Weekend Papers Summary
* NYT (Saturday): Iran’s seizure of at least one British oil tanker in the Strait Hormuz marks a sharp escalation of tensions with the West and raises fears of a military clash, even as both sides seek room for negotiations; Donald Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the national popular vote, may be even larger than it was in 2016, according to a New York Times analysis of election results and polling data; In a surprising split among Iranian hard-liners, some—including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long an anti-American—now say it’s time to sit down and resolve 40 years of animosity with the U.S. by talking directly to Trump; Demonstrating the limited influence of allies or advisers trying to steer him away from pre-election racial and cultural fights, Trump walked back his disavowal of a racially loaded chant at a campaign rally less than 24 hours after making it; Conventional wisdom in Hollywood has long held that big, lumbering “tentpole” movies require protracted promotional campaigns, often starting more than a year before release, but in today’s on-demand economy, shorter campaigns are the new normal; James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said he would be glad to lead the central bank if given the chance, which could be a possibility if Trump is re-elected and decides to replace chairman Jerome Powell; (Sunday): Front page story suggests that a new “red scare” is taking shape in Washington amid growing skepticism and mistrust of China, one sign of which is the revival of long-defunct groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger, which campaigned against the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s; British Airways and Lufthansa abruptly canceled all flights to Cairo on Saturday for security reasons, a day after the British government warned of a heightened risk of terrorist attacks against planes over Egypt; President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, in power since 1994, is increasingly looking to China for money and inspiration, but many in the country are protesting the construction of a China-funded lead-acid battery factory that may spew deadly toxins; Sunday Business: There are an estimated 25M safe deposit boxes in the U.S., but there are no federal laws governing them and no rules requiring banks to compensate customers if their property is stolen or destroyed; Sunday Review: Editorial says the gap between the poor and the wealthy in Illinois is one of the largest in any state, but the poor pay taxes at higher rates in 45 of the 50 states, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
* WSJ (Weekend): “Federal Reserve officials signaled they are ready to lower interest rates by a quarter-percentage point later this month, while indicating the potential for additional reductions, despite the recent surge in market expectations of a half-point cut”; To see how much coverage each Democratic presidential candidate is getting, UK-based media-monitoring firm Signal A.I. has been tracking 10,000 print media, 1,500 broadcast outlets and more than 2.6M online sources world-wide since January; Many of the nation’s largest drug manufacturers and distributors failed to implement even the most basic systems to halt suspicious drug orders as the opioid epidemic came into sharp focus, according to plaintiffs lawyers; The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued talks over how to pay for a two-year agreement to raise overall spending limits and at the same time raise the U.S. government’s borrowing limit; A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can proceed with its expansion of certain health plans that don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act; Trump administration aid cuts to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador aren’t slowing migration because the billions of dollars in remittances that migrants in the U.S. send back home dwarf any official assistance they receive from their countries or origin; The Republican tax overhaul passed in 2017 lowered the cost of being married for many couples, but being married is often more expensive than being two single filers come tax time—and that has prompted many couples to avoid legally tying the knot; The Baltic Dry Index, a closely watched index that tracks the cost of shipping commodities around the world, is at its highest level since 2014, but some analysts say that shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a bullish sign for the global economy; H.O.T.S.: A surge in online drug sales could pose a threat to CVS, WBA, and WMT; MSFT’s strong results and forecast help justify its trillion-dollar value; The oil market’s mild reaction to a series of incidents this week involving Iran should please the White House, but there are other reasons to be concerned.
* FT (Weekend): Israel-based spyware company NSO told buyers that its technology can surreptitiously access all of an individual’s data from the servers of companies such as AAPL, GOOGL, FB, AMZN, and MSFT, a situation observers fear repressive regimes could take advantage of; Big Read piece says “Hundreds of companies and labs are trying to use neurotechnology to connect human thought to computers,” but TSLA chief Elon Musk’s Neuralink is one of the few that also wants to merge the brain with artificial intelligence; Lex Column: In a year during which high-profile initial public offerings have stumbled, WeWork faces an uphill struggle to convince skeptics; National Australia Bank’s new leader, Ross McEwan, needs to increase trust just as he previously did at RBS; What MSFT lacks in fashionable services it makes up for with scale; Comment: Now that new leaders for the European Union have been chosen, says Carl Bildt, Brussels needs to prevent the bloc from further sliding into irrelevance as a disruptive U.S., assertive China, and revanchist Russia dominate the global stage.
* NY POST (Saturday): “Markets swung in and out of the green Friday as traders digested a slew of comments from Fed officials over the last few days that diminished hopes of a half-point rate cut”; (Sunday): +/- DIS: Story says Disneyland executives use the park’s wearable “MagicBands” and smartphone apps to spy on guests and collect data on buying habits, what rides their kids like, and who their favorite characters are.