With Heroes Like This, Who Needs Villains?

According to Owen Ullmann in an op-ed published by USA Today, there are some unsung “heroes” in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic — the brave and courageous bankers at the Federal Reserve.

I think Ulmann misspelled “villains.”

Ulmann writes that the Fed “has taken extraordinary steps to prevent the global economy from crashing into irreversible catastrophe as business around the world grinds to a virtual halt.”

This is like praising the arsonist for trying to put out the fire he set by throwing more gasoline on it.

The Fed certainly has taken extraordinary steps. Just a few days ago, it announced QE infinity. It committed to buy an “unlimited” amount of US Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. It also announced a new program to buy corporate bonds for the first time ever.

The Northern Hemisphere is having one of its snowiest winters since records began in 1979

We’ve long been told that snow will soon be a thing of the past…

In 2013, the Guardian ran with the story that the Arctic would be “ice-free by 2015” due to a catastrophic methane-induced warming “pulse” and a lack of snowfall and ice.

Ten years ago, the same rag claimed that Greenland was going to “collapse” within 10 years. And yet, according to NASA, its largest glacier, the Jacobshavn, has been growing for the past three years, and in Jan, 2020 the island actually set a new all-time record low temperature.

In 2008, the AP ran with the headline “we’re toast,” and reported that NASA scientists claim “the Arctic will be ice-free by 2018” due to rapid ablation and a lack of snowfall.

In 2000, the Independent wrote that scientists at the University of East Anglia are warning that “children won’t know what snow is,” as the white stuff “is starting to disappear from our lives.”

Laura Tennant: Canada sent masks and protective equipment to China—and now we're running out

In the face of the recent pandemic, one of the most affected countries has been China, therefore, different nations have tried to support that country by sending masks and protective equipment, and Canada was no exception.

It should be noted that today, people are informed that their actions have led to a shortage of supplies for health workers. But what people don’t understand is that consumers did not create the health worker mask shortage, in fact, governments did.

If people could reason from the limited data to which they had access at the end of January that they should buy a mask, governments should have come to the same conclusion and taken steps to ensure a supply of personal protective equipment for workers Of the health.

Irrationality by governments

In Canada, an inspiring movement emerges in response to the coronavirus

A woman adjusts her mask while she waits in line as Montreal's public health unit holds a walk-in clinic testing for the coronavirus on Monday. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters)

As the number of confirmed covid-19 cases increases around the world, people are struggling to keep themselves mentally and physically safe and stable. Some individuals and communities are having a tougher time than others, especially the marginalized. In Canada, with more than 2,000 confirmed coronavirus cases to date, this struggle has led to the emergence of the “caremonger” movement.

Caremongering is cast as the antithesis in name and spirit to fearmongering. Instead of singing doomsday dirges, caremongers are coming together to form networks to support their communities, including people who are stuck at home, financially precarious or otherwise in distress. Groups have sprung up across the country, many organizing through social media platforms. They vary in form and size, from a handful of members to thousands. Some distribute food and supplies while others coordinate and run errands for those unable to do them. And some serve as a platform to organize volunteers.

Bank of Canada Expands Authority to Buy and Sell Securities

Stephen Poloz leaves a news conference in Ottawa on March 18, 2020.  Photographer: David Kawai/Bloomberg

The Bank of Canada has expanded its authority to buy and sell securities outright, according to a public notice by the central bank.

The central bank added the right to buy and sell the debt of companies and municipalities, along with other instruments when it is “addressing a situation of financial system stress that could have material macroeconomic consequences,” according to the March 13 notice in the Canada Gazette issued by Governor Stephen Poloz. Those amendments add to the central bank’s power to conduct buybacks on various products, including corporate debt.

“The ability to purchase securities outright is a crucial step in arresting the impairment in system-wide liquidity in Canada” Ian Pollick, Global Head of FICC Strategy at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said by email. “Price-discovery has collapsed on the back of these stresses, so it is crucial for the Bank to respond in-kind with a program that targets both public and private sector assets.”

Coronavirus hyperinflation risk looms, buy gold: Peter Schiff

The extreme measures taken by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve to combat the COVID-19 pandemic could push the U.S. into an episode of hyperinflation and boost gold, according to Peter Schiff.

The White House and the Senate reached a $2 trillion deal early Wednesday on the third phase of a relief package that extends cash to the individuals, small businesses and corporations that were hit hardest by economic fallout from COVID-19.

