Comment: See also:

• Iraq's Hezbollah accuses high-ranking officials of working with US to assassinate Qassem Soleimani
• US-Iran covert war continues: US again strikes Iraqi forces aligned with Iran, possibly taking out another senior IRGC commander
• NYT says 'Iran-backed militia' attack that provoked Soleimani murder was possible ISIS false flag

Comment: Trump is damned if he do, damned if he don't with the liberal media, so it's not hard to understand his frustration. Thankfully Trump is being smart, saying he doesn't think a national lockdown is necessary. Meanwhile the rest of the world continues its descent into coronavirus hysteria...

On Saturday the US-Mexico border will close and "last as long as necessary," according to Sec. of State Mike Pompeo. Some 2,600 US troops and military staff based in Europe have been ordered into quarantine after at least 35 of them tested positive for Covid-19. The head doctor of Moscow's main disease hospital thinks that the coronavirus crisis will last six months (very unlikely).

Not content to scaremonger just the elderly, the WHO warned the youth that "you are not invincible." The war of words between Washington and Beijing continues, as the Foreign Ministry in China hit back at the reference to the outbreak as the "Wuhan Flu" by saying that Trump and others "attempt to stigmatize China's fight against the epidemic and shirk its responsibility to China." A staffer for Mike Pence has tested positive for the virus, but reports are that the staffer did not have close contact with Trump.

The UK has further shut down society, as Boris Johnson ordered all restaurants, cafes, and pubs to close. A London hospital has declared a "critical incident" over the number of patients requiring a high level of care, saying they don't have the space for all the people who need care (thank those austerity cuts!). Sirens blared throughout Argentina marking the beginning of a national quarantine, which surely must have made people feel like they were living in a dystopian science-fiction movie. Italy has reported a record number of deaths from coronavirus in one day - although exactly how that's being done and whether the deceased have pre-existing health issues is something that is left out of such dire proclamations.

But hey, there's good news! Goldman Sachs is giving their CEO a 20% raise even as it predicts an economic crash. The head of the WHO says there's actually hope as there have been no new cases announced in Wuhan on Thursday. Cuba is helping repair its image by allowing a British cruise ship to dock on its shore despite there being 5 cases of Covid-19 and others showing symptoms. The US refused the same request, but Cuban health officials are showing that they are not so terrified. Good for them.

Comment: As for the UK, The Guardian reported yesterday the measures the Bank of England has taken in its attempt to slow the freefall of the economy:

© David Sillitoe/The GuardianThe Bank Of England has slashed interest rates to 0.1%, the lowest-ever level.

The Bank of England has gone all in. By cutting interest rates to 0.1% and announcing a fresh £200bn of money creation via its quantitative easing programme it has fired all the conventional weapons in its arsenal.

Back in 2008 the BoE 'created' and pumped in more than £435 billion to save the banks - and it looks like this time they'll need to do even more...

There will be some who say this is all reminiscent of the Beyond the Fringe sketch where Peter Cook demands "a futile gesture" to raise the whole tone of the war. Others will say the Bank's new governor Andrew Bailey had no choice given the state of the markets and the imminent lockdown in London. Bailey has had a good first week in the job.

The "futile gesture" argument would carry more weight if the Bank had merely cut the cost of borrowing. To be sure, 0.1% is the lowest official interest rates have been since the Bank was founded in 1694 but trimming them from 0.25% is not going to do much to stem the inevitable flood of business failures and job losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The current economic crisis is not simply due to the manufactured hysteria of Covid-19, it's actually a continuation of the 2008 crash because nothing was ever done to hold the corrupted system to account.

Instead, the real meat was the increase in the QE programme, which came sooner and was a lot bigger than the City had been expecting.

Back in January, the then governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney said he thought there was the capacity for the markets to absorb a further £120bn of asset purchases under the QE scheme and that this would be the equivalent of a one percentage point cut in interest rates.

Things have moved on since then, and the extra borrowing that the government has embarked on to fight Covid-19 - £32bn and counting - means there is scope for the Bank to do more QE. Using Carney's rule of thumb, the Bank has just provided a stimulus equivalent to almost two percentage points off interest rates.

The Bank's actions need to be seen in the context of recent developments in the financial markets - the fall in the value of the pound to its lowest level since the mid-1980s and a rise in gilt yields, the interest rates paid to those holding government bonds.

The reason for both trends has been the strength of the US dollar - the safe haven of choice when markets are in a state of utter panic. By signalling it is prepared to buy gilts through its QE programme, the Bank is hoping to make them more attractive and so reduce yields.

Markets were impressed by the size of the QE announcement, which is the equivalent of about 9% of UK GDP. By comparison, the ECB's €750bn progamme announced late on Wednesday night amounts to just over 7% of eurozone GDP. It is a sign of how fast things are moving that the Fed's QE expansion, which was 3.3% of US GDP, now looks puny.

This was the second emergency move from the Bank in just over a week. Its monetary policy committee could have waited until its scheduled meeting next week but decided there was no point in delay.

The initial response in the gilts and currency markets was positive but not wildly so. That suggests the Bank might need to do more in the coming weeks. Bailey, like all central bankers, is extremely nervous about "helicopter drops" of money - which is where the Bank prints money for the Treasury to spend. But he has not ruled them out.

See also:

• If slowing growth, unsound financial systems and the coronavirus don't trigger a market meltdown, central banks will
• Krone collapse: Norway loses a fifth of its oil wealth
• Russia's gold & near-zero debt give it best chance of thriving in post-coronavirus hysteria and global economic apocalypse - Max Keiser
• 14 Million Americans have been laid off so far due to COVID-19

Comment:

Comment: Netanyahu is counting on a fear and isolation strategy consistently proven to be a winner, one that he has honed to perfection. Gantz has the opportunity to make a different choice. Will he consider the option, and with that, open Israel to redefinition?

Comment: US troops have begun leaving Afghanistan as part of Trump's mandate to reduce and ultimately eliminate American presence. The culmination of this action, however, will be drawn out over many months. Without a stronger, more viable Afghan leadership, any promises by either faction has doubtful chances of creating the kind of environment necessary for progress towards a functional and peaceful nation.

• US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has begun

See also:

• Afghan government delays release of Taliban prisoners
• Taliban rejects Afghan government's conditional prisoner release order
• Afghan president Ghani orders release of Taliban prisoners, important point of deal with US
• Ghani refuses to free Taliban prisoners, as required in the US peace deal, without an 'executive guarantee'