Your Weekend Reading: The Crisis of Our Time
Your Weekend Reading: The Crisis of Our Time
(Bloomberg) --
Four months. More than 1 million people infected. The menace that is Covid-19 continues to ravage the world. Singapore will close schools and most workplaces, the U.S. is trying to rescue small businesses and the U.K.—a country passionate about its health system and whose prime minister remains in isolation—announced its deadliest day yet. When, and how, will it end?
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What you’ll want to read this weekend
President Donald Trump shook up oil markets with a single tweet— “performance art,” Liam Denning calls it in Bloomberg Opinion. The OPEC+ cartel is pressing to form an unprecedented global coalition to cut production, but there’s another rift between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The virus knows no borders as it spreads to the unhealthiest part of the U.S.: the South. Blue-collar America is braced for another recession, the barter economy is back and mortgage firms are teetering. A bleak jobs report for March is a harbinger of the deluge to come.
Supply lines know no borders either. There’s still a heap of food out there, but trucking bottlenecks are one reason it’s not getting from farm to table. Brazil’s coffee growers are worried they won’t have enough fieldhands for the harvest, and U.S. farmers are even dumping milk.
U.S. intelligence contends China concealed the extent of the outbreak in its country, three officials told Bloomberg. China says the Trump administration is trying to deflect from its own mistakes. Speaking out about a lack of gear can come at a high cost for America’s doctors, while a literal about-face on masks may be underway.
Colleges are dropping the SAT, law deans are proposing this year’s class be allowed to skip the bar and universities are stepping in to sustain local businesses. Bloomberg Businessweek has some tips for those parents moonlighting as home-school teachers. Remember the concept of limiting kids’ screen time? How quaint.
What you’ll need to know next week
- OPEC+ is planning to meet but it could be delayed.
- Keep an eye out for WTO trade projections.
- China is set to lift the lockdown of Wuhan.
- FOMC minutes come out following a drastic March.
- World Health Day, Passover and Good Friday arrive.
What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Pursuits
The pandemic and its attendant recession may be the worst time to launch a car since, well, since we’ve had cars. Here are some of most needle-moving whips rolled out in years—all for a pre-coronavirus world. With would-be buyers now focused on the terrible crisis at hand, this is less a preview of automaker glory than a wistful look at what might have been.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.