Week in Review

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Week in Review

04/24/2021

For the week 4/19-4/23

[Posted 9:30 PM ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,149

This wasn’t a great week for yours truly or the family.  Early last Saturday morning, I received a dreaded call from Life-Aid (like Life-Alert), telling me our own Dr. Bortrum had fainted and fallen in the bathroom.  I live about seven minutes away, rescue squad and police were there and Bortrum (aka Dad) was taken to the local hospital.

Because of Covid protocols (this particular hospital, Overlook, recently released its 2,000th Covid patient) I couldn’t go into the emergency room until they gave Bortrum a rapid test.  In the meantime, he was supposed to get his second vaccine shot about two hours later just a few minutes away at a community center, so I went down there and canceled his appointment.

I went home awaiting a call from the ER, and about two hours after, the ER doctor said I could pick him up!  Great news!

Bortrum hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink, he was able to walk, sat him down in the breakfast room, got him some stuff, and went to do some shopping for him for later (like his favorite Subway turkey sub).

When I got back to the house, it was now about noon and I told the old man, I’d go back to the community center to see if he could still get his shot.

I get there, talk to a caring Atlantic Health official checking people in, he tells me, ‘Get back here in an hour before I leave and you’re in.’

I call Bortrum from the car, tell him to be ready to hit the road, go to his place, we get back to the center by 12:30, Bortrum is registering, all seems good, and then a woman tells us it’s too late.  His Pfizer shot had been given to someone else because it had to be used. 

S---, I told Bortrum. We’re in the car in the parking lot and the Atlantic Health guy who tried to help says, ‘Don’t leave…let me see what I can do.’

Well, he couldn’t help.  It was the clearest example of how if that had been a J&J shot, that wasn’t temperature controlled to the extreme extent Pfizer’s shot is, Bortrum gets his shot (or he’s already had the one dose you need in that instance).

OK, Sunday.  I go to the Farmers Market to get Bortrum his scones.  He tells me he slept great.  He looked and sounded good.  I go home to do my thing, knowing my brother will be calling him later.

Nothing the rest of the day.

Monday morning, Bortrum calls me at 7:00 a.m., saying he doesn’t feel well and probably should go to the hospital again.  I tear over there, he hasn’t called the Rescue Squad yet, he’s out of it, and I realize, just like as was the case Saturday, he’s dehydrated.  I get him to drink a lot of water and juice and he seems to perk up.

Well, shortly thereafter he starts to go downhill again and we call for the EMTs.

I can’t go into the emergency room with him like the old days so I go home to wait for the call.  The first thing I hear from the ER is that he tested positive for Covid!  He had been negative Saturday and has had zero symptoms this whole time.

But this is the rapid antigen test.  I know it’s a false positive, but that doesn’t matter.  At the same time, Bortrum is not well.  He’s admitted to the hospital, they start running a battery of tests, and it’s not until the next day, Tuesday, that we learn there are some issues that for privacy reasons will stay private.  Oh, a more detailed PCR test shows he’s negative, as I thought.

But I still can’t see him because of the initial test.  And then he had a second negative PCR test.

Bottom line, Bortrum is still with us but he’s now in a rehab facility and it will be a long road back…or maybe not.   At least he’s in the right place with the right care.

Because of Covid protocols at the facility he’s in, I can’t see him until Monday.

So I tell you all this because you had a classic example of the impact of a false positive (the family member can’t be there for support), and the need for the J&J vaccine.

Needless to say, it was tough getting all the work done this week as well.  But I don’t know any other way to live these days.

Meanwhile, the State Department has warned the pandemic continues to pose “unprecedented risks” globally and called on citizens to stay at home. Its updated travel guidelines are advising citizens to avoid visits to “80% of countries worldwide.”

As I’ve been writing for weeks, India’s case numbers just continue to soar.  Much of that nation has become hell on earth.

Biden’s Agenda

Next Wednesday, President Joe Biden will be addressing Congress (not formally a State of the Union, but essentially the same thing) on his agenda, namely rolling out his American Family Plan.  As noted below the proposal involves tax increases, but is not to affect any family earning less than $400,000 a year.

“His view is that that should be on the backs…of the wealthiest Americans who can afford it and corporations and businesses who can afford it,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

The proposal would increase the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6% from 37% and effectively reverse Donald Trump’s 2017 income tax cut for the highest income earners.  And there is the nearly doubling of taxes on capital gains, also addressed below.

Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) will give the Republican response to Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress.

Scott said he is looking forward to discussing the party’s “optimistic vision” for the future.

“We face serious challenges on multiple fronts, but I am as confident as I have ever been in the promise and potential of America.  I look forward to having an honest conversation with the American people and sharing Republicans’ optimistic vision for expanding opportunity and empowering working families,” he said.

I expect Scott will shine, supplying a big boost to any 2024 dreams he may harbor.

--President Biden held his climate summit, a surreal one at that, as he hosted more than 40 world leaders in a bid to restore the United States’ damaged diplomatic reputation and to rally nations around the globe to make deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and presidential climate envoy John Kerry sat around a table in the East Room of the White House, while the faces of presidents and prime ministers flashed by on a large screen, each putting forth their own sparse plans for meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Biden kicked off the meeting promising to cut U.S. emissions to half of their 2005 levels by the end of the decade.  Several other world leaders pledged to speed up cuts to their own emissions, restore forests, phase out coal plants, build wind turbines and install solar panels.

At least the leaders had their say, ahead of a critical United Nations gathering in Scotland this fall.

Three months after officially rejoining the Paris climate accord, the White House unveiled a new pledge to reduce U.S. emissions between 50 and 52 percent by 2030 – significantly more aggressive than the target set by President Obama six years ago.

Biden also promised to step up the amount of annual financing that Obama had made available for climate-related projects in developing countries.

The optics were generally good, but it’s really all about the willingness of China and India, and other developing nations, to promise new carbon cuts, because they are more focused on development and reducing poverty.  As these two grow, they’ll end up accounting for as much as three-quarters of emissions, over the coming decades, and they aren’t about to spend $trillions on a climate policy.

China’s Xi Jinping is talking of beginning to reduce emissions from coal plants, but not until 2026.

As the Wall Street Journal editorializes:

“The U.S. accounts for less than 15% of global CO2 emissions, and emissions in the U.S. and Europe have been falling since 2005 as natural gas and renewables have replaced coal power.

“But rising emissions from China have swamped these declines.  At the Paris climate summit in 2015, China committed only to begin reducing emissions in 2030, and it has continued to build coal plants and expand industrial production.  China’s CO2 emissions increased by more between 2015 and 2018 than the U.K.’s total emissions in 2018.

“All of the CO2 commitments made in Paris, including Barack Obama’s to reduce U.S. emissions by 26% to 28%, would reduce the Earth’s temperature increase by a mere 0.17 degree Celsius by 2100 – not even close to the 1.5 degrees that is supposedly needed to head off doomsday.  Yet Mr. Biden now wants to double down on Mr. Obama’s futile climate gesture.”

Much more in the coming months.  Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk did offer inventors $100 million in prize money to develop ways to fight global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or ocean.

“I don’t think we are currently doomed…if we keep going, complacent, there is some risk of non linear climate change,” said Musk, who really should focus on some more immediate issues of his, as discussed below.

--House Democrats unanimously approved Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s Washington, D.C. Admission Act, describing it as a bid to restore equal citizenship to the residents of the nation’s capital and rectify a historic injustice.

Norton (D-D.C.) told colleagues before the 216-208 party-line vote that they had a “moral obligation” to pass the bill.  “In this Congress, with Democrats controlling the House, the Senate and the White House, D.C. statehood is within reach for the first time in history,” she said.

But as I said weeks ago, this ain’t happenin’, especially with the Senate filibuster requiring the support of 60 senators to advance legislation.  Plus in the 50-50 Senate, not even all Senate Democrats have backed the bill as the clock ticks toward the 2022 midterm election.

The House passed the statehood bill for the first time last year, also without any Republican votes.

--The Senate did overwhelmingly pass legislation Thursday designed to more forcefully investigate hate crimes, particularly those against Asian Americans after the March 16 shootings at three Atlanta spas and a wave of violence following the spread of the coronavirus from China.

The vote was 94 to 1.  Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was the lone no vote.

--Sec. of State Blinken said it will be “very hard” for the administration to meet a previous goal that would have raised the cap to 62,500 refugee admissions this fiscal year.  In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Blinken added that while “it’s going to be very hard to meet the 62,000 (goal)…we’re going to be revisiting this over the coming weeks.”

An outrageous blunder on the part of the president.  Too many Americans no doubt equate this with the “crisis” at the southern border and it couldn’t be further from the truth.  These are people who have been doing the right thing for years in applying to come to the United States, legally, and tens of thousands of them have been screwed, after they were initially screwed over by President Trump.

The Pandemic

The renewed surge in Covid-19 infections is threatening to further divide the world economy between the rich and poor, potentially damaging overall global growth if the fresh outbreaks spread or if key sources of demand falter.

More people were diagnosed with Covid-19 last week than any other since the pandemic began.  The World Health Organization this week warned that new infections are increasing everywhere except Europe, led by rocketing numbers in India with cases also rising in Argentina, Turkey and Brazil.

