Fed's Kashkari suggests 4-6 week shutdown; says U.S. Congress can spend big on coronavirus relief https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fed-idUSKBN24Y0IM The U.S. economy could benefit if the nation were to “lock down really hard” for four to six weeks, a top Federal Reserve official said on Sunday, adding that Congress can well afford large sums for coronavirus relief efforts. The economy, which in the second quarter suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression, would be able to mount a robust recovery, but only if the virus were brought under control, Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “If we don’t do that and we just have this raging virus spreading throughout the country with flare-ups and local lockdowns for the next year or two, which is entirely possible, we’re going to see many, many more business bankruptcies,” Kashkari said. “That’s going to be a much slower recovery for all of us.” He said Congress is positioned to spend big on coronavirus relief efforts because the nation’s budget gap can be financed without relying on foreign borrowing, given how much Americans are saving. “Those of us who are fortunate enough to still have our jobs, we’re saving a lot more money because we’re not going to restaurants or movie theaters or vacations,” Kashkari said. “That actually means that we have a lot more resources as a country to support those who have been laid off,” he said. The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives approved a $3 trillion relief bill in May, while Senate Republicans, many of whom have expressed concerns about mounting debt, countered by proposing a $1 trillion aid package last week. Efforts to craft a compromise appear stalled. In an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said President Donald Trump would spend what was needed, but that the deficit was a factor. “There’s obviously a need to support workers and support the economy,” he said. “On the other hand, we have to be careful about not piling on enormous amount of debts for future generations.” Kashkari took a different view, stressing both the high level of domestic saving and historically low interest rates. “I’m not worried about it,” he said. “Congress should use this opportunity to support the American people and the American economy.” “If we get the economy growing, we will be able to pay off the debt,” Kashkari added.
And yet, the deaths keep going down. California has how many? 2, 4, 3 deaths? Florida which is a favorite target of extreme liberals has 73? after 184 and 200 plus the other day. In all that New York has suffered over 32,780 deaths so far under Governor Andrew Cuomo's great leadership? LOL
Kashkari is one of the biggest doves and supporters of MMT out there. The guy is a nightmare of irresponsibility.
Black-owned businesses more vulnerable to coronavirus crisis, NY Fed says https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-coronavirus-crisis-ny-fed-says-idUSKCN2501Z8 Black-owned U.S. businesses have failed at a disproportionately higher rate than those owned by whites during the coronavirus epidemic possibly because they were in poorer financial shape, less prepared to tap federal aid and faced longer closures, the New York Federal Reserve said on Tuesday. Many Black-owned businesses were already in a tough financial spot when the crisis hit, and were less equipped to outlast the prolonged business closures seen in areas with high infection rates, the New York Fed said in a report. “These firms had weaker financial cushions, weaker bank relationships, and preexisting funding gaps prior to the pandemic,” Claire Kramer Mills, assistant vice president at the New York Fed and one of the authors of the study, said in a statement. “COVID-19 has exacerbated these issues and businesses in the hardest-hit communities have witnessed huge disparities in access to federal relief funds and a higher rate of business closures.” The study followed earlier research by Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who found that the total number of Black business owners declined by 41% between February and April, compared to a 17% drop in the number of white business owners. The New York Fed study released on Tuesday pointed to a 2019 study that found only 42% of Black-owned companies were “financially” healthy as of last year, based on their credit score, profitability and accumulation of net income, versus 73% of white-owned businesses, according to the New York Fed. Those financial struggles may have made some of the Black firms less comfortable seeking out loans during the epidemic, Mills and her fellow researchers noted. Black businesses were overall less prepared to tap small business aid quickly through the U.S. government’s Paycheck Protection Program, which offered loans that could be forgiven, because many did not have strong banking relationships, the report found. Less than a quarter of Black-owned firms with employees had recently borrowed from a bank, according to a 2019 study by the New York Fed. And fintech firms, including online lenders which Black businesses are more likely to tap for funding, were not authorized to issue PPP loans until late in the first round of funding, the report noted. PPP loans were distributed at lower rates to the areas that were most affected by the virus, the New York Fed found. Some counties with a high concentration of Black-owned businesses received loans at rates below the national average of 17.7%. For example, only 7% of firms in the Bronx, New York, received PPP loans, as well as 11.3% of firms in Queens and 12.2% of firms in Prince George’s County, Maryland. “This tells us that a more targeted geographic focus on the hardest-hit and most underserved places is needed,” Mills said. Black business ownership has taken a sharp hit during the crisis, especially in areas that were harder hit by the virus early on and faced longer business closures. In the eight states with the largest numbers of Black owners, all but two - California and Florida - saw a net decline in Black business ownership between February and June. Ohio and New York saw the most severe business closures. Several states saw a pickup in business activity in May and June as some areas began to reopen, but the states that re-opened later, including New York, California and Illinois, continued to see a drop in the number of Black business owners.
