BlackMask Breaking News

The United Nations has predicted that the economic fallout from the worldwide coronavirus outbreak may end up killing more people than the actual disease itself. The virus’ outbreak has decimated the world economy and threatens the lives of millions around the globe who had been emerging from poverty. Economists forecast a global recession that will result in up to 420 million people plunging into extreme poverty, or making less than $2 a day. The U.S. has seen its unemployment levels reach levels not seen since the Great Depression while vulnerable poorer countries consider the virus’ impact on those already impoverished. “I feel like we’re watching a slow-motion train wreck as it moves through the world’s most fragile countries,” Nancy Lindborg, the president of the nonprofit U.S. Institute of Peace, said, according to the paper. The head of the International Labour Organization (ILO) said  with lost working hours higher than originally forecast, and equivalent to 495 million full-time jobs globally in the second quarter of the year.  The bleak news from ILO Director-General Guy Ryder coincided with an updated mid-year forecast from the UN body. Lower and middle-income countries have suffered most, with an estimated 23.3 per cent drop in working hours – equivalent to 240 million jobs – in the second quarter.  Previously, the ILO had suggested a 14 per cent average drop in global working time, equivalent to the loss of 400 million jobs, relative to the fourth quarter of 2019.  Workers in developing nations had also seen their income drop more than 15 per cent, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder told journalists in Geneva.  “On top of this, these are the places where there are the weakest social protection systems, so there are very few resources or protections for working people to fall back upon”, he said. “If you look at it regionally, the Americas were worst-affected, with losses of 12.1 per cent.”  Mr. Ryder highlighted that while the Governments of richer countries had shored up their economies with hundreds of billions of dollars, poorer nations had been unable to do the same.  Without such fiscal stimulus, working hours losses would have been 28 per cent between April and June, instead of 17.3 per cent, he insisted.  State financial support has led to the emergence of an extremely worrying “fiscal stimulus gap” between wealthy economies and the developing world, amounting to $982 billion, Mr. Ryder warned. “It runs a risk of leading us to post-COVID world with greater inequalities between regions, countries, sectors and social groups,” he said. “It’s a polar opposite to the better world that we want to build back, and it reminds us all, that unless we are all able to overcome and get out of this pandemic, none of us will.” Although the $982 billion global stimulus package was a staggering sum, the ILO Director-General noted that low-income countries needed a fraction of this figure – $45 billion – to support workers in the same way as wealthier nations had done, while lower-middle-income countries required the remaining $937 billion. To protect workers and economies everywhere, Mr. Ryder warned against any premature loosening of support for health measures aimed at combating the pandemic, in view of increasing infection rates in many countries. Nick Note: This plague is far from being bought under control. I still maintain we will bump along the bottom at best for another year.

YOU WILL SEE WAVES OF ATTEMPTED RE OPENINGS FLOWED BY REEMERGING INFECTIONS AND LOCKDOWNS AGAIN!

https://youtu.be/3lqCAEYe91k

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate acquitted Donald Trump on Saturday of inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol last month, sparing him from conviction in his second impeachment trial in a year despite broad condemnation of his role in sparking the deadly siege. The Senate voted 57-43 in favor of convicting the former president, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to do so, on a charge that he incited the insurrection that left five people dead, forced lawmakers to flee, and put his own vice president in danger while overseeing the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election win. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted “not guilty,” in the trial, offered scathing remarks about Trump after the verdict.

By Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a World Health Organization-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, one of the team’s investigators said, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began. The team had requested raw patient data on 174 cases that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases expert who is a member of the team. Such raw data is known as “line listings”, he said, and would typically be anonymised but contain details such as what questions were asked of individual patients, their responses and how their responses were analysed. “That’s standard practice for an outbreak investigation,” he told Reuters on Saturday via video call from Sydney, where hed is currently undergoing quarantine. He said that gaining access to the raw data was especially important since only half of the 174 cases had exposure to the Huanan market, the now-shuttered wholesale seafood centre in Wuhan where the virus was initially detected. Nick Note: as we reported in great detail this plague was hatched out of the Wuhan bio level 5 research facility. THe only thing not for certain is this question. Was it a deliberate release or accidental. I can tell you once the virus was in the wild the Chinese government paid for trips to foreign cities of infected hordes. WHY? The Chinese economy is fully recovered and growing like gang busters. At the same time the US and Europe are still devastated.

