U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned
business and the public to prepare to leave the European Union’s single market
without a trade deal as negotiations with the bloc falter.
Speaking a day after crisis talks with European Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen ended without a breakthrough, Johnson said Britain
will continue to seek a deal. But he also warned that the bloc’s demand that
the U.K. follow future changes in the EU’s rules is a major obstacle.
“There’s now the strong possibility we will have a solution
that’s much more like an Australian relationship with the EU than a Canadian
relationship with the EU,” Johnson said in a pooled TV interview Thursday.
“Looking at where we are, I do think it’s vital that
everybody now gets ready for that Australian option,” he said. Under that
option, the U.K. would fall back on the rules of the World Trade Organization
and face tariffs as well as quotas when the transition ends on Dec. 31.
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull later
told the BBC’s “Question Time” program that his country doesn’t have a
“satisfactory” trade relationship with the EU.
“Be careful what you wish for: Australia’s relationship
with the EU is not one, from a trade point of view, that Britain I think would
want,” he said. “There are very big barriers to Australian exports, agricultural
products in particular. There’s a lot of friction in the system in terms of
services. So there’s a lot to aim for.”
The pound extended its decline after Johnson’s
intervention. His remarks couldn’t come at a more delicate time as EU leaders
meet in Brussels after seeing off a threat by Hungary and Poland to block a
$2.2 trillion stimulus package. At the same time, a much-touted U.K. trade deal with Canada
has hit delays.
Atmosphere
Soured With the mood in the Brexit negotiating room suddenly
turning pessimistic, any deal with the U.K. is now likely to depend on a
last-minute intervention by either German Chancellor Angela Merkel or France’s
Emmanuel Macron. Both are in the middle of an EU summit in Brussels and are in
a position to make a difference as the two major powerbrokers in the bloc.
One EU official close to the Brexit discussions said that
Johnson’s words are more conciliatory than they might look at first glance: the
prime minister could have chosen to end the negotiations, but he didn’t.
Another official in Brussels brushed off the prime minister’s statement, saying
it wasn’t a surprise and leaders have other things to talk about.
And another European diplomat who’s following the
negotiations closely said gloomy warnings are to be expected at this point in
the process. He said that while the outcome is clearly hanging in the balance,
he’s still predicting a deal either on Sunday or in the following days.
It’s been more than four years since the U.K. voted to
leave the EU, and both sides have dealt with their fair share of drama and
brinkmanship. This time, it feels
different and they’ve had almost a year to settle the same old stubborn
sticking points.
Moving On? One EU diplomat said the bloc had mentally moved on. It is
possible that the two sides could agree on a “friendly no-deal,” allowing trade
talks to resume later in 2021, another EU official said.
Indeed, the bloc unveiled its contingency plans, first reported by Bloomberg , that
show in actions that there is very much a Plan B in place. They include keeping
flights in the air and trucks on the road, with the idea that the talks will
resume.
----The EU’s demand “basically means that whatever new laws
they brought in, we would have to follow or else face punishment,” Johnson
said. “Clearly that’s not a sensible way to proceed.”
----He also rejected EU proposals on fisheries that would
mean the U.K. still wouldn’t have control of its waters, many years after
people voted to leave the EU.
Both sides appear to be coming to terms with the fact that
it may be impossible to reach a compromise. Failure to do so would deliver a
major blow to pandemic-struck economies and disrupt supply chains for
businesses.
In another Brexit development, the U.K. published a document Thursday outlining how trade will work in
Northern Ireland, and committed to covering the paperwork costs for businesses
moving food into the province from Great Britain. Supermarkets had previously
warned they may withdraw from Northern Ireland if they had to pay the costs.
Johnson emphasized the U.K. hasn’t stopped trying.
“What I’ve said to our negotiators is that we’ve got to
keep going,” Johnson said. “And we’ll go the extra mile. And we will, and I
will go to Brussels, I’ll go to Paris or go to Berlin, or wherever, to try to
get this home and get to a deal.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-10/u-k-s-johnson-says-prepare-for-no-eu-trade-deal-after-brexit-kij5fh2a?srnd=premium-europe
Finally, why everyone’s taxes are so high. Everyone, that
is excepting oil and gas corporations and technology behemoths.
"We don't pay taxes; only
the little people pay taxes."
Leona Helmsley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley
Special
Report-How oil majors shift billions in profits to island tax havens December 9, 202012:07 PM
(Reuters) - Bermuda and the Bahamas aren’t exactly big
players in the oil-and-gas world. They don’t produce any of the fuels at all.
Yet the islands are deep wells of profit for European oil giant Royal Dutch
Shell Plc.
In 2018 and 2019, Shell earned more than $2.7 billion - about 7% of its
total income in those years - tax-free by reporting profits in companies
located in Bermuda and the Bahamas that employed just 39 people and generated
the bulk of their revenue from other Shell entities, company filings show.
If the oil-and-gas major had booked the profits through its headquarters
in the Netherlands, it could have faced a tax bill of about $700 million based
on the Dutch corporate tax rate of 25%. The bill would have been much steeper
if the income were reported in oil-producing countries - some of which levy
rates exceeding 80%.
Shell and other oil majors are avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars
in taxes in countries where they drill by shifting profits to thinly staffed
insurance and finance affiliates based in tax havens, according to a Reuters
review of corporate filings and rating agency reports. Shell, BP Plc, Chevron
and Total use subsidiaries in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Bermuda, the UK Channel
Islands and Ireland to provide their global operations with banking, insurance
and oil-trading services, the documents show. These subsidiaries, in turn, book
profits that go lightly taxed or entirely tax-free.
Such arrangements are not illegal. But they highlight the ability of
international oil corporations to game global tax systems and avoid handing
over revenue to nations where they conduct their core business, according to
academics who study corporate taxation.
