Nobody wants oil right now, lawmakers move close to another stimulus deal, and earnings season continues. Cruel crudeOil plunged anew to the lowest level since 1999, with West Texas Intermediate for May delivery dipping below $14 a barrel this morning. While much of the drop is because that contract expires tomorrow, leading to extra volatility, the fundamental challenges facing the oil market can be seen everywhere. Producers in Texas are getting as little as $2 a barrel for their output at the moment as fast depleting storage is becoming a major issue for buyers in a world where demand has rapidly disappeared. WTI for June delivery was trading close to $23 a barrel and a similar Brent contract was at $27. More stimulusTreasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that both sides are close to a deal on more funding for the small business aid program. The proposed package, which could be as large as $500 billion, would also have money for coronavirus testing and help for hospitals. It is hoped that Congress can pass the measures before the end of the week. The moves come as the outlook on the spread of coronavirus remains mixed, with cases continuing to drop in some countries, while others have seen a jump. In the U.S. the level of testing needed to reopen the economy has become a key point of disagreement among experts and the White House. Earnings The advice from one money manager is for investors to simply ignore the current earnings season as there will be little information from companies on how the economy will get back on its feet. Northern Trust Corp.'s Jim McDonald says he remains bullish on U.S. stocks as he sees the mammoth fiscal packages from Washington will be enough to offset demand-destruction from the lockdown. The effectiveness of that stimulus will be critical to his thesis, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicting that S&P 500 listed companies will slash their spending by 33% this year. International Business Machines Corp., Halliburton Co. and Equifax Inc. are among those reporting earnings today. Markets mixedGlobal equities are off to a slow start to the week, with the collapse in oil prices weighing on investor sentiment. Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slipped 0.7% while Japan's Topix index closed 0.7% lower. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.1% higher at 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time as investors favored defensive stocks. S&P 500 futures pointed to a drop of more than 1% at the open, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 0.635% and gold was unchanged. Coming up...It is a quiet start to the week on the economic data front. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index at 8:30 a.m. — which is expected to have its lowest print since early 2009 — is the only scheduled release in the U.S. this morning. The Federal Reserve's massive dollar liquidity program continues with three operations totaling $1.5 trillion today. More information on testing and the White House plans for reopening the economy may be revealed at the daily task force press conference later. What we've been readingThis is what's caught our eye over the weekend. And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morningWhen the lockdowns end, and it's safe to do so, one of the first things I plan to do is take a trip to Las Vegas. So I was particularly interested to read the 23-page plan posted by Matt Maddox, the CEO of Wynn Resorts, on his company's vision for how to safely reopen casinos on the Vegas strip when the time comes. The basic gist: Extensive cleaning and sanitization throughout the day of every little nook and cranny, and an effort where possible to keep customers distanced from each other. In other words, running a casino, at least in the beginning, will be extremely labor intensive and inefficient in a real capital sense. In a column at Bloomberg Opinion last week, Conor Sen of New River Investments wrote about exactly this phenomenon, that running physical operations will require an extremely high amount of labor... cleaning crews, drivers, temperature checkers, and so on. Obviously the U.S. faces a horrendous jobs crisis now. Nobody really knows how many of the businesses that have shut down will reopen and how many workers who are currently unemployed or furloughed will have jobs to go back to when things reopen. A massive federal effort will be needed to get the economy operating near full capacity again. But as the vision for reopening Las Vegas shows, there are at least some aspects of the recovery that will require a huge demand for workers.  Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. | 
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