Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
News posted last week about economic effects related to the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some articles are summarized here. We cover the latest economic data, especially the new coronavirus relief proposal and stimulus checks, government funding, the latest employment data, housing market reports, mortgage delinquencies & forbearance, layoffs, lockdowns, and schools, as well as GDP plus Biden Transition. The bulk of the news is from the U.S., with a few more articles than previously from overseas at the end. (Picture below is morning rush hour in downtown Chicago, 20 March 2020.) News items about epidemiology and other medical news for the virus are reported in a companion article.
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The Fed Has a Problem: Yields Have Doubled on the 10-Year Treasury in Six Months, Despite the Fed Buying $400 Billion in Treasury Securities – The chart above reminded us of what happened in the London Whale saga at JPMorgan Chase. The London derivatives traders at JPMorgan Chase were making such huge bets in a specific credit index that they effectively became the market with no escape route to unwind their losing trades. The bank had, insanely, used customer deposits to make those wild bets and ended up losing at least $6.2 billion.Since August 6 of last year, the Fed has purchased $400 billion of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. Despite that massive amount of propping up the market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has more than doubled, from half of one percent to a yield of 1.05 percent at 7:30 a.m. this morning. That means that all of those billions of dollars in Treasuries that the Fed bought at lower yields are now trading at losses.On September 16 of last year, one day before the repo market blew up and forced the Fed to intervene for the first time since the Wall Street crash of 2008, the Fed authorized the New York Fed to release a statement indicating that it would continue to purchase Treasury securities at a rate of “approximately $80 billion per month” but would also be allowed to purchase “additional amounts … as needed to sustain smooth functioning of markets for these securities.”That statement should be interpreted as “the Fed will do whatever it takes to push interest rates down to prevent the trillions of dollars in derivative bets at the mega banks from blowing up, taking down the banks, and forcing an even greater expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet from bank bailouts.”On August 5 of last year, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $6.99 trillion. As of January 20 of this year, it had grown to $7.463 billion, with the bulk of that coming from its purchases of Treasury securities. On January 30, 2008, before the Wall Street crash, the Fed’s balance sheet had been $906 billion and had been growing at a modest pace over the prior two decades. But in just the past 13 years, the Fed’s balance sheet has multiplied by more than 8 times. Is that really sustainable? Last March we reported the following: “According to the U.S. Treasury, as of February 29, 2020, there was $16.9 trillion in marketable U.S. Treasury securities outstanding. Of that amount, at the end of February, the Federal Reserve held $2.47 trillion or 14.6 percent – making it, by far, the largest single holder of U.S. Treasuries anywhere in the world.” As of December 31, 2020, there was $20.98 trillion in marketable U.S. Treasury securities outstanding. According to the Fed’s H.4.1 for January 20, 2021, the Fed owns $4.74 trillion of those or 22.6 percent. This is not a good trend and both Treasury yields and the prices of bank stocks are starting to reflect misgivings.
10Y Yield Tumbles Below 1.00% As Liquidations Lash Stocks – As the short-squeeze malarkey accelerates this morning… Funds are being forced to liquidate their longs to cover losses/margin… And that is weighing on the broad market… Which has put a bid under bonds, sending the 10Y yield back below 1.00%… And the dollar is bid as overseas positions are unwound and repatriated… It seems that all the cheering over soaring heavily-shorted stocks has an ugly unintended consequence after all. We are sure the regulators will be looking into this now. Graphs Source: Bloomberg
Chicago Fed: “Index points to an uptick in economic growth in December” – “Index points to an uptick in economic growth in December.” That is the headline for this morning’s release of the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index, and here is the opening paragraph from the report: Led by improvements in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased to +0.52 in December from +0.31 in November. Three of the four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index made positive contributions in December, but three categories decreased from November. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, ticked up to +0.61 in December from +0.59 in November. [Download report] The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly indicator designed to gauge overall economic activity and related inflationary pressure. It is a composite of 85 monthly indicators as explained in this background PDF file on the Chicago Fed’s website. The index is constructed so a zero value for the index indicates that the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate of growth. Negative values indicate below-average growth, and positive values indicate above-average growth. The first chart below shows the recent behavior of the index since 2007. The red dots show the indicator itself, which is quite noisy, together with the 3-month moving average (CFNAI-MA3), which is more useful as an indicator of the actual trend for coincident economic activity.
OECD Weekly Tracker of Economic Activity – Menzie Chinn – Real time estimates of GDP based on Google Trends and machine learning for OECD and G-20 countries,here. Here’s the current US GDP nowcast: Technical discussion here. VoxEU post here. Notice that there is an implied decline in January. It’s interesting to compare the nowcasts coming from “bean counting” approaches (GDPNow, NY Fed Nowcast, IHS MarkIt nee Macroeconomic Advisers) vs. this big data approach. The levels are calculated by adding on the nowcasted growth rates to latest available GDP estimate. Figure 1: GDP as reported (black), implied IHS Markit (red), GDPNow (blue), NY Fed (green), OECD Weekly Economic Tracker (orange), all in billions of Ch.2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA, 2020Q3 3rd release, IHS-Markit (1/25), Atlanta Fed (1/21), NY Fed (1/22), OECD weekly economic tracker (as of 1/24), and author’s calculations.
Business Cycle Indicators as of January 26th – Menzie Chinn – New information coming out on Friday, employment in a week and a half. For now: Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), Bloomberg consensus for January as of 1/26 (blue square), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), all log normalized to 2020M02=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (1/4/2021 release), NBER, and author’s calculations.
BEA: Real GDP increased at 4.0% Annualized Rate in Q4 –From the BEA: Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2020 (Advance Estimate) Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 33.4 percent. …The increase in real GDP reflected increases in exports, nonresidential fixed investment, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), residential fixed investment, and private inventory investment that were partly offset by decreases in state and local government spending and federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.The advance Q4 GDP report, with 4.0% annualized growth, was at expectations.
U.S. Economy Shrank in 2020 Despite Fourth-Quarter Growth – WSJ – The U.S. economy shrank in 2020 for the first time since the financial crisis, but grew rapidly in the fourth quarter and is forecast to continue recovering following its worst year since the 1940s. A strong rebound in the second half of 2020 wasn’t enough to overcome the economic shock created by the pandemic earlier in the year. Measured year-over-year, the economy contracted 3.5% last year, the largest decline since just after World War II and the first since 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis. Measured from the fourth quarter to the same quarter a year earlier the economy shrank 2.5%. Fourth-quarter U.S. gross domestic product – the value of all goods and services produced across the economy, adjusted for seasonality and inflation – grew at a 4% annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That joined a record 33.4% annual rate of growth in the third quarter to further reduce losses from earlier in the pandemic. Economists project that growth will pick up this year once the pandemic is under control, though the coronavirus remains a threat to the global economy. “We still have a ways to go, but it’s positive,” Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, said of U.S. growth. “It’s a slow heal,” she added, pointing to still-hurting parts of the economy such as in-person services businesses and energy production. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic output, slowed to a 2.5% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the holiday quarter, down from a 41% rebound in the third quarter, as consumers pulled back from shopping amid high coronavirus infection rates and business closures in some regions. Overall spending on goods declined in the fourth quarter. And spending on durable goods – products designed to last at least three years such as furniture and washing machines – was flat, following increased spending in the prior quarter as households purchased home entertainment, fitness and office supplies as they worked from home. Continued strength in corporate and residential housing investment, however, has helped set the economy up “for what could be a really good 2021,” said James Knightley, an economist at ING Financial Markets LLC. He said stimulus checks from the December coronavirus-aid package, the prospect of additional government aid this year, high household savings and vaccination programs point to a continued recovery. “There’s basically a wall of money being thrown at the economy,” Mr. Knightley said.
A Few Comments on Q4 GDP and Investment; Worst Year Since WWII Drawdown –Earlier from the BEA: Gross Domestic Product, 4th Quarter and Year 2020 (Advance Estimate) Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 33.4 percent. Real GDP was down 3.5% in 2020 from 2019. This was the worst year since 1946 (WWII drawdown). And other than WWII drawdown, this was the worst year since the Great Depression.On a Q4-over-Q4 basis, GDP was down 2.5%.This graph shows the percent decline in real GDP from the previous peak (currently the previous peak was in Q4 2019).This graph is through Q4 2020, and real GDP is currently off 2.5% from the previous peak.The advance Q4 GDP report, at 4.0% annualized, was close to expectations.Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased at a 2.5% annualized rate in Q4, down from 41.0% increase in Q3.The second graph below shows the contribution to GDP from residential investment, equipment and software, and nonresidential structures (3 quarter trailing average). This is important to follow because residential investment tends to lead the economy, equipment and software is generally coincident, and nonresidential structure investment trails the economy.In the graph, red is residential, green is equipment and software, and blue is investment in non-residential structures. So the usual pattern – both into and out of recessions is – red, green, blue.Of course – with the sudden economic stop due to COVID-19 – the usual pattern doesn’t apply.The dashed gray line is the contribution from the change in private inventories.Residential investment (RI) increased at a 33.5% annual rate in Q4. Equipment investment increased at a 24.9 annual rate, and investment in non-residential structures increased at a 3.0% annual rate (after getting crushed over the previous year)..The contribution to Q4 GDP from investment in private inventories was 1.0 percentage points. On a 3 quarter trailing average basis, RI (red) is up solidly, equipment (green) is also up solidly, and nonresidential structures (blue) is down sharply.The second graph shows residential investment as a percent of GDP.Residential Investment as a percent of GDP increased in Q4. Note: Residential investment (RI) includes new single family structures, multifamily structures, home improvement, broker’s commissions, and a few minor categories.The third graph shows non-residential investment in structures, equipment and “intellectual property products”. Investment in non-residential structures declined in Q4 as a percent GDP, and will probably be weak for some time (hotel occupancy is low, office and mall vacancy rates are rising).
GDP Forecasts: Q1 and 2021 –Some forecasters are increasing their 2021 forecasts significantly, and see possible further upside. However, there is ongoing concern about the pandemic, and the impact of the COVID variants. From Merrrill Lynch on 2021: We have become increasingly convinced of the prospects for exceptional growth this year. We came into the year with an above-consensus forecast of 4.5% which was boosted to 5.0% upon the earlier passage of stimulus. As we have been warning, we are now taking another leap forward and forecasting 6.0% growth this year [Jan 29 estimate] From Goldman Sachs on 2021: [O]ur 2021 growth forecast – which currently stands 21/2pp above consensus at +6.6% on a full-year basis … there are significant upside risks as well. [Jan 29 estimate] From the NY Fed Nowcasting Report: The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 6.5% for 2021:Q1. [Jan 29 estimate]And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow: The initial GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in thefirst quarter of 2021 is 5.2 percent on January 29. [Jan 29 estimate]
The COVID recession is over — James Hamilton – The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 4.0% annual rate in the fourth quarter. That’s well above the 3.1% average growth that the U.S. experienced over 1947-2019, and follows a 28.8% logarithmic annual growth rate seen in Q3. Real GDP growth at an annual rate, 1947:Q2-2020:Q4, with the 1947-2019 historical average (3.1%) in blue. Calculated as 400 times the difference in the natural log of GDP from the previous quarter. These numbers bring the Econbrowser recession indicator index down to 0.0% for Q3. As we’ve done every quarter for the last 15 years, the number posted today (0.0%) is an assessment of the situation of the economy in the previous quarter (namely 2020:Q3). According to our algorithm, there is zero probability that the Q3 observation of +28.8% could be viewed as continuation of the recession that began at the start of 2020; the recession is unambiguously over. For this reason, in the figures I report from now on I will end the shaded region for this recession with the 2020:Q2 observation. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has not yet made that call, though I believe they eventually will. If there is a downturn in 2021, the mechanical algorithm that we have been using for 15 years would label it as a separate recession. GDP-based recession indicator index. The plotted value for each date is based solely on the GDP numbers that were publicly available as of one quarter after the indicated date, with 2020:Q3 the last date shown on the graph. With the exception of the the end of the 2020 recession, shaded regions represent the NBER’s dates for recessions, which dates were not used in any way in constructing the index. The indicated end to the 2020 recession comes from the algorithm described in Chauvet and Hamilton (2005). None of this should be taken to suggest that the economy has fully recovered from events of 2020. Economists have always followed the convention that recessions end when recovery begins (as opposed to when recovery is complete). The figure below plots the level of real GDP (again in logarithmic units) rather than the growth rate. Despite the positive growth in Q3 and Q4, the level of real GDP in 2020:Q4 was still 2.5% lower than it had been in 2019:Q4. Even if we were to continue to experience the strong 4.0% annualized growth rate of 2020:Q4 for every quarter in 2021, that would only increase the level of GDP by 1% each quarter, and wouldn’t bring us back to the 2019:Q4 level until the third quarter of 2021.
Seven High Frequency Indicators for the Economy These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment. The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. This data shows the seven day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019-2020 (Blue) and 2020-2021 (Red). The dashed line is the percent of last year for the seven day average. This data is as of January 24th. The seven day average is down 64.5% from last year (35.5% of last year). (Dashed line) The second graph shows the 7 day average of the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities. This data is updated through January 23, 2021. This data is “a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. For year-over-year comparisons by day, we compare to the same day of the week from the same week in the previous year.” Note that this data is for “only the restaurants that have chosen to reopen in a given market”. Since some restaurants have not reopened, the actual year-over-year decline is worse than shown. Dining picked up during the holidays. Note that dining is generally lower in the northern states – Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. Note that California dining is off sharply with the orders to close. This data shows domestic box office for each week (red) and the maximum and minimum for the years 2016 through 2019. Blue is 2020 and Red is 2021. The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through January 21st. Movie ticket sales were at $12 million last week (compared to usually around $200 million per week at this time of year). This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. This data is through January 16th. Hotel occupancy is currently down 31.8% year-over-year. This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019. Blue is for 2020. At one point, gasoline supplied was off almost 50% YoY. Red is for 2021. As of January 15th, gasoline supplied was off about 8.5% (about 91.5% of the same week in 2019). This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: “This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities.” This is just a general guide – people that regularly commute probably don’t ask for directions. There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. This data is through January 24th for the United States and several selected cities. According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7 day average for the US is at 47% of the January 2020 level. It is at 35% in Chicago, and 53% in Houston – and mostly moving sideways. Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage (HT BR). This graph is from Todd W Schneider. This is daily data since early 2020. This data is through Friday, January 22nd. Schneider has graphs for each borough, and links to all the data sources.
Biden officials hold call with bipartisan group of senators on coronavirus relief plan – Officials in President Biden’s administration on Sunday held a call with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss the White House’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. Several senators confirmed their participation in the call, with a couple of Democratic senators describing the conversation as “productive.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) categorized the discussion as “refreshing” and and said it was “long overdue” to have the White House “fully engaged in addressing this pandemic with a focus on science and federal leadership.” “In the spirit of unity that we saw on the West Front of the Capitol on Wednesday, the Senate must come together on a bipartisan basis and provide the resources the American people need to survive this pandemic and this lengthy financial hardship,” he said. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in a tweet that the call centered around “policy solutions,” adding that was “notable in itself.” “Let’s keep working together to speed vaccine distribution and support Americans during this pandemic,” he posted. Brian Deese, the National Economic Council Director, hosted the private Zoom call that 16 senators, eight from each party, were invited to attend, according to reports from CNN and The Washington Post. Senators on the call reportedly requested that relief be targeted to those who need it most and called for vaccine distribution to be the top priority. Lawmakers from the upper chamber probed White House officials on the call, which lasted more than an hour, about where stimulus money is essential, what the justification is for some high spending and whether the proposed $1,400 direct checks could be tailored more toward those in need, several people involved told the Post and CNN. Louisa Terrell, the White House director of legislative affairs, and Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, also joined the call reportedly organized by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. Before the call, Deese told reporters he wanted to emphasize to the senators that “we’re at a precarious moment for the virus and the economy,” noting that “decisive action” is needed to avoid “falling into a very serious economic hole,” according to the Post. The $1.9 trillion plan also includes an extension of emergency unemployment benefits past mid-March and raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, in addition to the direct checks. Several Republicans have criticized the Biden administration’s plan as too expensive, with GOP senators specifically expressing concern about the minimum wage increase on the call, two people familiar told the Post. Several Republicans have suggested Biden and the Democrats may have more luck passing individual pieces of the relief bill rather than the comprehensive package. “The president wants to extend unemployment benefits if people are still unemployed, that is certainly something we would look at. We were of the view last time that states needed help, some rescue for states and localities that may have suffered a reduction in their revenues. That’s appropriate, but the total figure is pretty shocking, if you will,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Sunday morning. But a person on the call told CNN the White House still seeks to move forward with the $1.9 trillion package instead of dividing parts of it into smaller bills.
Collins: Minimum wage increase should be separate from COVID-19 relief package – Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), a key Republican moderate, said Monday that President Biden and Democratic lawmakers should set aside a proposal to increase the minimum wage from a new COVID-19 relief proposal. She was one of more than a dozen senators who participated on a conference call with National Economic Council Director Brian Deese on Sunday to discuss President Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief plan. Biden’s proposed package would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than doubling the current rate of $7.25 an hour. Collins, a leader of the bipartisan group, said Monday that she supports raising the minimum wage but says it should be done separately from the new proposed COVID-19 relief package. “This package should focus solely on the persistent pandemic. It should not be used as the vehicle for a wish list that certain Democrats have. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t think there should be an increase in the minimum wage. There should be. But that should be considered separately so we can debate what the right amount,” she said. She said raising the minimum wage “has nothing to do with COVID.” Collins said she doesn’t have a particular figure in mind for the appropriate total cost of the next relief package but she cautioned the package’s price tag “is a big question.” She argued that as much as $1.8 trillion in unspent funds might be left over from the five coronavirus relief bills signed into law last year and could be reallocated for a new package.
Democrats working on legislation to provide $3,000 payments per child amid pandemic— House Democrats are working on legislation proposed by President Joe Biden to expand the existing child tax credit, directing the IRS to send recurring monthly payments to American families, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN.In one draft of the proposal, the IRS would deposit checks worth $300 every month per child younger than 6 and $250 every month per child age 6 to 17. This would give parents $3,000 per year for each child between the ages of 6 to 17, and $3,600 per child under age 6.The changes would last for a year, but lawmakers would then push to make them permanent, another Democratic aide said.The source also confirmed to CNN that House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal of Massachusetts is directly involved in the effort to write the expansion of the child tax credit, as well as House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Rep. Suzan DelBene, Democrat of Washington.The drafting of the proposed legislation was first reported by The Washington Post.Eligibility for the benefit, similar to the stimulus checks, would be based on family income for the prior tax year and be phased out at a certain income amount, the Post reported.A White House official didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.Biden has previously said he wants to expand the child tax credit and last week he unveiled a $1.9 trillion proposal that would do so for one year. He also called for making it fully refundable to allow more households to claim it. Currently, 27 million children live in low-income families who receive a partial or no tax credit because they earn too little, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. A one-year expansion would cost about $120 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan fiscal watchdog.
1.3 million people applied for unemployment insurance last week: Policymakers must pass crucial relief and recovery measures -EPI -This morning the Department of Labor (DOL) released the first official economic data collected during the Biden presidency – initial unemployment insurance claims from last week, (well, half of last week was in the Biden presidency). What it shows is that Biden inherited an extremely weak labor market.Another 1.3 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 847,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 427,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). The 1.3 million who applied for UI last week was a decrease of 87,000 from the prior week, but the four-week moving average of total initial claims ticked up by 45,000. The four-week moving average of total initial claims has risen back to roughly where it was in mid-October.Last week was the 45th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims – because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession – initial claims last week were still greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession.) I should note that throughout this post I use seasonally adjusted data where I can, but for comparisons to the Great Recession I use not-seasonally-adjusted data, since DOL’s improved seasonal adjustments aren’t available before the week ending August 29, 2020.Most states provide just 26 weeks of regular benefits, meaning many workers are exhausting their regular state UI benefits. In the most recent data (the week ending January 16), continuing claims for regular state benefits dropped by 203,000. After a worker exhausts regular state benefits, they can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 24 weeks of regular state UI (theDecember COVID-19 relief bill increased the number of weeks of PEUC eligibility by 11, from 13 to 24).In the most recent data available for PEUC, the week ending January 9th, PEUC claims rose by 837,000. This increase partially reversed the prior week’s drop, which was due to the temporary lapse in pandemic UI programs before Trump signed the December COVID-19 relief bill. But we can expect them to continue to rise further in coming weeks. Over 3.5 million people had exhausted the original 13 weeks of PEUC by the end of December (see column C43 in form ETA 5159 for PEUC here). These workers are eligible for the additional 11 weeks, but they need to recertify. PEUC numbers will continue to swell as this occurs.Continuing claims for PUA increased by 1.6 million in the latest data, the week ending January 9th. The large jump in PUA almost fully reverses the prior week’s drop, which was also due to the temporary lapse described above. The December bill extended the total weeks of PUA eligibility by 11, from 39 to 50 weeks. As workers who exhausted PUA before the extensions were signed get back on PUA, we can expect the PUA numbers to swell further.The 11-week extensions of PEUC and PUA just kick the can down the road – they are not long enough. Congress must pass further extensions before mid-March, or millions will exhaust benefits at that time, when the virus is still rampant and the labor market is still weak.
