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With Moderna officially filing for expedited approval from the FDA yesterday, and Pfizer following up by announcing early Tuesday in the New York morning, With vaccine newsflow driving trading activity for yet another week, the team of analysts at Goldman Sachs has produced another handy guide to new developments in the race for a global vaccine.

Like the last update, Goldman's latest piece focuses on where the top performers are in the process, and which countries and regions have a step up in the race to 'reserve' precious resources.

One interesting addition to this week's chartbook is a summary of the 'outlook' for achieving 'widespread vaccination' in different parts of the world, featuring notable quotes from Dr. Fauci and Matt Hancock (the secretary of health in the UK).

The team started with an update on the status of the three leading western projects, along with the vaccine from Russia's Gamaleya Institute.

Before continuing on to some of the other top-tier projects that have released new data or information about trial enrollment etc.

Here's where things stand in the US, UK and EU as far as vaccine makers and their projections are concerned.

The researchers also broke down the various supply agreements between governments and manufacturers.

In the west, the deals have primarily been structured in the form of purchase options.

For at least the second week in a row, Goldman analysts say, public opinion polling has shown rising "demand" for a vaccine - that is, more people are allegedly willing to take the vaccine as soon as it's available than a month ago, as authorities attempts to shore up the "credibility" of COVID vaccines appear to be bearing some fruit.

Finally, a team of superforecasters consulted by Goldman see a 71% chance that 25 million Americans - presumably mostly health-care workers, cops and other stuff - will be vaccinated by Jan. 21.

The odds that these vaccination milestones will be delayed until Q2 2021 are seen as pretty small, in the low-single-digits, percentage-wise. Meanwhile, the odds that 200 million Americans will be vaccinated by the start of Q4 are supposedly as high as 90%.

With so much still unknown, and companies like Pfizer and UPS scrambling to build special packages to ship the dry ice necessary to preserve and transport the Pfizer vaccine.

We'll need to revisit these predictions a year from now and see how they worked out.

 

Two weeks we showed a concerning chart from Bank of America according to which after monetizing virtually all net Treasury issuance in 2020, the Fed's monetization of debt in 2021 would shrink drastically, and as a result, "Treasury supply will significantly outstrip Fed purchases", and this is even without factoring in the possibility of another major fiscal stimulus.

This prompted us to ask whether another "crisis" would spontaneously emerge in the coming months to greenlight another massive expansion in the Fed's QE; and why not - after all we are now well past the point where there is even a trace of monetary prudence with global central banks set to double their balance sheets in just two years :

But let's (naively) assume there are no major changes to the Fed's current monetization of $80BN in Treasurys every month. What does that mean for supply and demand for both Treasurys and the broader bond universe, and by extension, equilibrium bond prices?

To answer that question, JPMorgan quant Nick Panigirtzoglou looked at bond supply and demand in 2021 and projected that while there will be a substantial decline in global bond supply next year, he anticipates an even more dramatic drop in bond demand, largely driven by a reduction in G4 central bank purchases.

Starting with supply, in 2021 JPMorgan sees bond supply declining by just over $1 trillion "largely due to a decline in spread product supply where our credit strategists see an effective halving of net issuance in US HG corporate bonds from nearly $1tr in 2020 to around $450bn in 2021. By contrast, government supply looks set to decline only marginally, as a decline in government bond issuance outside the US is largely offset by an increase in US Treasury issuance. This in turn arises from the fact that this year’s funding of the deficit came largely in the form of T-bills in 1H20, with the Treasury gradually increasing bond issuance from May onward." However, in 2021, JPM expects a $670bn contraction in T-bills outstanding which together with the deficit are set to be absorbed by $2.8tr of bond supply, vs. $2.29tr T-bill supply and $1.75tr of bond supply in 2020.

