week ending Apr 18

Fed’s Balance Sheet Grows by $2.4 Trillion in One Year to a Stunning $6.4 Trillion -  Pam Martens - The Fed’s H.4.1 releasewhich is faithfully posted on the Fed’s website each Thursday at 4:30 p.m. was seriously delayed today due to “technical difficulties.” When the data was finally posted, it showed that the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has grown by a stunning $2.4 trillion since April 17 of last year. The Fed’s balance sheet now stands at $6.4 trillion.Following three rounds of Quantitative Easing (QE) after the financial crisis on Wall Street in 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet peaked at $4.5 trillion in 2015. On the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at just $995 billion. The Fed’s balance sheet was supposed to be “normalized” and “wound down” following the last financial crisis. That it has now ballooned to new heights raises the serious question as to whether the United States has entered a perpetual era of one Wall Street banking crisis after another as a result of the “universal” bank model where high-risk Wall Street trading firms are under the same ownership with giant, federally-insured, deposit-taking banks that are too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-manage prudently.

Timing The "Crossover Point": The Fed Will Soon Monetize The Entire Fiscal Stimulus Package... What Happens Then? - As we noted late last week, the Fed's money printer has been going brrrr in overtime, and in the past month alone, Powell & Co. has purchased nearly $2 trillion in Treasury and MBS securities, far more than during any of the previous QE episodes (either in the first month or their entirety)... .. which together with the Fed's POMO schedule which sees the Fed purchasing another $225BN in securities this week... ... will push the Fed's balance sheet (currently at $6.1 trillion) to $6.4 trillion by next Friday, up more than 50% in the span of just weeks. That's just the beginning, because as we showed two weeks ago, BofA strategist and former Fed guru, Mark Cabana expects the Fed's balance sheet to double to $9 trillion by the end of the year. What does this mean for Treasury issuance? Well, for one thing it means that the Fed will monetize not only all the debt issuance for 2020 that was scheduled before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, but also the entire fiscal stimulus package (currently $2.2 trillion, soon $3+ trillion). Which is hardly a surprise: last week the Bank of England became the first bank to officially announce it would openly monetize the UK's deficit. In other words, the central bank and the Treasury are now one and the same, which also means that helicopter money has arrived, first in the UK and soon everywhere else.  Yet while the Fed has unleashed an unprecedented buying spree across the curve, traders are starting to ask when and how will markets price in a "crossover point" when there is more supply than demand (if such a thing is possible), potentially resulting in a violent bear steepening in the yield curve and a spike in long-term yields as the Fed loses control over long-term inflation expectations. Commenting on this, DB's rates strategists write that the narrative for bearish curve steepening is rooted in the idea of a crossover point at which the duration impact of additional Treasury supply exceeds that of demand stemming from Fed QE purchases. This is particularly true in the long end, where the Treasury is still expected to begin 20y issuance in the May refunding.  The "crossover" argument is illustrated on the chart below: coupon supply net of Fed purchases is likely to turn positive during Q3, even if the Fed monetizes the entire fiscal stimulus package as it currently stands.That said, the crossover argument is inherently a flow argument, rather than a stock argument. To mitigate fears that the deluge of Treasurys - now that helicopter money has been unleashed - will lead to a chaotic spike in long-rates, Deutsche Bank writes that an immediate issue with the flow argument that increasing Treasury supply will push yields higher and the term premium steeper "is that it ignores the flows between the present and the time at which this crossover occurs." That is, large purchase volumes at higher than market WAM should flatten the term premium and push yields lower until the crossover point. Yields might rise and the term premium steepen, but from lower and flatter levels. At the same time, the Fed’s thought process around QE is inherently more stock-based (an argument that the Fed lost long ago when it was demonstrated conclusively by the like of Goldman and others that only the flow matters): QE "permanently" reduces the stock of risk free government debt, which should cause that government debt to richen. In order to enhance returns, private investors are then obliged to extend duration, flattening the term premium. When the term premium is flat, investors must move out the risk spectrum to enhance returns. This is the Fed's portfolio balance channel.

NY Fed Head Trader- “The Scale Of Our Asset Purchases Has Been Unparalleled” -- In remarks delivered before the Foreign Exchange Committee of the NY Fed, Lorie Logan, who is the head of the Fed's open markets, i.e., the head trader of the world's biggest hedge fund, commented on the Fed's unprecedented intervention, and takeover, of capital markets, saying that "the scale of these purchases has been unparalleled, totaling about $1.6 trillion in the past four weeks", something we showed last week when laid out the hundreds of billions in weekly purchases in the past 4 weeks, eclipsing the intervention during the financial crisis by orders of magnitude, as follows:

• April 8: $$272BN
• April 1: $557BN
• March 25: $586BN
• March 17:$356BN

Then again, hearing it from the person who made it all possible is so much more fulfilling.   Logan than explain why the Fed decided it was in America's best interest to nationalize the capital markets, saying that "supporting smooth market functioning does not mean restoring every aspect of market functioning to its level before the coronavirus crisis. Some aspects of liquidity—especially aspects related to transactions costs and market depth—are importantly affected by fundamental factors such as how the current extraordinary uncertainty about the economic outlook influences trading behavior. These aspects of market functioning may not return all the way to pre-crisis levels for some time, even as our purchases slow."That's the spin, the reality is that liquidity is collapsing in the Treasury market because of the Fed's purchases, which is soaking up so many bonds it now owns up to 50% and in some cases more, of any given Cusip, especially those with longer maturities. Logan then had some disappointing words for those who are hoping the Fed will push the VIX back to 10: "supporting smooth market functioning" does not "mean eliminating all volatility. In well-functioning markets, prices will respond rapidly and efficiently to new information." Except, of course, when the information is negative and the Fed has to buy everything that is being sold as it just did in the past 3 weeks. But then again, this is the same Fed which thinks the US population is too dumb to understand what is going on.

Fed’s Evans Unworried Coronavirus Effort Will Boost Moral Hazard – WSJ - Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said Tuesday extraordinary action by the central bank and the government to support the economy right now is fully appropriate, and he doesn’t see the interventions as creating risk-taking problems once the coronavirus crisis has passed. When it comes to so-called moral hazard flowing from the government’s support, “I don’t really worry about that in the current situation,” Mr. Evans said in a video appearance for an event held by the Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business. What’s happening now is unlikely to be seen as a bailout emboldening future risk taking, he said, because the entire economy has been slammed by an event that it could never really prepare for. “The fact that we’re hit by a widespread national shock affecting everybody, that is completely real,” Mr. Evans said, adding “there’s just no way you could have insured against this.” Now, he said, is a time for the government to “socialize more of these losses.” While government support is increasingly flowing to households and small businesses, its initial phase targeted financial markets, which are now the beneficiary of two major support efforts in the past decade or so. That has caused many to question whether the business and financial sector should have been better prepared to weather the coronavirus crisis. Mr. Evans said he sees no way that could have happened. “The current environment is one where risk pricing was never going to get this right for a pandemic crisis,” he said. “This is a risk that has hit us that nobody was going to pay the insurance for,” he said, comparing it with trying to pay for flood and hurricane insurance in a place routinely hit by massive storms. Put another way, the costs of pandemic preparations would have been prohibitively large, Mr. Evans said.

Hedge Fund Managers Claiming Bailouts as Small Businesses - Free money. That’s the enticing prospect hedge funds and other trading firms are pondering after realizing they too might be able to participate in a historic U.S. stimulus package to keep small businesses alive through the coronavirus pandemic. Since early April, law firms have hosted Webinars and sent out alerts, and accounting firms have reached out to clients, all with the goal of explaining how they might be able to tap into the Paycheck Protection Program. The $349 billion package administered by the Small Business Administration provides loans to cover payroll, rent and utilities for up to eight weeks. The loans can convert to grants if recipients retain or rehire their workers. Some hedge funds already have applied, filling out forms to show they have fewer than 500 employees and certifying the “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations.” Ironically, hedge funds are designed to employ as few people as possible so star traders don’t have to share millions of dollars in fees. The industry gets its name from the premise it can generate gains even when markets fall. The question of whether to partake in the program is dividing members of the money management community. Some traders have called it morally corrupt, while others insist they are small businesses -- just like hair salons, restaurants and dry cleaners -- that could use a helping hand after global markets tumbled and cost them money. Given that the program is first come, first served, some managers were quick to submit their paperwork, according to market participants, even if eligibility remains unclear. Donald Motschwiller, head of First New York, a trading firm that runs $2.9 billion in assets, said he was still deciding whether to request money that could be used to pay employees, including a receptionist and office manager, who are still on the payroll even though, with everyone at home, they essentially don’t have jobs to do. He canvassed about 15 hedge funds in his circle, from small managers to multibillion-dollar firms, “and no one has said ‘no’” to the possibility of taking the loan, he said.

Economy contracting sharply with coronavirus sweeping U.S., Fed says - The U.S. economy entered a defensive crouch as the coronavirus pandemic swept through the country, according to a report from the Federal Reserve. “Economic activity contracted sharply and abruptly across all regions in the United States as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the central bank said in its Beige Book survey released Wednesday in Washington, based on anecdotal information collected by the 12 regional reserve banks through April 6. “All districts reported highly uncertain outlooks among business contacts, with most expecting conditions to worsen in the next several months.” Businesses across the country shuttered in March as officials in most states ordered people to shelter in place in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. As many as a quarter of firms in the Fed’s Philadelphia region said they had shut down. “No sector was spared,” the Philadelphia Fed said in the report. The hardest hit industries were leisure and hospitality and retail outside of essential-goods purchases, the Fed said in its report prepared by the Boston branch. While food and medical products producers reported strong demand, they noted production and supply-chain difficulties. All districts reported employment declines, with many saying they were widespread. Drastic isolation measures have led to millions of job losses and estimates of a second-quarter economic contraction of 25% on an annualized basis. None of the districts reported upward pressures on wages. “Contacts in several Districts noted they were cutting employment via temporary layoffs and furloughs that they hoped to reverse once business activity resumes,” the Fed said. “The near-term outlook was for more job cuts in coming months.” In response to the economic slowdown, the Fed has unleashed an unprecedented range of policy tools designed to support households and businesses and to ensure the flow of credit. It cut interest rates to almost zero in March, dramatically increased asset purchases and announced emergency programs to support as much as $2.3 trillion in loans. A record drop in retail sales in March indicates the severe impact of the virus’s effect as lockdown steps were taken. Overall sales dropped a record 8.7% from the prior month, Commerce Department figures showed Wednesday. Manufacturing in New York state shrank in April at the fastest pace on record as the virus led to a drop in demand, separate data from the New York Fed showed. Fed districts reported either slowing price growth, unchanged prices or modest to moderate declines in prices, the Fed said. In some areas, virus-related outsize demand did push prices higher. “In contrast, supply chain disruptions and shifts in the composition of demand led to significant price increases for some essential services — such as freight — and some agricultural commodities and consumer goods,” the Fed said.

Fed's Beige Book: "Economic activity contracted sharply and abruptly" -- Fed's Beige Book- excerpt:  "This report was prepared at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston based on information collected on or before April 6, 2020." Economic activity contracted sharply and abruptly across all regions in the United States as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The hardest-hit industries—because of social distancing measures and mandated closures—were leisure and hospitality, and retail aside from essential goods. Most Districts reported declines in manufacturing, but cited significant variation across industries. Producers of food and medical products reported strong demand but faced both production delays, due to infection-prevention measures, and supply chain disruptions. Some other manufacturing industries, such as autos, mostly shut down. The energy sector, suffering from low prices, reduced investment and output. Districts reporting on loan demand said it was high, both from companies accessing credit lines and from households refinancing mortgages. All Districts reported highly uncertain outlooks among business contacts, with most expecting conditions to worsen in the next several months....Employment declined in all Districts, steeply in many cases, as the COVID-19 pandemic affected firms in many sectors. Employment cuts were most severe in the retail and leisure and hospitality sectors, where most Districts reported widespread mandatory closures and steep falloffs in demand. Many Districts said severe job cuts were widespread, including the manufacturing and energy sectors. Contacts in several Districts noted they were cutting employment via temporary layoffs and furloughs that they hoped to reverse once business activity resumes. The near-term outlook was for more job cuts in coming months.

ECRI Weekly Leading Index Update: WLIg At Lowest Levels Ever - Friday morning's release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 105.0, down 1.0 from the previous week. The WLIg is at -37.16, down 10.2 from last week and its lowest level in its history. The ECRI Indicator Year-over-Year Below is a chart of ECRI's smoothed year-over-year percent change since 2000 of their weekly leading index. The latest level is below where it was at the start of the last recession. The first chart below shows the history of the Weekly Leading Index and highlights its current level. For a better understanding of the relationship of the WLI level to recessions, the next chart shows the data series in terms of the percent-off the previous peak. In other words, new weekly highs register at 100%, with subsequent declines plotted accordingly. As the chart above illustrates, only once has a recession ended without the index level achieving a new high -- the two recessions, commonly referred to as a "double-dip," in the early 1980s. We've exceeded the previously longest stretch between highs, which was from February 1973 to April 1978. But the index level rose steadily from the trough at the end of the 1973-1975 recession to reach its new high in 1978. The pattern in ECRI's indictor is quite different, and this has no doubt been a key factor in their business cycle analysis. The best known of ECRI's indexes is their growth calculation on the WLI. For a close look at this index in recent months, here's a snapshot of the data since 2000. The current level is its lowest in its history. Now let's step back and examine the complete series available to the public, which dates from 1967. ECRI's WLIg metric has had a respectable record for forecasting recessions and rebounds therefrom. The next chart shows the correlation between the WLI, GDP, and recessions. Here is a snapshot of the year-over-year growth of the WLI rather than ECRI's previously favored method of calculating the WLIg series from the underlying WLI (see the endnote below). Specifically, the chart immediately below is the year-over-year change in the 4-week moving average of the WLI. The red dots highlight the YoY value for the month when recessions began. The WLI YoY is now at -21.63%, down from last week. The latest level is lower than at the start of the last seven recessions.

Goldman says downturn will be four times worse than the financial crisis - The global economic hit from the coronavirus crisis will likely be four times worse than the financial crisis and the U.S. will see its highest unemployment rate since World War II, according to a Goldman Sachs forecast. With most of the world’s developing economies on a near total shutdown to try to stop the coronavirus spread, Goldman sees a second-quarter GDP decline of 11% from a year ago and 35% from the previous quarter on an annualized basis. In the U.S., the headline unemployment rate should hit 15% “and even this understates the severity of the situation” as many workers will be sidelined and not looking for jobs amid an anticipated reopening of the economy. That will accompany a GDP decline in the U.S. of 11% from a year ago and 34% on a quarterly basis, both numbers also considerably worse than anything seen during the financial crisis in 2008. However, those numbers only tell part of the story, and financial markets of late have been taking a rosier view. Stocks are well off their lows from when fear over the virus peaked, and Wall Street seems to be pricing in a more optimistic scenario. “The initial improvement [in outlook] was mostly policy-driven, but the greater optimism of the past week seems to be at least partly related to the virus itself,” Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist, said in a note, adding that “the number of new active cases looks to be peaking globally, projections of cumulative fatalities and peak healthcare usage are coming down, and even actual new hospitalizations in hard-hit New York City have fallen sharply.” The analysis does not pin a date on when the U.S. economy can restart following social distancing practices that have closed all industries deemed nonessential. Hatzius said “business as usual” is unlikely until a vaccine is proven effective. However, he said, “it might be possible to bring back at least part of the lost output with a sharp increase in testing as well as more limited changes to business practices that lower the risk of infection.” He pointed specifically to manufacturing and construction, specifically citing the auto industry, which he said could go from 25% capacity in April to 70% in May. As industries are gradually brought back online, that should produce an improvement in economic growth that Hatzius said would be “unprecedented” for the U.S. He forecasts third-quarter growth to be up 19% from the Q2 plunge followed by another 12% jump in the final three months of the year.

Coronavirus Scars Might Weaken Economy for Years to Come – WSJ - The coronavirus pandemic will eventually be behind us, maybe soon, maybe not. Either way, the scars will long  persist for an entire generation of investors and future managers now living through what is rapidly becoming the deepest downturn since World War II. Investors in their formative years have just discovered that stocks come with big risks attached. Unless there is a rapid recovery—the V-shaped economic bounce many are hoping for—these investors could take 2020 as their reference point for bad news and have a lower appetite for risk throughout their lives. That means holding less in stock but also that as they advance through the corporate ranks they put less company money into uncertain projects, hitting future investment; fewer may opt to take the big financial risk of setting up their own businesses.This sort of financial scarring is less of an immediate concern than the debilitating effect on workers of a long spell of unemployment, the threat of faster deglobalization, the potential political pressure for more government spending and higher taxes, let alone the grand scale of the debt being taken on by both the public and private sectors.But studies have shown that the impact of big bear markets can linger in the minds of those hit hard by them long after they have sunk into the history books for everyone else. In the short run, the scale of the loss is also likely to encourage caution among those with less financial experience about returning to the market, just as it did in 2009. “Younger people are more sensitive to economic news because their experience is much shorter than for an older person who has been through bad times before,” says Stefan Nagel, a finance professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “It’s this younger generation that over the next year will tend to be more pessimistic about returns and risky assets and choose more conservative portfolios.” Prof. Nagel and Ulrike Malmendier, a finance and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, also found that long-term attitudes toward risk are affected by the personal experience of investing when younger. Those who started out with years of poor equity performance tended to avoid stocks, while those who grew up in better times were less influenced by a turn for the worse in markets. It isn’t just private investors whose approach to risk is shaped by early personal experience. Prof. Malmendier and others found that chief executives who were young adults during the Great Depression were less likely to leverage up their firms than those who grew up in happier times. Even Federal Reserve policy makers, who are immersed in financial history and theory, are heavily influenced by their early experiences of inflation.

Stiglitz Calls for ‘Super Chapter 11′ to Avoid Systemic Collapse  --Bankruptcy laws were written to help individual companies. They don’t work so well when many get into trouble at once. The companies’ balance sheets are interdependent: Reducing what one owes will weaken its creditors, making it impossible for them to pay their creditors, and so on. Businesses that could have bounced back are forced to liquidate as their court cases drag on. This is called systemic bankruptcy, and it’s the nightmare scenario for the financial impact of theCovid-19 pandemic. Steps can be taken to avoid it, but it’s not clear whether governments and central banks in the U.S. and around the world will take them in time.The best way to avoid debt gridlock is to use government support to keep the number of bankruptcies below the tipping point at which they become systemic, says Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate economist at Columbia University. He co-wrote a paper with Tarik Roukny and Stefano Battison about interconnectedness and systemic risk that was published in 2018 by the Journal of Financial Stability. “Somewhere between the case of an isolated bankruptcy (American Airlines) and mass default (Indonesia, with 70% of businesses in arrears) is the borderline between individual and systemic bankruptcy. There’s no bright line,” Stiglitz wrote in an email on April 6. (His example of an isolated bankruptcy, American Airlines, was under protection from creditors from 2011 to 2013.)  If government aid fails to stem the tide, Stiglitz says, the fallback should be what he calls “super Chapter 11”—building on the chapter of the federal bankruptcy code that’s designed to keep a company in business. It would resolve the problems of many companies at once under the auspices of a government-appointed supervisor. It would also be fast, usually keep management in place, and give more consideration to workers and less to creditors than in conventional bankruptcies, in his vision.In some cases the federal government would inject money in return for shares, so taxpayers would get a piece of the potential upside. “This is going to be rough justice,” Stiglitz says. Companies that don’t like the government’s offer could try their luck in standard Chapter 11. He says he hasn’t been approached by anyone in Congress or the White House about implementing super Chapter 11, which he and co-author Marcus Miller broached in an unpublished paper in 1999 and again in 2010 in an article in Britain’s Economic Journal.Systemic bankruptcy is more than a remote threat. The record jump in initial claims for unemployment insurance—10 million in the two weeks through March 27, vs. a recent two-week average of fewer than half a million—shows that companies are in extreme distress and a lot of consumers are having trouble paying bills. A handful of companies have already filed for Chapter 11 citing Covid-19, including British clothing retailer Laura Ashley Holdings Plcand U.S. energy companies Whiting Petroleum Corp. and Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc. The underlying problem is that, as Harvard economist Lawrence Summers has put it, economic time has stopped because of the pandemic, but the financial clock continues to tick. Interest payments, rents, and other obligations are still coming due, but the money to cover them has dried up. Yet a blanket moratorium on all financial obligations isn’t the right solution. It would benefit some well-off individual and business debtors that don’t require the help and harm some who need the payments, such as an elderly homeowning couple who live off the rent from a tenant or two.

US Deficit To Quadruple To $3.8 Trillion; Total Debt Will Surpass World War II Record- CRFB - Two weeks ago, with US CDS surging ever since the arrival of "helicopter money"... ...Fitch became the first rating agency to warn that the US AAA rating was at "risk of a near-term negative action" due to a damning set of reasons including soaring debt, shrinking GDP, and the "helicopter-money" anti-virus actions.Moments ago, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) issued a report which is sure to pour gasoline on that particular dumpster fire, when it projected that the US budget deficits will total more than $3.8 trillion this year, another $2.1 trillion in 2021, and will total just over $11 trillion by the end of 2025.And, as we pointed out a few days ago, the CRFB now projects total debt held by the public will exceed the size of the economy, or 100% of GDP, by the end of the year, and will eclipse the record set after World War II by 2023.  In its report, the CRFB writes that the United States entered the current public health and economic crisis facing high levels of debt and trillion-dollar deficits. Due to the effects of the crisis and legislation enacted to combat it, debt and deficits will now grow much higher, to never-before-seen levels both in dollars and as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The CRFB's latest projections find that under current law, budget deficits will total more than $3.8 trillion (18.7 percent of GDP) this year and $2.1 trillion (9.7 percent of GDP) in 2021. Meanwhile, debt held by the public will exceed the size of the economy by the end of Fiscal Year 2020 and eclipse the prior record set after World War II by 2023. The final result will likely be even worse. As the CRFB admits, "These projections almost certainly underestimate deficits, since they assume no further legislation is enacted to address the crisis and that policymakers stick to current law when it comes to other tax and spending policies. The projections also assume the economy experiences a strong recovery in 2021 and fully returns to its pre-crisis trajectory by 2025. Assuming a slower and weaker recovery (but no changes in law), we estimate debt would grow to 117 percent of GDP by 2025."

A comprehensive U.S. manufacturing policy is needed now more than ever -EPI -- Twelve years ago, we warned that: The increasing dependence of U.S. defense systems on foreign suppliers is alarming, especially, it might be argued, in a post-September 11 world…What happens when supply routes, for example, anywhere across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, are disrupted?These warnings could not be more relevant today as we experience devastating disruptions in our supply chains across virtually every industry sector due to the growing COVID-19 crisis. Essential medical supplies are impacted as we struggle to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. commercial industrial base is particularly threatened by excessive reliance on outsourcing without regard to possible downsides. Aerospace, which contributes heavily to gross domestic product (GDP) with almost 500,000 U.S. jobs, has been outsourcing production for many years to repeated protests from the Machinists Union, among others. Fifty years ago, U.S. commercial airplanes were mostly produced in the U.S. Now, a much larger percentage of aircraft is outsourced—with an estimated 70% of the Boeing 787production being outsourced. Of course, it is not just aerospace and related products that are outsourced. The U.S. shipbuilding and repair industry has declined dramatically, along with other fundamental industries like machine tools. We are now more dependent on other countries for these items—along with countless others—than ever before. The technology and clothing manufacturing industries, which have outsourced production to other countries, are incredibly vulnerable. As we face the COVID-19 crisis, we are learning just how vulnerable our medical supply industry is in the wake of all of the outsourcing of critical production to other countries.The implications of outsourcing go far beyond the disruptions of supply chains—it also greatly weakens our industrial base and defense capacity, hinders our capacity to initiate manufacturing of critical goods and equipment that we have never produced, and decimates the number of workers that are essential for producing these goods and supplies.

Kudlow presses Congress to replenish small-business loan program - Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Friday expressed exasperation with Congress for failing to pass additional funding for small business loans amid the coronavirus pandemic. "I’m impatient... I don’t know why it couldn’t have been automatic," Kudlow, the chairman of the National Economic Council, told reporters at the White House. "I stood here and said earlier this week we were going to run out on Wednesday or Thursday," he said. "I just don’t know why they can’t do a quick voice vote and replenish it and give it $250 billion. You see the unemployment insurance claims. They’re very high. It’s a dreadful story, there’s a lot of hardship. "Let’s get moving. It’s a very popular program, well-administered, we just need a replenishment. So I don’t know what they’re waiting for, honestly." The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced Thursday that it had exhausted the initial $349 billion allocated by Congress to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which offers loans to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Small businesses have been among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic as state leaders order shops other than grocery stores, pharmacies and restaurants serving takeout to close to try to limit the spread of the virus. The Senate adjourned on Thursday without a deal, meaning the impasse will last until at least Monday, when the chamber is next expected to convene for another pro forma session. The breakdown comes as Democrats are pushing for the replenishment of the PPP to include additional funding for state and local hospitals and measures that ensure loans make it to women- and minority-owned businesses.

Stimulus checks reportedly delayed so they can include President Trump's signature -- The stimulus checks headed for tens of millions Americans to help alleviate hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic will reportedly be delayed several days to that President Donald Trump's signature can be added by the Treasury Department. The Washington Post reports that adding the signature in the memo line has complicated the printing, citing several IRS sources: The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, ‘President Donald J. Trump’ will appear on the left side of the payment.But to critics and some IRS employees, many of whom started to learn of the decision on Tuesday, the presence of Trump’s name on the checks reeks of partisanship in a corner of the government that touches all Americans and has, since the Nixon era, steadfastly steered clear of politics. After President Richard Nixon targeted a wide range of ‘enemy’ groups for tax audits, including civil rights groups, reporters and prominent Democrats, Congress enacted laws to ensure that the agency conducts itself apolitically.According to the Washington Post, the idea for adding the signature came from President Trump himself. He reportedly privately suggested the idea to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.The Treasury Department disputed that the checks would be delayed, according to the paper.The Post also noted that no president's signature has ever appeared on an IRS check to citizens before, and the president is not the legal signing authority.

Trump threatens to adjourn both chambers of Congress  - President Trump on Wednesday threatened to use his executive power to force both chambers of Congress to adjourn if the Senate did not confirm his nominees for vacancies across the administration. The president, during a coronavirus briefing in the Rose Garden, offered a lengthy diatribe against what he described as congressional obstruction and argued confirming his nominees was more urgent than ever amid the pandemic. "The Senate should either fulfill its duty and vote on my nominees or it should formally adjourn so I can make recess appointments," Trump said. "We have a tremendous number of people that have to come into government. And now more so than ever before because of the virus and the problem." Lawmakers in both chambers are not expected to return to the Capitol until May 4 but both the House and Senate have been conducting pro forma sessions in the meantime. Those sessions prevent Trump from making recess appointments. "The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people can not afford during this crisis," he said. "It is a scam, what they do. It’s a scam. And everybody knows it and it’s been that way for a long time." Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution grants Trump the power to "on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper." That means that in order for the president to step in and dismiss both, the GOP-controlled Senate would have to adjourn while the Democrat-held House objected. Senate Democrats also have procedural tools to prevent the Senate from adjourning. The National Constitution Center noted that "no President has ever exercised" the authority. "Perhaps it’s never been done before, nobody’s even sure if it has," Trump said. "But we’re going to do it. We need these people here. We need people for this crisis, and we don’t want to play any more political games." Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor who appeared as a GOP witness during the House impeachment hearings, warned Trump against taking the step. "The President just said that he may unilaterally adjourn Congress. ... This power has never been used and should not be used now," he tweeted. 

As first sailor from COVID-19-stricken carrier dies, Pentagon stresses readiness for war - The Pentagon reported Monday the first COVID-19 death of a US Navy sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, whose captain was fired for demanding that the bulk of his crew be evacuated and quarantined to prevent the spread of the virus from taking their lives. The Navy said it was withholding the name of the sailor pending notification of next of kin. He was the second member of the US military to die from the disease. When the nuclear-powered ship’s commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, called, in a letter directed to at least 20 senior naval officers, for his crew to be evacuated, there were 90 confirmed cases of the coronavirus aboard the Theodore Roosevelt. Today, the number of confirmed cases is at least 585, with the dismissed captain himself fighting an infection. Another 400 sailors remain to be tested. The Navy has carried out precisely what Crozier had demanded, evacuating all but a skeleton crew from the warship and placing the vast majority of its crew under quarantine on the US Pacific island territory of Guam, with those who tested positive isolated from their shipmates. According to a report published Monday by the San Francisco Chronicle, while most of the sailors were placed for 14 days in Guam hotels, those who tested positive were sent to the Guam Navy base gym, where hundreds of cots were crammed into a crowded space. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” the captain wrote in his March 30 letter, which was obtained and published by the Chronicle on March 31. “If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our Sailors.” The Captain’s demand, issued in the face of stalling and opposition from his superior officers, provoked a political firestorm. It cut across President Donald Trump’s attempt to minimize the impact of the pandemic and pretend that his administration had it under control, as well as the Pentagon’s determination not to allow the outbreak to interfere with US imperialism’s worldwide aggression. The likely cause of the infection on the USS Theodore Roosevelt was the decision by the US Indo-Pacific Command to go ahead with a March 5 port call by the nuclear-powered carrier at the Vietnamese port of Da Nang, despite reports of coronavirus cases in the country. The port call, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the “normalization” of US-Vietnamese relations, marked only the second time that a US aircraft carrier had visited the Southeast Asian country. It was seen as an important projection of US military force in the region, as part of Washington’s confrontation with China.

As COVID-19 spreads through ranks, Pentagon stages show of force against China - The US military staged a show of force this week on its Pacific island territory of Guam with the clear aim of threatening China. Billions of dollars’ worth of US warplanes were paraded on the tarmac of Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base Monday in what is known as an “elephant walk,” a term used during the Vietnam War to describe the slow-moving lines of B-52 bombers waiting for takeoff for airstrikes that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians. Monday’s formation included 14 warplanes, including five nuclear-capable B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers, six KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelers, an MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter, and two unmanned aerial vehicles: an Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk and a Navy MQ-4C Triton. These operations are meant to prepare pilots for the launching of fully armed warplanes in a mass attack against a common target. In the case of Andersen Air Force Base, located 1,800 miles east of China, the identity of the target is clear. The Air Force’s 36th Wing, which is part of the Indo-Pacific Command, issued a statement declaring that “The Elephant Walk showcases the 36th Wing's readiness and ability to generate combat airpower at a moment's notice to ensure regional stability throughout the Indo-Pacific.” This “showcasing” of the US military’s ability to launch a nuclear war against China at “a moment’s notice” came amid an increasingly virulent anti-China campaign by the Trump administration aimed at diverting growing social anger over the government’s failure to carry out the most basic measures to contain the deadly virus that has now cost 30,000 American lives. It was also a demonstration of US air power under conditions in which its carrier strike groups, one of the principal instruments for the projection of US imperialism’s military might in Asia and internationally, have been sidelined by the spread of the coronavirus through the close quarters of US Navy ships. The USS Theodore Roosevelt remains docked in Guam, its crew under quarantine with nearly 600 having tested positive and one of them dying Monday from COVID-19, the second member of the US military killed by the disease. Another five of the ship’s sailors have been hospitalized, one of them in intensive care.

Trump retweets post about firing Dr. Anthony Fauci - President Trump on Sunday night retweeted a postthat called for the ousting of Dr. Anthony Fauci after the infectious disease specialist appeared on CNN.The tweet from DeAnna Lorraine, a former GOP candidate for Congress, included the hashtag #FireFauci and referred to Fauci’s concession that more lives could have been saved if the US had acted sooner to stop the spread of coronavirus.“Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape,” Trump wrote, insisting his travel ban was the action needed to stem the virus. “I banned China long before people spoke up.”Earlier on Sunday, Fauci appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and he acknowledged the country “could’ve saved lives” if we had started mitigation efforts earlier.“You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,” Fauci told host Jake Tapper.  “We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But we — it is what it is. We are where we are right now.”  Lorraine’s tweet was critical of Fauci’s cable news appearance and used the hashtag #FireFauci to encourage Trump’s fanbase to add the medical expert to the president’s list of perceived enemies.  “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives,” wrote Lorraine.

Trump declares major disaster in all 50 states for the first time in history - President Trump issued a major disaster declaration for Wyoming on Saturday, meaning that there is now such a declaration within all 50 states due to the COVID-19 pandemic.It is the first time a president has ever declared a major disaster in all 50 states at once, according to Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere.The move comes as confirmed cases of the coronavirus reached at least 519,453 as of Saturday afternoon. At least 20,071 people have died in the U.S. due to the disease, a death toll surpassing the one in hard-hit Italy — and a figure that has doubled, from 10,000 to more than 20,000, in just five days. Worldwide, confirmed cases have surpassed 1.75 million, and more than 100,000 people have died.Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon formally sought the declaration on Thursday in a letter to the president. The state had seen more than 200 cases of the coronavirus at that time.“Though Wyoming has not reached the dire situations of some states, this declaration will help us to prepare and mobilize resources when we need them,” Gordon said.The declarations make federal funding available for state and local governments, as well as some nonprofit organizations, according to the White House. They can also help state governments coordinate with federal resources like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Trump: It’s my decision when to reopen U.S. economy (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday it was his decision when to reopen the U.S. economy, not that of state governors, but legal experts disagree and governors are going their own way. Trump last month extended federal “stay at home” guidelines through April and has made clear he wanted the economy to reopen as soon as possible after the coronavirus outbreak that has killed nearly 22,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs. However, he also has said he would listen to U.S. health experts and others in making any recommendations. “It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!” Trump wrote on Twitter. The Republican president accused news media of incorrectly saying it was the governors’ decision. However, legal analysts say a U.S. president has quite limited power to order citizens back to their places of employment, or cities to reopen government buildings, transportation, or local businesses. While federal health officials have issued anti-coronavirus guidelines including social distancing and wearing face coverings, Washington has not issued nationwide recommendations on school closings or shuttering public services and businesses, leaving individual states to make those determinations.

Trump halts US funding for World Health Organization as it conducts coronavirus review - The U.S. will suspend funding to the World Health Organization while it reviews the agency’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday, saying the international health agency made mistakes that “caused so much death” as the coronavirus spread across the globe. “Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said at a White House press conference. Trump criticized the international agency’s response to the outbreak, saying “one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations” that Trump imposed early on in the outbreak. “Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China saving untold numbers of lives,” he said. It’s unclear exactly what mechanism Trump intends to use to withhold WHO funding, much of which is appropriated by Congress. The president typically does not have the authority to unilaterally redirect congressional funding. One option might be for Trump to use powers granted to the president under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Under this statute, the president may propose to withhold congressional funds, but it requires congressional approval within 45 days. Absent this approval, the funds must be returned to their original, congressionally mandated purpose after 45 days.

WHO regrets Trump funding halt as global coronavirus cases top 2 million -  (Reuters) - The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday he regrets U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull funding for the agency, but that now is the time for the world to unite in its fight against the new coronavirus. Trump’s move prompted condemnation from world leaders as global coronavirus infections passed the 2 million mark. The United States is the world’s worst-affected country and its coronavirus death toll topped 30,000 on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally. The fatalities have doubled in just a week and set a record single-day increase for the second day in a row. New U.S. cases have been rising by about 25,000 a day, down from a peak of 35,000, according to a Reuters tally. Trump said the data suggests the nation has passed the peak of new coronavirus infections and that he will announce guidelines for reopening the economy on Thursday. After gradually becoming more hostile toward the Geneva-based WHO, Trump accused it on Tuesday of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, saying this had probably worsened the outbreak. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference that the United States “has been a long-standing and generous friend of the WHO, and we hope it will continue to be so.” “WHO is reviewing the impact on our work of any withdrawal of U.S. funding and we will work with partners to fill any gaps and ensure our work continues uninterrupted,” Tedros added. Global health campaigner and donor Bill Gates tweeted that “Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds ... The world needs WHO now more than ever.” But Washington showed no sign of softening its stance, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed China’s top diplomat on the need for full transparency and information sharing to fight the pandemic.

Intel officials probe whether virus escaped from a Chinese lab— Although the the U.S. intelligence community early on dismissed the notion that the coronavirus is a synthesized bioweapon, it is still weighing the possibility that the pandemic might have been touched off by an accident at a research facility rather than by an infection from a live-animal market, according to nine current and former intelligence and national security officials familiar with ongoing investigations. After extensive research, scientists in the U.S. and elsewhere have determined that the new strain of the coronavirus discovered in China in December is, as Chinese officials have maintained, of natural origin, but they are taking seriously that its route to human infection may have started in a lab in Wuhan. “It’s definitely a real possibility being bandied about at the high levels of the administration,” said one of the sources, who has knowledge of China and national security. “We are actively and vigorously tracking down every piece of information we get on this topic and we are writing frequently to update policymakers,” an intelligence official told Yahoo News. The intelligence community “has not come down on any one theory.” While Chinese officials were quick to link the origin of the disease to infected animals at the Wuhan Seafood Market, which was formally closed on Jan. 1, scientists have not traced the initial exposure back to any specific animals. Therefore, an alternative possibility remains — that a natural virus sample being studied at a research laboratory in Wuhan infected a researcher who spread it in the community, or it escaped via hazardous waste or a lab animal. There are reasons to be wary of that theory. It may serve as a propaganda tool for politicians who want to fan tensions with China, and many scientists still argue that a natural outbreak is the most likely possibility, dismissing any alternative theory. But finding the source of the outbreak could also be vital in understanding how it spread and how to prevent the next potential pandemic.

Chairman Of Jt. Chiefs Admits US Intel Has Taken 'Hard Look' At Wuhan Lab As Origin Of COVID-19 -- According to Defense One editor Kevin Baron, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that the DoD has looked into the theory that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan laboratory. "There’s a lot of rumor and speculation in a wide variety of media, blog sites, etc.," said Milley. "It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that, and we have had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that.""At this point it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we do not know for sure," Milley added.Those words are going to fuel a lifetime of additional conspiracy theories and speculation. But the tone of his voice was pretty dismissive of the idea, and he stressed that they've looked hard. "Hard." And "the weight of evidence leans towards natural."— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) April 14, 2020Keep in mind that several theories are floating around with varying degrees of evidence to support them.

• COVID-19 is a natural bat coronavirus which was studied in Wuhan and accidentally leaked from the biolab.
• COVID-19 is an engineered bioweapon which either escaped or was released on purpose from the Wuhan laboratory.
• COVID-19 was created in the US at Ft. Detrick (USAMRIID) and the deep state released it last October to frame China and derail the global economy.

The US State Department received two cables from US Embassy officials in 2018 warning of inadequate safety at a Wuhan, China biolab conducting 'risky studies' on bat coronaviruses, according to the Washington Post, which notes that the cables have "fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus."

Inside America’s 2-Decade Failure to Prepare for Coronavirus - Top officials from three administrations describe how crucial lessons were learned and lost, programs launched and canceled, and budgets funded and defunded. The nation’s health secretary was warned about a possible pandemic — and, he admits now, he didn’t take that first warning seriously enough. But he studied with experts at the Centers of Disease Control. He read papers on virology. He took his concerns to the president. And months later, the administration unveiled a plan to tackle the virus emerging out of Asia, investing in therapies and warning Americans to stock up on canned goods. It’s a moment that feels ripped from the headlines about the current coronavirus crisis. But the year was 2005, not 2020.  And for his troubles, that health secretary — Bush appointee Mike Leavitt — was mocked as an alarmist by political rivals and late-night comics, even as that year’s threat of avian flu petered out around the globe.  “Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans store canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds for when bird flu hits,” host Jay Leno said on the Tonight Show in 2006, a recurring bit where he ridiculed Leavitt’s warnings. “What? … Powdered milk and tuna? How many would rather have the bird flu?”  Speaking to POLITICO this month, Leavitt described a trap that health and national security officials know too well: Prepare too early and you’re called Chicken Little. Act too late — and millions may die. “In advance of a pandemic, anything you say sounds alarmist,” Leavitt explained. “After a pandemic starts, everything you’ve done is inadequate.”

The White House Pushed FEMA To Give its Biggest Coronavirus Contract to a Company That Never Had to Bid — Last month, as a deadly new virus swept over the globe, one Canadian defense contractor predicted on an earnings call that it would lead to a big business opportunity in the U.S. Thanks to the White House, that bet paid off just a few weeks later in a $96 million no-bid deal. In an unusual move, even in times of disaster, the White House stepped into the federal purchasing process, ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to award a contract to AirBoss of America. The Trump administration has rushed through hundreds of deals to address the pandemic without the usual oversight, more than $760 million reported as of this week, but the AirBoss transaction is the single largest no-bid purchase, a ProPublica analysis of federal purchasing data found. While FEMA placed the order, it was directed to do so by the White House, ProPublica found. It is unclear why the White House chose AirBoss for the protective equipment, which is similar to products made by other vendors. “I can’t think of an example of the White House sending FEMA a directive to procure items from a particular company in a particular manner,” said Tim Manning, a former FEMA deputy administrator during the Obama administration. The March 31 FEMA contract called for the company to produce 100,000 powered respirators and filters for medical workers treating patients in New York — a critical need that the Trump administration has been slow to address. The contract calls for them to be delivered to New York by July 31, five months after the state’s first reported case.

Trump says coronavirus has peaked, some states will reopen before May 1 - President Trump said Wednesday that the US had passed the peak of the coronavirus pandemic — and that some states would reopen before his May 1 deadline. “While we must remain vigilant, it is clear that our strategy is working, and very strongly working. New cases are declining throughout the New York metropolitan area. Cases in Detroit and metro Denver areas are flat. Washington, DC, Baltimore, St. Louis is showing progress. New cases in New Orleans are declining. The data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases,” Trump said during the daily briefing of the Coronavirus Task Force in the Rose Garden. “These developments have put us in a strong position to finalize guidelines for states opening the country, which we will be announcing tomorrow. We will have a news conference tomorrow during the afternoon,” he said. “We will be announcing guidelines. We will be talking about various states. It’s very exciting. It’s a horrible time to see such death and distraction, especially when you come out of what was the greatest economy in the history of the world.” The president’s announcement came as confirmed cases in the US rose to more than 605,000 and the death toll topped 27,000. “We’ll be opening up states, some sooner than others,” Trump added, saying that some states could reopen before his stated goal of May 1, and that many governors were “chomping [sic] at the bit” to reopen. Asked for evidence that the peak had arrived, Trump said the task force was “looking at graphs and models.” Trump’s position has shifted this week. He said Monday he had total authority to decide when states would reopen, not individual governors. On Tuesday, he contended that he had authorized governors to make their own decisions. Dr. Deborah Birx, a task force member, sounded a more cautionary note during the briefing. “I will remind the people again this is a highly contagious virus. Social gatherings, coming together, there is a chance an asymptomatic person can spread it unknowingly. We know if you are sick, you will stay home. Don’t have that dinner party for 20 yet,” she said, while adding that some states had very few cases.

Schumer says more testing needed before Trump's plan to open country moves forward -Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) on Friday offered some cautious praise for President Trump’s guidelines for reopening the country but said he thinks that more testing still needs to be made available, reiterating Democrats’ call for a national testing program. “The plan is a little more measured than what the president said in the past, which is good but there’s a key thing missing in all this,” Schumer said in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “If we don’t have a strong, adequate testing regime, we’re going to have real trouble,” he added. “You have to know who has the illness, who’s immune from the illness and who could get the illness before we can determine who can go back to work and who can’t.” Schumer reiterated the need for a $30 billion national testing and contact tracing plan Democrats unveiled this week. He said it needs to be included in the interim coronavirus relief package that he, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are negotiating. He said Trump should invoke the Defense Production Act to “take over the factories and their supply chains” to make tests and distribute them across the country. The Democratic leader said the current testing regime is “scattershot and totally inadequate for the job that needed” to get Americans back to work. “Each state can’t come up with its own test. Many of the states are inadequate to come up with their own tests. We need a national program distributed to the local governments,” he added. Trump and the White House coronavirus task force announced a detailed set of new guidelines Thursday evening for reopening the country, which governors would use to make decisions for their own states. The three-phase plan provides ground rules for bringing employees back to work in phases, reopening schools and organized youth activities, permitting elective surgeries again, reopening gyms under strict physical distancing protocols, and allowing nonessential travel to resume — among other loosenings of restrictions now in place. Trump’s plan also assumes the “ability to quickly set up safe and efficient screening and testing sites for symptomatic individuals” and contact tracing for those who test positive for COVID-19.

New York forms team to develop 'Trump-proof' economic reopening plan - (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has tapped high-powered consultants to develop a science-based plan for the safe economic reopening of the region that can thwart pressure from President Donald Trump to move more rapidly, state government sources told Reuters. Cuomo, along with many other U.S. governors, shut all non-essential businesses to limit the spread of the sometimes deadly COVID-19 virus, and has warned that he is are prepared to keep them shut – perhaps for several months more – unless he can assure public safety. Governors from seven East Coast states formed a coalition on Monday, led by New York, to develop a joint reopening plan. Three governors from the West Coast formed a similar plan. The 10 states, mostly led by Democrats, together make up 38% of the U.S. economy. As part of Cuomo’s effort, McKinsey & Company is producing models on coronavirus testing, infections and other key data points that along with other research and expert opinions will help underpin decisions on how and when to reopen the region’s economy. Dani Lever, communications director for Cuomo, said McKinsey has been primarily helping New York analyze the COVID-19 surge, such as hospital capacity and infection rates. Cuomo has also recalled three former top aides: Bill Mulrow, a senior adviser director at Blackstone Group; Steven Cohen, an executive vice president of MacAndrews & Forbes Inc; and Larry Schwartz, who, like the others, previously served as secretary to the governor. Deloitte is also involved in developing the regional plan, a source told Reuters on Wednesday. The goal is to “Trump-proof” the plan, said an adviser to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. “We think Trump ultimately will blink on this, but if not, we need to push back, and we are reaching out to top experts and other professionals to come up with a bullet-proof plan,” to open on the state’s terms, said a Cuomo adviser. Trump, whose reelection bid was built on a strong economy before it was derailed by the epidemic, is losing patience with the economic shutdown and has challenged governors who are preaching caution, setting the stage for larger clashes over the pace of the reopening. Trump said in late March he hoped to reopen the economy by Easter in mid-April, but the mounting toll of infections and projected deaths forced him to extend federal guidelines to the end of April. More than 30,000 people have died in the United States from the epidemic. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T) McKinsey is providing analysis on testing availability and demand across the state, supply chain for critical supplies, hospital capacity and virus projections, a company official said.

Airlines Want a $50B Bailout. They Spent $45B Buying Back Stock.We don't know yet which companies are going to get how much in federal bailout money and what the bailout terms will be. But it's a sure bet that a ton of money will be earmarked for our nation's four biggest airlines - American, Delta, Southwest and United. And it's also a sure bet that the Big Four Flyers would need a lot less bailout money if they hadn't sent almost $45 billion to Wall Street over the past five years to keep shareholders happy. That's not much less than the $50 billion airline bailout package that's being proposed. I'm not saying that we should just let these airlines collapse. Even though bankruptcies are not unknown in the airline business, having them collapse now would add even more instability to our economy and endanger even more jobs. But what I am saying is that the terms of the bailout money that the airlines get from us should reflect the fact that a substantial part of their current financial problem is of their own making. So I think it's only fair for taxpayers to get a substantial piece of the upside in return for bailing out these companies. And in the process, bailing out their shareholders, who would be left with nothing if the companies failed. Yes, this is the same point I have made about a taxpayer bailout of Boeing. But it's a point that we should keep in mind every time we see companies line up at the bailout trough. If many of these companies hadn't spent lots of money to buy back their own stock to prop up its price, they wouldn't need anywhere near as much money as they need now.

The Really Really Yucky Airlines Bailout --  Yves Smith - I’ve held back from saying much about the 2020 bailouts because they are even stinkier than the 2008 ones, yet the people putting them together and receiving them don’t care what you think. If the Trump Administration could stare down two years of Russiagate, with the press braying daily and all sorts of spook state people warning about the danger to our precious bodily fluidselections, they have nothing to worry about when they are handing boatloads of cash out to friendly or at least friendly out-of-desperation recipients.The airlines are a particularly unsympathetic lot of corporate welfare queens. As most of you know, the largest US carriers spent 96% of their free cash flow on stock buybacks, well above the 50% average for the S&P 500. This Bloomberg factoid does not include whether the airlines borrowed to make these purchases, which was common in the post-crisis era.It’s bad enough that airlines went whole hog into propping up stock prices so as to goose executive pay. It’s even worse because airlines are a high fixed cost, cyclical business. They more than just about any business ought to keep cash around for a rainy day and they didn’t.  Now admittedly, airlines are less ugly than banks, since they haven’t engaged in large scale incompetence (like regularly all together making stupid loans and acting like they shouldn’t be blamed because pretty much every other bank did so too), borrower fraud (like steering people of color to subprime loans, or switching mortgage documentation at closing), investor fraud (lying about loan quality) and other forms of chicanery (pervasive bad servicing). However, they are producing a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, and electric planes are a long way away. So a smaller airline business would not be a bad thing. Nevertheless, if the Feds are going to rescue reckless businessmen, they ought to put their boots on the necks of the miscreants, particularly in making sure they build up big cash coffers so they don’t do a rerun any time soon. Instead, what the airlines get is the way of bailout conditions is so minimal as to be a too-obvious exercise in optics. For instance, some of the money is in cheap loans, and some in grants that will be forgiven if the carriers fly right. The carriers are whining that it isn’t all grants.  More grants and much more stringent conditions would have been a better mix. Instead we get: A ban on laying off workers or cutting pay prior to September 30 (the Financial Times reports that airlines “will receive a payment equal to roughly three-quarters of its payroll for the second and third quarters of 2019”). Needless to say, this is pathetic.

Trump administration reportedly looking to cut the already low wages of H-2A migrant farmworkers while giving their bosses a multibillion-dollar bailout -- EPI Blog - Key takeaways:

• The Trump administration, which recently deemed farmworkers essential to the economy, is considering lowering the wages of the 205,000 migrant farmworkers employed in the United States through the H-2A temporary work visa program, according to published reports.
• H-2A wages are usually based on a mandated wage standard that varies by region—known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR)—aiming to prevent temporary migrant farmworkers from being underpaid according to local standards and to prevent downward pressure on the wages of farmworkers in the United States.
• Farmworkers in general are paid very low wages—in 2019 they earned $13.99 per hour, which is only three-fifths of what production and nonsupervisory workers outside of agriculture earned, and they earned less than what workers with lowest levels of education in the U.S. labor market earned.
• The national average AEWR wage, at $12.96 per hour, was lower than wages for any of these groups of workers, and many H-2A farmworkers earned far less in some of the biggest H-2A states.
• The Trump administration may try to lower the wages of H-2A farmworkers through the regulatory process or a provision attached to a broader piece of legislation.
• This comes at a time when farm owners looking to cut their workers’ wages are on the verge of receiving a federal bailout worth at least $16 billion, which will help cover potential financial losses related to impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, NPR reported that “new White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms.” Apparently, the Trump administration believes that temporary migrant farmworkers—who earned between $11.01 and $15.03 per hour in 2019—are overpaid.

Congress should immediately pass legislation protecting workers’ safety during the coronavirus pandemic -  EPI - Key takeaways:

• Working people should not have to wait for a fourth recovery bill for vital, lifesaving protections, while corporations have received $450 billion in aid with no strings attached.
• The federal government should take on the role of “payroll of the last resort” like some other nations, in order to keep working people on the payroll with access to health care.
• The “phase four” recovery bill should contain enhanced protections for all workers performing essential work during this crisis, such as providing personal protective equipment, hazard pay, whistleblower protections, and bolstered collective bargaining rights.

Since March 8, Congress has passed three bills allocating trillions of dollars to relief and recovery measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These bills included some important provisions for workers hurt by the pandemic. Chief among those are funding for expanded unemployment insurance, increased access to paid sick leave for some workers, and funding for the airline industry to keep paying workers and covering their benefits. However, direct aid to workers was a small percentage of the overall funding in these relief and recovery measures. Much of the money included in these bills went directly to corporate interests. For example, the CARES Act included $450 billion in aid to impacted firms with virtually no strings attached. Instead of requiring firms receiving this bailout money to maintain pre-pandemic payroll levels, wages, and benefits, the language in the bill requires that such worker protections be provided “to the greatest extent practicable.” This is toothless language that does not require employers to use this taxpayer money to keep workers employed. The airline industry relief funding was the only example of financial assistance with a serious string attached—requiring relief funds to be used explicitly for the “continuation of payment of employee wages, salaries, and benefits.” However, the Trump administration seems to be playing politics with the implementation of this program. It is unfortunate if not unpredictable that the sole program that provided a subsidy for workers’ wages and benefits is now the source of a political battle that jeopardizes its efficacy.

Trump Defunds WHO and USPS: Will Motherhood and Apple Pie Be Next? - Barkley Rosser - Yes, Trump is out to cut the roughly half a billion $ US contribution to the $6 billion budget of the World Health Organization (WHO).  It seems that he now sees his path to reelection to be based on blaming China for the coronavirus and the WHO for supposedly supporting China in their supposedly nefarious conduct, allowing him to wallow in  fit of xenophobia as well as accusations against Joe Biden for being “soft on China.”  Certainly China was slow to act against the virus, although not as slow as Trump and his team here in the US, and the WHO may well have been too soliciitous of China and its interests. But the WHo remains the central organization for  coordination the global response to thie situation.  This is simply stupid in terms of fighting the virus. And then we have him going out of his way to demand that funds for the nearly bankrupt US Postal Service (USPS) be removed from the recent stimulus bill. GOPs in Congress have burdened them with having to fund future pensions at a level no other entity in the nation has to do, and, of course their business is in long term decline.  But apparently the USPS is the single most popular federal agencyy there is, with a 90% popularity rating, putting it ahead of even NASA and the National Park Service.  But, hey, it delivers packages for Amazon, whose owner owns the Washington Post, which says bad things about him, not to mention if USPS can be shut  down, then all these Dem proposals to have people mail in their votes can be quashed, and as we have seen in Wisconsin, making it hard for people to submit ballots by mail is really popular. Anyway, at this rate, I expect Trump’s next move to be to defund entities supporting motherhood and apple pie.

Life at CNN: Skeleton Staff, Record Ratings and Vanishing Ads – WSJ - On a recent conference call, CNN chief Jeff Zucker urged editors and producers at the network not to shift focus from coronavirus news updates despite weeks of wall-to-wall coverage of the pandemic. TV ratings suggest his hunch was on target. CNN and other cable news outlets could scarcely imagine that anything could juice viewership like the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath; but ratings have soared during the pandemic, reaching levels well above those when “Russian interference” and “Mueller report” dominated the news. CNN has averaged 2.2 million total viewers in prime time through the first week of April, more than double its viewership in the fourth quarter of 2019, and roughly 57% higher than its election-season peak, according to Nielsen data. Fox News is up nearly 50% since the end of last year to over four million viewers, increasing its lead over its two main rivals. MSNBC has seen the smallest lift. The three networks’ websites all saw big audience gains, too. Cashing in has been difficult for all the channels, however, as the economic fallout of the pandemic causes ad spending to collapse. CNN has revised its ad revenue forecasts downward, people familiar with the matter said. Instead of a double-digit percentage increase in revenue this year, the network could be staring at a significant decline, one top media analyst said. Chronicling the crisis for the public has been an odyssey. Anchors and producers committed to telling Americans the importance of social distancing and staying home are themselves trying to figure out how to perform their jobs safely night after night. CNN is using skeleton crews of producers in Atlanta and New York after encouraging many of its employees to work from home. In some cases, anchors have begun using one-person “flash studios” at the production facility instead of their usual large, glass-walled setup with multiple camera operators, people familiar with the matter said.  Despite the precautions, two prominent CNN anchors—Brooke Baldwin and Chris Cuomo—contracted the virus. Mr. Cuomo, perhaps the network’s highest-profile coronavirus chronicler, has documented his status nightly while broadcasting from home. Anderson Cooper, who like Mr. Cuomo is New York-based, did his show at home for a time after a staffer was infected. The company declined to provide a count of confirmed cases among its staff members.

CNN's Cuomo Melts-Down Live On Radio, Admits His Job Is "Trafficking In The Ridiculous" -- CNN anchor Chris Cuomo made a startling confession Monday, declaring that he doesn’t value his job and that CNN is “trafficking in things that I think are ridiculous.” In a Howard Beale-esq moment, Cuomo made the comments on his SiriusXM show, apparently having an epiphany after contracting coronavirus.“I don’t want to spend my time doing things that I don’t think are valuable enough to me personally,” Cuomo said, adding “I don’t value indulging the rationality, hyper-partisanship.”Listen:  @CNN's Chris Cuomo went on a rant today about how having the coronavirus has made him reconsider his life. He said he doesn't like what he does, that it isn't worth his time and even ranted about a "jackass, loser, fat tire biker":https://t.co/ctHzceHlO1 pic.twitter.com/btHJRu41nI — Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) April 14, 2020“I don’t like what I do professionally,” Cuomo said. “I don’t think it’s worth my time.”Cuomo also said that he dislikes “talking to Democrats about things that I don’t really believe they mean” and “talking to Republicans about them parroting things they feel they have to say.”The host seems to be reevaluating his role in the fake news system that has become purely about winning ratings by saying ridiculous things.“I don’t think its worth it to me because I don’t think I mean enough, I don’t think I matter enough, I don’t think I can really change anything, so then what am I really doing?” Cuomo continued. “I’m basically being perceived as successful in a system that I don’t value. I’m seen as being good at being on TV and advocating for different positions… but I don’t know if I value those things, certainly not as much as I value being able to live my life on my own terms.” he added.

Mike Bloomberg’s Firm that Ran His Presidential Campaign Is Bidding to Take Over Joe Biden’s Campaign - THE BLOOMBERG-OWNED FIRM Hawkfish, which ran the presidential campaign of Mike Bloomberg, is in serious talks to serve the presidential campaign of Joe Biden, according to sources with knowledge of the ongoing negotiations. Along with Biden’s campaign, the firm is courting a wide swath of other progressive and Democratic organizations, opening up the possibility of Bloomberg gaining significant control over the party’s technology and data infrastructure. The digital consulting firm has had little political experience outside of the Bloomberg campaign, a trial by fire in which the former New York City mayor burned through nearly $1 billion in less than four months. Hawkfish, which Bloomberg founded in 2019 to be the operational backbone of his campaign, is not yet able to sell its track record or quality of service, since it has no other major clients and few, if any, minor ones. But instead it comes with other enticements to clients. Democratic operatives who’ve been pitched by Hawkfish say that the firm is able to offer extraordinarily low prices by operating at a loss subsidized by Bloomberg, whose wealth dangles as an added benefit that could come with signing the firm. A Hawkfish insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize employment, confirmed that the company is willing to operate at a loss in order to grab control of the party infrastructure, explaining that the firm hopes to offer a fee that would be small enough to entice the Biden campaign while passing muster with federal regulators. (If a firm offers services for less than fair market value, the discount is considered under campaign finance laws to be an in-kind contribution, and thus subject to legal limits depending on the entity collecting the contribution. A presidential campaign can’t accept more than $2,800 from a single individual per election, or any contributions at all from a company.).

This Absolute Bullshit Would Not Be Possible Without Propaganda - Caitlin Johnstone - So as of right now it’s Trump versus Biden. An incompetent plutocrat president selling himself as an anti-establishment people’s champion while simultaneously advancing garden variety Republican sociopathy, versus awarmongering authoritarian who is too demented to string a coherent sentence together and who is looking more and more credibly to be a rapist.Needless to say, this is absolute bullshit.How did we get here? How did we get to the point where the electoral contest to run the most powerful government on the planet is between a racist demented right-wing authoritarian warmongering rapist and another racist demented right-wing authoritarian warmongering rapist? How in the hell did this bullshit happen?There are a number of factors, including anonymous and unsubstantiated “leaks” from the US intelligence community regarding Russian support for the Bernie Sanders campaign and a shockingly coordinated maneuver by Democratic Party leadership (including former president Obama) to sabotage Sanders in the late hours before Super Tuesday. But the primary factor by far was domestic mass media propaganda. Propaganda during the primary season of course, with the billionaire press showing a very clear and undeniable bias against Bernie Sanders from thevery beginning of the race. Had the Sanders campaign received a normal quality and quantity of mass media coverage for a candidate of his stature, he would doubtless have received far more support than he did. To deny that biased media messaging has an effect would be the same as denying that advertising, a trillion-dollar industry, has an effect.  Without having been raised in a media environment that is saturated with establishment propaganda, it would never occur to anyone in a million years to describe a violent authoritarian extremist like Joe Biden as a “moderate”. It would never occur to anyone to think of this crazy wingnut as “electable”. It would certainly never occur to anyone that he should be running on the platform of what passes for America’s political left wing. Joe Biden has been a horrible, evil politician since long before his rape allegations went mainstream and his brain started turning to porridge. If people could gaze with fresh, unmanipulated eyes upon someone who’s dedicated his entire political career to neoliberal exploitation at home and neoconservative mass murder abroad, someone who openly boasts about authoring the foundational documents of the USA PATRIOT Act, someone who promises rich donors that “nothing fundamentally will change” if he’s elected and who they know from experience can be taken at his word, it would never occur to them that this is someone who should be running for any elected office anywhere, let along within spitting distance of the most powerful one in the world.

CFPB paves way for consumers to get stimulus funds via prepaid cards - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to make it easier for consumers who lack bank accounts to use prepaid cards to receive their pandemic relief stimulus payments authorized by Congress.The CFPB issued an interpretive rule Monday that states it will not classify such payments as “government benefits.” The move is intended to get around restrictions in the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E on dispensing the stimulus relief through a prepaid option.The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act provides individuals $1,200 if they have under $75,000 in income, or $2,400 for couples with less than $150,000 in income based on 2019 tax return information. “In these unprecedented times, policymakers are acting swiftly to provide consumers with needed financial support through new mechanisms and for new purposes outside of existing government benefit programs,” CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger said in a press release “The steps we are taking today ensure that consumers can receive these payments in a fast, secure, and efficient manner.”Government agencies are prohibited by the EFTA and Reg E from requiring that consumers establish an account with a financial institution for the direct deposit of electronic fund transfers as a condition for receiving government benefits.To facilitate faster payments, the CFPB said that government benefits do not include payments from federal, state or local governments if those payments are made to provide assistance to consumers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; are not part of an already-established government benefit program; are made on a one-time or otherwise limited basis; and are distributed without a general requirement that consumers apply to the agency to receive funds.

Banks join calls to shield stimulus checks from debt collection — A growing chorus of voices is calling on Congress to protect the stimulus checks being sent to Americans across the nation this week from debt collection.A consensus has emerged that the recent $2 trillion package for easing economic fallout from the coronavirus allows banks to use a consumer's piece of the stimulus to fulfill garnishment orders to pay creditors for outstanding debts.The issue has put banks in a bind. To avoid diverting customers' stimulus money, they would need to suspend collection of overdraft fees, for example, and in many cases banks are obligated to fulfill court-required garnishment orders. Yet the industry has been widely focused on efforts to help consumers weather effects of the pandemic. Some large banks have already suspended collecting on negative checking balances to avoid garnishing stimulus checks. And the industry is urging lawmakers to exempt stimulus payments — typically $1,200 per individual — from garnishment, siding with consumers advocates and several members of the House and Senate.“We believe it is imperative that Congress make it clear that these payments are treated as benefits subject to the federal exemption from garnishment,” the American Bankers Association, Bank Policy Institute, Consumer Bankers Association and Financial Services Forum wrote in a joint letter to congressional leaders.The stimulus package — known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act — exempted the direct relief payments from certain garnishment orders, such as debts owed to state and federal agencies. But the exemption did not cover orders to pay private creditors.“As a result, banks are obligated to treat [stimulus checks] accordingly, which will impose a significant burden for some families facing unprecedented circumstances,” the trade groups wrote. They added that the Treasury Department should make such payments available through direct deposit, which allows for the funds to be coded as exempt from garnishment.Wells Fargo and Citigroup said this week they will not collect on negative balances for a month to ensure that customers can receive the full stimulus amount deposited into their accounts. Wells also announced that noncustomers can cash stimulus checks in their branches for no fee.Reports about banks’ ability to deduct outstanding debt from customers' stimulus money swirled in days after publication of a story in American Prospect magazine. It included audio of a Treasury official telling banks in a webinar that “nothing in the law” would legally prevent them from using stimulus funds to cover overdraft fees and other debts owed by customers.

