Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 27December 2020

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

News posted last week about economic effects related to the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some articles are summarized here. We cover the latest economic data, especially the coronavirus relief bill, government funding, the latest employment data, housing market reports, mortgage delinquencies & forbearance, layoffs, lockdowns, and schools, as well as GDP. 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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Research Arm of Congress Confirms that Mnuchin Never Released Bulk of CARES Act Money Earmarked for Fed’s Emergency Loans -By Pam Martens – On November 27, Wall Street On Parade reported that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had failed to turn over to the Federal Reserve 75 percent of the $454 billion that Congress had earmarked in the CARES Act for the Fed’s emergency lending programs. Now the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a century old nonpartisan agency that provides legal analysis to Congress, has confirmed what Wall Street On Parade reported more than three weeks ago. In a December 17 letter to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the CRS wrote the following: “Section 4003(b)(4) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act authorizes the Treasury Secretary to invest up to $454 billion in emergency-lending programs established by the Federal Reserve (the Fed). To date, the Treasury Secretary has committed $195 billion to such programs, and appears to have transferred $114 billion of that amount as of December 9, 2020.” “Committing” money and actually turning the funds over to the Fed are very different things. For example, the Term Sheet for the Municipal Liquidity Facility indicates that the Treasury had committed $35 billion to that emergency lending facility. But the Fed’s H.4.1 that was released on December 17 shows that the Fed had only received half of that amount, $17.5 billion. The same thing occurred with the Fed’s Primary and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities. The term sheet indicated that the Treasury would be providing a total of $75 billion combined to the two facilities. But the Fed’s H.4.1 has indicated for months that all it received from Treasury was exactly half that amount for the two facilities, $37.5 billion. (See footnote 14 to Table 1 of the H.4.1.) Mnuchin was able to delude the public with the idea that the Fed has just been sitting on over $400 billion of Treasury’s money, so it was time for Mnuchin to claw it back and kill the programs, because that information was inaccurately reported by mainstream media. On November 24 Saleha Mohsin of Bloomberg News reported this: “The money in question includes $429 billion that Mnuchin is clawing back from the Fed – which backed some of the central bank’s emergency lending facilities – and $26 billion that Treasury received for direct loans to companies. Both initiatives were created under the Cares Act that was passed in March as the coronavirus pandemic inflicted economic pain on the U.S.” Where did Mohsin get the idea that Mnuchin had turned over $429 billion of the $454 billion earmarked under the CARES Act to the Fed? According to Mohsin’s Tweet of December 1, Mnuchin made a phone call to her. Bloomberg News was not the only news outlet to incorrectly report how much money Mnuchin had actually turned over to the Fed. As recently as last Friday, December 18,Rachel Siegel of the Washington Post was reporting that Mnuchin “requested that the Fed return hundreds of billions of dollars that went unspent.” The misinformation campaign about the Fed twiddling its thumbs as its haul of $429 billion from the Treasury sat dormant in the Fed’s accounts has kept mainstream media from asking the critical question: exactly what was Mnuchin doing with the hundreds of billions of dollars he did not turn over to the Fed? The December 17 letter from the Congressional Research Service was requested by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis to challenge Mnuchin on his interpretation that he was legally required to terminate certain of the Fed’s emergency lending programs that were backstopped with CARES Act money by December 31, 2020. Numerous legal authorities had stated publicly that Mnuchin was misreading the legislation and there was no such requirement. Democrats charged that Mnuchin simply wanted to kneecap the economic performance of the incoming Biden administration.

Chicago Fed National Activity “Index Suggests Slower, but Still Slightly Above-Average Growth in November” – Note: This is a composite index of other data. From the Chicago Fed: Index Suggests Slower, but Still Slightly Above-Average Growth in November: Led by slower growth in employment- and production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) declined to +0.27 in November from +1.01 in October. Three of the four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index made positive contributions in November, but all four categories decreased from October. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, decreased to +0.56 in November from +0.85 in October. This graph from the Chicago Fed shows the Chicago Fed National Activity Index by category. According to the Chicago Fed: The index is a weighted average of 85 indicators of growth in national economic activity drawn from four broad categories of data: 1) production and income; 2) employment, unemployment, and hours; 3) personal consumption and housing; and 4) sales, orders, and inventories. … A zero value for the monthly index has been associated with the national economy expanding at its historical trend (average) rate of growth; negative values with below-average growth (in standard deviation units); and positive values with above-average growth.

Q3 GDP Growth Revised up slightly to 33.4% Annual Rate –From the BEA: Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits (Revised), and GDP by Industry, Third Quarter 2020: Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 33.4 percent in the third quarter of 2020, according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP decreased 31.4 percent.The “third” estimate of GDP released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 33.1 percent. The upward revision primarily reflected larger increases in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investmentHere is a Comparison of Third and Second Estimates. PCE growth was revised up to 41.0% from 40.6%. Residential investment was revised up from 62.3% to 63.0%. This was at the consensus forecast.

Q3 GDP Third Estimate: Real GDP at 33.4%, Record High – The Third Estimate for Q3 GDP, to one decimal, came in at 33.4% (33.44% to two decimal places), a record increase from -31.4% (-31.38% to two decimal places) for the Q2 Third Estimate. Investing.com had a consensus of 33.1%. Here is the slightly abbreviated opening text from the Bureau of Economic Analysis news release:Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 33.4 percent in the third quarter of 2020 (table 1), according to the “third” estimate released by th Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP decreased 31.4 percent. The “third” estimate of GDP released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 33.1 percent. The upward revision primarily reflected larger increases in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investment (see “Updates to GDP” on page 3). The increase in third quarter GDP reflected continued efforts to reopen businesses and resume activities that were postponed or restricted due to COVID-19. The full economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the GDP estimate for the third quarter of 2020 because the impacts are generally embedded in source data and cannot be separately identified. For more information, see the Technical Note. [Full Release] Here is a look at Quarterly GDP since Q2 1947. Prior to 1947, GDP was an annual calculation. To be more precise, the chart shows is the annualized percentage change from the preceding quarter in Real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product. We’ve also included recessions, which are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Also illustrated are the 3.17% average (arithmetic mean) and the 10-year moving average, currently at 2.02%.

Q3 Real GDP Per Capita: 32.7% Versus the 33.4% Headline Real GDP – The Third Estimate for Q3 GDP came in at 33.1% (33.10% to two decimals), up from -31.4% (-31.40% to two decimals) in Q2. With a per-capita adjustment, the headline number is lower at 32.68% to two decimal points. Here is a chart of real GDP per capita growth since 1960. For this analysis, we’ve chained in today’s dollar for the inflation adjustment. The per-capita calculation is based on quarterly aggregates of mid-month population estimates by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which date from 1959 (hence our 1960 starting date for this chart, even though quarterly GDP has is available since 1947). The population data is available in the FRED series POPTHM. The logarithmic vertical axis ensures that the highlighted contractions have the same relative scale. The chart includes an exponential regression through the data using the Excel GROWTH function to give us a sense of the historical trend. The regression illustrates the fact that the trend since the Great Recession has a visibly lower slope than the long-term trend. In fact, the current GDP per-capita is 11.5% below the pre-recession trend (2008). The real per-capita series gives us a better understanding of the depth and duration of GDP contractions. As we can see, since our 1960 starting point, the recession that began in December 2007 is associated with a deeper trough than previous contractions, which perhaps justifies its nickname as the Great Recession. The standard measure of GDP in the US is expressed as the compounded annual rate of change from one quarter to the next. The current real GDP is 33.1%. But with a per-capita adjustment, the data series is lower at 32.7%. The 10-year moving average illustrates that US economic growth has slowed dramatically since the last recession and has dropped significantly during the COVID recession.

Seven High Frequency Indicators for the Economy – These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment. The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. This data shows the seven day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Blue) and 2020 (Red). The dashed line is the percent of last year for the seven day average. This data is as of December 20th. The seven day average is down 63.8% from last year (36.2 of last year). (Dashed line) There had been a slow increase from the bottom, but is now moving more sideways – with ups and downs due to the holidays. 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 December 19, 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.” Note that dining is generally lower in the northern states – Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York – but declining in the southern states. Note that California dining is off sharply with the orders to close. This data shows domestic box office for each week (red) and the maximum and minimum for the previous four years. Data is from BoxOfficeMojo through December 17th. Movie ticket sales have picked up slightly over the last couple of months, but were down last week to $8 million (compared to usually as much as $400 million per week at this time of year). This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. This data is through December 12th. Hotel occupancy is currently down 37.4% year-over-year. Since there is a seasonal pattern to the occupancy rate, we can track the year-over-year change in occupancy to look for any improvement. This table shows the year-over-year change since the week ending Sept 19, 2020: This suggests no improvement over the last few months. 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 December 11th, gasoline supplied was off about 15.3% YoY (about 84.7% of last year). This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: “This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities.” This is just a general guide – people that regularly commute probably don’t ask for directions. There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. This data is through December 19th for the United States and several selected cities. According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7 day average for the US is at 45% of the January level. It is at 33% in Chicago, and 52% in Houston – and mostly trending down over the last few months. Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage. This data is through Friday, December 18th. “Data updates weekly from the MTA’s public turnstile data, usually on Saturday mornings”.

Business Cycle Indicators as of December 23 – Menzie Chinn – Key indicators tracked by NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) show mixed behavior; income (ex-transfers) declines. So too does consumption. Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), Bloomberg consensus for employment as of 12/23 (light blue square), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), all log normalized to 2020M02=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (12/1 release), NBER, Bloomberg, and author’s calculations. The Bloomberg consensus for nonfarm payroll employment for December is for an increase of only 100,000. Spending declines – both retail and food services sales as well as consumption. Figure 2: Personal consumption expenditure, in Ch.2012$ (blue), retail and food sales in 1982-84$ (brown), both s.a., in logs 2020M02=0. Source: BEA, FRED, and author’s calculations. University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index declined as well. Figure 3: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. Clearly this is a precarious point in the economy’s recovery. Perfect time to screw up a fiscal recovery package …

Red flag: Paul Krugman is optimistic about the economy – Paul Krugman, the left-wing economist who writes for the New York Times, is excited about the coming “Biden Boom” that will follow, he explains, the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine. The Biden Boom, he probably forgot to note, that depends on the Trump vaccine.Given Krugman’s record, his upbeat forecast is alarming. As many remember, he predicted in 2016 that the election of Donald Trump would usher in a global recession, “with no end in sight.” Oops.Krugman’s pessimism about the Trump economy, colored by his hatred of the president, endured. In April 2019, the NYU professor opined that the bond markets were signaling an imminent recession. Indeed, throughout 2019, as David Harsanyi wrote in a National Review column titled “Paul Krugman: Always Wrong, Never in Doubt,” the professor published: “Why was Trumponomics a Flop?” “From Trump Boom to Trump Gloom” and in October, “The Day the Trump Boom Died,” even as we went on to record record-low unemployment for every worker group and 56 percent of Americans declared themselves better off than they were four years earlier.Krugman was also dead wrong about the severity of the Great Recession. After the stock market tumbled nearly 3 percent on July 26, 2007, Krugman wrote a calming piece, explaining that trading in the government bond market showed “that investors still consider a recession, which would cause the Fed to cut interest rates, fairly unlikely” – a view that Krugman apparently shared.Further, Krugman opined the next day that “stocks don’t look overvalued the way they did in 2000.” Shortly thereafter the stock market began one of its worst slides in history, collapsing 51 percent from the close on the day Krugman wrote that cheery note. Nobody’s perfect, but Krugman’s record is pretty poor.Which is why his current optimism should make us nervous. On the surface, the U.S. does appear poised to profit from the roll-out of a vaccine that will put COVID-19 behind us, allowing the country to get back to work. Rising employment, especially in those industries most harmed by the coronavirus, like travel and entertainment, means higher incomes and spending.Also, the country’s savings rate has soared during the past six months as people stayed home; most economists think, like Krugman, that there is considerable pent-up demand.So, on the surface, the outlook is pretty rosy, which is why the stock market has been hitting new highs. What could go wrong?

Congress races to clinch coronavirus deal as shutdown looms – Congressional leaders are racing to finalize and pass a $900 billion coronavirus relief deal ahead of a midnight deadline to prevent a government shutdown. Leadership says it is on the precipice of a sweeping deal that would tie the long-sought relief to a $1.4 trillion bill to fund the government until Oct. 1. If lawmakers can’t pass the forthcoming agreement by the end of Sunday, something rank-and-file senators are casting doubt on, they’ll need to use a stopgap bill to keep the government open. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), entering the Capitol for the day, told reporters that they were “really, really close.” “We are winnowing down the remaining differences. I think I can speak for all sides when I say I expect and hope to have a final agreement nailed down in a matter of hours,” McConnell said from the floor during the rare Sunday session. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) echoed that, saying, “We’re very close.” Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that “barring a major mishap” both the House and Senate could vote “as early as tonight.” “As we speak, the legislative text is being finalized. The time has come to move forward and reach a conclusion,” he added from the Senate floor. The progress toward a deal comes after a middle-of-the-night breakthrough on the last big sticking point: emergency lending facilities under the Federal Reserve. The deal would close four Federal Reserve credit lending facilities created by the CARES Act and will prevent the Fed from standing up replica facilities in the future without congressional approval. The Fed will retain more flexibility over restarting the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, which will be closed but can be restarted in the future. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told reporters during a conference call on Sunday afternoon that lawmakers were still working to finalize the Federal Reserve language but that he intended to support the overall package. “Despite the significant reservations I have about some particular features, I think the good outweighs the bad, and it is my intention at this point to vote for it,” he said. Leadership aides acknowledged that the agreement with Toomey on the language moved Congress significantly closer, but there are smaller issues to iron out, and leadership needs to finalize and finish drafting the year-end agreement. “There are a few issues outstanding, but I’m quite hopeful that we’re closing in on an outcome,” Schumer said. Lawmakers are also pushing for language in the deal for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) tax “fix” over concerns that businesses that received PPP loans will have to pay a larger-than-expected tax bill next year. “Sounds to me like things aren’t completely tied up,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on Sunday.

House adopts 1-day stopgap bill to prevent government shutdown –The House moved swiftly Sunday night to pass a one-day extension of government funding – a last-minute cushion to prevent a government shutdown while the chambers slog through the final steps of passing a much larger coronavirus relief package on Monday. The 24-hour buffer was needed after negotiations on the broader spending bill stalled Sunday over a handful of stubborn disagreements, preventing the drafting and release of the final package. The bill later quickly passed the Senate and President Trump signed the stopgap bill just before the midnight shutdown deadline. With the clock ticking toward midnight – and a government shutdown – House Democratic leaders announced their one-day continuing resolution, or CR, to buy Congress more time to move the legislation through both chambers and move it to President Trump’s desk this week. Their announcement arrived just as leaders in both chambers announced that an agreement on a broader package had also been cemented. “I’m pleased we have reached an agreement on COVID-19 relief and an omnibus, which I expect we’ll pass tomorrow and send to the Senate,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) tweeted. “In order to provide time to prepare the bill for consideration, the House will meet at 6:30 p.m. to consider a one-day continuing resolution.” The House Rules Committee is expected to meet Monday morning to adopt the guidelines governing the floor debate on the package, which combines roughly $900 billion in emergency coronavirus relief with more than $1 trillion to fund the government through next September. The rules package will also include a multiday CR – somewhere in the neighborhood of seven days, though the number is not final – to allow for the logistical complications of adopting such an enormous bill, particularly during the holidays. The House is expected to send the legislation to the Senate on Monday afternoon, and leaders in both parties are hoping to move it quickly to Trump’s desk. It remains unclear, however, if there will be any objection to that fast-track strategy, which could delay the process further.

Congress passes one-day stopgap bill ahead of shutdown deadline – The Senate passed a one-day stopgap bill on Sunday night hours after congressional leaders announced they had reached an agreement on a sweeping deal to fund the government and provide long-stalled coronavirus relief. The one-day bill passed the House earlier in the evening. The White House announced just before the midnight deadline that President Trump signed the stopgap measure, funding the government for the next 24 hours. It’s the fourth continuing resolution (CR) Congress has needed this year after initially using a stopgap to fund the government from Oct. 1 to Dec. 11. They then used a second CR to extend it until Dec. 18 and a third to extend it further until the end of Sunday. The need for a one-day CR comes as the House is expected to vote on the roughly $2.3 trillion deal, which includes $900 billion for coronavirus relief and $1.4 trillion to fund the government, on Monday. A notice from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) initially had the deal teed up for a vote potentially late into Sunday evening but just before 6 p.m., House Democrats announced the one-day CR would be the only vote of the day. The deal includes $284 billion for another round of small business aid through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a $300-per-week unemployment benefit for 11 weeks, a pared down $600 second round of stimulus checks, and more money for things like schools, coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution. After the agreement passes the House on Monday, it will then go to the Senate where leadership has signaled that they are eager to move it quickly. But under Senate rules any one lawmaker could slow down the Senate’s passage, including dragging it out for days. No senator has said they will do so as members are eager to get out of town days before the Christmas holidays. Congress could also pass a second longer seven-day CR in order to give leadership time to get the mammoth COVID-spending bill to Trump’s desk and give him time to sign it amid the holiday week. The House is expected to tuck the longer CR into its package that governs the debate of the omnibus-coronavirus package. Once the House passes the rules for its debate, the longer, days-long CR will automatically go to the Senate for passage. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) indicated earlier that the Senate would pass the second, likely seven-day CR in order to give time for the agreement to be signed into law. “Well whatever they send over I assume we will pick it up and transact it,” Thune said about the House plan.

Trump signs bill extending government funding for 24 hours – President Trump signed a continuing resolution on Sunday night that will fund the government for the next 24 hours, preventing a shutdown just before midnight and giving Congress extra time to pass a coronavirus relief measure and an accompanying $1.4 trillion government funding bill. The White House announced just before midnight that Trump signed the bill shortly after the House and Senate each passed the measure Sunday evening. Congress is expected to take up the stimulus package and government funding bill on Monday. The government would have shut down at midnight without the one-day extension of funding. The continuing resolution was needed after stimulus talks hit an impasse over the weekend. It is the second such measure Trump has signed in the last two days, after a two-day short-term bill was passed and signed into law on Friday evening. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Sunday evening that congressional negotiators had finalized a deal that would link a $1.4 trillion government funding bill to roughly $900 billion in further coronavirus relief, a significant bipartisan breakthrough after months of on and off talks. A late disagreement over the Federal Reserve’s lending powers threatened the broader deal over the weekend but was resolved close to midnight Saturday by a bipartisan group, paving the way for an agreement. Trump has hardly been involved in stimulus talks, instead keeping his attention on disputing the election results that saw him be defeated by President-elect Joe Biden. Still, Trump has pushed for the inclusion of direct payments to Americans. He tweeted late Saturday that Congress needed to reach a stimulus deal, pressuring lawmakers to give “more money in direct payments.” The Washington Post reported last week that Trump wanted to call for direct payments of at least $1,200 and up to $2,000, but that aides intervened to prevent him from making the demand. The deal announced Sunday includes a round of $600 direct payments to certain Americans. Trump told reporters earlier this month he would support a coronavirus relief package if Congress were to reach a deal and aides indicated Sunday that he would support it.

Congress clinches sweeping deal on coronavirus relief, government funding –Congressional leaders on Sunday reached a mammoth deal to fund the government and provide long-sought coronavirus relief as lawmakers race to wrap up their work for the year. The deal will tie a $1.4 trillion bill to fund the government until Oct. 1 to roughly $900 billion in coronavirus aid. In order to give Congress time to process and pass the agreement, the House and Senate passed a one-day stopgap bill on Sunday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced the deal from the Senate floor on early Sunday evening. “For the information of all senators and more importantly for the American people, we can finally report what our nation has needed to hear for a very long time: More help is on the way,” McConnell said. “Moments ago, in consultation with our committees, the four leaders of the Senate and the House finalized an agreement. It will be another major rescue package for the American people,” McConnell added. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put out a joint statement confirming the deal. “Today, we have reached agreement with Republicans and the White House on an emergency coronavirus relief and omnibus package that delivers urgently needed funds to save the lives and livelihoods of the American people as the virus accelerates,” they said. The coronavirus deal, hashed out by the top four congressional leaders, doesn’t include more money directly for state and local governments or protections against coronavirus-related lawsuits – a top priority for Democrats and McConnell, respectively. It does include another round of small-business aid through the Paycheck Protection Program, a $300-per-week unemployment benefit for 11 weeks, a pared-down $600 second round of stimulus checks, and more money for things such as schools, coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution. McConnell, during his floor speech, noted that text was still being finalized. The White House quickly indicated that Trump will sign the deal. “President Trump has pushed hard for months to send Americans badly needed financial relief. We look forward to Congress sending a bill to his desk imminently for signature,” said Ben Williamson, a White House spokesman. The agreement came together after Schumer and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) struck a deal late Saturday night on the final big hold: federal emergency lending facilities. Congress hasn’t passed coronavirus relief since April, even as cases have surged, hospitals are warning they could be overwhelmed, and cities and states are reinstating lockdown measures to try to curb the spread heading into the holidays. Even as they announced a deal, McConnell and Schumer took shots at each other for who was to blame for the months-long delay in coronavirus relief. “The agreement on this package can be summed up by the expression ‘better late than never,’ although I know many of my Republican colleagues wished it was never,” Schumer said.

