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CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has been diagnosed with COVID-19, the network said in a memo to employees on Tuesday.

“In these difficult times that seem to get more difficult and complicated by the day, I just found out that I am positive for coronavirus,” Cuomo wrote in a message on Twitter.

CNN reports that Cuomo was most recently at CNN’s offices in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of New York City last Friday. He anchored from his home on Monday, and interviewed his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“I have been exposed to people in recent days who have subsequently tested positive and I had fevers, chills and shortness of breath,” he wrote.

“I just hope I didn’t give it to the kids and Cristina. That would make me feel worse than this illness!”

Cuomo said Tuesday that he is “quarantined in my basement” and will “do my shows from here.”

“We will all beat this by being smart and tough and united!” he wrote on Twitter.

This is the third case of coronavirus involving CNN’s workspace in New York City. Employees were notified of another case in mid-March.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The Empire State Building debuted what appeared to be a spinning red ‘siren’ light atop the iconic structure in what many observers saw as a dystopian sign of the times.

Scientist Rita J. King explained that the light was not actually spinning but was made to look that way.

The @EmpireStateBldg reminding us that the city is in the middle of an emergency. pic.twitter.com/50TjEjOogN

— Rita J. King (@RitaJKing) March 31, 2020

“It’s the way the light is being used to create the illusion of a spin,” King said.

Many respondents complained that the light was “anxiety inducing,” an observation shared by King, who said it should be swapped out “for the soothing, beautiful heartbeat pulse they use for Valentine’s Day.”

“Are they going to sound an air raid siren too?” asked another respondent.

While many saw the light as a dystopian touch that wouldn’t look out of place in an apocalyptic zombie movie, the Empire State Building itself claimed the light was supposed to represent the “heartbeat of America.”

“Starting tonight through the COVID-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced by the heartbeat of America with a white and red siren in the mast for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight,” the Empire State Building tweeted.

[1/2] We’ll never stop shining for you.

Starting tonight through the COVID-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced by the heartbeat of America with a white and red siren in the mast for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight. pic.twitter.com/OYkblLTRHN

— Empire State Building (@EmpireStateBldg) March 30, 2020

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It’s the final day of Q1, and in China, health officials have decided to start publicly unveiling the number of allegedly ‘asymptomatic’ carriers as Beijing ramps up travel restrictions. Many of these asymptomatic carriers are foreigners who managed to get into the country without being forced to self-quarantine because they didn’t exhibit any symptoms, including no fevers, one of the biggest and most critical symptoms for filtering out the potentially infected.

As the US ramps up its testing capacity, Reuters reports that the number of cases of ‘asymptomatic’ carriers in China was at 1,541 by late Monday, with 205 of those cases having come from overseas, according to data shared with Reuters. Shanghai, a critical commercial hub for China, reported 11 new imported cases on Monday, while three new cases among travelers were reported in Beijing. Still, there were almost no new cases in the country.

Just as the number of cases plunges to the point that nobody really cares about the numbers anymore, health authorities in Beijing said that they would start releasing data on the number of mostly foreign “asymptomatic” cases.

Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, reported no new infections for a seventh straight day. Groups of medical teams in brightly colored jackets took photos around the city as they prepared to leave. “Thank you, Wuhan. We are back,” read a message on a building that houses a Levi’s clothing store. The message was clear: The lockdown was finally over.

The commercial hub of Shanghai saw 11 new imported cases on Monday, mainly among returning Chinese nationals, while Beijing had three. By Monday, total infections stood at 81,518 in mainland China, with 3,305 deaths.

But initial data isn’t terrible. New data from a survey of manufacturers showed that factory activity expanded in March from February’s collapse as businesses returned to work, but analysts warned about the slump in external demand becoming a growing risk for Chinese factories ironically.

“The situation could be very fluid as the virus outbreak remains unpredictable,” analysts at ANZ bank said in a note. “Chinese policymakers will likely step up and expand the stimulus program if needed.” But that won’t spare domestic companies from the backlash from the fact that more people, including Americans are staying home.

