Showing posts with label Wall Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wall Street. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Friday, March 6, 2020
Markets Plunge as Critics Say Trump's "Keep the Stock Market Calm" Approach Has Backfired
"Trump staking his presidency on a good stock market was once just an annoying tic," said The Nation's Jeet Heer. "But now there's a situation that makes it actively harmful."
Eoin Higgins, staff writer
1 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/markets-plunge-critics-say-trumps-keep-stock-market-calm-approach-has-backfired?
The stock market plunged 970 points Thursday, or 3.58%, as fears of the economic impact of the global coronavirus outbreak—and President Donald Trump's mishnadling of the crisi—continued to roil the world's financial markets after last week's panic sent markets into freefall.
"It's kind of like an earthquake—there's the earthquake, which is last week, and then there's the aftershocks, which is this week," MUFG Union Bank chief financial economist Chris Rupkey told the New York Post.
Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis has been blamed by some observers for market volatility. The White House response to the coronavirus outbreak has been erratic, with health officials being contradicted by the president and Trump going on cable news to downplay the level of danger posed by the disease.
On Wednesday night, as Common Dreams reported, Trump called into Fox News' "Hannity" and told the eponymous host that he had a "hunch" the reported death rate was being misreported, that people with mild symptoms of the disease should nonetheless go into work, and likened the coronavirus to the common flu.
The Nation's Jeet Heer commented on Twitter that the president's insistence on pinning his political performance on the stock market was creating a situation where active measures to stop a pandemic might be deprioritized to ensure financial markets continued to do well.
"Trump staking his presidency on a good stock market was once just an annoying tic (one he shares by many other politicians)," said Heer. "But now there's a situation that makes it actively harmful."
Airline stocks led Thursday's drop after a global slowdown in air travel due to the continuing outbreak was projected to cost billions in travel.
Thursday's losses more than erased gains from Wednesday on the back of a health insurance stock surge that some analysts suggested was because of former Vice President Joe Biden's strong showing in the Super Tuesday 2020 Democratic primary contests against fellow frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. But, as Rosenberg Research CEO and strategist David Rosenberg told the Washington Post, that was a boost with a one-time application.
"Yesterday's market catalysts, clearly a slate of one-offs, were Joe Biden's success on Super Tuesday and a range of spending announcements to tackle the coronavirus," said Rosenberg. "Markets typically price in an announcement once. It got it yesterday. The news today is the spread of the virus in the U.S. and Italy closing schools, universities, and museums."
As CDC Says 'Do Not Go to Work,' Trump Says Thousands With Coronavirus Could Go to Work and Get Better
"These are really dangerous lies."
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/cdc-says-do-not-go-work-trump-says-thousands-coronavirus-could-go-work-and-get?
Running roughshod over the advice of trained medical professionals and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, President Donald Trump Wednesday night suggested to millions of Fox News viewers that people infected with coronavirus could still go to work and recover, comments that were immediately condemned as irresponsible and dangerous.
"A lot of people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly," Trump told Fox's Sean Hannity. "They don't even see a doctor, they don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people."
"Trump has had briefings from the nation's best doctors and scientists on COVID-19 and he still spouts total, dangerous bullshit."
—Peter Gleick
"So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and/or virus," Trump continued. "So you just can't do that. So, if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better."
The CDC has advised that anyone exhibiting symptoms of coronavirus such as a fever, coughing, and/or shortness of breath stay home from work, avoid public areas as much as possible, and seek medical attention.
"You should restrict activities outside your home, except for getting medical care," the CDC's website states. "Do not go to work, school, or public areas. Avoid using public transportation, ride-sharing, or taxis."
Trump also claimed in the interview with Hannity that the World Health Organization's (WHO) estimate of a 3.4% global death rate from coronavirus is a "false number."
"This is just my hunch," the president said.
"These are really dangerous lies," tweeted The Nation's Jeet Heer.
"Trump has had briefings from the nation's best doctors and scientists on COVID-19 and he still spouts total, dangerous bullshit," added climate scientist Peter Gleick.
Trump's remarks came just hours after California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency following the death of a 71-year-old man, the first U.S. coronavirus fatality reported outside of Washington state.
