Arlington Memorial Bridge reopens after two-year rehab
InternationalDec 05. 2020Vehicles cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge and, in the foreground, wait to enter Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in May 2015. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford
By The Washington Post · Michael E. Ruane
WASHINGTON – The Arlington Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River reopened Friday after a two-year, $227 million rehabilitation project that had disrupted traffic on one of D.C.’s most heavily used and historic spans.
Workers walk the Arlington Memorial Bridge just before it opened to traffic Friday. The bridge over the Potomac River between Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Va., reopened after a two-year, $227 million rehabilitation project that had disrupted traffic on one of Washington’s most heavily used and historic spans. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson
The bridge, which had seen many months of closed and shifted lanes, reopened fully, with all six lanes, at 11:30 a.m.
Jonathan Shafer, a spokesman for the National Park Service, called it the completion of a project “that’s been years in the making. It’s exciting that this bridge that’s been here for 88 years is ready for service in its second century.”
Some work will continue on the bridge, he said. And some landscaping won’t take place until next spring.
The crumbling landmark underwent a thorough facelift. Using construction cranes and barges, workers removed the old draw section and its rusted machinery, and replaced it with a new non-opening segment.
The roadway was resurfaced. And the decorative stone balustrades and flower-style fascia were refurbished or replaced.
The project, overseen by the Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration, began in 2018 after the highway administration found that – without the work – the bridge would have to close by 2021.
The structure had never undergone a complete rehabilitation, the Park Service said.
Designed in the neoclassical style in the 1920s by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the 2,100-foot-long bridge has borne generations of motorists, Arlington National Cemetery mourners and the feet of myriad pilgrims and protesters since it opened in 1932.
With its elegance and multiple arches, it symbolically links North and South – the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial – according to the Park Service.
But it was in poor condition, with much of its massive understructure corroded.
The bridge was originally built as a draw span and was said to be one of the longest and fastest openings in the world. But it was last raised in 1961 because other low bridges on the river prevented navigation by taller ships.
Over this span walked President Herbert Hoover and first lady Lou Hoover, inspecting the just-finished bridge on Jan. 16, 1932, as the country fell deeper into the Great Depression.
The bridge opened to traffic the next day, when more than 30,000 vehicles crossed, according to a news report. The speed limit was 22 mph.
The first funeral procession to the cemetery crossed the day after that.
The deceased was Alexander M. Harvey, a Canadian veteran of World War I who had worked on the bridge during its construction.
He had fallen from a building site in Washington five days before and was buried in the cemetery’s section for Canadian war veterans.
His was one of many such send-offs.
Famed World War I Gen. John Pershing’s funeral cortège crossed the bridge in July 1948.
President John Kennedy’s cortège, watched by millions on television, crossed after his assassination in 1963. The procession of his brother Robert crossed by moonlight after his assassination in 1968.
The bridge has witnessed protest marches during the Vietnam War, commemorative walks to mark the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the armies of motorcycle riders who turned out for the annual Memorial Day rally.
“This is a hallowed gateway to Arlington National Cemetery and is the crossroads between Virginia and Washington D.C.,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Friday.
“This is more than just a bridge,” he added. “It is a monument to our veterans … it’s a symbol of a country brought back together after the Civil War.”
By The Washington Post · William Booth, Karla Adam
LONDON – The first doses of the newly approved coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer arrived in Britain on Thursday night, the shipment packed in dry ice and traveling by truck from the company’s manufacturing plant in Belgium through the Eurotunnel to England.
Yet excitement over next week’s planned launch of a mass immunization program was tempered Friday by frustration over a late decision to exclude front line health workers from the first round – though many had already booked appointments.
Priority will go to people over 80 years old and to nursing home caregivers, and public health officials conceded that demand could quickly outstrip supply in the early months, even for those groups. The 800,000 doses Britain expects to get this month “could be the only batch we receive for some time,” warned Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers.
Britain’s early launch makes it the first country to confront the challenges of rolling out a vaccine that uses revolutionary technology and requires extremely careful handling.
The United States isn’t far behind in its approval decision, and experience here could inform U.S. efforts – though the United Kingdom’s universal health-care system allows a more centralized approach.
The U.S. government plans to ship 6.4 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine to states within 24 hours after an expected emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, Army Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operations officer for Operation Warp Speed, said this week.
While the United States may also start slow in the early weeks, like Britain, Perna told reporters the numbers will quickly grow. The White House vaccine czar predicted the United States should be able to distribute enough vaccine to immunize 100 million people by the end of February.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel on Tuesday voted to recommend prioritizing health-care workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. That’s in line with the priority lists in many countries around the world. But Britain shocked its National Health Service medical workers Thursday evening by revealing that, contrary to long-held assumptions, they would not be among the first to get an injection.
Frontline nurses and doctors have been regularly hailed as national heroes in Britain. In the early months of the cresting pandemic, citizens filled the streets banging pots and pans, blowing horns and clapping in weekly displays of appreciation for their courage.
But now, along with much of the country, they will be expected to wait.
Mike Adams, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing, said that in the past few weeks, “the messaging from politicians has been focused on ‘the NHS staff will get it,’ and so some of the narrative from politicians has been unhelpful in raising expectations.”
Adams told The Washington Post, “We want to see our members have access to it for their own safety and to prevent further outbreaks in the areas they are working, but we appreciate that with limited supply of vaccine, you understand why the most vulnerable are being prioritized. But the confusion is the most unhelpful part.”
