The other other stuff (politics)

by JanieM

In response to Girl from the North Country's request.

I suppose it's futile, but I'm going to ask anyhow. Can we try to keep it to

-- reportage and not bloody-minded rants about the facts being reported, and

-- constructive ideas and links to useful info, actions, etc....

It's hard enough to fight off despair even when not being clobbered over the head with it all day long.

Comments

[Girl from the North Country]

And lo, there was a thread! The request referred to:

Janie, we do need an actual politics thread. I've just read that Yamiche Alcindor (the original asker of the "nasty question" about why the Pandemic Task Force had been disbanded), has tweeted that in his press conference today He Who Must Not Be Named said ""As we near the end of our historic battle" with the coronavirus and that there is now "light at the end of the tunnel." Given that he apparently said this, and given that in his press conference yesterday he repeated Steve Hilton's idiot talking points about "the solution mustn't be worse than the problem" and that he would "re-open" the American economy sooner rather than later, and given the numbers you have run, it looks as if we are approaching a tremendous crisis of several different kinds (i.e. not just medically and logistically, but also where the administration might go completely against medical and scientific advice).

If this happens, and as wj and others have noted, given that the mass deaths might heavily skew Republican, we may not be far off a 25th Amendment situation. Is there some kind of mass action (emailing of congresspeople etc) that rational people should now be contemplating?

[Msrty]

First, the administration hasnt shut anything down in the first place, so him trying to start things up should prove frustrating.

Second, I asked the question yesterday if we have identified any criteria that defines we can start going back to work?

I'm not sitting here 4 months. Most of my gigs have shut down with the customer. How many lives did the depression take? Texas is shutting down from oil prices, secondary damage is not going to be solved in a month or two.

In a reasonably short amount of time we will have to pick a point on the curve as the start up point. Certainly not next week.

[Girl from the North Country]

[More kumbaya]

Marty, did you see the Dylan stuff I posted on the Returning Fire thread? If not, you might like it.

[JanieM]

Marty, I don't know if you've seen references to the Imperial College London study that has been mentioned a lot. I have not followed it closely, but I think it examines a couple of scenarios for intervention, relaxation of restrictions, and more intervention as case numbers rise again. (Did someone say right here that the 1918 flu killed more people in its second wave than in its first?)

Yes, the depression cost lives. The COVID-19 pandemic will also, potentially, cost many more lives than just the people who die of COVID-19 -- for example, people with other health care issues that can't be addressed because COVID-19 is in the way. The possible knock-on cost of having large numbers of health care workers become ill won't be minor either. The list could go on. But I don't relish beating my head against a stone wall.

When you say "I'm not sitting here for 4 months" you sound like a pouty defiant two-year-old. But whatever. Don't sit there! Go out and get sick and spread the illness to other people, what the heck.

Bare links:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-imperial-college-johnson.html

[JanieM]

Sorry, Marty. I shouldn't be so unpleasant. But I just don't get your thinking, unless you believe there's some element of hoax in the notion that this will be out of control if we don't clamp down hard.

Eh, I'll leave you to it.

[wj]

for example, people with other health care issues that can't be addressed because COVID-19 is in the way.

Not to mention those who cannot get their petscribed and required medication because someone who knows nothing about medicine** says (falsely) it will help with covid-19. And the people who attempt to self-medicate with one of those pseudo-cures, and manage to poison themselves. Both of which we are already seeing.

** But has a bully pulpit to fantasize from.

[Marty]

I think there is no doubt doing nothing creates a tsunami. But we never get past the risk, just stretching it out. If I could draw a graph there is a point where the diminished risk of the virus meets the rising risk of 20%+ unemployment. There will likely be 2 million new unemployed next week.

I think we need to start preparing people for what's next.

BTW, I have read parts of the Imperial study, i understand the science, we sent us and our workers home to work a week before everyone else, the science will define the point I am talking about. But the facts are that we will restart the economy before the risk is zero.

A serology test would make that easier but time is not on our side.

[russell]

In a reasonably short amount of time we will have to pick a point on the curve as the start up point.

What exactly does this mean? Everybody go back to work, and tough shit if you get sick and die?