"This is not something that I say hyperbolically," Newsom said of the emergency declaration during a press conference Wednesday. "The proclamation is to serve to help advance our resources."
As Trump and other White House officials have attempted to downplay the severity of the outbreak and hurled accusations of fearmongering—the president said at a rally last week that Democrats' criticism of his handling of the health crisis is a "new hoax"—coronavirus has spread to at least 15 states in the U.S. and killed 11 people.
"The death rate so far—which includes more than 3,000 deaths [globally]—is many times higher than the mortality rate of the seasonal flu, which is 0.1%," the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. "WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that is at least partly because COVID-19 is a new disease, and no one has built up an immunity to it."
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
You'll Never Guess How Big Banks Want the Fed to Handle the Coronavirus: More Wall Street Deregulation
"Surely, the big banks aren't craven enough to use COVID-19 as an excuse to lobby for long-sought regulatory rollbacks, right? Wrong!"
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/03/youll-never-guess-how-big-banks-want-fed-handle-coronavirus-more-wall-street?
A lobbying group for big banks in the United States came under fire Tuesday from financial industry experts for pressuring federal officials to push through long-sought regulatory rollbacks in response to the worldwide economic concerns sparked by the global coronavirus outbreak.
On Sunday, Bank Policy Institute (BPI) chief executive Greg Baer, head of research Francisco Covas, and chief economist Bill Nelson published a post on the group's website entitled "Actions the Fed Could Take in Response to COVID-19." The BPI is a lobbying group whose members include Bank of America, Citigroup JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.
While the trio of BPI leaders presented the suggestions as steps that the Federal Reserve could take "to allow banks to continue providing credit to businesses and households and liquidity to financial markets," financial industry experts "lambasted" the big bank group's requests as "opportunistic and unnecessary," according to the Washington Post.
As the Post reported Tuesday:
The recommendations are "transparently opportunistic," said Jeremy Kress, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan School of Business. For years, the banking industry resisted calls for higher capital requirements that could have been used as a buffer, or a rainy-day fund, during economic turmoil, he said. Those buffers could have been turned off now to give the industry more flexibility to make loans during the current economic uncertainty, Kress said.
But without those buffers reducing existing capital requirements, which are currently set at minimum levels, the timing could be risky, he said.
"The whole idea of capital requirements and stress-testing banks is to make sure they have enough cushion to absorb losses" during an economic crisis, Kress said.
In a tweet sharing the report, Kress summed up the BPI move as follows: "Surely, the big banks aren't craven enough to use COVID-19 as an excuse to lobby for long-sought regulatory rollbacks, right? Wrong!"
BPI's recommendations for the Fed include cutting reserve requirements and relaxing "stress tests" that force banks to show they can survive an economic crisis.
Graham Steele, the director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, tweeted that Kress was "100% correct" in characterizing the big banks' behavior as opportunistic.
"The banking industry's hammer is deregulation, and everything—from economic booms to recessions—looks like a nail," said Steele. "In fact, well capitalized banks are better able to lend throughout the business cycle."
Another financial expert suggested to the Post that the group's proposals were too extreme:
Deregulation has already gone too far, and the coronavirus could pose unique challenges to the financial system that are still unclear, said Larry White, a professor at New York University School of Business. As the virus spreads some people may not be able to work, shop and travel, he said, and "that is a problem for businesses because at the end of the day they won't be able to sell stuff."
"But I am not sure that is a good argument for, 'Oh, we need to do something about liquidity.' That is overreach by BPI," White said.
The Post report provoked criticism of BPI and alarm over the group's tactics.
Economist Betsey Stevenson, an associate professor at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy who served on the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, called the Post's report "absolutely terrifying."
Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at the watchdog group Public Citizen, offered a summary of BPI's recommendations on Twitter:
The Fed on Tuesday made an emergency cut of half a percentage point to the benchmark U.S. interest rate. "The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong," Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters, according to CNBC. However, he added, "the spread of the coronavirus has brought new challenges and risks."
While mainland China has been hit hardest by COVID-19, there are confirmed cases in at least 70 countries. Since the outbreak began late last year, the virus has infected more than 92,000 people and led to more than 3,100 deaths.
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