Back in March, there were some who feared a 2008-style credit freeze. Instead, the Fed chose to keep debt markets flowing. Now things look more like 2009: Most Americans are worried about a deeply damaged economy, but for some on Wall Street, it’s all sunshine and rainbows. The Fed’s moves meant a $10 billion windfall for the biggest U.S. banks as bond traders seized on big swings and bankers inked deals for companies craving cash. The market bonanza by firms like Goldman Sachs (“almost indecent” said one CEO) has for now eased fears about the type of bank capital concerns that fueled the last crisis. But it raises the question of whether the Fed’s efforts have benefited the fattest of cats at the expense of mom-and-pops just trying to stay alive. —David E. Rovella

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Here are today’s top stories

The professor who developed one of the best-known formulas for predicting corporate bankruptcies has a warning for U.S. credit investors: the “mega” insolvencies are just getting started.

Hedge funders often complain how their strategies are decimated by central bankers. Turns out they may be right.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said he’s preparing to narrow the field of vice-presidential hopefuls to a smaller group of finalists. President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is focusing resources on Georgia, a usually solid red state. 

It’s been more than three months since the Northeastern U.S., left largely to fend for itself, witnessed tens of thousands of citizens perish in hospitals and nursing homes where protective equipment was scarce. But even today, America’s health-care workers in the South and West still face dangerous shortages as infections spiral out of control and hospitals fill up. And just as New Yorkers became used to the sight of refrigerated trailers filled with the dead, so too may Texas, where they are ordering their own morgue trucks. U.S. deaths rose to almost 137,000 Wednesday, still by far the most in the world. Meanwhile, the Trump administration ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and instead send coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington. Health experts warn transparency as to critical pandemic data may be compromised. Globally, Tokyo raised its Covid-19 warning to the highest level, and in Mexico, oil workers are dying at an unprecedented pace.

On Wednesday, Trump moved forward with his biggest attempted rollback yet in a four-year campaign to dilute decades of environmental and health protections.

Fears of a Hong Kong brain drain are increasing after China moved to tax the global income of the city’s residents, further undermining the financial hub’s appeal to thousands of bankers and other white-collar workers. 

What’s Joe Weisenthal thinking about? The Bloomberg news director is contemplating an imminent threat to the struggling U.S. economy. The reason we’re not seeing a deeper recession right now, Joe says, is the Congressional bailout, which short-circuited this process by providing temporary income support to the unemployed. But for most recipients, the last expanded unemployment check will go out July 25. The loss of those checks will mean a massive income hit that, due to America’s failure to contain the virus, private sector spending will be unable to replace. This isn’t the only potential shock that’s coming, though. At the beginning of the crisis, all kinds of moratoriums were put in place on things like evictions and foreclosures. Many of those are expiring soon. Combined with a loss of income, the U.S. economy could be looking at a major problem. 

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

• Walmart joins big retail peers requiring masks for U.S. shoppers.
• A potential frontrunner in the race for a vaccine.
• Electric-car subsidies make Renaults free in Germany. 
• Michigan’s governor warns car plants will shut if masks not worn.
• Bezos, Gates among high profile Twitter handles likely hacked.
• Sony boosts its PlayStation 5 output to match pandemic demand.
• Disney parks are almost empty, and that seems to be the plan.

What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Pursuits

Hazmat Suits for Airplane Travel Are Here

With the pandemic spreading like wildfire across the Americas and re-emerging in Europe and Asia, air travelers are desperately looking for a pre-vaccine solution. Yezin Al-Qaysi says haute hazmats are just the thing to make flying feel safe again. In mid-April, the co-founder of VYZR Technologies launched a new product called the BioVYZR. It’s a hazmat suit for the sky.

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