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 GDP, the jobs report, banking oversight, mortgage delinquencies, local schools & universities, plus the sound of one hand clapping on coronavirus relief. Also, a handful of utility shutoff moratoriums ended on Oct 1st. There’s a selection of about 20 articles on Trump & his team getting infected. 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.
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Fed’s Bullard: Likely Robust Recovery Won’t Call For Change in Fed Policy – Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he expects the economy to snap back briskly from the coronavirus pandemic, but added that doesn’t mean he sees reason for the central bank to back away from its accommodative policy stance.
FOMC Minutes: “most forecasters were assuming that an additional pandemic-related fiscal package would be approved this year” –From the Fed: Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, September 15-16, 2020. A few excerpts: While the economic outlook had brightened, most forecasters were assuming that an additional pandemic-related fiscal package would be approved this year, and noted that, absent a new package, growth could decelerate at a faster-than-expected pace in the fourth quarter. In light of these and other risks, as well as the ongoing pandemic, market participants continued to suggest that the supportive policy environment and the backstops to market functioning remained important stabilizers….Participants continued to see the uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook as very elevated, with the path of the economy highly dependent on the course of the virus; on how individuals, businesses, and public officials responded to it; and on the effectiveness of public health measures to address it. Participants cited several downside risks that could threaten the recovery. While the risk of another broad economic shutdown was seen as having receded, participants remained concerned about the possibility of additional virus outbreaks that could undermine the recovery. Such scenarios could result in increases in bankruptcies and defaults, put stress on the financial system, and lead to disruptions in the flow of credit to households and businesses. Most participants raised the concern that fiscal support so far for households, businesses, and state and local governments might not provide sufficient relief to these sectors. A couple of participants saw an upside risk that further fiscal stimulus could be larger than anticipated, though it might come later than had been expected. Several participants raised concerns regarding the longer-run effects of the pandemic, including how it could lead to a restructuring in some sectors of the economy that could slow employment growth or could accelerate technological disruption that was likely limiting the pricing power of firms.
Fed officials vow to alter long-held practices to beat inequity – Federal Reserve officials were challenged Wednesday to make big policy changes to combat economic and racial inequality. In response, the presidents of the Atlanta, Boston and Minneapolis reserve banks pledged to shake up some long-held practices – including adding more minority and labor voices to its Beige Book, which has long been dominated by business input. Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox, said the U.S. central bank, the largest and arguably most influential in the world, isn’t serving all Americans. “The Federal Reserve as the economic policy instrument in this country absolutely has to know, be passionate about, be interested in not just the wealthiest or the median, but all the people,” Burns said in a virtual conference hosted by the Minneapolis, Atlanta and Boston reserve banks. Believing it’s not the Fed’s job to help solve economic problems along racial lines is “ducking” the issue, she said at the conference, called Racism and the Economy. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, the first Black Fed president, said the three banks were inspired to hold the conference following racist events in each of their districts. George Floyd whose death in Minneapolis sparked a global reckoning over police brutality. Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed while jogging in Georgia. And in Boston, former Major League Baseball player Torii Hunter said he had a clause in his contracts barring a trade to the Boston Red Sox after he had racial slurs directed at him while playing games at the city’s Fenway Park. Burns emphasized that every branch of government should be doing what it can to create a more inclusive economy and to decrease the race- and gender-based disparities that still plague the country. Wages and wealth vary significantly along racial lines, and the coronavirus pandemic has further widened some of these as Black and Latino Americans, as well as women, lost jobs at a faster clip than others. In response to Burns’s comments, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said that some people would argue that the central bank doesn’t have the right tools to adequately combat some of these issues and would say that Congress, with its lawmaking authority, is better equipped to rectify these problems. “I’m sure that you can live a life this way,” Burns responded. “You’ve been doing it for 107 years. I just think it is not appropriate at all. It’s not serving the people of this country.”
Fed Chair Powell: Recent Economic Developments and the Challenges Ahead – The speech is available on youtube. From Fed Chair Powell: Recent Economic Developments and the Challenges Ahead We should continue do what we can to manage downside risks to the outlook. One such risk is that COVID-19 cases might again rise to levels that more significantly limit economic activity, not to mention the tragic effects on lives and well-being. Managing this risk as the expansion continues will require following medical experts’ guidance, including using masks and social-distancing measures.A second risk is that a prolonged slowing in the pace of improvement over time could trigger typical recessionary dynamics, as weakness feeds on weakness. A long period of unnecessarily slow progress could continue to exacerbate existing disparities in our economy. That would be tragic, especially in light of our country’s progress on these issues in the years leading up to the pandemic. The expansion is still far from complete. At this early stage, I would argue that the risks of policy intervention are still asymmetric. Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses. Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy, and holding back wage growth. By contrast, the risks of overdoing it seem, for now, to be smaller. Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste. The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods.
Fed’s Rosengren- Pre-pandemic low rates worsened current downturn – Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said the long period of low interest rates before the coronavirus pandemic is contributing to the depth of the current recession. “The slow buildup of risk in the low-interest-rate environment that preceded the current recession likely will make the economic recovery from the pandemic more difficult,” Rosengren said in the text of a speech he’ll deliver Thursday at an online event hosted by Marquette University. “The increased risk buildup, such as the reaching-for-yield behavior in commercial real estate or increased corporate leverage, make economic downturns including this one more severe,” he said. Rosengren, who previously supported interest rate increases after the jobless rate fell below his estimate of full employment, has long warned of the danger of corporate risk-taking. He said the U.S. will have to improve its regulatory framework as interest rates are likely to stay low again for a number of years. “In the United States, we do not have a cohesive set of regulatory and supervisory tools to moderate risk buildups,” he said. “If we expect to remain in a low-interest-rate environment for a protracted period of time, we need to take more precautions against financial stability risks for when the next economic shock hits.” Rosengren, who doesn’t vote this year on the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee, didn’t provide a detailed outlook for the U.S. economy or discuss current monetary policy in his prepared remarks.
Seven High Frequency Indicators for the Economy –These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment – some of the sectors that will recover very slowly. The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. This data shows the seven day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Blue) and 2020 (Red). This data is as of Oct 4th. The seven day average is down 67% from last year (33% of last year). The second graph shows the 7 day average of the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities. This data is updated through October 3, 2020. This data is “a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. For year-over-year comparisons by day, we compare to the same day of the week from the same week in the previous year.” The 7 day average for New York is still off 61% YoY, and down 28% in Texas. There was a surge in restaurant dining around Labor Day – hopefully mostly outdoor dining. This data shows domestic box office for each week (red) and the maximum and minimum for the previous four years. Data is from BoxOfficeMojo through October 1st. Movie ticket sales have picked up over the last few weeks, and were at $11 million last week (compared to usually under $200 million per week in the late Summer / early Fall). This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. The red line is for 2020, dash light blue is 2019, blue is the median, and black is for 2009 (the worst year since the Great Depression for hotels – prior to 2020). This data is through September 26th. Hotel occupancy is currently down 31.5% year-over-year. This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week last year of . At one point, gasoline supplied was off almost 50% YoY. As of September 25th, gasoline supplied was only off about 6.7% YoY (about 93.3% of normal). This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: “This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities.” There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. This data is through October 2nd for the United States and several selected cities. The graph is the running 7 day average to remove the impact of weekends. Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage (HT BR). This data is through Friday, October 2nd.
WSJ October Survey: Q3 Growth Revised Up, Q4 Down – Menzie Chinn – In levels (incorporating revisions to actual GDP): Figure 1: GDP as reported in 2020Q2 3rd release (black), WSJ April survey (tan), May survey (green), June survey (red), July survey (pink), August survey (blue), September (brown), and October (chartreuse), all in billions Ch.2012$, SAAR, all on log scale. Source: BEA, various vintages, WSJ survey, various vintages, author’s calculations.The three most recent forecasts are for rising levels of Q4 GDP – arising partly from higher reported Q2 GDP at each revision, and mostly from upwardly revised estimates of Q3 growth (even as Q4 is revised downward).The most optimistic forecaster (for the remainder of 2020) remains the ever consistently optimistic James Smith of EconForecaster. The most pessimistic is A.C. Cutts. Figure 2: GDP as reported in 2020Q2 3rd release (black), James Smith/Economic Forecaster LLC (red), Amy Crew Cutts/A.C. Cutts & assoc. (green), Daniel Bachman/Deloitte (pink), all in billions Ch.2012$, SAAR, on log scale. Source: BEA, 2020Q2 3rd release, October WSJ survey, and author’s calculations. Daniel Bachman of Deloitte had the most “W”-ish recovery forecast – although the last stroke of the W is a bit limp. The survey was taken between October 2-6. This period largely predates Mr. Trump’s announcement of the end of negotiations on the Phase 4 recovery package. It’s hard to know how to incorporate this announcement, given the lack of credibility on the part of the administration. I compare the forecasts from Goldman Sachs research from early September and late “no deal” in this post.
Q3 GDP Forecasts — From Merrill Lynch: We are tracking 33% qoq saar for 3Q GDP growth. [Oct 9 estimate] From Goldman Sachs: We left our Q3 GDP tracking estimate unchanged at +35% (qoq ar).. [Oct 9 estimate] From the NY Fed Nowcasting Report: The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 14.1% for 2020:Q3 and 4.8% for 2020:Q4. [Oct 9 estimate] And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow: The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2020 is 35.2 percent on October 9, slightly down from 35.3 percent on October 6. [Oct 9 estimate] 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 following graph illustrates this decline. This graph shows the percent decline in real GDP from the previous peak (currently the previous peak was in Q4 2019).This graph is through Q2 2020, and real GDP is currently off 10.2% from the previous peak. For comparison, at the depth of the Great Recession, real GDP was down 4.0% from the previous peak. The black arrow shows what a 30% annualized increase in real GDP would look like in Q3.Even with a 30% annualized increase (about 6.8% QoQ), real GDP will be down about 4.2% from Q4 2019; a larger decline in real GDP than at the depth of the Great Recession.
Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth: How Deep Will the Depression Get? (video and transcript) Yves here. There’s a lot to like about this interview with Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth, yet there are some odd sour notes. For instance, Blyth repeats what is essentially a Democratic party stereotype about Trump voters, that they are Rust Belt victims of manufacturing loss. As we have repeatedly stressed, the average household income of Trump voters was substantially higher than that of Clinton voters: $72,000 versus $61,000. We’ve linked repeatedly to the Washington Post article, It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.
Powell warns of weak recovery without more government aid -In one of his strongest appeals to date, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of a weak U.S. recovery without sufficient government aid and said providing too much stimulus wouldn’t be a problem. Powell’s remarks Tuesday came amid Republicans’ opposition to a larger relief package that has kept talks with Democrats at a stalemate in Congress since aid to jobless Americans and small businesses expired in July and August. “Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday. “Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses,” Powell told a virtual conference hosted by the National Association for Business Economics. “By contrast, the risks of overdoing it seem, for now, to be smaller. Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste.”Powell and his colleagues at the U.S. central bank cut their benchmark interest rate to near zero in March at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve pledged to keep rates low until the economy returns to maximum employment and have been urging Congress to pass additional fiscal stimulus on top of the roughly $3 trillion already authorized to keep the outlook for continued economic recovery intact.Lawmakers have been debating additional aid since the end of July, when the enhanced unemployment benefits that were authorized in March expired, but have so far failed to come to an agreement. Democrats have been pushing for a bigger spending package while Republicans want a smaller one; Powell didn’t explicitly reference either party’s position in his prepared remarks.”The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods,” Powell said.Meanwhile, coronavirus cases are on the rise across the country again, posing a renewed threat to the economy – a risk Powell alluded to in his remarks. His comments echoed those of his European Central Bank counterpart, Christine Lagarde, who warned in an interview published Tuesday against governments’ winding down aid amid ongoing outbreaks.”Consumption held up well through August after the expiration of expanded unemployment insurance benefits, indicating that savings from transfer payments continue to support economic activity,” Powell said. “Still, since it appears that many will undergo extended periods of unemployment, there is likely to be a need for further support.” “Declining inflation has been a persistent factor for some time,” Powell said while answering questions after the speech. “We are still seeing downward pressure on inflation, and I think it’s appropriate for central banks, and certainly the Fed, to take that into account and move to a framework that is robust to that.”
Fed’s Powell Says U.S. Faces ‘Tragic’ Risks From Doing Too Little to Support Economy – WSJ – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned of potentially tragic economic consequences that could result if Congress and the White House don’t provide additional support to households and businesses disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. “The expansion is still far from complete,” Mr. Powell said in remarks to be delivered at a virtual economics conference Tuesday. “At this early stage, I would argue that the risks of policy intervention are still asymmetric. Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship.” By contrast, the risks of providing too generous relief are smaller, he said. “Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste,” he said. The Fed cut its benchmark rate to near zero in March, purchased unprecedented sums of government securities and offered to lend directly to businesses, cities and states to keep markets functioning. Republicans and Democrats have been at an impasse for months over steps to extend unemployment benefits that lapsed in July and to provide additional aid to hard-hit businesses, cities and states. Negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have picked up in recent days as congressional Democrats and the White House scope out one final chance at a breakthrough before the Nov. 3 election. Mr. Powell, who is generally well regarded by lawmakers in both parties, has repeatedly urged Congress to approve additional spending measures. He renewed that call on Tuesday by applauding the $3 trillion in spending and other measures that Congress had approved this past spring. The early fiscal response was “truly extraordinary” and the “most innovative” since the Great Depression, Mr. Powell said on Tuesday. “The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods.” Mr. Powell said actions by the Fed and fiscal policy makers had muted the normal recessionary dynamics that occur in a downturn, where households and businesses cut back on spending, leading to further pullbacks in hiring and output and a tightening in credit standards from banks and other lenders.
Trump and Biden’s plans would both add to the debt, analysis finds – Campaign plans from President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden would each add about $5 trillion to the debt over a decade, according to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) released Wednesday. Under the budget watchdog’s central estimates, Trump’s plan would add $4.95 trillion to the debt while Biden’s would increase the debt by $5.6 trillion. The estimates exclude spending proposals aimed at addressing the coronavirus pandemic and related economic downturn. “The country’s large and growing national debt threatens to slow economic growth, constrain the choices available to future policymakers, and is ultimately unsustainable,” CRFB said. “Yet neither presidential candidate has a plan to address the growth in debt. In fact, we find both candidates’ plans are likely to increase the debt.” Biden has released detailed proposals in areas including education, health care, infrastructure and taxes, while Trump has released general bullet points about his second-term agenda. CRFB interpreted Trump’s bullet points based by looking at budget proposals, previous statements and more detailed proposals from others. Because the candidates’ proposals were often unclear, CRFB released low-cost, central and high-cost estimates of Trump’s and Biden’s plans. The group found that Trump’s plans could increase the debt by $700 billion to $6.85 trillion over 10 years, while Biden’s plans could have an impact on the debt that ranges from a $150 billion reduction to an $8.3 trillion increase. CRFB’s central estimate of Trump’s agenda found that the president’s call for cutting prescription drug prices and ending surprise billing would produce savings of $150 billion over 10 years, but those savings would be dwarfed by his plans to increase spending in other areas. The watchdog group estimated that Trump’s education and child care agenda would cost $150 billion, and that his plans for spending on infrastructure, space and supporting Black-owned businesses would cost $2.7 trillion. Trump’s tax plans, which include making the individual provisions in his 2017 law permanent, would cost a total of $1.7 trillion, CRFB said. Trump’s national security and immigration plans would on net cost $300 billion, with his plans on immigration and ending wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East producing savings that are less than the total costs of his plans to increase the defense budget and spending on veterans. CRFB found in its central estimate that Biden would increase spending by about $2.7 trillion on child care and education, and most of this increase would come from his higher education plans. The former vice president would spend $2.05 trillion on health care and long-term care, with much of this cost coming from his plans to expand health-insurance coverage. Biden’s plans to expand Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and tax breaks for older Americans would cost $1.15 trillion. His plans in other domestic spending areas, including infrastructure and housing, would cost $4.45 trillion, according to CRFB’s central estimates. Biden’s spending plans would be partially offset by $750 billion in savings from his plans to end wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East and to reform the immigration system, and by $4.3 trillion in revenue generated by his plans to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, CRFB said.
On Capitol Hill, the prospects for a stimulus deal before the election remain murky. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that President Trump’s positive test for coronavirus “changes the dynamic of stimulus talks.” But developments since suggest that the sides are still far apart on negotiating a new pandemic aid package, according to today’s DealBook newsletter. Those pushing hard for a bill include the White House. Mr. Trump tweeted from the hospital on Saturday that the country “wants and needs” more stimulus. For Mr. Trump, a deal would serve as a sign of his authority, taking attention away from his health and unfavorable polls. Congressional leaders, though, are still haggling. When asked Sunday whether Mr. Trump’s comments meant the two parties were closer to a deal, Ms. Pelosi demurred: “No, it means that we want to see that they will agree on what we need to do to crush the virus so that we can open the economy and open our schools safely.” She said that the parties were “making progress” toward a deal, but with Mr. Biden ahead in the polls, Democrats may feel they have the upper hand in negotiations. On the Senate side, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is balancing competing interests among his Republican colleagues – some want a deal to bring home to constituents and others are worried about approving another large spending deal. Adding to the difficulties, the Senate has delayed its next sitting until Oct. 19, to account for positive coronavirus tests among Republican members. Hanging in the balance are jobs and the economy. The longer people are out of the work, the harder it is for them to come back, suggesting that we may be entering the slow, grinding phase of a recovery that could tip into recession. There are still about twice as many people out of work now than before the pandemic, and without aid akin to what was in the first stimulus bill, weaker consumer spending, missed rent payments and other factors could ripple through the economy and the financial system.
The Chamber Of Commerce Dems From The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Just Undercut Pelosi’s Pandemic Negotiations With Mnuchin – Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Pelosi anticipates striking a pandemic relief deal with Mnuchin, who the Republicans have tasked with keeping the package as small and mean as possible. Erica Werner and Jeff Stein asserted that Pelosi thinks that now that Trump is dying sick, it will be easier to get a bipartisan deal. The vote in the House on Thursday for the $2.2 trillion package was supposed to strengthen her hand in the negotiations. Instead, as we explained earlier a pack of mangy Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, screwed it up by voting with the Republicans against the package, giving Mnuchin a bit of an edge in cutting down the amount of money that goes to state and local governments and to working families directly. Democrats had sought a $2.2 trillion package, while the White House’s most recent offer was closer to $1.6 trillion. Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke Friday afternoon for 65 minutes and plan to continue their discussions, according to Drew Hammill, a spokesman for the House speaker. The pace of talks – and the possibility of a deal – have picked up markedly in recent days. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters Friday that Trump had inquired about the status of negotiations Friday morning, shortly after the president announced his positive coronavirus test. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sounded a positive note at a news conference in Kentucky.” I’m trying to figure out here whether I should predict another bill quickly or not, but the talks have speeded up in the last couple days,” said McConnell, who is not directly involved in the negotiations but is regularly briefed by Mnuchin. “I think we’re closer to getting an outcome.” With the talks picking up steam, Pelosi released a statement Friday calling on airlines to delay imminent furloughs of workers whose jobs are at risk after payroll support included in the Cares Act expired Wednesday. Pelosi said a six-month extension of the Payroll Support Program would be included in any deal or passed as a stand-alone bill. The economy recovered a bit during the summer, but it has shown signs of lagging in recent weeks, particularly as several large companies have announced new plans for layoffs. Although Pelosi was cross as the garbage Democraps, her own House Majority PAC and the DCCC have already started spending immense amounts of money to save their worthless hides. Neither the DCCC or Pelosi’s PAC spends much on progressives, making sure to keep the number of progressives down to a bare minimum, but they spend millions and millions of dollars protecting weak Blue Dogs and New Dems who don’t generate much enthusiasm from woke Democrats. Most of them will win in the November anti-Trump tsunami and will go on to be defeated in 2022 after two years of nothing consequential coming out of the Biden White House or the Schumer Senate. These garbagecrats all voted against the pandemic bailout package. The number next to their names is how much the DCCC and the House majority PAC have already spent independently on behalf of their campaigns – and they’re just getting started.
Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)- $1,159,950
Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- $2,252,284
Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- $1,600,047
Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- $1,601,567
Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- $1,171,949
Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- $1,509,849
Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)- $1,154,442
Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- $1,514,655
Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME)- $420,500
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $1,656,318
Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- $1,336,672
White House COVID Outbreak Will Make or Break Stimulus Deal – Those of us who were closely watching the endless, slow-motion saga of negotiations over a major coronavirus-relief and stimulus package were, like everyone else, thrown for a loop by the news bomb of the president’s own COVID-19 diagnosis, which happened to break just as Nancy Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin had reportedly reached the endgame of their on-again, off-again talks. But the public figure who seemed most determined to keep the stimulus story in the news was President Trump himself, who tweeted this from the Walter Reed medical center:If nothing else, this appeared to represent a very public set of instructions to Mnuchin to keep on talking. And although the House passed a Democratic stimulus bill last week and members went home to campaign for reelection, Pelosi has kept talking to the Treasury secretary, while making it clear that House members could be recalled on a day’s notice for a stimulus vote. So the supposedly hard deadlines everyone was talking about last week are proving to be quite flexible. Today, there are signs of further communications, per Pelosi’s staff:An hour is pretty long for a symbolic gesture, and exchanging “paper” suggests we are at the point of draft final agreements or even legislative language. There is no particular intel on where they are on prior sticking points (particularly state and local assistance), but the numbers from both sides on that item were already slowly converging last week.But while Pelosi has her troops prepared to return to Washington on short notice to pass a stimulus bill, the COVID-stricken Republican-controlled Senate may be a different matter. Mitch McConnell has called off Senate business until October 19, presumably to avoid additional infections (at least three Republican senators have tested positive so far with two more in quarantine). And unlike the House, the Senate has not instituted any system of large-scale proxies or remote voting to accommodate a pandemic.One pressure point for a d eal is the plight of the airline industry, which announced massive layoffs last week when the federal payroll support provided in the CARES Act ran out. Pelosi even said she would consider a stand-alone bill to deal with just that crisis. But if there’s no Senate around, that’s problematic as well.
Democrats sense momentum for expanding child tax credit – Democrats are rallying behind a child tax credit expansion, sensing momentum around one of the few tax issues that could garner bipartisan support in the coming months. The proposal was included in the House-passed HEROES Act in May and later highlighted by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in September. More recently, a slimmed-down version of the proposal was part of the revised HEROES Act that House Democrats passed last week. While Republicans have not been supportive of those larger bills, they have expanded the child tax credit in the past, making Democrats hopeful that there could be congressional action either later this year or in early 2021. “Not only does it help families now, I think it’s good long-term policy,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, told The Hill. Democrats have long been interested in expanding the child tax credit in an effort to provide more assistance to low- and middle-income families and have renewed these efforts as part of their push for another coronavirus relief package. The initial $3.4 trillion HEROES Act would expand the credit in several ways for 2020. It would make the credit fully refundable so that the lowest-income households and households that lost jobs could receive the full amount of the credit, and it would increase the credit amount from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child, or $3,600 for children under the age of 6. Seventeen-year-olds, who currently don’t qualify for the credit, would be eligible. The initial proposal also would direct the Treasury Department to endeavor to provide the expanded credit as advance payments on a monthly basis, so that people would not have to wait until they file their 2020 tax returns next year to get relief. The updated version of the HEROES Act, which was scaled back to have a smaller overall price tag of about $2.2 trillion, includes provisions on full refundability and advanced payments but does not increase the credit amount. The prospects for a deal on a COVID-19 relief package between Democrats and the Trump administration are shaky and looking less likely after President Trump on Tuesday tweeted that he’s directed his representatives to stop negotiating until after the elections. After Trump’s tweet, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter to colleagues that the president “has prioritized protecting the tax cut for the wealthiest from the CARES Act instead of meeting the needs of the poorest children in America – rejecting the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and the needs of school children learning safely in-person, hybrid, or virtual.” The White House presented a proposal to Pelosi last week with a cost of about $1.6 trillion that did not include an expansion of the child tax credit. Pelosi highlighted this difference in a letter to House Democrats on Friday. She also noted that the administration has not joined Democrats in proposing an expansion of the earned income tax credit, which benefits low- and middle-income workers.
Donald Trump ends stimulus relief negotiations until after election – President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was withdrawing from economic relief talks until after the election, abruptly ordering Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to stop negotiating with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.In a series of tweets posted less than 24 hours after he was released from the hospital, Trump accused Pelosi of failing to negotiate in good faith, after she rejected an opening bid from Mnuchin in their latest round of talks. Trump is still dealing with his recent coronavirus diagnosis, but he has tried to dismiss the illness’s impact on him in the past two days. “I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hard-working Americans and Small Business,” Trump wrote.The pronouncement was so stunning that Pelosi told Democratic colleagues on a conference call that the president’s sudden change in position might be connected to the steroids he’s taking as he battles the coronavirus.His tweets sent the stock market suddenly lower, as many businesses, households and investors had been hoping for a sudden jolt of fiscal stimulus amid signs the economy had lost momentum. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by about 330 points, or by 1.2%. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 also fell. The pronouncement came just hours after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said in a speech that more economic stimulus was needed.
Trump says he will back specific relief measures hours after halting talks – President Trump late Tuesday signaled he would support specific measures on stimulus checks, help for the airline industry and small business loans, hours after cutting off bipartisan talks for more coronavirus relief. “The House & Senate should IMMEDIATELY Approve 25 Billion Dollars for Airline Payroll Support, & 135 Billion Dollars for Paycheck Protection Program for Small Business. Both of these will be fully paid for with unused funds from the Cares Act. Have this money. I will sign now!” Trump tweeted Tuesday, referring to the coronavirus stimulus package passed in March. Both provisions were included in stimulus negotiations that were being held between the administration and congressional Democrats that Trump scrapped Tuesday. Later, Trump tweeted that he would also sign a bill that would give some Americans $1,200 stimulus checks, tagging top negotiators in the post. The messages come after stocks nosedived after Trump pulled the plug on talks for a broader stimulus agreement. All three major stock indexes lost solid gains from earlier in the day and fell into negative territory after the announcement. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a loss of 375 points, roughly 1.3 percent, the S&P 500 closed with a loss of 1.4 percent, and the Nasdaq composite closed down roughly 1.6 percent. The airline industry also grumbled over the announcement as their stocks sharply dropped. “We have to hold out that hope,” Industry group Airlines for America (A4A) CEO Nicholas Calio said in a statement on Tuesday. “Time already ran out for U.S. airlines and many of our employees, yet there is a glimmer of hope that our leaders in Washington will act and save these jobs before it’s too late to turn back the clock.” “The past week has dealt a crushing blow to the American Airlines team and the aviation industry, and we were hopeful that overwhelming bipartisan support for the Payroll Support Program would result in immediate action to protect jobs and service to communities across the country. We will continue to make the case in Washington that action is needed to help workers across the country and lead America to the other side of this pandemic,” added a spokesperson for American Airlines. The airline industry had pressed Congress and the White House to extend the airline Payroll Support Program (PSP), which allocated $25 billion in aid as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March. “There is wide, bipartisan support in providing assistance to our industry and we will continue to do everything we can to urge leaders in Washington to pass legislation that will save airline jobs,” a United Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. “As we have made clear, we are eager to reverse the furlough process should Congress pass legislation to extend the CARES Act Payroll Support Program, and we will continue to update our employees on the latest as this unfolds.”‘
Coronavirus live updates: Trump abruptly cuts off coronavirus aid talks, but tweets send mixed messages – The Washington Post – Coronavirus relief talks came to an abrupt halt Tuesday as President Trump ordered Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to stop negotiating with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) until after the November election. Hours later, however, Trump appeared to contradict himself in a series of tweets that called for Congress to “IMMEDIATELY” approve additional aid for small businesses and airlines. Here are some significant developments:
- At least 7,463,000 coronavirus cases and 210,000 fatalities have been reported in the United States since February, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. Seven states – Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming – set new highs for covid-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday.
- Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said that the White House coronavirus outbreak could have been prevented.
- Rick Bright, a former top government vaccine official, resigned from NIH on Tuesday, several months after lodging a whistleblower complaint.
- Britain’s health secretary warned of a “very serious problem” as the numbers of new infections and hospitalizations soar in the country.
- Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump, is the latest administration official to test positive for the novel coronavirus. The White House gestured toward enhancing public health protocols on Tuesday, but the main source of resistance continues to be Trump.
- The White House approved tough new standards for coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday after weeks of delay – but only after the Food and Drug Administration unilaterally published the guidelines on its website as part of briefing materials for outside vaccine advisers.
- Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in quarantine after a top Coast Guard admiral tested positive for the coronavirus, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Global markets struggle to make sense of Trump’s stimulus tweet storm – CNN -Global stock markets were struggling Wednesday to digest a tweet storm from President Donald Trump over what the US government should do next to prop up ailing businesses and the economy.Just hours after Trump’s decision to halt negotiations on a major economic stimulus package caused US stocks to plummet, he called on US lawmakers to approve smaller measures that would provide relief to airlines and small businesses.”The House & Senate should IMMEDIATELY Approve 25 Billion Dollars for Airline Payroll Support, & 135 Billion Dollars for Paycheck Protection Program for Small Business,” Trump tweeted late on Tuesday. “Both of these will be fully paid for with unused funds from the Cares Act. Have this money. I will sign now!”He later added that he was “ready to sign” a “Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200).” The head-snapping social media proclamations added to confusion about the prospect of further stimulus this year. On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called for more relief to help sustain the fragile recovery before Trump put stimulus negotiations on hold. “This appears to be a none too subtle effort to cherry-pick the bits of a fiscal stimulus plan that are directly vote-winning potentially,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst for Asia Pacific at Oanda. “Whether the American public buys it or not is another thing altogether.”Investors had been hoping that Washington would approve a financial plan to help the country through its worst economic crisis in generations. A Trump tweet dashed those hopes.”I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business,” he tweeted just before 3 p.m. ET.
1.3 million people filed initial unemployment insurance claims last week: It is terrible economics to pause stimulus talks -Another 1.3 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week. That includes 840,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 464,000 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. The 1.3 million who applied for UI last week was a decline from 53,000 from the prior week’s revised figures, though trends over time should be interpreted with caution right now because California data are being imputed because they have temporarily paused its processing of initial claims. It is worth noting that today’s data on initial claims do not include any workers who may have been laid off or furloughed in the wake of President Trump tweeting earlier this week that he was halting stimulus talks (more on that below).Republicans in the Senate allowed the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly UI benefits to expire at the end of July, so last week was the tenth week of unemployment in this pandemic for which recipients did not get the extra $600. On Tuesday, President Trump announced he had ordered his negotiators to stop top talks with Democratic leaders on another stimulus package. If that abrupt move holds, it means the extra $600 is not coming back anytime soon, and the economy will also not be getting other crucial stimulus measures it needs, including aid to state and local governments.This is terrible economics. For example, the extra $600 in weekly UI benefits was supporting a huge amount of spending by people who, without it, have to make drastic cuts. The spending made possible by the $600 was supporting millions of jobs. Cutting that $600 means cutting those jobs – it means the workers who were providing the goods and services that UI recipients were spending that $600 on lose their jobs. The map inFigure B of this blog post shows many jobs will be lost by state because of the expiration of the $600.Not providing aid to state and local governments will also cost millions of jobs. The labor market is still more than 12 million jobs below where we would be if the recession hadn’t happened, and job growth is slowing. Now is not the time to cut off stimulus talks. Cutting off talks also means no additional housing and nutrition assistance, no COVID-related health and safety measures for workers, no aid to the Postal Service during this critical time, and no additional support for virus testing, tracing, and isolation measures, or virus treatment and support for hospitals and other health providers. All of these things would have helped our economy and the people in it recover from the COVID crisis. Cutting it off is unthinkable at a time like this, yet that is what the president seems to have done.
Speaker Pelosi, House Democrats leave town, fail the American people | TheHill — Wheels up, off to California after adjourning the House until after Election Day. It’s a shameful display of partisanship in the wake of our recovery from the coronavirus. Rather than help small businesses continue to access unused funds from the Paycheck Protection Program, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is willing to block reasonable relief efforts, all in the name of politics. She doesn’t want to risk President Trump and congressional Republicans getting an ounce of credit in the final weeks of this election.Some things are simply more important than political posturing, like ensuring American small businesses can weather the storm of the coronavirus pandemic. We have unspent funds from the Paycheck Protection Program, a COVID relief program that saved 51 million jobs in the United States, 2 million in Ohio alone. Its authorization is expiring, meaning the program is closing up shop, despite $138 billion left in the coffers. My Ohio colleague, Rep. Steve Chabot, has a simple, straightforward bill that reauthorizes the unspent funds through the end of the year, expands the eligible entities and expenses, and further protects the program so that businesses with fewer than 300 employees can get to the front of the line.We are on the right path toward economic recovery, with more than 10 million jobs created or brought back after the worst of the pandemic. But as states reopen at different paces, we still have businesses struggling to adjust and keep their doors open. Mom and pop stores, those with just a handful of employees are bearing the brunt of the economic damage. That’s why this PPP extension bill earmarks $25 billion for businesses with 10 or fewer employees and, if a business receives a second PPP loan, this bill ensures the total of those two loans cannot exceed $10 million. Those businesses with just a few employees can make up a large number of loans in the program, but those loans will often be some of the smallest approved by the Small Business Administration. They are businesses that would struggle with the compliance and paperwork costs associated with byzantine processes mandated by federal regulators. This bill eliminates this problem: a simple form attesting that the business complied with the loan requirements is all that will be needed. It also requires them to keep records related to the loan on hand for three years in the case of an audit by the Small Business Administration.
Back to the Table: Stimulus talks on again after being shut down – Just a couple of days ago, President Donald Trump said talks over a new economic stimulus package were off between Republicans and Democrats until after the November election.That was bad news for the many Americans and businesses still struggling with uncertainty because of the COVID-19 pandemic.Now it looks like the president has reversed course.On Thursday, the White House and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said they are still negotiating.”Well I shut down talks two days ago because they weren’t working out. Now they are starting to work out, we’re starting to have some very productive talks,” President Trump told FOX Business. He even added a rare positive comment about the speaker, saying Pelosi wants the stimulus to happen “because it’s so good for our country, we really need it.”The president graciously – and realistically – refused to blame one side for Congress’ inability to reach a compromise.”But it’s not anybody’s fault, they were trying to get things, and we were trying to get things and it wasn’t going anywhere, I shut it down. I don’t want to play games. And then we reopened, and I see the markets are doing well but I think we have a really good chance of doing something,” the president said.Oh, and the big question for most of us? Both sides said any new deal would likely include another round of $1,200 stimulus checks. So was the president’s shutdown just a power play, a negotiating tool? Maybe so. In any case we hope this will speed talks and a new bill will be passed and signed soon. There are plenty of folks still hurting out here.
Trump’s stimulus proposal draws opposition from congressional Democrats and Republicans (Reuters) – A new $1.8 trillion economic stimulus proposal from the Trump administration drew criticism from congressional Democrats and Republicans on Saturday, diminishing hopes for a coronavirus relief deal before the Nov. 3 election. In a weekly letter to Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said the Trump administration’s proposal lacked a “strategic plan to crush the virus” and gave President Donald Trump too much discretion to decide how funds were allocated. “At this point, we still have disagreement on many priorities, and Democrats are awaiting language from the Administration on several provisions as the negotiations on the overall funding amount continue,” Pelosi’s letter said. On a conference call on Saturday morning with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, multiple Republican senators criticized the price tag of the Trump administration’s proposal, a source familiar with the matter said. Mnuchin floated the $1.8 trillion proposal in a 30-minute Friday afternoon phone conversation with Pelosi, according to the White House. The new White House package was higher than an earlier $1.6 trillion Mnuchin offer and closer to the $2.2 trillion the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed last week. White House spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said the administration wanted to keep spending below $2 trillion but was eager to enact a fresh round of direct payments to individuals as well as aid for small businesses and airlines. Friday marked the third straight day of talks between Pelosi and Mnuchin. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in Congress, said on Friday he doubted lawmakers would pass a package before Nov. 3, although he has not directly participated in the talks. “The proximity to the election and the differences of opinion over what is needed at this particular juncture are pretty vast,” McConnell told a news conference.
Pelosi, Mnuchin fail to reach COVID-19 stimulus deal, but talks go on amid Republican doubts (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed on Friday to reach agreement on a COVID-19 stimulus package, while the top Senate Republican voiced doubt that Congress would act before the Nov. 3 election. Mnuchin floated a new $1.8 trillion proposal in a 30-minute Friday afternoon phone conversation, according to the White House. But Pelosi aide Drew Hamill said the offer lacked a broad plan to contain the pandemic. Talks will continue, he said. “We are still awaiting language from the administration as negotiations on the overall funding amount continue,” Hamill said on Twitter. The new White House package was higher than an earlier $1.6 trillion Mnuchin offer and closer to the $2.2 trillion that the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed last week. White House spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said the administration wanted to keep spending below $2 trillion but was eager to enact a fresh round of direct payments to American individuals as well as aid to small businesses and airlines. “We want to think that the Speaker is operating in good faith and we can have some progress in the near future,” Farah said. It was the third straight day of talks between Pelosi and Mnuchin this week.
PPP Money Abounded – but Some Got It Faster Than Others – WSJ – Six months after launching the biggest small business aid initiative in history, Congress is working to extend the Paycheck Protection Program – but with new measures to ensure the most vulnerable of businesses have a better shot at funding. The PPP initiative delivered more than 5 million loans totaling $525 billion, but was dogged by complaints from many borrowers and small-business groups that it favored sophisticated companies with strong ties to lenders, which issued the loans, over those with weaker financial roots, including many in minority neighborhoods. That disparity played out in how fast companies were able to get loans in the first critical weeks following the program’s April 3 launch, according to a Wall Street Journal review of lending data in the nation’s capital. The Journal compared PPP borrower data for zip codes in Washington’s central business district – which includes K Street law firms and lobbying shops – against those for low-income neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where commercial areas are dotted with small Black-owned firms, non-profit organizations and churches. There was a wide gap between the two areas in terms of when borrowers got their money, according to a review of lending data released by the Small Business Administration, which oversaw the program with the Treasury Department. In the central business district, about 80% of companies that received loans before the program ended Aug. 8 had gotten loan approval within the first month of its April 3 launch, the data shows. By comparison, just 38% of borrowers in the areas east of the Anacostia River that ultimately received loans had been approved in that first month. A similar pattern played out across the country. Nationwide, 92% of PPP loans of $2 million and more received approval by the end of April, whereas just 54% of loans $350,000 or less received approval by then. Trump administration officials have defended the PPP initiative, saying it was aimed at getting money out to companies quickly so they could keep employees on the payroll. While most of the loans were made by conventional lenders such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. , the SBA said it encouraged lending through Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions – which issued more than 221,000 PPP loans exceeding $16 billion by the time the program ended Aug. 8. But as Congress looks to extend the program, both Republicans and Democrats say the new round of PPP should include funds set aside for businesses with 10 or fewer employees, as well as continued support for community lenders that cater to underserved borrowers, including companies owned by women, minorities and veterans.
Corporate Polluters Have Received Tens of Millions in PPP Loans -As the American public awaits a new coronavirus aid package and at least one in five small businesses expect to close by the end of 2020 due to economic hardship, government watchdog Accountable.US and the HuffPost revealed Sunday that at least five companies which were previously fined for pollution violations received millions of dollars in loans via the Paycheck Protection Program which was introduced in March. Fossil fuel companies, a diesel engine parts manufacturer, and a nuclear waste management company were among the corporations which received up to $32 million in loans, after they were forced to collectively pay more than $52 million in penalties, according to the analysis. “These companies have a clear history of violating public trust and the law by contaminating the environment in pursuit of profits. Our federal government should not be essentially giving back portions of the penalties they’ve paid, but that’s exactly what the Trump administration is doing through the PPP,” Chris Saeger, director of strategic initiatives at Accountable.US, told the HuffPost.The companies include CountryMark Refining and Logistics, a subsidiary of an oil company based in Indiana, which took a PPP loan of $5 million to $10 million in April, seven years after it paid more than $18 million to correct its violations of the Clean Air Act, including emissions standards regarding the carcinogen benzene.Utah-based diesel engine parts company Performance Diesel took a loan between $350,000 and $1 million, just a year after it agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle Clean Air Act violations.”Polluters should receive penalties and regulatory scrutiny, not taxpayer subsidies,” tweeted Joe Murphy, an environmental attorney in New York.The report comes days after Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and BailoutWatch revealed “how the U.S. government provided a safety net for the flagging fossil fuel industry” through coronavirus relief packages by allowing oil and gas companies to issue nearly $100 billion in bonds through the Federal Reserve’s bond purchasing program.More than 7,000 fossil fuel companies have received a total of $3 billion to $7 billion in PPP loans, while an estimated 167,735 small businesses, including restaurants and independent retailers, have been forced to close since March. Small business owners reported long delays in actually accessing funds after they were approved for PPP loans in the spring while they struggled to keep their businesses open and employees paid.As of Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was negotiating more potential Covid-19 aid with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. House Democrats passed the HEROES Act in May and a second version of the legislation last week, calling for a reinstatement of the $600 weekly enhanced unemployment benefit included in the CARES Act, $400 billion for state and local governments, child care assistance funding, and funding for Covid-19 testing and contact tracing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has so far refused to take up the legislation
SBA streamlines forgiveness for PPP loans of $50,000 or less – The Small Business Administration has taken a step toward automatic forgiveness of Paycheck Protection Program loans – but it wasn’t as big a step as bankers were hoping for. The SBA and the Treasury Department, which are administering the PPP, unveiled a streamlined forgiveness application for borrowers with loans of $50,000 or less. The one-page application requires borrowers to calculate the amount of forgiveness they are seeking and provide five certifications attesting that their calculations are accurate, they have submitted appropriate documentation and funds were used for authorized purposes. Lenders’ loan review responsibility is confined to confirming receipt of the application and accompanying documentation. The SBA and Treasury introduced the streamlined application as part of an interim final rule. The rule also exempts borrowers with loans of $50,000 or less from program provisions that reduce the amount of forgiveness for businesses that laid off employees. According to the SBA and Treasury, there are about 3.57 million outstanding PPP loans of $50,000 or less, totaling $62 billion. Those loans equal 69% of all PPP loans but represent just 12% of the program’s overall dollar volume. More than 1.7 million of those smaller loans went to businesses that had no employees other than the owner. Trade groups for banks and credit unions have lobbied hard for simplified forgiveness. They showed no inclination of abandoning their efforts after the SBA’s announcement late Thursday. Consumer Bankers Association President and CEO Richard Hunt called the streamlined application a move in the right direction, but he said it didn’t exempt enough borrowers and was still too complicated. “This newest process still requires a significant investment of time and resources from small-business owners, resources which could be better spent paying their employees and supporting local economies,” Hunt said in a press release. “While we appreciate SBA and Treasury attempting to streamline the forgiveness process, it is apparent congressional action is needed for the true streamlined forgiveness mom-and-pop businesses need,” Hunt added.
A man attempted to steal $6 million in PPP loans after submitting applications for companies with names from ‘Game of Thrones’: report – A North Carolina man was charged after reportedly trying to steal over $6 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans for companies with names from “Game of Thrones.” Tristan Bishop Pan, 38, was charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions on September 29 after submitting applications for companies named White Walker, Khaleesi, and The Night’s Watch (all references to the popular HBO show), according to the Department of Justice. “Pan made false statements about the companies’ employees and payroll expenses,” according to the DOJ. “The PPP loan applications were supported by fake documents, including falsified tax filings, according to the indictment.” He reportedly submitted 14 PPP loan applications over $6.1 million, and he received more than $1.7 million in benefits after being approved for two applications. The government seized some of the allegedly fraudulent loan benefits, according to the DOJ. In April, the US government launched the PPP as a way to help small businesses financially amid the pandemic. These loans must be used for payroll costs, rent, and utilities. The US Small Business Administration guarantees PPP loans under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and they released the names of hundreds of thousands of small businesses that received funding from the PPP in July. The CARES Act was built to provide emergency financial assistance to Americans who are suffering economically from the coronavirus pandemic. But the program has been under scrutiny over the possibility of fraud. In July, some banks filed a record-high number of claims of suspected business-loan fraud, according to a report from The Project on Government Oversight.
As 98,000 Businesses Permanently Closed, the Fed and Treasury Have Sat on $340 Billion of Untapped Money from the CARES Act – by Pam Martens – When both parties in Congress came together in March to pass the CARES Act, which was signed into law by President Trump on March 27, the clear intention of the legislation was for the U.S. Treasury to hand over $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to the Federal Reserve. The Fed, in turn, was to leverage the money by 10 times to approximately $4.54 trillion to deploy to keep the economy moving, credit flowing, workers employed and businesses alive until the pandemic had been brought under control. But according to the latest H.4.1 release from the Federal Reserve (and backed up by recent Senate Testimony), six months after the CARES Act was signed into law, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has handed only $114 billion of the $454 billion over to the Fed. That leaves $340 billion allocated by Congress unaccounted for. (See Paragraph 5 (Liabilities) and the related footnote 14 at this link on the Fed’s H.4.1 release.) The Federal Reserve’s H.4.1 release shows that the $114 billion it has received thus far from the Treasury has been allocated as follows: $10 billion to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF); $37.5 billion to the Corporate Credit Facilities; $37.5 billion to the Main Street Facilities; $17.5 billion to the Municipal Liquidity Facility; $10 billion to the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF II); and $1.5 billion to the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility. The bulk of those programs are helping Wall Street, not Main Street. The one program actually called the “Main Street Facilities,” bears little resemblance to the kind of help actual Main Street businesses need right now. Minimum loan amounts in the Fed’s Main Street program are set at $250,000 while many businesses on real Main Streets in America would be highly reluctant to take a loan of that size, given the likely prospect right now that their business won’t make it. What these businesses need more of are Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loans where the loan will be forgiven if they keep their workers on payroll. That would allow workers to avoid eviction and help small apartment building landlords stay out of foreclosure. The PPP program, run through the Small Business Administration, ended on August 8. Despite the desperate need, Congress can’t get its act together and pass a new PPP program. A September 16 Local Economic Impact Report from Yelp indicates that while the Fed and Treasury have stonewalled Congress on what is happening with that $340 billion, 97,966 businesses have permanently closed. The devastation has been particularly felt among restaurants, bars and clothing and home decor retailers. According to the Yelp study, as of August 31, there had been 32,109 restaurant closures with 19,590 of those indicated as permanent, or 61 percent. In the same time frame, 6,451 bars had closed with 3,499 reported as permanent (54 percent). Among retailers, since the end of August, there has been 30,374 business closures with 17,503 (58 percent) of those indicated as permanent. And the trend is going in the wrong direction. Yelp reports that permanent closures among retailers have increased by 10 percent since July.
Live updates: President’s blood oxygen levels dropped twice in recent days, doctors say -President Trump’s condition has “improved,” according to White House physician Sean Conley, but the president experienced significant oxygen drops on Friday and Saturday and was given dexamethasone – a steroid that is typically reserved only for severely ill coronavirus patients.Trump’s doctors said he has had no fever since Friday morning, however, and could be discharged as early as Monday. Conley declined to answer questions about the president’s lungs, including whether there is scarring or whether Trump has pneumonia.Aides and doctors have sowed confusion in recent days about Trump’s health status and the timeline of his treatment and diagnosis. The White House on Sunday falsely suggested that doctors did not previously disclose Trump’s use of supplemental oxygen because they lacked the information.Later Sunday, Trump made a surprise visit to supporters, waving to them from inside an SUV that slowly drove past the crowds gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The outing alarmed Secret Service agents and medical professionals, including a doctor affiliated with Walter Reed who said others in the car were risking their lives for “political theater.”
Photo of Mark Meadows rubbing his head during update on Trump’s health goes viral – A photo of President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, rubbing his head during Sunday’s update on the president’s health went viral. Reuters photographer Erin Scott captured Meadows with his forehead resting on his hands as Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley delivered the update to the media about Trump, who has been at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after testing positive for COVID-19. Corrine Perkins, the North America editor for Reuters Pictures, posted the photo on Twitter. The photo was also tweeted by other Reuters staff and ABC News. Several others commented on the photo, including Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire, who said, “This photo tells at least 1,000 words about this weekend.” Greta Van Susteren, host of “Full Court Press,” noted in a tweet that the chief of staff “probably hasn’t slept since Thursday.” Meadows was in hot water this weekend after he was identified to be the source who told reporters on Saturday that Trump’s “vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning, and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care.” Initially, Meadows’s comments were attributed to an official familiar with the president’s condition before an online video revealed that the chief of staff talked to pool reporters after Conley’s Saturday briefing. The New York Times and CNN reported that President Trump is furious with Meadows after he contradicted Conley’s message during Saturday’s press conference that the president was “doing well” and “in exceptionally good spirits.”
Trump says he ‘learned a lot’ about coronavirus during treatment: ‘This is the real school’ – President Trump on Sunday said he has “learned a lot” about COVID-19 since his diagnosis, calling his time undergoing treatment the “real school” for the highly contagious virus that has infected more than 7.4 million people in the U.S. “It’s been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID. I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn’t the ‘let’s read the books’ school,” Trump said in a video posted to Twitter. “And I get it, and I understand it, and it’s a very interesting thing, and I’m going to be letting you know about it.” Trump has been widely criticized by Democrats for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 209,000 people in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the most fatalities reported by any country. Trump’s critics have called him out for at times undermining public health guidance issued by his own administration, including holding large in-person campaign rallies without mask or social distancing requirements. In the video Sunday, the president also said he planned to greet supporters who had gathered outside Walter Reed Medical Center, where he is being treated for the coronavirus. Trump was taken to the hospital on Friday after he announced he and his wife had tested positive for the virus. Patients who test positive for COVID-19, a highly contagious and potentially fatal disease, are typically required to quarantine for 14 days. Since Trump announced his positive test, a growing number of Republican officials in his orbit have said they also tested positive for the coronavirus.
Questions remain unanswered as White House casts upbeat outlook on Trump’s COVID-19 fight – The White House and President Trump’s doctors sought Sunday to project a positive message about the president’s battle against COVID-19 even as contradictory statements and limited information left a number of unanswered questions about his condition. The team of doctors caring for Trump on Sunday said he could return to the White House as soon as Monday while at the same time disclosing he had been on supplemental oxygen and that he was receiving a drug normally given to seriously ill patients. And Trump himself sparked concern – and outrage – when he left his hospital room at Walter Reed Military Medical Center to wave to the supporters gathered outside from the back seat of an SUV. White House physician Sean Conley said Sunday that Trump has experienced two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen level since he was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus late Thursday evening and that he had received supplemental oxygen at least once. The doctors also said Trump was given a steroid called dexamethasone that is generally given to people seriously ill with COVID-19, which has killed nearly 210,000 people in the U.S. The White House physician admitted that officials had been intentionally vague a day earlier when pointedly asked when Trump had been administered supplemental oxygen in an attempt to be “upbeat” about the president’s prognosis. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, over his course of illness has had. I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in doing so, came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true,” he told reporters in a Sunday morning news conference outside Walter Reed Medical Center, where Trump has been since Friday. White House communications director Alyssa Farah echoed that sentiment after the medical briefing. “The other point I would make, which is what [Conley] alluded to, is when you’re treating a patient, you want to project confidence. You want to lift their spirits, and that was the intent,” she said. Even as he disclosed more on Sunday, Conley avoided answering questions about what X-rays and CT scans had revealed and whether Trump’s lungs had been damaged. Asked whether Trump is being held in a negative pressure room, Conley declined to “get into the specifics of his care.” Conley also said that he didn’t know whether Trump had received another dose of supplemental oxygen on Saturday, the second time he experienced a drop in his oxygen level, adding that he would need to check with the president’s nurses.
Melania Trump reportedly refused to leave COVID-19 isolation for fear of infecting Secret Service agents – unlike Trump who took a ride in his motorcade –The first lady, Melania Trump, did not come out of COVID-19 isolation in the White House to visit President Donald Trump in the hospital because she was concerned she might infect the Secret Service agents on her security detail, NBC News reported, citing an unnamed White House official.”She has COVID,” the official told the outlet in explaining why she did not make the trip Saturday.”That would expose the agents who would drive her there and the medical staff who would walk her up to him,” the person said.That reasoning contrasts with the actions of her husband, who on Sunday evening left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center – where he has been hospitalized for a few days – and took a ride in an SUV to wave at supporters. One senior medic at the hospital described the move as “political theater” that endangered the lives of the Secret Service agents who accompanied him in the closed vehicle.COVID-19 is highly infectious and spreads most easily in indoor spaces where there is little circulation. “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” tweeted Dr. James Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed.”They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”
Secret Service agents outraged by Trump’s drive outside hospital -A growing number of Secret Service agents have been concerned about the president’s seeming indifference to the health risks they face when traveling with him in public.A few reacted with outrage to his Sunday night drive outside the hospital where he is being treated for the coronavirus, asking how Trump’s desire to be seen outside of his hospital suite justified the jeopardy to agents protecting the president.The president, who wore a face mask, waved to a crowd from the back of the vehicle after announcing that he would “pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” Doctors immediately criticized the jaunt outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, saying the president had put everyone inside his SUV at risk.”Where are the adults?” said one former agent.”He’s not even pretending to care now,” said another. The White House did not immediately provide information about any precautions taken to protect Secret Service members.
Walter Reed attending physician swipes at Trump for motorcade visit to supporters An attending physician at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday swiped at President Trump for leaving his hospital room and waving to supporters gathered outside from his motorcade, saying it puts those in the vehicle at risk.”That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play,” tweeted James Phillips, who is also the chief of disaster medicine at the George Washington University Department of Emergency Medicine. “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity,” he continued.According to photos and videos of the visit to supporters, Trump was seen wearing what appeared to be a cloth face mask, while Secret Service members in the car with him wore N95 masks.Some also pointed out that Trump’s drive appeared to violate Maryland public health guidance, which asks that COVID-19-positive people in the state quarantine and isolate themselves from other people.The comments come after Trump tweeted a video in which he said he planned to go say hello to the dozens of supporters who had gathered near the hospital and waved Trump flags.
White House gave New Jersey officials list of 206 people at Trump’s Thursday fundraiser events –The White House provided New Jersey health officials with a list of at least 206 people who attended President Trump’s fundraiser events in Bedminster, N.J., last Thursday, officials said on Sunday. The New Jersey Department of Health said in a joint statement with the Somerset County Department of Health that it reached out to all of the individuals who attended the events hours before the president tested positive for COVID-19. The agencies said they received the list from the White House and the management of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. The state health department made attendees “aware of possible exposure and recommend that they self-monitor for symptoms and quarantine if they were in close contact with the President and his staff.” County health officials are conducting interviews with staff members at the golf club and analyzing how much contact each had with the president and his staff and “providing public health recommendations accordingly.” The statement notes that contact tracing is “ongoing,” and the majority of the club’s staff lives within Somerset County. New Jersey officials said they were told the federal government is also conducting contact tracing. The state and county health officials recommended attendees who want to get tested wait at least five to seven days after Thursday. “While the risk is low, a negative test earlier than that time cannot definitively rule out that COVID-19 will not develop,” the joint statement said.
