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Doubts Raised About Reported Drop In NYC Deaths As “The Hardest And Saddest Week Of Our Lives” Begins: Live Updates

Doubts Raised About Reported Drop In NYC Deaths As “The Hardest And Saddest Week Of Our Lives” Begins: Live Updates

During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” yesterday morning, Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Chris Wallace that the upcoming week will be “the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives,” calling it our “our Pearl Harbor, our 9/11 moment,” except that, unlike those attacks, this one won’t be “localized” – it will be unfurling across the US, almost simultaneously.

Nearly 12 hours later, President Trump and VP Pence said during the evening’s task force press briefing that the numbers reported out of Continental Europe and New York earlier that day were “very optimistic,” sending futures on what looks like their most bullish trading to kick off a new week since the end of the ‘rona rout (or at least, the first installment of it).

To be sure, some experts have raised doubts about the optimistic numbers reported out of New York State and New York City last night. Notably, the state reported its first decline in daily coronavirus deaths.

The second day of declining hospitalizations state-wide was one of the most optimistic numbers reported yesterday by Cuomo.

Numbers showing deaths in NYC declined yesterday for the second day in a row, when they were reported by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio also revealed last night that the feds had sent NYC 174 nurses, 104 doctors and 13 respiratory therapists, not enough to completely make up the shortfall, but “a start”, the mayor said.

Before people get too excited about these latest numbers out of New York, we noticed several epidemiologists and other ‘data people’ found flaws in the numbers that they highlighted on Twitter. One expert who reviewed the data said she found a pattern that suggests the city might have underreported deaths yesterday, meaning these encouraging numbers don’t reflect reality, and that more deaths would be reported later on Monday to compensate.

Here’s Dr. Andrea Feigl, a Harvard-trained medical writer:

She also highlighted the NYT report we mentioned last night showing widespread underreporting of deaths across the US.

While equity strategists appeared to focus on the strong numbers out of the Continental Europe yesterday, (Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, mostly), numbers out of the UK, where the Queen delivered a landmark speech while the PM was admitted to the hospital with brutal COVID-19 symptoms, were much more alarming, with the largest jump in deaths reported yet as the UK’s death toll has accelerated over the past week. Meanwhile, reports that Britons continue to flout the lockdowns despite the crackdown by police have vexed those trying to combat the outbreak.

Worldwide, we’re on the verge of 70k deaths as the virus continues to spread, finally accelerating in places like Brazil, and elsewhere across Latin America, while small outbreaks have cropped up in practically all of Africa’s 54 countries.

The same is true in Asia: While South Korea reported just 47 new cases of the coronavirus, the lowest daily uptick since infections began surging on Feb 21., and the first time that number has dipped below 50 since then as well. At the peak, SK was reporting 900+ new cases daily. As one reporter noted on twitter, things could still turn on a time, but it’s definitely a milestone for the country with arguably the most effective response to the virus in the world.

Although South Korea never had to close their economy (as officials’ swift response kept things from getting to out of control), analysts at Nomura just helped put SK’s outbreak in perspective.

Meanwhile, another 50+ cases were reported out of Tokyo overnight, as Japanese PM Abe prepared to announce plans to launch a state of emergency set to begin tomorrow. As Nikkei Asian Review reported Monday morning, Abe said Monday the planned state of emergency would be rolled out in seven prefectures, while also announcing a record 108 trillion yen (about $1 trillion) stimulus package.

Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Osaka, Hyogo and Fukuoka prefectures will be covered by the decree. However, because the Japanese Constitution bows to civil liberties and doesn’t give the government the authority to stop people from leaving their homes, cities and governors won’t be able to punish businesses who flout the rules – though they can engage in that famously Japanese cultural practice: shaming.

“Even though we will declare a state of emergency, we will not lock cities down and I do not think it is necessary,” Abe told reporters in Tokyo before a meeting of the government’s coronavirus task force. “We will ramp up our effort to maintain economic activities as possible as well as preventing the further spread of the virus.”

The prime minister said he would declare the state of emergency as soon as Tuesday. His bailout will include cash payments to households and bailouts for small businesses similar to what the US is trying to pull off.

