Bloomberg The Covid-19 pandemic has the potential to reverse years of progress in reducing maternal and child mortality worldwide by impairing access to medical care in poorer countries, a health financing group warned. If Covid-19 were to cause similar disruptions as the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, almost 1.2 million children and 57,000 mothers could die over just the ...

Bloomberg The US House gaveled amid extraordinary health precautions to begin debate leading up to expected final passage of a $484 billion interim coronavirus rescue plan to bolster the American economy. With a roll-call vote anticipated by mid-afternoon, members were expected to take turns in the chamber to debate the bill, the first time they have convened as a group ...

No one was asking, but it turns out a global pandemic isn’t enough for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to take a break from fretting about purportedly “borrowing money from future generations.” Never mind that the three-month-old coronavirus crisis has led to more than $2.3 trillion in congressional appropriations, to say nothing of the $484 billion relief package that passed ...

Will fashionistas embrace ostentatious outfits and logo-heavy handbags with as much gusto as the coronavirus crisis unfolds? This is a question that all luxury groups must grapple with. But it’s an especially pertinent one for Gucci, the superstar brand owned by luxury behemoth Kering SA. Gucci has had nothing short of a miraculous turnaround under creative director Alessandro Michele, who ...

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) meeting on April 30 might be its most important as it tries to manage the devastating economic impact of the Covid-19 virus. While its reaction so far has worked, it will need much greater firepower in the future. It will also have to be much more flexible in how it applies its rules on asset ...

As the economic carnage from the coronavirus pandemic continues, a long-forbidden word is starting to creep onto people’s lips: “depression.” In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no commonly accepted word for a slowdown in the economy. “Panic” was the term typically used for financial crises, while long slumps were commonly called depressions. Presidents such as James Monroe ...

T he Covid-19 pandemic is a bracing national security challenge — and how the country responds is doubly crucial, since biological history tells us that another, potentially more lethal, pathogen is inevitable. The US military can play a valuable role in helping to fight the next pandemic, if the lessons of this crisis are inculcated and implemented now. America’s armed ...

A large part of managing the economic disruption from the coronavirus crisis has been keeping businesses and individuals afloat amid the shutdown of large parts of the economy. Banks, landlords, the federal government, hospitals and workers have all chipped in to do their part. But one notable group of companies has been missing from this process — large technology companies ...

A Holy Grail of policymaking since the end of the 1970s high-inflation era has been to stop turning public debt into interest-free money. In emerging economies like India, where the idea made a late entry, this dogma is threatening to get in the way of mounting a robust response to the coronavirus. The reluctance to surrender hard-won victories is understandable. ...

Bloomberg European stocks dropped with US futures on Thursday as investors weighed the latest signs of the coronavirus’s impact on the global economy and a slew of corporate earnings. Crude oil rose to about $15 a barrel in New York. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index quickly erased its opening gain as an estimate of private-sector activity in the euro area ...