 

 

Billionaire real estate investor   the markets are disconnected from reality and some deals involving special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, remind him of the speculation in internet companies during the 1990s dot-com bubble. Zell said he believes SPACs do offer positive benefits for investors who buy in at the creation of the so-called blank-check companies. However, the founder of Equity Group Investments said he’s worried about the fundamental business prospects for some companies that go public via a SPAC. “If done well, it’s a very effective transaction. It’s one of the few times where the quote-unquote buyer has enormous power,” Zell said. “In other words, if you’re a buyer of an IPO SPAC, the worst thing that can happen is you get your money back in the cost to carry. The best thing that can happen is they make a very attractive deal and then you have a decision to make as to whether you want to play or not.” But in some cases, Zell said, the SPAC’s target company is not that attractive. He did not mention any names. “In this speculative environment we’re talking, you’ve had a number of these SPACs done with making money going to the moon and I saw one the other day on electric charging stations” where the company did not project positive cash flow for years, Zell said. “This is rampant speculation again, very much like the dot-com boom.” Investor enthusiasm for highly speculative internet stocks helped push the tech-heavy Nasdaq up more than 500% from 1995 until the bubble burst in March 2000. Zell, who started Equity Group Investments more than 50 years ago, launched his own SPAC called Equity Distribution Acquisition Corp., which is described as “targeting opportunities to apply technological advancement within the industrial industry.” EGI’s portfolio over the years also branched out from real estate to industries including health care, logistics, manufacturing, transportation and media. Zell also chairs five NYSE-listed firms, including three real estate investment trusts.

Zell said his concern about action in the stock market extends to other recent developments, including the Reddit-fueled short squeeze in GameStop shares.

Retail traders piled into the heavily bet-against stock, prompting hedge funds and other bearish investors to try to minimize their losses by buying up shares at their current higher prices. Both groups of people buying GameStop’s stock helped cause a meteoric rise, with shares gaining 400% in a single week in late January. The video-game retailer’s stock has plunged in February, ending Monday’s session at $60 per share. That’s down from its Jan. 28 intraday high of $483 apiece. In August, GameStop traded below $5.

“There’s no reality attached to that, and so it’s just pure speculation,” Zell said. “I think this is very negative for the stock market. It’s very negative for the capital-raising markets. It’s just creating and perpetuating just an incredible sense of disbelief and ‘can you top this?’”

The headline-grabbing GameStop saga turned parts of the U.S. equity market into a game of musical chairs, Zell said, in which “everybody knows there’s going to be one less chair when the music stops and 18-year-old mavens are betting they can get out before somebody else gets out. Nick Note: This is/will be some really tricky kick ass trading. Thats were the mega bucks are made. I see a rocket launch coming… Then a  blow up like has never been seen before.. timing and guessing lucky is everything. Maybe we can do it maybe not… It sure as hell is worth giving it a go! As in millions

Federal prosecutors and regulators are investigating whether “market manipulation or other types of misconduct” led to a meteoric rise in shares of companies such as GameStop and AMC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The Justice Department’s fraud section and the San Francisco U.S. attorney’s office have sought information about the trading from brokers and social-media companies that were hubs for the trading, the WSJ reported, Nick Note: Reality is the hedge funds and mutual funds are using social media to manipulate the markets to the disadvantage of the little guys. They are taking advantage of their stupidity and using cool dude chats to fuck them to the wall… And it ain’t over!

A cloth mask worn over a surgical mask improves fit and could boost protection.

Fit matters when it comes to your mask protecting you against the virus that causes COVID-19, and layering a well-fitting cloth mask over a surgical mask is likely to prove beneficial, according to new findings released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were not expected to lead to new mask recommendations by the CDC. The public health agency maintains that everyone age 2 and older should wear a face covering when outside their home. It also doesn’t change the recommendation that primarily medical workers in high-risk environments should rely on N95 masks, which act as a strong filter against any contaminants but is notably tougher to breathe in and withstand for long periods of time. Still, the experiment touches on some of the big questions Americans have on how best to protect themselves when mixing in public, such as grocery stores and airplanes. The research suggests that when a person “double masks” — wearing a polypropylene surgical mask with a cloth mask on top — and the people around them did the same, the risk of transmitting the virus falls more than 95%. Researchers, who used two mannequin-like forms to test exposure, found a similar benefit with tightening a single surgical mask around the ears to improve its fit. Using a hack known as a “knot and tuck,” the researchers ensured the surgical mask fits closely around the face without gaps. The benefit, though, fell to 80% if only one person wore the double mask and 60% if only one person knotted their surgical mask for a tighter fit.

Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 emergency response, said the research results suggest that combining the close fit of a cloth mask with the filtration of a surgical mask is a good option. It also makes the case that “community masking” — everyone wearing a mask and not just a few people — matters. “Universal masking is one of our most potent interventions to control the pandemic, we believe,” Brooks told ABC News in an interview. “When all of us mask, not only does it giving us some personal protection. But by each of us doing that, we’re protecting other people,” he added.

