each school building, every week. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza are responsible for implementing the standards that went into place after NYC schools had previously shut down. Meanwhile, high school and middle school students that are part of NYC’s 1 million plus student body are all receiving remote instruction. “Tens of thousands” of elementary school parents have voluntarily opted out of the random testing in favor of remote learning as well, Bloomberg concluded.

Detroit educators unions sanction school openings, poverty wages for staff, and pay raise for Superintendent Vitti – Detroit schools are presently set to reopen for face-to-face instruction in the coming weeks, a measure which will endanger countless lives as it coincides with the expected post-Christmas surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Following a consultation with the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) Superintendent Nikolai Vitti announced in a memo to staff that in-person learning will begin January 11, with the option of opening learning centers beforehand. In other words, as the state nears a half million COVID-19 cases and over 12,000 deaths, the education unions continue their partnership in the homicidal policy of reopening schools. In September, the DFT defied a “safety strike” vote by over 90 percent of teachers and instead signed a letter of agreement with Vitti to implement his back-to-school policy. For her part, Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer reversed her mandatory closure of high schools on December 18, paving the way for a full resumption of in-person learning at K-12 schools. Toeing this Democratic Party line, the unions have not only blocked a struggle against the forced return to schools, but they have agreed that it continues to be done at poverty-level wages. The week before Christmas, DPSCD settled one-year contracts with six support staff unions. The insulting deal pushed by the unions provides two percent pay increases and $2,000 bonuses to some 2,700 workers across 133 job classifications. To make matters worse, cafeteria workers were told that they would not even receive the two percent raise because of “revenue shortfall,” and instead they received merely $1,000 in “hazard pay.” The deal, purportedly reached after months of “negotiations,” means near-impossible living standards for support staff. In return for putting their lives on the line, many support workers make at or below minimum wage, with hourly wages as low as $9.25 an hour. In a self-indictment of the union’s long role in suppressing opposition among workers, Detroit Federation of Paraprofessionals president Donna Jackson previously noted, “It’s not an attractive salary to try to feed your families, pay for health care, trying to pay bills and a lot of that is being subtracted out.” Most egregiously, contracts do nothing to protect workers from the deadly reopening of schools being enforced across the state by the Democratic governor. Many support staff have been forced by the school administration to continue working in unsafe buildings since June. They were told that their upcoming contract would include a vague amount of hazard pay, but meanwhile they needed to report for work or lose their jobs. Vitti tried to justify this policy by noting the requirement “is not a decision unique to DPSCD.” He pointed to other Wayne County districts pursuing the same irresponsible policies, affecting large numbers of low-paid workers.

Wealthy hospitals rake in U.S. disaster aid for COVID-19 costs (Reuters) – After collecting billions of dollars in U.S. coronavirus aid, many of the nation’s wealthiest nonprofit hospitals are now tapping into disaster relief funds that critics say they don’t need. The money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is going to some large health systems that have billions of dollars in cash reserves and investments, according to government records reviewed by Reuters. FEMA has received nearly 2,200 aid requests from hospitals and thus far has approved about 15% of them, for a total of $894 million, the agency told Reuters. Hospitals can request more money as U.S. infections surge, and FEMA officials expect total aid awards to rise significantly. Some health policy experts say that large and well-capitalized nonprofit systems – which typically pay no taxes – do not need the additional relief money. Among the aid applicants are some of the nation’s best-known health systems, including the Cleveland Clinic, Providence and Stanford Health Care. “These are very financially successful hospitals that have already received a huge amount of taxpayer money to help with COVID-19,” said Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “This feels like greed for them to go to FEMA for even more money.” Some nonprofit hospitals said federal aid hasn’t covered all of the lost revenue and higher expenses caused by the pandemic. The FEMA program, they said, recognizes their major investments in staff and equipment to handle the crisis. “The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted hospitals and health systems around the country, including ours,” said Angela Smith, spokeswoman for the Cleveland Clinic. FEMA funds are typically dispersed after hurricanes, floods or other natural disasters in a specific region. Nonprofit hospitals nationwide can apply now because President Donald Trump declared the pandemic a national emergency in March. For-profit hospitals, which have faced similar challenges from the pandemic, can’t tap the FEMA money because federal law governing disaster relief excludes for-profit businesses.