Biden signs executive orders on stimulus checks, food stamps and minimum wage – – President Joe Biden signed two executive orders on Friday, one of which would increase federal food assistance and streamline the delivery of stimulus checks, as the president attempts to stabilize the economy without congressional assistance amid the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.”We have to act now,” Mr. Biden said in remarks before he signed the orders. “We cannot, will not, let people go hungry.”Mr. Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion relief plan to Congress, but it is unclear whether it will garner enough Republican support to pass on a bipartisan basis. Until Congress is able to pass another relief bill, Mr. Biden’s actions are intended as stopgap measures to stabilize the economy.Some Republicans have questioned whether there is still a need for a second, larger relief bill after Congress passed a $900 billion bill in December. But in his remarks on Friday, Mr. Biden said that the most recent relief bill was just a “downpayment.””We need more action, and we need to move fast,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re in a national emergency. We need to act like we’re in a national emergency. So we’ve got to move with everything we’ve got.”In the first order, Mr. Biden asks the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits – commonly known as food stamps – by 15%. Congress recently passed a $1 trillion relief bill that boosted the maximum SNAP benefit by 15%, but that did not help the 40% of SNAP recipients who were already at the maximum benefit. Mr. Biden’s order tells the USDA to “consider issuing new guidance that would allow states to increase SNAP emergency allotments for those who need it most,” according to a fact sheet provided by the White House, which would mean that an additional 12 million people get enhanced benefits.The order would also increase Pandemic-EBT, an electronic debit card program for students who would have qualified for free or reduced-price meals at school. Mr. Biden is directing the USDA to “consider issuing new guidance increasing P-EBT benefits by approximately 15% to accurately reflect the costs of missing meals and make it easier for households to claim benefits.” According to the White House, this could provide a family with three children an additional $100 in support per month. Under the order, the USDA would also reassess the Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for determining SNAP benefits. According to the fact sheet from the White House, the plan “is out of date with the economic realities most struggling households face when trying to buy and prepare healthy food.”
Rural U.S. states get larger share of PPP loans in latest round – Small businesses in Nebraska, Oklahoma and other rural states have been the most successful at getting federal pandemic relief in the $284 billion round of aid that opened this month, buoyed by a new rule that authorizes loans to many farms that didn’t qualify before. Measured by their share of the nation’s small-business payroll, four states, also including North Dakota and Wyoming, got more than twice their share of Paycheck Protection Program loans, based on an analysis of data from Jan. 11 to Jan. 24 released by the Small Business Administration this week. It’s still early days, and there’s evidence of pent-up demand across the country. Lenders and applicants say the process is simpler but slower than last year. Overall, $35 billion of forgivable loans were approved in the first two weeks of the January rollout, a fraction of the $349 billion disbursed in the first 13 days of the program last April. The latest PPP funding included rules aimed at fixing the program’s flaws: Restaurants can draw more debt and applications are more deeply scrutinized for fraud. One change benefited many small farmers and ranchers shut out last year. The Nebraska Farm Bureau, the largest member of the American Farm Bureau, and other agricultural groups successfully lobbied Congress to allow farm owners without paid employees to get aid even if they didn’t earn a net profit. The special rule for farmers was the result of a bipartisan effort led by Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat. “We are helping folks that could’ve used the help before but didn’t qualify,” said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, which represents over 4,000 family farms and ranches. “The SBA is glad that newly eligible audiences are speaking with their lenders to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program to secure funding that keeps their workforce employed and on payroll during the pandemic,” the agency said in a statement. The main goal of the PPP was to help business owners retain their employees. For the self-employed, aid was meant to replace earnings they relied on to pay themselves, meaning if the business hadn’t made a net profit in 2019, they weren’t eligible for aid. The new rules enable unprofitable non-employer farms and ranches to access the program, but exclude other self-employed in the same financial situation, such as barbers. The industry category that includes agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting represented 15% of PPP loans so far in 2021, compared with 3% last year, SBA data shows. By dollar volume, the sector has been approved for 3.5% of PPP funding, compared with 1.6% in 2020.
UN agency reports China surpassed US in foreign direct investments in 2020 – A United Nations trade agency reported that China surpassed the U.S. as the largest recipient of foreign direct investments (FDI) in 2020. The UN Conference on Trade and Developments (UNCTAD) concluded that China became the largest FDI receiver last year over the U.S., with flows increasing by 4 percent to $163 billion, $163 billion, Bloomberg News reported. Most countries saw decreases due to the coronavirus pandemic, including the U.S., which saw its flow drop by 49 percent to $134 billion, according to UNCTAD’s Investment Trends Monitor. The U.S.’s decrease was seen in wholesale trade, financial services and manufacturing. China’s return to positive GDP growth and targeted investment facilitation program assisted in the country’s FDI levels, the agency noted in a release. Globally, flows fell by 42 percent to $859 billion due to the coronavirus pandemic, compared to $1.5 trillion in 2019. The global foreign direct investment reached its lowest level since the 1990s, including 30 percent lower than investments after the 2008-2009 financial crisis. North American flows dropped by 46 percent to $166 billion, but Europe saw declines of about 66 percent to negative $4 billion. The decreases were found to be concentrated in developed countries, where flows dropped 69 percent. Meanwhile, developing countries accounted for 72 percent of the global FDI, the highest percentage recorded. FDI is expected to stay shaky during 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the world. “The effects of the pandemic on investment will linger,” James Zhan, the director of UNCTAD’s investment division, said in the release. “Investors are likely to remain cautious in committing capital to new overseas productive assets.”
Biden Signs Order Boosting Federal Spending On US Products — President Biden signed his much-previewed ‘Buy American’ executive order on Monday, which will boost federal agencies’ purchases of US products. The order will direct agencies to acquire more goods and services from US manufacturers and workers, using nearly $600 billion at their disposal for such contracts.” “I don’t buy for one second that the vitality of American manufacturing is a thing of the past,” Biden said before signing the order. “We are going to use taxpayers money to rebuild America.” According to Bloomberg, the policy will also make it more difficult to obtain waivers to buy products from overseasusing what the new administration described as loopholes which allowed the skirting of existing requirements. Further, the EO establishes a new position within the White House Office of Management and Budget which will oversee the changes, and will force agencies seeking waviers to pust them on a public website where US companies can view them for the purpose of competitive bids.Biden’s order also directs a federal panel to finalize changes within six months that would tighten standards defining American-made products to ensure they are manufactured with a higher percentage of U.S. components and labor, officials said. – Bloomberg As we reported last week, every day of President Biden’s 10-day sprint out the gate is supposed to have a “theme”. Thursday’s was fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Friday’s was economic/racial inequality. Now, as Nancy Pelosi and the rest of Biden’s Congressional allies continue with their push to (retroactively) impeach President Trump, President Biden is outright stealing one of his predecessors’ most popular ideas. Like Trump before him, Biden is signing a “Made in America” executive order to increase the amount of federal spending that goes to American companies.
Buy American: Biden More Protectionist Than Trump? — Although the rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief that the isolationist Donald Trump has literally departed the White House with little fanfare, the question remains: How much of an improvement will Biden be for international economic relations? A new article makes me question whether he will be much of an improvement since Biden is indicating more “Buy American” provisos for government procurement are in store to shore up US industry during these challenging times: President Joe Biden will take steps Monday to encourage the federal government to buy more American-made products, a move the new administration argues will protect U.S. jobs and juice an economy severely hobbled by the deadly coronavirus pandemic.Biden, who pushed a $700 billion Buy American campaign as a candidate for president, is set to sign an executive order that will advance several policies to boost the federal government’s purchase of U.S.-manufactured goods and services, administration officials said Sunday.Federal law requires government agencies to give preference to American firms when possible, but critics say those requirements haven’t always been implemented consistently or effectively. Some have not been substantially updated since the 1950s.The federal government spends nearly $600 billion a year on contracts, which is money the administration says can spur a revitalization of the nation’s industrial strength and create new markets for new technologies.To that end, Biden’s order will increase the domestic content threshold, which is the amount of a product that must be made in the U.S. before it can be purchased by the federal government. Trump has tried to implement something similar, although it had some loopholes still that Biden is currently trying to close: Shortly after taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that were intended to strengthen rules requiring federal agencies to buy U.S.-made goods when possible. But critics argued that effort fell short, partly because of Trump’s failure to adequately enforce the rules. The order that Biden will sign is expected to include a clear timeline for updating domestic content requirements and a process for reducing unnecessary waivers, which the administration argues would fundamentally change how the program operates. Oof! Is Biden even more protectionist than Trump? That won’t be such a good signal to open with in terms of repairing strained relationships with other countries. Remember also that the United States is a signatory to the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) that was intended to limit these shenanigans encouraging the purchase of own-country goods and services, and would therefore be subject to litigation by other signatories. Indeed, the Trump administration considered pulling out of the GPA for the purpose of introducing more “Buy American” policies: It remains to be seen how Biden will tiptoe around the United States’ WTO GPA commitments without offending other member countries. Still, the question remains: Is Biden really going to be more internationalist in outlook than Trump? This episode gives us reasons to doubt whether Biden’s actions will match his rhetoric (which is admittedly better to listen to).
Biden expected to sign executive order to expand US refugee program – President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order that would set up his goal of admitting tens of thousands more refugees to the United States, according to two administration officials.Though White House officials discussed having President Biden sign a round of immigration-related executive orders Friday, it now appears likely those will be pushed until next week, two officials told CNN.Under former President Donald Trump, the US refugee admissions program was largely decimated following years of low arrivals, including a cap of 15,000 in fiscal year 2021 – dramatically lower from the country’s historically high admissions caps. There are always plenty of reasons to take advantage of Sam’s Club’s curbside Pickup, from the stores’ enormous selection to the great member prices.The refugee cap, which dictates how many refugees may be admitted to the US, must be approved by the President. But where the cap was often been viewed as a goal to be reached, the actual number of refugees admitted fell dramatically under the Trump administration.During the campaign, Biden pledged to increase refugee admissions nearly tenfold, to an annual cap of 125,000. The President is expected to take executive actions on immigration as soon as Friday, according to a draft calendar sent to administration allies.While it’s unclear when Biden intends to reach the levels he committed to, the expected executive order would serve as guiding principles establishing a tone of opening up back up to refugees and setting a list of required reports due back between 30-120 days, according to a Homeland Security official.White House officials have made clear their intent to bolster the program. Over the weekend, Esther Olavarria, deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council for immigration, said Biden’s upcoming executive actions would “restore the refugee admissions program and enables the US to return to its historic role as a leader and protection for refugees.” Friday also marked two years of a Trump-era policy that required non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico until their court date in the United States. The orders build upon the actions already taken in Biden’s first hours as president and cement the administration’s vision for migration and border processing.
Biden immigration executive orders delayed, as bipartisan bill begins to take shape on Hill – The White House is delaying the signing of a number of immigration-related executive orders that would rescind a number of Trump-era policies, Fox News has learned — just as a potential bipartisan immigration bill is beginning to take shape on the Hill. President Biden was expected to sign a number of immigration-related orders on Friday, including one that would establish a task force to reunify families separated at the border, and another to increase refugee admissions. Biden has previously said he wants to increase the annual refugee intake from 15,000 to 125,000. But while the timeline was never confirmed by the White House, Fox News has learned some or all of these orders may be pushed to next week. White House officials did not explain what caused the change in timelines. The orders will come on the back of a slew of orders related to immigration signed by Biden since entering the White House last week. He has reversed the Trump-era travel bans, and strengthened the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that granted protection from deportation for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. He also signed an order pausing the construction of the wall at the southern border, something that went into effect on Wednesday. Separately, his Department of Homeland Security has issued an order suspending deportations for 100 days — but that is being challenged by a Texas lawsuit.
Biden to expand Affordable Care Act enrollment amid COVID-19 in new executive order – President Joe Biden will tackle the issue of health care Thursday with two executive actions aimed at expanding enrollment for the Affordable Care Act amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and addressing reproductive health, according to the White House.The actions continue a series of executive moves by Biden in his first week in office, setting an ambitious tone for his administration on a number of policy areas.On Thursday, Biden is expected to sign an executive order that will open a special enrollment period amid the pandemic that has already claimed the lives of nearly 430,000 Americans, according to a fact sheet outlining Biden’s planned actions.Through the executive order, the Department of Health and Human Service is expected to open a three-month enrollment period from Feb. 15 to May 15, on Healthcare.gov, allowing more Americans to sign up for health care as COVID-19 continues to engulf the country.”Reliable and affordable access to health insurance doesn’t just benefit families’ health; it is a critical source of economic security and peace of mind for all,” the administration argued in the fact sheet.The executive action will seek to strengthen the Affordable Care Act Biden hopes to expand during his administration, as well as Medicaid, by asking agencies to “re-examine” their current policies that could undermine protections and access to care. The action would be the president’s first step to follow through on his 2020 campaign pledge to expand the Affordable Care Act in order to provide health care to all Americans as a “right, not a privilege.” Biden will also address the issue of reproductive health in a presidential memorandum Thursday, rescinding the “Mexico City Policy,” often referred to as the global gag rule, which was expanded under President Donald Trump and which blocks U.S. funding to international non-profits that provide counseling or referrals for abortion.
Biden To Expand Obamacare, Eliminate Trump-Era Abortion Policy : NPR – President Biden will sign two executive actions Thursday that are designed to expand access to reproductive health care and health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. The president’s memorandum instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to open a special enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act through HealthCare.gov, the federally run health insurance marketplace. The enrollment period will run Feb. 15 to May 15, giving Americans who have lost their employer-based health insurance due to the pandemic an opportunity to sign up for coverage. “For President Biden, this is personal,” a news release read. “As we continue to battle COVID-19, it is even more critical that Americans have meaningful access to affordable care.” Biden will also order federal agencies to reexamine current policies that may undermine the Affordable Care Act and the health insurance exchanges created under it. He’ll also request a review of policies that could make it more difficult for Americans to enroll in Medicaid. His second order aims “to protect and expand access to comprehensive reproductive health care” by rescinding the Mexico City Policy, also known as the “global gag rule.” This policy, reinstated and expanded by the Trump administration, bars international nongovernmental organizations that provide abortion counseling or referrals from receiving U.S. funding. Biden’s executive actions will undo some of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the ACA. Last November, the Trump administration and several Republican-led states argued at the U.S. Supreme Court that the program should be voided, which would have eliminated popular elements of the law such as protections for those with preexisting conditions. The Supreme Court will hear a case that could decide the legality of work requirements for Medicaid recipients. The Trump administration granted waivers to allow work requirements for Medicaid to 12 states, though not all have been granted, and some have been blocked in lower courts. Biden is reversing course and directing federal agencies to reconsider those work requirement rules. He is also asking agencies to review policies that undermined protections for people with preexisting conditions, including COVID-19 related complications.
Catholic bishops slam Biden’s ‘grievous’ executive order funding overseas abortion providers – Roman Catholic bishops are condemning President Biden’s decision to reverse a policy that blocks funding for overseas abortion providers, calling a recent executive order on the issue “incompatible with Catholic teaching.” “It is grievous that one of President Biden’s first official acts actively promotes the destruction of human lives in developing nations,” read the statement from Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “This Executive Order is antithetical to reason, violates human dignity, and is incompatible with Catholic teaching. We and our brother bishops strongly oppose this action. We urge the President to use his office for good, prioritizing the most vulnerable, including unborn children.” The statement was also penned by Bishop David J. Malloy who serves as chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace.
Biden says nothing can change the trajectory of the Covid pandemic over the next several months – President Joe Biden has painted a bleak picture of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak in his first few days in office, warning that it will take months to turn around the pandemic’s trajectory and that fatalities are expected to dramatically rise over the next few weeks. “A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead expected to reach well over 600,000,” Biden said on Friday before signing two executive orders designed to reduce hunger and bolster workers’ rights amid the pandemic. The U.S. surpassed 400,000 total Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, with a quarter of those coming over the previous 36 days, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On Biden’s first full day as president on Thursday, he told reporters following a meeting with his Covid-19 advisors, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, that the nation would likely top 500,000 Covid-19 deaths in February. Biden warned on Friday that as the outbreak continues, “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” The president has repeatedly warned that the situation is likely to worsen before it improves. While it wasn’t immediately made clear what projections Biden was referencing, one key projection from Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that the U.S. could reach 600,000 Covid-19 deaths by March if states were to ease social distancing mandates. However, the model’s current projections show Covid-19 deaths plateauing just above 560,000 Covid-19 deaths by late April. A spokesperson for the Biden administration was not immediately available for comment regarding the president’s projections. The United States has reported a decline in Covid-19 cases in recent days, a glimmer of hope following a surge since the fall and through the winter holiday season. The U.S. is reporting an average of roughly 187,593 new Covid-19 cases daily, a 22% decline compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. However, the nation is still “in a very serious situation,” Fauci said during his first White House press briefing appearance under the new administration on Thursday, noting the country’s high death toll and strained hospital capacity. Fauci said that the daily number of cases, based on a weekly average, appears to be plateauing and turning around. It’s possible that the dip could still be because of a reduced reporting following the holidays, he added. “When we see that, we think it’s real,” Fauci said. Biden’s warnings come as the country races to administer 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots within the first 100 days in his administration. The nation’s vaccine rollout has been slow to start, though health experts have said that Biden’s 100 million shots goal is doable. The pace of vaccinations have picked up over the last week. The U.S. has administered 1.6 million Covid-19 vaccines between Thursday and Friday, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggesting that 100 million shots in 100 days would be a feasible goal if that daily count continues.
Fauci: Joe Biden’s 100 million COVID-19 shots pledge means doses, not people – President Biden’s pledge to distribute 100 million shots of COVID-19 vaccines in his first 100 days in office does not mean 100 million Americans will be vaccinated during that time, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted Sunday.That volume of vaccinates will only see around 67 million people fully inoculated, because both current vaccines require two shots, he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”“Let me clarify that because there was a little bit of an understanding. What we’re talking about is 100 million shots in individuals,” the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director said.”At the end of a hundred days, you’re going to have some people who will have gotten both shots, and some will still be on their first shots,” Fauci added.Fauci had been confronted with a previous interview in which he told CBS: “You know, the goal that’s been set, which I believe is entirely achievable, is to have a 100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days.”When asked at the time whether that meant “both vaccines” he had replied, “Primary and boost, yes.”Biden’s “100 million” goal has already come under fire for aiming too low – with data showing the country was already distributing more than 1 million shots a day when he took office.When asked last week why he didn’t aim higher, he snapped at a reporter: “Come on, gimme a break, man! It’s a good start.”The CDC said it had administered more than 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US as of Saturday.20 million more have been distributed, the agency said.
Biden To Ban Travelers From South Africa After Fauci Flip-Flops On ‘Deadliness’ Of New Strains – Just two days after unleashing his latest immigration Executive Order, easing border restrictions and removing President Trump’s travel ban from so-called “majority Muslim” countries, President Biden will impose a ban on most non-U.S. citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19, U.S. public health officials told Reuters.. Additionally, Biden on Monday is also reimposing an entry ban on nearly all non-U.S. travelers who have been in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 countries in Europe that allow travel across open borders, said the sources, who requested anonymity because the plans have not yet been made public. Notably, Reuters points out that the South African variant, also known as the 501Y.V2 variant, is 50% more infectious and has been detected in at least 20 countries. CDC officials said they would be open to adding additional countries to the list if needed. The South African variant has not yet been found in the United States but at least 20 U.S. states have detected a UK variant known as B.1.1.7. Current vaccines appear effective against the UK mutations.
