The overall death toll the coronavirus nears 50,000 globally. [indiscernible] 100,000 military body bags for civilian use. U. S. Officials say china concealed the extent of its outbreak, but futures rise in europe and in the u. S. After the worst drop for the s p 500 in two weeks. And President Trump voices optimism that russia and saudi arabia will end their oil spat soon. Brent and wti each jumped 5 or more. You can see here a 20 jump over the past three days. We are just under an hour away from the start of cash equity trading in europe. We will take a look at where futures are trading now. We have, in terms of european slighterder gains then we had in the u. S. If you look at the dow jones and s p 500, they are each up about 1. 5 in terms of futures, so bigger gains in the u. S. Picture , though further away from the open of cash equity trading. What does it look like on the gmm right now . Just had numbers come through on the u. K. House prices, i will come to that first. House prices rise by 3 on the year, but the yearly number is not what anybody is interested in. It is the rise month on month, and even that might be a little early to see the full impact of what goes on with coronavirus. U. K. Government asking people to not move house and pursue these transactions in the near sense, but wait for these numbers in the future. That gives us a little bit of early indication as to what is going on in house prices. Perhaps it may be too soon. A business that supplies energy to homes. Whilst utilities you might think of as being quite sheltered from some of the troubles weve seen , itcertainly retail canceled its final dividend payment. They are also pausing their spirit and if you Spirit Energy divestments. Let me get to the gmm then and tell you what has been going on overnight. We have a mixed picture coming through on asian markets right now. Asia paring losses. U. S. Futures actually pointing a little higher this morning. In fact, up to more than 1 . Italy and germany, as we said in our headlines, extending their lockdown. New york talking about taking not until the end of april. We are also seeing florida taking tougher measures, but on medicines of the death rate coming in from italy. A bit of a sinus to what we are bracing ourselves for, what is still to come a little bit later on. Lets get a bloomberg first word news update. Here are todays top stories. Pentagon sending as many as 100,000 military body bags for civilian use as the u. S. Expect debts to sort in the coming weeks. China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak. That is the conclusion of the u. S. Intelligence community in a classified report. Said the finding was that chinas numbers were fake. President trump describes china s data as on the light side. Eu nations are setting out competing visions of how to deal with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Governments are still at odds over how to cushion the economy. One of the key disagreements is over the idea of neutralizing debt. Corona bonds are popular in some of the hardest hit countries like italy and spain, but germany and the netherlands are pushing back. The Federal Reserve has wall street take on more leverage so they can absorb a severe lack of liquidity and treasuries. Banksd is making it clear should expand their Balance Sheets as appropriate, not so lenders can increase capital distribution. Global news 24 hours a day on air and at quicktake by bloomberg, powered by more than 20 600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. Matt we can see u. S. Equity futures are rising right now as Investors Show tentative signs of entering back into riskier assets. The market continues to assess the Economic Impact of efforts to contain the coronavirus, lets get into the story with laura cooper, a Bloomberg Markets live macro strategist. You have a story out today that. Thought was fascinating it shares some interesting bullet points. One is that more than three quarters of households across 75 countries are in worse shape today than they were in 2008. They have more debt 35 . Igher debt load where is concentrated . Were these countries, for example, that did not learn their lesson after the 2008 financial crisis . When we look at that number specifically, it does tend to lean more toward emerging market we looks, but even when to g10 currencies, when we look at the financial distress households are under and then we overlay this with an unprecedented shock coming likely from the labor market, that points to the fact that we really need to see this timely injection of fiscal policy to have cash in hand for households because ultimately, when we look at the recession the Global Economy is in, the recovery is crucially dependent on the consumer, the consumer ability to spend to come out of that. If they are already cashstrapped and debt laden, it will be more challenging this time around than previous recessions. Nejra anna looking at what is going on in fixed income markets and what is going on and treasuries in particular, i know you have been asking on the markets live blog if treasury yields can go to zero. What has been happening behind the scenes in this market . As a still performing haven . Some weeks ago, there was heavy selling even of treasuries at times of crisis because people were selling anything and now people are talking about a lack of liquidity and treasuries. What is the story . What is going on in the treasury market now is the fed is doing all it can to indirectly keep yields low. Yes, it is doing outright treasury purchases, and we are still seeing that haven demand because the path of least resistance right now for equity markets appears to be lower. These new fed facilities are coming through helping create function in the market, preventing the dysfunction we saw earlier. Overnight, we did see, for example, the u. S. Frees about 2 of capital under temporary changes to leverage rules for u. S. Banks because