As economists scramble to assess the devastating impact of the coronavirus, they’re homing in on an unexpected hero that’s mitigating the damage in the U.S.: remote working. With offices across the country closed and people stuck in their homes, many professional workers have accomplished a not-seamless but ultimately successful transition to online workplaces — allowing those in crucial industry sectors including professional and business services to […]
Working
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Saudi Arabian Airlines will begin exceptional commercial flights this week to bring British nationals and their families back to the United Kingdom, and similar flights are being arranged for US citizens to return home, both countries said, Reuters reports. Flights to London Heathrow will begin on Sunday from Riyadh and later in the week from Jeddah and Dammam, according to a British Embassy e-mail sent late […]
Authored by Christine Dolan via JustTheNews.com, Bahrain and Belgium report their hospitals are successfully treating coronavirus patients with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted by President Trump as a possible breakthrough in the pandemic. The Kingdom of Bahrain’s Supreme Council of Health chairman said his country was among the first to use the drug and that its impact has been “profound,” according to the Bahrain News Agency. Dr. Shaikh Mohamed, who leads the National Taskforce for […]
The Bio-Economic Pandemic And The Western Working Classes By Ingar Solty, Socialistproject.ca March 25, 2020 The Bio-Economic Pandemic And The Western Working Classes2020-03-252020-03-25https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/03/corona-recession.png200px200px Above Photo: From Socialistproject.ca “Sick… guess we didn’t move quick enough after all…” — Stephen King, The Stand. The Covid-19 Shock Meets an Impending Economic Recession As of March 2020, the world is back to the future. The global financial crisis of 2007-08, which escalated into a […]
Italy has been by far the hardest hit developed nation as the novel coronavirus spreads across the world, with really only Iran ranking as a more severe outbreak, while outbreaks in Spain and France are rapidly accelerating and threaten to soon join Italy among the nations desperately in need of aid from Brussels. But as the Europeans dawdle over their aid package, Italy is finally seeing […]
Authored by Michael Lebowitz and Jack Scott via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, “The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled.” – JK Galbraith By formally announcing quantitative easing (QE) infinity on March 23, 2020, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is using its entire arsenal of monetary stimulus. Unlimited purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities for an indefinite period is far more dramatic than anything they did in 2008. The […]
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk, Eventually, the coronavirus depression will subside. But what will America look like when it does? Jim Bianco: “This virus is the event of this generation. In the future, we will refer to this as pre-virus, post-virus.” Jim Bianco at Bianco Research made a fantastic, educational presentation last week on where we are and where we are going. The presentation is […]
One man’s fake market is another man’s blast off rally. On the same day Rabobank’s Michael Every asked rhetorically what’s the point of having a market if the Fed is backstopping everything in what is a de facto nationalization of risk, Nomura’s Charlie McElligott is focused on a more practical aspect of the Fed’s wholesale intervention: today’s soaring P&L which, with the S&P blasting off more […]
Approximately 19% of those who contract coronavirus become seriously ill, according to a large Chinese study, while just under 14% fall into the ‘severe’ category, and 5% become critical – typically requiring a ventilator to breathe while suffering from multiple organ dysfunction. And while the overall fatality rate is a matter of serious debate as many suspect vast underreporting of cases, for those who fall into […]
China has escalated its war on US news outlets – ordering at least seven Chinese nationals in Beijing to stop working for American news outlets, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Those ordered dismissed include employees for the New York Times, Voice of America and two other outlets, according to the report. “China appears determined to crush the news gathering operations of major U.S. outlets […]
The spread of the COVID-19 virus has caused not only a world health crisis, but may also cause a deep economic depression. The fabric of society is becoming strained to the breaking point, and social, economic, and political catastrophes are already erupting in a variety of forms. We live in a society in which our very existence is constantly dominated and constrained by the dual imperatives […]
