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Week in Review

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12/25/2021

For the week 12/20-12/24

[Posted 11:30 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.

Special thanks to Jim D. and Andy M. for their ongoing support.

Edition 1,184

I hope this finds you all well and that you are gathering with loved ones that maybe you missed last holiday season.  I’ll be driving a bit tomorrow, Christmas Day, to see my brother and sis-in-law and then because I am who I am, back home at the crack of dawn Sunday to keep working.

I’d love to travel overseas soon, specifically Taiwan, and Ireland, but as I presciently wrote in the weeks before Omicron, it’s tough to make ambitious plans when you don’t know what the rules will be…and in the case of a trip to say, Asia, I don’t want to have to chase after my money if I decide not to go because of new quarantine rules.

So we are where we are…and, yes, that is in a much, much better place than last year at least.

But while I sound a note or two of further hope below, here in New Jersey, the fact is, like New York, we are hitting one record after another in cases (yes, we are also testing a ton), but hospitalizations were 644 on Nov. 7 and now stand over 2,300.  Schools are once again having issues and as they are already short on staff, many teachers having quit the game in the past year+, let alone now getting infected, along with a ton of students, you see some districts going back to remote learning and that sucks.

The service and healthcare sectors are also getting slammed in various parts of the country, and Europe, all over again as well.

The hope is that Omicron isn’t anywhere near as severe as Delta, and I get into that, but if this is a final spasm, at what cost in lives?  We’ll see.

When it comes to those who remain unvaccinated by choice, I can’t help but agree with one of my favorite commentators, CNN’s Michael Smerconish.  There is a limit to my sympathy and compassion, and I’ve hit it.

I’ll have a few things to say about 2022 next week.   For now, we continue….

---

Researchers in Scotland found Omicron was associated with a two-thirds lower risk of hospitalization compared to the earlier variant, though it was 10 times more likely than Delta to infect people who’d already had Covid.  An Imperial College London team working with a larger data set found that people with Omicron were almost half as likely to need an overnight hospital stay.

The fresh data add to a study showing South Africans were 70% less likely to develop severe disease and 80% less likely to be hospitalized if they contract the new variant.  The growing body of research provides preliminary reassurance that the Omicron wave may be comparatively less dangerous than Delta, at least in areas with high levels of pre-existing immunity.

But the highly contagious new strain could still overwhelm health-care systems as infections soar globally.

“It’s important that we don’t get ahead of ourselves,” said Jim McMenamin, national Covid-19 incident director for Public Health Scotland, which conducted the Scottish study with the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde.  “A smaller proportion of a greater number of cases requiring treatment might still mean a substantial number of people that may experience severe Covid.”

And in the case of South Africa, Scotland and England, lowered risk of hospitalization in all three is no doubt due in large part to pre-existing immunity in those populations.  Many of the infected already had protection against severe disease, either because of previous infections or vaccinations.  [Plus South Africa’s population is very young compared to most of the developed world.]

In the United States we may have a lot of pre-existing immunity, but we also have a significant number who either are not vaccinated with even a single dose, or who are refusing to get the booster (or not yet eligible).  I have two good friends who got their first two shots but now refuse to get the booster though eligible. 

Caution is very much the word.  The markets got swept up in the happy talk this week on how Omicron wasn’t that bad even as cases hit record levels not just in Italy, Spain and France (Germany seems to have bent the curve), as well as the UK, but also in New York and New Jersey, which was the pattern in the spring of 2020, when my area was hit hardest, first, after Covid crossed the pond.

The World Health Organization’s European head, Hans Kluge, warned on Wednesday that it will be 3-4 weeks before we can really answer Omicron severity questions.

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan noted that not only is Omicron spreading faster than the Delta variant, but its causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from Covid and thus it would be “unwise” to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant than previous ones.  “With the numbers going up, all health systems are going to be under strain,” she told Geneva-based journalists.

But there is hope, the WHO said, pointing towards the development of second and third generation vaccines, and the further development of antimicrobial treatments and other innovations.

“(We) hope to consign this disease to a relatively mild disease that is easily prevented, that is easily treated,” Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergency expert, told the briefing.  “If we can keep virus transmission to minimum, then we can bring the pandemic to an end.”

However, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said China, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was first detected at the end of 2019, must be forthcoming with data and information related to its origin to help the response going forward.

“We need to continue until we know the origins, we need to push harder because we should learn from what happened this time in order to (do) better in the future,” Tedros said.

Fat chance of getting more out of Xi Jinping.

---

So last Saturday, we were given a heads up from the White House that on Tuesday, President Biden was going to give a very important speech on Covid and Omicron.  Immediately, many of us thought, well, if it’s that important why wait until Tuesday?!

The president then proceeded to deliver a truly embarrassing performance.

“I promised to always give you the truth,” he started out, and then after, in the Q&A with reporters, he gets all defensive about his administration’s abysmal failure on testing and not being ready for Omicron when anyone with half a brain, including your editor, was saying a year ago, unless we vaccinate the rest of the world, we’ll be dealing with variants for years and years to come.

The president then talked about delivering 500 million free at-home rapid Covid-19 tests, but, first, the New York Times immediately reported that no contracts for same had even been signed, and if you give this as a word problem to your kids now back doing virtual learning, any second-grader could tell you 500 million, which won’t be available until late January in all likelihood, amounts to 1-2 per person!

And don’t ask our vice president, Kamala Harris, to fill in for Joe Biden at a moment’s notice.  Ms. Harris, in another one of her disastrous interviews that were supposed to ‘reboot’ her status, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview last weekend:

“We didn’t see Delta coming.  I think most scientists did not – upon whose advice and direction we have relied – didn’t see Delta coming,” she said.  “We didn’t see Omicron coming.  And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”

What?  You mean the coronavirus can evolve to the point where we have different mutations and variants?  Jiminy-cricket!  This really is scary!

[Just shoot me.]

John Podhoretz / New York Post

“After President Joe Biden finished his almost insanely repetitive speech on Covid (Tuesday) – he literally said every single thing three times over, in a manner that suggested three different speech drafts had been prepared and all three were simply read serially even though they were entirely duplicative – he lost his temper.

“Asked by someone in the media why ‘it took so long’ for his administration to get serious about providing home exams and other forms of Covid tests to the American people, he snapped: ‘Come on, ‘What took so long?’  It didn’t take long at all.  What happened was the Omicron virus spread more rapidly than anyone thought.’

“That is a hilarious untruth, so brazen you have to admire Biden for even attempting something this Trumpian.

“Once Omicron was detected in the fourth week of November, the world went bananas precisely because it was going to spread rapidly.  That was the reason everybody was afraid of it – because of its potential virulence and the fact that it seemed almost designed to elude and defeat some of the vaccines being used worldwide to combat Covid.

“Here is a representative quote from the New York Times on Nov. 26, or 25 days ago; ‘Just two days after the world learned of the variant, the World Health Organization officially labeled it a ‘variant of concern,’ its most serious category – the first since the Delta variant, which emerged a year ago.  The designation means that the variant has mutations that might make it more contagious or more virulent, or make vaccines and other preventive measures less effective.’

“During his Covid blather, Biden went on to claim that if he had said in November it would spread as rapidly as it has, people would have replied, ‘Biden, have you been drinking?’  While that would be one explanation for why he slurred every third word in the speech, in fact, no one would have thought he was drinking had he said this – since that’s what everybody was saying would happen.

“The truth is that he and his people didn’t do anything about testing then because – well, who knows why he didn’t?  We need a Bob Woodward book to explain it to us in a year’s time. For now it’s’ enough to say Biden didn’t act – and right now, nationally, you cannot get your hands on a home antigen test to save your life….

“Trust me.  I spent an hour at it Monday and two hours at it Tuesday.  They’re all gone. Poof.  And guess what the television Covid-hysteric doctors are all blathering about?  They’re all saying, ‘Look, if you want to hang out with your family on Christmas, you better get tested first!’

“Oh, really? Where the hell are you supposed to get tested?  I got tested Sunday.  In Times Square.  In the cold rain.  I got there at 8:45 a.m.  I was done by 10:45 a.m.  When I left, the line was probably 300-people long.  My two hours were going to be six hours for them….

“But wait, everybody – here comes Joe Biden to save the day, like Mighty Mouse.  He’s going to open testing sites!  Federal testing sites!  There are going to be 10 – count ‘em, 10 – whole sites in New York City beginning this week!

“Whoop-de-freakin’-doo!  More than 8.5 million people in the Naked City, and 10 new whole sites are being set up as the Omicron virus spreads like wildfire!  It’s like bringing a water gun to put out the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“At long last, a sense of reality seems to be settling in at the White House that we will have to live with Covid-19, even if President Biden didn’t say so explicitly in his speech Tuesday.  He can’t ‘shut down the virus’ as he claimed in the campaign. But at least he isn’t shutting down the economy or schools.

“Mr. Biden was at pains to say Tuesday that this is no time to panic, even as the Omicron variant spreads.  He advised Americans not to abandon their holiday plans if they’re vaccinated, though he repeated his dire warnings about the unvaccinated.  He even offered a grace note to Donald Trump for producing the vaccines, which must be a first.

“Then again, there isn’t much the Administration can do at this point.  It plans to distribute 500 million free at-home tests, though not until January because ramping up manufacturing takes time.  Mr. Biden hammered the Trump Administration over long test lines, but now the reality is his.

“Last year the major challenge was a shortage of testing reagents.  Now it’s a shortage of workers, which is also hamstringing the vaccine booster campaign.  Mr. Biden’s vaccine mandate may be contributing to the testing snarls.  Ditto hospital staffing shortages. Some governors have called in their National Guard to assist at overburdened hospitals, some of which have lost unvaccinated staff….

“But the main government priority has to be accelerating the approval and production of therapies and vaccines to cope with new variants….

“Wasn’t Democrats’ $1.9 trillion spending bill in March supposed to pay for more testing and treatments?  Too much of the money went to progressive political groups, and the U.S. pandemic recovery has been worse off for it.

“Mr. Biden campaigned on vanquishing Covid, but he has done no better than Mr. Trump despite the benefit of better therapies and vaccines.  He isn’t responsible for the Covid deaths on his watch any more than Mr. Trump was, and it would help him politically if he said so.

“The reality is that the virus will eventually become endemic, like many other pathogens that humanity lives with.  Immunity from vaccines and infections over time should lessen its severity.  Omicron may accelerate this process, and we will be fortunate if it turns out to be less virulent, as some evidence suggests….

“Some schools and colleges are going virtual again, but even most Democratic governors are ruling out more lockdowns, unlike European politicians.  For that we can thank public insistence more than the most quoted public-health experts, who appear all too willing to force the public back into isolation even two years into the pandemic.  The people are wiser than the experts.”

Biden Agenda

--West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said on Sunday he would not support President Biden’s $1.75-$2 trillion domestic spending bill, the Build Back Better plan, in a huge  shock to the administration that thought it was continuing to negotiate with the senator.

During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Manchin said “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” citing concerns about inflation.  “I just can’t.  I have tried everything humanly possible.”

Manchin, in a statement after the interview, said that increasing the U.S. debt load would “drastically hinder” the country’s ability to respond to the pandemic and geopolitical threats.

“My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in  a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face,” he said.  “I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight.”

Manchin then said on Monday that White House staff did some “inexcusable” things that contributed to his decision to publicly reject President Joe Biden’s social and climate policy plan.

Manchin said he would not say “the real reason” talks failed.  But when asked what that was, he said: “The bottom line is…it’s staff.  It’s staff purely. …It’s not the president.  It’s staff.  And they drove some things and put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Sunday that Manchin’s halting negotiations on the bill would represent a “sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.”

Manchin has voiced concerns with a number of proposals in Biden’s signature domestic policy bill, including multiple climate proposals and a provision extending monthly payments to parents.  A proposal Manchin submitted to the White House last week included $1.8 trillion in funding over 10 years, as Biden had hoped, but no child tax credit, the Washington Post reported.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday he plans to move forward with a vote early next year anyway.

Get ready for the fireworks.

--The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to take up disputes over the Biden administration’s nationwide vaccine-or-testing Covid-19 mandate for large businesses and a separate vaccine requirement for healthcare workers.

The brief court order said the court will hear oral arguments on Jan. 7 in the two cases.

The workplace mandate is currently in effect nationwide, while the healthcare worker mandate is blocked in half the 50 states.

An appeals court last Friday allowed the workplace mandate, which covers 80 million American workers, to go into effect prompting businesses, states and other groups challenging the policy to ask the Supreme Court to block it.

The other case concerns whether the administration can require healthcare workers at facilities that treat federally funded Medicare and Medicaid patients to receive shots while litigation continues.

--Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Merry Christmas, student loan borrowers. Taxpayers will have to settle for airing their grievances a la Festivus.  That’s the result of the Biden Administration’s decision on Wednesday to extend its payment moratorium again to May 1.  Unlike its last pause through January, the Administration isn’t saying this extension is final – probably because it’s not.

“The Cares Act in March 2020 relieved borrowers from making payments on $1.6 trillion in federal student loans and waived interest accrual through September 2020.  President Trump extended the pause through January despite no legislative authority to do so.  Mr. Biden compounded the injury to taxpayers and the separation of powers by extending it through this September.

“Over the summer the Administration resisted progressive pressure for another extension.  But it ultimately surrendered, as it did with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s rental eviction moratorium.  The Education Department in August claimed this ‘final extension’ was necessary to ‘reduce the risk of delinquency and defaults.’  Democrats don’t want the pandemic emergency to end because it’s too politically useful.

“Claims of financial hardship for borrowers were dubious then and are even more so now as the unemployment rate among bachelor’s degree recipients has fallen to 2.3%.  Some 1.1 million more were employed in November than in February 2020. The pause has on average saved borrowers $400 per month….

“Mr. Biden is under pressure to appease progressives after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin shot down Build Back Better.  Politico reported Saturday that White House officials pushed back meetings with progressive groups against extending the loan pause again and said resuming payments was part of getting back to normal. Then came Mr. Manchin’s bombshell.

“ ‘With BBB delayed, Child Tax Credits will expire and student loans will restart within a matter of weeks.  Working families could lose thousands of $/mo just as prices are rising,’ New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Monday.  ‘That alone is reason for #POTUS to act on student loans ASAP – w / either moratorium or cancellation.’  Mr. Biden obliged.”

