Author: Mary Pat Campbell

As Covid-19 Vaccines Raise Hope, Cold Reality Dawns That Illness Is Likely Here to Stay

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-vaccines-raise-hope-cold-reality-dawns-covid-19-is-likely-here-to-stay-11612693803?mod=djemwhatsnews

Excerpt:

Vaccination drives hold out the promise of curbing Covid-19, but governments and businesses are increasingly accepting what epidemiologists have long warned: The pathogen will circulate for years, or even decades, leaving society to coexist with Covid-19 much as it does with other endemic diseases like flu, measles, and HIV.

The ease with which the coronavirus spreads, the emergence of new strains and poor access to vaccines in large parts of the world mean Covid-19 could shift from a pandemic disease to an endemic one, implying lasting modifications to personal and societal behavior, epidemiologists say.

“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”

Author(s): Daniela Hernandez and Drew Hinshaw

Publication Date: 7 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Slow Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout, New Variants Shift Some Business Plans

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/slow-covid-19-vaccine-rollout-shifts-some-business-plans-11612702801?mod=djemwhatsnews

Excerpt:

Consumers are unlikely to resume travel, dining out and shopping in stores at a pre-pandemic cadence until later this year, chiefs of some large companies told Wall Street analysts and investors in recent weeks. Some CEOs said consumer activity could pick up as soon as spring. Others pointed to a recovery later in the year—or even 2022.

“Let me underscore that progress on economic growth is contingent on an effective vaccine rollout program globally,” said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO David Solomon. “In its absence, economic recovery will be unnecessarily delayed.”

The pandemic has unevenly bolstered and derailed growth prospects; divided workforces into staff able to shelter at home and those who must report in person for duty; and reshaped consumer purchasing as stay-at-home orders change. The rapid shifts have complicated financial forecasts and made consumer behavior hard to predict.

Author(s): Sarah Krouse

Publication Date: 7 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

SAG-AFTRA Suspends Annual Dues Hike & Approves New “Influencers” Contract As Factions Continue To Fight Over Health Care & Governance

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://deadline.com/2021/02/sag-aftra-suspends-annual-dues-hike-approves-new-influencers-contract-as-factions-continue-to-fight-over-health-care-governance-1234689267/

Graph:

Excerpt:

In his letter of resignation, Trump wrote: “Who cares! I no longer wish to be associated with your union. As such, this letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG-AFTRA. You have done nothing for me.” That claim, however, is belied by the fact that he receives nearly $100,000 a year in SAG-AFTRA pensions. According to a financial disclosure report he filed in August, he receives a $90,776 pension for the acting work he performed on SAG-covered shows and an $8,724 pension for his AFTRA-covered work.

Author(s): David Robb

Publication Date: 7 February 2021

Publication Site: Deadline

WKYT Investigates | Ca$hing in on sports betting

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wkyt.com/2021/02/08/wkyt-investigates-cahing-in-on-sports-betting/

Excerpt:

“Everybody knows it exists,” Rep. Adam Koenig, R-Erlanger, said of illegal sports betting. “Everybody knows it happens. But people who do it don’t have any protections and the state’s not reaping any benefits from it.”

For several years now Rep. Koenig has sponsored sports wagering bills, including House Bill 241 this session.

He says an estimated $2 billion is wagered illegally in Kentucky each year. Under HB 241, five percent of the net money the state receives from sports wagering would go to addiction prevention and treatment, with the rest going toward the state’s pension liabilities.

Author(s): Garrett Wymer

Publication Date: 7 February 2021

Publication Site: WKYT

Research establishes a new method to predict individual risk of cognitive decline

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-method-individual-cognitive-decline.html

Excerpt:

The early prognosis of high-risk older adults for amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), using noninvasive and sensitive neuromarkers, is key for early prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. A recent study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, by researchers at the University of Kentucky establishes what they believe is a new way to predict the risk years before a clinical diagnosis. Their work shows that direct measures of brain signatures during mental activity are more sensitive and accurate predictors of memory decline than current standard behavioral testing.

“Many studies have measured electrophysiological rhythms during resting and sleep to predict Alzheimer’s risk. This study demonstrates that better predictions of a person’s cognitive risk can be made when the brain is challenged with a task. Additionally, we learned that out of thousands of possible brain oscillation measures, left-frontal brainwaves during so-called working memory tasks are good predictors for dementia risk,” explained lead investigator Yang Jiang, associate professor of behavioral sciences and an affiliated faculty member at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging.

Author(s): University of Kentucky (it’s a press release)

Publication Date: 5 February 2021

Publication Site: Medical Xpress

Testimony: Status of the Florida Retirement System

Mary Pat Campbell
Testimony: Status of the Florida Retirement System

Excerpt:

Using publicly available data and annual financial reports published by FRS, our quantitative team has built an actuarial model of the FRS system that has allowed our analysts to spotlight areas of systemic risk and inefficiencies that have resulted in not only the FRS defined benefit plan going from 118 percent funded and a surplus of $13.5 billion to 82 percent funded and holding over $36 billion in earned, yet unfunded, pension obligations that are implicitly protected by law, but also how the defined contribution Investment Plan, as currently built today, falls well short in providing adequate retirement security to public sector employees.

Regarding the current state of the FRS pension plan, underperforming investment returns have been the largest contributor to the unfunded liability, adding $17 billion in debt since 2008. Milliman Inc.—the actuaries hired by the system—warned for three straight years (2016, 2017, and 2018) that the system’s assumed rate of return was not reasonable, leading to its eventual reduction to 7.0 percent. Even with the reduced assumption, however, our analysis indicates that FRS still has a less than 40 percent probability of achieving or exceeding that rate over the next ten years. Market outcomes below FRS expectations will still likely be an issue generating unexpected costs for taxpayers, and the unfunded liabilities that exist today will continue to inhibit plan assets from compounding over decades, making paying down the $36 billion debt and honoring the state’s long-term obligations more di­fficult.