That’s casting a shadow over a previously vigorous global economic rebound given that failure to control the virus or get vaccines distributed evenly risks driving new mutations, first in emerging markets and then on to developed nations that had been beating the pandemic back.

Even if that doesn’t happen, a two-speed recovery will restrain even inoculated countries by limiting foreign demand for their goods and destabilizing supply chains.

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…3,098,883
USA…585,075
Brazil…386,623
Mexico…214,095
India…189,549
UK…127,385
Italy…118,699
Russia…107,501
France…102,496
Germany…81,936
Spain…77,591
Colombia…70,446
Iran…68,746
Poland…64,707
Argentina…61,176
Peru…59,012
South Africa…54,066
Indonesia…44,346
Ukraine…41,700
Turkey…37,672
Czechia…28,863
Romania…27,113
Hungary…26,208
Chile…25,641
Belgium…23,909
Canada…23,883

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 310; Mon. 488; Tues. 883; Wed. 876; Thurs. 896; Fri. 790.

Covid Bytes

--The European Medicines Agency said a warning about unusual blood clots may be added to Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine after finding a possible link to “very rare” cases of these events, but noted the overall benefit-risk profile of the vaccine remains positive.

Meanwhile, the European Union has exercised an option to acquire an additional 100 million doses of the Covid vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech.  The additional order brings the total number of doses to be delivered to the EU to 600 million.

--And tonight, a federal advisory committee recommended that use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine resume in the U.S., while J&J and regulators add language to the product label warning of the potential for a rare blood-clot condition.

The panel voted 10 to 4, with one abstention, in favor of lifting the recommended pause and restarting use among all adults.

“The benefits clearly outweigh the risks, though there are differences in age groups, and particularly for women less than 50 years of age,” said Dr. Katherine Poehling, a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that made the recommendation, who is also a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Wake Forest School of Medicine.  Go Deacs!

Out of nearly 8 million people vaccinated before the U.S. suspended J&J’s shot, health officials uncovered 15 cases of a highly unusual kind of blood clot, three of them fatal. All were women, most younger than 50.

The pause was appropriate, and I would understand if younger women are a bit cautious, but as alluded to above, this is a critical arrow in the quiver, especially in places like Africa and Latin America.

--Louisiana has stopped asking the federal government for its full allotment of Covid-19 vaccines.  About three-quarters of Kansas counties have turned down new shipments of the vaccine at least once over the past month. And in Mississippi, officials asked the federal government to ship vials in smaller packages so they don’t go to waste.

As the supply of vaccine doses in the U.S. outpaces demand, some places around the country are finding there’s such little interest in the shots, they need to turn down shipments.

“It is kind of stalling.  Some people just don’t want it,” said Stacey Hileman, a nurse with the health department in rural Kansas’ Decatur County, where less than a third of the county’s 2,900 residents have received at least one vaccine dose.

The dwindling demand for vaccines illustrates the challenge that the U.S. faces in trying to conquer the pandemic while at the same time dealing with the optics of tens of thousands of doses sitting on shelves when countries like India and Brazil are in the midst of full-blown emergencies.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 68% of Americans plan to or already have gotten a Covid vaccine but more than one-quarter of those surveyed say they don’t plan to get the vaccine.

According to the latest Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index, 20% say they are not at all likely to get the vaccine, as soon as it’s available to them, a number that has remained steady since early January.

--So as noted above, India reported 332,730 new cases on Thursday, and is hitting records nearly every day (345,000 today!), as the already fragile health system is now at the breaking point with understaffed hospitals overflowing with patients and critically short of supplies.

The situation is literally getting worse by the day with hospitals taking to social media pleading with the government to replenish their oxygen supplies and threatening to stop fresh admissions of patients.

Meanwhile, a fire killed 14 Covid-19 patients in a hospital in western India today.

--Last week I incorrectly wrote that the Chilean health authorities had found that the Chinese Covid vaccine employed there was 67% effective, but that is 67% after the second dose.  It is only 16% effective after one dose.  You can now see why folks in the UAE who use the Sinopharm vaccine are looking at three doses.

Chile is leading the Western Hemisphere in vaccinations per capita, but it is still seeing daily cases as high as 8,000…basically record heights.  Draw your own conclusions.

--Israel has done an outstanding job on the vaccine front, with a majority of high-risk people inoculated, but the nation is concerned over the impact of new variants, with the first cases of the Indian variant being detected.  Israel is slated to open its airports to foreign tourists beginning May 23.

--With several states lifting mask mandates and Covid-19 vaccination rates on the rise, travelers are starting to ask when they will be able to fly without wearing a mask.

Flight attendants are saying, ‘not yet.’

The federal mask mandate on planes and in airports, signed by President Biden in January and due to expire May 11, should be extended through September, the president of the largest flight attendants union said during a U.S. Senate subcommittee meeting Wednesday.

“We are still in the middle of the crisis,” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants- CWA, said ruing a congressional hearing.  “I do think it’s important that we recognize that and stay the course here with the mask policies, with all of our due diligence (and) with the efforts to get the vaccine out to everyone.”

Wall Street and the Economy

After a long winning streak it was only natural that stocks would take a little pause and President Biden’s proposal to raise taxes, as leaked to Bloomberg, was the excuse for a small selloff on Thursday, though the market rallied back Friday.  In the end, the major indices registered small losses on the week.

The leakers told Bloomberg that Biden will tax capital gains for taxpayers who earn more than $1 million at the personal income tax rate, which he also wants to raise to 39.6% from 37%. Add the 3.8% ObamaCare tax on investment, and you get to 43.4%.  As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, that’s merely the federal rate.  Add 13.3 % in California and 11.85% in New York (plus 3.88% in New York City), which also tax capital gains as regular income, and you are heading toward the 60% rate range.

But the likelihood of this kind of plan actually passing is nil, at least in this form and with today’s makeup in the Senate.  We don’t have any other details, and we’ll see just how far it gets in negotiations between the two sides.

The Biden news was zero surprise – it’s the same plan as laid out during the presidential campaign.

That said, stocks that have had the biggest gains would suffer some in the short-term. 

As Goldman Sachs research noted, when capital gains were last raised under the Obama administration, in 2013, the wealthiest 1% “unsurprisingly” were the biggest stock sellers, Goldman said.  Still, if investors were penalized by that hike, it didn’t show in overall returns.  The S&P 500 rose 30% that year, its best gain in almost a decade.

Meanwhile, it was a light week on the data front.  March existing home sales came in a little less than expected at a 6.01 million annualized rate.

But the median price rose to $329,100, a new high according to the National Association of Realtors, a huge gain of 17.2% from a year earlier, marking the biggest price increase in NAR data going back to 1999.

It’s all about rising prices amid a scarcity of inventory that has left the housing market millions of homes short of buyer demand.  But that has led to sales slowing, down 3.7% in March from February, the second straight month of sales declines. 

Here is one telling factoid: The NAR said the typical home sold in March spent only 18 days on the market, the fastest pace on record.

Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, summed it up: “The softening sales activity is not due to demand going away. Demand remains strong.  It is the lack of inventory that is hindering the sales activity.”

March new home sales were strong, a better-than-expected 1.021 million annual pace, after an upwardly revised 846,000 rate in February.

The supply of homes available for sale was unchanged at 307,000, down 7% from a year ago.

We had good news on the jobless claims front as the figure fell to 547,000, the lowest point since the pandemic struck and an encouraging sign that layoffs are slowing on the strength of an improving job market.  The number is down sharply from a peak of 900,000 in early January.

On Tuesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged “a little higher” temporary inflation this year but said the central bank was committed to limiting any overshoot.  A majority of economists now believe the Fed will start tapering its monthly asset purchases program in the first quarter of next year.

There was no update from the Atlanta Fed and its GDPNow barometer for the first quarter, still 8.3%.

Europe and Asia

We had flash PMI readings for April in the eurozone (courtesy of IHS Markit), with the composite at 53.7 vs. 53.2 in March, a 9-month high (50 being the dividing line between growth and contraction).

Manufacturing was a record high at 63.3 (going back to 1997), with services at 50.3, an 8-mo. high.

Germany: manufacturing 66.4, services 50.1.
France: mfg. 59.2, services 50.4.

In the UK, the flash April reading on manufacturing was 60.7, a 321-mo. high, while services came in at 60.1, an 80-mo. high.

Chris Williamson / IHS Markit

“In a month during which virus containment measures were tightened in the face of further waves of infections, the eurozone economy showed encouraging strength.

“Although the service sector continued to be hard hit by lockdown measures, it has returned to growth as companies adjust to life with the virus and prepare for better times ahead.

“The manufacturing sector is booming.  Pent-up spending, restocking, investment in new machinery and growing optimism about the outlook have all helped fuel a further record surge in both output and new orders.

“The steep rise in demand for raw materials is continuing to lead to unprecedented supply chain delays, which are in turn driving up firms’ costs at the fastest rate for a decade. Consumer price inflation may well rise sharply in coming months as a result, though the extent of the rise will be dependent on the strength of demand and the supply situation, both of which remain highly uncertain at the moment.”

Separately, debt to GDP in the eurozone increased significantly in 2020 compared with 2019, now 98.0% for Q4 2020 vs. 83.9% the prior year, as released by Eurostat.

