Week in Review

---

Week in Review

02/13/2021

For the week 2/8-2/12

[Posted 9:30 PM ET, Friday]

Note: StocksandNews has significant ongoing costs and your support is greatly appreciated.  Please click on the gofundme link or send a check to PO Box 990, New Providence, NJ 07974.

Edition 1,139

Trump Impeachment II

The second impeachment trial commenced Tuesday with Democratic impeachment managers laying out their argument for convicting Trump on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, while the former president’s legal team pushed back on the legality of holding a trial at all, arguing the Senate does not have the jurisdiction to try Trump since he is no longer in office.

So the Senate then voted 56-44 that the impeachment trial of Trump is constitutional on Tuesday, six Republicans siding with all the Democrats and independents.

Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.); Susan Collins (Maine); Lisa Murkowski (Alaska); Mitt Romney (Utah); Ben Sasse (Neb.); and Pat Toomey (Pa.).

The Democrats used a powerful 13-minute video containing clips from that day, from the president’s exhortation at a rally near the White House that his followers should go to the Capitol.

The video included footage of rioters breaking windows and chanting “stop the steal” as they disrupted the process to certify the 2020 presidential election results, falsely believing Trump’s Big Lie, that Joe Biden won due to widespread fraud.

The clips were followed by Trump’s words on social media, directing the rioters to “go home with love and in peace.”

“Senators, the president was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 13 for doing that.  You ask what a high crime and misdemeanor is under our Constitution?  That is a high crime and misdemeanor.  If that’s not an impeachable offense, then there is no such thing,” said House impeachment prosecutor Jamie Raskin.

Wednesday, House managers led a rapt Senate on a harrowing retelling of the terror of Jan. 6, sharing shocking new video and video recordings of rioters declaring their intent to harm then-Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials.

House manager Rep. Joe Neguse said: “We humbly, humbly ask you to convict President Trump for the crime for which he is overwhelmingly guilty of.  Because if you don’t, if we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse, if we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again?”

Rep. Jamie Raskin closed the House managers’ presentation Thursday with a list of questions he would have asked Trump if the former president had accepted the invitation to testify.

“Why did President Trump not tell his supporters to stop the attack on the Capitol as soon as he learned of it?”

“Why did President Trump do nothing to stop the attack for at least two hours after the attack began?”

“As our constitutional commander in chief, why did he do nothing to send help to our overwhelmed, besieged law enforcement officers for at least two hours on January 6th after the attack began?”

“Why did President Trump not at any point that day condemn the violent insurrection and the insurrectionists?”

Raskin also posed a general legal question to Trump’s lawyers, but it was clearly intended for the senators to also ponder.

“If a president did incite a violent insurrection against our government, as of course we allege and think we’ve proven in this case, but just in general, if a president incited a violent insurrection against our government, would that be a high crime and misdemeanor?  Can we all agree at least on that?”

Then, speaking directly to the senators, Raskin implored them, when deciding how to vote, to simply use “common sense.”

Today, Friday, Trump’s defense team relied heavily on his use of the words “peacefully and patriotically” at one, and only one, point in the Jan. 6 speech, talked about “process,” and showed multiple videos of prominent Democrats using language similar to the former president’s about fighting to argue Trump is being subjected to a double standard.

Trump’s defense team today was better than Tuesday’s opening performance, but they were not as strong in the Q&A that followed and finished up today’s proceedings.

But as I sum things up tonight, there is strong evidence Donald Trump knew Mike Pence was in physical danger Jan. 6 when he then moments later denigrated him on Twitter, saying Pence lacked “courage,” further underscoring how he delayed taking action to stop his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol.

Freshman Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he spoke to Trump on the phone shortly after Pence was rushed out of the Senate chamber and told the president about Pence’s hasty exit.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, they just took our vice president out, they’re getting ready to drag me out of here.  I got to go,” Tuberville said he told Trump during the brief call.

But Trump’s defense team this afternoon threw Tuberville under the bus, in essence calling him a liar.

---

This is how I started out my Week in Review of 1/2/21 (posted New Year’s Day).

Wednesday p.m. tweet [Dec. 30] from President Donald Trump:

“JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!”

Friday p.m. [Jan. 1] tweet from the Il Duce wannabe:

“The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C., will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!” ….

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska…wrote on Facebook Wednesday night [Dec. 30] that he has been urging his Republican colleagues to “reject” objecting to the certification process and Joe Biden’s victory, adding that such a move is a “dangerous ploy.”

“Having been in private conversation with two dozen of my colleagues over the past few weeks, it seems useful to explain in public why I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election – and why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy,” Sasse wrote.

He added: “The president and his allies are playing with fire. They have been asking – first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress – to overturn the results of a presidential election.  They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes.  If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence.  But the president doesn’t and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.”

Sasse alleged in his post that his Republican colleagues have entertained claims that the election was fraudulent out of fear of the political backlash from the President’s base.

“When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent – not one,” Sasse wrote.  “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will ‘look’ to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.”

Sasse attacked Trump’s conspiracies – drawing on failed lawsuits by the Trump campaign in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia – and wrote that the President’s attempted lawsuits were a “fundraising strategy.”

Sasse added that former Attorney General William Barr said there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.

Sasse concluded:

“Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong – and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions.” ….

Editorial / New York Post

“Mr. President, it’s time to end this dark charade.

“We’re one week away from an enormously important moment for the next four years of our country.

“On Jan. 5, two runoff races in Georgia will determine which party will control the Senate – whether Joe Biden will have a rubber stamp or a much-needed check on his agenda.

“Unfortunately, you’re obsessed with the next day, Jan. 6, when Congress will, in a pro forma action, certify the Electoral College vote.  You have tweeted that, as long as Republicans have ‘courage,’ they can overturn the results and give you four more years in office.

“In other words, you’re cheering for an undemocratic coup.”

Everyone, including the president, knew what the plan was for Jan. 6.  Donald Trump had kept the Big Lie alive since Election Day, really all of 2020, that the only way he could lose is if the Democrats stole it, which then evolved into “Stop the Steal.”

I’ve noted ad nauseam that since 2015, Donald Trump has been trying to undermine our democracy, talking about a rigged system and election fraud leading into 2016.  He’s never stopped since.  Never once tried to unite the country.

And in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Donald Trump realized his last shot was to do all he could to stop the certification.  Many of us were certainly on to it.

Of course Trump should be convicted.  And of course he won’t be.  Our nation is changed forever, for the worse.

---

Kevin Madden, an independent political strategist and former adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, perhaps summed up the trial best in terms of the state of national politics.

“It’s the political equivalence of jogging in place,” he said.  “His opponents have made up their mind, his supporters have made up their mind, and the broader political middle that doesn’t live or breathe politics has turned their attention to other issues.”

This afternoon, around 4:00 p.m., I received a phone call from an old friend who has recently moved out of the area.  “Hey, Brian…it’s (Joe).  Just wanted to give you a call.” 

Of course it was in the middle of the hearings, and Q&A, and he’s asking what I’ve been doing and I go, “Ah, (Joe), same as always…working….watching the hearings.”

“Oh, I couldn’t give a damn about that.  I don’t even follow the news anymore.  Just don’t care.”

“Ah, (Joe), well this is my job.  I have to care.”

Needless to say the call didn’t last long but I managed to stay polite.  But it was a reminder there is a large slice of America that does not care about what’s happening this week in Washington.  Yes, (Joe) is part of that middle that Mr. Madden is referring to that has turned their attention to other issues.  Which is kind of the state of play a lot of us hope we get to at some point.  When “Week in Review” was really just about Wall Street, global financial markets, and some foreign affairs.

But that day isn’t anytime soon.  At least for moi, who has now completed 22 years of this stuff as of this week.  Next week…Edition 1,140.

Editorial / Washington Post

“Before former president Donald Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial, members of both parties wondered whether it was worth the effort.  Democrats worried it would disrupt the early days of President Biden’s administration.  Republicans, most of whom remain terrified of Mr. Trump, rallied to oppose his conviction on procedural grounds, all but guaranteeing in advance it would not occur.  What good could a Senate trial do?

“Two days in, it is clear that the proceedings are essential for the nation, even if they do not end in a formal verdict against Mr. Trump.  The House impeachment managers’ presentation before the Senate has crystallized in graphic and compelling detail the horror of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot – and Mr. Trump’s deep responsibility for it.

“On Tuesday, the House managers played a video showing Mr. Trump telling his supporters to ‘stop the steal,’ and directing them toward the Capitol as they shouted about taking the building. They began streaming toward the sitting Congress even as Mr. Trump spoke.  Then they ransacked the building, with then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of both houses still inside it. Footage showed a Capitol police officer screaming as the mob crushed him, just one of many injuries inflicted on those guarding the building.  One rioter built a gallows with a noose.  Meanwhile, Mr. Trump watched passively.  Even as the occupation continued, he issued statements that did as much to inflame as to pacify the mob.

“On Wednesday, the managers demonstrated that the violence was predictable.  Mr. Trump planned the rally with the organizers of the second Million MAGA March, a previous pro-Trump event that had turned violent. House members detailed how Trump fanatics openly planned the Capitol invasion on pro-Trump websites that the White House reportedly monitored, and how government officials warned about the threat of extremist violence.  And they showed how Mr. Trump nevertheless told his mob, ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’  His acolytes, the presentation documented, had been primed by his previous support for violent acts, such as a Trump caravan’s attempt to run a bus of Biden supporters off a Texas highway.