The CDC has struggled with its public message on masks. Early in the pandemic, health officials urged the public not to wear masks because of concerns about dire shortages for health care workers. They also believed the virus would behave like other respiratory viruses and mostly transmit when a person shows symptoms like a cough and fever. But after research showed the virus that causes COVID-19 was spreading at an alarming rate through some people who never had symptoms, the CDC in April 2020 abruptly shifted gears and began recommending the public wear cloth masks. By June 2020, the World Health Organization agreed that people should wear masks especially when social distancing is not possible.

In recent weeks, the CDC has been pressed on whether it should toughen its recommendation on masks because of new variants of the virus that make it more transmissible. One question was whether the CDC might embrace N95 masks for public use and try to boost production. There are still shortages of N95 masks.

But agency officials have declined to suggest specifically that Americans wear the tight-fitting N95s because — while highly effective — they are particularly difficult to wear for long periods of time because they are harder to breathe in. Also, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said wearing an N95 mask probably isn’t necessary in public places. “I think if everybody is wearing a mask, if you’re wearing it and six feet apart … you have enough protective effectiveness in the barriers of those two masks and the space between you that you probably don’t need it,” Walensky said Jan. 27 during a CNN Town Hall. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has said people shouldn’t read too much into the evolving discussion on masks. Scientific experiments are likely to shed new light on what’s most effective, but the recommendation on face coverings remain the same. “The discussion is changing, not the goalposts,” Fauci told Fox News on Jan. 27, responding to a question about how many masks a person should wear. He later added: “You know what would be a good start? If everybody wears at least one mask. I think that would be important.”

“We want to communicate to the public that if you want to get more out of that mask, there’s a number of low-tech ways you can improve its performance,” Brooks said. Nick Note: Being the inventor of the “UGLY MASK” and P3 nanoparticle filter ULPA 15 I  can tell you we have know for a long time the dangerous of the N95 coffee/ toilet paper filters. So noow they admit their filters are not working so well especially on the mutated strains. Their solution is wear 2 masks…. REALLY!. For a fact no one even in high risks settings have reported they have NOT tested positive for the virus much less get infected using  the UGLY MASK.. And reports back from the field report that half the people in high risks environments using the billion dollar conglomerate toilet paper coffee filter SHIT are testing positive and half of those are getting infections..I have made thousands of them at great financial loss and as Sarah says DAD you invent things people do not want! Well Sugar Bugger that is my fate in life!!!

Feb 11 (Reuters) – Geneva-based Pictet Group’s assetmanagement arm expects the S&P 500 to rise 10% from its currentlevels, with improving economic growth and easy monetary policyhelping to extend its rally. The S&P 500 has risen around 21% from its October lows, and closed on Wednesday at 3909.88 points.

“There is a risk of a melt up in a way, in the U.S.especially, and you don’t want to stand against it,” LucaPaolini, chief strategist at Pictet Asset Management, told theReuters Global Markets Forum on Wednesday.

But valuations were high at current levels, said Paolini,whose company manages more than $200 billion in assets. U.S. bond yields may rise in the next three-to-six monthsdue to an uptick in inflation expectations and possibly somepre-emptive Fed guidance on tapering its massive stimulusprogramme, Paolini said. He expected the 10-year treasury yield to end 2021 around1.25%, last seen in March 2020. It is currently at 1.14%. Paolini said global inflation levels are likely to remainlow this year, but accelerate in 2022 when the global economy isexpected to return to near-full potential. But there was still a risk of rising inflation, which shouldbe hedged with gold, some commodities and U.S. TIPS, or treasuryinflation protected securities, he added. Paolini called high-yielding corporate bonds an “incrediblymrisky” investment in the context of U.S. junk bonds fallingbelow 4% for the first time ever. To make a good return at this level (in junk bonds), hesaid, “you need to have … no rise in bond yields, no Fedtaper, decline in default rates, a strong economy, and I thinkit is quite unlikely that you’re going to get all of that.” Paolini said there was not a strong case for bitcoin pricesto rise in the long term, calling the meteoric rise ofcryptocurrencies a side effect of a long period of monetaryexpansion. “That’s a very speculative asset class, which I think is …incredibly dangerous.” Bitcoin powered to a record high earlier this week,nearing$50,000, following Elon Musk-led Tesla’s investment in the cryptocurrency that had investors believing it may become a main stream asset class.(This interview was conducted in the Reuters Global MarketsForum, a chat room hosted on the Refinitiv Messenger platform. Nick Note: Forget the Wall Street speak in the above report. The main takeaway is the FACT this stock market is about to go parabolic. And I do freaked out markets.And i especially do their demise. All i can tell the bulls is the condemned eat hearty!