Trump Ripped For Putting 'Science-Denier' Mike Pence In Charge Of Coronavirus
Ed Mazza,HuffPost•February 27, 2020
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that Vice President Mike Pence would lead the White House task force on COVID-19, the deadly new coronavirus infection spreading around the world. But critics are pointing out that Pence’s track record on health and science isn’t exactly reassuring.
Pence once called global warming a “myth,” downplayed the health risks of smoking, and as governor of Indiana, led his state into an HIV crisis by cutting funding to Planned Parenthood and initially opposing needle exchange programs. The vice president also has no medical experience.
Critics were quick to point out the flaws in Trump’s plan:
Former Hoosier here 👋
Mike Pence said smoking doesn’t kill. He was single-handedly responsible for a statewide AIDS outbreak. And the lax gun laws he passed increased deaths across the Midwest.
Also, he doesn’t believe in science. 😬 https://t.co/w52rgwNH3N
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 27, 2020
Pray the Corona away https://t.co/kBE7KMd5pl
— Richard Marx (@richardmarx) February 27, 2020
So Pence is the expert who will save us all?!?#25thanyone ? https://t.co/fB9qX523RR
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) February 27, 2020
“Mike Pence can fix this.”
- No one ever.
— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) February 27, 2020
It's ok y'all......Mike Pence is in charge of the Coronavirus.
What could go wrong?#coronavirususa pic.twitter.com/cfSYvuVnpH
— Rogue NASA (@RogueNASA) February 27, 2020
Mike Pence literally does not believe in science.
It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic.
This decision could cost people their lives. Pence’s past decisions already have. https://t.co/NhMPOusOWm
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 27, 2020
A science denier who claimed smoking didn’t cause cancer, and who enabled a HIV outbreak with his stance against needles, is now in charge of handling a global health emergency?
— Morten Øverbye (@morten) February 27, 2020
Putting a science denier like Mike Pence in charge of the Coronavirius outbreak in the US? pic.twitter.com/f6fSsueX8S
— rachel leishman (@RachelLeishman) February 27, 2020
Pence says coronavirus can’t be alone in a room with a woman who’s not it’s wife, so that’s nice
— Christine Nangle (@nanglish) February 27, 2020
Mike Pence, the climate change science denier, is going to lead a task force which requires the scientific/medical profession’s input. What could go wrong? 🤦♂️😱 https://t.co/rT5IRKrzFD
— TheDiaryofDaniel (@DiaryofDaniel) February 27, 2020
Mr. Pence is so skilled at public health protection that his cutbacks and personal religious decisions helped fuel an outbreak of HIV in Indiana. He is about WORST POSSIBLE CHOICE. https://t.co/1J5KSlZM9N
— Regina Griffin (@Regina_Griffin) February 27, 2020
A matter of hours before Mike Pence announces coronversion therapy to cure those affected in the United States.
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) February 27, 2020
Remember when Trump put out those blank manila folders to "prove" he had divested his assets? Mike Pence is Trump's blank manila folder trotted out to "prove" he is dealing with the coronavirus.
— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) February 27, 2020
Putting Mike Pence in charge of the coronavirus response is like putting me in the Olympics and thinking I’ll take the gold in long-distance running. I’m completely unqualified and literally unable to do it. #CoronavirusOutbreak
— Melissa Blake (@melissablake) February 27, 2020
After Trump—who just tapped Pence to lead the effort—turns his back, Sec. Azar seizes the room's attention to insist that HE remains the "chairman" but is glad to have the Veep "helping," while Pence stands motionless with a vacant middle-distance stare. So that happened. (yikes)
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) February 27, 2020
Trump has appointed Mike Pence to be in charge of Coronavirus response.
Under the theory that the person who helped perpetuate an unnecessary AIDS crisis when he was governor of Indiana has the right resume.
— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) February 27, 2020
"He's got a certain talent for this," Trump says of Pence, who was just named to lead the government's coronavirus approach.
As Indiana governor Pence allowed an HIV outbreak in Scott County to spread to epidemic proportions because he slow-walked approval for needle exchanges.
— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) February 26, 2020
In 2000, Mike #Pence wrote an op-ed stating that smoking doesn't kill people. Since then, he's made no effort to deny or clarify his bizarre claim. This is the man Trump put in charge of our country's protection from the #CoronaVirus. Science is real, Mike. Facts matter, Mike.
— Dr. Jack Brown (@DrGJackBrown) February 27, 2020
Mike Pence who enabled a massive HIV outbreak by enacting TERRIBLE public policy is in charge of the Coronavirus outbreak. We have local transmission possible in California now with an admin hell bent on punishing communities who embrace their undocumented immigrants.
— Jonathan Van Ness (@jvn) February 27, 2020
Mike Pence’s plan for dealing with the coronavirus. #coronavirususa #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/jbsExJuP8W
— Korynn (@Korynn_W) February 27, 2020
Given that Pence famously, massively fucked up the response to an HIV outbreak, he shouldn’t be the guy to handle the Coronavirus.
Like, what if we stopped picking the LEAST qualified people to handle things? What would that even be like? https://t.co/0T7qHSdA30
— Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) February 27, 2020
My dad (a doctor) had signs in every bathroom in our house that said, “Handwashing prevents infection!” with a teddy bear and a heart. I wouldn’t mind seeing those signs everywhere now. More effective than Pence.
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 27, 2020
Coronavirus czar Mike Pence recommends keeping a safe distance from any infected women and also uninfected women
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 26, 2020
I would have more faith in this guy over Pence.
It’s that low of a bar.#coronavirus pic.twitter.com/WZMe31KjhN
— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) February 27, 2020
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Outraged Unions to Test Credibility of S. African Debt Curbs
Paul Vecchiatto, Amogelang Mbatha and Prinesha Naidoo,
Bloomberg•February 27, 2020
Outraged Unions to Test Credibility of S. African Debt Curbs
(Bloomberg) -- The credibility of South Africa’s proposals to curb debt and save its sole investment-grade credit rating will be put to the test by powerful labor unions outraged by plans to pare back the wage bill.
The government is seeking to backtrack on a three-year pay deal agreed with civil servants in 2018 and cut personnel spending by 37.8 billion rand ($2.5 billion) in the year through March 2021. The allocation for pay was also cut by 122.4 billion rand for the next two years to offset the effect of lower-than-expected economic growth and tax revenue, according to the budget review Finance Minister Tito Mboweni presented on Wednesday.
While financial markets cheered the news, with the rand gaining as much as 0.8% against the dollar, the government’s ability to hold firm against its 1.3 million state workers who’ve consistently won inflation-beating increases is in doubt. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s largest labor group, is a member of the ruling coalition and President Cyril Ramaphosa is indebted to it for helping him win control of the ruling party in late 2017.
“The budget is dependent on significant wage cuts,” said Investec Asset Management analysts Nazmeera Moola and Sisamkele Kobus. “There is absolutely no agreement with unions to achieve this, so at best this is a negotiating tactic.”
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The budget lays bare the need for the government to curb expenditure.
The economy is set to expand an average of just 1.2% a year through 2022, and the budget deficit is projected to reach 6.8% of gross domestic product in the year through March 2021 -- the highest since before apartheid ended in 1994. The state wage bill has surged 40% more than inflation over the past 12 years, and accounts for more than a third of total government spending.
The government isn’t planning to cut or reduce wages, according to Dondo Mogajane, the Treasury’s director-general. It’s proposing a 1.5% increase for the coming year and 4.5% in each of the next two years, he said, adding union concerns will be taken into account.
“We are opening up and saying ‘there are no holy cows here, let’s talk,’” Mogajane said in an interview. “The budget deficit is not going to be 6.8%, it’s going to be around 7% or right up to 8% if we factor out the wage proposal. We are prepared to open the conversation with labor to ask what else to cut.”
Mboweni conceded that difficult discussions with the unions lay ahead, but expressed confidence that “we will be able to find each other.”
Cosatu was less conciliatory, accusing the government of trying to force workers to bear the brunt of years of economic mismanagement and unchecked graft.
“The way the state has gone about notifying the workers is in extremely bad faith and dangerous,” said Matthew Parks, the federation’s parliamentary officer. “It causes anxiety among our members and collapses the space to engage.”
Civil servants last staged a strike in 2010 that dragged on for three weeks before they were awarded an inflation-beating 7.5% raise.
“The real issue from the budget seems to be the difficult times that lie ahead with very muted economic growth and a lot of cost-cutting, especially with the public-sector wage bill,” said Brendan Gace, head of private clients at Anchor Capital (Pty) Ltd. If spending on wages is curbed, there will be “an inevitable clash between government and the trade unions,” he said.
Moody’s Investors Service is the only major ratings company that still assesses South Africa’s debt at investment grade and is scheduled to make an announcement on the rating next month.
The budget highlights the severe deterioration underway in public finances and the long-term policy challenge of stabilizing government debt, Fitch Ratings, which has the country on one level below investment grade with a negative outlook, said on Wednesday.
“These consolidation measures rely heavily on hoped-for moderation in public-sector wages, which might not materialize, adding further risks to South Africa’s deficit and debt trajectories,” Fitch said in a statement in its website.
Opinion: Why is humanity so reluctant to save itself from climate change?
The biggest challenge in keeping Earth from overheating isn’t technical, it’s political
By WILLEME. BUITER
The biggest challenge in keeping Earth from overheating isn’t technical, it’s political
By WILLEME. BUITER
Willem H. Buiter, a former chief economist at Citigroup, is a visiting professor at Columbia University.
There is a massive free-rider problem. Under current circumstances, it will always be individually rational to let others cut back on their emissions rather than doing so yourself. The only way to correct this problem is through collective rationality or enlightened self-interest.
“We need quick wins,” warns the United Nations Environment Program in its latest Emissions Gap Report, “or the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement will slip out of reach.”
That is an understatement. Even if the current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the 2015 Paris accord were met, emissions in 2030 would 38% above where they need to be. Global average temperatures will be on track to rise by a disastrous 2.9° to 3.4°C by 2100, with continuing increases thereafter.
The NDC targets would need to be roughly tripled just to limit warming to 2°C, and would have to increase fivefold to achieve the 1.5°C goal.
That is not going to happen. The only time in recent history when CO2 emissions have looked as though they might plateau was in 2014-2016, owing to weak global growth. According to the Global Carbon Project, emissions have since increased again, by 2.7% in 2018 and 0.6% in 2019.
Making matters worse, the December 2019 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP25) was a dismal failure, resulting in no new climate pledges or clear messages of intent for this year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Why is humanity so reluctant to save itself?
Denial is the least of our worries
First, many people simply do not accept the predictions issued by climate scientists. But denialism is the least serious of the three main obstacles. There will always be a minority for whom facts and logic are unwelcome distractions. Yet even President Donald Trump must realize by now that climate change will undermine the future viability and profitability of Mar-a-Lago.
As the real-world costs of climate-driven disasters mount over time, denialism will become less of an issue. Indeed, a November 2019 Yale University survey finds that 62% of registered voters in the United States would support a president “declaring global warming a national emergency if Congress does not act.”
The second major challenge is that greenhouse-gas emissions are the quintessential global economic externality. Climate change doesn’t respect borders; greenhouse gases emitted anywhere will affect everyone eventually.
Countries like India and those in Sub-Saharan Africa are not going to sacrifice their economic development for the sake of emissions reductions.
