News Items.
12 September 2019. By John Ellis.
1. The U.S. and China are taking baby steps to ease tensions in their trade war, as negotiators prepare for the resumption of face-to-face talks in Washington in the coming weeks. On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he was postponing the imposition of 5% extra tariffs on Chinese goods by two weeks, meaning Chinese officials can celebrate their Oct. 1 national day without a fresh escalation.Meanwhile, China is considering whether to permit renewed imports of American farm goods including soybeans and pork, according to people familiar with the situation, potentially taking some pressure off U.S. states with large numbers of Trump supporters.
2. The Pentagon is compiling a list of companies with ties to the Chinese military as part of a stepped-up Trump administration effort to stop Beijing from obtaining sensitive technologies and protect US defense supply chains. The US defense department is trying to identify Chinese companies and organizations with direct and indirect relationships with the People’s Liberation Army to help reduce the chances of US weapons supply chains being compromised, according to seven people familiar with the effort, which has strong support from the White House.
3. The U.S. briefly became the world’s No. 1 oil exporter as record shale production found its way to global customers, and there are prospects for more. Surging output from shale helped America ship almost 9 million barrels a day of crude and oil products in June, surpassing Saudi Arabia, the International Energy Agency said in a report, citing gross export figures. There’s room to send even more supply overseas as companies add infrastructure to transport the burgeoning production from fields in Texas and New Mexico to the coast.
4. By raiding its coffers and making a bold bid to sweep away upcoming debt payments, Mexico’s government has bought precious time for its struggling state oil company, Pemex. But analysts warn that a new bailout — using a $5 billion payment from federal treasury funds — is not enough to fix the enormous cash flow and production problems that Pemex faces as it fights to avoid a catastrophic second downgrade to junk status, and will just end up eroding state accounts.
5. President Trump appeared to take a step back from his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran on Wednesday, leaving open the possibility of easing economic sanctions before starting new nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Although he also warned Iran against restarting production of the material necessary to make a nuclear bomb — as the clerical government in Tehran has threatened — Mr. Trump made clear he was ready for diplomatic talks.
6. The departure of the hawkish John Bolton as national security adviser helps clear the way for President Trump to meet President Rouhani this month, senior officials said — weeks after the US and Iran appeared to be on the brink of war. Iran’s president urged Mr Trump yesterday to “put warmongers aside” when choosing Mr Bolton’s replacement, suggesting that any talks depended on the approach of the president’s next adviser as well as Tehran’s longstanding call for sanctions to be lifted.
7. Mr. Trump on Wednesday called on the Federal Reserve to slash U.S. interest rates “down to ZERO,” admonishing chairman Jerome Powell and other leaders of the U.S. central bank as “Boneheads.” “The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less, and we should then start to refinance our debt,” Mr. Trump tweeted.
8. The European Central Bank meeting today is one of the most significant in recent memory—not because it may cut rates, but because it might not. Taking a neutral stance will reveal the dirty secret in monetary policy: Central bankers can’t prevent a recession. Ten years into an economic recovery coupled with some troubling headwinds have people nervous a recession may be coming, which has led to more calls for more expansionary monetary policy. But others are worried cutting rates further into negative territory is causing more harm than good, and that monetary policy has reached its limits.
9. The gloom hanging over the eurozone economy has darkened after the closely followed Ifo Institute cut its forecast for German growth over the next two years. The Munich-based think-tank added its voice to those warning that a sharp slowdown in German manufacturing will spread to the services sector and push up unemployment.
10. A no-deal Brexit could result in rising food and fuel prices, disruption to medicine supplies and public disorder on Britain’s streets, according to secret documents the government was forced by MPs to publish on Wednesday. A five-page document spelling out the government’s “planning assumptions” under Operation Yellowhammer – the government’s no-deal plan – was disclosed in response to a “humble address” motion. The content of the document was strikingly similar to the plan leaked to the Sunday Times in August, which the government dismissed at the time as out of date.
11. Eurointelligence: "It it all but certain that Spain will go to new general elections on November 10, after talks between PSOE and a group of Podemos and allies broke down at first contact. That the talks broke down should surprise no-one given that the positions hadn't really shifted over the parliament's summer recess."
12. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau triggered the start of his campaign toward an Oct. 21 election, in which he will try to overcome damage from an ethics scandal and persuade voters to give the Liberal government another term based on the strength of its economic and environmental record. Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party enters the campaign in a dead heat with its main rival, the Conservative Party, with support in the low-to-mid 30% range. The Liberal Party won its mandate in 2015 parliamentary elections with 40% of votes cast. At this juncture, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives appear to have the support required to win a majority of the seats in Canada’s Parliament.
13. Unlike the United States, which will repeatedly help pay for people to rebuild in place after a major storm, Canada has responded to the escalating costs of climate change by limiting aid after disasters, and even telling people to leave their homes. It is an experiment that has exposed a complex mix of relief, anger and loss as entire neighborhoods are removed, house by house.
14. When it comes to money, America has always had winners and losers, but the widening gulf between the rich and the bulk of U.S. households may be making almost everybody worse off. That includes investors. Income data released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday showed that the median U.S. household—the one in the statistical middle—had income of $63,200 last year. The 2018 figure was basically even with what the adjusted data show for 1999. Considering that the U.S. economy grew by an inflation-adjusted 48% over the same period, that is more than striking.
15. The expanding gap between rich and poor is not only widening the gulf in incomes and wealth in America. It is helping the rich lead longer lives, while cutting short the lives of those who are struggling, according to a study released this week by the Government Accountability Office. Almost three-quarters of rich Americans who were in their 50s and 60s in 1992 were still alive in 2014. Just over half of poor Americans in their 50s and 60s in 1992 made it to 2014.
16. Thomas Piketty’s last blockbuster helped put inequality at the center of economic debates. Now he’s back with an even longer treatise that explains how governments should fix it –- by upending capitalism.
17. On Wednesday morning, California passed AB 5, landmark legislation aimed at giving gig workers such as Uber drivers greater protections — minimum wage, overtime pay, etc. — by classifying many of them as employees rather than contractors. But Uber has said it will continue its business as usual and that it has no plans to change how it classifies its drivers. The company argues that the new legislation doesn’t mandate the company to make a change but only applies a stricter legal test to determine if Uber’s workers are truly independent contractors — a test the company thinks it can pass.
18. Mayo Clinic, one of medicine’s most prestigious brands, announced Tuesday that it has struck a sweeping partnership with Google to store patient data in the cloud and build products using artificial intelligence and other technologies to improve care. The 10-year partnership is a testament to Google’s expanding role in the U.S. health care system and gives Mayo greater access to the engineering talent and computing resources it needs to embed its expertise in algorithms and commercial devices.
19. The most iconic thing about measles is the rash — red, livid splotches that make infection painfully visible. But that rash, and even the fever, coughing and watery, sore eyes, are all distractions from the virus’s real harm — an all-out attack on the immune system. Measles silently wipes clean the immune system’s memory of past infections. In this way, the virus can cast a long and dangerous shadow for months, or even years, scientists are finding.
20. The day after 9/11: Islamic State has ramped up threats against New York City and New York Police Department officers in recent weeks, counterterrorism officials said in interviews. The overseas terrorist organization has been targeting New York City with a new flood of online propaganda that shows bloody images of police and digitally-faked threatening messages in subways, the officials said in interviews. The rise in violent messages, which officials say are circulated online and intended to inspire and instruct potential terrorists, has persisted since it was first detected in July.
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