Meanwhile, on the demand side, "the biggest shift this year has been the central bank QE response." Among the G4 (US, Euro area, Japan, UK) central banks, bond purchases look set to reach $5.1tr in 2020, driven by the aggressive expansion in Fed QE in late March to provide liquidity coupled with the expansion of ECB purchases in early April. However, for 2021, JPM sees central bank QE impulse declining to around $3.6tr, largely as a continuation of the Fed’s current pace in 2021 will still see a reduction in overall purchases given the aggressive nature of the initial response. And while the largest US bank expects the Fed to provide some further stimulus at the December meeting, it expects this to come in the form of an extension of the average maturity of its Treasury purchases rather than an increase in the pace. As for the ECB, JPM sees a modest increase overall relative to 2020, expecting a €500bn expansion in the PEPP programme in Dec20 and another €250bn expansion in 2H21. Elsewhere, the BoE has already announced a £150bn expansion for 2021, while net buying by the BoJ should be around ¥30tr in JGBs. "Overall, this means we see a deterioration in bond demand from G4 central banks of around $1.5tr in 2021 relative to this year", according to the Panigirtzoglou.

To be sure, other sources will also be a major supply/demand wildcard as follows:

• G4 commercial banks were the second largest source of bond demand in 2020 after central banks, with purchases of around $1.5tr. For 2021, JPM pencils in a 1/3rd decline in commercial bank demand in 2021, or a deterioration in bond demand of around $500bn to $1 trillion.
• Foreign official demand (i.e., reserve managers), as measured by the IMF’s COFER data, suggest that FX reserves contracted by around $310bn in 1Q20 as many central banks responded to the pandemic by supporting their currencies. Two thirds of this decline, or around $200bn, was reversed in 2Q20. JPM calculations suggest a continuation of gradual reserve accumulation in 2H20, bringing overall bond demand from FX reserve managers to around $20bn for this year. For 2021, a continuation of a modest dollar depreciation centred could see a gradual accumulation of reserves and the bank pencils in an $80bn increase in bond demand vs. 2020.
• G4 pension funds and insurance companies bought around $270b of bonds in 1H20, broadly consistent with an annualized pace of around $540bn and in-line with the previous year’s pace. In principle, the strong gains in equities in 2H20 could arguably have seen an increase in the pace of bond purchases. However, while the recovery of equities has helped reduce funding deficits of US defined benefit pension funds to a level where they are little changed YTD. Looking ahead, JPM pencils in a modest increase in pension fund bond demand of around $100bn in 2021 vs. this year.
• Finally, retail investors are currently tracking an annualized demand pace of around $340bn, which however masks significant outlaws in 1Q20 of $180bn, after which bond fund inflows reached nearly $500bn, broadly consistent with its average over the past decade. JPM pencils in a similar $500bn bond fund demand backdrop for 2021, which would imply an increase in bond demand of around $160bn.

Putting it all together, JPMorgan  now sees a nearly $1.7 trillion deterioration in global bond demand and a $1 trillion decline in global bond supply, or around $600bn deterioration in the supply/demand balance for 2021.

Of course, less demand can quickly turn into more demand if the price is lower (yield higher), and according to JPM this deterioration in the supply/demand imbalance "implies upward pressure on bond yields next year of just over 20bp based on the relationship between annual changes in excess supply and global agg yields over the past decade, effectively reversing a third of this year’s decline."

Obviously this begs the question of how much of the above is already priced in; alternatively one can also ask a market which has habituated to Fed intervention how much excess QE (or maturity extension, or yield curve control) is priced into today's 10Y yield of 0.93%. Because while JPM's sanguine conclusion that a $600 billion shortfall in demand can be offset with a simple 20bps increase in yields would surely be taken advantage of by the Fed which is certainly eager to steepen the yield curve to give struggling domestic banks some more bang for the NIM buck. And yet we doubt it because the moment the Fed's unveils new forward guidance indicating that not only is more QE not coming but the current $80BN/monthly is set to shrink, we expect surge in bond yields.

Why? Because that's precisely what happened in May 2013 when Bernanke unleashed the infamous taper tantrum. That's when yields soared by 150 bps, sparking a cascade of VaR shocks as the market freaked out. Well, back then it was just QE3 that was being tapered: considering that the size and scope of the current QE is far, far greater, we can only imagine just how dire the "titanic taper tantrum of 2021" will be.

Authored by Simon Veazey via The Epoch Times,

The Republican plaintiffs who are challenging legislation that allowed mail-in ballots from all comers in Pennsylvania, today filed a request to the Supreme Court to block the state from certifying the election.

The state Supreme Court had dismissed the case on Nov. 28, overturning a temporary block on election certification issued by a lower court.

