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5 things to start your day

Biden moves to export vaccines, GOP makes counteroffer and IEA says its time to stop drilling for oil.

Exports  

President Joe Biden said the U.S. will share at least 20 million doses of U.S.-authorized Covid-19 vaccines with the rest of the world by the end of June. This is on top of the 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca Plc vaccine that the Food and Drug Administration hasn't cleared for U.S. use which was already promised. Biden also signaled that he intends to to grow American manufacturing's share of the global vaccine market. The 20 million doses counts as less than one day's global supply, according to latest data from Bloomberg's vaccine tracker. 

Getting there

Republican senators are on track to deliver their infrastructure counteroffer later today, with signs increasing that they will come up with a larger package than their initial $568 billion five-year proposal. The group are opposed to tax increases to fund the spending, with some favoring public-private partnerships to help pay for the plan. The Biden administration is hopeful of doing a bipartisan deal and may split the overall stimulus package to achieve that

Stop 

The International Energy Agency said the world needs to stop developing new oil and gas fields immediately to have any chance of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. No new coal-fired power stations should be built, and electric cars should make up 60% of the global fleet by 2030. Oil prices should dwindle to $25 a barrel by mid-century under the scenario they outline. For oil traders, 2050 is obviously a long time away as they push the price of a barrel of Brent crude above $70 this morning

Markets rise

The sentiment pendulum swinging between reopening-driven economic optimism and Covid-flareup-driven pessimism is firmly on the side of optimism today. Overnight the MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 1.7% while Japan's Topix index closed 1.5% higher. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index had gained 0.3% by 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time with energy and mining stocks leading the gains. S&P 500 futures pointed to plenty of green at the open, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.645% and gold gained. 

Coming up... 

U.S. April housing starts and building permits data is at 8:30 a.m. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan speaks later. Both investors and economists will be keeping an eye on today's earnings reports from big retailers. Walmart Inc., Macy's Inc., and Home Depot Inc. all report, with the updates likely to be closely watched for consumer behavior and any signs of increasing costs from rising commodity prices. 

What we've been reading

Here's what caught our eye over the last 24 hours. 

And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morning

Late last month, I wrote a piece about where the cryptocurrency world was headed. We're living in the golden age of Ponzis, pump & dumps, and pyramid schemes.

There are a few things that make this moment in crypto unique. The key thing is the rise of so-called decentralized exchanges, where literally anyone can create a token and have it listed. In the past, for a token to list on a legit exchange, it had to demonstrate that it was a serious project. Or it had to pay a large fee to an exchange like Binance, in exchange for listing. No more. With decentralized exchanges where the trading happens right on a blockchain itself, there's no gatekeepers. And in many cases, it doesn't take much in the way of development chops to create a coin. (Just copy and paste the code from somewhere else and change a few things, like the name.)

Throw into the mix TikTok and other social media platforms where influencers can pump the coin, and you have a recipe for transparent games. Everybody knows it's a joke, but nobody cares, because as long as they get into the joke early enough and sell before the peak, they're happy. That's the game.

Anyway, Dave Portnoy did a thing on Twitter yesterday where he announced his support for some sh**coin, and he picked one called SafeMoon, and then he said the magic words: "if it is a ponzi, get in on the ground floor." As I said on April 28, the great thing about coins right now is "you can get in early on the next Bernie Madoff" and I thought maybe that was a little harsh. But he just went and said it!

Joe Weisenthal is an editor at Bloomberg

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