Stock Markets Rise Despite U.S. Violence: Live Updates

Global markets rise despite American protests.

Global markets rose on Monday despite jitters over the violence in the United States, as investors looked to further signs of recovery from the coronavirus and a lack of major retaliation from the United States in its dispute with China over the fate of Hong Kong.

Stocks in London and Paris were more than 1 percent higher in early Monday trading, though markets in Germany and a number of other countries were closed for a holiday. Asian markets rose strongly, paced by an increase of more than 3 percent in Hong Kong and more than 2 percent in mainland China shares.

Despite the unrest in the United States, futures markets were indicating Wall Street would open modestly higher.

Investors were cheered by results from surveys of purchasing managers around the world, which showed uneven but steady progress in recovering from the coronavirus outbreak. They also saw President Trump’s response on Friday to China’s efforts to take a heavier hand in Hong Kong’s affairs as less severe than it could have been. Mr. Trump said the United States would begin rolling back the special trade and financial status it grants to the former British colony but left many of the details unsaid.

Markets did not totally dismiss the problems in the United States. Prices for U.S. Treasury bonds were mixed, and the American dollar slipped in value compared with other major currencies.

For all the pain that the virus has caused the 25,000 or so who live in Bernal Heights, a dense little neighborhood built around a grassy hill in the south of San Francisco, it has also brought them together as a community — a pattern that is playing out in neighborhoods around the country.

Neighbors have formed a small newspaper for children. Socially distanced street dance parties and cocktail hours have taken over, block by block, as the sun sets. Some people have created a new micro-social safety net, turning bookshelves into sidewalk food banks and garages into medical-supply distribution centers. Email lists and text chains for each block are buzzing.

And as sheltering in place eases, some of the changes in Bernal Heights are turning permanent.

“The scale of life has changed,” said Francesca Russello Ammon, an associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. “Your world has shrunk. The neighborhood and the block become really important.”

When Ryan Stagg, 27, started baking bread for his neighbors in a one-bedroom apartment on Wright Street, he offered it for free, dangling each loaf in a basket, over the fence and down to the sidewalk.

But he and his fiancée, Daniella Banchero, were both out of work, and their landlord was unwilling to reduce their rent, so they started to charge $9 for a big sourdough loaf and expanded the menu, adding cinnamon rolls ($3), cookies ($2) and crumb cakes.

Recently, they have started using a commercial kitchen in a restaurant that’s been shuttered. And they applied to start a proper registered business: The Bernal Bakery.

There is widespread agreement that the United States economy will soon begin to recover from coronavirus lockdowns. The big debate is whether that rebound will resemble a V, a W, an L or a Nike Swoosh.

Two existing organizations and one new entrant are offering some of the most satisfying ways of providing few-strings-attached assistance. Modest Needs Foundation and GiveDirectly, both nonprofit organizations, are using years of experience to pay people’s bills or hand them money to pay for things themselves. And the 1K Project is facilitating money transfers, although without the tax deductions the other two can offer donors.

GiveDirectly partnered with Propel, a company that helps recipients of SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program once known as food stamps) manage their benefits. They receive a message at random offering the money, a bit like a lottery that they don’t have to enter.

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