Aurelia Butler

As the Christian world celebrates the birth of Jesus, take a moment to savour how relevant the gospel remains to our life today. Not for reasons of religion, which is each reader’s personal business. Rather, it is the economics of the nativity that carries important lessons for our present challenges.After all, the census that two millennia ago forced a Nazarene carpenter on the road back home to his native town, heavily pregnant wife in tow, must count as one of history’s greatest policy-induced labour market disruptions — worse than Brexit no doubt, although maybe shorter-lasting at least. With workers dispersed around the Holy Land like containers languishing outside Felixstowe or Long Beach, there will have been precursors to the hospitality industry’s travails, too. No room at the inn? A room could probably have been found, actually, if there had been staff to prepare it. But qualified workers would have been impossible to come by when the census officials had forced them to travel home just as the high season was setting in. At least it benefited the eco-tourism sharing economy and those with stable and a manger to put on the Judaean version of Airbnb.And anyone struggling to procure all the Christmas presents for the kids in this year of delay and disruption should spare a thought for the infant Christ, whose presents — we have it on high authority — arrived 12 days late. Perhaps the Magi were delayed in a caravan pile-up near Suez. Speaking of the 12 days of Christmas, the eponymous carol can serve as a risk analysis for the modern household’s holiday supply logistics challenge. It tells a story of two halves. If you don’t want your Christmas to fall through at any of the first seven verses — which celebrate a menagerie of poultry, game birds and ornamental fowl — you should have made sure to have ordered in the summer. US prices for less common poultry — like geese and ducks — have spiked to the highest on record. Turkeys cost more than ever, too. And that’s if you can get your hands on one: British farmers have reared 1m fewer of the birds this year than last. (Don’t worry about verse five, though: gold can always be had, for a price.)The last five verses, in contrast, point to the smart householder’s choice for a supply-constrained Christmas. With foodstuffs and goods snarled up in disrupted value chains and logistical logjams, buy experiences instead! Parades, acrobatics, and music — what’s not to like? With hotels and restaurants keeling over from an Omicron-induced lack of business, surely it should be no problem hiring laid-off service workers for a holiday extravaganza, even for those leaving the planning to the last minute.Except, of course, that in many places such festivities have now been ruled out by public health restrictions. Even the UK government would struggle to pass off the presence of double-digit numbers of dancers, drummers and pipers as anything other than a party. This can tempt leaders to hesitate before passing policies that seem like “cancelling Christmas”. When the goods don’t turn up and services are proscribed, it can seem there is nothing left for those wanting to celebrate the holiday. But actually, there is. Hold on to the most mundane content of the nativity, which Christians and non-Christians can cherish equally: a family spending time together, rejoicing in their love for one another and the happiness of childhood. The best experiences need not be bought. And for men and women of good will, there need be no supply constraint on fellow-feeling. More

The National Bank of Hungary (NBH) raised its one-week deposit rate by 20 basis points to 3.8% at a tender on Thursday, extending a series of weekly interest rate hikes as it tries to curb rising inflation.But on Wednesday Orban had said the government would freeze retail mortgage interest rates for a six-month period from January to shield households from higher borrowing costs.The bank had raised its base rate by 30 basis points to 2.4% last week, its highest level since May 2014, and pledged further rate hikes next year to anchor rising inflation expectations.The one-week deposit rate, which the bank uses to tackle short-term market volatility, now sits 305 basis points above its June level, when the bank started tightening policy, a move also reflected by Budapest interbank rates.The mortgage rate cap and the size of the rate increase, which disappointed some investors, helped to push the forint down 0.3% on the day, putting it within sight of its all-time-lows at 372 per euro hit in November.”Announcements of PM Orban on the freezing of mortgage rates at their October levels at least until June could considerably undermine efforts … to tighten monetary conditions,” economist Orsolya Nyeste at Erste Bank said in a note.The central bank’s press office did not respond to emailed questions on how the mortgage rate measure would affect the conduct of policy.Hungarian inflation surged to a 14-year-high of 7.4% in November, above expectations, driven by higher fuel, alcohol and tobacco prices. Services prices increased by 4.6%.”Despite the (NBH) now having raised (the one-week rate) by 200bp over the course of just over a month, the forint has remained virtually unchanged versus the euro since it began weekly hikes, which leaves the door open for further weekly tightening,” economists at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) said in a note.Analysts polled by Reuters expect the one-week deposit rate to rise to 4.3% by the end of the second quarter, when the mortgage rate freeze is set to expire.Economists at brokerage Erste Investment said the mortgage rate move, which follows a three-month cap on fuel prices in place since mid-November, harmed the efficiency of monetary policy, as borrowers would be spared the higher costs.Shares in Hungary’s OTP Bank, which sank to five-month-lows on Wednesday, rebounded to trade 3.3% higher at 16,115 forints ($49.42) at 1049 GMT, outperforming the Budapest blue chip index. Erste economists said that Wednesday’s falls in OTP’s shares were overdone in light of the possible financial impact.($1 = 326.07 forints) More