“Mr. Trump’s lawyers cannot credibly claim that the case is about a few careless words the then-president uttered in a single speech.  He fed his mob lies, told them they were losing their country and directed them to the Capitol when it was obvious they did not mean to conduct orderly protest.

“Most Republican senators nevertheless appear determined to acquit Mr. Trump, based on a flawed constitutional argument that former officials cannot be impeached.  Forty-four Republican senators voted Tuesday against proceeding with the trial, signaling that there may only be a handful willing even to consider voting against Mr. Trump – nowhere near the 17 required for conviction.

“Senators will bring disgrace upon their chamber if they fail to hold the former president accountable.  No reasonable listener this week could fail to find him culpable for the Capitol assault.  If the Senate fails to convict, Democrats should challenge Republicans’ constitutional dodge by introducing a censure resolution spelling out Mr. Trump’s responsibility for inciting an insurrection.  Each senator should be obliged to go on the record to condemn or condone a president’s unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Whether a former President ought to be subject to an impeachment trial is a matter of constitutional debate. Whether it’s prudent, if acquittal appears likely, is a related question.  But wherever you come down on those issues, the House impeachment managers this week are laying out a visceral case that the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 was a disgrace for which President Trump bears responsibility.

“Long before November, Mr. Trump was saying that the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged. On the night of the vote, he tweeted, ‘they are trying to STEAL the election.’  In his speech that night, he called it ‘a fraud on the American public,’ and said, ‘frankly we did win.’  Is it a surprise that some of his fans took his words to heart?

“Instead of bowing to dozens of court defeats, Mr. Trump escalated.  He falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence, if only he had the courage, could reject electoral votes and stop Democrats from hijacking democracy.  He called his supporters to attend a rally on Jan. 6, when Congress would do the counting.  ‘Be there, will be wild!’  Mr. Trump tweeted.  His speech that day was timed to coincide with the action in the Capitol, and then he directed the crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Mr. Trump’s defenders point out that he also told the audience to make their voices heard ‘peacefully.’  And contra Rep. Eric Swalwell, who argued the incitement to attack the Capitol was ‘premeditated,’ it’s difficult to think Mr. Trump ever envisioned what followed: that instead of merely making a boisterous display, the crowd would riot, assault the police, invade the building, send lawmakers fleeing with gas masks, trash legislative offices, and leave in its wake a dead Capitol officer.

“But talk about playing with fire.  Mr. Trump told an apocalyptic fable in which American democracy might end on Jan. 6, and some people who believed him acted like it.  Once the riot began, Mr. Trump took hours to say anything, a delay his defenders have not satisfactorily explained.  Even then he equivocated.  Imagine, Rep. Joe Neguse said, if Mr. Trump ‘had simply gone onto TV, just logged on to Twitter and said ‘Stop the Attack,’ if he had done so with even half as much force as he said ‘Stop the Steal.’’

“The impeachment managers hurt their case by blaming only Mr. Trump for earlier clashes. ‘Donald Trump, over many months, cultivated violence,’ said Stacey Plaskett, the delegate for the Virgin Islands.  But often those events were showdowns between left and right, with both seeking trouble.  ‘When darkness fell,’ the Washington Post reported after one melee, ‘the counterprotesters triggered more mayhem as they harassed Trump’s advocates, stealing red hats and flags and lighting them on fire.’

“Yet there’s no defense for Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 and before.  Mitch McConnell is reportedly telling his GOP colleagues that the decision to convict or acquit is a vote of conscience, and that’s appropriate.  After the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, Mr. Trump could have conceded defeat and touted his accomplishments.

“Now his legacy will forever be stained by this violence, and by his betrayal of his supporters in refusing to tell them the truth.  Whatever the result of the impeachment trial, Republicans should remember the betrayal if Mr. Trump decides to run again in 2024.”

Michael Gerson / Washington Post

“The Capitol attack was not merely the work of an unstable, departed leader.  All the mayhem and blood were the triumph of a certain kind of politics that continues and strengthens under Trump’s direction.

“It was the natural outworking of an apocalyptic politics.  We need to ‘fight like hell,’ Trump told the assembled crowd in D.C., or ‘you’re not going to have a country anymore.’

“It was the logical consequence of a politics based on lies.  ‘States want to correct their votes,’ Trump informed his supporters on Twitter.  ‘All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN.’

“It was the natural outcome of a politics infected with conspiracy theories.  Shadowy forces, Trump maintained, were responsible for the ‘biggest SCAM in our nation’s history.’

“It was the culmination of a militarized rhetoric, in which Trump has urged his followers to view politics as an ‘act of war’ and to ‘fight to the death.’

“Only one decision in the Senate trial will hold a guilty man accountable, while taking a stand for a better, nobler political ideal.  And there is no plausible, procedural argument that will rescue senators from the moral choice they face.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) / Washington Post

“Impeachment offers a chance to say enough is enough. It ought to force every American, regardless of party affiliation, to remember not only what happened on Jan. 6, but also the path that led there.  After all, the situation could get much, much worse – with more violence and more division that cannot be overcome.  The further down this road we go, the closer we come to the end of America as we know it.

“The Republican Party I joined as a young man would never take that road.  The GOP that inspired me to serve in uniform and then run for public office believed a brighter future was just around the bend.  We stood for equal opportunity, firm in our conviction that a poor kid from the South Side of Chicago deserves the same shot as a privileged kid from Highland Park.  We knew that if we brought everyone into America’s promise, we would unleash a new era of American progress and prosperity.  Outrage and the fear of a darker future were nowhere to be found in that Republican Party.

“When leaders such as Donald Trump changed that dynamic, many of my fellow Republicans went along without question.  Many are still there because they believe the rank-and-file Republican voter is there, too.  But I think that’s an illusion. The anger and outrage are drowning out the much larger group of people who reject that approach. Worse, many have gone silent because they assume the party’s leaders no longer represent them. They’re waiting for leaders who will say what they know is true.

“Since my vote to impeach Trump, I’ve heard from tens of thousands of my constituents.  Their reaction has been overwhelmingly supportive.  Republicans of all backgrounds and outlooks have told me they appreciate my efforts to return the GOP to a foundation of principle, not personality.  I’ve even heard from many Democrats.  They don’t agree with me on a lot of issues, but they want the Republican Party to be healthy and competitive.

“I firmly believe the majority of Americans – Republican, Democrat, independent, you name it – reject the madness of the past four years.  But we’ll never move forward by ignoring what happened or refusing to hold accountable those responsible.  That will embolden the few who led us here and dishearten the many who know America is better than this.  It will make it more likely that we see more anger, violence and chaos in the years ahead.

“The better path is to learn the lessons of the recent past.  Convicting Donald Trump is necessary to save America from going further down a sad, dangerous road.”

Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal

“The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump has been a rout for the pro-impeachment side.  They made the case through time-stamped videos and close argumentation, and their timeline linked in an undeniable way the statements of the president on 1/6 and the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol.  Democratic floor managers were at their best when they were direct, unadorned, and dealt crisply with information and data, as they did most of the time.  They were less effective when they employed emotional tones to move the audience.  Here is a truth: Facts make people feel.  People are so unused to being given them. They’re grateful for the respect shown in an invitation to think.

“Congress was riveted; journalists were riveted. Was America? Did it watch?  We’ll find out the ratings and in time get a sense of what people felt was worth absorbing. Did the proceeding have the power to break through as anything other than a partisan effort?  I don’t know, but I suspect so.  In the pandemic people are glued to their screens. Nothing they saw – nothing – would make them admire Mr. Trump more.

“As this is written a formal defense of the president’s actions is coming.  It is hard to believe his lawyers will argue his innocence of the charge that he incited a crowd to move on Congress and thwart its certification of the 2020 election.  Everyone knows he did that.  More likely the defense will speak of extenuating circumstances – Democrats now speak violently too, and they didn’t care when cities exploded in violence last summer.

“Beyond that I don’t understand the defense being mounted informally in conservative media.  This is that everyone knows the storming of the Capitol was being planned before the president’s rally, and the government knew.  This exonerates him?  If the government Mr. Trump headed knew trouble was coming, it’s evidence of both imminent lawless action and Mr. Trump’s intent – the legal elements of incitement.  It makes him more culpable, not less.

“I do not see how Republican senators could hear and fairly judge the accumulated evidence and vote to acquit the former president.  If we want to keep it from happening again, all involved must pay the stiffest possible price.  That would include banning Mr. Trump from future office.

“Everyone has a moment that most upset them in the videos of the rioters milling around, unstopped and unresisted, on the floors of both houses. Mine is when the vandals strolled through the abandoned Senate chamber and rifled through the desks of senators. Those are literally, the desks of Mike Mansfield, Robert M. La Follette, Arthur Vandenberg, John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater.  They each had, in accordance with tradition, carved or otherwise inscribed their names in them. It looked to me like history itself being violated.  It isn’t ‘loving government’ to feel protective of that place; it is loving history and those who’ve distinguished themselves within it.

“History will see 1/6 for what it was.  Those who acquit are voting for a lie. Conviction would be an act of self-respect and of reverence for the place where fortune has placed them.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued stunning remarks breaking with former President Trump, telling Politico in an interview published Friday that she believes he “let us down.”

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley, who served in her ambassador role under Trump, said.  “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him.  And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

The former South Carolina governor told Politico that she has not spoken with Trump since the mob attack, further expressing her disappointment with remarks he gave at a rally ahead of the assault condemning his own vice president, Mike Pence.

