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US asks Juan Guaido to renounce claim to Venezuela leadership – for the time being
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Wuhan Residents Dismiss Official Coronavirus Death Toll: ‘The Incinerators Have Been Working Around the Clock’
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US Navy captain says carrier faces dire coronavirus threat
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White House expects 100K-240K virus-related deaths
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Coronavirus death toll at Maryland nursing home rises to 5
One man in his 90s with underlying health problems died Saturday evening at the nursing home, health officials said.
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Durant headlines players in NBA 2K video game tourney
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Coronavirus death toll at Maryland nursing home rises to 5
One man in his 90s with underlying health problems died Saturday evening at the nursing home, health officials said.
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Americans facing financial struggles as April bills loom
There are signs that an already crippled economy may get even worse. Investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates that unemployment in the U.S. will explode to 15% by the end of June, and that the U.S. gross domestic product will drop as much as 34%. Mark Strassmann has a closer look.
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Health officials clarify guidelines on wearing face masks
The Center for Disease Control is taking steps to clarify the confusion over whether the general public should wear face masks or not. Dean Reynolds has the details.
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U.S. Army Field Band still plays during pandemic
Concert halls have gone dark all over the world, but the coronavirus could not silence the U.S. Army Field Band. David Martin reports.
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Nurse helps family say goodbye through FaceTime
Hospitalized with coronavirus, a nurse held her hand and patted her head — offering the physical comfort her family couldn't.
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U.S. rushes to build makeshift hospitals as death toll rises by 800
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Chicago Public Health Commissioner: 'We Want To Be Ahead Of This'
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Who's Sickest From COVID-19? These Conditions Tied To Increased Risk
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NREGS wages go up, thanks to inflation
As new rates come into force from Wednesday, the national average wage stands at Rs 202 per day, which is Rs 20 higher than 2019-20. None of the states has registered zero increase while the lowest hike is Rs 13 and the highest Rs 34. The welcome changehas been possible because of a spike in retail inflation for agriculture labourers - Consumer Price Index (Agriculture Labour).
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Coronavirus: Are loss of smell and taste key symptoms?
However, experts say a fever and a cough are still the main ones to look out for.
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Coronavirus death toll at Maryland nursing home rises to 5
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Americans facing financial struggles as April bills loom
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Health officials clarify guidelines on wearing face masks
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A coronavirus patient's phlegm or poop could still have live virus in it even after they recover and test negative, new research suggests
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29 Best Closet Organization Ideas to Maximize Space and Style
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Poll: 15% of Sanders supporters will vote for Trump if Biden is nominee; 80% would back Biden
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Surge of virus cases in California threatens hospitals
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Prisoners riot in Iran; Netanyahu goes into self-quarantine
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AI tool predicts which coronavirus patients get deadly 'wet lung'
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In scrappy Cambodian casino town, Chinese plan future beyond coronavirus
When casino owner Kang Qiang looks out the window of his 20th floor office in this city on the remote Cambodian coast, he sees construction cranes sitting idle.
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Christie Brinkley says daughter Alexa Ray Joel's wedding planning has been put ‘on hold’
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Army researchers at Fort Detrick who helped discover Ebola treatment seek coronavirus vaccine
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Sam Smith changes 'To Die For' album title and release date amid coronavirus outbreak
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U.S. is swiftly deporting migrant children at the border
"Despite everything I experienced along the way, they deported me the next day," one indigenous teenager from Guatemala told CBS News.
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New York greets hospital ship with cheers; U.S. death toll rises past 3,000
New York welcomed the arrival of a gleaming 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship on Monday as a beacon of hope for the city's desperate fight against the coronavirus pandemic, while the national death toll climbed past 3,000 on the country's most deadly day.
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Trump says coronavirus guidelines may get tougher; 1 million Americans tested
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that federal social distancing guidelines might be toughened and travel restrictions with China and Europe would stay in place as he urged Americans to help fight the coronavirus with tough measures through April.
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Six members of U.S. Congress diagnosed with coronavirus
At least six members of the U.S. Congress have announced that they have contracted the novel coronavirus, and more than 30 others are or were self-quarantining in hopes of limiting the spread of the pandemic.
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Why some of America’s best-known companies won’t qualify for bailout money
Macy’s and Gap Inc. are furloughing most of their workers as their sales collapse — but they might not qualify for the massive backstop for companies that Congress just passed because their finances are so bad that their debt is rated as junk.
The two iconic retailers and other companies running out of cash can’t tap into the new loan program backed by the Federal Reserve because it’s only available to corporations whose debt is considered safe by credit rating firms.
Retailers, casinos and other industries are now lobbying the Treasury Department and the Fed to get access to hundreds of billions of dollars in loans included in the massive relief bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last week. They warn that the central bank will need to cast a wider net to avoid a shockwave of defaults as private funding has begun drying up for all but the most stable companies.
Much of corporate America, “including thousands of household brands that everyone has heard of, will have no ability to get credit,” said Travis Norton, a lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, who represents clients across multiple sectors.
Already, more than half of companies that borrow through corporate bond markets aren’t eligible to get help from the Fed under its current rules because they aren’t classified as “investment-grade.” The central bank’s efforts aren’t designed to bail out companies that might go under, but instead to offer a reassuring backstop to private lending markets.
