Top 25 important news stories from last week

 COVID-19  NEWS:
October 14
– Reuters
(Benoit Van Overstraeten and
Jan Lopatka):
(1)
“France imposed curfews while other European nations are closing schools, canceling surgeries and enlisting student medics as overwhelmed authorities face the nightmare scenario of a COVID-19 resurgence at the onset of winter. With new cases hitting about 100,000 daily, Europe has by a wide margin overtaken the United States, where more than 51,000 COVID-19 infections are reported on average every day.”


(2)
October 15
– Financial Times:
“Countries across Europe are reimposing painful restrictions on public life ... In Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, infections hit record daily highs on Thursday while France imposed evening curfews on its biggest cities and Londoners faced new limits on socializing indoors. The resurgence of the virus is a huge setback for a continent that had largely succeeded in bringing infection rates down to manageable levels over the summer, after implementing tough lockdowns.”


(3)
October 14
– Financial Times
(Valentina Romei and
John Burn-Murdoch):
“The ... City of London or lower Manhattan ... empty shops, boarded up storefronts and cafés struggling for survival in once bustling financial districts. ... city centers have become ghost towns. According to FT research…, London and New York have seen a dramatic drop in visits to restaurants and retail venues since the start of the pandemic. ... Visits to central Paris were down 40% in the week to October 9 compared with the pre-pandemic average in January, and even Stockholm, which has had much lighter restrictions, has suffered a decline of 20%. But it is cities like New York and London, where high-rise office buildings host a large number of professional services and banking staff now mostly working from home, which have suffered the most.”


(4)
October 13
– Bloomberg
(Isis Almeida and
Dan Murtaugh):
“Jordan has built up record wheat reserves while Egypt, the world’s top buyer of the grain, took the unusual step of tapping international markets during its local harvest and has boosted purchases by more than 50% since April. Taiwan said it will boost strategic food stockpiles and China has been buying to feed its growing hog herd. ... The pandemic has already upset domestic farm-to-fork supply chains that provided just enough inventory to meet demand, with empty store shelves across the world leading consumers to change their shopping habits.”


ALL  OTHER  NEWS:
(5)
October 15
– Bloomberg
(Alberto Gallo):
“After almost two decades of quantitative easing by the world’s major central banks ... the more than $16 trillion of bond and stock purchases by central banks since the financial crisis alone has artificially boosted asset prices. ... they failed to achieve their primary goal, which was to spark faster inflation. ... We have witnessed some rather unprecedented market moves in recent months, with government bonds falling along with equities with increasing regularity.”


(6)
October 13
– Bloomberg
(Ksenia Galouchko):
“Among investors surveyed in the week through Oct. 8 by Bank of America Corp., 61% believe the U.S. vote’s outcome will be challenged, causing maximum volatility in the final months of the year. The monthly survey took place at a time when… Biden held a lead of an average of 9 percentage points nationally over Trump.”


(7)
October 15
– Bloomberg
(Michael Heath and
Kathleen Hays):
“World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart said the coronavirus pandemic is turning into a major economic crisis and warned of the possibility of a financial crisis emerging. ‘This did not start as a financial crisis but it is morphing into a major economic crisis, with very serious financial consequences,’ Reinhart said… ‘There’s a long road ahead.’”


(8)
October 14
– Associated Press
(Martin Crutsinger and
Aya Batrawy):
“The Group of 20 nations agreed… to extend the suspension of debt payments by an additional six months to support the most vulnerable countries in their fight against the coronavirus pandemic. ... to provide relief of $14 billion in debt payments had been due to expire at the end of the year ... until the end of June 2021 to focus spending on health care and emergency stimulus programs, rather than debt repayments.”


(9)
October 14
– Bloomberg 

(Billy House):
“The chances of Congress passing a pre-election stimulus are all but gone, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday blamed politics for undermining the months-long negotiations. ‘At this point getting something done before the election and executing on that would be difficult, just given where we are in the level of details,’ Mnuchin said… With a deal out of reach, the two sides in the talks faulted each other for the breakdown.”


(10)
October 12
– Reuters
(David Brunnstrom,
Patricia Zengerle,
Mike Stone and
Humeyra Pamuk):
“The White House is moving forward with three sales of advanced weaponry to Taiwan, sending in recent days a notification of the deals to Congress for approval…, while China threatened retaliation… Reuters broke the news in September that as many as seven major weapons systems were making their way through the U.S. export process as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on China.”


(11)
October 15
– CNBC
(Jeff Cox):
“American workers continued to hit the unemployment line in large numbers last week, with 898,000 new claims filed for jobless benefits… The total for the week ended Oct. 10 was the highest number since Aug. 22 and another sign that the labor market continues to struggle to get back to its pre-coronavirus pandemic mark. ... The number represented a gain of 53,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 845,000. Despite the higher than expected total, the level of continuing claims continues to fall at a brisk pace, declining by 1.165 million to just over 10 million.”


(12)
October 14

 – New York Times

 (Emily Flitter and 

Kate Kelly): 

“Hundreds of thousands of small businesses are closing for good. Temporary layoffs at larger companies are becoming permanent. But the country’s largest banks ... In their third-quarter earnings reports this week ... said they are generally prepared for a wave of loan defaults they expect in the second half of next year. And their own fortunes are just fine: A trading and investment banking bonanza on Wall Street is helping them stay profitable.”


