Week in Review

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Week in Review

10/31/2020

For the week 10/26-10/30

[Posted 10:00 PM ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,124

As I go to post, we are nearing 90 million votes cast already ahead of Tuesday’s presidential and national elections.  Truly amazing.  To put it in perspective, 138 million went to the polls in 2016, 47 million of which were cast prior to Election Day.

Texans, for one, have already cast more ballots in the presidential election than they did during all of 2016.

I cast my own weeks ago, in an official ballot box in town, but then I’ve voted by absentee ballot for years, ever since my polling place stopped having bake sales.

Who knows what is going to happen Tuesday and in the days after.  I’m disgusted, as if you didn’t already know.  I’m floored that one side accepts the endless lying and conspiracy theories promoted by one candidate, while I’ve said the other one is deeply flawed, flat-out too old, but maybe he’s the right guy for this moment.

I have a terrific home library and in glancing at it the other day, I pulled out a copy of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and was struck by the very first paragraph of the author’s introduction.

Feb. 14, 1776, Philadelphia

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.  Time makes more converts than reason.”

Last weekend, in writing up an obituary of the famous magician, debunker of same, “The Amazing Randi,” I was also struck by the following, related to how Randi wanted to see frauds punished, even as he recognized most people wanted to believe.

“The true believers,” he said, “will not pay any attention to evidence that does not show what they believe to be untrue.”

The truth has become a victim the last four years.  We have a president who spouts untruths and parrots the Kremlin line, a man who refuses to say anything in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned, doesn’t even comment on that simple fact; says nothing in support of the opposition in Belarus; never says anything about human rights and religious persecution around the world, as in China and North Korea; and maligns science, and now basically first responders with his Covid death toll claims, in the midst of a global pandemic.

But that seems to be good enough for a large segment of the American voting public, and the president may have enough support to cross the finish line in first.

As retired four-star Navy Admiral, and U.S. Special Ops commander, William McRaven (who I hope leads a new Republican Party) wrote last week, and as an editorial in The Economist echoes down below, America today is far from that shining city on a hill that beckons the oppressed and was a beacon of freedom around the world.  A nation of moral standing.  A nation of principles.

I keep thinking of what an Andrei Sakharov or Yelena Bonner would think today of the United States, dissidents supported by American leaders who lived under the harshest conditions in the Soviet Union.

I have further comments interspersed in all the following.

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Trump tweeted Tuesday: “Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media.  They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people.”

No, Mr. President.  We’ll be talking about Covid for quite some time.

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb on CBS’ “Face the Nation” last Sunday.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You warned us last Sunday that we are entering what could be the hardest part of this pandemic as we get into these colder months.  We’re seeing these infectioins and hospitalization rates really jump.  Where are we on the trajectory as you see it?

DR. GOTTLIEB: We’re at a dangerous tipping point right now, we’re entering what’s going to be the steep slope of the epidemic curve. We know what that looks like from the spring. We know what it looks like from this summer. These cases are going to continue to build.  There’s really no backstop here.  I don’t see a forceful policy intervention happening any time soon.  We have a moment of opportunity right now to take some forceful steps to try to abate the spread that’s underway. But if we don’t do that, if we miss this window, this is going to continue to accelerate and it’s going to be more difficult to get it under control.  Now in a lot of parts of the country, it doesn’t feel really bad right now because it’s a little bad everywhere.  You don’t have regions where it’s extremely dense in any one region like we did when it was epidemic in New York or epidemic in the South, outside of states like Wisconsin or Iowa.  Most states just have a lot of spread, but most states aren’t at the point where they’re extremely pressed right now.  That’s going to change over the next two to three weeks.  I think things are going to look much more difficult.  And so we need to take some steps right now. There is no public support for shutdowns…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

DR. GOTTLIEB: …nationally like we did in the spring.  That’s not going to happen. So we need to reach for other measures.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you heard the national security adviser to the President say the focus is on just protecting the vulnerable. The chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said on CNN, we’re not going to get control of the pandemic. So, is the point here just to buckle up?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, I think that’s what they’re saying but I don’t think that’s what we should be doing.  There’s things that we can do to slow the spread.  I mean a national mask mandate can be put into place.  It doesn’t need to be backed up with fines or stringent enforcement. We have other requirements that we expect of a civil society that we enforce with, you know, political jawboning, leadership. We give people warnings at first. So, I think masks are one thing that we could be doing.  We need to look at targeted mitigation, starting to close congregate settings where we know spread is happening.  Remember, even if we get a vaccine this year and I’m on the board of Pfizer, one of the companies that’s pretty far along in developing a vaccine, even that – if that became available this year and we get shots into the arms of the first tranche of patients, which is likely to be the elderly and healthcare workers, they’re not going to have protective immunity until 2021, at some point in 2021…

DR. GOTTLIEB: …because it takes time for that vaccine to kick in and you need two doses. So this vaccine is not going to affect the contours of what we’re going to go through, which is going to play out in the next two or three months right now.

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Trump tweet Thursday:

“A 3 day extension for Pennsylvania is a disaster for our Nation, and for Pennsylvania itself.  The Democrats are trying to steal this Election.  We have to get out and VOTE in even larger numbers. The Great Red Wave is coming!!!”

Last weekend, President Trump cast his ballot in-person in Palm Beach County and told the press afterward, “Everything was perfect, very strict, right by the rules.  When you send in your ballot, it could never be secure like that.”

Just another effort to further discredit mail-in voting and sow election chaos.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 79% of all Americans, including 59% of those who want to re-elect President Trump, will accept a win by Joe Biden even if they may not support a Biden presidency.  16% said they would do something to challenge a Democratic win such as protesting in public or resorting to violence….lovely.

The poll also found that 73% of Americans, including 57% of Biden supporters, would similarly accept a Trump victory.  Among those who said they would not accept a Trump win, 22% said they would take action to challenge the result.

It’s more than a bit disconcerting to have a company like Walmart Inc. removing all guns and ammunition from the sales floors of its U.S. stores this week, aiming to head off any potential theft of firearms if stores are broken into amid social unrest.

“We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers,” a Walmart spokesman said Thursday. 

*Late tonight, though, Walmart may be returning the guns and ammo to the sales floor.  It’s making conflicting statements on the policy.

Regardless of Walmart’s moves, or non-moves, Federal, state and local law enforcement officials are preparing for anything.  No one would be surprised if the president told his supporters to hit the streets should Tuesday’s results not be to his satisfaction.

We also know that top national security officials have been warning for weeks that Russia and Iran have been hacking into U.S. voting systems and looking for ways to undermine the election.  An easier task when you have a president who has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the vote, arguing that the process is “rigged” against him and repeatedly asserting without evidence that the surge in mail-in voting this year will increase the likelihood of voter fraud.

Two opinions…one from each side…

Daniel Henninger / Wall Street Journal

“Bernie Sanders knew that Mr. Biden’s primary victory was largely symbolic, and this week it looks possible that things may turn out fine for Sen. Sanders, who above all else is a professional.

“Almost immediately, Mr. Biden and the party came his way – to do business with Bernie, his surrogates, his base and his agenda. Donald Trump has said the Democrats stiffed Bernie.  No they didn’t.  Joe Biden is Bernie in sheep’s clothing.

“Standing up Mr. Biden’s smiley face rather than Bernie’s scowl to run against the persistent national fatigue with the pandemic shutdowns and Mr. Trump’s self-promotion was a shrewd call by the Democrats’ bloodless establishment.  But then May 25 happened.

“The protests, violence and ransackings in the aftermath of George Floyd carried on for weeks in U.S. cities. It included a long occupation of downtown Portland, Ore., and the looting of Midtown Manhattan and of shops in working-class neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Cleveland and elsewhere.  African-American police chiefs resigned – forced out or disgusted at getting no support from progressive Democratic politicians.

“Despite the images on TV, the party’s simpatico media commentators had to turn themselves inside out trying to create a fictional barrier of responsibility for the violence between ‘peaceful protesters’ and the people 20 feet away assaulting buildings, hurling rocks and setting cop cars on fire.

“These events put Democrats in a difficult spot. They weren’t just spontaneous acts of rage. The concurrent protests in so many cities and the individuals who spoke on their behalf revealed a darker side to the Democrats – a party whose most visible supporters see the United States as a failed nation, a country of irredeemable inequities and people with reflexively racist instincts.

“An ideological movement that emerged in January 2017 as the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ – led by Nancy Pelosi, the New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’ and various social-media platforms – ended up in the streets as a grim mass insurrection amid shattered glass, burning buildings and toppled or defaced monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.  Tutored in anticapitalist pieties, younger Democrats convinced themselves the local shop owner was as guilty as the statue in the town square.

“(South Carolina) Rep. Clyburn’s decision to go with Joe Biden looks like genius in retrospect. Mr. Biden’s faltering, insubstantial persona floats his noncampaign past the party’s embrace of these historical repudiations and his own thin pandemic plan – by either mouthing platitudes (‘It’s a moment that calls for hope and light and love’) or pretending that President Trump caused 200,000 Covid-19 deaths.

“Mr. Biden’s promise to America’s voters is that he will heal the country’s divisions. He won’t.  What has come into plain view the past year is that the Democratic Party, despite its liberal traditions, has allowed itself to descend into a deeply pessimistic view of America.  For all his flailing about, Donald Trump by comparison looks like the optimist.

