Rolando Pérez lives in a homeless shelter. His cell phone service was recently disconnected because he was unable to make his bill payments. And his son Christopher can’t log into remote classes because the family doesn’t have access to WiFi. But every morning at 5 a.m., Pérez drives his van to the Brooklyn Terminal Market in Canarsie to pick up hundreds of dollars of fresh fruits and vegetables, which he sells on the street in East New York.
“In this area, I am the only produce vendor,” says Pérez. That’s not far from the truth.
Anna and Rolando Pérez at their produce stand in East New York
Located just a few miles away from the world’s fine dining epicenter, the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn is one of the city’s food swamps, a designation for an area that has more access to fast food, liquor stores, and convenience stores than it does healthy food options. The neighborhood is littered with delis and bodegas that have mostly packaged goods and, if they’re lucky, a few baskets with some bananas and onions.
Food swamps are also some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, so ordering groceries on Instacart or even going to the area’s sole grocery store once a week to fill up the refrigerator is not an option. It’s a cash economy here, and sustenance is acquired one puzzle piece at a time. Street vendors, with their more accessible lower prices, are particularly essential in these neighborhoods.
Street vendor Roberto Cruz works at a produce stand owned by Sabina Morales Hernandez in Corona, Queens
The selection of produce at Hernandez’s stand
“We go out every day and are exposed on the street. But we feel that we all have a duty to work,” says Sabina Morales Hernandez, who runs a produce stand in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, another food swamp. Street vendors all over the city have seen their clientele dwindle due to fears over COVID-19. Hernandez sends money to relatives in Mexico every month, and is now overextended. For Pérez, what used to be $400 worth of gross sales a day is now $100.
“Everyone is afraid to leave their house,” says Anna Pérez, who has been married to Rolando for 25 years and runs the produce stand with him. “I’m afraid, sure, but we’ve taken all the necessary precautions.”
Rolando Pérez does not qualify for any government aid. Although he is an American citizen, his wife is a Honduran immigrant, which eliminates them from receiving relief checks. And though he has a mobile food vendor’s license, his cash-based microbusiness hardly has the banking history required to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program.
Many street vendors are in similar positions, according to Carina Kaufman-Guttierez, deputy director of the Street Vendors Project, a 2,000-member support and advocacy organization for mobile vendors in New York City. To get a license to sell, vendors only need a sales tax ID and not a social security number, she says. “This leads to a discussion about how many undocumented people are left out from benefits and federal aid,” Kaufman-Guttierez says.
Street vendor Roberto Cruz puts on gloves before handling produce
While many street food vendors have deserted their posts out of a combination of fear of contracting COVID-19 and plummeting sales numbers, some say that they have no choice but to come to work every day, despite the constant exposure to the elements, harassment from police over their locations, and now, the novel coronavirus.
“I would estimate 5 to 10 percent of vendors are still working,” says Kaufman-Guttierez. Some members of the Street Vendors Project report sales decreases of up to 80 to 90 percent.
On the corner of Junction Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue, under the rumbling trains overhead and next to vendors selling face masks and gloves — the area is one of the hardest hit by COVID-19 cases in the city — Hernandez and her assistants are on the street as early as 7 a.m. to hawk fresh produce. These days, the business is slow, but the deals are still good: three avocados for two dollars, which would normally net just one at a supermarket. A head of lettuce, which could be $2.50 at the store, is a dollar at the stand. Every penny counts in a neighborhood where over 50 percent of the population lives near the poverty line.
“I try to do my best to have the best prices on fresh fruit,” says Hernandez.
Hernandez sells on the street for 12 hours, but her work day doesn’t end there. As the sun sets, she’ll drive with her 21-year-old granddaughter Areli Valencia to the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market in the Bronx to reload. Hernandez is like a computer, her entire inventory seemingly loaded into her brain as she inspects cases of produce for quality and then counts off the number that she needs: Mangoes have been moving briskly, so she buys 30 cases; cucumbers less so, but these ones are particularly pretty, she says, so she takes three cases.
Hernandez and her granddaughter build each pallet by hand
Hernandez inspects all the produce before buying
Hernandez moves the boxes of produce from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m.
Most street vendors need to work with cash
The two women will work from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m., going from vendor to vendor, and buying up each one’s specialty. Since they’re a smaller operation, the two move boxes of produce and build each one of the pallets by hand, all while bundled up for the near-freezing conditions inside the refrigerated warehouses. “You get sleepy. You get cold,” says Hernandez as she inspected a box of organic bananas. They sell well, too, so she purchased 18 cases.
As the truck rolls up in the early morning hours to pick up the pallets of fresh produce that Hernandez has spent hours building, she’ll head to her home in Corona to sleep for a few hours before hitting the streets again to sell.
“We have to survive, to help our families,” says Hernandez.
You’re getting an open street! And you’re getting an open-street! But the rest of you … not yet.
The city will start taking 100 miles of roadway back from drivers for socially responsible recreation with about seven miles, focusing on parks beginning on Monday, the mayor said on Friday.
