Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• Long lines and escalating demand for testing underscore how a second wave of the coronavirus is threatening New York City, and they come as the entire country confronts record numbers of new cases—more than 181,000 nationally on Friday.
• Trump suffered multiple legal setbacks in three key swing states—Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan—on Friday, choking off many of his last-ditch efforts to use the courts to delay or block president-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
• The Biden administration has promised to drastically increase resources for public schools, expand civil rights advocacy for marginalized students, and reassert leadership in policymaking—undoing education secretary Betsy DuVos’ attempts to bolster private schools at the expense of public ones.
• As the pandemic engulfs the nation, recent recommendations from the CDC are hewing more closely to scientific evidence, often contradicting the positions of the Trump administration in areas such as urging people to wear masks and avoid large gatherings.
• After days of silence, China on Friday congratulated Joe Biden on his election as US president, signaling a start to its relations with the incoming administration after years of hostility and distrust under Trump.
• Justice Department prosecutors pushed back this week against a memo from attorney general William Barr that called for politically charged election fraud investigations, saying Barr had thrust the department into politics and falsely overstated the threat of voter fraud.
• In the waning days of his term, Trump is scrambling to fulfill his promise to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, aided by conservative antiwar forces who see it not only as good policy but also as a linchpin to any future he may seek in politics.
• In California, the beginnings of a hydrogen economy may finally be dawning after many false starts—dozens of hydrogen buses are working on city streets, and fueling stations are appearing from San Diego to San Francisco, financed by the state and federal governments.
Sunday
• More than 1,000 Americans are dying of the coronavirus every day on average, a 50 percent increase in the last month—Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Wisconsin have recorded more deaths over the last seven days than in any other week of the pandemic.
• With a coronavirus vaccine potentially available as soon as next month, states and cities are warning that distributing the shots could be hindered by inadequate technology, severe funding shortfalls, and a lack of trained personnel.
• Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied a report that Israeli agents had fatally shot Al Qaeda’s second-ranking leader on the streets of Tehran, likening it to a “Hollywood” scenario manufactured by “American and Zionist” officials.
• “The nine months of the pandemic have shown that in a modern state, capitalism can save the day—but only when the government exercises its power to guide the economy and act as the ultimate absorber of risk. The lesson of Covid capitalism is that big business needs big government, and vice versa,” says Upshot columnist Neil Irwin.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• Front page story reports US school districts “are fighting a wave of increasingly aggressive hackers, who are publicly posting sensitive student information to get schools to pay up—the data can aid identity theft or be highly embarrassing for vulnerable young people.”
• Increasing numbers of green-card holders are becoming naturalized US citizens—last year, 843,593 immigrants took the oath, the highest number in 11 years according to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Immigration Statistics.
• The Small Business Administration won a temporary stay of a federal judge’s ruling that required the agency to release detailed information on Paycheck Protection Program borrowers, including names and specific loan amounts.
• A revived Trump administration rule to end the rebates drugmakers give to middlemen in Medicare—an executive order said the rule can’t increase premiums or federal spending—is awaiting approval from the Office of Management and Budget, and a final version could be imminent.
• From 1980 through 2016, 19 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties voted for the eventual president in every election—but only one of them, Washington state’s Clallam County, backed Biden’s White House bid.
• China and 14 other Asia-Pacific nations will sign a trade deal that will knit their economies closer together—the second pact covering large swaths of the region whose signatories don’t include the US.
• Covid-19 is wreaking havoc on the market for risky municipal bonds, and investors desperate for tax-exempt yield are still piling in—fixed-income returns that come with a tax break have become so precious to affluent households that they are willing to overlook potential problems.
• H.O.T.S.: Retail titans WMT and KR can capitalize on the pandemic-driven surge in e-commerce by revving up their online-advertising plans; The pandemic has curbed indoor dining at restaurants across the globe and been a boon for the food-delivery industry, but the trend may not last; Vaccines from PFE and MRNA are essential to end the coronavirus pandemic, but investors should remain cautious about the long term business opportunity.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• Even as Donald Trump refuses to concede his loss in the presidential election and ignore the coronavirus crisis, Joe Biden is laying the groundwork to address the pandemic when the takes office, including the formation of a dedicated task force.
• GOOGL chief executive Sundar Pichai apologized to Thierry Breton, Europe’s internal market commissioner, after an internal company document laid out a plan to “increase pushback” on the Frenchman in an attempt to weaken support for EU regulatory proposals.
• Many European politicians have hailed Biden as the winner of the US presidential election, but some have refrained from doing so, endorsing Trump’s unfounded claim that he lost because of ballot fraud.
• Big Read piece says that while BNTX has developed a vaccine that offers humanity a pathway out of the coronavirus pandemic, Ugur asahin and Ozlem Tureci, the husband and wife team behind the German company, believe their technology can transform all of medicine.
• Lex Column: BP chief Bernard Looney may want to keep his options open in Russia, but the company’s commitment to Rosneft makes less sense every year; GS’s aspirations are supposed to center on a shift to a broader business mix, but part of that will require bringing more representatives of those areas into its partnership structure; Reducing US pension investment in supposedly risky Chinese companies is a bipartisan cause—but Trump’s executive order banning US investors from holding shares in companies tied to China’s military only ratchets up the problem.
• Comment: Between the partisan rhetoric in the US and Australia over global warming, climate action is becoming less divisive as markets work to carry out change, and despite Trump’s best efforts, the coal industry is shrinking, even in Republican states.
NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• Warner Bros. may consider releasing “Wonder Woman 1984,” the only big-budget movie set to be shown in theaters this year, on the HBO Max streaming service soon after its theatrical release.
Sunday
• More than two dozen CEOs of major US corporations took part in a video conference earlier this month to discuss what to do if Trump refuses to leave office or takes other steps to stay in power beyond Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.
• + Nintendo: The looming release of SNE’s PlayStation 5 and MSFT’s Xbox Series X didn’t put a damper on Switch sales last month, with Nintendo’s flagship console delivering the second-strongest October sales performance ever.