On top of that, the Fed said earlier this week it would buy unlimited amounts of assets to support market functions and the economy. The central bank has also cut rates to nearly zero to ease lending conditions.

“What the Fed is doing is extremely bearish for the U.S. economy,” Schiff, CEO of Westport, Connecticut-based Euro Pacific Capital, told FOX Business. “It ensures that this recession, depression that we’re entering is going to be extremely brutal in the inflation that is going to ravage the economy, particularly investors and retirees.”

The Central Bank Playbook Is Played Out

The Federal Reserve launched QE infinity this week. The Fed has committed to buy an “unlimited” amount of US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. But that’s not all. The central bank also announced it will buy some corporate bonds for the first time ever.

In effect, this is money-printing on a massive scale. And of course, pumping trillions of dollars into the economy will have ramifications. We may well be on the path to hyperinflation.

But the Federal Reserve is not alone. The European Central Bank, along with many others, are slashing interest rates and launching bond-buying programs of their own. This is on top of the easy-money policies that have been ongoing for years.

This is the only fork the central bankers know. Cut interest rates, print money out of thin air and hope that the “stimulus” keeps the economic bubbles inflated.

But as economist Joakim Book wrote in an article originally published on the Mises Wire, the central banks are running out of options. The playbook is played out.

In fact, Book believes we have truly reached the end of this monetary experiment by activist central banks.

"We're Going To Be Fine" - Nobel-Winning Biophysicist Predicts Quicker COVID-19 Recovery

Michael Levitt, a Stanford biophysicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013, has made a bold statement that the end of COVID-19 pandemic could be near and has cited China’s curve flattening to support his hypothesis, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Levitt is now predicting a curve flattening in infections could be around the corner for the US as strict social distancing measures are being implemented across major metro areas.

“What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”

Levitt accurately forecasted the deceleration in confirmed cases and deaths in early February in China. He said the initial infection rate in China’s Hubei province was 30% per day, but on February 7, something changed:

Fiat Failure: Japan's QE On Verge Of Failure As Nobody Wants To Sell To The BOJ

Over a decade since central bankers started a stealthy nationalization of capital markets by purchasing a wide range of securities from Trasuries, to MBS, to corporate bonds, to ETFs and single stocks, their actions are finally catching up to them, and in the process breaking the very markets central bankers have worked so hard to prop up. And nowhere is this more obvious than in Japan, where the shrinking universe of Japanese government bonds (as a reminder the BOJ now owns more than 100% of Japanese GDP in JGBs) is “causing havoc” in Japanese money markets as the Bank of Japan continues to buy while dealers refuse to sell.

The result is that rates in Japan’s repo market, which traditionally connects holders of bonds with investors looking to borrow them, jumped to a record Tuesday (although they since retreated on Wednesday) because as Bloomberg notes, “the introduction of cheaper, more regular dollar-swap auctions has generated huge demand from U.S. currency-starved dealers who are keeping their JGBs to put them down as collateral.”

The Truth About U.S. Inequality

An Occupy protest against economic inequality. Photo Credit: Brian Sims

Rising economic inequality and how to address it has been one of the most important issues in the United States since the Great Recession ended in 2009. Rising inequality has spurred a powerful left-wing economic movement that kicked off with Occupy Wall Street in 2011, led to the 2016 presidential campaign of socialist Bernie Sanders (which was very popular with young Americans), and has now contributed to the rise and growing clout of far-left politicians including Elizabeth Warren and millennial socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are both calling for wealth redistribution policies.

At the core of this left-wing economic movement is a growing disbelief and distrust in capitalism itself, as well as the belief that an excessive rich-poor gap is an inevitable outcome of capitalism. As a result, young Americans now favor socialism over capitalism. Even 45% of Republican voters support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% top-tax-rate proposal, while “conservative” Fox News host Tucker Carlson threw in the towel on capitalism.

Huge spreads occurring in gold prices

(Kitco News) — Huge spreads are occurring in the gold market Tuesday with pricing for futures contracts far above spot prices.

Also, earlier in the day, nearby futures were more expensive than deferred, a sign of strong demand in any commodity market.

Just before noon EDT, one price vendor was showing spot metal was trading at $1,612.10 an ounce while at the same time showing the Comex April futures were at $1,654.10 an ounce — a spread of $42 an ounce. It was much wider earlier in the day.