Instead of ICU nurses, ventilator specialists and emergency room physicians, NHS officials and vaccine task force members said they wanted to prioritize the elderly and nursing home caregivers – because the highest mortality and the largest number of hospitalizations have come from that age group and sector.
Unfortunately, however, NHS officials conceded they do not yet have a protocol nor approval from drug regulators to offer Pfizer injections within nursing homes.
The vaccine, developed by the German company BioNTech and produced by Pfizer, is built on tiny bits of messenger RNA, which encourage the body to produce antibodies to repel the spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus. RNA vaccines need to be stored and shipped at seriously cold, sub-Antarctic temperatures of minus 75 Celsius, and so they require special handling.
British regulators, in granting emergency approval for the Pfizer vaccine, said it cannot be moved more than four times and that the trays of 975 doses cannot be split apart – meaning a tray cannot at this time be broken up to give injections in the typically smaller nursing homes caring for a fewer patients.
“It’s not like taking a six pack of yogurt out of your home fridge, breaking it up on the kitchen work top, putting one in your bag, taking it to work and then storing it in the work fridge,” Hopson said.
So while the NHS figures out how to get into nursing homes, the first jabs will be injected at one of the 50 hospitals serving an immunization hubs. Next year, the government plans to open mass immunization centers in conference centers, sport arenas, and schools.
Overall, Britain has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough to vaccinate 20 million people, as each requires two shots, three weeks apart.
Business minister Alok Sharma told Sky News on Friday that he hoped the country would get “some millions” of doses from Pfizer this month, “but, of course, what we also always said is that the vast majority of this vaccination program will take place in the new year.”
The initial 800,000 doses promised from Pfizer won’t go far to cover the 3.2 million Brits aged 80 and above and the at least 300,000 caregivers working in nursing homes.
All of those people will be in line before the more than 1.4 million NHS workers.
Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association, the main doctors union, said that with limited supplies, it was important that those deemed most at risk were prioritized, but he criticized the government’s inconsistent messaging.
“During the first wave, we saw far too many health- and social-care workers become incredibly sick with covid – with many tragically dying – and therefore those working on the front line need to be given the opportunity to get protected early,” Nagpaul said.
“It’s crucial now that there’s absolute consistency and clarity, as more vaccines become available, for both the public and health care staff about when and where they can expect to be vaccinated,” he said.
Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the deployment will be a “big challenge,” but added that U.K. hospitals and labs were well equipped for handling samples that need low temperatures, including using liquid nitrogen and dry ice.
He said if the aim is to reduce the death toll, it made sense to prioritize nursing homes, which were hit “really badly” in the first wave.
After that, he said, the next on the list could be health care workers, “not only because they’re more at risk themselves, but they care for a lot of the people in the extremely vulnerable older age group.”
This is also important if there isn’t widespread uptake in those over 80 years old.
“If you target the upper 80s, and if they don’t take it up like you hoped, then the next best thing is to vaccinate people who come into close contact with them, which will be the health-care workers.”
ECB urged to extend bank dividend ban six months by watchdog
InternationalDec 05. 2020European Union flags fly outside the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, on July 16, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alex Kraus.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nicholas Comfort
Europe should extend its de-facto ban on bank dividends by six months, a top official at the European Central Bank’s supervisory arm said, casting a shadow over investors’ hopes for a return to payouts early next year.
The comments come as big banks across Europe are facing fraught times, with regulators at the ECB and the Bank of England preparing to decide in coming weeks whether and how to lift their recommendations on payouts. Shareholder dividends were effectively frozen in March in a trade-off for unprecedented regulatory relief and government loan guarantees, yet bankers have subsequently slammed them as doing more harm than good.
Speaking in an interview ahead of the long-awaited decision this month, Ed Sibley, a member of the ECB’s supervisory board, said continued uncertainty, a need to preserve capital for lending and reputational issues for banks all speak in favor of extending the regulator’s existing recommendation. The question is how to implement it in practice, because the ECB doesn’t have the powers to enforce a blanket ban over mounting objection by lenders.
“Overall, we would be better if we were to hold off for another six months,” said Sibley, who is also a deputy governor at the Central Bank of Ireland. “Whether we can practically do that is a real challenge.”
European banking stocks pared gains on Friday, with the 22-member Euro Stoxx Banks Index up 0.9% as of 4:52 p.m. in Frankfurt after earlier rising 2%. The index has fallen 19% this year with Banco de Sabadell SA, ABN Amro Bank NV and Societe Generale SA among the biggest losers.
The BOE and ECB have said they will announce their decisions on dividends by the end of the year. The ECB will release its economic projections on Thursday, providing a key input for regulators, alongside its latest monetary policy decision. The BOE publishes its Financial Stability Report the next day.
“That will factor into our thinking, but there are lots of other things we need to think about as well,” said Sibley. “There are significant weaknesses in lots of banks’ ability to demonstrate to us that their planning is effective from a capital management perspective.”
The ECB recommended earlier this year that banks not pay dividends or buy back shares at least through the end of 2020. The central bank doesn’t have the legal basis to issue a blanket ban, yet big banks fell in line after chief watchdog Andrea Enria said he could impose legally-binding measures on an individual basis.
As the pandemic progressed and lenders largely managed to deal with the fallout, some of the banks hardest-hit by the dividend suspension have become more vocal in demanding a return to payouts. Many have seen their share prices erode this year, especially when compared with the U.S., where the Federal Reserve only demanded a cap on capital returns.
