Week in Review

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Week in Review

12/24/2022

For the week 12/19-12/23

[Posted 6:00 PM ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,236

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said that a “just peace” with Russia means no compromise on his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but questioned if there could be such a peace for parents who have lost their children.

Appearing at a White House news conference with President Biden, prior to his dramatic appearance at a joint session of Congress, Zelensky reaffirmed in personal terms his conditions for any settlement to the war.

“I don’t know what just peace is,” he began in answering a question about what he considered a fair way to end the conflict that has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions and destroyed cities and towns.  “It’s a very philosophical description.  If there is a just war, I don’t know.”

“For me as the president, just peace is no compromise as to the sovereign, freedom and territorial integrity of my country.  The payback for all the damages inflicted by Russian aggression,” Zelensky continued, referring to his demand for reparations from Moscow.

He added that he did not see how there could be a just peace for parents whose children have been killed.  “How many parents lost their sons and daughters on the frontlines?  So what is just peace for them?  Money is nothing.  Reparations are of no consequence.  They (parents) live by revenge.”

“The longer the war lasts, the longer this aggression lasts, there will be more parents who live for the sake of vengeance and I know a lot of people like that,” said Zelensky.

President Biden, responding to the same question, said the United States shares with Zelensky the “exact same vision of a free, independent, prosperous and secure Ukraine.”

Biden continued that the war could stop “today if Putin had any dignity at all” and pulled his troops out of Ukraine.  “But that’s not going to happen.”

The United States, its allies and others would continue arming Ukraine, Biden said, “so that if and when President Zelensky is ready to talk to the Russians, he will be able to succeed as well, because he would have won on the battlefield.”

Wednesday, the Kremlin said it saw no chance of peace talks with Kyiv and Putin would continue his “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities.

At his address before Congress, Zelensky drew a parallel between Ukraine’s plight and the American colonies’ fight for independence.

“Your wellbeing is the product of your national security.  The result of your struggle for independence and your many victories,” he said.  “We Ukrainians will also go through our war of independence and freedom with dignity and success.”

Zelensky answered some of the skepticism about how Ukraine is spending aid: “Your money is not charity.  [It is] an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”

Earlier, on the Senate floor, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who backed accelerated aid for Ukraine, noted “our support for Ukraine is morally right, but it’s not only that.  It is also a direct investment in cold, hard American interests.”

As we gather with family and friends at Christmas, just take a moment at the dinner table to pray for Ukraine and its people.  They deserve that.

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I get into China’s Covid-19 situation below, but it’s all about a lack of transparency today after a loosening of restrictions in the country.  Not that this is anything new as the Chinese Communist Party has always lied when it comes to the facts, but there are lots of anecdotes of hearses queued up outside crematoriums, and hospitals that are overwhelmed, as the staff itself becomes sick.

The domestic vaccines are ineffective against Omicron, and now the nation, at least hundreds of millions of folks, will soon be traveling back to their home towns from the cities for the Lunar New Year holidays.  Oh boy.  Imagine being on a crowded train or bus where half the people on it could easily be sick.

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Meanwhile, some of us hear the distressing news out of Afghanistan this week, where the Taliban is now banning women from attending university, and think back to the disastrous withdrawal from the country, where Joe Biden ignored the advice of military leaders and other learned sorts.  It’s all in my archives…and all part of his legacy.  More on this tragedy below as well.

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Finally, hope you all arrived to your holiday destination without too much trouble.  We’ll remember this weather for a long time, as I look at Flightaware’s number of cancellations in the United States today…nearing 5,000 as I write (after over 2,600 yesterday).  And it’s as if the entire continental U.S. had a flash freeze of one kind or another.

I’m thinking of the post office where I pick up some of my mail in New Providence, which has the most slippery parking lot, and praying I don’t hear of too many of the elderly who use the facility fracturing their hips Saturday morning. 

But as I go to post, there are growing issues on the energy grid across the country, such as oil refineries in Texas cutting gasoline and diesel production on equipment failures, while heating and power prices surge.  From North Dakota to Texas, you have output suffering from freeze-ins, cutting supplies.

This will be part of next week’s story no doubt.

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This week in Ukraine….

--Russia launched fresh waves of drone attacks against Ukraine as the country struggled to repair damaged infrastructure from earlier attacks that left millions without power and water.

Last weekend, a significant Russian cruise-missile strike against infrastructure left Kharkiv and other cities, including Kyiv, without power and water for hours.

Then, Monday, Russia’s air force attacked with another 34 Iranian-made drones, including 23 aimed at Kyiv – 18 of which were shot down before hitting their target.

“These are ‘Shaheds’ [drones] from the new batch that Russia received from Iran,” Zelensky said in a statement Monday.  He said Russia had purchased a second batch of them totaling more than 250.

Over the weekend, nine million had regained power after last Friday’s attacks, Zelensky said.

--Vladimir Putin traveled to Belarus for the first time since 2019 on Monday to visit with Alexander Lukashenko, a meeting that suggested Putin “is setting conditions for a new offensive from Belarusian territory” into Ukraine, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote.

But in a joint press conference, Putin hardly mentioned the war.  Russian forces used Belarus as a launch pad for their abortive attack on Kyiv in February, and there has been Russian and Belarusian military activity there for months.

But none of the journalists invited to speak asked Putin or Lukashenko – who has repeatedly said his country will not be drawn into Ukraine – about the war.  They in turn devoted their answers to ever-closer economic, industrial and defense alignment between their two former Soviet states – already formally allied in a nebulous “Union”

Belarus’ political opposition, largely driven into jail or exile, or silence, fears a creeping Russian annexation or “absorption” of its much smaller neighbor which, like Russia, has been hurt by sweeping Western economic sanctions.

Both Putin and Lukashenko dismissed the idea.  “Russia has no interest in absorbing anyone,” Putin said.  “There is simply no expediency in this… It’s not a takeover, it’s a matter of policy alignment.”

--A top Ukrainian official thinks Russia is about to run out of missiles, which some experts doubt.  “If we count the massive attacks that have already been carried out, then they have at most two or three left, or they may be able to scrape together four,” Nasional Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov told the Ukrainian newspaper Pravda on Monday.  “But after that, they will completely run out of missiles,” he predicted.  However, “They still have S-300 [Soviet long range surface-to-air missile systems] missiles, which they are using now, unfortunately, over our cities.  They have more or less enough of these missiles.”

Danilov said that when it came to Iranian drones, “we have learned how to fight them.  Recently, there was a case when we shot down 100% of the drones they launched.”  [That seems to have been an attack on Kyiv last week.]

Danilov on Putin: “It is important that every day we do our part to make his life more and more and more horrible; and this is what is happening,” he said.  “He is like a cornered rat… His life is a nightmare, because he wakes up in the morning – I don’t know in which bunker – and he doesn’t understand what he has to do next.”

--Tuesday, Putin acknowledged that there were serious challenges with Russian forces in the four occupied territories and ordered domestic security forces to tighten their checks on Russians at home.

It was a rare admission for Vlad that the war is facing obstacles in the areas where it staged referendums – Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – and annexed the regions, despite only controlling portions of them.

In video comments, Putin described the situation in those territories as “extremely difficult.”  Previously, Moscow downplayed any problems with the offensive.

In September, Putin ordered a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 draftees, arguing the move was needed to defend Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

On Tuesday, Putin told the security services that people living in the Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine are citizens of Russia and it was their “duty to do everything necessary to ensure their security, rights and freedoms as much as possible.”

The FSB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is set to enhance the monitoring of Russian society, including putting places of mass gatherings, strategic facilities, transport and energy infrastructure “under constant control.”

A “concentration of forces is now required from counterintelligence agencies, including the military,” Putin said.  “It’s necessary to strictly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, to quickly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.”

Well this is troubling.

It’s true, thousands of civilians have been jailed for publicly opposing the war and the September call-up of draftees amidst a Kremlin crackdown on protests against the war, but this appears to say it’s going to get even worse for the Russian people.

--Also Tuesday, President Zelensky, traveled to the eastern frontlines and the battered city of Bakhmut, where he spoke to members of several units that are taking a pounding from Russian attacks, but are still in control.

“Bakhmut is the hottest spot on the entire front line, [which spans] more than 1,300 km of active hostilities,” Zelensky said Monday evening in his video address.  “Since May, the occupiers have been trying to break our Bakhmut,” he said.  “But time goes by and Bakhmut is already breaking not only the Russian army, but also the Russian mercenaries  [Ed. Wagner Group] who came to replace the wasted army of the occupiers.”

--Wednesday, President Putin gave his backing to a plan to boost the size of the armed forces by more than 30% as he said Moscow needed to learn from and fix the problems it had suffered in Ukraine.