“I’ve never seen that before,” said one gold trader who has been in the market for 30-plus years.

Some contacts suggested the discrepancy is an evolving story that is still unfolding, with traders trying to figure out what’s happening.

The London Bullion Market issued this statement to Kitco News:

Peter Schiff: Hyperinflation Is the Most Probable Scenario

March 23 was Peter Schiff’s birthday. It was also the day the Federal Reserve announced QE Infinity. So, Peter spent over three hours hosting a live videocast talking about the latest Fed moves, the potential impact on the economy and answering questions from viewers.

Peter said he was hoping to combat the rampant economic ignorance that is pretty much everywhere.

There’s probably one thing that is spreading right now throughout the country faster than the coronavirus and that is economic ignorance and misinformation. It’s all over the place. It’s gone completely viral … The best thing anybody can do to combat the virus of ignorance is to turn off their television sets or their computers and don’t listen to anything that is being said in conventional media, whether it’s a news-related channel or a financial channel, I can virtually assure you that every single thing that you’re hearing is wrong.”

How the Virus Got Out - The New York Times

Certainly, the most extensive travel restrictions to stop an outbreak in human history have been seen, yet it has not been enough. It was thought that if you stop traveling, it prevents the virus from spreading around the world. However, this did not work and therefore it will be explained why.

Many of the earliest known cases were clustered around a seafood market in Wuhan, China, a city of 11 million and a transportation hub. Four cases grew to dozens in late December. Doctors only knew 

that sick people had viral pneumonia that did not respond to standard treatments.

With each patient infecting two or three more on average, even a perfect response may not have contained the spread. But Chinese officials did not alert the public to the risks in December. It was not until December 31 that they alerted the World Health Organization and issued a statement, and a consolation. “The disease is preventable and controllable”, said the government.

Dramatic expansion

"The World Cannot Be Saved" - Von Greyerz Warns Global Financial System "Broken & Bankrupt"

Financial and precious metals expert Egon von Greyerz (EvG) operates the largest private gold vault in the world in Switzerland.

More than a year and a half ago, EvG warned here on USAWatchdog.com that “risk is exponential and unmeasurable” because of the estimated two quadrillion of derivatives and debt in the global financial system. He also warned that “at some point, all hell will break loose.”

Looks like hell has indeed broken loose because of the China virus, and now EvG contends,

“The system is bankrupt… The system is broken and bankrupt. This did not start now with the Coronavirus. It didn’t start in August and September (of 2019) when central banks said we would do everything we can with the Fed QE, repos and the ECB (European Central Bank) QE…

How Taiwan and Singapore managed to contain COVID-19, while letting normal life go on

Commuters wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus look at their mobile phones on the Mass Rapid Transit train in Singapore on March 18, 2020. Catherine Lai/AFP via Getty Images

The six million city-states are a transportation hub for East Asia and for a few days had the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world. But his total stood at a modest 345 on Friday, with no deaths.

And as Canadians curl up in their homes or go shopping at the local supermarket, life in Singapore is progressing more or less as usual.

It is not that the residents there are acting recklessly in the face of the pandemic. On the contrary. In fact, like Taiwan, another Asian country closely related to the Chinese epicenter of the coronavirus, Singapore has taken aggressive and innovative measures to keep the disease under control. Taiwan, which received 2.7 million visitors from China in 2019, had just 135 cases and two deaths as of Friday, up from 846 cases and 10 deaths in Canada.

Strict control

Gold is the only thing to own after Fed cuts rates to zero - analysts

(Kitco News) -A cacophony of instability has hit financial markets at the start of a new trading week, but with central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, dropping interest rates to zero, analysts now say that the only place investors can turn to is gold.

At the beginning of the Asian trading session, the gold market started Sunday evening strong but volatile; April gold futures last traded at $1,559.50 an ounce, up 2.8% on the day.

The Billionaire Interview That Tanked The Stock Market

Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who. © 2013 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP

Bill Ackman panicked about the coronavirus early on.

The billionaire investor had a nightmare about COVID-19 in late January, which might as well have been the plot of the pandemic thriller Contagion. When he woke up, he started prepping.

He began arranging for his firm’s fifty employees to abandon their midtown Manhattan offices. He put on doomsday hedges. And then he pulled an enormous amount of cash from an ATM. By the time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was plunging seemingly a thousand points a day, Ackman’s $5.6 billion firm was making money amid the chaos.

