Democrats and Republicans said they had an agreement on another round of pandemic aid, including direct payments to Americans, jobless benefits and funds for businesses and vaccine distribution. More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLawmakers Resolve Fed Dispute as They Race to Close Stimulus DealTop senators appeared to strike an agreement on the central bank’s lending powers as they struggled to clear away the last sticking points in the $900 billion compromise plan.Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, at the Capitol on Saturday. His proposal on the Federal Reserve is the primary issue remaining in efforts to finalize a $900 billion stimulus deal.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesEmily Cochrane and Published More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCongress Grasps for Stimulus Deal as Fed Dispute Poses Final HurdleLeaders struggled to clear away the last sticking points in the $900 billion compromise plan, including a stubborn disagreement over the central bank’s lending powers.Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, at the Capitol on Saturday. His proposal on the Federal Reserve is the primary issue remaining in efforts to finalize a $900 billion stimulus deal.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesEmily Cochrane and Dec. 19, 2020, 7:32 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Congressional leaders worked feverishly on Saturday to resolve an impasse over a Republican push to curtail the powers of the Federal Reserve that was threatening to derail a compromise $900 billion stimulus plan, racing against a Sunday-night deadline to avoid a government shutdown.After a monthslong impasse on a pandemic aid package, Democrats and Republicans were tantalizingly close to completing the emergency plan to rush direct payments, unemployment benefits and food and rental assistance to millions of Americans, relief to businesses, and provide funds for vaccine distribution.But with time running out for a deal, they remained divided over a proposal by Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to ensure the termination of a series of pandemic relief programs created this year by the Fed and potentially curtail the central bank’s ability to fight financial crises in the future.“We’re right within reach,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told House Democrats in a party conference call on Saturday. But she said Mr. Toomey’s late-stage demands to rein in the Fed were slowing the process.By Saturday evening, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said the dispute had cost negotiators another day in their efforts to cement a deal.“It won’t be tonight,” Mr. Durbin said. “It really is up to Mr. Toomey at this point, what he will accept.”Everything else, he said, is “pretty close.”The emerging deal would send direct payments of $600 to many Americans and provide enhanced federal jobless payments of $300-per-week until early spring. It would also provide hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up small businesses, schools and other institutions struggling amid the pandemic.But Democrats said that Mr. Toomey’s proposal, which has been embraced by Republicans, amounted to an attempt to undercut President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his administration’s ability to continue supporting the country’s economic recovery.As drafted, it would prevent the Fed and the Treasury Department from re-establishing programs that have helped to keep credit flowing to municipal borrowers, medium-sized businesses and corporations during the pandemic recession. It would also bar the creation of “similar” programs going forward.Lawmakers and aides in both parties acknowledged that the Fed provision presented the most significant hurdle to a final agreement, even though negotiators were still haggling over a number of outstanding technical details, including how to provide for food assistance and the scope of unemployment benefits.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, criticized the Toomey proposal.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSenator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the Senate floor that Mr. Toomey’s language was the “number one outstanding issue.”With government funding set to lapse Sunday and both chambers hoping to merge the stimulus package with a catchall measure to cover all federal spending for the remainder of the fiscal year, time was dwindling to find a resolution.The Coronavirus Outbreak More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow May We Serve You? For Restaurant Chains, It Depends on the LocationLarge dine-in chains are finding it difficult to enact uniform approaches to the pandemic when dealing with different regulations across the country about how they can operate.With 43 locations scattered across the United States, Fogo De Chão has been dealing with a patchwork of pandemic regulations. At this location, in Rosemont Ill., only two panels of an outdoor structure must be kept open.Credit…Lyndon French for The New York TimesJulie Creswell and Dec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETExecutives at the Brazilian steakhouse chain Fogo de Chão thought they had seen the worst of it.Earlier in the year, when seemingly each hour brought news of another city or state abruptly shutting down because of the pandemic, executives switched from email to the messaging system WhatsApp to communicate in real time with the general managers of their 43 U.S.-based restaurants scattered around the country.