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• President Donald Trump is willing to sign a $1.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, a top aide said on Friday, but Democratic House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the sum was not enough to meet the needs of the American people.

• Reuters: Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, rose 1.9% last month, after jumping 6.2% in June. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer spending would gain 1.5% in July. July’s increase left consumer spending about 4.6% percent below its February level.

• “The Fed said it can allow inflation to run above its 2% target for some time seems like they are going to keep their monetary policy extremely loose”.

• Iowa, the biggest U.S. corn-producing state, is facing its most widespread drought since September 2013, state agriculture secretary Mike Naig said on Friday.

• In a dramatic U-turn, Brazil's Environment Ministry said on Friday it would continue to fight deforestation, reversing its position after saying hours earlier that it could not afford to continue enforcement efforts in the Amazon.

• Reuters: The company that operates the Trump International Hotel in Vancouver said on Friday it has filed for bankruptcy, blaming the coronavirus pandemic for lost revenue and financial hardship.

• Nearly half of Twitter accounts pushing to reopen America may be bots..   The plague on humanity, merrily plaguing away..
  

Study: Black turbine blades reduced bird mortality by 72%

• Some very long-term trends are changing for the better. First, insurance giant Suncorp says it won't insure oil or gas companies and projects. And now Exxon, the world’s biggest company as recently as 2011 is booted from the Dow Industrials.

• Utilization rates for Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) fell to 44% in August, their lowest level this year according to Vortexa data. The sharp drop since the year-to-date high of 52% in May follows stymied global demand recovery for crude and a significant loss of cargoes compared to 2019 levels.

• DJIA changes: Out go Exxon Mobil (ticker: XOM), Raytheon Technologies (RTX), and Pfizer (PFE). In come Salesforce. com (CRM), Honeywell International (HON), and Amgen (AMGN).

• Germany’s economy shrank by 9.7% from April to June compared with the first three months of the year.

• The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index slumped to 84.8 in August after tumbling to a downwardly revised 91.7 in July.

• U.S. new home sales rose by 13.9 % to an annual rate of 901,000 in July after rising by 15.1 % to a rate of 791,000 in June.