Financial Markets and Economy
Saudis Said to Quit Russia Talks as OPEC Deal No Closer (Bloomberg)
Saudi Arabia pulled out of planned talks with non-OPEC nations including Russia as disagreements about how to share the burden of supply cuts stood in the way of a deal to boost prices just days before a make-or-break meeting in Vienna.
This U.K. ETF Is More Expensive Than the Shares It Owns: Chart (Bloomberg)
The biggest exchange-traded fund tracking the U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index is seeing a surge in popularity, with traders paying the most since December relative to the value of the equities it owns.
The future of oil (The Economist)
AT THE TURN of the 20th century, the most malodorous environmental challenge facing the world’s big cities was not slums, sewage or soot; it was horse dung. In London in 1900, an estimated 300,000 horses pulled cabs and omnibuses, as well as carts, drays and haywains, leaving a swamp of manure in their wake.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist, took to Twitter on Friday to address the state of the US labor market and President-elect Donald Trump's promises to bring back manufacturing jobs.
Turkey Rate Hike Fails to Compensate for Risk as Lira Slides (Bloomberg)
The lira’s short-lived rebound after a surprise interest-rate increase sent Turkish policy makers a message: a lot more will be needed to arrest the currency’s slump.
Fitch just revised South Africa's outlook to negative – and the rand is sliding (Business Insider)
Fitch just revised South Africa's outlook to negative from stable.
The ratings agency also affirmed the country's long-term foreign and local currency issuer default ratings at BBB-.
No Credit History? No Problem. Lenders Are Looking at Your Phone Data (Bloomberg)
Financial institutions, overcoming some initial trepidation about privacy, are increasingly gauging consumers’ creditworthiness by using phone-company data on mobile calling patterns and locations.
ECB’s Stournaras Says ‘Far Too Early’ to Discuss QE Tapering (Bloomberg)
The European Central Bank has a long way to go to meet its inflation target so it’s “far too early” to discuss the gradual removal of monetary stimulus, Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras said on Friday.
Black Friday? The Majority Of U.S. Holiday Shopping Will Likely Happen In December [Infographic] (Forbes)
These days, shopping splurges and Thanksgiving feasts go hand in hand for the vast majority of Americans. According to the National Retail Federation, an estimated 137.4 million people are planning or considering shopping during this year’s Thanksgiving weekend.
GDP Hopes Slashed As Trade Deficit, Inventories Tumble In October (Zero Hedge)
The resurrected hopes of lift-off velocity GDP growth in America suffered a double whammy this morning.
Cash Crackdown Escalates: India May Impose 60% Tax On "Unaccounted" Deposits, Curbs On Gold Holdings (Zero Hedge)
As reported yesterday, India's unexpected crackdown on "black money" which saw the elimination of the old high denomination bills, is not going well, not only because former PM Manmohan Singh slammed the idea warning it would cut as much as 2% from the GDP of the world's fastest growing economy, but because so far the voluntary participation in the "exchange" of old for new notes ahead of today's exchange suspension (deposits of old cash may still take place until December 31) has been far below expectations.
Investment focus: Is this the 'Great Rotation'? Some banks think so (Reuters)
After a number of false starts since the term was first coined five years ago, the idea of a 'Great Rotation' out of bonds into stocks is again gaining traction.
Companies
Holiday Price War Heats Up as Wal-Mart, Target Chase Amazon (Bloomberg)
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other brick-and-mortar chains are counting on heavier discounts and a bigger online selection to help keep up with Amazon.com Inc. this holiday season.
As Auto Market Slows, Nissan And Hyundai Find Rental Lots Are A Good Place To Park Cars (Forbes)
Auto sales fell 5.8 percent in October – more proof that U.S. demand is softening — but two big Asian manufacturers, Nissan North America and Hyundai of America, managed to outperform the industry. How? By sharply increasing their sales to rental car agencies.
