China, after reporting no new infections on March 19, said the virus had been contained. Since then, Beijing has been reporting dozens of new cases each day but has maintained that virtually all of them were "imported" -- in other words, the infected were individuals arriving from other countries.

Of the very few in-country transmissions, most, Beijing maintained, were transmissions from the imported cases.

China's official numbers of deaths and new infections, however, must be bogus. Chinese officials are taking actions that are, as a practical matter, inconsistent with the no-new-infection reports.

For instance, on March 27 Beijing closed all theaters nationwide, after re-opening them just the previous week.

In Shanghai, tourist attractions that had just resumed operations were shut again. For instance, the municipality re-closed the observation deck of the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, and the nearby Oriental Pearl Tower. The Jin Mao Tower is now shuttered "to further strengthen pandemic prevention and control." Madame Tussauds, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, and the Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park are now dark, along with the indoor portions of another 25 attractions.

Shanghai Disneyland? "Temporarily Closed Until Further Notice."

Shanghai is not the only metropolis turning out the lights. In Chengdu, karaoke bars and internet cafes were also shut just days after Sichuan province opened up all entertainment venues.

Fuyang in Anhui province ordered the closure of "entertainment spots" and indoor swimming pools. Henan province locked down internet cafes.

Henan even quarantined an entire area, Jia county, as doctors there tested positive for the bug.

On March 31, ESPN reported that the Chinese central government had delayed the resumption of team sports.

The nationwide university-entrance exams, the gaokao, have been postponed a month, to July.

The regime has also not rescheduled its premier political events, the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, both originally scheduled for early March.

Finally, the authorities in Jiangxi province are not allowing people from next-door Hubei to enter, indicating they do not believe the epidemic in that disease-ridden province is over.

Does any of this matter? It does: Xi Jinping thinks he should rule the planet.

"China, the country where the virus first appeared and claimed its first several thousand lives, is now using the global spread of the disease to bolster an increasingly vocal, assertive bid for global leadership that is exacerbating a yearslong conflict with the U.S.," the Wall Street Journal wrote on April 1.

As the Communist Party's Global Times on March 30 triumphantly put it, "COVID-19 Blunders Signal End of 'American Century.'"

To push America aside and seize global leadership, China got Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), to say that China's response to the coronavirus showed the "superiority of the Chinese system and this experience is worthy of emulation by other countries." Then Beijing set about making a big show of "donating" medical equipment and diagnostic kits, most notably to stricken Europe.

Finally, Xi Jinping, beginning around the first week of February, forced China back to work to demonstrate that China had ended the epidemic.

None of these showy displays will convince anyone, however, if the virus ravages China again. Unfortunately for Xi, that is what is happening: people in China are re-infecting each other. For instance, in industrial Dongguan in southern Guangdong province, workers returning to their jobsites have been carrying the coronavirus, and this has forced health officials to quarantine other workers. China's leader can jump-start the economy or throttle the coronavirus, but he cannot do both at the same time.

When the second wave of coronavirus infections hits China hard, Xi Jinping's boasts about the superiority of Chinese communism will begin to sound hollow, absurd even.

Xi's initial policies turned a local outbreak into a pandemic, and now they are making even more people sick and forcing China into another pit of disease. China's inaccurate diagnostic kits and substandard protective gear donated around the world along with the new infections will show the truth: communism is incompetent if not downright malign.

Incompetent and malign communism in turn means Xi's predicted decline of America will again have to be pushed back to another day.

China can lie with statistics, but the virus gets the last word. "Victory" over both COVID-19 and the United States is still far out of sight.

"We've been through a lot on the continent. Ebola, yes, African governments took a hit, but we have not seen anything like this before," Eziakonwa said. "The African labor market is driven by imports and exports and with the lockdown everywhere in the world, it means basically that the economy is frozen in place. And with that, of course, all the jobs are gone."

We've warned over the last month that a virus crisis looms in Africa. A little more than half of the continent's 54 countries have imposed lockdowns, curfews, and or travel bans to mitigate the spread of the virus. 

Places like South Africa, where the military has enforced "unprecedented" Martial law-style lockdowns through mid-April, is an attempt to thwart social uprisings as 370,000 jobs have likely been lost.  

South Africa's military has begun enforcing a #coronavirus lockdown, which includes bans on alcohol sales and even dog-walking.


Over 1,000 #COVID19 cases and 2 deaths have been confirmed pic.twitter.com/lanbMFw2hb

— QuickTake by Bloomberg (@QuickTake) March 27, 2020

For the 1.3 billion that inhabit the continent, widespread lockdowns are triggering vicious economic downturns, couple that with a public health crisis, and it could be a perfect storm that results in social unrest. 