Biden faces scrutiny over his reliance on executive orders – President Joe Biden and aides showed touches of prickliness Thursday over growing scrutiny of the new president’s heavy reliance on executive orders in his first days in office.The president in just over a week has already signed more than three dozen executive orders and directives aimed at addressing the coronavirus pandemic as well as a gamut of other issues including environmental regulations, immigration policies and racial justice.Biden has also sought to use the orders to erase foundational policy initiatives by former President Donald Trump, such as halting construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and reversing a Trump-era Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender people from serving in the military.Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Biden’s early reliance on executive action is at odds with the Democrat’s pledge as a candidate to be a consensus builder. The New York Times editorial board on Thursday ran an opinion piece headlined “Ease up on the Executive Actions, Joe.”Biden, for his part, on Thursday framed his latest executive actions as an effort to “undo the damage Trump has done” by fiat rather than “initiating any new law.” During a brief exchange with reporters in the Oval Office after signing two more executive orders, he noted he was working simultaneously to push his $1.9 trillion COVID aid package through Congress. After being asked by a reporter if he was open to splitting up the relief package, the president responded: “No one requires me to do anything.” Earlier in the day, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield bristled at the criticism of Biden’s executive orders in a series of tweets, adding, “Of course we are also pursuing our agenda through legislation. It’s why we are working so hard to get the American Rescue Plan passed, for starters.”
Republicans who cheered Trump’s executive orders now grumble about ‘record number’ from Biden – Over the past week, a growing number of Republicans began sounding the alarm about the number and content of executive orders being issued by President Biden.”The first week in office, what has Joe Biden done? He’s signed an executive order ending the Keystone pipeline, destroying 11,000 jobs,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a Tuesday interview on Fox News.”The scale of Joe Biden’s executive orders and their impact on Americans is stark,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said last week.Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blasted Biden for issuing “more executive fiats than anyone in such a short period of time, ever. More than Obama, more than Trump, more than anyone. Second, these aren’t just normal executive fiats, this is literally going down the wish list of the far left and checking all of them off.” Biden has in fact been on a record-setting pace for executive orders, signing more than 40 of them in his first week in office. Most, however, were written to overturn those of his predecessor, Donald Trump. They have included an end to the travel ban from some majority-Muslim countries, a reversal in Trump’s immigrant enforcement policies, the rejoining of the Paris climate accord, the cancellation of the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and an end to the policy of prohibiting transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. After years of complaints that former President Barack Obama had used executive orders as an end run around a deadlocked Congress, Republicans were silent when Trump did the same thing. Not surprisingly, the pace of Trump’s executive orders increased after Democrats retook control of the House of Representatives, thereby blocking his prospects for passing legislation. By the time his term ended, Trump had signed 220 executive orders in a single term. Obama, by comparison, signed 276 over his two terms. From a historical perspective, both pale in comparison to the 3,721 issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 12 years in office, though the nature of the orders, and the debate over whether they were better left to Congress to legislate, has also changed over time. Roosevelt’s most consequential initiatives, including Social Security and most New Deal programs, were enacted by legislation.
Bedingfield slams NY Times’ editorial on Biden’s executive orders -President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order that will phase out the Department of Justice’s use of private prisons.The action is part of the administration’s effort to address racial inequity in the country and make good on Biden’s campaign promises to Black Americans – who were integral to securing his presidential win.The order directs the Justice Department to decline to renew contracts with privately-operated, for-profit prisons. This effort began under the Obama administration and was championed by then-DeputyAttorney General Sally Yates. The policy was quickly axed by the Trump administration in 2017. Now, scholars are taking a deeper look at the restored policy, and questioning its overall impact on racial inequity.”When it comes to private prisons, the impact of this order is going to be slight to none,” said John Pfaff, a professor of law at the Fordham University School of Law. “This is not about shrinking the footprint of the federal prison system, it’s just about transferring people to public facilities. Biden is telling an executive agency under his control what kind of contracts they can enter, that’s a core executive function of Biden’s.”Still states can still choose “who to write contracts with,” Pfaff said. “In practice, this will end up being more symbolic and will have little impact on any issue of racial justice and the system. The symbolism carries the very real risk of making us blind to the nearly identical incentives of the public prison sector, and the public side is so much vaster in scope.”Few details have been released about the order scaling back private prison use, but the initial Obama-era policy focused on about a dozen privately-run facilities. The federal Bureau of Prisons said then that approximately 195,000 people were incarcerated in the bureau’s or private-contract facilities. Today, there are nearly 152,000 people incarcerated federally, with 14,000 housed at privately-managed facilities, according to The Associated Press.
Sen. Patrick Leahy returns home after being hospitalized – Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is set to preside over the impeachment trial of former President Trump, was briefly taken to the hospital Tuesday before being released, his office said in a statement. Leahy, 80, “was not feeling well” in his Capitol office and was examined by the attending physician, said David Carle, a spokesperson for the Vermont senator. Leahy later left the hospital to return home. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Attending Physician recommended that he be taken to a local hospital for observation, where he is now, and where he is being evaluated,” Carle said. “After getting test results back, and after a thorough examination, Senator Leahy is now home,” Carle added in a subsequent statement later Tuesday. “He looks forward to getting back to work.” Leahy’s hospitalization came hours after he was sworn in to preside over the Senate’s impeachment trial. The proceedings are expected to begin the week of Feb. 8. Leahy, the Senate president pro tempore, is constitutionally the second-highest-ranking official in the upper chamber behind Vice President Harris, who is the president of the Senate under Article I. He is third in line in the order of presidential succession after Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The Vermont lawmaker was first elected to the Senate in 1974. He is the only sitting senator to have served during the Ford administration and one of only two to have served during the Carter administration. Leahy will oversee Trump’s impeachment trial next month in lieu of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who chose not to preside over the trial because Trump is no longer in office.
Growing warnings of a Wall Street bubble – As Wall Street climbs to new record highs on the belief that massive support from the Fed will continue virtually indefinitely, there are warnings from some within the financial oligarchy that the bubble is heading for a collapse. The year began with a note from long-time financial investor Jeremy Grantham that Wall Street was heading into the final stages of a bubble as exemplified by the “market craziness” that has seen Tesla shares rocket by more than 700 percent since last March. This warning has been joined by others. The head of the hedge fund Baupost Group, Seth Klarman, sent a letter to clients earlier this month, cited by the Financial Times(FT), in which he noted that, under the policies of governments and central banks to provide continuous stimulus to the markets, risk had “simply vanished.” Klarman engages in what is known as value investing where some assessment is attempted to be made of a company’s underlying financial structure, the nature of its assets and its profitability as the basis for making decisions. Like other asset management firms who pursue this strategy, Baupost underperformed the rest of the market in 2020 in conditions where shares are being purchased simply because they are rising. As an example, he cited, as others have, the rise of Tesla. The shares in the “barely profitable” electric carmaker had risen “seemingly beyond all reason” making its founder Elon Musk the richest man in the world. The flooding of the market with cash from the Fed had made it impossible to judge the underlying state of the real economy. “With so much stimulus being deployed, trying to figure out if the economy is in recession is like trying to assess if you have a fever after you just took a large dose of aspirin. But as with frogs in water that is slowly being heated to a boil, investors are being conditioned not to recognise the danger,” he wrote. The biggest problem with “unprecedented and sustained government interventions is that risks to capital become masked even as they mount.” He noted that, in their search for yield, investors were moving into ever riskier sections of the market, including below investment-grade junk bonds. While the Fed’s measures had helped sustain the economy, they had resulted in two dangerous ideas: “that fiscal deficits don’t matter, and no matter how much debt is outstanding, we can effortlessly, safely, and reliably pile on more.”
Historic Mania in SPACs, IPOs. Huge Fees for Wall Street Banks. Mega Paydays for Insiders. Disdain for Valuations. Blind Faith that “This Time It’s Different” – Wolf Richter: The business of SPACs is setting stunning records. A SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company) is a “blank-check company” with no business activity that raises funds from investors via an IPO and will then attempt to use those funds to buy a startup company. For the startup company, getting acquired by a SPAC is an alternative to an IPO. There are fewer disclosures to make, compared to a standard IPO. For Wall Street, there are huge fees to be made. And insiders, including those that start the SPACs, make tons of money. So all the building blocks are in place. In 2020, an all-time record of $83 billion were raised by SPACs, six times as much as in 2019 ($13.6 billion), according to SPAC Insider’s data. This $83 billion was more than all of the funds that SPACs had raised in all prior years combined, according to Dealogic, and it blew by the $78 billion raised by standard IPOs in 2020, such as Airbnb’s IPO. Everyone and their dog was starting SPACs, from former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, going after the hottest stories at the minute.And in 2021, the SPAC mania accelerated further. “If you don’t have your own SPAC, you’re nobody,” Peter Atwater, founder of Financial Insyghts, told the Wall Street Journal. In the first three weeks of 2021, there have already been 67 SPACs, raising a total of $19 billion, more than in the entire year of 2019: A special mix of market exuberance, blind confidence that this exuberance will last forever, and a total disdain for valuations are required to create this kind of situation.To see just how far this mania in SPACs has exploded this year, we can look at the dollars raised per week on average. Turns out, in 2021, $6.4 billion have been raised per week, compared to $1.6 billion per week in 2020. This is where we are so far: There are currently 287 SPACs, sitting on roughly $90 billion in cash, that are now trying to chase down startups in the hottest sectors of the moment, from anything-EVs to telehealth. Stocks after they have gone public have skyrocketed since the March lows. The Renaissance IPO ETF [IPO], which tracks the Renaissance IPO Index, which includes the largest 80% of IPOs over the past two years, has soared by nearly 240% since March 18, totally blowing by and leaving in the dust the S&P 500 Index, which has soared 72% since the March low. This spike in the IPO index comes after it had spent the prior five years roughly on the same trajectory as the S&P 500 Index (data via YCharts): Banks have now reported their fourth quarter results, including the fees they earned from SPACs and IPOs. In 2020, the top six in equity underwriting fees – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Jefferies – earned $14.1 billion in fees from SPACs and IPOs, according to the Wall Street Journal, up 89% from 2019: So everyone is getting rich off this mania in SPACs and IPOs and is having a grand old time. And after everyone has gotten rich off the mania, and extracted fees and unloaded shares and had all the fun, there is then another thing: In prior manias of this type, the aftermath has been very unkind to investors that had made it all possible by buying these shares with that mix of exuberance, blind confidence that this exuberance will last forever, and a total disdain for valuations. Ah yes, this time it’s different, everyone is saying again – another sign that the zoo has gone nuts.
Coronavirus and Banking: Evaluating Policy Options for Avoiding a Financial Crisis -The Covid-19 pandemic will leave deep scars across the globe, particularly in the euro area. Given that the health of banking systems is inextricably tied to the performance of the underlying economies, the non-performing loans (NPLs) of banks are an important issue. What are the policy options to safeguard the integrity and functionality of the banking system? And what are the criteria defining the desired response? This column will address these questions in the context of the EU.What makes the identification of a suitable policy response particularly difficult is the strong reliance on banks and the apparent ‘overbanking’ in Europe (Pagano et al. 2014). At the national level, banking markets are highly concentrated, and many institutions are considered too-big-to-fail. The structurally low profitability of European banking makes this even more of a concern.Policy responses should take these structural issues into consideration. In particular, the policy actions should neither reinforce the substantial reliance on banks, nor perpetuate a ‘legacy banking’ architecture that is nation-centric and prone to a ‘doom-loop’ between the fiscal state of national governments and the state of the banking system. The extent to which financial markets could play a more prominent role should also be considered. In this column, we discuss and evaluate a variety of policy options that are considered in the current debate on how to deal with potential problems of the European banking sector, amplified by the Covid-19 crisis.2 The evaluation is based on a set of criteria that, in our view, capture the effectiveness and credibility of a proper policy response.
Fed undecided on bank dividend cap in second quarter – The Federal Reserve will consider the pace of coronavirus vaccinations with other factors to decide if a cap on bank dividends and share repurchases will remain in place next quarter, Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday. Between June and December, banks could not repurchase shares and had to limit dividends to what they paid out in the second quarter of 2020. Those restrictions were eased starting this month, following midcycle stress tests, with dividends and buybacks capped at an amount based on 2020 income. But the Fed remains undecided on whether to lift its restrictions entirely for the second quarter of this year, said Powell, speaking at a news conference after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “We haven’t made a decision about whether to continue them in the second quarter or not,” he said. “We’re going to look at the whole range of information, including economic activity, banking activity, the success in vaccination – all of those things will go into our assessment of what the right answer is to that question.” Powell said he has been “pleased” with the central bank’s approach to setting and rolling back restrictions on what banks pay their investors during pandemic. “Let’s remember that the banks that are subject to the stress tests have taken very, very large loss reserves, and also increased their capital. They actually have higher capital ratios now than they had at the beginning of the pandemic,” he said. Powell added that so far banks have not experienced “the kinds of defaults that we all were concerned about in the early months of the pandemic.” “It’s just not materializing, so they’re having to reverse some of their loss reserves, actually,” he said.
Will Biden, Democrats renew push to tax big banks- As Democrats regain power in Washington, a tax that banks successfully opposed throughout the Obama administration is poised to get another look. The tax, which President Biden endorsed during last year’s campaign, would be paid by financial firms with more than $50 billion of assets, and the proceeds would be used to help close gaps in the federal budget. The amount that specific banks owe would likely be calculated using a formula meant to discourage them from becoming overleveraged. The outlines of this idea first emerged 12 years ago as a way to pay for the costs of the massive federal bank bailout. In the years since, its rationale has morphed, but it has never gained traction in Congress thanks in part to fierce opposition from industry lobbyists. This time could be different, largely because Democrats control both houses of Congress and may be able to pass key legislation with a bare majority in the Senate. They could use a tax on large banks to help pay for Biden’s ambitious government response to curb the spread of the coronavirus and stimulate an economic recovery. “Given the historic profits that the largest financial institutions in the country are pocketing in the middle of a pandemic that is wiping out Main Street Americans, the politics of a leverage tax are going to change pretty substantially,” predicted Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of the advocacy group Better Markets. Several financial industry lobbying groups declined to comment for this article, perhaps wary of antagonizing the Biden administration at a time when the tax proposal remains little more than a vague campaign pledge. Tax plans that specifically target large financial institutions date back to the federal law that authorized the 2008 bank bailouts. That statute required the president to submit a legislative proposal that would recoup from the financial industry an amount equal to the program’s budgetary shortfall. This provision was intended to bolster political support for an unpopular bailout fund. But President Barack Obama’s proposed fee, which would have applied to firms with at least $50 billion of assets, failed to attract enough support on Capitol Hill to be included in the Dodd-Frank Act. Dodd-Frank ultimately passed the Senate by a 60-39 vote that went largely along party lines.
California to regulate early-wage access firms under landmark agreements — Five companies in the early-wage access industry have reached landmark agreements with California regulators that will govern their operations in the nation’s largest state. The voluntary pacts give the firms, which to date have been largely unregulated, greater certainty about their ability to offer products to the state’s nearly 40 million residents. In exchange, the companies agreed to allow regular examinations, share quarterly data with the regulators and abide by certain limits on their pricing. The deals do not force any changes to the firms’ existing revenue models. “These first-of-their-kind agreements reflect the type of balanced approach and oversight we strive to provide,” Manny Alvarez, the commissioner of the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, said in a press release Wednesday. The department plans to ue the data it gathers from the five companies to help inform the development of a regulatory scheme for the entire, fast-growing industry. The agreements come more than a year after the demise of California legislation that aimed to achieve the same purpose. The five companies that signed the deals have business models that vary substantially, and some of those approaches have proven more controversial than others. Three of the firms offer their products in partnership with employers under deals in which workers agree to have their prepaid wages deducted from their next regular paychecks. The other two firms offer their services directly to consumers under arrangements that have sparked greater opposition because they bear a closer resemblance to payday loans, though typically at a much lower cost.
What will incoming CFPB chief do with $570 million consumer aid fund? – As Democrats take control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, observers are questioning how a new director will tap a multimillion-dollar fund to direct more relief to consumers.At the end of September, the agency had amassed $576 million in its civil penalty fund – a 6% increase from a year earlier – after collecting over $34 million in fines from companies during the fiscal year.Former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger touted efforts to provide redress from the fund for consumers harmed by companies that could not pay hefty amounts. Yet some experts hope the agency under Rohit Chopra, if confirmed to be President Biden’s CFPB director, will be more aggressive.The Trump administration’s attempts to use the fund as a lifeline faced challenges over the difficulty in finding harmed consumers and concerns about the optics of the consumer bureau spending federal resources. It also is unclear how much Kraninger tapped the fund for financial education efforts, because the bureau’s financial statements do not list any money from the fund going to education last year.”Even though the CFPB under … Kraninger had identified education as a priority, there’s a lot more engagement to be done, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic and the need to support vulnerable populations,” said Quyen Truong, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Levan and a former assistant CFPB director and deputy general counsel. The fund grew steadily during the Trump administration, suggesting that the agency was not fully expending its resources. The fund had $542.9 million at the end of the 2019 fiscal year, up from $522.7 million in 2018, according to the CFPB’s financial statements.Though GOP officials are typically more cautious than Democrats about using up federal coffers, some observers point out that the agency’s use of the fund is limited only to certain activities.”It is a huge amount of money,” said Allyson Baker, chair of the financial services practice at Venable. “There is a very narrow set of prescriptions of what the money can be used for.”Under Kraninger, the CFPB tapped the fund to pay $11.4 million to consumers in 2020 and $119.8 million in 2019. Between the 2013 and 2018 fiscal years, during which the CFPB was mostly led by Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee, the CFPB used the fund to return $551.8 to consumers, the financial statements show.Some Republican lawmakers, concerned that the fund gives the agency too much latitude to spend federal money, had urged Kraninger to return the unused balance to the U.S. Treasury. However, that is not allowed under the Dodd-Frank Act. The civil penalty fund can only be used for two purposes: to compensate consumers who have been harmed or for consumer education and financial literacy programs. Fines and penalties issued against wrongdoers for violations of consumer financial laws are deposited into the fund. “There is a lot of confusion about the penalty fund,” said Lucy Morris, a partner at Hudson Cook and a former CFPB deputy enforcement director. “It is not a slush fund. It can only be used for two purposes and the bureau largely uses it to provide relief to consumers who otherwise wouldn’t get it.”
New CFPB boss vows to get tough on military lending, pandemic relief laws – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new leader is vowing to move quickly to penalize mortgage servicers, banks and other financial companies that have failed to provide relief to military veterans and others during the pandemic. The bureau will expedite enforcement investigations tied to the Military Lending Act and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to ensure that the industry “gets the message that violations of law during this time of need will not be tolerated,” acting Director Dave Uejio wrote in a blog post Thursday. Helping consumers who are suffering financially from the coronavirus pandemic is one of the CFPB’s top priorities, along with enforcement of fair lending laws and identifying unlawful conduct that disproportionately harms communities of color and other vulnerable populations, he said. “The CFPB will take aggressive action to ensure that regulated companies follow the law and meet their obligations to assist consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Uejio said. “In some cases, penalties may be necessary.” Uejio reiterated that the CFPB, as part of its attention to matters of racial equity, will focus on banks that only took applications for the Paycheck Protection Program from preexisting customers; such decisions have had a “disproportionate negative impact” on minority-owned businesses, in the eyes of some critics. “The country is in the middle of a long overdue conversation about race, and as we all know, practices and policies of the financial services industry have both caused and exacerbated racial inequality,” Uejio said. The CFPB, under the new Biden administration, is breaking from recent policy tied to the Military Lending Act. Three years ago, the Trump administration refused to supervise banks and financial firms for compliance with the MLA, claiming that further legislation was necessary. The Department of Defense and roughly 30 military and veterans groups opposed the Republican position on the act, which imposes a 36% annual percentage interest rate cap for active-duty military members and their dependents.
Fannie Mae: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate Decreased in December – Fannie Mae reported that the Single-Family Serious Delinquency decreased to 2.87% in December, from 2.96% in November. The serious delinquency rate is up from 0.66% in December 2019. These are mortgage loans that are “three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure”. The Fannie Mae serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 5.59%. By vintage, for loans made in 2004 or earlier (2% of portfolio), 5.88% are seriously delinquent (up from 5.87% in November). For loans made in 2005 through 2008 (2% of portfolio), 9.98% are seriously delinquent (down from 10.00%), For recent loans, originated in 2009 through 2018 (95% of portfolio), 2.39% are seriously delinquent (down from 2.48%). So Fannie is still working through a few poor performing loans from the bubble years. Mortgages in forbearance are counted as delinquent in this monthly report, but they will not be reported to the credit bureaus.This is very different from the increase in delinquencies following the housing bubble. Lending standards have been fairly solid over the last decade, and most of these homeowners have equity in their homes – and they will be able to restructure their loans once they are employed.
