Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 25July 2021

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 prospects for an infrastructure bill, stimulus checks, government funding, the Fed, the latest employment data, housing market reports, mortgage delinquencies & forbearance, travel, layoffs, lockdowns, and schools, as well as infrastructure and GDP. The bulk of the news is from the U.S., with a few more 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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Not much change this week in my selection on the infrastructure debate, while included without editing are several articles on the debt ceiling. Whatever the case, there’s no shortage of covid related news, so anything that isn’t important to you can just be skipped.

The news:

Fed Ramps Up Debate Over Taper Timing, Pace – WSJ – Federal Reserve officials are set to accelerate deliberations at their meeting next week over how to scale back their easy-money policies amid a stronger U.S. economic recovery than they anticipated six months ago. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has said their discussions are focusing on two important questions: When to start paring their monthly purchases of $80 billion in Treasury securities and $40 billion in mortgage securities, and how quickly to reduce, or taper, them. The answers matter greatly to financial markets because Fed officials have said they aren’t likely to consider raising interest rates from near zero until they are done tapering the asset purchases. Some officials have discussed concluding the purchases around October 2022 so they could lift rates later that year if the recovery is stronger or inflation is higher than now anticipated. The Fed began buying large quantities of the securities in March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a near-meltdown in financial markets. The purchases aim to hold down long-term interest rates to encourage borrowing and spending. Fed officials are likely to receive formal staff briefings at their meeting next week on potential strategies for tapering the bond purchases. No decisions have been made. The timing of the Fed’s plans will depend on whether the economy keeps performing as expected and on whether Fed Chairman Jerome Powell can build a consensus among policy makers about how to proceed. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, excluding volatile food and energy categories, rose 3.4% in May from a year earlier, a larger jump than officials had expected and more than their target of 2% on average. They said last August they would seek inflation moderately above that level for some time to make up for years of shortfalls. While inflation is running well above that goal, Mr. Powell and many of his colleagues have said they still expect price increases to moderate as shortages driven by the reopening of the economy subside. The central bank last December said it would continue the current pace of bond purchases until officials concluded they had achieved “substantial further progress” toward their goals of 2% inflation and robust employment. “We have not achieved that,” New York Fed President John Williams said July 12. Because Fed officials have said they would provide ample notice before they start tapering, they look unlikely to initiate any taper at their next two meetings, in July or September. Instead, if they can agree on a plan this summer, they could provide updated guidance later this summer or at their September meeting on how soon actual reductions might begin.

Term Spread and Inflation Breakeven Declining, and Real Rates Still Low –Menzie Chinn – All suggesting slowing growth … maybe Figure 1: Treasury 10 year constant maturity yield minus 3 month yield, %. Source: Treasury via FRED, and author’s calculations.Maybe we won’t get that red hot economy, bumping up and over full-employment GDP after all.From Reuters:“Equity markets were pricing an explosion of growth and margins over the next two to three years and it’s clear now we won’t have that,” said Ludovic Colin, senior portfolio manager at Vontobel Asset Management.Colin said however bond markets appeared too pessimistic in starting to price recession.“We don’t think we will have recession, just long-term growth that won’t be as beautiful as what was expected by investors in January-March period.”Given the spread is still positive, predicting another recession seems uncalled for, especially given special factors affecting the term premium (e.g., flight to safety, Fed quantitative easing, etc.), as discussed before the last recession (e.g., here and here).Declining inflation expectations (or at least breakeven calculations) and real rates similarly suggest cooling (relative to prior expectations). Figure 2: Five year inflation breakeven calculated as five year Treasury yield minus five year TIPS yield (blue), five year breakeven adjusted by inflation risk premium and liquidity premium per DKW (red),and TIPS five year yield (teal), all in %. Source: FRB via FRED, Treasury, KWW following D’amico, Kim and Wei (DKW), and author’s calculations.

NBER: Recession Trough in April 2020 -From NBER: Business Cycle Dating Committee Announcement July 19, 2021 The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research maintains a chronology of the peaks and troughs of US business cycles.The committee has determined that a trough in monthly economic activity occurred in the US economy in April 2020. The previous peak in economic activity occurred in February 2020. The recession lasted two months, which makes it the shortest US recession on record.The NBER chronology does not identify the precise moment that the economy entered a recession or expansion. In the NBER’s convention for measuring the duration of a recession, the first month of the recession is the month following the peak and the last month is the month of the trough. Because the most recent trough was in April 2020, the last month of the recession was April 2020, and May 2020 was the first month of the subsequent expansion.In determining that a trough occurred in April 2020, the committee did not conclude that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. An expansion is a period of rising economic activity spread across the economy, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion, and it sometimes remains so well into the expansion. The committee decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession associated with the February 2020 peak. The basis for this decision was the length and strength of the recovery to date.

NBER Declares Recession Trough at 2020M04 -Menzie Chinn – From NBER today: The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research maintains a chronology of the peaks and troughs of US business cycles. The committee has determined that a trough in monthly economic activity occurred in the US economy in April 2020. The previous peak in economic activity occurred in February 2020. The recession lasted two months, which makes it the shortest US recession on record. Here is the resulting graph (monthly) showing some key indicators: Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment from June release (dark blue), Bloomberg consensus as of 7/16 for July nonfarm payroll employment (light blue +), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), consumption in Ch.2012$ (light blue), 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) (7/1/2021 release), NBER, and author’s calculations.ECRI places the monthly peak at December 2017 and trough at April 2020.For quarterly data, peak is at 2019Q4, trough at 2020Q2. Figure 2: GDP (blue) and GDI (red), both in billion Ch.2012$, SAAR. NBER recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, 2021Q1 3rd release, NBER. Chronologies for other countries, see this post.

Officially, the pandemic recession lasted only two months. -The pandemic recession is officially over.In fact, it has been over for more than a year.The National Bureau of Economic Research, the semiofficial arbiter of U.S. business cycles, said Monday that the recession had ended in April 2020, after a mere two months. That makes it by far the shortest contraction on record – so short that by June 2020, when the bureau officially determined that a recession had begun, it had been over for two months. (The previous shortest recession on record, in 1980, lasted six months.)But while the 2020 recession was short, it was unusually severe. Employers cut 22 million jobs in March and April, and the unemployment rate hit 14.8 percent, the worst level since the Great Depression. Gross domestic product fell by more than 10 percent.The end of the recession doesn’t mean that the economy has healed. The United States has nearly seven million fewer jobs than before the pandemic, and while gross domestic product has most likely returned to its prepandemic level, thousands of businesses have failed, and millions of individuals are still struggling to get back on their feet. To economists, however, recessions aren’t simply periods of financial hardship. They are periods of economic contraction, as measured by employment, income, production and other indicators. Once growth resumes, the recession is over, no matter how deep a hole remains. The recession that accompanied the 2008 financial crisis, for example, ended in June 2009 – four months before the unemployment rate hit its peak, and years before many Americans began to experience a meaningful rebound.

Chicago Fed: “Index suggests economic growth moderated in June” – “Index suggests economic growth moderated in June.” This is the headline for this morning’s release of the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index, and here is the opening paragraph from the report:The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) decreased to +0.09 in June from +0.26 in May. Three of the four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index made positive contributions in June, but two categories deteriorated from May. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, declined to +0.06 in June from +0.80 in May. [Download report]The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly indicator designed to gauge overall economic activity and related inflationary pressure. It is a composite of 85 monthly indicators as explained in thisbackground PDF file on the Chicago Fed’s website. The index is constructed so a zero value for the index indicates that the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate of growth. Negative values indicate below-average growth, and positive values indicate above-average growth.The first chart below shows the recent behavior of the index since 2007. The red dots show the indicator itself, which is quite noisy, together with the 3-month moving average (CFNAI-MA3), which is more useful as an indicator of the actual trend for coincident economic activity.

Seven High Frequency Indicators for the Economy – These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment.The TSA is providing daily travel numbers.This data is as of July 18th. This data shows the 7-day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Light Blue), 2020 (Blue) and 2021 (Red). The dashed line is the percent of 2019 for the seven day average. The 7-day average is down 21.0% from the same day in 2019 (79.0% of 2019). (Dashed line) There was a slow increase from the bottom – and TSA data has picked up in 2021. 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 July 17th, 2021. This data is “a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. Dining picked up during the holidays, then slumped with the huge winter surge in cases. Dining is generally picking up, but was down 6% in the US (7-day average compared to 2019). Florida and Texas are above 2019 levels. This data shows domestic box office for each week and the median for the years 2016 through 2019 (dashed light blue). The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through July 15th. Movie ticket sales were at $165 million last week, down about 34% from the median for the week. This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. Occupancy is now above the horrible 2009 levels and weekend occupancy (leisure) has been solid. This data is through July 10th. The occupancy rate is down 9.3% compared to the same week in 2019.. This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019. Blue is for 2020. Red is for 2021. As of July 9th, gasoline supplied was up 0.7% compared to the same week in 2019. This is the third week this year when gasoline supplied was up compared to the same week in 2019. This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: “This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities.” There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. This data is through July 17th for the United States and several selected cities. The graph is the running 7-day average to remove the impact of weekends. According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7 day average for the US is at 100% of the January 2020 level.Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage. This graph is from Todd W Schneider. This is weekly data since 2015. Most weeks are between 30 and 35 million entries, and currently there are over 12 million subway turnstile entries per week – and generally increasing.This data is through Friday, July 16th. Schneider has graphs for each borough, and links to all the data sources.

Debt ceiling deadline: Here’s when the government will no longer be able to pay its bills – The U.S. government will probably run out of cash to pay its bills at some point this fall, likely in October or November, if no action is taken, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office announced Wednesday. This comes as the debate over raising or suspending the debt limit is breaking down on Capitol Hill. If lawmakers do not address the issue, the U.S. will be unable to pay its obligations fully – leading to delaying payments, defaulting on its debt obligations or both, the report warns.The debt limit suspension expires on July 31, after it w as suspended for two years under President Trump in 2019. The debt ceiling was previously $22 trillion, but as of the end of June, an additional $6.5 trillion had been borrowed, bringing the total amount of debt subject to the debt limit to $28.5 trillion.The Treasury Department said in May it would use so-called “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting over the summer. The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday those “extraordinary measures” could be exhausted earlier or later than the agency expects, because the timing and size of revenue collection and spending over the coming months could differ noticeably from what the federal agency has projected. The pandemic has further complicated matters. Earlier this month, the Bipartisan Policy Center warned projecting the debt limit “X Date,” that is, when the government can no longer meet its obligations after its suspension expires, will be more difficult to predict than it has been in the past, due to the “high uncertainty” of Treasury Department cash flows relating to COVID-19 relief and the speed of the recovery. Without congressional action, the center has also projected that date will arrive sometime in fall. But despite the expiration of the suspension at the end of the month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled Republicans would not be amenable to raising or suspending the debt ceiling because of what he referred to as “free-for-all for taxes and spending” favored by Democrats, who are working on a $3.5 trillion “human” infrastructure bill.

Senate braces for a nasty debt ceiling fight –Republicans are digging in on the federal debt limit, warning Democrats that it will be up to them to avoid a default as President Biden pushes for trillions more in spending. GOP senators are taking a firm line as Democrats plot a path for their $3.5 trillion spending measure, which the party plans to pass with budget reconciliation rules that will prevent the GOP from blocking it with a filibuster. Given those plans, Republican senators say they won’t lift a finger to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling. “I’m not sure why there’s much of an incentive right now given what the Democrats are doing, trying to run roughshod over the minority in the Senate, to help them,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican. Thune added that if Democrats are going to use a go-it-alone approach to push through a sweeping spending package, which is expected to include other priorities like immigration reform, then Republicans believe “the debt limit can ride on it and they can own it all.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) previewed the GOP tactics to Punchbowl News, in remarks confirmed by his office. “I can’t imagine there will be a single Republican voting to raise the debt ceiling after what we’ve been experiencing,” he said. The government will reach its spending limit on July 31, though the Treasury Department will be able to shuffle funds for an additional period to prevent the U.S. from breaking the ceiling. Actually doing so would cause a severe disruption to markets and the economy, as the U.S. government would be unable to meet demands from its creditors and pay its bills. The limit on how much debt the federal government can owe has been suspended for nearly two years thanks to a bipartisan deal struck under former President Trump. The Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday that the Treasury would most likely run out of cash in October or November, though that is just an estimate. Experts have said that the coronavirus pandemic is making it harder to estimate precisely when the U.S. would default on its obligations absent any action. Republican senators are planning to use the specter of crisis to secure major fiscal concessions, in a throwback to the Obama years. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, is expected to put forward a proposal next week, accusing Congress of “spending like drunken sailors.” “We need to make some structural reforms down the road. … About half the time the debt ceiling has been increased has been accompanied by something, and I think now is the time to put some ideas on the table,” he said. The effort comes after a GOP Congress approved a massive tax-cut bill during the Trump years that added to the deficit. It also follows a series of big spending bills signed by Trump and Biden that were intended to help the economy survive the pandemic. Democrats would need at least 10 GOP votes to defeat a filibuster on a stand-alone debt limit increase, and several progressives have ruled out ceding to Republican spending-cut demands. Several top Senate Democrats – including Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) – accused McConnell of holding the U.S. economy hostage. “The leader’s statements on the debt ceiling are shameless, cynical and totally political,” Schumer said at the Capitol on Wednesday. “This debt is Trump debt. It’s COVID debt. Democrats joined three times during the Trump administration to do the responsible thing,” Schumer added. “And the bottom line is that leader McConnell should not be playing political games with the full faith and credit of the United States.” Republicans have suggested that Democrats add a debt-limit increase to the budget reconciliation process. Doing so would make it easier for Democrats to lift the ceiling but would also shield GOP senators from a vote that is necessitated by spending decisions by both parties. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that Democrats are “looking at various approaches” while also criticizing Republicans’ comments on the debt limit.

Drama over the debt ceiling is the last thing America’s economy needs – CNN –America’s road to economic recovery is littered with obstacles, beginning with soaring inflation and the rapidly spreading Covid-19 Delta variant. Now political bickering in Washington is looming as yet another hurdle.If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, the federal government will likely run out of cash by October or November, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is already vowing that Republicans will not vote to raise the federal borrowing limit – even though failing to do so risks a default that would tank the economy.America’s deep political fissures could cost the country its perfect credit rating -This raises the specter of Washington repeating the mistakes of the 2011 debt ceiling debacle by gambling with the full faith and credit of the United States. That episode sent markets into a tailspin and resulted in the unprecedented downgrade of America’s prized AAA credit rating.”The last thing the economy needs is an artificial crisis,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “The risk is that the political polarization in Washington is so intense that politicians who should know better begin to throw around words like ‘default.'”A default would be disastrous. US debt is considered among the safest securities on the planet, the benchmark for measuring all other risk. Even a near-default could send interest rates spiking, lifting the cost of borrowing on everything from car loans to mortgages. Markets would tumble.”Few policy matters in Washington have such destructive economic capability,” Chris Krueger, managing director at Cowen Washington Research Group, wrote in a note to clients Thursday.During a hearing in May, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon urged lawmakers not to even think about going down this path again. An actual default, Dimon said, “could cause an immediate, literally cascading catastrophe of unbelievable proportions and damage America for 100 years.”Brusuelas echoed that sentiment. “If one wants chaos across financial markets and a replay of the global financial crisis, this would be the quickest road to hell,” he said. “The adults in the room need to take control.”Yet this week McConnell signaled a brewing fight over the debt ceiling.”I can’t imagine there will be a single Republican voting to raise the debt ceiling after what we’ve been experiencing,” the Senate minority leader said in aninterview with Punchbowl News published Wednesday.President Joe Biden responded by pointing out that Republicans had no problem raising the borrowing limit when a Republican was in the White House.”You know, for the last four years, they’ve just extended the debt limit,” Biden told reporters.In 2019, Congress voted to suspend the debt limit altogether, but that two-year suspension expires at the end of this month.