American Workers Get a 4-Month Safety Net; Wall Street Gets a 4 to 5-Year Bailout – Pam Martens - The stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in March, (the CARES Act), increases the miserly amount most states provide in unemployment benefits (an average of $378 weekly) by an additional $600 per week. But that extra $600 only lasts until July 31 — a period of four months. Millions of small businesses, such as restaurants and retail shops, will shut down permanently as a result of this business disruption, meaning that workers in places like Florida, the third most populous state in the U.S., will be back to their preposterously low weekly unemployment allotment of $275 per week in just four months.Let that sink in for a moment. A worker in Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is in charge, is expected to live on $275 a week or $1100 per month, or the annualized amount of $13,200 per year. Other states with Dickensian unemployment benefits include Mississippi at $235 weekly; Arizona at $240; Louisiana at $247; and Alabama at $275. The CARES Act will give workers an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits, on top of the typical 26 weeks – but only at the rate their state is paying – and those additional weeks will end on December 31 of this year. In numerous states, newly unemployed workers have been unable to contact their dysfunctional unemployment office. The Tampa Bay Times published stories from laid-off workers attempting, in vain, to file for unemployment benefits in Florida. One worker called it “some sort of sick nightmare.”  In Ohio, workers hoping to get that extra $600 per week will have to wait for the state to hire a vendor to build a computer system to process those claims, according to a report yesterday by the Columbus Dispatch. Now consider how the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) and Congress take care of Wall Street.  On September 17, 2019 the interest rate on overnight loans (repo) made between banks and other financial institutions spiked from the typical 2 percent to 10 percent. There was no coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak anywhere in the world at that point. . There was no national emergency of any kind to warrant bailing out Wall Street. But within 24 hours the New York Fed had pumped $53 billion to the trading houses on Wall Street. No questions asked. No clogged phone lines. No paperwork to fill out. No standing in lines. No asking Congress for a vote. Just $53 billion created out of thin air by the New York Fed and instantly funneled out to Wall Street’s trading houses with the push of an electronic button. Over the next six weeks, the New York Fed pumped out more than $6 trillion in below-market rate loans to Wall Street’s trading houses – without one single hearing being held in Congress to investigate what was going on.  The Wall Street programs are not going to last for just 4 months or to the end of the year as are the CARES Act’s programs for workers. The New York Fed’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) will last three years. The Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility (PMCCF) will last for four years and buy up investment grade as well as junk-rated corporate bonds to shore up the balance sheets of mega banks on Wall Street. The Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF) will last for five years, buying up everything from investment grade to junk corporate bonds as well as junk-rated exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Fed's Corporate Debt-Buying Could Mean Billion-Dollar Big Oil Bailout - As calls for a People's Bailout in response to the coronavirus pandemic continue to grow across the United States, a new analysis warns that the country's Big Oil companies "stand to reap yet another billion dollar bailout" thanks to the Federal Reserve's plans to buy up to $750 billion in corporate debt. The analysis (pdf), released Wednesday by the advocacy group Friends of the Earth (FOE), explains that this expected bailout for polluters relates to a controversial $500 billion corporate slush fund included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that Congress passed in March. According to FOE's report, The Big Oil Money Pit:Of that amount, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin enjoys direct control over a comparatively small $46 billion reserved for aviation and industries deemed essential to "national security." But the remaining $454 billion went to the Federal Reserve, which will use the money to implement emergency lending programs for corporations and municipalities. Secretary Mnuchin must approve these lending programs and wields considerable power over their design, but the money itself will move through the Fed. After weeks of unprecedented human suffering and an ongoing failure to support frontline workers, the Fed announced on April 9, 2020 how it would spend the first $195 billion of the slush fund. A full $75 billion would go to buy corporate debt. But because the Fed can leverage money appropriated by Congress, the real size of this program is $750 billion.  FOE found that the fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Conoco "are together eligible for a maximum $19.4 billion in benefits, based on their credit ratings and outstanding long-term debt." The Fed has hired BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, to administer part of its debt-buying efforts related to the pandemic. "As BlackRock begins purchasing 'high yield' exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to bolster corporate debt markets," FOE warns, "energy companies (predominantly oil and gas) stand to benefit disproportionately as the largest single issuer of junk bonds, at 11% of the entire U.S. market." Other key takeaways from the report include:

• There are 12 fracking-focused oil and gas companies that could potentially qualify for the new program. Together, they may be eligible for over $24.1 billion in potential benefits.
• Major fracking company Continental Resources, whose debt was recently downgraded to below investment grade by S&P, is potentially eligible for as much as $1.5 billion under new, weaker standards announced by the Federal Reserve.

Echoing climate campaigners' after President Donald Trump met with fossil fuel executives at the White House earlier this month, FOE senior policy analyst Lukas Ross said in a statement Wednesday that "oil company bailouts are simply throwing good money after bad." "Congress and the Democrats must stop this endless stream of handouts to an industry that is exploiting a public health crisis for financial gain," Ross declared. "These potential payoffs to major campaign contributors are the least efficient way of re-starting the economy and will just serve to enrich oil executives."

Three of the Biggest Banks on Wall Street Have $7.4 Trillion In Off-Balance Sheet Exposures - Pam Martens - In the past few weeks everyone from Fed Chair Jerome Powell to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to former Fed Chair Janet Yellen to bank analyst Mike Mayo have appeared on TV to tell the American people that the big banks on Wall Street are well capitalized. To put it in Janet Yellen’s exact words on CNBC last Thursday, “we have a strong, well capitalized banking system.”These folks have to keep repeating this mantra to the public because the public is increasingly getting curious as to why the New York Fed has had to pump a cumulative $9 trillion in cash to these Wall Street banks, since September 17   of last year, if they are so well capitalized. Can big banks actually be well capitalized and have no liquid money to make loans – the key function of a bank? As we have regularly noted, the Fed’s trillions of dollars in cash infusions to the banks began months before there was any coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak anywhere in the world.The reality is that the U.S. banking system only looks well capitalized if federal regulators, banking analysts, and the mainstream business press put blinders on and don’t look at what’s hiding in off-balance sheet items at the banking behemoths on Wall Street — the same fatal mistake they all made in the years leading up to the 2008 collapse. As of December 31, 2019, Citigroup’s federally-insured bank, Citibank N.A., had $1.45 trillion on its balance sheet with $150 billion in equity capital and $3 trillion in off-balance sheet items, with a “mysterious” two entries marked simply as “other” that total $389 billion. (What kind of accounting rules allow $389 billion to be described as “other.” See tables below.)On April 5 we reported that JPMorgan Chase had $2.9 trillion exposure in off-balance sheet items versus $2.3 trillion on its balance sheet with $246 billion in equity capital. That information comes directly from JPMorgan Chase’s Uniform Bank Performance Report for December 31, 2019 at the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC). Its off-balance sheet “mysterious” items marked simply “other,” total to a whopping $737.5 billion – that’s almost three-quarters of an undefined $1 trillion at the largest bank in the U.S.Then there is Bank of America. It has $1.85 trillion in assets on its balance sheet and equity capital of $212 billion. But off its balance sheet it has another $1.5 trillion. Its “other” items listed off its balance sheet total to $450.9 billion. The core problem with the federally-insured U.S. banking system today is that a handful of banks holding the lion’s share of deposits in the U.S. are owned by the trading casinos on Wall Street, which, since 2000, have blown themselves up three times. That’s three widespread blow-ups in 20 years versus no widespread blowups of Wall Street from 1933 to 1999, a period of 66 years, when the Glass-Steagall Act was in effect.

A Strange Timeline at JPMorgan Chase Includes a Meeting with Fed Chair Jay Powell  -  Pam Martens - From 3 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, February 19 of this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome (Jay) Powell met in the anteroom to his office in Washington, D.C. with Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Adding to the unusual nature of this meeting, the Chief Financial Officer of JPMorgan Chase, Jennifer Piepszak, had traveled with Dimon from New York to Washington, D.C. to attend this meeting. During the entire month of February, Powell met with no other CEO or CFO of any other Wall Street mega bank. We obtained this information from a review of the Fed Chairman’s daily calendar.  The meeting came one day after Reuters reported a “sweeping reshuffle” at JPMorgan’s investment bank and two weeks after Bloomberg News reported that the bank was, once again, under a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice. This would be the fourth, publicly known, criminal probe at JPMorgan Chase during Dimon’s tenure as Chairman and CEO. A prior investigation into how JPMorgan Chase had handled the business bank account for Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff ended in two criminal felony counts against the bank in 2014, to which the bank pleaded guilty. Another investigation into the bank’s role in rigging foreign exchange trading ended in one criminal felony count in 2015, to which the bank also pleaded guilty.A fourth criminal probe into how the federally-insured bank that is part of JPMorgan Chase had used depositors’ money to gamble in derivatives in London in 2012 and lose $6.2 billion, did not end in criminal charges. It did, however, result in a scathing 300-page report by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into how the bank “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.” Dimon had initially called the matter “a tempest in a teapot.”A peculiar timeline has emerged at JPMorgan Chase that includes the February 19, 2020 meeting with the Fed Chair but actually began in the first half of last year, long beforethere was any coronavirus COVID-19 crisis anywhere in the world.This begs the question: did the U.S. have a Wall Street banking crisis similar to 2008 long before there was a pandemic crisis? Here’s the timeline. Note carefully that the first coronavirus COVID-19 case in the United States was not found until January 20, 2020, according to the New England Journal of Medicine

Exclusive: U.S. banks prepare to seize energy assets as shale boom goes bust – (Reuters) - Major U.S. lenders are preparing to become operators of oil and gas fields across the country for the first time in a generation to avoid losses on loans to energy companies that may go bankrupt, sources aware of the plans told Reuters. JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc are each in the process of setting up independent companies to own oil and gas assets, said three people who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The banks are also looking to hire executives with relevant expertise to manage them, the sources said. The banks did not provide comment in time for publication. Energy companies are suffering through a plunge in oil prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a supply glut, with crude prices down more than 60% this year. Although oil prices may gain support from a potential agreement Thursday between Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut production, few believe the curtailment can offset a 30% drop in global fuel demand, as the coronavirus has grounded aircraft, reduced vehicle use and curbed economic activity more broadly. Oil and gas companies working in shale basins from Texas to Wyoming are saddled with debt. The industry is estimated to owe more than $200 billion to lenders through loans backed by oil and gas reserves. As revenue has plummeted and assets have declined in value, some companies are saying they may be unable to repay. Whiting Petroleum Corp became the first producer to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 1. Others, including Chesapeake Energy Corp, Denbury Resources Inc and Callon Petroleum Co, have also hired debt advisers. If banks do not retain bankrupt assets, they might be forced to sell them for pennies on the dollar at current prices. The companies they are setting up could manage oil and gas assets until conditions improve enough to sell at a meaningful value. Big banks will need to get regulatory waivers to execute their plans, because of limitations on their involvement with physical commodities, sources said. Banks are hoping their planned ownership time frame of a year or so will pass a Federal Reserve requirement that they do not plan to hold assets for a long time. Because lenders would be stepping in to support part of the economy that is important to any potential rebound, and which has not gotten direct bailouts from the federal government, that might help applications, too. For now, the banks are establishing holding companies that can sit above limited liability companies (LLCs) containing seized assets. The LLCs would be owned proportionally by banks participating in the original secured loan. To run the oil-and-gas operations, banks might hire former industry executives or specialty firms that have done so for private equity, sources said. Houston-based EnerVest Operating LLC would be among the most likely operators, sources said.

Fed stress tests will incorporate 'current events,' Quarles says— Federal Reserve Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles said the central bank will proceed with this year’s stress tests, and that the Fed should use them to monitor how banks are handling economic stress due to the coronavirus. Financial institutions subject to this year’s Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review were required to submit their capital management plans to the Fed by April 6, but many in the industry have argued that the stress tests should be suspended this year given the current economic conditions.“In the regular order, stress testing of banks proceeds by our announcing the scenario early in the year of hypothetical financial stress, and then we determine how a bank’s portfolio would respond to that hypothetical stress and whether their capital levels are sufficient to allow them to continue to support the real economy through that stress,” Quarles said Friday on a webcast Q&A with the University of Utah.   Although other central banks — including the Bank of England — have announced that they will suspend their stress tests this year, Quarles said he supports the Fed going forward with CCAR this year. “The right thing for us to do is to continue our stress tests, but as part of them, to analyze how banks’ portfolios are responding to real, current events, not just to the hypothetical event that we announced earlier this year,” he said. The Fed will then “use that analysis to inform determinations we make about the regulation and supervision of the financial sector,” he added. The CCAR test uses two scenarios: one dealing with normal economic conditions, the other based on severe stress to the financial system. For the 2020 test, the baseline scenario is based on year-end 2019 conditions, envisioning GDP growth of 1.75% and an unemployment rate of 3.25%. The latter scenario envisions a severe global recession highlighted by an 8.5% drop in GDP and 10% unemployment. Yet many observers have posited that the fallout from the pandemic could be even more severe.The Fed said in a statement last month that it would use this year’s stress tests to monitor how banks are withstanding the current shocks to the financial system, but did not announce any structural changes to CCAR in light of the present-day economic conditions.

House Dems seek details on FDIC's crisis plans following IG report— House lawmakers are calling for a briefing from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on how it will address an internal watchdog report that found weaknesses in the agency's crisis readiness.The chairs of the House Financials Services and Oversight committees said in a letter Monday to FDIC Chairwoman Jelena McWilliams that an agency inspector general report last week raises “questions about whether the agency is prepared for the potential financial consequences from the coronavirus crisis.”“In light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and resulting strains on the global financial system, we urge you to act immediately to establish robust crisis readiness,” wrote Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. The IG report, which was not conducted in response to the pandemic, said the agency lacks a written policy on readiness with defined roles and responsibilities for the staff tasked to respond to a crisis situation. The agency also did not train personnel to understand crisis readiness plans, the report said. The report recommends that the agency develop an “all-hazards readiness plan that identifies the critical common functions and tasks” and that the agency document the results of its readiness plan exercises.The lawmakers noted in their letter that the FDIC’s IG assessments from 2018 and 2019 similarly identified crisis readiness as a “top challenge” for the agency.A spokesperson for the FDIC said the agency is willing to brief the lawmakers and has acted "with urgency" to protect the health of its staff during the pandemic while carrying out its responsibilities.

Wells Fargo tells business clients to consider other banks for emergency loans -Wells Fargo has told customers still waiting in line to get an emergency small-business loan that, because of the backlog it's facing, they should consider applying at another bank.The company issued the warning in an email to customers Friday, just two days after the Federal Reserve lifted the $1.95 trillion asset cap it had imposed on Wells Fargo in 2018. The Fed made the move so the bank could make more Paycheck Protection Program loans to small businesses that took an economic hit tied to the coronavirus epidemic. Wells, blaming the asset cap, early last week stopped taking applications under the $349 billion program overseen by the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department. After the Fed lifted the cap on April 8, Wells reopened its online portal and again began accepting “expressions of interest” in the SBA loan program.The email to customers was reported by the San Francisco Business Times on Friday. Separately, a Wells Fargo customer provided a copy of the email to American Banker.Though Wells has said it is processing applications in the order in which they are received, the bank told customers in the email that they “may be able to apply elsewhere” for a PPP loan. “While you remain in queue based upon when you submitted your initial interest, due to high demand we are not able to begin your application at this time,” the email said. “You remain in our queue. However, since there is a limited amount of funds approved by the SBA for the Paycheck Protection Program, we want you to be aware of your options,” the email continued. “You may want to apply elsewhere to increase your chances of receiving a loan before the funds run out.”

Fintechs OK'd to make emergency small-business loans - They wanted in. Now they're in. Online lenders had lobbied federal officials hard to participate in emergency lending to small businesses hurt by the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus outbreak. Three fintech companies — PayPal, Intuit QuickBooks Capital and Square Capital — said that in recent days the federal government has approved them to make loans under the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program. Other prominent fintechs, including Funding Circle, are awaiting approval to be direct lenders in the program. Applications were first taken from fintechs last Wednesday, though banks and credit unions have been involved since the program's inception on April 3. Some online lenders — including Square, PayPal and Kabbage — have participated indirectly in conjunction with bank partners that were already active in the program. OnDeck Capital said Monday that it would process applications on behalf of Celtic Bank, a Utah industrial bank, and that it had applied last week to become a direct lender in the program, too. As of Monday afternoon, the Small Business Administration said it had approved more than 941,000 loan applications for the program, totaling about $228 billion. Many banks have prioritized existing customers ahead of noncustomers, leaving smaller businesses lacking core banking relationships looking frantically for help. According to several industry experts, fintechs are the most likely vehicles for loans to smaller concerns that have had a hard time accessing the emergency loan program. "Having another outlet has to help," said Steven Busby, CEO of Greenwich Associates, a data analytics firm in Stamford, Conn. "There are all these stories of businesses that didn't have a bank relationship, and they're going to anyone who'll listen" to obtain funding.

Fintechs help banks manage deluge of emergency small-business loans - A slew of fintechs are selling software solutions to lenders grappling with the influx of applications for emergency small-business loans.Within days of enactment of the federal Paycheck Protection Program, online lenders, core-system providers and software companies churned out platforms and portals — often built on existing technology — that allow banks to accept applications under the relief program, originate loans, automate the underwriting process, collect documents and transmit the information to the Small Business Administration’s processing system. The products also help banks meet compliance requirements in the rush to help businesses survive during the coronavirus pandemic.Mark Rockefeller, CEO and co-founder of StreetShares, a lending-as-a-service provider, said software like his company's onboarding and prequalification solution is essential for bankers, who are accustomed to making loans in person. “That is the biggest problem with this entire PPP structure," Rockefeller said. "In an era where branch offices are closed and entrepreneurs and business owners are quarantined, how do you distribute this if not 100% digitally and remotely?”Many of these providers say they have started conversations with dozens or even hundreds of financial institutions, report a handful have been receptive, and expect more to follow suit in the weeks ahead. Companies interviewed for this story generally did not provide names of their bank customers.Jack Henry Lending, the loan origination division of the core banking software provider, said it has sent out over 400 contracts and is already helping 264 financial institutions take applications and relay approvals to the SBA for final clearance.Numerated, a small-business loan prospecting and origination software provider, reports more than 90 community banks, regional banks and credit unions are using its PPP software. Laso, a provider of artificial-intelligence-based lending software, predicts the number of banks using its technology for the SBA program will climb to 50 in the coming weeks. The relationships are primarily sourced through white-label channel partnerships with bank software-as-a-service solution providers. The software company Treasury Prime offers technology for account creation as well as know-your-customer vetting and other compliance tasks. It recently partnered with Radius Bank in Boston and said together they have produced more than $1.1 billion in PPP loan applications in less than three days.The Paycheck Protection Program, which is being managed jointly by SBA and the Treasury Department, is an effort to help small businesses keep their workforces employed during the coronavirus crisis. If businesses use these funds strictly for the purpose intended — mainly, to pay their people — the loans will be forgiven. As of midafternoon Tuesday, more than 4,700 lenders had approved about 1.1 million applications for $263 billion of loans, according to the SBA.

Funding Exhausted for $350 Billion Small-Business Paycheck Protection Program – WSJ —A $350 billion loan program for small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic ran out of money Thursday morning as Republicans and Democrats continued to disagree over how to replenish the funds. The Small Business Administration, which administers the new program, wrote a message on its website that it couldn’t accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program or enroll new lenders. Republicans want to approve $250 billion more for the loans, before moving on to other aid and stimulus proposals. Democrats want to make changes to the small-business program and include money for hospitals, state and local governments, and food assistance recipients alongside it.

Hundreds of thousands of emergency small-business loan applications in limbo - With the Paycheck Protection Program’s initial funds depleted, lenders are stepping up efforts to press for more money. The Small Business Administration announced Thursday morning that it had committed all of the program's $349 billion, less than two weeks after the effort began. Lawmakers are debating a second round of funding that would add $250 billion to the program. The SBA and the Treasury Department, the program's administrators, had said they would stop approving applications when the funding was expended. That leaves more than 700,000 applications in limbo, said Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association. “I believe we could need upward of $1 trillion to satisfy all the demand, but we need at least $250 billion as soon as possible,” Hunt said during a Wednesday conference call. “If Congress would just pass what we call a clean bill, that would be great.” James Ballentine, executive director of congressional relations and public affairs at the American Bankers Association, expressed hope that lawmakers would reach an agreement on a new round of funding as early as Thursday.“Any lapse would be detrimental to so many small businesses,” Ballentine said. The Federal Reserve announced just hours before the funding ran out that its liquidity facility for the program was fully operational and available. The CBA has been urging the government to allow lenders to keep uploading applications into the SBA’s E-Tran system even if there is a temporary shutdown. “Entering PPP loans into the system would ensure small businesses are able to receive immediate funds, without the continued backlog, when Congress approves additional funding,” Hunt wrote in a Wednesday letter to the agencies.

Community banks call for AML relief in next coronavirus aid package — Community banks want Congress to halt "beneficial owner" requirements for small-business customers that seek loans through the coronavirus rescue package that Congress passed last month.In a letter Tuesday, Independent Community Bankers of America CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said suspending the rules, which require banks to report an account's true owner to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, until Dec. 31 would make it easier for customers to seek Small Business Administration loans through the Paycheck Protection Program.“This rule suspension will facilitate quick access for both PPP and non-PPP credit,” Rainey wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Banks will exercise ongoing due diligence and monitoring to safeguard the PPP from fraud.” Paul Merski, group executive vice president for congressional relations and strategy at the ICBA, said beneficial ownership rules — part of broader anti-money-laundering requirements — are keeping banks from taking on new customers for the PPP because banks have to certify new customers’ true owners when then they apply. “If you’re a new small-business customer … then every owner that owns 20% or more of the company, you have to do all of the Fincen documentation that you certify who these owners are,” Merski said. “And there’s just no time to do that. … Particularly in an emergency situation, it’s really putting [new customers] at a huge disadvantage.” The banking industry has been engaged in ongoing efforts to ease beneficial owner requirements permanently as part of AML reforms, urging lawmakers to pass legislation that would require companies to report owner information directly to Fincen at incorporation. That would take the burden off of banks.Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, signaled in an interview with American Banker that he might be willing to support regulators relaxing beneficial ownership requirements. Asked about the issue, Brown said, "I will support anything that I think can help people and help businesses stay in business."

Banks expect ugly earnings season; treading carefully on PPP loans -  Analysts at KBW “expect large U.S. banks’ earnings to drop by 23% in the first quarter compared with a year ago.”  The first three months of 2020 presented banks with their most formidable challenges in recent memory — near-zero interest rates and a free-falling U.S. economy that threatens to upend almost all their business lines,” the Wall Street Journal notes.“Banks have already given some hint of how they are being affected, but there is a lot that we do not know,” says the Financial Times, which looks at the top things to watch for. “Global investment banks risk seeing their annual earnings wiped out by the coronavirus crisis, with European banks more vulnerable than their more profitable U.S. counterparts,” the paper adds. “Even the most optimistic ‘rapid rebound’ scenario, where relative normality is restored in six months or less, could lead to a 100% decline in profits this year. In a more pessimistic model credit losses could surge to between $200 billion and $300 billion, compared with $30 billion to $50 billion if a rapid rebound unfolds.” Banks participating in the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program “are torn: The program aims to have them quickly disburse loans to businesses struggling for oxygen, but banks have concerns about letting slide the more involved due diligence ordinarily done on every loan application. In a worst-case scenario, banks fear they could be punished down the road for approving shoddy loans,” the Journal says.“The SBA has said lenders can rely on borrowers’ self-certifications of the accuracy of their payroll data to approve stimulus loans. But many banks are being more cautious, asking for tax forms and other documentation to spot fraud.”“Thousands of small-business owners are at risk of being shut out” of the PPP “because of limits set by lenders grappling with overwhelming demand,” the New York Times reports. “And for small-business owners [who are] black, the hurdles could be much higher. That’s because minority-owned businesses often have weaker banking relationships than their white-owned counterparts — one legacy of the practice of redlining, or refusing to lend to people in communities of color. Research shows that black and Latino business owners are denied loans at higher rates.” Separately, the FT says, banks shouldn’t try to be “do-gooders” or be shamed into it by lending recklessly during the pandemic. They shouldn’t “use their freed-up equity capital as a basis for higher leverage, borrowing $5 trillion of funds to spray at the economy and keep the flames of coronavirus at bay. If any bank was really tempted to do this, rather than merely hint at it in PR-friendly messaging, regulators should take fright.”

Banks meet ‘mad scramble’ for loan deferments, but at what cost? -- Loan deferments and forbearances are surging during the coronavirus crisis, raising questions about how extensive a financial blow banks could receive in coming quarters.Even though most crisis-related loan modifications do not have to be recorded as troubled-debt restructurings, they could substantially cut into interest income in consumer and commercial lines. Moreover, distressed loan portfolios are still expected to lead to higher loan-loss provisions in case the economy does not bounce back relatively soon.First-quarter conference calls — starting with some of the larger banks on Tuesday — will give shareholders an initial glimpse of where things stand. The more details, the better, industry observers said. “Investors will want as much granularity as possible on payment delays to get a sense of the initial effects,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, an analyst at D.A. Davidson. “The ultimate impact depends on the duration of this thing, but people want to get the best glimpse they can.”Reliable estimates of industrywide deferments are hard to come by at this point, except among mortgage lenders. Requests to delay mortgage payments increased tenfold during March, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Its projection was based on more than 22 million loans, or nearly 45% of the first-lien mortgage servicing market. The association did not give a precise dollar figure for the delayed payments."It is expected that requests will continue to skyrocket” as unemployment rises and more mortgage borrowers struggle to pay their bills, said Mike Fratantoni, the association's chief economist.The stimulus package allows borrowers with government-backed mortgages to delay monthly payments for at least 90 days — and potentially longer. The payments must eventually be paid, likely at the end of the loan’s term or through a modified payment plan. But banks will lose out on interest income on those loans in the interim. Similar scenarios are playing out in other consumer lines, such as auto lending, as well as in commercial real estate and business lending.

Global regulators pledge further relief for banks in midst of crisis - Global financial regulators vowed to keep easing rules to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. In a report ahead of a virtual meeting on Wednesday of the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors, the Financial Stability Board said it stood ready to coordinate additional relief on capital requirements, upcoming regulatory deadlines and other standards. Authorities have already freed up hundreds of billions of dollars by loosening capital demands on banks, eased key planks of the post-2008 crisis rulebook, delayed new margin requirements on derivatives and backstopped markets with trillions of dollars in assets. The actions help “provide the resilience needed to sustain lending to the real economy, and preserve an international level playing field,” the FSB said in the report on the implications of the pandemic on financial stability. “Such actions will not roll back regulatory reforms or compromise the underlying objectives of existing international standards.” The FSB, which is led by U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal K. Quarles, was set up in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to monitor and ward off threats to the global financial system.

Amid pandemic, state elected officials become de facto bank regulators - Until last month, state elected officials typically had little involvement in financial regulation, instead leaving it in the hands of appointees at the state and federal levels.But amid the coronavirus crisis, governors and state attorneys general, particularly in blue states, have become de facto banking regulators. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, all Democrats, are among the state officials who have pushed for temporary protections for consumers impacted by the pandemic.Some of these officials are working collaboratively with banks, while others have taken a more top-down approach. They have instituted moratoriums on foreclosures and vehicle repossessions, encouraged the establishment of grace periods for borrowers and sought to prevent damage to consumers’ credit scores. The state elected officials are adding a a new layer of oversight to an existing patchwork of state and federal bank regulation. They are asserting authority in a realm where many Democrats believe that officials in the Trump administration have left a void.Shapiro, who was elected on the same day that Pennsylvania voters unexpectedly helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency, has focused on consumer financial protection throughout his three-year tenure as AG.In 2017, he hired Nicholas Smyth, a former enforcement lawyer at the Richard Cordray-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to lead his office’s push to combat financial fraud.“Long before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, there was a complete abrogation of responsibility at the federal level when it comes to consumer protection,” Shapiro said in a recent interview. “So we’ve been stepping up and filling that void for more than three years. But now more than ever, consumers need to be protected.”

One senator's plan for helping consumers weather coronavirus pandemic — As Congress continues to debate another round of stimulus in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio says he is still fighting to expand financial relief for consumers.After Congress passed the $2 trillion stimulus package known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, Republicans last week attempted to push through an additional $250 billion in aid for small businesses. But their proposal didn’t include certain consumer protection measures backed by Democrats. But Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in an American Banker interview that he thinks Republicans could come around to supporting some of his ideas as they hear from constituents who are struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic. Brown said people shouldn’t lose their homes during the crisis, and that they also shouldn't see their credit scores drop because they are unable to make mortgage payments.Among the legislative proposals that Brown has introduced are a bill to prohibit lenders from reporting missed payments to credit agencies during the pandemic, a bill to temporarily ban overdraft fees and a bill to temporarily cap interest rates on consumer loans at 36%. He has also proposed legislation to give all consumers a free digital wallet to receive stimulus payments, and to create a $75 billion Housing Assistance Fund to aid state-level housing finance agencies.Brown did not rule out supporting additional measures to help financial institutions, either. The senator in the past has criticized banks for seeking regulatory relief in order to lend to consumers. But he said he “will support anything that I think can help people and help businesses stay in business.”Below is an edited transcript of a discussion with Brown about his proposals to help consumers amid the pandemic.

CFPB rulemaking engine churns on through coronavirus -- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving forward with its payday lending and "qualified mortgage" rules despite logistical issues and the industry's focus on economic effects from the coronavirus pandemic. CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger has given no indication about any CFPB rulemaking being put on hold. The agency is focused on finishing certain regulations even though its employees are working from home due to at least one confirmed case of COVID-19. However, like many regulatory agencies, the bureau is likely to delay other lower-priority actions. “They are determined to continue with their different rulemakings but it’s also possible that some things will be put off,” or extended, said Jeff Naimon, a partner at Buckley. Since the outbreak began, the financial regulators have paused some efforts but persisted with others. Yet the CFPB is moving quickly to finalize some rules to make it harder — should the Democrats win the presidency in November — for a new agency director to reverse them, according to sources familiar with the agency's thinking. “The CFPB has plenty of bandwidth to complete all pending rules before the end of this year,” said Alan Kaplinsky, a partner and co-practice leader at Ballard Spahr. “I don’t think they will or should put off any other pending rulemakings.”The CFPB is still widely expected to finalize its small-dollar lending rule this month to rescind underwriting requirements that formed the basis of a previous 2017 regulation. Meanwhile, more certainty about the QM rule, which gives mortgage lenders legal protection from ability-to-repay standards, is seen as an even higher priority now with the pandemic threatening the stability of the mortgage market.

CFPB finalizes HMDA rule that gives reg relief to banks - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule that reduces the number of financial institutions reporting Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data that can be used to root out discrimination in home lending.The amendment to Regulation C, released on Thursday and effective July 1, will increase the permanent loan-volume coverage threshold for collecting and reporting data on closed-end mortgages from 25 to 100. The CFPB first proposed the current HMDA changes in May 2019. The move is part of CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger's efforts to provide regulatory relief to small lenders by significantly raising loan thresholds for collecting and reporting HMDA data. The final rule also increases the permanent threshold for open-end lines of credit from 100 to 200. Financial institutions currently have a reprieve from HMDA reporting after the CFPB extended a temporary threshold that required institutions with 500 open-end lines of credit to report. The permanent threshold goes into effect Jan. 1, 2022, when the temporary, two-year threshold expires, the CFPB said.The agency sought to tie the regulatory relief to the coronavirus pandemic. In its press release, the CFPB said it recognizes “the operational challenges” confronting institutions due to COVID-19.“The Bureau anticipates that this final rule, once effective, will reduce regulatory burden on smaller institutions to help those institutions to focus on responding to consumers in need now and in the longer term,” the CFPB said in the release. Congress enacted HMDA in 1975 to collect data that can be used to identify institutions that engage in discrimination in mortgage lending, typically by raising costs for certain borrowers. The CFPB and other prudential regulators use the data to examine and identify fair-lending violations.

Wall Street puts blame on Calabria for blocking mortgage aid - With the coronavirus crisis crushing the real estate market, some on Wall Street are assailing a U.S. official they blame for blocking a government bailout of mortgage lenders. That man isn’t Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin or Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who are leading Washington’s effort to rescue the economy. Rather, the target of ire is Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria, a libertarian economist whose job is regulating the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At issue is whether the U.S. should step in now to save nonbank mortgage servicers, firms including Quicken Loans, Freedom Mortgage and Mr Cooper Group Inc. that collect payments from borrowers and make sure investors in trillions of dollars of government-backed bonds get paid each month. With millions of homeowners predicted to start missing payments, the industry says it needs an immediate lifeline to head off servicer failures that could trigger nothing less than the collapse of the housing market. Calabria argues that’s hyperbole. He’s refused to let government-controlled Fannie and Freddie provide support for servicers because he says there are more pressing uses of their limited capital to help bondholders and borrowers. His stance has made him a target of criticism for trade groups such as the Mortgage Bankers Association and some financial analysts. “The president should fire Mark Calabria,” Chris Whalen, a New York-based bank analyst at Whalen Global Advisers, said in an interview. “He is taking a childish, naive approach right now that is bordering on negligence,” added Whalen, who says he’s been fielding phone calls from financial executives complaining about the FHFA leader.

Key Democrats urge Mnuchin, Powell to rescue mortgage servicers - Key Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate are calling on Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to provide a lifeline to mortgage servicing firms that are bracing for a wave of missed payments. The Fed and Treasury should use powers given to them under recent stimulus measures to provide liquidity to servicers facing shortfalls, House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters and Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a letter Wednesday. Steps that government-sponsored Ginnie Mae have taken may not be enough, the lawmakers wrote. “Mortgage servicers are expected to face increased strain as millions of homeowners and renters lose jobs, are furloughed, or see reduced hours, all of which will keep them from making mortgage and rent payments, as a result of this public health crisis,” the lawmakers wrote. “We must not allow the pandemic to destabilize critical markets, including our housing market.” The letter is the latest in a fight in Washington about what steps regulators should take to save nonbank mortgage servicers such as Quicken Loans, Freedom Mortgage and Mr. Cooper Group Inc. It’s a boost to Wall Street lobbying efforts seeking to quell the fallout of the coronavirus crisis on the mortgage market. Servicers collect payments from borrowers and make sure investors in trillions of dollars of government-backed bonds get paid each month. With millions of homeowners predicted to start missing payments, the industry says it needs a lifeline to head off servicer failures that could threaten the housing market. Powell said last week that the Fed is watching the situation carefully, and Mnuchin said earlier this week that Treasury is “going to make sure that the market functions properly.”

CFPB, FHFA to share data on mortgage servicing - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Housing Finance Agency announced a plan to share mortgage servicing data as borrowers seek loan workout options during the coronavirus emergency.The Borrower Protection Program initiative announced Wednesday enables the CFPB to share complaint information about servicers and analytical tools with the FHFA using a secure electronic interface. The FHFA will make loss mitigation data, related to loan forbearance and modifications, available to the CFPB.CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger and FHFA Director Mark Calabria said the information-sharing program would help both agencies protect borrowers during the pandemic crisis. Yet the joint press release offered little detail on how the information shared between the two agencies would be used to protect borrowers. “Through the partnership being announced today, the Bureau will share our insights with FHFA and ensure we get their data on how mortgage servicers are working with their customers during this critical time and going forward,” Kraninger said in the jointrelease. “Help for consumers is always here at the CFPB through our complaints process. In addition to working with your lender to get an answer for you, we analyze the information to better educate consumers, provide clear rules for financial institutions, and hold companies accountable.” Calabria said "protecting and helping homeowners during this national crisis is my top priority.""No one should be worried about losing their home,” he said. “Borrowers are entitled to accurate information about their forbearance options. This partnership with CFPB ensures FHFA can address misconceptions stemming from consumer complaints by working with Fannie and Freddie servicers.”

JPMorgan Scrambles To Raise Mortgage Borrowing Standards Ahead Of "Biggest Wave Of Defaults In History" - Earlier this week when we reported that JPMorgan has quietly halted all non-Paycheck Protection Program based loan issuance for the foreseeable future, we said that we didn't buy the stated reason namely - the bank was drowning in (government-backstopped) applications and would be willing to forego millions in easy, recurring net interest income, and said that the real reason why JPMorgan would "temporarily suspend" all non-government backstopped loans such as PPP, is because the bank expects a default tsunami to hit, coupled with a full-blown depression that wipes out the value of assets pledged to collateralize the loans. We went on:Furthermore, why issue loans that will default in months if not weeks, just as bankruptcy courts fill up with millions of cases (assuming the coronavirus clears out by then, as the alternative is simply unthinkable - a default tsunami without any functioning Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 process) when JPM can simply stick to the 100% risk-free issuance of government-guaranteed small-business loans which pay a handsome 1% interest, especially if it makes JPM look patriotic by doing its duty to bail out America.Over the weekend our skepticism was confirmed when Reuters reported that JPMorgan, the country’s largest lender by assets and which will kick off earnings season tomorrow, will raise borrowing standards this week for most new home loans as the bank "moves to mitigate lending risk stemming from the novel coronavirus disruption."Starting Tuesday, customers applying for a new mortgage will need a credit score of at least 700, and will be required to make a down payment equal to 20% of the home’s value (something which we thought was the norm after the last financial crisis, but apparently lending conditions had eased quite a bit in the past decade).“Due to the economic uncertainty, we are making temporary changes that will allow us to more closely focus on serving our existing customers,” Amy Bonitatibus, chief marketing officer for JPMorgan Chase’s home lending business, told Reuters. According to Reuters, "the change highlights how banks are quickly shifting gears to respond to the darkening U.S. economic outlook and stress in the housing market, after measures to contain the virus put 16 million people out of work and plunged the country into  recession."

JPMorgan halts home equity loans due to coronavirus - JPMorgan Chase has temporarily stopped offering home equity lines of credit due to the nationwide surge in unemployment and projections that U.S. home prices could decline substantially amid the coronavirus pandemic.The $3.1 trillion-asset bank said Thursday that it is taking steps to mitigate risks in the housing market as it prepares for a surge in defaults by homeowners.“Due to the economic uncertainty, we’re temporarily pausing new applications for home equity lines of credit,” said Amy Bonitatibus, chief marketing officer at Chase Home Lending.   The New York bank's customers can still tap into their home’s equity through a cash-out refinance of their existing mortgage, Bonitatibus said. Last year, JPMorgan originated roughly 33,000 home equity lines of credit and approximately twice as many cash-out refinances, she said. JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon warned this week that the bank is preparing for a worst-case scenario in which its credit costs could exceed $45 billion if the economy remains closed for longer than expected. Under projections reviewed by JPMorgan, home values could decline by 10% and the unemployment rate could climb as high as 20%.

Nearly 2 Million Struggling Homeowners Apply For Assistance As Forbearance Explosion Paints Dire Picture - With unemployment claims hitting nearly 17 million over the last three weeks, the number of Americans applying for the government's mortgage forbearance program under the COVID-19 relief plan spiked 73% for the week ending April 5 vs. the previous week - jumping from 2.73% to 3.74%, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. For context, the total number of loans in forbearance was just 0.25% for the week of March 2 - an increase of 1,496% in just six weeks, with the number of borrowers in forbearance now topping 2 million according to CNBC. Of the increase, borrowers with Ginnie Mae loans are in the worst shape - with requests jumping from 4.31% to 5.89%. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers are doing 'less bad', with forbearance requests increasing from 1.69% to 2.44%. "The nationwide shutdown of the economy to slow the spread of COVID-19 continues to create hardships for millions of households, and more are contacting their servicers for relief in accordance with the forbearance provisions under the CARES Act," said MBA's chief economist, Mike Fratantoni. "With mitigation efforts seemingly in place for at least several more weeks, job losses will continue and the number of borrowers asking for forbearance will likely to continue to rise at a rapid pace."Meanwhile, as we noted last night, JP Morgan is now raising borrowing standards for most new home loans as they move "to mitigate lending risk stemming from the novel coronavirus disruption." Starting Tuesday, customers applying for a new mortgage will need a credit score of at least 700, and will be required to make a down payment equal to 20% of the home’s value (something which we thought was the norm after the last financial crisis, but apparently lending conditions had eased quite a bit in the past decade), according to Reuters.

Black Knight Mortgage Monitor for February; "Unemployment Spike Triggering Surge in Mortgage Forbearance Requests" - Black Knight released their Mortgage Monitor report for February today. According to Black Knight, 3.28% of mortgages were delinquent in February, down from 3.89% in February 2019. Black Knight also reported that 0.45% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down from 0.51% a year ago.  This gives a total of 3.73% delinquent or in foreclosure. Press Release: Black Knight: COVID-19 Unemployment Spike Triggering Surge in Mortgage Forbearance Requests; Principal and Interest Advances Could Lead to Servicer Liquidity Challenges  “Trying to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on mortgage performance is as much an art right now as a science,” said Graboske. “The fact is that there is no true point of comparison in the nation’s recent history for analysts to model against. That said, there are some historical clues that can help shed light. In the Great Recession, for example, the number of past- due mortgages tripled over four years, increasing by more than 5.5 million, as the unemployment rate rose relatively sharply from 4.5% in 2006 to 10% by the end of 2009. Today, we’ve seen more than 10 million people file for unemployment since the coronavirus was labeled a pandemic on March 11, which should put the unemployment rate at roughly 9.5%. Using the Great Recession as a point of comparison, Black Knight’s AFT modeling team looked at potential delinquencies under different unemployment scenarios, and at 10%, we could expect 2 million new mortgage delinquencies. That would put the total at 4 million delinquencies with a national non-current rate of 7.5%. If unemployment climbs to the 15% recently projected by Goldman Sachs[1], we could be looking at 5.5 million past-due mortgages. Should unemployment reach the 32% projected by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis[2], the non-current rate could spike to nearly 19%, surpassing what we saw during the Great Recession, with 10 million homeowners past due on their mortgages. Here is a graph from the Mortgage Monitor that shows the National Delinquency Rate. From Black Knight:

• As of February, the national delinquency rate was 3.28%; just one month removed from its record low and with the rate of improvement accelerating in recent months
• Likewise, the national foreclosure rate was only 1 BPS above its all-time low and was trending downward heading into 2020
• Foreclosure starts hit their lowest level on record in February as well and were down by some 20% from the same time last year
• While these historically low levels of past due mortgages provide a strong foundation for the market leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, they also mean that default servicing staff had been greatly reduced in recent years
• This will compound the challenge that servicers face in managing the wave of new forbearance and deferral requests on the horizon in coming weeks/months

The second graph shows the impact of COVID-19 on real estate showings:  There is much more in the mortgage monitor.

MBA Survey: Total Number of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Jumped from 2.73% to 3.74% ---Note: To put these numbers in perspective, the MBA notes "For the week of March 2, only 0.25% of all loans were in forbearance." From the MBA: MBA Survey: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Continues to ClimbThe surge in unemployment claims filed since mid-March resulting from the mitigation efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) are straining household budgets and leading to more requests for mortgage forbearance.That is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey, which revealed that the total number of loans in forbearance jumped from 2.73% to 3.74% during the week of March 30 to April 5, 2020. … “The nationwide shutdown of the economy to slow the spread of COVID-19 continues to create hardships for millions of households, and more are contacting their servicers for relief in accordance with the forbearance provisions under the CARES Act,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The share of loans in forbearance grew the first week of April, and forbearance requests and call center volume further increased. With mitigation efforts seemingly in place for at least several more weeks, job losses will continue and the number of borrowers asking for forbearance will likely to continue to rise at a rapid pace.” “There was a decline in call center hold times and abandonment rates in the latest survey, which indicates the mortgage industry is adapting to the current environment by adding or reallocating staff and increasingly utilizing its websites to help borrowers.”

Hamptons’ priciest mansion snatched up in one day by tycoon fleeing coronavirus - Hamptons developer Joe Farrell has found a renter for his famed property, nicknamed Sandcastle. It was on the market for $2 million from March until Labor Day, as we previously reported — making it the most expensive East End rental ever. Farrell tells Gimme Shelter the Bridgehampton mansion rented for close to its asking price “to a textile tycoon and his family who were stuck in Manhattan and wanted to leave the city on a day’s notice. This was a COVID situation — not a normal summer rental.” The 11-bedroom spread — which has hosted guests like Justin Bieber, Beyoncé and Jay-Z — rented in just one day. That meant Farrell moved out of it in a “day and a half.” He’s now in his new home — “a sick flat-roof modern” by the beach, at 51 Sandpiper Lane. It has a hot tub, outdoor kitchen and golf course on the roof. He’s selling another flat-roof modern home near his, at 65 Sandpiper Lane, for $15 million. That home is also available as a $700,000 rental from now until Labor Day. Farrell says he only has around “three or four” Hamptons homes for rent, available immediately, and will have about seven more available for rent this June or July “due to existing leases in place.”

MBA: Mortgage Applications Increased, Purchase Applications down 35% YoY - From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey: Mortgage applications increased 7.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 10, 2020.... The Refinance Index increased 10 percent from the previous week and was 192 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week and was 35 percent lower than the same week one year ago. ... “The 30-year fixed mortgage rate decreased last week to the lowest level in MBA’s survey at 3.45 percent. The decline in rates – despite Treasury yields rising – is a sign that the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market is stabilizing and lenders are successfully working through their lending pipelines,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Refinance activity has experienced a volatile four-week period, but did increase 10 percent last week. Refinancing will continue to be beneficial for the many borrowers able to lower their monthly payments during this time of economic distress.” Added Kan, “Purchase applications decreased less than 2 percent last week – the fifth straight weekly decline. Compared to the first week of March, the purchase index was down around 35 percent, as the economic downturn and nationwide mitigation practices to slow the spread of COVID-19 have disrupted the spring homebuying season. The purchase market is still expected to rebound, as long as the public health measures to reduce the pandemic’s spread are successful and result in a broader recovery.”... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) decreased to 3.45 percent from 3.49 percent, with points increasing to 0.29 from 0.28 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans. The first graph shows the refinance index since 1990. The refinance index has been very volatile recently depending on rates and liquidity. Note the Fed has stepped up buying of MBS last month and that helped with liquidity.

Lawler: Redfin Selected Housing Market Data -- From housing economist Tom Lawler:  Redfin Corporation, a real estate brokerage company in the United States and Canada, has recently (and temporarily) been publishing more timely data on selected housing data that it covers. Here is an excerpt from its website. “Each week, we are temporarily releasing a new daily dataset to keep everyone up-to-date on the latest developments in the housing market.  All data here is computed daily as either a rolling 7-day or 28-day window. The local data is grouped by Redfin market, which may not align perfectly with metro area definitions (CBSAs). All of this data is subject to revisions weekly and should be viewed with caution.” Here is a table showing YOY % changes in selected housing data compiled by Redfin. Redfin data on closed home sales is not quite as timely, but for the 28-day period ending 3/27/2020 Redfin’s closed home sales were up 1.5% from the comparable period of 2019.  I have not done any work to assess how Redfin’s data track other measures of housing activity.

The Sharp Decline in Housing Activity --Housing economist Tom Lawler has send me some housing data from a few areas: The data reflect newly ratified contracts in the week ending 4/11/2020 compared to the comparable week of a year ago.
Northern Virginia, down 35%
Loudoun County, down 37%
Prince William Count down 43%
Prince George's County down 44%
Montgomery County down 44%
DC down 58%.
From the Long Island Business News: Long Island home sales down nearly 67% The Long Island housing market, which began to feel the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic towards the end of March, has seen a dramatic drop in sales and listings in the first half of April. There were just 491 homes contracted for sale in Nassau and Suffolk counties in the first two weeks of April, down nearly 67 percent from the 1,471 homes contracted for sale in the same period a year ago, according to numbers from OneKey MLS.  From Chicago Now: Coronavirus Impact On Chicago Real Estate Market: Week 5 - The Chicago Association of Realtors released their updated numbers for the week ending April 4 yesterday morning and it continues to show a pretty bleak picture.Single family home activity fell from 318 last year to 172 this year. That's a 46% drop.Condo and townhome activity fell from 517 to 195 which is a 62% drop. Wow!Last year there were 528 new single family home listings compared to only 255 this year. That's a 52% drop.Last year there were 971 new condo townhome listings vs. only 352 this year. That's a 64% drop. Ouch! CR Note: It looks like both sales and new inventory will decline sharply in April.

NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Finds Rent Payment Rate at 93 Percent of Prior Month - From the NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Finds Rent Payment Rate at 93 Percent of Prior Month The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) found that 84 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by April 12 in its second survey of 11.5 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country, up 15 percentage points from April 5. NMHC’s Rent Payment Tracker numbers also examined historical numbers and found that 90 percent of renters made full or partial payments from April 1-12, 2019, and 91 percent of renters in March 1-12, 2020. The latest tracker numbers reflect a payment rate of 93 percent compared to the same time last month. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties, which can vary by size, type and average rental price. “We are pleased to see that it appears that the vast majority of apartment residents who can pay their rent are doing so to help ensure that their properties can continue to operate safely and so apartment owners can help residents who legitimately need help,” said Doug Bibby, President of NMHC. “Unfortunately, unemployment levels are continuing to rise and delays have been reported in getting assistance to residents, which could affect May’s rent levels. It is our hope that, as residents begin receiving the direct payments and the enhanced unemployment benefits the federal government passed, we will continue to see improvements in rent payments.”…"History offers us no frame of reference for the truly unprecedented economic situation we find ourselves in,” said Bibby. "With apartment firms stepping up to support their residents by waiving late fees, creating flexible payment plans and offering other creative solutions for residents impacted by COVID-19, we expected more renters to pay later in the month than has historically been the case. The increase in this week’s number over last week’s, however, shows that apartment residents are continuing to pay rent despite the financial challenges facing them.” Note: I've noted before that a key goal of disaster relief is to fill the economic hole caused by the disaster.   There has been a sudden stop in economic activity, however the financial world continues.  Some people are advocating suspending paying bills, such as rents, mortgages, insurance, credit card, bond payments, and other bills during the crisis.  This is a terrible idea. We don’t want to add a financial crisis, on top of an economic crisis, on top of a healthcare crisis. If we have a financial crisis too, it will be much hard to eventually reopen the economy.   So it is good news that most people are still paying their rents (and many more will probably catch up once they receive Federal benefits).  The Federal government needs to keep filling the economic hole.

Housing Starts decreased to 1.216 Million Annual Rate in March - From the Census Bureau: Permits, Starts and Completions Privately‐owned housing starts in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,216,000. This is 22.3 percent below the revised February estimate of 1,564,000, but is 1.4 percent above the March 2019 rate of 1,199,000. Single‐family housing starts in March were at a rate of 856,000; this is 17.5 percent below the revised February figure of 1,037,000. The March rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 347,000. Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,353,000. This is 6.8 percent below the revised February rate of 1,452,000, but is 5.0 percent above the March 2019 rate of 1,288,000. Single‐family authorizations in March were at a rate of 884,000; this is 12.0 percent below the revised February figure of 1,005,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 423,000 in March. The first graph shows single and multi-family housing starts for the last several years. Multi-family starts (red, 2+ units) were down in March compared to February. Multi-family starts were down 1.6% year-over-year in March. Multi-family is volatile month-to-month, and had been mostly moving sideways the last several years. Single-family starts (blue) decreased in March, and were up 2.8% year-over-year. Total Housing Starts and Single Family Housing StartsThe second graph shows total and single unit starts since 1968. The second graph shows the huge collapse following the housing bubble, and then eventual recovery (but still historically low). Total housing starts in March were below expectations and revisions were negative. Residential construction is considered an essential business, and might hold up better than some other sectors of the economy - but will still be negatively impacted by COVID-19.

Comments on March Housing Starts - This was partially pre-crisis. Although housing starts will decline significantly during the crisis, residential construction is considered essential, and starts will not decline as sharply as some other sectors.  Earlier: Housing Starts decreased to 1.216 Million Annual Rate in March.    Total housing starts in March were below expectations and revisions to prior months were negative. The housing starts report showed starts were down 22.3% in March compared to February, but starts were still up 1.4% year-over-year compared to March 2019.  Single family starts were up 2.8% year-over-year, and multi-family starts were down 1.6% YoY.  This first graph shows the month to month comparison for total starts between 2019 (blue) and 2020 (red). .  Starts were up 1.4% in March compared to March 2019.  Last year, in 2019, starts picked up in the 2nd half of the year, so the comparisons are easy early in the year.  Starts will be down YoY over the next several months due to impact from COVID-19.  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).  The rolling 12 month total for starts (blue line) increased steadily for several years following the great recession - but turned down, and has moved sideways recently.  Completions (red line) had lagged behind - then completions caught up with starts- although starts had picked up a little again lately.  The second 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.  Note the relatively low level of single family starts and completions.  The "wide bottom" was what I was forecasting following the recession, and now I expect some further increases in single family starts and completions once the crisis ends.

NAHB: Builder Confidence "Plunged" to 30 in April -  The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported the housing market index (HMI) was at 30, down from 72 in March. Any number below 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as poor than good.  From NAHB: Builder Confidence Posts Historic Decline on Coronavirus Pandemic: Reflecting the growing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes plunged 42 points in April to 30, according to the latest NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. The decline in April was the largest single monthly change in the history of the index and marks the lowest builder confidence reading since June 2012. It is also the first time that builder confidence has been in negative territory (below 50) since June 2014.  “This unprecedented drop in builder confidence is due exclusively to the coronavirus outbreak across the nation, as unemployment has skyrocketed and gaps in the supply chain have hampered construction activities,” said NAHB Chairman Dean Mon....The HMI index gauging current sales conditions dropped 43 points to 36, the component measuring sales expectations in the next six months fell 39 points to 36 and the gauge charting traffic of prospective buyers also decreased 43 points to 13. Looking at the monthly averages regional HMI scores, the Northeast fell 45 points in April to 19, the Midwest dropped 42 points to 25, the South fell 42 points to 34 and the West dropped 47 points to 32.This graph show the NAHB index since Jan 1985. This was well below the consensus forecast. This survey took place between April 1 and April 13 and shows the impact of COVID-19.

Retail Sales decreased 8.7% in March - On a monthly basis, retail sales decreased 8.7 percent from February to March (seasonally adjusted), and sales were down 6.2 percent from March 2019. From the Census Bureau report:  Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for March 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $483.1 billion,a decrease of 8.7 percent from the previous month, and 6.2 percent below March 2019.…Due to recent events surrounding COVID-19, many businesses are operating on a limited capacity or have ceased operations completely. The Census Bureau has monitored response and data quality and determined estimates in this release meet publication standards. This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales and food service, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline). Retail sales ex-gasoline were down 8.0% in March. The second graph shows the year-over-year change in retail sales and food service (ex-gasoline) since 1993. Retail and Food service sales, ex-gasoline, decreased by 4.9% on a YoY basis.The decrease in March was well below expectations, however sales in January and February were revised up, combined.  Note: The graphs show the 2020 recession starting in March 2020.

Coronavirus kills 30 food workers as shoppers ransack stores -More than two dozen US food industry workers have died from the coronavirus as scared shoppers plow through supermarkets with little regard for employees’ safety, it emerged on Monday. The United Food and Commercial Workers labor union says at least 30 workers in the grocery, meatpacking and food-processing industries have perished from COVID-19 in recent weeks as they continue to trudge to work to help feed their fellow Americans. Nearly 3,000 other food industry other workers have the virus or have been exposed to it, union president Marc Perrone said Monday. Perrone said the number may be worse as UFCW’s count doesn’t include for non-union grocery stores such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, which has reported at least one employee death so far. Grocery workers say they feel particularly exposed because they have to face shoppers who litter stores with used masks and gloves while hectoring staff about product shortages. “The fear that we feel here is absolutely real,” Queens Stop & Shop worker Gregg Finch told reporters Monday. “We worry about catching this virus and possibly taking it home to our loved ones. Unfortunately, we don’t have a choice.” UFCW is pushing for protections, such as hazard pay, expanded sick leave and widespread coronavirus testing. It’s pushing states to designate grocery workers as first responders so they can have priority access to coronavirus testing.

Farmers Battered By Food Glut As COVID-19 Shifts How America Eats - The trade war has battered US farmers over the last several years only now to be sucker-punched by COVID-19, which has transformed how Americans eat, resulting in massive food gluts across the country, reports The Wall Street Journal.  With at least 95% of Americans under government-enforced stay-at-home public safety orders, restaurants have been forced to close. Only a few are providing curbside pickup, but even then, many Americans do not trust other people preparing their food.   We've been documenting the state of the restaurant industry, on a state by state basis, now showing traffic is down 100% in nearly every state for the first seven days of April.   Quarantines have forced Americans out of restaurants and into supermarkets over the last month, resulting in a massive food glut for farmers and food companies. Now the agricultural industry must reduce output as sales to restaurants collapse:   "Farmers and food companies across the country are throttling back production as the virus creates chaos in the agricultural supply chain, erasing sales to restaurants, hotels and cafeterias despite grocery stores rushing to restock shelves. American producers stuck with vast quantities of food they cannot sell are dumping milk, throwing out chicken-hatching eggs and rendering pork bellies into lard instead of bacon," The Journal notes.   Many of these companies have been supplying the restaurant industry, will have difficulty reworking supply chains towards supermarkets. This has already forced many farmers to reduce the acreage of planted vegetables and trim their flock of chickens this month as gluts continue to materialize and weigh on spot prices.   Mississippi-based Sanderson Farms Inc. told The Journal that restaurant demand for its agricultural products had been halved since the virus outbreak.  "When you have panic in the marketplace, weird things happen,"    Dennis Rodenbaugh, executive vice president at Dairy Farmers of America, said consumers had changed their eating habits during the pandemic, "and it's rippling back right to the farm gate."   As much as 7% of all US milk produced last week was dumped, said Rodenbaugh, as he warned with restaurants shuttered, the glut will get even worse.  We are dumping milk in South Florida because there is no home for it. We still have to feed and care for our cows, and our farmers are still milking cows, in hopes that we can sell that milk in the future... #stillfarming pic.twitter.com/tn4dpUBuUa—What a waste! #COVID19Pandemic is forcing Dairy farmers to dump their milk down the drain so the milk market doesn’t implode. Why not give it away to those who need it? We’ll get to the bottom of it at 6:00. pic.twitter.com/ZXp2uSjWQa — Heartbreak of dumping whole milk as the supply chain struggles. Photo via a Facebook friend pic.twitter.com/Q9j1dmkIyV With dairy supplies quickly increasing, the industry might have to cut production across farms to avoid oversupply conditions that would crush spot prices.

Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic - The New York TimesIn Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil. After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell. The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses. The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week. Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and Meals on Wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand. But there is only so much perishable food that charities with limited numbers of refrigerators and volunteers can absorb. And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear. Exporting much of the excess food is not feasible either, farmers say, because many international customers are also struggling through the pandemic and recent currency fluctuations make exports unprofitable.

Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats are sued over restaurant prices amid pandemic -  (Reuters) - GrubHub, DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats were sued on Monday for allegedly exploiting their dominance in restaurant meal deliveries to impose fees that consumers ultimately bear through higher menu prices, including during the coronavirus pandemic.In a proposed class action filed in Manhattan federal court, three consumers said the defendants violated U.S. antitrust law by requiring that restaurants charge delivery customers and dine-in customers the same price, while imposing “exorbitant” fees of 10% to 40% of revenue to process delivery orders. The consumers, all from New York, said this sticks restaurants with a “devil’s choice” of charging everyone higher prices as a condition of using the defendants’ services.

Amazon has suspended more than 6,000 sellers for price gouging amid coronavirus crisis - Amazon has suspended more than 6,000 vendors, totaling more than 500,000 listings, from its website for price gouging during the coronavirus pandemic, CEO and founder Jeff Bezos told investors Thursday. This comes after Amazon in a blog post last month said that it had suspended over 3,900 vendors on its U.S. site. "Amazon turned over information about sellers we suspect engaged in price gouging of products related to COVID-19 to 42 state attorneys general offices," Bezos wrote in the letter. "To accelerate our response to price-gouging incidents, we created a special communication channel for state attorneys general to quickly and easily escalate consumer complaints to us," he added. The company has received criticism during the pandemic for the lack of essential goods needed such as hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Also in the letter, Bezos said that mass global testing would be needed to “get the economy back up and running" after the pandemic."If every person could be tested regularly, it would make a huge difference in how we fight this virus," he wrote. "Those who test positive could be quarantined and cared for, and everyone who tests negative could re-enter the economy with confidence."The online retail giant has faced criticism for its response to the virus and its treatment of its employees.  Its move to fire three employees who publicly criticized the company for warehouse conditions drew backlash from Washington.

The Hate Store: Amazon’s Self-Publishing Arm Is a Haven for White Supremacists “Give me, a white man, a reason to live,” a user posted to the anonymous message board 4chan in the summer of 2017. “Should I get a hobby. What interests can I pursue to save myself from total despair. How do you go on living.” A fellow user had a suggestion: “Please write a concise book of only factual indisputable information exposing the Jews,” focusing on “their selling of our high tech secrets to China/Russia” and “their long track record of pedophilia and perversion etc.” The man seeking advice was intrigued. “And who would publish it and who would put it in their bookstores that would make it worth the trouble,” he asked. The answer came a few minutes later. “Self-publish to Amazon,” his interlocutor replied. “Kindle will publish anything,” a third user chimed in. They were basically right. It takes just a couple of minutes to upload one’s work to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon’s self-publishing arm; the e-book then shows up in the world’s largest bookstore within half a day, typically with minimal oversight. Since its founding more than a decade ago, KDP has democratized the publishing industry and earned praise for giving authors shut out of traditional channels the chance to reach an audience that would have been previously unimaginable. It has also afforded the same opportunity to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, an investigation by ProPublica and The Atlantic has found. Releases include “Anschluss: The Politics of Vesica Piscis,” a polemic that praises the “grossly underappreciated” massacre of 77 people by the Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik in 2011, and “The White Rabbit Handbook,” a manifesto linked to an Illinois-based militia group facing federal hate-crime charges for firebombing a mosque. About 200 of the 1,500 books recommended by the Colchester Collection, an online reading room run by and for white nationalists, were self-published through Amazon. And new KDP acolytes are born every day: Members of fringe groups on 4chan, Discord and Telegram regularly tout the platform’s convenience, according to our analysis of thousands of conversations on those message boards.

All gassed up and nowhere to go: Gasoline prices are at multi-year lows, but no one is driving - The national average for a gallon of gas — $1.883 as of Friday, according to the latest data from AAA — is the cheapest in more than four years. The coronavirus outbreak has sapped demand for both crude oil and gasoline, just as a price war between Saudi Arabia kicked off as each sought to gain market share in the global oil market. This has translated into dramatically cheaper prices at the pump. In the last month the national average per gallon has dropped 48 cents, and current prices are 32% below what consumers paid a year ago. With only guesswork as to when stay-at-home ordinances might be lifted, gas prices could have even further to fall. “We are seeing major destruction to gasoline demand which could push the national average below $1.70 or cheaper this month,” AAA spokesperson Jeanette Casselano told CNBC. And some believe it won’t stop there. Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.com, sees the national average dropping below 2016′s low of $1.66. Prices could get all the way down to $1.49, he said, depending on “how quickly the situation [coronavirus] improves — if it does at all.” Demand for gas is at its lowest level since 1968, according to Tom Kloza, head of global energy analysis at Oil Price Information Services. Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that for the week ending April 3, gas usage fell 48% year-over-year, to 5.065 million barrels per day. DeHaan said that the speed of the decline, which has essentially sent demand into “free fall” is “truly remarkable.” “We’ve seen prices plummet consistent with something that we have almost never seen...By all metrics we really are in some unprecedented times for retail gasoline and certainly oil prices as well,” he added. Cheaper fuel typically acts as a boon to the economy, since consumers have extra money in their pockets. But this time around, the areas where Americans would spend — dining out or going to the movies, for example, and driving to either —are not options. “The outbreak is causing a meaningful shift in the consumer basket and lower oil prices are unlikely to be the jet fuel for consumption that they would be in a more normal environment,” Bank of America said in a recent note to clients.

An Unpleasant Truth - Used Auto Market On Verge Of Collapse That Could Cost Companies Billions As if we weren't getting a clear enough picture of the auto industry imploding as a result of new car sales plunging, the industry is now warning about a used-car price collapse. The collapse is coming as a result of used vehicle auctions grinding to a halt - along with the rest of the country - and vehicles piling up at places where buyers and sellers transact secondhand cars, according to Bloomberg.A price drop in used vehicles could be another headwind for automakers and their lending units, which could be forced to write down the value of lease contracts that had previously assumed vehicles would retain more value. GM, for example, has $30.4 billion worth of leased vehicles on its books at the end of last year. Every 100 bps it has to raise its estimate for depreciation costs the company $304 million.Joel Levington, a credit analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence said:"GM assumed a 4% decline in residual values this year. If the 10% drop Manheim has seen recently persists, depreciation expense could counter the $1.9 billion that GM Financial earned in pretax profit last year." A similar headwind could be felt by rental car companies, who would likely get less money from selling their used fleet of vehicles, which are also sitting idly by as the pandemic paralyzes the nation.  Hertz, Avis and Enterprise have all sought help from the Treasury Department for loans, tax breaks and other types of support. "For Hertz and Avis, every 1% increase in fleet costs saps about $20 million from earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization." Dale Pollak, an executive vice president of Cox Automotive said:  “Six months from now, there will be huge, if not unprecedented, levels of wholesale supply in the market. Cars are coming in, but they aren’t selling. Today’s huge supply of wholesale inventory suggests supplies will be even larger in the months ahead.”

