Arctic 'doomsday vault' stocks up on 60,000 more food seeds

Longyearbyen (AFP) - A "doomsday vault" nestled deep in the Arctic received 60,000 new seed samples on Tuesday, including Prince Charles' cowslips and Cherokee sacred corn, increasing stocks of the world's agricultural bounty in case of global catastrophe.

Mounting concern over climate change and species loss is driving groups worldwide to add their seeds to the collection inside a mountain near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about 1,300 kilometres (about 800 miles) from the North Pole.

The "Noah's Ark" of food crops is set up to preserve plants that can feed a growing population facing climate change.

"As the pace of climate change and biodiversity loss increases, there is new urgency surrounding efforts to save food crops at risk of extinction," said Stefan Schmitz, who manages the reserve as head of the Crop Trust.

"The large scope of today's seed deposit reflects worldwide concern about the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on food production."

The head of the genetic bank of the Nordic nations, Lise Lykke Steffensen, said every single seed in the vault "holds potential solutions for sustainable agriculture".

"Solutions that are vital for feeding a growing population and achieving a green transition," she added.

- 'Before it's too late' -

A total of 36 regional and international institutions have contributed to the 60,000 samples that were deposited on Tuesday.

The new arrivals include staple crops such as wheat and rice, as well as wild varietes of European apple trees.

Also among the seeds are beans, squash and corn from the Cherokee Nation -- the first Native American group to send crops to the vault -- including their sacred White Eagle corn.

Britain's Prince Charles, who is known for his environmental advocacy, sent the seeds of 27 wild plants, including cowslips and orchids collected from the meadows of Highgrove, his country home.

"It has proved to be an exhausting and often demoralising task to persuade people of the utterly essential role played by all this diversity in maintaining vibrant, healthy ecosystems that sustain both people and our planet," the Prince of Wales said in a statement.
Story continues

"It's more urgent than ever that we act now to protect this diversity before it really is too late," he added.

The latest shipment will bring the number of seed varieties, stored in three underground alcoves at an optimum minus 18 degrees Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit), to 1.05 million.

The seed bank has the capacity to hold up to 4.5 million samples.

Around two or three million samples "would be a good idea to make the future of the food of mankind even more secure," Schmitz told AFP in the freezing cold of Longyearbyen.

Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg, fourth from the right, and other representatives outside the vault (AFP Photo/Lise Åserud)

- Conflict and climate change -

Little betrays the huge size of this granary for humanity on the icy mountainside except for its distinctive entrance: two towering grey walls emerging from the bowels of earth, topped with mirrors and pieces of iron creating a reflection that glimmers in the darkness of the polar winter.

The seed store was launched in 2008 with financing from Norway with the aim of safeguarding biodiversity in the face of climate change, wars and other natural and man-made disasters, earning it the nickname "doomsday vault".

Its usefulness was spotlighted during Syria's civil war when researchers were able in 2015 to retrieve from the vault duplicates of grains lost in the destruction of Aleppo.

The countries and institutions that deposit seeds in the vault retain ownership over them and can retrieve them when necessary.

More than 5,000 species of plants are now stored in the Arctic Archipelago, a frozen landscape where almost nothing grows.

The vault has itself been hit by climate change.

In 2016, water seeped into its tunnel entrance when the permafrost that encases it began to melt as Arctic temperatures climbed unusually high.

Norway has since financed work to insulate the vault from further effects of a warming and wetter climate, which scientists say is happening twice as fast in the Arctic than the global average. 

UPDATED: Body cam captures 

6-year-old's tearful pleas during arrest

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A police officer's body camera shows a 6-year-old Florida girl crying and begging officers not to arrest her as one fastens zip ties around her wrists at a charter school.

The video that Kaia Rolle's family shared with the Orlando Sentinel and other media outlets Monday shows the girl being arrested in September for kicking and punching staff members at her Orlando charter school.

“What are those for?” Kaia asks about the zip ties in the video.

“They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner says before another officer tightens them around her wrists and Kaia begins weeping.

Turner was fired shortly after the arrest. Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon said at the time that Turner, a reserve officer, didn't follow department policy of getting the approval of a watch commander to arrest someone younger than 12.

“Help me. Help me, please!” Kaia pleads through tears.

As she is being walked to the vehicle, she cries, “I don’t want to go in a police car.”

The second officer, who has not been identified, responds, “You don’t want to? ... You have to.”

“Please, give me a second chance,” Kaia says.

The video shows the officer lifting the sobbing girl into the back seat of the police vehicle and putting a seat belt around her.

A short time later, Turner returns to the office to talk to Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy administrators, who appear dismayed by what they have witnessed in the school office.

The officer tells them that the juvenile detention center where Kaia was headed is “not like you think.” Turner tells the administrators he has made 6,000 arrests, including a 7-year-old.

When school employees tell the officer that Kaia is 6, not 8 like he thought, he replies, “Now she has broken the record."

Turner had worked in the police agency's reserve unit, which is mostly made up of retired officers who pick up extra-duty jobs for pay. Because he was a reserve officer, he was not a member of the collective bargaining unit, and the police union didn't represent him, Shawn Dunlap of the Fraternal Order of Police Orlando Lodge 25, said in an email Tuesday.

School resource officers came under close scrutiny in Florida after former Broward Deputy Scot Peterson failed to engage a shooter at a Parkland high school in 2018. He was charged last year with child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury. That case is ongoing.

The Orlando case drew yet more attention to the role of police in schools.

Jeff Kaye, president of California-based School Safety Operations Inc., said in an email that the officer would not only have been fired in some other states but possibly charged with a crime, such as oppression under color of authority.

School administrators might have been better served by contacting the child's parents and working with a counselor, rather than calling police, Kaye said.

“As long as everyone is safe, take a deep breath, slow things down, and make good commonsense decisions," Kaye said. “I can't think of any reason to ever arrest a 6-year-old child, but I say that based on my training and experience and not that of others."

Kaye said he's had several several school districts contact him since the video's release saying they want to re-examine their school resource officer programs, because they don't want something similar to happen in their schools.

Officials have said that Turner also arrested a 6-year-old boy at another school on the same day as Kaia's arrest for misdemeanor battery in an unrelated incident. However, the boy’s arrest was halted by superiors before the child made it through the full arrest process.

State Attorney Aramis Ayala said last September that she was dismissing misdemeanor battery charges against both children.

Body camera video: 6-year-old girl cries for help as Florida police arrest her at school
Grace Toohey 

ITS FLORIDA ITS IN THE WATER

6-year-old girl cries, begs for help during arrest at Orlando school

VIDEO Kaia Rolle was sitting, listening to a school employee read her a story when two officers came in the room to arrest her.

