Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 20September 2020

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 failed stimulus efforts, US employment, mortgage delinquencies, and nonpayment of rent and utility bills, plus articles on schools’ plans for this fall and problems with college campuses reopening. The bulk of the news is from the U.S., with a few articles 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.

Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.

Fed signals rates will stay near zero for at least three years – The Federal Reserve left interest rates near zero and signaled it would hold them there through at least 2023 to help the U.S. economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Open Market Committee “expects to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy” until it achieves inflation averaging 2% over time and longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2%, the central bank said in a statement Wednesday following a two-day policy meeting. BloombergThe statement reflects the central bank’s new long-term policy framework in which officials will allow inflation to overshoot their 2% target after periods of under-performance. That shift was announced by Powell last month at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole policy conference. Following the statement’s release, Treasuries were little changed, with the 10-year yield steady at about 0.68%. Stocks gained slightly. The vote, in the FOMC’s final scheduled meeting before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, was 8-2. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan dissented, preferring to retain “greater policy rate flexibility,” while Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari dissented in favor of waiting for a rate hike until “core inflation has reached 2% on a sustained basis.” Powell and other Fed officials have stressed in recent weeks that the U.S. recovery is highly dependent on the nation’s ability to better control the coronavirus, and that further fiscal stimulus is likely needed to support jobs and incomes. The Fed on Wednesday committed to using its full range of tools to support the economic recovery. The central bank repeated it will continue buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities “at least at the current pace to sustain smooth market functioning.” A separate statement on Wednesday pegged those amounts at $80 billion of Treasuries a month and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Officials see rates staying ultra-low through 2023, according to the median projection of their quarterly forecasts, though four officials penciled in at least one hike in 2023. In other updates to quarterly forecasts, Fed officials see a shallower economic contraction this year than before, but a slower recovery in the coming years. In addition to slashing borrowing costs in March, the central bank has pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system through bond purchases and launched a slew of emergency lending facilities to keep businesses afloat.

FOMC Projections and Press Conference (see tables) Statement here.Fed Chair Powell press conference video here starting at 2:30 PM ET. Here are the projections. Note that GDP decreased at a 5.0% annual rate in Q1, and decreased at a 31.7% annual rate in Q2. Most forecasts are for GDP to increase at a 25% to 35% annual rate in Q3.It is important to note that GDP is reported at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR). A 30% annualized increase in Q3 GDP, is about 6.8% QoQ, and would leave real GDP down about 4.2% from Q4 2019.The course of the economy will depend on the course of the pandemic, so the FOMC has to factor in their expectations of when the pandemic will subside and end (and no one knows at this time).This FOMC revised up their GDP projections for 2020, and revised down their projections for the following years.GDP projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, Change in Real GDP. 1 Projections of change in real GDP and inflation are from the fourth quarter of the previous year to the fourth quarter of the year indicated.The unemployment rate was at 8.4% in August. The unemployment rate declined faster than most expectations. Note that the unemployment rate doesn’t remotely capture the economic damage to the labor market. Not only are there almost 14 million people unemployed, close to 4 million people have left the labor force since January. And millions more are being supported by various provisions for the CARES Act – that hasn’t been renewed The unemployment rate was revised down for all three years. Unemployment projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, Unemployment Rate Projections for the unemployment rate are for the average civilian unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of the year indicated. As of July 2020, PCE inflation was up 1.0% from July 2019. The projections for inflation were revised up this month.Inflation projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, PCE Inflation1 PCE core inflation was up 1.3% in July year-over-year. Projections for core inflation were revised up.

Fed weighs changes to Main Street program to allay banks’ concerns – The Federal Reserve is considering changes to its middle-market business rescue program in order to make it more available to borrowers, but the law limits how much additional risk the central bank can take on, said Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Only a fraction of the funds allocated for the $600 billion Main Street Lending Program have been put to use since the Fed started purchasing loans in July. Powell said Wednesday that about $2 billion in Main Street loans has been issued so far. Many have speculated that part of the problem could be that, even though the Fed is taking on most of the risk, banks still hold on to a 5% stake of loans in the program. Financial institutions are wary of taking on that added risk. “Lenders are concerned about the underwriting expectations,” Powell said at a press conference after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “So, banks, their approach is likely to be that they’re going to underwrite this loan roughly the same as they underwrite any loan – they’re keeping part of it.” The Fed “will be making some changes in that respect,” Powell added. The Main Street Lending Program was established using money from the Coroanvirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to help businesses with up to 15,000 employees or $5 billion in annual revenue that were in sound financial shape before the pandemic, and offers loans of $250,000 to $300 million. It was one of several facilities the Fed stood up using its emergency lending powers under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. But Powell said that the Fed is also limited by law in terms of which recipients can receive assistance, and those restrictions could be constraining the program. “If you look at the law under Section 13(3), it’s very clear that we are to make loans only to solvent borrowers and the CARES Act is quite specific in keeping all of the terms of Section 13(3) in effect, including the requirement that we gather good evidence that the borrower is solvent,” he said. A recent Bloomberg report also alleged that the Treasury Department has been instructing banks to take zero losses on Main Street loans, making lending through the program a risky venture for many financial institutions. “Banks like to make good loans – that’s what they do,” Powell said. “They’re trained to make good loans, so you should expect that they, and we expect, that they will do some underwriting. We also want them to take some risk, obviously because that was the point of it, and the question is, how do you dial that in? It’s not an easy thing to do.” Powell also discussed a growing concern in commercial real estate, as delinquency rates among CRE borrowers have been on the rise. With commercial real estate companies suffering during the pandemic, more bankruptcies could lead to increased defaults on CRE loans. The Fed has said that fiscal support may be more beneficial for commercial real estate borrowers than backing from the agency, given that the central bank can only lend and that would saddle those borrowers with more debt. But as stimulus talks in Congress have stalled, more borrowers have been looking to the Fed for an answer.

Fed, Treasury clarify underwriting rules for Main Street loans – The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department clarified underwriting expectations for lenders participating in the Main Street Lending Program in a set of frequently asked questions Friday in an attempt to assuage bank concerns of taking on added risk. The $600 billion Main Street Lending Program was established using money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to help businesses with up to 15,000 employees or $5 billion in annual revenue that were in sound financial shape before the pandemic, and offers loans of $250,000 to $300 million. Only a fraction of the funds allocated for the program have been put to use since the Fed started purchasing loans in July. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that about $2 billion in Main Street loans has been issued so far, and acknowledged that lenders were concerned about keeping 5% of those loans on their books. The Fed is purchasing the other 95% through a special-purpose vehicle. But some banks have been nervous about having skin in the game on Main Street loans, and recent reports allege that Treasury has instructed banks to not let borrowers default, potentially scaring banks from taking on the risk. “Banks like to make good loans – that’s what they do,” Powell said during a press conference. “They’re trained to make good loans, so you should expect that they, and we expect, that they will do some underwriting. We also want them to take some risk, obviously, because that was the point of it, and the question is, how do you dial that in? It’s not an easy thing to do.” The Fed and Treasury looked to soothe some of those fears on Friday, emphasizing in the new FAQs that lenders should not make Main Street loans based on a borrower’s current financial state, which may have been damaged by the coronavirus, and should instead evaluate potential Main Street borrowers’ pre-pandemic financial condition and post-pandemic prospects. Lenders should also factor in the payment deferral features available to Main Street loans, the Fed said. The FAQs were also developed in consultation with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the two other banking regulators, and offered more information on how bank examiners will treat Main Street loans. Supervisors will not rebuke banks for Main Street loans that were made in compliance with the program’s requirements, the Fed said, including loans that could be considered “non-pass” at the time of the origination, as long as the weaknesses in those loans derive from the COVID-19 pandemic

Foreigners Dump Record $54BN In Corporate Debt As Japan Treasury Holdings Surge To All Time High – (graphs) Foreigners resumed selling long-term US Treasuries in July, offloading $22.8 billion (after buying $28.9BN in June), in yet another spending spree led by foreign official institutions, i.e. central banks, SWFs and reserve managers, who sold $20.7 billion in July (as well as another $2.1 billion in private holdings), bringing their selling to 22 of the past 23 months. Additionally:

• Foreign net buying of equities eased to $16 billion in July, from $28.5 billion in June
• Foreign net buying of agency debt also dipped to $34.4 billion from at $38 billion

But the big surprise was the puke in foreign holdings of corporate debt, which plunged by a record $54.3 billion in July, the biggest monthly drop on record, following June’s more modest drop of $16.6 billion. Between this record dump, and the record issuance of corporate debt in the primary market, one almost wonders where corporate bonds would be trading if the Fed wasn’t backstopping them.In any case, aside from the record corporate bond liquidation, total foreign holdings were relatively stable and a far cry from the record selling in March and April. Looking at individual countries, China continued to sell US paper, in July selling another $1 billion and bringing its total to $1.073 trillion, the lowest since April in the latest continuation of China’s dumping of US Treasurys. On the other end of the spectrum, Japan – which surpassed China as the largest US creditor last year – continued to buy Treasurys, adding $31.6 billion in July, the most since February, and bringing its total to a record $1.293 trillion. Some other notable holders included Belgium, whose $211.9bn were a decrease of $6.8b; the Cayman Islands – traditionally a proxy for hedge funds – held $212.9b, a decrease of $9.1b from last month while Saudi Arabia took its $124.6b in TSY holdings $0.3bn from last month. But the big trend of de-dollarization continues…

Business Cycle Peak in Monthly vs. Quarterly Data – Menzie Chinn – There’s been some debate over how low GDP is relative to peak. One has to be particularly careful in calculations because the monthly peak is different than the quarterly peak, according to the NBER BCDC. For instance, monthly GDP (unofficial, from IHS-Markit) peaks in February 2020, but quarterly GDP (official, from BEA, 2nd release) peaks in 2019Q4. It happens that these dates coincide with NBER defined peaks; they don’t have to as NBER uses more indicators in addition to GDP to determine the business cycle chronology. Taking into account these peaks, what is GDP “now” relative to “peak”? Figure 1: Official Quarterly GDP (blue bar), IHS-Markit monthly GDP (pink line), in billions Ch.2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA, 2020Q2 2nd release, IHS-Markit release of September 1. More on y/y, q/q, annual growth rates in this post.

Bank of America CEO says more stimulus needed to help last of recovery – Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan called for another round of federal stimulus to help the U.S. reach a full economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. “You’re back up to where 95% of the economy is back,” Moynihan said Friday in an interview with David Westin in advance of next week’s Bloomberg Equality Summit, adding that more help is needed for restaurants, airlines, performing-arts venues and state and local governments so they can “cross that same bridge” as housing, health-care and other recovered industries. “We’ve got to help everybody else get across.” Moynihan said a year-over-year increase in consumer spending is a sign of the economy’s resilience. U.S. retail sales rose 0.6% last month, following a 0.9% gain in July, the Commerce Department reported earlier this week. Government support for small businesses is running dry with the Paycheck Protection Program having closed in early August, and a supplemental $600 a week in unemployment benefits having expired at the end of July. Some House Democrats are keeping pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring a new coronavirus relief bill up for a vote next week as they look to signal that the party is pursuing a deal to bolster the economy. Pelosi has held firm that the White House should first agree on a $2.2 trillion plan Democrats have put on the table. A “second bite at the apple” for PPP would help the economy come back fully, Moynihan said. “The idea of it recovering that last five percentage points tomorrow morning – it’s going to take a while to grind through that,” he said, adding that more government support would help industries still struggling. “What we need, I think, is pretty straightforward: You need more stimulus for the people.”

Trump suggests he could back a bigger coronavirus stimulus, top aide says he’s more optimistic about a deal – President Donald Trump urged Republicans on Wednesday to embrace a larger coronavirus stimulus package, and a top White House aide showed more optimism about striking a deal with Democrats. In a tweet, the president told GOP lawmakers to “go for the much higher numbers” in legislation designed to boost an economy and health-care system struggling under the weight of the pandemic. Many Republicans have embraced limited relief – or backed no new spending at all – as the major parties struggle to break a stalemate over a fifth relief bill. Asked later in the day if he backed roughly $1.5 trillion legislation put forward by a bipartisan House group, Trump said he supports “something like that” and likes “the larger amount” of spending. He added that “some Republicans disagree, but I think I can convince them to go along with that.” Shortly after Trump first tweeted, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that he is “probably more optimistic about the potential for a deal in the last 72 hours than I have been in the last 72 days.” The comment from Meadows, one of the two leading Trump administration negotiators in stimulus talks, followed the Tuesday release of the plan from the House Problem Solvers Caucus. Democratic House committee chairs rejected the proposal Tuesday as party leaders call to inject at least $2.2 trillion into the coronavirus fight. Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., again opposed a more limited relief proposal. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said they were “encouraged” by Trump’s tweet. They added that they “look forward to hearing from the President’s negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway with a bill that is equal to the massive health and economic crises gripping our nation.” Negotiations over more aid to Americans collapsed last month despite the expiration of financial lifelines including an extra $600 per week unemployment benefit and a federal moratorium on evictions. Pressure on officials in Washington to act has increased as they hurtle toward reelection fights in November. Some House Democrats have increasingly pushed Pelosi to relent and pass a smaller relief package than the party initially desired. Senate Republican leaders attempted to pass their own aid bill last week, both to put pressure on Democrats and to ease the burden on vulnerable GOP senators. Democrats blocked the legislation, which they said was inadequate to address the crisis. Trump’s tweet Wednesday, in which he pushed for “stimulus payments,” also showed the political benefit he sees in sending more relief before the election. The bill that failed in the Senate last week did not include a second round of direct payments to Americans. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump’s tweet referred to the need for a bigger relief package than the roughly $500 billion plan the Senate GOP proposed.

Trump undercuts GOP, calls for bigger COVID-19 relief package – President Trump on Wednesday shook up the high-stakes debate over coronavirus relief, undercutting the Republicans’ long-held position by urging GOP leaders to go big. Senate Republicans had initially offered a $1.1 trillion emergency aid package, but subsequently voted on a proposal providing just $650 billion – only $350 billion of it in new funding. Democrats have howled at the GOP’s “emaciated” offer, arguing that it falls far short of the funding needed to address the dual health and economic crises caused by the deadly coronavirus. On Wednesday morning, Trump stunned Washington by joining those Democratic critics in calling for Republicans to seek much more funding than they’ve previously proposed. He suggested it would not only provide relief to those struggling, but would also stimulate the domestic economy at large. “Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!),” Trump tweeted. Judging by the immediate reaction of Senate Republicans, it appeared Trump did not tell his congressional allies that his change of position was forthcoming. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), a member of GOP leadership, quickly warned that a stimulus package in the range of $1.5 trillion – which a group of centrist lawmakers from both parties proposed this week – would likely lead to “heartburn” among Republicans on Capitol Hill. “If the number gets too high, anything that got passed in the Senate will be passed mostly with Democrat votes and a handful of Republicans,” Thune told reporters in the Capitol. “So it’s gonna have to stay in a, sort of, realistic range, if … we want to maximize, optimize the number of Republican senators that will vote for it.” But another member of GOP leadership, Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), indicated he was hopeful for an agreement before the Nov. 3 election. “I think there is a deal to be had here,” Blunt said. “My concern is that the window closes probably at the end of this month. We need to get busy finding out what we can all agree on. I think the number is gonna be higher than our trillion dollars.” Minutes after Trump’s tweet, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a key negotiator, said he was more “optimistic” about a potential for a deal than he had been in quite some time. “If the Speaker is willing to stay in, I’m willing to stay in, the secretary is willing to stay in” and negotiate, Meadows said during an appearance on CNBC, referring to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Meadows, a former leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, characterized the $1.52 trillion relief plan proposed by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus a day earlier as a “thoughtful suggestion” and said it has moved the needle, even as allies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had panned it as insufficient.