Challenging that ruling, the emergency application for injunction, dated Dec. 1, asks the Supreme Court to prohibit the Pennsylvania governor and secretary of state from “taking official action to tabulate, compute, canvass, certify, or otherwise finalize the results of the election.”

“To the extent that the above-prohibited actions have already taken place, petitioners seek an injunction to restore the status quo ante, compelling respondents to nullify any such actions already taken, until further order of this court,” says the petition.

The emergency application essentially asks the court to put a temporary hold on certifying the state election pending the filing of a full writ of certiorari - asking the court to review the lower court decisions.

The case was filed by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and others. They claim that an act passed last year by the state legislature that allows voting by mail without excuse violated the state constitution.

The state Supreme Court dismissed the case with prejudice, saying that the lawsuit had not been filed in a “timely manner,” since the act in question was signed into law on Oct. 31, 2019.

That ruling, however, appears to leave open the broader merits of the case - that the law, Act 77, requires an amendment to the state constitution.

In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Pennsylvania congressional nominee Sean Parnell addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 24, 2020. (Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

One of the plaintiffs, Republican congressional candidate Sean Parnell, told KDKA on Nov. 30:

“While we believe that Act 77 is certainly a state issue, we also believe that there are very important federal questions nested within it. So what we’re doing is we’re looking to appeal to the Supreme Court on those federal questions.”

The petition, filed with Judge Samuel A. Alito, poses two questions for the Supreme Court to answer:

1. Can a state violate its own constitutional restrictions without violating the U.S. constitutional clauses relating to elections and due process?

2. And did the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution “by dismissing with prejudice the case below, on the basis of laches, thereby foreclosing any opportunity for petitioners to seek retrospective and prospective relief for ongoing constitutional violations?”

The state Supreme Court said on Nov. 28 that the petitioners waited until days before the county of boards of election were required to certify the election results, which could “result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters” who voted by mail.

“It is beyond cavil that petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim,” the court wrote.

Parnell told KDKA that it was a “Catch-22” situation.

 “Had I filed it earlier, I would have probably not been able to bring the case into court because I wouldn’t have had legal standing,” he said.

“So they would have probably said, ‘Well, the harm that you’re alleging is speculative.'”

Parnell said that the case was not about whether mail-in ballots are good or bad per se, but about state constitutional procedure.

“Democrat or Republican, if the citizen learns that his law is unconstitutional, it’s our duty and responsibility as citizens to challenge that law,” he said, noting that he was being criticized by some Republicans for his actions.

The lawsuit is filed against the state, the majority Republican general assembly, Gov. Tom Wolf, and Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.

In the state Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice Thomas Saylor issued a separate opinion agreeing to reverse the preliminary injunction. However, Saylor said he believes the Republican petitioners should still be able to argue their case about the constitutional validity of Act 77.

“I find that the relevant substantive challenge raised by appellees presents troublesome questions about the constitutional validity of the new mail-in voting scheme,” Saylor wrote.

Shortly after the appeal was filed, Senator Ted Cruz issued a statement in support:

#SCOTUS should hear the emergency appeal on the Pennsylvania election challenge. pic.twitter.com/mzwr4eaHR8

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 1, 2020

No sooner did we just get finishing penning a piece about how the British Army is being used to fight "anti-vaccine" protests and vaccine "disinformation" - including by "work[ing] closely with social media companies" - than Mark Zuckerberg has also thrown his hat into the fray.

The Facebook CEO has said he wants to provide platform users with "authoritative information about Covid-19 vaccines," according to CNBC. The company has "already reached out to the Biden administration," Zuckerberg has said. We don't know about you, but we already feel safer and more informed...

Meanwhile, "authoritative" is a great word choice. 

On a livestream with Dr. Anthony Fauci this week, Zuckerberg said: “There’ll be a few important things that we can do together. We’re already planning a push around authoritative information about the vaccines.”

He did not clarify on how he planned on distributing the information, but if it's anything like how Facebook informed its users on how to vote, it will be a non-stop bludgeoning of banners, alerts and messages that will completely override what little true "user experience" is left on Facebook, between the ads. 