Germany 69.8%, France 115.7%, Italy 155.8%, Spain 120.0%, Netherlands 54.5% and *Greece 205.6%!

*But Greece got a ratings upgrade from Standard & Poor’s today, touting its improving budget picture.

Brexit: Unionists in Northern Ireland have united for a five-point plan to get rid of the Northern Ireland protocol, the post-Brexit arrangement which puts a de facto trade barrier for goods in the Irish Sea to prevent any need for a hardening of the Border on the island of Ireland.

First Minister Arlene Foster, responding to the European Commission’s claim that the protocol was the only way to protect the peace deal in the North, said the EC “either willfully misunderstands the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement or is misrepresenting it for its own ends.”

“There is a need for those in Europe, in London, in Dublin as well, to listen to the voices of those of us who will not have the protocol, because it is damaging the economy of Northern Ireland,” she said.

“But more than that, it is damaging our citizenship here in Northern Ireland as equal citizens of the United Kingdom, because we cannot partake in the internal market of the United Kingdom.”

--On a different topic, the European Union reached a tentative climate deal aimed at making the 27-nation bloc carbon-neutral by 2050, with negotiators from member states and the EU parliament agreeing on new emissions targets on the eve of the virtual summit hosted by President Biden.

“Our political commitment to becoming the first [carbon-neutral] continent by 2050 is now also a legal commitment. The climate law sets the EU on a green path for a generation,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday.

Under the provisional deal reached, the EU will also commit itself to an intermediate target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55%, compared to 1990 levels, by 2030.

Turning to Asia…nothing of import on the data front in China this week.

But some important economic releases in Japan. The flash April PMI reading for manufacturing was 54.2, with services still contracting, 48.3.

Consumer prices in Japan fell 0.1% on core in March from a year earlier, marking the eighth straight month of annual declines, as the pandemic weighs on household spending and the fragile economy.  But with robust global demand pushing up energy and raw material prices, Japan isn’t expected to slip back into prolonged deflation.

Speaking of robust demand, exports from Japan jumped 16.1% year-on-year in March, well ahead of consensus and the steepest growth in outbound shipments since November 2017.  Exports rose to most countries: China (37.2%), South Korea (111.2%), the U.S. (4.9%), Germany (11.3%) and Australia (28.7%), per the Ministry of Finance.

Imports rose 5.7% Y/Y last month, a 14-month high.

Industrial production in Japan, though, dropped 1.3% month-over-month in February, -2.0% Y/Y.

As for the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese government is seeking a “short and powerful” state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and two other prefectures, with restrictions to contain the coronavirus similar to those imposed last spring, a cabinet minister said on Friday.

Under the new state of emergency between April 25 to May 11 and including Kyoto and Hyogo, the government would ask restaurants, bars, and karaoke parlors serving alcohol to close, and big sporting events to be held without spectators.

The government must get the infection rate down, and administer a lot more vaccines than it currently has if there is to be any hope at holding the Games.  It’s on the verge of being ludicrous, the thought of doing so.

Street Bytes

--Negative news on the Covid front, in terms of rising global case levels, as well as talk of Biden’s tax plans, led to a drop in the major indices, though better-than-expected corporate earnings and solid news on the housing front minimized the declines.

The Dow Jones lost 0.7% to 34043, while the S&P 500 edged down 0.1% and Nasdaq fell 0.3%.

Next week, some major heavyweights report their earnings, including Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.03%  2-yr. 0.16%  10-yr. 1.56%  30-yr. 2.23%

Treasuries were unchanged on the week.

--The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday said 106 Boeing 737 MAX airplanes have been grounded worldwide by an electrical issue and said the U.S. planemaker is still working on a fix. Boeing disclosed an electrical power system issue on April 7 and recommended operators temporarily remove these airplanes from service.

The problem involved the electrical grounding – or connections designed to maintain safety in the event of a surge of voltage – inside a backup power control system.  The FAA said Thursday “subsequent analysis and testing showed the issue could involve additional systems.”

Boeing continues to develop a proposed fix, that must be approved by the FAA.

“FAA expects to issue an airworthiness directive mandating corrective action before further flights for all affected airplanes.”

The top three U.S. 737 MAX operators – Southwest, American and United – removed more than 60 jets from service following the notice from Boeing.

It just goes on and on for them with the MAX.  Boeing told us last week this was no biggie.

Earlier in the week, Boeing shares took a hit when it announced the board had extended the retirement age for CEO David Calhoun to 70 from 65 due to his contribution to the company’s progress amid the MAX crisis and the pandemic.

Calhoun, 64, has led the company since January 2020.

But what shareholders didn’t like to hear was the retirement of CFO Greg Smith, effective July 9.  He has served in this position since 2011.

--American Airlines said Thursday that it lost $1.25 billion in the first quarter and continued to slash costs, including delaying delivery of new jets as it waits for air travel to recover.

Chairman and CEO Doug Parker said the airline continues to see signs that demand for tickets is improving.

American said it burned through $27 billion in cash each day in the quarter, down from $30 million a day in the fourth quarter of 2020. The airline said it reduced 2021 costs by more than $1.3 billion, including a new round of voluntary buyouts that will result in 1,600 employees leaving the company.

Leisure travel within the U.S. has picked up recently, with about 1.4 million travelers going through airports each day this month. Still, that remains about 40% below the pre-pandemic pace of 2019.

With less traffic, American reached a deal with Boeing to delay delivery of 23 737 MAX jets until 2023 and 2024 and convert five of those to a larger version of the plane.  American expects to take 14 MAX jets over the next 12 months.

A year ago, when the pandemic was just starting to hit the U.S., American lost $2.24 billion.

Revenue was $4.01 billion, just shy of forecasts, and down 53% from $8.52 billion a year ago.

--Southwest Airlines is the first major U.S. airline to report a profit since the pandemic started, as federal payroll aid helped boost the company to net income of $116 million in the first quarter.

Without the federal money, Southwest would have lost $1 billion in the quarter.

Southwest echoed rivals in saying that demand for travel is continuing to improve.  The airline said Thursday that bookings for leisure trips within the United States have been rising each week since mid-February.

“While the pandemic is not over, we believe the worst is behind us, in terms of the severity of the negative impact on travel demand,” Chairman and CEO Gary Kelly said in a statement.

Southwest is benefiting more from the pickup in leisure travel because its biggest rivals – American, Delta and United – depend more on business travel and long-haul international flying, both of which remain deeply depressed.

Southwest posted revenue of $2.05 billion, down 52% from a year ago.

--United Airlines reported a Q1 adjusted net loss of $7.50 per share, compared with a $2.57 loss per share last year.  Revenue for the March quarter totaled $3.22 billion, down from $7.98 billion last year.

Q1 capacity was down 54% compared with Q1 2019.

Core cash burn was $9 million per day in the quarter, an improvement of $10 million per day compared with Q4.

Looking ahead, United expects total revenue per available seat mile to be down 20% compared with Q2 2019, and Q2 capacity to be down 45% compared with the same period.

But business and long-haul international demand remains as much as 70% below 2019 levels.  However, the company is moving to capitalize on pent-up demand for travel to countries where vaccinated travelers are welcome.

In fact, the company announced new international flights to Greece, Iceland and Croatia.  Having been to Iceland twice, if you haven’t, it is a terrific four-night destination.

--Delta Air Lines said it’s ordered more aircraft from Airbus by converting purchase rights into firm orders for 25 Airbus A321neo narrowbody planes while securing 25 additional purchase options.

As a result, Delta’s purchase commitment for the A321neo now consists of 125 firm orders and 100 purchase rights.

--TSA checkpoint travel data vs. 2019

4/22…60 percent vs. 2019 levels
4/21…52
4/20…49
4/18…67
4/17…64
4/16…60
4/15…57
4/14…50

*The post-pandemic passenger high of 1,580,785 travelers was set on April 2.

--Credit Suisse Group AG said it would issue new shares after losses from Archegos Capital Management wiped out a strong first quarter, highlighting the damage caused by the collapse of the investment firm.

The bank said it had only a small remaining exposure to Archegos as of Wednesday after selling 97% of its related positions, but lost another $655 million from the fund in the second quarter, adding to a $4.7 billion charge in the first quarter.

Switzerland’s financial regulator, Finma, said Thursday it has opened enforcement proceedings against the bank over how it handled the risks around Archegos.

Credit Suisse shares fell another 5% on the news of the capital raise. Its stock has sunk by around a third since the end of February even as bank shares in general have performed well thanks to economies rebounding from Covid-19 lockdowns.

--Ford Motor Co. is planning more downtime at five North American factories due to a global semiconductor shortage, further disrupting output of a popular sport-utility vehicle and the F-150 pickup truck, the company’s biggest moneymaker.

Ford said factories in Chicago, suburban Detroit and Kansas City, Mo., will be idled for an additional two weeks, extending the closures through May 14.  An SUV plant in Ontario will also take an extra week of downtime in early May.

Since early this year, the semiconductor shortage has forced global auto makers to intermittently cancel factory shifts and shuffle production schedules to divert chips to high-priority vehicles, primarily pickup trucks and larger SUVs that generate bigger profits.

Ford, though, has been forced to cancel weeks of production at its two F-150 plants, crimping supply of a model that generates the bulk of its global profit.