“But voters still ask: How has it come to this, a choice between the devil or the deep blue sea?  The deep blue sea has always scared me.”

Editorial / The Economist

“The country that elected Donald Trump in 2016 was unhappy and divided.  The country he is asking to re-elect him is more unhappy and more divided.  After almost four years of his leadership, politics is even angrier than it was and partisanship even less constrained. Daily life is consumed by a pandemic that has registered almost 230,000 deaths amid bickering, buck-passing and lies.  Much of that is Mr. Trump’s doing, and his victory on November 3rd would endorse it all.

“Joe Biden is not a miracle cure for what ails America. But he is a good man who would restore steadiness and civility to the White House.  He is equipped to begin the long, difficult task of putting a fractured country back together again. That is why, if we had a vote, it would go to Joe.

“Mr. Trump has fallen short less in his role as the head of America’s government than as the head of state.  He and his administration can claim their share of political wins and losses, just like administrations before them. But as the guardian of America’s values, the conscience of the nation and America’s voice in the world, he has dismally failed to measure up to the task.

“Without Covid-19, Mr. Trump’s policies could well have won him a second term.  His record at home includes tax cuts, deregulation and the appointment of benchloads of conservative judges. Before the pandemic, wages among the poorest quarter of workers were growing by 4.7% a year. Small-business confidence was near a 30-year peak. By restricting immigration, he gave his voters what they wanted. Abroad, his disruptive approach has brought some welcome change.  America has hammered Islamic State and brokered peace deals between Israel and a trio of Muslim countries. Some allies in NATO are at last spending more on defense.  China’s government knows that the White House now recognizes it as a formidable adversary.

“This tally contains plenty to object to.  The tax cuts were regressive. Some of the deregulation was harmful, especially to the environment. The attempt at health-care reform has been a debacle.  Immigration officials cruelly separated migrant children from their parents and limits on new entrants will drain America’s vitality.  On the hard problems – on North Korea and Iran, and on bringing peace to the Middle East – Mr. Trump has fared no better than the Washington establishment he loves to ridicule.

“However, our bigger dispute with Mr. Trump is over something more fundamental.  In the past four years he has repeatedly desecrated the values, principles and practices that made America a haven for its own people and a beacon to the world. Those who accuse Mr. Biden of the same or worse should stop and think. Those who breezily dismiss Mr. Trump’s bullying and lies as so much tweeting are ignoring the harm he has wrought.

“It starts with America’s democratic culture. Tribal politics predated Mr. Trump.  The host of ‘The Apprentice’ exploited it to take himself from the green room to the White House.  Yet, whereas most recent presidents have seen toxic partisanship as bad for America, Mr. Trump made it central to his office.  He has never sought to represent the majority of Americans who did not vote for him.  Faced by an outpouring of peaceful protest after the killing of George Floyd, his instinct was not to heal, but to depict it as an orgy of looting and left-wing violence – part of a pattern of stoking racial tension. Today, 40% of the electorate believes the other side is not just misguided, but evil.

“The most head-spinning feature of the Trump presidency is his contempt for the truth.  All politicians prevaricate, but his administration has given America ‘alternative facts.’  Nothing Mr. Trump says can be believed – including his claims that Mr. Biden is corrupt.  His cheerleaders in the Republican Party feel obliged to defend him regardless, as they did in an impeachment that, bar one vote, went along party lines.

“Partisanship and lying undermine norms and institutions.  That may sound fussy – Trump voters, after all, like his willingness to offend. But America’s system of checks and balances suffers.  This president calls for his opponents to be locked up; he uses the Department of Justice to conduct vendettas; he commutes the sentences of supporters convicted of serious crimes; he gives his family plum jobs in the White House; and he offers foreign governments protection in exchange for dirt on a rival.  When a president casts doubt on the integrity of an election just because it might help him win, he undermines the democracy he has sworn to defend.

“Partisanship and lying also undermine policy.  Look at Covid-19.  Mr. Trump had a chance to unite his country around a well organized response – and win re-election on the back of it, as other leaders have.  Instead he saw Democratic governors as rivals or scapegoats.  He muzzled and belittled America’s world-class institutions, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As so often, he sneered at science, including over masks.  And, unable to see beyond his own re-election, he has continued to misrepresent the evident truth about the epidemic and its consequences.  America has many of the world’s best scientists.  It also has one of the world’s highest Covid-19 fatality rates.

“Mr. Trump has treated America’s allies with the same small-mindedness.  Alliances magnify America’s influence in the world. The closest ones were forged during wars and, once unmade, cannot easily be put back together in peacetime.  When countries that have fought alongside America look on his leadership, they struggle to recognize the place they admire.

“That matters.  Americans are liable both to over- and to underestimate the influence they have in the world. American military power alone cannot transform foreign countries, as the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq proved.  Yet American ideals really do serve as an example to other democracies, and to people who live in states that persecute their citizens.  Mr. Trump thinks ideals are for suckers.  The governments of China and Russia have always seen American rhetoric about freedom as cynical cover for the belief that might is right.  Tragically, under Mr. Trump their suspicions have been confirmed.

“Four more years of a historically bad president like Mr. Trump would deepen all these harms – and more.  In 2016 American voters did not know whom they were getting.   Now they do.  They would be voting for division and lying. They would be endorsing the trampling of norms and the shrinking of national institutions into personal fiefs.  They would be ushering in climate change that threatens not only distant lands but Florida, California and America’s heartlands.  They would be signaling that the champion of freedom and democracy for all should be just another big country throwing its weight around.  Re-election would put a democratic seal on all the harm Mr. Trump has done….

“In this election America faces a fateful choice.  At stake is the nature of its democracy. One path leads to a fractious, personalized rule, dominated by a head of state who scorns decency and truth.  The other leads to something better – something truer to what this newspaper sees as the values that originally made America an inspiration around the world.

“In his first term, Mr. Trump has been a destructive president.  He would start his second affirmed in all his worst instincts.  Mr. Biden is his antithesis. Were he to be elected, success would not be guaranteed – how could it be?  But he would enter the White House with the promise of the most precious gift that democracies can bestow: renewal.”

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“Rounding the Corner”

Tuesday, the president pledged, as he has at every campaign stop, that the coronavirus would go away with or without a vaccine.  He accused the news media of covering the pandemic in order to damage him politically.

Yet the last two days have seen record highs in cases in the U.S., over 90,000 each one, 101,000 Friday.

The world has also seen record case numbers Thursday and Friday as well.

The surge in Europe and Iran is sickening…record death tolls in Russia and Iran, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.

The Euro six, as described below, hitting new records on cases, and now deaths rising rapidly.

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…1,193,734
USA…235,159
Brazil…159,562
India…121,681
Mexico…91,289
UK…46,229
Italy…38,321
France…36,565
Spain…35,878
Iran…34,478
Peru…34,411
Colombia…31,135
Argentina…30,792
Russia…27,656

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 442; Mon. 529; Tues. 1,039; Wed. 1,030; Thurs. 1,047; Fri. 988.

Week thirteen of my Wednesday comparison on the case and death tolls of the Euro six (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK and Belgium, with a combined population of 336 million) and the U.S. (population 330 million).

The first week, the U.S. had 55,148 cases and 1,319 deaths, while the Euro six had a combined 7,281 and 100.

This week, we are at 81,581 cases and 1,030 deaths in the U.S., and 135,667 and 1,162 in the Euro six.

And then the numbers for both worsened significantly Thursday and Friday.

Covid Bytes

--France and Germany joined Ireland in instituting sweeping nationwide restrictions this week such as closures of restaurants, cafes and shops not selling essential goods.

Germany’s lockdown is a “soft” one, with the closure of restaurants, bars, gyms and theatres, but most everything else open.

Schools remain open in both.

Italy and Spain have introduced various curfews, as well as travel restrictions inside the country.

--Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an online interview with the editor-in-chief of the American Medical Association, Howard Bauchner, that Americans need to set politics aside and wear a face mask to arrest an escalation of Covid cases.

“We don’t want to shut down completely,” Fauci said.  “That’s almost radioactive now when you say that because of the situation of not wanting to hurt the economy. Well, if you want to shut down, at least do the fundamental, basic things…the flagship of which is wearing a mask.”

Modeling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation last week found that universal mask use could save an additional 129,574 American lives from Sept. 22 through February 2021.

Fauci noted the success of the lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, which reopened this week after crushing an explosive outbreak.

“The fact that it was accomplished in a major cosmopolitan city in a country like Australia made me feel that there is hope for us to get this under control,” said Fauci.

“We can’t have this very inconsistent wearing, where you see some states that absolutely refuse to wear a mask,” Fauci said.  “It almost becomes a political statement. We’ve got to get away from that.”

Two states with the lowest use of masks, North and South Dakota, are seeing the worst surges in cases and record death rates this week.  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s comments on wearing a mask have been appalling, but then she’s running for president in 2024 and thinks this is the way to inherit the Trump supporters.  Well, she’ll have to battle Don Jr. for that.  He called the Covid death toll the other day “almost nothing.”  What a despicable ass.

--El Paso, Texas, County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said Thursday he was ordering a two-week shutdown of all non-essential services to curb the spread of Covid.

“Our hospitals are at capacity.  Our medical professionals are overwhelmed.  If we don’t respond, we will see unprecedented levels of deaths,” Samaniego said at a news briefing.