Is It Ok to Fake Being Healthy??? — An Honest QUESTION . . . According to the law . . . . Is there any difference between a man with AIDS having unprotected sex with someone and not telling his partner about his disease … .AND what TRUMP did in New Jersey ???
Trump Didn’t Disclose First Positive Covid-19 Test While Awaiting a Second Test on Thursday – WSJ – President Trump didn’t disclose a positive result from a rapid test for Covid-19 on Thursday while awaiting the findings from a more thorough coronavirus screening, according to people familiar with the matter.Mr. Trump received a positive result on Thursday evening before making an appearance on Fox News in which he didn’t reveal those results. Instead, he confirmed earlier reports that one of his top aides had tested positive for coronavirus and mentioned the second test he had taken that night for which he was awaiting results.”I’ll get my test back either tonight or tomorrow morning,” Mr. Trump said during the interview. At 1 a.m. on Friday, the president tweeted that he indeed had tested positive.Under White House protocols, the more reliable test that screens a specimen from deeper in the nasal passage is administered only after a rapid test shows a positive reading. Based on people familiar with the matter, the president’s tests followed that protocol.As the virus spread among the people closest to him, Mr. Trump also asked one adviser not to disclose results of their own positive test. “Don’t tell anyone,” Mr. Trump said, according to a person familiar with the conversation.Mr. Trump and his top advisers also aimed to keep such a close hold on the early positive results that his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, didn’t know that Hope Hicks, one of the president’s closest White House aides, had tested positive on Thursday morning until news reports later that evening, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Trump campaign said Friday evening that Mr. Stepien had tested positive.The initial secrecy within Mr. Trump’s inner circle has created a sense of anxiety within the West Wing. Publicly, the White House has issued evolving and contradictory statements about the president’s health that has some officials worried about their own credibility.”I’m glued to Twitter and TV because I have no official communication from anyone in the West Wing,” an administration official said.
President’s niece: Trump family viewed illness as a weakness – President Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, told NPR that her uncle, currently hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19, was brought up to view sickness as “unacceptable” and a “weakness.”Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, told the network that the president and his father, Fred Trump, viewed illness as “unacceptable … which sounds incredibly cruel, but happens to be true.”She pointed to how her father Fred Trump Jr.’s alcoholism was received, telling NPR: “In my family, [it] was treated like a moral failing.””That’s why [the U.S. is] in the horrible place we’re in, because he cannot admit to the weakness of being ill or of other people being ill,” she added.”Between that and my grandfather’s adherence to Norman Vincent Peale’s power of positive thinking, which he took to such an extreme level that it was toxic because it left no room for expressions of what he considered negativity of any kind, you know, sadness, despair, being physically ill,” she said, naming the minister and author whose church President Trump attended in his youth. Mary Trump also said she had not heard anything from her family regarding her uncle’s treatment. “Unfortunately, it seems like we can’t exactly rely upon the information we’re getting directly from the medical team at Walter Reed, which is unfortunate because we really do need as much accurate information as possible in a case like this,” she said. Mary Trump’s late uncle Robert Trump attempted to block the release of her book, “Too Much and Never Enough,” over the summer, citing a nondisclosure agreement she signed after her grandfather’s death. The temporary restraining order filing was ultimately dismissed and the book’s release proceeded in July.
Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tests positive for coronavirus – White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday that she has tested positive for the coronavirus, a diagnosis that comes as President Donald Trump remains hospitalized with the virus. “After testing negative consistently, including every day since Thursday, I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday morning while experiencing no symptoms,” McEnany said in a statement that she posted on Twitter. “No reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as close contacts by the White House Medical Unit.” McEnany gave a briefing to reporters at the White House last Thursday, hours before Trump’s advisor Hope Hicks was revealed to have tested positive for Covid-19. Trump’s diagnosis, and that of his wife, first lady Melania Trump, was revealed shortly thereafter. “I definitively had no knowledge of Hope Hicks’ diagnosis prior to holding a White House press briefing on Thursday,” McEnany wrote in her Twitter post. “With my recent positive test, I will begin the quarantine process and will continue working on behalf of the American People remotely.” In White House circles, McEnany has become a symbol of how closely held the early diagnoses of Covid-19 were among high-ranking officials. While Hicks tested positive for the coronavirus early Thursday, McEnany was not immediately informed of the diagnosis, nor that she herself had been exposed to the virus, until Thursday evening, when press reports began to emerge about Hicks. In the hours between Hicks’ positive test and when McEnany learned of it, she briefed the press in the White House briefing room, while not wearing a mask. Melania Trump’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham, who preceded McEnany as White House press secretary, declined to comment on McEnany’s disclosure Monday.
Claudia Conway announces she has coronavirus on TikTok -Claudia Conway announced on social media Sunday that she has coronavirus.”Hey guys currently dying of covid!” Conway, the daughter of President Trump’s former aide Kellyanne Conway, wrote on a TikTok post. Kellyanne Conway announced her own coronavirus diagnosis on Friday minutes after her daughter broke the news.The elder Conway was at the Sept. 26 Rose Garden event for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett with several attendees who later tested positive for the bug.There were roughly 150 high-profile guests in attendance at the event, many without masks.Kellyanne Conway also attended Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Barr reverses, will quarantine for several days after potential coronavirus exposure Attorney General William Barr reversed his decision to not quarantine following possible exposure to the coronavirus and said instead that he would isolate himself for several days, according to the Associated Press. Barr was exposed to COVID-19 last week at the White House’s event announcing the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. A spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Barr’s decision to the news outlet, though the exact length of Barr’s self-imposed quarantine was not immediately clear. Kerri Kupec, the Justice Department’s spokesperson, added that Barr had undergone four tests for COVID-19 exposure since Friday, all of which had returned negative results. Barr told the New York Times through a spokesperson the day earlier that he would not quarantine, a decision that came as the Trump administration and the president’s reelection campaign have faced increasing scrutiny over their preventative measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic following the president’s announcement Friday that he and the first lady had tested positive for the virus. News outlets have hammered allies of the president over the past two days in response to contradictory statements about the president’s condition. Allies of the president have also faced criticism over the president’s own past unwillingness to appear in public while wearing a mask, as well as the Trump campaign’s lack of preventative measures against the spread of the virus.
White House staffers get email saying to stay home if they experience coronavirus symptoms – White House staffers were urged in an email Sunday to “please stay home” and “do not come to work” if they have exhibited any symptoms of the coronavirus. An all-staff email obtained by New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi directed members of the White House staff to “immediately contact your primary care provider” and “inform their supervisors” in the event of symptoms being presented. “If you or your colleagues believe that you should be practicing telework, or have questions about your ability to do so, please contact your supervisor,” the email reads. The guidance for White House employees came almost three days after the president announced his own diagnosis of COVID-19, along with his wife’s, shortly after the confirmation that Hope Hicks, his longtime aide, had tested positive. . It also comes amid a whirlwind of criticism centered around the White House and allies of the president surrounding the president’s longstanding resistance against publicly taking measures to prevent the spread of the virus; Trump has frequently made public appearances at rallies and various events without a mask and in apparent violation of various local guidelines enforcing social distancing. The president’s allies attempted to defend his past behavior on Sunday as well as his decision to leave Walter Reed Medical Center for a drive-by past supporters gathered outside, even as the White House has faced searing criticism over misleading comments about Trump’s health and continued personal fight against COVID-19. “Now more than ever, the American public deserves independent coverage of the president so they can be reliably informed about his health,” said the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) on Sunday.
McEnany’s Press Aides Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt Test Positive For Coronavirus, At Least 18 Now Ill – White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and two of her deputies have tested positive for the coronavirus as President Donald Trump will be released from hospital Monday, suffering from coronavirus. McEnany and her two deputies, Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt, are among at least 18 people people in the White House, or connected to Trump’s reelection campaign or to recent White House events, who have tested positive for Covid-19 since late last week.”After testing negative consistently, including every day since Thursday, I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday morning while experiencing no symptoms,” McEnany said on Twitter.”No reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as close contacts by the White House Medical Unit.”It was not clear when Gilmartin, who is principal assistant press secretary, and Leavitt, who is assistant press secretary, tested positives for Covid-19. Their diagnoses, which were confirmed by NBC News with two sources familiar with their situation, were made public only after McEnany disclosed her diagnois on Twitter.The other people connected to Trump and recent White House events who have tested positive since Thursday include Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, three Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, as well as Nick Luna, the president’s personal assistant. University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins also tested positive, after attending a White House event announcing Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. In addition, at least three journalists who were at the White House over the past week have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the White House Correspondents Association.
Fox News Stars Potentially Exposed to Coronavirus at Debate – A son of Rupert Murdoch and some of the biggest stars at Fox News were potentially exposed to the coronavirus after attending Tuesday’s presidential debate in Cleveland, and the network is planning for its anchors, reporters and staff to be tested out of an abundance of caution, according to a person familiar with its plans.Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman of the Fox Corporation, led a toast to Chris Wallace, the “Fox News Sunday” anchor who moderated the debate, at a Cleveland airport after the event. The gathering included two of the channel’s news anchors, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, along with the Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott, and the president of Fox News Media, Jay Wallace. Chris Wallace, who sat about a dozen feet from President Trump during Tuesday’s 96-minute event, then flew on a private plane to the Washington area in a group that included Mr. Baier and other Washington-based members of the Fox News staff. Sean Hannity, Fox News’s top-rated opinion star, also broadcast from Cleveland on the night of the debate, during which he conducted an in-person interview with the president’s son, Donald J. Trump Jr., who sat only a few inches away from Mr. Hannity. Other Fox News personalities in Cleveland included the political analysts Brit Hume, Dana Perino, and Juan Williams, and the anchor Bill Hemmer. Karl Rove, the Republican strategist and Fox News contributor, was also on hand.In addition, Laura Ingraham, the 10 p.m. opinion host on Fox News, attended a news conference at the White House on Saturday where Mr. Trump announced the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Another Fox News host, Pete Hegseth, also attended. Many of those in the crowd at the Barrett event did not wear masks.Fox News declined to comment on Friday. But a person familiar with the network’s workings said that the hosts, reporters, and staff who were potentially exposed to the virus over the past week would be tested out of an abundance of caution. The person requested anonymity to describe internal discussions that were not yet public. John Roberts, the network’s chief White House correspondent, and Jon Decker, a Fox News Radio correspondent, both attended a White House news briefing with Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, on Thursday. The two correspondents are also expected to be tested for the virus.
Trump announces he’s leaving hospital after three days of coronavirus treatment – President Trump said he would leave Walter Reed Medical Center and return to the White House on Monday at 6:30 p.m. ET, three days after being admitted to the hospital for treatment of complications from COVID-19. “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M.” Trump tweeted Monday afternoon. “Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Early Friday morning, Trump announced that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus. The president was brought to the hospital via Marine One on Friday night after he had developed a fever and his blood oxygen level had “dropped rapidly” and required supplemental oxygen, according to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Trump received an experimental antibody treatment along with the antiviral remdesivir and the anti-inflammatory steroid dexamethasone. Both of the latter drugs were in use before the coronavirus pandemic hit and before Trump took office. Trump’s medical conditioned has remained unclear after White House physician Dr. Sean Conley admitted to reporters Sunday that, during a briefing a day earlier, he had tried to conceal the fact that the president had received oxygen at the White House. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude of the team [and] the president over the course of his illness,” Conley said. “I didn’t want to give any info that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true.” Trump has released two videos on social media from the hospital thanking his followers for well wishes, and in one proclaiming he had “learned a lot about COVID” by going to the “real school.” The White House released photographs that it said showed Trump working at a table while in the presidential unit of Walter Reed, although the paper he was shown signing in one photo appeared to be blank. Late Sunday afternoon, Trump briefly left Walter Reed in a motorcade to salute flag-waving supporters outside the hospital, drawing sharp criticism for putting the driver, his aides and Secret Service at risk of contracting the virus.
Covid-19 Live Updates: Trump Returns Home After Downplaying Disease, but Doctor Says He Isn’t ‘Out of the Woods’ – After spending three nights at the Walter Reed medical center, President Trump returned on Monday evening to the White House, where he will continue to receive treatment for Covid-19. His physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, had said earlier in the day that the president was not “out of the woods yet.” After passing through the hospital’s large golden doors, Mr. Trump, wearing a mask and a suit, paused atop a flight of steps and pumped his fist a few times at chest level. He did not respond to shouted questions from the press as he walked past, unaccompanied. “Thank you very much, everybody,” he said with a wave. Mr. Trump then boarded a black S.U.V. that drove him to his presidential helicopter, Marine One, for the short flight to the White House. He offered a thumbs-up just before stepping onto his helicopter, which departed just after 6:45 p.m. for the 10-minute flight. After landing on the South Lawn, Mr. Trump ascended a flight of stairs and then turned to face his helicopter – and the live television cameras – and removed his mask before giving the departing Marine One a long salute. He then turned and walked into the White House residence – without donning his mask. Several masked people, including what appeared to be an official photographer capturing the moment, were inside. The three major network newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC carried it all live, the kind of blanket television coverage that Mr. Trump relishes.
Covid drug given to Trump developed using cells derived from an abortion – One of the drugs taken by Donald Trump that he has touted as a potential “cure” for coronavirus was developed using human cells originally obtained from an elective abortion, a practice repeatedly denounced by the president and many of his supporters. The drug is a monoclonal antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron. The president received an 8-gram infusion under a “compassionate use” exemption when he was hospitalized over the weekend after testing positive for Covid-19. There is no cure for Covid-19, and the drug is not approved. The cells used to develop the drug are known as HEK-293T cells, a line of cells used in laboratories. The cells were originally derived from an embryonic kidney after an elective abortion performed in the Netherlands in the 1970s. HEK-293 cells are one of the most commonly used cell lines in laboratories across a wide array of research. Trump has consistently sought to restrict abortion access, including most recently, when he nominated the conservative Catholic Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court last month. The anti-abortion movement is one of Trump’s most enthusiastic bases of support. The 2020 Republican party platform explicitly opposes embryonic stem cell research, and calls for a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, because like HEK cells they are derived from an embryo.
Trump tells Americans following his hospital release: Don’t let coronavirus ‘dominate you’ – President Trump on Monday implored Americans not to allow the novel coronavirus to “dominate your lives” after returning to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he was treated for three days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it. We have the best medical equipment. We have the best medicines, all developed recently,” Trump, who was not wearing a mask, said in a video message taped at the White House and disseminated on his Twitter account. “Don’t let it dominate. Don’t let it take over your lives. Don’t let that happen,” Trump continued. The president insisted that he felt “better than 20 years ago” after receiving treatment from doctors at Walter Reed in Bethesda, Md., where he was transported on Friday after being diagnosed with the virus. Trump, who has held large campaign rallies in recent weeks, also suggested that he contracted the virus because he was “out front” leading the country. And he wondered whether he was now “immune” to the virus, four days after testing positive. “Nobody that is a leader would not do what I did. And I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger, but that’s OK. And now I’m better. Maybe I’m immune. I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world,” Trump said. The president’s remarks served to expand on a tweet he sent earlier Monday in which he announced his plans to leave Walter Reed and urged Americans not to fear the virus, which has killed more than 210,000 people into the United States and has resulted in millions losing their jobs. Globally, more than 1 million have died from COVID-19. Trump has repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the coronavirus, and his message indicated that his rhetoric would not shift now that he has faced his own infection. He has also eschewed public health guidelines, holding rallies and White House events with crowds where people are not required to wear masks and do not practice social distancing. Upon his return to the White House from Walter Reed on Monday evening, the president walked up the steps of the residence and promptly removed his face mask despite likely still being infectious. Trump has been afforded top-notch care at Walter Reed, the sort that is not available to average Americans. According to his doctors, the president has taken the antiviral medication remdesivir, the steroid dexamethasone and an experimental antibody cocktail made by Regeneron. Trump is expected to receive a fifth and final dose of remdesivir at the White House on Tuesday and will continue to receive dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation.
Trump stages White House return to boost back-to-work policy and election coup plans – President Donald Trump left Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to the White House Monday night in an event staged for the evening television news and aimed at promoting an image of strength and power to offset the devastating impact of his falling ill with COVID-19. The clear intention was to reaffirm his criminal policy of “herd immunity,” i.e., opposing measures to contain the pandemic, which has already led to the deaths of more than 210,000 Americans. Trump staged a Nazi-like photo-op on the White House balcony whose obvious intention is to inspire his fascistic base. As a substantial defeat at the polls appears increasingly likely, Trump’s strategy to retain power is focused on the use of non-electoral, illegal, unconstitutional and violent methods. Trump has denounced mail-in ballots and called on far-right supporters to intimidate in-person voters as well. He is counting on the cowardice and complicity of his Democratic Party opponents, who fear a movement from below against both the Trump administration and the capitalist system as a whole. The political purpose of Trump’s departure from the hospital, while he remains highly infectious, was indicated by a tweet that encapsulates both the class arrogance and the homicidal frenzy of the American corporate elite. In it, Trump said he felt “really good,” and declared, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life … I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Shortly after his return to the White House, Trump tweeted a video in which he declared his “victory” over COVID-19 and repeated: “Don’t let it dominate your lives. Don’t be afraid … We’re going back. We’re going back to work.” Trump is making clear, in his brutish style, that American capitalism will not allow the health concerns of working people to “dominate” over the profit concerns of the corporations and banks, and the billionaires who control them. After all, he is arguing, if I, the president, can go “back to work,” so can autoworkers, meatpackers, warehouse workers and school teachers. Never mind that none of these millions of workers has access to anything like the medical resources and technology available to the billionaire president.
Trump removes mask upon arrival at White House | TheHill – President Trump, who is infected with a highly contagious virus, took off his mask upon his return to the White House on Monday as he posed for photos from the balcony above the South Lawn. The president posed for photos and appeared to be taking part in a video shoot following his return to the executive mansion after spending three days undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. After landing in Marine One, Trump walked up the stairs of the South Portico, removed his mask and looked over the balcony. The president was near an official photographer, and other staffers could be seen behind him. He did not put his mask back on as he turned to walk back into the White House. The image reflects how Trump appears largely unchanged in his views toward COVID-19 even after contracting the virus that has killed more than 200,000 people in the U.S. and infected millions. The president earlier in the day tweeted to his followers, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” Trump revealed Friday that he and the first lady had tested positive for the virus. He was taken to Walter Reed later that day and has been showing symptoms, including fatigue and fever. The president required supplemental oxygen on Friday and Saturday as well. White House physician Sean Conley told reporters earlier Monday that Trump was healthy enough to leave the hospital, citing his vitals and clinical evaluations. But he acknowledged that the president, who is 74 and overweight and thus at risk for severe complications, was not out of the woods yet. “If we can get through to Monday with him remaining the same or improving better yet, then we will all take that final deep sigh of relief,” Conley said.
Piecing together clues, medical experts suggest Trump could be entering a pivotal phase in his fight against Covid-19.– The White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, said on Tuesday that President Trump was experiencing no symptoms of Covid-19 and doing “extremely well” on his first full day at home since a three-night stay in the hospital. But outside doctors and medical experts in Covid-19 and lung disease said they were struggling to piece together an accurate picture of Mr. Trump’s health. Far from having vanquished Covid-19, the outside experts said, Mr. Trump is most likely still struggling with it, and possibly entering a pivotal phase in which he could take a turn for the worse. Dr. Conley said on Monday that Mr. Trump had been prescribed dexamethasone, which some experts saw as a sign that the president could be dealing with pulmonary issues since it is recommended only for Covid-19 patients who have severe or critical forms of the disease. “Does he have lung involvement? My guess is yes, because they did give him a lot of medications that they would only give to someone who did,” said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a pulmonologist and director of critical care services at Northwell Health in New York. In a televised event on Monday that some of the president’s Republican allies tried to frame as a quick recovery from the virus, Mr. Trump was flown from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to the White House. After leaving his helicopter, he crossed the lawn, walked up a set of stairs and removed his mask. “As a pulmonologist, he did two things for me: He did a walk test, and he did a stair-climbing test,” said Dr. Talmadge E. King Jr., a specialist in pulmonary critical care and the dean of the UCSF School of Medicine. He added that lung doctors still rely on tests like these “to just get a picture of how the patient’s doing.” He and others said that at the top of the stairs, Mr. Trump used his neck muscles to help him breathe – a classic sign that someone’s lungs are not taking in enough oxygen. Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease doctor and assistant professor at the University of Alberta, agreed. “As a physician, I would refrain from commenting on somebody whom I haven’t examined,” he said. “But in this case, the clinical signs are so obvious that it can be seen from a distance, even on a short two- or three-second clip.”
CDC finally acknowledges airborne spread of coronavirus – In guidance updated on Monday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally acknowledged that “airborne transmission” of “small droplets” can be responsible for coronavirus infections, including at a distance of more than six feet away, in some situations.The updated guidance reflects a continuing battle between public health officials and the Trump administration over how to accurately describe risks associated with different environments.Although scientists have long known that the coronavirus is spread through air – as opposed to the unlikely form of transmission from touching contaminated surfaces – the debate over whether it is “airborne” has to do with just how long viral particles linger in the air and what size those particles must be to remain infectious.”There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than 6 feet away. These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising,” the updated guidance says. The new guidance appears to caution against activities such as political rallies and sports events, where many people may be crowded together indoors. The CDC now says that, in those enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces, “the amount of infectious smaller droplet and particles produced by the people with COVID-19 became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people. The people who were infected were in the same space during the same time or shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left.” The CDC has frequently found its scientists silenced or subverted by the White House, which has consistently sought to downplay the risks of contracting a virus that has killed 210,000 people in the United States. In late September, the CDC was forced to delete a guidance describing the airborne qualities of the coronavirus. The agency said that guidance had been a “draft” that was “posted in error.” Critics charged that political pressure was at work.
Trump health official meets with doctors pushing herd immunity | TheHill – A top Trump health official met Monday with a group of doctors who are proponents of the controversial “herd immunity” approach to COVID-19, even as other experts warn of its deadly and dangerous consequences. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard; Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford; and Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford, all of whom are epidemiologists studying infectious diseases, were invited to the meeting by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Scott Atlas, an adviser to Trump on whom other experts have cast doubt for his statements about COVID-19, including his endorsement of herd immunity. In the meeting, the three doctors told Azar that allowing the virus to spread uncontrolled among young, healthy people while protecting older adults and those at higher risk for serious illness would build up enough population immunity to stop it from spreading widely while avoiding lockdowns and other mitigation measures that have had a damaging impact on the economy. “We had a very good discussion. He asked many questions, and we put forth our case to protect the people who are vulnerable, and the idea of trying to do lockdowns to eliminate this disease is not realistic,” Kulldorff said. Other experts argue that allowing COVID-19 to spread uncontrollably would lead to unnecessary deaths, illness and hospitalizations, even if the U.S. attempted to isolate vulnerable people from the rest of the population while the virus spreads. Herd immunity is typically accomplished when enough people are vaccinated against a virus, but a vaccine has not yet been approved for COVID-19. The idea of allowing the virus to spread uncontrollably is gaining traction in the White House, where Atlas is advising President Trump, who is battling his own case of COVID-19. Atlas told The Hill in an email that he attended the meeting and supports the declaration the group put out endorsing herd immunity. “Their targeted protection of the vulnerable and opening schools and society policy matches the policy of the President and what I have advised,” he wrote. After this story was published, Bhattacharya, the Stanford professor, said it was “false” to say the group was pushing a herd immunity strategy. “A herd immunity strategy better describes the current lockdown policy,” he said in an email. “Herd immunity is a biological fact so of course we mention it, but it is not our strategy.” The Great Barrington declaration signed by the doctors argues that the lockdown policies “are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” including fewer cancer screenings, lower childhood vaccination rates and deteriorating mental health. It said keeping restrictions in place until a vaccine is available will cause damage, and makes the case for allowing young people to get the coronavirus while shielding the vulnerable from it so that herd immunity is built up without a vaccine. The group calls this “focused protection.””The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk,” the declaration reads. “We call this Focused Protection.” The declaration calls for schools and universities to be opened for in-person teaching with sports and other extracurricular activities resumed. Young adults should work normally and not at home, it says, with restaurants and other businesses opened.
Trump Again Claims Coronavirus Less Deadly Than Flu, Prompting Facebook and Twitter to Block His Post – Both Facebook and Twitter acted Tuesday to flag a post by President Donald Trump in which he once again downplayed the new coronavirus by comparing it to the seasonal flu.”Flu season is coming up!,” Trump said in the post, as CNBC reported. “Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” This is not true. COVID-19 has killed 210,909 U.S. residents so far, according to the most recent figures from Johns Hopkins University. That’s almost 10 times more than the 22,000 estimated deaths during the 2019-2020 flu season, following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures. The 2017-2018 flu season, which was the deadliest since 2010, saw around 61,000 deaths, CNBC reported. The coronavirus also has a much higher mortality rate, NPR pointed out. The seasonal flu usually has a mortality rate of less than 0.1 percent, while the coronavirus in the U.S. has had an estimated mortality rate of between 0.5 percent and slightly more than one percent.Facebook removed the post altogether around 11 a.m. Eastern Time, CNBC reported.”We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19, and have now removed this post,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC.Twitter did not remove the post altogether, but instead covered it with a warning that users had to click past in order to view the tweet and also prevented it from being shared. It posted the warning more than three hours after Trump wrote the tweet.”This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19,” the social media company wrote. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
Donald Trump Personally to Blame for 37 Percent of the World’s COVID-19 Misinformation, Study Finds – It’s easy to dismiss President Donald Trump’s witless mutterings about the coronavirus pandemic as laughable or patently untrue, like when he suggested injecting sunlight into human bodies. But a study has found that the knock-on effect of his baseless claims are much more far-reaching and damaging than many might think. Researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world found that mentions of Trump made up nearly 38 percent of the overall “misinformation conversation,” making the president the largest single source of falsehoods about the pandemic. Sarah Evanega, the study’s lead author, toldThe New York Times that the work proves Trump’s loose lips have “real-world dire health implications.”
White House Blocks FDA Guidelines for COVID-19 Vaccine – New guidelines produced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure the safety of a vaccine to protect against the novel coronavirus are being blocked by White House officials. The new guidelines would almost certainly guarantee that a vaccine would not be ready and approved by Election Day, according to The New York Times. An administration official told Reuters that the approval process was pending and there was no connection to Election Day. The thorniest issue seems to be that the FDA guidelines mandate that vaccine developers follow patients enrolled in their trials for a minimum of two months before seeking approval for the vaccine under an Emergency Use Authorization license, according to the AP.The recommendation from the FDA about the follow-up period is designed to make sure the vaccine is safe. A senior administration official confirmed that the White House was blocking the guideline, arguing there was “no clinical or medical reason” to wait two months, as the AP reported.Two weeks ago, when the FDA signaled that it would issue tougher standards to increase transparency and increase public trust in the safety and efficacy of a vaccine, Trump signaled he may not be open to the tougher standards, dismissing it as a political move, according to The Hill.During the weeks that the FDA has tried to implement stricter guidelines to ensure safety and efficacy, FDA Administrator Stephen Hahn has vowed that any and all decisions about approving a potential vaccine would be made by career scientists, not politicians, according to the AP. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has blocked the guidelines from moving forward, arguing the two-month follow up of patients would alter the rules in the midst of clinical trials. He also suggested that Hahn was bowing to pressure from career scientists, according to The New York Times. In the face of White House resistance, the FDA is looking for a workaround, which includes handing off the standards to an advisory committee that must meet publicly before an emergency authorization license is granted. The idea behind the maneuver would be to have the committee adhere to the guidelines, even when confronted by the Trump administration’s resistance to them, as The New York Times reported.The administration’s move to block the guidelines is undermining the public’s trust that a vaccine is safe and effective. If one is released without public trust, that may make people resistant to receiving it, which would derail an immunization campaign.