The automaker estimated in February that the disruption from the chip shortage could hurt operating profit by $1 billion to $2.5 billion this year.  An update is coming next week when it reports first-quarter earnings.

--Mitsubishi Motors said it would cut production by as many as 16,000 cars globally next month due to the chip shortage.

--Two U.S. agencies on Monday said they were investigating a Tesla crash in Texas on Saturday that left two dead and which local police said appeared to have occurred with no one in the driver’s seat.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates vehicle safety, and the National Transportation Safety Board both said they would investigate the crash.

Just hours before, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted to his more than 50 million followers, “Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle.”

The crash occurred as scrutiny is increasing over Tesla’s semi-automated Autopilot driving system following recent crashes.  Autopilot was operating in at least three Tesla vehicles involved in fatal U.S. crashes since 2016.

In Saturday’s accident, the 2019 Tesla Model S was traveling at high speed near Houston when it failed to negotiate a curve and went off the road, crashing into a tree and bursting into flames.  After the fire was extinguished, authorities located two occupants in the vehicle, with one in the front passenger seat and the other in the back seat.

Tesla advises drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and pay attention while using Autopilot.

Elon Musk, after the crash, tweeted, “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled.”

Houston police said they will serve search warrants on Tesla to secure the data from the vehicle.

Let’s just say the victims were burned to a crisp as it also took forever to put out the fire.

Tesla is also dealing with a public relations debacle in China over an accident there.

Thursday, Consumer Reports said its engineers were able to operate a Tesla vehicle without anyone in the driver’s seat, but the system failed to send out a warning or indicate that the driver’s seat was empty.

Over several trips across a half-mile closed test track, the Model Y automatically steered along painted lane line, the magazine said.  “In our evaluation, the system not only failed to make sure the driver was paying attention, but it also couldn’t tell if there was a driver there at all,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports’ auto testing.  “Tesla is falling behind other automakers like GM and Ford that on models with advanced driver assist systems, use technology to make sure the driver is looking at the road.” [Emphasis mine.]

Yes, this last statement is the most powerful of the week.  Tesla’s competitors are gaining speed quickly…maybe not today in terms of sales, but certainly in the future.  As in, if you own Tesla shares, and their delivery numbers will no doubt be pretty good for a while, be very careful.

--Shares in Netflix fell about 7.5% on Wednesday after the company reported its rapid subscriber growth is slowing far faster than anticipated as people who have been cooped at home during the pandemic are able to get out and do other things again.

The video-streaming service added 4 million more worldwide subscribers from January through March, its smallest gain during that three-month period in four years.

The performance reported after the close of the market on Tuesday was about 2 million fewer subscribers than both management and analysts had predicted Netflix would add during the first quarter.

It marked a huge comedown from the same time last year when Netflix added nearly 16 million subscribers. That came just as governments around the world imposed lockdowns that created a huge captive audience for the leading video-streaming service.

Signaling that the trend is continuing, Netflix forecast an increase of just 1 million worldwide subscribers in the current April-June period, down from an increase of 10 million subscribers at the same time last year.

Netflix earned $1.71 billion, more than doubling from a year ago.  Revenue climbed 24% to $7.16 billion.

The inevitable slowdown in subscriber growth has been widely telegraphed by Netflix’s management in repeated reminders that its gains were a pandemic-driven anomaly.  The company also faces increasingly stiff competition from a variety of new streaming services, namely Disney+, which already has 100 million subscribers, compared with Netflix’s 207.6 million.

And you have HBO Max, Paramount+, AppleTV+, plus old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu.

The big question is how big this year’s decline will be from last year’s full-year increase of 37 million worldwide subscribers, by far the biggest since Netflix expanded its DVD-by-rental service into video streaming 14 years ago.

Management doesn’t make full-year growth projections. 

A large portion of Netflix’s programming has been financed by debt, but the company no longer expects to have to borrow to foot those bills.  What’s more, Netflix is now bringing in more cash than it is burning, something it has rarely done in the past.

--Speaking of Netflix’ competition, AT&T added 2.7 million new customers to HBO and HBO Max in the first quarter, a boost for its new streaming effort in this crowded field.

The company’s WarnerMedia division, which includes HBO, recorded $8.5 billion in revenue for the period, a 9.8 percent jump over last year, when theater sales and advertising revenue plummeted during the pandemic.

The company also plans a global expansion of HBO Max starting in June, along with a lower-cost version of the service that will include commercials.  The company has about 19.7 million HBO customers overseas who it hopes to convert into HBO Max subscribers.

--IBM returned to sales growth in the first quarter after a year of declines and beat Wall Street targets on Monday, boosted by its bets in the high-margin cloud computing business.  Shares of the Dow component, which have gained nearly 6% so far this year, were up on the news.

Finance chief James Kavanaugh said cloud spending by clients in retail, manufacturing and travel industries in the United States was picking up after the initial pandemic-driven slump.  Sales from its cloud computing services jumped 21% to $6.5 billion in the quarter.

The 109-year-old firm is preparing to split itself into two public companies, with the namesake firm narrowing its focus on the co-called hybrid cloud, where it sees a $1 trillion market opportunity.

Big Blue recorded a sales decline in global technology services, its largest unit, but that was offset by a rise in revenue in the remaining three units, including surprise growth in the business that hosts mainframe computers.

Mainframe saw strong traction from the financial services industry, where its banking clients shopped for more capacity as trading volumes soared during the retail trading frenzy.

Total revenue rose nearly 1% to $17.73 billion in the quarter, besting estimates.  Net income fell to $955 million, from $1.18 billion a year earlier.

--Intel Corp. on Thursday raised its annual sales outlook but fell short of analyst expectations for first-quarter data center chip sales and its second-quarter profit forecast, signaling a turbulent road ahead as the company aims to catch up to rivals with faster chips. 

Intel fumbled new manufacturing technology in recent years, causing it to fall behind rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Nvidia Corp. in the race to make faster, smaller chips.

Patrick Gelsinger, who returned to Intel as its chief executive this year, said the chipmaker has begun to resolve its manufacturing problems, and in March announced a major expansion plan to build new factories in the United States and Europe.

Intel said it expects 2021 adjusted revenue and profits of $72.5 billion and $4.60 per share.  The chipmaker forecast second-quarter adjusted revenue and profits of $17.8 billion and $1.05 per share.

The company added shortfalls of other third-party components needed to build complete computers could hold back its sales this year.

--Apple Inc. rolled out the first redesign of its flagship desktop iMac computer in almost a decade, showcasing its latest machine with in-house designed chips instead of those made by Intel Corp.

At a Tuesday product event, the company also launched a new accessory called AirTag that will find physical items like bags, wallets and keys.  And it unveiled an upgraded Apple TV set-top box with a faster processor and revamped remote control, giving its living room strategy a boost as Amazon.com Inc., Google and Roku Inc. continue to launch competing devices.

The new iMacs come in a new 24-inch screen size, up from 21.5-inches on the previous entry-level model.  They are far thinner than their predecessors and have slimmer edges.  They start at $1,299 compared with $1,099 for the previous model with Intel chips.  Apple last redesigned the iMac in 2012.  It didn’t announce upgrades for its more powerful iMac models.

--Foxconn is scaling back plans for a liquid-crystal-display plant in Wisconsin, saying it expects to invest a fraction of the $10 billion promised nearly four years ago, according to a new contract with the state.

The electronics maker negotiated a new economic development deal on Tuesday that looks far different than the much-ballyhooed package announced in the summer of 2017.

Foxconn, the world’s biggest electronics contract manufacturer, now plans to invest as much as $672 million and create 1,454 jobs by the year 2025 to qualify for $80 million in incentives,

Previously, the company agreed to invest as much as $10 billion and hire 13,000 people by the year 2032 to qualify for $2.85 billion in incentives.

At the time of the 2017 deal, then-President Trump and Republican Gov. Scott Walker were touting the deal as a pillar of the administration’s plan to boost U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Foxconn, a supplier of screens for Apple Inc., has previously said fast-changing LCD technology complicated plans in Wisconsin.

Last month, Foxconn Chairman Young Liu said it might make sense to manufacture electric cars at the Wisconsin site, in light of the company’s recent agreement with Los Angeles-based electric-vehicle startup Fisker Inc.

The cleared, prepped site is bigger than Central Park, with nearly 100 homes and small farms having been bulldozed to make way for Foxconn.  But today, the site consists of a few shell buildings and a glass-and-steel dome.

--Johnson & Johnson’s investors and the general public have been focused lately on the company’s Covid-19 vaccine and its issues, but the vaccine isn’t material to the company’s finances.

The company on Tuesday reported first-quarter sales of $22.3 billion and adjusted earnings of $2.59 a share, up 8% and 12.5%, respectively, from a year earlier.  J&J booked $100 million of Covid-19 vaccine sales in the quarter, less than 1% of its total revenue.  The industry bellwether also boosted its 2021 sales and profit forecast and increased its dividend.

Medical-device revenue reached $6.6 billion in the quarter, good for 11% growth from the same period a year earlier, when elective surgical procedures ground to a halt in key markets like the U.S. and China.

Sales in the pharmaceutical unit reached $12.2 billion, up nearly 10% from a year ago, thanks to strong sales of cancer drugs like Darzalex and Imbruvica.

