The Full Belmonte, 1/26/2022
Timothy A. Clary / AFP
“Wall Street experienced another day of volatility Tuesday as investors face uncertainty ahead of the Federal Reserve’s first policy meeting of 2022.” [Vox] Read more at New York Times / Coral Murphy Marcos
“Since the start of this year, the S&P 500, a benchmark for the stock market, has been down almost 9 percent. Unless it recovers by the end of the month, this will be the worst January in the index’s history.” [Vox] Read more at Axios / Matt Phillips
“Stocks are falling as investors sell to try to shield themselves from lackluster company earnings, expectations the Fed will raise interest rates, and rising international tensions between NATO and Russia — any of which could bring prices down even further.” [Vox] Read more at Washington Post / Aaron Gregg
“Once viewed as the future of currency, crypto assets have also plummeted in recent months. Since November, Bitcoin has lost 45 percent of its value as investors rush to get rid of their most risky investments and assets.” [Vox] Read more at Slate / Jordan Weissmann
“Investors are now anxiously waiting to see what Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces after Wednesday’s policy meeting. The central bank has said it would raise interest rates this year.” [Vox] Read more at Yahoo / Alexandra Semenova
A member of the Ukrainian army based in Avdiivka, on the front line less than half a mile away from separatist forces.
“President Joe Biden says a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent, but the atmosphere among the two country's populations is wildly different. Images from state TV in Moscow depict NATO forces as the aggressors, with tanks and troops heading to the Ukrainian border and snipers taking aim. NATO, meanwhile, says there is still a diplomatic way out of the crisis, but Russia must show it's ready to engage in good faith in political talks. Yesterday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CNN that Ukraine ‘will not allow anyone to impose any concessions’ on his country as part of efforts to de-escalate the threat. The Kremlin denies it is planning to invade and argues that NATO support for Ukraine -- including increased weapons supplies and military training -- constitutes a growing threat on Russia's western flank.” Read more at CNN
“The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it was working with gas and crude oil suppliers from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia to bolster supplies to Europe in the coming weeks, in an effort to blunt the threat that Russia could cut off fuel shipments in the escalating conflict over Ukraine.
European allies have been cautious in public about how far they would go in placing severe sanctions on Moscow if it invades Ukraine. Germany has been especially wary; it has shuttered many of its nuclear plants, increasing its dependence on natural gas imports to generate electricity.
Many European officials have said they suspect President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia instigated the current crisis in the depths of winter for a reason, calculating that he has more leverage if he can threaten to turn off Russian fuel sales to Europe.
So in recent weeks, American officials have been planning an effort that has echoes of the Berlin airlift, the attempt to keep West Berlin supplied in the face of a Soviet blockade in 1948 and 1949. That event led to the creation of NATO, the defensive alliance that Mr. Putin is hoping to undercut by massing troops along the Ukrainian border, and by demanding that NATO pull back from what he has called Russia’s ‘sphere of influence.’” Read more at New York Times
“Covid-19’s deadly effects manifest long after some patients leave the hospital, making people more than twice as likely to die or be admitted again within months. Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Oxford found Covid survivors also had an almost five-times greater risk of dying in the following 10 months than a sample taken from the general population.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The Biden administration is formally withdrawing its requirement that most workers be vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19 – the controversial rule the Supreme Court blocked from enforcement earlier this month.” Read more at USA Today
“Clinical trials have begun for a Pfizer-BioNTech omicron variant-specific vaccine. Although current vaccines have been effective at protecting against severe disease and hospitalization, the research would help address the highly contagious omicron and any potential new variants.” Read more at NPR
“A major computer chip shortage has left some manufacturers with only five days’ worth of inventory due to supply chain woes. According to a new report from the Commerce Department, the median supply of chips held by manufacturers has dropped from 40 days' worth in 2019 to less than five days' worth last year. The limited supply means that disruptions to production overseas — such as those from weather or new Covid-19 outbreaks — could again lead to factory shutdowns and furloughed workers in the US. This continues to disrupt production overseas while the pandemic and extreme weather cause even more delays. The shortage has been felt across the world, leading to price increases on everything from cars, cell phones and washing machines.” Read more at CNN
“WASHINGTON—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said she plans to seek re-election this fall, but gave no indication of whether she wants to remain her party’s leader, as Democrats face an uphill battle to keep control of the chamber in the midterms elections.
To win backing for the speakership in 2018, Mrs. Pelosi made a deal with party lawmakers that she would serve as speaker for just two more terms. Since then, she has declined to talk about whether she plans to step aside. While she has the firm backing of her caucus, many have openly called for a change in leadership.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, is the first woman to hold the highest position in the House.