Before we go, here is a snapshot on how the situation in the US has developed over the last 24 hours.

Late last night, Axios reported (and we duly note) whispers that “the first major confrontation” had unfolded during a White House task force meeting between – of all people – Peter Navarro and Dr. Fauci. Navarro slammed Dr. Fauci for allegedly playing down the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, which was recently determined to be one of the more effective therapies that have been tested in small batches (albeit without control groups, which, as any good scientist will tell you, is vital for producing ‘usable’ data). At the end of the fight, Jared Kushner demanded that Navarro “Take yes as an answer” since the administration is already working to get the drug to ‘hotspots’ around the country.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/06/2020 – 07:16

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39MUY1M Tyler Durden

COVID-19 Is Being Used To Scare You Away From Using Cash

COVID-19 Is Being Used To Scare You Away From Using Cash

Authored by Nick Hankoff via The Libertarian Institute,

Cash has been the target of the banking and financial elites for years. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is being used to frighten the masses into accepting a cashless society. That would mean the death of what’s left of our free society.

CBS News, CNN, and other mainstream outlets are fearmongering again. Alarmism is nothing new in the media world, but this time, it’s not about triggering panic buying or even pushing a political agenda.

The war on cash is about imposing a new meta-narrative. As economist Joseph Salerno explains, the cashless society forces all payments to be made through the financial system. It doesn’t end with monopoly control over transactions, though.

Being bound to computers for transactions kicks the door wide open to hardcore surveillance of personal activity and location data. Being eternally on the grid means relentless taxation and negative interest rates, which the Federal Reserve is already gearing up for.

None of this bothers the well-heeled boosters of a cashless society or their lackeys in the media. They want Americans reading about the threat of coronavirus cooties on their cash, which is absurd.

Germs, of course, can loiter all over credit and debit cards, smartphones, ATMs, and every other cash alternative device. Too bad implanted microchip technology isn’t further along, the banksters must be thinking.

In another CNN article, readers are practically shamed for withdrawing cash to save during a crisis. Every sentence, every word, every letter of the article is nuts.

It begins by reassuring the reader that their bank account is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). There’s no mention of moral hazard from CNN. The fact that the federal government guarantees every bank account up to $250,000 encourages reckless financial and banking behavior. Not worth mentioning, CNN?

Prior to the end of World War II, there were $500, $1,000, and $10,000 bills in wide circulation. This cash was dissolved by the Federal Reserve in the name of fighting organized crime. This same argument is now being made against $50 and $100 bills by Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff.

In the Wall Street Journal, Rogoff also wrote that a cashless society would offer such benefits as “greater flexibility for the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy when necessary.”

He wrote those words in 2017. And these too:

“The Federal Reserve should be able to implement negative nominal interest rates vastly more effectively in the absence of large bills, which could prove quite important as a stimulative tool in the next financial crisis.”

Prophetic. And indeed, negative interest rates would require the assistance of outlawing cash, so that banking customers don’t cheat by simply drawing out on their accounts.

Pardon the pun, but it’s absolutely sick how COVID-19 is being used now as a launching pad for this cashless agenda. There’s nothing to fear about using cash during this time of social distancing.

Wash your hands after handling cash, but don’t give up your moolah. Preserve your health, your privacy, and your liberty.

And just in case you wondered what all this fearmongering has done for that dirty cash in circulation – Americans are grabbing it at at the fastest pace since the Y2K liquidity scare…

Another unintended consequence of government intervention.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/06/2020 – 07:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xQ21JK Tyler Durden

“Immunity Certificates” Are Coming – COVID-Survivors To Get ‘Special Passports’ Enabling Return To ‘Normalcy’

“Immunity Certificates” Are Coming – COVID-Survivors To Get ‘Special Passports’ Enabling Return To ‘Normalcy’

Update: Even more prophetically, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman tweeted about his “optimism” and the need for

“…Hydroxychloriquine and antibiotics appear to help. There is increasing evidence that the asymptomatic infection rate could be as much as 50X higher than expected.

