Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Wall Street hesitates

Evening Briefing
Bloomberg

New York City may have entered the second phase of its gradual reopening, but in major office districts, many of the biggest employers aren’t rushing to bring people back. Citigroup, with more than 13,000 workers in New York, won’t start ramping up its return until next month, and even then will just have 5% of staff in offices. A lot of other companies both on and off Wall Street are thinking the same way. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is mapping the pandemic globally and across America. For the latest news, sign up for our Covid-19 podcast and daily newsletter.

Here are today’s top stories

No, being a U.S. police employee is not as dangerous as their unions would have you believe at this time of reckoning for police brutality and wrongful killings. In fact, being a cop ranks No. 16, just above construction worker, and has been getting less dangerous over the years. Justin Fox writes in Bloomberg Opinion that police-work is safer than being a roofer, truck driver, farmer or sanitation employee. Moreover, Fox notes, people with those riskier jobs “seldom if ever give off the air of aggrieved menace that many police officers, and especially their union leaders, currently do.”

Markets have often seemed disconnected from the reality faced by most during the pandemic and its concomitant economic calamity. Wall Street smiled as bailout money flowed to corporations, despite tens of millions of Americans losing jobs and many of them lining up at food pantries. But as the trillions of dollars authorized by Congress (and doled out by the Trump administration) dry up, so too may investor risk-taking. Indeed, they may be headed for a wake-up call, as dire scenarios they recently brushed aside begin to come true.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Invest Global virtual conference, economist Nouriel Roubini predicted any recovery from the current crisis will soon fizzle out and be more anemic than the one following the 2008 financial meltdown. Economist Joseph Stiglitz said politicians must assure citizens public support programs will continue as long as needed.

At least one in 10 small businesses in the U.S. are expecting to lay off workers once their fiscal relief funds run out. More aid may be needed to keep businesses afloat and workers employed, especially as infection rates are now spiking in states that reopened before they were advised to.

A pandemic study from France said school children didn’t appear to transmit the novel coronavirus to peers or teachers. In the U.S., Trump administration official Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted a vaccine by the end of the year or early 2021, warned there will be no summer lull in the disease’s spread and contradicted President Donald Trump’s repeated statements that he was slowing down testing. More young people are getting the disease, thanks in part to southern and western states reopening too soon, poor social distancing and lax mask use. Fauci said it was too early to tell whether that explains a lower death rate. In 31 states, infections continue to climb as the fallout from premature reopenings and politicized messaging endangers more Americans. Even New Jersey, one of the decimated northeast states that seemed to have the virus under control, is seeing a new uptick. The U.S. leads the planet with 121,000 dead and 2.3 million infected, more than the next six countries combined. Approximately one-quarter of all deaths and infections worldwide are American.

The perpetually defective and way-over budget F-35 fighter jet has yet another item in its long list of problems. Spare parts from Lockheed Martin, the massive defense contractor being paid hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build it, don’t work.

Three of the top-10 automobiles Cars.com says contribute most to the U.S. economy are electric vehicles made by Tesla. Number one is a Ford pickup truck.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

What you’ll want to read tonight in Businessweek

Why Business Travel May Never Recover

Kayak Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Steve Hafner says consumers are at least beginning to think about flying again and restaurants are selling every table they can. But for travel veterans with corporate cards, the world may have changed for good.

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