At an end-of-the year conference of Russia’s top military brass, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed beefing up the armed forces to 1.5 million combat personnel from 1.15 million.  This was required “to guarantee the solving of problems related to Russia’s military security,” Shoigu told Putin at the televised event.  He said 695,000 of the fighters should be professional contracted soldiers – as opposed to conscripts serving mandatory military service.  Putin had signed a decree only this summer ordering troop numbers to be increased by 137,000 from Jan. 1, 2023, to reach the 1.15 million levels, and has drafted more than 300,000 reservists in his mobilization drive to support the invasion.

Russia has not given an official tally of combat deaths in Ukraine since Sept. 21, when Shoigu said 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed.  Western and Ukrainian officials have said the current toll is in the “tens of thousands,” with 100,000 total casualties (killed and wounded).

The Institute for the Study of War noted that “Putin is taking increasing pains to surround himself with military uniforms,” and, they speculate, the Russian leader is “hoping to evoke recollections of Joseph Stalin engaging with the Soviet STAVKA during World War II and to separate himself from the famous pictures of Putin separated by a very long table from Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov.”

--Thursday, Vlad the Impaler said Russia wants an end to the war and that this would inevitably involve a diplomatic solution, Putin making the comments a day after Zelensky appeared in Washington.

“Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said.  “We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner the better, of course.”

White House spokesman John Kirby said Putin has “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war, and just look at everything else Putin and Russia said and did this week to the contrary.

Kirby: “Quite the contrary, everything he is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people” and “escalate the war.”

--Separately, a senior U.S. administration official said the Wagner Group took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces, a sign of the group’s expanding role in the conflict, the official said.

North Korea’s foreign ministry denied reports it offered munitions to Russia, calling the report “groundless,” the North’s KCNA news agency reported.

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--Defense One reported on two wonks’ dark forecast for Moscow: “Putin’s fall could translate into civil war,” warned Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Liana Fix and Catholic University Professor Michael Kimmage in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.  “Russia has a history of regime change in the aftermath of unsuccessful wars,” they write.  “A long war in Ukraine would probably spark a revolutionary flame in Russia.”

--Sam Bendett of CNA, citing Russian sources on Telegram, said Ukrainian troops are allegedly deploying a clever new counter-drone strategy.  The idea: “[A] group of drones fly at different heights during the night, but only one of them has a light.  It attracts attention, provokes shelling from ground positions, while ‘dark’ drones record the data.”  And that data is then used to hit the locations that fired at the lit-up drone.

--Veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger, 99, wrote in The Spectator magazine this week that the time is approaching for a negotiated peace in Ukraine to reduce the risk of another devastating world war, but the Kyiv government dismissed his comments as amounting to “appeasing the aggressor” and said there could be no deal involving ceding territory.

The Kremlin says Kyiv must acknowledge Moscow’s annexation of southern and eastern regions.  Ukraine says every Russian soldier should just leave its territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. 

Kissinger said that in May he had proposed a ceasefire under which Russia would withdraw to the front lines before the February invasion but Crimea would be the subject of “negotiation.”

“Mr. Kissinger still has not understood anything…neither the nature of this war, nor its impact on the world order,” Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Telegram.  “The prescription that the ex-Secretary of State calls for, but is afraid to say out loud, is simple: appease the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine with guarantees of non-aggression against the other states of Eastern Europe.”  He added, “All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious: any agreement with the devil – a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories – will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success for autocrats around the world.”

CIA Director William Burns said in an interview published over the weekend that while most conflicts end in negotiation, CIA’s assessment was Russia was not serious yet about a real negotiation to end the war.

--President Zelensky said this week that “Ukrainian children in their letters to St. Nicholas ask for air defense, weapons and victory.” 

Opinion….

David Ignatius / Washington Post

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr  Zelensky’s bold Wednesday visit to Washington is an epic piece of theater designed to motivate multiple audiences – in the United States, Europe, Russia and Ukraine itself. The message is simple: With its own bravery in battle and the world’s help, Ukraine will prevail.

“By embracing President Biden and addressing a clamorous joint session of Congress, Zelensky will send a riposte to Moscow that’s more potent, in some ways, than the Russian drones and missiles pounding his country. Ukraine has allies; it has staying power; NATO isn’t cracking; even in polarized America, support for Kyiv is bipartisan and sustained.

“As you watch Zelensky on the podium before Congress, imagine the rage that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be feeling: His bets are losing.  Ukraine, Europe and the United States haven’t splintered. The West isn’t as feeble as he imagined.  It’s Russia that is isolated and slipping month by month toward becoming a failed state.

“Zelensky’s lightning trip to the United States demonstrates once more his dramatic flair, fused with his personal courage. Those two qualities have made him a great wartime leader – whose small, disheveled figure, combined with an indomitable will, has come to symbolize his nation’s resistance to Russia’s brutal aggression.

“Zelensky is the X-factor in Ukraine’s war against Russia. He has a television actor’s sense of timing and gut-wrenching delivery.  He was an unlikely president, elected in 2019 to play in real life the television character in his series, ‘Servant of the People’” an ordinary citizen who dreams of transforming his corrupt, battered country.

“His visit to Washington won’t alter the fundamentals of the battlefield by drawing the United States openly into the conflict with Russia.  ‘The United States is not sending forces to Ukraine to directly fight the Russians,’ a senior administration official stressed on Tuesday night. Biden’s insistence on avoiding a World War III confrontation is something he ‘hasn’t wavered from, and he won’t waver from it tomorrow, or next month, or next year,’ the official added.

“Rather than create a new strategy, Zelensky will cement his current one with this trip….

“For Europe, which faces a winter of heating and electricity shortages, rising prices and sagging economic growth, the message from Washington will be: Stay the course.  After French President Macron’s successful visit to Washington this month, there’s no sign of strong European dissent from this unified NATO position….

“Many in the West thought that the actor-turned-politician would bolt Kyiv when Russian tanks and elite paratroopers assaulted the city.  I’m told that U.S. officials queried Zelensky and his defense chiefs about moving from the capital to safer quarters. Zelensky’s unforgettable retort, delivered through the Ukrainian Embassy in London: ‘The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.’

“And then the moment when Zelensky became, in his rumpled green jacket, a Churchillian figure: a video posted Feb. 26, two days after the invasion, in which he stood defiant outside his presidential bunker and affirmed: ‘I am here.  We are not putting down arms.  We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this.’

“Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, likes to quote a comment attributed to Napoleon: ‘In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one.’  Zelensky is the embodiment of that everlasting truth.

“As Putin watches Zelensky’s bravura performance in Washington, he will surely say to himself, perhaps with grudging admiration: This little man has survived the worst.  He isn’t afraid.  His allies stand with him.  So the question becomes, how does this war end without a catastrophe for Russia?”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Biden announced another $1.85 billion in military aid and hardware, including some long sought weapons that the U.S. has been reluctant to provide. The Pentagon will deliver a Patriot missile-defense battery to intercept more of Russia’s assault from the skies against civilians and electric-power sites.  The shame is this will take weeks to deliver and could be there now if the U.S. had acted sooner.

“The aid package also includes more ammo for the Himars artillery missile systems as well as ‘precision aerial munitions.’ The latter are usually launched from fixed-wing aircraft, which makes us wonder why the U.S. has been reluctant to provide old F-16s.

“The U.S. has so far provided some $21.9 billion in total military or other aid, and Congress this week is voting on another $45 billion in support that will be rolled out in the coming months.  Some countries such as the Baltic states have donated more as a share of national GDP.  But the U.S. has provided by far the most in dollars and military hardware.

“Opposition to more aid is building in some U.S. quarters on the right and left. Ten months ago the fear was that Kyiv would lose in a rout and escalate the war against NATO if the alliance aided Kyiv.  Now the worry is that Russia might lose and that could cause Mr. Putin to escalate against NATO.

“There’s no predicting what the willful Kremlin dictator might do, but one thing the war has taught is that Russia’s military is far less formidable than most believed.  Despite fewer men and less firepower, Ukrainians have imposed ferocious casualties and fought Russia to a stalemate.  Ukraine’s tenacity has also served America’s interests as well as its own.

“It’s worth thinking about what the world would look like today if Mr. Putin had crushed Kyiv within days as he and U.S. intelligence services expected.  Russian forces would now control nearly all of Ukraine and man the border of Poland and other frontline NATO states.  If an insurgency broke out in Ukraine, Mr. Putin would be blaming those countries for aiding the ‘terrorists,’ whether they did or not, and threatening retaliation.

“Moldova would have been next to fall to Russia, and one or more of the Baltic states would be in his sites.  NATO would be divided over how to respond for fear of Mr. Putin’s wrath, and forget about Finland and Sweden joining the alliance as they are currently doing.  Germany would be especially conflicted, and all of Western Europe would be more vulnerable to Russia’s energy blackmail.

“The cost of shoring up NATO, with Russian tanks on its doorstep, would arguably have been even greater in the long run.  U.S. credibility also would have suffered another blow, compounding the damage from the Afghanistan retreat.  Critics who say helping Ukraine has hurt deterrence against China have it exactly wrong. China’s Xi Jinping would have had greater cause to doubt U.S. resolve to defend Taiwan had the U.S. abandoned Ukraine.