If this is true, the severity and death rate could be much lower than anticipated, and we could be closer to herd immunity than projected. Highly accurate antibody tests are scaling production and distribution which will definitively answer this question hopefully soon.

One could imagine a world in the next few months where everyone is tested and all but the immune-compromised go back to a socially distanced but more normal life. 

We wear bracelets or carry a phone certificate which indicate our status, and track infections where they emerge…”

Yay, let’s all cheer for antibody-based freedom.

*  *  *

The rollout of immunity certificates across the world will likely be government-issued to first responders and citizens who have developed resistance to COVID-19.

People who have contracted the virus and have recovered, normally develop antibodies to fight the virus, could be their golden ticket to escape regions that have strict social distancing measures and or lockdowns. 

Just imagine, immunity certificates granted by governments to people who have recovered or have developed resistance to the virus could be considered special passports that will allow them to freely travel across states, countries, and or the world — while everyone else remains hunkered down in their homes or doomsday bunkers. 

Some of the first talks of this has originated in the UK. The government could roll out immunity passports to Britons who have already contracted and recovered from the virus so they can reenter the economy, reported The New York Times.

“(An immunity certificate) is an important thing that we will be doing and are looking at but it’s too early in the science of the immunity that comes from having had the disease,” health minister Matt Hancock said at a Downing Street press conference.

“It’s too early in that science to be able to put clarity around that. I wish that we could but the reason that we can’t is because the science isn’t yet advanced enough,” Hancock said. 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said Britain was completing due diligence in how feasible immunity passports would be.

Hancock said a blood test was in development that could test whether people already had the virus or had the antibodies that would make them resistant to the infection.

In Germany, researchers are preparing a study that would see if people already immune to the virus could reenter the workforce and be granted immunity passports. 

In Italy, the conservative president of the northeastern Veneto region has proposed an immunity passport for people who possess antibodies that show they are resistant to the virus. 

The former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has called it a “Covid Pass” for the uninfected who can return to their normal lives. 

Immunity passports and “intermittent lockdowns” could become a reality in the months, quarters, or at least in the next several years – as the virus could be sticking around a lot longer than many have anticipated. 

Talk of these special passports surfaced in American politics last week when House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to implement an “Immunity Certificate” for first responders and healthcare professionals. 

Stewart said first-responders who have the antibodies and are immune to the virus should be shifted onto the frontlines.

“We need to get the resources in place to test all of our healthcare workers so we know which ones can work without fear of COVID-19 and which ones need maximum protection against the VIRUS,” Stewart said.

And for more confirmation that immunity passports are going to be the next big thing in the Western world, or maybe across the globe. Here is Bill Gates on March 24, giving a 50-minute interview to Chris Anderson, the Curator of TED, the non-profit that runs the TED Talks.

Right at 34:14, Gates discussed how the future in a post-corona world would be. He said:

Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who’s a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person…

…Because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly.

You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around.

So eventually there will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global reopening up.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/06/2020 – 06:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2V35ZGQ Tyler Durden

Is the American Dream Dead?

Here are two stories about modern Americans’ economic lives.

The first story is that the American Dream is dead. The cost of college is ballooning even as higher education becomes a prerequisite for an increasing proportion of white-collar jobs. Those jobs have become more important to the American middle class as manufacturing and many other forms of well-compensated blue-collar work disappear. The debt from obtaining this quasi-mandatory college education (especially at expensive, cut-throat elite schools where admission is statistically impossible) puts newly minted adults in a terrible position. They feel they cannot move forward with one of the major milestones of 20th century adulthood: homeownership. Nor can they afford to live in major cities with job growth, such as New York and San Francisco, where rents have been increasing and vacancy rates dropping for the last decade. Seventeen percent of adults say they cannot pay this month’s bills in full. Feeling financially insecure, they defer childbearing, and when they do have kids they are stressed about how to pay for child care and education. Less-educated male wage earners have been hit hardest by these economic changes; as a result, they are struggling with unemployment, obesity, disability, suicide, and drug abuse. In extreme cases, this leads to “deaths of despair” and decreasing life expectancy. Some could be helped with medical interventions, but when they seek treatment, they’re hit by a combination of rising health care costs (and attendant medical debt) and a confusingly opaque system. One-fourth of adults say they have forgone necessary care because they were unable to afford it. Government spending on health care, mostly for the elderly, is out of control, yet some elderly people are still choosing between filling their prescriptions and buying food. One-quarter of nonretired adults have no retirement savings or pension whatsoever. Oh, and now there’s a global pandemic.