Investing.com — There’s one last big dump of U.S. economic data before the holiday, with jobless claims, personal income and spending and more consumer price data for November all due. Vladimir Putin goes on an extended rant about NATO, but conspicuously omits to repeat his threat of military action against Ukraine. Fresh studies add to evidence that Omicron could be the beginning of the end of the pandemic. And Elon Musk says he’s nearly finished offloading Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock. Here’s what you need to know in financial markets on Thursday, 23rd December.1. Jobless claims, PCE prices and personal spendingThe last major economic data before the holiday season arrive at 8:30 AM ET (1330 GMT), with the publication of last week’s jobless claims, and November data for personal income and spending, as well as the price index for personal consumer expenditures. Analysts are also on the lookout for a slowdown in spending, amid suspicions that rising prices and the depletion of forced savings are taking their toll.The PCE price indices are, of course, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation and will likely gain the most attention accordingly. Core PCE prices are expected to have continued rising at a solid clip of 0.4% on the month, as in October. Initial jobless claims are expected to have stayed around last week’s level of 206,000, a historically low level that hints at widespread labor hoarding by employers who are struggling to find staff. Durable goods orders for November are also due 2. Chinese city locks down hard to stop OmicronChina locked down the 13 million inhabitants of Xi’an in the west-central province of Shaanxi, trying to stamp out a local outbreak of Covid-19. The lockdown, reported to be the harshest since the one imposed on Wuhan at the start of the pandemic, is a characteristically extreme reaction from one of the few countries in the world that still has a zero-tolerance approach to the Coronavirus, at a time when it is becoming endemic in many other parts of the world. The outbreak comes only a few weeks ahead of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, an event from which foreign visitors have already been banned. The Summer Olympic games in Tokyo had led to a spike in Covid-19 cases in Japan earlier this year, as the activities of various athletes and others associated with the games accelerated the spread of the then-dominant Delta variant. The news elsewhere on the Covid-19 front was considerably better. Fresh data from Denmark, the U.K. and South Africa all added evidence to support the view that the new Omicron strain is less likely to cause serious illness.  AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) joined Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) in producing trial results to show that a booster jab of its Covid-19 vaccine largely restored a person’s immune response to the virus. However, other trial data showed that the Sinovac vaccine, the mainstay of China’s immunization program, didn’t have the same effect. Travel and tourism-related stocks rebounded sharply on the news in Europe, although discount airline Ryanair (NASDAQ:RYAAY) was forced to guide for a wider net loss due to the recent European bans on tourist arrivals from the U.K.3.  Stocks set to open higherU.S. stock markets are set to drift higher at the open on the more positive news from the pandemic, pending the release of the data mentioned above. By 6:45 AM ET (1145 GMT), Dow Jones futures were up 98 points, or 0.3%, while S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were both up 0.2%. Stocks likely to be in focus later include Tesla, which bounced over 7% on Wednesday after CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was nearly done selling stock to meet his tax bill. Filings suggest he has sold around $15 billion, compared to Musk’s own estimate of $11 billion in tax liabilities this year. Also in focus will be Tencent (OTC:TCEHY), after it announced plans to distribute almost its entire stake in e-commerce giant JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) to shareholders, a move seen as a response to pressure from Chinese antitrust regulators earlier this year.4. Putin airs NATO grievances, but tones down rhetoric; Europe gas prices fallAs expeced, Russian President Vladimir Putin set aside ample time in his annual marathon press conference for a lengthy tirade against the U.S. and its NATO allies, repeating a series of allegations of malicious and aggressive intent by the West that were, almost without exception, either unprovable or unsubstantiated.These included claims that the U.S. is set to deploy hypersonic weapons in Ukraine. The U.S. – unlike Russia – has not yet developed hypersonic weapons, nor is Ukraine likely to be admitted to NATO in any foreseeable timeframe.However, Putin chose not to repeat the explicit threat of military action against Ukraine that he had aired in a speech to his defense chiefs earlier this week and also mentioned upcoming talks with the U.S. scheduled for the new year. The shift in rhetoric, coupled with the arrival of warmer weather and a handful of liquefied natural gas cargoes in Europe, led the spike in European energy markets to unwind markedly. Benchmark gas prices fell 20%.5. Oil prices firmer after U.S. inventory dataCrude oil prices were lifted overnight by the general improvement in risk appetite, with the Omicron news restoring a bit of faith in demand for air travel next year. Also helping was the U.S. government’s weekly report on oil inventories on Wednesday, which showed an even bigger drop in crude stockpiles than the American Petroleum Institute had done.  By 6:55 AM ET, U.S. crude futures were up 0.3% at $73.00 a barrel, while Brent crude was up 0.4% at $75.59 a barrel More