There are examples of countries that have managed this well without cratering their economies.

Test aggressively. Isolate people who are sick and provide them with medical care. Trace points of contact from those people and test and isolate people they have been in contact with for two weeks to (a) see if they sick and (b) keep them from infecting anybody else. Maintain that until R0 goes below 1, for as long as it takes to keep R0 below 1.

That is apparently what works.

We dropped the ball when the WHO offered tests. We dropped the ball when we FUBARed our own tests. We dropped the ball while we waited around for that asshole in the Oval Office to get a clue and do any damned thing at all.

So, pick up the freaking ball. Tests exist, spend the damned money and acquire them, and use them. And anyone who tests positive stays home, and anybody they've been in contact with gets tested and if they test positive they stay home.

Pick some arbitrary point "on the curve" and lift all restrictions is going to kill a lot of people. If you want to go first, fine. If you don't want to put your hand up, don't ask anybody else to do so.

This country is in thrall to god-damned fucking money. It's obscene.

[wj]

we never get past the risk, just stretching it out.

As I understand it, "stretching it out" is precisely the point. In order to keep from overwhelming the capacity of the medical system. Because if it IS overwhelmed, a lot more people die.

If you stretch it out, the same number of people get sick eventually. But fewer of them die.

[JanieM]

780 US deaths on the JH site now. That's a good deal worse than my seat of the pants calc last night would predict (based on 3/19 to 3/23 and onward). At that rate (585 last night to 780 tonight, and the night isn't over), the # of deaths by 4/16 approaches 600,000.

I am holding out hope that the measures that have been put in place aren't reflected yet, because the lag before they will show up is significant.

But other than that, wrs, as usual.

[JanieM]

To put it a different way, the point on the curve (to take up Marty's formulation) that should have been chosen was about two months ago. Too bad we live in a banana republic now.

[Marty]

Well luckily russell you got yours, the 20% of the people who will be unemployed in 6 weeks dont . At some point you have to let them go to work because a thousand dollars ain't gonna cut it. Yeah, fucking money matters, but not to the people you complain about nearly as much as the people that dont have any.

What's obscene is the jump to the extreme, no one wa ts millions of people to die, or be pushed into oermanent poverty.

Jesus.

[JanieM]

Yeah, fucking money matters, but not to the people you complain about nearly as much as the people that dont have any.

If this were even remotely true, income inequality in this country wouldn't have been worsening for the last several decades.

[Girl from the North Country]

No one wants millions of people to die, but they will if the scientists and doctors are ignored (as they were at the beginning, with terrible results).

[JanieM]

"You got yours" -- Marty's favorite nyah nyah retort. Champion of the poor and oppressed, heh.

[russell]

Well luckily russell you got yours, the 20% of the people who will be unemployed in 6 weeks dont

I have a job where I have the good fortune to be able to work at home, and the company I work for will probably not go out of business.

So yes, I'm very lucky.

All I have to say about the "you got yours" thing other than that is (a) don't be an asshole and (b) short of that, fuck the hell off.

If you look at what I have called out as an intelligent approach, you will not see "make everybody stay at home until they run out of money".

And if people need to stay home because they (a) are ill or (b) are infectious or (c) have been in contact with (a) or (b) and we need them to isolate for a couple of weeks until we know if they're (a) or (b), then we can take the HALF A FUCKING TRILLION DOLLARS that Trump wants to give to Mnuchin to dole out to his pals and use it to provide those people with unemployment insurance and medical coverage.

Right?

$500 billion-with-a-b is like 2.5% of the entire GDP of the United States. It'll pay a lot of household bills, for a lot of people, for long enough for them to get well or long enough for us to figure out if they're ill.

You want to send them back to work. That means some of them will die, full stop.

So don't give me any shit about having insufficient empathy for the working man. Not now, not ever.

[Marty]

I wrote an angry reply, but I'm not angry.

At some point we have to have a plan for restarting the economy. Pretty much everything to mitigate is in works, we would all like that to be going faster.

We need to understand where the break point of the economy is,I guarantee we dont want a depression. Other countries aren't us but, they haven't waited for zero risk to restart their economies.