“Mr. Putin’s strategy is to punish the Ukrainian people and impose economic costs on the West with a goal of outlasting the democracies. But Mr. Zelensky and Ukrainians deserve continued U.S. support, and the fastest way to end the war is to provide Kyiv with the weapons to win as soon as possible….

“All wars end with some form of negotiation, and this one will too.  But Mr. Putin betrays no willingness to do so on anything other than his terms.  The faster and more decisively Ukraine regains its territory, the sooner Russia may reconsider its disastrous war.”

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Wall Street and the Economy

Just another week to go in this crappy year for global markets.

We had a slew of economic data that had both stock and bond traders a bit flummoxed.

The housing data was mixed.  November housing starts were a little above expectations at a 1.427 million annualized rate, but building permits were way below forecasts.

November existing home sales came in shy of forecasts at 4.09 million ann., down 7.7% from October’s pace, and -35.4% year-over-year.  It was the tenth straight monthly slide in sales.  The median sales price was $370,00, up 3.5% from a year earlier, but well off the June peak of $413,800.

November new home sales came in a little better than expected at a 640,000 clip.

November durable goods were worse than forecast, -2.1%, but up 0.2% ex-transportation.

And we had critical data on November personal income, up 0.4%, and consumption, up 0.1%, more or less in line with expectations.

But this is the report that contains the Fed’s key inflation barometer, the personal consumption expenditures index, and the core rate came in as expected, 0.2%, and 4.7% year-over-year.

It’s that last figure that the Street was waiting for all week, 4.7%, which is down from October’s 5.0%, but it’s still very high when you have a Fed target of 2%.

One more, a final reading on third-quarter GDP, and it came in hotter than forecast at 3.2%, vs. the last reading of 2.9%.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow forecast for the fourth quarter is at 3.7%, up from last week’s 2.8%.

Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is at 6.27%, down from the prior week’s 6.31%, and off the peak of 7.08%.

But it’s still way up from last year’s 3.05%.

Freddie Mac’s rate will be much higher next week after a big move in the 10-year Treasury.

We continued to see good news at the gas pump, with the price of regular down to $3.09 nationally, compared with $3.29 a year ago.  Diesel is coming down rapidly, now $4.69, but this is still way up from $3.57 on this date in 2021.

Well, with all the above in mind, I got a kick out of the market reaction on Thursday to the stronger than expected GDP revision, and the comments of hedge fund billionaire David Tepper in an interview on CNBC.

Tepper said he is worried about further monetary tightening from the world’s central banks, particularly the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.

Central banks “are going to keep rates high for a while,” Tepper said.  “Don’t ignore what these guys are saying.”

Yup…as I have been saying for months!  The markets (particularly the equity markets) have been ignoring what Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said at all of his recent press conferences.  ‘We are going to keep rates higher for longer…eventually we’ll pause, but we are in no way close to pivoting…’

It’s been so simple, and the markets needed a heavyweight like Tepper to remind them of the facts.

“I’m leaning short on the equity markets.  I think the upside/downside [risk here] just doesn’t make sense to me when I have so many central banks telling me what they are going to do,” Tepper said.  “This is a tough level [for the S&P 500] to talk about robust returns.”

Yup…readers of this space weren’t surprised.

But the Dow Jones fell 750 points after Tepper’s comments, the GDP report helping to buttress the Fed’s case for staying higher for longer, before recovering to finish off 350.  But the point was made. 

Meanwhile, the Senate passed the nearly $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that finances the government through Sept. 30, 68-29, with large bipartisan support, but the House passed it only 225-201 in a bitterly partisan battle on the floor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy trying to prove he has the chops to be Speaker, calling the bill “one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in this body,” which is rather laughable.

Some 30 GOP lawmakers promised to block any legislative priority that comes from those Republican senators who voted for the bill. 

I really despise the House…just a bunch of clowns and jerks, on both sides of the aisle.

The bill provides roughly $15.3 billion for more than 7,200 little projects, i.e., earmarks, which will give Sunday talk shows something to fulminate over for the next month or so.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“The 117th Congress has been the most spendthrift in history, and this week it plans to go out with one final bipartisan back-slapping hurrah – a 4,155-page omnibus spending bill that is the worst in history.  This is no way to govern in a democracy, but here we are.

“The Members, in their efforts to disguise what they’re doing, rolled out the final product late Monday night. They plan to whip it through by Thursday while Americans are busy with pre-Christmas plans and before even the Members know what they’re voting on.

“Democrats failed in their duty to pass normal spending bills, so they are using this omnibus to finance all of government with $1.65 trillion for fiscal 2023. But wait, it’s worse.  Congress is also adding major policy changes many of which deserve separate votes or couldn’t pass by themselves – from healthcare to presidential election rules to regulation of the beauty industry.

“A bill this large – 1,500 pages more than last year’s omnibus – can’t be all bad, and this contains a few bright spots. One is $858 billion for defense, a 9.7% increase.  That’s $45 billion more than President Biden sought, and it will backfill dwindling weapons stocks, give military members a 4.6% pay raise, and help stabilize the naval fleet, among other urgent needs.

“There’s $45 billion in new military and economic aid for Ukraine in its desperate fight against Vladimir Putin’s attempt to conquer more of Europe. There are also new incentives for retirement savings, including an increase to 75 in the age holders must begin to withdraw funds.  So much for most of the good news.

“Republicans claim they’ve broken the longtime Democratic demand for defense-non-defense spending ‘parity,’ but that’s not clear.  The GOP says non-defense discretionary is $787 billion, a 7.9% increase, which is on top of the $4.6 trillion Congress has already spent over two years.

“But House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro says the number is $800 billion, a 9.3% increase and ‘the highest level for non-defense funding ever.’  If Ms. DeLauro is taking credit, the money is in there somewhere….

“Republicans are boasting about a symbolic $275 million cut to the IRS’s annual budget – but that’s a drop in the $80 billion gusher bestowed on the agency in August….

“The political process here is as bad as most of the policy.  Major changes in law deserve their own debate and vote. Instead, a handful of powerful legislators wrote this vast bill in a backroom.  Members can use the need to fund the government as an excuse to say they supported, or opposed, specific provisions as future politics demands.

“This didn’t have to be.  Congress could pass a short-term funding bill and kick this mess to next year when the GOP House would have more leverage.  A few Republicans are suggesting they may try to delay a Senate vote, and please do.  For trying to stick the country with this omnibus, Congress should miss Christmas.”

Alas, they’ll all be home for the holidays.

Europe and Asia

Nothing of substance to report on the economic front this week.  But lots of action in the following….

Britain: Tuesday, nurses went on strike across much of the country, and Wednesday, ambulance workers went on strike, with accusations flying between the government and unions, and no end in sight.  Prime Minster Rishi Sunak’s reluctance to make pay concessions to public sector workers was backed by data showing government borrowing has surged, with the budget deficit ballooning to $26.8 billion in November – the highest monthly total since records began in 1993 and almost triple the level of a year ago.

But the strikes come as cases of flu and Covid already had the National Health Service “facing very significant pressure,” according to Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay. Barclay faced criticism when he told the public to avoid taking risks, because there wouldn’t be an ambulance to help them.  Only heart attacks were to be prioritized, the people were told.

People have been leaving the ambulance services because the pressure on the staff has been unprecedented, with patients suffering as a result.

One of the ambulance workers unions, the GMB, said pay in the health service has fallen 17% in real terms (inflation-adjusted) since 2010, while demand for ambulances has risen 77% in the same period.  A pay review board granted NHS workers a rise of 4%, but unions want a rise above the rate of inflation, which stood at 10.7% in November.

Friday, the nurses said they would go on strike again Jan. 18 and 19, with further dates  confirmed later, after walking out Dec. 15 and 20.

Also today, air travelers faced possible delays at British airports as government employees who check passports went on strike.  The job action by the Border Force staff was due to continue through the end of the year, with the exception of Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers could be impacted, as the government said it was preparing to have military personnel and workers from other public services help out at the airports.

Turning to Asia…no important economic data from China this week.  Instead, it was all about Covid and reopening.

But a survey by World Economics revealed that China’s business confidence hit its lowest level since at least January 2013, reflecting the impact of surging Covid cases on economic activity and hinting at possible recession next year.  The index fell to 48.1 in December from 51.8 in November, via World Economics’ survey of sales managers at over 2,300 companies conducted Dec. 1-16.  It was the lowest figure since the survey began.

In Japan, November inflation came in at 3.8% year-over-year, 2.8% ann., ex-food and energy.

And with this in mind, the Bank of Japan pulled a surprise on Tuesday in allowing long-term interest rates to rise more by widening the band around its yield cap, the move designed to address the rising cost of prolonged monetary easing.

But the central bank kept its yield target unchanged and said it will sharply increase bond buying, a sign the move was a fine-tuning of its existing ultra-loose monetary policy rather than a withdrawal of stimulus. 