A lower share of people infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant are likely to require hospital treatment compared with cases of the Delta strain, according to healthcare data from South Africa, Denmark and the UK.The findings by separate research teams raise hopes that there will be fewer cases of severe disease than those caused by other strains of the virus, but the researchers cautioned that Omicron’s high degree of infectiousness could still put health services under a heavy burden.The reduction in severe illness was likely to stem from Omicron’s greater propensity, compared with other variants, to infect people who had been vaccinated or previously infected, experts stressed, though the UK studies also hinted at a possible drop in intrinsic severity.Unvaccinated groups remained the most at-risk but as the majority of breakthrough infections and reinfections caused by Omicron are mild, the proportion of all cases that developed severe disease is lower than with other variants.The UK, South Africa and Denmark have the highest levels of Omicron in the world but the new variant now accounts for a majority of Covid-19 cases in several countries, including the US. The rapid spread of Omicron has led to the reimposition of restrictions across Europe and parts of America to slow its transmission.One of the scientists involved in the Danish study cautioned that it would be “some weeks” before Omicron’s impact on hospitals becomes clear and to be careful about “making the narrative that it’s more mild”.Have your Christmas plans been derailed by Omicron? How so? Let us know at [email protected]. Thanks for reading FirstFT Americas. Here’s the rest of today’s news — GordonFive more stories in the news1. Intel apologises for banning use of components from Xinjiang The apology was in response to attacks from Chinese nationalist media over the policy. The controversy erupted after the US chipmaker sent a year-end letter to suppliers noting that components made in the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang should not be used in its semiconductors.2. Tencent reduces stake in ecommerce group JD.com The Shenzhen-based tech conglomerate will begin distributing $16bn of shares in ecommerce group JD.com to shareholders from March. It is Tencent’s first big move to unlock the value of its vast investment portfolio as Beijing steps up regulatory scrutiny of the sector.3. Big Tech split leads to demise of Internet Association Growing tensions between Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Apple lie behind the death of the Internet Association, a nine-year-old lobby group that was Big Tech’s voice in Washington. Dubbed the “unified” voice of the internet industry, IA will shut at the end of the year after both Microsoft and Uber, among others, pulled their financial support.4. Apple loses bid to block three shareholder proposals The resolutions called for detailed reports regarding allegations of forced labour in Apple’s supply chain, explanations of why certain apps are deleted from the App Store in China and a public report of what risks the iPhone maker could face by allegedly using non-disclosure agreements.5. Credit Suisse fires two managers overseeing Greensill funds Lukas Haas, a portfolio manager, and Luc Mathys, who was head of fixed income at Credit Suisse Asset Management, were suspended from their roles in the aftermath of the funds’ suspension. More departures are expected.Coronavirus digestChina has locked down 13m people in the central city of Xi’an, as the country battles to contain increasingly frequent coronavirus outbreaks that threaten its economic recovery in the run-up to the 2022 Winter Olympics.The White House has warned it will take more than six months to fulfil its initial order for Pfizer’s antiviral Covid-19 pill, as officials damped speculation the drug could immediately turn the tables on the pandemic.The UK reported a record 106,000 coronavirus cases yesterday, up 35 per cent compared with the same day last week, highlighting the rapid spread of Omicron. However, the growth rate appears to have slowed.Under-investment in European hospitals has led to workforce shortages that are constraining intensive care provisions.US financial conditions are near the most accommodative on record, even as the Federal Reserve has begun stepping up its exit from coronavirus crisis-era stimulus measures in a bid to battle elevated inflation.The FT View: Omicron has shown that there are still serious failings of international co-ordination and co-operation.Thank you to readers who took our poll. Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they had received a Covid-19 booster jab. Of the 17 per cent who had not received a booster, 5 per cent said it was because additional doses were not available where they live. The day aheadEconomic data The Federal Reserve will get a look at its favoured inflation measure, with the release of personal consumption expenditure data. The Census Bureau will publish its latest report on orders for long-lasting goods, like cars and dishwashers, and new home sales.Vladimir Putin to hold annual press conference The Russian president will hold his end-of-year briefing with domestic media, two days after he warned Nato of a military response to an expansion of its alliance.What else we’re readingJair Bolsonaro turns to the establishment For an outsider who won Brazil’s presidency criticising the traditional political system, to tell an audience of legislators “I feel at home here” as the far-right leader recently did, was a remarkable volte-face. With less than a year to go until the presidential election, the incumbent is on the ropes.Business complacence about US democratic stability Typically fearful of the political spotlight, executives called for a peaceful transfer of power in their home market as Donald Trump contested his election loss to Joe Biden. A year on, though, business has gone quiet over voting rights.The e-bike that encapsulates the supply chain crisis When the pandemic fuelled a surge in cycling, sales of electric bikes increased disproportionately. But for the manufacturer of the popular Element e-bikes weathering this year’s supply chain crisis has been a challenge.

