Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Most Candidates Running on Crime Wouldn’t Have Much Power to Solve It. Crime surges and falls for reasons that experts don’t fully understand, and many elected offices have little power to change trends on the ground.
-On New York’s Subways, High-Profile Crimes, High Anxiety, but Low Risk MTA workers, buskers and others whose livelihoods depend on the system offer a complex picture as ridership approaches prepandemic levels.
-Democrats promote tough-on-crime credentials as Party plays defense. With sheriffs vouching for them and a flood of ads proclaiming their support for the police, Democrats are shoring up their public safety bona fides. Still, some worry it’s too late.
-Elon Musk cuts half of Twitter’s staff. The layoffs of roughly 3,700 hit many divisions, including the engineering unit, the content moderation teams and the sales and advertising departments.
-Twitter’s advertisers pull back as layoffs sweep through company. Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, acknowledged that ad spending on the platform had slumped. He blamed the drop on pressure from activists.
-Frustrating and often fruitless: The search for missing Russian soldiers. Families searching for loved ones say the system for finding soldiers is as disorganized as Moscow’s campaign, which has been marked by dysfunction.
-Russia sends ill-trained draftees into combat amid losses. Ukraine’s military and Western analysts say Russian forces are making ineffective attacks and taking heavy losses.
-Moderate House Democrats are at risk, putting the majority up for grabs. Several Democrats elected in 2018 with an anti-Trump message in conservative-leaning districts are centering their closing argument on protecting democracy as they try to buck national trends.
-Midterms updates: Both GOP and Democrats seize on jobs report. With the election just days away, both parties are looking for an advantage in the economic news. Candidates are also fanning out on the campaign trail with support from their respective parties’ biggest names.
-The housing market is worse than you think. Buyers, sellers and renters are in for more twists and turns, as soaring mortgage rates and stubborn inflation signal belt tightening ahead.
-Jan. 6 committee gives Trump more time to comply with subpoena. The House panel said it was in discussions with former President Trump over his compliance ahead of an interview scheduled for this month.
-Oath keepers’ leader testifies at Jan. 6 sedition trial. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia group, took the stand in his own defense in Federal District Court in Washington.
-As Israel’s far right nears power, Palestinians feel a pang of fear. To some Palestinians, the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister can scarcely make things worse. But many fear a surge of violence.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-US jobs growth rose at an unexpectedly rapid clip in October, defying expectations for a larger slowdown as the historically tight labor market again showed resilience in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to curb demand.
-The US Federal Reserve warned of the potential for financial distress that damages the economy if interest rates rise to levels higher than expected, in a report that underscored the stakes of its drive to control stubborn inflation.
-Some of Asia’s biggest battery makers are jeopardizing their access to sufficient raw materials by holding back on direct investments in producers in Australia that supply them.
-As Musk embarks on the cost-cutting cull, he claimed on Friday that Twitter “has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists”. Brands such as General Motors, Mondelez, Carlsberg, Volkswagen and General Mills have paused marketing since Musk took the helm, with some advertisers fearful he will allow a wave of hate speech and misinformation to spill on to the platform.
-President Vladimir Putin has called for the evacuation of civilians from Russian-occupied Kherson, his first acknowledgment that Ukraine’s bid to recapture the city was gaining ground.
“The people who live in Kherson need to be taken out of the zone of the most dangerous [combat] operations, because the civilian population shouldn’t suffer,” Putin told a group of volunteers in Red Square on Friday.
-Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, chair of France’s Société Générale and a former European Central Bank board member, wrote to the ECB in October questioning the need for its officials to be present at bank board meetings. He also called for a meeting between top bank chairs and Andrea Enria, the head of the financial supervision unit.
-Veteran financier Tom Barrack has been cleared of illegal lobbying charges stemming from his alleged efforts to sway US foreign policy during the administration of his longtime friend Donald Trump.
The verdict delivered by a New York jury on Friday marks a defeat for prosecutors who had argued that Barrack passed sensitive information to the government of the United Arab Emirates and tried to nudge foreign policy in directions favored by his financial backers in Abu Dhabi.
-By the time voters in Los Angeles go to the polls on Tuesday, billionaire property developer Rick Caruso is expected to have spent $100M on his campaign to persuade voters to elect him as the city’s next mayor. The flood of cash has helped Caruso gain ground in recent weeks against his opponent, California congresswoman Karen Bass, a progressive Democrat who has been endorsed by president Joe Biden and former president Barack Obama.
-In the US, demand for expensive handbags and clothes bounced back very quickly from the coronavirus pandemic and has since proved surprisingly resilient. Luxury sales in the US grew almost twice as fast as the global average in 2021, and one and a half times faster in the first half of 2022, according to Citi Research.
Sector leader LVMH recently reported 19% year-on-year revenue growth in the US, while Hermès grew by 24%. Even the summer boom in luxury sales in Europe was driven by big-spending American tourists. Whether this positive dynamic in the US will continue remains to be seen given the clouds gathering over the economy. After several years of double-digit growth, analysts say a normalization to a slower pace of expansion is inevitable.
-In a world of low interest rates and cheap debt, investors viewed the digital world’s infrastructure assets as ideal sanctuaries for their money.
Both mobile towers — the metal structures on which radio antennas sit — and the real estate groups that house data centers offered steady, long-duration returns in a rapidly digitalizing world. But since June, share prices in many of these sectors’ companies have tumbled as rapidly rising interest rates drive up the cost of capital for their heavily indebted businesses.
-In a world of low interest rates and cheap debt, investors viewed the digital world’s infrastructure assets as ideal sanctuaries for their money.
Both mobile towers — the metal structures on which radio antennas sit — and the real estate groups that house data centers offered steady, long-duration returns in a rapidly digitalizing world. But since June, share prices in many of these sectors’ companies have tumbled as rapidly rising interest rates drive up the cost of capital for their heavily indebted businesses.
-Precious metal miners Pan American and Agnico Eagle have made a joint $4.8bn bid for Yamana Gold, swooping in after Gold Fields faced an uphill battle convincing investors to back its takeover offer. The two companies offered a shares and cash deal that represents a 15% premium to the all-stock offer made in May by South Africa’s Gold Fields and would involve Yamana’s assets being split up between the two groups.
NY POST
-New York’s neck-and-neck race for governor has suddenly gotten the attention of prominent national democrats — for all the wrong reasons. Party bigwigs appear to be in panic mode, critics note, flooding the 2-to-1 Democratic enrollment Empire State with big names like Bill, Hillary, Joe and Kamala in the final stretch to Tuesday’s election as Gov. Kathy Hochul has rapidly lost ground to Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin.
“New York Democrats are smashing the glass and pulling the fire alarm,” state Republican Party Chair Nick Langworthy said Friday.
-Twitter boss Elon Musk was photographed in the parking garage at New York City’s Lincoln Center on Friday ahead of his expected appearance at the Baron Investment Conference. Musk was pictured hurrying into the venue through a side door. He is slated to be interviewed by legendary investor and Tesla shareholder Ron Baron on Friday — the same day that Twitter launched sweeping layoffs reportedly impacting half of its workforce.
-Megyn Kelly celebrated MSNBC’s decision to cut ties with controversial weekend host Tiffany Cross on Friday, referring to the ousted anchor as “the most racist person in all of television.”
Kelly addressed Cross’ exit from MSNBC during a discussion with her guest, conservative radio host Dana Loesch, on Friday’s episode of her SiriusXM podcast “The Megyn Kelly Show” — describing the decision as “good news.” “Tiffany Cross, the most racist person in all of television — and in particular on MSNBC — just got fired,” a gleeful Kelly said. “Poor Tiffany.”