Recall, we also wrote hours ago that the British Army's Information Warfare Unit is being deployed to deal with "anti-vaccine propaganda" heading into the rollout of the vaccine overseas. Some in the country have said they will refuse the vaccine and will do the same for the children. Others have called it a "mass sterilization program". Other Brits simply "feel the Government is wielding too much power," the Daily Mail noted. 

The U.K. is also launching a probe into "vaccine disinformation", including an investigation into (of course) Russia. 

A U.K. Cabinet Office spokesman said late last week:  "As we edge closer to a vaccine we continue to work closely with social media companies and other organizations to anticipate and mitigate any emerging anti-vax narratives and promote authoritative sources of information."

We're sure the Biden administration will do the same and anoint Facebook as its official Covid press secretary. 

Summary:

• Texas, California see record numbers
• Cuomo says hospital capacity expansion a "top priority"
• France to prioritize vaccinating nursing home residents
• San Francisco warns new measures coming as soon as this week
• Denmark announces new restrictions
• The Netherlands sees decline in new cases
• US hospitalizations hit new record
• Vietnam halts international flights
• Ireland begins reopening Tuesday
• CureVac chairman says vaccine will be ready in Q1

* * *

Update (1820ET): We're getting some more dire numbers out of the US, as cases look set to surge in today's nationwide tally following a new record in daily cases in Texas, and a record hospitalization tally in California.

California has a record 9,049 patients hospitalized with the virus after only recently exceeding levels from July. Now that California's hospitalizations are back in record territory, the state is already acting, moving more counties into its most dire 'purple' designation, while Gov Gavin Newsom hints at another lockdown. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed hinted at another lockdown, warning that more-stringent measures may be coming as soon as this week.

In Texas, officials reported 15,182 new cases, and 170 new deaths, raising the tally to 21,549 deaths.

New Jersey reported 90 deaths, by far the most in more than six months. The state now has 15,254 lab-confirmed virus fatalities and 1,829 with an untested but probable link.

Meanwhile, the CDC has voted on a protocol for prioritizing the distribution of the first batches of COVID-19 vaccines.

* * *

Update (1310ET): As coronavirus hospitalizations in the US hit new highs, virus-related hospitalizations in New York jumped by 242 in one day, the most since early April. There were 3,774 hospitalizations on Monday, and 66 virus-related deaths, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday during a briefing via conference call.

Cuomo reminded New Yorkers that hospital capacity is a "top priority" and that orders have already been given to increase the number of available beds as hospitalizations in the state surge. These include a backup facility on Staten Island.

New York City is urging older adults and those with underlying health conditions to stay home and refuse any guests in order to moderate the spread of the virus. City hospitalizations have doubled in recent weeks and are now 1,100, the highest since June. The seven-day average of daily reported cases has climbed to 1,685, the highest since May. A month ago, the daily case average was 621. The percentage of people testing positive continues to climb, to a seven-day average of 4.14%.

It's evening in Western Europe, and Denmark has become the latest country to impose new restrictions that will hit the greater Copenhagen area and take effect next week. Denmark is struggling to contain the latest surge in cases, while in the Netherlands, right next door, authorities revealed that new cases dropped 8% over the past week, attributing their success to the COVID-19 measures.

* * *

As warnings about a "long dark winter" ahead intensify, with the NYT once again quoting scientists projecting death tolls and case tallies several times larger than what we have seen already, hospitalizations in the US have hit a new record high with more than 96k patients admitted to hospitals around the country.

However, even as daily tests now top 2 million, the number of new cases in the US is still falling, continuing an incipient trend that started just before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Source: COVID Tracking Project

Still, the alarming surge in hospitalizations over the past month would suggest that higher death tolls might be in store, as rural hospitals are overwhelmed by the crush of severely ill patients.

Meanwhile, the biggest news on the vaccine front has to do with Pfizer's latest vaccine development: the company has officially filed for emergency use approval in the EU on Tuesday - after making the same request of authorities in the US last week.

Outside the US, Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered the country’s aviation authority to halt international commercial flights after health authorities reported the country's first local cases in almost three months, according to a posting on the government’s website. The premier - who added that  "rescue" flights bringing Vietnamese home from abroad should continue - instructed the Ho Chi Minh City government to quickly trace and isolate everyone who came in contact with those who tested positive this week.

