Why Crypto Bulls May Not Want It To Be A Safe-Haven Asset

Why Crypto Bulls May Not Want It To Be A Safe-Haven Asset

Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

All eyes were glued to the quote screens this past week to see how crypto would react to the virus-inspired selloffs in other markets. Many were hoping that Bitcoin would finally show off its bonafides as a “safe haven” or flight to quality asset — something I myself have wondered about in the past.

But crypto mostly tanked alongside everything else.

There are two ways market watchers are interpreting this.

  1. Some observers now (disappointedly) think that crypto is just another risk-on asset, to be sold during a crisis.

  2. Others still think it’s a safe haven, and point to the fact that gold fell this past week as well (there is some precedence of precious metals falling during the peak of a crisis, then rebounding strongly. Make of that what you will).

My hunch is that it’s neither. Crypto is mostly doing its own thing. Too few big players own any of it, or even consider owning it, for it to be caught up in the usual “risk-on, risk-off” calculations. Asking the average Wall Streeter what happened to Bitcoin while the Nasdaq was tanking is sort of like asking them what happened to the Mexican Peso. Most traders probably weren’t even thinking about it. More importantly, I wonder whether crypto investors should want their preferred investment to be a flight to quality asset. I certainly don’t.

My belief is based on volatility:

To be a safe haven, an asset needs to be less volatile than the thing investors are fleeing. This is as much a mathematical truth as it is common sense. The reason why you’d rather own treasuries or gold during a market crash is because — regardless of the market mood — they usually don’t move as much as Tesla. You can see what I mean in the following chart of the implied volatility of stocks, treasuries and gold.

Although their relative vols tend to be correlated, one is almost always much higher than the other two. Bond volatility actually spiked to a multiyear high last week, but it was still less than a quarter of stock volatility.

Crypto volatility doesn’t even register on this chart because it’s an order of magnitude higher. That alone disqualifies it for proper “safe haven” status. Case in point, the price of Bitcoin rallied by over 50% in the two months prior to this week, with alts rallying even more. Nobody wants something that can double that quickly as their store of value. Things that go up quickly can come down just as fast.

So in order for crypto to become a true safe haven, its volatility would have come down drastically. This is not something hodlers should want. A less volatile asset is one that by definition has less potential upside. To put it in industry slang, less vol equals much later moon.

Gold, which is historically a reliable tore of value, has had an impressive rally over the past five years, climbing by 44%. If Bitcoin were to follow the same trajectory, it would barely break above $12,000 in the year 2025 — still 40% below its previous high. How terribly disappointing that would be for most investors

So as far as crypto’s safe-haven status is concerned, be careful what you wish for. There are still many risks and unknowns to owning these things, so investors should expect disproportionate upside as their reward. This is even truer given crypto’s backwards volatility profile. Unlike stocks, bonds, gold and almost everything else – cryptocoins are more volatile during bull markets than bear ones. The current five year high realized 30 day vol in Bitcoin was recorded right around the time of the late 2017 peak. The low came 11 months later as she was making her 2018 lows.

https://www.bitpremier.com/volatility-index

This begs the question: if not risk on vs risk off, what drives crypto prices?

It’s still too hard to know for sure, but my guess is that the performance of relative market infrastructure matters more than relative asset prices. There are now two competing models for a financial system:

  1. the legacy one, which emphasizes centralized control by large commercial entities whipped around by their central banking overlords,

  2. and the newer one, which emphasizes decentralized protocols driven by a global community.

My admittedly non-mathematical correlation analysis shows changing perceptions about how value is best moved around are the biggest drivers of crypto valuations.

  • When the old way fails its users, as was the case during the great financial crisis that launched Bitcoin, the Cypriot bail-in that lead to the 2013 highs or more recent Chinese capital controls, crypto goes up.

  • When the new way shows its own problems, like the Ethereum DAO crisis of 2016, or the contentious Bitcoin Cash split that marked the 2018 lows, crypto goes down.

Ironically, the biggest gains have happened when the stalwarts of the old guard bless the new way, like when the CME announced Bitcoin futures in 2017 or Facebook launched Libra in 2019.

If this analysis holds true, then the question crypto longs should be asking is not how stocks or bonds will do as the Coronavirus situation unfolds, but rather how the legacy financial infrastructure holds up during this period, and just as importantly, the ensuing response.