Across China, as businesses start opening back up, locals are rejoicing as the number of infections peters out even as new cases surface among travelers returning home. However, the prevalence of virus carriers with no symptoms is spurring public concern that people could be spreading it without knowing they are ill.

And now that the daily report of the National Health Commission will include details of such cases for the first time (as Chang Jile, a commission official, said during a Tuesday briefing), the government is also recommending that anybody who comes into contact with these people quarantine themselves for 14 days.

Fearing a follow-up wave of infections sparked by travelers, China said Tuesday that it would delay its grueling college entrance exams, the “gaokao”, by a month, until July 7 and 8, according to China Central Television. Hubei Province and Beijing will get additional leeway in scheduling.

President Trump has called for $2 trillion in infrastructure spending in the upcoming ‘phase 4’ coronavirus stimulus.

“With interest rates for the United States being at ZERO, this is the time to do our decades long awaited Infrastructure Bill. It should be VERY BIG & BOLD, Two Trillion Dollars, and be focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once great infrastructure of our Country! Phase 4,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

With interest rates for the United States being at ZERO, this is the time to do our decades long awaited Infrastructure Bill. It should be VERY BIG & BOLD, Two Trillion Dollars, and be focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once great infrastructure of our Country! Phase 4

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2020

As we noted earlier, Congressional Democrats and the White House have been compiling their lists of what they say is needed in the next package.

Prime among them is “our infrastructure needs,” according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told MSNBC on Tuesday that “Many more people are teleworking, or tele-educating or really communicating with family and friends.”

“There are infrastructure needs that our country has that directly relate to how we are proceeding with the coronavirus. Many more people are teleworking, or tele-educating or really communicating with family and friends,” said Pelosi, according to te Washington Times.

In an interview Tuesday with MSNBC, Pelosi said negotiators had already agreed that “everything will be specific to the coronavirus” in the next round of legislation and that it wouldn’t become a “wish list.”

In an interview with the New York Times published on Monday, Pelosi indicated that another possible move was getting rid of the limit on state and local tax deductions, or SALT, that was part of the 2017 tax overhaul and affects California, Pelosi’s home state, and New York. –Bloomberg (via Yahoo!)

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says Pelosi’s SALT plan is “a nonstarter.”

“Millionaires don’t need a new tax break as the federal government spends trillions of dollars to fight a pandemic,” said spokesman Michael Zona.

Also being pushed by Pelosi is a vote-by-mail system amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“In terms of the elections, I think that we will probably be moving to vote by mail,” she told MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, adding that it’s a “reality of life” now.

Pelosi claims she won’t rush to push the bill through and doesn’t expect the package to be ready befor Easter, according to the . Instead, it will be ready for a vote when Congress returns.

The White House, meanwhile, has compiled their own list based on what US agencies say they need totaling roughly $600 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank

Another day, another dollar.

Of course, that’s not strictly true. For the average market economist trying to predict that dollar on waking up it is more usually 0.99, 0.98, 1.01, 1.0, 1.01 – and then out of the blue minus 6 trillion.

For the epidemiologists at Imperial College it’s also a wild ride. To recall, first of all their model said the UK only needed to wash its hands and the herd would be immune to COVID-19; then the model was tweaked and 250,000 to 500,000 were going to die; then we all locked down and only 5,700 were going to die (leading some to scream “open the economy!”); and now, echoing the Oxford University team, they estimate that up to 2.7% of the UK population may already be infected, meaning 1.8 million people, and implying that the we are totally mismeasuring how many people have a symptomless and/or pain-free virus experience, and that the COVID-19 mortality rate is really very low.

Except that is isn’t 2.7%. It’s anywhere from 1.2% to 5.4% of the population, and once again this is based on guessing the R0 rate and the virus inception date and multiplying madly. And once again it fails to account for the fact that 90% of tests being done on people who already face virus symptoms and/or are at risk are coming back negative. Faulty tests, or is it just my Rebel Sum standing up to the might of the Imperials? (“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational university!”) At least the thrust of their argument is that lockdowns are necessary rather than “open the economy!”