White House shows flexibility on coronavirus aid; Pelosi holds firm – The Trump administration is willing to consider another $1.5 trillion in relief for the U.S. economy and health care system, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday, including more aid to state and local governments than top GOP officials have been comfortable with to date. Meadows spoke with President Donald Trump before a CNBC appearance Wednesday, where he said Trump was “encouraged” by the bipartisan Problem Solvers caucus proposal unveiled the previous day. Meadows said the $1.5 trillion price tag was higher than Republicans would like, but “not a showstopper at this point,” while Trump tweeted that Republicans should “go for the much higher numbers” under discussion. Meadows added that he was “probably more optimistic about the potential for a deal in the last 72 hours than I have been in the last 72 days.” He said a deal would likely need to come together in the next “week to 10 days” in order for a further aid package to have an impact this year, however. Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t been willing to go any lower than $2.2 trillion, however, and several House committee leaders panned the Problem Solvers plan as inadequate. On the biggest sticking point between the parties, the Problem Solvers offered up to $500 billion in direct aid to cash-strapped state and local governments. Republicans have offered $150 billion; Democrats are at $915 billion. Meadows said the midway point proposed by the bipartisan House group was “more than what we’re seeing in terms of lost revenue,” which he said was in the $250 billion to $300 billion range. It wasn’t clear whether Meadows was endorsing that figure, however, because he also reiterated a GOP talking point that some $100 billion of the original $150 billion from the March relief law hasn’t yet been spent. Loading the player… State budget officers have refuted the Treasury Department’s figures, arguing the estimates are outdated and don’t account for funds that have been committed. The Problem Solvers proposal contains a trigger mechanism that would cut the amount of direct state and local aid by $130 billion if certain metrics on hospitalizations and vaccine development are met. Such metrics could result in faster reopenings, and therefore less state and local health care spending and more tax revenue. “If we’re talking about trying to replace some of the lost revenues , hopefully that number is closer to the” $250 billion to $300 billion range, Meadows said, while adding that the Problem Solvers plan “at least it gives us something to talk about, and I’m encouraged.”

Half a year into the pandemic and millions of people are unemployed: Congress must provide relief – Another 1.5 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week. That includes 860,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 659,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers. It provides up to 39 weeks of benefits, but it is set to expire at the end of this year. Last week was the 26th week in a row total initial claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. If you restrict to regular state claims (because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession), claims are still greater than the 3rd-worst week of the Great Recession. Most states provide 26 weeks of regular state benefits. After an individual exhausts those benefits, they can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 13 weeks of state UI benefits that is available only to people who were on regular state UI. (A reminder: PEUC is different from Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, or PUC, the now-expired $600 additional weekly benefit, which anyone on any UI program had been eligible for.)Given that continuing claims for regular state benefits have been elevated since the third week in March, we should begin to see PEUC spike up dramatically soon (starting with the week ending September 19th). However, because of reporting delays for PEUC, we won’t actually get PEUC data from this week (the week ending September 19th) until October 8th.Department of Labor (DOL) data suggest that right now, 31.5 million workers are either on unemployment benefits or have applied recently and are waiting to get approved (see Figure A). But importantly, that number is a substantial overestimate for at least two reasons: (1) Initial claims for regular state UI and PUA should be non-overlapping – that is how DOL has directed state agencies to report them – but some individuals are erroneously being counted as being in both programs; (2) Some states are including retroactive payments in their continuing PUA claims, which would also lead to double counting (this story does a great job of explaining this). The bottom line is that we truly don’t know exactly how many people are receiving unemployment insurance benefits right now. That is both bonkers, and a harsh reminder that we need to invest heavily in our data infrastructure.

Second stimulus: Trump pushes for ‘larger’ COVID-19 relief bill, prioritizing $1,200 checks – — President Donald Trump parachuted into the coronavirus aid debate Wednesday, upbraiding his Republican allies for proposing too small of a relief package and encouraging both parties in Congress to go for a bigger one that would include his priority of $1,200 stimulus checks for most Americans. But his top GOP allies in the House and Senate shrugged off the president’s mid-morning tweet for more aid. They also weighed in against a $1.5 trillion aid package backed by moderates in both parties that earned praise from the White House. Trump, by evening, dug in. “I like the larger amount,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House. “Some of the Republicans disagree, but I think I can convince them to go along with that.” The president said he wants Americans to be given relief checks and thinks he’s getting “closer” to a deal. Negotiations remain far apart. All the key players in the entrenched impasse over a COVID-19 rescue package instead focused their energies on finger-pointing and gamesmanship, even as political nervousness was on the rise among Democrats frustrated by a stalemate in which their party shares the blame. There remained no sign that talks between the White House and congressional Democrats would restart. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says any deal will have to include far more than just another set of “Trump checks” and a handful of other priorities. “All they want is to have the President’s name on a check going out. …. That’s all he really cares about,” Pelosi said. “We have to do more than just have the Republicans check a box.”

Coronavirus checks: A second payment may be in the cards after all– This year, Americans were thrown a lifeline in the midst of a pandemic that spurred a recession unlike any other: a round of direct aid payments. Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, those payments maxed out at $1,200 per adult and $500 per child under 17, and they helped households keep up with their bills in the face of job losses and economic uncertainty. Lawmakers spent the better part of the summer duking it out over a second relief bill, and the expectation was that they’d come to an agreement to facilitate a follow-up round of direct payments by September at the latest. Lo and behold, we’re in mid-September, and no such deal has been signed. Which means payments are deadlocked as well. As if that weren’t enough to make Americans give up on ever getting a second check, Republicans presented a pared-down bill last week that did not include a payment. That proposal failed to advance in the Senate. A new development on COVID-19 relief lends a little optimism that another round of payments might be in the cards after all. That’s something desperate Americans will really pull for. On Sept. 15, the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus (25 Democrats and 25 Republicans) introduced a proposal designed to provide the COVID-19 relief the public needs. The proposal addresses a number of points, including boosted unemployment benefits; state and local aid; and assistance for small businesses, many of which have struggled immensely during the pandemic and risk closing permanently. One encouraging aspect of this proposal is the inclusion of not just one check but potentially two rounds of direct relief checks. Specifically, eligible recipients would initially be in line for a $1,200 payment per adult and a $500 payment per child or dependent adult. The proposal calls for another round of automatic aid checks in March 2021 if economic circumstances warrant it. Given that unemployment has been extraordinarily high since April and that the jobless rate could stay that way or worsen over the next six months, that’s a very good thing. Though this proposal is bipartisan, lawmakers might still argue over its cost: $1.5 trillion. Democrats might insist that more money needs to be spent in the course of dishing out aid. Republicans might argue that the cost is too high, especially given their slimmed-down bill. Though the proposal is certainly meant to appease both sides, there’s no guarantee it will become law. The fact that it calls for a second payment round is still something for the public to hang its hopes on.

Trump-Appointed CDC Officials Reportedly Meddled With Coronavirus Reports – Forbes – Trump appointed communications officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been looking over the agency’s weekly Covid-19 reports before they’re published, a Politico investigation found, and in some cases have successfully put pressure on scientists to change reports that would undermine President Donald Trump’s positive message about the pandemic. Since former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo was installed as the CDC’s spokesperson in April, he and his aides have made sizable efforts to keep the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports in line with Trump’s public stance that the coronavirus is under control, the investigation found.CDC officials have pushed back against Caputo, but have increasingly agreed to allow them to review the reports and, in some cases, change the wording.Caputo and his team tried to add qualifiers to reports written by career scientists, and sometimes retroactively change reports they say overinflated the risks of Covid-19, sources told Politico.They also allegedly blocked reports from being published, including one that said the benefits of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug promoted by Trump as a coronavirus treatment, “do not outweigh [the] risks.” – that report, published last week, was delayed by a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings.Caputo’s aides have accused CDC Director Robert Redfield and CDC scientists of using the reports to ‘hurt the President,” calling them “hit pieces on the administration” – one asked specifically to be able to make line edits and demanded the reports should stop until then, the investigation found. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Caputo, his aides, or the response within the department.

Political HHS Appointees Demand Authority to Rewrite CDC Case Reports – Politico recently published an exclusive report, based on its own investigation, Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19: The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals. In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump’s optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation. I’m posting this a couple days after Trump communications aide Michael Caputo spoke about details regarding the CDC and went public on Facebook with allegations that political unrest will follow – including armed rebellion – after November’s elections. Alas, he also urged Trump supporters to prepare (see this WaPo account Top Trump health appointee Michael Caputo warns of armed insurrection after election; there are similar reports to be found at the NYT, NY Mag, and Forbes). Of course this is being reported as news live and straight from the cray cray zone. But does anyone seriously doubt that the upcoming electoral cycle will be a particularly fraught one? Would you want to warrant and guarantee personally that the losing side will stand down? Does anyone remember what happened in 2016? And it’s a measure of just how seriously political reporting has degraded that this warning is regarded as beyond the pale. As to that Politico report, the first thing any self-respecting writer should ask herself when faced with the latest manifestation of such textbook pearl clutching, is is it true? And does it make any sense? The reports we are talking about are the well-respected Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports Now, one thing I zeroed in on was the doctored (?, sorry, you must grant me that) reports themselves. Because I could see if they were essentially political reports – subject to interpretation – the political appointees might have a point. Much as their “corrections” might seem to fly in the face of mainstream scientific consensus. But as we should surely have understood by now, there’s no hard and fast division between “scientific” and “political”.

US Global Image Plummets Amid Virus-Handling Debacle – The United States’ image has tumbled to a record-low among a new 13-nation Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday. America’s reputation, nevertheless, confidence in the Trump administration, have both rapidly declined over the past year due to the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump attempted to boost his image last weekend in a Fox News interview, arguing his administration took “tremendous steps” at the beginning of the virus pandemic to mitigate the spread, which ‘probably saved a couple million lives’. But according to Pew’s polling data, much of the world sees things differently – and that data shows more than a dozen U.S.’s top allies’ public attitudes towards the U.S. and Trump are in collapse (see: here). Many of the allies, which include the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Australia, had their share of the public give some of the lowest favorable views of the U.S. on record, going back to the early 2000s when Pew started collecting data. The polling data comes amid Trump’s handling of the public health crisis, after journalist Bob Woodward leaked damaging audio of the president downplaying the severity of the virus outbreak. But as readers may recall, none other than Dr.Fauci said Trump “did not distort anything and acted immediately when he was presented the data.” Nevertheless, “across the 13 nations surveyed, a median of just 15% say the U.S. has done a good job of dealing with the outbreak. In contrast, most say the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Union have done a good job, and in nearly all nations, people give their own country positive marks for dealing with the crisis (the U.S. and U.K. are notable exceptions). Relatively few think China has handled the pandemic well, although it still receives considerably better reviews than the U.S. response,” Pew said.

Trump Is One of the Worst Leaders on Earth, According to the Rest of the World – People in more than a dozen countries around the world have virtually no confidence in Donald Trump, and believe the U.S. has royally screwed up its coronavirus response, according to a Pew survey of American-allied countries around the globe. In some countries that are closely allied with the United States, such as the United Kingdom, confidence is the lowest it’s ever been (41%). In others, such as France and Germany, only around 25% of respondents have confidence in the U.S., matching the country’s poor global standing in March 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. In all but one of the 13 countries included in the survey – which includes countries from western Europe and east Asia, as well as Australia and Canada – a clear majority have an unfavorable view of the United States. Among those 13 countries, just 16% of those surveyed expressed confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs, as opposed to 83% who did not have confidence in him to do that. Just 34% of those surveyed held a favorable view of the United States in general. The only country that did not hold an unfavorable view of the U.S. is South Korea, with which Trump has attempted to broker a deal to end long standing tensions with North Korea. Fifty-nine percent of those polled hold a favorable view of the United States, but just 17% have confidence in Trump, down drastically from 46% last year. By comparison, South Korea’s confidence in former U.S. President Barack Obama in South Korea was at 88% toward the end of his term in office.

Trump says he doesn’t think he could’ve done more to stop virus spread | TheHill – President Trump on Tuesday said he doesn’t believe he could have done anything different to stop the coronavirus pandemic from spreading across the United States as part of a town hall event where he fiercely pushed back on criticism of his response to the outbreak.The president was asked by one prospective voter what the most difficult challenge of his presidency has been, and what he learned from it.”I learned that life is very fragile. I knew people that were powerful people, strong people, good people, and they got knocked out by this, and died — six people,” Trump said. “It was five until about two weeks ago, now it’s six.””But I’ve learned that life is very fragile, because these were strong people, and all of a sudden they were dead; they were gone,” he continued. “And it wasn’t their fault. It was the fault of a country that could have stopped it.”Trump repeated his belief that the pandemic could have been contained by China, prompting anchor George Stephanopoulos to ask if the president could have done more himself to keep the virus outside the U.S. “I don’t think so,” Trump said. “I think what I did by closing up the country, I think I saved two, maybe two and a half, maybe more than that lives. I really don’t think so. I think we did a very good job.” Several of the questions focused on the pandemic, with one woman noting that the virus has hit minority communities the hardest and another asking why Trump did not wear a mask more often. He repeated his unsupported belief that the virus will go away even without a vaccine, claimed he “up-played” the severity of the crisis despite his statements to the contrary earlier this year, and pointed to waiters when asked who has argued masks may be bad for preventing the spread of the disease.”So you regret nothing?” Stephanopoulos asked at one point.”No, I think we did a great job,” Trump replied.

Trump defends claim coronavirus will disappear, citing ‘herd mentality’ – President Trump defended his assertion that the novel coronavirus would “disappear” with or without a vaccine on Tuesday, saying the United States would develop what he called “herd mentality.””With time it goes away,” Trump said during an ABC News town hall in Pennsylvania when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos on his public comments about the virus. “You’ll develop, you’ll develop herd – like a herd mentality. It’s going to be, it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen. That will all happen. But with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly.”Trump appeared to mistake “herd mentality” for “herd immunity,” which occurs when enough individuals develop immunity to prevent the spread of a disease.Trump went on to insist that the United States is “rounding the corner” with respect to the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 200,000 people in the U.S. Top health officials, meanwhile, have warned of the possibility of a dangerous public health situation in the fall if a second wave of COVID-19 coincides with flu season.Last week, Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said he disagreed with Trump’s claim that the U.S. was rounding the “final turn” on the virus.”A lot of people do agree with me,” Trump told Stephanopoulos when pressed on Fauci’s disagreement. “You look at Scott Atlas. You look at some of the other doctors that are highly – from Stanford. Look at some of the other doctors. They think maybe we could have done that from the beginning.”Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, was added as one of Trump’s coronavirus advisers in August. The Washington Post reported last month that Atlas was pushing the White House to adopt a “herd immunity” strategy, though the White House has denied that the administration has ever considered such a policy to address the coronavirus pandemic.