Freddie Mac: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate decreased in November – Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in December was 2.64%, down from 2.75% in November. Freddie’s rate is up from 0.63% in December 2019. Freddie’s serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20%. These are mortgage loans that are “three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure”. Mortgages in forbearance are being counted as delinquent in this monthly report, but they will not be reported to the credit bureaus. This is very different from the increase in delinquencies following the housing bubble. Lending standards have been fairly solid over the last decade, and most of these homeowners have equity in their homes – and they will be able to restructure their loans once (if) they are employed. Also – for multifamily – delinquencies were at 0.16%, unchanged from 0.16% in November, and up double from 0.08% in December 2019.
MBA Survey: “Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases Slightly to 5.38%” — Note: This is as of January 17th. From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases Slightly to 5.38%: The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance increased slightly from 5.37% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 5.38% as of January 17, 2021. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.7 million homeowners are in forbearance plans. … The small increase in the share of loans in forbearance was led by a gain in the portfolio/PLS loan segment. The good news is that the forbearance numbers for GSE loans continues to decline more consistently, as these borrowers typically have stronger credit and more stable employment,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The rate of exits from forbearance slowed in the prior week, while the rate of new forbearance requests remained steady at a low level.” Fratantoni added, “The latest housing market data show strong momentum entering 2021, with both the pace of home sales and new construction booming. We expect that this strong market could benefit homeowners who need to sell their home, as record-low inventory is causing for-sale homes to go under contract quickly and is pushing up home prices.”This graph shows the percent of portfolio in forbearance by investor type over time. Most of the increase was in late March and early April, and has generally been trending down. The MBA notes: “Weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) remained flat relative to the previous two weeks at 0.07 percent.”
Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Increased – Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance. This data is as of January 26th.From Black Knight: Another Week of Low Forbearance Plan Exits; GSES Outperforming Other Investor Classes in Terms of Recovery New data released today from our McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker shows that forbearance plans rose by 20,000 this week, continuing a trend of rising numbers late in calendar months. Exits remain muted, with only 41,000 borrowers leaving their plans this week. This means the week ranks among the lowest three weeks in terms of exits since the recovery began last summer. With a couple more days remaining in the month, there is modest opportunity for volume improvement next week – some 172,000 forbearance plans are set to expire at the end of the month. The GSEs have the best scenario on their hands in terms of improvement among investor classes. There was a decline of 4,000 active GSE plans, and the rate of improvement among GSE-held mortgages continues to significantly outpace other investor classes. GSE forbearances are now down 4% month-over-month, roughly four times the rate of decline seen among FHA/VA loans (down 1%) and portfolio-held and privately securitized forbearances (down 1.3%). The decline seen among GSE loans in forbearance (4,000) was tempered by an increase of 9,000 FHA/VA forbearance plans and an increase of 15,000 portfolio/private plans.As this week marks yet another round of muted improvement and limited removals it will be worth it to continue to monitor the situation closely. We will have another weekly look at the national forbearance data published on this blog next Friday, Feb. 5. The number of loans in forbearance has moved mostly sideways for the last few months.
MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest Weekly Survey -From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey Mortgage applications decreased 4.1 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending January 22, 2021…. The Refinance Index decreased 5 percent from the previous week and was 83 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 4 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 3 percent compared with the previous week and was 16 percent higher than the same week one year ago.”Mortgage rates were mixed last week, with the 30-year fixed rate rising to its highest level since November 2020 at 2.95 percent, and all other rates in the survey posting a decline. In a sign that borrowers are increasingly more sensitive to higher rates, large declines in government purchase applications and refinance applications pulled overall activity lower. The refinance index has now declined for two straight weeks, but is still 83 percent higher than last year,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Purchase applications also decreased last week, but the impressive trend of year-over-year growth since the second half of 2020 has continued in early 2021. Activity was up 16 percent from a year ago, and the average purchase loan amount hit another record high of $395,200. Since hitting a recent low in April 2020, the average purchase loan amount has steadily risen – in line with the accelerating home-price appreciation occurring in most of the country because of strong demand and extremely low inventory levels.”…The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) increased to 2.95 percent from 2.92 percent, with points decreasing to 0.32 from 0.37 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.’
NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Shows Households Paying Rent Decreased 2.5% YoY – From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 88.6 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of January 20: The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 88.6 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by January 20 in its survey of 11.6 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country. This is a 2.5 percentage point, or 294,224 household decrease from the share who paid rent through January 20, 2020 and compares to 89.8 percent that had paid by December 20, 2020. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price.”While there is light at the end of the tunnel with the rollout of vaccines, the country and the multifamily industry continue to face steep challenges,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President,. “The recently passed COVID relief package included $25 billion in desperately needed rental assistance as well as expanded unemployment insurance. Now, it is critical that those funds reach those in need as quickly and efficiently as possible. “What’s more, it is clear that is only a down payment on the financial support that will be necessary to make apartment residents and owners and operators whole – Moody’s Analytics has estimated that back rent debt had reached $70 billion by the end of 2020 alone. This graph from the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker shows the percent of household making full or partial rent payments by the 6th (light color) and 20th (dark color) of the month.This is mostly for large, professionally managed properties.
Record Low Mortgage Rates; Loans Taking 2 Months to Close – From Jann Swanson at MortgageNewsDaily: Loans Still Taking 2 Months to Close as Refi Demand Stays Strong: The interest rates on 30-year fixed rate mortgages originated in December reached an all-time low in ICE Mortgage Technology’s (formerly Ellie Mae’s) records, an average of 2.93 percent and a 4-basis point decline from the November rate. … The time to close all loans increased to 58 days from 55 days in November with purchase loans, at 56 days compared to 49 days, accounting for all the increase. The refinance timeline remained at 59 days. [Today’s Most Prevalent Rates For Top Tier Scenarios 30YR FIXED – 2.78%] This graph from Mortgage News Daily shows mortgage rates since January 2011. Mortgage rates are essentially at record lows. This graph is interactive, and you could view mortgage rates back to the mid-1980s – click here for interactive graph.
FHFA House Price Index: Up 1.0% in November, Another All-Time High – The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released its U.S. House Price Index (HPI) for November . Here is the opening of the press release: – House prices rose nationwide in November, up 1.0 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI). House prices rose 11.0 percent from November 2019 to November 2020. The previously reported 1.5 percent price change for October 2020 remained unchanged. For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from October 2020 to November 2020 ranged from +0.3 percent in the West South Central division to +1.6 percent in the Pacific division. The 12-month changes ranged from +8.7 percent in the West South Central division to +14.0 percent in the Mountain division. “House prices have risen by at least one percent for six consecutive months,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “The acceleration has been slowing but annual gains now outpace the prior housing boom. Current conditions can be explained by fundamentals, including low rates and tight housing supply, which have been intensified by the pandemic.” The chart below illustrates the monthly HPI series, which is not adjusted for inflation, along with a real (inflation-adjusted) series using the Consumer Price Index: All Items Less Shelter.
Case-Shiller: National House Price Index increased 9.5% year-over-year in November –S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for November (“November” is a 3 month average of September, October and November prices).This release includes prices for 20 individual cities, two composite indices (for 10 cities and 20 cities) and the monthly National index.From S&P: S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index Shows Annual Home Price Gains Climbed to 9.5% in November The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 9.5% annual gain in November, up from 8.4% in the previous month. The 10-City Composite annual increase came in at 8.8%, up from 7.6% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a 9.1% year-over-year gain, up from 8.0% in the previous month.Phoenix, Seattle and San Diego continued to report the highest year-over-year gains among the 19 cities (excluding Detroit) in November. Phoenix led the way with a 13.8% year-over-year price increase, followed by Seattle with a 12.7% increase and San Diego with a 12.3% increase. All 19 cities reported higher price increases in the year ending November 2020 versus the year ending October 2020….The U.S. National Index posted a 1.1% month-over-month increase, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites both posted increases of 1.2% and 1.1% respectively, before seasonal adjustment in November. After seasonal adjustment, the U.S. National Index posted a month-over-month increase of 1.4%, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites both posted increases of 1.4%. In November, all 19 cities (excluding Detroit) reported increases before and after seasonal adjustment. “The housing market’s strength was once again broadly-based: all 19 cities for which we have November data rose, and all 19 gained more in the 12 months ended in November than they had gained in the 12 months ended in October. The first graph shows the nominal seasonally adjusted Composite 10, Composite 20 and National indices (the Composite 20 was started in January 2000). The Composite 10 index is up 1.4% in November (SA) from October. The Composite 20 index is up 1.4% (SA) in November. The National index is 26% above the bubble peak (SA), and up 1.4% (SA) in November. The National index is up 70% from the post-bubble low set in December 2011 (SA). The second graph shows the Year over year change in all three indices. Note: According to the data, prices increased in 19 cities month-over-month seasonally adjusted. Price increases were above expectations.
Zillow Case-Shiller House Price Forecast: “Gathering Speed”, 10.3% YoY in December – The Case-Shiller house price indexes for November were released today. Zillow forecasts Case-Shiller a month early, and I like to check the Zillow forecasts since they have been pretty close. From Matthew Speakman at Zillow: November Case-Shiller Results & December Forecast: Gathering Speed: Growth in home prices continued to climb in November, gathering speed before the end of the year and setting the stage for a full out sprint in 2021….Buoyed by record-low mortgage rates, which continued to plumb new depths back in November, a wave of eager would-be homebuyers poured into the market, further stoking the competition for homes that has been red-hot since the late spring. Homes flew off the market as a result and prices shot upward at their fastest pace in years. Even as the pandemic accelerated its rapid spread across the country, this fervent market competition has shown few, if any, signs of cooling and is unlikely in the near future. Combined, annual growth in home prices should continue its sharp upward trajectory in the months to come.Monthly growth in December as reported by Case-Shiller is expected to slow slightly from [November] in all three main indices, while annual growth is expected to accelerate across the board. S&P Dow Jones Indices is expected to release data for the December S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices on Tuesday, February 23.The Zillow forecast is for the year-over-year change for the Case-Shiller National index to be at 10.3% in December, up from 9.5% in November. The Zillow forecast is for the 20-City index to be up 9.8% YoY in December from 8.9% in November, and for the 10-City index to increase to be up 9.5% YoY compared to 8.4% YoY in November.
New Home Sales increase to 842,000 Annual Rate in December; Sales up 18.8% in 2020 –The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 842 thousand. The previous three months were revised down sharply. Sales of new single-family houses in December 2020 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 842,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 1.6 percen above the revised November rate of 829,000 and is 15.2 percent above the December 2019 estimate of 731,000.An estimated 811,000 new homes were sold in 2020. This is 18.8 percent above the 2019 figure of 683,000..The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate.The last seven months saw the highest sales rates since 2006. This was strong year-over-year growth.The second graph shows New Home Months of Supply. The months of supply increased in December to 4.3 months from 4.2 months in November.The all time record high was 12.1 months of supply in January 2009. The all time record low is 3.5 months, most recently in September 2020. This is at the low end of the normal range (about 4 to 6 months supply is normal).”The seasonally-adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of December was 302,000. This represents a supply of 4.3 months at the current sales rate.” Starting in 1973 the Census Bureau broke inventory down into three categories: Not Started, Under Construction, and Completed.The third graph shows the three categories of inventory starting in 1973.The inventory of completed homes for sale is low, and the combined total of completed and under construction is a little lower than normal.The last graph shows sales NSA (monthly sales, not seasonally adjusted annual rate).In December 2020 (red column), 55 thousand new homes were sold (NSA). Last year, 49 thousand homes were sold in December.The all time high for December was 87 thousand in 2005, and the all time low for December was 23 thousand in 2010.This was at expectations and sales in the three previous months were revised down slightly, combined.
A few Comments on December New Home Sales – McBride – New home sales for December were reported at 842,000 on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis (SAAR). Sales for the previous three months were revised down slightly, combined. Annual sales in 2020 were at 811,000, up 18.8% from 683,000 annual sales in 2019, and the best year for new home sales since 2006.This was at consensus expectations for December, and well above analysts forecasts for 2020. Clearly low mortgages rates, low existing home supply, and favorable demographics (something Iwrote about many times over the last decade). A surging stock market have probably helped new home sales too.Another factor in the strong headline sales rate, over the last the second half of 2020, was the delay in the selling season. Usually the strongest sales are in the March to June time frame, but this year the strongest sales months were later in the year – so the usual seasonal factors boosted sales in late Summer and Fall. Earlier: New Home Sales increase to 842,000 Annual Rate in December; Sales up 18.8% in 2020. This graph shows new home sales for 2019 and 2020 by month (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate).The year-over-year comparison will be easy in early 2021 – especially in March, April and May.However, sales will likely be down year-over-year in August through October – since the selling season was delayed in 2020. And on inventory: note that completed inventory is near record lows, but inventory under construction has been increasing.
NAR: Pending Home Sales Decrease 0.3% in December — From the NAR: Pending Home Sales Inch Back 0.3% in December Despite dropping slightly in the last month of 2020, the latest pending home sales registered as the highest ever recorded in the month of December, according to the National Association of Realtors. The decrease marks the fourth consecutive month of month-over-month declines. While contract transitions fell in one of the four major U.S. regions, activity climbed or remained flat in the three other areas. Compared to a year ago, all four regions witnessed double-digit gains in pending home sales transactions.The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI),a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, waned 0.3% to 125.5 in December. Year-over-year, contract signings jumped 21.4%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001….The Northeast PHSI rose 3.1% to 112.0 in December, a 22.1% increase from a year ago. In the Midwest, the index fell 3.6% to 111.7 last month, up 13.9% from December 2019. Pending home sales in the South increased 0.1% to an index of 150.6 in December, up 26.6% from December 2019. The index in the West was unchanged in December, remaining at 111.3, which is up 18.9% from a year ago. This was slightly above expectations for this index. Note: Contract signings usually lead sales by about 45 to 60 days, so this would usually be for closed sales in January and February.
Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 30.6% Year-over-year –From CoStar: STR: US Hotel Occupancy Flat From Previous Week: U.S. weekly hotel occupancy remained flat from the previous week, according to STR’s latest data through 23 January.
17-23 January 2021 (percentage change from comparable week in 2020):
Occupancy: 40.0% (-30.6%)
Average daily rate (ADR): US$90.13 (-28.1%)
Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$36.07 (-50.1%)
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.The red line is for 2021, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2009 (the worst year since the Great Depression for hotels prior to 2020). Even when occupancy increases to 2009 levels, hotels will still be hurting.Seasonally we’d expect that business travel would start to pick up in the new year, but there will probably not be much pickup early in 2021.
Personal Income increased 0.6% in December, Spending decreased 0.2% — The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for December: Personal income increased $116.6 billion (0.6 percent) in December according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $111.6 billion (0.6 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $27.9 billion (0.2 percent). Real DPI increased 0.2 percent in December and Real PCE decreased 0.6 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.4 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.3 percent . The increase in personal income was above expectations, and the decrease in PCE was also above expectations The December PCE price index increased 1.3 percent year-over-year and the December PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 1.5 percent year-over-year. The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) since January 2019 through December 2020 (2012 dollars).
Real personal spending declines in December, while income rises; not quite enough to start a “double-dip” recession — This morning’s report on personal income and spending for December reversed the pattern we have seen all during the second half of 2020. After rebounding strongly for 6 months, real personal spending (blue in the graph below) declined for the month by -0.2%, and is 3.6% below its February peak. Meanwhile real personal income (red), which has generally declined since April, rose 0.6%, and remains 1.3% higher than it was in February just before the pandemic hit: The continued strength in income compared with prior to the pandemic has everything to do with the emergency stimulus Congress put in place early on after the pandemic hit. This has greatly ameliorated the privation which would otherwise have occurred.Further, real personal income excluding transfer payments (I.e., payments from the government like food stamps and unemployment insurance) is one of the four coincident indicators which the NBER makes use of in determining if the economy is expanding or not. This also declined -0.2% in December, the second monthly decline in a row after increasing in the 6 prior months. In the below graph I show that (blue) together with jobs (red), real retail sales (green), and industrial production (gold) for the year 2020:All four of these data points have been deteriorating since strong rebounds in May and June. Two (sales and income) were negative in November, and payrolls also went negative in December. Because industrial production is the King of Coincident Indicators, however, I doubt the NBER will mark a renewed recession beginning in either month. Still, *if* production rolls over, and the other three decline further in January, that might mean the start of a “double-dip.” But because I expect the pandemic to be brought somewhat under control by spring sometime, I further suspect that it won’t be enough to qualify as a renewed recession.
Real Disposable Income Per Capita in December – With the release of this morning’s report on December Personal Incomes and Outlays, we can now take a closer look at“Real” Disposable Personal Income Per Capita. At two decimal places, the nominal 0.60% month-over-month change in disposable income is cut to 0.18% when we adjust for inflation. This is an increase from last month’s -1.50% nominal and -1.51% real decreases last month. The year-over-year metrics are 4.12% nominal and 2.81% real.Post-recession, the trend was one of steady growth, but generally flattened out in late 2015 with increases in 2012 and 2013. As a result of the CARES Act and the COVID pandemic, a major spike is seen in April 2020. The first chart shows both the nominal per capita disposable income and the real (inflation-adjusted) equivalent since 2000. This indicator was significantly disrupted by the bizarre but predictable oscillation caused by 2012 year-end tax strategies in expectation of tax hikes in 2013 and more recently, by the CARES Act stimulus. The BEA uses the average dollar value in 2012 for inflation adjustment. But the 2012 peg is arbitrary and unintuitive. For a more natural comparison, let’s compare the nominal and real growth in per-capita disposable income since 2000. Nominal disposable income is up 104.6% since then. But the real purchasing power of those dollars is up 41.0%.
Consumer Confidence Improves in January – The headline number of 89.3 was an increase from the final reading of 87.1 for December. This was slightly above theInvesting.com consensus of 89.0. “Consumers’ appraisal of present-day conditions weakened further in January, with COVID-19 still the major suppressor,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ expectations for the economy and jobs, however, advanced further, suggesting that consumers foresee conditions improving in the not-too-distant future. In addition, the percent of consumers who said they intend to purchase a home in the next six months improved, suggesting that the pace of home sales should remain robust in early 2021.” Read more The chart below is another attempt to evaluate the historical context for this index as a coincident indicator of the economy. Toward this end, we have highlighted recessions and included GDP. The regression through the index data shows the long-term trend and highlights the extreme volatility of this indicator. Statisticians may assign little significance to a regression through this sort of data. But the slope resembles the regression trend for real GDP shown below, and it is a more revealing gauge of relative confidence than the 1985 level of 100 that the Conference Board cites as a point of reference.
Gasoline Volume Sales Down 11.5% Since Before Recession –The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) monthly data on volume sales is several weeks old when it released. The latest numbers, through mid-November, are now available. Gasoline prices and increases in fuel efficiency are important factors, but there are also some significant demographic and cultural dynamics in this data series.Because the sales data are highly volatile with some obvious seasonality, we’ve added a 12-month moving average (MA) to give a clearer indication of the long-term trends. The latest 12-month MA is 14% below its all-time high set in August 2005 and has surpassed its -8.6% low set in August 2014 after the last recessionThe next chart includes an overlay of real monthly retail gasoline prices, all grades and formulations, adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (the red line). We’ve shortened the timeline to start with EIA price series, which dates from August 1990. The retail prices are updated weekly, so the price series is the more current of the two.
DOT: Vehicle Miles Driven decreased 10.3% year-over-year in November – The Department of Transportation (DOT) reported:Travel on all roads and streets changed by -11.1% (-28.9 billion vehicle miles) for November 2020 as compared with November 2019. Travel for the month is estimated to be 231.6 billion vehicle miles. The seasonally adjusted vehicle miles traveled for November 2020 is 244.8 billion miles, a -10.3% (-28.2 billion vehicle miles) decline from November 2019. It also represents -0.7% decline (-1.6 billion vehicle miles) compared with October 2020. Cumulative Travel for 2020 changed by -13.7% (-410.0 billion vehicle miles). The cumulative estimate for the year is 2,583.1 billion vehicle miles of travel. This graph shows the rolling 12 month total vehicle miles driven to remove the seasonal factors. Miles driven declined during the great recession, and the rolling 12 months stayed below the previous peak for a record 85 months. Miles driven declined sharply in March, and really collapsed in April. This graph shows the YoY change in vehicle miles driven. Miles driven have rebounded, but are still down 10.3% YoY (seasonally adjusted).
