America’s mortgage market sickens
Mar 26th 2020AMERICA’S $19trn commercial and residential mortgage market is jittery as investors begin to fear that laid-off workers and shut-down firms will struggle to repay their debts. Plenty of investors—such as real-estate investment trusts—are highly leveraged. As the value of mortgage-backed securities has dropped sharply they have begun to face margin calls on their…
If you thought the trade war was bad for global commerce…
Mar 26th 2020WASHINGTON, DCCONTAINER-SHIP navigators, box-ticking customs officials, logistics wizards, truck drivers and warehouse nightwatchmen: all are familiar with dealing with glitches involving international trade, from strikes to trade wars. But with forecasters predicting a slump in global GDP this year, even their most creative thinking cannot keep $25trn of goods and services flowing around…
An imaginative template for dealing with the cash crunch
Mar 26th 2020TAKE YOURSELF back, if you can manage it, to a more tranquil time—January, say. Imagine a smallish restaurant chain that had a bad Christmas. Its owner borrowed heavily to expand only to find its new outlets were slow to attract customers. The chain cannot meet its interest and other costs. A consultancy says…
The ECB breaks its self-imposed rules
Mar 26th 2020CHRISTINE LAGARDE took over as the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) in November intent on peacemaking. The bank’s negative interest rates and bond-buying were reviled in the euro area’s northern countries. In order to heal the rift Ms Lagarde launched a year-long review of the ECB’s strategy. Few investors expected policy…
Saudi Arabia stopped trying to support oil prices. Enter America
EARLY IN MARCH the oil market’s central banker seemed to go berserk. Saudi Arabia, the most powerful member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has long adjusted its supply to help stabilise the price of crude. Russia had teamed up with OPEC since 2016, but as covid-19 drove demand relentlessly down, it…
America’s central bank is not the only one doling out greenbacks
WHEN AMERICA and its allies wanted to cheapen the dollar in 1985, their officials met in the Plaza Hotel in New York. When they sought to stabilise the currency two years later, they gathered in the Louvre Palace in Paris, conversing over turbot soufflé cardinale washed down with Puligny Montrachet, according to Funabashi Yoichi, a…
Airborne particles may be assisting the spread of SARS-CoV-2
Mar 26th 2020POLLUTION AND disease have long been associated in people’s minds. The very word “malaria”, for example, means “bad air” in Italian. But the germ theory of infection, developed in the 19th century, knocked on the head the idea that it is the air itself which causes illness. Rather, bad smells indicate sources of…
Taking people’s temperatures can help fight the coronavirus
Mar 26th 2020STICKING A THERMOMETER into an armpit, mouth, ear or other body cavity is the most accurate way to take someone’s temperature. Understandably, though, this cannot be done at airports or checkpoints set up elsewhere to screen the masses for feverish victims of covid-19. So, in a bid to detect the warmth produced by…
The epidemic provides a chance to do good by the climate
Mar 26th 2020IN VENICE, WATER in the canals is running clear, offering glimpses of fish swimming against the current. As human activity grinds to a halt, natural rhythms resume. A similar, less visible story is being played out in the skies. Around the world, levels of toxic air pollutants are dropping as places go into…
A sex-abuse scandal incenses millions of South Koreans
“FIRST HE JUST asked for a picture of my body, but then he asked if I could send one that showed my face…and then he asked me to play with myself…to use school supplies,” the girl told a local radio show on the morning of March 24th. She went on to describe a weeks-long ordeal…