“The first time we heard a state issue a stay-at-home order we were like, ‘What does that mean? What are they talking about?’” said Barry McGowan, the chief executive of Fogo de Chão. “Then it was like dominoes falling. Boom. Boom. Boom.”Communicating with vendors was hit or miss. Trucks full of food pulled up to restaurants that had been closed.The restaurant chain created a takeout menu in just three days. It reached out to landlords to negotiate breaks on its leases. And as orders to stay closed were lifted, it spent about $1 million renting tents and other equipment to set up outdoor dining at many of its restaurants where indoor dining was still restricted.For a while, it worked. Diners flocked to the restaurants and spent lavishly. Before the pandemic, Fogo de Chão sold about 500 premium steaks, like Wagyu and Tomahawk rib-eyes, per week. That shot up to 1,300 per week by July.But with virus cases rising again across the country, new restrictions have been placed on indoor and outdoor dining, though they are far from uniform (no indoor dining in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York City, indoor dining curfews in New Jersey and Massachusetts, no restaurant dining at all in much of California). For larger dine-in chains like Fogo de Chão, the ever-changing patchwork of rules poses a particular logistical challenge: How do you come up with a companywide approach when different locations are dealing with their own specific regulations?For a while, Fogo de Chão was selling more premium steaks per week during the pandemic than it had previously.Credit…Lyndon French for The New York Times“What you have is a massive deviation from standard in terms of how a chain is operating restaurant locations in different states, which then requires a whole set of processes and management to make sure that you comply with the regulations,” said Sean Ryan, a partner at Kearney, a consulting firm. “It’s costly and time consuming.”Restaurants must work with local health departments that hand down specific guidance on measures that must be taken to prevent the spread of the virus. Some require outdoor dining tents or structures that have no more than two walls to provide adequate ventilation. Others want three sides of tents to remain open.And just as they did earlier in the pandemic, restaurants are quickly adapting once again, by shifting deliveries of food, alcohol, linens and other products from locations that are temporarily closed to ones that remain open. Some are doing the same with personnel.“Restaurateurs are in a state of despair,” said Phil Kafarakis, an industry analyst and the former chief innovation officer for the National Restaurant Association. “People are in total panic mode right now and are starting to take drastic measures to continue to survive.”The restaurant industry has been clobbered by the coronavirus pandemic this year. By some estimates, nearly 110,00 restaurants have permanently closed and 2.1 million employees remained unemployed as of October. Several large casual and upscale dining chains like Chuck E. Cheese, California Pizza Kitchen and some Il Mulino restaurants spiraled into bankruptcy.The new restrictions come at a rough time since the holiday season is typically the busiest period for the industry.Some local health departments require restaurants to set up outdoor dining tents or structures that have no more than two walls. Others want three sides of tents to remain open.Credit…Lyndon French for The New York TimesMaggiano’s Little Italy chain, which operates over 50 restaurants in the United States, typically would be filled with company parties and family celebrations at this time of year.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 18, 2020, 7:11 a.m. ETStocks close the week on an uncertain note.Catch up: Coinbase files for initial public offering.Restaurant chains are finding it difficult to navigate differing regulations.But because of various dining restrictions, 2020 would be different, executives at Brinker International, which owns Maggiano’s and Chili’s Grill and Bar, warned Wall Street analysts in September. “Our anticipation right now is we won’t see that same similar environment playing out,” said Joe Taylor, Brinker’s chief financial officer. This week, Brinker withdrew its guidance for the quarter as a number of its locations were again shut down.Still, in many ways, the large dine-in chains are better positioned for the new restrictions than they were in the spring.“There were so many unknown variables during the springtime,” said R.J. Hottovy, an analyst at the consulting firm Aaron Allen & Associates. “This time around, restaurant operators had a specific game plan in place.”Left with empty dining rooms, casual and upscale dining chains moved quickly to beef up or offer to-go options the first time around. They launched curbside pickup and signed on with food delivery partners like DoorDash and Grubhub. Some states loosened liquor laws, allowing chains to offer alcoholic beverages for takeout. And when restaurants were allowed to serve diners again, with restrictions, many rented tents or opened up patios to create outdoor seating.But chains saw uneven performance among their restaurants.By the end of summer, Olive Garden restaurants were averaging $70,000 in sales per week. But sales at the chain’s superstar restaurant in Times Square in New York, which was offering only takeout during the summer, plummeted to $17,500 per week, down from roughly $288,000 per week, executives of Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and The Capital Grille, told Wall Street analysts in September.Sales at the Olive Garden in Times Square plunged to $17,500 per week during the summer, when it was serving only takeout, down from roughly $288,000 per week.Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York TimesDarden’s stock, along with that of many restaurant companies, bounced back this fall and winter, partly on the success many have had in offering to-go or outdoor dining, as well as the expectation that diners will return in droves to eating out once vaccines become widely available in the United States.“Chain restaurants, like humans, are amazingly adaptable entities,” said Mr. Ryan of Kearney.Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the caipirinhas flowed freely and $135 Wagyu rib-eye steaks sizzled as they were delivered to diners under a tent at the Beverly Hills location of Fogo de Chão. The location was the chain’s busiest, but many of its other restaurants were also rebounding strongly.By early November, the chain, which in based in Plano, Texas, and was acquired in 2018 by the investment firm Rhone Capital, was making 93 percent of the revenues it had made at the same time last year and had hired back about 90 percent of the employees who had been furloughed earlier in the year. Sixteen of its restaurants located largely in states with fewer dining restrictions were seeing higher sales than those last year.But as states have put in new restrictions, Fogo de Chão has gone back to its earlier playbook. It is moving food around and a few weeks ago reached out again to landlords to negotiate lease payments.Many large chains, including Olive Garden, saw uneven performance among their restaurants during the pandemic.Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York TimesThe once-bustling tent in Beverly Hills sits empty after health officials shut down outdoor dining in Los Angeles County for three weeks. About 2,300 miles away in a suburb of Detroit, another tent sits empty. Fogo de Chão had to remove three sides of the tent, per local health regulations, and now has to figure out a way to add barriers to block the freezing winds.But inside a cozy “Winter Wonderland”-themed tent in Rosemont, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, where restaurants need only two side panels open, customers are able to nosh on shrimp cocktails and sip on bottles of South American wine every night as they sit around heaters and under twinkling lights with Christmas music spilling through speakers.In an effort to keep as many workers employed as possible, Fogo de Chão is offering to shift some employees from locations that are temporarily closed to ones that are thriving, including those in Las Vegas, Orlando, Dallas and Rosemont.“Our goal is to keep our employees employed through the holidays,” Mr. McGowan said. “Our hope is that in January we can open up our patios and tents in parking lots again. And then, the vaccine will come and hopefully, by March or April, we’re back to some sort of normal.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUnemployment Claims Show Impact of Layoffs as Virus Surges“It’s going to be a challenging few months,” one economist says. A new pandemic relief bill from Congress could soften the blow.Vacant retail shops in Columbus, Ohio. The rate of jobless claims has been rising as coronavirus cases remain high across the country.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2020, 6:25 p.m. ETThe surge in coronavirus cases is rippling through the economy, forcing employers to lay off workers at an extraordinarily high rate even as new vaccines and the possibility of more federal aid offer hope for next year.The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance remained elevated last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. After dropping earlier in the fall, claims have moved higher, dwarfing the pace of past recessions.Consumer caution, coupled with new restrictions on business activity like indoor dining, has pummeled the hospitality industry, lodging, airlines and other service businesses. The debut of a coronavirus vaccine offers the prospect of relief, but until mass inoculations begin next year, the economy will remain under pressure.“Businesses are closing, and as a result, we are seeing job losses mount — and that’s exactly what we were fearful of going into the winter,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “It’s going to be a challenging few months, no doubt.”Already, the pace of retail sales has dipped, as has the rate of overall economic growth. Few expect coronavirus cases to ease this winter, further holding back economic activity, but progress on a new aid bill on Capitol Hill could soften the blow.Last week brought 935,000 new claims for state benefits, compared with 956,000 the previous week. Adjusted for seasonal variations, last week’s figure was 885,000, an increase of 23,000.There were 455,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for part-time workers, the self-employed and others ordinarily ineligible for jobless benefits. That total, which was not seasonally adjusted, was up 40,000 from the week before.The move to limit business and consumer activity by government authorities was evident in the new data. In Illinois, which banned indoor dining on Nov. 20, claims rose by over 35,000. In California, where restrictions went into effect on Dec. 3, new filings jumped by nearly 24,000.At the end of November, more than 20 million workers were collecting unemployment benefits under state or federal programs, Labor Department data indicates. Although the unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent in November from a high of 14.7 percent in April, the persistent layoffs highlight the economic fragility of many Americans.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 17, 2020, 4:35 p.m. ETThe Washington Post has 3 million digital subscribers.Coinbase, a top cryptocurrency company, files for initial public offering.Amazon wrongfully fired a worker in retaliation for organizing, a labor agency says.“We are not moving in the right direction,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “With the looming expiration of benefits, it’s even more worrisome.”The pain in the labor market is particularly acute for less-skilled workers, whose jobs and finances have been hit much harder than those of more affluent Americans.The S&P 500, the Dow Jones industrials and the Nasdaq composite index closed at record highs Thursday, capping a strong rally in recent weeks. Initial public offerings have been white-hot, minting thousands of paper millionaires in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.The housing market, too, has been robust, propelled by low interest rates that make mortgages more affordable as city dwellers escape to the suburbs.Total wages and salaries have bounced back to where they before the pandemic, at $9.6 trillion a month, after dipping below $8.7 trillion at the depths of the recession in the spring. But the proportion of Americans in the labor force remains well below where it was a year ago, underscoring the deep hole the economy is slowly working its way out of.Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress continued talks on Thursday on another pandemic relief bill, something that economists have warned is overdue. Without action, two key programs for unemployed workers — Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provides extra weeks of aid after state benefits end — will expire this month, cutting off payments to millions.In addition to extending those programs, the $900 billion package is expected to include stimulus payments of $600 to individuals, a $300 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits, and rental and food assistance. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act, approved in March, has been credited with helping the economy survive the depths of the lockdown in many parts of the country last spring. But partisan battles in Washington have held up renewed federal assistance for months.Economists have warned that without a new aid package from Washington, economic growth could be flat in the first quarter of 2021. What’s more, the abrupt end of unemployment benefits for millions could put a further crimp in consumer spending.Data released on Wednesday showed a 1.1 percent drop in retail sales in November, a disappointing start to the crucial holiday season. Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, expects economic growth to be weak for the next few months before picking up later in 2021.“Until we get a lot of people vaccinated, the economy will face a difficult test,” he said. “I don’t know if we will see an outright contraction or the loss of jobs, but the pace of improvement will slow markedly.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFed Leaves Rates Unchanged and Commits to Ongoing Bond PurchasesCentral bank officials left rates near-zero at their December meeting and tied bond buying to their employment and price goals.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, said Wednesday that the central bank will keep interest rates near zero to support the economy as coronavirus cases surge nationwide, adding that “a full economic recovery is unlikely until people are confident that it is safe to re-engage in a broad range of activities.”CreditCredit…Al Drago for The New York TimesDec. 16, 2020Updated 5:26 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials pledged to help the economy through the painful pandemic era, making clear at their final meeting of the year that the central bank would continue cushioning businesses and households by keeping interest rates at rock bottom and buying government-backed debt for the foreseeable future.The Fed’s chair, Jerome H. Powell, said at a news conference after the meeting that the central bank would keep its effort to bolster demand going “for some time,” adding that the “the next few months are likely to be very challenging.”The Fed cut interest rates to near-zero in March and has been buying about $120 billion in government-backed debt each month to soothe markets and help shore up growth. The central bank explicitly tied its bond-buying program to its goals of full employment and stable inflation in its December policy statement. The move suggested that the Fed expected to continue its purchases for some time, given how far the economy is from meeting those goals.The committee said the Fed would continue to increase its holdings of Treasury securities at the current pace “until substantial further progress has been made toward the committee’s maximum employment and price stability goals.”Mr. Powell said the policy decisions were intended to show that the Fed would “deliver powerful support to the economy until the recovery is complete.”He used his post-meeting remarks to paint a picture of a bifurcated economy, one in which many businesses and households face acute economic pain in the near-term, coupled with the expectation that the economy would snap back once vaccines were widely available — a development that he guessed could come about as soon as midyear.The United States could then see a long period of unbroken growth, Mr. Powell predicted, signaling that he and his colleagues were prepared to leave rates low for years on end as they try to return the labor market and broader economy to full strength.Government policies are “trying to work together to try to create a bridge across this economic chasm that was created by the pandemic, and for many Americans, that bridge is there, and they’re across it,” he said.“But there’s a group for which they don’t have a bridge yet,” Mr. Powell added, suggesting later that more help from Congress is needed to help fill the gap. “It’s the 10 million people who lost their jobs, it’s the people who may lose their homes. You see the many, many millions of Americans who are waiting in food lines in their cars these days.”He said the economy would need the Fed’s support for some time because while officials expect it to grow at a healthy clip starting in the middle of next year, “it is going to be a while before we really are back to the levels of labor market conditions that we had early this year.”The central bank’s summary of economic projections, released Wednesday, underlined Mr. Powell’s patient point. They showed that Fed officials had a slightly more optimistic outlook for growth and unemployment at the end of 2020 and in coming years than they had been in September. The central official now sees unemployment declining to 5 percent in 2021, versus a previous prediction of 5.5 percent, and sees gross domestic product coming in at 4.2 percent versus 4 percent.Despite that upgrade, the median Fed official continued to project interest rates near-zero through the end of 2023, demonstrating the central bank’s plan to move glacially coming out of the crisis.While the Fed promised to do what it could to help the economy, Mr. Powell also stressed its limitations. He repeated his call for more fiscal stimulus, saying that the continuing rise in virus cases and the lapse in funding for several programs that were helping households and businesses stay afloat posed challenges.The Coronavirus Outbreak More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story$900 Billion Pandemic Relief Deal Takes Shape: Live Business UpdatesHow Are You Managing the Holidays in a Pandemic?Dec. 16, 2020, 11:31 a.m. ETDec. 16, 2020, 11:31 a.m. ETCredit…Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe economic upheaval caused by the pandemic is making this a very unusual holiday season.Millions have lost jobs and face the imminent loss of federal unemployment benefits. For many, plans for travel and shopping outings have been upended because of health restrictions or financial hardship. For those with the opportunity to take on extra hours or seasonal work, there may be an incentive to do so.How are you celebrating differently this year? What economic or personal choices have you had to make in observing the holidays? Are you cutting back on meals — or adjusting your charitable giving? We’d like to know about your situation and your plans.We may reach out to you individually to chat some more about these questions, so please let us know if you’d be willing to share additional details with us.We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first.
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