Durable-Goods Demand Eased in December – WSJ – Growth in demand for long-lasting manufactured goods slowed in December, as the overall economic recovery lost momentum at the end of last year. New orders for durable goods – products designed to last at least three years – increased 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted $245.3 billion in December compared with November, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That was the eighth straight month of gains, although the increase was the smallest since last August. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected new orders to increase 0.8% in December, after an upwardly revised 1.2% rise the previous month. New orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft – or so-called core capital-goods orders, a closely watched proxy for business investment – increased 0.6% in December from the previous month, to $71.8 billion. The gain was also smaller than in recent months. Despite slower December growth in new orders, economists said the report reflected positive trends for the U.S. manufacturing industry and business investment. “The bigger story is the continued strong gains in core orders, which underlines that the recovery in business equipment investment – which looks set to rise above its pre-pandemic level in the fourth quarter – still has plenty of momentum,” Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said in a research note. New orders for transportation equipment weighed on last month, falling 1%. Orders for commercial aircraft and parts dropped sharply, driven primarily by a decline in net orders at Boeing Co. , according to economists. Boeing on Wednesday reported its biggest-ever annual loss and said it took a large financial hit on its new 777X jetliner, as the company faces continuing challenges because of the coronavirus pandemic. Excluding transportation, a category that can be particularly volatile, overall durable-goods orders increased 0.7%. The overall rise in durable-goods orders last month is the latest in a string of data that have pointed to resilience for U.S. manufacturing and increased activity at factories amid the pandemic. For example, data firm IHS Markit said last week that its index of U.S. manufacturing activity rose in early January to its highest level in more than a decade.
Dallas Fed: “Texas Manufacturing Expansion Moderates” in January -From the Dallas Fed: Texas Manufacturing Expansion Moderates: Texas factory activity continued to expand in January, albeit at a markedly slower pace, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell from 26.8 to 4.6, indicating a sharp deceleration in output growth. Other measures of manufacturing activity also point to more muted growth this month. The new orders index dropped 13 points to 6.3, and the growth rate of orders index fell from 15.9 to 5.9. The capacity utilization index declined 10 points to 9.2, and the shipments index fell from 23.4 to 13.5. Perceptions of broader business conditions continued to improve in January. The general business activity index remained positive but edged down from 10.5 to 7.0. The company outlook index also stayed in positive territory but retreated, from 18.2 to 10.3. Uncertainty regarding companies’ outlooks continued to rise; the index increased six points to 19.3. Labor market measures indicated slightly slower growth in employment and a continued increase in work hours. The employment index came in at 16.6, down from 20.9 but still indicative of increased head counts.
Richmond Fed Manufacturing Shows Growth in January Despite Decline – Fifth District manufacturing activity showed growth in January, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite index fell to 14 in January from 15 in December and indicates expansion.The complete data series behind today’s Richmond Fed manufacturing report, which dates from November 1993, is available here.Here is a snapshot of the complete Richmond Fed Manufacturing Composite series. Here is an excerpt from the latest Richmond Fed manufacturing overview: The Fifth District manufacturing sector showed signs of growth in January, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite index fell from 19 in December to 14 in January but remained in expansionary territory, as did all three of its component indexes – shipments, new orders, and employment. Manufacturers reported lengthening vendor lead times, as this index rose to 39, its highest reading since January 1996. Overall, manufacturers were optimistic that conditions would continue to improve in the coming months. Link to ReportHere is a somewhat closer look at the index since the turn of the century.
Kansas City Fed Survey: Continued Improvement in January – The latest index came in at 17, up 3 from last month’s 14, which indicates expansion in January. The future outlook increased to 24 this month from 17. Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.Quarterly data for this indicator dates back to 1995, but monthly data is only available from 2001.Here is an excerpt from the latest report:. – The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released the January Manufacturing Survey today. According to Chad Wilkerson, vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the survey revealed that Tenth District manufacturing activity increased at a faster pace in January compared to a month ago and was similar to year ago levels. Expectations for future activity rose further.“Regional factories reported more growth in January,” said Wilkerson. “COVID-19 vaccination is a key factor in manufacturers’ overall business outlook for 2021, but with less impact on hiring and capital spending in the near-term.” [Full report here]Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.
Chicago PMI Jumped in January -The Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index, is similar to the national ISM Manufacturing indicator but at a regional level and is seen by many as an indicator of the larger US economy. It is a composite diffusion indicator, made up of production, new orders, order backlogs, employment, and supplier deliveries compiled through surveys. Values above 50.0 indicate expanding manufacturing activity.The latest Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index, or the Chicago Business Barometer, jumped to 63.8 in January from 58.7 in December, which is in expansion territory. Values above 50.0 indicate expanding manufacturing activity.Here is an excerpt from the press release:The Chicago Business BarometerTM, produced with MNI, rose 5.1 points to 63.8 in January. The index now stands at the highest level since July 2018, boosted by a pick-up in activity at the beginning of 2021.Among the main five indicators, Production saw the largest monthly gain, followed by New Orders. Employment recorded the biggest decline. [Source] Let’s take a look at the Chicago PMI since its inception.
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decreased to 847,000 –The DOL reported: In the week ending January 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 847,000, a decrease of 67,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 14,000 from 900,000 to 914,000. The 4-week moving average was 868,000, an increase of 16,250 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 3,750 from 848,000 to 851,750. This does not include the 426,856 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that was down from 447,328 the previous week.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971. The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 868,000. The previous week was revised up.The second graph shows seasonally adjust continued claims since 1967 (lags initial by one week).At the worst of the Great Recession, continued claims peaked at 6.635 million, but then steadily declined.Regular state continued claims decreased to 4,771,000 (SA) from 4,974,000 (SA) the previous week and will likely stay at a high level until the crisis abates. Note: There are an additional 7,334,193 receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that increased from 5,707,397 the previous week (there are questions about these numbers). This is a special program for business owners, self-employed, independent contractors or gig workers not receiving other unemployment insurance.
BLS: December Unemployment rates down in 19 States, Higher in 12 States – From the BLS: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Summary: Unemployment rates were lower in December in 19 states, higher in 12 states and the District of Columbia, and stable in 19 states, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Forty-five states and the District had jobless rate increases from a year earlier, one state had a decrease, and four states had little or no change. The national unemployment rate, 6.7 percent, was unchanged over the month but was 3.1 percentage points higher than in December 2019. In December 2020, nonfarm payroll employment increased in 15 states, decreased in 11 states, and was essentially unchanged in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Over the year, nonfarm payroll employment decreased in 48 states and the District and was essentially unchanged in 2 states. … Hawaii and Nevada had the highest unemployment rates in December, 9.3 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively. Nebraska and South Dakota had the lowest rates, 3.0 percent each. Hawaii and Nevada are being impacted by the lack of tourism.
Delta Air Lines To Activate 400 Pilots By Summer Amid Travel Rebound Expectation -Delta Air Lines plans to activate 400 full-time pilots by this summer, reflecting vaccine optimism could lead to a rebound in air travel, according to a company memo, seen by Reuters. John Laughter, senior vice president of flight operations, told employees last week that the company is positioning itself for recovery. “We saw an opportunity to build back additional pilot staffing in advance of summer 2022 by bringing 400 affected pilots back to active flying status by this summer,” he said. Laughter continued, “This is well ahead of when we originally estimated we would be able to convert pilots back to full flying status and is possible because of the PSP aid and available training capacity starting in March and April.””We’re cautiously optimistic that demand will increase as vaccinations roll out across the world, and we look forward to restoring all affected pilots back to full flying status as the recovery continues,” he added.Laughter expects average cash burn could be around $10-$15 million per day in the first quarter as customer demand will remain depressed. The upbeat comments come as Delta experienced the largest ever annual loss of $12 billion in 2020. The airline hopes to return to profitability in the second half of 2021 as vaccines may give people more confidence to travel on planes. “We are encouraged that Delta has begun recalling pilots that the pandemic has sidelined,” the Air Line Pilots Association said in a statement.”As career-long stakeholders, pilots want to see Delta back where it was before the virus exploded, at the top of the industry,” the union added. Despite the optimistic outlook, Delta shares were down more than 2% this afternoon as traders became spooked by new air travel restrictions in the US to mitigate the virus’ spread.
California officials confirm over $11 billion in unemployment fraud during pandemic – California officials confirmed on Monday that over $11 billion in unemployment benefits paid amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic involved fraud. The state paid at least $11.4 billion, which is approximately 10 percent of benefits paid during the pandemic, in funds that involved fraud, the California Employment Development Department confirmed to The Hill. Seventeen percent of the rest of total benefits paid are under investigation. “There is no sugarcoating the reality,” California Labor Secretary Julie Su aid during a press conference Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported. “California has not had sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud, and criminals took advantage of the situation.” The state has paid $114 billion in unemployment benefits since the start of the pandemic last March, with officials processing approximately 19 million claims. Officials warned that many of the 17 percent of claims under investigation could also involve fraud. Su on Monday said that the Trump administration did not provide adequate guidance and resources to California amid the pandemic, as swaths of businesses were forced to close under health orders. She said that almost all of the fraudulent claims were filed through a federal program that provides unemployment benefits to the self-employed, independent contractors and others. “We now know that as millions of Californians applied for help, international and national criminal rings were at work behind the scenes working relentlessly to steal unemployment benefits using sophisticated methods of identity theft,” Su said, according to the Times. California’s Employment Development Department announced last month that it was freezing 1.4 million unemployment claims to verify identities. The Department has hired a contractor to verify the identities of claimants, ID.me. The contractor has found that 35 percent of unemployment applications nationwide had fraud concerns. The state is also grappling with a backlog of unemployment claims amid the pandemic, which totaled 916,000 claims as of last week.
Audit Finds 4 Million Californians May Have To Repay COVID Jobless Benefits – In September, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee ordered State Auditor Elaine Howle to conduct an in-depth audit into EDD following a tidal wave of abuse reports. One of the most notable abuses was rapper Fontrell Antonio Baines, 31, who fraudulently collected $1.2 million in EDD claims. He even detailed the EDD scam in a rap video. State lawmakers had criticized the agency for massive backlogs that delayed claims, along with its failure to prevent widespread fraud. “Although it would be unreasonable to have expected a flawless response to such a historical event, EDD’s inefficient processes and lack of advanced planning led to significant delays in its payment of [unemployment insurance] claims,” Howle’s letter said, which was addressed to the governor and lawmakers. Howle found at least half of the claims submitted online to EDD could not automatically process between March and September and were processed manually. “As a result, hundreds of thousands of claimants waited longer than 21 days – EDD’s measure of how quickly it should process a claim – to receive their first benefit payments,” Howle said. “EDD has begun to modify its practices and processes to increase the rate at which it automatically processes online claims, but the automation it has gained during the pandemic is not fully sustainable.”As the backlog soared during the pandemic and internal chaos at EDD erupted, the agency relaxed eligibility rules to speed up claims distribution. This may have resulted in millions of people who shouldn’t have received claims or were overpaid. Now EDD is deciding how these folks will repay the jobless benefits they got during the pandemic.
12 dead and over 750 workers infected at Southern California ports – As COVID-19 continues to break record numbers of infections and mounting death tolls in California, dock workers, shipbuilding and logistics workers at the busy ports in Southern Californian have been particularly hard hit in recent weeks. Currently nearly 700 workers have contracted the virus in Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, with another 60 workers infected at the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego. Since the beginning of the year, over 35,000 confirmed cases have been reported in California every day, with Los Angeles alone seeing over 10,000 daily infections. A dozen longshore workers have died so far this year. Eugene Seroka, executive director of the Los Angeles port, told the Los Angeles Timesthat nearly 1,800 dock workers are currently not working either due to self-isolation because of limited contact tracing or awaiting test results. Many are staying at home out of fear of contracting the virus. “We’ve got more cargo than we do skilled labor,” Seroka said. The high numbers of cases at the ports have been the direct result of indifference to the health of port workers. Union representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) have cynically claimed that port executives have been failing to report widespread outbreaks to county health officials all while keeping workers on the job. Only one of the 12 terminals in Los Angeles has officially declared a virus outbreak of just 15 workers, despite the hundreds who are reporting infections. In reality, the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association are colluding to keep workers on the job.
After government intervention to keep it open, hundreds of infections went unreported at Illinois meatpacking plant – At least 137 COVID-19 cases at the Rochelle Foods meatpacking plant went unreported after state and federal government officials intervened to countermand a local lockdown order, according to an investigative report published last week in USA Today. Although meatpacking plants have served as a key vector for the spread of the virus, particularly into rural areas of the country, information about the extent of the virus in the industry has been released only piecemeal, at the discretion of companies and management at individual sites. However, according to available reports compiled by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, which contributed to last week’s report, at least 45,000 meatpacking workers have been infected and 240 have died. Rochelle Foods, a subsidiary of Hormel, employs approximately 900 workers at the plant in Rochelle, Illinois. The Ogle County Health Department intervened to shut down production at the facility on April 20. On May 1, by which time 123 workers were confirmed infected, state and federal officials intervened, convening a conference call with the Ogle County health director, lawyers for Rochelle Foods and several political appointees from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and a representative of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), high-level officials from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), and the office of Democratic Governor Jay Robert “J. B.” Pritzker’s office. According to the report, Ogle County Health Department (OCHD) Director Kyle Aumun was told by USDA officials that he had no authority to investigate or shut down production at the plant, citing Trump’s April 28 executive order invoking the Defense Production Act that forced meatpacking and food-processing facilities to keep operating in the midst of a pandemic. After the conference call had concluded, Auman recalled feeling “very manipulated.” “Rochelle Foods reopened on May 4 and, since then, no coronavirus cases have been publicly reported,” the report continues. “But behind closed doors, the county health department has been fighting coronavirus outbreaks at Rochelle Foods ever since.” A second outbreak occurred in the fall, and “By mid-September, at least 137 COVID-19 cases had been reported at the plant in Rochelle.” The current number of infections is likely higher, according to the report. Rochelle Foods management even intervened to prevent local health officials from publicly announcing COVID-19 testing at the plant, on the grounds that it would give the company “bad publicity.” “We essentially had to leave Rochelle Foods alone,” Aumun told reporters. “They were using the act to keep people working, not to protect public health.”
COVID-19 Has Exposed the Fragility of Our Food System – Here’s How We Can Localize It –The U.S. was once a haven for small-scale, family farmers. Today, food giants have gobbled up most of those family farms, creating the monstrous and unsustainable food industry known as Big Ag. The extent to which this massive, industrialized, global food system falls short became especially unmistakable in 2020. The current food system is “fraying.” It relies on the horrendoustreatment of laborers, a wasteful allocation of resources, worldwide environmental devastation – and in a pinch, can quickly devolve into near-collapse of the entire system, as evidenced by the delays, shortages and pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deepening hunger crisisin America. Among the many necessary systemic changes 2020 has illuminated is the need to majorly restructure the way we cultivate and access food in our communities.Faced with the shortcomings of the current food systems, food producers across the Pacific Northwest have been innovating ways to reestablish locally sourced, regional food systems. In the process of localizing the food supply chain, they aim to establish food security for their communities, create local jobs and support the surrounding ecosystems.During a free, online event called Festival of What Works, which took place in November 2020, entrepreneurs from an array of backgrounds shared their success stories to demonstrate how it is possible to build and scale local food production across geography as well as institutions and create more food-secure communities. The festival was a project of a newly launched eco-trust network called Salmon Nation. It gathered a collection of voices from various cultures and focuses, to showcase solution-oriented projects from Northern California through Alaska (a region called “Salmon Nation” by many of the area’s Indigenous people) that offer place-based responses to the current political, economic and climate realities. Here are three examples of localized food projects successfully challenging the current system – all of which lend themselves to replication in other areas.
Flying Blind by James Howard Kunstler – Events are in the driver’s seat now, not personalities. Gil Scott-Heron was right way back in the day when he said, “the revolution will not be televised.” Only what he called “revolution” turns out to be collapse, led by the disintegrating news business, so that the people of this land are flying blind into a maelstrom of hardship. Everything is going south at once here, and you probably don’t know it. If you think we’re headed into a transhuman nirvana of continuous tech-assisted orgasm, social equity, and guaranteed basic income, you are going to be disappointed. Our actual destination is a neo-medieval time-out from all the techno-dazzle of recent decades. It’s not as bad as you might think. The human project will continue at a lower pitch, probably for a good long while, but minus most of the comforts and conveniences we’re used to, and with very different social arrangements. You can waste your energy hand-wringing and wailing over all this, or summon the fortitude to go where history is taking us and make something of it. The old economy is wrecked. Many Americans already know this because they’ve lost their businesses and their livelihoods. What used to be there isn’t coming back. But there will always be ways to make yourself useful providing things and services that other people need, just not within the crumbling armature of the economy we’re leaving behind. There will be a lot of debris left in the way to overcome, especially the crap we’ve smeared all over the landscape. One business you can begin to organize right now is a salvage industry, sorting out the reusable components of all that crap – the steel I-beams, the aluminum trusses and sashes, plate glass, concrete blocks, copper and PVC pipe, and dimensional lumber. A lot of this stuff we just won’t be making anymore, certainly not at the former scale. Think of all the shopping malls to be disassembled. Growing food and getting it to markets is the most critical activity. Poor Bill Gates, addled by his fortune, has bought up something like a quarter-million acres of farmland. His grandiosity prompts him to believe he can organize farming on the super-giant scale – Walmart for corn and turnips. Nothing could be further from the real coming trend: a reduction of scale and scope of farming and of the distribution supply lines that serve it. Poor Bill doesn’t seem to realize that the oil-and-gas-based “inputs” (fertilizers, pesticides) won’t be there for him, nor will the million-dollar diesel-powered combines. Nor the trucking industry. He could do more good for mankind getting into the mule business. The transition between the old giant agri-biz model of farming and the emergent system of small-scaled farms based on human and animal labor will be arduous and disorderly in the early going. A lot of people will miss a lot of meals, and you know what that means. Working on a farm will be one way to make sure you get enough to eat. But also consider all the businesses that have to be created from scratch on the local level to serve the logistics of farming. You are already seeing many food products unavailable in the supermarkets. That will become more distressingly obvious in the disorders of 2021. When food deliveries to the supermarkets get really spotty, the farmers’ markets will not just be for schmoozing over lattes and almond croissants.
Cuomo implicated in ‘criminal corruption scandal’ over nursing home coronavirus deaths: Stefanik — Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said Friday that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. was implicated in a “criminal corruption scandal” over his state’s reported undercounting of nursing home COVID-19 deaths. In an interview on “The Story,” Stefanik said New York lawmakers needed to hold Cuomo accountable for what the state’s attorney general has alleged was a significant underreporting of the death count of New Yorkers in nursing homes. Cuomo, D., defended his policy as following federal guidelines at the time, but officials have said those guidelines mandated strict standards for nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive patients. “This is the governor who has pointed fingers at everyone. He’s pointed fingers at President Trump. He’s pointed fingers at the seniors themselves, at the nursing homes, basically blaming everyone but himself,” Stefanik said.Stefanik also blasted the media and CNN in particular for its coverage of Cuomo, whose brother Chris Cuomo is a primetime anchor and conducted numerous, friendly interviews with the governor when the pandemic first struck. “It is a disgrace that CNN allows Chris Cuomo to just invite his brother and do those ridiculous fawning interviews. It’s an embarrassment now to the media,” she said.
White House: DOJ would lead potential N.Y. nursing home probe – – Any federal investigation into New York’s COVID nursing home deaths will be led by the Department of Justice, the White House said Friday. White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to weigh in Friday on a scathing report in which New York Attorney General James accused the Cuomo administration of underreporting deaths at elder care facilities during the pandemic. “I have seen those reports. I would say any investigation, I would point you to the Department of Justice,” Psaki said. James’ report, which also found many long-term care sites failed to adequately protect residents from coronavirus, prompted state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to release long-sought data detailing how many seniors died in nursing homes and after being transferred to hospitals. Hours after the AG’s report, Zucker said in a statement that an ongoing audit shows the true total number of deaths connected to nursing homes is 12,743, not the 8,700 the state had been reporting on its website. The change in reporting does not impact the state’s overall death toll, which stood at 34,742 as of Wednesday. The comment from the White House comes months after the Department of Justice requested information from New York and other Democratic-led states about nursing home deaths. Under the Trump administration, the feds claimed the probe was part of the first step in determining whether to open a formal investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. At the time, Cuomo called the probe “political.”
