Author: BlackMask Financial

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Record infections in France as restrictions spark outcry

France reported a new record for daily coronavirus infections on Thursday a day after the government announced new restrictions on bars and restaurants in major cities which have provoked an outcry from local politicians and business owners. Figures from Public Health France showed that 16,096 people had tested positive for Covid-19 over the last 24 hours, a record — even though experts advise that testing during the first coronavirus wave in March-April captured only a fraction of cases.

The centrist government of President Emmanuel Macron announced a series of new measures on Wednesday to try to slow the spread of the disease, including the closure of all bars and restaurants in Marseille and earlier closing times in Paris and elsewhere.

Faced with criticism from the mayors of Paris and Marseille, legal challenges and calls from some bar owners to defy the new orders, Prime Minister Jean Castex called for “responsibility” and implied his opponents were playing politics. “What I don’t want is that we go back to March,” he said, referring to one of the strictest national lockdowns in Europe in which French people were required to fill out forms to leave their homes.

The southern port city of Marseille has been put on “maximum alert”, while Paris and 10 other cities are at “elevated alert” — the second tier on a new sliding scale system of infection control measures.

Public gatherings in all of these cities — which includes Bordeaux and Lyon — have been limited to 10 people, and attendance of large sporting events or concerts to 1,000. Marseille’s left-wing mayor objected that she had not been consulted about orders to shut bars, restaurants and sports facilities, and insisted that steps taken locally were started slowing the outbreak. “I am angry because there was no consultation,” Mayor Michele Rubirola, herself a doctor, told Franceinfo radio. “Why turn the screws when our numbers have been improving for a few days now?” Owners of restaurants, cafes and other businesses in Marseille said they would stage a protest against the new measures on Friday. Bernard Marty of the UMIH union, which represents the hospitality sector, warned of “insurrection,” with several restaurant owners vowing to ignore the closure orders. Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris, which will see its gyms and other indoor sporting facilities closed as well, said she had lodged a formal protest. “I do not think that the closure of bars after 10:00 pm is an appropriate measure,” Hidalgo told France 3 television. “It is hard to understand: how will it prevent the spread of the virus? How will the fact that we can no longer exercise help us, while sport is an important part of keeping us healthy with strong immune systems?” she asked. Paris hospital authority AP-HP said Thursday that an influx of coronavirus patients was forcing it to start cancelling non-emergency surgery starting this weekend.

The number of coronavirus patients in Paris hospitals had more than doubled in three weeks, from 150 to 330, and would probably reach 600 by month’s end, said deputy director Francois Cremieux. Numbers of Covid-19 patients in intensive care have followed a similar upward curve, from 50 three weeks ago to 132 on Wednesday and likely more than 200 by next week, he said.

With a quarter of critical care beds now taken up by coronavirus patients, AP-HP will start by cancelling 20 percent of operations to free up capacity, said Cremieux. Nick Note: Virus gone wild. The fucks got to have something to fuck, something to get fucked up on and something to fuck up. The global stupid majority. They cannot live without their restaurants, bars, crowd fests, and modern gladiators. They are incapable of calculating the grave danger to themselvs and others. A plague is a horrible thing to underestimate

 

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Trump Says White House Could Veto FDA’s Vaccine Rules

Trump Says the vaccine has to be approved by the HiM not the FDA

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump signaled that he could overrule any tightening of U.S. rules for the emergency clearance of a coronavirus vaccine, a move that could increase concerns that the race to find a Covid-19 shot is being politicized ahead of the presidential election. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to soon issue final guidelines for an emergency-use authorization. Regulators and drugmakers have in recent weeks vowed to adhere to science, not politics, in deciding when a vaccine is ready to reach the market. At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump said it “sounds like a political move” when asked whether the FDA was considering stricter standards for an authorization, suggesting that the White House could intercede if it thought the agency was too rigorous.“That has to be approved by the White House,” Trump said. “We may or may not approve it.” If a vaccine shows promising early signs of being safe and effective, it could be allowed to reach the market on an emergency basis before full results from a clinical trial are available. Companies including Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc., AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson have vaccine candidates in late-stage clinical trials. Some of those studies could produce efficacy data as soon as October. Trump is trailing Democrat Joe Biden in polls ahead of the November election, with surveys showing that a majority of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the virus. Trump has sought to focus on other topics while claiming that his administration is doing a good job handling the virus. The president has been promising that a coronavirus vaccine will be approved within weeks — a gambit to turn a pandemic inoculation into an October surprise for his struggling re-election campaign. Trump and his supporters have also questioned whether government employees are trying to sabotage his efforts to combat the virus. In August, the president attacked the FDA for harboring “deep state” staff slowing vaccine and drug work to hurt him politically. There’s no evidence that’s the case. FDA officials have indicated they would hold a vaccine to a higher standard than other medications that typically receive emergency waivers from the agency. Peter Marks, head of the agency’s biologics office, earlier this month described what he called an EUA-plus program that would accelerate the review of a vaccine but require data standards similar to those that are used when the FDA is considering a full approval. Marks also said at the time that the FDA would like companies to have a median of two months of follow-up on trial participants after they receive the vaccine. “That’s what we’re hoping for,” Marks said. “Most adverse events will happen about a month and a half after vaccination.” He also said any plan for an emergency authorization would include longer-term follow-up once the vaccine is on the market. The FDA has been attempting to rebuild trust as Trump publicly pushes for a vaccine to be authorized by the Nov. 3 election. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has been criticized for exaggerating the benefit of a plasma treatment the agency authorized for use against the virus last month. Hahn has tweeted several times since that outside FDA advisers would review vaccine data. Nick Note: the subject is “Lucky Guess” …… again. The market cares about stimulus for the mega corporations, Happy checks for the masses and the golden shot the vaccine. Earnings, PE ratios, 52 week highs and lows, the trend is your friend,  economic growth and everything else does not matter. And it is my firm belief up to the elections they will be given what they yearn for. GOT IT?