The BOJ kept unchanged its yield curve control (YCC) targets, set at -0.1% for short-term interest rates and around zero for the 10-year bond yield.  But it decided to allow the 10-year yield to move up and down 50 basis points around the 0% target, wider than the previous 25 point band.

Current Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who is stepping down in the spring, has said that he would stick to the bank’s current rate policy until the bank achieves sustainable, demand-driven inflation of 2 percent, a level that policymakers argue would create a virtuous cycle of growing corporate profits and wages.  The current levels such as above that exceed the target, the bank argues, are the result of supply constraints, not heightened demand that it aims to create.

We had a poor sign from Taiwan, as it reported its most dramatic slide in exports in nearly 14 years in November, which portends a slow start to 2023 in much of the world.

The value of shipment orders placed to Taiwan reached $501.4 billion last month, down 23.4 percent from the same month last year, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement on Tuesday.  Orders last fell by a magnitude that high in March 2009.

Consumers in Europe – a market for Taiwan’s PCs and other electronic devices – are grappling with high inflation and heating bills.  Orders to Europe fell 26.3 percent, while those to the U.S. declined 16.7 percent.

Street Bytes

--Stocks finished mixed on the week on light holiday trading, the Dow Jones rising 0.9% to 33203, but the S&P 500 falling 0.2% and Nasdaq 1.9%.  Next week’s action will be light as well.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 4.63%  2-yr. 4.32%  10-yr. 3.75%  30-yr. 3.82%

A big bump on the long end of the curve, with the yield on the key 10-year rising from 3.48% to 3.75%, as reality sets in when it comes to the Fed and sticky inflation.

David Tepper talked about the hawkishness coming from the European Central Bank and as an example, the yield on the German 10-year has gone from 1.85% to 2.38% in three weeks.  The Italian 10-year has risen to 4.48% from 3.75% over the same period.

--Crude oil rose sharply end of the week as Russia threatened to cut output in the face of EU/G7 price caps on Russian crude, West Texas Intermediate rising $5 since last Friday to $79.67.

--A good economic barometer is the production of cardboard and North American companies that make the raw material for corrugated boxes shut down nearly 1 million tons of capacity in the third quarter and a similar scenario is expected for the fourth quarter, Bloomberg Intelligence reports.  Prices are falling for the first time since 2020.

--Nike Inc.’s stock had fallen nearly 40% this year, battered by investor concerns over slowing demand and inventory issues.  But Tuesday’s fiscal second-quarter earnings and sales beat expectations and the shares soared 13%, as Nike posted adjusted earnings of 85 cents a share on $13.3 billion in sales, when analysts were forecasting 67 cents on $12.58 in sales for the quarter.

The company also updated its guidance for fiscal 2023 to reflect the strong results.  Nike is now expecting full-year revenue to grow in the low-teens on a currency-neutral basis.  Foreign exchange headwinds will drag down sales by approximately 7 percentage points, however, resulting in full-year revenue growth in the mid-single digits, but this is better than the company’s original projected sales range.

“We remain positive regarding the strong consumer demand we see across our portfolio brands, as well as the health of our product franchises,” said CFO Matthew Friend on a call with investors.

In September, Nike said it was forced to take “decisive” action to clear overburdened inventories, an announcement that spooked the market as discounts would eat into margins.

But Tuesday’s rally suggested the company was making progress sorting out its inventory problems, though they are still substantial.

And sales in China are a problem and not likely to have recovered to a pre-pandemic level for some time to come as the reopening remains in the early stages.  Sales in Greater China declined 3% from a year earlier, but performance elsewhere was strong.

--FedEx Corp. investors were hoping for a better quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, but the shipping company continues to be hurt by a weakening economy and slowing volumes.

Logistics is the life blood of the economy.  And FedEx serves thousands of small and large businesses around the globe, giving investors as close to a real-time look into the economy as there is.

Domestic and international express daily package volumes dropped roughly 12% year over year. Volumes in the company’s ground business fell about 9% year over year.

The declines point to a slowing economy. The company still generated fiscal second-quarter earnings of $3.18 per share on $22.8 billion in sales.  The Street was projecting $2.81 from $23.7 billion in sales.  A year ago, FedEx earned $4.83 a share from $23.5 billion.

FedEx didn’t wow the Street with its guidance, which was a little light of expectations.  But as is the case with so many stocks that have been beaten up in 2022, FedEx shares actually rose a little on the tepid report.

Recall, the company announced the prior quarter’s results early and they were dreadful, with the shares plunging 21% the day following the warning.

The company is looking for a pickup in the second half of 2023.

--Delta Air Lines Inc. is expected to begin rolling out free wireless internet for its passengers as soon as early 2023, according to the Wall Street Journal

Delta CEO Ed Bastian has said for years that he wants in-flight internet to be fast and free, but there have been technical challenges.  The airline first tested free Wi-Fi on domestic flights in 2019, and later turned to a new provider, Viasat Inc., to offer faster, more reliable service.

Delta began offering Wi-Fi on Viasat-enabled planes for a $5 flat fee in 2021 and has said it plans to have most of its domestic mainline fleet equipped with that service by the end of this year.

Airlines have been trying to address their Wi-Fi woes for years, trying out different technologies and business models.

JetBlue Airways has long offered free internet during flights, backed by corporate sponsorships.

But airline internet doesn’t always work as expected, which is why Delta is aiming to position itself as a more high-end airline with premium features that can attract higher-paying leisure and business travelers, so Wi-Fi is even more of a key.

--Dozens of people were injured when a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Phoenix to Honolulu hit severe turbulence Sunday.

A total of 36 people needed medical attention and 11 were in serious condition after a wobbly flight rocked the cabin and left the plane’s interior visibly damaged.

Patients suffered cuts, bumps and bruises, including head injuries.

The flight was just 30 minutes from Honolulu and at 36,000 feet.

It’s why you always wear your seat belt, even loosely.

--TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2019

12/22…92 percent of 2019 levels
12/21…125…weather issues in 2019
12/20…111
12/19…91
12/18…93
12/17…89
12/16…93
12/15…92

[The TSA said this week that it had stopped more than 6,000 firearms going through airport security checkpoints so far this year, the most in the history of the agency.  Of the 6,301 guns discovered by officers at checkpoints, more than 88% were loaded.  By the end of the year, TSA will have stopped more than 6,600 firearms, a nearly 10% increase over 2021’s record level, officials said.]

--Sam Bankman-Fried consented to be extradited to the United States to face fraud charges, according to an affidavit his lawyer read on Wednesday at a court hearing in the Bahamas. It paved the way for the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange to be flown to the U.S., and he arrived late Wednesday night.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last week charged the 30-year-old crypto “mogul” with stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer assets to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, in what U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

SBF said he would initially contest extradition, but he learned prison life in the Bahamas is not all sun and sand, let alone he wouldn’t be receiving his favored veggie fare.  Instead, the conditions are described as “harsh,” with the U.S. State Department in a 2021 report citing overcrowding, rodent infestation and prisoners relying on buckets as toilets.  Conditions have supposedly improved a bit, and SBF reportedly had a form of air-conditioning and did get some vegan meals.

Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability.

Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of hedge fund Alameda, and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, pleaded guilty to fraud charges and are both cooperating with federal prosecutors, officials announced Wednesday night.

The charges filed against the pair were “in connection with their roles in the frauds that contributed to FTX’s collapse,” Williams said.

Thursday, SBF was released on $250 million bail while awaiting trial, per a ruling from a federal judge in Manhattan.

Judge Gabriel Gorenstein said Bankman-Fried will have to wear a monitoring device and would not be allowed to leave the Northern District of California, as he will be confined to his parents’ home in Palo Alto as he awaits trial.  He surrendered his passport, but was not required to enter a plea on Thursday.

Prosecutor Nicolas Roos called the package the “largest ever pretrial bond.”  But the only thing at risk really appears to be the parents’ (both professors at Stanford Law School) equity in their home as assurance their little POS son shows up in court.

--Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet Wednesday that he will step down as CEO of Twitter “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”

Musk said he will then only oversee the software and server teams.

The statement came after more than half of the participants in a poll that Musk conducted wanted him to resign as Twitter CEO, with about 58% of 17.5 million votes cast being in favor.

For investors, the bigger question is what it means for Tesla.  The shares closed last Dec. 31 at $352 and got down to $121 before finishing the week at $123.

On Tuesday evening, Musk tweeted that the carmaker’s share slide comes down to higher interest rates, but that doesn’t explain why the stock has tanked so much more than the rest of the market.

Yet Tesla still trades at a substantially higher multiple than competitors such as Ford.

And news website Electrek reported Wednesday that Tesla has confirmed another wave of layoffs are coming in the first quarter, as well as initiating a hiring freeze.

Throughout his career, Musk’s great talent was convincing people that they’re not just buying a share of future revenues in his companies, but something much bigger…earth changing.

But Twitter has taken a lot of the shine off.

On the human capital front, since taking over as CEO in October, Musk has overseen the firings or departures of roughly 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees.