“When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley said.  “I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”

Haley said that the president “believes he is following” his oath of office by challenging the election results, adding, “There’s nothing that you’re ever going to do that’s going to make him feel like he legitimately lost the election.”

“He’s got a big bully pulpit. He should be responsible with it,” she said.

“And it wasn’t just his words,” she added at the time.  “His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday had 56% of Americans saying Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again, with 43% saying he should not be.  I’d be shocked if that 56% didn’t move to 60% after this week, but not much more.

In January 2020, amid the first impeachment trial, 47% of Americans said the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office and 49% said he should not be removed.

---

--While the video presented was “horrific,” as Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said after watching Wednesday’s presentation from the House prosecutors, Cruz captured the sentiment of a majority of Republican senators in saying the impeachment managers didn’t connect the violence to Trump.

“They spent a great deal of time focusing on the horrific acts of violence that were played out by the criminals, but the language from the president doesn’t come close to meeting the legal standard for incitement,” Cruz told reporters.

--Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, have initiated a criminal investigation into former President Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results, including a phone call he made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to help him reverse his loss.

The inquiry makes Georgia the second state after New York where Trump faces a criminal investigation.  And it comes in a jurisdiction where potential jurors are unlikely to be hospitable to the former president; Fulton County encompasses most of Atlanta and overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden in November.

Fani Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, could become a national figure through this investigation.

Biden Bits

--President Biden met with a bipartisan group of governors and mayors at the White House on Friday as part of his push to give financial relief from the Covid relief package to state and local governments – a clear source of division with Republican lawmakers who view the spending as wasteful.

--President Biden promised U.S. senators from both major parties on Thursday to work together to modernize aging U.S. infrastructure, after his predecessor Donald Trump failed to win approval for a major funding effort.  Biden plans to ask Congress this month to invest heavily in infrastructure amid studies showing close to half of U.S. roads are in poor or mediocre condition and more than a third of U.S. bridges need repair, replacement or significant rehabilitation.

--The United States will turn away most migrants caught at its border with Mexico under a Trump-era policy aimed at limiting the spread of coronavirus and to give the Biden administration time to implement “humane” asylum processing systems, a White House official said on Wednesday.

Biden has left in place a Trump-era Covid order called Title 42 that allows U.S. authorities to rapidly expel Mexico migrants caught crossing the border illegally.

--U.S. President Joe Biden’s plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025 would cut employment by 1.4 million jobs that year and increase the budget deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday.  The non-partisan legislative budget referee agency said that the minimum wage increase also would lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty in 2025.  The CBO said the proposal would increase, on net, the cumulative pay of affected people by $333 billion over the 2021-2031 period but noted that this represented an increased labor costs for firms employing them. 

The agency said 17 million workers whose wages would otherwise be below $15 would see their wages rise to that level in 2025, but 1.4 million fewer workers overall would be employed, as some companies will choose to invest more in technology or automation.

The minimum wage proposal is unlikely to be part of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan. Instead, expect an expansion of the child tax credit, among other items.

The Pandemic….

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…2,392,581
USA…492,521
Brazil…237,601
Mexico…171,234
India…155,588
UK…116,287
Italy…93,045
France…81,448
Russia…79,194
Germany…65,036
Spain…64,747
Iran…58,809
Colombia…57,196
Argentina…50,029
South Africa…47,670
Peru…43,255
Poland…40,424
Indonesia…32,656
Turkey…27,284
Ukraine…24,174
Belgium…21,551
Canada…21,162

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 1,315; Mon. 1,489; Tues. 3,265; Wed. 3,432; Thurs. 3,068; Fri. 2,908.

Covid Bytes

--Dr. Anthony Fauci forecasted a better landscape for vaccine availability on the horizon, predicting an “open season” on the shots by April in which almost anyone could get inoculated.  Most people in the United States could be vaccinated by the end of the summer, he said.

President Biden then announced that the administration had secured another 200 million doses of vaccine (100m from Pfizer, 100m from Moderna), increasing availability by 50 percent this summer, bringing the total to 600 million doses, enough to fully vaccinate 300 million people.

But the issue for the states is that in most places, signing up for a shot is still complicated.

Biden, speaking Thursday at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., said, “We’re not going to have everything fixed for a while, but we’re going to fix it.”

The president said the vaccine program he inherited was in “much worse shape” than he had anticipated and that his team had been misled about the vaccine supply.

“While scientists did their job in discovering vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I’ll be very blunt about it – did not do his job in getting ready for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” Biden said.

--According to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that while 67% of Americans plan to get vaccinated or have already done so, 15% are certain they won’t and 17% say probably not.  Many expressed doubts about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.

Dr. Fauci has estimated that somewhere between 70% and 85% of the U.S. population needs to get inoculated to stop the scourge. The spread of more contagious variants of the virus, however, increases the need for more people to get their shots – and quickly.

About 15% of the population has received at least one dose thus far.  The CDC’s latest figures have 48,410,558 does being administered, with 12 million having received a second dose as of today.

--Meanwhile the UK variant is here to stay in the U.S., and the South African variant is popping up, with California identifying the state’s first two cases.

Speaking of South Africa, the country’s leaders on Sunday ordered the rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine halted, after a clinical trial failed to show that it could prevent people from getting mild or moderate cases of Covid caused by the variant that has overrun the country.

“It was a real body blow,” the nation’s infectious disease doctor, Jeremy Nel, said. “The promise of a vaccine, albeit quite delayed compared to many other countries, was a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The new findings from South Africa were far from conclusive, coming from a small clinical trial involving fewer than 2,000 people.  And they did not preclude what some scientists say is the likelihood that the vaccine protects against severe disease from the variant.

But as quickly as scientists develop vaccines, the virus has seemed to evolve more quickly.

--The CEO of Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that people may need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 annually for the next several years – similar to seasonal flu shots.

“Unfortunately, as (the virus) spreads it can also mutate,” Alex Gorsky said in an interview on CNBC.

“Every time it mutates, it’s almost like another click of the dial so to speak where we can see another variant, another mutation that can have an impact on its ability to fend off antibodies or to have a different kind of response not only to a therapeutic but also to a vaccine,” he added.

--European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged that the EU was not where it wanted to be in the fight against the coronavirus.

“We were late with the approval. We were too optimistic on mass production.  And perhaps we were also too certain that the orders would actually be delivered on time,” she told the European Parliament in a debate on the bloc’s vaccine strategy.

She said the difficulty of mass producing vaccines was underestimated, and said there was no intention to restrict companies that were honoring their contracts with the EU.

--The World Health Organization’s investigative team in Wuhan said this week that after its team had been on the ground for a few weeks, the virus that causes Covid-19 most likely jumped from one species to another before entering the human population and is highly unlikely to have leaked from a laboratory.

The WHO team said on Tuesday it was also possible that the virus may have been transmitted to humans through imported frozen food, a theory heavily promoted by Beijing.  But the team said the most likely scenario was one in which the virus spilled over naturally from an animal into humans, such as from a bat to a small mammal that then infected a person.

“Did we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I don’t think so,” said Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food-safety expert who spoke on behalf of the WHO delegation.  “Did we improve our understanding?  Did we add details to that picture? Absolutely.”

--On the contentious reopening of schools’ issue, President Biden is under pressure to deliver as Republicans seize on his cautious approach and parents demand more aggressive action to address what he called a “national emergency.”

Biden is caught between teacher union allies who have resisted in-person learning until safety measures are assured and parents nationwide frustrated their children remain home.

So today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its reopening guidelines, giving Biden one of the components he said was needed to achieve his goal of having most public schools open within his first 100 days in office.  Today is Day 23.

Parents want fast progress. But if recommendations include updating ventilation systems in aging school buildings or smaller class sizes – safety measures the president has discussed – fixes might not be quick.  And we only have a few months remaining in the 2020-21 academic calendar before summer break.

The White House downsized Biden’s goal this week, clarifying it hopes for 50% or more of schools to open “for at least one day a week” within 100 days, not necessarily fully reopened.  By this standard, New Jersey schools, except for some inner cities, have largely been meeting the goal since the beginning of the academic year.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the lower bar is not the end goal.

“The president will not rest until schools are open five days a week,” she said Thursday.

Well, the CDC provided its roadmap this afternoon, emphasizing mask wearing and social distancing and saying vaccination of teachers is important but not a prerequisite for reopening.

The CDC cannot force schools to reopen, and agency officials were careful to say they are not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.

The agency also emphasized hand washing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a call with reporters: “We know that most clusters in the school setting have occurred when there are breaches in mask wearing.

On vaccinating teachers, Walensky said while it should not be seen as a precondition to reopen, it can provide “an additional layer of protection.”

She emphasized the CDC’s findings, which are all rather obvious, were “free from political meddling.”

So it’s up to the president.  He needs to act quickly.  But you can see where this is headed.  Many of the unions will demand vaccinations first.  Pure and simple.  Then Biden will cave, I imagine.

--A member of Congress died after being diagnosed with Covid while battling cancer, Rep. Ron Wright (R-Texas), 67.  He was admitted two weeks ago to a Dallas-based hospital after contracting the virus.

--Lastly, there are fresh calls for an investigation of how the administration of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo handled the coronavirus in nursing homes in the wake of two bombshell reports by the Associated Press and the New York Post.

Early on in the pandemic, the state mandated that recovering Covid patients should return to nursing homes.

On Thursday night, the AP uncovered the total number involved more than 9,000 people, which is 40% higher than what the Cuomo administration previously reported.