How bad was 2021? Chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman is joined by colleagues Martin Wolf and Gillian Tett to look back at a year bookended with Donald Trump’s chaotic exit from the White House and Vladimir Putin’s threats against Ukraine, with the ever-present inflation raging throughout. How to Spend ItWhat to give your pooch this Christmas? A Ralph Lauren cashmere doggy jumper or a Fendi poo-bag dispenser? For the tech-savvy household, Furbo has developed a WiFi-enabled two-way doggy baby monitor complete with a remote treat dispenser.

Furbo, £129 © Furbo’s remote doggy treat dispenser More

Grant Zehnder, a 23-year-old Chicago resident, gave out IOUs for Christmas last year after his parcels arrived two weeks late, despite completing his shopping early. Zehnder was one of millions of Americans left waiting for holiday purchases as Covid-19 forced more consumers to shop online, catching logistics companies unprepared to handle the surge in volumes. This year, they might seem to face an even greater challenge. Parcel analytics company ShipMatrix has predicted that 89.8m parcels will be delivered daily in the peak season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, up from 79.1m for 2020 and 65.3m in 2019. Yet delayed shipments are down by nearly half, from about 2.5m parcels daily in the 2020 holiday season to approximately 1.3m so far this year. The reason, according to industry members, is that last year’s delays forced businesses and consumers to rethink how they approached the peak shopping season. Logistics companies, retailers and carriers all misunderstood the full impact of Covid-19 on the retail sector until it was too late last year, said Stephen Bullard, senior vice-president of operations at Project Verte, an ecommerce supply chain company.After that experience, Bullard said, most carriers invested more into strengthening their systems and networks. That has paid off this festive season. President Joe Biden touted the improvements on Wednesday. “Delivery times for this season for FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service are faster than before the pandemic, even as Americans have purchased a record amount of goods,” he said. UPS said it started to prepare for the peak holiday season at the beginning of the year, and worked with its customers to kickstart holiday promotions earlier so as to bring packages into its network sooner than in previous holidays. It added more facilities and relaxed the hiring process for about 100,000 seasonal and other holiday workers.To ensure it would have enough package handlers and driver helpers, “we eliminated as many steps to the process that we determined weren’t essential or regulatory to us,” said Matt Lavery, UPS’s human resources director. A hiring process that previously took about 21 to 28 days was reduced to about 10 to 12 days, Lavery said, and new recruits were offered jobs less than an hour into their interviews. “By the time we are 30 minutes in [the job interview], we have collected all the information we need”, and the new recruits were ready for training, he added.

The early shopping guidance to consumers played a part in smoothing this year’s deliveries. According to an internal UPS survey, 95 per cent of consumers shopped earlier than usual for the Christmas holiday. FedEx delivered 97.1 per cent of its express packages on time between December 5 up to December 11 while UPS had 99.3 per cent and US Postal Service stood at 98.5 per cent, according to ShipMatrix data. The company last week reported revenue of $23.5bn in the second quarter, an increase of 14.1 per cent compared with a year earlier. Raj Subramaniam, chief operating officer of FedEx, told analysts that its ground delivery operation had seen “an outstanding Cyber Week”, delivering 100m packages. Its ability to handle this volume was due to it adding more capacity across its network, he said, including the equivalent of 300 American football fields worth of sorting facilities since June.FedEx had managed to hire 60,000 frontline workers since September, he added. This came at a cost, however, as the company offered higher pay, more paid time off and perks such as tuition reimbursement to overcome “staffing and retention challenges due to the constrained labour market”.The effects of labour shortages pushed costs in FedEx Ground up by $285m in its latest quarter.The US Postal Service said it expected to handle between 850m and 950m packages this holiday season. Its average delivery time has slightly improved to 2.7 days this year from 2.9 days during last year’s peak season.From April this year, USPS said it installed 92 new package sorting machines, leased an additional 13m square feet and hired more than 40,000 seasonal positions to make its network more resilient. Logistics companies and carriers have also turned to technology and data tools this year to solve last-mile delivery problems. Steve Denton, chief executive of Ware2Go, a UPS-backed company, said these technology tools were used to forecast demand, allowing carriers to place the right inventory closer to their customers, and offsetting the labour shortage by deploying more automation and robotics in warehouses. And, of course, customers themselves did their bit. Because of his experience last year, Zehnder said he shopped in-store and completed online shopping early to avoid getting “fewer gifts under the tree and a little less festivity on Christmas morning”. More