Latest Corporate and Public Pension Articles

A consulting firm called Willis Towers Watson released a report that estimated that corporate funding status of their pensions only improved slightly in 2019: improving from 86% to 87%. This is even though they estimate that investment returns hit 19.8%.

Institutional Investor reported on the reason why there was such limited improvement in funding status even though returns were so significant:

Interest rates experienced the largest one-year drop in two decades last year, said Joseph Gamzon, senior director of retirement at Willis Towers Watson. According to Lewis, this is important because interest rates affect how liabilities are calculated. When they fall, liabilities increase, which affects a pension’s funded status.

Coronavirus: Latin America

It was slightly over two weeks ago that the first case of COVID-19 popped up in Latin America. The first case was confirmed in Brazil on Thursday, February 27th.

Per Worldometer the cases as of March 13th (Friday) have continued to grow across the region though at admittedly low numbers:

Brazil: 151
Chile: 43
Peru: 38
Argentina: 34
Panama: 27
Ecuador: 23
Costa Rica: 23
Colombia: 16
Bolivia: 10
French Guiana: 6
Paraguay: 6
Uruguay: 4
Honduras: 2
Venezuela: 2
Guyana: 1
Guatemala: 1
Suriname: 1

Coronavirus: Indonesia

The Jakarta Post reported back on February 11th that a Harvard study stated that there had to be a coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia based on travel between Wuhan and Indonesia.

Fast forward to March and according to South China Morning Post, the first cases of the virus were finally announced in the country. Interestingly, the cases are related to contact to a Japanese citizen who appears to live in Malaysia versus a Chinese citizen:

Indonesian authorities have swung into action to track down dozens of close contacts of the country’s first two coronavirus patients, a mother and daughter from a city south of Jakarta who contracted the disease from a Japanese citizen visiting from Malaysia.

Los Angeles: First Homeless Project Opens

From the Los Angeles Times, we learn that the first homeless apartment complex opened at what is called 88th and Vermont. It is located in the South Los Angeles neighborhood. It is a 62 unit complex that is opening slightly delayed (it was supposed to open in October of 2019).

The mayor lauded the change the 88th and Vermont project had made for a family of seven, who were among the first dozen tenants. After losing their home, they had couch-surfed, lived in shelters and motels, and “spent way too many nights in their car,” he said.

. . . Even that goal of 10,000 units is now too small, as it was based on past homeless counts when the population was smaller. With the number of people living in tents and makeshift shelters on the city’s streets ballooning to 27,000 out of 36,000 overall, and the number of chronically homeless Angelenos increasing, the current pace of construction is not keeping up.

. . . The 88th and Vermont project cost $34 million and received just under $9.7 million from Proposition HHH. At $549,500 per unit, it reflects the upward trend in the cost of housing. The most expensive HHH projects have run more than $600,000 per unit.

Coronavirus: Egypt

For awhile, all cases of coronavirus in Egypt were related to foreigners. Two to be exact. One was a Chinese from mid-February while another was just announced on Sunday, March 1st. I don't believe the nationality of the individual was announced.

The Egypt Independent had the following about the March 1st case:

According to the head of the Preventive Medicine Sector Alaa Eid, the foreigner had been working under an Egyptian company and arrived in Egypt since February.

. . . The company w[h]ere the patient worked at was ordered not to allow anyone to leave or enter their headquarters, and to provide detailed information regarding employees or visitors within the last ten days. The 1,500 quarantined cases have had samples taken for testing, Eid said. 

Coronavirus: Hawaii

Above is a video I noticed showing panic buying in Hawaii. As of now, there are no reported cases of the coronavirus in Hawaii, but that is perhaps due to the inability to test anyone.

Hawaii News Now reported February 20th:

The botched coronavirus test kits that were sent to Hawaii now have to be re-manufactured. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz says he’s been told by CDC that the new test kits won’t be ready until mid-March. “The fact that it’s going to take a month for them to re-manufacture totally unacceptable,” he said.

That date has shifted a couple weeks. Hawaii Public Radio reported on February 28th:

A Northern California health worker who had cared for a patient with coronavirus hopped a plane to visit Hawaii, arriving yesterday. Today, after alerted by federal officials, state health officials tested the woman and found she does not have coronavirus.