Stewart Rhodes in 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP)
“Stewart Rhodes and nine alleged co-conspirators with the extremist Oath Keepers group pleaded not guilty Tuesday to seditious conspiracy and other charges in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
An 11th defendant arrested with Rhodes on Jan. 13, Edward Vallejo, was not present during a court hearing in the case Tuesday and will be arraigned later. Rhodes and those charged with him are accused of plotting violence to prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Rhodes, the group’s founder and the most prominent figure charged in the Justice Department’s investigation of the attack, remains jailed pending a bond decision by a U.S. magistrate judge in Plano, Tex. The 56-year-old Army veteran and Yale Law School graduate was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.” Read more at Washington Post
“A legal challenge in North Carolina may require Representative Madison Cawthorn to prove that he is not an ‘insurrectionist.’” Read more at New York Times
“Rescue crews are continuing to search Wednesday for 39 people missing for several days after the boat they were in capsized off the Florida coast. The Coast Guard got a call from a ‘good Samaritan’ early Tuesday who rescued a man clinging to the capsized vessel about 45 miles east of Fort Pierce, the agency tweeted. The survivor said he left Bimini, Bahamas, with 39 other people Saturday night. The survivor said the group ran into severe weather, causing the boat to capsize, according to a Coast Guard statement. The Coast Guard is calling it a suspected human smuggling case. Officials said on Twitter that they are searching by both air and sea over a roughly 135-mile area extending from Bimini to the Fort Pierce Inlet.” Read more at USA Today
“The Biden administration has authorized more than $2 billion in arms sales to Egypt despite ongoing concerns about Cairo's human rights record. The State Department said the sale includes military aircraft, air defense radar systems and other related equipment. In September, the US released $170 million in military aid to Egypt but also put $130 million on hold, conditioned on Egypt improving its record on human rights in specific ways. The Egyptian government has been charged with serious human rights abuses, including unlawful or arbitrary killings, forced disappearance, torture, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, arbitrary detention, and restrictions on freedom of speech, expression, and political participation, according to the State Department's annual report on human rights in the country.” Read more at CNN
“The House of Representatives unveiled legislation to bolster U.S. research and development to better compete with China and help the domestic chip industry, in a bid to negotiate a final bill this year with the Senate.” Read more at Bloomberg
“A $14 billion Pentagon software upgrade for F-35 jets is being installed on planes that are already deployed even though it’s ‘immature, deficient and insufficiently tested,’ according to a new assessment by the military’s testing office.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The SAT is getting a makeover. The new college-admissions test will be digital, not paper, and two hours, not three. Scores will arrive in days, not weeks. It launches internationally in March 2023 and in the U.S. in March 2024.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“(CNN)The San Jose, California, city council voted Tuesday night to adopt a first-in-the-nation ordinance requiring most gun owners to pay a fee and carry liability insurance, measures aimed at reducing the risk of gun harm by incentivizing safer behavior and easing taxpayers of the financial burden of gun violence.
The Silicon Valley city's council split the vote into two parts: the first approving the bulk of the proposal, including the insurance provisions, and the second approving the fee provisions. The insurance vote passed 10-1, while the fees vote passed 8-3.
The ordinance must be approved next month at its final reading in order to take effect in August. Gun rights supporters have threatened to sue to block the measures if they become law.
Ahead of the vote, Democratic Mayor Sam Liccardo estimated that San Jose residents incur about $442 million in gun-related costs each year. ‘Certainly the Second Amendment protects every citizen's right to own a gun. It does not require taxpayers to subsidize that right,’ Liccardo said Monday at a news conference.” Read more at CNN
Instead of filling out paper answer sheets, students will be able to take the digital exam on their own tablet or laptop, or on a device provided to them.
PHOTO: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
“LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson is bracing for the conclusions of an investigation into allegations of lockdown-breaching parties, a document that could help him end weeks of scandal and discontent, or bring his time in office to an abrupt close.
Senior civil servant Sue Gray could turn in her report to the government as soon as Wednesday. Johnson’s office has promised to publish its findings, and the prime minister will address Parliament about it soon after.
Gray’s office wouldn’t comment on timing, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the Conservative government hadn’t yet received the report Wednesday morning.
‘I expect we won’t have much longer to wait,’ she told the BBC.” Read more at AP News
“Years of intense athletic training now boils down to one final test for Olympians: dodging a positive COVID result.
10 days out from the Olympics, athletes are battening down the hatches in hopes of making it within the Beijing bubble — the strictest ever created for a global sporting event, reports Axios Sports reporter Jeff Tracy.
Athletes must test negative twice within 96 hours of their flight and again upon arrival in Beijing.
