Tag: news

In what was by far his harshest criticism of the international agency to date, President Trump slammed the WHO in a tweet, accusing it of doing the bidding of China while taking the US’s money, and hinted that he would be giving American funding to the organization “a good look”, a statement that certainly won’t sit well with Trump’s critics, who will accuse the president of slashing funding to a vital public health institution in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic.

The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020

Though the WHO has been helpful in providing tests around the world, the agency has faced plenty of criticism for appearing to kowtow to Beijing and parrot its lies and propaganda. Beijng also provides a solid chunk of the WHO’s funding, as the chart below shows:

Trump boasted that he did the right thing and ignored the WHO’s advice when he imposed his China travel ban, and as studies have shown in recent weeks, that was perhaps the best decision his administration made during the response so far.

Amid a surge in demand for the first tranche, the US Treasury is preparing to ask Congress for a further $200 billion for the small business lending program, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

This would increase the total size of the so-called Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to $550 billion.

As WaPo notes, Banks and the Small Business Administration have been overwhelmed by applications since the program began operating on Friday, leading President Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) – who authored the program – and others to predict the need for more funds.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he would work with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.):

“Congress needs to act with speed and total focus to provide more money for this uncontroversial bipartisan program. I will work with Secretary Mnuchin and Leader Schumer and hope to approve further funding for the Paycheck Protection Program by unanimous consent or voice vote during the next scheduled Senate session on Thursday,” McConnell said in a statement.

The fact that Treasury would make the request on just the third day of the program’s existence underscores the surging demand for businesses to obtain financing as many of them struggle to avoid closing.

Helicopter money is truly here…

 

For the past six years, and especially in 2015 when Yanis Varoufakis tried to stage a mutiny within the Eurozone and using some truly convoluted “game theory” ended up causing a near collapse of the Greek banking sector and the loss of hundreds of billions in deposits which the ECB held hostage, Greece had found itself in the Animal Farm position of being part of the Eurozone yet somehow its bonds were not at first not eligible for ECB purchases, and later, did not quality as collateral for Eurosystem credit operations.

That changed on Tuesday afternoon when, as part of a “unprecedented” and temporary (yeah, sure) package meant to ease collateral measures to “mitigate the tightening of financial conditions across the euro area” (read push stock prices higher), the ECB said it would grant a waiver to accept Greek sovereign debt instruments as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations. In short, the debt which as everyone found out 5 years ago was worthless excluding its ECB backstop, will now serve as money good collateral for countless banks which borrow against Greek bonds.

But the ECB’s decision to include Greek bonds as eligible collateral is just part of it: perhaps the biggest surprise is that the central banks decided to “temporarily increase its risk tolerance level in credit operations” through a general reduction of collateral valuation haircuts by a fixed factor of 20%.

This adjustment aims to contribute to the collateral easing measures while maintaining a consistent degree of protection across collateral asset types, albeit at a temporarily lower level.

In short, asset values in Europe are collapsing, and since every asset is someone else’s liability, the ECB is scrambling to make sure that there is a sufficient buffer to withstand another sharp drop in risk prices.

Below is the full ECB presser:

ECB announces package of temporary collateral easing measures

• ECB adopts an unprecedented set of collateral measures to mitigate the tightening of financial conditions across the euro area
• Temporary increase in the Eurosystem’s risk tolerance in order to support credit to the economy
• ECB eases the conditions for the use of credit claims as collateral
• ECB adopts a general reduction of collateral valuation haircuts
• Waiver to accept Greek sovereign debt instruments as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations
• ECB will assess further measures to temporarily mitigate the effect on counterparties’ collateral availability from rating downgrades

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) today adopted a package of temporary collateral easing measures to facilitate the availability of eligible collateral for Eurosystem counterparties to participate in liquidity providing operations, such as the targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO-III). The package is complementary to other measures recently announced by the ECB, including additional longer-term refinancing operations (LTROs) and the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) as a response to the coronavirus emergency. The measures collectively support the provision of bank lending especially by easing the conditions at which credit claims are accepted as collateral. At the same time the Eurosystem is increasing its risk tolerance to support the provision of credit via its refinancing operations, particularly by lowering collateral valuation haircuts for all assets consistently.

The emergency collateral package contains three main features.

First, the Governing Council decided on a set of collateral measures to facilitate an increase in bank funding against loans to corporates and households. This will be achieved by expanding the use of credit claims as collateral, in particular through the potential expansion of the additional credit claims (ACCs) frameworks. The ACC framework provides the possibility to National Central Banks to enlarge the scope of eligible credit claims for counterparties in their jurisdictions. This includes the possibility to accept loans with lower credit quality, loans to other types of debtors, not accepted in the ECB’s general framework, and foreign-currency loans.

In this respect, the Governing Council decided to temporarily extend the ACC frameworks further by:

• Accommodating the requirements on guarantees to include government and public sector guaranteed loans to corporates, SMEs and self-employed individuals and households in the ACC frameworks in order to also provide liquidity against loans benefiting from the new guarantee schemes adopted in euro area Member States as a response to the coronavirus pandemic;
• Enlarging the scope of acceptable credit assessment systems used in the ACC frameworks, for example by easing the acceptance of banks’ own credit assessments from internal rating-based systems that are approved by supervisors;
• Reducing the ACC loan level reporting requirements to allow counterparties to benefit from the ACC frameworks even before the necessary reporting infrastructure is put in place.

Second, the Governing Council further adopted the following temporary measures:

• A lowering of the level of the non-uniform minimum size threshold for domestic credit claims to EUR 0 from EUR 25,000 previously to facilitate the mobilisation as collateral of loans from small corporate entities;
• An increase, from 2.5% to 10%, in the maximum share of unsecured debt instruments issued by any single other banking group in a credit institution’s collateral pool. This will enable counterparties to benefit from a larger share of such assets.
• A waiver of the minimum credit quality requirement for marketable debt instruments issued by the Hellenic Republic for acceptance as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations.