The second story is that modern Americans are living the dream. They have more education, bigger houses, greater employment options, and better stuff than ever before. Unemployment, which was just shy of 10 percent at the start of 2010, is now 3.6 percent. Real median household income recently hit a high of $62,000 per year. In February, Gallup reported that 90 percent of Americans say they are “satisfied with their personal lives.” New homes in the United States are 1,000 square feet larger than they were in 1973; living space per person has doubled. Interest rates are low. More Americans than ever are obtaining college degrees, and those degrees are paying dividends: The lifetime net return for a typical college graduate is more than half a million dollars. Consumer goods overall are cheaper and higher-quality thanks to innovation and global trade, and per-capita expenditure on food has gone from more than 17 percent of disposable income in 1960 to just over 9 percent today. Health care is expensive, but 92 percent of Americans have insurance—and our ability to treat cancer, AIDS, and other diseases has improved tremendously. Zooming out, more people are healthy, well-fed, literate, and safe from physical violence than at almost any time in human history.

Both of these stories are basically true. Which one predominates in your thinking is a function of your temperament, your political persuasion, and your personal situation.

Market-minded optimists may be tempted to focus on the second story, especially if the goal is to fend off large interventions into the economy. The impulse is to say that the rumors of the death of the American Dream are greatly exaggerated and that people are simply mistaken about whether life is—on balance—worse in meaningful ways.

But it’s important to take the first story seriously on its own terms, not least because it is the story that has completely dominated American electoral politics in 2020 on both the left and the right. While Democrats and Republicans disagree with each other (and among themselves) about how to solve those problems, they are not—for the most part—disagreeing about the list of problems to be solved.

One explanation for the gap between how bad things feel to a substantial segment of the population and how good certain economic indicators look is that many things are getting much better even as a few important things are getting much worse.

At right, you can see the sectors where things have gotten more affordable. You can also see where things have gotten more expensive—in some cases wildly more expensive. In recent decades, the incredible gains from the private sector have outpaced the costs of the burgeoning state, which is why overall economic data look pretty good. But these gains are not distributed evenly.

Some people will look at this chart and see a to-do list: Every one of the red lines, they presume, is a problem that needs to be fixed by the government. A different interpretation is that the red lines are caused by government interference. The blue lines are areas where consumers are benefitting from a relatively open global market in manufactured goods and technology.

Again, it’s possible that both are true. The government has been meddling in those red-line sectors for decades, creating confused expectations about current and future prices, true levels of supply and demand, and more. Solving these problems will indeed require legislative and bureaucratic changes. But the palette of possible solutions should not be limited to sending in the feds with wagons full of money and rulebooks.

To seriously engage with the idea that the American Dream has become unaffordable, this issue of Reason delves into the question of how we got where we are today. In “Student Loans Aren’t Working” (page 24), Deputy Managing Editor Mike Riggs looks at the role of federal subsidies in pushing up the price of college while destroying the ability of the market for education debt to assess risk. In “Can’t Afford Your Rent? Blame Herbert Hoover” (page 32), Gallup economist Jonathan Rothwell goes back to the origins of residential zoning policy to explain a host of housing woes. And in “How Doctors Broke Health Care” (page 36), historian Christy Ford Chapin examines the way doctors, insurers, professional associations, and politicians created the United States’ current confusing and cronyist medical system.

Bad things happen to politics when Americans feel like the future will be worse than the past. Reactionary and socialist ideologies ascend. The stories we tell ourselves about the problems we face have profound implications for the policy directions we take in the future. But there’s much more to the story than what politicians and pundits are telling us right now.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2JJUTkY
via IFTTT

Is the American Dream Dead?

