FOMC Meeting Tomorrow
– No change expected
– A lot of explaining on how they intend to support bonds since Treasury took back #$475 BILLION

IPOs
– Big names last week came to market – DASH and ABNB
-Both shot up – consolidated and then started to come in
– AirBnB high of $165 – now $126
– Doordash – High $195 – now $157
– – Retail gets screwed again while VC’s, PE, Insiders, Sovereign Funds, Hedge Funds get benefits

Taco Tuesday
– Moderna Vaccine getting the nod

Apple
– Reports that they will be increasing production in the first half of 20121 by 30%.
– Wondering if that is significant considering the drop in production due to 2020 1st half

Not Good X2 – Blame the Russians
– Last Week – FireEye, one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the United States, said on Tuesday that is has been hacked.
– This week- Solar Winds – Treasury, Commerce departments hacked. Pentagon, NASA also potentially compromised.
– Hackers broke into the networks of the Treasury and Commerce departments as part of a global cyberespionage campaign.
— They accessed those networks by slipping malware into a SolarWinds software update, according to the global cybersecurity firm FireEye, which was also compromised.
– The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm are investigating what experts and former officials said appeared to be a large-scale penetration of U.S. government agencies. Industry experts said it bore the hallmarks of Russian tradecraft.

More Hacks/Outages
– Several services had outages this week including Google, Netflix
– Microsoft says it’s monitoring a dynamic threat environment surrounding the discovery of a sophisticated attack that included compromised binaries from a legitimate software.
–These binaries, which are related to the SolarWinds Orion Platform, could be used by attackers to remotely access devices.

TESLA – News
– TSLA will be stopping production of the high-end Model S and Model X cars from December 24 to January 11 at its Fremont, California, factory.
– Unclear why that is happening
– Stock up (naturally)

Surprise/No Surprise!
– Brexit talks extended past deadline
– London and Brussels agreed to “go the extra mile” in coming days to try to reach an elusive trade agreement despite missing their latest deadline to avert a turbulent ‘no deal’ exit for Britain from the European Union’s orbit at the end of the month.

Time – Person of The Year Race
– Time Magazine reveals its Person of the Year for 2020 on Thursday, choosing the winner from nominees that include healthcare workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial justice movement and two U.S. presidential election winners.
– Trump, Biden, Fauci and Virus Healthcare Workers
– And the winner? Biden/Harris….
– How is that going to go down?

Porn-Snubbed – UPDATE
– Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc on Thursday stopped processing payments on Pornhub after a New York Times report last week that many videos posted on the adult website depicted sexual assault of children.
– Mastercard said it was permanently ending the use of its cards on the sex videos site after its investigation confirmed the presence of illegal content on the platform. Visa said it was suspending payments till an investigation was completed.

WHY?
– Last week, Vice President Mike Pence announced 18 astronauts chosen for possible participation in planned NASA missions to return to the moon’s surface during the final U.S. space policy meeting before he and President Donald Trump leave office next month.
– At a meeting of the White House’s National Space Council at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Pence unveiled the pool of nine women and nine men who could go to the moon under NASA’s Artemis program, intended to put people back on the lunar surface for the first time since the 1970s.
– Why are we going to the moon again?

White House – Vaccine Delay
– President Donald Trump said he will delay Covid-19 vaccinations for himself and White House staff after reports they would be offered early access to it as part of a plan to ensure continuity in government amid the pandemic.
– TWEET: President Donald Trump said he will delay Covid-19 vaccinations for himself and White House staff after reports they would be offered early access to it as part of a plan to ensure continuity in government amid the pandemic.
– There goes the confidence in the vaccine with his base…

Pardon Pool?
– Julian Assange?
– Edward Snowden?

Google – OUTAGE
– Google suffered from a 40 minute global outage Monday Morning
– Internal issue and was not any type of cyber attack
– Big impact – on many firms that use Google Cloud and related services