Saudi Arabia to allow outgoing international flights for foreign nationals –Saudi Arabian authorities will allow outgoing flights carrying foreign nationals to resume after placing a temporary hold due to a new, more infectious strain of the coronavirus, state television announced Sunday. Under the new terms, any country dealing with the more infectious strain will still be restricted, and crew members on flights landing in Saudi Arabia will be confined to the plane, according to Bloomberg. New York Democratic Party chairman warns Ocasio-Cortez against… Why a special counsel is guaranteed if Biden chooses Yates, Cuomo or… Last week, the kingdom announced all international flights would be suspended due to the new variant, first detected in southeastern England. The prohibition was set to last a week with the option to extend it if necessary. Saudi Arabia has officially reported just over 361,000 cases of the virus, and official numbers have not shown a second wave of the virus like that of numerous other countries, including Europe and much of the U.S. Official U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines still advise Americans against traveling to the country. Several countries responded to the new variant by banning flights from the U.K. The U.S. was not among them as of Sunday, and Anthony Fauci, the U.S.’ top infectious diseases expert, has said such a move could be an “overreaction” and said the strain was likely in the country already. Public health experts have said the strain does not appear to be any deadlier and there is no reason to believe vaccines will not be effective against it.

China’s factory recovery moderates as higher costs slow business (Reuters) – China’s factory activity expanded in December as hot export demand fueled a recovery in the world’s second-largest economy from the coronavirus slump, although higher labour and transport costs slowed the pace of growth. The official manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) fell to 51.9 in December from 52.1 in November, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Thursday. The index remained above the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction but was a tad below the 52.0 in a Reuters’ poll of analysts. China’s vast industrial sector has staged an impressive recovery from the coronavirus shock thanks to surprisingly strong exports. The economy is expected to expand around 2% for the full year – the weakest pace in over three decades but much stronger than other major economies still struggling to contain infections. However, tougher coronavirus control measures in many of its key trading partners in the west and recent domestic infections could dent industrial demand, weighing on the recovery. The official PMI, which largely focuses on big and state-owned firms, showed the sub-index for new export orders stood at 51.3 in December, easing from 51.5 a month earlier.

Singapore and Malaysia Terminate High Speed Rail Project -A multi-billion-dollar high-speed rail link between Singapore and Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur has been terminated. The two countries were unable to reach an agreement on the project after Malaysia sought changes because of the pandemic’s economic impact, according to a joint statement Friday. Malaysia will have to compensate Singapore for costs already incurred, the city-state’s transport ministry said in a separate statement. The announcement came just after a Dec. 31 deadline for the second and final extension of the suspension of the project, which was first mooted a decade ago and given the green light in 2013. In June, the Southeast Asian neighbors had agreed to put the development, which has already incurred multiple suspensions, on hold again amid a discussion around costs. The on-again, off-again 350 kilometer (218 mile) high-speed rail link would have cut travel time between the centers down to about 90 minutes versus more than four hours by car. Although flying between the two only takes about an hour, that’s a lot longer once airport check-in and security is taken into account. The service was due to start in 2026. “In light of the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the Malaysian economy, the Government of Malaysia had proposed several changes to the HSR project,” according to the joint statement by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. “Both Governments had conducted several discussions with regard to these changes and had not been able to reach an agreement.” Malaysia had proposed changes in the project structure, alignment and station design as well as advancing the start of construction by two years to give a boost to the economy battered by the pandemic, Malaysian Economy Minister Mustapa Mohamed said in a separate statement. It also wanted to allow for more flexible financing options, including deferred payments and public-private partnerships. The administration of former Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who resigned in February, sought to cancel the project as the country grappled with debt and liabilities amounting to more than 1 trillion ringgit ($249 billion), before settling for a deferment and a S$15 million ($11.4 million) compensation fee to Singapore. Mahathir had at one stage estimated the project would cost around 110 billion ringgit for Malaysia. “Both countries will abide by their respective obligations, and will now proceed with the necessary actions, resulting from this termination of the HSR Agreement,” said the joint statement.

