Asian Markets Rise but Alarm Persists: Live Updates

Monica Crowley, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mnuchin, said that the Treasury secretary’s comments were not a projection and that because Congress was taking additional action, he did not believe the unemployment rate would reach 20 percent.

“During the meeting with Senate Republicans today, Secretary Mnuchin used several mathematical examples for illustrative purposes, but he never implied this would be the case,” Ms. Crowley said in a statement.

Since World War II, the United States has never seen unemployment rise above 11 percent, the level it nearly reached in the recession of the early 1980s. It reached 10 percent, briefly, during the 2008 financial crisis.

The White House is seeking ways to use smartphone location data in its virus response.

The Trump administration has spoken with large technology companies about how their access to geolocation data from smartphones can aid in the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

At a recent meeting, a group of tech companies discussed the use of anonymous, aggregated geolocation data to respond to the spread of the virus with the White House and other administration officials, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. They also discussed how that would intersect with user privacy, the people said.

The Centers for Disease Control asked during the meeting about the prospect of using the data to track demand for hospitals around the country, which are expected to be deluged by patients, one of the people said. The conversations were first reported by The Washington Post.

Facebook has also discussed with the U.S. government the maps it produces to track disasters using satellite and census data, said a company spokesman, Andy Stone. It is also working to provide nonprofit groups — which can work with local, state and federal authorities — with a second set of mapping tools that use smartphone location data that Facebook users can choose to share.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/business/stock-market-today.html