There are currently 14,359 active cases of the virus in the county.  The judge had previously ordered a 10 p.m. curfew for residents in an attempt to slow the spread.

--The European Union reported that only a share of its population can be inoculated against the new coronavirus before 2022, should an effective vaccine be available.  The warning comes in spite of the fact that the 27-nation bloc, with a population of 450 million, has secured more than 1 billion doses of potential Covid-19 vaccines from three drugmakers.

“There will not be sufficient doses of Covid-19 vaccines for the entire population before the end of 2021,” a European Commission official told diplomats from EU states in a closed-door meeting on Monday, a source told Reuters.

--In Mexico, health officials said the country’s coronavirus death toll is far higher than previously reported, with 193,100 “excess” deaths through late September.  Nearly 140,000 deaths are now attributable to Covid-19, about 50,000 more than the country’s official death toll of 91,000.

--Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care at the worst possible time.

At least five U.S. hospitals were hit this week and the cyberattacks involving ransomware could potentially impact hundreds more.

The offensive is by a Russian-speaking criminal gang and coincides with the U.S. presidential election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit.

--There is good news…there is clear evidence the death rate is dropping, owing to more experience in treating patients, better therapeutics, and not due just to changing demographics of the patients.

For example, NYU Langone Health conducted a study of 5,000 patients at the system’s three hospitals from March  through August, and even when they controlled for differences in the patients’ age, sex, race, underlying health problems and severity of Covid symptoms – they found that death rates had dropped significantly, to 7.6 percent in August, down from 25.6 percent in March.

“This is still a high death rate, much higher than we see for flu or other respiratory diseases,” said Dr. Leora Horwitz, director of NYU Langone’s Center for Heathcare Innovation & Delivery Science and senior author of the paper in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.  “I don’t want to pretend this is benign.  But it definitely is something that has given me hope.”

Dr. Robert A. Phillips, chief physician executive at Houston Methodist and author of a research letter in JAMA that compared the first and second surges of Covid-19 patients in Houston, said, “The mortality rates are way lower now.”  But he emphasized that the disease remains “not only deadly – 10 times more deadly probably than a bad influenza – but it also has long-term complications.  You don’t have that from the flu.”

While the studies evaluated the death rate, they did not assess the burden of what Dr. Phillips called “post-Covid syndrome,” which leaves many patients with lasting respiratory and neurologic problems, cardiac complications, and other lingering issues.  [Roni Caryn Rabin / New York Times]

--The aforementioned Dr. Scott Gottlieb, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, commented on the topic of masks.

“Not all masks are created equal. The quality matters, especially if you are looking for a mask that protects you from others, not just others from you. A cotton mask offers far less protection than a level 2 or level 3 surgical mask. For cotton masks, generally thicker is better, and cotton-and-polyester blends tend to provide more protection.  An N95 or equivalent mask offers the best protection from inhaling someone else’s infectious droplets or aerosols.  Look up instructions for fit testing if you go this route. A fleece mask is unlikely to do much.”

--While many countries around the world are hitting new highs in coronavirus cases, Taiwan has achieved a different kind of record – 200 days without a locally transmitted case.

The island of 23 million has had 553 confirmed cases, with only seven deaths.  Closing borders early and tightly regulating travel has gone a long way toward fighting the virus.  Other factors include rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and widespread mask-wearing.  Further, Taiwan’s deadly experience with SARS has scared people into compliance.

Taiwan’s death per million rate is 0.3.  The rate in the U.S. is 706 per million population.

Japan’s rate is 14 per, South Korea’s 9, as of Friday.

Trump World

--After the Senate confirmed her 52-48 on Monday, President Trump held a hasty swearing-in ceremony Monday night, Amy Coney Barrett becoming Justice Barrett.  At 48, she could easily be a fixture on the bench for 30 years.

--In a taped interview on April 18 that was just revealed this week, Jared Kushner boasted about how the President had cut out the doctors and scientists advising him on the unfolding coronavirus pandemic, comments that came as more than 40,000 Americans had already died from the virus, which was ravaging New York City.

Kushner told Bob Woodward that Trump was “getting the country back from the doctors” in what he called a “negotiated settlement.”  Kushner also proclaimed that the U.S. was moving swiftly through the “panic phase” and “pain phase” of the pandemic and that that the country was at the “beginning of the comeback phase.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s not still a lot of pain and there won’t be pain for a while, but that basically was, we’ve now put out rules to get back to work,” Kushner said.  “Trump’s now back in charge.  It’s not the doctors.”

Instead of following the health experts’ advice, it was about the reelection of the president.  By their calculations, Trump would be the “open-up president.”

CNN obtained audio of two separate interviews with Kushner, the other in May, as part of Woodward’s reporting for his book “Rage.”

Kushner also told Woodward, “The most dangerous people around the president are over-confident idiots” and that Trump had replaced them with “more thoughtful people who kind of know their place.”

Kushner also described how he believed Trump had set himself up to reap the political benefits of a successful containment of the virus while ensuring that state governors, and not the President, would be blamed for any failure to stop the spread.

“The states have to own the testing,” Kushner said.  “The federal government should not own the testing. And the federal government should not own kind of the rules. It’s got to be up to the governors, because that’s the way the federalist system works.”

He went on: “But the president also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors to basically say, no, no, no, no, I own the opening.  Because again, the opening is going to be very popular.  People want this country open. But if it opens in the wrong way, the question will be, did the governors follow the guidelines we set out or not?”

In a second interview on May 8, Kushner insisted that one of Trump’s tasks for boosting the economy was to be a “cheerleader.”  Kushner referred to this as taking care of the “psychology of the market.”  “One of the things that the president’s great at is he’s also a cheerleader.  He’s trying to make people feel good about the outcome.”

In “Rage,” Woodward writes that he believed Kushner was referring to former Cabinet members and advisers James Mattis, Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn when he said “we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the over-confident idiots.”  In a September interview on “Today,” Kushner claimed Woodward “mischaracterized” him and denied he had used that term to describe them.

--The same Jared Kushner drew sharp criticism on Monday after he said Black people need to “want to be successful” in order for the administration’s policies to help them.

“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” Kushner said on ‘Fox & Friends’ Monday morning.  “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”

--President Trump longs for the days when Fox News was run by the late Roger Ailes, an ardent supporter.

Seemingly displeased that the right-wing cable channel aired a speech by Barack Obama Tuesday, Trump told reporters that wouldn’t have happened if Ailes were still at the helm.

“I only saw that he was on Fox and Fox puts Sleepy Joe on all the time,” the president said outside the White House later that afternoon.

“Fox is very disappointing. This would not have happened with Roger Ailes.”

Ailes, 77, died in 2017, less than a year after parting ways with Fox News following sexual misconduct claims.

In his verbal rebuke of Trump, Obama panned his successor as someone who watches too much television when he could be working.

“Tweeting at the TV doesn’t fix things,” Obama said.  “Watching TV all day doesn’t fix things.  Making stuff up doesn’t fix things.”

Obama also said: “What’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on Covid?  He said this at one of his rallies: ‘Covid, Covid, Covid,’ he’s complaining,” Obama said, referring to Trump’s regular gripes about the media’s focus on the coronavirus.  “He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage.”

--Trump tweets:

“I would NEVER have taken the endorsement of the man who, through gross incompetence, poisoned the people of Flint, Michigan. Former RINO Governor Rick Snyder should be ashamed of himself and his service. I was asked to help fix it. Biden took his endorsement.  VOTE TRUMP!!!”

“SECOND AMENDMENT!”

“SUPREME COURT!”

“33.1% GDP – BEST IN USA HISTORY.  IF I AM ELECTED, NEXT YEAR WILL BE OUR BEST EVER!”

“The @nytimes now admits that patients ill with Covid are getting better faster and at higher (much) percentages.”

[Ed. Again, Mr. Trump fails to say anything about side effects.]

“More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN.  Hospitals have great additional capacity!  Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!”

“If Sleepy Joe Biden is actually elected President, the 4 Justices (plus 1) that helped make such a ridiculous win possible would be relegated to sitting on not only a heavily PACKED COURT, but probably a REVOLVING COURT as well.  At least the many new Justices will be Radical Left!”

[Ed. The above is outrageous. He’s telling us he expects the Court to comply with his wishes on any election issues that come before it.]

“Biden will destroy the United States Supreme Court. Don’t let this happen!”

“The Fake News Media is riding COVID, COVID, COVID, all the way to the Election.  Losers!”

“Cases up because we TEST, TEST, TEST.   A Fake News Media Conspiracy. Many young people who heal very fast.  99.9%.  Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high.  On November 4th, topic will totally change.  VOTE!”

“We are winning big on the voting numbers. Get out and Vote. Bigger than 2016!!!”

“We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the Election.  COVID, COVID, COVID is being used by them, in total coordination, in order to change our great early election numbers.  Should be an election law violation!”

[Ed. Oh brother.]

Wall Street and the Economy

Trump tweeted yesterday:

“GDP number just announced. Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close.  Next year will be FANTASTIC!!!  However, Sleepy Joe Biden and his proposed record setting tax increase, would kill it all.  So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd.”

When you read the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 33.1% in the third quarter (the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow final estimate was 37.0%, on the high side of Street forecasts), understand that when you see the below Eurozone GDP figures, they use headline figures of quarter to quarter, while our headline number is annualized.  For the third quarter vs. the second quarter, U.S. GDP grew at a record 7.4%, after the second quarter’s record decline.