As US death toll hits 200,000, Trump calls for herd immunity – On Tuesday, the day that the United States reached the threshold of 200,000 deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump openly defended the US government’s de facto policy of “herd immunity,” that is, allowing the virus to spread without restraint. “You’ll develop herd,” Trump told a televised town hall event, before apparently catching himself and substituting the term “herd mentality” for “herd immunity.” He continued, “Like a herd mentality. It’s going to be – it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen.” As a result, he said, the pandemic will “disappear.” In openly defending “herd immunity,” Trump has let the cat out of the bag. In fact, herd immunity has been the guiding principle of his government’s response to the pandemic, underlying his efforts to downplay the virus, handicap testing, and get workers back on the job as quickly as possible. As a strategy for responding to COVID-19, the advocates of herd immunity argue that the disease should be allowed to spread freely throughout the population, based on the claim that, at some point, enough people will become infected that the spread of the disease will slow down. Dr. Scott Atlas, whom Trump recently appointed as a COVID-19 advisor, argued for this approach in July, declaring, “Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem. In fact, it’s a positive.” Despite the strategy’s pseudoscientific trappings, it means nothing more nor less than allowing large numbers of the population, primarily the elderly and the sick, to die in a sort of mass eugenics program potentially costing millions of lives. Trump has spearheaded this policy and, as revealed in the tapes released by Bob Woodward, deliberately downplayed the threat and lied to the population. However, it has been supported and implemented by both the Democrats and Republicans. In late March, it was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman who praised the herd immunity policy being pursued by the Swedish government, criticized lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus, and declared that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.” His column was followed by a Washington Post editorial praising Sweden for what it called an “appealing model.”

USDA and Meatpacking Industry Collaborated to Undermine COVID-19 Response, Documents Show – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the meatpacking industry worked together to downplay and disregard risks to worker health during the Covid-19 pandemic, as shown in documents published Monday by Public Citizen and American Oversight. The documents, which the groups obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reveal that a week before President Donald Trump issued his controversial executive order in April to keep meatpacking plants open – overriding closure orders from local health officials – a leading meat industry lobby group drafted a proposed executive order that was strikingly similar to Trump’s directive. North American Meat Institute president Julie Anna Potts drafted the document, which invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act in proposing a presidential proclamation that orders “critical infrastructure food companies continue their operations to the fullest extent possible.”The documents also show that the North American Meat Institute repeatedly requested that USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue discourage workers who were afraid to return to work from staying home, that meatpacking plants asked the USDA to intervene on multiple occasions when state and local governments either shut them down over health and safety concerns or sought to impose worker health and safety standards, and that pork producer and food processing giant Smithfield Foods repeatedly requested that the USDA “order” it to reopen its meat processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota – even though the agency lacks the legal authority for such a move. “While we knew that the meatpacking industry was lobbying the Trump administration to take steps to protect its profits regardless of the cost to workers’ lives, the degree of collaboration these documents show is astounding,” said Adam Pulver, attorney for Public Citizen. “As outbreaks continue to emerge in meatpacking plants, it is stunning to see the cavalier attitude officials took to the health and safety of workers in the early part of the pandemic,” Pulver added. “To the extent that the USDA impeded the efforts of state and local governments to contain the virus, the blood of meatpacking workers is on their hands.” According to July data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 23 states reported Covid-19 outbreaks in meat and poultry processing facilities, with 16,233 cases and 86 deaths reported in 239 facilities. Fully 87% of those cases occurred among racial or ethnic minorities. The problem is global, with other countries from Britain to Brazil reporting widespread Covid-19 infection among their meatpackers.A common theme connects all of these outbreaks around the world, critics said Tuesday – the prioritization of profit over people.”During a global pandemic, Americans should be able to trust that public health experts are drafting public health standards, not big businesses looking out for their bottom lines,” said Austin Evers, executive director at American Oversight. “This is corruption that came at the cost of lives and safety. Making matters worse, we know now that Trump knew the coronavirus was a deadly threat even while he played it down and took steps he knew were at odds with what experts advised.”

COVID-19 outbreak at Virginia migrant detention center caused by repression of anti-police brutality protesters – A COVID-19 outbreak at an immigration detention center in rural Virginia was caused by the rapid transfer of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assault teams chauffeured into the area by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the crackdown on anti-police brutality protests that broke out throughout the United States in late May and early June. As of Sunday, 339 of the facility’s inmates and staff at the Immigration Centers of America (ICA) private prison in Farmville, Virginia have tested positive for COVID-19. The outbreak is the most serious recorded at any immigrant detention center across the country. Last month the World Socialist Web Site reported that the outbreak claimed the life of a 72-year-old detainee and Canadian national, James Thomas Hill. The revelation of the source of the outbreak is part of an ongoing lawsuit brought against the detention center by four migrant detainees. According to sources inside ICE that spoke to the Washington Post, prisoners were moved to the Farmville center in order to give cover for the Trump administration’s operation involving militarized agents of the state apparatus to repress protests in Washington, DC. Detention facility in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018 (Photo US Customs and Border Protection). “They needed to justify the movement of SRT [special response teams],” a Department of Homeland Security official told the Post. According to ICE lawyer Yuri Fuchs, “there is an ICE Air regulation that requires detainees and staff to be on the same flight, so they’re being moved around,” referring to the colloquial name of a program ICE uses to shuttle prisoners, material, and personnel around the country on charter commercial flights. This open admission by a United States federal official of the use of immigrant detainees as human shields for an operation of mass repression prompted federal judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia to help cover for the overshare of information by rewording the sentence into a legally permissible action: “I think what you’re saying then is when you move inmates, or detainees, you have to have ICE people with them,” Brinkema said. “That’s got to be what that means.” Fuchs replied: “Yes.”

Tucker Slams Facebook Censorship Of Chinese Virologist: “It’s Turning Us Into The Soviet Union” – Facebook and other tech giants have engaged in a troubling pattern of censoring speech surrounding major issues in the coronavirus debate, Fox News host Tucker Carlson argued during his Wednesday night monologue.Carlson’s comments came after Facebook slapped a warning label on video of his Tuesday interview with Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who claimed to have evidence showing China “intentionally” released COVID-19 onto the general population.”Within a few hours of her interview last night,” Carlson said, “a video of the segment reached 1.3 million people on Facebook.”“And why wouldn’t it? The coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every American. And justifiably, people want to know where it came from. But Facebook still doesn’t want you to know that.So Facebook suppressed the video, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government. Facebook executives made it harder for users to watch our segment. Those who found the video had to navigate a warning that the interview ‘repeats information about COVID-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false,” he added.“Instagram, which Facebook also owns did the same thing. Twitter suspended Dr. Yan’s account entirely. It did not explain why…” “Nor did the tech companies explain how they would know more about disease transmission than an MD, PhD virologist like Dr. Li-Meng Yan. Instead, Facebook and Instagram linked to three so-called fact checks which supposedly proved Yan was lying.

Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID – The Daily Beast – A new study purporting to show that the novel coronavirus was manufactured in a Chinese lab was published by a pair of nonprofit groups linked to Steve Bannon, the former top Trump strategist now facing felony fraud charges. The study, co-authored by a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong this year, claims that “laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2.” Its findings were quickly picked up by a handful of prominent news organizations such as the New York Post, which hyped the “explosive” allegations that run counter to virtually all existing scientific literature on the source of the virus. The study is the work of the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister nonprofit organizations that Bannon was instrumental in creating. According to documents posted on the Society’s website last year, he served as that group’s chair. The Bannon connection was first spotted by Kevin Bird, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, and shared by Carl Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington, who called the study “bizarre and unfounded.” A search of Google Scholar and the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation websites indicates that the organizations have not previously published scientific or medical research, and it’s unclear whether the paper received any peer review. It was posted on Monday on the website Zenodo, a publicly available repository of scientific and academic research to which anyone can upload their work. Both of the nonprofits behind the study were formed in conjunction with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, with whom Bannon has collaborated on a number of advocacy efforts targeting the Chinese government and business endeavors that have drawn the scrutiny of federal law enforcement officials.

House passes resolution condemning anti-Asian discrimination relating to coronavirus -The House passed a resolution Thursday condemning “all forms of anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19” in a 243-164 vote. The measure came amid Democratic lawmakers repeatedly blasting President Trump for referring to coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” alleging the rhetoric has led to an influx of discrimination against Asian Americans. The measure – spearheaded by Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) – highlighted that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stated that connecting the name of a virus to the geographic location where it originated perpetuates a stigma. Proponents of the resolution said it is necessary to combat bigotry as instances of harassment and violence against the Asian community have increased since the start of the pandemic. “Sadly this bigotry is being fueled by some in Washington, and you would think, I thought this would be almost unanimous consent to condemn violence against Asian Americans. Even from the White House itself, which uses dangerous, false, and offensive terms to describe the coronavirus,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the floor ahead of the vote. “The World Health Organization and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, have explicitly warned against linking infectious diseases to specific ethnicities because of the stigmatizing effects, which has serious impacts on health and defeating the virus. As the CDC medical officer has said, stigma is the enemy of public health,” Pelosi said. Republicans condemned the resolution as partisan posturing, arguing that Democrats have misplaced priorities by bringing a nonbinding resolution to the floor when Congress has yet to come to a consensus on a coronavirus relief bill or government funding legislation. GOP lawmakers believe Democrats haven’t been hard enough on China. Others have dismissed the idea that calling the coronavirus by a name citing its origin has racist undertones, noting that other diseases like Ebola and the West Nile virus were named after where they originated.

Trump signs new, expanded executive order to lower U.S. drug prices (Reuters) – President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Sunday aimed at lowering drug prices in the United States by linking them to those of other nations and expanding the scope of a July action. “My Most Favored Nation order will ensure that our Country gets the same low price Big Pharma gives to other countries. The days of global freeriding at America’s expense are over,” Trump said in a Twitter post. The latest step, coming less than two months before the Nov. 3 presidential election, would replace a July 24 Trump executive order. It extends the mandate to prescription drugs available at a pharmacy, which are covered under Medicare Part D. The July version focused on drugs typically administered in doctors’ offices and health clinics, covered by Medicare Part B. Specifically, it would pay a price for a drug that matches the lowest price paid among wealthy foreign governments. Medicare, the government healthcare program for seniors, is currently prohibited from negotiating prices it pays to drugmakers. It also requires issuing new federal rules, a complex process that might not be done by Election Day. Determining prices paid by other countries could be challenging as negotiations between governments and drugmakers often are kept confidential. The industry’s largest trade group – the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA – denounced Trump’s move as “a reckless attack on the very companies working around the clock to beat COVID-19.” PhRMA President and Chief Executive Stephen Ubl called the policy “unworkable” and an “overreach,” and said it would give foreign governments a say in how the United States provides access to treatments.

Trump’s Eviction Moratorium Opens the Door for Medicare for All by Executive Order – On September 1, the Trump administration announced a nationwide moratorium on evictions to last until December 31, a full four months. The reason for the moratorium, according to a White House spokesman, was to make sure that people “struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus will not have to worry about being evicted and risk the further spreading of, or exposure to, the disease.” The moratorium applies only to people “who would otherwise be eligible for federal stimulus funds in the previous CARES Act, which went only to people with certain tax income levels and citizenship status.” The ban also requires that renters “self-certify” to become eligible. As Politicoput it: “The new ban covers tenants who certify that they have lost “substantial” income; that they expect to make no more than $99,000 in 2020 or received a stimulus check; and that they are making their “best efforts” to pay as much of their rent as they can. Tenants must also certify that an eviction would likely make them homeless or push them to double up with others in close quarters.”It should be noted that the ban does not cancel rental obligations; it just delays payment. Also, as the order itself states, “Nothing in this Order precludes the charging or collecting of fees, penalties, or interest as a result of the failure to pay rent or other housing payment on a timely basis, under the terms of any applicable contract.”As a solution, it’s better than nothing, but it only defers the pain. The order provides no funds for relief to landlords. For the many landlords who are, in fact, millionaires, billionaire, and large, well-funded corporations and venture capital firms, this may look to many like just desserts. For the other half of the landlord population, however, especially the minority who own just one or two rental properties, this could spell financial disaster as great as the disaster their tenants are facing. The authority for this action comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Surgeon General, who reports to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – not from the Housing or the Treasury departments – and it’s based on the stated need to prevent the spread of disease in a crisis. The applicable language states (emphasis added): [Title 42 U.S.C.] ff264. Regulations to control communicable diseases(a) Promulgation and enforcement by Surgeon GeneralThe Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession. For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, the Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary. This declaration and the unusual legal authority on which it is based has many important ramifications. For one, it opens the door for Medicare for All by executive order.

Mitch McConnell rams through six Trump judges in 30 hours after blocking coronavirus aid for months – The Republican-led Senate confirmed six of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees to lifetime appointments over two days this week, even though it has delayed crucial coronavirus relief since May.The Senate filled four federal vacancies in California and two in Illinois, Bloomberg Law reported. It is also expected to confirm two additional Illinois judges in short order.”The Senate has confirmed six of Trump’s judicial nominees in the past 30 hours,”tweeted Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “These are lifetime appointments that McConnell’s pushing through instead of the HEROES Act & other crucial legislation.” Three of the judges were appointed to seats covering Los Angeles, while another was appointed to a seat covering San Diego. There are 11 additional nominees to California courts awaiting Senate confirmation.The Senate additionally confirmed David Dugan and Stephen McGlynn to the Eastern District of Illinois while ending the debate on the nominations of Iain Johnston to the Northern District. The upper chamber is also expected to end debate on the nomination of Franklin Ulyses Valderrama to the Northern District of Illinois.Advocacy groups sounded the alarm over the confirmations of Dugan and McGlynn, who received support from anti-abortion organizations and signaled their opposition to abortion rights. “Today’s vote should never have even happened. People are calling on their senators to provide relief from the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recession and the rampant anti-Black violence occurring around the country,” Anisha Singh, the director of judiciary affairs at Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “And yet, the Senate majority continues to prioritize confirming judges for lifetime appointments – many with hostile records on reproductive and civil rights, including abortion.”

Wealth of US billionaires rises by nearly a third during pandemic – The already vast fortunes of America’s 643 billionaires have soared by an average of 29% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has at the same time laid waste to tens of millions of jobs around the world. The richest of the superrich have benefited by $845bn , according to a report by a US progressive thinktank, the Institute for Policy Studies. The report calculated that 643 billionaires in the US had racked up $845bn (Pound Sterling642bn) in collective wealth gains since 18 March, when lockdowns began across the US and much of the rest of the world. The collective wealth of the billionaire class increased from $2.95tn to $3.8tn. That works out to gains of $141bn a month, or $4.7bn a day. Over the same period, more than 197,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and more than 50m Americans have lost their jobs. Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, who was already the world’s richest person, has benefited most from the pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns. His personal fortune, as estimated by Forbes magazine, has risen by $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn. That 65% increase results mostly from the soaring value of Amazon shares as more people turn to the delivery service. In just one day in July, Bezos saw his fortune increase by more than Pound Sterling10bn.

Perelman Selling Almost Everything as Pandemic Roils His Empire – Bit by bit, billionaire Ronald O. Perelman is parting with his treasures. His Gulfstream 650 is on the market. So is his 257-foot yacht. Movers hauled crates of art from his Upper East Side townhouse after he struck a deal with Sotheby’s to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of works. He’s unloaded his stake in Humvee-maker AM General, sold a flavorings company that he’d owned for decades and hired banks to find buyers for stock he holds in other companies. What in the world is going on with Ron Perelman? His exploits on and off Wall Street have been tabloid fare in New York since the go-go 1980s. But now, at an age when most fellow billionaires are kicking back, Perelman, 77, is facing a range of financial challenges, most of all at Revlon Inc., his cosmetics giant. Once touted as America’s richest man, his wealth has dropped from $19 billion to $4.2 billion in the past two years, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bankers, socialites and art collectors have been buzzing about Perelman since his investment company, MacAndrews & Forbes, said in July it would rework its holdings in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the ravages it caused to American businesses, including his own. “We quickly took significant steps to react to the unprecedented economic environment that we were facing,” Perelman said in a statement. “I have been very public about my intention to reduce leverage, streamline operations, sell some assets and convert those assets to cash in order to seek new investment opportunities and that is exactly what we are doing.” Perelman also gave more prosaic reasons for the shift, including spending time with his family during lockdown and a desire for a simpler life.