Covid Crisis Decimates Indonesia’s Hordes of Motorcycle Taxis – Millions of sidelined motorcycle taxi drivers in Indonesia are bracing for a long recovery as the country’s coronavirus outbreak shows no signs of abating. The taxis — known locally as “ojek” — are a fixture in congested Indonesian cities where transport infrastructure is limited and gridlock is among the worst in the world. They’re also the inspiration for Indonesia’s most valuable startup, the ride-hailing and food-delivery app Gojek. The ojek drivers are a bellwether for Southeast Asia’s largest economy, as they facilitate consumer spending and business activity. Roughly 40% of the country’s estimated 5 million ojek drivers have lost their jobs in the pandemic. President Joko Widodo has been hard-pressed to tame unemployment and pull the economy out of recession, while keeping a lid on Covid cases that have topped 700,000. “These are very basic jobs we have.” Spikes in Covid-19 infections and deaths have ushered in a raft of stricter social-distancing measures this month, threatening to undercut a gradual improvement in ridership since the worst of the crisis. Amid gaps in social-safety nets, drivers are resorting to lower-paying gigs. Wicaksono estimates that drivers are seeing only about half their prior business. The government is aiming for 5% economic growth next year, hoping that stimulus spending and an aggressive vaccination plan can boost private consumption. The economy is expected to shrink as much as 2.2% this year, Indonesia’s first annual contraction in more than two decades. Amid gaps in social-safety nets, drivers are resorting to lower-paying gigs that may not be enough to pay down loans they took for their motorbikes, according to Joanna Octavia, a doctoral researcher at the U.K.-based Warwick Institute for Employment Research. “For an ojek driver, their most important asset is their motorcycle. It’s the way to get around and the way they generate an income,” she said. “If that was taken away, it would be very difficult for them to start all over again.” That could have broader implications for the economy, where the ranks of the jobless are growing. The sector has been crucial in absorbing low-skilled labor, Octavia said, since all drivers need is a license and a bike to earn money.

Thailand announces new restrictions amid COVID-19 surge – Thailand announced additional COVID-19 pandemic restrictions amid a surge in cases threatening the country’s good standing in combating widespread outbreaks of the virus. On Monday, government officials ordered the closure of Bangkok hostess bars, gambling venues, and massage parlors starting Tuesday until Jan. 4. It will allow bars and restaurants to remain open with an order to close at midnight and enforce social distancing, the Associated Press reported. Thailand recorded 155 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, a small spike in comparison to other countries with thousands of severely climbing case numbers. It marks a notable rise for Thailand which has a well-regarded health program and a population that strictly abides by pandemic safety measures. The government’s COVID-19 coordinating center reported 134 cases were local transmissions. Eleven cases reportedly came from migrant workers at a fish market in the capital city of Bangkok, and 10 were found in state quarantine zones. Over 20 percent of Thailand’s 6,440 confirmed cases since the outset of the pandemic reportedly derived from migrant workers in Samut Sakhon. Officials have warned the seafood market outbreak along with a cluster of cases near a gambling venue in an eastern province could threaten to undo the country’s progress in maintaining low rates of infections. Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha promised Tuesday there would not be any travel restrictions for the New Year’s holiday, though he added, “there will be measures put in place in many provinces.”

AMLO government falsified COVID-19 data to avoid shutdowns in Mexico City – The government of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) falsified data on the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico City to prevent the alert level being raised to “red,” which mandates a shutdown of “nonessential economic activities.” In the second largest metropolitan area in the Americas with 21.6 million people, Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico have been the epicenter of the pandemic in the country. Together the two entities have recorded 458,000 cases and 34,700 deaths out of 1.39 million cases and 123,000 deaths confirmed nationwide. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the government has connived with corporations and trade unions to cover up outbreaks in factories and other workplaces. Testing levels are so low that Mexico currently has the highest positivity rate – the percentage of tests that come out positive – in the world at 40.6 percent. Moreover, the year is expected to end with 280,000 excess deaths. The resulting official figures, which greatly minimize the pandemic’s real spread and death toll, are plugged into a formula with 10 indicators to determine each state’s alert and restriction levels under a “semaphore system.” On December 4, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, who leads the pandemic response, provided Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who belongs to Lopez Obrador’s Morena party, a report with lower figures than the official ones. According to documents reported by the New York Times last week, Lopez-Gatell’s report stated that 45 percent of hospital beds with ventilators were occupied, and that the positivity rate was 25 percent in the capital. Official data, however, had shown 59 of these beds occupied and a 35 percent positivity rate. If the official numbers had been used, the semaphore formula would have exceeded the 32-point threshold to activate a red light. When contacted by the Times, the Health Ministry refused to explain the source of the lower numbers. The authorities did not declare the red light in Mexico City until a new report was filed on December 18. “Yet officials kept the capital open for business for an extra two weeks, its streets thronged with shoppers, its restaurants teeming with diners,” the Times reported.