But output remains 2.9% lower compared to the same period a year ago.

And now with the big spike in coronavirus cases and any additional stimulus yet to arrive until potentially the beginning of 2021, further progress in the economy is going to be tougher.  For instance, today, the Atlanta Fed gave its first initial estimate on the fourth quarter and it is at 2.2%, annualized.  Quite a difference.  Most initial forecasts for Q4 are in the 3% to 4% range.  We are not getting back to 2019 GDP levels until mid-2021, assuming all goes according to plan, whatever that really is at this point.

One thing that is going to be difficult to get down in any sizable way is the unemployment rate, which was 7.9% in September, October’s figure announced next Friday.  We have seen very sizable job cut announcements in October, and as you’ll see below, they continue.  Then again, Amazon is hiring another 100,000, and there are some sizable seasonal gains coming in selected retailers and the shipping sector.

It’s important to note that this is not a V-shaped recovery.  You can’t measure that by one decline (Q2) and one big advance (Q3).  Let’s see what happens in Q4 and the first half of next year.

We are also piling on debt in massive quantities, with much more to follow.  At some point that will become an issue.

Elsewhere in the U.S. economy, new home sales for September came in less than expected, a 959,000 annualized pace, but still a strong number.  The S&P CoreLogic 20-city home price index for August showed a 0.5% month-on-month gain, a big 5.2% jump year-over-year.

September durable goods came in far better than expected, 1.9%, 0.8% ex-transportation.

And then today, we had excellent September data on personal income, 0.9%, and consumption, 1.0%, both far better than forecast, while the closely followed core personal consumption expenditures index rose 1.5% on core, year-over-year, this being the Federal Reserve’s preferred  inflation barometer.

And we had a first look at October with the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, an excellent 61.1, 50 being the dividing line between growth and contraction.

But weekly jobless claims, while down again, were still at 751,000, the 32nd straight week over the previous all-time high of 665,000 set during the Great Recession.  [I hope you’ve memorized that number by now.]

Recall, jobless claims were running at a 210,000 to 220,000 rate for months prior to the pandemic hitting us in March.

Europe and Asia

We had a slew of data just today on the eurozone, EA19, from Eurostat.

Third-quarter GDP for the euro area came in up 12.7% compared with the previous quarter, a flash estimate revealed, by far the sharpest increase observed in this time series, which also compares with the second quarter when GDP decreased by 11.8% in the EA19.

Compared with the same quarter of 2019, Q3 GDP was -4.3%.

Germany’s -4.2% year-over-year, France -4.3%, Italy -4.7%, Spain -8.7%.

Of course now these same countries are in the midst of renewed lockdowns at the end of the first month of the fourth quarter.

Euro area unemployment for September sits at 8.3%, stable compared with August and up from 7.5% in September 2019.

Germany 4.5%, France 7.9%, Italy 9.6%, Spain 16.5%, Ireland 5.4%, Netherlands 4.4%.

A flash reading on October inflation came in at -0.3%, annualized, same as September. Ex-food and energy it is 0.4%, also same as September.

Next week we will have a slew of PMI data for October which should be quite telling.

The European Central Bank said today that European governments must be selective in shutting down economic activity to combat the pandemic and need to keep spending up to support businesses and families; previous heavy support a reason why Europe didn’t see the disastrous early unemployment rates when the coronavirus hit.

With infections testing the limits of the health system, and governments imposing lockdown measures as noted above, “We must try to defeat the virus without totally shutting down the economy because the consequences in terms of loss of economic activity are very, very intense,” ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos said.

The ECB on Thursday made clear it would ramp up stimulus in December as the lockdowns raise the prospect of a double-dip recession but policymakers also shifted the burden onto governments, arguing that the role of monetary policy is limited.

“We have to take into account the need for probably a higher amount of fiscal input in these circumstances since it’s not for monetary policy to be surgical and to extend credit to individual companies,” ECB board member Yves Mersch said. “That is a fiscal task and we have encouraged the fiscal side to expand its intervention.”

While most governments have put in place public guarantees to keep viable firms afloat, debt levels have surged and some governments are discussing becoming more selective in using taxpayers’ money.  Such caution could force banks to hold back loans, creating a credit crunch, even though there is ample liquidity in the system.

Brexit: There was no movement in terms of negotiations between the UK and the European Union on reaching a trade deal, the latest ‘formal’ deadline Nov. 15.

But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to flout international law over Brexit is set to be blocked by the House of Lords next month, throwing up an incendiary early test of relations, potentially, with Joe Biden if he wins the election.

Biden has warned that Johnson’s UK internal market Bill would undermine the Northern Ireland peace process and that he would never sign a trade deal with the UK unless key clauses in the Bill were removed.

Members of parliament’s upper house are expected to oblige Biden by voting overwhelmingly to throw out six clauses from the Bill, which ministers have admitted will breach Britain’s withdrawal treaty, signed last year with the EU.

The House of Lords votes Nov. 9 and this comes not only just right after the U.S. election, but in the final stages of EU negotiations with the UK.

Johnson will be defeated in the upper chamber, then we’ll see what happens.

Biden said last month that the Bill would undermine the deal between the EU and UK to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland.  “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” he tweeted.

Turning to Asia…China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported its PMI data for October tonight; 51.4 on manufacturing vs. 51.5 in September, and 56.2 for the service sector vs. 55.9 last month, very solid.

Japan reported September retail sales were down 0.1% over August, but down 8.7% year-over-year.  September industrial production was up 4% vs. August, but down 9.0% yoy.  September unemployment came in at 3.0%, same as the month before.

Street Bytes

--Stocks tumbled, with the S&P 500 suffering its worst loss since March, down 5.6%, which also represented the worst pre-election week loss in history.  The Dow Jones fell 6.5% to 26501, while Nasdaq lost 5.5%.  Stocks in Europe didn’t fare any better, generally down 6% across the board, the German Dax down over 8% on fears of the economic impact of renewed lockdowns.

In the U.S., it’s all about surging Covid cases, no further economic stimulus until, potentially, as late as the new year, and tremendous election uncertainty.

It didn’t help that some major tech players, which released earnings after the market closed on Thursday, fell flat on their face today.

Facebook -6%, Amazon -5%, Apple -5%, and Twitter collapsing -21%.  Alphabet/Google bucked the trend, +4%.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.10%  2-yr. 0.15%  10-yr. 0.87%  30-yr. 1.66%

The key 10-year yield continues to inch up, the highest weekly close since June 5, ditto the 30-year, but the short end of the curve hasn’t moved in a long time.

--Exxon Mobil Corp. on Wednesday kept its fourth-quarter dividend flat at 87 cents a share, signaling 2020 will be the first year since 1982 that the largest U.S. oil producer by volume has not raised its shareholder payout, rather remarkable, and a most telling statement on the condition of the industry today; Exxon perhaps caught off guard by the sharp decline in energy prices and demand this year. 

Oil prices are off over 40% since the start of the year due to the pandemic crushing demand globally, and this week they cratered $4 to $35.72 on West-Texas Intermediate.

Exxon has pledged cost and jobs cuts, and then on Thursday announced it could cut the number of global employees by 15%, or an estimated 14,000, including contractors, with 1,900 of them in the U.S. 

“The impact of Covid-19 on the demand for Exxon Mobil’s products has increased the urgency of the ongoing efficiency work,” the company said in a statement.  Earlier this month, Exxon said it would cut 1,600 jobs in Europe, and announced cuts in Australia.

The company posted its first back-to-back quarterly losses this year and is projected to report a full-year $2 billion loss, according to Refinitiv.

And make that three straight quarterly losses after Exxon reported today for its third quarter, detailing deeper spending cuts to come.

Exxon plans to cut its capital spending for 2021 to between $16 billion to $19 billion from a planned $23 billion this year.  It also said it was reassessing its natural gas holdings in North America and could impair around $25 billion to $30 billion – but only if it changes its long-term development plans.  It is evaluating those assets this quarter.  Exxon has not had writedowns in shale fields this year and has long said it believes demand will grow for its products as more people join the middle class globally.

The company’s third-quarter net loss was $680 million, compared with a profit of $3.17 billion a year earlier.

--Chevron Corp. said it will lay off about 25% of Noble Energy’s employees who joined the oil major after its $4.1 billion purchase of the smaller rival earlier this month, the company said on Tuesday.  The job cuts, which are on top of Chevron’s plan to cut 10%-15% of its own workforce (4,500 to 6,750), come after the company promised to lower its operating expenses by $1 billion this year in the face of sharply lower energy demand.  Most of the cuts will take place this year, Chevron said.

Friday, the company also reported an adjusted third-quarter profit of $201 million, excluding one-time items, compared with a profit of $2.9 billion a year earlier.

The company said the outlook for energy consumption “depends on when the world – this country and other countries – get control of the pandemic and those activities resume. We don’t know when that’s going to be,” CFO Pierre Breber said today.

Chevron is nearing the end of a year-long restructuring of its operations, as noted above.

“The world’s economy continues to operate below pre-pandemic levels, impacting demand for our products which are closely linked to economic activity,” CEO Michael Wirth said in a statement.