As they argue over how many viruses can fit on the head of a pin, the daily deaths in Italy and Spain number painfully close to 1,000 and New York’s fatalities are also rising rapidly – just like we normally see at this time of year in ‘flu season – not. Indeed, the latest data from China suggest that the mortality rate is 4% for those hospitalised in their 40s and 8% in their 50s.

Meanwhile, in China we are back to a familiar world of another day, another 1.06 dollars. The official Chinese PMI for March reported that manufacturing leaped from 35.7 all the way back to 52.0, vastly higher than the 44.8 expectation. All those stories you have read about factories being shuttered because export demand has dried up? Wrong. All those reports about local officials telling people to leave lights on to boost electricity demand and let foreign satellites see a ‘working’ plant? Wrong. All the data-trackers saying China is, at best, running at 80% of capacity, so down 20% y/y from where it should be? Wrong. Even the services PMI leaped to 52.3 from 29.6, which is interesting given all cinemas are still shut and reports are flying round talking about 18m people losing their jobs and Chinese consumers retrenching. (‘As Rest of World Locks Down, China Struggles to Get Shoppers Out’ says Bloomberg today; even the World Bank is saying the best case for China’s economy is 2.3% y/y growth)

When we saw the weak February PMI and associated terrible January-February retail sales, industrial production, and investment data it seemed we were getting accurate snapshots of what was going on in the Chinese economy for once. So, back to business as usual in more ways than one? Not quite. First, the PBOC just slashed its 7-day repo rate a record 20bp and the government are talking about more fiscal stimulus being needed: that is hardly cheer-leading. Second, these PMI surveys asked Chinese firms how the feel now compared to February – NOT to how they usually operate. The exercise is therefore incompatible with the normal PMI metric – which is where the consensus forecast of a recessionary 45-ish print rightly sat.

Once again, markets are going to have to pick their way through a data asteroid field to get to an accurate understanding of what is going on.

“Sir! The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!”

“Never tell me the odds!”

Meanwhile, also showing how much success they are having against the virus, and in line with what I wrote yesterday, the White House and Congress are already planning the next phase of fiscal stimulus even before the current one hits anybody’s pockets. It appears help is on the way for the mortgage market, as mortgage firms complain the Fed’s action is wiping them out, for the travel industry, and for states and local governments. Some of that will be bailouts and some of it might even be actual economic stimulus, with the total package being talked about in the range of USD600bn. Once upon a time that was a lot of money.

Allow me to repeat once again: the crucial factor for markets to consider imminently is that not all economies and currencies are created equal. Not everyone is going to be able to get away with 20% fiscal deficits paid for by central banks. Only the US is guaranteed to be able to do so without crushing its currency due to the USD reserve function. The vast majority won’t, and there will be a high price paid for any stimulus.

Let’s see how AUD and NZD and CAD and GBP, et al., ultimately fare as they go the zero rates and unlimited QE route as if there is natural market demand for them globally; and emerging markets are in a far deeper hole if they want to push back fiscally against the ‘rules of the game’ in the same way that developed economies are.

The underlying issue is still ‘another day, another US dollar’. And there aren’t that many to go round in EM space in particular, doubly so when export earnings evaporate ahead – which they will. That key dynamic is set to trigger the next round of global turmoil ahead. Coming soon: Imperial vs. Rebel sums fighting over the USD Death Star.

Until recently, funds that imposed redemption “gates” on their investors were those who had suffered a substantial mismatch between the illiquidity of their investments and the liquidity preference of their investors (which tends to be instantaneous), usually as a result of some exogenous event such as Brexit, or a media report sparking investor fears.

As a result, over the past 4 years we had seen a procession of prominent funds gating investors, starting with the junk bond fiasco at Third Avenue which led to a premature end for the asset manager, then the three largest UK property funds suddenly froze over $12 billion in assets in the aftermath of the Brexit vote; two years later the Swiss multi-billion fund manager GAM blocked redemptions, followed by iconic UK investor Neil Woodford also suddenly gating investors despite representations of solid returns and liquid assets, then it was the ill-named, Nataxis-owned H20 Asset Management decided to freeze redemptions; then the largest UK property fund, M&G, halted redemptions, and finally in December, distressed investing giants York Capital Management and Southpaw Asset Management also barred clients from redeeming money they have requested for year-end, a sign of the pressure that investors in distressed assets are facing.