The case represents the first time Hawaii officials have discussed results of local testing for the rapidly spreading COVID-19 virus. Health officials were able to use components of kits sent earlier this month from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to carry out the tests on the visitor, although some kit parts were deemed defective. 

Coronavirus: Italy Spreads It Across the Globe and First Community Spread in Northern California

Coronavirus popped up big in Italy. As I'm writing this on Friday (2/28), Worldmeters has the number of cases at 889. When this post goes online, the number will be much higher. I really wouldn't be surprised if the actual number is closer to 50,000. Why? People who are Italian or visited Italy have spread it across the globe. To me, this feels like a Diamond Princess situation where every country has a case just because of one country.

Countries in Africa picked up the virus due to Italy. .Africa for the longest time just had one case in Egypt that was associated directly with China. I've posted a couple times on Africa. I figured if the virus found a foothold on the continent it would be due to China. That is still a distinct possibility, but Italy might also be a reason now.

Coronavirus: Sugical Mask Production

With coronavirus spreading across the globe, one item in high demand is the surgical/N95 mask.

Washington Post recently had an article on the topic:

During the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, demand for N95 respirators and face masks spiked dramatically . . . U.S. officials had to dip into the government’s secret cache in the Strategic National Stockpile and release about 100 million respirators and face masks to states 

. . . Routine annual production in the United States has been estimated to be 1.5 billion N95 respirators and 3.6 billion surgical masks, according to a 2017 report in the journal Health Security. The report estimated that 1.7 billion to 3.5 billion N95 respirators and 100 million to 400 million surgical masks would be needed to protect health-care workers in the event of a severe influenza pandemic . . But CDC recently recommended that health-care facilities consider strategies to conserve their N95 supplies. U.S. officials are also talking daily with about a dozen protective equipment manufacturers and 20 distributors that sell products in the United States 

. . . One reason there aren’t more U.S. firms that manufacture medical masks: The profit margin is low, and imports from Mexico and China are much cheaper (this has been a particular focus of Bannon and Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top trade advisers). 

Coronavirus: Iran

For the longest time, Iran reported that no one had the virus in their country. Then Wednesday morning (2/19) in the United States (late evening in Iran), articles started to pop up that Iran had 2 cases of coronavirus. Maybe a couple hours later, it was reported that these two individuals had died.

ABC News had this quick summary of events:

Iranian authorities said that two patients diagnosed with novel coronavirus in the country are now dead, Fars News Agency, the nation's state-run news organization, reported Wednesday. Earlier on Wednesday, health officials said two cases of the virus, known officially as COVID-19, had been detected in the central province of Qom. 

The article is short, but there are also some thoughts regarding the Tokyo Olympics should one want read it.

And just a random thought: I'm not sure any other country has announced that there were cases of the coronavirus and then a couple hours later the individuals were stated to have died. One has to wonder how long the individuals were sick before finally coming to see the doctor. Honestly, to have died so quickly, I'd bet they went to the hospital over the weekend and were probably infectious a week or so prior to that. That's just me speculating. None of the articles I've read provide any details on this part of the story.

Coronavirus: Los Angeles

Coronavirus really hasn't hit the United States. There are some cases in the United States, but as I'm writing this up (Feb 13th, Thursday), the total cases were only 15. And I believe 3 of those cases were from individuals that were flown out of Wuhan and were quarantined on military bases across the United States.

Even though the United States is currently being spared any mass outbreaks, that doesn't mean we shouldn't worry. Here's one article from Patch that caught my attention:

Los Angeles County public health nurses are closely monitoring all residents who recently traveled to mainland China, regardless of whether they have any symptoms of the coronavirus, the county's top health official said Tuesday. 

Coronavirus: North Korea and Indonesia

My last two blogs on coronavirus focused on areas that I feel aren't getting a lot of attention: Africa and the Uyghurs. Today's post on the subject will look at North Korea and Indonesia.

I'm not sure how much confidence one should put in The Daily Beast, but they report that coronavirus has broken out in North Korea. To add more weight to their article, they quote Korean news reports.

Among the first to report fatalities in North Korea, the Seoul-based website Daily NK said five people had died in the critical northwestern city of Sinuiju, on the Yalu River across road and rail bridges from Dandong, which is the largest Chinese city in the region and a key point for commerce with North Korea despite sanctions.

