Since the Panama Canal debuted its larger Neopanamax locks in 2016, the three heaviest users have been container ships, liquified natural gas (LNG) carriers and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carriers. Now, transit demand for all three segments is simultaneously surging. On top of that, COVID issues are reportedly affecting canal operations.

By a completely partisan vote of 48 to 47 (though Rand Paul voted against), The Senate confirmed Trump nominee Christopher Waller to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors - filling one of the two vacant slots on the influential economic body.

Christopher Waller, the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was confirmed to a term that runs through January 2030. He has attended meetings of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year in his capacity at the St. Louis Fed. He headed the University of Notre Dame’s economics department before joining the regional Fed bank in 2009.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called-out Speaker Nancy Pelosi during his weekly press briefing; saying members of her own party are saying she’s been “wrong” to hurt the unemployed and small businesses.

“Many people are finally telling Nancy Pelosi in her own party that she has been wrong to hurt those who are unemployed, the small businesses that are shuttering every day. You know, not every business can be named the French Laundry and people will just go to it,” said McCarthy.

It’s easy to lay America’s visible frustrations at the feet of Covid lockdowns or political polarization, but this conveniently ignores the real driver: systemic unfairness.

The status quo has been increasingly rigged to benefit insiders and elites as the powers of central banks and governments have picked the winners (cronies, insiders, cartels and monopolies) and shifted the losses and risks onto the losers (the rest of us).

We now live in the world the 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat so aptly described:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

Ours is a two-tier society and economy with a broken ladder of social mobility for those trying to reach the security of the technocrat class.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a law to kick Chinese companies off U.S. stock exchanges if they do not fully comply with the country’s auditing rules, giving President Donald Trump one more tool to threaten Beijing with before leaving office.

The measure passed the House by unanimous voice vote, after passing the Senate unanimously in May, sending it to Trump, who the White House said is expected to sign it into law.

“The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act” bars securities of foreign companies from being listed on any U.S. exchange if they have failed to comply with the U.S. Public Accounting Oversight Board’s audits for three years in a row.

Governments are likely to continue printing money to pay their debts with devalued money. That’s the easiest and least controversial way to reduce the debt burdens and without raising taxes.

In an interview with The New York Times, Joe Biden said he will not “immediately” lift tariffs on Chinese goods or scrap President Trump’s Phase One trade deal, which was signed by the US and China in January.

“I’m not going to make any immediate moves, and the same applies to the tariffs,” Biden said in the interview that was published on Wednesday. Biden said he first wants to conduct a review of the trade deal and consult with US allies in Europe and Asia about China.

“The best China strategy, I think, is one which gets every one of our — or at least what used to be our — allies on the same page. It’s going to be a major priority for me in the opening weeks of my presidency to try to get us back on the same page with our allies,” he said.

One of the most puzzling single-stock stories of the post-pandemic era is how 3M, a pillar of American industry and long-time component of the Dow 30, has seen its shares lag this year. Though shares have seen a pickup as of late courtesy of the rotation in value, they' only just barely tapped their highs from January, before 3M was bushwacked by fears about slowing global growth and demand.

That "gamma gravity" at 3,650 we have been discussing for the past three days continued to make its presence known overnight as futures tried another break above all time highs and failed, eventually fading back to unchanged and last trading at 3,665, two points the Wednesday close as European stocks erased an earlier loss, while the dollar selloff continued and 10Y yields were fractionally lower ahead of initial jobless claims data which are expected to show another 775K workers were laid off in the latest week.

In news that should stun no one, the Government Accountability Office has found that the Labor Department has "consistently" provided inaccurate information on the state of the labor market. The GAO also found that millions of workers were underpaid by government assistance during the pandemic.

The Labor Department's weekly jobless claims reports have produced “flawed estimates of the number of individuals receiving benefits each week throughout the pandemic,” the GAO said, according to the Wall Street Journal. The GAO said they "didn't know the full extent of the errors".