My prediction is not so good. The current attitude towards easy money from the world’s central banks reminds me of what Homer Simpson once said about alcohol: it’s the cause, and cure, of all of life’s problems. All of the instabilities that have built up from a decade of easy money — like an insane debt load in China or the destruction of commercial banking in Europe — are about to be pushed to a new extreme. It might take a few years to play out, but it won’t end well, increasing the appeal of an alternative

There’s also the possible catalyst of a central bank digital currency using some kind of blockchain infrastructure, an event made more likely by a scary contagious disease. If you believe in the price impact of blessings by the old guard, then it doesn’t get any better than a tokenized CBDC, a friendly blink from the Eye of Sauron himself.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 18:40

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The Supreme Court did not grant certiorari on the House of Representative’s Obamacare Cert Petition

This morning, the Supreme Court granted California’s petition (19-840), as well as Texas’s cross-petition (19-1019).

However, the Court did not grant the House of Representative’s petition (19-841).Why? Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections killed legislative standing–especially where only a single House brings the suit. There were not even four votes to grant the House’s petition.

The House will likely request argument time as an amicus curiae. The podium will already be quite crowded. California, the Solicitor General, and Texas will get argument time. The private plaintiffs from Texas may also request argument time. And the Court limited the case to a single hour. I think it is unlikely that the House gets time. Don Verrilli no doubt would have loved another round to defend Obamacare before the Supreme Court.

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As ‘Corona Recession’ Fears Threaten Trump Re-Election, Sanders Gains Steam Into ‘Super Tuesday’

As ‘Corona Recession’ Fears Threaten Trump Re-Election, Sanders Gains Steam Into ‘Super Tuesday’

Moderate Democrats are in quite the predicament going into Super Tuesday – the day when most states hold contests to pick a presidential nominee.

Joe Biden – whose only primary win of note in South Carolina has resulted in a temporary boost in PredictIt odds – has otherwise struggled to maintain momentum amid a slew of senior moments and a recent promise to raise taxes on people who benefited from Trump’s cuts.

Screenshot via RealClearPolitics

And with Bernie Sanders (I-VT) the presumptive nominee, and the rest of the still-crowded Democratic field polling at loser status, Biden is the moderate left’s last hope of running an establishment candidate against Donald Trump.

Unfortunately for the former Vice President, nobody aside from Pete Buttigieg seems interested in exiting the race right now.

The candidates know that no one can beat Sanders as long as they all stay in the race, but none of them wants to drop out.

The Warren campaign said Super Tuesday would force some candidates to drop out — but she wouldn’t be one of them.

That leaves Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who has risen to the top tier through the force of more than $538 million in advertising. He has defied new calls to drop out — coming loudest from the Biden camp — before he has earned a delegate or appeared on a ballot.

Bloomberg bet his whole candidacy on Super Tuesday, the first time he’ll face voters, but if anything, he seems to be stalling right at the moment he hoped to peak. Bloomberg

So if Biden can’t pull off a Super Tuesday miracle, the best he can hope for is that Sanders also doesn’t score the 1,991 delegates needed to get on the ballot – which would lead to a brokered convention. This hasn’t happened since 1952, however as Bloomberg notes, the size of the Democratic field makes such a scenario plausible.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times posits what life would be like under a Sanders administration, noting that “Danielle DiMartino Booth, chief executive officer of Quill Intelligence, a research firm, said president Trump’s chances of re-election would be “appreciably lower” if the US economy were tipped into recession by the coronavirus outbreak,” which “opens the door to the presumptive candidate at this juncture — Bernie Sanders.”

The markets, meanwhile, can expect to grapple with the following should Sanders win in November.

At least two sectors of the stock market, healthcare and energy, would see their profits “decimated” under a Sanders administration given the candidate’s stated aims to effectively eliminate private health insurance and to nationalise energy exploration and production, Ms DiMartino Booth said. Other sectors that could be vulnerable include financials, due to Mr Sanders’ planned transaction taxes, as well as technology. –Financial Times

The real question then becomes; will a coronavirus-induced recession hand Bernie Sanders a win in November? Or is the notion that it will impact Trump’s chances a flawed notion to begin with.

