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The World
The World Economic Forum has launched the “Global Cooperation Barometer” to measure “the state of global cooperation. The barometer indicates that global cooperation was resilient in multiple dimensions from 2012 until 2020 but overall cooperation declined by 2% from 2020 to 2022.” The barometer “uses 42 indicators to measure five pillars of global cooperation” over the past decade: climate and natural capital, health and wellness, innovation and technology, peace and security, and trade and capital. (World Economic Forum)
“Americans are now getting an actual pay raise, even after accounting for inflation.” Average hourly earnings for private sector employees “rose at an annual rate of 4.1% in December, according to Friday's job report, a smidge higher than the 4% gain in November, and roughly 1 percentage point above the 3.1% annual rise inflation that month.” (Axios)
Taiwan’s vice-president accused China of the “most serious” interference in his country’s elections yet recorded as it sought to install a “Beijing-friendly” regime. Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party, criticised Beijing’s attitude that the election was a choice between peace and war. (Financial Times)
French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne resigns: French President Emmanuel Macron was expected to name a new prime minister after accepting the resignation of Élisabeth Borne, as he seeks to inject new energy into a government weakened by repeated battles in parliament and deteriorating poll numbers. The move caps days of speculation in France over the prospects for a government reshuffle, although the name of the new prime minister has not yet been released. The overhaul comes just months ahead of European elections in June and the Olympic Games in Paris starting in July, two major challenges this year for Macron. (Financial Times)
Belarus will not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor parliamentary and local elections next month. The decision “is the latest authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has undertaken in recent years to further cement his control over the country’s political institutions.” (Associated Press)
Kim Jong Un “turned 40 with no announced public celebrations at home.” While birthdays “are central to the mythology of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il” and are both national holidays in North Korea, the current leader’s birthday “has yet to be officially celebrated.” A Monday article published by the state-run news agency extolled Kim’s “guidance of major construction projects in the past decade,” but “made no mention of his birthday.” (Associated Press)
A diplomatic feud between India and the Maldives “escalated on Monday as a major Indian travel agency stopped flight bookings to the archipelagic nation and India summoned the Maldivian envoy while promoting its domestic beach destinations.” While the dispute “stems from antagonistic comments made by three Maldivian ministers about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week,” it has been “simmering” for nearly a year. The Maldives “is heavily dependent on tourism from India.” (Semafor)
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declined to inform the White House both times he was hospitalized and transferred authority to run the Pentagon to his deputy, military officials said, episodes that call into question Austin’s judgment amid heightened tensions in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The secrecy behind his hospitalization Jan. 1—known only to a handful of aides and military officials by the next day, but not the White House or President Biden until Thursday. Austin, 70 years old, first underwent what military officials described as “elective medical procedure” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Dec. 22 and remained there until the following day. During that time, Austin’s deputy, Kath Hicks, assumed some duties on his behalf. But Pentagon officials never informed the White House of that initial medical procedure. (Wall Street Journal)
President Biden is not considering firing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and “would not accept a resignation if Austin were to offer one,” according to a senior administration official. Biden “is famously loyal and values continuity in his cabinet.” (Politico)
A dangerous storm is sweeping the nation: An exceptionally intense storm system is underway across the Plains states and will bring disruptive and, in some cases, dangerous weather to the central and eastern United States. Strong tornadoes, blizzard conditions, flooding rains and damaging winds have begun or are expected with the cyclone as it batters the Lower 48 into early Wednesday. The low-pressure system began to rapidly form in Oklahoma late Monday and will next sweep through the Midwest on Tuesday and Michigan on Tuesday night. In the storm’s “warm sector,” from the Gulf Coast to the Outer Banks of the Carolinas, an outbreak of severe thunderstorms is anticipated Monday night into Tuesday, including hurricane-force straight-line winds and the potential for tornadoes. (Washington Post)