Toomey’s compromise on Fed authority cleared way for stimulus deal – Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., signaled that he would support a compromise coronavirus stimulus package after congressional leaders agreed to modify restrictions on the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending powers. Lawmakers were planning to hold a vote as early as Monday on the roughly $900 billion pandemic relief bill. The legislation includes more than $280 billion for small-business lending efforts through the Paycheck Protection Program and provides another one-year extension – to 2022 – for banks to comply with the Current Expected Credit Losses accounting standard. The relief bill had hit a potential snag over a GOP proposal backed by Toomey aiming to prevent the Fed from reviving certain credit facilities – launched through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act – that the central bank previously agreed to shut down at year-end. But Democrats claimed the Republican plan would unnecessarily restrain the Fed’s emergency powers under 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. Toomey agreed to modify the amendment to explicitly state that the Fed cannot recreate facilities that are identical to the CARES Act programs. “I am very pleased with the conclusions that we have come to on how we have handled the 13(3) CARES facilities,” Toomey, who will chair the Senate Banking Committee in 2021 if Republicans maintain their majority, said in a call with reporters on Sunday. “I think the good outweighs the bad and it is my intention to vote for it.” Toomey’s original amendment announced last week would have blocked the Fed from propping up “similar” facilities, but Democrats argued that that version was too overaching. “There was a complaint from the Democrats that my initial language was too broad and could be interpreted as too sweeping,” Toomey said. “So we ended up narrowing the language versus what we had originally put on the table.” The CARES Act facilities affected by the legislation include the Main Street Lending Program, through which the Fed can buy pieces of bank loans issued to midsize businesses hampered by the pandemic. They also include the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility and Municipal Liquidity Facility. Toomey said the agreement still achieves his original goals, including to ensure that unused CARES Act funds could be diverted away from the Fed for future use. “Goal No. 1 was to sweep the funds, the unused funds, out of the accounts, and repurpose that money for other purposes,” Toomey said. “Goal No. 2 was to shut down the three facilities that needed to be shut down. No. 3 was to forbid the reopening of those facilities, make it clear that the shutdown was permanent and cannot be reversed without coming to Congress. And No. 4 would be to ban a clone.” Toomey also rejected Democrats’ criticism that his intention was to stifle the incoming Biden administration’s ability to respond to an economic crisis. He said his goal was to keep the Fed from being politicized and succumbing to Democratic calls to lend to municipalities and other favored groups. “The Fed would be in a position of having to decide whether or not it is going to comply with the pressure that it would be under to start doing an activity they know they shouldn’t be doing, and then there would be competing pressure to do all kinds of other things for preferred constituencies,” Toomey said.

What is in the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill? —Lawmakers late on Sunday released a long-awaited $900 billion coronavirus relief bill that is expected to be passed by Congress on Monday and signed into law by President Trump. The relief package will be combined with a $1.4 trillion measure to fund federal agencies through the end of September and a package extending expiring tax provisions. Both Democrats and Republicans touted various aspects of the relief package, though Democrats wanted a significantly larger bill. One of the key elements of the bill is a second round of direct payments to Americans. The payments will be up to $600 per adult and per child. The amount per adult is half the $1,200 payments that were provided under the CARES Act enacted in March, but the amount per child is slightly larger than the $500 allowed under that law. The bill will allow U.S. citizens who are in households that also include non-citizens to receive the payments. With the first round of payments, U.S. citizens married to people who do not have work-eligible Social Security numbers generally could not receive a payment if the couple filed a joint return. A second round of direct payments had not been included in a proposal from a bipartisan group of moderates who had served as a starting point for discussions. But progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), GOP Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and the White House all pushed for the inclusion of more relief checks. Advocates for more checks are happy to see another direct payment included, but wished it was a higher amount. Two expiring CARES Act programs, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which made benefits available to the self-employed and gig economy workers, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provided additional weeks of benefits, were extended for 11 weeks, averting a fiscal crisis for millions of Americans. That timeline will set another key deadline to stop the programs from expiring in early March. In addition, Congress will add $300 to all weekly unemployment benefits, half the amount that supplemented benefits from April through July. Workers who rely on multiple jobs and have lost income will also be eligible for a weekly $100 boost as well. The popular Paycheck Protection Program, which provided distressed small businesses with forgivable loans to keep them afloat and leave employees on the books, was re-upped with $284 billion in funds. Businesses that already received a PPP loan will be eligible to get a second one under the new terms. Some of the PPP funds will be set aside for the smallest businesses and community-based lenders. The deal provides $9 billion in emergency Treasury capital investments for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs), financial institutions that largely cater to minorities, as well as an additional $3 billion for CDFIs through a Treasury fund. It also provides $20 billion in Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) grants for smaller businesses. Additionally, it includes $15 billion in grants dedicated to live venues.

What’s in the U.S. COVID-19 bill? Unemployment, $600 checks, ‘three martini lunch’ deduction (Reuters) – U.S. congressional leaders said on Sunday they had reached agreement on a $900 billion package to provide the first new aid in months to an economy hammered by the novel coronavirus pandemic, with votes likely on Monday. Here’s what is in the package, according to a summary released by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and interviews with several congressional aides who provided additional details:

• Checks in the mail: The bill includes $166 billion in new direct payments of up to $600 per adult and child, for individuals making up to $75,000 a year and $1,200 for couples making up to $150,000 a year. The bill expands direct payments to mixed-status households.
• More unemployment benefits: An additional $300 per week for some unemployment recipients, with expanded coverage to the self employed, “gig” workers and others in nontraditional situations.
• A U.S. Postal Service grant: Congress agrees to convert a $10 billion loan approved in March into direct funding for USPS without requiring repayment.
• Payroll loans: $284 billion for government payroll loans, including expanded eligibility for nonprofits and newspaper and TV and radio broadcasters, $15 billion for live venues, independent movie theaters, and cultural institutions and $20 billion for targeted disaster grants
• Back-to-school funding: $82 billion for colleges and schools, including for heating-and-cooling system upgrades to mitigate virus transmission and reopen classrooms, and $10 billion for childcare assistance. Includes $54.3 billion for K-12 schools and $22.7 billion for higher education
• Childcare: $10 billion to provide childcare assistance to families and to help childcare providers cover costs related to pandemic safety.
• Business meal write-offs. A new tax break for business meal expenses, nicknamed the “three martini” deduction.
• Ending surprise medical billing: Insured patients only need to pay in-network costs when an emergency or other issue forces them to use a medical provider who isn’t covered by their network.
• Transport industry help: $45 billion for transportation aid, including $15 billion to U.S. passenger airlines for payroll assistance, $14 billion for transit systems, $10 billion for state highway funding, $2 billion for airports, $1 billion for airline contractors and $1 billion for passenger railroad Amtrak.
• Rent and eviction aid: $25 billion for rent and utility payment assistance for people struggling to stay in their homes, and an extension of the eviction moratorium until Jan. 31. States will receive a minimum of $200 million in assistance.
• Vaccine distribution aid: $30 billion to support procurement and distribution of the vaccine, “ensuring it’s free and rapidly distributed to everyone,” as Schumer said.
• More to fight hunger: $13 billion for food assistance, including additional funding for food banks and senior nutrition programs, college student access to the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
• Farm aid: Another $13 billion for direct payments, purchases and loans to farmers and ranchers.
• Expanded Pell Grants: New grants for college tuition, which would reach 500,000 new recipients.
• Internet access: $7 billion to give more Americans broadband internet access, including $1.9 billion to replace telecom network equipment that poses national security risks
• Minority-owned businesses: $12 billion for minority owned and very small businesses that struggled to access earlier Payroll Protection Program financing.

Pressley: Direct payments are ‘survival checks,’ not stimulus –Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called a new expected round of direct payments a matter of survival, saying average Americans need further relief for basic necessities. “We have to get urgent relief to our families. Again, at this point, these are not stimulus checks. They’re stimulating nothing. These are survival checks,” Pressley told CNN’s Abby Phillip on Sunday. “This is about basic needs, about families needing to remain safely housed, about purchasing diapers and formula, inhalers, insulin. And the truth of the matter is $600 will not even cover a month’s rent.” Asked whether a potential Senate deal could meet those needs, Pressley responded: “I have not seen any text as of yet. So I will need to go through that and see if it’s responsive to what my mayors have told me they need, what our community health centers have told me they need, what our families say they need, what our small businesses, our restaurants say that they need. And so, you know, I’m waiting for the text so I can do that.” Pressley has used the term “survival checks” for direct payments before and blasted reports that the Senate package will reduce a second round of payments to $600 per recipient, noting that in most of the country such a payment would not cover a month’s rent. “Our families deserve real survival checks. Six hundred dollars is hardly sufficient. It is an insult. We must act to save lives now,” Pressley said on the House floor last week.

Bipartisan US “relief” bill stiffs workers and unemployed, gives billions more to business – Late Sunday night, congressional leaders from both parties signaled their acceptance of a roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief bill that includes generous handouts to large companies while leaving jobless workers and their families with crumbs. The bill is expected to pass both the House and Senate by Monday afternoon and be attached to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill. President Donald Trump has signaled his intention to sign the bill into law. The package, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called a “strong shot in the arm,” does nowhere near enough to make whole the over 10 million people who have lost their jobs since March and the millions whose hours or wages have been reduced. The bill does not provide health insurance for the estimated 15 million who have lost it during the pandemic. It will not house the over 162,000 who have been evicted during the pandemic, nor does it provide enough money to cover the nearly $6,000 in average back rent owed by some 12 million people, according to Moody’s analytics. It’s been nearly nine months since congress passed the CARES Act, a windfall for the financial oligarchy that provided about $6 trillion in low-interest loans and cash subsidies to major banks and corporations, while providing limited relief for the general population in the form of a $1,200 stimulus check for those earning under $75,000, limited protection against eviction, and a $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit. The new bill slashes the federal supplemental jobless benefit to only $300 a week and cuts the duration of the program to a mere 11 weeks. It reduces the one-time stimulus check to $600 from the CARES Act’s $1,200. A temporary holdup in the bill’s passage was ironed out over the weekend after a deal was struck between Republican Senator Pat Toomey and the Democrats over several Federal Reserve programs created in the CARES Act that were set to expire at the end of the year. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had already ended the programs on his own, but the language Toomey included in the package would have required congressional approval to restart the programs in case another crisis for the financial oligarchy arose that required additional billions in immediate funds. The Democrats demanded the removal of the proposed check on the supposed “independence of the Fed,” a fiction used to conceal the fact that the US central bank is an instrument of the corporate-financial oligarchy and does its bidding. The Democrats had little problem abandoning federal aid to cash-starved states and cities, money for food programs under conditions of mass hunger, serious money for COVID-19 testing, tracing and PPE, and other desperately needed social funding they had included in the so-called Heroes Act passed by the House in May. But on the issue of unlimited Fed money to prop up the financial markets, they dug in their heels and refused to sign onto the deal until Toomey backed down.

‘It’s hostage-taking.’ AOC lashed out after lawmakers got only hours to read and pass the huge 5,593-page bill to secure COVID-19 relief Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York described the voting process on the new legislation that contained the COVID-19 relief funding as “hostage-taking” after lawmakers were given only a few hours to read 5,593 pages of text.Congress on Monday night passed a $1.4 trillion bill that included $908 billion in coronavirus relief, agreed after months of tense negotiation.The final text of the legislation was released only Monday afternoon. The House vote took place at 9:08 p.m., while senators took until almost midnight to pass it.Both chambers overwhelmingly passed the bill, and, despite her objections, Ocasio-Cortez also voted in favor for the portion approving COVID-19 relief. The New York representative tweeted a Hollywood Reporter articlethat said provisions in the bill would make illegal video streaming into a felony.”This is why Congress needs time to actually read this package before voting on it,” she wrote.”Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5000 pages, arrived at 2pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in 2 hours. This isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking.”Ocasio-Cortez argued that time for public scrutiny – not just by lawmakers – was just as important.”Members are reeling right now bc they don’t have time to consult w/ their communities,” she wrote.Broad summaries of the top-line items in the COVID-19 relief bill had been widely shared, including matters that have been part of public debate for weeks – such as sending $600 one-off payments to most Americans and scaling up unemployment insurance.But the full bill contained measures that had not previously been widely shared. These included aid for several countries and provisions for race-horse owners, sexual-abstinence programs, and the Space Force.Lawmakers have debated COVID-19 relief measures throughout the summer and fall. But much of the progress toward the final shape of the deal has been made in the past two weeks, necessitating extending the deadline twice to prevent a government shutdown.The bill passed in the House by 359 votes to 53, including a vote in favor from Ocasio-Cortez. About two hours later, it passed the Senate with a substantial majority, and as of early Tuesday morning it was awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature.

‘Slap in the Face for People Suffering Across the Country’: Critics Slam Watered-Down Covid Relief Deal — In the wake of Sunday night’s agreement on a roughly $900 billion Covid-19 relief package that is far smaller than economists say is necessary, progressives argued that the “slap-in-the-face” bill must be passed to help stem the suffering of working-class Americans but that much more will be needed to address the crisis that has claimed more than 300,000 lives and 20 million jobs in the United States so far.”To say this relief package is a day late and a dollar short is an understatement to say the least,” said People’s Action director George Goehl in a statement released Sunday night.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his fellow congressional Republicans “prioritized the profits of the 1% over the well-being of everyone else since this pandemic began,” Goehl said. “The result is a diluted bill that’s barely a Band-Aid, but definitely a slap in the face for people suffering across the country.””When the history books are written about this pandemic,” Goehl added, McConnell and the GOP “will be remembered as heartless souls who played politics with people’s lives by blocking life-saving relief for months.”The legislation includes $600 direct cash payments to Americans who earned $75,000 or less in 2019, though that hard-fought-for sum is meager compared to what other OECD countries have allocated to workers, including several nations that subsidized wages by 75% to 100% and didn’t have gaps of more than 260 days between relief packages.In addition, the bill extends paid sick leave benefits and augments jobless benefits by $300 per week for 11 weeks, averting a catastrophic post-Christmas Day scenario in which 12 million people would lose unemployment insurance. It also provides much-needed funding – $10 billion for childcare, $13 billion for nutrition aid, $25 billion in rental assistance, and $82 billion for schools, as Common Dreams reported Sunday. Progressives defeated the corporate immunity provision McConnell has spent monthspushing for, but urgently needed fiscal aid for state and local governments was also cut from the bill.Although specific details of the agreement are still emerging, the package will reportedly leave out hazard pay for frontline workers while the Washington Postreported Sunday that Republicans extracted tax deductions for “three-martini lunch” expenses “in exchange for… tax credits for low-income families.” And, according to Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project, the legislation excludes 13.5 million adult dependents.The bill is “not nothing, but it’s obviously inadequate…during an economic meltdown that has been punctuated by mass starvation and intensifying poverty,” the Daily Poster’s David Sirota wrote Sunday night. “For comparison, only three years ago, Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that enriched the wealthiest 1% of households.”

5,000-Page Funding Bill Including COVID Relief Also Has Section Detailing Reincarnation of Dalai Lama – The 5,593-page government funding bill that includes the COVID-19 stimulus legislation also includes a section outlining the reincarnation and succession of the Dalai Lama.The massive legislation was released publicly Monday after months of back-and-forth negotiations between Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who announced Sunday that they had reached an agreement to provide further economic relief to Americans amid the surging coronavirus pandemic. The stimulus bill has been included with the appropriations bill that will keep the government funded moving forward. Due to the length of the legislation and the tight timeframe lawmakers are facing, most members of Congress will not likely have time to read the entire bill.The legislation includes some notable sections that are not directly related to government funding or the pandemic. Section 342 of the bill outlines a “statement of policy regarding the succession or reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.” Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, currently resides in exile in India after escaping from Tibet in 1959 amid a revolt against Chinese governance. Tibet was occupied by China in 1951 and incorporated as part of the East Asian nation.”Tibetan Buddhism is practiced in many countries including Bhutan, India, Mongolia, Nepal, the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and the United States, yet the Government of the People’s Republic of China has repeatedly insisted on its role in managing the selection of Tibet’s next spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, through actions such as those described in the ‘Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas’ in 2007,” the bill explains.

Despite ‘three martini’ tax break, COVID-19 bill leaves struggling U.S. restaurants cold (Reuters) – The $900 billion coronavirus relief package passed by the U.S. Congress on Monday contains a high-profile tax loophole for business meals, but not the one thing most requested by independent U.S. restaurants which have been devastated by the pandemic: cash.The Republican-backed “three-martini lunch deduction” doubles an existing tax break, allowing companies to write off 100% of business dining expenses through 2022. The loophole’s defenders say it supports the hard-hit restaurant industry. This is “a pro-worker, pro-restaurant, and pro-small business bill,” said U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. However, it has been derided by economists, Democrats, and even the staunchly conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed page as politically tone deaf, given the millions of sick and out-of-work Americans. The tax break will cost taxpayers $6.3 billion through 2023, analysis by a congressional committee shows. It will also fail to boost the restaurant industry in a big way, at least initially. “When less than 10% of workers have returned to their offices in Midtown and Lower Manhattan, and indoor dining is closed and it’s freezing outside, this deduction doesn’t do much,” said Andrew Rigie, director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance. The coronavirus pandemic, and related restrictions on dining out, have split the fortunes of the U.S. restaurant industry, which racked up $860 billion in sales in 2019 and employed 12.3 million before the pandemic hit.Sales are up and expansions under way at some of the biggest restaurant brands, mostly chains with drive-thru and delivery, including Starbucks Corp, McDonald’s Corp, Papa John’s International Inc, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc and Domino’s Pizza Inc. But small, independent restaurants and fine dining have been bludgeoned. Chef and owner Amanda Cohen said her 12-year-old eatery Dirt Candy in Lower Manhattan is barely hanging on. Revenue at Dirt Candy, known for innovative vegetarian fare like carrot sliders and an eggplant dessert flambeed at the table, has plummeted from as much as $12,000 a night before the pandemic to as little as $300 a night now. The National Restaurant Association (NRA) believes 17% of all U.S. restaurants – about 110,000 – have already closed permanently or long-term. The industry has lost over 2 million jobs since February, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor data. The coronavirus relief bill does include loans and tax breaks the restaurant industry could tap, but not the dedicated grants trade groups had spent months lobbying for, arguing that the restaurant industry deserved similar subsidies to airlines and farms.