“What are those for?” the 6-year-old girl asked the Orlando police officers.

“They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner said about the zip ties, before another officer tightened them around her wrists. Kaia immediately began weeping.

“No ... no, don’t put handcuffs on!” she wailed in body camera footage from the arrest, which Kaia’s family shared with the Orlando Sentinel Monday evening. The arrests of the girl and another 6-year-old at Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy in September drew national headlines and widespread condemnation, leading to the officer’s firing.

WOULD THIS HAPPEN IN A PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL?
THIS WAS A CHARTER SCHOOL NOT REALLY A PUBLIC SCHOOL
AND THEY HAVE A COP AS A RESOURCE OFFICER, IN AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

“Help me, help me, please!” the girl choked out through tears. The officers continued with the arrest. Employees at the Orlando charter school stood by.

After Kaia was placed in a police SUV to be taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center, Officer Turner returned to the school’s office and spoke to administrators, who were concerned about Kaia. He downplayed the juvenile detention center, saying it’s “not like you think.”

He told them he had arrested 6,000 people in his career — the youngest, to that point, was 7. When school employees told him Kaia was 6, not 8 like he thought, he did not seem concerned.

“Now she has broken the record,” he said.

Kaia, a first grader at charter school, had a tantrum earlier in the day where she had kicked and punched three school employees, leading to her arrest on a charge of misdemeanor battery, according to her arrest report. However, by the time Turner and another officer approached Kaia to detain, cuff and arrest her, the girl had calmed down, the video shows.

The school staff member who had been reading to her told Kaia she had to go with the officers, and that her grandmother would pick her up later.

While walking with the officer to the car, Kaia continued to cry, “I don’t wanna go in a police car.”

The second officer, who has not been identified, replied, “You don’t want to? ... You have to.”

“Please, give me a second chance,” the girl responded, still crying.

The officers put her in the backseat of the police SUV.

Turner then returned to the school’s office, reminding one employee that he will need a statement from her, and said she will likely get a subpoena. The woman agreed, though she said she was upset.

The arrest report Turner completed said that a member of the school’s faculty, Beverly Stoute, had requested to press charges against Kaia, something the school has denied. The video does not show any staff member attempting to stop the arrest, though several are obviously rattled.

“The restraints, are they necessary?” one school employee asked.

“Yes,” Turner said.

Then, he added: “If she was bigger, she would have been wearing regular handcuffs.”

He then told the school administrators that the youngest person he ever arrested previously was 7 years old, a boy who he had caught stealing at an Albertsons. He said he arrested the boy because he “thought it was a joke" while the other children caught in the act had started crying.

Officials have said that Turner also arrested a 6-year-old boy at Nixon Academy the same day as Kaia for misdemeanor battery in an unrelated incident. However, the boy’s arrest was halted by superiors before the child made it through the full arrest process.
Details about the boy’s arrest have not been made public.

The following day, prosecutors dropped the charge against Kaia.

Orlando Police Department officials have said Turner violated agency policy on arresting children younger than 12, which requires officers to get a supervisor’s approval — something Turner did not do. However, his decision was not illegal as Florida currently does not have a minimum age for arrest.

Meralyn Kirkland, Kaia’s grandmother, said she is hoping that when people watch the footage of her granddaughter’s arrest, they will support a proposal to change that law by making 12 the minimum age for arrest. She said she would also like to see school resource officers receive more training and preparation, especially to work with young children.

“I knew that what they did was wrong, but I never knew she was begging for help," Kirkland said in an interview Monday night about the video. “I watched her break.”

The body camera footage still upsets her, Kirkland said, especially when Turner “callously” talks about arresting children.

“You’re discussing traumatizing a 6- and 7-year-old — and that’s a boasting right for you?” she said. “These are babies.”

Kirkland said her granddaughter had sleep apnea, which could cause her to act out in school — a condition that Kirkland had repeatedly worked with the school to manage, she said.

Kaia was completely processed at the county Juvenile Assessment Center, where the girl’s mugshot and fingerprints were taken, Kirkland said, adding that employees at the center had to use a step stool so Kaia could reach the camera for the mugshot.

Kaia has since re-enrolled in a private school, after refusing to attend a school with an officer on campus, Kirkland said. She said she worries about how the trauma from the arrest will affect her granddaughter in years to come.

Turner, who was fired days after the arrest became national news, had worked in OPD’s Reserve Unit, which is made up of retired officers who are required to work a certain amount of hours at the agency per month and can pick up extra-duty jobs for pay.

Over the course of Turner’s 23-year tenure at OPD prior to retiring last year, he was disciplined seven times for violations of department policy that ranged from unsafe driving to a child-abuse arrest in which he was accused of injuring his 7-year-old son. He was also accused of sending threatening text messages to his ex-wife in 2009 and racial profiling, records show.

USA
Retired, or Hoping to Be, and Saddled With Student Loans
STUDENT DEBT IS MORLEY'S CHAINS
WHICH IS WHY BERNIE WILL WIN
When Patrick Donohue retired in May after a 20-year career in customer service at AT&T, he and his wife, Kay, didn’t celebrate. Instead, they argued over which pension option was better: obtaining a large portion right away or scheduling small monthly payments.

© John Francis Peters for The New York Times Patrick Donohue with two of his four daughters, Carly, left, and Kelly, at their old high school in San Diego.

At issue was whether the lump sum might free them from paying further interest on the $97,932 they borrowed from the federal government so their four daughters could attend college, or if doing so would mean sacrificing their long-term financial stability. Ultimately, they settled on the monthly payments, guaranteed for both their lifetimes.


“Kay’s position was, we would outlive the lump sum,” said Mr. Donohue, 64, of San Diego. His inclination to take it may have been just as practical, though: “After eight years of paying off loans, my concern was that we didn’t have much of a cushion if we encountered a major expense.”

It’s a dilemma more American retirees can relate to: While most borrowers are 18 to 39 years old, people over 60 are the fastest-growing segment of the population with student loan debt, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In all, more than 2.8 million Americans over 60 are contending with student debt, a number that has quadrupled from 700,000 in 2005, according to the bureau. The cost is swelling, too: Between 2012 and 2017, for those age 60 and older, the average amount of student loan debt almost doubled, ballooning to $23,500 from $12,100.

The Donohues’ situation is typical. According to that 2017 report, which uses the most recently available figures, 73 percent of borrowers over 60 are paying off student loans they either took out or co-signed to help children and grandchildren through college. Only 27 percent are chipping away at their own or their spouse’s education.