Here's a roundup of COVID news from around the world and in the US:

Ireland, one of the first countries in western Europe to return to lockdown in late October, began reopening its economy on Tuesday. Non-essential stores welcomed shoppers back. Restaurants will reopen later this week, as well as bars serving food. Bars that only serve drinks will remain closed (Source: Bloomberg).

Jean Stephenne, chairman of German biotech company CureVac NV, said he is confident the company’s Covid vaccine will be ready in the first quarter of 2021, and there is no reason to suggest its efficiency won’t match that of rivals. "We’re running a few months behind Pfizer, but confident on prospect for February-March,” he said (Source: Bloomberg).

Authored by Mike Brown via Inverse.com

Starlink's beta test is requiring participants to recognize Mars as a "free planet."

It's an unusual bit of fine print, and the implications go far beyond securing good internet on Earth.

SpaceX's internet connectivity constellation Starlink, which began forming in May 2019, has started inviting interested fans to the "Better Than Nothing" beta test. While the final version aims to offer gigabit download speeds at low latency to anyone with a view of the sky, the beta is offering more like 50 to 150 megabits per second – hence the humble-brag test name.

But the Starlink terms of service, as spotted by Twitter account "WholeMarsBlog" and confirmed by Reddit moderator "Smoke-away," require users to agree that "no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities."

Under section nine of the terms, SpaceX explains how services provided around the Earth or Moon will follow the law as governed by the state of California in the United States. But for Mars, the story changes a bit:

"For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement."

The comments highlight one of SpaceX's biggest ambitions for the coming decades: to send the first humans to Mars and ultimately establish a city by 2050.

To achieve that goal, the firm is developing the Starship, a fully-reusable rocket measuring around 400 feet tall when paired with the booster. SpaceX wants to send the first cargo ships to the Red Planet in the next few years.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, has commented before about the sort of government he'd like to see emerge on the planet. In a March 2018 interview, he predicted the city would operate on some sort of direct democracy. He compared it to the early United States, where representative democracy was most logical due to the sheer size of the nascent state.

“Everyone votes on every issue and that’s how it goes,” Musk explained. “There’s a few things I’d recommend. Keep laws short. […] Something suspicious is going on if there’s long laws.”

Not everyone follows Musk's logic. Jim Pass, CEO of the Astrosociology Research Institute, told Inverse in April 2019 that he believed the determiner will be who is sponsoring the settlement. A religious organization could lead to a theocracy, whereas military types may lead to a more autocratic structure.

Like other features of the "Better Than Nothing" beta, it's possible that Starlink's terms right now don't make it to the final version. The company is expected to start offering services in the United States and Canada by 2020, before moving to a larger breadth of the populated world by 2021.

The Inverse analysis – As with many of Musk's projects, it seems Starlink includes some tongue-in-cheek references, too.

Another joke was spotted in the new Android app by Reddit user "joehalfrack." In the app, an animated character called Dishy attempts to help. The easter egg, seemingly a reference to Microsoft Office's much-hated "Clippy" assistant, is an example of the sort of references Musk likes to make, whether in his company's products or on his personal Twitter account.

It's difficult to imagine Starlink's terms trumping international laws and treaties, but if the clause was designed to draw attention to the service it worked — how many other satellite broadband providers do you know that have people sharing their terms of service on Twitter?

Bleakley Advisor Group CIO Peter Boockvar joins senior editor Ash Bennington to discuss a potentially higher inflationary environment for 2021 and why that may put central banks and markets at odds. Boockvar reviews this year’s market trends and dissects the latest ISM manufacturing data, pointing out reports of supply chain disruptions, labor cost pressures, and a general rise in inflation. With markets looking past recent COVID-19 data with promising vaccine announcements, value is growing increasingly attractive here in the U.S., the U.K., Europe, and Asia. However, Boockvar explains his concerns of markets tightening with the onset of growth and whether the Fed will choose to let the yield curve steepen or prevent it. As CPI increases are the kryptonite of central banks, should the inflation narrative take hold, Boockvar expresses how this may shock global bond markets. Real Vision's Haley Draznin explores the deep dichotomy between the real economy and equity markets, as all major U.S. indices were up today despite Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin shutting down the Fed's emergency loan programs for main street businesses.