Former vaccine chief demoted amid White House criticism quits post – Rick Bright, who said he was demoted from his position at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) due to criticism of the Trump Administration’s COVID-19 response, has resigned from the government. In an updated whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday, Bright claims that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he was demoted in April, rejected his recommendations for fixing the nation’s COVID-19 testing strategy due to “political considerations.” He further claims that he had not been assigned new work since Sept. 4, when he completed the one assignment he was given. Bright further raised alarms that Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who is one of Trump’s COVID-19 advisers, was “calling the shots” at the White House despite not having a background in infectious diseases. Bright’s lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said in a statement that Bright resigned because “he can no longer sit idly by and work for an administration that ignores scientific expertise, overrules public health guidance and disrespects career scientists, resulting the in the sickness and death of hundreds of thousands of Americans.” In his initial whistleblower complaint in May, Bright alleged that he encountered hostility from the Department of Health and Human Services about the threat of the virus. He further claimed he was ousted over intervening in the administration’s strategy to make chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine – two drugs the president has pushed as treatments for the virus – widely available.
US safety agency undermines federal oversight of COVID-19 workplace spread – The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has rewritten its workplace safety guidelines regarding reporting of COVID-19 infections to give employers a blank check to allow the spread of coronavirus throughout their workforces. While the deadly virus has ripped through food processing plants, Amazon facilities, auto factories and nursing homes, OSHA has done little or nothing. Since the start of the pandemic the federal agency responsible for workplace safety has only issued citations to 30 employers even though it has received 9,000 complaints and 1,200 referrals from other agencies relating to the handling of COVID-19. OSHA’s highest proposed fine to date is just $40,482. According to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, OHSA recently withdrew its first coronavirus citation after issuing a new legal interpretation. The withdrawn citation concerned Winder Health Care, a nursing home outside Athens, Georgia. The citation of Winder came after OSHA found that the nursing facility failed to report within 24 hours that six employees had been hospitalized with COVID-19. Instead, the nursing home reportedly waited more than two weeks. Initially, the fine proposed by OSHA was a token $6,506 for an “other-than-serious” violation. That was later reduced to just $3,904. In revoking the fine against Winder, OSHA posted revised wording on its website stating that employers must only report a hospitalization if it occurs within 24-hours of a worker being exposed to the virus on the job. Since the incubation period of the virus after initial exposure is days, if not weeks, this will virtually never happen. The change, in effect, abolishes any requirement that companies notify OSHA of employee COVID-related hospitalizations. Colin Smith, a clinical assistant professor at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, told the Journal-Constitution, “The burden of proof has been set so high, that this appears to be another pro-business endeavor to excuse non-reporting.” Further, the governor of Georgia signed legislation earlier this year shielding businesses and health care providers from liability lawsuits as long as they follow basic health protocols. As of Sept. 4, OSHA had conducted just 199 inspections in response to complaints and closed more than 8,000 cases without taking any action.
New England Journal of Medicine Urges Readers to Oust Trump Over Bungled Coronavirus Response – For the first time in more than two centuries of publication, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has taken a stand on a U.S. election.In an editorial titled “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum” published Wednesday, the journal condemned the Trump administration for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.”Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world,” the editors wrote. “This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”The editors pointed to the outsized U.S. caseload and death toll – the country still leads the world for both metrics. They compared the U.S. numbers with other countries that had greater vulnerabilities but much lower death tolls, such as China, where COVID-19 originated; Japan, which has a large elderly population; and Vietnam, which has fewer resources. They pointed out that the death rate in China was three per million, while in the U.S. it was more than 500 per million.Further, they highlighted specific failures in pandemic response, such as an early delay in widespread testing and getting proper protective gear to frontline medical workers. They also railed against the politicization ofpublic health.”[I]n much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures,” they wrote. Finally, they argued that the U.S. had the ability to respond well to the pandemic, both because of its manufacturing capabilities and its many scientific institutions and experts. But instead of listening to these experts, the editors said, the current administration sidelined them. It either undermined, ignored or politicized government institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health that could have led an effective response.”Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs,” the editorial concluded. While the editorial does not mention President Donald Trump or his election rival former Vice President Joe Biden by name, it is a clear call to oust the president at the polls in November. “It should be clear that we are not a political organization,” NEJM editor in chief Dr. Eric Rubin told The New York Times. “But pretty much every week in our editorial meeting there would be some new outrage. How can you not speak out at a time like this?”
Coronavirus — Pentagon Chiefs Enter Quarantine after Coronavirus Exposure – Several of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Chairman Mark Milley, have moved to quarantine after learning that they were likely exposed to the coronavirus in recent days. Admiral Charles Ray, vice commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, tested positive for coronavirus on Monday. Ray experienced symptoms over the weekend, and attended multiple meetings with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in recent days, CNN reported. “Out of an abundance of caution, all potential close contacts from these meetings are self-quarantining and have been tested this morning,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman saidin a statement. “No Pentagon contacts have exhibited symptoms and we have no additional positive tests to report at this time.” Milley, who has so far tested negative, will be working from home during the upcoming days. Chief of Staff Charles Brown, head of the U.S. Air Force, will also quarantine at home. “The Coast Guard is following established policies for COVID, per CDC guidelines, to include quarantine and contact tracing,” the Coast Guard said in a statement on Tuesday. “According to CDC guidelines, any Coast Guard personnel that were in close contact will also quarantine.” The news comes after multiple top Republican officials have contracted coronavirus, including President Trump and Senators Mike Lee (R., Utah), Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) and Thom Tillis (R., N.C.).
White House event for families of deceased U.S. troops thrust into new light after admiral’s coronavirus diagnosis – The White House’s handling of an event for the family members of deceased U.S. troops was thrust into a new light on Tuesday amid the disclosure that a Coast Guard admiral who attended has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, forcing some of the military’s top generals and admirals into quarantine.The Sept. 27 ceremony, held on Gold Star Mother’s and Family’s Day with dozens of people in attendance, recognized the families of 20 deceased service members, according to a copy of the event program obtained by The Washington Post.President Trump, Vice President Pence, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and some of the military’s top generals and admirals were also at the event, which was held in the East Room. Most attendees did not wear masks or maintain social distancing, White House photographs of the event show. Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday, the service said in a statement on Tuesday. He had begun experiencing mild symptoms over the weekend, a week after attending the Gold Star event, but “is in good spirits,” Rear Adm. Jon Hickey, a senior Coast Guard spokesman, said in the statement. “In accordance with established Coast Guard COVID policies, he will be quarantining from home for the required 14-day timeframe, where he will continue to perform his duties as Vice Commandant,” Hickey said. Other senior defense officials who attended the White House event include Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chief of staff of the Air Force; Gen. David H. Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps; Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army; and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.
Democrats rip Trump for suggesting Gold Star families could have given him Covid-19 – Top congressional Democrats condemned President Donald Trump on Thursday after the commander in chief suggested that he might have contracted Covid-19 from Gold Star family members who were too close to him when telling stories of their loved ones who died in the line of duty. Democrats said Trump’s comments, made in an interview with Fox Business Thursday morning, disrespected military families and shifted blame for his administration’s shortcomings on the coronavirus. “Whether he intended it or not, the President has blamed an event with families who lost their loved ones in battle for giving him COVID. That is a shocking statement even for this President,” Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “He must immediately apologize. Failure to do so would be yet another example of his callous disregard and disrespect for the women and men of our Armed Forces who we ask to stand in harm’s way.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill that Trump’s comments underscore the need for the administration to disclose when the president last tested negative for the coronavirus. “It is a very important question for our country, because now the president is saying that he probably got this from the Gold Star families,” Pelosi said. “Can you believe that he would say such a thing?” In the interview, Trump told host Maria Bartiromo that he “figured there would be a chance” he would become infected with the coronavirus, citing his meetings with the families of America’s war dead at the White House on Sept. 27. “Sometimes, I’d be in groups of, for instance, Gold Star families. I met with Gold Star families. I didn’t want to cancel that,” he said. “But they all came in, and they all talk about their son and daughter and father. And, you know, they all came up to me, and they tell me a story.” Trump explained that as he was being told these stories about fallen service members, “I can’t say, ‘Back up, stand 10 feet,’ you know? I just can’t do it.” The Gold Star family members “come within an inch of my face, sometimes,” Trump said. “They want to hug me, and they want to kiss me. And they do. And, frankly, I’m not telling them to back up. I’m not doing it.”
Stephen Miller Tests Positive as White House Outbreak Grows – The New York Times – On Tuesday evening, senior administration officials confirmed that Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top speechwriter and a policy adviser, had tested positive for the coronavirus, joining a growing list of Mr. Trump’s close aides who have the virus. “Over the last five days I have been working remotely and self-isolating, testing negative every day through yesterday,” Mr. Miller said in a statement. “Today, I tested positive for Covid-19 and am in quarantine.”Mr. Miller is married to Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director. A senior administration official said Ms. Miller, who contracted the virus this spring and returned to work in May, was tested Tuesday morning and was negative for any new infection.On Tuesday, many White House offices were empty as officials stayed home to wait out the infectious period from an outbreak of the coronavirus within the building and among people who had been there.President Trump was in the White House residence, convalescing, as a number of advisers and other officials stayed home, either because they had contracted the coronavirus or had been near people who did.The White House communications and press shops were bereft of people. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, announced on Monday that she had tested positive. Two other press office aides have also contracted the virus, and two more aides on Tuesday were said to have tested positive, people familiar with the results said.The outbreak in the White House, which has extended to some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, has raised concerns in the city that surrounds it. Washington, D.C., which has managed to bring infection rates down in recent weeks through preventive laws and high rates of compliance, has almost no control over the federal government.The city reported 105 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the highest number since June 3.The gathering at the Rose Garden would have violated the city’s mandates limiting the size of gatherings and requiring masks. But because the White House is on federal property, it is exempt from such rules.City officials said they would be closely monitoring infection trends for several days to see if the Capitol and White House cases affected the city’s overall infection rate.
Fourth White House press aide tests positive for COVID-19 – White House press aide Jalen Drummond tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to a Bloomberg News reporter, adding to the growing list of people to contract the virus after attending a White House Rose Garden ceremony. Drummond is the third aide under White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to test positive for COVID-19. Press deputies Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt have also reportedly tested positive for the virus, according to CNN, and McEnany herself tested positive on Monday. Drummond was reportedly in attendance at the White House Rose Garden event on Sept. 26, in which President Trump announced his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an associate Supreme Court justice. Since the event, multiple attendees close to the president have tested positive for the virus, including the president himself and first lady Melania Trump. Others around the president who have tested positive include former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Thom Tillis (N.C.). Zeke Miller, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), said in a statement that he was “concerned” by the reported diagnosis, and has not been provided information by the White House. “We are told that close contacts for any cases will be traced and notified by the White House Medical Unit according to CDC guidelines,” Miller said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
32 Sickened In White House COVID-19 Outbreak As 4th Press Shop Aide Tests Positive – CNN and NYT have just reported that a 4th White House press aide has tested positive for COVID-19. That individual is at least the 32nd person to test positive in the White House outbreak (which right now doesn’t include the joint chiefs, who have all tested negative and are quarantingin at home). If accurate, that’s at least the 31st person to test positive who is connected to the White House outbreak. Here’s the complete list:
- Donald Trump
- Melania Trump, first lady
- Hope Hicks, senior adviser to the president
- Bill Stepien, Trump campaign manager
- Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor who helped Trump prepare for debate
- Kellyanne Conway, former White House senior adviser
- Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairwoman
- Mike Lee, Republican senator from Utah
- Thom Tillis, Republican senator from North Carolina
- Ron Johnson, Republican senator from Wisconsin
- Nick Luna, Trump’s personal attendant
- Kayleigh McEnany, press secretary
- Chad Gilmartin, White House press office
- Karoline Leavitt, White House press office
- Jalen Drummond, assistant press secretary
- Charles Ray, vice commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard
- Jayna McCarron, Coast Guard aide to the president
- 11 staffers from Cleveland debate
- Anonymous 4th press ship aide
- 3 White House reporters
McCarron’s illness was reported earlier on Tuesday. In addition, a top Coast Guard commander has also been sickened (in an unrelated incident, it seems) sending the others into quarantine. With Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and four of her staffers out, we can’t help but wonder: who is left on the comms team depth chart?
COVID-19 cuts a swathe through official Washington – While President Trump declares his own infection with COVID-19 a “blessing from God,” the coronavirus is cutting a swathe through official Washington, hitting dozens of White House aides, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and well over a hundred members of Congress and their staff. Ignoring the fact that the vast majority of coronavirus patients cannot hope to receive the level of care he received – including dozens of doctors, an entire floor of the Walter Reed Medical Center, and a battery of drugs, including some still experimental – Trump presented his own disease and apparent recovery as divinely ordained. Presumably God has also chosen to infect every one of the dozens of White House officials and other Republican Party operatives who likely contracted coronavirus at one of several “superspreader” events at the White House. The September 26 announcement of Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was attended by some 200 people, nearly all unmasked and none observing social distancing. Among those infected subsequently are Trump, his wife Melania, top aides including Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller, US senators Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, the president of Notre Dame University, where Barrett is a law professor, and several others. By Wednesday, the count of White House personnel testing positive for the coronavirus reached 19, including four members of the White House press office, who deal with reporters every day and are generally not masked. A second White House event attended by Trump the following day is the apparent source of the infection’s spread through the military brass. Admiral Charles Ray, vice-commandant of the US Coast Guard, was among those present at a reception for the families of American soldiers killed in battle. He has now tested positive for the virus. All members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been quarantined because they attended a meeting with Ray at the Pentagon on October 2. These include the chairman, Gen. Mark Milley; the vice chairman, Gen. John Hyten; Army Chief of Staff James McConville; Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday; Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown; Marine Corps Commandant David Berger; CyberCom Commander Paul Nakasone; Space Force chief John Raymond and Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy is also quarantined. A Pentagon spokesman was at pains to declare there had been “no change to the operational readiness or mission capability of the US Armed Forces,” and that “Senior military leaders are able to remain fully mission capable and perform their duties from an alternative work location.” Coronavirus is spreading through Capitol Hill as well, at least in part through Republican senators visiting the White House: three of them, Thom Tillis, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson, have now tested positive. The latest member of Congress to contract the virus is Representative Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat who was tested after he was exposed to the coronavirus through Senator Lee. A total of 13 other House members, five Democrats and eight Republicans, have tested positive, as well as two more Republican senators. According to the House Administration Committee, there are 123 employees or contractors of the legislative branch who have tested positive. This includes 46 employees of the Capitol Police, 42 employees of the Architect of the Capitol and 35 contractors working on the renovation of the Cannon House Office Building.
Trump Reveals Covid Infection Was More Severe Than White House Has Said – During a radio rally with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Trump said he was “not in great shape” when he checked into Walter Reed military hospital last Friday, despite the White House claiming at the time he had “mild symptoms.””They said you could have been very bad,” Trump said of his medical team, though White House physician Sean Conley released a memo that day telling the public that Trump was “fatigued but in good spirits” and that his medications were “precautionary.”Trump claimed he “might not have recovered at all” without the experimental treatments he was given – once again pushing the widely debunked claims that drugs like remdesivir are a “cure” for the virus – and spoke about friends of his who have died from the disease.Trump’s latest comments are pertinent as he eyes a return to the campaign trail and his campaign demands an in-person debate as soon as Oct. 15 – the Centers for Disease Control say people with severe symptoms can remain contagious for up to 20 days. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has continued to test negative for the virus, has pushed for a virtual debate and scheduled a solo town hall for Oct. 15 after Trump refused to accept the Commission on Presidential Debates’ plan to make that debate virtual. “Trump went on to talk about friends who died of covid, suggesting things could have gone that way for him,” tweeted Politico reporter Ryan Lizza, who sarcastically exclaimed, “Glad we’re learning about this now on the Rush Limbaugh show!”
Trump and Socialized Medicine – Spencer England – In economics we have the concept of “revealed preference” that simply states that you do not pay attention to what an individual claims to prefer. Rather, you pay attention to what they actually do. President Trump just elected to go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment of his COVID-19 symptoms. He could have elected to go to any hospital in the country, but he choose to go to the most purely socialist medical center in the country, one owned by the government and all it’s employees are government employees. Just as the military is the purest example of socialism in the US, Walter Reed is the purest example of socialized medicine in the US. So Trump’s revealed preference is that he prefers socialized medicine to private medical care. Who knew that deep down he really is a socialist.
Trump coronavirus treatment: President had Regeneron and Gilead stock – President Donald Trump previously reported he earned capital gains from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Sciences Inc., the manufacturers of two of the medicines he’s taken as part of his COVID-19 treatment plan. According to a 2017 financial disclosure form filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in June 2017, Trump had a capital gain of $50,001 to $100,000 for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and $100,001 to $1 million for Gilead Sciences Inc. The form notes the information was of April 15, 2017. Trump’s subsequent disclosure forms, including his 2020 form signed July 31, did not list Regeneron or Gilead. Trump received a single 8-gram dose of Regeneron’s polyclonal antibody cocktail as a precautionary measure, according to his physician Sean Conley. The antibody cocktail is in four late-stage clinical trials, and its safety and efficacy have not been fully evaluated by any regulatory authority, the company said on its webpage. As part of Operation Warp Speed, New York state-based Regeneron won a $450 million federal contract in July to manufacture and supply the company’s antibody cocktail REGN-COV2. The New York Times reported Friday that Regeneron’s chief executive, Dr. Leonard S. Schleifer, a member of Trump’s golf club in Westchester County, New York, said Trump’s medical staff reached out to the company for permission to use the drug and the Food and Drug Administration cleared it. “When it’s the president of the United States, of course, that gets – obviously – gets our attention,” Schleifer told the Times. Regeneron stock rose $19.20 a share in after-hours trading. Trump also is taking Gilead’s remdesivir, which has been authorized for COVID-19 patients by the FDA under an emergency use declaration. Trials showed effectiveness under some circumstances.
U.S., AstraZeneca strike deal for COVID-19 antibody treatment touted by Trump (Reuters) – The U.S. government has awarded $486 million to AstraZeneca Plc to develop and secure supplies of up to 100,000 doses of COVID-19 antibody treatment, a similar class of drug that was used in treating President Donald Trump. The agreement, under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, is for developing a monoclonal antibody cocktail that can prevent COVID-19, especially in high-risk population like those over 80 years old, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. The treatment has come under the spotlight after Trump was treated with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ antibody drug last week. The president has also released a video on Twitter touting its benefits. In a call earlier on Friday, a top U.S. health official said the government was expecting to provide more than 1 million free doses of antibody treatments to COVID-19 patients, similar to the one that was administered to Trump. Regeneron and Eli Lilly have both applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorizations of their antibody treatments. AstraZeneca said it was planning to supply up to 100,000 doses starting toward the end of 2020 and that the U.S. government could acquire up to an additional one million doses in 2021 under a separate agreement. Regeneron signed a $450 million deal in July to sell Operation Warp Speed enough doses of its antibody treatment, REGN-COV2, to treat around 300,000 people. AstraZeneca plans to evaluate the treatment, AZD7442, which is a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies, in two studies. One trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of the experimental treatment to prevent infection for up to 12 months in about 5,000 participants, while the second will evaluate post-exposure preventative and pre-emptive treatment in roughly 1,100 participants.
How Far Will Repubs Go??? – This clip of Senator Tom Cotton was easy to install. Briefly and you can listen to the clip, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo states three Repub Senators are fighting COVID-19 infections. Senator Cotton starts off with thanking Maria for the question and then states “I am doing fine” as if someone asked how he was feeling. This Senator is on the same plane as Ron Johnson for intelligence and which we will address later. Listen to the clip and you will hear and see why (a grinning Cotton), why I am suggesting these people are on the lowest plane for intelligence.Herr Cotton suggested they can wheel Senators who are sick from Covid on to the Senate floor in order to vote. After all, Dems did such with an ailing 92 year old Senator Byrd who was not contagious. So why not Covid-contagious senators?Both Lee and Tillis were at the Rose Garden on September 26 when Associate Justice nominee Amy Barrett was introduced by President donald trump and where it is believe many were exposed to Covid. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson announced Saturday he tested positive for COVID-19, the results of which came after attending a GOP fundraising event in Ozaukee County on Friday. After being tested, he decided to attend the fund raiser while he waited for the results because he did not have symptoms and the test was supposedly precautionary. Apparently, his chief of staff tested positive. Somehow, Johnson came into contact with his Chief of staff? “Quelle Surprise!” After being exposed to someone who tested positive, one quarantines themselves, something federal guidelines advise. Oh and Senator Ron Johnson had this to say also: “I’m not in favor of mask mandates, I think that’s up to individuals to be responsible. The jury is out. I think they’re helpful, but it’s certainly not a panacea, it’s not a cure-all.” “Key word here is think.” “I’m not sick, I have no symptoms. I certainly didn’t anticipate testing positive, so there was no reason to quarantine.” No one anticipate a positive result and you do not have symptoms in the beginning to be contagious. As a precaution, one should stay away from any Republican politicians. Johnson really sets the bar low for ignorance. Tom Cotton: COVID-infected Senators Will Be ‘Wheeled In’ , Crooks and Liars, David, October 2020
More than 1K alumni from Amy Coney Barrett’s undergrad college sign letter of concern Over 1,500 alumni from U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s alma mater signed a letter of concern over the conservative lawyer and judge’s pending appointment to become the next court justice. Barrett graduated in 1994 with honors from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., CBS News reported. Rhodes President Marjorie Hass lauded Barrett in a statement on Sept. 22 for her “professional distinction and achievement,” after President Trump nominated her to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month from pancreatic cancer. Following Hass’s statement, alumni Rob Marus and Katherine Morgan Breslin wrote a critical letter over Barrett’s stances on abortion law, the LBGTQ community and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “We are likewise firmly and passionately opposed to Rhodes administrators’ attempts to embrace Amy Coney Barrett as an alumna of our beloved alma mater,” the letter said. “We oppose this embrace because we believe both her record and the process that has produced her nomination are diametrically opposed to the values of truth, loyalty, and service that we learned at Rhodes.” Barrett’s nomination to replace Ginsburg, an abortion rights supporter and trailblazer for women’s rights, brought praise from conservatives but raised concerns among liberals and Democrats. She said in 2016 if Roe v. Wade were overturned or weakened, its “core holding” that women have a right to abortion would not change. The letter also directly called attention to the ACA’s fate, which is slated to be contested in a Supreme Court trial on Nov. 10 over whether some provisions of the act may remain law. Hass responded to the alumni letter, standing by her previous praise of Barrett, but adding, “I hope that your letter – as well as the support, dissent, and attention it has generated – serves as a spur for robust engagement with the political process.”
Pandemic Erects Barriers for Prized Bloc of Voters in Nursing Homes, Senior Facilities – The convergence of the coronavirus pandemic and election season has complicated this year’s voting for residents of nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other long-term care centers. Many seniors who need help to get or fill out their ballots may be stymied by shifting rules about family visits. Voting procedures – whether in person or by mail – are under increased scrutiny, adding to the confusion. Facilities that used to host voting precincts likely won’t do so this year because of concerns about the spread of COVID-19.”We’re basically not allowed to go out into the public right now, we’re more vulnerable, and our immune systems are compromised anyway,” said Janice Phillips, a 14-year resident of Village Square Healthcare Center, a skilled nursing facility in San Marcos, California. “We’re basically locked in.”Phillips, 75, who has rheumatoid arthritis, has voted by absentee ballot for years without problems. This year she is encouraging her fellow residents to vote by mail as well. She works with the facility’s activities staff, going resident by resident, to make sure folks are registered. As president of the resident council, Phillips has also raised the issue at community meetings.Older Americans are a consistent voting bloc courted by both parties.According to AARP, 71% of Americans 65 and older voted in the 2016 presidential election, compared with 46% of people 18-29. “For many older adults, it’s a point of pride for them that they’ve voted in every election since they were 18,” said Leza Coleman, the executive director of California’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman Association.But hardly anyone has been allowed inside skilled nursing facilities since the start of the pandemic, except for staff members and the occasional state health official, or family members in certain circumstances. In California and beyond, facilities are beginning to open up in counties with low transmission rates, since federal rules changed in September to allow for more lenient visiting policies. At the same time, outbreaks continue to plague some senior facilities, despite improved testing of staff and other safety measures. On Wednesday, Santa Cruz County health officials reported a major outbreak at the Watsonville Post-Acute Center, which has infected 46 residents, killing nine of them, and infecting 15 staff members.
Trump Says He Won’t Participate in Virtual Presidential Debate – WSJ – Plans for President Trump and Joe Biden to meet for two more debates this month were in question after the president refused to participate in a virtual debate next week, leading the Democratic nominee’s campaign to schedule a town hall in Philadelphia for the same day. The debate schedule was up in the air after the Commission on Presidential Debates said Thursday it was changing the format of a planned Oct. 15 debate so that the two candidates would participate from remote locations. The president and a growing number of people in the White House recently tested positive for the coronavirus. The first presidential debate and Wednesday night’s vice-presidential event were held in person but included social-distancing measures crafted in consultation with the Cleveland Clinic. “I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate,” Mr. Trump said on Fox Business on Thursday morning. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who also tested positive for coronavirus in recent days, said the decision to make the Oct. 15 debate – which was planned as an in-person town hall – a virtual event was “pathetic.” He said Mr. Trump wouldn’t be positive for the coronavirus by then and that the campaign would hold a rally instead. Mr. Stepien issued another statement later Thursday asking for the town-hall debate to be pushed back a week and for a third presidential debate to be scheduled on Oct. 29.
Trump campaign agrees on moving second debate back by a week — President Trump’s campaign manager issued a new statement today announcing they agree to a suggestion by Joe Biden’s campaign to delay the second debate by a week so it can be in person.”The [Commission on Presidential Debates] and the media cannot hide Joe Biden forever. Americans deserve to hear directly from both presidential candidates on these dates, October 22 and 29,” Bill Stepien said in a statement. Earlier today, Trump said that he will not participate in the second presidential debate with Biden after the Commission on Presidential Debates said the event will be held virtually in the wake of the President’s positive coronavirus diagnosis.”I am not going to do a virtual debate,” Trump said on Fox Business. “I am not going to waste my time on a virtual debate.”
Bob Dole claims no Republicans on debate commission support Trump – Former GOP Sen. Bob Dole (Kan.) claimed on Twitter on Friday that none of the Republicans on the Commission on Presidential Debates support President Trump. “The Commission on Presidential Debates is supposedly bipartisan w/ an equal number of Rs and Ds. I know all of the Republicans and most are friends of mine,” Dole tweeted, saying he was concerned that none of them supported Trump. “A biased Debate Commission is unfair.” Dole’s tweet comes as the president and his allies have repeatedly accused the commission, which describes itself as nonpartisan, of trying to assist Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The claims arise as the commission has sought to make several changes to the upcoming presidential debates. Members of the commission’s board of directors include former GOP Sens. John Danforth (Mo.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine). All of the living former presidents serve as honorary co-chairs.Most recently, Trump said Thursday that the commission’s decision to make the Oct. 15 presidential debate a virtual event was a way to protect Biden. The decision was made amidst Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who also tested positive for COVID-19, also ripped the decision Thursday, calling it a “pathetic” effort to “rush to Joe Biden’s defense.” The Trump campaign previously made these claims when the commission was looking into changes to impose more order after Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden and moderator Chris Wallace at the first debate. They accused the commission of considering Biden in these adjustments.