Those numbers don’t surprise Persis Yu, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “We’re taught that sacrificing for our children is what we’re supposed to do,” she said. “What parent would say, ‘No, I’m not going to provide this opportunity for my child to go to college, even if it’s to my own financial detriment?’”

A 2019 AARP Public Policy Institute report found that 15 years ago, borrowers 50 and over held $47 billion of the nation’s $455.2 billion in student loan debt. By 2018, that figure had risen to $289.5 billion of an overall $1.5 trillion.

There are big risks to taking on this debt, and painful consequences if you fall behind: A person’s Social Security benefits can be reduced up to 15 percent if the borrower defaults, not to mention serious quality-of-life issues.

The kind of issues Kimberly Weihl, 55, of Midland, Mich., is facing, for instance. When Ms. Weihl took out a loan for her daughter to attend Saginaw Valley State University in 2007, she was already paying down $60,000 of her own student debt. Now she owes $77,000. Her daughter, who dropped out after two years at Saginaw State and is living at home, is working as a waitress and not yet able to help with payments, which come to $500 a month.

Ms. Weihl cannot foresee a future in which she is able to retire from her nursing job. “I’m convinced I’m going to die before I resolve this,” she said. “I can’t sleep at night. My stomach is in knots.”

Julie B. Miller, a researcher at the M.I.T. AgeLab who is studying how college debt affects family relationships, said student loans and longevity planning are at odds within many debt-saddled households. Pre-retirement milestones like paying off a mortgage get shelved in favor of paying off loans, she said. In some cases, like Ms. Weihl’s, borrowers’ mental or physical health suffers.

“They’ll say, ‘It’s either, make my loan payment this month or do the root canal,’” Ms. Miller said. Sometimes consequences cross generations. “We’ve had borrowers say, ‘My loans are impacting my willingness to help my mom, who’s in a nursing home, financially.’”

The Donohues’ debt load owes itself to four separate loans. Each daughter graduated from a California public university. The part that mystifies Mr. Donohue is how the cost of education so quickly managed to outpace his ability to pay.

“I graduated from a private college, the University of the Pacific, in 1978,” he said. “There were state scholarships available at that time, and I had a little baseball scholarship, and I came out with $3,000 in debt.” (This amounts to about $12,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars.) He was able to pay that off before he got married in 1988. Since then, he said, “the cost of college has become a nightmare and a scandal.”

His daughters do not disagree. Kelly Donohue, 31, the oldest daughter, recently paid off her portion of the family’s loans. But she still worries about her parents’ future. “The parent loan situation has definitely made me think about how I’ll support them when they’re no longer able to work. This is something I factor into my own financial planning.”

Like Ms. Weihl, the Donohues borrowed federal money, in the form of Parent Plus loans. Another option for parents and grandparents is co-signing private loans. Both carry their own risks.

Parent Plus loans “basically fill the gap between what a child might qualify for on their own, which is usually not very much, and the cost of attendance,” said Jessica Ferastoaru of Take Charge America, a nonprofit provider of student loan counseling for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Often, a student will max out federal student loans before turning to private or Parent Plus loans. According to the Education Department, dependent students qualify for $5,500 to $7,500 in loans per year.

Plus loans differ from private loans in a few important ways. One, there is no cap on loan amounts and, in Mr. Donohue’s opinion, not much in the way of warnings to discourage parents from asking for unmanageable sums. “When you apply, their formula is not complete enough,” he said. “What ends up happening is they give out money too easily, and you backslide.”

Another way they differ from private loans is that the signing parent — grandparents are ineligible for Parent Plus loans unless they have adopted the grandchild — is on the hook exclusively for repayment. In addition, “there’s no way to transfer these loans to the student, and the interest rates can be quite high,” Ms. Ferastoaru said, adding that the current rate is about 7 percent.

The risks in co-signing a private loan include fewer repayment plan options; the possibility that the student will miss or skip payments, leaving the co-signer responsible; and an increase in the balance if the loan has an adjustable interest rate, said Lori Trawinski, the AARP Public Policy Institute’s director of banking and finance. In 2017, AARP Research conducted a study of 3,300 people over age 40 who took out loans for someone else, most often children or grandchildren. Among those 50 and older who co-signed a private student loan, 25 percent had to make at least one payment because the student borrower did not.

Those on the older end of the study group were more likely to default than younger co-signers. Decreased income levels after retirement, higher medical expenses and tighter budgets are the likely culprits, Dr. Trawinski said. According to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report, nearly 40 percent of borrowers 65 and older were in default on federal student loans. Dr. Trawinski suspects that number is rising steadily, a result of upticks in Parent Plus borrowing. “Family incomes have not increased enough to keep pace with inflation, much less the dramatic increase in college costs over the past several decades,” she said.

That pension option Mr. Donohue chose provides about $1,000 a month, and his student-loan payments are about the same. To cover living expenses, Mr. Donohue recently went back to work in customer service at Sprouts, a local grocery store. Before he took that job, he and his wife were dipping into their 401(k). Ms. Donohue is not working while she cares for her 94-year-old father.

Dr. Trawinski said parents and grandparents should protect themselves before taking out loans by doing the math beforehand, factoring in what-ifs, like the death of a spouse. They can also protect themselves and urge children to attend less expensive schools. And they should know that if they ever need to declare personal bankruptcy, student loan debt cannot be discharged, or wiped away.

“Often these are emotional decisions,” she said. “Sometimes they end up requiring you to sacrifice your long-term financial security.”

---30---

Hurun rich list: New Chinese billionaires outpace US by 3 to 1

STATE MONOPOLY CAPITALISM 
VS 
MONOPOLY MARKET CAPITALISM
AND THE WINNER IS....

BEIJING (Reuters) - China minted three times as many new billionaires than the United States in the past year, with fortunes made in drugs and online entertainment after a mini-boom from the coronavirus outbreak, a ranking of the world's wealthiest people shows.

The Greater China region, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, created 182 new billionaires in the year to Jan. 31, taking its total to 799, according to the 2020 Hurun Global Rich List released on Wednesday. That compares with 59 new U.S. billionaires.

While the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has hammered the world's second-biggest economy, it has also driven up stock valuations of Chinese companies in online education, online games and vaccinations, the report said.With much of China stuck at home due to quarantines and travel restrictions, demand for online services has surged, lining the pockets of billionaire founders such as Robin Li of Baidu , owner of popular online video platform iQiyi.

Healthcare entrepreneurs specializing in vaccinations did well, including An Kang of Hualan Biological Engineering and Jiang Rensheng of Zhifei Biological Products .

