Monthly Archives: September 2021

Gary Cohn, a key architect of former President Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, has a new mission.

"We now need to get people back into the workforce and we need to force people in many respects to re-enter the workforce," Cohn told Yahoo Finance Live.

Cohn said he is worried the current shortage of labor threatens to undermine the ability of American businesses to compete at home and globally. The U.S. Department of Labor's latest JOLTS report showed there are almost 11 million job openings and roughly 8.4 million unemployed people in the United States.

"I think it's a huge issue right now, as you point out, labor demand is far outpacing labor supply," Stifel Chief Economist Lindsey Piegza said. But getting the unemployed back on the job, "it's not going to be a very fast or flip the switch scenario," Piegza added.

Cohn points to recent earnings reports from Darden Restaurants (DRI) and FedEx (FDX) which highlighted labor shortages as an issue impeding their growth. "They're not looking for that skilled of a labor force, they need a labor force that's willing to come to work," he said.

Federally funded pandemic related unemployment benefits expired at the beginning of September. But various states have extended eviction moratoriums and other measures, like prohibiting utilities from cutting off service for customers who fall behind on their bills. Democrats in Congress are also planning to introduce legislation to restore and extend COVID-19 unemployment benefits into next year.

"I think we have to stop many of these programs at a high level that are encouraging people to stay home and start encouraging to reenter the workforce," Cohn said.

White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 28, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

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Cohn supported the federal government's initial COVID-19 pandemic response, "giving money to people, allowing people to pay their bills, allowing people to buy food, allowing people to stay in their shelter, and live their lives. That was very important."

But he said the country is now at the other end of the spectrum and the federal government's new policy should be one that, "incentivizes work and doesn't incentivize allowing people or encouraging people to stay at home."

Private business is trying to entice people to work with hiring bonuses and higher wages. But that is contributing to inflation and undercutting the purchasing power of low income workers and those on the sidelines.

"If you're not entering the workforce, you're not participating in those increased wages. And in fact, you're losing purchasing power because your wages, your subsidies are not inflating with wages today," Cohn said.

Piegza said, "Many Americans have been able to accumulate at least somewhat of a wealth cushion that can carry them forward for some time now, even in the absence of some of these more generous benefits programs, meaning that businesses could still struggle for several months, maybe even to the first of the year before these individuals on the sideline decide to move back into the labor market."

Cohn says hiring bonuses won't solve the problem. "We've got to start talking about how we motivate people back into the labor force and how do we get them back working again?"

Adam Shapiro is co-anchor of Yahoo Finance Live 3pm to 5pm. Follow him on Twitter @Ajshaps

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Gary Cohn: 'We need to force people in many respects' back to work - Yahoo Finance

Talk about industrial and materials stocks being as cold as a slab of frozen beef.

The industrial and materials sectors of the S&P 500 have tanked 6.49% and 7.47%, respectively, since Aug. 16, according to research out of Sundial Capital Research. That makes each sector the worst performers from within the S&P 500 over this time span. The S&P 500 is roughly flat going back to Aug. 16.

Sundial says the selling pressure is "getting extreme," and the data bears that out.

The percentage of industrial stocks holding above their 50-day moving average has plunged below 20%, a level not seen since the height of COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Fewer than 60% of industrial stocks closed above their 200-day moving average earlier this week, indicating a severe loss in confidence in the sector among investors.

"As we've referenced in the past, healthy markets (and sectors) typically hold above that threshold. It might quickly drop below 60% during uptrends, but it's usually a spike pattern that quickly recovers. When it doesn't, beware," the team at Sundial explains of the dip below the 200-day moving average.

There are likely several reasons for the loss in confidence in the industrial patch.

For starters, economic growth globally has slowed down since the early part of the rebound from the pandemic this year. Industrial stocks tend to perform better at the start of an economic upswing as companies invest in the capital equipment they probably held off ordering when times were weak.

Meanwhile, industrials are continuing to battle a host of margin pressures ranging from labor shortages to raw material price inflation. The latest evidence on the financial impact of those dual struggles came via transport giant FedEx this week.