watch as redhats celebrate the "falling infection rate" watch as DeCuntis refuses to revamp testing after using this excuse https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...se-coronavirus-testing-due-to-impending-storm Florida Will Pause Coronavirus Testing Due To Impending Storm Florida will stop testing for the coronavirus for several days due to concerns about the potential impact from Tropical Storm Isaias. After the state's testing sites close Thursday evening, they won't reopen until at least Tuesday morning, Candy Sims of the Florida Department of Health in Broward County told NPR. Some locations could be closed for longer, she added, depending on the weather.
Florida re-opened these testing centers directly after the storm. It was a good move for Florida to close them temporarily as a safety measure due to the storm. The number of tests performed daily in Florida has been dropping in the two weeks prior the storm. This, of course, has led to fewer positive test results.
One-Third of American Renters Expected to Miss Their August Payment An expansive census survey reveals a nation stretched to the brink by the financial toll of pandemic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-07/survey-exposes-america-s-looming-rent-crisis Renters across America are wading into unknown territory. With the lapse of the federal moratorium on evictions that expired July 31 and the end of the $600 per week boost to unemployment benefits, a recent survey reveals the breadth of financial uncertainty now plaguing Americans. An estimated 27% of adults in the U.S. missed their rent or mortgage payment for July, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau weekly over the last three months. Among renters alone, just over one-third (34%) said during the waning days of July that they had little to no confidence that they could make their August rent payment, a stark measure of the ongoing economic devastation for households stretched to the brink by coronavirus pandemic. The survey registers the deepest uncertainty across the South, where in some states, more than one-third of renters and homeowners said they missed their last rent or mortgage payment and would struggle to meet their obligations for August. In Texas, for example, 39% of renters said they weren’t certain they could pay their rent (or they were sure that they couldn’t). In Oklahoma, doubt has creptup to 43%. The Household Pulse Survey paints a picture of a nation veering toward widespread financial precarity. Over the last 90 days, the Census Bureau conducted this weighted survey by polling Americans weekly on their financial, physical and mental well-being. The responses show large shares of Americans foregoing medical care and many struggling with food insecurity. During the week of July 21 — the final week of the census survey — an estimated 35% of Americans said they expected to lose employment income due to the pandemic. One-third of respondents reported feeling anxiety most days or every day of the week. The risks weigh differently for different groups. For example, 31% of Black renters said that they were unable to pay last month’s rent, versus 28% of Latino renters and14% of white renters. It’s worth noting that the Census Bureau provides estimates for adults, not households, which would provide slightly different and perhaps more accurate estimates. The picture from this survey complicates the news that applications for unemployment benefits fell unexpectedly last week. Initial jobless claims fell to 1.2 million workers in the week ending Aug. 1, a substantial improvement. (Counting claims for the federal program for gig workers and the self employed, the number of applications was 1.6 million.) Data from the Labor Department show that continuing claims for unemployment benefits in the week that ended on July 25 hit their lowest level since April. Yet millions of renters — and homeowners — are still relying on the federal $600 boost to unemployment to pay their bills. The Census Bureau survey found that an estimated one in five renters tapped unemployment benefits to meet their spending needs over the period from July 16 to 21. Similar shares of renters used credit cards, money from savings, loans from friends or family or money from the one-time stimulus payment to pay their bills (or some combination of income sources). More than 40% of renters say they are scraping by, using funds from sources other than regular income. Americans who are out of work may be on the verge of a cliff. Up until July 31, a federal moratorium on evictions has shielded between 12 million and 20 million households. (At least on paper; renters who were served eviction notices illegally would still need to show up to court to pursue their rights, and many don’t.) Some states still have local eviction protections in place, and a few states where protections lapsed are taking steps to extend them. The Household Pulse Survey tracked the situation for renters across the nation right up until the federal moratorium expired. Senate Republicans are still debating how or whether to extend the boost to unemployment. Some senators suggest replacing the weekly $600 bump with a $200 boost instead. Some Republicans hope to hold out for a separate bill for unemployment benefits, separate from other spending priorities that Democrats in the House are putting forward as a package. Resuming a federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures is another issue that Senate Republicans are weighing; the HEROES Act passed by the House includes $100 billion in emergency rental assistance along with a uniform eviction moratorium for all renters. President Donald Trump has even said he could sign an executive order banning evictions. How far these efforts go (or don’t go) to help struggling households may be hard to see right away. The Household Pulse Survey ended its run last week; the Census Bureau did not respond to questions about whether the agency planned to resume the survey.