That means there is a massive free-rider problem. Under current circumstances, it will always be individually rational to let others cut back on their emissions rather than doing so yourself. The only way to correct this problem is through collective rationality or enlightened self-interest.
But given the current state of multilateralism, expecting a truly global effort in pursuit of the common good is a tall order.
The poor pay the price
The third obstacle is that effective policies to reduce emissions disproportionately hurt the poor (both globally and within countries). The International Monetary Fund recently calculated that the current effective global price of CO2 emissions is a mere $2 per ton. To limit global warming to less than 2°C, however, would require an average effective price of $75 per ton by 2030.
I agree with Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff that a uniform global carbon-emissions tax is likely to be the best solution to the climate challenge, at least from an environmental perspective.
But with such a tax in place, average household electricity prices over the next decade would increase cumulatively by 45%, and gasoline prices by 15%.
More than 1 billion people lack access to basic electricity.
Hence, even within rich countries, the distributional consequences would be difficult to handle, as France’s government found out after it tried to introduce a modest fuel tax in 2018. Worse, since the 1980s, effective redistributive fiscal mechanisms in most advanced economies have been emasculated.
Moreover, the larger distributional burden of a global carbon tax would fall disproportionately on poor countries that are hoping to pursue rapid development in the coming decades. Around 570 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa alone lack access to basic electricity; globally, the number is closer to 1.2 billion.
Needless to say, long-overdue growth in developing and emerging economies will bring massive increases in energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions. In India, China, and many other countries, coal-fired power plants will likely continue to be built for years to come.
Clean and renewable energy from solar and wind will complement, but not displace, fossil fuels in these countries. Despite the strides made in battery storage technology, the intermittency problems associated with wind and solar imply a continuing role for fossil fuels and nuclear power.
India wants development
Consider India, which accounts for 7% of annual global greenhouse-gas emissions, making it the world’s fourth-largest emitter, after China (27%), the U.S. (15%), and the European Union (10%). That is despite the fact that India’s per capita energy consumption is around one-tenth of America’s. And even if that figure doubles by 2030, it will still be only half of what China’s was in 2015.
Countries like India and those in Sub-Saharan Africa are not going to sacrifice their economic development for the sake of emissions reductions.
The only way to square the circle is to extend financial aid to developing and emerging economies undergoing unavoidably energy-intensive development, so that they can afford to internalize the externality through an appropriately steep tax on emissions.
Unfortunately, sustained large-scale international aid programs are deeply unpopular. And given that domestic fiscal solidarity is already wanting, cross-border fiscal solidarity seems like a non-starter. Unless and until that changes, an existential crisis of our own making will only worsen.
PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images
Members of South Africa’s main opposition party protest a
looming 9% hike in electricity prices. More than half a billion
people in Sub-Sahara Africa have no access to electricity at all.
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — Despite the buzz around climate action at this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the world’s current environmental prospects look grim. There are three obstacles: climate-change denial; the economics of reducing greenhouse-gas (GHGs) emissions; and the politics of mitigation policies, which tend to be highly regressive.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global carbon-dioxide emissions must be cut by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and then eliminated entirely by 2050, to have even a reasonable chance of preventing global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — Despite the buzz around climate action at this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the world’s current environmental prospects look grim. There are three obstacles: climate-change denial; the economics of reducing greenhouse-gas (GHGs) emissions; and the politics of mitigation policies, which tend to be highly regressive.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global carbon-dioxide emissions must be cut by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and then eliminated entirely by 2050, to have even a reasonable chance of preventing global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
There is a massive free-rider problem. Under current circumstances, it will always be individually rational to let others cut back on their emissions rather than doing so yourself. The only way to correct this problem is through collective rationality or enlightened self-interest.
“We need quick wins,” warns the United Nations Environment Program in its latest Emissions Gap Report, “or the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement will slip out of reach.”
That is an understatement. Even if the current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the 2015 Paris accord were met, emissions in 2030 would 38% above where they need to be. Global average temperatures will be on track to rise by a disastrous 2.9° to 3.4°C by 2100, with continuing increases thereafter.
The NDC targets would need to be roughly tripled just to limit warming to 2°C, and would have to increase fivefold to achieve the 1.5°C goal.
That is not going to happen. The only time in recent history when CO2 emissions have looked as though they might plateau was in 2014-2016, owing to weak global growth. According to the Global Carbon Project, emissions have since increased again, by 2.7% in 2018 and 0.6% in 2019.
Making matters worse, the December 2019 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP25) was a dismal failure, resulting in no new climate pledges or clear messages of intent for this year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Why is humanity so reluctant to save itself?
Denial is the least of our worries
First, many people simply do not accept the predictions issued by climate scientists. But denialism is the least serious of the three main obstacles. There will always be a minority for whom facts and logic are unwelcome distractions. Yet even President Donald Trump must realize by now that climate change will undermine the future viability and profitability of Mar-a-Lago.
As the real-world costs of climate-driven disasters mount over time, denialism will become less of an issue. Indeed, a November 2019 Yale University survey finds that 62% of registered voters in the United States would support a president “declaring global warming a national emergency if Congress does not act.”
The second major challenge is that greenhouse-gas emissions are the quintessential global economic externality. Climate change doesn’t respect borders; greenhouse gases emitted anywhere will affect everyone eventually.
Countries like India and those in Sub-Saharan Africa are not going to sacrifice their economic development for the sake of emissions reductions.
That means there is a massive free-rider problem. Under current circumstances, it will always be individually rational to let others cut back on their emissions rather than doing so yourself. The only way to correct this problem is through collective rationality or enlightened self-interest.
But given the current state of multilateralism, expecting a truly global effort in pursuit of the common good is a tall order.
The poor pay the price
The third obstacle is that effective policies to reduce emissions disproportionately hurt the poor (both globally and within countries). The International Monetary Fund recently calculated that the current effective global price of CO2 emissions is a mere $2 per ton. To limit global warming to less than 2°C, however, would require an average effective price of $75 per ton by 2030.
I agree with Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff that a uniform global carbon-emissions tax is likely to be the best solution to the climate challenge, at least from an environmental perspective.
But with such a tax in place, average household electricity prices over the next decade would increase cumulatively by 45%, and gasoline prices by 15%.
More than 1 billion people lack access to basic electricity.
Hence, even within rich countries, the distributional consequences would be difficult to handle, as France’s government found out after it tried to introduce a modest fuel tax in 2018. Worse, since the 1980s, effective redistributive fiscal mechanisms in most advanced economies have been emasculated.
Moreover, the larger distributional burden of a global carbon tax would fall disproportionately on poor countries that are hoping to pursue rapid development in the coming decades. Around 570 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa alone lack access to basic electricity; globally, the number is closer to 1.2 billion.
Needless to say, long-overdue growth in developing and emerging economies will bring massive increases in energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions. In India, China, and many other countries, coal-fired power plants will likely continue to be built for years to come.
Clean and renewable energy from solar and wind will complement, but not displace, fossil fuels in these countries. Despite the strides made in battery storage technology, the intermittency problems associated with wind and solar imply a continuing role for fossil fuels and nuclear power.
India wants development
Consider India, which accounts for 7% of annual global greenhouse-gas emissions, making it the world’s fourth-largest emitter, after China (27%), the U.S. (15%), and the European Union (10%). That is despite the fact that India’s per capita energy consumption is around one-tenth of America’s. And even if that figure doubles by 2030, it will still be only half of what China’s was in 2015.
Countries like India and those in Sub-Saharan Africa are not going to sacrifice their economic development for the sake of emissions reductions.
The only way to square the circle is to extend financial aid to developing and emerging economies undergoing unavoidably energy-intensive development, so that they can afford to internalize the externality through an appropriately steep tax on emissions.
Unfortunately, sustained large-scale international aid programs are deeply unpopular. And given that domestic fiscal solidarity is already wanting, cross-border fiscal solidarity seems like a non-starter. Unless and until that changes, an existential crisis of our own making will only worsen.
Opinion: Here are all the things that could go wrong in 2020, according to Nouriel Roubini
From hot wars to weaponized financial assets, the U.S. faces severe economic, financial, political and geopolitical disturbances
By NOURIELROUBINI
Published: Feb 22, 2020 12:23 p.m. ET
From hot wars to weaponized financial assets, the U.S. faces severe economic, financial, political and geopolitical disturbances
By NOURIELROUBINI
Published: Feb 22, 2020 12:23 p.m. ET
Getty ImagesRussia and China would each like to undercut
American hard and soft power abroad by destabilizing the U.S. from within.
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — In my 2010 book, “Crisis Economics,” I defined financial crises not as the “black swan” events that Nassim Nicholas Taleb described in his eponymous bestseller, but as “white swans.”
According to Taleb, black swans are events that emerge unpredictably, like a tornado, from a fat-tailed statistical distribution. But I argued that financial crises, at least, are more like hurricanes: They are the predictable result of built-up economic and financial vulnerabilities and policy mistakes.
There are times when we should expect the system to reach a tipping point — the “Minsky Moment” — when a boom and a bubble turn into a crash and a bust. Such events are not about the “unknown unknowns” but rather the “known unknowns.”
Financial markets remain blissfully in denial of the many predictable global crises that could come to a head this year, particularly in the months before the U.S. presidential election. In addition to the increasingly obvious risks associated with climate change, at least four countries want to destabilize the US from within.
Beyond the usual economic and policy risks that most financial analysts worry about, a number of potentially seismic white swans are visible on the horizon this year. Any of them could trigger severe economic, financial, political and geopolitical disturbances unlike anything since the 2008 crisis.
Four powers
For starters, the United States is locked in an escalating strategic rivalry with at least four implicitly aligned revisionist powers: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These countries all have an interest in challenging the U.S.-led global order, and 2020 could be a critical year for them, owing to the U.S. presidential election and the potential change in U.S. global policies that could follow.
Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. is trying to contain or even trigger regime change in these four countries through economic sanctions and other means. Similarly, the four revisionists want to undercut American hard and soft power abroad by destabilizing the U.S. from within through asymmetric warfare.
If the U.S. election descends into partisan rancor, chaos, disputed vote tallies and accusations of “rigged” elections, so much the better for America’s rivals. A breakdown of the U.S. political system would weaken American power abroad.
Moreover, some countries have a particular interest in removing Trump.
The acute threat that he poses to the Iranian regime gives it every reason to escalate the conflict with the U.S. in the coming months — even if it means risking a full-scale war — on the chance that the ensuing spike in oil prices CL.1, -1.35% would crash the U.S. stock market DJIA, -0.46% SPX, -0.38% , trigger a recession and sink Trump’s re-election prospects.
If the U.S. election descends into partisan rancor, chaos, disputed vote tallies and accusations of “rigged” elections, so much the better for America’s rivals. A breakdown of the U.S. political system would weaken American power abroad.
Yes, the consensus view is that the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani has deterred Iran, but that argument misunderstands the regime’s perverse incentives. War between U.S. and Iran is likely this year; the current calm is the one before the proverbial storm.
Cold war with China
As for U.S.-China relations, the recent “Phase 1” deal is a temporary Band-aid. The bilateral cold war over technology, data, investment, currency and finance is already escalating sharply.
The COVID-19 outbreak has reinforced the position of those in the U.S. arguing for containment, and lent further momentum to the broader trend of Sino-American “decoupling.”
