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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shedding high expertise throughout NASA lander struggle

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin losing top talent during NASA lander fight

Jeff Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, introduces a new lunar landing module called Blue Moon during an event at the Washington Convention Center, May 9, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Mark Wilson | Getty Images

Jeff Bezos flew to space late last month, but his company has lost top talent since the billionaire space founder came back to Earth.

At least 17 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, CNBC has learned, with many moving on in the weeks after Bezos’ spaceflight.

Two of the engineers, Nitin Arora and Lauren Lyons, this week announced jobs at other space companies: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, respectively.

Others quietly updated their LinkedIn pages over the past few weeks.

Each unannounced departure was confirmed to CNBC by people familiar with the matter. Those departures include: New Shepard senior vice president Steve Bennett, chief of mission assurance Jeff Ashby (who retired), national security sales director Scott Jacobs, New Glenn senior director Bob Ess, New Glenn first stage senior director Tod Byquist, New Glenn senior finance manager Bill Scammell, senior manager of production testing Christopher Payne, New Shepard technical project manager Nate Chapman, senior propulsion design engineer Dave Sanderson, senior HLS human factors engineer Rachel Forman, BE-4 controller lead integration and testing engineer Jack Nelson, New Shepard lead avionics software engineer Huong Vo, BE-7 avionics hardware engineer Aaron Wang, propulsion engineer Rex Gu, and rocket engine development engineer Gerry Hudak.

Those who announced they were leaving Blue Origin did not specify why, but frustration with executive management and a slow, bureaucratic structure is often cited in employee reviews on job site Glassdoor.

A company spokesperson emphasized Blue Origin’s growth in a statement to CNBC.

“Blue Origin grew by 850 people in 2020 and we have grown by another 650 so far in 2021. In fact, we’ve grown by nearly a factor of four over the past three years. We continue to fill out major leadership roles in manufacturing, quality, engine design, and vehicle design. It’s a team we’re building and we have great talent,” the spokesperson said.

Some of the engineers who left were part of Blue Origin’s astronaut lunar lander program. Bezos’ company lost its bid for a valuable NASA development contract in April when SpaceX was announced as the sole awardee under the space agency’s Human Landing System program, winning a $2.9 billion contract.

But, despite the Government Accountability Office last month denying Blue Origin’s protest of NASA’s decision, the company has continued to escalate its fight to be a part of the HLS program. Blue Origin first launched a public relations offensive against SpaceX’s Starship rocket and then, on Monday, sued NASA in federal court.

A $10,000 bonus

Jeff Bezos pops champagne after emerging from the New Shepard capsule after his spaceflight on July 20, 2021.

Blue Origin

The company has nearly 4,000 employees around the U.S., with its headquarters in Kent, Washington, near Seattle, as well as facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Van Horn, Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama.

Ten days after Bezos’ July 20 spaceflight, Blue Origin gave all its full-time employees a $10,000, no-strings-attached cash bonus, multiple people familiar with the situation told CNBC. None of Blue Origin’s contractors received it. The company confirmed the bonus, with a spokesperson noting that it was intended as a “thank you” for achieving the milestone of launching people to space.

Two people told CNBC that internally the bonus was perceived as the company’s leadership attempting to entice talent to stay, in response to the number of employees filing notices to leave after the launch.

A look at Glassdoor reveals a sharp disparity in employee satisfaction with Blue Origin’s leadership when compared with that of other top space companies. According to Glassdoor, just 15% of Blue Origin employees approve of CEO Bob Smith — versus 91% for Elon Musk at SpaceX or 77% for Tory Bruno at United Launch Alliance.

The HLS fight

A mockup of the crew lander vehicle at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in August 2020.

Blue Origin

NASA’s Human Landing System program is one of the critical pieces of the agency’s plan, known as Artemis, to return U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon.

Last year, NASA handed out nearly $1 billion in concept development contracts for HLS — with SpaceX receiving $135 million, Leidos’ subsidiary Dynetics receiving $253 million and Blue Origin receiving $579 million. The space agency then expected to award two of those three companies hardware development contracts this year. However, following a shortfall in requested funding for HLS from Congress, NASA decided to give only SpaceX a contract, worth about $2.9 billion.