Moderna has reported some more good news from its trials, stating that its Covid-19 vaccine candidate has a final efficacy of just over 94 percent with nobody who received it during trials falling severely ill. That has paved the way for the company to apply for emergency usage authorization in the U.S. and Europe. That puts Moderna around a week behind Pfizer and BioNTech who already took that step with their own vaccine that emerged from trials with an efficacy of 95 percent.

With the pandemic worsening and the race to roll out the first vaccine heating up, Statista's Niall McCarthy notes that governments around the world have already reserved close to 10 billion doses before a single candidate has even reached the market. 2.6 billion further doses are under negotiation or reserved as optional expansions of existing deals. The findings come from Duke University who have been aggregating and analyzing publicly available data on vaccine procurement and manufacturing.

The research shows that the U.S. had secured 1.01 billion doses from six different companies up to November 20 which represents the highest quantity of any government apart from India which has made agreements for 1.6 billion.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna both account for 100 million U.S. doses each while the U.S. is also set for 500 million doses of the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.

It offers 70 percent protection according to trials, though it is believed this can be increased to 90 percent by tweaking the dose. The rest of the U.S. supply is made up of candidates that have not reported detailed testing results and it includes vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson?, Novavax? and Sanofi-GSK.

Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

If Israel, as is universally believed and has not been denied, was behind the assassination of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist, questions arise:

Why would the Israelis kill him? And why would they do it now?

The scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, it is conceded, was a leader in Iran’s nuclear bomb program, but that program was disbanded in 2003.

Under George W. Bush, in 2007, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies declared with “high confidence” that Iran no longer had a bomb program.

Four years later, the same intel agencies affirmed that finding.

Since 2015, Iran’s nuclear facilities, under the Iran nuclear deal, have been subject to U.N. surveillance and inspections. And Iran has neither produced plutonium nor enriched uranium to the 90% level needed for a bomb.

Israel claims Iran never stopped working on a bomb, but U.S. intel agencies and U.N. nuclear inspectors have agreed that the military nuclear program that Fakhrizadeh oversaw was ended in 2003.

So, again, why would Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu authorize Mossad to send an assassination team to Iran to kill the nuclear scientist? And why now?

If Iran is actually running a secret program to build a bomb in violation of the nuclear deal, why not identify the site of the violation, demand that U.N. inspectors visit, expose Iranian duplicity to the world, and kill the deal?

Why kill the scientist?

From Netanyahu’s standpoint, there are, however, many motives to make the call to kill Fakhrizadeh.

To humiliate the Iranian regime. To demonstrate Mossad’s capacity to kill Israel’s enemies with impunity. To send a message to others working in Iran’s nuclear program that the regime’s security forces cannot protect them.

To Sunni and Gulf Arabs who see Iran as a sectarian and strategic rival and adversary, Israel’s ability to punish Iran and its regional militias with repeated, unanswered strikes makes Israel a far more desirable ally and partner than ever before.

But with this strike, Bibi was also sending a message to Joe Biden, who is seven weeks away from assuming the presidency.

What is Bibi’s message?

Mr. President-elect:

This Mossad operation should tell you how seriously we view Iran’s determination to build a nuclear bomb, and how existential a threat that would be for us. And we intend to deal with that threat sooner rather than later.

And if, on taking office, you try to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and lift U.S. sanctions in return for Iran’s full compliance with the terms of that deal, then we will not be restricted in the actions we take to prevent that from happening.

As President Trump put America first, we put Israel first, and Iran tops the list of threats we intend to face — preferably with you, but if necessary, alone.

From Bibi’s standpoint, the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist seems to be a win-win-win proposition. Bibi’s personal scandals are eclipsed and put on the back burner. He is seen by Israelis as a man of action and decisive protector of the nation against its greatest threat.

Should Iran answer the assassination with a counterstrike, that could lead to Israeli retaliation, escalation, and war. This could turn Bibi into a wartime prime minister like Winston Churchill and fulfill his dream of having America bring its full air, naval and missile power to deliver a crushing blow to the Iranian military and the Ayatollah’s regime.

However, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh and Iran’s resolve to retaliate complicates — if it does not close — Biden’s path toward rejoining the nuclear deal and reconciling with Iran.

If the killing ignites a war, Tehran knows there is a real possibility that America would align with Israel, as Donald Trump detests the Iranian regime as much as Netanyahu does.