More immediately, the epidemic is likely to be more severe than currently expected, and the disruption to the Chinese economy will have spillover effects on global supply chains — including pharma inputs, of which China is a critical supplier — and business confidence, all of which will likely be more severe than financial markets’ current complacency suggests.
Caroline Baum: Stock market abandons all caution even as killer coronavirus spreads
Although the Sino-American cold war is by definition a low-intensity conflict, a sharp escalation is likely this year. To some Chinese leaders, it cannot be a coincidence that their country is simultaneously experiencing a massive swine flu outbreak, a severe bird flu, a coronavirus epidemic, political unrest in Hong Kong, the re-election of Taiwan’s pro-independence president, and stepped-up U.S. naval operations in the East and South China Seas.
Regardless of whether China has only itself to blame for some of these crises, the view in Beijing is veering toward the conspiratorial.
Cyberwarfare
But open aggression is not really an option at this point, given the asymmetry of conventional power. China’s immediate response to U.S. containment efforts will likely take the form of cyberwarfare.
There are several obvious targets. Chinese hackers — and their Russian, North Korean and Iranian counterparts — could interfere in the U.S. election by flooding Americans with misinformation and deep fakes. With the electorate already so polarized, it is not difficult to imagine armed partisans taking to the streets to challenge the results, leading to serious violence and chaos.
Revisionist powers could also attack the U.S. and Western financial systems — including the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) platform. Already, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has warned that a cyberattack on European financial markets could cost $645 billion.
And security officials have expressed similar concerns about the U.S., where an even wider range of telecommunication infrastructure is potentially vulnerable.
By next year, the U.S.-China conflict could have escalated from a cold war to a near-hot one.
A Chinese regime and economy severely damaged by the COVID-19 crisis and facing restless masses will need an external scapegoat, and will likely set its sights on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and U.S. naval positions in the East and South China Seas; confrontation could creep into escalating military accidents.
Dump Treasury?
It could also pursue the financial “nuclear option” of dumping its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities TMUBMUSD10Y, -2.63% if escalation does take place. Because U.S. assets comprise such a large share of China’s (and, to a lesser extent, Russia’s) foreign reserves, the Chinese are increasingly worried that such assets could be frozen through U.S. sanctions (like those already used against Iran and North Korea).
Don’t miss: Thirty-year Treasury yield breaks to all-time low as coronavirus fear stokes safe-haven demand
Of course, dumping U.S. Treasurys would impede China’s economic growth if dollar BUXX, -0.36% assets were sold and converted back into yuan USDCNH, -0.0171% (which would appreciate). But China could diversify its reserves by converting them into another liquid asset that is less vulnerable to U.S. primary or secondary sanctions, namely gold GC00, +0.43% . Indeed, both China and Russia have been stockpiling gold reserves (overtly and covertly), which explains the 30% spike in gold prices since early 2019.
In a selloff scenario, the capital gains on gold would compensate for any loss incurred from dumping U.S. Treasuries, whose yields would spike as their market price and value fell. So far, China and Russia’s shift into gold has occurred slowly, leaving Treasury yields unaffected. But if this diversification strategy accelerates, as is likely, it could trigger a shock in the U.S. Treasuries market, possibly leading to a sharp economic slowdown in the U.S.
Read more: Gold on track for biggest weekly gain since June as downbeat economic data fuel haven demand
U.S. won’t sit idle
The U.S., of course, will not sit idly by while coming under asymmetric attack.
It has already been increasing the pressure on these countries with sanctions and other forms of trade and financial warfare, not to mention its own world-beating cyberwarfare capabilities. U.S. cyberattacks against the four rivals will continue to intensify this year, raising the risk of the first-ever cyber world war and massive economic, financial and political disorder.
Looking beyond the risk of severe geopolitical escalations in 2020, there are additional medium-term risks associated with climate change, which could trigger costly environmental disasters. Climate change is not just a lumbering giant that will cause economic and financial havoc decades from now. It is a threat in the here and now, as demonstrated by the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events.
In addition to climate change, there is evidence that separate, deeper seismic events are underway, leading to rapid global movements in magnetic polarity and accelerating ocean currents.
Any one of these developments could augur an environmental white swan event, as could climatic “tipping points” such as the collapse of major ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland in the next few years. We already know that underwater volcanic activity is increasing; what if that trend translates into rapid marine acidification and the depletion of global fish stocks upon which billions of people rely?
Where we stand
As of early 2020, this is where we stand: The U.S. and Iran have already had a military confrontation that will likely soon escalate; China is in the grip of a viral outbreak that could become a global pandemic; cyberwarfare is ongoing; major holders of U.S. Treasury debt are pursuing diversification strategies; the Democratic presidential primary is exposing rifts in the opposition to Trump and already casting doubt on vote-counting processes; rivalries between the U.S. and four revisionist powers are escalating; and the real-world costs of climate change and other environmental trends are mounting.
This list is hardly exhaustive, but it points to what one can reasonably expect for 2020. Financial markets, meanwhile, remain blissfully in denial of the risks, convinced that a calm if not happy year awaits major economies and global markets.
This article was published with permission of Project Syndicate — The White Swans of 2020.
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — In my 2010 book, “Crisis Economics,” I defined financial crises not as the “black swan” events that Nassim Nicholas Taleb described in his eponymous bestseller, but as “white swans.”
According to Taleb, black swans are events that emerge unpredictably, like a tornado, from a fat-tailed statistical distribution. But I argued that financial crises, at least, are more like hurricanes: They are the predictable result of built-up economic and financial vulnerabilities and policy mistakes.
There are times when we should expect the system to reach a tipping point — the “Minsky Moment” — when a boom and a bubble turn into a crash and a bust. Such events are not about the “unknown unknowns” but rather the “known unknowns.”
Financial markets remain blissfully in denial of the many predictable global crises that could come to a head this year, particularly in the months before the U.S. presidential election. In addition to the increasingly obvious risks associated with climate change, at least four countries want to destabilize the US from within.
Beyond the usual economic and policy risks that most financial analysts worry about, a number of potentially seismic white swans are visible on the horizon this year. Any of them could trigger severe economic, financial, political and geopolitical disturbances unlike anything since the 2008 crisis.
Four powers
For starters, the United States is locked in an escalating strategic rivalry with at least four implicitly aligned revisionist powers: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These countries all have an interest in challenging the U.S.-led global order, and 2020 could be a critical year for them, owing to the U.S. presidential election and the potential change in U.S. global policies that could follow.
Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. is trying to contain or even trigger regime change in these four countries through economic sanctions and other means. Similarly, the four revisionists want to undercut American hard and soft power abroad by destabilizing the U.S. from within through asymmetric warfare.
If the U.S. election descends into partisan rancor, chaos, disputed vote tallies and accusations of “rigged” elections, so much the better for America’s rivals. A breakdown of the U.S. political system would weaken American power abroad.
Moreover, some countries have a particular interest in removing Trump.
The acute threat that he poses to the Iranian regime gives it every reason to escalate the conflict with the U.S. in the coming months — even if it means risking a full-scale war — on the chance that the ensuing spike in oil prices CL.1, -1.35% would crash the U.S. stock market DJIA, -0.46% SPX, -0.38% , trigger a recession and sink Trump’s re-election prospects.
If the U.S. election descends into partisan rancor, chaos, disputed vote tallies and accusations of “rigged” elections, so much the better for America’s rivals. A breakdown of the U.S. political system would weaken American power abroad.
Yes, the consensus view is that the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani has deterred Iran, but that argument misunderstands the regime’s perverse incentives. War between U.S. and Iran is likely this year; the current calm is the one before the proverbial storm.
Cold war with China
As for U.S.-China relations, the recent “Phase 1” deal is a temporary Band-aid. The bilateral cold war over technology, data, investment, currency and finance is already escalating sharply.
The COVID-19 outbreak has reinforced the position of those in the U.S. arguing for containment, and lent further momentum to the broader trend of Sino-American “decoupling.”
More immediately, the epidemic is likely to be more severe than currently expected, and the disruption to the Chinese economy will have spillover effects on global supply chains — including pharma inputs, of which China is a critical supplier — and business confidence, all of which will likely be more severe than financial markets’ current complacency suggests.
Caroline Baum: Stock market abandons all caution even as killer coronavirus spreads
Although the Sino-American cold war is by definition a low-intensity conflict, a sharp escalation is likely this year. To some Chinese leaders, it cannot be a coincidence that their country is simultaneously experiencing a massive swine flu outbreak, a severe bird flu, a coronavirus epidemic, political unrest in Hong Kong, the re-election of Taiwan’s pro-independence president, and stepped-up U.S. naval operations in the East and South China Seas.
Regardless of whether China has only itself to blame for some of these crises, the view in Beijing is veering toward the conspiratorial.
Cyberwarfare
But open aggression is not really an option at this point, given the asymmetry of conventional power. China’s immediate response to U.S. containment efforts will likely take the form of cyberwarfare.
There are several obvious targets. Chinese hackers — and their Russian, North Korean and Iranian counterparts — could interfere in the U.S. election by flooding Americans with misinformation and deep fakes. With the electorate already so polarized, it is not difficult to imagine armed partisans taking to the streets to challenge the results, leading to serious violence and chaos.
Revisionist powers could also attack the U.S. and Western financial systems — including the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) platform. Already, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has warned that a cyberattack on European financial markets could cost $645 billion.
And security officials have expressed similar concerns about the U.S., where an even wider range of telecommunication infrastructure is potentially vulnerable.
By next year, the U.S.-China conflict could have escalated from a cold war to a near-hot one.
A Chinese regime and economy severely damaged by the COVID-19 crisis and facing restless masses will need an external scapegoat, and will likely set its sights on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and U.S. naval positions in the East and South China Seas; confrontation could creep into escalating military accidents.
Dump Treasury?
It could also pursue the financial “nuclear option” of dumping its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities TMUBMUSD10Y, -2.63% if escalation does take place. Because U.S. assets comprise such a large share of China’s (and, to a lesser extent, Russia’s) foreign reserves, the Chinese are increasingly worried that such assets could be frozen through U.S. sanctions (like those already used against Iran and North Korea).
Don’t miss: Thirty-year Treasury yield breaks to all-time low as coronavirus fear stokes safe-haven demand
Of course, dumping U.S. Treasurys would impede China’s economic growth if dollar BUXX, -0.36% assets were sold and converted back into yuan USDCNH, -0.0171% (which would appreciate). But China could diversify its reserves by converting them into another liquid asset that is less vulnerable to U.S. primary or secondary sanctions, namely gold GC00, +0.43% . Indeed, both China and Russia have been stockpiling gold reserves (overtly and covertly), which explains the 30% spike in gold prices since early 2019.
In a selloff scenario, the capital gains on gold would compensate for any loss incurred from dumping U.S. Treasuries, whose yields would spike as their market price and value fell. So far, China and Russia’s shift into gold has occurred slowly, leaving Treasury yields unaffected. But if this diversification strategy accelerates, as is likely, it could trigger a shock in the U.S. Treasuries market, possibly leading to a sharp economic slowdown in the U.S.
Read more: Gold on track for biggest weekly gain since June as downbeat economic data fuel haven demand
U.S. won’t sit idle
The U.S., of course, will not sit idly by while coming under asymmetric attack.