The “three-martini lunch” tax break sums up why so many people hate capitalism – -As Americans dig into the details of the government’s new stimulus bill and debate the impact it will have on the average household, one provision has sparked utter disgust: the so-called “three-martini lunch” tax break.As reported by the Washington Post, this tweak of the tax code will allow corporations to deduct 100% of their business meals, instead of the 50% they’ve been able to claim since the 1980s.Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, introduced the deduction, claiming it would help restaurants and restaurant workers who have been struggling since the beginning of the pandemic.While the goal is admirable, the logic of the measure – which was championed by the Trump White House – is hard to defend. Before we even get to the economics, let’s ask why elected officials would incentivize indoor dining, the very activity that puts restaurant workers (and patrons) at risk of contracting Covid-19, when hospitals already are buckling under the stress of case spikes in several US states? Restaurant environments are so friendly to the virus – giving it access to people from various “bubbles” mixing indoors without masks – that scientists are calling them “superspreader destinations.”Part of the answer has to do with a sense of entitlement. As we saw with members of US president Donald Trump’s inner circle who refused to wear masks during a string of events before election day, many Republican officials seem to believe that public health rules don’t apply to them or their corporate friends. They have been modeling the worst behaviors since Covid-19 first became a threat – and now they’re using the tax code to encourage people to put their fellow Americans at risk.That’s standard cronyism, of course, which is something the Trump administration has brought to new levels – deadly heights, in fact – over the past four years. And it pairs perfectly with a lack of empathy.Democrats who spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity said they only agreed to this deduction in exchange for an item on their own wish list: additional tax credits for low-income families and the working poor, according to the Post. If true, the swap adds insult to injury. It’s shameful that a benefit for the lowest earners was treated like any other pawn in the horse-trading that led to this package. More generous deductions for business lunches will literally cost the government’s coffers funds that could have been used to support more Americans. And yet it’s also Republicans who continue to push a narrative that says people are responsible for their own social mobility, that where there’s a will, there’s a way, et cetera.”Republicans are nickel-and-diming benefits for jobless workers, while at the same time pushing for tax breaks for three-martini power lunches. It’s unconscionable,”

COVID-19 bill that stiffed workers full of handouts to big business – The COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress this week provided a pittance for workers affected by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. But in recent days it has emerged that the bill is stuffed full of handouts to major businesses and the superrich. Included in the combined relief and spending bill are generous tax incentives for large businesses totaling over $110 billion for liquor producers, wind energy lobbyists, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and electric motorcycle manufacturers. The Washington Post reported that the “tax extenders” are “something of a year-end tradition” frequently added to large bills at the behest of industry lobbyists. Speaking to the Post, Howard Gleckman, a tax policy expert at the Urban Institute, characterized them as a “gravy train for members and lobbyists.” He added that these are “classic special interest tax breaks that do not benefit the overall economy in any way.” One extender, lobbied for by liquor and alcohol giants, Anheuser-Busch and Bacardi North America, re-ups tax cuts that first became law in 2017 but were set to expire this year without congressional approval. In an interview with the Post, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (Oregon) defended the cuts as a way to “help small brewers and wineries.” The extender granted to NASCAR goes back to 2004 and will help Brian France and the rest of the France family, owners of NASCAR and worth a reported $5.7 billion, to continue claiming tax breaks on their facilities through 2025. Another extender will grant a tax credit to purchasers of electric motorcycles worth up to $2,500, or 10 percent of the cost of the vehicle. The bill also includes the so-called “three martini lunch” provision, which allows business executives to deduct their meal expenses at 100 percent, compared to the previous 50 percent, which will lead to a $5 billion reduction in tax revenue, according to the Tax Foundation. While Trump has championed this provision since April, the stimulus bill failed to include a $120 billion fund that had been lobbied by the National Restaurant Association (NRA), which reported that employment within the industry remains 2.1 million jobs below its pre-coronavirus level. To add insult to injury, Trump threatened to veto the bill Tuesday, raising the prospect that millions of desperate people will not get any assistance at all for weeks. While the bill is the largest in US history at nearly 6,000 pages, not a single line was devoted to protecting career federal employees from political retaliation and terminations. Two weeks before the election Trump issued an executive order which allowed him to reclassify federal employees and civil servants that work within government agencies, such as the Office of Budget and Management, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause, similar to political appointments. It is unknown how many of the 2.1 million federal workers, many of whom deal with crafting policy or giving confidential advice top officials, could be affected.

‘This Is Atrocious’: Congress Crams Language to Criminalize Online Streaming, Meme-Sharing Into 5,500-Page Omnibus Bill — Lawmakers in Congress are under fire from digital rights campaigners for embedding three controversial changes to online copyright and trademark laws into the must-pass$2.3 trillion legislative package – which includes a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill and a $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill – that could receive floor votes in the House and Senate as early as Monday evening.The punitive provisions crammed into the enormous bill (pdf), warned Evan Greer of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, “threaten ordinary Internet users with up to $30,000 in fines for engaging in everyday activity such as downloading an image and re-uploading it… [or] sharing memes.”While the citizenry had almost no time to process the actual contents of the 5,593 page legislative text, Greer said Monday afternoon that the CASE Act, Felony Streaming Act, and Trademark Modernization Act “are in fact included in the must-pass omnibus spending bill.”As Mike Masnick explained in a piece at TechDirt on Monday:The CASE Act will supercharge copyright trolling exactly at a time when we need to fix the law to have less trolling. And the felony streaming bill (which was only just revealed last week with no debate or discussion) includes provisions that are so confusing and vague no one is sure if it makes sites like Twitch into felons.“The fact that these are getting added to the must-pass government funding bill is just bad government,” Masnick added. “And congressional leadership should hear about this.” According to Fight for the Future, “More than 20,000 people had called on House and Senate leadership to remove these dangerous and unnecessary provisions from the must-pass bill,” yet Congress chose to include them anyway.”This is atrocious,” Greer said in her statement. “We’re facing a massive eviction crisis and millions are unemployed due to the pandemic, but congressional leaders could only muster $600 stimulus checks for Covid relief.” And yet, lawmakers “managed to cram in handouts for content companies like Disney?” Greer continued. “The CASE Act is a terribly written law that will threaten ordinary Internet users with huge fines for everyday online activity. It’s absurd that lawmakers included these provisions in a must-pass spending bill.”

President Trump throws Covid relief bill in doubt by asking Congress to amend it – – President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he is asking for changes to the coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress, leaving the future of the $900 billion stimulus in doubt. Trump’s position could threaten to torpedo the carefully drafted bill, which his own administration helped negotiate — a move that could lead to a government shutdown and send the economy into a tailspin if he carried through with a veto. “I’m asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2000 or $4000 per couple,” Trump said in a video released on Twitter. “I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items in this legislation or to send me a suitable bill.” The extraordinary message came after he largely left negotiations over the measure to lawmakers and his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump did not explicitly threaten to veto the bill, but said he was dissatisfied with its final state. “A few months ago, Congress started negotiations on a new package to get urgently needed help to the American people. It’s taken forever,” he said in the video. “However, the bill they are now planning to send back to my desk is much different than anticipated. It really is a disgrace.” Still, Trump’s message appeared to be greeted favorably by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted: “Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks.” “At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 – Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent,” she said. “Let’s do it!” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, however, tweeted, “we’re glad to pass more aid Americans need” but stressed that “Trump needs to sign the bill to help people and keep the government open.”

Trump threatens COVID relief bill, testing loyalty of GOP -(AP) – Threatening to tank Congress’ massive COVID relief and government funding package, President Donald Trump’s demand for bigger aid checks for Americans is forcing Republicans traditionally wary of such spending into an uncomfortable test of allegiance. On Thursday, House Democrats who also favor $2,000 checks will all but dare Republicans to break with Trump, calling up his proposal for a Christmas Eve vote. The president’s last-minute objection could derail critical legislation amid a raging pandemic and deep economic uncertainty. His attacks risk a federal government shutdown by early next week. “Just when you think you have seen it all,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote Wednesday in a letter to colleagues. “The entire country knows that it is urgent for the President to sign this bill, both to provide the coronavirus relief and to keep government open.” Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have resisted $2,000 checks as too costly. House Republicans are expected to block the vote, but Democrats may try again Monday. The president’s last-minute objections are setting up a defining showdown with his own Republican Party in his final days in office. Rather than take the victory of the sweeping aid package, among the biggest in history, Trump is lashing out at GOP leaders over the presidential election – for acknowledging Joe Biden as president-elect and rebuffing his campaign to dispute the Electoral College results when they are tallied in Congress on Jan. 6. The president’s push to increase direct payments for most Americans from $600 to $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for couples splits the party with a politically painful loyalty test, including for GOP senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, fighting to retain their seats in the Jan. 5 special election in Georgia. Republican lawmakers traditionally balk at big spending and many never fully embraced Trump’s populist approach. Their political DNA tells them to oppose a costlier relief package. But now they’re being asked to stand with the president. GOP leaders were mostly silent Wednesday, with neither McConnell nor Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, speaking publicly. On a conference call, House Republican lawmakers complained that Trump threw them under the bus, according to one Republican on the private call and granted anonymity to discuss it. Most had voted for the package and they urged leaders to hit the cable news shows to explain its benefits, the person said. McCarthy later sent a letter to colleagues suggesting Republicans would offer their own proposal, picking up on Trump’s own complaints about foreign aid to “reexamine how our tax dollars are spent overseas.” Democrats were taking advantage of the Republican disarray to apply pressure for a priority. Jon Ossoff, Perdue’s Democratic opponent, tweeted simply on Tuesday night: “$2,000 checks now.”

Stimulus Bill’s “Pathetic” $600 Checks and Pork Giveaways Are Savaged on Social Media; Trump, Belatedly, Demands Bigger Checks -Pam Martens – President Donald Trump has finally emerged from his consultations on the possibility of retaining the White House by declaring martial law to weigh in on the pandemic relief and appropriations bill that was passed by both houses of Congress and awaiting his signature to become law. Instead of speaking out before 510 members of Congress voted on the sprawling 5,593 page document, Trump waited until last night to post a video on his Twitter page in which he demands that the $600 stimulus checks in the bill be increased and pork removed. In the video, Trump cited some of the very same foreign loans and pork items that have been savaged on social media over the past two days. (See Tweets below.) Trump finished up the video with this: “Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it. It wasn’t their fault, it was China’s fault. Not their fault. I’m asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2000 or $4000 for a couple. I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation and to send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a Covid relief package – and maybe that administration will be me. And we will get it done.” During his first campaign for the Presidency, Trump sold himself as the great deal maker. Trump is now attempting to renegotiate a 5,593 page deal after 412 members of the House and 98 members of the Senate have already negotiated and voted on its terms. We’ll see how that works out. While the $600 checks could be easily increased to $2,000 through a standalone measure, exorcising all of the intricate pork would be a far bigger hurdle. For example, thoroughbred racehorse owners who reside in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state of Kentucky might be unhappy with the removal of a special tax break for them that is buried in the bill. The tax provision permits racehorse owners to depreciate the value of qualifying racehorses. The C-suite might also be nonplussed with the removal of what is being called the 3-martini lunch tax provision. It increases from 50 percent to 100 percent the deduction of business-related meals. Millions of Americans will remember this Christmas as the bleakest moment in their lives. They lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic; they can’t pay their rent or adequately feed their families. They are stressing out over the possibility of getting sick from the virus because their health insurance was attached to their job – both of which are now gone. The $600 weekly unemployment insurance supplement that was part of the CARES Act, signed into law on March 27, lasted only four months and ended on July 31. Likewise, the one-time payment of $1200 under the CARES Act has long been exhausted by struggling families living in high-cost America. The response to the worst pandemic since 1918 from the U.S. Congress stands in ugly contrast to what America’s neighbor to the north has done for workers and families. The Canadian government provided their workers that were impacted with layoffs or reduced hours because of the pandemic $2,000 per month for seven months, ending September 27. Canada’s more recent relief announcement includes $1200 in 2021 for each child under age six. Families with income of less than $120,000 per year will also receive four tax-free payments of $300 in 2021. Families earning more than $120,000 will receive four tax-free payments of $150.

Stimulus: Here’s what Trump’s attempt to upend the congressional deal means – CNNPolitics – President Donald Trump’s surprise Tuesday night video cataloging his complaints about the massive — and painstakingly negotiated — $900 billion coronavirus relief bill immediately raised the specter of a government shutdown and economic turmoil at a time when aid is desperately sought for millions of Americans. The President didn’t explicitly threaten to veto the bill, and his White House said earlier in the night that he would sign it, but in a video released on Twitter, he added a layer of confusion to a delicate process that includes not only Covid-19 relief but a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package that funds the federal government. Most of the items the President listed off as problematic in his Tuesday night video weren’t from the Covid relief piece of the package. They were from the omnibus. Most, if not all, of those items were similar to items in past spending packages the President has signed.As for his request to “amend” the bill, well, both chambers have passed the legislation, and at this point, aides on both sides say, there’s no plan to make any move to acquiesce to the President’s request on the cleared package. Early talk is that both sides may just ignore it and see if he cools off. The government is operating under a seven-day continuing resolution, so there’s some time here. The real deadline is December 28. “Maybe he’ll become obsessed with something else and forget about this whole episode,” one senior Democratic aide told CNN. “Or maybe he’ll just blow the thing up. Perfect coda to his time in office.” But at the moment, aides on both sides of the aisle are mostly just dumbstruck. “It’s a weird thing where I’m not at all surprised because of course he’d do this, but also kind of stunned because he’s been so preoccupied with everything else that this seemed in a good place,” one senior Republican aide told CNN. As to the size of the direct payments, that’s been an issue Trump has talked to aides about for several weeks, according to two officials who spoke with him. The $600 level was actually the proposal of his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, his lead negotiator on this entire deal — both the Covid relief and the omnibus. Mnuchin was on television Tuesday selling the merits of the deal. While Trump had advocated for higher payments, he never explicitly threatened to torpedo the bill if they weren’t included, a person familiar with the matter said. One other note: the package passed with a veto-proof majority, but it’s not clear what that means if Trump decides to go nuclear on it. House Republicans tend to move wherever Trump moves, so the original vote count may not be operative. Still, it’s too early for that. Right now, everyone is in wait-and-see mode.

COVID-19 relief bill: Wall Street sees an economic ‘tailspin’ if Trump doesn’t sign – Wall Street is moving quickly to crystalize around the view that if President Trump doesn’t sign a new $900 billion bipartisan COVID-19 stimulus bill, then investors will get torched. EvercoreISI strategist Dennis DeBusschere thinks a “tailspin” in markets and the economy will emerge if Trump doesn’t whip out his pen and sign on the dotted line immediately. Yet, that uncertainty is where things stand right now after Trump surprised many in D.C. with his take on the stimulus bill hammered out by bickering lawmakers in Congress this week. In a video posted on Twitter Tuesday evening (below), Trump said the relief package “really is disgraceful” and includes “wasteful” items. “It’s called the Covid relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with Covid,” Trump said in a video now viewed 21.3 million times. Trump called for stimulus checks of $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for households. Under the proposed legislation brought to Trump’s desk, single people earning up to $75,000 will receive a check of $600. Married couples bringing in $150,000 will get a check of $1,200. Both amounts are half of what was paid out directly to folks in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The bill also includes $1.4 trillion in funding to keep the government open. Stocks surprisingly shrugged off Trump’s bluster. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq were all solidly in the green by afternoon trading Wednesday. But investors shouldn’t be lulled into complacency on the stimulus issue. Absent Trump’s signature, the government could risk another shutdown and households would continue to grapple with the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. That would arguably create the condition for the “tailspin” suggested by EvercoreISI’s DeBusschere. “We would be going into recession by choice. This is something that the political actors in Washington have the power to prevent. And they should act to present it,” RSM US LLP Chief economist Joe Brusuelas told Yahoo Finance Live. “If they don’t and this just continues well into January and nothing gets done, we are likely to see a double-dip recession. That still create conditions that will delay recovery and create an expansion that’s weaker than it otherwise has to be.”

GOP blocks House Democrats’ attempt to pass $2,000 stimulus checks – House Republicans on Thursday blocked a Democratic attempt to pass $2,000 direct payments to Americans, as the fate of the massive coronavirus relief package passed by Congress earlier in the week hangs in the balance. The Democrats moved to increase the size of the checks after President Donald Trump threatened to oppose the $2 trillion pandemic aid and federal funding bill because it included only $600 in direct payments rather than $2,000. Congress passed the proposal Monday after Trump took no role in weeks of talks. The plan included $900 billion in coronavirus relief. Trying to cap the plan’s cost, most of Trump’s Republican Party sought $600 in direct payments rather than the $1,200 passed in the CARES Act in March. In criticizing the year-end legislation, Trump also pointed to foreign aid spending – which Washington includes in funding bills every year. The House tried to pass the $2,000 payments during a pro forma session on Christmas Eve day, a brief meeting of the chamber where typically only a few members attend. Democrats aimed to approve the measure by unanimous consent, which means any one lawmaker can block it. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., offered the proposal from the House floor, but was blocked because the measure was not approved by House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. Subsequently, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., attempted to get lawmakers to reconsider aspects of the spending bill related to foreign aid. That move was blocked by Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement after her party’s measure failed that she would hold a full recorded vote on the proposal for $2,000 payments on Monday. “If the President is serious about the $2,000 direct payments, he must call on House Republicans to end their obstruction,” Pelosi said. Democrats have called on Trump to sign the coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law and to support the separate cash payment plan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and McCarthy, the top two Republicans in Congress, and their aides have been silent on Trump’s demand for bigger checks. But McCarthy, in a letter late Wednesday to Republicans, described a countermove his party planned to make on Thursday that would seek changes to the foreign aid component of the spending bill. It is unclear who would be eligible for $2,000 payments in the Democrats’ plan. In the aid and government funding bill, individuals who earn up to $75,000 and couples filing jointly who make up to $150,000 would receive the full $600. In addition, the measure would pay $600 for each dependent child. Trump did not address the payments to children. If Trump vetoes the legislation, Congress may have enough support to override his action. However, depending on how quickly the more than 5,000-page bill gets to his desk after formal enrollment, he could let it die by refusing to sign it before the new session of Congress starts at noon ET on Jan. 3.

Trump vetoing the Covid stimulus bill could be disastrous. But signing it is only the first step. – Americans around the country are suffering because of Covid-19. But it is our nation’s most vulnerable who have been the hardest hit by the economic effects of the pandemic: low-income families with children. Many have lost jobs, while those who are still employed have often lost hours and tips. Hunger among families with young children, which was already unconscionably high for the world’s richest nation before the pandemic, has more than doubled. While we know this pandemic won’t last forever, children can’t just wait to eat. Child poverty today means lost growth and development and lost opportunities to learn – it’s hard to study on an empty stomach, or while worried about being evicted. Child poverty today means lost growth and development and lost opportunities to learn – it’s very hard to study on an empty stomach, or while worried about getting evicted. The relief plan passed by Congress on Monday night will at least help start addressing this disaster – assuming President Donald Trump even signs it into law, which is now an open question. The bill includes substantial increases in nutrition assistance, including more help for families with the youngest kids and for low-income college students, two particularly vulnerable groups that had been missed by the CARES Act in March. It also extends the eviction moratorium and provides more rental assistance, which helps with hunger because, in struggling households, the rent eats first. But the cash families will receive – $600 stimulus checks and $300 unemployment insurance supplements that are half the size of those provided by the CARES Act – is simply not enough. We’ve been following a panel of hourly service workers with young children since 2019. Our ongoing research shows that even when help from the CARES Act peaked in early summer, half of these families were living on less than before the crisis began. As aid dried up this fall, that rose to nearly two-thirds. Despite the claims of some politicians that generous unemployment benefits were keeping people unemployed, in our panel we’ve seen no rise in employment since supplements ended this summer. Instead, we’ve seen unemployed families simply struggle more, with a majority now trying to scrape by on less than half their former income. And the money in this new bill will not even restore them to the desperate straits of June. Worse, this bill adds new hoops to qualifying for unemployment insurance. Many laid-off low-income workers have difficulty securing documentation of earnings from gig work, tips and the like. At the same time, state benefits offices, overloaded by the unparalleled number and types of new claims, have struggled to process even the simplest paperwork – many workers in our study waited months to receive their assistance, and some are still waiting. Similar bureaucratic hurdles have kept many of our families from accessing nutrition programs, Medicaid and more. While the CARES Act recognized this, at least for unemployment insurance, and reduced paperwork requirements, the new bill reinstates them, likely increasing the share of people who cannot qualify, and further jamming up the system, so that even those with their papers in order may not be able to successfully submit. And the relief in this bill is short-lived. Stimulus payments are one-time (despite the fact that many other countries have committed to monthly stimulus payments to all for the duration of the pandemic). The eviction moratorium ends in February, unemployment supplements in March, nutrition benefits in June. Yet, with current projections that 60 million to 100 million adultswill still not have access to a vaccine by the end of June, families will need help for long after the start of summer. And given that 1 in 6 children were food insecure and that 3 in 10 lived in rent-burdened households prior to the pandemic, policies like expanded nutrition and rent assistance will continue to be needed even when the pandemic finally ends.