Canada to require negative coronavirus test for air travelers entering country – Canada will require air travelers to present a negative COVID-19 test in order to enter the country, officials announced Wednesday. Travelers coming into Canada by plane will have to get a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test within 72 hours of boarding, which Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said will likely be in place within a week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported. Canada currently mandates that those who enter the country quarantine for 14 days, which Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said during a press conference would not be affected by the new restrictions. “This is not an alternative to quarantine,” Blair said, according to the CBC. “It’s an additional layer.” Blair also countered the calls from some to reduce the 14-day quarantine period, saying “at the current time we should only be considering testing as an additional layer of defense against the illness,” according to Yahoo News. He cited the mandate as Canada’s “most effective line of defense for keeping the illness out of Canada.” Disobedience of the quarantine period could result in up to six months in prison or up to $750,000 in fines. Transport Minister Marc Garneau is expected to reveal more details about the test requirement on Thursday, the network noted. Blair announced that Ottawa was exploring instituting testing at land points of entry to the country. The country has also banned all flights from the U.K. amid the outbreak of a new COVID-19 strain estimated to be more contagious, although Canada has already confirmed cases of the strain within its borders. The restrictions will also follow Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s condemnation of his finance minister’s vacation to the French island of St. Barts over the holidays. Ford called the trip “unacceptable” as the government is requesting people avoid nonessential travel, The Associated Press reported.

“The working conditions are hell” – Ontario allows COVID-19 to run rampant through workplaces – The current surge of COVID-19 infections in Ontario is being driven by major workplace outbreaks that are the direct product of the refusal of governments and big business to take the necessary measures to protect workers on the job. In recent weeks, hundreds of workers have been infected in several major workplace outbreaks, including at a Cargill meatpacking plant in Guelph and four Amazon fulfillment centres in the Peel Region, which lies on the outskirts of Toronto. Cargill revealed on December 17 that 82 workers at its Guelph plant had been infected and that the facility would be temporarily closed. After lecturing workers to remain home for 14 days, Cargill management promptly announced that full production will recommence today, December 29, less than two weeks after the initial shutdown. This reckless decision reflects not just Cargill’s disregard for the health and wellbeing of its workers. It is possible only because Ontario’s Conservative government has refused to impose COVID-19 restrictions on most workplaces (aside from retail outlets), despite new infections reaching record levels. Premier Doug Ford announced a “lockdown” December 21 with so many loopholes that large parts of the economy are continuing to operate. It delayed the beginning of restrictions on social gatherings until December 26, thereby encouraging dangerous levels of social contact over the Christmas holiday. And under Ford’s “lockdown,” all food processing, distribution and delivery, manufacturing, parts supply, and temporary staffing operations are allowed to remain open as usual. Even Ontario’s highly selective official data, which undoubtedly fails to capture the true extent of workplace infections due to the virtual collapse of contact tracing, shows that workplaces are one of the most likely sources of COVID-19 infections. As of December 21, the province had officially recorded 6,242 workplace infections since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 1,404 in recreational settings like bars and restaurants. Earlier this month, workplaces emerged as the most common setting for new outbreaks in Ontario, surpassing even care homes. As of December 4, workplaces accounted for almost a third of the province’s active COVID-19 outbreaks, a total of 227 out of 773.

Epidemiological and Economic Consequences of Government Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic – OECD economists. VoxEU – Policymakers have faced a crucial trade-off between curbing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and minimising further damage to economic activity. Employing reduced form econometric estimates of the Covid-19 pandemic, this column seeks to quantify the impact of government interventions on disease progression and mobility. It finds that a wide-ranging package of public health policies – including comprehensive testing, tracing and isolation, mask-wearing, and policies directed at vulnerable people in care homes – are crucial to avoid full lockdowns while also containing the spread of the virus. Such policies may, however, need to be complemented by selective containment measures such as restricting large public events and international travel or localised lockdowns.

