The measure, which had already been announced previously, adds to the end of the limitation of hours for the terraces, which was already decreed this month. New York has also lifted the capacity restrictions that have prevailed for the hotel industry, leisure and many other businesses such as retail stores, gyms and hairdressers, although restaurants must maintain a social distance of two meters, unless they have screens that isolate diners.
The reopening of the bars and other shops is thanks to the citizens
“Like the rest of the milestones of our reopening, the end of the curfew for indoor hospitality is the result of New Yorkers coming together, complying with precautions and getting vaccinated, so that we can defeat the virus and move towards a new normal,” he said. Cuomo. The governor also announced today that the rate of positives in covid-19 tests has once again reached a new low since the start of the pandemic. The average of the last seven days was 0.67% positive, after 71,242 tests were carried out on the last day with only 494 positives. EFE News
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US lawmakers demand that big banks support the “real economy”
Washington, May 26 (EFE News) .- The CEOs of the six largest banks in the United States were harshly questioned this Wednesday in the Senate for their paper in the economic recovery after the crisis unleashed by the pandemic, especially due to the reduction of credit, and they were required to invest in the “real economy”.
For the first time in more than two years, the heads of JPMorgan Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, Goldman and Morgan Stanley they jointly testified, virtually, before the US Senate Banking Committee. The appearance also took place after the results of the first quarter of the year were known, in which several of the banks represented recorded record profits. The greatest criticism came from the Democratic side, from where they were criticized for the share buyback policy and the marked decline in loans during the crisis.
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DECREASE IN CREDITS
In this sense, the chairman of the committee, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, lamented that “decades ago, most of the capital on Wall Street served to finance the real economy: wages, machinery and research.” “No longer. Instead of investing in companies that have created real jobs across the country, entities have spent billions on repurchasing shares and delivering bonuses to their CEOs, “said Brown.
As an example, he pointed out that Bank of America loans fell 14% last year while this entity dedicated 25,000 million dollars to share buybacks, with the aim of raising the price of its assets on the stock market. By way of reply, the entity’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, stressed that the voluminous federal aid, such as the program to assist small and medium-sized companies with non-repayable loans if they kept their workers, was one of the reasons for the lower demand for credit.
Moynihan stressed that the objective of his banks “is to offer great returns to shareholders” while serving “the needs of society”, in a practice that he described as “responsible growth.” The also Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren charged against the bankers considering that they are “more concerned” about the benefits than about “supporting citizens in difficulties.”
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BANKS AS A SOLUTION, NOT AS A PROBLEM
Bankers defended their key role in channeling much of the enormous fiscal stimulus approved by Congress, such as the successive rounds of direct cash transfers, the temporary suspension of commissions to their clients in the most complicated months of the pandemic, as well as such as mortgage moratoriums.
“We are a very different bank than we were during the financial crisis more than a decade ago,” said Jane Fraser, Citigroup’s new CEO, noting that financial institutions this time weren’t the cause of the economic storm like they were then. , but join the tools for its solution. In a similar way, Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan, remarked that the “solidity” of the banking system allowed “the use of the size and scale” of the big banks to “contribute to the stability” of the country.
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Increase
The United States economy is beginning its economic recovery after the sharp contraction in 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced activity to be almost completely paralyzed for several months. The Federal Reserve (Fed), which maintains extraordinary monetary support through the purchase of bonds and interest rates close to 0%, expects growth for 2021 of 6.5%, which would represent the highest rate of expansion in the country. US GDP since the 1980s.
However, the president of the US central bank, Jerome Powell, has warned that there is still a long way to go to recover normal economic activity, especially in the labor market, as there are still 8 million fewer jobs than in February 2020 . EFE News
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