“We didn’t ban dividends, we expressed our view on them and I think that’s as far as we can go this time,” Sibley said. “You have to think about how would we implement something that is practical and will stand some degree of challenge. I think that’s where we’re having the debate.”
Other options floated by central bankers have been to allow only the strongest banks to return funds to shareholders.
That approach is also complicated, according to Sibley. It encourages banks to prioritize investors’ short-term interests over their longer-term financial health and risks disclosing non-public information about how the ECB views the governance failings of certain lenders, he said.
“That leads to another collective action problem or system-wide problem versus the individual incentive,” he said. “Overall, I think we’d be better off waiting. Practically, I don’t know how that’s going to be achievable so we’re going to have to come up with something that sits in the middle.”
Canada’s job market shows surprising strength amid new lockdowns
InternationalDec 05. 2020Bakers wearing protective masks shape and roll out loaves of bread dough at Portofino Bakery in Saanichton, British Columbia, on Nov. 19, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by James MacDonald.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Shelly Hagan
Canada’s job market remained surprisingly resilient in November despite a new surge in covid-19 cases.
The country added 62,100 jobs in the month, Statistics Canada said Friday in Ottawa, triple the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey and down only modestly from the 83,600 gain in October. The unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 8.5%, from 8.9% previously.
Employment was relatively robust even as a new wave of covid-19 cases forced local authorities to impose targeted restrictions on businesses to curb the spread.
“Canada’s labor market was able to outrun Covid again,” Royce Mendes, an economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said in a report to investors.
Construction, wholesale and retail trade and the public sector led the increase. Employment fell the most in two industries — accommodation and food services, and information, culture and recreation.
Hours worked rose 1.2% in November, and are down 5% since February. The labor market has recovered 81% of the 3 million positions lost during March and April.
Economists were expecting a gain of 20,000 jobs in November, the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey.
Still, November’s gain was the slowest since the recovery began in May, and sharply below the average increase of 395,000 over the previous six months. A slowdown has been widely expected with the economy entering a prolonged recuperation phase that could take years to play out.
Chinese coronavirus-vaccine maker Sinovac Biotech is good at getting its products to market. It was first to begin clinical trials of a SARS vaccine in 2003 and first to bring a swine flu vaccine to consumers in 2009.
Its CEO was also bribing China’s drug regulator for vaccine approvals during that time, court records show.
Sinovac is now seeking to supply its coronavirus vaccine to developing nations, from Brazil to Turkey to Indonesia. While graft and weak transparency have long plagued China’s pharmaceutical industry, seldom has the reliability of a single drug vendor from the country mattered this much to the rest of the world.
Sinovac is one of China’s two coronavirus-vaccine front-runners, with its clinical testing in the same final stage as Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s. Domestically, Sinovac’s vaccine is in second place, with state-owned Sinopharm’s vaccines more widely administered under an emergency-use program. Another Chinese vaccine, developed by CanSino and a military research institute, is approved for emergency use by China’s military.
Sinovac’s vaccine, Coronavac, may end up adopted in a number of developing markets. Officials in Brazil and Indonesia – the most populous nations in Latin America and Southeast Asia – say Coronavac could be approved in coming weeks. In Brazil, São Paulo Gov. João Doria has called it the safest vaccine the country has tested.
Sinovac has not yet released efficacy data, making it unclear whether its vaccine can protect recipients as successfully as the vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, which were more than 90% effective in preliminary analyses.
Sinovac has acknowledged the bribery case involving its CEO, saying in regulatory filings that he cooperated with prosecutors and was not charged. The CEO said in testimony he could not refuse demands for money from a regulatory official.
Sinovac has not been involved in safety scandals, and there is no evidence that any of the vaccines approved in cases involving bribery were faulty. But some medical experts say that extra scrutiny of Sinovac’s drug claims is justified, given its record of moral flexibility.
“The fact that the company has a history of bribery casts a long shadow of doubt over its unpublished, non-peer-reviewed data claims about its vaccine,” said Arthur Caplan, medical ethics division director at New York University Langone Medical Center. “Even in a plague, a company with a morally dubious track record has to be treated with great caution concerning its claims.”
While Sinovac’s history of bribery has raised concerns among investors of the Nasdaq-listed company, only in recent months has its record taken on such global implications. Governments are weighing the risks of new vaccines from companies like Sinovac against the certainty of more deaths if the pandemic continues.
A review of public records and trial testimonies by The Washington Post reflects that Sinovac’s rise to the front ranks of China’s vaccine industry took place with the help of priority projects from Beijing and kickbacks to officials who assisted in regulatory reviews and sales deals. A number of details from the court cases have not been reported previously, in part because of China’s censored media.
In 2016 court testimony, Sinovac’s founder and chief executive, Yin Weidong, admitted to giving more than $83,000 in bribes from 2002 to 2011 to a regulatory official overseeing vaccine reviews, Yin Hongzhang, and his wife. Yin Hongzhang confessed to expediting Sinovac’s vaccine certifications in return.
Those years corresponded to Sinovac’s breakout period, when the biotech start-up founded in 2001 was handpicked by Beijing officials to lead development of vaccines for SARS, avian flu and swine flu.
Yin Hongzhang, who shares a surname with Sinovac’s CEO but is no relation, was sentenced in 2017 to a decade in prison for taking bribes from Sinovac and seven other companies. Sinovac’s Yin Weidong, now 56, was not charged and continues to oversee the company’s coronavirus-vaccine drive this year.
