investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--No Bank Bailouts This Time — $800 Billion in Options for Direct Financial Infusion to Middle Class

National Economic Council ( NEC ) Director Larry Kudlow held an impromptu press conference to describe what sectors of the @ @ @ @ @ financial assistance to bridge revenue gaps from mandated government policy .
The stock market is @ @ @ @ @ Calling this type of financial assistance a “ bailout ” is not a fair term @ @ @ @ @ created by government instruction .
Government orders to shut down restaurants creates a financial loss @ @ @ @ @ bills and payroll obligations to meet .
These types of affected businesses will need immediate @ @ @ @ @ , resorts , private parks , gyms , restaurants and various entertainment companies/industries may also @ @ @ @ @ cash or deferred tax payment to compensate for financial losses .
Again , these businesses @ @ @ @ @ ordering their closure .
Depending on the size of the business , the need for @ @ @ @ @ .

National Economic Council (NEC) Director Larry Kudlow held an impromptu press conference to describe what sectors of the U.S. economy may need direct financial assistance to bridge revenue gaps from mandated government policy. The stock market is not the U.S. economy.
Calling this type of financial assistance a “bailout” is not a fair term considering the financial impact was created by government instruction. Government orders to shut down restaurants creates a financial loss for restaurants who also have bills and payroll obligations to meet. These types of affected businesses will need immediate assistance.
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Airlines, hotels, resorts, private parks, gyms, restaurants and various entertainment companies/industries may also need a direct infusion of cash or deferred tax payment to compensate for financial losses. Again, these businesses have been impacted by government ordering their closure. Depending on the size of the business, the need for gap funds may be urgent.


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--We now have: A pandemic crisis – A supply chain crisis – A demand crisis – A labor market crisis – A

We now have: A pandemic crisis – A supply chain crisis – A demand crisis – A labor market crisis – An equity market crisis – An oil price crisis – A brewing bond market crisis… Nouriel Robin: There Will Be Riots in the Streets

Here Are the Industries That Could Get Aid From the U.S. Government Entire industries are hurting and hoping for help @ @ @ @ @ as Americans cancel travel plans and avoid stores and restaurants because of the… The Next @ @ @ @ @ A new Marist poll this week for NPR/PBS News found 18 % of US adults @ @ @ @ @ either been laid off or had significant reduction of hours due to the ripple effect @ @ @ @ @ Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach says the U.S. economy has about a 90 % chance of @ @ @ @ @ from about 80 % last week , as the negative impact of the coronavirus expands @ @ @ @ @ Will Be Riots in the Streets People are not going to have money to buy @ @ @ @ @ jobs , ’ says Robin…

So as best I can tell this morning we now have: – A pandemic crisis
– A supply chain crisis
– A demand crisis
– A labor market crisis
– An equity market crisis
– An oil price crisis
– A brewing bond market crisis
– A developing currency crisis
– A potential housing market crisis — Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) March 18, 2020
This is the largest risk-off event in history yet the safest instruments, the risk-off instruments, sovereign bonds including US Treasuries, are also getting hit. Everything is dysfunctional, even "the safe stuff" is getting hit. pic.twitter.com/NPZqRe4o7G — Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) March 18, 2020
Please see my time stamped tweet yesterday. 🎯 What they don’t realize is buy backs created 95% of stock mkt gains since 2010. How does mkt “recover” with no buy backs? If it doesn’t, what happens to 401k’s? Pensions? How much consumer spending would that destroy into future? t.co/YSlbsMk7gi — George Gammon (@GeorgeGammon) March 18, 2020
Great point.
This is NOT the flu
This is NOT a GFC
This is a global pandemic the likes of which we haven’t seen for a hundred years. t.co/jPhAzuFkOa — Anil (@anilvohra69) March 18, 2020
With USD got supercharged, I wonder, can EM eurobond be also the soon next black swan (and banks that hold them)?@chigrl @SamanthaLaDuc @HenrikZeberg @LukeGromen How the Oil Crash Is Hitting Emerging-Market Currenciest.co/d8THmiN0CIt.co/ugco18wosD — Sky Walker (@skywalker_2k) March 18, 2020
WTI #Oil falls <$25 a barrel for 1st time since 2002 as rout continues on coronavirus fears and price war. pic.twitter.com/eU7TAFIF1f — Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) March 18, 2020
Entire industries are hurting and hoping for help from the U.S. government, as Americans cancel travel plans and avoid stores and restaurants because of the…
A new Marist poll this week for NPR/PBS News found 18% of US adults responding they’d already either been laid off or had significant reduction of hours due to the ripple effect of the pandemic.
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DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach says the U.S. economy has about a 90% chance of recession this year, up from about 80% last week, as the negative impact of the coronavirus expands.
People are not going to have money to buy food once they lose their jobs,’ says Robin…
NYC MAYOR DE BLASIO SAYS MILITARY ASSISTANCE NEEDED IN CITY — *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaOne) March 18, 2020


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--PRESS BRIEFING TODAY @ 11:30 AM EDT

PRESS BRIEFING TODAY @ 11:30 AM EDT

Donald J. Trump @ realDonaldTrump I will be having a news conference today to discuss very important news from the @ @ @ @ @ !
6:12 AM · Mar 18 , 2020·Twitter for iPhone 621 Retweets 1.8K Likes

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I will be having a news conference today to discuss very important news from the FDA concerning the Chinese Virus!
6:12 AM · Mar 18, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
621
Retweets
1.8K
Likes
I will be having a news conference today to discuss very important news from the FDA concerning the Chinese Virus! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2020
www.whitehouse.gov/live/
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NG


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--It’s Still Not Enough

It’s Still Not Enough

The bailout the fed is considering won ’ t be enough .
And they ’ re not giving money to consumers directly , so consumers won ’ t be able to deal with their rising debt .
Bear gang chiming in here with some sexy DD to remind you to hold your puts .
( Previously posted some of this as a comment in the daily discussion thread , but kept digging and found more scary stuff . )
Look at the US Commercial Bank stats over the last decade ( from ToS ) .
These dramatic increases in debt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changes in median household income ( ~56k in 2011 vs. ~63k in 2018 ) + increases in consumer loan defaults over the last few years + the Fed making it easier to take out even more debt + beerflu impact on consumer paychecks/employment/spending +incompetent government handling of beerflu = recession inbound .
Hold onto those puts , bear gang ( but beware of a bounce this week ) .
Disclaimer : This information is only for educational purposes .
Do not make any investment decisions based on the information in this article .
@ @ @ @ @ @

by senor_tiburon
The bailout the fed is offering considering won’t be enough. And they’re not giving money to consumers directly, so consumers won’t be able to deal with their rising debt.
Bear gang chiming in here with some sexy DD to remind you to hold your puts. (Previously posted some of this as a comment in the daily discussion thread, but kept digging and found more scary stuff.) Look at the US Commercial Bank stats over the last decade (from ToS).
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March 2011 (billions of $US) Feb 2020 (billions of US$) Approx. % change in debt Commercial and Industrial Loans ~1,200 ~2,350 +96% All consumer loans ~1,070 ~1,600 +49.8% Consumer Credit Card Debt (& other revolving plans) ~600 ~860 +43% Real Estate Loans ~3,570 ~4,640 +30%
These dramatic increases in debt over the last decade relative to small changes in median household income (~56k in 2011 vs. ~63k in 2018) + increases in consumer loan defaults over the last few years + the Fed making it easier to take out even more debt + beerflu impact on consumer paychecks/employment/spending +incompetent government handling of beerflu = recession inbound. Hold onto those puts, bear gang (but beware of a bounce this week).

Disclaimer: This information is only for educational purposes. Do not make any investment decisions based on the information in this article. Do you own due diligence.


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--The Stock Market Still Has A Long Way To Fall…

This doesn ’ t end when your country flattens the curve .
It ends when EVERY country flattens the curve .
If magically all of the US infections disappeared tomorrow and we opened up all of our businesses again , coronavirus would find its way back into the country and we would have to start over .
Until then , America must shutter its businesses and homes .
People are no longer traveling .
Companies like Uber and Lyft take a hit .
Airlines lose business .
Cruise industries falter .
Regions that rely on tourism lose business .
People @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no longer afford vacations .
Entertainment industries suffer due to tighter budgeting of Americans .
Luxury brands suffer .
The list goes on , the cycle repeats and worsens .
Even after the US recovers domestically , I believe that developing countries that produce goods for the United States ( many of which are only just starting to accelerate in COVID 19 cases ) will soon be impacted , which will further damage the US economy .
Given all of this , I don ’ t see any way that the economy does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has .
I believe that stimulus bills like the ones that Trump is proposing will help in the short term , but even after all of this is over , it will take time for people to regain confidence to travel , eat out , attend concerts , etc .
Am I missing anything here ?
I want to hear from the people that disagree with my hypothesis .