At the same time, they also found that "a program created by Congress to provide jobless benefits to workers who are normally not eligible for them has underpaid recipients in most states." The average weekly payout for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance - used to help gig workers - was under the poverty line in 70% of states, the report noted.

The Financial Times reviewed a letter, written by Ivory Coast and Ghana, think of both as cocoa's OPEC, control about two-thirds of the world's cocoa trade, outlined how both countries were angered by the blatant attempt of top chocolate companies and traders including Mars, Hershey, and Olam in their attempts to circumvent a premium on cocoa meant to help combat poverty among African farmers.

The letter said chocolate producers attempted to avoid a $400-per-ton "living income differential" (LID), which is a tax added to the price of cocoa bought from Ghana and the Ivory Coast. In addition to the major industry players, the letter calls out four other smaller cocoa traders.

In a separate letter, Ivorian Conseil de Café Cacao and the Ghana Cocoa Board blasted Hershey for their attempt to bypass the LID, calling their alleged strategies a "breach of faith." Authorities halted Hershey from operating its chocolate sustainability programs in both countries.

UPS ordered drivers to temporarily stop accepting packages from Macy's, Gap, Nike, L.L. Bean and other large retailers this week, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing an internal message confirmed to the Journal by UPS employees.

The big picture: Thanksgiving Day online sales reportedly hit a record $5.1 billion this year, while Americans spent $10.8 billion in e-commerce for Cyber Monday — the biggest U.S. online shopping day ever, per the Washington Post.

Cars and other vehicles (motorhomes, boats, motorcycles, etc.) each have a title and require your signature to transfer the vehicle to another person. That means they are subject to probate after your death UNLESS you have the vehicle “owned” or titled in the name of your living revocable trust.

I hear all the time that you shouldn’t put cars into a living revocable trust. People for some reason think it will expose the assets of the trust to liabilities associated with the vehicle. The trust in no way protects your assets, so that reasoning is simply false.

You should put your vehicles into your trust in order to avoid probate. Only those assets held by the trust will avoid probate.

The US government has borrowed $4.2 trillion in the last 12 months, pushing the total national debt to over $27 trillion. In order for Uncle Sam to borrow, somebody has to lend. So, who is buying all of these government bonds? Foreign and domestic investors, commercial banks and US government entities all buy US debt, but increasingly, the Federal Reserve is backstopping the market and making this borrowing binge possible.

In Q3, the Fed bought $240 billion in US Treasuries. That brought its total Treasury holdings to $4.44 trillion. The central bank now holds a record 16.5% of the US debt load.

In the last 12 months, the Fed has doubled its holdings of Treasuries, adding a staggering $2.4 trillion in US government bonds to its balance sheet – most of that since March. The Fed’s total share of US debt has spiked from 9.3% in Q1 to 16.5%.

Lawmakers released a blitz of competing coronavirus relief proposals Tuesday, reigniting stalled talks as the pandemic surges across the country, but without any clear signs that Democratic and Republican leaders would be able to reach a consensus.

A bipartisan group from the House and Senate unveiled a roughly $900 billion compromise proposal, offering one route between House Democrats’ last $2.4 trillion bill and Senate Republicans’ recent $650 billion proposal. Meanwhile, GOP and Democratic leaders traded new offers, as the looming expiration of some relief measures intensified the pace of year-end legislating.

In another sign of the new urgency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held their first phone conversation since the election on relief measures and spending legislation.

With shares up nearly 600% year-to-date, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is worried the company's stock could "get crushed" if it doesn't start to focus on profitability and affordability.

Ticker Security Last Change Change %
TSLA TESLA INC. 568.95 -15.81 -2.70%
TD Ameritrade Stock Table

Musk's email, obtained by news outlet Electrek, notes that Telsa shares are being valued on future profits, but if investors decide the profitability isn't there, the company's stock will suffer drastically.

The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) has appealed to the United Nations to educate citizens to use their roles as consumers to create a momentum for change. This was ahead of the 2021 Food Systems Summit which the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, will host on November 25 next year.