It’s feared that is what triggered the rapid spread of the virus within nursing homes throughout the state, but New York health officials disagree, blaming asymptomatic employees and not recovering patients.

Meanwhile, the New York Post first reported that Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to the governor, admitted in a call with Democratic state lawmakers this week that the Cuomo administration “froze” in releasing nursing home data, fearing the Trump administration would use it as ammunition in a political attack in the form of a Department of Justice investigation.

According to a partial transcript released by the governor’s office, when asked what the holdup was on responding to a list of questions that state lawmakers had submitted around nursing homes, DeRosa said, “Basically we froze because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”

DeRosa said then-President Trump was “going after” Democratic governors and directing “the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us.”

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” she said, according to the transcript.

As Drudge would say….Developing….

Wall Street and the Economy

In a speech to the Economic Club of New York Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made a broad call for a “society-wide commitment” to get Americans back to work, particularly minorities and those ousted from lower-paying jobs during the pandemic.  “Given the number of people who have lost their jobs and the likelihood that some will struggle to find work in the post-pandemic economy, achieving and sustaining maximum employment will require more than supportive monetary policy,” Powell said.  “It will require a society-wide commitment, with contributions from across government and the private sector.”

Powell leaned against the idea that the economy might overheat with additional stimulus.  He said it could take “many years” to overcome scars from long-term unemployment, and even with the jobless rate at 3.5% in February, signs of inflation were scarce.

“There was every reason to expect that the labor market could have strengthened even further without causing a worrisome increase in inflation were it not for the onset of the pandemic,” he said.

Democrats seized on the comments as validating their push to go big with the next round of fiscal aid.

“Chair Powell’s assessment reiterates the need for the strongest possible benefits package in our Covid relief bill,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden said in a statement, noting that the speech delivered a “bleak” evaluation of joblessness in America.

As the risk of the year-long pandemic recedes with vaccinations rolling out, it’s unclear if employers will make do with smaller workforces, or if job growth will pick up.

There was very little economic news on the week, including globally, with the January reading on consumer prices up 0.3%, ex-food and energy 0.0%; 1.4% year-over-year on headline, ditto on core.

Weekly jobless claims came in at a still sickening 793,000, down from a prior revised 812,000.

A survey of economists in the Wall Street Journal shows forecasters are increasingly optimistic about economic growth this year, though less so about the labor market’s prospects (Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen’s point).

Economists on average expect GDP to expand nearly 4.9% this year, an improvement from their 4.3% forecast in January.  They cited the distribution of Covid-19 vaccinations and the prospect of additional fiscal relief from Washington for the brightening outlook.

The same folks also expect inflation to pick up, projecting 2.8% growth in consumer prices in June of this year from a year earlier, compared with the current 1.4% you see above.  Oil prices are expected to continue to rise.

But four-fifths of the economists surveyed cited Covid-specific concerns as the biggest risk to growth – compared with two-thirds in January. All about the variants.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department said the budget deficit for January was -$163 billion; $736bn for the first four months of the fiscal year.

The Congressional Budget Office now projects a deficit for fiscal 2021 of $2.3 trillion, nearly $900 billion less than the budget gap for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, but 25% higher than CBO forecast in September. The increase was driven by another large economic relief package Congress enacted in December, and is offset in part by the effects of a stronger economy this year, the agency said.  It’s figures do not include the impact of the looming relief package that will most likely be enacted in March.

CBO expects annual deficits will average $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

Last week I said the current net interest expense for fiscal 2020 was $350-$400 billion.  With this new CBO report, we got the final figure and it was $345bn, projected to be just $303bn in F2021, but this will be higher because more debt is being added, and interest rates are inching up.  The CBO’s 10-year projections on rates are way too sanguine.

Separately, the Biden administration will look at adding “new targeted restrictions” on certain sensitive technology exports to China in cooperation with allies, a senior official said on Wednesday ahead of the new president’s first call with Xi Jinping.  The U.S. will also not move to lift Chinese trade tariffs imposed by the Trump administration before it has conducted “intense consultation and review” with allies, the official told reporters during a briefing.  “We are maintaining those tariffs while we conduct our review because we’re not going to act precipitously,” he said.  “President Biden’s major criticism of the Trump strategy here was not he wasn’t getting tough on China on trade, but that he was doing so alone, while also fighting our allies.”

The official said no decisions had been made yet on whether to lift the tariffs and that there would be areas of “continuity” with Trump’s policies.  “One of them is to ensure that we are not supplying highly sensitive technology that can advance China’s military capabilities.  We will be bearing down on that.”

More on the call between Biden and Xi down below.

Europe and Asia

The eurozone economy will rebound less than earlier expected from the coronavirus slump this year as a second wave of the pandemic put economies in new lockdowns, the European Commission said this week, adding 2022 growth will be stronger than earlier thought.

The EC forecast economic growth in 19 countries sharing the euro would be 3.8% this year and the same in 2022, rallying from a 6.8% drop in 2020.

But the Commission said, “These projections are subject to significant uncertainty and elevated risks, predominantly linked to the evolution of the pandemic and the success of vaccination campaigns.

“There is also a risk of deeper scars in the fabric of the European economy and society inflicted by the protracted crisis, through bankruptcies, long-term unemployment, and higher inequalities,” it said.

Brexit: Ireland called on the European Union and Britain on Thursday to dial down the rhetoric in a blame game over post-Brexit trade frictions after Brussels rejected most of London’s demands for easier trade with Northern Ireland.

Britain’s exit from the EU’s trading orbit has led to significant disruption to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, straining relations as London and Brussels hold each other responsible for the problem.

The dispute continues to revolve around the EU’s insistence on Britain honoring its withdrawal treaty which left the British province of Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market sphere due to its open land border with Ireland, meaning a customs border in the Irish Sea dividing the province from mainland Britain.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, whose country – an EU member state – has been central to the talks, summoned both sides to “dial down the rhetoric.”

“We just need to calm it, because ultimately we want the United Kingdom aligning well with the European Union.  We want harmonious, sensible relationships,” he told RTE radio.

The European Union’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said difficulties in Northern Ireland are due to Brexit rather than the Northern Ireland protocol, which Barnier said “is the solution.”

Again, the protocol sets out that Northern Ireland will remain largely in line with the EU while checks take place on goods arriving from Britain, was designed to reconcile London’s goal of a hard Brexit with the need to avoid a border on the island of Ireland.

The British government wants a two-year extension to “grace periods” that were given to allow businesses more time to adjust.

One big issue that was separate from the trade negotiations, a decision on granting “equivalence” on financial services, which would allow British firms access to the bloc, has yet to be made by the EU.  Barnier said such decisions “are and will remain unilateral of each party and are not subject to negotiation.”

Amsterdam overtook London as Europe’s largest share trading center last month, due to business relocating due to Brexit.

In fact, Bloomberg reported today that six weeks into 2021, half the volumes that previously changed hands in the UK have migrated to the continent, with Amsterdam the clear winner.  Stock trading joins billions of dollars of derivatives and the carbon cap-and-trade system that have all exited London, highlighting a huge failure on the part of Boris Johnson’s government to secure a regulatory equivalence as part of the post-Brexit settlement.

Lastly, Britain’s coronavirus-ravaged economy shrank 9.9 percent in 2020, the biggest annual fall in output since modern records began, though it avoided falling back towards recession in the final quarter of the year, according to the Office for National Statistics today.

Britain’s GDP grew 1 percent between October and December vs. the previous quarter.

The economy is set to shrink sharply in early 2021 due to the effects of a third Covid lockdown, with the Bank of England projecting it will shrink by 4% in the first quarter. 

A reading on consumer spending in the UK in January plunged 16.3% from a year earlier, the biggest drop since May when the country was starting to emerge from its first lockdown.

Spending in pubs and bars dropped nearly 94% and was down by more than 84% in restaurants, a survey from Barclaycard revealed.

Italy: Members of the 5-Star Movement voted on Thursday to back Prime Minister designate Mario Draghi, opening the way for the former European Central Bank chief to take office at the head of a broad government of national unity.  In an online ballot, 59.3% of 5-Star supporters heeded a call from party leaders to support the new administration, despite the fact it includes some of their arch foes and will be headed by the sort of technocrat they have previously decried.

After coalition infighting brought down the previous government, President Sergio Mattarella called on Draghi, one of the most respected figures in Italy, to form a new cabinet to tackle the coronavirus health crisis and economic meltdown.  Draghi presented his cabinet to Mattarella today, which the president then accepted, so Draghi is leader tonight. 

Luigi Di Maio, a leader of 5-Star, will remain foreign minister.  Other cabinet members are non-affiliated technocrats, including Daniele Franco, director general of the Bank of Italy who was named as economy minister. 

The new team will be sworn in Saturday, opening the way for debates in both houses of parliament early next week, where Draghi will unveil his policy plans and face a vote of confidence.  Victory is guaranteed, though some members of 5-Star, which was born in 2009 as an anti-system, anti-euro protest party, will not vote for Draghi.  The 5-Star leadership had urged members to vote yes, saying the movement had to help lead economic recovery in Italy, which is receiving more than 200bn euros ($242 billion) from a European Union fund to revive its battered economy.

Turning to Asia…China’s stock market is on an annual “pause” for the Lunar New Year Holiday, Feb. 11-17.  We will get a slew of economic data from Japan on Sunday.

As for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, chief Yoshiro Mori resigned today over his sexist comments, with the mayor of the Olympic village Saburo Kawabuchi saying Mori had asked him to take over, but then there were reports he wasn’t going to be tabbed.