Hizzoner vaguely mentioned that the new open roadways would be “enforced,” but a subsequent press release from his office did not include any mention of an NYPD role in the program. An earlier open-streets pilot program overseen by the police department was scrubbed after 11 days, as the NYPD said it required too much of their manpower.
It is unclear if that problem has been solved. The agency had testified at a City Council hearing as recently as last Friday that the NYPD could not undertake an open-space program. A spokesperson for City Hall later told Streetsblog that the NYPD will monitor the first wave of open streets, but the limitations on drivers will be enforced with barriers and signage.
For now, here’s the breakdown of the total 7.1 miles:
These roadways will be off-limits to cars inside parks:
These roadways will be off-limits to cars adjacent to parks:
“The focus on streets near parks because of the warmer weather — we want to expand parks, if you will,” said the mayor, who said 40 miles of roadways would be opened up in May, towards the 100-mile goal. “That’s the beginning and we will expand from there.”
The mayor said the roadways would have “proper enforcement…with vigilant eyes,” but did not specify the exact role of the NYPD — and offered contradictory information about whether New York would continue to use the model of the NYPD’s original open space pilot, which was quickly scrubbed because it required too many cops, or whether the city would use the Oakland model of simply putting up “Closed to Thru-Traffic” signs.
“We don’t want to open up space and it becomes a gathering space or we open up space and there isn’t enforcement or cars can still access it,” the mayor said in his press conference (though not in his press release). “That was a critique I had about other parts of the country. This will be well protected and well regulated space, which is why we have to do it in phases. But a family will feel very, very comfortable.”
Despite the official nature of the announcement, a lot remains in flux — especially the role that community groups are expected to play. An email was apparently sent out to community boards that suggested an enhanced — and possibly unworkable — role for neighborhood groups:
“It is going to be very hard to open streets in NYC with all the rules the city is creating,” Beadle said. ‘[The plan] requires local community organizations essentially adopt and manage any closed street. Just close the damn streets to cars! Create super blocks.”
The City Hall press release did reveal some details:
Pedestrians and cyclists can use the roadbed of each open street.
No through traffic will be permitted, with remaining vehicle traffic limited to local deliveries, pick-ups/drop-offs, necessary city service vehicles, and emergency vehicles only.
These drivers are alerted to be hyper-vigilant and to drive at 5 miles per hour along these routes.
Organizations and community boards wishing to have other New York City streets considered for the open streets program should reach out to openstreets@dot.nyc.gov or fill out the online survey here.
The release quoted many city officials and members of the City Council but, tellingly, no member of the NYPD.
The mayor’s initial list will certainly disappoint residents of Jackson Heights and Corona, who rallied for 34th Avenue — a redundant roadway that parallels Northern Boulevard — to be included. Two dozen neighbors created open space as a demonstration earlier this week, blocking cars at 90th Street, without the need for police.
Residents of the Rockaways were also disappointed by the initial list:
How can @NYCMayor completely exclude #Rockaways when people are already seeing out open space like the beach? We need STREETS closed to vehicles! We've already fought hard for parks closed to vehicles!
— Make Queens Safer (@MakeQueensSafer) May 1, 2020
And Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who has called for Broadway between Times Square and Soho to be opened for pedestrians, did not get her request on the initial list. But Trottenberg hinted that it may come soon, given her emphasis that “business improvement districts and neighborhood groups” would be involved in securing the open space.
But residents near Prospect Park will likely be pleased. Parkside Avenue — on the park’s very crowded eastern edge — and even a part of Prospect Park West is expected to be opened as public space. (The four-block Prospect Park West segment may require enforcement, as that one-way southbound roadway is used by many drivers.)
The inclusion of the roadway along Carl Schurz Park in Upper Manhattan is particularly ironic, given that the mayor’s home — Gracie Mansion — is inside that park. The mayor was confronted last weekend by a Brooklynite who was angered that the mayor is regularly driven 11 miles from the mansion to Prospect Park so he can recreate. Perhaps he will now use East End Avenue.
Even if not, the area’s council member, Ben Kallos, shared his support.
“East End Avenue is a perfect street to open exclusively to pedestrians,” he said. “Once the street is open to pedestrians, this will relieve the pressure off our local parks and give everyone the space they need to the practice social distancing outdoors correctly.”
The announcement could be seen as a small start, but it does come as the Department of Transportation has repeatedly said it is straining to fulfill its mission during the COVID-19 crisis, with a staff scattered by the virus.
“Our agency’s ability to do the requisite planning, traffic studies, and fieldwork needed for projects is significantly hampered,” spokesman Brian Zumhagen said on Thursday in a question not related to today’s announcement.
It’s also important to point out that Oakland’s much-lauded plan, announced on April 9, to create 74 miles of open streets that are off-limits to thru-traffic has resulted in about 10 miles of roads so far.
The NYPD’s initial insistence of heavily staffing New York’s four initial open streets prompted an epic takedown by Streetsblog’s in-house satire band, the Speeders:
Moran Forman of Goldman Sachs, 33, in her home office in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York.