[russell]

At some point, preferably a month ago but bygones, we need a plan for managing COVID-19.

The economy will take care of itself if we figure out who is sick and treat them, and who is contagious or potentially so and isolate them until they're not.

This is not the great depression or even the great recession. The problem is not the economy, it's the virus. Our attention should be directed to addressing the virus.

The immediate problem is *we don't who has or has not been exposed*. So our options are make everybody stay home, or don't do that and wait to see who gets sick and dies.

Figure out who can infect somebody else and isolate them until they are well or the incubation period is over.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"At some point we have to have a plan for restarting the economy."

I hear that Elizabeth Warren is really good at making plans.

The orange dotard, not so much.

[Marty]

We arent ever going to know who has it.we have 300 million people who will not put an app on their phone that let's the government know where they are, and warns the people around them that someone near them has been infected or exposed.

South Korea solution, out.

The federal government could not shut the country down, if they had tried four weeks ago the push back on the authoritarian GOP would have been earth shattering.

Too late, China solution out.

We have what we have, it seems to be followed better in most areas.

The economy will not magically crank back up after a point, the money from Congress may be too late to staunch the layoffs,the contraction will be at least 30% in the second quarter, thats more than 2.5% of gdp.

I'm not sure when Easter is as I write this but yesterday people were talking 4 months. We would not likely recover from that anytime soon. Which is what I'm sure doofus was reacting to.

[russell]

We arent ever going to know who has it.

Then you can kiss "the economy" goodbye.

[Hartmut]

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/jerry-falwell-jr-trump-ally-isn-t-closing-his-virginia-n1167681

Borrow Cerberus from Hades and put him on the entrance. Enclose the campus with (electrified) barbed wire. Also dig a trench and fill it with a mixture of disinfectant and sulfuric acid.
Air drop food occasionally. Wait till the end of term, then send in troops in full hazard gear and round up the survivors, disinfect them and put them in a second quarantine for 4 weeks in some remote facility. Get 'biblical' on those not complying.

[liberal japonicus]

I guarantee we dont want a depression.

I believe that a famous Anglo-American philosopher observed 'You can't always get what you want'. I assume the logical corollary is one often gets things that they don't want.

The federal government could not shut the country down, if they had tried four weeks ago the push back on the authoritarian GOP would have been earth shattering.

And so they did not even try? I think that is understating the extent to which doofus and others argued that there was nothing to see.

Of course, there were the other pundits who when this was all breaking said that this was a lesson to China and other places (Iraq ring a bell?), that authoritarian governments can't handle these crises. If my Chinese was better, I could look for the pundits there now saying that this just proves what Western neo-liberalism suffers from the fatal flaw of too much freedom. As they say in the UK, the boot is on the other foot.

I hope that my tone doesn't come off as dumping on you, I'm pleased that you agree with some of these things I wrote here. But if we go for your new normal of "better left unsaid" (and I would also note that it is an assumption that getting sick from COVID once provides continued immunity in the future, which means that this is more or less a permanent state of affairs)

Researchers do know that reinfection is an issue with the four seasonal coronaviruses that cause about 10 to 30% of common colds. These coronaviruses seem to be able to sicken people again and again, even though people have been exposed to them since childhood.

[...]

"Most respiratory viruses only give you a period of relative protection. I'm talking about a year or two. That's what we know about the seasonal coronaviruses," says Falsey.

So a throw up our hands approach cause it is too big to deal with, even if it doesn't break the healthcare system as it has in Italy, means that everyone will live under the cloud of fear. I think of the rather common assumption by kids whose parents divorce that they are somehow the reason and wonder if the same thing will obtain here. 'Don't be silly, you didn't kill grandpa because you didn't wash your hands' You can tell kids that it's not their fault that mommy and daddy can't stand each other, but they usually don't listen. How are they going to handle this?

So as I said, this probably sounds harsh, but when you argue that there is nothing that can be done, you are essentially giving doofus a pass. I agree with you that we probably won't get the economy restarted, and we are well and truely screwed, so it is probably only for the purposes of self-satisfaction that I say we told you so.

