ECONOMY

MAGA, Meet OUAA

Yesterday, President Trump released Opening Up America Again, a framework to help states ease lockdown restrictions.

• At a press conference last night, Trump said he would leave it to governors to determine when to swing the gates open. But he also said, “We must have a working economy, and we want to get it back very, very quickly.” 

WH coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx unveiled a three-phase plan where “all vulnerable individuals” stay home and employees return to work gradually. To enter each phase, states have to meet "gating" thresholds that may be declining documented cases or a decreasing percentage of positive tests.  

• Phase 1: A limited group of businesses like restaurants and movie theaters are allowed to reopen while schools remain closed and vulnerable people stay home.
• Phase 2: Schools can reopen and non-essential travel can resume.
• Phase 3: Vulnerable people can resume public interactions while practicing social distancing. 

Sounds good, right? Lots of Americans are eager to get back to the old normal. If you’re not, your name is Larry David.

But there’s a major issue: testing

Public health officials, lawmakers, and business leaders are concerned the U.S. can’t test people at the scale necessary to responsibly send us back to work. 

• In the entirety of the crisis, the U.S. has conducted nearly 3.5 million tests. Experts say we need to test millions per week before we get back to working IRL in any significant capacity.
• If the U.S. eases restrictions too early, medical authorities say, it risks spurring a second wave of infections that overwhelms the healthcare system. In fact, a second wave of COVID-19 infections is hitting northern Japan right now.

Zoom out: Earlier this week, Trump said that he had “total authority” over when to reopen. Now he's deferring to governors, showing that the pandemic requires locally tailored responses.

JOBS

The Chart That Keeps on Taking

Thursdays used to mean breaking out sweats to prepare for casual Friday. Now, they mean coming face-to-face with this nightmare chart of jobless claims.

Last week, 5.2 million U.S. workers filed for unemployment, bringing the four-week total to 22 million and wiping out nearly all the job gains from the 11-year bull market that followed the Great Recession. 

Now, layoffs are fanning out from early-affected industries. The April jobs report could log 1.5 million layoffs of nonessential healthcare workers and 3.4 million layoffs across business-services fields like consulting, law, and advertising, according to Oxford Economics. 

• “The virus shock does not discriminate across sectors as we initially thought,” Oxford's Gregory Daco told the WSJ. 

State unemployment agencies trying to accommodate the surge are as overrun as a Chuck E. Cheese during a Duggar family birthday party. 

For the 17 million who filed before last week, an estimated half have yet to collect federal payments. And those additional $600 payments through the CARES Act are only available in 29 states so far.

GAMBLING

DraftKings Takes the Over

Three letters you thought you'd never hear during a global pandemic: I-P-O. Sports betting giant DraftKings is set to go public via a reverse merger after nabbing regulatory approval this week to join forces with SBTech, a gaming tech company, and Diamond Eagle, a public acquisition vehicle. The deal values DraftKings at $3.3 billion.

• The last hurdle: Diamond Eagle shareholders vote on it next Thursday. 

You might be wondering, does DraftKings even have business right now? Kinda. COVID-19 has forced gambling companies to get creative and give customers opportunities to bet on everything from Eastern European ping pong matches to TV and politics. 

Looking ahead...in a “pinch us we’re dreaming” moment, the PGA Tour said yesterday golf will resume mid-June. The entire world might put down a wager on that first tournament back.

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CONSUMER

French Companies Suffer From Le Downturn

Like a good pain au chocolat, yesterday’s news from French consumer behemoths LVMH and L’Oréal is bittersweet. 

The bitter: LVMH same-store sales fell 17% in Q1, while L’Oréal’s dropped almost 5%. The coronavirus pandemic closed luxury stores pretty much everywhere—LVMH said it will be “very affected” in Q2 and it will cut last year’s dividend by 30%. 

The sweet: L’Oréal said its China sales had turned positive in March as the country reopened, and it’s penciling in 5%–10% gains in April. LVMH said it’s hopeful for a relaxation of lockdowns in May or June and will reopen some manufacturing plants accordingly. 

Bottom line: The French may be all about égalité, but not all consumer conglomerates are created equal. L’Oréal has an advantage because it sells personal care products like shampoo that remain available and in-demand in essential stores. 

AVIATION

If the Wright Brothers time-traveled to April 2020 they'd look up and say, "What have you guys been doing for the last 117 years?" 

The number of travelers that passed through TSA checkpoints...

• April 15, 2020: 90,784
• A year ago on the same weekday: 2,317,381

That's why United Airlines said yesterday travel demand was “essentially zero” and going nowhere fast.

+ Weekend reading: "Now Arriving at La Guardia Airport: One Passenger" 

QUIZ

Quizzentials

Since this quiz is now going to 2 million inboxes...should we make it harder? Let us know when we hit the Goldilocks zone of quiz-making. It’s the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz.

1. Israel’s National Security Council has reportedly finalized a plan to slowly lift stay-at-home restrictions by opening sectors of the economy in a specified order. Can you put these sectors in order from first to reopen to last?

1. Commerce and retail
2. Sports, air travel, and entertainment
3. Tech and finance
4. Restaurants and hotels

2. True or false: The new iPhone SE costs less than $500.

3. Which of the following brands is not seeing a renaissance during the time of COVID-19:

1. Ravensburger
2. Pet Rock
3. Houseparty
4. Kraft Heinz

4. Fill in the blank: Gilead Sciences' drug, _________, is one of the leaders in the race to treat COVID-19. No excuses, we told you to remember this word at the beginning of the week. 

5. Thanks to lucrative offshore oil fields, one small country’s economy is forecasted to grow 53% in 2020. That’s easily the most of any country and the only economy in the Americas expected to grow at all this year. Which country is it? 

Or, you can keep scrolling for the answers. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• New York and other East Coast states extended closures of nonessential businesses until May 15.
• The U.K.’s lockdown will also last at least three more weeks.
• Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook employees can WFH through the summer and the company won’t hold large physical events until July 2021.
• GM and Ford signed a new $336 million contract to produce 50,000 ventilators for the U.S. government. 
• Morgan Stanley capped big bank earnings this week with a 30% drop in profit for Q1. 
• Instacart and Costco are partnering for prescription drug delivery. 

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FRIDAY PUZZLE

Each sentence below contains a word that can be anagrammed to answer or describe the sentence.

Example: Craft that might tip in the ocean. Answer: Canoe (anagram of ocean)

1. You cover a mattress with one of these
2. Dangerous thing for an alcoholic to begin
3. Feature on which a tire might be rated
4. Feeling about a poisonous adder
5. Weapon that a cavalryman bears
6. It doesn't necessarily bring rain, but it could

ANSWERS

Friday Puzzle

1. Sheet
2. Binge
3. Tread
4. Dread
5. Sabre or Saber
6. Cloud

Weekly News Quiz: 1. Tech and finance; commerce and retail; restaurants and hotels; then sports, air travel, and entertainment 2. True; it costs $399 3. Pet Rock 4. Remdesivir 5. Guyana