Then, Tesla announced it was offering a discount on its two top-selling models, an indication that demand is slowing.

The company offered a $3,750 incentive on its Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV on its website earlier this month, but on Wednesday doubled the discount to $7,500 for those who take delivery between now and Dec. 31.

The move comes ahead of a new federal tax credit of up to $7,500 that’s scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.  Teslas weren’t eligible for a previous federal tax credit program because the program had reached the limit of 200,000 vehicles sold.  Next year’s credits don’t have such a limit.

To qualify for the tax credit, vehicles can’t have a sticker price of over $55,000 for sedans and $80,000 for trucks and SUVs. The Model 3 is at $48,000, while the Y has a starting price of just over $67,000.

There are issues still to be worked out, I think, because the Treasury Dept. is working on rules restricting battery minerals and parts to come from North America.  So the vehicles may only be eligible for half the credit once the rules come out in March.

For now, until year end, Tesla may be offering the discounts in an effort to meet a pledge to grow sales by 50%.

Thursday, Musk pledged to pause selling shares in Tesla and said that a decision on a buyback of the company’s stock could be influenced by the severity of any economic downturn.

Musk, on a Twitter Spaces call, signaled he would not sell any Tesla stock for a minimum of 18 months to 24 months.

“You certainly have my commitment I won’t sell stock until, I don’t know, probably two years from now. Definitely not next year under any circumstances and probably not the year thereafter,” he said.

But we’ve heard this before and he has gone back on his word.

--Micron Technology Inc. is reducing its workforce by about 10% to save money and will cut executive salaries for the remainder of the current fiscal year, as announced by CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on Wednesday.

Then computer-memory maker is responding to further weakening demand for electronics and the chips that go into them as the company reported a sharp drop in sales and a net loss for the most recent quarter.

Mehrotra pointed to “challenging conditions” during the quarter, with the industry in the throes of the most severe supply-demand imbalance in 13 years, while profitability would remain challenging through next year.

The Boise, Idaho-based company said revenue dropped by nearly half to $4.09 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 1, amid a fall in prices for both main types of memory.  Micron reported a loss of $195 million for the period.

The results were below the Street’s forecasts.

Spending by consumers and companies on electronics and gadgets has slowed in recent months following a boom at the outset of the Covid pandemic.  Personal-computer and smartphone shipments are expected to fall sharply this year after a surge in 2021, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

Mehrotra said Micron expects a 10% decline in shipments this year from 2021 levels, but also “strong profitability once we get past this downturn.”

Micron is just one of the chip-makers slashing jobs.   Intel Corp. in October said it was targeting up to $10 billion of annual cost reductions and efficiency gains by 2025 that will include layoffs. 
Qualcomm Inc. announced it was pausing hiring and reducing spending.

Other tech companies, from Amazon.com to Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. have also said they will be reining in costs and cutting payroll.

Micron shares didn’t react much to the latest earnings announcement because the shares had already fallen from a 52-week high of $98 to Friday’s close of $50.

--General Mills’ fiscal second-quarter results topped analysts’ estimates after getting a boost from higher prices, prompting the food producer to lift its full-year outlook despite continued expectations for costs to rise.

Organic net sales are set to increase 8% to 9%, compared with previous projections of a 6% to 7% gain, based on better volume performance and improved product mix.

“While it’s encouraging to see some signs of supply chain improvement recently, we expect the pace of change in the operating environment to remain high for the foreseeable future,” CEO Jeff Harmening said in prepared remarks.  “While we have work to do to overcome some short-term headwinds in pet and international, we’ve taken actions to drive stronger results in those segments in the second half of this year.”

GIS continues to see input cost inflation of between 14% and 15% for cost of goods sold for the fiscal year, including double-digit inflation in the second half.

Net sales for the quarter ended Nov. 27 rose 4% to $5.22 billion.  Sales in the North America retail segment jumped 11% to $3.37 billion driven by a 24% surge in the foodservice division, while revenue in the pet segment was flat year-on-year.  International sales slumped 27% due to currency headwinds.

The Street took the shares down a bit, with concerns over the pet division’s performance.

--Egg prices are hitting record highs, driven by an avian-flu outbreak that has killed tens of millions of chickens and turkeys this year across nearly all 50 states.

Wholesale prices of Midwest large eggs hit a record $5.36 a dozen in December, according to research firm Urner Barry.  Retail egg prices have increased more than any other supermarket item so far this year, climbing more than 30% from January to early December compared with a year ago, according to data firm Information Resources Inc.

--Wells Fargo agreed to a $3.7 billion settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to address allegations of loan mismanagement that affected 16 million consumer accounts, the agency said Tuesday.

The CFPB, in a consent order, identified instances dating to 2011 in which Wells incorrectly applied payments or wrongly charged fees, actions that resulted in some customers losing their homes and vehicles.

“Wells Fargo’s rinse-repeat cycle of violating the law has harmed millions of American families,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.  “The CFPB is ordering Wells Fargo to refund billions of dollars to consumers across the country.  This is an important initial step for accountability and long-term reform of this repeat offender.”

Under terms of the settlement, Wells Fargo was ordered to pay a $1.7 billion civil penalty and $2 billion in “redress to consumers.”  Much of the latter has been paid, according to Wells, and it’s a reason why the share price didn’t react significantly on the news.

Wells had set aside $2 billion for regulatory and legal issues in the third quarter and on Tuesday, the bank said it expects operating losses to hit $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter due to the settlement.

It’s been a long road for the bank in its bid to regain Wall Street’s trust since the fake accounts scandal from 2016.

Since 2018, Wells has been operating under a $2 trillion asset cap that was imposed by the Federal Reserve in response to the fake accounts scandal, and the Street is still waiting for the cap to be lifted.

--Walt Disney Company shares fell after the opening weekend for “Avatar: The Way of Water” came in below projections.

The movie took in $134 million in domestic box office; however, the film had been expected to take in $150 million to $175 million in North America.

The film did earn $435 million in theaters around the world, the second-highest global opening-weekend gross of 2022, trailing only “Doctors Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” from Disney’s Marvel Studios.

The film earned $57.1 million in China, not especially good given the runaway success of the first movie in the franchise in China.

The original “Avatar” film, released in 2009, opened to $77 million domestically and went on to become the highest-grossing movie ever, with a cumulative global box-office gross of nearly $2.9 billion.  About $259 million of that total came from China.

This time, due to Covid, only about 35% of cinemas in China were open, because of strict government lockdowns, when about 80% were open for the movie’s debut, according to Disney.

Overall, 2022 is not looking good as ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada are expected to come in at about $7.4 billion, according to analysts and studio estimates, down 35% from the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

Only three 2022 pictures have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, assuming the “Avatar” film reaches the milestone.  The other two were “Top Gun: Maverick” at $1.49 billion, and “Jurassic World Dominion” (almost exactly $1 billion).  In 2019, there were nine such movies, most of them produced by Disney.

But the theaters complain there has been a shortage of movies.  U.S. cinemas received 37 fewer wide-release film as of Dec. 18 compared with the same point in 2019, according to Comscore.  A wide-release plays on 1,800 screens or more.

--In Nielsen data for 2022, Fox News’ “The Five” was the most watched show in cable news with an average of 3.5 million viewers.

The figure tops “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which averaged 3.3 million viewers for the year.  The figure for the Fox News prime-time show is up 3% over 2021 when it was the most watched program for the year.

But “The Five” grew more, up 17% over 2021. The program, which airs 5 p.m. Eastern and 2 p.m. Pacific, is also the first cable news show outside of prime time to finish the year on top.

The only non-sports cable program with a larger audience than “The Five” is Paramount Network’s hit drama “Yellowstone.”

Overall, Fox News was the most watched cable news network for a 21st consecutive year with an average of 1.49 million viewers, a 12% gain compared with 2021.

CNN and MSNBC experienced significant year-to-year declines in 2022. MSNBC averaged 733,000, down 19% from 2021.  CNN averaged 568,000 viewers, down 27%.

Both networks saw major drops in the first half of the year as they suffered from comparisons to the high levels of 2021 generated by coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol and President Biden’s inauguration.

CNN stemmed its yearlong decline in the fourth quarter, seeing its audience level rise by 9%.

For the year, CNN’s prime-time audience was down 33% to 730,000 viewers.  Fox News was off 1% to 2.3 million, while MSNBC’s block was off 21% to 1.2 million viewers.  [Los Angeles Times]

--FOX television received stupendous ratings for the World Cup final last Sunday, 16.8 million, up 47% from the 2018 championship. That doesn’t include the viewers who watched it on Paramount+ or Telemundo.

Both Fox and Telemundo have the rights to the World Cup through 2026.

--YouTube and the National Football League reached a deal for the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package of games for as much as $2.5 annually, including licensing agreements; about $1 billion a year more than DirecTV, the previous rights holder.  The deal will allow YouTube viewers to stream nearly all of the NFL games on Sunday next season, except for those that air on traditional television in their local markets.