A positive test will force them to stay home or endure a lengthy isolation in China.” Read more at Axios
“Animal owners in Hong Kong are chartering private flights to help get their pets out of the country as many leave the financial hub due to its strict Covid measures.” [Vox] Read more at CNN / Lilit Marcus and Ivan Watson
“Britain’s Prince Andrew, already stripped of his titles by the Queen, has moved to sell his Swiss chalet to raise cash for legal fees as he faces a sexual abuse lawsuit.” [Vox] Read more at Washington Post / Greg Miller
“Donald Trump has made a habit of deriding the U.S. alliance with Western Europe. He described NATO — the American-led alliance with Europe that dates to the 1940s — as “obsolete” and said that Americans were ‘schmucks’ for financing it. He mused about withdrawing the U.S. from NATO and often spoke more positively about Russia than about longtime American allies like Germany and France.
These comments were a radical departure from the policies of every U.S. president, Republican and Democrat, for 75 years. Still, because Trump did not make good on his biggest threats, the tangible effects were not always clear.
Now they are becoming clearer.
Russia has massed about 125,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, threatening an invasion that would be the most substantial ground war in Europe since the end of World War II. To prevent that, President Biden, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and several other leaders are trying to present a unified front and tell Russia that it would suffer severe economic consequences. But one crucial country is missing from that united front: Germany.
As Katrin Bennhold, The Times’s Berlin bureau chief, writes:
Denmark is sending fighter jets to Lithuania and a frigate to the Baltic Sea. France has offered to send troops to Romania. Spain is sending a frigate to the Black Sea. President Biden has put thousands of U.S. troops on ‘high alert.’
And then there is Germany. In recent days Germany — Europe’s largest and richest democracy, strategically situated at the crossroads between East and West — has stood out more for what it will not do than for what it is doing.
Germany’s government, under its new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has ruled out any arms exports to Ukraine. It is also delaying a shipment of howitzers from Estonia to Ukraine. It may have kept British planes from using German airspace when sending military supplies to Ukraine last week.
Most significantly, the Scholz government has been vague about whether a Russian invasion would lead to the shutdown of an undersea gas pipeline between Germany and Russia. The pipeline, the Nord Stream 2, will become a major source of energy for Germany and a major source of revenue for Russia once it begins operating, likely in the next year. Scholz recently described Nord Stream 2 as a ‘private-sector project.’
Pipes for Nord Stream 2 in Germany.Jens Buettner/DPA, via Associated Press
Trumpism in action
The pipeline’s history highlights the long-term consequences of Trump’s hostility to Europe. For years, many U.S. officials opposed Nord Stream 2, understanding that it would solidify ties between Germany and Russia. It is also likely to damage Ukraine’s economy; much of Russia’s natural gas has flowed through Ukraine, which receives fees in exchange.
But Trump showed little interest in building a good relationship with Germany as a way to persuade it to abandon the pipeline. He instead criticized America’s longtime allies in Europe — and treated Russian President Vladimir Putin warmly.
Trump’s hostility to Western Europe, in turn, encouraged Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor at the time, to ponder a future in which the U.S. might be pulling back from NATO. In that scenario, friendly relations with Russia (and China, too) would have advantages, especially because of its importance to European energy supplies.
‘By the time Biden took office, the pipeline was nearly complete,’ said my colleague Michael Crowley, who covered Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Germany last week. ‘Biden calculated that restoring relations with Berlin after the Trump era was far too important to risk with a last-ditch and potentially futile effort to stop the project.’
Instead, Biden waived sanctions — which Congress established starting in 2017 — on companies that worked on the pipeline. It was too late to prevent completion, he decided.
Trump’s European policy is hardly the only reason that the pipeline exists. Discussions about it began before he was president, reflecting decades of close ties between Germany and Russia, as Katrin notes. But Trump’s foreign policy diminished American influence in Europe — and, if anything, sent signals that the U.S. favored closer ties between Russia and Western Europe.
Leaders across much of Eastern Europe are not happy about these developments. Ukraine’s foreign minister has accused Berlin of effectively ‘encouraging’ Russian aggression. A senior Lithuanian official said that Germany was ‘making a big strategic mistake and putting its reputation at risk.’
Putin, on the other hand, seems thrilled. He has embarked on a campaign to weaken democracies and strengthen autocracies, both in his own region (as in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus) and elsewhere (through election misinformation campaigns in the U.S. and Western Europe). Despite this aggression, NATO is not unified in confronting him, giving Putin more leeway to act as he chooses.
‘He well recognizes that Europe’s main power base is France, Germany and Britain,’ Tobias Ellwood, a member of Britain’s Parliament who helps set military policy, told The Washington Post. ‘If these three countries are united, the rest of Europe follows. If you can sow divisions among these three, then there’s no leadership, there’s no coordination and there’s no unity.’
The divisions even extend to internal U.S. politics. This week, Tom Malinowski, a Democrat who represents New Jersey in the House, tweeted: ‘My office is now getting calls from folks who say they watch Tucker Carlson and are upset that we’re not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine, and who want me to support Russia’s ‘reasonable’ positions.’
