CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin just confirmed on Instagram that she has tested positive for COVID-19, joining her colleague, Chris Cuomo, among the more than 1 million people around the world who have been infected. Baldwin, a star reporter on America’s most trusted Fake News organization, said on Instagram that she is “OKAY” and has “chills, […]

Back in November of 2017, this website was the first to suggest that a flood of “fallen angels”, or the lowest, BBB-rated investment grade bonds that are downgraded to junk, will be the event that triggers the next corporate debt crisis. In “Hunting Angels: What The World’s Most Bearish Hedge Fund Will Short Next“, we […]

Summary: US nonfarm payrolls was an unmitigated disaster. Russia reports drop in cases after extending quarantine NY COVID-19 cases top 100k Bolsonaro urges country to “go back to work” as Brazil’s governors say opposite Brazil says first COVID-19 case and death in South American happened 1 month earlier Beijing says more than half of foreign […]

And just like that, it was gone! Following the biggest daily surge in oil prices ever… and another major surge in prices today, things have gone a little bit slightly turbo for “investors” in one leveraged oil ETN. Source: Bloomberg Unprecedented spikes in price along with a record ‘super-contango’ have left the VelocityShares Daily 3x […]

Earlier today we said that ahead of Monday’s (virtual) R-OPEC conference, a new ask had emerged from within the oil producing nations – any production cut would have to include the US, which alongside with Russia, Saudi Arabia and others R-OPEC nations, would to around 10 million b/d. Then moments ago, Vladimir Putin confirmed just […]

No business is immune to the country’s coronavirus shutdown, including the President’s. In fact, it was was reported yesterday that the Trump Organization is actively seeking out concessions from Deutsche Bank, one of its lenders, due to the pandemic. Representatives from the President’s company reached out to Deutsche Bank late in March and talks between […]

Here are the key takeaways from Michael Hartnett’s latest Flow Show: Lows on corporate bonds & stocks to hold on extreme bearishness & policy stimulus. Policy ended credit crunch but not yet recession…US dollar, oil, HY bonds will signals worst of recession priced-in. Big EPS headwinds: bias asset allocation toward growth, yield, quality alongside stagflation […]

We derive a measure of firm-level regulatory costs from the text of corporate earnings calls. We then use this measure to study the effect of regulation on companies’ operating fundamentals and cost of capital. We find that higher regulatory cost results in slower sales growth, an effect which is mitigated for large firms. Furthermore, we […]

Google has launched a website which uses anonymized location data to show where people are taking social distancing more seriously than others. Collected from their various products and services, the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports site will show changes in behavior – such as shopping and recreation, from a top-down look at entire countries – to […]

Today in bankruptcy news that isn’t related to the coronavirus, Dean & DeLuca, the grocery chain that closed its New York stores last year, has officially filed for bankruptcy in Manhattan and now hopes to re-open some of its stores.  The chain had been open for more than four decades and was one of the first […]

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Approximately ten million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the past two weeks.  To put that in perspective, the all-time record for a single week before this coronavirus pandemic hit was just 695,000.  So needless to say, 6.6 million claims in a single week […]

by Calculated Risk on 4/03/2020 11:11:00 AM

by Calculated Risk on 4/03/2020 10:05:00 AM

Maybe Coronavirus Didn’t End the Bull MarketEvery rally or bust has large counter moves that may not be a real break from underlying trends.Bloomberg, April 1, 2020 After the sudden collapse in equity markets in mid-March, the assumption across the board was that not only was the long bull market over but that a bear market […]

Yves here. On the one hand, this post contains many examples of how people with resources are assisting those hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. On the other, it is also all too apparent that in most cases, these charitable acts only make a dent in the problems most face, although admittedly shows of concern […]

by Calculated Risk on 4/03/2020 08:44:00 AM

Ben sits down with investor, author and market historian William Bernstein to put the current crash into perspective with history’s worst crises. Words of Wisdom from William Bernstein: Deep vs shallow risk His take on “now show Japan” How stocks redistribute during bear markets How a crisis impacts behavior Can we use history to help […]

Tiny picnic tables for feeding squirrels in style Boing Boing (JBird4049). Ocean Creatures Have Been Protecting Us From Millions of Viruses This Entire Time Science Alert What’s a virus, anyway? Part 1: The bare-bones basics Stanford Medicine CSU Predicts Busier-Than-Average Atlantic Hurricane Season in 2020 Weather Underground The hilltop fortress town that cut itself off […]

Yves here. While the vogue for globalization, which has been a dominant business and economic model for decades, is suddenly looking imperiled, it isn’t clear what comes next. Recall the last great period of globalization was the period right before World War I. It collapsed in World War I due among other things to the […]

It is hard to think that anyone is getting through this Covid-19 crisis unscathed. Even the super rich have fled and tried bunkering themselves, only to discover that they can’t get ventilators and the specially trained operators on site too if they are felled by the disease. Most people are looking at at best, interruptions […]

Public officials in mission critical roles don’t have the privilege of playing the personal privacy game. Their ability to perform their duties is of critical importance to citizens in their jurisdiction. For instance, when Boris Johnson was diagnosed with Covid-19, the Government made a statement, claiming he had a mild case and would continue working […]

I had a fun conversation with a group of car buddies (online) recently. Someone posed this question: What if you could only have ONE CAR?Meaning, you, your spouse, your entire household: ONE CAR. My answer would be something that was fun to drive, had all wheel (or four wheel) drive, space to haul some gear, […]

