DAILY DOSE: May 9, 2022
Posted on 05/09/2022
1. UK POLITICS. The U.K. government, like many others, enforced strict COVID-19 lockdown rules in 2020 and 2021. Politicians went out of their ways to wear masks publicly during the COVID-19 pandemic, often taking them off when the cameras panned out. Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer (age 59) will offer to resign if he is found by police to have broken COVID rules at a gathering in 2021. British police said they would investigate Starmer over a potential breach of COVID-19 lockdown rules in 2021 after receiving footage from April 2021 showing him drinking a bottle of beer with colleagues indoors in the northeast of England. Keir Starmer had served as a top prosecutor in the U.K. Earlier, Keir Starmer led calls for U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.K. finance minister Rishi Sunak to resign after they both received fines relating to a birthday party celebration thrown for Johnson by staff in his Downing Street office in June 2020.
2. U.S. Defense Industry Attempts to Inflation Hedge with Politicians. The Biden administration plans to seek supplemental defense funding if inflation eats into the Pentagon’s buying power in fiscal 2023. Lawmakers of both parties have criticized the Pentagon’s budget request for the fiscal year starting in October of US$ 773 billion, which is 2.2% more than Congress appropriated for fiscal 2022. Lawmakers say the amount is “too small” given high inflation.
3. Palantir Technologies Inc. shares plummeted as much as 22%. Palantir Technologies reported mounting losses and a disappointing sales forecast. The first quarter 2022 loss was US$ 101 million.
4. FATHER TO SON. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as BongBong, won in a landslide Philippines presidential election. With 76% of the election returns counted, the former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won 24.6 million votes, or 59.4% of the total votes cast for president. His closest rival, Vice President Leni Robredo got 11.7 million votes, or 28.3%. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is bringing his family back to power in Manila 36 years after his father – Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. – fled the country.
5. The median three-year inflation expectation rose in April 2022 to 3.9%, the highest since December 2021, according to the latest consumer survey by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. U.S. consumers project inflation in three years to be higher compared with a month ago.
6. Hungary maintains a block on a European Union proposal that would ban Russian oil imports.