 


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 18:20

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Shanghai Accord 2.0? Powell, Mnuchin To Lead Tuesday’s Emergency G-7 Coronavirus Call

Shanghai Accord 2.0? Powell, Mnuchin To Lead Tuesday’s Emergency G-7 Coronavirus Call

While traders were disappointed by the lack of an emergency, intermeeting rate cut by the Fed on Sunday which sent futures sharply lower in early Monday trading, speculation that such an announcement was merely delayed to Tuesday morning, when as Bloomberg reported an emergency G-7 conference call would take place, quickly reversed the market’s dour mood and sparked a record 1,294 point gain in the Dow Jones.

And while we still don’t know what is on the agenda, and whether officials will announce some monetary stimulus, or fiscal boost, or some combination of the two, we do know thanks to CNBC’s Steve Liesman  that the 7am ET teleconference call between gGlobal financial ministers and central bankers will be led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chair Jerome Powell and that – as one would expect – representatives of the Group of Seven industrialized nations will attend the call. And as a CNBC source notes, following the “coordinating call” for the financial and economic response to the virus, a communique is scheduled for after the call, which likely means that the call participants will be loathe to disappoint a market – and a Goldman Sachs – which as recently as this morning was expecting no less than two rate cuts at or before the March 18 FOMC meeting.

So is the reason for today’s historic market ramp because – with both Powell and Mnuchin there – traders now expect tomorrow’s announcement to be nothing short of the second coming of the notorious Shanghai Accord from Feb 2016 which unleashed a nearly two-year long buying spree in the aftermath of China’s mini recession?

Perhaps… but as Bloomberg’s Ye Xie writes, it may not be so easy to replicate the tremendous market outperformance that was unlocked by the first Shanghai Accord just over four years ago.

He explains below:

Are Markets Looking for a ‘Shanghai Accord’ 2.0?

Bad news is good news. That cliché seems to be the best explanation for Monday’s trading. Or is it? The worst-ever China PMI data? No problem. The Shanghai Composite surged 3.6%. More casualties in the U.S. from the coronavirus? Well, the S&P 500 jumped 4.6%.

What excites the markets is a call among G-7 finance ministers and central bankers Tuesday to discuss how to respond to the coronavirus. Maybe some sort of coordinated policy stimulus? China is not part of the G-7, but expectations for more stimulus from Beijing have been high ever since the outbreak.

Remember the so-called “Shanghai Accord” at the G-20 in Shanghai in February 2016? It is most likely a coincidence, but the meeting turned out to be the turning point for global markets as the Fed shortly thereafter postponed tightening, which helped curb the dollar rally.

Are we about to dust off the old playbook?

At first glance, the price action certainly fits the narrative. Treasury yield curves steepened with 2s10s rising to 26 basis points. Central bank rate cuts and fiscal spending globally should push the short-end lower more than the longer-end. Check. In China, telecommunication, industrial and material shares led the rally Monday. It’s a classic reaction to old-style infrastructure stimulus. Check.

Here’s the rub in the theory that the global plunge protection team can save the world, though: The hope for a bottoming in global growth expectations hasn’t been corroborated by other assets. For example, cyclical stocks in the U.S. are still underperforming defensives. Secondly, some of the assets sensitive to China’s stimulus aren’t moving much. The base-metals market hasn’t shown any sparkle lately.

The Australian dollar, a proxy for China sentiment, is hovering at the lowest since 2009. Either they are mispriced or that the spillover from China stimulus won’t be as large as before. For global markets to stabilize, policy makers need to react.

More importantly, we need some signs that the virus is under control globally. We are probably getting closer to the first condition, but still some way away from the second one.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 18:12

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The Supreme Court did not grant certiorari on the House of Representative’s Obamacare Cert Petition

This morning, the Supreme Court granted California’s petition (19-840), as well as Texas’s cross-petition (19-1019).

However, the Court did not grant the House of Representative’s petition (19-841).Why? Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections killed legislative standing–especially where only a single House brings the suit. There were not even four votes to grant the House’s petition.

The House will likely request argument time as an amicus curiae. The podium will already be quite crowded. California, the Solicitor General, and Texas will get argument time. The private plaintiffs from Texas may also request argument time. And the Court limited the case to a single hour. I think it is unlikely that the House gets time. Don Verrilli no doubt would have loved another round to defend Obamacare before the Supreme Court.