Blue Origin and Dynetics each quickly filed protests with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which halted NASA’s work on the program until the protests could be resolved. The GAO on July 30 upheld NASA’s decision. On Aug. 16, Blue Origin took its battle a step further, suing NASA in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

NASA has paid $300 million of its SpaceX contract so far, with the payment made on the day the GAO denied the protests. However, the space agency’s work on HLS has once again halted — this time due to the Blue Origin lawsuit, according to court filings Thursday — and will not resume until Nov. 1.

Major delays

Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos is launched with three crew members aboard a New Shepard rocket on the world’s first unpiloted suborbital flight from Blue Origin’s Launch Site 1 near Van Horn, Texas, July 20, 2021.

Joe Skipper | Reuters

Blue Origin has struggled to deliver on multiple major programs since Bezos hired Smith as CEO in 2017. Bezos founded the company in 2000, with the goal of creating “a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth.” Delays — although common in the industry, in which the adage “space is hard” is persistently heard — have pushed back Bezos’ vision, highlighted by the departure of Blue Origin’s chief operating officer late last year.

Bezos launched to the edge of space as one of the members of the first crew onboard Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket. While the company has not disclosed pricing, New Shepard competes with Virgin Galactic in the realm of suborbital space tourism, with Blue Origin having sold nearly $100 million worth of tickets for future passenger flights. Although the first crewed New Shepard launch was a smooth success, Blue Origin’s leadership had previously expected the rocket to begin launching people by the end of 2017.

An artist’s illustration of a New Glenn rocket standing on the launchpad in Florida.

Blue Origin

BE-4 engine test at Blue Origin’s West Texas launch facility.

Blue Origin

Blue Origin’s third major program is its stable of rocket engines, headlined by the BE-4, which will power its New Glenn rocket. The company previously said that its BE-4 engines would be “ready for flight in 2017.”

However, four years later, development issues and a lack of hardware for testing quickly mean Blue Origin has yet to deliver its first flight engines, ArsTechnica reported earlier this month. The company is pushing to have two BE-4 engines ready by the end of this year. Notably, BE-4s are important beyond Blue Origin, as ULA signed a deal to use the engines to power its Vulcan rockets, choosing Blue Origin over Aerojet Rocketdyne as its supplier. ULA is pushing to have its first Vulcan rocket ready to launch by the end of this year, and Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines are expected to be a — if not the — final piece added before launch.

Bezos has spent the majority of his time in the past two decades focused on Amazon, but along the way has steadily sold pieces of his stake in the tech giant to fund Blue Origin’s development — to the tune of $1 billion a year, or possibly more. Last month, Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO, with many in the space industry expecting him to spend more time focusing on his space company.

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Dow bounces greater than 200 factors on Friday, however nonetheless heads for dropping week

Dow bounces more than 200 points on Friday, but still heads for losing week

Major U.S. stock averages rebounded Friday while markets remained on track for a losing week driven by fears of the Federal Reserve pulling back its stimulus.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 220 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 added 0.6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 0.7%.

Technology stocks traded in the green Friday, providing the market with support. Microsoft, Cisco and Salesforce were among the biggest gainers in the Dow as investors snapped up tech stocks amid concerns about slowing economic recovery. Chip stocks rose, with Nvidia among the Nasdaq’s top winners.

Tesla shares inched higher after Elon Musk’s electric car maker had an AI day, where it unveiled a new custom chip and plans to build a humanoid robot. The stock is down more than 5% this week as investors worried about growth in China, one of the electric vehicle maker’s key markets.

This week, WTI crude oil has tumbled more than 8%, taking energy stocks with it. Diamondback Energy and Valero Energy are down roughly 10% and 9%, respectively, on the week.

All three major stock indexes are on track to close the week lower. The S&P 500 is down 0.8% for the week, while the Dow is off 1.1% and the Nasdaq Composite is 1.2% lower.

Minutes from the Fed’s July meeting released this week showed the central bank is willing to start reducing its monthly asset purchases this year. Investors sold equities and commodities this week and bought bonds on fears the move by the Fed may upend a global economy already under stress by the delta variant.