Source: Goldman Sachs
Each weekday morning, Moran Forman wakes up in her Chelsea apartment, takes a few steps to a spare bedroom and powers up the full might of Goldman Sachs on a curved LCD screen.
Forman, a 33-year old managing director who runs a team of seven traders dealing in equity index derivatives, says technology allows her to feel so connected to her coworkers and clients, she rarely misses being at Goldman's headquarters a few miles to the south.
"I could be anywhere in the United States right now, and my ability to communicate and manage my team would be similar," Forman said in a phone interview. "It's been amazing to see how much productivity has potentially even gone up during this period while everybody's still separated."
For decades, Wall Street has been a place rooted in vast physical rooms filled with tightly-packed rows of monitors, specialized phones called turrets and workstations operated (mostly) by men between the ages of 22 and 45. This culture survived every calamity, manmade and otherwise, to happen to institutional trading in the last 20 years: The shift to decimalization in stocks; the 9/11 attacks, the financial crisis, the rise of passive investing and Hurricane Sandy.
But now, after the coronavirus pandemic forced traders to work from home, Wall Street has gone virtual, setting off a cultural shift that is only beginning to be understood. As weeks at home stretch into months and traders get habituated to new tech platforms to stay connected, it's likely that Wall Street – which never before allowed traders to operate away from the floor – will be permanently changed by the coronavirus, according to traders, bank executives and the CEOs of tech vendors used by banks.
New normal
Working from home is now routine for Forman, a rising star at Goldman who was 8 months pregnant when she spoke to CNBC.
She leans on Symphony, a messaging platform for investment banks similar to Slack, to create chatrooms for internal teams and clients, and Zoom to host teleconference calls with Goldman traders and clients. On any given day, she has 50 chats open with hedge funds, asset managers and pensions seeking advice on the intricacies of placing huge trades, usually to hedge against losses or wager on volatility.
With all these workplace tools at her disposal, including a Goldman-issued Cisco phone that records conversations and lets her reach contacts at the press of a button, Forman said the transition has been easier than she would've imagined. It doesn't matter that colleagues are spread around the country, working from homes in Atlanta and Florida, as well as Goldman offices in Jersey City and Greenwich, Connecticut.
"Before you would've walked across the trading floor to communicate, and you kind of assumed that everyone knew what was happening because there was this assumption of knowledge transference that happens on the floor," Forman said. "You're now forced to be more systematic and efficient about communicating."
While companies have been investing in digital tools like Symphony for the past few years to keep up with a younger workforce used to excellent consumer technology, it's only now, amid the pandemic, that they have become crucial, said Ying Cao, director of digital strategy for London-based investment bank Barclays
"People were using it before, but you also had face-to-face," Cao said. "With a very distributed workspace, it's important to have a group of people in a single chat room who can see each other typing and share information in real time, rather than sending an email and you don't know when that person will reply."
The implications for remote work will be lasting, Cao said: "Once you are at home and you realize it's so easy to conduct business, you don't want to commute two hours a day just to have conversations with people."
Exhibit A for how the new Wall Street is operating is the industry's first-quarter results. Banks sent traders home in the second week of March as the pandemic was wreaking havoc, causing a historic surge in stock volatility and dislocations across credit markets. IT departments worked around the clock to equip thousands of traders for the task. But the five biggest U.S. investment banks posted their best trading quarter in nearly a decade as both bond and stock desks handily beat expectations.
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman marveled at the results, which coincided with ten of the highest-volume days for stocks on record.
"If you told me three months ago we could have 90% of employees out of the office and be functioning with the volumes we have had," Gorman said in an CNBC interview, "I would've said the probability of that being pulled off is close to zero, but it happened."
Reopening Wall Street
Now, as the discussion turns to when New York — the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic seeing a decline in coronavirus deaths in recent weeks — can begin to reopen, banks are beginning to plan for the return of workers.
It won't be business as usual. Banks could bring back up to half of their staff, but doing more than that will be hard as employees still need to maintain distance from each other.
Firms including Morgan Stanley are looking at keeping workers masked and leaving every other seat empty, and have even considered setting up plastic partitions between desks. Goldman is looking at installing infrared body scanners at building entrances, and banks including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are figuring out how to keep lobbies and elevators from becoming focal points of contagion.
"Some portion of our workforce won't need to come back to the office on a full-time basis anymore," said Bob Santella, CEO of IPC Systems, the leading maker of trading turrets for Wall Street. "There will be pressure to space people further at the office, and my expectation is that's going to be offset by a larger percentage of people working from home that weren't doing it."
This intermediate period could last 12 months or longer, Santella said, meaning that people will continue to rely on tech platforms rather than face-to-face contact. Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold, IPC has sold more than 10,000 licenses for "soft turrets" – cloud based telephones for remote work – or six to seven times more than in the past year.
David Gurle, CEO, Symphony
Source: Symphony
"People have become dependent on Symphony for their daily activities," Symphony CEO David Gurle said in interview. "It's an essential element of their business going forward because they don't think this is a one-off event, they realize that pandemics could be the new reality."