For Sinovac, that case was not a one-off: At least 20 government officials and hospital administrators across five provinces admitted in court to taking bribes from Sinovac employees between 2008 and 2016.
– – –
Sinovac said in 2017 it had launched an internal investigation in response to the bribery cases. It has yet to announce the investigation’s result.
In its latest annual report, released in April, Sinovac said that Yin Weidong “was not charged with any offense or improper conduct and he cooperated as a witness with the procuratorate. To our knowledge, the Chinese authorities have not commenced any legal proceedings or government inquiries against Mr. Yin.”
The annual report said that Sinovac maintained strict anti-corruption policies but that “these policies may not be completely effective.”
In a statement to The Post, a Sinovac spokesman said the company had entrusted the legal system to handle the past bribery cases appropriately. He said the CEO’s ability to do his work was unaffected. Sinovac did not make Yin Weidong available for an interview.
Corruption in China’s pharmaceutical industry is a long-running scourge. Dali Yang, a University of Chicago political scientist, said China’s shift from decentralized drug approvals in the 1990s to centralized reviews in the 2000s created opportunities for graft.
But corruption is no longer as rampant as it once was, after several high-profile crackdowns sparked by drug-safety scandals, Yang said. In 2007, China executed Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, in a grim warning to the industry. China’s President Xi Jinping launched another broad anti-corruption drive in 2012.
Vaccine mishaps continued to occur in recent years. In 2018, Sinovac’s larger rival Sinopharm recalled 400,000 shots of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccines for substandard quality.
In a Beijing court in 2016, Yin Hongzhang, the former deputy director of the China Food and Drug Administration’s drug-testing center, said Sinovac’s Yin Weidong gave him cash bribes over nine years as he sought regulatory approval for the company’s vaccines for hepatitis A, SARS, avian flu, foot-and-mouth disease and influenza A.
In exchange, Yin Hongzhang said he helped “accelerate the approval process” for Sinovac’s vaccines.
Sinovac’s CEO said in his testimony that he “could not refuse” requests from a regulator.
Peter Humphrey, a British corporate investigator who has probed pharmaceutical corruption cases in China, called it “a bit extraordinary” that Sinovac emerged unscathed in 2017, despite its CEO confessing to bribery.
China previously punished only the party that accepted the bribes, he said, but this changed in 2014 with a case involving GlaxoSmithKline. GSK was fined $490 million for bribing doctors and officials to bolster sales, and its top China executive given a suspended prison sentence.
For Sinovac, the bribery cases have had little visible impact except to exacerbate an acrimonious shareholder struggle that has frozen trade of its stock on Nasdaq since February 2019. This ownership battle has taken dramatic turns, including a physical fight for the company seal – a stamp used by Chinese firms for legalizing documents – that Sinovac said resulted in a factory power outage and ruined vaccines. Sinovac has otherwise continued business as usual.
– – –
In a 2012 interview with state-run China Youth Daily, Yin Weidong said that after a less-than-rigorous early education, he flunked his college entrance exam. He found his calling in a vocational epidemiology program: “I suddenly turned into the student asking the most questions in school.”
A few years later at age 21, he was hailed as the first person in China to isolate the hepatitis A virus. He would spend the next decade and a half developing and testing his hepatitis A vaccine – China’s first domestically developed one for the liver disease – before founding Sinovac in Beijing in 2001.
His big break came in April 2003: As SARS spread, Yin Weidong phoned municipal officials and volunteered to help develop a vaccine, according to the state-run Guangming Daily. Days later, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology named him the leader for a national project to fast-track a SARS vaccine, with government funding and researchers at his assistance.
While the project fizzled out along with SARS, it gave Sinovac’s team crucial practice in developing a vaccine for a coronavirus. As with this year’s plan, the SARS vaccine plan called for production to begin before testing finished.
Sinovac also received Beijing’s support for developing vaccines for avian flu and H1N1, with its team getting more experienced and faster.
When SARS hit, Sinovac’s Yin Weidong had already been bribing regulator Yin Hongzhang for a year.
In his court confession, Yin Hongzhang said he mentioned to Yin Weidong in 2002 that he wanted to buy a car, drawing a $15,200 cash gift from the executive. That same year, Sinovac’s first flagship product, the Healive hepatitis A vaccine, was approved for sale.
A few years later in 2006, Yin Weidong gave Yin Hongzhang and his wife $7,600 in cash, saying it was to help them furnish their new apartment, according to testimony by Yin Hongzhang’s wife. Yin Weidong said in testimony that when he was invited to their newly furnished home months later, he gave them another $15,200 in cash, which he expensed.
During that period, Sinovac gained approvals to sell influenza, avian flu and swine flu vaccines in China. Sinovac’s swine flu vaccine was approved for sale in China just half a year after the virus was detected in Mexico.
In 2011, Yin Hongzhang asked Yin Weidong to lend him around $45,600 to buy a villa on Beijing’s northern outskirts, according to his testimony.
Yin Weidong said in court that he arranged the cash drop-off through an intermediary, wary of repercussions if he handled it personally.
Yin Hongzhang’s wife, identified in court testimony only by her surname, Guo, told the court that she and her husband picked up the cash in a hotel lobby and never volunteered to repay the loan.
– – –
At lower levels, at least 20 officials and hospital employees confessed in Chinese courts between 2015 and 2018 to taking bribes from Sinovac employees, according to the court judgments.
“In the vaccine industry, we usually give a commission to the person in charge to encourage them to use our vaccines,” one Sinovac salesperson, identified only by the surname Yang, said in a 2017 case in the southern province of Guangdong.