5 ransomware trends that should alarm credit unions, banks – Ransomware attacks have been accelerating during the pandemic, as cybercriminals take advantage of the security vulnerabilities and disruption caused by the massive movement toward working from home and they find ransomware increasingly profitable. According to a report published Tuesday by the security company Arctic Wolf, the banking sector saw a 520% increase in phishing and ransomware attacks between March and June of this year. Arctic Wolf has 250 bank and credit union customers. In April and May, there was a rash of ransomware attacks on banking technology vendors like Finastra, Diebold and Cognizant. Though they’re targeted with ransomware all the time, U.S. financial institutions have mostly escaped being paralyzed by ransomware so far because they have strong controls in place. “But if the trend continues toward bigger and bigger companies being hit, it’s only a matter of time before a bank is taken down,” said Callow.There are at least six reasons why ransomware attacks are on the rise and are posing challenges for banks and credit unions, and the consumers they serve.
- Hackers are taking advantage of confusion caused by COVID-19 – “Attackers are always looking for soft targets and they follow the news to figure out how to do that,” said Mark Manglicmot, vice president security services at Arctic Wolf, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. “The COVID-19 pandemic just released a bunch of ideas for attackers to go after and they crafted their phishing emails and their lures accordingly.”The sudden provision of government relief, such as the Paycheck Protection Program through which lenders made loans to small businesses, provided one idea.”Banks and credit unions that were small all of a sudden had to become very large overnight, and they didn’t have the cybersecurity controls or monitoring in place that they needed,” Manglicmot said. “And so they were a lot more susceptible to COVID-19-specific lures.”
- Ransomware has become cybercriminals’ preferred attack method -“Ransomware has been escalating at a pretty healthy clip over the last couple of years. Certainly that was accelerated with COVID,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike, the incident response company (also based in Sunnyvale) that became famous when it helped the Democratic National Committee investigate a data breach conducted by Russian hackers in 2016.Many criminal groups that once targeted bank customers with malware to steal banking credentials have moved towards ransomware, which has become their dominant revenue generator, Meyers said.
- FIs’ large customers are being targeted with ransomware. Cybercriminals are currently focused on what Meyers calls “big game hunting.””They are getting into large enterprises and moving laterally, escalating privileges, and then ultimately deploying a crypter, which allows them to encrypt the victim’s files and then demand a ransom payment,” Meyers said.These attacks are primarily targeting organizations that have to be up and running for some reason, that don’t have the most effective security programs and that are therefore most vulnerable, he said. Manufacturing, healthcare, state and local governments and school districts are all examples.
- Ransomware attacks are doubling as data breachesIn one out of four cases, hackers are not just locking up servers and demanding ransom, they are also exfiltrating some of the data in those servers, such as customer data, and posting it on the dark web, according to Callow.Recently customer data from a few community banks has been posted on the dark web, indicating a ransomware-based data leakage. The banks did not respond to phone calls or emails about this. The data exfiltration trend means that when banks are hit with ransomware, in addition to figuring out how to unencrypt their data and regain control of their systems, they need to know that their customers’ data may be posted on the internet. Then they will be legally required to notify customers of the fact that their data has been breached.
- Attacks are becoming more profitable, as victims and ransom demands get largerIn 2018, the average ransom demand was $5,000 and the average victim was a small business, such as a corner store, according to Callow. In 2020, the average ransom demand is somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000, multimillion dollar demands are the norm, and victims are large, multinational companies like insurers and mortgage brokers, he said.In July, a Russian ransomware gang member offered a Tesla employee a $1 million bribe to introduce malware into Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory computer networks. The employee turned the criminal in to the FBI. “How do you protect against something like that?” Callow said. “Tesla got lucky. Every organization has disgruntled employees..”
- Financial firms have been freshly warned against facilitating ransomware payments. The Treasury Department gave a stern reminder to banks and credit unions last week that they’d better not facilitate ransomware payments.”Companies that facilitate ransomware payments to cyber actors on behalf of victims, including financial institutions, cyberinsurance firms, and companies involved in digital forensics and incident response, not only encourage future ransomware payment demands but also may risk violating OFAC regulations,” the Treasury said, referring to the Office of Foreign Assets Control.The warning may have been triggered by the Garmin case, in which the wearables manufacturer paid $10 million in ransom to the Evil Corp. cybercriminal gang.
Central banks want digital currencies that don’t nudge out cash – Central banks have identified key criteria for issuing their own digital currencies in a report from the Bank of International Settlements. Digital money will have to coexist with cash and other forms of tender, do no harm to monetary and financial stability, and be very cheap or free to use. There should also be “an appropriate role for the private sector,” according to a report by the BIS, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve and other institutions published on Friday. “A design that delivers these features can promote more resilient, efficient, inclusive and innovative payments,” said working group co-chair Benoit Coeure, who leads the BIS’s Innovation Hub, set up last year to help officials embrace financial technology. The paper, which provides “a springboard for further development,” comes less than a week after the ECB announced it would start public consultation and experimentation on digital currencies, a major step toward possibly creating a digital euro. Just a few years ago, crypto-assets based on similar technology elicited condemnation from policymakers, with Coeure terming bitcoin “the evil spawn of the financial crisis.” But central banks are increasingly paying attention to and experimenting in the field after Facebook proposed creating its own electronic means of payment, Libra. A survey of 66 central banks by the Basel-based BIS published early this year found that some 80% were engaged in the matter, up from 70% the year before. The proportion saying they were likely to issue a digital currency to the public in the next one to three years doubled to 10%, it found.
Banks are permitted to hold crypto assets. Will they? – Banks regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were given the go-ahead by regulators in July to hold customers’ digital assets. But so far, no OCC-regulated banks have done so. What’s holding them back? One factor seems to be lack of clarity around exactly what banks are allowed to do and the risks therein. The concept of custody isn’t so complicated when it comes to cash held at a bank. Account deposits are assets that are owned and controlled by the bank, while items in a safety deposit box more directly belong to the customer. “The cash in my bank account isn’t exactly my money,” said Bryan Routledge, associate professor of finance in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “It’s a claim against the bank.” Bills in a safety deposit box would be “your money, but physically stored at the bank,” Routledge said. “You get the old-fashioned vaults and the big thick doors, but it’s not an asset of the bank.” The concept gets murkier when extended to banks assuming custody over cryptocurrency. The OCC issued an interpretive letter in July confirming that bank custody services could include holding cryptographic keys and other crypto-related assets, in response to a query from an unnamed bank. This clarification applies to federally chartered banks. Currently, companies that receive Wyoming’s special-purpose depository institution charter and trust companies in some states can offer digital asset custody services. “The OCC is trying to get in front of cutting-edge issues by clarifying that national banks can offer services related to crypto where the states have already provided such clarification to state-chartered banks,” said Paul Clark, partner at Seward & Kissel LLP, which has offices in New York and Washington. Customers are likely to be institutional rather than individual investors in cryptocurrency. Registered investment advisers, for example, may prefer holding crypto assets with a full-service bank, which can provide loans and other services, rather than with a trust company. Banks might decide to offer crypto custody if it helps them keep institutional clients who are looking for it and they can use it as a marketing tactic to attract new clients. Collecting fees to store these assets could be another incentive. There are a number of considerations as to when it makes sense for a bank to exercise this power. Although most banks are mum about their intentions, experts agree that they would need sufficient demand from customers to justify the time, resources and technology needed to safely hold these assets. Many are also wary of the risks of cryptocurrency in general, according to recent research.
Banks urge Fed to revise liquidity rule after pandemic shock – For many months, regulators have relaxed regulatory standards in order to help banks weather the COVID-19 crisis. But an impending liquidity benchmark will test the largest institutions’ ability to support the fragile economy while complying with new rules. The federal agencies are poised soon to finalize the Net Stable Funding Ratio, a measure of long-term liquidity strength developed after the financial crisis by the international Basel Committee. But some in the industry and other analysts say finalizing the rule, not long after the coronavirus outbreak triggered volatility in the liquidity markets, is playing with fire. They point to the sudden selloff in Treasury securities in the spring, which led the Fed to buy up Treasuries, saying that the new liquidity ratio could make it hard for banks to respond if the market suffered another such shock in the future. The Bank Policy Institute warned in a recent blog post that “adopting the NSFR at this time would be both ironic and reckless.” Bill Nelson, the chief economist at BPI, said in an interview that the NSFR’s treatment of Treasury securities would have exacterbated the market volatility that necessitated an unprecedented intervention from the Fed. He noted the events of this past spring proved that banks could weather the storm without a new liquidity requirement. “It does make it ironic that they are adopting this in the wake of events for which it was demonstrably not needed, and it would have made it worse,” Nelson said in an interview. Banks are already complying with a short-term funding measure known as the Liquidity Coverage Ratio, which gauges banks’ ability to withstand a sudden market crisis over a 30 day-period. In contrast, the NSFR assesses a bank’s ability to fund the asset side of its balance sheet for one year. According to the 2016 proposal by the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the rule would apply risk weights to different types of assets and liabilities. An institution’s “available stable funding” would have to equal or exceed “required stable funding.” The proposal would generally apply to banks with over $250 billion of assets, although less complex institutions would comply with a modified version. The NSFR proposal hewed fairly closely to the international standard set by the Basel Committee. Despite hope from many big banks that the NSFR was all but dead, Fed Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles said last week that he believes the rule will be finished “quite soon.” The Fed is leading the charge among the regulators to complete the rule, according to Politico. Quarles, speaking at an event for Harvard Law School, suggested that regulators will finalize the NSFR as well as a separate package of other Basel III requirements.
Unofficial Problem Bank list Decreased to 65 Institutions -The FDIC’s official problem bank list is comprised of banks with a CAMELS rating of 4 or 5, and the list is not made public (just the number of banks and assets every quarter). Note: Bank CAMELS ratings are also not made public.CAMELS is the FDIC rating system, and stands for Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management, Earnings, Liquidity and Sensitivity to market risk. The scale is from 1 to 5, with 1 being the strongest. As a substitute for the CAMELS ratings, surferdude808 is using publicly announced formal enforcement actions, and also media reports and company announcements that suggest to us an enforcement action is likely, to compile a list of possible problem banks in the public interest. Here is the unofficial problem bank list for September 2020. Here are the monthly changes and a few comments from surferdude808: Update on the Unofficial Problem Bank List for September 2020. During the month, the list declined by one to 65 banks after one removal. Aggregate assets dropped to $56.8 billion. A year ago, the list held 74 institutions with assets of $55.7 billion. Thanks from a reader for letting us know that the action against CFG Community Bank, Lutherville, MD ($1.6 billion) [was terminated]. With the conclusion of the third quarter, we bring an updated transition matrix to detail how banks are transitioning off the Unofficial Problem Bank List. Since we first published the Unofficial Problem Bank List on August 7, 2009 with 389 institutions, 1,767 institutions have appeared on a weekly or monthly list since then. Only 3.7 percent of the banks that have appeared on a list remain today as 1,702 institutions have transitioned through the list. Departure methods include 1,003 action terminations, 410 failures, 270 mergers, and 19 voluntary liquidations. Of the 389 institutions on the first published list, only 3 or less than 1.0 percent, still have a troubled designation more than ten years later. The 410 failures represent 23.2 percent of the 1,767 institutions that have made an appearance on the list. This failure rate is well above the 10-12 percent rate frequently cited in media reports on the failure rate of banks on the FDIC’s official list.
Biggest U.S. banks keep assets at safest level in 35 years – The largest banks haven’t been this cautious with their holdings in at least 35 years. Cash, Treasurys and other securities effectively guaranteed by the federal government now make up more than 35% of the combined balance sheets of the 25 biggest U.S. banks, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve. That’s the biggest share in records going back to 1985, and is 5.5 percentage points higher than the five-year average. Loans and leases now account for less than half of big banks’ books for the first time on record, spurred by what appears to be a combination of lower borrower demand and lenders tightening their standards as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. The cautious stance will fuel debate over whether giant firms are prudently guarding against a worst-case scenario or exacerbating the pain by slowing the flow of credit. “The banks have been flooded with deposits and have nowhere to put it,” said Brian Foran, an analyst at Autonomous Research. “Healthy companies don’t want to borrow because the future is still uncertain. Struggling companies would like to borrow to stay afloat, but as a bank it’s hard lending to those sectors.” Next week, the largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, report their third-quarter financial results. The firms will detail their lending activities over the past three months, and investors will be listening for executives’ commentary on how their customers are faring during the COVID-19 crisis. The KBW Bank Index has slumped 30% this year, fueled by Citigroup’s 44% decline and Wells Fargo’s 53% drop. The S&P 500, meanwhile, has gained 6.7%. Hopes that U.S. economic growth would quickly rebound following widespread shutdowns in the spring have largely faded, with economists not expecting a turnaround until the second quarter of 2021, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. The pullback in lending comes despite some $525 billion in forgivable small-business loans under the federal Paycheck Protection Program, launched in response to the pandemic. Had the banks kept the mix of loans to securities and cash they’ve had in the past five years, the flood of deposits would have meant an extra $635 billion of loans for consumers and businesses, the figures suggest. Bankers say that businesses have less need for credit, whether in the form of commercial and industrial loans or commercial real estate financing, according to the latest comprehensive survey of banks’ senior loan officers. Households have been clamoring for home mortgages, loan officers said, but there’s less demand for other forms of financing, such as credit cards and auto loans.
Deposit glut could dog banks well into next year The flood of deposits that poured into banks during the first half of 2020 was expected to be temporary. But general unease about an economy that’s been clobbered by the coronavirus pandemic – and fear that there is more pain to come – continue to drive down consumer spending and commercial loan demand, leaving banks awash in record-level deposits with few ways to put the cash to work. While interest rates at near zero are making that cash relatively cheap, net interest margins have narrowed and profitability is a concern. Liquidity could stay high if lawmakers negotiate a second round of aid for consumers and businesses – perhaps over $1 trillion on top of the $2.2 trillion already injected in the spring – and recipients of Paycheck Protection Program loans keep their money in the bank because of uncertainty about the economy or loan-forgiveness terms. “I think people are not expecting much in the way of diminished dollars until 2021,” Randy Rosen, vice president of deposit products at FBX, said of deposit levels. To find near-term relief, some banks are paying near-zero rates on deposits and eliminating higher rates for new or preferred customers. Some are using the inflow to buy mortgage-backed securities or make other investments. Other banks are parking cash at the Federal Reserve, where it earns at least some interest. Regions Financial in Birmingham, Ala., is doing all three, plus employing a hedging strategy put into place about three years ago to protect net interest margin in anticipation of a low-interest-rate environment, according to David Turner, chief financial officer of the $144.1 billion-asset company. At June 30, Regions held $116.8 billion of deposits, its highest ever, he said. “We would love to take [the excess cash] and make loans,” Turner said. “But there just aren’t a lot of opportunities to grow right now … and I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of loan growth in a period with this much uncertainty about the economic recovery and the pandemic.”
Bank of America takes on payday lenders — Bank of America plans to offer some of its customers access to short-term loans, the latest blow to the payday lending industry. Customers who have had checking accounts for more than a year can apply to borrow as much as $500 for a flat $5 fee, the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender said Thursday. The bank will require that the advance, available in increments of $100, be paid back in three equal installments over 90 days. “Customers have told us they have that need for liquidity,” Kevin Condon, senior vice president for consumer-deposit and small-business products at Bank of America, said in an interview. “We want them to stay within mainstream banking to do that.” Even before the coronavirus pandemic, about 40% of U.S. adults said they would struggle to pay for an unexpected $400 expense such as a car repair or a small medical bill, according to asurveyby the Federal Reserve. This year, unemployment has soared, leaving many consumers struggling to keep up with their bills. That has consumer advocates worried about a surge in the use of so-called payday lenders, which charge high annual percentage rates for short-term loans. In response, regulators including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have been urging banks to begin offering small-dollar loans to customers hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. In May, regulators released guidance to further encourage lenders to engage in small-dollar lending. In the notice, the overseers said the structure of the loans should make it so a borrower is able to successfully repay the loan in a “reasonable time frame rather than reborrowing, rollovers, or immediate collectability in the event of default.” Borrowers’ repayment behavior on the loans, which Bank of America is calling Balance Assist, will be reported to major credit bureaus, Condon said. The bank will use data it gathers from customers’ checking accounts along with outside credit information to determine eligibility, he said. For Bank of America, Balance Assist follows efforts such as its SafeBalance Banking account, which eliminated overdraft fees and has attracted 2 million clients since its debut in 2014. “This is part of the journey that we’ve been on for quite some time,” Steve Boland, president of retail at Bank of America, said in an interview. “I would hope that we’ll see really favorable reactions from all key constituents as they hear about the solution.”
Black Knight Mortgage Monitor for August: “At Current Rate of Improvement, Delinquencies Will Remain Above Pre-Pandemic Levels Until 2022” – Black Knight released their Mortgage Monitor report for August today. According to Black Knight, 6.88% of mortgages were delinquent in August, down from 7.91% in July, and up from 3.45% in August 2019. Black Knight also reported that 0.35% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down from 0.48% a year ago.This gives a total of 7.23% delinquent or in foreclosure.Press Release: At Current Rate of Improvement, Delinquencies Will Remain Above Pre-Pandemic Levels Until 2022; Loss Mitigation and High Levels of Equity Help Mitigate Foreclosure Risk This month’s report found that – after tracking relatively closely to the deterioration and recovery timelines of recent natural disasters – the trend lines of COVID-19’s impact on mortgage performance have begun to diverge. As Black Knight Data & Analytics President Ben Graboske explained, while this divergence suggests a prolonged recovery period may lay ahead, there are several mitigating factors which together could help lessen the size of a follow-on wave of foreclosures. “When COVID-19 first began to impact the mortgage and housing markets, there was no easy historical precedent by which to gauge the fallout, so we looked to mortgage performance in the wake of recent recessions and natural disasters for clues,” . “And for the first several months of the pandemic, the performance impact of COVID tracked relatively closely to that of major hurricanes. Those trends have since begun to diverge, however, and looking at the 3-month average rate of improvement since May’s peak in mortgage delinquencies suggests a longer recovery timeline. At the current rate of improvement, delinquencies would remain above pre-pandemic levels until March 2022. What’s more, when the first wave of COVID-19-related forbearance plans reach their 12-month expiration period, we would still have a million excess delinquencies. As early-stage delinquencies have already returned to pre-pandemic levels, the bulk of these will be seriously delinquent when the forbearance clock runs Here is a graph from the Mortgage Monitor that shows the National Delinquency Rate. From Black Knight:
The chasm between early-stage delinquencies and seriously past-due mortgages continued to widen in August
Overall delinquencies nationwide fell by 0.03% from July after declining a combined 0.85% over the prior two months, a noticeable slowing in the rate of improvement
The share of borrowers with a single missed payment had already fallen below pre-pandemic levels; in August, the sum of all early-stage delinquencies (those 30-and 60-days past due) fell 9%, to drop below that benchmark as well
However, the improvement in early-stage delinquencies was offset by a 5% increase in serious delinquencies – 90 or more days past due – which have now risen in each of the past five months
At 6.88%, the national delinquency rate is now 3.6% above its pre-pandemic level
MBA Survey: “Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Declines to 6.81%” –Note: This is as of September 27th. From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Declines to 6.81%: The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased by 6 basis points from 6.87% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 6.81% as of September 27, 2020. According to MBA’s estimate, 3.4 million homeowners are in forbearance plans….”As of the end of September, there continues to be a slow and steady decrease in the share of loans in forbearance – driven by consistent declines in the GSE loan share – and a persistently high amount in the Ginnie Mae portfolio,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The significant churn in the labor market now, more than six months into the pandemic, is still causing financial distress for millions of homeowners. As a result, more than 70 percent of loans in forbearance are now in an extension.”…By stage, 28.50% of total loans in forbearance are in the initial forbearance plan stage, while 70.07% are in a forbearance extension. The remaining 1.43% are forbearance re-entries. This graph shows the percent of portfolio in forbearance by investor type over time. Most of the increase was in late March and early April, and has been trending down for the last few months.The MBA notes: “Weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) decreased to 0.08 percent from 0.11 percent the previous week. This marks the lowest level of forbearance requests since passage of the CARES Act%.There hasn’t been a pickup in forbearance activity related to the end of the extra unemployment benefits.
Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Declined Sharply – Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance. This data is as of October 6th. From Forbearances See Largest Single Week Decline Yet: After a slight uptick last week, active forbearance volumes plummeted over the past seven days, falling by 649K from the week prior. An 18% reduction in the number of active forbearances, this represents the largest single-week decline since the beginning of the pandemic and its related fallout in the U.S. housing market. New data from Black Knight’s McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker shows that as the first wave of forbearances from April are hitting the end of their initial six-month term, the national forbearance rate has decreased to 5.6%. This figure is down from 6.8% last week, with active forbearances falling below 3 million for the first time since mid-April. This decline noticeably outpaced the 435K weekly reduction we saw when the first wave of cases hit the three-month point back in July. As of October 6, 2.97 million homeowners remain in COVID-19-related forbearance plans, representing $614 billion in unpaid principal. Though the market continues to adjust to historic and unprecedented conditions, these are clear signs of long-term improvement. We hope to see a continuation of the promising trend of forbearance reduction in the coming weeks, as an additional 800K forbearance plans are slated to reach the end of their initial six-month term in the next 30 days.
NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Shows Households Paying Rent Unchanged in October – From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 79.4 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of October 6: The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 79.4 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by October 6 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country. This is unchanged from the share who paid rent through October 6, 2019 and compares to 76.4 percent that had paid by September 6, 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. “Our initial findings for October show that despite ongoing efforts by apartment community owners and operators to help residents facing financial distress through creative and nuanced payment plans, rent relief and other approaches, renters and the broader multifamily industry are confronting growing challenges,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President.
Reis: Office, Mall and Apartment Vacancy Rates Increased in Q3 — From Reis economist Barbara Byrne Denham: The Apartment Vacancy Rate rose to 5.0% in the third quarter, the highest rate since the first quarter of 2012. The Office Vacancy Rate rose 0.3% to 17.4%, the highest since Q3 2011 as occupancy declined by 5.85 million square feet; the Average Office Asking Rent increased 0.2%, but the Effective Rent declined 0.2% in the quarter. The Retail Vacancy Rate increased 0.2% in the quarter to 10.4%, the highest since Q4 2013 as occupancy declined 2.63 million square feet; the Average Asking Rent declined 0.1% while the Average Effective Rent fell 0.4%. The average Mall Vacancy Rate climbed 0.3% in the quarter to 10.1%, the highest in more than 20 years. The average Asking Rent decreased 0.7% in the quarter and 0.6% over the year. The third quarter statistics clearly show that property owners started to feel the impact of the pandemic. Ironically, occupancy growth in the apartment market was net positive, yet rents fell dramatically, especially in some high-priced markets as tenants had the upper hand and property owners recognized this and lowered rents to maintain occupancy. … Finally, the office market may have seen the smallest impact thus far, but this was likely due to the term structure of leases – the average lease term is 9 years. Still, the continued work-from-home option driven by the pandemic has prompted many office planners to re-consider future office needs which will impact the office market for years. Thus, our outlook remains cautious: vacancies will continue to rise and rents will decline further. However, rent declines will likely not accelerate until 2021 as layoffs from airlines and other industries that had been supported by the CARES Act will hit the economy; and more leases up for renewal are either not renewed, get downsized and/or are renewed at lower rents.This graph shows the regional and strip mall vacancy rate starting in 1980 (prior to 2000 the data is annual). For Neighborhood and Community malls (strip malls), the vacancy rate was 10.4% in Q3, up from 10.2% in Q2, and up from 10.1% in Q3 2019. For strip malls, the vacancy rate peaked at 11.1% in Q3 2011, and the low was 9.8% in Q2 2016. For Regional malls, the vacancy rate was 10.1% in Q3, up from 9.8% in Q2, and up from 9.4% in Q3 2019.
Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 29.6% Year-over-year – From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US hotel results for week ending 3 October: U.S. hotel occupancy decreased slightly from the previous week, according to the latest data from STR through 3 October. 27 September through 3 October 2020 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019):
Occupancy: 47.9% (-29.6%)
AAverage daily rate (ADR): US$95.63 (-26.3%)
Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$45.80 (-48.1%)
Year-over-year declines were less pronounced compared with previous weeks due to the Rosh Hashanah impact on the hotel calendar in 2019. Most of the markets with the highest occupancy levels were once again those in areas with displaced residents from natural disasters. Amid continued wildfires, California South/Central saw the highest occupancy level at 78.4%. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sally, Mobile, Alabama, reported the next highest occupancy level (73.6%).The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.
Regal Cinemas closing all locations nationwide – Regal Cinemas, the nation’s second-largest theater chain, will close its doors across the country as the film industry continues to be hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.The Wall Street Journal first reported the closures Monday, citing an interview with the CEO of Regal’s parent company, Cineworld.”We are like a grocery shop that doesn’t have vegetables, fruit, meat,” Mooky Greidinger told the newspaper. “We cannot operate for a long time without a product.”Regal’s decision will likely further impact the industry. Studios have opted to delay the release of box office blockbusters such as the upcoming James Bond film “No Time to Die” due to the pandemic. Any film released domestically will now face a much smaller pool of theaters available for screenings.Regal operates more than 550 theaters nationwide, trailing behind only AMC, which opted to reopen dozens of locations in August after suspending operations across the country earlier in the year. Cineworld’s shares have dropped by more than 80 percent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year. In July, it moved to reopen its locations as some states saw a decline in their rates of new coronavirus cases.Some states, including Virginia and Oregon, have struggled in recent weeks with attempts to bring the virus under control, and have reported increasing rates of new infections as businesses, schools and other public places have reopened.
U.S. consumer borrowing falls on smaller credit card balances – U.S. consumer borrowing unexpectedly fell in August as credit card balances declined for a sixth consecutive month with the coronavirus pandemic continuing to limit some purchases amid elevated unemployment. Total credit decreased $7.2 billion from the prior month after an upwardly revised $14.7 billion July gain, Federal Reserve figures showed Wednesday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a $14 billion increase in August. The drop in revolving credit to a three-year low indicates the pace of consumer spending growth is moderating after outsize gains immediately following the gradual lifting of restrictions on businesses and individuals. The expiration of a $600 weekly supplemental benefit for the unemployed may have also played a role in the drop in consumer charges. The absence of additional government financial support to the millions of unemployed Americans is seen limiting the consumer expenditures that make up the largest share of gross domestic product. Revolving credit fell $9.4 billion, the most in three months. The decrease left outstanding revolving credit at $985.3 billion, the lowest since June 2017. Nonrevolving debt, which includes auto and school loans, rose $2.2 billion, though the increase was the smallest since a decrease in April. Lending by the federal government, which is mainly for student loans, increased almost $15 billion before seasonal adjustment. Total consumer credit for the month fell an annualized 2.1% after growing 4.3% in July. The Fed’s report does not track debt secured by real estate, such as home mortgages.
First it was toilet paper – now we’re running out of fridges – Earlier in the pandemic, there was a run on toilet paper. Now it seems that customers looking to buy a refrigerator are facing long waiting times as models are backordered across the country. There are also shortages for other major appliances including dishwashers, dryers and some microwaves. John Taylor, senior vice president of LG Electronics USA told TODAY Food that the industry as a whole is experiencing unprecedented demand when it comes to major appliances. “There are a variety of factors largely related to coronavirus,” he said.”People are spending more time at home and we’ve seen a record number not just for fridges but dishwashers, washing machines and dryers. If appliances are 15-20 years old, the more people they use them, the more likely they need to be replaced.”Taylor said that in lieu of spending on family vacations, dinners out or movies and concerts, people are looking to invest in their homes and focus on energy savings.”When you’re looking at how to invest in your home, appliances are at the top of the list,” he said.Taylor said there has been an industry-wide disruption in the supply chain, from factories to warehouses, though he noted that LG has mostly avoided major disruptions, but the specific model you want may not be available.With many businesses closing due to COVID-19 and the public spending less due to layoffs and unemployment, stores have had a tricky time predicting what amount of product they need. Coronavirus has also slowed manufacturing and created problems with shipping. “There are supply chain challenges across the globe whether because of people not being able to work to manufacture the items or because they can’t physically ship units from a warehouse,” Sara Skirboll, shopping and trends expert for RetailMeNot told TODAY Food. “With so many people spending most of their time in their home, a lot of folks are upgrading appliances or redecorating their homes, so the spike in appliances isn’t surprising.”