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FedEx said its quarterly results were drilled by $450 million due to labor shortages alone, notably at its ground segment. The company estimated a shocking 600,000 packages across the FedEx network are being rerouted because of the inability to find labor.

"The impact of constrained labor markets remains the biggest issue facing our business as with many other companies around the world and was the key driver of our lower than expected results in the first quarter," FedEx COO Raj Subramaniam told analysts on an earnings call.

Sundial goes on to add that the selling in industrials is approaching "panic" levels. This may prove to be a longer-term buying opportunity into the space, but Sundial cautions the choppiness is unlikely done in the near-term.

"This sector is nearing a critical inflection point, or maybe it's already there. Investors have puked about as much as they ever do during healthy market environments, at least when measured by internal breadth and momentum. Suppose we're in a similar environment to the past decade. In that case, we should see a relief rally in the coming weeks that alleviates the oversold conditions and allows longer-term indicators like the McClellan Summation Index to remain in (mostly) positive territory. A test of the low would typically be a higher probability for investors. Maybe it's too cute to expect markets to follow a precise playbook like that. Still, the overall suggestion is that buying conditions like this in Industrials might work longer-term as long as one is willing to suffer potentially high uncertainty in the weeks ahead," the researchers say.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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Investors have lost total confidence in these stocks - Yahoo Finance

Each year, 8 million tons of plastic the equivalent of a garbage truck load every minute is dumped into the ocean, according to the World Economic Forum.

The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit engineering environmental organization based in the Netherlands, is attempting to remove as much of that plastic as is feasible.

Our strategy is really twofold, The Ocean Cleanup CEO and Founder Boyan Slat said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). On one hand, stop the source, preventing more plastic from going into the oceans and rivers. But at the same time, there's already a lot of legacy plastic in the ocean, especially this Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California. It's massive and it doesn't go away by itself. So we have to clean that up.

The Ocean Cleanup has deployed three Interceptors in rivers in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Dominican Republic to keep plastic from entering oceans. The solar-powered barrier and conveyor system uses river currents to funnel plastic into containers that can be brought back to land and sorted through.

The ultimate aim is to develop the first scalable technology to remove plastic from Earth's waters, Slat said.

Saarinah (45) carries recyclable plastic trash on January 30, 2021 in Kedonganan, Bali, Indonesia. (Photo by Agung Parameswara/Getty Images)

Ocean Cleanup is targeting garbage patches, which are areas where circulating ocean currents amass plastic in large concentrations.

Because most plastics don't break down for hundreds of years, the debris accumulates over time.

The most prominent garbage patch, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is estimated to contain 79,000 tons of plastic across an area of over half a million square miles. The detritus is primarily made up of microplastics, which the National Ocean Service defines as "small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life."

Ocean Cleanup's approach draws inspiration from the natural world and coastlines, in particular.

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If you look at coastlines, coastlines are actually very effective ways of catching plastic, Slat said. If you see it on the beach, it's out of the ocean, stays out of the ocean."

That gave Slat and his team members the idea of building coastlines in the middle of the ocean.

"Basically, we've developed very long, floating barriers that we drag through the patch," he said. "And it catches and then concentrates the plastic before we can take it out."

System 002 during a test run in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (Photo: The Ocean Clean Up)

In 2019, Ocean Cleanup recalled its first system, nicknamed 'Wilson', to repair and iterate on its design. Since then, the nonprofit has continued to make adjustments and even launched its latest prototype, System 002 or 'Jenny', in July 2021.

If everything goes well, in a few weeks from now we hope to see a system completely filled with plastic, Slat said. And if that works, then we can with confidence say that the technology works and we can scale this up.

The nonprofit is also looking for ways to automate and clean up how its ocean vessels are powered. Slat noted the difficulty of cleaning up plastic in the oceans without using fossil fuels.

Batteries are just not good enough for that yet, he said. We do use fuels, but at the same time, we're experimenting with low carbon biofuels. And all the rest of the emissions will be offset, so the cleanup will be carbon neutral.

Plastic catch onboard a System 002 vessel. (Photo: The Ocean Clean Up)

Since it was founded in 2013, Ocean Cleanup boasts a number of notable backers, including Maersk (MAERSK) and a recent partnership with Coca-Cola (KO).