Yang admitted to giving a hospital employee $2,441 in kickbacks – “always through envelopes of cash” – as a reward for the hospital purchasing 5,351 doses of Sinovac’s hepatitis A vaccine from 2011 to 2015.
Caplan, the medical ethics professor, said Sinovac’s history of bribery would alienate some potential customers. But some countries may still prefer Sinovac’s vaccine, as it can be stored closer to room temperature than the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. And some may lack other options.
“When there are no options and you’re in a plague, you tend to take what you can get,” Caplan said. “Sketchy history or not.”
Mortgage industry roars to best year ever, courtesy of the Fed
InternationalDec 05. 2020A home stands under construction in Oakland, Calif., on June 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Prashant Gopal, Christopher Maloney, Shahien Nasiripour
The Federal Reserve has handed U.S. mortgage lenders their best year ever. Nobody knows that better than Shant Banosian, the industry’s first billion-dollar salesman.
By his own count, the loan officer is personally set to originate a staggering $1.5 billion of home loans by year’s end from his office outside of Boston, a record in a year of records for the mortgage business.
Set alight by the Fed’s low interest rates and bond purchases, the mortgage industry is on fire. Lenders this year are projected to originate $4.1 trillion of loans, eclipsing the 2003 high, thanks mostly to borrowers refinancing to reduce their house payments, according to Fannie Mae.
With profit margins the widest on record, mortgage lenders are on a hiring spree and taking advantage of the pandemic housing boom to raise money from investors. At least nine have either gone public this year, such as Rocket Cos., or are planning to do so in coming months.
But like all booms, this one won’t last forever. By next year, mortgage volumes could decline by a third as refinancings drop, according to a Fannie Mae forecast. Even if rates stay flat, the number of homeowners motivated to lock in savings will decline.
“Today’s market is like riding a giant rollercoaster — the higher it goes, the more dramatic the decline,” said Jim Cameron, senior partner with STRATMOR Group, a mortgage advisory firm based in Greenwood Village, Colorado. “You could argue, when you know the rates will eventually turn and you’ll lay a bunch of people off, why hire? But quite frankly, the profits are there now.”
For now, the industry is adding staff to handle all the business. Recruiters are in an all-out “firefight,” Cameron said. Firms are offering signing bonuses to steal underwriters and processors from competitors or giving retention payments to keep them from leaving.
Lenders increased their headcount by 25% in July and 40% in August on an annualized basis, according to Bank of America researchers. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest there are now more than 100,000 mortgage brokers in the U.S., the first time it’s cracked six figures since 2007.
Banosian, who runs a branch for Chicago-based Guaranteed Rate, increased his staff by half to 40, just to keep up with the flood of applications from buyers upgrading to bigger suburban homes or saving a bundle by refinancing. Nationally, the company is advertising more than 400 open positions on its website.
“I presume rates will remain low next year,” Banosian, 40, said in an interview, alone in his 4,000-square-foot office in Waltham, Massachusetts, while his employees work remotely. “We’re planning to staff up.”
Last year, Banosian originated a record $916 million in mortgages, according to Scotsman Guide, which began producing its rankings in 2009. This year, he says he reached $1 billion in September. He expects to make 3,000 loans this year under his name, totaling at least $1.5 billion. And he plans to expand to other states.
Guild Holdings, which focuses on providing mortgages to homebuyers, sold shares to the public in October and wants to expand its business in Florida, the northeast and across the center of the country, Guild Chief Executive Officer Mary Ann McGarry said in an interview. And they’re staffing up quickly.
United Wholesale Mortgage, the nation’s largest lender for mortgages initially handled by brokers, now employs more than 7,000 people, up by about 40% from last year. NewDayUSA, a mortgage lender that focuses on veterans, has nearly doubled its workforce since March with plans to grow even more in the coming months, CEO and founder Rob Posner said in an interview.
While mortgage rates have never been this low, they could be lower. Most loans are sold and then packaged into bonds. The Fed has bought more than $1.3 trillion in mortgage bonds since March, driving up prices and enabling lenders to sell their loans at a hefty premium. Lenders say that to avoid being overrun with business they’ve kept rates elevated, padding profits.
The average lender originated $1.34 billion of mortgages in the third quarters, up 33% from the prior three months and as much as a typical company would produce in a year, said Marina Walsh, vice president of industry analysis at MBA. The profit-per-loan in the third quarter hit a record $5,535, up 22% from three months earlier, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday.
Next year may tell a different story, depending on the pandemic. A successfully deployed vaccine might bring back a semblance of normality to the economy. If employment recovers, that could push more people in the housing market. But if rates climb, even slightly, that could snuff out the refinancing boom.
Fannie Mae, which projects borrowing costs to remain flat, said mortgage volumes for home purchases will grow by about 4% next year. That won’t make up for an expected plunge in refinanced loans to $1.1 trillion next year from $2.6 trillion in 2020.
So far, lenders haven’t run out of consumers who can refinance. There are still nearly 20 million homeowners out there who could shave about $300 on average off their monthly mortgage payment at today’s rates, according to Black Knight Inc.
But if refinancings drop as predicted, lenders will be looking to homebuyers to make up the difference. And that will depend on the strength of a housing market that has been running hot, pushing prices out of reach for some Americans.
“The Fed has delivered a windfall to the mortgage industry,” LendingTree Chief Economist Tendayi Kapfidze said. “But demand from borrowers is going to be less. The low hanging fruit is gone.”