Here are two stories about modern Americans’ economic lives.

The first story is that the American Dream is dead. The cost of college is ballooning even as higher education becomes a prerequisite for an increasing proportion of white-collar jobs. Those jobs have become more important to the American middle class as manufacturing and many other forms of well-compensated blue-collar work disappear. The debt from obtaining this quasi-mandatory college education (especially at expensive, cut-throat elite schools where admission is statistically impossible) puts newly minted adults in a terrible position. They feel they cannot move forward with one of the major milestones of 20th century adulthood: homeownership. Nor can they afford to live in major cities with job growth, such as New York and San Francisco, where rents have been increasing and vacancy rates dropping for the last decade. Seventeen percent of adults say they cannot pay this month’s bills in full. Feeling financially insecure, they defer childbearing, and when they do have kids they are stressed about how to pay for child care and education. Less-educated male wage earners have been hit hardest by these economic changes; as a result, they are struggling with unemployment, obesity, disability, suicide, and drug abuse. In extreme cases, this leads to “deaths of despair” and decreasing life expectancy. Some could be helped with medical interventions, but when they seek treatment, they’re hit by a combination of rising health care costs (and attendant medical debt) and a confusingly opaque system. One-fourth of adults say they have forgone necessary care because they were unable to afford it. Government spending on health care, mostly for the elderly, is out of control, yet some elderly people are still choosing between filling their prescriptions and buying food. One-quarter of nonretired adults have no retirement savings or pension whatsoever. Oh, and now there’s a global pandemic.

The second story is that modern Americans are living the dream. They have more education, bigger houses, greater employment options, and better stuff than ever before. Unemployment, which was just shy of 10 percent at the start of 2010, is now 3.6 percent. Real median household income recently hit a high of $62,000 per year. In February, Gallup reported that 90 percent of Americans say they are “satisfied with their personal lives.” New homes in the United States are 1,000 square feet larger than they were in 1973; living space per person has doubled. Interest rates are low. More Americans than ever are obtaining college degrees, and those degrees are paying dividends: The lifetime net return for a typical college graduate is more than half a million dollars. Consumer goods overall are cheaper and higher-quality thanks to innovation and global trade, and per-capita expenditure on food has gone from more than 17 percent of disposable income in 1960 to just over 9 percent today. Health care is expensive, but 92 percent of Americans have insurance—and our ability to treat cancer, AIDS, and other diseases has improved tremendously. Zooming out, more people are healthy, well-fed, literate, and safe from physical violence than at almost any time in human history.

Both of these stories are basically true. Which one predominates in your thinking is a function of your temperament, your political persuasion, and your personal situation.

Market-minded optimists may be tempted to focus on the second story, especially if the goal is to fend off large interventions into the economy. The impulse is to say that the rumors of the death of the American Dream are greatly exaggerated and that people are simply mistaken about whether life is—on balance—worse in meaningful ways.

But it’s important to take the first story seriously on its own terms, not least because it is the story that has completely dominated American electoral politics in 2020 on both the left and the right. While Democrats and Republicans disagree with each other (and among themselves) about how to solve those problems, they are not—for the most part—disagreeing about the list of problems to be solved.

One explanation for the gap between how bad things feel to a substantial segment of the population and how good certain economic indicators look is that many things are getting much better even as a few important things are getting much worse.

At right, you can see the sectors where things have gotten more affordable. You can also see where things have gotten more expensive—in some cases wildly more expensive. In recent decades, the incredible gains from the private sector have outpaced the costs of the burgeoning state, which is why overall economic data look pretty good. But these gains are not distributed evenly.

Some people will look at this chart and see a to-do list: Every one of the red lines, they presume, is a problem that needs to be fixed by the government. A different interpretation is that the red lines are caused by government interference. The blue lines are areas where consumers are benefitting from a relatively open global market in manufactured goods and technology.

Again, it’s possible that both are true. The government has been meddling in those red-line sectors for decades, creating confused expectations about current and future prices, true levels of supply and demand, and more. Solving these problems will indeed require legislative and bureaucratic changes. But the palette of possible solutions should not be limited to sending in the feds with wagons full of money and rulebooks.