And if the “moderates” in Tehran fail to maintain the national honor by retaliating against Israel, that could result in a hardline regime winning in this year’s elections.

A return of the hardliners could mean a total collapse of the Iran nuclear deal and a new cold war that could eventually end in the hot war Middle East hawks — in Iran, Israel and the USA — have long desired.

As Trump showed with the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in his car coming out of Baghdad airport, he does not recoil from direct action against perceived enemies.

Last week, the U.S. flew two B-52s out of Minot, North Dakota, to the Middle East. The USS Nimitz carrier group began moving out of the Indian Ocean toward the Persian Gulf.

Four days before the hit on the Iranian scientist, Netanyahu met secretly in a Red Sea port city with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Was Pompeo told what the Israelis were about to do? Did the U.S. know of, approve of, or not object to the attack? Do Americans want this war that seems closer today?

PropertyShark is back with its latest sprawling ranking of the nation's wealthiest zip codes. Once again, California and New York dominated, with the Golden State home to the most top-dollar zip codes. In fact, on the 2020 list, 107 of the 121 zip codes with the highest median averages were located in either the Empire State, or the Golden State.

The disparity between the average home price on the coasts vs. the rest of the country has long mirrored their relative economic vitality. But COVID-19 appears to have changed all that.

Outside of California and New York, nine other states made it onto  the ranking, the same number as last year. Massachusetts came in third with four zip codes on the list, including Boston's infamously expensive Back Bay neighborhood.

Connecticut and Nevada also added two zip codes each, while Arizona, Florida, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Washington each contributed one.

Key Takeaways:

• At $7 million, Atherton’s 94027 remains #1 most expensive zip code for fourth consecutive year
• California further solidifies its position as most expensive housing market with 87 entries
• Medians rose in 78 of country’s 100 priciest zips in 2020, flipping the mostly downsliding trend of 2019
• San Francisco claims 11 of the priciest zip codes, the highest concentration of any city, with the Bay Area home to 50
• Offering up 23 zips, Los Angeles County features the highest concentration of expensive zip codes at the county level
• Metro L.A., Bay Area & New York metropolitan area account for 103 of the most exclusive zip codes in the U.S.
• For first time in at least five years, TriBeCa isn’t among the top 10 priciest zip codes, landing at #11 with 10007
• Red Hook & Carroll Gardens zip places Brooklyn among 100 most expensive for second year in a row
• Nationally, 13 zips featured median sale prices higher than $3 million — one less than in 2019
• Overall, the country’s top 100 most expensive zip codes are located in 11 states; California & New York claim bulk of high-priced real estate

Focusing on California, the Bay Area alone saw 50 zip codes top the list.

LA County saw a record 23 zip codes in the most expensive list, the highest of any single county.

San Francisco, meanwhile, has 11 zip codes in the list, the highest concentration of any single city.

In a milestone that's appropriate considering one of the most talked about real estate trends of the year was the exodus of people out of NYC this spring as COVID-19 ravaged the city (leading to record-breaking deaths in its nursing homes), the Big Apple didn't have any zip codes in the top ten wealthiest for the first time ever.

Two down town zip codes that include parts of TriBeCa and SoHo have seen their median sales numbers drop by double digits compared with 2019. Specifically, 10007 experienced a 19% drop in its median sale price, while neighboring 10013 underwent a 15% drop, which brought its median below $3 million for the first time in at least five years. In fact, 10007 was the only NYC zip code to see its median sales price hold above $3 million.

One of the biggest drops was seen in Manhattan's Garment District, which saw its median price drop 38%, or nearly $1 million. In 2019, it was the No. 26 most expensive zip code in the US, with a $2,520,000 median sale price, whereas, in 2020, it placed No. 84 at $1,575,000.

Other high-priced parts of NY State better retained their 2019 highs. The No. 2 most expensive zip code in the country was found out in Suffolk County, the home of the exclusive Hamptons zip codes. Sagaponack’s 11962 was No. 2 for the whole country, not just New York State. Of course, the Hamptons still saw some mild declines compared to the prior year, but nothing compared to what we saw in NYC, as more wealthy New Yorkers scrambled to their Hamptons homes for an extended summer that began in March.