The 83-year-old Mori, a former prime minister, sparked a global outcry with his comments that women talk too much, which he made during an Olympic committee meeting.  His resignation less than six months before the Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin raises new doubts over the viability of holding the postponed Games this year.

Taiwan’s exports rose in January for the seventh consecutive month, with the unexpectedly strong pace setting a new record as its manufacturers benefited from consumers staying at home during the pandemic and new technologies such as 5G.

Exports jumped 36.8% from a year earlier to $34.27bn in January, the highest monthly figure on record, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday, though it was helped by a low base with the week-long Lunar New Year holiday falling in January last year.  Because of the holiday this year being in February, exports this month will rise more modestly.

Taiwan is obviously a critical player in some of the semiconductor stories that follow.

Street Bytes

--Stocks rallied again on further talk of a Covid relief package, and an improving vaccination picture while the trends in infections and hospitalizations are promising.  All the major indices closed the week at new highs, with the Dow Jones adding 1.0% to 31458, the S&P 500 1.2% and Nasdaq 1.7%. 

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.05%  2-yr. 0.11%  10-yr. 1.20%  30-yr. 2.01%

Yields continue to inch up on the long end owing to future stimulus, as well as the prior relief packages that are, and will, be working their way through the system.

--Royal Dutch Shell said it would start reducing oil production, calling an end to a decades-old strategy centered on pumping more hydrocarbons as it and other energy giants seek to capitalize on a shift to low-carbon power.

Until recent years, Shell pursued expensive, environmentally challenging projects in Canadian oil sands and Alaska, driven by fears the world could run out of oil.  Now, it sees demand faltering long before oil runs out.

Shell said Thursday its oil production had already peaked and it expects output to decline 1-2% a year, including from asset sales, reducing its exposure to commodity prices over the longer term.  The company plans to cut its production of traditional fuels such as diesel and gasoline by 55% in the next decade.  At the same time, the company said it would double the amount of electricity it sells and roll out thousands of new electric-vehicle charging points.

The strategy follows similar plans from rivals BP PLC and Total SE to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels while expanding in renewable power such as wind and solar, partly in response to growth in regulatory and investor pressure.  By contrast, U.S. companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron don’t plan to invest substantially in electricity and both say the world will need vast amounts of fossil fuels for decades to come.  Exxon does, though, plan to invest in technology to reduce carbon emissions.

--Meanwhile, a study from the American Clean Power Association released this month reports that 2020 was a record year for the wind energy sector. 

In all, 16,913 megawatts of new wind power capacity was installed in the U.S. last year – an increase of 85% over 2019.  That’s the equivalent of the power generated from 11 large coal plants, and enough to serve nearly 6 million homes.

Texas hosted the most activity with 13% of energy output, followed by Wyoming (10%), Oklahoma (7%), Kansas (5%) and New Mexico (4%).

Wind power produced up to two thirds of Texas’ energy output in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration.

--General Motors delivered impressive quarterly results driven by healthy demand for SUVs and pickup trucks.  GM comfortably outpaced fourth-quarter EPS forecasts, $1.93 vs. $1.61, while generating significant year-over-year improvements in margins.

On January 5, GM had reported that total Q4 sales grew by 5% to 771,323 vehicles, with notable strength experienced across its higher-margin SUV and pickup truck models.  Rival Ford blew out earnings expectations last week as a spike in SUV sales in China fueled outperformance.

For GM, its enhanced margin profile is led by the launch of new full-size SUVs such as the Chevy Suburban, Tahoe, and GMC Yukon.  And Chevy trucks (Silverado, Colorado) tallied sales of 269,000 in the quarter, up 13% yr./yr.  Gm believes it gained 1.4% market share in the U.S.

But, the good news was overshadowed by GM’s disappointing 2021 guidance.  Specifically, the company forecast earnings per share substantially below consensus estimate, and the primary culprit is related to the widely-documented semiconductor shortage.  On February 2, GM had reported that the chip supply shortage would impact 2021 production, forcing a few assembly plants to take downtime on shifts.

What wasn’t known at that time was how severe the impact would be to GM’s financials.  And then Wednesday, the company gave the bad news, though it is saying the impact will be only near-term in terms of production.  And the supply constraints won’t affect its electric vehicle initiatives.

GM is planning to invest $7 billion in EV and autonomous vehicle projects this year, as part of an overall $27bn program.  CEO Mary Barra reiterated that GM intends to launch 30 EVs by 2025, including the Chevy Bolt, Cadillac LYRIQ, and full-size SUVs and pickups for the Hummer.  GM is targeting 1 million+ EV sales by mid-decade.

For 2020, GM earned $6.4 billion, down from $6.7bn a year earlier, as brisk sales of pickup trucks and SUVs in the second half offset the damage from the pandemic in the spring.  Revenue declined 11 percent, to $122 billion.

[Speaking of the semiconductor shortage, the White House said Thursday administration officials are working to address the problem, with press secretary Jen Psaki saying the White House is “currently identifying potential chokepoints in the supply chain and actively working alongside key stakeholders in industry and with our trading partners to do more now.”  Biden plans to sign an executive order in the coming weeks to direct a comprehensive review of supply chain issues for critical goods.]

--Apple Inc.’s talks with Hyundai Motor Group have broken down without an agreement for the South Korean auto giant to assemble vehicles for the iPhone company, Hyundai said Monday.

In regulatory filings, Hyundai and Kia Corp. said they are “not in talks with Apple over developing an autonomous vehicle.”  The two auto makers have fielded multiple requests from other firms to jointly develop autonomous electric vehicles, though no initial steps have been determined, according to the regulatory filings.

The companies had held talks with Apple about a deal for Hyundai subsidiary Kia to build vehicles for Apple in Georgia, the Journal had reported last week.  The prospect of an auto partnership had sent the Korean companies’ stocks soaring this year.  The shares then sank after Monday’s disclosures.

Apple has flirted with other auto companies over the years, but without reaching a partnership.

--Brad K., a manufacturer in New Jersey who uses copious amounts of steel, said the industry is out of control.  From the lows of last summer, current pricing is 60-80 percent higher.  Steel he ordered for his business not too long ago for March, at a then large increase over yearned, was just offered to him for April delivery at a price 40% over March.   “Buyers are having a very rough time getting orders placed.”

Yes, the mills are “minting money.”  Brad said folks in the business for 40+ years tell him (he’s a 30-year veteran) they’ve never seen anything like this.  “Some companies will close, simply because they either can’t get the steel they need or they can’t afford to pass through their increases.”

Ditto lumber, my friend offers.

Ergo, the Federal Reserve better be on guard….let alone the financial markets.

--Amazon.com has ordered hundreds of trucks that run on compressed natural gas as it tests ways to shift its U.S. fleet away from heavier polluting trucks, the company told Reuters last weekend.  The engines, supplied by a joint venture between Cummins Inc. and Vancouver-based Westport Fuel Systems Inc., are to be used for Amazon’s heavy duty trucks that run from warehouses to distribution centers. 

Natural gas emits approximately 27% less carbon dioxide when burned compared with diesel fuel, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

--Delta announced on Monday that it was extending its middle-seat block for one more month, to the end of April.  Delta, the last U.S. airline to block all middle seats in coach, will consider further extensions based on Covid-19 transmission and vaccination rates.

So far, Delta thinks it’s earning goodwill and confidence with customers, particularly business travelers, who aren’t traveling now but will come back.  Some who’ve flown during the pandemic have been willing to pay Delta more for more space onboard.  Most have been price-sensitive leisure travelers willing to sit shoulder-to-shoulder for cheap fares – on airlines not blocking middle seats.

“This is really about playing the long game and making sure that we are positioning this brand for greater success coming out of the pandemic,” said Bill Lentsch, Delta’s chief customer experience officer.

The bottom line for Delta during the pandemic has been bigger losses than rival airlines selling all their seats.  Delta was the most profitable U.S. airline in the final six months of 2019. That flipped during the pandemic.  In the last six months of 2020, Delta had the biggest losses, with a net loss of more than $6 billion, greater than United and Southwest combined.

--TSA checkpoint travel numbers vs. 2020 (slight improvements):

2/11…43 percent of 2020 level*
2/10…36
2/9…34
2/8…40
2/7…38
2/6…40
2/5…38
2/4…36

*Thursday was the first day with over 1 million passengers since Jan. 4.

--Disney on Thursday reported a 98 percent decline in quarterly income, the result of steep losses at its coronavirus-devasted theme parks.

But the company’s fledgling Disney+ streaming service is now closing in on 100 million subscribers worldwide, enough to convince investors that Disney is well-positioned for the future, despite the continuing health crisis.

Disney+ now has 95 million subscribers worldwide, when it had only about 30 million subscribers a year ago (and did not exist 15 months ago).  Disney’s paid steaming membership topped 146 million when you include Hulu and ESPN+.

Overall, Disney pulled off a slim $29 million in profit, or 2 cents a share, down from $2.13 billion in the same period a year ago.

The theme park business reported more than $2 billion in operating losses in the company’s first fiscal quarter, which ended January 2.

That was the result of Disneyland in California remaining closed (as well as parks in Hong Kong and Paris), and a dramatic decline in attendance at the flagship Walt Disney World in Florida, which is capping daily attendance at 35 percent of capacity.

Revenue totaled $16.2 billion, a 22 percent decline.

It has been a year of extremes for Disney shares.  In March, when the company first closed its theme parks, postponed movies and, for a time, operated a sports cable network without live sports, the stock fell 38 percent.  Today, it closed the week at an all-time high.