WSJ: Shale performance not meetng forecasts

The Wall Street Journal via Morningstar has another of their ongoing takedown articles on shale oil. The newspaper has been writing about disappointing shale production for sometime. Admittedly, however, shale production keeps on increasing each year. So the question is: is the WSJ wrong and production will keep increasing or will their analysis eventually be proven correct?

In February 2015, Whiting told investors that it expected the wells it drilled that year in North Dakota to produce 700,000 barrels of oil and gas apiece over their lifetimes. In 2018, Rystad estimated those wells were on track to produce only about 590,000 barrels. Rystad has since revised that forecast to about 540,000 barrels, or roughly 23% less oil and gas than Whiting projected.

. . . In October 2016, Encana Corp. estimated that its wells in the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas ultimately would produce about 580,000 barrels of oil and gas each. Rystad's initial estimate showed Encana's Eagle Ford wells from that year on track to generate less than 360,000 barrels. Rystad's forecast has since dropped to about 345,000 barrels of oil and gas, roughly 41% less than Encana told investors.

Coronavirus: Africa

I have a day job so I'm writing this on Sunday. This might be seriously dated or not by the time it posts on Tuesday. As of Sunday, there wasn't a single reported case of coronavirus in Africa. If that is still the case on Tuesday, then this won't be dated.

US News and World Report via Associated Press has an article up about the country of Zambia and how it is dealing with the threat of the coronavirus. Now I admit, I had to look up where Zambia is. Zambia is in Southern Africa. It is north of Zimbabwe and south of Congo. It has a population of 17 million.

The virus that has spread through much of China has yet to be confirmed in Africa, but global health authorities are increasingly worried about the threat to the continent where an estimated 1 million Chinese now live, as some health workers on the ground warn they are not ready to handle an outbreak.

. . . But the effort has been complicated by a critical shortage of testing kits and numerous illnesses that display symptoms similar to the flu-like virus.

. . . Those growing worried include employees at the Sino-Zambia Friendship Hospital in the mining city of Kitwe in northern Zambia, near the Congo border. Chinese companies operate mines on the outskirts of the city of more than half a million people. One company is headquartered in Wuhan, the city at the center of the virus outbreak. Hundreds of workers traveled between Zambia and China in recent weeks.

. . . But the employees and others familiar with the matter, some of whom spoke anonymously under the new rules, say some Chinese patients checked in with coughs and fevers but did not get placed in isolation. 

Coronavirus: Africa and Uyghurs

I'm writing this Sunday night after the Super Bowl so many things could change from now and when I actually post this. I've been thinking about how this could spread across the globe and my thoughts shifted to countries that might not have the best healthcare systems and also has connections with China.

As of Sunday, I don't believe there have been any reported cases in Africa. There have been suspected cases, but I believe all have turned out to be due to other illnesses.

Al Jazeera wrote about this on Saturday, February 1st:

Amid the mounting concerns, medical experts appear certain that the deadly virus will also infect people on the continent, pointing to the deepening trade and travel ties between China and Africa that has seen many countries on the continent become popular tourist, business and investment destinations for the Chinese.

"There is a large amount of travel between China and Africa; hubs such as Addis Ababa, Cairo and Nairobi are at particular risks due to the large amount of Chinese travellers that pass through these airports."

Coronavirus: Random Thoughts on a Couple Myth/Ethics Articles

I'm writing this Saturday morning. South China Morning Post has the number of Coronavirus cases at just over 12,000. By the time I actually post this, the number of cases will be much higher. Anyways, I've come across various articles about how we should deal with this virus and I just want to throw in my 2 cents.

Yahoo posted an article about the myths of the coronavirus. Most of the myths I agree are myths. One I think is really disputable. The author makes the case that the coronavirus is not deadlier than the flu. I think that is debatable based on how you look at the data: absolute numbers versus percentages.

“Coronavirus is obviously worrisome and dangerous with about a three percent fatality rate, but in the U.S. this flu season, we’ve seen more than 8,000 flu deaths and some of those are children,” says [Dr. Purvi] Parikh [a infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Health]. According to the CDC, more than 15 million Americans have been infected with the flu in the 2019-2020 season and more than 140,000 have been hospitalized with the virus.