[russell]

If we can find half a trillion bucks for Mnuchin to hand out to corps sub rosa, then we can find money to acquire tests, masks, ventilators. And we can find the money to extend unemployment benefits and health insurance to people who've lost their jobs, or who we need to isolate so they don't make other people sick.

The choice of either compel everyone to go back to work, or send everyone a thousand bucks and then make them stay home to go broke, is a false one. The fact that it's all that this administration can come up with is damning.

Trump is not doofus. GW Bush was doofus. Trump is toxic.

If we can't find a way to figure out who to isolate, the economy is not going to rebound. Not for a long, long time. Not until some critical mass of people are exposed and either get sick or don't, or die or don't.

Which, in this country, means hundreds of thousands or low millions of people die from the virus, lots of other people die because the medical system is crushed, and an order magnitude more people get pretty sick but don't die.

All of which is going to be a huge drag on our precious economy.

[Marty]

Never mind, useless circular argument. Eventually you have to plan for what's next. Not just say well we will start up again someday. If for no other reason than people are less afraid when there is a goal.

[John D Thullen]

We'll start up again someday, for whatever value of "someday" one's self-interest dictates.

There.

[cleek]

go to work, "conservatives". please. all of you, get in your F150s, go bro- it out at the construction site or the ol Gun-n-Pray. a little Darwinian filtering might do you some good.

leave me out of it.

[wj]

The federal government could not shut the country down, if they had tried four weeks ago the push back on the authoritarian GOP would have been earth shattering.

And so they did not even try? I think that is understating the extent to which doofus and others argued that there was nothing to see.

Suppose, 4 (better yet 8-10) weeks ago, the Federal government had gotten serious. Gotten testing capabilities ready. Gotten production ventilators, masks, etc. ramped up. Then we might have been in a position to avoid having to shut down. Certainly not to the across-the-board extent that we have. But that would have required accepting expert advice.

Now, as Marty says, we have to deal with where we are. But, as others have noted, we can either live with a major economic downturn (with huge efforts to moderate the effects to some extent), or live with massive death tolls. The good news is, we have experience working our way out of a major economic depression. It's hard work, but we know what to do (whether some will admit it or not). The bad news is, we don't know how to bring the dead back to life once they're gone.

[russell]

Now, as Marty says, we have to deal with where we are.

Look, I'll answer his question from yesterday.

I asked the question yesterday if we have identified any criteria that defines we can start going back to work?

Trump has identified "by Easter", which is three weeks from now. I'm not aware of any other time certain that has been proposed at the federal level.

In the state of MA, non-essential businesses and services are under order to close their physical locations until April 7. I have no idea if that will be extended at that point, or not.

Other jurisdictions probably have their own rules.

So 4 months may be recommended by some medical authorities, but it doesn't seem like anything is enforcing that at the public policy level, at this point.

That may change, it depends on what happens over the next few weeks.

The economy is definitely stalled. I'm not sure what exactly anyone is supposed to do to "start it back up". If it's unsafe for people to go to work, or go shopping, or gather in public places for any reason at all, it's going to be hard to make them do so. If we insist on making them do so by not providing sufficient support for them to stay home, then a lot of them will probably get sick.

You tell me how many people should get sick to keep the economy from stalling. If we're going to go through the exercise of "picking a point on the curve", we need to pick a point on that curve also.

Because that is the other variable in the equation.

[Marty]

Yes russell, exactly what I said originally. We need to look at both graphs.

[wj]

You tell me how many people should get sick to keep the economy from stalling.

Too late. The economy is already stalled. And IMHO is going to stay stalled for some months, no matter what Trump wants. My take is that his comments are half wishful thinking (which he is good at) and half attempted blame avoidance (which is a core competency). Nothing more.

At most, there will be a few states (small by population, if not in number) where the governor, et al., decide to follow Trump and drop anything like a lockdown. Followed by a huge increase in infections -- for which they will turn out to have even fewer medical facilities than average. Followed by a far worse economic downturn than the rest of us end up with.

Neighboring states will get some overflow, as people from those places try desperately to find help. But the worst of it will be the states which insist that wishful thinking is better than elitist expertise.