US Import, Export Prices Plummet In March As COVID Deflationary Drag Strikes -- In what is perhaps not totally surprising, the deflationary winds of a global lockdown washed ashore in the US with a collapse in both US import and export prices (though both were modestly better than expected).

• Import Prices fell 2.3% MoM (better than the -3.2% exp) and year-over-year plunged 4.1% (again better than 5.0% drop expected)
• Export Prices fell 1.9% MoM (better than the -2.3% exp) and year-over-year tumbled 3.6%. These are the biggest deflationary impulses since June 2016.

China's deflationary export was not as significant as Canada and Asia Near-East...  Source: BloombergMore to come, we are sure.

Industrial Production Decreased in March -- From the Fed: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization -Total industrial production fell 5.4 percent in March, as the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic led many factories to suspend operations late in the month. Manufacturing output fell 6.3 percent; most major industries posted decreases, with the largest decline registered by motor vehicles and parts. The decreases for total industrial production and for manufacturing were their largest since January 1946 and February 1946, respectively. The indexes for utilities and mining declined 3.9 percent and 2.0 percent, respectively. At 103.7 percent of its 2012 average, the level of total industrial production in March was 5.5 percent lower than a year earlier. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector decreased 4.3 percentage points to 72.7 percent in March, a rate that is 7.1 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2019) average. This graph shows Capacity Utilization. This series is up 10.3 percentage points from the record low set in June 2009 (the series starts in 1967). Capacity utilization at 72.7% is 7.1% below the average from 1972 to 2017 and below the pre-recession level of 80.8% in December 2007. The second graph shows industrial production since 1967. Industrial production decreased in March to  103.7. This is 19.1% above the recession low, and 1.5% below the pre-recession peak.The change in industrial production was below consensus expectations. Note: The graphs show the 2020 recession starting in March 2020

March retail sales and industrial production: not nearly as awful as might have been expected --Both March retail sales and industrial production were reported this morning. After employment, these are the two biggest reports I follow each month. In particular, normally I spend a lot of time parsing the long and short leading aspects of retail sales - especially as it tends to shortly lead employment. I don’t think that is particularly useful to resume yet. Industrial production, by contrast, is the King of coincident indicators.Since the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic only hit in the second half of March, I don’t think we are seeing the full impact in these numbers. But let’s take a look at what they show so far.Both were objectively awful. But neither one was as awful as could easily have been expected. Both knocked off about the last 2.5 years of growth.First, here’s real retail sales, both excluding (blue) and including (red) food services. I include the former because, of course, restaurants have been all but obliterated by the lockdowns:Including food services, real retail sales were down -8.8% from their January peak. Excluding food services, they were down -6.3% from that peak. While in normal times that would be awful, that both maintained over 90% of their pre-coronavirus levels is cautiously encouraging news. Partly this is probably because of early March hoarding, partly because some services, like grocery stores, have to remain open, and partly because there is probably a big surge in online shopping.Turning to industrial production, we see a similar story. Total production declined -5.4% from February, and manufacturing declined -6.3%: Both of these were not nearly so bad as might have been anticipated.I expect worse to come when this month’s reports are released in May. But for now, the takeaway is “less awful,” and I’ll take it.

NY Fed: Manufacturing "Business activity plunged in New York State", Record Low Index - From the NY Fed: Empire State Manufacturing Survey Business activity plunged in New York State, according to firms responding to the April 2020 Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The headline general business conditions index plummeted fifty-seven points to -78.2, its lowest level in the history of the survey—by a wide margin. New orders and shipments declined at a record pace... Labor market indicators were extremely weak. The index for number of employees fell fifty-four points to -55.3, with nearly 60 percent of respondents indicating lower employment levels. The average workweek index fell to -61.6, with 65 percent reporting shorter workweeks. This was well below the consensus forecast.

Philly Fed "Manufacturing firms reported continued weakening" in April -- From the Philly Fed: Manufacturing firms reported continued weakening: Manufacturing firms reported continued weakening in regional manufacturing activity this month, according to results from the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The survey’s current indicators for general activity, new orders, and shipments once again fell sharply this month to long-term low readings, coinciding with ongoing developments related to the coronavirus pandemic. The indexes for employment and the average workweek, which had both remained positive last month, fell into negative territory this month. The firms expect the current letup in manufacturing activity to last less than six months, as the broadest indicator of future activity strengthened further from last month’s reading; furthermore, the firms continue to expect overall growth in new orders, shipments, and employment over the next six months. The diffusion index for current activity declined strikingly for the second consecutive month from -12.7 in March to -56.6 this month, falling below its nadir during the Great Recession. This is the current activity index’s lowest reading since July 1980. … The firms reported widespread decreases in manufacturing employment this month, as the current employment index fell 51 points to -46.7, its lowest reading since March 2009. The average workweek index fell 55 points to -54.5, its lowest reading ever. This was well below the consensus forecast. Here is a graph comparing the regional Fed surveys and the ISM manufacturing index:The New York and Philly Fed surveys are averaged together (yellow, through April), and five Fed surveys are averaged (blue, through March) including New York, Philly, Richmond, Dallas and Kansas City. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) PMI (red) is through March (right axis). These early reports suggest the ISM manufacturing index will decline significantly in April, likely to new lows.

Small Business Optimism Decreased Sharply in March - Most of this survey is noise, but there is some information, especially on the labor market and the "Single Most Important Problem".  From the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB): March 2020 Report: The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index fell 8.1 points in March to 96.4, the largest monthly decline in the survey’s history..[H]iring plans experienced a significant drop from February yet finding qualified workers remains the top issue for 24% of small employers who reported this as their No. 1 problem. … This survey was conducted in March 2020. A sample of 5,000 small-business owners/members was drawn. Six hundred twenty-seven (627) usable responses were received —a response rate of 12.5 percent.This graph shows the small business optimism index since 1986.The index decreased to 96.4 in March.This index will decline sharply in April (and  the response rate will probably decline).

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decrease to 5,245,000 - The DOL reported: In the week ending April 11, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 5,245,000, a decrease of 1,370,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 9,000 from 6,606,000 to 6,615,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,508,500, an increase of 1,240,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 2,250 from 4,265,500 to 4,267,750. The previous week was revised up.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 5,508,500.

Updated state unemployment numbers remain astonishingly high: Six states saw record-high levels of initial unemployment claims last week - EPI This morning, the Department of Labor released the latest initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims data, showing that another five million people (not seasonally adjusted) filed for UI last week. In the last four weeks,more than 20 million workers—whose economic security has been upended by the coronavirus crisis and inadequate policy responses—filed for UI.Last week, Colorado, New York, South Carolina, Connecticut, Mississippi, and West Virginia saw their highest level of initial UI claim filings ever. These six states, along with Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina, saw increases in initial filings compared with the prior week.Most states had fewer initial UI claims last week than the week prior, but the number of UI claims remained astonishingly high. California and Michigan—the two states with the largest decline since the week before—still had 661,000 and 219,000 claims filed last week, respectively—the third highest week on record for both.Figure A compares UI claims filed last week with filings in the pre-virus period, showing once again thatSouthern states are faring particularly poorly. Seven of the 10 states that had the highest percent change last week relative to the pre-virus period are Southern: Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Alabama.Table 1 shows the data displayed in the map as well as the change in UI claims over the last five weeks relative to the same five-week period a year ago.These UI claims represent a devastating loss of income and security for workers and their families and also have exacerbated existing inequalities. Women have been overrepresented in the number of job losses so far. The leisure and hospitality sector, which has laid off the most workers, disproportionately employs immigrants and people of color.The staggering number of claims has also placed an enormous amount of strain on the agencies tasked with administering these benefits. Federal funding is needed to support these agencies and states must leverage existing laws to get aid to workers quickly.

9.2 million workers likely lost their employer-provided health insurance in the past four weeks - EPI Blog - We estimate that 9.2 million workers were at high risk of losing their employer-provided health insurance in the past four weeks. To avoid prohibitively costly insurance options, the federal government should fund an expansion of Medicare and Medicaid to all those suffering job losses during the pandemic period.  Two weeks ago, when the two-week total of unemployment insurance (UI) initial claims was 8.7 million, we estimated that 3.5 million workers may have lost their health insurance at work. Since then, 11.4 million more workers filed claims for unemployment benefits, bringing the total of UI initial claims over the last four weeks to20.1 million, currently the most comprehensive measure of the extent of job losses and furloughs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate that across all industries where workers have filed UI claims, about 45.7%of workers had their own health insurance provided through their employer. As a result, of the 20.1 million workers who filed initial UI claims in the last four weeks, 9.2 million may have lost coverage through their own employer-provided health insurance (EPHI). The analysis, described below, combines industry-specific UI claims data for 11 states, representing about 20% of national employment, with national, industry-specific health insurance coverage rates. Using these data, we provide a rough prediction of 9.2 million workers losing EPHI. We can’t say exactly how many people will lose insurance coverage altogether for several reasons. For example, some workers who lose EPHI due to layoffs or hours reductions that trigger UI claims may be able to obtain coverage through health care exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or through Medicaid. Some of this group may also be able to obtain continuing coverage through COBRA, paying out of pocket the full cost of their EPHI coverage. Some workers may be able to obtain coverage through other family members, or if only experiencing a temporary furlough or hours reduction, their employers might continue to pay for coverage. On the other hand, our calculations might understate the loss of health insurance coverage because they do not account for family members who are no longer covered because of the policyholder’s layoff. And because not all layoffs result in UI claims, we will underestimate the actual magnitude of job losses. Because the United States is unique among rich countries in tying health insurance benefits to employment many of the newly unemployed will suddenly face prohibitively costly insurance options. A comprehensive policy solution would be to extend Medicare and Medicaid to all those suffering job losses during the pandemic period, with the federal government funding this expansion. Current discussions suggest there may be legislation that the federal government pay for all of COBRA coverage so that workers who are laid off or furloughed may continue their employer-provided coverage. While this policy proposal will help many workers continue coverage, in some states it will not help workers from small businesses with fewer than 20 employees, who are not eligible for COBRA.

Burning Man festival canceled due to coronavirus pandemic - Burning Man has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers announced Friday the annual desert art festival scheduled to start Aug. 30 has been called off for the first year since it began in 1986. “After much listening, discussion, and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision not to build Black Rock City in 2020,” organizers posted in a statement on the Burning Man Journal. “Given the painful reality of COVID-19, one of the greatest global challenges of our lifetimes, we believe this is the right thing to do. Yes, we are heartbroken. We know you are too.” The festival draws roughly 80,000 participants from around the world to the Nevada desert every summer, where a temporary, multi-million-dollar Black Rock City is erected. Organizers at the Burning Man Project nonprofit said the experience will be replaced with an online alternative, where participants will build a “virtual” Black Rock City — but details on “The Multiverse,” as it’s being called, are unclear.

Disney World to furlough 43,000 workers during coronavirus pandemic - Disney World, where dreams are furloughed.The Florida theme park will stop paying some 43,000 workers after closing in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the employees’ representatives.The staff will be furloughed by April 19 and will retain their health benefits, including medical, dental and life insurance policies, for up to a year under the agreement between Disney World and Service Trades Council, a coalition of unions representing Disney World workers.“The union agreement provides stronger protections and benefits for 43,000 union workers at Disney than virtually any other furloughed or laid-off workers in the United States,” the union said in a statement to members.“Disney will pay 100% of all insurance costs,” the union said. “There will be no cost to any employee who’s on furlough for use of their medical insurance and the continued coverage of it.”The Orlando resort employs roughly 77,000 workers, making it the largest single-site employer in the country. Since closing, Disney has been paying its employees while they’ve stayed home.Roughly 200 workers will be kept on staff while the park’s doors are closed to perform “essential duties,” the coalition said.Officials said they had to undertake furloughs b ecause of the uncertainty of the pandemic and when operations could resume. The company said it would also be furloughing non-union employees, including executives, whose jobs aren’t considered necessary.

Public health expert on coronavirus: Concerts and sporting events won't be safe until 'fall 2021 at the earliest' - As governors across the U.S. consider when exactly to reopen state economies amid the coronavirus outbreak, a former White House health official warns that large gatherings likely could not safely resume until at least the fall of 2021. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who served as special advisor for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration, told on a recent New York Times panel that “restarting the economy has to be done in stages... Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — ... I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.” Dr. Emanuel, who is currently Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, added that the overall experience is “going to be this roller coaster, up and down. The question is: When it goes up, can we do better testing and contact tracing so that we can focus on particular people and isolate them and not have to reimpose shelter-in-place for everyone as we did before?” Emanuel, who has also cast doubts on the effectiveness of the use of an anti-malarial drug against the coronavirus due to the lack of sufficient data, is not alone in advising caution. Dr. Tom Tsai, an assistant professor at the Harvard Global Health Institute, also stressed then need to think about other safeguards in place before reopening the economy. “A lot of these early signs are encouraging … but it’s still too soon to rest on our laurels,” Tsai said on Yahoo Finance’s The Ticker. “The data from New York showing that yes, we may be at the peak, but it’s not a rapid fall off the peak back to normal.”

Flight Attendants and Pilots Ask, ‘Is It OK to Keep Working?’ - Airlines have canceled a staggering number of flights, but thousands still take off every day, leaving many of the people needed to keep them running to reckon with whether to continue working and how to stay safe if they do.  Some airline employees have continued to show up reluctantly, either because they need the money or fear losing their jobs once the crisis has ebbed. Others who had once relied on extra income from loaded-up schedules now have to make due with what few flights are available. Tens of thousands more have taken unpaid leave, staying home out of necessity or concern or to free up slots for colleagues who may need the income more. Already, hundreds of flight attendants and pilots have fallen ill and at least five have died from the coronavirus, according to to the labor unions that represent them. And even though the industry secured $25 billion from the federal government to pay employeesthrough September, the future remains bleak.Many airlines are likely to emerge from the crisis with fewer employees, and a full recovery isn’t expected any time soon. It took several years for passenger volume to rebound after the terrorist attacks in 2001, a shock less severe than the current crisis, which is seen by many as the worst in the history of aviation. The devastation arrived abruptly in late February as new bookings started to plummet and cancellations began to surge. Less than two months later, air travel has fallen to new lows. On Tuesday, for the first time since the Transportation Security Administration was formed after the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency screened fewer than 100,000 travelers, pilots, flight attendants and airport and airline workers at its checkpoints. On the same day last year, it screened more than two million people. Airlines have slashed service dramatically, but they still run thousands of daily flights. On Tuesday, for example, there were nearly 8,000 flights in the United States, compared with nearly 35,000 a year ago, according to the aviation data provider OAG. The industry is cutting more, but must maintain minimum service to many destinations under the conditions Congress imposed on the grants earmarked for airline employees.

A Second Round of Coronavirus Layoffs Has Begun. Few Are Safe. – WSJ - The first people to lose their jobs worked at restaurants, malls, hotels and other places that closed to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Higher skilled work, which often didn’t require personal contact, seemed more secure. That’s not how it’s turning out.A second wave of job loss is hitting those who thought they were safe. Businesses that set up employees to work from home are laying them off as sales plummet. Corporate lawyers are seeing jobs dry up. Government workers are being furloughed as state and city budgets are squeezed. And health-care workers not involved in fighting the pandemic are suffering.The longer shutdowns continue, the bigger this second wave could become, risking a repeat of the deep and prolonged labor downturn that accompanied the 2007-09 recession.The consensus of 57 economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal is that 14.4 million jobs will be lost in the coming months, and the unemployment rate will rise to a record 13% in June, from a 50-year low of 3.5% in February. Already nearly 17 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits in the past three weeks, dwarfing any period of mass layoffs recorded since World War II. Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist of Oxford Economics, projects 27.9 million jobs will be lost, and industries beyond those ordered to close will account for 8 million to 10 million, a level of job destruction on a par with the 2007-09 recession. Oxford Economics, a U.K.-based forecasting and consulting firm, projects April’s jobs report, which will capture late-March layoffs, will show cuts to 3.4 million business-services workers, including lawyers, architects, consultants and advertising professionals, as well as 1.5 million nonessential health-care workers and 100,000 information workers, including those working in the media and telecommunications.

'Elbow to elbow:' North America meat plant workers fall ill, walk off jobs - (Reuters) - At a Wayne Farms chicken processing plant in Alabama, workers recently had to pay the company 10 cents a day to buy masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus, according to a meat inspector. In Colorado, nearly a third of the workers at a JBS USA beef plant stayed home amid safety concerns for the last two weeks as a 30-year employee of the facility died following complications from the virus. And since an Olymel pork plant in Quebec shut on March 29, the number of workers who tested positive for the coronavirus quintupled to more than 50, according to their union. The facility and at least 10 others in North America have temporarily closed or reduced production in about the last two weeks because of the pandemic, disrupting food supply chains that have struggled to keep pace with surging demand at grocery stores. According to more than a dozen interviews with U.S and Canadian plant workers, union leaders and industry analysts, a lack of protective equipment and the nature of “elbow to elbow” work required to debone chickens, chop beef and slice hams are highlighting risks for employees and limiting output as some forego the low-paying work. Companies that added protections, such as enhanced cleaning or spacing out workers, say the moves are further slowing meat production. Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, on Sunday said it is indefinitely shutting a pork plant that accounts for about 4% to 5% of U.S. production. It warned that plant shutdowns are pushing the United States “perilously close to the edge” in meat supplies for grocers. Lockdowns that aim to stop the spread of the coronavirus have prevented farmers across the globe from delivering food products to consumers. Millions of laborers also cannot get to the fields for harvesting and planting, and there are too few truckers to keep goods moving. The United States and Canada are among the world’s biggest shippers of beef and pork. Food production has continued as governments try to ensure adequate supplies, even as they close broad swathes of the economy. The closures and increased absenteeism among workers have contributed to drops in the price of livestock, as farmers find fewer places for slaughter. Since March 25, nearby lean hog futures have plunged 35%, and live cattle prices shed 15%, straining the U.S. farm economy.  North American meat demand has dropped some 30% in the past month as declining sales of restaurant meats like steaks and chicken wings outweighed a spike in retail demand for ground beef, said Christine McCracken, Rabobank’s animal protein analyst.

Smithfield shutting U.S. pork plant indefinitely, warns of meat shortages during pandemic - (Reuters) - Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers. Slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping availability of meat at retail stores and leaving farmers without outlets for their livestock. + Smithfield extended the closure of its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant after initially saying it would idle temporarily for cleaning. The facility is one of the nation’s largest pork processing facilities, representing 4% to 5% of U.S. pork production, according to the company. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said on Saturday that 238 Smithfield employees had active cases of the new coronavirus, accounting for 55% of the state’s total. Noem and the mayor of Sioux Falls had recommended the company shut the plant, which has about 3,700 workers, for at least two weeks. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running,” Smithfield Chief Executive Ken Sullivan said in a statement on Sunday. “These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers.” Smithfield said it will resume operations in Sioux Falls after further direction from local, state and federal officials. The company will pay employees for the next two weeks, according to the statement. The company has been running its plants to supply U.S. consumers during the outbreak, Sullivan said. 

Smithfield CEO Warns of Risks to Pork Supply – WSJ - Smithfield Foods Inc. will keep its Sioux Falls, S.D., pork plant closed indefinitely at the urging of the state’s governor, though the company’s chief executive warned of dire consequences for farmers and consumers. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Saturday called on Smithfield to keep the plant closed after linking it to 238 cases of the new coronavirus, representing more than half of all cases in the county. Smithfield’s plant and other meatpacking facilities around the country have emerged as hot spots for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, with unions and advocacy groups warning that close quarters for workers on processing lines raise the risk of infection. Ms. Noem, a Republican, acknowledged Smithfield’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus among its plant employees but wrote in a letter to Smithfield that it could do more. “As a critical infrastructure employer for the nation’s food supply chain and a major employer in Sioux Falls, it is crucial that Smithfield have a healthy workforce to ensure the continuity of operations to feed the nation,” she wrote in the letter with Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken. Smithfield Chief Executive Ken Sullivan said Sunday the plant would stay closed after a previously announced plan to shut it for three days. But he warned that the 550 farmers who supply the plant will no longer have a place to send their hogs, and not operating the plant’s processing lines will make it harder to keep grocery stores stocked with pork. “We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of Covid-19,” Mr. Sullivan said in a written statement. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running.”

P&G Toilet Paper Factory Keeps Delivering as Coronavirus Strikes Its Town – WSJ - Almost every day an employee at Procter & Gamble’s plant in Albany, Ga., a town with one of the nation’s highest rates of coronavirus, learns that someone close has become seriously ill or died of Covid-19. There is little time for consolation between co-workers. They are all racing to churn out one of the most in-demand products in America: toilet paper. “It’s a lot quieter here than it used to be,” said John Patterson, a 16-year veteran of the plant, which makes Charmin toilet paper alongside Bounty paper towels. Workers, who must stay 6 feet apart, console one another over headsets and on video calls. P&G, which produces household staples from Tide detergent to Pampers diapers, is the biggest U.S. maker of toilet paper with close to 30% of the market. The sprawling Albany factory, one of six that make toilet paper, is P&G’s second-largest U.S. plant. It makes products that generate roughly $1.3 billion in annual sales, according to the Georgia Manufacturing Alliance. The factory has ramped up production by 20% of both toilet paper and paper towels, even as it revamps its operations to keep its roughly 600 workers healthy. Among other measures, it has instituted pre-shift temperature checks and staggered start times. P&G declined to comment on whether employees have tested positive. The plant sits in a midsize town of 75,000 people ravaged by the new coronavirus. More than 1,020 people have tested positive in Dougherty County, which includes Albany, and 62 have died as of Thursday afternoon. More people have died in the county than in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta and has a population more than 10 times larger. Health officials trace the spread of coronavirus in Albany to a late-February funeral that drew more than 100 mourners, including a man who later died of Covid-19.

Bill Gates stored food in his basement because he knew a pandemic was eventually coming - Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, people across the world have rushed to “panic buy” and stockpile food and toilet paper, fearing potential shortages. But Bill and Melinda Gates began to stockpile food in their basement years before the current pandemic. “A number of years ago, we talked about, ‘What if there wasn’t clean water? What if there wasn’t enough food? Where might we go? What might we do as a family?’ So, I think we should leave those preparations to ourselves,” Melinda Gates told BBC Radio Live on Thursday. “We had prepared, and had some food in the basement in case needed, and now we’re all in the same situation,” she said. Melinda said they could not prepare with a particular drug or vaccine, of course, as “there are no tools” for Covid-19. “This is a disease we’re all in together,” she said on BBC Radio. But she also acknowledged her family’s privilege. “What we mostly talk about now in our home every night is how lucky we are. We understand our privilege. When we say our grace at night, what we’re thankful for around the table, is that we aren’t struggling to put a meal on the table as so many families around the world are,” Melinda said.As far back as 2010, Bill Gates warned of a looming pandemic in a blog post after the 2009 H1N1 outbreak.In April 2018, Bill said the world wasn’t prepared for such an event, which should “concern us all,” he said at an event hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). “The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war,” he said.

Protests draw thousands over state stay-at-home orders during coronavirus pandemic -  – Multiple states have seen protests as stay-a-home orders meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus continue. Many protesters were angry about the economic ramifications the restrictions are causing. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimate the Labor Department will report Thursday that 5.5 million Americans filed initial applications for unemployment insurance last week. The protests are occurring as President Donald Trump and governors debate over when states should loosen the restrictions put in place to ensure people practice social distancing. While discussing whether he or the nation’s governors have the power to lift restrictions, Trump declared at a news briefing Monday, “When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total.” However, Trump, speaking Wednesday at the White House task force press conference, said recommendations about opening the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic would be released Thursday after a conference call with all 50 governors. Here are some states that have seen protests thus far:

• Demonstrators drove thousands of vehicles – many draped with protest signs – to Michigan’s state Capitol on Wednesday, loudly protesting Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. The demonstration was dubbed “Operation Gridlock” because organizers said they wanted to gain attention by tying up traffic. With the thousands of vehicles, traffic was backed up for more than a mile around the Capitol in several directions, according to Lt. Darren Green of the Michigan State Police.
• About 100 protesters demanded Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear reopen Kentucky and disrupted his televised Wednesday afternoon pandemic update by chanting, blowing horns and shouting into a megaphone outside the window of the briefing room, nearly drowning out his comments to Kentuckians. Protesters, some of whom appeared to be standing less than 6 feet apart from one another, chanted “we want to work” and “facts over fear.”
• Around 100 protesters gathered outside the Statehouse during GOP Gov. Mike Dewine’s appearance on Monday, at least one wearing a Donald Trump hat while many carried signs expressing displeasure at the stay-at-home order or waved American flags. One protester questioned whether DeWine was truly a Republican, asking, “Don’t he believe in less government? Small government?”
• Hundreds of Utah residents gathered Wednesday to protest the state’s closures of businesses and facilities due to the coronavirus. St. George resident Larry Meyers organized the event in an effort to “assert our God-given, Constitutionally-protected rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, religious freedom, the right to contract, and the right to use our property as we see fit so long as we do not harm others” according to a Facebook post.
• Police in North Carolina on Tuesday arrested a protester after more than 100 people gathered in downtown Raleigh to protest Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay-at-home order. The arrest was made by the State Capitol Police, according to the Raleigh Police Department. RPD released a statement on social media regarding the protest and said “protesting is not listed as an essential function” under stay-at-home orders issued by Cooper and Wake County, where Raleigh is located.
• There is a protest planned Thursday in Richmond, Virginia by group of people upset with the stay-at-home order into place to limit the spread of the coronavirus. According to ABC-affiliated television station WHSV, “Groups known as ReOpen Virginia, End The Lockdown VA and Virginians Against Excessive Quarantine say they will have “thousands of concerned citizens” gathering at Virginia’s Capitol Square on April 16 at 11:30 a.m.”

Lockdown Rebelliousness: Denying that Coronavirus Is in Charge -  Yves Smith - The natives are getting restive. USA Today chronicled protests across the US against the coronavirus “shelter at home” and less-extreme forms of activity restriction. Most were small, only a hundred or so in places like Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. The largest was in Lansing, Michigan, despite Michigan suffering the third-highest death toll. Drivers set out to gridlock the capital and succeeded well enough to also block a hospital entrance: Most of the protestors wanted restrictions removed so they could go back to work or get their business back in operation.  And it’s undeniable that the coronavirus-induced shutdown have already exacted a huge toll. Data for March, when the restrictions weren’t in place for the entire month, show much more severe damage than most economists foresaw. Note featured Mohamed El-Erian, Martin Wolf, and Goldman forecasts which were all more dour than the mainstream “quick rebound” take, which seemed obviously nonsensical. The Financial Times today, which seldom practices hair-on-fire journalism, nevertheless sounds five alarms in its lead story, New data shows vast scale of US economic breakdown:  Data from all corners of the US economy published on Wednesday revealed the scale of the collapse in consumer demand, industrial activity and confidence, suggesting the hit from coronavirus lockdowns has been deeper even than feared. Two measures in particular were historically bad: US industrial production showed the biggest monthly decline since the end of the second world war, while retail sales dropped by the most since the data started being collected in 1992…..Industrial production, a broad gauge of output from factories, mines and utilities, fell 5.4 per cent in March from the previous month, according to the Federal Reserve, its worst performance since 1946.Headline retail sales, a measure of sales in shops and restaurants, fell 8.7 per cent, according to the Commerce Department, erasing four years of growth…. Purchases at grocery stores surged by 27 per cent as consumers filled up their pantries, but there was a 27 per cent drop at bars and restaurants, which in many cases had to shut their doors. Sales at petrol stations sank by 17 per cent as people stayed home. Clothing sales were cut in half, the worst of any category. Car and furniture sales each dropped by a quarter. And aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Mind you, in some ways, the US is in a self-created worst of all possible worlds. I’m hoisting this chart from a cross post by Ilargi today: As we know, except for Northern California, US states and cities imposed restrictions too late, and even then too haltingly, to slow the rapid rise of infection. We still are not terribly locked down.

Ten U.S. states developing 'reopening' plans account for 38% of U.S. economy - (Reuters) - The ten U.S. states coordinating plans separately from the White House to reopen businesses shut by the coronavirus are responsible for an outsized proportion of the U.S. economy. On Monday, three states on the U.S. West Coast, led by California Governor Gavin Newsom, and seven on the East Coast, led by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, said they will develop coordinated regional plans. With the exception of Massachusetts, all are led by Democratic governors. Collectively the ten states generated 38.3% of the total U.S. economic output in the fourth quarter of 2019, highlighting how much of the U.S. economy depends on its most populous states. California and New York, the biggest and third-biggest states respectively, account for about 23% of total U.S. economic output, figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show. Announcements about the pacts to coordinate plans came after Republican President Donald Trump declared any decision on reopening the economy was up to him. The White House is preparing its own plans which are expected to be announced soon. But Trump also suggested he would prefer to defer to governors. “I’d rather have them make the decision,” he said in his daily news conference. The U.S. constitution gives state authorities the power to police citizens and regulate public welfare. Outside of the two coalitions, the two states with the biggest contribution to GDP are Texas and Florida, which together account for 14%. Both are led by Republican governors.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveils guide to lifting state’s coronavirus restrictions - California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday a guide to how Californiawill reopen society and the economy across the state as officials weigh lifting restrictive orders meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Newsom became the first governor to issue a statewide stay-at-home order on March 19. He said Tuesday that the order and similar policies have successfully minimized California’s Covid-19 outbreak, which has infected more than 22,348 people across the state and killed at least 687 people in California as of Sunday, according to California Health and Human Services. “While Californians have stepped up in a big way to flatten the curve and buy us time to prepare to fight the virus, at some point in the future we will need to modify our stay-at-home order,” Newsom said in a statement. “As we contemplate reopening parts of our state, we must be guided by science and data, and we must understand that things will look different than before.” Local officials will have a “profound and outsize influence” on any any decision to lift public health orders, Newsom said. He went on to outline six key indicators that will guide the state’s decision as it considers lifting the stay-at-home order:

• “The ability to monitor and protect our communities through testing, contact tracing, isolating, and supporting those who are positive or exposed;
• The ability to prevent infection in people who are at risk for more severe COVID-19;
• The ability of the hospital and health systems to handle surges;
• The ability to develop therapeutics to meet the demand;
• The ability for businesses, schools, and child care facilities to support physical distancing; and
• The ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures, such as the stay-at-home orders, if necessary.”

Even once the stay-at-home order is lifted, Newsom said society won’t snap back to normal. For example, he said restaurants will likely have to limit capacity and face coverings in public will likely be common.

The Coronavirus Economic Reopening Will Be Fragile, Partial and Slow – WSJ - Walt Disney Co. reached a coronavirus milestone of sorts last month when it reopened a portion of its Shanghai Disney Resort as China’s pandemic began to ebb. But a trip to Tomorrowland may never be the same. Guests at the Shanghai resort must wear masks at all times, removing them only for eating. Hours and capacity are limited. And just to gain entry, visitors must submit to a temperature check and present a government-controlled QR code on their phone that indicates they are virus-free.Executives around the world who rapidly overhauled operations when the coronavirus struck, and the politicians who made them do it, are now focused on restarting the economy and their own businesses. That restart, according to interviews with leaders across a range of industries, suggests that back to normal will be anything but.The re-emergence over the coming weeks and months will be fitful, fragile and partial—and a bit dystopian, with frequent temperature checks, increased monitoring of employees and customers, and, potentially, blood tests to determine whether workers have likely immunity to the virus. Officials and business leaders predict that operations won’t fully return to normal until an effective vaccine hits the market, estimated at least a year away.Some firms may bring office workers back in alternating groups to allow for social distancing in open-plan offices. Restaurant chains may operate at half capacity, installing plexiglass shields between booths, while stores may do away with tester cosmetics and sanitize items after customers try them on. Major League Baseball has discussed a season with no spectators, held in a part of the country where it can essentially sequester players for weeks at a time.

A coronavirus recovery: How to ensure older workers fully participate - EPI Blog -Key takeaways:

• Because older workers are more likely to be unemployed for long periods, have work-limiting disabilities, and live in areas of the country that were struggling even before the crisis, policies aimed at addressing these problems will especially benefit these workers.
• While infrastructure spending could help jumpstart the post-pandemic recovery, policies must ensure that older workers participate in training and jobs programs related to these investments.
• Regulatory protections for front-line workers, especially older workers and others at heightened risk for contracting or suffering serious consequences from contagious diseases, need to be strengthened and updated using lessons learned from the pandemic.
• Employer-provided benefits result in spotty coverage and higher costs for older workers. The United States should catch up to other countries and provide sick leave, paid family leave, and health insurance through government programs rather than leaving these to the discretion of employers.

(See the companion blog post outlining steps needed to protect vulnerable older workers in the economic collapse caused by measures needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.) Once the worst of the outbreak is over and social distancing measures are relaxed, policies to help older workers will be needed to ensure they share in the recovery.Deficit-financed stimulus spending—needed to quickly bring the economy back to something approaching full employment—will help but not ensure broad-based prosperity. Policymakers also need to address power imbalances between employers and workers and target policies at disadvantaged workers, including unemployed older workers.Older workers, as my last blog post discussed, may find it harder to get back in the job market after layoffs for a number of reasons. They may have health conditions that limit what they can do or feel forced to accept large pay cuts because some skills and knowledge they’ve built up aren’t transferable and may be undervalued by prospective employers. Absent policies to help these workers regain their footing, they may become “discouraged workers” who give up on the job search and retire before they’re ready.This post lays out a series of policies to address barriers to employment for unemployed older workers and to protect older workers from health and financial risks.

80% Of Americans Will Wait To Resume Normal Activities After COVID-19 Restrictions Lifted - As the debate rages over when to reopen the country amid the coronavirus pandemic, over 80% of Americans say they would wait to return to normal activities after the government lifts nationwide restrictions designed to slow the spread of the virus, according to a Tuesday poll by Gallup. In what might disappoint those hoping for an immediate recovery after restrictions are lifted, Gallup found that 71% of respondents would wait and see what happens with the spread of the virus before returning to normal activities, while 10% say they would wait indefinitely.   20% said they would resume normal activities immediately.   Along party lines, 31% of Republicans said they would immediately resume normal activities, while 11% of Democrats and 19% of independents said the same. By age, those aged 18-29 and 50-64 are more likely to return immediately at 25% and 24% respectively, while those aged 30 - 49 were least likely at 16%. Geographically, 23% of people from small towns and rural areas with lower population density were more likely to say they would immediately return to normal activities vs. 15% of people in large cities and 18% of people in suburbs. Income and employment status made no difference on respondents' answers, according to Gallup.While the country debates when to open up, Dr. Anthony Fauci - who initially said Americans shouldn't change their behaviors - said on Tuesday that a target date of May 1 may be "overly optimistic" for many parts of the United States, and that critical testing and tracing procedures needed to reopen are not in place.

Social Distancing Efforts Have Cemented Into US Life – Gallup - Avoiding public transportation such as planes, buses, subways or trains (89%) and small gatherings (84%) has become the norm for more than eight in 10 Americans. Nearly as many Americans are avoiding public places such as stores and restaurants (78%) out of concern about COVID-19. A smaller majority of U.S. adults (61%) have stocked up on food, medical or cleaning supplies. Majorities of Americans have reported taking each of these actions since Gallup polling conducted March 20-22, and figures for most measures have remained at about their current levels since then. The latest results, from a probability-based Gallup Panel survey conducted online April 6-9, reflect Americans' reported actions they have taken to socially distance themselves since late March.  Some notable differences by subgroup include:

• Adults aged 18 to 44 are a bit more likely than older adults to have taken each of these actions.
• Solid majorities within all major political party groups report having taken these measures -- but Democrats are most likely to report having done so. The biggest differences between Democrats and Republicans are seen in the percentages saying they've avoided public places (86% among Democrats and 70% among Republicans) and avoided small gatherings (92% among Democrats and 74% among Republicans).
• Few differences exist across income groups in terms of actions they have taken -- except for the percentages saying they've stocked up on food, medical or cleaning supplies. While at least six in 10 higher-income households (66%) and middle-income households (61%) report having stocked up, less than half of lower-income households (49%) say the same.

A majority of working adults (63%) say they have worked from home as a result of concerns about the pandemic -- on par with the 59% to 63% recorded since March 23. Meanwhile, one in five U.S. workers have stayed home and have been unable to work as a result of the outbreak. This figure has ranged from 19% to 25% since March 16.

Texas prisons won’t accept new county jail inmates as coronavirus spreads in lockups - Starting Monday, the Texas prison system is no longer taking new inmates from county jails, according to an agency letter obtained by The Texas Tribune. Bryan Collier, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said in a letter to county sheriffs Saturday that he recognized the move would put an additional strain on counties, but he said the action is necessary. The new coronavirus has been confirmed in at least 10 county jails, and the number of state prisoners infected nearly doubled in one day last week, according to state agency reports. “Halting the intake of new inmates will allow the TDCJ to fight this virus without further exposing both county and state inmates,” Collier wrote. As of Saturday, 167 state prisoners and 72 TDCJ employees had tested positive for the virus at units throughout the state, TDCJ reported. And one prisoner and one correctional officer from different units have died after contracting the virus. Twenty of the state's more than 100 prison facilities were on lockdown after an inmate or employee had tested positive, restricting prisoner movement and activity. Normally, counties send commitment papers over to TDCJ after an inmate has been handed a prison sentence, and the state prison system has to take them in within 45 days, according to state statute. That statute has now been waived during the coronavirus disaster, Collier said. The agency had already halted intake from counties if inmates in the jail had tested positive.

Kentucky worshippers met with nails in road as they defy lockdown - A Kentucky church defied coronavirus-lockdown orders to hold a packed Easter Sunday service — despite a heavy police presence and even nails blocking the parking lots, according to a report. Maryville Baptist Church appeared to have a near-full house for its Sunday service despite orders to avoid in-person services — and the heightened risk of catching COVID-19, the Louisville Courier Journal said. Worshippers arrived even after police warned that they would record their car plates to force them into 14-day quarantines. Many — including the defiant pastor, Rev. Jack Roberts — arrived with their plates covered, with officers instead recording their VIN numbers, the paper said. Even more desperate measures appeared to have been taken to keep the faithful away — with “piles of nails” blocking each entrance, according to photos shared by the Courier Journal. It was not clear who had left the nails, which were eventually cleared by church volunteers in time for the main arrivals, the paper said. Kentucky State Police troopers then left large signs on every car left in the church lot, the paper said — accusing those present of “CREATING SCENES OF AN EMERGENCY.” They noted that everyone in the car owner’s household would be forced to quarantine for 14-days for defying the warning — an order several worshippers told the Courier Journal that they planned to ignore.

Mike Huckabee Sues Florida Sheriff For Threatening 'Social Distancing' Arrest On Private Beach - Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a county government ordinance which has temporarily shut down beaches where his multi-million dollar Florida home is located. Huckabee filed it with his breachfront property neighbors against Walton County and its sheriff, saying the ordinance is unlawfully preventing them from “being able to use or even set foot in their own backyards”.The lawsuit is stating violation of the community's Fifth Amendment rights, specifically the "Takings Clause", which states, "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." It was filed Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida and says that local government is denying basic constitutional rights in taking 'social distancing' measures too far — to the point that police are infringing on property rights.The complaint says that law enforcement officers “have been and are currently patrolling and occupying the private beachfront properties” without permission while threatening “arrest or fine Plaintiffs, their family members, or invitees on their private properties,” according to Lawandcrime.com.“The Amended Ordinance is arbitrary and capricious. The Amended Ordinance purports to be designed to ‘prevent the spread of COVID-19’ yet it has the opposite effect,” Plaintiffs wrote. “The Amended Ordinance prevents the Plaintiffs, many of whom own residences along the beach, from utilizing their own backyards to quarantine or stay safe at home,” the filing states further. “The chances of a family or landowner catching or spreading COVID-19 is far less in his or her own private backyard (where no one else should be less they be trespassing) than traveling to the grocery store or hardware store or other essential business.”

Judge: Alabama can't prohibit abortion during pandemic - (AP) — A federal judge on Sunday ruled that Alabama cannot ban abortions as part of the state's response to coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued a preliminary injunction sought by clinics to prevent the state from forbidding abortions as part of a ban on elective medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thompson said abortion providers can decide whether a procedure can wait. "Based on the current record, the defendants' efforts to combat COVID-19 do not outweigh the lasting harm imposed by the denial of an individual's right to terminate her pregnancy, by an undue burden or increase in risk on patients imposed by a delayed procedure, or by the cloud of unwarranted prosecution against providers," Thompson wrote in an opinion. The ruling was a victory for abortion rights advocates who are fighting efforts in Texas, Ohio, Alabama and other states to prohibit abortion services during the COVID-19 pandemic. States have argued they need to conserve medical equipment and potential hospital beds during the pandemic. Abortion clinics in Alabama said they sought the injunction after the state refused to clarify that the clinics could continue to operate. Alabama had ordered a postponement of medical procedures except in cases of a medical emergency or "to avoid serious harm from an underlying condition or disease, or necessary as part of a patient's ongoing and active treatment." A lawyer representing clinics praised the decision. "Preventing someone from getting an abortion doesn't do anything to stop the COVID-19 virus, it just takes the decision whether to have a child out of their hands," said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project.

Buying seeds now prohibited in Michigan — but booze, pot, lottery tickets OK - Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's latest stay-at-home order is being blasted forlack of consistency and seemingly arbitrary rules regarding what can be purchased and what cannot.Under the new mandate:

• Residents are prohibited from traveling between homes — even one's own second home.
• In the state famous for its Great Lakes and more than 11,000 inland lakes, operating motor boats or jet-skis, even by oneself, has been outlawed — though boats without motors are still allowed on lakes.
• Buying seeds in a store to grown one's own food, or paint for home repairs, is illegal — but Michiganders can still legally purchase alcohol, marijuana, and lottery tickets, which have been deemed "essential."

A resident tweeted pictures from Michigan Walmart Friday showing the seed section roped off with yellow tape, barring shoppers from purchasing them:  In his tweet, the Michigander blasted the Democratic governor, saying she "has banned us from growing our own food." (Screen shot featured above so expletive could be blurred out; tweet can be viewed on Twitter here.)

Despite Pandemic, Thousands Still Have No Water in Detroit (Democracy Now video & transcript) Water shutoffs continue amid the coronavirus pandemic in Detroit, despite a moratorium and a program to help thousands of residents restore service last month. The lack of water access comes as nearly 1,500 people in Michigan have died from COVID-19, and 40% of those who have died are African-American, despite making up just 14% of the state’s population. We speak with community pastor and activist Rev. Roslyn Bouier, who has been working with residents to restore their water.

She’s A Furloughed Single Mom Of 3. The Utility Is Shutting Off Her Power Anyway.  - After she was furloughed from her job at a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plant three weeks ago, Toni burned through her savings stocking up on essentials: propane, toilet paper, shampoo and food. The 38-year-old single mother had her two high schoolers and her 20-year-old daughter, home from college, to care for, and they needed enough to survive on as the novel coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc across the country and brought the economy screeching to a stop. She filed for unemployment almost immediately. But, weeks later, the check hasn’t come and the bills keep mounting. Across the country, utilities and states have enacted policies to stop service shut-offs for nonpayment. As an employee of the federally owned power company that generates nearly all of Tennessee’s electricity, she figured the utilities that distribute that energy would follow suit. Last week, she called the Dayton Electric Department, the municipal power distributor in her small town in central Tennessee, to let them know she’d be late on her bill. The response was unsparing, she told HuffPost on Friday evening. “They basically told me they’ll give me five extra days, and I’d accrue late fees, and if I couldn’t pay it they’d have to run it off,” said Toni, who asked to keep her last name private for fear of drawing unwanted attention to her daughters. “They said if they let everyone not pay, they’d be losing money, and it wasn’t their problem.”

Reality of American capitalism exposed: Millions line up for food aid as pandemic spreads - The rapid spread of the coronavirus in the United States is revealing the consequences of decades of ruling-class policy, which have left the center of world capitalism completely unprepared for a significant health care emergency. At the same time, the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic is exposing the reality of widespread poverty and insecurity. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, breadlines became a symbol of social distress. Such scenes are reemerging in the form of massive line-ups for emergency food assistance in every state and community. On Thursday, 6,000 cars lined up for five miles at a food bank drive-through in San Antonio, Texas. Some families arrived 12 hours early to ensure they received some aid. In Inglewood, California, south of Los Angeles, 5,000 cars lined up to receive food on Friday. Food bank usage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has increased by 543 percent in recent days. Those who are lining up are not just the poorest workers, who typically rely on food banks in hard times, but also broader sections of the working class and middle class families who have never had to rely on such aid in their lives. “I’ve never had to go to a food pantry in my life,” Shanell Gray, a recently laid off hotel worker, told the Columbus Dispatch at a food distribution in Ohio’s capital city this weekend. “This just went really fast. I was able to pay my rent for this month. May is the struggle.” Nearly 17 million workers have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks, the highest number ever recorded. Even this figure, however, underestimates the scale of layoffs. Millions more are either ineligible for benefits or have been unable to apply due to overloaded websites and call centers. The vast majority of the population has yet to receive any financial assistance. Just 10,000 people had received a direct deposit to their bank account as of Friday, and most states still have not established a means of sending out the $600 weekly increase in unemployment for four months. While trillions have been handed over to the banks and gigantic corporations—with no requirement that they wait in lines—every obstacle is being put in place to prevent workers from getting anything and to cut off aid as soon as possible. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, son of the late arch-reactionary Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has done everything in his power to limit payments, including by excluding gig workers who use phone apps to find work and making it easier for companies to avoid paying sick and family leave. “We want workers to have work, not to become dependent on the unemployment system,” Scalia declared in an article posted last week on Fox Business News. The comments mirrored Trump’s outraged response to the fact that “we’re paying people not to go to work.”

More Than 1 In 3 Americans Consider Selling Blood As Lockdowns Continue - With 17 million Americans out of work in under three weeks, consumer sentiment crashing the fastest on record, and the economy sliding into a depression, households are starting to crack. The evidence of the "working poor" crushed by the economic downturn is starting to be realized with huge runs on food bank systems across the country. On Thursday alone, the San Antonio Food Bank, located in San Antonio, Texas, aided about 10,000 households with food.  We turn to a recently published study via the career advice site Zety.com has confirmed what we've been saying for years: Households don't have the financial cushion to weather an economic storm.   The study polled about 1,000 working Americans last month, asking them about their financial well-being. In the first series of questions, respondents were asked about how long their savings could bridge them if they lost their jobs. Shockingly, 36% answered 0-1 month, 24% answered 1-3 months, and so forth. That means at least 60% of respondents had only enough savings for less than three months, and judging by today's lockdowns, we could extrapolate those numbers and conclude that many people might not survive the economic downturn currently underway, despite government UBI checks.  With financial conditions of households quickly deteriorating, their savings are limited, have insurmountable debts, and mounting expenses could force some into liquidating assets to build cash. The survey had this to say: "Women were more likely than men to sell certain items for extra money, including their clothing and shoes (57%) and jewelry (41%). In contrast, men were slightly more willing to part with their laptop (21%), collectibles (36%), blood plasma (36%), car (23%), and sports equipment (22%)."  You read that correctly, more than a third of Americans who are in a financial bind are willing to sell their blood to make an extra few dollars to cover rent payments, service bills, and even maybe use the money to cover student loan payments. However, the government has unveiled new economic hardship deferment plans for working-class poor that could alleviate some short-term stress. As calls for blood plasma donations are increasing due to the pandemic, search term "blood plasma" has hit a new record high. Maybe the working-class poor can sell their blood for cash to put food on their tables.

The impact of the pandemic on childcare in the US: A social catastrophe affecting generations - The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the complete inability of the capitalist system to serve the basic requirements of society at every level. In addition to the death and destruction of human life taking place across the planet, the capitalist system must be particularly indicted for the detrimental impacts upon the youngest and most vulnerable. The broader impact of such a crisis on the childcare system is impossible to calculate. In the case of small childcare business owners, many will be followed by a trail of debt which will haunt them for years to come. Parents, under immense economic and social pressure to return the work, will find limited options for childcare available. Families will be uprooted, deeply affecting young lives in the process. Early childhood development programs which serve children at pre-Kindergarten ages (0-5 years of age) are vital to the cognitive and social functioning of the young in the first stages of their lives. According to the federal government, there are roughly 21.4 million pre-Kindergarten children and 1.7 million healthcare workers in the United States. Reports from the Hunt Institute show that as of last week, 17 states in the US have closed all childcare facilities for fear of contagion. All other states still allowing such facilities to remain open are doing so at risk to their staff and the families they serve. As the pandemic has forced governments to enact social distancing protocols, many teachers and businesses have sought to maintain relationships with their students through online instruction. In early childhood development, such a medium holds little value. An article published in March titled “Making Connections: There’s No Such Thing as Online Preschool,” plainly states: “The reality is that there is no online equivalent to preschool.” The article references a 2015 National Research Council report on childhood development which establishes “the first eight years [as] a profound developmental period that impacts the whole life. Crucial, complex areas of development include the relationship between language and mathematics, self-regulation, social and emotional development, responsible decision-making, physical development, self-management, and relationship skills.” For a child, such a period of life requires the most attentive care. A child’s future development may be forever altered amid a COVID-19 pandemic, in which they are forced to remain indoors in isolation due to social distancing, or are forced to keep physically separate from peers and adults in public..

Scratch claws its way up into top 20 programming languages --A new surprising entry to the TIOBE Index cracks the top 20. Scratch, an introductory programming language helping children learn programming fundamentals enters the chart. The TIOBE Index updates its programming language ranking monthly, using results from search engine queries. Often, there isn’t too much of a change in ranking, with no falls or gains, and only some reshuffling between the top languages. However, sometimes a new contender bumps up the charts and shakes things up a bit.The April update saw Scratch rise into the top 20 with a change of +0.28%.  You may not have heard of this programming language since it is primarily designed for a younger audience.Scratch helps children learn the basics of coding through hands-on game and story creation. (Of course, people of all ages can have fun with Scratch!) Using Scratch, young programmers create games, interactive stories, and animations.From the Index’s April 2020 update: Graphical block-based programming language Scratch has entered the TIOBE index top 20. At first sight this might seem a bit strange for a programming language that is designed to teach children how to program. But if you take into account that there are in total more than 50 million projects “written” in Scratch and each month 1 million new Scratch projects are added, it can’t be denied any more that Scratch is popular. Since computers are getting more and more an integral part of life, it is actually quite logical that languages to teach children programming are getting popular. Some years ago there was competition between Scratch and Alice which language would become the new “Logo” programming language of the modern ages. Alice is now at position #90 of the TIOBE index so it seems clear who has won. Possible reasons why this happened is that Scratch is easier to learn (a critical success factor in this field) and Scratch is sponsored by companies such as Google and Intel.

Louisiana school closures: Gov. Edwards says buildings will not reopen - Students will not be going back to schools in Louisiana this academic year, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in his Monday afternoon briefing on the COVID-19 health emergency. His current stay-at-home order and statewide school closure mandate expire April 30, but he will issue a new proclamation Tuesday in conjuction with the interim state superintendent of education and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, he said. "It is my intention now to announce that school will not resume in the sense that students are going to the school building," he said. He did not give details but said students and faculty would not be able to return to campuses before the end of the academic calendar, which tends to fall around May 20. "It is just not going to be feasible to resume the operation of our schools this academic year," he said Monday. More: Coronavirus: Lafayette librarians, teachers find ways to encourage students to read at home More information and guidance on what that looks like for local districts will become available Tuesday once his proclamation officially is issued, he said. While campuses will remain closed, Edwards said, "learning will continue." He referenced distance learning and other efforts being implemented to keep students engaged from home.

New York City makes first wave of massive budget cuts to public education - On April 7, New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) announced that it would be cutting $273 million from its budget next school year. These are part of plans to cut $1.3 billion from the city’s budget, due to a steep drop in revenue caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The DOE has confirmed that more cuts are to come. This does not include aid from New York state, whose deficit has jumped from $6 billion to $12 billion because of revenue lost during the coronavirus pandemic. The New York City DOE will receive $11.3 billion from the state, including $717 million of federal stimulus funds. That still represents a small overall decease from the current year. Significantly, the state legislature, controlled by the Democratic Party, authorized the state budget director to make further cuts in each quarter of the year if the budget is one percent off state projections. Already anticipating a further loss in revenue, Cuomo has made it clear that such cuts are coming. There is little doubt that they will further impact New York City schools. The annual federal contribution to New York schools has not been calculated, though there are likely to be cuts there as well. Funding for private charter schools at both the city and the state levels remain intact in the budget and it is unlikely that this line will be significantly adjusted. On the chopping block for the schools in the city’s system is $67 million for teachers’ professional development and a $49 million reduction in funding for Equity and Excellence programs, such as early literacy, computer science, math and college entry programs that largely benefit kids from impoverished backgrounds. Other cuts include $43 million for the expansion of pre-school programs in several school districts, including the entire borough of Staten Island. Another $100 million will be taken from the Fair Student Funding formula. This funding is typically higher at schools with large numbers of special education students, English language learners, low-income students and students who need special academic assistance. In addition to the cuts to education, the city will cancel its Summer Youth Employment Program, in place since 1963, that provides 75,000 poor and working-class youth with summer jobs. Cutting the program will save the city $150 million.

21 New York City Teachers & Over 50 Total School Staff Have Died Of COVID-19 - As NYC's total Covid-19 cases skyrocket past 105,000 - the The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has released an alarming figure, saying that over 50 of its school employees have died in connection to coronavirus. This includes 21 teachers, according to the DOE, with others being administrators and various school support staff. A 36-year old principal named Dez-Ann Romain at a Brooklyn high school was the first New York City Public Schools employee to die last month after contracting Covid-19. "This is painful news for too many of our communities — each number represents a life, a member of one our schools or offices, and the pain their loved ones are experiencing is unimaginable," New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement, per CNN. "We will be there to support our students and staff in any way they need, including remote crisis and grief counseling each day. We mourn these losses and will not forget the impact each person had on our DOE family," Carranza said.Early in the crisis last month Mayor Bill de Blasio came under fire for not closing the city's schools fast enough. He argued that underprivileged students could not go without school-provided meals and needed the safe confines of the classroom. The mayor finally ordered the city's schools to temporarily shut on the weekend of March 14.And this past weekend he ordered all public school sites closed for the remainder of the year. This impacts some 1.1 million-students in the New York City district. Recently de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo have publicly been at odds over the question of potential school re-openings. Likely the growing loss of school staff due to the pandemic was a strong factor in the mayor declaring schools going to 'online only' instruction for the remainder of the year.

The pandemic’s impact on education – Harvard Gazette (interview) - As former secretary of education for Massachusetts, Paul Reville is keenly aware of the financial and resource disparities between districts, schools, and individual students. The school closings due to coronavirus concerns have turned a spotlight on those problems and how they contribute to educational and income inequality in the nation. The Gazette talked to Reville, the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at Harvard Graduate School of Education, about the effects of the pandemic on schools and how the experience may inspire an overhaul of the American education system. 

Wholesale move to online education across the US: A nightmare for students and educators - Nearly four weeks have passed since many US states began cancelling in-person classes at all grade levels in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Immediately many districts announced a transition to online classes via Zoom or other platforms. These measures are far from a panacea. The vast majority of young people are falling drastically behind and are increasingly anxious, while teachers tasked with designing new curricula virtually overnight are overburdened and stressed. The rapid transition to online education has revealed the inadequacy of preparation for such an eventuality by schools at all levels. In short, it has become a disaster for large numbers of students. At the same time, it is clear that changes being implemented now are only a prelude, as the ruling class uses the crisis to mount even further assaults on public education at the expense of teachers and students. Not only has it become evident that most school districts and colleges had no real plans for what to do in the event of a disaster of this magnitude, but decades of austerity have left them few viable or coherent options. Worldwide, according to a UNESCO, students in 188 countries are out of school, or over 90 percent of students worldwide. In many places, students have had no schooling at all since schools closed. As of this writing, 21 states have closed schools for the duration of the school year. New York City has, as of this weekend, done likewise. A poll of 849 teenagers conducted by Common Sense Media between March 24 and April 1 indicates that 41 percent reported they had not attended even a single online or virtual class. While some districts are set to start distance learning on Monday, including in Chicago and parts of Oregon, others are set to wait longer. Even when schools have restarted online, many students are not logging in. According to figures released by Los Angeles schools, around one-third of high school students have not logged into classes daily, while 15,000 have attended none at all. Nationally, 21 percent of students are now “truant,” according to Education Week. Hundreds of thousands of young people, already traumatized by the lockdowns and deaths or illnesses of family members, are being made more anxious by attempts to learn with unfamiliar or unreliable tools. “These students were distracted from their world by coming to this building that was outside of the community where they faced all these barriers,” said Malcolm Jones, a teacher in Norfolk, VA, speaking with Education Week. “Now, they’re stuck at home in that chaos. Who can really expect some of these students to do that [academic work packet] when they’re at home starving or they’re at home taking care of their siblings?” Students that qualify for special education in many states and districts have so far been left out completely. Access Living, an Illinois disability advocacy organization, notes “it is unclear if all missed services will be made up.” In other words, some students may receive no education services at all if it cannot be provided through videoconferencing or over the phone.

The coronavirus will explode achievement gaps in education - The COVID-19 pandemic will take existing academic achievement differences between middle-class and low-income students and explode them.  The academic achievement gap has bedeviled educators for years. In math and reading, children of college-educated parents score on average at about the 60th percentile, while children whose parents have only a high school degree score, on average, at the 35th percentile.* The academic advantages of children whose parents have master’s degrees and beyond are even greater. To a significant extent, this is a neighborhood issue—schools are more segregated today than at any time in the last 50 years, mostly because the neighborhoods in which they are located are so segregated. Schools with concentrated populations of children affected by serious socioeconomic problems are able to devote less time and attention to academic instruction.In 2001 we adopted the “No Child Left Behind Act,” assuming that these disparities mostly stemmed from schools’ failure to take seriously a responsibility to educate African-American, Hispanic, and lower-income students. Supporters claimed that holding educators accountable for test results would soon eliminate the achievement gap. Promoted by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, the theory was ludicrous, and the law failed to fulfill its promise. The achievement gap mostly results from social-class based advantages that some children bring to school and that others lack, as well as disadvantages stemming from racial discrimination that only some children have to face. The coronavirus, unfortunately, will only exacerbate the effects of these advantages. With schools shut, white-collar professionals with college degrees operate homeschools, sometimes with superior curricular enhancements. My own children, with post-graduate degrees, are introducing my young grandchildren to Shakespeare and algebra, topics they would ordinarily encounter only in later grades. Meanwhile, many parents with less education have jobs that even during the coronavirus crisis cannot be performed at home – supermarket clerks, warehouse workers, delivery truck drivers. Even with distance learning being established by schools and teachers—many of whom are now busy with their own children at home—too many students in low-income and rural communities don’t have internet access: 35 percent of low-income households with school-aged children don’t have high-speed internet; for moderate-income families it is 17 percent, and only 6 percent for middle-class and affluent families. When measured by race and ethnicity, the gap is greater for African-American and Hispanic families.

MBA students demand tuition fee refunds over campus closures - FT --MBA students at some of the world’s leading business schools are demanding a refund on their tuition fees as compensation for campus closures and the switch to what they view as inferior online learning. A petition circulating among students at The Wharton School, where fees alone for a two-year MBA degree can exceed $160,000, has received close to 900 signatures, equivalent to a single year’s intake. At Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where the two-year MBA programme costs $150,000 in fees, an online petition has been signed by the equivalent to 80 per cent of the class. Students have made similar demands at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and at Insead. “They have clearly shown that they do not care about us,” said an MBA candidate at Insead’s Singapore campus who predicted that the fees row would discourage future students. “Everything has been derailed on our end and we’re also not sure if we’ll get absorbed back into the workforce upon graduation.” The high cost of an MBA, which has been rising by more than inflation for several years, was a cause for concern even before the coronavirus crisis forced schools to close their campuses and switch to online lectures. Alongside a clampdown on international student visas in some countries, high fees are blamed for a fall in applications at most US business schools.  Fee increases have pushed the cost of a full-time MBA degree at some leading business schools, factoring in living costs and other expenses, towards $250,000.  The high cost is borne by many students because it is widely accepted that an MBA qualification leads to a significant salary increase after graduation. But the virus pandemic, and the long-term economic damage it is causing, has undermined that belief. Business schools have responded to their students’ concerns by offering extended payment periods but none of the institutions petitioned have agreed to cut fees. Schools are loath to reduce MBA fees because fixed costs such as teaching facilities and staff wages have not reduced.

Baltimore Streets Flooded With Methadone And Suboxone During Pandemic -Methadone clinics across Baltimore City are flooding neighborhoods with "a lot" of addiction-treatment medicines after federal regulators relaxed take-home restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, reported The Baltimore Sun. In pre-corona times, addiction treatment medicines, such as methadone or Suboxone, were limited by clinics to avoid abuse or resold o n the streets. Now because of relaxed federal rules, addicts can receive up to a month's supply in one visit. The Rev. Milton Emanuel Williams Jr., the pastor of New Life Evangelical Baptist Church, also the operator of Turning Point Clinic, said his facility usually doses out a day's worth of methadone or Suboxone from his East Baltimore clinic to addicts. Now he's sending them home with a massive 28-day supply.  "We're putting a lot of methadone and Suboxone on the street right now, which is a huge concern to me," said Williams. "There are folks who can't handle all this medication."Williams said a month's supply of medicine would keep addicts out of the clinic to limit his medical staff's exposure to a patient that could be a COVID-19 carrier. The Sun notes that the federal government relaxed take-home rules for clinics to decrease the spread of the virus. Williams' clinic regularly treats 2,000 addicts per day. Now his staff is dressed head to toe in protective gear while "It's almost impossible, in giving compassionate care, to not get close to people," he said.

Damage From OxyContin Continues to Be Revealed - OxyContin, and the aggressive, misleading way that Purdue Pharma marketed it, might have been even more damaging than was previously understood. Recent research shows how the company focused its marketing in states with lighter prescription regulation — to devastating effect. Also, a new version of OxyContin introduced a decade ago — which was meant to reduce harm — had unintended consequences. Besides contributing to heroin overdoses, it led to hepatitis C and other infections. Careful studies are only now starting to reveal the extent of the damage.OxyContin is an opioid painkiller that Purdue Pharma first brought to the U.S. market in 1996. Its chief innovation was its 12-hour timed release of oxycodone. This made it ripe for abuse, since by crushing or dissolving OxyContin pills, abusers of the drug could ingest the entire dose at once.Several studies have pointed to Purdue’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin as a significant contributor to the opioid epidemic. The marketing took various forms, including calling and visiting doctors; paying them for meals and travel; providing gifts; and funding pain treatment groups that urged liberalization of opioid prescribing.Some of the company’s marketing messages minimized the potential for OxyContin to lead to addiction, for which it paid over $600 million in fines in 2007.A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published last fall sheds light on Purdue’s role. The researchers, economists from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Notre Dame and the RAND Corporation, looked at variations in prescribing regulations that led Purdue to market OxyContin more aggressively in some states than in others.The study found that OxyContin distribution was nearly twice as high in states where regulations made it easier to market. Misuse of the drug was also higher in the more marketed states, both immediately after OxyContin’s introduction in 1996 and many years later.

Robert F Kennedy Jr. Exposes Bill Gates' Vaccine Agenda In Scathing Report -  Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy. Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology. Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain. During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.” In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children. In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.”  A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade.  Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines. In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court. A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually. Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development.

Epidemiologist says COVID-19 may be more infectious than thought - A Harvard epidemiologist is warning that nursing homes, through no fault of their own, may no longer be the best place to house vulnerable elderly patients. Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and its Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said Friday that he believes the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is more transmissible than previously thought. It has been difficult to keep it from spreading in a number of settings, including hospitals, cruise ships, and nursing homes — in Massachusetts alone, some 102 nursing homes had reported 551 cases by Sunday afternoon, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Even with current restrictions on visitors, he said, employees regularly moving in and out of the facilities means it’s likely that additional cases will occur. “I do think as many people as we can get out of these homes, [it] is probably better,” said Mina, also a Chan School associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases and associate medical director in clinical microbiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Pathology Department. “I think that this is an extraordinarily transmissible virus. I think it’s more transmissible than we recognize and actually preventing it from spreading within nursing homes is an extraordinary feat.” The focus on nursing homes has heightened recently, in part due to revelations of 21 deaths at the Holyoke Soldiers Home since late March, of which at least 15 were due to the coronavirus. Test results in other cases are pending. A cluster of deaths at a nursing home in Washington that began in February highlighted senior citizens’ vulnerability to developing severe illness from the virus and, since early March, nursing homes across the country have restricted visitors in an effort to reduce risk to residents. In response to the growing threat, Harvard-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife (HSL) on Friday instituted a self-shelter-at-home directive for 1,700 residents at five senior living campuses across Greater Boston. The organization has seen 36 COVID-19 cases and nine deaths among residents, as well as eight cases among employees.