Yellen wants debt limit raised by Aug. 2, U.S. may need ‘extraordinary measures’ – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday warned Congress that her department will need to embark on “extraordinary measures” on Aug. 2 to prevent the U.S. government from defaulting if lawmakers are unable to strike a deal to raise or extend the debt ceiling. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Yellen put lawmakers on notice that the Treasury Department will at the end of July suspend the sale of bonds, the avenue by which the U.S. finances its debt obligations. After Aug. 2 and barring a debt limit agreement, the Treasury will start taking “extraordinary measures” to pay for Congress’ legal and financial obligations, a temporary fix that allows the secretary to tap additional government accounts for a period of weeks. “The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty due to a variety of factors, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future, exacerbated by the heightened uncertainty in payments and receipts related to the economic impact of the pandemic,” Yellen told Pelosi in a letter. The message between the Treasury secretary and the House speaker is a required formality should the outstanding debt of the U.S. near its statutory limit. While the extraordinary measures have been deployed in the past to prevent a default, it’s unclear how long Yellen’s emergency capital will last in the face of unprecedented stimulus efforts sparked by the Covid-19 crisis. While the United States has never defaulted on its debt, recent history shows that getting uncomfortably close to it can create chaos. In 2011, House Republicans’ refusal to pass a debt ceiling increase led to a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating that upset financial markets. Economists say default, though extremely unlikely, would be a catastrophic event and would pose a significant threat to several sectors of the American economy. Asked about Yellen’s letter, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that the communication should be taken in context and noted that similar letters have been sent in prior administrations. The letter is “standard practice for Treasury secretaries when a debt limit is going to be reimposed,” Psaki said Friday afternoon. “During the previous two administrations, the Treasury secretary sent nearly 50 letters to the Hill on the debt limit, some of which were very similar, in wording and asks and updates, to this letter.” Despite the administration’s calm, it is virtually certain Congress will breach that Aug. 2 deadline with Democrats and Republicans gridlocked on several key pieces of legislation. Perhaps most notable is that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., remains far away from compromise over a trillion-dollar physical infrastructure deal. House Democrats insist that they won’t pass a bill to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, broadband and waterways without a separate piece of legislation modeled after President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan to support paid worker leave, labor education and other programs. For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Punchbowl News earlier this month that he “can’t imagine a single Republican” voting to raise the debt limit amid Democrats’ “free-for-all for taxes and spending.”

Yellen to Congress: Raise the debt ceiling or risk ‘irreparable harm’ –Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged congressional leaders Friday to raise the federal debt limit as soon as possible or risk “irreparable harm to the U.S. economy and the livelihoods of all Americans.”In a Friday letter, Yellen warned that the Treasury Department is unable to project how long it could stave off a potentially catastrophic default on the national debt if Congress does not either raise or suspend the debt ceiling before Aug. 1. “In recent years Congress has addressed the debt limit through regular order, with broad bipartisan support,” Yellen wrote. “I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible.” The debt ceiling does not increase or reduce government spending, but sets a cap on how much debt the government can take on while paying for obligations already approved by Congress and the president. A two-year deal to suspend the debt limit expires on July 31, and Congress is unlikely to reach another agreement to lift it before then. Senate Republican leaders said this week there will not be enough Republicans to support a debt ceiling increase or suspension if it is not tied to debt reduction measures. Democrats have refused those requests, arguing that the GOP is holding the economy hostage to partisan demands. The Treasury Department has taken extraordinary measures to avert defaults during prior debt ceiling showdowns. But Yellen warned Friday that the department is unable to predict when those efforts would run out because of difficulties created by the coronavirus pandemic. While the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated this week that the Treasury likely has until October or November before hitting the end of the road, Yellen said it could happen soon after Congress returns from recess in the middle of September. Yellen also warned lawmakers that the threat of a default alone could damage the nation’s financial standing. She cited the decision among rating agencies to downgrade the U.S’s credit worthiness for the first and so far only time during the 2011 debt ceiling standoff. “This is why no President or Treasury Secretary of either party has ever countenanced even the suggestion of a default on any obligation of the United States,” Yellen wrote. Yellen sent the letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.); Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.); and the top Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees.

Senate Infrastructure Bill Drops IRS Funding, Raising Pressure for New Revenue – WSJ – Lawmakers dropped plans to pay for a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package in part by boosting tax-collecting enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service, a setback for the bipartisan measure ahead of a looming deadline for agreement.The shift came after pushback from Republicans who were wary of granting the agency more money and power, Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio), one of the lead negotiators, said Sunday on CNN. Legislative aides from both parties confirmed the move.The change means that the plan to strengthen the IRS to do more to collect taxes owed but not collected – a priority for President Biden – has stalled, at least for now. But lawmakers say it could be revived elsewhere, in a separate spending package pushed by Democrats.The decision to exclude the IRS provision means lawmakers will have to scramble to replace it to complete the infrastructure package before a midweek deadline, and it casts new uncertainty over the talks.Republicans and Democrats have spent weeks trying to negotiate an infrastructure deal, including funding for roads, bridges and broadband. But they have struggled with how to cover the cost without increasing the federal deficit, which has risen to record levels over the past few years because of tax cuts and pandemic-related spending. They have said the plan would be fully paid for with new revenue Budget reconciliation may offer Democrats a way to sidestep some partisan gridlock and advance President Biden’s policy objectives.Lawmakers face the first test this week of whether there will be enough support to move forward with the infrastructure deal, along with a separate $3.5 trillion budget resolutionsupported only by Democrats. That package includes provisions aimed at addressing climate change, expanded access to education and affordable child care and broader Medicare benefits. The two pieces of legislation together comprise most of the White House’s legislative agenda. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said last week that he would take the first procedural step Monday, setting up a vote Wednesday to begin debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Democratic support for the infrastructure legislation, however, depends on the party coalescing by the same day around the $3.5 trillion budget resolution. Both bills rely on fragile coalitions of lawmakers deciding to compromise. Republicans and Democrats were still working on details over the weekend and said they weren’t sure if they would meet the midweek deadline. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) said on Fox News Sunday that meeting the Wednesday deadline was possible, but only if the negotiators agreed on provisions to pay for the plan.Mr. Portman, the lead GOP negotiator on the infrastructure deal, said they shouldn’t have a Wednesday deadline. “It’s more important to get it right than to meet an arbitrary deadline,” he said.Lawmakers in the bipartisan negotiating group, including Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) had said last week they were already looking at alternatives to the IRS provision to raise revenue. The process has been made difficult by Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes and Democrats’ unwillingness to raise user fees on lower and middle-income Americans.Mr. Portman said Sunday that the new funding shortfall wouldn’t derail the overall package, adding that other potential revenue sources existed for the infrastructure plan. Among other options, lawmakers are considering delaying or repealing a Trump-era proposal to end rebates that drugmakers give to Medicare, a change that would save the government revenue.

Infrastructure deal in precarious state as endgame nears – The Washington Post – President Biden on Monday took a subtle yet unmistakable dig at Republicans who have backed away from a major funding component in a bipartisan infrastructure package that is now starting to fray, saying pointedly that “we shook hands on it” even as he continued to promote the agreement.Biden’s comment, with its accusatory undertones, reflected the agreement’s precarious state at the outset of what could be a pivotal week. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to force a vote within days to advance the roughly $1 trillion plan despite the Republican hesitations, a high-stakes gamble that is intended to force agreement but that GOP senators on Monday warned they would reject.The last-minute struggle to nail down details of the blueprint for revitalizing roads, bridges, water pipes and broadband systems is threatening a bipartisan victory that stands not just at the core of Biden’s economic agenda, but also is intended as Exhibit A in the president’s case that bipartisanship is still possible in a divided Washington.The current flare-up revolves around more than $100 billion in revenue that a bipartisan group of senators hoped to raise by beefing up Internal Revenue Service enforcement so it could better collect unpaid taxes. Conservatives rebelled against empowering an agency they deeply distrust, however, even after Republicans including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a top GOP negotiator, sought to address the concerns by proposing safeguards on the IRS’s authority.But those suggested restrictions made the IRS provision virtually unworkable, according to aides familiar with the discussions, forcing negotiators to nix it as a source of revenue and leaving senators scrambling to find tens of billions of new dollars to pay for the infrastructure deal.Republicans were annoyed by Schumer’s insistence on holding preliminary Senate votes Wednesday to proceed to a debate on the agreement, which has not been finalized. The majority leader finalized his floor strategy on Monday night, teeing up a Wednesday vote that would allow the Senate to proceed to the bipartisan package.The Wednesday vote, Schumer said, was “simply about getting the legislative process started here on the Senate floor,” and he indicated that he was prepared to put the bipartisan infrastructure legislation on the floor as early as Thursday should the group finalize it by then.

Senate Infrastructure Deal in Sight After Medicare Agreement – A bipartisan group of senators is closing in on a $579 billion infrastructure deal after agreeing to pay for it in part by delaying a Trump-era Medicare regulation, a key Democratic senator said July 22.The Medicare rule, promulgated by President Donald Trump, eliminates rebates that drug companies give benefit managers in Medicare Part D and was aimed at reducing out-of-pocket costs.But the Congressional Budget Office estimated the rule would increase federal Medicare spending by about $177 billion from 2020 through 2029.”We had an agreement on 99% when we walked out yesterday afternoon,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), one of 22 senators negotiating the infrastructure deal, said in an interview. “The pay-fors are pretty much lined up.” Drug companies, which could lose revenue if the rule is set aside, have lobbied against its inclusion in the deal.”Despite railing against high drug costs on the campaign trail, lawmakers are threatening to gut a rule that would provide patients meaningful relief at the pharmacy,” said Debra DeShong, executive vice president of public affairs at PhRMA. “If it is included in the infrastructure package, this proposal will provide health insurers and drug middlemen a windfall and turn Medicare into a piggy bank to fund projects that have nothing to do with lowering out-of-pocket costs for medicines.”Negotiators are still working on exactly how much money to funnel to transit systems, Manchin said. Some Republicans have argued that given the large boost in the bill for transit, future highway trust fund disbursement for transit should be reduced from 20% to 18%. Democrats say the traditional 20% share of the trust fund, which is primarily funded by the gas tax, that is set aside for transit should be maintained.The senators have said they hope to have final bill text and an official budget score by July 26 to allow the Senate to vote then to begin debate. Republicans on July 21 blocked an attempt by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to start debate, arguing they needed to see a deal first.”If it’s not ready for Monday vote, we’re going to lose a couple of weeks on our August recess,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another member of the negotiating group. “So it’s got to be ready.”Schumer indicated on the Senate floor July 22 he is prepared to keep the Senate in session past its Aug. 9 recess date to finish work on the infrastructure bill and a multitrillion-dollar budget bill carrying much of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.”My colleagues on both sides should be assured: As majority leader, I have every intention of passing both major infrastructure packages – the bipartisan infrastructure framework and a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions – before we leave for the August recess,” Schumer said. “I laid out that precise schedule both publicly and privately and I intend to stick with it.”

Dems are ‘not particularly pleased’ with the Senate infrastructure deal. They’ll back it anyway. – Ben Cardin is “not particularly pleased” with parts of the bipartisan infrastructure package. Kirsten Gillibrand has “no reason to be against it.” And Elizabeth Warren said she’ll support it if “it makes some people happier.” Those are Democratic senators’ scintillating reviews for a plan billed as a major goal of President Joe Biden. As negotiators rush to finish their package by Monday, they’re signaling they’ll go along with it, even if it’s through gritted teeth. When asked if he plans to support the bipartisan deal, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hardly brimmed with enthusiasm: “I voted for it yesterday, didn’t I?” All 50 Democratic Caucus members supported advancing the bill on Wednesday, an effort blocked by 50 Republicans. In interviews Thursday, Democratic senators said they expected all 50 members of their caucus to sign on to the final product, with the assurance that their $3.5 trillion social spending proposal will include their top priorities. The bipartisan group still needs to sway several Democrats angry about water funding, but the party seems content to enter the home stretch of the infrastructure drama united – and leave Republicans split over whether to support it. “There are a lot of things that are happening that I’m unhappy about. I think they’re mistakes,” said Cardin (D-Md.). “But I’m going to support the package. I think it’s critically important we get the bipartisan package done.” Even Democratic senators skeptical of GOP cooperation said they were hopeful that a bipartisan deal on physical infrastructure would come to fruition, given that Biden has thrown the weight of the White House behind it and is already traveling the country to promote the framework. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who previously panned the bipartisan talks, said she’s “optimistic” these days and is “prepared to support it because … Joe Biden supports it.” “We’re knocking at an open door because leadership is for it and so is the president,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who has criticized the pace and scope of negotiations with Republicans. “The stars are pretty well aligned as long as the Republicans drop their obstruction. They seem to be flailing for every excuse to make this effort fail.” Biden can spare at most a handful of votes from the 50-member Democratic caucus to pass the bipartisan $1.2 trillion physical infrastructure package, if a deal is reached. While 11 Senate Republicans wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Wednesday saying that they’d vote to move forward next week, most members of the GOP conference are waiting for legislative text and a score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office before making up their minds. Even some Republicans in the bipartisan group of 22 working on the package could ultimately bolt, according to one GOP senator. Senate negotiators say they’re getting close to clinching a bipartisan deal, despite Wednesday’s failed vote. The most controversial sticking point remaining appears to be public transportation funding levels. But the group is finalizing provisions related to broadband and how to use unspent coronavirus relief money as a financing mechanism, according to aides familiar with the talks.

Democrats pushing for changes to bipartisan infrastructure deal – Senate Democrats are warning that they will ask for changes to an infrastructure deal being worked on by a bipartisan group of senators, as they try to get reassurances on key priorities. The bipartisan group is still working to finalize their deal, and resolve a remaining sticking point of transportation funding. But the requests from Democrats are an early sign of the hurdles the bill could face even if it is able to get the 60 votes needed to start debate. A group of Democrats is pushing for assurances that the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act, a drinking water and sanitation bill that previously passed the Senate in an 89-2 vote, would be fully funded through the bipartisan group’s infrastructure bill. “I want to make sure that they are fully funded,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) told reporters. “I’m going to withhold my support until they are fully funded.” Carper added that Democrats had received assurances that their proposal would be fully funded but were now hearing that “it may be moved around.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who crafted the drinking water bill, warned in a statement that it had to be fully funded through the bipartisan bill in order for her to support it. “While I voted to proceed to consideration of a bipartisan infrastructure bill, more will need to be done in order for me to support the current proposal that is being drafted. … I can’t commit to supporting a final bill if it does not include full funding for my Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act (DWWIA) at $35.9 billion over the next five years,” she said. In addition to Carper and Duckworth, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) is also raising concerns about the funding for the drinking water bill, according to senators involved in the talks.