[cleek]

i really don't get this panic about a permanently stalled economy. why on earth should the economy be permanently stalled by this?

if this takes longer than Easter (wtf), then we should just keep handing out the checks. increase unemployment coverage, pay people to dig ditches in their own back yards. whatever.

and when the threat recedes, we'll start putting things back together.

why does any of this have to be permanent ?

[cleek]

also... "get back to work, despite the risks, for the sake of the glorious economy" has quite a Soviet feel to it, nyet?

[liberal japonicus]

that's a good point cleek. I think there are a lot of businesses that are worried that if it goes on too long, they are toast. And, to give some credit to Marty, if it gets to a point where we are picking up the pieces in 6 months to a year, the government is going to get to choose which industries live and which die and I have to say, not speaking for Marty, I shudder to think ot what they would use as a metric to decide.

cf this
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/absorb-these-words

[russell]

We need to look at both graphs.

All good.

So, my point of view on this is that we should focus our efforts on keeping people healthy, even if that is at the expense of economic recovery.

If that creates financial hardship through lost wages etc., then we should extend and increase unemployment and other forms of assistance so that people can stay home if they work in non-essential industries, until we can bring more resources online for testing and medical care.

That will delay the return of the economy to full strength, but will save many thousands, perhaps very low millions, of lives.

Delaying the return of the market to full strength will also, no doubt, impair the quality of a lot of people's lives, but IMO less so then allowing exposure to the virus to go unchecked, or only minimally checked.

So, personally, that's my take on it.

[cleek]

I think there are a lot of businesses that are worried that if it goes on too long, they are toast.

that's probably true. but government can help avoid that. and government can help get those businesses back up. we can help businesses owners with rent, so they don't lose their places. we can employees with lost wages. we can help people not lose their houses.

we can do this.

throwing lives away isn't the way to go.

[russell]

we can do this.

throwing lives away isn't the way to go.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^. this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[wj]

"get back to work, despite the risks, for the sake of the glorious economy" has quite a Soviet feel to it, nyet?

Da!

But we must all sacrifice, for the glorious state and our glorious leader.

[John D Thullen]

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/03/25/were-past-the-point-of-giving-trump-advice/

[wj]

that's probably true. but government can help avoid that. and government can help get those businesses back up. we can help businesses owners with rent, so they don't lose their places. we can employees with lost wages. we can help people not lose their houses.

I do think we need to broaden our horizons a bit for this. I don't see massive government interventions to safeguard the profit margins of big companies. But I think we need to recall that the owners of small businesses need the same kind of personal financial support (in addition to the items you mention for their businesses) that their employees need.

[russell]

Looks like Congress has an economic package to help in the near term. It looks pretty generous, in good ways as far as I can tell.

If they can get Trump to shut the hell up, maybe we'll get through this in mostly one piece.

[CaseyL]

a trillion dollars is a thousand billion.

How many multi-billionaires do we have in America?

540, according to Forbes - and they would know. Some maybe just qualify; others have 5 billion or more.

So we take an average of 500M from each of them, which gives us half a trillion.

(The same amount the Senate was about to hand to Trump to dole out however he liked, secretly, until Democratic Senators succeeded in adding a No You Can't to the bill.)

Half a trillion would go pretty far in keeping small businesses from going under.

[CaseyL]

... that should be, $1B from each of them, not $500M.

Math is hard :D

[Hartmut]

Mississippi governor overturns local measures (that were imposed) to slow spread of virus. Cities forced to revoke stay-at-home orders and restaurant closings (apart from take-away). Businesses who were preparing work-from-home procedures order employees to come back to work instead.

I say, when this is over, the guy should be sued into the poorhouse by those negatively affected. And that's the generous option (my first reaction being calling for exquisitely cruel and highly unusual punishment).

[Marty]

Good god, no one was handing out anything secretly. That was all bullshit politics that delayed the bill for three days.. Unless they decided that the loans were top secret they would be a matter of public record. Which is still true.

What crap.

[cleek]

they would be a matter of public record

6 months after they were given.

conveniently.