But Disney+ revenue per subscriber declined 28 percent to $4.03 per month, because it has signed up millions of subscribers in India by offering them an almost-giveaway price.

--Best Buy announced it is laying off some store workers, though didn’t say how many, because as a spokesman put it: “Customer shopping behavior will be permanently changed in a way that is even more digital.”

Best Buy last April furloughed about 51,000 hourly employees as it closed stores due to lockdowns, although it brought some of them back after reopening to meet a surge in demand for home computer equipment and game consoles.   The retailer has nearly 125,000 workers, according to its last annual filing.

--Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday reported a decline in revenue for a fifth straight quarter, as enterprise clients spent less on its network infrastructure products for offices due to the rise of remote working.  The dour performance overshadowed a better-than-expected forecast for current-quarter revenue and sent the company’s shares 4% lower in extended trading.

The infrastructure platforms unit, whose sales fell 3% in the quarter, took the biggest hit from the pandemic.  The company’s total revenue fell slightly to $11.96 billion in the second quarter ended Jan. 23, from $12.01 billion a year earlier. 

The remote working trend, however, boosted demand for the company’s videoconferencing platform Webex, virtual private network AnyConnect and cybersecurity products. Revenue from the company’s services business rose 2% to $3.39 billion. 

Cisco said it expects third-quarter revenue to increase between 3.5% to 5.5%, which implies a range of $12.4 billion to $12.64, slightly above analysts’ estimates of $12.35bn.

--Twitter Inc. reported fourth-quarter revenue Tuesday that topped analysts’ estimates, capitalizing on a robust holiday season for digital advertising, though the company added fewer new users than projected and warned that audience gains in 2021 will slow compared with last year’s pandemic-fueled surge.

Revenue rose 28% to $1.29 billion, surpassing the average analyst prediction of $1.19 billion.  Twitters shareholder letter cited “strong brand advertiser demand in the U.S.” as a driver of ad sales in the quarter.  Net income rose to $222 million.

Twitter reported 192 million daily active users, 26% growth from a year earlier but shy of estimates for 193.4 million.  Overall for 2020 the company’s daily user base grew by 40 million.  The company credited the gains to “product improvements” and a series of major events that drew in audiences, including the election and discussion around the pandemic.

But Twitter’s lackluster user additions could reignite concerns about long-term growth, especially after the company permanently banned then-President Trump in January.

Twitter has long argued that Trump’s presence on the platform didn’t meaningfully affect user growth, but it did raise Twitter’s public profile during his four years in office.

“We are a platform that is obviously much larger than any one topic or any one account,” CEO Jack Dorsey told analysts Tuesday.  He added that the majority of Twitter’s users are outside the U.S., and that the service has more than 50 accounts with over 25 million followers.  He also said daily active users will probably grow more than 20% in the U.S. and now has 37 million average daily users in its most profitable market.

The company projected first-quarter revenue of $940 million to $1.04 billion.

Investors, though, looked past Twitter’s miss on user growth because of other positives during the quarter, including higher ad revenue, profitability and revenue guidance that was a bit better than expected.

--China’s market regulator released new anti-monopoly guidelines on Sunday that target internet platforms, tightening existing restrictions faced by the country’s tech giants.  The new rules formalize an earlier anti-monopoly draft law released in November, and clarify a series of monopolistic practices that regulators plan to crack down on.

The guidelines are expected to put new pressure on the country’s leading internet services, including e-commerce sites such as Alibaba Group’s Taobao and Tmall marketplaces of JD.com.  they will also cover payment services like Ant Group’s Alipay or Tencent Holding’s WeChat Pay.

The rules, issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation on its website, bar companies from a range of behavior, including forcing merchants to choose between the country’s top internet players, a long-time practice in the market.  SAMR said the latest guidelines would “stop monopolistic behaviors in the platform economy and protect fair competition in the market.”

--A plan to force the sale of TikTok’s American operations to a group including Oracle and Walmart has been shelved indefinitely, people familiar with the situation said, as President Biden undertakes a broad review of his predecessor’s efforts to address potential security risks from Chinese tech companies.

The TikTok deal – which had been driven by Donald Trump – has languished since last fall in the midst of successful legal challenges to the U.S. government’s effort by TikTok’s owner, China’s ByteDance Ltd.

But late Wednesday, the Biden administration asked to delay the government’s appeal of a federal district court judge’s December injunction against the TikTok ban.

In a court filing, the Biden administration said it had begun a review of the agency action that would help it determine whether the national security threat cited by the Trump administration continues to warrant the ban.

Discussions continue between representatives of ByteDance and U.S. national security officials, with the talks centering on data security and ways to prevent the information TikTok collects on American users from being accessed by the Chinese government, they said.

--Uber Technologies Inc. posted a narrower annual loss on the back of its food-delivery business, while cutting costs, despite the fact the pandemic has crushed its core ride-hailing operations.

The company on Wednesday reported a net loss of $6.76 billion for 2020, compared with a loss of $8.5bn the year before.  While shelter-in-place orders dealt a blow to Uber’s rides business, its food-delivery arm soared as the same mandates kept people from going to restaurants.  Revenue declined 14% year over year to $11.13 billion.

Uber cut about a quarter of its staff while shedding noncore businesses, leading to $1 billion in savings on fixed expenses last year.

At the same time the company doubled down on delivery, buying small food-delivery rival Postmates Inc. last year and including new items such as groceries and medicines.  Earlier this month, Uber acquired Drizly as it enters the alcohol delivery business as well.

“It has become clear that the pandemic has increased consumers’ appetite for on-demand delivery of not just food, but all goods, and we have taken major steps to address this enormous opportunity,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on a call with analysts.

Overall, Uber’s fourth-quarter revenue fell 16% to $3.16bn.  The net loss for the period narrowed to $968 million, from $1.09bn in the year-earlier quarter.

But like rival Lyft, Uber has said it expects to become profitable by year-end on an adjusted basis (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

--Bitcoin surged to an all-time high after Tesla Inc. said it’s invested $1.5 billion, becoming the biggest company yet to back the controversial cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin jumped as much as 15% after Tesla made the disclosure in a regulatory filing, with prices exceeding $44,000 for the first time.

That Tesla, and billionaire Elon Musk, have thrown their weight behind Bitcoin is a massive sign of support for the cryptocurrency, which has been criticized by policymakers for facilitating money laundering and fraud.

Predictions for Bitcoin’s possible long-term price range from $400,000 down to zero.

But Thursday, BNY Mellon became the first global bank to announce the formation of a new enterprise Digital Assets unit that will accelerate the development of solutions and capabilities to help clients address growing and evolving needs related to the growth of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies.

The cross-functional, cross-business team is currently developing a client-facing prototype that is designed to be the industry’s first multi-asset digital custody and administration platform for traditional and digital assets.

Roman Regelman, CEO of Asset Servicing and Head of Digital at BNY Mellon said: “Growing client demand for digital assets, maturity of advanced solutions, and improving regulatory clarity present a tremendous opportunity for us to extend our current service offerings to this emerging field.”

--PepsiCo Inc. said on Thursday it expects organic revenue to grow in 2021 on hopes that consumers would return to pre-pandemic lifestyles as economies reopen and Covid-19.

The snack and beverage giant topped Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter revenue as the second round of lockdowns spurred demand for its products such as Tostitos, Cheetos and Gatorade that are more suited to at-home consumption.

The company said it expects a mid-single digit rise in annual organic revenue and a high-single digit increase in adjusted earnings.

Rival Coca-Cola too had forecast organic revenue to rebound this year.

Organic revenue from snacks under the company’s Frito-Lay North America unit rose 5% in the fourth quarter, while those of sodas and other beverages rose 5.5% in North America, its biggest market.

Net revenue rose 8.8% to $22.46 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 26, above expectations.  The company also announced a 5% increase in its annual dividend to be paid in June.

--The Aunt Jemima breakfast brand will be renamed Pearl Milling Company, it was announced Tuesday, after the 130-year-old maple syrup mascot was scrutinized last year over its ties to slavery.

Quaker Oats, a division of PepsiCo that owns the brand, unveiled the new name and logo, which it said would hit store shelves in June.

Pearl Milling Company was a small Missouri mill that in 1889 produced the self-rising pancake mix later known as Aunt Jemima.

“While the name on the box has changed, the great tasting products – the ‘pearl’ inside the familiar red box – remains the same, with a mission to create joyful breakfast moments for everyone,” the company said on its website.

Can’t say I’ve ever had a joyful breakfast moment.

But it is kind of startling Aunt Jemima wasn’t retired decades earlier.

--Kellogg posted fourth-quarter and annual sales gains Thursday even as its forecast for 2021 left room for a slight slowdown after a year in which it struggled to keep up with the pandemic-fueled demand for Frosted Flakes.

Fourth-quarter net sales of $3.46 billion improved on $3.22 billion a year earlier, versus Street expectations of $3.49 billion.  On an organic basis excluding acquisitions, divestitures and the latest fiscal year’s extra week, net sales grew 2.5% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and 6% for all of 2020.

CEO Steve Cahillane said on a call with analysts: “Importantly, we saw growth across our category groups in 2020.  In each of these category groups, there were headwinds in the form of sharply lower away-from-home occasions and outlets as well as reduced on-the-go occasions. The good news is that elevated at-home demand and a consumer preference for brands accelerated our retail channel growth in each of these category groups.”

The company said it expects organic growth to slip 1% in 2021 “as it compares to unusually strong, Covid-related growth in the prior year.”

