Dow futures plunge the 5% limit as coronavirus slams market, Fed official warns unemployment could h

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: MarketWatch

Market Snapshot

Dow futures plunge the 5% limit as coronavirus slams market, Fed official warns unemployment could hit 30%

Published: March 22, 2020 at 7:35 p.m. ET

By Mark DeCambre and Mike Murphy

Bad Sunday for stocks as Senate fails to pass coronavirus stimulus measure

U.S. stock-index futures fell by the most allowable for the day Sunday evening as the cases of coronavirus globally neared 330,000 and the market appeared unhappy with a lack of government action to address the current and expected fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On top of that, a U.S. central bank official estimated that the unemployment rate could surge from just over 3% to 30% at its peak as businesses shutter in an effort to clamp down on the spread of the deadly illness.

Markets tumbled Sunday evening after an important Senate vote on coronavirus rescue package failed to gain sufficient traction. The vote was 47 to 47, but needed 60 votes to proceed. Senate Democrats voted against starting a 30-hour clock toward a vote.

Democrats have argued the details of the bill were geared toward helping Wall Street more than Main Street, as COVID-19, the infectious disease that has been contracted by more than 300,000 people globally, rapidly spreads and threatens to throw the domestic and global economy into a recession. The U.S. has seen more than 32,000 cases so far.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, on Sunday called the coronavirus bill a "corporate bailout" without protections for everyday workers.

President Donald Trump, during a Sunday news conference of the coronavirus task force, said he expects a package to get completed.

The failure of the bill highlights a lack of consensus between Democrats and Republicans to coalesce around a package at a crucial time for the economy and the financial market, which has been hammered as the virus has ground business activity to a halt.

Trump also said Sunday that he has activated the National Guard to help respond to the coronavirus outbreaks in California, New York and Washington, where much of those states are on lockdown.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-futures-plunge-the-most-allowable-as-coronavirus-slams-market-fed-officials-warns-unemployment-could-hit-30-2020-03-22?mod=home-page

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The story is in GD too.

[Evolve Dammit]

1. Call your Senators. Do not allow Mnuchin and McConnell to decide which donor corporations get bailed

out. This is a swindle at a dark hour and they are traitors to working Americans.

[Mr.Bill]

3. They are there to loot the place.

Nothing else.

[47of74]

2. I think we'll be at 50 to 75 percent by the end of this year and in a second Great Depression

[IronLionZion]

4. "unhappy with a lack of government action"

Many normal people are absolutely livid with the lack of action. Why the hell are they not mobilizing American factories to produce the necessary healthcare equipment already? Our country needs to be on war footing similar to WW2.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Willow Run

I hadn't known it was built as a dedicated aircraft factory.

Willow Run



B-24s under construction at Willow Run.

Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, constructed by the Ford Motor Company for the mass production of aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. Construction of the Willow Run Bomber Plant began in 1940 and was completed in 1942.

[PSPS]

13. At its peak, They pumped out a B-24 every hour.

[Bengus81]

14. Yeah,after telling Ford for a YEAR you can't build them like a car

rolling down some assembly line. They have to go to a station,set and then move forward to another station and then finally set for final construction.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

16. At a time when the company was imploding

Henry Ford

{snip}

Peace and war

{snip}

The coming of World War II and Ford's mental collapse

Ford had opposed the United States entry into World War II and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction"; in 1939 he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers. The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War. In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel. However, he also agreed to build warplane engines for the British government.

Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention. At that time, which was before the U.S. entered the war and still had full diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ford-Werke was under the control of the Ford Motor Company. The number of slave laborers grew as the war expanded although Wallace makes it clear that companies in Germany were not required by the Nazi authorities to use slave laborers.

When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an additional source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in December 1941. His support of the American war effort, however, was problematic.

Once the U.S. entered the war, Ford directed the Ford Motor Company to construct a vast new purpose-built factory at Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of 1942, and the first B-24 came off the line in October 1942. At 3,500,000 sq ft (330,000 m2), it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes.[55] Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.[55]

When Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943, aged only 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name. The company was in fact controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944. Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating some sort of coup among executives and directors. Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II. They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted to three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but had no choice but to give in. The young man took over and, as his first act of business, fired Harry Bennett.

{snip}

[55] Nolan, Jenny. "Michigan History: Willow Run and the Arsenal of Democracy." The Detroit News, January 28, 1997. Retrieved: August 7, 2010.

You can find that link at https://web.archive.org/web/20180625103810/http://blogs.detroitnews.com/history/1997/01/27/willow-run-and-the-arsenal-of-democracy/

[NoMoreRepugs]

6. The President activated the National Gurad in individual states?

[machoneman]

7. Only the Govs can do that, save a declaration of a real war or they are Federalized.

Trump never said the Feds would pay btw.

[CanonRay]

9. I saw that and thought

WTF does he mean. Is he nationalizing the Guard? He doesn't activate the Guard, the state governor does. He has no fucking idea how to govern.

[CanonRay]

8. The first unemployment projections I saw

were 20%. Then 24%. Now 30%.

[bucolic_frolic]

10. I think they should close the markets for months

Everything is frozen where it is. You have no market when nothing is measurable or estimable. You can't mark to market, there is no market. But they'll wait until ETFs index are in meltdown which causes Blue Chips to be liquidated which causes a debt implosion. You're looking at Dow 9680 in 10 days. I don't think there's been this much uncertainty since World War I.

[Lucky Luciano]

11. Sneak attack and buy VIX puts struck at 20.

No trading means zero vol!

[bucolic_frolic]

12. Yes, that would be the deep out of the money play indeed

in the event the shutdown economy convinces them to match the markets to it.

Somehow, though, they'll never do it, and they cancel options at that point because no one can unwind anything

[Bengus81]

15. Never closed the Markets for FDR in the Great Depression

Never closed regular trading days when Obama was trying to claw his way out of the Bush almost second Great Depression. If Dems can take the TOUGH days then so should fat ass Trump.