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Trump Says Elderly to Get $200 for Drugs in Bid for Senior Vote

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said that Americans in the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled will be sent $200 discount cards for prescription drugs within weeks, potentially putting cash in their pockets ahead of his November re-election. “Nobody’s seen this before. These cards are incredible,” Trump said Thursday in a speech outlining what he called an “America First Health Plan” in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The cards will be mailed out in coming weeks. I will always take care of our wonderful senior citizens.” Trump didn’t explain in his speech what program or authority would allow the government to provide the cards. Assuming they are sent to 33 million Medicare beneficiaries, the figure Trump used, the cards would cost about $6.6 billion. Money for the cards will be drawn from a demonstration program Medicare uses to test new payment systems and other projects, and the cost will be offset by future savings generated from new price cuts Trump has ordered for drugs bought by Medicare, according to a White House official. The cards can be used for prescription drugs co-pays, the official said, but didn’t elaborate. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services referred questions about the cards to the White House. Trump is struggling to secure the votes of older Americans with less than six weeks before the election. Several recent polls indicate his re-election opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, is tied or leading Trump among people 65 and older, a turnabout from 2016 when the president won the senior vote by a comfortable margin. “Joe Biden won’t be doing this,” Trump said in his speech. The White House has been negotiating with drug makers over an order Trump signed in August that would cut the U.S. prices of some medicines by tying them to prices paid in other Western countries with national health-care systems. But the leading lobby group for the industry, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said last week it had rejected a request from the administration to provide discount cards to Medicare patients as part of the deal. Trump issued the drug price order last week, after negotiations with the industry broke off, but it hasn’t yet taken effect. It isn’t clear whether it will ever generate savings for the government or whether they would be enough to offset the cost of the drug discount cards. Drug companies aren’t aware of Trump’s plans or where funding for the cards will come from, according to a person familiar with the industry’s negotiations with the White House. Trump’s speech was intended to set forth a health care agenda for his second term, addressing a key vulnerability for the president in the election. After his remarks, he signed an executive order that calls on Congress to retain protections for sick people buying insurance — safeguards guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act, a law Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to strike down. The president has often promised he would produce a replacement for Obamacare, which guarantees insurers can’t deny coverage to sick people or charge them more. Just last week, the president said his plan is “ready.” But the order he signed essentially abandons the issue to Congress, suggesting he won’t offer his own plan before the election. Trump’s order purporting to protect people with pre-existing conditions won’t apply to consumers who buy short-term insurance policies that last less than a year, according to the White House official. The Trump administration has promoted the plans as a cheaper alternative to Obamacare plans. But they are cheaper because companies offering them are allowed to exclude sick people and because the plans seldom cover as many services as Obamacare policies. Nick Note: I got skunked….. Sources told me the administration was going to make a “big” health care announcement. I considered the possibility that it would be a vaccine. Not the joke shit above….. Trump has been laying the ground work and has made it clear the decision will be made by him in the White House on the vaccine roll out. And my belief is the stupid MAJORITY will suck it up like a blond coke whore with a bag of white powder spread out on a mirror!

 

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Dow Rides Tech, Stimulus Hopes Higher

https://youtu.be/mWHqZ-oC_9Y

The Dow rose Thursday as an Apple-infused rebound in tech and signs U.S. lawmakers are ready to resume talks on stimulus lifted investor sentiment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.88%, or 234 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.96%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.34%. Tech awoke from its slumber this week, with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) gaining more than 2% and leading the rebound in the Fab 5.  Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) added more than 1%

Investor sentiment on stocks was also boosted by signs U.S. lawmakers are still seeking to get a deal done on further stimulus before the U.S. election.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reportedly plans to resume talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to iron out differences on a fresh round of stimulus to boost the economy. Sectors tied to the progress of the economy such as industrials and financials also found their footing. Financials were pushed higher by a 6% jump in Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) after UBS upgraded its rating on the stock to buy from neutral, citing opportunity ahead for higher trading revenue. UBS suggested a closely fought U.S. presidential election could trigger volatility, boosting Goldman’s trading revenue. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) all traded higher, with the latter up more than 3%. On the economic front, the latest jobs data showed an expected rise in weekly jobless claims, but analysts played down the importance of the headline number. The Labor Department reported that 870,000 people filed for unemployment insurance in the week ended Sept. 19, up from the prior week’s 866,000 and above economists’ forecasts of 840,000.