The Palo Alto, California-based start-up said that from January to March, message traffic on the network jumped 273% while daily active users rose 42%.
The story is similar for hedge funds, which have been using Microsoft Teams and Skype, according to Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group. His IT firm serves over 500 hedge funds with a combined $750 billion in assets under management. Even more than banks, hedge funds are likely to adopt a post-coronavirus model where workers don't need to be physically present, he said.
"It doesn't matter if you're a New York hedge fund or a Dallas hedge fund or a hedge fund in Minnesota, nobody's working from the office anymore," Grandi said.
Essential workers
It hasn't gone perfectly smoothly, however. Financial services has been deemed an essential business, and although 95% of investment bank staff at JPMorgan and Bank of America have been sent home, that means some workers never stopped going to the office. In March, senior trading executives at both of the banks have pressured staff on certain teams to come in, even as workers fell ill, according to multiple media reports.
There has always been value to having traders under one roof, after all. Transactions often take longer now as people wait for responses that used to be more immediate in person. A high yield trader who spots a dislocation in the debt of a company could tip off a nearby equity trader about a shorting opportunity, for instance. Mentoring junior traders will always be easier face to face.
But now, artificial intelligence bots can fill in the gaps created by remote work, said David Donovan, who spent 25 years in equity trading before joining Publicis Sapient as a consultant. For instance, a program could automatically alert traders about momentary trading opportunities in the same way that colleagues used to, he said.
Wall Street remains a bastion of men, particularly at the senior levels, and Goldman's Forman hopes that the ability to work from home will help address that. While banks have been hiring more women and minorities out of school, these people may stay in the industry longer if it evolves past the rules of the old trading floor.
Despite the advantages of working from home, Forman does admit to missing one aspect of the old Wall Street: There is a palpable buzz in the air of a trading floor at the start of trading at 9:30 a.m. as phones ring and conversations spike.
"Now, the difference between 9:28 a.m. and 9:32 a.m. is really nothing, you have to just kind of look at your screen and be like, 'Right, yeah, we opened'," Forman said. "I keep CNBC on just to remind myself about the flow of the day."
With help from Ben Lefebvre, Theo Meyer and Doug Palmer
Editor’s Note: Morning Energy is a free version of POLITICO Pro Energy's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
Quick Fix
— An expansion of the Fed's emergency lending program for coronavirus relief might offer help for some in the oil and gas industry.
— Exxon Mobil and Chevron will announce their first-quarter earnings today.
— Several Senate Democrats will send a letterto the Interior Department today opposing royalty relief for oil and gas companies.
GOOD MORNING, IT'S FRIDAY! I'm your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Check out the POLITICO Energy podcast— all the energy and environmental politics and policy news you need to start your day, in just five minutes. Listen and subscribe for free at politico.com/energy-podcast.
Thursday's trivia question seemed to trip up a lot of you: A Senate session was staffed entirely by women for the first time back on Nov. 10, 1999. Here's the Congressional Record for that day. But as Kellie Donnelly, currently at Lot Sixteen and formerly the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's chief counsel, noted, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins opened the Senate during a snow day back in 2016, where the parliamentarians, floor staff and pages were all women, too. Watch Murkowski's remarks from that day. For today: Who was the first president to fly in a jet specifically built for presidential use? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to [email protected].
Driving the Day
DOWN ON MAIN STREET: The Federal Reserve announced an expansion of the size and scope of businesses that will be eligible for its "Main Street" emergency lending program. Though broad and not specifically intended for the oil and gas industry, the changes could benefit several of the industry's heavily indebted small- to medium-size companies, as Pro's Victoria Guida and Zack Colman report.
What the Fed did: Under the Main Street program, the Fed will buy the majority of a four-year loan made by a bank to mid-size and small businesses. Thanks to the changes announced Thursday, companies with up to 15,000 employees or up to $5 billion in annual revenue can now qualify for those loans — up from 10,000 employees and $2.5 billion in revenue, Victoria reports. The central bank is also lowering the minimum loan size to $500,000 from $1 million, and under the changes, lenders will be "able to apply their industry-specific expertise and underwriting standards to best measure a borrower's income."
How does oil factor in? The Trump administration has been weighing its options on how to help the struggling oil industry amid the coronavirus pandemic. Late last week, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called on Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to immediately establish a new lending facility to provide emergency liquidity for oil and gas businesses. Cruz said at the time that the Main Street programs were not "sufficiently structured" to support oil companies, in part because it placed restrictions on the size of loans for businesses with large amounts of debt.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told POLITICO that the changes announced Thursday were "clearly a reflection on what we've been advocating for" to help the energy industry. "Whether it's the president or Mnuchin or his team, there's a clear recognition that this sector of the U.S. economy is not just important for Alaska or Oklahoma or North Dakota or Texas," he said. "This was unequivocally the sector of the U.S. economy that drove us out of our last recession."
Firms like Continental Resources, which last week reportedly invoked an "act of God" clause to skirt oil deliveries to a refiner, and Occidental Petroleum, whose debt fell below investment grade in March, could be eligible under the revised conditions, said Andrew Park, a financial policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform.