Wall Street and the Economy

We had a slew of economic data on the week, leading off with a final look at third-quarter GDP, up a bit to 2.3%.  Personal consumption was 2.0% in the quarter, which compares with 11.4% and 12.0% in the prior two quarters amid the reopening.  But remember, the Delta variant played a key role in Q3 in reducing economic activity.

GDP (annualized)

2022 Q3…2.3%
2022 Q2…6.7%
2022 Q1…6.4%
2021 Q4…4.5%

November existing-home sales came in a little light of expectations at 6.46 million annualized units, though up 1.9% month-over-month, and down 2.9% year-over-year.  The median home price of $353,900 was up 13.9% Y/Y, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Existing-home sales nonetheless are on track for their strongest year since 2006, as low mortgage rates and a robust job market drive up demand.

New home sales came in at an annualized pace of 774,000.

November durable goods were better than forecast, up 2.5%, and 0.8% ex-transportation.

And we had key data for the month on personal income, up 0.4%, and consumption, up 0.6%, both in line with expectations.

But this is the report that gives us the Fed’s preferred inflation benchmark, the personal consumption expenditures index, which rose 0.6% month-over-month, 5.7% Y/Y, the latter the highest rate since 1982.

The core figure that the Fed focuses on, ex-food and energy, though, rose 0.5% M/M and 4.7% from a year ago, which is well above the Fed’s target of 2%.

Ergo, further fuel for Jerome Powell and Co. to quickly end its bond-buying program in order to begin hiking interest rates, probably in May.  *Though this is all Covid dependent.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer, weighing all the above and more, is up to 7.6% for the fourth quarter.

In looking ahead at 2022, however, some economists expect the U.S. economy to now grow more slowly after Sen. Manchin seemingly dealt a fatal blow to the Build Back Better spending plan.

Goldman Sachs lowered its GDP growth forecast for 2022, as did Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics (and the favored economist of the White House).

“If BBB doesn’t become law, the economic recovery will be vulnerable to stalling out if we suffer another serious wave of the pandemic; an increasingly likely scenario with Omicron spreading rapidly,” Zandi wrote on Twitter.

One shift that economists say could slow growth is the reduction of an enhanced tax credit that sent families monthly payments of up to $300 per child but which is set to expire on Dec. 31.

According to a Reuters poll of economists, GDP was expected to fall to 4% in the first quarter after an expected 6% surge in the final three months of the year.  Growth for all of 2022 was seen decelerating to 3.9% - still well above pre-pandemic trends – from 5.6% this year.

Europe and Asia

Nothing this week on the Euro data front.

Brexit: Brexit minister David Frost quit the government last weekend, openly undermining British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over both his negotiations with the European Union and his response to a surge in coronavirus cases.  As Omicron gripped the UK, Frost said he opposed anything that could look like another lockdown.

Ultimately, Johnson held off on extra virus measures, avoiding a repeat of last year’s cancelled Christmas.

Johnson then appointed Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to be the Brexit negotiator as well and she said she would speak to her European Union counterpart, Marcos Sefcovic, next Tuesday amid renewed calls in Britain to rip up the controversial Northern Ireland protocol. 

Truss said she wanted to negotiate “a comprehensive solution” to the agreement, which requires post-Brexit checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Britain.

The protocol allows goods to flow freely between the North and the Republic to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

No EU-UK talks had been scheduled in the last days before Christmas, until the surprise resignation of Lord Frost.

Article 16 of the protocol allows one side or the other to rip up part of the agreement – such as customs checks between Britain and Northern Ireland – in the event of “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties.”  But it could expose whoever acts to retaliatory tariffs.

Truss supported ‘remain’ during the 2016 referendum campaign, but is popular with Tory activists at a time when Boris Johnson’s premiership is in crisis due to a string of revelations about lockdown-breaking gatherings at No. 10 Downing Street.

Some say Ms. Truss is attempting to look like Margaret Thatcher.  She recently was pictured riding on a tank in Estonia.

Turning to Asia…zero economic data of note out of China this week, though the Central Bank has taken steps to prop up the teetering real estate industry.

Japan reported inflation data for November and the annualized rate of 0.6% was actually the highest in two years.  But the core rate, ex-food and energy, was -0.6%.

Street Bytes

--One week to go in another strong year for stocks.  Equities liked what they heard on the Omicron front (rightly or wrongly), and the news on the economy was solid, so the S&P 500 hit a new record on Thursday (Wall Street closed Friday), 4725, up 2.3% on the week and nearly 26% for 2021.  The Dow Jones rose 1.7% to 35950 and Nasdaq surged 3.2%.

The Santa Claus rally was in full swing this week and next week could be more of the same, though it’s really up to Vladimir Putin.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.16%  2-yr. 0.69%  10-yr. 1.49%  30-yr. 1.91%

Bonds fell, yields rose, on the stronger economic outlook after this week’s releases. 

Yields also rose across the pond, with the Italian 10-year rising from 0.89% to 1.11%, a significant move as these things go.

--Oil had a solid week, up about $3.50 on West Texas Intermediate to $73.76 on the heels of the supposedly good Omicron news in terms of the severity of the illness.

Natural gas, though, is mired below $4.00 ($3.73), after a near-term peak of $6.20 on Oct. 27.  Look how warm it’s been across much of the country.

But I follow the 10-day forecast, daily, for Rapid City, South Dakota, to get an idea of future temperatures and we’re finally going to be getting into a normal winter pattern, at least for a spell it seems, so I’d expect nat gas to respond some in kind this coming week (after we set all kinds of warm weather records Christmas Day).

--Editorial / Washington Post

“President Biden has yet to name anyone to fill three key seats on the Federal Reserve Board. This is the most important economic policymaking institution in the United States – and many would say in the entire world.

“It’s hard to imagine Mr. Biden would not act expeditiously to nominate someone if there were an opening on the Supreme Court. So why the delay in filling vacancies at the Fed?

“When Mr. Biden announced last month that he would reappoint the steady and battle-tested Fed Chair Jerome Powell (a move this editorial board endorsed), the White House also put out a statement saying the president would announce his nominees for the other three spots ‘beginning in early December.’  It’s now past the midpoint of the month and no further nominations have been made.

“It’s difficult to understand why this isn’t an urgent priority for Mr. Biden.  Inflation is running at a nearly 40-year high, which is spooking many Americans and is a key reason the president’s approval ratings have slumped.  The Fed is the main line of defense against inflation.

“And the nation is going to need that line of defense at full strength in 2022.  As Mr. Powell warned (last) Wednesday, ‘The risk of higher inflation becoming entrenched has certainly increased.’….

“Mr. Powell does not make (critical) decisions on his own.  The Fed has a policymaking committee, and the core of it is the seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors.  If Mr. Biden does not move swiftly to fill the openings, the Fed will soon be operating hamstrung with just four members….

“It’s time for Mr. Biden to make some decisions.  The nominees will still have to be confirmed by the Senate before they can start their jobs, a process that can be lengthy.”

--The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Wursthorn relayed some of the research from Goldman Sachs that found five stocks in the S&P 500 account for more than half of the broad benchmark’s gain since April – Microsoft, Nvidia Corp., Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Tesla. For the year, these five are responsible for around one-third of the S&P’s gains.

But if these stocks stumble in the new year, you have a problem.

--Micron Technology Inc. on Monday delivered stronger quarterly results than Wall Street expected as data centers and electric vehicle manufacturers drove demand for its chips, and it forecast second-quarter sales and profits will also beat estimates with chip shortages easing in 2022.  Micron disclosed that it has struck deals with its own suppliers to ease bottlenecks in the supply chain.  The Street loved to hear this and the stock rocketed higher.

Micron makes both the NAND memory chips that serve the data storage market and the DRAM memory chips that are widely used in data centers, personal computers and other devices. Strong demand and an industry-wide shortage of the chips have also allowed Micron, one of the world’s biggest memory chip suppliers, to charge higher prices.

Micron said data center revenue grew 70% and that automotive revenue grew 25%.  The company expects revenue for the current fiscal second quarter to be $7.5 billion, above current Street forecasts, while in Fiscal Q1, Micron beat estimates with $7.69 billion.  Earnings came in at $2.16 per share, beating expectations of $2.11.

--While Micron said it is dealing successfully with the supply-chain issue, global constraints have hurt Nike Inc.’s sales.  The sneaker giant reported for a second consecutive quarter this week that its growth was stunted by a slowdown in production and transportation of its goods around the world.

Nike posted revenue of $11.4 billion in the quarter ended Nov. 30, up 1% from the same period a year earlier, better than expected.

Demand for Nike’s goods continues to outpace supply.  The previous quarter Nike reported a 10-week delay in production because of a lockdown in Vietnam and said it expected flat revenue growth for the November quarter.

On Monday, Nike said revenue in China, Asia Pacific and Latin America declined mainly because of low inventory levels resulting from Covid-related factory closures.

The company said measures to stop the spread of the virus in China continue to drive volatility in retail traffic but that it saw traffic recover to pre-pandemic levels at times throughout the quarter.

While Nike sees improvement in the inventory situation, it forecasts growth only in the lower single digits for the third quarter because of the continuing production issues in Vietnam, which I follow daily and have been relaying to you.  [The picture in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, however, is greatly improved on the Covid front.]

More than half of Nike’s footwear and about a third of its apparel manufacturing occurs in Vietnam, with Covid spiking all over again after the government crushed the curve.

Nike’s net income for the November quarter was $1.3 billion, up 7% from a year earlier. 

Digital sales increased 12%.

--The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday issued a warning to airlines regarding the risk of potential adverse effects on radio altimeters and other aircraft safety systems when operating in the presence of 5G C-band signals.

Separately, the FAA said in a statement on its website it’s “working with the aviation and wireless industries to find a solution that allows 5G C-band and aviation to safely coexist.”

While that work is underway, the agency has warned airlines that notices may be issued “to restrict operations in areas where 5G interference is possible,” it said.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and Airbus Americas CEO Jeffrey Knittel on Monday urged the U.S. government to delay the rollout of new 5G services, saying it could harm aviation safety.

--Ryanair on Wednesday more than doubled its forecast annual loss and cut its January traffic forecast by 33% due to the impact of Omicron.  The Irish airline, Europe’s largest by passenger numbers, said in a statement that it expects a net loss of between 250 million euros and 450 million euros ($509 million) in the 12 months to the end of March, which compares to a previous forecast of a loss of between 100 million and 200 million euros ($226 million).

Ryanair is blaming travel restrictions in France, Germany and Morocco following the emergence of Omicron but it said it was too soon to say whether similar cuts would be required to its February and March schedules and would wait for further scientific data before making any decisions.

The low-cost airline flew more than twice as many flights within the continent in the second week of December as any other airline, according to Eurocontrol, Europe’s air traffic regulator.  But restrictions on British passengers flying to Germany and France – and all EU passengers to Morocco – forced Ryanair to cut its December passenger forecast.

CEO Michael O’Leary, one of the most outspoken critics of Covid-19 travel restrictions, said the mood in Britain and Ireland in the face of Omicron was one of “panic.”

O’Leary has argued that it is impossible to limit the spread of virus variants and that high quality filters on planes make them relatively safe.  But many health experts argue that air travel is nevertheless a high-risk activity.

--United Airlines and Delta Air Lines on Thursday said they had each canceled dozens of Christmas Eve flights, as Omicron takes a toll on its flight crews and other workers.

United canceled 120 flights for Friday, while Delta said it has canceled about 90 (later revised to 135).  Both said they were working to contact passengers so they would not be stranded at airports, but you’ve seen the stories.  Many passengers showed up only to find out that their holiday plans were ruined.

“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation. As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport,” United said.

In Australia, dozens of flights were also canceled at airports in Sydney and Melbourne as Covid cases surged to their highest since the start of the pandemic.

A big issue is the length of time flight crews are required to quarantine and this has to be shortened, in all walks of life.  You are seeing local schools do so.

And in another example, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul just shortened the quarantine time for healthcare ( and other essential) workers to five days (as long as they are fully vaccinated and are asymptomatic).

So I wrote the flight data Thursday and then by Friday afternoon, the number of canceled flights for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day had soared to more than 3,000 globally, after 2,000 were scrapped on Thursday, according to FlightAware.  More than 20 percent of those canceled for Friday involved travel within, into or out of the United States.

--TSA checkpoint travel numbers vs. 2019….

12/23…86 percent of 2019 levels
12/22…107…2.081M
12/21…100…but under 2M
12/20…84
12/19…84
12/18…82
12/17…86
12/16…83

*Post-pandemic high of 2,451,300 travelers set on 11/28 (Sun. after Thanksgiving)

--The Biden administration on Monday raised fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars and light duty trucks, saying the new standards will reduce pollution and save consumers billions of dollars at the gas pump.

Auto makers must meet a fleetwide average of 55 miles a gallon for cars and light trucks by model year 2026, up from the 43 mpg standard set by the Trump administration for that year. The fleetwide mileage standard for the current 2021 model year is 40 mpg.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the new rules will save U.S. drivers between $210 billion and $420bn in fuel costs through 2050, based on government estimates of future fuel prices.

The EPA said the higher standards will curb pollution from the transportation sector, which it says is the nation’s No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the lobbying group for auto makers and suppliers, said in order to achieve the new targets, the industry would need federal support to transition to electric vehicles.

The Build Back Better plan as it’s currently structured would provide $20 billion in tax credits for electric-vehicle buyers, as I alluded to above, in addition to other funding to spur manufacturing investments and domestic battery plants.  But the package is doomed if Sen. Manchin has his way.

The president of the Sierra Club, Ramon Cruz, said, “For auto makers, this is the future.  If you want to remain competitive you have to do this.”

The EPA estimates the companies can comply for model year 2026 with electric vehicle sales at about 17%, though consumers have been slow to warm to EVs, which currently account for 3% to 4% of sales, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis.

New funding for a national network of charging stations has been included in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill recently enacted.

The EPA says the transportation sector accounted for 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2019.

--Elon Musk on Wednesday sold more of his Tesla stock, bringing the total value of his share sales to more than $15 billion since he began to unload shares in the past month to cover tax obligations, according to regulatory filings.

Back in September, Musk set out a plan to exercise options and sell shares and he has exercised about 21.3 million of 23 million options that are set to expire in August 2022.  He tweeted Wednesday, “There are still a few tranches left, but almost done.”

While the stock rallied sharply on Wednesday, since he polled his Twitter users about whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the shares are down more than 17%.

Earlier, Musk, the world’s richest person, tweeted he will pay $11 billion in tax for this year.  Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren had tweeted that Musk should stop “freeloading off everyone else.”