So when he woke on Wednesday morning, Ackman didn’t have a pleasant message for America. He took to Twitter to recommend a shutdown of the country.

US Central Bank Pulling Out Stops to Try to Calm Market Amid Coronavirus Crisis

FILE - The Federal Reserve building is pictured in Washington

As the global coronavirus pandemic wreaks economic destruction around the world, the U.S. government has taken a number of dramatic steps to keep money moving through the U.S. economy.

The Treasury Department on Friday announced that it would postpone the deadline for filing 2019 income taxes to July 15, from April 15. At the same time, the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates and taken a number of steps that will allow it to continue pushing money into the hands of businesses and individual borrowers through all means available — some of which it has not yet activated.

So far, the Fed’s actions have done little to calm the stock market, which in the past week has wiped out the record gains achieved since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. But the Fed and the Treasury still have a few more financial and monetary tools at their disposal to try to still the panic of investors.

Buy Gold ‘Right Here and Now,’ Top Wealth Manager Says

Now’s the time to buy gold, according to one of the world’s leading wealth managers, which flagged bullion’s prospects after the haven lost out to the dollar in recent weeks as the pandemic roils markets.

“When I think about what would I buy in the right here and now, I would be buying gold,” Wayne Gordon, executive director for commodities and foreign exchange at UBS Group AG’s wealth-management unit, told Bloomberg TV. Prices would appreciate over three to six months, according to Gordon.

COVID-19 - Evidence Over Hysteria

Update (3/22/2020): After falling under much scrutiny, Medium has deleted Ginn’s post. Of note, Ginn is a former 2012 Romney digital campaign staffer with no background in medicine or infectious disease.

We are leaving it up for anyone who wants to read, while also including a thread from a biologist who has refuted it. Click on the tweet below to read.

1. I hate to invest precious time on taking apart the atrocious @aginnt article pictured below, but it is getting too much traction here and even in traditional media.

This thread could be far longer than it is, but I'm doing my best to only discuss the most glaring flaws. pic.twitter.com/EFA7ATQRbX

— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) March 22, 2020

Authored by Aaron Ginn via Medium.com,

NP View: COVID-19 is the emergency we should have saved for

Canadian Border Services Agency officers stand in front of two closed border checkpoints at the Thousand Islands Bridge in Lansdowne, Ont., on March 19, 2020. Alex Filipe/Reuters

It should be noted that compound interest is one of the miracles of finance. You earn interest, and if you keep it instead of spending it right away, you earn interest on the interest. The same works for debt.

Certainly, governments seldom learn this. They may be aware of this, given their access to experts and advisers, but they choose to overwhelmingly ignore as long as the crisis doesn’t come during their term in office. The future leaders, and the population they claim to serve, are alone.

Now, before COVID-19, governments around the world are preparing massive spending packages in an effort to offset the damage the outbreak is causing to jobs, economies, and people. Economists indicate that the luckiest countries, like Canada, can bear the cost it will bring. We have “fiscal capacity”. We have resisted worse in the past.

Affected economy

Conrad Black: Getting a handle on COVID-19's economic fallout

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the coronavirus response daily briefing with members of the administration's coronavirus task force, at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 20. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

COVID-19, also known as coronavirus disease, is an infectious disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. It was first detected during the 2019 Wuhan epidemic, with coronavirus pneumonia.

Certainly, this disease has caused a stir around the world and is, in fact, generating a great world crisis.

In this way, it is appropriate to indicate that the coronavirus crisis is complicated by the unusual state of panic that has possessed much of the world, and by the somewhat divergent concerns and objectives of those who address medical questions and those who attempt to cope with the economic damage. The American national political media, in its hostility towards the president in an election year, and before the proportions of the pandemic were clear, fanned the fires of public hysteria. At the same time, the Chinese government and media first disguised and lied about the virus and are now engaged in immense work of fabricating fabricated myths.

COVID-19 around the world

Timeless Optimism Will Conquer Panic. Again.

I believe optimism will eventually triumph over prevalent pessimism.

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So … I’ve been buying American stocks.

That is how Warren Buffett — perhaps the greatest living investor — began his October 2008 New York Times op-ed. World stock markets were selling off violently, similar to what we have all experienced lately. The specifics, of course, differ from today. But his basic wisdom holds: In a panic, those who can keep their heads generally prevail. Investing is a statement of hope and optimism in the power of human creativity to bring a brighter longer-term future. Twelve years ago, his words resonated with me. Many lambasted him as out of touch at the time. The succeeding decade proved otherwise. This is, no doubt, a fearful time. However, it will pass. Once it does, history argues the American and world markets will flourish — echoing their rebound then.

