Two top US public health officials have played down the chances of having a coronavirus vaccine before the election, despite Donald Trump’s insistence that one will be available “within weeks”. During a hearing before the Senate health committee, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and...
Exclusive: How a marked-up term sheet and messy rollout threw TikTok deal into disarray
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – As China’s ByteDance raced to seal a deal with Oracle Corp and Walmart Inc to keep its video-sharing app TikTok operational in the United States, an apparent breakthrough came last Wednesday in a phone call to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. FILE PHOTO: The TikTok logo is pictured outside the company’s U.S. head office in...
Chicago Fed’s Evans Tries To Set Record Straight On “Rate Hike” Miscommunication, But Dollar Barely Notices
Yesterday just after 11am, the dollar spiked and risk assets slumped after what was a significant miscommunication between Chicago Fed president Charles Evens, the Bloomberg headline algo and traders. As we explained at the time, the dollar hit a 1 month high after a Bloomberg headline hit according to which Evans said that the “Fed May Raise Rates Before Average...
Will Jet Fuel Demand Ever Recover?
Airlines were banking on summer travel to offset some of the steep losses from grounded flights in the second quarter. Although everyone knew that air travel would take the longest to recover from the pandemic, it became painfully evident for airlines and aircraft manufacturers at the end of the summer travel season that global air travel is not rebounding as...
Geely develops new electric car technology to sell to rivals
Geely has developed a system for building electric cars that it plans to sell to rivals, aiming to provide one of a handful of global battery systems expected to dominate the industry in the coming decades. The Chinese carmaker behind Volvo and Lotus is already in talks with several other car manufacturers to license the technology, including Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler,...
Clipper: Something Doesn’t Add Up (NYSE:CLPR)
After my Initiating Coverage Report of Clipper Realty (NYSE:CLPR) and the 2nd quarter earnings release, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a follow-on article to support the thesis of undervaluation. In this update, I will review the historical valuation and financial performance of Clipper, provide a detailed financial forecast and then proceed to examine different methods and perspectives...
Howden buys fellow British insurance broker A-Plan
Via Yahoo Finance LONDON (Reuters) – Howden Broking Group said on Wednesday it had bought fellow British insurance broker A-Plan Group at a valuation which David Howden, the chief executive of Howden’s parent company, described as being in the “high 600 million pounds”. Broker Howden focuses on specialty commercial risk and reinsurance, while A-Plan, which sells insurance through brands including...
The Future Promise Of Value Versus The Allure Of Growth
Authored by Michael Lebowitz and Jack Scott via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Many investors, especially those with limited investment experience, are declaring that value investing is dead. If one’s investment experience runs over the last ten years, who can blame them? Since 2010, growth stocks have outperformed value stocks, on average, by 6.11% a year. If one’s experience runs deeper, and/or they appreciate...
Brussels unveils plan to overhaul EU migration policy
Brussels has launched an overhaul of the EU’s much-criticised migration policy, risking a revival of the internal battles that were first sparked by the arrival of more than 1m people in the bloc in 2015. The European Commission plan unveiled on Wednesday seeks to return more failed asylum-seekers to their home countries and meet the demands of some northern and...
World may be running out of gold with mine production in decline
Via RT Business While uncertainty created by the global pandemic has sparked a surge in gold buying, analysts are raising concerns over how much of the precious metal is left to mine. According to the World Gold Council, gold mine production totaled 3,531 tonnes in 2019, which is one percent lower than in the previous year. That is the first...
Will The Resurgence Of COVID In Europe Boost Gold Prices?
The number of new daily infections in Europe is rapidly increasing, even reaching new heights in several countries. That is just another reminder that the second wave in fall or winter is upon us. Yes, I know. You are all fed up reading about the coronavirus. And yet, the coronavirus is not fed up with spreading around the globe. The...
Pandemic knocks a tenth off incomes of workers worldwide
The income earned by workers around the world fell more than 10 per cent in the first nine months of 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the International Labour Organization — a loss totalling more than $3.5tn. The estimate, which equates to 5.5 per cent of global gross domestic product, was derived from the number of working hours...
Buttonwood – Can you make money from the Big Mac index? | Finance & economics
Sep 19th 2020 THIS WEEK Hong Kong’s monetary officials stepped into the foreign-exchange markets after dusk to defend the city’s long-standing peg to the dollar. Given everything the financial hub has faced in recent months—protests, a pandemic and punitive American sanctions—you might assume it is battling to prop its currency up. You would be wrong. The city’s monetary authority has...
Natural Gas Market: End-Of-Injection-Season Storage Index Is Now Below Market Expectations
The Weather Last week Last week (ending September 18), the number of cooling degree days (CDDs) plunged by 25.0% w-o-w (from 66 to 49). At the same time, the number of heating degree days (HDDs) remained largely unchanged (at 12). We estimate that total “energy demand” (as measured in total degree days, or TDDs) was 14.3% below last year’s level...
Not The Onion: US Space Force Deploys To Middle East
Via AlMasdarNews.com, The U.S. Army has deployed the first batch of its newly established military branch, the “Space Force”, outside the United States, specifically in the Arabian Peninsula. The Chargé d’Affairs at the United States Embassy in Qatar, Greta C. Holtz, said on her Twitter account on Tuesday, that “Washington has deployed the first group of the space force at...
‘CNN badly misreported this’: Edward Snowden debunks news story reporting he ‘agreed’ to give money from his book to US government
Via RT Edward Snowden has accused CNN of twisting facts by claiming that he was willing to forfeit book proceeds in favor of the US government. He even offered a “better” headline for the contested piece. Citing US court documents, CNN reported that Snowden “agreed” to forfeit more than $5 million he had allegedly earned from his book and speaking...
J&J launches first phase 3 trial of single-dose Covid-19 vaccine
Johnson & Johnson became the first leading pharmaceuticals company to test a single-dose Covid-19 vaccine with the launch this week of a phase 3 trial that will recruit 60,000 participants across three continents. The company’s decision to pursue a single-dose product may help its trials move faster than rivals that need to give two jabs, even though some other vaccine...
Thirty-Nine States Don’t Have Enough Money to Pay Their Bills
Via Peter Schiff September 23, 2020 by SchiffGold 0 0 It’s not just the federal government running massive deficits and piling up enormous levels of debt. Thirty-nine US states don’t have enough money to pay all of their bills. That was the grim conclusion of Truth in Accounting’s annual Financial State of the States report. The report summarizes a comprehensive analysis surveying the...
In Unprecedented Monetary Overhaul, The Fed Is Preparing To Deposit “Digital Dollars” Directly To “Each American”
Over the past decade, the one common theme despite the political upheaval and growing social and geopolitical instability, was that the market would keep marching higher and the Fed would continue injecting liquidity into the system. The second common theme is that despite sparking unprecedented asset price inflation, price as measured across the broader economy – using the flawed CPI...
Neste and Shell to increase supply of sustainable aviation fuel
FILE PHOTO: Fuel pumps are pictured at a Neste Oil gas station in Adazi, Latvia August 5, 2014. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins (Reuters) – Finnish biofuel producer and oil refiner Neste said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement with Shell Aviation to significantly increase the supply and availability of sustainable aviation fuel. “It brings together Neste’s expertise in the production and...