Eziakonwa said unless the virus spread can be controlled – then up to 50% of all estimated growth for Africa's travel, services, mining, agriculture and the informal sectors could be lost. An extended period of subpar economic growth could be seen across the continent in the quarters ahead.  

"We will see a complete collapse of economies and livelihoods. Livelihoods will be wiped out in a way we have never seen before," she warned.

Top oil-exporting countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, could lose up to $65 billion in revenue with collapsed commodity prices – indicating that those governments will struggle to balance budgets, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said. 

Many countries in the Sub-Saharan region are heavily indebted and could come into severe financial distress with budget constraints in a downturn. That is why the calls for stimulus among some African leaders have already begun: 

"Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has spoken of an "existential threat" to Africa's economies while seeking up to $150 billion from G20 nations. A meeting of African finance ministers agreed that the continent needs a stimulus package of up to $100 billion, including a waiver of up to $44 billion in interest payments.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa backed the calls for a stimulus package, saying in a recent speech that the pandemic "will reverse the gains that many countries have made in recent years." Several African nations have been among the fastest-growing in the world," Ap notes. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said last month that 20 African countries had requested financial assistance, with an expected ten more countries to need some form of aid. The IMF has already cleared credit facilities for Guinea and Senegal.

In the quarters ahead, socio-economic challenges will persist for Africa as the latest lockdowns due to the virus pandemic will contribute to negative economic outlooks for the region. 

UNECA has said emergency stimulus programs are needed to protect 30 million jobs at risk of evaporating. 

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo recently said, "We do know what to do to bring the economy back to life. What we don't know is how to bring back people to life." He has created a virus fund that will distribute food and salaries to some citizens for three months. 

In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta has launched temporary tax relief programs for citizens and created a $94 million fund to protect low-income families. 

Benin's President Patrice Talon said the rich African countries are unleashing stimulus to boost their economies. He said for poor African countries, like his, they don't have the financial capability to stimulate. 

To sum up, Africa is being swallowed whole by a pandemic that has forced many countries to implement lockdowns to mitigate the spread, which has led to vicious economic downturns. Much of the continent will likely remain in financial distress this year as the global economy has ground to a halt.  

While the above data may not have been surprising, what was shocking is what the Fed reported was the average consumer expectation for stock prices in the future: according to the NY Fed, the mean probability that US stock prices will be higher one year from now surged to 47.7%, the highest on record.

Right... because with his job gone, his $400 dollars of emergency savings just spent on a roll of toilet paper, his bank preparing to foreclose on his home, all while a deadly virus lurks in every corner, all Joe Sixpack can think of is how to get his "money on the sidelines" into the stock market as it is about to soar to all time highs.

And so, thanks to the Fed's now grotesque interventions in all capital markets, including the purchase of over $1 trillion in securities in the past two weeks, the stock market is now perceived by conventional wisdom as a countercyclical indicator, one which surges the worst the economy gets, and with the economy sliding into a depression it is only "logical" - we use the term loosely - that expectations of higher stock prices have never been higher.

That of course is the absurdist interpretation of the above "data'. There was, naturally, a serious way of looking at this delightfully ridiculous data and lacking a sense of humor, David Rosenberg applied just that, tweeting that "I was so close to turning more bullish (less bearish?) until I see this metric was released by the New York Fed on consumer expectations.  Since when do bear markets end on record optimism?"

I was so close to turning more bullish (less bearish?) until I see this metric was released by the New York Fed on consumer expectations. Since when do bear markets end on record optimism? pic.twitter.com/Gddwl5JDbj

— David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) April 6, 2020

Oh David, "since when" do you still think that anything you observe in this economy or market, both stuffed to the gills with trillions and trillions in freshly printed fiatscoes, matters or makes sense. And to answer your question: bear markets end when the Fed says so, and proceeds to do to stocks what it did to IG bonds - and start buying directly.

And incidentally David, you may want to reasses your nothing can beat deflation thesis. Albert Edwards already has, and has said farewell to his "great ice age" thesis that defined his work for the past 30 years. We wonder how long it will take you to realize that we now live in a time of helicopter money and that markets - by any definition  - no longer exist, and what comes next it a tsunami of debt and money much of which will finally make its way, kicking and screaming into the broader economy.

Don't believe us? Just take one look at gold, where the beginning of the end is finally starting to be priced in.