German high school student: “If we don’t close the schools, no one will!” – Faced with death tolls unseen in Europe since World War II, the Network of Action Committees for Safe Education (Netzwerk der Aktionskomitees fur sichere Bildung) in Germany convened an emergency meeting on Tuesday to advance the fight for school closures and discuss prospects for a general strike against the politics of mass infection with the coronavirus. “Since our last meeting, the situation has worsened enormously,” Christoph Vandreier, deputy chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (SGP), stated at the outset of the meeting. “Almost 1,000 people a day are now dying in Germany, and according to experts, this figure will continue to rise, driving the health care system to collapse, which in turn will cause many more deaths. Even now, clinics have begun triage.” In this context, the emergence of a mutation of the coronavirus, which initial reports suggest is around 70 percent more contagious, is a deadly warning, said Vandreier. “While thousands have died and 40 percent of the population have lost income, the champagne corks have been popping on the stock exchanges. This situation, in which hundreds of thousands have died, was deliberately brought about politically. It is a result of the policy of opening schools and businesses, pursued in order to secure profits. In fact, outside of retail and hospitality, not a single business has been closed.” All public talk about the current measures qualifying as a “lock-down,” Vandreier concluded, therefore constitutes a fraud: “All these measures are aimed at keeping businesses open and the economy running while 1,000 people a day are dying. And despite the continuing surge in numbers and the mutation in the UK, there’s already discussion about opening schools as soon as possible.” Already, he said, day-care centres and many schools are not in fact closed, but instead serve as “storage facilities” for children so that parents can be forced to work. “The GEW [teachers’ union] spoke out against school closures just days before the so-called lock-down and even ruled out alternate teaching at elementary school.” That is why the work of the action committees is taking on such dire importance, said Vandreier. “We need to prevent schools from reopening in January and we need to organize massive school strikes. Businesses, schools, day-care centres and public transportation are the main drivers of the pandemic and must be shut down immediately. Non-essential production must cease and all workers must continue to receive full pay.”

Germany’s DAX stock index feasts upon mass death – After the holidays, mass deaths continue in Germany and around the world. On Tuesday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 852 coronavirus deaths, and on Wednesday morning a new record number of 1,129. This makes December by far the deadliest month since the beginning of the pandemic. In Germany alone, more than 15,500 people are officially recorded as having died of coronavirus between 1 and 28 December, more than twice as many as in November (6,231 deaths) and April (5,708 deaths). By the end of the year, the death toll will have risen to about 35,000. Such a scale of death is usually only encountered in times of war. Worldwide, almost 1.8 million people have now died from COVID-19, including more than half a million in Europe and about 350,000 in the USA. Since mid-March, an average of more than 6,000 people each day have succumbed to the virus. In the course of World War I, the average number of fallen soldiers per day was about 6,060. The medical situation is dramatic. In hospitals working at full capacity, doctors, nurses and orderlies are desperately trying to keep thousands of patients from dying due to suffocation. Due to the brutal austerity policies of the last decades, there is not only a lack of staff but often also of necessary medical equipment. The social situation can also only be compared to the great crises in the first half of the 20th century.. In Germany, the poverty rate reached an all-time high of 15.9 percent (13.2 million people) last year. The pandemic has further exacerbated social inequality. On the other hand, there is a thin layer at the top of society that has become unbelievably wealthier and are feasting on death and social misery. After peaking on Monday, the German share index (DAX) reached another record high on Tuesday, temporarily exceeding 13,900 points. The closing level of 13,761 points was only about 30 points below Monday’s all-time high (13,790 points). Other German stock indices also set new records on Tuesday: the MDAX reached a new high of 30,912 points, the SDAX 14,766 points. The German stock market has thus not only fully recovered from the interim price slump at the beginning of the pandemic but ended the year with a significant uptick. At the end of 2019, the DAX stood at 13,249 points, meaning an overall increase of almost four percent for 2020. The MDAX rose by more than nine percent and the SDAX by over 18 percent. The stock market bonanza amid the pandemic means the super-rich have further increased their already astronomical fortunes. According to calculations by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBS, the total assets of the more than 2,000 dollar-billionaires worldwide had risen to the record value of about euro 8.7 trillion by the end of July. The sum is more than twice as high as the total annual economic output of Germany (about euro 3.5 trillion).

Daily deaths near 1,000 as UK Parliament spends day ratifying Brexit treaty – Yesterday was a continuing nightmare for the British population, as another 981 deaths were announced from COVID-19. A further 50,023 new cases of the disease were recorded. These numbers will rise as Scotland and Wales are yet to detail deaths over the Christmas period. But in a world far removed from this death and suffering, Parliament and the House of Lords were engaged in a day long ratification of the Brexit treaty agreed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government with the European Union (EU). A foregone conclusion, the government won the vote in the House of Commons by 521 to just 73 against, a majority of 448. The Bill was sent to the House of Lords, where it was passed before receiving Royal Assent around midnight. With EU member states already endorsing the treaty, it will be implemented by Brussels and London from 11pm on December 31. Straight after a Commons debate in which all parties and MPs for and against the treaty posed as loyal defenders of the “national interest”, the government confirmed its indifference to the public health catastrophe threatening millions by announcing that all primary school would open as planned on January 4, and all secondary schools would follow – after a meaningless two week delay – on January 18. This is despite the fact that they were forced to take, with the virus raging throughout the country, the token action of placing another 21 million people in England under Tier 4, the highest level of still limited restrictions. The debate on the 85 page European Union (Future Relationship) Bill was in reality over the 1,246-page Brexit deal Johnson signed last week. It was rushed through in just five hours, with under 60 MPs called to speak. Not one had anything to say that did not uphold the interests of the City of London and Britain’s major corporations. Johnson has a parliamentary majority of 80 and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer had whipped his 200 MPs to back the government. The pro-EU Scottish National Party (47 MPs) and Liberal Democrats (11) and the Democratic Unionist Party (8) voted against but comprised a small minority in the 650-seat chamber. Proceedings were dominated by mutual back slapping from the government benches, with non-stop gloating from its hard Brexit wing. There was mainly a collective sigh of relief from the Labour opposition benches.