by McMissile
This doesn’t end when your country flattens the curve. It ends when EVERY country flattens the curve. If magically all of the US infections disappeared tomorrow and we opened up all of our businesses again, coronavirus would find its way back into the country and we would have to start over.
Until then, America must shutter its businesses and homes.
As a result:
People are no longer traveling. Companies like Uber and Lyft take a hit. Airlines lose business. Cruise industries falter. Regions that rely on tourism lose business. People lose their jobs. These people can no longer afford vacations. Entertainment industries suffer due to tighter budgeting of Americans. Luxury brands suffer. The list goes on, the cycle repeats and worsens.
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Even after the US recovers domestically, I believe that developing countries that produce goods for the United States (many of which are only just starting to accelerate in COVID 19 cases) will soon be impacted, which will further damage the US economy.
Given all of this, I don’t see any way that the economy does not suffer tremendously more than it already has.
I believe that stimulus bills like the ones that Trump is proposing will help in the short term, but even after all of this is over, it will take time for people to regain confidence to travel, eat out, attend concerts, etc.
Am I missing anything here? I want to hear from the people that disagree with my hypothesis.
JUST IN: U.S. retail sales fell in February, indicating the main driver of the U.S. economy, consumer spending, had begun to slow even before coronavirus containment measures began rippling through the economy t.co/wW13mCNDEo pic.twitter.com/0oyQeATY5H — Bloomberg Economics (@economics) March 17, 2020
"Some analysts think that the second-quarter GDP could contract somewhere between 3 and 5%…I caution those who think that there’s going to be a V-shaped recovery, and that the United States economy is going to come roaring back in the third quarter."t.co/K2Cg5Ou3hG — Danielle DiMartino Booth (@DiMartinoBooth) March 17, 2020
"Half of small businesses in the country have enough cash to survive for a few weeks, according to one study." t.co/4YEfIsmMQo — Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) March 18, 2020
U.S. MEDIA: 47 PENTAGON EMPLOYEES INFECTED WITH CORONA VIRUS — First Squawk (@FirstSquawk) March 17, 2020


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--Visualizing Coronavirus Disease by the Numbers (Update 18 March 2020)

The coronavirus is fundamentally changing the world before our eyes .
Our goal at HowMuch.net has always been to help @ @ @ @ @ We do that by creating beautiful data visualizations that tell a story and help people @ @ @ @ @ response to the coronavirus outbreak , we ’ re creating a new page to help @ @ @ @ @ really going on with the virus and the economy .
We will stick to the @ @ @ @ @ and avoid undue alarmism .
We ’ ll always use reliable sources for our data @ @ @ @ @ are in turmoil , entire countries are on lockdown and governments are struggling to formulate @ @ @ @ @ our mission remains the same : to help our readers better understand the world even @ @ @ @ @ Donate Now to the WHO to Help Fight the Coronavirus Donate Now to the WHO @ @ @ @ @

by howmuch
The coronavirus is fundamentally changing the world before our eyes.
We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!
Our goal at HowMuch.net has always been to help people understand the economy. We do that by creating beautiful data visualizations that tell a story and help people make better decisions. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, we’re creating a new page to help people understand what’s really going on with the virus and the economy.
We will stick to the facts as we know them and avoid undue alarmism. We’ll always use reliable sources for our data. Yes, financial markets are in turmoil, entire countries are on lockdown and governments are struggling to formulate a coherent response. But our mission remains the same: to help our readers better understand the world even as it rapidly changes.
Donate Now to the WHO to Help Fight the Coronavirus
Donate Now to the WHO to Help Fight the Coronavirus


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--The Coronavirus Collapse Is Here: Get Ready For The U.S. Unemployment Rate To Hit 20 Percent (Or Hig

The Coronavirus Collapse Is Here: Get Ready For The U.S. Unemployment Rate To Hit 20 Percent (Or Higher)

As communities all over America shut down in order to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus , job losses are already starting to rise to extremely alarming levels .
As you will see below , almost one out of every five households in the U.S. has already experienced “ a layoff or a reduction in work hours ” because of this pandemic .
Unfortunately , many experts are now anticipating that we could see one of the most dramatic spikes in the unemployment rate in American history in the months ahead .
In fact , it is being reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members of Congress that this crisis could actually push our unemployment rate up to 20 percent… Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned Republican senators Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic could drive up US unemployment to 20 % , a Republican Senate source told CNN .
Mnuchin ’ s comments came as he urged Republican senators to act on economic stimulus measures totaling $ 1 trillion designed to avert that kind of worst case scenario .
If this coronavirus pandemic is over by the end of this calendar year , I think that Mnuchin ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if if this pandemic stretches into 2021 or beyond , the U.S. unemployment rate will likely go quite a bit higher .
If you doubt this , just look at what has already happened… To be more precise , the survey found that 18 percent of U.S. households have lost income already because of this pandemic .
But we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis .
If employment is being hit this hard now , what is going to happen if millions of Americans eventually catch this virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I have discussed previously , the attending physician of the U.S. Congress believes that up to 150 million Americans will ultimately become infected .
Sadly , lower income Americans have been hit the hardest by this crisis so far… Most lower income Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are just barely scraping by each month .
So if this pandemic doesn ’ t end relatively soon , it won ’ t be very long before millions of them are really , really hurting financially .
Needless to say , we are about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits .
In fact , so many New Yorkers have been trying to apply that it actually crashed the website… And according to U.S .
Senator Rob Portman , the number of people in Ohio filing for benefits jumped 592 percent in just one week… Please let that number sink in for a moment .
We are going to see things that we have never seen before in the weeks and months to come , and the economic suffering is going to be off the charts .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Morgan Stanley are acknowledging that a recession has probably already begun , and one economist is now projecting that U.S. GDP will decline at a 10 percent annualized rate during the second quarter… In a desperate attempt to prop up the economy , the Trump administration is proposing a stimulus package that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars .
The following is how CNBC summarized what may be in that package… • $ 500 billion to $ 550 billion in direct payments or tax cuts • $ 50 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ industry relief If Congress ultimately approves this package , apparently quite a bit of the money will be used to make direct payments to U.S. households .
According to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin , the American people “ need cash now ” … Of course this would set an extremely dangerous precedent , and the federal government can ’ t afford this because it is already drowning in debt , and “ helicopter money ” is likely to cause significant inflation , but very few policy makers in Washington seem to be alarmed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is going to do this during the very early chapters of this crisis , they better keep on doing it month after month , because the suffering is going to greatly escalate the longer this pandemic lasts .
If we get to the point where the payments are eventually cut off , it is likely that we will see a really big national temper tantrum .
And instead of sending out $ 1,000 to each adult , why not send out $ 10,000 ?
Better yet , why not make it $ 100,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that couldn ’ t use an extra $ 100,000 right now .
Needless to say , once we start going down this road it is just a matter of time before our money is completely and utterly worthless .
Our national economic nightmare has begun , and it is going to be absolutely horrifying .
I really like how Peter Schiff recently made this point… This is the beginning of the end .
This is how it starts .
And believe me , when you see how this finishes , this is going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I think we have passed that point of no return .
It ’ s like we ’ ve already jumped off the top of the building , off the top of the Empire State Building .
There ’ s no way to change our minds now .
We ’ re going to hit that pavement .
I can ’ t see any way we can avoid that .
All we can do is brace for impact ourselves.
” For so long , so many of us have been warning that “ the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the consequences would be extremely severe .
It turns out that fear of the coronavirus is the “ black swan event ” that finally burst that bubble , and now everything that we have been warning about is starting to unfold .
The coronavirus collapse is here , and the days ahead are going to be exceedingly challenging .
We are about to experience the consequences of decades of exceedingly foolish decisions , and those consequences are going to shake our society to the core .