Another, is that the Trump Administration and the CDC weren't the only organizations blinded by "institutional hubris" - as WaPo described the situation at the CDC in its big expose published over the weekend.

Even WaPo conceded that if there was one indisputably great call made by Trump, it was his decision to seal off the US to most flights from China in February. If anything, he should have sealed off slights from all of Europe, too.

But in Brussels, bureaucrats with the EU took the China-influenced advice from the WHO claiming that closing borders wasn't appropriate at face value, and pushed member states to prioritize other methods of combating the virus instead of border closures and travel bans. Unfortunately, epidemiologists now understand that these are among the most effective tactics for combating the pandemic.

As if to underline that point, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his government on Monday announced plans to reopen their economy as soon as next week.

Flanked by senior government ministers, Kurz announced on Monday a new timetable to restart the Austrian economy, detailing a series of phased steps to bring life back to normal while minimizing the risk.

This will make Austria the first major European country to reopen its economy, a gamble that the FT pointed out will be heavily scrutinized by its neighbors.

But the reason Austria is even in this situation is because it was one of the first major European economies to eschew the advice from Brussels by ordering businesses to close, imposing a strict nationwide 'lockdown' and - most importantly - closing the country's borders to its plague-ridden southern neighbor, Italy.

The country's lockdown was in place by March 11.

The country of 8.8 million has still reported a number of cases and deaths, though with lower totals than its neighbors. The number of active COVID-19 cases fell for a third straight day on Monday, as recoveries once again outnumbered new infections. That 'total active' - the key figure for an economy considering reopening - stood at just over 12,000 in a country of 8.8 million. Sixteen people died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 220. The number of patients requiring intensive care remained stable over the past four days at around 250.

During Monday's speech, Kurz warned Austrians not to engage in Easter celebrations, or he could cancel or alter the plans. The lockdown must continue to be scrupulously adhered to, he said, or the reopening would not happen. Per Kurz's plan, some shops would start reopening as soon as next week, with others reopening the following week, with reopenings happening gradually by industry until restaurants and bars (expected to be the last on the list) are allowed to reopen by the end of next month (according to the current timeline).

So far, Kurz’s handling of the pandemic, and the performance of his health minister, the coalition-partner Green party’s Rudolf Anschober, has been incredibly popular at home. Now, if he manages to upstage neighboring Germany by reopening the Austrian economy swiftly and safely, Kurz will likely go down as one of the most celebrated leaders of Austria since WWII.

"You’ll be pleased to know that we do consider both the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny to be essential workers," she said. "But as you can imagine, at this time they’re going to be potentially quite busy at home with their family as well and their own bunnies."

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern confirms Easter Bunny is classed as an “essential worker” but it might be “difficult for the bunny to get everywhere” in current circumstances.


Tooth fairy also confirmed as an essential worker. pic.twitter.com/Jv6o4t2tkG

— Daniel Rosney (@DanielRosney) April 6, 2020

And for those families whose financial situation doesn't offer enough room for Easter egg hunts, gifts and candy, Ardern assured those children that, because of all the restrictions, it might be a bit difficult for the Easter Bunny to make it to every house this year.

"I say to the children of New Zealand, if the Easter Bunny doesn’t make it to your household, we have to understand that it’s a bit difficult at the moment for the bunny to perhaps get everywhere," she said.

To help accommodate these children, Ardern suggested that neighborhoods set up 'easter egg hunts' by placing eggs in their windows, so that children can 'spot' them while they stroll through the streets with their parents. We can hear the groans from NZ's "bad moms" from here.

On March 25, Ardern announced the most significant restriction on New Zealanders' movements in the country's history by declaring a four-week nationwide lockdown, instructing all residents to remain at home except for “essential workers” in health care, retail etc.

The coronavirus outbreak has already taken a great toll on the Chinese economy, with all headline readings pointing towards a record slowdown in growth during the first two months of the year.But there is an even greater danger for what was once the world’s fastest-growing major economy: that Covid-19 will become the catalyst that will bring its many long-simmering problems to the boil. At the centre of these problems is a rising systemic risk in its banking and financial systems caused by a high level of debt accrued over the past decade.

The outbreak could not have occurred at a worse time. The past 10 years have not only seen the economy saddled with this debt, but it has also involved a steady structural slowdown that last year saw the growth rate fall to 6.1 per cent, the lowest in decades. Now, just at the very time the country might consider spending more to prop up that growth rate, a raging pandemic means it will be making much less money than usual.