In whose interests? Bharat Ramamurti, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren tapped for the congressionally appointed panel scrutinizing trillions of dollars in emergency lending, tweeted Thursday the expansion clearly lined up with the requests of the oil and gas industry. "That raises questions about how the changes promote the broader public interest — especially when these companies will still have no real obligation to retain or rehire their workers," he said. Ramamurti added to POLITICO: "A lot of the changes … seem to move this from temporary liquidity for companies hurt by Covid to a bailout of companies that were already in bad shape pre-Covid."
Oil and Gas
HOW LOW CAN IT GO? ExxonMobil and Chevron will announce earnings today, offering a deeper look at how U.S. oil companies are faring amid an unprecedented drop in fuel demand and oil prices. Oil production in the U.S. dropped to 12.1 million barrels a day as of April 24, according to the latest government statistics, down a million barrels from February and is all but certain to fall further in coming months as more producers shut in wells.
The numbers won't be great. ConocoPhillips on Thursday said it would cut production by 460,000 barrels a day starting in June after it reported a $1.7 billion loss for the quarter. And as bad as the numbers were, they still reflect a time in the first quarter when oil prices were still mainly in the relatively heady $40-$50 range and had yet to make their brief dive into negative territory.
There's also the question of what gets funded. European majors Shell and BP said they would slash spending on their oil programs amid steep earnings drops, but added they would continue plans to expand their renewable energy operations. Whether Exxon and Chevron make similar commitments remains to be seen. "The world has fundamentally changed," Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said in a video on the company’s website. Beurden told reporters after the earnings call that Shell does not expect a recovery of oil prices or demand in the medium term.
THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT? Economic downturns have weighed on oil demand in previous energy market busts, but no one was prepared for the coronavirus pandemic that wiped out 30 percent of the world's consumption. Now, with oil storage tanks around the world rapidly filling as producers race to shut down wells, there's little hope that the situation for companies will improve any time soon, Pro's Ben Lefebvre and Zack report this morning.
"It still remains a very complex system, but it does feel like this oil price crash is different," said Michael Webber, chief technology officer at Paris-based energy infrastructure company ENGIE and a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas-Austin.
WHEN ONE DROPS, THE OTHER RISES: As U.S. fuel demand has plummeted amid the coronavirus pandemic, crude oil inventories have risen sharply. Pro DataPoint's Patterson Clark breaks down petroleum product consumption vs. the crude oil held in tanks, transit and pipelines across the U.S.
CANARY CEO ASKS TRUMP TO LIFT STEEL TARIFFS: A prominent Trump donor who is also head of one of the nation's largest independent oil field services companies is urging the president to help his hard-hit sector by lifting tariffs on steel and other manufactured goods. "The impact of such tariffs on the products we rely on has always been significant, but it is now increasingly worrying as our margins shrink exponentially," Canary chief executive Dan Eberhart said in a letter on Thursday to Trump. "Our company is spending roughly $80,000 a month in direct and indirect payments on tariffs, and the total will likely top $1 million in 2020."
'New reality': Eberhart, who also has contributed to Republican congressional campaigns, said Canary's monthly tariff bill accounts for about 20 percent of the increased payments it is making each month. The remaining 80 percent is the result of higher prices charged by its suppliers because of the duties Trump has imposed on steel and Chinese goods.
On the Hill
DEMS WARN AGAINST ROYALTY RELIEF: Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall, are warning the Interior Department against seeking to provide relief from federal royalty payments for oil and gas production on federal lands amid the pandemic. "We adamantly oppose any plans to eliminate oil and gas operators' royalty obligations," said the senators, including Ed Markey, Ron Wyden and Cory Booker, in a letter to Secretary David Bernhardt today and shared with ME. "This 'relief' would gut the budgets of states that count on receiving 48 percent of those receipts to fund emergency response, infrastructure, education, and other critical state functions in the midst of a worsening public health and economic crisis."
The Democrats write that, should the department decide to move forward with a royalty relief program, it "should simultaneously enact a leasing moratorium to counteract the oversupply of oil and gas reserves." The letter lays out a series of questions for the department to respond to for the record, including how many operators have received relief and whether recipients committed to forgoing executive bonuses, shareholder dividends or other corporate payouts.
K STREET LAYS OUT RELIEF BILL PATH: The law and lobbying firm Hogan Lovells identified in a memo to clients this week that Trump, Mnuchin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be the "power players" who will need to respond to pressures from K Street and other lawmakers as they craft the next coronavirus relief legislation.
The oil and gas industry, for instance, "is likely to press for a federal rescue package in the wake of a dramatic decrease in the price of oil resulting from insufficient demand in the market and a dispute between OPEC and non-OPEC nations over production levels." House Democrats have their own priorities. "We expect the progressive wing of the caucus to push for concepts like a moratorium on mergers, as has been proposed by" Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the firm writes. "We also expect House Democrats to pursue pre-existing priorities such as federal spending on building infrastructure, deploying rural broadband, and fighting climate change."