It has already been increasing the pressure on these countries with sanctions and other forms of trade and financial warfare, not to mention its own world-beating cyberwarfare capabilities. U.S. cyberattacks against the four rivals will continue to intensify this year, raising the risk of the first-ever cyber world war and massive economic, financial and political disorder.
Looking beyond the risk of severe geopolitical escalations in 2020, there are additional medium-term risks associated with climate change, which could trigger costly environmental disasters. Climate change is not just a lumbering giant that will cause economic and financial havoc decades from now. It is a threat in the here and now, as demonstrated by the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events.
In addition to climate change, there is evidence that separate, deeper seismic events are underway, leading to rapid global movements in magnetic polarity and accelerating ocean currents.
Any one of these developments could augur an environmental white swan event, as could climatic “tipping points” such as the collapse of major ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland in the next few years. We already know that underwater volcanic activity is increasing; what if that trend translates into rapid marine acidification and the depletion of global fish stocks upon which billions of people rely?
Where we stand
As of early 2020, this is where we stand: The U.S. and Iran have already had a military confrontation that will likely soon escalate; China is in the grip of a viral outbreak that could become a global pandemic; cyberwarfare is ongoing; major holders of U.S. Treasury debt are pursuing diversification strategies; the Democratic presidential primary is exposing rifts in the opposition to Trump and already casting doubt on vote-counting processes; rivalries between the U.S. and four revisionist powers are escalating; and the real-world costs of climate change and other environmental trends are mounting.
This list is hardly exhaustive, but it points to what one can reasonably expect for 2020. Financial markets, meanwhile, remain blissfully in denial of the risks, convinced that a calm if not happy year awaits major economies and global markets.
This article was published with permission of Project Syndicate — The White Swans of 2020.
Oil giant BP pulls out of 3 trade groups over climate policies but sticks with the powerful API
NOT YET BEYOND PETROLEUM
NOT YET BEYOND PETROLEUM
(THEIR BRAND NAME CHANGE TILL THE DEEP WATER HORIZON DISASTER)
Shifting positions on methane leaks and carbon pricing are behind BP’s move
Shifting positions on methane leaks and carbon pricing are behind BP’s move
Getty ImagesBritish oil giant BP is withdrawing from three
trade groups because of differences on climate policies.
It remains aligned with the American Petroleum Institute.
By RACHEL KONING BEALS NEWS EDITOR
BP PLC is cutting ties with three trade groups over climate policies, a move announced Wednesday that follows the energy giant’s vow earlier this month to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
BP BP, -0.76% will remain aligned with the more prominent fossil-fuel lobbyist, the American Petroleum Institute, leaving some sustainable investing analysts questioning the oil giant’s full commitment to issues such as curbing methane leaks.
BP is pulling out of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Western Energy Alliance and the Western States Petroleum Association, the company said in a release.
BP said it was quitting WEA because it was “not aligned” with BP’s positions on reducing methane leaks. Methane has a greenhouse effect that is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and is responsible for at least 25% of global heating, according to the UN Environment Programme.
“Leaving the API would have made this a bolder commitment by BP because API is so much larger and more influential than the groups that BP exited from,” said Andrew Logan, senior director for oil and gas at sustainable investing advocate Ceres.
The API “last fall supported the rollback of U.S. federal methane regulation — a position opposite to the one taken by BP and which was the primary reason that BP left WEA,” said Logan.
Read: JP Morgan Chase — the oil industry’s bank of choice — will withdraw support for some fossil fuels
The Climate Investigations Center has a log on API efforts, going back at least to the 1960s, of funding and fostering efforts to play down man-made climate change, although API has worked in recent years to massage its messaging. It supports the “ambitions” of the Paris Climate agreement, which aims to hold the global average temperature increase to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and in the future, even deeper reductions. API has not officially supported the agreement itself, however.
The oil giant said it was leaving the other groups because of differences over putting a price on carbon. BP had spent about $13 million in 2018 to help the WSPA defeat a carbon tax in Washington state.
Read: Companies are too slow with shift to carbon neutral, say investors with $35 trillion at stake
At least one trade group said BP is misrepresenting its role in climate-change efforts.
“As an active member of our executive committee, BP knows full well that AFPM recognizes that climate change is real and that we are committed to engaging on and developing policies that enable our members to provide the fuels and petrochemicals that humanity needs to thrive in a sustainable way,” said AFPM President and CEO Chet Thompson. “When it comes to specific policy prescriptions, we — like any family — don’t always agree, but it is certain that more industry-wide progress is achieved through ongoing collaboration than without it.”
BP rival Shell RDS.A, -0.33% RDS.B, +0.26% had already pulled out of the AFPM , saying it was at odds with the refining and petrochemical group on the Paris climate agreement, carbon pricing, fuel mandates and the reduction of methane emissions.
BP, as part of its previously announced carbon pledge, said it would install monitoring equipment at oil CL00, -1.27% and gas processing plants by 2023 as it seeks to reduce the amount of methane leaks by 50%. The company said it will increase investment in non-oil and gas businesses. And it will stop “corporate reputation advertising’’ and shift that spending toward promoting carbon-reduction policies.
“If BP is to stand a chance of achieving our ambition, then we have to earn back people’s trust,” said CEO Bernard Looney with Wednesday’s announcement. “Our priority is to work to influence within trade associations, but we may publicly dissent or resign our membership if there is material misalignment on high-priority issues.”
In London trading, BP shares are down 9% in the year to date and have shed more than 19% over the past year. Oil prices are at their lowest in more than a year as fears about the spread of the COVID-19 virus outside of China continue to drive trade across financial markets.
By RACHEL KONING BEALS NEWS EDITOR
BP PLC is cutting ties with three trade groups over climate policies, a move announced Wednesday that follows the energy giant’s vow earlier this month to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
BP BP, -0.76% will remain aligned with the more prominent fossil-fuel lobbyist, the American Petroleum Institute, leaving some sustainable investing analysts questioning the oil giant’s full commitment to issues such as curbing methane leaks.
BP is pulling out of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Western Energy Alliance and the Western States Petroleum Association, the company said in a release.
BP said it was quitting WEA because it was “not aligned” with BP’s positions on reducing methane leaks. Methane has a greenhouse effect that is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and is responsible for at least 25% of global heating, according to the UN Environment Programme.
“Leaving the API would have made this a bolder commitment by BP because API is so much larger and more influential than the groups that BP exited from,” said Andrew Logan, senior director for oil and gas at sustainable investing advocate Ceres.
The API “last fall supported the rollback of U.S. federal methane regulation — a position opposite to the one taken by BP and which was the primary reason that BP left WEA,” said Logan.
Read: JP Morgan Chase — the oil industry’s bank of choice — will withdraw support for some fossil fuels
The Climate Investigations Center has a log on API efforts, going back at least to the 1960s, of funding and fostering efforts to play down man-made climate change, although API has worked in recent years to massage its messaging. It supports the “ambitions” of the Paris Climate agreement, which aims to hold the global average temperature increase to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and in the future, even deeper reductions. API has not officially supported the agreement itself, however.
The oil giant said it was leaving the other groups because of differences over putting a price on carbon. BP had spent about $13 million in 2018 to help the WSPA defeat a carbon tax in Washington state.
Read: Companies are too slow with shift to carbon neutral, say investors with $35 trillion at stake
At least one trade group said BP is misrepresenting its role in climate-change efforts.
“As an active member of our executive committee, BP knows full well that AFPM recognizes that climate change is real and that we are committed to engaging on and developing policies that enable our members to provide the fuels and petrochemicals that humanity needs to thrive in a sustainable way,” said AFPM President and CEO Chet Thompson. “When it comes to specific policy prescriptions, we — like any family — don’t always agree, but it is certain that more industry-wide progress is achieved through ongoing collaboration than without it.”
BP rival Shell RDS.A, -0.33% RDS.B, +0.26% had already pulled out of the AFPM , saying it was at odds with the refining and petrochemical group on the Paris climate agreement, carbon pricing, fuel mandates and the reduction of methane emissions.
BP, as part of its previously announced carbon pledge, said it would install monitoring equipment at oil CL00, -1.27% and gas processing plants by 2023 as it seeks to reduce the amount of methane leaks by 50%. The company said it will increase investment in non-oil and gas businesses. And it will stop “corporate reputation advertising’’ and shift that spending toward promoting carbon-reduction policies.
“If BP is to stand a chance of achieving our ambition, then we have to earn back people’s trust,” said CEO Bernard Looney with Wednesday’s announcement. “Our priority is to work to influence within trade associations, but we may publicly dissent or resign our membership if there is material misalignment on high-priority issues.”
In London trading, BP shares are down 9% in the year to date and have shed more than 19% over the past year. Oil prices are at their lowest in more than a year as fears about the spread of the COVID-19 virus outside of China continue to drive trade across financial markets.
FROM MARKETWATCH
BEARDS, MUSTACHES AND RESPIRATORS, OH MY
CDC issues beard and mustache guide for coronavirus pandemic
Some facial-hair styles will interfere with your face mask
By BRETT ARENDS Published: Feb 26, 2020
As face masks fly off the shelves amid rising fears over the COVID-19 illness, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health have just issued a helpful guide about which types of beards and mustaches will make those masks less effective, and which will be OK.
Bottom line: Most beards, and a few mustaches, prevent the mask from making a complete seal against the skin.
Full beards are out, of course, along with any kinds of stubble.
So too are those “mutton chop” whiskers that were all the rage in the Victorian era, along with the so-called “Imperial” mini-beard — a kind of “soul patch” in the days of the Russian czars — and the Three Musketeers-style “French Fork” beard.
The long, droopy “Fu Manchu” mustache is a no-no as well.
On the positive side, all sorts of mustaches may be ready to make a comeback. The toothbrush mustache has been social death since about 1941, but the CDC says it’s just fine. Ditto the old-fashioned, bushy walrus mustache, the pencil mustache immortalized by Jimmy Buffett, and the dashing one worn by Zorro. And while the Fu Manchu is out, the CDC says you’ll be fine if you turn the long ends upward. That will turn the beard into a “Dali,” named after the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and it won’t interfere with your mask.
Masks have been selling out since fears about the coronavirus began spiraling over the weekend, and they rank No. 1 among the bestselling household products on Amazon AMZN, +0.35% . Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, said Tuesday the center expects coronavirus to spread more widely in the U.S. and that Americans should prepare themselves for a possible pandemic.
CDC issues beard and mustache guide for coronavirus pandemic
Some facial-hair styles will interfere with your face mask
CDC The "good beard guide" for the pandemic from the
CDC and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
By BRETT ARENDS Published: Feb 26, 2020
As face masks fly off the shelves amid rising fears over the COVID-19 illness, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health have just issued a helpful guide about which types of beards and mustaches will make those masks less effective, and which will be OK.
Bottom line: Most beards, and a few mustaches, prevent the mask from making a complete seal against the skin.
Full beards are out, of course, along with any kinds of stubble.
So too are those “mutton chop” whiskers that were all the rage in the Victorian era, along with the so-called “Imperial” mini-beard — a kind of “soul patch” in the days of the Russian czars — and the Three Musketeers-style “French Fork” beard.
The long, droopy “Fu Manchu” mustache is a no-no as well.
