Health
Investors need to wake up and face the warning signs in the global economy – Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
Global investors are being overly complacent about downside economic risks, aggravated but not limited to the growing impact of coronavirus.
They are underestimating the forces that are changing the very nature of the world economy – a growing degree of “deglobalization” in the face of U.S.-Chinese decoupling. At the same time, they are overestimating the power of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the global economic party going.
When G-20 finance ministers meet this weekend in Riyadh, they’ll do so at a time when all of the world’s ten major economies are slowing – and several confront recession. Next week, Beijing is likely to announce a delay in the meeting of its National People’s Congress due to the coronavirus outbreak.
This week, Apple raised fears of more global corporate troubles to come with a coronavirus-caused revenue warning. The full ripple effects of the virus, and of the economic impact of humans scared to be with other humans, will show up in first quarter results, in particular in tourism, travel and on all Chinese and global companies that depend on Chinese supply chains and markets.
Despite all that, investor complacency persists in no small part due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how rapidly the world has changed, economically and politically. We are only in the opening pages of this new era of major power competition and technological change, and there’s no model to “price in” its impact.
Within democracies, the public’s faith has been shaken in capitalism and globalization to produce results that deliver greater prosperity. Most recently, that has driven everything from the recent Irish election victory of Sinn Fein, to the UK’s departure from the European Union, to the erosion of the German political center.
Most dramatic is the growing possibility that U.S. presidential elections this year could produce a showdown between two populists of different stripes but similar decibels, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Both are septuagenarian insurgents who appeal to hard-core, unconventional constituencies, and that’s prompted global concern that the new U.S. normal may be abnormal.
All of that is unfolding against a backdrop of a major power test that at its heart is a systemic struggle between democratic and authoritarian capitalist models. Though traditional security analysts continue to worry about how U.S.-Chinese, U.S.-Russian or U.S.-Iranian tensions could unravel into armed conflict, the more likely outcome is a resource-sapping, continual competition that stops short of kinetics but involves information warfare, cyber assaults, and economic clashes ranging from trade wars to targeted sanctions.
But let’s get back to investors and their complacency, which is as easy to explain as it is increasingly hard to justify.
Every time the global economy approached the brink in the decade since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, some intervening force pulled us back. The latest came last year when it looked as though the global economy might slow to below 2 percent GDP growth, generally considered a way to measure the onset of a global recession.
Central banks stepped up. As the International Monetary Fund has pointed out, 49 central banks cut interest rates 71 times last year. The result was a 0.5 percent global GDP boost, according to the IMF. Monetary policy saved the day.
Investors understand that coronavirus could be a major 2020 shock, but they are wagering again that something will prevent this from becoming an economic disaster. They realize the U.S. Fed and other central banks may have fewer monetary tools to deploy, so they are counting on increased fiscal stimulus from governments.
For example, Chinese lenders on Thursday cut their one-year loan prime rate, which is used across the financial system, by 0.1 percent to 4.05 percent. The result was a rallying of Chinese stocks that day of 2.2 percent of the benchmark CSI 300 index.
That followed the Chinese central bank’s cut to its medium-term lending rate this week, as well as dozens of other measures Beijing has introduced in recent days to support businesses hit by the epidemic. The Financial Times reports that China’s central bank thus far has made 300 billion RmB available to large lenders and local banks in hard-hit areas, particularly Hubei province.
Wishful thinking
Even so, the S&P Global Ratings forecast that China’s 2020 growth could fall to 4.4 percent from its 6 percent level last year, if the coronavirus hit continues through April. Most predictions of that sort probably err on the optimistic side, and it may be wishful thinking that China’s economy will make up most of what is being lost once coronavirus recedes.
At the same time, the eurozone economy barely grew in the fourth quarter of 2019, up only 0.1 percent from the previous quarter, the slowest rate since 2013. Germany had zero growth. Real GDP in the eurozone was up just 0.9 percent in 2019, the slowest rate since 2013. (With the UK now leaving the EU, its leaders failed to agree on their budget on Friday due to insoluble differences.)
Governments across the world see these storm clouds, and a Bloomberg survey of economic forecasts shows that budgets are loosening in more than half of the world’s 20 biggest economies, providing some of the fiscal stimulus that central bankers have been seeking from their government counterparts.
Markets are wagering that the combination of fiscal and monetary measures will again prevent the worst.
However, what if they’re wrong?
Other than the United States, major central banks are tapped out, some of them experimenting with negative interest rates. Some experts argue that our low interest rate environment allows greater borrowing for fiscal stimulus.
That’s risky business.
Near the end
Global debt is nearing $244 trillion, the highest level on record, and that’s not a good record to be breaking. Public debt is the highest in advanced economies since WWII. In a recent Atlantic Council report, Global Risks 2035 Update, author Mathew Burrows explores a worst-case scenario he calls “Descent into Chaos.” It starts with growing indebtedness hitting China first and then spreading to the Western world, triggering a worldwide economic meltdown.
Burrows isn’t in the business of predicting the timing of global downturns. Yet it would be unwise to take one’s eye off this ballooning debt at this moment of uncertainty.
Investors are counting on the playbook of the last decade to hold out for a little longer.
That’s a risky bet in this year of coronavirus, slowing growth, growing debt, and rising geopolitical uncertainty. We’re near the end of a bull run that’s in year ten of a seven-year cycle.
Source: CNBC
Health
RCMP warn about benzodiazepine-laced fentanyl tied to overdose in Alberta – Edmonton Journal
Article content
Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
Article content
Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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