--Kraft Heinz reported solid fourth-quarter earnings yesterday.  Organic sales rose 6% in the quarter from a year earlier, better than expected, which follows growth of around 6% to 7% over each of the prior three quarters as consumers ate more at home.

The company also guided for flat to positive sales growth in the first quarter of 2021.

--It has been decades since I was a regular rider on the PATH rail system between New Jersey and New York, but I’m not surprised that researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine said air quality readings in the subway system raise serious health concerns and warrant further investigation.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, looked at the air quality of transit systems across the Northeast, including subways in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, during morning and evening rush hours. It found that air quality was lowest on platforms and improved somewhat on air-conditioned trains.

Dr. Terry Gordon, the co-author of the study said all of the systems showed pollution levels at least several times higher than those recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.  The two systems in New York were the most polluted.

“The only saving grace is that one doesn’t spend much time in the subway system whether on the train or on the platform,” Dr. Gordon said.

The transit workers union found the study alarming.  A PATH union representative said many current and former colleagues suffer from respiratory problems and cancers they believe are caused by their work.

--Madison Square Garden Entertainment on Friday reported a fiscal Q2 net loss of $5.17 per share, compared with earnings of $3.39 per share in the prior-year period. 

The New York-based sports team and entertainment company also reported revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31 of $23.1 million, down 94% from $394.1 million a year earlier. 

Needless to say, MSG’s results were materially impacted by the pandemic.

Alas, New York State will be allowing limited crowds at indoor venues in the coming weeks.

--The ratings for the Super Bowl were the lowest since 2007, but the telecast still attracted 96.4 million viewers.

Foreign Affairs

Iran: Tehran has carried out its plan to produce uranium metal, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed on Wednesday, despite Western powers having warned Iran that would breach their 2015 nuclear deal as uranium metal can be used to make the core of an atom bomb.

Iran began breaching its nuclear deal step by step in 2019 in response to President Trump’s withdrawal from the deal the previous year and Washington’s reimposition of sanctions on Tehran.  In recent months, Iran has been accelerating those breaches, complicating efforts to bring the U.S. back into the deal under President Biden.

But while Iran hinted this week it was rethinking their vow to never seek a nuclear weapon, new Israeli intelligence suggests they are at least two years away from producing one, not the 3-6 months commonly thought if Iran were to “break out.”  Israel says while Iran has amassed uranium sufficient to build almost three nuclear bombs – if the uranium were enriched to weapons-grade level, it still lacks all the components and technical ability to make a bomb.

President Biden said the United States will not lift its economic sanctions on Iran in order to get Tehran back to the negotiating table.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif last weekend urged Washington to act fast to return to the 2015 nuclear accord, pointing out that legislation passed by parliament forces the government to harden its nuclear stance if U.S. sanctions are not eased by Feb. 21.  Zarif also referred to elections in Iran in June.  If a hardline president is elected, this could further jeopardize the deal.

“Time is running out for the Americans, both because of the parliament bill and the election atmosphere that will follow the Iranian New Year,” Zarif said in a newspaper interview.  Iran’s new year begins on March 21.

Zarif made his comments Saturday.  Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the United States should lift all sanctions if Washington wants Tehran to reverse its nuclear steps.

“Iran has fulfilled all its obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal, not the United States and the three European countries… If they want Iran to return to its commitments, the United States must lift all sanctions first,” Khamenei wrote on Twitter.

“After verifying whether all sanctions have been lifted, then we will return to full compliance,” he wrote.

Separately, Iran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday a new U.S. stand on the Yemen war can be a “step towards correcting past mistakes.”  Last Thursday, Biden said the six-year war, widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, “has to end.”  He also named a veteran U.S. diplomat as the special envoy for Yemen in a bid to step up American diplomacy to try to end the war.

China: President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping held their first telephone call as leaders and appeared at odds on most issues, even as Xi warned that confrontation would be a “disaster” for both nations.  While Xi has called for “win-win” cooperation, Biden has called China America’s “most serious competitor” and vowed to “out compete” Beijing.

On Thursday, Biden told a bipartisan group of senators at an Oval Office meeting on infrastructure that the United States must raise its game in the face of the Chinese challenge.

Biden said he spoke to Xi for two hours on Wednesday night and warned the senators: “If we don’t get moving, they are going to eat our lunch… They’re investing billions of dollars dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things. We just have to step up.”

The White House said Biden emphasized to Xi it was a U.S. priority to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific, a region where the United States and China are major strategic rivals.  It said he voiced “fundamental” concerns about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair” trade practices, as well as about human rights issues, including China’s crackdown in Hong Kong and treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, and its increasingly assertive actions in Asia, including toward Taiwan.

Xi told Biden confrontation would be a “disaster” and the two sides should re-establish the means to avoid misjudgments, the Chinese foreign ministry said. Xi maintained a hardline tone regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, which he said were matters of “sovereignty and territorial integrity” that he hoped the United States would approach cautiously. 

The call was the first between Chinese and U.S. leaders since Xi spoke with former President Trump last March 27, nearly 11 months ago, which is startling.  Since then, relations between the two have plunged to their worst level in decades.

Tuesday, the United States sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the disputed South China Sea, the latest sign of continued military tension under the Biden administration.

“The United States frequently sends ships and planes into the South China Sea to show off its force, which is not conducive to regional peace and stability,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said in a regular press briefing.

Separately, the United States has condemned China for banning the broadcast of the BBC World News, saying China should allow the public full access to the internet and media.

The ban is the latest in a string of disputes between Beijing and overseas media, including the arrests of an Australian journalist and a news assistant for Bloomberg News in China, and the expulsion of journalists from several American outlets.

“We absolutely condemn [China’s] decision to ban BBC World News.  [China] maintains one of the most controlled, most oppressive, least free information spaces in the world,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday.

“It’s troubling that as [China] restricts outlets and platforms from operating freely in China, Beijing’s leaders use free and open media environments overseas to promote misinformation.”

North Korea: Kim Jong Un sacked his economy chief, who was only appointed last month, and denounced his cabinet for a lack of innovation in drafting goals for a new five-year economic plan, state media reported on Friday.

The ruling Workers’ Party wrapped up its four-day plenary meeting on Thursday, where Kim also mapped out his vision for inter-Korean affairs and relations with other countries, as well as party rules and personnel issues.

Kim accused the cabinet of drafting plans with “no big changes” from previous ones, which he has said had “failed tremendously on almost every sector.”

“The idea and policy of the party congress are not properly reflected in the proposed plan for economic work for this year and innovative viewpoint and clear tactics can’t be found,” Kim told the meeting, according to the official KCNA news agency.

“The cabinet failed to play a leading role in mapping out plans of key economic fields and almost mechanically brought together the numbers drafted by the ministries.”

Russia: Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny returned to court on Friday for a trial on slander charges he calls politically motivated amid mounting tensions between Russia and the West over his jailing.

Navalny was jailed last week for almost three years for parole violations he said were trumped up.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Friday that Moscow was ready to sever ties with the European Union if the bloc hit it with painful economic sanctions.  Moscow has accused the West of hysteria over the case.

In the slander case, Navalny stands accused of defaming a World War II veteran who took part in a promotional video backing constitutional reforms last year that let Putin run for two more terms in the Kremlin after 2024 if he wants.

Navalny described the people in the video as traitors and corrupt lackeys. He accuses authorities of using the slander charges to smear his reputation.  It does not appear that this is a jailable offense because the alleged crime was committed before the law was changed to make it so.

Meanwhile, Navalny’s allies have urged Russians to gather near their homes for a brief Valentine’s Day protest, shining their mobile phone torches and lighting candles in heart shapes to flood social media.

Nationwide, police have detained more than 11,000 people at what they say were unsanctioned protests that the Kremlin has condemned as illegal and dangerous.  I haven’t seen how many are still in custody.

Navalny’s allies have said they will turn their focus away from mass protests after all the arrests and instead mobilize for the parliamentary elections this September, when his backers hope to unseat the ruling United Russia party loyal to Putin.

One of Navalny’s top lieutenants, Leonid Volkov, said in a video to supporters, “Tens of millions of people watched with horror as [Putin] showed he was ready to beat peaceful unarmed protesters with his storm troopers.”

Navalny’s team has watched as mass protests in Belarus played out to no effect.

Putin “learned from Lukashenko that you can beat people very, very, very painfully and still hold on to power,” Volkov said.  “It was an election that drove people into the street in Belarus. For us, our election is still ahead of us.”

Navalny’s team has vowed to help European authorities identify stolen assets and laundered money, as it also continues to post exposes of wealth and corruption in Kremlin circles.

Lastly, the Biden administration now has access to the call records between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin; at least a dozen calls and meetings over four years.  Understanding what was said between the two could help illuminate whether Trump ever revealed sensitive information or struck any deals with the Kremlin leader that could take the new administration by surprise.

According to the independent Levada Center, however, Putin still has a 64% approval rating, in the latest survey conducted in the lead up to Navalny’s sentencing, although his popularity among younger respondents dropped 17 points to 51%, and Navalny’s supporters say that even independent polls can’t be trusted because many Russians are fearful of speaking out against Putin.

Myanmar: Close aides to ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi have been detained in a new wave of arrests following last week’s military coup, while officials of the electoral commission were also arrested.  The military launched the coup after what it said was widespread fraud in November elections, won by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), with the electoral commission rejecting the military’s claims.

President Biden on Wednesday approved an executive order for new sanctions on those responsible for the coup, and repeated demands for the generals to give up power and free civilian leaders.