Fed offers details on additional bank stress test triggered by COVID-19 – The Federal Reserve published hypothetical scenarios Thursday for the supplemental stress tests the largest banks must undergo in light of the uncertain economic environment. The central bank is holding the first-ever “midcycle” stress test to get a firmer grasp of banks’ capital strength since onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The most recent results of the Fed’s normal test were based significantly on yearend 2019 financial data. The supplemental tests will use data from this year’s economic tremors. The midcycle test will include two scenarios: a “severely adverse” scenario and an “alternative severe” scenario. Both are much more dire than current forecasts for the U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic. The first scenario factors in an unemployment rate that tops out at 12.5% at the end of 2021, a sharp slowdown abroad and a decline of 3% in gross domestic product from the third quarter of 2020 through the fourth quarter of 2021. The second scenario will test banks against an unemployment rate that peaks at 11% by the end of this year but remains high through the end of the scenario, and a 2.5% decline in GDP. Banks with large trading operations will also be subject to a global market shock component, and will be required to factor in the default of their largest counterparty. Banks with substantial processing operations will also have to incorporate the default of their largest counterparty. The banks subject to both a global market shock and a counterparty default include Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, DB USA (the U.S.-based affiliate of Deutsche Bank), Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo. The Fed will release bank-specific results for the 34 banks subject to the midcycle test by the end of this year, the central bank said in a press release. “The Fed’s stress tests earlier this year showed the strength of large banks under many different scenarios,” Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles said in the release. “Although the economy has improved materially over the last quarter, uncertainty over the course of the next few quarters remains unusually high, and these two additional tests will provide more information on the resiliency of large banks.” As part of its regular stress testing cycle this year, the Fed included additional “sensitivity analyses” that tested banks against hypothetical economic models of recovery from the pandemic. In aggregate, all 34 banks maintained the minimum capital requirements under each of the scenarios tested, although “several would approach minimum capital levels,” the Fed said at the time. The regulator added that it would require banks to resubmit their capital plans in the fall to reflect more current stresses on the economy.

The Fed Announces New Bank Stress Tests: Will Look at What Would Happen if a Major Counterparty Defaulted – Pam Martens – At the time the Fed released the results of its bank stress tests in June, it announced that because of the pandemic and unprecedented economic downturn, it would require additional stress testing of the biggest banks later this year. This afternoon, the Fed released those plans.Among the various hypothetical scenarios that the banks will have to perform against, 13 of the banks with significant trading operations will have to consider what would happen if a major counterparty blew up. The banks that will have to submit outcomes under this scenario include: Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Barclays US, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank USA, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street, UBS, and Wells Fargo. The Fed will release bank-specific results before the end of the year.All 34 banks will face two hypothetical scenarios featuring severe economic downturns. Both hypothetical scenarios feature high unemployment continuing into 2021. (Read the full details of the scenarios in this Fed booklet.)The counterparty default scenario works like this, according to the Fed:“Firms with substantial trading or custodial operations will be required to incorporate a counterparty default scenario component into their supervisory severely adverse and alternative severe stress scenarios for the resubmission of capital plans in the fourth quarter of 2020. The counterparty default scenario component involves the instantaneous and unexpected default of the firm’s largest counterparty.“In connection with the counterparty default scenario component, these firms will be required to estimate and report the potential losses and related effects on capital associated with the instantaneous and unexpected default of the counterparty that would generate the largest losses across their derivatives and securities financing activities, including securities lending and repurchase or reverse repurchase agreement activities. The counterparty default scenario component is an add-on to the macroeconomic conditions and financial market environments specified in the supervisory severely adverse and alternative severe scenarios.“The largest counterparty of each firm will be determined by net stressed losses. Net stressed losses are estimated by applying the global market shock to revalue non-cash securities financing transactions (securities or collateral posted or received); and, for derivatives, the trade position and non-cash collateral exchanged. The as-of date for the counterparty default scenario component is June 30, 2020 – the same date as for the global market shock.” It’s notable that the Fed is going to be looking at the “largest counterparty of each firm” and what would happen if it blew up. Let’s hope the Fed has the good sense to look to see just how concentrated that counterparty risk is to other banks.

Bankers urge extension of CARES Act reg relief – At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress gave banks and credit unions relief from a number of regulations so that they would have flexibility to help commercial and retail customers weather the economic shock. Those regulatory relief measures are set to expire Dec. 31, but with the virus still raging and many households and businesses still struggling, financial institutions are urging Congress and regulators to extend them into next year. And while it is unclear if regulators will act on their own to extend the relief, lawmakers from both parties have expressed support for continued pandemic relief. Among other things, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act relieved financial institutions from having to categorize loan modifications related to the pandemic as troubled debt restructurings until the end of 2020, and it it enabled them to delay compliance with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Current Expected Credit Losses standard until the end of the year. The legislation also eased community banks’ capital requirements by lowering the Community Bank Leverage Ration from 9% to 8% until 2021, and it authorized the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to revive its crisis-era program backstopping bank-issued debt and noninterest-bearing transaction deposits that exceed the FDIC’s $250,000 limit. Troubled debt restructurings have been of particular concern for banks as they anticipate that their customers could need loan modifications long after the CARES Act relief expires. Critics of troubled debt restructurings have argued that they reduce the incentive for banks to work out new loan agreements with struggling borrowers, since they require banks to set aside more in capital reserves and they create other administrative hassles. The American Bankers Association is asking that the exemption on troubled debt restructurings remain in place at least until January 2023 while the Independent Community Bankers of America asked Congress in a September letter to extend the relief until the end of 2021. “We requested [an extension]…in large part because there will be debt restructurings and we don’t want the regulatory agencies in retrospect to look negatively at institutions and what they have done to help their customers through a difficult time,” said James Ballentine, executive vice president for political affairs and congressional relations at the American Bankers Association. Paul Merski, group executive vice president for congressional relations and strategy at the Independent Community Bankers of America, said that banks are worried that they will be penalized by their examiners if they change borrowers’ loan terms after the relief expires. “Borrowers who are experiencing financial difficulty, banks can extend out the terms of the loan. … Really the regulators don’t like that,” Merski said. “That can be negative for your exam, for your bank for providing that kind of relief. It’s still better than canceling or foreclosing on a borrower.”

Barclays Latest Global Megabank To Suffer Trading Floor COVID-19 Outbreak – As JP Morgan struggles with another COVID-19 outbreak as it prepares to order more workers back to its offices in NYC and London, Barclays has just become the latest global mega-bank to suffer a flareup of its own.Dow Jones-owned Financial News, a London-based news organization, reported Thursday that “Barclays sent some staff home from its London trading floor after two employees tested positive for COVID-19.” What’s more puzzling, the outbreak come as the City of London reportedly remains a ghost town, which, apparently, hasn’t dissuaded local officials and the British government from considering another “localized” lockdown as cases in the UK continue to climb as PM Boris Johnson continues to reopen the economy.The infected traders reportedly worked on Level 2 of Barclays’ 5 North Colonnade office.“Earlier this week, two colleagues based on level 2 of 5 North Colonnade received this confirmation” of having contracted the virus, Barclays’ head of markets Stephen Dainton wrote in a memo sent to employees on 2 September. The North Colonnade building in Canary Wharf houses the Barclays investment bank and trading floors.Here’s the rest of the statement, courtesy of FN:“The colleagues who tested positive began a period of self isolation,” said the memo, which was seen by Financial News. “Anyone who interacted with the affected individuals was notified and advised to self-quarantine for 14 days.”

Deutsche Bank allowing US staffers to work from home through next summer – Deutsche Bank does not plan to allow U.S. staffers back into its offices until next summer. Americas chief of staff Matthias Krause outlined the bank’s plans during a town hall Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, after employees put pressure on leadership to lay out a clear outline as they continue to maneuver unknowns such as school reopenings. In a memo obtained by the Journal, Krause acknowledges New York City’s “success in containing COVID” but added that workers have “understandable concerns about public transportation, cleanliness, security and other quality of life issues.” “Many of you do not wish to return to 60 Wall Street soon,” the memo said, referring to the bank’s downtown Manhattan office. The bank is moving to a new office and trading floor next summer when in-person operations are slated to return, the Journal noted. The move by Deutsche Bank is at contrast with other big U.S. banks, such as JP Morgan and Bank of America, which will begin having some staffers work from their offices as early as this month.

FDIC holds line on bank fees despite sharp deposit growth – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s board voted unanimously to maintain current assessment rates for banks despite a sudden hit to the agency’s insurance fund. In August, the FDIC announced that the Deposit Insurance Fund had fallen to 1.3% of estimated insured deposits in the second quarter, 9 basis points below the previous quarter and 5 basis points below the agency’s statutory minimum. The agency cited an unprecedented surge in deposit growth in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic as the cause, rather than any major loss to the DIF from bank failures. The agency is required by law to develop a restoration plan whenever the DIF’s reserve ratio falls below 1.35%. But officials said at this point they will continue to monitor the situation with the expectation that deposit growth will stabilize, boosting that ratio without an insurance price increase. “While subject to considerable uncertainty, it is the FDIC’s view that raising assessments based on two quarters of extraordinary insured deposit growth would be premature,” FDIC staff wrote in the restoration plan presented to the board. In the memo, the agency said for the first half of the year, estimated insured deposits had grown by an amount equal to roughly three years of growth during a more normal period. The DIF balance totaled $114.7 billion at the end of the second quarter, when the fund had earned nearly $1.8 billion in assessment income. Under the FDIC’s current assessment rate schedule, the average assessment rate last quarter was 4 basis points per total assets minus its average tangible equity. FDIC officials repeatedly emphasized the short-term nature of the spring and summer’s explosive deposit growth, as well as a murky economic outlook, as reasons for not raising rates quite yet. “Of course, we’re living in highly uncertain times, and these estimates are not predictions,” FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams said in prepared remarks. “As part of the restoration plan, we will closely monitor economic conditions, the health of the banking sector and deposit growth trends, and FDIC staff will provide updates to the Board of Directors not less than semi-annually.” Agency staff stressed that assuming a return to normal deposit growth, the fund would likely recover without adjusting assessment rates within eight years – the length of time allowed by law to restore DIF reserves once the fund falls below its legal minimum.

Credit unions to pay $1.5B to bolster NCUA’s deposit insurance fund – Like its counterparts at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union Administration has a deposit problem. A COVID-related deposit surge has pushed the equity ratio of NCUA’s $17.7 billion share insurance fund down to 1.22% – two basis points above the level at which the Federal Credit Union Act requires the regulator to assess a premium or develop a restoration plan. The equity ratio was 1.35% at Dec. 31, 2019, and has not dipped below 1.3% since the middle of 2017. The industry has seen just one failure so far in 2020, a $7.7 million-asset credit union in Beaver, Pa., so the equity ratio’s decline “is totally being driven by growth in insured shares,” Chief Financial Officer Eugene Schied said Thursday at a meeting of NCUA’s governing board in Alexandria, Va. Between January and June, credit union deposits jumped 13%, while the share insurance fund’s capital grew 2%, according to Schied. By comparison, the average annual increase in system-wide deposits has been 4.58%. Credit unions are required to maintain a capital deposit in the share insurance fund equal to 1% of their total deposits. To “true up” those capital deposits, the agency plans to bill institutions with more than $50 million in assets, a process expected to raise $1.5 billion, Schied said. The added capital deposit funding should boost the equity ratio to 1.32% by year-end, said Victoria Nahrwold, NCUA’s director of risk management. “We’re dealing with a black-swan event here,” board member Todd Harper said. “It’s something we’ve never seen before and something we couldn’t have anticipated.” At a meeting Tuesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported a 9-basis-point decline in the equity of its deposit insurance fund to 1.3%, 5 basis points below its statutory minimum. FDIC’s board held off on imposing an assessment on banks in hopes deposit growth will level off. NCUA had the option of imposing a premium, since the share insurance fund is well below its normal operating level of 1.39%, but like FDIC, it chose not to do so. A share insurance premium would be an expensive proposition for most credit unions. If NCUA were forced to impose 5 basis-point premium, the cost for a midsize institution with about $250 million in deposits would approach $125,000 according to Nahrwold.

How a tweak to the Federal Home Loan banks could save cities – Today’s mayors face the dual challenge of expanding civic engagement and economic opportunity for all of their residents. This is especially acute now with the spread of COVID-19, a pandemic that affects everyone but devastates the most vulnerable. Like other mayors around the country, our cities – Little Rock, Ark., and Miami, Fla. – are focused on addressing systemic inequality and responding to COVID-19. Yet, we confront mounting financial pressure from costs associated with these efforts, lower tax revenue and an increasingly unfavorable municipal bond market. And whether the state is red or blue, our critical infrastructure projects are slowed or stopped by declining revenues and resources. Municipal bonds are an essential tool to help cities, counties and states recover from financial crises. The funding from these bonds supports everything from water treatment facilities and industrial development to hospitals, schools and other infrastructure. In Miami, we have leveraged our Miami Forever bond program to invest in climate adaptive infrastructure and economically inclusive policies. At a time when resources are being stretched, tax-exempt bonds can play a bigger role than ever in helping us to invest in our cities through new infrastructure projects, quality jobs and hope for a bright future. Our nation’s ability to fully recover depends on the ability of its state and local governments to issue bonds that will fuel economic recovery, putting members of their communities back to work. Governments at all levels are facing the potential of declining bond ratings that can significantly increase the cost of obtaining bond funding. As responsible public officials, we, like mayors across the nation, are looking to leverage every public policy option available to boost the ability of localities to borrow funds and to lower the cost of debt financing. This is why both of us – a Democratic mayor and a Republican mayor – are joining forces to ask our federal partners to put in place a series of much-needed, bipartisan legislative fixes that will ultimately improve the quality of life for working families and other city residents. We want Congress to allow financial institutions to better utilize the Federal Home Loan Bank System. The 11 Home Loan banks provide low-cost funding to more than 6,700 financial institutions, including many focused on community lending. The legislative fixes will not cost the taxpayer but can empower these institutions to do more. Today, lawmakers need to better position the Home Loan banks to help institutions serving their municipalities. Legislation being considered in Congress includes authorization allowing the banks to issue letters of credit to support tax-exempt bonds and protect deposits by local government entities. These letters would allow local depository institutions to receive state and local government funds in excess of federal deposit insurance levels. Moreover, these letters of credit could increase the marketability and lower the financing costs of tax-exempt bonds, despite uncertainty within the municipal bond market. This is the type of liquidity and support that mayors and municipalities around the country want Congress to bring off the sidelines and put into action to help fuel our nation’s economic recovery.