Cuomo: NYC Indoor Dining Can Return Valentine’s Day (25% Cap); Limited Weddings OK in March – New York City restaurants can reopen indoor dining at 25 percent capacity on Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest dining days of the year, provided current downward trends in positivity and hospitalization rates continue, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday. He also announced that wedding receptions of up to 50 percent or 150 people will be permitted in New York starting March 15, provided all guests are tested and local health officials approve. The state is developing an app that would list guests’ names once they have been tested; rapid tests are the suggested means. That reopening step for weddings was born out of the success the governor says the state saw byallowing fans to attend two Buffalo Bills home playoff games earlier this month with strict testing and contact tracing rules. He believes that rapid pre-testing will be the key to eventually reopening more venues, including Broadway and baseball stadiums, before vaccination reaches critical mass. Both highly anticipated announcements come two days after Cuomo hinted of more reopening measures in the near future when he declared “the holiday surge is over” as he lifted most of the state’s micro-cluster zone restrictions.
Vaccination Chaos Fuels Push to Recall Gavin Newsom – 01/29Since October, Newsom has touted his administration’s readiness to vaccinate the state’s 40 million residents, while repeatedly assuring them that “hope is on the horizon.” He has vowed that California would lead the nation with a fair and efficient system of delivering vaccines. Instead, the situation has devolved into chaos and confusion, as vulnerable older people, teachers and others in essential industries scramble to find a vaccine appointment – often without help or direction from state or local officials. Newsom, who emerged as an early leader in the pandemic when he issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order, is desperately trying to turn the situation around – and political strategists say he must do so quickly because his political future depends on it. He is facing a Republican-driven effort to recall him from office, with supporters gaining momentum from the vaccine problems. Even some in his Democratic base are beginning to question his leadership. “This is not going well. You just cannot have these kinds of disparities we’re seeing all over California. The governor has got to get control of this vaccination effort,” said Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist Garry South, who ran the gubernatorial campaigns of former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, recalled by voters in 2003 and replaced by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “If the vaccination process is not carried out smoothly and efficiently, a lot of voters will blame him, regardless of whether it’s actually his fault or not,” South said. “People did not blame Gray Davis for starting the electricity crisis, but they did blame him for failing to solve the problem.” Recall organizers have until March 17 to gather the roughly 1.5 million valid signatures needed to put the question before voters. As of Jan. 6, the California secretary of state’s office had received nearly 724,000 signatures.
Missouri residents confront growing joblessness, hunger, evictions – As throughout the United States, the coronavirus pandemic is ravaging the population of the state of Missouri. Hunger, unemployment and homelessness reached record levels in 2020, while the total wealth of US billionaires soared by over $1 trillion in the first nine months of the year. The already threadbare social welfare system in the state is leaving thousands of people unable to receive needed assistance. Food banks have been relying on CARES Act funds to be able to purchase food to serve their communities. For example, Douglass Community Services in Hannibal – a city in northeastern Missouri that was the boyhood home of famed author Mark Twain – received its last CARES Act check at the start of November. That month they were able to purchase about $7,000 worth of food, only enough to feed area residents for one month. The food bank supplies individuals with three to five days of food at a time. Stacey Nicholas, Douglass Community Services community outreach initiatives director, said that they have been forced to rely upon local donations. “We rely on those local funders because the heart of it is, we can’t wait for someone in Washington D.C. or Jefferson City to come to northeast Missouri and save us. We have to save ourselves.” Indeed, help from the federal government is paltry. The recently passed $900 billion coronavirus relief package will do little to address growing hunger in the United States. America is experiencing the worst levels of hunger since 1998, when the Census Bureau began compiling data about household food insecurity. Missouri’s hunger statistics are damning. One in six children doesn’t get enough to eat each day, and over 1 million residents got help from a food bank or food pantry in 2019. The St. Louis Area Foodbank has distributed over 40 million meals since March 16, and reported a 46 percent increase in requests for assistance in 2020. President and CEO of the food bank Meredith Knopp said that the organization conducted surveys that showed that 70 percent of people utilizing the food bank in 2020 were seeking help for the first time. Kansas City food bank Harvesters has reported a 40 percent increase in need this year.
“Greatest Rise In Inequality Ever”: The Last 6 Months Saw Sharpest Rise In US Poverty In Half-Century – A new poverty estimate seeking to analyze the nationwide impact of government relief measures which expired just at the end of last month has found that the latter half of 2020 marked the sharpest rise in the US poverty rate since the 1960s. The study released Monday and presented in Bloomberg finds that the poverty rate increased by 2.4% during the second half of 2020, following last spring and early summer COVID-19 rolling lockdowns in various parts of the country.This amounts to an additional 8 million Americans being considered newly poor, nearly double the highest annual increase in poverty in over a half-century.The study authors – economists Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago, and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame – further found that Black Americans were among the hardest hit, and more that twice as likely to fall below the poverty line as White Americans.According to Bloomberg’s summary of the results, “The researchers found that the stimulus checks the federal government issued in the spring helped forestall the poverty rate from rising even faster.” Bloomberg recalls further that “In late December, $900 billion in addition federal relief aid was passed, and President Joe Biden is asking Congress for an additional $1.9 trillion in stimulus.”The US trend of the past six months is also echoed more broadly in global data showing COVID-fueled poverty across much of the world.
COVID Lockdown Policies Will Disproportionately Hit Black Americans For Decades, New Study Finds — “Follow the science” exclaimed every virtue-signaling talking head as left-leaning authorities/officials clamped down on Americans’ rights nationwide… “wear a mask”, “shelter at home”, “no comingling”, “slow the spread”, “think of the children”, “save grandma” were the cries as the virus refused to pay attention to state and local authories’ orders to behave as the “scientist” textbooks claimed. And, as cases rose, and hospitalizations rose, and deaths rose, so did the tyrannical trouncing of the economy sending unemployment rates to record highs and crushing GDP growth to record lows. Now, here we sit, hunkered down in many blue states still, unable to discern exactly what ‘science’ it is that is driving officials’ decision. Along those lines, it seems like a good idea to point out that a new peer reviewed study out of Stanford is questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders (which it calls NPIs, or non-pharmaceutical interventions) to combat Covid-19. The study’s lead author is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford. “The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread,” according to Outkick, who published the report. The study, co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya, studied the effects of NPIs in 10 different countries, including England, France, Germany and Italy. And, when all was said and done, it concluded that: “In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020.” In fact, the study found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.”
Two dead after 26-year-old mother jumps off Tennessee overpass holding infant — A ghastly event that took place in the early morning hours of Monday, January 4 just north of Jackson, Tennessee, highlights the degree of social misery and despair that has overtaken untold numbers of the world’s population amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 12:30 a.m. local time, callers from the gas station northeast of Jackson, in the western part of the state, informed 911 dispatchers that a woman had just tried to crash her car into a gas pump. Then, calls came in from witnesses saying the woman exited the vehicle carrying a child and proceeded to walk to the edge of the nearby overpass before disappearing from sight. The woman and child’s fate were confirmed minutes later, when a truck driver moving westbound on Interstate 40 called 911 reporting something had hit his truck. When the authorities responded to the scene, they found two people dead on the roadway. The woman callers reported seeing has been identified as Tonisha Lashay Barker. She was 26. The child was later identified by relatives as her 21-month-old son, Jonathan Jones. In a statement the day of the incident County Sheriff John Mehr said, “It’s heartbreaking to have that situation this morning, especially when someone loses their life. It’s hard on everybody, especially the driver of the vehicle. It’s just a bad situation that we hate to ever receive.” Commenting on the investigation, MCSO Public Information Officer Tom Maples said Barker “evidently chose to jump off with the child in her hands.” Barker’s grandmother told local Memphis TV station WREG that Barker was depressed in the period leading up to the incident on the highway overpass. Barker, a 2018 science graduate from Tennessee State University, had recently lost her job at a state COVID-19 testing site in December.
Chicago Teachers Union votes to defy district’s reopening plans over coronavirus concern -The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to defy Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) reopening plans for teachers and staff due to coronavirus concerns, the union announced on Sunday. The teachers union for the nation’s third-largest school district decided to allow all educators to conduct work remotely starting on Monday, the day that kindergarten through eighth grade staff was expected to return in person. The CTU reported that 86 percent of its 25,000 members participated in the electronic vote on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Seventy-one percent of voting members decided to deny the district’s current plan to come back to in-person learning.”So what does this mean?” a CTU release read. “It means the overwhelming majority of you have chosen safety. CPS did everything possible to divide us by instilling fear through threats of retaliation, but you still chose unity, solidarity and to collectively act as one.”The Chicago Sun-Times labeled the vote as “unusually close for CTU labor actions” noting that 94 percent of voting members in 2019 decided to strike. The Chicago district’s officials sent a letter to families on Sunday in response to the vote, saying the return date for teachers will be delayed until Wednesday to allow for more time for negotiations and to avoid “risking disruption to student learning.” They noted they hoped to reach a deal with the union “as soon as possible” and the Feb. 1 return date for students remains in place.”We now agree on far more than we disagree, but our discussions remain ongoing, and additional time is needed to reach a resolution,” the letter obtained by The Hill read. The teachers union and CPS have been feuding over the district’s plan to require most teachers and staff to work in-person for weeks. Under the plan, staff and teachers were supposed to return on Monday, with the K-8 students having the option of in-person learning starting on Feb. 1.CPS previously instructed most of its pre-kindergarten and special education staff to return to schools earlier this month, with students going back Jan. 11. But the district reported that 49 percent of those who said they’d return for the Jan. 11 start date have, amounting to 19 percent of the student populations. In their letter, the officials said pre-K and special education staff will be expected to keep reporting in-person to work, despite the delay for other staff. The district has already blocked remote work and stopped paying a few dozen of these teachers who previously did not return to in-person work.
Chicago Teachers Vote To ‘Strike’ Against In-Person Instruction Over COVID-19 Fears -The Chicago Teachers Union announced on Sunday that its members voted to defy an order to return to in-person instruction on Monday, citing concerns over COVID-19. Officials with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have made clear that refusing to return when ordered would be tantamount to an illegal strike.CPS, the nation’s third-largest district, ordered roughly 10,000 K-8 teachers and other staffers to return to school on Monday, while roughly 70,000 students are expected to show up for part-time in-person classes on February 1 – when CPS says they still expect K-8 teachers to appear in-person. There has been no return date set for high school students.The teachers union says that the reopening plan fails to take the health of teachers into account, and has called on the district to allow them to continue teaching from home.”Here you have the most lethal health emergency that we’ve had in 100 years, and there is so little guidance that everyone is doing different things,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers last week, adding that a national strategy “costs money, it requires good management, and it requires working together.”According to the union, vaccinations will need to be more widespread and different metrics to measure infections will need to be instituted.”There’s no doubt we all want to return to in-person instruction. The issue is CPS’ current unpreparedness for a return to in-person instruction, and the clear and present danger that poses to the health of our families and school communities,” the union said in a statement, according to Fox News.The two sides have been negotiating for months and talks continued after the result of the vote was announced in the hopes of reaching a deal.CPS officials said Sunday that they had agreed to delay the teachers’ return for two days to give the sides more time to negotiate. But they said K-8 teachers would still be expected to resume in-person instruction on Feb. 1.“We now agree on far more than we disagree, but our discussions remain ongoing, and additional time is needed to reach a resolution,” the district’s CEO, Janice Jackson, said in a statement.School officials have argued that remote learning isn’t working for all students, including many low income and Black and Latino students who make up the majority of the district. The district’s safety plan includes thousands of air purifiers, more cleaning and a voluntary testing program. –Fox News
Overwhelming opposition among Chicago educators to deadly school reopenings – In the face of threats that taking collective action to prevent deadly school reopenings would constitute an “illegal strike,” Chicago educators voted overwhelmingly to approve a union resolution to continue teaching remotely. In response, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Janice Jackson was forced to announce Sunday that the return of K-8 educators would be delayed to Wednesday at the earliest. Despite this temporary delay in the full reopening of schools, Chicago educators must not have any illusions that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is fighting in their interests. Behind the scenes, Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials are working furiously to hammer out a deal with the CTU on the resumption of in-person learning, as they have done in over 60 negotiating sessions throughout the fall that led to the situation today. Support for the resolution among Chicago’s 25,000 educators was overwhelming, with a 71 percent margin in favor. Those voting represented 86 percent of the total membership. The high degree of support for the resolution and the district’s move to delay shows the real relationship of forces in the city, and both CPS and CTU are interested in avoiding a confrontation that could quickly get out of the union’s control and raise demands far beyond those it has been negotiating. Both CPS and the CTU have undoubtedly followed the recent establishment of the Chicago Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, which is spearheading the fight to unite educators with the broader working class to close all schools and nonessential workplaces. Our committee is completely independent of the unions and the capitalist parties, and is demanding that the financial elite pay for educators, nonessential workers and their families to stay home safely until the pandemic is contained. Educators and other workers throughout Chicago are overwhelmingly opposed to the reopening of schools and other businesses by the Lightfoot administration and Illinois’ billionaire Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker. Just 3,200 students, or about half of the roughly 6,000 Pre-K and special education cluster program students whose parents opted them in for in-person learning, have actually showed up to school buildings, according to CPS attendance figures. This represents only 19 percent of all such students.
US educators confront Democrats and the unions in battle to close schools and save lives – In its first week in office, the Biden administration has begun to fulfill its pledge to reopen the majority of schools across the United States during the worst stage of the pandemic. Officially, there have now been 25,861,597 infections and 431,392 deaths from COVID-19 in the US alone, with a seven-day moving average of 3,182 people dying every day.Biden’s reckless plan to reopen schools has the full support of Democratic Party politicians in every major city, as well as their backers in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), and their state and local affiliates, including so-called “progressive” locals such as the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and others. The CTU is being presented by the corporate media as oppositional, despite only taking a strike vote three weeks after allowing schools to reopen. The union has accepted the return to classrooms of pre-K and special education teachers and students, which continued Monday despite the massive 71 percent vote in support of a strike. They have engaged in over 60 secret negotiations with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) officials and are desperately trying to reach a deal by Wednesday, when CPS is demanding that K-8 teachers return to classrooms before thousands more students return next Monday.Democratic Party officials decided to back away from their threat to lock teachers out on Monday for an “illegal strike” and are in engaged in frenzied talks with the union to find some way to package a return-to-school deal before Wednesday.At the union’s Monday morning press conference, CTU President Jesse Sharkey stated, “We want to get a safe reopening agreement, that’s the goal. No one wants to be locked out of their classroom in the middle of a pandemic.” CTU Vice President State Davis Gates seconded this, stating, “We are working to get an agreement.” After New York City’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) set the precedent last fall in reopening the largest school district in the country, Democrats have reached agreements with teachers unions to reopen schools in Houston, Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Detroit, Salt Lake City, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, California, and numerous other cities and states.
Chicago educators to remain teaching remotely on Wednesday – World Chicago educators will remain teaching remotely starting Wednesday, as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot backed off from threats to retaliate against teachers for refusing to report to school buildings this week. While Lightfoot’s tactical retreat is due to the overwhelming hostility to the city’s plan to aggressively push forward to reopen schools and other businesses in the midst of a still raging pandemic, her administration is only buying time while it works with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) to get an agreement for the return of teachers and tens of thousands of students to schools on February 1. As prospects for a Wednesday deal dwindled, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) officials announced to parents of Pre-K and special education cluster program students that they should not bring their children to school on Wednesday. These 3,200 students, as well as some 3,800 educators, have been in schools since January 11. While clearly on the back foot, the city administration has remained intransigent about reopening schools next Monday. At a Tuesday evening press conference, Lightfoot told reporters CPS would “not expect them to violate the directive of their union.” She also waved off questions about what the city might do if teachers continue to refuse to report to school buildings, saying, “I don’t want to speculate.” At the press conference and in a letter to parents, Lightfoot detailed new plans from what the district describes as a new “comprehensive plan” to address teacher concerns. The new plan is barely an improvement over the current reopening protocols, which have already produced over 64 positive cases of COVID-19, even with the small numbers of students and staff in attendance. In response to charges of inadequate testing of staff, as well as lack of concern over community spread, CPS is now offering to test school-based workers twice a month instead of just once and is now offering free monthly tests just to students in the 10 zip codes where COVID-19 positivity rates are highest. The district is also now claiming it will prioritize vaccinations for educators working in Chicago neighborhoods with the highest positivity rates, an almost meaningless promise given the low supplies of the vaccine. Even though vaccination of teachers – while returning students can still infect one another and their families – will do little to prevent the spread of the virus in working class communities, Chicago has been receiving only 34,000 doses of vaccine per week and has roughly 660,000 “essential” workers in the same vaccination priority group as teachers. Indeed, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) canceled a number of vaccine appointments made by teachers due to confusion over the ramshackle and ad hoc signup system.
Negotiations stall in Chicago amid nationwide campaign to open schools -For the past month, the nationwide, bipartisan effort to force a return to in-person learning has centered on the country’s third largest school district, Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The resistance of rank-and-file educators in the city has inspired educators and huge sections of workers across the US and globally. Every effort is being made by the political establishment and the bourgeois media to vilify Chicago educators and wear down their opposition, to pave the way for mass school reopenings at the most dangerous stage of the pandemic in the interests of corporate profits. On January 4, CPS began a “phased” reopening of schools with the cooperation of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The CTU has reported that there have already been over 150 infections in Chicago schools since schools began reopening. On Thursday, it was reported that Marshall High School custodian and SEIU Local 73 member Marcus Young died from COVID-19. Only last week did the union finally take a vote to stop the deadly return to buildings and keep learning remote, which won overwhelming support among teachers and parents.The CTU and CPS have been stalled in negotiations for the past week, attempting to reach an agreement that the union feels they can sell to their members. CPS CEO Janice Jackson made public statements throughout the week indicating her expectation that some 71,000 K-8 students will return to buildings on Monday, February 1, as the district has long planned. In response, parents and students are organizing a student sick out on Monday, refusing to send children back into dangerous buildings.Late Friday evening, Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a press conference to announce that no deal had been reached with the CTU. The union also issued a statement declaring negotiations had fallen apart.In her brief remarks, Lightfoot said that a deal is within reach. She commented, “We need to get it done,” and added that teachers “need to be there” in buildings on Monday. Lightfoot pledged to take action if teachers do not report to buildings on Monday, but did not elaborate.The CTU continues to advocate a phased reopening of schools, but on a more extended timeline, in which teachers should first be vaccinated. This unscientific position will not adequately protect educators or other CPS staff, and places students, their families and the wider community at enormous risk of further infections and deaths.
Pennsylvania educators oppose statewide reopening of K-8 schools –The Pennsylvania Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee wholeheartedly supports the ongoing resistance of Chicago educators to the demands of Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to force 10,000 educators and 71,000 K-8 students into unsafe buildings by February 1. Chicago educators voted by 71 percent not to return for in-person instruction and to strike if the district retaliated against teachers defying orders. However, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has conspired against the teachers, allowing a phased-in return of Pre-K and Special Education teachers and punitively isolating “locked-out” teachers who refused to enter buildings. The CTU is engaged in frenzied negotiations to push through a reopening of schools in line with the policies of the Democratic Party in Illinois and nationwide.This fight is our fight and the fight of educators everywhere. There is no “safe” return to school when the pandemic is totally out of control and has entered a new and deadlier phase. Resistance is growing to these homicidal policies, both nationally and internationally, including in Democratic Party-controlled Montgomery, Alabama where teachers this week conducted asickout fighting for the right to teach fully remotely.Under Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, state guidelines mandating virtual instruction under conditions of “substantial” viral spread have been left entirely at the discretion of a patchwork of 500 local school districts’ administrations. Now even the toothless state recommendations have been swept away. Starting on January 25, all districts are encouraged to return elementary school students to in-person learning regardless of the level of community spread, fully in line with the Biden administration’s directive to reopen K-8 schools nationally within his first 100 days in office.
