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The World
“Congress is veering toward another shutdown, having made little progress in advancing bills to keep the government open” since a continuing resolution was adopted six weeks ago. House Republicans “have yet to unveil their plan for how to fund the government, having spent three weeks trying to elect” a new speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted over that deal. The House finished its work week Thursday after the canceling of “votes on two funding bills that lacked the support to pass, adding to the dysfunction.” (CBS News)
“Speaker Mike Johnson, just two weeks into the job, had yet to give any public indication about his plan to prevent a lapse in government spending.” (New York Times)
The federal government has started making formal preparations for a possible shutdown. “With only eight days remaining before current funding expires, the White House’s top budget office told federal agencies to ready their plans for a major interruption, which could see millions of civilian workers and military personnel sent home or forced to work without pay after Nov. 17.” (Washington Post)
US forces under fire in Middle East as America slides towards brink: At least 40 separate drone and rocket attacks have been launched at US forces by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria over the past three weeks in response to American support for Israel in the Gaza war. (Reuters)
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) will not seek re-election but will instead “travel the country to see if there is interest ‘in mobilizing the middle.’” Manchin has close ties to No Labels, which is “seeking to garner interest in a potential third-party candidate for president. Manchin’s name has been mentioned as one of those potential candidates, but his announcement Thursday did not include any mention of a possible presidential run.” (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
Swing-state voters see US-Mexico border security as a greater priority than the foreign policy crises that are increasingly dominating President Joe Biden’s attention, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll shows. About three times as many voters said immigration is their top issue in the 2024 presidential contest as those who said the same about the Israel-Hamas war. Some 68% of respondents said they approve of funding for border protection, a larger share than the 61% who back aid to Israel or the 58% who favor aid to Ukraine. (Bloomberg)
With a New Home Out of Reach, They’re Spending Elsewhere: Americans are now postponing their home searches by years, not months, fueling new spending and saving dynamics. (Wall Street Journal)
“America’s long streak of population growth is expected to come to an end.” The Census Bureau said Thursday that “under the most likely scenario, the U.S. will stop growing by 2080 and shrink slightly by 2100.” (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
China's economic slowdown is hurting manufacturing worldwide. Net income of “roughly 13,000 major listed companies in the U.S., China, Europe, Japan and other economies for the July-September period totaled about $1.1 trillion” — down nine percent from one year earlier. (Nikkei Asia)
“China slipped back into deflation in October after a brief reprieve, highlighting how hard it is for Beijing to reinvigorate domestic demand.” (Wall Street Journal)
“Advocates of industrial policy have long argued that manufacturing possesses special powers” to boost economies and innovation, but in the U.S., “manufacturing’s powers seem to have vanished.” Though GDP grew at a 4.9% annual rate in the third quarter, labor productivity in manufacturing was actually down by 0.2%, “meaning that the boost to growth was driven by services. To make matters worse, productivity in the manufacturing sector has been in secular decline since 2011.” (The Economist)
More derivatives exchanges may be required to keep client funds separate from their own if a draft proposal by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is adopted. The proposal is “the latest response by U.S. policymakers to the havoc wrought by fallen crypto giant FTX.” (Bloomberg)
Record U.S. oil production helps tame prices: The U.S. is pumping oil at a record rate, helping send crude oil prices lower. U.S crude oil prices fell to their lowest level in more than three months on Wednesday. The decrease comes even as Russia and Saudi Arabia are sticking to their voluntary production cuts to prop up prices. Global demand has been slumping, too, especially from China. China is the second-largest consumer of crude oil behind the U.S., and it continues to struggle with a lackluster economy. Meanwhile, U.S. oil production is steadily ratcheting up: In the first week of November, U.S. crude oil production hit 13.2 million barrels per day, a new record. The decline of oil prices also comes despite the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the kind of geopolitical conflict that would traditionally result in some kind of fear premium in the oil market. (Axios)
Technology
A ransomware attack on the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, that nation’s largest bank, disrupted the U.S. Treasury market on Thursday. The attack prevented ICBC “from settling Treasury trades on behalf of other market participants, according to traders and banks.” Market participants rerouted trades because of the disruption. (Financial Times)
A top European court has ruled that Austria “cannot force Google, Meta, and TikTok to pay millions in fines if they fail to delete hate speech from their popular social media platforms.” A 2021 Austrian law required tech giants “to publish reports as often as every six months detailing content takedowns. Like the European Union's recently adopted Digital Services Act, the Austrian law sought to impose fines” for failing to deal with such content. (Ars Technica)
Apple will pay $25 million to settle Justice Department claims that the company “illegally favored immigrant workers over U.S. citizen and green card holders for certain jobs.” The DOJ says the settlement is the largest ever involving claims of discrimination based on citizenship, the agency said. In a statement, Apple “said it had ‘unintentionally not been following the DOJ standard.’” (Reuters)
Apple dealt blow at top EU court over €14.3bn tax bill in Ireland: Brussels handed lifeline by opinion that previous ruling quashing its order for funds ‘should be set aside’. (Financial Times)
Five major carmakers did not violate a Washington state privacy law by their storage of text messages in infotainment systems, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The five class-action suits argued that the messages were stored “in a way that potentially allows the messages to be retrieved by law enforcement using specialized hardware and software. The rulings in the carmakers' favor came in cases against Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, and Volkswagen.” (Ars Technica)
“Nvidia has developed three new chips tailored for China that aim to meet the region’s growing demand” for AI while staying in compliance with U.S. export rules. It is the second time just over a year that Nvidia “has been forced by new U.S. regulations to reconfigure its products for Chinese customers, as it strives to maintain its foothold in one of its most important markets.” (Financial Times)
“Future noise-canceling headphones could let users opt back in to certain sounds they’d like to hear,” such as a crying infant or an alarm. Semantic hearing technology “could pave the way for smarter hearing aids and earphones, allowing the wearer to filter out some sounds while boosting others.” A prototype has been trained to recognize 20 everyday sounds. (MIT Technology Review)
Smart Links
Portugal to hold snap election in March after resignation of PM. (Financial Times)
Federal judge rejects legal challenge to ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project. (Alaska Public Media)
OpenAI seeks partnerships to generate AI training data. (Reuters)
The California tech executive taking on Tesla. (Politico)
Time to make the doughnuts? Krispy Kreme may expand McDonald's partnership. (USA Today)