"China today has more billionaires than the U.S. and India combined," said Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and chairman of the Hurun Report, which counted 629 U.S. billionaires and 137 in India.New Chinese entrants include Cheng Xianfeng of drug maker Yifan Xinfu Pharmaceutical and Shen Ya of online discount retailer Vipshop .

"A boom in tech valuations and strong stockmarkets across the U.S., India and China propelled the billionaires to record heights," said the British accountant, who began publishing the list in 1999.U.S. tycoons still led the list, with Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos retaining the top spot for a third year with a $140 billion fortune. Jack Ma of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group topped China's billionaires with $45 billion and came in No. 21 overall, but he was overtaken by Elon Musk from Tesla due to soaring shares in the U.S. electric carmaker.

Technology was followed by property, manufacturing, capital and retail as a major source of wealth in the past year. 

© Reuters/CHINA STRINGER NETWORK People stand near a window overlooking the financial district in Shanghai

Despite the U.S.-China trade war, Ren Zhengfei, founder of Shenzhen-based telecoms giant Huwei Technologies, blacklisted by the U.S. government, saw his personal wealth grow 7% to $3 billion, roughly on par with that of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Beijing is the world's billionaire capital for the fifth year, with 110 billionaires, against 98 in New York. Shanghai overtook Hong Kong to claim third spot.

(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Luoyan Liu in Shanghai; editing by Richard Pullin)

AND HOW THEY GOT TO BE BILLIONAIRES

The Doctors Suing to Make Health Care Great Again

MEDICARE FOR NONE YA ALL PAY CASH

DR.S RON AND RAND PAUL 
Olga Khazan 

A small, litigious group has spent decades trying to stop the government from telling doctors what to do. What happens if it succeeds?

© Bettmann / Getty / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

When the vaccine crackdown came, it was the doctors, of all people, who felt censored. It all started last year, when Adam Schiff, a Democratic representative from California, sent letters to Amazon and other tech giants expressing concern that the companies feature anti-vaccine videos and information on their platforms. Schiff cited a report by CNN that found that many searches on Amazon related to vaccines led to anti-vax content. The first listing, for instance, was a sponsored post for the book Vaccines on Trial, which is dedicated to “children who had to suffer due to adverse vaccine reactions.”


Amazon removed anti-vaccine movies like Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe from its Prime streaming service, incensing advocates opposed to mandatory vaccines and leading to a lawsuit that was filed against Schiff a few weeks ago. The lawsuit came from a New York woman who wants more information about vaccines, alongside an organization that, on the surface, seems counterintuitive: a group of doctors called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

The lawsuit alleges that Schiff’s actions are tantamount to censorship. As a result of his letters, the suit says, Amazon kicked AAPS out of an affiliate network through which the organization had earned commissions. According to the group, searches on Facebook for AAPS vaccine articles instead yielded links to the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the AAPS articles that was allegedly suppressed states, “Measles is a vexing problem, and more complete, forced vaccination will likely not solve it.” (Schiff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

Related: The new measles

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons might sound like another boring doctors’ group politely debating telehealth legislation. But AAPS is a small yet vociferous interest group. Like Zelig with a stethoscope, it has popped up in nearly every major health-care debate for decades, including the Affordable Care Act and opioids, and it wields a surprising amount of influence. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was outed as a member in 2010. (A Paul spokesperson told me that while the senator is no longer a member, he is supportive of AAPS’s fight against Obamacare.) When Rep. Tom Price of Georgia was nominated to lead President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, several newspapers pointed out that he, too, was a member. (At the time, an HHS spokesperson said that not all doctors in a group believe the same thing.)

Though AAPS often takes positions that are associated with conservative groups, it sometimes goes even further, pushing fringe views that most mainstream conservatives do not endorse, such as the belief that mandatory vaccination is “equivalent to human experimentation” and that Medicare is “evil.” Over the years, the group seems to have coalesced around an ethos of radical self-determination and a belief that mainstream science isn’t always trustworthy. It’s the most curious of medical organizations: a doctors’ interest group that seems more invested in the interests of doctors, rather than public health.

At a time when doctors are facing scorching levels of burnout, health-care costs are soaring, and seemingly everyone is frustrated with the status quo, AAPS seems to have come up with an unusual answer: to turn back the clock. AAPS sees its vision as forward-looking and modern, but the group’s rhetoric recalls an era when a doctor would treat you for just a few bucks. No insurance deductible would need to be met first, and no intimidating vaccine schedule had been mandated from above.

AAPS has been called the Tea Party’s favorite doctors, but it’s actually a more fitting health-care group for the Trump era. As Trump has contributed to sowed doubt in the scientific consensus, AAPS is seizing the moment. The group just wants to make health care great again—even if that means tearing it apart.

AAPS was founded in 1943 in opposition to an early effort to provide universal health care to Americans. It first shot to fame half a century later, when it sued then–First Lady Hillary Clinton to gain access to the records of her Task Force on National Health Care Reform. (Though the Clinton administration was initially ordered to pay AAPS’s lawyer fees and other costs, eventually a federal appeals court ruled in its favor.)

Today, the group has moved beyond simply opposing health-care reform, with the apparent intent to throw sand in any and all government gears. It seems most invested in protecting doctors from regulations. “We believe in private medicine,” Jane Orient, AAPS’s longtime executive director and primary spokesperson, told me in a phone interview. “We have opposed attempts to intrude government and other third parties between the patients and the physicians.”

Related: When the religious doctor refuses to treat you

Orient said that AAPS’s membership consists of “under 5,000” of the country’s million or so doctors. She is a physician herself, based in Tuscon and licensed by the Arizona Medical Board. According to AAPS’s tax forms, Orient makes $181,000 a year from the group, though she said in an email that much of this goes toward running the office, such as IT support and office supplies, and that her salary is $48,000. On Facebook, someone named Jane Orient from Tucson posts AAPS press releases on her feed, along with ads for radiation detectors, conspiracy theories about vaccines, and inspirational posts from Littlethings.com. Orient would not confirm whether this was her Facebook page.

During our call, Orient was down on insurance companies, as well as electronic health records and anyone or anything that might tell a doctor what to do, ever. In 2005, Orient backed doctors who prescribe lots of opioids, telling a newspaper that doctors were being “imprisoned for prescribing in good faith with the intention of relieving pain.” (The opioid epidemic has claimed 700,000 American lives.) In 2007, AAPS sued the Texas Medical Board to stop it from relying on anonymous complaints to retaliate against doctors suspected of wrongdoing. (AAPS lost.) Later, AAPS became the first medical society to sue to overturn the Affordable Care Act, saying that it “spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it.”

