Gilead’s antiviral medication remdesivir could radically change the course of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.
Category: economics – Page 118
Hong Kong’s government announced in late February that it would be giving every resident over the age of 18 a cash payout of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars, part of a package of measures aimed at reducing the financial blow to the territory from the COVID-19 outbreak and months of anti-government protests. At the time, the city’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan told CNBC the move could boost Hong Kong’s economy by around 1%.
The U.S. should follow Hong Kong’s lead and give a cash handout to its citizens amid the coronavirus pandemic, a strategist told CNBC Friday.
“This is not a financial crisis,” Andrew Freris, CEO of Ecognosis Advisory, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection.” “It is a crisis about the real economy.”
He noted that in 2008, central banks used stimulus to respond to the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market — but he said nothing of the kind was happening right now.
Continue reading “US should give citizens
Hong Kong’s government announced in late February that it would be giving every resident over the age of 18 a cash payout of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars, part of a package of measures aimed at reducing the financial blow to the territory from the COVID-19 outbreak and months of anti-government protests. At the time, the city’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan told CNBC the move could boost Hong Kong’s economy by around 1%.
The U.S. should follow Hong Kong’s lead and give a cash handout to its citizens amid the coronavirus pandemic, a strategist told CNBC Friday.
“This is not a financial crisis,” Andrew Freris, CEO of Ecognosis Advisory, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection.” “It is a crisis about the real economy.”
He noted that in 2008, central banks used stimulus to respond to the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market — but he said nothing of the kind was happening right now.,000 a month to limit coronavirus impact on economy, strategist says” | >
The Federal Reserve swept into action on Sunday in a new bid to save the U.S. economy from the fallout of the coronavirus, cutting its benchmark interest rate by a full percentage point to near zero and promising to boost its bond holdings by at least $700 billion.
The central bank also announced several other actions, including letting banks borrow from the discount window for as long as 90 days and reducing reserve requirement ratios to zero percent. In addition, the Fed united with five other central banks to ensure dollars are available around the world via swap lines.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at 6:30 p.m. Washington time to discuss the actions.
Coronavirus’s economic danger is exponentially greater than its health risks to the public. If the virus does directly affect your life, it is most likely to be through stopping you going to work, forcing your employer to make you redundant, or bankrupting your business.
The trillions of dollars wiped from financial markets this week will be just the beginning, if our governments do not step in. And if President Trump continues to stumble in his handling of the situation, it may well affect his chances of re-election. Joe Biden in particular has identified Covid-19 as a weakness for Trump, promising “steady, reassuring” leadership during America’s hour of need.
© Provided by The Independent Worldwide, Covid-19 has killed 4,389 with 31 US deaths as of today. But it will economically cripple millions, especially since the epidemic has formed a perfect storm with stock market crashes, an oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, and the spilling over of an actual war in Syria into another potential migrant crisis.
How would a massive federal spending program like a universal basic income (UBI) affect the macroeconomy? We use the Levy Institute macroeconometric model to estimate the impact of three versions of such an unconditional cash assistance program over an eight-year time horizon. Overall, we find that the economy can not only withstand large increases in federal spending, but could also grow thanks to the stimulative effects of cash transfers on the economy.
Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard 
Tulsi GabbardLawmakers call for universal basic income amid coronavirus crisis Tulsi Gabbard calls for giving Americans K a month during coronavirus outbreak Biden consolidates majority support in new Hill/HarrisX 2020 poll MORE (D-Hawaii) called for introducing a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month until coronavirus “no longer presents a public health emergency.”
“Most Americans don’t have that safety emergency bank account even for a short term, what to speak of if you’re talking about weeks, or in this case people are looking at potentially months,” Gabbard said in an interview on Hill. TV.
Her proposal, H.R. 897, would give a UBI of $1,000 per month to all adult Americans “until COVID-19 no longer presents a public health emergency.”
The House is preparing to vote on Thursday on a coronavirus-relief bill that would provide Americans with paid sick leave, food assistance, free coronavirus testing, and more substantial unemployment benefits.
But Ocasio-Cortez pushed for a more sweeping response, including expanding Medicare or Medicaid to cover all Americans, a freeze on evictions, a universal basic income, ending work requirements for food-assistance programs, criminal-justice reform, and freezing student-debt collection.
“This is not the time for half measures,” she tweeted on Thursday. “We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst public health & economic affects. That includes making moves on paid leave, debt relief, waiving work req’s, guaranteeing healthcare, UBI, detention relief (pretrial, elderly, imm).”
First wave 🌊.
Your questions answered — an update (11−03−2020): Professor Neil Ferguson on the current status of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak, case numbers, intervention measures and challenges countries are currently facing.
Read all reports including estimates of epidemic size, transmissibility, severity, phylogenetics, undetected cases, prevalence and symptom progression here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-gida
Andrew Yang says a Universal Basic Income program would greatly help individuals and their communities during the coronavirus outbreak.
“In the case of the Industrial Revolution, people’s lives didn’t improve for seven decades,” Frey says. “That’s two generations. I think we need to be very concerned about some of these short-term effects on people.”
Frey says for seven decades wages were stagnant, food consumption decreased and “people’s living standards deteriorated.” The economy was doing quite well, but most of the workers weren’t seeing the benefits of that economy.
“Because people’s living standards deteriorated, people rioted against mechanized factories. The Luddites are often portrayed as these irrational enemies of progress, and to some extent, that’s right if you take a very long term view,””
The case against the flawed argument that automation won’t be so bad.