Winter is coming: Why America’s window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 is closing https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/10...portunity-to-beat-back-covid-19-is-narrowing/ The good news: The United States has a window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 before things get much, much worse. The bad news: That window is rapidly closing. And the country seems unwilling or unable to seize the moment. Winter is coming. Winter means cold and flu season, which is all but sure to complicate the task of figuring out who is sick with Covid-19 and who is suffering from a less threatening respiratory tract infection. It also means that cherished outdoor freedoms that link us to pre-Covid life — pop-up restaurant patios, picnics in parks, trips to the beach — will soon be out of reach, at least in northern parts of the country. Unless Americans use the dwindling weeks between now and the onset of “indoor weather” to tamp down transmission in the country, this winter could be Dickensianly bleak, public health experts warn. “I think November, December, January, February are going to be tough months in this country without a vaccine,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. It is possible, of course, that some vaccines could be approved by then, thanks to historically rapid scientific work. But there is little prospect that vast numbers of Americans will be vaccinated in time to forestall the grim winter Osterholm and others foresee. Human coronaviruses, the distant cold-causing cousins of the virus that causes Covid-19, circulate year-round. Now is typically the low season for transmission. But in this summer of America’s failed Covid-19 response, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is widespread across the country, and pandemic-weary Americans seem more interested in resuming pre-Covid lifestyles than in suppressing the virus to the point where schools can be reopened, and stay open, and restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms can function with some restrictions. “We should be aiming for no transmission before we open the schools and we put kids in harm’s way — kids and teachers and their caregivers. And so, if that means no gym, no movie theaters, so be it,” said Caroline Buckee, associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We seem to be choosing leisure activities now over children’s safety in a month’s time. And I cannot understand that tradeoff.” While many countries managed to suppress spread of SARS-CoV-2, the United States has failed miserably. Countries in Europe and Asia are worrying about a second wave. Here, the first wave rages on, engulfing rural as well as urban parts of the country. Though there’s been a slight decline in cases in the past couple of weeks, more than 50,000 Americans a day are being diagnosed with Covid-19. And those are just the confirmed cases. To put that in perspective, at this rate the U.S. is racking up more cases in a week than Britain has accumulated since the start of the pandemic. Public health officials had hoped transmission of the virus would abate with the warm temperatures of summer and the tendency — heightened this year — of people to take their recreational activities outdoors. Experts do believe people are less likely to transmit the virus outside, especially if they are wearing face coverings and keeping a safe distance apart. But in some places, people have been throwing Covid cautions to the wind, flouting public health orders in the process. Kristen Ehresmann, director of infectious disease epidemiology, prevention, and control for the Minnesota Department of Health, points to a large, three-day rodeo that was held recently in her state. Organizers knew they were supposed to limit the number of attendees to 250 but refused; thousands attended. In Sturgis, S.D., an estimated quarter of a million motorcyclists were expected to descend on the city this past weekend for an annual rally that spans 10 days. Even on smaller scales, public health authorities know some people are letting down their guard. Others have never embraced the need to try to prevent spread of the virus. Ehresmann’s father was recently invited to visit some friends; he went, she said, but wore his mask, elbow bumping instead of shaking proffered hands. “And the people kind of acted like, … ‘Oh, you drank that Kool-Aid,’ rather than, ‘We all need to be doing this.'” Ehresmann and others in public health are flummoxed by the phenomenon of people refusing to acknowledge the risk the virus poses. “Just this idea of, ‘I just don’t want to believe it so therefore it’s not going to be true’ — honestly, I have not really dealt with that as it relates to disease before,” she said. Buckee, the Harvard expert, wonders if the magical thinking that seems to have infected swaths of the country is due to the fact many of the people who have died were elderly. For many Americans, she said, the disease has not yet touched their lives — but the movement restrictions and other response measures have. “I think if children were dying, this would be … a different situation, quite honestly,” she said. Epidemiologist Michael Mina despairs that an important chance to wrestle the virus under control is being lost, as Americans ignore the realities of the pandemic in favor of trying to resume pre-Covid life. “We just continue to squander every bit of opportunity we get with this epidemic to get it under control,’’ said Mina, an assistant professor in Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “The best time to squash a pandemic is when the environmental characteristics slow transmission. It’s your one opportunity in the