U.S. hiring rebound markedly slows amid virus surge
InternationalDec 05. 2020An employee wearing a protective mask works at the Gifts For You company warehouse in Woodridge, Ill., on Aug. 24, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Olivia Obineme.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Reade Pickert
The U.S. labor-market rebound markedly slowed in November, indicating the surge in covid-19 cases is hitting workers and curbing the broader economic recovery.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 245,000 from the prior month, as the unemployment rate dipped 0.2 percentage point to 6.7%, according to a Labor Department report Friday. The data also showed a worrisome decline in Americans participating in the labor force, as more people left jobs and the workforce altogether.
The median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 460,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls and an unemployment rate of 6.7%. The payrolls figure reflected a decline of 93,000 temporary workers who had been hired for the decennial census.
The data raise the chances that President-elect Joe Biden will inherit an even weaker labor market next year, with the recovery at risk of stalling during the wait for widespread vaccine distribution. With almost 4 million Americans enduring long-term joblessness, the report may also help push Congress to pass new fiscal aid by year-end and could make Federal Reserve officials more inclined to provide new stimulus when they meet Dec. 15-16.
U.S. stocks rose at the open, while 10-year Treasury yields extended their increase after the report and the dollar was lower.
“You are seeing the impact of the pandemic surge here,” Jeffrey Rosenberg, senior portfolio manager at BlackRock Inc., said on Bloomberg Television. “The market reaction is really looking through this to the policy response.”
The employment report is a mid-month snapshot, so jobs lost amid new restrictions and lockdowns put into place in the weeks since won’t be reflected until December’s data.
Not only did payroll gains come in below estimates, but hiring was concentrated in fewer industries, with the shift to online shopping this holiday season accounting for an outsize portion.
Transportation and warehousing added 145,000 workers — the most since 1997 — while retail employment fell by 34,700, reflecting less seasonal hiring than normal in some sectors.
Leisure and hospitality jobs rose by 31,000 following a 270,000 gain in October. Job growth slowed in a variety of sectors including manufacturing, construction, professional and business services, and health care.
Though effective vaccines could be rolled out as soon as this month, economic headwinds are likely to keep mounting before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The virus is raging uncontrolled with more than 1 million new cases each week, jobless benefits run out soon for millions of Americans, and some federal protections for renters and homeowners are due to expire.
And while prospects are growing for lawmakers to approve another stimulus package by year-end, it’s unclear whether negotiations that have been unsuccessful for months could conclude with agreement.
The gain leaves employment 9.8 million below pre-pandemic levels, and many Americans have been jobless since losing work in March and April.
The ranks of the long-term unemployed, or those out of work 27 weeks or more, increased by 385,000 in November to 3.9 million, the most since 2013. The group makes up more than a third of the total unemployed.
“It’s pointing to weaker momentum as we enter a critical phase of the recovery with the health situation deteriorating rapidly,” said Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics. “Going into the month of December this is quite worrisome and worthy of our attention and importantly worthy of policy makers’ attention.”
Below is a breakdown of highlights by demographic:
– The unemployment rate drop was biggest for minority groups, with Asian Americans seeing a 0.9 percentage point decline in their rate, to 6.7%.
– The participation rate for prime-age men — those ages 25 to 54 — fell a half percentage point to 87.4%, the lowest since May. It declined by 0.1 point among women in the same age group.
– Black Americans saw a drop to 10.3% from 10.8% in October and the Hispanic unemployment rate fell to 8.4% from 8.8%. That compares with a drop of just 0.1 percentage point for White Americans, which continue to see the lowest unemployment rate among the largest race groups, at 5.9%.
Pompeo decries Hong Kong ‘persecution’ as activists jailed
InternationalDec 05. 2020Joshua Wong, activist and former member of pro-democracy party Demosisto, wearing a protective mask while walking through the Lai Chi Kok Reception Center in Hong Kong on Dec. 3, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Billy H.C. Kwok.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Kari Lindberg
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo accused Hong Kong of using the courts to engage in “political persecution” after prominent activists were detained and a former opposition lawmaker fled to Europe.
Pompeo said in a statement Thursday that the decisions to sentence activists including Joshua Wong to jail while denying bail to billionaire media mogul Jimmy Lai violated fundamental rights guaranteed by the treaty allowing the former British colony’s return to China in 1997. He said the U.S. would work with its allies to defend such freedoms, something the incoming administration of Joe Biden has also pledged to do.
“The United States is appalled by the Hong Kong government’s political persecution of Hong Kong’s courageous pro-democracy advocates,” Pompeo said. “The use of courts to silence peaceful dissent is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes and underscores once again that the Chinese Communist Party’s greatest fear is the free speech and free thinking of its own people.”
Meanwhile, former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui announced Thursday he was going into exile in the U.K. after fleeing to Denmark earlier this week. Hui was among those arrested last month in connection with a disruptive protest in the legislative chamber in May and quit last month as part of a mass resignation by opposition legislators over the government’s ouster of four of their members.
The government of the Hong Kong special administrative region called Pompeo’s statement “baseless.”
“Our courts only decide cases in accordance with the law and evidence,” the government said in a statement on Friday. “Human rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, are fully protected”
The developments illustrate the growing threat of jail hanging over pro-democracy activists as the Hong Kong government uses new and once-little-used laws to press criminal cases against them. Police have arrested more than 10,000 people since a wave of largely leaderless protests last year, including 26 under new national security legislation carrying sentences as long as life in prison.
