Friday 29th of March 2024

money, money, money...

lipstick

What on earth is the stock market doing?


Death and despair are all around. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits each of the last two weeks was about 10 times the previous record — and is probably being artificially held back by overloaded government systems. Vast swaths of American business are shuttered indefinitely. The economic quarter now underway will most likely feature Great Depression-caliber shrinkage in economic activity.


Yet at Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 was up 25 percent from its recent low on March 23. It is down only about 14 percent this year — and is up from its levels of just 11 months ago. There are answers as to why (more on that below). But that doesn’t take away the extremity of the juxtaposition between an economy in free fall and a stock market that is, in the scheme of things, doing just fine.


Two powerful forces are pushing in opposite directions. Commerce is being disrupted to a degree that seemed impossible just weeks ago. But simultaneously, stock investors are betting that powerful interventions out of Washington — including an additional $2.3 trillion in lending programs from the Federal Reserve announced on Thursday — will be enough to enable major companies to emerge with little damage to their long-term profitability.


It’s a battle between collapsing economic activity and, to use a silly meme from finance Twitter, the federal government’s money printer going “brrr.” In the stock market, at least, the revving of the money printer is winning.

Paradoxically, said Gene Goldman, the chief investment officer of Cetera Investment Management, the shockingly high numbers of jobless claims can even be viewed as helpful to the market, as they increase political pressure on Congress to scale up rescue measures beyond the $2 trillion legislation already enacted.


“Imagine you’re a Democrat or a Republican talking about 16 million people unemployed,” he said. “It really creates more bipartisan pressure to support the next stimulus package.

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/upshot/virus-stock-market-booming.html

betting on the yoyo...

yoyo

Ordinary Australians have turned the coronavirus crisis into a savvy investing opportunity, displaying impressive insight by jumping into sharemarkets and snapping up bargains.

Retail investors – everyday Australians with some money in the sharemarket – have taken full advantage of the ASX’s recent losses.

For many, the allure of the market’s more recent gains are enough to offset the inherent risks attached to sharemarket investing.

Gemma Dale, director of SMSFs and investor behaviour at nabtrade (the stockbroking arm of NAB), said existing investor trade volumes have doubled in the past four to eight weeks.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/markets-and-shares/2020/...

killing EU health...

"The European Commission has asked the states 63 times to reduce healthcare spending" denounces MEP Martin Schirdewan

 

Source : L’Humanité, Samuel Ravier-Regnat


Interview with Martin Schirdewan, co-president of the European United Left, on the role of austerity policies in the deterioration of the public health sector in Europe.


Samuel Ravier-RegnatYou denounce responsibility for European Union (EU) health policies. Why ?


Martin Schirdewan On 63 occasions between 2011 and 2018, the European Commission has recommended that EU member states privatize parts of the health sector or reduce public spending on health. These recommendations targeted almost all States, which generally complied. There is obviously an impact on the state of national health systems, especially in countries affected by the financial crisis (2010s - Editor's note). This is all the more serious today with the coronavirus crisis. The response capacity of countries is weakened.


Do these recommendations explain why European hospitals are unable to cope with the crisis?


Martin Schirdewan They testify to the economic governance regime and reveal that the neoliberal economic model of the EU is not capable of maintaining public services and protecting the basic needs of citizens. The problem is not the recommendations per se, but the fact that the EU’s economic model is based on austerity and not on solidarity. Today, the shortage of staff, medical units and medical equipment in hospitals is a direct result of the austerity policies that diverted money from the public sector to the private sector.


Public health falls within the competence of the Member States. Is the EU solely responsible?


Martin Schirdewan No, of course, it was the Member States that led and implemented the austerity policies. National governments must also be held to account. However, national policies are constrained by the European framework. This is what we have to think about now: we have to definitively get rid of the Stability and Growth Pact (which was suspended on March 20 - Editor's note), which limits state spending in an entirely arbitrary manner. New economic governance is needed, which allows Member States to tackle the health sector crisis immediately and to cope with the dramatic socio-economic impact of the coronavirus crisis.


What would a progressive European health policy be?


Martin Schirdewan We must first redefine the concept of public service at European level: public services must once again serve the people. Rather than cutting public spending, Member States need to invest much more in the health sector. They should be able to spend as much money as they want on public services at any time. Secondly, I think that health should be administered by the state, in particular so that everyone can have access to it. We must renationalise what has been privatized, it is essential. The raison d'être of hospitals is to protect people's health, not to make a profit. Let's get public services, and health in particular, out of capitalist logic! It is not up to the market to define health policies.


