$98

27

That was the rather sobering estimate of the expected year-over-year fall in US gross domestic product in Q4, according to a fresh forecast from the Congressional Budget Office. It added that although the economy is likely to grow 4.8% next year, it won't return to its pre-pandemic size until mid-2022. The growth in 2021 will likely be followed by a long, slow recovery similar to the pace of the previous decade-long economic expansion, when growth averaged around weak 2% a year, the CBO said. Unemployment is expected to average very high 6.1% per year through 2030. But the agency acknowledged that the projections are highly uncertain, given incomplete knowledge about the severity of the pandemic and the prospects for developing treatments or a vaccine.

1000

That's about how many cases involving potential Chinese theft of American intellectual property the FBI is currently investigating, according to Director Christopher Wray at a conference on the subject last week. Wray said cases have been piling up since 2018, ever since the DOJ launched the China Initiative campaign to counter and investigate Beijing's economic espionage. The Director added that the Beijing government has shown "they're willing to steal their way up the economic ladder at [the US'] expense." US officials said all Chinese theft operations are happening based on an well-established plan handed down from the Beijing government, with areas of interest to target, which the Sino government sees critical to becoming self-sufficient. "They're not just targeting defense-sector companies. The Chinese have targeted companies producing everything from proprietary rice and corn seeds to software for wind turbines to high-end medical devices," Wray added. "And they're not just targeting innovation and R&D. They're going after cost and pricing data, internal strategy documents, bulk PII; really just about anything that can give them a competitive advantage.” Wow.