Author(s): Vittorio Nastasi

Publication Date: 4 February 2021

Publication Site: Reason

Governor Lamont Agrees to New, Regressive Tax

Mary Pat Campbell
Governor Lamont Agrees to New, Regressive Tax

Excerpt:

Today, Governor Lamont joined governors in the Northeast region in signing onto the newly-released Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) Memorandum of Understanding. The initiative would result in $388.6 million per year in increased gasoline costs across the state. 

Connecticut is already struggling amid an economic downturn. Imposing a significant tax increase simply chops any chance of recovery off at the knees and harms working families with a regressive tax at a time when few can afford it. 

Author(s): Isabel Blank

Publication Date: 21 December 2020

Publication Site: Yankee Institute

A California Plan to Chase Away the Rich, Then Keep Stalking Them

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-california-plan-to-chase-away-the-rich-then-keep-stalking-them-11608331448?st=eciwz3atsygqzun&reflink=article_email_share

Excerpt:

California’s Legislature is considering a wealth tax on residents, part-year residents, and any person who spends more than 60 days inside the state’s borders in a single year. Even those who move out of state would continue to be subject to the tax for a decade — a provision that calls to mind the Eagles’ famous “Hotel California” lyric: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

The California Constitution probably allows a statewide wealth tax on residents, but any effort to create a tax capable of reaching across state borders is likely to run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. Taxing someone who spends only 60 days in the state in any single year — and extending that tax over an ensuing decade — would be something new under the sun.

Author(s): Hank Adler

Publication Date: 18 December 2020

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

“This is for you, Dad”: Interview with an Anonymous GameStop Investor

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/this-is-for-you-dad-interview-with

Excerpt:

Since 2008, the tendency among mainstream commentators has been to shrug off reverberations from the crash that force their way into news, usually on the grounds that the millions who lost homes, careers, marriages, lifetimes of savings, health, and in thousands of cases, their lives, are not truly poor or “working class,” or are only “relatively low-wealth,” as New York magazine recently put it. In the case of GameStop, there’s been a parade of stories describing investors as dupes, dummies, financial Trumpists, irresponsible gamblers, even crooks, their trade pegged as almost everything but what on some level it surely was and is, an echo of a suppressed national disaster.

Was GameStop “recreational” investing gone haywire, or a climax to a story building for a generation? Here’s one person’s answer:

SP: I grew up watching my parents struggle with money. Money was discussed all the time. They fought all the time. The older I got, the more I felt I had to do anything to keep my own kids from going through the same thing.

My parents worried in different ways. With my mother, I regularly knew how much money was in her checking account because she would stress-yell the amount whenever I asked for anything. It was really difficult for her.

My dad was the opposite. He wanted you to think he had money, but you were looking around and thinking, “I’m pretty sure we don’t.” Because I don’t have a bed, and my brother is sleeping on a couch. So if you’ve got it, maybe we should use it, I don’t know. So they were different in that regard.

Author(s): Matt Taibbi

Publication Date: 6 February 2021

Publication Site: TK News

Examining Private Equity in Public Pension Investments

Mary Pat Campbell
Examining Private Equity in Public Pension Investments

Graph:

Excerpt:

However, there are reasons to be skeptical of public pension investment in private equity. While it is true that most private equity benchmarks outperformed the S&P 500 during the 2010s, it appears that public pension system investors did not benefit from this outperformance: their returns on public and private equity holdings were similar. Furthermore, it appears that private equity underperformed in 2020 and may not recover its edge in the decade ahead.

Over a long time period, annual returns on leveraged buyout funds are highly correlated with those of the S&P 500, raising questions as to whether private equity meaningfully adds to the diversification of pension system portfolios.

Pension systems should thoroughly evaluate the downsides of private equity investing before increasing their allocations to this asset class. These disadvantages include illiquidity, challenges in obtaining timely and accurate valuations, high investment costs, and lack of transparency.

Author(s): Marc Joffe

Publication Date: 27 January 2021

Publication Site: Reason

New York Reveals Another 1,516 COVID-19 Deaths in Long-Term Care Facilities

Mary Pat Campbell
New York Reveals Another 1,516 COVID-19 Deaths in Long-Term Care Facilities

Graph:

Excerpt:

The death toll in New York’s long-term care facilities jumped by another 1,516 this weekend as the Cuomo administration adjusted its reporting on adult-care facilities to include residents who died after being transferred to hospitals.

The newly disclosed deaths represented an almost eight-fold increase for assisted living and other adult-care facilities, which provide non-medical services for their elderly and disabled residents.

Author(s): Bill Hammond

Publication Date: 7 February 2021

Publication Site: Empire Center

GameStop stock crashed, but Reddit still wants to send it to the moon. How and what’s next

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/gamestop-stock-crashed-but-reddit-still-wants-to-send-it-to-the-moon-how-and-whats-next/

Graph:

Excerpt:

When people in the Reddit community r/WallStreetBets began pushing up GameStop’s share price, establishment investors started losing billions and billions of dollars. Since then, GameStop’s shares have been swinging wildly, going from about $17 at the start of the year to $483 last week and then to $90 by the close of Monday’s trading. Shares rose slightly on Tuesday to close at $92.41, which is still down more than 80% from their highs last week.

Author(s): Ian Sherr

Publication Date: 4 February 2021

Publication Site: Cnet