On the positive side, all sorts of mustaches may be ready to make a comeback. The toothbrush mustache has been social death since about 1941, but the CDC says it’s just fine. Ditto the old-fashioned, bushy walrus mustache, the pencil mustache immortalized by Jimmy Buffett, and the dashing one worn by Zorro. And while the Fu Manchu is out, the CDC says you’ll be fine if you turn the long ends upward. That will turn the beard into a “Dali,” named after the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and it won’t interfere with your mask.
Masks have been selling out since fears about the coronavirus began spiraling over the weekend, and they rank No. 1 among the bestselling household products on Amazon AMZN, +0.35% . Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, said Tuesday the center expects coronavirus to spread more widely in the U.S. and that Americans should prepare themselves for a possible pandemic.
Climate change is the biggest health threat this century — here’s how medical schools are adapting
More medical schools are training doctors to recognize and treat the effects of climate change
The benefits of the work under way at UC, San Francisco, part of a broader statewide system, is that new practices might be implemented throughout its several hospitals, clinics and classrooms, and much of the new training is geared toward layering on to existing course work. For instance, it’s important for medical students to understand the effects that hotter temperatures can have on the effectiveness and risks of pharmaceuticals, such as antipsychotics and diuretics, said UCSF’s Dr. Sheri Weiser, an epidemiologist and practicing internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, who also holds a master’s degree in public health.
Arianne Teherani, Ph.D., a professor of medicine and education at UCSF, says medical training in climate awareness isn’t just about diagnostics but fully understanding the role of medicine in creating and fixing the effects of climate change. If the U.S. health-care system were a country, it would rank 13th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions, the article in Academic Medicine cites. Professors of anesthesia, radiology and pharmacy, for example, are encouraged to teach that anesthetic gases, imaging technologies and pharmaceuticals all have a significant carbon footprint that may need to be offset, at the least, with green best-practices elsewhere, such as a shift to more energy efficiency in hospitals and offices. More work is needed, Teherani says, in cutting the industry’s footprint overall.
There’s also mental health to consider. Sobering climate-change statistics, no matter their projected year for realization, are already having an impact.
Dr. Karla Ivankovich, Ph.D., a licensed clinical professional counselor and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the mental-health profession has seen growing political anxiety from a widening trench of partisanship carry over into climate-change dread, and many therapists would welcome additional training.
Ivankovich said that she and other therapists are seeing patients who, among other concerns, find themselves troubled by the choice to have children more than past clients had, which Ivankovich linked in part to their fears for climate change and their response to the pickup in media coverage.
Not all who wear the white coat think that addressing climate change in the exam room is true to the profession’s intent.
“The zeitgeist of sociology and social work have become the driving force in medical education. The goal of today’s educators is to produce legions of primary care physicians who engage in what is termed ‘population health.’ This fits perfectly with the current administrator-rich, policy-heavy, form-over-function approach at every level of American education,” wrote Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal. “Meanwhile, oncologists, cardiologists, surgeons and other medical specialists are in short supply.”
Jha, writing in JAMA, would argue that view neglects both the climate warning signs and the way medicine should evolve.
“With the ubiquitous presence of information technology, including clinical decision support tools, students and physicians now have ready access to all the medical knowledge ever created… [Many medical schools] still spend too much time teaching topics such as laboratory methods and having students memorize anatomic details that can be covered more quickly or not at all,” he says
Health professionals operating as a gatekeeper for climate-change risks is effective, argues Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Canada’s subarctic Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where the changing conditions risk major life changes for her native patients in particular.
Howard routinely argues, including in this TEDx talk, that the trust medical professionals tend to cultivate with patients positions them to best teach about climate-change impacts; she cites survey statistics showing nurses routinely rank at the top of a list of professionals that people trust, with doctors in second place and politicians in dead last.
“We all have pull and we need to use it” to combat climate change, Howard regularly tells health professionals.
If Wisconsin’s Patz has his way, the future of climate curriculum will break slightly with med-school norms, equipping doctors and nurses to better engage with experts outside of the health-care setting. That includes urban planners, civil and environmental engineers, and of course, public-health officials.
Treatment and advocacy should never be separate pursuits, he argues.
More medical schools are training doctors to recognize and treat the effects of climate change
Illustration by Doug ChaykaThe past five years have been
the hottest on record, nearly 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer
than the 20th century average, according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
By RACHEL KONING BEALS NEWS EDITOR
By RACHEL KONING BEALS NEWS EDITOR
Published: Feb 26, 2020
On the lakefront campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which in 60 years could have average temperatures resembling those felt currently in Kansas City nearly 500 miles to its south, the next wave of aspiring doctors settles in for a “Climate Change and Medicine” elective filled to capacity.
Students at Wisconsin learn under Dr. Jonathan Patz, who had already been consulting for the United Nations on accelerating man-made climate change’s health impacts decades ago. The students examine, for instance, heat-related mortality, as well as the healthy “upside” of adapting to the effects of climate change. Reducing one’s reliance on cars and eating smarter benefits the human body and Mother Earth alike, Patz argues.
Wisconsin is just one of roughly two dozen medical schools leading — although only typically by offering a few courses — in the training of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other practitioners who will take to the front lines of diagnosing and treating the impact of climate change. That impact is showing up increasingly in emergencies, such as wildfires, and in complicated-pregnancy statistics even in developed nations. More broadly, the spread of toxins, asthma cases, cardiovascular disease and Lyme disease is on the rise, all part of what The Lancet has deemed the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.
Yet the slow drip of new or amended medical-school programs that address climate change must be accelerated, some experts stress. Their efforts got an important boost after the American Medical Association in 2019 gave its backing to expanding climate-change training.
“Climate change is our reality. It is going to change the way we provide clinical care. For that reason, it needs to be taught in every medical school across the nation,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health and Health Policy at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
So far, climate-related scholarship has emerged in the last few years via elective courses and one-off lectures rather than treated as a portion of core curriculum, according to a study published in 2018 in the journal Academic Medicine. Those researchers found that a database was created but is lacking comprehensive reporting by schools of what climate-change lessons are taught. The lingering challenge: many schools believe they can’t devote significant attention to climate change in an already packed curriculum.
“With the ubiquitous presence of information technology...students and physicians now have ready access to all the medical knowledge ever created… [Many medical schools] still spend too much time teaching topics such as laboratory methods and having students memorize anatomic details that can be covered more quickly or not at all.”Dr. Ashish Jha, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The time burden may be eased via shared materials. Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health formed the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education in 2017 to begin to share ideas on how to train health professionals. To date, it can count some 180 signatories of mostly public-health programs, but also over 20 medical schools and another two dozen nursing programs.
Even without dedicated coursework, existing classes should include more climate-change teaching, say proponents.
For instance, an asthma-diagnosing exercise with questions more closely tied to pollution exposure has now been in practice at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign and is driving curriculum priorities at the University of California, San Francisco, near where deadly fires raged over the last couple of years.
Air pollution is responsible for about seven million deaths a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, which found that reducing the burning of fossil fuels could avoid 2.5 million premature deaths each year by 2050. Pollen and other aeroallergen levels are also higher in extreme heat. These factors can trigger asthma, which affects around 300 million people but can usually be treated.
Physicians also need better training in screening for vector-borne illnesses (infectious pathogens spread from one living organism to another; think ticks or mosquitoes) which are expected to increase with higher temperatures. Diagnosed cases of tick-spread Lyme disease, for instance, doubled between 2004 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mosquitoes are cold-blooded vectors of disease, so any mosquito-borne disease will be affected by very small changes in temperature.
Environmental changes also affect respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular mortality or stroke, said Harvard’s Jha. Globally, the medical profession also has a stake in policy around access to clean drinking water and fighting nutrient depletion in crops and food from climate effects.
These conditions are susceptible to increased risks from climate change
Asthma As temperatures increase, warmer air helps to form ground-level ozone, sometimes called smog, which is a powerful air pollutant. Ozone irritates the lungs and acts like a sunburn on the lungs which may trigger an asthma attack, says the American Lung Association.
On the lakefront campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which in 60 years could have average temperatures resembling those felt currently in Kansas City nearly 500 miles to its south, the next wave of aspiring doctors settles in for a “Climate Change and Medicine” elective filled to capacity.
Students at Wisconsin learn under Dr. Jonathan Patz, who had already been consulting for the United Nations on accelerating man-made climate change’s health impacts decades ago. The students examine, for instance, heat-related mortality, as well as the healthy “upside” of adapting to the effects of climate change. Reducing one’s reliance on cars and eating smarter benefits the human body and Mother Earth alike, Patz argues.
Wisconsin is just one of roughly two dozen medical schools leading — although only typically by offering a few courses — in the training of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other practitioners who will take to the front lines of diagnosing and treating the impact of climate change. That impact is showing up increasingly in emergencies, such as wildfires, and in complicated-pregnancy statistics even in developed nations. More broadly, the spread of toxins, asthma cases, cardiovascular disease and Lyme disease is on the rise, all part of what The Lancet has deemed the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.
Yet the slow drip of new or amended medical-school programs that address climate change must be accelerated, some experts stress. Their efforts got an important boost after the American Medical Association in 2019 gave its backing to expanding climate-change training.
“Climate change is our reality. It is going to change the way we provide clinical care. For that reason, it needs to be taught in every medical school across the nation,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health and Health Policy at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
So far, climate-related scholarship has emerged in the last few years via elective courses and one-off lectures rather than treated as a portion of core curriculum, according to a study published in 2018 in the journal Academic Medicine. Those researchers found that a database was created but is lacking comprehensive reporting by schools of what climate-change lessons are taught. The lingering challenge: many schools believe they can’t devote significant attention to climate change in an already packed curriculum.
“With the ubiquitous presence of information technology...students and physicians now have ready access to all the medical knowledge ever created… [Many medical schools] still spend too much time teaching topics such as laboratory methods and having students memorize anatomic details that can be covered more quickly or not at all.”Dr. Ashish Jha, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The time burden may be eased via shared materials. Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health formed the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education in 2017 to begin to share ideas on how to train health professionals. To date, it can count some 180 signatories of mostly public-health programs, but also over 20 medical schools and another two dozen nursing programs.
Even without dedicated coursework, existing classes should include more climate-change teaching, say proponents.
For instance, an asthma-diagnosing exercise with questions more closely tied to pollution exposure has now been in practice at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign and is driving curriculum priorities at the University of California, San Francisco, near where deadly fires raged over the last couple of years.
Air pollution is responsible for about seven million deaths a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, which found that reducing the burning of fossil fuels could avoid 2.5 million premature deaths each year by 2050. Pollen and other aeroallergen levels are also higher in extreme heat. These factors can trigger asthma, which affects around 300 million people but can usually be treated.
Physicians also need better training in screening for vector-borne illnesses (infectious pathogens spread from one living organism to another; think ticks or mosquitoes) which are expected to increase with higher temperatures. Diagnosed cases of tick-spread Lyme disease, for instance, doubled between 2004 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mosquitoes are cold-blooded vectors of disease, so any mosquito-borne disease will be affected by very small changes in temperature.
Environmental changes also affect respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular mortality or stroke, said Harvard’s Jha. Globally, the medical profession also has a stake in policy around access to clean drinking water and fighting nutrient depletion in crops and food from climate effects.
