| The Olympic Games have officially been delayed, China's government is facing the worst fiscal situation since the global financial crisis, and stocks in Asia look set to extend the global rally after the best session for U.S. stocks in almost a dozen years. Here are some of the things people in markets are talking about today. The Olympic Games are now the biggest global event to be disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, along with the International Olympic Committee, agreed to delay the Tokyo Games by a year, the first postponement since the modern games began in the 19th century. Meanwhile, Singapore and Australia are the latest in a long list of countries to expand on strict social distancing measures designed to stymie the virus by shuttering events, bars, cinemas, religious services and other non-essential services, while India imposed a national lockdown for 21 days. In other virus developments, the U.S. could become a new hub of the outbreak, the World Health Organization warned. Still, President Donald Trump said he's hoping to have the economy open again by Easter. Also, China prepared to lift its lockdown in Wuhan, the city at the center of the original outbreak, while symptom-free cases suggest thew country's problems are not over. Cases around the world have topped 409,000, leaving 18,246 dead, according to Johns Hopkins data. Stocks in Asia looked set to extend a global rally after the best session for U.S. stocks in almost a dozen years, with investors rediscovering some appetite for risk with Congress closing in on an unprecedented spending bill to prop up the slumping economy. The dollar dropped, halting a 10-day winning streak. Futures surged in Australia, Hong Kong and Japan, indicating gains could extend to a second day for Asia-Pacific shares. S&P 500 futures opened higher in Asia after the gauge soared more than 9% — the biggest one-day gain since October 2008. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 11%, clocking its biggest advance since 1933. Elsewhere, emerging-market stocks jumped alongside their currencies. Oil added to gains. Still, about $26 trillion has so far evaporated from equity markets since mid-February. China's government is facing the worst fiscal situation since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, with revenue falling after the government shut down economic activity in February to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The income of central and local governments contracted 9.9% in the first two months of the year compared to a year ago. That was the deepest fall since February 2009. Tax revenue declined more than 11%, with drops in value-added taxes, corporate income taxes and car purchase taxes undercutting the government's coffers just as it needs to find extra money to stimulate the economy. Spending also dropped, but a surge in outlays on health-care and social security kept the decline to 2.9% from a year ago. The tight fiscal conditions add to the urgency for the government to raise money from bond sales and allow a higher deficit in 2020. President Donald Trump's ``back-to-work'' push is pitting billionaires against the doctors, where business leaders in the U.S. are getting impatient with the national economic shutdown caused by coronavirus. They're increasingly echoing Trump, who hopes to open the economy by Easter, April 12. David Neeleman, who founded JetBlue and WestJet, said on Monday that the suffering from a huge economic downturn will outweigh the damage from the disease. "There's too much confusion -- nobody has jobs, people are losing their houses, kids are home from school," he said by phone. Apple retail stores are planning to reopen nationally in the first half of April on a staggered basis. The thing is, state officials are still moving toward shutdown. On Monday, governors and health officials in Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and West Virginia became the latest to order residents to stay at home. SoftBank Group's Masayoshi Son is continuing to bet on himself, even after he reportedly considered and then abandoned the idea of taking his conglomerate private. Son discussed the idea with investors including Elliott Management and the Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund Mubadala in the past week, the Financial Times reported, before moving ahead with a plan to sell assets instead. But the Japanese billionaire is backing himself in other ways. A regulatory filing Tuesday shows his stake has risen to 26.9% from 25.5% and, with SoftBank's shares gyrating wildly, he also pledged more stock against his holdings. What We've Been Reading This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. And finally, here's what Tracy's interested in this morning There's a tendency to think of financial crises as an overabundance of something. In the case of 2008, it was too much risk in the housing market, which wound up being repackaged and sold on to eager investors in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other securitization structures. But, almost always, the real pain in a financial crisis stems from a shortage of something. In the case of 2008, it was a sudden shortage in "safe" securities that had been used for funding in the repo market. One estimate showed that between 1990 and 2006 (the peak of the subprime boom), assets with the highest credit rating of triple-A had come to account for almost 55% of total fixed income in the world, up from a little more than 20%. So more than half the world's debt securities were basically considered "risk-free" and a big portion of that "risk-free" pool came from MBS. As subprime losses mounted and those triple-A ratings looked increasingly shaky, the available supply of "safe assets" shrank enormously and caused widespread pain.  Today, the shortage is arguably one of cash (and dollar-denominated cash at that). Cash flow is getting cut off for the foreseeable future, and so all types of businesses and investors are scrambling to get enough of it to survive for the next few months. Or, as Josh Younger at JPMorgan put it recently: "Fundamentally, global financial markets are demanding more USD cash than the system can currently provide." The good news is that providing dollar-denominated cash is basically what the Fed does, and we've already seen the central bank announce a number of new programs aimed at alleviating the shortage. If this is a line of thinking that interests you, make sure you listen to Odd Lots as our next episode features Josh and his great take on how the scramble for cash explains the recent pain in markets. You can follow Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway at @tracyalloway. Follow Bloomberg on Telegram for all the investment news and analysis you need. | 
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