Isn't the European level the best suited to respond to the crisis?


Martin Schirdewan I think both levels of response are important. We need a European response based on solidarity. And at the same time, we need a national reflection on health structures.


interview by Samuel Ravier-Regnat

 

 

https://www.les-crises.fr/la-commission-europeenne-a-demande-63-fois-aux...

forward to the future....

Today’s Commission for the Human Future report on “Surviving and thriving in the 21st Century” is an effort to step back from COVID-19 and see it in the context of 10 catastrophic risks facing the planet, including global warming, nuclear weapons, overpopulation and pandemics of new and untreatable disease. The report follows a roundtable of heavy-hitters in late March organised by the Canberra-based commission, which has an impressive board chaired by former Liberal leader and ANU professorial fellow John Hewson, who wrote in a Guardian Australia op-ed this morning that “the coronavirus pandemic should be seen as a dress rehearsal for what awaits us if we continue to ignore the laws of science, the physical world and the demands of several catastrophic threats such as climate change”. We now have two former members for Wentworth on the case, with former PM Malcolm Turnbull declaring he would be an “activist” on climate change post-politics. If only he’d been more active on climate while in office. 

The commission’s report notes there have been seven pandemics already this century and that COVID-19 “shows how human interaction with and damage to the wild world can result in new dangers to ourselves”. It also argues the coronavirus is a wake-up call that presents an unprecedented opportunity to rethink society, and that the response has shown “widespread, universal change in human behaviour is possible – at least in the case of an acute global health crisis”. It is true that climate scientists say COVID-19 may be only the beginning of the pandemics if warming accelerates – liberating new bacteria and viruses from melting permafrost, for example. The COVID-19 pandemic could be a profound global learning experience: not just by exposing anti-scientific, populist frauds like Donald Trump, but in proving the possibility of collective action. As Greens leader Adam Bandt told me in a recent interview: “We need to not just flatten the corona curve, we need to flatten the CO2 emissions curve as well.” Hopefully achieving the first will make the second easier. 

The report’s grandiloquence is off-putting, as for example in calling for a “worldwide discussion of the way forward for all of humanity”, or asking “humanity to shift from competitive to more collaborative behaviour”. Whatever … at least this report is trying to pull it all together, and the people involved in the roundtable have a combined expertise and track record that is not to be sneezed at. The report acknowledges plenty of other contributions to the debate, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s “Vision 2050”.

The reality, of course, is that the Morrison government is headed in exactly the wrong direction, with more “let ’er rip” low-taxed and deregulated free-market capitalism. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg flagged company tax cuts this morning on Sky News – “We will look at tax reform as an area of interest because we are always looking for opportunities to cut taxes” – and Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor (backed up by COVID-19 commissioner Nev Power) flagged a “gas-led recovery” that will ramp up Australia’s contribution to global warming. 

It only underlines the challenge ahead, and not just in Australia recovering from recession at home, with growth opportunities severely curtailed by closed borders and lower immigration, as Crikey’s Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer write [$], but in a world ravaged by a pandemic that is still building. Overnight, the head of the UN’s World Food Programme warned of a coming famine “of biblical proportions” threatening hundreds of millions of people. “We are talking about extreme conditions, emergency status – people literally marching to the brink of starvation,” said executive director David Beasley.

Unprecedented opportunity for a rethink could be putting it mildly

 

Read more:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/paddy-manning/2020/22/2020/158753412...

 

Read from top.

the arts bite the dust...

CW01

 

CW02

Carriageworks goes into voluntary administration citing 'irreparable loss of income' due to coronavirus


Industry reacts with shock and dismay after Sydney arts centre suffers ‘irreparable loss of income’


The Sydney arts centre Carriageworks has gone into voluntary administration after Covid-19 shutdowns resulted in an “irreparable loss of income”.

One of the largest multi-arts centres in Australia, Carriageworks is known for hosting a huge range of creative exhibits and festivals, with news of its demise triggering shock and dismay in the arts industry on Tuesday.

Since New South Wales placed bans on large gatherings in mid-March, Carriageworks has been forced to cancel or postpone all its major upcoming events, including the Sydney writers’ festival, Mercedes-Benz fashion week Australia and its popular weekend markets.

As a result, the company released a statement on Monday announcing that it had appointed voluntary administrators.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/05/carriageworks-goes-into-voluntary-administration-citing-irreparable-loss-of-income-due-to-coronavirus

 

Pictures by Gus Leonisky.