Regarding the partnership with Coca-Cola, which was rated the world's top plastic polluter in 2020, Slat said there's two ways to look at it.

One way, he said, is to look at it from a greenwashing lens, in which Coca-Cola appears to virtuously help with the plastic problem while continuing to pollute waters with plastic bottles and other packaging.

But the way I look at it is that it's a pragmatic way to scale this up, Slat continued. Companies like Coca-Cola, they don't want the ocean to be polluted with plastic. So by allowing them to solve this problem by cleaning out their own waste I think if anyone should be paying for this clean up, it's companies like Coca-Cola.

Grace is an assistant editor for Yahoo Finance and a UX writer for Yahoo products.

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Ocean Cleanup pilots the first scalable technology to remove plastic waste from Earth's waters - Yahoo Finance

Do a read through of the disappointing earnings report out of FedEx on Tuesday night and you get the sense non-farm payrolls reports for the rest of 2021 may surprise economists to the downside.

The problem (one that may be getting worse, per FedEx)? Finding humans to accept jobs in a very tight labor market even at higher rates than what the specific job would have paid months ago.

"The impact of constrained labor markets remains the biggest issue facing our business as with many other companies around the world and was the key driver of our lower than expected results in the first quarter," FedEx COO Raj Subramaniam told analysts on an earnings call.

FedEx (FDX) said its quarterly results were drilled by $450 million due to labor shortages alone, notably at its ground segment. The company estimated a shocking 600,000 packages across the FedEx network are being rerouted because of the inability to find labor.

Those processing bottlenecks stand to wreak havoc on the holiday season if FedEx is unable to address the worker shortage, which increasingly appears unlikely.

To illustrate the point on its labor challenges, FedEx shared the current state of play at one of its facilities in Portland, Oregon.

A FedEx driver delivers a cart of packages, Thursday, May 6, 2021, in New York. FedEx is getting hurt by the tight job market. The package delivery company said Tuesday, Sept. 21 that its costs are up $450 million in the most recent quarter, as it paid higher wages as it got harder to find new workers and demand for shipping increased. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

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Explained Subramaniam, "Our Portland Oregon hub is running with approximately 65% of the staffing needed to handle its normal volume. This staffing shortage has a pronounced impact on the operations, which results in our teams diverting 25% of the volume that would normally flow through this hub because it simply cannot be processed efficiently to meet our service standards. And in this case the volume that diverted must be rerouted and process, which drives inefficiencies in our operations and in turn higher costs. These inefficiencies included adding Incremental linehaul and delivery routes, meaning more miles driven and higher use of third-party transportation to enable us to bypass Portland entirely. Now that's merely one example."

One example, that the Street is clearly concerned about, stands to morph into a litany of examples come the peak holiday-shipping season.

Shares of FedEx plunged 9% in Wednesday trading as investors digested the lackluster earnings day. Rival UPS also fell 2% in sympathy as traders braced for a similar warning from the company on its upcoming earnings day.

Not only did FedEx badly whiff on earnings estimates, but it slashed its full fiscal year profit outlook. FedEx now sees full-year earnings of $19.75 to $21 a share compared to $20.50 to $21.50. FedEx also warned that it's seeing a slowdown in e-commerce demand as people return to shopping at physical stores.

"While we were calibrated for higher ground expense from labor availability issues, the magnitude and related volume impact was greater than anticipated," said KeyBanc analyst Todd Fowler, who kept an Overweight rating (Buy rating equivalent) on FedEx shares.

The September employment report will be released on Oct. 8. If it disappoints, remember that FedEx telegraphed it in mid-September.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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FedEx just painted a disturbing picture of the job market - Yahoo Finance

This article first appeared in the Morning Brief. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

An ugly start to September, and the even uglier start to this weeks trading session, can be defined using two alliterative words that often unsettle investors.

Correction and contagion.

The first word relates to stocks that, as bulls are wont to remind us, usually go up. That has mostly been the case this year until Monday, that is, when Wall Street suffered its worst session in four months. The liquidity crisis sparked by Chinese property developer Evergrande has emboldened some analysts who think the market is long overdue for a correction (typically defined as a downturn of at least 5%-10%).