“The man known as the godfather of climate science” says the threshold to prevent the planet “from spiraling into a new superheated era will be ‘passed for all practical purposes’ during 2024.” James Hansen says that by May, temperatures will be as much as 1.7 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrialization average, exceeding the 1.5-degree threshold. However, most of Hansen’s peers say the threshold will not be crossed until the 2030s. (The Guardian)
Economy
Consumers’ near-term inflation expectations declined in December to the lowest level in nearly three years. Median inflation expectations “fell for a third month to 3.0%, down from 3.4% in November. Expectations for price growth at the three-year and five-year horizon also declined to 2.6% and 2.5%, respectively.” (Bloomberg)
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says 100,000 businesses “have joined a new database that collects ‘beneficial ownership’ information on firms as part of a new government effort to unmask shell company owners.” Yellen said the new database “sends the message that ‘the United States is not a haven for dirty money.’” (Associated Press)
The Labor Department will soon release a final rule “that will make it more difficult for companies to treat workers as independent contractors rather than employees that typically cost a company more.” The rule, first proposed in 2022, “will require that workers be considered employees entitled to more benefits and legal protections than contractors when they are ‘economically dependent’ on a company.” Legal challenges are expected. (Reuters)
Johnson & Johnson and Merck both announced plans to acquire cancer therapy developers on Monday. J&J will buy Ambrx Biopharma for $2 billion “to gain promising targeted cancer therapies known as antibody drug conjugates,” while Merck will purchase Harpoon Therapeutics “for about $680 million, gaining access to early-stage immunotherapies being tested for lung cancer and multiple myeloma.” (Reuters)
Japan’s Kyushu Electric Power may purchase of a 10% stake in the Lake Charles liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana “in an effort to reduce imports from Russia.” Kyushu Electric is also in discussions to buy 1.6 million tons of LNG annually for 20 years “along with other smaller Japanese utilities.” (Nikkei Asia)
“There are no sure things in markets, but many investors believe high-quality U.S. bonds are currently pretty close.” The Wall Street consensus “is that interest rates have peaked for this economic cycle, and the pain bondholders experienced in 2022 and 2023 has likely ended,” which “should make further investments in Treasurys and highly rated corporate bonds a good bet.” (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Samsung Profit Tumbles 35% as Chip Weakness Persists: Samsung posted its sixth straight quarter of declining operating profit, reflecting weak consumer demand and stoking uncertainty over the timing of a broader tech recovery. Korea’s largest company reported a 35% fall in operating income to 2.8 trillion won ($2.1 billion), about 24% shy of estimates. Revenue slid more than anticipated to 67 trillion won. In all of 2023, Samsung reported its slimmest operating profit in 15 years. (Bloomberg)
Nvidia rallies to record high as chipmaker announces AI-related components. (Reuters)
The Peregrine 1 lunar lander “ran into trouble just hours after launching on board United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) inaugural Vulcan rocket” early Monday. Shortly after the spacecraft was delivered to a trans-lunar injection orbit, Astrobotic, the company that built the lander, “said an ‘anomaly’ occurred that prevented it from orienting the spacecraft’s solar panels towards the Sun to begin drawing the necessary power to operate.” While an improvised corrective maneuver succeeded, the craft then suffered “a critical loss of propellant” and a moon landing now appears unlikely. (Spaceflight Now)
Vietnamese automaker VinFast will spend up to $2 billion “to build an electric vehicle factory in India, the world’s third-largest auto market by sales.” The factory in Tamil Nadu “will be the company’s first foray into India and follows VinFast’s launch of sales in the United States and other major markets.” (Associated Press)
How Hyundai became big in America after focusing on smaller electric vehicles (Financial Times)
“TV has long been the place where advertisers go to get the broadest audiences in media. But NBCUniversal is touting it as a venue where Madison Avenue can also find some of its narrowest.” The company plans for half of its 2024 advertising agreements to be “based on a search for niches of consumers built around an interest in a particular product or attribute, not on typical definitions such as viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.” (Variety)
Smart Links
Tiger Woods and Nike Split Up After 27 Years. (Wall Street Journal)
Nord Stream Probe Faces Resistance From Poland (Wall Street Journal)
China’s Central Bank Hints at Reserve Ratio Cut for Lenders (Bloomberg)
The Apple Vision Pro will launch in February (The Verge)
Robots Learn, Chatbots Visualize: How 2024 Will Be A.I.’s ‘Leap Forward’ (New York Times)