The moment of truth for the United States will come in the next week or so. Will it follow the path of Singapore, or Japan, South Korea and Italy?
Return of Ruble Rubble
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“Literally, empty shelves in Target and Walmart as early as April,” predicts David Iwinski, a local China business consultant who once ran a factory in China.
...Other product shortages are expected in clothing, computers, cell phones, shoes and even toys.
So when might this be over?
“We think August, September, this will be a memory,” predicts Iwinski.
At this point, the hospital called the CDC requesting permission to perform the COVID-19 testing. The CDC denied the request on the ground that I did not have the most life-threatening symptoms: chest pain and shortness of breath. According to everything I read it's very likely not to have these symptoms if you're in your 30's and relatively healthy.The government is an incompetent clown show and this isn't simply one administration. There is deep rot in the bureaucracy. This is honestly what I would expect to hear from a country such as Iran or North Korea, or a completely dysfunctional African country.
And... that was that. They discharged me, said I don't have Corona virus, since they didn't test me for it, and said I can ride the subway, return to work, do whatever I want.
Of course my doctor disagreed. She said I should treat myself as if I am infected. My partner is currently staying in a nearby hotel since we live in a studio apartment. I've performed a self-quarantine for 14 days. Fortunately I can work from home and my partner can deliver me groceries if I run out.
But I don't think that many people are aware of the fact that they're actively not testing people for COVID-19, even people who have travel history to high-risk places.
Businesses are caught in a dilemma. Facing cash flow pressures, they are eager to restart their operations to make up the losses suffered during the closure, but they also face the risk of virus spreading among their workers once factories reopen.
China had 18.07 million SMEs at the end of 2018, accounting for 99.8% of all companies. If these companies can regain their footing, employment and the economy will stabilize, Zhang said.
Small private business owners incur expenses for labor, rent, and utilities even while closed. For example, rent and utilities for restaurants could account for 15-20% of their total costs, 30% for barber shops and small retailers, and as much as 50% for small mom-and-pop grocery stores, Tang Jun, deputy director of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said at the press conference.
China will help companies amid the ongoing shutdown related to the coronavirus outbreak. Many of these policies are a reversal of deleveraging efforts made in the past year or two. They are loosening lending and reversing the crackdown on underpayment of social security. The social security taxes will be repaid later, but how many businesses will take the opportunity to load up on credit?And yes, those companies are trying.
Chinese authorities have booted 48, mostly state-owned, enterprises off an official list of companies eligible for special low-cost loans under a government initiative to boost financial help for firms actively engaged in the battle against the coronavirus epidemic out of concern the loans would not be used for their intended purpose.China has good information on SOEs, but even these guys were bold enough to try. No doubt there are many private borrowers loading up for the post-corona boom.
The 48 companies comprise five coal producers, 38 transport companies and five local government financing vehicles, Caixin learned on Tuesday from sources close to banks and financial regulators. Some of them had tried to get loans under the 300 billion yuan ($42.8 billion) special-purpose relending program by pretending to produce goods such as disinfectants, the sources said. Loans already made to these companies will no longer benefit from the preferential interest rates, they said.
By sorting out the public data of some migrant workers in the country, 21st Century Business Herald reporters found that despite the launch of measures to promote the return of migrant workers to work, there are still migrant workers returning to work in less than 50% .With everyone focused on getting existing labor and production back to work, one thing that's been overlooked is the lack of growth. Companies haven't been creating and filling new jobs. For now, they're still hoping their workers return.
Many scholars interviewed by 21st Century Business Herald reporters believe that with the downward adjustment of public health emergency response levels, more jobs may be released in the future. However, the increase in employment in a region is still a market behavior and has a close relationship with the stage of local economic development and industrial characteristics, so it is still not easy to create a large number of jobs in the short term.
As of February 23, there were 3.889 million rural laborers returning to work in Henan Province. Before the Spring Festival, 9.78 million migrant workers returned from outside the province, the return rate was 37.72%. According to statistics from Kaifeng City, Henan Province, On the 22nd, the city's 187,000 returning rural migrant workers returned to work with 50,800 people. The return rate was 27.2%, of which 6402 were organized.Chongqing estimates 88 percent of those who returned home for Spring Festival are still in Chongqing:
As of the end of December 2019, according to the Yunnan province ’s human resources system labor force resource survey, 12.244 million rural laborers in the province have realized transfer employment, 8.639,900 transfer jobs within the province, and 3.605 million transfer jobs outside the province, but as of February 21 The rural labor transfer employment in Yunnan Province was 3.286 million, of which 10.272 million were transferred outside the province and 2.624 million were transferred within the province—compared to the data at the end of 2019, there are still large differences.
However, Yunnan Province ’s Human Resources and Social Security Department ’s epidemic prevention and stable employment headquarters said that within the next 15 days, the province ’s rural labor force is expected to go out to employ 1.575 million people.
A press conference on the prevention and control of the epidemic in Chongqing, which was held on February 20, announced that there were 6.057 million migrant workers returning home in Chongqing during the Spring Festival this year. According to incomplete statistics, 739,000 people are currently employed outside the country. This means that there are still 5.31 million returning migrant workers in Chongqing who are not out of employment, accounting for nearly 88% of the returning migrant workers in the Spring Festival in 2020.This is why traffic is down all over. There's still tens of millions of workers waiting in their home cities.
Astros players have already been hit by pitches 7 times through 3 games.
— The Champion Picks (@ChampionPicks) February 26, 2020
It’s February 26th...pic.twitter.com/Yd5Z8HYb6e
On Jan. 29, as part of our second quarter of fiscal year 2020 earnings call, we issued quarterly revenue guidance for our More Personal Computing segment between $10.75 and $11.15 billion, which included a wider than usual range to reflect uncertainty related to the public health situation in China. Although we see strong Windows demand in line with our expectations, the supply chain is returning to normal operations at a slower pace than anticipated at the time of our Q2 earnings call. As a result, for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, we do not expect to meet our More Personal Computing segment guidance as Windows OEM and Surface are more negatively impacted than previously anticipated. All other components of our Q3 guidance remain unchanged.I still think an outbreak in the U.S. is likely. My hunch is at some point there will be far to pessimistic economic assumptions. Yesterday, I discussed a few positions I had. I'm out of Boeing today, but added shorts on Disney (DIS) and Expedia (EXPE), plus increased my TLT short as mentioned in the update to that post.
An analysis of roaming usage patterns from Guangdong-registered mobile accounts showed that through Sunday some 10 million people were waiting to return to the wealthy province in South China, officials announced at a Tuesday briefing. That included 1.7 million people from Hubei province at the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, which has infected nearly 80,000 in China and killed more than 2,000.
Official news disclosed on February 23 that a cluster of new-onset pneumonia families broke out in Liwan District, Guangzhou. On January 22, the day before Wuhan closed the city, a family of six from Pan took a high-speed train from Wuhan to Guangzhou. Until February 21, almost a month later, Pan and his son-in-law were diagnosed with new coronary pneumonia. The next day, Pan's wife and grandson were diagnosed.This goes against the news of quarantines easing.