--We note the passing of influential fund manager Scott Minerd, 63.  Minerd was chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners.

A weightlifting fanatic, he died Wednesday of a heart attack during his daily workout.

--Finally, I didn’t learn of his passing until after I posted last time, but I have to note the death of Don Christopher, who died about ten days ago.  He was the King of Garlic, operating out of Gilroy, California, starting modestly with a 10-acre plot in the Bay Area town when little of the state was devoted to garlic.

But as the American palate changed, sales at Christopher Ranch skyrocketed to more than 100 million pounds a year, dwarfing competitors.

Christopher helped dream up the city’s quirky Garlic Festival, a three-day mashup of all things garlic that drew foodies and the curious to Gilroy to sample garlic ice cream, garlic oysters, and the like.

As noted in the Wall Street Journal, “Locals boasted that Gilroy was the only town where a person could marinate a steak simply by hanging it on a clothesline.”

I’m hungry.

Foreign Affairs, Part II

China: The World Health Organization said Wednesday that China may be struggling to keep a tally of Covid-19 infections as the country experiences a big spike in cases.

Official figures from China have become an unreliable guide as less testing is being done across the country following the easing of the strict “zero-Covid” policy.

“In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up,” WHO’s emergencies director Mike Ryan said Wednesday.  “I wouldn’t like to say that China is actively not telling us what’s going on.  I think they’re behind the curve.”

Dozens of hearses queued outside a Beijing crematorium on Wednesday, even as China reported no new Covid-19 deaths in its growing outbreak, sparking criticism of its virus accounting as the capital braces for a surge in cases.

A Reuters witness saw about 40 hearses queuing to enter a Beijing crematorium while the parking lot was filled.  20 coffins were inside awaiting cremation.  Staff wore hazmat suits and smoke rose from five of the 15 furnaces. It was unknown if the deaths were caused by Covid, but this was just one crematorium.

Ryan at least noted a surge in vaccination rates in the country over the last few weeks, but that it remained to be seen whether enough vaccination can be done in the coming weeks to stave off the impact of an Omicron wave (though as noted below, there’s a problem here).

The first batch of BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines were sent from Germany to China, Wednesday, to be administered initially to German expatriates, a German government spokesman said, which would make it the first foreign coronavirus vaccine to be delivered to the country.  China had agreed to allow German nationals in China to get the shot following a visit last month by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.  There are about 20,000 German nationals currently in the country.

Beijing has so far insisted on using only domestically produced vaccines, which are not based on the Western mRNA technology but on more traditional technologies.  And none of the nine domestically developed Covid vaccines approved for use has been updated to target the highly infectious Omicron variant, as Pfizer and Moderna have done.

The National Health Commission said on Tuesday only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as Covid deaths.

But Bloomberg reported that nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid on a single day this week, citing estimates from the government’s top health authority.

A report on an internal meeting of the National Health Commission said the NHC estimated 248 million people, or nearly 18% of the population, are likely to have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December.

A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with Covid as it expects half of the city’s 25 million people to get infected by the end of the year while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Chinese counterpart that it was important for Beijing to be transparent about a growing Covid-19 outbreak.

In a call with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Blinken “discussed the current Covid-19 situation, and the secretary underscored the importance of transparency for the international community,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement Thursday night.

But a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry on the call didn’t mention Covid, saying the two sides discussed issues related to Taiwan and Ukraine.

Earlier, the State Department expressed concerns that a runaway outbreak in China could have global implications by spawning new virus variants.

But on Taiwan, Wang Yi urged the United States to stop “containing and suppressing” Beijing and warned against Washington’s salami-slicing tactics on Taiwan, saying they could lead to “a head-on collision.”

Beijing sent a record number of bombers, 18, into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Tuesday, keeping up the pressure as cross-strait tensions remain high over the island’s close ties with the U.S.  Twenty-nine warplanes in all and three warships were detected around Taiwan, the island’s defense ministry said.

North Korea: Kim Jong Un and his band of Orcs fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters on Friday, South Korea’s military said, in the latest demonstration that came days after U.S. and South Korean warplanes conducted joint drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal.

The U.S. flew nuclear-capable bombers and advanced stealth jets near the Korean Peninsula for joint training with South Korean warplanes on Tuesday.

Last Sunday, Pyongyang said it launched another pair of rockets to test cameras and other systems for the development of its first military reconnaissance satellite.  Its state media published low-resolution photos of South Korean cities as viewed from space.

Some civilian experts in South Korea and elsewhere said the photos were too crude for surveillance purposes and that the launches were likely a cover for tests of North Korea’s missile technology.  South Korea’s military said North Korea fired two medium-range ballistic missiles.

Separately, North Korea on Tuesday denounced Japan’s new security strategy as fundamentally changing the regional security environment and warned it will show how “wrong” and “dangerous” Japan’s choice is with unspecified actions, official news agency KCNA reported.

Days earlier, Japan unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War II as regional tensions and Russia’s Ukraine invasion stoke war fears.

Israel: A new government seen as the most right-wing in Israel’s history has been agreed to, allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to return to power.

Netanyahu, who won elections in November and has been putting together a government since, will serve an historic sixth term as prime minister.

His coalition, consisting of all white males, contains far-right parties, including one whose leader was once convicted of anti-Arab racism.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners reject the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the internationally backed formula for peace.

The leader of the Religious Zionism party, which in alliance with two other far-right parties won the third largest number of seats in the Knesset, wants to see Israel annex the West Bank and has been given wide powers over its activities there.

More than 600,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  The settlements they live in are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Afghanistan: Wednesday, female university students were turned away from campuses after the Taliban-run administration said women would be suspended from tertiary (university) education.  The decision to ban women was announced Tuesday evening in a letter to universities from the higher education ministry, drawing condemnation from foreign governments and the United Nations.

“We went to university, the Taliban were at the gate and told us ‘you are not allowed to enter the university until further notice’…everyone was crying,” said Shaista, a business studies student at a private university in Kabul, told Reuters.

The ban on women students will complicate the Taliban administration’s efforts to gain international recognition and to get rid of sanctions that are severely hampering the economy.  As in they are idiots.

The UN’s mission in Afghanistan asked the Taliban-run administration to “immediately” revoke the decision.  It also urged authorities to reopen girls’ schools beyond the sixth grade and “end all measures preventing women and girls from participating fully in daily public life.”

Even students who went to universities for administrative reasons, such as to pick up their diplomas after finishing final exams and meeting qualifications for a degree, were not allowed to do so.  Security forces entered the schools and told all women to leave, including those in the midst of taking exams.

Taliban leadership have said they want peaceful relations with the international community but that foreigners can not interfere in domestic affairs.

A Taliban minister said the universities were closed to women partly due to female students not adhering to its interpretation of the Islamic dress code.

Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, added their voices on Thursday to the criticism of the ban and the Taliban’s treatment of women.

“Treating women as second-class citizens, depriving them of their universal human rights, and denying them the opportunity to better themselves and their communities should generate outrage among all of us,” they wrote in a statement posted on Twitter.

Separately, at least 19 people were killed, and dozens injured, in a fire inside a road tunnel in Afghanistan.

A fuel tanker exploded inside the Salang Tunnel – which links Kabul to the northern provinces.  It is 1.6 miles long and at an altitude of more than 11,000 feet.  Accidents and avalanches frequently shut it down.

This is the ultimate nightmare for drivers everywhere…a tunnel fire.  A blaze in the same tunnel in 1982 killed at least 400!  [Some estimates put the death toll in the thousands.]

Iran: Authorities arrested one of the country’s most renowned actresses Saturday on suspicion of spreading falsehoods about nationwide protests that grip the country, state media said.

The report by IRNA said Taraneh Alidoosti, star of the Oscar-winning movie “The Salesman,” was detained a week after she made a post on Instagram expressing solidarity with the first man recently executed for crimes allegedly committed during the protests.

The announcement was the latest in a series of celebrity arrests, which have included footballers, actors and influencers, in response to their open display of support for anti-government demonstrators now in their third month.

In her post, Alidoosti, 38, said: “His name was Mohsen Shekari.  Every international organization who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity.”

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: 40% approve of Biden’s job performance, 55% disapprove; 37% of independents approve (Nov. 9-Dec. 2).

Rasmussen: 46% approve of Biden’s performance, 51% disapprove (Dec. 22).

Trump World

--The Jan. 6 House select committee dealt a serious blow to Donald Trump on Monday when it referred him to federal prosecutors for four potential crimes related to the storming of the Capitol.

But it doesn’t mean Trump will ever be charged with a crime, let alone face prison time.

It’s up to prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith, who have already been investigating his scheme to stay in power.

What the House has done, though, is give prosecutors a further mountain of evidence, along with the Justice Department’s evidence gathered in their own probe, which includes grand jury testimony.

The DOJ is only going to bring charges if it thinks it can win in court…get a jury to convict, and also maintain the conviction on appeal.  Those are higher bars than the committee faced.