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Covid-19 Risks – Doing The Math

Covid-19 Risks – Doing The Math

Authored by Daniel Nevins via NevinsResearch.com,

As recently as two weeks ago, it wasn’t clear which infectious disease experts had the best handle on COVID-19’s likely path.

Among the optimists, one operation ran a model in February that showed the following maximum case counts by the “end of the epidemic.” (I’ve included the running case tally as well, using data from the Johns Hopkins dashboard.)

With the benefit of hindsight, these well-intentioned forecasts were clearly too low. But I’ve shared them anyway because they support the premise for this article—that it seems time to listen to those experts who were telling us all along that a pandemic is inevitable. In comparison to the misplaced forecasts above, the experts who expected a global health crisis can point to the chart below as validation:

So recent events seem to settle the question of which experts have the best grasp on what’s happening.

And recent data also provide another way to look into the future, one that doesn’t require complex epidemiological models. I’m suggesting the following:

  • Ignore the case data from China, which falls somewhere between glitchy and grossly incomplete.

  • Fit an exponential curve to the daily number of confirmed cases outside China.

  • Create a “base case” by following the curve’s trajectory until the pandemic reaches proportions expected by those experts who’ve been most accurate to date.

  • Experiment with flatter trajectories to map the interplay between the pandemic’s intensity and its duration.

This approach offers three advantages.

First, it produces plausible scenarios that are easy to rerun and calibrate to the latest data.

Second, it requires only a few assumptions.

Third, those assumptions are transparent and easily understood.

More to the point, while the approach doesn’t substitute for complex modeling, it gives reasonable answers to a few important questions. Essentially, I’m trying to answer the following:

  • How many new cases could appear each day (the intensity) at the pandemic’s peak?

  • How long will the pandemic last?

The endgame, in numbers

So let’s crunch the numbers. I’ll start with the predictions of Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, who said in mid-February that he expected 40% to 70% of adults worldwide to be infected. I’ll apply that prediction to the world ex-China, using the following initial calculations:

  1. Subtract 1.8 billion under-15s from a world ex-China population of 6.4 billion. That’s 4.6 billion adults.

  2. Apply the 40% lower end of Lipsitch’s estimated infection rate to those 4.6 billion adults. That’s 1.8 billion infections.

  3. Allowing that many cases will never be recorded, reduce the 1.8 billion infections to an even 1.0 billion. (Imperial College recently estimated that only about a third of infections outside China are being recorded. That proportion—should I say optimistic estimate?—should increase with more testing, but it should still fall well short of 100%, considering that 80% or more of cases are mild.)

  4. Assume further that the growth rate slows after the number of cases reaches somewhere between 10% and 50% of the eventual one billion. Mathematically, the growth rate has to slow, since a growing number of infections means a shrinking number of people susceptible to new infections. Applying 10% and 50% to one billion, we’re looking for the growth rate to slow after it reaches somewhere between 100 and 500 million recorded cases.

(Note that I’m assuming all infected survivors build immunity. If that’s wrong—and according to various reports, it could be at least partly wrong—that calls for a completely different analysis. It means the pandemic probably continues until a vaccine becomes available.)

Follow the curve

Now for the easy part. Here’s an exponential curve that fits the daily case data:

The next chart extends the fitted curve until late April, when it reaches the 100–500 million case count I estimated above. I’ve highlighted the point where the case count exceeds 500 million, which I’ll call “Half a Billion Day”:

To be sure, the first projection is a base case, not a likely one, and probably not even a realistic one. It simply answers the question: If the closest-fit exponential curve continues towards a 40% infection rate, when does the pandemic begin to run out of steam?

Moreover, the curve will need refitting as time passes. The actual case count might soar above it, and it will certainly fall below it, eventually.

One reason for the case count to overshoot the curve is that test kits are becoming more widely available and actively used. So the percentage of actual cases included in published statistics should rise.

On the other hand, the trajectory should eventually flatten, for at least four reasons.

First, the propensity to test suspected cases should level off and might even decline in some countries as resources become stretched.

Second, governments, businesses and other organizations are likely to impose stricter containment measures.

Third, the virus will eventually run out of unprepared communities to attack while their defenses are low.

Fourth, the pool of uninfected people will increasingly tilt towards those who take extreme precautions against infection.

