April, 2020

• 14 April

  N Korea fires missile barrage ahead of South Korea polls

  

  Bloomberg North Korea fired multiple missiles from its eastern coast on Tuesday, in a show of military might ahead of parliamentary elections in South Korea. The projectiles were fired on Tuesday from sites near Munchon and neighbouring Wonsan on the east coast, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense said in a statement. North Korea launched short-range cruise missiles from ...

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• 14 April

  Austria tests easing lockdown with few stores reopening

  

  Bloomberg Austrians lined up outside hardware and gardening stores that reopened on Tuesday after the country became one of the first in Europe to ease lockdown measures. The soft and partial restart of the economy — also one of the first to clamp down on public life to halt the spread of the coronavirus — will be eyed by others ...

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• 14 April

  US reopening hinges on testing surge

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s push to reopen the world’s largest economy hinges on a breakthrough that has so far eluded him: ratcheting up testing capacity to stave off another wave of coronavirus. Trump is anxious to end economy-crushing social distancing practices that have curbed the spread of the illness. He declared that he has “total” authority to reopen the country, ...

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• 14 April

  Vietnam may extend social distancing ban

  

  Bloomberg Vietnam may extend its social distancing order in provinces and cities that have a high risk of the spread of the novel coronavirus spread, the government said in a posting on its website. The government initiated a 15-day social distancing and stay-at-home order on April 1. It is now looking to divide provinces and regions of the country into ...

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• 14 April

  Doctors come under attack in India over virus stigma

  

  Bloomberg Trupti Katdare was in a slum in the central Indian city of Indore when the mob attacked. She and a group of other public-health workers had been tracking down a man who might have had contact with a recently confirmed case of the coronavirus. When they found him, he cursed at them, asking why they wanted his information and ...

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• 14 April

  Joe Biden’s quarantine reading assignment

  

  Because the United States’ unrivaled resources of human and physical capital have only been idled, not obliterated, the recovery might begin with a bang, propelled by a burst of pent-up animal spirits. The recovery could, however, be unnecessarily anemic, for two reasons. First, the receding pandemic (caused by a virus roughly one ten-thousandth of a millimeter in diameter) will leave ...

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• 14 April

  Masayoshi Son’s impatience cost $17b

  

  For a man with a 100-year vision, Masayoshi Son sure seems impatient. We already know that the SoftBank Group Corp chairman wasn’t content letting Adam Neumann be slightly crazy in his plan to upend the short-term office rental market; indeed he encouraged the founder of The We Co to be even crazier. And when a young Ritesh Agarwal was building ...

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• 14 April

  How bankers keep the vision fund going?

  Forget that $24 billion writedown on investments that SoftBank Group Corp. It’s bad. But it’s only paper. The Japanese conglomerate faces a far more tangible problem as the value of portfolios plummet and credit ratings get slashed. The issue is cash. Specifically, at the $100 billion Vision Fund. Most venture capitalists operate by taking in money from limited partners and ...

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• 14 April

  Covid-19 chaos is the IMF’s biggest test ever

  Finance ministers and central-bank governors logging in for this week’s virtual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will say the right thing, promising to work together to confront the economic fallout of the coronavirus. The question is whether they will do the right thing and take concrete steps to allow the necessary cooperation and coordination. Many ...

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• 14 April

  Can Donald Trump delay the presidential election?

  

  It is alarming, to say the least, that people are even asking this question: Does President Donald Trump have the legal authority to postpone or cancel the 2020 presidential election? The answer is entirely clear: He does not. Start with the Constitution itself: “The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall ...

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