“With Fed tapering coming while delta variant keeps spreading, the transition away from liquidity/policy regime to more mid-cycle markets means we may experience a bumpier ride ahead,” Barclays equity strategists said in a note. “Market narrative may thus turn more cautious, as concerns about peaking growth rates, Delta variant and policy mistake may prove headwinds, at a time where seasonality and technicals are unfavourable.”

Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:

—CNBC’s Pippa Stevens contributed reporting.

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Health

The Metropolis Shedding Its Kids to H.I.V.

The City Losing Its Children to H.I.V.

At a government hospital in Larkana, I watched a nurse leave a needle open after preparing medication in the children’s ward. Then she tossed it in a regular trash can with the tip still exposed. I did not see any containers for sharp objects. Outside, I asked a cleaner how the hospital handles rubbish. He led me past the hospital gates and showed me the trash that was lined up around its perimeter. There were exposed needles, infusion cannulas, and dirty nebulizer masks everywhere. An incinerator was nearby but was not used. (WHO has since donated new incinerators, but the pandemic has delayed their installation.)

As an ambulance, I have provided medical care overseas in all sorts of dire environments. Still, I was shocked here. Even in impoverished, war-drained countries in sub-Saharan Africa, I was held to the strictest infection control standards as a medical student. The nurses in the operating, work, and delivery rooms had eyes in the back of their heads to warn anyone who violated the protocol. In an HIV ward in South Africa, I was shocked by the tearing words of a fellow student, a local woman, when I was clumsy with a needle. She warned me that no matter how rushed I was, this task cannot be compromised. It is the first lesson we learn here as students, she explained.

Syringes with built-in safety locks that slide forward easily to cover the needle are common in American healthcare facilities, but even the Aga Khan does not have them. In the best case scenario, the plunger will be locked so that the syringe cannot be reused. When I went to several pharmacies that dispose of these needles and asked about the correct way to dispose of them, I received terrible advice. A pharmacist bent the needle to 120 degrees. “We’ll do that,” he told me. The sharp point was obviously still exposed. “In the sewer, on the street,” said another pharmacist when I asked him where to throw the needle before I tossed it out the window without looking. I watched the needle float in a puddle of open sewage. Children were hopping around the corner down the street.

At the time, Rajesh Panjwani was the Sindh HealthCare Commission’s deputy director of inspections for the Larkana area, which also includes Ratodero. I managed to see him. He shared an office with Faraz Hussain, an administrator; Their desks were at right angles to each other. “All hospitals use the safety boxes,” Panjwani assured me, referring to sharp rubbish bins. I told him I didn’t see this, but he denied my characterization. We walked back and forth until he had to take a call. I didn’t even know that Hussain was listening as he was typing briskly on a large desktop computer, but now he was speaking. “They’re 100 percent telling the truth about government hospitals,” he told me.

Panjwani later told me that he had inspected many clinics in the area and that they had security boxes available. I said I hadn’t seen a safe in any of the dozen or so clinics I went to. At that point, Hussain said something to Panjwani and they started arguing in Sindhi. My translator said to me softly: “Hussain says: ‘She is telling the truth. Please admit the truth. There are no safety boxes in the clinics. ‘”

Everything, it seems, is always someone else’s job. Aftab Ahmad, a doctor in charge of monitoring and evaluating the Sindh AIDS Control Program, blamed the district health bureau for the outbreak. “There is a refusal, you are right,” said Ahmad. “People don’t quite do what they’re supposed to do.” The Sindh HealthCare Commission can order a clinic to be sealed, but is asking the police to enforce the order. The commission considers its job to be done when it has issued its recommendation to close clinics with violations. The Commission does not see itself responsible for actually closing the facilities or for ensuring that they remain closed.

The cruel dilemma, however, is that without these private health rooms, many people in Ratodero and other remote areas of Pakistan would not have access to medical care. For the poor and the uneducated, there is usually a choice between terrible care or no care at all.

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Business

ViacomCBS inventory tanks, dropping greater than half its worth in lower than per week.

ViacomCBS stock tanks, losing more than half its value in less than a week.

ViacomCBS, the media goliath led by Shari Redstone, took a nosedive this week, with the company losing more than half of its market value in just four days.

The stock was trading at $ 100 on Monday. By Friday close of trading, it had fallen to just over $ 48, a decline of more than 51 percent in less than a week.