These conditions are susceptible to increased risks from climate change
Asthma As temperatures increase, warmer air helps to form ground-level ozone, sometimes called smog, which is a powerful air pollutant. Ozone irritates the lungs and acts like a sunburn on the lungs which may trigger an asthma attack, says the American Lung Association.
These conditions are susceptible to increased risks from climate change
Asthma As temperatures increase, warmer air helps to form ground-level ozone, sometimes called smog, which is a powerful air pollutant. Ozone irritates the lungs and acts like a sunburn on the lungs which may trigger an asthma attack, says the American Lung Association.
Cardiovascular disease Asthma isn’t the only issue, temperature gains equal more air pollution, which stresses both the heart and lungs.Allergies In hotter temperatures, plants and grass give off pollen for longer periods of time, lengthening and intensifying the allergy season that claims many sufferers. Carbon dioxide can also increase the allergy-causing effects of pollen, says a report in this biology journal.
Pregnancy complications and low birth weight Pregnant women are more vulnerable to heat, especially heat waves, and air pollution, which can cause prematurity, even in developed nations, according to a limited-but-expanding collection of obstetrics studies. In the developing world, pregnancies have been impacted in the past by vector-borne illnesses that may be on the rise, such as the mosquito-spread Zika virus, according to this Stanford University journal and other sources.
Kidney strain Hotter temperatures and related dehydradration are linked with electrolyte imbalances, kidney stones and kidney failure, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Infectious disease and contamination Temperature and rainfall extremes can change insect behavior, impacting the diseases they spread, such as malaria, dengue, Lyme disease and West Nile virus. Waterborne cholera and cryptosporidiosis increase with drought and flooding. Meanwhile, heat is linked with higher risk for salmonella and campylobacter outbreaks.
Depression and anxiety The American Psychological Association created a 69-page guide on how climate change can induce stress, depression and anxiety. The APA wants more education for its professionals. “The connections with mental health are often not part” of the climate-health discussion, it says.
The benefits of the work under way at UC, San Francisco, part of a broader statewide system, is that new practices might be implemented throughout its several hospitals, clinics and classrooms, and much of the new training is geared toward layering on to existing course work. For instance, it’s important for medical students to understand the effects that hotter temperatures can have on the effectiveness and risks of pharmaceuticals, such as antipsychotics and diuretics, said UCSF’s Dr. Sheri Weiser, an epidemiologist and practicing internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, who also holds a master’s degree in public health.
Arianne Teherani, Ph.D., a professor of medicine and education at UCSF, says medical training in climate awareness isn’t just about diagnostics but fully understanding the role of medicine in creating and fixing the effects of climate change. If the U.S. health-care system were a country, it would rank 13th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions, the article in Academic Medicine cites. Professors of anesthesia, radiology and pharmacy, for example, are encouraged to teach that anesthetic gases, imaging technologies and pharmaceuticals all have a significant carbon footprint that may need to be offset, at the least, with green best-practices elsewhere, such as a shift to more energy efficiency in hospitals and offices. More work is needed, Teherani says, in cutting the industry’s footprint overall.
There’s also mental health to consider. Sobering climate-change statistics, no matter their projected year for realization, are already having an impact.
Dr. Karla Ivankovich, Ph.D., a licensed clinical professional counselor and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the mental-health profession has seen growing political anxiety from a widening trench of partisanship carry over into climate-change dread, and many therapists would welcome additional training.
Ivankovich said that she and other therapists are seeing patients who, among other concerns, find themselves troubled by the choice to have children more than past clients had, which Ivankovich linked in part to their fears for climate change and their response to the pickup in media coverage.
Not all who wear the white coat think that addressing climate change in the exam room is true to the profession’s intent.
“The zeitgeist of sociology and social work have become the driving force in medical education. The goal of today’s educators is to produce legions of primary care physicians who engage in what is termed ‘population health.’ This fits perfectly with the current administrator-rich, policy-heavy, form-over-function approach at every level of American education,” wrote Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal. “Meanwhile, oncologists, cardiologists, surgeons and other medical specialists are in short supply.”
Jha, writing in JAMA, would argue that view neglects both the climate warning signs and the way medicine should evolve.
“With the ubiquitous presence of information technology, including clinical decision support tools, students and physicians now have ready access to all the medical knowledge ever created… [Many medical schools] still spend too much time teaching topics such as laboratory methods and having students memorize anatomic details that can be covered more quickly or not at all,” he says
Health professionals operating as a gatekeeper for climate-change risks is effective, argues Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Canada’s subarctic Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where the changing conditions risk major life changes for her native patients in particular.
Howard routinely argues, including in this TEDx talk, that the trust medical professionals tend to cultivate with patients positions them to best teach about climate-change impacts; she cites survey statistics showing nurses routinely rank at the top of a list of professionals that people trust, with doctors in second place and politicians in dead last.
“We all have pull and we need to use it” to combat climate change, Howard regularly tells health professionals.
If Wisconsin’s Patz has his way, the future of climate curriculum will break slightly with med-school norms, equipping doctors and nurses to better engage with experts outside of the health-care setting. That includes urban planners, civil and environmental engineers, and of course, public-health officials.
Treatment and advocacy should never be separate pursuits, he argues.
Joe Biden wants a first-time homeowner tax credit, Amy Klobuchar would clear public-housing backlog — where the Democratic candidates stand on affordable housing
‘One sure way we can make sure that kids get a good start is if they have a roof over their head and a stable place to live,’ Sen. Amy Klobuchar said at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate
HOUSING IS A RIGHT
IT SHOULD NOT BE REAL ESTATE SPECULATION
Housing hasn’t traditionally been a hot topic in presidential elections, but with homeownership financially out of reach for many Americans, the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination have been eager to discuss the issue.
Several candidates brought up housing at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate during the one of the evening’s tense back-and-forths.
In response to a question from the debate’s moderators, Sen. Amy Klobuchar mentioned the need to work through the backlog of people who have applied for federal housing vouchers that help low-income households offset the cost of housing.
“One sure way we can make sure that kids get a good start is if they have a roof over their head and a stable place to live,” Klobuchar said. “So the way you do that is, first of all, taking care of the Section 8 backlog of applicants. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people waiting. And I have found a way to pay for this and a way to make sure that people get off that list and get into housing.”
Klobuchar also mentioned concerns related to housing deserts and the need to pay for more affordable housing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, repeated their dispute from the last Democratic presidential debate over comments Bloomberg made years ago about the discriminatory practice of redlining, that were recently resurfaced by the Associated Press
“It is important to recognize the role that the federal government played for decades and decades in discriminating against African-Americans having an opportunity to buy homes,” Warren said. “And while Mayor Bloomberg was blaming the housing crash of 2008 on African-Americans and on Latinos, in fact, I was out there fighting for a consumer agency to make sure people never get cheated again on their mortgages.”
Bloomberg argued that his comments on redlining were taken out of context before mentioning his record as mayor. “When you’re talking about affordable housing, we created 175,000 units of affordable housing in New York City,” he said.
During a debate in November, MSNBC CMCSA, -2.20% moderator Kristen Welker asked billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer whether he was the best person to address this issue, citing the housing crisis in Steyer’s home state of California. “We need to apply resources here to make sure that we build literally millions of new units,” Steyer responded.
Multiple other candidates, including Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have released detailed plans showcasing how they would tackle the trouble many Americans face when looking to find a home to rent or to buy.
‘For the first time in recent memory, affordable housing is a topic on the presidential campaign trail.’— Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition
“For the first time in recent memory, affordable housing is a topic on the presidential campaign trail,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Some 85% of Americans “believe ensuring everyone has a safe, decent, affordable place to live should be a top national priority,” according to a nationwide public-opinion poll commissioned between the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Hart Research Associates.
But the primary calendar itself may be largely the cause of candidates’ enthusiasm, said Rick Sharga, a mortgage-industry veteran.
“California — perhaps the epicenter of unaffordable housing — is scheduled to have its primary earlier than in past election cycles, and voters in the Golden State will very likely pay more attention to the affordable housing proposals being presented by the Democratic hopefuls than voters in many other states,” Sharga said.
The Trump administration has taken steps recently to address housing-related issues. Last year, the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development unveiled plans outlining how America’s housing-finance system could be overhauled, including ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The White House recently released an extensive report detailing the forces contributing to chronic homelessness, particularly in states like California.
Don’t miss: 5 major changes the Trump administration wants to make to housing finance
Here’s what other Democratic candidates are saying about affordable housing:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
Former Vice President Joe Biden was the latest candidate to release an extensive plan for tackling issues related to affordable housing and homelessness. In a break with his fellow candidates, Biden explicitly called for tougher standards for real-estate appraisers as part of his proposal.
Doing so, he argued, would curb bias against black and Latino communities, which some say has depressed home values in those neighborhoods. Appraisers argue that current standards prevent bias, however.
Here are some of the other proposals Biden has made to address Americans’ housing issues:
• Draft and pass legislation to create a Homeowner and Renter Bill of Rights, modeled on a similar policy in California.
• Beef up tenant protections so fewer Americans are evicted.
• Expand the Community Reinvestment Act to include mortgage lenders and insurers to ensure communities of color have access to financial services.
• Revive anti-discrimination policies at the federal level.
• Create a new refundable $15,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers to help them build a down payment and offset the costs associated with buying a home. Similarly, he has advocated for a renter’s tax credit that would reduce housing costs to no more than 30% of a household’s income for low-income households and families who don’t qualify for Section 8 vouchers.
• Providing Section 8 housing vouchers to all eligible families.
• Expand housing benefits for public-sector workers, including teachers and first responders.
• Form a strategy to make housing a right for all Americans.
• Allocate more funds to tackle issues related to homelessness.
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, released a plan dubbed “Housing for All,” that addresses everything from the need to build more housing units to combatting gentrification.
Like many of his policies, the Sanders campaign framed its housing proposal in the context of what the average American faces versus Wall Street’s profits. “In America today, over 18 million families are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing, while last year alone the five largest banks on Wall Street made a record-breaking $111 billion in profits,” the campaign said in its description of Sanders’ plan.
Here are some of the many ways in which Sanders hopes to address Americans’ housing needs:
• Preventing Wall Street funds from selling large pools of mortgages
• Investing $1.48 trillion over a decade in the National Affordable Housing Trust to fund the building, rehabilitation and/or preservation of 7.4 million affordable housing units.
• Setting aside $70 billion to repair and modernize public housing.
• Creating a national cap on annual rent increases at no more than 3% or 1.5 times the Consumer Price Index (whichever is higher).
• Forming an office in the Department of Housing and Urban Development designed to strengthen rent control, tenant protections and inclusive zoning.
• Making federal funding contingent on states encouraging development that promotes integration and public transportation access.
• Instating a 25% home flipping tax on real-estate speculators who sell non-owner-occupied properties that sell for more than their original purchase price if sold within five years.
• Creating an independent National Fair Housing Agency in the vein of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that protects people from housing discrimination and enforces housing standards for renters.
• Investing $8 billion across HUD and the Department of Agriculture to form a first-time homebuyer assistance program
Affordable housing also features as part of Sanders’ proposal for an “Economic Bill of Rights.” During a campaign speech earlier this year, Sanders claimed that some Americans are “paying 40%, 50%, 60% of their limited income in housing” and called the situation “absurd.” Sanders has further referenced urban gentrification as an issue that needs to be addressed.