While the Evergrande situation is front and center, the reality is, stock market valuations are overstretched and the market has enjoyed too long of a break from volatility and Monday's stock market declines are not surprising, said David Bahnsen, CIO at wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, with over $3 billion in assets under management.

It remains to be seen whether a correction is in the offing. Still, the word contagion bubbled up more than once on Monday, as Yahoo Finances Brian Sozzi explained. Ironically enough, the two themes are connected by a third that also starts with a c: namely China.

Evergrande's debt has swooned as its crisis has grown more acute.

Evergrande may or may not be the trigger event that bears have been waiting for. But it has amplified pervasive market jitters about the direction of the Chinese economy, and Beijings policy orientation.

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China has spent the better part of the summer throwing its weight around in various sectors of the economy, a stark reminder about its unapologetically authoritarian bent. And in a market with a short memory, Evergrande also reminds us that China is littered with economic landmines that have the potential to ricochet across the global economy.

The problems have been there for so long that most people watching the Chinese economy have just started ignoring them, China Beige Book CEO Leland Miller told Yahoo Finance Live on Monday. The major issue here is: Can the government contain the problems within the property sector?

Evergrande has over $300 billion in liabilities, but only $15 billion in cash on hand, raising worries that it cant make good on $84 billion of interest due next week, according to a report in Bloomberg. So is this the new Lehman Brothers, Wall Streets erstwhile investment titan that became synonymous with systemic risk?

Perhaps, but indications suggest were not there yet. Safe havens like gold, U.S. Treasury debt and the U.S. dollar are well-bid, but far from levels that would be associated with nervous investors seeking shelter from squalls buffeting world markets.

Although the impact from Evergrandes liquidity crisis is enormous, the good news is the fallout hasnt started to spillover to other markets, LPL Financial Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick wrote in a note on Monday.

Short-term funding markets are acting just fine in China thus far; remember, it was the money markets in the U.S. that first started to show cracks in the system in early 2008, well before the wheels fell off, Detrick added.

So, to summarize: Correction? Perhaps.

Contagion? Unlikely, but not entirely out of the question.

Yet day-by-day, the events unfolding in China are rattling investor confidence, injecting more uncertainty and volatility in a market that doesnt need any more of either. At a minimum, investing in China has become more complex, as analysts at Wasatch Global Investors wrote on Monday.

Arguments that China has abandoned capitalism might be a stretch, the firm wrote. However, besides evaluating a companys underlying fundamentals, investors must now weigh the extent to which the firms business aligns with the policy objectives of the Chinese government, it added.

By Javier E. David, editor at Yahoo Finance. Follow him at @Teflongeek

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This week's sell-off, brought to you by the letter 'C': Morning Brief - Yahoo Finance

This article originally appeared on Simply Wall St News.

NVIDIA Corporation ( NASDAQ:NVDA ) is in the enviable position of supplying components to some of the fastest growing industries in the world - including gaming, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, visualization, and cryptocurrency mining. With a market value of $538 billion, it is the 11th most valuable company listed on US markets, and on the verge of overtaking TSMC ( NYSE:TSM ) as the most valuable semiconductor manufacturer in the world.

However, when a company is the size of Nvidia, it becomes more difficult to maintain the growth rates that got it to that size in the first place. Amongst the worlds mega-cap companies, Nvidia has one of the richest valuations, apart perhaps from Tesla ( Nasdaq:TSLA ).

Nvidia's price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 74x is second only to Tesla amongst the 20 largest companies. And Nvidias price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio of 24x is the highest amongst this group of companies. These metrics suggest that Nvidia and Tesla have the most future growth priced into their valuations amongst mega cap stocks.

See our latest analysis for NVIDIA

NasdaqGS:NVDA Fair Value Estimate, September 23rd 2021

When we estimate Nvidias intrinsic value using analyst forecasts we arrive at a value of $107.75, implying the stock is overvalued by about 103%. This estimate is calculated using the 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity and you can see the full calculation here .

Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual cash flows. Both of these can, and probably will change, over time - so the $107 value is just an estimate based on current forecasts.

Clearly the market believes Nvidia can grow faster than current forecasts suggest. One of the reasons for this is the metaverse, and Nvidias efforts to accelerate growth in the industries it supplies.

