USA: Biden calls on N.Y. Gov. Cuomo to resign over sexual harassment allegations

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo makes a statement denying he made inappropriate sexual advances in this screengrab taken from a pre-recorded video released by his office in New York on Tuesday. (Office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo/Reuters)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting pressure Tuesday to resign, including from U.S. President Joe Biden and other onetime Democratic allies, after an investigation found he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers.

"I think he should resign," Biden told reporters Tuesday, echoing the sentiments of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and New York's two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, all Democrats.

Note EU-Digest: The President should be spending far more time on real important issues facing the US, rather than catering to a "womens lib" movement, which seems to have gone on steroids in America.

Read more at: Biden calls on N.Y. Gov. Cuomo to resign over sexual harassment allegations | CBC News

USA: Wall Street - America's Monopoly Headquarters: Wall Street caps best week since 1974 on latest Fed stunner - "fake optimism on steroids"

Wall Street closed out its best week in 45 years on Thursday after the Federal Reserve launched its latest titanic effort to support the economy through the coronavirus outbreak.

The central bank announced programs to provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to households, local governments and businesses as the country tips into what economists say may be the worst recession in decades.

It’s the latest unprecedented move by the Fed, which has rushed to ensure cash gets to parts of the economy that need it after markets got snarled by a rush of investors pulling cash out of the system.
The stock market is not the economy, and that distinction has become even more clear this week.

The S&P 500 rose 1.4% Thursday, the same day the government announced 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as layoffs sweep the nation. For the week, the S&P 500 jumped 12.1%, its best performance since late 1974. Markets will be closed for Good Friday.

Stock investors are continuously looking ahead to where the economy will be a few months or more in the future. From mid-February through late March, they sent stocks down by a third on expectations that a steep recession was imminent, before the economy really began to crunch.

In the last few weeks, though, investors have sent the market back up more than 20% following promises for massive aid from the Fed, other central banks and governments around the world, even as evidence piles up that the recession fears were prescient.

This week, some investors have begun to look ahead to the economy possibly reopening amid signs the outbreak may be peaking or plateauing in several of the world’s hardest hit areas.

Note EU-Digest: "Wall Street once again lives up to its reputation, but this time the "Monopoly optimism" could very well turn into the destruction of the US financial system as we know it."  

Read more at: Wall Street caps best week since 1974 on latest Fed stunner | WNWO

The Corona Virus: Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump’s Failures - by David Frum

I don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up says the Atlantic in a very factual piece by Donald Frum.

"The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault.

The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault.

That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too.

Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault.

The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault. H

For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump.
Trump is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

The fact are as follow: the coronavirus emerged in China in late December. The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak on January 3. The first confirmed case in the United States was diagnosed in mid-January. Financial markets in the United States suffered the first of a sequence of crashes on February 24. The first person known to have succumbed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the United States died on February 29. The 100th died on March 17. By March 20, New York City alone had confirmed 5,600 cases. Not until March 21—the day the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services placed its first large-scale order for N95 masks—did the White House begin marshaling a national supply chain to meet the threat in earnest. “What they’ve done over the last 13 days has been really extraordinary,” Jared Kushner said on April 3, implicitly acknowledging the waste of weeks between January 3 and March 21".

Bottom-line: Donald Trump and his administration can only be qualified as "incompetence on steroids"

EU-Digest

USA: State of the Union 2020: Trump addresses the nation - propaganda on steroids

This speech will be remembered for the bitter partisanship underlying it. From the snubbed handshake of Pelosi by Trump, to the awarding of the presidential Medal of Freedom to a man who has professionally insulted people, especially women, for decades; to the instantly viral clip of Pelosi ripping up Trump’s partisanship underlying it. Trump’s speech, we learned more tonight about the state of America’s disunion than anything else.

Read more: State of the Union 2020 live updates: Trump addresses the nation