Around the Agencies
I'M ON A VIRTUAL BOAT: Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is expected to attend a virtual conference later this month hosted by the National Marine Manufacturers Association. The NMMA said this week that Bernhardt will deliver the keynote remarks on Day 2 of the virtual "2020 American Boating Congress," which will be held May 13-14. Bernhardt "will outline steps the Trump administration is taking to reopen our nation's public lands and waters," according to a release.
Movers and Shakers
— John Morton, former senior director for energy and climate change on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, has joined new climate change advisory and investment firm Pollination. Morton will be a partner in the firm, building a team in D.C. and leading work on blended finance partnerships and innovative investments, "helping to mobilize institutional capital flows into climate and natural capital sectors." Most recently, Morton was architect and coordinator of the Climate Finance Partnership, an emerging markets climate investment fund.
— Former FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur joined Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy as a distinguished visiting fellow.
LONDON — One recent Friday, Nathan Bowen, a graffiti artist, was spray painting a boarded-up storefront in East London.
He was wearing a reflective vest, hoping any police officers who drove by would mistake him for a builder. But he still stood out. He was the only person on the whole street.
Mr. Bowen was not an essential worker, he acknowledged, but he said he was providing a necessary service, of sorts. “In this time, you need people like me to go out,” he said. “If no one’s doing it, the city has no vibe.”
Before the pandemic, London teemed with street artists and performers: Buskers sang to commuters on the Underground, street magicians entertained tourists, graffiti artists covered the city’s walls.
But now — with a few exceptions like Mr. Bowen — they are all gone. What has happened to the artists who used to add so much life? And when the pandemic is over, will they be able to go back out?
The Artist
The day that London went into lockdown, Mr. Bowen, 35, had a different reaction to the news from most others in the city. He was walking home from a friend’s house, he said, when he saw a storekeeper boarding up their windows.
“I just saw that blank board and thought, ‘Yeah! There’s going to be so many opportunities to paint,’” he said.
“For me, this lockdown works in reverse,” he added. “Everyone’s left the city now, so it’s time for the underworld to come through.”
The next day, he went to the store he’d seen and painted the boards with a construction worker in a face mask, holding open his jacket to reveal a thank-you message for the National Health Service.
Mr. Bowen has been going out every couple of days since, he said, and has been shocked to find that he appeared to be the only street artist out. “This lockdown’s a true test,” Mr. Bowen said. “You get all these graffiti guys going on about how they’re so anti-system, so radical, yet this comes around and I haven’t seen one bit of ‘graf.’ ”
Frontline, a British graffiti magazine, has been urging its readers to “stay home, stay safe,” since the lockdown began. Even Banksy, perhaps Britain’s most famous street artist, has resisted the urge to go out and paint an attention-grabbing mural. In April, he posted a picture on Instagram of some stencils he’d done around his bathroom with the message, “My wife hates it when I work from home.”
Mr. Bowen said that during the pandemic, he was only painting work with supportive messages for the National Health Service, Britain’s beloved state health care provider. He wanted to give hospital workers a boost at this time, he said, and he felt that pieces on other subjects would open him up to criticism for breaking the lockdown.
“This is proper street art, as it’s about communication — promoting positive messages that raise the spirits,” he said.
On a recent Friday afternoon, nobody stopped Mr. Bowen as he painted. A handful of joggers ran past, giving him a wide berth. Two police cars drove past.
The owner of the building did appear, Mr. Bowen said, but rather than chasing him off for property damage, the owner just asked him to add some balls to the painting to reflect the fact the building had been, before lockdown, an adult ball pit.
It looked like Mr. Bowen would finish the piece without a hitch, until he encountered a common problem for street artists in London: It started to rain. Mr. Bowen swore and huddled under an awning with his dog Klae (who also wore a reflective vest). He’d just have to come back and finish it tomorrow, he said.
The Busker
The last time that Kirsten McClure was busking in a London Underground station, in early March, she could feel a change was coming.
“People were wearing face masks for the first time,” the 52-year-old singer-songwriter said, in a telephone interview. “People in face masks don’t give you much money,” she added.
On March 21, Transport for London, the city’s public transportation agency, banned all buskers from its network.
“I was really surprised,” Ms. McClure said. “I didn’t think they’d shut it off. I had this fantasy that I’d go and play all these nice soothing tunes for medics going off shift. It was just that weird denial everyone’s had.”
Ever since, Ms. McClure, who said she usually made half her income from busking, has been staying at home with her husband and son. She was lucky that she still had income from her second job as an illustrator, she said. Some buskers she knew had started claiming unemployment benefits, she added.
She had seen one busker’s desperation at first hand when she went out to exercise and saw an accordionist playing next to a line of shoppers outside a grocery store. “It was pointless — absolutely pointless,” Ms. McClure said, “But that’s the busker’s mentality: You go where the footfall is.”
She threw the accordionist a coin, maintaining the recommended distance of two meters, or about six feet, she said. But the coin hit the ground and rolled straight back to her. “I thought, ‘This is awful! How do you actually give someone money without going in two meters?’”