“For those wondering, I will pay over $11bn in taxes this year,” the billionaire responded.

--Chipmaker Intel became the latest multinational company to struggle with the geopolitics of doing business in China. The $207 billion tech giant had to say it was sorry to defuse a social media backlash after telling suppliers they could not use products or labor from the Xinjiang region. 

The company backtracked with a Chinese-language statement on Thursday saying it was complying with U.S. law rather than expressing Intel’s position on the issue.  America and other Western countries have accused China of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Intel’s stance is mealy-mouthed.  But U.S. companies operating in China can’t be seen to take sides. 

More than a quarter of Intel’s $78 billion of sales in 2020 came from customers in China.

--Oracle Corp. on Monday announced its largest deal ever, a roughly $28.3 billion purchase of electronic-medical-records company Cerner Corp. that takes the business-software giant deeper into medical technology.

The deal extends Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s longstanding willingness to buy his way into new markets; Ellison having built Oracle through a long list of acquisitions over the decades.

The Cerner deal gives Oracle a major presence in an industry that is one of the top drivers of growth for cloud computing.  Ellison said earlier this month that healthcare is one of the key focus areas for his company, telling analysts that it was “on par with banking in terms of the importance to our future.”

He said Monday, “With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications.”

U.S. healthcare spending accounts for nearly 20% of the country’s GDP – and has often been slow to adopt the latest digital tools.

Cerner sells software that hospitals and doctors use to store and analyze medical records.  It is the second-largest vendor in the market after Epic Systems Corp.

--Staying on the healthcare front, the Journal had a story on ‘burnout’ in the pharmacy business with overtaxed, overworked staff owing to Covid taking care of vaccines, testing, long hours, and in some cases at little relative pay.  I can see it in the staff at my local CVS.  All of this on top of normal pharmacy work, which is intensive behind that counter.

A CVS spokesman told the Journal the company is doing everything it can to supports its workers, and has begun adding prescheduled break time and is hiring thousands of pharmacy staff, though the company won’t say if it’s hiring more workers than it’s losing.

CVS has 9,900 stores in the U.S., while Walgreens has about 9,000.

Both chains have started raising their minimum hourly wage to $15 by mid- to-late next year.

Retail pharmacies, including CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid, as well as Walmart and grocers, had been responsible for one-third of Covid vaccines through most of the pandemic but now account for about two-thirds of the shots.

--Last week I mentioned how well New York City was doing on the hotel occupancy front, and this week I saw a piece in the Los Angeles Times discussing how hotel bookings in L.A. returned to 100% of their pre-pandemic levels in October and November, considerably above the national average.

The national average for hotel bookings is 89.57% of 2019 numbers, according to SiteMinder.

San Francisco hotels, in contrast, are running at about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, the data show.  Huh.

Hoteliers are benefiting from the pandemic-related shift among U.S. employers to allow their employees to work remotely instead of in the office.  As one hotel operator noted, “If they don’t have to be in the office on Fridays or Mondays, they can extend their weekend stays and work from the hotel.”

--“Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected a pandemic-best $253 million at theaters, according to estimates from Comscore.

On Friday alone, the most anticipated movie of the year had already amassed $121.9 million – the second-highest opening-day tally in domestic box office history and the most lucrative December opening of all time, according to figures from Sony Pictures.  “No Way Home” cost $200 million to make.

With the latest “Spider-Man” installment, Marvel has officially swept the top five theatrical debuts since the pandemic shutdowns began in March 2020.

To date, only two films have opened above “No Way Home” at the North American box office: 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” ($357.1 million) and 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” ($257.7 million), which were distributed by Disney.

--So thanks to “No Way Home,” AMC Entertainment Holdings said movie attendance in the U.S. last week set records for post-Covid lockdown, as the movie exhibitor said it sold more than 7 million movie tickets worldwide from Dec. 16 through 19, including more than 5 million tickets sold in the U.S.

The Pandemic

--The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday gave its approval to Pfizer’s Covid pill, which will allow people to treat the virus at home and avert the virus’ worst symptoms, the drug company said.

The drug, Paxlovid, is the first effective and recommended treatment against Covid-19 that does not require an injection or an IV drip.  According to Pfizer, the pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths nearly 90% and only caused mild side effects.

“The efficacy is high, the side effects are low and it’s oral.  It checks all the boxes,” Dr. Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic, said.  “You’re looking at a 90% decreased risk of hospitalizations and death in a high-risk group – that’s stunning.”

Paxlovid has been approved for anyone 12 and older with a positive Covid test and early symptoms, as well as those with pre-existing conditions at risk for hospitalization.  The treatment consists of three pills (two Paxlovid and another antiviral) taken twice a day for five days.

But for now, just like Covid-19 testing sites and vaccines, Covid treatment pills will be in short supply for months until production can increase.

The federal distribution to states will be based on population, and it will likely be up to doctors to prescribe Paxlovid.  The National Institutes of Health said it will release recommendations on how to allocate treatments.

New York will get only 3,180 courses of Paxlovid for the state’s roughly 20 million residents when the government starts parceling them out on a per-capita basis in the coming weeks, according to a breakdown of the disbursements by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Wyoming – with about half a million residents – will get just 100 courses.  California, the most-populous state, will get 6,180.

The U.S. is only expecting 265,000 Pfizer courses by the end of January and then 10 million by July.  It will also have 3 million of the less effective Merck pill by the end of January.

Pfizer’s pill takes about six to eight months to make.

--Speaking of Merck, the FDA also authorized its antiviral pill for Covid.  Merck’s drug, molnupiravir, developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, was shown to reduce hospitalizations and deaths by around 30% in a clinical trial of high-risk individuals early in the course of the illness.  The agency authorized the oral drug for the treatment of mild-to-moderate Covid in adults who are at risk for severe disease.

--So now with the first two Covid-19 treatment pills having been cleared for use, comes the hard part: deciding who should get one. 

Covid-19 death tolls, as of early tonight….

World…5,408,741
USA…837,671
Brazil…618,429
India…479,218
Russia…302,269
Mexico…298,508
Peru…202,424
UK…147,857
Indonesia…144,047
Italy…136,386
Iran…131,306
Colombia…129,686
France…122,462
Argentina…117,008
Germany…110,908
Ukraine…94,432
Poland…94,041
South Africa…90,743
Spain…89,019
Turkey…81,258
Romania…58,507
Philippines…51,050
Chile…38,984
Hungary…38,307
Czechia…35,640
Ecuador…33,641
Malaysia…31,290
Vietnam…30,766
Bulgaria…30,476
Canada…30,139
Pakistan…28,898
Belgium…28,110
Bangladesh…28,055
Tunisia…25,516
Iraq…24,115
Egypt…21,546
Thailand…21,528
Netherlands…20,661
Greece…20,292

[Source: worldometers.info]

U.S. daily death tolls…Mon. 623; Tues. 1,811; Wed. 1,630; Thurs. 1,149; Fri. 747.

*Owing to the holidays, the numbers on cases, hospitalizations and deaths will be largely incomplete until after New Year’s.  Just a fact.

Covid Bytes

--China is redoubling efforts to control new coronavirus outbreaks with a lockdown of the 13 million residents of the northern city of Xian following a spike in cases.  Local officials were then arrested for not preventing the spread.

There was no word on whether the cases were the result of Omicron or Delta.

China, with its zero Covid policy, has been dealing with substantial outbreak in several cities in the eastern province of Zhejiang near Shanghai.

And here come the Olympics and athletes from all over the world.  Oh joy.

--Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that attending large gatherings of over 40 people is not considered safe for vaccinated people, even those who got a booster dose.

“There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals.  Those are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not want to go to,” Fauci said at a White House briefing.

The seven-day average of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. increased by 25% from the previous week as of Wednesday.

--As a result of Omicron, 52% of Americans told a Marist national poll of adults that they will celebrate the holidays only with people who have been vaccinated against Covid.  42% say they will gather with people regardless of their vaccination status.

--Novavax said Wednesday that its two-dose Covid vaccine showed cross-reactive immune responses against several variants of the coronavirus, including Omicron, based on initial results.

A third dose, or a booster shot, produced increased immune responses equal to or above the levels shown in the vaccine’s phase 3 trial.

--AstraZeneca said Thursday a third booster dose of its Vaxzevria vaccine significantly increased levels of antibodies against the Omicron variant.

But this is based on data from a laboratory study, though performed independently by investigators at the University of Oxford.

--Israel says it plans to become the first country to roll out a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine as the country prepares for a wave of infections driven by Omicron.

Israel’s pandemic experts have recommended a fourth booster for those over 60 and health care workers.

--As first reported by Tara Copp of Defense One:

“Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against Covid-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.

“The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus.  The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the Covid-19 virus in early 2020.  Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.”

Animal trials have been conducted, and phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and other variants, wrapped up this month so we’ll see.

According to Tara Copp:

“Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed’s SpFN (Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle vaccine) uses a soccer-ball shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.”

The next step is seeing how this vaccine works against people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick.

Exciting stuff…fingers crossed.

--Aircraft passengers are twice or even three times more likely to catch Covid-19 during a flight since the emergence of Omicron, according to the top medical adviser to the world’s airlines.

David Powell, physician and medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association, which represents almost 300 carriers worldwide, said business class is probably safer.  As before, passengers should avoid face-to-face contact and surfaces that are frequently touched, and people sitting near to each other should try not to be unmasked at the same time during meals, he said.

Transmission risk remains much lower than in crowded places on the ground such as shopping malls thanks to the hospital-grade air filters on modern passenger jets, a point that airlines have been keen to highlight throughout the pandemic, but not all the aircraft you may be traveling on are modern.

--Friday, President Biden will lift travel restrictions on eight countries in southern Africa on Dec. 31, based on the recommendation of the CDC, which noted evidence that vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease from Omicron.

“According to our health and medical experts at the CDC, the value of country-based international travel restrictions is greatest early in an outbreak, before the virus or variant has been widely disseminated,” the White House said in a statement.  “This value declines as domestic transmission starts to contribute a larger proportion of case burden.”

--Next month’s World Economic Forum from Davos, Switzerland was canceled for a second year.

Foreign Affairs

Iran: The United States and its partners are discussing time frames for nuclear diplomacy with Iran, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday, adding that current efforts to achieve a new nuclear deal may be exhausted within weeks.

“We’re not circling a date on the calendar in public, but I can tell you that behind closed doors we are talking about time frames and they are not long,” he told reporters during a visit to Israel.  Asked to elaborate on the time frame, Sullivan said “weeks.”

As for Israel, there have been conflicting reports from Israeli defense officials on whether the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) is ready to attack Iran.  Israel’s defense minister has warned the world that his country would take matters into its own hands if a new nuclear agreement did not sufficiently constrain Iran.

But other current and former senior defense officials and experts say that Israel lacks the ability to pull off an assault that could destroy, or even significantly delay Iran’s nuclear program, at least not now.

It’s one thing to disrupt parts of the program, but much of Iran’s activities are hidden far from Israel and that would be very difficult to launch a campaign against such sites.  One retired Israeli Air Force general, Relik Shafir, told the New York Times, “In the world we live in, the only air force that can maintain a campaign is the U.S. Air Force,” he said.

Russia/Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his annual year end press conference Thursday and called on the West to give immediate security guarantees to defuse a crisis prompted by Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine’s borders.

“It’s you who must give us guarantees, and give them immediately, now,” Putin said.

Putin has demanded that NATO abandon military activity in Eastern Europe and not admit Ukraine as a member.  Vlad the Impaler denies planning to invade Ukraine, despite now having a reported 122,000 troops close to its borders, on the way to massing over 170,000, according to Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council.

Putin said military measures were not his preferred choice and he expressed hope that talks would take place with the U.S. early next year in Geneva, adding: “The ball is in their court, they have to give us some response.”

No we don’t.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she welcomed the fact that Moscow had “signaled it is willing to enter talks in January,” but warned any Russian attack would be met with sanctions that hit Russia’s economy.

Putin said: “We didn’t come to the U.S. or UK borders, no, they came to ours,” accusing NATO of cheating Russia with five waves of expansion since the 1990s, which is total BS.

In a list of demands outlined last week, Russia has said it wants NATO to roll back to where it was in 1997, a demand seen as a non-starter for Poland, the Baltics and other Eastern European states that joined the West’s defensive military alliance.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and then seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and Moscow is seeking assurances that neither country will be allowed to join NATO.

The Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia also fear Russia’s military buildup and Lithuanian President Nauseda has described the situation as probably “the most dangerous it’s been in 30 years.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week he also hoped for talks with Russia early next year but was adamant that Ukraine’s membership in the alliance was up to NATO and Kyiv: “Any dialogue with Russia has of course to respect the core principles which European security has been based on.”

The Biden administration said Thursday it is prepared to hold talks with Russia as early as January, though no specifics.

For now, a 2020 ceasefire deal has been renewed in the Donbas region.  This comes after ceasefire violations have surged of late.

Thursday, a day after the ceasefire went into effect, the Ukrainian military reported the “armed formations of the Russian Federation” had violated it three times, including with mortars and heavy grenade launchers, though there were no casualties.

Meanwhile, supposedly Russian mercenaries have deployed to separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine in recent weeks to bolster defenses against Ukrainian government forces.

Patrick Tucker / Defense One

“Moscow has ‘stepped up efforts’ to portray Ukraine and the United States as the instigator of increased tensions that include a massive buildup of Russian forces along the Ukrainian border, a senior White House official told reporters on Thursday.

“That came hours after Russian leader Vladimir Putin told reporters that U.S. actions, particularly its financial and military support of Ukraine, were to blame for the rising standoff.

“ ‘How would the Americans react if on their frontier with Canada we deployed our missiles,’ Putin said. … ‘It’s a question of security and you know our red lines.’

“The White House official said, ‘To be clear, we see no evidence of that escalation on the Ukrainian side.  And we have tried to be very clear to partners and allies that this is a Russian disinformation effort that’s underway.  It’s not unexpected; it fits a standard playbook.’”

Vladimir Putin, by the way, does not see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a negotiating partner, accusing him of falling under the influence of what he called radical nationalist forces.

“How can I build a relationship with the current leadership, given what they are doing?  It’s practically impossible,” he said.

I’d laugh but it’s far too serious.

Editorial / Washington Post

“To be clear, Mr. Putin has no legitimate casus belli regarding Ukraine. What he seems really to fear is not Ukraine-based NATO missiles, as he claims, but the growth and development of a successful, Western-oriented democracy in Kyiv, the exemplary existence of which would destabilize his own kleptocratic regime.  His conduct, and the rationale for it, are false and unacceptable.