To seriously engage with the idea that the American Dream has become unaffordable, this issue of Reason delves into the question of how we got where we are today. In “Student Loans Aren’t Working” (page 24), Deputy Managing Editor Mike Riggs looks at the role of federal subsidies in pushing up the price of college while destroying the ability of the market for education debt to assess risk. In “Can’t Afford Your Rent? Blame Herbert Hoover” (page 32), Gallup economist Jonathan Rothwell goes back to the origins of residential zoning policy to explain a host of housing woes. And in “How Doctors Broke Health Care” (page 36), historian Christy Ford Chapin examines the way doctors, insurers, professional associations, and politicians created the United States’ current confusing and cronyist medical system.

Bad things happen to politics when Americans feel like the future will be worse than the past. Reactionary and socialist ideologies ascend. The stories we tell ourselves about the problems we face have profound implications for the policy directions we take in the future. But there’s much more to the story than what politicians and pundits are telling us right now.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2JJUTkY
via IFTTT

“We Borrowed From The Future & Now It’s Over…”

“We Borrowed From The Future & Now It’s Over…”

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Investment advisor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts says, “We’ve been printing massive amounts of dollars, and if you look at all the things we did to stop high speed debasement and unprecedented inflation, we’ve kind of run out of tricks…”

“…Inflation is really sneaking up…

My question:

Is basically shutting down the small businesses and the small farm economy at high speed the way they have done, is that protecting us from going up a frightening inflation? Are we at Weimar Republic kind of inflation rates?

I have been telling my subscribers to plant, plant and plant because the price of food is going to go through the roof. Another one of my questions: What’s pressing for war?   Is the debt spiral up and the inflation spiral up, is that more than they can handle?”

Fitts also says the covert war going on now is about the U.S. dollar and countries who want to stop using it for trade.

If the dollar is used less, it will be worth less and maybe much less. Fitts says,

“We have tried to keep all the oil sales in the world going through the dollar. Of course, that’s put everybody back into our jurisdiction. The world doesn’t want to do that anymore. They want to be free to trade.

You are seeing more and more central banks around the world doing swap lines and direct relationships between central bank to central bank to try to do what is called de-dollarization.

So, you have the world wanting to move outside our channel, and you have the Anglo American alliance trying to protect the dollar syndicate. That is part of the economic war that is going on.”

Fitts says, “Whatever happens on the global stage, it means the days of the subsidy that kept the game inside America is over…”

“…So, how do you radically reduce the size of the financial footprint that stops inflation from going wild?  

How do you take the subsidy away from the American middle class without a major civil war?…

What we did was we did the China trade, and now it’s over, and everybody in America said fine, we will go along. Well, this is the price. You have borrowed from the future and now it’s over.”

Why the sudden record gun buying in America? Fitts says,

“They understand that the rule of law is steadily being diminished. They see all sorts of behavior… that is lawless…

They see people in poverty say if anything goes for the big guys, then anything goes for us…

Part of what is happening is we are dealing with a spiritual war, and there are serious demonic and occult forces at work. There is nothing they would love more than to stop the churches and stop people from getting together and praying and inviting in the divine and angelic hope every Sunday. I am with the President. I think stopping the churches from gathering is a very, very terrible idea.”

Fitts also still thinks gold is a good investment that will “outperform most other investments in 2020.”

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Catherine Austin Fitts, publisher of “The Solari Report.”

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/06/2020 – 06:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JH9fTd Tyler Durden

Hospital Operator Quorum Health Is Facing Bankruptcy Amidst The COVID-19 Outbreak

Hospital Operator Quorum Health Is Facing Bankruptcy Amidst The COVID-19 Outbreak

Quorum Health, which operates 24 hospitals in 14 states, is preparing for bankruptcy at the worst possible time: the middle of a global pandemic. The “flood” of coronavirus patients that the hospitals have experienced have put pressure on an already precarious set of financials, leaving the the company little choice, according to Bloomberg.