The coronavirus can travel at least 13 feet, new study shows - The coronavirus can travel through the air at least 13 feet — more than twice as far as social distancing guidelines, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research published in the federal agency’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal shows the contagion spreading much farther than previous official suggestions — and also getting spread on people’s shoes. “The aerosol distribution characteristics … indicate that the transmission distance of [COVID-19] might be 4 m,” the report says, translating as more than 13 feet. “Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive,” the researchers wrote of samples taken at Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan. “Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers.” The report, based on research by a team at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing, appears to reaffirm fears that the current social distancing guidelines of 6 feet may not be enough. It also suggests people — especially medical staff on the front lines — could inadvertently be spreading the bug away from its source, recommending stringent disinfecting measures. High levels were also found on frequently touched surfaces like computer mice, trash cans and bed rails. The CDC recommends 6 feet for social distancing, while the World Health Organization claims just 3 feet should be enough, less than a quarter of the distance the current study suggests the bug spreads.

Novel coronavirus attacks and destroys T cells, just like HIV - The immune system has many components that work together in protecting the body from foreign invaders. One of the most important types of immune cells is T lymphocytes or T cells, a type of white blood cell that acts as the core of adaptive immunity, the system that modifies the immune response to specific pathogens. Now, a team from the United States and China revealed evidence that the coronavirus disease, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), attacks the immune system’s T lymphocytes. The worrying findings highlight the destructive power of the novel coronavirus, which can destroy the immune system, leaving the patient unable to fight off the infection. The novel coronavirus Coronaviruses have been causing problems in humans for a long time. Though many versions of the virus are known to trigger only mild symptoms such as common colds. However, three recent types of coronavirus have caused deadly diseases – the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China in 2002, the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and the current global pandemic, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which first emerged in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, in China December 2019. The impact of the previous coronavirus outbreaks in 2002 and 2012 has been mild compared with the mayhem unleashed by the SARS-CoV-2. Within only a few months, the novel coronavirus has prompted most countries to go into lockdown, dwindling economies, and overwhelming health care systems with the more than 2 million people infected. Meanwhile, scientists across the globe are racing to understand the SARS-CoV-2-in the hope of finding a treatment or cure. Now, the researchers’ surprise discovery has shed light on the potency of the novel coronavirus is killing powerful immune cells, which are supposed to kill the virus instead.

Coronavirus patients can suffer lasting bodily damage - Patients who survive COVID-19 can still suffer lasting bodily damage, including to the liver and heart, researchers are finding. Multiple studies of recovered patients from China, where the disease first emerged in November, showed impaired liver and heart function, according to the Los Angeles Times. “COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disorder,” Dr. Harlan Krumholtz, a cardiologist at Yale University, told the paper. “It can affect the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the endocrine system and the blood system.” Inflammation from the body’s immune response has been linked to strokes and heart attacks. Researchers also wonder if the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 might lie dormant in the body for years or even decades — and then spring back to life, in the same way, that the herpes virus that causes chickenpox can reemerge as shingles. Nearly 400,000 people across the globe have recovered from COVID-19. #160;

Coronavirus Ravages the Lungs. It Also Affects the Brain. – WSJ -- A patient in Japan had seizures. An airline worker ended up in a Detroit hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with a rare form of brain damage. Others reported auditory and visual hallucinations or losing their sense of smell and taste.What they share: presumed or confirmed coronavirus infections.As the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide reaches 2 million, clinicians are realizing the disease doesn’t just ravage the lungs and hurt the heart. It also can, in a significant proportion of cases, affect the nervous system in myriad little-understood ways.Through a growing number of papers, doctors around the globe are chronicling Covid-19’slesser-known neurological manifestations including brain inflammation, hallucinations, seizures, cognitive deficits and loss of smell and taste. It is unknown whether these are caused directly by the virus infiltrating the nervous system, or by the body’s immune response to infection.The hope is these reports could speed up diagnosis. Some patients say they were going out in public, potentially exposing others, due to lack of awareness of these symptoms. The reports could also open avenues of research that elucidate whether the virus gets into the brain, how long neurological symptoms might persist, and whether a full recovery can be expected. In late March, while keeping quarantine, The range of effects could take decades to play out. Some epidemiological studies and lab experiments with other viruses suggest severe infections could set in motion molecular events that might increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, many years later. The links are a matter of debate among neurologists and neuroscientists.Last Friday, Chinese doctors published a study of 214 hospitalized patients in Wuhan showing that more than a third had neurologic symptoms. The most common included dizziness, headaches, impaired consciousness, skeletal-muscle injury and loss of smell and taste. The paper—published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the largest to date on the disease’s impact on normal nervous-system function—also documented rare, but more serious, effects including seizures and stroke, which occurs when a blood clot hits the brain.

Doctors Fear Coronavirus Survivors May Have Lasting Damage To Multiple Organs - Doctors treating coronavirus patients have begun to worry that survivors may sustain lasting damage to several organs - not just the lungs, according to the Los Angeles Times.  For the sickest patients, infection with the new coronavirus is proving to be a full-body assault, causing damage well beyond the lungs. And even after patients who become severely ill have recovered and cleared the virus, physicians have begun seeing evidence of the infection’s lingering effects.In a study posted this week, scientists in China examined the blood test results of 34 COVID-19 patients over the course of their hospitalization. In those who survived mild and severe disease alike, the researchers found that many of the biological measures had “failed to return to normal.” -Los Angeles TimesOne alarming observation have been test results indicating that recovered patients continue to have impaired liver function after patients had been cleared for discharge.Another concern from cardiologists are the immediate effects of COVID-19 on the heart, raising questions over how long the damage may last. As the Times notes, "In an early study of COVID-19 patients in China, heart failure was seen in nearly 12% of those who survived, including in some who had shown no signs of respiratory distress." Heart damage can easily occur when the lungs cannot deliver sufficient oxygen to the body, however when this happens without respiratory distress, "doctors have to wonder whether they have underestimated COVID-19's ability to wreak lasting havoc," according to the report. "COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disorder," according to Yale cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholtz, who added "It can affect the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the endocrine system and the blood system."

Whistleblower: COVID-19 Patients Need Oxygen Therapy Not Ventilator - Another whistleblower, a doctor treating Coronavirus patients himself has come out with a startling disclosure saying COVID-19 patients need Oxygen therapy not Ventilator and that we maybe treating the wrong disease. He says the patients symptoms resemble High Altitude Sickness and not Pneumonia.Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell is a doctor treating COVID-19 patients in New York City’s Maimonides Medical Center. Nine days ago Dr. Cameron opened an Intensive Care Unit to care for COVID-19 patients in New York City. Here is what he learned in his own words:“I am a physician who has been working at the bedside of COVID+ patients in NYC. I believe we are treating the wrong disease and that we must change what we are doing if we want to save as many lives as possible.”“In February, South Korean physicians reported that critical Covid-19 patients responded well to oxygen therapy without a ventilator. Patients are getting multiple organ damage from hypoxia. It’s not the pneumonia that’s the killer, it’s the cellular oxygen deprivation. And we are hurting these patients with ventilators.” The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue.

Drugs Touted by Trump for COVID-19 Increase Heart Risks, Studies Find - Scientists around the world are questioning the efficacy of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as potential treatments for COVID-19 after a recent research has shown that the drugs increase the risk of fatal heart complications, as The New York Times reported.A small study in Brazil published online by medRxiv had to be cut short after patients taking high-doses of chloroquine to treat their COVID-19 symptoms started to develop heart arrhythmias. "Within three days of starting the drugs, researchers started noticing heart arrhythmias in patients taking the higher dose. By the sixth day of treatment, 11 patients had died, leading to an immediate end to the high-dose segment of the trial," The New York Times reported.Hospitals in Sweden have been cautioned against using the drugs for COVID-19 and a consortium of American cardiology groups published guidelines for treating COVID-19 patients that urged doctors to be aware that the "antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin are currently gaining attention as potential treatments for COVID-19, and each have potential serious implications for people with existing cardiovascular disease," according to a statement from The American Heart Association.The evidence that the combination of the two drugs may increase risk of heart failure continues to mount after an analysis of international health records. "Worryingly, significant risks are identified for combination users of HCQ+AZM even in the short-term as proposed for COVID19 management, with a 15-20 percent increased risk of angina/chest pain and heart failure, and a two-fold risk of cardiovascular mortality in the first month of treatment," said the report, according to Science Translational Medicine.In France, where the initial buzz started about treating COVID-19 with a combination of antimalarial drugs and azithromycin, data released by the country's drug safety agency showed 43 cases of heart incidents linked to hydroxychloroquine, highlighting the risk of providing unproven treatments to COVID-19 patients, as The Hill reported. "This initial assessment shows that the risks, in particular cardiovascular, associated with these treatments are very present and potentially increased in COVID-19 patients. Almost all of the declarations come from health establishments," the agency said. "These drugs should only be used in hospitals, under close medical supervision."

Hundreds of young Americans have now been killed by the coronavirus, data shows - Two weeks after her husband died alone in an intensive care unit in Fort Myers, Fla., Nicole Buchanan is quarantined at the home they shared with their 12-year-old daughter, wrestling not only with grief but also with why and how the coronavirus could steal someone so young and healthy. “My husband didn’t have diabetes, he didn’t have asthma, he didn’t have high cholesterol. He didn’t have anything,” Buchanan said. “There’s just so much I’ll never know, that I’ll never get the answers to.” Conrad Buchanan, who died at 39 on March 26 after battling the infection for nearly two weeks, was among at least 759 people under age 50 across the United States who have perished amid the deepening pandemic, according to a Washington Post analysis of state data. These deaths underscore the tragic fact that while the novel coronavirus might be most threatening to the old and compromised, no one is immune. For the very young — people under the age of 20 — death is extremely rare in the current pandemic. But it happens: The Post identified nine such cases. The risk appears to rise with every decade of age. The Post found at least 45 deaths among people in their 20s, at least 190 deaths among people in their 30s, and at least 413 deaths among people in their 40s. Determining a precise number for each category is difficult because of the divergent ways states present age groups. But The Post found at least 102 other deaths that occurred among people younger than 50. The true number of deaths among young people is probably even higher. Not all states provide data on coronavirus deaths sorted by age group. Some, like New Jersey and Texas, provided figures after being approached by The Post, while others, like California, did not. As a result, the figures above do not include data from some states, including several with sizable outbreaks. What has profoundly struck Evans and his colleagues is the seeming randomness of the type of young people who are unable to fight off the disease. “A very fit 30-year-old triathlete is just as vulnerable as a chess-playing 45-year-old who gets no exercise,” he said. “We just don’t know who it is that this virus carries the master key to.”

What is behind the high percentage of COVID-19 deaths among African Americans? - As the number of daily US coronavirus deaths climbs to new heights, a wave of articles has appeared in the press presenting the deadly impact of the crisis as the product of racism. The press coverage focuses on Detroit, Michigan; New Orleans, Louisiana; Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where African American residents are suffering from infection and death rates that far surpass the black proportion of the total population. The figures are disturbing. In Louisiana, 70 percent of total coronavirus deaths are black, though they make up just one third of the population. In Chicago, 67 percent of those killed by the virus are black, though they comprise 32 percent of the population. In Michigan, blacks make up 40 percent of the deaths and one third of positive tests, despite comprising just 14 percent of the state’s population. In Milwaukee County, blacks constitute 26 percent of the population but account for 73 percent of the county’s deaths. The data shows the deadly impact of the virus on the entire working class, and especially its most vulnerable populations. Workers of all races who lack adequate healthcare, who are forced to work under dangerous conditions by their employers and who suffer underlying ailments like obesity, asthma, diabetes and heart and lung disease are most at risk of contracting the virus and dying once infected. In the four highly unequal urban areas listed above, blacks make up large portions of the impoverished working class. From this data, representatives of the ruling class, and particularly figures in and around the Democratic Party, are spinning a narrative that the catastrophic social impact of the disease is not due to the impact of decades of bipartisan social counterrevolution and Wall Street’s rapacious response to the pandemic on the working class, but due specifically to racial prejudice against all African-Americans. In an April 8 opinion piece titled “The Pandemic’s Missing Data,” the New York Times asserts that addressing the health crisis means recognizing “that American health institutions were designed to discriminate against blacks, whether poor or not.”

Four reasons the coronavirus is killing so many black Americans. - A Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country found that the novel coronavirus appears to be affecting — and killing — black Americans at a disproportionately high rate compared to white Americans.Majority black counties have three times the rate of infections and nearly six times the rate of deaths as majority white counties, according to the analysis.  “Why is it three or four times more so for the black community as opposed to other people?” President Trump asked at Tuesday’s White House task force briefing. “It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t like it, and we are going to have statistics over the next probably two to three days.”   But based on what we know about the inequities in many black communities, it does make sense. The Fix dug in to better understand why the coronavirus is apparently killing black Americans at a faster rate than other groups. Here are some of the main causes.

• 1. Higher rates of underlying health conditions, and less access to care. Data has long shown that black Americans have higher rates of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and lung disease. Medical professionals have said that coronavirus exacerbates the challenges that come with these illnesses, and that’s what Trump administration officials cited first when talking about the disparity in Tuesday’s briefing. “Health disparities have always existed for the African American community, but here again with the crisis now — it’s shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is,” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday.
• 2. Black Americans hold a lot of ‘essential’ jobs. Black people are more likely to work in jobs that put workers in close contact with others who might be in poor health and that make engaging in social distancing more difficult. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics compiled by the Center for American Progress, black people are overrepresented compared to the overall population in the food service industry, hotel industry and taxi drivers and chauffeurs.
• 3. Insufficient information: Keneshia Grant, a political science professor at Howard University, focuses on black voters’ relationships with state and local governments. She says poor information from government leaders has shaped black people’s experience with the coronavirus.“In short, I think the problem was not that black folks didn’t get i nformation from their governments. The problem was that we got bad and inconsistent information from our governments. We also got information that did not seem to represent people who looked like us,” she said.
• 4. Housing disparities Vedette Gavin, a principal investigator for the Conservation Law Foundation’s Healthy Neighborhood Study, told The Fix that racial disparities in housing put black lives at much greater risk for contracting an illness. A 2017 Princeton University study found that black children are more likely to suffer from asthma because they live in older buildings that harbor fecal matter and rodent infestations, and which are in segregated neighborhoods that are near busy highways that put harmful matter into the air.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released information stating that people with asthma may be at a greater risk of dying from coronavirus.“People of color are more likely to live in densely packed areas and in multi-generational housing situations, which create higher risk for spread of highly contagious disease like covid-19,” Adams said Friday.

Explosive Report: Wuhan Biolab Captured Bats From Caves Traced To COVID-19 Outbreak, Had US Funding - Recent findings regarding the origin of COVID-19 continue to support our January reporting that the disease may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology - which was experimenting with bat coronavirus found to be 96% genetically identical to COVID-19. On Saturday, the Daily Mail added an important piece to the puzzle; the institute was experimenting on mammals captured over 1,000 miles away in Yunnan - which is particularly notable because genetic analysis of COVID-19's genome has traced it to horseshoe bats found in Yunnan's caves. Also disturbing is that the lab had been operating in part on a $3.7 million grant from the US government.The Mail on Sunday has learned that scientists there experimented on bats as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments.Results of the research were published in November 2017 under the heading: 'Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.'The exercise was summarised as: 'Bats in a cave in Yunnan, China were captured and sampled for coronaviruses used for lab experiments. All sampling procedures were performed by veterinarians with approval from the Animal Ethics Committee of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' -Daily Mail"Bat samplings were conducted ten times from April 2011 to October 2015 at different seasons in their natural habitat at a single location (cave) in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. Bats were trapped and faecal swab samples were collected," the paper continues. In April, 2018, a similar study was published by the institute titled "fatal swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin," which reveals "Following a 2016 bat-related coronavirus outbreak on Chinese pig farms, bats were captured in a cave and samples were taken. Experimenters grew the virus in a lab and injected it into three-day-old piglets. Intestinal samples from sick piglets were ground up and fed to other piglets as well." According to the Mail, Senior Ministers can no longer rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory.

How a Premier U.S. Drug Company Became a Virus ‘Super Spreader’ NYT  — Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston on the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, touted the company’s new Alzheimer’s drug’s “remarkable journey.” Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the company’s big plans, Mr. Vounatsos said no.   But even as he spoke, the virus was already silently spreading among Biogen’s senior executives, who did not know they had been infected days earlier at the company’s annual leadership meeting. Biogen employees, most feeling healthy, boarded planes full of passengers. They drove home to their families. And they carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread. The Biogen meeting was one of the earliest examples in the United States of what epidemiologists call “superspreading events” of Covid-19, where a small gathering of people leads to a huge number of infections. Unlike the most infamous clusters of cases stemming from a nursing home outside Seattle or a 40th birthday party in Connecticut, the Biogen cluster happened at a meeting of top health care professionals whose job it was to fight disease, not spread it. “The smartest people in health care and drug development — and they were completely oblivious to the biggest thing that was about to shatter their world,” said John Carroll, editor of Endpoints News, which covers the biotech industry. The official count of those sickened — 99, including employees and their contacts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health — includes only those who live in that state. The true number across the United States is certainly higher. The first two cases in Indiana were Biogen executives. So was the first known case in Tennessee, and six of the earliest cases in North Carolina. All the people outside Massachusetts whom The New York Times has connected to the cluster have recovered. But it’s impossible to say for certain whether anyone became gravely ill or died from the spread out of the conference. In hindsight, many people have criticized Biogen’s decision to continue with its leadership meeting in late February, which was attended by vice presidents from European countries already hit by the virus. Others in the industry fault Biogen for being too tight-lipped about the outbreak.

Newly found coronavirus mutation could threaten vaccine race, study says - Scientists say they have discovered the first evidence of a “significant” mutation of the coronavirus — raising concerns that strides made toward a vaccine so far could become “futile,” according to a new study.  The researchers, who isolated a strain of the virus from a sample collected in India in January, said the mutation appeared to make the bug less able to bind to a receptor on human cells called ACE2, an enzyme found in the lungs.The discovery of this mutation “raises the alarm that the ongoing vaccine development may become futile in future epidemic if more mutations were identified,” the researchers said, according to Newsweek. The study, which was published on biorxiv.org on Saturday, has not yet been peer-reviewed.However, the team — led by the National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan in collaboration with Murdoch University in Australia — added that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, has a low mutation rate.“We confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 has a relatively low mutation rate but also proved that novel mutation with varied virulence and immune characteristics have already emerged,” they said, according to the outlet.But Jenna Macciochi, a lecturer in immunology at the University of Sussex who did not work on the study, told Newsweek that although the finding is important to monitor, she doesn’t believe vaccination efforts are hindered.“Small mutations would be expected with any virus. The emerged mutation in this report appears to reduce binding to ACE2 meaning less virulence which could potentially mean less ability to infect. But as this is an isolated report this doesn’t necessarily mean vaccine attempts are futile.”  Benjamin Neuman, professor and chair of biological sciences with Texas A&M University, also told the South China Morning Post that the constant mutation of the coronavirus only means the vaccine will need periodic tests and updates.

Coronavirus: US death toll overtakes Italy as world’s highest BBC - The United States has now overtaken Italy to have the highest death toll from coronavirus in the world. The latest data, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, shows more than 20,000 people in the US have now died. The grim milestone comes shortly after the US became the first nation to record more than 2,000 virus deaths in a single day. The governor of New York Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday the state's death toll appeared to be stabilising. Announcing a 24-hour figure of 783 new deaths, he noted the last several days had seen around the same number. "That is not an all-time high, and you can see that the number is somewhat stabilising but it is stabilising at a horrific rate," Mr Cuomo said. "These are just incredible numbers depicting incredible loss and pain." New York state has become the epicentre of the outbreak in the US, recording more than 180,000 of the country's nearly 530,000 cases. As of Saturday, every single US state has declared a disaster in response to the outbreak. 

Over 1 in 100 New York residents have now tested positive for coronavirus - The Washington Post -- The coronavirus outbreak in New York state, now larger in scale than in any other country in the world, also appears to be the most highly concentrated, state statistics show.As of Monday, over 1 in 100 state residents, or 1 percent, have now tested positive for the disease — far higher than in even the hardest-hit nations like Spain, where that figure is only a third of a percent.There are 195,031 confirmed coronavirus cases in New York, per the count state officials released Monday. With a 2019 estimated population of 19.45 million, that equates to an infection rate of just over 1 percent for the state of New York. “Why New York? Why are we seeing this level of infection? … It’s very simple: It’s about density,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said at a news conference Monday morning. “The dense environments are its feeding grounds.” At the early coronavirus cluster in New Rochelle, he said, one or two infected people attended gatherings of hundreds, and the virus “spread like wildfire.”New York’s less dense counties — some of which have more cows than people, Cuomo said — have very few hospitalizations. Ninety-four percent of patients hospitalized are in New York City and Rockland and Westchester Counties (which includes New Rochelle) and Long Island.The state’s figures are led by New York City, whose five boroughs had 104,410 cases as of Sunday spread across a 2018 Census-estimated population of 8.4 million. That’s an infection rate of 1.2 percent.In Europe, the only place where the virus disaster rivals what is now happening in the United States, no country appears to have such a high concentration of cases. In Spain, the infection rate has reached 0.36 percent of the country’s 2018 population. Switzerland’s figure is at 0.3 percent, Belgium’s 0.27 percent and Italy’s 0.26 percent.

Coronavirus live updates: U.S. cases nearing 600,000, covid-19 deaths approaching 25,000 as Trump claims 'total' authority over lifting restrictions - As world leaders consider how to restart a crashing global economy, President Trump incorrectly claimed that he is the final arbiter on when the United States will reopen. “The authority is total,” Trump said during a sometimes hostile news conference — a comment that astounded legal scholars. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) on Tuesday said there would be a “constitutional crisis” if Trump tried to exert federal power over the states. Here are some significant developments:

• Nearly 600,000 people have been infected by the virus in the United States, where the confirmed death toll is nearing 25,000.
• The International Monetary Fund said the pandemic is causing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• More than 2,100 U.S. cities are now bracing for budget shortfalls, with many planning cuts and layoffs, according to a new survey.
• India extended the world’s largest lockdown until May 3, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the nation that the measures were helping to save lives.
• In France, President Emmanuel Macron said a nationwide lockdown will remain in place until May 11, at which point restrictions will be partially lifted.

Another 778 New Yorkers have died from the novel coronavirus, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at his daily briefing Tuesday, bringing the total number of deaths in the state to 10,834. For the last week, the daily death count has hovered between 700 and 800 people. “It’s basically flat at a devastating level of suffering and grief,” Cuomo (D) said.The rate of hospitalizations and intubations are down, but the governor noted that just 20 percent of patients who must be placed on a ventilator are able to survive without the machine breathing for them. Cuomo said models from the U.S. government and academic institutions projected much higher death and infection rates, a sign that the “extraordinary” physical distancing measures enacted weeks ago are working. “We changed the curve,” the governor said. “We are changing the curve every day.” But Cuomo warned of complacency and urged New Yorkers to continue to act responsibly. He talked about the importance that widespread testing will play in reopening the economy, but he said that no state yet has the capacity to roll it out.

NYC Adds to Death Toll; California Maps Reopening: Virus Update - New York City added more than 3,700 people to its virus death toll to account for victims who died in recent weeks without seeking hospital care. The additional deaths pushed the city’s total to more than 10,000. Freddi Goldstein, press secretary to Mayor Bill de Blasio, said they include at-home deaths of people suspected of having Covid-19, based on reported symptoms including cough, fever and shortness of breath. California Governor Gavin Newsom outlined his plan to lift restrictions in the most-populous U.S. state, saying a reopening depends on meeting a series of benchmarks that would remake daily life for 40 million residents. “There’s no light switch here,” Newsom said at a briefing, declining to estimate timing on a reopening. “It’s more like a dimmer,” toggling back and forth between more and fewer rules. To consider modifying stay-at-home orders, California will need to meet criteria including the ability to do widespread testing and contact tracing, making sure hospitals can meet demand, and having businesses and schools support physical distancing. Even then, public outings will look quite different, with restaurants likely having fewer tables and face coverings common, Newsom said. Mass gatherings will be “negligible at best” at least through the summer.U.S. coronavirus cases rose 4.6% to 598,670 Tuesday, according to data from John’s Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. That was below the average daily increase of 6.8% over the past week, suggesting the U.S. outbreak continues to ease. New York, the epicenter in the U.S., reported a 3.7% increase. That’s down from 10% on April 1. New Jersey cases rose 6.6%.South Dakota reported the highest growth rate, with cases increasing 14%. Louisiana reported 129 new deaths, pushing its total count above 1,000. “Today’s death count is the largest we have reported in a single day,” Governor John Bel Edwards said in a statement. “It is incumbent upon our people to follow the stay at home order.”

N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count - New York City, already a world epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, sharply increased its death toll by more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it.The new figures, released by the city’s Health Department, drove up the number of people killed in New York City to more than 10,000, and appeared to increase the overall United States death count by 17 percent to more than 26,000. The numbers brought into clearer focus the staggering toll the virus has already taken on the largest city in the United States, where deserted streets are haunted by the near-constant howl of ambulance sirens. Far more people have died in New York City, on a per-capita basis, than in Italy — the hardest-hit country in Europe. And in a city reeling from the overt danger posed by the virus, top health officials said they had identified another grim reality: The outbreak is likely to have also led indirectly to a spike in deaths of New Yorkers who may never have been infected.Three thousand more people died in New York City between March 11 and April 13 than would have been expected during the same time period in an ordinary year, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the commissioner of the city Health Department, said in an interview. While these so-called excess deaths were not explicitly linked to the virus, they might not have happened had the outbreak not occurred, in part because it overwhelmed the normal health care system. “This is yet another part of the impact of Covid,” she said, adding that more study was needed. Similar analysis is commonly done after heat waves and was performed in the wake of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.“What New Yorkers are interested in, and what the country is interested in, is that we have an accurate and complete count,” Dr. Barbot added. “It’s part of the healing process that we’re going to have to go through.”The revised death toll renewed focus on shortcomings in testing that have hamstrung city and state officials since the beginning of the outbreak. A limited number of tests have been available, and until now, only deaths where a person had tested positive were officially counted among those killed by the virus in New York.

NYC coronavirus deaths soar past 11,000 as confirmed cases rise - New York City passed yet another grim milepost as its coronavirus death toll surpassed 11,000 Thursday and confirmed cases neared 120,000, according to new official data. By Thursday afternoon the ferocious virus had claimed the lives of 11,477 New Yorkers — 578 more deaths than a day earlier, according to statistics released by the city’s Dept. of Health. Confirmed cases also grew from 111,424 Wednesday to 117,565 Thursday and nearly 31,000 people have been hospitalized for the coronavirus since the outbreak started early last month. “We should never underestimate this disease,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a Thursday morning press briefing, adding that New York is “far from out of the woods” despite signs that the pandemic is plateauing. The 11,477 deaths include 7,563 people who tested positive for the virus and another 3,914 who showed symptoms of the disease but never received tests. New York City started adding probable deaths to its official tally earlier this week. Queens is the epicenter of the city’s outbreak with with 36,220 confirmed cases, followed by 31,279 cases in Brooklyn, 25,638 in the Bronx, 15,539 in Manhattan and 8,822 in Staten Island. Men and people over age 75 are more likely to test positive for the disease, according to the city’s Health Dept.

New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown - Stuart Staniford - The above shows the daily count of new Covid cases in New York state (blue) and the seven day centered moving average (orange).  The black line marks when the Governor issued his "PAUSE" (shutdown) order.  It continues to appear that around 12-14 days after that order, cases peaked and are now in a slow decline.  The quality of this data is appalling - many people are not getting tested, the criteria to get a test vary widely depending on location within the state, and have changed over time in poorly documented ways.  The seeming day-to-day noise in the data is also much too large - a random process producing a count approaching 10000 should have tiny day-to-day fluctuations, so something is very wrong with the data collection - possibly the count is terminated at different times of day or something of that kind. One measure of the data quality is the fraction of new test results that are positive, shown here: It peaked at around 50% (ignoring whatever caused that outlier at 75%) and has now declined into the mid thirties.  That suggests that a little more testing is happening relative to the size of the epidemic, and tends to confirm the idea that the slight decline in new cases is real. There is no sign at all that we can exit lockdown any time soon.  To remove most of the lockdown measures, it would be good to have few cases (in the hundreds statewide), and be aggressively chasing them all down, testing all their contacts and confining anyone found positive or symptomatic.  That would imply a positive test ratio of 5% or less.We would appear to be months away from these kinds of exit criteria on present trends.  One possible new factor is the governor's order, taking effect yesterday, that everyone needs to wear masks anywhere social distancing may be imperfect.  We don't know how well this will work in New York, but it's at least possible it will cause another significant decline in the case volume.  We'll find out in 12-14 days.

Lessons Learned From Running ICUs in Disaster Zones - interview transcript - As New York City strains under COVID-19 cases and health care workers scramble for every bit of equipment they can get, hospitals are starting to look less like part of a wealthy country’s medical system and more like the makeshift clinics in disaster zones or the developing world. In those places, experts say, doctors need to think about care differently: managing resources to best serve all the patients who will need help over the duration of a crisis, even if it means not being able to save every person to walk through the door. Dr. Sean Runnels is an associate professor at University of Utah Health and a working anesthesiologist who manages the supply room for his department. The wave of coronavirus cases hasn’t really hit yet in Salt Lake City, but he’s been stocking up on as much equipment as he thinks will be needed for sedating patients if they need to go on ventilators. Already, Runnels says he’s noticed normal supply ordering patterns breaking down, as hospital administrators working from home try to prepare for a potential flood of COVID-19 patients.  What’s happening in cities overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases reminds him of the year he spent based in Guinea working for Mercy Ships, a nonprofit that deploys floating hospitals to African countries with little surgical capacity, and the subsequent two years he spent in Rwanda training clinicians. We talked about what American cities in the throes of the coronavirus epidemic could learn from places with far less developed hospital systems in times of crisis, and came away with three main points. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

A Nurse Bought Protective Supplies for Her Colleagues Using GoFundMe. The Hospital Suspended Her. —  Olga Matievskaya and her fellow intensive care nurses at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey were so desperate for gowns and masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus that they turned to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money. The donations flowed in — more than $12,000 — and Matievskaya used some of them to buy about 500 masks, 4,000 shoe covers and 150 jumpsuits. She and her colleagues at the hospital celebrated protecting themselves and their patients from the spread of the virus. But rather than thanking the staff, hospital administrators on Saturday suspended Matievskaya for distributing “unauthorized” protective gear. Across the country, front-line medical providers are being told to reuse or go without necessary supplies even when treating patients infected with COVID-19. That goes against the way they’ve been trained. Some doctors and nurses now say they are being instructed not to speak to journalists and disciplined for doing so or taking action to protect themselves. Matievskaya declined to comment. But four other Newark Beth Israel nurses spoke to ProPublica on the condition of anonymity about the dire shortage of gear. All four said their administration has failed to provide the supplies they need to protect themselves and patients. Two of them work in the intensive care unit, which houses the sickest patients. The other two work in other areas of the hospital. They said Matievskaya showed leadership to keep people safe where their hospital administration has not. “There was no information distributed” about not being allowed to purchase supplies for others on staff, one of the nurses told ProPublica.

Coronavirus wreaking havoc on four New Jersey psychiatric hospitals - The coronavirus has devastated New Jersey’s four psychiatric hospitals — with 240 cases and five fatalities, according to data released by state officials over the weekend.The virus has spread like wildfire at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital — a 400-bedroom facility with 93 employees and 27 patients that have tested positive for the virus. One patient has died. There are still 153 pending cases at the facility,reported nj.com.At the Garden State’s largest psychiatric hospital, Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County, 17 employees and 10 patients tested positive for coronavirus, officials said. The facility had 289 patients.At Parsippany’s Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris County — which had a total of 339 patients on Friday — 44 employees and 33 patients tested positive for COVID-19. Of those, four patients died, reported the Trentonian.At the Ann Klein Forensic Center in Trenton, 10 patients and six workers were COVID-19-positive. Anonymous Trent Pych employees launched a petition at change.org demanding the CEO allow non-essential employees to work remotely after they accused the administration of failing to contain the spread of the virus.“There should be an audit on what went wrong at TPH: was it power & control; slow reactivity; lack of PPE; lack of transparency to employees/patients; not properly following CDC guidelines; and/or lack of management emergency response skills,” says the petition.Letters sent to NJ Media revealed Ancora employees weren’t equipped with PPE and were discouraged from wearing masks “because it would scare patients,” reported nj.com. Greystone Park employees also said the lack of PPE made them “fearful for their lives,” reported nj.com. As of Sunday, over 60,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in New Jersey and 2,350 people died.

Courier With Coronavirus Samples Crashes On I-195 In Massachusetts - As the US scrambles to ramp up both testing capacity and the speed at which results are delivered, one courier in New England was perhaps taking this directive a little too seriously when he crashed on Interstate I-195 in Seekonk, Mass, near the Rhode Island border on Tuesday morning. However, in some long overdue good news, none of the test samples inside the car were damaged, according to CBSN Boston.   Massachusetts State Police sent a hazardous materials team to examine the samples and the team determined that they "were not compromised" and the container holding them was intact.The courier, who was driving a Honda Civic, bumped into a tractor-trailer on the westbound side of 1-95 at Exit 1 around 7:50 am. The contact caused the Honda to spin out and hit an ambulance carrying a 70-year-old patient. Fortunately, no one was hurt.“Initial observations of a liquid spill led first responders to suspect the samples may have spilled and a state hazardous materials response team responded to the scene,” State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said in a statement.“Further investigation by the hazmat team revealed that the spilled liquid was the Honda driver’s coffee, and that the container holding the samples was intact and undamaged, as were the samples inside.”The driver, a 49-year-old woman from Rhode Island, was taken to the   hospital as a precaution for potential exposure to the virus. Another courier was called and ended up delivering the samples to their destination.

Massachusetts Recruits 1,000 ‘Contact Tracers’ To Battle COVID-19 - Massachusetts is launching an effort to reach everyone in the state who may have the coronavirus and get them tested and into isolation or treatment if needed. The ambitious goal is to stop — not just slow — the destructive power of COVID-19 through the tedious, yet powerful public health tool called contact tracing.Contact tracing starts with a call to someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus, and then follow-up with everyone that person was in close contact with — family, friends, colleagues or others they got closer than 6 feet from for more than a brief encounter. Everyone on that list is interviewed about their contacts and symptoms.This is a routine, resource-intensive public health strategy that’s been successfully used in the U.S. and around the world to contain infectious disease outbreaks — from measles to smallpox to tuberculosis to Ebola and more.Local public health workers across the U.S. are already using this strategy with COVID-19 — a few cases at a time. Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told NPR that “very aggressive” contact tracing would be necessary before the country could start to return to any sort of pre-pandemic normalcy. In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker had already begun a statewide effort.“We need to get out ahead of this and do everything we possibly can here in Massachusetts, through and in the aftermath of the surge,” Baker said during a briefing about the project on April 3.The state is partnering with the Boston-based nonprofit Partners in Health, and has begun hiring and training some of the 1,000, or so, people who will call everyone who tests positive.Many of the thousands of Massachusetts residents who will receive calls won’t know that they may have been exposed to the virus. Callers will keep the name of the infected person private, although organizers acknowledge it may not be difficult for the call recipients to determine the source of their COVID-19 exposure. In an ideal scenario, everyone who’s been in close contact with someone who is positive would be tested, even if the person receiving the call does not have symptoms. But Massachusetts, like most states, still doesn’t have the capacity to do that. As of Sunday, at least 25,475 people had tested positive. There were 6,499 tests conducted daily, on average, in Massachusetts last week.’

Maine sees largest single-day spike as confirmed coronavirus cases hit 698 statewide — Another 65 cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed in Maine, the largest single-day increase the state has seen so far.There are now 698 cases spread across 15 of Maine’s counties, Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Nirav Shah said at a Monday press conference. That’s up from 633 cases on Sunday.Of those, 124 Maine residents have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, including 61 patients who are currently hospitalized throughout the state, Shah said. Of those 61 patients, 22 are in intensive care unit beds and nine are on ventilators.Meanwhile, 273 Mainers have fully recovered from the virus.The statewide death toll stands at 19, according to the Maine CDC. The latest deaths, involving a man in his 80s from York County and a woman in her 70s from Cumberland County, were confirmed Saturday. Of the 65 new cases confirmed on Monday, 48 are related to long term care facilities, Shah said. Thirteen of those patients are health care workers and 35 are residents of those facilities.  “As soon as we detect even the faintest light of an outbreak at a long term care facility, we recommend universal testing across all staff and residents,” Shah said. He added that many of the cases associated with long term care facilities are patients who do not have symptoms.

Nursing home deaths soar past 3,300 in alarming surge (AP) — More than 3,600 deaths nationwide have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks, according to the latest count by The Associated Press. Because the federal government has not been releasing a count of its own, the AP has kept its own running tally based on media reports and state health departments. The latest count of at least 3,621 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago. But the true toll among the 1 million mostly frail and elderly people who live in such facilities is likely much higher, experts say, because most state counts don’t include those who died without ever being tested for COVID-19. Outbreaks in just the past few weeks have included one at a nursing home in suburban Richmond, Virginia, that has killed 42 and infected more than 100, another at nursing home in central Indiana that has killed 24 and infected 16, and one at a veteran’s home in Holyoke, Mass., that has killed 38, infected 88 and prompted a federal investigation. This comes weeks after an outbreak at a nursing home in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland that has so far claimed 43 lives. And those are just the outbreaks we know about. Most states provide only total numbers of nursing home deaths and don’t give details of specific outbreaks. Notable among them is the nation's leader, New York, which accounts for 1,880 nursing home deaths out of about 96,000 total residents but has so far declined to detail specific outbreaks, citing privacy concerns. Experts say nursing home deaths may keep climbing because of chronic staffing shortages that have been made worse by the coronavirus crisis, a shortage of protective supplies and a continued lack of available testing. And the deaths have skyrocketed despite steps taken by the federal government in mid-March to bar visitors, cease all group activities, and require that every worker be screened for fever or respiratory symptoms at every shift.  But an AP report earlier this month found that infections were continuing to find their way into nursing homes because such screenings didn't catch people who were infected but asymptomatic. Several large outbreaks were blamed on such spreaders, including infected health workers who worked at several different nursing home facilities.

COVID-19 infecting nursing homes across New England - Federal inspectors have visited 80 nursing home facilities in Massachusetts since March 23 and found that staff members were not properly washing their hands at one-third of the facilities, and personal protective equipment was not properly used at a quarter of the locations. Some 1.3 million people are residents of nursing homes nationwide. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that even before the coronavirus pandemic there were between one million to three million serious infections each year at longterm care facilities. There were an estimated 380,000 deaths annually. With the addition of COVID-19 victims, this figure is set to grow substantially. Massachusetts has more than 37,000 people living in nursing homes. Data provided by the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services largely corresponds to the national figures. Over the past three years, 234 of 377 Massachusetts nursing homes were cited at least once for failing to meet infection-control standards. This figure is for nursing homes only and does not include other types of longterm care facilities that are subject to different inspections. According to the April 8 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, there were 1,236 confirmed cases of the coronavirus among residents and staff at 140 longterm care facilities across the state. These figures likely greatly undercount the actual number of cases because testing remains widely unavailable. Multiple nursing homes and assisted living facilities around western Massachusetts are reporting cases of COVID-19. In Agawam, 57 residents of Heritage Hall Nursing Home have tested positive for COVID-19. The Christopher Heights of Belchertown facility for assisted living is reporting four residents and one employee with COVID-19. JGS Lifecare in Longmeadow reports that it has 29 cases of COVID-19 and has placed those residents in an isolation unit. The situation is so critical in the state that the Department of Public Health has called in the Massachusetts National Guard to help administer tests for the virus at nursing homes. In the eight days prior to April 9, guardsmen and women tested nearly 2,600 nursing home residents at more than 140 facilities across the state. State officials are pressing ahead with a plan to designate nursing homes throughout the state as treatment centers for recovering COVID-19 patients, even as the first three homes agreeing to relocate residents report infection outbreaks. AdviniaCare in Willmington, where 77 out of 98 nursing home residents have tested positive, still plans to convert to a recovery center. David Ball, a spokesman for AdviniaCare’s Norwood-based parent company, Pointe Group Care, confirmed that seven residents who tested positive at the facility have died, all of whom were receiving end-of-life care before they were tested.

Coronavirus: At least 40 dead in Ohio nursing homes, but many counties won’t release information -  Columbus Dispatch - Nursing home residents across Ohio have been hit hard by the coronavirus, with at least 40 deaths linked to the pandemic, including at least three in Franklin County. But the overall total isn’t known, and neither are the locations of more outbreaks, because many local health departments and the Ohio Department of Health won’t release details requested by Gannett Ohio reporters — not specific names of patients, just locations and the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths in each location. On Friday, the Wayne County Health Department said all five coronavirus deaths in that northeastern Ohio county were connected to one nursing home, a statement rebutted by the administrator of Glendora Health Care Center in Wooster. Ten residents and 10 staff members at Glendora have tested positive for coronavirus, the health department said. “We have 20 cases (at Glendora),” Wayne County Health Commissioner Nicholas Cascarelli said in a phone interview on Friday. “Not all of those are confirmed because the definition for a case changed. Some of those could be presumptive. If a clinician deems they’re a probable COVID-19 case, they would be included in that number.” The lack of statewide information along with the inability to do widespread testing in nursing homes puts residents and staff members at risk and is frustrating some operators. They contend that not knowing how pervasive the virus has become within long-term care facilities is hampering their response.

2 new coronavirus deaths in Cleveland, 316 total cases — The Cleveland Department of Public Health (CDPH) was notified Monday of four new positive COVID-19 tests in Cleveland residents, bringing the total confirmed cases in the city to 316. A 50-year-old man and 60-year-old woman died from the virus, bringing the total number of deaths to five. The new cases include both males and females with ages ranging from their 40's to their 70's.CDPH is working to identify any close contacts of these residents who would require testing or monitoring for symptoms of COVID-19.As of Monday, there are more than 6,881 confirmed cases and 268 fatalities in the State of Ohio. There are more than 577,000 confirmed cases and 23,000 deaths in the United States.

Coronavirus Pandemic: Acton believes Ohio is in the peak - Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton said she believes Ohio is now in the peak and that the peak has so far stayed flat. There are 6,975 cases in the state, 274 deaths and 2,033 hospitalizations, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The state’s system for identifying COVID-19 cases now adds probable cases that will spot the new cases by a blood test that reveals antibodies or clinical evidence of the coronavirus in your body and there is no other likely diagnosis. There have been 65,112 people tested for coronavirus in Ohio. Of the cases in the state, 1,449 are healthcare workers.It is important to note the number of confirmed cases is not a true reflection of actual cases in the state because of the limited amount of testing available. The hope is that the number of cases will be more accurate because of the expansion of the testing standards.The state remains under an extended stay-at-home order until May 1. Gov. Mike DeWine held a 2 p.m. press conference to provide an update on the state’s response to coronavirus. The following announcements were made:

• Gov. Mike DeWine said some companies in Ohio are beginning to purchase rapid antibody tests to begin testing staff and customers. He said this is one piece to the puzzle in determining when employees can return to work. The state cautioned only to use FDA Emergency Use Authorization approved antibody tests.
• The Ohio National Guard will begin providing assistance to the medical staff at Pickaway Correctional Institution. A number of medical staff there are out sick. An inmate housed at the jail has died from COVID-19.
• Dr. Acton will issue an order requiring long-term care facilities to notify residents and families within 24 hours of a resident or staff member becoming infected.
• The in-person sale of liquor in the following counties will be restricted to only Ohioans: Ashtabula, Trumbull, Mahoning, Columbiana, Jefferson and Belmont. This comes after complaints of people coming from out of state to purchase liquor, DeWine said.
• DeWine has signed an executive order to provide nearly $5 million in emergency funding from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant to support Ohio’s 12 Feeding America foodbanks and the statewide hunger relief network. Of this, $1 million is earmarked for the Agricultural Clearance Program, where the Ohio Association of Foodbanks will purchase Ohio-made commodities, such as milk, to distribute to foodbanks across the state.

Mapping Ohio’s 8,414 coronavirus cases, Thursday’s updates and trends - cleveland.com - The 8,414 coronavirus cases to date in Ohio are spread across 87 of the state’s 88 counties, with 389 deaths, the Ohio Department of Health reported Thursday.The total was up from 7,791 cases in the same 87 counties on Wednesday, while the number of deaths increased from 361. The only county for which there has not been a reported case is Vinton in Southeast Ohio, Ohio’s smallest county with just 13,085 residents. For county-by-county details, see chart at the bottom of this story.Wednesday marked the seventh day of new reporting standards to comply with federal guidelines to now include cases identified from non-testing evidence, certain rapid tests and blood tests that can uncover earlier infections, officials said.This has resulted in 175 additional “probable” cases than would have been reported previously - 42 Friday, 21 Saturday, 23 Sunday, 8 Monday, 33 Tuesday, 36 Wednesday and 12 Thursday. That is just one variable that has played into tracking the numbers. Another is limited testing, which generally had been focused on the sickest and health care workers. The state this week has discussed increased testing at prisons, which accounted for 122 of the cases added on Wednesday. That number was not immediately available for Thursday but cases reported were up sharply in some counties with prisons.Overall, there were 623 new cases reported Thursday, after an increase of 511 on Wednesday. The number was below 400 in other recent days.By percent, the total was up 8% from Wednesday. The daily increase has been in the 4% to 8% range since April 7, much lower than in March when the daily increases were often above 20% and sometimes above 40%.Nearly half of all deaths have been to people age 80 and over (193 of 189, or 49.6%). Another 96 (24.7%) were in their 70s. Only two deaths have been reported for people under the age of 40.The deaths are spread across 49 counties, including highs of 42 in Cuyahoga County, 41 in Mahoning, 29 in Hamilton, 28 in Lucas and 24 in Portage. Among the 7,119 cases in which race is known, 64.2% are white, 24.3% black and the rest of other races or multi-race. Ohio’s population is 81.9% white and 13% black, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Coronavirus: Ohio's reopening process to begin May 1, DeWine says—  Gov. Mike DeWine said Ohio may start cautiously reopening parts of the state May 1 with mandates such as the use of masks, hand sanitizers and social distancing to protect workers and the public from a resurgence of the coronavirus infections. “We must get this right because the stakes are very high. If we don’t do it right, the consequences are horrendous,” DeWine said on Thursday.He added, “It’s going to be gradual. It’s going to be rolling it out one thing after another … We’re trying to do this in a very thoughtful way.”   The governor said there are variables that will influence how Ohio re-opens:

• Are the cases and hospital admissions staying level or increasing?
• Is there an increase in availability of personal protective equipment?
• Is there an increase in testing capacity?

A detailed plan is being developed, he said.   The Ohio Department of Health on Thursday announced 8,239 confirmed coronavirus cases, plus an additional 175 probable cases; 2,331 hospitalizations; 373 deaths, plus 16 deaths from probable COVID-19 disease. “The main thing is, no matter what anyone says, there is not enough tests and there is not enough PPE (personal protective equipment),” said Dr. Amy Acton, director of the Ohio Department of Health.  The Ohio Chamber of Commerce said in a written statement that it is “highly encouraged” that DeWine indicated when Ohio’s economy will get moving again. “We know the COVID-19 crisis is not over, and that health and safety protocols are going to remain a fact of life for the foreseeable future. But businesses are ready to get back to work, and knowing that May 1 is the target date for this happening will allow them sufficient time to prepare to reopen safely and successfully.”

Five Michigan grocery and retail workers die from COVID-19 -  The supermarket chain Kroger confirmed on Saturday afternoon that four of its employees in Michigan had passed away from the coronavirus. Ken DeLuca, President of the Michigan division of the company, which is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, reported that the employees worked at stores in Northville, Troy, Grosse Pointe, and Livonia, all in the Detroit metropolitan area. A fifth retail employee who worked for the supercenter chain Meijer was also reported on Saturday to have died from COVID-19, although the specific store location was not disclosed by the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based company. A Meijer spokesperson said, “Out of respect for the team members and their families, we will not share any additional details and ask that you respect their privacy during this difficult time.” Half of Meijer’s 242 stores are located in Michigan, with the other half in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin. In addition to the reported deaths, evidence is emerging that the pandemic is sweeping through the workforce of grocery and retail establishments, which have been kept open and identified as part of the critical infrastructure workforce in most states. A leaked memo sent to workers for the delivery service Shipt last week reported Meijer stores in Cedar Springs, Grandville and Ann Arbor, Michigan had employees who tested positive for COVID-19. An official announcement stated multiple employees had tested positive, but a spokesman only confirmed the Cedar Springs case, no other locations were disclosed.

1,602 deaths, 25,635 cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Michigan — There are now 1,602 deaths from COVID-19 in Michigan and 25,635 cases. That's up from 1,487 deaths and 24,638 cases on Sunday. The age breakdown for the deaths is below.

0-19 - 0%
20-29 - 1%
30-39 - 2%
40-49 - 5%
50-59 - 11%
60-69 - 19%
70-79 - 28%
80+ - 36%

View a live map of updated cases here from the state, 433 people have recovered from the virus, according to the state. Recovered is defined as the number of persons with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis who are alive 30 days post-onset (or referral date if onset is not available). On Sunday, the daily number of COVID-19 deaths and positive cases showed significant declines from the numbers reported the day before. There were 95 deaths reported on Sunday, April 12, which is down from 111 deaths reported on April 11. Additionally, there were just 645 positive cases reported on Sunday, which is significantly down from the 1,210 reported from April 11.

Michigan has highest U.S. coronavirus death rate, ranks low in testing - Michigan has the highest death rate from coronavirus in the nation, and has conducted among the fewest cases per capita of states hit hardest by the pandemic. With 95 new deaths reported Monday, Michigan has had 1,602 die from COVID-19. But as a percentage of confirmed cases, deaths equal 6 percent of all confirmed cases, the highest rate in the nation. Even New York, with more than 10,000 deaths, has a lower death rate because it has tested three times as many people on a per-capita basis. Overall, Michigan is third in the nation in terms of total deaths behind New York and New Jersey. That’s well ahead of states with higher populations, including California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida and Ohio. Only five states in the country have more deaths than Wayne County’s 760, which includes 395 in Detroit. Metro Detroit’s Oakland County (347) has more deaths than all but 13 states and Macomb County (240) more than all but 17 states. One of the reasons Michigan’s 6 percent is high is likely tied to its relative lack of testing. As of Sunday, the state had completed nearly 800 tests for every 100,000 people, a total of 79,437. Of the 10 states with high rates of infection and deaths, only California (just under 500 tests per 100,000) had fewer tests than Michigan.

Bodies piled in closet, slumped in chair at Detroit hospital - A Detroit hospital is so overwhelmed with dead coronavirus patients that it is stashing the bodies on top of each other in a closet — and even sitting one upright in a chair in a hotel-like room usually reserved for sleep studies, jarring photos show. “All I know is we ran out of beds to keep our patients on, so we couldn’t spare any for the bodies,” an emergency-room worker at Sinai-Grace Hospital – Detroit Medical Center told CNN, which obtained the snapshots, according to network reporter Marshall Cohen on Twitter on Monday. One photograph showed white body bags stacked on the floor and what look like large, open, metal and wood-planked bookshelves in a long closet, along with several blue string sacks tossed on them. “The blue bags shown in one of the photos are the personal effects of the deceased,” Cohen wrote. Another photo showed two white body bags lying across a gold quilted comforter on a double bed, with another full body bag sitting in the chair next to it. “At least one room, which is typically used for sleep studies, was used to store bodies because the morgue was full,” Cohen added. A hospital spokesman told CNN, “Surge plans are in place at our hospital to handle the increase in patient volumes to ensure we provide the safest and most appropriate care for our patients.”

COVID-19 deaths pass 2,000 in Michigan, 29,263 total cases | WPBN – The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state of Michigan is now 29,263 with total deaths at 2,093.The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported 1,204 new cases and 172 new deaths on Thursday. MDHHS released the following statement about today’s update of COVID-19 death statistics:  "Beginning Friday, April 10, MDHHS staff has been reviewing death certificate data maintained in the state’s Vital Records reporting systems on a weekly basis. As a part of this process, records that identify COVID-19 infection as a contributing factor to death are compared against all laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Michigan Disease Surveillance System (MDSS). If a death certificate is matched to a confirmed COVID-19 case and that record in the MDSS does not indicate a death, the MDSS record is updated to indicate the death and the appropriate local health department is notified."  The state also reported that 433 patients have recovered from COVID-19 in Michigan. According to health officials, the Vital Records reporting system added 30 deaths to the COVID-19 total for the state. Thursday's data includes 65 additional deaths identified through the methodology.In addition, Thursday's update includes:

• additional statistics
• the inclusion of the percentage of cumulative cases
• deceased cases by Arab ethnicity
• case fatality rate by county
• respiratory outbreaks in congregate settings by county
• Syndromic Surveillance System data of coronavirus-like symptoms from emergency departments.

The numbers for the whole state of Michigan can be found on the state's website, which updates around 3 p.m. daily.  For the latest coronavirus news in Michigan and around the world, go to our coronavirus page.

World famous Mayo Clinic cuts pay, furloughs employees amidst COVID-19 pandemic - The Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic, one of America’s leading hospital systems and Minnesota’s largest private employer, has announced pay cuts and furloughs for over 20,000 of its nearly 70,000 employees. Announcing the pay cuts, Mayo CEO Gianrico Farrugia cited the lack of revenue from elective surgical procedures, which have been delayed across the country to concentrate hospital resources on the spreading COVID-19 crisis. According to the Minnesota Hospital Association, the loss of revenue from elective surgeries will cost hospital systems in Minnesota over $3 billion over the next 3 months. The cuts expose the real attitude of the capitalist class to the medical professionals, nurses and health care workers who are on the front lines of the struggle to contain the pandemic and save lives, often at great personal risk. While these workers do express the heroism and self-sacrifice of millions of workers who instinctively respond to the crisis in the spirit of social solidarity, the current media praise for the “coronavirus heroes” masks the callous indifference of the corporate elite, which considers them expendable.  As with every other social need, the safety and protection of these workers, not to mention their jobs and income, take a back seat to the drive for profit. Other hospital systems across the nation have responded in a similar manner to the drain on profits caused by the pandemic and the shutdown of much of the economy.  To date, 117 hospitals and hospital chains have imposed cuts of various sorts.

• Detroit Medical Center announced that it is furloughing 480 employees who are not involved in COVID-19 treatment.
• Trinity Health, based in Livonia, Michigan plans to furlough 2,500 employees.
• Allina Health and St. Francis Medical Center in Minnesota are requiring all nonpatient care staff to take a furlough, giving employees the option of using paid time off.
• Ephraim McDowell Health, based in Danville, Kentucky, announced that it will furlough 20 percent of its 1,700 employees.
• Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina announced plans last month to cut hours for 3,900 of its 30,000 employees and impose an undisclosed number of furloughs.

Major hospital systems have also mounted attacks on health care workers who expose to the public the desperate and unsafe conditions in the hospitals. Nurses and other workers have been terminated or punished with disciplinary action for protesting against the lack of personal protective equipment.

April 15 Update: US COVID-19 Test Results: More Needed --Test-and-trace is a key criterion in starting to reopen the country.   My current guess is test-and-trace will require around 300,000 tests per day at first since the US is far behind the curve.  Some scientists believe we need around 800,000 tests per day. Note: The Financial Times reports that Germany is doing more than 50,000 tests per day (with about one-fourth of the US population). That would be 200,000 in the US.  I rounded up to 300,000 per day since the US is so behind on testing. But there are recommendations that Germany needs 200,000 tests per day to do test-and-trace.  (800,000 adjusted for population).This is just test results reported daily.There were 161,135 test results reported over the last 24 hours. This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 18.7% (red line).  The US probably needs enough tests to push  the percentage below 5% (probably much lower based on testing in New Zealand). All experts agree: We need many more tests!

COVID-19 deaths break US record as virus spreads through every state - On Tuesday, 2,349 people succumbed to COVID-19 in the United States, in the highest daily death toll in the US—or any other country. But with the US media promoting the narrative that the pandemic was showing “glimmers of hope” and “hopeful signs,” this staggering toll did not even make the evening news. With Wyoming reporting its first COVID-19 death Monday, every state in the country now has a recorded death from the virus. The state of New York reported 778 deaths Tuesday, New Jersey 362, Michigan 166, Massachusetts 113 and Louisiana 129. The state of New York has reported 202,208 cases, approximately one third of all US cases. Its death toll stands at a harrowing 10,834. However, this figure does not take into account that New York City has added 3,700 additional people to its list of those who have presumably died from COVID-19 at hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, but were never tested. The New York City health department released figures that now place the number of deaths in the city alone at over 10,000. The pandemic has led to a rise in collateral deaths, or deaths not directly related to COVID-19, but to the inability of the health system and first responders to focus attention on the basic health needs of the population due to a lack of resources. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said last week, “The driver of this huge uptick in deaths at home is COVID-19. And some people are dying directly of it, and some people are dying indirectly of it, but it is the tragic 'X' factor here.” Massachusetts has climbed into the third position as the number of new cases has grown. Per capita, it is just behind the state of Louisiana, which recorded 129 deaths today to surpass the 1,000 mark. Governor Charlie Baker said that Massachusetts is bracing for a surge in cases expected in mid-to-late April, with an anticipated 2,500 new cases per day. The state of Michigan, with over 27,000 cases, has a case fatality rate of 6.5 percent and over 1,768 deaths. Yesterday, the state reported 166 new deaths. In a gruesomely emblematic scene, photos taken by emergency room staff show bodies in white bags piled in closets and vacant spaces, and strewn on the floor because the morgue was too full to take more corpses. Yet, a hospital spokesman told a CNN reporter, “Surge plans are in place at our hospital to handle the increase in inpatient volumes to ensure we provide the safest and most appropriate care for our patients.”

Coronavirus updates in Louisiana: 21,016 COVID-19 cases across the state; 884 deaths reported --Over the weekend, Louisiana surpassed the 20,000 mark for coronavirus cases. The Louisiana Department of Health reported Monday 21,016 cases across the state. According to the most recent update, 884 Louisianians have died of COVID-19. More than 400 of those deaths were reported in Orleans and Jefferson parishes.Orleans and Jefferson parishes -- where the COVID-19 outbreak began in Louisiana -- are now reporting more than 10,700 of the state's COVID-19 cases. New Orleans has 5,651 cases while Jefferson Parish has 5,088 cases as of the latest update Monday.Other parishes seeing high numbers include East Baton Rouge, Caddo and St. Tammany parishes. Tensas Parish was the last of the state's 64 parishes to report a coronavirus case. Louisiana health officials said 2,134 COVID-19 patients remain in hospitals. Of that number, 461 patients are on ventilators.More than 108,000 COVID-19 tests have been completed in the state.One of the main concerns by Louisiana officials has been the outbreak overwhelming the state's hospital systems, including the fear that health care workers might run out of ventilators. In the New Orleans area, where the ventilator shortage was a possibility at the beginning of the month, there has been a boost to availability.Gov. John Bel Edwards has said improvements in ventilator capacity is due to more of the ventilators coming into the state and health care workers improving the process in which they treat COVID-19 patients, including those who may need ventilators.

COVID-19 exposes the precarious state of rural health care in the South - The COVID-19 coronavirus has arrived in the rural South. Harrison County in central Kentucky is the epicenter of the outbreak in that state; at least six people there have been infected, and more than 150 are self-quarantined. And the main hospital in rural Southwest Georgia, Phoebe Putney in Albany, saw seven of its patients test positive for the virus just last weekend. If the novel strain of the coronavirus continues to hit rural Southern communities, as many doctors expect, it could be catastrophic — not only for the health of individuals, but for the long-term physical and economic health of their communities. Rural communities are, as has been well-documented, older and poorer overall than their urban and suburban counterparts. The South's rural areas are no exception; in fact, they have higher poverty rates, higher mortality rates, and lower life expectancies than other rural regions of the country. People living in the rural South are more likely to be uninsured than people living in rural communities in any other region, and also more likely to be living in poverty. These crises are especially pronounced in Black and Hispanic communities, including those in the South’s historic Black Belt. All of this creates a less-than-ideal set of conditions in which to prepare for a pandemic. "It is becoming absolutely dire," said Maggie Elehwany, the government affairs and policy vice president for the National Association of Rural Hospitals. "I cannot believe how rapidly things are deteriorating in rural America, from workforce shortages to cash flow issues." Many rural hospitals in the South are designated as critical access hospitals by Medicare. This usually means they are more than 35 miles away from the next-nearest hospital and under law cannot have more than 25 inpatient beds. That requirement has been waived in response to the current pandemic. But it's hard for hospitals to expand their capabilities so quickly, especially when every other part of day-to-day life — childcare, schooling, a spouse's job — has been upended. Doctors in communities that have not yet been hit are preparing to weather the storm they know is coming.

The South May See the Largest Share of Coronavirus Misery - Pew - It looks increasingly likely the South will endure more death and economic loss from COVID-19 than any other region in the country — and not just because Southern governors were slow to shut down businesses and order people to stay at home. Southern poverty rates are high, social welfare programs spotty and health care infrastructure threadbare. Last year, 120 rural U.S. hospitals closed their doors; 75 of them were in the South. And emerging data from some cities and states shows that black people — more than half of whom live in the South — are contracting and dying from the virus at a disproportionately high rate. Because of poverty and limited access to health care, African Americans more often have underlying health conditions — such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity and asthma — that increase the risk of death from COVID-19. In addition, African Americans more often work in essential frontline jobs that make social distancing impossible. “The South is expected to be hit hard, because African Americans are expected to be hit hard,” said Dr. Harry Heiman, a professor at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health. “There’s no getting around that.” Still, he and other advocates for low-income people say it’s not too late for elected leaders in the South to enact policies that could substantially improve the region’s chances for recovery. Medicaid expansion, which would provide health insurance to hundreds of thousands of low-income people with the federal government paying 90% of the cost, is the best way for Southern states to boost their budgets, according to a study by researchers at Harvard University published last month in response to the coronavirus crisis. “There is no moment in recent memory more critical than now to bolster Medicaid,” they wrote. “Covering more people in Medicaid is a rapid way to bring needed resources into the health care system and infuse federal dollars into state economies on the verge of a major downturn.” At a news conference earlier this month in Montgomery, Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama urged state leaders to expand Medicaid now with the promise that more federal money would be coming soon to pay the state’s 10% share. In the meantime, federal stimulus money could be used to pay part of the costs, he suggested.

Florida nurse, 33, found dead after being exposed to coronavirus - A 33-year-old Florida nurse was found dead at home after her husband says she was exposed to the coronavirus without wearing proper protective gear, according to a report.Danielle DiCenso, a traveling nurse, began to experience symptoms of the virus after she worked a shift two weeks ago without a proper face mask at Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, her husbandtold news station WPLG.“She showed up for work one day and they didn’t have a mask for her,” her husband, David DiCenso, told the outlet.Danielle took a COVID-19 test but her results came back inconclusive and she began self-isolating in her family’s living room, news station WTCJ reported.“It was a rough four- or five-day struggle between that,” her husband said. “Her fever spiked, it came on in waves.”But on Thursday, he found the lifeless body of his wife, who had no underlying health issues, the reports said.“Just by looking at her, I knew that she wasn’t her lively self,” David told WPLG. “She looked so peaceful. She looked like she just went in her sleep.”He said he’s “very mad” that what he believes was a lack of protective equipment contributed to his wife’s death.“I know for a fact that my wife would still be here right now if she was given the proper protective equipment,” he told WTCJ. “I’m very upset,” he told WTCJ. “My 4-year-old son’s not gonna have a mother.”

COVID-19 May Be Silently Spreading Across Rural Counties, University of Texas Researchers Believe  - Looking at a map of Texas coronavirus cases, there might be a tendency to assume that large swaths of the state, most of them rural and conservative, have mostly been spared from the outbreak.   The big clusters of illness, after all—the ones immediately threatening to overwhelm hospitals and turn grocery shopping into a life or death choice—are in cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Ninety-three Texas counties officially remain, at least per confirmed tests, coronavirus-free, and 28 others have reported only a single case.  That thinking influenced officials like Governor Greg Abbott, who finally issued a stay-at-home order last week after Texas reported 3,266 confirmed cases and the number of cases was increasing by the hundreds across multiple major metropolitan areas. Abbott had argued that he was protecting the economies and livelihoods of counties without coronavirus cases from shutdown until the data indicated it was necessary. But a new study from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin casts serious doubt on the wisdom of a wait-and-see approach to containment, and underscores how severe the problem could be in rural counties. The study’s authors suggest that U.S. counties with only a few cases or none at all may still have “sustained community transmission” of the virus.  Using a model developed during the Zika outbreak, the study relied on recent virus data from counties across the country. The implication for states like Texas—where testing is limited, medical supplies scarce, and many counties have few or no confirmed coronavirus cases—is alarming. Out of Texas’s 254 counties, 161 have reported COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday. While dozens of counties have reported only a few cases, researchers argue that people living in those areas may still be facing a significant risk. In counties with no cases, researchers conclude that the chance of an “undetected outbreak,” in which there is sustained community transmission, stands at 9 percent. In counties with a single case, like Hansford and Gaines, the chance that an outbreak has already begun jumps to 51 percent, they conclude. In counties with three known cases, such as Milam and Grimes, the chance that an outbreak is unfolding rises to 79 percent.