“Yet he may not be wrong to believe he can get what he wants through war.  Though far stronger than they were in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and the Donbas region, Ukraine’s armed forces are probably no match for Russia’s and may well have to retreat quickly to the western side of the Dnieper River, which essentially bisects the country. The United States and its allies, distracted by domestic politics and coronavirus, can try to deter Russia by beefing up Ukraine’s capacity to fight back, and to punish Russia with economic sanctions. The potential efficacy of the latter is limited by Western Europe’s dependence on energy from Russia, however.  Moscow can do retaliatory damage through cyberwarfare and other means.

“The Soviet Union collapsed nearly 30 years ago this month, an event that opened up vast new possibilities for freedom and self-determination in Europe, but whose geopolitical consequences Mr. Putin has openly lamented.  He seems bent on reversing them, quite possibly by force, and sooner rather than later.”

China: Japan’s Kyodo news agency said on Thursday that Japanese and U.S. armed forces have drawn up a draft plan for a joint operation for a possible Taiwan emergency, citing unnamed Japanese government sources, amid increased tensions between the island and China.

Under the plan the U.S. Marine Corps will set up temporary bases in the Nansei island chain stretching from Kyushu, one of the four main islands of Japan, to Taiwan, at the initial stage of a Taiwan emergency, and will deploy troops, Kyodo said.

Japanese armed forces will provide logistical support in such areas as ammunition and fuel supplies, it said.

Again, this is just a reported plan, but in October, Japan’s government signaled a more assertive position on China’s aggressive posture towards self-ruled Taiwan, suggesting it would consider options and prepare for “various scenarios,” while reaffirming close U.S. ties.

Earlier this month, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, still highly influential in his country, said that Japan and the United States could not stand by if China attacked Taiwan.

Indeed, the U.S. has tens of thousands of troops in Japan, including on the southern island of Okinawa, a short flight from Taiwan.

In Hong Kong, two more universities on Friday removed public monuments to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

The move followed the dismantling of a sculpture marking victims of the crackdown at another university earlier this week.

Unlike mainland China, where Chinese authorities ban any memorials or public commemoration of June 4th, Hong Kong had previously remained the only place on Chinese soil where such commemorations were permissible.

Meanwhile, turnout for last weekend’s “patriots”-only legislative election in Hong Kong was 30.2% as critics deemed the vote to be regressive.  The turnout figure is less than half of that of the 2016 legislative poll, with the latest results showing almost all of the seats being taken by pro-Beijing and pro-establishment candidates.

The election – in which only candidates screened by the government as “patriots” could run – was harshly criticized by activists, foreign governments and rights groups as undemocratic.

Afghanistan: The United States formally exempted on Wednesday U.S. and UN officials doing permitted business with the Taliban from U.S. sanctions to try to maintain the flow of aid to Afghanistan as it sinks deeper into a humanitarian crisis.  It was unclear, however, whether the move would pave the way for proposed UN payments of some $6 million to the Islamists for security. 

Having designated the Taliban as a terrorist group for years, Washington has ordered its U.S. assets frozen and barred Americans from dealing with them.  But the Treasury on Wednesday issued three general licenses aimed at easing humanitarian aid flows into Afghanistan.

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, said in a statement that the exemption “could result in using American taxpayer funds to reward, legitimize and enable the same Taliban that took power by force and has shown no interest in abiding by international norms.”

But the United Nations says nearly 23 million people, or about 55% of the population, are facing extreme levels of hunger, with nearly 9 million at risk of famine as winter takes hold.

Meanwhile, China said the resurgence of international militant groups emboldened by the chaos in post-war Afghanistan is posing serous threats to anti-terror work.

“The new threats and new challenges in the counterterrorism field call for high (levels of) vigilance.  Emerging new technologies are being abused by terrorist forces.  The use of cyberspace has made terrorist activities more covert and unchecked, and pushed terrorism closer to organized crime,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said.

China is concerned with instability in the western part of the country, as Beijing has called on the Afghan Taliban to help eradicate terrorism.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: *New poll…43% approve of President Biden’s job performance, 51% disapprove; 40% of independents approve…but only 78% of Democrats when the prior low was 90%!  [5% of Republicans approve.]  [Dec. 1-16]  Prior split for Nov. 1-16 was 42-55, 37% independents.

Rasmussen: 41% approve, 57% disapprove (Dec. 23).

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national poll has Biden’s approval rating at 41%, with 55% disapproving. 

This survey also has 49% optimistic about what’s ahead for the world in 2022, with 47% more pessimistic for the new year. 

--The Democrats are in such deep merde.  Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a leading voice of the moderates, a Florida Democrat, announced Monday she won’t be seeking reelection next fall in another stinging loss for the party.

Murphy flipped a GOP-held seat in 2016 and helped write the party’s playbook for its House takeover two years later. She said she is leaving the Hill to spend more time with her family, including two school-age children.

She is the 22nd incumbent House Democrat to forgo a reelection bid next year.  Murphy is also a member of the Jan. 6 select committee and has faced a dramatic uptick of threats against her and her family.  Anyone making such a threat should face ten years without parole.

--Delaware state police took five suspects into custody after Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon was robbed of her automobile at gunpoint in a Philadelphia park on Wednesday.

The suspects were located in Scanlon’s vehicle.

Scanlon, a Democrat who represents Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District, was unharmed in the mid-afternoon carjacking which occurred following a meeting of elected officials as she walked to her sport utility vehicle, city police said.

--U.S. population growth hit a record low in 2020, while life expectancy fell by the largest margin since World War II, the Census Bureau said.

The country’s population grew by 0.1 percent from July 2020 to July 2021, or by 392,665 people, representing the first time that the country’s population rose by fewer than 1 million individuals since 1937, the Census Bureau said.  The average expected life span fell to 77, a drop of 1.8 years from 2019, with Covid-19 becoming the third-leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer.

The low population growth is attributable to both the pandemic and lower birthrates, among other factors.  Mortality grew in part due to the coronavirus, while pandemic-induced travel restrictions prevented fewer people from migrating to the United States.

--Crain’s New York Business’ editors graded New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as he finishes up his two terms in office.  On some of the topics:

Fixing social and economic inequality: D

“Homelessness has exploded across the city. Spending on shelters doubled between 2014 and 2018, but a record number of New Yorkers – 60,000 – were homeless by mid-2021.”

Affordable housing was another pillar of de Blasio’s agenda, and eight years later, “the New York City Housing Authority’s stock remains in a dilapidated state: More than $40 billion in repairs is needed.”

Fighting the pandemic: B+

I’m not going to disagree here, as New York has a very high vaccination rate and until the testing fiasco of the last few weeks, did a pretty good job in terms of access for testing and vaccines.

Boosting the financial sector: A

“The economy was amazingly strong during most of de Blasio’s tenure, which meant he had funding for priorities such as universal pre-K.  During his tenure, jobs and prosperity spread outside Manhattan and into the other boroughs at levels unseen in decades until the pandemic.  The city’s credit rating is a rock-solid AA.”

On the crime front, I’ll wait for yearend numbers, but murders are way up over last year, though major felony offenses not so much, last I saw.

The number of traffic deaths has been soaring – including with pedestrians.  Yet at the same time, the number of summonses issued by cops has dropped over 50 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

As for incoming mayor Eric Adams, he has made some controversial picks for top spots and the press is not going to give him a long honeymoon.

But I like the guy.

--And now some Trump Bits….

Former President Donald Trump called Sen. Mitch McConnell a “disaster” for allowing the $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal to pass, saying Republicans need a new leader in the Senate.

“Mitch McConnell is a disaster.  The Republicans have to get a new leader.  Mitch McConnell allowed this to happen.  The ‘un-frastructure’ bill, I call it ‘un-frastructure,’ not infrastructure,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Trump said only 9 percent of the funds in the bill that passed the Senate 69-30 in August actually went toward infrastructure projects (depending on how infrastructure is defined, spending in the bill on such projects ranges from 46 to 80 percent, the Washington Post found).

Yup, we had four years of “Infrastructure Week” in the Trump administration and nothing.  And Biden got a bill through his first year.  Suck it up, Donald.

Trump also slammed McConnell for working out a compromise with Democrats to allow them to raise the debt ceiling, and he said there is a bigger problem in the “so-calling voting rights bill, which is a voting rights for Democrats, because Republicans will never be elected again if that happens, if that passes.”

Meanwhile, the former president revealed that he received a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd in Dallas.

Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of “The History Tour,” a live interview show he has been doing with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

“Both the president and I are vaxxed,” O’Reilly said at the American Airlines Center, drawing some jeers from the audience.

“Did you get the booster?” he asked the former president.  “Yes,” Trump responded.  “I got it, too,” O’Reilly said, eliciting more hectoring.

“Don’t!  Don’t!  Don’t!  Don’t!  Don’t!” Trump told the crowd, waving off their reaction with his hand.

While taking credit for the vaccines developed on his watch, Trump has refused to urge his supporters to take them.

Though finally, in recent days, Trump has spoken out more aggressively about the value of vaccines.  After his appearance with O’Reilly, in an interview Tuesday with conservative Daily Wire host Candace Owens, who is a leading purveyor of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, Trump took credit for the vaccines as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”  He added, “Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form” of Covid.  “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”

This is good.  Most of us just wish he had been this forceful a year ago.

Former vice president Mike Pence received his vaccine doses in public (ditto President Biden and VP Harris), but Trump chose to receive his in private – an acknowledgement of the unpopularity of the vaccine with large swaths of his base.

But Tuesday, Trump said he was “very appreciate” and “surprised” that President Biden thanked him and his administration for their success in making Covid-19 vaccines available to the public, telling Fox News that “tone” and “trust” are critical in getting Americans vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Trump took at least seven trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express” private plane – far more than was previously known, according to newly released flight logs.

The 118 pages of flight logs, released Monday, also lists nine trips by former President Bill Clinton, as well as flights taken by lawyer Alan Dershowitz, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and Prince Andrew.

Only one of Trump’s trips was previously known, reported the Miami Herald, which first reported on the logs entered into evidence in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.

The logs show Trump taking four trips in 1993, and one in 1994, 1995 and 1997; the 1997 trip was previously disclosed in earlier documents.

On one of the flights, the names Marla, Tiffany and a nanny appear – believed to be a reference to his then-wife Marla Maples and then-infant daughter Tiffany.

In 1995, he flew with his son Eric, who was not yet 2 years old, the logs show.

On another matter, Donald Trump claimed victory in the fake “war on Christmas” and says even Jews and Muslims are joining in the spirit.

Trump took credit for bringing back “Merry Christmas” and dumping the more universalist phrase “Happy Holidays” that he said was sweeping the nation before his MAGA movement hit the scene.

“When I started campaigning, I said; ‘You’re going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again, and now people are saying it,’” Trump said in a recent interview on the Newsmax network.

“I would say it all the time during that period, that we want them to say ‘Merry Christmas.’  Don’t shop at stores that don’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’

“I’ll tell you: ‘We brought it back very quickly,” he added.

Oh brother.

Days later, Trump made a jaw-dropping series of anti-Semitic claims about Jewish Americans controlling institutions of government and media in an interview with Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist for Axios who wrote a book on Trump’s Middle Eastern policies.  Trump said evangelical Americans “love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”

‘It used to be Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite,” he said.

Trump also suggested American Jews used to have “a great love of Israel” and that this has “dissipated over the years.”

“I must be honest. It’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening,” Trump said.  “People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel.”

He went on: “I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”

Trump was not done.

“I mean, you look at the New York Times – the New York Times hates Israel.  Hates ‘em.  And they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times.  I mean, the Sulzbergers,” Trump said.  [According to the Times, some of the Sulzbergers were raised Protestant.]

Lastly, Trump on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to block the release of White House records sought by the House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. 

Trump’s request came two weeks after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Trump had no basis to challenge President Joe Biden’s decision to allow the documents to be handed over.  That decision will now remain on hold until the Supreme Court acts.

--As of Wednesday, 163 tornadoes had been confirmed in the United States, the most on record in December by far and the second most in any winter month.  The tornado count, with a few more days in the month, would be above the average for any month other than April, May and June.

The official death toll of 90 now ranks as the 10th-deadliest month for tornadoes since the modern keeping of records began in 1950.

The National Weather Service confirmed one of the tornadoes of Dec. 10-11 was on the ground 166 miles, devastating Kentucky communities such as Mayfield and Dawson Springs.

--Analysis of 40 years of December 25 U.S. snow measurements show that less of the country now has snow for Christmas than in the 1980s.

That’s especially true in a belt across the nation’s midsection – from Baltimore to Denver and a few hundred miles farther north. And the snow that falls doesn’t measure up to past depths.

Scientists say the decline in the number of white Christmases is relatively small and caution about drawing conclusions.

But according to an analysis of ground observation data by the University of Arizona for the Associated Press, from 1981 to 1990, on average, almost 47% of the country had snow on the ground on Christmas Day, with an average depth of 3.5 inches.  From 2011 to 2020, Christmas snow cover was down to 38%, with an average depth of 2.7 inches.

In Central Park, New York, NBC’s Janice Huff said Thursday that from 1912-66, there were 12 white Christmases, defined as one inch of snow on the ground.  But from 1967-2020, only four!

Eegads.

But tons more snow in the critical Sierra Nevada Mountains of California this week, and that’s a good thing for next summer and the agriculture sector, among other industries, for starters.

--Finally, say a prayer if you read this before tomorrow morning that the James Webb deep space telescope launch goes off without a hitch Saturday morning.  That’s $10 billion on the line, but the rewards could be literally out of this world.

---

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

God bless America.

Official government Kentucky relief fund (as the media has moved on):

TeamWKYReliefFund.ky.gov

---

Gold $1810
Oil $73.76

Returns for the week 12/20-12/24

Dow Jones +1.7%  ]35950]
S&P 500  +2.3%  [4725]
S&P MidCap  N/A
Russell 2000  N/A
Nasdaq  +3.2%  [15653]

Returns for the period 1/1/21-12/24/21

Dow Jones  +17.5%
S&P 500  +25.8%
S&P MidCap  +21.2%
Russell 2000  +13.5%
Nasdaq  +21.5%

Bulls 43.9
Bears 24.4…no update this week

Merry Christmas!  Travel safe.

Brian Trumbore

*I will be posting a column on New Year’s Eve about the same time.