Calabria to Congress- If you don’t like crisis fee, then fund GSEs – Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s controversial “adverse market” fee at a virtual hearing with House lawmakers on Wednesday. Calabria testified before the House Financial Services Committee, where members of both parties questioned the fee imposed on refinancings. The added charge is meant to help Fannie and Freddie shoulder losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, but the fee could raise costs by an estimated $1,400 for the average consumer. “Rather than allowing homeowners to take advantage of historically low mortgage rates, Director Calabria announced a new refinance fee that would take some of the savings that would have otherwise gone into the pockets of families and instead redirect that money into the pockets of Fannie and Freddie,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the top Republican on the committee, said that the fee’s rollout on Aug. 12 was problematic, but that he understood Fannie and Freddie need to meet their financial obligations. Fannie and Freddie originally planned to start charging the fee Sept. 1, but that was delayed to Dec. 1 after backlash from the mortgage industry. “The way this was announced and the initial three-week timing for its implementation doomed it from the start,” McHenry said. “Clearly, FHFA has a statutory obligation to ensure the GSEs operate in a safe and sound manner with sufficient resources to meet their obligations.” Calabria argued that the fee was necessary in order to cover roughly $6 billion in projected losses resulting from the pandemic, which the two companies are required to recoup by law. He also said that the fee, 0.5% on refinanced mortgages, was lower than the fee Fannie and Freddie had initially requested. The government-sponsored enterprises will also exempt mortgage loans with a balance of less than $125,000 from the additional cost. “By the charters of the GSEs, they are required to recapture those costs via income,” Calabria said. “This was Fannie and Freddie’s suggestion and as a safety and soundness regulator when I’ve got two multitrillion dollar entities coming to me and saying that if they aren’t allowed to increase their income that they are at the risk of distress, I simply have to take that seriously. I can’t simply ignore instability in the mortgage market.” Calabria indicated that Congress could prevent the fee by appropriating funds to the GSEs to cover coronavirus-related losses. The FHFA has suggested that Fannie and Freddie’s losses would be derived in part from forbearance policies mandated by the recent Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. “Since this fee is resulting from costs that arise out of the CARES Act that are unfunded, of course Congress could fund that,” Calabria said. “I think it would have to be in the neighborhood of $10 billion that would make sure that we would not have to reassess any fees that would cover COVID costs.” Calabria clarified that he was not endorsing a possible decision by Congress to appropriate funds to Fannie and Freddie through legislation. He said the refinance fee was a reasonable step. “This fee amounts to about five basis points annually on the loan,” he said. “That’s less than mortgage rates have been fluctuating during the time this hearing has been going on.” Calabria was also pressed by members about extending the freezes on foreclosures and evictions that the FHFA announced early in the pandemic.

Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Decreased –Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance.This data is as of September 15th. From Fourth Consecutive Week of Forbearance Improvement Overall, the total number of mortgages in forbearance continued to improve this week, as the number of active plans declined another 26K (-0.7%). This marks the fourth consecutive week of improvement, and declining volumes for 10 of the past 12 weeks. As of September 15, just under 3.7M homeowners remain in COVID-19-related forbearance plans. That’s down more than 22% from the peak of over 4.7M in late May. These loans represent 7% of the active mortgage universe, unchanged from last week. Together, they represent $781 billion in unpaid principal.Active forbearances are now down 266K (-7%) over the past 30 days, as servicers continue to proactively assess the 1.7M forbearance plans still set to expire in September for extensions and removals.Given the large number of plans in which September’s mortgage payment was the last payment covered under forbearance plan, we could see significant removal/extension activity over the next few weeks.

NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Shows Decline in Households Paying Rent in September -From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 86.2 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of September 13: The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 86.2 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by September 13 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.This is a 2.4-percentage point, or 279,457-household decrease from the share who paid rent through September 13, 2019 and compares to 86.9 percent that had paid by August 13, 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 it remains clear that many apartment residents continue to prioritize their housing obligations and that apartment owners and operators remain committed to meeting them halfway with creative and nuanced approaches, the reality is that the second week of September figures shows ongoing deterioration of rent payment figures – representing hundreds of thousands of households who are increasingly at risk,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President.”This sadly comes as little surprise given that Congress and the Administration have failed to come back to the table and extend the critical protections that supported apartment residents and the nation’s consumer base during the initial months of the pandemic.This graph from the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker shows the percent of household making full or partial rent payments by the 6th of the month.CR Note: This is mostly for large, professionally managed properties. It appears fewer people are paying their rent this year compared to last year – down 2.4 percentage points from a year ago – and also down 0.7 percentage points compared to last month at the same point (August 2020). Declining, but not falling off a cliff.

Retail Sales increased 0.6% in August – On a monthly basis, retail sales increased 0.6 percent from July to August (seasonally adjusted), and sales were up 2.6 percent from August 2019. From the Census Bureau report: Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $537.5 billion,an increase of 0.6 percent from the previous month, and 2.6 percent above August 2019. Total sales for the June 2020 through August 2020 period were up 2.4 percent from the same period a year ago. The June 2020 to July 2020 percent change was revised from up 1.2 percent to up 0.9 percent.This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales and food service, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline). Retail sales ex-gasoline were up 0.6% in August. The second graph shows the year-over-year change in retail sales and food service (ex-gasoline) since 1993. Year-over-year change in Retail Sales Retail and Food service sales, ex-gasoline, increased by 4.0% on a YoY basis. The increase in August was below expectations, and sales in June and July were revised down, combined.

Real retail sales gains join industrial production in sharp deceleration — Yesterday we saw that gains in industrial production had decelerated sharply in August. This morning we saw the same thing with real retail sales, one of my favorite indicators. Nominal retail sales were up +0.6% in August. Meanwhile July’s reading was revised downward by -0.3%. Since in July and August consumer inflation was up +0.6% and +0.4%, respectively, that means revised *real* retail sales rose +0.3% in July and +0.2% in August. Which means that the net result over two months was lower than previously thought for the month of July alone. Nevertheless real retails sales did establish a new record high, above any reading from before the pandemic: Historically consumption has led employment (/2) by several months (albeit with lots of noise), and has an even closer relationship with aggregate hours (all shown YoY below): Here is the short-term view of the past 9 months: Because sales have made a full recovery, I expect employment and hours worked to continue to show gains for the next several months, although at a slower pace, particularly if employers suspect – as most economic watchers including myself appear to – that the end of the emergency Congressional relief will lead to a renewed downturn in spending.

American chains are turning to Mexican toilet paper as they struggle to keep shelves stocked – Toilet paper is back on store shelves. But you may not recognize some of the brands. Demand for toilet paper has been so high during the pandemic that in order to keep their shelves stocked, retailers are buying up foreign toilet paper brands, mostly from Mexico. Major chains, across the country, including CVS, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, 7-Eleven and others, are carrying the international brands. In recent weeks, a CVS in New York has been selling three Mexican brands: Regio, Hoteles Elite and Daisy Soft. Mexico’s Petalo was on the shelves of a Piggly Wiggly in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. And a Safeway supermarket in Fremont, California, had those same brands, plus Vogue, whose label says in Spanish that it smells like chamomile. The stores said they needed to get creative during the pandemic and started working with new suppliers to get shoppers what they needed. But don’t worry about popular U.S. brands like Charmin – they aren’t going to disappear. Supply chain experts expect the Mexican and other foreign-made rolls to be on store shelves only temporarily, until U.S. manufacturers catch up with demand.

LA Area Port Inbound Traffic up to New Record High, Outbound Traffic Down Year-over-year in August – Note: The expansion to the Panama Canal was completed in 2016 (As I noted a few years ago), and some of the traffic that used the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is probably going through the canal. This might be impacting TEUs on the West Coast. Container traffic gives us an idea about the volume of goods being exported and imported – and usually some hints about the trade report since LA area ports handle about 40% of the nation’s container port traffic. The following graphs are for inbound and outbound traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in TEUs (TEUs: 20-foot equivalent units or 20-foot-long cargo container). To remove the strong seasonal component for inbound traffic, the first graph shows the rolling 12 month average. On a rolling 12 month basis, inbound traffic was up 1.5% in August compared to the rolling 12 months ending in July. Outbound traffic was down 0.4% compared to the rolling 12 months ending the previous month. The 2nd graph is the monthly data (with a strong seasonal pattern for imports). LA Area Port TrafficUsually imports peak in the July to October period as retailers import goods for the Christmas holiday, and then decline sharply and bottom in February or March depending on the timing of the Chinese New Year (January 25th in 2020). Imports were up 16% YoY in August to a new record high, and exports were down 5% YoY.

“I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”: Shippers Using West Coast Ports Can’t Book Rail On BNSF And Union Pacific – A Northern California logistics consultant was unable to book containers on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) or Union Pacific (UP) railroads for the first week of September going to and from U.S. West Coast ports and Midwest destinations. The consultant said, “I have been working in the industry for thirty years and I have never seen anything like this. It’s weird.” The result is that importers of low value products being shipped by containers such as tee shirts would be at an economic disadvantage transporting containers by truck as opposed to by rail between U.S. West Coast ports and Midwest destinations, because of the higher cost. The consultant explained that there is a huge shortage of rail capacity: “There are no rail cars and there are no chassis.” The consultant, who is not identified, was contracted to research container rail bookings on the UP and BNSF to and from U.S. West Coast ports including: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, & Seattle. The result of the research was that: “The railroads will not take any bookings right now and so all the containers going to and from the West Coast to places such as Chicago and Memphis must go by truck.” The consultant cited the following trucking rates per container as examples:

• Los Angeles/ Long Beach to Chicago: $7000.
• LA/LB to New Berlin, Wisconsin: $6,700.
• LA/LB to Nashville, Tennessee: $7,200.
• LA/LB to Dallas, Texas: $5000.
• LA/LB to Jacksonville, Florida: $8,800.

The consultant said that in the past it had been possible to truck a container coast-to-coast for $2,000: “But those days are gone.”In addition, “In the good old days you could ship a co ntainer from the West Coast to Chicago or Memphis by rail for $1000 dollars.”

Rail Week Ending 12 September 2020 – Still In Contraction But Remains On An Improving Trendline – Week 37 of 2020 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) declined according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. Total rail traffic has been mostly in contraction for over one year – and now is recovering from a coronavirus pandemic. Total rail traffic has two components – carloads and intermodal (containers or trailers on rail cars). Container exports from China are now recovering, container exports from the U.S. declined and remains deep in contraction. This week again intermodal continued in expansion year-over-year and continues on a strengthening trendline.However, carloads remain deep in contraction. But overall, rail is on an improving trendline. The intuitive sectors (total carloads removing coal, grain, and petroleum) contracted 13.9 % year-over-year for this week. We primarily use rolling averages to analyze the intuitive data due to weekly volatility – and the 4 week rolling year-over-year average for the intuitive sectors worsened from -9.8 % to -10.1 %.When rail contracts, it suggests a slowing of the economy.The following graph compares the four-week moving averages for carload economically intuitive sectors (red line) vs. total movements (blue line): Intermodal transport growth was weak and in contraction in 2019.This analysis is looking for clues in the rail data to show the direction of economic activity – and is not necessarily looking for clues of the profitability of the railroads. The weekly data is fairly noisy, and the best way to view it is to look at the rolling averages (carloads [including coal and grain] and intermodal combined). A summary for this week from the AAR:For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 474,785 carloads and intermodal units, down 9.9 percent compared with the same week last year.Total carloads for the week ending September 12 were 214,142 carloads, down 15.2 percent compared with the same week in 2019, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 260,643 containers and trailers, down 5 percent compared to 2019.One of the 10 carload commodity groups posted an increase compared with the same week in 2019. It was grain, up 3,098 carloads, to 21,550. Commodity groups that posted decreases compared with the same week in 2019 included coal, down 20,518 carloads, to 60,278; nonmetallic minerals, down 9,007 carloads, to 26,760; and metallic ores and metals, down 4,648 carloads, to 18,157.For the first 37 weeks of 2020, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 7,884,697 carloads, down 15.8 percent from the same point last year; and 9,158,459 intermodal units, down 6.9 percent from last year. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 37 weeks of 2020 was 17,043,156 carloads and intermodal units, a decrease of 11.2 percent compared to last year.The middle row in the table below removes coal, grain, and petroleum from the changes in the railcar counts as these commodities are not economically intuitive.

The Airline Industry Collapse Part 4 – Total Paralysis Continues – Hubert Horan – Readers who had not seen the previous posts outlining the aviation crisis, or would find a summation of the critical issues useful, should take a look at my video interview with Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times on Friday the 11th. Here is an alternative Youtube link to the video interview. Towards the end of the interview, Izabella noted that my main arguments were “depressing” and asked me to provide a bit of optimism by outlining potential solutions to the industry crisis. This might be a good place to clarify which parts of the crisis will be difficult and painful and which parts are legitimately “depressing.”This series has laid out data showing that the current crisis is staggering worse than any previous crisis in aviation history. A previous downturn that reduced traffic 6% put 75% of US industry capacity into bankruptcy. The current crisis has cut traffic by 75% and revenue by 85%. The critical corporate and international markets have completely collapsed, every carrier is hemorrhaging cash, and almost none of the major carriers can be considered viable going concerns.Since the collapse is greater and more widespread than anything the industry has ever faced, it logically follows that the actions needed to halt the collapse and restore sustainable operations will be more difficult and painful than anything the industry has ever required in the past.More importantly, of collapse of this magnitude fundamentally changes the nature of the problem, and changes how any solution would need to be structured. Past airline crisis were limited to fairly narrow industry segments (a couple carriers had foolishly overexpanded, supply and demand had gotten out of whack in a specific country or market), were known to be temporary and had not disrupted basic industry economics (recessions pass, and don’t structurally change the demand for travel) and there was still a large set of competitors and investors that could help restructure (or replace) the companies that could no longer meet their financial obligations. The current airline crisis is global, supply and demand are wildly out of balance everywhere, and the pandemic is likely to permanently reduce industry demand (due to videoconference, reduced global trade, and structurally higher fares). Competitors cannot step in to fix local problems; nobody wants to buy anyone’s excess aircraft and the number of competing airlines had already been radically reduced. The current collapse is a crisis for overall economic welfare. The industry’s ability to sustainably produce benefits for society as a whole (facilitating huge amounts of economic activity, employment, trade, etc.) is fundamentally broken. As the past months have demonstrated, multi-billion dollar cash drains will not magically go away by themselves. Allowing desperate airline investors to pursue their short-term self interest will not maximize long-run welfare benefits for other stakeholders or the rest of society.

Industrial Production Increased 0.4 Percent in August; Still 7.2% Below Pre-Crisis Level — From the Fed: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization: Industrial production rose 0.4 percent in August for its fourth consecutive monthly increase. However, even after the recent gains, the index in August was 7.3 percent below its pre-pandemic February level. Manufacturing output continued to improve in August, rising 1.0 percent, but the gains for most manufacturing industries have gradually slowed since June. Mining production fell 2.5 percent in August, as Tropical Storm Marco and Hurricane Laura caused sharp but temporary drops in oil and gas extraction and well drilling. The output of utilities moved down 0.4 percent. At 101.4 percent of its 2012 average, the level of total industrial production was 7.7 percent lower in August than it was a year earlier. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector increased 0.3 percentage point in August to 71.4 percent, a rate that is 8.4 percentage points below its long-run (1972 – 2019) average but 7.3 percentage points above its low in April. This graph shows Capacity Utilization. This series is up from the record low set in April, but still well below the level in February 2020. Capacity utilization at 71.4% is 8.4% below the average from 1972 to 2017. The second graph shows industrial production since 1967. Industrial production increased in August to 101.4. This is 7.2% below the February 2020 level. The change in industrial production was below consensus expectations, however industrial production in June and July were revised up.

Industrial production improves in August, but with sharp deceleration – If the jobs report is the Queen of Coincident Indicators, industrial production is the King. It, more than any other metric, is found at the turning points where recessions both begin and end. This morning’s report of industrial production for August shows that the recovery from the bottom of the coronavirus recession has come close to stalling out. Overall industrial production grew by 0.4%, while July was revised higher by 0.5%. Manufacturing production grew just under 1.0%. July was likewise revised higher by 0.6%. Here are the overall totals:The good news is that manufacturing production has gained back almost 70% of its decline from March. Overall production has gained a little over half of its decline. The bad news, as is easily seen from the trajectories of the recoveries, is that there has been a sharp deceleration in them since June. Since production generally follows consumption (but is considerably more volatile), it is not a surprise that industrial production (blue) has continued to recover in the face of a total recovery in real retail sales (violet) (shown YoY): But with the expiration of supplemental Congressional unemployment aid, like most observers I am expecting that consumption rebound to end – and that will likely show up in the ending of the industrial rebound as well in several months.