But there are growing fears that more companies will see their credit ratings cut as the economy slides toward a recession, which would further threaten their ability to get funding. About half of investment-grade debt is only barely above junk status, and plunging oil prices could lead more companies to be downgraded.
“The overall share of debt that is below investment-grade and we would say is most risky and least directly supported by the Fed is $5 trillion,” said Matt Mish, the head of credit strategy at Swiss bank UBS. That debt, which includes over $1 trillion in risky loans to already highly indebted companies, could grow by as much as $350 billion to $450 billion in the coming months from downgrades, he added.
Lobbyists are working to shape the rules governing the $454 billion loan program for big and medium-sized businesses outlined in the law and backed by the Fed, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin must publish within a week.
The rules will determine which companies will be able to apply for loans. Businesses with mediocre credit, bad credit or no credit at all — including those whose bond ratings have been downgraded in recent weeks as the coronavirus has ravaged the economy — are worried about being excluded.
Russ Sullivan, another Brownstein Hyatt lobbyist, said he and his colleagues are trying “to persuade Treasury and the Fed, who have enormous flexibility in how to administer this program, to do it broadly.”
Retailers, which have been ordered to close in some states because they’re not considered essential businesses, are among those worried about not making the cut.
“In cases where the eligibility criteria is too narrow for some of America’s best-recognized companies, we ask that your respective agencies exercise discretion to make these programs more widely available,” Matthew Shay, the president and chief executive of the National Retail Federation, wrote on Friday in a letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Mnuchin.
A spokesperson for the Gap declined to comment.
But there would also be a tradeoff if the Fed and Treasury decide to expand the emergency lending programs to businesses with less-than-ideal credit.
The Treasury Department is planning to stretch the $454 billion that Congress set aside for loans to big and medium-sized businesses by working with the Fed, which will chip in much more. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told reporters last week he hoped that together the Treasury Department and the Fed together could lend $2 trillion to $3 trillion to keep corporate America going for several more months.
Because the Fed isn’t set up to take on the risk of companies defaulting, though, the worse the credit of the businesses allowed to apply for loans, the more money Treasury will have to kick in.
And it’s not just the government that will have to parse out the difference between companies that are merely experiencing a cash crunch because of circumstances out of their control, and which companies were ill-prepared for a downturn, such as having loaded up on too much debt.
Firms responsible for rating companies’ debt -- including Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch -- also are having to make fast-moving decisions about whether to downgrade companies based on circumstances that could prove temporary.
Downgrading a company to junk bond status would, for now, make it ineligible for Fed loans. But if a company needs funding from the central bank to refinance its debt, “that’s already by definition a non-investment-grade company,” UBS’ Mish said.
“Government support will cushion the blow for some companies, but it is unlikely to prevent distress at businesses with less certain long-term viability,” Moody’s said in a report last week.
For the Fed, it is already entering unprecedented territory by announcing that it will directly purchase debt from large companies under its emergency powers, rather than merely working to make credit more available through banks. Businesses that want to take advantage of that program will have to register and pay a fee.
Now the central bank is bumping into awkward but consequential decisions about its role, which has traditionally been to keep money flowing through the economy rather than intervening to help out specific industries. It also, by law, isn’t supposed to lend to companies that are insolvent, a term the central bank has the power to define.
“What it doesn’t want to be doing is engaging in fiscal stimulus where there’s a value judgment and allocation to this sector vs. that sector, because that’s traditionally seen as Treasury and Congress’ purview,” said Peter Conti-Brown, a professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“But then Congress announces, ‘Actually, we want the Fed in the driver’s seat’” on deciding where this money goes, he added. “So, the Fed is finding itself in a brave new world.”
Corporate bond markets have been working a bit more smoothly since the Fed announced its plans to buy debt directly from investment-grade companies, with more stable corporations having little trouble raising funds. Yum! Brands, which owns brands like KFC and Pizza Hut, also on Monday became the first non-investment-grade company since early March to publicly issue new bonds.
Because higher-rated companies aren’t struggling to raise funds, the Fed’s emergency lending “is likely to be more helpful to the lowest end” of the investment-grade spectrum, said Susie Scher, co-head of global financing in Goldman Sachs’ investment bank.
“Non-investment grade companies have also had access to secured loans from banks and to private equity capital,” she said but added that markets for lower-rated debt “have been temporarily shut.”
Ultimately, whether the Fed and Treasury broaden out the programs will depend greatly on how bad things get, Conti-Brown said.
“The Fed’s role is going to grow because they’re making risk determinations that have to evolve,” he said. “It’s not inconsistent for the Fed to change its regulations around the loans it’s comfortable making as the world around it changes so profoundly.”
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Coronavirus live: Total cases in India rise to 1251
The govt has said there is no plan to extend the lockdown beyond 21 days, and trashed media reports hinting at such a possibility. Meanwhile, the number of positive cases in India has crossed 1200 and the death toll stands at 32. Stay with TOI for the latest developments.
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US gas prices drop amid virus-driven slowdown
Gas prices across the nation are still falling amid decreased demand with fewer drivers on the road during the coronavirus outbreak. (March 30)
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Trump: nationwide stay at home order 'unlikely'
President Donald Trump said a nationwide 'stay at home' order to help slow the spread of the coronavirus is unlikely. "There are some parts of the of the country that are in far deeper trouble than other parts," he said Monday. (March 30)
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