Sun, 17 May 2020 15:53 PM EST
NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• “The coronavirus pandemic dealt another crushing blow to retailers in April, but now the question is what the sector will look like as the economy reopens—and how much permanent damage has been inflicted.”
• American criticism of China’s handling of the coronavirus has been harsh, sending relations between the two countries to a nadir and prompting observers to say the situation could draw Washington and Beijing into a new kind of Cold War.
• The American health care system long had a clear playbook for turning a profit: Provide surgeries, scans, and other well-reimbursed services to privately insured patients, whose plans pay higher prices than public programs like Medicare and Medicaid—but Covid-19 has exposed the model’s vulnerabilities.
• Education secretary Betsy DeVos is using the coronavirus stabilization law to help education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.
• Trump reinforced his promise to have a coronavirus vaccine available by the end of this year, but his credibility on the issue has been clouded by months of overpromising, exaggerating, and misleading about his response to the pandemic.
• The Treasury Department on Friday made it slightly easier for small-business owners to avoid having to repay government-backed loans they took out under a program designed to keep them from laying off employees and permanently closing.
Sunday
• The number of new coronavirus cases confirmed in the US has steadily declined in recent days, leaving the nation is at a crossroads, embracing signs of hope and beginning to reopen businesses and ease the measures that slowed the virus, despite the risk of a resurgence.
• Since the end of World War II, economists have warned that running a large deficit would risk runaway inflation and possibly unsustainable tax hikes on future generations, but now even some of the country’s most ardent deficit hawks are calling for more spending.
• Plunging oil prices are robbing Saudi Arabia of the enormous wealth that crown price Mohammed bin Salman was counting on to undertake his sweeping social and economic agendas, and they have already cut into the vast welfare state that has given most Saudis a comfortable subsidized life.
• Confusion in Brazil about how to respond to the coronavirus has helped fuel the spread of the disease and contributed to making Brazil an emerging center of the pandemic, with a daily death rate second only to that of the US.
• Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s already high approval ratings continue to soar, and unlike two of the populist leaders to whom he is often compared—Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin—Modi seems to be thriving during the coronavirus crisis.
• Secretary of State Pompeo urged Trump to fire the official responsible for fighting waste and fraud in his department, a move certain to come under scrutiny after congressional Democrats opened an investigation into what they said “may be an act of illegal retaliation.”
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• Front page story reports “US lockdowns to contain the coronavirus pandemic prompted record monthly drops in retail spending and industrial output, as consumers pulled back sharply on shopping and eating out and factories suffered a sharp drop in demand.”
• With the coronavirus pandemic heightening anxieties about travel, the Transportation Security Authority will begin checking passengers’ temperatures at roughly a dozen airports as soon as next week, and for now passengers won’t be charged any extra fee for the service.
• +/- GOOGL: A Journal investigation found hundreds of instances in which individuals or companies, often using fake identities, asked Google to remove links to unfavorable articles and blog posts that alleged wrongdoing by convicted criminals, foreign officials, and businesspeople in the US and abroad.
• Growth in service professions allowed women to overtake men as a proportion of the US labor force, but because education, hospitality, and other service sectors have been hard hit by social-distancing, female workers face hurdles that men don’t.
• The House approved a slate of rule changes that will allow lawmakers to cast votes by proxy during the coronavirus pandemic, a historic step that Democrats cast as pragmatic but that Republicans warned could alter the nature of Congress.
• States debating how to loosen social-distancing restrictions are in many cases basing decisions on data such as trends in daily death tolls and the percentage of positive coronavirus tests, but experts say that information is often inconsistent or messy.
• Germany fell into recession in the first quarter, shrinking at its second-fastest pace since reunification as the coronavirus pandemic hurt everything from retailers to auto exporters, but its economy is expected to fare better than its neighbors in 2020.
• When companies return to whatever new “normal” awaits them, there will likely be fewer offices in the center of big cities, more hybrid schedules that allow workers to stay home part of the week, and more room as companies free up space for social distancing.
• - SoftBank: The company’s Vision Fund, which poured $80B into cash-burning startups at high prices, has invested at least half its assets in industries that have taken a major hit from the coronavirus, frustrating chief Masayoshi Son’s strategy and investors’ high hopes for returns.
• + ETSY: The company, which launched in Brooklyn as a market for individual craftspeople and artisans to sell handmade items, has during the pandemic become a source for a wide range of consumer essentials, including baked goods and other foods.
• H.O.T.S.: Millions of Americans now have the right to postpone mortgage payments, a major challenge for the complex ecosystem behind home loans; Japan’s major banks have long looked overseas for returns, but the strategy has suffered this year, and while generous dividends remain, they are the last point of attraction for the stocks; “After April’s slump in retail sales, even pessimistic forecasts for the current quarter could be too upbeat.”
FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• As the US increases its pressure on Huawei, accusing the Chinese companies of skirting rules and using American technology, an FT investigation of the company’s P40 smartphone found its radio-frequency front-end modules were produced by US chipmakers QCOM, SWKS, and QRVO.
• Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said he may ignore a European Court of Justice ruling that Budapest had flouted European Union law over its treatment of asylum seekers.
• African nations are developing a platform to pool medical orders and break into the global medical diagnostics and equipment market after having largely been shut out of it during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Big Read story says “The decision to reopen schools is one of the most difficult issues that governments face as they lift parts of their lockdowns—some scientists believe the risk is manageable, but there are significant logistical problems.”
• Lex Column: BT is more likely to raise cash by selling its own shares to investors than by selling a stake in Openreach—and for those after a quick return, with no dividend likely, the company is still a value trap; Washington’s ban on US chipmakers supplying Huawei has benefited TSM, just as it prepares to build a plant in Arizona; The dispute over which country might gain first access to a SNY coronavirus vaccine illustrates a broader issue: the disproportionate contribution of the US to the funding of new treatments.
• Comment: When the pandemic eases, the US may be ready at last for a radical overhaul of its tax system, says Willem Buiter, including more progressive income, wealth, and inheritance taxes, much as the writer Thomas Piketty calls for in his book Capital and Ideology
NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• +/- AMZN: The death of several warehouse employees has prompted officials from 12 states and the District of Columbia to call on the retailer and its Whole Foods subsidiary to take greater steps to protect workers and customers.
Sunday
• China’s ambassador to Israel, 58-year-old Du Wei, was found dead Sunday morning in his home north of Tel Aviv, just three months into the job, with no cause of death announced.
• A study from the Broad Institute found the coronavirus was taken to an animal market in Wuhan, China, by a person already infected with the disease, a sign the virus was already pre-adapted to human transmission.
• + TSLA: Early next year the automaker plans to launch Model 3 sedans containing a new lower-cost, longer-life battery in China—the batteries are designed to last for a million miles of use before breaking down.