The U.S., which has already sanctioned Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and several other officials responsible for the city, is facing a mid-December deadline to identify banks for penalties under a law passed earlier this year to support the local democracy movement. Biden has vowed to “fully enforce” such Hong Kong-related legislation and said he would convene a “Summit for Democracy” to reach new commitments to fight corruption and authoritarianism and advance human rights.
China has repeatedly rejected such actions as meddling in its own domestic affairs and issued countersanctions against U.S. lawmakers among other figures. Lam and Chinese officials argue the arrests have been necessary to restore stability to the Asian financial center after last year’s sometimes violent unrest.
Ten members of the city’s former opposition bloc are facing criminal charges related to scuffles in the legislative chamber or their appearance at unauthorized rallies. Wong, 24, who was sentenced to more than a year in prison Wednesday for participating in a June 2019 protest outside the police headquarters, faces two other similar criminal cases.
Lai, 73, was denied bail in a fraud case Thursday, potentially keeping him behind bars for months as he battles more serious foreign collusion allegations under the security law. The judge presiding over the case deemed the Next Digital Ltd. founder to be a flight risk, Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper reported, although he had already surrendered his passport and said he had no intention to leave Hong Kong.
Hui, the former lawmaker, was among several pro-democracy activists to exit the city since the move to enact the national security law in June. Twelve more have been detained in mainland China since August after being caught attempting to flee by boat. The trend has led to efforts in places like Australia, Canada and the U.K. to make it easier for Hong Kong residents to relocate.
Without mentioning any names, Hong Kong’s Security Bureau criticized what it called “absconders who openly jump bail” and said that law enforcement would bring such people to justice, according to a statement issued Friday.
The high-profile departures, however, may make it harder for others facing prosecution to leave or secure bail from courts. The security law also allows courts to deny bail before trial because defendants may “continue to commit acts endangering national security,” a power that rights lawyers say clashes with the presumption of innocence in the city’s Common Law tradition.
Angry India farmers are ‘ready to die’ in showdown with Modi
InternationalDec 05. 2020Workers load sacks of wheat grain onto a truck at a wholesale grain market in Rewari, India, on May 8, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by T Narayan.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Pratik Parija, Bibhudatta Pradhan, Archana Chaudhary
As India’s virus numbers swell and the economy stumbles, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has another crisis to deal with: Tens of thousands of angry farmers vowing to camp outside the capital for months.
The farmers — mostly from Punjab, often called India’s bread-basket — want him to repeal three laws passed in September that allow them to sell crops directly to private firms instead of licensed middlemen at state-controlled markets. While Modi has said the laws will help them earn more cash, farmers fear those companies won’t give them minimum prices set by the government.
“Modi has joined hands with private companies — he is trying to grab our land through private firms,” said Sukhvinder Kaur, 65, who joined the protest along with 10 other women from her village in Punjab state, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) away. Braving Delhi’s cold winter, the women sleep on a truck bed, bathe on the side of the road and eat food at a makeshift community kitchen.
“We are not ready to go back home unless these laws are scrapped,” Kaur said. “We are ready to sacrifice our lives — even ready to die.”
The protest sites on the Delhi border that popped up about a week ago have turned into semi-permanent camps featuring almost a festive atmosphere, with some leaders saying they have enough supplies to stay put for six months. Tractor-trolleys loaded with blankets, mattresses, vegetables, gas cylinders and utensils showed they’ve come prepared for the long haul.
The sheer determination of the protesters may test Modi’s reform credentials like never before. While his popularity has withstood one of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks and demonstrations earlier this year against a religion-based citizenship law, the farmers represent potentially a huge constituency: Some 60% of India’s 1.3 billion depend on agriculture in one way or another.
What’s more, some members of India’s large diaspora have taken up the cause. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau angered India’s government when he backed the protesters after police initially used tear gas and water cannons to prevent them advancing into Delhi. This week a convoy of about 20 vehicles slowly lapped Australia’s national capital Canberra with signs saying “We support Indian farmers” and “No farmers, no food.”
Modi has stood his ground, using a monthly radio address on Nov. 29 to say the laws gave farmers “new rights and new opportunities” — including a provision that called for disputes over payment to be settled within a month. He listed examples of farmers who benefited from the law and also reached out to the Sikh community, which is the largest religious group in Punjab.
With a solid majority in parliament and national elections not due until 2024, Modi’s immediate risk is limited. So far the protest is mainly contained to farmers in Punjab, which is controlled by the opposition Congress party, and Haryana, which is ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. But the opposition is looking to pounce by labeling the government as anti-poor.
“When you play a card that is high stakes like the farmers’ laws, it can very well backfire,” said Rahul Verma, a researcher at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research who has written a book about ideology in Indian politics. “If this one spreads to rural areas, it has a cost.”
Several experts and economists say the new measures have the potential to modernize Indian agriculture, which has been hampered by low yields and inefficient smallholdings. Yet it will take years before private investment comes in and creates supply chains that will better align producers with consumer demand, according to Ashok Gulati, an agriculture economist at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
“If the government goes back on this reform, Modi’s credibility will be over,” Gulati said, adding that it would be like “rolling back” the measures that opened India’s economy in 1991. “Even then, so many had opposed the move.”
Prior to the passage of the laws, India’s system for buying and selling crops had remained largely unchanged since the 1950s. Back then, state governments — which have constitutional powers to regulate farming — sought to prevent farmers in remote areas from exploitation by setting up markets with licensed traders and transparent sales.