Protests have been widespread in the country, the Civil Disobedience Movement, chanting anti-junta slogans and carrying placards that read “reject military coup” and “save Myanmar.”

Random Musings

--Rasmussen tracking poll: 52% approve of President Biden’s job performance, 45% disapprove (Feb. 12).

--Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, 86, announced he would not seek reelection for a seventh term in 2022, becoming the latest Republican senator to step down ahead of a midterm campaign that is likely to be spirited and expensive. “I am grateful to the people of Alabama who have put their trust in me for more than forty years. I have been fortunate to serve in the U.S. Senate longer than any other Alabamian,” Shelby said in a statement.

Shelby was first elected to the Senate in 1986 as a Democrat before switching parties.  He last won re-election in 2016 with 64% of the vote.  [Shelby was first elected to the House in 1978.]

Republican senators Rob Portman, Pat Toomey and Richard Burr have also announced they will not seek reelection in 2022.

--Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a titan of American Academia, business and diplomacy who spent most of the 1980s trying to improve Cold War relations with the Soviet Union and forging a course for peace in the Middle East, died on Saturday.  He was 100.

A lifelong Republican, Shultz held three major Cabinet positions in GOP administrations during a lengthy career of public service.

He was labor secretary, treasury secretary and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Richard M. Nixon before spending more than six years as President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, reflecting in his memoirs on the “highly analytic, calm and unselfish Shultz,” paid Shultz an exceptional compliment in his diary: “If I could choose one American to whom I would entrust the nation’s fate in a crisis, it would be George Shultz.”

Shultz was born Dec. 13, 1920, in New York City and raised in Englewood, New Jersey.  He studied economics and public and international affairs at Princeton University.  After Princeton, Shultz joined the Marine Corps and rose to the rank of captain as an artillery officer during World War II.

A pragmatist, Shultz, along with fellow Republican Kissinger, made headlines during the 2016 presidential campaign when he declined to endorse Republican nominee Donald Trump after being quoted as saying “God help us” when asked about the possibility of Trump in the White House.

Paul Wolfowitz / Wall Street Journal

“George Shultz was perhaps the 20th century’s most consequential secretary of state, a group that includes George Marshall, Dean Acheson and Henry Kissinger.  Between 1982 and 1989 Shultz and President Ronald Reagan forged a relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that brought a peaceful end to the Cold War and relative freedom to some 400 million Soviet subjects – an impossible dream when Reagan took office in 1981.

“Reagan had a sign on his desk: ‘There is no limit to what a man can do, or how far he can go, if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.’  Shultz was happy to credit Reagan for their joint achievement, which the secretary attributed to the president’s willingness to challenge conventional wisdom and change ‘the national and international agenda on issue after issue.’  Shultz viewed his role as providing the diplomacy to realize that vision and to improve it.  Sometimes that meant telling the president he was wrong, as with the Iran-Contra scandal or the president’s erroneous statement that there had been ‘fraud on both sides’ in the 1986 Philippine election.

“Shultz would be the first to say he was lucky to work with a great leader.  Both men recognized they were lucky to have Mikhail Gorbachev as a counterpart.  Shultz seized that luck to forge a trusting relationship between the two leaders and between himself and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

“ ‘Trust is the coin of the realm,’ Shultz believed, an adage he used as the title for an essay reflecting on his 100th birthday in December.  With trust, good things happen.  Without it, they don’t.  Characteristically, when Shultz called out China on these pages last August for ‘wrecking Hong Kong,’ he emphasized that China had ‘lost international trust,’ making it ‘difficult to form future deals with China’s leadership.’….

“Shultz’s successors would do well to remember three aspects of his diplomacy. First, he knew that diplomacy requires strategy, setting goals and working toward them over time.  ‘Confronting tremendous problems’ on coming into office, Shultz wrote, ‘the economist in me asked, ‘Where are we trying to go, and what kind of strategy should we employ to get there?’ recognizing that results would often be a long time in coming.’’

“Second, he understood that strategy requires reflection. That means confronting what Shultz’s friend and colleague Paul Nitze, called the ‘tension between opposites’ – between reflection and action. The flood of decisions demanding the secretary’s attention leave little time to think about the big picture.  Accordingly, Shultz created his ‘Saturday seminars,’ to which he would invite a diverse group of experts to explore with him for several hours key aspects of important issues.

“Third, even with the best effort to set the right direction, many factors are outside a diplomat’s control. For him, it was a pursuit more like gardening than architecture or engineering, where you can build according to a plan.  ‘If you keep the weeds out and apply fertilizer regularly,’ he would say, amazing things may grow.  He was anything but flashy: The press corps might have preferred exciting speeches, but Shultz was more interested in results than headlines.  And he remembered that sign on Reagan’s desk.

“Shultz displayed so much energy and good humor at the teleconference celebration of his birthday last December and he was writing so thoughtfully, even in his 100th year, that it seemed reasonable to hope we could have the benefit of his wisdom for a few more years.  Fortunately we can still learn from his writings and from his example.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, called his memoir ‘Present at the Creation,’ an account of rebuilding the postwar world and the realities of a Cold War with the Soviet Union.  Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who died Saturday at age 100, titled his memoir ‘Turmoil and Triumph,’ an apt description of the historic role Shultz played in ending the Cold War some 40 years later….

“The ‘turmoil’ of his memoir’s title described the world as he took control of foreign policy for Reagan.

“The Soviet Union, possessing a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, was led by Yuri Andropov, a determined communist opponent of the West.  Hard to believe now, but Europe then was still divided by what Winston Churchill called an ‘iron curtain,’ which separated the free democratic nations of Western Europe from the closed, Soviet-dominated countries to the east.  Millions were imprisoned inside these countries, unable to emigrate.  Those who tried to flee could be imprisoned or shot.

“The competition between the U.S. and Soviet Union was global, extending into Central America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa.  Shultz, like Reagan, was determined to end the Cold War….

“In 1982 President Reagan asked Shultz to return to government as Secretary of State.

“Within a year Shultz was at the center of a massive global effort to force the U.S. to back down from its intention to deploy Pershing-II intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe to balance the Soviet Union’s INF missiles already deployed and aimed at Western Europe.

“Some 30 years after the Cold War ended with the West’s victory, we tend to forget how contingent and difficult the struggle was.  Millions of anti-American marchers demonstrated in European capitals. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lent its moral weight to the anti-Reagan opposition.  Despite this pressure, Reagan – with the support of allied leadership in Britain, West Germany and France – went ahead with placing the Pershing-II missiles in West Germany.

“ ‘Allied unity and resolve were demonstrated,’ Shultz wrote in his memoir, adding what came to be known as a keystone of his approach to foreign policy: ‘Strength was recognized as crucial to diplomacy.’

“Four years later, Shultz shepherded the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 signed by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, amid some Republican and conservative opposition, including from these columns.   The U.S. has since withdrawn from the INF treaty after years of Kremlin violations, but at the time it reduced East-West tensions….

“By 1989 communist regimes were collapsing across eastern Europe.  The symbolic end of the Cold War came with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  An enormous cast of public figures and government officials, in the U.S. and Europe, contributed to the elimination of Soviet communism.  George Shultz will be remembered as a leading force in shaping and executing a U.S. strategy that liberated millions from the ideology of totalitarianism.”

Lou Cannon / Washington Post

“George P. Shultz was at once a patriot and an internationalist.  As a Marine Corps artillery officer in World War II, he saw combat in the Pacific. As secretary of state, he would take newly minted U.S. envoys to a large globe and ask them to name their country.  Invariably, they pointed to the nation where they were about to be sent.

“ ‘No,’ Shultz would say.  ‘Your country is the United States of America.’”

--A computer hacker gained access to the water system of a city in Florida and tried to pump in a “dangerous” amount of a chemical, officials say.

The hacker briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide (lye) in Oldsmar’s water treatment system, but a worker spotted it and reversed the action.

Lye is used in small amounts to control acidity but a large amount could have caused major problems in the water.

No arrests have yet been made and it is not known if the hack was done from within the U.S. or outside.

A plant operator saw an attempt to access the system in the morning but assumed it was his supervisor, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

But another attempt was made early in the afternoon and this time the hacker accessed the treatment software and increased the sodium hydroxide content from 100 parts per million to 11,100 ppm.

The operator immediately reduced the level to normal.

--Nine National Guard troops have been killed in Black Hawk crashes in roughly one year.  When the active-duty force is included, data shows that there have been five fatal Black Hawk crashes in the past 14 months, both overseas and domestically, claiming the lives of 16 service members.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said the crashes raise “significant concerns about a systemic issue with the Black Hawk helicopter operation cycle,” as she put it in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin the other day.

Among the accidents was one where five U.S. soldiers, as well as a French and Czech troop, were killed during a peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula when their Black Hawk went down because of an apparent technical failure.

---

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

We pray for our healthcare workers and first responders.

God bless America.

---

Gold $1823
Oil $59.70

Returns for the week 2/8-2/12

Dow Jones  +1.0%  [31458]
S&P 500  +1.2%  [3934]
S&P MidCap  +2.7%
Russell 2000  +2.5%
Nasdaq  +1.7%  [14095]

Returns for the period 1/1/21-2/12/21

Dow Jones  +2.8%
S&P 500  +4.8%
S&P MidCap  +10.3%
Russell 2000  +15.9%
Nasdaq  +9.4%

Bulls 58.6
Bears 18.3

Hang in there…Mask up, wash your hands.

Brian Trumbore

 

 

 

---