[JanieM]

Marty, ever the champion of the poor and oppressed...billionaires. I loved those crocodile tears for the real poor people the other day.

[Marty]

3.28 million new jobless claims last week on top of 1.8 m continuing.Lets let those billionaires fail, that will help.

[cleek]

dead people don't need unemployment benefits.

problem solved.

[JanieM]

Lets let those billionaires fail, that will help.

It very well might. Part of the reason we've turned into a banana republic is the rapaciousness of the people at the top, and the snowballing effect of greed for more, ever more, for the few, ever fewer.

Somehow I don't think we'd be worse off if the most rapacious of the billionaire / entrepreneur class ended up half as rich, and the people on the bottom got better wages, better health care, had money to spend in "the economy." That is, TP's version of "the economy."

If that little snake Zuckerberg "failed," I'd throw a party.

[cleek]

from Twitter: "This pandemic is like an infomercial for a wealth tax"

[sapient]

The playbook.

Please distribute widely. This is what was known had to be done, but wasn't done. These people are murderers.

[JanieM]

Or Mnuchin,for another example.

He could fail all the way to Hades and the country wouldn't be a whit worse off. In fact....

[JanieM]

N.b. there are two Mnuchin links. Just as a little sampler.

[John D Thullen]

Marty, you have used the lie Deep State here on at least one occasion., in the manner of the right wing, Further, you are affiliated, loosely according to your mood as far as I can tell and as all conservatives make a habit of, a line of ideological thinking that government by its very nature, despite being elected by those of us who vote, is at the very best non-transparent, secretive, and venally so in its motivations toward your tax dollars, not to mention dishonest, incompetent (l'm still getting fucking mail, McKinney, make it stop!), prone to theft, slavery and any number of jackbooted sins and crimes against the body politic.

Now, you tell us differently, while the most vile, lying, theiving political monster in our Nation's history and his minions (there's another word easily copped from the conservative lexicon) stand in front of us daily and spew the most concentrated line of bullshit from their pie holes.

So Casey may use the word "secret" without credible bwa-ha-ha admonition from you.

That said, get through this thing with with your health and well-being intact.

As to Zuckerberg, I wish I had been his college roommate when he first uttered the words "There is no such thing as privacy". He's another arrogant twit like Trump who no one thought to punch his face in, from which they concluded that fucking the world was their birthright.

Have we noticed finally that today's conservatives, the alleged heirs to the likes of Edmund Burke and William F. Buckley, who stood athwart any sort of change and yelled "No!", get sadistic pleasure right down in their "animal spirited" gonads from disrupting our worlds without our permission.

[russell]

Good god, no one was handing out anything secretly.

My understanding is this: the administration's original was that money could be lent and the recipient not disclosed for up to 6 months. Because lending the money could be seen as an indication of financial weakness on the part of the recipient.

Do you know otherwise?

I will also note that it might be of interest to potential investors to know that the corp was receiving federal emergency loan money. Funny times we live in.

3.28 million new jobless claims last week on top of 1.8 m continuing

Which is why the current intent is to support people who are out of work with increased and extended unemployment and other benefits.

Should they be so inclined, the billionaires could help by paying for some of that. That's what taxes do.

This is of interest, and lets us play the "where on the curve" game through the magic of interactive statistical graphics.

Kristof recommends 60 days. That seems like a reasonable balance between not doing irreparable damage to the economy, vs chasing increasingly small gains in public health and safety.

Let's just do that. If we get 30 days in and we make much better progress than expected, we can always relax restrictions earlier than planned. You can't really go the other way - once they're relaxed, the virus is free to spread, and you can't put that genie back in the bottle.

We should have done this a month ago. Now is better than never.

Trump won't do this, ever. If Congress can't make it happen, states should do it.

Call you governor.

[John D Thullen]

We won!

https://digbysblog.net/2020/03/perversity-explained/

[hairshirthedonist]

I will also note that it might be of interest to potential investors to know that the corp was receiving federal emergency loan money. Funny times we live in.

Markets are supposed to work ideally when actors have complete and perfect information, right? It seems like free-marketeers remember the lessons from the econ classes they never took on an à la carte basis.

