The Wall Street Journal - 19.03.2020

** THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2020 ~ VOL. CCLXXV NO. 65 WSJ.com HHHH$4.

DJIA19898.92g1338.46 6.3% NASDAQ6989.84g4.7% STOXX 600279.66g3.9% 10-YR. TREAS.g2 17/32 , yield 1.259% OIL$20.37g$6.58 GOLD$1,477.30g$47.60 EURO$1.0916 YEN108.

Gray & Christmas Inc., an out-

placement firm. That count

doesn’t include job cuts at

bars and restaurants in more

than a dozen states and some

cities that face restrictions on

operations.

In Texas, 60 employees

working on the now-canceled

South by Southwest festival

were laid off, according to a

state filing.

Ryan Choura, owner of his

namesake events and tenting

company in the Los Angeles

area, said he shifted almost 140

full-time employees to part

time as clients canceled or

postponed events, such as the

Coachella Valley Music and Arts

Festival. Other employees at

the company have been laid off.

Union Square Hospitality

Group—a New York-based com-

pany led by Danny Meyer that

runs the well-known Union

Please turn to page A

No Lucky

Charms but

Lots of Okra

iii

If you’re late to

the supermarket,

pickings are slim

BYJOEFLINT

ANDANNIEGASPARRO

Desperate times call for

desperate measures.

That’s what Edwin Se says

he was thinking when he

grabbed three cans of cream

of mushroom condensed soup

and two cans of sardines at a

Ralphs supermarket in the

Miracle Mile section of Los

Angeles on Saturday.

The next morning, Mr. Se

was back outside Ralphs wait-

ing for it to open, in hopes of

finding something he liked

better for waiting out a pan-

demic.

The coronavirus and the

need to prepare for it are seri-

Please turn to page A

another to have this uncer-

tainty,” said Ms. de Chabert-Ost-

land, who is also traveling with

her niece, Abigail Bravi, 26. “It’s

not that we’re in danger. But it’s

that we’re not where we need to

be, with our families.”

As the virus that causes

Covid-19 spreads, Americans in

Cambodia to Morocco, Chile to

Spain have been trapped, caught

far from home as governments

trying to contain it have sealed

borders and prohibited flights

from coming and going.

U.S. football players are

stranded in Honduras, a couple

is stuck in the Amazon and a sa-

fari-goer from Los Angeles is

trying to get out of Africa. Trav-

elers and students from a hand-

ful of other countries are also

scrambling to get home, after

Australia, Indonesia, New Zea-

land, Norway and the United

Arab Emirates this week urged

them to return as soon as possi-

ble. Singapore also told students

overseas to consider making

Please turn to page A

LIMA, Peru—It was supposed

to have been what the American

family called “a bucket list” trip

for Lesley Bravi, 77 years old,

whose husband had died last

year: A trip to Peru with rela-

tives to see the 15th-century

Inca citadel of Machu Picchu and

Lake Titicaca.

But on Monday, a week into

her trip, an email came from the

U.S. Embassy in Lima, telling

Ms. Bravi and her daughter,

Kathleen de Chabert-Ostland,

that they had to get out of Peru

fast. With the coronavirus pan-

demic on the march, Peru had

declared a state of emergency,

enacted a two-week mandatory

quarantine and announced air

travel out of the country would

halt by midnight.

By the time they tried to

travel, flights had been

grounded.

“We’re distraught. It’s one

thing to be on your own soil, but

BYRYANDUBE,JUANFORERO

ANDALISTAIRMACDONALD

When cases of the new cor-

onavirus began emerging sev-

eral weeks ago in California,

Washington state and other

pockets of the country, U.S.

public-health officials worried

this might be The Big One,

emails and interviews show.

The testing program they

rolled out to combat it,

though, was a small one.

Limited testing has

blinded Americans to the scale of the out-

break so far, impeding the nation’s ability to

fight the virus through isolating the sick and

their contacts, public-health officials say. As

of Wednesday evening, about 7,800 people in

the U.S. had tested positive,

data compiled by Johns Hop-

kins University show, but the

Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention had reported

only about 32,000 tests con-

ducted at its facilities and

other public-health labs. The

CDC last updated its data on

Tuesday, its website shows,

leaving out an expected up-

tick in testing in recent days.

Limited testing is also

keeping patients like Justin

LaBor in the dark, despite

recent improvements. Mr.