The metaverse is a virtual, 3D, digital world, or worlds. Currently, the metaverse is mostly confined to games like Fortnite and Minecraft. But in the future, the metaverse promises to be a place to work and play. It will see the full realization of the potential of virtual and augmented reality, and merge the real world with the internet.

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Creating the metaverse requires cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality - the same industries and technologies that make up some of Nvidias key markets. Nvidias CEO Jensen Huang believes t he economy in the metaverse will be larger than the economy in the physical world , though he tends to use the term omniverse rather than metaverse.

A core part of Nvidias growth strategy is providing the tools to make this a reality. These efforts fall within the Nvidia Omniverse, a platform for real time collaboration and simulation.

There are countless applications where companies can use any combination of AR, VR, and AI to increase efficiency, reduce costs and collaborate. Applications for industries like animation, gaming, architecture and automotive design are obvious. But there are applications in countless other industries too.

To create the platform, Nvidia has partnered with a large number of other companies including Adobe, Autodesk, Blender, and Pixar. This means Nvidias Omniverse is helping the users of all these products to make the metaverse a reality, and thereby increasing the size of Nvidias market.

If Jensen Huangs prediction that the metaverse will be a bigger economy than the current physical economy comes anywhere close to being true, Nvidia will be one of its major suppliers, if not its largest supplier. This makes for a compelling investment case - but the metaverse is a long way from being a reality at scale, and stocks dont move in a straight line.

The semiconductor industry is also cyclical, and earnings tend to be lumpy. Add to that the fact that Nvidia is trading at a substantial premium, and theres potential for lots of volatility in the future.

We recently pointed out that trading by insiders suggested Nvidia may be nearing a peak. We may see lots of corrections of varying magnitudes in the future - this is the nature of companies that persistently trade at high valuations. Watching insider activity may be a good way to manage your own expectations. Insider activity and the ownership breakdown are included in our free analysis of Nvidia.

Simply Wall St analyst Richard Bowman and Simply Wall St have no position in any of the companies mentioned. This article is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

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Nvidias (NASDAQ:NVDA) Road Ahead May be Bumpy as the Company Plays the Long Game with Metaverse Strategy - Yahoo Finance

A legal fight in Los Angeles has exposed a bitter and widening divide between public servants like teachers, police officers and firefighters as COVID-19 vaccine mandates become increasingly common and first responders push back.

Earlier this month, more than 500 Los Angeles firefighters filed a lawsuit against the citys COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The suit is one of several challenges among police and EMS personnel across California and in other major cities, some of whom have threatened resignations in response to the new rules.

Jeff Burmeister, whos part of the nonprofit group Firefighters4Freedom Foundation, said he and his colleagues on the frontlines should be able to make the personal choice based off their constitutional right to privacy,'' whether or not they want the vaccine.

Our lawsuit is directly aimed at trying to repeal the mandate that all city workers, including firefighters receive the vaccine or be terminated, Burmeister, whos served as a firefighter paramedic for the Los Angeles City Fire Department for 16 years, told Yahoo Finance in an interview.

The city of Los Angeles approved an ordinance last month requiring city employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID by early October, unless they are approved for a specific religious or medical exemption.

Similar pressures are bubbling up in New York City, where medical professionals, teachers and police have sparred with City Hall over COVID-19 vaccination requirements. According to recent data, only 53% of NYPD workers are vaccinated.

But Kevin McBride, the L.A. firefighters attorney, argues that the local government doesnt have the power to intrude upon constitutional rights. The city can mandate when garbage is picked up, things that are administrative that don't impact people's individual constitutional rights, he told Yahoo Finance.

As of this week, 66% of the 3350 sworn Los Angeles Fire Department members have received at least one shot, according to the departments records.

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Of the LAFDs 3,712 employees, 1,079 have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began, 9 of them within the last two weeks.

McBride notes that his clients are seeking a middle ground with the city that could include submitting a COVID test regularly.

Our position in the legal case is reasonable accommodations that probably include some sort of testing and we're open to negotiating what that looks like he said. However, he insisted that none of my clients will ever walk off the job.

