Cases of domestic violence in London rose sharply during the coronavirus lockdown of March 2020. This is suggested by an index, newly calculated by the ifo Institute, based on searches for certain terms on the internet. “This index shows an increase in cases of domestic violence that is seven times higher than that recorded by police statistics,” says Helmut Rainer, Director of the ifo Center for Labor and Demographic Economics….
Pablo Pardo (Washington) | What if it turns out that we are going to come out of the Covid-19 recession too quickly? In Europe that sounds like a joke, of course, thanks to the disaster organized by the European Commission with the purchase of the vaccines, and the insistence of the northern EU countries that no funds should be committed for the revival of the lazy southern ones. But that is not the case in the US, where the vaccine campaign is going much faster, and the public authorities have not been shy about spending to stimulate the economy.
Hans-George Betz (Via Fair Observer) | There is an unwritten rule in politics: If you are incompetent, at least you should not be corrupt. It seems nobody ever informed the German Christian Democrats that this was the way of things. How else to explain why Christian Democratic MPs thought it was perfectly fine to take advantage of Germany’s COVID-19 crisis to line their own pockets? In German, we have a word, “Raffzahn,” to refer to somebody who cannot get enough, never satisfied with what they have. In the concrete case, a member of the German Bundestag from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) pocketed €250,000 ($298,000) in commissions for brokering a deal involving the procurement of FFP2 face masks by the federal and the state governments.
Gilles Moec (AXA IM) | The divergence between Europe and the United States on the pandemic front continues.In the latter, the number of states facing an acceleration in the propagation of the virus rose furthe. Meanwhile, in Europe, while some clusters continue to appear, the speed of the epidemic is still markedly lower than when authorities considered it was safe to start re-opening the economy.
Anthony Pettinari (Citi GPS) | While we can’t rule out that funding for infrastructure will be included in a new package, it looks far more likely that any package that can be agreed on by the Administrationand Congress will include more money for small businesses, the unemployed, hospitals/health care, and possibly State/Local governments. The good news though is that we expect a post-election comprehensive infrastructure bill that could help propel beaten down state and local economies.