‘We’re Not Controlling It in Our Schools’: Covid Safety Lapses Abound Across US – Computer science teacher Suzy Lebo saw Covid-19 dangers frequently in her Indiana high school: classes with about 30 students sitting less than 18 inches apart. Students crowding teachers in hallways. Students and staff members taking off their masks around others. “I’m concerned,” said Lebo, who teaches at Avon High School in the Indianapolis suburbs. “We’re not controlling the virus in our county. We’re not controlling it in our state. And we’re not controlling it in our schools.”President Joe Biden’s Covid response proposes $130 billion to improve school safety, offers federal guidance for making schools safer and improves workplace protections to safeguard teachers and other workers from Covid. This comes after many school districts and states holding in-person classes have ignored recommendations from public health officials or written their own questionable safety rules – creating a tinderbox where Covid can sicken and kill.A KHN analysis of federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration data found more than 780 Covid-related complaints covering more than 2,000 public and private K-12 schools. But those pleas for help likely represent only a small portion of the problems, because a federal loophole prevents public school employees from lodging them in 24 states without their own OSHA agencies or federally approved programs for local and state employees. Still, the complaints filed provide a window into the safety lapses: Employees reported sick children coming to school, maskless students and teachers less than 6 feet apart, and administrators minimizing the dangers of the virus and punishing teachers who spoke out.KHN also found that practices contradicting safety experts’ advice are codified into the patchwork of Covid rules put out by states and districts. For instance, about half of states don’t require masks for all students – including 11 that have exempted schoolchildren of various ages from mandatory masks, with New Hampshire excluding all K-12 students. Districts can craft stricter rules than their states but often don’t.”The response to the virus has been politicized,” said Dr. Chandy John, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at the Indiana University School of Medicine. “There’s a willingness to ignore data and facts and go with whatever you’re hearing from the internet or from political leaders who don’t have any scientific knowledge.”But even with Biden’s rollout of new school safety steps, struggles over balancing the need for education with Covid safety are sure to continue, since it will be months before the nationwide vaccine rollout reaches all school staff members, and the shots haven’t yet been approved for kids.Meanwhile, the scope of Covid in schools remains unknown. Biden’s order calls for tracking it on the federal level, which wasn’t happening. States haven’t collected uniform data either. The Covid Monitor, a project launched by volunteers and public health researchers, has counted more than 505,000 cases in K-12 schools – more than a quarter of them among staffers. Although kids are less likely than adults to become seriously ill, recent research suggests they can spread the virus even if asymptomatic. The American Federation of Teachers estimates Covid-19 has killed at least 325 school employees, though it’s unclear whether they caught it at school.
Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen – The reminders of pandemic-driven suffering among students in Clark County, Nev., have come in droves. Since schools shut their doors in March, an early-warning system that monitors students’ mental health episodes has sent more than 3,100 alerts to district officials, raising alarms about suicidal thoughts, possible self-harm or cries for care. By December, 18 students had taken their own lives. The spate of student suicides in and around Las Vegas has pushed the Clark County district, the nation’s fifth largest, toward bringing students back as quickly as possible. This month, the school board gave the green light to phase in the return of some elementary school grades and groups of struggling students even as greater Las Vegas continues to post huge numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths. Superintendents across the nation are weighing the benefit of in-person education against the cost of public health, watching teachers and staff become sick and, in some cases, die, but also seeing the psychological and academic toll that school closings are having on children nearly a year in. The risk of student suicides has quietly stirred many district leaders, leading some, like the state superintendent in Arizona, to cite that fear in public pleas to help mitigate the virus’s spread. In Clark County, it forced the superintendent’s hand. “When we started to see the uptick in children taking their lives, we knew it wasn’t just the Covid numbers we need to look at anymore,” said Jesus Jara, the Clark County superintendent. “We have to find a way to put our hands on our kids, to see them, to look at them. They’ve got to start seeing some movement, some hope.” Adolescent suicide during the pandemic cannot conclusively be linked to school closures; national data on suicides in 2020 have yet to be compiled. One study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the percentage of youth emergency room visits that were for mental health reasons had risen during the pandemic. The actual number of those visits fell, though researchers noted that many people were avoiding hospitals that were dealing with the crush of coronavirus patients. And a compilation of emergency calls in more than 40 states among all age groups showed increased numbers related to mental health.
Montgomery, Alabama school district reneges on pledge to switch to remote learning – Within 24 hours of the announcement by Montgomery Public Schools (MPS) that schools would go all-virtual, the district – long under the thumb of business interests – began backpedaling. On Monday, dozens of Montgomery Public Schools educators in Alabama staged a sickout in response to the horrific news that four of their colleagues passed away from COVID-19 the previous week, all within 48 hours. Utah school teacher Emily Johnson protests with other teachers at the Utah State Capitol, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) The most recent deaths of educators across the state include MPS administrator and football coach Dwayne Berry on January 19, Capitol Heights Middle School physical education teacher Lushers Lane on January 20, and Park Crossing High School coach DeCarlos Perkins on January 20. On January 21, Booker T. Washington Magnet High School piano teacher Leslye Ames passed. In Birmingham, Derrick Johnson, 43, a coach and special education teacher, passed away January 10. In response to Monday’s sickout, the school district quickly called a press conference. Superintendent Ann Roy Moore then announced that teachers would be allowed to teach remotely until a vaccine was more widely available. “Starting February 1, 2021, all MPS students will resume a virtual learning schedule,” she told reporters. “MPS employees, during that time, will work remotely.” Indicating that she was talking out of both sides of her mouth, however, Moore added that MPS’ 4,500 employees would “receive information about their work schedules from their direct supervisors.” It turned out on Tuesday that the “work schedules” involved teachers reporting to their classrooms one day a week, a measure which also required paraprofessionals to report alongside their assigned teachers. Additionally, all teachers are required to come to school for half a day on Wednesdays for faculty meetings. According to guidelines, any teacher who fails to report to their classroom on their scheduled day must record that day as an absence, along with a note stating, “no sub needed.” They must still provide “reinforcement activities” for the children to do from home.
Reopening of Boston colleges threatens escalation of COVID-19 crisis – In the state of Massachusetts the average number of daily COVID-19 cases is trending near 5,000. Not a single day has passed since November in which new daily case numbers have been below those seen during the highest peaks of the first April surge. Despite the harrowing state of the pandemic in the state and throughout the country, colleges and universities in Boston and the surrounding area are pushing to reopen schools for in-person learning in the 2021 semester. The impact of college reopenings will have a devastating impact on the region. In particular, Boston comprises 10 percent of the state’s total population and more than a third of the state’s total college enrollment. Remarkably, even schools considered the apogee of scientific work and study, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are pushing to bring back more students than last semester. A Northeastern University statement announces: “The university is now open. Students are on campus, classes are in session, residence halls are occupied, and business offices are open.” At Boston College (BC), classes resumed January 28. The university will continue as it did last semester with “symptomatic and targeted asymptomatic testing for all BC community members throughout the second semester.” Boston University (BU), which has experienced a spike in the on-campus positive test rate for COVID-19 in recent weeks, is expecting more students to return to campus this semester than in the fall. These reopenings come despite the fact that there is no way for schools to operate safely for in-person learning under the current conditions. The lessons of the fall semester, along with all the recent scientific evidence, demonstrate that reopening schools will lead to a sharp increase in community spread, hospitalizations and death.
Thousands died at a nursing home chain. Its CEO got a $5 million bonus — As COVID-19 took a deadly toll among residents of Genesis Healthcare facilities, the financially troubled company gave CEO George Hager Jr. a $5.2 million “retention payment.” At the helm of the large U.S. nursing home chain during a pandemic that has killed more than 1,500 of its residents and threatens to push it into bankruptcy, Hager received the bonus in late October. He then resigned from the for-profit company, where he had served as chief executive for 17 years, less than three months later, earlier this month. Nursing homes account for a sizable portion of the more than 419,000 U.S. COVID-19deaths, and outbreaks at Genesis facilities caught the attention of lawmakers over the summer. “More than 1,500 Americans have died and many more have been infected at facilities owned by your company, with at least 187 of your facilities reporting cases of the coronavirus,” members of a House panel looking into the impact of COVID wrote Hager in June. The toll at Genesis reportedly nearly doubled in the second half of 2020, with 14,352 confirmed cases among its residents and 2,812 deaths as of December 20, according to the Washington Post. An analysis of Medicare data by the news outlet found almost all of Genesis’ nursing homes running short on personal protective equipment up until late November, after the company’s board had signed off on Hager’s bonus. In a regulatory filing in November, the company said its first report of a positive case of COVID-19 in one of its facilities occurred on March 16, 2020. Since then, 266 of its 360 nursing facilities and assisted living communities had reported positive cases among patients and residents, the filing stated. More than 70% of those cases occurred in five states – Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – with those facilities representing 45% of its beds. Genesis operates in 24 states.
New Report From Rep. Katie Porter Reveals How Big Pharma Pursues ‘Killer Profits’ at the Expense of Americans’ Health – Rep. Katie Porter on Friday published a damning report revealing the devastating effects of Big Pharma mergers and acquisitions on U.S. healthcare, and recommending steps Congress should take to enact “comprehensive, urgent reform” of an integral part of a broken healthcare system.The report, entitled Killer Profits: How Big Pharma Takeovers Destroy Innovation and Harm Patients, begins by noting that “in just 10 years, the number of large, international pharmaceutical companies decreased six-fold, from 60 to only 10.”While pharmaceutical executives often attempt to portray such consolidation as a means to increase operational efficiency, the report states that “digging a level deeper ‘exposes a troubling industry-wide trend of billions of dollars of corporate resources going toward acquiring other pharmaceutical corporations with patent-protected blockbuster drugs instead of putting those resources toward’ discovery of new drugs.”Merger and acquisition (M&A) deals are often executed to “boost stock prices,” to “stop competitors,” and to “acquire an innovative blockbuster drug with an enormous prospective revenue stream.””Instead of spending on innovation, Big Pharma is hoarding its money for salaries and dividends,” the report says, “all while swallowing smaller companies, thus making the marketplace far less competitive.”The report calls M&As “just the tip of the iceberg of pharmaceutical companies’ anti-competitive, profit-driven behaviors”:Pharmaceutical companies often claim that lowering the prices of prescription drugs in the United States would devastate innovation. Yet, as prices have skyrocketed over the last few decades, these same companies’ investment in research and development have failed to match this same pace. Instead, they’ve dedicated more and more of their funds to enrich shareholders or to purchase other companies to eliminate competition.“In 2018, the year that [former President] Donald Trump’s tax giveaway to the wealthy went into effect, 12 of the biggest pharmaceutical companies spent more money on stock buybacks than on research and development,” the report notes.Some key findings from the report:
- Big pharmaceutical companies are not responsible for most major breakthroughs in new drugs. Rather, innovation is driven in small firms, which are often spun off of taxpayer-funded academic research. These small labs are then purchased by giant firms after they’ve assumed the risk needed to develop a blockbuster drug;
- Instead of producing lifesaving drugs for diseases with few or no cures, large pharmaceutical companies often focus on small, incremental changes to existing drugs in order to kill off generic threats to their government-granted monopoly patents; and
- Mergers in the pharmaceutical industry have had an overall negative effect on innovation, taking what little competition existed in the industry and completely destroying it.
“Competition is central to capitalism,” Porter said in a press release introducing the report. “As our report shows, Big Pharma has little incentive to invest in new, critically needed drugs. Instead, pharmaceutical giants are free to devote their resources to acquiring smaller companies that might otherwise force them to compete.” “Lives are on the line; it’s clear the federal government needs to reform how it evaluates healthcare mergers and patent abuses,” Porter added.
Houston, Texas hospital remains locked over financial dispute, putting hundreds of patients at risk – The Heights Hospital in Houston, Texas, remains locked, with the situation still unresolved after the hospital was closed without warning last Monday. The closure is the result of a financial dispute over a loan payment between the owner of the hospital, AMD Global and Arbitra Capital Partners LLC, as well as the non-payment of maintenance, repair, and property insurance. Dr. John Thomas, an internal medicine specialist who is affiliated with the Heights Hospital, told the WSWS that all the locks were changed over the weekend when the medical facility is typically closed, with staff only finding out on Monday. Dr. Thomas stated that Dr. Felicity Mack was treating “quite a few” COVID-19 patients at the hospital before it was shut down, and that around 100 coronavirus tests were being performed at the hospital per day. According to Dr. Thomas, hospital staff were only allowed to go in briefly on Tuesday and take personal belongings before the hospital was locked again. When asked about patient records Dr. Thomas stated “they are all locked up. We were allowed to get personal belongings.” Dr. Thomas stated bluntly that the lockout was not only immoral, but illegal: “It is illegal. We have a duty to the patients to provide 30 days’ notice. And they broke that law. It is called patient abandonment; we have to give 30-days’ notice.” “The reason behind this is purely financial. The company who took control of this hospital does not care, does not care about their wellbeing. It is completely unacceptable to deny people healthcare. Its 100 percent money driven. They don’t care about anyone else, they don’t care about the laws, about doing the right thing.” When asked about the impact of the lockout on patients he stated that not transferring patients’ records would mean that treatment details, medication records, and other data is effectively lost and that diagnostics on patients would have to be redone as patients typically don’t remember the minute details of their treatment. Additionally, patients would have to find new doctors and a place to get treated, all delaying potentially vital medical treatment.
State-By-State Breakdown Of 897 US Hospitals At Risk Of Closing — More than 500 rural hospitals in the U.S. were at immediate risk of closure before the COVID-19 pandemic because of financial losses and lack of reserves to maintain operations, according to a report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Nearly every state had at least one rural hospital at immediate risk of closure before the pandemic. In 22 states, 25 percent or more of rural hospitals were at immediate risk, according to the report. The hospitals identified as being at immediate risk of closure had a cumulative negative total margin over the most recent three-year period, and their financial situation has likely deteriorated because of the pandemic. Across the U.S., more than 800 hospitals – 40 percent of all rural hospitals in the country – are either at immediate or high risk of closure. The more than 300 hospitals at high risk closure either have low financial reserves or high dependence on nonpatient service revenues such as local taxes or state subsidies, according to the report. Here are the number and percentage of rural hospitals at risk of closing in each state as of January 2021 based on the CHQPR analysis:
Indian farmers’ agitation against Modi government’s pro-agribusiness laws enters third month — Farmers protesting against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s pro-agribusiness “reform” laws will hold a giant tractor rally in Delhi today to mark the country’s January 26 Republic Day holiday. The government had initially sought to have the protest declared illegal. But it backed down after India’s Supreme Court refused its request for an injunction, out of fear such action would lead to a violent clash that would further fuel opposition to the Narendra Modi-led government and its rapacious pro-big business policies. Nevertheless, in a show of force meant to intimidate the farmers and their supporters, the BJP government is deploying “five layer security” in and around India’s capital today. The Indian Express reports Delhi police as saying that over 40,000 police and paramilitaries from the Delhi police, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CBRF) will be deployed at the Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur borders of the Delhi National Capital Territory. Since November 26-27, when the government blocked their entry into Delhi with water cannon, tear gas and violent police charges, hundreds of thousands of farmers have been camped at the borders of India’s capital. Now entering its third month, the farmers’ agitation has compounded the enormous social and political crisis facing the Modi regime and the Indian ruling elite as a whole. The ruling class’ catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in more than 150,000 official COVID-19 deaths – although the real number is undoubtedly far higher – and the biggest economic contraction in modern Indian history. The greatest fear of the Hindu supremacist BJP government, no less than its establishment political opponents, is that the farmers’ agitation will become the catalyst for a broader social movement led by the working class and embracing the agricultural workers and landless, who comprise the majority of the rural masses. The three pro-agribusiness laws were rammed through parliament last September during the same session as the Modi government amended the country’s labour laws to expand the already ubiquitous use of contract labour, allow large companies to lay off workers at will, and illegalise most strikes and other worker job actions. The 11th round of talks between government representatives and farm union leaders abruptly ended on January 22 when the latter rejected the government’s proposal to delay implementation of its farm laws for a period of 18 months. Application of the laws had already been temporarily suspended by the Supreme Court as part of a ruse to get the farmers to agree to submit their complaints to a Court-appointed panel of “experts” comprised entirely of supporters of the government’s farm “reform” laws. Rightly mistrustful of the government, the farmers have insisted that the three pro-agribusiness laws must be repealed and a legal guarantee given that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system will not be dismantled.
Sri Lankan stock market hits record high amidst rising COVID-19 infections -Over the past four weeks, Sri Lanka’s wealthy have become 739 billion rupees ($US3.8 billion) richer through a 25 percent rise in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE). Last week alone, major players in the CSE amassed 318 billion rupees, an increase that dwarfs the 109 billion rupee rise for the whole of 2019. The spike in Sri Lanka’s small share market occurs amidst an exponential growth of COVD-19 infections. As of yesterday, confirmed cases have increased 20-fold since October, to more than 60,000, and deaths by 26 times, to almost 300. The CSE rise has been accompanied by growing poverty, rising unemployment, wage cuts and a higher cost of living. Jubilant over the ballooning share market, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, who is also the finance minister, tweeted: “It’s also among the best performing indices in the world so far in 2021. I thank investors for having faith in the Sri Lankan companies. The GOSL [government] is committed to fulfilling its mandate to revive the Sri Lankan economy.” The CSE bubble, however, is the direct result of massive amounts of “free money” provided as part of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s pandemic stimulus package for big business last July. The package involved the Central Bank releasing 230 billion rupees and reducing bank rates by 2.5 percent to between 4 and 4.5 percent. Last year, the government also printed 650 billion rupees. Big business is reaping windfall benefits and profits from Colombo’s measures to boost foreign investment. Apart from providing cheap money, this year’s budget reduced tax rates to 14 and 18 percent, the lowest in South Asia, and big investors were given staggering 15-year tax exemptions. The Colombo share market increases are a small reflection of the massive rises on the US, EU and Indian stock markets. Since last March, the US Federal Reserve has pumped out $120 billion per month or more than $1.4 trillion a year, pushing up the share market. Warnings have already been issued that the Wall Street share bubble may burst. While Colombo’s share market boom continues, the country’s economy faces an unprecedented crisis that has been deepened by the global pandemic. Last year, the Sri Lankan economy contracted by 3.9 percent. The country needs $23 billion for debt servicing payments up to 2024, including $7 billion due this year. Foreign currency reserves have fallen to about $5 billion, which is only sufficient for four months of imports, and last year export earnings fell by 17 percent.
Millions of Brazilian students refuse to take exam amid rising opposition to back to school campaign – While the second wave of the coronavirus is resulting in record numbers of cases and deaths and overwhelming Brazil’s health care system, all sections of the ruling class are imposing the “herd immunity” policy, with several state governments announcing a return to school in the coming weeks. Last Thursday, the country registered 1,382 new coronavirus deaths in 24 hours, the highest number since August 4 during the height of the first wave of the pandemic. The seven-day daily average has surpassed 1,000 deaths once again, amid a grossly mismanaged rollout of the COVID vaccine. Sao Paulo State Health Secretary Jean Gorinchteyn has stated that the vaccine will have no impact on the number of cases for six months. Under these conditions, the country’s 2020 national college admission exam, the ENEM, was held last week throughout the country, after being postponed for a couple of months. In the state of Amazonas, where the health care system collapsed with COVID-19 patients dying due to the lack of oxygen tanks, the ENEM was merely postponed for a few more weeks. Students responded to the holding of the exam with a 51.5 percent absence rate, which corresponds to more than 2.8 million candidates. Between 2009 and 2019, absence on the first day of the exam was 28 percent on average. The unprecedented absence during one of the most important national yearly exams, taken by millions of students every year and widely seen as a way out of poverty, amounts to a statement of opposition to the herd immunity policy and the reopening of schools and universities throughout the country. The ENEM forced millions of young people to choose between risking infection or, what means in many cases, abandoning higher education. In a BBC report, one young student stated bluntly, “I won’t be able to attend college if I’m dead,” while another in the same report said, “I’ve been preparing for this test all year, but I thought about my family and my health.”