“[Pandemic unemployment assistance] initial claims and continuing claims remain the more important area to watch in our opinion. This week’s data was especially encouraging,” Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) said.

Nick Note: For the record key to mY “guessing Lucky” is my analysis that their is to much heat. And that heat the politicians are felling will force them to hold their noses and give the other side a win with A NEW STIMULI AS package. In every third world shit hole run by inept leaders they ALWAYS give the masses a gift before elections. And in America that is hell bent on creating a dictator run shit hole it will be no different!

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Bullard: US economy may be within reach of full recovery by year-end

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, in the most upbeat comments by a central banker since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, said the U.S. economy may surge at a 35% annualized rate in the third quarter and the nation may be close to a complete recovery by year-end. Rapid expansion in gross domestic product in the third quarter “may put the U.S. economy within reach of a sort of ‘full recovery’ by the end of 2020,” Bullard, who doesn’t vote on monetary policy this year, said in comments prepared for a virtual presentation to the Global Interdependence Center Thursday. Nick Note: I told you a long time they will not lose the system. And at the present they got a lot of blue chips to put in the pot. Knowing this I new hos i wanted to positions us. Call it another lucky guess……..

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Trump Jeered Paying Respect to RBG: ‘Vote Him Out’

“Vote him out!” Mourners booed President Donald Trump when he went to pay his respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

 President Trump is getting blatantly, and loudly, disrespected for his attempt to pay his respects to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg … and the chants he heard have a familiar ring. First Lady Melania Trump and the President — who was actually wearing a face mask — went to the Supreme Court Thursday morning during the public viewing of flag-draped RBG’s casket. Moments after the crowd of mourners saw him, a chorus of boos rained down on Trump. Then came the repeated chant of “Vote him out!!!” In what Trump’s opponents would call poetic justice … the chant was done to the same cadence of the “lock her up” chants Trump himself has encouraged for years about Hillary Clinton

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US initial jobless claims up by 4,000 to 870,000

Slightly more Americans applied for state unemployment benefits in the week ended Sept. 19 than in the prior week. Jobless claims rose 4,000 to 870,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims in the prior week were raised by 6,000 to 866,000.  The number of people already collecting economic benefits, known as continuing claims fell 167,000 to 12.58 million. These claims are reported with a one-week lag. This is the lowest level of continued claims since mid-April. Jobless claims have been drifting lower lately. Roughly half of the 22 million payroll jobs that were lost in March and April have been regained as people return to work. The prospects for this trend to continue are mixed and economists say high unemployment will remain a problem for at least a couple of years. The Labor Department’s weekly unemployment claims report did showed a significant drop in the total number of people claiming benefits across all unemployment programs, including several emergency programs that extend benefits. That number fell by 3.7 million to 26 million in the week ending September 5th. Nick Note: this report shows vast improvement for now. Because their are so many programs the only way to look at the nember is across all programs. Ans that number showed claims fell by a whopping 3.7 million. That is a big number! By the way it was not that long ago we were seeing over a million claims for unemployment benefits per week…..

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Trump campaign ‘discussing contingency plans to bypass election results’

President Trump’s campaign is discussing “contingency plans” that would involve bypassing the result of November’s election, reports The Atlantic. The report delves into possible scenarios if Trump apparently loses the 2020 presidential election but doesn’t concede, noting that although we’re used to electors being selected based on the popular vote, “nothing in the Constitution says it has to be that way.” Citing Republican Party sources, The Atlantic says that Trump’s campaign is “discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” The campaign would reportedly assert that this step was necessary due to claims of supposed voter fraud, which experts have noted is extraordinarily rare, ahead of the “safe harbor” deadline to appoint 538 electors on Dec. 8. “Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly,” The Atlantic reports. “The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.” A Trump campaign legal adviser who spoke to The Atlantic said that in this scenario, “the state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state.” Lawrence Tabas, chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, also told The Atlantic he has discussed the direct appointment of electors with the Trump campaign, saying, “I’ve mentioned it to them, and I hope they’re thinking about it too.” The Trump campaign said it is “fighting for a free and fair election.” This potential scenario is just one part of the broader piece in which experts warn “conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis.”

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Dictator Elect…

When asked if he would give a “peaceful transfer of power” to Joe Biden were he to lose in the November election. “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said with a smile. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.” The president said there would be no “transfer of power [but a] continuation” if the ballots, which he has issued a tirade on for promoting voter fraud – which has been disproven. “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very … there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” he say, adding “the ballots are out of control.” Nick Note: One way or another Trump told you he will be staying in power. Win lose or draw Trump will be your dictator elect!