Delivering the message through Danielle Nierenberg, the president of the Food Tank, at the conclusion of the one-day Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork summit, BCFN said the world should take advantage of the COVID-19 opportunity and not return to normal.

“The normal left us vulnerable, and the crisis we’re experiencing has really widened the cracks in the food system that was in need of much repair,” said Nierenberg who was also co-moderating the session.

China accounts for more than a third of export dollars earned by Australia.

The figures, for the 12 months to October, cover the period of coronavirus disruptions and disputes over trade.

They apply to physical exports rather than harder to measure services, and are dominated by record-high Chinese takings of Australian iron ore.

But they mightn’t last.

Republicans are preparing to reembrace their inner deficit hawks after greenlighting big spending bills under President Trump.

GOP senators say they expect to refocus on curbing the nation’s debt and reforming entitlement programs starting in 2021, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the debt has surpassed the size of the American economy.

“I think that’s kind of getting back to our DNA. ... I think spending, entitlement reform, growth and the economy are all things that we’re going to have to be focused on next year, and, yeah, I would expect you’ll hear a lot more about that,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.

The shift could pose a significant headache for a new Biden administration that will need GOP support in the Senate to move its agenda. It is also likely to complicate efforts on a debt ceiling deal.

VICE World News sat down with Senator Iván Marulanda to talk about his cocaine legalization bill, which is currently moving through Colombia’s congress.

After 40 years of U.S. - backed anti-drug policy that criminalizes the coca leaf, Marulanda and a group of members of congress want to change tack.

The bill attempts to create a legal industry that distributes cocaine to users for pain relief, not recreational use. Like that in Bolivia, it also hopes to bring hundreds of thousands of illegal coca farmers out of the shadows into a legal, homegrown industry.

There are three ‘must pass’ bills in the lame duck session of Congress that are going to be addressed one way or the other, yet Congress can’t help themselves by loading up these bills with pet projects and special interest requests.

These are the days when Congress acts behind closed doors and without public input. The leadership of both parties loves this time, because they can insert pet provisions in massive bills, then dare opponents to take the whole bill down if they don’t like it. The final versions of these bills will not go through any committee hearings, markups or floor amendment process – they will be rolled to the floor of the House and Senate with rank-and-file members having a few hours to digest hundreds of pages of legislative language before a vote. Expect the last-minute legislation to be loaded up like a Christmas tree for special interest and K Street lobbyists to the detriment of the American taxpayer.

By limiting access to China’s AI and rare earth metals, Beijing is responding to President Trump’s endless stream of sanctions. But this latest move is set to cause big problems for the companies that work with the US military.

China’s announcement of new laws controlling the exports of ‘sensitive items’ in a way that mirrors the US Commerce Department’s ‘entity list’ is the latest example of escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington.

The new regulations are set to control items said to be vital to the country’s national security, including military items, strategic technologies, artificial intelligence algorithms, and, most strikingly, rare earth mineral exports.

Another day, another stock record. The S&P 500 soared to a fresh all-time high on Tuesday, while the yield curve steepened on optimism about more fiscal stimulus and the imminent deployment of vaccines. The seeming disconnect between financial markets and the economy is kind of surreal, considering that 11 million people remain unemployed and the virus is spiraling out of control.

The fact that U.S. policy makers are still pedal-to-the-metal with monetary stimulus stands in sharp contrast to China, where officials have set their sights on an exit from loose policy. Consider recent events:

Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, described China’s property market as the biggest “gray rhino” - an obvious yet ignored financial risk.

The Seattle chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will be voting today on a new resolution that demands pushing state and federal bodies to take money from white workers and give it to blacks as “reparations.”

In a time where millions of white Americans are unemployed, falling behind on bills and facing food insecurity and homelessness, the tone deaf proposal rationalizes that “while all members of the working class are exploited by capitalism, white workers have benefited disproportionately from racist and anti-Black institutions (housing, healthcare, education, policing, etc.) set up under racialized capitalism.”

