Author: Mary Pat Campbell

The Latino Health Paradox Goes Beyond U.S. Borders

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-02-12/hispanic-paradox-in-health-extends-beyond-us-borders

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Excerpt:

LATIN AMERICANS ARE less likely to die prematurely than non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. – whether they live in the country or not, a new study suggests.

Researchers have long theorized that a longer life expectancy among Latinos in the U.S. – despite often facing socioeconomic disadvantages – could be driven in part by a “healthy immigrant effect,” meaning healthier people may be more likely to immigrate to the U.S. than those in poorer health. But the new study, published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, suggests “there may be a broader Latin American paradox” that extends far beyond U.S. borders.

Author(s): Gaby Galvin

Publication Date: 12 February 2021

Publication Site: U.S. News & World Report

Pandemic led to U.S. housing boom, reduced credit card debt, New York Fed says

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-report/pandemic-led-to-us-housing-boom-reduced-credit-card-debt-new-york-fed-says-idUSKBN2AH28Z

Excerpt:

The coronavirus pandemic changed the way U.S. consumers use credit, as lower interest rates spurred a boom in home buying and refinancing and virus-related shutdowns led to a drop in credit card use and an increase in paying off debt, according to a report released on Wednesday by the New York Federal Reserve.

Total household debt last year increased by $414 billion to $14.56 trillion at the end of December, the New York Fed found in its quarterly household debt and credit report.

Author(s): Jonnelle Marte

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Reuters

Did your pipes burst during Texas’ winter storm? Here’s what to expect from insurance

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://news.yahoo.com/did-pipes-burst-during-texas-220107004.html

Excerpt:

Chris Pilcic, a public affairs specialist for State Farm, said to first keep calm. Then, turn your water supply off and let all the remaining water in your pipes drain out

Next step, look over your damage, both to your property and your personal belongings. And then call your insurance agent.

“The average frozen pipe claim we paid in Texas last year was $10,300,” Pilcic said on Wednesday.

What comes out of your pocket will depend on your coverage and deductible.

Author(s): Nichole Manna

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Yahoo News

Bond Selloff Prompts Stock Investors to Confront Rising Rates

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bond-selloff-prompts-rethink-bystock-investors-11613919600

Excerpt:

The sharp increase this month in U.S. government-bond yields is pressuring the stock market and forcing investors to more seriously confront the implications of rising interest rates.

The lift in yields largely reflects investor expectations of a strong economic recovery. However, the collateral damage could include higher borrowing costs for businesses, more options for investors who had seen few alternatives to stocks and less favorable valuation models for some hot technology shares, investors and analysts said.

As of Friday [Feb 19], the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note stood at 1.344%, up from 1.157% just five trading sessions earlier and roughly 0.9% at the start of the year.

Author(s): Sam Goldfarb

Publication Date: 21 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

GameStop Craze Puts Holders of Retail ETF on Wild Ride

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-craze-puts-holders-of-retail-etf-on-wild-ride-11613923200

Excerpt:

GameStop mania has spilled over into a popular exchange-traded fund, as the WallStreetBets craze reaches beyond shares favored on social media.

The fund, State Street ’s SPDR S&P Retail ETF, was created in 2006 to give investors broad exposure to mall-store firms. Its shares have surged 23% this year, far outstripping a 4% gain in the S&P 500, despite the uncertain outlook for retail. Behind those gains are the traders who congregate on social-media platforms such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum and whose enthusiasm has turned this mundane investment into a roller coaster.

On Jan. 27, GameStop soared 135%, driven by events such as Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeting “Gamestonk.” The State Street fund jumped 42% the same day. The next day, GameStop shares tumbled 44% and the fund, known by its ticker XRT, dropped about 9%.

Author(s): Michael Wursthorn

Publication Date: 21 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Midwest Labor Markets Shake Off Covid-19 Downturn

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/midwest-labor-markets-shake-off-covid-19-downturn-11613817001

Excerpt:

Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 6.7% in December 2020, from 3.6% a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. Jobless rates in the four Midwest metros rose about half as much, while the rates climbed more in several coastal cities.

Columbus and Cincinnati finished last year with a seasonally adjusted 5.1% unemployment rate. The rate was 4.3% in Indianapolis and 4.7% in Minneapolis. The rates were higher in San Francisco, 7.3%, and Boston, 6.9%. The latter two cities had among the lowest unemployment rates among major metro areas at the end of 2019.

Columbus moved from having a near average unemployment rate in 2019 to having among the nation’s lowest rates for major metro areas late last year. The region, with a population of 2.1 million, is home to Ohio State University, a source of young talent and stability during economic downturns and the area’s largest single employer. The city is also home to the state Capitol and is a major hub for JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest private employer, with 18,000 workers.