To show how the eventual flattening could affect the pandemic’s path, I created a second projection with an inflection point. As of April 30, I toggled the trajectory from exponential to linear, freezing the number of daily new cases. And between March 16 and April 30, I gradually flattened the trajectory to make the transition smooth. In other words, the projection now has three phases:

  • Up until March 15: Exponential growth along the fitted path

  • March 16 – April 30: Gradual transition to linear growth

  • After April 30: Linear growth, meaning the number of daily new cases remains at the April 30 peak

(Note that the March 15 timing for the transition to linear growth is subjective. The fitted curve steepened over the past week as testing activity increased, and testing activity continues to increase, so a transition towards linear growth seems unlikely during the next few weeks.)

The new curve pushes Half a Billion Day back to May 19. Labeling April 30 as “Peak Intensity Day,” here’s the picture:

Finally, the crux of the analysis is to examine the interplay between intensity and duration. I looked at eight possibilities for Peak Intensity Day, calculating the implications for both peak intensity (new cases per day) and Half a Billion Day.

Note that Scenario 1 fails to deliver a 40%–70% infection rate over the next year, which is how Lipshitz framed his prediction.

At the other extreme, Scenario 8 raises a question of whether it’s realistic for the pandemic to grow exponentially beyond Half a Billion Day.

So Scenarios 2 through 7 appear to be the most realistic 40% infection scenarios. They show the pandemic reaching peak intensity in the second half of April or the first half of May, with daily new cases running anywhere from a couple of million to just over fifty million.

Conclusions

At a first pass, if a 40% infection rate proves accurate (and I haven’t yet seen a convincing case that such an extensive global diffusion—whether 40%, 30%, 20% or in that general vicinity—can be prevented), the pandemic should continue to intensify for another couple of months. Daily new cases could reach into the tens of millions. Alternatively, daily new cases will flatten after reaching a peak of between two and fifteen million. But an early flattening would have the undesired effect of prolonging the pandemic. That’s just a mathematical observation—if COVID-19 passes through the population at a slower pace, it’ll remain active for longer before it runs out of targets.

As far as the economic implications, a 40% infection rate would mean COVID-19 persisting long enough to cause a global recession, and probably not a mild one. Call it somewhere between moderate and severe. In that scenario, we can only hope the shoes have already dropped—that people don’t get infected more than once, that the mortality rate doesn’t worsen, and that the health care sector moves quickly towards a vaccine.

More optimistically, those who stress that “this, too, will pass” will surely be proven right. The problem is that we don’t know when. We only know that the most optimistic estimates of just two weeks ago are clearly wrong. But we can use that information—together with a month and a half of data—to explore the possibilities. We can cast a cold light on the pandemic’s sudden exponential growth.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 18:00

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Senate Homeland Committee To Issue First Subpoena In Biden-Burisma Probe

Senate Homeland Committee To Issue First Subpoena In Biden-Burisma Probe

Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) plans to force a vote to issue the first subpoena linked to his probe involving Hunter Biden and Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma Holdings.

Johnson sent a letter to members of his committee on Sunday saying that it is his “intention to schedule a business meeting to consider a committee subpoena” of a former consultant for Blue Star Strategies, which Johnson noted worked as a U.S. representative for Burisma.

“As part of the committee’s ongoing investigation, it has received U.S. government records indicating that Blue Star sought to leverage Hunter Biden’s role as a board member of Burisma to gain access to, and potentially influence matters at, the State Department,” Johnson wrote in the letter to committee members. –The Hill

Specifically, Johnson wants to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, a former Blue Star consultant who has indicated that he wants to “cooperate fully” with Johnson, but is limited by a nondisclosure agreement.

“Because Mr. Telizhenko’s records and information would be responsive to the committee’s requests, and Blue Star has refused to provide them, a subpoena to Mr. Telizhenko for these records is appropriate at this time,” reads Johnson’s letter. “Accordingly, I will be scheduling a vote in the near future to approve issuing the enclosed subpoena.”

Johnson noted in his letter that the subpoena was “narrowly drafted,” and would only pertain to documents related to Burisma and Blue Star.

“Blocking the receipt of relevant records, as any committee member voting against this subpoena would be doing, only heightens the risk of ‘disinformation’ because Congress would not have access to all pertinent information,” he added.

Objecting to the subpoena is Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), the top Democrat on Johnson’s committee, who says doing so could bolster Russian disinformation efforts. With a GOP majority in the Senate, however, Johnson can tell Peters to go pound sand.