Data-analytics company Palantir Technologies Inc. is in talks to provide software to governments across Europe to battle the spread of Covid-19 and make strained health-care systems more efficient, a person familiar with the matter said. The software company is in discussions with authorities in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the person said, asking not to […]

As RanSquawk notes, the data for March are already stale, given the release of the timelier initial jobless claims data, which showed another record high number of claims, and some 10 million laid off workers in the past 2 weeks. Additionally, the survey period of the BLS Employment Situation Report runs through the month ending […]

Do we have evidence that hospitalization of COVID19 patients is actually saving significant numbers of lives? I’ve now seen multiple studies suggesting that up to 80 or 90 percent of patients who end up on ventilators ultimately die.  At this point, I guess there’s no way to know if the other 10 percent would have lived […]

As part of the Coronavirus CARES Act, the $2 trillion fiscal stimulus meant to resuscitate the US economy, Congress allocated $454 billion to help underwrite the special lending programs from the Federal Reserve. This could generate up to $4.540 trillion in new lending (assuming 10x leverage for highly-rated assets) likely geared toward small and medium-sized […]

Courtesy of Joseph Brusuelas of the Real Economy Blog and Wallet Hub The widespread layoffs of American workers worsened in the third week of the coronavirus shutdown, with all states (with the exception of the Virgin Islands) now having reported a significant increase in initial jobless claims at some point during the three-week period. This […]

A new report by Reuters alleges a major attempted hack of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the worldwide coronavirus pandemic linked to Iranian state entities. WHO officials described “a sustained digital bombardment” by hackers described as seeking internal information on the deadly coronavirus, further said to be “more than doubled” compared to prior hacking attempts […]

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Strategic Culture Foundation, As much as Covid-19 is a circuit breaker, a time bomb and an actual weapon of mass destruction (WMD), a fierce debate is raging worldwide on the wisdom of mass quarantine applied to entire cities, states and nations. Those against it argue Planet Lockdown not only […]

With 92,381 total cases, surging by 8,669 in one day, and resulting in 2,373 deaths, New York has emerged the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Just as concerning, is that it is also among the states least prepared to deal with the record surge of unemployment claims by workers in restaurants, retail shops and hotels […]

by Calculated Risk on 4/02/2020 10:25:00 PM

Submitted by Nick Cunningham of OilPrice Oil prices spiked 25 percent on Thursday after President Trump tweeted that Saudi Arabia and Russia would cut production by 10 to 15 million barrels per day (mb/d), but there are a variety of reasons why a cut of this size faces steep odds. Incidentally it was the biggest […]

Authored by Jonathan Turley, Jose L. Gomez, 19, may have the dubious distinction of being the first person charged and convicted of a Corona hate crime. Gomez is accused of stabbing three members of a family of four inside a Sam’s Club. The family is Asian and police say that he was trying to stop […]

Scott Horton at the Libertarian Institute is alarmed at how fast the rise in corona-moral shaming is translating into Americans snitching to police and town authorities on local small businesses and neighbors… “Umm, umm, ummm! I’m telling on you! I’m gonna get you in trouble!” – Nickie and Melissa, Mrs. Tuttle’s kindergarten class, 1981. Now look here, […]

Update (2125ET): Unsurprisingly, Senator Schumer has responded to President Trump’s brutal letter by appearing on MSNBC tonight: “I spoke to the president late this afternoon and explained it and the result is this letter. So I’m just appalled. You know I say to the president just stop the pettiness. People are dying and so, President […]

WWII is viewed as the quintessential example of fiscal stimulus and exerts an outsized influence on fiscal multiplier estimates, but the wartime economy was highly unusual. I use newly-digitized contract data to construct a state-level panel on U.S. spending in WWII. I estimate a relative fiscal multiplier of 0.25, implying an aggregate multiplier of roughly […]

Over a normal two-week period we’d expect around half a million U.S. workers to file claims for unemployment insurance. Over the past two weeks we’ve seen almost 10 million filings. We’re facing an incredible economic catastrophe. The question is whether we’re ready to deal with this catastrophe. Alas, early indications are that we may be […]

by Calculated Risk on 4/02/2020 05:37:00 PM

by Calculated Risk on 4/02/2020 04:45:00 PM

I appreciate your frequent high quality work on covid 19.  I’m assuming you’re more plugged into various endeavors to fight covid 19 than I am, so I wanted to ask you for some suggestions. For someone who has strong technical and analytical skills, but little domain-specific knowledge about pandemics, virology, or any of the other […]

What happens after a war? Two weeks ago, I asked that question and came away cautiously optimistic about America’s ability to bounce back from its current crisis. Now, I’m not so sure.

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Patient readers, this Water Cooler is way too light (though I fancy there are some topics that will provoke discussion). I’ve had some household issues over the past couple of days, and frankly I’m out of gas. Back to the usual tomorrow! –lambert #COVID-19 At reader request, I’ve added this […]

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci says that the United States will not come out of lockdown until there are no “new cases” of coronavirus, prompting some to question precisely how long that will be. During yesterday’s White House briefing, Fauci, who has become the face of America’s response […]

Summary: Spain deaths pass 10k Global cases near 1 million mark Infection in New Delhi slum sparks fears of mass breakout PM Abe mocked for handing out ‘two masks’ to every Japanese household British health official says “everybody is frustrated” about test shortage Half the world on lockdown, AFP reports World hits 50k COVID-19 deaths […]