Ms. McClure said that she had considered busking online — performing on a livestream and asking for donations — but had felt that it would be difficult to drum up enough attention. Instead, she has started teaching herself violin in case she is forced to wear a face mask when she returns to busking. “I thought it might be easier to play instrumentals, than sing with a mask,” she said.
She was optimistic, though, that the ban would not last long. Over recent weeks, Transport for London, which regulates busking on the subway, has sent its licensed buskers several emails telling them how to apply for emergency support from charities and saying that the service hoped to have them back soon, she said. Busking was also a vital component of the city, “a sign of it being happy and healthy,” she added.
“It’s going to be really good for people to see buskers out again, just to take their mind off things,” she said. “That’s what we do: distract and cheer them up.”
The Magician
Nathan Earl had two tricks in his routine before lockdown.
One was a staple of magic shows worldwide. He’d take solid silver rings and smash them into each other so that they suddenly linked. He liked to perform the trick with the help of a child from the audience drafted in to hold the ring, who would often look on with wonder at the feat.
The other was a card trick, in which he would pull a spectator’s chosen card from a deck set in an animal trap. He’d grab the card just before the trap’s jaws slammed shut.
Both tricks involved audience interaction, Mr. Earl, 24, said in a telephone interview. For the card trick, he’d stand alongside someone as they picked a card from the deck. “Obviously, people will be afraid of touching after the pandemic,” he said. “That’s what all street magicians are worried about.”
Social distancing could also have an impact on his street shows in another way, he said. “Magic relies on being a spectacle. If people are standing apart, it just looks like a rubbish show, and people walk through the gaps as well.”
“It’d be a mess,” he added.
Mr. Earl was not alone in his concerns about social distancing, according to Jay Blanes of the Westminister Street Performers’ Association. Some performers feared for their livelihood if they were banned from gathering crowds or if fewer tourists visited the city. “I think some people are being too optimistic,” Mr. Blanes said in a telephone interview, though he expressed hope that things would improve.
Mr. Earl said he hoped he could just get out on the streets as normal, and soon. He lived with his parents, he said, and was financially OK for now. “But if it goes on like this for a while, I’ll have to look at other options,” he said. He didn’t really want to contemplate stopping street magic, he added. He loved the freedom, he explained, and the feeling of community among the street magicians.
“It’d be really sad to stop,” Mr. Earl said. “The streets would be quite sterile without performers.”
Street art is the ultimate visual source of social commentary and the pandemic has lit a fire under the feet of muralists around the world.
“Soap Bear,” by the San Francisco-based artist Fnnch.Credit...Andrew Rettman
“Hippie Bear,” also by Fnnch.Credit...Andrew Rettman
Some works are humorous, even playful, like those done by the San Francisco-based artist Fnnch, whose paste-up images include his signature honey bears wearing face masks, and bright blue soap-dispenser bears, encouraging people to wash their hands. They can be found all over the city, in neighborhoods like Inner Richmond and Cow Hollow, on sidewalks and mailboxes. Other artists’ works are more serious, highlighting, for example, the importance of health care workers.
From Norway to Colorado, here are some places where Covid-19-inspired street art has cropped up.
Norway
In March, the artist Pobel returned to his home in Norway after traveling in the Peruvian jungle and found a mandatory lockdown. He was struck by people wearing masks, he said.
That’s how the idea for “The Lovers,” a mural of a young couple wearing bright blue face masks, was born. He spray-painted the image on a concrete wall on the main road in Bryne, after making a stencil drawing on cardboard.
“There’s a beautiful lamp above it, so at nighttime, it really lights up,” he said. His inspiration stemmed from hope. “Even though everyone has gone through struggles and hard times, there is still heart and love and compassion,” he said.
In Bergen, the street artist Pyritt painted a woman clad in a traditional Norwegian costume called a bunad, wearing a gold face mask. He named it “May 2020,” a nod to the country’s May 17 Constitution Day, which is celebrated with parades and has not been canceled since World War II. “A bunad is a very important part of the collective self-image,” said Christer Holm, who represents the artist, noting that this year there is a high probability that the celebrations won’t happen.
Pyritt has since painted another mural on April 19 called “Contagious,” an image of a girl kissing a bottle of Corona beer.
AFK, another Bergen-based artist, did a nostalgic paste-up called “Hug the World” on a wall under a city bridge: Two girls hug the Earth bathed in a pink hue. Near the painting, the artist wrote: “When you can’t control what’s happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what’s happening. That’s where the power is.”
On April 10, the Denver-based artist Austin Zucchini-Fowler painted an arresting, multicolored “Healthcare Hero” mural on the wall of an abandoned building on Colfax Avenue. The mural shows a winged health care worker wearing a face mask and a pair of red boxing gloves.
The mural, which took fewer than 10 hours to paint, “has resonated with the health care community,” said the artist, who added that he’s seen many medical professionals taking photos in front of it. He used a mixture of spray and acrylic paints, including Seurat-like pointillistic dots throughout.
Gov. Jared Polis enacted a stay-at-home order in Denver on March 26, and Mr. Zucchini-Fowler said he wanted to be proactive in his community during this period of social distancing.