NY Fed: Manufacturing “Business activity expanded at a solid clip in New York State” in September – From the NY Fed: Empire State Manufacturing Survey Business activity expanded at a solid clip in New York State, according to firms responding to the September 2020 Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The headline general business conditions index climbed thirteen points to 17.0….The index for number of employees held steady at 2.6, indicating little change in employment levels. The average workweek index rose fourteen points to 6.7, its first positive reading since the pandemic began, signaling an increase in hours worked. This was above expectations, and showed activity expanded in September.

Philly Fed Manufacturing “continued to expand” in September –Note: Be careful with diffusion indexes. This shows a rebound off the bottom – some improvement from May to September – but doesn’t show the level of activity. Earlier from the Philly Fed: September 2020 Manufacturing Business Outlook SurveyManufacturing activity in the region continued to expand this month, according to firms responding to the September Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The survey’s current indicators for general activity, new orders, and shipments remained positive for the fourth consecutive month. The employment index improved in September and remained in positive territory for the third consecutive month. Nearly all of the future indexes increased, suggesting more widespread optimism among firms about growth over the next six months. The diffusion index for current activity fell 2 points to 15.0 in September, its fourth consecutive positive reading after reaching long-term lows in April and May … On balance, the firms reported increases in manufacturing employment for the third consecutive month: The current employment index increased 7 points to 15.7 this month. This was close to the consensus forecast. Here is a graph comparing the regional Fed surveys and the ISM manufacturing index: The New York and Philly Fed surveys are averaged together (blue, through September), and five Fed surveys are averaged (yellow, through August) including New York, Philly, Richmond, Dallas and Kansas City. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) PMI (red) is through August (right axis). These early reports suggest the ISM manufacturing index will likely not change much from the August level.

860,000 Americans Filed For First-Time Jobless Benefits Last Week – While some may celebrate the fact that initial jobless claims was below 1 million for the 3rd week in a row, the fact remains that a stunning 860,000 Americans filed for first time unemployment benefits last week… That is more than four times the pre-COVID ‘normal’ and well above any peak week during the great financial crisis collapse. And this is 7 months after the lockdowns began! Maybe it’s time for Governors to start opening these states!!

“Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2019” – This survey was impacted by COVID, and the results are probably distorted (see last paragraph below). From the Census Bureau: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2019 The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that median household income in 2019 increased 6.8% from 2018, and the official poverty rate decreased 1.3 percentage points. Meanwhile the percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2019 was 92.0% and 8.0% of people, or 26.1 million, did not have health insurance at any point during 2019, according to the 2020 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). Median household income was $68,703 in 2019, an increase of 6.8% from the 2018 median. Between 2018 and 2019, the real median earnings of all workers increased by 1.4%, while the real median earnings of full-time, year-round workers increased 0.8%. The official poverty rate in 2019 was 10.5%, a decrease of 1.3 percentage points from 11.8% in 2018. This is the fifth consecutive annual decline in the national poverty rate. Since 2014, the poverty rate has fallen 4.3 percentage points, from 14.8% to 10.5%. The 2019 poverty rate of 10.5% is the lowest rate observed since estimates were initially published for 1959. The number of people in poverty in 2019 was 34.0 million, 4.2 million fewer people than 2018. … While the Census Bureau went to great lengths to complete interviews by telephone, the response rate for the CPS basic household survey was 73% in March 2020, about 10 percentage points lower than in preceding months and the same period in 2019, which were regularly above 80%. The change from conducting first interviews in person to making first contacts by telephone contributed to the lower response rates and it is likely that the characteristics of people for whom a telephone number was found may be systematically different from the people for whom the Census Bureau was unable to obtain a telephone number.

Household income gains welcome in 2019 Census data, but may not be as strong as they first appear – EPI Blog – Yesterday’s Census Bureau report on 2019 income levels showed significant gains in median household income in 2019, but it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. First, those gains may not be as strong as initially reported given survey non-response bias, which we explain below. Second, household incomes in 2019 provide little information on what is currently happening in the U.S. economy, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, as a measure of how strong the economy can get, there is still room for improvement in terms of overall growth as well as in narrowing economic inequality and closing racial gaps.According to the Census Bureau’s latest report, median household incomes rose 6.8% between 2018 and 2019. Ignoring the non-response concerns and taking this for face value, this represents a significant step towards reclaiming the lost decade of income growth caused by the Great Recession. The economy continued to grow in 2019 and the unemployment rate averaged 3.7% over the year. Increasing earnings as well as slowing inflation between 2018 and 2019 contributed to significant gains in household incomes.And, yet, there’s reason to put a big old asterisk on the data for 2019. Although the data release includes information about 2019 only, the data was collected between February and April of this year, right as the pandemic began to spread rapidly and most of the country was locked down. This Census paper discusses some of the impacts the pandemic had on data collection efforts. Overall, non-response increased significantly and was more strongly associated with income than in previous years, with non-response decreasing with income, meaning that income data could be skewed higher than it actually was. Respondents were also less likely to be Black and more likely to be white or Hispanic. Using that information, researchers at the Census provided new estimates for household income over the last four years, provided as a separate working paper and not adjusted in the official Census report. The figure below provides some perspective on those changes along with other data changes in the last several years. Solid lines are reported CPS ASEC data; dashed lines prior to 2013 denote historical values imputed by applying the redesigned income methodology in 2013 to past trends and the dotted lines since 2016 represent the new imputed values from the Census working paper on non-response rates.

Over 13 million more people would be in poverty without unemployment insurance and stimulus payments: Senate Republicans are blocking legislation proven to reduce poverty –It is often underappreciated how effective public safety net spending and social insurance programs are in reducing poverty. Even in normal years, tens of millions of people are kept out of poverty only because of these programs. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, the importance of public spending in averting poverty became even more evident. In its annual report on household income and poverty released Tuesday, the Census Bureau estimated that Social Security kept 26.5 million people out of poverty in 2019, and refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit reduced the number of people in poverty by 7.5 million. Unemployment insurance (UI) kept about 472,000 people from being in poverty (see Figure A) in 2019. The relatively small poverty reduction is due to the fact that few people received UI in 2019, both because of relatively low unemployment rates and because many low-wage workers are generally ineligible for UI benefits due to restrictive earnings eligibility requirements.In March of this year, as job loss began to accelerate, Congress temporarily strengthened the UI system as part of the CARES Act. Notably, it extended eligibility to low-wage, part-time, and self-employed workers, and it added an extra weekly UI benefit of $600. The law also provided a one-time Economic Impact Payment (EIP) of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child. New research by Jeehoon Han, Bruce Meyer, and James Sullivan estimates that EIP and UI payments between April and June substantially reduced the number of people in poverty, even when millions of workers were suddenly laid off or furloughed. Applying those results to the recently released Census data for 2019 shows that the number of people in poverty fell by 4.7 million between the end of 2019 and June 2020, from 34.0 million to 29.3 million.The fall in poverty is entirely due to the EIP and UI payments. The EIP alone reduced poverty by 8.2 million workers and the UI programs had a slightly smaller impact, lowering poverty by 7.2 million workers. Had both of those programs not been in place, the effects of the economic shock caused by the pandemic would have increased poverty by 13.2 million people to about 42.5 million people overall living in poverty. These are temporary poverty reductions effective the month of June 2020 because of the one-time nature of the $1,200 check and the July expiration of the supplementary $600 weekly UI benefit.

Homicides spike 52 percent in Chicago amid coronavirus pandemic – Homicides have increased more than 50 percent in Chicago since the coronavirus pandemic began, officials in Cook County said this week. The medical examiner’s office for the nation’s second-largest county said 95 percent of the victims were people of color, and Chicago has already recorded more homicides this year than in all of 2019, USA Today reported. Some of the shootings during the pandemic have claimed the lives of children under 10 years old. President Trump has argued that Democratic mayors in cities like Chicago are to blame for much of the violence. In early June, Trump threatened to send the National Guard to Chicago. “That’s not gonna happen. I will see him in court,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said in response to Trump. “It’s not gonna happen, not in my city. And I’m not confident that the president has the power to do that. But we have our lawyers hard at work and if he tries to do that and usurp the power of our governor, and myself as the mayor, we will see him in court.”

Mounting opposition to school reopenings as 55 New York City teachers test positive for COVID-19 – With schools slated to reopen across New York City next week, 55 teachers and school staff in the district have already tested positive for COVID-19. Since most of those that tested positive had to wait several days before receiving their test results, many had already reported to school buildings for preservice preparations with colleagues last week. Teachers across the largest school district in the United States returned to their buildings to prepare for the upcoming school year on September 8, after a deal was struck behind their backs between the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio. The deal, which highlights the collusion between the teachers unions in the US and both political parties in the reckless reopening of K-12 schools, sought to derail a widely anticipated teachers strike by delaying the resumption of in-person instruction until September 21. However, all the fundamental issues at stake in the reopening of New York City’s schools remain unresolved, and there is mounting opposition to this homicidal policy. Late last Wednesday, news began to surface that two teachers at two separate schools, PS 001 and MS 88, both located in District 15 in Brooklyn, had tested positive for COVID-19. According to initial reports, the teachers received their test results Tuesday evening, after they had reported to their respective schools earlier the same day. By Wednesday it was revealed that 16 teachers from 16 different buildings had tested positive, with most of the tests administered on September 2, a full eight days before being notified of their results and two days after they had been in contact with colleagues in school buildings. The explosion of COVID-19 positive cases among teachers across the city was entirely predictable given the widespread outbreaks that have taken place in K-12 districts and college campuses across the United States during the past month. Since August, at least six K-12 teachers have died from the coronavirus nationally, with countless others falling ill to the virus.

NYC Mayor Delays Start Of School For 2nd Time; Global COVID-19 Cases Near 30 Million- Live Update New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is once again caving to the teacher’s unions by delaying the start of school for a second time, while also changing up the plan. According to the New York Times, the city will instead start bringing kids back “on a rolling basis”, beginning next week. Instead, the city will phase students back into classrooms on a rolling basis, starting with the youngest children, who will report to schools next week. Students in pre-K classes and students with advanced special needs will return on Monday. On Sept. 29, elementary schools will open, and middle and high schools will open on Oct. 1. The sudden shift comes just three days before the nation’s largest school district was set to reopen. It is the second time that Mayor Bill de Blasio has delayed the start of in-person classes, which were originally set to begin on Sept. 10. According to the NY Post, de Blasio “caved to mounting pressre” from teachers unions and elected officials, all of whom have slammed the city’s and the school district’s lack of preparedness. The NYT says de Blasio will explain more during a Thursday press briefing, but with NYC’s cases and hospitalizations and deaths all still near their all-time lows, we can’t imagine a clear-cut data-driven argument for doing so. Looks like one more sop to the teacher’s unions.One day after crossing the 5 million-case threshold, India has reported yet another record single-day jump in coronavirus cases, with 97,894 reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to 5.12 million, as the world is roughly one day away from topping the 30 million case mark. Indian cases are now climbing at roughly double the rate of the US.

Teachers say some parents drink, smoke, and appear half-dressed in online classroom | KOMO – In a school board meeting Wednesday, Boca Raton Elementary teacher Edith Pride delivered a colorful message to parents.”Parents, please make sure that you have on proper clothing when you are walking behind your child’s computer because we’ve seen them in their drawers, their bras, and everything else,” Pride said during public comment.Pride said she had plenty of issues to take up with the district, but dedicated her entire three minutes to this message.”Parents, when you are helping your children at their computer please do not appear with big joints in your hands and cigarettes,” Pride continued. “Those joints be as big as cigars. Oh yeah, we’ve seen it all.”In a school board meeting Wednesday, Boca Raton Elementary teacher Edith Pride delivered a colorful message to parents. (WPEC) Though her comments drew laughter from the crowd, her message struck a chord with many local teachers who have had similar experiences navigating the sometimes unpredictable world of online lessons.”I did have a parent who sat on the couch and we could see an ankle monitor on her leg,” said one teacher, who wished to remain anonymous.”I had a father, no shirt drinking a beer at 11:45 in the morning,” another teacher said.While teachers say that most parents are respectful of online class time, they worry about the behavior some kids are being exposed to in the online classrooms.”(Students) do see other things that they’ve probably never seen before so I know that is a challenge,” one teacher said. A spokesperson said all classes are recorded in case students need to go back and review their lessons.

Parents sent child to Massachusetts school despite positive COVID-19 test A pair of Massachusetts parents sent their child to school despite the high schooler having tested positive for the coronavirus days before, according to the town’s mayor. Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux sj(D) aid in a Facebook post Wednesday that a student who had tested positive for the coronavirus had been in school Monday, urging other parents not to make the same mistake. The parents found out their child tested positive on Sept. 11 but thought that they could go to school after quarantining for several days, the mayor told CNN. “The parents used very poor judgment, it’s very frustrating,” Heroux told the outlet. “The school department did everything they were supposed to do.” Attleboro High School Superintendent David Sawyer sent a letter to parents notifying them that a student who tested positive for COVID-19 attended class on Monday but that the school was not aware of the diagnosis until the next day, according to CNN. The superintendent reportedly said 28 students who had close contact with the infected person have been notified and asked to quarantine for 14 days.

One-third of schools in Knox County, Tennessee have at least one positive COVID-19 case -Schools in Knox County, Tennessee, which includes the city of Knoxville, concluded their third week of school last week with over one-third of schools in the district having reported a positive case of COVID-19. Across the county, 31 of 88 schools have at least one confirmed COVID-19 case. The growing spread of the deadly virus is the direct outcome of the “herd immunity” policies that have been pursued by every level of government in the US from the Trump administration down to the local Board of Education in the county. The public health protocols in the county mandate that principals of individual schools contact staff and parents after a confirmed case of COVID-19. The schools then collaborate with public health officials to conduct contact tracing, and anyone that has been within six feet of someone infected with COVID-19 for 15 minutes or longer is required to quarantine for two weeks. Within the last few weeks, Knox County Health Department has reported some of the largest daily increases in COVID-19 cases in the country since the start of the pandemic. The department reported 222 new cases on September 6, 219 new cases on September 15 and 189 new cases on September 12. According to the Knox County School website, as of September 15 there are 50 active COVID-19 cases associated with the school district, including 39 students and 11 staff members. In a reflection of the failure to implement adequate social distancing measures within the schools, 917 students and 69 staff members were in isolation or quarantine on the same day. Prior to the school year resuming, over a hundred teachers in the county refused to return to in-person instruction, opting to either retire or resign from their positions. By early July, over 18,000 students – roughly 30 percent of the 59,235 total enrollment – were registered for virtual learning. Last week, the Knox County School Board announced that they were in need of more substitute teachers in order to continue with in-person classes. The school board has acknowledged that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the district had been experiencing a shortage of substitute teachers, and that the situation has worsened as a result of staff needing to be quarantined. The Executive Director of Human Resources at Knox County Schools, Scott Bolton, stated last week, “We’re seeing issues because of contact tracing or people having to quarantine. We’re having to fill those vacancies. Now, while staff members are quarantined, they’re still providing remote instruction into the classroom. However, the issue is we need someone in that particular classroom to monitor students and to assist with any kind of technology, and that’s what we use our subs for in that scenario.”