There’s no better way to put it: The company’s stock was fueling.

What happened? Several things at the same time. First off, it’s worth noting that ViacomCBS was actually on its knees a bit by the time it crashed this week and has grown almost tenfold in the past 12 months. It was trading at around $ 12 per share about a year ago.

That rally came when the company, like the rest of the media industry, took a step towards streaming. Recently, Paramount + was launched to compete against Netflix, Disney +, HBO Max, and others. The service leveraged ViacomCBS’s extensive archive of content from the CBS broadcast network, Paramount Film Studios, and several cable channels including Nickelodeon and MTV.

This shift is important as ViacomCBS has been hit hard by an overall decline in cable viewers. The company’s pre-tax profits are down nearly 17 percent in the last two years, and debt has exceeded $ 21 billion.

However, the stock rose so much that Robert M. Bakish, CEO of ViacomCBS, decided to take advantage of the blessing by offering new shares to raise up to $ 3 billion. The underwriters who managed the sale valued the offering earlier this week at around $ 85 per share, a discount from Monday’s trading booth.

You could say it backfired. When a company issues new shares, it usually dilutes the value of current shareholders, so expect some price decline. A few days after the offer, one of Wall Street’s most influential research firms, MoffettNathanson, released a report questioning the company’s value and downgrading the stock to a “sale.” The stock should only be worth $ 55, MoffettNathanson said. With that the nosedive began.

“We never thought Viacom would trade near $ 100 a share,” said the report, written by Michael Nathanson, a co-founder of the company. “Obviously, ViacomCBS’s management didn’t either,” it continued, citing the new stock offering.

Streaming is still a money-losing company, and that means the legacy media companies will have to suffer even more losses for several years before they can return to profitability.

In the case of ViacomCBS, it seemed to accelerate cable cutting when it signed a new licensing agreement with the NFL that will cost the company more than $ 2 billion a year by 2033. As part of the agreement, ViacomCBS also plans to cable stream the games on Paramount +, which is much cheaper than a bundle of cables.

As the premium program games move to streaming, “the industry is at risk of both cable cutting and more eroding viewers,” wrote Nathanson.

On Friday, an analyst at Wells Fargo also downgraded the stock, lowering the bank’s price target to $ 59.

But the market decided it wasn’t even worth that much. It barely closed a quarter above $ 48 on Friday.

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World News

Inventory futures slip as Wall Road appears to rebound from dropping week

Stock futures slip as Wall Street looks to rebound from losing week

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Source: NYSE

US stock futures fell slightly on Sunday night as Wall Street appeared to be recovering from a lost week.

Futures linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 68 points, or 0.2%. Those for the S&P 500 were also down 0.2%, while those for the Nasdaq 100 were up 0.1%.

The movement in futures comes after the three major indices lost ground last week. The Dow and S&P 500 slid on Friday, ending the week 0.5% and 0.8% respectively, breaking two-week winning streaks. The Nasdaq Composite rose on Friday but ended the week down 0.8%.

The struggles for stocks came as bond yields rose again last week, putting pressure on tech and growth stocks that dragged the market back from its pandemic-triggered sell-off last year. On Sunday, futures rose at the price of the 10 year Treasury note, indicating lower yields.

Despite last week’s weakness, the S&P 500 and Dow are still near record highs, and the Nasdaq is not too far away. Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer of Wells Fargos Wealth and Investment Management, said the stock market is still on track for multi-year growth.

“If you went down the list and started putting check-check-check-check boxes, you’d look at this in a vacuum … and say it looks like an early recovery cycle that goes on for about a year and probably a number of years left to run, “said Cronk.

Optimism about markets and the path of the US economy has increased as vaccines roll out across the country. In the past few weeks, the American pace has increased. However, there has been an increase in Covid-19 cases in several states.

Over the weekend, the industrial sector produced an important corporate news item. The Canadian Pacific Railway announced that it is buying $ 25 billion worth of Kansas City Southern, creating a railroad giant connecting Canada, the United States and Mexico.

In terms of economic data, investors will take another look at the property market on Monday when the National Association of Realtors releases existing home sales for February. Economists polled by Dow Jones forecast a decline of 2.8%.