The Real Crash Is Here

On Wednesday, March, 18, Peter Schiff did a live episode of his podcast and took questions for over four hours.

In a nutshell, Peter made the case that the real crash is here. He covered a wide range of topics relating to the ongoing and ever-evolving coronavirus crisis.

As far as the mainstream narrative out there, Peter said, “Everybody has lost their minds.”

This is really the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen. And, you know, the economy is about to implode. That much is pretty sure.”

Point of No Return - Sprott Gold Report

Credit Deflation and Gold

Gold and precious metals mining shares are casualties of panic selling across all financial markets. The scenario is similar to what happened in 2008 during the global financial crisis (GFC). When the general selling exhausted itself in late 2008, gold and mining shares delivered superior absolute and relative performance for the following three years. We believe that this pattern is likely to repeat following this sell-off.

While COVID-19 outbreak is grabbing the headlines, the far bigger story is the deflation of financial assets that it has triggered and the resulting loss of investment confidence. Markets that had been priced for perfection must now reckon with a likely recession, soaring fiscal deficits and the very real possibility of a sustained bear market.

Mining company valuations appear extraordinarily cheap…. Buying low is never easy but now is the time to do it.

John Robson: You can't 'stimulate' your way out of a pandemic-driven recession

Macroeconomics is the study of a mysterious purple dragon called GDP that hovers in the sky somewhere, writes John Robson.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone tells governments to “stimulate” something called “the economy” through deficits and cuts in interest rates so that we do not have less wealth just because people cannot go to work and create it.

Concerning this, it has been suggested that economic theory may not be the most important thing. But how many solitaire games can you play? So the economy is broken down into “micro,” the study of what real people really do, and “macro,” the study of a mysterious purple dragon called GDP floating somewhere in the sky.

If there is any doubt, unless the government multiplies loaves and fish or cures the sick, it cannot “stimulate” the “economy” in a pandemic.

Alarming situation

Peter Schiff: We’ve Passed the Point of No Return

The Federal Reserve cut rates to zero and expanded quantitative easing on Sunday. How did the markets reward this latest monetary stimulus?

They crashed.

In his podcast, Peter said he thinks we’ve passed the point of no return.

Philip Cross: The limits of monetary and fiscal stimulus

Continuing stimulus over the past decade has reduced the scope for more stimulus. Brent Lewin/Bloomberg files

Canada wasted its opportunity to focus on policies that raise long-term potential, which means we have fewer and less effective tools to combat slumping global growth

As prospects dim for the global economy, policy-makers reflexively turn to more stimulus — as they have done for a decade at the first sign of slowdown. Already the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada have cut interest rates half a percentage point, with more assuredly on the way, while governments have signalled they are planning more spending and higher deficits.

But monetary and fiscal stimulus are reaching their limits — for at least three reasons. First, continuing stimulus over the past decade has reduced the scope for more stimulus. In everyday parlance, policy-makers are “running out of bullets.” Interest rates are near zero, while the accumulation of annual deficits by all levels of government has raised their debt to over 80 per cent of GDP, which restricts the room for further increases. This is why the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has long urged government to curb borrowing during expansions so as to preserve “sufficient room for manoeuvre during busts.”

Here's what could really sink the global economy: $19 trillion in risky corporate debt

London (CNN Business) Companies have spent the years since the global financial crisis binging on debt. Now, as the coronavirus pandemic threatens to push the world into recession, the bill could come due — exacerbating damage to the economy and feeding a meltdown in financial markets.

Looking to take advantage of low interest rates, companies have rushed in recent years to issue bonds whose proceeds could be used to grow their businesses. Corporate debt among non-banks exploded to $75 trillion at the end of 2019, up from $48 trillion at the end of 2009, according to the Institute of International Finance.

As the coronavirus spreads — touching off a plunge in oil prices and a collapse in travel, and shutting factories from Italy to China — there is increasing alarm that companies in the energy, hospitality and auto sectors won’t be able to make their bond payments. That could trigger a spree of ratings downgrades and defaults that would further destabilize financial markets and compound the economic shock.