In the first Democratic presidential debate, Sanders also mentioned the country’s homeless population in response to a question about his calls for expanded government benefits.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has set forth a housing agenda that would aim to cut homelessness in half by 2025. As part of that plan, he said he would double the federal spending on homelessness programs from $3 billion to $6 billion annually, including extra support for rehousing programs and short-term rental assistance.
Bloomberg has also laid out the following initiatives as part of his housing plan:
• Providing housing vouchers to all Americans at or below 30% of their area median income and expanding programs to avoid evictions.
• Increasing the supply of new affordable housing units, expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and raising funding for the National Housing Trust Fund.
• Providing matching funds to aid renters in building up down payments.
• Curbing discrimination in rental housing and bringing more landlords into the voucher system.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has released “an agenda for housing justice in America” aimed at improving affordability and reducing homelessness.
“Pete is committed to housing justice,” the campaign noted on his website. As President, he will use housing policy at every level of government as a tool to address injustices, reverse the discriminatory impacts of racist redlining, and build pathways to lasting economic and social opportunity.”
The broad plan included the following recommendations:
• Supporting the construction or renovation of more than 2 million rental units, mainly through allocating an additional $150 billion in new National Housing Trust funds.
• Investing $4 billion in matching funds to scale successful low-income homeownership programs in order to assist households in becoming homeowners.
• Combatting lending discrimination and reverse Trump administration changes to policies under the Fair Housing Act.
• Passing legislation to regulate interstate landlords and holding bank executives and mortgage lenders liable for robo-signing and other predatory lending practices
• Expanding housing assistance to families with children.
• Creating an emergency rental assistance fund to help families avoid eviction among other rental protections.
Additionally, Buttigieg has put forth an extensive proposal, called the Douglass Plan, to address racial disparities in homeownership and wealth. The plan would create a “21st Century Community Homestead Act” that would be piloted in select cities across the country.
Through this program, a public trust would purchase abandoned properties and provide them to eligible residents. These people would include those who earn less than the area’s median income or those who live in historically redlined or segregated areas. Residents who participate would be given full ownership over the land and a 10-year forgivable lien to renovate the home so it could be used as a primary residence.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
As she has done on other issues, such as student debt, Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, has released a detailed plan to tackle a wide variety of housing-related issues.
“Housing is not just the biggest expense for most American families — or the biggest purchase most Americans will make in their lifetimes,” the Warren campaign said in a post to the site Medium. “It also affects the jobs you can get, the schools your children can go to, and the kinds of communities you can live in. That’s why it’s so important that government gets housing policy right.”
To that end, Warren has introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, which serves as the backbone of her affordable housing plan:
Elizabeth Warren has a plan to build, preserve or rehabilitate 3.2 million housing units for lower- and middle-income people to lower rents by 10%.
Warren’s plan includes, among other things:
• Building, preserving or rehabilitating 3.2 million housing units nationwide for lower- and middle-income people in order to lower rents by 10%. This, she said, would be funded by raising the estate tax back to Bush-era levels.
• Creating a down-payment assistance program designed to address the black-white homeownership gap by providing assistance to first-time home buyers who live in a formerly red-lined neighborhoods or communities that were segregated by law and are still currently low-income.
• Expanding fair-housing legislation to bar housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, veteran status or income.
• Extending the Community Reinvestment Act to require non-bank mortgage lenders invest in minority communities.
• Providing $2 billion in assistance to mortgage borrowers who are still underwater on their home loans following the financial crisis, meaning they owe more than their homes are worth.
• Instituting new requirements for sales of delinquent mortgages .
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Sen. Klobuchar from Minnesota has included multiple housing-related initiatives as part of her outline of more than 100 actions she plans took take in her first 100 days in office, if she is elected. They include:
• Reversing the Trump administration’s proposed changes to federal housing subsidies.
• Expanding a pilot program that provides mobility-housing vouchers to families with children to help them relocate to higher opportunity neighborhoods.
• Suspending changes to fair housing policy ushered in by HUD Secretary Ben Carson in order to combat segregation in housing.
• Overhaul housing policy more broadly as part of a national infrastructure plan.
‘One sure way we can make sure that kids get a good start is if they have a roof over their head and a stable place to live,’ Sen. Amy Klobuchar said at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate
HOUSING IS A RIGHT
IT SHOULD NOT BE REAL ESTATE SPECULATION
Getty Images Some 85% of Americans ‘believe ensuring everyone has
a safe, decent, affordable place to live should be a top national priority,’
a recent survey found. Almost every Democratic presidential candidate
Housing hasn’t traditionally been a hot topic in presidential elections, but with homeownership financially out of reach for many Americans, the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination have been eager to discuss the issue.
Several candidates brought up housing at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate during the one of the evening’s tense back-and-forths.
In response to a question from the debate’s moderators, Sen. Amy Klobuchar mentioned the need to work through the backlog of people who have applied for federal housing vouchers that help low-income households offset the cost of housing.
“One sure way we can make sure that kids get a good start is if they have a roof over their head and a stable place to live,” Klobuchar said. “So the way you do that is, first of all, taking care of the Section 8 backlog of applicants. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people waiting. And I have found a way to pay for this and a way to make sure that people get off that list and get into housing.”
Klobuchar also mentioned concerns related to housing deserts and the need to pay for more affordable housing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, repeated their dispute from the last Democratic presidential debate over comments Bloomberg made years ago about the discriminatory practice of redlining, that were recently resurfaced by the Associated Press
“It is important to recognize the role that the federal government played for decades and decades in discriminating against African-Americans having an opportunity to buy homes,” Warren said. “And while Mayor Bloomberg was blaming the housing crash of 2008 on African-Americans and on Latinos, in fact, I was out there fighting for a consumer agency to make sure people never get cheated again on their mortgages.”
Bloomberg argued that his comments on redlining were taken out of context before mentioning his record as mayor. “When you’re talking about affordable housing, we created 175,000 units of affordable housing in New York City,” he said.
During a debate in November, MSNBC CMCSA, -2.20% moderator Kristen Welker asked billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer whether he was the best person to address this issue, citing the housing crisis in Steyer’s home state of California. “We need to apply resources here to make sure that we build literally millions of new units,” Steyer responded.
Multiple other candidates, including Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have released detailed plans showcasing how they would tackle the trouble many Americans face when looking to find a home to rent or to buy.
‘For the first time in recent memory, affordable housing is a topic on the presidential campaign trail.’— Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition
“For the first time in recent memory, affordable housing is a topic on the presidential campaign trail,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Some 85% of Americans “believe ensuring everyone has a safe, decent, affordable place to live should be a top national priority,” according to a nationwide public-opinion poll commissioned between the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Hart Research Associates.
But the primary calendar itself may be largely the cause of candidates’ enthusiasm, said Rick Sharga, a mortgage-industry veteran.
“California — perhaps the epicenter of unaffordable housing — is scheduled to have its primary earlier than in past election cycles, and voters in the Golden State will very likely pay more attention to the affordable housing proposals being presented by the Democratic hopefuls than voters in many other states,” Sharga said.
The Trump administration has taken steps recently to address housing-related issues. Last year, the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development unveiled plans outlining how America’s housing-finance system could be overhauled, including ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The White House recently released an extensive report detailing the forces contributing to chronic homelessness, particularly in states like California.
Don’t miss: 5 major changes the Trump administration wants to make to housing finance
Here’s what other Democratic candidates are saying about affordable housing:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
Former Vice President Joe Biden was the latest candidate to release an extensive plan for tackling issues related to affordable housing and homelessness. In a break with his fellow candidates, Biden explicitly called for tougher standards for real-estate appraisers as part of his proposal.
Doing so, he argued, would curb bias against black and Latino communities, which some say has depressed home values in those neighborhoods. Appraisers argue that current standards prevent bias, however.
Here are some of the other proposals Biden has made to address Americans’ housing issues:
• Draft and pass legislation to create a Homeowner and Renter Bill of Rights, modeled on a similar policy in California.
• Beef up tenant protections so fewer Americans are evicted.
• Expand the Community Reinvestment Act to include mortgage lenders and insurers to ensure communities of color have access to financial services.
• Revive anti-discrimination policies at the federal level.
• Create a new refundable $15,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers to help them build a down payment and offset the costs associated with buying a home. Similarly, he has advocated for a renter’s tax credit that would reduce housing costs to no more than 30% of a household’s income for low-income households and families who don’t qualify for Section 8 vouchers.
• Providing Section 8 housing vouchers to all eligible families.
• Expand housing benefits for public-sector workers, including teachers and first responders.
• Form a strategy to make housing a right for all Americans.
• Allocate more funds to tackle issues related to homelessness.
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, released a plan dubbed “Housing for All,” that addresses everything from the need to build more housing units to combatting gentrification.
Like many of his policies, the Sanders campaign framed its housing proposal in the context of what the average American faces versus Wall Street’s profits. “In America today, over 18 million families are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing, while last year alone the five largest banks on Wall Street made a record-breaking $111 billion in profits,” the campaign said in its description of Sanders’ plan.
Here are some of the many ways in which Sanders hopes to address Americans’ housing needs:
• Preventing Wall Street funds from selling large pools of mortgages
• Investing $1.48 trillion over a decade in the National Affordable Housing Trust to fund the building, rehabilitation and/or preservation of 7.4 million affordable housing units.
• Setting aside $70 billion to repair and modernize public housing.
• Creating a national cap on annual rent increases at no more than 3% or 1.5 times the Consumer Price Index (whichever is higher).
• Forming an office in the Department of Housing and Urban Development designed to strengthen rent control, tenant protections and inclusive zoning.
• Making federal funding contingent on states encouraging development that promotes integration and public transportation access.
• Instating a 25% home flipping tax on real-estate speculators who sell non-owner-occupied properties that sell for more than their original purchase price if sold within five years.
• Creating an independent National Fair Housing Agency in the vein of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that protects people from housing discrimination and enforces housing standards for renters.
• Investing $8 billion across HUD and the Department of Agriculture to form a first-time homebuyer assistance program
Affordable housing also features as part of Sanders’ proposal for an “Economic Bill of Rights.” During a campaign speech earlier this year, Sanders claimed that some Americans are “paying 40%, 50%, 60% of their limited income in housing” and called the situation “absurd.” Sanders has further referenced urban gentrification as an issue that needs to be addressed.
In the first Democratic presidential debate, Sanders also mentioned the country’s homeless population in response to a question about his calls for expanded government benefits.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has set forth a housing agenda that would aim to cut homelessness in half by 2025. As part of that plan, he said he would double the federal spending on homelessness programs from $3 billion to $6 billion annually, including extra support for rehousing programs and short-term rental assistance.
Bloomberg has also laid out the following initiatives as part of his housing plan:
• Providing housing vouchers to all Americans at or below 30% of their area median income and expanding programs to avoid evictions.
• Increasing the supply of new affordable housing units, expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and raising funding for the National Housing Trust Fund.
• Providing matching funds to aid renters in building up down payments.
• Curbing discrimination in rental housing and bringing more landlords into the voucher system.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has released “an agenda for housing justice in America” aimed at improving affordability and reducing homelessness.
“Pete is committed to housing justice,” the campaign noted on his website. As President, he will use housing policy at every level of government as a tool to address injustices, reverse the discriminatory impacts of racist redlining, and build pathways to lasting economic and social opportunity.”