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Week in Review

12/25/2021

For the week 12/20-12/24

[Posted 11:30 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.

Special thanks to Jim D. and Andy M. for their ongoing support.

Edition 1,184

I hope this finds you all well and that you are gathering with loved ones that maybe you missed last holiday season.  I’ll be driving a bit tomorrow, Christmas Day, to see my brother and sis-in-law and then because I am who I am, back home at the crack of dawn Sunday to keep working.

I’d love to travel overseas soon, specifically Taiwan, and Ireland, but as I presciently wrote in the weeks before Omicron, it’s tough to make ambitious plans when you don’t know what the rules will be…and in the case of a trip to say, Asia, I don’t want to have to chase after my money if I decide not to go because of new quarantine rules.

So we are where we are…and, yes, that is in a much, much better place than last year at least.

But while I sound a note or two of further hope below, here in New Jersey, the fact is, like New York, we are hitting one record after another in cases (yes, we are also testing a ton), but hospitalizations were 644 on Nov. 7 and now stand over 2,300.  Schools are once again having issues and as they are already short on staff, many teachers having quit the game in the past year+, let alone now getting infected, along with a ton of students, you see some districts going back to remote learning and that sucks.

The service and healthcare sectors are also getting slammed in various parts of the country, and Europe, all over again as well.

The hope is that Omicron isn’t anywhere near as severe as Delta, and I get into that, but if this is a final spasm, at what cost in lives?  We’ll see.

When it comes to those who remain unvaccinated by choice, I can’t help but agree with one of my favorite commentators, CNN’s Michael Smerconish.  There is a limit to my sympathy and compassion, and I’ve hit it.

I’ll have a few things to say about 2022 next week.   For now, we continue….

---

Researchers in Scotland found Omicron was associated with a two-thirds lower risk of hospitalization compared to the earlier variant, though it was 10 times more likely than Delta to infect people who’d already had Covid.  An Imperial College London team working with a larger data set found that people with Omicron were almost half as likely to need an overnight hospital stay.

The fresh data add to a study showing South Africans were 70% less likely to develop severe disease and 80% less likely to be hospitalized if they contract the new variant.  The growing body of research provides preliminary reassurance that the Omicron wave may be comparatively less dangerous than Delta, at least in areas with high levels of pre-existing immunity.

But the highly contagious new strain could still overwhelm health-care systems as infections soar globally.

“It’s important that we don’t get ahead of ourselves,” said Jim McMenamin, national Covid-19 incident director for Public Health Scotland, which conducted the Scottish study with the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde.  “A smaller proportion of a greater number of cases requiring treatment might still mean a substantial number of people that may experience severe Covid.”

And in the case of South Africa, Scotland and England, lowered risk of hospitalization in all three is no doubt due in large part to pre-existing immunity in those populations.  Many of the infected already had protection against severe disease, either because of previous infections or vaccinations.  [Plus South Africa’s population is very young compared to most of the developed world.]

In the United States we may have a lot of pre-existing immunity, but we also have a significant number who either are not vaccinated with even a single dose, or who are refusing to get the booster (or not yet eligible).  I have two good friends who got their first two shots but now refuse to get the booster though eligible. 

Caution is very much the word.  The markets got swept up in the happy talk this week on how Omicron wasn’t that bad even as cases hit record levels not just in Italy, Spain and France (Germany seems to have bent the curve), as well as the UK, but also in New York and New Jersey, which was the pattern in the spring of 2020, when my area was hit hardest, first, after Covid crossed the pond.

The World Health Organization’s European head, Hans Kluge, warned on Wednesday that it will be 3-4 weeks before we can really answer Omicron severity questions.

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan noted that not only is Omicron spreading faster than the Delta variant, but its causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from Covid and thus it would be “unwise” to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant than previous ones.  “With the numbers going up, all health systems are going to be under strain,” she told Geneva-based journalists.

But there is hope, the WHO said, pointing towards the development of second and third generation vaccines, and the further development of antimicrobial treatments and other innovations.

“(We) hope to consign this disease to a relatively mild disease that is easily prevented, that is easily treated,” Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergency expert, told the briefing.  “If we can keep virus transmission to minimum, then we can bring the pandemic to an end.”

However, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said China, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was first detected at the end of 2019, must be forthcoming with data and information related to its origin to help the response going forward.

“We need to continue until we know the origins, we need to push harder because we should learn from what happened this time in order to (do) better in the future,” Tedros said.

Fat chance of getting more out of Xi Jinping.

---

So last Saturday, we were given a heads up from the White House that on Tuesday, President Biden was going to give a very important speech on Covid and Omicron.  Immediately, many of us thought, well, if it’s that important why wait until Tuesday?!

The president then proceeded to deliver a truly embarrassing performance.

“I promised to always give you the truth,” he started out, and then after, in the Q&A with reporters, he gets all defensive about his administration’s abysmal failure on testing and not being ready for Omicron when anyone with half a brain, including your editor, was saying a year ago, unless we vaccinate the rest of the world, we’ll be dealing with variants for years and years to come.

The president then talked about delivering 500 million free at-home rapid Covid-19 tests, but, first, the New York Times immediately reported that no contracts for same had even been signed, and if you give this as a word problem to your kids now back doing virtual learning, any second-grader could tell you 500 million, which won’t be available until late January in all likelihood, amounts to 1-2 per person!

And don’t ask our vice president, Kamala Harris, to fill in for Joe Biden at a moment’s notice.  Ms. Harris, in another one of her disastrous interviews that were supposed to ‘reboot’ her status, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview last weekend:

“We didn’t see Delta coming.  I think most scientists did not – upon whose advice and direction we have relied – didn’t see Delta coming,” she said.  “We didn’t see Omicron coming.  And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”

What?  You mean the coronavirus can evolve to the point where we have different mutations and variants?  Jiminy-cricket!  This really is scary!

[Just shoot me.]

John Podhoretz / New York Post

“After President Joe Biden finished his almost insanely repetitive speech on Covid (Tuesday) – he literally said every single thing three times over, in a manner that suggested three different speech drafts had been prepared and all three were simply read serially even though they were entirely duplicative – he lost his temper.

“Asked by someone in the media why ‘it took so long’ for his administration to get serious about providing home exams and other forms of Covid tests to the American people, he snapped: ‘Come on, ‘What took so long?’  It didn’t take long at all.  What happened was the Omicron virus spread more rapidly than anyone thought.’

“That is a hilarious untruth, so brazen you have to admire Biden for even attempting something this Trumpian.

“Once Omicron was detected in the fourth week of November, the world went bananas precisely because it was going to spread rapidly.  That was the reason everybody was afraid of it – because of its potential virulence and the fact that it seemed almost designed to elude and defeat some of the vaccines being used worldwide to combat Covid.

“Here is a representative quote from the New York Times on Nov. 26, or 25 days ago; ‘Just two days after the world learned of the variant, the World Health Organization officially labeled it a ‘variant of concern,’ its most serious category – the first since the Delta variant, which emerged a year ago.  The designation means that the variant has mutations that might make it more contagious or more virulent, or make vaccines and other preventive measures less effective.’

“During his Covid blather, Biden went on to claim that if he had said in November it would spread as rapidly as it has, people would have replied, ‘Biden, have you been drinking?’  While that would be one explanation for why he slurred every third word in the speech, in fact, no one would have thought he was drinking had he said this – since that’s what everybody was saying would happen.

“The truth is that he and his people didn’t do anything about testing then because – well, who knows why he didn’t?  We need a Bob Woodward book to explain it to us in a year’s time. For now it’s’ enough to say Biden didn’t act – and right now, nationally, you cannot get your hands on a home antigen test to save your life….

“Trust me.  I spent an hour at it Monday and two hours at it Tuesday.  They’re all gone. Poof.  And guess what the television Covid-hysteric doctors are all blathering about?  They’re all saying, ‘Look, if you want to hang out with your family on Christmas, you better get tested first!’

“Oh, really? Where the hell are you supposed to get tested?  I got tested Sunday.  In Times Square.  In the cold rain.  I got there at 8:45 a.m.  I was done by 10:45 a.m.  When I left, the line was probably 300-people long.  My two hours were going to be six hours for them….

“But wait, everybody – here comes Joe Biden to save the day, like Mighty Mouse.  He’s going to open testing sites!  Federal testing sites!  There are going to be 10 – count ‘em, 10 – whole sites in New York City beginning this week!

“Whoop-de-freakin’-doo!  More than 8.5 million people in the Naked City, and 10 new whole sites are being set up as the Omicron virus spreads like wildfire!  It’s like bringing a water gun to put out the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“At long last, a sense of reality seems to be settling in at the White House that we will have to live with Covid-19, even if President Biden didn’t say so explicitly in his speech Tuesday.  He can’t ‘shut down the virus’ as he claimed in the campaign. But at least he isn’t shutting down the economy or schools.

“Mr. Biden was at pains to say Tuesday that this is no time to panic, even as the Omicron variant spreads.  He advised Americans not to abandon their holiday plans if they’re vaccinated, though he repeated his dire warnings about the unvaccinated.  He even offered a grace note to Donald Trump for producing the vaccines, which must be a first.

“Then again, there isn’t much the Administration can do at this point.  It plans to distribute 500 million free at-home tests, though not until January because ramping up manufacturing takes time.  Mr. Biden hammered the Trump Administration over long test lines, but now the reality is his.

“Last year the major challenge was a shortage of testing reagents.  Now it’s a shortage of workers, which is also hamstringing the vaccine booster campaign.  Mr. Biden’s vaccine mandate may be contributing to the testing snarls.  Ditto hospital staffing shortages. Some governors have called in their National Guard to assist at overburdened hospitals, some of which have lost unvaccinated staff….

“But the main government priority has to be accelerating the approval and production of therapies and vaccines to cope with new variants….

“Wasn’t Democrats’ $1.9 trillion spending bill in March supposed to pay for more testing and treatments?  Too much of the money went to progressive political groups, and the U.S. pandemic recovery has been worse off for it.

“Mr. Biden campaigned on vanquishing Covid, but he has done no better than Mr. Trump despite the benefit of better therapies and vaccines.  He isn’t responsible for the Covid deaths on his watch any more than Mr. Trump was, and it would help him politically if he said so.

“The reality is that the virus will eventually become endemic, like many other pathogens that humanity lives with.  Immunity from vaccines and infections over time should lessen its severity.  Omicron may accelerate this process, and we will be fortunate if it turns out to be less virulent, as some evidence suggests….

“Some schools and colleges are going virtual again, but even most Democratic governors are ruling out more lockdowns, unlike European politicians.  For that we can thank public insistence more than the most quoted public-health experts, who appear all too willing to force the public back into isolation even two years into the pandemic.  The people are wiser than the experts.”

Biden Agenda

--West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said on Sunday he would not support President Biden’s $1.75-$2 trillion domestic spending bill, the Build Back Better plan, in a huge  shock to the administration that thought it was continuing to negotiate with the senator.

During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Manchin said “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” citing concerns about inflation.  “I just can’t.  I have tried everything humanly possible.”

Manchin, in a statement after the interview, said that increasing the U.S. debt load would “drastically hinder” the country’s ability to respond to the pandemic and geopolitical threats.

“My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in  a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face,” he said.  “I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight.”

Manchin then said on Monday that White House staff did some “inexcusable” things that contributed to his decision to publicly reject President Joe Biden’s social and climate policy plan.

Manchin said he would not say “the real reason” talks failed.  But when asked what that was, he said: “The bottom line is…it’s staff.  It’s staff purely. …It’s not the president.  It’s staff.  And they drove some things and put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Sunday that Manchin’s halting negotiations on the bill would represent a “sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.”

Manchin has voiced concerns with a number of proposals in Biden’s signature domestic policy bill, including multiple climate proposals and a provision extending monthly payments to parents.  A proposal Manchin submitted to the White House last week included $1.8 trillion in funding over 10 years, as Biden had hoped, but no child tax credit, the Washington Post reported.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday he plans to move forward with a vote early next year anyway.

Get ready for the fireworks.

--The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to take up disputes over the Biden administration’s nationwide vaccine-or-testing Covid-19 mandate for large businesses and a separate vaccine requirement for healthcare workers.

The brief court order said the court will hear oral arguments on Jan. 7 in the two cases.

The workplace mandate is currently in effect nationwide, while the healthcare worker mandate is blocked in half the 50 states.

An appeals court last Friday allowed the workplace mandate, which covers 80 million American workers, to go into effect prompting businesses, states and other groups challenging the policy to ask the Supreme Court to block it.

The other case concerns whether the administration can require healthcare workers at facilities that treat federally funded Medicare and Medicaid patients to receive shots while litigation continues.

--Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Merry Christmas, student loan borrowers. Taxpayers will have to settle for airing their grievances a la Festivus.  That’s the result of the Biden Administration’s decision on Wednesday to extend its payment moratorium again to May 1.  Unlike its last pause through January, the Administration isn’t saying this extension is final – probably because it’s not.

“The Cares Act in March 2020 relieved borrowers from making payments on $1.6 trillion in federal student loans and waived interest accrual through September 2020.  President Trump extended the pause through January despite no legislative authority to do so.  Mr. Biden compounded the injury to taxpayers and the separation of powers by extending it through this September.

“Over the summer the Administration resisted progressive pressure for another extension.  But it ultimately surrendered, as it did with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s rental eviction moratorium.  The Education Department in August claimed this ‘final extension’ was necessary to ‘reduce the risk of delinquency and defaults.’  Democrats don’t want the pandemic emergency to end because it’s too politically useful.

“Claims of financial hardship for borrowers were dubious then and are even more so now as the unemployment rate among bachelor’s degree recipients has fallen to 2.3%.  Some 1.1 million more were employed in November than in February 2020. The pause has on average saved borrowers $400 per month….

“Mr. Biden is under pressure to appease progressives after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin shot down Build Back Better.  Politico reported Saturday that White House officials pushed back meetings with progressive groups against extending the loan pause again and said resuming payments was part of getting back to normal. Then came Mr. Manchin’s bombshell.

“ ‘With BBB delayed, Child Tax Credits will expire and student loans will restart within a matter of weeks.  Working families could lose thousands of $/mo just as prices are rising,’ New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Monday.  ‘That alone is reason for #POTUS to act on student loans ASAP – w / either moratorium or cancellation.’  Mr. Biden obliged.”