The subpoena would be the first in relation to the months-long GOP investigation into Burisma and Hunter Biden.

Biden, who has reinvented himself as an artist in a slobberingly fellacious New York Times PR puff piece, was paid upwards of $50,000 per month to sit on Burisma’s board while his father was Vice President, and Obama’s point-man on Ukraine policy – where he notoriously forced the country’s prior administration to fire a prosecutor investigating the energy giant.

Hunter Biden, artist

He is currently living in a $12,000 per month rental in the Hollywood Hills while engaged in an ongoing paternity battle with an Arkansas stripper he impregnated.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 17:40

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Coronavirus Outbreak: How Employers & Employees Are Responding

Coronavirus Outbreak: How Employers & Employees Are Responding

Authored by Daniel Zhao via GlassDoor.com,

With the coronavirus outbreak continuing to spread around the world, employees and employers are already responding. On Glassdoor, we’re seeing several new jobs coming online showing how certain organizations are preparing to tackle the virus, while employees in different countries are commenting on what they’re hearing from their employers to keep safe. In this post, we briefly examine evidence of how employees and employers are reacting on Glassdoor’s platform.

More Jobs Responding to the Outbreak

The global public health response is beginning to show up in Glassdoor data. Dozens of job postings for health care workers, scientists and data specialists are popping up as organizations prepare for the outbreak. In addition to health care workers, employers are also hiring communications specialists and consultants to address this sensitive topic with the public and other stakeholders. Several jobs posted on Glassdoor are quoted below:

How are Employees Reacting?

Employee reviews on Glassdoor discussing the outbreak report a variety of workplace challenges from disruption of business operations to cancelled interviews to lack of work-from-home arrangements. Notably, some reviews cite serious economic consequences including diminished business outlook or pay cuts. Excerpts from select reviews are quoted below:

  • “Travel downturn with coronavirus etc. adds more challenge”

  • “She told me that due to the coronavirus outbreak, my employment could only commence in March.”

  • “Vulnerable industry and business – Hit by the coronavirus in 2020 and immediately start sagging staff and cutting salaries on a significant amount”

  • “It took 3 weeks after coronavirus for employees to be able to work from home because the company is so cheap they won’t even get people laptops during emergency situations.”

  • “I was told [by] the staff the interview was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak which I can totally understand”

  • “Coronavirus causing fear of travel.”

  • “… relies on international manufacturers, and we all feel the squeeze when production issues happen. With Coronavirus and Brexit, that might become even more of an issue – but it’s something that’s no doubt felt by most businesses in the UK at the moment.”

  • “Recent coronavirus outbreak and no work from home arrangements or flexibility. Putting everyone at risk, especially those of us with children and elderly to look after.”

Conversely, we have seen several employees praise their companies’ response. Some unifying themes from these responses have been a combination of transparent communication and substantive action. Excerpts quoted below:

  • Impressed with the way our company is handling the coronavirus outbreak situation. They are very efficient in taking all the necessary measures to ensure utmost safety and precaution. We have been provided with surgical masks, Dettol spray, vinyl gloves, hand wipes and temperature is being taken 2 times a day. HR is also tracking very closely those who have travelled anywhere (not just to China) during this period, as well as any staff who has come into close contact with anyone from China. Our MD has had a talk with us to ensure that our company will do the best it can and take necessary measures to keep the employees safe. I feel very reassured that the situation is taken so seriously and is well  under control in the place where I spend more time than anywhere else.”

  • “Recently, I was worried about my salary and job security with the emergence of the coronavirus in China but the school acted quickly and provided a reasonable online schedule allowing me to continue to teach English via my computer. All of the equipment has been provided to me and they continue to pay my full salary, so they have turned what could have been a terrible experience for me, into a very positive one.”

Additionally, business outlook ratings—as reported by employees on Glassdoor—are trending down for companies and employees based in affected countries: China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea. While the decline so far has been modest, reports from workers on the frontlines are one way to get an understanding of how confident employees feel that businesses can get back on their feet once the outbreak is contained. Employee confidence will be a metric we watch closely in the coming weeks.

