President Donald Trump’s reopening guidelines for states are more cautious than you might expect from someone who consistently calls for a rapid return to economic activity. The “gating” metrics that states are supposed to meet before reopening are fairly robust: They should see a two-week downward trajectory of flu and Covid-like symptoms, and a two-week downward trajectory of documented cases ...

The coronavirus pandemic and its devastating effect on the US economy has ensured that big government—the one that’s already spending some $4.7 trillion in the current fiscal year—is poised to get even larger. As in past crises that led to massive government interventions, new initiatives will largely stay in place once the business downturn ends to the long-term detriment of ...

The US has surpassed 28,000 dead from Covid-19, which is almost certainly an undercount, and is bracing for more. President Donald Trump’s partisan and incoherent response — the sum of his positions is that he has both total authority and zero responsibility — has made the crisis more political than it might have been. Multiple governors have shown a better ...

The coronavirus pandemic has gutted many US businesses. Amazon.com Inc, of course, is one of the notable exceptions. The e-commerce giant is thriving as self-isolating consumers make more and more of their purchases online rather than risk Covid-19 infection by shopping outdoors. To illustrate the magnitude of the recent ramp-up, the company announced earlier this week it plans to hire ...

So much of the news around Covid-19 is scary, but there is a hopeful item to share: A steep rise in the learning curve of doctors treating critically ill coronavirus patients. Doctors are learning more about just how weird this disease can be when people get sick enough to be hospitalised. Some say that unlike typical cases of severe pneumonia, ...

Bloomberg The pandemic has many of us acting in unusual ways, and the world’s largest e-commerce company is no exception. In a stunning reprieve from the prerogatives of capitalism, Amazon.com Inc. has begun discouraging users from buying things they don’t need. Amazon is suppressing extraneous consumption in various ways, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. It isn’t ...

Bloomberg By mid-March, John Lyotier’s travel software business Left Technologies Inc. was cratering with the spread of the pandemic. Seeking to cut costs, he reached out to his office landlord, who offered rent relief. Then he contacted Amazon.com Inc., asking to “explore creative financing opportunities” for his monthly cloud-computing bill. The response was succinct. “’Nope, that’s the way it is,’” ...

Bloomberg Ford Motor Co. is warning of significant damage wreaked by a tornado in South Carolina this week that knocked out a BorgWarner Inc. auto-parts plant supplying a key component for the automaker’s most profitable models. The Seneca, South Carolina, parts factory makes transfer cases, an important component of four-wheel-drive systems that Ford uses in its F-150 pickup, its biggest ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. lost its six-year legal battle to let the public know exactly how many requests it received from the FBI to snoop on private user accounts. A federal judge said the government convinced her that granting the request “would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security.” Twitter broke ranks with other large ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank governor laid the ground for more interest rate cuts as he took a number of steps to boost liquidity and support lenders amid a nationwide lockdown that’s brought the economy to a virtual standstill. Governor Shaktikanta Das kept the benchmark repurchase rate unchanged at 4.4%, but signalled that inflation will ease to below the central bank’s ...