All this, of course, happened before the investing world turned upside down as a result of the coronacrisis and fastest bear market in history. Yet curiously despite the furious market plunge in March, besides the occasional false rumor, there had not been any prominent hedge fund casualties, or even redemption gates.

That changed today when the WSJ reported that $7 billion hedge fund EJF Capital LLC told clients it was suspending redemptions from one of its funds for the foreseeable future because it didn’t want to be a forced seller in what it called “dysfunctional” credit markets. And so once again the liquidity mismatch strikes.

According to the WSJ, EJF founded by Emanuel “Manny” Friedman, told clients in a letter Friday it was preventing investors from withdrawing their money from its Debt Opportunities Fund which managed $2.5 billion at the end of February. What is disturbing is that while the fund received redemption requests totaling only 6% of its assets under management for March 31, the letter said, it wanted to “protect all of the Fund’s investors by not selling assets into a nonfunctioning market.”

“We are currently experiencing unprecedented volatility and dysfunction in the credit markets,” Mr. Friedman and EJF co-Chief Executive Neal Wilson wrote in the letter. “Market participants fear extreme and irreversible damage as the uncertainty emanating from the coronavirus spreads. We believe this fear of permanent economic damage, combined with an only nascent fiscal response from Congress, has led to the tightening of credit available to pooled investment vehicles such as the Fund over the past few weeks.”

This means that either the fund is telling the truth, or more likely the modest redemptions would mean that the Fund would have to drastically remark its holdings to a far lower “market”, in the process triggering ever more investor panic and redemptions. As a result, the founders “fear” not permanent economic damage, but a cascade of outflows which could lead to feedback loop which results in more firesales, more redemptions and the eventual liquidation of the fund.

The Arlington, Virginia based fund was down an estimated 15% for the month of March through March 27, and includes Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital as an investor.

The letter said the fund would reassess the suspension quarterly, adding it was unlikely to be lifted in time for June redemptions because of the advance notice clients are required to give. In other words, anyone who is invested and needs their money now is stuck. Unlike a mutual fund, hedge funds offer their investors only periodic opportunities to redeem, and their investors typically have to submit withdrawal requests well in advance of those dates.

EJF’s Debt Opportunities Fund holds mainly debt issued by banks and insurance companies and structured-credit securities collateralized by debt issued by banks and insurance companies, the letter said. It also holds stock in banks and other financial services firms. While the fund has kept all its financing lines, the letter said financing had “become both limited as well as more expensive” in the past few weeks. The letter also said the fund had seen and met “unprecedented margin calls” but so far been able to avoid firesaling assets.

Of course that would have changed had the fund seen a flood of redemption requests; hence the “gate.”

While hedge funds rarely suspend investor redemptions because it is unpopular with clients, we expect many more funds to follow in these footsteps as the alternative is a wave of widespread redemptions; the move prevents investors from accessing their own cash at a time when they may urgently need it. Investors in so-called structured credit funds said the funds broadly were struggling with liquidity issues as the value of assets like mortgage-backed securities had fallen rapidly and banks have tightened financing.

Meanwhile, hedge fund investors are bracing for additional managers in structured credit to make moves limiting clients’ ability to get back their own cash. One fund executive described the dynamic as a “death spiral” where margin calls were causing forced selling, which in turn was causing additional margin calls and more forced sales.

One fund which is certainly immune from the whims – and liquidity needs – of its LPs is Millennium which as we reported last month unveiled a new share class open to new investments limits the amount clients can pull to 5% of their money each quarter, meaning it would take them five years to fully cash out. The 5% quarterly redemption limit means that in a quarter in which markets tank and investors want to pull their money, they will only be allowed to pull just 5%. In other words, Millennium investors have pre-emptively agreed to be gated to at least 95% of their capital following a “market event.” And all this just to be allowed to invest in the vaunted Englander’s hedge fund.

In retrospect, now that the liquidity panic is about to hit, every other hedge fund will wonder how they didn’t think of this first.