Smith, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor, would need to decide whether to recommend that the former president should be indicted and on what charges to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has the final say.

The grand jury is still gathering evidence and it’s unclear how long the DOJ will take to decide whether to charge Trump, though they have to be pretty far along in the process by now.  I just think a decision to charge, or not charge, Trump will be made in January.

The Jan. 6 committee referred Trump for prosecution on four charges: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to make false statements, and inciting an insurrection.

The only person aside from Trump that the committee referred for prosecution was lawyer John Eastman.

Thursday night, the committee then released its full, 845-page report, detailing unheeded intelligence warnings and other security lapses that allowed the mob of Trump supporters to storm the Capitol.

Impending violence in the days before the insurrection was – in the words of Gen. Mark Milley – “clear to all.”  An advanced threat assessment by Capitol Police on Jan. 3 even warned “Congress itself is a target.”

“Federal and local law enforcement authorities were in possession of multiple streams of intelligence predicting violence directed at the Capitol prior to January 6th,” the report says.  “Although some of that intelligence was fragmentary, it should have been sufficient to warrant far more vigorous preparations for the security of the joint session.”

Yet, the security preparations proved insufficient, jeopardizing the lives of police officers defending the Capitol and everyone in it, the report states.  And that was compounded by the more than three hours and 19 minutes it took to deploy the Guard to the Capitol once the violence began.

The report does confirm that then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund had in the days prior to the attack called then-House Sgt.-at-Arms Paul Irving to talk about requesting the National Guard to assist in policing the Capitol’s perimeter.

But Sund remembers that Irving responded immediately that he “did not like the optics.”  Irving recalled that Sund said the DC National Guard had offered 125 unarmed Guardsmen to assist the Capitol and Metropolitan Police, but later agreed the DC National Guard would not be necessary, especially if the Capitol Police had an “all hands on deck” posture.

“We have no evidence that the delay was intentional.  Likewise, it appears that none of the individuals involved understood what President Trump planned for January 6th, and how he would behave during the violence,” the report states.

“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” reads the report.  “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

The panel, in another notable conclusion, found that Trump and his allies engaged in some 200 acts targeting state legislators or state and local election officials attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.

The panel also argued that Trump should not be allowed to serve in government office because of the constitutional amendment that prohibits people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding such posts. The committee pointed to Trump’s impeachment by the House on incitement of insurrection, cited the 57 senators who voted to convict him and referenced its criminal referral to the Justice Department on a similar charge.

Trump quickly fired back, posting on Truth Social: “The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the ‘Peacefully and Patrioticly” (sic) words I used, or study the reason for the protest.  Election Fraud.  ‘WITCH HUNT’!”

Editorial / New York Daily News

“Donald Trump was unique among all the men who have occupied the presidency from George Washington to Joe Biden.  Only he was twice impeached by the House of Representatives.  Only he opposed transferring power to his successor.  Only he fomented a violent insurrection against the legal government he swore to defend. And now, only he has been referred by the Congress to be prosecuted for committing felonies.

“How much more history can one man make?....

“ ‘Incite,’ ‘Assist’ or “Aid and Comfort’ an Insurrection is the most serious of the crimes found by the committee.  Rebellion and domestic violence are anathema to the Constitution and insurrection is automatic grounds to be permanently barred from public office.  It wasn’t just some paperwork that Trump sought to stop.  He tried to overthrow the government and install himself in power.

“What say Special Counsel Jack Smith?”

Noah Feldman / Bloomberg

“The Jan. 6 committee that concluded its work Monday represents the third and likely final chance for Congress to establish a historical record with regard to Donald Trump’s wrongdoing while president.

“The first two opportunities were the first and second impeachment efforts. The House of Representatives did its job both times by impeaching Trump.  The Senate, however, failed its constitutional role by declining to convict Trump either time, despite substantial evidence he committed high crimes and misdemeanors.  Those didn’t need to be crimes described in the statute books.

“Now the House committee has turned to the legally different question of whether Trump committed actual, statutory crimes.  After doing real and sustained investigation, and gathering evidence from more than a million documents and a thousand witnesses, the committee has taken the unprecedented step of referring a former president to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution….

“(The) committee provided enough evidence to conclude that Trump should be charged criminally for interfering with the electoral process and trying to block a peaceful transition.  We’ve known about this evidence for some time. It’s important that an official U.S. government body has marshaled it into the form of a formal accusation.

“Trump genuinely sought to break American democracy. Nothing is more important to the democratic process than that the candidate who loses an election concede the race peacefully.  The consequences of Trump’s conduct were thus profoundly threatening to democracy.  The referral puts the House on the right side of history.  Declining to refer Trump to the Justice Department would have amounted to a dereliction of duty.

“Yet it’s important also to acknowledge that, notwithstanding its importance, the effect of the referral is mostly symbolic.  Jack Smith…will not be influenced meaningfully by the referral….

“(The) committee’s recommendation can be seen for what it is: an accurate and important historical assertion by a body that is political by definition. And the bottom line is that Smith’s enormously difficult job isn’t any easier than it would have been without the committee.

“If Smith decides not to bring criminal charges against Trump, the Jan. 6 report will probably end up as the final word from the federal government about what went wrong on that day.  It won’t on its own stop Trump from being reelected.  But like the impeachments, it will function as another component of the gradual process of convincing Republican moderates that Trump is unfit to be president again.  That realization could in turn signal to harder-line Republicans that it makes sense to move on to other candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”

--On the unveiling of Trump’s tax returns….

Editorial / Washington Post

“In 2020, President Donald Trump and Melania Trump paid no federal income taxes by claiming millions in dubious deductions and carrying over losses from previous years.

“Somehow, that’s not the most scandalous detail to emerge following the House’s four-year legal brawl to obtain Mr. Trump’s tax returns. It turns out the Internal Revenue Service did not conduct – let alone complete – mandatory examinations of Mr. Trump’s returns while he was president, despite its own internal policy from 1977 requiring such reviews and the White House’s claims that they were happening.  A report by the House Ways and Means Committee, released after members voted Tuesday to make Mr. Trump’s filings public, proposes codifying into law the norm that every president since Richard M. Nixon had observed, until Mr. Trump: the routine release of presidential tax returns.

“In April 2019, on the very day the committee inquired about the status of mandatory presidential audits, the IRS notified Mr. Trump that his 2015 return would be examined. But the audit was assigned mainly to one agent, and Mr. Trump threw sand in the gears.  The lone IRS employee had to review a return that included over 400 pass-through entities, numerous schedules, foreign tax credits and millions in carried-over losses from previous years.

“An accompanying report from the Joint Committee on Taxation, summarizing Mr. Trump’s returns, raises questions about several deductions he’s claimed. For example, he took a $21.1 million deduction for donating 158 acres of real estate but had no qualified appraisal for the land. He also reported making cash donations of more than $500,000 in 2018 and 2019 without substantiation, according to the report.

“An internal IRS memo said Mr. Trump’s taxes were so complicated that ‘it is not possible to obtain the resources available to examine all potential issues.’  In other words, even if the agency wanted it, it lacked the resources for a thorough review….

“Alas, this problem is bigger than Mr. Trump. Former IRS commissioner Charles Rettig has testified the agency lacks the resources to closely scrutinize the filings of many people in Mr. Trump’s stratum.  ‘We get outgunned routinely,’ he said.  No American should be too big to audit.”

--The New York Times’ Jeremy W. Peters reported that in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Sean Hannity, under oath, was questioned about the allegations of election fraud against Dominion by the likes of Sidney Powell and whether he believed any of it, and Hannity said, “I did not believe it for one second.”

Meade Cooper, who oversees prime-time programming for Fox News, and Tucker Carlson, have essentially said the same in their depositions, and texts, though the judge in the case has prevented some of them from being released.

Dominion lawyers have told the judge they have evidence showing an employee of Fox Corporation trying to intervene with the White House to stop Powell from making “outlandish” fraud claims.

But there is a high legal standard of proof in defamation cases such as this one against a media organization like Fox News.  “Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite. And that requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those who were making the decisions at the network.” [Jeremy Peters]

--An aide to former President Trump told the House Jan. 6 committee earlier this year that he saw the commander-in-chief “tearing” up documents.

Nick Luna, who served as Trump’s personal aide in the White House, told the House select committee during a deposition on March 21 that he witnessed Trump destroying presidential documents, possibly in violation of the Presidential Records Act, according to audio obtained by CBS News.

The Presidential Records Act requires that presidential documents be preserved and given to the National Archives at the end of a president’s time in office.

--Right-wing Republicans slammed aid to Ukraine even as President Zelensky arrived in the U.S.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene denounced Zelensky as America’s “shadow president” and “Ukraine as the 51st state” in a Twitter rant. She also trashed Sen. Mitch McConnell as a turncoat who is pushing a massive compromise end-of-year spending bill so “he can hand a $47 BILLION check” to Zelensky.

“It’s like the American people are raped everyday at the hands of their own elected leaders,” Greene tweeted.