--Microsoft Corp. beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Tuesday, powered by a slight uptick in growth in its flagship cloud computing business as the software maker continued to benefit from a global shift to working from home and online learning.  The pandemic has accelerated a shift already under way toward cloud-based computing, helping companies such as Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Alphabet’s Google Cloud.

Revenue growth for Azure, Microsoft’s cloud business, was up 48%, up from 47% in the previous quarter and better than the Street expected.

Microsoft has shifted to selling many of its products via recurring subscriptions, which investors like because it generates stable revenue flows.  The value of Microsoft’s future recurring revenue contracts with big business customers was flat from the previous quarter.  Microsoft said 93% of commercial cloud products were sold as subscriptions, compared with 94% the quarter before.  [The company bundles together several sets of software and services such as Office and Azure into a “commercial cloud” metric, closely followed by analysts.]

Microsoft said revenue in its “Intelligent Cloud” segment rose 20% to $13 billion in the first quarter, with 48% growth in Azure.  Revenue from its personal computing division, which includes Windows software and Xbox gaming consoles, rose 6% to $11.8 billion.  The company’s overall revenue rose 12% to $37.2 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, beating analysts’ estimates of $35.72 billion.  Net income rose to $13.89 billion from $10.68 billion a year earlier.

--Apple posted slightly better-than-expected sales and profits for its fiscal fourth quarter ended September.  But the stock traded lower after hours on Thursday.

For the quarter, Apple reported revenue of $64.7 billion, up about 1% from a year ago and slightly ahead of the Wall Street consensus of $64.2 billion.  Profit fell to $12.7 billion, from $13.7 billion, the company said.

Overall, Apple finished its fiscal year with $274.5 billion in revenue, a 5.5% gain from 2019.

iPhone sales in the quarter were $26.4 billion, down 20.7%, but the company saw strength across its other segments.  Mac sales were $9 billion, up 29%.  iPad sales were $6.8 billion, up 46%.  Wearables sales increased 20.8% to $7.9 billion.  Service revenue was $14.5 billion, up 16.3%.

Sales were $30.7 billion in the Americas, up 4.7%.  They were up 13% to $16.9 billion in Europe but down 29% to $7.9 billion in Greater China. Sales were about flat in Japan, and up 13% in the rest of Asia.

CEO Tim Cook noted on the call that the quarter overall was ahead of internal expectations, driven by better-than-expected performance for both the iPhone and services.  He noted that the weak quarter for China was due largely to the lack of new iPhones in the period, but he added that non-iPhone hardware sales were up double-digits in China.  Cook also said the company expects China sales to grow year-over-year in the December quarter.

Apple didn’t provide detailed financial guidance in its earnings release, given the ongoing pandemic and the minimal data available so far on sales of the new iPhone 12.

--Amazon.com posted better-than-expected third-quarter results, as the company continued to benefit from the growth in e-commerce during the Covid-19 pandemic.

For the quarter, Amazon posted sales of $96.1 billion, up 37%, and well ahead of the company’s guidance.  Operating income was $6.2 billion, with earnings per share well ahead of the Street.

For the fourth quarter, the company is projecting sales of $112 billion to $121 billion, up 28% to 29% from a year ago.  But the shares didn’t act well after the earnings release because the company said operating income in the current quarter could fall below current expectations.

In Q3, sales were up 39% in North America, 37% for international markets, and 29% for Amazon Web Services (the cloud business).

Amazon announced earlier in the week it was adding 100,000 seasonal jobs across the U.S. and Canada as the holiday season approaches, the latest in a wave of hirings this year as the retail giant keeps up with increased demand amid the pandemic.

Amazon will hire full and part-time workers for their operations network, where jobs include stowing, picking, packing, shipping, and delivering customer orders, working in human resources, operating robotics and other roles.

Amazon pays a minimum wage at $15 an hour, and full-time employees receive benefits including health, dental, and vision insurance, as well as a 401(k) with 50% company match.

This latest hiring binge comes after Amazon added 100,000 people in September for their warehouses to keep up with a surge of online orders.

--Alphabet gave investors reason to cheer late Thursday when it reported earnings, sales and profit growth that was more consistent with pre-Covid levels. Shares rose about 7% in the aftermarket, with Alphabet reporting net income of $11.25 billion, compared with a profit of $7.07 billion a year ago. Revenue rose 14% to $46.17 billion from $40.50 billion in the year-ago period.

Alphabet third-quarter revenue was $38.01 billion when traffic acquisition costs were removed.

The company reported YouTube revenue of $5.04 billion, Google Cloud revenue of $3.44 billion, and other revenue of $5.48bn.

Alphabet did not address the billions of dollars in traffic acquisition costs the Justice Department says Google paid to Apple in return for making Google the default search engine in Safari on IOS and in its Siri virtual assistant.

--Facebook shares slipped a bit after appearing to return to a steady clip of quarterly profit, after two quarters of slowing growth amid the pandemic.

But CFO David Wehner acknowledged that the company’s U.S. and Canada member count had declined from the second quarter. Wehner also issued a tepid outlook for the remainder of the year’s user growth and 2021.  “Looking ahead to 2021, we continue to face a significant amount of uncertainty.”

“We believe the pandemic has contributed to an acceleration in the shift of commerce from offline to online, and we experienced increasing demand for advertising as a result of this acceleration.  Considering that online commerce is our largest ad vertical, a change in this trend could serve as a headwind to our 2021 ad revenue growth.”

Facebook reported net income of $7.85 billion, compared with a profit of $6.09 billion a year earlier. Revenue rose 22% to $21.47 billion from $17.65 billion.

The number of people who use one of Facebook’s various platforms – the main Facebook app, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp, among others – rose 15% to 2.54 billion.  Monthly member use across those services rose 14% to 3.21 billion.

In the U.S. and Canada, the total daily user count fell to 196 million from 198 million in the second quarter.  Europe’s daily member count was flat at 305 million, and the company added roughly 30 million daily users in the Asia-Pacific region, and 10 million in the rest of the world.

--Monday shares in German software giant SAP collapsed as the company slashed its yearly financial targets while predicting lasting damage from the pandemic.  The stock fell 20%, its worst day in more than two decades, after SAP warned investors that recovery in demand for its business software products has been “more muted than expected” as spikes in Covid infections led to renewed lockdowns in some countries.

As a result, SAP cut the high end of its operating profit outlook for 2020 by about 200 million euros ($234 million), while its top revenue estimate dropped about $800 million.

--Semiconductor designer Advanced Micro Devices said it would buy Xilinx Inc. in a $35 billion all-stock deal, intensifying its battle with Intel Corp. in the data center chip market.  The deal, which AMD expects to close at the end of 2021, will create a combined company with 13,000 engineers and a completely outsourced manufacturing strategy that relies heavily on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

The two U.S. firms have benefited from a more nimble approach to grab market share from Intel, which has struggled with internal manufacturing.

AMD has long been Intel’s chief rival for central processor units (CPUs) in the personal computer business.

But, as CNBC’s Jim Cramer likes to say, CEO Lisa Su, who took over AMD in 2014, is a superstar, and she’s focused on challenging Intel in the fast-growing business of data centers that power internet-based applications and services, which are fueling artificial intelligence and the latest generation of telecommunications networks.

Xilinx has also been working to penetrate data centers with programmable processors that help speed up specialized tasks such as compressing videos or providing digital encryption.  Its primary rival in the area, Altera Corp., was scooped up by Intel for $16.7 billion in 2015.

“There are some areas where we’re very strong, and we will be able to accelerate some of the adoption of the Xilinx product family,” Su told Reuters.  “And there are some areas where (Xilinx) is very strong, and we believe that we’ll be able to accelerate some of the AMD products into those markets.”

AMD has seen its CPU market share rise to almost 20%.  The companies expect the deal to generate $300 million in cost savings.

Separately, AMD reported earnings of $2.80 billion for the third quarter.

--Twitter Inc. reported Thursday that it added fewer users than Wall Street expected and said expenses would accelerate in the current quarter, sending its shares tumbling 15%. Twitter said it had 187 million monetizable daily active users during the third quarter, badly missing consensus expectations of 195.2 million.  The figure stood at 186 million in the previous quarter.

Costs and expenses grew 13% from the same period last year to $880 million, as the company spent more on infrastructure-related expenses.

Twitter said revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $936 million during the quarter, beating estimates.  Ad revenue grew 15% to $808 million.

--Boeing announced it will cut more jobs as it continues to bleed money and lose revenue during a pandemic that has smothered demand for new aircraft.  The company said it expects to cut its workforce to about 130,000 employees by the end of next year, down 30,000 from the start of this year; far deeper than the 19,000 reduction that the company announced three months ago.

Boeing updated its plan on the same day it reported a $449 million loss for the third quarter (fourth straight quarterly loss), a swing from the $1.17 billion it earned in the same period last year.  The loss was, however, narrower than expected.

Revenue fell 29% to $14.14 billion, as Boeing has been whipsawed by a drop in revenue after its 737 MAX was grounded in March 2019 and the company recently lowered its forecast of demand for new planes over the next decade by 11% because of the pandemic.

Boeing failed to record a single order for a new jetliner in September.  In the first nine months of 2020, the company has delivered only 98 airline planes, compared with 301 during the same stretch of 2019, and that was with the MAX being grounded early that year.