Texas Anti-Vaxxers Fear Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines More Than the Virus Itself - Friday, just after Governor Greg Abbott declared a statewide emergency in response to the coronavirus, Sarah posted a worried plea on a local anti-vaccine Facebook group. She worried that the declaration gives the government the right to “force vaccinations” on unwilling Texans.  “If they fast-track some vaccine for coronavirus, how are all of us going to defend ourselves?” she asked. “I’ll let them vaccinate my daughter over my dead body.”    Other members of the group, Tarrant County Crunchy Mamas, chimed in.   “Hide in the floors like they hid the Jews from the Nazis,” one suggested. “Hide them in our gun safe (yes, it’s a big safe and yes, we love our guns),” said another.    Though a COVID-19 vaccine is likely still more than a year away, according to experts, concerns over mandatory vaccinations have spread throughout the anti-vaxxer community in Texas, which is one of the largest in the nation. In recent years, prominent voices in the anti-vaxxer movement have settled in and around Austin, and a vocal Facebook group formed a political action committee, Texans for Vaccine Choice. This school year, nearly 73,000, or 1.35 percent, of Texas students opted out of getting at least one required vaccine for nonmedical reasons, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That number does not include home schooled children.    The anti-vaccine community, at large, believes that vaccines are a tool of government control that make big pharmaceutical companies rich and have side effects that can cause lasting damage. Sarah, a Benbrook mom who asked that her last name be omitted over fears her family will be targeted by people who support vaccines, said she’s more scared that she’ll be forced to vaccinate her two-year-old daughter than she is of the virus itself. 

Laredo Spent $500,000 to Buy Coronavirus Tests. Health Officials Say They’re Unreliable.  When thousands of rapid COVID-19 tests were delivered to the South Texas city of Laredo late last month, it looked as if a visiting dignitary had arrived. With lights flashing and sirens blaring, Webb County sheriff’s deputies escorted a red tractor-trailer carrying the tests to a local emergency room, whose owner had purchased them from a Chinese manufacturer. Longtime Laredo Congressman Henry Cuellar, who helped facilitate the arrival of the tests, smiled broadly as he carried boxes of them inside the clinic. Believing the tests would detect an active infection, Laredo leaders hustled to set up a drive-through testing site to welcome anxious residents the following morning. But the promise of the 20,000 tests would soon become a bitter example of what can go wrong when local governments and private medical firms try to buy supplies on the open market from unknown manufacturers, as policies from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shift and anxiety increases over a lack of test kits from official sources. This story is part of a collaboration between ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Learn more As they tried to validate the tests to ensure their accuracy, city health workers in Laredo quickly determined that they were unreliable and unusable. And even if they had passed the city’s testing, it’s unclear how helpful they would have been for the city at that early point in its battle against the coronavirus. They were antibody tests, which seek evidence that someone’s immune response has encountered the virus, not diagnostic tests that detect active infection. Within a week, investigators from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would seize the 20,000 tests, as Laredo police and federal authorities tried to determine the validity of the tests’ FDA status. “We’re very disappointed, because we thought we had secured a supply,” Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz said. “It set us back, but we can’t give up. Plan B is acquiring (tests) wherever we can find them.”

S.D. became a covid-19 hot spot after governor resisted issuing stay-at-home order -  As governors across the country fell into line in recent weeks, South Dakota’s top elected leader stood firm: There would be no statewide order to stay home. Such edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.” And besides, the first-term Republican told reporters at a briefing this month, “South Dakota is not New York City.” But now South Dakota is home to one of the largest single coronavirus clusters anywhere in the United States, with more than 300 workers at a giant ­pork-processing plant falling ill. With the case numbers continuing to spike, the company was forced to announce the indefinite closure of the facility Sunday, threatening the U.S. food supply. “A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today,” said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, whose city is at the center of South Dakota’s outbreak and who has had to improvise with voluntary recommendations in the absence of statewide action. But the governor continued to resist. Instead, she used a media briefing Monday to announce trials of a drug that President Trump has repeatedly touted as a potential breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus, despite a lack of scientific evidence.  Trump has been eager to get the economy on its feet again by the beginning of May after record rises in unemployment claims and dramatic falls in the stock market. Yet as South Dakota’s experience shows, no part of the country is immune to being ravaged by the virus. And rescinding orders that people stay at home — or declining to issue them, as in the case of South Dakota and four other states — offers plenty of peril. Reopening the country by May is “not even remotely achievable,” said TenHaken, who, like Trump and Noem, is a Republican. “We’re in the early innings of this thing in Sioux Falls.” Already, the experience has been harrowing: As of early April, the city had relatively few cases. But over the course of last week, the numbers surged as the virus ripped through the city’s Smithfield Foods production plant, a colossus that employs 3,700 people — many of them immigrants — and churns out 18 million servings of pork product per day. On Monday alone, 57 more workers were confirmed to have positive diagnoses, bringing the total well above 300 — and making it one of the country’s largest clusters. Other major clusters include Cook County Jail in Chicago and the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier.

Coronavirus cases in DC, Maryland and Virginia double to 20,000 in one week - The number of coronavirus cases in Washington, D.C, Maryland and Virginia has doubled to 20,000 cases in a week, according to information reported by their health departments Thursday evening. The death toll in the two states and D.C. has reached 750 and has continued to increase each day. And the crisis is also hitting the local economies. An additional 177,450 people filed for unemployment benefits in the three jurisdictions last week, pushing the total jobless claims to more than 390,000 people in the four weeks since social distancing measures shut down most businesses, according to The Washington Post. The one-week spike comes as governors across the country come under pressure to reopen their economies. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who chairs the National Governors Association, said Thursday this week “would be the worst possible time” to lift coronavirus restrictions. “Here in the Washington-Baltimore corridor we’re still heading up that curve ... it would really be the worst possible time to put our people out there and endanger them,” Hogan said on NBC's “Today.” Dozens protested in Richmond on Thursday, pressuring Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to publicly release plans to reopen the economy. The chair of Virginia’s Republican Party attacked Northam’s decision to extend business closures until May 8 in a Thursday news release and demanded the governor “begin the process of reopening Virginia now.”

US coronavirus deaths hits record one-day total of 4,591 - Thursday marked a new record for coronavirus deaths in the U.S., with 4,591 people dying from the virus in just 24 hours. The prior record was 2,569 deaths in the U.S. on Wednesday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.The number of new coronavirus cases on Thursday was approximately the same as Wednesday, with 31,451 new confirmed infections across the country, according to the outlet. There have been more than 671,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. since the outbreak began in China late last year. There have been more than 33,000 deaths. Around the world, there have been more than 2.15 million cases.The spike came on the same day that President Trump unveiled guidancefor a phased reopening of parts of the U.S. economy that largely leaves final decisions to governors across the country.The guidance recommends that states see a downward trajectory in the number of confirmed cases and flu-like symptoms before moving to lift the stay-at-home orders and other restrictions in states nationwide intended to stem the spread of the virus. Multiple regional coalitions formed this week as state officials confer with one another on the best course for lifting advisories, including in the Northeast, along the West Coast and in a group of seven Midwestern states.

April 16 Update: US COVID-19 Test Results - Test-and-trace is a key criterion in starting to reopen the country.   My current guess is test-and-trace will require around 300,000 tests per day at first since the US is far behind the curve.  Some scientists believe we need around 800,000 tests per day. Note: The Financial Times reports that Germany is doing more than 50,000 tests per day (with about one-fourth of the US population). That would be 200,000 in the US.  I rounded up to 300,000 per day since the US is so behind on testing. But there are recommendations that Germany needs 200,000 tests per day to do test-and-trace.  (800,000 adjusted for population).This is just test results reported daily.There were 158,309 test results reported over the last 24 hours. This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 19% (red line).  The US probably needs enough tests to push  the percentage below 5% (probably much lower based on testing in New Zealand). All experts agree: We need many more tests!

Coronavirus dashboard for April 16: if new infections have passed peak, what pace of decline can we expect? -- Here is the update through yesterday (April 15). Significant new items are in italics In the US, the only significant development yesterday was that deaths rose to yet another new daily high, while infections continued to be below last week’s peak. Since I want to look ahead, I turned to three countries in Europe all of which have seen their peaks: Spain, Germany, and Italy. Here’s what each of them look like, in order:

• Spain - in the 3 weeks since peak, cases have declined by about 50% total from 10,000 per day to 5,000 per day (or 17%/week):
• Germany - in the 2 weeks since peak, cases have declined by about 60% total from 8,000 per day to 3,200 per day (or 30%/week): 
• Italy - in the nearly 4 weeks since peak, cases have declined by about 55%, also from about 8,000 per day to 3,400 per day (or 14%/week)

Of the three countries, Germany has been doing an excellent job of testing, tracing, and isolating, so I do not expect the US to follow that trajectory. On the other hand, in the 6 days since its apparent peak, on a three day rolling bases new cases in the US has declined about -19% from peak. So, conservatively we can hope for at least 15% declines weekly from peak, or about a 60% decline to roughly 13,000 cases per day by the first week of May. That will be my next forward-looking marker. Now, let’s look at yesterday’s numbers.

• Number: up +29,979 to 639,664 (vs. 35,219 peak on April 10)
• ***Rate of increase: day/day: 5% (vs. 6% for the past week, and 5% on April 12)

The number of new infections has declined from a recorded peak last week. Hopefully the increase in the past two days is just temporary noise. Number of deaths and infections and rate of increase of testing (from COVID Tracking Project)

• ***Number of deaths: Total 28,160 increase of +2,492 day/day (new daily high)
• Rate: increase of 10% day/day vs. average of 10% in past week
• Number of tests: 161,135, up +14,521 day/day (vs. 163,769 peak on April 9)
• Ratio of positive tests to total: 5.3:1 (vs. 5.8:1 peak on March 28)

US States and population in total lockdown, business lockdown, and partial restrictions - no changes in past 24 hours.  US States with “test, trace, and quarantine” programs

• East Coast consortium: 7 States: CT, DE, MA, MD, NJ, NY, PA, RI
• West Coast consortium: 3 States: CA, OR, WA
• Also under development: 1 State: UT
• Midwest consortium*: 3 States: MI, MN, WI

Here’s how we stand (meaningful new developments in italics):

• About 95% of the total US population remains under total lockdown.
• In States with no lockdowns, a meat-packing plant in South Dakota has emerged as the new national hotspot.
• The number of daily new infections appears to have plateaued in the past week, and is slightly lower, while deaths made another new high. Per my introductory section above, I am looking for a decline of roughly 15%/week in new infections if the peak has indeed been reached, so long as the lockdowns stay in place.
• The number of daily tests has improved a little bit from about 140-150,000. We likely are continuing to miss a large percent of new infections. My personal suspicion is that the actual number of total infections in the US is between 2-5x the official number.
• The Trump Administration has taken no steps - and realistically will never take steps -towards a nationwide “test, trace, and quarantine” plan that will be needed to lift lockdowns, or to assist States to do so, and is using a haphazard, secret, and likely corrupt method of distributing vital medical equipment.
• In the absence of federal action, 14 States are either coordinating in making purchases of the necessary equipment, and/or to develop their own “test, trace, and quarantine” plan, but specifics in how to accomplish that have not emerged.
• Some private companies are developing technologies or equipment to be used in a “test, trace, and quarantine” regimen. Abbott Labs has premiered a test which it says can be administered 1,000,000x/day.

Anxiety Medication Prescriptions up 34% Since Coronavirus Lockdowns -More Americans are turning to pharmaceuticals to help them cope with crippling anxiety during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from Express Scripts. The report, America's State of Mind, found that Americans filled 21 percent more prescriptions for antidepressant, anti-anxiety and anti-insomnia medications from mid-February to mid-March when the COVID-19 social distancing protocols went into effect in the U.S. The largest increase was for anti-anxiety prescriptions, which rose 34.1 percent during that month, with an increase of 18 percent in the week leading up to March 15, according to the report.The global pandemic was declared on March 12. Shelter-at-home orders went into effect shortly after that."It's hard to imagine we don't have a lot of our fellow Americans under incredible stress right now, either from getting sick or being afraid of being sick or losing their jobs," Dr. Glen Stettin, senior vice president and chief innovation officer at Express Scripts, told Newsweek. "It's a stressful time and you can see it in the kinds of medications that have been increasing in terms of the use of medication."The numbers are startling since they reverse a trend, an analysis of the report noted. For the last five years, use of those anxiety medications known as benzodiazepines, which includes Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan and Valium, declined 12.1 percent. Anti-insomnia medications had declined roughly 11 percent from 2015 to 2019.Doctors have shifted away from prescribing these medications, which are more prone to abuse, in favor of therapy, according to Stettin, as CNN reported."We were doing our five-year update to look at what was happening with the utilization of these medicines," Stettin said to Newsweek. "Antidepressant use continued to increase but the anxiety and insomnia medication declined. All of a sudden, when the pandemic got declared, the use of the drugs combined increased by over 20 percent."The recent increase in prescriptions being filled was nearly twice as high for women, whose prescriptions jumped almost 40 percent, compared with men, who saw a 22.7 percent rise, according to the study, as CNNreported.

Nurses suspended for refusing to treat patients without N95 masks - Nurse Mike Gulick was meticulous about not bringing the novel coronavirus home to his wife and their 2-year-old daughter. He’d stop at a hotel after work just to take a shower. He’d wash his clothes in Lysol disinfectant. They did a tremendous amount of handwashing. But at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, Gulick and his colleagues worried that caring for infected patients without first being able to don an N95 respirator mask was risky. The N95 mask filters out 95 percent of all airborne particles, including ones too tiny to be blocked by regular masks. But administrators at his hospital said they weren’t necessary and didn’t provide them, he said. His wife, also a nurse, not only wore an N95 mask, but covered it with a second air-purifying respirator while she cared for COVID-19 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center across town in Los Angeles. Then, last week, a nurse on Gulick’s ward tested positive for the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19. The next day doctors doing rounds on their ward asked the nurses why they weren’t wearing N95 masks, Gulick said, and told them they should have better protection. For Gulick, that was it. He and a handful of nurses told their managers they wouldn’t enter COVID-19 patient rooms without N95 masks. The hospital suspended them, according to the National Nurses Union, which represents them. Ten nurses are now being paid but are not allowed to return to work pending an investigation from human resources, the union said. They are among hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care workers across the country who say they’ve been asked to work without adequate protection. Some have taken part in protests or lodged formal complaints. Others are buying — or even making — their own supplies.

Navy's Mercy Hospital Ship Off L.A. Now Battling Serious COVID-19 Outbreak Among Crew --It was supposed to help relieve local California hospitals in the fight against coronavirus, but now it may have become a dangerous source of spreading the disease.The emergency response ship USNS Mercy, docked since last month in the Port of Los Angeles, has been hit with a significant outbreak on board, with seven total crew members testing positive for COVID-19, the Navy said. All of the infected have now been removed from the ship and put into isolation in an especially worrisome situation given the ship is geared toward housing and caring for vulnerable non-coronavirus patients to take the strain off of area hospitals.   People recently having contact with the newly positive crew members have also been put in isolation off the ship and are being monitored. In total the Mercy has 1,000 military personnel, assisted by a small civilian staff.  The Navy says the rise in infections aboard the Mercy will not stop its mission to receive medical patients: “The ship is following protocols and taking every precaution to ensure the health and safety of all crew members and patients on board,” a statement said. “This will not affect the ability for Mercy to receive patients at this time.” It must be remembered that an entire nuclear aircraft carrier and its crew of nearly 5,000 was put out of commission off Guam last month amid a growing number of infections. The Theodore Roosevelt now has at least 585 sailors that tested COVID-19 positive, including the death of one sailor.

Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free - (Reuters) - Sweeping testing of the entire crew of the coronavirus-stricken U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt may have revealed a clue about the pandemic: The majority of the positive cases so far are among sailors who are asymptomatic, officials say. The possibility that the coronavirus spreads in a mostly stealthy mode among a population of largely young, healthy people showing no symptoms could have major implications for U.S. policy-makers, who are considering how and when to reopen the economy. It also renews questions about the extent to which U.S. testing of just the people suspected of being infected is actually capturing the spread of the virus in the United States and around the world. The Navy’s testing of the entire 4,800-member crew of the aircraft carrier - which is about 94% complete - was an extraordinary move in a headline-grabbing case that has already led to the firing of the carrier’s captain and the resignation of the Navy’s top civilian official. Roughly 60 percent of the over 600 sailors who tested positive so far have not shown symptoms of COVID-19, the potentially lethal respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, the Navy says. The service did not speculate about how many might later develop symptoms or remain asymptomatic. “With regard to COVID-19, we’re learning that stealth in the form of asymptomatic transmission is this adversary’s secret power,” said Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the Navy. The figure is higher than the 25% to 50% range offered on April 5 by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, speaking in a television interview on Thursday, said the number of asymptomatic cases from the carrier was “disconcerting.” “It has revealed a new dynamic of this virus: that it can be carried by normal, healthy people who have no idea whatsoever that they are carrying it,” Esper told NBC’s “Today” morning show. Such data present challenges to the Pentagon, which is deployed around the world, sometimes in confined environments like submarines, ships and aircraft.

What does this economist think of epidemiologists?  Tyler Cowen - reasons, and I do understand this is only one corner of the discipline.  I don’t mean this as a complaint dump, because most of economics suffers from similar problems, but here are a few limitations I see in the mainline epidemiological models put before us:

• 1. They do not sufficiently grasp that long-run elasticities of adjustment are more powerful than short-run elasticites.  In the short run you socially distance, but in the long run you learn which methods of social distance protect you the most.  Or you move from doing “half home delivery of food” to “full home delivery of food” once you get that extra credit card or learn the best sites.  In this regard the epidemiological models end up being too pessimistic, and it seems that “the natural disaster economist complaints about the epidemiologists” (yes there is such a thing) are largely correct on this count.  On this question economic models really do better, though not the models of everybody.
• 2. They do not sufficiently incorporate public choice considerations.  An epidemic path, for instance, may be politically infeasible, which leads to adjustments along the way, and very often those adjustments are stupid policy moves from impatient politicians.  This is not built into the models I am seeing, nor are such factors built into most economic macro models, even though there is a large independent branch of public choice research.  It is hard to integrate.  Still, it means that epidemiological models will be too optimistic, rather than too pessimistic as in #1.  Epidemiologists might protest that it is not the purpose of their science or models to incorporate politics, but these factors are relevant for prediction, and if you try to wash your hands of them (no pun intended) you will be wrong a lot.
• 3. The Lucas critique, namely that agents within a model, knowing the model, will change how the model itself operates.  Epidemiologists seemsuper-aware of this, much more than Keynesian macroeconomists are these days, though it seems to be more of a “I told you that you should listen to us” embodiment than trying to find an actual closed-loop solution for the model as a whole.  That is really hard, either in macroeconomics or epidemiology.  Still, on the predictive front without a good instantiation of the Lucas critique again a lot will go askew, as indeed it does in economics.
• 4. Selection bias from the failures coming first.  The early models were calibrated from Wuhan data, because what else could they do?  Then came northern Italy, which was also a mess.  It is the messes which are visible first, at least on average.  So some of the models may have been too pessimistic at first.  These days we have Germany, Australia, and a bunch of southern states that haven’t quite “blown up” as quickly as they should have.  If the early models had access to all of that data, presumably they would be more predictive of the entire situation today.  But it is no accident that the failures will be more visible early on.

Taleb: The Only Man Who Has A Clue – Ilargi  Today, I’m going to try to show you how and why we know that in the case of a pandemic like the one we’re in, surrounded by doubts and uncertainties, there are still a series of measures that we can and, more importantly, must take. But also, how these measures are hardly ever taken, and if they are, not in the correct fashion. This has to date led us into a ton of preventable misery and death. If only we would listen. And there’s still more we can do to prevent more mayhem, there is at every step of the process.  It took me a while to get this together. But in the end I wound up with the only COVID19 analysis that makes sense. It doesn’t leave much room for discussion, at least not in the steps needed to be taken in order to tame the virus (I despise the war analogies everyone uses, taming sounds much better). How to fill in those steps once they have -kind of- been taken is another matter. These people are useful for the knowledge they possess of past epidemics, not for predicting what will happen in the next one, certainly not if it’s caused by a virus which they -and we- simply don’t know enough about to build a reliable model. In that case, you need to step back and apply more basic principles. Lucky for us, those exist. Most people who read a site like the Automatic Earth, where finance is a main topic, will know who Nassim Nicholas Taleb is, for instance because he wrote The Black Swan before the 2008 financial crisis. Or because a hedge fund he advises recently announced a 6,000%+ gain in “virustime”. But Taleb is also, and more interesting for this essay, “distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering”.For much of his coverage of COVID19, Taleb has been co-operating with Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex System Institute, and Joseph Norman, a postdoctoral researcher at the same New England Complex System Institute. That means “real scientists”, just not from where you might expect. Which in turn means they can help the other guys get out of the ditch they’re in. First, here are a few bits from a piece the three wrote on January 26, to get you familiar with some of the ideas. These are ground rules for approaching a pandemic such as this one, but they are also ground rules for -any- other problems with too many unknown variables.This is crucial because it denotes that if you have a disease that is both contagious and deadly, you don’t -have to- first wait and (build a model to) see how deadly and contagious it is, as an epidemiologist is wont to do, you can act right off the bat. Of course the scientists at the WHO and various government know this basic stuff, but they still haven’t acted accordingly. On January 26 and after, the ground rules were ignored. So then you’re forced into the next basic steps. Still -mostly- not an epic disaster, but surely an unnecessary -and potentially deadly- risk. Taleb doesn’t take prisoners, and labels the WHO “criminally incompetent”. And I fully agree: they get paid billions a year to be the world’s ears and eyes in case a new disease pops up somewhere, and they have still let it happen. Here’s that first bit:

Coronavirus May Wane This Summer, but Don’t Expect the Pandemic to End -Will SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, fade away on its own this summer?After all, other viruses – including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes bronchiolitis in little children – are mostly seen in the winter.The National Academies' Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats recently addressed the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 will follow the same pattern. The group of experts corralled the research that's been done so far – much of it not yet peer-reviewed – to assess the evidence.While there is some reason to hope that things may get better as the weather warms up, there is plenty of reason for the U.S. to keep its guard up.  Although the U.S. is early in the course of the pandemic, there is evidence from other countries that SARS-CoV-2 spreads more rapidly in cold, dry weather.  One preprint study of 30 Chinese provinces showed that the number of COVID-19 cases went down by between 36% and 57% for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature. When temperatures held steady in the low 40s F, the number of cases went down between 11% and 22% with each 1% increase in relative humidity (how much water is in the air). A larger preprint study looking at 310 regions in 116 countries found that 11% more cases were reported when the temperature went down 9 degrees, the relative humidity went down 10% and when the wind speed went up. Laboratory research also suggest that the virus survives longer in cold conditions. One study showed that SARS-CoV-2 lasts for 14 days at 40 F in lab media but is gone after one day at 98.6 F. These and other studies suggest that warm, humid weather may slow the spread of this virus, although not all commentators agree.  COVID-19 is already spreading in many parts of the world where it's hot, including Australia and South America, demonstrating that high temperatures are not enough to stop the disease.The most important reason to be concerned about ongoing spread is the fact that this is a brand new virus for humans, so almost everyone is susceptible to being infected.In fact, weather actually appears to play a minor role in the rate at which this virus spreads. Other influences on infection rates include individual behaviors, cultural practices, geography, income and living conditions. Public health practices such as social distancing, the intensity of testing for infection, contact tracing, quarantine of people who are exposed and isolation of people who are actually infected also play a big role in how the coronavirus spreads. The news from other viral diseases is not encouraging either. The two most serious coronavirus diseases that are closely related to COVID-19, the first SARS outbreak and MERS, did not vary with the seasons after they emerged. In fact, MERS is still found year-round in the Middle East, where it is hot and dry. Pandemic influenza infections have emerged at different times of the year as well.

New Study Exposes More Evidence That Summer Won't Stop The Coronavirus -- One of the public's last great hopes as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases nears the 2 million mark is that the onset of summer in the northern hemisphere will help defeat the virus as warmer temperatures make life for the virus more hostile, hampering the virus's ability to spread.However, it's looking increasingly likely that the novel coronavirus is stronger than its predecessor, SARS, when it comes to resisting intense heat. One recent study of additional steps that could be taken to protect lab technicians handling samples of the virus found that samples of the virus can survive when exposed to temperatures as high as 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).That would seem to preclude the onset of summer as a potential 'miracle cure', while also suggesting that the outbreaks in Africa and South America might be worse than they appear, since the theories that high temperatures slow the virus's spread don't appear nearly as convincing. According to SCMP, the French scientists who conducted the experiment had to heat samples of the sample, strains of the virus mixed with various animal proteins (to mimic real-world conditions in the test tube), to nearly 90 degrees Celsius (210 degrees Fahrenheit) to completely kill the virus. The scientists had to bring the temperature to almost boiling point to kill the virus completely, according to their non-peer-reviewed paper released on bioRxiv.org on Saturday. The results have implications for the safety of lab technicians working with the virus.The team in France infected African green monkey kidney cells, a standard host material for viral activity tests, with a strain isolated from a patient in Berlin, Germany. The cells were loaded into tubes representing two different types of environments, one “clean” and the other “dirty” with animal proteins to simulate biological contamination in real-life samples, such as an oral swab. After the heating, the viral strains in the clean environment were thoroughly deactivated. Some strains in the dirty samples, however, survived.

Coronavirus Survivors Hope for Immunity — The Reality Is More Complicated - As the number of new Covid-19 cases each day begins to slow in parts of the U.S. and states consider rolling back social-distancing measures, a huge unknown remains: Who has become immune to the disease — and for how long? When the body’s immune system encounters a virus, it gets to work producing antibodies that can recognize a particular virus and attack it. And it’s commonly thought that once a person catches a virus, immunity makes it impossible to get sick from the same one again. But it’s more complicated than that. Immunity is a spectrum. Some viruses result in life-long protection, such as those that cause chickenpox and measles. On the other end of that spectrum, human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, doesn’t usually provide any protective shield. When it comes to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, little is known yet about the body’s immune response to an infection, said George Rutherford, the head of infectious disease and global epidemiology at the University of California San Francisco. “That’s something that’s going to take a while to figure out.” Understanding the level of viral immunity in survivors of Covid-19 will prove key in making decisions about how and when to lift restrictions. Tests that measure antibodies to the virus have been touted as a major part of efforts to restart the economy and get people back to work. New York state has approved an antibody test and plans to use it widely. Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious-disease expert, has suggested a future in which “certificates of immunity" would be required for returning workers. But all these ideas may be getting ahead of themselves. Researchers first need to answer two key questions: How long do antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 remain in the body, and for how long do they prevent reinfection, if at all? Rutherford said ideally, SARS-CoV-2 will be similar to viruses such as the one for rubeola that causes measles and triggers life-long immunity. In such a scenario, the virus eventually would stop spreading — what’s known as herd immunity. “This is the hope for Covid-19,” Rutherford said. But for now, that’s all it is: a hope. That’s because immunity is a particularly complicated question when it comes to coronaviruses, a class of viruses that includes SARS and MERS as well as seasonal coronaviruses that cause illnesses such as the common cold. They are named for the crown-like spiked proteins that allow them to attach to their cellular hosts. “There is no proof at this point that the development of an antibody response will be protective,” said David Walt, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “There is no evidence yet that people can’t be reinfected with the virus.”

Why daily death tolls have become unusually important in understanding the coronavirus pandemic - Nature - COVID-19 is different from the viral epidemics of the recent past in a few ways: it is more widespread than severe acute respiratory syndrome, more infectious than seasonal influenza and has killed more people than Ebola.And it is different in the way that epidemiologists are tracking its progress. Instead of relying principally on the number of infections, or the ratio of deaths to infections — known as the case fatality rate — researchers are looking at the daily deaths attributed to COVID-19 to monitor the impact of the disease and to guide responses.In part, that’s due to a lack of testing in many countries — and the virus’s ability to spread in people who don’t show symptoms — both of which make counting the number of infections very difficult. COVID-19 has also been more fatal than many recent epidemics, which makes its death toll relevant to understanding the pandemic more broadly.As of early April, more than a million coronavirus cases had been reported around the world. There have been more than 80,000 deaths reported so far, with Italy, the United States and Spain reporting the highest numbers. And the pandemic has yet to hit its stride in most low- and middle-income countries, where it could cause much more damage. “This is a virus with a considerable lethal potential,” says Sheila Bird, a biostatistician at the University of Cambridge, UK. COVID-19 is not deadly to most people: the World Health Organization estimates that it is fatal in about 3.4% of reported cases, and the risk of death varies by age group and a host of other factors. But the pandemic is now widespread enough that the reported number of deaths within a country, day by day or week by week, is a surer tracker of the disease’s progress and effectiveness of containment than are other measures. When the rate of new deaths per day starts to slow or reduces, it’s a good sign that the disease has peaked, and several countries are seeing early signs that this is happening (see ‘Counting Deaths’). The rates can also be used to predict health-care needs.

China's new coronavirus cases rise to near six-week high — China reported the highest number of new daily coronavirus cases in nearly six weeks, driven by a rise in infected travelers arriving from overseas and underscoring challenges Beijing faces in preventing a second wave of COVID-19. A total of 108 new coronavirus cases were reported Sunday, up from 99 a day earlier and marking the highest number of cases since 143 cases were reported on March 5. The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 82,160, while the death toll rose by two to 3,341. The National Health Commission said Monday that 98 of the new cases were imported involving people entering China from another country, a new record and up from 97 a day earlier. The number of asymptomatic cases fell to 61 from 63 a day earlier. Though the number of daily infections has dropped sharply from the height of the epidemic in February, China has seen the daily toll creep higher after hitting a trough on March 12 as the virus spread globally. Beijing is concerned that infected people entering the country could trigger a second wave and push the country back into a state of near-paralysis.

Over 100 South Koreans test positive for coronavirus after recovery - More than 100 South Koreans who fully recovered from coronavirus have tested positive for a second time, as the country eyes an easing of social-distancing rules, officials said. The killer virus has “reactivated” in a total 116 patients, with 48 of them in the nation’s coronavirus epicenter of Daegu, according to Yonhap News Agency.  Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the virus may have been reactivated after remaining dormant in the patients, as opposed to them being reinfected. The country reported last week there were 51 cases of patients testing positive after being cleared of the virus.   Jeong noted, however, there have been no cases of the relapsed patients spreading the virus to anyone else, Yonhap News reported.  Meanwhile, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said the government would soon be looking to lift some of the stay-at-home guidelines, which are in effect until at least April 19.  South Korea has confirmed more than 10,500 COVID-19 cases, with more than 7,447 patients being cleared of the virus, officials said.

Emergency Declared In Japanese Prefecture Hit By 2nd Wave Of Coronavirus Infections Japan's Hokkaido prefecture, which accounted for the country's highest number of coronavirus infections as the pandemic initially swept through Asia, has seen a sudden uptick in cases, causing government officials there to declare a state of emergency less than a month after lifting a similar order. The governor of Hokkaido, the country's northernmost main island and the largest prefecture by size, made the announcement Sunday following nearly a week of double-digit increases in cases in the prefecture, according to Kyodo news service. "We are facing a crisis of a second wave in the spread of (the coronavirus) infections," Gov. Naomichi Suzuki told reporters in the capital, Sapporo. The declaration, which falls under a law revised just last month in response to the pandemic, allows governors to issue stay-at-home directives to contain the spread of the virus. Hokkaido declared a three-week state of emergency in February that was lifted on March 19. The prefecture had begun to reopen schools and was even allowing carefully orchestrated public gatherings. But the latest order reverses all that, asking residents once again to refrain from nonessential trips outside their homes and closing prefectural primary and secondary schools until May 6.

Russia Sees Over 2,000 New COVID-19 Infections In Biggest Ever Single-Day Spike International health officials were previously scratching their heads as to how Russia, a vast country of nearly 150 million people, had maintained such low COVID-19 numbers in the early months of the global crisis. Health experts have maintained suspicion over the country's much smaller numbers when compared to Europe.Many had attributed the early low numbers to the quick decision to shut the lengthy border with China, but other had criticized lack of actual testing, including in one notable moment the mayor of Moscow, who in late March when national numbers were only at 495 confirmed cases, told President Vladimir Putin in a meeting "the real number of those who are sick is much greater" than official numbers indicated.That warning appears to be coming to fruition, as on Sunday Russia recorded it's single greatest one-day record jump in new cases.  "Russia confirmed 2,186 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, bringing the country’s official number of cases up to 15,770 and marking a one-day record in new cases. One hundred and thirty people have been killed by the virus," The Moscow Times reports. The vast majority of cases are centered in Moscow, which has been under a near total lockdown since March 30. Of the record Sunday spike in cases, 1,306 of these are in Moscow, home to 12 million people. Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, has currently reported 69 cases

Coronavirus: 'Sombre day' as UK deaths hit 10,000 - The UK has recorded 737 new coronavirus-related hospital deaths, taking the total number to 10,612. It comes after one of the government's senior scientific advisers said the UK was likely to be among the worst-affected European countries.Health Secretary Matt Hancock said "today marks a sombre day", but welcomed the efforts people had made to stay at home.The number of reported deaths does not include deaths outside of hospitals.Meanwhile, Boris Johnson thanked healthcare workers for saving his life after being discharged from hospital.Mr Hancock told the daily press briefing: "Today marks a sombre day in the impact of this disease as we join the list of countries who have seen more than 10,000 deaths related to coronavirus."The fact that over 10,000 people have now lost their lives to this invisible killer demonstrates just how serious this coronavirus is and why the national effort that everyone is engaged in is so important."The UK is the fifth country to surpass 10,000 deaths, joining the US, Spain, Italy and France. Earlier, Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the UK was likely to be "one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe". In comparison, he said, the "remarkable" scale of testing in Germany had been key to keeping the number of hospital admissions for coronavirus lower than in the UK. "Undoubtedly there are lessons to learn from that," he said. Responding to Sir Jeremy's comments, the health secretary said: "The future of this virus is unknowable as yet because it depends on the behaviour of millions of people and the great British public." Mr Hancock added that the government took advice from experts "very seriously".

Coronavirus latest news: UK death toll rises by 778 to 12,107 as government warns of 'tough times ahead' - Good evening, here is a roundup of today’s main events:

• An additional 778 people who tested positive for the coronavirus have died, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals in the UK to 12,107.
• Care home deaths related to the coronavirus increased tenfold in a week, according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.
• One in five deaths in England and Wales are linked to Covid-19, overtaking deaths caused by flu and pneumonia.
• The Government faces the biggest budget deficit since the Second World War as it ramps up spending and borrowing to battle the coronavirus and its economic effects.
• Boris Johnson is continuing his recovery at Chequers and is not involved in making decisions, taking phone calls or receiving official papers in his ministerial red boxes.
• EU governments have approved 2.7 billion euros from the bloc's budget to support the fight against coronavirus.
• At least 10,834 people have died in New York from the coronavirus, but state Governor Andrew Cuomo revealed today that hospitalisations from the virus are starting to decrease.
• Poland will gradually lift lockdown measures imposed to contain the coronavirus from April 19.
• More than 117 million children in 37 countries may miss out on receiving the measles vaccine as countries focus efforts on containing Covid-19, the World Health Organization has warned.

Figures show hundreds more coronavirus deaths in UK care homes - - Hundreds more people with COVID-19 have died in Britain than have been recorded in the government’s daily tally, official figures showed Tuesday — including a tide of deaths in nursing homes that staff say are being overlooked. The Office for National Statistics said 5,979 deaths that occurred in England up to April 3 involved COVID-19, 15% more than the 5,186 deaths announced by the National Health Service for the same period. As of Monday, the government had reported 11,329 deaths in the U.K. of people with the new coronavirus. Worldwide, more than 1.9 million infections have been reported and over 119,000 people have died. That total, updated daily, only includes people who died in hospitals. The higher figure, published weekly by the statistics office, includes deaths in all settings including nursing homes, and cases where coronavirus was suspected but not tested for. The statistics office said that up to April 3 just under 10% of deaths involving COVID-19 occurred outside hospitals. Care home operators and staff say that figure likely under-estimates the true toll in facilities that house some of the country’s oldest and most vulnerable people. The boss of one of Britain’s biggest nursing home operators said Tuesday that the number of coronavirus cases and deaths among elderly residents is much higher than has been officially reported. The government says outbreaks of COVID-19 have been reported in one in eight U.K. care homes. But David Behan, chairman of home operator HC-One, said cases of the new coronavirus had been reported in 232 of the firm’s homes — two-thirds of the total. He said 311 residents and one staff member have died with confirmed or suspected COVID-19.

Coronavirus: Older people being ‘airbrushed’ out of virus figures - BBC - Many older people are being "airbrushed" out of coronavirus figures in the UK, charities have warned.The official death toll has been criticised for only covering people who die in hospital - but not those in care homes or in their own houses.Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey told the BBC the daily figure was based on hospital deaths because "it's accurate and quick".Meanwhile, scientists will begin a review of the UK lockdown later.The evaluation will be passed to the government - but ministers have said it was unlikely restrictions would change.The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, which include every community death linked to Covid-19 in England and Wales, showed a total of 406 such deaths registered up to 3 April had occurred outside of hospitals.That would have added an extra 11% to the official UK figures, based solely on deaths in hospitals, that were being reported at that time.Of those extra deaths, 217 took place in care homes, 33 in hospices, 136 in private homes, three in other communal establishments and 17 elsewhere. Northern Ireland's chief medical officer has said details about the number of coronavirus-related deaths in care homes remain unclear, but it was reported last week that there were cases of Covid-19 in 20 care homes across the nation.

Elderly Left ‘In the Lurch’ by U.K. Response to Coronavirus –  The U.K. government is under pressure from the care industry for failing to protect the country’s elderly from the coronavirus and for under-reporting the number of deaths Covid-19 has caused. Older people, many of whom already have medical conditions, are among the most vulnerable to the virus. The risk is that once one resident in a care home catches the disease, it can spread throughout a facility. So far, though, the government has focused its attention on equipping National Health Service hospitals with critical care beds and protective equipment. Care home staff complain they lack the protective equipment they need, leaving the most vulnerable and the people who work with them exposed to the disease, while a shortage of tests has hampered efforts to track and contain the virus. Sunak said Health Secretary Matt Hancock will give an update on the government’s plans for social care on Wednesday. “The NHS has kind of left them in the lurch,” former Conservative government minister Ros Altmann told the BBC earlier. “They are left without protective equipment, they can’t find it, or testing even if they request it, it’s not always given to them.” Complicating the picture is the lack of data. Because the U.K. government doesn’t keep track of how many people in social care are dying from Covid-19, it almost certain to be under-reporting the overall death toll. When France and Belgium included fatalities in nursing homes for the first time, their counts surged. U.K. officials say they are seeking the data urgently, but collecting figures from thousands of care homes is a more time-consuming process than aggregating it from a few hundred hospital trusts long accustomed to reporting data to central government daily. Those in hospices and care homes may not have been tested for coronavirus and may also have other longstanding medical conditions, meaning they may not show up in the coronavirus statistics. “In these very dispersed systems, we just need to be absolutely clear that the cause of death that is attributed is correct,” Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England, said at Tuesday’s briefing.

Doctors, nurses, porters, volunteers: the UK health workers who have died from Covid-19 - The Guardian - We are launching a project to remember those who lost their lives working in hospitals, surgeries and care homes during the coronavirus outbreak. A number of NHS and private healthcare staff, from heart surgeons to nurses, porters and volunteers, have sadly lost their lives to the coronavirus in the UK.The government says there have been 27 verified deaths of NHS staff during the pandemic, but others have also died. The Guardian has recorded 50 deaths that have been reported in the news, although the true scale of those who lost their lives is likely to be higher, as not all deaths will be in the public domain.Many family members of those who have died have complained that those in the health profession are not being given adequate protective equipment as they deal with coronavirus cases.If you want to share any further names and stories with us, or feel there are some people we have missed, then please drop an email to sarah.marsh@theguardian.com. We hope to document, understand the causes behind and pay tribute to those who die working on the frontline of the pandemic. These are some of the first tragic cases. We will be adding to the cases in a database and hope to examine further these deaths.

Coronavirus: Body-bag stocks ‘in danger of running out’ -  Mortuary suppliers have told BBC News they have no stocks of standard body bags left for sale, blaming the shortage on stockpiling due to the coronavirus pandemic. New stocks from overseas cannot be sourced for many weeks, they say. The NHS says it currently has adequate stocks but health workers report having to wrap bodies in sheets. Public Health England said the virus that caused Covid-19 degraded quickly after a patient had died. And there was no specific need for body bags to be used to transport these corpses, although "there may be other practical reasons for their use". Barber Medical, which has the NHS contract for mortuary supplies, said availability of zipped mortuary bags was a real problem and they could not be sourced anywhere. The company has, however, increased the availability of polythene bags, known as body pouch bags, and urged any hospital or trust struggling with supplies to contact it. A major supplier to undertakers also told BBC News it could not get hold of body bags, because of stockpiling. NHS trusts and funeral directors were desperate for the bags and "horrified" by the official advice it was safe not to use them, it said. The bags it sells are made in China but it said it took six weeks to ship them to the UK and air freighting them was prohibitively expensive.

Germany set to consider relaxing coronavirus restrictions  - Top German scientists have said that the country could begin to reduce public restrictions after April 19. Chancellor Angela Merkel will take this into account when her government decides how to proceed. The top German scientific academy recommended Monday that the country could begin to reduce restrictions on public life in place to slow the spread of coronavirus. Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, said the government could begin to safely reopen some schools while still observing hygiene rules. Stores and restaurants could also be reopened, if social distancing regulations are strictly enforced. The academy also said the government should introduce requirements for citizens to wear face masks in public. "Every citizen should in the future have this type of protection for their mouth and nose and wear it each time social distancing measures can't be respected," said the academy's head Gerald Haug to German news outlet Der Spiegel. The academy also said that government offices should gradually reopen, but stressed that private and public travel and the vast majority of public events should only slowly and incrementally be re-introduced. The Leopoldina's scientists make their recommendations based on three factors: the slowing of new infections, hospitals bulking up their ability to handle additional COVID-19 cases and resuming normal operations, and citizens following the widely known safety measures such as social distancing and wearing masks.

LATEST: Number of new coronavirus cases in Italy drops below 3,000 - Italy reported fewer than 3,000 new cases of Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours, the slowest daily increase in weeks, as the number of people hospitalised with the new coronavirus continues to fall. Italy confirmed 2,972 new cases in the past day, the Civil Protection department announced on Tuesday evening, compared to 3,153 in the preceding 24 hours. The rate at which cases are increasing day on day is now at just 1.9 percent, its lowest since Italy's outbreak began. The country has now recorded a total of 162,488 cases since start of the outbreak, 21,067 of them fatal. Another 602 people died in the past 24 hours, an increase from 566 the day before. Yet while deaths remain high, the pressure on Italian hospitals continues to ease. The number of people in intensive care fell by another 74 to 3,186, while patients in non-intensive care dropped by 12 to 28,011. A total of 104,291 people are currently positive for the virus in Italy (+675 in the past 24 hours), while 37,130 have already recovered (+1,695). Two Italian regions reported no new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday: Basilicata and Molise, which has now recorded no new infections for two days in a row. Meanwhile Umbria reported just one new case in the past 24 hours.

Italy's coronavirus death toll rises by 525, new cases push higher (Reuters) - Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy increased by 525 on Thursday, down from 578 the day before, but the number of new cases accelerated sharply to 3,786 from a previous 2,667. The daily death toll was the lowest since Sunday, while the tally of new infections was the highest since Sunday. The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 rose to 22,170, the Civil Protection Agency said, the second highest in the world after that of the United States. The number of officially confirmed cases climbed to 168,941, the third highest global tally behind those of the United States and Spain. There were 2,936 people in intensive care on Thursday against 3,079 on Wednesday — a 13th consecutive daily decline. Of those originally infected, 40,164 were declared recovered against 38,092 a day earlier.

Most COVID-19 Cases Imported to Brazil Came from Italy, Study Finds - More than half of Brazil’s imported cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) came from Italy, according to a new study. The analysis is based on air traffic data between February and March, encompassing inbound traffic to Brazil from 29 countries where the novel coronavirus was known to be present. The study, published in the Journal of Travel Medicine, suggests that as of March 5th, 54.8% of Brazil’s imported COVID-19 cases were brought to the country from Italy. China, the early epicenter of the crisis, was responsible for just 9.3% of Brazil’s imported cases. Another 8.3% of imported cases came from France. The findings highlight the degree to which Europe has become an important transmission route for the disease. Co-author Ester C. Sabino, PhD, of the University of Sao Paolo Medical School, said Brazil’s experience with COVID-19 started with a large number of cases. "In contrast with China and other countries, where the outbreak began slowly with a small number of cases, it was started in Brazil by more than 300 people, most of whom came from Italy,” Sabino said, in a press release. “The virus spread very quickly as a result." As of April 9th, Brazil had reported more than 14,000 cases of COVID-19. Sabino and colleagues completed their analysis by estimating the proportion of infected travelers from each country and for each route based on airline data. They then cross-referenced their findings with the Brazilian Ministry of Health’s data, which showed that 14 of the first 29 patients diagnosed in Brazil had recently traveled from Italy. Most of the cases of Italian origin came through the city of Sao Paolo. In fact, one-quarter of all cases of people with COVID-19 traveling to Brazil were estimated to be travelers from Italy to Sao Paolo. “It was very clear that Sao Paulo would be the epicenter of the epidemic in Brazil because it was the final destination for the largest number of infected people coming mainly from Italy,” Sabino said.

Bolsonaro Says Trump 'Wonder Drug' Will Save 1000s Of Lives In Brazil - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro thanked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week for allowing raw materials to continue to flow into Brazil so they could maintain production of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-malaria drug, to treat patients of COVID-19, reported The Economic Times. "We have more good news. As an outcome of my direct conversation with Prime Minister of India, we will receive, by Saturday, raw materials to continue our production of HCQ so that we can treat patients of COVID-19 as well as of Lupus, Malaria, and Arthritis. I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the people of India for such timely help to the people of Brazil," Bolsonaro stated.  "An honorable gesture that can help save the lives of many Brazilians, and which we will never forget," Bolsonaro added. HCQ is an anti-malarial drug that has been commonly used to treat lupus, arthritis, and other disorders which has been touted by President Trump. While clinical studies of the drug are still pending, there is compelling anecdotal evidence of the drug's efficacy when combined with azithromycin (Z-Pac) and zinc sulfate has caused several countries to place them on their recommended treatment regimen for the virus. The Brazilian president said the drug's effectiveness against the virus "could go down in history as having saved thousands of lives in Brazil." This comes at a time when the South American country has recorded 18,176 confirmed cases and 957 deaths (as of Friday morning, April 10). Bolsonaro said, "doctors, researchers, and heads of state from other countries" have told him that the drug had been used to treat "dozens of patients" and "all of them were saved."Bolsonaro wrote a letter to Modi last weekend, indicating that Hindu and Christian religious officials are comparing HCQ to "holy medicine" that must be shared with South America: "Just as Lord Hanuman brought the holy medicine from the Himalayas to save the life of Lord Rama's brother Lakshmana, and Jesus healed those who were sick and restored the sight to Bartimeu, India and Brazil will overcome this global crisis by joining forces and sharing blessings for the sake of all peoples."

'You'll See Bodies In The Streets Of Africa' Warns Melinda Gates; Says Vaccine Is 'Ultimate Solution' To COVID-19 -- Melinda Gates says that COVID-19 is going to "be horrible in the developing world," and that we're going to see 'bodies in the streets of Africa' like what's happening in Ecuador."Look at Ecuador," said Gates, adding "They're putting bodies out on the street. You're going to see that in countries in Africa." During a Friday interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow, Gates said that when she saw how China had to enact mass quarantines in order to combat the virus, "my first thought was Africa," adding "how in the world are they going to deal with this?"Earlier in the interview, Gates said that vaccines will be the 'ultimate solution' to solving coronavirus - which she and her husband Bill have been heavily invested in for some time.Of course, not everyone is excited about the Gates' endeavors. These people wanted Corona to spread like crazy in Africa and then offer their 'help' via vaccine. There's a growing resentment against them, a lot of Africans don't want them there.— DMF aka Sarah (@ForumsMeghan) April 10, 2020Melinda Gates says the lack of testing kits in Africa is the reason our numbers are low but soon we’ll have bodies out in the streets. I’m sure Bill and his wife have rituals every night hoping Africa gets affected the most — Katlee (@JustKatlee) April 11, 2020After reading critical reports how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation really operates in India and Africa my blood just boiled watching this interview. Their vaccines caused epidemics in those communities. Polio infections rose in India.Even WHO was loathed to admit this fact. https://t.co/X7hMLuknj9— Hanief Haider (@haniefhaider) April 11, 2020

Harvard Researchers Say Some Social Distancing May Be Needed Into 2022 - People around the world might need to practice some level of social distancing intermittently through 2022 to stop Covid-19 from surging anew and overwhelming hospital systems, a group of Harvard disease researchers said Tuesday. Lifting social-distancing measures all at once could risk simply delaying the epidemic’s peak and potentially making it more severe, the scientists warned in an article published Tuesday in the journal Science.The course of the pandemic will depend on questions not yet answered: Will the virus’s spread change with the seasons? What immunity will people have after they’re infected? And does exposure to coronaviruses that cause mild illnesses confer any protection against the pathogen that causes Covid-19?Those questions are being weighed by government leaders who have seen economies around the globe come to a standstill because of the social-distancing measures. With millions of people out of work and staying home, pressure is growing to loosen restrictions in the U.S. and elsewhere. Doing so, experts have said, will depend on having in place measures to control the disease, such as widespread testing.The Harvard researchers used computer models to simulate how the pandemic might play out. One possibility is that strict social distancing followed by intensive public-health detective work could chase down and eradicate the virus. That’s what happened with SARS-CoV-1, which caused a 2003 outbreak. But with confirmed cases of the new pathogen approaching 2 million globally, that outcome is seen as increasingly unlikely, the researchers wrote. More likely is that the virus is here to stay like influenza, traveling the globe seasonally. In one model, 20 weeks of measures to limit spread were followed by an epidemic peak that was as great as an uncontrolled spread. “The social distancing was so effective that virtually no population immunity was built,” the researchers said of that scenario. If the virus is more transmissible in colder months, delaying the peak into the autumn could exacerbate the strain on health-care systems, they wrote. To avoid such outcomes, on-and-off social distancing measures might be needed until 2022, unless hospital capacity is increased, or effective vaccines or treatments are developed. The authors don’t endorse a particular path forward but said they sought “to identify likely trajectories of the epidemic under alternative approaches.”

Herd immunity is the only way the coronavirus pandemic will end — and it would require a vaccine. Here's how it works.As countries across the globe approach and pass the peaks of their first waves of coronavirus infections, officials and experts are racing to figure out how to protect people long-term. Individuals could gain immunity to the new coronavirus if they develop antibodies; that can happen through vaccination, or after they get infected and recover. If enough people become immune, that can confer "herd immunity" to an entire population. This protects even people who aren't immune, because so many others are immune that they prevent the virus from spreading within a community. Herd immunity would effectively end the coronavirus pandemic. That day would come with the mass distribution of a vaccine, but that process is expected to take at least 18 months. Earlier in the pandemic, some governments also considered allowing herd immunity to develop on its own, without a vaccine, by letting the virus spread through their populations. But in its wake, the coronavirus would have left millions of recovered people with antibodies — but a trail of deaths would have followed, too. Experts warned against this path. "You don't get herd immunity until you have a huge percent of your population that has had the disease," Melinda Gates, cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told Business Insider. She added: "We're still a long way from herd immunity. And you can't count on that, because a lot of people are going to die in the meantime if you let the experiment run and you just let the disease run its course in communities. Sure, we could get herd immunity, and we will get so much death." For a population to achieve herd immunity, a certain proportion has to be immune. That proportion depends on how infectious a virus is, a measure called R0 (pronounce "r-naught"). The R0 is the number of people the average person with a virus infects. But R0 isn't a fixed number. It can decrease if conditions change — specifically, if people stay too far apart for the virus to spread, or if so many individuals become immune that the virus can no longer spread from each person it infects. The goal of herd immunity — as with all public-health responses to a new virus — is to bring the R0 below 1, which puts the disease in decline until it dies out. But the higher a virus' R0, the more people need to be immune to make that happen.

Ebola: 11-month-old girl becomes second to die in Congo amid fears of new wave - After more than seven weeks without any recorded cases, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has now seen two deaths in recent days, with the latest victim being an 11-month-old girl, the World Health Organisation said on Sunday. The country had been due to mark the official end of the second-deadliest outbreak of the virus on record, but on Friday a 26-year-old electrician in the eastern city of Beni was found to have the disease. The 11-month-old girl had been treated at the same health centre as the electrician, Boubacar Diallo, deputy incident manager for the WHO’s Ebola response, told Reuters. Officials say it is not yet clear how the electrician contracted Ebola. He had no known contacts with other Ebola patients and was not a survivor of the virus who could have relapsed, the government said on Friday. Flare-ups or one-off transmissions are common towards the end of Ebola outbreaks, and a new case does not necessarily mean that the virus will spread out of control again. The Ebola virus causes fever, bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea and spreads among humans through bodily fluids. The current outbreak has killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018 in an area of the country where militia violence hobbled efforts to contain it. During this outbreak it has killed about two thirds of those infected. .

EPA Evades Public Comment Period, Allows Cancer-Causing Pesticide - In the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that soybean farmers in 25 states are allowed to spray Alite 27, a cancer-causing weedkiller known to drift 1,000 feet from where it was sprayed, according to The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.To approve new use for the herbicide, which has the chemical name isoxaflutole and is manufactured by German-chemical giant BASF, the EPA had to skirt around the usual public comment period for the decision. The registration for isoxaflutole was opened for public comment, but it was never listed in the federal register. Agencies almost always provide notice that they are considering a new rule in the federal register, according to to The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting."The press release caught everyone off guard, we were just waiting for the EPA to open the comment period, and we never saw it," said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, referring to an EPA press release, as the AP reported.The spray, which is already used on corn in 33 states, can be sprayed on crops that have been genetically engineered to resist the herbicide. Commodity farmers praised the decision and touted the weedkiller as an indispensable tool in their arsenal of supplies to push back against new "super weeds" that have grown resistant to several types of herbicides, including glyphosate, or RoundUp, the most commonly used herbicide in the U.S., as to The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting reported. "One of the biggest challenges growers face is resistant weeds, and the soybean market needed a new residual active ingredient to help fight against them," said Darren Unland, Technical Marketing Manager, BASF Agricultural Solutions, in a company press release. "Alite 27 herbicide will provide growers with another pre-emergent herbicide option to layer into their herbicide program for effective, season-long control." Comments like Unland's were the only ones that appeared in the public register. In fact, there were 54 comments in the public register and all of them were in praise of Alite 27, neglecting that it is a known carcinogen and that the drift of the herbicide is potentially harmful to nearby farms and farmers.  "Clearly no one from the public health community knew about this because no one commented," Donley said, as The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting noted. "Yet there was all these industry comments, all these positive comments. Someone was tipped off that this docket had been opened. One side was able to comment, the other wasn't."

A Second, Larger Wave of Locusts Invades East Africa Amid Pandemic - While much of the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 1.6 million people across the globe, East Africa is battling the worst invasion of desert locusts in decades — a months-long "scourge of biblical proportions" that experts warn could get worse with a larger second wave already arriving in parts of the region.  The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which is shepherding the global response to the region's locust crisis, "estimates that locust numbers could grow another 20 times during the upcoming rainy season unless control activities are stepped up," U.N. News reported Thursday. A Wednesday update from FAO's Locust Watch service warned:  The current situation in East Africa remains extremely alarming as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarms form in northern and central Kenya, southern Ethiopia, and Somalia. This represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods because it coincides with the beginning of the long rains and the planting season. Although ground and aerial control operations are in progress, widespread rains that fell in late March will allow the new swarms to mostly remain, mature and lay eggs while a few swarms could move from Kenya to Uganda, South Sudan and Ethiopia. During May, the eggs will hatch into hopper bands that will form new swarms in late June and July, which coincides with the start of the harvest. The massive swarms have affected Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The pests have also been spotted in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan and India.

Ancient Olive Trees Across Europe Dying From Disease - A deadly pathogen is spreading across olive trees in Europe and may cause over $20 billion in losses and increase the price of olive oil, according to the BBC. The bacteria, Xylella fastidiosa, is spread by sap-sucking insects known as spittlebugs. It is considered to be one of the most dangerous plant pathogens in the world, and it has already created huge problems in Italy and Spain where it has decimated entire groves of ancient olive trees, as The Independent reported.According to experts, the bacterium is capable of destroying not only olive trees, but it also preys upon more than 300 species including lavender, rosemary, almond, plum and cherry trees. There is no cure for a Xylella infection, according to the BBC.A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the infection could cost Italy over $5 billion over the next half century. Already, the bacterium has wiped out more than 1 million trees in Italy. Spain could suffer over $17 billion in losses and Greece will face another $2 billion in losses. That is assuming the infection continues unabated and replanting is impossible, as The Guardian reported. Together, Spain, Italy and Greece account for 95 percent of Europe's olive oil production."The damage to the olives also causes a depreciation of the value of the land, and to the touristic attractiveness of this region," said Dr. Maria Saponari, from the CNR Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Italy, as the BBC reported."It's had a severe impact on the local economy and jobs connected with agriculture."  In 2019, Italy saw a 57 percent decrease in its olive harvest, which scientists attributed to the climate crisis, as The Guardian reported at the time.  The Xyllela infection restricts the tree's ability to move water and nutrients and over time it withers and dies, according to the BBC.

Deadly olive tree disease across Europe ‘could costs billions’ – BBC - Researchers say the economic costs of a deadly pathogen affecting olive trees in Europe could run to over €20 billion. They've modelled the future worst impacts of the Xylella fastidiosa pathogen which has killed swathes of trees in Italy. Spread by insects, the bacterium now poses a potential threat to olive plantations in Spain and Greece. The disease could increase the costs of olive oil for consumers. Xylella is considered to be one of the most dangerous pathogens for plants anywhere in the world. At present there is no cure for the infection. It can infect cherry, almond and plum trees as well as olives. It has become closely associated with olives after a strain was discovered in trees in Puglia in Italy in 2013. The organism is transmitted by sap-sucking insects such as spittlebugs. The infection limits the tree's ability to move water and nutrients and over time it withers and dies.In Italy, the consequences of the spread of the disease have been devastating, with an estimated 60% decline in crop yields since the first discovery in 2013. "The damage to the olives also causes a depreciation of the value of the land, and to the touristic attractiveness of this region," said Dr Maria Saponari, from the CNR Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Italy. "It's had a severe impact on the local economy and jobs connected with agriculture." As well as in Italy, the Xylella bacterium has now been found in Spain, France and Portugal.

Chinese dams held back Mekong waters during drought, study finds - (Reuters) - China’s Mekong River dams held back large amounts of water during a damaging drought in downstream countries last year despite China having higher-than-average water levels upstream, a U.S. research company said in a study. FILE PHOTO: A general view of the future site of the Luang Prabang dam is seen on the Mekong River outskirt of Luang Prabang province, Laos, February 5, 2020. REUTERS/Panu Wongcha-um/File Photo China’s government disputed the findings, saying there was low rainfall during last year’s monsoon season on its portion of the 4,350-km (2,700-mile) river. The findings by Eyes on Earth Inc., a research and consulting company specialising in water, published in a U.S.-government funded study, could complicate tricky discussions between China and other Mekong countries on how to manage the river that supports 60 million people as it flows past Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and through Cambodia and Vietnam. Last year's drought, which saw the Lower Mekong at its lowest levels in more than 50 years, devastated farmers and fishermen and saw the massive river recede to expose sandbanks along some stretches and at others turned from its usual murky brown to bright blue here because waters were so shallow and lacking in sediment. “If the Chinese are stating that they were not contributing to the drought, the data does not support that position,” said Alan Basist, a meteorologist and president of Eyes on Earth, which conducted the study with funding from the U.S. State Department’s Lower Mekong Initiative. Instead, satellite measurements of “surface wetness” in China’s Yunnan province, through which the Upper Mekong flows, suggest the region in 2019 actually had slightly above-average combined rainfall and snowmelt during the May to October wet season. But water levels measured downstream from China along the Thai-Lao border were at times up to 3 metres (10 feet) lower than they should have been, the group said in the study. That suggests China is “not letting the water out during the wet season, even when the restriction of water from China has a severe impact of the drought experienced downstream”, Basist said.

NASA Satellite Data Show 30 Percent Drop In Air Pollution Over Northeast U.S. - NASA -Over the past several weeks, NASA satellite measurements have revealed significant reductions in air pollution over the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast United States. Similar reductions have been observed in other regions of the world. These recent improvements in air quality have come at a high cost, as communities grapple with widespread lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders as a result of the spread of COVID-19. Nitrogen dioxide, primarily emitted from burning fossil fuels for transportation and electricity generation, can be used as an indicator of changes in human activity. The images below show average concentrations of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide as measured by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite, as processed by a team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. The left image in the slider shows the average concentration in March of 2015-19, while the right image in the slider shows the average concentration measured in March of this year. Though variations in weather from year to year cause variations in the monthly means for individual years, March 2020 shows the lowest monthly atmospheric nitrogen dioxide levels of any March during the OMI data record, which spans 2005 to the present. In fact, the data indicate that the nitrogen dioxide levels in March 2020 are about 30% lower on average across the region of the I-95 corridor from Washington, DC to Boston than when compared to the March mean of 2015-19. Further analysis will be required to rigorously quantify the amount of the change in nitrogen dioxide levels associated with changes in emissions versus natural variations in weather. If processed and interpreted carefully, nitrogen dioxide levels observed from space serve as an effective proxy for nitrogen dioxide levels at Earth's surface, though there will likely be differences in the measurements from space and those made at ground level. It is also important to note that satellites that measure nitrogen dioxide cannot see through clouds, so all data shown is for days with low cloudiness. Such nuances in the data make long-term records vital in understanding changes like those shown in this image.

Coronavirus shutdown leads to 'alpine' air in polluted cities - A bittersweet silver lining to the COVID-19 virus is how clean the air in some of the world’s most polluted cities has become. New Delhi is one of many megacities around the world reporting much fresher air for the first time in years since the virus forced people inside two weeks ago. Members of a Delhi Whatsapp group exchanged screenshots of the daily air quality index last week, not believing their eyes when they saw that a green banner had replaced the familiar ominous red banner, indicating the conditions were “good.” “It’s positively alpine,” one person wrote, according to the Guardian. Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a Delhi politician and environmentalist, called the improved air quality a wake-up call. “The blissful sight of blue skies and the joy of breathing clean air provides just the contrast to illustrate what we are doing to ourselves the rest of the time,” Tharoor said. “Today the typical Delhi AQI hovers around 30 and one blissful afternoon, after a spurt of rain, it dropped to seven.” Cities like Bangkok, Beijing, Sao Paulo and Bogota, which all have some type of stay-at-home order in place, are reporting unprecedented levels of clean air. The sad irony is, few can enjoy the blue skies and fresh air since most everyone has to stay inside. The drop in pollution shows how deadly a role cars play in India’s pollution, said Delhi environmentalist Sunita Narain. Narain stressed environmentalists aren’t “celebrating” the virus that has ravaged many cities. “We have to make sure we take this breath of fresh air and think about the serious efforts we need to deal with pollution in Delhi.”

Hospital Visits Declined After Sulfur Dioxide Reductions from Louisville-Area Coal Plants - —By taking advantage of a "natural experiment" brought on by the closure of one coal-fired power plant and the addition of new pollution controls at others in the area, health researchers have documented how lowering air pollution improves the lives of asthma patients. Led by Columbia University's Joan A. Casey, an environmental health sciences professor, the team calculated a 55 percent reduction in the amount of lung-irritating pollutants in the air over Louisville beginning in the spring of 2015. The reduction came after the closure of Louisville Gas and Electric's Cane Run facility and the installation of sulfur dioxide scrubbers at its Mill Creek plant and another, separately owned plant in Rockport, Indiana. The researchers found that there were nearly 400 fewer hospital admissions or emergency room visits for asthma attacks in Louisville in the year following the closure and the addition of pollution controls. The findings come at a time when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been attacking the science used to establish federal air pollution regulations that have helped cities like Louisville clean up their historically dirty and deadly air quality. The research also has implications for the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which amounts to another "natural experiment" where air quality has been suddenly improved—this time, because large sectors of the global economy have shut down.

