Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - The cost of a Taiwan war

As China holds extensive and increasingly aggressive military exercises off of Taiwan, a group of American defense experts in Washington are focused on a simulation of a hypothetical war between the US and China over the island democracy. A US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, would come at a huge cost, they’ve found. “Under most—though not all—scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.” In 18 of the 22 rounds of the exercise so far, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US surface fleet. The group has yet to project the number of dead in such a non-nuclear conflict, or the economic shock waves that would almost certainly result. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is tracking the coronavirus pandemic and the progress of global vaccination efforts.

Alleged theft of government records, reportedly the reason behind last night’s execution of a federal warrant by the FBI, is the least of Donald Trump’s legal worries, Timothy L. O’Brien writes in Bloomberg Opinion. The raid also followed previous reports that Trump has allegedly destroyed documents by ripping them up and flushing them down toilets or putting them in burn bags. But O’Brien writes that the move signals Attorney General Merrick Garland may be finally bringing the full weight of federal law enforcement to bear on Trump. Depending on how aggressively Garland pursues the Republican for the attempted coup that he and his adjutants allegedly tried to engineer, the list of charges that could result include obstruction of official proceedings, conspiracy to defraud the US and seditious conspiracy,

Merrick Garland  Photographer: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

The UK is planning for several days over the winter when cold weather may combine with gas shortages to spur organized blackouts for industry and even households. Under the government’s latest “reasonable worst-case scenario,” Britain could face an electricity capacity shortfall totaling about one sixth of peak demand, even after emergency coal plants have been fired up. 

Kyiv reportedly claimed credit for a huge explosion at a Russian air base deep inside the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which the Kremlin has occupied since 2014. As Russian forces move south from the Donbas region to confront an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, other Kyiv-directed attacks behind enemy lines are reportedly wreaking havoc among Russian forces.

Inside Carlyle Group, battle lines were forming. On one side: Kewsong Lee, the executive hand-picked to assume the mantle of Carlyle’s co-founders and clear the path for a new generation of leaders. On the other: the very people who hand-picked him. Last week, the tension boiled over.

Kewsong Lee Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg

Merck’s Januvia, a popular diabetes drug, was found to be contaminated with a potential carcinogen. An impurity called a nitrosamine was found in some samples of the drug, which has the chemical name of sitagliptin, the US Food and Drug Administration said. 

Gasoline prices in the U.S. have begun to fall below $4 a gallon as demand wanes, though that’s still close to 25% more than it was a year ago. 

The supply of homes for sale across the US grew at a record rate last month, another sign that higher mortgage costs are cooling down the housing market. The number of active listings nationwide jumped 31% from a year earlier, a record-high increase for a third straight month.

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When investor demand for Chinese property debt was approaching its peak back in 2018, a banker could pull together the makings of a multi-million dollar deal during a Saturday boat trip around Hong Kong’s harbor. Now, the $203 billion market—which once yielded several deals a week and padded portfolios across the world from Pimco to UBS—is all but dead. And offshore investors are swallowing almost all of the losses. 

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