--Procter & Gamble Co. reported fiscal Q3 earnings of $1.26 per share, up from $1.12 a year earlier and ahead of expectations.

Net sales were $18.11 billion for the quarter ended March 31, up from $17.21 billion a year ago, also beating the Street.

Looking ahead, the company said it expects to grow its core EPS by 8% to 10% and its organic sales (not including from mergers or acquisitions, or currency moves) by 5% to 6%.

The company announced it “has started the process of implementing price increases on its baby care, feminine care and adult incontinence product categories in the United States to offset a portion of the impact of rising commodity costs,” the maker of Pampers said.  “The exact amount of the price increases will vary by brand and sub-brand in the range of mid-to-high single digit percentages and will go into effect in mid-September.”

--Coca-Cola reported decent quarterly earnings, saying its organic sales rose 6% from a year earlier in the quarter ended April 2.  However, this was against a miserable quarter in 2020 when the pandemic was spreading.   The resulting lockdowns punished Coca-Cola as they continue to curtail out-of-home sales in places such as restaurants and sporting venues.

For all of 2021, the company left its prior forecast unchanged for high-single-digit organic revenue growth.  Yet CEO James Quincey warned on an analyst call Monday not to expect a straight-line recovery, noting that confirmed Covid cases globally hit a high last week.  Yes, the U.S. and UK are improving rapidly in terms of vaccine progress, but as Quincey said, “you’ve got countries that are going in the exact opposite direction with cases shooting up and more levels of lockdowns.”

Brazil and India are huge markets for Coke.

--Chipotle Mexican Grill reported adjusted earnings of $5.36 for the first quarter, up from $3.08 a year earlier, beating consensus estimates of $4.91.

Revenue increased to $1.74 billion from $1.41 billion.  That missed the projection of analysts polled by Capital IQ of $1.75 billion, respectively.

Comparable restaurant sales increased 17.2%, slightly below estimates.  Digital sales grew 133.9% and accounted for 50.1% of sales.

Chipotle is not issuing sales growth guidance for 2021 due to uncertainty over the pandemic.  It does expect to open 200 new restaurants.

--Bitcoin hit a record $64,869 two weeks ago and then over the weekend, slid precipitously to the $54-55,000 range, and then down to about $48,000 on the Biden cap gains tax talk, before rising back above $50,000 as I write.  [As this always trades, there’s no such thing as a closing price.]

Shares in Coindesk, a proxy for bitcoin, which finished last week at $342 following its IPO, closed today at $293.

Foreign Affairs

Iran: The regime has installed extra advanced centrifuges at its underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and plans to add even more, a report by the UN atomic watchdog on Wednesday showed, deepening Iran’s breaches of its nuclear deal with major powers.

“On 21 April 2021, the Agency verified at FEP that: …six cascades of up to 1,044 IR-2m centrifuges; and two cascades of up to 348 IR-4 centrifuges…were installed, of which a number were being used,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency report to member states, referring to the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz.

Russia’s envoy to the Iran nuclear talks said the parties had agreed to pause negotiations to consult with their capitals before resuming next week.

China’s envoy said a drafting process on a final document had started.

Iran said talks were moving forward despite difficulties but warned Tehran would stop the negotiations if faced with “unreasonable demands” or time wasting.

A European Union official said some headway has been made, but much more work is needed.

Meanwhile, major questions remain as to the effectiveness of Israel’s none-too-secret attack on Natanz on April 11. It’s assumed Mossad carried it out and sources told the Jerusalem Post that the incident set back Tehran’s nuclear program nine months.

But then Iran, after admitting it lost the use of thousands of centrifuges, days later said it had made a major jump in uranium enrichment to the 60% level.  And the IAEA confirmed later this was the case, using the new, advanced centrifuges that were not apparently among those knocked out.

Afghanistan: A leading U.S. general voiced “grave doubts” on Tuesday about the Taliban’s reliability as a negotiating partner for U.S. and Afghan diplomats following the U.S. military’s withdrawal.  Marine General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, also suggested it was still unclear how exactly the United States would detect and act on any threats from al Qaeda or Islamic State that emerge after the pullout, saying military planners were crafting options.  But the United States has not struck military basing agreements with Afghanistan’s neighbors and is even still working on a diplomatic agreement governing security forces who stay at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, McKenzie said.

Taken together, McKenzie’s testimony to the House Armed Services Committee underscores the uncertainties facing the Pentagon as it carries out President Biden’s orders for all U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11.  The drawdown is due to begin by May 1.

McKenzie said the U.S. did not have an agreement with the Taliban that would guarantee that the insurgents do not attack U.S. forces after May 1, but that the military was prepared in case they did.

McKenzie said that most contractors and all U.S. contractors would leave Afghanistan with U.S. forces.  But there are thousands of internationally-financed contractors supporting Afghan forces who might remain, at least for a period.

Sunday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked on Fox News about the risk of a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where Islamic State militants seized territory after U.S. troops withdrew in 2011.  That led then-President Obama to send troops back into Iraq.

Sullivan said Biden had no intention of sending American forces back to Afghanistan, but he added: “I can’t make any guarantees about what will happen inside the country. No one can.”

Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost control of the Knesset and may soon also lose the Prime Minister’s Office, after the anti-Netanyahu bloc defeated him in a key vote in the parliament on Monday.

Netanyahu’s opponents succeeded in passing their proposal for control over the powerful Knesset Arrangements Committee, which runs the Knesset until a government is formed, thanks to the support of the Ra’am (United Arab List) Party.

Netanyahu, in classic vengeful fashion, then attacked, mocked and besmirched his onetime former protégé, Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, who could become the next prime minister.

The only way for Netanyahu to remain prime minister is to successfully sabotage upcoming coalition talks between Bennett and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid.

Syria: Israel and Syria exchanged missile attacks early Thursday after Damascus launched an advanced surface-to-air missile that landed all the way in the Negev Desert, near Dimona, Israel’s top-secret nuclear reactor.  The IDF’s attempt to intercept the missile, however, failed.  There was no damage.  Israel then retaliated against the missile launcher and air-defense systems in Syria.

Earlier, Russia unleashed airstrikes that it said killed as many as 200 militants in central Syria amid an intensifying assault by Islamic State insurgents that threatens the Syrian government’s access to oil and heightens the risks for its foreign backers.

From hideouts in the desert in central and easter Syria, ISIS fighters have extended their reach over the past year, striking major highways across the country, attacking oil convoys, assassinating Syrian military commanders and killing a Russian major general in a roadside bombing last April.

China/Taiwan: Japanese Prime Minster Yoshihide Suga has emphasized that, despite a reference to Taiwan in a joint statement released after his recent meeting with President Biden, there is no possibility of Japanese forces being committed to any military contingency surrounding Taiwan.

In response to a question from an opposition politician in the Diet on Tuesday about the details of Japan’s commitment to Taiwan, Suga replied that the statement “does not presuppose military involvement at all.”

Analysts say Japan’s constitution would block the military from taking part in combat in the event China attempted to take Taiwan by force, although Japan could provide a range of logistical and rear-echelon support to the United States.

Biden and Suga called for “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the first reference to Taiwan – which Beijing claims as its territory – in a joint statement in more than 50 years.  They also said they would counter China’s “intimidation” in the Asia-Pacific region.

China accused Japan and the U.S. of sowing division and said the two countries were inciting “group confrontation.”  On the weekend, the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command, which oversees the Taiwan Strait, again deployed dozens of H6K strategic bombers in a nine-hour live-fire drill, according to state television.

Separately, President Xi Jinping said no nation should dictate global rules or interfere in other countries, as Beijing continued to signal its unhappiness over what it sees as growing international meddling in its affairs.

Without naming any country, Xi made his remarks by video link to more than 2,000 officials and business executives attending the annual Boao Forum for Asia in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan.

“The destiny and future of the world should be decided by all nations, and rules set up just by one or several countries should not be imposed on others,” Xi said.  “The whole world should not be led by unilateralism of individual countries.

“Equality, mutual respect and trust should be at the forefront when countries are dealing with each other.  It is unpopular to arrogantly instruct others and interfere in internal affairs.”

Britain’s parliament called on Wednesday for the government to take action to end what lawmakers described as genocide in China’s Xinjiang region, stepping up pressure on ministers to go further in their criticism of Beijing.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government again steered clear of declaring genocide over what it says are “industrial-scale” human rights abuses against the mainly Muslim Uighur community in Xinjiang.

The Chinese embassy in the UK condemned the parliament’s move, calling on Britain to take concrete steps to respect China’s core interests and “immediately right its wrong moves.”

North Korea: China’s exports to North Korea in March rose to a six-month high, with outbound shipments to its neighbor that month nearly 400 times more than January-February combined, in a sign of easing border restrictions imposed due to Covid-19.

China exported $12.978 million of goods to North Korea in March after a combined $33,000 in the first two months.

Early last year, North Korea banned almost all cross-border travel.

Russia/Ukraine: Doctors of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged him to immediately end his hunger strike, warning that otherwise he could die.  In a statement, the five said they have been shown the results of his medical tests conducted Tuesday, and they offered, “If the hunger strike continues even for a minimal amount of time, unfortunately, we will simply have no-one to treat soon.”