Larry Summers’ Opposition to $2000 Covid Payments Confirms Our Classic: “Why Larry Summers Should Not Be Permitted to Run Anything More Important than a Dog Pound” – – Yves Smith – Unfortunately, it looks like Larry Summers will always be with us: I don’t get how anyone with a straight face can believe one time 2000 dollar checks would overheat the economy. Quote Tweet @BloombergTV Dec 24 “$2,000 checks would be a pretty serious mistake.” Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says larger stimulus checks to Americans could risk overheating the economy https://trib.al/gYJtefL Or as reader Doug put it: Mr. Summers,The particular temperature of the economy is – and this will quite obviously come as a bit of a shock to you – of no importance right now.People are suffering.I realize in using the word “people”, I am alluding to a phenomenon that is not in your vocabulary or data set.But, then, you are a grade A asshole.Indeed, you are just as much a sociopath as Dear Leader DJTYou ought to seek help before it is too late. At best, Summers’ boneheaded remark shows that he is aggressively defending Joe Biden’s views. Recall that David Sirota recently translated the New York Times’ reporting on Biden’s intervention in the stimulus bill as Biden’s Austerity Zealotry Helped Cut The Stimulus Bill In Half: Now, in the whittling down of the stimulus legislation, we see the first concrete example of how Biden’s ideology can change policy in the here and now – and in deeply destructive ways.As pain and suffering is crescendoing across the country, Biden refrained from aggressively pushing the bipartisan initiative for $1,200 survival checks. Indeed, at a time when there was a legitimate chance to flip some Republicans – including Donald Trump! – against McConnell and push for a more robust stimulus, he demurred.However, the New York Times reminds us today that Biden was “not an idle bystander in the negotiations.” On the contrary, the paper of record tells us that the president-elect played a decisive role in making sure the legislation was cut in half. For those of you not well versed in Summers’ sorry record, this post might fill in some gaps.

Anger at Congress, Trump mounts among governors –Governors facing the prospect of hundreds of thousands of their constituents losing out on badly needed relief during the coronavirus pandemic grew increasingly frustrated as Congress dragged its feet on a legislative package, and many became downright apoplectic after President Trump this week blew up delicate negotiations by saying he was not happy with a bill in which he previously paid little interest. In interviews Wednesday and Thursday, top advisers to both Democratic and Republican governors said that anger at the lack of a coordinated federal response to combat the pandemic had reached a boiling point during negotiations over a relief package. “Honestly I’ve never been so disgusted with Congress,” said a chief of staff to one Democratic governor. “We’ve been pulling our hair out for months. The federal government has not made a single step of the process of dealing with this pandemic easier. Not one single step.” The chief of staff, like others interviewed for this story, asked for anonymity to avoid angering both the Trump administration and Senate Republicans, who have said they will not consider new aid to state and local governments in future relief packages. Congress approved a $900 billion relief package on Tuesday, a bill that includes $300 weekly supplemental jobless benefits and one-time $600 payments to millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Later on Tuesday, Trump said he was dissatisfied with an agreement he called “a disgrace.” He called on Congress to amend the legislation to boost the one-time payments to $2,000 per individual and to rid the bill of funding that his own administration had requested in its annual budget. Trump did not threaten to veto the measure outright, though if he does not sign it in short order, state officials said there will be a gap between unemployment checks that millions are relying on in the midst of rising unemployment rates. “The longer the president waits to sign [the bill], the longer it will take the Department of Labor to turn around guidance, the longer it will take us to get that new relief out,” said a top aide to one Republican governor. “Think of all the businesses within a week or two of deciding to close that would hang on because of the extension of PPP. The effect of further delay there would be immediate.”

Bipartisan, bicameral group urges Trump to sign COVID-19 relief package A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate is calling on President Trump to sign a $900 billion coronavirus relief bill that he recently said should include bigger stimulus checks. The 13 lawmakers, who previously put forth a $908 billion compromise measure, urged Trump to sign the measure into law, citing the need to provide immediate help to workers, businesses, schools and hospitals. “As members of the bipartisan, bicameral ‘908 Coalition,’ we urge the President to sign the COVID relief package. The legislation would bring desperately needed help to struggling families, unemployed workers, hard-hit small businesses, an overburdened health care system, stressed schools, and so many others. It would provide robust funding for testing and vaccine distribution at a critical time,” the lawmakers wrote. “By signing the bill, the President would be providing the best possible Christmas gift to the American people,” they added. The letter was signed by lawmakers including Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), as well as the co-chairs of the bipartisan centrist House Problem Solvers Caucus. Trump unexpectedly bashed the COVID-19 relief package Tuesday, saying the $600 stimulus checks it provides should be increased to $2,000 each. His opposition caught Democrats and Republicans alike by surprise since he did not voice any concerns with the bill until after it was passed by Congress, following negotiations that included Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The COVID-19 relief package was paired with a $1.4 trillion omnibus measure that would keep the government open through Sept. 30. Trump also voiced displeasure with several aspects of the government funding bill, particularly the provisions on foreign aid, even though his White House budget request called for such aid. Trump has not explicitly threatened to veto the $2.3 trillion package, but it’s unclear whether he will sign or reject the measure.

Relief bill in Trump limbo arrives at Mar-a-Lago -The $2.3 trillion government funding and coronavirus relief package that was passed by Congress has arrived at President Trump’s resort in Florida. A source familiar with the situation confirmed to The Hill that the bill has arrived at Mar-a-Lago, where the president is staying for the holidays. The package faces an uncertain fate after Trump panned the bill this week following months of back-and-forth talks with congressional Democrats and Republicans. Trump has not actually threatened to veto the package, though he has also not said he will sign it. A number of Republicans including Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.) have urged him to sign the package to prevent a government shutdown and a cessation of unemployment benefits. “The best way out of this is for the president to sign the bill,” Blunt, a member of Senate GOP leadership, told reporters on Thursday. Unemployment benefits are set to expire on Saturday if they are not renewed, while a government shutdown would begin on Tuesday without action by the president or the passage of a new bill by Congress, which would also have to be signed by Trump before Tuesday. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill regarding if Trump plans to sign or veto the bill. Congress passed legislation earlier this week that includes a $900 billion COVID-19 relief measure and $1.4 trillion omnibus to fund the government until October. Among the provisions of the relief part of the package are stimulus checks for up to $600 per adult and per child, an extension of two coronavirus-era unemployment programs and the addition of $300 to all weekly unemployment benefits and $284 billion for small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The president specifically called on Congress to raise the amount of the stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. Democrats in the House offered legislation on Thursday to do so, but it was blocked by Republicans. Trump also tore into spending provisions such as $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia and $40 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington that were included in the omnibus and signed off on by his administration and Republicans. His decision to announce his sudden opposition caught members of both parties off guard.

Millions of Americans lose jobless benefits as Trump refuses to sign aid bill (Reuters) – Millions of Americans saw their jobless benefits expire on Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, protesting that it did not do enough to help everyday people. Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the massive bill, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on Dec. 26, and $1.4 trillion for normal government spending. Without Trump’s signature, about 14 million people could lose those extra benefits, according to Labor Department data. A partial government shutdown will begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then. After months of wrangling, Republicans and Democrats agreed to the package last weekend, with the support of the White House. Trump, who hands over power to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, did not object to terms of the deal before Congress voted it through on Monday night. But since then he has complained that the bill gives too much money to special interests, cultural projects and foreign aid, while its one-time $600 stimulus checks to millions of struggling Americans were too small. He has demanded that be raised to $2,000. “Why would politicians not want to give people $2,000, rather than only $600?…Give our people the money!” the billionaire president tweeted.

Graham: Trump ‘more determined than ever’ to get bigger stimulus payments – Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Friday night after spending part of the day with President Trump that the president is “more determined than ever” to stick by his demand for bigger stimulus payments for Americans than those approved by Congress in a bill passed this week. Graham’s remarks come as Trump and Congress are locked in a standoff over the size of payments to millions of Americans as part of the latest COVID-19 relief bill, after the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation that Trump has criticized and not signed, putting it in limbo. “After spending some time with President @realDonaldTrump today, I am convinced he is more determined than ever to increase stimulus payments to $2000 per person and challenge Section 230 big tech liability protection,” Graham tweeted on Friday night. “Both are reasonable demands, and I hope Congress is listening. The biggest winner would be the American people,” he added. Graham, a top Trump ally in Congress, weighed in after spending time golfing with the president at his club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Friday. The president is staying at his nearby Mar-a-Lago resort for the holidays. The $2.3 trillion government funding and coronavirus relief package arrived at Mar-a-Lago this week, though its fate is unclear. While he has not threatened to veto the bill, the president also has not said he’ll sign it. Trump has been at odds with Congress this week over the latest coronavirus deal, with his surprise opposition to the legislation throwing the latest relief bill and government funding package into uncertainty. The president has criticized the $900 billion COVID-19 deal, which came after months of slow-moving negotiations between both parties as well as his administration, by focusing on the size of the payments to Americans. He has called for $2,000 payments instead of the $600 payments that lawmakers approved along with a number of other provisions to provide economic relief amid the pandemic. The coronavirus deal was passed along with a $1.4 trillion package to fund the federal government through October. Republicans have urged Trump to sign the legislation, with unemployment benefits set to expire Saturday and a shutdown looming starting Tuesday unless the president signs the bill or Congress passes a new measure and the president signs it. The president indicated in tweets on Christmas Day and on Saturday that he was still pushing for bigger payments for Americans. “Made many calls and had meetings at Trump International in Palm Beach, Florida. Why would politicians not want to give people $2000, rather than only $600? It wasn’t their fault, it was China. Give our people the money!” he tweeted earlier Friday. “I simply want to get our great people $2000, rather than $600. Also, Congress should cut the ‘pork,'” he added in another tweet Saturday. Trump has separately criticized an annual defense policy bill, referenced by Graham, and vetoed the legislation this week. The president blasted the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act for failing to repeal a key liability shield for social media companies, known as Section 230.

COVID-19 could complicate Pelosi’s path to Speaker next year – As Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seeks the support to keep the gavel for another term, her allies are keeping close watch on a potential wild card that could complicate her path next month: COVID-19.Pelosi is already facing a much slimmer majority in the next Congress, after Democrats were clobbered at the polls in November, meaning she can afford far fewer Democratic defections than the 15 who opposed her two years ago. And lawmakers must be present on the House floor to cast their vote for Speaker, precluding the option for members to vote remotely, as many have done throughout the pandemic. The combination of factors creates the chance that Democrats could face a dilemma on Jan. 3 in which Pelosi locks up the Democratic support to remain Speaker, but coronavirus concerns – illnesses, quarantines or otherwise – prevent a sufficient number of them from being in the Capitol to log their votes.A failure of Pelosi to secure support from half the voting members would, at the very least, throw the process into chaos. In the Democrats’ nightmare scenario, the math could tilt so far in the Republicans’ favor that it yields a GOP Speaker.”Let’s say, just theoretically, we had six or eight people out with Covid and the Republicans have none. They probably could elect [Kevin] McCarthy,” said Rep. John Yarmuth(D-Ky.), referring to the House GOP leader. Lawmakers were reminded of their vulnerability this week, when five more members of the House tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of infected lawmakers to at least 35 since the pandemic hit the U.S. roughly a year ago.With that in mind, Pelosi’s supporters say it’s an outbreak over the holidays – not Democratic detractors – that poses the single greatest threat to Pelosi’s otherwise-expected Speakership victory next month. “We’re in a health care crisis, right? No one can get sick. That’s the X-factor here,” said one House Democrat, a Pelosi ally, who spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive topic. “We need everyone to be healthy. … That’s the big fear.”

Birx traveled over Thanksgiving weekend after warning Americans to limit celebrations to household -White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx traveled to her Delaware vacation home during the Thanksgiving weekend despite advising people to celebrate the holiday with only those in their immediate household.The Associated Press reported that Birx traveled with family members from two other households. Birx told the AP in a statement the purpose of the trip was to winterize the property before an upcoming sale.”I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said, adding that her family shared a meal while in Delaware.Birx said that all of the gathered family members belonged to her “immediate household” but also said they lived in two different homes.According to federal guidelines, Birx’s role makes her an “essential worker.” Her position requires her to travel across the country, and she has visited 43 states, often at coronavirus hot spots, the AP reported. She also maintains an office at the White House, where several COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred.Birx has stated that she keeps herself and her family safe through isolating, mask-wearing and regular testing. She is among the lawmakers and officials who have been criticized for traveling or dining out despite sending similar warnings to people to stay at home.Denver Mayor Michael Hancock (D) apologized after facing backlash for traveling to Mississippi over the Thanksgiving weekend despite telling his residents to stay put. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) faced condemnation for attending a 12-person party after urging people to avoid such gatherings. The governor later apologized for his attendance. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) altered his in-person Thanksgiving plans after he received backlash for saying his 89-year-old mother and two daughters were traveling to Albany to celebrate the holiday.

Pompeo’s wife tested positive for COVID-19: report -Susan Pompeo, the wife of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month, leading her husband to quarantine, according to sources close to the matter, Bloomberg reports. The unnamed sources told Bloomberg that Susan Pompeo tested positive right before her husband announced he would be going into quarantine on Dec. 16 after an exposure to the virus. The secretary of State later tested negative for the virus. At the time, the State Department did not identify who had exposed Pompeo. Mike Pompeo’s public schedule showed that he was to attend a reception for the families of diplomats one day before he went into quarantine. The decision to host a holiday party in the midst of a worsening pandemic was highly criticized by health experts who worried it could become a “superspreader” event. The event was also criticized for going directly against the department’s own policies that instructed State Department employees to avoid going to “non-mission critical events,” and instead encouraging them to go for virtual gatherings. Bloomberg notes that the State Department did not specify how long Mike Pompeo planned on quarantining and his Dec. 21 public schedule had him attending meetings and briefings at the department. On Monday, the State Department announced it would be tightening COVID-19 rules for its employees, returning to phase one of the department’s “Diplomacy Strong” strategy. Following the article from Bloomberg, Pompeo slammed the report calling it “patently false” adding that he and his wife did not attend any holiday parties at the White House or the State Department. “My wife and I did not attend any State Department nor White House holiday parties – your statement is patently FALSE,” he tweeted. “This isn’t journalism and it’s worse than gossip – it’s unethical and potentially unlawful. Stay tuned.”

US requiring negative coronavirus tests for travelers from UK –The U.S. is requiring airline passengers arriving from the U.K. to provide negative coronavirus tests before boarding their flights, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said late Thursday night. Under the new order, passengers arriving from the U.K. must test negative no more than 72 hours before their departures. Passengers must provide written documentation of their test results to the airline and the airline must confirm the negative test results for all passengers. If a passenger chooses not to take a test, the airline must deny boarding to the passenger, the CDC said. The order will be signed Friday and go into effect Monday, according to the agency. The ramped-up measure comes after public health authorities in the U.K announced the discovery of a new variant of the coronavirus that may be up to 70 percent more transmissible than the initial strain. Since the new variant was discovered, roughly 40 countries have imposed travel bans on Great Britain, The Associated Press noted.

Tulsi Gabbard calls for halt on UK flights to US over new COVID strain – Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, called Saturday for a halt on all flights from the United Kingdom into the U.S. amid increasing concern about a new, more infectious strain of COVID-19. “The U.S. needs to temporarily halt all flights from the U.K. into the U.S. to stop more infectious mutation of COVID from entering the U.S. This should have been done days ago,” tweeted Gabbard, a former presidential hopeful. Gabbard was reacting to new rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that require passengers from the U.K. to have proof of a negative COVID-19 test before their flight — a move she said did not go far enough. “Negative tests from passengers is not sufficient,” she tweeted. “It’s too little, too late.” The new rules about U.K. travel go into effect Monday. That is in addition to President Trump’s proclamation in March that barred the entry of foreign nationals who had visited the U.K. in the last 14 days from coming into the U.S. — a move that the CDC said reduced travel from the U.K. to the U.S. by about 90%.

Fed gives banks green light to resume share buybacks – The US Federal Reserve has given major banks the go-ahead to resume share buybacks starting in the first quarter of next year, signalling a victory for them in what has been a public campaign against restrictions imposed in June. The Fed decision was made after “stress tests” conducted on the major banks showed they could withstand a major downturn in the economy. It had been widely expected that the banks would pass the tests. But it had been thought that with the US continuing to report record COVID-19 infections and deaths and consequently a highly uncertain outlook for the US economy, the Fed would maintain its restrictions. “Passing [the stress tests] was expected; the ability to buy back stock, within limits, was hoped for but not expected,” Announcing the stress test results, Fed Vice-Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles said the banking system had been a “source of strength” during the past year and the stress tests confirmed that large banks could continue to lend “even during a sharply adverse turn in the economy.” The only dissenting voice among Fed governors was that of Lael Brainard. She said that for several large banks the projected losses under the tests took them “very close to the minimum requirement.” “Prudence would call for more modest payouts to preserve lending to households and borrowers during an exceptionally challenging winter.” The reaction to the decision was immediate. Within minutes of the Fed announcement, JP Morgan Chase announced that its board had approved up to $30 billion in share buybacks, with the timing and extent of the purchases subject to “various considerations.” Morgan Stanley said that its board had authorised up to $10 billion of repurchases in 2021, starting in the first quarter. Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America also said they intended to resume share buybacks. JP Morgan shares rose 5.3 percent, Goldman Sachs 4.4 percent and Wells Fargo 3.5 percent. The decision is another expression of how the financial system operates as an institutionalised mechanism for siphoning wealth to the upper strata in the midst of the worst economic recession in the past-war period. As a result of the ultra-cheap monetary policies pursued by the Fed, above all the injection of trillions of dollars into the Treasury bond market, the banks have been able cash in through market trading. Back in October, JP Morgan Chase reported profits of $9.44 billion, or $292 per share – well above market expectations – and an increase on the profit of $9.08 billion for the corresponding quarter last year.. Now these profits, reaped from the largesse of the Fed, will now be distributed to wealthy individuals as well as investment funds that own bank shares. The effect of the share buybacks is to lift the price of the remaining shares, enabling their owners to reaize a capital gain.

Banks can repurchase shares again. Will they? –The nation’s largest banks are once again permitted to repurchase shares of their own stock. Now the question is, which banks will resume buybacks and when? As of midday Monday, just a handful of the 34 banks subject to the Federal Reserve’s six-month freeze on buybacks had made public statements about their plans to repurchase shares in coming months. JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank by assets, provided the most details, saying it would commence a $30 billion buyback plan during the first quarter. The timing of the repurchases and the exact amount to be repurchased will be subject to “various considerations.” “Our highest priority and best use of capital continues to be supporting our clients and driving an inclusive economic recovery,” JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said in a news release. “We will continue to maintain a fortress balance sheet that allows us to safely deploy capital by investing in and growing our business, supporting consumers and businesses, paying a sustainable dividend and returning any remaining excess capital to shareholders.” Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street said they intend to start buybacks in the first quarter, but did not say how many shares they will buy. Since the end of June, the 34 banks that are subject to the Fed’s stress tests have been unable to repurchase shares or increase dividend payments to shareholders beyond the levels paid out in the second quarter of this year. The Fed put the limits in place to ensure banks would have enough capital on hand to manage economic challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. But the Fed said Friday that banks are free to resume repurchases after it conducted the first-ever “midcycle” stress tests, a supplemental exercise that incorporated “severely adverse” and “alternative adverse” scenarios that gauged banks’ ability to withstand some of the economic uncertainties related to the pandemic. The results of those tests were released Friday and showed that all 34 banks would have sufficient capital to endure a severe pandemic-related downturn, though some would fare better than others. The Fed said that while banks can resume buybacks, the amount will be limited to income earned this past year. Dividend payouts, meanwhile, remain capped at second-quarter levels. Industry observers say the Fed’s decision to loosen restrictions on buybacks was unexpected.