ultimately, we have these sensibilities that will bring about a surge in demand for Small Businesses, but it is banks taking on that credit risk, so banks have to have the ability to freely close out the funds into the economy, so that is another measure the fed is taking. At this stage, what we see in the treasury market is it is really all about the fed continuing to pump in liquidity to ensure that you dont have to see this forced selling of treasuries by Central Banks and other reserve managers in order to ensure that we can still have this function within the market. Still see a forced selling of everything small and mediumsized businesses can get to the market, though. They seem to be running out of liquidity and the Federal Reserve bank of boston said the rollout of the new Lending Program for these would which surely would be the hardest hit businesses, is still another couple of weeks away. How many bankruptcies are we going to see . I think that is the crucial challenge because right now, we are seeing these cashstrapped businesses. The stimulus measures are meant to prevent this liquidity crisis from becoming an insolvency crisis. Once these businesses go under, they are no longer able to employ workers, no longer able to contribute to the economy. Crucially at this stage, we need to get that cash injection. The facility youre referring to, the fact that it will take weeks is quite a concern. We have not seen anything like this before, so congress is leaning towards the fed to use discretion in terms of determining how this will be allocated to businesses. Theres a number of hurdles still ahead in order to get cash in hand, and i think that is likely going to continue to weigh on risk segments, given that we do not know the duration of the economic lockdown and if we will actually see the stimulus reach the muchneeded businesses before they come under pressure and potentially collapse. Matt thanks very much for joining us. From the bloomberg mliv team. Her work really critical during really volatile times like this. We will continue talking about the problem that i just highlighted. Up next, we will hear what the boston fed president had to say about when we can expect the feds coronavirus lending plan for small and mediumsized businesses to roll out. A lot of these businesses are cashstrap. They operate with no cash reserves monthtomonth, and they have been absolutely shut down for weeks. How much time do they have left . This is bloomberg. Anna welcome back to the european open. 7 13 here in london. Willean futures suggest we see a little bounce at the start of trade, not all that solid perhaps. A couple of bits of breaking news to bring you. Temporary proposing financial really for customers impacted by coronavirus and part of that is freezing some credit card payments. They say this is a stopgap to quickly support users of certain credit products who are facing difficulty because of the exceptional circumstances of the coronavirus. The other piece of breaking news i want to bring you to do with oil prices. We are listening for clues as to when producers will cooperate globally to support oil prices. Brent crude has been securing gains to rise 13 in london. Percentage change versus yesterday still valid, so we are seeing substantial moves to the upside. I brought you the move a moment ago. Just now, it is up by 11. 5 , as you can see on the screen. The boston fed president says a new Lending Program for small and mediumsize businesses is still a couple of weeks away. He spoke to blumberg tvs mike mckee in an exclusive interview. With rate cuts we did at the emergency meetings earlier in march, we reduced federal funds rate by 150 basis points. Normally we would expect that to flow through to other Financial Markets ready seamlessly, and you would see borrowers, both individuals and firms, seeing lower costs as they try to borrow funds. Inortunately, the plumbing the Financial System was overwhelmed by the number of people trying to sell whatever assets they had and get into cash, so some of the Interest Rate reductions that we did, which were primarily at the short end of the market, im not perfectly gone through to the rest of the market. These facilities that we are setting up our intended to in effect get the plumbing better. The new york fed has been buying mortgages and treasury securities. I would say the treasury Securities Market is operating reasonably well. The Mortgage Market is operating much better than it operated a week or two ago, but still is not by any means all the way back. Paperf the commercial markets, some of the shorter term markets are seeing margins come in, which is a very good sign. It means lower Interest Rates are starting to be passed on to firms and households, but i think its going to take some time. The primary goal of what the Federal Reserve is doing is trying to reduce the amount of spillovers that occur, so theres not much we can do about that wash crisis created by covid19, but there are things we can do to limit the amount of spillover to Financial Markets, and i think the fact that we quickly got our facilities up and theres still more facilities coming has helped in reducing the amount of financial spillover, but not completely eliminated it. Anna that was the boston fed president speaking to bloomberg. Of fxg us now is the head at saxo bank. Good to see you. We are seeing different responses from different fiscal authorities. Is the market distinguishing between them in terms of if the market likes the policies, then the assets of that country are treated differently to others, or is that too granular, we are not there yet . That is a great question. I think perhaps it is a little bit too granular so far. One of the big differences you have to look at in the u. S. Much of thersus rest of the market is the scale and speed of job losses is a lot , so people going out of work very quickly. And talking about markets functioning normally and the