So today, Navalny announced he is ending the strike after 24 days of refusing food in jail.

Navalny had begun refusing food on March 31 to demand better medical care.

More than 1,500 people were arrested in a number of cities including Moscow, as thousands had rallied on Wednesday demanding Navalny be freed.

But it seems the crowds were relatively light, which is a sign of resignation.

Meanwhile, on the Ukrainian border, there is a lot of confusion at week’s end.  Russia’s Defense Ministry ordered some of its troops to begin withdrawing from Crimea in a move that appeared to be an attempt to de-escalate tensions with Kyiv, the United States and NATO.  But Russia still has tens of thousands of troops in the region and Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned adversaries that Moscow would deliver a swift and harsh response to any foreign threat that crossed its “red lines.”

Western officials estimate Russia has between 80,000 and 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border, larger than the force the Russians deployed when they seized Crimea and sent troops into eastern Ukraine.

President Biden and NATO have been calling on Russia to dial down tensions.

Editorial / The Economist

“Mr. Putin is weaker than he looks, but that makes him dangerous.  His previous Ukrainian adventures came when the Russian economy was in trouble and his polls needed a boost. Today, his personal polls are sliding and barely a quarter of Russians support his party.  Protests against Mr. Navalny’s arrest in January were the largest in a decade.  And events in Belarus worry Mr. Putin: Mr. Lukashenko has been so weakened by protests that he now depends on Russian support to stay in power.  If something similar were to happen to Mr. Putin, he has no one to turn to.  Facing protests at home, he may lash out abroad, in Ukraine, Belarus or elsewhere.

“All this poses a challenge for President Joe Biden and his allies. When deciding how to deter Mr. Putin, the West should be realistic.  No one wants war with a nuclear power, and sanctions are often ineffective.  They rarely work if they are unilateral, or their aim is too ambitious.  Even the strictest embargoes have failed to dislodge lesser tyrants in Cuba and Venezuela.  Russia has fashioned a siege economy, inward-looking and stagnant but hard for outsiders to throttle.  Talk of an embargo on Russian oil and gas exports, meanwhile, is naïve.  The world must one day find alternatives to fossil fuels, but suddenly shutting off a supplier as big as Saudi Arabia would cause global economic tremors – so it won’t happen….

“Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Biden sees Mr. Putin clearly. Rather than embracing him, he has called him a killer.  But he also keeps communications open.  He has suggested a summit. That would be a mistake if it merely boosts Mr. Putin’s prestige, but not if it de-escalates military tensions and signals resolve.  The diplomatic spadework that precedes it will be crucial.  Fortunately, Mr. Biden has hired plenty of Russia experts, and actually listens to them.

“In the end it will not be outsiders who decide Russia’s future.  The long, hard task of creating an alternative to Mr. Putin’s misrule can be performed only by Russians themselves.  Meanwhile, democracies should lend Russian democrats their moral support, just as they did in the Soviet era.  Mr. Biden should press hard for Mr. Navalny to be released, immediately and unharmed.  The world needs dissidents like him to hold the Kremlin to account.  Without such checks, Russia will remain a thuggish kleptocracy, and its neighbors will never be safe.”

On a different matter, Russia and Czech Republic (Czechia) are in the midst of a major spat.  Czechia expelled 18 Russian diplomats, suspected of being intelligence operatives involved in an explosion at a Czech arms depot in 2014 which killed two people.

Two Russians suspected of carrying out a nerve agent attack in the UK in 2018 are now also being linked to the blast.

Russia was furious, the foreign ministry calling the Czech decision “unprecedented” and a “hostile act,” so the Kremlin expelled 20 Czech diplomats.

Chad: Thousands of people gathered in Chad’s capital N’Djamena on Friday for the state funeral of President Idriss Deby, whose death this week while leading his troops against a rebel offensive has thrown his country into crisis.

Mourners included President Emmanuel Macron of France, which counted on the long-ruling strongman as a lynchpin in the war against Islamist militants, and a host of African presidents and prime ministers.

Rebel forces said their command center was bombed on Wednesday in an attempt to kill their own leader.

The rebels swept out of their base in Libya and claim they are less than 200 miles from the capital.  Macron met with the military transition council which has pledged a military-civilian transition.  Deby’s 37-year-old son has taken power, but opposition leaders have condemned the takeover as a coup.

The late president’s 30-year rule was marked by repression, though he was an ally of the West and his death has raised concerns that more turmoil and uncertainty will hamper the fight against Islamist militants who are spreading across Africa.

Turkey/Armenia: President Biden is expected to formally recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War One as an act of genocide tomorrow, a move likely to infuriate Ankara and further strain already frayed ties between the two NATO allies.

The move would be largely symbolic but would mean breaking away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House and come at a time when Ankara and Washington are already at loggerheads over a string of issues.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but contests the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

For decades, measures recognizing the Armenian genocide stalled in Congress and U.S. presidents have refrained from calling it that, stymied by concerns about relations with Turkey.

Turkish President Erdogan has yet to speak to Biden since he became president.  The administration has stepped up pressure on Turkey by frequently expressing its discontent over Ankara’s human rights track record, and the gap between the two sides over a host of issues including Turkey’s purchase of Russian weapons systems and policy differences in Syria remains.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Rasmussen: 52% approve of President Biden’s job performance, 46% disapprove (Apr. 23).

I was about to say I’ve been waiting for a Gallup update and tonight it was released. Taken over April 1-21, 57% approve of Biden’s performance, 40% disapprove, an improvement from the last 54-42 split (Mar. 1-15).  58% of independents approve.

--Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges in the May 2020 death of George Floyd – convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter after kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest.

Special prosecutor Jerry Blackwell, in his rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument, saved his best for last because he considered it “the biggest shading of the truth” by Chauvin’s defense.

“You were told, for example, that Mr. Floyd died because his heart was too big.  You heard that testimony,” Blackwell said.

“Now having seen all the evidence, having heard all the evidence, you know the truth.  And the truth of the matter is – that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr. Chauvin’s heart was too small.”

With that, Blackwell ended the prosecution’s rebuttal to the defendant’s closing argument and stepped away from the microphone.

Chauvin will face sentencing in 8 weeks, with the maximum sentence being 40 years in prison, though as he has no criminal history, he would likely receive a 12 ½-year sentence for the top charge if the judge followed Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines.

Following the verdict, President Biden called for a “moment of significant change” to fight systemic racism in policing.

“No one should be above the law, and today’s verdict sends that message,” Biden said in a speech from the White House.  “But it’s not enough.  It can’t stop here.  In order to deliver real change and reform, we can and we must do more to reduce the likelihood that tragedies like this will ever happen again.”

Biden said his Justice Department is “fully committed to restoring trust” between law enforcement and communities.  He touted two of his nominees for high-ranking DOJ positions, whose confirmations many Republicans oppose.

He also pushed for the Senate’s passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act – named in Floyd’s honor – that seeks to bolster police accountability and prevent problem officers from moving from one department to another.  The bill, which cleared the House in March, would also end certain police practices that have been under scrutiny.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Many Americans are relieved that justice was done for Floyd, while others breathed a sigh of relief that there won’t be riots as some feared if there was even a partial acquittal.

“Our conclusion is that the jury and justice system performed better than political critics predicted or behaved themselves as they condoned violent protests and demanded a guilty verdict from afar.

“Most Americans saw at least some of the disturbing video of Floyd’s death while Mr. Chauvin and other officers restrained him beside a Minneapolis squad car.  In convicting Mr. Chauvin of second-degree murder, the jury determined that his actions substantially caused Floyd’s death.  They did not have to find that he did so intentionally, but rather that the death occurred in the course of a felony assault….

“Expert witnesses differed over the cause of Floyd’s death.  The police restraint was the most obvious culprit, but the defense pointed to Floyd’s severe heart disease and that he had recently consumed fentanyl and methamphetamines, which can interfere with cardiopulmonary function.  But police witnesses for the prosecution said Mr. Chauvin had violated standard police practice.

“The multiracial jury appeared to have little doubt about the facts and law, as it returned the verdicts after only 10 or so hours of deliberation.  The second-degree murder charge, the most severe, carries a maximum sentence of up to 40 years n prison.  Unless the verdict is overturned on appeal, the 45-year-old Mr Chauvin is likely to live behind bars for more than a decade.

“It would be nice to think all of this would prompt reflection among those who have exploited Floyd’s killing for political purposes. But it probably won’t.  Even after the verdict, commentators who applauded the jury gave last year’s riots in American cities the credit for inspiring it.

“Not the facts.  Not the law.  But lawless protests.  If a large faction of Americans really believe that only mayhem in the streets can guarantee justice in America, then this verdict will mean little and we are in for far more unrest ahead.

“On this point, President Biden has been little help, despite his inaugural pleas for unity and healing.  On Tuesday before the verdict, Mr. Biden said he was ‘praying’ for the jury to reach ‘the right verdict’ and that the evidence was ‘overwhelming.’  That’s an outrageous interference with the administration of justice. Though the jury was sequestered at the time, it’s possible word of his comments could have made it to the jury had their deliberations gone on. That could have been grounds for a mistrial….

“The case also isn’t over. Mr. Chauvin’s fellow arresting officers will go on trial later this year.  And Mr. Chauvin’s lawyers are sure to use the political atmospherics surrounding the case as grounds for appeal….