LaBor, 36, said he went to

the emergency room at AtlantiCare Regional

Medical Center in Pomona, N.J., Monday

with a fever and dry cough, symptoms typi-

cal in a coronavirus infection. Doctors admit-

Please turn to page A

ByChristopher Weaver,

Betsy McKay

andBrianna Abbott

THE

CORONAVIRUS

PANDEMIC

Car makers shut North

American factories, B

U.S. looks to new tools to

fight fallout, A

The Middle Seat: How life

has changed in the air, A

Lockdowns for Virus

Trap Travelers Abroad

Wild Rush for Cash Rattles Markets

Dow sinks over 6%,

closing below 20000;

oil plumbs 18-year low;

bonds walloped

down the dangers of the virus

until recently, compared the ef-

fort against the virus to fight-

ing a war. “I view it in a sense,

a wartime president,” he said.

“That’s what we’re fighting. It’s

a very tough situation.”

The Republican president

said the White House would

be invoking the Defense Pro-

duction Act, “just in case we

need it.” That act, first passed

Please turn to page A

rately said they had tested

positive for the illness, the

first congressmen to be hit by

Covid-19.

The State Department said

it is suspending routine visa

services in most countries

world-wide in response to the

outbreak of the new coronavi-

rus, and Mr. Trump outlined

plans to close the border with

Canada to nonessential traffic.

Mr. Trump, who had played

WASHINGTON—Senate law-

makers turned their full atten-

tion to the Trump administra-

tion’s proposal for $1 trillion in

spending to combat the corona-

virus outbreak, including aid for

airlines and direct payments to

U.S. households, after passing a

paid-leave bill that President

Trump signed into law late

Wednesday.

The urgent work in the Sen-

ate came as the coronavirus

toll crossed a grim milestone,

with more than 200,000 con-

firmed cases world-wide—and

more than 8,800 deaths—

along with growing job losses.

Two lawmakers, Reps. Mario

Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) and Ben

McAdams (D., Utah), sepa-

BySiobhan Hughes,

Kate Davidson

andAndrew Duehren

Debate Stirs Over Stimulus Plan

A rush for cash shook the

financial system Wednesday,

forcing investors to sell nearly

everything they could: Stocks

dropped more than 5%, oil was

crushed to levels not seen

since the months after the

Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks

and even risk-free government

bonds were battered.

The moves suggest inves-

tors might be moving from

market turmoil to a new, more

troubling liquidation phase.

Short-term money markets at

the heart of the financial sys-

tem—close substitutes for

cash—were strained and large

companies have drawn heavily

on credit facilities while they

have them.

The selling sent the Dow

Jones Industrial Average down

1,338.46 points, or 6.3%, to

19898.92, its first close below

20000 in more than three

years. The blue-chip index,

which dropped more than

2,300 points earlier in the ses-

sion, has fallen by about a

third in just the past month.

The selloff continued in the

futures market Wednesday

night and in Asia early Thurs-

day. S&P 500 and Dow futures

were both down 4.9% late in

the evening. Hong Kong’s Hang

Seng Index was down 4.8%,

the Shanghai Composite was

down 3% and Japan’s Nikkei

wasdown0.7%.

Wednesday’s slide crushed

Please turn to page A

BYPAULJ.DAVIES

Wave of Layoffs Socks

Workers Nationwide

Employers are cutting shifts,

suspending work and starting

to lay off workers as the new

coronavirus devastates busi-

ness across the country.

Companies from restaurant

operators to wedding caterers

have started to let workers go

as they ratchet down opera-

tions. Many firms have moved

cautiously to date, furloughing

employees and moving workers

to part-time status. But for

many companies, economists

said, layoffs are likely next.

More than 3,600 people,

most of them from entertain-

ment and leisure industries,

have been laid off in the U.S.

due to the pandemic, accord-

ing to new data released

Wednesday from Challenger,

ByMicah Maidenberg,

Chip Cutter

andRachel Feintzeig

America Needed Tests.

The Government Failed.