Frustration builds as infrastructure talks drag – Tempers are starting to flare on both sides of the aisle as bipartisan infrastructure talks drag on and negotiators face the prospect of missing an informal self-imposed deadline of Monday for getting a deal. Some Democrats are accusing Republicans of slow-walking the negotiations and reopening negotiating items that were believed to be solved. Republicans say Democrats are being unreasonable in some of their demands, such as an insistence on tens of billions of dollars in new funding for transit and broad authority for local governments to decide how to spend infrastructure funds. A bipartisan group of Senate negotiators who have been working with the White House for months to fill out a $1.2 trillion, eight-year spending proposal say they’re on track to get it done next week, but frustrations are starting to mount as a final deal eludes them. “They have not been serious about transit dollars,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who is leading the battle for more federal money for public transit, one of the biggest obstacles to getting a deal. “We’ve offered to split the difference and they don’t seem to want to do that,” he said. “It’s not we who’re stalling,” Brown added. Brown accused Republicans of drawing out the talks to derail President Biden’s agenda, which Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says will move as a bipartisan infrastructure package and a budget reconciliation bill planned for the fall. Schumer said he will set up the reconciliation process by scheduling a vote on a budget resolution after the bipartisan infrastructure bill passes the Senate. But negotiators haven’t finished work on their bipartisan framework, holding the whole process up. “If they continue to slow-walk, which is what they’re doing, we’ve got to move ahead,” Brown said. “I remember during the Affordable Care Act [debate], they slow-walked for four months. That’s why we didn’t get Medicare at 55, that’s why we didn’t get a public option.” His Banking Committee has jurisdiction over transit. And unlike other Senate committee, such as the Environment and Public Work Committee, the Commerce Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, it had not already reached agreement on key infrastructure priorities in its domain. Brown said there is strong skepticism among Democrats about whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will allow any major bipartisan infrastructure deal to pass the Senate, which would be a major win for President Biden. In a sign of wearing patience, Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), the lead Republican negotiator, suggested dropping the transit funding element from the deal altogether, something that would spark an angry backlash from Democrats. “Transit funding has not yet been resolved. That’s important, but if we can’t resolve it then we could leave that out. I hope not,” he said. “Democrats frankly are not being reasonable in their requests right now. We have had a very generous offer out there that provides a significant increase in funding over the next five years,” he added.Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) threatened to oppose the bipartisan deal after he saw Portman’s comment. “A bill that fails to adequately include transit will not have my support,” he warned. The other key player in the fight over transit funding is Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the top-ranking Republican on the Banking panel, who has balked at an additional $48.5 billion in funding, which he believes would skew the traditional allocation between highway and transit spending.

Business groups urge lawmakers to stick with bipartisan infrastructure deal – Business groups are keeping the pressure on lawmakers to finalize a bipartisan infrastructure bill after Republicans blocked the Senate from debating the proposal Wednesday. More than 120 business and manufacturing associations, led by the National Association of Manufacturers, sent a letter to members of Congress on Thursday urging them to pass the infrastructure proposal negotiated by President Biden and a bipartisan group of senators. “As an elected leader, you have the chance to realize the promise of American economic prosperity by working with your colleagues to enact the bipartisan framework that was recently announced,” the groups wrote. Business groups are attempting to round up support from GOP senators, who blocked debate on the bipartisan deal Wednesday because the bill was not yet written. Lobbyists are stressing that the $1.2 trillion framework makes huge investments in the nation’s infrastructure without raising taxes on corporations, a top priority for both business interests and Republicans. “Importantly, this agreement advances these historic investments without putting at risk the competitive gains achieved for American businesses through tax reform, allowing manufacturers to reinvest in their facilities, their communities and their employees,” business groups wrote to lawmakers Thursday. Biden on Thursday afternoon was set to meet with business and labor leaders who support the bipartisan deal, including Business Roundtable CEO Joshua Bolten, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark, Laborers’ Union President Terry O’Sullivan and National Association of Manufacturers board chair Michael Lamach. The meeting is meant to send a message to Republicans that a wide range of organizations support Biden’s proposal, including those that typically clash on most issues, such as the Chamber and the AFL-CIO. Build Together, a group of CEOs from large companies such as Delta, General Motors, IBM, Nike, Walmart and Bank of America, is one of the many business groups attempting to persuade Senate Republicans to support the infrastructure deal. The group is placing newspaper ads in 14 states represented by Republican senators who are open to the bipartisan deal, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The ads say that the bipartisan framework “makes a down payment on our climate progress and engages private capital to create durable solutions to our infrastructure challenges without hampering our post-COVID recovery.” Republicans have insisted that they will come to an agreement on the final bill by next week. Progressive groups and some congressional Democrats have urged Biden to end negotiations with Republicans, making the case that GOP lawmakers are intentionally stalling the process.

Top Biden officials now believe COVID lab-leak theory: report -The Biden administration took one giant step closer to admitting that the coronavirus was leaked from a Chinese lab, a theory once derided as fanciful fiction.An increasing number of senior administration officials engaged in a probe of the virus are now backing the theory that the virus could have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,according to a CNN report.Although officials still remain divided on whether the virus emerged from nature, passing from animals to humans, the acknowledgment marks a shift from the scorn that was heaped on former President Trump and a group of European scientists who first brought up the lab-leak theory during the height of the pandemic last year.The virus has infected nearly 190 million people around the world and resulted in more than 3.5 million deaths, according to statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organization’s director general also engaged in an about-face this week when he acknowledged that the virus could have leaked from a lab. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus now wants China to be “transparent, open and cooperate” and hand over the “raw data” that the WHO asked for at the beginning of the pandemic, he said.

White House blasts China’s ‘dangerous’ rejection of coronavirus origins study –The White House on Thursday called China’s rejection of a second phase of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) investigation into the origins of the coronavirus “irresponsible” and “dangerous.””We are deeply disappointed. Their position is irresponsible and frankly dangerous,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters when asked about Beijing’s rejection of the investigation, which would examine the possibility the virus emerged from a laboratory.”Alongside other member states around the world, we continue to call for China to provide the needed access to data and samples and this is critical so we can understand, to prevent the next pandemic. This is about saving lives in the future, and it’s not a time to be stonewalling,” she added.Psaki reiterated the Biden administration’s support for a second phase of the investigation that is “scientific, transparent, expert-led and free from interference.”Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said at a press conference earlier Thursday that China would not participate in phase two of the investigation. Zeng said he was “rather taken aback” that the study would investigate further the possibility that the virus emerged from a lab in Wuhan.”It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan,” he said, according to The Associated Press. A WHO-led report issued in March found that COVID-19 most likely transferred from animals to humans and described the lab-leak scenario as “extremely unlikely.” However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the time that the United Nations health body was not ruling out any theories. The initial report was written jointly with Chinese scientists.Biden in May ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to come to a definitive conclusion on the disease’s origins, after new reports pointed to circumstantial evidence that it could have emerged from a lab.The U.S. has pressured China to provide more access to data and other information so that the global community can get to the bottom of the source of COVID-19, which was first discovered in Wuhan in 2019.

Half a million Chinese netizens sign joint letter to the WHO demanding a probe into the US’ Fort Detrick lab – More than half a million Chinese netizens have signed a joint letter to the WHO as of the press time on Sunday, demanding the organization conduct an investigation into the US’ Fort Detrick lab, a place whose sudden shutdown is still shrouded in secrecy which has not been subject to any scrutiny from the international community. They believe a thorough probe into the US lab could prevent a future epidemic. The move came as certain Western politicians and media stirred up a new round of the smear campaign of pinpointing China as the culprit for the coronavirus origin. A group of Chinese netizens drafted the joint open letter to ask the WHO to investigate the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. They entrusted the Global Times with posting the letter on its WeChat and Weibo platforms on Saturday to solicit a public response. It has garnered half a million signatures within 24 hours. They said in the letter that to prevent the next epidemic, the WHO should pay special attention to labs that are conducting studies on dangerous virus or even on biochemical weapons. The open letter particularly noted the Fort Detrick lab, which stores the most deadly and infectious viruses in the world, including Ebola, smallpox, SARS, MERS and the novel coronavirus. The leak of any of them would cause severe danger to the world. “But this lab has a notorious record on lab security. There have been scandals of anthrax bacterium from the lab being stolen, causing poisoning to many and even death. There has been a leakage incident in the lab in the autumn of 2019 right before the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, however, detailed information had been withheld by the US under excuses of national security,” said the letter. The information unveiled by the US media has worried the world and some have questioned whether the novel coronavirus could be linked to the US lab.

U.S. Border Travel Restrictions Extended, Gov. Burgum Calls It “Preposterous” – – North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum calls it “preposterous”.The Biden administration is extending non-essential travel restrictions at the northern and southern borders until August 21.The administration is under fire for continuing to keep them in place more than a year into the pandemic, and after Canada announced it was reopening to vaccinated Americans on August 9. Burgum says Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination rate “has surpassed our own”.He says the Biden administration continues to stand in the way of a “long-overdue reopening of the border with our closest ally and trading partner.”

Democrat stalls Biden’s border nominee – Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is stalling President Biden’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an effort to unearth more details about government surveillance of protesters in Portland last summer.Biden nominated Tucson, Ariz., Police Chief Chris Magnus to lead CBP in April, tapping a vocal critic of former President Trump‘s immigration policies to lead the agency. While Wyden congratulated Magnus on his nomination earlier this year, his role as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, which conducts oversight of CBP, gives him a perch to push for answers amid reports the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surveilled both protesters and journalists covering the demonstrations. “Six months into the new administration, the Department[s] of Homeland Security and Justice have failed to answer basic questions about how the Trump administration misused federal resources to stoke violence against peaceful protesters in my hometown,” Wyden said in a statement.”While it is clear that Customs and Border Protection faces pressing issues, as the senior senator from Oregon, I am unable to advance this nominee until DHS and DOJ give Oregonians some straight answers about what they were up to in Portland last year, and who was responsible,” he said.Wyden had previously sent a letter to both DHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking information about various efforts under the Trump administration as protesters were demonstrating following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Unscripted remarks start to haunt President Biden – President Biden has been more freewheeling with his remarks in the last few weeks, leading to slip-ups the White House has had to clean up. The most recent example came Friday, when Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” because of the misinformation spread on the social media network about coronavirus vaccines. It was a striking statement that triggered a furious response from Facebook. And on Monday, it became clear Biden had gone further and been more biting than he intended. Less than three days after his initial remarks, the president reversed course, saying Facebook “isn’t killing people.” “My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally – that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people – that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous information about the vaccine. That’s what I meant.” Biden’s walk-back of his original comments was the second time in recent weeks he’s been forced to backtrack from public comments that have caused a stir. It’s caused some consternation among people close to the White House and raised memories of past Biden gaffes. “A little bit cringeworthy, not going to lie,” said one major Democratic donor, who referenced former President Trump to underline the discomfort. “I think these sorts of things can be said more artfully and less Trumpy.” In the early months of the administration, Biden was scripted in his remarks, rarely straying from prepared comments and talking points. But the president has made a habit of indulging reporters’ questions after events at the White House, leading to more unscripted, unguarded moments in exchanges with the press. Those back-and-forths have led to the unforced errors that required clarifications from Biden or White House officials. During an overseas trip in early June, Biden held a press conference at NATO headquarters where he called on a predetermined list of reporters. When he took a question from an additional journalist in the room, he joked that he was “going to get in trouble with my staff.”

Duckworth, Pressley introduce bill to provide paid family leave for those who experience miscarriage – Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) introduced a bill on Tuesday that calls for employers to provide at least three days of paid leave for workers who experience a miscarriage. The bill, dubbed the Support Through Loss Act, is looking to “raise awareness about pregnancy loss and establish new paid leave benefits for workers experiencing painful challenges while seeking to grow their family,” according to a press release. Specifically, the legislation aims to invest $45 million a year to the National Institutes of Health for federal research into miscarriages and pregnancy loss, and require that the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), develop and spread public information regarding pregnancy loss, such as statistics on the matter and treatment options. The bill also proposes a minimum of three days of paid leave for workers “to process and cope following a pregnancy loss, an unsuccessful assisted reproductive technology procedure, a failed adoption arrangement, a failed surrogacy arrangement, or a medical diagnosis or event that impacts pregnancy or fertility.” According to the CDC, about one in 100 pregnancies at 20 weeks of carrying and later are affected by stillbirth. Roughly 24,000 babies are stillborn in the U.S. per year. The lawmakers wrote that while pregnancy loss is “an experience shared across communities and background,” it can sometimes feel like an “isolating experience” because of the lack of truthful information. “Pregnancy loss should be met with care, compassion and support. It is a common experience, but many struggle in silence due to the lack of awareness and cultural stigma,” Pressley said.

Private Equity Now Buying Up Primary Care Practices –As if we did not have enough issues with the commercial healthcare insurance industry attempting to supplant single payer Medicare (minus setting hospital budgets, doctor fees, and pharmaceutical costs to the consumer) and the VA with commercial healthcare insurance and/or Medicare Advantage and ACOs? Commercial Healthcare Insurance and Medicare Advantage are “not” the equivalent of Medicare or the VA healthcare models.Some advocates are actively promoting the replacement of Medicare with commercial Medicare Advantage which does not bode well for the healthy, the elderly, and also those with pre-existing conditions. In the end, it will be more costly healthcare to the nation and individuals. Fix the healthcare issues and move onward with single payer to cut costs.But . . . the latest threat to healthcare are private equity companies entering the market and buying up medical practices. When the PPACA was passed, within the new healthcare law was a concept called the Accountable Care Organization or ACO as they are mostly know as. The organizational concept were created with good intentions and meant to provide better care patients more efficiently and less costly. Even before the PPACA came into being many hospitals were increasing their prices as I wrotehere, here, and here.With the consolidation of healthcare under the ACO concept has come a greater concentration of care as ACOs have bought up other hospitals (and closed some), clinics, specialist groups, and well as testing facilities. The HHI (measures competition) has increased to an ~5000 in areas of the countries and the cost of healthcare has increased as a result.Both MedPage Today and Modern Healthcare are sounding the alarm on a new threat to healthcare due to multiple acquisitions taking place in 2021.ModernHealthcare: “Physician practice acquisitions see ‘staggering’ spending uptick in Q2″Compared to 2nd quarter 2020, investors spent 10 times as much time buying-up physician practices . . .From Modern Healthcare, Solic Capital Management tallied a total transaction value of $126.1 billion in the three months ended June 30, 2021. It characterized the 2021 venture investments as a “staggering” increase over the $12.9 billion during the same period in 2020. Huge deals in the long-term care, hospital, and e-health sectors drove up spending in the recently ended quarter.

House passes bill to revive FTC authority to recover money for consumers – The House passed a bill Tuesday largely along party lines that aims to revive the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) authority to return money to constituents harmed by companies found to engage in deceptive practices. The Consumer Protection and Recovery Act passed with widespread support from Democrats. Republicans opposed to the bill argued on the floor before that the legislation was incomplete at the time of the vote. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said before the vote, however that the bill introduced by Rep. Tony Cflrdenas (D-Calif.) “is not ideological – this is practical,” and urged his colleagues to support it. “Today the House took decisive action to restore the FTC’s authority to help return money to consumers and businesses that have been defrauded by scammers,” Pallone and Consumer Protection and Commerce subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill) said in a joint statement. The passage of the bill comes after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled earlier this year that the agency did not have authority under a provision known as Section 13(b) to obtain equitable monetary relief. FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who served as acting chair of the agency before Chair Lina Khan was approved to the agency and named chair, had urged lawmakers to revive the agency’s authority. Slaughter testified before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in April that the Supreme Court’s decisions had “significantly limited” the agency’s “primary and most effective tool for providing refunds to harmed consumers.” The Biden administration issued a statement in support of the House bill Monday.