“As the cases move ahead, the politicians and media elites should be calming tempers, not inflaming them. The verdict showed that the legal system isn’t systemically racist, and that a police officer who exceeded his power can be found guilty.  The challenge as always is to let police defend the innocent and public order while punishing those who misuse their power.  American justice isn’t perfect, but it works.”

As an aside, it is interesting to go back to the original Minneapolis police statement in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, attributing it to “medical distress” while making no mention that the Black man had been pinned to the ground by Chauvin, or that he’d cried out that he couldn’t breathe.

--Meanwhile, the guilty verdict in the George Floyd case injected some momentum in efforts by the White House and Congress to overhaul policing practices.  The chief GOP negotiator on the issue is Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), who said Wednesday that his discussions with Democrats could wrap up in the “next week or two” as he sought avenues for compromise, particularly on the sensitive matter of whether officers can be sued for misconduct.

The legislation named for Floyd that has been endorsed by the White House would bar the use of chokeholds, ban most no-knock warrants and outlaw carotid holds – a policing tactic used to restrict blood flow to the brain – by federal law enforcement.  It would also create a national database to track police misconduct while making it easier for officers to be held both criminally and civilly liable.

The Republican version, written by Scott, addresses the same issues in different ways.

For example, it would withhold federal grants to state and local law enforcement agencies that do not proactively bar the practice of chokeholds, rather than banning them outright.  Most Republicans have said they support the legislation drafted by Scott, but they balk at dumping the “qualified immunity” standard, which they say allows police officers to do their job without the threat of potentially frivolous lawsuits.

Scott said this week that one potential compromise is holding liable police departments, rather than individual officers.

But influential Democrats want individual officers held accountable.

Police reform is one of the major topics in President Biden’s address to Congress next week.

--Among the dumb statements of the week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was skewered for saying in the aftermath of the Chauvin verdict, “Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice.”

‘Sacrificing your life’?  His life was violently taken, Madam Speaker.

--Fox News host Tucker Carlson dismissed the opinions of a New York City law enforcement veteran when the guest strayed from Carlson’s narrative following the conviction of Derek Chauvin.

Carlson’s interview of former New York City Deputy Sheriff Ed Gavin began with the host leading Gavin with the question “Who’s going to become a cop going forward, do you think?”

Gavin didn’t see the police officers as victims in the killing of George Floyd.

“Well, I think people will still become police officers,” Gavin said.  “This really is a learning experience for everyone.  Let’s face it, what we saw in that video was pure savagery.”

Gavin said that based on his experiences, the “emotionally disturbed” Floyd had been successfully contained – and more – during the “excessive” traffic stop that cost him his life.  Gavin also said he’d like to see more training for police.

“I’ve used force on literally over 500 people in my 21-year career in the New York City Department of Corrections, and in the New York City’s Sheriff’s Department,” Gavin said. “I’ve never had anybody go unconscious.  That was truly an excessive, unjustified use of force.”

Gavin suggested future measures to stop a repeat of what happened to Floyd, and at that, Carlson had had enough.

“How about enforce the law? Do we need to do that?” Carlson interrupted.

Then Carlson pivoted to his trademark story line that it’s Carlson and his viewers who are the real victims.

“Let’s say people are going through the windows at Macy’s and the cops are just standing there? Do they resign because obviously their honor is being violated?” Carlson asked.  “When do they start doing something about it and protecting everyone else, not just George Floyd.”

Gavin told Carlson that of course it’s important for police officers to protect everyone, but restated his point that Floyd was mistreated and suggested that cops become better educated on the risks connected with asphyxia during struggles.

“Well, yeah, but the guy that did it looks like he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison so I’m kind of worried about the rest of the country, which thanks to police inaction, in case you haven’t noticed, is, like, boarded up,” Carlson complained, then unleashing his maniacal cackle.

“So that’s more my concern.  But I appreciate it, Gavin, thank you,” Carlson added.

Gavin tried to further illustrate his point, but Carlson cut him off.

“Nope, done!” The next guest was a guy who penned a book titled “The War on Cops.”  [Brian Niemietz / New York Daily News]

--Capitol Police office Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes a day after he confronted rioters at the Jan. 6 insurrection, the District’s chief medical examiner has ruled.

The ruling, released Monday, makes it difficult for prosecutors to pursue homicide changes in the officer’s death.  Two men are accused of assaulting Sicknick by spraying a powerful chemical irritant at him during the siege.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Francisco J. Diaz, the medical examiner, said the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize.  Diaz also said there was no evidence of internal or external injuries.

Sicknick, who joined the Capitol Police in 2008, collapsed after he had returned to his office following the riot and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

The Capitol Police had previously said in a statement that Sicknick “was injured while physically engaging with protesters.”

Meanwhile, Congress’ pursuit of an independent investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection is facing long odds, as bipartisan resolve to hold the perpetrators and instigators accountable erodes, and Republicans face sustained pressure to disavow that it was supporters of former president Trump who attacked the Capitol.

Many rank-and-file Republicans have been forced to walk a political tightrope, as the former president still wields outsize influence in the GOP.  Look no further than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who blamed Trump for the attack but refused to vote to convict him.

--Paul Farhi / Washington Post

“Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s memoir and social critique, ‘Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage,’ soared to the top of the bestseller lists when it was published last year. The book helped raise the former Navy SEAL’s profile and burnished his credentials as a rising star among freshman congressmen.

“As it happens, Crenshaw and his publisher, Hachette Book Group, got a little help from the Texas Republican’s friends.

“The National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect GOP candidates to Congress, spent nearly $400,000 on bulk purchases of the book. The organization acquired 25,500 copies through two online booksellers, enough to fuel ‘Fortitude’s’ ascent up the bestseller lists. The NRCC said it gave away copies as incentives to donors, raising $1.5 million in the process.”

There is nothing wrong with this, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz crossed the line into illegal activity when he used campaign money to boost sales of his newest book.

A government watchdog organization, the Campaign Legal Center, filed complaints last week with the Federal Election Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee about the manner in which Cruz’s campaign aides went about bulk buying and promoting the senator’s latest volume, “One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Vote Can Change History,” published last fall.

The issue with the Cruz book is that he not only received an advance payment of $400,000 from his publisher but the contract calls for him to receive royalties of 15 percent on hardcover sales, and the law forbids members of Congress from receiving royalties on books purchased with donated funds.

--Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal

“We have been thinking about the Republican Party and how it can come back – worthily, constructively – after the splits and shatterings of recent years. The GOP is relatively strong in the states but holds neither the White House, House nor Senate and in presidential elections struggles to win the popular vote.  Entrenched power centers are arrayed against it, increasingly including corporate America. But parties have come back from worse.  The Democrats came back from being on the wrong side in the Civil War.

“Some thoughts here on Republicans and immigration.

“From Pew Research’s findings on U.S. immigrants, published in August 2020: America has more immigrants than any other nation on earth.  More than 40 million people living here were born in another country. According to the government’s 2020 Current Population Survey, when you combine immigrants and their U.S.-born children the number adds up to 85.7 million.  Pew estimates that most (77%) are here legally, including naturalized citizens.  Almost a quarter are not.

“Where are America’s immigrants from?  Twenty-five percent, the largest group, are from Mexico, according to Pew.  After that China at 6%, India just behind, the Philippines at 4%, el Salvador at 3%.

“America hasn’t had so many first- and second-generation Americans since the great European wave of the turn of the last century.  The political party that embraces this reality, that becomes part of it, will win the future….

“It’s my belief that the immigrants of America the past 40 years are a natural constituency of the Republican Party. When I say this to Republican political professionals they become excited or depressed.  The excited say yes, we made progress in the last election with Hispanics; if we could become more liberal on illegal immigration, we could start to clinch the deal. The depressed say no, Republicans can’t win them because we’re too tagged as the anti-immigrant party.

“To them I say when a whole class of people think you don’t like them, they are probably picking up a signal you don’t know you’re sending. Which leads us to Donald Trump, and the signal he did know he was sending.  In opposing illegal immigration he opposed – he insulted and denigrated – immigrants themselves.  His supporters didn’t mind because they recognized it as burn-your-bridges language: It meant he wouldn’t go to Washington and sign some big, lying, establishment-driven comprehensive reform like all the rest.

“What he said did a lot of damage and caused a lot of just resentment.  But he’s gone right now, and something new, day by day, is being built in his place….

“The approach of the Republican Party should be one not of distance and guilt but of affinity and identification.  Immigrants, legal and illegal, are tough.  They’ve often had hard lives.  They left everything, even the sound on the street of their old lives, to come to this different place.  “I made myself lonely for you” is something almost all of them can say to their children.

“No one who comes here from El Salvador really wants it to become El Salvador.  People don’t flee Nicaragua so America can turn into Nicaragua. This is where Republican policies come in.   There’s no reason to believe the bulk of immigrants to America the past 40 years want to tax people to death or see an economic system they risked so much to enter radically altered. They don’t want small businesses to be subject to the endless shakedowns of state and local government. They don’t want to defund the police, they depend on the police. The riots of 2020 would have shocked and repelled them, and may prove to have been a turning point.