by Michael Snyder
As communities all over America shut down in order to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, job losses are already starting to rise to extremely alarming levels. As you will see below, almost one out of every five households in the U.S. has already experienced “a layoff or a reduction in work hours” because of this pandemic. Unfortunately, many experts are now anticipating that we could see one of the most dramatic spikes in the unemployment rate in American history in the months ahead. In fact, it is being reported that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin just told members of Congress that this crisis could actually push our unemployment rate up to 20 percent…
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned Republican senators Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic could drive up US unemployment to 20%, a Republican Senate source told CNN. Mnuchin’s comments came as he urged Republican senators to act on economic stimulus measures totaling $1 trillion designed to avert that kind of worst case scenario.
If this coronavirus pandemic is over by the end of this calendar year, I think that Mnuchin’s projection may be accurate.
But if if this pandemic stretches into 2021 or beyond, the U.S. unemployment rate will likely go quite a bit higher.
If you doubt this, just look at what has already happened…
The coronavirus pandemic has already started to hit American pocketbooks, with nearly 1 in 5 households experiencing a layoff or a reduction in work hours, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. As people stay home, avoid crowds and cancel plans to avoid spreading the disease, it’s rapidly causing a contraction in economic activity that is hurting a wide range of businesses.
To be more precise, the survey found that 18 percent of U.S. households have lost income already because of this pandemic.
But we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis. If employment is being hit this hard now, what is going to happen if millions of Americans eventually catch this virus?
And it could happen. As I have discussed previously, the attending physician of the U.S. Congress believes that up to 150 million Americans will ultimately become infected.
Sadly, lower income Americans have been hit the hardest by this crisis so far…
Lower-income workers were the most affected: A quarter of households making less than $50,000 had experienced cut hours or a job loss.
Most lower income Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are just barely scraping by each month.
So if this pandemic doesn’t end relatively soon, it won’t be very long before millions of them are really, really hurting financially.
Needless to say, we are about to see a colossal spike in the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits. In fact, so many New Yorkers have been trying to apply that it actually crashed the website…
A drastic move by Gov. Cuomo to close all of the state’s restaurants, bars, movie theaters, gyms and casinos by 8 p.m. Monday to contain the outbreak had suddenly jobless workers flooding the Department of Labor with applications for unemployment benefits. So many people tried to apply that the website crashed several times throughout the day — while the DOL’s hotline was so jammed up that callers seeking aid could not get through to someone who could handle their claim.
And according to U.S. Senator Rob Portman, the number of people in Ohio filing for benefits jumped 592 percent in just one week…
Senator Rob Portman, and Ohio Republican, said on Tuesday that he received new data on Ohio’s unemployment claims showing 45,000 claims this week compared to 6,500 last week, according to journalist Liz Skalka. That’s a one-week increase of 592 percent.
Please let that number sink in for a moment.
592 percent.
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We are going to see things that we have never seen before in the weeks and months to come, and the economic suffering is going to be off the charts.
At this point, even Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are acknowledging that a recession has probably already begun, and one economist is now projecting that U.S. GDP will decline at a 10 percent annualized rate during the second quarter…
We are only just beginning to see what the economic fallout from coronavirus will be. And Wall Street economists are now throwing out some brutal forecasts for what economic data in the quarters ahead might hold. “We now guesstimate that second quarter GDP will drop at a 10% annualized rate, after a 2% fall in Q1,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note to clients on Monday night.
In a desperate attempt to prop up the economy, the Trump administration is proposing a stimulus package that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars.
The following is how CNBC summarized what may be in that package…
$500 billion to $550 billion in direct payments or tax cuts
$200 billion to $300 billion in small business assistance
$50 billion to $100 billion in airline and industry relief
If Congress ultimately approves this package, apparently quite a bit of the money will be used to make direct payments to U.S. households.
According to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, the American people “need cash now”…
Potentially $250 billion of the package could go toward making direct payments to Americans, a White House official told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Mnuchin said earlier Tuesday that the administration wants to get emergency funds in Americans’ pockets “immediately.” “Americans need cash now,” Mnuchin said during a White House press briefing on the administration’s latest efforts to combat the disease. “I mean now in the next two weeks.”
Of course this would set an extremely dangerous precedent, and the federal government can’t afford this because it is already drowning in debt, and “helicopter money” is likely to cause significant inflation, but very few policy makers in Washington seem to be alarmed by such concerns.
If the federal government is going to do this during the very early chapters of this crisis, they better keep on doing it month after month, because the suffering is going to greatly escalate the longer this pandemic lasts. If we get to the point where the payments are eventually cut off, it is likely that we will see a really big national temper tantrum.
And instead of sending out $1,000 to each adult, why not send out $10,000? Better yet, why not make it $100,000?
I don’t know anyone that couldn’t use an extra $100,000 right now.
Needless to say, once we start going down this road it is just a matter of time before our money is completely and utterly worthless.
Our national economic nightmare has begun, and it is going to be absolutely horrifying. I really like how Peter Schiff recently made this point…
This is the beginning of the end. This is how it starts. And believe me, when you see how this finishes, this is going to be unlike anything we have experienced. I think we have passed that point of no return. It’s like we’ve already jumped off the top of the building, off the top of the Empire State Building. There’s no way to change our minds now. We’re going to hit that pavement. I can’t see any way we can avoid that. All we can do is brace for impact ourselves.”
For so long, so many of us have been warning that “the everything bubble” would burst and that the consequences would be extremely severe.
It turns out that fear of the coronavirus is the “black swan event” that finally burst that bubble, and now everything that we have been warning about is starting to unfold.
The coronavirus collapse is here, and the days ahead are going to be exceedingly challenging. We are about to experience the consequences of decades of exceedingly foolish decisions, and those consequences are going to shake our society to the core.


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--Chart: The Downward Spiral in Interest Rates

During the onset of an economic crisis , national governments are thought to have two chief policy tools at their disposal : • Fiscal Policy How the central government collects money through taxation , and how it spends that money • Monetary Policy How central banks choose to manage the supply of money and interest rates Major fiscal policy changes can take time to be implemented — but since central banks can make moves unilaterally , monetary policy is often the first line of defense in settling markets .
As the ripple effect of the COVID-19 pandemic rages on , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in slashing interest rates .
However , with rates already sitting at historic lows before the crisis , it is possible that banks may be forced to employ more unconventional and controversial techniques to try and calm the economy as time goes on .
The Fed : Firing at Will The most meaningful rate cuts happened on March 3rd and March 15th after emergency meetings in the United States .
First , the Federal Open Market Committee ( FOMC ) cut the target rate from 1.5 % to 1.0 % — and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rate got chopped by an entire percentage point to rub up against the lower bound of zero .
As you can see on the chart , this puts us back into familiar territory : a policy environment analogous to that seen during the recovery from the financial crisis .
It ’ s been awhile , but with interest rates again bumping up against the lower bound , you ’ ll begin to see discussions pop up again about the effectiveness of zero interest rate policy ( ZIRP ) and even negative interest rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ latter has been used by some European banks in recent years , NIRP has never been experimented with in the United States or Canada .
With rates sitting at zero , it ’ s not impossible for the Fed and other central banks to begin toying more seriously with the idea of negative rates .
Such a move would be bold , but also seen as highly experimental and risky with unforeseen consequences .
Since only the beginning of March , the world ’ s central banks have cut interest rates on 37 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this rule was the National Bank of Kazakhstan , which raised its key rate by 2.75 % to support its currency in light of current oil prices .
Even so , the Kazakhstani tenge has lost roughly 15 % of its value against the U.S. dollar since February .
Here ’ s a look at cumulative interest rate cuts by some of the world ’ s most important central banks , from January 1 , 2020 until today : Going into the year , rates in developed economies were already between 0 % @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much room to work with , banks have slashed rates where they can — and now out of major developed economies , Canada has the “ highest ” interest rate at just 0.75 % .
With central banks running out of ammo for the use of traditional measures , the conversation is quickly shifting to unconventional measures such as “ helicopter money ” and NIRP .
Life is already surreal as societal measures to defend against the spread of COVID-19 unfold ; pretty soon , monetary measures taken around the globe may seem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , unless something changes fast and miraculously , we could be moving into an unprecedented monetary environment where up is down , and down is up .
At that point , it ’ s anybody ’ s guess as to how things will shake out going forward .

by visualcapitalist
During the onset of an economic crisis, national governments are thought to have two chief policy tools at their disposal:
Fiscal Policy
How the central government collects money through taxation, and how it spends that money Monetary Policy
How central banks choose to manage the supply of money and interest rates
Major fiscal policy changes can take time to be implemented — but since central banks can make moves unilaterally, monetary policy is often the first line of defense in settling markets.
As the ripple effect of the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, central banks have been quick to act in slashing interest rates. However, with rates already sitting at historic lows before the crisis, it is possible that banks may be forced to employ more unconventional and controversial techniques to try and calm the economy as time goes on.
The Fed: Firing at Will
The most meaningful rate cuts happened on March 3rd and March 15th after emergency meetings in the United States.
First, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) cut the target rate from 1.5% to 1.0% — and then on Sunday (March 15th) the rate got chopped by an entire percentage point to rub up against the lower bound of zero.
As you can see on the chart, this puts us back into familiar territory: a policy environment analogous to that seen during the recovery from the financial crisis.
ZIRP or NIRP?
It’s been awhile, but with interest rates again bumping up against the lower bound, you’ll begin to see discussions pop up again about the effectiveness of zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and even negative interest rate policy (NIRP).
Although the latter has been used by some European banks in recent years, NIRP has never been experimented with in the United States or Canada.
Here’s a quick primer on both:
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With rates sitting at zero, it’s not impossible for the Fed and other central banks to begin toying more seriously with the idea of negative rates. Such a move would be bold, but also seen as highly experimental and risky with unforeseen consequences.
Global Rate Slashing
Since only the beginning of March, the world’s central banks have cut interest rates on 37 separate occasions.
The only exception to this rule was the National Bank of Kazakhstan, which raised its key rate by 2.75% to support its currency in light of current oil prices. Even so, the Kazakhstani tenge has lost roughly 15% of its value against the U.S. dollar since February.
Here’s a look at cumulative interest rate cuts by some of the world’s most important central banks, from January 1, 2020 until today:
Going into the year, rates in developed economies were already between 0% and 2%.
Despite not having much room to work with, banks have slashed rates where they can — and now out of major developed economies, Canada has the “highest” interest rate at just 0.75%.
Helicopters on the Horizon
With central banks running out of ammo for the use of traditional measures, the conversation is quickly shifting to unconventional measures such as “helicopter money” and NIRP.
Life is already surreal as societal measures to defend against the spread of COVID-19 unfold; pretty soon, monetary measures taken around the globe may seem just as bizarre.
Put another way, unless something changes fast and miraculously, we could be moving into an unprecedented monetary environment where up is down, and down is up. At that point, it’s anybody’s guess as to how things will shake out going forward.


