U.S. Coronavirus Cases Jump, With Death Toll Just Below 200,000 Some 52,000 new Covid-19 infections were reported in the U.S., the highest single-day increase since Aug. 14, as some guidelines and practices for stopping the disease’s spread have been called into question.
(…) Meanwhile, experts and medical groups increasingly say temperature checks, one of the most common initial screenings for the infection, aren’t a good gauge of Covid-19. Many infected children and adults don’t get fevers, and variability in individual temperatures, as well as questions about the accuracy of body-temperature scanners and infrared contact-free thermometers put such checks at risk of error. (…)
The percentage of U.S. coronavirus cases that were fatal was 2.9% through Monday, according to Johns Hopkins figures. That percentage has decreased as a rapid expansion of testing across the country has detected more mild, moderate or asymptomatic cases. Still, the number of deaths per 100,000 Americans has risen to nearly 61, up from 39 in early July.
Mexico has the highest case-fatality rate at 10.5%, according to Johns Hopkins’s analysis of its data, followed by France at 6.7% and Bolivia at 5.8%. Brazil, India and Mexico have the highest total numbers of fatalities after the U.S. (…)
Spain ready to take further action to fight Madrid’s second Covid wave Pedro Sánchez willing to reactivate emergency powers used during first lockdown
New cases in Spain and France are above their spring levels. Th U.K., Canada, Italy and Germany seem to be rising to the same challenge. The U.S. is the top yellow line in the center, having never declined below its spring peak levels and showing signs of joining Spain’s and France’s trends.
Much different trends in developed Asia and Oceania countries, and at much lower levels.
Deaths?
Axios-Ipsos poll: America turns against vaccine
Data: Axios/Ipsos surveys. 1,100 U.S adults surveyed Aug. 28-31; 1,008 U.S. adults surveyed Sept. 18-21. Chart: Axios Visuals
This is stunning, and a huge problem: The share of Americans who say they’ll try a first-generation coronavirus vaccine is plummeting, White House editor Margaret Talev writes from the new Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index.
- The trend is true among both Democrats and Republicans.
As the U.S. nears the milestone of 200,000 deaths, this shows the risk of politicizing the virus and its treatments. It’s another warning of the difficulties health authorities will face in convincing enough Americans that a vaccine is safe and effective.
Many respondents in Week 25 of our national survey feel a vaccine will be risky. Only half are prepared to pay out of pocket for it.
- Just 13% say they’d be willing to try it immediately.
Men remain more likely than women to take the first-generation vaccine.
- Black Americans are about half as likely as Hispanics or whites to take it.
Laid-Off Workers Cut Spending as Extra Unemployment Benefits Run Out President Trump’s action last month put in place an extra $300 in benefits a week, but those benefits will last only six weeks. Congress, meanwhile, has yet to reach an agreement on a new federal jobless benefit.
(…) She said the $600-a-week benefit gave her a sufficient financial cushion to ride out the pandemic, allowing her to save around $1,200. Now that it has expired, her feeling of anxiety is growing. “All of this is scary,” she said. (…)
Many workers are still waiting for the additional $300 payments to arrive, which means they are drawing solely on regular state unemployment benefits, which have averaged $326 a week in the year through July, according to the Labor Department.
Peter Ganong, a University of Chicago economist, said the $300 supplemental benefit would put about 48% of workers above their previous income levels. Under the $600 supplement, about 76% of workers eligible for benefits were making more than their previous income, Mr. Ganong and other University of Chicago researchers estimated. (…)
Economists expect the benefit reduction to dent consumer spending in the coming months. Nearly half of economists in a Wall Street Journal survey expected the lower jobless benefits to hurt spending in September. (…)
The Small Business Pulse survey by the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that as of September 12, more than 75% of small businesses were moderately (44%) or importantly (31%) negatively impacted by the pandemic. This is down from 82.7% in June but still 3 out of 4 small biz owners suffering.