(13)
October 14
– Reuters
(Howard Schneider):
“A decade-long economic expansion did little to narrow the gaps between the United States’ prosperous and ailing areas, with thousands of ‘distressed’ zip codes shedding jobs and businesses in a trend that laid the groundwork for the developing ‘K’ shaped recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. New analysis from the Economic Innovation Group studying economic patterns across roughly 25,000 zip codes showed that from 2000 through 2018, already prosperous areas pulled further ahead, capturing disproportionate shares of the jobs created and the new businesses… 5,000 ... ‘distressed’ zip codes ... fell further behind."


(14)
October 13
– Bloomberg
(Amanda Albright):
“U.S. states saw their tax revenue drop by about $31 billion, or 6%, from March through August, compared to the same period a year earlier… according to a data from 44 states compiled by the Urban Institute. ... several states have reported that their revenue didn’t decline as much as anticipated… In August, when much of the country was reopening, state revenue climbed about 1.1% from a year earlier, the Urban Institute found.”


(15)
October 16
– Bloomberg
(Reade Pickert and
Olivia Rockeman):
“U.S. retail sales rose in September at the fastest pace in three months, topping forecasts and capping a third-quarter rebound … The value of overall sales increased 1.9% from the prior month after a 0.6% gain in August… Excluding autos and gasoline, sales rose 1.5%."


(16)
October 13 

– Reuters:
“U.S. consumer prices increased 0.2% last month after gaining 0.4% in August… In the 12 months through September, the CPI increased 1.4%.”


(17)
October 13
– Bloomberg
(Noah Buhayar):
“San Francisco’s ... median monthly rate for a studio (apartment) in the city tumbled 31% in September from a year earlier to $2,285, compared with a 0.5% decline nationally, according to… Realtor.com. One-bedroom rents in San Francisco fell 24% and two-bedrooms were down 21%, to $2,873 and $3,931 a month, respectively."


(18)
October 14 

– Bloomberg 

(Kevin Crowley):
“America’s oil production will never again reach the record 13 million barrels a day set earlier this year, just before the pandemic devastated global demand, according to Occidental Petroleum Corp. ‘It’s just going to be too difficult to replace the 2 million barrels a day of production that we’ve lost, and then to further grow beyond that,’ Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub said … ”


(19)
October 12 

– Financial Times

 (Derek Brower):
“A fracking binge in the American shale industry has permanently damaged the country’s oil and gas reserves, threatening hopes for a production recovery and US energy independence, according to one of the sector’s top investors. Wil VanLoh, chief executive of Quantum Energy Partners, a private equity firm that through its portfolio companies is the biggest US driller after ExxonMobil, ... ‘That’s the dirty secret about shale,’ Mr VanLoh told the Financial Times, noting wells had often been drilled too closely to one another. ‘What we’ve done for the last five years is we’ve drilled the heart out of the watermelon.’”


(20)
October 14
– Bloomberg
(Rick Green):
“More signs of distress among mall owners emerged… with news that CBL & Associates Properties Inc. will skip a debt payment, and that Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust is asking lenders to help it stay out of bankruptcy. CBL Properties, which previously disclosed it was preparing to seek Chapter 11 protection, said in a filing that it will skip a $6.9 million interest payment due Oct. 15 on its senior unsecured 2024 notes.”


(21)
October 13
– Reuters
(Arunima Kumar):
“Bankruptcies in the North American energy industry surged in the third quarter as companies struggled with weak fuel demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lower crude prices and a dearth of available credit, according to law firm Haynes and Boone. In the three months to September, 17 oil producers sought bankruptcy protection, fueling a 21% jump in such filings in the first nine months of 2020 from a year earlier… oilfield service providers have been hit even harder.”


(22)
October 12
– CNBC
(Evelyn Cheng):
“For September, China’s imports surged 13.2% in U.S. dollar terms… That was far above the 0.3% predicted… Exports rose 9.9% from a year ago… In the third quarter, China’s exports rose 10.2% from a year ago to 5 trillion yuan ($742.9bn)… Imports rose 4.3% to 3.88 trillion yuan…”


(23)
October 13
– Bloomberg:
“Surging global demand for everything from hazmat suits to work-from-home technology has allowed China, which contained the virus months ago, to capture record market share of global exports by quickly reopening its factories while the rest of the world grappled with lockdowns. It’s a striking reversal from the first two months of the year when China’s exports contracted by 17.1%.”


(24)
October 13
– Reuters
(Yilei Sun and
Brenda Goh):
“China auto sales marked a sixth straight month of gain, rebounding a solid 12.8% in September as the world’s biggest vehicle market comes off lows hit during the coronavirus lockdown… Sales reached 2.57 million vehicles last month but were still down 6.9% for the year to date at 17.12 million vehicles…”


(25)
October 12
– Reuters
(Kanishka Singh):
“European Union regulators are making a 'hit list' of up to 20 large internet companies, potentially including Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet's Google, that will be facing new and tougher rules aimed at curbing their market power, the Financial Times reported… The big technology platforms will have to comply with tougher regulation than smaller competitors… New rules will force the companies to share data with rivals and be more transparent on how they gather information, the report said.”