Belt and Road Partner Nations Ask for Bailouts China’s Belt and Road project is an attempt to extend the country’s economic domination to more than half of the world: the country made low-interest loans to 138 nations, most of them poor, to build roads, railways, ports, and other infrastructure that would bind the countries more tightly to China as trading...
EUROPE
Europe’s Economy on Track for 7.7-Percent Contraction, 9-Percent Jobless Rate Europe’s economy will contract by 7.7 percent this year and unemployment could linger at 9 percent unless the European Commission, or EC, takes “decisive joint action” to stop the damage, according to the commission’s spring economic forecast. Otherwise, the situation will worsen, warned Paolo Gentiloni, the EC’s commissioner for economic...
COVID-UP NOTES
Trump Asserts “National Emergency”, Fed Control Over Electric Utility Purchases In a 1 May executive order declaring a national emergency, Donald Trump has given the U.S. defense department the authority to oversee electric companies’ purchases of electronic equipment. The order grows out of a view widely shared among U.S. intelligence agencies that adversaries such as China and Russia have secured...
AMONG THE WEAKEST OF THE WEAK
Restaurant Supplier’s Performance Bodes Ill for Sector Sysco, which supplies food to restaurants, schools, hospitals, and other institutions, has dispensed with a third of its employees after seeing sales fall 6.5 percent in its most recent quarter, the worst performance in 11 years. In mid-March, as economic lockdowns were being imposed, sales were down as much as 60 percent; restaurants...
THE FED GANG GAME
Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, has more than $11 million of his personal funds invested with BlackRock, a private investment management firm the Fed has chosen to run its $750-billion corporate bond-buying program, as reported in Wall Street on Parade. According to government-mandated financial disclosure forms, Powell has as much as $11.6 million of his personal...
U.S. MARKETS
Last Friday, in a further disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street, the Dow shot up 455 points because unemployment numbers came in a bit lower than feared… despite erasing a decade of job gains. The NASDAQ rose 71 to 9,192, registering its sixth consecutive day of gains. Despite a broad range of dismal economic news sweeping the globe, the...
BUSINESS IS BACK. NO RECOVERY.
Malls in at least ten states have reopened for business… but shoppers are not flocking to them. Shopping hubs in Florida, Georgia, and Texas were open but saw few cars in their parking lots last week. Many mall stores remain closed even though the malls themselves are open. Food courts greet few diners. Children’s play areas are shut down. Security...
SMILE! YOU’RE ON SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS
When the hard lockdown eases, returning to work will be more closely watched than ever before: Thermal cameras, which have the ability to measure body heat, have been installed at a large office tower in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. PricewaterhouseCoopers announced it is releasing a phone app for employers that give them the ability to track who employees are interacting with...
MEDIA/POLITICAL HYPE MINUS THE FACTS
On Sunday, the Governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, another daddy’s boy born on third base and thought he hit a home run with a better-than-thou attitude – whose family is the 15th wealthiest in the world – defended his stay-at-home dictate and slow reopening plans, saying Illinois residents must comply with the way things are done until COVID-19 is “eradicated.”...
OPENING UP RULES: SCIENCE FICTION, NO SCIENTIFIC FACTS
Name the country, name the state, name the city… different places with different rules made up by different leaders in charge. Across Europe, nations are reopening their economies. And each country makes up reopening laws. In Germany, retail stores will be reopening but will have restrictions on permissible percentages of occupancy. Restaurants will be allowed to open at the end...