IMF raises global growth forecasts, expects ‘low levels’ of COVID-19 by end of 2022 – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday raised its projections for global growth, due in large part to the fund’s expectation to see “low levels” of COVID-19 across the world by the end of 2022. “Multiple vaccine approvals and the launch of vaccination in some countries in December have raised hopes of an eventual end to the pandemic,” the IMF noted in an update to its World Economic Outlook report. The IMF now expects global GDP to grow 5.5% in 2021, an upgrade from its 5.2% projection published in October last year. Among advanced economies, the United States received the largest upward revision in growth expectations, with the IMF now projecting 5.1% growth in 2021, compared to its last forecast of 3.1%. The IMF specifically applauded fiscal packages from late last year in the United States and Japan, urging governments to prioritize further support “until a vaccine-powered normalization of activity is underway.” IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told Yahoo Finance Tuesday that the outlook could improve further if strong fiscal support comes alongside positive developments on vaccine rollout and overall case counts. “But I want to emphasize: there remains tremendous uncertainty,” Gopinath said. The IMF report warned that renewed lockdowns and obstacles to vaccine distribution remain downside risks. Gopinath also expressed concern about the emergence of new variants of the virus in the United Kingdom and South Africa. “If it indeed is the case the new strains of the virus reduce the effectiveness of vaccines enough that the recovery takes much longer, then we could have a negative downgrade,” Gopinath said.
Billionaire wealth soars as 255 million of world’s jobs lost in pandemic -The pandemic has worsened income inequality, with the world’s richest people regaining their losses from COVID-19 shutdowns in nine months while the number of people living in poverty has doubled to more than 500 million, according to a new report from the anti-poverty group Oxfam. Almost 9% of total working hours were lost last year when compared with the levels of employment at the end of 2019, before the pandemic shuttered the economy, according to a separate report from the International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency. That’s the equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs lost across the globe, or about four times greater than the impact from the Great Recession of 2009, the analysis found. The world’s poorest could take a decade to regain their financial footing from the devastation wrought by the pandemic, according to the Oxfam study, which says the novel coronavirus has accelerated an ongoing trend toward widening income inequality. Oxfam’s report was released to coincide with the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda, set to take place online this year rather than its traditional gathering of global movers and shakers in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos.America’s richest people have seen their wealth soar during the pandemic by more than $1 trillion, thanks to a booming stock market and a K-shaped recovery that has benefited the rich, while poorer people have struggled with lost wages and jobs and future opportunities. It’s a rich vs. poor phenomenon that is replicating across the globe. Oxfam describes the pandemic’s impact as “the greatest rise in inequality since records began.”The International Labour Organization said the crisis has been the most severe on work since the Great Depression in the 1930s. “Its impact is far greater than that of the global financial crisis of 2009,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. The employment fallout tracked by the ILO was almost equally split between reduced work hours and “unprecedented” job losses, he added.
Forty-three refugees drown off Libya’s coast: victims of the European Union’s refugee policy – At least 43 refugees drowned on January 19 off the Libyan coast during their attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Only 10 people could be rescued. They were returned to Libya by the Libyan coastguard. The mass death in the Mediterranean, for which the European Union (EU) bears responsibility, thus continues into yet another year. The dinghy, carrying more than 50 people, suffered engine failure amid rough seas and capsized shortly after leaving the port city of Zawiyah, west of Tripoli, in the early hours of the morning. The survivors, who came from the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and Gambia, stated that everyone on board the capsized boat came from West Africa. Chief responsibility for these pointless deaths of people fleeing civil war, poverty and misery lies with the governments in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Vienna and The Hague. In close collusion with the European Commission, they have blocked all legal avenues to Europe. When refugees are then forced to attempt crossings on tiny, unseaworthy dinghies, the European governments do everything in their power, in what amounts to a despicable crime, to halt virtually all rescue missions in the central Mediterranean. Their hands are, in the most literal sense of the phrase, dripping with the blood of the 20,000 people who have drowned in the Mediterranean over the past eight years. The experience of Souleymane, a refugee from Guinea, gives a sense of the tragedies taking place in the Mediterranean. Souleymane was interviewed by the Infomigrants news website last March while he was living in Libya, waiting on an opportunity to reach Europe. The 18-year-old was one of the victims who drowned in last week’s boat tragedy. His friend Moussa, who was among the survivors, told Infomigrants that the sea became increasingly rough in the hours following their departure. The boat then capsized, and Souleymane, who could not swim, was thrown into the water. Moussa was able to grab him and pull him back to the boat. Souleymane was still in the water holding onto the boat from the outside when a second wave struck. “I am broken. I can’t hold on anymore,” were the last words Souleymane spoke before he disappeared underwater. “He never resurfaced again,” whispered Sylla, who also comes from Guinea and lives in Libya.
Europe Remains In Lockdown Mode – In early 2021, COVID-19 restrictions remain in place across Europe. Yet, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, reluctance to go into a full-fledged lockdown has some countries applying a hodgepodge of restrictions just short of the real deal.Spain and France, where a second wave of infections spread from mid-July, led the way by imposing lockdowns as early as October. France has since come out of lockdown and switched to an early national curfew supplemented by restaurant closures – a tactic which is currently also applied in Belgium and Luxembourg.Spain has stuck to its national curfew and localized lockdown system stubbornly despite case numbers rising swiftly again in what has been called a third wave of infections. Italy, where cases started rising quickly in October, is under the same regiment, while adding early restaurant closures at 6 p.m. into the mix. More national curfews have been implemented in less-affected parts of Eastern and South Eastern Europe, for example in Hungary, Romania, Turkey and Albania.Despite rumors, a curfew has not yet been implemented in Germany. The country implemented a national lockdown on Nov. 2, shortly after the spread of the virus accelerated, but failed to close non-essential shops until mid-December. The UK and much of Central Europe followed suit by imposing national lockdowns again, even though places like Scotland, Bulgaria and Denmark were latecomers. Switzerland closed down as late as January 15 and also keeps schools open, as does Portugal. Switzerland, which has developed a reputations for skirting some restrictions, also allows ski resorts to operate. This has led to conflict with neighboring France, where they were ordered shut.As with the first wave of lockdowns, enforcement varies significantly between countries, with Germany merely urging residents to stay at home, while more stringent checks are customary in Spain and France. Some more creative solutions have come out of Cyprus and Greece, where the frequency of shopping trips has been restricted majorly with the help text message codes. Scandinavia has not yet imposed major restrictions. Norway, for example, allows indoor gatherings of up to 200 people, but only if distancing measures are adhered to and chairs are bolted to the ground for extra safety. In locked-down Slovakia, a valid reason to leave your home is – like elsewhere – to walk your dog and – surprisingly – also to walk your cat.
Greece loosens coronavirus lockdown, massively rearms military – Despite the dangerous spread of the new virus mutations and the deadly development of the pandemic throughout Europe, Greece is easing its lockdown measures. On 11 January, elementary schools and daycare centers reopened, followed last Monday by retail stores, hairdressers and beauty salons. Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis, who had the relaxations accompanied by an increased police presence, justified the move, saying, “If we continue with the strict bans, we will destroy ourselves financially and psychologically.” By this he does not at all mean the losses to small business owners and workers who have received almost no financial support during the lockdown. Rather, Chrysochoidis is concerned about the profits of the ruling class, for which his government will accept a renewed increase in the COVID-19 death rate without batting an eye. With the partial opening, the social plight of workers and employees in the private sector is being used as a battering ram. In a recent survey conducted by the Alco Institute for the Private Sector Trade Union Confederation (GSEE), 56 percent of respondents said they had lost income during the pandemic, and 22 percent even had wage cuts of more than 31 percent, which has major consequences given Greece’s low wages. The majority of respondents, 60 percent, have not been able to work from home, exposing themselves to the risk of infection at work. More than half of those surveyed are pessimistic about the coming months, with nearly 40 percent unsure whether they will be able to keep their jobs. The government has the backing of the nominal opposition party, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), in its policy of opening up the economy. Party leader Alexis Tsipras, who himself saw to the interests of the economic and financial oligarchy for four years as prime minister, expressed his support for looser restrictions for retail. He troubled himself to deliver a few platitudes, such as calling for more financial aid and higher health spending, but from his mouth this is nothing but hot air. In the media, the drumbeat for the rapid reopening of schools is already rising. This is a “priority,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the right-wing Nea Dimokratia (ND) declared Tuesday. The target date is the first of February. The argument used to justify the relaxations is the initial fall in official infection rates in Greece, a result of the weeks-long lockdown and little testing. Last Monday, state television spoke of a “stable” epidemiological situation, concealing the fact that Monday’s figures of 237 new infections were accompanied by exceptionally low testing numbers of only about 3,700 PCR tests and 4,500 rapid tests. A day later, on Tuesday, the testing rate tripled as did infections, which went up to 566. The number of patients on ventilators also remains consistently high at around 300. So far, at least 32 people in Greece have tested positive with the new UK COVID-19 mutation.
Dutch Youth Torch COVID-Testing Facility In Violent Curfew Backlash |- Until December, the Dutch government had bucked the authoritarian trend of most global authorities in their efforts to ‘crush’ the virus, but as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths began to soar, the government turned to harsher measures, and ultimately to the first curfew since WWII. Yesterday was the first night of the newly enforced curfew and that crackdown sparked a backlash across the nation.. The violence climaxed with a group of rioting young people torching a coronavirus testing facility and threw fireworks at police in a Dutch fishing village. Video from the village of Urk, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Amsterdam, showed youths breaking into the COVID-19 testing facility near the village’s harbor before it was set ablaze Saturday night. “This is not only unacceptable, but also a slap in the face, especially for the local health authority staff who do all they can at the test center to help people from Urk,” the local authorities said, promising to strictly enforce the curfew in the future. The group was reportedly driving cars, honking horns, and waving national flags at the square, footage from the scene shows.The group then apparently waited for police to arrive to taunt the officers and pelt them with various projectiles. Overall, police said Sunday they fined more than 3,600 people nationwide for breaching the curfew that ran from 9 p.m. Saturday until 4:30 a.m. Sunday and arrested 25 people for breaching the curfew or for violence. Police in Amsterdam also were bracing for another protest Sunday, sending officers to a square where demonstrators clashed with police a week ago. The city’s municipality designated the square a “risk area,” a move that gave police extra powers to frisk people.
Netherlands on brink of ‘civil war’ as rioters strike again over COVID-19 curfew – Anti-lockdown protesters in the Netherlands set fires, looted stores and fought with cops for a third consecutive night of rioting after a strict curfew was imposed – with a mayor warning the nation was “on our way to civil war.”At least 184 people were arrested during Monday night’s ongoing riots as at least 10 cops were injured as police in some cities fought back with water cannon and tear gas, officials said.So far, rioters have struck in at least 20 cities and towns across the Netherlands since Saturday, when the nation was forced into its first curfew since World War II.”We haven’t seen so much violence in 40 years,” Koen Simmers, of the police trade union NPB, said on television program “Nieuwsuur” (“Newshour”).Monday’s violence left a trail of looted shops and burned cars in cities including Rotterdam, The Hague and the capital, Amsterdam, as well as a town close to it, Haarlem, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).Around 1,850 fines were handed out for breaking curfew along with the close to 200 arrests, officials told national broadcaster NOS.Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemned the “unacceptable” revolt, saying most of the nation regarded it “with horror.”“This has nothing to do with protesting or fighting for freedom. It is criminal violence and we will treat it as such,” he tweeted. Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said the nation was “not going to capitulate to a few idiots,” according to NOS. Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus dismissed rioters’ claims that the violence was sparked by the curfew, telling NOS that “you don’t have to raid a shop for that.” John Jorritsma, the mayor of Eindhoven, one of the towns hit hardest by the riots, called the “completely anarchist” mobs the “scum of the Earth.”
Germany considers cutting international air traffic ‘to almost zero’ – Germany is considering closing its skies almost completely to international air traffic to slow the spread of more infectious strains of coronavirus, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Tuesday. “The danger from the numerous virus mutations forces us to consider drastic measures,” Seehofer told Bild newspaper. “That includes significantly stricter border checks, especially at the borders of high-risk areas, but also reducing air travel to Germany to almost zero, as Israel is currently doing,” he added. Chancellor Angela Merkel, addressing a meeting of lawmakers from her conservative CDU/CSU bloc, said citizens had a right to expect that the government would take “certain precautions at border”, participants told AFP. “Everyone understands that now is not the time to travel,” she was quoted as saying. The German Travel Association (DRV), however, objected to restricting travel more. Tourist travel has already come to an almost complete standstill due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, while the business travel sector is also down, the DRV said. “The federal government should also take note of this,” the association said. “It should therefore not now concentrate on further restricting our already severely limited freedom to travel.” Instead, the government should remedy the “dramatic deficits” in vaccination and present sensible testing concepts, the association said. “In addition, the federal government should urgently remember in the public debate that freedom to travel is a fundamental right – not a privilege to be granted politically.”
French government determined to keep schools open as virus spreads – As the spread of more infectious and dangerous variants of the coronavirus strain French hospitals, the Macron government is doubling down on its efforts to keep schools open. His policy is driven by the interests of the capitalist class, which is demanding that schools be kept open as holding pens for children so that their parents can continue to work. On Monday night, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer gave an interview to LCI in an effort to win support for the government’s policy. Despite his personal oversight of attacks on school funding in the 2018 high school reforms and the elimination of 2,650 public school positions in 2019, he feigned concern for the toll of school closures on children’s mental health. “Keeping schools open is my deepest conviction,” he said. “Being deprived of school can be very serious for children on the educational, social, psychological and even health levels.” Dismissing the deaths resulting from this policy, he boasted, “France is the country that has experienced the most school days in 2020.” A family watches French President Emmanuel Macron’s televised speech, Monday April 13, 2020, in Lyon, central France. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani) Blanquer stated, “I am not convinced at this stage that this solution [closing schools] could reduce the contamination.” This is a bald-faced lie that contradicts international scientific studies showing that schools act as transmission vectors for the virus. Earlier on Monday, Eric Caumes, the head of infectious diseases at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris, stated on RMC, “It’s circulating in schools, there’s no reason why France should be the only country in the world where it’s not circulating in schools … there’s a cost that we’re going to have to pay.” Later in Blanquer’s interview, he attempted to shift blame from his government’s murderous “herd immunity” policy onto school children and their parents. Dismissing suggestions of extending the February vacation, he claimed that “vacations can be more contaminating than school periods.” Yesterday, 3,041 individuals were treated for COVID-19 in hospital intensive care units in France. The figure has risen by over 1,000 in the last two days alone. This is the first time that ICU occupancy has exceeded 3,000 since November. On Monday, another 445 people died from the virus, and the seven-day average for new infections reached a two-week high of 20,447. Since the premature reopening of schools in September, over 40,000 people have died from the virus in France.
Macron government denounces scientists for “intervening” in pandemic response In a press conference yesterday afternoon, French Health Minister Olivier Veran announced that the government would likely be compelled to announce stricter lockdown measures to face a continued acceleration in the spread of the pandemic. Veran admitted that the nationwide curfew from 6 p.m. had failed to reverse the spread of the virus, and the more contagious variants of the virus, principally the one first identified in the UK, have become established across France. Macron’s spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, stated yesterday that a decision will be taken by “the end of the week.” The curfew was implemented to prevent a national lockdown that would impact upon corporate profits through the closure of schools and non-essential workplaces. For weeks, the Macron government has rejected demands from the scientific community and health care professionals for a lockdown. Macron had been due to speak on Wednesday, in what had been widely reported to be an announcement of a limited lockdown in which schools and workplaces would all remain open. The speech was cancelled on Wednesday afternoon, with reports that he would not speak before at least Saturday. This week, Macron has released a series of increasingly open denunciations of scientists’ calls, including from his own chief scientific adviser Jean-Francois Delfraisy, for lockdowns. “The president has had enough of this automatic and robotic manner of managing the crisis. He wants new solutions,” a top legislator in Macron’s party told RTL radio anonymously on Wednesday. The same day, Le Monde published comments of Macron adviser Stephane Sejourne, who denounced what he called the “uncontrolled and suffocating – because sometimes contradictory – interventions of scientists” into the debate on coronavirus policy. “This permanent escalation in the media makes the public debate hysterical,” he added. Sejourne said that “scientists are not there to make policy. They must clarify the decisions of the public powers, not clarify themselves. This mixing of roles has to stop.”In other words: the role of scientists is not to warn the public about dangers they face and outline a scientifically-based response. It is to provide advice to the government, and, when the government proceeds to ignore scientific warnings in defence of the interests of the corporate elite, to be quiet and acquiesce to everything.
Huge COVID-19 outbreak at Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency exposes fraudulent UK lockdown –A massive, sustained COVID-19 outbreak at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) offices and call centre in Swansea, Wales has exposed the Conservative government’s fraudulent “national lockdown” and contempt for workers’ lives. The DVLA is a government agency under the Department of Transport. Since September, 535 workers have tested positive, the largest known number of infections linked to a single employer and workplace. The DVLA has a total workforce of 6,000 people, meaning more than one in 12 have been infected in the last five months. It is certain that these infections have contributed to the appalling toll of infections and deaths in the Swansea Bay area, where more than 26,000 cases have been registered and 828 COVID-related deaths. The DVLA headquarters in Swansea (credit: Wikimedia Commons) This disaster is the direct result of actions taken by management at DVLA and the loosened restrictions implemented during this lockdown compared to the original shutdown in March–despite the development of a more infectious strain of the virus and the overwhelming pressure on the National Health Service (NHS). It has been facilitated by the Labour Party and the trade unions, who have suppressed all opposition to the Tories’ herd immunity policy, exposing huge numbers of people to the virus in order to keep the economy producing profits. According to the Guardian, roughly 1,800 workers are currently being asked to come into the office. During the lockdown last spring, just 250 workers were kept on site. One employee told the newspaper, “We sit back-to-back, just one metre apart. They say ‘the two-metre rule only applies if you’re face to face’.” He said the virus had “spread like wildfire. Loads have tested positive. More than I can count’.”
Covid: Wrexham vaccine plant evacuated over suspicious package – Production of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has resumed at a plant after it was suspended when a suspicious package was received. The Wockhardt UK plant on Wrexham Industrial Estate was evacuated and the Army sent a bomb disposal unit. Police said the package had been made safe and its contents would be “taken away for analysis”. Wockhardt said staff had been allowed to return and its production schedule had not been affected. Both Downing Street and Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford had been receiving updates on the incident since police were called at about 10:40 GMT. A police cordon was put in place near the plant and the public were asked to keep away. There are no reports of any injuries. “There are no wider concerns for public safety, however, some roads on the industrial estate will remain closed whilst we continue our investigations,” North Wales Police said in a statement.
COVID-19 infections among UK nursery workers deepens funding crisis — The situation in early years education settings across the country is deteriorating day by day from the spread of COVID-19.Nurseries and early years settings were not included in the government’s limited national lockdown announced on January 4.Nurseries along with special educational needs providers were informed they would remain open despite a deadly increase in the pandemic – exacerbated by a newer more transmissible strain of the virus – because according to the official government rationale the under-fives were “unlikely to be playing a driving role in transmission.” These lies are refuted by the experience of nursery staff. Infections and hospitalizations are sweeping through nurseries and early years settings, particularly in the capital and the south-east of the country.On January 18, Nursery World reported that four staff members had been hospitalised with COVID-19 from the London Early Years Foundation (London’s largest group of “social enterprise nurseries”) and over a third of its settings had been forced to close.There have been 48 positive cases at the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) since the start of the year. In that time, 14 out of 39 LEYF nurseries have closed due to staff having to self-isolate. LEYF warned that many more nurseries are set to follow CEO June O’Sullivan described the new variant of the virus as “spreading like wildfire” among staff at LEYF’s nurseries, with 22 positive cases in one week at one nursery and 16 positive cases across eight sites in one weekend alone.Following the nursery closures, O’Sullivan tweeted: “16 cases of Covid19 across 8 @LEYFonline sites in one weekend – 48 cases this year (and counting), including four staff in hospital. What was the DfE @educationgovuk saying about nurseries being low risk???” On January 21, ITV news ran a piece that contains video interviews with nursery staff on the dangerous and impossible conditions they now face. Jo Godbold, the owner of Sunny Kids Pre-School Nursery in Kent – where COVID-19 outbreaks among staff have forced the setting to close three times – said: “We’ve been told its safe. But that’s a lie. Because categorically, people are getting ill. And people are going to hospital. We feel like we’ve been forgotten and lied to.” “Most of us are scared. I’ve definitely had my moments where I’ve sat in bed and cried … You’ve got to be a motivator as well for the children. You’ve got to motivate the parents. To show them that they’re safe and we’re happy to have them back. But at the same time, you feel conflicted to be here yourself.”
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