These Charts Challenge the Status Quo Thinking on the Stock Market – Pam Martens – The only time that tens of millions of Americans typically hear anything about the stock market on the evening news is when the S&P 500 Index sets a new high. That’s been happening a lot this year. .But beneath the surface of that cheerful sound bite, major deterioration in the underpinnings of the market has been taking place. For example, recently there have been more stocks on the New York Stock Exchange setting 3-month lows than setting three-month highs. The same is true for the Nasdaq stock market and dramatically so for the smaller companies that trade Over-the-Counter (OTC). These measurements gauge the “breadth of the market.” When new lows consistently trounce new highs, it can be a forewarning of a looming market correction.Then there is the problem with the Dow Theory breaking down. Based on that theory, any long-term uptrend in the overall market requires that both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Dow Jones Transportation Average set new highs within a reasonable period of time of each other to confirm the upward trend. The thinking goes that if industrials are doing well, then the companies that ship those industrial products, the transports, should also be doing well. But as the chart above indicates, since May 10, the bottom has been falling out of the transports as the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced little damage.Next up is the yield on the bellwether 10-year U.S. Treasury note. While the financial media has been in a tizzy over the threat of inflation coming from an overheating economy, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note has been behaving like a recession is just around the corner. Since April 1, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note has declined from 1.70 percent to a yield of 1.2 percent.Unfortunately, we can’t tell if that heretofore bellwether on the U.S. economy is still an accurate barometer because the Fed has completely distorted the normal functioning of this market. James Grant calls what the Fed is doing “administered rates.” We agree. The confusion over just where the yield should be on the 10-Year U.S. Treasury note stems from the fact that the Federal Reserve continues to buy up approximately $80 billion each month in Treasury bills, notes and bonds. The Fed uses the quaint expression for this process as “Quantitative Easing” or QE. In reality, the Fed is providing artificial demand for these Treasury securities that wouldn’t otherwise be there, and thus driving down the yield. On top of that artificial demand, the Federal Reserve, via the privately-owned New York Fed, is simultaneously engaging in reverse repurchase agreements (reverse repos or RRPs) with the trading houses on Wall Street (primary dealers) and other financial institutions. The chart below, based on RRP data from the St. Louis Fed, shows the unprecedented scale of these RRP operations. In simple terms, what the Federal Reserve has been doing since its $29 trillion Wall Street bailout program that ran secretly from 2007 through at least July of 2010, is to flood Wall Street with bailout money and then, after the fact, attempt to figure out how to deal with the bubbles and market dislocations these bailouts create. For the past 13 years it’s been like watching a mad scientist perform radical experiments on a financial system controlled by Frankenbanks, the Wall Street behemoths that were insanely allowed by Congress to merge federally-insured deposits with high-risk speculative trading via the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.

Warren: CFPB should take a closer look at overdraft fees, crypto – – Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is widely perceived as the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and she used the occasion of the agency’s 10th anniversary to call for more robust oversight of cryptocurrency and banks’ overdraft practices. “There are so many areas still where the bureau can make a difference,” the Democratic senator said during a virtual event held by several groups, including Americans for Financial Reform, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Center for Responsible Lending, acknowledging the CFPB’s anniversary. “Even in the face of…opposition from politicians and from industry, the agency survived [the Trump administration] and stayed strong, in part because it is built right,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said of the CFPB. “I think one of them is overdraft fees,” Warren said. “This is an area where there’s a lot of predatory behavior by giant banks that make billions of dollars in profits and squeeze every last penny out of customers who are struggling.”

Republicans hammer HUD chief over sluggish rental aid -Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge took heat Tuesday from Republicans over the meager portion of rental aid distributed to tenants and landlords with less than two weeks until a federal eviction ban expires. Fudge appeared before the House Financial Services Committee for what was scheduled to be testimony on the Biden administration’s plans to expand affordable housing. But Democrats and Republicans spent most of the hearing sparring over Fudge’s role in the dismal pace of rental aid distribution and why Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had not joined her before the committee. Congress approved a total of $46 billion in rental aid between two coronavirus relief bills passed under former President Trump and President Biden. Administered by both the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Treasury Department, the program is intended to ensure millions of tenants have enough funds to cover rent and utilities accrued while they were protected from eviction. While the program has distributed all of that money to state and local grantees, only $1.5 billion made it to tenants, landlords and utility companies as of May, according to data released by the Treasury Department last week. “This is the poster child for why hardworking taxpayers are so critical of big government, bureaucratic programs like this,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is also unlikely to extend its eviction ban past July 31, leaving millions facing eviction and deep debt without sorely needed federal aid. “If we don’t get those resources flowing, there’s going to be a bunch of folks in a terrible jam come sunrise on Aug. 1,” said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.). More than 4.7 million Americans are not current on their housing payments and expect to be evicted or foreclosed on within two months, according to a survey conducted by the Census Bureau between June 23 and July 5. Roughly 8 million also said they don’t expect to make their next housing payment on time, boosting the pressure on the Biden administration to get rental aid out.

MBA Survey: “Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Decreases to 3.50%” – Note: This is as of July 11th. From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Decreases to 3.50%: The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased by 26 basis points from 3.76% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 3.50% as of July 11, 2021. According to MBA’s estimate, 1.75 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.The share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance decreased 8 basis points to 1.83%. Ginnie Mae loans in forbearance decreased 42 basis points to 4.36%, while the forbearance share for portfolio loans and private-label securities (PLS) decreased 61 basis points to 7.33%. The percentage of loans in forbearance for independent mortgage bank (IMB) servicers decreased 19 basis points to 3.68%, and the percentage of loans in forbearance for depository servicers decreased 36 basis points to 3.62%. “Forbearance exits edged up again last week and new forbearance requests dropped to their lowest level since last March, leading to the largest weekly drop in the forbearance share since last October and the 20th consecutive week of declines,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The forbearance share decreased for every investor and servicer category.” “The latest economic data regarding the job market and consumer spending continue to show a robust pace of economic recovery, which is supporting further improvements in the forbearance numbers as more homeowners are able to resume their payments.” 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 2020, and has trended down since then.The MBA notes: “Total weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) decreased relative to the prior week: from 0.04% to 0.03% – the lowest level reported since the week ending March 15, 2020.”

Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Increased Slightly – Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance.This data is as of July 20th. From Andy Walden at Black Knight: Forbearances Flat for Second Consecutive Week:Not much to report with this week’s snapshot of our McDash Flash daily Forbearance Tracker data, as we’ve come to expect in the mid-month period.Last week’s slight net decline of just 1,000 was matched by a 2,000 increase in the number of active forbearance plans over the past seven days, leaving volumes essentially flat for the second week in a row.As of July 20, 1.86 million borrowers remain in COVID-19 forbearance plans, making up 3.5% of all active mortgages and 2.1% of GSE, 6.2% of FHA/VA and 4.1% of Portfolio/PLS loans.What weekly improvement there was – among GSE forbearance plans (-8,000) – was more than offset by a 9,000 rise among portfolio/PLS forbearances and 1,000 additional FHA plans. All in, this puts the number of loans in active forbearance down 198,000 (-9.6%) from the same time last month. Some 230,000 plans are still scheduled to be reviewed for extension/removal in July, down from roughly 400,000 last week.Restarts remained elevated this week, while new forbearance plan volumes continue remain low. Removals held steady week to week and remain on the lower end of the spectrum – as we typically see in the middle of the month – while plan extensions hit the lowest level since late February.

NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increased to 5.86 million in June -From the NAR: Existing-Home Sales Expand 1.4% in June – Existing-home sales increased in June, snapping four consecutive months of declines, according to the National Association of Realtors. Three of the four major U.S. regions registered small month-over-month gains, while the fourth remained flat. However, all four areas notched double-digit year-over-year gains. Total existing-home sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, grew 1.4% from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.86 million in June. Sales climbed year-over-year, up 22.9% from a year ago (4.77 million in June 2020)….Total housing inventory at the end of June amounted to 1.25 million units, up 3.3% from May’s inventory and down 18.8% from one year ago (1.54 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 2.6-month supply at the current sales pace, modestly up from May’s 2.5-month supply but down from 3.9 months in June 2020.This graph shows existing home sales, on a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) basis since 1993.Sales in June (5.86 million SAAR) were up 1.4% from last month, and were 22.9% above the June 2020 sales rate. The second graph shows nationwide inventory for existing homes.According to the NAR, inventory increased to 1.25 million in June from 1.21 million in May. 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 18.8% year-over-year in June compared to June 2020.Months of supply increased to 2.6 months in June from 2.5 months in May.This was slightly below the consensus forecast.

Comments on June Existing Home Sales – McBride – Earlier: NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increased to 5.86 million in June. Two key points:

1) Existing home sales are still somewhat above pre-pandemic levels. Seasonally adjusted (SA) sales for May were the highest since 2006, and sales Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) in June 2021 were also the highest since 2006. Some of the increase over the previous eleven months was probably related to record low mortgage rates, strong second home buying, a strong stock market and favorable demographics. Also, the delay in the 2020 buying season pushed the seasonally adjusted number to very high levels over the winter. This means there are going to be some difficult comparisons in the second half of 2021!

2) Inventory is very low, and was down 18.8% year-over-year (YoY) in May. Also, as housing economist Tom Lawler has noted, the local MLS data shows even a larger decline in active inventory (the NAR appears to include some pending sales in inventory). Lawler noted: “As I’ve noted before, the inventory measure in most publicly-released local realtor/MLS reports excludes listings with pending contracts, but that is not the case for many of the reports sent to the NAR (referred to as the “NAR Report!”), Since the middle of last Spring inventory measures excluding pending listings have fallen much more sharply than inventory measures including such listings, and this latter inventory measure understates the decline in the effective inventory of homes for sale over the last several months.”

It seems likely that active inventory is down close to 40% year-over-year.Months-of-supply at 2.6 months is still very low, but above the record low of 1.9 months set in December 2020 and January 2021. Inventory will be important to watch in 2021, see: Some thoughts on Housing InventoryThis graph shows existing home sales by month for 2020 and 2021. The year-over-year comparison will be more difficult in the second half of the year. The second graph shows existing home sales for each month, Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA), since 2005. Sales NSA in June (614,000) were 21.1% above sales in June 2020 (507,000). This was the highest sales for June, NSA, since 2006.

Housing Starts increased to 1.643 Million Annual Rate in June — From the Census Bureau: Permits, Starts and Completions Privatelyâ€owned housing starts in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,643,000. This is 6.3 percent above the revised May estimate of 1,546,000 and is 29.1 percent above the June 2020 rate of 1,273,000. Singleâ€family housing starts in June were at a rate of 1,160,000; this is 6.3 percent above the revised May figure of 1,091,000. The June rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 474,000. Privatelyâ€owned housing units authorized by building permits in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,598,000. This is 5.1 percent below the revised May rate of 1,683,000, but is 23.3 percent above the June 2020 rate of 1,296,000. Singleâ€family authorizations in June were at a rate of 1,063,000; this is 6.3 percent below the revised May figure of 1,134,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 483,000 in June.The first graph shows single and multi-family housing starts for the last several years. Multi-family starts (red, 2+ units) increased in June compared to May. Multi-family starts were up 31% year-over-year in June.Single-family starts (blue) increased in June, and were up 28% year-over-year (starts slumped at the beginning of the pandemic). The second graph shows total and single unit starts since 1968.The second graph shows the huge collapse following the housing bubble, and then the eventual recovery (but still not historically high).Total housing starts in June were above expectations, however starts in April and May were revised down. …

Housing permits continue decline in June; more challenging YoY comparisons ahead – First, a brief comment about the NBER’s declaration yesterday that the COVID recession ended in April 2020. I am not surprised at all that they chose that date. It has been clear for a year that the trough in economic activity across the board was that month (which we’ll see below as to housing, for example). Remember that a recovery starts when economic activity improves, even if that improvement is from totally awful to almost totally awful. The only thing that surprised me about the NBER announcement was that I expected them to wait for next week’s GDP report, which will probably show that Q2 set a new all time peak, surpassing Q1 2020 just before the pandemic. Housing permits, both in total (gold in the graph below) and the less volatile single family permits (red), both continued to decline in June, to the lowest level since last August. The more volatile and slightly lagging measure of housing starts (blue) increased, although they remained below their recent peak from this March and also last December:Both as to permits and starts, the level of construction activity remains higher than its pre-pandemic peak. At the same time, the decline of slightly more than 15% in permits is consistent with a slowing down of economic growth next year. Finally, here is the YoY change in mortgage rates (red)(*10 for scale), inverted so that up = economic positive, and down = economic negative, compared with total permits (blue):As I have said many times before, mortgage rates lead permits and starts. The big pandemic decline evaporated last July, so beginning next month, the YoY comparisons are going to be much more challenging. On the other hand, the renewed decline in mortgage rates in the past few weeks will at least temporarily put a floor under the decline in housing purchases.

Comments on June Housing Starts – McBride – Earlier: Housing Starts increased to 1.643 Million Annual Rate in JuneTotal housing starts in June were above expectations, however starts in April and May were revised down. Single family starts increased in June, and were up 28% year-over-year. Starts declined at the beginning of the pandemic, and then increased due to strong demand.The volatile multi-family sector is up 31% year-over-year. The housing starts report showed total starts were up 6.3% in June compared to the previous month, and total starts were up 29.1% year-over-year compared to June 2020.Low mortgage rates, limited existing home inventory, and favorable demographics have given a boost to single family housing starts.The first graph shows the month to month comparison for total starts between 2020 (blue) and 2021 (red). Starts were up 29.1% in June compared to June 2020. The year-over-year comparison will be more difficult starting in July. In 2020, starts were off to a strong start before the pandemic, and with low interest rates, and little competing existing home inventory, starts finished 2020 strong. Starts were solid in the first half of 2021.Below is an update to the graph comparing multi-family starts and completions. Since it usually takes over a year on average to complete a multi-family project, there is a lag between multi-family starts and completions. Completions are important because that is new supply added to the market, and starts are important because that is future new supply (units under construction is also important for employment).These graphs use a 12 month rolling total for NSA starts and completions.The blue line is for multifamily starts and the red line is for multifamily completions.

The rolling 12 month total for starts (blue line) increased steadily for several years following the great recession – then mostly moved sideways. Completions (red line) had lagged behind starts, but have caught up again.The last graph shows single family starts and completions. It usually only takes about 6 months between starting a single family home and completion – so the lines are much closer. The blue line is for single family starts and the red line is for single family completions. Single family starts are getting back to more normal levels, but I still expect some further increases in single family starts and completions on a rolling 12 month basis – especially given the low level of existing home inventory.

NAHB: Builder Confidence Declined to 80 in July – The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported the housing market index (HMI) was at 80, down from 81 in June. Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. From the NAHB: Builder Confidence Edges Lower as Material Challenges Persist Strong buyer demand helped to offset supply-side challenges relating to building materials, regulation and labor as builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes inched down one point to 80 in July, according to the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. “Builders continue to grapple with elevated building material prices and supply shortages, particularly the price of oriented strand board, which has skyrocketed more than 500 percent above its January 2020 level,” said NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke. “We are grateful that the White House heeded our urgent plea to hold a building materials meeting with interested stakeholders on July 16 to seek solutions to end production bottlenecks that have harmed housing affordability.””Builders are contending with shortages of building materials, buildable lots and skilled labor as well as a challenging regulatory environment. This is putting upward pressure on home prices and sidelining many prospective home buyers even as demand remains strong in a low-inventory environment,” …The three major HMI indices were mixed in June. The HMI index gauging current sales conditions fell one point to 86, the component measuring traffic of prospective buyers dropped six points to 65 and the gauge charting sales expectations in the next six months posted a two-point gain to 81.Looking at the three-month moving averages for regional HMI scores, the Northeast fell four points to 75, the Midwest moved one-point lower to 71 and the West posted a two-point decline to 87. The South held steady at 85.. This graph show the NAHB index since Jan 1985.This was below the consensus forecast, but still a very strong reading – and lumber prices have continued to decline.

