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Trump Weighs “Enforceable” Quarantine Order For Greater New York, Including Conn. & NJ: Live Updates

March 28, 2020

Trump Weighs “Enforceable” Quarantine Order For Greater New York, Including Conn. & NJ: Live Updates

Summary:

  • Global case total tops 600k
  • Japan fast-tracks approval of treatment drug for COVID-19
  • Third UK minister self-quarantines after showing symptoms of virus
  • Trump weighing enforceable quarantine order for all of greater NY area
  • Trump tells NBC reporter that quarantines of New York, NJ & Conn. were “possible”
  • Italy case total surpasses China
  • Spain reports deadliest day yet
  • UK case total climbs north of 17k
  • Navy hospital ships leave for New York, LA
  • Abe says he’s “just barely avoiding” declaring a national emergency
  • Yale University slammed for denying aid to city of New Haven
  • Shinzo Abe promises unprecedented stimulus package
  • Trump gives Pentagon power to call up retired soldiers and reservists
  • NYPD detective dies from COVID-19
  • Italian centennarian survives battle with COVID-19

*   *   *

Update (1420ET): As the death toll skyrockets, Spanish officials said they would need to tighten quarantine rules, and are now ordering all people to stay indoors at all times, unless they’re going to work at an “essential” job. We expect the bare minimum of exceptions (trips outside permitted to get food) will continue.

Meanwhile, in France, large numbers of the public continue to ignore the quarantine.

Though France’s health minister said Saturday that the country could soon face shortages of critical drugs, he assured the public that an order for 1 billion masks had recently been put in to ‘China’.

In Italy, the tone was far more somber.

*   *   *

Update (1412ET): The coronavirus outbreak has pitted many interests against one another in the scramble for resources. But some of the most flagrant examples of communal selfishness so far have occurred in ritzy Connecticut, where a town full of wealthy bankers and doctors shut down a drive thru testing center (well, they stopped it from opening in the first place), and now, Yale University is at the center of a controversy after refusing to allow the town access to any of its (now empty) facilities to help the community fight off the virus.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Jersey Declares State Of Emergency As Coronavirus Cases Triple In Greater New York: Live Updates

March 10, 2020

New Jersey Declares State Of Emergency As Coronavirus Cases Triple In Greater New York: Live Updates

Update (0850ET): As the US market open draws near, investors are parsing a flood of coronavirus related news overnight, including the good (President Xi’s to Wuhan and a sharp drop in new cases in South Korea), the bad (US confirmed cases nearing 1,000), and the ugly (Italy’s crackdown is starting to resemble China’s, as the video below would suggest).

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“Please stay at home & go outside only when you need to buy medicines or see doctors. Please follow our rules & wear face masks,” Italian authorities use loudspeakers to promote awareness among local residents about #COVID19 prevention and control.

While we’ve focused on some of the new developments in the US earlier, there’s plenty going on in Europe to rattle investor confidence. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Spain has doubled in the past few days, prompting the government to shut all schools in Madrid and the surrounding area for 2 weeks.

The Spanish parliament’s lower house suspended all activities on Tuesday for at least a week after a lawmaker with the country’s right-wing Vox Party was confirmed to have the virus.

MP Javier Ortega Smith was diagnosed with the virus, El Pais newspaper reported, citing sources from with Vox.

Ortega Smith is Vox’s No. 2 leader, and in this capacity participated in a large scale political rally last weekend, where we interacted with constituents and other lawmakers, Reuters said.

* * *

NYC-based bankers better have a bugout base in Antarctica, because all the suburban bedroom communities preferred by wealthy financiers have already been infected with the coronavirus: Westchester, New Jersey, Fairfield County and Long Island (though thankfully not the Hamptons) have all reported cases of the virus (even scarier: a handful of infections have no clear connection to another case, potentially offering a glimpse into what might be a much wider ‘community outbreak’).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Jersey To Now Tax Water Supply as Well – Creative Greed of Taxes

July 20, 2018

New Jersey To Now Tax Water Supply as Well – Creative Greed of Taxes

Politicians are truly amazing. When they need money, they are never short of ideas of things to tax. New Jersey is proposing to now tax water from the tap. The proposal is being submitted by State Senator Bob Smith D-Middlesex. Of course, Smith is trying to say it’s not actually a tax and calling it a“user fee” even though you already get a water bill. A “user fee” would be a flat rate. He wants 10 cents per 1,000 gallons so it functions more like a tax than a one-time fee like getting a driver’s license. Smith obtained his J.D. in 1981 from the Seton Hall University School of Law. The only thing law teaches you is how to call a pig a cow and get away with it. It is probably inevitable that they will figure out a way to tax the air for making it clean.