Wall Street and the Economy

We had a slew of economic data on the week, leading off with a final look at third-quarter GDP, up a bit to 2.3%.  Personal consumption was 2.0% in the quarter, which compares with 11.4% and 12.0% in the prior two quarters amid the reopening.  But remember, the Delta variant played a key role in Q3 in reducing economic activity.

GDP (annualized)

2022 Q3…2.3%
2022 Q2…6.7%
2022 Q1…6.4%
2021 Q4…4.5%

November existing-home sales came in a little light of expectations at 6.46 million annualized units, though up 1.9% month-over-month, and down 2.9% year-over-year.  The median home price of $353,900 was up 13.9% Y/Y, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Existing-home sales nonetheless are on track for their strongest year since 2006, as low mortgage rates and a robust job market drive up demand.

New home sales came in at an annualized pace of 774,000.

November durable goods were better than forecast, up 2.5%, and 0.8% ex-transportation.

And we had key data for the month on personal income, up 0.4%, and consumption, up 0.6%, both in line with expectations.

But this is the report that gives us the Fed’s preferred inflation benchmark, the personal consumption expenditures index, which rose 0.6% month-over-month, 5.7% Y/Y, the latter the highest rate since 1982.

The core figure that the Fed focuses on, ex-food and energy, though, rose 0.5% M/M and 4.7% from a year ago, which is well above the Fed’s target of 2%.

Ergo, further fuel for Jerome Powell and Co. to quickly end its bond-buying program in order to begin hiking interest rates, probably in May.  *Though this is all Covid dependent.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer, weighing all the above and more, is up to 7.6% for the fourth quarter.

In looking ahead at 2022, however, some economists expect the U.S. economy to now grow more slowly after Sen. Manchin seemingly dealt a fatal blow to the Build Back Better spending plan.

Goldman Sachs lowered its GDP growth forecast for 2022, as did Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics (and the favored economist of the White House).

“If BBB doesn’t become law, the economic recovery will be vulnerable to stalling out if we suffer another serious wave of the pandemic; an increasingly likely scenario with Omicron spreading rapidly,” Zandi wrote on Twitter.

One shift that economists say could slow growth is the reduction of an enhanced tax credit that sent families monthly payments of up to $300 per child but which is set to expire on Dec. 31.

According to a Reuters poll of economists, GDP was expected to fall to 4% in the first quarter after an expected 6% surge in the final three months of the year.  Growth for all of 2022 was seen decelerating to 3.9% - still well above pre-pandemic trends – from 5.6% this year.

Europe and Asia

Nothing this week on the Euro data front.

Brexit: Brexit minister David Frost quit the government last weekend, openly undermining British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over both his negotiations with the European Union and his response to a surge in coronavirus cases.  As Omicron gripped the UK, Frost said he opposed anything that could look like another lockdown.

Ultimately, Johnson held off on extra virus measures, avoiding a repeat of last year’s cancelled Christmas.

Johnson then appointed Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to be the Brexit negotiator as well and she said she would speak to her European Union counterpart, Marcos Sefcovic, next Tuesday amid renewed calls in Britain to rip up the controversial Northern Ireland protocol. 

Truss said she wanted to negotiate “a comprehensive solution” to the agreement, which requires post-Brexit checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Britain.

The protocol allows goods to flow freely between the North and the Republic to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

No EU-UK talks had been scheduled in the last days before Christmas, until the surprise resignation of Lord Frost.

Article 16 of the protocol allows one side or the other to rip up part of the agreement – such as customs checks between Britain and Northern Ireland – in the event of “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties.”  But it could expose whoever acts to retaliatory tariffs.

Truss supported ‘remain’ during the 2016 referendum campaign, but is popular with Tory activists at a time when Boris Johnson’s premiership is in crisis due to a string of revelations about lockdown-breaking gatherings at No. 10 Downing Street.

Some say Ms. Truss is attempting to look like Margaret Thatcher.  She recently was pictured riding on a tank in Estonia.

Turning to Asia…zero economic data of note out of China this week, though the Central Bank has taken steps to prop up the teetering real estate industry.

Japan reported inflation data for November and the annualized rate of 0.6% was actually the highest in two years.  But the core rate, ex-food and energy, was -0.6%.

Street Bytes

--One week to go in another strong year for stocks.  Equities liked what they heard on the Omicron front (rightly or wrongly), and the news on the economy was solid, so the S&P 500 hit a new record on Thursday (Wall Street closed Friday), 4725, up 2.3% on the week and nearly 26% for 2021.  The Dow Jones rose 1.7% to 35950 and Nasdaq surged 3.2%.

The Santa Claus rally was in full swing this week and next week could be more of the same, though it’s really up to Vladimir Putin.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.16%  2-yr. 0.69%  10-yr. 1.49%  30-yr. 1.91%

Bonds fell, yields rose, on the stronger economic outlook after this week’s releases. 

Yields also rose across the pond, with the Italian 10-year rising from 0.89% to 1.11%, a significant move as these things go.

--Oil had a solid week, up about $3.50 on West Texas Intermediate to $73.76 on the heels of the supposedly good Omicron news in terms of the severity of the illness.

Natural gas, though, is mired below $4.00 ($3.73), after a near-term peak of $6.20 on Oct. 27.  Look how warm it’s been across much of the country.

But I follow the 10-day forecast, daily, for Rapid City, South Dakota, to get an idea of future temperatures and we’re finally going to be getting into a normal winter pattern, at least for a spell it seems, so I’d expect nat gas to respond some in kind this coming week (after we set all kinds of warm weather records Christmas Day).

--Editorial / Washington Post

“President Biden has yet to name anyone to fill three key seats on the Federal Reserve Board. This is the most important economic policymaking institution in the United States – and many would say in the entire world.

“It’s hard to imagine Mr. Biden would not act expeditiously to nominate someone if there were an opening on the Supreme Court. So why the delay in filling vacancies at the Fed?

“When Mr. Biden announced last month that he would reappoint the steady and battle-tested Fed Chair Jerome Powell (a move this editorial board endorsed), the White House also put out a statement saying the president would announce his nominees for the other three spots ‘beginning in early December.’  It’s now past the midpoint of the month and no further nominations have been made.

“It’s difficult to understand why this isn’t an urgent priority for Mr. Biden.  Inflation is running at a nearly 40-year high, which is spooking many Americans and is a key reason the president’s approval ratings have slumped.  The Fed is the main line of defense against inflation.

“And the nation is going to need that line of defense at full strength in 2022.  As Mr. Powell warned (last) Wednesday, ‘The risk of higher inflation becoming entrenched has certainly increased.’….

“Mr. Powell does not make (critical) decisions on his own.  The Fed has a policymaking committee, and the core of it is the seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors.  If Mr. Biden does not move swiftly to fill the openings, the Fed will soon be operating hamstrung with just four members….

“It’s time for Mr. Biden to make some decisions.  The nominees will still have to be confirmed by the Senate before they can start their jobs, a process that can be lengthy.”

--The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Wursthorn relayed some of the research from Goldman Sachs that found five stocks in the S&P 500 account for more than half of the broad benchmark’s gain since April – Microsoft, Nvidia Corp., Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Tesla. For the year, these five are responsible for around one-third of the S&P’s gains.

But if these stocks stumble in the new year, you have a problem.

--Micron Technology Inc. on Monday delivered stronger quarterly results than Wall Street expected as data centers and electric vehicle manufacturers drove demand for its chips, and it forecast second-quarter sales and profits will also beat estimates with chip shortages easing in 2022.  Micron disclosed that it has struck deals with its own suppliers to ease bottlenecks in the supply chain.  The Street loved to hear this and the stock rocketed higher.

Micron makes both the NAND memory chips that serve the data storage market and the DRAM memory chips that are widely used in data centers, personal computers and other devices. Strong demand and an industry-wide shortage of the chips have also allowed Micron, one of the world’s biggest memory chip suppliers, to charge higher prices.

Micron said data center revenue grew 70% and that automotive revenue grew 25%.  The company expects revenue for the current fiscal second quarter to be $7.5 billion, above current Street forecasts, while in Fiscal Q1, Micron beat estimates with $7.69 billion.  Earnings came in at $2.16 per share, beating expectations of $2.11.

--While Micron said it is dealing successfully with the supply-chain issue, global constraints have hurt Nike Inc.’s sales.  The sneaker giant reported for a second consecutive quarter this week that its growth was stunted by a slowdown in production and transportation of its goods around the world.

Nike posted revenue of $11.4 billion in the quarter ended Nov. 30, up 1% from the same period a year earlier, better than expected.

Demand for Nike’s goods continues to outpace supply.  The previous quarter Nike reported a 10-week delay in production because of a lockdown in Vietnam and said it expected flat revenue growth for the November quarter.

On Monday, Nike said revenue in China, Asia Pacific and Latin America declined mainly because of low inventory levels resulting from Covid-related factory closures.

The company said measures to stop the spread of the virus in China continue to drive volatility in retail traffic but that it saw traffic recover to pre-pandemic levels at times throughout the quarter.

While Nike sees improvement in the inventory situation, it forecasts growth only in the lower single digits for the third quarter because of the continuing production issues in Vietnam, which I follow daily and have been relaying to you.  [The picture in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, however, is greatly improved on the Covid front.]

More than half of Nike’s footwear and about a third of its apparel manufacturing occurs in Vietnam, with Covid spiking all over again after the government crushed the curve.

Nike’s net income for the November quarter was $1.3 billion, up 7% from a year earlier. 

Digital sales increased 12%.

--The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday issued a warning to airlines regarding the risk of potential adverse effects on radio altimeters and other aircraft safety systems when operating in the presence of 5G C-band signals.

Separately, the FAA said in a statement on its website it’s “working with the aviation and wireless industries to find a solution that allows 5G C-band and aviation to safely coexist.”

While that work is underway, the agency has warned airlines that notices may be issued “to restrict operations in areas where 5G interference is possible,” it said.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and Airbus Americas CEO Jeffrey Knittel on Monday urged the U.S. government to delay the rollout of new 5G services, saying it could harm aviation safety.

--Ryanair on Wednesday more than doubled its forecast annual loss and cut its January traffic forecast by 33% due to the impact of Omicron.  The Irish airline, Europe’s largest by passenger numbers, said in a statement that it expects a net loss of between 250 million euros and 450 million euros ($509 million) in the 12 months to the end of March, which compares to a previous forecast of a loss of between 100 million and 200 million euros ($226 million).

Ryanair is blaming travel restrictions in France, Germany and Morocco following the emergence of Omicron but it said it was too soon to say whether similar cuts would be required to its February and March schedules and would wait for further scientific data before making any decisions.

The low-cost airline flew more than twice as many flights within the continent in the second week of December as any other airline, according to Eurocontrol, Europe’s air traffic regulator.  But restrictions on British passengers flying to Germany and France – and all EU passengers to Morocco – forced Ryanair to cut its December passenger forecast.

CEO Michael O’Leary, one of the most outspoken critics of Covid-19 travel restrictions, said the mood in Britain and Ireland in the face of Omicron was one of “panic.”

O’Leary has argued that it is impossible to limit the spread of virus variants and that high quality filters on planes make them relatively safe.  But many health experts argue that air travel is nevertheless a high-risk activity.

--United Airlines and Delta Air Lines on Thursday said they had each canceled dozens of Christmas Eve flights, as Omicron takes a toll on its flight crews and other workers.

United canceled 120 flights for Friday, while Delta said it has canceled about 90 (later revised to 135).  Both said they were working to contact passengers so they would not be stranded at airports, but you’ve seen the stories.  Many passengers showed up only to find out that their holiday plans were ruined.

“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation. As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport,” United said.

In Australia, dozens of flights were also canceled at airports in Sydney and Melbourne as Covid cases surged to their highest since the start of the pandemic.

A big issue is the length of time flight crews are required to quarantine and this has to be shortened, in all walks of life.  You are seeing local schools do so.

And in another example, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul just shortened the quarantine time for healthcare ( and other essential) workers to five days (as long as they are fully vaccinated and are asymptomatic).

So I wrote the flight data Thursday and then by Friday afternoon, the number of canceled flights for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day had soared to more than 3,000 globally, after 2,000 were scrapped on Thursday, according to FlightAware.  More than 20 percent of those canceled for Friday involved travel within, into or out of the United States.

--TSA checkpoint travel numbers vs. 2019….

12/23…86 percent of 2019 levels
12/22…107…2.081M
12/21…100…but under 2M
12/20…84
12/19…84
12/18…82
12/17…86
12/16…83

*Post-pandemic high of 2,451,300 travelers set on 11/28 (Sun. after Thanksgiving)

--The Biden administration on Monday raised fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars and light duty trucks, saying the new standards will reduce pollution and save consumers billions of dollars at the gas pump.

Auto makers must meet a fleetwide average of 55 miles a gallon for cars and light trucks by model year 2026, up from the 43 mpg standard set by the Trump administration for that year. The fleetwide mileage standard for the current 2021 model year is 40 mpg.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the new rules will save U.S. drivers between $210 billion and $420bn in fuel costs through 2050, based on government estimates of future fuel prices.

The EPA said the higher standards will curb pollution from the transportation sector, which it says is the nation’s No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the lobbying group for auto makers and suppliers, said in order to achieve the new targets, the industry would need federal support to transition to electric vehicles.

The Build Back Better plan as it’s currently structured would provide $20 billion in tax credits for electric-vehicle buyers, as I alluded to above, in addition to other funding to spur manufacturing investments and domestic battery plants.  But the package is doomed if Sen. Manchin has his way.

The president of the Sierra Club, Ramon Cruz, said, “For auto makers, this is the future.  If you want to remain competitive you have to do this.”

The EPA estimates the companies can comply for model year 2026 with electric vehicle sales at about 17%, though consumers have been slow to warm to EVs, which currently account for 3% to 4% of sales, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis.

New funding for a national network of charging stations has been included in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill recently enacted.

The EPA says the transportation sector accounted for 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2019.

--Elon Musk on Wednesday sold more of his Tesla stock, bringing the total value of his share sales to more than $15 billion since he began to unload shares in the past month to cover tax obligations, according to regulatory filings.

Back in September, Musk set out a plan to exercise options and sell shares and he has exercised about 21.3 million of 23 million options that are set to expire in August 2022.  He tweeted Wednesday, “There are still a few tranches left, but almost done.”

While the stock rallied sharply on Wednesday, since he polled his Twitter users about whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the shares are down more than 17%.

Earlier, Musk, the world’s richest person, tweeted he will pay $11 billion in tax for this year.  Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren had tweeted that Musk should stop “freeloading off everyone else.”