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--This is not a black swan…

This is not a black swan…

Its not a black swan .
This is a flock of black swans all at once .
( actually a wedge but that sounds weird ) .
The worst pandemic in 100 years , demand shock , supply shock , supply chain disruption and the financial system collapsing in all sorts of weird and interesting ways .
Many people have just woken up to the fact we ’ re heading for a recession .
Um… no this is a depression .
The first deflationary depression since 1929-1932 .
Even in the absolute depths of the 2008 financial crisis , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shutdown that is happening now .
Entire sectors of the economy are being shuttered indefinitely , ￼ which collectively employ tens of millions of people – transportation , tourism , hospitality , food service , retail , movie + arts , etc .
Businesses have never faced a total collapse of revenue in 2 days like they are now , in some areas such as restaurant and movie theaters their revenue is going to near 0 .
In 2008 a restaurant for instance may have seen revenue collapse to 50 % of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lack of cash flow is going to bankrupt thousands of businesses within less than a month and even more if it goes 2 or 3 months which it almost certainly will .
We haven ’ t seen anything yet .
We ’ ve only seen the stock market collapse , just wait until millions of workers are laid off , major corporations default , the junk bond market seizes up , it goes on and on .
70 % of our economy is based on consumer spending .
We ’ ve been thrown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only continue as the financial crisis really gets underway .
In addition , the financial system is far more fragile than it ever was in 2008 .
Non-financial corporate debt is the highest in history .
There are massive asset and credit bubbles everywhere you look .
The Fed and central banks all over the world are out of monetary policy tools and are left with only a desperate attempt to maintain liquidity in specific parts of the financial markets .
As I said , we haven ’ t seen anything yet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @

by SpontaneousDisorder
Its not a black swan. This is a flock of black swans all at once. (actually a wedge but that sounds weird).
The worst pandemic in 100 years, demand shock, supply shock, supply chain disruption and the financial system collapsing in all sorts of weird and interesting ways.
Many people have just woken up to the fact we’re heading for a recession. Um… no this is a depression. The first deflationary depression since 1929-1932.
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Even in the absolute depths of the 2008 financial crisis, we never had the sort of total economic shutdown that is happening now. Entire sectors of the economy are being shuttered indefinitely,￼ which collectively employ tens of millions of people – transportation, tourism, hospitality, food service, retail, movie + arts, etc.
Businesses have never faced a total collapse of revenue in 2 days like they are now, in some areas such as restaurant and movie theaters their revenue is going to near 0. In 2008 a restaurant for instance may have seen revenue collapse to 50% of their previous but not 0%. The lack of cash flow is going to bankrupt thousands of businesses within less than a month and even more if it goes 2 or 3 months which it almost certainly will.
We haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve only seen the stock market collapse, just wait until millions of workers are laid off, major corporations default, the junk bond market seizes up, it goes on and on. 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending. We’ve been thrown into a major recession and it will only continue as the financial crisis really gets underway.
In addition, the financial system is far more fragile than it ever was in 2008. Non-financial corporate debt is the highest in history. There are massive asset and credit bubbles everywhere you look. The Fed and central banks all over the world are out of monetary policy tools and are left with only a desperate attempt to maintain liquidity in specific parts of the financial markets. As I said, we haven’t seen anything yet, this will get so much worse.


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--Coronavirus to cause global recession, surge in defaults: S&P Global

The sudden economic stop caused by coronavirus containment measures will cause a global recession this year and could see U.S. @ @ @ @ @ 10 % in the next 12 months , ratings agency S & P Global warned @ @ @ @ @ sudden economic stop caused by COVID-19 containment measures will lead to a global recession this @ @ @ @ @ P said in a new report A cash flow slump and much tighter financing conditions @ @ @ @ @ oil price shock will hurt creditworthiness it added .
“ These factors will likely result @ @ @ @ @ , with a default rate on nonfinancial corporates in the U.S that may rise above @ @ @ @ @ high single digits in Europe over the next 12 months .
”

The sudden economic stop caused by coronavirus containment measures will cause a global recession this year and could see U.S. corporate default rates spike above 10% in the next 12 months, ratings agency S&P Global warned on Tuesday.
“The sudden economic stop caused by COVID-19 containment measures will lead to a global recession this year,” S&P said in a new report
A cash flow slump and much tighter financing conditions as well as the simultaneous oil price shock will hurt creditworthiness it added.
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“These factors will likely result in a surge in defaults, with a default rate on nonfinancial corporates in the U.S that may rise above 10% and into the high single digits in Europe over the next 12 months.”
www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-defaults-s-p/coronavirus-to-cause-global-recession-surge-in-defaults-sp-global-idUSKBN214216


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--Red/Green Castle Ready, Clock Activated, Stage Is Set

The [ DS ] is pushing their agenda , the [ V ] has been neutralized but the MSM/ [ @ @ @ @ @ not deviate from the script .
Trump and the patriots are using this to their @ @ @ @ @ your enemy while they are destroying themselves .
Trump mentions we are fighting an invisible @ @ @ @ @ .
The stage is set , clock activated .

The [DS] is pushing their agenda, the [V] has been neutralized but the MSM/[DS] and others can not deviate from the script. Trump and the patriots are using this to their benefit, why interfere with your enemy while they are destroying themselves. Trump mentions we are fighting an invisible enemy that is upon us. The stage is set, clock activated.
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investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--Big Bond Bubble Begins to Blow!

Big Bond Bubble Begins to Blow!