Anchorage School District plans to bring kids back to in-person classes in phases starting Oct. 19 – The Anchorage School District announced a plan on Wednesday to gradually phase its students back in to school buildings, beginning with its elementary and high-needs students. Anchorage schools closed in March as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of Alaska. Schools have remained closed since, although online classes resumed at the beginning of the school year on Aug. 20. “We are confident that while we cannot eliminate the virus, we can effectively mitigate its spread using the most up-to-date information and best practices from the medical and science experts from around the world,” the district wrote.In-person classes will resume on Oct. 19 for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, and all students will attend school five days a week for 5 1/2 hours each day, according to a district-wide message. Students in self-contained special education programs will also return to school buildings Oct. 19.The district said in-person classes for first-year middle school students will begin Nov. 12-13, for grades six or seven, depending on the school. All other middle school students will begin classes on Nov. 16, according to the email.

George Washington Enrollment Drops 17% in Pandemic Setback – – George Washington University’s enrollment is down about 17% from last year, an early indication of the impact of Covid-19 on U.S. higher education.President Thomas LeBlanc told a faculty senate meeting that preliminary undergraduate enrollment is about 1,000 students below its target of 10,126, a spokeswoman said Monday. Last year, the school in Washington, D.C., drew 12,031 undergrads in the fall, including 1,416 from abroad, and 11,008 were full-time students.Provost Brian Blake said in an interview that he expects the enrollment drop to be lessened when final numbers are tabulated next month.The university was already planning to decrease the size of its undergraduate population over several years, but the pandemic accelerated the drop, according to the spokeswoman.Colleges have feared that fewer students would show up this term, with masks, virus testing and limited interactions for in-person attendees. Many schools are going all or mostly virtual, while others have sent students home after outbreaks.Some 67% of schools expected enrollment to decrease, and most forecast lower tuition revenue, according to a poll last month by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Those with big international populations forecast the steepest declines.

Surge in COVID-19 infections as in-person classes resume at many Illinois college campuses – As with schools across the US, many Illinois college campuses have seen a spike in coronavirus infections since the decision by state authorities to permit in-person classes. While some universities in the state have switched to online learning or to an in-person/online hybrid model, others have brought students back onto campus and are holding regular classes. Despite promises made to students and faculty that universities would open safely, the return to campus has resulted in massive outbreaks. Lack of administrative action and reports of poor and unsafe conditions, hasty student quarantines and general negligence have evoked a substantial backlash by students. The University of Illinois (U of I) at Champaign-Urbana, the largest university in the state with 48,000 students, opened August 24 with students on campus, but with classes being held through a hybrid model of both online and face-to-face. U of I even developed its own COVID-19 test. The test is saliva-based and is faster, easier to administer and far cheaper than standard tests. Despite this, there has been a surge of COVID-19 cases among faculty and staff. More than 1,900 cases have been reported on campus, the vast majority among undergraduate students. Undergraduates have been urged to restrict their activities to essential ones only. This includes going out to buy groceries, attending religious events, seeking urgent medical help and receiving their twice-weekly COVID test. This temporary quarantine is set to last only until the 16th of this month. After that time, the plan is to resume normal functions, with the potential for a new outbreak. Some Illinois colleges with later start dates are attempting to implement measures aimed at convincing students that a return to campus will be safe, without providing plans that could realistically provide a safe environment. For example, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which is set to begin classes September 24, is not admitting first- and second-year students on campus (with few exceptions) and is having them conduct all their classes online. But, third- and fourth-year students are being welcomed on campus and have the choice of taking classes in person, through a hybrid model, or completely online. Northwestern is also requiring students who plan to return to campus to get tested before arriving and regularly throughout the fall.

University of Illinois at Chicago workers go on strike against low wages and unsafe conditions – Workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have gone on strike as of this morning. The workers, who are in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), include nearly 4,000 maintenance, clerical, professional, technical, and service employees at the university. Workers unanimously voted to strike earlier in the month after the year-long contract negotiations between SEIU and UIC management failed to meet workers’ most basic demands in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Workers are striking to demand adequate staffing to ensure safety of staff, patients, and students, proper personal protective equipment (PPE), including universal masking and N95s in the hospital, an increase in the base minimum pay to $15 per hour, improvements to workload and time off, and language in the contract that prohibits outsourcing work. Many workers are angered by the university’s failure to provide decent pay as they are risking their lives and those of their families. Sharon Geddis, a service worker at UIC, said: “I am going on strike because I deserve a living wage to be able to enjoy things like any other hard-working person in America. I shouldn’t have to struggle from paycheck to paycheck when I’m working every day. President Killeen doesn’t have to struggle, why should I?” The president of the University of Illinois, Timothy Killeen, makes $835,000 a year. He received a 40 percent pay raise only a week after the University of Illinois trustees unanimously approved a tuition hike of 1.8 percent at Urbana-Champaign and Chicago. Other workers are protesting on similar grounds, demanding that UIC provide PPE to all workers on site. Jonna Mchugh, a student advisor, said: “I’m going on strike because when I have to go back to working on site, I want to be sure that UIC will pull out all the stops to protect me and my coworkers from COVID-19. This includes providing proper PPE to ALL who are on site, ensuring safe staffing levels so that we are not expected to take on more workers with fewer resources, and receiving fair pay for our work.” The Illinois Nurses Association (INA) at the University of Illinois hospital has also been on strike since Saturday, after a three-year contract between UIC and the INA expired. Healthcare workers are striking to demand a limit to the number of patients a single nurse can care for at one time, as there is currently no cap. They are also protesting the hospital’s attempt to freeze nurses’ pay for three years, which has been met with ferocious hostility by nurses who are working amidst the deadly pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 900 nurses in the United States have died from COVID-19.

The University of Iowa and Iowa State University students and staff unite to oppose in-person learning – Iowa students and faculty at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University have united together to oppose the reckless reopening plans of the universities. The students and faculty are planning a sickout today after over 900 students at the University of Iowa participated in a similar action September 2. The demands of those involved in the protest are to end all in-person classes and have all learning be done online until the pandemic is under control. The protest is being organized by two groups, UIowa Sickout at the University of Iowa and Iowa Student Action at Iowa State. Representatives from Iowa Student Action told Iowa State Daily, “The Board of Regents and [University President] Wendy Wintersteen made the decision to open, prioritizing their own profit and not the health and safety of the community.” The students continued: “They knew it would be unsafe to reopen but did so anyway. They care more about our tuition money and residence hall money than our lives.” Both schools are seeing massive outbreaks of COVID-19. In Story County, where Iowa State is located, 3,119 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19. Iowa has the country’s worst outbreak of the pandemic per capita. As of this writing, there have been 74,767 confirmed cases in the state. Its positivity rate for those who have been tested is close to 10 percent, and six counties have a positivity rate of over 15 percent. So far 1,218 Iowans have died from COVID-19. The University of Iowa has reported a staggering 1,804 total cases. The University has done everything in its power to downplay the severity of the outbreak. Meanwhile, the University of Iowa students are reporting difficulties getting tested for the virus and have been provided few resources to handle the outbreak. One student, Will Luebke, told The Daily Iowan that even after he had come into contact with another student who had tested positive for COVID-19 he could not get tested since he was not yet showing any symptoms.

University of Wisconsin-Madison and La Crosse quarantine students after infections – After a reported surge in COVID-19 cases among the student body at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM), the school administration ordered 2,230 students living on campus in the Witte and Sellery dorms into a two-week quarantine. A total of 1,800 students have now tested positive for COVID-19 at UWM. The affected students were given the choice of returning home to live with their families or remain on campus and live in the crowded COVID-infested residence halls for the duration of the quarantine period. For the less privileged students, those with no other housing option, or for those who did not want to risk infecting their families, there was no other option but to quarantine on campus and risk COVID-19 infection. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL), which has a student body of around 10,500, is having a similar outbreak of COVID-19 cases. On the same day as the UWM quarantine orders, UWL also issued a “shelter in place.” Students living in the Coate residence hall are under restrictions after dozens of students tested positive for COVID-19. With the sudden announcement at UWM, panic and uncertainty quickly set in as it was unclear to students how they would acquire basic necessities. Many of them rushed to the nearest grocery stores to stock up on supplies. Others resigned themselves to their predicament and took the time to take one last leisurely walk. As the restrictions went into effect, students found they were only allowed to leave their dorm floors for scheduled food deliveries three times a day. These meals will cost students $4.99 apiece. The university is claiming students get a selection of many different entrees along with appropriate sides and a fountain drink. Students, however, are reporting that the meal is less than adequate. Sometimes consisting of only sandwiches on some days while on others breakfast was water and a banana or muffin.

San Diego State University seeks to shift blame to students for coronavirus outbreaks following reopening – The number of COVID-19 cases in California is approaching 770,000, with a death toll nearing 15,000. Despite these staggering figures, the state’s major universities, including the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems, have moved forward with “hybrid models” of school reopening. The plans include a combination of in-person and online courses, placing three-quarters of a million students at risk of contracting the virus, along with hundreds of thousands of staff. Since opening, hundreds of cases among college students have been reported every day, and many campuses have become outbreak hotspots. In Southern California, San Diego State University (SDSU) continues to make national headlines, with an explosion of cases that has created a community health disaster. SDSU is the leader among California schools, with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, which increased by more than 200 cases since last week. As of Tuesday, over 648 COVID-positive students have been reported at the university, 73 percent of whom are undergraduates. Responding to the negative press on skyrocketing cases, the CSU Chancellor’s office issued an announcement on Monday that the majority of classes will continue online for the spring 2021 semester. The administration continues to hail preparations made for the current fall semester as a success. Unsurprisingly, campus life continues as “normal.” Brian, a freshman SDSU resident living in the dorms, told the WSWS that there is a lack of information, testing and personal protective equipment (PPE). “It feels like they’re keeping us in the dark,” he said. “The school has been giving out information on testing, and yet it is still not mandatory for students to get tested. Also, there are no places on campus to obtain proper PPE and cleaning gear.” For weeks, many students avoided voluntary testing for fear of social stigma, repercussions from the school, and the horrific conditions of the isolation dorms that have been leaked on social media in a now viral tweet. Attempting to respond to demands of mass testing, the university announced on Tuesday an end to their stay-at-home advisory and boasted a new nominally required testing plan. Reportedly, students living on campus will be told at random to report for testing, and receive a $5 Starbucks gift card as an incentive. This public relations stunt will do little to nothing to stop the spread of the virus.

“The Virus Isn’t Going Away… Campuses Need To Reopen”, Northeastern Uni President Warns – With many colleges and universities across the country shifting to remote learning for the fall semester, and even the spring semester, one college president is arguing that campuses need to reopen. Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern University in Boston wrote in a Washington Post op-ed titled, “The virus isn’t going away. That’s why campuses need to reopen,” that he believes schools need to reopen, and explained why he himself worked tirelessly to ensure Northeastern students could return to their classrooms this fall. He argues that the coronavirus is going to be a constant threat, and states that the world cannot hit the pause button. “The pandemic, we realized, is going to be endemic: an ongoing threat to manage, not a brief blip in history, cleanly wiped out by a miracle vaccine. The science will take time. But the world cannot,” Aoun explains after consulting with various epidemiologists, biologists, and scientists from the Northeastern faculty. “Manufacturing enough doses to vaccinate the entire country, let alone the world, will take many months. And we don’t yet know the strength and duration of the immunity that will be conferred, making it likely that the world will experience covid-19 outbreaks, albeit at lower levels, for years,” Aoun continued. Auon states that the coronavirus will likely be a “four-to-five-year problem” and explains that putting a pause on in-person learning would “be devastating to colleges and their students.”“This will likely make COVID-19 at least a four-to-five-year problem, epidemiologists say. Pausing in-person education that long would be devastating to colleges and their students. And even a one-year delay would be a substantial challenge.It would disproportionately hurt low-income students who spent the spring continuing their studies online, without adequate technology, sometimes in overcrowded and even traumatic living conditions. And it would impair universities’ ability to discover solutions that would make the world safer – from this pandemic, and from ones that are yet to come.”

The governor ‘tweaked’ a Harvard COVID map. Their experts say the state’s changes are flawed. – In August, Gov. Jim Justice introduced West Virginia’s parents, teachers and coaches to a new Saturday night ritual: refreshing a state website for updates to the color-coded map that would determine whether ballfields and schoolhouses would be open the following week. State officials modeled the map after one developed by the Harvard Global Health Institute, which places counties into one of four risk levels – green, yellow, orange or red – based on the number of COVID-19 cases per capita. The map developed by West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources looks similar to the Harvard map, lending a veneer of academic rigor to the state’s school reopening plans. But they are never the same. West Virginia officials have relied on outdated data, raised the cutoff that determines each county’s risk level and altered the methodology for determining the total number of cases. The pandemic has become more deadly as West Virginia leaders have downplayed the risks. In recent months, West Virginia’s death toll has risen faster and faster, hitting a record in August of 98 deaths. The state now has had one of the highest COVID “reproductive rates” – the number of people an infected person will spread the disease to, on average – in the nation.Members of the Harvard team that developed the metric said West Virginia was misusing their work.”That doesn’t follow the public health guidance,” said Dr. Thomas Tsai, a health policy researcher and surgeon at Harvard. “It’s like they’re saying you have five downs now, instead of four,” he added, borrowing an analogy from football. Tsai said the goal of the Harvard team, made up of ethicists, policy researchers and public health experts, was to create a single, clear metric that could be used by cities and counties across the country to assess the extent of their coronavirus outbreak. But that scientific consensus proved incompatible with the desires of West Virginia leaders, who wanted to get athletes back onto the field and students back into school as quickly as possible. For weeks, the most obvious similarity between the two maps has been the color palette, and even that disappeared when Justice alchemized five orange counties into “gold” on Tuesday.

More than 15,000 attend University of Texas football game amidst coronavirus pandemic – The University of Texas (UT) at Austin held a football game Saturday between the Texas Longhorns and the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). More than 15,300 people attended the game under conditions in which confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to spread throughout the state. Free COVID-19 tests were required only for students who purchased “The Big Ticket” season pass. All other ticket purchasers from UTEP or non-students were exempt and could not get the free tests, accounting for the roughly 14,000 people at the stadium. A UT Austin spokesperson confirmed that only 1,198 attendees were tested before the game. Out of these, 95 tested positive, or nearly 8 percent. This indicates that the UT Austin student population has an incredibly high incidence of COVID-19. Prior to the game, the university issued a list of wholly inadequate “precautions,” including markings in the stadium for social distancing, a mask mandate, and a ban on tailgating. They also reported that 225 hand sanitizer stations had been set up. Fans at the college football game in Austin, Texas, on September 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) It is well known that people wearing masks in close proximity for long periods can still acquire the virus. It has also been stated by experts and scientists ad infinitum that any large gathering of people, especially where shouting will take place, has the potential to become a “super spreader” event in which large numbers of people become infected with the virus. In fact, the state of Texas has a ban on gatherings of over 10 people. The exception to the requirement was made by the Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. He has also exempted various business re-openings and issued a mandate that schools reopen for in-person classes eight weeks after their normal start date. In a press conference Wednesday, Mark Escott, the Austin Public Health interim health authority, citing the occupancy limit set for the game, put it mildly: “Having 25,000 people in one space is a concern.” On the same day, three COVID-19 clusters were reported with about 100 cases.UT Austin already has a high number of COVID-19 cases, ranking fourth in Texas universities. The COVID-19 dashboard on UT Austin’s website lists 814 cases, with 633 students and 181 staff infected since March 1. The reported positivity rate of 1.3 percent, which is terrible in itself, is most likely an undercount, especially given the case numbers among students attempting to attend the game.