“Identity politics is powerful but not as powerful in the long term as here’s-where-we-stand politics.  Republican officials ought to be going to America’s immigrants and saying: We might have had a rocky road but we are seeing the world the same way. The appeal must be to the brains and wisdom of their audience, not some patronizing babble on Republican Hispanic Voter Night….

“The Democratic Party is increasingly in thrall to a progressive left whose most impressive accomplishment has been communicating an air of its inevitable triumph.  Under their pressure Democrats will make a lot of mistakes. They already are.

“During the Bush immigration debates, when the base of the party rebelled against his comprehensive reform bill, a mostly unspoken accusation emanated from the president’s operatives. It was that the new Americans, including illegal immigrants, were kind of better than the existing American working class, harder-working.  This was situational snobbery: The operatives themselves had left the working class behind, but daily rubbed shoulders with newer Americans at home and at the club.  That snobbery helped break the party.

“But I’ll tell you what is true. We do have the best immigrants in the world.  I so want the Republican Party to know this, embrace it.  Embrace them.”

--Soaring carbon emissions this year are on track to reverse much of last year’s sharp reduction, as Covid-19 shut many of the world’s biggest economies. The International Energy Agency estimates emissions fell 5.8% in 2020, the first time emissions had dropped since 2015 and the steepest percentage decline since World War II.

But now they are climbing sharply again. The IEA, in a report published Tuesday, said emissions are expected to jump 4.8% this year, the biggest annual gain since 2010’s record-setting increase, when the world was bouncing back from the global financial crisis.

Strong economic recoveries in the U.S. and China are leading the way. Oil demand, for instance, while still expected to remain about 3% below 2019 levels this year, should exceed that level in 2023.

But the IEA forecast a net reduction of about 400 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions over 2020 and 2021.  It said net emissions fell 1.9 billion tons last year and, based on its projections, will rise 1.5 billion tons this year.

--You haven’t heard much about the sexual-harassment allegations against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo the last few weeks, and in a recent survey of New York voters by the Siena College Research Institute, 51% said the Democratic governor shouldn’t resign, while 37% of the voters said he should.  But dozens of federal and state officials have called him for him to step down.

A Siena poll released on March 15 showed that 35% thought the governor should resign and 50% didn’t.

But 57% of voters surveyed said they would prefer to vote for someone else in next year’s gubernatorial race, compared with 33% who said they would vote to re-elect Cuomo.

Cuomo’s overall job favorability rating, however, is the lowest ever, 40%, as measured by Siena. At this time last year, during the height of the pandemic, Cuomo’s favorability was 77%.

--Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who lost the most lopsided presidential election after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won, died Monday. He was 93.

Mondale followed the trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert Humphrey, from Minnesota politics to the U.S. Senate and the vice presidency, serving under Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

His own try for the White House, in 1984, came at the zenith of Ronald Reagan’s popularity.  Mondale’s selection of Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate made him the first major-party presidential nominee to put a woman on the ticket, but his declaration that he would raise taxes helped define the race.

On Election Day, he carried only his home state and the District of Columbia; a 525-13 electoral college landslide.

“I did my best,” Mondale said the day after the election, and blamed no one but himself.

In 2002, state and national Democrats looked to Mondale when Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., was killed in a plane crash less than two weeks before Election Day.  Mondale agreed to stand in for Wellstone, and early polls showed him with a lead over the Republican candidate, Norm Coleman, but the 53-year-old Coleman, emphasizing his youth and vigor over the 74-year-old Mondale, prevailed.

It didn’t help that at Wellstone’s memorial service it became very partisan, with thousands of Democrats booing Republican politicians in attendance, which polls showed turned off independents and cost Mondale votes.

Mondale said after, “The eulogizers were the ones who hurt the most.”

After his White House years, Mondale served from 1993-96 as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Japan, and did so effectively, gaining U.S. access to Japanese markets ranging from cars to cellphones.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar / New York Times

“On Monday night we lost my friend and mentor Walter Mondale, known to friends as Fritz.  In my home state of Minnesota we were proud to call Fritz our attorney general, our senator and our vice president….

“It was not just the decency he displayed on the local and national political stage that made him stand out.  It was the dignity he brought home with him in the wake of defeat.  He didn’t crawl under a desk or complain about his losses.

“Instead, with his characteristic humbleness and good humor, the man who had played a pivotal role in the Camp David peace accords between Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt would happily talk Mideast peace with a cashier at the grocery store.  He’d share stories from his time as ambassador to Japan with students at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.  And most important, he took on the mission of preparing the next generation of leaders for the next big decision by serving as a mentor to many.  And I know that when the jury verdict in the trial of George Floyd’s murder was read, Fritz Mondale was with us rooting for justice.

“My first job in politics was as a college intern in Vice President Mondale’s office in 1980 during his last year in office. I went to Washington with grandiose visions of writing big briefings on big issues.  Instead I was assigned to furniture inventory, which meant I had to write down the serial numbers of every lamp, table and chair provided by the government for the use of the vice president and his staff.

“As I like to remind students, I learned two things from that job; One, Walter Mondale was scrupulously honest.  Nothing was missing. Second, take your jobs seriously, even when they aren’t exactly what you planned.  Thanks to him, that was my first job in Washington.  And, again thanks to him, senator was my second….

“On the wall in the Carter Museum in Atlanta are Vice President Mondale’s words uttered shortly after their 1980 defeat, summing up their four years in office: ‘We told the truth.  We obeyed the law.  We kept the peace.’ I wrote those words down once on a piece of paper at the museum and slipped them in my purse. Through the Trump years, those words were my touchstone.

“We told the truth.  We obeyed the law.  We kept the peace.  That is the minimum we should expect from our public servants.  With Walter Mondale, we got that and so much more.

“He was a small-town boy, the son of a minister who rose to the second-highest office in the land, with a strong moral core that defined his every action.  He set a high bar for himself, and for his entire life he kept passing it and raising it, passing it and raising it.

“As our country’s political winds have whipped back and forth in every direction over the past decades, Walter Mondale remained true to his North Star compass of goodness and decency.  I can’t think of a better role model.”

--It is a bit unseemly that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is receiving a reported $2 million book deal, the size and timing creating bad optics for a court already in the political crosshairs.

There have been other Justices who received large advances, such as Justice Clarence Thomas ($1.5m for his 2007 memoir) and Justice Sonia Sotomayor ($1.175m for hers, published in 2013), but Barrett’s book comes unusually soon for a justice who joined the court only six months ago and only has two majority opinions to her name.

Federal law doesn’t preclude judges from being paid for writing books, but such a large advance raises appearance issues.

--Most of the 73 West Point cadets accused in the biggest cheating scandal in decades at the U.S. Military Academy are being required to repeat a year, and eight were expelled, academy officials said last weekend.

The cadets were accused of cheating on an online freshman calculus exam in May while students were studying remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic. An investigation was launched after instructors noticed irregularities in answers.  All but one were freshmen, or plebes, in a class of 1,200. The other was a sophomore.

Most of the cadets, 51, were “turned back” one full year after admitting to cheating, and two were turned back six months. Those cadets are under probation until graduation.

This was the largest cheating scandal at West Point since one in 1976 involving 153 upperclassmen who resigned or were expelled for cheating on an electrical engineering exam.

--A study in the scientific journal Nature Communications had some folks talking this week.  People aged 50 or 60 who regularly slept six hours or less each night were more likely than those who slept seven hours to be diagnosed with dementia.

Even after controlling for cardiac, metabolic and mental-health issues, the study researchers found that 50-year-olds who were sleeping six hours or less a night had a 22% higher risk of developing dementia later in life.  Sixty-year-olds were 37% more likely to develop the disorder. The comparisons were with people who slept for seven hours each night.

This is seen as a definitive study because a group of European researchers looked at survey data for nearly 8,000 adults in the U.K. over 25 years and linked the data with dementia diagnoses in electronic health records.

--Finally, how awesome was it to see NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter rising from the dusty red surface into the planet’s thin air on Monday, achieving the first powered flight on another planet.

It took three excruciating hours for the NASA team to learn whether the pre-programmed flight had succeeded 178 million miles away.

NASA had been aiming for a 40-second flight, and they learned the craft hit all its targets: spin-up, takeoff, hover, descent and landing.

To accomplish all that, the helicopter’s twin, counter-rotating rotor blades needed to spin at 2,500 revolutions per minute – five times faster than on Earth, due to the atmosphere being just 1 percent of the thickness of Earth’s.

And there was a second successful flight today. 

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

Thank you to all the healthcare workers and first responders, including the professionals at Atlantic Healthcare.

God bless America.

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Gold $1776
Oil $62.04

Returns for the week 4/19-4/23

Dow Jones  -0.7%  [34043]
S&P 500  -0.1%  [4180]
S&P MidCap  +0.9%
Russell 2000  +0.4%
Nasdaq  -0.3%  [14016]

Returns for the period 1/1/21-4/23/21

Dow Jones  +11.2%
S&P 500  +11.3%
S&P MidCap  +19.0%
Russell 2000  +15.0%
Nasdaq  +8.8%

Bulls 63.4
Bears 16.8…no update this week, I incorrectly had the ratio last time at 61.4/16.8.

Hang in there.  Mask up where appropriate…wash your hands.

Brian Trumbore

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