Dispatches from the COVID-19 Financial Front

Curious as to who/how you can get unemployment in the current environment.

My brother just told me that he has difficulty getting an uber or similar. It appears that many are now collecting unemployment rather than driving. I don't blame them as I would only imagine that it would open them up to getting sick. Puts people that work in the city and need to get to hospitals to work very difficult. These are people that probably should not take public transportation as working in hospitals opens them up both ways.

Well, Uber cut some 3,700 jobs and is readying to zap 3,000 more.

But at the same time they are looking to buy Grub Hub.

Federal Reserve officials indicated they expected the economic recovery from the pandemic-induced recession would be a slow one, with rates near zero for years....

... In their first economic projections this year, Fed officials indicated that they expect the unemployment rate to end 2020 at 9.3 percent and remain elevated for years, coming in at 5.5 percent in 2022. That would be well above the level they expect to prevail over the longer run in a healthy economy....

... The Fed is projecting a particularly sharp hit in 2020, with officials expecting output to contract by 6.5 percent at the end of this year compared to the final quarter of 2019, before rebounding by 5 percent in 2021.

The new forecasts predict a slower path back to economic strength than the Trump administration — and perhaps the stock market — seems to expect as the economy climbs out of a virus-spurred downturn. The Fed skipped its quarterly economic summary in March as the pandemic gripped the United States, sowing uncertainty as business activity came to a near standstill.