During the 2018 election cycle, AAPS donated $16,000 to federal political candidates, all of them Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Orient herself has consistently donated small amounts of money to candidates, almost exclusively Republicans, since 1998. But the group drifts from the Republican establishment in many ways. Orient said she opposes some traditionally conservative health-care policies, such as the Massachusetts predecessor to the Affordable Care Act devised by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Regarding Trump, Orient said he has been “a disappointment in some ways,” but that AAPS is “very glad for some of the things that he has done,” such as continuing to oppose Obamacare.

Several mainstream conservatives I reached out to declined to speak with me about AAPS. When I finally got one right-leaning health wonk, Joe Antos, on the phone, he said he had been thinking of the wrong AAPS and did not know much about the group.

Meanwhile, a media-relations representative at the American Medical Association, the main doctors’ group in America, mentioned that he'd expect the AAPS to accuse the AMA of having a ‘fascist’ relationship with the government. Orient told me that AAPS does not consider the AMA fascist, “although we certainly criticize many of their policies. We think it is important to define terms precisely and not to indulge in name-calling.”

Perhaps the only thing Americans agree on when it comes to health care today is that something’s gotta give. Electronic records are a nightmare for many doctors, and patients hate fighting with insurers as much as doctors do. It’s natural to want to just nuke it all. AAPS presents an extreme vision of that: What would happen if the government didn’t make doctors do, well, anything? I’ve met with some doctors who see anti-vaccine patients and who also don’t accept insurance, and I was taken by how free, self-actualized, and otherwise perky they were. Many doctors might readily swap an overcrowded primary-care practice for a concierge gig like that.

AAPS seems to have pushed this vision of the unfettered doctor too far, though. Over time, it has taken a puzzling turn toward unconventional medical views, as exemplified by its legal tangle with Schiff. To Orient, the government should not even dictate essential medications that protect public health. Asked whether vaccines increase the risk of autism, she said, “I think that the definitive research has not been done.” (The overwhelming scientific consensus is that vaccines do not cause autism.)

In 2015, after measles broke out at Disneyland, AAPS put out a press release questioning the safety of vaccines. The group has suggested that women who have abortions are at a higher risk of breast cancer, though mainstream scientists say this is false. In 2008, an article on AAPS’s website suggested that President Barack Obama was covertly hypnotizing people with his speeches, and that this might explain why Jews voted for him. AAPS’s journal, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, has published articles raising doubts that HIV causes AIDS and questioning the wisdom of urging people to quit smoking, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

Orient told me that the articles in the group’s journal don’t necessarily represent the official policy of AAPS. She called the story from the Louisville Courier Journal a “hit piece,” saying that the smoking article was arguing simply that “constantly telling [people] that nicotine is addictive might give them an excuse not to try” to quit. Regarding the abortion–breast cancer link, she said in an email that “there is a large and growing number of articles supporting this, although ‘mainstream’ American researchers deny it and focus on a small number of articles with negative findings.” She denied the suggestion about Jews and said that the entire AAPS article was referencing an article from another source.

Orient disagrees with the premise of this article, too. She said that AAPS cares most about patients, not doctors. Rather than being backwards-looking, she said, the group is “looking forward to a future in which there’s more innovation and more freedom, instead of one in which there’s tighter government control.” With such freedom, Orient told me, “we could have a thriving, innovative, friendly medical practice where when you call the doctor’s office on the phone, instead of saying, ‘What insurance do you have?’ the doctor’s office will say, ‘How can we help you?’”


AAPS’s apparent yearning for patients to pay with cash and for doctors to do as they please has historical precedent. Medicare only arrived in 1966. Before that, the options for seniors were to, as PolitiFact notes, “spend their savings, rely on funding from their children … hope for charity from the hospitals or avoid care altogether.” In the early 1970s, only certain states had school vaccination laws—and their measles rates were 40 to 51 percent lower than in schools without such laws.

There were indeed fewer rules and less paperwork back then. But the AAPS doesn’t seem to offer a solution for the fact that these days, a single “How can we help you?” from a doctor can result in a five-figure bill. In recent years, the group has focused on opposing calls for single-payer health care, and it even came out against surprise-billing legislation, which would protect patients from out-of-network hospital bills and has garnered bipartisan support in several states. (Orient dismissed these measures as “price controls imposed on physicians.”)

In our conversation, Orient did say that physicians should strive to help people who can’t pay, that hospitals should charge more reasonable and transparent prices, and that patients are often able to reduce their hospital bills through negotiation. But in 2016, Orient wrote in an op-ed that some people might simply sell their belongings to pay their medical bills. “Consider this,” she wrote. “Would you rather buy a nice car and risk having to sell it to pay a bill, or pay the insurance company the same amount and never get to drive the car?” (Orient stands by this, writing in an email, “If you lived beyond your means and bought a car that you couldn’t afford, and did not provide for future medical costs, how much sympathy should you receive?”)

Most health groups today have a specific idea for how to reform medical care, whether through single-payer health care or Netflix for doctors. The trouble with AAPS’s vision for America is that it exhibits a nostalgia for a past that never existed. Measles killed hundreds of Americans a year before the vaccine became available. Americans are drowning in medical debt that kindly doctors haven’t successfully eliminated, and selling our cars to pay for medical care would strike few people as the right answer. The idea that doctors always do right by patients, and that patients always have the money to pay, and that no one ever gets measles at Disneyland, is a tempting dream. The problem is, it’s just that.


Related video: Anti-vaccine movement takes online harassment into the real world (provided by NBC News

  

© Digital Vision / Getty

Kudlow: Coronavirus will not be economic tragedy
DR. KUDLOW I PRESUME

White House economic adviser says US economy can ride out coronavirus
KUDLOW PLAYS A TV ECONOMIST

 SO WHY NOT A TV DOCTOR

The U.S. economy will be able to ride out any disruption from the global spread of coronavirus, a top White House adviser said on Tuesday, adding that he is not anticipating the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to blunt the virus' economic impact.

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in an interview on CNBC that the virus has so far been tightly contained in the United States despite calls by federal public health officials for businesses and others to prepare for possible major disruption.

"This is very tightly contained in the U.S.," Kudlow told CNBC, adding any such emergency planning does not mean a wider outbreak of the virus will come to pass in the United States.

"I'm not hearing the Fed's going to make any panic move," he said, referring to growing market expectations that the virus will push the U.S. central bank to cut rates.

U.S. health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday raised the alarm about the likely spread of coronavirus and urged Americans to get prepared now, following swift-moving outbreaks in China, South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has sought to downplay any potential U.S. outbreak or the impact to the nation's economy.

Kudlow on Tuesday praised U.S. health officials for "preparing for any eventualities" but also urged Americans and financial investors not to overreact.