pressure liquidity measures, but about solvency . Liquidity versus solvency i think is the big question going forward. The more we risked insolvency, the less potent the fed medicine is. Matt are we going to see much more insolvencys in the u. S. . It seems they are taking longer to get there Lending Program going. Americans famously have much more Credit Card Debt than europeans and operate businesses, i would say, with much tighter cash reserves. Huge risk that is the here. The more the focus is on lending versus outright cash drops, the bigger the risk we do see the widespread insolvencies, and the labor markets, the joblessness spiking to levels that are unprecedented. It will be far beyond the record on the plummet level since the great depression, as well as the generosity of jobless benefits program, on top of what they are getting means they could be slow to return to the markets, so it is just a really difficult situation for the authorities to get ahead of. We are trying to keep the economy in some sort of suspended animation, but in the meantime, theres this solvency and joblessness risk. Anna we listen to Abby Joseph Cohen talk about how the state is going to be week in april. If we look from a european perspective, the data could be week in march and also in april. I would closer to getting a handle on that timescale as to when we see some sort of bounce toouropean data, or is it soon to say . That is the ultimate question. We can all talk about we are seeing the numbers doing this on in terms of virus, talking here, talking theyre in terms of the quarantine, but you can tell us what the numbers look like in terms of the recovery in the shape of the timescale of that recovery, and i think it is a difficult question. Its clear we will not see avshaped recovery. What does the right side of that recovery look like . It isrse, the concern is something in between, and it takes a couple quarters to return to something was emily normalcy and, of course, Consumer Behavior could be far more cautious. It is just such an and or mislead difficult forecast such an enormously difficult forecast to make. Matt we are going to keep you with us. John hardy sticks with us for the time being. Coming up, extending lockdowns. Germany and italy say the shutdowns will last until easter at least. That is as governments caution against lifting restrictions too early. This is bloomberg. Matt welcome back to Bloomberg Markets. This is the european open. Right now, about 36 minutes away from the start of cash trading across the continent and in the u. K. Germany and italy have extended lockdown measures until after easter. Spain reported its deadliest day yet with 864 fatalities and confirmed cases topping 102 thousand. Extending the shutdown until april 19, german chancellor Angela Merkel said infection rates had eased slightly but earlyned that it is too to relax strict rules on public interactions. This comes as european leaders struggle to agree on a joint response to counter the Economic Impact of the virus. Competing visions have been set out by france and the netherlands as well as others, but officials are going to find it hard, of course, to get all 27 countries on the same page. John hardy, head of fx at saxo bank, is still with us. Let me first ask your take on corona bonds. Coronabonds. What do you think about this sort of very popular issue to discuss . In germany, they are against it. In the countries that need the money, they are for it. I think it is an existential question for europe and the Monetary Union. I think they need to happen, and if they dont happen, we are path towardsricing aggravated existential concerns. The ecb needs to keep orderly. Nd sovereign bond markets we need to see solidarity. We need to see that mutual is asian over the longterm. Otherwise, the Monetary Union ceases to exist as currently comprised. Anna will we see some sort of corona fudge here . We are going to get more details around a program called sure by the end of the week, 100 billion euros of money to mend the state. The eu will raise the money on international markets, backed by member states. This sounds a little bit like debt neutralization. Will we get Something Like corona bonds, but of course, they will not be called that . I think we have to. We are not seeing much talk about existential concerns. The market really not expressing much of that. I think the consensus now and i largely agree with that is we have to fudge the margin to in up on a path toward mutual is asian, but it is something we really need to be attuned to, especially the political tone from the top as we go into the of talks. S it is just an issue that is really upfront on our radar. Anna it is. Thanks very much, john hardy talking about the existential crisis that europe could find itself in. Up next, staying in the office, we speak to the ceo of a fintech defending keeping staff during the outbreak. We have european stock futures pointing higher right now. Your u. S. Futures also pointing up. This is bloomberg. Beyond the routine checkups. Beyond the notsoroutine cases. Comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. All working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gigspeed network. Because beyond technology. There is human ingenuity. Every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. To do the extraordinary. Take your business beyond. Back to thee european open. 30 minutes until the start of the cash equity trading day. You can see futures are positive in some cases, but actually fairly mixed. U. S. Futures, i should point. Ut, up by more than 1 the feds intervention in the repo market was so effective that it had never been cheaper to access dollars outside the United States, but individual exchanges also stressed the importance that they stay open and keep critical staff in the office to ensure liquidity is fair. An exchangerate based in london says the Uncertain Times caused by the coronavirus are