Conclusion

We’re beginning to see early evidence of the reaction to the coronavirus outbreak on Glassdoor. New jobs are being posted for health agencies, companies and international organizations as they gear up to respond to the outbreak. Additionally, employees are paying close attention to their employers’ response to the outbreak and are sharing their thoughts on the topic in Glassdoor reviews. Many employees report concerns with disruptions to their workplaces and the outlook for their businesses, while others have praised their companies for transparent communication. While the global trajectory of the coronavirus outbreak is a big unknown, we’ll be watching Glassdoor’s platform closely for more evidence of how employees and employers are reacting.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 17:20

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CPAC Promised To Take on Socialism but Couldn’t Even Take on Trump’s Spending

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a large annual gathering of the American Right, promised to wage war at this year’s event: “America vs. Socialism” was the theme. It’s a strategically savvy move when considering that democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) is leading the delegate count for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. But notably absent from the CPAC agenda was anything pertaining to the debt, deficit, or current levels of absurd government spending—an odd choice for a conference that sought to position itself as a banner carrier for responsible fiscal policy.

There was plenty of time allotted for main stage performances by incendiary characters like Diamond and Silk, Charlie Kirk, and Candace Owens, who do more to caricature the Right than provide constructive policy ideas. Also present were panels on immigration restriction, impeachment, social media, and a live reading of FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers, a new play about the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page FBI scandal. And there were a few meetings on the ills of socialism. But if you wanted to hear people talk about our immediate slide into deficit hell, you were at the wrong conference.

Perhaps that’s because President Donald Trump is helping drive up America’s debt despite campaigning in 2016 on a promise to eliminate the $19 trillion debt within 8 years.

Trump has “fully embraced the idea that deficits don’t matter,” writes Steven Greenhut for Reason, with fantastical budget proposals that fail to right America’s fiscal ship. His 2021 budget, for instance, requests $4.8 trillion in spending—a 21 percent increase from when Trump took office.

Republicans have often criticized Democrats for their expensive policies and rallied behind spending cuts, but now that Trump is in the White House, many conservatives seem to have abandoned the idea entirely. Rush Limbaugh, the inflammatory right-wing radio host and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, regularly railed against former President Barack Obama for his reckless approach to fiscal issues. In July, he appeared to have changed his position.

“How many years have people tried to scare everybody about [the deficit]?” he said on his show. “Yet here we’re still here, and the great jaws of the deficit have not bitten off our heads and chewed them up and spit them out.”

“America vs. Socialism,” it turns out, was real-life clickbait.

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CPAC Promised To Take on Socialism but Couldn’t Even Take on Trump’s Spending

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a large annual gathering of the American Right, promised to wage war at this year’s event: “America vs. Socialism” was the theme. It’s a strategically savvy move when considering that democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) is leading the delegate count for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. But notably absent from the CPAC agenda was anything pertaining to the debt, deficit, or current levels of absurd government spending—an odd choice for a conference that sought to position itself as a banner carrier for responsible fiscal policy.

There was plenty of time allotted for main stage performances by incendiary characters like Diamond and Silk, Charlie Kirk, and Candace Owens, who do more to caricature the Right than provide constructive policy ideas. Also present were panels on immigration restriction, impeachment, social media, and a live reading of FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers, a new play about the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page FBI scandal. And there were a few meetings on the ills of socialism. But if you wanted to hear people talk about our immediate slide into deficit hell, you were at the wrong conference.

Perhaps that’s because President Donald Trump is helping drive up America’s debt despite campaigning in 2016 on a promise to eliminate the $19 trillion debt within 8 years.

Trump has “fully embraced the idea that deficits don’t matter,” writes Steven Greenhut for Reason, with fantastical budget proposals that fail to right America’s fiscal ship. His 2021 budget, for instance, requests $4.8 trillion in spending—a 21 percent increase from when Trump took office.

Republicans have often criticized Democrats for their expensive policies and rallied behind spending cuts, but now that Trump is in the White House, many conservatives seem to have abandoned the idea entirely. Rush Limbaugh, the inflammatory right-wing radio host and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, regularly railed against former President Barack Obama for his reckless approach to fiscal issues. In July, he appeared to have changed his position.

“How many years have people tried to scare everybody about [the deficit]?” he said on his show. “Yet here we’re still here, and the great jaws of the deficit have not bitten off our heads and chewed them up and spit them out.”

“America vs. Socialism,” it turns out, was real-life clickbait.

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