Conrad Black: Coronavirus' political toll

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about America's response to the COVID-19 pandemic during an address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 11. Doug Mills/Pool via REUTERS

There is no need to emphasize now that there is no other option in any advanced country than to apply drastic measures to reduce the probability that members of its population will become infected with the coronavirus. As the average age of those who died from the disease in the United States is 80 years, and the death rate in the United States for those under 70 years affected by the coronavirus is approximately between a quarter and a fifth of one percent of those affected, the greatest and most urgent effort should be to protect frail elderly people from any exposure to it.

Certainly, the level of danger this disease presents to a sophisticated country in terms of public health, such as Canada and the United States, does not justify the level of media and public hysteria that has assaulted financial markets and has affected most of the media of the United States. Since the imagination is often more devious than reality, it is easy to jump into a state of acute spontaneous nervousness about a virus that can kill people.

What is said

"More Violent, More Persistent": Market Fear Worse Now Than In 2008, Man Who Inspired VIX Says

The academic best known for coming up with the idea of the VIX — also know as Wall Street’s fear gauge — says that the fear looming over the markets now is far greater than the fear we faced in 2008.

Dan Galai, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told Bloomberg:

“The level of uncertainty is even beyond what we saw in 2008 immediately after Lehman Brothers collapsed.”

Galai continued:

We Have Nothing to Fear from CO2 | A Supplement to Nothing to Fear | By Donn Dears (PDF)

Click

M&M Exclusive: Peter Schiff — Fed Stimulus Will Light ‘Fire Under Hard Assets’

Notably, Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff said he believes the Federal Reserve will do whatever it takes to reinflate the bubble after Wall Street collapsed this week in a bear market.

And things are certainly very bad right now, even casual observers are generally aware that stocks have fallen since mid-February, with the top three US indexes falling in a bear market, a decline in 20% or more from recent historical highs.

Likewise, it has been indicated that the fall finally ended with the record expansion that began in 2009.

While the numbers did not officially drop 20% until this week, Schiff said in an exclusive interview with Money & Markets that it was simply a matter of catching up on the reality of equities, which he said were already at a bear market.

Experts speak

The seeds of the next debt crisis

It should be noted that with debt levels already at a record level, there are those who consider that the coronavirus increases the risk of a credit crisis in a world of low-interest rates.

Undoubtedly, the shock caused by the coronavirus in markets around the world coincides with a dangerous financial backdrop marked by the spiral of global debt. In fact, according to the Institute of International Finance, a trade group, the ratio of global debt to gross domestic product reached a record high of over 322 percent in the third quarter of 2019, with total debt close to $ 253bn. In this way, it could be said that the implication, if the virus continues to spread, is that any fragility in the financial system has the potential to trigger a new debt crisis.

Likewise, it is understood that in the short term, the behavior of credit markets will be critical. Despite declining bond yields and borrowing costs since the markets panicked, financial conditions have tightened for weaker corporate borrowers. Their access to bond markets has become more difficult.

Search for an answer

How Canada’s Mining Sector Impacts the Economy

Canada is a mining nation.

From the Rockies to the Canadian Shield, and from the Plains and to the North, the variety of geology that exists in the country is immense — and this has created a large and unique opportunity for groundbreaking mineral discoveries.

As a result, Canada is one of the world’s largest exporters of minerals and metals, supplying approximately 60 different mineral commodities to over 100 countries.

An Intro to Canadian Mining

Today’s infographic comes to us from Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan and it highlights an industry that has given Canada a competitive advantage in the global economy.

Jackson Keane requested to be pulled from Saturday's lineup so all the seniors could play

UND captain Colton Poolman hugs his dad, hockey athletic trainer Mark Poolman, after the Fighting Hawks bested Western Michigan 2-1 in overtime Saturday night at Ralph Engelstad Arena. Nick Nelson / Grand Forks Herald

Jackson Keane was supposed to be in the lineup Saturday.

The UND junior forward played an outstanding game in Friday’s 3–1 win over Western Michigan, setting up the first goal with a slick pass through a defender to spring a two-on-one rush.

Keane’s teammates recognized his outstanding night by awarding him the hard hat, which goes to their choice for player of the game.

It was a breakthrough moment for Keane, who had been in-and-out of the lineup all year. Since October, Keane had only played on back-to-back nights one time. But after four months of scratching and clawing for a lineup spot, he had finally earned a spot for an entire series.