AIR POLLUTION: Trump's soot proposal bucks advice of EPA career staff -- EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is proposing to leave the agency's existing soot standards in place for years to come — delivering a win for industry over the conclusions of agency career staff. Those particles, technically known as PM2.5, are associated with a variety of respiratory and cardiovascular ailments; in a study released last week, Harvard University researchers tentatively linked long-term exposure to even slightly higher levels of fine particles to sharply increased odds of death from COVID-19. Under the Clean Air Act, particulate matter is one of a half-dozen pollutants for which EPA must periodically review its National Ambient Air Quality Standards in light of the latest research into their health and environmental effects.Business groups like the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, oppose any change to the status quo for the soot standard. In a draft report last year, EPA air staffers had found that the existing limits may be allowing thousands of premature deaths each year. They tentatively concluded that the evidence warranted a significant tightening of the annual average exposure threshold, currently set at 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air (E&E News PM, Sept. 5, 2019).An EPA advisory panel mostly made up of Wheeler appointees later rejected those staff findings on the grounds that the underlying research was unconvincing. The panel, known as the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, recommended that both the annual standard and the 24-hour limit of 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air be left in place (Greenwire, Dec. 4, 2019).  In an unprecedented step,Wheeler in late 2018 fired a group of mostly academic experts charged with providing added know-how to the committee, usually known by its acronym CASAC (Greenwire, Oct. 12, 2018).Those experts then unofficially regrouped under the auspices of the Union of Concerned Scientists to produce a report calling both for stricter annual and 24-hour PM2.5 limits (Greenwire, Dec. 4, 2019). Wheeler, meanwhile, appointed an alternative group of consultants to aid in the review. As E&E News previously reported, the bulk of those consultants have ties either to CASAC members or to groups with a stake in the rule's outcome (Greenwire, Feb. 8). PM2.5, often dubbed soot, refers to particles that are no more than 2.5 microns in diameter, or one-thirtieth the width of a human hair. Assuming that EPA meets its self-imposed December deadline for completing the review, the standards will remain in place for at least five years unless a federal court rules otherwise. Whatever the review's ultimate outcome, a legal challenge is likely.

Chernobyl Wildfires Could Spread Radioactive Particles --Firefighters are battling to contain larger-than-usual wildfires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone as radiation levels spike at their center.The fires, which started April 3 in the west of the zone, then spread to forests in the area with higher radiation levels, Reuters reported. High winds Saturday risked pushing the blaze towards the abandoned plant and equipment used to clean up the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, acting leader of the agency that manages the area Kateryna Pavlova told The New York Times."We have been working all night digging firebreaks around the plant to protect it from fire," Pavlova said. The wind had been blowing the smoke towards rural parts of Russia and Belarus most of the week, but shifted Friday towards the Ukranian capital of Kyiv, home to around three million people. However, authorities said the radiation levels in the city remained normal. Contaminated smoke was expected to reach Kyiv over the weekend, but authorities said radiation levels in the air once the smoke had dispersed would be safe.The risk posed by the fires is that people might inhale radioactive particles with the smoke."Wind can raise hot particles in the air together with the ash and blow it toward populated areas," air pollution expert with environmental group Ecodiya Olena Miskun told The New York Times.However, Ukraine is currently on lockdown to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, and Miskun said this was an unexpected blessing."We are lucky to have quarantine measures in place now," she said. "People stay at home, walk less and wear masks."The explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in April 1986 was the worst nuclear accident in history, Reuters explained. Afterwards, people were evacuated from a 19-mile exclusion zone around the plant that is tightly controlled to this day.Wildfires are common in the exclusion zone, but these are unusually large and follow a warm, dry winter, The New York Times reported. As of Saturday, they had consumed more than 8,600 acres and required the work of around 400 firefighters, 100 fire engines and several helicopters. "At the moment, we cannot say the fire is contained," Pavlova told The New York Times.

Ukraine: wildfires draw dangerously close to Chernobyl site - Wildfires in Ukraine have spread to just over a mile from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant and a disposal site for radioactive waste, according to activists, as more than 300 firefighters work to contain the blaze. A video posted by a Chernobyl tour operator showed flames and a cloud of smoke rising within sight of the protective shelter over the carcass of Chernobyl’s Unit 4 nuclear reactor, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history. The tour operator, Yaroslav Yemelianenko, wrote that the fire had reached the abandoned city of Pripyat and was just 2km (1.24 miles) away from the nuclear power plant and the Pidlisny radioactive waste disposal site. “The situation is critical. The zone is burning,” he wrote in a Facebook post accompanied by a video of the blaze. Yemelianenko, a member of a public advisory board to Ukraine’s emergency service, also accused the government of covering up the severity of the fires. Ukraine’s emergency service on Monday said the fire was “difficult” but called for calm, saying all radiation levels in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, were normal and urging people not to listen to “apocalyptic messages”. “The main thing we can say is that there is no threat to the nuclear power station, the spent fuel storage, and to other critical sites in the exclusion zone,” the agency said. The agency said 310 firefighters and dozens of fire trucks, as well as three aircraft and three helicopters, had been deployed to extinguish the fire. The agency did not say exactly how far the fire was from the site of the former reactor or other sensitive sites. On Monday, a member of Greenpeace’s Russia branch told Reuters that the fires were larger than Ukraine’s official estimates and could pose a health risk. “A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk,” Rashid Alimov, head of energy projects at Greenpeace Russia, told the agency. Fires have been burning since 4 April in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, the 30-kilometre (18.6-mile) area around the former nuclear reactor where authorities have barred people from living.

Chernobyl guides say worst wildfires in area's history are out of control  -Guides who offer tours of Chernobyl have warned that wildfires close to the former nuclear power station are out of control and have accused Ukrainian authorities of concealing the scale of the problem, which they said now threatens to destroy many of the sites in the area. Firefighters have been struggling for 10 days to extinguish several fires burning inside the 18-mile "Exclusion Zone" that surrounds the station, which was the scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986. The fires are the largest ever to hit the area according to locals, and despite the deployment of hundreds more firefighters this week they have continued to grow.On Monday, Yaroslav Yemelianenko, the head of the Association of Chernobyl Tour Operators, said the fires were now only a kilometer from the station itself and around 2 kilometers from a site containing radioactive waste. He said the fires had also approached Pripyat, the famous ghost city built for the power station, abandoned since its entire population was evacuated following the accident. "I have two possibilities for what’s going on: either the Cabinet is not being told the real situation or they’ve chosen the Soviet policy of hushing it up, as they did in ’86,” Yemelianenko wrote.  Ukraine’s state emergency service said last week that a slight rise in radiation levels had been detected at the heart of the fires, but that levels remained normal further away from them and that background radiation has not risen in Ukraine's capital, about 60 miles to the south of Chernobyl.

Brazil's Amazon Rainforest Has Become the Wild West for Illegal Gold Miners -- From the skies above Creporizao, a remote town in the south of the Brazilian Amazon, the surrounding area looks like a vast blanket of dark green rainforest. But along the dirt roads and rivers that run through it like arteries are telling patches of muddy brown: illegal gold mines.  Wildcat miners come to the area seeking their fortune. Every day, hundreds of laborers embark on long journeys up and down the Crepori river to reach the gold pits, while others fly in on small planes that land on makeshift airstrips. Such scenes have become common across the world's largest rainforest, and are being held up as the cause of widespread destruction. Jose Maria, a miner from the state of Maranhao, is waiting on the river banks for a ride. "We're here to do honest work and earn a living," he said. "I don't see what the problem is." But the pits where Jose Maria and fellow miners work are located on the more than two million-hectare territory of the Munduruku, one of the largest indigenous tribes in the Amazon, whose mineral-rich lands are protected under Brazil's 1988 Constitution.  A 2019 survey by polling institute Datafolha showed 86% of Brazilians oppose mining on indigenous territory, yet it has been encouraged by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's controversial bill, which calls for the legalization of commercial mining on indigenous land. Submitted to Brazil's Congress in early February, the bill has yet to be put to a vote. A planned ballot was pushed back with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, telling Congress it was "not the right moment." But he also stressed that the bill was "not unconstitutional."Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it was planning to "regulate activities" on indigenous land, adding that the process would require "consultation with the indigenous communities," which would be able to participate in mining activity.While some in the Munduruku have been won over by the allure of riches, and allow gold extraction on their land in exchange for money, the majority remain opposed to illegal mining.

3rd environmental activist killed this year in Mexico  (AP) — The U.N. human rights office in Mexico issued a statement Monday condemning the killing of an environmental activist in the violent Gulf coast state of Veracruz. The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Adán Vez Lira was shot to death on April 8 while he rode his motorcycle in the township of Actopan. Vez Lira was a longtime supporter and organizer at the La Mancha bird-watching reserve on the sparsely populated stretch of coast north of the Veracruz state capital. “Adán Vez Lira was a recognized environmental activists whose voice and leadership had played a notable role in several environmental defense causes in Actopan,” the office said. Mourners who posted messages on the reserve’s Facebook page said he also was active in opposing mines and preserving wetlands. The area is noted for its tropical forest and coastal lagoons. He was at least the third environmentalist killed in Mexico this year.

Wild Bears 'Having a Party' in Coronavirus-Closed Yosemite National Park -- Wild bears in Yosemite National Park are coming out of the woodwork in what park officials are calling a "party" following the park's March 20 closure in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.The wildly popular park is visited by millions of people every year, and at the same time hundreds of bears call the Rhode Island-sized park home, said Ranger Katie, a wildlife biologist who has worked with black bears in Yosemite National Park for more than a decade, in a Facebook live streaming over the weekend. "For the most part, I think [the bears] are having a party," said Ranger Katie. "This time of year is difficult for the animals here. There can be literally walls of cars, stop-and-go traffic, or people in the park."  Ranger Katie is a part of the park's human-bear management program, whose role is to mitigate conflict between humans and bears. In the video, the park ranger uses a tracking device to show a young male bear heading towards the visitor's center, which would normally be packed with people during the warm, sunny spring.  "Bears are these amazingly powerful and intelligent animals that we make our homes alongside. Because they have those characteristics and they're very food-motivated, bears can wrack up a huge amount of property damage or even injure somebody in their pursuit of food," said the biologist. Identified bears who have developed a taste for human food or are habituated will be captured, tagged and outfitted with a transmitter for future observations. A worker at Yosemite's Ahwahnee Hotel told the Los Angeles Times that not only has the bear population "quadrupled," but that he and his coworkers have also seen more coyotes and bobcats near their living quarters. "It's not like they aren't usually here," said Dane Peterson. "It's that they usually hang back at the edges, or move in the shadows." Ranger Katie says that the meandering bears could be an issue when people return to the park. Bears that live in Yosemite Valley "key in" on triggers of people being around and tend to start to avoid places when humans become more frequent. It will take a "little bit of a learning curve," she adds, and newer bears will be on a "steep learning curve about where they can be and when."

Sea Shepherd Suspends Efforts to Protect Endangered Vaquitas Due to Coronavirus - Marine conservation group Sea Shepherd has made the difficult decision to suspend its campaign to protect the critically endangered vaquita porpoise in Mexico's Upper Gulf of California. "We haven't had much choice because we're dependent upon getting fuel from the Mexican government to do the patrols, and we weren't able to get the fuel," Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, told Mongabay. "We have to send the vessels back to Mazatlán, and once we get there, of course, then we're not allowed to leave because of the [COVID-19] quarantine."Vaquitas (Phocoena sinus), which are endemic to the Sea of Cortez in the Upper Gulf of California, are on the brink of extinction, although there are different estimates of how many are left. A recent study calculated there to be fewer than 19 vaquitas left as of the summer of 2018. Another report, conducted by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA), suggested only about 10 individuals remain, although it also stated that there's a 95 percent chance that 6 to 22 individuals continue to exist.The biggest threat to the vaquitas is the illegal fishing of totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), which, like the vaquita, is classified as a critically endangered species by the IUCN. The totoaba's swim bladder is believed to have special medicinal qualities in traditional Asian medicine, despite there being no scientific evidence to support this. The bladders, which are used to make a "curative" soup, can fetch prices up to $14,000 USD, according to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), and they're regularly trafficked in the global wildlife trade.Since totoabas are about the same size as vaquitas, vaquitas easily get caught in the gillnets meant to capture totoabas. Gillnets are also used to catch shrimp in the Sea of Cortez, which wreaked further havoc on the vaquita population.In 2015, the Mexican government placed a two-year ban on gillnet fishing in the Sea of Cortez, and in 2016, it announced a total ban on gillnet fishing. Despite these legislative efforts, fishing has continued in the area. During a patrol in October 2019, Sea Shepherd reported seeing more than 70 fishing boats in the vaquita's critical habitat.

North Atlantic’s capacity to absorb CO2 overestimated, study suggests - The North Atlantic may be a weaker climate ally than previously believed, according to a study that suggests the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide has been overestimated. A first-ever winter and spring sampling of plankton in the western North Atlantic showed cell sizes were considerably smaller than scientists assumed, which means the carbon they absorb does not sink as deep or as fast, nor does it stay in the depths for as long. This discovery is likely to force a negative revision of global climate calculations, say the authors of the Nasa-backed study, though it is unclear by how much. “We have found a misconception. It will definitely impact the model of carbon flows,” said Oregon State University microbiologist Steve Giovannoni. “It will require more than just a small tweak.” Researchers say the spring phytoplankton bloom in the North Atlantic is probably the largest annual biological carbon sequestration mechanism on the planet. Like a vast forest of tiny plants in the sunlight upper part of the ocean, they draw down carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The bigger the plankton, the higher the chance they will sink into the deep mesopelagic zone of the ocean, where carbon can be trapped for more than 1,000 years. Until now, climate models have assumed that diatoms – one of the biggest types of plankton – were dominant. But the study, published in theInternational Society for Microbial Ecology Journal, reveals they are a very minor share of biomass when compared with much smaller cyanobacteria, picophytoeukaryotes and nanophytoeukaryotes.  This was expected in winter, but the research team found that even in spring – shortly before the annual bloom – there were far fewer diatoms in the western North Atlantic than assumed.  Although the findings of this study of one part of the North Atlantic – much of it carried out in fierce gales – do not necessarily apply to all oceans, Giovannoni said they highlight how little is understood of marine biology, as well as the need for close-up study.

As Sea Level Rise Threatens Their Ancestral Village, a Louisiana Tribe Fights to Stay Put | NRDC - Ten years ago, as news of the BP oil disaster reached Louisiana’s Grand Bayou Indian Village, Rosina Philippe dispatched her brother Maurice Phillips on a reconnaissance mission. Phillips pointed his flatboat toward the Gulf of Mexico and motored through a series of canals and inlets until he reached a fertile fishing ground called Bay Jimmy, eight miles from home. He returned with a passenger: a brown pelican, alive but slathered in petroleum. Philippe and her brother belong to the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe. They live in their ancestral village, an hour’s drive south of New Orleans near the town of Port Sulphur. Most of the tribe’s estimated 400 members live elsewhere, but a remnant remains in Grand Bayou, a community that has shrunk over the years as its land has slowly slipped into the surrounding waters. The village consists of 14 homes and a nondenominational church. Surrounded by water, most of the buildings sit atop wooden pilings, and there are no roads to connect them. The houses line the bayou and can be reached only by boat. For generations, the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha have relied on the fertility of the Mississippi River Delta. They catch seafood and forage for wild celery, green onions, and a leafy green called morelle noire. They used to forage for persimmons, too. They trapped muskrats, packing the meat in salt and preserving it in oak barrels. They hunted for deer and rabbits—and still hunt ducks—and grew vegetables in large backyard gardens. In recent decades, however, these resources have contracted. The tribe has withstood one environmental assault after another, standing its ground in a disappearing wetland. The Deepwater Horizon explosion and resulting 87-day oil spill proved catastrophic for Grand Bayou. The community had just rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the area in 2005, and residents had returned in time for the 2010 commercial shrimping season. “A lot of guys, what little bit of cash they had, they invested into making repairs on their boats because they envisioned the seafood to come,” says Philippe, a tribal elder. The springtime waters brimmed with shrimp. “So, it was almost like the anticipation of Christmas morning.” Except that Christmas never came. The oil spewing from BP’s open well about 5,000 feet below the Gulf’s surface shut down the nearby fisheries for months. Grand Bayou’s fleet remained docked long after officials insisted that Gulf seafood posed no health risk. The fishermen didn’t agree. “As long as they believed that it was unsafe to eat,” Philippe says, “they refused to go out and catch it, even though they were in dire straits financially.” Now, on the 10th anniversary of the explosion, the tribe is clear on two points. First, the BP disaster cannot be viewed in a vacuum. It is part of a litany of stresses that Grand Bayou has survived for decades, including the loss of more than 5,000 acres of fertile Delta land. And, second: They have no plans to leave.

Earth’s Second Warmest March, Second Warmest Year to Date  -Even without an assist from El Niño, this year is giving 2016 a run for its money as the warmest year on record. In its monthly global climate summary for March, released on Monday, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) reported that last month was the second warmest March in record going back to 1880. The month came in only 0.15°C (0.27°F) behind March 2016.Last month also saw the third largest departure from the 20th-century average for any of the 1683 months on record, behind only February and March 2016.NASA concurred with NOAA, as did the Japan Meteorological Agency, with both ranking last month as the second warmest in their respective databases. Meanwhile, Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service found March 2020 to be the fourth-warmest March on record, but it was within 0.04 degrees of the second- and third-warmest Marches from 2017 and 2019. Such differences in rankings can stem from variations in how research groups analyze global temperature, including how they account for data-sparse areas such as the Arctic. The crucial difference between this year and 2016 is that one of the strongest El Niño events on record was peaking in late 2015 and early 2016. As it spreads warm water across the surface of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, El Niño can send vast amounts of stored oceanic heat into the atmosphere. Most of the recent record-warm spikes atop longer-term global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases have occurred during El Niño, so to get a March this warm without El Niño is truly noteworthy.

Decades of Science Denial Related to Climate Change Has Led to Denial of the Coronavirus Pandemic - Decades of climate denial now appear to have paved the way for denial of Covid-19 by many on the right, according to experts on climate politics. After the fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking climate scientists and accentuating the supposed uncertainty of climate science, it isn't hard to understand how that happened. President Trump, who denies climate change, has brushed off Covid-19's seriousness until recently by relying on many of the same arguments he uses to dismiss global warming, such as ignoring government scientists or blaming China. Climate deniers have long attacked climate scientists, and Covid-19 deniers recently launched a smear campaign against Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in part because he corrected the President's inaccurate statements about the pandemic.The radio host and staunch Trump supporter Bill Mitchell offered a glimpse of how some conservatives see the pandemic as part of a continuum of dubious science when he tweeted that the novel coronavirus is "a minor infection" and the worries about it were "climate change 2.0." "It's this sense of deja vu. This is what climate denialism looked like," said Jerry Taylor, president of the bipartisan, pro-climate action think tank Niskanen Center and himself a former skeptic of climate science. "The peril here is the reality of what's about to follow. You can't gaslight it. You're not going to be able to deny the reality of the deaths. That will be the wages of dismissing what the technocratic and scientific elites have been telling us for months."

America's 'clean energy' workforce projected to fall by 15% in months ahead - Over 106,000 people working in the U.S. “clean energy” sector lost their jobs in March as the industry struggled to soften the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it was claimed Wednesday. The analysis of Department of Labor data, released by Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), the American Council on Renewable Energy, E4TheFuture and BW Research Partnership, paints a challenging picture for the industry. For the purposes of the analysis, the term “clean energy” encompasses a range of areas including: renewables such as solar and wind; energy storage; energy efficiency; and “clean fuels.” It shows that, last month, 106,472 people working in clean energy roles filed for unemployment benefits. Looking further ahead, the analysis projects that over 500,000 people working in clean energy — 15% of the sector’s workforce — will lose their jobs in the following months unless “quick and substantive action” is taken by both the administration of President Donald Trump and Congress. “The economic fallout from COVID-19 is historic in both size and speed,” Phil Jordan, vice president and principal at BW Research Partnership, said in a statement issued alongside the analysis. Jordan explained that activities, from the manufacture of electric vehicles to the installation of solar panels, were being impacted. “And the data pretty clearly indicate that this is just the beginning,” he added. Wednesday’s figures are a heavy blow for an industry that added over 70,000 jobs in 2019. The clean energy workforce in the U.S. grew to almost 3.4 million people at the end of last year, according to E2′s Clean Jobs America 2020 report, which was also released on Wednesday. This year looks set to pose a number of challenges for the renewables sector, many of them connected to the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused issues with supply chains and forced some factories to shut.

Ohio electric vehicle legislation pushed to back burner amid pandemic response | Energy News Network -Proposals would reduce registration fees and create sales tax credits, but prospects are uncertain in this legislative session. A set of bills aimed at promoting electric vehicles in Ohio is among the state legislation on hold across the country as lawmakers grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature has not been friendly to clean energy inrecent years. Those efforts led first to a freeze and then last year’s gutting of the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. Electric vehicle measures might fare better because of their potential to boost electric utility sales and bolster in-state auto manufacturing. However,  it’s unclear when they’ll return to the agenda and whether they can be passed during this session. House Bill 546 would slash electric vehicle registration fees in half. Fees for all-electric vehicles would go from $200 to $100 per year, while fees for hybrids would drop from $100 to $50. The definition for “hybrid” vehicles would also expand to include vehicles that could run on gas and which also offer the option of plugging in.

Duke Energy warns solar producers it may cut power purchases during coronavirus crisis - Duke Energy Corp. warns independent solar producers that it may curtail contracted power purchases as low spring demand combined with reduced commercial and industrial usage during the COVID-19 crisis may create excess energy issues on the grid.Duke Energy Progress already reduced 92 megawatts of its own solar production on Friday, says spokesman Randy Wheeless. And in any situation where power must be cut back, Duke’s utilities will always start with their own utility-owned solar farms.But last week, Duke did send notice to solar producers, state regulators and other interested parties that there may be an additional need to curtail solar as spring and the emergency continues. And that may include the need to stop purchasing solar power Duke is contacted to buy under standing power-purchase agreements with independent producers.On April 9, Maura Farver, who directs distributed energy policy for Duke (NYSE: DUK), sent an email to all interested parties warning of the possible cutbacks.  “Duke Energy Progress and Duke Energy Carolinas may be required to curtail energy from solar generators over the next few weeks,” she writes in the email. “This is particularly true in Duke Energy Progress.  “At this time, we are not certain we will need to curtail solar or how much we will need to curtail if we need to do so,” she says. “However, we do know there is a greater probability of curtailment than normal due to the Covid19 impact on load.”

How Rick Perry bucked Congress's clean energy mandate - - As energy secretary, Rick Perry regularly told lawmakers that he favored an all-encompassing energy policy that supported wind and solar as well as fossil fuels. But during his nearly three-year tenure, the Energy Department repeatedly hamstrung bipartisan efforts to boost spending on clean energy technology. With President Donald Trump downplaying the need to address climate change, the Energy Department under Perry delayed clean energy grants, slow-walked hiring and left staffing levels in the nation’s clean energy programs far below what they were at the end of the Obama administration, according to government records One program went unfunded for so long that the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, told the department to release the money or risk violating federal law.

New York's Power Use Crumples During Coronavirus Shutdown - New York has closed all nonessential businesses to battle the country’s worst outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting effects on electricity demand are becoming starkly apparent. State grid operator NYISO released data Thursday showing significant drops in energy demand across the state as the lockdown entered its third week. The drop is particularly striking in New York City — down as much as 18 percent at times — where the commercial sector uses a much higher proportion of total electricity than in the state as a whole. NYISO’s data runs through April 6 and has been weather-normalized to account for temperature differences from previous years. Daily energy use across the state was down by nearly 8 percent during the last two weeks of March and into the first week of April, even after adjusting for weather, according to NYISO. That means demand has weakened since the first week of the lockdown, as the chart below indicates. "Demand across New York state is clearly impacted by COVID-19 related closures,” Rich Dewey, NYISO CEO, said in a statement. NYISO has seen drops across different parts of the state, with declines proportional to the commercial percentage of load in each region. This difference is most clear in New York City, or “Zone J” in NYISO parlance. This region, served by utility Con Edison, saw average load declines fall from about 6 percent below normal in the first days of the statewide lockdown to nearly 14 percent below normal levels as of early this week (as shown by the red line in the chart below). In terms of hour-by-hour demand in New York City, NYISO is seeing even bigger drops during the 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. hours on weekdays — the times when most office buildings and other businesses would be turning on lights, HVAC systems, elevators and other major electric loads. During those hours, demand in New York City has fallen as much as 18 percent below typical levels, while across the entire state, or the New York Control Area (NYCA), demand has fallen by as much as 12 percent. Nighttime load changes are far less pronounced, at 1 to 2 percent below typical levels.

Electricity prices pushed to new lows as coronavirus cuts New England demand with businesses closed and employees at home - With businesses and schools shut to halt the spread of the coronavirus, electricity demand in New England has dropped between 3% and 5%, resembling a weekslong snow day, according to the region’s electric grid operator. It’s pushed electricity prices to new lows, and with less power to generate, the region’s 350 power plants are spending more time protecting the safety of their 5,000 workers. Solar and wind power are pushing down electricity prices in New England, but carbon fuels still dominate » “What we’re seeing is the biggest change and disruption,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association. Anne C. George, vice president for external affairs and corporate communications at grid operator ISO-New England, said the drop in demand since mid-March is unprecedented.

How coronavirus is changing electricity usage, in 3 charts | Grist - As hundreds of millions of Americans change their lifestyles to flatten the COVID-19 infection curve, they’re inadvertently shifting energy supply and demand curves too. On a typical, non-pandemic day, people use a lot of electricity in the mornings before they leave home for work and school, and even more when they return home in the evenings. To match that constantly shifting demand, power operators adjust how much power from conventional sources like coal, natural gas, and pumped hydropower goes onto the grid throughout the day. Plotted on a graph, the amount of power operators need to add to the grid forms a shape called a “camel curve,” with two gentle humps in the morning and evening and a midday dip between. But when an electric grid gets a lot of power from solar energy, that graph of how much energy needs to be supplied from other sources over the course of the day forms the shape of a duck. Its tail covers the morning, its belly stretches over midday and afternoon, and its neck and head rise abruptly in the evening. That’s because the sun provides a lot of energy at a time when few people need it. In the middle of the day, when sunshine abounds and demand is low, power can be so cheap that suppliers will give it away to prevent overload. When the duck rears its head in the evening, right when the sun is going down, those round-the-clock energy sources like hydroelectric, natural gas, and coal pick up the slack. The “duck curve” is common in areas with lots of renewables, like California, which uses wind and solar for 23 percent of its electricity. Thanks to shuttered businesses and stay-at-home orders, camel curves appear to have less defined humps, while solar-heavy, duck-shaped grids, like California’s, seem to have developed a rather shapeless tail and a shorter neck.

Utility Case Timelines Not Immune To Effects Of COVID-19; Uncertainty Abounds | S&P Global Market Intelligence - Owing to the expanding impact of COVID-19 on the way business is conducted in the U.S., state utility commissions continue to impose procedural schedule changes in many pending electric and natural gas rate cases. Schedule adjustments have been adopted in prominent rate proceedings in about a dozen jurisdictions. Several key rate cases that are in their latter stages have been affected and numerous other cases could be affected if the pandemic strengthens its grip on commerce and public health in the coming weeks. Regulatory Research Associates, a group within S&P Global Market Intelligence, provided key details on March 17 pertaining to initial measures that were taken by some commissions and utilities across the U.S. to respond to the rapidly-changing situation and on March 26 gave an assessment of several pending rate proceedings that have been delayed. The information provided in these articles and below are intended to draw attention to some noteworthy details that address the industry's response to the pandemic. RRA expects additional developments to occur and will disseminate relevant details in a timely manner. On March 31, RRA highlighted important regulatory developments that are expected to occur during April. (details on utility rate cases that have been extended or delayed in over a dozen states)

Columbus energy benchmarking ordinance is a first for Ohio - Even while most Ohio businesses are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, officials in Columbus are getting ready to help building owners comply with the state’s first energy benchmarking ordinance.“We’ve got a tremendous amount of growth going on in the city of Columbus. And with that comes an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and other negative effects of that growth,” said Anthony Celebreeze, assistant director of the city’s Department of Building and Zoning Services. The City Council passed the benchmarking ordinance in March. It will require building owners to report data on building size, energy usage and utility bills. An EPA energy manager program will then provide Energy Star scores for energy and water usage.The results will show building owners “where they’re out in front on clean energy [and] conserving energy, or whether they’re not doing as well as they probably would like,” Celebreeze said.“The building sector alone accounts for the majority of carbon emissions in Columbus,” at 58%, said Stefan Schaffer, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s city strategist for the American Cities Climate Challenge. “We’re looking at a 3% to 4% reduction in annual carbon emissions, just by reporting,” he added.That estimate is at the low end of the 3% to 8% range of reductions in total energy consumption or energy intensity that a team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found for most cities two to four years after adopting a benchmarking policy. A report from Minneapolis earlier this year noted a 5.5% drop in that city’s energy intensity over the course of four years.

Union accuses FirstEnergy of endangering workers with nonemergency work during pandemic - The president of the major U.S. utility workers union accused the Ohio-based, investor-owned utility FirstEnergy of endangering workers and the public during the coronavirus outbreak by requiring nonemergency work to continue. While a vast majority of companies are taking the necessary precautions to stop the virus’ spread, FirstEnergy is “treating it almost like a normal day,” James Slevin, national president of the Utility Workers Union of America, said in an interview. For example, Slevin said, the utility, which serves 6 million customers across six states, is still conducting normal meter reading and other work that isn’t an immediate priority. Many other utilities are putting off nonemergency work, he added. “It kind of angers me,” Slevin said, adding such decisions are “reckless." Slevin also said the union received a call that FirstEnergy is running out of sanitizer and is looking into getting a distillery to supply it. And while workers in the field may have personal protective equipment (PPE) and are using masks, “doing this nonessential work puts people in the Cleveland area unnecessarily at risk,” he added. “It’s also a risk to the healthcare industry, where the need for PPE is critical.”

Judge sides with CMP corridor opponents, allowing anti-powerline referendum on ballot — A Kennebec County Superior Court judge sided with opponents of Central Maine Power’s proposed powerline project Monday by allowing a referendum aimed at defeating the project to continue despite proof that some signatures were gathered illegally. The decision deals a serious blow to supporters of the $1 billion project, who are likely to appeal the ruling. CMP-funded political action committee Clean Energy Matters director Jon Breed said Monday the group is reviewing the decision before taking next steps.It is the latest development in a court effort by CMP to defeat the November referendum that poses a threat to the project as it makes its way through the regulatory process. In addition, two groups backed by stakeholders in the project have spent a combined $9.5 million this year in advertising against the referendum.Former CMP employee Delbert Reed has argued the referendum should be invalidated because paid notaries engaged in other activities for the campaign, a violation of state law. He charged that those signatures, combined with duplicates submitted by grassroots group Say No to NECEC, would knock enough signatures off the nearly 70,000 submitted to invalidate the effort. He was represented by attorneys who also represent Clean Energy Matters. Secretary of State Matt Dunlap disagreed. He found a total of 16,332 signatures were ultimately not valid earlier this month, leaving the referendum with over 66,000 signatures — enough to clear the threshold of about 63,000 signatures needed to get on the November ballot. He had previously certified the effort in March.

Reckless coal plant demolition covers Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood in dust amid coronavirus lockdown - The demolition of a 96-year old coal plant Saturday caused dust to coat the surrounding Chicago neighborhood of Little Village. The city issued the permit for demolition just 11 days before, in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic which has infected nearly 17,000 people and killed 630 in the city and surrounding Cook County. The dust cloud spread over a three-quarter-mile radius forcing residents to stay indoors. Those living closest to the demolition reported dust entering through cracks in the door and windows of their homes. Residents told theWorld Socialist Web Site they were only given a one-day notice of the planned demolition and some reported being given no notice at all.  The city is under an official stay-at-home order and only essential businesses are supposed to be operating. Why the city approved the demolition taking place under these conditions remains to be answered. On a community Facebook page, resident Jazmine Barrera remarked, “Did they really have to do this with COVID-19 going on. It’s been shut down all these [years] and just now they decided.” Another added, “We knew this was coming... they don’t give a shit about us.” The coal plant was shuttered in 2012, after decades of polluting the surrounding neighborhood. City inspectors and developer Hilco Redevelopment Partners claimed that asbestos removal was completed on the site and the demolition posed no threat to public health. However, there is little reason to believe the job was done right. What toxic chemicals, if any, were in the dust that coated the area remains to be seen. Fernando Cantú, a 78-year-old man who lived less than a half mile away from the coal plant, died within hours of the implosion. Cantu, who had suffered from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), had been outside that afternoon and was dead by 3 a.m. the next day.

Mayor, city officials furious over demolition in Little Village - Chicago Sun-Times - Mayor Lori Lightfoot joined Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd) and other city officials Sunday to express their frustration with Hilco Redevelopment Partners’ handling of Saturday’s implosion of a smokestack at the former Crawford Power Generating Station in Little Village. On Saturday morning, during the latest stage of the Crawford Power Generating Station demolition, an implosion sent clouds of dust particles cascading through the Southwest Side neighborhood. Once she was made aware of what happen, the mayor said she took several actions to “remediate the impact of Saturday’s event” and prevent similar events in the future, including issuing a stop-work order, initiating investigations into the city’s regulatory approval process and ordering Hilco to conduct a full clean-up and removal of dust in the surrounding neighborhood. “The fear and anxiety that residents feel about COVID-19 have only been exacerbated with this situation,” Rodriguez said. Before Saturday’s demolition, the alderman said Hilco told him it would make sure no dust would leave the site and said it would mail nearby residents notice of the demolition ahead of time; it did not, he said. While Hilco did receive the proper permitting to conduct the implosion, the promised precautions taken by the company were not enough to contain the spread of dust, the mayor said. “They were supposed to have huge water cannons on site to spray down the smoke stack before, during and after,” Lightfoot said. “The videos I’ve seen don’t suggest that there were any of these high-powered water cannons on site that would contain the dust.” Hilco has been issued a citation from the city that will result in a fine, and the Chicago Department of Public Health will be providing residents in the immediate area with masks.

Trump’s EPA Weakens Justification for Life-Saving Mercury Pollution Rule --As many Americans fight for their lives in the midst of a respiratory pandemic, the Trump administration Thursday axed the justification for a mercury pollution rule that saves more than 10,000 lives and prevents as many as 130,000 asthma attacks each year.The new rollback leaves mercury emission standards in place for now, but changes how their benefits are calculated so that the economic cost takes precedence over public health gains, The New York Times reported. The move provides a legal opening to challenge other pollution controls even as evidence suggests that exposure to air pollution might increase one's chances of dying from the new coronavirus."This is an absolute abomination," former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head under Obama andNatural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) president Gina McCarthy said in a statement. "This final rule will increase the risk of more kids with asthma and brain damage, and more people with cancer. Undermining these vital safeguards now also directly threatens the people hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, making it even harder to breathe and putting people with respiratory illnesses at even higher risk."The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), first passed in 2011 when McCarthy headed the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, were the first of their kind to limit toxic emissions like mercury and lead from coal-fired power plants. These metals are particularly harmful to pregnant women and the brains of children. Between 2006, when states first began controlling mercury, and 2016, when the MATS took full effect, mercury emissions declined 85 percent, The Washington Post pointed out. At the center of Thursday's decision is not the standards themselves, however, but how they were justified. The Obama administration argued that, while the standards would cost the industry as much as $9.6 billion a year, the country as a whole would save between $37 billion and $90 billion in public health costs. However, these calculations considered co-benefits of the mercury rule such as a decline in soot and smog-causing pollution.In the rule released Thursday, the EPA said it was not appropriate to consider these side benefits."We have put in place an honest accounting mechanism," EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told reporters Thursday, as The Washington Post reported.According to the EPA's new accounting mechanism, the rule would cost industry $7.4 to $9.6 billion a year and only generate annual savings of $4 to $6 million in mercury-specific health costs, Reuters pointed out. "One would not say it is even rational, never mind appropriate, to impose billions in economic cost in return for a few dollars in health benefits," Wheeler said, according to The Washington Post.

Republican Senators Want to Help Coal Get U.S. Bailout Money - A group of powerful Republican senators wants to make sure the bailout program being administered by BlackRock Inc. on behalf of the federal government won’t leave fossil-fuel companies behind. The U.S. government tapped BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to become the buyer of corporate bonds as part of a $454 billion effort to bail out companies hit by the coronavirus lockdown. That triggered a letter from Greenpeace, Sierra Club, 350.org and other environmental organizations on March 27 urging Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to weigh climate risk in its guidelines for BlackRock as it decides what sectors of the economy get financial support. Now, in a letter sent Tuesday, a group of 17 Republican senators, including James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas, are asking Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to ensure that fossil-fuel companies aren’t excluded from the bailout program being administered by BlackRock. The pandemic has created an unprecedented upheaval in the global economy. With governments around the world pouring huge sums of money into propping up struggling companies, climate advocates see an opportunity to speed up the transition to clean energy and make entire industries as green as possible. Republican lawmakers have opposed this encroachment from environmental groups, pushing back and largely succeeding so far in separating stimulus spending from climate concerns.Led by Kevin Cramer, Senator from North Dakota, the group of Republican lawmakers seeking to safeguard fossil-fuel companies in the bailout draws heavily from states with concentrations of coal, oil, and gas extraction. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who also signed the letter, heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The letter calls for the Fed to ensure the relief program is “broad and flexible” and asserts that companies in the “energy and transportation sectors” deserve support. But the message appears particularly concerned with the possible exclusion of coal companies, noting that BlackRock decided in January to exclude any company from its actively managed holdings if it derives more than 25% of its revenue selling coal used in power plants. BlackRock has more than $7 trillion under management, although much of that is in passive holdings. A representative for the company declined to comment on the senators’ letter.

Coal companies seek to cut tax that supports Black Lung Disability Trust Fund - - Washington Post - Harold Sturgill spent 35 years down in the coal mines, running a ferocious machine that grinds away at the seams of coal and at the rock that encases them, throwing coal dust and silica into the air.  In 1998 he was diagnosed with black lung disease. He kept working underground another 17 years after that, the only job he could imagine doing where he lives in Beckley, W.Va. Now 60, and a widower, he’s retired and concerned his weakened lungs could make him more susceptible to complications from the novelcoronavirus.  “I can’t hardly walk down to my basement and come back up without gasping for breath,” he said. With the black lung, “you go on and it gets worse, and it never gets better." He’s one of 25,000 retired miners supported by the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, a program administered by the Department of Labor and funded by an excise tax on mine operations for every ton of coal they carve out of the earth. But now the coal companies, citing the economic cost of the pandemic, want to cut back the taxes they pay to support the fund and let the federal government pick up the tab. “They’re crooks,” said Sturgill, who receives a benefit of $686.70 a month from the fund and worries the program might be shut down completely. “They’re going to try to use this virus thing to stop paying benefits.” The National Mining Association asked Congress last month for a 55 percent cut in the excise tax for the trust fund, and a suspension of another fee that pays to clean up abandoned mines. Altogether the operators say they could save about $220 million. While the level of taxation to back the fund has fluctuated sharply over the past two years, it currently stands at $1.10 for every ton of coal mined underground and 55 cents for surface coal. The idea didn’t make it into the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill, but the association plans to keep pushing for it. If the coal companies succeed in getting the tax cut, the black lung trust fund would need to borrow more money than it already does from the federal government to maintain benefits. It’s currently about $4 billion in debt to the Treasury. The NMA — which includes among its members the six largest coal operators not currently in bankruptcy and smaller firms — points out that coal is hardly alone in seeking government help, and it says that retired miners would not see their benefits or health care reduced.

Consol reopens Bailey Mine that had been shut from COVID-19 -  The Bailey Mine, which Consol Energy Inc. had closed for two weeks after two coal miners tested positive for COVID-19, went back into operation Monday. Bailey, one of three coal mines at Consol's massive underground complex beneath Greene and Washington counties, announced March 30 that it would temporarily shut the mine due to the COCID-19 cases. The company said at the time that it would deep clean the mine and stop the production there for two weeks out of an abundance of caution. At least one other employee tested positive for COVID-19. "We continue to reiterate to employees who test positive, have been exposed to someone that has tested positive for COVID-19, or have any flu-like symptoms, to stay home and contact their human resources representative," a Consol spokesman told the Business Times on Monday. Consol's other two mines in the underground complex, Enlow Fork and Harvey, remained open as did the preparation plants.

Massive increase in toxic emissions at Australian coal power plant - Data released this month by the National Pollutant Inventory revealed that the Vales Point coal-fired power plant on the New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast released 130,000 kilograms of fine particulate matter in 2018-19, an increase of 181 percent over the previous year. Australians became all too familiar with toxic PM2.5 pollution in recent months, as smoke from the summer’s catastrophic bushfires enveloped large sections of the country for weeks on end. The World Health Organisation estimates that 4.2 million premature deaths each year are caused by air pollution. Exposure to PM2.5 has been shown to increase the incidence of heart, lung and kidney disease. A study released earlier this week at Harvard University in the United States found that a small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 also is associated with a 15 percent increase in the COVID-19 death rate. An Australian federal government review board recently ruled against a bid to use $14 million of the federal Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) to upgrade the privately-owned Vales Point plant. The Independent Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee found that the proposed turbine blade replacement project would cut the power station’s carbon emissions by a mere 1.3 percent, not enough to bring the plant’s emissions below the grid average. The bid for funding had been rejected in 2018 by the government’s Clean Energy Regulator for the same reason, but the plant’s multi-millionaire co-owner, Trevor St Baker, sought an “urgent meeting” to appeal the decision. Melissa Price, the then environment minister in the federal Liberal-National government, called for the review. While this proposal was turned down, nothing in the ruling contradicts Price’s 2018 insistence that the ERF was “technology neutral,” and therefore could be used to fund supposed upgrades to polluting coal-fired power stations. In the first five years of its operation, the government’s $2.55 billion ERF reportedly reduced Australia’s carbon pollution by 44.8 million tonnes, a mere 8 percent of the country’s annual emissions, and less than one fifth of the emissions caused by the recent bushfires. More than half of that reduction came from reforestation projects, suggesting a significant portion of projected future gains may have literally gone up in smoke. Like the earlier Emissions Trading Scheme introduced by the last Labor government of 2007 to 2013, the ERF is aimed at bolstering the very capitalist market responsible for global warming and the environmental crisis. Rather than forcing big polluters to forgo any of their profits to reduce, or at least pay the true cost of, their carbon emissions, they are rewarded with additional public funds for even the smallest effort to improve their environmental performance.

Santee Cooper center as SC House-Senate feud gets angrier (AP) — The plan was for South Carolina lawmakers to meet Wednesday, get their business done in an hour or two and head home until at least the summer, when hopefully the coronavirus crisis was past. Instead, that old entanglement Santee Cooper popped up again. The typical annoyance between the House and Senate turned to anger. Sniping statements and speeches were exchanged. And now at least one of the chambers will have to return before July 1 and pass a bill allowing the state to continue operating without a budget or South Carolina will shut down. Wednesday’s unfinished business leaves lawmakers with several choices. Pass nothing and let the state shut down seems inconceivable. The likeliest scenario is the House returns. It can pass what the Senate passed or change it again and put the ball back in the Senate’s court. Or both sides could let the May 14 adjournment date pass and leave it to the governor to call a special session. At issue is the fate of Santee Cooper. Lawmakers have been studying whether to sell or reform the state-owned utility since it took on $4 billion in debt in the last decade for a minority stake in a pair of nuclear reactors that never generated power. The bill to allow state government to keep spending included a section to extend the law allowing the state to sell or reform the utility to be extended into 2021. House leaders said Senate leaders agreed to a provision preventing Santee Cooper from entering into any contracts over a year in length, but suddenly that became an issue 36 hours before Wednesday’s session.

Coronavirus expands foothold at Georgia Power's Vogtle project - The new coronavirus has infected several more workers on Georgia Power’s nuclear expansion of Plant Vogtle, described as the largest construction project in the state. The utility’s parent, Southern Company, cautioned investors last week that the multi-billion-dollar project’s latest timeline  and costs could be disrupted by the pandemic. The work already is years behind scheduled and billions over budget, problems that developed long before COVID-19.Georgia Power said Friday that a total of six of the roughly 9,000 workers assigned to the project have been confirmed to have COVID-19. It had reported the first confirmed case there less than a week ago.Nearly 170 other workers are under quarantine because they were in close proximity to workers who had pending COVID-19 tests, company spokesman John Kraft wrote in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Eleven workers are awaiting test results and 79 have tested negative, he wrote.The company did not disclose what parts of the project the workers were assigned to. Nor did it say whether any of the infected workers have been hospitalized.“Construction work continues at the site under continuing enhanced protocols designed to reduce worker-to-worker contact and keep areas that workers frequent, cleaned and sanitized,” Kraft wrote.Among other things, the company said it has added portable hand-washing stations, adjusted break schedules, implemented some alternate work schedules, closed an on-site cafeteria and suspended on-site transit trams and shuttle buses.

As the coronavirus pandemic bites, EDF lowers its nuclear output projections for 2020 - In the latest example of how the Covid-19 pandemic is impacting the energy sector, French utility EDF said Thursday that it was sharply revising down its projected nuclear output for this year. In a statement, the company said it expected its nuclear output for 2020 to be “in the region of” 300 terawatt hours (TWh) — a steep downwards revision to the 375-390 TWh previously forecast. The company explained that in response to the ongoing public-health crisis it had made adjustments to all of its activities in order to protect workers at its nuclear power plants. Work slated to be carried out during maintenance outages had been “significantly affected,” it said, which had in turn lowered output capacity. “Furthermore, the economic slow-down has brought about a drop in electricity consumption, which could potentially fall by 20% compared to usual levels, thereby resulting in reduced nuclear output,” EDF said. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, France has reported 134,598 cases of Covid-19, and 17,188 people have died. Looking ahead, EDF added that it was working with French grid operator RTE to provide a “continuous supply of power” this winter, and said that a number of reactors “may have to be taken off line this coming summer and autumn in order to save fuel on these power plants.” Given the above, the firm said output was expected to be between 330 to 360 TWh in 2021 and 2022. Shares of EDF were down around 5% on Thursday. Earlier this week, the company withdrew all of its financial targets for 2020 and 2021. Globally, EDF operates 73 nuclear reactors, with 58 of these located in France.

UTICA SHALE WELL ACTIVITY AS OF APRIL 11 -

• DRILLED: 154 (144 as of last week)
• DRILLING: 99 (107)
• PERMITTED: 499 (493)
• PRODUCING: 2,481 (2,481)
• TOTAL: 3,233 (3,225)

Six horizontal permits were issued during the week that ended April 11, and 10 rigs were operating in the Utica Shale.

Frack waste recycler wants to install river barge loading facility in Martins Ferry — A facility where waste from the fracking industry is recycled wants to install a barge loading facility along the Ohio River in Martins Ferry.According to a public notice, 4K Industrial Park, Martins Ferry, has applied with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit “to construct a barge loading and off-loading waterfront facility. The facility will be receiving fluids from the Gas and Oil markets for processing, to reuse the fluids for drilling operations or to be sent to a disposal facility.”The notice describes the scope of the structure proposed:“ The applicant proposes to secure a 195 foot x 35 foot spud barge approximately 25 feet off the riverbank and will be used for securing tank barges alongside for loading and off-loading operations. The spud barge will be anchored with two, 2′ x 50′ spuds and secured to the riverbank at each end with a 20-inch dead men chains. The total mooring width, from the face of the river bank extending riverward will be approximately 100 feet wide by 200 feet in length. For safety purposes the applicant proposes to place approximately four, 20-inch diameter steel pipe dead men, for barge deflection, to protect the downstream marina. The steel pipes will be placed approximately 80 feet downstream (south end), of the spudded barge and spaced approximately 20 feet from center point to center of each other, extending river ward and will be driven into the river bottom.“On top of the riverbank near the spudded barge, the applicants propose to construct a 240 feet long elevated catwalk. The elevated catwalk will be supported by 24, 12-inch diameter pipe pilings. The catwalk will then support a doubled walled 10-inch diameter pipe coming from the existing water storage area, located approximately 600 feet from the waterfront. After the transiting tank barge is secured to the spudded barge, a transfer hose from the barge is then connected to the 10-inch pipe, along the catwalk, transferring the fluid to the existing water storage area.” George Brkovich, waterways inspector with the Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh, confirmed that the deadline to submit public comments on the application is April 30. The notice also states that a person can request a public hearing be held on the matter. 

Pa., Allegheny National Forest face new wave of abandoned oil, gas wells  — Ten thousand acres of Pennsylvania’s only national forest have given way, tree by tree, over the last 70 years to an oil drilling operation unique in its scope in the northeastern United States. A network of wells, tanks, pipelines, pump houses and roads grew into the shape of an italic L cut into the Allegheny National Forest in Elk County to harvest $350 million worth of oil. The lower leg is nearly 6 miles long; the upper one roughly 9 miles. The imprint is visible by satellite. What worries state and federal environmental regulators isn’t the project’s growth but its death. Last year, the company that owns the field — Kane-based ARG Resources — quietly shut it down. The company didn’t have the money to run the operation — let alone plug and decommission its 1,600 wells, dozens of buildings and tanks and roughly 150 miles of roads. “There was just one guy left working there, and he wasn’t working there anymore,” said Scott Perry, Pennsylvania’s head oil and gas regulator. Although the ARG Resources’ operation is unusual in many ways, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection officials see it as a harbinger of a troubling trend. Perry calls it “the looming crisis.” A staggering drop in oil prices is threatening to cause a cascade of abandoned wells across Pennsylvania’s traditional oil and gas industry. There are already roughly 200,000 orphaned wells dotting the commonwealth — abandoned by their owners over a century of drilling. For most of that time, fully sealing off expired wells wasn’t required. Each abandoned well is a risk, although the danger depends on age, decay and proximity to people. They can channel gas and oil to the surface, pollute streams and drinking water, create explosion hazards when gas seeps into homes and emit climate-changing gases.Very little money has been allocated for finding and plugging the old wells. Last year, DEP received about $1 million to fund the work. It is sealing abandoned wells at a rate of fewer than a dozen per year. At that pace, it will take 17,500 years and about $6.6 billion.

Wolf's conduct on the pipeline is impossible to explain - The Times of Chester County -It runs like a scar across Chester County, a tear far more than a flesh wound, winding across the middle of the county as a reminder that the rich and the powerful can always buy off government at the expense of the people. It is, of course, the Mariner East II pipeline. It is appears to be back under construction because of a waiver from the Wolf Administration deeming it “life sustaining,” but strangely, no one has been able to confirm the existence of a waiver. Whatever is the truth — something in short supply in the tangled tale of this white elephant project — work resumed in the county on the project by the middle of last week. I know, because I saw it in person. How anyone in their right mind — unless compromised by money — can see this project as “life-sustaining” or “productive” or “sane” needs to have their head examined. This poorly designed, high-pressure mess of a pipeline is years behind schedule because Sunoco/Energy Transfer Partners is the kind of company that could mess up a one-car funeral. It is allegedly designed to carry some sort of petroleum product intended to make plastics to Marcus Hook, where it will go on a large ship and be transported to Europe. Of course, none of that makes any sense, economically, environmentally, or basically on any level. Let’s start with fracking. even if fracking was wildly profitable, it would be problematic at best. But, it’s not. With oil under $25 a barrel, every barrel that comes out of the ground is a big money loser — estimates suggest fracking doesn’t break even unless oil is around $50 a barrel. In short, there’s an oil glut right now. No one wants or needs the product coming out of the fracking sites in Pennsylvania.

Equinor is planning an oil conditioning facility in the Trenton area  - Equinor is proposing to build a crude oil conditioning facility that could process up to 40,000 barrels of oil per day on a 5 to 20-acre tract 10 miles southwest of Williston near Trenton. The facility, being less than 50,000 barrels per day, does not require PSC oversight. PSC Commissioner Julie Fedorchak said there are probably many oil conditioning facilities like this in the state, but it’s not known how many, since most of them fall below the 50,000 barrel per day threshold. Whiting has the only proposal for an oil conditioning facility regulated by the PSC. It is not clear if Equinor’s proposed facility will require permits from Williams County. Development Services Director Kameron Hymer said in most cases it would require a zone change to heavy industrial and a CUP, but without a pre-application meeting he is not certain those items would be required. Right now, Equinor is in the middle of seeking a permit to construct the oil conditioning facility under the synthetic minor designation from the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality. That agency is proposing to issue the facility a permit to construct, and is taking public comments on the matter from April 1 through April 30.

Community Fights Construction of Mountain Valley Pipeline - Drive past small houses and cows on Yellow Finch Road, and blue yard signs line the gravel road. “Stream Crossing” is written in big letters, and the logo of the Mountain Valley Pipeline corporation is tucked in the corner. The signs acknowledge the over 1,000 locations where the Mountain Valley Pipeline crosses water bodies. As the road narrows, handmade fabric banners are hung in trees with messages like “Water Is Life,” a motto of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and “Solidarity: Defend What You Love” with a drawing of a yellow finch. At around this point in the road, a clear difference appears in the left and right sides of the road. The right side has been clear cut, with netting and fertilizer capsules on top to grow grass, while the left side looks like a healthy forest. On the left, a makeshift staircase has been built into the steep land, leading up to a campsite built among the trees. People of all ages are sitting on benches around a small fire with a tarp hung above them. The camp on its own is remarkable as a communal home in the woods, but the camp isn’t the point. A dozen steps from the camp is an oak tree, and 50 feet up in the oak tree is a person living on a small platform. A few steps further is a white pine with another person living in it. They have been in the trees for more than 500 days as of January, “tree-sitting” to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline. They have received national media attention and they are far from alone in their actions. In the past six months, a man in Tasmania, Australia was arrested for tree-sitting to prevent the logging of old growth forests, a woman was arrested in Columbia, Missouri, for tree-sitting to prevent the removal of old trees for a new bike trail, and a tree-sitter left a centuries old tree on Rainbow Ridge in Northern California after she successfully prevented a logging company from cutting the tree down. Around the world, pipelines are being protested, including the Coastal GasLink pipeline in the Wet’suwet’en Nation in British Columbia, the Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline in North Brooklyn, New York, and the Jordan Cove LNG Project in Oregon—all making news in early February. With the Mountain Valley Pipeline specifically, more than 40 people have been charged in relation to direct action like tree-sitting, as reported by the Roanoke Times.

New Virginia law could be Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s greatest barrier yet - HB 167 requires state regulators to consider whether pipeline capacity is needed for reliability before approving projects. Virginia environmentalists are confident that a bipartisan ratepayer-protection measure championed by a House Republican will spell doom for Dominion Energy’s fiercely debated Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Not surprisingly, however, Dominion is still convinced the $8 billion natural gas pipeline still has a bright future. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signed HB 167 into law in early April, barely a month after the General Assembly wrapped up this year’s ambitious session. Both the Senate and the House of Delegates had voted unanimously to pass the legislation, introduced by Del. Lee Ware, R-Powhatan. Briefly, Ware’s measure adds an extra level of scrutiny. It protects customers from paying for large new gas pipelines if utility regulators determine that the capacity of such infrastructure is not necessary for reliability and is not the least-cost way to meet electricity demand. Peter Anderson of Charlottesville, senior program manager for Appalachian Voices in Virginia, applauded Northam and the legislature for ensuring that regulators now have the appropriate tools to prevent electric monopolies from gouging consumers by constructing unnecessary pipelines. He decamped to Richmond in January for several months of hands-on tracking of measures from the smaller-scope HB 167 to the all-encompassing Virginia Clean Economy Act. While Anderson is unsure exactly how the State Corporation Commission might interpret the new law, his layperson translation is this: “In the last fuel factor case, commissioners said Dominion’s existing pipeline portfolio is adequate for the size of its gas-fired power plant fleet. When you add this standard of review to that existing base of facts, unless new gas-fired plants are coming on line … costs for new gas capacity would be unnecessary.”

PIPELINES: Feds tell court to defer to PHMSA on Line 5 spill plans -- Friday, April 10, 2020 -- Pipeline regulators yesterday urged a federal appeals court to overturn a recent ruling requiring a redo of approvals for oil spill response plans for a project that passes below the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan.

Offshore oil and gas platforms release more methane than previously estimated – The Michigan Engineer News Center -Offshore energy producing platforms in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico are emitting twice as much methane, a greenhouse gas, than previously thought, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. Researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind pilot-study sampling air over offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Their findings suggest the federal government’s calculations are too low.U-M’s research found that, for the full U.S. Gulf of Mexico, oil and gas facilities emit approximately one-half a teragram of methane each year, comparable with large emitting oil and gas basins like the Four Corners region in the Southwest US. The effective loss rate of produced gas is roughly 2.9%, similar to large onshore basins primarily focused on oil, and significantly higher than current inventory estimates.Offshore harvesting accounts for roughly one-third of the oil and gas produced worldwide, and these facilities both vent and leak methane. Until now, only a handful of measurements of offshore platforms have been made, and no aircraft studies of methane emissions in normal operation had been conducted. Each year the EPA issues its U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory, but its numbers for offshore emissions are not produced via direct sampling. The study identified three reasons for the discrepancy between EPA estimates and their findings:

• Errors in platform counts: Offshore facilities in state waters, of which there are in excess of 1,300, were missing from the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
• Persistent emissions from shallow-water facilities, particularly those primarily focused on natural gas, are higher than inventoried.
• Large, older facilities situated in shallow waters tended to produce episodic, disproportionally high spikes of methane emissions. These facilities, which have more than seven platforms apiece, contribute to nearly 40% of emissions, yet consist of less than 1% of total platforms. If this emission process were identified, it could provide an optimal mitigation opportunity, the researchers say.

The findings were published today in Environmental Science and Technology.

Shell, Exxon halt some Gulf of Mexico output due to Exxon pipeline leak -  (Reuters) - A leak in a pipeline that carries oil from U.S. Gulf of Mexico offshore facilities has halted production at two fields, Exxon Mobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday. Shell said it temporarily halted production on its 100,000-barrel-per-day deepwater Perdido production hub last Thursday after a subsurface leak was discovered on Exxon’s Hoover Offshore Oil Pipeline System (HOOPS). Production on Exxon’s Hoover platform also was halted because of the leak, Exxon said. The HOOPS pipeline has been closed for repairs, a spokeswoman for Shell said. Exxon has notified government agencies and shippers and has responded to an onshore release of crude oil at a facility in Freeport, Texas, spokesman Todd Spitler said on Monday. “We anticipate resuming flow on the line in a timely manner once it is safe to do so,” he said. Exxon did not say what caused the leak or how much production was affected. HOOPS connects the Exxon-operated Hoover, Marshall and Madison offshore fields, which combined produce about 4,000 barrels of oil per day, according to a 2018 marketing brochure. Shell’s Perdido hub is moored in some 8,000 feet (2,438 m) of water about 200 miles (322 km) south of Galveston, Texas, and is a joint venture among Shell, BP Plc and Chevron Corp. The 153-mile (246-km) HOOPS pipeline brings oil from several offshore oilfields to the Quintana Terminal near Freeport, according to an Exxon website.

BP disaster 10 years later: Lessons learned almost too much to bear amid COVID-19 - April 20 marks the 10^th anniversary of the explosion aboard BP’s leased Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig. Ten years since 11 workers were killed, 17 were injured, and oil began gushing from a gash nearly a mile deep in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Oil would spill for 87 days before the hole was sealed, a hole drilled 18,000 feet beneath the sea floor in search of fossil fuel. The entire disaster drew 24/7 news coverage akin to man’s first steps on the moon. An estimated 3.19 million barrels of oil spilled, some of it fouling the coastline of five states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Five recommendations could prevent another BP type of disaster from damaging the environment, according to a report released Tuesday by Oceana, the international ocean conservation group. For 56 pages, Oceana’s report presents a detailed look at what went wrong, who got hurt, what was damaged, and what’s been learned since the oil rig blew up and sank, two days later. The title is,Hindsight 2020: Lessons We Cannot Ignore from the BP Disaster.  “Years later, large swaths of the ocean floor around the wellhead resemble a toxic waste dump, devoid of the kinds of marine life that typically lives there.”   It turns out that the efforts of valiant children and adults to save a few critters proved to be in vain. The practice of squirting Dove dish detergent into water to disperse the oil may not have done any good:  “So, this study suggests that those chemicals may have been dumped into the Gulf for no benefit at all.”   One development is so new that Oceana’s report doesn’t mention it, and it weighs on Alabama’s clean-up efforts: The collapse of the global energy sector has caused a reduction in the credit outlook of BP’s parent company, and with it the outlook on $571 million in bonds sold by Alabama. The credit drop was announced this month.  Oceana’s report recommends five measures to prevent a recurrence of the BP disaster. Here they are, verbatim:

• 1) President Trump should halt all efforts to expand offshore drilling to new areas. Expanding offshore drilling to new areas is expanding risk to human health, ecosystems and economies. Tourism, fishing and recreation industries currently contribute millions of jobs and billions in revenue to coastal states. Threatening these with unsafe offshore drilling and its risks is shortsighted and dangerous.
• 2) President Trump should direct BSEE to seek transformative changes to the industry’s safety culture and reverse efforts to weaken safety regulations. Poor safety culture in the oil industry prior to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster fed the conditions that led to it. Ten years later, little has changed and BSEE gutted the very precautions put in place after the BP disaster. BSEE [Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, within the Department of the Interior] should restore safety measures it removed from the Production Safety Systems Rule and Well Control Rule. Additionally, the industry needs drastic safety reforms in the drilling operations currently underway that are still resulting in hundreds of oil spills every year.
• 3) President Trump should direct the BOEM to deny all pending geological and geophysical seismic permits for oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean. Seismic airgun blasting is dangerous and harmful to marine wildlife. Seismic airgun blasting can disrupt, injure or even kill marine animals from the smallest zooplankton to the largest whales. BOEM [Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, within the Department of the Interior] should not issue permits to companies that want to blast the Atlantic Ocean with noise, looking for oil reserves that should never be tapped in the first place.
• 4) Congress should enact a moratorium on expanded offshore drilling. For nearly three decades, Congress restricted spending on outer continental shelf (OCS) oil and gas leasing and drilling activities through moratoria renewed annually in appropriations bills. These restrictions were enacted via the annual appropriations in the Interior-Environment Appropriations bill. Congress should reinstate offshore drilling moratoria once again in the FY 2021 bill [which begins Oct. 1], and continue to do so, as long as permanent protections are not in place.
• 5) Congress should incentivize investments in clean, renewable energy. We must rapidly end our reliance on fossil fuels and begin the transition to clean, renewable energy like offshore wind and solar power to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Congress should enact incentives for investments in developing clean energy to help reduce our energy-related emissions that fuel climate change.

'Broken' Interior agency struggles 10 years after Gulf spill -- Monday, April 13, 2020 -- Start a free trial - Ten years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Interior Department agency that regulates offshore energy development is fractious, demoralized and riddled with staff distrust toward its leadership, according to multiple accounts from current and former employees.

Trump's offshore drilling plan is still a preventable disaster - Ten years ago, the BP “Deepwater Horizon” rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and setting off the worst oil spill in U.S. history. More than 200 million gallons of oil gushed into the Gulf unchecked, while BP and its contractors failed to stop the spill for 87 days.Unfortunately, few if any lessons were learned from this unprecedented tragedy, and offshore drilling is no safer today than it was a decade ago. President Trump has rolled back key safety protections put in place to prevent another Deepwater Horizon-scale catastrophe while proposing to radically expand the footprint of offshore drilling at the same time. With more drilling and less safety, the president’s plans are a recipe for disaster.  During the crisis, while oil spilled uncontrollably, President Obama created an independent, nonpartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. They were charged with providing the nation with an impartial analysis, determining the causes and recommending reforms to make offshore drilling safer. Today, the industry, as a whole, has not embraced independent oversight or adequately improved its safety culture. Instead, the industry continues to advocate for regulatory rollbacks — which the president has championed — while claiming publicly; it holds safety as a top priority.  Considering the dire consequences of drilling disasters, rigorous, independent oversight should be a minimum prerequisite of doing business. Looking back, while BP was required to formulate a plan for precisely how it would handle an oil spill, the amount of effort involved appeared to rely on copying and pasting abilities. For example, BP’s response plan for Deepwater Horizon named a wildlife expert that died several years before submission of its plan and included mentions of seals and walruses – animals never found in the Gulf of Mexico. Any serious review of this plan should have caught BP’s embarrassing mistakes and revealed that in no way was the company prepared to manage a well blowout, like occurred on April 20, 2010.  Blowouts are a known risk associated with offshore drilling and “blowout preventers” are considered the last line of defense against a catastrophic spill. This is the device that failed to prevent the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and today, the devices remain unreliable and are still not tested under extreme, real-world conditions. In response to the disaster, the Obama administration increased the rigor of testing and government oversight of these safety devices. Still, the Trump administration has drastically undercut these improvements by reducing testing and government review of results. The Trump administration cited that their suite of safety rollbacks will save the offshore industry about $824 million over 10 years. Focusing on industry cost-savings entirely disregards the safety and environmental benefits that the safeguards were intended to provide.