Anti-lockdown protest organiser faces Pound Sterling10,000 fine as London enters tier 4 – The organiser of anti-lockdown protests in which five police officers were injured and 29 people were arrested faces a fine of Pound Sterling10,000, the Metropolitan Police have said. The woman was identified as the organiser of the demonstrations in which more than 150 people gathered on Saturday and marched through parts of central London – just as tier 4 restrictions for the capital were being announced. Several clashes occurred between officers and unmasked demonstrators, who chanted “we demand freedom”. The Met said that the protest “endangered the health of Londoners” and that those arrested had been charged with breaching health protection regulations. The force added that three men had also been charged with assaulting an emergency worker. Christmas Fallah, 35, Joss Lillis, 27, and Leon Larose, 28, will appear at a London magistrates’ court in the new year. The majority of the other 26 people arrested were issued with fixed penalty notices for breaching health protection regulations, the Met said.

Boxing Day retail traffic drops 60 percent amid UK pandemic restrictions –Boxing Day retail traffic in the U.K. fell by 60 percent compared with last year, Reuters reported, another effect the coronavirus pandemic has had on the global economy. A researcher from Springboard, a retail and foot traffic analysis company released, its findings on Sunday and attributed the sudden drop to the COVID-19 restrictions currently in place in the U.K. Reuters noted that London and large swaths of east and south England are currently under Tier 4 restrictions, meaning all non-essential retail stores are closed.According to Springboard, foot traffic fell as much as 76 percent in Tier 4 areas of the country. However, even areas with more lenient restrictions saw rather large decreases in traffic, the company noted.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed Tier 4 restrictions, the harshest the country has seen yet, just before the Christmas holiday, tossing out previous plans to lessen the restrictions and allow families to gather. “Residents in those areas must stay at home, apart from limited exemptions set out in law. Nonessential retail, indoor gyms and leisure facilities and personal care services must close. People must work from home if they can but may travel to work if this is not possible,” Johnson said when announcing the heightened restrictions.Areas under Tier 2 and Tier 3 restrictions saw their foot traffic fall by more than 30 percent, Springboard reported, despite being allowed to keep nonessential shops open. Areas under such tiers are required to place restrictions on hospitality venues, Reuters reported.

UK reactivates emergency COVID-19 hospitals, closes London primary schools – (Reuters) – Britain reactivated emergency hospitals built at the start of the pandemic and shut primary schools in London on Friday to counter the rapid spread of a much more infectious variant of the coronavirus. With more than 50,000 new daily cases of COVID-19 for the last four days, the health service said it was preparing for an anticipated rush of patients and needed more beds. The announcement comes just days after the Royal London Hospital told staff in an email it was now in “disaster medicine mode” and unable to provide high standard critical care. With the capital one of the areas worst-hit by the new variant, which is up to 70% more infectious, the government also decided to close all London primary schools, reversing a decision made just two days ago. “Children’s education and wellbeing remains a national priority,” Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said. “Moving further parts of London to remote education really is a last resort and a temporary solution.” Britain is battling a new wave of a virus that has already killed more than 74,000 people and crushed the economy. One of the worst hit countries in the world, it recorded 53,285 cases in the last 24 hours on Friday, and 613 new deaths. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has been criticised for frequent reversals during the pandemic, including delaying lockdown during the first wave in March and abandoning a system to award school grades without exams. The temporary ‘Nightingale’ hospitals at locations such as convention centres were one success, built by the military in a matter of days. They were barely used but have remained on standby. A Sky News report said intensive care units of three London hospitals were full on New Year’s Eve, forcing patients to be transferred to other hospitals for critical care.

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