year, really, to leverage that extra assistance and get transmission under control,” he said, his frustration audible. Driving back transmission would require people to continue to make sacrifices, to accept the fact that life post-Covid cannot proceed as normal, not while so many people remain vulnerable to the virus. Instead, people are giddily throwing off the shackles of coronavirus suppression efforts, seemingly convinced that a few weeks of sacrifice during the spring was a one-time solution. Osterholm has for months warned that people were being misled about how long the restrictions on daily life would need to be in place. He now thinks the time has come for another lockdown. “What we did before and more,” he said. The country has fallen into a dangerous pattern, Osterholm said, where a spike in cases in a location leads to some temporary restraint from people who eventually become alarmed enough to start to take precautions. But as soon as cases start to plateau or decline a little, victory over the virus is declared and people think it’s safe to resume normal life. “It’s like an all or nothing phenomenon, right?” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “You all locked down or you get so discouraged with being lockdown that you decide you’re going to be in crowded bars … you can have indoor parties with no masks. You can do all the things that are going to get you in trouble.” Osterholm said with the K-12 school year resuming in some parts of the country or set to start — along with universities — in a few weeks, transmission will take off and cases will start to climb again. He predicted the next peaks will “exceed by far the peak we have just experienced. Winter is only going to reinforce that. Indoor air,” he said. Buckee thinks that if the country doesn’t alter the trajectory it is on, more shutdowns are inevitable. “I can’t see a way that we’re going to have restaurants and bars open in the winter, frankly. We’ll have resurgence. Everything will get shut down again.” Fauci favors a reset of the reopening measures, with a strong messaging component aimed at explaining to people why driving down transmission now will pay off later. Young people in particular need to understand that even if they are less likely to die from Covid-19, statistically speaking, transmission among 20-somethings will eventually lead to infections among their parents and grandparents, where the risk of severe infections and fatal outcomes is higher. (Young people can also develop long-term health problems as a result of the virus.) “It’s not them alone in a vacuum,” Fauci said. “They are spreading it to the people who are going to wind up in the hospital.” Everyone has to work together to get cases down to more manageable levels, if the country hopes to avoid “a disastrous winter,” he said. “I think we can get it under much better control, between now and the mid-to-late fall when we get influenza or we get whatever it is we get in the fall and the winter. I’m not giving up,” said Fauci. But without an all-in effort “the cases are not going to come down,” he warned. “They’re not. They’re just not.”
Virus surge makes US weak link in global economic recovery https://ktar.com/story/3481093/virus-surge-makes-us-weak-link-in-global-economic-recovery/ People in China are back to buying German luxury cars. Europe’s assembly lines are accelerating. Now the global economy is waiting for the United States to get its coronavirus outbreak under control and boost the recovery, but there’s little sign of that. The United States’ fumbling response to the pandemic and its dithering over a new aid package is casting doubt on its economic prospects and making it one of the chief risks to a global rebound. After springtime restrictions, many U.S. states prematurely declared victory over the virus and began to reopen their economies, leading to a resurgence in COVID-19 cases. Confirmed infections are rising in most states, and many businesses have had to scale back or even cancel plans to reopen. And while it does not dominate global commerce like it did 20 years ago, America is still by far the biggest economy – accounting for 22% of total economic output, versus 14% for No. 2 China, according to the World Bank. That makes its handling of the pandemic and its economy crucial for companies like Officina del Poggio, a producer of luxury handbags in Bologna, Italy, that sells 60% its vintage motorcycle-inspired satchels to U.S. customers. Company owner Allison Hoeltzel Savini said retail sales dried up during the spring. She had already suffered a blow when Barneys, her main client, went bankrupt and didn’t pay for the spring-summer collection that had shipped. Hoeltzel Savini said she has had to hold off on new hires, and hasn’t been able to do her usual sales trip to the United States. She recouped some sales by reaching out directly to customers through newsletters and social media during the height of Italy’s lockdown, but remains cautious about the future, as the U.S. market for her goods continues to slow down. “I am really concerned for the next season, if wholesale clients will be placing orders,” she said. Same for of Shenzhen Aung Crown Industrial Ltd., which makes baseball hats. The company usually sells about 60% of its output to the United States. “We can’t afford to lose the U.S. market,” said general manager Kailyn Weng. “It is difficult to find other markets that could digest such a great amount of high-quality hats … We have no alternative but to focus on the U.S. market.” The United States is unlikely to pull the world economy out of its rut as it did in past downturns such as after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. “The