They have in a way managed to tax sex as well over the centuries. In Nevada, they have proposed a $5 tax every time a prostitute performs a service. This is nothing new. The Roman Emperor Caligula (37-41AD) inaugurated a tax upon prostitutes per client (the vectigal ex capturis). There was the bachelor tax which was a punitive tax imposed on unmarried men. The Lex Papia Poppaea was introduced in 9 AD by emperor Augustus (27BC-14AD) to encourage marriage. Penalties were therefore imposed on those who were celibate, with an exception granted to Vestal Virgins. (Ulp. Frag. xvii.1). The law also imposed penalties on married persons who had no children from the age of twenty-five to sixty in a man. Women were taxed who had no children from the age of twenty to fifty (Gaius, ii.111)  (Tacit. Ann. xv.19). As strange as that may sound, New Jersey and Michigan proposed a tax on bachelor men to change their behavior.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Jersey Prepares To Raise Taxes On “Almost Everything” As It Nears Financial Disaster

March 13, 2018

New Jersey Prepares To Raise Taxes On “Almost Everything” As It Nears Financial Disaster

Last week we noted that in what was a radical U-turn to what other public pension funds have been doing in recent years – most notably Calpers  – the struggling New Jersey public pension system decided that instead of lowering its expected rate of return, it would raise it, from 7% to 7.5%.

The simple reason behind this odd increase in projected returns was an accounting sleight of hand which would allow the state of New Jersey to save some $238 million in pension contributions as a result of the higher discount rate applied to the fund’s liabilities. And with a pension funding level of only 37% for the 2015 fiscal year, the worst of any state in the US, New Jersey would gladly take even the most glaring accounting gimmickry that would delay its inevitable death.

Unfortunately, being the not so proud owner of the most distressed and underfunded public pension fund in the US is just the start of New Jersey’s monetary woes, and as Bloomberg reports, New Jersey’s fiscal situation is so dire that new Governor Phil Murphy has proposed taxing online-room booking, ride-sharing, marijuana, e-cigarettes and Internet transactions along with raising taxes on millionaires and retail sales to fund a record $37.4 billion budget that would boost spending on schools, pensions and mass transit.

The proposal which is 4.2% higher than the current fiscal year’s, relies on a tax for the wealthiest that is so unpopular it not only has yet to be approved, but also lacks support from key Democrats in the legislature, let alone Republicans. It also reverses pledges from Murphy’s predecessor, Republican Chris Christie, to lower taxes in a state where living costs are already among the nation’s highest.

Murphy, a Democrat who replaced term-limited Christie on Jan. 16, said his goal is to give New Jerseyans more value for their tax dollars; instead he plans on bleeding them dry. He has promised additional spending on underfunded schools and transportation in a credit-battered state with an estimated $8.7 billion structural deficit for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Puerto Rico Is Greece, & These 5 States Are Next To Go

January 3, 2016

Puerto Rico Is Greece, & These 5 States Are Next To Go

As Wilbur Ross so eloquently noted, for Puerto Rico “it’s the end of the beginning… and the beginning of the end,” as he explained “Puerto Rico is the US version of Greece.” However, as JPMorgan explains, for some states the pain is really just beginning as Municipal bond risk will only become more important over time, as assets of some severely underfunded plans are gradually depleted.

Wilbur Ross discusses Puerto Rico’s debt struggles and where it goes from here…

But, as JPMorgan details, Muni risk is on the rise for US states, but broad generalizations do not apply (in other words, these five states are ‘screwed’)…

The direct indebtedness of US states (excluding revenue bonds) is $500 billion.  However, bonds are just one part of the picture: states have another trillion in future obligations related to pension and retiree healthcare.  In the summer of 2014, we conducted a deep-dive analysis of US states, incorporating bonds, pension obligations and retiree healthcare obligations.  After reviewing over 300 Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports from different states, we pulled together an assessment of each state’s total debt service relative to its tax collections, incorporating the need to pay down underfunded pension and retiree healthcare obligations.  

While there are five states with significant challenges (Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Kentucky) , the majority of states have debt service-to-revenue ratios that are more manageable. 

As a brief summary, we computed the ratio of debt, pension and retiree healthcare payments to state revenues.  The blue bars show what states are currently paying.  The orange bars show this ratio assuming that states pay what they owe on a full-accrual basis, assuming a 30-year term for amortizing unfunded pension and retiree healthcare obligations, and assuming a 6% return on pension plan assets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

White House Presses States to Reconsider Mandatory Ebola Quarantine Orders – NYTimes.com

October 26, 2014

White House Presses States to Reconsider Mandatory Ebola Quarantine Orders – NYTimes.com.

The Obama administration has expressed deep concerns to the governors of New York and New Jersey and is consulting with them to modify their orders to quarantine medical volunteers returning from West Africa as President Obama seeks to quickly develop a new, nationwide policy for the workers, according to two senior administration officials.

One administration official said the federal government has been pressing the governors to back off their decisions, which quarantine all medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients. But another official said the administration has not specifically asked the governors to reverse their policies.

Mr. Obama held a meeting with his top advisers at the White House on Sunday as officials work to craft a policy that reassures Americans that they are protected from the virus while following the guidance of the government’s scientific advisers. Officials said that policy will be ready in days and that the government would urge all states to follow it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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