Quorum’s executives are in the midst of negotiations with stakeholders on possible restructuring deals, but at the same time the company is preparing Chapter 11 plans. Earlier this week, the company delayed its annual report filing to focus on negotiations with its creditors. No official decision has been made.

But the worst part is that Quorum’s troubles could foreshadow what’s coming for the American healthcare system. Even prior to the outbreak, hospitals in rural areas were “losing profitable elective procedures to outpatient facilities while still handling patients who lack good insurance.”

And now, hospitals are being forced to cancel optional and elective procedures to make capacity for coronavirus patients. This further squeezes the financials of many of these facilities and federal relief may not be enough to save them. Prior to the virus even becoming a factor, more than 30 facilities went bankrupt last year. 

CEO Robert Fish said: “Regardless of the path forward the company chooses, Quorum Health and its hospitals will continue to maintain all operations without any interruption to service.” 

Quorum started in 2016 as a spinoff of 38 hospitals from Community Health Systems. It is now down to just 24 facilities and 2,000 beds. The company hasn’t been profitable since the spinoff and its 2023 unsecured bonds are trading for about 70 cents on the dollar. 

KKR & Co., York Capital Management Global Advisors LLC and Mudrick Capital Management round out a list of the company’s stakeholders. KKR offered last year to help recapitalize the company, but noted that it would likely wipe out the company’s equity holders. 


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/06/2020 – 05:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39MObVZ Tyler Durden

China Prepares To Close “Oil Deal Of A Lifetime” In Iraq

China Prepares To Close “Oil Deal Of A Lifetime” In Iraq

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

Over the past week or so, China has eased quarantine measures in Wuhan – the city in which the global coronavirus pandemic began – with the entire lockdown scheduled to end on 8 April. With China’s President Xi Jinpiang having visited the city just a few days ago, the industrial economy across China as a whole is back working and operating at levels even above the pre-coronavirus rates, although the service sector remains more cautious.

For the oil industry, this means that China is back and busy taking up where it left off in terms of exploring and developing new field opportunities.

This is at a time when the U.S. is just beginning to see the full onset of coronavirus mayhem.

There has been no clearer sign of this move by China than last week’s awarding of a US$203.5 million engineering contract for Iraq’s supergiant oil field, Majnoon, to the little known China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corp (CPECC). 

With the U.S.’ focus increasingly on fire-fighting the coronavirus outbreak at home, Beijing has good reason to believe that it has largely a clear run at target country Iraq, provided that it does not stick it too much in the U.S.’ craw. This specifically means continuing to develop oil and gas field opportunities in geopolitically ultra-sensitive areas, such as Iraq, on the basis of rolling contracts for specific work undertaken by companies that are not top of the U.S.’ radar, like CPECC.

This method is also being used by Russia, and the focus of it right now is Iraq and Iran, two countries that are right in the centre of the Middle East and vital to both China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ multi-generational dominance strategy and to Russia’s ongoing attempt to sequestrate the entire Middle East.

Majnoon is a key focus in Iraq because it has so much oil that its very name in Arabic means ‘insane’, to signify the insane amount of oil that has always been present there. Before the U.S. noticed that China was stealthily acting hand in glove with Russia to provide the money where the muscle had been put in place, the ever-fractious senior Iraqi politicians had offered China a stunningly lucrative deal for the development of the Majnoon field. Specifically, the terms of the deal were that China would obtain a 25-year contract but one that would officially start two years after the signing date. This would allow China to recoup more profits on average per year and less upfront investment.

Also enormously beneficial for Beijing was that the methodology for working out per barrel payments to it would be the higher – the Chinese would choose – of either the mean average of the 18 month spot price for crude oil produced, or the past six months. Additionally, China would receive a discount of at least 10 per cent for at least five years on the value of the oil it recovered.