U.S. Heavy Truck Sales down 26% Year-over-year in September – The following graph shows heavy truck sales since 1967 using data from the BEA. The dashed line is the September 2020 seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR). Heavy truck sales really collapsed during the great recession, falling to a low of 180 thousand SAAR in May 2009. Then heavy truck sales increased to a new all time high of 575 thousand SAAR in September 2019.However heavy truck sales started declining late last year due to lower oil prices.Note: “Heavy trucks – trucks more than 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight.”Heavy truck sales really declined towards the end of March due to COVID-19 and the collapse in oil prices. Heavy truck sales are now back to March 2020 levels, but still below February 2020 (pre-COVID).Heavy truck sales were at 415 thousand SAAR in September, down from 438 thousand SAAR in August, and down 26% from 563 thousand SAAR in September 2019.Year-to-date heavy truck sales are down 28% compared to the same period in 2019 (288.5 thousand in 2020 compared to 399.4 thousand in 2019 through September).
CDC Extends No-Sail Advisory for U.S. Cruise Industry Through October 31 – After the U.S. cruise industry announced in August that it was voluntarily suspending operations through October 31, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has similarly extended it no-sail advisory through the same period. In a statement issued on September 30, the CDC said that cumulative data it had reviewed showed “at least 3,689 COVID-19 or COVID-like illness cases on cruise ships in U.S. waters, in addition to at least 41 reported deaths,” from March 1 through September 29. Noting that the numbers “are likely incomplete and an underestimate,” the agency said this underscores the need for further action and consideration before safe resumption of operations, as at this point, the agency believes that premature sailing “would likely spread the infection into U.S. communities.” For its part, the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), a trade group for the largest ships and lines around the world, in conjunction with a Healthy Sail Panel formed by Norwegian Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean International, submitted the first phase of a series of new health and safety protocols to the CDC for review last month, at the agency’s request. The report aims to inform future public health guidance and preventative measures relating to travel on cruise ships. Overseas, cruising did resume this summer, with mixed results: After a few onboard outbreaks on small ships, several sailings on large vessels resumed – MSC Cruises, Costa Cruises – with no report of outbreak or infection. In its statement, the CDC acknowledged this development, but cautioned those successful sailings “significantly burdened public health authorities by creating the need for additional SARS-CoV-2 testing, isolation of infected travelers, contact tracing, and quarantine of exposed people.” The CDC’s no-sail advisory for cruise ships carrying passengers of 250 or more has been in place since March. While CLIA has not yet issued a response to the latest extension, industry representatives are expected to meet with White House officials about a safe return to operations October 2, Axios reported. As the regulations stand now, cruise ships cannot disembark any passengers or crew at U.S. ports without approval from the Coast Guard and oversight from the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services, as well as coordination with other federal, state, and local authorities. The CDC says that its order remains in effect until at least the end of the month, or if its director modifies the order, or that COVID-19 is no longer classified as a public health emergency.
Despite COVID outbreaks, NFL season continues in front of tens of thousands of spectators – In spite of coronavirus outbreaks in two different teams in the National Football League (NFL), the season for the world’s most lucrative sporting competition continues unabated. Cam Newton, the star quarterback of the New England Patriots, tested positive for the virus on Saturday. In a mass outbreak, the Tennessee Titans reported that 20 players and staff had tested positive. The Titans announced Monday morning that there had been no additional cases reported and are planning to resume play by October 11. The NFL COVID-19 regulations state that a team can resume activity after just two consecutive days without a positive test. Newton’s positive test caused last Sunday’s planned game against the Kansas City Chiefs to be postponed one day, to Monday night, to allow for players to be tested. With no additional positive tests reported, the game went forward and was played in Kansas City with 16,000 fans in attendance. Only Newton was excluded from the game while he recovers from the virus. The NFL has carried out the least restrictive COVID-19 measures of any other professional sports league. It has not implemented a quarantine “bubble” like the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nor has it even barred fans at all of its venues from attending in person, like the Major League Baseball (whose pandemic-shortened season was almost derailed as soon as it began by several major outbreaks). In the NBA and NHL, players and team staff lived completely isolated when their seasons restarted over the summer. The leagues played out their seasons in a small number of venues, where players lived in nearby hotels with no contact with anyone outside the bubble. No fans were permitted, and all games were broadcast on TV only. Instead, the NFL has taken an approach similar to college football, relying only on regular rapid testing of players. In college football, this has already produced disasters, with outbreaks occurring in several teams. Hundreds of thousands of fans have attended college games, possible “super-spreader” events which could contribute to a surge in new cases. Outside of testing, players’ lives are continuing normally, without restrictions on their travel or contact with family members and others who may be infected with COVID. The daily routine of the season, including daily practices and games surrounded by dozens of coaches and staffers, reporting staff, and thousands of fans in some cases, continues much as it has before.
The Tennessee Titans’ Continued Outbreak Threatens the NFL’s Schedule – WSJ –The still-growing Covid-19 outbreak inside the Tennessee Titans is on the verge of disrupting another of the team’s games, creating a scheduling nightmare for the NFL’s pandemic season with no easy fix. Another member of the Titans received a positive test result Thursday morning, bringing the team’s total to 21 infections since the start of last week. The continued positives have kept the team’s facility closed, casting doubt on the Titans scheduled game Sunday against the Buffalo Bills. Also at issue is Tennessee’s apparent violation of NFL rules, which could explain the ongoing string of positive Covid-19 tests the team has registered. The latest results fall outside of an incubation period for the virus most experts see as typical for a team that was barred from being together on Sept. 29. That has shifted the league’s attention to the possibility that unsanctioned workouts by Titans players has extended the period during which the squad is at risk. That possibility became a reality Wednesday when a Nashville prep school confirmed that a group of players had gathered there Sept. 30. By then, the team’s facility had already been closed with members of the organization told to conduct no in-person activities. The NFL was hoping to see the team register at least two consecutive days of negative results before allowing its facilities to reopen, a timeline that would now mean the soonest they could reopen would be this weekend. That’s a significant problem for the team – and the league – because there’s no longer much flexibility to reschedule the game. The NFL was able to accommodate the postponement of the Titans game last weekend against the Pittsburgh Steelers by shuffling around off weeks later in the year, but that wiggle room has now been used up. Attempting to push the game back a day or two would just present a new set of difficulties because the Bills are scheduled to play in next week’s Thursday night game, which would have to be pushed back to accommodate any delay. Other possibilities that have been floated include adding an additional week into the regular season to account for this postponement and others that may arise.
AAR: September Rail Carloads down 9.7% YoY, Intermodal Up 7.1% YoY From the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Rail Time Indicators. U.S. rail volumes in September ranged from “generally getting better” to “already pretty good.” On the “already pretty good” side, average weekly U.S. intermodal originations in September were 284,777 units. That’s the fourth most for any month in history and up 7.1% over September 2019 … U.S. rail carloads are in the “generally getting better” category. Total carloads in September were down 9.7% from last year. That’s still a sizable decline, to be sure, but it’s the smallest since March 2020. This graph from the Rail Time Indicators report shows the six week average of U.S. Carloads in 2018, 2019 and 2020: On the carload side, volumes are still down, but by less than they were. U.S. railroads originated an average of 223,909 total carloads per week in September 2020. That’s their lowest weekly average for September since sometime before 1988 (when our data begin). That said, total carloads in September 2020 were down 9.7% from September 2019 – their smallest monthly year-over-year percentage decline since March 2020, when the lockdowns began. The second graph shows the six week average of U.S. intermodal in 2018, 2019 and 2020: (using intermodal or shipping containers): Like nearly every other rail category, intermodal fell sharply in the spring – it was down 12.6% in Q2 2020, including a 17.2% decline in April. A few months later, things are very different. U.S. railroads originated 1.31 million containers and trailers in September 2020, up 7.1% over September 2019 – the biggest year-over-year percentage gain for intermodal since December 2016…. Why the change? U.S. imports of consumer goods are surging – they set an all-time monthly record in August 2020, with China supplying a huge share of them. After stalling in the spring, China’s export machine has come roaring back. Note that rail traffic was weak prior to the pandemic.
Trade Deficit Increased to $67.1 Billion in August -From the Department of Commerce reported: The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that the goods and services deficit was $67.1 billion in August, up $3.7 billion from $63.4 billion in July, revised. August exports were $171.9 billion, $3.6 billion more than July exports. August imports were $239.0 billion, $7.4 billion more than July imports. Both exports and imports increased in August. Exports are down 18% compared to August 2019; imports are down 8.5% compared to August 2019. Both imports and exports decreased sharply due to COVID-19, and have now bounced back (imports more than exports), The second graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum. The blue line is the total deficit, and the black line is the petroleum deficit, and the red line is the trade deficit ex-petroleum products. Note that the U.S. exported a slight net positive petroleum products in recent months.Oil imports averaged $41.69 per barrel in August, up from $40.60 per barrel in July, and down from $58.57 in August 2019. The trade deficit with China decreased to $29.8 billion in August, from $31.7 billion in August 2019.
U.S. trade deficit widened in August to largest since 2006 -The U.S. trade deficit widened in August to the largest since 2006 as the nation imported a record amount of consumer goods amid a pickup in demand ahead of the holiday-shopping season. The overall gap in trade in goods and services expanded to $67.1 billion in August from a revised $63.4 billion in July, according to Commerce Department data released Tuesday, Oct. 6. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists had called for a widening to $66.2 billion. The positive balance on services dropped to $16.8 billion. Total imports increased 3.2% to $239 billion, while exports rose 2.2% from the prior month to $171.9 billion. The nation’s surplus in services shrank to the lowest since 2012. Meanwhile, the merchandise trade deficit expanded to a record high. The coronavirus pandemic undid some of the Trump administration’s deficit-reduction efforts which were starting to bear fruit before COVID-19 upended demand and supply chains. American businesses, which drew down inventories at the start of the lockdown, have recently increased imports to replenish stocks ahead of the holidays. Meanwhile, depressed economic activity abroad has led to smaller improvements in exports of goods from the world’s biggest economy. Trade volumes are higher than May’s pandemic lows, but remain depressed following the initial uptick stemming from reopening measures. Together, the value of U.S. exports and imports climbed to almost $411 billion, still well below pre-pandemic levels. The increase in imports of services outpaced the advance in exports, resulting in a lower overall surplus. Travel exports – which refer to tourists to the U.S. – declined for a sixth straight month and were down 77% from a year earlier. Imports of services, ranging from insurance and financial services to construction and travel, rose to almost $36.1 billion. This is the final release of data on trade in goods and services before the Nov. 3 election. Trade has been a keystone of President Donald Trump’s agenda, with his administration determined to minimize U.S. merchandise imports from China, which went from being America’s biggest trading partner at the end of 2017 to third-largest – after Mexico and Canada – by December 2019. Trump’s strategy of imposing hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs on imports of Chinese goods saw fewer products from the Asian nation arrive on U.S. shores, with the monthly goods-trade deficits gradually becoming smaller since late 2018. The partial trade agreement signed in January was supposed to result in China buying an additional $200 billion in U.S. exports over two years. While the country is unlikely to reach the targets this year – partially because the pandemic upended demand and supply chains – it has made record purchases of American beef and corn, and has reiterated its commitment to the agreement.
ISM Services Index Increased to 57.8% in September – The September ISM Services index was at 57.8%, up from 56.9% last month. The employment index increased to 51.8%, from 47.9%. Note: Above 50 indicates expansion, below 50 contraction. From the Institute for Supply Management: Services PMI at 57.8%; September 2020 Services ISM Report On Business The Services PMI registered 57.8 percent, 0.9 percentage point higher than the August reading of 56.9 percent. This reading represents growth in the services sector for the fourth straight month and the 126th time in the last 128 months, except for April’s and May’s contraction.”The Supplier Deliveries Index registered 54.9 percent, down 5.6 percentage points from August’s reading of 60.5 percent. (Supplier Deliveries is the only ISM Report On Business index that is inversed; a reading of above 50 percent indicates slower deliveries, which is typical as the economy improves and customer demand increases.) This graph shows the ISM services index (started in January 2008) and the ISM services employment diffusion index. This was above the consensus forecast, and the employment index was above 50 following six consecutive months of contraction.
Markit Services PMI: “New business growth accelerates to fastest since March 2019” — The September US Services Purchasing Managers’ Index conducted by Markit came in at 54.6 percent, down 0.4 from the final August estimate of 55.0. The Investing.com consensus was for 54.6 percent. Here is the opening from the latest press release: “The U.S. economy continued to rebound in September from the deep contraction seen at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, with business activity rising across both manufacturing and services to round off the strongest quarter since early-2019. “Covid-19 worries and social distancing continued to impact many businesses, however, especially in consumerfacing sectors, where demand for services fell once again. However, business and financial services, healthcare and housing sectors all fared well as the economy continued to revive, and exports of services also picked up as other countries continued to open up their economies.“Encouragingly, new orders for services grew at an increased rate in September, putting additional pressure on operating capacity and fuelling another robust rise in employment. A further rise in backlogs of work bodes well for robust jobs growth to be sustained into October.“Sentiment on prospects for the coming year darkened significantly, however, linked to growing worries about virus numbers, uncertainty regarding the presidential election and fears that the economy is susceptible to weakening unless more support measures are put in place soon.” [Press Release]Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012.
U.S. Services Activity Rose as New Curbs Weighed on Europe, Asia – WSJ – The recovery for U.S. services businesses gained momentum in September, surveys of purchasing managers show, while fresh coronavirus restrictions hurt activity in Europe and Asia. The Institute for Supply Management’s nonmanufacturing index – a survey-based measure of activity in U.S. industries such as travel, health care, restaurants and real estate – rose to 57.8, up from 56.9 in August. Separately, private data firm IHS Markit said Monday its U.S. services index came in at 54.6 last month, down slightly from 55.0 in August though still in expansion territory. Both surveys track the direction – as opposed to the magnitude – of change in business activity, with a reading above 50 indicating expansion, while a level below 50 signals contraction. Recent global surveys of companies separately found that factories bounced back in September and had largely closed the gap opened by lockdowns many countries employed in the spring to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Get a coronavirus briefing six days a week, and a weekly Health newsletter once the crisis abates: Sign up here. However, service providers – travel, hospitality, entertainment and many others – were coming back more slowly, as many consumers, wary of fresh infections and concerned about their jobs and finances, remain at home and cut their spending. In the U.S., the pickup in demand for services captured in the survey aligned with a brightening outlook among U.S. shoppers, with the two leading indexes of consumer optimism turning up in September. This improvement among U.S. businesses and households contrasts with Europe, where a coronavirus resurgence began darkening the economic outlook last month. September’s purchasing-managers index fell sharply in Spain, the country hit hardest by Europe’s second wave. The U.S. services readings stood out from other recent economic data in the country that signal a slowing pace of recovery. Job gains decelerated sharply in September as once-temporary layoffs became permanent, according to the Labor Department’s latest report. Growth in consumer spending weakened in August, as the boost from federal aid faded. Still, the pandemic continues to weigh on the services sector, which includes many industries that hinge on in-person interactions. Americans spent 7% less on services in August than a year earlier.
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims at 840,000 – Special technical note on California (two week pause). The DOL reported: In the week ending October 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 840,000, a decrease of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 12,000 from 837,000 to 849,000. The 4-week moving average was 857,000, a decrease of 13,250 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 3,000 from 867,250 to 870,250. This does not include the 464,437 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that was down from 508,707 the previous week. (There are some questions on PUA numbers). The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.
Jobless claims: yet another week of glacial progress – Today marked yet another week of glacial progress in initial jobless claims, at levels worse than the worst weekly levels of the Great Recession. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose by 5,312 to 804,307. After seasonal adjustment (which is far less important than usual at this time), claims fell by 9,000 to 840,000, another new pandemic low. The 4 week moving average also declined by 13,250 to a new pandemic low of 857,000: Here is a close-up of the last two months highlighting the glacial progress in initial claims during the past 7 weeks: Continuing claims declined on a non-adjusted basis declined by -1,010,280 to 10,612,021. With seasonal adjustment they declined by 1,003,000 to 10,976,000. Both of these numbers are also new pandemic lows: Continuing claims are now about 60% below their worst level from the beginning of May, but remain about 4 million higher than their worst levels during the Great Recession. There has been only very slow downward movement in new jobless claims over the past nine weeks. The pandemic shock recession is gradually turning into something much more chronic, with more long-term damage that will be more difficult to remedy.
BLS: Job Openings Decreased to 6.5 Million in August – From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary The number of job openings was little changed at 6.5 million on the last business day of August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Hires were little changed at 5.9 million in August. Total separations decreased to 4.6 million. Within separations, the quits rate was little changed at 2.0 percent while the layoffs and discharges rate decreased to a series low of 1.0 percent. The following graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS. This series started in December 2000. The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. This report is for August, the most recent employment report was for September. Note that hires (dark blue) and total separations (red and light blue columns stacked) are usually pretty close each month. This is a measure of labor market turnover. When the blue line is above the two stacked columns, the economy is adding net jobs – when it is below the columns, the economy is losing jobs. The huge spikes in layoffs and discharges in March and April 2020 are labeled, but off the chart to better show the usual data.Jobs openings decreased in August to 6.493 million from 6.697 million in July.The number of job openings (yellow) were down 9.4% year-over-year.Quits were down 21% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations. (see light blue columns at bottom of graph for trend for “quits”).Job openings decreased in August, and are down YoY – and quits are down sharply YoY.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey shows hiring failed to improve: Congress must act to fix massive jobs shortfall – Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that, as of the middle of September, the economy was still 10.7 million jobs below where it was in February. Job growth slowed considerably over the last few months and the jobs deficit in September was easily over 12 million from where we would have been if the economy had continued adding jobs at the pre-pandemic pace. Today’s BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reports job openings softened from 6.7 million in July to 6.5 million in August while layoffs and quits both dropped. While the slowdown in layoffs is promising, the drop in quits is a concern. Hiring in August was on par with what we experienced in July. The U.S. economy is seeing a significantly slower pace of hiring than we experienced in May or June – hiring is roughly where it was before the recession, which is a big problem given that we have more than 12 million jobs to make up. No matter how it is measured, the U.S. economy is facing a huge job shortfall.One of the most striking indicators from today’s report is the job seekers ratio, that is, the ratio of unemployed workers (a veraged for mid-August and mid-September) to job openings (at the end of August). On average, there were 13.1 million unemployed workers while there were only 6.5 million job openings. This translates into a job seeker ratio of two unemployed workers to every job opening. Another way to think about this: for every 20 workers who were officially counted as unemployed, there were only available jobs for 10 of them. That means, no matter what they did, there were no jobs for 6.6 million unemployed workers. And this misses the fact that many more weren’t counted among the unemployed. Without congressional action to stimulate the economy, we are facing a slow, painful recovery.As winter approaches and many families face eviction and hunger, it is essential that Congress provide relief to all of those unemployed workers who have no hope for employment and are desperately trying to make ends meet. The first dose of austerity exhibited by the loss to the vital enhanced unemployment insurance benefit in August is already taking a toll on job creation. At this slowing pace of job growth, it will take years to return to the pre-pandemic labor market. It didn’t have to be this way. With additional aid to state and local governments as well as reinstituting the $600 weekly boost to unemployment insurance (UI), it is likely that job growth could be over 10 million jobs higher through the next year (5.3 million for state and local aid plus 5.1 million for UI extensions). Unfortunately, continued federal inaction will make it far harder in coming months to claw back the jobs lost during the pandemic.
Nearly 650,000 more women than men dropped out of the job market in September – The coronavirus pandemic has been especially difficult for working women, and the latest employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that it has not gotten easier in September. The US added 661,000 jobs in September, but a large number of women left the workforce, meaning they are neither working nor actively looking for work. Michael Madowitz, an economist at The Center for American Progress, tweeted a chart that highlights the drastic number of people dropping out, especially women. The following chart shows the monthly change in labor force participation by sex. Labor force participation includes both people who are working and those looking for work. Labor force participation dropped for both sexes, suggesting an increasing number of people giving up on looking for work, retiring, or caring for family full-time. But the monthly change for women was much larger than for men. Labor force participation declined by 865,000 women from August to September, while about 216,000 men left the labor force. The unemployment rate dropped by 0.6 percentage points for both men and women, although the rate is still higher for women. The September unemployment rate was 8.0% for women and 7.7% for men. A survey conducted by McKinsey and Company and Lean In of around 40,000 workers found 1 in 4 women have considered dropping out of the workforce or cutting hours amid the pandemic. Working mothers are having to balance their own work with their children’s schooling. Per reporting from the New York Times, the problem is especially hard for mothers in retail where schedules are not as structured. The New York Times also cites results fromCensus Bureau polling in mid-July where 32.1% of women aged 25-44 are not working because of childcare, compared to only 12.1% of men. The Washington Post also found low-income and single mothers have to decide between paying for expensive childcare or dropping out of the workforce, which could have long-term effects on labor force participation for women. Additionally, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) womenhave reportedly been one of the demographics most negatively impacted by the pandemic. One reason for this is because they work in a lot of the jobs hardest hit by the pandemic and on the frontlines of the pandemic, such as health care workers. The unemployment rate for white women in September was 6.9%, while the rate for Black and African American women was 11.1%.
WSJ Survey: 43% of Economists Don’t See U.S. Gaining Back Lost Jobs Until 2023 – WSJ -The U.S. labor market faces a protracted recovery amid the continued spread of the coronavirus and uncertainty over prospects for another stimulus package and the outcome of the presidential election, according to a new Wall Street Journal survey of economists.More than half of business and academic economists polled this month said they didn’t expect the labor market to claw back until 2023 or later all the jobs lost as a result of coronavirus-related shutdowns. That is a slower timeline than economists predicted six months ago.Hiring gains slowed sharply heading into the fall as more layoffs turned permanent, adding to signs that the economy faces a long slog to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic.”The slowing momentum in the labor market bodes poorly for the broader recovery and points to increasing scarring effects from the crisis,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. The U.S. had nearly 11 million fewer jobs in September than it did in February. Nearly 4 million of the jobs lost since the start of the pandemic were in the leisure and hospitality sector, according to the Labor Department. Economists say recovery in travel and hospitality has been slower than expected earlier in the pandemic because of continued high coronavirus infection rates. “The damage to service-sector employment will be long lasting, and many will face long durations of unemployment that will delay the return to February 2020 levels,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US. Six months ago, in The Wall Street Journal’s April survey of economists, more than half of respondents expected job losses to hit a trough in the second quarter of 2020. That proved to be the case: The labor market shed a seasonally adjusted 13.3 million jobs in the second quarter, the steepest quarterly decline in records dating to 1939. In this month’s survey, just over a third of economists, 34.7%, broadly stuck with that timeline and said payrolls would recover in 2022. A larger share, 42.9%, now see the labor market recovering in 2023, and another 12.2% expect it will take even longer – with 2% expecting it will take until 2030.
The Covid Economy Carves Deep Divide Between Haves and Have-Nots – WSJ – A two-track recovery is emerging from the country’s pandemic-driven economic contraction. Some workers, companies and regions show signs of coming out fine or even stronger. The rest are mired in a deep decline with an uncertain path ahead. Just months ago, economists were predicting a V-shaped recovery – a rapid rebound from a steep fall – or a U-shaped path – a prolonged downturn before healing began. What has developed is more like a K. On the upper arm of the K are well-educated and well-off people, businesses tied to the digital economy or supplying domestic necessities, and regions such as tech-forward Western cities. By and large, they are prospering. On the bottom arm are lower-wage workers with fewer credentials, old-line businesses and regions tied to tourism and public gatherings. They can expect to bear years-long scars from the crisis. The divergence helps explain the striking disconnect of a stock market and household wealth near record highs, while lines stretch at food banks and applications for jobless benefits continue to grow. In the latest example, consumer spending rose 1% in August but overall personal income fell 2.7% from July, in part because the unemployed received less government aid, according to Commerce Department figures reported last Thursday. Employers have added 11.4 million jobs since the start of May, and economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimate gross domestic product rose at a 23.9% annual rate in the third quarter. That some workers, industries and regions are managing to power through the pandemic explains why growth is so strong. Those gains still leave the country well short of where it started the year. The pandemic and lockdowns knocked out 22.2 million jobs in March and April and caused the economy to shrink at a 31.4% rate in the second quarter and a 5% pace in the first. The pandemic has effectively erased all the economic growth of 2018 and 2019. Even with recent gains, more jobs have been lost – nearly 11 million – than were cut in the wake of the 2007-09 recession, when 8.7 million were eliminated. The gyrating numbers are a shock to a U.S. economy that had been averaging a little better than 2% annual growth for a decade. Together, the gains and losses show the economy at large is still in a hole after months of the fastest employment and output spurt on record, and could take years to fully dig out.
Nurses suffer burn-out, psychological distress in COVID fight – association (Reuters) – Many nurses caring for COVID-19 patients are suffering burn-out or psychological distress, and many have faced abuse or discrimination outside of work, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said. Supplies of personal protective equipment for nurses and other health workers in some care homes remain insufficient, it said, marking World Mental Health Day on Saturday. “We are extremely concerned about the mental health impact on nurses,” Howard Catton, a British nurse who is the ICN’s chief executive, told Reuters Television at the association’s headquarters in Geneva. “Our most recent survey of national nurses’ associations shows that more than 70% of them (the associations) were saying that nurses have been subject to violence or discrimination and as a result of that they are very concerned about extreme cases of psychological distress and mental health pressure,” he said. The figure was based on responses from roughly a quarter of its national nurses’ associations in more than 130 countries. Nurses face a broad spectrum of issues that affect their mental health, including physical and verbal abuse, Catton said. “There are nurses who have been subject to discrimination, where their landlord has not renewed their lease for their apartment, or they can’t get child care for their children,” he said, without giving specifics of physical or verbal abuse. ICN has lobbied for better protection and working conditions for nurses on the front lines of the pandemic. “We still continue to see problems with the supplies personal protective equipment. There have been improvements, particularly in hospitals,” Catton said. But some care homes and long-term care facilities in Europe, and in North and South America still lack supplies, he said, citing its members’ survey.