US Federal Reserve backstops rising corporate debt mountain – As the WSWS noted, there was one notable feature of the passage of the $900 billion relief bill through the US Congress earlier this week that demonstrated the absolute loyalty of the Democrats to the Wall Street financial oligarchy. After abandoning aid for cash-strapped cities and states to provide services and agreeing to a grossly inadequate one-time payment of $600 to most working people, they rose up in arms against at attempt to restrict operations by the Fed to bolster major companies. Republican Senator Pat Toomey moved to prevent the Fed reviving an operation in which it receives money from the US Treasury, which it then leverages to make ultra-cheap loans to businesses and to buy corporate debt. The Fed had raised objections when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called for the winding down of the program in November warning that it could impede its operations to sustain Wall Street and other financial markets. The importance of that support, which was lifted to new heights following the market freeze in mid-March, has been underscored by data on the level of corporate borrowing this year compiled by the Bank of America and reported in the Financial Times earlier in the week. US companies have borrowed a record $2.5 trillion in the bond market this year. This has meant that leverage – the ratio between debt and earnings – for investment grade companies has gone to new heights after reaching record levels in 2019. The actions taken by the Fed in response to the March crisis have provided crucial support for these operations. The Fed took the unprecedented decision to buy investment-grade corporate bonds as well as buying exchange traded funds, including those that tracked riskier assets. Unlike the purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which form the backbone of the Fed’s market intervention – currently running at $120 billion a month more than $1.4 trillion a year – the move into corporate bond purchases involved backing from the US Treasury, which the Toomey measure sought to restrict in the future. Initially debt was raised to cover the loss of income due to the pandemic. But what the Financial Times called “the largest corporate borrowing spree on record” has developed as companies have used the ultra-low interest rates facilitated by the Fed to build up their cash holdings in order to take advantage of any favourable buying operations. The significance of the Fed’s intervention into the corporate debt market, which the Democrats were so desperate to ensure continued unimpeded, was underscored by Jonny Fine, the USA head of debt syndicate at Goldman Sachs. He described it as “the most important piece of central bank policymaking I have seen in my career.”

What bankers (mostly) like about rebooted PPP – Congress is poised to authorize a new version of the Paycheck Protection Program that checks off most of the items on bankers’ wish lists. The latest stimulus bill, which is on the cusp of passing, would allocate $285 billion in PPP funding, according to legislative summaries. It would allow existing PPP borrowers with less than 300 employees that can show a revenue decline of at least 25% to apply for a second loan of up to $2 million. The plan expands the list of eligible expenses for forgiveness to include software, cloud computing expenses and human resources and accounting costs. And it creates a simplified forgiveness application for loans of $150,000 or less that only requires borrowers to state the number of employees retained and the amount of PPP funds spent on payroll. The relief package would also let PPP borrowers claim deductions for expenses covered by their loans. Addressing a key complaint of PPP borrowers who obtained a $10,000 advance under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the new blueprint eliminates a provision that required borrowers to deduct the advance from their forgiveness amounts. “This plan looks better” than the original rollout, said John Buhrmaster, president and CEO of 1stNational Bank of Scotia in New York. Barring any last-minute changes, he said, the $603 million-asset bank is almost certain to participate in the renewed effort. It shouldn’t take long to start processing applications once the new relief package is signed into law, bankers said. “We’re ready to help our customers and community whenever a new stimulus passes,” said Jill Castilla, CEO of the $322 million-asset Citizens Bank of Edmond in Oklahoma. “We’ve been preparing to ensure we have streamlined processes for application and submission so we can focus on education and support for another round.” “The process is there, the forms are loaded, our people are educated,” Burhmaster said. “As long as funding lasts, we’re going to get the money to the businesses that need it.” Still, some bankers said they will need to take a look at the finalized package before jumping back into the program. “We look forward to understanding the program and our potential role as soon as the details are clear,” said Candice Caruso, director of governement guranteed lending at the $13.8 billion-asset WSFS Financial in Wilmington, Del. The new round of PPP “will bring much needed assistance to those impacted by the pandemic as the economy recovers and the vaccine is deployed.” Lenders said they expect the new funds to largely target specific industries that continue to feel the pain of shutdown orders and social distancing requirements. “There were costs that everybody incurred to pivot to this new remote way of being” during the initial phase of PPP, said Julieann Thurlow, president and CEO of the $630 million-asset Reading Cooperative Bank in Massachusetts. “Now the pain is definitely sector specific,” Thurlow added. “The hospitality industry is the sector that is being hurt the most.” “I do believe the hospitality industry needs more PPP funding,” added Todd Nagle, president and CEO of the $1.7 billion-asset IncredibleBank in Wausau, Wis.

Stimulus bill would give banks more flexibility on problem loans– A revised Paycheck Protection Program isn’t the only Christmas gift banks received in the latest stimulus bill. The $892 billion package – which was approved by Congress this week and now awaits the signature of President Trump – also includes two provisions that give banks additional flexibility in accounting for problem loans. The first postpones for another year the start date of the Current Expected Credit Losses accounting standard, which requires banks to estimate credit losses at origination. The second allows banks, for the next 12 months, to delay categorizing pandemic-related loan modifications as troubled debt restructurings. The CECL extension and the delay in loan classification were both due to end Dec. 31. President and CEO Derrik Wynkoop of Walden Savings Bank said the ability to keep loans that have been in deferral since the early stages of the pandemic out of the troubled debt restructuring pile gives banks greater flexibility to work with borrowers who are still struggling. Roughly $11 million of loans, most tied to the food and hospitality sectors, are still in deferral, Wynkoop said. “Let’s face it. The first [stimulus bill] contemplated that we’d be on the backside of this pandemic by now and unfortunately we’re knee-deep in a second wave,” Wynkoop said. “So moving out the date gives us more tools in our toolbox to work with borrowers who are still not out of the woods. Had this not been in the latest legislation, we would have been in a situation where we would have to have some very difficult conversations beginning in the new year.” In the spring, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act provided temporary regulatory relief to financial institutions so they could focus on serving their customers during the pandemic. Among the various measures, the ability to suspend troubled debt restructuring classification was particularly helpful as it allows banks to modify or adjust customers’ loan terms and defer loan payments without counting those loans as troubled debt restructurings. For years, banks had mostly been keeping loan delinquencies at bay. But when the pandemic hit, noncurrent loans began rising, jumping $7 billion between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of this year and rising another $15.9 billion by the end of the second quarter, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. By the end of the third quarter, noncurrent loans had risen another $9.3 billion. Keeping those loans out of the troubled debt restructuring bucket has been crucial for banks because it means those loans don’t have to be reviewed for impairment and banks don’t have to boost loan-loss reserves to cover them. Plus, any loan classified as a troubled debt restructuring retains that classification, even if the borrower returns to normal payments.

New stimulus package clears path for increased SBA lending The new stimulus package is providing more than just emergency relief for small businesses. While the $900 billion legislation revives the Paycheck Protection Program, it also enhances key elements of the Small Business Administration’s traditional lending efforts. That could result in a major lift for lenders and borrowers when the time comes to invest in an economic recovery, industry experts said. The package authorizes $2 billion for the SBA’s 7(a), 504 and Microloan programs, while allowing the agency to waive borrower and lender fees, according to legislative summaries of the law. The SBA will be able to raise the standard guarantee on 7(a) loans to 90% from 75%, retain the size threshold for SBA Express loans at $1 million and authorize a 504 Express program to expedite approval of loans under $500,000. “We think banking and small businesses are winners from the proposed second round of fiscal stimulus,” Chris Marinac, an analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. “Remember, banks are mirrors of the communities they serve. An improved economy should be [a] positive.” Boosting guarantees and waiving fees helped spark a surge in SBA lending after the 2008-9 financial crisis, and Rep. Nydia Velazquez, a Democrat from New York who chairs the House Small Business Committee, said she expects a similar result in 2021. Those changes should “go a long way to help build back better,” Velazquez said in a statement Monday. “I expect 7(a) to grow tremendously,” said Chris Hurn, CEO of Fountainhead Capital, a nonbank lender in Lake Mary, Fla. “Small businesses need working capital.” SBA spokeswoman Shannon Giles said Tuesday that agency officials were reviewing the text of the stimulus bill. Bankers were pleased to see other benefits included in the relief package. The stimulus package funds several months of principal and interest payments for most 7(a) and 504 loans, depending on when the loans were originated, as well as a borrower’s size and financial circumstances. In all cases, the monthly payments are capped at $9,000. “I was really grateful to see the … inclusion of additional SBA payment assistance,” said Jill Castilla, CEO of the $322 million-asset Citizens Bank of Edmond in Oklahoma. Similar relief in the original stimulus package “likely saved thousands of small businesses throughout the country,” she said.

N.Y. law requires nonbanks to disclose loan terms to small businesses – New York has passed a law requiring nonbank lenders to provide greater transparency around the credit they extend to small-business customers. Signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday, the new law mandates that fintech lenders and other nonbanks disclose annual percentage rates and other costs to the borrower upfront. The law is intended to make it easier for small-business borrowers to compare multiple offers, amid complaints that the fine print is often hard to understand or misleading. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed the New York State Small Business Truth in Lending Act into law late Wednesday. BloombergSuch disclosures are commonplace in consumer lending, but New York is just the second state in the nation to require lenders to clearly disclose terms to borrowers seeking small-business loans. “A lack of uniform disclosures has led to a confusing and complex environment for business owners accessing commercial financing,” the bill’s author, Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski, a Democrat, said in a statement to American Banker. “This legislation will provide clarity through a simple and easily understood disclosure that provides information on the true costs and hidden fees of an offer. A simple and understandable disclosure will level the playing field and ensure business owners are making an informed decision that is best for their business.” The New York State Small Business Truth in Lending Act covers various types of small-business financing that became popular in the wake of the Great Recession, after many banks scaled back their lending to small businesses. The bill has garnered broad support among small-business advocates and industry groups alike. The Innovative Lending Platform Association, whose members include fintechs like Kabbage, OnDeck and Funding Circle, backed the bill. The Responsible Business Lending Coalition, which also supported the measure, estimated that it would save small-business borrowers between $369 million and $1.76 billion annually.

Margin Debt and the Market: Up 9.5% in November, Record High – The New York Stock Exchange previously published end-of-month data for margin debt on the NYX data website, including historical data going back to 1959. Because of NYSE’s suspension of publication, we have turned to FINRA to continue our analysis. The figures differ in their inclusion of firms. For data through January 2010, debit balances were derived by adding NYSE debit balances in margin accounts to FINRA debit balances in customers’ cash and margin accounts and credit balances were derived by adding NYSE free credit balances in cash and margin accounts to FINRA free and other credit balances in customers’ securities accounts. For data after January 2010, “As of February 2010, data are collected pursuant to FINRA Rule 4521 and are aggregated across all member firms, regardless of whether the firm was designated to NASD or the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) before the consolidation of NASD and the member firm regulation operations of NYSE Regulation in July 2007 that created FINRA,” (FINRA statistics definition,FINRA website). As a result of this change, the debt data is higher than the NYSE data. Let’s examine the numbers and study the relationship between margin debt and the market, using the S&P 500 as the surrogate for the latter. The first chart shows the two series in real terms – adjusted for inflation to today’s dollar using the Consumer Price Index as the deflator. At the 1997 start date, we were well into the Boomer Bull Market that began in 1982 and approaching the start of the Tech Bubble that shaped investor sentiment during the second half of the decade. The astonishing surge in leverage in late 1999 peaked in March 2000, the same month that the S&P 500 hit its all-time daily high, although the highest monthly close for that year was five months later in August. A similar surge began in 2006, peaking in July 2007, three months before the market peak. Debt hit a trough in February 2009, a month before the March market bottom. It then began another major cycle of increases. FINRA has released new data for margin debt, now available through November. The latest debt level is up 9.53% month-over-month and is at a record high.

Bloomberg News Attempts to Capture the “Speculative Frenzy” of Today’s Markets; Here’s the Key Stuff It Missed – On Saturday, Bloomberg News attempted to outline the key components of markets gone bonkers “in this year of death, disease and economic calamity,” writing that the “Mania is laid bare in IPO surge, options boom and crypto fever.”In fairness, the nine reporters who worked on the story, none of whom received a byline but are noted at the bottom of the article, correctly compiled the observable earmarks of this bubble market. But they failed to dig into the dark underbelly of how we got here.Let’s start with the compromised Wall Street regulators in Washington. The Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, bolted from his post yesterday, after previously announcing he would leave at year’s end. That’s never a good sign. This is the same man involved in a failed coup to take over the office that criminally prosecutes Wall Street crimes (or not). The SEC can only bring civil charges. Clayton had Geoffrey Berman ousted from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan to open up the position for his nomination to the post. Wall Street wanted Clayton in the post because he was Wall Street’s lawyer before coming to the SEC. (See our report SEC Nominee Has Represented 8 of the 10 Largest Wall Street Banks in Past Three Years.) The head of the federal regulator of national banks (those operating across state lines such as JPMorgan Chase’s 5,000-plus branches) is the Comptroller of the Currency. During Trump’s term as President, that position has been filled with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s former pals from One West, the foreclosure king that Mnuchin ran before raising money for Trump’s campaign and becoming Treasury Secretary. The first Comptroller under Trump was Joseph Otting, who was CEO and President of One West while Mnuchin was Chairman of the bank. Otting stepped down in May and his successor became Brian Brooks, who had been Vice Chairman of One West. This marked the first time in three decades that former bankers had run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. One West came into being in 2009 in the midst of the last financial crisis when Mnuchin, Otting and a group of investors purchased the assets of the failed IndyMac Bank. Mnuchin was savaged during his confirmation hearing for the illegal foreclosures conducted by One West, including foreclosures against active-duty military members. Mnuchin was also responsible for picking Jerome Powell as the Chair of the Federal Reserve, as reported by Politico and subsequently confirmed by Trump himself. Both Powell and the Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Fed, Randal Quarles, got rich at Carlyle Group, a private equity fund with a string of bankruptcies and job losses. Powell will likely be remembered in the history books for putting the investment manager, BlackRock, in charge of the Fed’s corporate bond bailout program and allowing it to buy up BlackRock’s own sinking junk-bond Exchange Traded Funds as part of the program. This was occurring while BlackRock managed $25 million of Powell’s personal money. Apparently, a proven background in preying on average Americans is now a prerequisite for getting a job as a Wall Street regulator.

Waters, Brown urge Mnuchin to halt housing finance reforms – The top Democrats on the House and Senate banking committees urged the Trump administration to halt any plans to reform the U.S. housing finance system in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a letter Wednesday to pull the plug on any steps to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the pandemic still taking a toll on the economy. “Amidst this uncertainty, any significant changes to our multi-trillion dollar housing system, which affects every person in this country, could further damage the economy,” wrote Waters and Brown. “Market participants have similarly raised concerns that sudden changes to the housing system could further compromise the financial stability of millions of families and the housing market both during and after the pandemic.” The letter said Mnuchin “was not forthcoming” in congressional testimony about possible changes to housing finance policy but added that “in recent media reports you have indicated you do in fact have plans you are working to set in motion.” “We are concerned that some of the policy changes Treasury has previously endorsed, including restricting or eliminating guarantees for certain types of loans and other, more aggressive proposals, could threaten the stability of the $11 trillion mortgage market,” Waters and Brown wrote. The letter comes as the Federal Housing Finance Agency has developed procedures intended to release the government-sponsored enterprises from conservatorship. The agency recently released a new risk-based capital plan for Fannie and Freddie. Meanwhile, both the FHFA and Treasury oversee agreements that require the two companies to sweep profits into the federal government. Waters has previously called on the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden to halt plans to release Fannie and Freddie from conservatorship. In their letter to Mnuchin, the two lawmakers added that millions of borrowers are currently in forbearance on their mortgages because of the pandemic and that housing experts are predicting a possible “avalanche” of evictions on the horizon. Waters and Brown are requesting a briefing from Mnuchin on any actions that the Treasury Department might take in the next month that will affect the housing system.

Who Holds the $1.65 Trillion of Apartment Building Debt amid Eviction Bans and Plunging Occupancy Rates at High Rises? – Wolf Richter – You guessed it: For over half of it, taxpayers are on the hook. Time to take a look. The other day, we discussed two luxury apartment towers whose occupancy rates had plunged into the 70% range during the Pandemic – the “New York by Gehry” in Manhattan whose mortgage had been moved to the servicer watch list, and the NEMA in San Francisco. But the mortgages on those properties were still marked as “current.”Overall, the delinquency rate for these multifamily “private label” CMBS loans – “private label” because they’re not backed by the government – has ticked up to 3.1% in November but is still relatively low compared to the blow-up during the 2009-2012 mortgage crisis when the delinquency rate reached 17% and stayed there for a year, and compared to current delinquency rates of hotel CMBS (19.7%) and mall CMBS (14.2%). More on that straight line south in a moment (delinquency data through November provided by Trepp): So for now, landlords of apartment towers in the centers of large cities, afflicted by the renters’ exodus and plunging rents, and landlords anywhere afflicted by renters not making rent payments, protected by eviction bans, are still trying to make mortgage payments on their rental properties, hoping that the surge in vacancies and non-payment of rents are short-term phenomena and that people will come back and fill those apartments and that tenants will catch up with the rent. These “private label” CMBS and other private label securitizations only hold a small portion of the total commercial mortgages backed by apartment buildings.The total amount of multifamily mortgages outstanding in Q3 was $1.65 trillion, up by $31 billion from Q2, according to the Q3 report this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association, based on data from the Fed’s Financial Accounts of the United States, the FDIC’s Quarterly Banking Profile, and Wells Fargo Securities.

• The US government: $798 billion, or 48.4% of the $1.65 trillion in apartment building debt, is backed by the federal government through Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and government agencies such as Ginnie Mae, which securitized many of these loans into CMBS, and sold them to investors. The government is on the hook for losses. And the Fed has acquired $9.3 billion of these “Agency” CMBS.
• Banks and thrifts: $478 billion or 29% of the multifamily debt is held by banks and thrifts. The Fed has pointed out in the past that some regional and smaller banks are heavily concentrated on commercial mortgages, and that for these specific banks, a downturn in commercial real estate would pose a significant risk.
• Life insurance companies hold $168 billion or 10.2% of this multifamily mortgage debt.
• State and local governments hold $108 billion or 6.5% of this debt in pension funds and the like. This ultimately also sits on the backs of taxpayers.
• Private label CMBS, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and other asset-backed securities only hold $52 billion, or 3.1% of this $1.65 trillion in apartment building debt.

The chart shows holdings by sector, red for Q3 and blue for Q2 (data from the MBA):

Congressional stimulus falls short on mortgage relief, experts say – After much deliberation, Congress landed on an agreement for the next round of coronavirus aid on Sunday. The bipartisan bill will provide $25 billion in emergency rental assistance and a round of $600 stimulus checks, in addition to pushing the eviction moratorium out by a month to Jan. 31, 2021.Following the announcement of the deal, housing and mortgage finance experts were quick to point out that the measure will not be enough to fully support the millions of Americans struggling to make housing payments. Nearly 2.8 million borrowers fell into active forbearance plans as of Dec. 15, an amount that’s trended upward alongside rising COVID-19 cases. “More will be needed to prevent housing insecurity for millions of low- and moderate-income households who are managing the economic fallout of the pandemic,” David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, said in a press release.Dworkin, a former senior policy adviser at the Treasury Department under the Obama administration, also highlighted the need for the Treasury to fast-track regulations and directly distribute the funds to each state in order to get the money out quickly.Ellie Mae reexamined the entire underwriting process to identify a new approach that uses technology for scalable productivity gains, balanced with the…About 20.3% of borrowers who have missed mortgage payments think they’ll likely face foreclosure is in the next two months, according to the latest Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey ending Dec. 7. The outlook is bleaker for renters who are behind on payments, as 48.1% of that group said eviction is likely with a two-month time frame. A 13.3% share of borrowers overall have little to no confidence in making their next mortgage payment. That number jumps to 32.7% for renters, according to the Census survey.