Third, the Governing Council decided to temporarily increase its risk tolerance level in credit operations through a general reduction of collateral valuation haircuts by a fixed factor of 20%. This adjustment aims to contribute to the collateral easing measures while maintaining a consistent degree of protection across collateral asset types, albeit at a temporarily lower level.

These measures are temporary for the duration of the pandemic crisis and linked to the duration of the PEPP. They will be re-assessed before the end of 2020, also considering whether there is a need to extend some of these measures to ensure that Eurosystem counterparties’ participation in its liquidity providing operations is not adversely affected.

In addition, as part of the regular review of its risk control framework, the Governing Council decided to adjust the haircuts applied to non-marketable assets, both in the general collateral framework and for ACCs, by fine-tuning some of the haircut parameters. This adjustment, which is not linked to the duration of the PEPP, applies in addition to the temporary haircut reduction and thus further supports the collateral easing measures while maintaining adequate risk protection. This leads on average to a further haircut reduction of this type of collateral by around 20%.

Furthermore, the Governing Council has mandated the Eurosystem committees to assess measures to temporarily mitigate the effect on counterparties’ collateral availability from rating downgrades arising from the economic impact of coronavirus, while continuing ensuring collateral adequacy.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

In the early 1980s, doctors and medical researchers around the world were confounded by the growing number of young, otherwise healthy patients who were dying of rare infections that typically only occurred in people with very weak immune systems.

The situation was so alarming that the CDC in the United States set up a special task force in 1982 to study the condition and stop its spread.

By 1983 the medical community had found the answer: they discovered a terrifying new retrovirus that utterly and permanently vanquished the human immune system.

This retrovirus eventually became known as the Human Immunodeficiency Virus– HIV. And nearly four decades later, while there has been substantial progress in treatment and prevention, there is still no vaccine.

Then there’s shingles – an infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus– which is brutally painful for older adults.

GlaxoSmithKline produces a vaccine for this virus called Shingrix that took them more than 10 years to develop and test. And the company has stated repeatedly that they are overwhelmed with demand: hundreds of millions of people want the vaccine.

A few months ago, Glaxo announced that they already reached maximum production capacity of the vaccine, and they’ll have to build a new bioreactor facility just to increase production to ~20 million units per year.

That new facility won’t be online until 2024.

Obviously the novel Coronavirus is different. Its biology is different, the circumstances are different.

But there does seem to be a prevailing attitude worldwide that there will be a vaccine ‘within 12-18 months.’

We can certainly hope so. Fingers crossed.

But this “12-18 month” estimate has been repeated so many times by politicians, reporters, etc. that the public now views it as a foregone conclusion.

And there seems to be zero consideration given to the possibility that, maybe just maybe, vaccine development could take a lot longer.

Or perhaps, even if a vaccine is rapidly developed, that it would take at least five years to produce, transport, and administer BILLIONS of vaccines.

Think about it– Glaxo will spend the next four years building a new facility just to be able to produce 10-20 million annual units of its Shingles vaccine.

How many biotech facilities worldwide will be needed to produce billions of coronavirus vaccines?

And even if existing production centers are able to quickly switch from producing other drugs and start producing coronavirus vaccines– what will be the opportunity cost?

If the world manages to be able to produce billions of vaccines, who will be left to produce cancer drugs? Or antibiotics? Or the countless other life-saving drugs that people depend on?

I’m not writing all of this to be negative. Far from it. And it’s important to remember that absolutely every scenario is on the table right now, including positive and favorable ones.

But there are clearly a number of reasons why this pandemic could last much longer than most people probably think. So it’s prudent to be physically, mentally, and financially prepared for that reality.

If this virus has taught us anything, it’s that tomorrow can be radically different than today.

This goes against some of our most basic human tendencies, what psychologists call ‘cognitive bias’.

The bottom line is that our brains cling to the idea that tomorrow is going to be just like today. And we have a very difficult time accepting rapid change.

And even when radical changes do take place and we eventually become accustomed to our new realities, we still cling to the belief that things can’t get any worse.

They can. Again, anything is possible now. All scenarios are on the table. So it would be dangerous to assume that it can’t get any worse, or that the pandemic won’t drag on for a longer period of time.

Back in early February before the virus became a global concern, I suggested that you stock up on food and masks before it all hit the fan.

I want to suggest the same thing again today– at least the food part.

It is entirely possible that we could see supply chain disruptions. It’s not a certainty—nothing is certain right now. But there are pretty obvious risks.

Chances are high that whatever you ate for breakfast this morning probably originated in some far off place.

The food on your plate can easily travel hundreds if not thousands of miles before it arrives to your table, starting off in a farmer’s field, to an inspection center, and then to the port where it is shipped/trucked/railed/flown to a regional distribution center and ultimately to your grocery store.

The global food supply chain is incredibly complex and not especially resilient; I’ve seen this firsthand over the past few years from running a large agriculture business.

I don’t think it’s likely that the global supply chain would shut down completely. But there’s definitely a risk for hiccups, i.e. slowdowns that cause delays and sporadic shortages.

This kind of scarcity could create some high stress situations in the grocery store; just take a look at Black Friday videos on YouTube to get a sense of what I’m talking about.

It’s best to avoid that kind of environment altogether. So I’d definitely encourage you to stock up on food, and remain stocked up.

This isn’t about being paranoid. We can hope for the best, but still acknowledge this pandemic could last a lot longer, and understand that the supply chain wasn’t designed to function under such stress.

Nothing is certain. But stocking up on food is a simple precaution to offset some obvious risks… which is the cornerstone of any good Plan B.

And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.