Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Chicago teachers have voted to go remote as Covid cases surge nationwide. Teachers’ unions elsewhere are citing staffing issues and testing shortages. The tensions are a distinctly unwelcome development for Democrats, who fear an election backlash from parents concerned about risks and child care.
-US President Biden and British Prime Minister Johnson, two different leaders with differing approaches, both landed on a policy of coexisting with the virus. Analysts say they had little choice.
-The widening disparity between Tesla’s performance and that of established automakers last year reflects a technological change roiling the industry.
-A fire that raged through a public housing unit in Philadelphia left 12 people dead. But families have few options, with thousands waiting for subsidized homes.
-For almost two years, couches have been cubicles. Colleagues are instant message avatars. And people are reconsidering how much they should have to put up with from a boss.
-With his government under siege, Kazakhstan’s president turned to Russia for support. The choice could realign Central Asia’s politics.
-The tennis star Novak Djokovic is quarantining in a hotel where asylum seekers have been held for over a year under a program that has been widely criticized.
-NASA is providing updates as the James Webb telescope, the most powerful ever launched, deploys its mirrors, a crucial milestone for conducting future studies. Watch live.
-Cyber Ninjas, derided for Arizona Vote Review, said it will shut down.
The firm, which led the review in Maricopa County after former President Trump narrowly lost there, said it was insolvent and had laid off its workers.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Wall Street’s biggest banks this month are set to report record profits for 2021 thanks to bumper investment banking fees and lower-than-expected losses on loans during the pandemic, with analysts cautioning it may take years to repeat such stellar earnings.
-BTCS, a public crypto firm, this week offered its investors what it called a “bividend” — a one-time payout of five cents per share, payable in either dollars or bitcoin.
-Apple at $3T. Tim Cook’s triumph as Jobs’ successor has been so unparalleled that the numbers don’t speak for themselves so much as they scream: Apple’s market value has grown by more than $700m a day from when Cook took over in August 2011 to this week when it struck $3tn, before falling back.
-In the early days of Covid, working from home looked like a win-win. Studies of when people were logging on and off suggested that many were maintaining or even increasing hours. One 2020 survey of American office workers found respondents reporting that both managers and subordinates were more productive. But the picture has since become more nuanced.
-China’s central city of Xi’an has recorded more than 1,900 infections over the past month, just a fraction compared with the numbers experienced in countries such as the US, which reported more than 1m cases on Tuesday.
-Citigroup will fire US employees at the end of January if they have not been vaccinated or received an exemption, according to a person briefed on the matter, adopting one of the strictest policies among big banks on Wall Street.
-The EU is resisting pressure to change rules forcing airlines to use or lose their valuable landing slots after warnings of thousands of half-empty and polluting “ghost flights” operating this winter.
-Kazakhstan’s former intelligence chief has been arrested on suspicion of treason, as the government seeks to restore order following violent protests that have left government buildings destroyed and dozens dead in the former Soviet country.
-In Moscow the hope is for “fairly quick results”, while Washington talks of uncertain outcomes. As US and Russian diplomats prepare for a summit in Geneva with Europe’s geopolitical balance at stake, the difference in mood is stark.
-US jobs growth slowed sharply in December, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, suggesting the labor market’s recovery could be running out of steam. Looking beyond the headline figures, which showed just 199,000 positions were created, a different picture takes shape: economists argue the labor market is much stronger than it first appears, and is in fact in one of the most solid positions in history.
-The departing Andreessen Horowitz partner Katie Haun aims to raise at least $900M for a pair of cryptocurrency investment funds, in what would be one of the largest debuts for a new venture capital firm.
-The Shanghai Stock Exchange suspended trading in several bonds of Chinese property developer Shimao, a day after the company’s failure to make a loan payment increased fears that a cash crunch will spread more widely across the country’s embattled real estate industry.
-Investors this week deserted a trade that has generated big returns since the financial crisis, ditching shares of fast-growing technology companies in favor of staid businesses that had largely been overlooked by Wall Street.
THE NEW YORK POST
-The soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney’s office “omitted all facts” of a violent theft — including key information about an alleged weapon used during the crime — reducing the charges in the case to mere petit larceny, according to union and court documents. Newly-elected DA Alvin Bragg has already been under fire for a “soft on crime” progressive ideology, which has even had the NYPD’s top cop worried for the safety of her officers.
-The New York City Toy Fair, the Western Hemisphere’s biggest trade show for toys, is the latest victim of the Omicron virus, with some of the biggest retail buyers – including Walmart, Target and Amazon – pulling out of the in-person event, On the Money has learned. They join Hasbro, Jazwares and MGA Entertainment among others, which have already ditched plans to attend the fair, still set to take place at the Javits Center in Manhattan from Feb. 19-22. Others, including Tonka Truck maker Basic Fun, are on the fence about attending, sources say.
-Bitcoin has the potential to cross the $100,000 milestone in the coming years if investors increasingly treat the leading cryptocurrency as a store of value, according to a recent note from Goldman Sachs.