NMHC: July Apartment Market Tightness Index Highest on Record – The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) released their July report: July Apartment Market Conditions Showed Improvement Across All Metrics Apartment market conditions showed continued improvement in the National Multifamily Housing Council’s Quarterly Survey of Apartment Market Conditions for July 2021. For the first time since October 2015, the Market Tightness (96), Sales Volume (79), Equity Financing (69), and Debt Financing (71) indexes all came in above the breakeven level (50).”We are witnessing strong, broad-based demand for apartments as the U.S. economy continues to recover,” noted NMHC Chief Economist Mark Obrinsky. “Many U.S. gateway metros, which were among those hardest hit during the coronavirus pandemic, have now seen their occupancy rates return to near-pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, rent growth remains particularly strong in a number of Sun Belt and Mountain markets.””Nearly all (92 percent) respondents this quarter observed tighter conditions in their apartment markets, signaling that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us. Apartment sales volume is strong as well, bolstered by continued low interest rates and strong availability of equity financing.” The Market Tightness Index increased from 81 to 96 – the highest index number on record – indicating widespread agreement among respondents that market conditions have become tighter. Nearly all (92 percent) respondents reported tighter market conditions than three months prior, compared to only 1 percent who reported looser conditions. Seven percent of respondents felt that conditions were no different from last quarter. This graph shows the quarterly Apartment Tightness Index. Any reading above 50 indicates tighter conditions from the previous quarter. This indicates market conditions tightened further in July, after being especially weak during the early months of the pandemic.

CoreLogic: Single-Family Rents Up 6.6% Year Over Year in May –Housing economist Tom Lawler has been tracking this, see: Lawler: Single-Family Rent Trends. This will likely push up Owner’s Equivalent Rent (OER, a key component of CPI) in the coming months. From CoreLogic: U.S. Single-Family Rents Up 6.6% Year Over Year in MayU.S. single-family rent growth increased 6.6% in May 2021, the fastest year-over-year increase since at least January 2005[1], according to the CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI). The May 2021 increase was nearly four times the May 2020 increase. The index measures rent changes among single-family rental homes, including condominiums, using a repeat-rent analysis to measure the same rental properties over time. An uneven U.S. job recovery, sometimes called a “K-shaped” recovery, is reflected in the rent price growth of the low- and high-price rent tiers, with the increase in lower-priced rentals lagging behind that of higher-priced rentals. The low-price tier is defined as properties with rent prices less than 75% of the regional median, and the high-price tier is defined as properties with rent prices greater than 125% of a region’s median rent (Figure 1). Rent prices for the low-price tier, increased 4.6% year over year in May 2021, up from 2.7% in May 2020. Meanwhile, high-price rentals increased 7.9% in May 2021, up from a gain of 1.3% in May 2020. This was the fastest increase in low-price rents since January 2017, and the fastest increase in high-price rentals in the history of the SFRI. Differences in rent growth by property type emerged after the pandemic as renters sought out standalone properties in lower density areas (Figure 2). The detached property type tier is defined as properties with a free-standing residential building, and the attached property type tier is defined as a single-family dwelling that is attached to other single-family dwellings, which includes duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhouses, row-houses, condos and co-ops. As demand for more space and outdoor amenities remains, detached rentals in particular are experiencing accelerated growth with a 9.2% year-over-year increase in May, compared to growth of 3.6% annually for attached rentals.

“Rising Rents Threaten to Prop Up Inflation” – Menzie Chinn – That’s the title of a NYT article today.If rents continue to take off, it could be bad news both for those seeking housing and for the nation’s inflation outlook. Rental costs play an outsize role in the Consumer Price Index, so a meaningful rise in them could help keep that closely watched government price gauge, which has picked up sharply, higher for longer. The CPI for shelter has risen more slowly than the CPI less shelter, so the thesis of the article must be that – as transitory upward pressure on goods and services ex-shelter dissipates, CPI-shelter has risen more than previously anticipated. And is expected to be more persistent than previously anticipated – reasonable given what seems to be strong wages and high demand. First, what have each of the indices done since 2020M02. Figure 1: CPI-shelter (blue), CPI-less shelter (brown), CPI-all urban (bold black), CPI-all nowcast for July (gray +), all in logs, 2020M02=0. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS via FRED,Cleveland Fed, NBER, and author’s calculations.Since the NBER peak in 2020M02, CPI less shelter has risen 5.8%, vs. 2.9% for the CPI shelter component. Month-on-month CPI-less shelter inflation has consistently outpaced CPI shelter component in recent months. The Cleveland Fed nowcast of CPI has substantial deceleration marked for July.Figure 2: Month-on-month annualized inflation for CPI-shelter (blue), CPI-less shelter (brown), CPI-all urban (bold black), CPI-all Cleveland Fed nowcast (gray +), all calculated using log differences. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS via FRED, Cleveland Fed, NBER, and author’s calculations. from 1986-2019, the persistence of m/m CPI-shelter inflation was less than that of CPI-less shelter (as measured by the AR(1) coefficient), so the assumption of a transitory jump in shelter costs made sense. However, the special conditions surrounding the pandemic means that one wouldn’t want to rely on this historical pattern to hold.The NYT article cites statistics from Zillow (in particular, the smoothed, not seasonally adjusted, series*). I’m not sure how useful the Zillow series will be for predicting the CPI rent component. Figure 3 plots the m/m growth rates of the Zillow series (seasonally adjusted) and the CPI rent of primary residence component.

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Down 9% Compared to Same Week in 2019m Note: The year-over-year occupancy comparisons are easy, since occupancy declined sharply at the onset of the pandemic. So STR is comparing to the same week in 2019. The occupancy rate is down 8.7% compared to the same week in 2019. From CoStar: STR: Weekly US Hotel Occupancy Reaches Pre-Pandemic Level While ADR Drops Slightly: U.S. weekly hotel occupancy reached its highest level since October 2019, according to STR’s latest data through July 17.

July 11-17, 2021 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019*):

Occupancy: 71.0% (-8.7%)

Average daily rate (ADR): US$139.19 (+1.8%)

Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$98.87 (-7.1%)

Despite a four-point, week-over-week improvement in occupancy, ADR dipped slightly from the all-time high achieved the previous week.

The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.The red line is for 2021, black is 2020, blue is the median, dashed purple is 2019, and dashed light blue is for 2009 (the worst year on record for hotels prior to 2020). Occupancy is well above the horrible 2009 levels and weekend occupancy (leisure) has been solid.With solid leisure travel, the Summer months should have decent occupancy – but it is uncertain what will happen in the Fall with business travel. In another recent article, a CoStar analyst points out “Leisure Demand Continues To Do the Heavy Lifting for Industry”.

AIA: “Architecture Billings Index robust growth continues” in June – Note: This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment.From the AIA: Architecture Billings Index robust growth continues: Architecture firms reported increasing demand for design services in June according to a new report today from The American Institute of Architects (AIA). AIA’s Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score for June remained at an elevated level of 57.1 in June (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). During June, the new design contracts score also remained positive at 58.9 but was not quite as strong as the 63.2 reading in May. New project inquiries logged another near-record high score at 71.8, compared to 69.2 in May.”With the current pace of billings growth near the highest levels ever seen in the history of the index, we’re expecting a sharp upturn in nonresidential building activity later this year and into 2022,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD. “However, as is often the case when market conditions make a sudden reversal, concerns are growing about architecture firms not being able to find enough workers to meet the higher workloads. Nearly six in 10 firms report that they are having problems filling open architectural staff positions.”…

Regional averages: Midwest (62.0); West (59.7); South (57.3); Northeast (53.2)

Sector index breakdown: commercial/industrial (61.0); multi-family residential (57.9); institutional (57.3); mixed practice (56.4) This graph shows the Architecture Billings Index since 1996. The index was at 57.1 in June, down from 58.5 in May. Anything above 50 indicates expansion in demand for architects’ services. Note: This includes commercial and industrial facilities like hotels and office buildings, multi-family residential, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions. This index had been below 50 for eleven consecutive months, but has been solidly positive for the last five months. The eleven months of decline represented a significant decrease in design services, and suggests a decline in CRE investment through most of 2021 (This usually leads CRE investment by 9 to 12 months), however we might see a pickup in CRE investment towards the end of the 2021 and into 2022.

July Vehicle Sales Forecast: “Sales to Continue Free-Fall” -From WardsAuto: July U.S. Light-Vehicle Sales to Continue Free-Fall from Springtime Peak (pay content) Wards notes low inventories and supply issues (mircochips) are impacting sales. This graph shows actual sales from the BEA (Blue), and Wards forecast for July (Red). The Wards forecast of 14.8 million SAAR, would be down about 4% from last month, and up 1% from a year ago (sales were recovering in June 2020 from the depths of the pandemic).

Passport backlog threatens to upend travel plans for millions of Americans – Millions of Americans hoping to renew their passports and travel abroad this summer could see their plans dashed by a massive backlog caused by staffing shortages at the State Department. The delays are compounding frustrations for would-be travelers looking to take vacations or visit loved ones who are barred from entering the U.S. because of ongoing restrictions tied to the coronavirus pandemic. Congressional staff say their offices are being inundated with complaints and pleas from constituents over the wait time for passports. The State Department said in a briefing Wednesday that processing could take up to 18 weeks. Lawmakers are now getting involved. The top members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday calling for the State Department to “prioritize efforts to reduce processing time for passport applications.” “As more and more employees are able to safely return to work, and with demand for passports surging, it is critical that the Department use all available tools to reduce extended processing times, including strategies developed to address past passport backlogs,” wrote Reps. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman and ranking member of the committee. The delays largely stem from the State Department’s reduced in-person workforce that resulted from COVID-19 restrictions. The backlog now numbers as many as 2 million passport applications, for new ones and renewals, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services Rachel Arndt told reporters in a briefing Wednesday. “That is somewhat higher than what we would normally expect to see,” Arndt said, adding that application volume grew alongside vaccination rates in the U.S. Much of the processing has to be done with staff physically present in the office, said Arndt, adding that the State Department is bringing back more than 150 employees to help deal with the workload and will continue to increase that number. “They are not processing remotely or from home,” she said. “So we’re maintaining very high standards of security and privacy protection for the customers, and we’re securing their sensitive documents like their birth certificates and naturalization certificates in our offices. And, of course, the physical printing and mailing of the passport books and cards occurs from our facility.”

Summer travelers crowd U.S. airports despite coronavirus concerns. -More travelers passed through U.S. airports on Sunday than at any time since the start of the pandemic, federal data show, suggesting that the desire to get away this summer remains strong in the face of discouraging coronavirus news.About 2.2 million people passed through security checkpoints at airports in the United States, nearly three times as many as the same day a year ago, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration. That was still half a million short of the same day in 2019, before the pandemic, and about 300,000 short of July 21, 2019, which was also a late-July Sunday.The number of travelers continues to grow even though reported coronavirus infections are rising, particularly in areas with low rates of vaccination.The number of domestic travelers is growing even though there are fewer flights for them to take. U.S. airlines are expected to operate about 615,000 domestic flights this month, down more than 14 percent from July 2019, according to an analysis of flight schedules from Cirium, an aviation data provider.The number of passengers on domestic flights has climbed for months as vaccinations have risen and the numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths have declined.The number of air travelers on July 1 and 2 – just before Independence Day – was actually greater in 2021 than in 2019, T.S.A. data showed. (The T.S.A. noted that more people traveled over the entire holiday weekend in 2019.)

Eye-poking flight attendants and eye-popping fines for airplane mayhem – In undisclosed locations near airports around the country this month, flight attendants are receiving training in aggressive self defense moves that are specially designed for close-quarters. Flight attendants learn the double-ear slap, the eye-poke, and the groin-kick. They learn tricks to swiftly disarm passengers with sharp weapons, and how to use items readily available aboard a plane for defense.The moves are designed to de-escalate and quickly subdue passengers because in the words of former trainer Scott Armstrong, “you don’t want to get into a long, drawn-out fight.”This is, as they say, not a drill. Just last week, the training was famously put to good use, when a female passenger on an American Airlines flight to North Carolina attacked and bit several flight attendants and tried to open the plane’s door mid-flight. Resourceful flight attendants grabbed a roll of duct-tape, and the woman arrived at her destination, subdued and bound tightly to her chair. It might not have been standard protocol but it was effective and American Airlines later applauded its crew. It’s not just your imagination; there really has been an extraordinary amount of mayhem in the skies recently. The FAA has received 3,420 “unruly passenger” reports in 2021, and 3,000 weapons have been seized at airports.

State Department to Americans: Don’t Fly to UK Due to COVID-19 – The US State Department has urged Americans not to travel to the United Kingdom because of a surge in coronavirus cases there. “Do not travel to the United Kingdom due to COVID-19,” the agency wrote in an updated advisory posted Monday. COVID-19 cases in the UK continue to rise, with nearly 40,000 new infections reported on Monday. Despite the recent surge in cases, the UK government lifted most of its COVID-19 restrictions. The State Department raised the travel advisory for the UK to a Level 4 – “Do Not Travel” – after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention elevated its warnings for travel there. The CDC “has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice for the United Kingdom due to COVID-19, indicating a very high level of COVID-19 in the country,” the State Department said in its advisory. In a warning issued earlier Monday, the CDC told Americans to “avoid travel to the United Kingdom.” “If you must travel to the United Kingdom, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel,” the CDC said, adding, “Because of the current situation in the United Kingdom, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants.”

Kansas City Fed Survey: Activity Strengthens in July – The latest index came in at 30, up 3 from last month’s 27, indicating expansion in July. The future outlook decreased to 33 his month from 37. Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey. Quarterly data for this indicator dates back to 1995, but monthly data is only available from 2001.Here is an excerpt from the latest report:Tenth District manufacturing activity increased further, with solid expectations for future activity over the next six months (Chart 1, Tables 1 & 2). The index of prices paid for raw materials remained near record highs and the index of prices received for finished goods expanded again in July. Price indexes vs. a year ago posted record highs in July for the fourth straight month. In July, more district firms expected materials prices and finished goods prices to rise over the next six months. [Full report here] Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims increase to 419,000 – The DOL reported: In the week ending July 17, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 419,000, an increase of 51,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 8,000 from 360,000 to 368,000. The 4-week moving average was 385,250, an increase of 750 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 2,000 from 382,500 to 384,500. This does not include the 96,362 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that was down from 100,590 the previous week. The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971. The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 385,250. The previous week was revised up. Regular state continued claims decreased to 3,236,000 (SA) from 3,265,000 (SA) the previous week. Note: There are an additional 5,133,938 receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that decreased from 5,687,188 the previous week (there are questions about these numbers). This is a special program for business owners, self-employed, independent contractors or gig workers not receiving other unemployment insurance. And an additional 4,134,716 receiving Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) down from 4,710,359. Weekly claims were higher than the consensus forecast.

