July 5 2024
Biden bad news; SCOTUS; US deficits; bird flu vax; Chinese EVs
Global elections
1 ELECTION 2024 Outlook worsens for Biden, Harris favorite to replace him
2 OPINION Supreme Court not as ideologically conservative as portrayed
3 Fed: US needs to cut deficit
4 US gov to pay Moderna $176m for bird flu vax
5 EU imposes duties on Chinese EVs
7/5/1994 Amazon founded by Jeff Bezos
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
Global elections
· Labor party wins in a landslide in the UK, after 14y out of power
· Iranians head to polls today to elect new president after prior leaders death in helicopter crash
1 ELECTION 2024 Outlook worsens for Biden, Harris favorite to replace him
Two new polls bleak for Biden
Mr. Trump now leads Mr. Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters nationally, a three-point swing toward the Republican from just a week earlier, before the debate. It is the largest lead Mr. Trump has recorded in a Times/Siena poll since 2015. Mr. Trump leads by even more among registered voters, 49 percent to 41 percent.
NYT
Donald Trump has opened a 6-point lead over President Biden among voters nationally, with 80% saying that the president is too old to run for a second term, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.
WSJ
Prediction market give Biden 70% chance of dropping out
Harris neck and neck with Biden for Dem nomination
On her advantages:
If President Biden steps aside, Vice President Harris would be almost impossible to beat for the nomination, thanks to endorsements, money, optics and 2028 politics, top officials tell us. All Harris needs is Biden's backing. If she gets it, the Obamas and Clintons likely would follow, making any challenge an affront to the sitting president and two former presidents. If she gets Biden's endorsement, the only way a top-tier Democrat could challenge her would be to risk their future by saying "not your turn" to the first woman vice president, first Black American vice president and first South Asian vice president
there's the practicality: If you're eyeing the 2028 nomination, you're thinking about the base. Do you really want to torpedo Harris' chance to become the first woman president of color? What are your real chances of defeating Harris and her formidable apparatus (White House, DNC, Biden-Harris campaign) when you're less well-known nationally than she is — then beating the Trump machine, with its huge head start, in the 75 days between the Democratic convention and Election Day?
Ed note: there’s also the money, if the Dems went with someone other than Harris, they’d forfeit all $$$ raised by Biden-Harris
Article Source: NYT, WSJ, Polymarket, PredictIt, Axios
2 OPINION Supreme Court not as ideologically conservative as portrayed
Chamath: “There’s this prevailing narrative that the Supreme Court is ideologically conservative, but that’s a gross oversimplification. If you look at the recent decisions, you’ll notice that the justices are not adhering strictly to conservative ideology. Instead, they are making rulings that reflect a complex and nuanced interpretation of the law. For instance, in several cases, conservative justices have joined liberal ones and vice versa, showcasing that the Court’s decisions are not driven by a single ideological framework but rather by a diverse set of legal principles.”
From the July 4, 2024 episode of the All-In Podcast where Chamath Palihapitiya discusses the ideological stance of the U.S. Supreme Court
Article Source: All In Podcast
3 Fed: US needs to cut deficit
The head of the Federal Reserve has warned the US economy is too strong to justify running such high deficits and urged Washington to address its fiscal imbalance “sooner rather than later”, in a sign of monetary policymakers’ rising concern about rampant government spending. Jay Powell warned that the Biden administration was taking excessive risks by “running a very large deficit at a time when we are at full employment” and said “you can’t run these levels in good economic times for very long”. The jobless rate in the world’s largest economy has not exceeded its current level of 4 per cent for more than two years, longer than at any time since Powell was “a teenager”, the Fed chair said on Tuesday. Speaking at the European Central Bank’s conference in Sintra, Portugal, Powell said “the level of debt we have is completely sustainable but the path we are on is unsustainable”. His comments came amid intensifying worries about debt levels as both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are running on campaign pledges that seem unlikely to reduce the deficit whoever wins the November election.
Article Source: FT
4 US gov to pay Moderna $176m for bird flu vax
The US government will pay Moderna $176 million to develop an mRNA vaccine against a pandemic influenza—an award given as the highly pathogenic bird flu virus H5N1 continues to spread widely among US dairy cattle.
Moderna noted that it began a Phase 1/2 trial of a pandemic influenza virus vaccine last year, which included versions targeting H5 and H7 varieties of bird flu viruses. The company said it expects to release the results of that trial this year and that those results will direct the design of a Phase 3 trial, anticipated to begin in 2025.
Article Source: Ars Technica
5 EU imposes duties on Chinese EVs
The European Union will impose tariffs of up to 37.6% from Friday on imports of electric vehicles made in China, EU officials said, ratcheting up tensions with Beijing in Brussels' largest trade case yet.
The European Commission's provisional duties of between 17.4% and 37.6% without backdating are designed to prevent what its president Ursula von der Leyen has said is a threatened flood of cheap EVs built with state subsidies.
Article Source: Reuters
7/5/1994 Amazon founded by Jeff Bezos
Sources
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/poll-debate-biden-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb; https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-expands-lead-over-biden-after-debate-as-voters-age-worries-grow-wsj-poll-finds-c3a793ab?st=afg9yo32hy8wfa2&reflink=article_copyURL_share; https://polymarket.com/event/will-biden-drop-out-of-presidential-race?tid=1720125226897; https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7057/Who-will-win-the-2024-Democratic-presidential-nomination; https://www.axios.com/2024/07/04/kamala-harris-replace-biden-2024-election
4. https://on.ft.com/4bnOYwg
5. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/us-prepares-for-bird-flu-pandemic-with-176m-moderna-vaccine-deal/
6. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-imposes-duties-china-built-evs-leaving-four-months-talks-2024-07-04/
Thanks for reading!