The latest data from the Chinese Ministry of Finance shows fiscal revenue plunged by 9.9 per cent in the January-February period, the steepest drop since 2009. Overall tax revenue fell 11.2 per cent, driven by a 19 per cent slump in value-added tax (VAT) revenue, the main source of fiscal income. These drops come just as the government has offered a handsome tax cut in response to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the escalation of the pandemic in the rest of the world will only further weigh on China’s economic growth, corporate profits and personal income. In turn, this will inevitably drag down government revenue in months to come.

Coronavirus: March 2020, the month Covid-19 changed the world

Beijing’s proposed stimulus spending will only exacerbate China’s already-massive debt pile, which had reached 310 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of last year, according to the Institute of International Finance. Many economies that have experienced such levels of debt have gone on to suffer a financial crash or economic crisis. China now accounts for about 60 per cent of the US$72.5 trillion emerging market debt.

A deleveraging campaign had reduced Beijing’s debt mountain in 2018. But it has since returned to credit-driven stimulus to support growth and combat the effects of its  trade war with the United States.

About 80 per cent of China’s debt stock was accumulated over the past decade as the country strived to achieve the politically significant milestone of doubling its economic size from 2010 to 2020. The milestone was a key goal in President  Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream of “national rejuvenation”.

While the coronavirus threat has receded in China itself, any hope of an early recovery is forlorn as Covid-19 is still ripping through the major developed economies – essentially, China’s customers and  trade partners. Plunging demand from abroad will create a second shock wave that will hit China’s export-oriented economy just as it is recovering from the first shock of having to lock down its cities.

China’s balance sheet will be hit by both dwindling revenue and a spiralling demand for spending. Rising corporate debt, surging local government borrowings, and soaring non-performing loans for commercial banks are three areas that could wreck its fragile financial and banking systems. The non-financial corporate debt-to-GDP ratio jumped from 93 per cent in 2009 to 153 per cent last year, one of the highest in the world. The Institute of International Finance warned that China was the major driver of global non-financial corporate debt. China’s bond defaults also hit records in 2018 and 2019.

Coronavirus could cause global food shortages by April as export curbs worsen supply chain problems

Meanwhile, China’s local government debts will jump as a result of more infrastructure-driven stimulus. This will add to a debt pile already worth up to 40 trillion yuan – about 40 per cent of the country’s 100-trillion-yuan GDP last year. S&P Global Ratings has singled out local government financing vehicles as being chiefly responsible for the accumulation of hidden debt. At issue is that while local governments want to spend more, their income from land sales, the main source of local fiscal revenue, is decreasing. The Ministry of Finance said revenue from land sales, which are off-budget, fell by 16.4 per cent in the first two months of the year.

China’s commercial banks also face a severe test as bad debts are likely to rise. Even before the outbreak, China’s banking system was a ticking time bomb, with the state having to step in to rescue a string of embattled medium-sized lenders. A Financial Stability Report released by the People’s Bank of China at the end of last year described 586 of the country’s almost 4,400 lenders as “high risk”. Data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission shows there has been a steady rise in the non-performing loan balances of commercial banks since the middle of last year, a result of Beijing scaling back itsdeleveraging campaign.

China’s policymakers face a difficult choice: tolerate an unprecedented slowdown or go for massive stimulus and risk detonating a financial time bomb.

China’s economic planners have a habit of relying on massive levels of debt-financed stimulus whenever growth slows. The closed nature of its financial system affords policymakers the luxury of complacency, as they have a war chest of US$3.1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

Some China-made coronavirus test kits and face masks rejected as ‘unreliable’ in European countries

All the signals suggest this is what they will do once more, despite the risk. Leaks suggest Beijing has amended its 2020 budget to raise the deficit to 3.5 per cent of GDP from an original cap of 3 per cent to fund this massive stimulus. Analysts say the actual fiscal deficits could jump much higher than last year’s 4.9 per cent, which included off-budget sheet borrowing and spending. Indeed, a meeting of the politburo, China’s top decision-making body, on March 27 suggested scaling up the stimulus package, with calls to raise the fiscal deficit ratio, increase issuance of Special Treasury bonds, and raise the quota of local government special bond issuance. Policymakers have also directed commercial banks to tolerate a higher threshold for bad loans, hoping to keep thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises from collapsing. The government has already sped up the issuance of bonds. The issuance of special-purpose bonds almost tripled to 950 billion yuan in the first two months of 2020, compared with last year.

It is to be expected that China’s debt will rise substantively in coming months, as in all previous crises. However, Beijing should beware that this time its fiscal measures will be limited. They will help only the country’s internal issue of supply and do nothing for external demand. China should exercise extreme caution: a financial virus can be as toxic, contagious and lethal as a biological one if it is allowed to spread.