SEE 
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/will-chinas-coronavirus-outbreak-send.html

Trump’s Plea for U.S. to Shrug Off Virus Fear Ignored by Markets

DR TRUMP I PRESUME PLAYING PRESIDENT NOW PLAYING DOCTOR 

Trump to discuss coronavirus at news conference

OOPS THAT PREDICTION DIDN'T LAST LONG


(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump and his top advisers want global markets and the American public to believe that the coronavirus poses little risk to the U.S.

But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is saying just the opposite -- warning Tuesday that the virus’s spread in America is inevitable and could bring significant disruption to the world’s largest economy.


So far, the markets are siding with the CDC’s experts. U.S. stocks hit a 12-week low following the CDC warning, with losses on the S&P 500 totaling 7.6% over four days.

“The American people deserve some straight answers on the coronavirus and I’m not getting them from you,” Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf at a hearing on Tuesday.

At the Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina, on Tuesday night, candidates accused Trump of making the country more vulnerable by failing to take action.

The mixed messages from top U.S. officials illustrated the balance that Trump and his advisers are trying to strike: Demonstrating that they have control over the situation while avoiding any move that spurs a panic and subsequent stock market sell-off as the re-election campaign heats up.

Trump will arrive in Washington early Wednesday morning with growing questions about the administration’s handling of coronavirus. His Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, will face a second day of scrutiny over the government’s response during House hearings Wednesday on his agency’s budget.

Earlier: Trump Administration Asks for $2.5 Billion to Battle Coronavirus

Earlier Tuesday, as he concluded a two-day trip to India, Trump told reporters that the disease was “well under control” in the U.S. His top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, declared at the White House later in the day that “we have contained this virus.”

But they were contradicted by public health professionals at the CDC. “We expect we will see community spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“It is not a matter of if, but a question of when, this will exactly happen,” she said.

The benchmark S&P 500 index extended its losses for a fourth straight day, the longest such streak since Aug. 5, falling more than 3% on Tuesday. Compounding investors’ worries about the U.S. government’s preparedness, the World Health Organization reported on Tuesday that the number of global infections exceeded 80,000, up 900 in a day, and that cases were reported in four additional countries -- Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq and Oman.

There have only been 60 Americans infected so far, according to the CDC, and none have died. Nevertheless, there is deep concern on Capitol Hill that the government is unprepared for a domestic outbreak. Some lawmakers have pushed Trump for a more aggressive response, including broader restrictions on travel from countries with outbreaks, but there are worries within the White House about the impact on the economy -- and by extension, the president’s re-election campaign.

Read More: Fed’s Clarida Says Too Soon to Speculate on Virus Spillover

A test for the virus developed in part by the CDC and shared with states has produced inconclusive results, limiting the ability of local health departments to detect the disease and raise alarm if it’s silently spreading through U.S. communities. That’s crucially important, given that mild cases can resemble the flu.

“I am frustrated that we have had issues with the test,” Messonnier said. The agency is working on a modified test kit it hopes to send out to state and local health departments as soon as possible. Twelve states and localities are now able to perform testing on their own, she said.

Through Feb. 23, the CDC conducted 2,620 coronavirus tests on 1,007 patients. While it has no backlog, completing the test involves sending a sample back to the agency, potentially delaying results.

The U.S. also has far fewer protective masks than it would need in the case of a major coronavirus outbreak, Alex Azar told lawmakers.

There are about 30 million stockpiled N95 masks that can block infective particles, Azar said, but the country would need as many as 300 million for health workers in an outbreak.

More Money
The Trump administration asked Congress on Monday to provide $2.5 billion to help fight the looming outbreak, money that would be used to help expand disease surveillance, bolster state and local health agencies, fund work on vaccines and drug treatments and help fortify the strategic national stockpile with protective gear including masks and respirators. About half of the $2.5 billion would come from reallocated funds, including $535 million for efforts to combat Ebola, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Democrats and some Republicans said the White House’s request was not enough.

Even some close Trump allies expressed frustration with the government’s preparations and public statements. Asked to comment on Kudlow’s assertion that the virus is contained in the U.S., Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, demurred.

“I can’t comment on what the White House has been saying on this, because the people who work for the White House are not saying that,” he said.

Kennedy complained that U.S. officials couldn’t consistently answer even basic questions about the virus. In a hearing Tuesday morning, he asked Wolf about the disease’s mortality rate.

Earlier: Virus Outbreak Drives Italians to Panic-Buying of Masks and Food

“Worldwide I believe it’s under 2%,” Wolf said, saying he’d provide an exact figure from the CDC. “It changes daily. It’s under 2%, it was as high as 3.”

Asked the mortality rate of influenza, Wolf said, “it’s also right around that percentage as well.”

“You sure of that?” Kennedy said. While seasonal flu kills as many as tens of thousands of Americans each year, its mortality rate is less than 0.5% this year, in part thanks to broad vaccination.

During the Tuesday night debate, Senator Amy Klobuchar, former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg all said Trump has sought to cut funding to the CDC, and Klobuchar said that the president “hasn’t really addressed the nation on this topic.”

(Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

Trump, on his way back from India, responded on Twitter that “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world.” He added that “so far, by the way, we have not had one death. Let’s keep it that way!”

‘Radical Transparency’
After the Senate hearing, Kennedy said that officials “need to speak straight up to the American people, and when they don’t know an answer, they need to say we don’t know the answer to that but we’re working on it.” A Homeland Security Department spokeswoman said that Kennedy should have directed his questions about the virus’s mortality to health care officials, not Wolf.

Azar said that the administration is “trying to engage in radical transparency with the American public as we go through this.”

“Each of those messages is accurate, but addresses a particular aspect of what we’re talking about,” he said. “Abroad, this is spreading quite rapidly. In the United States, thanks to the president and this team’s aggressive containment efforts, this disease is contained.”

Trump, tweeting grievances about the prosecution of his friend Roger Stone as he flew back to Washington, will return to a city consumed by concerns about the coronavirus and his government’s preparations. His message to Americans, so far, has been that even if they get sick, the virus is unlikely to kill them.

Of the 60 Americans who have become infected so far, 36 were on a cruise ship in Japan that was the site of one of the largest outbreaks outside China. None have died.

“We think they’ll be in very good shape very, very soon,” Trump said.

Blunt, the Missouri Republican, took a darker and more global view. After a classified briefing from U.S. officials at the Capitol, Blunt said: “It would be true that most of them are getting better.”

But he added: “They’re not all getting better. The ones that died aren’t getting better.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM BANK ROBBERY
A Private Bank That Survived the Nazis May Be Broken by German Tax Scandal

Karin Matussek

M.M. Warburg & Co.’s headquarters exudes the aura of a fortress that has withstood the tumultuous twists of German history for centuries.