Over time, the licensing system turned into a monopoly in many states, with traders organizing to prevent new entrants and stifle competition. The central bank had cited agriculture cartels as a key reason for several spikes in inflation, particularly when onion prices soared.
Some farmers like the system, however. Although the middlemen are able to make big margins buying low from farmers and selling high to retailers, the farmers trust them more than private companies. Not only can they get a buyer at a guaranteed minimum price, but the traders also act like a bank by advancing cash whenever needed to buy goods like fertilizer.
Palwinder Singh, who grows rice, wheat, potatoes and sunflower seeds in Punjab, said he grows potatoes under a contract with a multinational company that fixes prices before the crop is planted. He said the company always buys from him if the price of potatoes climbs in the market, but when it can get them cheaper elsewhere then some of his crop is rejected due to quality issues.
“The same thing will happen to us if we deal with private companies,” said Davinder Singh, another farmer who grows rice and wheat in Punjab. “If we surrender we will become daily wage workers.”
Small and marginal farmers with up to two hectares (five acres) of land account for about 86% of all cultivators in India but own just 47% of the crop area. While the government declares a minimum support price for more than two dozen crops that it uses while making purchases for its food program, traders and companies aren’t legally obligated to pay that amount to farmers.
Several rounds of talks between farm leaders and government ministers have so far failed to resolve the deadlock, with the protesters insisting that a special session of parliament be called to repeal the laws and make it mandatory for private companies to pay the minimum prices. The next talks are set for Saturday.
“We can’t allow private companies to make purchases and do contract farming — we don’t trust them,” said Harbhajan Singh, a 55-year-old from Punjab who has grown rice and wheat for the past 25 years. “We won’t move out of here until the three laws are rolled back.”
British cry foul as Brexit negotiations hit last-minute snag
InternationalDec 05. 2020Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, gestures while speaking during a news conference in Brussels on Oct. 18, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson. Photo by: Simon Dawson — Bloomberg
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ian Wishart, Tim Ross
Brexit trade talks that were on the verge of a breakthrough descended into a fight between the U.K. and France on Thursday as the British government said prospects of an imminent deal had receded.
With negotiators working around the clock in London, optimism had been growing for days that an agreement could be struck this weekend. But British officials said the European Union had suddenly turned up with a new set of demands, sending the talks backward. They didn’t say what the demands were and EU officials denied it.
The U.K.’s assessment came after French diplomats raised concerns a day earlier that the EU was making too many concessions to get a deal over the line.
One U.K. official said talks had taken a big step backward because the EU had hardened its position in response to the French. Another said that, despite the setback, a breakthrough is still possible in the next few days.
Senior figures close to the European side questioned whether the remarks from the U.K. were another case of brinkmanship to pile last-minute pressure on the talks or an effort to disguise the fact that the British themselves are making concessions. One official said that fundamental differences between the two sides have persisted for weeks, but that hadn’t prevented both sides believing a deal was close, while another insisted the bloc hadn’t made new proposals.
The spat sets the scene for a potential call between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The talks are at a “critical phase” and there are “some tricky issues yet to resolve,” U.K. Business Secretary Alok Sharma told Sky News.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, will now remain in London on Friday for a full day of negotiations. Earlier, he had planned to return to Brussels to consult with von der Leyen and diplomats from member states, an EU official said.
It’s not unusual for assessments of the likelihood of a deal to gyrate wildly in the final days of a negotiation as both sides try to make the other blink. Nonetheless, French concerns and U.K. red lines are genuine, officials said.
French President Emmanuel Macron is determined that his fishing industry won’t lose a big part of its access to British fishing waters and wants British businesses to be tied to strict rules on state aid and labor standards so they don’t have what he sees as an unfair advantage.
On Friday, European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune reiterated that France will veto any Brexit deal if it isn’t in the national interest.
“If there is a deal which is not good,” he told Europe 1 radio, “then we would oppose it. We always said so.”
Equally, Johnson sees reclaiming control of fishing waters and being free to set his own rules as a matter of national sovereignty, and that was the point of Brexit.
The last few days had seen some progress on all of the three main topics that need to be resolved before a deal can be reached: access to British fishing waters, the competitive level playing field, and how the agreement is enforced. But none of them are settled yet.
One French concern that talks are stuck over is an EU demand that Britain establishes a regulator for state aid that can rule against measures before they come into force. That’s the case in the European system, but the U.K. has been pushing for the regulator only to have the power to step in after the government has handed over its money.
Vehicles cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge and, in the foreground, wait to enter Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in May 2015. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford 
European Union flags fly outside the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, on July 16, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alex Kraus. 
Bakers wearing protective masks shape and roll out loaves of bread dough at Portofino Bakery in Saanichton, British Columbia, on Nov. 19, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by James MacDonald. 
A home stands under construction in Oakland, Calif., on June 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris. 
An employee wearing a protective mask works at the Gifts For You company warehouse in Woodridge, Ill., on Aug. 24, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Olivia Obineme. 
Joshua Wong, activist and former member of pro-democracy party Demosisto, wearing a protective mask while walking through the Lai Chi Kok Reception Center in Hong Kong on Dec. 3, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Billy H.C. Kwok. 
Workers load sacks of wheat grain onto a truck at a wholesale grain market in Rewari, India, on May 8, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by T Narayan. 
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, gestures while speaking during a news conference in Brussels on Oct. 18, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson. Photo by: Simon Dawson — Bloomberg 
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