Freddie Mac: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate decreased in November – Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in November was 2.75%, down from 2.89% in October. Freddie’s rate is up from 0.62% in November 2019. Freddie’s serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20%. These are mortgage loans that are “three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure”. Mortgages in forbearance are being counted as delinquent in this monthly report, but they will not be reported to the credit bureaus. This is very different from the increase in delinquencies following the housing bubble. Lending standards have been fairly solid over the last decade, and most of these homeowners have equity in their homes – and they will be able to restructure their loans once (if) they are employed. Note: Fannie Mae will report for November soon. Also – for multifamily – delinquencies were at 0.16%, up from 0.14% in October, and up more than double from 0.06% in November 2019. ‘

Foreclosures drop to new all-time low in November — In November, mortgage delinquencies fell to a coronavirus-era low point while foreclosures hit their bottommost rate ever, according to Black Knight. Loans at least 30 days late on their payment or already in foreclosure at the end of November dropped to nearly 3.56 million from 3.62 million in October. This represents the sixth straight month of declines while remaining way above the year-ago level of 2.12 million. The delinquency rate – which does not include loans in foreclosure – tumbled to 6.33% from 6.44% month-over-month while eclipsing the year-ago rate of 3.53%. Seriously delinquent borrowers – those late on their payments for 90 days or more but not yet in foreclosure – similarly declined to 2.19 million from 2.26 million but quintupled the 439,000 from November 2019. At the state level, Mississippi and Louisiana had the highest share of noncurrent mortgages for the second month in a row. They posted rates of 11.11% and 10.74%, respectively, with Hawaii following at 9.45%. Idaho again led with an improved noncurrent share of 3.45%, trailed by 4.06% in Washington and 4.19% in Colorado. The three states with the highest delinquency share also had the worst rates of serious delinquency. Mississippi’s 6.58% was highest in the nation, followed closely by Louisiana’s 6.51% and 5.8% in Hawaii. About 4,400 loans started the foreclosure process in November, alongside 176,000 mortgages in active foreclosure. Those fell from 4,700 and 178,000 in October and 33,500 and 248,000 the year before. November’s totals are the lowest since Black Knight started tracking them in 2000. These should remain at artificially held nadirs at least through the end of January and could continue as long as CARES Act protections keep getting extended. Prepayment activity came down to 2.82% from October’s all-time high of 3.17% while exactly doubling the year-ago rate of 1.46%. Prepayment rates should stay elevated as long as interest rates hover around historic lows.

Black Knight: National Mortgage Delinquency Rate Decreased in November -Note: Loans in forbearance are counted as delinquent in this survey, but those loans are not reported as delinquent to the credit bureaus.From Black Knight: Black Knight: Delinquencies Improved Again in November 2020, But Nearly 2.2 Million Seriously Past-Due Mortgages Remain:

Despite seasonal headwinds, mortgage delinquencies improved for the sixth consecutive month in November 2020, falling to 6.33% from 6.44% in the month prior

The national delinquency rate is now down 1.5 percentage points from its peak of 7.8% in May but remains a full three percentage points (+93%) above pre-pandemic levels

While early-stage delinquencies – borrowers one or two payments past due – have fallen back below pre-pandemic levels, seriously past-due (90+ days) mortgages remain 1.8 million above pre-pandemic levels

Foreclosure activity remains muted as widespread moratoriums remain in place

November’s 4,400 foreclosure starts and 176,000 loans in active foreclosure are both at their lowest levels on record since Black Knight began reporting the metrics in 2000

Prepayments fell 11% from October’s 16-year high; however, with interest rates at record lows and refinance incentive at an all-time high, prepay activity is likely to remain elevated in the coming months

According to Black Knight’s First Look report, the percent of loans delinquent decreased 1.8% in November compared to October, and increased 79% year-over-year.

The percent of loans in the foreclosure process decreased 1.6% in November and were down 30% over the last year.

Black Knight reported the U.S. mortgage delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) was 6.33% in November, down from 6.44% in October. The percent of loans in the foreclosure process decreased slightly in November to 0.33%, from 0.33% in October.

The number of delinquent properties, but not in foreclosure, is up 1,513,000 properties year-over-year, and the number of properties in the foreclosure process is down 72,000 properties year-over-year.

MBA Survey: “Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases to 5.49%” – Note: This is as of December 13th. From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases to 5.49%: The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance increased slightly from 5.48% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 5.49% as of December 13, 2020. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.7 million homeowners are in forbearance plans. … The share of loans in forbearance has stayed fairly level since early November, often with small decreases in the GSE loan share and increases for Ginnie Mae loans. That was the case last week. Additionally, forbearance requests from Ginnie Mae borrowers reached the highest level since the week ending June 14,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “Additional restrictions on businesses and rising COVID-19 cases are causing a renewed increase in layoffs and other signs of slowing economic activity. These troubling trends will likely result in more homeowners seeking relief.” …By stage, 18.78% of total loans in forbearance are in the initial forbearance plan stage, while 78.54% are in a forbearance extension. The remaining 2.69% 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 generally been trending down.The MBA notes: “Weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) remained flat from the previous week at 0.12 percent.”

NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Shows Households Paying Rent Decreased 3.4% YoY –From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 89.8 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of December 20 The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 89.8 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by December 20 in its survey of 11.5 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.This is a 3.4 percentage point, or 392,952 household decrease from the share who paid rent through December 20, 2019 and compares to 90.3 percent that had paid by November 20, 2020. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price.This graph from the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker shows the percent of household making full or partial rent payments by the 6th (dark color) and 20th (light color) of the month.This is mostly for large, professionally managed properties.The new disaster relief should help people make their rent payments.

NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decreased to 6.69 million in November — From the NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decrease 2.5% in November” Total existing-home sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, decreased 2.5% from October to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 6.69 million in November. However, sales in total rose year-over-year, up 25.8% from a year ago (5.32 million in November 2019). … Total housing inventory at the end of November totaled 1.28 million units, down 9.9% from October and down 22% from one year ago (1.64 million). Unsold inventory sits at an all-time low 2.3-month supply at the current sales pace, down from 2.5 months in October and down from the 3.7-month figure recorded in November 2019. This graph shows existing home sales, on a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) basis since 1993. Sales in November (6.69 million SAAR) were down 2.5% from last month, and were 25.8% above the November 2019 sales rate. The second graph shows nationwide inventory for existing homes. According to the NAR, inventory decreased to 1.28 million in November from 1.42 million in October. Headline inventory is not seasonally adjusted, and inventory usually decreases to the seasonal lows in December and January, and peaks in mid-to-late summer. The last graph shows the year-over-year (YoY) change in reported existing home inventory and months-of-supply. Since inventory is not seasonally adjusted, it really helps to look at the YoY change. Note: Months-of-supply is based on the seasonally adjusted sales and not seasonally adjusted inventory. Inventory was down 22% year-over-year in November compared to November 2019. Months of supply decreased to 2.3 months in November (an all time low). This was close to the consensus forecast.

Comments on November Existing Home Sales – Earlier: NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decreased to 6.69 million in November — A few key points:

1) This was the highest sales rate for November since 2005. Some of the increase over the last several months was probably related to pent up demand from the shutdowns in March and April. Other reasons include record low mortgage rates, a move away from multi-family rentals, strong second home buying (to escape the high-density cities) and favorable demographics. The delay in the buying season has pushed the seasonally adjusted number to very high levels. For example, this number of sales, Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) in August, would have given a 5 million Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR), as opposed to 6.7 million. So the delay in the buying season is a factor in the headline number being so high.There are going to be some difficult comparisons in the second half of next year!

2) Inventory is very low, and was down 22% year-over-year (YoY) in November. This is the lowest level of inventory for November since at least the early 1990s. Months-of-supply is at a record low. Inventory will be important to watch in 2021, see: Some thoughts on Housing Inventory. This graph shows existing home sales by month for 2019 and 2020. Note that existing home sales picked up somewhat in the second half of 2019 as interest rates declined. Even with weak sales in April, May, and June, sales to date are up about 4% compared to the same period in 2019. The second graph shows existing home sales Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) by month (Red dashes are 2020), and the minimum and maximum for 2005 through 2019.Sales NSA in November (492,000) were 22% above sales last year in November (404,000). This was the highest sales for November (NSA) since 2005.

New Home Sales decrease to 841,000 Annual Rate in November – The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in November were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 841 thousand. The previous three months were revised down sharply.Sales of new single-family houses in November 2020 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 841,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 11.0 percent below the revised October rate of 945,000, but is 20.8 percent above the November 2019 estimate of 696,000. The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate.The last five months saw the highest sales rates since 2006. This is strong year-over-year growth. The second graph shows New Home Months of Supply. The months of supply was increased in November to 4.1 months from 3.5 months in October.The all time record high was 12.1 months of supply in January 2009. The all time record low is 3.5 months, most recently in September 2020.This is at the low end of the normal range (about 4 to 6 months supply is normal).“The seasonally-adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of November was 286,000. This represents a supply of 4.1 months at the current sales rate. ” Starting in 1973 the Census Bureau broke inventory down into three categories: Not Started, Under Construction, and Completed.The third graph shows the three categories of inventory starting in 1973.The inventory of completed homes for sale is low, and the combined total of completed and under construction is lower than normal.The last graph shows sales NSA (monthly sales, not seasonally adjusted annual rate).In November 2020 (red column), 55 thousand new homes were sold (NSA). Last year, 50 thousand homes were sold in November.The all time high for November was 86 thousand in 2005, and the all time low for November was 20 thousand in 2010. This was well expectations and sales in the three previous months were revised down sharply.

A few Comments on November New Home Sales — New home sales for November were reported at 841,000 on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis (SAAR). Sales for the previous three months were revised down sharply. Earlier: New Home Sales decrease to 841,000 Annual Rate in November.This was well below consensus expectations of 990,000, but sales were still up 20.8% from November 2019. The last five months were the highest sales rates since 2006. Clearly low mortgages rates, low existing home supply, and low sales in March and April (due to the pandemic) have led to a strong increase in sales. Favorable demographics (something I wrote about many times over the last decade) and a surging stock market have probably helped new home sales too.Another factor in the strong headline sales rate over the last several months was the delay in the selling season. Usually the strongest sales a re in the March to June time frame, but this year the strongest sales months were later in the year – so the usually seasonal factors boosted sales in late Summer and Fall.This graph shows new home sales for 2019 and 2020 by month (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate). New home sales were up 20.8% year-over-year (YoY) in November. Year-to-date (YTD) sales are up 19.1% (This is even above my optimistic forecast for 2020!). And on inventory: since new home sales are reported when the contract is signed – even if the home hasn’t been started – new home sales are not limited by inventory (except if no lots are available). Inventory for new home sales is important in that it means there will be more housing starts if inventory is low (like right now) – and fewer starts if inventory is too high (not now).

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 26.4% Year-over-year – From HotelNewsNow.com: STR US hotel results for week ending 19 December: U.S. weekly hotel occupancy decreased slightly from the previous week, according to the latest data from STR through 19 December. 13-19 December 2020 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019):

Occupancy: 36.8% (-26.4%)

Average daily rate (ADR): US$85.50 (-21.9%)

Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$31.45 (-42.5%)

The industry also surpassed one billion unsold room nights for the first time on record. The following 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 – before 2020).

Seasonally we’d expect the occupancy rate to decline into the new year. Since there is a seasonal pattern to the occupancy rate – see graph above – we can track the year-over-year change in occupancy to look for any improvement. This table shows the year-over-year change since the week ending Sept 19, 2020: This suggests no improvement over the last 3 months.

Personal Income decreased 1.1% in November, Spending decreased 0.4% — The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for November: Personal income decreased $221.8 billion (1.1 percent) in November according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $218.0 billion (1.2 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $63.3 billion (0.4 percent). Real DPI decreased 1.3 percent in November and Real PCE decreased 0.4 percent. The PCE price index had no change. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index had no change . The decrease in personal income was below expectations, and the decrease in PCE was also below expectations The November PCE price index increased 1.1 percent year-over-year and the November PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 1.4 percent year-over-year. The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) since January 2019 through November 2020 (2012 dollars). Note that the y-axis doesn’t start at zero to better show the change. The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE. Using the two-month method to estimate Q4 PCE growth, PCE was increasing at a 6.8% annual rate in Q4 2020. (using the mid-month method, PCE was increasing at 4.0%). However, it appears the economy contracted in December – so PCE growth could be lower than 4%.

Real Disposable Income Per Capita in November – With the release of this morning’s report on November Personal Incomes and Outlays, we can now take a closer look at“Real” Disposable Personal Income Per Capita. At two decimal places, the nominal -1.29% month-over-month change in disposable income is virtually unchanged when we adjust for inflation at -1.30%. This is a decrease from last month’s 0.79% nominal and 0.81% real decreases last month. The year-over-year metrics are 3.78% nominal and 2.63% real. Post-recession, the trend was one of steady growth, but generally flattened out in late 2015 with increases in 2012 and 2013. As a result of the CARES Act and the COVID pandemic, a major spike is seen in April 2020. The first chart shows both the nominal per capita disposable income and the real (inflation-adjusted) equivalent since 2000. This indicator was significantly disrupted by the bizarre but predictable oscillation caused by 2012 year-end tax strategies in expectation of tax hikes in 2013 and more recently, by the CARES Act stimulus. The BEA uses the average dollar value in 2012 for inflation adjustment. But the 2012 peg is arbitrary and unintuitive. For a more natural comparison, let’s compare the nominal and real growth in per-capita disposable income since 2000. Do you recall what you were doing on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium? Nominal disposable income is up 104% since then. But the real purchasing power of those dollars is up 41.2%.

Michigan Consumer Sentiment: December Final Reflects Cautionary Motives: The December Final came in at 80.7, up 3.8 from the November Final. Investing.com had forecast 81.3. Since its beginning in 1978, consumer sentiment is 6.4 percent below the average reading (arithmetic mean) and 5.3 percent below the geometric mean. Surveys of Consumers chief economist, Richard Curtin, makes the following comments: The Sentiment Index slipped in late December, although it remained higher than last month despite the ongoing surge in covid infections and deaths. The improvement was due to a large and rapid partisan shift, with Democrats becoming much more positive and Republicans much more negative. The largest change was in long term business prospects, as twice as many Democrats as three months ago expected a continuous expansion over the next five years (54% up from 27%), while that same favorable expectation was nearly cut in half among Republicans (32% down from 60%). The pandemic has had a much greater relative impact on assessments of the overall economy than on assessments of consumers’ current personal financial situations. Trends in how consumers evaluate their own finances and how they assess changes in the national economy have followed a close association over the past half century (see the chart). Since the start of the pandemic, however, a huge divide has grown across households in how they assess their own personal finances: the finances of those that continue to be employed and working at home have remained positive while those who have lost jobs and incomes have been quite negative. Growing inequalities have also been due to rising home and stock prices. In contrast, nearly everyone has reported negative assessments of current conditions in the national economy. This gap signifies the pandemic nature of the current downturn; the second largest gap occurred in the downturn surrounding 9/11. While the rollout of the vaccine has been greeted as the beginning of the end, the end of the pandemic is still on the distant horizon in terms of a return to normalcy for consumer behavior, even among the most favored households. Precautionary motives will continue to shape both economic and personal behavior. [More…] See the chart below for a long-term perspective on this widely watched indicator. Recessions and real GDP are included to help us evaluate the correlation between the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index and the broader economy.

Headline Durable Goods Orders Up 0.9% in November – The Advance Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders released today gives us a first look at the latest durable goods numbers. Here is the Bureau’s summary on new orders: New orders for manufactured durable goods in November increased $2.2 billion or 0.9 percent to $244.2 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This increase, up seven consecutive months, followed a 1.8 percent October increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.4 percent. Excluding defense, new orders increased 0.7 percent. Transportation equipment, up six of the last seven months, led the increase, $1.5 billion or 1.9 percent to $78.8 billion.Download full PDFThe latest new orders number at 0.9% month-over-month (MoM) was better than the Investing.com 0.7% estimate. The series is up 3.8% year-over-year (YoY).If we exclude transportation, “core” durable goods was up 0.4% MoM, which was worse than the Investing.com consensus of 0.6%. The core measure is up 4.8% YoY.If we exclude both transportation and defense for an even more fundamental “core”, the latest number is up 0.1% MoM and up 1.6% YoY.Core Capital Goods New Orders (nondefense capital goods used in the production of goods or services, excluding aircraft) is an important gauge of business spending, often referred to as Core Capex. It is up 0.4% MoM and up 6.5% YoY.For a look at the big picture and an understanding of the relative size of the major components, here is an area chart of Durable Goods New Orders minus Transportation and Defense with those two components stacked on top. We’ve also included a dotted line to show the relative size of Core Capex.

Richmond Fed Manufacturing Shows Improvement in December – Fifth District manufacturing activity strengthened in November, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite index fell to 15 in November from 29 in October but still indicates expansion.The complete data series behind today’s Richmond Fed manufacturing report, which dates from November 1993, is available here.Here is a snapshot of the complete Richmond Fed Manufacturing Composite series.Here is an excerpt from the latest Richmond Fed manufacturing overview:Fifth District manufacturing activity showed signs of improvement in December, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite index rose from 15 in November to 19 in December, buoyed by increases in the indexes for new orders and employment, while the third component – the shipments index – declined but remained positive. Indexes for local business conditions and capital spending were also positive, and manufacturers were optimistic that conditions would improve in the coming months. Link to Report Here is a somewhat closer look at the index since the turn of the century.

GoDaddy uses fake holiday bonus notification to test employees on email phishing – Internet domain company GoDaddy used a holiday bonus notification to test employees on email phishing scams, after workers had already been told they would not receive a bonus this year. The email to all staff, obtained by NBC affiliate KPNX in Arizona, was sent on Dec. 14 and read: “Happy Holiday GoDaddy! 2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you!” “Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus!” the email continued. “To ensure that you receive your one-time bonus in time for the Holidays, please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th.” The email from GoDaddy, which is headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., comes months after CEO Aman Bhutani announced companywide layoffs, prompting some employees to call the testing mechanism insensitive, KPNX reported Wednesday. The Hill has reached out to GoDaddy for comment. GoDaddy, which has millions of customers, has fallen victim to various data breaches. Earlier this year it disclosed a breach that occurred in October 2019, according to Forbes. The company is not the first to use fake bonuses as a way to test employees. News media company Tribune Publishing sent out a similar email to employees in September, using bonuses as bait. The company had previously announced it was closing down certain newsrooms, imposing pay cuts and furloughing some employees. Tribune later issued an apology and called the email “misleading and insensitive.”

Coronavirus outbreak forces closure of Amazon warehouse in New Jersey – On December 19, Amazon closed its warehouse in Robbinsville, New Jersey, (PNE5) after testing revealed an increase in asymptomatic coronavirus cases. The company notified workers that the site would remain closed until December 26 and that they would be paid for shifts they missed because of the closure.”This is exactly why we built the [in-house coronavirus testing] program – to identify asymptomatic cases and ensure that we can take swift action to prevent spread,” said Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski in a statement. But she did not answer a reporter’s question about whether the facility would be cleaned while it is closed, nor did she say how many cases had been detected at the Robbinsville warehouse.Levandowski’s depiction of Amazon’s diligence does not jibe with workers’ experience. The text messages that the company sends to alert employees about infections often are delayed. They do not identify the infected workers, state where they were stationed or explain who has been in contact with them. Text messages have even been sent to the wrong warehouse, according to workers.The outbreak in Robbinsville is not the first to occur at an Amazon facility in New Jersey. In April, 48 workers at a fulfillment center in Edison became infected with the virus. At the time, it was the largest reported outbreak at any of Amazon’s locations in the state. New Jersey is an important center of operations for Amazon. The company employs more than 34,000 workers at 14 fulfillment centers and three delivery stations in the state. New Jersey also is home to 21 Whole Foods stores, which are owned by Amazon.

Armed fascists storm Oregon state Capitol building — Armed fascists led by Joey Gibson and Chandler Pappas of the Patriot Prayer group forced their way into the Oregon state Capitol in Salem on Monday morning, in an attempt to disrupt a special legislative session. Gibson and Pappas led the group, composed of roughly 100 people, in a six-hour standoff on the Capitol grounds to protest an $800 million bill, which, among other things, would provide rental assistance to landlords and tenants, permit carry-out alcoholic beverages, extend an eviction moratorium and limit school liability for coronavirus claims. The protest had been planned in advance by Gibson. On the ground footage from independent journalist Laura Jedeed shows protesters, some wearing body armor and others carrying semi-automatic rifles, shoving and spraying mace at police as they attempt to get inside. Protesters also shattered windows in the Capitol. In contrast to the thousands of anti-police violence protests that have occurred over the past year, the police were more than accommodating, allowing the anti-lockdown protesters to occupy the capitol grounds for several hours even after an “unlawful assembly” was declared by Oregon State Police. After a section of the crowd managed to get into the foyer of the capitol, the cops reluctantly deployed mace and inert pepper balls against those inside the building, while a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) advised the crowd outside to disperse. Protesters attempted to get into the building multiple times. By the afternoon, state troopers, including riot police with Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, were deployed outside the Capitol, prompting a brief stand-off before the crowd dispersed. While many of the protesters were shouting racist and fascist chants, advocating an end to any restrictions to stop the spread of the coronavirus, some in the crowd were simply demanding economic relief after their businesses or workplaces had been shut down for months. Inside the building, Republican state Senator Dallas Heard accused his colleagues of joining Democratic Governor Kate Brown’s “campaign of intimidation against the people and children of God,” signified by the requirement for legislators to wear a mask inside the building. Brown, along with Portland’s Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, have been repeatedly denounced by President Trump for being insufficiently brutal in repressing protests against police violence.

