Washington Post (January 19)
“The challenge — and the opportunity — for Joe Biden is that he succeeds the worst president in U.S. history. Donald Trump’s tenure was characterized by colossal incompetence and mind-numbing indifference to the public good.” As a result, the new president will face the biggest challenges since Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Paradoxically, by taking over at such a low point in our history, Biden is set up for success” and his approval rating is already “higher than Trump’s ever was.”
Tags: Biden, Challenge, Incompetence, Indifference, Opportunity, Public good, Roosevelt, Success, Trump, Worst
Financial Times (January 19)
From the beginning, Donald Trump was clearly a “grave threat…. He lacked any of the qualities required in the leader of a great republic. But, it turned out, he had the redeeming flaw of gross incompetence.” America has survived this wrenching, “near-death experience,” but “Donald Trump was just a symptom and the US is still in danger from those who peddle lies in place of truth.”
Tags: Danger, Grave threat, Incompetence, Leader, Lies, Near-death, Republic, Symptom, Trump, Truth, U.S., Wrenching
Bloomberg (January 18)
“China’s successful control of Covid-19 made it the only major economy to have grown last year, but a wide income inequality gap and still weak consumer spending reflects an unbalanced recovery.”
Tags: China, Consumer spending, Control, COVID-19, Gap, Income inequality, Major economy, Successful, Unbalanced recovery, Weak
Washington Post (January 17)
“Nearly 400,000 Americans have now died of covid-19. It took 12 weeks for the death toll to rise from 200,000 to 300,000. The death toll has leaped from 300,000 to almost 400,000 in less than five weeks…. Yet these are, by and large, invisible deaths: Coronavirus victims who die in the hospital often spend their final days cut off from family and friends.”
Tags: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Death toll, Die, Family, Friends, Hospital, Invisible deaths, Victims
Wall Street Journal (January 15)
“Rising temperatures last year capped the world’s warmest decade in modern times.” Moreover, according to the same NASA findings, 2020 tied with 2016 as the hottest year ever. This came “despite cooling ocean currents and a drop in greenhouse gas emissions” associate with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tags: 2016, 2020, Cooling, COVID-19, Emissions, GHG, NASA, Ocean currents, Pandemic, Rising temperatures, Warmest decade, World
Reuters (January 14)
“Firms from JPMorgan to AT&T are rethinking political donations after last week’s Capitol violence…. The storming of the seat of U.S. government has spurred a sea change in corporate America. AT&T, the biggest company spender in the last election cycle… is suspending political donations to Republican lawmakers who objected without evidence to the November presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. Others, like JPMorgan, paused their giving altogether to reassess their strategy.”
Tags: AT&T, Biden, Capitol, Donations, Election cycle, Government, JPMorgan, Republicans, Rethinking, Trump, U.S., Violence
MarketWatch (January 13)
“The U.S. set another grim milestone in the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, when more than 4,400 COVID-19 patients died, the most in a single day since the start of the outbreak, and experts said that with cases continuing to accelerate, the worst is still to come.” Simply put, the “vaccine program must speed up to avoid reaching 640,000 deaths by spring, equal to lives lost in the 1918 flu pandemic.”
LA Times (January 13)
“Trump was rightly impeached. Now the Senate must do its job and convict…. There is no reasonable way to defend how Trump undermined the public’s faith in elections for his own gain, or how he recklessly stoked the passions of his followers in the hope of intimidating Congress into voiding Biden’s win.”
Tags: Biden, Congress, Convict, Defend, Elections, Gain, Impeached, Intimidating, Passions, Reasonable, Recklessly, Senate, Trump, Undermined
Philadelphia Inquirer (January 12)
“One year into a changed world, the numbers defy comprehension. More than 21 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States—a rate approaching one in 15 people, plus untold millions who had mild or no symptoms and were never identified.” Including them, the U.S. may be “approaching 60 million or 70 million infections—perhaps 20% of the population, though it varies from state to state.”
Tags: Changed world, Confirmed cases, COVID-19, Identified, Infections, Rate, Symptoms, U.S.
New York Times (January 12)
“As America went through a week from hell, with the prospect of fresh hells yet to come, financial markets signaled … growing optimism.” This actually makes sense. Other things that happened, aside from the act of insurrection, like the Georgia win giving Democrats control over the Senate. This makes “a huge difference for economic policy, making it almost certain that we’ll have an additional large relief package, and fairly likely that we’ll get some much needed investment in infrastructure.”
Tags: Control, Democrats, Economic policy, Financial markets, Georgia, Insurrection, Investment, Optimism, Relief package, Senate, Sense, Signaled, U.S.