LOGA head says OPEC+ deal won't do enough to help Louisiana oil industry - The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association said the new deal with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil producers like Russia, or OPEC+, to reduce oil production does not do enough to help Louisiana producers in a statement issued Monday. The deal, which came after a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, reduces production by about 10 million barrels a day beginning in May. The pricing battle between Russia and Saudi Arabia inflated the supply side of the equation, causing prices to plummet. “The OPEC+ deal may eventually help move the needle in the right direction, but the cuts announced Sunday fall far short of the meaningful measures that Louisiana’s independent oil and gas producers need to survive," said LOGA President Gifford Briggs. Briggs has previously called the one-two punch of the price war and COVID-19 a "perfect storm" and the worst crisis the industry has ever faced. Last week, LOGA, citing a "point-in-time" survey with its membership, said the crisis impacting the economy could spell doom for many of these companies, which make up a large part of Acadiana's economic backbone and fuel the state budget. “Our industry is on the verge of collapsing," Briggs said. "This is a time for bold, decisive action, not small steps in the right direction. With tens of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue at risk, it is essential for policymakers at all levels of government to implement aggressive and immediate solutions to offset the expectation of prolonged shut-in wells, a massively oversupplied world oil market and the global shutdown of our economy.” The oil and gas trade group called for the suspension of state severance tax collections for one year, easing Office of Conservation regulations, finding opportunities to expand oil and gas storage capacity at the state and federal levels, and ending coastal lawsuits. “At the federal level, we urge members of Congress to support a temporary elimination of offshore royalties in the Gulf of Mexico to prevent thousands of leases from being shut in,” Briggs said.

Trump to Lease Oil Storage to Nine Companies-- The U.S. Energy Department is negotiating with nine companies to rent about 23 million barrels of oil storage capacity in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a Trump administration bid to help drain the country’s growing glut of crude. The Energy Department said most of the oil will be delivered in May and June, with the crude distributed into all four of the reserve’s storage sites in Texas and Louisiana. The agency did not say what companies were involved in the deals or detail the terms of their contracts. “When producing oil, you have two options -- you either use it or you store it,” Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said in a news release. “Providing our storage for these U.S. companies will help alleviate some of the stress on the American energy industry and its incredible workforce.” The Energy Department earlier this month offered to lease as much as 30 million barrels of storage to domestic producers that are struggling to find places to keep excess oil amid an unprecedented collapse in demand caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. Of the original total, 22.8 million barrels were marked for low-sulfur crude, and the rest for high-sulfur oil. The tender offering the storage closed April 9. The final mix and grade of crudes that would be stored under the leasing initiative were not immediately available. The oil earmarked for storage under the program will be aggregated from small, medium and large producers, the Energy Department said. Companies can schedule return of their crude through March 2021, subtracting what the agency said would be “a small amount of oil to cover the SPR’s cost of storage.” President Donald Trump has sought to help America’s shale industry after large swaths of the world shut down to stem the spread of the coronavirus, causing demand to crumble. Trump helped broker a deal among the world’s largest producers to cut crude supplies by 9.7 million barrels a day from May, ending a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The planned oil leasing will consume roughly a third of spare capacity in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was established after the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s to help the U.S. weather supply shocks. The Trump administration is still seeking to fill up the rest of the reserve, including by buying domestic crude for the stockpile. An initial proposal to purchase as much as 77 million barrels of crude for the reserve was blocked by Democrats in Congress, though another purchase plan may be revived as part of the next stimulus package.

One worker injured in fire at Valero's Meraux, Louisiana, refinery - (Reuters) - One worker was injured in a fire at Valero Energy Corp’s 125,000 barrel-per-day Meraux, Louisiana, refinery early Friday morning, a company spokeswoman said. Valero spokeswoman Lillian Riojas said the injured worker was taken to a local hospital. The extent of the person’s injuries was unknown. All other workers at the refinery were accounted for. Energy industry intelligence service Genscape said the refinery was shut at about the time the fire broke out, shortly before 1 a.m. CDT (0600 GMT). The fire broke out in the refinery’s hydrocracker, said sources familiar with plant operations. The hydrocracker converts gas oil into motor fuels, primarily diesel. Riojas said the fire was contained to the area where it broke out.

Crude export terminals weather stormy times, part 3. - U.S. crude oil production is off its historic highs, the rig count is in free-fall, and crude inventories are rising fast, with the Cushing-to-Magellan East Houston price differential drawing oil away from the Gulf Coast and to the Oklahoma storage hub. Oh, and global demand for crude is off by more than 20%. None of this bodes well for U.S. crude exports, which have been at or near record levels the past few months. What seems to be shaping up is a fierce competition among the owners of existing export terminals to offer the most efficient, lowest-cost access to the water. Today, we continue our series with a look at Enterprise Products Partners’ Houston-area crude oil storage, pipelines and docks. When we decided a couple of months ago to take a fresh look at crude export terminals along the Gulf Coast, the market’s concern was that additional loading and dock capacity would be needed soon to keep pace with what had been soaring export volumes. In the first two months of 2020, crude exports from Texas and Louisiana marine terminals averaged 3.2 MMb/d, or nearly 1 MMb/d more than in January/February last year. The expectation was that U.S. crude export volumes would continue rising, probably to at least 5 MMb/d in 2022 and maybe 6 MMb/d in 2024; in response, a number of midstream companies were scrambling to advance offshore facilities capable of fully loading Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs). But that was before COVID-19 became a pandemic, and before the OPEC+ alliance collapsed and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prices fell below $25/bbl. In this new, scarier environment — even with a new agreement by the Saudis, the Russians and others to reduce crude production — the outlook for crude exports is far less clear; in fact, existing marine terminals along the Gulf Coast may well be battling for barrels.

How to Erase a Neighborhood – Texas Monthly - Established in 1930 as the town’s “Negro District,” the East End was the only part of Freeport where Rollerson’s grandmother, Louise Richardson, was allowed to buy property after the city passed a Jim Crow–era segregation ordinance. Though the neighborhood had a view of the water, the homes and businesses were soon dwarfed by the port’s expanse of chemical plants and industrial facilities. When Rollerson was growing up here in the sixties, Freeport’s schools were starting to desegregate, but Rollerson remembers his mother saying the city still felt like a sundown town, a place where white residents could threaten and intimidate African Americans outside after dark. As a child, he and his peers stayed in their corner of the city, especially at night.  Rollerson would eventually raise his own children in the East End; his oldest daughter grew up in the blue house, spoiled by her great-grandmother. But the house is long gone—his family had to demolish it in 2002 after, Rollerson says, the city wouldn’t issue him permits to make repairs. In fact, houses have vanished, one by one, all over the East End—and so have churches, schools, the barbershop, and the mom-and-pop stores that served the once-thriving community. Today, only a handful of residents still live in the East End, and weeds cover vacant lots where houses used to stand. Most of the families who used to live here have sold their properties to Port Freeport, which is planning to deepen its ship channels, part of a $295 million program to make Freeport the home of Texas’s deepest port. Alongside that project, the port plans to expand its footprint into the East End, converting the residential neighborhood into a complex of warehouses and U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities to service the port’s expanded operations. The expansion would allow Port Freeport, which delivers an estimated statewide economic output just shy of $100 billion, to accommodate larger cargo ships in addition to servicing companies like Dow Chemical, Phillips 66, Chiquita, and Dole.Freeport’s local newspaper, the Facts, has aggressively editorialized in favor of the project and suggested that criticism of the demise of the East End is unwarranted. In October, the managing editor of the paper wrote that the “gnarled faces” of residents fighting the port expansion are holding on to memories of a bygone era. “Watching the East End transform from a place for young families into a place for international commerce undoubtedly is painful for many, but the end result will be to the long-term benefit of the city and region.”

Texas Oil Regulators Could Mandate 20% Output Cuts - With crude prices plummeting to 20 year lows and a local industry in shambles,Texas oil regulators are contemplating the unthinkable: cutting statewide oil production for the first time since the 1970s. The Railroad Commission of Texas will hold a meeting on Tuesday that could potentially result in mandated caps on the state's oil output after watching WTI prices collapse by more than 60 percent so far this year.  It also comes as domestic oil storage quickly approaches its absolute limit. Ryan Sitton, one of three commissioners at the regulatory body, noted that significant cuts could “stave off a total oil industry meltdown.”  Such a radical decision, which needs the authorization of two of the three RCC participants, is being weighed against a backdrop of immense pressure as oil nations come together to attempt to rebalance crude markets before it's too late.  Today's decision by the RCC, which has the power to mandate output cuts in the state, could result in a mandate which requires larger oil producers to cut output by 20 percent starting on the first of May. The current decline in oil prices, triggered by a geopolitical spat between two of the world's most influential oil producers, Russia and  Saudi Arabia, in addition to the demand destruction sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in an unprecedented glut which has Texas regulators weighing the possibility of something that goes against their very grain; meddling in the free market.The meeting will come just after the historic deal reached by the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries and its allies, referred to as OPEC+, to reduce oil production by 9.7 million barrels daily through April 2022.  Exxon is not exactly a fan of the idea, with the company’s shale boss, Staale Gjervik calling the free market “the most efficient means of sorting out the extreme supply and demand imbalances we are now experiencing.” Gjervik also noted that “Proposals to impose quotas or mandatory production cuts will lead to unintended consequences for the state to the benefit of competing states in the U.S. and countries abroad."

Railroad Commission debate creates strange bedfellows - Record low oil prices have created strange bedfellows and triggered an intense debate over whether the Railroad Commission of Texas should order statewide production cuts — a power the agency that regulates  the oil and gas industry has not used since the early 1970s. The three-member Railroad Commission will hear testimony from 58 witnesses on both sides of the issue during a Tuesday morning hearing. The proposed production cuts come as the coronavirus pandemic continues to crush global demand even as a months long price war ended over the weekend with a deal to cut production. Over the past week, a coalition of oil companies, trade associations, elected officials and others have filed 140 public comments on the topic.  As of Monday afternoon, 66 of the comments were against using the power while 58 were in favor. Another 16 comments were unclear or neutral. Some 304 people filed what appeared to be form letters against the proposed state-mandated cuts. With crude oil prices trading around $22 per barrel and storage tanks filling up fast, Irving oil company Pioneer Natural Resources and Austin oil company Parsley Energy asked the panel to hold a special meeting to discuss the issue. Opponents say the agency should allow the free market to determine production.The Railroad Commission of Texas, the state agency that regulates the oil & gas industry, has the authority to order production cuts but has not used that power since the early 1970s. Record low crude oil prices have triggered a debate over whether the agency should do so now. Some 66 oil companies, trade association, politicians filed public comments against using the power while 58 are in favor. Another 16 filed unclear or neutral comments. Another 304 people filed form letters against the state-mandated cuts. Pioneer and Parsley were joined in support by five environmental groups, three former Railroad Commissioners, three trade associations and several smaller oil companies from Midland, San Antonio and Colorado.Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Diamondback Energy and EOG Resources, some of the most prolific drillers in Texas, were among those opposed to the proposed cuts. Other opponents included 11 elected officials, nine trade associations and Houston pipeline operator Enterprise Products Partners.The public remains divided on the issue as well. Forty percent of Texans said they do not want the cuts while 24 percent said they support them and 36 percent said they are unsure, according to a poll by the Brunswick Group.

Trump All Over The Place On Oil Prices - Indeed, are we surprised? But POTUS has reached a new level of hypocrisy on all this. So a while ago when oil prices began falling sharply, Trump bragged about how much this was going to help consumers, and he should get credit for it, of course. More recently, since WTI crude and even Brent fell below $30 per barrel (with WTI just over 20 right now, and Brent just over 30), he became worried about his pals in the oil patches of Texas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota, with Putin and MbS openly declaring they want to put US frackers out of business, oh dear. So Trump piled in to strong arm Putin and MbS into supposedly making a production cut deal, maybe 10 mbpd, although unclear either of them actually following through solidly (and some others, such as Oman, pumping it up all the way). This got about a day or two’s worth of a blip in the prices. But now we find out that Trump has not agreed to any cuts in US production, and the prices have proceeded to plunge again, for better or worse. This has led to something almost unheard of in more than half a century, the Texas Railroad Commission. It has authority over days oil can be pumped in Texas, and it and its equivalent in Oklahoma are apparently contemplating intervening and on their own reducing production in their states in order to try to prop up prices. There was a time, back in the 1950s, when the Texas RR Commission was effectively OPEC, controlling global marginal production. That has not been the case for many decades, but who knows, maybe they will be back. But then maybe Trump will not like this, given his recent claims about having “absolute authority” over all state entities and actors. As it is, on this, he does not seem to know what he wants. But what can one expect from somebody who one minute is declaring himself free of “all responsibility” but the next is claiming “absolute authority”? - Barkley Rosser

Trump Advances Massive Fracking Expansion on Colorado Federal Lands - The Trump administration on Friday released a new land use plan for southwestern Colorado that community and conservation advocacy groups warn is a "dangerous" pathway towards increased fossil fuel extraction that makes no "climate, ecological, or economic sense." Published officially Friday in the Federal Register, the Bureau of Land Management's "Approved Resource Management Plan" for the Uncompahgre Field Office affects 675,800 acres of public lands and 971,220 acres of federal mineral estate and spans six counties. It gives a 20-year blueprint for how the land can be used for purposes such as oil and gas drilling as well as livestock grazing, and was issued by the Interior Department over objections raised in public comments.The advocacy groups opposed to the plan say that expanding fracking in the region over the next decades will not only add fuel to the planetary climate crisis, but will also adversely impact local organic agriculture and endangered species. "This plan, unconscionable as the connections between fossil fuel emissions and global climate change become clearer every day, has the potential to exponentially increase greenhouse gas pollution in the region over the next decade, when we need to be drastically reducing emissions," said Melissa Hornbein with the Western Environmental Law Center. According to the groups, The plan would allow fracking on more than half of the 675,000 acres of public land and almost a million acres of federal minerals that it covers, and coal extraction on another 371,000 acres. The BLM's environmental impact analysis fails to tally direct and indirect climate pollution that would result from fossil fuel production. The new plan sets up a clash between Colorado's new law calling for a halving of carbon emissions by 2030 and what the advocacy groups say could be a 2,300% increase over the next decade in climate pollution as a result of the BLM's proposal for increased oil and gas extraction. "Ultimately," said Rebecca Fischer, climate and energy program attorney for WildEarth Guardians, "the Trump administration is testing Colorado's commitment to its new climate law, and its success depends on the state stepping up to defend bold climate action."

Marathon announces 'frac holidays,' Continental suspends dividend - Marathon will take hydraulic fracturing “holidays” and Continental will suspend its quarterly dividend and further cut crude oil production in both its resource plays. The new cuts were announced amid both an international price war between OPEC and Russia and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. The price war appears to be ending, but demand destruction due to coronavirus continues. More than a quarter of the world’s oil demand has evaporated amid stay-home orders and other steps to curtail spread of the virus. Continental’s dividend will be suspended until further notice. It will also reduce crude oil production by 30 percent, instead of just the 5 percent it had announced in mid-March. In March, Continental had said it would cut capital expenditures by 55 percent, dropping expected capex to $1.2 billion. That program was expected to fund three rigs in the Bakken and four in Oklahoma, and would result in a 5 percent crude oil production drop. “Global crude and product demand is estimated to have been impacted by 30 percent due to COVID-19. Accordingly, we are reducing our production for April and May 2020 in a similar range.” Marathon, meanwhile, is revising its capital spending budget to $1.3 billion or less, a reduction of $1.1 billion from initial 2020 guidance. That is 50 percent below actual capital spending for 2019. In mid-March, the company had announced a 30 percent or $500 million reduction in its planned spending, completely cutting its drilling and completion activity in Oklahoma. Now it will also suspend drilling activity in the Northern Delaware. In the Bakken, it will continue to “optimize” development plans, and likewise the Eagle Ford. Then it will before shift to a lower and more continuous drilling and completion plan for the second half of 2020 in those resource plays.

US Oil Drilling Grinds To A Halt At Key Shale Hotspots - Oil and gas production in the United States has peaked and is already in decline. The latest data from the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report sees widespread production declines across all major shale basins in the country. The Permian is set to lose 76,000 bpd between April and May, with declines also evident in the Eagle Ford (-35,000 bpd), the Bakken (-28,000 bpd), the Anadarko (-21,000 bpd) and the Niobrara (-20,000 bpd). Natural gas production is also in decline, a reality that occurred prior to the global pandemic but is set to accelerate. The Appalachian basin (Marcellus and Utica shales) are expected to lose 326 million cubic feet per day (mcf/d) in May, a loss of 1 percent of supply. In percentage terms, the Anadarko basin in Oklahoma is expected to see an even larger drop off – 216 mcf/d in May, or a 3 percent decline in production. The sudden declines in production illustrates the fatal flaw in the shale business model. Once drilling slows down, production can immediately go negative due to steep decline rates. Shale E&Ps have to keep running fast on the drilling treadmill in order to keep production aloft. But the meltdown in prices has forced the industry to idle 179 rigs since mid-March. With drilling grinding to a halt, output has slumped as “legacy” production declines take hold. That is, without new wells coming online to offset the declines from existing wells, overall production falls. In specific terms, the Permian, for example, will lose 356,000 bpd from “legacy” wells in May, more than overwhelming the 280,000 bpd in new output from new wells. On a net basis, the Permian is set to lose 76,000 bpd in May. That legacy decline rate has deepened with each passing year, requiring more aggressive drilling each month to keep production on an upward trend. But the treadmill has finally caught up to the industry. The OPEC+ deal won’t rescue a lot of shale companies. The demand destruction is simply too large for the OPEC+ cuts. With WTI at $20 per barrel on Tuesday, Permian drillers are actually receiving quite a bit less than that. “Since humans started using oil, we have never seen anything like this,” Saad Rahim, chief economist at Trafigura Group Pte. Ltd., told the Wall Street Journal. “There is no guide we are following. This is uncharted.” He estimates demand has plunged from 100 million barrels per day (mb/d) to just 65-70 mb/d currently. The WSJ says that oil storage in Cushing, OK could be full by the end of the month, which could abruptly force production shut ins in Oklahoma and Texas. That suggests the EIA estimate for a decline in U.S. shale production of 183,000 bpd in May could be optimistic. Meanwhile, analysts are eyeing a rebound for gas because of the supply curtailments already underway. The shut-ins in the Permian also help balance gas markets because associated gas will decline along with oil.

North America’s Oil Industry Is Shutting Off the Spigot – WSJ - Canceled orders were mounting when Texland Petroleum LP recently decided to shut in each of its 1,211 oil wells to cease production by May. “We’ve never done this before,” said Jim Wilkes, president of the 7,000-barrel-a-day Fort Worth, Texas, firm, which has weathered oil busts since 1973. “We’ve always been able to sell the oil, even at a crappy price.” Now there are no buyers for the crude coming from its wells and no choice but to shut them in. Texland told state regulators its plans and applied for a loan through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program to keep its 73 employees on payroll. From the West Texas desert, where oil is blasted from deep shale formations, to the wilds of western Canada, where multibillion-dollar steam plants bubble thick crude from the earth’s crust, energy producers are resorting to the desperate measure of shutting in productive wells. The sharp drop in fuel consumption caused by the coronavirus pandemic and exacerbated by a feud between the world’s largest producers has limited options for North American oil companies. Pipelines, refiners and storage facilities are filling up. Even when there is somewhere to send oil, low prices mean that many barrels lose money. West Texas Intermediate, the main U.S. price benchmark, ended Thursday at $22.76 a barrel, down 63% since the start of the year. It’s been even worse in Midland, Texas, where a lot of oil extracted from the Permian Basin is priced, and in western Canada, from which most of the country’s output comes. Oil has traded below $10 a barrel in both markets.Since mid-March, producers ranging from Exxon Mobil Co and Royal Dutch Shell to Oklahoma City’s Devon Energy and Cenovus Energy of Calgary, Alberta, collectively have announced spending cuts totaling some $50 billion. The number of rigs drilling in the U.S. has fallen to about 600, down from nearly 800 a month ago, according to Baker Hughes Co. BKR 1.09% Drilling is always down in Canada this time of year, when the spring thaw hinders accessibility, but the 35 rigs operating there are the fewest Baker Hughes has ever counted. It can take months for the flow from new wells to taper off, so production has only begun to reflect the austerity. U.S. production has declined about 5% from March’s record levels, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Rystad Lowers Production Outlook For Shale By 2.15 Million Bpd  - Rystad Energy had been projecting an increase in US shale production of 650,000 bpd by the end of this year, but recent developments have caused it to take a more pessimistic view of what’s to come in the shale industry, the Houston Chronicle reported on Thursday.U.S. Shale was pumping 10.4 million bpd in January 2020, and the 650,000 bpd of additional shale production that Rystad was anticipating we’d see by the end of 2020 would have seen U.S. shale produce more than 11 million bpd by the end of this year. But the coronavirus, which stripped away demand, and overzealous production by OPEC have both lowered the price of oil and filled oil storage to the brim.The result? Rystad has lowered its projected change in output for the year by 2.15 million barrels per day. Additionally, it cautioned that this figure may “slide even further”.So instead of shale production increasing by 650,000 bpd, Rystad is now expecting production to decrease by 1.5 million bpd by the end of 2020.Rystad’s projections were released on Thursday and come in the same week as the Energy Information Administration’s Drilling Productivity Report forecast that U.S. shale production in the seven most prolific basins for April is expected to fall by a record amount—193,625 bpd. The EIA expects this production to fall again in May by another 182,673 bpd. According to the EIA’s DPR, U.S. shale production has fallen by 546,622 bpd since December 2019.The largest loss will come from the Permian Basin, the EIA’s report showed. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was trading below $20 per barrel on Thursday afternoon, down 0.60% at $19.75.

Baker Hughes Takes $15B Charge for Q1 - Baker Hughes Co. reported Monday that it expects to record an approximately $15 billion non-cash goodwill impairment charge for the first quarter of 2020. “The company’s market capitalization declined significantly during the first quarter driven by current macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions inducing the collapse of oil prices driven by both surplus production and supply as well as the decrease of demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Baker Hughes noted in a written statement emailed to Rigzone. The firm also stated that ongoing uncertainty tied to oil demand is dramatically affecting its primary customers’ investment and operating plans. “Based on these events, Baker Hughes concluded that a triggering event occurred which required the company to perform an interim quantitative impairment test as of March 31, 2020,” the company continued. Baker Hughes added the results of the impairment test led it to conclude that the carrying value of its Oilfield Services and Oilfield Equipment reporting units exceeded the estimated fair value, prompting the goodwill impairment charge. “This charge will not impact the company’s cash flow,” Baker Hughes stated. “This charge is subject to finalization.” In addition to reporting the $15 billion non-cash accounting write-down, Baker Hughes revealed Monday that it has approved a plan for restructuring, impairment and other charges totaling approximately $1.8 billion. It stated that it will record approximately $1.5 billion of the total in the first quarter of this year.

OPEC+ Deal Is “Too Little and Too Late” - “The historic agreement that we saw…is only 10 mb/d. But that is only half of the story,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said on Fox Business. “When you add up all of the production cuts around the world, we are going to be much closer to 20 mb/d coming off the market.” After several days of negotiations, OPEC+ pulled off a historic production cut of around 10 million barrels per day. Additional cuts from a series of non-OPEC countries, including the U.S., magnified the headline number, although those cuts are not mandatory. Instead, the market is going to force shut ins, a trend for which the Trump administration is taking credit as a “cut.” Through some optimistic accounting, the Trump administration billed the deal as a cut of nearly 20 mb/d. In reality, the figure will be much smaller. In any event, the drop in global demand exceeds the cuts by so much that oil prices were flat on Monday. That’s not to say the deal will have no effect at all. Instead, it could prevent a more catastrophic meltdown, even if it doesn’t rally prices anytime soon. “Having looked into the abyss three weeks ago, the deal should provide some stability to global oil prices and reduce volatility,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a note on Monday. The deal mitigates some of the destruction in the U.S. shale patch. Bank of America predicted that U.S. oil production would have fallen by as much as 3.5 mb/d by the end of next year absent a deal. The cuts announced by OPEC+ could translate into a drop in U.S. production by a more modest 1.8 mb/d instead.  Nevertheless, the current meltdown is already having an effect. The North American oil industry has announced roughly $50 billion in spending cuts over the past month, according to the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. and Canada have shelved more than 300 rigs since mid-March.

Oil Deal Will Not Save Weakest Shale Producers-- President Donald Trump said the “big Oil Deal” sealed on Sunday will save hundreds of thousands of American jobs. But the agreement he brokered depends on a sharp downturn in shale that will likely bring about a wave of bankruptcies and job cuts. Days of frantic diplomatic maneuvering culminated in an agreement on Sunday by OPEC+ to pare production by 9.7 million barrels a day, ending a devastating price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia and belatedly tackling a plunge in demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The lockdowns enacted across much of the world to slow its spread have caused consumption to crater by as much as 35 million barrels a day. Rather than agree to any formal cuts, Trump is counting on market forces to shave some 2 million barrels a day of overall U.S. output by the end of the year. U.S.-focused oil producers have already slashed more than $27 billion from drilling budgets this year and are starting to shut in production. That could spell the end for some shale explorers drowning in debt. “Trump’s strategy seems to rely on the free market forcing production down and implicit in that is some companies going under,” said Dan Eberhart, a Trump donor and chief executive of drilling services company Canary Drilling Services. Almost 40% of oil and natural gas producers face insolvency within the year if crude prices remain near $30 a barrel, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Oil producer Whiting Petroleum Corp. and service provider Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc. filed for bankruptcy last week. Explorers idled 10% of the U.S. oil-drilling fleet, with more than half of the losses in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, the heart of America’s shale industry, while Concho Resources Inc. said Friday that it and other producers are shutting in output.

U.S. banks prepare to seize energy assets as shale boom goes bust – (Reuters) - Major U.S. lenders are preparing to become operators of oil and gas fields across the country for the first time in a generation to avoid losses on loans to energy companies that may go bankrupt, sources aware of the plans told Reuters. JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc are each in the process of setting up independent companies to own oil and gas assets, said three people who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The banks are also looking to hire executives with relevant expertise to manage them, the sources said. The banks did not provide comment in time for publication. Energy companies are suffering through a plunge in oil prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a supply glut, with crude prices down more than 60% this year. Although oil prices may gain support from a potential agreement Thursday between Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut production, few believe the curtailment can offset a 30% drop in global fuel demand, as the coronavirus has grounded aircraft, reduced vehicle use and curbed economic activity more broadly. Oil and gas companies working in shale basins from Texas to Wyoming are saddled with debt. The industry is estimated to owe more than $200 billion to lenders through loans backed by oil and gas reserves. As revenue has plummeted and assets have declined in value, some companies are saying they may be unable to repay. Whiting Petroleum Corp became the first producer to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 1. Others, including Chesapeake Energy Corp, Denbury Resources Inc and Callon Petroleum Co, have also hired debt advisers. If banks do not retain bankrupt assets, they might be forced to sell them for pennies on the dollar at current prices. The companies they are setting up could manage oil and gas assets until conditions improve enough to sell at a meaningful value. Big banks will need to get regulatory waivers to execute their plans, because of limitations on their involvement with physical commodities, sources said. Banks are hoping their planned ownership time frame of a year or so will pass a Federal Reserve requirement that they do not plan to hold assets for a long time. Because lenders would be stepping in to support part of the economy that is important to any potential rebound, and which has not gotten direct bailouts from the federal government, that might help applications, too. For now, the banks are establishing holding companies that can sit above limited liability companies (LLCs) containing seized assets. The LLCs would be owned proportionally by banks participating in the original secured loan. To run the oil-and-gas operations, banks might hire former industry executives or specialty firms that have done so for private equity, sources said. Houston-based EnerVest Operating LLC would be among the most likely operators, sources said.

Fed's Corporate Debt-Buying Could Mean Billion-Dollar Big Oil Bailout - As calls for a People's Bailout in response to the coronavirus pandemic continue to grow across the United States, a new analysis warns that the country's Big Oil companies "stand to reap yet another billion dollar bailout" thanks to the Federal Reserve's plans to buy up to $750 billion in corporate debt. The analysis (pdf), released Wednesday by the advocacy group Friends of the Earth (FOE), explains that this expected bailout for polluters relates to a controversial $500 billion corporate slush fund included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that Congress passed in March. According to FOE's report, The Big Oil Money Pit:Of that amount, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin enjoys direct control over a comparatively small $46 billion reserved for aviation and industries deemed essential to "national security." But the remaining $454 billion went to the Federal Reserve, which will use the money to implement emergency lending programs for corporations and municipalities. Secretary Mnuchin must approve these lending programs and wields considerable power over their design, but the money itself will move through the Fed. After weeks of unprecedented human suffering and an ongoing failure to support frontline workers, the Fed announced on April 9, 2020 how it would spend the first $195 billion of the slush fund. A full $75 billion would go to buy corporate debt. But because the Fed can leverage money appropriated by Congress, the real size of this program is $750 billion.  FOE found that the fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Conoco "are together eligible for a maximum $19.4 billion in benefits, based on their credit ratings and outstanding long-term debt." The Fed has hired BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, to administer part of its debt-buying efforts related to the pandemic. "As BlackRock begins purchasing 'high yield' exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to bolster corporate debt markets," FOE warns, "energy companies (predominantly oil and gas) stand to benefit disproportionately as the largest single issuer of junk bonds, at 11% of the entire U.S. market." Other key takeaways from the report include:

• There are 12 fracking-focused oil and gas companies that could potentially qualify for the new program. Together, they may be eligible for over $24.1 billion in potential benefits.
• Major fracking company Continental Resources, whose debt was recently downgraded to below investment grade by S&P, is potentially eligible for as much as $1.5 billion under new, weaker standards announced by the Federal Reserve.

Echoing climate campaigners' after President Donald Trump met with fossil fuel executives at the White House earlier this month, FOE senior policy analyst Lukas Ross said in a statement Wednesday that "oil company bailouts are simply throwing good money after bad." "Congress and the Democrats must stop this endless stream of handouts to an industry that is exploiting a public health crisis for financial gain," Ross declared. "These potential payoffs to major campaign contributors are the least efficient way of re-starting the economy and will just serve to enrich oil executives."

Landlocked natural gas producers look to potential West Coast export terminal for hope - Natural gas producers in Wyoming had already been battling tough market conditions well before the coronavirus outbreak started paralyzing the world’s energy economy. Wyoming boasts 16 of the country’s biggest natural gas fields. But other plays in the Permian Basin, as well as the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the Northeast, have made competition tight for Wyoming producers. On top of that, wicked-low natural gas prices have been driving Wyoming’s top producers to cut back on production. For years, Wyoming operators have held out hope for accessing international demand for natural gas. Last month, natural gas producers throughout the Rockies scored a small win when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, gave the green light to the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export terminal in Coos Bay, Oregon, along with a corresponding 229-mile pipeline. Landlocked Wyoming could see high returns if the export terminal on the west coast comes to fruition, because it would offer access to markets in Asia, proponents say. Even still, the export terminal has had its fair share of controversy and been in the works for over a decade. For one, it’s hit several roadblocks over the years, particularly from the state’s regulatory bodies. Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality blocked necessary water quality certificates last year. The project’s owner, Canadian energy company Pembina Pipeline Corp., still needs to obtain an extension for a dredging permit with the Department of State Land, too. In the latest hiccup, Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development objected to the project, though the energy company is working on an appeal. “As a result of this objection, neither FERC nor (the Army Corps of Engineers) can grant a license or permit for this project unless the U.S. Secretary of Commerce overrides this objection on appeal,” the Department of Land Conservation and Development stated in its objection to the project.The proposed facility has also faced significant protest from several environmental groups for well over a decade. Constructing and operating the facility would damage coastal ecosystems, crucial waterways and the climate, opponents say. Given the steep regulatory hurdles, the federal nod of approval last month gave the project’s supporters a needed boost in the long battle to secure additional natural gas markets.

New hearing ordered over lawyer fees in Keystone XL case (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered a new hearing Friday in a dispute over who should pay the lawyer who represented landowners against the developer of the Keystone XL pipeline when the company was trying to gain access to their land. The landowners along the old proposed route have argued that TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, should pay their attorneys’ legal fees. Company officials had tried to invoke eminent domain so they could run the pipeline through the property of 40 Nebraska landowners who objected to the project on their land. Those cases were still pending when the state Supreme Court issued a separate ruling that threw into question whether the company’s planned route through Nebraska was constitutional. In response, TC Energy dropped its eminent domain cases and chose to reapply for a new route, but landowners argued that the company should have to pay the costs of the lawyer who agreed to represent them. An Antelope County judge initially ruled in favor of the landowners and ordered TC Energy to pay their legal fees, but the company appealed. A district court judge who heard the case reversed the decision and sent the case back to the county court for another hearing. Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court ruled in a similar case that TC Energy didn’t have to pay the legal fees of landowners in two other counties. Based on that ruling, the Antelope County judge concluded that a new hearing wasn’t necessary. The landowners appealed that decision to the district court, which again ordered the county court to hold a hearing. TC Energy responded by appealing to the Nebraska Supreme Court to resolve the dispute. “By concluding that the ordered ‘rehearing’ was pointless ... the county court deviated from the district court’s mandates, which it lacked the authority to do,” Justice John Freudenberg wrote in the opinion.

Judge Tosses Major Keystone XL Permit - A federal judge delivered a win to endangered species and a blow to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Wednesday when he tossed a crucial permit it needed to cross hundreds of rivers and streams.  The ruling marks yet another setback for the 1,200 mile-long fossil fuel project that was first proposed in 2008 but canceled twice during the Obama administration over climate concerns before President Donald Trump resuscitated it in the early days of his administration, The Associated Press Reported. "The court has rightfully ruled against the Trump administration's efforts to fast track this nasty pipeline at any cost," Tamara Toles O'Laughlin of environmental group 350.org said in a statement reported by The Guardian. "We won't allow fossil fuel corporations and backdoor politicians to violate the laws that protect people and the planet." Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ruled in Montana in favor of a coalition of green groups including the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who brought the suit challenging the permit last year, HuffPost reported. He found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not consider how a 2017 water crossing permit would impact endangered species like pallid sturgeon.  While the decision comes less than two weeks after pipeline construction started on the U.S. / Canada border in Montana, it won't immediately halt that construction, The Associated Press reported. However, it could cause major delays going forward.  "It creates another significant hurdle for the project," Anthony Swift of NRDC told The Associated Press. "Regardless of whether they have the cross border segment ... Keystone XL has basically lost all of its Clean Water Act permits for water crossings."   Pipeline owner TC Energy said it would review the decision but pledged to move ahead.  However, the project could face an even more immediate setback. The same judge will hear a case Thursday, April 16 brought by tribal communities seeking an injunction to halt the just-started construction on the border over concerns construction worker could bring the new coronavirus to rural communities there.

Keystone XL Pipeline Permit Canceled Because Of Fish  - A Montana judge canceled a vital permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline with the argument that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to consider the effects of the pipeline on one fish species present in rivers that the route of the Keystone XL would cross.The cancellation comes just days after work on the construction of the pipeline began after two years of setbacks. Bloomberg reported last week that construction works had started on the Canadian part of the pipeline amid calls from opponents to delay the start because of the coronavirus outbreak.These construction works will not stop due to Judge Brian Morris’s ruling, the AP notes in a report on the news. However, it will delay work on the U.S. side of the border, perhaps indefinitely.“It creates another significant hurdle for the project,” said a representative of one of the organizations opposing the Keystone XL. “Regardless of whether they have the cross border segment ... Keystone XL has basically lost all of its Clean Water Act permits for water crossings.”The Canadian National Energy Board approved the start of preliminary work on the Keystone XL pipeline in January last year, but U.S. opposition has been strong and relentless.The pipeline, vetoed by President Obama and then given the green light by President Trump, was planned to carry heavy oil from Alberta to U.S. refineries. The 830,000 bpd pipeline will run from the Albertan oil sands through Montana and South Dakota, ending in Nebraska, where it will connect to the existing pipeline network that goes on to the Gulf Coast.A lot of the opposition to the project—and the reason President Obama vetoed it—was that it was believed to be unnecessary for the U.S. energy sector. It was, however, vital for the Canadian energy sector, which has been struggling with a pipeline shortage for several years now.

Coleman Oil settles with EPA over spill in river - — Coleman Oil Co. has settled two lawsuits with the federal government over a 2017 biodiesel spill in the Columbia River.A leaking underground pipe spilled 3,800 gallons of biodiesel into the Columbia River from a plant the company was using in Wenatchee. The company came to a consent agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Nov. 22, 2019, and agreed to a $133,200 penalty, according to a news release from the EPA.The company already settled $170,000 in fines with the state Department of Ecology in June 2019.According to the EPA news release, the agency found Coleman Oil facility’s spill-prevention plan had several violations, including:

• Failure to include protective wrapping and coating of buried pipeline
• Failure to conduct integrity and leak testing
• Failure to prevent or detect problems in buried piping
• Failure to come up with prevention measures and discharge or drainage controls for buried piping

As part of the consent agreement, Coleman Oil did not admit or deny the facts of the case. The site has since been decommissioned by Coleman Oil, according to the news release.

State responds to oily water spill at Trans-Alaska Pipeline terminal -- Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation is responding to an oil spill at the Marine Terminal in Valdez — at the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. On Sunday, equipment owned by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company malfunctioned and a mixture of North Slope Crude and water spilled under the snow. That mixture traveled over land and into the water in one of the tanker berths.  As of 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Alyeska said that approximately 13,692 gallons of oily water had been recovered by an incident management team. Crews under contract with Alyeska have corralled a 30-foot by 30-foot area of oily water with fishing vessels and aircraft contracted to watch for any escapement.

Alyeska Pipeline cleaning up oil spill at Valdez Marine Terminal - Alyeska Pipeline Service Company says that as of Tuesday morning, roughly 326 barrels — 13,692 gallons — of oily water have been recovered at the Valdez Marine Terminal. APSC said in a press release that an oily sheen was noticed on water near the terminal's small boat harbor on Sunday around 8:00 p.m. "Responders were on scene within the hour and continue response activities including deployment of sorbents sweeps, sausage boom and containment boom," the company wrote. "A team of vessels were dispatched and continue deploying current buster boom while another team of responders is performing on-land cleanup." Alyeska Pipeline says an incident management team responded to the terminal Monday night to aid in the investigation and spill management. The company says the cause of the spill and the volume of oil spilled are currently unknown. No injuries have been reported at this time.

Key BP Deal Threatened by Buyer's Financing Snag – WSJ - BP’s sale of its Alaskan business is in jeopardy after a group of banks balked at financing the $5.6 billion deal to buyer Hilcorp Energy Co. amid a historic rout of oil and gas prices, according to people familiar with the deal. A failure to complete the deal would be a blow to BP, which already has the highest debt levels—in relation to its size—among the major oil companies and is counting on the transaction to help reduce its debt. It is the largest deal involving oil and gas production assets globally that has yet to close, according to data provider Dealogic. A group of banks led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and including Wells Fargo & Co. had earlier discussed providing privately held Hilcorp with a reserve-based lending facility to help finance the deal. The proposed vehicle would essentially be a loan based on the future cash flows from oil and gas assets. But the collapse in oil prices related to the coronavirus pandemic and cratering energy demand has made the banks uncomfortable providing the loan, say the people familiar with the matter. BP declined to comment on the deal. JP Morgan and Wells Fargo also declined to comment.  The global benchmark oil price has fallen nearly 60% this year as an unprecedented glut of crude builds while much of the global economy is closed. BP’s shares are down 29% this year, in line with peers such as Chevron Corp. and TotalSA . BP and other large, Western oil companies have been using asset sales to help fund their capital expenses and dividend payments to investors for years. But the market for oil and gas assets has become virtually nonexistent, meaning major oil firms may have to take on more debt to fund their budgets and maintain investor payouts.For BP, the deal with Hilcorp represents a large chunk of the $15 billion asset sales it aims to complete by mid-2021. The divestments should help lower the company’s gearing—the ratio of net debt to the total of net debt and equity—which stood at 35% including leases in the fourth quarter, higher than any of its peers. This is above the company’s long-term target level of between 20% and 30%.

Western Canadian Select Falls Below $5 | OilPrice.com   Canadian oil is struggling. And I mean really, really having a tough time. Alberta's benchmark, Western Canadian Select, is now cheaper than a pint of beer. Sitting at $4.71 at the time of writing, WCS is facing a nightmare scenario.Fortunately for Alberta, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this month that the government was scrambling to secure an aid package for the country's oil sector. And though the help has been slow to come, it seems the administration is now closer than ever to providing some relief for the ailing industry. “We recognize that the most important thing from the very beginning was to get help out to Canadians right across the country, regardless of the sectors they’re in, regardless of their situation or their location,” the prime minister said.And some relief has come. Not only have OPEC and a slew of other oil producers across the globe agreed upon a massive 9.7 million barrel per day cut in oil production, but the Canadian government has also been making some attempts to prop up the industry. In Saskatchewan, mineral rights have been extended until 2021, allowing more time for producers to plan since holding onto those titles typically means drilling a well - which in this environment, is currently out of the question. Warren Waldegger, the president and CEO of Fire Sky Energy, noted that “An extra year on some of those leases...hopefully will lead to future drilling activity."   Alberta too has seen some relief, with a $100 million loan to the Orphan Well Association to begin the reclamation and abandonment of up to 1000 more wells. Additionally, the government noted that it will enact important reforms under Bill 12 of the Oil & Gas Conservation Act, allowing the Orphan Well Association to sell oil from orphan wells to associated pipelines.   But whether or not the government is doing enough to support the industry through this crisis remains unclear. The mega-relief package that Finance Minister Bill Morneau touted was only "hours away" a few weeks ago still hasn't come.

Exploration firm Ascent Resources announces first acquisition in Cuba - Oil and gas exploration and production firm Ascent Resources has announced its first acquisition in Cuba, marking its entry into the Caribbean market. The acquisition includes UK-based Energetical Limited, which has exclusive rights to secure a production sharing contract (PSC) on a producing onshore Cuban oil licence. Energetical delivers exclusive rights to the Block 9B in Cuba. This block contains the onshore Majaguillar and San Anton fields, located on the north coast of Cuba. The block currently produces 190 gross barrels of oil per day (bopd) from three wells. Ascent said it is reviewing potential further acquisitions to develop a wider Cuban portfolio across the oil and gas sector, along with the existing oil and gas asset in Slovenia. Ascent Resources executive chairman James Parsons said: “Cuba is one of the last remaining largely untapped hydrocarbon provinces of scale. “We see here, despite the recent market turmoil and oil price collapse, the unique ingredients for a new, highly material, growth trajectory across oil, gas and mining when the cycle turns.

Brazil Cuts Oil Production On 62 Offshore Platforms - Petrobras has started shutting down production at 62 offshore platforms in the shallow waters off its coast, Reuters reported, adding that the cuts will amount to 23,000 bpd.  Petrobras said earlier that as part of a global effort to support oil prices, it would cut some 200,000 bpd from its daily production, an earlier Reuters report said.OPEC+ agreed last week to reduce its combined production by 9.7 million bpd. This was less than most traders expected and a lot less than the slump in demand, which could be as much as 30 million bpd. However, with cuts from non-OPEC+ partners such as Brazil, Norway, Canada, and the United States, the total reduction in supply could reach 20 million bpd.The bad news is this won’t be enough. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its latest monthly Oil Market Report that the coronavirus outbreak has so far caused a record drop in oil demand, at 9.3 million bpd from 2019 levels. In April alone, demand fell by 29 million bpd. Over the second quarter, the IEA said, demand would recover somewhat, to 23 million bpd below 2019 levels, and then further down the road, it could recoup most of the losses, ending the year 2.7 million bpd below 2019 levels.It is clear to everyone that the cuts are necessary, but it also seems clear that they will not be enough to offset the demand decline fully. What’s worse is that global oil storage is filling up, and it will continue filling up despite the cuts. This seems to be the only thing that could force additional production cuts from most, if not all, oil producers.  Brazil, too, may have to cut deeper. The country was on course to a new oil boom in its presalt zone offshore when the crisis hit and persistently low prices could be the death of this oil boom. Currently, the country is producing around 3 million bpd but had plans to increase this substantially. According to OPEC’s February MOMR, Brazil’s production was expected to grow by 310,000 bpd in 2020.

Ecuador scrambles to contain oil spill in Amazon region (Reuters) - Ecuadorean authorities on Thursday were scrambling to limit the environmental impact of a crude oil spill in the country’s Amazon region, where pipeline bursts prompted by a landslide this week caused crude to enter the Coca river. The Energy Ministry said in a Wednesday evening statement that it had placed barriers around the spill in an area home to several indigenous communities and near the source of drinking water for the city of El Coca, with some 45,000 residents. State-run Petroecuador, which manages the SOTE pipeline, and private Heavy Crude Pipeline (OCP) said they had deployed six teams across several areas to “contain the spill.” Authorities have not yet provided an estimate for how much crude was lost due to the pipeline ruptures. El Coca had preventatively shifted its water supply to another nearby river, the Payamino, due to the spill and had faced some disruption, said Juan Baez, the city’s potable water director. He said normal service would likely be restored by Thursday evening. “This was big, something like this has never happened,” Baez said in a telephone interview. Holger Gallo, the president of the Panduyaku indigenous group in Sucumbios province, said pollution in the river from the spill was visible to members of his community. “Indigenous communities feel affected because our livelihoods come from hunting and fishing,” Gallo told Reuters. “Our way of life will be seriously affected.” The government and OCP said they would assist with potable water supply if it became necessary. Both OCP and Petroecuador said they would begin cleaning the banks of the Quijos and Coca rivers, and were installing temporary pipelines to continue pumping crude until the pipes could be repaired.

Turkish vessels avert tanker accident in Bosphorus -Crude oil tanker M/T Militos was taken under control by tugs, turned around and towed back to Marmara sea after it suffered an engine failure in southern Bosphorus, on April 12 [talasexpresshaber.com] () A possible accident in Bosphorous was averted by Turkish coastal authorities after a Greek-registered oil tanker suffered engine failure causing it to drift in the narrow water channel in Istanbul before being tugged into safety. The 274-metre M/T Militos crude oil tanker suffered engine failure during its journey from the Marmara Sea to the Black Sea. Turkish coastal police teams arrived at scene in less than 10 minutes after the alert was sent. The rescue vessel Mehmetçik and tugboats, which are on stand by 24/7 to respond to any possible call for help in various parts of the Bosphorus, repositioned the tanker and prevented it to drift. Difficult to navigate Bosphorus is one of the most difficult water routes in the world for large ships and vessels. Around 50,000 vessels pass through Istanbul's 30-km and 700 metres wide Bosphorus every year, with some 9,000 vesseles carrying dangerous goods such as crude oil. About 2.4 million barrels of oil passes through Bosphorus every day, and accidents keep occurring in the strait. Some of them have caused major environmental disasters.

China's March crude oil imports rose 4.5% year-on-year on stockpiling -  (Reuters) - China’s crude oil imports in March rose 4.5% from a year earlier, according to official customs data, as refiners stocked up on cheaper cargoes despite falling domestic fuel demand and cuts in refining rates caused by the COVID-19 disease outbreak. China, the world’s top crude oil importer, took in 41.1 million tonnes of oil, according to the official data from the General Administration of Customs. That is equal to 9.68 million barrels per day (bpd). The official March figure in bpd compared to an average of 10.47 million bpd for the first two months of the year. Imports in the first quarter rose 5% from a year earlier to 127.19 million tonnes, customs said, equal to 10.2 million bpd. Reuters reported a higher import number earlier for March based on quarterly figures released in a customs statement and data from previous months. In the official data set, the customs department gave a lower figure for the quarterly imports. Refiners, including state majors and private plants, began slashing crude throughput in February as fuel demand collapsed amid a nationwide lockdown to contain the novel coronavirus. But independent plants, also known as “teapots”, started cranking up production rates in March, as a plunge in oil prices triggered by the Saudi-Russia price war boosted margins. “Teapots started to book crude oil from late February when domestic virus transmission was easing. Some of the vessels have arrived in March and more will come in April,” said Li Yan, senior analyst at Longzhong Information Group. Li also expected an increase in oil imports in late April and May as Chinese refineries scrambled to purchase cheap energy after oil prices collapsed.

Mexico Ends Oil Standoff With OPEC - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday that his country will cut its crude oil output by 100,000 barrels per day, joining OPEC and other producers in efforts to stabilize the market. Lopez Obrador, speaking at his daily press briefing, said President Trump “generously” offered for the U.S. to reduce output by an additional 250,000 barrels a day, according to The Wall Street Journal. OPEC was hoping Mexico would lower its output by 400,000 barrels a day, and the country's initial delay in joining the pact had jeopardized the arrangement. "The United States will help Mexico along and they'll reimburse us some time at a later date when they're pepared to do so," Trump said at a press conference on Friday.  U.S. producers cannot coordinate to lower output because doing so would run afoul of antitrust laws. Governments on the state or federal level would have to “mandate a production cut,” allowing the market to “answer this from a U.S. perspective,” Stephen Shorck, founder and editor of The Shorck Report, told FOX Business. Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, U.S. producers, including Continental Resources, had already reduced their daily output by a combined 600,000 barrels per day, Shorck said. Still, there has not been an order from the Trump administration to lower production. The apparent end to Mexico’s standoff would potentially cement a deal between OPEC producers and their allies that would reduce global crude oil output by 10 million barrels a day until July, and initiate a ceasefire in the price war that began last month between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

OPEC and allies finalize record oil production cut after days of discussion - OPEC and its oil producing allies on Sunday finalized a historic agreement to cut production by 9.7 million barrels per day, following days of discussions among the world’s largest energy producers. It’s the single largest output cut in history. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was up 0.83% on Monday to $22.95 per barrel. Brent crude was down 0.22% to $31.41. Sunday’s emergency meeting — the second in four days — came as oil-producing nations scrambled to reach an agreement in an effort to prop up falling prices as the coronavirus outbreak hammers demand. The agreement ends a Saudi Arabian-Russian price war that broke out at the beginning of March and had pressured oil prices as each sought to gain market share. On Thursday, OPEC+ proposed cutting production by 10 million barrels per day — amounting to some 10% of global oil supply — but Mexico opposed the amount it was being asked to cut, holding up the final deal. Talks continued on Friday when energy ministers from the Group of 20 major economies met, and while all agreed that stabilization in the market is needed, the group stopped short of discussing specific production numbers. Under OPEC+’s new agreement, Mexico will cut 100,000 bpd, a quarter of what it had been asked to cut on Thursday. The 9.7 million bpd cut will begin on May 1 and will extend through the end of June. The cuts will then taper to 7.7 million bpd from July through the end of 2020, and 5.8 million bpd from January 2021 through April 2022. The 23-nation group will meet again on June 10 to determine if further action is needed. “This is at least a temporary relief for the energy industry and for the global economy,” Rystad Energy’s head of analysis Per Magnus Nysveen told CNBC in an email. “Even though the production cuts are smaller than what the market needed and only postpone the stock building constraints problem, the worst is for now avoided.” President Donald Trump, who has been heavily involved in brokering a Saudi Arabian-Russian price war, said in a tweet that it’s a “great deal for all” that “will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States.”

OPEC : The 10th (Extraordinary) OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting concludes - The 10th (Extraordinary) OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting was held via videoconference, on Sunday, 12 April 2020, under the Chairmanship of HRH Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy, and co-Chair HE Alexander Novak, Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation. The Meeting reaffirmed the continued commitment of the participating producing countries in the ‘Declaration of Cooperation’ (DoC) to a stable market, the mutual interest of producing nations, the efficient, economic and secure supply to consumers, and a fair return on invested capital. The Meeting emphasized the important and responsible decision to adjustment production at the 9th (Extraordinary) OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting on 09/10 April. Furthermore, the Meeting took note of the G20 Extraordinary Energy Ministers Meeting held on April 10, which recognized the commitment of the producers in the OPEC+ group to stabilize energy markets and acknowledged the importance of international cooperation in ensuring the resilience of energy systems. In view of the current fundamentals and the consensus market perspectives, and in line with the decision taken at the 9th (Extraordinary) OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting, all  Participating Countries agreed to:

1. Reaffirm the Framework of the DoC, signed on 10 December 2016 and further endorsed in subsequent meetings; as well as the Charter of Cooperation, signed on 2 July 2019.
2. Adjust downwards their overall crude oil production by 9.7 mb/d, starting on 1 May 2020, for an initial period of two months that concludes on 30 June 2020. For the subsequent period of 6 months, from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2020, the total adjustment agreed will be 7.7 mb/d. It will be followed by a 5.8 mb/d adjustment for a period of 16 months, from 1 January 2021 to 30 April 2022. The baseline for the calculation of the adjustments is the oil production of October 2018, except for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and The Russian Federation, both with the same baseline level of 11.0 mb/d. The agreement will be valid until 30 April 2022, however, the extension of this agreement will be reviewed during December 2021.
3. Call upon all major producers to provide commensurate and timely contributions to the efforts aimed at stabilizing the oil market.
4. Reaffirm and extend the mandate of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee and its membership, to closely review general market conditions, oil production levels and the level of conformity with the DoC and this Statement, assisted by the Joint Technical Committee and the OPEC Secretariat.
5. Reaffirm that the DoC conformity is to be monitored considering crude oil production, based on the information from secondary sources, according to the methodology applied for OPEC Member Countries.
6. Meet on 10 June 2020 via videoconference, to determine further actions, as needed to balance the market.

U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia Lead Pact for Record Cuts in Oil Output – WSJ - Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S. agreed to lead a multinational coalition in major oil-production cuts after a drop in demand due to the coronavirus crisis and a Saudi-Russian feud devastated oil prices. The deal, sealed Sunday, came after President Trump intervened to help resolve a Saudi-Mexico standoff that jeopardized the broader pact. As part of the agreement, 23 countries committed to withhold collectively 9.7 million barrels a day of oil from global markets. The deal, designed to address a mounting oil glut resulting from the pandemic’s erosion of demand, seeks to withhold a record amount of crude from markets—over 13% of world production. The U.S. has never been so active in forging a pact like this. On a hastily convened conference call with delegates from the 13-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and others, including Russia, participants raced to strike a deal before oil markets opened Monday. They expected prices to crash without an accord. It was a diplomatic victory for Mr. Trump. His allies in the oil industry prodded him to press international rivals to cut supply before it caused a wave of U.S. bankruptcies. Mr. Trump, on Twitter, said the deal will “save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States,” and he thanked the Russian and Saudi Arabian leaders for their cooperation. Mr. Trump and his representatives weren’t present at Sunday’s meeting. Still, the American president’s presence loomed large, after calling the Saudi leadership and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador over recent days. Mr. Trump also placed phone calls last month urging the Saudi and Russian leaders to call a cease-fire in their price war against each other. Christi Craddick, a regulator with the Texas Railroad Commission—which regulates oil in the U.S.’s largest oil-producing state—said Mr. Trump’s “aggressive actions and continued engagement to bring Saudi Arabia and Russia to the table to reduce global oil production was crucial to defending the domestic energy industry” and avoiding a downward spiral in oil prices. Investors remain concerned that the cuts might not be enough to support higher prices in the coming weeks as world-wide lockdowns pummel demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.The curbs will mitigate some issues in oil markets, but some analysts said they were too little, too late. Amid travel restrictions and work stoppages, oil consumption is expected to fall by as much as 30 million barrels a day this month. Under the final deal disclosed Sunday, Mexico will cut 100,000 barrels a day of output, some 250,000 barrels fewer than Saudi Arabia initially wanted. The U.S. unlocked the standoff by pledging to compensate for the Mexican amount with 300,000 barrels of reductions of its own, the delegates were told. It couldn’t be determined whether that was in addition to other U.S. cuts, or how the U.S. cuts would be implemented.

OPEC and allies' oil production cut is Trump's 'biggest and most complex' deal ever: Dan Yergin - As the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies came to an agreement on a record cut in oil production, U.S. President Donald Trump may have struck his “biggest and most complex deal,” according to oil expert Dan Yergin. “What was so interesting — among many, very interesting things in this unprecedented event — was the turnaround, the pivot by Donald Trump,” Yergin, who is vice chairman at IHS Markit, told CNBC’s “Street Signs” on Monday. Just a few weeks ago, Trump had said the early-March plunge in oil prices were “good for the consumer” as it meant lower gasoline prices. That drop in crude prices had been triggered by an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia after Moscow rejected a proposal by OPEC to cut 1.5 million barrels of production per day. The sharp decline in oil prices spurred giant capex and job cuts across the U.S. shale industry, which has some of the highest production costs in the world. But Yergin said: ”(Trump) came to see this as a national security issue, also an employment issue, and a very important factor in the U.S. economy … and he just jumped in.” “This must be the biggest and most complex deal (Trump)’s ever made,” Yergin said. “Not only was he a deal maker, but he was also something of a divorce mediator.” It looked like a mission impossible a few weeks ago. Yergin said there were two main factors driving the turnaround to the deal that just six weeks ago “would not have seemed possible.” Firstly, he said, the price of oil was in danger of crashing without a deal as there was limited inventory space left. That would have had “severe repercussions” beyond the oil industry itself and other sectors such as finance. The other driving factor was likely due to a dearth in oil demand, where the “producers found they couldn’t sell their oil.” Crude demand has taken a hit in recent weeks as measures taken by authorities to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have left major economies effectively frozen. “I think all those things came together but then it was this dealmaker ... Donald Trump who got on the phones,” Yergin said. “I would say it looked like a mission impossible a few weeks ago. Turned out, it was mission possible.”

OPEC+ deal saved 'more than 2 million' jobs in the US, says Russia's sovereign wealth fund chief - The OPEC+ deal that’s supporting oil prices could save millions of U.S. jobs, according to the chief executive of Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF. After days of discussion, OPEC and its allies reached an agreement on Sunday to cut production by a record 9.7 million barrels per day. It will be in effect from May 1 to the end of June, following which restrictions will be loosened. The alliance will also meet on June 10 to reassess the situation. U.S. President Donald Trump, who was involved in the negotiations, said in a tweet that the deal “will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States.” Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said Trump was “modest” in saying that. “We believe that more than 2 million jobs in the U.S. will be saved as a result of President Trump’s leadership on this,” he told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Monday. “The total number of jobs in the U.S. oil and gas industry is 10 million. But if you count ... other industries affected by this, you’re talking about huge job numbers,” he said, adding that Russian jobs will also be saved. America’s shale patch was seen to be vulnerable when oil prices went into a free fall amid the Russia-Saudi Arabia price war, which was triggered in early March, when Moscow refused to approve a proposal to cut production. Riyadh, in response, offered discounts on oil and prepared to ramp up supply. Analysts said Russia may have taken the action in order to target the U.S., which has higher production costs and struggles to break-even when prices are under $50 a barrel. Oil traded mixed on Monday evening in Asia, with U.S. crude futures up 0.13% at $22.79 and Brent dropped 2.06% to $30.83. While the oil benchmarks are still down by more than 50% from the beginning of the year, RDIF’s Dmitriev said the OPEC+ agreement supports oil prices “dramatically.” “Without this deal, oil prices would have gone a lot below $10 a barrel,” he said. It won’t push prices “exceptionally high,” in part because of demand destruction due to the coronavirus crisis, but does provide a “floor” going forward, he added.

Here Is The Secret Weapon That Allowed Tiny Oil Producer Mexico To Defy Giant Saudi Arabia - After the Saudis and Russia cobbled a historic OPEC+ oil production cut which at 10 million b/d was the biggest ever, and one which received the blessing - if not the participation - of Donald Trump, the rest of OPEC+ was supposed to applaud the two oil exporting giants who agreed to cut 23% of their, and everyone else's output, and fall in line agreeing to the terms that were imposed upon them in hopes of sending the price of oil slightly higher, because as a reminder even the agreed upon 10 million cut would do nothing to balance an oil market crushed by what Trafigura calculates was a record 36 million b/d drop in oil demand.  However, that did not happen because one country dared to stand up to not just Saudi Arabia, but also Russia and the rest of the OPEC cartel, and even forced Trump to bend to its will with the US president - desperate to get the price of WTI higher in hopes of avoiding mass defaults for the US shale industry - saying he would be responsible for Mexico's production cut balance. That country is the southern US neighbor, Mexico, which pumps a relatively tiny 1.75 million b/d and which would have been forced to cap its output some 400,000 barrels lower to comply with the deal, however the most Mexico would agree to was a a minuscule 100kb/d cut - a number that is completely meaningless in the grand scheme of the oil market - yet one which openly defies Saudi Arabia which staked its reputation as OPEC's most powerful nation by guaranteeing that every OPEC member would agree to the 23% production cut.  But why is Mexico risking the collapse of OPEC, and another sharp plunge in oil prices, by refusing to comply with the deal -  after all if Mexico cuts just another 250K barrels in output from its adjusted total it will unlock if not higher prices, then at least avoid an even sharper plunge in the price of oil. Sure, it may not balance the market, and $50 Brent won't come back for a long time, but avoiding another dramatic plunge in oil would be worth the cut, right?  Well, no because while that would be the reasonable economic equation for all other OPEC members, Mexico has always had what Bloomberg dubbed a "sector weapon" up its sleeve, one which incentivizes Mexico's president to either get his way, or watch as oil craters... and get paid billions. We are talking of course about Mexico's famous annual oil hedge, which in recent years has manifested itself mostly in the form of billions of dollars spent on oil puts, which we profiled extensively back in 2016 and 2017. As Bloomberg's Javier Blas writes, for the last two decades, Mexico has bought "Asian" style put options from some of the most prominent US investment banks and oil companies, in what’s considered Wall Street’s largest - and most closely guarded - annual oil deal. The options give Mexico the right to sell its oil at a predetermined price. They are the equivalent of an insurance policy: the country banks all gains from higher prices but enjoys the security of a minimum floor. So - unlike all of its OPEC peers - if oil prices remain weak or plunge even further, Mexico will still book higher prices.

G20 Oil Nations Agree To 3.7 Million Bpd Cut  -Oil producers from G20 have agreed to reduce their combined crude oil output by 3.7 million bpd, according to Iran’s Oil Minister, Bijan Zanganeh, as quoted by IRNA. G20 met on Friday to discuss oil production, but reports from that day revealed that the group had failed to agree on a specific number.“To underpin global economic recovery and to safeguard our energy markets, we commit to work together to develop collaborative policy responses,” the group’s energy ministers said in an official statement. “We recognize the commitment of some producers to stabilize energy markets. We acknowledge the importance of international cooperation in ensuring the resilience of energy systems.”This is indeed way too vague for anyone’s comfort, although some hailed the G20’s declaration of support for the OPEC+ cuts as a positive development. Such broad support for an oil production-cutting effort is unprecedented, just like the crisis that prompted it. Still, there is a figure for at least one G20 member: the United States.U.S. President Trump spoke with his Mexican counterpart on Friday after Mexico refused to sign up for cuts of 400,000 bpd under the OPEC+ agreement. Following his talks with Trump, Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that the U.S. would implement cuts of 250,000 bpd to help Mexico, which will cut 100,000 bpd. Trump confirmed the agreement, saying Mexico will “reimburse” the U.S. when it can.Besides this 250,000 bpd cut, U.S. oil production could be lowered by as much as 2 million bpd by the end of the year, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said at the G20 meeting, as quoted by the Financial Times. “This is a time for all nations to seriously examine what each can do to correct the supply/demand imbalance,” Brouillette said in what could be seen as a departure from the official White House position until recently that the U.S. did not need to cut oil production on purpose because low prices would force a decline in production anyway.