The bust is on !
Not only is the stock market crashing like never seen before ( Dow down 3,000 points today ! )
, but there are now deeply distressing breaks in the bond market .
These staggering responses to Fed actions run counter to what is expected ; but people are so focused on stocks , the are missing the more worrisome action .
When the Dow crashed trough the sub-basement into the pit of hell today , 10-year bonds remained locked around the 0.75 % rate they ’ ve hunkered in at for about a week .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to safety in bonds , which indicates how illiquid the bond market has become and how its patches are pulling at their stitches .
Money fleeing stocks is now avoiding bonds and going to cash .
Last Monday 30-year yields posted the biggest intraday decline since at least October 1998 , pushing bond prices up as stocks continued to sell off .
That ’ s what you would expect when stocks are crashing and the Fed is rushing back to easing .
Stocks sell and money flees into bonds as a safe haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The rest of the week they did the opposite .
Bond yields rose and prices fell as stocks mostly fell .
By the the end of the week , a massive injection of cash from the Federal Reserve along with President Donald Trump ’ s declaration of a national emergency with promises of fiscal support gave stocks their best day in history , but bond prices continued to fall as yields rose .
Throughout the Fed ’ s Great “ Recovery , ” bond yields fell whenever the Fed sucked up government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerns about the necessary issuance of even greater record amounts of government debt , pushed the yields that investors demand up and prices , therefore , down , even when the Fed practically promised to buy everything .
During the middle of last week ’ s reversal , I got our 401Ks entirely out of bonds and into cash ( the only other safe alternative in our 401K plans ) because the movements were becoming too unpredictable .
I decided it was time to reap the gains that bonds had given during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I came through all right , but most of the gains were already lost , so violently did bonds swing the other way .
How bad is the bond breakup ?
I was , as it turned out , in good company .
Analysts suddenly started to say the U.S. government-debt market is not functioning properly : “ We were just trying on Monday to trim a long position in the 30-year Treasury because it had moved so far in our favor , and were unable to get bids from several major dealers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before.… I ’ ve never seen … the inability to trade a U.S. Treasury… .
Liquidity is not only cataclysmic but getting worse… .
Traders also reported a shortage of prices on screens , while futures on U.S. ultra bonds hit circuit breakers repeatedly during Friday morning trading in Europe .
“ We heard there were some issues in off-the-run Treasuries , ” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on CNBC Friday morning .
“ We are working on that ” … but apparently not enough , and the result was the biggest VaR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funds launched a crushing deleveraging which has crippled conventional correlations , and left traders speechless at … offerless Treasury markets… .
As risk parity funds were caught in a liquidation cascade , both the equity and Treasury markets became unstable to the point of being untradeable .
After starting the week off below 1 % , 30-year yields soared to 1.79 % amid the margin call liquidation route… .
Said Zoeb Sachee , head of European government-bond trading at Citigroup Inc. “ There has been an abrupt deterioration in liquidity in the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get worse by the day.
” “ We have seen such aggressive moves in the market that everyone is having to rebalance , address losses , or de-risk , ” [ said ] Richard Kelly , head of global strategy at TD Bank… .
“ We are at the stage where central banks need to provide exceptional liquidity into the market to make sure that basic markets can function….
” The inability to find a price on older treasuries ( “ off-the-run ” treasuries ) is significant because in repo agreements , someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offers an existing treasury to market at a price with a promise to purchase it back at a higher price on a set date .
So , this indicates a new crack in the repo market .
At the same time people “ were unable to get bids , ” meaning zero offers for the treasuries they wanted to sell .
It appears the market froze up from both sides .
“ I ’ ve never seen anything like it ” , says veteran bond trader .
Amid frenzied trading over the past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Treasury market showed cracks that raised eyebrows across Wall Street , and finally led the Federal Reserve to announce a range of measures on Sunday night including purchases of hundreds of billions of U.S. government bonds over the coming months… .
The cost to trade Treasurys with virtually identical terms but which differ in maturities by a few months has diverged sharply last week as traders struggled to buy and sell bonds in a hurry .
This worrisome phenomenon underlines how volatility across Wall Street has seen trading volumes for older Treasurys slump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advertised as the deepest and most liquid safe-haven asset in the world .
“ I have never seen moves like this in 35 years of trading… .
At this point , the market will get absolutely exhausted , ” said Tom di Galoma , managing director of Treasurys trading at Seaport Global Securities… .
The more visible and most widely traded part of the market are newer “ on-the-run ” securities which are the bonds most recently issued by the U.S. government , but it ’ s the older “ off-the-run ” securities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 18 trillion market .
Much of it is held by fund managers , insurance companies , pension funds , and other investors… .
Though traders have been able to move in and out of on-the-run Treasurys with relative smoothness , it ’ s the less liquid and much bigger off-the-run portion of the market that has seen a sharp erosion of liquidity .
This has led to a sharp widening of the price difference between the two buckets of bonds… .
The surge in trading costs for older off-the-run Treasurys highlights the enormous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the bond-market , who are grappling with the biggest swings in government debt yields in sometimes decades .
“ If we can ’ t price and clear Treasurys in a very efficient manner , the market is going to have broader issues , ” said Gregory Faranello , head of AmeriVet Securities… .
Mutual funds and other investors promise their clients that they will be able to pull money in and out of funds on a day-to-day basis… .
“ You couldn ’ t trade off-the-run Treasurys even if you begged people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director of WinShore Capital Management , a fixed-income hedge fund… .
Market participants say the recent blow-out of bid-ask spreads for older Treasurys is not so much a reflection of funding pressures , and more a reflection of how dealers were struggling to handle unprecedented daily volatility in the bond-market… .
Priya Misra , global head of rates strategy at TD Securities , in an interview with Bloomberg Television said the Fed ’ s repo liquidity injections would not help smooth dislocations in the Treasury market… .
The U.S. central bank offered up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repurchasing operations this week… .
The U.S. central bank said it would buy … $ 500 billion in Treasury securities and $ 200 billion in mortgage-backed securities over the coming months , beginning on Monday… .
Investors say the lack of liquidity in the off-the-run Treasurys shines a light on the workings of financial markets , at a time when it could come under increased pressure in the coming months as the coronavirus epidemic impacts economies and markets .
Wow !
What a sudden swing for the normally sanguine government bond market .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Fed ’ s actions on Monday and then began drifting back up to where they were .
At the same time , older treasuries stagnated while new ones did not .
What is causing older treasuries — the ones used for repos — to become so , well , dead , that they ’ re not moving ?
The shift from stock troubles to new bond troubles is even more severe … or , at least , sudden … than I expected .
While I saw a badly flawed economy slowly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know it would get a COVID-19 booster to put a heavy foot in its back and stomp it down .
And , now that has led us to this headline , which I ’ ll let you read on MarketWatch , after you are done with this article , so they get some benefit from my use of their extensive quotes above : Wall Street fears ‘ flashbacks to 2008 ’ with forced selling in $ 9 trillion U.S. corporate bond market The bond market is troubled in the government basket and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and short of it is , as the article just linked to says , that the decade-long bond bubble is imploding from one end to the other .
On the corporate side , the global credit cycle is ending because defaults are about to begin .
Corporate bonds are in a crisis situation with no liquidity in the market .
( I recommend you read the article above . )
It ’ s easy to see why corporate bonds are moving toward default as revenues crash under the virus for corporations that loaded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ debt was cheap .
Now the cost for refinancing corporate debt is rising as investor flee to safety .
But that makes the freeze in government debt trading all the harder to understand .
Bond-fund prices are dropping the furthest below their net-price value they have ever gone , creating “ unprecedented dislocations in the ETFs that track them.
” In other words , investors can move in and out of the ETFs ( stock Exchange Traded Funds ) much easier than the fund managers can move in and out of the bonds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it hard for the managers to sell bonds and cash out members who are fleeing .
How did this upset in the normally sanguine bond market happen and why ?
I think the bond market is riddled with problems but to try to understand why its breaking up in government bonds — the safest haven of all — we ’ re going to have to dig deeper .
Let ’ s start with asking , “ Why are ‘ old ’ treasuries stalling out in trade , while new treasuries are doing fine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because it is such an anomaly , and an absolute anomaly might point us in the direction of some of the deepest trouble .
I suspect people started fleeing government bonds for the same two reasons I saw them as no longer being a safe haven .
One reason was the obvious : all of Trump ’ s promises of government stimulus and corporate bailouts and assistance to job-stranded citizens mean a huge increase in the government deficit that has already seen a huge increase this year .
That means huge issuances of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already running more than a one-trillion-dollar deficit , you ’ re not in good shape to pile on more .
The Fed , however , simultaneously promised to vacuum all of that up as quickly as the government issues it , monetizing the debt , but everyone is nervous the Fed is losing controls as well as the government .
So , I needed to find a bigger , deeper , darker reason for the freeze in older bonds .
That led me to discovering ( for myself ) something much worse .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ rehypothecation ” — that may need some explaining .
The short of it is that older US government bonds have become unsafe because of how they are traded and used as collateral again and again , and everyone is losing track of the collateral pledges ( or never had track ) .
That ’ s why money fleeing from stocks is choosing even safer havens now .
The older the bond , the more likely it stacked in more than one collateral basket .
( But that , too , takes some explaining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) This is what has banks scared , driving fear in the repo market and churning up a constant crisis state there .
( In addition to the failing hedge funds the I pointed out in one of my Patron Posts .
Yet , they may be connected , too . )
Rather than attempt to explain rehypothecation myself , I ’ m going to let two others explain it — one in words that I think lay it out about as simply as it can be stated and the other with his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to contain the damage [ in bonds ] , the Federal Reserve on March 3 slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5 % to 1.0 % , in its first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis .
But rather than reassuring investors , the move fueled another panic sell-off… .
Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking… .
So what was the Fed ’ s reasoning for lowering the fed funds rate ?
According to some financial analysts , the fire it was trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repo market , where the Fed has lost control despite its emergency measures of the last six months .
Repo market transactions come to $ 1 trillion to $ 2.2 trillion per day and keep our modern-day financial system afloat… .
The risky element of these apparently secure trades is that the collateral itself [ the bonds that are traded , including government bonds ] may not be reliable , because it may be subject to more than one claim .
For example , it may have been acquired [ as pledged collateral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a swap with another party for securitized auto loans or other shaky assets — a swap that will have to be reversed at maturity .
As I explained in an earlier article , the private repo market has been invaded by hedge funds , which are highly leveraged and risky ; so risk-averse money market funds and other institutional lenders have been withdrawing from that market .
When the normally low repo interest rate shot up to 10 % in September , the Fed therefore felt compelled to step in .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former practice of injecting money short-term through its own repo agreements with its primary dealers , which then lent to banks and other players .
On March 3 , however , even that central bank facility was oversubscribed , with far more demand for loans than the subscription limit… .
The Fed ’ s emergency rate cut was in response to that crisis .
Lowering the fed funds rate by half a percentage point was supposed to relieve the pressure on the central bank ’ s repo facility by encouraging banks to lend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cut had virtually no effect , and the central bank ’ s repo facility continued to be oversubscribed the next day and the following… .
The problem is in the collateral , which lenders no longer trust .
Lowering the fed funds rate did not relieve the pressure on the Fed ’ s repo facility for obvious reasons : Banks that are not willing to take the risk of lending to each other unsecured at 1.5 % in the fed funds market are going to be even less willing to lend at 1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knew that .
So why lower the fed funds rate ?
Perhaps because it had to do something to maintain the façade of being in control , and lowering the interest rate was the most acceptable tool it had .
The alternative would be another round of quantitative easing… .
In the face of a recession caused by massive supply-chain disruption , the U.S. central bank has shown itself to be impotent .
In other words , no one trust the bonds that are used as collateral in repo financing are clear — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to others as collateral who might have first positions in the undisclosed collateral chain .
This author explains this root cause in another article ” At $ 1 trillion daily , the repo market is much bigger and more global than the fed funds market that is the usual target of central bank policy .
Repo trades are supposedly secured with “ high-quality collateral ” ( usually U.S. Treasuries ) .
But they are not risk-free , because of the practice of “ re-hypothecation ” : the short-term “ owner ” of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another loan , creating leverage – loans upon loans .
The IMF has estimated that the same collateral was reused 2.2 times in 2018 , which means both the original owner and 2.2 subsequent re-users believed they owned the same collateral .
This leveraging , which actually expands the money supply , is one of the reasons banks put their extra funds in the repo market rather than in the fed funds market .
But it is also why the repo market and the U.S. Treasuries it uses as collateral are not risk-free… @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most rehypothecated asset in financial markets , and the big banks know this.… U.S. Treasuries are the core asset used by every financial institution to satisfy its capital and liquidity requirements – which means that no one really knows how big the hole is at a system-wide level… .
“ This is the real reason why the repo market periodically seizes up .
It ’ s akin to musical chairs – no one knows how many players will be without a chair until the music stops… .
Some hedge funds take the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use it to secure cash loans in the repo market .
They then use this fresh cash to increase the size of the trade , repeating the process over and over and ratcheting up the potential returns .
“ This … explains why the Fed panicked in response to the GC [ General Collateral ] repo rate blowing out to 10 % on Sept 16 , and instantly implemented repos as well as rushed to launch QE 4 : not only was Fed Chair Powell facing an LTCM [ Long Term Capital Management @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repo-funded [ arbitrage ] was ( ab ) used by most multi-strat funds , the Federal Reserve was suddenly facing a constellation of multiple LTCM blow-ups that could have started an avalanche that would have resulted in trillions of assets being forcefully liquidated as a tsunami of margin calls hit the hedge funds world….
” Does anyone want to trust that the Fed has that all sorted out , given how the repo crisis has raged on for half a year ?
In short , the most basic , supposedly most secure , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s about to be incinerated due to spontaneous combustion .
You can see the smoke rising from the junk pile now .
Here is the magic-drawing-board explanation for those who do better with a visual explanation of something complicated like rehypothecation : And that is why we are now seeing moves the ones below after half a year of constant repo intervention by the Fed : Does that look under control to you ?
Or does it look like a hockey stick ?
Which is why I don ’ t even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you don ’ t know how many times the old government bonds your bond fund owns ( or thinks it owns ) have been pledged as collateral now that hedge funds have entwined themselves so deeply into the repo market .
My move of our 401Ks into cash funds may ultimately not be safe now either if banks start to fail due to the rehypothecation problem , but it will be safest for the longest among the kinds of funds available in our 401Ks .
One can hope that , by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money market funds and CDs , etc . )
look unsteady , most stocks will have bottomed out to where one might be able to re-enter the stock market safely at bargain prices .
I have doubts that government bonds will stabilize because of the rehypothecation problem and rapidly rising government debt and the seeming inability of the Fed to wrestle all of that back under control .
The Repocalypse has returned with a vengeance , and the Fed is having a hard time feeding the monster with enough to keep it quiet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in my recent Patron Posts , I anticipate some big changes in how the Fed does its work .
It may start giving out non-recourse loans .
It appears it is already accepting lower quality collateral for its new bald-faced QE , about which it now simply says , “ We don ’ t care what you call it .
We ’ re just doing it.
” Is it becoming a garbage disposal again for all this junk ?
It has reversed from trying to roll off all of its tired , dog-eared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over from its Great Recession salvation days to now stocking back up on that rubbish in order to clear the trash off the market and make banks safer .
It may be accepting that stuff in repos because they are what banks most want to get rid of or because they are now deemed just as safe as rehypothecated US treasuries .
If that ’ s the case , the Fed has just moved over the past weekend to giving banks cash for toxic junk as well as rehypothecated US treasuries .
Sucking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Fed has opened up the repo taps to pouring out another $ 1.5 trillion in “ call-it-what-you-want-now QE.
” They may even engage in some “ not-TARP ” loans .
( More on all of the Fed ’ s recent and massive failures in my next post , as I ’ ll keep this one to being just about the big bond bust . )
As one reader ( who goes by the name “ Aricool ” ) said on a comment to my FuBEAR article on another site , “ In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FUBAR that Banks and Shadow banks/hedgefunds effectively can print there own money now , when the Fed is buying rehypothecated UST IOUs .
We do not have a CB anymore .
Funny money gone wild !
” I think that about sums up the current state of the US treasury market , and it only looks a lost worse for the corporate bond market !
Aricool continued , “ This time it is fraud and financialism scams the Fed is buying/bailing out .
The financial system is now almost completely moral hazard and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , b/c it ain ’ t there… .
Fed is almost certainly clueless about this problem and the politicians for 100 % sure are .
No-one ’ s risk models assumed global economic shutdown for any period of time .
So , they ’ ll all be way behind the curve as the ( collateral call ) tsunami comes and collateral chains collapse.
” It is just like no one ’ s risk models during the housing crisis assumed the possibility that housing prices would decline for months , which would turn ARMs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ madness is now forced to be endless because , as Peter Schiff puts it , It ’ s a dangerous financial circle when even USTs are not safe because you don ’ t know who in all the flurry really owns the right to sell them or , to put it more precisely , who has already pledged those exact treasures you are buying as collateral for their own high-risk schemes that are now blowing apart .
So , I got out .
You might as well braid bonds into a hangman ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Bond Bubble is beginning to burst , and when that happens , stock action in the last few weeks will seem like a mild foreshock .
It ’ s about to get real ugly in everything because that is how we have loaded our entire economy with crap … and called it “ strong.
” The president and the Fed and all the permabulls said “ the economy is strong.
” The president said it is the “ strongest economy ever.
” Well , the “ strongest economy ever ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a thousand fault lines that we built in throughout the Fed ’ s Great Recovery !
And the fall of the giants has begun as , just today … Expect many more downgrades where that came from .
Literal collateral damage is here .
The Epocalypse is here , too !
You haven ’ t even seen economic hell yet !
This is just economic Armageddon .
Wait until the fires in the pit come on when the bonds stored down there begin to burn !
That ’ s when the banks above @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot more hell to pay for years of benefiting from and praising total financial profligacy .
The Everything Bubble is just starting to crack apart , and the bursting of the bond bubble inside of it will be even worse than the stock bubble .
It will become an unstoppable raging inferno once the downgrades cause collateral backups through the entire system .