Big Ten universities announce football will resume – The presidents and chancellors of the universities that make up the Big Ten college football conference announced Wednesday morning that they had unanimously voted to reverse their earlier decision to postpone the football season. The Big Ten’s season is set to begin on October 24 with each team playing eight games, one each week, and a final championship game on December 19. After the initial decision to postpone, it was speculated that the season would not resume until the spring at the earliest. However, political pressure, including the intervention of President Donald Trump and huge financial interests, pushed the schools to have a rapid resumption of the 2020 football season. The conference includes the largest public universities across the main centers of US industry, and, not coincidentally, states vital to the outcome of the 2020 elections: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The decision flies in the face of the advice of the Big Ten’s own medical advisers, who up until the last few weeks were in agreement that holding football games would be far too dangerous until at least 2021. Now the Big Ten leaders are claiming that they have achieved a plan that will prevent an outbreak. President of Purdue University Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana, remarked, “Things we all learned, along with some technological advances, have produced a plan that is safer for our players and staff than it would have been originally.” The Big Ten plan stipulates that players will receive daily testing for COVID-19 and that players who do test positive will have to sit out for 21 days before being able to return to the field. If a team records a positivity rate of over 5 percent then they will halt their games and practices. In addition, players who are positive for COVID-19 must pass a series of heart tests including a cardiac MRI. The heart screening component was added after news broke that a large percentage of college athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 had developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that can be deadly when untreated. Even if these measures are implemented properly, of which there is serious doubt, it is not believable that holding football games under the present circumstances can be done safely. Not only will dozens of young athletes be in direct physical contact with one another, but there will be hundreds of additional support staff and TV crews present at the games. There have been at the very least 8,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Big Ten schools. Several schools in the Big Ten, including the universities of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin, have become epicenters of the pandemic. After large outbreaks on campuses, several schools, including the University of Wisconsin, have adopted restrictive isolation rules for their students to attempt to lower their number of cases before the football season is set to begin. Students have been ordered to remain in their dorms in what they are describing as prison-like conditions with poor food and without basic necessities.

Pac-12 moves toward ‘return to competition’ after Big Ten announces resumption of football season – The Pac-12 Conference’s commissioner said late Wednesday that its college football teams would move to resume practices and “return to competition” amid the coronavirus pandemic after the Big Ten Conference announced that it would go ahead with a fall football season. Larry Scott said in a statement shared on Twitter that “state public health officials will allow for contact practice and return to competition,” adding that “there are no state restrictions on our ability to play sports in light of our adherence to strict health and safety protocols and stringent testing requirements, including our recently announced partnership with Quidel which will enable daily rapid results testing.” “We are eager for our student-athletes to have the opportunity to play this season, as soon as it can be done safely and in accordance with public health authority approvals,” Scott said. Scott also called on the California and Oregon universities in the conference to reach out to county and other local health officials for guidance on how to safely return to practice and competition. The announcement came hours after the Big Ten said it would officially start its football season the weekend of Oct. 23. It initially postponed games last month due to the pandemic. President Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to praise the Big Ten’s decision to start its football season and later urged the Pac-12 to follow suit. “I want to recommend that the Pac-12 also get going because there’s no reason why Pac-12 shouldn’t be playing now,” Trump said. “Pac-12, you’re the only one now. Open up. Open up, Pac-12. Get going.”

University of Michigan graduate students vote to extend strike as opposition erupts at campuses throughout the US – Striking University of Michigan graduate instructors voted Sunday to extend their strike against the reopening policies of the university into the coming week. The students in the UM Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) concluded their initial four-day strike on Friday. At a meeting late Friday evening, the GEO announced that its steering committee was recommending the extension of the strike by another week as the demands of the instructors had not been met by the university. The membership had the weekend to cast their vote for the extension of the strike. The results were released late Sunday night showing overwhelming support, with 80 percent voting in favor of the extension. The strike has garnered immense support from undergraduate students, Residential Advisors, faculty, university staff, local workers and high school students, as well as students and workers from campuses across the country. The groundswell of support is an indication of the immense opposition that exists in the working class to the reckless drive to reopen schools and workplaces as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep through the country. A report published Friday morning by USA Today gives indisputable evidence that the reopening of colleges and universities leads to an increase in infections throughout the community. The report showed that 19 of the 25 largest outbreaks in the US are in communities with colleges that have reopened for in-person learning. Yesterday, news broke of virus outbreaks at Michigan State University (MSU), just an hour away from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Opposition is brewing among students and staff at MSU over the same issues at the center of the strike at UM, and the closure of both of these campuses would save countless lives throughout the region.

University of Michigan president seeks court injunction to force graduate student instructors back to work – The University of Michigan is responding with a new round of threats and intimidation to the overwhelming vote Sunday by graduate students to extend their strike. On Monday, UM President Mark Schlissel sought a restraining order and court injunction to break the strike against the university’s reckless reopening of campus and in-person classes amidst the coronavirus pandemic. In a video statement to “the campus community,” Schlissel said that the university can no longer allow the “profound disruption to the education we’ve promised our undergraduate students.” What contemptible hypocrisy! It is the university’s own policies that will cause not only a “profound disruption” to the education of students but to their lives and the lives of their families and “the campus community” at large. Schlissel went on: “We want our great classes to continue, our students to learn without interference and we don’t want anyone to feel threatened simply for wanting to go to class.” Again, the “threat” comes from the fact that undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty are exposed to the coronavirus with the initiation of in-person classes. “Going to the court,” Schlissel claimed, “was our only choice after learning the strike would continue. We’d much rather our classes be in session while we work out our differences.” The rest of Schlissel’s video response was dominated by the usual hollow phrases and platitudes about welcoming the “opportunity to discuss the issues” and being “committed to addressing them,” all the while feigning that their main concern is the students’ education. The action by the university administration is a direct threat to the striking students and workers. For all the talk about “wanting to talk things out,” Schlissel has a clear position on the strike: End it or face fines and expulsion.

Isolation, Addiction, and Drug Use in the Covid-19 Moment — In our new era of nearly unparalleled upheaval, as a pandemic ravages the bodies of some and the minds of nearly everyone, as the associated economic damage disposes of the livelihoods of many, and as even the promise of democracy fades, the people whose lives were already on a razor’s edge – who were vulnerable and isolated before the advent of Covid-19 – are in far greater danger than ever before.Against this backdrop, many of us are scanning the news for any sign of hope, any small flicker of light whose gleam could indicate that everything, somehow, is going to be okay. In fact, there is just such a flicker coming from those who have been through the worst of it and have made it out the other side. I spoke with Rafael Rodriguez of Holyoke, Massachusetts … “Covid-19 has made it more and more apparent how stigmatizing it is to be less fortunate,” he said. As we spoke, the number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits had just ticked up to around 30 million, or about one in every five workers, with nearly 15 million behind on their rent, and 29 million reporting that their households hadn’t had enough to eat over the preceding week. Rodriguez is an expert in what happens after eviction or when emergency aid dries up (or there’s none to be had in the first place) – what becomes, that is, of those in protracted isolation and despair. Drug-overdose deaths were up 13% in the first seven months of this year compared to 2019, according to research conducted by the New York Times covering 40% of the U.S. population. More than 60% of participating counties nationwide that report to the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program at the University of Baltimore saw a sustained spike in overdoses following March 19th, when many states began issuing social-distancing and stay-at-home orders. This uptick arrived atop a decades-long climb in drug-related fatalities. Last year, before the pandemic even hit, an estimated 72,000 people in the United States died of an overdose, the equivalent of sustaining a tragedy of 9/11 proportions every two weeks, or about equal to the American Covid-19 death toll during its deadliest stretch so far, from mid-April to mid-May.What people do in the face of protracted isolation and despair is turn to whatever coping strategy they’ve got – including substances so strong they can be deadly. “I think of opioids as technologies that are perfectly suited for making you okay with social isolation,” said Nancy Campbell, head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose. Miraculously, an opioid overdose can be reversed with the medicine naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan. But you can’t use naloxone on yourself; you need someone else to administer it to you. That’s why Campbell calls it a “technology of solidarity.” The solidarity of people looking out for one another is a necessary ingredient when it comes to preserving the lives of those in the deepest desolation.

Another famine coming? China struggles to meet basic food demands –The Yangtze River basin, which accounts for 70 percent of China’s rice production, has seen the worst floods since 1939, damaging millions of acres of cropland. According to the China Meteorological Administration, the country has experienced a 20 percent increase in heavy rainfall since 1961, taking the water level of more than 400 rivers above the flood control line, with 33 of them reaching record highs. The heavy rain has ravaged vast swaths of industrial and agricultural land, and experts warn the worst may be yet to come. Soaring prices of agricultural products are stoking food-security jitters in China. According to the China’s National Bureau of Statistics, food prices went up by 13 percent in July, compared to the previous July; the price of pork rose about 85 percent. On a year-on-year basis, food prices have increased by 10 percent in 2020 – the price of corn is 20 percent higher and the price of soybeans, 30 percent.According to global financial group Nomura, China’s agricultural GDP could fall by nearly a percentage point in the July-September quarter, rendering losses of $1.7 billion (USD) in the agriculture output. Chinese brokerage firm Shenwan Hongyuan has anticipated that China could lose 11.2 million tons of grains this year, compared to last year. Although Xi claimed that the country’s grain output increased this year, imports of grains have gone up almost 22 percent, to 74 million tons in the first half of this year. Imports of wheat went up by a whopping 197 percent during the period.This has forced Beijing to release 62.5 tons of rice, 50 tons of corn, and 760,000 tons of soybeans from its strategic reserve – the amount is significantly higher than last year. Insect infestations also have caused great damage to China’s food sector. An invasion of fall armyworms and locusts devoured millions of acres of wheat and corn crops this year. African swine fever has forced authorities to kill more than 180 million pigs, or about 40 percent of China’s swine population, causing prices to soar. Imports of meat have jumped significantly in just one year. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia are among the top exporters of agriculture commodities to China. Despite its dispute over tariffs with the U.S., China still remains heavily dependent on the United States to meet its food demand. China’sagricultural imports in 2019 were pegged at $13.8 billion (USD), up from $9.1 billion in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even during the first quarter of 2020, China imported farm products from the U.S. worth $5.08 billion, while its exports dropped by 17.2 percent in January and February and 6.6 percent in March.

RBI chief says India’s recovery not entrenched, will only be gradual (Reuters) – Some high frequency indicators are pointing towards stabilisation in economic activity in India but the recovery is still not entrenched and will only be gradual, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday. The major economy hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, India has been forecast by most leading economists and banks to contract by around 10% in the fiscal year ending in March. “High frequency indicators of agricultural activity, the purchasing managers index and certain private estimates on unemployment point to some stabilisation of economic activity in the second quarter of the current year,” Das told members of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry’s national executive committee. “The recovery is not yet fully entrenched,” he said. “By all indications, the recovery is likely to be gradual as efforts towards re-opening of the economy are confronted with rising infections.” Despite India seeing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, the country has crossed 5 million COVID-19 infections, and has the world’s second highest number of cases. Das also underlined the need to regulate non-bank finance companies (NBFCs) or shadow banks better, while highlighting the positive impact of the measures taken by the RBI to lowering borrowing costs for the government and corporates. The RBI has all these years followed a light touch regulation policy with regards to NBFCs, Das said, adding that it has now taken measures to ensure no large entity failed as IL&FS did in 2019.

France imposes return to school without protections against COVID-19 – In order to return the economy to normal despite the pandemic, the French government is abandoning whatever safety measures were previously taken for the restart of classes. This is proceeding despite the recent surge in cases of COVID-19, with over 10,000 cases discovered on September 12 in France alone. What this policy signifies can clearly be seen in Spain where the resurgence of COVID-19 is also well underway. The right-wing Madrid regional prime minister, Isabel Ayuso, declared: “It is probable that practically all children, in one way or another, will be infected by the coronavirus.” That is what is in store for children and their families across Europe if the working class does not oppose the forced reopening of schools. In the case of France’s September restart of the school year, distance learning has been abandoned: all pupils must be present in overcrowded classrooms. And while teachers moved between classrooms during the partial school reopening in June, now pupils will have to move between classes through overcrowded corridors. This “intermingling,” to which the minister was previously opposed, is now accepted. As for school buses, recreation periods and meals, “intermingling” is also the rule. Everything is returning to pre-lockdown conditions, with minor adjustments. An epidemic explosion in schools is in the making, with masks being the only protective barrier, and only then for middle and high school pupils. In any case, masks are not very effective in environments where social distancing is lacking. To force parents back to work at all costs, no plans are made to look after pupils whose classes are forced to close due to cases of COVID-19. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer bluntly told BFM-TV on September 7: “We are planning for parental leave in the event of school closures.” Parental leave is time off work without pay and therefore an enormous cost to workers’ families. Nevertheless, infections are rising rapidly. The government announced last Thursday it would reactivate payments for partially laid-off workers in the private sector, authorized absences of public sector workers, and absences for one parent only if schools or classes are shut down. The obvious aim is to avoid a social explosion. The criteria for closures of classes and schools are vague. The decision is in the hands of local government officials in consultation with regional health authorities. The ministry refuses to communicate the list of classes and schools closed and only provides limited vague data on classes and establishments concerned.

Schools at epicentre of UK’s coronavirus explosion – COVID-19 is spreading out of control in Britain, with levels of infection not seen since May being recorded. Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday all saw above 3,300 cases daily. A further 2,621 cases and nine deaths were recorded on Monday, a normal “weekend-dip” in reports – followed by 3,105 cases and 27 deaths on Tuesday. The virus is resurgent in workplaces, schools, and communities, with the R (reproduction) value rising last Friday to between 1.0 and 1.2. In London and the North West of England, R is between 1.1 and 1.3, higher than the UK’s other regions. According to official figures, an average of 2,998 daily infections are being recorded daily – an amount that has nearly doubled in two weeks from the seven-day rolling average of 1,323 on August 31. The real numbers infected is far larger as many thousands of people are unable to get a test after showing symptoms. Official deaths in Britain stand at 41,637. But this is sharply contradicted by Office for National Statistics figures published yesterday, showing that 57,528 fatalities with COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate were registered in the UK up to September 4-6. Other authoritative assessments of the COVID-19 death toll, based on excess deaths, are over 65,000. Such is the spread of coronavirus that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, which adopted a strategy of herd immunity at the beginning of the pandemic, has been forced to impose new national restrictions. Its policy of “local lockdowns” were so porous they only contributed to the spread of the infection over wide areas of the country. On Monday, social gatherings of more than six people were made illegal, as the “rule of six” came into force. This too will do little or nothing to stop the spread of the virus. The rule is not even being applied uniformly across the UK. In England, it applies indoors and outdoors and includes children; in Scotland indoors and outdoors and excludes children; in Wales indoors only and excludes children; and in Northern Ireland indoors only and includes children. Tens of millions of workers, including all educators and pupils, will remain exposed to the virus, with the government stating that “education and work settings are unaffected” by the “rule of six.” True to their naked class bias, the Tories had to delay their announcement by several days while mulling over what to do with grouse shooting during the season. They determined that six people cannot mingle at a birthday or Christmas party and that two families of four stopping for a talk in the street would be illegal “mingling.” But parties of up to 30 people can don their flat caps, Barbour jackets, tweeds and wellies, and spend a costly day on the moors with their wealthy chums.

.

include(“/home/aleta/public_html/files/ad_openx.htm”); ?>