Global debt is soaring, posing a risk after pandemic fades: WSJ
Surge in US jobless claims filings expected to continue in today’s update: Reuters
Fed’s Beige Book paints grim economic profile for US: Barron’s
Business inflation expectation fell sharply in April: Atlanta Fed
US industrial output plummets 5.4% in March–biggest decline since 1946: MW
NY Fed Mfg Index falls to a record low in April: NY Fed
Homebuilder sentiment posts biggest monthly decline in data’s 35yr history: CNBC
US headline retail sales collapsed in March although some segments rose: CNBC

The extraordinary gains in long Treasuries so far this year is a sight to behold. In the rush to safety this year, US debt has been a clear winner and within this space long maturities have left the rest of the fixed-income realm in the dust, based on a set of exchange-traded funds through yesterday’s close (Apr. 14).

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Trump suspends US funding for World Health Organization: Politico
US resists IMF plan to support emerging economies’ finances: FT
IEA estimates that a decade of oil-demand growth will evaporate in 2020: CNBC
Social distancing may need to last longer than widely expected: Reuters
IMF expects worst global recession since Great Depression: NY Times
Record drop expected for retail sales in today’s report for March: Reuters
Gold rises to 8-year high: Bloomberg

There have been few places to hide from this year’s dramatic crash in stock markets around the world. Cash, US Treasuries and a select group of government bonds in foreign markets have been a rare source of safety. For funds that held risk assets, managed futures strategies have also been an island of calm, at least for some portfolios, including several of the largest ETFs in this niche.

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Governors of 10 states announce plans for gradual economic reopenings: Reuters
US economic reopening expected to be slow and tenuous: WSJ
Fed’s plan to favor certain cities for relief funding draws criticism: FT
Advanced economies on track for deeper slump vs. 2008 crisis: Bloomberg
Coronavirus-earnings season starts with today’s update from JP Morgan: CNBC
Treasury Dept: first round of coronavirus checks have been sent: USA Today
Economic pain will linger longer after economy reopens: NY Times
Is Texas in play for Nov election after state’s economic troubles? Politico
Treasury market’s inflation expectations continue to snap back:

Most of the major asset classes mounted a strong rebound in the shortened trading week through Thursday, Mar. 9, led by US real estate investment trusts (REITs), based on a set of exchange-traded funds. The lone exception: broadly defined commodities, which continued to slump.

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Dr. Fauci: ‘cautious optimism’ that US coronavirus outbreak is slowing: CNBC
China’s new daily coronavirus cases rise to nearly 6-week high: Reuters
China imposes restrictions on publication of coronavirus research: CNN
Trump eyes reopening US economy but governors have the authority: USA Today
Minneapolis Fed President: US economic rebound could be ‘long, hard road’: CNBC
OPEC, Russia and US sign off on cut in oil production cut: Reuters
Goldman Sachs predicts that US stocks have seen their lows: Bloomberg
US consumer prices fell 0.5% in March–biggest monthly fall in 5 years: CNBC

We’ve seen this movie before, only to learn otherwise with subsequent updates. But maybe it’s the real deal this time. The daily change for Covid-19 fatalities in the US is showing renewed signs of trending lower, based on data through Apr. 12, according to numbers published this evening by Johns Hopkins. As always, it’ll take several days at the least before we can even begin to take the shift seriously. Meantime, there’s bad news to consider: the apex for the sum of cumulative fatalities is still nowhere on the immediate horizon. But if the downturn in the daily change persists, the fatalities may be close to flat-lining.
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● Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley―Making AI
Serve Us All
By Kevin Scott with Greg Shaw
Q&A with author (Scott) via The Verge
This week for our Vergecast interview series, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel chats with Microsoft chief technology officer Kevin Scott about his new book Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley―Making AI Serve Us All.
Scott’s book tackles how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help rural America in a more grounding way, from employment to education to public health. In one chapter of his book, Scott focuses on how AI can assist with health care and diagnostic issues — a prominent concern in the US today, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the interview, Scott refocuses the solutions he describes in the book around the current crisis, specifically supercomputers Microsoft has been using to train natural language processing now being used to search for vaccine targets and therapies for the novel coronavirus.
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In recent weeks the moderate optimism on the US economic outlook has deteriorated—gradually at first, then suddenly. The catalyst, of course, is the coronavirus and the attempt to battle its spread—a policy that economist Paul Krugman describes as the economic equivalent of a “medically induced coma.” Whatever you call it, the blowback is severe and no one knows how it’ll play out or, more importantly, how the eventual recovery will unfold. Meantime, let’s consider some of the latest guesstimates for the Covid-19-triggered recession that’s roiling the American economy.

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