But regarding the MAX and its return, Boeing has made steady progress, including rigorous certification and validation flights conducted by the FAA, Transport Canada and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.  The 737 MAX has now completed around 1,400 test and check flights and more than 3,000 flight hours.  An actual return date has yet to be determined.

--In the key TSA checkpoint daily travel figures metric, for the last seven days, including Thursday, they’ve been at the following daily percentages vs. a year ago.

37, 39, 40, 38, 34, 32, 43 (yesterday).  None of the days were over 1,000,000 passengers and we still just have one, Oct. 18, at that key number since the pandemic crushed demand beginning in mid-March.  A year ago, we were generally in the 2.2 to 2.5 million range.

--Japan’s largest airline operator, ANA Holdings Inc., plans to cut about 3,500 in three years as it braces for its biggest-ever annual loss due to plunging demand amid the crisis, as first reported by the Yomiuri daily.

--Ford Motor Co. posted a stronger-than-expected third-quarter net profit as demand for cars and trucks recovered from coronavirus shutdowns and the company sold more high-margin trucks.

The automaker says it made $2.39 billion, or 60 cents per share, as factories edged back to normal after they were forced to close earlier this year.  The company now expects positive pretax income for the full year between break even and $500 million in the fourth quarter.

Ford also took in revenue of $37.5 billion, slightly below estimates.

Automakers were expecting a tough third quarter because they didn’t know how much demand and production would recover from the virus. But Ford saw its U.S. sales down only 5% for the period, with much of the decline from slower sales to large fleet buyers.

At the same time, Ford had its best quarter for pickup truck sales since 2005, with the company’s average vehicle sales price up 8% from a year ago to $45,599, according to Edmunds.com.

--The pace of U.S. auto sales overall is expected to rise 3% in October, helped by a strong recovery in consumer demand and tighter inventories at dealerships, industry consultants J.D. Power and LMC Automotive said on Wednesday.  Retail sales of new vehicles are estimated to reach about 1.2 million units in October, a 3% increase from a year ago when adjusted for selling days.

--Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday that revenue fell by at least a fifth in the latest quarter in each of its three global segments: construction, mining and energy and transportation.  The company said slower construction of everything from cruise ships to pipelines during the pandemic is weighing on demand for its heavy machinery.

“Those are very big machines, very expensive, and people are deferring [purchases] until such time as they have clarity,” Andrew Bonfield, CAT’s CFO, said in an interview.

The oil-and-gas market was particularly weak for Caterpillar, with sales to customers in that industry falling 41% as declining energy prices have caused development of new oil and gas fields to stall.

But the company does see some positive signs, such as an increase in demand from China as its economy recovers from the spring lockdown.  In the U.S., home builders have increased construction rates in recent months.

In all, revenue fell 23% to $9.88 billion, from $12.76 billion a year ago.

--3M Co. said sales were down in about half its business lines from a year earlier and that demand for its products for nonemergency medical and dental procedures wasn’t likely to recover through next year.  Like with Caterpillar, another sign that demand from commercial customers is on shaky ground as the pandemic continues to disrupt work routines and commerce.

“It’s reflective of the challenges with Covid,” 3M’s CEO Mike Roman said in an interview, of demand for its medical and dental products.  “It’s not going to be a perfectly straight line.”

Demand for 3M products such as N95 masks and home-cleaning supplies, on the other hand, is booming, and overall the company’s sales rose 4.5% to $8.35 billion for the third quarter.

The company sold 1.4 billion of the N95 and other masks and is on track to see 2 billion by the end of 2020.

3M posted a profit of $1.41 billion compared with $1.58bn in the same period last year.

“We are seeing both sides of the pandemic,” Roman said.

--United Parcel Service Inc. is delivering more packages, but it is paying a much bigger price to do so.  The delivery giant said revenue rose nearly 16% in the third quarter and profit rose 11.8% amid an influx of packages moving domestically and internationally during the pandemic.

But despite the boost, UPS’s large domestic business posted a sharp decline in profits due to the need to hire tens of thousands of new workers, while spending $179 million to speed up delivery times.

The shares fell in response to the continued higher costs heading into the holiday season.  But they are up about 40% for the year.

Shipping volume is expected to remain robust during the holiday season. Both FedEx and UPS have warned their largest customers that there is no extra capacity available during the coming period, while smaller companies have stopped taking new customers until next year.

--General Electric Co. unexpectedly reported a quarterly profit and a positive cash flow on the back of cost cuts and improvements in its power and renewable energy businesses, sending its shares higher.

Adjusted profit for the quarter came in at 6 cents per share compared with analysts’ expectations of 4 cents.

“We are managing through a still-difficult environment with better operational execution across our businesses,” said CEO Lawrence Culp, who has been trying to turn the company around by improving free cash flow and cutting debt.  But the pandemic has hit those efforts by hammering GE’s aviation unit, usually the company’s most profitable and most cash-generative segment.  In response to the turmoil, GE is cutting $2 billion in costs and aiming to generate $3 billion in cash savings.

Revenue at GE’s aviation unit fell an annual 39% in the latest quarter.  But mounting losses related to the company’s run-off insurance operations – a portfolio of about 300,000 long-term care insurance policies it holds in its disastrous GE Capital unit – forced the company to take a $6.2 billion charge in 2018 and put aside $15 billion in reserves to shore it up.

Overall, GE reported total revenue of $19.42 billion, down from $23.36 billion in the prior-year period but above analysts’ estimates of $18.94 billion.

--Chiefs of the largest social-media companies tangled with U.S. senators over their role in public discourse amid a contentious election that has stoked bipartisan criticism of the companies’ policies.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and YouTube owner Alphabet Inc., have spent the years since the 2016 election rewriting their policies and taking a more active role in moderating online speech – in part to avoid a spotlight like the one placed on them Wednesday.

But the Senate Commerce Committee hearing reflected deep discontent with the power of the social-media platforms’ power, with Republicans pressing to update part of a 1996 law known as Section 230 that helps shield internet platforms from liability for user-generated content, claiming it has been misused to censor conservative views.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), in a tough reelection battle, questioned Twitter’s decision to label some posts by President Trump as misleading but not others by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei threatening Israel and denying the Holocaust.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Tex.) accused Twitter of acting as a “Democratic super PAC” when it decided to block tweets of recent New York Post articles concerning allegations against Joe Biden, which his campaign has denied.

“Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report?” Cruz asked.

“I hear the concerns and acknowledge them,” Jack Dorsey said, but he denied Twitter was favoring Democratic causes.

--Netflix announced it was raising prices for U.S. subscribers for its standard plan by $1 a month to $13.99, from $12.99.  The price for premium plans jumps by $2 a month to $17.99, from $15.99.

The shares fell more than 5% in response.

--Tiffany & Co. agreed to accept a lower price in its takeover by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, ending a dispute between the luxury-goods companies that erupted after the coronavirus pandemic upended the industry.

The companies have reached agreement on new deal terms with LVMH paying $131.50 a share for Tiffany, down from an original price of $135 a share, or savings of roughly $430 million for LVMH.  The two have also agreed to settle their pending litigation in Delaware.

“We are as convinced as ever of the formidable potential of the Tiffany brand and believe that LVMH is the right home for Tiffany and its employees during this exciting next chapter,” said LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault.

--Starbucks Corp. reported same-store sales in its Americas region declined 9% in its latest quarter from last year’s period, a better result than analysts expected amidst the pandemic.  The chain benefited from large orders as customers have tended to load up on food and drinks during less frequent trips.  Still, Starbucks reported a 25% reductions in transactions during its fourth quarter ended Sept. 27.

The chain said it expects to fully recover from the pandemic next fiscal year, and anticipates opening 2,150 new stores world-wide even as it closes hundreds of existing ones.

For the quarter, Starbucks posted a profit of $392.6 million, compared with $802.9 million in the comparable quarter last year.  The pandemic depressed sales by $1.2 billion in the quarter.

Global same-store sales fell 14% for the year.

But the company expects global same-store sales to increase by 18% to 23% for its 2021 fiscal year.  The chain anticipates opening 850 stores in the Americas, while closing 800 (mostly urban stores).  It anticipates adding 600 stores in China.

--Dunkin’ Brands reported sales in the U.S. were up about 1 percent in the third quarter from the same period last year, while in the second quarter, sales were down nearly 19 percent, so the recovery from the initial lockdowns continues.

Dunkin’s more than 9,100 stores in the U.S. make up over 80 percent of the company’s operating income.  Dunkin’ Brands also owns Baskin-Robbins, and the company said same store sales in the U.S. at the ice cream chain were up 6.5 percent in the third quarter compared to last year.

Overall, third-quarter revenues at Dunkin’ Brands increased 1.6 percent, year over year, to $361.5 million.

*Tonight, the Wall Street Journal is reporting Dunkin’ is being bought by Inspire Brands (Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings) for over $11 billion, including debt.  More next time, though this has been talked about for some time.

--A day after cutting 1,000 jobs from the newly-acquired TD Ameritrade custody business, Charles Schwab Corp. CEO Walt Bettinger confirmed that additional job cuts are “still to come.”

“We’ve had to part ways with some incredibly talented people,” he told a virtual audience at the 30th annual Schwab Impact conference during the opening keynote presentation.

“Unfortunately, it’s the nature of combinations like this,” Bettinger added.