Trump administration rushes to make it tougher for skilled foreign workers to gain H-1B visas
CBO Downgrades Long-Term Projections of Economic Growth Agency says U.S. GDP growth will average 1.6% over next 30 years, vs. 1.9% projected in 2019
Growth averaged 2.5% from 1990 to 2019. Debt as a share of gross domestic product is forecast to hit 195% by 2050, 45 percentage points higher than the CBO projected in June 2019. (…)
The projections released Monday are an extension of 10-year forecasts the CBO released over the summer, showing debt as a share of annual economic output is on track to hit 100% next year and reach 108.9% by the end of the next decade, the highest since World War II. (…)
Federal spending is projected to rise from 21% of GDP in 2020 to 31% by 2050, driven in large part by the soaring cost of servicing the nation’s debt. The aging population and rising health-care costs are also expected to continue pushing up spending on Social Security and Medicare over the next three decades, even after the effects of pandemic spending dissipate. (…)
In The Day After, I showed the close link between growth in GDP and corporate profits and between nominal GDP, business sales and S&P 500 earnings.
If real GDP growth is set to slow below 1.5% per year, from 2.3% in the last cycle, and if inflation slows to the 1.0% range (from +1.7%), then nominal GDP growth will be around 2.5% during the cycle post-pandemic. That would mean business sales growth will slow from 4.0% per year between 2010 and 2019 to about 2.5% post-pandemic.
Ed Yardeni links business sales growth to S&P 500 revenue growth. Overall, but particularly since 2003, both series trend very similarly.
Unless one sees S&P 500 profit margins rise in the coming cycle, a rather heroic assumption, investors are in for a long period of very slow profit growth. (…)
Even more so if corporate taxes rise.
EQUITIES
Nervous markets! Different markets yesterday: DJIA -1.8%, SP500 -1.2% and SP600 -3.4% (liquidity seeking?), NDX +1.4%.
Following my yesterday comments and charts on banks:
Banks Still Are Too Weak and Risky, Kashkari Says Minneapolis Fed head, decrying two bailouts in 12 years, says lenders need more equity capital to buffer against tough times.
(…) ”Large, unacceptable risks remain,” Kashkari told a virtual conference hosted by the Council of Institutional Investors (CII) Friday.
He ought to know. In 2008, as a high-ranking official in the US Treasury Department, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which purchased toxic mortgages and other bum real estate assets from financial institutions. “How can it possibly be this fragile?” he asked the conference.
The regional Fed chief said it was “absurd” that Washington had to bail out the banks twice in less than 20 years. He noted that the big lenders have “enormous influence on Capitol Hill.” Kashkari called on pension funds and other big institutions to use their influence with banks to make themselves safer.
Following the 2008-09 crisis, banks faced the new Dodd-Frank law and other restrictions on their behavior—chiefly a requirement that they boost their equity capital, so they would have a bigger buffer during the next downturn. And, indeed, large banks almost doubled equity capital, to the current 13% of risk-weighted assets. But Kashkari said his regional Fed bank calculated that they should be at least at 24%.
The big banks complain that such rules make them less competitive and harm their ability to make loans. Lending, of course, benefits economic growth. Kashkari, however, said the lending-constraints argument was ridiculous because the lenders have robust stock buyback programs, designed to buck up share prices. “If capital was constraining lending,” he asked, “why were they buying back their stock? It is nonsense.”
The last crisis saw the Fed pumping billions into the banking system. And the central bank did it again in recent months, he said, by backstopping banks when the repurchase (aka repo) market froze—the arrangement where banks borrow overnight to gain a small but helpful return. “I keep asking myself,” he said, “what kind of absurd financial system do we have that requires the central bank to bail it out every decade?”
Hasn’t Washington policy “masked weakness” in the economic system, asked Ash Williams, who chairs CII’s board and is the CIO of the Florida State Board of Administration, which oversees the state pension fund. Williams, who moderated Kashkari’s talk, pointed out that programs such as the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) subsidized businesses but underlying vulnerabilities remained. “Isn’t there are disconnect between the real economy and financial institutions?” he asked.
Kashkari agreed and warned that, if the coronavirus lasted another year or more, ”there will be a lot more pain.”