Donald Trump Jr. said of the Ukrainian leader: “Zelensky is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen.”

Then Don Jr., mocked Zelensky with a naked photo of Hunter Biden standing next to the Ukrainian leader as Zelensky handed over a battle flag to Vice President Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Twitter removed the image. 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) tweeted after Zelensky’s address: “Hemorrhaging billions of taxpayer dollars for Ukraine while our country is in crisis is the definition of America Last.”

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--Long Island Republican Congressman-elect George Santos is in a heap of trouble, as it’s become clear he grossly fabricated his resume, as a New York Times report revealed.

As in he did not attend Baruch College and NYU, nor did he work at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.  It’s been days since the story came out and Santos, nor his staff, have done anything to refute the details.

Santos’ win over Democrat and party operative Robert Zimmerman (a real slimeball) helped give Republicans their narrow majority.

Thursday, Santos broke his silence and tweeted, “I have my story to tell and it will be told next week.  I want to assure everyone that I will address your questions and that I remain committed to deliver the results I campaigned on; Public safety, Inflation, Education & more…Happy Holidays to all!”

--I was really disappointed to read that Florida Gov. DeSantis, who praised President Trump’s expedited development and rollout of a Covid vaccine, and said of the shots in February 2021, “We’re having more vaccine because of this, which is great,” has now thrown himself into disparaging vaccines!

In remarks where he intended to convince skeptics to buck guidance from the CDC, while seeking to investigate vaccine makers for fraud, DeSantis said at an event the other day:

“These companies have made a fortune off this federal government imposing or at least attempting to impose mandates, and a lot of false statements.  I think people want the truth and I think people want accountability, so you need to have a thorough investigation into what’s happened with these shots.”

DeSantis’ position has been evolving, seizing on the shots waning efficacy against new variants and portraying scientific evidence as deliberate deceit.

Oh brother.

Yes, efficacy wanes…thus the need for booster shots.  I’m sure I got Covid myself in October because I waited too long (as I was writing in this space) to get my third booster.  But outside of a rough 36 hours, and zero need to go to a doctor or hospital, I was OK (got RSV after for two weeks, but that was just part of what’s going on in the country now, and I’m also old).

Adults who received the latest booster shots cut their risk of having to visit an emergency room or being hospitalized by 50 percent or more, the CDC reported last week.

But in the case of DeSantis, he’s going after that Trump faction that doesn’t believe in vaccines.

And this is what upsets me.  Just the other day, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that support for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine requirements for healthy children to attend public school has declined from 82 percent in October 2019 to 71 percent today.  Twenty-eight percent of those polled “now say that parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their school-age children, even if this creates health risks for others,” up from 16 percent in 2019.

The share of Republicans who say that parents should be able to opt out of these childhood vaccines has doubled since the start of the pandemic, up from 20% in 2019 to 44% now.  But, at least 85% of adults in the Kaiser survey say the benefits of the MMR vaccine outweigh their risk, down only 3 points from 2019.

So, while Republican parents increasingly don’t want to have to comply with vaccine requirements, it seems most end up doing so.

However, a measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio that started last month, has continued to grow, last I saw, spreading entirely among children who were not fully vaccinated for MMR.

As of about ten days ago, 77 children had a confirmed case of measles, and more than a third of them were hospitalized, according to data from Columbus Public health.  The vast majority of the children were completely unvaccinated against measles, and four had received half of the recommended two-dose series.

--The year 2021 saw 106,699 drug overdose deaths in the United States, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics said in a report Thursday.  That’s up sharply from 2020, when fatal overdoses had already reached a historic peak of 91,799.

While deaths caused by cocaine and methamphetamine rose in 2021, the steepest hike in overdose deaths – 22% - was attributed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

The new figures indicate that drug fatalities have risen fivefold over the last two decades, the CDC said.

Covid-19 deaths increased from 350,831 in 2020 to 416,893 in 2021.  That allowed the disease to maintain its position as the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., behind heart disease (695,547 deaths) and cancer (605,213).

Meanwhile, U.S. life expectancy fell by 1.5 years in 2020, largest drop since World War II.

Life expectancy at birth dropped from 77 years in 2020 to 76.4 years in 2021.

The pandemic, of course, has taken its heaviest toll on senior citizens, especially those 75 and older.

Editorial / Washington Post

“In 2016, federal agents seized 573 pounds of illicit fentanyl at California ports of entry. A year later, it was 2,099 pounds. This was a clue to a fundamental shift.  Instead of fentanyl being sent by mail from China, as in the past, Mexican drug cartels were beginning to manufacture and traffic the drug overland to the United States.  A seven-part Post investigation documented a cascade of government blunders and failure to recognize and fight this scourge. Now the country faces the most lethal drug crisis in its history. The government should act urgently to tighten enforcement, reduce demand and expand access to lifesaving treatment.

“Fentanyl is an opioid 50 times more potent than heroin, giving users a sense of euphoria but also putting them in mortal peril.  Too much in the bloodstream can trigger respiratory failure and ultimately cardiac arrest.  Unbeknownst to many people who use other drugs, dealers in the United States are spiking them with cheap and accessible fentanyl.  The Post told the agonizing story of five friends in Colorado who died in February after using cocaine they did not know was laced with fentanyl.  Last year, drug overdoses in the United States surpassed 107,000, the highest ever.  Two-thirds of the deaths involved fentanyl use, which now claims more American lives each year than car crashes, gun violence and suicides – and is the leading cause of death for people ages 18 to 49.

“Unfortunately, illicit fentanyl powder and pills are compact and easily smuggled.  A U.S. commission on the drug crisis estimated this year that only 3 to 5 metric tons of pure fentanyl would meet the entire annual U.S. consumption of illegally supplied opioids.  By contrast, 47 metric tons of heroin and 145 metric tons of cocaine were consumed in 2016.  Seizure of fentanyl on the southern border has jumped ninefold in the past five years.”

As the Post points out there have been governmental failures all around, including a 2017 Drug Enforcement Administration document that devoted four pages to synthetic opioids “but made no mention that Mexican traffickers were producing fentanyl.”  The agency hemorrhaged staffers and went through five acting administrators, three of them during Mr. Trump’s tenure.  Eighteen months ago, former New Jersey attorney general Anne Milgram became the first Senate-confirmed DEA administrator since 2015.

“Mexico also blundered.  A decade-long counternarcotics alliance with the United States fell apart after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018 and embarked on a policy he called ‘hugs, not bullets.’ The chill in relations has left DEA agents scrutinizing press releases to see what types of narcotics and precursor chemicals Mexico’s military has seized.”

And, of course, the Biden administration has no border policy these days.

But some of us remember a much-ridiculed, in some corners, PSA program that featured Nancy Reagan*.  “Just Say No to Drugs.”  Well it worked.

Where are the PSAs on hard-core drug and fentanyl usage?  We’ve been inundated with PSAs on vaping, after all.

It’s a two-way street.  Supply…and demand…

*In 1984, Nancy Reagan was visiting an elementary school when the First Lady was asked by a schoolgirl what to do if she was offered drugs by her peers.  Nancy responded, “Just say ‘no’,”  and an ad campaign was born.

--Separately, America’s population grew 0.4% this year, Census Bureau figures released Thursday show, continuing historically slow growth that has added pressure to a tight labor market.  This was still better than the unprecedented low rate of 0.1% recorded in 2021.

The U.S. population was 333.3 million for the year ending July 1.

Eighteen states lost population, led by New York (minus 0.9%) and Illinois (minus 0.8%) and Louisiana (minus 0.8%).

Florida reported the largest percentage gain at 1.9%, followed by Idaho (1.8%) and South Carolina (1.7%).

--Lastly, director Steven Spielberg apologized this week on BBC radio.  He conceded that perhaps his Oscar-winning thriller, “Jaws,” was too effective at conjuring fear of sharks, admitting he is “truly regretful” for any influence he has had on the world’s rapidly shrinking shark population.

Since the early 70s, the world’s population of oceanic sharks and rays has fallen by 71 percent as a result of overfishing, a global study published in Nature found last year.

Asked by a presenter how he would feel having sharks circling him while on a small desert island, Spielberg said: “That’s one of the things I still fear.  Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sports fishermen that happened after 1975.”

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

Pray for Ukraine.

God bless America.

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Gold $1806
Oil $79.67

Regular Gas: $3.09; Diesel: $4.69 [$3.29 / $3.57 yr. ago]

Returns for the week 12/19-12/23

Dow Jones  +0.9%  [33203]
S&P 500  -0.2%  [3844]
S&P MidCap  +0.8%
Russell 2000  -0.1%
Nasdaq  -1.9%  [10497]

Returns for the period 1/1/22-12/23/22

Dow Jones  -8.6%
S&P 500  -19.3%
S&P MidCap  -14.3%
Russell 2000  -21.6%
Nasdaq  -32.9%

Bulls 42.9
Bears 31.4…no update this week

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

Travel safe. 

Next week…predictions for 2023.

Brian Trumbore

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