by David Haggith
The bust is on! Not only is the stock market crashing like never seen before (Dow down 3,000 points today!), but there are now deeply distressing breaks in the bond market. These staggering responses to Fed actions run counter to what is expected; but people are so focused on stocks, the are missing the more worrisome action.
When the Dow crashed trough the sub-basement into the pit of hell today, 10-year bonds remained locked around the 0.75% rate they’ve hunkered in at for about a week. This represents a freeze on the flight to safety in bonds, which indicates how illiquid the bond market has become and how its patches are pulling at their stitches. Money fleeing stocks is now avoiding bonds and going to cash.
Last Monday 30-year yields posted the biggest intraday decline since at least October 1998, pushing bond prices up as stocks continued to sell off. That’s what you would expect when stocks are crashing and the Fed is rushing back to easing. Stocks sell and money flees into bonds as a safe haven, pushing yields down and prices up. The rest of the week they did the opposite. Bond yields rose and prices fell as stocks mostly fell.
By the the end of the week, a massive injection of cash from the Federal Reserve along with President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency with promises of fiscal support gave stocks their best day in history, but bond prices continued to fall as yields rose. Throughout the Fed’s Great “Recovery,” bond yields fell whenever the Fed sucked up government bonds with its QE, but now concerns about the necessary issuance of even greater record amounts of government debt, pushed the yields that investors demand up and prices, therefore, down, even when the Fed practically promised to buy everything.
During the middle of last week’s reversal, I got our 401Ks entirely out of bonds and into cash (the only other safe alternative in our 401K plans) because the movements were becoming too unpredictable. I decided it was time to reap the gains that bonds had given during the stock market’s crash, so I came through all right, but most of the gains were already lost, so violently did bonds swing the other way.
How bad is the bond breakup?
I was, as it turned out, in good company. Analysts suddenly started to say the U.S. government-debt market is not functioning properly:
“We were just trying on Monday to trim a long position in the 30-year Treasury because it had moved so far in our favor, and were unable to get bids from several major dealers. We’ve never seen that before.… I’ve never seen … the inability to trade a U.S. Treasury…. Liquidity is not only cataclysmic but getting worse…. Traders also reported a shortage of prices on screens, while futures on U.S. ultra bonds hit circuit breakers repeatedly during Friday morning trading in Europe. “We heard there were some issues in off-the-run Treasuries,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on CNBC Friday morning. “We are working on that ” … but apparently not enough, and the result was the biggest VaR shock of all time as risk parity funds launched a crushing deleveraging which has crippled conventional correlations, and left traders speechless at … offerless Treasury markets…. As risk parity funds were caught in a liquidation cascade, both the equity and Treasury markets became unstable to the point of being untradeable. After starting the week off below 1%, 30-year yields soared to 1.79% amid the margin call liquidation route…. Said Zoeb Sachee, head of European government-bond trading at Citigroup Inc. “There has been an abrupt deterioration in liquidity in the last week or so and it seems to get worse by the day.” “We have seen such aggressive moves in the market that everyone is having to rebalance, address losses, or de-risk,” [said] Richard Kelly, head of global strategy at TD Bank…. “We are at the stage where central banks need to provide exceptional liquidity into the market to make sure that basic markets can function….” ‘The Treasury market is broken.” Zero Hedge
The inability to find a price on older treasuries (“off-the-run” treasuries) is significant because in repo agreements, someone who wants to effectively get a loan offers an existing treasury to market at a price with a promise to purchase it back at a higher price on a set date. So, this indicates a new crack in the repo market. At the same time people “were unable to get bids,” meaning zero offers for the treasuries they wanted to sell. It appears the market froze up from both sides.
“I’ve never seen anything like it”, says veteran bond trader. Amid frenzied trading over the past week, the $18 trillion U.S. Treasury market showed cracks that raised eyebrows across Wall Street, and finally led the Federal Reserve to announce a range of measures on Sunday night including purchases of hundreds of billions of U.S. government bonds over the coming months…. The cost to trade Treasurys with virtually identical terms but which differ in maturities by a few months has diverged sharply last week as traders struggled to buy and sell bonds in a hurry. This worrisome phenomenon underlines how volatility across Wall Street has seen trading volumes for older Treasurys slump even in the U.S. bond-market which is advertised as the deepest and most liquid safe-haven asset in the world. “I have never seen moves like this in 35 years of trading…. At this point, the market will get absolutely exhausted,” said Tom di Galoma, managing director of Treasurys trading at Seaport Global Securities…. The more visible and most widely traded part of the market are newer “on-the-run” securities which are the bonds most recently issued by the U.S. government, but it’s the older “off-the-run” securities that represent the bulk of the $18 trillion market. Much of it is held by fund managers, insurance companies, pension funds, and other investors…. Though traders have been able to move in and out of on-the-run Treasurys with relative smoothness, it’s the less liquid and much bigger off-the-run portion of the market that has seen a sharp erosion of liquidity. This has led to a sharp widening of the price difference between the two buckets of bonds…. The surge in trading costs for older off-the-run Treasurys highlights the enormous pressure faced by broker-dealers, the middlemen of the bond-market, who are grappling with the biggest swings in government debt yields in sometimes decades. “If we can’t price and clear Treasurys in a very efficient manner, the market is going to have broader issues,” said Gregory Faranello, head of AmeriVet Securities…. Mutual funds and other investors promise their clients that they will be able to pull money in and out of funds on a day-to-day basis…. “You couldn’t trade off-the-run Treasurys even if you begged people,” said Gang Hu, managing director of WinShore Capital Management, a fixed-income hedge fund…. Market participants say the recent blow-out of bid-ask spreads for older Treasurys is not so much a reflection of funding pressures, and more a reflection of how dealers were struggling to handle unprecedented daily volatility in the bond-market…. Priya Misra, global head of rates strategy at TD Securities, in an interview with Bloomberg Television said the Fed’s repo liquidity injections would not help smooth dislocations in the Treasury market…. The U.S. central bank offered up $1.5 trillion of funds through longer-term repurchasing operations this week…. The U.S. central bank said it would buy … $500 billion in Treasury securities and $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities over the coming months, beginning on Monday…. Investors say the lack of liquidity in the off-the-run Treasurys shines a light on the workings of financial markets, at a time when it could come under increased pressure in the coming months as the coronavirus epidemic impacts economies and markets. MarketWatch
Wow! What a sudden swing for the normally sanguine government bond market. Yields at first plunged as a result of the Fed’s actions on Monday and then began drifting back up to where they were. At the same time, older treasuries stagnated while new ones did not. What is causing older treasuries — the ones used for repos — to become so, well, dead, that they’re not moving?
The shift from stock troubles to new bond troubles is even more severe … or, at least, sudden … than I expected. While I saw a badly flawed economy slowly crumbling into recession, I didn’t know it would get a COVID-19 booster to put a heavy foot in its back and stomp it down.
And, now that has led us to this headline, which I’ll let you read on MarketWatch, after you are done with this article, so they get some benefit from my use of their extensive quotes above:
The bond market is troubled in the government basket and in the corporate basket. The long and short of it is, as the article just linked to says, that the decade-long bond bubble is imploding from one end to the other. On the corporate side, the global credit cycle is ending because defaults are about to begin. Corporate bonds are in a crisis situation with no liquidity in the market. (I recommend you read the article above.)
It’s easy to see why corporate bonds are moving toward default as revenues crash under the virus for corporations that loaded up on debt for stock buybacks when debt was cheap. Now the cost for refinancing corporate debt is rising as investor flee to safety. But that makes the freeze in government debt trading all the harder to understand.
As Bloomberg also writes,
Bond-fund prices are dropping the furthest below their net-price value they have ever gone, creating “unprecedented dislocations in the ETFs that track them.”
The inherent rub is that fixed-income ETFs, which trade on exchanges and behave like stocks, are much more liquid than the securities they hold. That’s fueled fears that in the event of a sell-off, investors scrambling to redeem their holdings would overwhelm the managers…. Now, as credit spreads blow out and investors rush for the exit, fixed-income ETFs are being put to the test. Bloomberg
In other words, investors can move in and out of the ETFs (stock Exchange Traded Funds) much easier than the fund managers can move in and out of the bonds they hold in those funds, making it hard for the managers to sell bonds and cash out members who are fleeing.
How did this upset in the normally sanguine bond market happen and why? I think the bond market is riddled with problems but to try to understand why its breaking up in government bonds — the safest haven of all — we’re going to have to dig deeper. Let’s start with asking, “Why are ‘old’ treasuries stalling out in trade, while new treasuries are doing fine?” We’d ask that because it is such an anomaly, and an absolute anomaly might point us in the direction of some of the deepest trouble.
What went broke?
I suspect people started fleeing government bonds for the same two reasons I saw them as no longer being a safe haven. One reason was the obvious: all of Trump’s promises of government stimulus and corporate bailouts and assistance to job-stranded citizens mean a huge increase in the government deficit that has already seen a huge increase this year. That means huge issuances of new bonds. When you’re already running more than a one-trillion-dollar deficit, you’re not in good shape to pile on more.
The Fed, however, simultaneously promised to vacuum all of that up as quickly as the government issues it, monetizing the debt, but everyone is nervous the Fed is losing controls as well as the government. So, I needed to find a bigger, deeper, darker reason for the freeze in older bonds.
That led me to discovering (for myself) something much worse. It has a gnarly name — “rehypothecation” — that may need some explaining. The short of it is that older US government bonds have become unsafe because of how they are traded and used as collateral again and again, and everyone is losing track of the collateral pledges (or never had track). That’s why money fleeing from stocks is choosing even safer havens now. The older the bond, the more likely it stacked in more than one collateral basket. (But that, too, takes some explaining as to how that can happen.) This is what has banks scared, driving fear in the repo market and churning up a constant crisis state there. (In addition to the failing hedge funds the I pointed out in one of my Patron Posts. Yet, they may be connected, too.)
