Umair

Just months ago, few people in this country knew who María Antonieta Alva was. Now Peru’s finance minister is a household name. In Lima, banners featuring her face and the words, “courage and dignity,” are hung from bridges. On social media, a video circulates of her discussing stimulus policies with the salsa song, “How crazy it was to fall in love with you,” playing in the background.⠀

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The 35-year-old’s popularity—rare in a country that has historically had little trust in politicians or state institutions—is largely due to her role leading Peru’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic, marking Latin America’s biggest per capita financial outlay.⠀

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Alva, a Harvard-trained economist, is helping roll out a colossal stimulus package amounting to 12% of gross domestic product, one of the world’s most aggressive compared with the size of its economy. Public spending and tax breaks comprise 7%, with the remainder mainly government-backed loans to struggling businesses.⠀

“We aren’t going to skimp on resources needed for the emergency,” Alva said in a recent interview. “Money can’t be a problem.”⠀

A CHART FROM BLOOMBERG MARKETS ON THE GROWTH IN THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE AS THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL CENTRAL BANK EXPANDS ITS ASSET PURCHASE PROGRAM (QE) AND OPENS MULTIPLE EMERGENCY FUNDING WINDOWS.

The evidence is mounting that March marked the start of a deep global recession. The extent of the collapse is beginning to appear in the trickle of economic data across the world.

Crude Expected to Collapse as OPEC Meeting Delayed; Saudi, Russia Rift Widens!

A delay in the virtual meeting between OPEC and its allies scheduled for Monday is likely to hit oil prices this week following last week’s record-setting comeback in crude oil prices, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC. The meeting will now “likely’ be held on Thursday, sources said.

Last week, President Donald Trump said to CNBC that he expected Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to announce a deal to cut production by up to 15 million barrels, and that he had spoken to both countries’ leaders.

That news was enough to chase the weaker shorts out of the market, fueling a 25% surge in U.S. crude oil on Thursday, producing its best day on record. It also gained another 12% on Friday.

Furthermore, the market finished the week with a 32% surge, breaking a 5-week losing streak and posting its best weekly performance ever, back to the contract’s inception in 1983.

Dan Crenshaw, a Navy SEAL turned Texas congressman, thinks the lessons in his new book “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage” are particularly useful in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.⁠⠀

Politicians and epidemiologists have compared the fight against the new coronavirus to a war, and Crenshaw agrees. In those conflicts, he says, only a fraction of the U.S. population was in harm’s way. The pandemic, on the other hand, “is an all-hands-on-deck kind of war,” adds the 36-year-old, who lost an eye after being hit by an IED on a 2012 mission in Afghanistan.⁠