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The World
A new consensus may be emerging as lawmakers scramble to reach a deal on an emergency economic relief plan: A proposal to offer $300 per week in enhanced federal unemployment benefits is drawing broad bipartisan support. Meanwhile, as the Fed prepares for its final meeting of the year today, a NY Fed survey found households reporting the highest level of expected spending growth since July 2016. The increase was driven by households earning under $50,000 a year. (Finance 202, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times)
One-quarter of the world may not get a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022. Meanwhile, FDA scientists backed Moderna's coronavirus vaccine ahead of tomorrow’s advisory committee meeting, which should clear Moderna for emergency use. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca could seek the FDA's green light by February. Additionally, if vaccine clinical trials vaccines aren’t expanded soon to include children, it’s unlikely that even kids in their teens will be vaccinated in time for the next school year. (STAT News, HealthcareDive, Politico, Kaiser Health News)
Paris streets were empty as a new 8 p.m. curfew took effect. In Japan, Asahikawa, the freezing northern city of 340,000, has become a red flag for winter vulnerability: It accounts for 20% of the northern island of Hokkaido’s 330 fatalities — a case fatality rate of about 8%, compared to about 1% for Japan. Santa may have been a super spreader in Belgium, infecting 75 at a care home, and in Ludowici, GA, possible exposing 50 children. (Reuters, Reuters-2, CNN, Washington Post)
PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group, took in nearly $527 million in revenue last year, a $68 million increase from 2018 that came as the industry faced unprecedented opposition in Washington. Meanwhile, 67% of Americans are satisfied with what they pay for health insurance — new high. (STAT News, Gallup)
MSCI, a major US investment index compiler, will remove seven Chinese securities that President Trump has blacklisted because of suspected ties with Chinese military. Meanwhile, Japan’s exports fell in November, dashing expectations for an end to the two-year run of declines, largely due to weaker U.S.- and China-bound shipments and suggesting a slower pace of recovery for the world’s third-largest economy. (South China Morning News, Financial Times, Retuers)
New Biden appointments: (Reuters)
Pete Buttigieg to lead the Transportation Department, making him the first of Biden’s Democratic rivals for the presidency to land a non-VP Cabinet role. As a presidential candidate, Buttigieg’s infrastructure plan called for a national “Vision Zero”: a $1 trillion pledge to upgrade roads, utilities, and public transportation has an emphasis on road safety and climate adaptation. Former MI Gov. Granholm will lead the Energy Department. (Reuters, City Lab, Politico)
Former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as White House climate czar. McCarthy heads the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has sued the Trump administration more than 100 times. Michael Regan, the top environmental regulator in North Carolina, has emerged as a leading candidate to head the EPA. (Washington Post, Axios)
A major Princeton University-led analysis concludes there's a range of economically beneficial and technologically feasible options for reaching "net-zero" U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The researchers modeled a range of pathways that involve varying levels of renewable power increases, building and vehicle electrification, bioenergy, carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, enhanced carbon "land sinks" via better forest and farm practices, and more. (Axios, Princeton University)
Nearly 70% of college presidents identified student mental health as among their most pressing issues, compared to 53% in October. Meanwhile, colleges and universities would get $20 billion from Congress’ latest relief proposal, far short of the $120 billion higher education groups requested. (American Council on Education, HigherEdDive)
MacKenzie Scott, who became one of the biggest individual shareholders in Amazon last year after her divorce from founder Jeff Bezos, has given away $4.1 billion in the last four months to people suffering the effects of the pandemic. In doing so, Scott is acting quickly to fulfill the “giving pledge” she signed after her divorce to give away half her net worth during her lifetime. Scott got 4% of Amazon’s outstanding shares in the divorce settlement, Amazon has said, stock that is now worth about $60 billion. That suggests there is plenty more donations to come. Full list here. (The Information, New York Times, MacKenzie Scott)
Economy
Co-working executives estimate that as much as 50% of all flexible office space in major U.S. cities is currently available for lease. That availability would help push the overall office-availability rate in San Francisco to 21.8%. In Manhattan, the estimated availability rate after factoring in similarly high co-working vacancies is 15.9%, the highest since 1995. Some real-estate analysts expect these figures to continue rising, as more companies look to cut costs and embrace remote work. (Wall Street Journal)
For the first time in over 20 years, all S&P 500 boards have at least one woman. In 2020, S&P 500 boards appointed 413 new independent directors, with 59% of these appointments going to women and minority men. (CNBC)
Steel orders are jumping — the benchmark price for hot-rolled sheet steel has doubled since early August to a two-year high of $900 a ton — after their Covid-19 slowdown, as increased demand from manufacturers has delayed shipments, restarted mills and led to higher prices. (Wall Street Journal)
Social Finance, known as SoFi, pulled in about $200 million in revenue 3Q20 with positive EBITDA for the first time since 2017. The improvements come as more financial services startups have been looking to go public, including online lender Affirm and mortgage underwriter Betterdotcom. (The Information)
62% of Asian Americans and 41% of Hispanic Americans said they rarely, if ever, see themselves represented in ad content. 32% of Black Americans and 24% of white Americans said the same. (Morning Consult)
Technology
Apple plans to produce up to 96 million iPhones for 1H21, a nearly 30% year-on-year increase, after demand for its first-ever 5G handsets surged amid the pandemic. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Facebook is building a new video product that will let people pay content creators or celebrities for the chance to interact with them during a live broadcast. The tool, called Super, will let creators, entrepreneurs or celebrities host live, interactive video events. Viewers can tip creators by buying them digital gifts, or pay to “appear” alongside a creator during the livestream to ask a question or take a selfie. Creators will also be able to sell merchandise or other products alongside the livestream. (Bloomberg)
The EU revealed its plan to regulate Big Tech with two proposed bills — one focused on illegal content, the other on anticompetitive behavior — that would empower regulators to levy fines of up to 6% or 10% of annual world-wide revenue, or break up big tech companies. As drafted, the bills would likely apply to companies including Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. (BBC News, Wall Street Journal)
In the U.S., a coalition of states is finishing an antitrust lawsuit against Google that could be filed as soon as tomorrow. The bipartisan complaint is expected to allege that Google has altered its search engine designs to disadvantage rivals. Separately, the FTC asked Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, Reddit, Snap, Twitter and Discord for data on how they track personal information and target ads. (Politico, Protocol)
Meanwhile, Facebook will shift all its UK users into user agreements with the corporate headquarters in California, moving them out of reach of Europe’s privacy laws. (Reuters)
A “significant subset” of Gmail users continued to face email service issues as of yesterday evening. While users could access inboxes, they encountered “error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.” The errors come just a day after many Google properties, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Docs, were hit with a widespread outage. (The Verge, Google)
Smart Links
Census estimates U.S. population growth slowest since 1930s. (Wall Street Journal)
Japan scientists left ‘speechless’ by samples from asteroid 300 million km away. (South China Morning Post)
Walmart will use fully driverless trucks to make Arkansas deliveries in 2021. (The Verge)
Condé Nast puts Anna Wintour in charge of magazines worldwide. (New York Times)
Night kindergarten class meets needs of working families during the pandemic. (K12Dive)
Paris city hall fined for putting too many women in senior roles. (Agence France-Presse)
Learn More (today, 9 a.m. ET): Trans-Atlantic cooperation after the US election: Perspectives from France and Germany. (Brookings)