“For those wondering, I will pay over $11bn in taxes this year,” the billionaire responded.

--Chipmaker Intel became the latest multinational company to struggle with the geopolitics of doing business in China. The $207 billion tech giant had to say it was sorry to defuse a social media backlash after telling suppliers they could not use products or labor from the Xinjiang region. 

The company backtracked with a Chinese-language statement on Thursday saying it was complying with U.S. law rather than expressing Intel’s position on the issue.  America and other Western countries have accused China of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Intel’s stance is mealy-mouthed.  But U.S. companies operating in China can’t be seen to take sides. 

More than a quarter of Intel’s $78 billion of sales in 2020 came from customers in China.

--Oracle Corp. on Monday announced its largest deal ever, a roughly $28.3 billion purchase of electronic-medical-records company Cerner Corp. that takes the business-software giant deeper into medical technology.

The deal extends Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s longstanding willingness to buy his way into new markets; Ellison having built Oracle through a long list of acquisitions over the decades.

The Cerner deal gives Oracle a major presence in an industry that is one of the top drivers of growth for cloud computing.  Ellison said earlier this month that healthcare is one of the key focus areas for his company, telling analysts that it was “on par with banking in terms of the importance to our future.”

He said Monday, “With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications.”

U.S. healthcare spending accounts for nearly 20% of the country’s GDP – and has often been slow to adopt the latest digital tools.

Cerner sells software that hospitals and doctors use to store and analyze medical records.  It is the second-largest vendor in the market after Epic Systems Corp.

--Staying on the healthcare front, the Journal had a story on ‘burnout’ in the pharmacy business with overtaxed, overworked staff owing to Covid taking care of vaccines, testing, long hours, and in some cases at little relative pay.  I can see it in the staff at my local CVS.  All of this on top of normal pharmacy work, which is intensive behind that counter.

A CVS spokesman told the Journal the company is doing everything it can to supports its workers, and has begun adding prescheduled break time and is hiring thousands of pharmacy staff, though the company won’t say if it’s hiring more workers than it’s losing.

CVS has 9,900 stores in the U.S., while Walgreens has about 9,000.

Both chains have started raising their minimum hourly wage to $15 by mid- to-late next year.

Retail pharmacies, including CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid, as well as Walmart and grocers, had been responsible for one-third of Covid vaccines through most of the pandemic but now account for about two-thirds of the shots.

--Last week I mentioned how well New York City was doing on the hotel occupancy front, and this week I saw a piece in the Los Angeles Times discussing how hotel bookings in L.A. returned to 100% of their pre-pandemic levels in October and November, considerably above the national average.

The national average for hotel bookings is 89.57% of 2019 numbers, according to SiteMinder.

San Francisco hotels, in contrast, are running at about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, the data show.  Huh.

Hoteliers are benefiting from the pandemic-related shift among U.S. employers to allow their employees to work remotely instead of in the office.  As one hotel operator noted, “If they don’t have to be in the office on Fridays or Mondays, they can extend their weekend stays and work from the hotel.”

--“Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected a pandemic-best $253 million at theaters, according to estimates from Comscore.

On Friday alone, the most anticipated movie of the year had already amassed $121.9 million – the second-highest opening-day tally in domestic box office history and the most lucrative December opening of all time, according to figures from Sony Pictures.  “No Way Home” cost $200 million to make.

With the latest “Spider-Man” installment, Marvel has officially swept the top five theatrical debuts since the pandemic shutdowns began in March 2020.

To date, only two films have opened above “No Way Home” at the North American box office: 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” ($357.1 million) and 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” ($257.7 million), which were distributed by Disney.

--So thanks to “No Way Home,” AMC Entertainment Holdings said movie attendance in the U.S. last week set records for post-Covid lockdown, as the movie exhibitor said it sold more than 7 million movie tickets worldwide from Dec. 16 through 19, including more than 5 million tickets sold in the U.S.

The Pandemic

--The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday gave its approval to Pfizer’s Covid pill, which will allow people to treat the virus at home and avert the virus’ worst symptoms, the drug company said.

The drug, Paxlovid, is the first effective and recommended treatment against Covid-19 that does not require an injection or an IV drip.  According to Pfizer, the pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths nearly 90% and only caused mild side effects.

“The efficacy is high, the side effects are low and it’s oral.  It checks all the boxes,” Dr. Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic, said.  “You’re looking at a 90% decreased risk of hospitalizations and death in a high-risk group – that’s stunning.”

Paxlovid has been approved for anyone 12 and older with a positive Covid test and early symptoms, as well as those with pre-existing conditions at risk for hospitalization.  The treatment consists of three pills (two Paxlovid and another antiviral) taken twice a day for five days.

But for now, just like Covid-19 testing sites and vaccines, Covid treatment pills will be in short supply for months until production can increase.

The federal distribution to states will be based on population, and it will likely be up to doctors to prescribe Paxlovid.  The National Institutes of Health said it will release recommendations on how to allocate treatments.

New York will get only 3,180 courses of Paxlovid for the state’s roughly 20 million residents when the government starts parceling them out on a per-capita basis in the coming weeks, according to a breakdown of the disbursements by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Wyoming – with about half a million residents – will get just 100 courses.  California, the most-populous state, will get 6,180.

The U.S. is only expecting 265,000 Pfizer courses by the end of January and then 10 million by July.  It will also have 3 million of the less effective Merck pill by the end of January.

Pfizer’s pill takes about six to eight months to make.

--Speaking of Merck, the FDA also authorized its antiviral pill for Covid.  Merck’s drug, molnupiravir, developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, was shown to reduce hospitalizations and deaths by around 30% in a clinical trial of high-risk individuals early in the course of the illness.  The agency authorized the oral drug for the treatment of mild-to-moderate Covid in adults who are at risk for severe disease.

--So now with the first two Covid-19 treatment pills having been cleared for use, comes the hard part: deciding who should get one. 

Covid-19 death tolls, as of early tonight….

World…5,408,741
USA…837,671
Brazil…618,429
India…479,218
Russia…302,269
Mexico…298,508
Peru…202,424
UK…147,857
Indonesia…144,047
Italy…136,386
Iran…131,306
Colombia…129,686
France…122,462
Argentina…117,008
Germany…110,908
Ukraine…94,432
Poland…94,041
South Africa…90,743
Spain…89,019
Turkey…81,258
Romania…58,507
Philippines…51,050
Chile…38,984
Hungary…38,307
Czechia…35,640
Ecuador…33,641
Malaysia…31,290
Vietnam…30,766
Bulgaria…30,476
Canada…30,139
Pakistan…28,898
Belgium…28,110
Bangladesh…28,055
Tunisia…25,516
Iraq…24,115
Egypt…21,546
Thailand…21,528
Netherlands…20,661
Greece…20,292

[Source: worldometers.info]

U.S. daily death tolls…Mon. 623; Tues. 1,811; Wed. 1,630; Thurs. 1,149; Fri. 747.

*Owing to the holidays, the numbers on cases, hospitalizations and deaths will be largely incomplete until after New Year’s.  Just a fact.

Covid Bytes

--China is redoubling efforts to control new coronavirus outbreaks with a lockdown of the 13 million residents of the northern city of Xian following a spike in cases.  Local officials were then arrested for not preventing the spread.

There was no word on whether the cases were the result of Omicron or Delta.

China, with its zero Covid policy, has been dealing with substantial outbreak in several cities in the eastern province of Zhejiang near Shanghai.

And here come the Olympics and athletes from all over the world.  Oh joy.

--Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that attending large gatherings of over 40 people is not considered safe for vaccinated people, even those who got a booster dose.

“There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals.  Those are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not want to go to,” Fauci said at a White House briefing.

The seven-day average of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. increased by 25% from the previous week as of Wednesday.

--As a result of Omicron, 52% of Americans told a Marist national poll of adults that they will celebrate the holidays only with people who have been vaccinated against Covid.  42% say they will gather with people regardless of their vaccination status.

--Novavax said Wednesday that its two-dose Covid vaccine showed cross-reactive immune responses against several variants of the coronavirus, including Omicron, based on initial results.

A third dose, or a booster shot, produced increased immune responses equal to or above the levels shown in the vaccine’s phase 3 trial.

--AstraZeneca said Thursday a third booster dose of its Vaxzevria vaccine significantly increased levels of antibodies against the Omicron variant.

But this is based on data from a laboratory study, though performed independently by investigators at the University of Oxford.

--Israel says it plans to become the first country to roll out a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine as the country prepares for a wave of infections driven by Omicron.

Israel’s pandemic experts have recommended a fourth booster for those over 60 and health care workers.

--As first reported by Tara Copp of Defense One:

“Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against Covid-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.

“The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus.  The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the Covid-19 virus in early 2020.  Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.”

Animal trials have been conducted, and phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and other variants, wrapped up this month so we’ll see.

According to Tara Copp:

“Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed’s SpFN (Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle vaccine) uses a soccer-ball shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.”

The next step is seeing how this vaccine works against people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick.

Exciting stuff…fingers crossed.

--Aircraft passengers are twice or even three times more likely to catch Covid-19 during a flight since the emergence of Omicron, according to the top medical adviser to the world’s airlines.

David Powell, physician and medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association, which represents almost 300 carriers worldwide, said business class is probably safer.  As before, passengers should avoid face-to-face contact and surfaces that are frequently touched, and people sitting near to each other should try not to be unmasked at the same time during meals, he said.

Transmission risk remains much lower than in crowded places on the ground such as shopping malls thanks to the hospital-grade air filters on modern passenger jets, a point that airlines have been keen to highlight throughout the pandemic, but not all the aircraft you may be traveling on are modern.

--Friday, President Biden will lift travel restrictions on eight countries in southern Africa on Dec. 31, based on the recommendation of the CDC, which noted evidence that vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease from Omicron.

“According to our health and medical experts at the CDC, the value of country-based international travel restrictions is greatest early in an outbreak, before the virus or variant has been widely disseminated,” the White House said in a statement.  “This value declines as domestic transmission starts to contribute a larger proportion of case burden.”

--Next month’s World Economic Forum from Davos, Switzerland was canceled for a second year.

Foreign Affairs

Iran: The United States and its partners are discussing time frames for nuclear diplomacy with Iran, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday, adding that current efforts to achieve a new nuclear deal may be exhausted within weeks.

“We’re not circling a date on the calendar in public, but I can tell you that behind closed doors we are talking about time frames and they are not long,” he told reporters during a visit to Israel.  Asked to elaborate on the time frame, Sullivan said “weeks.”

As for Israel, there have been conflicting reports from Israeli defense officials on whether the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) is ready to attack Iran.  Israel’s defense minister has warned the world that his country would take matters into its own hands if a new nuclear agreement did not sufficiently constrain Iran.

But other current and former senior defense officials and experts say that Israel lacks the ability to pull off an assault that could destroy, or even significantly delay Iran’s nuclear program, at least not now.

It’s one thing to disrupt parts of the program, but much of Iran’s activities are hidden far from Israel and that would be very difficult to launch a campaign against such sites.  One retired Israeli Air Force general, Relik Shafir, told the New York Times, “In the world we live in, the only air force that can maintain a campaign is the U.S. Air Force,” he said.

Russia/Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his annual year end press conference Thursday and called on the West to give immediate security guarantees to defuse a crisis prompted by Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine’s borders.

“It’s you who must give us guarantees, and give them immediately, now,” Putin said.

Putin has demanded that NATO abandon military activity in Eastern Europe and not admit Ukraine as a member.  Vlad the Impaler denies planning to invade Ukraine, despite now having a reported 122,000 troops close to its borders, on the way to massing over 170,000, according to Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council.

Putin said military measures were not his preferred choice and he expressed hope that talks would take place with the U.S. early next year in Geneva, adding: “The ball is in their court, they have to give us some response.”

No we don’t.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she welcomed the fact that Moscow had “signaled it is willing to enter talks in January,” but warned any Russian attack would be met with sanctions that hit Russia’s economy.

Putin said: “We didn’t come to the U.S. or UK borders, no, they came to ours,” accusing NATO of cheating Russia with five waves of expansion since the 1990s, which is total BS.

In a list of demands outlined last week, Russia has said it wants NATO to roll back to where it was in 1997, a demand seen as a non-starter for Poland, the Baltics and other Eastern European states that joined the West’s defensive military alliance.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and then seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and Moscow is seeking assurances that neither country will be allowed to join NATO.

The Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia also fear Russia’s military buildup and Lithuanian President Nauseda has described the situation as probably “the most dangerous it’s been in 30 years.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week he also hoped for talks with Russia early next year but was adamant that Ukraine’s membership in the alliance was up to NATO and Kyiv: “Any dialogue with Russia has of course to respect the core principles which European security has been based on.”

The Biden administration said Thursday it is prepared to hold talks with Russia as early as January, though no specifics.

For now, a 2020 ceasefire deal has been renewed in the Donbas region.  This comes after ceasefire violations have surged of late.

Thursday, a day after the ceasefire went into effect, the Ukrainian military reported the “armed formations of the Russian Federation” had violated it three times, including with mortars and heavy grenade launchers, though there were no casualties.

Meanwhile, supposedly Russian mercenaries have deployed to separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine in recent weeks to bolster defenses against Ukrainian government forces.

Patrick Tucker / Defense One

“Moscow has ‘stepped up efforts’ to portray Ukraine and the United States as the instigator of increased tensions that include a massive buildup of Russian forces along the Ukrainian border, a senior White House official told reporters on Thursday.

“That came hours after Russian leader Vladimir Putin told reporters that U.S. actions, particularly its financial and military support of Ukraine, were to blame for the rising standoff.

“ ‘How would the Americans react if on their frontier with Canada we deployed our missiles,’ Putin said. … ‘It’s a question of security and you know our red lines.’

“The White House official said, ‘To be clear, we see no evidence of that escalation on the Ukrainian side.  And we have tried to be very clear to partners and allies that this is a Russian disinformation effort that’s underway.  It’s not unexpected; it fits a standard playbook.’”

Vladimir Putin, by the way, does not see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a negotiating partner, accusing him of falling under the influence of what he called radical nationalist forces.

“How can I build a relationship with the current leadership, given what they are doing?  It’s practically impossible,” he said.

I’d laugh but it’s far too serious.

Editorial / Washington Post

“To be clear, Mr. Putin has no legitimate casus belli regarding Ukraine. What he seems really to fear is not Ukraine-based NATO missiles, as he claims, but the growth and development of a successful, Western-oriented democracy in Kyiv, the exemplary existence of which would destabilize his own kleptocratic regime.  His conduct, and the rationale for it, are false and unacceptable.