Millions Risk Losing Power Over Unpaid Utilities As Most States’ Pandemic Grace Period Expires – Millions of Americans are facing a dire situation of being without power or water as their utility bills pile up, and as state and local protections which allowed for deferred payments amid the pandemic come to an end.After a summer of rising unemployment numbers brought on by the crisis, though seeing a promising potential softening of the trend in September, The Washington Post recently detailed some instances of people going as much as two months in the dark after falling behind on utility payments last spring.”The worst economic crisis in more than a generation has thrust potentially millions of Americans across the country into a similar, sudden peril: Cash-strapped, and in some cases still unemployed, they have fallen far behind on their electricity, water and gas bills, staring down the prospect of potential utility shut-offs and fast-growing debts they may never be able to repay,” the Post summarized of new National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA) analysis. Soon following the start of the pandemic in the US and resulting state lockdowns, most states moved to ensure residents that they would prevent utility shut-offs for an extended grace period. But still the debts have mounted, and at this point, the NEADA finds, only 21 states along with the District of Columbia still have disconnection bans in place. That means the majority of states are shutting off utilities over unpaid bills. And further, “Millions more in nine other states are set to lose their protections starting Thursday and throughout the fall, the group found,” WaPo reports.The study found that 179 million Americans are potentially at risk of shut-offs, though with the big and unlikely assumption that the vast amount of households would fail to pay their bills altogether. But still even a small percentage of this number means many hundreds of thousands of households, or even millions, face being in the dark. Consider a single state, Indiana: In some cases, the delinquencies appear to be severe. In Indiana, for example, more than 112,000 households are behind 120 days or more on their power bills, a Washington Post analysis of the largest local energy companies’ records found. The debt, totaling millions of dollars, is four times greater than the arrears accrued during the same period in 2019, the data shows.
NJ told to halt utility shutoffs, find out how many customers are in trouble — The state should extend a moratorium on utility shutoffs until next April and launch a proceeding to determine just how much debt customers may have run up by not paying bills during the pandemic, according to New Jersey’s Division of Rate Counsel. In a petition filed yesterday with the Board of Public Utilities, Rate Counsel director Stefanie Brand also urged the regulatory agency to suspend filings of new base-rate cases and spending on infrastructure programs by utilities during the ongoing public health crisis. The filing reflects mounting concerns by her office and consumer advocates over the long-term impact COVID-19 has had on New Jersey where more than 16,000 people have died and over 1.56 million have filed for unemployment since the pandemic began in mid-March. “COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on both the health and financial wellbeing of New Jersey ratepayers,” Brand argued in the petition. She urged the board to consider how many customers have fallen behind on their their bills and by how much, as well as what steps can be taken to eliminate that debt. Brand cited Gov. Phil Murphy speaking on National Public Radio last month, “Most everybody is hurting, but particularly, low-income workers and their families have been crushed. Small businesses have been crushed. The impact has been staggering across the board.” The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. But other consumer advocates urged the governor to extend the voluntary moratorium, which is now scheduled to expire on Oct. 15. “It is likely that hundreds of thousands of New Jersey families and businesses cannot afford their utility bills and are at risk of being shut off … these essential lifeline services are always critical for health and safety, but especially during a pandemic,” said Ev Liebman, associate director of AARP New Jersey. “We hope the board responds quickly.”
Utilities can now cut off non-paying customers, Pa. agency says, but there are safeguards for the poor -Pennsylvania utilities will be allowed to resume shutoffs of nonpaying customers on Nov. 9 after state regulators Thursday lifted a moratorium imposed at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic emergency.The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission on Thursday voted 3-1 to again permit service terminations, but put safeguards into place for families and small businesses that are struggling financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The PUC’s action resolves a dispute that had stalemated the commission for months over how to end the moratorium. Utilities say the COVID-19 moratorium has made it difficult for them to collect payments or to get customers to sign up for low-income assistance. They say customers were late on a total of $479 million in June, a figure that is mounting. But consumer advocates say that a public health emergency is no time to shut off a vital service, the loss of which could mean homelessness for some.”The moratorium on utility service terminations was the right decision to make in March, but the moratorium cannot be the sole solution for assisting vulnerable utility customers,” said Gladys Brown Dutrieuille, the PUC chair. “Many other states have moved or are moving from moratoriums by designing plans to assist payment troubled customers keep utility service.”The PUC’s order will still prohibit utilities from shutting off “protected customers” whose income is no more than triple the Federal Poverty Guidelines, which are set at $26,200 for a family of four, so the yearly limit for such a family would be $78,600. The protected customers must apply for available assistance programs and request a payment arrangement from the utility to pay down their debt.
Many Electric Co-ops Resumed Disconnections As Utilities Were Prevented From Shutting Off Power | Wisconsin Public Radio – State regulators have prevented utilities from shutting off water, power and heat for residential customers during the COVID-19 crisis. But the state’s 24 electric cooperatives that serve more than 587,000 customers aren’t required to meet the same standard. While the Public Service Commission (PSC) oversees utilities, electric cooperatives are member-owned and governed by a board of directors elected by members, said Steve Freese, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association. WHYsconsin was recently asked what protections people have in regard to utility shutoffs or fees associated with late payments if the utility is a co-op. The person who reached out to WHYsconsin has electricity provided by Polk-Burnett Electric Cooperative and said they were told the co-op does not have to abide by the state’s moratorium. They also asked how a crucial service that is also the only option for customers can be exempt from the moratorium. Freese said all members of the association voluntarily complied with the PSC’s moratorium on utility shutoffs while the state’s “Safer at Home” order was in place, which contributed to a spike in past-due bills among members. “When the order was lifted, many of the electric co-ops made the decision to go back and to follow the disconnection protocols that they had as policies in place,” said Freese. Since then, only four cooperatives have not resumed disconnections. Yet, Freese said cooperatives are generally reporting less than 1 percent of their members aren’t paying their bills.
Top US Food Bank Warns Of Nationwide “Meal Shortages” In Next 12 Months – The virus pandemic and resulting recession, crushing millions of households, has produced a new era of hunger nationwide. After seven months of the coronavirus chaos, triggering widespread unemployment and the collapse of small businesses, millions of Americans are going hungry for the first time in their lives ahead of the holiday season. Tens of millions of Americans have turned to their local food banks as food insecurity spirals out of control. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from late August, about 10% of adults, 22.3 million, reported they didn’t have enough to eat or lacked food. This figure is up from 18 million in early March. Now, Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks, serving more than 46 million people, is warning it may experience a massive food shortage within the next twelve months, reported WaPo. Feeding America said it could face a deficit of “10 billion pound shortfall between now and June of 2021 – the equivalent of 8 billion meals.” In July, the nonprofit organization “estimated the total need for charitable food over the next year would be an unprecedented 17 billion pounds, more than three times the food bank network’s last annual distribution of 5 billion pounds.” Rising food insecurity comes as the economy faces a tidal wave of long-term unemployment as millions of people who lost jobs early in the pandemic and remain out of work, unable to find a job, as job losses increasingly become permanent.At the moment, nearly 4 million jobs have vanished forever. Two problems are developed: rising long-term unemployment and permanent job losses, the combination of the two create deep economic scarring and immense financial pain for households. The Salvation Army recently launched its annual holiday fundraising campaign early this year, for the first time in 130 years, in a bid to “rescue Christmas” to support those households financially ruined by the economic downturn.
Parents: Online learning program has racist, sexist content(AP) – Zan Timtim doesn’t think it’s safe for her eighth-grade daughter to return to school in person during the coronavirus pandemic but also doesn’t want her exposed to a remote learning program that misspelled and mispronounced the name of Queen LiliÊ»uokalani, the last monarch to rule the Hawaiian Kingdom. Timtim’s daughter is Native Hawaiian and speaks Hawaiian fluently, “so to see that inaccuracy with the Hawaiian history side was really upsetting,” she said. Even before the school year started, Timtim said she heard from other parents about racist, sexist and other concerning content on Acellus, an online program some students use to learn from home. Parents have called out “towelban” as a multiple-choice answer for a question about a terrorist group and Grumpy from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” described as a “woman hater.” Some also say the program isn’t as rigorous as it should be.As parents help their children navigate remote classes, they’re more aware of what’s being taught, and it’s often not simply coming from an educator on Zoom. Some schools have turned to programs like Acellus to supplement online classes by teachers, while others use it for students who choose to learn from home as campuses reopen. And because of the scramble to keep classes running during a health crisis, vetting the curriculum may not have been as thorough as it should have been, experts say. Thousands of schools nationwide use Acellus, according to the company, and parents’ complaints are leading some districts to reconsider or stop using the program. “We wouldn’t have had this visibility if it weren’t for all of us at home, often sitting side by side and making sure: ‘Is this working for you?'” said Adrienne Robillard, who withdrew her seventh-grade daughter from Kailua Intermediate School after concluding Acellus lacked substance and featured racist content.
Partial closures in New York City as infections spread throughout US schools – Throughout the United States, school reopenings have been a complete disaster. More than 30 K-12 educators have died since schools began reopening in late July, and at least 39,000 students and school employees have been infected across the country. On October 1, one day after her 58th birthday, first grade bilingual teacher Olga Quiroga died after battling COVID-19. Quiroda taught at Funston Elementary and had worked in the Chicago Public School District (CPS) for over 30 years. Although CPS began the school year fully online for most students, Quiroga became infected after being forced to make a number of trips to her school for required pre-service workdays, including a back-to-school event where she met her students’ parents and handed out supplies for the upcoming academic year. While sick at home, Quiroga continued to teach her students virtually as the school year began. After a week of worsening symptoms while teaching virtually, she was taken by her daughter to the emergency room and never left the hospital. There have now been nine reported deaths of CPS workers since the onset of the pandemic. Despite the surge in infections and deaths among educators across the country, major school districts that have started online are now pushing for the full resumption of in-person learning, which will vastly accelerate the spread of the pandemic. In New York City, mass school reopenings combined with the easing of social distancing restrictions in recent weeks have led to a rapid rise in infections across the city. At least 145 teachers and 38 students have tested positive for COVID-19, and the average infection rate throughout the city has nearly doubled in the past week, from one to 1.75 percent in the past week. On Sunday, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that all non-essential businesses, as well as public and private schools, will close this Wednesday, October 7, in neighborhoods with a three percent infection rate for seven consecutive days. The closures will impact roughly half a million people across nine zip codes and encompass parts of at least 20 neighborhoods within the city, with roughly 100 public and 200 non-public schools closing in the largest school district in the country.
New York governor closes some schools and businesses while COVID-19 infections spike – New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new tiered system of restrictions on Tuesday in response to the rapid development of coronavirus hotspots throughout the state. The plan establishes a system of color-coded zones (red, orange and yellow) with varying degrees of restrictions on schools and nonessential businesses. Within so-called red zones, schools and nonessential businesses would be shuttered for a minimum of two weeks, restaurants would be limited to take-out, and religious gatherings in excess of 10 people would be banned. Areas designated as orange and yellow zones would be subject to more limited restrictions. New York City neighborhoods in south Brooklyn, central Queens and Far Rockaway, which had previously been designated hotspots by Mayor Bill de Blasio, as well as Rockland and Orange counties and the town of Binghamton, all located within two hours northwest of the city, will be impacted by the plan set to go into effect Friday. The emergence of coronavirus spikes within the state is by no means limited to these areas. The plan announced by Cuomo is a political move intended to cast a negative light on his antagonist New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is also a Democrat. On Sunday, de Blasio called for the temporary closure of about 300 schools, as well as nonessential businesses within nine zip codes in the areas of Brooklyn and Queens. The positivity rate in all these areas has risen to double the three percent citywide threshold previously set by de Blasio to trigger a shutdown of all city schools. An additional 11 zip codes in New York City were placed on a “watch list” due to sharp spikes in positivity rates. Both the Cuomo and de Blasio plans have received the blessings of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which was instrumental in opening the schools in September. On Sunday, the UFT President Michael Mulgrew praised the governor, saying, “This is the right decision, one that helps protect our schools, our neighborhoods, and ultimately our city.” The recent case of a student at P373K, a school for children with autism and developmental disabilities in Brooklyn where many students cannot wear face coverings, underscores the unsafe conditions for hundreds of thousands of students and educators. A student attended classes for two days before being identified as positive, and staff at the school were only informed after directly calling the parent to inquire into absences. At least 13 students and staff remain quarantined.
New York City Seeks to Shortchange Teachers on $900 Million of Back Pay — Yves Smith — The latest fiscal shoe to drop in the Big Apple is the city reneging on $900 million of back pay to teachers, the fourth installment in a deal struck by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014. From what I can infer, teachers had gotten lower pay increases than other city workers in the years right after the financial crisis and sought a make-up. The incoming mayor and the unions agreed on a complicated package for teachers hired before 2012. You can read a summary here; these were the two groups subject to the pay deferral scheme:
- – Upcoming Retirees: Anyone who retires before June 30, 2014 will also receive a lump sum payment for 100 percent of their back pay. Anyone who retires after June 30, 2014 will receive their full back pay delivered in five separate payments from 2015 through 2020.
- – Mid-Career Teachers: Anyone who was teaching in 2009, 2010, and/or 2011, is still teaching, and remains in continuous employment (meaning they don’t leave or take a year off for, say, childbirth), will receive a $1,000 payment immediately; 12.5 percent retroactive payments in 2015 and 2017; and 25 percent payments in 2018, 2019, and 2020. .
- – Early-Career Teachers: Using the pension plan’s assumptions for retention, the average first-year teacher in 2009 had less than a 50-50 chance of making it to 2020. Many of them are already gone, but another 25 percent of the class of 2009 will leave between now and when they’ll be eligible for full retroactive pay in 2020
So you can see the motivation for deferring the pay wasn’t the usual hope that New York City’s finances would be better later (and that the value of money in the future is less than money now) but also that the number of recipients would be reduced by the “remaining in continuous employment” requirement. The Wall Street Journal broke the story of New York City announcing it would not make its $900 million payment due this month:New York City can’t afford to pay a lump sum due its teachers because of the new coronavirus, city officials said Thursday, reflecting a fiscal crisis that has already led to budget cuts and service reductions. The city teachers union, which puts the amount due this month at $900 million, called Thursday for immediate arbitration.
Parents At New York’s Dalton School Revolt Over $54K Tuition For Online Classes – Parents at New York’s elite Dalton School are spitting mad over having to pay $54,180 in tuition for online-only classes during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg. Now, after weeks of watching kids stream in and out of other private school buildings, and the city’s public schools resuming in-person learning, some Dalton parents are calling for kids to get off their computers and back in the classroom. – Bloomberg “We are, in short, frustrated and confused and better hope to understand the school’s thought processes behind the virtual model it has adopted,” said a group of about a dozen physician-parents in a letter to the head of the school last week. “Please tell us what are the criteria for re-opening fully in person. Covid-19 is not going away and waiting for that to happen is misguided.”Dalton is one of many schools around the country which has restricted or eliminated in-person education during the pandemic. That said, remote learning risks children falling behind, both academically and socially as Bloomberg notes. Adding to the frustration is parents who are sick of writing giant tuition checks for virtual learning.Meanwhile, a petition for the return of on-campus classes was signed over the weekend by over 70 lower-school parents, who say “Zoom-school is not Dalton.””From our understanding, several of our peer schools are not just surviving but thriving,” reads the letter from the physician parents. “Our children are sad, confused and isolated, questioning why everyone around them gets to go to school when they do not.”Jim Best, the head of school, told the physicians he wants to work with them on a reopening plan for Dalton’s 1,300 students and 250 teachers, according to one of the parents, who asked not to be identified.“We welcome and appreciate the perspective of these parents, as well as every parent and member of our community,” a spokesperson for the Upper East Side school said Monday in a statement. –BloombergThe frustrated letter comes as New York redoubles efforts to lock down after its si xth-consecutive day of infections of 1,000 or more – while Mayor Bill de Blasio says he’ll shutter Brooklyn and Queens schools located in hot spots starting Wednesday.
Pennsylvania educators, bus drivers and school workers launch rank-and-file safety committee to put an end to in-person instruction – We announce today the formation of the Pennsylvania Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee to oppose the school reopenings enacted by Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and supported by Democratic and Republican state and local officials. Face-to-face instruction places the lives of educators, school workers, students, and the broader community at grave risk. These measures are not meant to help young people, whose health and lives are placed in jeopardy, but rather to force the entire working class back on the job for the sake of corporate profits.The resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic is in full swing across the US and internationally. It has been driven by the bipartisan policy of unlimited financial support to Wall Street while forcing workers to choose between destitution, hunger and homelessness, on the one hand, or returning to unsafe schools and businesses on the other.Pennsylvania has a patchwork of 500 school districts, each choosing independently whether to open with face-to-face learning, online learning, or a hybrid model that combines the two. Many teachers returning for face-to-face instruction have reported that they have been given one face mask and a bottle of “blue liquid” as a disinfectant, while others have been provided nothing. The Wolf administration’s Department of Education has refused to issue any safety mandates for reopenings. State guidelines which restrict event sizes to 20 percent of room capacity exempt classrooms. Years of budget cuts to education have already ballooned class sizes, with 30 or more students routinely packed into classrooms. As a result of relaxed or nonexistent guidelines and years of budget cuts, there is a lack of mask-wearing among students and staff, no social distancing, and no proper disinfecting in reopened schools. Some districts refuse to test students for COVID-19, with children who report to the nurse being sent back into the classrooms.
Los Angeles school district uses COVID-19 testing to accelerate back-to-school drive – The Los Angeles Unified School District – the second largest in the country with more than 775,000 students, teachers and support staff – recently announced that it had finished its trial phase of mass coronavirus testing and would begin implementing larger scale testing in preparation for a return to in-person learning as early as November. Once completed, LAUSD is expected to become the first school district in the country to test all students and staff for COVID-19. Underscoring the rushed and reckless character of the testing program, a pilot program involving up to 100,000 special needs children will be sent back into classrooms later this month, while athletic teams will begin tryouts and practices on November 2. Children and staff in early education and elementary schools will be the first to receive testing, with the district expanding to older students over the coming weeks. Families will be notified by their respective school principals when it’s time to be tested, and results are expected to be available within 24 to 36 hours. The stated intent of the program is to establish a COVID-19 infection rate baseline and to perform a second round of testing soon after to determine changes in infection rates against the baseline result. The district also announced it will be making use of the Microsoft “Daily Pass” app, which essentially functions like an electronic ticket on a smart phone. Using the app, only those students and staff who have been cleared as healthy will be allowed to enter school premises. The drive to reopen Los Angeles schools is part of the larger, reckless drive to reopen the economy regardless of the consequences for the population. Los Angeles County alone has already had more than 277,000 COVID-19 cases, with 6,709 deaths as of today. Once schools are open, these numbers will rise exponentially, especially with openings occurring in the midst of the autumn and winter seasons.
Tennessee educator speaks out on unsafe conditions in schools – Following the recent comments made by Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, in which he praised the “very strong safety measures” in place for in-person classes during the pandemic, an educator in Rutherford County, Tennessee, has spoken to the World Socialist Web Site and revealed the reality of conditions she and her colleagues are facing. Rutherford County is one of the fastest growing counties in Tennessee, in part due to the soaring housing costs in nearby Davidson County (Nashville), with the number of residents rising from 262,604 residents in 2010 to an estimated 332,285 in 2019, according to US Census data. Murfreesboro, the county seat, is “Tennessee’s fastest growing major city and one of the fastest growing cities in the country,” according to Homesnacks.com. It is the home of the state’s second-largest university, Middle Tennessee State University, with nearly 20,000 undergraduate students. The Rutherford County school district has 46,303 students, while Murfreesboro city schools have 9,000 students. Shortly after Rutherford County reopened its schools, some 1,500 students were quarantined due to COVID-19 symptoms or having been exposed to someone infected with the virus. Despite this, the county has refused to move entirely to online learning. Describing the situation, the teacher commented: “It is clear that they [politicians and school administrators] want the schools to remain open at all costs. They don’t care who is going to be harmed. “I spoke with the nurse at my school, who keeps track of all the kids that are quarantined. She told me that we had 80 kids with COVID throughout the school and six of them tested positive in one week. I had to ask when they are going to close the school, but that hasn’t happened. Instead they are keeping it open, and I have taken it upon myself to get tested for COVID every two weeks. “It is clear that the principal wants an illusion of normality. But a few weeks ago the principal had tested positive for COVID, and the assistant principal was quarantined. Shouldn’t we have closed down then?”
As COVID-19 infection rates skyrocket, hundreds of Missouri schoolchildren quarantined – On Thursday, Missouri reported more than 1,500 new COVID-19 cases and the greatest number of hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. Neighboring Illinois reported the highest daily confirmed new cases, 3,059, since the state’s peak in May. Despite the sharp rise in cases, hours are being cut for Missouri’s COVID-19 information hotline. It will continue to operate seven days a week, but new hours effective Oct. 1 are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., down from 24 hours a day. Furthermore, Oct. 10 will be the last day Missouri residents qualify for extended unemployment benefits, which the state has cut even as long term unemployed figures rise due to the economic impact of the pandemic. The entire state is considered a “red zone” for COVID-19. The rate of new cases and positive tests in the state was one of the highest in the country for September. Despite this, Republican Governor Mike Parson refuses to implement further restrictions or impose mask mandates. While the state recently launched a COVID-19 dashboard that tallies statistics including infections and deaths in each region, the Department of Health and Senior Services announced that it will no longer provide daily updates on social media of COVID-19 spread. The DHSS was previously giving daily updates on Facebook and Twitter. The new dashboard reports numbers that are three days old. It shows seven-day averages for hospitalizations instead of daily updates. This will make it more difficult to spot the emergence of hot spots and plan effective responses to virus spread. The White House task force has taken note of the situation in Missouri and warned that it is in a dangerous position to see increased rates of infections and deaths through this fall and winter. Jefferson County, a rural portion of the St. Louis region, has in total nearly 4,600 positive cases reported and 65 deaths. Governor Parson has returned to the State Capitol in Jefferson City as of this Monday after announcing that he and First Lady Teresa Parson tested positive on Sept. 23. Four of the governor’s aides had also tested positive. As is the case through the US, the bipartisan policy of reopening schools and businesses is driving the outbreak in Missouri. As of this week 499 students have been quarantined in the Fort Zumwalt School District in St. Charles County after being exposed to the virus.
Three people associated with local school districts have died recently with Coronavirus — KJAS News learned Thursday that three people associated with three local school districts have recently died with Coronavirus. Jasper County Judge Mark Allen says that the deaths include an unnamed female school teacher at Evadale Elementary School, along with Buna ISD School Board Member Shad Skinner, who died Saturday at the age of 44, and also an unnamed Kirbyville CISD female cafeteria worker, who Judge Allen said is believed to have lived in Newton County. Meanwhile, Evadale ISD officials say all campuses have been closed so that they can be thoroughly cleaned and classes are scheduled to resume on Monday. Judge Allen said as of Thursday the official number of Coronavirus deaths in Jasper County had increased to 26, up just 1 from 25 on Monday. However, Judge Allen noted that it takes several days for the State of Texas tally the numbers in their updates.
Chicago teacher dies from COVID-19 after visits to school, family says – A Chicago teacher has died from COVID-19 after making several visits to her school – including to hand out academic supplies to parents, her family said.First-grade teacher Olga Quiroga, 58, started suffering cold-like symptoms last month after multiple trips to Funston Elementary School, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.”These schools are not properly equipped, they’re not ready,” said her daughter, Giovanna Quiroga. “My mom, it took one time to be in that building to contract it.”Her mother tried to continue to teach her students virtually despite suffering from a bad cough and fatigue, the outlet reported.But soon, her health began to rapidly deteriorate and she was brought to the emergency room.”The nurses literally just snatched her away from me,” Giovanna said. “And ever since Sept. 11, she was in the intensive care unit. She just never came home.”Olga died on Thursday – just one day after her birthday – following a three-week battle with the virus, the outlet reported. Her family is now urging Chicago Public Schools to pull the brakes on any plans to reopen schools – insisting that Olga’s death is proof that they’re not safe.
Arizona teacher speaks on the death of her colleague from COVID-19 and contracting the virus herself – The WSWS spoke with Angela Skillings, a second grade teacher in Winkelman, Arizona, who was one of three teachers sharing a room who all contracted COVID-19 in June while teaching virtual summer school. Skillings and her colleagues Kim Byrd and Jena Martinez-Inzunza, along with their families, became infected. Byrd tragically succumbed to the virus in June. Ever since, Skillings has strongly advocated for schools to remain closed until the pandemic is contained. Skillings has been teaching for 17 years, and this August began her 14th year at Hayden-Winkelman Unified School District. She teaches second grade at Leonor Hambly K-8 school, one of two schools in the district in Winkelman, Arizona, a small town southeast of Phoenix. The district serves about 300 K-12 students from Winkelman and surrounding communities. Skillings, Byrd, and Martinez-Inzunza were in a K-2 grade level band and began teaching students virtually from their school site on June 8. The teachers shared a classroom and worked together each morning for the first week. Skillings described how she and her coworkers were hyper-diligent about staying safe, maintained well over six feet of distancing, wore masks, and religiously washed and sanitized their hands. On June 14, Skillings was notified that Kim Byrd was taken to the hospital, put on a ventilator and later that evening tested positive for COVID-19. Two days later, Skillings started showing symptoms of COVID-19, and Martinez-Inzunza followed suit the next day. Skillings would then receive a positive test result on Thursday, June 18, and Martinez-Inzunza tested positive on Tuesday, June 23. During the second week of summer school, both Skillings and Martinez-Inzunza continued teaching from home despite feeling terribly ill from the virus. Skillings described this experience, saying, “I texted my colleague saying ‘I feel like death has hit me.’ But we still pushed through it because we had students sitting in front of us. That’s what teachers do, we have always sacrificed for our students. It was the hardest four days, knowing Kim was already on the ventilator and she had tested positive, and we were sick. Our students had made get-well cards for her, the parents would send us pictures that we sent to Kim’s husband … Little did we know she wasn’t going to survive.” After Byrd’s death, her entire family tested positive for the virus, including her two-year-old granddaughter. Her brother, Roy Chavez, a substitute teacher in a neighboring school district, would also die three weeks later. A staggering nine out of the total 60 staff members in the district had contracted the virus in June and July, prior to kids showing up on campus. Three months have passed since Byrd’s tragic death, and hundreds of teachers and students across the US have now lost their lives to COVID-19 in the seven months since the onset of the pandemic. Arizona has reported a total of 219,763 cases and 5,693 deaths. There have been multiple outbreaks at schools since they began reopening in August throughout the state, leading to temporary school shutdowns and quarantines of students and staff. Last week, the entire varsity football team at Cactus Shadows High School in Cave Creek was placed under quarantine after four of its players tested positive for COVID-19.
Appalachian State University faculty and students demand action after death of healthy student from COVID-19 – COVID-19 infections continue to rise at Appalachian State University (ASU) in Boone, North Carolina in the wake of the tragic death of Chad Dorrill, a healthy 19-year-old student who died September 28. Dorrill began developing flu-like symptoms in early September. He decided to return home, where he tested positive for the virus on September 7. After quarantining for 10 days, and being cleared by his doctor, he returned to school. Soon afterward, he began suffering serious neurological problems after the COVID-19 virus triggered his immune system to attack his nerve cells, leading to his death. An autopsy is still pending on Dorrill. Since his death, students and teachers at ASU have spoken out against the inaction of the university administration. Since late September student cases have jumped dramatically from 96 to 229. COVID-19 clusters, defined here as five or more cases confirmed in a two-week period, have been reported across six different residence halls and over a dozen fraternities and sororities, according to reports from local news network WFMY. The school’s football team now has 21 active cases confirmed. At least one game has been postponed since Thursday. The recent success of the team, appearing in five nationally televised bowl games since 2015, in part spurred the university to pursue an “aggressive enrollment target” of 20,000 students by this year. This “achievement” has been criticized by sections of the faculty who point out that the university was wholly unprepared for an influx of students on and off campus amid a global pandemic.