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World News

Uber grants U.Ok. drivers employee standing after dropping main labor battle

Uber grants U.K. drivers worker status after losing major labor battle

A smartphone displaying the Uber app in London.

Oli Scarff | Getty Images

Shortly after losing a major labor dispute in the UK, Uber will classify all UK based drivers as workers.

Under the new designation, more than 70,000 drivers will receive some benefits, including minimum wage, vacation time and pension contributions, but will not receive full employee benefits.

Uber announced the change to an SEC filing, adding that UK ridesharing accounted for 6.4% of all gross bookings for mobility in the fourth quarter of 2020.

While the move will increase Uber’s costs in the UK, the company continues to aim for adjusted EBITDA profitability through the year-end.

Earlier this year, Uber lost a major legal battle in the UK over the issue. The country’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a group of drivers were workers and not independent contractors. While the decision was made with a small group of drivers, thousands more have taken action against the company.

In a comment in The Evening Standard, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, wrote that following the Supreme Court ruling, “we could continue to challenge drivers’ rights to any of these protections in court. Instead, we decided to turn the page.” “”

Khosrowshahi admits, “I know many observers will not pat us on the back if we take this step, which comes after a five-year legal battle. They are right, although I hope the path we have chosen will change our willingness to change shows. “”

Meanwhile, Uber and the gig economy as a whole are facing regulatory challenges around the world. Uber has spent millions addressing these challenges in other regions.

In California, Uber pushed back against Assembly Bill 5, a gig economy bill passed by law in 2019 that tightened the rules for classifying workers as independent contractors.

After a widespread campaign that cost over $ 200 million – the most expensive election campaign in the state’s history – Uber and a handful of other gig economy companies used Uber to convince voters to support an election campaign called Proposition 22 and other gig economy platforms have been exempted from state labor law.

In return, gig workers received some benefits without full employment status. Some of the additional cost of providing benefits has been passed on to carpooling.

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Business

Workhorse Inventory Plunges After Dropping USPS Contract

Workhorse Stock Plunges After Losing USPS Contract

Workhorse, a start-up that aims to become a major electric vehicle maker, received bad news Tuesday: it lost a $ 482 million deal to make tens of thousands of vehicles for the United States Postal Service . And now investors are punishing his stocks.

The company’s shares fell nearly 50 percent on Tuesday following the postal service’s announcement and fell another 10 percent in afternoon trading on Wednesday.

Workhorse, an Ohio-based company with a factory in Indiana, relied on the postal contract to drive sales. By early February, stocks had gone from under $ 2 to over $ 40 in less than a year, mostly in hopes of winning all or part of the postal deal. Instead, the Postal Service outsourced the work to Oshkosh Defense, a subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation in Wisconsin that makes military vehicles and mobility systems.

As part of an initial contract for what the postal service calls the next generation delivery vehicle, Oshkosh will complete the design and then assemble 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over a 10-year period.

Oshkosh vehicles will be fitted with either fuel-efficient gasoline engines or electric batteries and will be upgraded to keep up with advances in electric vehicle technology, the postal service said. Workhorse suggested delivering an all-electric contract.

The Workhorse Group, which employs approximately 130 people and had sales of less than $ 1 million for the first nine months of last year, was for the Goliath of Oshkosh, which had corporate sales of $ 8.4 billion in fiscal 2019 , a David.

On Wednesday, Workhorse said in a statement that it “has asked the postal service for more information in accordance with the rules of the tender process” and that it “intends to explore all the options available to an unsuccessful finalist in a state tender process”.

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Health

‘Shedding our grip’: In some neighborhoods, the devastation of the pandemic goes far past the illness itself.

‘Losing our grip’: In some neighborhoods, the devastation of the pandemic goes far beyond the disease itself.

Numerous numbers can quantify how the pandemic and the resulting recession hit the United States: at least 7.8 million people fell into poverty, the biggest slump in six decades; 85 million Americans say they have had trouble paying basic household expenses, including food and rent.

But those numbers don’t capture the feeling of mounting despair in some communities that struggled before the pandemic. In certain neighborhoods on the east side of Cleveland, for example, longtime residents and workers speak of a steady breakup.