The ornate sandstone structure survived the bombs that rained down on Hamburg starting in 1941. One shell hit the roof but bounced off a metal beam, limiting the damage. Even the firestorm that wiped out much of the neighborhood in a 1943 raid couldn’t harm the building. The Jewish family that owned and ran the bank was expelled by the Nazis and went into exile, only to return after the war and rebuild the institution into one of the country’s largest and best-regarded private lenders.

Now another crisis is enveloping the storied institution and has forced its longtime chairman, Christian Olearius, as well as co-owner Max Warburg -- a direct descendant of the founding family -- from the supervisory board. Authorities have raided Warburg three times as well as the private homes of Olearius. Among the seized documents were the chairman’s personal diaries containing meticulous records of his business life.

Warburg allegedly participated in controversial dividend trades known as Cum-Ex that took advantage of double tax reimbursements. The scandal, which lawmakers say has cost the state at least 10 billion euros ($10.8 billion) in lost revenue, has roiled the financial industry, ensnaring lenders from Deutsche Bank AG to Barclays Plc. The case has led to a months-long trial unfolding in Bonn with two defendants, former bankers who have laid out the industry’s complicity in the practice.
Countless Challenges

Olearius, his son Joachim -- now the lender’s CEO -- Max Warburg and several top managers are being probed over their roles in Cum-Ex. The next charges filed by Cologne prosecutors will target Warburg employees, people familiar with the case said.

Warburg said it never intended to participate in illegal share transactions, misinform tax authorities or claim unjustified refunds.

Cum-Ex trades, named for the Latin term for “With-Without,” took advantage of German tax laws and allowed multiple investors to claim refunds on a dividend levy that was paid only once, prosecutors say.

How a discreet institution like Warburg, which has carefully crafted the image of respectability, got caught up in what’s been labeled the biggest tax heist in Germany has perplexed investigators and the public alike. Warburg is a fixture among Hamburg’s moneyed elite, and the fall of Olearius has sent shock waves through the upper echelons of society and political circles.

“Warburg survived countless challenges in the last 200 years; numerous wars, a hyperinflation and the Nazis -- you have to wonder why a bank with such tradition was prepared to participate in these kinds of acts,” said Christopher Kopper, a professor at Bielefeld University specializing in corporate history.In the world of Cum-Ex, Warburg stands out. Its deep involvement in the scandal belies its modest size compared to global giants like Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit or Barclays. Warburg long focused on private banking for the rich, as well as asset management and investment banking, and the company prides itself in its long-term approach. A corporate brochure suggests Warburg is guided by a higher ethical standard, claiming it doesn’t do business for its own sake.

Hamburg, New York

“Cum-Ex has laid bare the fundamental problem of the finance industry, which likes to embrace all possibilities that are not strictly illegal,” said Bernhard Emunds, an ethics professor at the Sankt Georgen college in Frankfurt.

Warburg is one of the last family-owned private banks in the country. Sal. Oppenheim, previously Europe’s largest private bank with a rich history to match Warburg’s, was forced to embrace Deutsche Bank as a savior in 2009 after investments went sour.

The Hamburg bank traces its roots to brothers Moses Marcus Warburg and Gerson Warburg, who set up shop in 1798. Over the next century, it expanded to become a well-connected lender with close government ties around the globe. Paul Warburg, a family offspring who became an investment banker in New York, was an early advocate for the U.S. Federal Reserve System, while Eric M. Warburg founded E.M. Warburg in New York in 1939, which evolved into private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC.

The Nazis finally forced the family in Hamburg to give up its shares and the bank later had to change its name to Brinckmann, Wirtz & Co. After the war, the Warburgs regained ownership and reinstated the family name.

Warburg’s first brush with Cum-Ex occurred more than a decade ago, when one of Germany’s top tax lawyers stopped by for a meeting. On Jan. 30, 2006, Hanno Berger pitched Olearius a new trade that promised safe yet highly lucrative transactions built around taxation of dividends, according to the indictment filed by prosecutors in the Bonn case.

Rich Heritage

One of Berger’s associates, a tax lawyer who has since turned on his former boss using the pseudonym Benjamin Frey, recounted the meetings, and how he was awed by the splendor, with oil paintings depicting the dynasty adorning the walls, coffee served by butlers and china with the Warburg emblem. (The bank denies employing butlers).

Frey said Berger explained the deals, though Olearius “didn’t understand the details,” instead relying on another manager who had analyzed the structure. In the end, Olearius signaled his interest, and that he might also invest his personal money, according to Frey’s account in court last year.

Warburg set out as a Cum-Ex shortseller later in 2006. The following year, the bank switched roles and acted as the buyer in the deals, continuing until 2011, prosecutors say. The Cum-Ex practice ended in 2012 after Germany changed how dividend tax is collected. Berger, who moved to Switzerland that same year after his Frankfurt law office was raided, has denied any wrongdoing.

The bank has long maintained that it simply participated in legitimate dividend arbitrage transactions and couldn’t know that these involved Cum-Ex-type deals. It’s an argument refuted by witnesses in the Bonn trial, who said everyone knew and could detect Cum-Ex even if the term wasn’t used because the profits priced into the underlying transaction were unusually high.

The bank’s investment unit also set up funds that collected money from German millionaires and other investors. One of these arrangements was dubbed “Maltese structure” because it used offshore companies based in Malta. That entity alone caused damages of 108 million euros, according to the indictment.

Credibility Boost

In the majority of the 34 cases under review in the Bonn case, Warburg or people associated with the bank were involved. A verdict in that case is expected toward the end of March or early in April.

Martin Shields, one of the accused in the Bonn trial, told the court that he came in contact with Warburg when he was still a trader at UniCredit SpA’s HVB unit. The Hamburg lender was “one of our desk’s most active relationships,” said Shields, who worked primarily on Cum-Ex deals.

When Shields left the bank to set up his own boutique advising on Cum-Ex deals, Warburg was his first client.

“The agreement with M.M. Warburg provided us with a certain amount of credibility and basic business,” Shields, who is cooperating with authorities in a bid to avoid jail time, told the court.

The judges in the Bonn case have said they consider the deals to be criminal and that Warburg will most likely have to pay about 280 million euros in lost tax revenue.

“Warburg needs to understand that the state is clamping down,” said Konrad Duffy, an expert on financial crime at Finanzwende, a political pressure group. “This is why the bank is struggling, because it previously wasn’t accustomed to such behavior.”

Confronted with the allegations, the bank initially went on the offensive. After the third raid of its headquarters in 2018, Warburg issued a terse release denying any wrongdoing. The probe, Warburg said, was a “useless” exercise that failed to produce even a single case backing the allegations.