McBride added: These firefighters got into this business to protect the public. They're going to keep protecting the public as long as the city lets them.

A Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) firefighter receives a COVID-19 vaccine dose from firefighter Michael Perez at a fire station on January 29, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, six LAPD employees have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the citys vaccination requirement, claiming the mandate violates the employees constitutional rights to privacy and due process. The complaint also says that officials have threatened to lay off thousands of officers who refuse to get the jab.

We want them to be able to have a meaningful opportunity to request a religious accommodation, Kevin Snider, chief counsel at the Pacific Justice Institute, said in an interview. We want those that have contracted and recovered from coronavirus to be exempt from vaccination.

This lawsuit comes amid increasingly fraught debates over employer vaccination mandates across the country. The issue escalated after President Joe Biden announced a mandate for federal government workers, and requirements that private employers with more than 100 employees to be vaccinated against the virus, or be tested weekly.

However, the LAPD suit, which was brought against the city, the police chief, and several other government officials, claims that weekly testing itself is highly intrusive.

Snider noted that his clients dont want nasal testing but they may be open to other non-intrusive methods.

It reflects a broader hesitancy among LAPD employees to get vaccinated against coronavirus, despite strong evidence that vaccines are safe and effective.

According to an internal memo sent to Mayor Eric Garcetti obtained by Yahoo Finance, more than 2,600 Los Angeles Police Department employees intend to seek religious exemptions, and over 360 plan to seek medical exemptions for the mandate requiring all city employees to get vaccinated.

The exemptions suggest a loophole in the system. Yet according to Snider, when you have a situation in one's life that is a bit of a crisis then one begins to do some soul searching and some deep thinking. And I think that is what is happening.

In L.A., non-exempt employees must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 19, and exemptions will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Those who have exemptions must be tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis.

Recent data also shows just about half of the departments employees have not been vaccinated, which lags behind the general population, who have had at least one dose. Several sworn LAPD employees and three spouses of department personnel have died from complications of COVID since the pandemic began.

An LAPD representative did not immediately return Yahoo Finances request for comment. However, L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer, expressed his belief that the citys position would prevail.

I'm confident about the outcome, Feuer told Yahoo Finance Live this week. I think it's essential that we continue to effectively persuade all members of the public, including our first responders, how important it is to get vaccinated to protect all of us.

Yet its unclear what will happen if employees refuse to get the jab, regardless of how the lawsuit fares.

We're going to see what happens. I will say I think it's just imperative that we rise to this occasion right now, Feuer added.

He declined to speculate if officers or firefighters would leave over the mandates, claiming it's premature. However, Feuer said he was optimistic that we're going to see the vast majority of our firefighters and police officers agree to comply with a law that is extremely likely to be upheld by courts in these losses.

Some first responders have argued that they have survived previous bouts of coronavirus, and as a result have natural antibodies from contracting the virus previously. Still, many medical experts advise vaccination even for those who have been infected.

There's no medical reason why people who have had prior infection should not be considered protected and allowed to have an exemption from workplace vaccination requirements, said Jeffrey Klausner, clinical professor of population and public health sciences at University of Southern Californias Keck School of Medicine.

He added: There's no strong evidence that people who get a shot after they've recovered actually have better immunity in terms of a lower risk of going to the hospital, going to an intensive care unit or dying.

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @daniromerotv

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Vaccines: LA firefighters lawsuit is 'directly aimed at trying to repeal the mandate' - Yahoo Finance

Funding a Roth IRA through the backdoor has been a favorite move of aggressive savers in recent years.

But the benefit may be much less prevalent if Democrats pass their ambitious multitrillion-dollar budget reconciliation bill.

The backdoor Roth maneuver lets a high-income earners contribute money to a traditional IRA and then convert it into a Roth to skirt income limitations in the Roth program, but still take advantage of the tax benefits. Once the move is made and the relevant taxes are paid upfront the retirement account can grow and won't be subject to taxes again (earnings can grow tax-free, and qualified withdrawals are tax- and penalty-free).