CoreWeave, the largest U.S. miner on the Ethereum blockchain, is redirecting the processing power of 6,000 specialized computer chips toward research to find a therapy for the coronavirus. These graphics processing units (GPUs) will be pointed toward Stanford University’s Folding@home, a long-standing research effort that unveiled a project on February 27 specifically to boost coronavirus research by way of a unique approach to developing pharmaceutical drugs: […]
The Center for Disease Control has released a new series of guidelines for how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta shined a light on their recommendation for what health care workers are being allowed to do if they run low on resources. The CNN chief medical correspondent joined his colleagues Thursday on New Day to discuss the proposed guideline change that workers […]
Israeli prosecutors issued an indictment on Wednesday afternoon against a Palestinian-Israeli citizen who is accused of working with the military wing of Hamas, Safa news agency has reported. Aya Al-Khatib worked as a medical assistant in Israel for Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip, and is also a member of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and an activist for Al-Aqsa Mosque. According […]
America isn’t ready for coronavirus. In the last 24 hours, millions of school children across the country have been told to stay home for two weeks, or even longer. This is an important public health step to stop the spread, but it also means parents can’t go to work. I’m fixing lunch for a 9 and 12 year old as I write this. And I’m one […]
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was torn apart by critics who think he needs to get his priorities in order while the coronavirus crisis continues to unfold. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski posted a picture of the mayor’s car as it was parked outside of the Park Slope YMCA on Monday morning. The mayor was at the workout facility just as New York governor Andrew Cuomo […]
With investor expectations for an imminent rate cut to 0% (or lower) running high, only surpassed by expectations for an imminent – and “very, very substantial” fiscal stimulus – Standard Chartered’s head of FX strategy Steve Englander has an unorthodox take: neither may be sufficient. As Englander writes in a note titled “Emptying the monetary policy cupboard?”, while the Fed may think that aggressively reducing policy […]
Last weekend, we reported that in order to fool the world into believing that its economy is rebounding nicely and that its people have put that entire coronavirus “thing” in the rearview mirror, a factory owner in one of China’s provinces was told by district officials that he must turn on the machines and consume electricity – in his closed factory which has no workers – […]
The United States will continue to work with Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan until they sign an accord on a giant Blue Nile hydropower dam, after failing to secure signatures from the three countries this week, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday. The three countries had expected to sign an agreement in Washington this week on the filling and operation of the $4 billion Grand Ethiopian […]
A partial truce in Afghanistan between the Taliban, American and Afghan forces is holding, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday. The statement came despite insurgent attacks and US strikes against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) targets. “So far the reduction in violence is working – imperfect, but it’s working,” he told reporters in Washington. The planned week-long detente, which has lasted four days, […]
The Tunisian Ennahda movement confirmed, on Wednesday, its willingness to spare the country from holding early parliamentary elections, noting that there has been progress in the negotiations to form the new government. This came in statements made by Abdelkarim Harouni, head of the movement’s Shura Council (Islamic / 54 deputies from 217), during a press conference held in Ennahda’s headquarters in the capital, Tunis. Harouni said: […]
On a night patrol in Bentiu town. How did Nonviolent Peaceforce respond when South Sudanese women reported facing assault, harassment and robbery on their way to and from the market at night? Our peacekeepers came up with a safety plan. They knew from experience that the day patrols Nonviolent Peaceforce conducted across South Sudan were successful in reducing violence in communities. So, they decided to start […]
Last June at the House Ways and Means Committee Hearing on Medicare for All, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas lamented, “That great health care plan that your union negotiated for you? It’s gone. Banned under Medicare for All.” A right-wing congressman with a 7 percent lifetime voting score from the AFL-CIO crying crocodile tears for union health care plans can easily be dismissed as just another […]
“Many foreign powers” are seeking to undermine the Indian government, fearful of the nation’s rise to global prominence, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has warned. “Many foreign powers are trying to break our country. They do not want a stable government in India, because they can see our future – the country is not only on its way to becoming a global superpower, but also a universal […]