It’s still possible that Germany will do more to discourage an invasion than it has so far. Scholz said recently that Russia would suffer ‘high costs’ if it invades. Yet Putin is savvy enough to understand the difference between a unified, clear European effort to prevent an invasion and a muddled one. Germany has chosen a muddle so far.
It’s a sign that Trump has succeeded at one of his foreign-policy goals: creating distance between the U.S. and at least some parts of NATO.” Read more at New York Times
“$6.5 million — The average cost of 30 seconds of ad time during this year’s Super Bowl, the ad-tracking firm Kantar estimated. That’s up from $5.5 million last year. The game will air on CBS on Feb. 13.
131 — The number of countries that failed to make any meaningful progress on corruption over the last decade, according to the Berlin-based advocacy group Transparency International, which looked at 180. The reputations of more than two dozen were at an all-time low.
95% — The share of workers who want flexible hours versus 78% who want location flexibility. Future Forum, a consortium focused on reimagining the future of work led by Slack Technologies, surveyed more than 10,000 knowledge workers in November.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Experian will permit consumers who don’t have credit reports to create them from scratch, starting this week.
The program helps the roughly 28 million Americans without credit reports, because without credit scores, they often can’t borrow from banks and other mainstream lenders. Among those most affected are college students, people who avoid debt, immigrants and many Black and Hispanic adults. Many in Experian’s Go program will link recurring nondebt bills—including utilities, cable, cell phone and streaming services—to their newly created credit reports. Experian says that will get them, on average, from having no FICO score to a 665, the baseline for what lenders consider decent credit. Experian then can pitch them credit cards—and collect money from issuers, if consumers open accounts.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“GM is making the largest investment in company history in its home state of Michigan, with plans to spend $7 billion to convert a factory to make electric pickups and to build a new battery cell plant, AP reports.
Why it matters: GM is rolling the dice on Americans converting from internal combustion engines to battery power.
The moves — announced yesterday in Lansing, the state capital — will create up to 4,000 jobs, and keep another 1,000 already employed at an underutilized assembly plant north of Detroit.
CEO Mary Barra said the investment will make Michigan ‘the epicenter of the electric vehicle industry.’” Read more at Axios
“Amid a nationwide nursing shortage and burnout crisis, tech companies say they could be part of the solution by allowing nurses to essentially join the gig economy, Axios health care editor Tina Reed writes.
Why it matters: Demand is accelerating for tools to help hospitals more efficiently fill shifts and offer exhausted workers more flexibility.
Lots of money is flowing into these models:
Nurse staffing app connectRN raised $76 million in VC cash last month, and TrustedHealth raised $149 million in November.
Last year, ShiftMed raised $45 million, Nomad netted $63 million and CareRev completed a $50 million Series A funding round.” Read more at Axios
“David Ortiz needed just one swing to power his way into baseball’s Hall of Fame, narrowly punching his ticket to Cooperstown on the same night voters denied steroid-stained legends Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for the 10th and final time.
Ortiz was named on 307 of 394 ballots, just 11 votes above the 75% required for induction in results released Tuesday night by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He will be enshrined in July despite a reported positive test for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003.
Bonds and Roger Clemens, far superior players than Ortiz with much stronger ties to PED use, were not so fortunate.
Though both recorded their highest vote percentages ever, Bonds (260 votes, 66%) and Clemens (257, 65.2%) could not rally sufficient support to earn induction. They’ll now fall off the writers’ ballot – the Hall in 2014 reduced the number of eligible years from 15 to 10, significantly harming their prospects – and will be at the mercy of the 16-person Today’s Game committee, which can consider them twice every five years.” Read more at USA Today
After 15 seasons at the helm, Sean Payton informed the New Orleans Saints on Tuesday he’s stepping down as coach. (Derick Hingle/AP)
“Sean Payton stepped away Tuesday as coach of the New Orleans Saints, ending a highly successful 15-season run with a franchise that he helped revive but not ruling out an eventual return to an NFL sideline.” Read more at Washington Post
A Steller's sea eagle seen off Georgetown, Maine. Photo: Zachary Holderby, Downeast Audubon via AP
“This beautiful bird doesn't belong in Maine, but is delighting Mainers nonetheless, AP reports.
The Steller’s sea eagle — native to northeast Russia and Japan — arrived in Maine last month after a brief stop in Massachusetts.
It has stuck to Maine’s middle coast, eating fish and ducks and attracting hundreds of bird-watchers from all over the world.
Maine’s lone Steller’s sea eagle is an adult, and its sex is not confirmed.
For comparison: A Steller's eagle is about twice as big as a bald eagle.” Read more at Axios