New jobless claims rise sharply; is the Delta wave beginning to take its economic toll? – New jobless claims are the most important weekly economic datapoint with regard to the effects of vaccination progress. At this point, it is also a test of how much the “delta wave” of new cases is setting economic progress back. Three weeks I wrote that, because progress in vaccinations had largely stalled, “that implies at least a stall in the decline in new claims, and – I actually suspect – an increase, perhaps to about 450,000 per week or so.” This week’s number may just be noise, or may be evidence such an increase. New jobless claims rose by 51,000 to 419,000, the highest number in 9 weeks. The 4 week average of claims also rose – slightly – by 750 to 385,2500. Here is the trend since last August:After trending down by roughly 100,000 per month from late February into May, as vaccinations increased quickly, the rate slowed sharply ever since, to a decline of less than 20,000 in the past 6 weeks in the 4 week average.On the other hand, continuing claims, which are reported with a one week lag, and lag the trend of initial claims typically by a few weeks to several months, have declined gradually about 15% from roughly 3,800,000 over the past 4 months, did set another new pandemic low today at 3,236,000:Some of this decline *may* be due to many States’ termination of all extended jobless benefits due to the pandemic.A long term perspective shows that this week’s level is similar to early during other recoveries from most previous recessions, versus at 2,000,000 or below later in strong expansions: My ultimate target for economic success from vaccinations has been for claims to average 325,000 or below. But with the Delta variant surging, and new COVID cases rapidly increasing to near last summer’s highs, I suspect that both employers and potential customers will become more cautious again. I remain skeptical that there will be a full return to employment until the disease has run its course.

The Pace of Employment Growth in States Cutting UI Benefits by Menzie Chinn – Is slower than for those that didn’t. From Steve Englander/Standard Charter Bank: Source: Englander, “US – Benefit cuts not linked to job gains so far,” Global Research/Standard Charter Bank, 16 July 2021. From the newsletter:We found evidence that cutting or eliminating federal COVID-linked benefits reduced the numbers receiving benefits (see UI recipients drop in states cutting benefits), but June Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) state employment data do not indicate that the states that cut or had impending benefit cuts had higher employment gains (Figure 1). The first round of states cutting benefits (Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri) clearly lagged other states. The eight states that reduced benefits a week later also lagged, but by a smaller margin. … We see this as a modest disappointment for those who expected to see a big, immediate impact from benefit reductions, but the conclusion is very tentative because of the survey dates. July state data should be more definitive on this score.A more detailed examination, confirming little evidence of any effect, is provided by Arindrajit Dube in thisblogpost: So what has been the impact so far on the labor market? How have the policy changes impacted the number of people receiving UI benefits? And have these policy changes boosted jobs in those states so far? Here I use recent data from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) collected by the Census Bureau to assess the short term impacts of the June expiration. Specifically, the HPS asks whether the respondent received UI in the last 7 days, which allows us to assess the impact of the policy expiration on recipiency. In addition, the HPS also asks whether the respondent is currently working, which allows us to evaluate the employment impacts. The most recent data goes through July 5, 2021. … Overall, the mid-June expirations of pandemic UI seem to have sharply reduced the share of population receiving any unemployment benefits. But this doesn’t seem to have translated into most of these individuals having jobs in the first 2-3 weeks following expiration. However, there is evidence that the reduced UI benefits increased self-reported hardship in paying for regular expenses. Of course, this evidence is still early, and more data is needed to paint a fuller picture.

Judge rules against Maryland’s threat to end extended pandemic benefits – On Tuesday, July 13, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan from cutting off supplemental enhanced federal unemployment benefits under the CARES Act, with the program allowed to continue until September 6, when the national program is terminated. Hogan’s original order, issued June 1, announced that benefits would be cut off effective July 3. Hogan cited the state’s achievement of the 70 percent vaccination benchmark set by Democratic President Joe Biden as well as an abundance of vaccines and job openings in the state. In addition, the governor cited 12 consecutive months of job growth. The court ruling was the result of over two weeks of court battles and appeals by Hogan’s administration after two lawsuits filed June 30 opposed the order cutting off enhanced benefits. The six plaintiffs in the D.A. v. Hogan suit alleged that each of them had received some combination of pandemic assistance. All six had lost work due to the pandemic and had been unable to find new work. The suit also claimed that, for five of the six plaintiffs, their benefits would terminate if an injunction was not issued. Six more plaintiffs in Harp v. Hogan asserted claims for themselves and on behalf of other similarly-situated claimants. Two of the six plaintiffs were receiving enhanced unemployment benefits. Two others alleged that they lost work because of the pandemic and had never received their benefits due to errors in the administration of the benefit programs. The other two received benefits at one point, but were cut off due to those same errors. Baltimore City Circuit Court Associate Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill issued a temporary restraining order on July 3 and set up the hearing that took place on July 12, citing the “cruelly uneven” impact of the pandemic. Hogan’s appeals to both the Court of Special Appeals and the Maryland Court of Appeals were denied. Even if the Circuit Court had ruled in favor of Hogan, the state would have had to extend benefits into mid-August due to a US Department of Labor ruling that a state must give 30 days’ notice before it can end federal benefits. “Hogan is going to all this trouble just to try to cut people off from their benefits a few weeks early,” Maryland House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Luedtke (D-Montgomery County) told the Washington Post last week.

Many return-to-office plans are being disrupted by the virus surge. – When companies began announcing tentative return-to-office plans this spring, there was a sense of optimism behind the messages.In recent days, that tone has suddenly shifted. The Delta variant, a more contagious version of the coronavirus, is sweeping through the country. Less than half of Americans are fully vaccinated, exacerbating the situation. It all adds up to a difficult calculation for America’s business leaders, who hoped the country would already be fully on a path to normalcy, with employees getting back to offices. Instead, individual companies are now being forced to make tough decisions that they had hoped could be avoided, such as whether to reverse reopening plans or institute vaccine mandates for employees. All the while, they continue to grapple with the unpredictable nature of the pandemic.”It’s emotionally draining on all of us, and it drives the top management teams crazy,” said Bob Sutton, a psychology professor at Stanford University who studies leadership and organizations. He said some executives he had advised were “pulling their hair out” over what to do.Several hospital systems that previously held off making vaccines mandatory for health care workers are now willing to do so. Google employees in California who have returned to the office on a voluntary basis are again wearing masks indoors.Goldman Sachs is considering whether to reinstitute testing for fully vaccinated employees in the company’s New York City offices, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because nothing had been decided. And on Monday, Apple told its work force that it would push back its return-to-office date from September to October.For employers wary of the legal ramifications and political backlash of mandating a vaccine, the tide has begun to turn, if ever so sightly. “At the beginning, there were a lot of employers that were concerned about jumping in too soon and being the one out front – it is a divisive issue,” said David Barron, a labor and employment lawyer at the law firm Cozen O’Connor. “The calculus starts to shift a little bit when you see another spike.”

N.Y.C.’s mayor calls for companies to require shots, as national debate over vaccine mandates picks up. – Mayor Bill de Blasio urged on Friday that New York City’s private businesses require their workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and signaled that he would introduce similar measures for hundreds of thousands of municipal employees.The mayor’s comments came just days after he announced that all employees in the public hospital system would have to either receive a virus vaccine or submit to weekly testing.The highly contagious Delta variant has fueled outbreaks among the unvaccinated across the United States and in recent days many local governments and private organizations have been grappling with whether to put vaccination mandates in place. Several organizations – including various hospital systems, schools, thecity of San Francisco and professional football – have taken steps to require vaccinations.The mayor’s new position reflected growing concern that New York, like much of the United States, is on the verge of another wave of the pandemic. In just a few weeks, case counts in the city have tripled, to more than 650 a day on average, while inoculation rates have leveled off.”If people want freedom, if people want jobs, if people want to live again, we have got to get more people vaccinated,” Mr. de Blasio said on Friday during a weekly radio appearance on WNYC. “And obviously it’s time for whatever mandates we can achieve.”Although nearly five million New York City residents have received at least one dose of vaccine, the speed at which new shots are being administered has slowed. Nationally, 57 percent of Americans have gotten at least one vaccine dose; 49 percent are fully vaccinated.New York City officials have tried everything from mobile vaccination sites to in-home vaccination visits to offering incentives like cash and movie tickets, but they have yet to see a significant rise in inoculations.Even vaccinations among employees of many city agencies – including the Police Department, the Fire Department and the public schools – have remained below the citywide rate of full vaccination among adults, 65 percent. “We have reached the limits of purely voluntary,” Mr. de Blasio said on Friday. “It’s time for more mandates.”

DeSantis vows no lockdowns as Florida Covid cases surge – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday pledged that there would be no mask mandates in schools or Covid-related lockdowns this fall even as the virus surges in the state and across the nation. Florida has seen its cases explode in July, primarily among the unvaccinated, and hospitals are grappling with a wave of new admissions that have forced some major hospitals across the state to bring back visitation limits and cut back on elective surgeries. More than 8,000 people in Florida tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday, and even the state’s attorney general announced this week that she has Covid despite being fully vaccinated. Yet the Republican governor insisted that Florida would have a “normal school year” and that the state would resist any campaigns or push by federal authorities to put in place mask mandates for school children. The American Academy of Pediatricians earlier this week recommended that all students two or older and school staff wear masks. “We’re not doing that in Florida. Ok? We need our kids to breathe,” said DeSantis during a press conference in Fort Pierce to acknowledge the signing of a bill that creates a statewide book distribution program. “Is it really healthy for them to be muzzled and having their breathing obstructed all day long in school? I don’t think it is.” DeSantis comments marked yet another round in his confrontational stance against federal health authorities. The Republican governor, who is eyeing a 2024 presidential bid, has repeatedly touted his hands-off approach to Covid-19 that went against some of the recommendations of health authorities, but resulted in businesses remaining open and the state keeping down its mortality rate among its senior citizens, particularly in nursing homes. More than 38,000 Floridians have died since the start of the pandemic.

Five-year-old dies of COVID-19 in Georgia as Biden administration pushes to fully open schools –On Friday, Wyatt Gary Gibson died from COVID-19 at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after a short battle with the virus. He was just 5 years old. Wyatt was the son of Alexis Gibson and her husband Wes Gibson, a deputy with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office, and brother to a 9-month-old sister. Local reports indicate that the entire Gibson family contracted COVID-19. However, Wyatt was the only member of the family that experienced complications, including a stroke. Tragically, the young boy was admitted to the hospital with “COVID pneumonia” early in the week and died just a few days after. As with all too many families, the Gibsons are now experiencing the worst nightmare of any parent. Wyatt is the fourth child under age 10 who has died of COVID-19 in Georgia alone, according to the official tally from the Georgia Department of Public Health (GDPH). The three other child deaths in the state include a 7-year-old boy from Chatham County, a 7-year-old girl from Clayton County, and a 1-year-old boy from Cobb County. As in many countries throughout the world, the United States is experiencing a major new upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past month alone, daily cases have increased by a staggering 250 percent. The increase in cases has driven a rise in hospitalizations and a significant increase in the daily death rate. The main source of the rise in cases is coming from the new Delta variant of COVID-19, the most infectious and deadliest variant of the virus that the world has seen so far. The increase in cases is mostly affecting the unvaccinated population. In the US, less than half of the population is fully vaccinated, including all children under 12 for whom no vaccines have yet been approved.

More than 1.5 million children have lost a caregiver to the pandemic, a study says. -An estimated 1.5 million children worldwide lost a mother, father or other caregiving relative in the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a new study. More than a million lost primary caregivers. “These unnamed children are the tragic overlooked consequence of the millions of pandemic dead,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday.Many more children will experience such losses as the virus rages in many countries, the researchers predict, and the bereaved are likely to be at risk for an array of further traumas that may include mental health problems, abuse, chronic diseases and poverty.The estimates were developed using death statistics and other data for 21 countries that accounted for more than 76 percent of global Covid deaths up to April 30, 2021. The international research team was led by a member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and included experts from international agencies, including the World Health Organization and Imperial College London. The deaths of grandparents represent a powerful blow to many children. “In the U.S.A., 40 percent of grandparents living with grandchildren serve as their primary caregivers; in the U.K., 40 percent of grandparents provide regular care for grandchildren,” the researchers wrote. In a separate online report linked to the study, the researchers warned that with the pandemic far from over and vaccinations yet to reach much of the global population, the deaths of caregivers were likely to keep mounting, with “severe consequences lasting at least through the age of 18 years for children affected.” “The impact of these parental and caregiver deaths differs across families, communities and nations,” the researchers wrote. “Yet, there is one commonality: A child’s life often falls apart when he or she loses a parent or grandparent caregiver.”

Chicago will require masks in school this fall, regardless of vaccination status. -Chicago Public Schools will require everyone to wear masks in school buildings when the new academic year starts, regardless of their vaccination status, according to guidelines the school system released on Thursday.With the decision, Chicago joins New York City and several other large jurisdictions, including the state of California, in imposing stricter health guidelines for students and teachers than the federal government has recommended.In a letter to public school parents and children, Jose Torres, the interim chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, wrote that the rule on face covering would apply to students, staff members and visitors.”Continuing to require masks will help make sure those in our school communities who are not yet eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine, which encompasses the majority of our students, remain as safe as possible,” Mr. Torres wrote.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance earlier this month that called for a full return to classrooms in the fall and recommended that masks be optional for fully vaccinated students and staff.But the guidance left a lot of details up to state and local governments, advising districts to use local coronavirus data to guide decisions about when to tighten or relax prevention measures like masking and physical distancing. It also recommended that unvaccinated students and staff members keep wearing masks.Chicago’s announcement came a day after the Virginia Department of Health and Department of Education said that masks should be worn indoors in public elementary schools, regardless of vaccination status. The state’s return-to-school guidelines also encourage mask-wearing indoors in middle and high schools for those who are unvaccinated. But Virginia stopped short of issuing a universal mask mandate, leaving that decision up to schools.Chicago’s decision on masks was based in part onrecommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics,which took a more conservative approach than the C.D.C. by recommending that everyone over age 2 wear masks this fall, even if they have been vaccinated. But both the A.A.P. and the C.D.C. support a return to in-person learning.

After a Republican outcry, Tennessee redirects vaccine outreach to teenagers, shifting it to their parents — Tennessee health officials are resuming several programs to promote vaccinations for public school students, just two weeks after such efforts were halted because Republican elected officials had complained that parents should make the decisions. The criticism of the programs had reached a fever pitch just before the firing of the state’s top immunization official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, earlier this month. Dr. Fiscus, medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs, attributed her ouster to the pushback among Republican lawmakers in the state. She is one of scores of public health officials across the United States who have quit or been forced from their jobs in a political climate that has grown increasingly polarized over the coronavirus and the vaccines. On Friday, Dr. Lisa Piercey, the state health commissioner, said at a news conference that the state had temporarily suspended its outreach efforts in light of the criticism from conservatives, but officials were now trying to target messages to parents. She said the department would be taking part in several back-to-school vaccine events in partnership with schools. “There was a perception we were marketing to children and that was totally against our view of the importance of parental authority,” she said. “We strongly believe that parents are the best decision markers.”