Stripe, the US fintech firm founded by two Irish brothers, is now worth more than $9 billion (Business Insider)
Stripe, a US fintech firm founded by two Irish brothers, has raised $150 million (£121 million) in a funding round that values the company at over $9 billion (£7 billion).
Technology
2016 Holiday Shopping: Up-To-The-Minute Data From ADI (CMO)
Adobe Digital Insights has totaled Black Friday performance, which resulted in an incredible $3.34B in online sales with a 21.6% year-over-year growth rate (Up $290M over the predicted $3.05B and 11.3% year-over-year growth).
Fake News Onslaught Targets Pizzeria as Nest of Child-Trafficking (NY Times)
WASHINGTON — Days before the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of a local pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong, noticed an unusual spike in the number of his Instagram followers.
Lung Cancer Patient First to Undergo CRISPR Gene Editing (Singularity Hub)
The CRISPR-Cas9 “drag-and-drop” gene editing technique has been used in its first human trial, reports Nature. Scientists at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China began a trial last month to treat a lung cancer patient.
Politics
A Battle to Change Medicare Is Brewing, Whether Trump Wants It or Not (NY Times)
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump once declared that campaigning for “substantial” changes to Medicare would be a political death wish.
The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces (The Guardian)
Please don’t read this unless you are feeling strong. This is a list of 13 major crises that, I believe, confront us. There may be more. Please feel free to add to it or to knock it down. I’m sorry to say that it’s not happy reading.
In Scotland, Trump Built a Wall. Then He Sent Residents the Bill. (NY Times)
BALMEDIE, Scotland — President-elect Donald J. Trump has already built a wall — not on the border with Mexico, but on the border of his exclusive golf course in northeastern Scotland, blocking the sea view of local residents who refused to sell their homes.
Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say (The Washington Post)
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Electoral College must reject Trump unless he sells his business, top lawyers for Bush and Obama say (Think Progress)
Members of the Electoral College should not make Donald Trump the next president unless he sells his companies and puts the proceeds in a blind trust, according to the top ethics lawyers for the last two presidents.
Of the many, many Republican hypocrisies revealed by the party’s support for and election of Donald Trump to the presidency, we can add the charge thrown with abandon at President Obama throughout his time in office that his administration engaged in the dreaded “crony capitalism.”
The Constitution lets the electoral college choose the winner. They should choose Clinton. (The Washington Post)
Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers.
Life on the Home Planet
Waste management: Food waste is a massive global problem, but the solution starts with your Thanksgiving leftoversThis Thanksgiving Americans will eat more than 50 million turkeys, individually consume almost 4,500 calories, and spend more than $2.8 billion on Thanksgiving dinner food. That means packed tables, full stomachs and, regardless of how many rounds of leftovers are consumed, it also means a lot of waste.
NASA: ‘Planetary warming does not care about the election’ (Think Progress)
Last month was the second-hottest October on record, NASA reported Tuesday. Combined with a record-smashing January through September — and a very warm November — this new data guarantee that 2016 will demolish the previous record for hottest year, set way back in 2015.
Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates (CNN News)
(CNN) – A legal tug-of-war between Ugandan authorities and a for-profit international chain of schools has led to the education provider being ordered to shut down in a matter of weeks, leaving the lives of thousands of pupils in limbo.
Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson talks about math, nuclear rockets, and astounding things about the universe (Business Insider)
Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson has had a career as varied as it has been successful. A former professor of physics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, he has worked on the unification of the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Richard Feynman, nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, biology, and the application of useful and elegant math problems.
Furious Erdogan Lashes Out, Threatens To Let 3 Million Refugees Into Europe (Zero Hedge)
When reporting yesterday on the abrupt deterioration in European-Turkish relations, in which the European Parliament voted Thursday in an overhwleming majority to impose a temporary, non-binding freeze on talks for Turkey's accession into the EU, we said that it "remains unclear if Turkey will proceed with releasing the nearly three million Syrian refugees allegedly contained within its borders as a result of the European Parliament vote."