[Cashay: Everything you need to know about IRAs]

The Democrats' plan, however, would scale back Roth conversions, and completely eliminate the ability for the richest Americans to convert traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs by 2032. Right now, individuals with an income above $140,000 are not permitted to make Roth IRA contributions directly. The change would mean that wealthier Americans individuals with a taxable income over $400,000 or couples filing jointly with taxable income over $450,000 wouldn't be able go through the backdoor to make a conversion.

A related maneuver called the mega backdoor Roth IRA would be eliminated even sooner. This move allows employees in certain retirement plans make an after-tax contribution to their 401(k) that they then roll into a tax-protected Roth. That move would be eliminated by 2022 and apply to everyone, regardless of income level.

A "backdoor" Roth IRA is a way for high-income taxpayers to fund a Roth, even if their incomes exceed the limits that allows for regular Roth contributions. (Getty Images)

Gordon Gray, director of fiscal policy at American Action Forum, a Washington think tank, notes that the drive to limit Roths is based on a few very visible cases of this in the news, but predicts the bill, if enacted, would raise only a little over $4 billion over the coming decade a drop in the bucket in the proposed $3.5 trillion package.

I think this is a little bit of policy chasing headlines, says Gray.

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The headlines in question surround a blockbuster ProPublica story published this summer that found billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal (PYPL) and an early investor in Facebook (FB), was sitting on a Roth "individual retirement account" worth $5 billion.

Thiel and other ultra-wealthy Americans, the investigation found, have turned their Roths into supercharged investment vehicles subsidized by American taxpayers. They'll pay no taxes on the returns on their investments if they wait to access the money until they're 59 1/2.

IRAs have been in the political crosshairs before, notably in 2012 when then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney was reported to have a traditional SEP-IRA worth $102 million. While Thiel and Romney used a variety of tricks, the backdoor provisions were reportedly not a key way they amassed their IRA fortunes.

The people that do these types of [backdoor] strategies are not very, very wealthy, super high-income earners that are trying to skirt paying taxes that they owe," said Henry Yoshida, co-founder and CEO of a self-directed IRA company called Rocket Dollar. "Instead, they are very financially responsible people with actually more mid-tier incomes that live pretty well below their means.

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel participates in a discussion at the National Press Club on October 31, 2016 in Washington, DC. Thiel discussed his support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Another change proposed by Democrats could target a future Peter Thiel more directly. The tax plan would ban IRAs from making certain types of investments, even if the account holder has a specific license to do so. According to a summary, the bill prohibits IRAs from holding investments which are offered to accredited investors because those investments are securities that have not been registered under federal securities laws.

According to the ProPublica investigation, Thiel achieved his eye-popping balance by purchasing his founders shares in PayPal through his Roth IRA during PayPals formation. It was an investment not available to the general public, and an example of one that would likely be disallowed under the Democrats' new rule.

Other changes in the plan dont address Roth accounts directly but are designed to bring in additional revenue from the wealthiest Americans and their retirement plans. One proposal would add a contribution limit for retirement plans of high-income earners with account balances over $10 million. Another would institute an increase in minimum required distributions for high-income earners with similarly large account balances.

Former U.S. Senator William Roth Jr. represented Delaware for decades and pushed provisions into the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 to create his namesake account type. A little over decade later, further changes allowed Roth conversions for anyone regardless of income level beginning in 2010.

Yoshida noted that in recent history Washington actually really loved Roth IRAs because they got tax revenue today from people that had the means and qualified to do so.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA), right ,is spearheading the Democrat's tax plan in the upcoming reconciliation package. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

All of a sudden now, I think that they're maybe prematurely looking at eliminating [the provisions] based on a very extreme edge case, he said, adding that he doesn't think the provisions "are actually going to penalize the people that you're intending to penalize.

But in the end, Congressional observers like Gray expect the new Roth provisions to become law if Democrats are able to muscle the massive package through Congress.

The revenue raised by the new rules, however small, will help fund the rest of the bill.

I expect those will stay in, in part because it does raise money, said Gray, a former advisor to lawmakers including Sen. Rob Portman and Sen. John McCain. Because Democrats are going to want to hold onto as many of the offsets that they can, and given the visibility on some of these, they probably feel pretty strongly about being able to defend these changes, he said.

Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.

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Democrats want to cut way back on those backdoor Roths - Yahoo Finance