Rather than attempt to explain rehypothecation myself, I’m going to let two others explain it — one in words that I think lay it out about as simply as it can be stated and the other with his magic drawing board.
In an attempt to contain the damage [in bonds], the Federal Reserve on March 3 slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in its first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off…. Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking…. So what was the Fed’s reasoning for lowering the fed funds rate? According to some financial analysts, the fire it was trying to put out was actually in the repo market, where the Fed has lost control despite its emergency measures of the last six months. Repo market transactions come to $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion per day and keep our modern-day financial system afloat…. The risky element of these apparently secure trades is that the collateral itself [the bonds that are traded, including government bonds] may not be reliable, because it may be subject to more than one claim. For example, it may have been acquired [as pledged collateral, not as a physical possession] in a swap with another party for securitized auto loans or other shaky assets — a swap that will have to be reversed at maturity. As I explained in an earlier article, the private repo market has been invaded by hedge funds, which are highly leveraged and risky; so risk-averse money market funds and other institutional lenders have been withdrawing from that market. When the normally low repo interest rate shot up to 10% in September, the Fed therefore felt compelled to step in. The action it took was to restart its former practice of injecting money short-term through its own repo agreements with its primary dealers, which then lent to banks and other players. On March 3, however, even that central bank facility was oversubscribed, with far more demand for loans than the subscription limit…. The Fed’s emergency rate cut was in response to that crisis. Lowering the fed funds rate by half a percentage point was supposed to relieve the pressure on the central bank’s repo facility by encouraging banks to lend to each other. But the rate cut had virtually no effect, and the central bank’s repo facility continued to be oversubscribed the next day and the following…. The problem is in the collateral, which lenders no longer trust. Lowering the fed funds rate did not relieve the pressure on the Fed’s repo facility for obvious reasons: Banks that are not willing to take the risk of lending to each other unsecured at 1.5% in the fed funds market are going to be even less willing to lend at 1%…. But surely the Fed knew that. So why lower the fed funds rate? Perhaps because it had to do something to maintain the façade of being in control, and lowering the interest rate was the most acceptable tool it had. The alternative would be another round of quantitative easing…. In the face of a recession caused by massive supply-chain disruption, the U.S. central bank has shown itself to be impotent. TruthDig
In other words, no one trust the bonds that are used as collateral in repo financing are clear — that they have not been expressly offered to others as collateral who might have first positions in the undisclosed collateral chain. This author explains this root cause in another article”
At $1 trillion daily, the repo market is much bigger and more global than the fed funds market that is the usual target of central bank policy. Repo trades are supposedly secured with “high-quality collateral” (usually U.S. Treasuries). But they are not risk-free, because of the practice of “re-hypothecation”: the short-term “owner” of the collateral can use it as collateral for another loan, creating leverage – loans upon loans. The IMF has estimated that the same collateral was reused 2.2 times in 2018, which means both the original owner and 2.2 subsequent re-users believed they owned the same collateral. This leveraging, which actually expands the money supply, is one of the reasons banks put their extra funds in the repo market rather than in the fed funds market. But it is also why the repo market and the U.S. Treasuries it uses as collateral are not risk-free…. As Wall Street veteran Caitlin Long warns: “U.S. Treasuries are … the most rehypothecated asset in financial markets, and the big banks know this.… U.S. Treasuries are the core asset used by every financial institution to satisfy its capital and liquidity requirements – which means that no one really knows how big the hole is at a system-wide level…. “This is the real reason why the repo market periodically seizes up. It’s akin to musical chairs – no one knows how many players will be without a chair until the music stops…. Some hedge funds take the Treasury security they have just bought and use it to secure cash loans in the repo market. They then use this fresh cash to increase the size of the trade, repeating the process over and over and ratcheting up the potential returns. Zero Hedge concludes: “This … explains why the Fed panicked in response to the GC [General Collateral] repo rate blowing out to 10% on Sept 16, and instantly implemented repos as well as rushed to launch QE 4: not only was Fed Chair Powell facing an LTCM [Long Term Capital Management] like situation, but because the repo-funded [arbitrage] was (ab)used by most multi-strat funds, the Federal Reserve was suddenly facing a constellation of multiple LTCM blow-ups that could have started an avalanche that would have resulted in trillions of assets being forcefully liquidated as a tsunami of margin calls hit the hedge funds world….” Ellen Brown
Does anyone want to trust that the Fed has that all sorted out, given how the repo crisis has raged on for half a year? In short, the most basic, supposedly most secure, lowest-interest market has become garbage, and it’s about to be incinerated due to spontaneous combustion. You can see the smoke rising from the junk pile now.
Here is the magic-drawing-board explanation for those who do better with a visual explanation of something complicated like rehypothecation :
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And that is why we are now seeing moves the ones below after half a year of constant repo intervention by the Fed:
Does that look under control to you? Or does it look like a hockey stick?
Which is why I don’t even trust US government bonds anymore
Simply put, you don’t know how many times the old government bonds your bond fund owns (or thinks it owns) have been pledged as collateral now that hedge funds have entwined themselves so deeply into the repo market.
My move of our 401Ks into cash funds may ultimately not be safe now either if banks start to fail due to the rehypothecation problem, but it will be safest for the longest among the kinds of funds available in our 401Ks. One can hope that, by the time cash funds (made up of money market funds and CDs, etc.) look unsteady, most stocks will have bottomed out to where one might be able to re-enter the stock market safely at bargain prices.
I have doubts that government bonds will stabilize because of the rehypothecation problem and rapidly rising government debt and the seeming inability of the Fed to wrestle all of that back under control. The Repocalypse has returned with a vengeance, and the Fed is having a hard time feeding the monster with enough to keep it quiet.
As I’ve laid out in my recent Patron Posts, I anticipate some big changes in how the Fed does its work. It may start giving out non-recourse loans. It appears it is already accepting lower quality collateral for its new bald-faced QE, about which it now simply says, “We don’t care what you call it. We’re just doing it.” Is it becoming a garbage disposal again for all this junk?
It has reversed from trying to roll off all of its tired, dog-eared mortgage-backed securities (MBS) junk left over from its Great Recession salvation days to now stocking back up on that rubbish in order to clear the trash off the market and make banks safer.
It may be accepting that stuff in repos because they are what banks most want to get rid of or because they are now deemed just as safe as rehypothecated US treasuries. If that’s the case, the Fed has just moved over the past weekend to giving banks cash for toxic junk as well as rehypothecated US treasuries.
Sucking up this swill is likely one reason the Fed has opened up the repo taps to pouring out another $1.5 trillion in “call-it-what-you-want-now QE.” They may even engage in some “not-TARP” loans. (More on all of the Fed’s recent and massive failures in my next post, as I’ll keep this one to being just about the big bond bust.)
As one reader (who goes by the name “Aricool”) said on a comment to my FuBEAR article on another site, “In this way, the system is so FUBAR that Banks and Shadow banks/hedgefunds effectively can print there own money now, when the Fed is buying rehypothecated UST IOUs. We do not have a CB anymore. Funny money gone wild!”
I think that about sums up the current state of the US treasury market, and it only looks a lost worse for the corporate bond market!
Aricool continued, “This time it is fraud and financialism scams the Fed is buying/bailing out. The financial system is now almost completely moral hazard and what will collapse it is collateral calls, b/c it ain’t there…. Fed is almost certainly clueless about this problem and the politicians for 100% sure are. No-one’s risk models assumed global economic shutdown for any period of time. So, they’ll all be way behind the curve as the (collateral call) tsunami comes and collateral chains collapse.”
It is just like no one’s risk models during the housing crisis assumed the possibility that housing prices would decline for months, which would turn ARMs into underwater timebombs.
And this repo madness is now forced to be endless because, as Peter Schiff puts it,
“How else is the fiscal stimulus paid for? It’s paid for by the Fed. The Fed ends up doing more QE to buy all the bonds that have to be sold to finance the stimulus” Zero Hedge
It’s a dangerous financial circle when even USTs are not safe because you don’t know who in all the flurry really owns the right to sell them or, to put it more precisely, who has already pledged those exact treasures you are buying as collateral for their own high-risk schemes that are now blowing apart.
So, I got out. You might as well braid bonds into a hangman’s rope and hang yourself with them.
The Bond Bubble is beginning to burst, and when that happens, stock action in the last few weeks will seem like a mild foreshock. It’s about to get real ugly in everything because that is how we have loaded our entire economy with crap … and called it “strong.”
The president and the Fed and all the permabulls said “the economy is strong.” The president said it is the “strongest economy ever.” Well, the “strongest economy ever” is about to burst along every one of a thousand fault lines that we built in throughout the Fed’s Great Recovery!
And the fall of the giants has begun as, just today …
S&P, confirming it would move quickly on rating downgrades this time following a near record plunge in the price of oil last week, downgraded Exxon from AA+ to AA as Exxon’s “Lower Oil Price Assumption Weakens Cash Flow/Leverage Metrics”; and since the outlook is negative, it means more downgrades are coming. Zero Hedge
Expect many more downgrades where that came from. Literal collateral damage is here.
The Epocalypse is here, too! You haven’t even seen economic hell yet! This is just economic Armageddon. Wait until the fires in the pit come on when the bonds stored down there begin to burn! That’s when the banks above go up in flames. There is a lot more hell to pay for years of benefiting from and praising total financial profligacy.
The Everything Bubble is just starting to crack apart, and the bursting of the bond bubble inside of it will be even worse than the stock bubble. It will become an unstoppable raging inferno once the downgrades cause collateral backups through the entire system.
(More on that to come. Fortunately, now that I cannot write fast enough to keep up with our economic collapse, I have a paid month off work as result of our economy going into planned hibernation at the end of winter. I’ll do what I can to eulogize the economy as all of this plays out and to lay out how the pieces are likely to fall from here on out. I hope you’ll support that effort.)