“Yet he may not be wrong to believe he can get what he wants through war.  Though far stronger than they were in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and the Donbas region, Ukraine’s armed forces are probably no match for Russia’s and may well have to retreat quickly to the western side of the Dnieper River, which essentially bisects the country. The United States and its allies, distracted by domestic politics and coronavirus, can try to deter Russia by beefing up Ukraine’s capacity to fight back, and to punish Russia with economic sanctions. The potential efficacy of the latter is limited by Western Europe’s dependence on energy from Russia, however.  Moscow can do retaliatory damage through cyberwarfare and other means.

“The Soviet Union collapsed nearly 30 years ago this month, an event that opened up vast new possibilities for freedom and self-determination in Europe, but whose geopolitical consequences Mr. Putin has openly lamented.  He seems bent on reversing them, quite possibly by force, and sooner rather than later.”

China: Japan’s Kyodo news agency said on Thursday that Japanese and U.S. armed forces have drawn up a draft plan for a joint operation for a possible Taiwan emergency, citing unnamed Japanese government sources, amid increased tensions between the island and China.

Under the plan the U.S. Marine Corps will set up temporary bases in the Nansei island chain stretching from Kyushu, one of the four main islands of Japan, to Taiwan, at the initial stage of a Taiwan emergency, and will deploy troops, Kyodo said.

Japanese armed forces will provide logistical support in such areas as ammunition and fuel supplies, it said.

Again, this is just a reported plan, but in October, Japan’s government signaled a more assertive position on China’s aggressive posture towards self-ruled Taiwan, suggesting it would consider options and prepare for “various scenarios,” while reaffirming close U.S. ties.

Earlier this month, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, still highly influential in his country, said that Japan and the United States could not stand by if China attacked Taiwan.

Indeed, the U.S. has tens of thousands of troops in Japan, including on the southern island of Okinawa, a short flight from Taiwan.

In Hong Kong, two more universities on Friday removed public monuments to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

The move followed the dismantling of a sculpture marking victims of the crackdown at another university earlier this week.

Unlike mainland China, where Chinese authorities ban any memorials or public commemoration of June 4th, Hong Kong had previously remained the only place on Chinese soil where such commemorations were permissible.

Meanwhile, turnout for last weekend’s “patriots”-only legislative election in Hong Kong was 30.2% as critics deemed the vote to be regressive.  The turnout figure is less than half of that of the 2016 legislative poll, with the latest results showing almost all of the seats being taken by pro-Beijing and pro-establishment candidates.

The election – in which only candidates screened by the government as “patriots” could run – was harshly criticized by activists, foreign governments and rights groups as undemocratic.

Afghanistan: The United States formally exempted on Wednesday U.S. and UN officials doing permitted business with the Taliban from U.S. sanctions to try to maintain the flow of aid to Afghanistan as it sinks deeper into a humanitarian crisis.  It was unclear, however, whether the move would pave the way for proposed UN payments of some $6 million to the Islamists for security. 

Having designated the Taliban as a terrorist group for years, Washington has ordered its U.S. assets frozen and barred Americans from dealing with them.  But the Treasury on Wednesday issued three general licenses aimed at easing humanitarian aid flows into Afghanistan.

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, said in a statement that the exemption “could result in using American taxpayer funds to reward, legitimize and enable the same Taliban that took power by force and has shown no interest in abiding by international norms.”

But the United Nations says nearly 23 million people, or about 55% of the population, are facing extreme levels of hunger, with nearly 9 million at risk of famine as winter takes hold.

Meanwhile, China said the resurgence of international militant groups emboldened by the chaos in post-war Afghanistan is posing serous threats to anti-terror work.

“The new threats and new challenges in the counterterrorism field call for high (levels of) vigilance.  Emerging new technologies are being abused by terrorist forces.  The use of cyberspace has made terrorist activities more covert and unchecked, and pushed terrorism closer to organized crime,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said.

China is concerned with instability in the western part of the country, as Beijing has called on the Afghan Taliban to help eradicate terrorism.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: *New poll…43% approve of President Biden’s job performance, 51% disapprove; 40% of independents approve…but only 78% of Democrats when the prior low was 90%!  [5% of Republicans approve.]  [Dec. 1-16]  Prior split for Nov. 1-16 was 42-55, 37% independents.

Rasmussen: 41% approve, 57% disapprove (Dec. 23).

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national poll has Biden’s approval rating at 41%, with 55% disapproving. 

This survey also has 49% optimistic about what’s ahead for the world in 2022, with 47% more pessimistic for the new year. 

--The Democrats are in such deep merde.  Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a leading voice of the moderates, a Florida Democrat, announced Monday she won’t be seeking reelection next fall in another stinging loss for the party.

Murphy flipped a GOP-held seat in 2016 and helped write the party’s playbook for its House takeover two years later. She said she is leaving the Hill to spend more time with her family, including two school-age children.

She is the 22nd incumbent House Democrat to forgo a reelection bid next year.  Murphy is also a member of the Jan. 6 select committee and has faced a dramatic uptick of threats against her and her family.  Anyone making such a threat should face ten years without parole.

--Delaware state police took five suspects into custody after Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon was robbed of her automobile at gunpoint in a Philadelphia park on Wednesday.

The suspects were located in Scanlon’s vehicle.

Scanlon, a Democrat who represents Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District, was unharmed in the mid-afternoon carjacking which occurred following a meeting of elected officials as she walked to her sport utility vehicle, city police said.

--U.S. population growth hit a record low in 2020, while life expectancy fell by the largest margin since World War II, the Census Bureau said.

The country’s population grew by 0.1 percent from July 2020 to July 2021, or by 392,665 people, representing the first time that the country’s population rose by fewer than 1 million individuals since 1937, the Census Bureau said.  The average expected life span fell to 77, a drop of 1.8 years from 2019, with Covid-19 becoming the third-leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer.

The low population growth is attributable to both the pandemic and lower birthrates, among other factors.  Mortality grew in part due to the coronavirus, while pandemic-induced travel restrictions prevented fewer people from migrating to the United States.

--Crain’s New York Business’ editors graded New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as he finishes up his two terms in office.  On some of the topics:

Fixing social and economic inequality: D

“Homelessness has exploded across the city. Spending on shelters doubled between 2014 and 2018, but a record number of New Yorkers – 60,000 – were homeless by mid-2021.”

Affordable housing was another pillar of de Blasio’s agenda, and eight years later, “the New York City Housing Authority’s stock remains in a dilapidated state: More than $40 billion in repairs is needed.”

Fighting the pandemic: B+

I’m not going to disagree here, as New York has a very high vaccination rate and until the testing fiasco of the last few weeks, did a pretty good job in terms of access for testing and vaccines.

Boosting the financial sector: A

“The economy was amazingly strong during most of de Blasio’s tenure, which meant he had funding for priorities such as universal pre-K.  During his tenure, jobs and prosperity spread outside Manhattan and into the other boroughs at levels unseen in decades until the pandemic.  The city’s credit rating is a rock-solid AA.”

On the crime front, I’ll wait for yearend numbers, but murders are way up over last year, though major felony offenses not so much, last I saw.

The number of traffic deaths has been soaring – including with pedestrians.  Yet at the same time, the number of summonses issued by cops has dropped over 50 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

As for incoming mayor Eric Adams, he has made some controversial picks for top spots and the press is not going to give him a long honeymoon.

But I like the guy.

--And now some Trump Bits….

Former President Donald Trump called Sen. Mitch McConnell a “disaster” for allowing the $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal to pass, saying Republicans need a new leader in the Senate.

“Mitch McConnell is a disaster.  The Republicans have to get a new leader.  Mitch McConnell allowed this to happen.  The ‘un-frastructure’ bill, I call it ‘un-frastructure,’ not infrastructure,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Trump said only 9 percent of the funds in the bill that passed the Senate 69-30 in August actually went toward infrastructure projects (depending on how infrastructure is defined, spending in the bill on such projects ranges from 46 to 80 percent, the Washington Post found).

Yup, we had four years of “Infrastructure Week” in the Trump administration and nothing.  And Biden got a bill through his first year.  Suck it up, Donald.

Trump also slammed McConnell for working out a compromise with Democrats to allow them to raise the debt ceiling, and he said there is a bigger problem in the “so-calling voting rights bill, which is a voting rights for Democrats, because Republicans will never be elected again if that happens, if that passes.”

Meanwhile, the former president revealed that he received a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd in Dallas.

Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of “The History Tour,” a live interview show he has been doing with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

“Both the president and I are vaxxed,” O’Reilly said at the American Airlines Center, drawing some jeers from the audience.

“Did you get the booster?” he asked the former president.  “Yes,” Trump responded.  “I got it, too,” O’Reilly said, eliciting more hectoring.

“Don’t!  Don’t!  Don’t!  Don’t!  Don’t!” Trump told the crowd, waving off their reaction with his hand.

While taking credit for the vaccines developed on his watch, Trump has refused to urge his supporters to take them.

Though finally, in recent days, Trump has spoken out more aggressively about the value of vaccines.  After his appearance with O’Reilly, in an interview Tuesday with conservative Daily Wire host Candace Owens, who is a leading purveyor of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, Trump took credit for the vaccines as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”  He added, “Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form” of Covid.  “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”

This is good.  Most of us just wish he had been this forceful a year ago.

Former vice president Mike Pence received his vaccine doses in public (ditto President Biden and VP Harris), but Trump chose to receive his in private – an acknowledgement of the unpopularity of the vaccine with large swaths of his base.

But Tuesday, Trump said he was “very appreciate” and “surprised” that President Biden thanked him and his administration for their success in making Covid-19 vaccines available to the public, telling Fox News that “tone” and “trust” are critical in getting Americans vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Trump took at least seven trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express” private plane – far more than was previously known, according to newly released flight logs.

The 118 pages of flight logs, released Monday, also lists nine trips by former President Bill Clinton, as well as flights taken by lawyer Alan Dershowitz, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and Prince Andrew.

Only one of Trump’s trips was previously known, reported the Miami Herald, which first reported on the logs entered into evidence in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.

The logs show Trump taking four trips in 1993, and one in 1994, 1995 and 1997; the 1997 trip was previously disclosed in earlier documents.

On one of the flights, the names Marla, Tiffany and a nanny appear – believed to be a reference to his then-wife Marla Maples and then-infant daughter Tiffany.

In 1995, he flew with his son Eric, who was not yet 2 years old, the logs show.

On another matter, Donald Trump claimed victory in the fake “war on Christmas” and says even Jews and Muslims are joining in the spirit.

Trump took credit for bringing back “Merry Christmas” and dumping the more universalist phrase “Happy Holidays” that he said was sweeping the nation before his MAGA movement hit the scene.

“When I started campaigning, I said; ‘You’re going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again, and now people are saying it,’” Trump said in a recent interview on the Newsmax network.

“I would say it all the time during that period, that we want them to say ‘Merry Christmas.’  Don’t shop at stores that don’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’

“I’ll tell you: ‘We brought it back very quickly,” he added.

Oh brother.

Days later, Trump made a jaw-dropping series of anti-Semitic claims about Jewish Americans controlling institutions of government and media in an interview with Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist for Axios who wrote a book on Trump’s Middle Eastern policies.  Trump said evangelical Americans “love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”

‘It used to be Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite,” he said.

Trump also suggested American Jews used to have “a great love of Israel” and that this has “dissipated over the years.”

“I must be honest. It’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening,” Trump said.  “People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel.”

He went on: “I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”

Trump was not done.

“I mean, you look at the New York Times – the New York Times hates Israel.  Hates ‘em.  And they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times.  I mean, the Sulzbergers,” Trump said.  [According to the Times, some of the Sulzbergers were raised Protestant.]

Lastly, Trump on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to block the release of White House records sought by the House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. 

Trump’s request came two weeks after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Trump had no basis to challenge President Joe Biden’s decision to allow the documents to be handed over.  That decision will now remain on hold until the Supreme Court acts.

--As of Wednesday, 163 tornadoes had been confirmed in the United States, the most on record in December by far and the second most in any winter month.  The tornado count, with a few more days in the month, would be above the average for any month other than April, May and June.

The official death toll of 90 now ranks as the 10th-deadliest month for tornadoes since the modern keeping of records began in 1950.

The National Weather Service confirmed one of the tornadoes of Dec. 10-11 was on the ground 166 miles, devastating Kentucky communities such as Mayfield and Dawson Springs.

--Analysis of 40 years of December 25 U.S. snow measurements show that less of the country now has snow for Christmas than in the 1980s.

That’s especially true in a belt across the nation’s midsection – from Baltimore to Denver and a few hundred miles farther north. And the snow that falls doesn’t measure up to past depths.

Scientists say the decline in the number of white Christmases is relatively small and caution about drawing conclusions.

But according to an analysis of ground observation data by the University of Arizona for the Associated Press, from 1981 to 1990, on average, almost 47% of the country had snow on the ground on Christmas Day, with an average depth of 3.5 inches.  From 2011 to 2020, Christmas snow cover was down to 38%, with an average depth of 2.7 inches.

In Central Park, New York, NBC’s Janice Huff said Thursday that from 1912-66, there were 12 white Christmases, defined as one inch of snow on the ground.  But from 1967-2020, only four!

Eegads.

But tons more snow in the critical Sierra Nevada Mountains of California this week, and that’s a good thing for next summer and the agriculture sector, among other industries, for starters.

--Finally, say a prayer if you read this before tomorrow morning that the James Webb deep space telescope launch goes off without a hitch Saturday morning.  That’s $10 billion on the line, but the rewards could be literally out of this world.

---

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

God bless America.

Official government Kentucky relief fund (as the media has moved on):

TeamWKYReliefFund.ky.gov

---

Gold $1810
Oil $73.76

Returns for the week 12/20-12/24

Dow Jones +1.7%  ]35950]
S&P 500  +2.3%  [4725]
S&P MidCap  N/A
Russell 2000  N/A
Nasdaq  +3.2%  [15653]

Returns for the period 1/1/21-12/24/21

Dow Jones  +17.5%
S&P 500  +25.8%
S&P MidCap  +21.2%
Russell 2000  +13.5%
Nasdaq  +21.5%

Bulls 43.9
Bears 24.4…no update this week

Merry Christmas!  Travel safe.

Brian Trumbore

*I will be posting a column on New Year’s Eve about the same time.