March, 2020

• 22 March

  Covid-19: US’s comparision to China will be decisive

  

  The Pentagon created the Office of Net Assessment in 1973 to forecast America’s strengths and weaknesses relative to its main adversaries after a nuclear war. What would a similar “net assessment” tell us about how America and the world will look after the coronavirus pandemic? At the heart of such a post-pandemic assessment is the question of where America will ...

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• 22 March

  How to limit hoarding amid outbreak

  

  “What happened to the soap?” That’s what many Americans may be thinking as they wander forlornly through the aisles of local grocery stores (always careful, of course, to maintain a 6-foot distance from other customers). Fresh food may be abundant, but the necessities of a disease quarantine — hand soap, sanitiser, toilet paper and so on — are increasingly hard ...

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• 22 March

  Coronavirus predictions bedeviled by the details

  Until last week, the UK government under Boris Johnson had been oddly relaxed in its response to the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike many other nations that had closed schools and restaurants and banned gatherings of even five people in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19, the UK had allowed life to continue much as normal, only testing patients entering ...

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• 22 March

  Banks get stressed like never before, globally

  Banks are thankfully in much better shape to face the coronavirus pandemic than they were before the financial crisis. But as the economic challenge they face grows, regulatory measures to help them that looked overly forgiving just a few weeks ago may prove to be just the start. In 2008-2009, the financial sector’s woes dragged down the real economy. Now ...

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• 22 March

  Covid-19: Small business alone needs $1tn now

  

  Restaurants and shops are closed across the US to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The Federal government has started to address the resulting economic pain with an emergency declaration by President Donald Trump releasing $50 billion for public-health measures and congressional passage of a multi-billion dollar relief bill providing some paid sick leave and extended unemployment benefits, ...

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• 22 March

  Coronavirus killed the progressive left

  

  Covid-19 and the Democratic presidential primaries, the two biggest stories of the year so far, reflect a common theme: the death of the progressive left. Looking back, historians may well see late 2019 and very early 2020 as a kind of high-water mark for American progressivism. It wasn’t so long ago that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were commanding most ...

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• 22 March

  Mobile location data may help save virus spread

  

  Almost everyone these days carries a device that tracks their movements and shares that information with an array of companies. They may use it to offer everything from food deliveries and car rides to virtual monster hunts. It’s ironic, then, that we’re so reluctant to use the same capabilities to fight a pandemic that could kill millions. Thanks to the ...

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• 22 March

  Hedge funds ask clients for fresh cash to buy the dip

  

  Bloomberg First they lost money. Now hedge funds want clients to risk even more cash on the bets that caused the pain. LMR Partners, Citadel, Baupost Group and Capital Four Management are trying to persuade clients to inject money into their funds after taking a hit in the coronavirus-fuelled market turmoil. Capula Investment Management has had talks with some investors ...

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• 22 March

  Taiwan rolls out its new trading system at the wrong time

  

  Bloomberg Taiwan’s timing on rolling out a new stock trading system could have been better. Traders in Taipei starting on Monday will be able to trade stocks continuously, rather than through a five-second matched call auction that has been in place since 2014. It’s the only major capital market which runs such auctions throughout regular trading, said the Taiwan Stock ...

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• 22 March

  JPMorgan, BofA give extra pay to employees who can’t go home

  

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. (BofA) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. plan to make special payments to branch, call-center and operations employees who can’t work from home during the coronavirus pandemic. JPMorgan, the biggest US bank, will make payments of $1,000 — $500 next month, and the rest in May — to branch workers as well as operations and call-center ...

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