--Chinese financial-technology giant Ant Group Co. is set to raise at least $34.4 billion from the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering, according to filings released Monday, in a blockbuster deal that is bypassing U.S. stock exchanges and instead will span Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Ant is seeking to raise about $17.2 billion in each city.  The $34.4 billion would eclipse the $25 billion raised in 2014 by its former parent Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and the $29.4 billion of shares sold recently by Saudi Aramco, in what is to date the largest-ever IPO.

Jack Ma, who controls Ant, said the IPO will be “the largest in human history.”

In a few years, Ant has helped change how people in China spend, borrow, save and invest. The firm, which has its origins in an escrow service for Alibaba’s e-commerce websites, now processes trillions of dollars in payments annually, running one of the world’s largest money-market funds, while facilitating small loans to hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

--Mexico’s economy grew 12.0% in the third quarter over the second.  In the April-June period, at the peak of Mexico’s lockdown, the economy shrank 17.1% from the first quarter.

Mexico has run up large trade surpluses the past four months, fueled by U.S. demand for the country’s manufactured goods, especially in the automotive sector, which just further shows how reliant the country is on the U.S.  Domestic demand has lagged, with businesses still feeling the pinch of the pandemic.

--Lee Kun-hee, who transformed Samsung Electronics Co. from a copycat South Korean appliance maker into the world’s biggest producer of smartphones, televisions and memory chips, died Sunday.  He was 78.

Lee, who told employees to “change everything except your wife and children” during his drive to foster innovation and challenge rivals such as Sony Corp., was South Korea’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $20.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.  Samsung, the biggest of South Korea’s family-run industrial groups, known as chaebol, has been led by his only son, Jay Y. Lee, since a heart attack in 2014.  Jay Lee is now assuming the reins more formally.

But the younger Lee is grappling with two simultaneous legal disputes with South Korean prosecutors over allegations of bribery and corruption, which he’s denied.

And Lee Kun-hee’s heirs now face an estate tax of roughly $10 billion, and paying it may complicate the family’s control of the Samsung conglomerate.

--According to TomTom, a Netherlands-based software company that tracks traffic patterns around the world, there are about 30% fewer cars roaming New York City’s streets and highways before the city locked down in mid-March.  This is consistent with Port Authority statistics showing a 31% decline in cars entering the city via bridges and tunnels.

The persistent decline is one reason why the virus remains contained in Gotham.

Separately, a Partnership for New York City survey has found that only 15% of New Yorkers are expected back in the city’s office towers by the end of the year, compared with its estimate of 26% in August.

As of this month, 10% of the city’s 1 million office workers had returned to their desks, according to the survey.

--We note the passing of Robert E. Murray, founder of Murray Energy Corp., the coal-mining giant who used an aggressive acquisition strategy to drive rivals out of business even as coal prices were falling.  He was 80.

The son of an Ohio coal miner, Murray spent more than six decades in the industry as a miner, executive and entrepreneur who battled unions and regulations aimed at cutting emissions from coal-burning plants.  He called global warming a hoax and saw saving the coal industry as his mission.

Heavy debts and slumping demand for coal prompted Murray Energy to file for protection from creditors under U.S. bankruptcy law a year ago.

The coal industry’s decline has continued over the years, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration expecting coal will generate 20% of U.S. electricity this year, down from 31% in 2016, despite President Trump’s proclamations that the industry is coming back.  As recently as two decades ago, coal regularly accounted for more than half of the country’s electricity.

I was disappointed the Murray obituary I read didn’t mention the Crandell Canyon Mine Disaster in Utah, 2007, that killed nine miners in two separate incidents.  The mine was owned by one of Murray’s subsidiaries and as many of you will recall, his behavior in the aftermath was appalling.

Foreign Affairs

Armenia and Azerbaijan: A U.S.-brokered ceasefire from last weekend fell apart hours later, and Armenia acknowledged that Nagorno-Karabakh forces had withdrawn from a strategic town between the enclave and the Iranian border, an apparent military gain for Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey, has been trying to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region populated and ruled by ethnic Armenians.

Armenia admitted more than 1,000 of its soldiers have now died in the fighting.  Based on their population of 3 million, this would be like 110,00 American dying in fighting. As in this is a real tragedy for people in the region.  Azerbaijan has not been releasing its casualty figures, but they are in the hundreds.

The two sides have accused each other of striking targets outside of Nagorno-Karabakh itself.

Turkey and France: Relations between France and Turkey deteriorated rapidly after last week’s beheading of a teacher by an Islamist militant, avenging the use of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression.  Turkey and France are both members of NATO, but have been at odds over issues including Syria and Libya, maritime jurisdiction in the eastern Mediterranean, and the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

State secularism – or laicite – is central to France’s national identity. Curbing freedom of expression to protect the feelings of one particular community, the states says, undermines the country’s unity.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Monday for Turks to boycott French goods and urged European Union leaders to halt French leader Emmanuel Macron’s “anti-Islam” agenda.

For a third day running Erdogan said that the French president needed a mental health check, repeating a rebuke that caused France to recall its ambassador from Ankara over the weekend, as he appealed to Turks to shun French products.

“Just like they say ‘Don’t buy goods with Turkish brands’ in France, I am calling to all my citizens from here to never help French brands or buy them,” Erdogan said.

Earlier he had said, “What’s the problem of the individual called Macron with Islam and with the Muslims?”

“Macron needs treatment on a mental level.  What else can be said to a head of state who does not understand freedom of belief and who behaves in this way to millions of people living in his country who are members of a different faith?”

France is the 10th biggest source of imports into Turkey and the seventh biggest market for Turkey’s exports.  French autos are among the highest-selling cars in Turkey.

“European leaders with foresight and morals must break down the walls of fear,” Erdogan said in a speech at the start of a week of activities in Turkey to commemorate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad.  “They must put an end to the anti-Islam agenda and hate campaign that Macron is leading.”

Macron has pledged to fight “Islamist separatism,” saying it was threatening to take over some Muslim communities in France.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called on NATO allies to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on values of tolerance and free speech, in a veiled rebuke to Turkey.

“The UK stands in solidarity with France and the French people in the wake of the appalling murder of Samuel Paty,” Raab said in a statement. “Terrorism can never and should never be justified.

“NATO allies and the wider international community must stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the fundamental values of tolerance and free speech, and we should never give terrorists the gift of dividing us.”

Tuesday, France urged fellow European Union leaders to adopt measures against Turkey.

“France is united and Europe is united. At the next European Council, Europe will have to take decisions that will allow it to strengthen the power balance with Turkey to better defend its interests and European values,” Trade Minister Franck Riester told lawmakers, without elaborating.

President Erdogan said on Wednesday that Western countries attacking Islam want to “relaunch the Crusades” as tensions escalated further.

Erdogan said in a speech to lawmakers from his AK Party in parliament that standing against attacks on the Prophet Mohammad was “an issue of honor for us.”

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday freedom of expression should stop at offending more than 1.5 billion people.  Sisi also said he firmly rejects any form of violence or terrorism from anyone in the name of defending religion, religious symbols or icons.

Then Thursday in Nice, a knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a clear terror attack at Notre Dame church there.  The attacker was detained by police.

Within hours, police killed a man who had threatened passersby with a handgun in Montfavet, near the southern French city of Avignon.  He was also shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest), according to radio station Europe 1.

Nice’s Mayor Christian Estrosi said: “Enough is enough.  It’s time now for France to exonerate itself from the laws of peace in order to definitively wipe out Islamo-fascism from our territory.”

President Macron said on Thursday that he would be stepping up the deployment of soldiers to protect key French sites, such as places of worship and schools, following the latest attack.

Today, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah described French cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad as an aggression and likened Paris sticking by them to “declaring a sort of war.”

Nasrallah, in a televised speech, condemned this week’s fatal stabbings at the church, but said Western leaders also bore responsibility for such crimes because of their roles in Middle East conflicts.

Belarus: President Alexander Lukashenko partially closed the country’s land borders, replaced his interior minister and named three security hawks to new roles on Thursday in an attempt to tighten his grip after months of mass protests.

Minsk announced restrictions at its borders with Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine, citing the Covid-19 pandemic.  Poland said only Belarusian citizens and trucks were being allowed to travel to Belarus at some of its border.

Lukashenko has been at loggerheads with his EU neighbors since the country plunged into turmoil in August.

Main opposition rival, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said the president’s actions were a sign of weakness.  “The regime destroys itself. Both the closure of the borders and the next appointments are signals of a weakening of his power.  He makes inconsistent decisions because he is in a panic,” she said in a statement.

More than 16,000 have been arrested since a presidential election on Aug. 9, which the opposition and Western governments say was rigged.  The opposition called for a nationwide strike this week.

Syria: There were various reports on airstrikes in northwestern Syria, with a U.S. airstrike believed to have killed seven leaders of al-Qaeda affiliates, as the alleged terrorists were meeting near the city of Idlib, a spokeswoman for Central Command told the Associated Press.

The seven who were killed were not identified.

[On Monday, Afghanistan officials said they killed a top al-Qaeda propagandist who is on the FBI’s most wanted list, Husam Abd al-Rauf (who also went by the name ‘al-Masri’), reportedly killed in a military operation in the eastern section of Afghanistan.]

Then Russia said its war planes struck a camp of Turkish-backed rebel fighters in northwestern Syria, killing dozens of Syrian fighters as well as civilians harvesting olives nearby, according to a rebel spokesman, in the bloodiest surge in violence since a cease-fire came into effect seven months ago.