And oil there is aplenty. Located around 60 kilometres to the north east of the main southern export terminal of Basra, the Majnoon supergiant oil field is one of the largest oil fields in the world, with an estimated 38 billion barrels of oil in place. Due to the legacy of both the Iran-Iraq War and the U.S. incursions, from when the licence on the field was awarded on 11 December 2009 by the Iraq government to Shell Iraq Petroleum Development (SIPD) – in conjunction with its Malaysian partner, Petronas, and Iraq’s Missan Oil Company – it took nearly 18 months simply to clear 28 square kilometres of land of explosives, prior to constructing and opening the first well. Production was then formally restarted on 20 September 2013 and, within a very short timeframe, the consortium had already managed to boost output to the 175,000 barrels per day (bpd) first commercial production target (also the threshold for cost-recovery payments for Shell). 

By the end of the first quarter of 2014, the field was churning out an average of 210,000 bpd, according to figures from Shell and Baghdad. Indeed, the first shipment of crude oil to Shell Trading occurred on 8 April that year and, despite the floods that hit the fields in early 2019, the longer-term original production target figures designed for the Shell-led consortium still stand: the first production target of 175,000 bpd (already reached and surpassed), and the plateau production for the site of 1.8 mbpd. 

The International Energy Agency projected output of 550,000-950,000 bpd production by 2020, and 700,000-1 million bpd at some point in the 2030s, although due to the flooding and recent political upheavals – plus the effects of the coronavirus – the timing has slipped. Even with these caveats, though, China’s part of the deal – which also remains in place – is to shore up the site from future potential flooding and to increase output to at least 500,000 bpd by the end of May 2021. 

The details of the early 2019 flooding damage might make worrying reading for some developers. The rain that caused the initial flooding had only fallen on both sides of the Iraq/Iran border for just 35 minutes in total, which then caused the Hiwiza marshes to overflow into farmland in the nearby Al-Qurna district, cutting through the safety berms and the rising level of water caused the Jahaf dam to collapse. By 15 March, the water level rose sufficiently to force itself through a second safety berm to the edges of the Majnoon oil field. 

The details do not worry the Chinese, though, for two key reasons.

  • One is that China has extensive knowledge of dealing with floods across its own country, both natural and man-created (via the damming that has occurred for decades), so it has the expertise and engineering capabilities to effectively deal with such eventualities.

  • The other is that, in line with its aforementioned encroachment into Iran, China can work on both sides of the border, as the Majnoon reservoir in the Iraqi side extends across the Iran border into the massive field known as Azadegan. This, in turn, is split into the North Azadegan and South Azadegan oil field developments.

For years, structural damage has been done to the area by the erosion of subsoil across over one million hectares of forest and brush land by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a result of building programmes. This has been worsened by the redirection of many of the natural water flows through the building of dams and again by Iran’s irrigation systems that have been sending clean and waste water into Iraq for decades.

A 2011 study by the University of Basra warned that the infrastructure was not able to handle Iranian inflows, with the danger zone concentrated in an area where the Majnoon oil pipelines feed the gas-oil separation station. However, as a senior source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week: “The IRGC invited China into Iran and Iraq and the IRGC is entirely at China’s service.”  

This strategy of gradual encroachment is a Chinese classic, of course, currently being employed very notably where possible across the Asia-Pacific region as well as the Middle East. The modus operandi is:

offer lots of money to cash-strapped countries (which most emerging economies are) that are tied in to future project developments, then leverage this into the building out of on-the-ground infrastructural projects (that have employment and revenue benefits for the host countries as well), and then turn the screw by inveigling the host countries to give China extremely preferential terms on something it wants (in the Middle East it is oil and gas and land transit routes, and in Asia Pacific it is other natural resources and international port usage).

Although in the Middle East, China is still partly trying to cover its intentions by using non-headline companies on ‘contractor-only’ specific work projects – just like CPECC – it does not take much digging to find the real interest. 

Not only is CPECC a subsidiary of Chinese oil behemoth, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), but also it was the very same company that was recently awarded exactly the same type of contract (US$121 million for ‘engineering work’ that time) for Iraq’s supergiant West Qurna-1 oilfield, also located very close to Iraq’s principal oil hub of Basra.

“At some point the U.S. is going to wake up and find out that it has lost the entire Middle East, including Iraq and Saudi,” concluded the Iran source. 


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/06/2020 – 05:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xRScLk Tyler Durden