Damaged Reputation

The staunch resistance enraged prosecutors, according to people familiar with the probe. Public perception of Warburg and Olearius had already begun to shift, depicting the bank and its chairman as greedy and willing to sacrifice their principles on the altar of profit.

By the end of November, pressure had become unsustainable. Olearius and Max Warburg both quit their posts to “devote more time to their social commitment,” according to a statement. The release maintained the veneer of an orderly generational handover that had been long in the making. But Bafin, the regulator, had essentially forced out that duo that had guided the bank for decades.

After Olearius and Max Warburg stepped down, the bank began revealing a more cooperative side. Less than three weeks after their departure was announced, lawyers told the Bonn court that the lender was ready to pay back any profits generated from the incriminated transactions. Warburg says it made 68 million euros in the deals. Earlier this month, the bank said Olearius and Max Warburg were prepared to contribute the necessary funds to cope with any Cum-Ex impact.

“Olearius spent years cultivating the image of the honorable merchant,” Duffy said. “Taking a closer look, that now rings hollow.”

--With assistance from Stephan Kahl.

Will China's coronavirus outbreak send the world economy into recession? 

As cases spread across Asia and in Europe, only some of the multiple indicators investors use to monitor recession signals are flashing red, implying the frail global economy may not necessarily be heading towards a contraction.

It is too early to be sure, however. The outbreak is still continuing to spread and key data points for February are still unavailable.

What's more, forecasting global recessions is tricky because most countries can't match U.S. data for its breadth. It's also rare for the world economy to actually shrink - prior to 2008-09, that happened only in 1990-1991.

But taking into account population growth and poor countries' need for faster expansion rates, the broad rule of thumb is that world growth below 2% can be classed as recession.
The International Monetary Fund still expects 3.3% global growth in 2020. But it cut China forecasts to 5.6% and voiced fears the coronavirus impact could be longer-lasting than previously expected.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed the country's 6% growth target will be met.
But Justin Onuekwusi, a portfolio manager at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), said there was a 90% probability Chinese growth would fall below 5% if the virus continued to disrupt economic activity.

"That would be the tipping point. The question then will be if world growth will fall under 2%," he added.

Here are 10 frequently used recession indicators.

1. U.S. LEADS THE WORLD
If the world's biggest economy tips into recession, it's likely others will follow. But a closely watched Leading Economic Index in the United States, compiled by the Conference Board think-tank, hit a record high in January.

The index suggests "the current economic expansion – at about 2% – will continue through early 2020," the Conference Board said.

But the index also leans heavily on indicators tied to manufacturing, which now accounts for less than a fifth of U.S. economic activity. The surge also reflected the run-up in stock prices last month.

2. CURVE BALL
An inverted yield curve, when short-dated borrowing costs rise above longer yields, has been a reliable gauge of U.S. downturns, having predicted almost every recession in the past half-century.

Now the coronavirus has sent three-month borrowing costs above 10-year rates while the two-year/10-year curve is less than 20 basis points from inversion.
"The Treasury market is pricing that the world economy is going to be flirting with sub-2% growth," LGIM's Onuekwusi said.

3. CHINA MOMENTUM INDICATOR
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reportedly favors three indicators to monitor growth - freight volumes, power consumption and bank loans - unified in Fathom Consulting's China Momentum Index.

The index tumbled in 2008 before the global crisis and fell below 2 in 2015-16 amid Chinese "hard landing" fears.

The index stood at 5.1 in December, off three-years lows touched in mid-2019 during the Sino-U.S. trade spat. But recovery has probably fizzled this year as the virus dampened activity.

4. TRADE ALARM
If growth hinges on booming trade, the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) shipping benchmark is sounding alarm bells. It hit three-year lows this month and has dipped during every previous recession. Since September the BDI has plunged 80% to around 506 points. It troughed during the 2016 growth scare at around 300 points.

5. WHAT DO PURCHASING MANAGERS THINK?
Purchasing Managers' Indexes have been reliable in predicting manufacturing and services trends so February's drop in the U.S. services PMI to the lowest since October 2013 was a shock.

Signaling that a sector accounting for two-thirds of the world's biggest economy was in contraction, the "flash" PMI "brought home how close we might be to recession because of the coronavirus," London and Capital Group told clients.
Global composite global PMIs from JPMorgan showed output and new orders still expanding last month. But February's composite is likely to be very different. 

6. INFLATION AND BONDS
Bond yields and inflation usually rise when growth is strong and vice versa. So the recent tumble in market-based inflation gauges -- five-year forward swaps -- in the euro zone and the United States is cause for concern.

And 7-10-year yields on the Bloomberg/Barclays Multiverse, a global debt benchmark, are at six-month lows and approaching the lows hit during the 2016 growth scare.

7. ASK DR. COPPER
Copper's record as a boom-bust indicator has earned it the "Dr. Copper" moniker. And because gold is considered a store of value during recession, the gold/copper ratio can point where growth is heading. So if the economy's tanking, dump copper and buy gold.
The current ratio - approaching 2009 peaks - is worrying. But in the modern economy copper's predictive power has weakened. Also during market panic, "sentiment tends to boost gold and weigh on copper. That can open the spread and lead to a false signal," said Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke.

8. DEMAND FOR DEFENSIVES
There are shares that do well when the economy is robust and others which perform in tough times. The former category comprises 'cyclicals' -- carmakers and retailers for instance -- while 'defensives' include utilities and consumer staples. 

But these days the cyclicals vs defensives ratio is skewed by tech - nominally classed as cyclicals, companies such as Apple and Amazon have behaved increasingly like safe defensives.

9. TIGHTENING BELTS
Financial conditions indices (FCI), comprising elements such as long-term borrowing costs, exchange rates and equity moves, show how supportive the backdrop is for growth. Tighter conditions are generally a negative.

A Goldman Sachs index https://tmsnrt.rs/32lFIqw shows conditions have eased since early January, possibly as China loosens policy. But the index does not yet reflect this week's massive equity selloff. 

10. KOREAN EXPORTS
South Korean trade figures are the first to emerge each month from any major economy and therefore receive close scrutiny. The picture isn't pretty - exports contracted in January for the 14th straight month.

February data is now awaited, especially on semiconductors - used in electronics and comprising a fifth of South Korean exports, overseas sales have fallen for five months straight.


Iranians wear protective masks to prevent contracting coronavirus as they sit in taxi in Tehran.© Reuters / WANA NEWS AGENCY Iranians wear protective masks to prevent contracting coronavirus as they sit in taxi in Tehran.