As temperatures plummet and pandemic rages, homelessness in Michigan poised to explode – Suffering is dramatically increasing as winter starts during the upsurge of the COVID-19 crisis across the United States. The economic impact has fallen on the working class; wages are falling and protections from eviction are set to expire in less than a week – a period of time which would be extended only for another month should the “relief” bill passed by Congress be signed into law. Already landlords have initiated tens of thousands of legal proceedings to force tenants from their homes for their inability to pay. Homelessness, already impacting hundreds of thousands of adults and children, is poised to explode. Michigan, once among the more prosperous states, with its concentration of automobile assembly and parts plants, but today well below the median in terms of household income, is particularly affected. Homelessness is growing in cities and towns across the state. The local NBC affiliate in Kalamazoo, WOOD-TV, reported earlier this month on a homeless encampment that has doubled in size from 12 tents to more than two dozen since the spring. Not far from the Pfizer facility producing COVID-19 vaccines – the largest plant in pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer’s operations – and the headquarters of medical device giant Stryker, workers who have been unable to afford their homes and apartments are camping out in the cold, with relief coming only from working class volunteers who arrive to bring food, firewood, and help as best they can. One resident told WOOD-TV that she had taken to placing her tent within a larger tent that might act as a wind-stop. “I am cold all the time,” she said. Homelessness in Michigan is widespread. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), there were 8,575 people that experienced homelessness in the state on any given night in 2019. For the US as a whole, that number is 500,000. This number could easily balloon into the millions if the national eviction moratorium expires at the end of December or January. Federal funding remains a pittance in comparison to the scale of homelessness. The misnamed CARES Act, passed in March chiefly to prop up financial markets, provided $4 billion in funding for homeless services. Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy for the NAEH, told NBC News that $15 billion was actually needed simply to address the increase in homelessness in 2020 that has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated hemorrhaging of jobs. Other cities in Michigan, large and small, have seen the need for shelter grow throughout the year. Chad Audi, president of Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries told the Detroit Free Press that one site had an overflow capacity limit of 125 beds. In previous years, bed usage always lessened in summer with warmer weather. But this year it never dipped below 120. Meanwhile, in Traverse City, a popular tourist destination but with a relatively small population of about 16,000, a memorial walk was held on Monday to remember the 13 homeless people who died on the streets there this year. Nationally, this number is estimated at about 13,000.

Mom and daughter who worked at same preschool die of COVID-19 –A Florida mother and daughter, teachers at the same nursery school, died within days of each other from coronavirus complications.Marilyn Foshee, 81, and her daughter, Julie Foshee-Knowell, 44, were both diagnosed with COVID-19 in late November, the Miami Herald reported. The women, longtime employees of Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville, were believed to have contracted the virus during the Thanksgiving break. They never made it back to school. Foshee-Knowell died over the weekend. Her mother died a few days earlier, on Dec. 15. Mom Marylin, known to students as “Mimi,” was a longtime preschool teacher, who had been involved with the school since 1994, according to News4Jax. Her daughter, the preschool director, started as an assistant at the school when she was a teenager and rose through the ranks, the outlet reported. Trinity spokesman Pastor Tom Messer told the Florida Times-Union that the beloved educators “lived in a way that they gave their life up for everybody else.” A GoFundMe page was initially set up by family friend Angie Dennard to help cover Foshee’s funeral costs. Now the money will go to pay for services for both women.

Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Teachers Union advance deadly school reopening plans – On December 14, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced the hiring of 2,000 school workers to assist in the full reopening of the nation’s third largest school district. Some principals have reported to local media that one-quarter to one-half of teachers and staff may not return to schools next month due to the unacceptable health risks to all involved. Earlier this month, CPS announced its homicidal school reopening plan amid the deepest surge of the pandemic in Illinois and across the United States. Teachers and staff for pre-Kindergarten, moderate and intensive special education cluster programs are scheduled to return to class January 4, while students for these classes are set to return on January 11. Teachers and staff for grades K-8 are to report to schools January 25, with students for these grades scheduled to be back in school February 1. Teachers reporting to work in schools will be responsible for simultaneously teaching students in-person in the classroom, as well as those who opt to stay home and learn online. This “hybrid” system, as teachers nationwide have been reporting for many months, is the worst of all possible situations, and leaves everyone dangerously exposed to the virus. Further, splitting their time and attention between in-person and online students is in part why many additional staff are needed, underscoring that quality of education is not the priority in reopening the schools. The push to reopen schools in Chicago and across the US takes place as the coronavirus pandemic spreads uncontrollably across much of the country, hitting the Midwest especially hard in recent months. The state of Illinois is nearing 100,000 cases of COVID-19, with over 16,000 dead this year and over 100 dying per day for the last 12 days.. Chicago’s current seven-day average COVID-19 test positivity rate is 11.3 percent. Hospital bed availability is critically low, with intensive care unit (ICU) bed availability at 22.8 percent and hospital bed availability at 16.2 percent. Expecting that numerous teachers will be out on medical leave or get sick as schools reopen in January, CPS is seeking to hire 1,000 “cadre substitutes” and low-wage, part-time classroom assistants. The “cadre substitute” will be a dues-paying member of the CTU. The classroom assistant is a $15 per hour position, including in-class supervision, health screenings and social distance monitoring. For risking their lives, they will be paid barely above minimum wage and work 6.75 hours a day, with an unpaid 45 minute lunch break.

Alabama doubles down on school reopenings, as healthcare catastrophe hits the state – As the state death toll in Alabama surpasses 4,500, with ICU beds near capacity, Montgomery Public Schools (MPS) sent teachers home for the holiday with a menacing memo, threatening that they must be prepared to return to unsafe schools January 4. The memo to “MPS ALL,” said it wanted to “make sure our employees” know that the Federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act expires on December 31 and that any absences due to COVID-19 exposure would have to be covered through accrued leave. The administration notes, in no uncertain terms: “When we return to school on January 4, 2021, the leave that the federal government has provided will not be in effect.” It adds, “All positive cases will require that the employee uses his/her accrued leave,” and “All absences of 5 or more consecutive days require a doctor’s note.” The right to isolate and work from home would only be granted, the document adds, “as a result of close contact at school” (emphasis in the original). This means teachers who may have not accrued leave time or who have already used it for quarantining will be left with few options and pressured to return to work even if they are sick or contagious. Such blatantly irresponsible policies threaten not just the health and safety of school workers, but students, parents and the community as a whole. Montgomery teachers were infuriated by this email. One angrily posted on Facebook, “This is the most insensitive and distasteful thing anyone could do on our last day of school before going on Christmas break which happens to be the same day [that] another MPS employee, 2nd employee at Lee [High School has died] within 2 weeks. This is a damn disgrace … Someone has a lot of blood on their hands.” The Alabama healthcare system has reached a state of crisis. The state currently has the fifth highest rate of infection per capita over the past seven days, at 82.4 daily cases per 100,000 people. On December 22, there were 4,758 new cases recorded and the death toll reached 4,587. By comparison, all of mainland China with nearly 1.4 billion people has a COVID-19 death toll of 4,634. The number of new cases is expected to reach 100,000 for the month of December, up from the 57,000 added in November. On December 11, only seven percent of the state’s ICU beds were available, according to Dr. Donald Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association. That day, Montgomery hospitals reported zero beds available. Jefferson County, the largest in the state, had only 13 available. Though bed availability changes from day to day, the trend of increasing hospitalizations has been consistent. New York Times’ current estimate of ICU occupancy in Alabama is 91 percent. COVID-19 hospitalizations in Alabama reached a record 2,527 on Tuesday, the first time hospitalizations exceeded 2,500 since tracking began.

Washington educators denounce Democratic Governor Jay Inslee’s plan to reopen schools -As the coronavirus spreads like wildfire throughout the United States and along the West Coast, Washington state’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee announced last Wednesday, “It’s time to begin getting kids back into classrooms.” The announcement follows the reopening of schools in New York City, which has spearheaded the broader trend of cities and states controlled by the Democratic Party reopening schools as quickly as possible. In addition to Washington state, last week saw Chicago and Washington, DC, announce plans to reopen schools in January. Similar plans were implemented across the state of Oregon last month, while officials in Oakland, California, are also moving to reopen schools in January. .Monica, an elementary specialist from Seattle who has two of her own children in school, raised important questions, asking, “What exactly does improved classroom ventilation mean? Does it mean that we all get an air purifier paid for by our districts, or does it simply mean keeping a door or window open?” Referring to the state restrictions against bars, restaurants and fitness centers implemented on November 15, she added, “If it’s dangerous for five people to eat together at a table in a restaurant, how is it safe for 15 children to eat together in a classroom?” When asked about the role that schools play in providing childcare so that parents can return to work for major corporations, Monica replied, “So it’s a corporate push to get workers back … to Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing. Our governor is buddies with Bill Gates.” Trisha, a longtime paraeducator in a district just north of Seattle who also spoke with the WSWS, said that she is over 60 years old and has a compromised immune system. She is greatly concerned about returning to the classroom, which for her involves going from class to class as well as the lunchroom and recess. She also works one-on-one with students. If she is no longer allowed to work remotely, she has been informed by Human Resources that her choices are to report to work or take leave. Once her sick leave runs out, she would be unpaid. She noted, “It seems that even a letter from my doctor does not change anything.”

Biden picks Education Secretary committed to opening schools as pandemic rages – On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said that he will nominate Miguel Cardona as Secretary of Education for his incoming administration. Cardona has been Connecticut’s commissioner of education since 2019 and his chief qualification is heavily promoting the reopening of schools during the pandemic, which Biden has stated will be a top “national priority” upon taking office. In selecting Cardona, who is of Puerto Rican descent, Biden is furthering the promotion of racial politics to pursue his thoroughly reactionary agenda. In this case, Cardona’s background as an English language learner and his supposed sympathy for students struggling with remote learning will be invoked to justify the opening of schools throughout the US in the interests of Wall Street. The homicidal campaign to reopen schools since July has never been about improving learning conditions for students, as both parties have deliberately starved school districts and states of the funding needed to ensure high quality remote learning and added assistance to low-income and other at-risk students. Rather, the sole aim in reopening schools is to compel parents to return to unsafe workplaces, in order to pump out ever-greater profits for the financial oligarchy. Biden stated that upon taking office, “my team will work to see that a majority of our schools can be open by the end of my first 100 days.” With this goal in mind, Biden is selecting Cardona due to the central role he has played in reopening schools in Connecticut this fall. Since the summer, Cardona has joined Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Ned Lamont in falsely claiming that schools are not vectors for the spread of COVID-19. In an op-ed in the News-Times last week, without citing any evidence, Cardona claimed, “ Cases reported by schools, which include students who are in full remote learning, are being traced back to community spread happening outside the building.”Cardona has continually pressured districts to resume in-person learning, such that by December 11 only 28 percent of school districts in the state were operating under a fully remote model, with the rest either fully in-person or under the equally unsafe “hybrid” model. Throughout the fall, state metrics guiding school reopenings were repeatedly revised to enable schools to stay open even as cases quadrupled the original safety thresholds.As a result of these and other policies implemented by the state’s Democratic politicians, Connecticut now has the fifth highest ratio of deaths per person among all US states. In total, 167,377 of the state’s 3.6 million residents have been infected with COVID-19 and 5,676 people have died. Much is being made of Cardona’s background working in public education, with the press and union officials glowing that Biden has fulfilled his campaign promise of appointing an “educator” as his Education Secretary to replace the despised billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos. In reality, Cardona has spent the past 17 years of his career as a well-paid administrator and he is thoroughly hostile to teachers and education workers. As with Obama’s hated Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Cardona is a proponent of charter schools, “school choice,” and other schemes that aim to privatize public education. As Connecticut’s education commissioner, he has fought to reinstate high-stakes standardized testing later this year, which he will likely replicate on the national level in order to pressure schools to reopen.

West Point accuses more than 70 cadets of cheating in worst academic scandal in nearly 45 years – More than 70 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point were accused of cheating on a math exam, the worst academic scandal since the 1970s at the Army’s premier training ground for officers. Fifty-eight cadets admitted cheating on the exam, which was administered remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of them have been enrolled in a rehabilitation program and will be on probation for the remainder of their time at the academy. Others resigned, and some face hearings that could result in their expulsion. The scandal strikes at the heart of the academy’s reputation for rectitude, espoused by its own moral code, which is literally etched in stone: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” Tim Bakken, a law professor at West Point, called the scandal a national security issue. West Point cadets become senior leaders the nation depends on. “There’s no excuse for cheating when the fundamental code for cadets is that they should not lie, cheat or steal,” Bakken said. “Therefore when the military tries to downplay effects of cheating at the academy, we’re really downplaying the effects on the military as a whole. We rely on the military to tell us honestly when we should fight wars, and when we can win them.” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said West Point’s disciplinary system is effective. “The Honor process is working as expected and cadets will be held accountable for breaking the code,” McCarthy said in a statement. “The honor system at West Point is strong and working as designed,” Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, the academy’s superintendent, said in a statement. “We made a deliberate decision to uphold our academic standards during the pandemic. We are holding cadets to those standards.”

Hunger in the Philippines reaches all-time highs – Hunger has risen to historic highs in the Philippines, according to the latest findings from the country’s pollster Social Weather Stations. The finding is an indictment of the capitalist system and the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in which millions have lost their livelihood and employment without compensation. Residents try to salvage belongings after their homes were toppled from Typhoon Goni in San Andres, Catanduanes province, eastern Philippines on Monday Nov. 2, 2020 [Credit: Philippine Red Cross via AP] Social Weather Survey released its findings last Wednesday based on its first survey conducted through face-to-face interviews since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Between November 21 – 25, the pollster sampled 1,500 adults and probed the issue of involuntary hunger – that is, hunger due to the lack of food to eat. The results were extrapolated to the general population with the assistance of the government’s Philippine Statistics Authority population projections for 2020. The questions asked were, “In the last three months, did it happen even once that your family experienced hunger and not have anything to eat?” If the answer was yes, respondents were asked: “Did it happen only once, a few times, often or always?” The answers “often” and “always” were taken as constituting severe hunger, the two other answers as moderate hunger. The findings show that 16.0 percent of the population, or an estimated 4.0 million families, experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months. This is actually a drop from the record high in September which reached 30.7 percent (almost a third of all families) owing to prolonged periods of unemployment and loss of income as a result of government lockdowns. However, it is still double the pre-pandemic levels of 8.8 percent which were recorded in December 2019. Combining the quarterly hunger surveys in May (16.7 percent) and July (20.9 percent) with those in September and December, the average hunger rate for Filipino families in 2020 assumes an historic high of 21.1 percent. This surpasses the previous records of 19.9 percent in 2011 and 2012. Hunger was most prevalent in Metro Manila with 23.3 percent (almost 1 in 4 families), followed by 16.0 percent in Mindanao, 14.4 percent in Balance Luzon, and 14.3 percent in the Visayas. The record high hunger rates of September are being used by the government of Rodrigo Duterte to economically bludgeon the population back to work, accept the risk of getting infected and to produce profits. Virus restrictions have been eased in recent months in order to revive the economy which is reportedly set to contract by 9.5 percent this year. “I’ve never seen hunger at this level before,” said Jomar Fleras, executive director of Rise Against Hunger (RAH) in the Philippines in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP). “If you go out there everybody will tell you that they’re more afraid of dying from hunger than dying from COVID. They don’t care about COVID anymore.”

Australian arts and entertainment workers devastated by coronavirus pandemic Throughout the world, the arts and entertainment sectors have been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. The dangerous and highly infectious virus has accelerated a decades-long assault on funding for creative and cultural endeavours at the hands of cost-cutting governments and brought into focus the perilous social conditions facing the overwhelming majority of artists and entertainers. Under conditions where there was no vaccine, lockdowns and restrictions on public gatherings were necessary basic responses to the dangerous and highly-contagious disease. Trillions of dollars internationally have been handed over to big business but little or no compensation made available to the tens of thousands of individuals whose livelihoods depend on live audiences. Artists have been forced to live off their often meagre savings or poverty-level welfare payments. While Australia has so far avoided the massive COVID-19 death tolls and infection rates seen overseas, the country’s live performance industry has not escaped the devastating economic consequences of the pandemic. Along with tourism and hospitality workers, entertainment workers were among the first to lose work as the result of lockdowns, struggle to receive government assistance, and are still many months, if not years, away from a return to pre-COVID-19 levels of employment. In mid-March, the closure of bars, restaurants and other venues meant the overnight cancellation of virtually all work for the hundreds of thousands employed in the arts and entertainment sector. By the end of April, more than $340 million in lost work had been reported to the ilostmygig website. A report last month by consulting firm EY found that 79,000 jobs – two thirds of the workforce – had been lost in the live entertainment industry since October 2019, and the economic output had decreased by $23.6 billion (65 percent). The report also noted that, “for commercial live entertainment operators both large and small, revenue in September/October remains at no more than 10 percent of 2019 levels.” Between February and August, hours worked in the “Arts and Recreation Services” fell by more than 25 percent, the largest decline in any Australian sector, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Opera Australia recently announced the forced redundancy of almost one third of its 56 full-time orchestral players, before advertising most of the “redundant” positions as temporary roles. This brazen move towards increased casualisation is typical of restructuring being carried out in numerous industries, ostensibly because of COVID-19. These job cuts at Australia’s biggest arts employer are the product of decades of funding cuts to the country’s cultural institutions and the insistence that they must be run as profitable businesses rather than for the good of society. Only one fifth of Opera Australia’s revenue comes from government funding; the majority comes from ticket sales, meaning the pandemic has had a major impact. Yet the company was prevented from receiving emergency funding unless it first sold off its headquarters and warehouse in Sydney.

Canadian Cargill plant closed after more than 80 employees test positive for coronavirus – Last week, on Thursday, December 17, a Cargill meat-processing plant in Guelph, Ontario, was forced to close after a major outbreak of coronavirus. Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph (WDG) Public Health announced that day that 87 cases had been confirmed, concentrated to the Guelph facility, while an additional 42 were considered to have been exposed and instructed to self-quarantine. According to the WDG Public Health website, there have been 2,175 confirmed cases and 44 fatalities in the WDG area, a population of approximately 272,000. The area was moved into the “red zone” by the government of Ontario on December 11, triggering stricter social distancing protocols, including limiting large gatherings. In an email to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Kitchener-Waterloo, a Cargill spokesperson wrote, “We are taking this step out of an abundance of caution as our local workforce deals with the community-wide impacts of COVID-19. As we work in partnership with the union, our employees will be paid the 36 hours per week as outlined in our collective agreement.” In a statement issued by the company, Cargill “stressed the importance” that “any employees who are sick or have been exposed to anyone with COVID-19 in the last 14 days to stay home.” However, despite the outbreak in the plant and the spread of the virus in the community, Cargill has announced that it plans to reopen on December 29, less than two weeks after the shutdown began and well before the WDG area leaves “red zone” status. Moreover, before shutting production Cargill required workers finish their shifts to process what unprocessed meats remained in the facility.

Massive new coronavirus outbreaks at Amazon in Germany – In the last few days, several hundred workers of the shipping giant Amazon in Germany have become infected with coronavirus. Amazon distribution center workers continue to toil under deadly conditions while Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man, further enriches himself during the pandemic. At least 100 of the 900-person workforce at the sorting and distribution center in Garbsen near Hannover had been infected by the time mass testing began at the plant. Despite this, the highly-automated Garbsen facility, one of the newest and most modern of its kind, has not yet been closed. The Amazon warehouses in Bayreuth, Koblenz and Graben near Augsburg are also reporting new outbreaks, but work continues at full speed in all sorting and distribution centers. The online retail giant Amazon is taking advantage of the so-called “shutdown” imposed by the German federal government, which has shut down in-person retail (with the exception of grocery stores). However, schools and daycare centers remain open as well as public transportation and shipping firms. In spite of the “shutdown,” COVID-19 cases continue to rise, and hospitals are overcrowded. The Robert Koch Institute reported on Friday 33,777 new infections and 813 COVID-19 deaths in Germany, once again an alarming new record. Yet, business is booming in the entire shipping industry. Much to the delight of Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s richest man and CEO of Amazon. He has increased his wealth by over $70 billion during the pandemic. Amazon now hopes to massively increase its Christmas sales. Amazon workers’ wages and health precautions will not be increased. For them, the busy Christmas period, especially under conditions of the pandemic, means incessant stress, longer hours and putting their lives in danger. In order to send out all seasonal extra orders, the company has added around 10,000 temporary workers in its German distribution centers. This has caused “chaos and a lack of social distancing,” as one operations manager recently put it. The promised Christmas bonus of 2 Euros per hour between December 9 and 22 only applies for the hours that workers are actually present. The consequence of this is that those who are sick come to work, which increases the risk of infecting others.