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-18--Visualizing Coronavirus Disease by the Numbers

The coronavirus is fundamentally changing the world before our eyes .
Our goal at HowMuch.net has always been to help @ @ @ @ @ do that by creating beautiful data visualizations that tell a story and help people make @ @ @ @ @ response to the coronavirus outbreak , we ’ re creating a new page to help @ @ @ @ @ really going on with the virus and the economy .
We will stick to the @ @ @ @ @ and avoid undue alarmism .
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by howmuch
The coronavirus is fundamentally changing the world before our eyes.
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Our goal at HowMuch.net has always been to help people understand money. We do that by creating beautiful data visualizations that tell a story and help people make better financial decisions. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, we’re creating a new page to help people understand what’s really going on with the virus and the economy.
We will stick to the facts as we know them and avoid undue alarmism. We’ll always use reliable sources for our data. Yes, financial markets are in turmoil, entire countries are on lockdown and governments are struggling to formulate a coherent response. But our mission remains the same: to help our readers better understand the world even as it rapidly changes.


investmentwatchblog--2020-03-19--News on Covid19 checks: Income cap for getting a full $1200 check (new #) is $75k. Scales down until

News on Covid19 checks : Income cap for getting a full $ 1200 check ( new # ) is $ @ @ @ @ @ you hit $ 95k .
Then nothing .
It doubles if you are married .
@ @ @ @ @ .
Also $ 500 per child but unclear if that ’ s based on household @ @ @ @

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News on Covid19 checks: Income cap for getting a full $1200
check (new #) is $75k. Scales down until you hit $95k. Then
nothing. It doubles if you are married. Is based on 2019
income. Also $500 per child but unclear if that’s based on
household income.All per @SenKevinCramer
News on Covid19 checks: Income cap for getting a full $1200 check (new #) is $75k. Scales down until you hit $95k. Then nothing. It doubles if you are married. Is based on 2019 income. Also $500 per child but unclear if that’s based on household income.All per @SenKevinCramer — Trish Turner (@caphilltrish) March 19, 2020