Author(s): Kim Mackrael and Joe Barrett

Publication Date: 20 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

It’s Time: The COVID Tracking Project Will Soon Come to an End

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/covid-tracking-project-end-march-7

Excerpt:

Every day for almost a year, hundreds of COVID Tracking Project contributors from all walks of life have compiled, published, and interpreted vitally important COVID-19 data as a service to their fellow Americans. On March 7, the one-year anniversary of our founding, we will release our final daily update and our data compilation will stop. Documentation, analysis, and archival work will continue for another two months, and we will bring the project to a close in May.

….

That we were able to carry the data through a full year is a testament to the generosity of the foundations and firms that gave us the resources we needed, to the counsel of our advisory board, to The Atlantic’s support for our highly unusual organization, and above all to the devotion of our contributors. But the work itself—compiling, cleaning, standardizing, and making sense of COVID-19 data from 56 individual states and territories—is properly the work of federal public health agencies. Not only because these efforts are a governmental responsibility—which they are—but because federal teams have access to far more comprehensive data than we do, and can mandate compliance with at least some standards and requirements. We were able to build good working relationships with public health departments in states governed by both Republicans and Democrats, and these relationships helped bring much more data to into public view. But ultimately, the best we could hope to do with unstandardized state data was to build a bridge over the data gaps—and the good news is that we believe we can now see the other side.

Author(s): Erin Kissane & Alexis Madrigal

Publication Date: 1 February 2021

Publication Site: Covid Tracking Project

The Ten Most Misleading Charts During Donald Trump’s Presidency

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://policyviz.com/2021/02/15/the-ten-most-misleading-charts-during-donald-trumps-presidency/

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Over the course of four years as President, Donald Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker. It should be no surprise, then, that some of these took the form of data visualizations. Here are the top ten most misleading charts, graphs, maps, and tables from the Trump Administration over the past four years.

Author(s): Jonathan Schwabish

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: PolicyViz

American Indicators: The Faces And Stories Behind The Economic Statistics

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/20/969122775/american-indicators-the-faces-and-stories-behind-the-economic-statistics

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When the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, big parts of the U.S. economy just turned off. Voluntary social distancing and lockdowns, like those during the first wave in March, were necessary to help “flatten the curve” of COVID-19’s spread throughout the country, but these lockdowns had ripple effects on the economy.

Millions suddenly lost their jobs, pushing unemployment to historic highs. When travel ground to a halt, hotel occupancy plummeted — and so did profits, which dropped 84.6% in 2020 from a year earlier. In New Jersey, that meant hotel owner Bhavesh Patel had to furlough employees to make ends meet.

….

That factory is one of the parts of the economy that are slowly coming back. Some sectors are thriving, while others continue to struggle, putting different people in vastly different situations. NPR will spend the year following four people who will help illustrate the arc of the expected economic recovery.

Author(s): Mallory Yu, Ari Shapiro

Publication Date: 20 February 2021

Publication Site: NPR

Retirement Insecurity 2021 | Americans’ Views of Retirement

Mary Pat Campbell
Retirement Insecurity 2021 | Americans’ Views of Retirement

Press Release: https://www.nirsonline.org/2021/02/amid-political-division-americans-united-in-retirement-worry/

Webinar recording:

Webinar slides: https://www.nirsonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FINAL-Public-Opinion-Webinar-Slides-Feb-25-2021.pdf

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This new national survey of working-age Americans also reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated worries about achieving financial security in retirement.

More than half of Americans (51 percent) say that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased concerns about achieving financial security in retirement. And the COVID-19 concern is high across party lines: 57 percent among Democrats; 50 percent for Independents; and at 44 percent for Republicans.

Author(s): Dan Doonan, Kelly Kenneally, Tyler Bond

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: National Institute on Retirement Security

Former SolarWinds CEO blames intern for ‘solarwinds123’ password leak

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/26/politics/solarwinds123-password-intern/index.html

Excerpt:

Current and former top executives at SolarWinds are blaming a company intern for a critical lapse in password security that apparently went undiagnosed for years.

The password in question, “solarwinds123,” was discovered in 2019 on the public internet by an independent security researcher who warned the company that the leak had exposed a SolarWinds file server.

Several US lawmakers ripped into SolarWinds for the password issue Friday, in a joint hearing by the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees.

“I’ve got a stronger password than ‘solarwinds123’ to stop my kids from watching too much YouTube on their iPad,” said Rep. Katie Porter. “You and your company were supposed to be preventing the Russians from reading Defense Department emails!”

Author(s): Brian Fung and Geneva Sands

Publication Date: 26 February 2021

Publication Site: CNN