The strike targeted the group Faylaq al-Sham, whose base is near several refugee camps in the heavily populated province of Idlib, where several million people live, many of them displaced from other parts of Syria.  The death toll rose to 60.

The Russian airstrike was viewed as an attack on Turkey, with some analysts connecting it to Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan against Armenia.

Afghanistan: ISIS claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack outside an education center in the capital, Kabul, that killed at least 18 and wounded dozens. 

Random Musings

--Presidential poll data….

Gallup: Final figures…46% approve of President Trump’s job performance, 52% disapprove; 95% of Republicans approve, 41% of independents (Oct. 16-Oct. 27).  The previous splits were 43/55, 94, 35.  *In four years, Trump’s approval rating never exceeded 49% at any time in this survey.  Should he lose, historians will no doubt point to this fact, from the oldest, most-creditable survey of its kind, as a cause of his defeat…as in he never tried to expand his base.
Rasmussen: 51% approve, 48% disapprove of the president’s job performance, same as last week.

--A final CNN/SSRS national poll of likely voters has Joe Biden with a 54 to 42 percent lead, the 42% the same as President Trump’s approval rating in the survey.  Among those who have already voted, the split was 64-34 Biden.  Trump leads 59-36 among those who say they plan to vote Election Day.

Women break sharply for Biden, 61 to 37 percent.  Among men, it’s a near-even split, 48% for Trump and 47% for Biden.  Voters of color support the Democrat by a nearly 50-point margin, 71-24, while White voters split 50% for Trump and 48% for Biden. White men favor Trump 56-41.  Those with college degrees favor Biden by 30 points.

White voters with college degrees favor Biden 58-40, while White voters who do not hold a four-year degree are a mirror image, 58-40 for Trump. White men without degrees go to Trump, 68-30.

Biden leads among likely voters 65 or older, 55-44.

Only about 4 in 10 Americans say things are going well in the country right now (39%). That figure has only dipped lower twice in reelection years since 1980: In 1992 (35% going well) and in 1980 (32% going well). [Both incumbents lost.]

--A final Fox News national poll of likely voters has Biden leading Trump 52-44, a slight narrowing from a 53-43 advantage a month ago.

Biden leads among suburban women in this one 62-33.

--In a shocking Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely voters in Wisconsin, Joe Biden has a 17-point lead, 57 to 40 percent.  Now I in no way believe this is anywhere near correct, but it’s significant considering the last time this survey polled voters there the margin was six points.

[The Post admits there was some variation in random sample surveys in the state and the margin may be more like Biden by 12.  The RealClearPolitics average has Biden up 5.5 points.]

In Michigan, the Post/ABC poll has Biden up seven, 51 to 44 percent.

Trump leads among likely voters who plan to vote on Election Day in the two states, with 65 percent support in Michigan and 70 percent in Wisconsin.  Among voters who have already voted or plan to do so before Election Day, over 7 in 10 in both Michigan and Wisconsin support Biden.

In the hotly contested Michigan Senate race, Democratic Sen. Gary Peters leads his Republican challenger John James, 52 to 46 percent.

--Back to Wisconsin, perhaps a better indicator than the above is Wednesday’s Marquette University Law School Poll that shows Biden up 48-43.  Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen is at 2%, while 8% say they’re either undecided, won’t reveal their preference or won’t vote.

[Gov. Tony Evers job approval is at 50% to 43% disapproval.]

--In a series of Reuters/Ipsos polls of likely voters in battleground states released Tuesday:

Michigan: Biden 52-43
North Carolina: Biden 49-48
Wisconsin: Biden 53-44
Pennsylvania: 50-45
Florida: Biden 50-46
Arizona: Biden 49-46

So we’ll sit back and see how close some of the polls have been vs. reality.

--An NBC News/Marist poll of likely Florida voters had Biden up 51-47, within the margin of error.

--A Monmouth University poll of registered voters in Florida is unchanged from a month ago, 50-45 Biden.

--I hadn’t seen a poll on how voters in my state of New Jersey are going, but a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released Thursday showed Joe Biden had a 61-37 lead over President Trump.

--The killing of Walter Wallace Jr. by police in Philadelphia could roil the presidential campaign as protests, and some violence, then ensued both in the city and elsewhere; President Trump seizing on the riots and looting in an effort to portray Biden as soft on crime, while selling himself as the “law and order” candidate.

Biden pushed back, saying repeatedly that he does not condone looting and has no tolerance for violence against police.

But to secure victory in Pennsylvania, Biden needs the support of the Philly suburbs, number one, and Trump believes he can win some of them back with his law-and-order message.

Just as importantly for Biden, though, is he needs a heavy voter turnout in Philadelphia itself from African Americans and other supporters, and many may not even bother if they are uneasy about the atmosphere in the area.

As for the killing, Walter Wallace should not be dead. 

--CNN’s Chris Cuomo rightfully blasted Miles Taylor for denying in a past CNN interview that he was the author of an “anonymous” New York Times 2018 op-ed slamming the president.

“You lied to us, Miles,” Cuomo told the former Homeland Security staffer, who was recently hired by CNN as a contributor, the network obviously not knowing this important tidbit.  “You were asked in August if you were ‘anonymous’ here on CNN with Anderson Cooper, and you said, ‘no.’”

“Now, why should CNN keep you on the payroll after lying like that?” Cuomo asked Taylor, who was named a contributor in September.

Taylor, who I do not like, considering him to be a POS before the admission, said he strategically hid his identity in the Times piece – and later a book – to try to influence Trump to address his written accusations instead of personally attacking him.

“We have seen over the course of four years, that Donald Trump’s preference is to find personal attacks and distractions to pull people away from criticisms of his record,” Taylor said.

“I wrote that work anonymously to deprive him of that opportunity and to force him to answer the questions on their merits,” he added.

I agree with Taylor when he bashed the president as an “undisciplined” and “amoral” leader, but I’m irked by his attitude on air, where he appears to elevate his actual status within the administration.

--Journalist Glenn Greenwald left the news website he helped create, The Intercept, claiming he was censored by the site’s editors in refusing to publish an article he had written on Joe Biden and son, Hunter, unless he agreed to remove portions that were seen as critical of the Democratic presidential nominee.

Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief of The Intercept, disputed Mr. Greenwald’s claim that he had been censored.

“Glenn Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship,” she wrote in a statement.

The Intercept was founded in 2013 by Greenwald and two partners, with backing from the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

--Canada said today it was increasing its immigration targets to bolster the economy and fill jobs in sectors experiencing shortages after the pandemic led to closed borders and a sharp slowdown in new arrivals, the immigration minister said.

The country is aiming to add 401,000 new permanent residents next year and 411,000 in 2022, an increase of 50,000 compared with previous targets.  The last time Canada attracted more than 400,000 people in one year was in the early 1900s.

More than one-in-five Canadians is foreign born because the country has consistently welcomed a large number of immigrants, including refugees.

Well, depending on our election results, Canada may see hordes of…..oh, never mind.

--Hurricane Zeta packed a powerful punch, strengthening like so many before it this year prior to hitting the Louisiana coast as a CAT 2, 110 mph winds, the fifth storm to hit Louisiana, a record, and a record 11th to make landfall in the U.S.

At least six have been killed in the storm, with over 2.6 million losing power.  Poor Louisiana.  It’s going to need a ton of help to rebuild.

There is another tropical disturbance in the Caribbean that could become the record 28th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season this weekend or early next week.

--Update: Last week I wrote of the Osiris-Rex spacecraft and its successful touch-and-go on an asteroid, Bennu, to scoop up a sample of the rock’s rubble.  But it turns out Osiris collected far more material than expected for return to Earth, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid of the robot arm, which was jammed open, precious particles drifting away.  The situation appeared to stabilize once the robot arm was locked into place, and NASA announced yesterday all was good, though it was impossible to know exactly how much had been lost.

Osiris-Rex will not leave the vicinity of the asteroid until March – given the relative locations of Earth and Bennu.

--NASA revealed conclusive evidence of water on the Moon, having dropped tantalizing hints in recent days about an “exciting new discovery.”

This “unambiguous detection of molecular water” will boost NASA’s hopes of establishing a lunar base.

The aim is to sustain that base by tapping into the Moon’s natural resources.

The findings have been published as two papers in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Unlike previous detections of water in permanently shadowed parts of lunar craters, scientists have now detected the molecule in sunlit regions of the Moon’s surface.

Researchers still need to understand the nature of the watery deposits, which would help them determine how accessible they would be for future lunar explorers to use.  Then we can begin littering the place with plastic bottles!

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

God bless America.

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Gold $1877
Oil $35.72

Returns for the week 10/26-10/30

Dow Jones  -6.5%  [26501]
S&P 500  -5.6%  [3269]
S&P MidCap  -5.7%
Russell 2000  -6.2%
Nasdaq  -5.5%  [10911]

Returns for the period 1/1/20-10/30/20

Dow Jones  -7.1%
S&P 500  +1.2%
S&P MidCap  -7.9%
Russell 2000  -7.8%
Nasdaq  +21.6%

Bulls 59.2
Bears  20.4…no update this week

Hang in there.  Mask up, wash your hands.

Good luck the next few weeks. It could really suck.

Brian Trumbore

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