The profits generated by those offshore
units are enormous, despite their tiny operations. BP’s so-called captive
insurer - meaning it serves only other BP entities - had $6.5 billion in cash
on hand at the end of 2018 after years of robust annual profits, according to
insurance rating agency AM Best Co. The insurer, Jupiter Insurance Ltd, has
accounted for as much as 14% of BP’s global annual profits in recent years,
according to AM Best figures and BP’s financial statements. Jupiter has six
directors but no employees; BP outsources insurance administration to a
brokerage located in Guernsey, a tax haven in the UK Channel Islands.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSKBN28J1IK
Winter
Watch.
From around mid-October, the northern
hemisphere snow cover usually rapidly expands, while the Arctic ice gradually
expands back towards its winter maximum.
Over simplified, a rapid expansion of
both, especially if early, can be a sign of a harsher than normal arriving northern
hemisphere winter. Perhaps more so in 2020-2021 as we’re in the low of the
ending sunspot cycle, which possibly also influenced this year’s record
Atlantic hurricane season.
Update: we seem to have started new sunspot cycle 25 this month ,
though it’s unlikely to affect 2020-2021s coming winter.
Northern Eur-Asia turned snowy fast in
mid-October. The Arctic sea ice
expansion was slow, and from a very low level at the end of September, but with
the vastly expanded snow cover, sea ice formation sped up.
With the Laptev sea ice back to normal
at the end of November I think that it will likely be a normal to slightly
warmer winter ahead for western Europe.
The failure of the Kara Sea ice to
return to normal, leads me to bet on a warmer western European winter ahead.
Arctic
and Antarctic Sea Ice.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
Juncker: The
Ten Commandments. The European Commission was a great believer in some of them.
With
apologies to Joe Orton and Loot.
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
FDA Nears Pfizer Decision;
Australia Cancels Order: Virus Update Bloomberg News December
11, 2020, 12:47 AM GMT Updated on December 11, 2020, 4:38 AM GMT
The first Covid-19 vaccine expected to be deployed in the
U.S. won the backing of a panel of government
advisers, a step that will likely help clear the way for emergency
authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.
The Australian government canceled an order for 51 million
doses of a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by CSL Ltd. and the University of
Queensland after clinical trials ran into difficulties. In South Korea, where
daily virus cases have hovered in the 600 range for the past week, the country reported 689 new infections in 24
hours bringing the country’s total to 40,786.
States across the U.S. implemented more restrictions with
Virginia announcing a limited nightly stay-at-home order after record daily
cases this week. Pennsylvania is temporarily suspending indoor dining at bars
and restaurants.
Key
Developments: Global Tracker : Cases exceed 69.5 million; deaths
surpass 1.58 millionU.S. Hot Spots: December
smashes records as deaths near 300,000Pfizer shot backed by FDA
advisers as agency decision nears There’s still time to beat Covid without lockdowns Bye-bye Bali , hello Bondi.
Grounded Australians holiday at homeThe window is closing for also-ran vaccine
makers Tracking coronavirus vaccines
that will end the pandemicMore
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/fda-nears-pfizer-decision-australia-cancels-order-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus
The Latest: Germany reports
highest one-day virus increase The
Associated Press 10 December 2020
BERLIN — Germany has reported its highest
one-day total of new coronavirus cases, while the number of deaths linked to
COVID-19 has climbed above 20,000.
The national disease control center, the Robert
Koch Institute, said Thursday that 23,679 new cases were confirmed over the
previous 24 hours. That’s just above the previous record of 23,648 from Nov.
20.
A partial shutdown that started Nov. 2 has
succeeded in keeping the surge from picking up speed, but the number of daily
new cases have remained around the same high level in recent weeks rather than
falling. Momentum is building for a harder lockdown over Christmas and New
Year, and some regions already are introducing new restrictions.
That’s partly because deaths, which have been
relatively low in Germany compared with several other European countries, have
increased markedly. Another 440 deaths were reported on Thursday, following a
single-day record of 590 on Wednesday.
That brought the total so far to 20,372.
Germany has reported some 1.24 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic
began.
More
https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-tokyo-coronavirus-pandemic-united-nations-japan-c6f138de290541970471f031765a635d
New CDC coronavirus forecast:
362,000 dead by Jan. 2 By Celine Castronuovo - 12/10/20 09:16 AM EST
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on
Wednesday predicted that the number of newly reported coronavirus-related
deaths will likely increase over the next month, with the potential for a total
death count of up to 362,000 by Jan. 2.
The CDC made the prediction in its weekly
“ensemble forecast,” which combines national and stave-level forecasts into
an aggregate prediction on the state of COVID-19 over the next four
weeks.
In this week’s forecast, the CDC predicted that in the week
ending Jan. 2, the U.S. could see anywhere from 12,600 to 23,400 new deaths due
to the virus.
This means that by this date, the country could reach a
total of anywhere from 332,000 to 362,000 COVID-19 deaths.
The CDC’s prediction is based on forecasts of deaths over
the next four weeks from 40 modeling groups. According to the CDC, 37 of the 40
groups provided forecasts for both new and total deaths, with two groups
forecasting total deaths only and one forecasting new deaths only.
As of Wednesday, the
CDC has recorded more than 285,000 total coronavirus fatalities, with more
than 15 million reported infections since the CDC began recording data on the
virus in January.
On Wednesday, the U.S. also hit a
new record for the number of new deaths in a single day, with 3,054
fatalities from the coronavirus, according
to The COVID Tracking Project , beating the previous record from the spring,
which was 2,769 deaths on May 7.
The CDC’s prediction comes as experts anticipate a spike in
infections over the holidays and winter months, with the colder weather forcing
people indoors, where the virus is able to spread more easily.
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