Tag: CNN

Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing home deaths calls for serious investigation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/opinions/cuomo-covid-nursing-home-deaths-rodgers/index.html

Excerpt:

Late last month, New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a scathing report about how nursing homes in the state handled Covid-19, including a finding that the state’s Department of Health undercounted Covid deaths at nursing homes by approximately 50%. While the discrepancy didn’t change the overall number of New York Covid-19 deaths, it attributed deaths where a nursing home resident had been transferred to a hospital for treatment to the hospital instead of the nursing home.

This undercount (a term New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker has pushed back on) downplayed the high rates of transmission at nursing homes, at a time when the state mandated that nursing homes re-admit patients with Covid-19 who had been receiving treatment in a hospital, a policy that was reversed a couple of months later. (Cuomo has long said the decision to send recovering Covid-19 patients back to nursing homes was based on federal guidance to do so.)

Last year both the US Department of Justice and New York State legislators issued requests for information about nursing home Covid statistics in New York State, but the Cuomo administration, according to a recent admission by a top Cuomo aide, delayed the release of the figures out of concern about a possible politically motivated federal investigation.

Author(s): Jennifer Rodgers

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: CNN

Silver is surging but users on WallStreetBets say they’re not behind the rally

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/silver-price-squeeze-reddit-wallstreetbets/index.html

Excerpt:

Silver futures surged as much as 13% to Monday, touching eight-year highs. That follows a 6% rally last week when some posts on the WallStreetBets group on Reddit called for betting on silver as a way to hurt big banks they believe are artificially suppressing prices.

Meanwhile, retail sites warned customers over the weekend they could not meet skyrocketing demand for silver bars and coins. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is monitoring the silver markets and “remains vigilant in surveilling these markets for fraud and manipulation.” And “#silversqueeze” is trending on Twitter.

However, it’s not clear who the Reddit users are — nor whether their market moves match the claims online.

Author(s): Matt Egan

Publication Date: 2 February 2021

Publication Site: CNN

Despite Covid-19 and stay-at-home orders, 2020 saw an increase in homicides across the US

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/01/us/homicides-2020-increase-coronavirus/index.html

Graph:

Excerpt:

Despite less activity outside with the closing of businesses and schools, 2020 saw a dramatic increase in homicides.

Between January and October, there was a 29% increase in homicides compared to the same timeframe in 2019, according to a November report from the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice. As of December 27, some of America’s largest cities saw dramatic increases as well, including Chicago (55%), New York (41%) and Los Angeles (30%).

Author(s): Amir Vera

Publication Date: 1 January 2021

Publication Site: CNN

Inside the Reddit army that’s crushing Wall Street

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/29/investing/wallstreetbets-reddit-culture/index.html

Excerpt:

This past week has been a banner one for Reddit’s island of misfit investors.

WallStreetBets exploded into the mainstream, moving from the front page of Reddit to the front page of the New York Times and nearly every other major news site. The subreddit’s short-squeeze of GameStop helped shoot up the price of the video game retailer’s stock a mind-boggling 1,700% from the beginning of January to Wednesday (before it fell again Thursday), captivating the minds and wallets of investors — both casual and institutional — and financial regulators.

But while millions are now discovering WallStreetBets for the first time, it has been building momentum throughout the pandemic. One can trace its epic rise to a perfect storm of favorable conditions: the exponential growth of the app Robinhood and its no-fee options trading, the extreme volatility Covid-19 brought to the markets, the stimulus checks mailed to millions of Americans, the lack of televised sports for much of the year, and the unwanted free time stuck at home the pandemic has forced on many people.

Author: Jon Sarlin

Publication Date: 30 January 2021

Publication Site: CNN