Shots echoed almost every night, they say. Cleveland Police reported six murders within 24 hours in November. Like in Cincinnati, Wichita, Kan. And for several other US cities, 2020 was the worst year for murders in Cleveland in decades.

Everyone’s talking about crazy driving – in the past few months, cars have crashed into a corner grocery store, house, and popular local restaurant in the neighborhood of Slavic Village. In Cuyahoga County, 19 people died of overdoses in one week. All while the virus continues its deadly spread.

“Sometimes,” said the Rev. Richard Gibson, whose 101-year-old church is in the Slavic village, “we feel that we no longer have a grip on civilization.”

The places where many would normally have found out about new benefits and new rules – such as having a decent internet connection – are now closed.

“Our library is no longer open, our Boys Club is no longer open,” said Tony Brancatelli, a member of the city council to whose parish the Slavic village belongs.

A decade ago, during the foreclosure crisis, parts of Mr Brancatelli’s parish were among the hardest hit parts of the country, but more people kept their jobs. They had friends and relatives whom they could move in with or contact for financial assistance. Today, when parts of the Slavic village have over 30 percent unemployment and a virus is spreading in small gatherings, these supports are not there.

And the virus continues to rage. Cleveland has been spared the catastrophic cases of cities like Detroit or New Orleans, but has just weathered its worst two-month expansion. At the end of December, four out of five intensive care beds in hospitals in Cuyahoga County were in use.

In the university settlement, a 94-year-old social service facility in the Slavic village, there used to be a weekly dinner for everyone in the community. This has changed for take away. Some of the people who have been routinely screened by the organization appear to have simply disappeared and stopped answering the phone or knocking on the door.

“The community felt frayed and forgotten anyway,” said Earl Pike, executive director of University Settlement. “It’s starting to feel a little ‘Mad Max’-y.”

Categories
World News

Dow futures rise as shares try to bounce again from shedding week

Dow futures rise as stocks attempt to bounce back from losing week

Traders work on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

NYSE

US stock futures rose early Monday as markets indicated a rebound from a lost week.

Investors are weighing updates on the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine and the coronavirus stimulus stalemate in Washington

Dow futures indicated an opening gain of more than 180 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures also traded in positive territory.

Last week, stocks saw their first week of downturn in several months as lawmakers continued a stalemate over a Covid-19 bailout package.

The S&P 500 fell nearly 1% in its first negative week in three years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.57% for its first negative week in three and the Nasdaq Composite lost nearly 0.7% for its first negative week in four.

Next week is expected to be market-moving with the launch of the Pfizer vaccine and a Federal Reserve policy meeting. Tesla is also joining the S&P 500 on Friday.

Following the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency approval for Pfizer’s vaccine, Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield signed the drug so that vaccinations could officially continue for those aged 16 and over.

The US has started shipping the cans from a Pfizer facility in Michigan to hundreds of distribution centers around the country. The FDA is expected to publish its assessment of Moderna’s vaccine this week.

The Covid-19 vaccine launches on some of the darkest days of the pandemic in the United States. More than 2,300 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded on Saturday, after over 3,300 deaths on Friday. New infections keep exploding. More than 219,000 cases were reported on Saturday.

The surge in cases coincides with months of debates in Washington over another round of Covid relief. A non-partisan group has proposed a $ 908 billion limit. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has opposed the proposal, instead calling for an agreement that eliminates corporate liability and funding provisions from state and local governments. These two issues are major sources of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats.

“Politically, the debate continues on more tax legislation that is badly needed for much of the population, but will also create an even bigger ‘wall of money’ for consumers when the economies are fully reopened,” said Raymond James’ Tavis McCourt towards customers on Sunday.

“It is very clear that the economy is slowing as the local stalemate persists, but the impact on the stock market has so far been limited. Whether this will continue through Q1 is unclear, but we expect withdrawals to be limited unless the vaccine changes significantly. ” History, “he added.

The Fed begins its two-day meeting on Tuesday, the last central bank meeting in 2020. Economists have speculated that the Fed might make changes to its bond program. The Fed is currently buying at least $ 80 billion a month from Treasuries, and Fed officials at their last meeting discussed what they could do to change that program.

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