The broad plan included the following recommendations:
• Supporting the construction or renovation of more than 2 million rental units, mainly through allocating an additional $150 billion in new National Housing Trust funds.
• Investing $4 billion in matching funds to scale successful low-income homeownership programs in order to assist households in becoming homeowners.
• Combatting lending discrimination and reverse Trump administration changes to policies under the Fair Housing Act.
• Passing legislation to regulate interstate landlords and holding bank executives and mortgage lenders liable for robo-signing and other predatory lending practices
• Expanding housing assistance to families with children.
• Creating an emergency rental assistance fund to help families avoid eviction among other rental protections.
Additionally, Buttigieg has put forth an extensive proposal, called the Douglass Plan, to address racial disparities in homeownership and wealth. The plan would create a “21st Century Community Homestead Act” that would be piloted in select cities across the country.
Through this program, a public trust would purchase abandoned properties and provide them to eligible residents. These people would include those who earn less than the area’s median income or those who live in historically redlined or segregated areas. Residents who participate would be given full ownership over the land and a 10-year forgivable lien to renovate the home so it could be used as a primary residence.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
As she has done on other issues, such as student debt, Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, has released a detailed plan to tackle a wide variety of housing-related issues.
“Housing is not just the biggest expense for most American families — or the biggest purchase most Americans will make in their lifetimes,” the Warren campaign said in a post to the site Medium. “It also affects the jobs you can get, the schools your children can go to, and the kinds of communities you can live in. That’s why it’s so important that government gets housing policy right.”
To that end, Warren has introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, which serves as the backbone of her affordable housing plan:
Elizabeth Warren has a plan to build, preserve or rehabilitate 3.2 million housing units for lower- and middle-income people to lower rents by 10%.
Warren’s plan includes, among other things:
• Building, preserving or rehabilitating 3.2 million housing units nationwide for lower- and middle-income people in order to lower rents by 10%. This, she said, would be funded by raising the estate tax back to Bush-era levels.
• Creating a down-payment assistance program designed to address the black-white homeownership gap by providing assistance to first-time home buyers who live in a formerly red-lined neighborhoods or communities that were segregated by law and are still currently low-income.
• Expanding fair-housing legislation to bar housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, veteran status or income.
• Extending the Community Reinvestment Act to require non-bank mortgage lenders invest in minority communities.
• Providing $2 billion in assistance to mortgage borrowers who are still underwater on their home loans following the financial crisis, meaning they owe more than their homes are worth.
• Instituting new requirements for sales of delinquent mortgages .
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Sen. Klobuchar from Minnesota has included multiple housing-related initiatives as part of her outline of more than 100 actions she plans took take in her first 100 days in office, if she is elected. They include:
• Reversing the Trump administration’s proposed changes to federal housing subsidies.
• Expanding a pilot program that provides mobility-housing vouchers to families with children to help them relocate to higher opportunity neighborhoods.
• Suspending changes to fair housing policy ushered in by HUD Secretary Ben Carson in order to combat segregation in housing.
• Overhaul housing policy more broadly as part of a national infrastructure plan.
Coronavirus latest: Stark CDC, WHO warnings add to global gloom: 'This could be bad'
Anjalee Khemlani Senior Reporter,Yahoo Finance•February 25, 2020
CDC to Americans: this could be bad
Grim warnings on Tuesday from public health officials about the spread of the coronavirus coincided with new cases appearing across Europe, sparking a sell-off in markets and stirring new worries about a global pandemic.
China, the epicenter of the outbreak, continues to see a declining number of new cases. However, the outbreak has spread to South Korea, Japan, Italy and Iran.
Meanwhile, isolated infections in Austria, Croatia and Spain have added to global concerns about a worldwide emergency and weighed heavily on Wall Street, even though officials have downplayed the prospect of a pandemic.
At a daily news briefing, Nancy Messonnier, the Centers for Disease Control’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned that the risk of the virus spreading domestically is on the rise — and could prove severely disruptive to everyday life.
“We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad,” Messonnier told reporters, as the Trump administration stepped up its efforts to manage the virus’ after-effects.
Messonnier added it is no longer “a matter of if, but when” the virus spreads, and how many people in the country end up contracting a severe case of the virus.
An active list of all the countries affected by the virus
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers at a budget hearing Tuesday the department is requesting $2.5 billion in emergency supplemental funding, half of which would go directly to fund the outbreak response.
The spread of the outbreak is an “unprecedented...health care challenge, globally,” Azar said, pushing for more funding to conduct lab testing and field work.
To date, the pathogen has infected over 80,000 worldwide, causing more than 2,700 deaths. The U.S. has recorded 57 cases, most of which are related to evacuees from Asia, or the Diamond Princess cruise that was quarantined off of Japan for two weeks.
What’s happening in the market
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers at a budget hearing Tuesday the department is requesting $2.5 billion in emergency supplemental funding, half of which would go directly to fund the outbreak response.
The spread of the outbreak is an “unprecedented...health care challenge, globally,” Azar said, pushing for more funding to conduct lab testing and field work.
To date, the pathogen has infected over 80,000 worldwide, causing more than 2,700 deaths. The U.S. has recorded 57 cases, most of which are related to evacuees from Asia, or the Diamond Princess cruise that was quarantined off of Japan for two weeks.
What’s happening in the market
A screen shows numbers of stocks after the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on February 24, 2020 at Wall Street in New York City. - Wall Street stocks finished with steep losses February 24, 2020, joining a global rout on mounting worries that the coronavirus will derail economic growth.
U.S. benchmarks on Tuesday tried to claw back from the prior day’s ugly beating, but fell by over 2% after new cases popped up around the world, and Italy’s toll mounted. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq (^IXIC) all hit their lowest levels since December, while the Dow’s (^DJI) two-day losses topped 1,500 points.
While travel and leisure have taken the brunt of the sell-off, tech stocks like Apple, Google and Tesla, among others, have been punished by investors.
On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Rich Clarida said the disruption in China could spill over to the rest of the global economy, but warned it was too early to quantify.
William Lee, the chief economist of the Milken Institute, told Yahoo Finance that when talking about the pathogen’s impact on tech giants, the markets should not be “overreacting, but they are,” Lee said.
Deepening concerns about the impact to global demand, and the worldwide supply chain, are weighing on multinational companies overall. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reportedly contacted 20 pharmaceutical companies that are likely to be vulnerable to supply chain disruptions from China, the world’s largest source of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
“If production in an important American industry were to grind to a halt due to supply chain disruptions originating from abroad, then a domino effect could take hold in the U.S. industrial sector,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a research note on Tuesday, citing chemical, petroleum and coal as industries that would take a hit.
Some pharmaceutical names saw their stocks move amid hopes that a vaccine could be found. A clinical trial of coronavirus vaccines will begin in partnership with the National Institute of Health at the University of Nebraska — which include Gilead’s (GILD) remdisivir, HHS’s Azar told Congress.
Separately, Moderna (MRNA) got a 22% intraday boost from news that its vaccine candidate is set to be tested in the U.S.
But lawmakers were concerned that the list of needs HHS presented Tuesday would be hard to find and stockpile in time for an outbreak in the U.S., and criticized the diagnostic kits the CDC has sent to states.
Around the world
The U.S. and other countries took steps to limit or restrict travel to China, Hong Kong and other surrounding countries. On Monday, China announced restrictions on travel to the U.S., while Germany said it would keep its borders open as the virus spreads in Italy.
The outbreak has raised questions about whether the Olympics will go on in Tokyo this summer, as planned. Dick Pound, a key member of the International Olympic Committee told the Associated Press on Tuesday that organizers could cancel the iconic global event, rather than postpone or relocate it.
Bruce Aylward, WHO lead of the international experts mission in China said during a press briefing Tuesday that the world should prepare as if the coronavirus hits their country tomorrow.
The coronavirus “is going to come soon, potentially, you’ve got to be shifting to a readiness, rapid response thinking,” he said.
Meanwhile, reports of factories slowly ramping up operations and at least one-third of businesses open, including half of all Apple stores in China, has given some hope. Yet the damage to first quarter growth is likely to be substantial, analysts say.
Anjalee Khemlani is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @AnjKhem
Here's what makes the coronavirus similar to — and deadlier than — SARS
Keeping China engaged amid the coronavirus outbreak
What the coronavirus means for the economy
How the coronavirus stacks up to other deadly viruses
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
Follow Yahoo Finance
U.S. benchmarks on Tuesday tried to claw back from the prior day’s ugly beating, but fell by over 2% after new cases popped up around the world, and Italy’s toll mounted. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq (^IXIC) all hit their lowest levels since December, while the Dow’s (^DJI) two-day losses topped 1,500 points.
While travel and leisure have taken the brunt of the sell-off, tech stocks like Apple, Google and Tesla, among others, have been punished by investors.
On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Rich Clarida said the disruption in China could spill over to the rest of the global economy, but warned it was too early to quantify.
William Lee, the chief economist of the Milken Institute, told Yahoo Finance that when talking about the pathogen’s impact on tech giants, the markets should not be “overreacting, but they are,” Lee said.
Deepening concerns about the impact to global demand, and the worldwide supply chain, are weighing on multinational companies overall. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reportedly contacted 20 pharmaceutical companies that are likely to be vulnerable to supply chain disruptions from China, the world’s largest source of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
“If production in an important American industry were to grind to a halt due to supply chain disruptions originating from abroad, then a domino effect could take hold in the U.S. industrial sector,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a research note on Tuesday, citing chemical, petroleum and coal as industries that would take a hit.
Some pharmaceutical names saw their stocks move amid hopes that a vaccine could be found. A clinical trial of coronavirus vaccines will begin in partnership with the National Institute of Health at the University of Nebraska — which include Gilead’s (GILD) remdisivir, HHS’s Azar told Congress.
Separately, Moderna (MRNA) got a 22% intraday boost from news that its vaccine candidate is set to be tested in the U.S.
But lawmakers were concerned that the list of needs HHS presented Tuesday would be hard to find and stockpile in time for an outbreak in the U.S., and criticized the diagnostic kits the CDC has sent to states.
Around the world
The U.S. and other countries took steps to limit or restrict travel to China, Hong Kong and other surrounding countries. On Monday, China announced restrictions on travel to the U.S., while Germany said it would keep its borders open as the virus spreads in Italy.
The outbreak has raised questions about whether the Olympics will go on in Tokyo this summer, as planned. Dick Pound, a key member of the International Olympic Committee told the Associated Press on Tuesday that organizers could cancel the iconic global event, rather than postpone or relocate it.
Bruce Aylward, WHO lead of the international experts mission in China said during a press briefing Tuesday that the world should prepare as if the coronavirus hits their country tomorrow.
The coronavirus “is going to come soon, potentially, you’ve got to be shifting to a readiness, rapid response thinking,” he said.
Meanwhile, reports of factories slowly ramping up operations and at least one-third of businesses open, including half of all Apple stores in China, has given some hope. Yet the damage to first quarter growth is likely to be substantial, analysts say.
Anjalee Khemlani is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @AnjKhem
Here's what makes the coronavirus similar to — and deadlier than — SARS
Keeping China engaged amid the coronavirus outbreak
What the coronavirus means for the economy
How the coronavirus stacks up to other deadly viruses
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
Follow Yahoo Finance
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