U.S. stock futures drop sharply after Wall Street's worst week since March

U.S. stock index futures dropped sharply late Sunday, suggestincontinued choppy trading Monday following Thursday's deep selloff andFriday's partial rebound. As of 10 p.m.Eastern, Dow Jones IndustrialAverage futuresYM00,  -1.40% were down more than 300 points, or 1.3%, while S&P 500 futuresES00, -1.27%and Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00, -0.73%fell as well. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said Sunday that the U.S. economic recovery hinged on effective public health measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic. "The extent we do that well will determine how quickly we recover. We'll grow faster if we dothose things well," Kaplan told CBS News' "Face the Nation." "And rightnow, it's relatively uneven." Lasteek,Wall Street posted its worst week since March,with all three major indexes on Thursday seeing their sharpest one-daydrops since March 16. On Friday, The Dow Jones Industrial Average JIA, +1.90% gained 477.37 points, or 1.9%, to close at 25,605.54, while the S+1.30% added 39.21 points, or 1.3%, at 3.041.31, and the Nasdaq Composite IndexCOMP, +1.01%climbed 96.08 points, or 1%, to 9,588.81.

Read more at:
U.S. stock futures drop sharply after Wall Street's worst week since March - MarketWatch

Corona Virus Vaccine: EU nations sign deal for coronavirus vaccine

Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands signed an initial deal with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for over 300 million doses of a promising coronavirus vaccine currently still in the experimental phase, Germany's health ministry confirmed Saturday.

Doses of the vaccine would be distributed to countries relative to their population as soon as it is ready, the ministry said, adding that all EU members can participate in the program.

The vaccine is expected to be finished by the end of 2020. 

 

Read more at: 
EU nations sign deal for coronavirus vaccine | News | DW | 13.06.2020

USA: Government’s cure for the coronavirus recession is worse for the global economy than the disease

A major legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic will be a significantincrease in already high global debt levels. In the U.S., government debt is expected to rise to $27 trillion by September 2020 from $23 trillion a year ago — a debt-to-GDP ratio of 135%. In OECD countries, debt levelsare expected to increase by $17 trillion, rising from 109% to more than 137% of GDP.

Public sector debt increases reflecthigher healthcare spending, actions to alleviate the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis, emergency loans and the loss of tax revenues
revenues.

Households and businesses have also substantially increased borrowingsto cover income shortfalls. If the recovery is slower than expected,then the rise in borrowings will be greater.

Read more at;
Government’s cure for the coronavirus recession is worse for the global economy than the disease - MarketWatch

USA: Will the Banks Collapse? - by Frank Portnoy

After months of living with the coronavirus pandemic, American citizens are well aware of the toll it has taken on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. All of these factors are serious and could mire the United States in a deep, prolonged recession. But there’s another threat to the economy, too. It lurks on the balance sheets of the big banks, and it could be cataclysmic. Imagine if, in addition to all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, you woke up one morning to find that the financial sector had collapsed.

 Read more:
Will the Banks Collapse? - The Atlantic

U.S. central bank keeps rate steady at 0.25% but warns COVID-19 impact will last for years

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday signaled it would provideyears of extraordinary support for an economy facing a torturous slogback from the coronavirus pandemic, with policymakers projecting a 6.5per cent decline in gross domestic product this year and a 9.3 percent unemployment rate at year's end.

In the first economic projections of the pandemic era, U.S. central bank policymakers put into numbers what has been an emerging narrative: that the measures put inplace to battle a health crisis will echo through the economy for yearsto come rather than be quickly reversed as commerce reopens.

Read more at:
U.S. central bank keeps rate steady at 0.25% but warns COVID-19 impact will last for years | CBC News

USA - a thoroughly corrupt political process: Billionaires got $565 billion richer during the coronavirus pandemic

American billionaires are now nearly 20% richer — by $565 billion,to be exact — than they were at the start of the coronavirus pandemic,according to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies

Six billionaires, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk, and Zoom's Eric Yuan, have seen their net worths grow by more than $2billion each since March, according to the think tank's analysis of Forbes' Billionaires List.

The coronavirus crisis has been an economic disaster for the rest of America, as an end unprecedented 42.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the past 11 weeks.

Note EU-Digest: This is another major problem facing America, and has resulted in the overwhelming influence Corporate America has on the political environment of the US and beyound. What's been happening with White House and Congressional politics could only be described as a thoroughly corrupt process, with the blessings of a Supreme Court dominated by justices hand-picked to protect the same process.

Read more at:
Billionaires got $565 billion richer during the coronavirus pandemic - Business Insider

Capitalism has gone out of control: Private equity firms should be abolished

In his latest BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller (previously) relates the key moments in the history of private equity, from its roots in the notorious "leveraged buyouts" of the 1980s, and explains exactly how the PE con works: successful, productive business are acquired through debt financing, drained of their cash and assets, and then killed, leaving workers unemployed and with their pension funds looted, and with the business's creditors out in the cold.

Read more at:
Private equity firms should be abolished / Boing Boing