A federal judge upholds Indiana University’s vaccination requirement for students – In what appeared to be the first ruling upholding a coronavirus vaccine mandate by a university, a federal judge affirmed on Monday that Indiana University could require that its students be vaccinated against the virus. A lawyer for eight student plaintiffs had argued that requiring the vaccine violated their right to bodily integrity and autonomy, and that the coronavirus vaccines have only emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, and should not be considered as part of the normal range of vaccinations schools require. He vowed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. “What we have here is the government forcing you to do something that you strenuously object to and have your body invaded in the process,” said the lawyer, James Bopp Jr. He said that the appeal would be paid for by America’s Frontline Doctors, a conservative organization that has been pursuing an anti-vaccine agenda. Mr. Bopp, of Terre Haute, Ind., is known for his legal advocacy promoting conservative causes. Mr. Bopp filed the lawsuit in June, after Indiana University announced the previous month that faculty, staff and students would be required to get coronavirus vaccinations before coming to school this fall. The university, whose main campus is in Bloomington, Ind., said that students who did not comply would have their class registrations canceled and would be barred from campus activities. The requirement permitted exemptions only for religious objections, documented allergies to the vaccine, medical deferrals and virtual class attendance.

Inside the ‘vicious cycle’ of spiralling student-loan debt caused by servicers just not picking up the phone –Charles Moore, 49, was on the phone for four hours with the company that collects his student loans. Moore, who holds more than $50,000 in student debt, wanted to know why his and his wife’s loans weren’t consolidated, or combined, and despite many attempts to contact American Education Services, which collects his loan payments, he wasn’t able to get an answer. This means they were paying two debt loads’ worth of interest when they could have just been paying for one. “Nobody wants to assist you,” Moore, of South Carolina, told Insider. “And you don’t know how to get help. Even though you go back and forth, the lender doesn’t know what the servicer is doing and the servicer doesn’t know what the lender is doing.”Student-loan servicers have been under close scrutiny on Capitol Hill over the past decade for practices that have put borrowers in a bind, engaging in misleading practices, with many borrowers taking out loans they can never pay back, among other things. Moore’s loans, along with 8.5 million others, are owned by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), which just announced it is shutting down its loan services in December. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said those borrowers can now “breathe a sigh of relief” knowing their loans won’t be managed by a company that “has robbed untold numbers of public servants of debt relief.” Borrowers told Insider that their debt piles continue to grow, simply because they can’t reach their servicers for help. Here’s what those borrowers are dealing with, and how lawmakers want to hold servicers accountable.

Warren: Canceling $50K in student debt could ‘transform an entire generation’ –Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is reigniting her push for canceling $50,000 in student debt per borrower, arguing the move could “transform an entire generation.” “It would help nearly everyone who tried to go to college and it didn’t work out – the 40% of student loan borrowers who do not have a college diploma and are truly struggling hard with student loan debt and would help a huge number of public school teachers and firefighters and people who want a chance to get out there and start their own businesses,” Warren told MassLive in a recent interview. “It’s the right number, it’s where a lot of people intersect that we could transform an entire generation,” she added. The renewed push comes as Democratic lawmakers prepare for Oct. 1, when federal student loans payments and interest are slated to resume. The Trump administration enacted a pause amid the pandemic, which President Biden extended through an executive order he signed on his first day in office. Warren, along with a group of Democratic lawmakers, reintroduced a measure in February that called on Biden to forgive up to $50,000 in federally held student debt per borrower. She doubled down on that call days later, writing in a joint statement with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), “It’s time to act. We will keep fighting.” Biden, who said in February he is “prepared to write off” $10,000 in debt, has balked at the $50,000 figure, saying he does not believe such a move could be done with presidential action. The White House that month said the Office of Legal Counsel was reviewing if Biden could unilaterally cancel federal student loan debt. Warren said if the White House cancels $50,000 of student debt per borrower and extends the pause on payments and interest until at least March 21, 2022, student loan debt for 85 percent of Americans would be eliminated. “If they do both of those things, that will completely eliminate student loan debt for 85 percent of the people who currently carry it,” Warren told MassLive. “And for the 15 percent of people who remain, it gives the Department of Education a chance to get them into the right repayment programs.”

Almost nobody is repaying their student loans -In the 2020 CARES Act, Congress gave student-loan borrowers a temporary break from repaying their loans. President Trump extended that twice and President Biden once, with loan payments now set to resume Oct. 1, 2021.Borrowers could have kept paying if they wanted to, but almost nobody did. As Tom Lee of the American Action Forum recently explained, the portion of borrowers repaying their student loans dropped from 46% at the beginning of 2020 to 1% today. The portion of borrowers in forbearance rose from 10% to 57%. The rest include borrowers who are still in school, who have gotten deferments or who have defaulted.There’s no shame in accepting an emergency benefit the government offers during a pandemic. It’s also financially shrewd to put off repayment of a loan, as long as there’s no penalty. But the massive student-loan deferment may have set the stage for a chaotic resumption of payments this fall, or politically explosive intervention by the Biden administration that could impact upcoming elections.Some Democrats, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, want Biden to extend the repayment deadline into 2022. Another group of Democrats wants Biden to forgive $50,000 in debt for every student-loan borrower. Biden has said he might consider canceling up to $10,000, but it’s not clear he has the legal authority to do that, and the high cost could torpedo funding for other priorities if he did. America’s $1.4 trillion in federally backed student debt has become a cultural and generational flashpoint as politicians debate what, if anything, to do about it. Liberal Democrats feel some or all of the 40 million student-loan borrowers deserve relief, since the average amount owed per borrower has exploded to nearly $37,000. The growth in average balances has far exceeded inflation or income growth. The hardest cases are students who take on debt but never get a degree or the extra earning power that comes with it.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped in 2020, especially for Black and Hispanic Americans. – Life expectancy in the United States fell by a year and a half in 2020, largely because of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a federal report said on Wednesday, a staggering drop that affected Hispanic and Black Americans more severely than white people.It was the steepest decline in life expectancy in the United States since World War II.From 2019 to 2020, Hispanic people experienced the greatest drop in life expectancy – three years – and Black Americans saw a decrease of 2.9 years. White Americans experienced the smallest decline, of 1.2 years.The numbers can vary from year to year, providing only a snapshot in time of the general health of a population: If an American child was born today and lived an entire life under the conditions of 2020, that child would be expected to live 77.3 years, down from 78.8 in 2019.Racial and ethnic disparities have persisted throughout the coronavirus pandemic, a reflection of many factors, including the differences in overall health and available health care between white, Hispanic and Black people in the United States. Black and Hispanic Americans were more likely to be employed in risky, public-facing jobs during the pandemic – bus drivers, restaurant cooks, sanitation workers – rather than working from home in relative safety on their laptops in white-collar jobs.They also more commonly depend on public transportation, risking coronavirus exposure, or live in multigenerational homes and in tighter conditions that were more conducive to spreading the virus. The precipitous drop in 2020, caused largely by Covid-19, is not likely to be permanent. In 1918, the flu pandemic wiped 11.8 years from Americans’ life expectancy, and the number fully rebounded the following year. But even if deaths from Covid-19 markedly decline in 2021, the economic and social effects will linger, especially among racial groups that were disproportionately affected, researchers have noted.

Pandemic slashed US life expectancy by 1.5 years in 2020 – Life expectancy in the US plummeted by 1.5 years in 2020, according to a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), marking the largest one-year drop since 1943, when young men were dying every day on the battlefields of World War II. The precipitous decline is a continuation and acceleration of a downward trend in US mortality since 2015. Life expectancy is defined as an estimate of the average number of years a person born in a given year may expect to live. The metric does not precisely predict actual life span, instead being a measure of a society’s general health. The drastic fall in 2020 reflects the accelerating decay of American society under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been allowed to run rampant under a bipartisan “herd immunity” policy, resulting in more than 35 million infections and over 625,000 deaths so far. According to the report, if an American child were born today and lived his or her entire life under the conditions of 2020, the child would be expected to live 77.3 years, down from 78.8 in 2019. Life expectancy for American males declined 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020, while life expectancy for American women dropped by 1.2 years from 2019. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, US life expectancy has not been so low since 2003. The report estimated COVID-19 deaths contributed to approximately 74 percent of the decline in life expectancy. Researchers discovered disparities among racial groups, with the virus being responsible for 90 percent of the decline in life expectancy among Latinos, 68 percent among the non-Hispanic white population and about 59 percent among the non-Hispanic black population. There was no data on Asian Americans or other racial groups in the report. According to CDC data, black Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19 at 2.9 times the rate of white Americans and die at two times the rate. Nonwhite Hispanics are hospitalized at 2.8 times the rate and die at 2.3 times the rate of white Americans. Federal data indicates life expectancy for black Americans has not fallen so much since the mid-1930s amid the Great Depression. While health officials have not recorded Hispanic life expectancy as far back, the 2020 decline was the largest recorded year-to-year drop. The report’s authors and bourgeois publications, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, were quick to attribute the discrepancy among racial groups to “systemic racism” inherent in American society. In reality, these differences reflect the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on the working class and poor. Minorities are more likely to be employed in jobs deemed “essential” by the ruling class and forced to expose themselves to the deadly disease. Poor workers more commonly depend on public transportation, risking exposure with every outing, or live in multigenerational homes in cramped conditions more conducive to spreading the virus. Experts say it is also possible Hispanics are disproportionately affected because many are undocumented and ineligible for federal pandemic relief or unemployment benefits. Additionally, there are obstacles related to accessing coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines for the undocumented. The overall decline in life expectancy reflects the pandemic’s massive toll on American society and its broader impacts on social health, including a record-high number of deaths from drug overdoses and other so-called deaths of despair. In 2020, more than 93,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. This staggering figure is more than 10 times the estimated 9,000 overdose deaths recorded by the CDC in 1988, around the height of the crack epidemic.

Indonesia extends restrictions during a Muslim holiday. – President Joko Widodo of Indonesia said Tuesday he would extend coronavirus restrictions at least until Monday as the country celebrated a muted Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Muslim holidays traditionally marked by large gatherings and the slaughter of cows and sheep. The country hit a series of daily records last week, surpassing India and Brazil with the largest number of daily cases in the world and establishing Indonesia as an epicenter of the virus. Many hospitals on densely populated Java island are overwhelmed by patients, and lifesaving oxygen is in short supply. Some patients wait days in tents and hallways for admission to a hospital ward and many others die in isolation at home. Gravediggers struggle to keep pace with the surge of bodies. On Monday, the government reported a record 1,338 deaths. Mr. Joko said the restrictions on much of Java and Bali islands were needed “so as not to paralyze hospitals due to overcapacity.” Since last week, the number of reported cases has declined sharply, reaching 38,325 on Tuesday. But the number of tests being conducted has also dropped sharply, from a high of nearly 260,000 on Friday to fewer than 115,000 on Tuesday. Indonesia had hit a record of nearly 57,000 cases on Thursday. Mr. Joko, who has been reluctant throughout the pandemic to impose lockdowns that slow the economy, said that if the trend continues, he will begin lifting restrictions on commerce and gatherings in stages. The percentage of tests that are positive has remained at more than 30 percent for the past week, which health experts say is a sign that the virus is widespread and that too few tests are being conducted. On Tuesday, the positivity rate was even higher: one out of every three people tested was positive. This was the second year in a row that Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, celebrated Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, under the shadow of the coronavirus. The holiday commemorates the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son, Ismail, at God’s command.

Remittances to Latin America Surge, Even As Virus Crisis Continues to Bite in Host Economies –Between January and May of this year the total amount Mexico received in remittances – transfers of money by workers of Mexican descent mainly in the US but also other countries to individuals in Mexico – surged by 21.75% compared to the same period last year, from $15.75 billion to $19.17 billion. Spanish lender BBVA says it’s on target to set another annual record, of around $47 billion. That’s after increasing by 11.4% in 2020, to $40.6 billion. This all happened despite the fact that GDP in the US, where 98% of the remittances to Mexico originate, slumped by 3.5% last year, the worst annual decline since 1946.Mexico is the third largest recipient country for remittances inflows worldwide, behind India ($83 billion of inflows in 2019) and China ($70 billion), both with populations more than ten times larger than Mexico’s. After nine consecutive years of increases in inflows, Mexico’s economy is receiving more than double the amount it received in 2011 ($19 billion). The most important host regions for remittance outflows are the United States and Canada ($200 billion), the Arabian peninsular ($130 billion) and Europe ($121 billion). Mexico was not the only country in Latin America to witness a sharp rise in remittances last year. In El Salavador, where remittances account for 24% of GDP, $5.93 billion of remittances arrived in 2020, $275 million more than the previous year. The Dominican Republic saw its total remittance haul surge by 16%, to $8,219 million. A similar trend was observed in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. None of this was expected. In late April 2020, as the global economy seized up and financial markets cascaded, the World Bank released a press release warning that remittances were likely to drop significantly across the world’s low and middle-income economies: Remittance flows are expected to fall across all World Bank Group regions, most notably in Europe and Central Asia (27.5 percent), followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (23.1 percent), South Asia (22.1 percent), the Middle East and North Africa (19.6 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (19.3 percent), and East Asia and the Pacific (13 percent). In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there was a six-year downtrend in remittances to Mexico, totalling 21%. Yet the opposite has happened during this downturn – and not just in Mexico. As the World Bank reported in May this year, despite COVID-19, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020, registering a smaller decline than previously projected: Officially recorded remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $540 billion in 2020, just 1.6 percent below the 2019 total of $548 billion, according to the latest Migration and Development Brief. The decline in recorded remittance flows in 2020 was smaller than the one during the 2009 global financial crisis (4.8 percent). In some regions remittance income actually increased. In Latin America and the Caribbean it went up by 6.5%; in South Asia, by 5.2%, and in the Middle East and North Africa, by 2.3%. But it fell in East Asia and the Pacific (7.9%); in Europe and Central Asia (9.7%) and in sub-Saharan Africa (12.5%). Most of the decline in flows to Sub-Saharan Africa have been attributed to a 28% decline in remittance flows to Nigeria. Excluding those flows, remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 2.3 percent.

YouTube pulls videos by Bolsonaro for spreading misinformation on the virus. – YouTube removed videos from President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil on Wednesday for spreading misinformation about Covid-19, becoming the latest internet platform to act against a leader whose country has one of the world’s highest death counts, but who hasdisparaged vaccines and the use of masks and called governors “tyrants” for ordering lockdowns.YouTube, which played an important role in Mr. Bolsonaro’s rise to power and says it is more widely watched in Brazil than all but one television channel, said in a statement that the president had violated the company’s policies about vaccine misinformation, including the promotion of unproven cures.”Our policies don’t allow content that claims hydroxychloroquine and/or Ivermectin are effective to treat or prevent Covid-19, claims that there is a guaranteed cure for Covid-19, and claims that masks don’t work to prevent the spread of the virus,” YouTube said in a statement. “This is in line with the guidance of local and global health authorities, and we update our policies as guidance changes.”Last year, Facebook removed statements by Mr. Bolsonaro after he promoted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus. Around the same time, Twitter deleted posts from the far-right Brazilian president for pushing false remedies and calling for an end to social distancing. YouTube said it applies policies consistently across the platform, regardless of the person or political view.