The DSA document even reduces the idea of socialism itself to being a product of racism, stating that socialist groups “developed within the context of colonialism and systemic racism” and today serve to “normalize whiteness & white practices/frameworks” by conceptualizing working people as “white, male, cisgendered, able-bodied, and heterosexual.”

The CARES Act was signed into law on March 27. Congress earmarked $454 billion of that stimulus money to be distributed by the Treasury to the Federal Reserve to be used for emergency lending programs to save businesses and jobs during the pandemic and keep credit flowing to the U.S. economy. The catch was that the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, would have to give his approval for each of the programs.

Since June, Wall Street On Parade has been reporting that $340 billion of the $454 billion that Mnuchin was instructed to turn over to the Fed was unaccounted for. We noted that 98,000 businesses had permanently closed in the U.S. while this money, intended for economic relief, went missing.

On November 19, Mnuchin publicly issued a letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, making it sound like most of the CARES Act money has been sitting idle at the Fed and Mnuchin was demanding it back to put to better use.

Ukraine’s economic situation is getting more and more complicated. The country is going through a moment of great crisis, from which it hoped to mitigate the effects by receiving emergency financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. However, the IMF now refuses to provide a large part of such emergency aid and launches Kiev into a danger of financial collapse. Now, the country must look for other ways to end this fiscal year after facing a large debt in its budget.

In baseball, there is a situation where a base runner is sprinting to home plate and can’t see what is happening behind him. Totally focused on scoring, he doesn’t know if the outfielder is throwing a ball that will reach home plate first. That’s where we get the phrase “out of left field.” (If the ball were coming from right field, the runner could actually see it.)

COVID-19 was the ultimate ball out of left field. Yes, we knew viruses spread and pandemics were possible. Most of us have lived through them before. We didn’t foresee this particular one appearing when and where it did. But it quickly changed the course of history.

Neera Tanden, who President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday as his choice to lead the Office of Budget and Management, advocated forcing the Libyan government to give oil proceeds to the U.S. government in order to “partially pay us back” for military intervention there in 2011.

Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, came under intense scrutiny in 2015 over the email, which she sent to colleagues on Oct. 21, 2011, a day after Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was killed.

According to the email, published by The Intercept, Tanden and other CAP officials were discussing a segment on CNN about whether Libya should compensate the U.S. for helping oust Gaddafi. (RELATED: Neera Tanden Suggested How To Get NYT To Cover Hillary More Favorably)

“We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil,” Tanden wrote to her colleagues on Oct. 21, 2011.

American billionaires haven't been just immune to the pandemic, they have been thriving in it, drastically increasing their collective wealth. An analysis by Chuck Collins at the Institute for Policy Studies found that American billionaires have been their wealth grow by $1 trillion since March of this year - more than 34 percent. That was not the case during the 2008 financial crisis when it took Forbes' 400 richest people three years to recoup their losses from the Great Recession. Collins' findings highlight a wealth gain by a mere 650 individuals that seems obscene at a time when nearly 7 million Americans are at risk of eviction when moratoriums expire at the end of the year.

Maybe it’s because Wall Street On Parade has been shining a bright light on the serial crimes and rap sheets of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Or maybe it’s because the nonpartisan watchdog, Better Markets, published a report last year titled “Wall Street’s Six Biggest Bailed-Out Banks: Their RAP Sheets & Their Ongoing Crime Spree.” Or maybe it all comes down to what Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said after the financial crisis of 2008: “And the banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

Whatever the reason, the darkness that started growing around the crimes committed by the big Wall Street banks during the Obama administration has now evolved into such a complete dark curtain that regulators are refusing to say what the crimes actually are that are being settled for huge amounts of money.

Communism under the cover of COVID

Covid is an excuse to do to small business owners what Stalin
did to the Kulaks in Ukraine:
Exterminate them. The Holomodor.
Communists don't want anyone to be economically independent.

"Mine is just one corner of a city filled with millions of people.
One tiny slice of life. But it's magnified by thousands,
possibly millions, of other shuttered businesses all over the world.
Businesses gone bust, dreams destroyed, lives ruined, all because of a lockdown over a phony virus."