A student says test proctoring AI flagged her as cheating when she read a question out loud. Others say the software could have more dire consequences. – As college students adapt to the new realities of distance learning amid the coronavirus pandemic, some students say they’re struggling to navigate the demands of exam proctoring and “anti-cheating” software. Programs that record students during exams have been widely implemented as educators attempt to curb academic dishonesty – but the test monitoring software has seemingly had unintended consequences from some students. One economics major is going viral on TikTok after expressing her frustration with a remote test-taking situation. In an emotional video posted last week, the college student said that ProctorU, the exam proctoring program used by her university, had flagged some of her behavior during an exam as suspicious. As a result, she claimed, her professor had given her a zero on the assessment. “So, just to let you know how online school and college is going, I just took an exam that I studied really, really hard for, and I got a B on it. And it’s a pretty difficult exam, so a B is pretty good,” TikTok user @_.daynuh._, who goes by Dana Jo the app, said through tears. “And my professor is giving me a zero, because the Review+ said I was talking when I was just, like, re-reading the question so I could better understand it.” The video racked up 3 million views in less than a week and viewers flooded the comments section of the video with support for the distraught college student and condemnation of the professor. “That is so ableist of them,” one TikTok user wrote. “I am so so sorry that you had to deal with this.” Popular YouTuber and comedian Alonzo Lerone commented on the video writing, “What’s your professor’s name? I just wanna talk.” Some students say they’ve been having issues with proctoring software simply because of the color of their skin. Twitter user @uhreeb said that ExamSoft, a monitoring tool used during the Bar Exam, directed him to “sit directly in front of a lighting source” after he experienced facial recognition difficulties. He said he was already in a well-lit room. Law student Kiana Caton told Venture Beat that she plans to shine a light directly in her face as she takes the California bar exam remotely in October. Caton, who is Black, adopted the measure at the suggestion of other dark-skinned students, the outlet explained, in order to ensure that her skin tone did not raise red flags to ExamSoft. Facial recognition technology, generally, has recently come under fire for its history of misidentifying people of color. A 2019 study conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that in a “one-to-one matching” database search, facial recognition algorithms falsely identified African-American and Asian faces between 10 and 100 times more often than they falsely identified Caucasian faces.
How student loan forgiveness is altering consumer behavior – Student loans are now a perennial political hot potato and an entrenched economic challenge for young Americans. Politicians and the higher education industry have kicked the can down the road for so long that we can no longer ignore the effect student debt is having on Millennials’ ability to thrive in today’s unforgiving economic environment. No matter how you view the issue, student debt will continue to color our voting patterns and consumer behavior for decades to come. Politics aside, let’s talk about how we got here and what, if anything, can be done to ensure that student debt doesn’t become a weapon of mass economic destruction. Additionally, I want to share what you should do if you find yourself shouldering a large amount of student debt in a rapidly evolving policy landscape. Even if you don’t carry any student debt, it’s a very pervasive problem. It’s likely that your children, neighbors, employees or friends are struggling to cover their minimum interest payments and are seeing their balances grow because of sky-high interest rates. Many of these debts defy individual economic realities and will likely never be collected. Unfortunately, taxpayers will be on the hook for these staggering losses. This dismal fiscal outlook is why some believe student loan forgiveness is the solution to this debt quagmire. Opposition to those measures quickly points out the obvious moral hazard and the simple fact that forgiveness doesn’t address future generations who will inevitably fall into the same debt trap. In sum, there is no easy way out for anyone, and the specter of student debt will continue to cast a shadow on our national economic prospects. The government appears to be more willing to address the crisis in a piecemeal, often haphazard fashion that doesn’t seem to be getting closer to a solution. But if you’re a borrower, you’re going to have to follow a rapidly changing reality if you want to get a grip on your economic future and help dig yourself out a student debt hole. For student borrowers who have federally held loans, you’ve probably noticed that all of your loans are currently in forbearance because of the ongoing pandemic. That means you don’t have to pay a red cent toward your loans, and your principal balance isn’t incurring interest. President Trump has extended these measures until the end of the year. Private borrowers received no such relief, meaning that people will probably rethink refinancing their public debt into private debt, which had become extremely popular in recent years. A payoff strategy for individual borrowers is now beginning to defy the basic rules of personal finance. Individual sacrifice may be fruitless as the expectation of some sort of forgiveness is beginning to alter consumer behavior permanently. For some, these changes are leading people to deprioritize paying their debt. I know of several people using the pandemic grace period to save up for a down payment on a house, or are simply living beyond their means for the time being. For others, it means keeping high-interest federally-backed debt that may be forgiven instead of refinancing into lower-interest private debt.
World food price index rise 5% year-on-year in September: FAO – (Reuters) – World food prices rose for a fourth month running in September, led by strong increases for cereals and vegetable oils, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index, which measures monthly changes for a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar, averaged 97.9 points last month versus a downwardly revised 95.9 in August. The August figure was previously given as 96.1. The Rome-based FAO also said in a statement that worldwide cereal harvests remained on course to hit an annual record in 2020, even though it slightly trimmed its previous forecasts. The agency’s cereal price index rose 5.1% in September from the month before and 13.6% above its value a year earlier. “Higher wheat price quotations led the increase, spurred by brisk trade activity amid concerns over production prospects in the southern hemisphere as well as dry conditions affecting winter wheat sowings around Europe,” FAO said. Maize, sorghum and barley prices rose, while rice fell 1.4% as fresh demand slowed. The vegetable oil price index climbed 6.0% month-on-month, thanks largely to rising palm, sunflowerseed and soy oil quotations, reaching an 8-month high. [POI/] The dairy index was little changed on the month, with moderate increases in price quotations for butter, cheese and skim milk powder offset by a fall in those of whole milk powder. Average sugar prices fell 2.6% from August, reflecting expectations of a global production surplus for the new 2020/2021 season. The meat index dipped 0.9% month-on-month and was down 9.4% year-on-year, with quotations for pig meat dropping on the back of China’s move to ban imports from Germany following the detection of African swine fever in Europe’s largest economy. FAO revised down its forecast for the 2020 cereal season by 2.5 million tonnes, reflecting lower expectations for the output of global coarse grains. However, despite this reduction, the agency still expected a record harvest this year of 2.762 billion tonnes, up 2.1% on 2019 levels. The forecast for world cereal utilisation in 2020/21 was put at 2.744 billion tonnes, down 2.8 million tonnes since September, but still 54.5 million tonnes above the 2019/20 estimate. The forecast for world cereal stocks by the close of seasons in 2021 was 890 million tonnes, down 5.9 million tonnes from the previous estimate but still representing a record high.
U.S. Crop Report Signals Worsening Global Food-Insecurity Crisis -On the same day the World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its fight against hunger, fresh numbers from the U.S. government showed that tighter crop supplies could worsen the food-inequality crisis that’s sweeping the globe.In its hotly watched monthly crop report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday said world soybean stockpiles will be smaller than expected, signaled growing competition over global wheat shipments and highlighted dry weather as a threat to crops in parts of South America and Europe.Taken together, the report indicated that global food prices could keep climbing, making adequate nutrition more expensive as millions are thrown out of work and economic woes deepen. Just this week, the United Nations released its gauge of global food prices, which showed costs rose 2.1% in September, mainly driven by grains and vegetable oils. The index is approaching a multi-year peak set in January. The USDA figures show that the increases could continue as China imports more soybeans and wheat, tightening the global balance sheet. Prices are rising as the world is forecast for a sharp rise in food insecurity because of Covid-19’s impact. As many as 132 million more people globally may fall into the grip of hunger this year, including in many places that used to have relative stability. While global grain and oilseed supplies remain relatively robust, wild weather including a recent severe wind storm in Iowa means harvests are smaller than initially hoped. Average yields for U.S. corn and soybeans are still record large, though there are fewer acres that will be harvested.Meanwhile, in top wheat-exporter Russia, production was raised by 5 million metric tons to 83 million tons, the second-biggest ever, according to the USDA’s report. Wheat output was cut in Argentina, Canada, Ukraine and the U.S. Prices have been surging in Chicago, with investors enticed by a demand-driven rally. Soybeans for November delivery climbed as much as 2.8% to $10.7975 a bushel Friday, the highest for a most-active contract since March 2018. Wheat prices touched a five-year high earlier this week.
Global Outlook Brightens as U.S. Consumer Imports Reach Pre-Pandemic Levels – WSJ – The U.S. posted its largest monthly trade deficit since 2006 in August as imports of consumer goods recovered to pre-pandemic levels, adding to evidence of a snapback in global trade. The U.S. trade deficit widened 5.9% from July to $67.1 billion, the largest gap since August 2006, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Imports rose 3.2% to $239 billion in August, while exports ticked 2.2% higher to $171.9 billion as exports of services and manufacturing products stalled. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a trade gap of $66.2 billion. Imports of consumer goods and food rose in August and are the only broad categories of foreign trade that have surpassed year-ago levels, Tuesday’s data showed. That likely reflects the roughly $1 trillion of fiscal support that the federal government has pumped into U.S. households through enhanced unemployment insurance, stimulus checks and tax cuts, since March. While those programs have mostly run their course – the additional $600 weekly unemployment benefits expired in July – consumer spending continued to grow through August. The result has been higher imports of furniture, clothes and pharmaceuticals. Imports of industrial supplies fell in August from July and imports of capital goods and vehicles slowed, suggesting renewed caution by domestic businesses following the economy’s initial rebound from coronavirus-related shutdowns. Overall exports remained 13% below their level in August 2019, as slowing momentum in the global economy weighed on U.S. sales of capital goods and industrial supplies to other countries. The overall trade deficit has been further exacerbated by a decline in the U.S.’s longstanding trade surplus in services, which fell to $16.8 billion – its lowest level in nine years – from $23.8 billion in August 2019. While there were signs that the U.S.’s dominance in services was waning before the pandemic, much of the more-recent decline stems from Covid-19’s impact on international tourism, which has collapsed in recent months. So-called travel exports, which represent spending by foreigners in the U.S., were down 77% in August from a year earlier at $3.62 billion.
Covid-19 and the Global Addiction to Cheap Migrant Labor – COVID-19 hit the world as a freight train hits a car stalled at a railroad crossing. The virus has shredded the rhythm of our daily lives, and it will reconfigure our economies and politics. How exactly it will do so remains unclear, but this much is certain: across the globe, middle class standards of living depend on the labor and – during a global pandemic – the deaths of an army of cheap migrant workers. The virus has shed light on this dependence, but there is nothing new about it; it has been a basic feature of national and global capitalism since at least the 1970s. And, for all the talk more of a new, more just world that will emerge from the ashes of COVID-19, the world’s addiction to cheap labor is going nowhere. The virus highlighted the world’s structural dependence on cheap, exploitable labor. As lockdowns spread around the globe in February (in much of Asia) and March (in much of Europe and North America), low-skilled migrants suffered some combination of four fates: unemployment, internment, expulsion, and infection.In Turkey, the pandemic slashed domestic growth and foreign remittances, and the first who were sacked were many of the 3.7 million Syrians refugees working in the informal sector. Inlocked-down Singapore, 30,000 migrant workers were confined to crammed dormitories with as many as twenty bunk beds per rooms. In India, when Prime Minister Modi shut down a country of 1.3 billion people on 24 March, at least 600,000 internal migrants tried to return home – clogging roads and railways in scenes that evoked memories of the great flights and expulsions during partition. As Saudi Arabia entered lockdown, the Kingdom expelled over 2,800 Ethiopian migrants.These lockdowns, sackings, and expulsions highlighted the degree to which both the global south and the global north are structurally dependent on cheap (e)migrants. At $554 billion globally in 2019, remittances provide more income than international aid; in Tajikistan, annual remittances from over one million guest workers in Russia are responsible for one-half of the country’s GDP. Due to the pandemic, global remittances may fall by as much as $108 billion dollars this year. But the global south also depends on cheap migrant labor – chiefly internal migrants in India and China, chiefly external migrants in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and the Gulf States – for construction, manufacturing, meat processing, caregiving, cleaning, and numerous other menial jobs.In the global north, multiple sectors depend on low-skilled migrant labor, but two depend on it to a superlative degree: agriculture and meatpacking. In meatpacking and meat processing, laborers work cheek-by-jowl, hacking away at poultry, pork, and beef as it flies by at line speeds that have increased decade-on-decade. Migrant workers live in crammed, often squalid, quarters. Human trafficking – including contract deception, wage theft, and illegal document retention – is common. The sector was a perfect incubator for the coronavirus: in Germany, Ireland, France, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, and the United States, meat processing plants became COVID-19 hotspots, and the virus infected tens of thousands of workers. In the US alone, 16,200 meat and poultry plant workers tested positive as early as May (the latest date for which the CDC produced numbers), and 86 died; 87% of the dead were minorities.
Global billionaire wealth tops $10 trillion as COVID-19 deaths mount – The collective wealth of the world’s 2,189 billionaires has risen to $10.2 trillion, an increase of nearly $1.3 trillion in the past three years, according to a new report by the Swiss bank UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The unprecedented surge in wealth takes place amidst a global pandemic that has killed more than one million people worldwide, including more than 215,000 in the United States alone. The report, “Riding the Storm,” is based on data from 43 markets, including interviews with 60 billionaires, accounting for around 98 percent of global billionaire wealth. It sums up the results: “Most of the decade was a time of exceptional prosperity for billionaires regardless of sector … ” The US continues to have the largest concentration of billionaire wealth, accounting for 36 percent of the world’s total, or $3.6 trillion. China ranked second with $1.6 trillion and saw the largest growth over the decade, by 1,146 percent. Third was Germany, where billionaire wealth totaled $594.9 billion, an increase of 175 percent from 2009’s $216.1 billion. While fourth in terms of billionaire wealth at $467.6 billion, Russia saw the smallest growth by percentage, 80 percent, from $260.2 billion in 2009 to $467.6 billion in 2020. The $10.2 trillion amassed by less than .0003 percent of the global population is more than the estimated 2020 Gross Domestic Product of every country on the planet except for the US and China. The staggering total hoarded by less than 2,200 people, or about the number of COVID-19 deaths in the US within the last 72 hours, surpasses the previous high of $8.9 trillion recorded in 2017.
Police shut down protests, fine students at University of Sydney – During the past two months, police have broken up four protests and one meeting at the University of Sydney, with dozens of fines issued to participants. On the patently false pretext of enforcing COVID-19 safety measures, the state Liberal-National government in New South Wales has deployed police to conduct anti-democratic operations on a university campus. Amid mass unemployment, intensifying cuts to university jobs, and planned student fee increases, there is rising political and social unrest among students, and more broadly among youth and workers. Under these conditions, the mobilisation of police on campuses – previously regarded as safe venues for political demonstrations – is a warning of the authoritarian measures being prepared against the working class as a whole. On July 31, approximately 30 police officers broke up a socially-distanced rally of students against the federal Liberal-National government’s plan to increase course feesfor humanities, communications, law, economics and commerce students to $14,500 a year, the highest fee bracket. For humanities students, this means a more than doubling of fees. Police chase protesters in Victoria Park 23 September 2020 (Credit: Honi Soit, Twitter) While students were dispersing, police identified a rally organiser, Adam Adelpour, and chased him down. Adelpour and another student were both issued $1,000 fines. On August 28, over 70 police officers, including from the riot squad and mounted police, prevented a planned rally from taking place. The event was called to protest cuts by the federal government and university managements.
Zimbabwean teachers refuse to work as government reopens schools without COVID-19 protection – Zimbabwe’s teachers are in their second week of strike action against the government’s back-to-school campaign being rammed through with minimal protections and over poverty level wages. It follows a three-month strike by 16,000 nurses over a lack of personal protective equipment and low wages, betrayed by the Zimbabwe Nurses Association. The actions are part of a growing wave of opposition by teachers and health workers against the reckless and homicidal response of capitalist governments around the world to the coronavirus pandemic. Teachers refused to resume teaching on September 28 when schools reopened for the first time since March for those students taking exams in December. Regular classes for all students were due to resume on October 5. The reopening of schools is bound up with the government’s efforts to drive parents back to work and to start generating profits for multinational corporations and the national bourgeoisie. Schools have been starved of funds for years, with parents providing most of the funding after the introduction of user charges in the 1990s. Classroom conditions are abysmal. Tawanda Chikondo, a 29-year-old teacher, told Bloomberg, “Our school looks like something from a war film, because I doubt it’s been painted in 25 or 30 years. There are broken windows, crumbling walls and we don’t have water. This is Zimbabwe, can you imagine? Africa’s most-educated nation has to teach children under trees because the classrooms are squalid and unkempt.” There is an acute shortage of schools, particularly in rural areas, with more than 2,000 extra schools needed. Teacher to pupil ratios range between 1:45 and 1:120 because of the shortage of teachers and classrooms available, making social distancing impossible. Teachers and students lack the most basic safety measures. Limited hand sanitiser has been made available under conditions where even clean water is a scarce commodity, as Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education officials acknowledge. Teachers are demanding that as frontline workers they should have regular testing, adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), and risk allowances before they are prepared to start work again.
Furloughed Jobs Disguise The Eurozone Employment Crisis –The United States jobs recovery slowed down slightly in September, but the employment recovery is still faster than in most comparable economies. The jobs report showed a healthy 661,000 gain in non-farm payrolls last month. Much of the difference with consensus came from shifts in government payrolls, which fell 216,000 in September. However, private payrolls rose by a healthy 877,000. This means that unemployment may have fallen below the 8.1% level in September.In Europe, according to Eurostat, the unemployment rate increased to 7.4% in August, while in the euro area it rose to 8.1%. However, more than 10 million workers remain in furloughed jobs, making the comparison with the United States, that does not have that scheme of subsidised unemployment, a challenge. In similar terms, the Eurozone unemployment would be close to 11% if we used the same calculation as the United States. The OECD estimates that unemployment will rise above 10% in the eurozone before year-end as furlough schemes end.Eurostat said it estimates that over 15.6 million people in the EU and around 13.2 million in the euro area were unemployed in August. Compared with July, the number of unemployed increased by 238,000 in the EU and 251,000 in the euro area.The furloughed jobs schemes have been one of the most important policies implemented by the European nations in the Covid-19 crisis. They aim to protect jobs for a few months while businesses recover their activity. These schemes were designed to allow companies to pass what was expected to be a short and almost painless crisis of two, maybe three months. Now, many European nations face a double problem. Many of the companies that signed for these furloughed job schemes face bankruptcy as the economic crisis has been longer and more damaging to the business fabric than governments expected. With almost one in five companies in Europe facing substantial losses and many close to bankruptcy, a significant part of these furloughed jobs will simply become full unemployment. In Germany, an economy that has recovered faster than all its European peers, around one million workers remained in these subsidised schemes after almost six months of re-opening the economy.In Germany, the government has also implemented a “bailout of everything” policy to keep the zombie businesses alive. According to the FT, almost 500,000 businesses in Germany can be considered zombie (unable to pay their interest expenses with operating profits). If the crisis remains for more months, as it seems, the cost of furloughed jobs will be unbearable for governments and the employment drama will unravel just at the time in which the insolvency issues start to appear in banks and companies.Furloughed job schemes only work as a temporary measure if strong policies to protect the business fabric and strengthen the private economy are implemented at the same time. Unfortunately, many governments in Europe like the Spanish, where unemployment is 16.2% even without counting furlough schemes, have only used these programs to “hide” unemployment and no significant measure has been implemented to help businesses thrive, attract capital and strengthen job creation.
Lagarde Is Prepared to Add Stimulus, Cut Rates to Support European Recovery – WSJ – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said the bank is ready to inject fresh monetary stimulus to support the eurozone’s stuttering economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, including by cutting a key interest rate further below zero. Speaking in an interview ahead of The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, Ms. Lagarde warned that Europe’s economic recovery looks “a little bit more shaky” amid a second wave of infections in countries like France and Spain. She said output wouldn’t return to pre-Covid levels until the end of 2022, and the world’s central banks would need to continue to provide stimulus to support government spending. “We are prepared to use all the tools that will produce the most effective, efficient, and proportionate outcome,” Ms. Lagarde said. The ECB has so far opted against cutting its key interest rate further below zero this year, even as it has unveiled around $3 trillion of new monetary stimulus, including large-scale bond purchases and cheap loans for banks, that roughly matched the Federal Reserve. The ECB’s key interest rate currently stands at minus 0.5%. Other major central banks including the Federal Reserve and Bank of England have also avoided pushing interest rates below zero to combat the crisis. Banks have long complained that the ECB’s negative interest rates eat into their profits because they generally haven’t been able to pass them on to customers.Ms. Lagarde acknowledged that the ECB currently considers other policy tools to be more effective than a rate cut. But she stressed that the ECB hasn’t yet reached the point where a fresh interest-rate cut would do more harm than good, known to economists as the reversal rate.
School occupations continue in Greece as students resist government blackmail and violence – Thousands of students demonstrated last Thursday in several Greek cities, including Athens and Thessaloniki, against the right-wing Greek New Democracy (ND) government’s criminal handling of the coronavirus pandemic. “The mask is not the only protection – spend money on education!” And “We are not costs, we are the future!” were some of the slogans chanted and displayed on banners. Along with the protests, general assemblies and protest actions were organised at schools. Since the homicidal reopening of schools two weeks ago, students, with the support of parents and teachers, have been fighting against the attempt to force them back into dilapidated school buildings, where they face the deadly threat of the coronavirus without adequate protection. According to the Education Ministry, 141 schools have either been partially or fully closed due to coronavirus outbreaks. Hundreds more schools have been occupied by students. Pupils are demanding much smaller classes with a maximum of 15 students, more teachers and cleaners, shorter lesson times, the use of additional buildings, as well as safe, affordable and regularly-operating transportation. Growing numbers of students are participating in the protests. Universities are supposed to open over the coming days in spite of rapidly increasing coronavirus figures in Greece. On Monday, students occupied the president’s office at Aristotiles University in Thessaloniki to demand safety measures, including restrictions on numbers of students, the making available of additional buildings and lecture halls, free coronavirus testing, and the hiring of more teaching staff and cleaners. The readiness of the students to fight has taken the government by surprise. Hundreds of the 700 schools originally occupied remain under occupation. The government is attempting to suppress the movement with brutal force so that it does not spread to the entire working class. They are not only relying on media propaganda and right-wing agitation to do this, but are also employing blackmail and physical violence.
UK plans to detain refugees on prison ships –Britain’s Tory government is drawing up proposals to remove migrants and asylum seekers to remote offshore locations – either within other countries or in UK waters – the moment they reach the UK.Documents seen by the Financial Times, the Times and Guardian reveal that the government’s “hostile environment” against immigrants and asylum seekers is to be stepped up with a raft of sadistic proposals.Under one of these, asylum seekers would be sent to the Ascension Islands, a volcanic rock in the Atlantic 4,000 miles away from Britain. Other locations under consideration include Moldova, Morocco and Papua New Guinea, with detailed “cost estimates” submitted for each, according to theGuardian.Asylum policy will be closely modelled on the Australian system of “remote detention”, the leaked documents make clear, with refugees forcibly sent to offshore islands. The Australian policy – described chillingly as the “Pacific Solution” – has been enforced by successive Labor and Liberal governments since 2001. Australia’s refugee prison camps have been condemned by refugee and human rights organisations. In the years from 2010 to January 2019 there were 37 deaths in its detention centres, both at “offshore” facilities on Manus Island and Nauru and “onshore” camps on the mainland and Christmas Island, an Indian Ocean outpost. Commenting on the UK documents, Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, UK representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said, “This is the Australian model and I think we have already seen that the Australian model has brought about incredible suffering on people who are guilty of no more than seeking asylum.”
‘Exhausted’ teachers warn they have no additional funding to handle Covid-19 – Headteachers have warned they do not have enough funding from the government to meet the extra costs of the Covid-19 crisis, leaving school budgets “in the lap of the gods”.The new president of the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT), Ruth Davies, said schools are being expected to implement Covid safety arrangements “without any additional funding at all”, placing pressure on “exhausted” school leaders.She called on the government to provide money for items such as personal protective equipment, extra cleaning, more staff and the physical adaptations made to schools. “It’s all having to be met from existing funds, which already have gaps.” ‘Headteachers don’t know from one day to the next what level of staffing they are going to have’: Ruth Davies, president of the National Association of Headteachers. Photograph: NAHT There is a particular problem with staffing costs, said Davies, as the “unreliable” test and trace system means teachers are having to self-isolate unnecessarily, waiting for results. “Headteachers don’t know from one day to the next what level of staffing they are going to have.”Government guidance is “vague at best, and often changes overnight”, with school leaders working 70-hour weeks to try to keep up, Davies said.The NAHT also called on Ofsted to drop plans to restart inspections in England in January, as they would be neither “fair nor useful”, Davies said. “It’s not just wondering what it is that Ofsted will be going in to inspect, but it’s also the unnecessary additional burden it places upon schools,” she said. “The profession has been sidelined. The government has refused to talk to us. We’ve asked to meet Ofsted and the response has been either nothing or just rejecting our offers.”A Department for Education spokesperson said: “On average, costs to schools to become Covid-secure will have been a relatively small proportion of their core funding. On top of that our Pound Sterling1bn Covid catch-up fund has flexible funding to help all their pupils make up for lost learning.”The spokesperson added: “Ofsted has started to visit schools to discuss how they are managing the return to education, including how expectations on remote education are being met. These will not result in a judgment. We intend to restart routine inspections from January. However this date is being kept under review.” An Ofsted spokesperson said: “In the spirit of openness, we consulted extensively with education unions – including the NAHT – throughout our planning for the autumn term. We have set out our intention to resume regular inspections in January, and will keep this under review during the Autumn term.”
UK students denounce dangerous conditions in universities and halls of residence – University students across the UK have spoken to the WSWS, and posted on social media, detailing the appalling conditions they face after returning to campus amid a resurging pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of young people, many leaving home for the first time, were told to move to university halls of residence. Many have now been locked down or told to self-isolate in cramped and expensive rooms, left short of food and support and denied the right to return home. Students and educators protested that students were being scapegoated, while universities and private developers pocketed rental incomes. On average, students pay around Pound Sterling150 a week for university accommodation, roughly Pound Sterling6,000 for a 40 to 42-week academic year – in London, the average is closer to Pound Sterling8,000. Ben, an Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies student at Exeter University, noted, “I think they’re using us as a cash cow by charging us full rates for a service that is half-quality at best, while simultaneously scapegoating us for the rise in cases due to their own ineptitude.” Steve, a third-year student at Sheffield, said, “We’ve had the most students in the past three years, it’s hard to socially distance and there’s so many cases. It’s totally for profit.” A department head at York university, Helen Smith, tweeted, “Repeat after me: if you bring students from all over the UK (and beyond) and put them together in halls of residence, it is not okay to blame *them* when they contract COVID-19.” One parent tweeted, “My son’s student residence already has a confirmed case of COVID-19 and uni hasn’t even started yet. It’s going to be a disaster.” Some students stayed at home. Others fear that if they return home now, they will endanger their families.
University and College Union moves to prevent strikes as COVID-19 cases surge on UK campuses – Northumbria University in Newcastle moved to temporary online learning Wednesday, following an emergency call for an industrial action ballot by lecturers and staff. The proposed strike was in opposition to the disastrous and homicidal conditions of the reopening of universities amid the coronavirus pandemic. The University of Newcastle followed suit, with both universities imposing distance learning measures for three weeks. The two universities combined have recorded over 1,600 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among students and staff. Newcastle upon Tyne, located in England’s North East, is one of the areas hardest hit by COVID-19 in the country, with 1,227 new cases in the city in the seven days to October 5. Manchester University, Manchester Metropolitan, Sheffield University, Sheffield Hallam, and Exeter universities have also been forced to scuttle their lecture hall teaching plans and moved to online learning. Northumbria University’s decision to move online prompted the University and College Union (UCU) leadership to ditch within 24 hours its members’ unanimous October 7 vote to ballot for strike action. Immediately following the vote, UCU General Secretary Jo Grady commented, “Our members do not want to take industrial action, but this is a matter of life and death. Unless the university changes course immediately, and moves to online learning as the default position, we will be balloting for industrial action.” When university management moved to online learning, the UCU called off organizing a strike ballot.
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