Covid-19: Christmas rules tightened for England, Scotland and Wales – BBC –The planned relaxation of Covid rules for Christmas has been scrapped for large parts of south-east England and cut to just Christmas Day for the rest of England, Scotland and Wales.From midnight, a new tier four will be introduced in areas including London, Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire. Those in tier four cannot mix indoors with anyone not from their household.Elsewhere in England, Scotland and Wales, relaxed indoor mixing rules are cut from five days to Christmas Day. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the changes for England at a Downing Street briefing after scientists said a new coronavirus variant was spreading more rapidly.Tier-four restrictions – similar to England’s second national lockdown – will apply in all areas in the South East currently in tier three, covering Kent, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey (excluding Waverley), Gosport, Havant, Portsmouth, Rother and Hastings.It will also apply in London (all 32 boroughs and the City of London) and the East of England (Bedford, Central Bedford, Milton Keynes, Luton, Peterborough, Hertfordshire, Essex (excluding Colchester, Uttlesford and Tendring).In Scotland, Covid restrictions will only be relaxed on Christmas Day, with mainland Scotland being placed under the tightest restrictions from Boxing Day.Outlining the changes, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she wished she had acted quicker to curb the virus in February, adding: “Standing here saying this actually makes me want to cry.”A ban on travel to the rest of the UK will also apply over the festive period.In Wales, First Minister Mark Drakeford announced that the country will be placed under lockdown from midnight.In Northern Ireland, no changes have been made to Christmas restrictions,with three households allowed to meet from 23 to 27 December. The country is set to enter a six-week lockdown from 26 December.

Millions forced to cancel Christmas as mutant coronavirus strain spreads in U.K. – Millions of people in London and the U.K.’s southeast will be forced to cancel their Christmas plans after scientists said Saturday that a new coronavirusvariant was spreading more quickly. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a news conference that the toughest set of coronavirus restrictions – known as “Tier 4” – will be put in place from Sunday, putting regions under the strictest lockdown rules. As a result, nonessential shops, gyms, cinemas, hairdressers and bowling alleys will be forced to close for two weeks, while people will be restricted to meeting one other person from another household in an outdoor public space. A “bubble” policy – allowing up to three households to meet over the holiday period in parts of the country that are not under Tier 4 restrictions – will be severely curtailed and will only apply on Christmas Day, Johnson said. He added that he “bitterly regretted” the changes, but insisted they were “necessary.””Alas, when the facts change, you have to change your approach,” he said, adding that a briefing he had on Friday “about this mutation of the virus, particularly about the speed of transmission, was not possible to ignore.” “The message is that this is the year to lift a glass to those who aren’t there, in the knowledge that it’s precisely because they’re not there to celebrate Christmas with you this year that we all have a better chance that they’ll be there next year,” he said. Johnson spoke out after he was advised by scientists that the new coronavirus variant was spreading more rapidly. The chief medical officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, said in a statement Saturday that the U.K. had informed the World Health Organization about the mutant strain. “As announced on Monday, the U.K. has identified a new variant of Covid-19 through Public Health England’s genomic surveillance,” he said, adding that preliminary modeling data and rising cases in the country’s southeast showed “the new strain can spread more quickly.” He added that scientists were “continuing to analyze the available data to improve our understanding.”However, he insisted that there was “no current evidence to suggest the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments although urgent work is under way to confirm this.” There has been mounting anxiety across as Britain – like other countries across Europe – is working to curb a second wave of Covid-19 cases and deaths, and the government is having to defend a plan to relax contact restrictions for five days over the Christmas period in order to lift the national mood. “The government was too slow to introduce restrictions in the spring and again in the autumn. It should now reverse its rash decision to allow household mixing,” the British Medical Journal and Health Service Journal said in a unique joint editorial this week.

London news: Britons FURIOUS as Londoners FLEE capital after Tier 4 rules announced –Shocking images on social media showed crowds packing main London stations including Kings Cross and Euston as they attempting to leave the capital before the deadline hit.But those escaping the capital have angered Brits up and down the country with many calling for fines to be issued.One person said: “Utterly selfish behaviour.”Only they matter, not the country getting back on its feet, not other people’s lives, not broken families with dead relatives. “Shameful.”A second reader said: “Look at the rats leaving the sinking ship.”Why don’t they grow up?”Christmas is supposed to be for children.” “Spread the infection far and wide and then blame Boris.”A sixth reader called them all “totally selfish” and said it is not the Government’s fault but the “selfish people” spreading the virus.They said: “Totally selfish rushing out of London to help spread the virus nationwide.”Let’s watch the next explosion of death. Police given powers to impose fines on rule breakers “This is not the Government’s fault this is selfish people spreading the disease now watch Keir Starmer try to score political points.”He has his hindsight crystal ball to hand.”Someone else said: “Nothing like spreading Christmas cheer around the country while killing your relatives, each and every one should be prosecuted.”Another reader pointed out how many of these people travelling to spend Christmas with their family could have the new strain of the virus.They said: “Unbelievable, many of these people could have the new strain and not be aware of it, so will spread it outside London.”Thanks a bunch.”Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested the tougher measures – which require about a third of the population of England to stay at home except for essential reasons such as work – might remain in place until vaccinations become more widely available.He said today: “We’ve got a long way to go to sort this.”Essentially we’ve got to get that vaccine rolled out to keep people safe. Given how much faster this new variant spreads, it’s going to be very difficult to keep it under control until we have the vaccine rolled out.”

Tier 4 lockdown: Matt Hancock slams Brits trying to leave London – The Health Secretary has branded Londoners who left the city in huge crowds on Saturday night ‘totally irresponsible’. It comes after the Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced at 4pm that the capital would be placed into a new ‘tier four’ within hours, meaning people risked being arrested for leaving the capital after midnight. That sparked huge numbers of people unable to social distance crowding into rail stations as the scramble to leave was compared to ‘the last train out of Saigon’. Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday, Mr Hancock hit out at people trying to flee the capital last night. Sighing dramatically and shaking his head, he said: ‘This was clearly totally irresponsible behaviour. The Chief Medical Officer (Professor Chris Whitty) was absolutely clear that people should unpack their bags if they have them packed.’ . The Government has been slammed for the Christmas U-turn – which it blamed on a more contagious variant of Covid-19 – and was this morning accused of not following the science. Mr Hancock continued: ‘I think it is relatively small numbers and the large, vast majority of people throughout this whole pandemic have followed the rules, been responsible and played their part and I want to thank everybody for doing that. Londoners fleeing city ‘totally irresponsible’ says Health Secretary ‘It is more important than ever that people are responsible, not only stick to the rules, but even within the rules restrict social contact as much as is possible because this is deadly serious.’ Mr Hancock struggled to answer why Brits were told ahead of time that they could celebrate Christmas and make plans for celebration over five days across three households, only for that to be taken away. Earlier in the pandemic, Mr Johnson had suggested the UK could be ‘back to normal’ by Christmas. But the Government has come under fire for changing the rules at the last minute on Saturday, with many suggesting online that the scenes in London should have been planned for. And the British Medical Association (BMA) joined the pile on this morning implying the Government had not ‘managed’ the change well or followed the science. When asked by Sky’s Sophy Ridge how concerned he was about the new strain of coronavirus, Dr Nagpaul said: ‘We were concerned at the time the Prime Minister announced the five-day relaxation for Christmas because the science told us then that the virus was spreading week-on-week

Countries impose UK travel restrictions as more infectious Covid strain threatens to spread worldwide — Britain recorded 33,364 new cases of COVID-19, 18,871 hospitalisations and 215 deaths – spurred on by the new more infectious strain first acknowledged by Boris Johnson’s government last week. More than 40 countries have imposed flight and other travel restrictions on the UK to contain the spread of the new strain which is reported to be 70 percent more infectious than the previously dominant strains. They include at least 18 European countries, as well as Russia, India, Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru. The US is expected to follow. But Professor Calum Semple, of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has warned that the mutated strain is likely to become the dominant global strain nevertheless. Semple, professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, when asked by Sky News whether the mutant strain will become globally dominant, answered in the affirmative as it was affecting more people: “Because the virus has the evolutionary advantage in transmitting more quickly, it will out-compete all the other strains, and so it will naturally do that.” He added, “As immunity comes into the community more widely, then you’ll start to see more pressure on the virus and you’re more likely to see other escapes of other variations,” before warning, “We do not yet have herd immunity despite those people that think herd immunity is going to be the salvation. We won’t have it until a very large number of people have been vaccinated.” There is no evidence that the new strain is more deadly than its predecessors, or that it is resistant to the various vaccines now being rolled out. But its higher rate of infectivity means more cases, hospitalisations, and deaths and demands a faster and more widespread vaccination drive and far more effective measures of containment. These are still not being imposed in the UK or in any of the countries now belatedly imposing travel restrictions. Even if the spread of the mutation is limited, it is already active on the continent and is only one of thousands of mutations worldwide – some of which have similar characteristics. British scientists are reportedly monitoring 4,000 strains of coronavirus. These include the D614G variant that became the dominant strain in Europe and then spread globally. A new strain was identified in October as responsible for 90 percent of new infections in Spain and is likely to have spread throughout Europe due to tourism.

Brexit Event Horizon and Covid Mutation Deliver Lumps of Coal to UK for Christmas –Yves Smith -One has to wonder if all the bad karma that the UK incurred in its imperial days has finally come home to roost with a vengeance. The UK has found that the Brexit cliff edge arrived early thanks to a Covid cordon imposed by its trade partners, and as we’ll discuss soon, the real Brexit cliff is bearing down on the UK.But for the Brexit part, one doesn’t have to look that far back in history to find causes. Even though Thatcher did pump for the UK joining the EEC, her initial enthusiasm turned to distaste. That led among other things to the UK having a half-in, half out attitude, regularly looking for ways to play the spoiler to its advantage. That spectacularly backfired when the UK pushed hard for Eastern European countries to join the block, anticipated that they would become allies in opposing the Germany-France axis. The UK estimated that the entry of Poland would result in first year emigration of Poles to the UK of 50,000. It turned out to be 500,000, putting pressure not just on wages but on low-end housing in a country already at the very low end for residential square footage per capita among advanced economies.And that’s before getting to the great damage Thatcherism did to the UK, and how UK membership in the EU helped accelerate neoliberalism taking hold on the Continent. As readers know too well, the Tories would regularly scapegoat the EU for austerity the UK imposed all on its own.But to the Covid lockdown imposed on the UK by its trade partners. Unless you took an Internet break over the weekend, you have probably heard that there are two new Covid mutations that have health authorities worried, one in the UK and one in South Africa. The one in South Africa may wind up being even more dangerous since it appears to increase the severity of infections and more heavily afflict the young than early strains.But the UK mutation sounds bad enough. It appears be markedly more contagious, even though there seems to be no evidence (so far) that resulting infections are more serious than under previously-circulating strains of Covid. This mutation is taking hold just after the UK managed to engineer an internal mass migration by announcing a Tier 4 lockdown of the London in advance, inducing anyone who had anywhere else to go to decamp. As usual, the Daily Mail last Friday tells the story: Escape from the capital! Huge queues as desperate families flee London ahead of Tier 4 misery – as PM’s critics mockingly congratulate him for causing the city’s ‘first evacuation since 1939.‘

New coronavirus variant: Flights from UK halted over Covid-19 concerns – Canada has become the latest country to halt flights from the UK following the discovery of a new variant of Covid-19, which is said by officials to spread faster than others. The new coronavirus variant, which prompted the UK government to impose a Tier 4 lockdown in London and southeastern England, and tighten restrictions for all of England over the festive period, is “out of control,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Sunday – the same day that the UK broke its daily coronavirus case record, recording 35,928 new cases. The ensuing wave of travel bans has cut off UK travelers from much of Europe and other parts of the world. It also spurred a decision to hold an emergency governmental meeting on Monday, chaired by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a No. 10 spokesperson told CNN. The meeting will focus on the international movement restrictions, and “in particular the steady flow of freight into and out of the UK,” they said. “Further meetings are happening this evening and tomorrow morning to ensure robust plans are in place.”Canada announced it will ban most passenger travel from the UK beginning midnight Sunday for at least 72 hours. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed the news in a tweet Sunday night saying it was being done to ‘protect’ Canadians across the country. In South America, Argentina, Chile and Colombia have all suspended direct flights to and from the UK. Ecuador is also considering strengthening measures to control the spread of the virus. According to a joint statement published Sunday by the Argentinian Health and Interior Ministries, Argentina will only allow one more flight from Britain to land at the international airport in Buenos Aires on Monday morning. Later flights have all been canceled. The Chilean government announced on Twitter that all flights to and from the UK will be suspended, beginning on Tuesday, and that travelers who have been to the UK in the last 14 days would have to self-quarantine. Colombian president Ivan Duque similarly announced that all flights between Colombia and the UK will be suspended, starting on Monday. Travelers who have been to the UK in the last 14 days will also have to self-quarantine, upon entering Colombia. On Sunday, France announced it would suspend travel to and from the United Kingdom for 48 hours starting at midnight local time, due to the “new health risk,” The Republic of Ireland is banning flights from Britain on Monday and Tuesday. “In the interests of Public Health, people in Britain, regardless of nationality, should not travel to Ireland, by air or by sea,” the Irish government announced in a statement. Italy will also suspend flights to and from the UK, as well as banning entry to anyone who has been in Britain in the past two weeks, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said on Facebook Sunday. Portugal will allow only Portuguese nationals to arrive on flights from the UK, and they must have a negative Covid-19 test, according to the country’s Interior Minister. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said that Belgium will block travelers from the UK for 24 hours on Monday as a “precautionary measure,” though the ban could be extended if necessary. The Netherlands and Latvia announced longer bans on flights coming from the United Kingdom, lasting until the new year. The Dutch government, which also banned ferry passengers arriving from the UK, said the same virus variant had been detected in the Netherlands. Estoniaalso announced a suspension of air traffic with the UK until the end of the year. And the Czech Republic imposed a mandatory 10-day quarantine on anyone arriving from the UK starting Sunday. Further away, Saudi Arabia is suspending all international flights for travelers – as well as entry through land and sea ports – for one week. Turkeybanned flights from the UK, South Africa, the Netherlands and Denmark, according to the country’s state-owned Anadolu Agency. And Israel banned incoming flights from Britain, Denmark and South Africa, and will bar foreign nationals from those countries from entering the country.

UK’s Covid and Brexit Siege -Yves Smith -The latest news from the UK on Covid and Brexit isn’t at encouraging. While some experts deemed the initial take of a Government panel that the new variant Covid looked to be markedly more contagious than established versions to be too speculative to warrant a Tier 4 lockdown of the southeast, others are calling for a national Tier 4 lockdown.Unfortunately, the short version of “where we are now” is I suspect more definitive answers won’t be coming quickly, as in the next day or so. From the Financial Times:“There is no evidence at the moment that the new variant causes disease which is any different from that caused by previous variants,” said Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London.There is provisional clinical evidence that B.1.1.7 is increasing the “viral load” – the amount of virus present in patients’ upper respiratory tract – which is also a feature of another variant called 501. V2 that has evolved independently in South Africa. This may make the new variants transmit more readily between people but it is not clear how the greater viral load would affect symptoms in those who are infected.However, later reports speculate that that the South African variant is the same as the new UK one, which seems a bit at odds with Prof. Openshaw’s view. The big reason for concern in South Africa was their new strain was hitting young people with no comorbidities harder than the older variants. Presumably the “how many new strains” matter will be settled relatively quickly. The new variant is now out and about all over Great Britain. From the Daily Mail: The Mail understands Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has warned the Prime Minister the number of patients in hospital with coronavirus is on course to match the April peak by New Year’s Eve – and will continue increasing in January.Downing Street yesterday tried to play down suggestions that a third national lockdown was imminent, but [Chief Scientific Adviser] Sir Patrick [Vallance] said the new strain, which is thought to spread up to 70 per cent more easily, was already present ‘around the country’.He added: ‘It’s localised in some places but we know there are cases everywhere, so it’s not as though we can stop this getting into other places.’ Cases of the mutated strain of Covid have already been seen in Wales and Scotland and there are fears it could be spreading within Northern Ireland.In the meantime, the UK is cordoned off. 40 countries have halted flights. United and Delta are allowing UK nationals to fly to the US, but only if they’ve had a negative Covid test.Worse is the situation with goods. As readers may have seen, France has imposed a 48 hour hold on all entering shipments. Macron wants lorry-drivers to have a negative Covid test before they enter France from the UK. Needless to say, figuring out how to get drivers tested (and what tests are acceptable?) and how to generate documentation that can be verified at the border is a nightmare on top of the existing pile-up at Kent, which near term is getting worse:

France agrees to reopen UK border to lorry drivers with negative Covid test – A mass Covid-19 testing programme for lorry drivers is to get under way to relieve congestion at British ports following an agreement to reopen the border between France and the UK. The Department for Transport made the announcement late on Tuesday, hours after Paris said passengers from Britain could enter France following a 48-hour blockade, aimed at stopping the spread of a new coronavirus variant, that left thousands of HGVs stranded outside UK ports before Christmas. Rail, air and sea services would resume from Wednesday morning, the DfT said, with all people travelling from the UK into France required to show proof of a negative test taken within the previous 72 hours. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said lateral flow tests, which take about 30 minutes, could be used to test those eligible to cross the French border, but urged hauliers not to travel to Kent until the testing programme was operational. The French prime minister’s office announced earlier on Tuesday that French and EU citizens in the UK, as well as British and third-country nationals with permanent residence in France or another EU member state, would be able to enter the country, or travel through it, providing they have a recent negative Covid test. UK citizens or people from third countries with legitimate professional or other reasons for travelling from Britain – including hauliers and other transport staff, diplomats and health workers – would also be allowed into France with a negative test, Paris said. About 4,000 lorries, and thousands more small vans, were waiting to cross the Channel on Tuesday, with food transport firms warning that potential disruption levels ranged between “a shambles and a catastrophe” just as January and the end of Brexit transition looms. The backlog is likely to take several days to clear. Elizabeth de Jong, policy director of the transport business group Logistics UK, welcomed the news that the border would soon be open but said it was now “vital that Covid-19 testing procedures be stood up fast” so backed-up traffic could clear. The ban on freight and passengers was imposed by Paris on Sunday evening in an attempt to contain a newly discovered Covid-19 variant thought to have a growth rate up to 70% higher than previous types.

UK imposes more lockdowns as mutated COVID variant causes record cases (Reuters) – The British government on Wednesday said huge swathes of England would be placed under its strictest COVID-19 restrictions as a highly infectious virus variant sweeps the country, pushing the number of cases to a record level. Britain reported almost 40,000 new infections as the mutated variant of the coronavirus, which could be up to 70% more transmissible than the original, causes the number of cases and hospital admissions to soar. The number of recorded deaths – 744 – was also the highest figure since April. “Against this backdrop of rising infections, rising hospitalizations and rising numbers of people dying from coronavirus, it is absolutely vital that we act,” health minister Matt Hancock told a media briefing. “We simply cannot have the kind of Christmas that we all yearn for.” On Saturday, tight social mixing restrictions measures were brought in for London, southeast England and Wales while plans to ease curbs over Christmas across the nation were either dramatically scaled back or scrapped altogether. Hancock said from Dec. 26, many more parts of southern England would be also be added to the highest level of social mixing restrictions, joining the 16 million already in Tier 4, while other areas across the country currently in lower tiers would also face tighter curbs. The governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland have already announced that nearly everyone living in those countries would be subjected to the highest level of restrictions after Christmas. Hancock said there was on average 1909 COVID hospital admissions a day, with 18,943 people currently in hospital with the coronavirus, levels not seen since the peak of the first outbreak in April.

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