Suicide attempts among Canadian children have doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic -A Canadian children’s charity has declared a state of emergency with respect to children’s mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children First Canada launched the #codePINK campaign, which aims to raise awareness about pediatric emergencies.The figures reported by the campaign are devastating:

• â— A 200 percent increase in hospital admissions for substance abuse among children over the past year
• â— A 100 percent increase in suicide attempts by children during the same period
• â— 70 percent of children between ages 6 and 18 say that the pandemic has harmed their mental health in some form
• â— 62 percent of parents admit that the pandemic has worsened the mental health of at least one of their children
• â— 61 percent of parents expect the residual effects of the pandemic to impact their child’s mental health even after the pandemic ends

While the pandemic has unquestionably dramatically worsened the mental health crisis facing children, the real cause of the dramatic rise in suicides and substance abuse, which had begun well before COVID-19 emerged, is the capitalist profit system.The statistics cited by #codePINK are ultimately a by-product of the disastrous, decades-long gutting of social services by all the major political parties, from the social democratic New Democratic Party to the Liberals and Conservatives. Mental health services across Canada are in an atrocious state, with patients often waiting months to see specialists and receive support. Public education is also in a deplorable state following decades of austerity, which has pushed up class sizes, cut back on support staff, and placed increased demands on already overworked teachers.Meanwhile, the same politicians and political parties who repeat ad nauseam the claim that there is “no money” for critical health care and mental health services have lavished hundreds of billions of dollars on the banks and major corporations, and increased military spending by tens of billions of dollars.

Canada will reopen its border with the U.S. and hopes to allow others in by early September. – Canada is poised to welcome back fully vaccinated travelers, including Americans, after over a year of strict controls at the border.Beginning on Aug. 9, citizens and permanent residents of the United States will be allowed to enter Canada as long as they have been fully vaccinated for at least 14 days before travel, federal government officials said on Monday.Canada then hopes to allow visitors from other countries beginning on Sept. 7, a date that could change depending on conditions.Pressure has been building on both sides of the border to reopen, to bolster tourism and allow separated families to reunite (though Canada has already made some exceptions for relatives). The two countries have renewed the closure every month since the border closed to nonessential travel on March 21, 2020. Commercial traffic was never halted.Before the pandemic, Canada was the second most popular foreign destination for Americans, behind Mexico.Canada is ready to lift border restrictions because it has made rapid progress vaccinating its population after months of delays. It now has higher vaccination rates than the United States, with 50 percent of its population fully vaccinated, and 75 percent of residents having received at least one dose, according to its federal public health agency. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had indicated that Canada would begin to open its border after it crossed the 75 percent threshold for residents who are at least partly vaccinated.

Quelle Surprise: Covid Cases Surge in Europe’s Tourism Hot Spots, Just One Month After Grand Reopening – It turns out that a massive increase in cross-border travel – particularly by air – is a great way of spreading an airborne virus. “Pack your bags, Europe is opening back up!” That was the message sent out, to great fanfare, just a month ago. Many Northern Europeans, starved for the best part of two years of sun, sea and sand, flocked southward. But unfortunately, it turns out that cross-border travel – particularly by air – is a great way of spreading an airborne virus. The Covid-19 pandemic is once again raging in many of Europe’s vacation hot spots, from Portugal to Spain, to Malta and Greece. Catalonia, from where I am writing this article, is one of the worst hit.For the first time in over a year and a half, Barcelona, the region’s capital, is crawling with tourists (albeit, thankfully, not nearly in the same numbers as before). But it’s unlikely to last, given that the number of Covid cases is surging to dangerous levels. With an infection rate of 1,160 per 100,000 over a 14-day period, Spain’s north-eastern region boasts one of the five worst rates of contagion in mainland Europe. Infections are expected to peak at the end of this month, by which point the region’s hospitals anticipate having as many as 500 patients in critical condition, said Gemma Craywinckel, the director of public health.As recently as two weeks ago, the local government’s health secretary, Josep Maria Argimon, was blaming the rising cases on two factors: the “more contagious” delta variant and a surge in social interaction among local people, particularly the young as they embarked on their end-of-school-year trips and made merry during the Sant Joan midsummer festival (June 23). But last week he finally admitted that the recent surge in overseas arrivals had also played a part: “Catalonia’s position as an important tourist destination makes it more likely that an explosive situation can occur.” It’s impossible to know how many of the incoming tourists have been vaccinated and how many haven’t. Based on my own on-the-ground observations, most of them are in their twenties, thirties or forties. Quite a few of them are not wearing masks as they pour into shops and other indoor settings, even though their use indoors is mandatory here in Spain. My wife, a jewellery designer who works in a craft jewellery store in the tourist-heavy barrio of El Borne, has to stop roughly one out of every three tourists that comes through the door. She respectfully but assertively asks them to don their mask. Many are happy to oblige, others somewhat less so.

France prepares to introduce Covid-19 ‘health pass’ for access to cultural venues – A compulsory health pass for access to cultural and leisure venues will come into force in France on July 21, certifying that the bearer has either been fully vaccinated or had a recent, negative PCR test. FRANCE 24 takes a look at the European countries that have applied similar policies. Reserving access to venues and events for those who have been vaccinated or recently tested has sparked controversy in many countries, and France is no exception. “The health pass will never be a right of access that discriminates among the French. It cannot be made compulsory for access to everyday places,” French President Emmanuel Macron pledged in April during an interview with the regional press. But barely two months later, under pressure from the soaring infections due to the Covid-19 Delta variant, the president did an about-face.Starting July 21, the “health pass” (pass sanitaire) will be compulsory for access to leisure and cultural venues with more than 50 people, including cinemas and museums. From the beginning of August, it will be necessary to show your health pass to have coffee or eat lunch at a restaurant – even on an outdoor terrace – or to shop at a mall.Customers will have to provide either a QR code proving they are fully vaccinated, a negative PCR or antigen test that is less than 48 hours old, or proof that they have recovered from Covid-19 in the last six months. According to the government’s draft bill, restaurants could be fined up to euro 45,000 and proprietors face up to a year in prison if they fail to comply.Since Macron’s dramatic announcement on July 12, accusations of a “health dictatorship” have been spreading on social networks. According to the authorities, more than 20,000 people protested across France on Wednesday, Bastille Day, in the name of “freedom” against the president’s announcements.

In Europe, France takes the lead in making life unpleasant for the unvaccinated. – As Europe and the United States scramble to find an appropriate balance between curbing the Delta variant of the coronavirus and curbing personal freedom, President Emmanuel Macron has led the way down a narrow path combining limited compulsion to get vaccinated with widespread coercion.His approach of ordering health workers to get vaccinated by Sept. 15, and telling the rest of the French population they will be denied access to most indoor public venues if unvaccinated or without a negative test by Aug. 1, has prompted other countries including Italy to follow suit, even as it has stirred pockets of deep resistance.”You are creating a society of generalized control for months, maybe years,” Eric Coquerel, a lawmaker from the far-left France Unbowed party, said during a tumultuous 48-hour parliamentary debate on Mr. Macron’s measures that ended early Friday with a relatively narrow victory for the president.Barreling through 1,200 proposed amendments, defying accusations of authoritarianism and chaos from the hard right and left, the lower house voted by 117 to 86 to back President Macron’s attempt to strong-arm the French to get vaccinated by making their lives miserable if they do not.Europe’s problem is similar to that of the United States: vaccination levels that at around or just under 60 percent are inadequate for herd immunity; surging Delta variant cases; andgrowing divisions over how far getting an injection can be mandated.But where the United States has generally not gone beyond hospitals and major health systems requiring employees to get Covid-19 vaccines, major European economies including France and Italy are moving closer to making vaccines mandatory for everyone. Mr. Macron’s measures, announced July 12 as the only means to avoid yet another French lockdown, have spurred both protests and an extraordinary surge in vaccinations, with 3.7 million booked in the first week after the president spoke, and a record of nearly 900,000 vaccinations in a single day on July 19. In this sense, his bold move has been a success.

In France, angry protests, rising infections and record vaccinations. – More than 100,000 people took to the streets across France over the weekend to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s tough new vaccination strategy, which will restrict access to restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, long-distance trains and more for the unvaccinated.Demonstrators in Paris and elsewhere vented against what some called Mr. Macron’s “dictatorship” after he announced that a “health pass” – official proof of vaccination, a recent negative test, or recent Covid-19 recovery – would be required for many to attend or enter most public events and venues.At the same time, however, his policy seemed to have the desired effect: Record numbers of people flocked to vaccination centers in advance of the new rules coming into effect next month.It made for a striking split-screen image as millions lined up for vaccines – so desperately sought in much of the world suffering outbreaks but with little access to doses – while an increasingly strident group from both the far left and far right decried Mr. Macron’s policies as government overreach. Some protesters caused particular outrage after drawing parallels between their situation and that of the Jews during the Holocaust. Some wore a yellow star that said “nonvaccinated,” others carried signs or shouted slogans that compared the health pass to a Nazi-era measure.

Protestors in Greece demonstrating against vaccine mandates teargassed by police – Police on Saturday teargassed demonstrators in Greece who were protesting against a coronavirus vaccine mandate for some workers. There were more than 4,000 protesters in central Athens outside of the parliament building calling for the vaccincation requirement for healthcare workers to be dropped, Reuters reported. A police official told Reuters that some protesters threw petrol bombs at authorities, so police responded with tear gas. This is the third time this month that there have been protests against mandatory vaccines. The requirement for vaccines is only for healthcare workers and nursing staff in the country. Greece is encouraging teachers to get vaccinated as well; however, it is not a requirement. Only 45 percent of Greece’s population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, Reuters noted. Greece has reported more than 474,000 COVID-19 cases throughout the pandemic with more than 12,000 deaths. Greece wasn’t the only country that experience protests on Saturday; in France, there were around 160,000 people who protested against a bill being discussed in the Senate that would require COVID-19 passes to get into all restaurants and bars in the country, and in Australia, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Sydney and other cities across the country to push back on continued COVID-19 lockdown orders. Although the protests were mostly peaceful, some protesters got violent with police responding with water cannons and tear gas.

Italy says it will require proof of vaccination or a negative test for many social activities. The Italian government announced on Thursday that it would require people to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test in order to participate in certain social activities, including indoor dining, visiting museums and attending shows.The move follows a similar announcement made by the French government last week and comes as the debate in Western nations heats up over how far governments should – or can – go in circumscribing the life of the unvaccinated.In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this week that his government planned to insist on proof of vaccination to enter nightclubs and similar venues by the end of September, but the idea was met with a swift political backlash and is not yet certain to go ahead.The expanded use of Italy’s health pass, which Italian authorities are calling “green certification,” is meant to both encourage more vaccination and blunt the spread of the Delta variant, which is already causing an increase in coronavirus case numbers across the continent.”The virus’s Delta variant is menacing,” Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, said during a news conference on Thursday night. “We must act on the front of Covid-19,” he added, to continue to allow Italy’s economy to recover. A spokesman for the prime minister said that businesses would have to enforce the requirements and would be punished if caught violating them.Without these measures, the Italian government said it could be forced to reintroduce new restrictions in a country that endured the first and among the strictest lockdowns in the West. The Italian government is particularly concerned about the spread of the virus among the two million people over the age of 60 who are still completely unvaccinated.Just above 50 percent of Italians over the age of 12 – about 28 million people – are fully vaccinated, according to the Italian government.But the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has said that the spread of the Delta variant is on the rise. The organization projected that by the end of August, the Delta variant would account for 90 percent of coronavirus infections in the European Union.

As Boris Johnson isolates himself, England lifts nearly all legal Covid restrictions. – “Freedom Day” arrived in England on Monday with its chief architect, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, confined in quarantine, millions of Britons facing the same prospect and untold people more anxious about the risks of liberation.Those were the incongruities on the long-awaited day when the government lifted all but a few remaining coronavirus restrictions.Even as nightclubs and pubs threw open their doors and patrons embraced each other, 39,950 new cases were reported on Monday and tens of thousands were forced into quarantine after they were notified by the National Health Service’s cellphone app that they had been in contact with an infected person.The U.S. State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued their highest-level travel warnings Monday for the United Kingdom, citing high levels of the virus.Mr. Johnson defended the decision to reopen from his country residence, Chequers, where he has been in self-isolation since Sunday after the N.H.S. notified, or “pinged,” him because he had met with his health secretary, Sajid Javid, before he tested positive for the virus on Saturday. “If we don’t open up now, then we face a risk of even tougher conditions in the coming months when the virus has a natural advantage,” Mr. Johnson said in a news conference. “We have to ask ourselves the question, ‘If not now, when?'”

A ‘pingdemic’ is gripping the U.K. as cases rise. – Gas stations closed, garbage collection canceled and supermarket shelves stripped bare of food, water and other essential goods. In a week when Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised England a return to normality after the end of months of lockdown rules, a coronavirus-weary nation has instead been battered by a new crisis. This one is being called the “pingdemic.” With virus case numbers surging again, hundreds of thousands of people have been notified – or pinged – by a government-sponsored phone app asking them to self-isolate for 10 days because they were in contact with someone who had tested positive.In the week of July 8 to 15, more than 600,000 alerts were issued by the app, putting acute strain on many businesses and public services.Supermarkets have warned of staff shortages, as have trucking firms, and the British Meat Processors Association said that 5 to 10 percent of the work force of some of its companies had been pinged. If the situation deteriorates further, some will be forced to start shutting down production lines, it said.So many workers have been affected that some businesses have closed their doors or started a desperate search for new staff, and a political battle has erupted with the opposition Labour Party warning of “a summer of chaos” after contradictory statements from the government about how to respond if pinged. Those notified by the app are not required by law to isolate but the government’s official position is that it wants them to do so. On Thursday, it was planning to publish a list of critical workers to be exempted from self-isolation in order to keep things running.

Asset Strippers Are Preparing to Feast on Britain’s Covid-Ravaged Economy -For much of the past half-century, Morrisons supermarket has been hailed as a bastion of responsible British capitalism. But in recent weeks Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket chain has been the subject of a bidding war between investors that have a rather different business ethos. In June, private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice offered to buy Morrisons for Pound Sterling8.7bn, in a move that would take the company off the London Stock Exchange and into private hands. The bid was ultimately rejected, but on 3 July a Pound Sterling9.5bn offer from another private equity firm, Fortress Group, was accepted. The deal, which is still subject to shareholder approval, will result in an estimated Pound Sterling19.6m payoff for the company’s chief executive, David Potts. Another private equity giant, Apollo Global Management, has said it is considering lining up a rival counteroffer. The scramble to purchase a UK supermarket chain in the middle of a global pandemic raises an obvious question: why are profit-hungry private equity funds so keen to sink their fangs into a sector that is notorious for its cut-throat competition and low profit margins? The answer provides a glimpse into a dramatic transformation of the UK’s corporate landscape that is underway, which has the potential to fundamentally reshape British capitalism.Although Morrisons has long been run as a profitable business, its financial performance has been far from spectacular. This year the company expects to make about Pound Sterling342m in net profit – half what it made a decade ago and significantly less than its arch-rival Tesco. What the company does have, however, is assets, and lots of them.The company reportedly owns 85% of its retail stores, more than any other supermarket. With abook value of Pound Sterling5.8bn, Morrisons real estate portfolio is worth nearly as much as the market value of the entire company, based on its current share price. Unlike other supermarkets, Morrisons also owns significant parts of its supply chain. The company deals directly with the 2,700 British farmers rather than wholesalers, who deliver livestock and fresh produce directly to its 17 processing facilities. As a result, the National Farmers’ Union calls Morrisons “British farming’s biggest direct customer”. The company, which employs about 121,000 people, also has a healthy surplus in its defined benefit pension schemes. To most people, these characteristics mean that Morrisons is a prudently run business that strives to treat its suppliers and workers well. But to profit-hungry private equity firms, it means the company is a prime target for the kind of smash-and-grab asset stripping that the sector has become notorious for.

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