*  *  *

Cary Huang is a veteran China affairs columnist, having written on the topic since the early 1990s

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's words, however, were more aggressive and blunt, explaining in so many words that essentially Washington's ban on the exports puts lives in danger. This after European leaders likened similar measures and interventions impacting Germany and France to "modern piracy".

Canadian Premier of Ontario @fordnation starts his statements today noting that the U.S. won't allow medical supplies into Canada and that it puts lives in danger. Imagine how deadly it is to blockade a country's access to medicine & supplies for years/decades. #TheBlockadeKills pic.twitter.com/aDjmncRVxn

— Camila (@camilateleSUR) April 6, 2020

“What I understand is we have 3 million masks that were stopped by U.S. officials,” Ford told a Monday press conference. Ford later indicated that some of the masks — up to 500,000 — have since been released and that should “buy the province a week” before health workers run out.

“Our supplies are strained right at this moment... We're exhausting every avenue available to us,” the Ontario leader said. “The hard truth is our supplies in Ontario are getting very low.”

Doug Ford is absolutely desperate saying its critical that the U.S. exempt Canada from the Presidential order blocking N95 masks as Ontario has just a week supply remaining. pic.twitter.com/FSBDqM11Fo

— Camila (@camilateleSUR) April 6, 2020

He continued: “We're putting pressure on the US government from all sides. It's absolutely critical that they except Canada from this presidential order.”

He underscored how dire the situation remains by further saying, “We're reaching out to everyone in the world right now to make sure that we have enough masks.”

Canada's Globe and Mail further quoted Ford as comparing the decision made Trump to someone telling a relative: “you go starve and we’ll feast on the rest of the meal.”

Surely missed on Canada's leaders as they scramble to deal with the fallout of the US ban on crucial medical personal protective equipment for hospital workers, is the fact that they themselves previously willingly joined in Trump's sanctions on so-called 'rogue states' like Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. 

Nationwide Canada has seen over 16,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 339 deaths. Ontario province has witnessed the highest number of deaths, at 150, creating alarm within the under-supplied health system there.

In some cases for those newspapers not yet completely shuttered, it's translating into a rapid transition to digital presence only. Others are going from being daily papers to only delivering print copies twice a week — this also as cash-strapped advertisers and shuttered retail stores are foregoing conventional ads.

“I’m hearing 40% to 60% drops in revenue over the last 30 days,” Dean Ridings, chief executive officer of the national trade association America’s Newspapers, said. “The advertisers are the local mom and pops, the retailers, the restaurants, who are understandably canceling their advertisements.”

Some notable developments strongly suggesting the writing is on the wall:

• Recall that Warren Buffett already abandoned the industry in January, selling all 31 daily papers to Lee Enterprises Inc. for $140 million.


• Largest American newspaper chain Gannet Co., which owns USA Today along with hundreds of local papers like the the important Des Moines Register, announced this past week it's been forced to slash jobs and furlough workers amid the outbreak carnage.


• A recent Buzzfeed headline dubbed the pandemic a “media extinction event.” 


• BuzzFeed itself announced pay cuts employees through May in order to stave off mass layoffs.


• Tampa Bay Times furloughed much of its staff and announced that print production would now only go to Sundays and Wednesdays for the time bing. “These extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” Tampa Bay Times chairman Paul Tash said.


• WaPo media columnist Margaret Sullivan has called for urgent stimulus money to be injected into the dying industry: “News-industry experts have been predicting for years that a recession of severe economic downturn would deliver a death blow to these already troubled businesses.”

Additionally, Local papers which in some instances have been around for almost a century have had to close their doors.

The Bismarck Tribune, along with all other newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises, will furlough employees or cut pay in response to a drop in advertising revenue: https://t.co/WxSbHIRL5m

— Amy R. Sisk (@amyrsisk) April 4, 2020

Bloomberg writes of one notable instance: "In Oregon, Smith family sells off newspapers after 87-year run The business grew into a chain of publications — chronicling local events through the Depression, Smith becoming Oregon’s governor, and a gas leak in the ’70s that destroyed one of the company’s printing presses — all under the family’s ownership. Until this week."

Many residents of smaller to mid-sized towns and cities see the local paper as "irreplaceable" — given it's often the only source for local news and events, and a crucial longtime vehicle of local culture of sorts.

“Whether it’s the watchdog to cover the city council, or the school board, or even the Little League, the newspaper was the last remaining source for local information,” America’s Newspapers Dean Ridings told Bloomberg further.