U.S. won’t be the locomotive,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at research firm IHS Markit. The American economy shrank at an annual pace of 32.9% from April through June, by far the worst quarter on record. The numbers are expected to bounce back strongly in the second half but to leave the U.S. economy well short of where it stood at the beginning of 2020. Talks in Congress to pass another round of federal coronavirus aid have failed, piling pressure on state and local authorities to keep basic services running. U.S. stock markets are nevertheless near record highs, but analysts attribute that largely to the Federal Reserve’s commitment to keep interest rates low. The European Union, which has reduced the number of contagions more effectively than the U.S., saw its economy shrink at a similar pace but is forecast to grow more quickly next year. And government support for workers has contained the rise in unemployment for now. China, meanwhile, was the first major economy to resume growth since the pandemic struck, recording a 3.2% expansion during the April-June period from the quarter before. If the U.S had done a better job managing the outbreak, “the rebound would have been stronger,” Behravesh said. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that.” Hopes for a strong and quick recovery have largely been dashed by the country’s inability to bring the virus under control. The United States’ diminished ability to drive global growth isn’t just related to its coronavirus response. Its share of global economic output – and growth – has been eroding. China’s economy has consistently grown faster than America’s and has steadily narrowed the gap between them. From 2009 through 2019, China accounted for almost 28% of global economic growth; the United States, just 17%. “We’re in a multi-polar world in which there are multiple locomotives — China, Europe” as well as the United States, Behravesh said. Germany’s carmakers, who dominate the global market for expensive cars, are already seeing their sales buoyed by China. BMW saw car sales in China rise 17% in the second quarter, compared with a year earlier – before anyone had heard the term “COVID-19.” Competitor Daimler’s revenues in China rose 15% during the same period from a year earlier while they sagged 36% in the U.S. Economist Philipp Hauber at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said that “in fact China has been the locomotive of the global economy in recent years. That does not mean that the development of the economy in the U.S. is inconsequential. Both economies are about the same size, depending on how one measures … and the two of them are the biggest trading partners for the eurozone.” He said that a weak U.S. economic rebound is the greatest risk to the eurozone and world economy, along with a second wave of coronavirus contagions. Chinese exporters already were looking for alternatives to the U.S. market after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on their goods in 2018. That has helped Chinese exports grow faster than the world average, taking away market share from other developing countries. But markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America usually buy lower-priced, less profitable goods. The ruling Communist Party has been trying for a decade to reduce the country’s reliance on exports and to encourage economic growth based on consumer spending at home. Businesses around the globe are hoping America gets its act together, and soon. The general manager of Yiwu Sinohood Bags Factory, which makes canvas tote bags, said it usually exports 40% to the United States, but sales in America have dropped to zero. “We tried to develop the European market, but Europe has also been hit hard by the epidemic,” said the manager, David Hu. “The U.S. market is important for us, and I am not confident about finding a replacement.” ___ Wiseman reported from Washington and McDonald from Beijing. Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, also contributed to this report. Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A White House report claims that roughly 81% of coronavirus job losses are likely to be temporary https://www.businessinsider.com/whi...oronavirus-job-losses-likely-temporary-2020-8 A report released Thursday by the White House Council of Economic Advisers said that roughly 81% of coronavirus job losses are likely to be temporary. The report found that the historic policy actions from the federal government in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic "ameliorated a stark economic contraction while improving expectations for a recovery in 2021." Specifically, the report highlighted the Payroll Protection Program as one that helped stabilize the labor market. A majority of the jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession are likely only temporary, according to a Thursday report from the Trump administration. The report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that the historic policy actions of the federal government to provide aid to the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic "ameliorated a stark economic contraction while improving expectations for a recovery in 2021." In particular, an estimated 80.6% of layoffs due to the pandemic are likely to be temporary instead of permanent, according to the report. The number of unemployed Americans skyrocketed from 5.8 million in February to more than 23 million in April as the US grappled with the coronavirus pandemic and sweeping shutdowns to contain the disease. In July, the number of unemployed ticked down to 16.3 million, but the unemployment rate remains elevated at 10.2%.