Goldman Sachs: Don't Expect Oil Prices To Rise On Historic Oil Deal -- Even though oil producers finally agreed to cut production by nearly 10 million bpd, the deal will fail to support oil prices in the coming weeks as the agreement, albeit historic, is falling short of the enormous demand destruction and expectations, according to Goldman Sachs.   The voluntary cuts from the OPEC+ group will be too little to counter a nearly 20 million bpd demand loss this month and next, Goldman said on Sunday, as carried by Reuters.  The OPEC and non-OPEC producers known as OPEC+ who had managed their oil supply to prop up prices in the past three years put the Saudi-Russia feud behind and forged on Sunday a new collective deal to respond to U.S. pressure and to the glut threatening to fill up global storage within weeks as demand crashed in the COVID-19 pandemic. After four days of talks and mediation, the OPEC+ countries decided to cut their overall crude oil production by 9.7 million bpd for two months—May and June, before gradually easing the cuts.Still, while OPEC issued a timetable of cuts that would last through 2022, oil prices were barely up on at 7:50 a.m. EDT on Monday, with WTI Crude up 0.13% at $22.79, erasing earlier gains of 5% as the market seems to look at the deal as ‘too little, too late’ as global oil demand tumbles by 20-30 million bpd.   The global oil deal would translate into just 4.3 million bpd of actual production reduction from Q1 2020 levels, according to Goldman Sachs, assuming that all major OPEC members comply 100 percent and all other producers comply at 50 percent with the agreement.   “Ultimately, this simply reflects that no voluntary cuts could be large enough to offset the 19 million bpd average April-May demand loss due to the coronavirus,” Goldman Sachs said.“[W]hile these cuts are significant, there is still a sizeable surplus expected over the second quarter. Therefore, we still believe that there is downside risk to oil prices from current levels in the short-term,”

Oil Cuts Won't Ease Mideast Storage Crunch-- The coronavirus that’s throttling fuel demand and forcing global producers to make unprecedented output cuts has left markets awash in so much crude that even the Middle East’s main oil-trading hub has run out of room to store unwanted barrels. Terminal operators at Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates say they’re turning down requests from traders and refiners to store crude and refined products, whereas a year ago they had ample space. The port’s 14 million barrels of commercial crude-storage capacity is just a fraction of what Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi provide for their state oil companies. Without tanks to lease, traders face costly constraints on their role as matchmakers who link a specific supply here with a willing buyer there. The global oil glut is making it harder for traders to even out imbalances in the market, and the plunge in crude, down about half this year, is making matters worse. “If tanks are leased or blocked, then traders need to push back on taking crude,” said Edward Bell, senior director for market economics at Emirates NBD PJSC in Dubai. That, in turn, could force production in some places to halt, he said. Demand for storage, an unglamorous but essential link in the global energy supply chain, is at its highest in years. From Singapore to Cushing, Oklahoma, tanks are brimming with crude, gasoline and other products, nowhere moreso than in Fujairah, a gateway for shipments from the world’s most prolific oil-producing region. “The current capacity isn’t enough, for sure,” said Malek Azizeh, commercial director at Fujairah Oil Terminal FZC. Even a deal between oil producers to trim global output by about a tenth won’t ease the storage crunch at Fujairah. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners such as Russia finally agreed on Sunday, after four days of deliberations, to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day. Other nations, including the U.S. and Canada, expect to pump less because crude prices are too low for some of their oil companies to make a profit. While a cut of this size would partly offset lost crude demand, it would fall short of OPEC’s own estimate for the drop in consumption. Trafigura Group sees oil use plunging by as much as 35 million barrels daily -- roughly a third of normal global output -- as countries prolong lockdowns over the coronavirus.

The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut - Quite aside from the subtler elements of the oil deal announced late last week that are likely to undermine its ability to stave off further oil price lows in the coming weeks, the basic facts of the deal are sufficient to do so: global supply is to be cut by (sort of) 10 million barrels per day (bpd) whilst global demand has fallen by around 30 million bpd. That is really all anyone needs to know and is the key reason why oil prices are likely to continue to test the downside of recent lows and to surpass them over time. Terrible though these raw figures look, the overall deal itself is much worse the more that it is examined in depth, as it is below. […] Aside from fundamental mathematical failure of the oil deal, then, what else is wrong with it? For a start, there is the usual nonsense of the ‘baseline levels’ from which production is judged to have been cut. Both Saudi Arabia and Russia are to ‘cut’ around 2.5 million bpd each but only from the production baseline level of about 11 million, according to the OPEC statement last week. However, Saudi has never recorded sustained actual oil production of more than 10.5 million bpd for more than a brief period. The recent often-quoted ‘supply highs’ of over 12 million bpd are not – repeat not – actual production but rather production plus the use of oil inventory.  To put it into historical – and real – terms, the average Saudi production from 1973 to the beginning of this year was 8.15 million barrels per day. This means that the Saudis are not in reality cutting production at all, it is just going to cut back on the use of its oil inventory, which it cannot afford to keep squandering at such low prices anyway. Russia, in the meantime, is geared up to produce around 11 million bpd anyhow – the baseline figure – so again this effectively means no cut, and even if the baseline figure was lower, Russia would take no notice and produce whatever it wanted, as it has done for every OPEC+ deal with which it has been involved, since the first agreed cut in December 2016. The third key failure of this deal is that the prospect of failure is explicitly built into it, in the form of a sliding scale of production reductions that are to be reviewed on a rolling basis as the market moves forward. Specifically, OPEC+’s tentative plan would see the output curbs dramatically reduced after two months, depending on the evolution of the coronavirus, with the 10 million-barrel-a-day cut liable to be reduced to 8 million a day from July and then to 6 million a day from January 2021 to April 2022, according to the OPEC statement. The group is planning another videoconference 10 June to discuss what additional measures need to be taken, which means that any slim optimism that may have supported oil prices has immediately been undermined with the prospect of a complete change to the parameters of the deal so quickly. With this prospect of reducing production quotas so close, it is also not unreasonable to expect the OPEC and OPEC+ producers to take a less than stringent approach to the absolute level of their oil production or exports, of course, although in the case of Saudi Arabia and Russia, the quotas, as mentioned, are meaningless.

Oil trims early gains despite deal between Saudi Arabia, Russia  - The world’s biggest oil producers on Sunday agreed to historic production cuts, representing almost 10 percent of global supply, putting an end to a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was up 0.22 percent at $22.81 a barrel on Monday, after being up as much as 5 percent overnight. Brent crude, the international benchmark, turned lower by 0.4 percent at $31.35. “We took the responsive and responsible action to focus on adjusting crude oil production by 10 mb/d beginning on 1 May 2020, for an initial period of two months; then by 8 mb/d from July to December 2020; and by 6 mb/d for the period of January 2021 to April 2022, in the interests of producers, consumers, and the global economy,” OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said Sunday in a statement. The so-called OPEC+ group, which consists of Saudi Arabia, Russia and their allies, agreed to a 9.7 million barrel per day cut after four days of negotiations and pressure from President Trump, who came to the defense of the battered U.S. shale industry. The U.S., Canada and Brazil will lower their output by about 3.7 million barrels per day, but some of that could come in the form of market-driven losses, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mexico, will lower its production by 100,000 barrels per day – less than the 400,000 that Saudi Arabia was originally seeking. “The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done,” Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. “This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States.”

Record oil output cuts fail to make waves in coronavirus-hit market - (Reuters) - The minimal impact on oil prices from a global deal for record output cuts showed that oil producers have a mountain to climb if they are to restore market balance as the coronavirus shreds demand and sends stockpiles soaring, industry watchers said. After several days of discussions, oil producing and consuming countries aim to remove nearly 20 million barrels per day (bpd) or 20% of global supply from the market, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Monday. The oil market has barely shrugged, however: Brent crude gained 1.5% on Monday, while U.S. crude ended the day lower. The move underscores what both investors and producers already understand - that the monumental deal to cut supply in face of a 30% drop in demand could only accomplish so much initially. The Saudi energy minister downplayed the move in oil prices on Monday, saying anticipation of the cuts was the reason for a rally in oil prices before the meeting. Since dipping below $22 a barrel two weeks ago, Brent has rebounded by roughly 48%. “It’s the typical deal, you know: buy the rumour, and sell the news,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said. The minister added on Monday that effective global oil supply cuts would amount to around 19.5 million barrels per day, taking into account the reduction pact agreed by OPEC+, pledges by other G20 nations and oil purchases into reserves. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, known as OPEC+, are cutting 9.7 million bpd in supply. Other major producers like the United States and Canada gave indirect commitments to cuts as well, playing up forecasts for drastic production declines in coming months due to the free-fall in prices. He said that G20 nations had pledged to cut about 3.7 million bpd and that strategic reserves purchases would reach roughly 200 million barrels over the next couple of months. Both Brent LCOc1 and WTI CLc1 have lost more than half of their value this year.

Oil Suffers on Demand Loss Despite OPEC+ Output Cuts-- Oil in London eked out a modest gain on Monday as investors weighed whether an unprecedented deal by the world’s biggest producers to cut output could stabilize the market reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. Futures rose less than 1% after earlier surging 8% following the OPEC+ alliance agreement to slash production by 9.7 million barrels a day starting in May. West Texas Intermediate fell 1.5%, and the May-June timespread moved deeper into contango, indicating that traders see the physical glut worsening even with the output cuts. The group reached the deal following days of intense negotiations after Mexico declined to endorse the original agreement reached Thursday. While the OPEC+ deal amounts to the largest coordinated cut in history, it’s dwarfed by the estimated 20 million barrels a day or greater decline in oil consumption as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S., Brazil and Canada will contribute an additional 3.7 million barrels in nominal production reductions as their output declines, and other Group of 20 nations will cut 1.3 million more. The G-20 numbers don’t represent real voluntary cuts but rather the impact that low prices have already had on output, and they would need months, or perhaps more than a year, to take effect. The OPEC+ deal came after days of brokering by U.S. President Donald Trump, who spoke by phone to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, followed by a three-way conference call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are ready to cut oil production further if needed when the OPEC+ alliance meets again in June, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the oil minister, told reporters on a conference call on Monday. Trump on Monday morning asserted in a tweet that the cut would be closer to 20 million barrels per day, without getting into specifics. West Texas Intermediate for May delivery fell 35 cents to close at $22.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. May’s discount to June settled at $6.85 a barrel, the biggest it’s been since 2009. Brent for June delivery gained 26 cents to close at $31.74 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. Saudi Aramco reduced pricing for all its grades to Asia, signaling the state company’s intention to defend sales in its biggest market even while paring output.

Oil Tumbles After IMF Slashes Global Growth Forecast - As if oil prices needed any more help on their downward spiral towards the teens, The IMF just slashed global growth to the worst since the '30s.“This crisis is like no other,” Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s chief economist, wrote in a foreword to its semi-annual report.“Like in a war or a political crisis, there is continued severe uncertainty about the duration and intensity of the shock.”As Bloomberg notes, The International Monetary Fund predicted the “Great Lockdown” recession would be the steepest in almost a century and warned the world economy’s contraction and recovery would be worse than anticipated if the coronavirus lingers or returns.In its first World Economic Outlook report since the spread of the coronavirus and subsequent freezing of major economies, the IMF estimated on Tuesday that global gross domestic product will shrink 3% this year. That compares to a January projection of 3.3% expansion and would likely mark the deepest dive since the Great Depression. It would also dwarf the 0.1% contraction of 2009 amid the financial crisis. Of course, there is the hockey-stick recovery with IMF anticipating growth of 5.8% next year, which would be the strongest in records dating back to 1980, it cautioned risks lay to the downside.

Oil prices may now be at a bottom after historic OPEC deal, US energy secretary says - The historic deal reached by OPEC and its oil-producing allies to cut production has worked to “stem the tide, stem the damage that was being done to the market,” since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the Saudi Arabia-Russia oil price war, U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told CNBC. Oil prices are down more than 55% year-to-date, having experienced the worst price plunges in nearly two decades in the face of record supply, disappearing storage space and global demand eviscerated by coronavirus lockdowns around the world. But they would be even lower if no agreement had been reached, Brouillette told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble via phone interview Tuesday. “Think about what would have happened in the alternative had there been instead of a cut of 10 million on the part of OPEC and OPEC+, what if that number had been zero, what would we be looking at today suggests that it’s probably something much lower than where we are,” he said. “And I think we may be at a floor. I think the intent of this conversation with OPEC and the rest of the G-20 countries is simply to do exactly that, to mitigate.” An early victim of the oil price crash has been the U.S. shale industry, which is now hemorrhaging jobs as highly-indebted oil producers in the U.S. begin filing for bankruptcy. Up to 240,000 oil-related jobs in the U.S. will be lost this year, according to consultancy firm Rystad Energy. Saudi Arabia slashed its oil selling prices and increased production after Russia refused to join its plan to further cut output and boost prices in early March. With the two countries reversing course on oil policy in order to pursue greater market share, many suspected the moves were targeting U.S. shale, whose production would largely cease to be economically viable once prices fell below around $50 per barrel. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate is now trading at less than $20 per barrel.

Oil drops more than 10% as producer cuts fail to banish demand fears - Oil prices shed more than 10% on Tuesday, with investors apparently unconvinced that record supply cuts could soon balance markets pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic, though a predicted plunge in U.S. shale output provided some support. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 10.26% to settle at $20.11 per barrel, having dropped 1.5% in the previous session. Brent futures fell $2.14, or 6.7%, to $29.60 per barrel after settling up 0.8% on Monday. Global oil producers worldwide are expected to cut overall output by roughly 19.5 million barrels per day, or nearly 20% of world supply. However, those commitments - which include voluntary cuts that will happen gradually in places like the United States - will not be enough to reduce the growing worldwide supply glut. Oil prices remain more than 50% down this year. “With demand destruction forecasts ranging from 15 million to 22 million bpd in April 2020 and these measures not even coming into place until May, we are likely to see a substantial overhang in the short-term,” said Nitesh Shah, director of research at New York-based WisdomTree Investments. The bulk of the mandated reductions come from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a group known as OPEC+. That group agreed this weekend to cut output by 9.7 million bpd in May and June. The rest from the United States, Canada and others, will come as a result of weak pricing and happen over time. As a result, physical markets where crude is traded, such as in Houston or London, suggest prices will not recover for a while as storage fills.

Oil Tumbles As Saudis Quietly Launch New Price War With Record Discounts - This weekend's 11th hour decision to cut OPEC oil output by 23% was supposed to end the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC+, but it appears Saudi Arabia did not get the memo. While oil production may (or may not) be cut by 9.7mmb/d on May 1, Riyadh remembered that to capture market share one can manipulate volumes, which are now set as per this weekend's OPEC+ agreement or one can adjust price discounts, which are not. And as the kingdom faces stiff competition from rival suppliers for market share in the prized Asian market (or at least what's left of it after India cut demand by 70%), the OPEC leader slashed its official selling prices to Asian customers for May by larger-than-expected margins this week, while keeping prices flat for Europe and raising them for the United States.On Monday, Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco set the May price for its Arab light crude oil to Asia at a discount of $7.3 to the Oman/Dubai average, down $4.2 a barrel from April, according to a document seen by Reuters.Asian refiners had called on Saudi Arabia to slash its crude OSPs for a third straight month in May after Middle East benchmarks and refining margins dropped amid ample supplies and lower demand due to the coronavirus. Overnight, China’s customs bureau reported that overseas energy purchases weakened in March as demand from the top importer took a hit from the coronavirus pandemic. Crude oil imports fell to the equivalent of about 9.72 million barrels a day, the least since July. While Aramco cut Asian prices in hopes of beating Russia, Iran and other producers to the punch, it raised the May OSP of its Arab light crude oil to the United States to a discount of $0.75 per barrel versus the Argus Sour Crude Index (ASCI), up $3 a barrel from April, according to the document.  Aramco left its OSP for Arab light crude oil to Northwestern Europe unchanged from April at a discount of $10.25 per barrel to ICE Brent. Then on Tuesday morning, Saudi Aramco again cut official selling prices of all four grades to new record lows from Egyptian port of Sidi Kerir for May, in line with big cuts in prices for other customer regions, with some grades sold at a discount of as much as $10.95/bbl:

• Arab Light OSP set at $9.85 discount to ICE Brent, vs -$8.40 for April
• Arab Extra Light also at -$9.85/bbl vs -$5.60/bbl
• Arab Medium -$10.95/bbl vs -$10.20/bbl
• Arab Heavy -$10.95/bbl vs - $10.50/bbl

Prices of all four crude grades from Sidi Kerir are 45c higher than those shipped from Ras Tanura in Persian Gulf for customers in Mediterranean, compared with 20c higher in April’s price list. And so, between the IMF's warning earlier today, and Saudi Arabia's quiet restart of the oil price war, Brent tumbled by over 5.5% this morning, sliding below $30, after hitting a high over $36 just two trading days ago as the unprecedented chaos in the energy market continues.

Oil Glut May Overwhelm Storage Tanks in Weeks-- Global oil demand will plunge by a record 9% this year due to coronavirus lockdowns, thwarting efforts by OPEC+ to contain the resulting glut of crude, the International Energy Agency said. A decade of demand growth will be wiped out in 2020, when consumption will slump by just over 9 million barrels a day, the agency said in its monthly report. April will suffer the hardest hit, with fuel use contracting by almost a third to the lowest level since 1995. While production cuts agreed the OPEC cartel and its partners at the weekend will bring about an unprecedented pullback in supply next month, facilities for storing the remaining surplus could be exhausted by the middle of the year. “Never before has the oil industry come this close to testing its logistics capacity to the limit,” said the Paris-based IEA, which advises most major economies on energy policy. The collapse in demand is prompting a similarly sharp pullback in supply. Saudi Arabia, Russia and other exporter in the OPEC+ coalition announced that they will collectively slash output by just under 10 million barrels a day over the next two months. This “should help bring the oil industry back from the brink of an even more serious situation than it currently faces,” the IEA said. Despite the efforts of OPEC+, global inventories will still accumulate by 12 million barrels a day in the first half of the year, according to the agency. The glut “threatens to overwhelm the logistics of the oil industry – ships, pipelines and storage tanks – in the coming weeks,” it warned.

"We're Crippled At $30" - Oil Prices Hold Big Losses After Massive Crude Build - Oil prices cratered today - completely shrugging off the OPEC+ deal as if it never happened - following IMF slashing global growth expectations and the Saudis launching a price war (heavily discounting crude). WTI broke below $20 and Brent below $30, and a key gauge of the oil market’s health is at its weakest in more than a decade as supplies build and futures contracts roll over. West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery traded at more than $7 a barrel below its June contract on Tuesday, the deepest contango since 2009. The May contract is nearing expiration and exchange-traded funds, including the United States Oil Fund, have been selling front-month contracts and buying second-month futures. Simply put, this is an indication of extreme oversupply.“At least over the next month or so, before these cuts have an opportunity to kick in, we are going to be very stressed on inventories,” And so all eyes are once again on the inventories for any positive signs...API:

• Crude +13.143mm (+10.1mm exp)
• Cushing +5.361mm
• Gasoline +2.226mm (+7.1mm exp)
• Distillates +5.64mm (+1.8mm exp)

This is the 12th weekly build in crude stocks and follows two weeks of massive build in all oil products.

Oil Weighed Down by Lingering Demand Fears- Oil was anchored near $20 a barrel after tumbling 10% on Tuesday as concerns over virus-driven demand destruction overshadowed a historic deal by the world’s biggest producers slash output. While Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers have pledged to cut supply starting next month, they continue to flood the market, swelling global stockpiles and testing capacity limits. The world is still choking on too much oil and will run out of places to store it within a month, according to trader Gunvor Group Ltd. In the U.S., industry data indicated American crude stockpiles rose by more than 13 million barrels last week, while a key timespread for New York futures moved deeper into contango, signaling an expanding physical glut. Oil has lost around two-thirds of its value this year after the coronavirus prompted lockdowns across the world to stem its spread, vaporizing consumption for everything from crude to fuels. The International Monetary Fund estimated that global gross domestic product will shrink 3% in 2020, a signal that energy demand may remain weak longer than anticipated. “This is a demand driven market at the moment and clearly lockdown measures across most of the world are keeping that under pressure,” said Daniel Hynes, an analyst at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Sydney. “We expect to see prices remain relatively volatile.” West Texas Intermediate crude for May fell 1 cent to $20.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 7:53 a.m. London time after rising as much as 3.9% earlier. The contract has lost almost 20% in the past three sessions. Brent for June delivery dropped 1.6% to $29.13 on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange after closing 6.7% lower Tuesday. Dated Brent, the benchmark for two-thirds of the world’s physical supply, was assessed at $20.66 on Tuesday, compared with $23.73 on Thursday.

U.S. Oil Crashes Below $20 On Record Demand Plunge - WTI Crude prices tumbled early on Wednesday to below $20 a barrel, after the International Energy Agency warned of a record oil demand slump this year, adding additional bearish tilt to the market which is already digesting huge U.S. inventory builds and too-little-too-late OPEC++ actions to support prices.  At 8:55 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, WTI Crude was trading down 1.59 percent at $19.77 and Brent Crude was tumbling to below $30 a barrel—down by 3.72 percent on the day to $28.60.  Following the Easter holiday weekend, oil prices were volatile on Monday as the market seemed to think that Sunday’s OPEC+ decision to cut 9.7 million bpd in May and June would not go far to prevent a huge global inventory build amid crashing oil demand in the COVID-19 pandemic.  On Tuesday, oil prices were pressured again, by a report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying that the global economy will likely contract by 3 percent in 2020, due to the coronavirus outbreak and the following “Great Lockdown” which will plunge many economies into recession.Later on Tuesday came the report of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which estimated another large crude oil inventory build of 13.143 million barrels for the week ending April 10 as demand destruction stemming from the coronavirus wears on. On Wednesday, oil prices crumbled after the IEA issued its monthly report, saying that it expects global oil demand to plunge by a record 9.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2020 compared to last year.  Even if travel restrictions are lifted in the second half of this year, demand for the whole 2020 would drop by a record level of 9.3 million bpd, “erasing almost a decade of growth,” said the agency, also warning that the historic OPEC++ deal may not be able to prevent global storage from overflowing within weeks.  Three days after the global oil deal—described as historic by OPEC+ and the U.S.—the market has already forgotten the calculations of v oluntary and forced cuts and has turned its attention again to the massive demand loss in the pandemic. 

WTI Extends Losses Below $20 After Record Surge In Crude Inventories - WTI crashed below $20 (tagging $19.20) overnight after API reported huge inventory builds and was not helped by comments from the International Energy Agency that a historic production cut deal won’t be enough to counter a record demand slump this year.This appears to confirm a key gauge of the oil market’s health which is at its weakest in more than a decade as supplies build and futures contracts roll over. West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery traded at more than $7 a barrel below its June contract on Tuesday, the deepest contango since 2009. The May contract is nearing expiration and exchange-traded funds, including the United States Oil Fund, have been selling front-month contracts and buying second-month futures. Simply put, this is an indication of extreme oversupply. “At least over the next month or so, before these cuts have an opportunity to kick in, we are going to be very stressed on inventories,” Bart Melek, head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, said by telephone.  And so all eyes are once again on the inventories for any positive signs... DOE

• Crude +19.25mm (+10.1mm exp)
• Cushing +5.724mm
• Gasoline +4.914mm (+7.1mm exp)
• Distillates +6.28mm (+1.8mm exp)

Everything is significantly worse than expected with record breaking builds in crude and gasoline and at Cushing...Total US Crude stocks are now at their highest since June 2017... And Gasoline stocks are at record highs... ...as Gasoline demand collapsed to series lows... US production continued to slide (with U.S. Refineries running at the lowest rates since 2008)... Source of graphs: Bloomberg.   WTI crashed back below $20 after ramping up before the DOE data...

Coronavirus crisis will erase nearly a decade of oil demand growth this year, IEA says - The International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday that it expects the coronavirus crisis to erase almost a decade of oil demand growth in 2020, with countries around the world effectively having to shut down in response to the pandemic. A public health crisis has prompted governments to impose draconian measures on the lives of billions of people. It has created an unprecedented demand shock in energy markets, with mobility brought close to a standstill. Activity in the transportation sector has fallen dramatically almost everywhere, the IEA said, noting that confinement measures had been implemented in 187 countries and territories in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. “Even assuming that travel restrictions are eased in the second half of the year, we expect that global oil demand in 2020 will fall by 9.3 million barrels a day versus 2019, erasing almost a decade of growth.” In its closely-watched monthly report, the Paris-based agency said demand in April is estimated to be 29 million barrels per day lower than a year ago, hitting a level last seen in 1995. For the second quarter of the year, oil demand is expected to be 23.1 million barrels per day below year-ago levels. Yet, while a recovery is forecast to be underway in the second half of the year, the IEA said it expects this to be gradual and, in December, demand will still be down 2.7 million barrels per day year-on-year. Oil prices, which were already trading slightly lower Wednesday morning, extended their losses shortly after the report was published.

Oil drops to more than 18-year low on inventory build, supply concerns - Oil dropped to its lowest level in more than 18 years on Wednesday amid reports suggesting persistent oversupply and collapsing demand due to global coronavirus-related lockdowns could continue to hammer prices. The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday forecast a 29 million barrel per day (bpd) dive in April oil demand to levels not seen in 25 years and said no output cut could fully offset the near-term falls facing the market. Brent crude fell $1.91, or 6.45%, to settle at $27.69, giving up an earlier gain. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 24 cents, or 1.19%, to settle at $19.87 per barrel, its lowest settle since Feb. 2002. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, for the week ending April 10 inventory increased by 19.2 million barrels. Analysts polled by FactSet had been expecting a rise of 12.02 million barrels. “There is no feasible agreement that could cut supply by enough to offset such near-term demand losses,” the IEA said in its monthly report. “However, the past week’s achievements are a solid start.” The drop in prices and demand has pushed global producers to agree unprecedented supply cuts. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with Russia and other producer - a grouping known as OPEC+ - has partnered with other oil-pumping nations, such as the United States, in the record global supply pact. Officials and sources from OPEC+ states indicated the IEA, the energy watchdog for the world’s most industrialised nations, could announce purchases of oil for storage of up to several million barrels to buoy the deal. But as of Wednesday, no such IEA purchases had materialised. The agency, in its report, said it was “still waiting for more details on some planned production cuts and proposals to use strategic storage.” The United States, India, China and South Korea have either offered or are considering such purchases, the IEA added. Some analysts said they expect more downward pressure on the market without a demand recovery. “The slow implementation of the agreement, the risk of non-compliance and no firm commitment from others to follow suit could see the market remain under pressure until the pandemic loosens its grip to let fuel demand recover,”

Oil prices hold at 18-year low on demand concerns amid coronavirus shutdowns- Oil prices held steady at a 18-year low on Thursday after OPEC lowered its global oil demand forecast due to the “historic shock” delivered by the coronavirus outbreak. Before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries released its latest forecast, global benchmark Brent futures were up over $1 a barrel as investors hoped record builds in U.S. inventories would prompt producers there to cut output quickly. West Texas Intermediate crude settled unchanged at $19.87 per barrel, the lowest level since February 2002. Brent crude settled up 13 cents, or 0.47%, at $27.82 per barrel. OPEC said in a monthly report it now expects global demand to contract by 6.9 million barrels per day (bpd), or 6.9%, in 2020, and noted the reduction may not be the last. Last month, OPEC projected a small increase in demand of 60,000 bpd. OPEC and its allies, including Russia - a group known as OPEC+ - agreed over the weekend to reduce output by 9.7 million bpd for May and June. Russian energy firms have already significantly revised down their plans for oil exports in May following the OPEC+ deal, three company sources and two traders told Reuters on Thursday. “Low prices are here to stay until there is some clarity on when and by how much non-OPEC+ countries will chip in with additional production cuts,” analysts at Rystad Energy said. Hoped-for cuts of another 10 million bpd from other countries, including the United States, could lower production by around 20 million bpd, although some analysts have questioned that number. “Oil prices must remain depressed to force shut-ins among non-cartelised producers,” said Norbert Ruecker, head of economics at Swiss bank Julius Baer, referring to producers such as the United States, where a lot of production is unprofitable at current prices. Some countries have also committed to increasing purchases of oil for their strategic stockpiles, but there are limits to how much oil can be bought and the extent of global coordination. Speaking of U.S. strategic reserve buying, Commerzbank analysts said that “this would accommodate 23 million barrels, which would normally constitute a massive additional reserve but these days would only just be enough to cope with one weekly increase in stocks.”

Oil mixed as shrinking China economy overshadows Trump plan to ease US coronavirus lockdown - Oil prices were mixed on Friday after the weakest Chinese economic data in decades showed the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, offsetting some earlier gains on optimism for President Donald Trump’s early plans to revive the U.S. economy. Brent was up by 55 cents, or 2%, at $28.37 a barrel by 0406 GMT, while U.S. crude for May delivery, which expires on April 21, was down 13 cents, or 0.7%, at $19.74 a barrel. The more active June contract was up $1, or 4%, at $26.53. China’s economy shrank for the first time since at least 1992 in the first quarter, as the coronavirus outbreak paralysed production and spending and punched a huge hole in global demand for crude and refined products. That data was released after Trump laid out a three-stage process for ending lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus that has now killed more than 32,000 Americans and nearly 140,000 worldwide. “Oil markets found baseline support from President Trump’s U.S. reopening plan,” said Stephen Innes, market strategist at AxiTrader. Still, downside risk remains the dominant factor, he said. Both oil benchmarks are heading for a second consecutive week of losses, with U.S. oil around 18-year lows: Analysts have slashed forecasts for prices and demand due to the spread of the coronavirus and oversupply concerns. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) lowered its forecast for 2020 global oil demand and warned it may not be the last revision downward. OPEC now sees a contraction of global demand of 6.9 million barrels per day (bpd), compared with a small increase predicted last month, due to the coronavirus outbreak. “Downward risks remain significant, suggesting the possibility of further adjustments, especially in the second quarter,” OPEC said of the demand forecast. OPEC and other producers including Russia, in a grouping known as OPEC+, over the weekend agreed on production cuts of nearly 10 million bpd, after an earlier cooperation agreement collapsed. ConocoPhillips said on Thursday it will reduce planned North American output by 225,000 bpd, the largest cut so far by a major shale oil producer to deal with the unprecedented drop in demand. “This highlights that the market will see meaningful cuts from outside the OPEC+ group without the need for mandated cuts,” said ING bank in a note on Friday. “Instead, market forces will do the job, with the low price environment forcing producers to cut back.”

Demand For OPEC Oil Falls To 30-Year Low - The sharp contraction in global oil demand amid lockdowns and stalled industrial activity will lead to the lowest demand for OPEC crude in more than thirty years this quarter.  Global oil demand in Q2 is set to be at around 86 million bpd, down by 12 million bpd year on year, OPEC said in its closely watched Monthly Oil Market Report on Thursday. In the second quarter, the call on OPEC crude will be 19.73 million bpd, down by 9.6 million bpd from the demand for OPEC’s oil in Q2 2019.The fewer-than-20-million-bpd demand for OPEC crude in Q2 2020 would be the lowest since 1989, the last time OPEC pumped so little crude oil, according to Bloomberg estimates.Even with the historic OPEC+ agreement to remove 9.7 million bpd from the market in May and June, OPEC alone is faced with a gaping hole between crashing demand for its oil (and for any other oil, for that matter) and still persistent oversupply, even if all OPEC members were to comply fully with their cuts—something never seen in the industry before.In the unlikely event of all OPEC members fully complying with the cuts, demand for OPEC crude in Q2 at just below 20 million bpd would still be much lower than OPEC’s potential all-members-complying-100-percent production of 23.4 million bpd, according to Bloomberg estimates.  For the full-year 2020, OPEC expects demand for its crude at 24.5 million bpd, down by 5.4 million bpd compared to 2019. When compared with the same quarters in 2019, demand for OPEC crude in Q1 2020 and Q2 2020 is expected to be 8.2 million bpd and 9.6 million bpd lower, respectively, the cartel said in its monthly report. Those projections, however, remain “heavily subject to uncertainty surrounding current market conditions,” OPEC said.   As far as the entire global oil demand is concerned, OPEC expects it to drop by 6.8 million bpd this year, as “The oil market is currently undergoing historic shock that is abrupt, extreme and at global scale.”

IMF warns 'vulnerabilities high' in the Middle East hit with dual shock of coronavirus and oil plunge - The International Monetary Fund forecasts a dramatic contraction for Middle Eastern and North African economies this year, predicting a worse outlook for the region than for the global economy as a whole in its latest regional economic report. The IMF expects the MENA region to contract by 3.3% in 2020, compared to last year’s projected growth of 0.3%. That’s worse than the Fund’s forecast for the world economy, which is expected to contract by 3% this year. “Vulnerabilities are high in certain countries, especially those with high levels of unemployment and low growth,” the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Director Jihad Azour told CNBC on Tuesday. He acknowledged the possibility of civil unrest as the region’s economies face strains caused by the “dual shock” of coronavirus and low oil prices. The IMF expects growth in Lebanon to decline by 12% in 2020. The small Mediterranean country has the third-highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world and was facing an economic crisis long before the coronavirus pandemic set in. Egypt is the only country in the MENA region the IMF expects to grow in 2020, by 2%. Lebanon’s ailing economy — forecast to have contracted by 6.5% in 2019 — with governance issues and rampant corruption resulted in mass demonstrations last year, and ultimately forced former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government to resign. The structural reforms required of an IMF bailout could have deeper social and economic repercussions, however, and push the government to look elsewhere for funds. Both Lebanon and Iraq have explored further funding from the IMF, Azour confirmed to CNBC, as the Fund responds to an unprecedented demand for emergency assistance. The Washington-based organization provides financing to members and has $1 trillion in lending capacity.

Something Good From The Pandemic? Maybe A Cease Fire In Yemen - Barkley Rosser - Yes, in the midst of deaths and deep recession there may be someting good that may come from this pandemic.  Saudi Arabia’s leaders have announced a cease fire in Yemen after five years of war, one also accepted by its ally, the recognized government there.  Unfortunately so far the Houthi enemies of the Saudis and the recognized government have not so far accepted this proposed cease fire, and in fact it is not the first time the Saudis have called for one, with the previous efforts having failed. However, this time maybe it will stick.  So far there are no officially recognized cases of covid-19 in Yemen.  But tens of thousands of Yemenis are returning home from KSA, thrown out as low oil prices have strained the Saudi economy, with the numerous Yemeni guest workers taking the hit, Yemenis being the only non-Saudis allowed to come and go without getting visas, so easy come and easy go.  In KSA there are now over 3,000 recognized cases while in Yemen more than half the health infrastructure has been destroyed by the Saudis in the war.  Yemen is facing a potentially disastrous situation. A further aspect of this on the Saudi side is that 150 members of the Saudi royal family have apparently become infected.  Most of these are in the lesser branches, with the family now ridiculously large at about 15,000, of whom about 2,000 are “core.”  But in fact some serious “senior” members have fallen ill, with perhaps the most prominent (and seriously ill) is the powerful governor of Riyadh province, which contains the capital city, Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz, a nephew of King Salman, who is reportedly hiding on an island in the Red Sea, with de factoo ruler Crown Prince MbS also in seclusion somewhere.  This seems to have spooked the Saudi leadership so that even if the Houthis do not like what is being offered, the Saudis may simply stand down. The virus may be bringing about peace in a long-suffering nation. Let us hope so.

Chinese Oil Giant Helps Kuwait Turn Refinery Project Into Hospital - China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec, is helping Kuwait to remodel a camp at a refinery into a hospital to treat the rising number of coronavirus patients in one of OPEC’s core oil producers. Sinopec’s unit Sinopec Fifth Construction Co is helping Kuwait to turn the living quarters of construction workers at the Al-Zour New Refinery Project (NRP) into a makeshift hospital, Sinopec, one of China’s biggest oil and petrochemical firms, told Chinese publication the Global Times on Tuesday.As of early Tuesday, April 14, Kuwait had 1,355 confirmed coronavirus cases and 3 deaths, with a growing curve of daily COVID-19 cases.“The Kuwaiti government chose our camp because it is in the desert, a good place for isolation. With its existing facilities, it can be converted into a makeshift hospital with little modification,” a Sinopec Fifth Construction employee told the Global Times.Last month, Sinopec launched two production lines for N95 respirators and surgical masks in response to a shortage created by the coronavirus pandemic.While life in China begins to return to normal after a two-month lockdown, the coronavirus is spreading to nearly all other countries in the world. Globally, as of 2:00 a.m. CEST on April 14, there have been 1,812,734 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 113,675 deaths, reported to the World Health Organization (WHO).In the Middle East, the countries including Kuwait are being directly hit by the pandemic and by the indirect hit from the colossal oil demand loss that has been weighing on the price of oil and consequently, on the oil revenues of the oil-exporting nations in the region. Some Middle Eastern producers, such as Qatar and Abu Dhabi, have tapped the international debt markets in the past week amid growing fiscal pressures on their economies and wealth funds in the oil price crash and the coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus Hit on China Trade Eases, but Export Outlook Is Bleak - WSJ—China’s imports and exports fell by smaller margins in March than in the first two months of the year as businesses there began to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, but officials and analysts warned of a grim outlook for the world’s largest exporter as global economic activity collapses.Outbound shipments from China dropped 6.6% in March from a year earlier, following a 17.2% decline in the January-February period, data from the General Administration of Customs showed Tuesday. The fall was much less steep than the 15.9% decline estimated by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.Imports fell 0.9% year over year last month, compared with a 4% decline in the first two months of the year—and a 10% fall predicted by the economists. Overseas purchases of farm goods, commodities and medical supplies increased as Beijing moved to restart China’s economy after making progress in containing the coronavirus. Overall in March, China notched a trade surplus of $19.9 billion, reversing a $7.1 billion deficit in the first two months of the year.“March’s exports were buoyed by shipment of products that were undelivered in the first two months when China was snarled by the coronavirus,” said Zhaopeng Xing, an economist with ANZ.China imposed factory shutdowns and tightened travel restrictions in late January when the severity of the viral outbreak first became clear to the central government in Beijing. The prevention measures put a virtual halt to all economic activity, including foreign trade, during the first two months of the year, which were reported together because of the timing of Lunar New Year holiday.When China’s businesses began to bounce backin March, the coronavirus had engulfed much of the rest of the world, depressing economic activity and consumer demand in many of the Western markets that China’s exporters rely on.“The difficulties for Chinese exporters are weakening demand and plunging global growth amid the coronavirus pandemic,” said Mr. Xing, who predicts China’s exports will fall by about 20% year over year in the second quarter.Following the government’s work resumption efforts, a majority of Chinese exporters have restored at least 70% of their production capacity, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed. But on Tuesday, ministry officials worried openly about the setbacks many exporters are facing as existing overseas orders are canceled and new orders dry up. Demand from Europe and the U.S.—two of China’s biggest trading partners—has fallen. In March, shipments to the two markets fell by more than 20% compared with last year.

PC Shipments Plunge Most In Four Years As 'Global Recession Begins' - A new report from research firm Canalys shows global PC shipments plunged 8% YoY for the first quarter, a drop of 4.6 million units from 58.3 million in 1Q19 to 53.7 million in 1Q20. The decline in PC shipments was the steepest since the global economy slowed in early 2016 when the research firm recorded a 12% decline.  We suspected that electronic manufacturers would take a sizeable hit from China shutdowns in 1Q20. Shortages of semiconductor parts and labor over the quarter didn't help factories boost output. Canalys said the top vendor for the global PC market was Lenovo, who shipped 12.8 million units, down 4.4% over the same quarter last year. HP was second with 11.7 million units shipped, or down 13.8%, followed by Dell with 10.5 million units, an increase of 1.1%. Apple suffered the sharpest decline in unit sales, down 20% to 3.2 million over the quarter.  Despite annual growth trends pointing down, Canalys research director Rushabh Dosh said there was some positive news as lockdowns across the world forced many people to work at home and upgrade PCs. "The PC industry has been boosted by the global COVID-19 lockdown, with products flying off the shelves throughout Q1," Doshi said. "But PC makers started 2020 with a constrained supply of Intel processors, caused by a botched transition to 10nm nodes. This was exacerbated when factories in China were unable to reopen after the lunar new year holidays."Canalys analyst Ishan Dutt warns that, while the production constraints will probably ease in 2Q, PC demand in 1Q won't be sustained for long, and the outlook on the year is negative: "As we move into Q2, the production constraints in China have eased. But the spike in PC demand seen in Q1 is not likely to be sustained and the rest of the year looks less positive. Few businesses will be spending on technology for their offices, while many homes will have been freshly equipped.

Modi extends India’s coronavirus lockdown till May 3 - In an “address to the nation” yesterday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that his government’s hasty, ill-conceived 21-day countrywide anti-coronavirus lockdown will be extended till May 3. Speaking on the day the lockdown was originally supposed to end, Modi offered only demagogy, in remarks that were laced with right-wing nationalist and Hindu communalist appeals. He offered no serious plan to deal either with the health emergency—which given India’s mass poverty and ramshackle public health system threatens to result in a catastrophic loss of life—or the socio-economic calamity triggered by the sudden, unplanned lockdown. As the result of the lockdown, hundreds of millions of workers and toilers, who had little to no savings, have been left jobless and without any income. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), in the first week of April, just three in every 10 Indians of working age were employed. Yet, even as India’s prime minister extended the lockdown for a further 19 days, he provided not a single rupee in additional aid for working people! The 1.7 lakh crore rupee (US $22.5 billion) relief package that the far-right, Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced on the lockdown’s second day, March 26, amounts in per capita terms to less than 1,250 rupees (US$ 16.45). In other words, India’s already impoverished masses have been placed on famine rations. Moreover, much of this “aid” will only be available weeks and even months hence, and many of the most vulnerable, including most migrant workers, will not be able to access it. This is because they are not enrolled in the existing poverty alleviation programs through which the state relief is being distributed. While Modi, with consummate cynicism, claimed in yesterday’s speech to be concerned and moved by the plight of India’s workers and toilers, all he would do for them was make a hollow appeal for others to provide them with charity. Adopting the tones of a Hindu priest, this servant of India’s rapacious capitalist elite beseeched, “Take as much care of poor families as you can. Especially try to fulfill their food requirements.” He one again lectured the populace on the need to practice social distancing, but failed to say how this could be done in the teeming slums of India’s major cities, where people often live five and more to a room. Nor did he explain how the urban and rural poor can regularly wash their hands, when hundreds of millions don’t have running water in their homes, and more than one in 10 Indians, according to a 2018 Water Aid India study, “lack access to clean water near their home”.

India’s Hunger Games - While the world over people have grown myopic worrying about the real or imagined problem to do with corona-virus in their immediate surroundings, the world’s biggest prison has been erected. 1.38 billion people are in a complete house-arrest, with no possibility of leaving home. In scale, this is by far the first in human history. I am not talking about China. When faced with the first wave of corona-virus, China focused mostly on Wuhan and other hotspots. It didn’t see a need to lockdown the whole country. Moreover, it didn’t think it could get away with that. Any regime that contemplated locking down the whole country would have realized that not only would it create massive disruption, joblessness, poverty, and dislocation, but also that restarting the economy would be a gargantuan job. Farmers would have found themselves with no money to buy seeds and banks with no cash to lend out, and everyone in a vicious economic cycle. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, however, thought that he could enforce a draconian curfew without any legal backing in what is one of the world’s most undisciplined, chaotic, poverty-stricken and backward societies. Modi’s confidence comes from an extraordinary cult following he has developed, very ironically, centered on the educated Middle-Class Indians, who are well-stocked with beer, chips, and Netflix connections. On 24th March 2020, the Indian Prime Minister came on the Television to declare that starting four hours thereon would be a complete and total lockdown everywhere in the country for the next 21 days. He instructed that people were not to leave the door of their homes, go out for walks or walk their dogs, and that all offices, factories, shops, etc. had to be shut entirely. All the highways and roads were to be blocked. One of the biggest train networks came to a sudden standstill for the first time in its history of 167 years. Trains stopped wherever they were when the lockdown started, leaving passengers stranded. Every single flight, domestic as well as international, was canceled. The whole of India went into a curfew.  Those who went to buy groceries were ruthlessly beaten by the police, who knew well that despite the constitution, courts would ignore the brutalities. A couple of days later when the government realized their mistake, a window to let people go out to buy groceries was opened up. The police had by then already put itself in the image of an invading army, which gives itself the right to rape and pillage the enemy without any restrictions or accountability—people who went shopping kept on getting beaten up. Alas, Indians accept beatings without any resistance, videos of which are now all over the social media, the reason why I am sure that India never fought with the British for independence. The British left in moral disgust.

Coronavirus Could Worsen Hunger in the Developing World - World Economic Forum - Even as it takes its distressing toll, the current pandemic has generated a flurry of less somber memes. Some of these involve people stuck at home, unable to tear themselves from the pantry, piling on the pounds. But for many in the developing world, the lockdowns mean the exact opposite: they cannot get anywhere near the pantry. By contrast, for many children in the global South – 85 million in Latin America and the Caribbean alone – school closures mean no more school meals. Which in turn (in some African households in particular) means an end to the only hot meal anyone among family members would get in a day. Already before the coronavirus crisis, more than 820 million people went to bed hungry. This is an enormous number to grapple with, not just morally but from a policy perspective. The world has, after all, committed to ending all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030. Unlike in the crisis of 2007/2008, and despite anecdotal reports of empty supermarket shelves, the risk today is not one of immediate shortages. The global supply of food remains strong. The big question mark hangs over supply chains. There is evidence that quarantine regulations and partial port closures are causing slowdowns and logistical hurdles in the shipping industry. Amid border restrictions, trucking faces similar threats. The concern is not all about ready consumables: transport constraints can drastically affect the supply of fertilizers, veterinary drugs and other agricultural inputs.   In the West, reduced labor mobility threatens to leave some seasonal crops rotting in the fields and deprive producers of their livelihoods. In Africa, during the Ebola crisis, food production plummeted by 12%. Much like in the public health sphere, where the virus's impact explodes into view weeks after the initial contagion, the cumulative effects of such market disruption, while not dramatic yet, will likely become apparent as early as this month. Yes, well-nourished citizens in wealthy countries may weather a couple of months without some fresh or imported produce. But in the developing world, a child malnourished at a young age will be stunted for life. This is why there is no time to waste. Governments, even as they prioritize public health goals, must do everything in their power to keep trade routes open and supply chains alive. Policymakers should without delay convene food industry and farmer representatives to identify bottlenecks and work out ways to smooth them out. They must decide which categories of agricultural laborers should be designated as critical staff and – while in no way undermining due protective measures – allow them to continue moving and working as needed. Systems must be aligned to ensure that global information on food prices, consumption and stocks flows widely and in real-time.

G-7 Countries Support Debt Relief for Poorest Countries If Joined by Full G-20 – WSJ - The Group of Seven countries—the world’s largest advanced economies—said they would support an initiative to suspend the debt payments of the world’s poor countries, so long as the initiative is taken up by a broader group of nations. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have called on the world’s wealthy economies to allow poor countries to postpone their debt payments for up to 14 months, freeing up funds to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The forbearance proposal would apply to official bilateral debt—that is, debts that are held by government institutions. “This initiative would provide liquidity support to help these countries deal with the health and economic impacts of the crisis,” the G-7 said following a virtual meeting on Tuesday. The G-7 consists of the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, U.K., Canada and Italy. But the G-7 qualified its support, saying it needed to see a broader swath of countries—the Group of 20 major economies, or G-20—all agree to the proposal. The G-20 includes the world’s largest advanced economies and major emerging markets including China, India, Brazil and Russia. The G-20 is scheduled to meet later this week. The G-7 officials said that they “support multilateral efforts to assist these countries and stand ready to provide a time-bound suspension on debt service payments due on official bilateral claims for all countries eligible for World Bank concessional financing, if joined by all bilateral official creditors in the G-20.” The agreement would also have to be ratified by the Paris Club, a negotiating group for bilateral creditors, the statement said.

Coronavirus-Afflicted Global Economy Is Almost Certainly in Recession – WSJ —The global economy has almost certainly entered a recession affecting most of the world, with a severity unmatched by anything aside from the Great Depression, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday. The IMF, in a new outlook, said the world economy is expected to contract by 3% in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic causes nations around the world to close down, compared with a contraction of 0.1% in 2009, the worst year of the previous recession. This year’s decline amounts to about $2.7 trillion of global losses for the roughly $90 trillion global economy. “It is very likely that this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression, surpassing that seen during the global financial crisis a decade ago,” Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s chief economist, said in a note introducing the quarterly global growth update. “The great lockdown, as one might call it, is projected to shrink global growth dramatically,” she added. Unlike in the previous recession, which began in 2007 in the U.S. but was at its worst point in 2009 in most countries, nearly no country will be able to escape the economic fallout this year. Even in the depths of the prior recession, about 40% of countries continued to post per capita growth. In 2020, less than 10% of them will see growth continue, the IMF said. Though it has been clear for weeks that the global economy was entering a severe downturn, the new outlook gives numerical estimates of the severity of the crisis. The forecasts are fodder for the IMF and World Bank, which are conducting a virtual spring meeting this week after the coronavirus pandemic led to a cancellation of an in-person Washington gathering. The international organizations have been slow to unify around a coordinated approach to confront the pandemic.

Global economy in 2020 on track for sharpest downturn since 1930s: IMF - (Reuters) - The global economy is expected to shrink by 3.0% during 2020 in a stunning coronavirus-driven collapse of activity that will mark the steepest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.  The IMF, in its 2020 World Economic Outlook, predicted a partial rebound in 2021, with the world economy growing at a 5.8% rate, but said its forecasts were marked by “extreme uncertainty” and that outcomes could be far worse, depending on the course of the pandemic. “This recovery in 2021 is only partial as the level of economic activity is projected to remain below the level we had projected for 2021, before the virus hit,” Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s chief economist, told a news conference via a video link. Under the Fund’s best-case scenario, the world is likely to lose a cumulative $9 trillion in output over two years - greater than the combined gross domestic product of Germany and Japan, she added. The IMF’s forecasts assume that outbreaks of the novel coronavirus will peak in most countries during the second quarter and fade in the second half of the year, with business closures and other containment measures gradually unwound. A longer pandemic that lasts through the third quarter could cause a further 3% contraction in 2020 and a slower recovery in 2021, due to the “scarring” effects of bankruptcies and prolonged unemployment. A second outbreak in 2021 that forces more shutdowns could cause a reduction of 5 to 8 percentage points in the global GDP baseline forecast for next year, keeping the world in recession for a second straight year. “It is very likely that this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression, surpassing that seen during the global financial crisis a decade ago,” the IMF said in its report. “The Great Lockdown, as one might call it, is projected to shrink global growth dramatically.”

IMF Sees Great Lockdown Recession as Worst Since Depression - The International Monetary Fund predicted the “Great Lockdown” recession would be the steepest in almost a century and warned the world economy’s contraction and recovery would be worse than anticipated if the coronavirus lingers or returns. In its first World Economic Outlook report since the spread of the virus and subsequent freezing of major economies, the IMF estimated on Tuesday that global gross domestic product will shrink 3% this year. That compares to a January projection of 3.3% expansion and would likely mark the deepest dive since the Great Depression. It would also dwarf the 0.1% contraction of 2009 amid the financial crisis. While the fund anticipated growth of 5.8% next year, which would be the strongest in records dating back to 1980, it cautioned risks are tilted to the downside. Much depends on the longevity of the pandemic, its effect on activity and related stresses in financial and commodity markets, it said. Even if the IMF’s forecast proves accurate, it said output in both advanced and emerging markets would undershoot their pre-virus trends through 2021, seemingly dashing any lingering hopes of a V-shaped economic rebound from the health emergency. The cumulative loss in global GDP this year and next could be about $9 trillion -- bigger than the economies of Japan and Germany combined, IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said. “This is a crisis like no other, which means there is substantial uncertainty on the impact it will have on people’s lives and livelihoods,” Gopinath said in an online briefing. In a Bloomberg TV interview, she said that a worse-than-expected impact in emerging markets is a major downside risk to the IMF’s baseline scenario. In its forecasts, the IMF assumes that countries experiencing severe epidemics will lose about 8% of working days this year during containment efforts and the loosening of restrictions. In a further sign of pessimism, the IMF sketched out three alternative scenarios in which the virus lasted longer than expected, returned in 2021 or both. A lengthier pandemic would wipe 3% off GDP this year compared to the baseline, while protraction plus a resumption next year would mean 8% less output than projected in 2021, it said.

A double recession? Economies risk debt crises after stimulus spending - The economic meltdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has governments deploying historically vast fiscal spending packages to support millions of their citizens and businesses. This spending is necessary to support economies — officials agree on that much. But the debt incurred over time could mean a deeper crisis and a doubled-down recession for some countries, according to recent reports. “Debt crises may be coming,” the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) wrote in late March. “For now, governments are ramping up fiscal spending to fight the epidemic, maintain basic economic architecture and keep workers in their jobs. As a result, fiscal deficits will rise sharply in the coming years.” Already in early January, before any country imposed coronavirus lockdowns, the World Bank warned of the risk of a fresh global debt crisis. It described the current wave of debt accumulation — which started in 2010 — as “the largest, fastest and most broad-based increase” in global borrowing since the 1970s. In the first half of 2019, global debt surged by $7.5 trillion, hitting a new record of more than $250 trillion, according to the Institute for International Finance. “With no sign of a slowdown, we expect the global debt load to exceed $255 trillion in 2019, largely driven by the U.S. and China,” the IIF wrote in late 2019 — before the year was over and well before anyone was talking about a global pandemic. Now, the International Monetary Fund projects that the global economy this year will “very likely” suffer the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, as governments around the world extend lockdowns and economic shutdowns to fight the spread of Covid-19. The Washington-based fund now expects the global economy to contract by 3% in 2020. In January, by contrast, it had forecast a global GDP expansion of 3.3% for this year. Half the world has now asked the IMF for a bailout, the organization’s chief Kristalina Georgieva told CNBC on Wednesday, highlighting the severety of the economic crisis.

The coronavirus crisis has sounded the death knell for liberal globalisation The left is prone to misunderstanding “crisis” and “revolution”. The financial crash of 2008 led not to a left revival in the UK but to a long period of Conservative rule and ten years of austerity. This period could have offered a reckoning with the failures of globalisation and of democratic politics, an opportunity to resist the relentless pressure capitalism exerts in trying to transform human beings and our natural environment into commodities. Instead, much of the left reheated globalisation in the name of internationalism and, in the UK, the Labour Party could not assert its leadership of the country. This was intensified in the Brexit interregnum, which was resolved decisively by the Conservatives in the December 2019 general election. The virus will shape a new era, not by transforming things utterly, as some commentators have said, but by accelerating and consolidating trends that have played out over the last 12 years. The first of these is that the nation state has re-emerged as the primary force within bordered polities. The immediate response to the coronavirus within the European Union has been the reassertion of national controls over borders and the pursuit of national strategies of containment. Germany has not only suspended free movement of people, but for a time banned the export of all medical equipment to other EU nations. The stipulations of the Lisbon Treaty concerning state aid and competition law have been set aside in every European state, under a new temporary framing order. The European Central Bank has ceased imposing constraints on public spending. Across Europe, the state has underwritten the wages of workers, as well as securing the production of necessities and the delivery of supplies. Issues relating to national autarchy concerning food, water, energy, manufacture and transportation have now become primary issues of statecraft, and will remain so. The consequences of financialisation have never been more apparent. The invisible hand of the market is being replaced by the mighty fist of the state, and national security is rightly no longer considered an exclusively military matter.

65% Of Greek Hotels Face Bankruptcy As Lockdowns Continue - The Greek tourism industry has collapsed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and is on track to lose at least 50% of its revenues in 2020, said Grigoris Tasios, President of the Greek Hoteliers Association, who spoke with the Greek Reporter last week. The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, a group that oversees the tourism industry in Greece, warned in a new study on Monday that a bankruptcy wave looms.Alexandros Vasilikos, the president of the Chamber, told the Greek Reporter this week that a recovery in the tourism industry, reverting to 2019 growth rates, could take a very long time to achieve.According to the Chamber's study, 65% of Greek hotels indicate that the threat of bankruptcy is "likely" or "most likely" — at 46.6% and 18.3%, respectively. About 95% of hotels said their business volumes had been halved since the crisis unfolded. The Chamber is estimating that the hotel sector would lose upwards of 4.46 billion Euros in 2020. Tasios told Greek Reporter last week that the tourism industry is facing an unprecedented crisis: "It is very difficult to plan ahead during these times, simply because we do not know how long the coronavirus scare will last. We hope to launch the Greek tourist season on July 1, but this is speculative, since everything will depend on how the virus situation will unfold," he said.Tasios said about 300 hotels are currently operating in the entire country under strict social distancing rules. Thousands remain closed, as nationwide lockdowns from mid-March extend into April. "We really do not know how many will be in a position to reopen when the situation becomes normal again," he said, noting that hoteliers up and down the country basically have zero income right now."We are monitoring developments in the pandemic on a day-to-day basis, not just in Greece but throughout the world, and in particular, in the countries that are tourist markets for Greece," Tasios said. He then added that the number of arrivals from Greece's traditional markets will probably be far lower than that of previous years. "I think that the situation in Germany, UK, France, Poland and maybe Russia, countries that are among the top five tourism markets for Greece, does not allow much optimism about a quick rebound in visitors," he explained.The Greek Ministry of Tourism announced last month that it would reopen the industry around April 30.   For the remainder of the year, tourism across the Western world will struggle to attract guests, specifically in Europe and the US. We noted last month that the Spanish tourism industry plummeted after the country went into lockdown following a massive surge in cases and deaths. The tourism industry across Europe has likely gone bust as well. Flight bans across the world have made it almost impossible for people to travel to top tourist destinations.

The global elite seek their pandemic retreats - The devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic is being felt by billions of people the world over, most acutely in densely populated working class areas and among the poorest layers of society, where social distancing is a physical impossibility and economic desperation makes lack of income life threatening. Against this polarised world situation, the most grotesque picture emerges whenever an occasional news report shines a light on the behaviour of the super-rich. Last week, it was reported that French authorities refused to allow ten passengers of a British private jet to disembark at Marseille-Provence airport. The party had planned to travel onwards in three private helicopters to a £50,000-a-night luxury villa in Cannes. The party comprised three male billionaires in their 40s, three female escorts in their 20s, a secretary, a translator and bodyguards. The trip was organised by a Croatian businessman working in a finance and estate agency in Britain, who reportedly had “paid for everything.” Travel into France is still permitted, but the government lockdown includes restrictions on non-essential trips. Travel to a holiday villa for weeks on end is not included. Police turned back the three helicopter pilots, fining them for breach of lockdown regulations. The passengers were not fined because they were not allowed to step onto French soil. The arrogance and self-entitlement were palpable. The businessman had booked the flight with French authorities in advance, hence the police being in place on their arrival. One of the businessmen told press that they were not holidaymakers but were on their way to complete a deal that would have seen the creation of nearly 1,000 jobs. The businessman blamed “the stupid ignorance in the time of COVID-19.” According to one source, the party’s leader told police, “I have money, let’s talk,” when they boarded the plane. The party also “tried to make use of their connections and made a few phone calls.” Nine of the party returned to Britain. The tenth chartered another plane and flew to Berlin. The unsuccessful jaunt to the French Riviera points to the phenomenal resources the rich can call upon. A police source told press the businessman was “looking forward to the break,” intending to lockdown at the villa.

The UK economy could shrink by 35% with 2 million more people unemployed due to the coronavirus - The UK economy could take its steepest hit in more than a century as a result of the novel coronavirus, according to the official national spending watchdog. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent body that analyzes the UK's public finances, on Tuesday published a scenario under which UK gross domestic product would fall by 35% in the second quarter of this year. Under this scenario, which assumes the strict lockdown measures will last a total of three months, with social-distancing measures continuing beyond that, unemployment would rise to 3.4 million from 2.1 million, meaning 10% of people would be out of work. The UK economy would quickly bounce back under this scenario, with GDP up by about 25% in the third quarter and about 20% in the fourth, after the expected relaxation of lockdown measures and people returning to work. The overall effect on the UK economy, however, would be a 13% decline of GDP in 2020, the steepest decline of any year since at least 1908 and more than double the annual declines the UK saw at the end of World War II.

Disease patient can't get meds with pharmacies ravaged by coronavirus - A 32-year-old British woman with a debilitating skin condition who depends on pain relief medication Paracetamol has penned a heartbreaking account of how panic buyers have left pharmacies without it. Celebrity journalist Myra Ali, 32, was born with epidermolysis bullosa, known as “butterfly skin,” a life-threatening skin condition that has ravaged her body. “I’m in agonizing pain every single day, and have been mistaken for an acid attack victim,” Ali wrote in The Sun, where she described how her disease makes her “skin blister at the slightest knock” and leaves her with severe burns. “Paracetamol is my only relief, taken every four hours, in set doses,” she said of the drug, a brand name for acetaminophen. “It’s the only medication I can use: strong painkillers trigger hives on my skin, which leaves me with red, unbearably itchy areas.” Ali said the high demand for the medication amid the pandemic means that for the first time in her life, she has been unable to find it. “This is partly thanks to coronavirus panic-buyers, who have depleted supplies at chemists around the country. And it’s the same at high street pharmacies, where I’ve been able to get Paracetamol in the past,” she said. “While I know some people with chronic illnesses will be stocking up on Paracetamol out of fear – and I don’t blame them – other, healthy Brits are stockpiling boxes in their medicine cabinets ‘just in case.’”

"Wasted" - 50 Million Pints Down The Drain Unless UK Pubs Reopen By Summer - Britain remained in a nationwide lockdown in mid-April as virus-related deaths and confirmed cases climb. A crashed economy and high unemployment risk sending the country into depression. Non-essential businesses, like pubs, have been shuttered for nearly a month. BBC News is reporting, with no clear timeline of when lockdowns will dissipate, tens of thousands of pubs across the country have been severely damaged with limited cash flow in the last thirty days. They are holding large sums of beer inventory that could expire if lockdowns continue for the next several months, which would result in over 50 million pints of stale beer being dumped, according to a leading industry body.The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) estimates the nation's 39,000 pubs each have around 15 barrels of inventory. Camra's chief executive Tom Stainer fears many pubs will have to dump stale beer if the lockdown extends into summer."It's a very sad waste of all the work and talent that goes into producing great beer," Stainer told the BBC. "People won't get to drink it and all those resources have been used up for nothing."He added: "It's not the biggest issue that the country is dealing with, but aspects of life like going to the cinema or cafe, or going for a pint, are something we treasure."Since pubs were forced to close their doors on March 20, supermarket have seen a 20% increase in alcohol sales. Consumers have shifted where they buy their beverages in the lockdowns as public health orders force everyone to drink at home. This trend will likely continue for the next several months, further pressuring pubs.Iain Crockett, director of Gloucestershire-based Severn Brewing, said the lockdown has severely impacted pubs and down the supply chain to brewers.Crockett said smaller brewers could see financial hardships while larger ones with storage capacity and capital can weather the economic storm.Some pubs are already asking the government where they can dump stale beer. In the coming months, tens of millions of pints could be destroyed if lockdowns continue.

“Something Has Gone Wrong”: UK Government, Banks Screw Up Coronavirus Loans, Small Firms Near Collapse. Better Results in Other Countries -- Thanks to its Brexit planning, the UK should have been better positioned to help its small businesses through the coronavirus crisis than most of its European peers. In early 2019, the UK treasury, together with the business department and the state-owned British Business Bank, laid the groundwork for a loan guarantee system for small businesses in the event of a chaotic Brexit. This meant that when the Covid-19 lockdown began, all the government needed to do was dust off those plans and put them into action. It should have been smooth sailing. Instead, it’s been an unmitigated disaster. On March 19, the day the economy went into lockdown, the government unveiled £330 billion of emergency measures to help shuttered businesses weather the storm. Those measures included the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), which the Chancellor of Exchequer Rishi Sunak said would be made available to “any good business in financial difficulty who needs access to cash to pay their rent, the salaries of their employees, pay suppliers, or purchase stock”. Yet almost four weeks later, just 4,000 of the 300,000 companies that have applied for the funds have actually received them.“Something has gone wrong,” warned former Bank of England governor Mervyn King on Sunday. Due to a combination of voluminous government red tape, complex eligibility criteria, massive roadblocks erected by the participating banks and the temporary closure of a large number of bank branches, the amount of money so far lent out by UK lenders to small or mid-sized businesses is just £800 million pounds. That’s less than 0.25% of the total £330 billion pledged in loans for businesses, small and large.In Switzerland, with a population roughly one eighth the size as the UK’s, 76,000 small businesseshad received emergency loans worth more than CHF15 billion ($15 billion) as of April 6. Since then, the Swiss government has doubled the facility from CHF20 billion ($20.8 billion) to CHF40 billion ($41.6 billion). The much-lauded loan scheme’s success appears to rest on two basic pillars:One, simplicity and speed. To qualify for a loan of up half a million francs, small business owners merely have to fill in a one-page form containing six basic questions, which they must answer honestly. Once the form is sent to the bank, the application is approved or rejected within no more than 24 hours. If approved, the loan is interest free, does not include penalties and is repayable in five years. Two, zero risks for banks. All loans of up to CHF500,000 are 100% guaranteed by the state, meaning the banks have nothing to lose and are therefore less worried about the risk of providing financial lifelines to businesses whose future is far from certain, even with the loans. In the UK, by contrast, 80% of each loan is guaranteed by the state, which means banks must assume 20% of the risk of non-payment. Even before this crisis began, large UK banks were already reticent about lending to small businesses. Worse still, many of the small firms they havelent to ended up being lumbered with dodgy financial products such as payment protection insurance (PPI) or interest rate swaps, which had an annoying tendency to harm or destroy the business’ financial health while making the bank bucket loads of money,