“The participation from the community was really great, both the process of making it and the interaction (from passers-by),” he said. Since then, he’s started selling prints of his work for $30, donating a print to a different hospital around the United States for every 10 sold, and has plans for more coronavirus-inspired street art around the city.
You can view “Healthcare Hero” and Mr. Zucchini-Fowler’slatest mural, “Frontline Fighter,” on hisInstagramchannel.
Charlotte, N. C.
After a visit to his local supermarket on March 12, the Charlotte-based artist Darion Fleming realized that there would soon be no sanitizers anywhere: a thought that inspired his work “Pure’ll Gold.” “I thought it would be a funny idea to see gold spilling out of a Purell bottle,” he said, and added the words “Available Nowhere” on the bottle.
He painted the mural on a quiet residential building on North Davidson Street. It took him eight 10-hour days to finish it. “This wasn’t a commissioned piece, and everything was on my dime because I wanted to do something for the community to enjoy in serious times,” he said, adding that the project cost him around $500.
Since then, he has more than doubled the number of his Instagram followers and turned the area into a buzzworthy spot. “It could be around for a very long time, or when all of this blows up, I might cover it up and paint something else. That’s the cool thing about public art, nothing’s really permanent,” he said.
To view “Pure’ll Gold" virtually, visit Mr. Fleming’sInstagram page.
Berlin
The Berlin-based artist Eme Freethinker wanted to make a statement about greed during the crisis. “I was thinking about what I should paint all night, and was laughing a lot about it, and in the morning I told my son that I was going to paint Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” with a toilet paper roll, with the words ‘Mein Schatz’ (‘My Precious’),” he said.
The original mural in Mauerpark (a public park in the Prenzlauer Berg district) was painted on March 19, but has since been covered with artwork by others, but can be seen here, on the artist’s Instagram account.
He has painted several more, including his latest, Gollum and Scrat, the squirrel from the movie “Ice Age,” who has now nabbed the toilet paper roll. While the works have attracted a lot of attention, he doesn’t know how many more virus-themed paintings he will create in the future, noting that he doesn’t want to exploit the theme too much.
“Gollum and Scrat” can be seen virtually on the artist’s Instagram account,Eme Freethinker.
Milwaukee
The Mexican-American artist Mauricio Ramirez splits his time between Chicago and Milwaukee, Wis., where his family lives, and has been painting murals since he was 16.
“My news feed was filled with Covid-19 and I just got sick of it,” he said. He had the desire to create something positive for health care workers. “I just wanted to let them know they’re appreciated.”
He chose a mixed-used building with a pristine masonry brick facade in the residential neighborhood Lincoln Village as the canvas for his 15-foot tall, 30-foot-wide work, “Frontline Heroes.” “The building is across the street from a basilica in an area that looks a little bit like Rome, and some of my family members have been baptized there,” he said.
The striking mural with geometric waves shows a nurse wearing a mask in a prayer-like pose, with the colors of the Puerto Rican and Mexican flags in the background. Mr. Ramirez started the mural on April 9, finished it in two days, and said that everyone on his Instagram post has been tagging a health care worker.
‘Frontline Heroes’ can virtually be found on Mr. Ramirez’sInstagram page.
A woman with a facial mask passes the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on February 3, 2020 at Wall Street in New York City.
Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images
Stock futures fell sharply in Friday early morning trade as investors pored through the latest batch of big tech earnings after Wall Street wrapped up its best month in decades.
Apple reported quarterly earnings that topped analyst expectations, but its revenue growth remained flat on a year-over-year basis. Also, the company did not offer guidance for the quarter ending in June amid uncertainty over the coronavirus outbreak. The tech giant's stock traded more than 2% lower in after-hours trading.
Both Apple and Amazon are among the companies that led the S&P 500's comeback from the late-March lows and were two of the best performers in April. Amazon rallied nearly 27% in April while Apple jumped 15.3%.
"Dependency on a handful of stocks has masked broadly based weakness in the past, and if they falter, could obscure broadly based improvements going forward," said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird, in a note.
Wall Street was coming off its biggest monthly surge in over 30 years, with the S&P 500 gaining 12.7% while the Dow advanced 11.1%. It was the third-biggest monthly gain for the S&P 500 since World War II. The Nasdaq Composite closed 15.5% higher for April, logging in its biggest one-month gain since June 2000.
Those gains were driven in part by hopes of a potential treatment for the coronavirus. Earlier in the week, Gilead Sciences said a study of its remdesivir drug conducted by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases met its primary endpoint.
The number of new infection around the world has also fallen in recent weeks, leading some countries and U.S. states to slowly reopen their economies.
But Phillip Colmar and Santiago Espinosa, strategists at MRB Partners, urged investors to remain cautious.
"The sharp relief rally in equities has now moved ahead of underlying fundamentals, leaving room for near-term disappointments," they said in a note to clients. "Many authorities are looking to reopen their economies but doing so safely and to near previous output levels will require a series of medical breakthroughs and widespread distribution of the treatment."
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