A series of blunders blinded the U.S. to the outbreak’s scale

30-YEAR

1.888%

10-YEAR

1.259%

TWO-YEAR

0.522%

THREE-MONTH

0.185%

COPPER

S&P 500

–26%

DJIA

–30%

NASDAQ

–22%

RUSSELL 2000

–41%

CRUDE

–67%

GOLD

–3%

–23%

YieldsYTD ChangeYTD ChangeYTD

WSJ DOLLAR

INDEX

+7%

Two-year

Three-month

10-year

30-year

S&P

RUSSELL

NASDAQCOMPOSITE

DOWINDUSTRIALS

GOLD

COPPER

CRUDEOIL

WSJDOLLARINDEX

TREASURYS

–%–%

–%–%

–%–  %–

%+    +   

++%

INDEXESANDCOMMODITIES,PCT.CHG.

TREASURYYIELDS,PCT.-PT.CHG.

+0.35 –0.

–24% 0 +2%

Treasury scale inverted to show

yields rising as prices fall.

Treasury yields of various maturities had been falling together as demand

rose for the safety of U.S. government debt. But in the recent rush to

cash, shorter-term Treasurys are now gaining favor.

Cumulative change on Wednesday from a day earlier,

15-minute intervals, nonconcurrent time frames

Sources: FactSet (yields, stock indexes, commodities); Dow Jones Market Data (WSJ Dollar Index)

Long-andshort-term

debthavediverged

Thedollarhas

climbedasthe

costtoborrow

U.S.currency

hasrisen.

 Fed to backstop money-

market mutual funds............ A

 ECB unveils surprise bond-

buying plan............................... A

Oracle is the #

Enterprise Applications vendor in

North America

based on market share and revenue.

oracle.com/applications

IDC Worldwide Semiannual SoftwareTracker, April 2019, results for CY2018.

North America is the USA and Canada. Enterprise Applications refer to

the IDC markets CRM, Engineering, Enterprise Resource Management

(including HCM, Financial, Enterprise Performance Management, Payroll,

Procurement, Order Management, PPM, EAM), SCM, and Production and

Operations Applications.

Per IDC’s

latest annual market share results,

S

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O R A C L E

CONTENTS

Business News.. B3,

Crossword.............. A

Equities....................... B

Heard on Street. B

Life & Arts...... A13-

Markets..................... B

Middle Seat.......... A

Opinion.............. A17-

Sports........................ A

Technology............... B

U.S. News............. A2-

Weather................... A

World News.......... A

s2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

What’s

News

Senate lawmakersturned

their full attention to the

administration’s proposal

for $1 trillion in spending to

combat the coronavirus out-

break, including aid for air-

lines and direct payments to

U.S. households, after passing

a paid-leave bill that Trump

later signed into law.A

The U.S. escalatedits re-

sponse to the pandemic as

confirmed cases of Covid-

world-wide exceeded

200,000, with more than

8,800 deaths.A4, A6-A

The White Houseconsid-

ered an order expanding the

use of investigational drugs

against the coronavirus, but

FDA scientists objected.A

China’s recourseto its

vast state sector in response

to the coronavirus could

mark a retreat from a mar-

ket-oriented economy.A

Sanders is assessingthe

future of his campaign after

a third consecutive string

of losses to Biden in the

race for the Democratic

presidential nomination.A

A Pakistani courtis weigh-

ing the appeal of a man con-

victed and sentenced to death

nearly 18 years ago in the

murder of Wall Street Journal

reporter Daniel Pearl.A

A 5.7-magnitudeearth-

quake struck Utah, causing

power outages and damag-

ing infrastructure.A

A

rush for cashshook the

financial system, forcing

investors to sell nearly ev-

erything they could. Stocks

sank more than 5%, oil was

crushed to levels not seen

since the months after the

9/11 terrorist attacks and even

risk-free government bonds

were battered.A1, B1, B

The Fed saidlate

Wednesday that it would

launch a new lending facility

to backstop the money-mar-

ket mutual-fund sector.A

The ECB unveileda

nearly $819 billion bond-

buying program aimed at

shielding the eurozone econ-

omy amid the pandemic.A

Employers are cutting

shifts, suspending work

and starting to lay off

workers as the coronavirus

devastates business.A

Detroit’s car makers

have agreed to temporarily

shut plants in the U.S., Mex-

ico and Canada in a bid to

limit the virus’s spread.B

The administrationis

brushing aside calls to put

broad import tariffs on

hold, despite pleas from

the business community.A

Fannie Mae andFreddie

Mac are suspending fore-

closures and evictions of

homeowners who are be-

hind on their mortgages.A

Playboy magazine will

end its print run in the U.S.

after nearly seven decades.B

Business&Finance

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