[cleek]

my suggestion is that we let the virus decide when it's safe for us to all get back to normal. since it's probably not going to follow any schedule we set for it.

[Tony P.]

Q: How do you become a millionaire in the stock market?
A: You start with a billion dollars.

It's an old joke, but it may help explain this to Marty: "capital" is still "capital" even when it is NOT concentrated in a very few hands.

The billionaire "goes under" by buying high and selling low. Now consider the people on the other side of those transactions. They could be billionaires too, of course, but they could also be (gasp!) ordinary proles whose retirement accounts got a little fatter at the billionaire's expense. Some of the billionaire's "wealth" became their "wealth". If that "wealth" was ownership of some on-going business (a hotel chain, a software company, a baseball team, whatever) why should that business not continue to on-go just because some of its ownership changed hands?

Unless I have been grossly misinformed, ownership changing hands happens millions of times every day -- it's called stock trading on the NYSE, Nasdaq, and so on. The nation's chickens continue to lay eggs despite all this hand-changing. Job consumers are still needed to collect, package, and distribute the eggs. Because you make omelettes with eggs, not dollars. At the risk of pedantry, "eggs" is a metaphor; read it as "goodsandservices" if you prefer.

So, shorter me: billionaires "going under" is NOT THE SAME as The Economy "going under".

--TP

[wj]

I say, when this is over, the guy should be sued into the poorhouse by those negatively affected. And that's the generous option (my first reaction being calling for exquisitely cruel and highly unusual punishment).

We got into a discussion of this on the weekly conference call at work. One suggestion floated: can you sue someone (for example the governor) for wrongful death in a case like this? Interesting thought.

[wj]

My understanding is this: the administration's original was that money could be lent and the recipient not disclosed for up to 6 months. Because lending the money could be seen as an indication of financial weakness on the part of the recipient.

Are you sure? Because I thought the reason was to conveniently put the disclosure date after the election. After all, then it no longer matters -- to Trump or to the Senators pushing for it.

[JanieM]

can you sue someone (for example the governor) for wrongful death in a case like this?

As to that mayor, tarred and feathered and run out of "his" town on a rail is a tempting image.

Can he make people go to work, for crying out loud? (Rhetorical question. Even from my very local neighborhood it's abundantly clear that different towns invest different powers in their officials.)

[Snarki, child of Loki]

wj, you could *sue*, it's incredibly unlikely that you'd *win*. They've stacked the legal deck so as to avoid accountability.

When there's no "legal path" to accountability for heinous acts, that leaves the 2nd Amendment path.

Better to deal with it through the courts, but (IMO) it needs to be made much clearer that there is a PRICE for legal immunity.

[hairshirthedonist]

my suggestion is that we let the virus decide when it's safe for us to all get back to normal. since it's probably not going to follow any schedule we set for it.

Why anyone is even thinking about when to "reopen" anything or get "back to normal" when we, whether that means the US or the planet generally, are still in the exponential-growth phase (literally, mathematically exponential - not the loose colloquial usage) of this thing is beyond me.

It's like your house is burning down and you want to talk about what color to paint the living room after the house is rebuilt.

[Girl from the North Country]

As to that mayor, tarred and feathered and run out of "his" town on a rail is a tempting image.

This would do, but personally I prefer Hartmut's sinister:

(my first reaction being calling for exquisitely cruel and highly unusual punishment)

Hartmut's past record encourages me to imagine that this would be highly appropriate, not to mention entertaining.

[Hartmut]

Well, Mozart had the right idea. He just jumbled the proper sequence:
http://www.aria-database.com/search.php?individualAria=290
(Last stanza is the relevant part here)
https://youtu.be/dp15XFciT-c?t=277

[wj]

Perhaps Mozart was a completist.

[Hartmut]

From a practical point of view #1 would make #2 a wee bit difficult. I think one should start with #5 and then go #6*, #3, #7, #2, #1, #4.

*the correct translation would be 'dipping' btw, so less final.

[wj]

Meter and rhyme tend to make getting sequencing difficult. I design flaw, I suppose....

[Marty]

I did not use billionaires as a proxy for the corporations, someone else did and I was replying to them. None of this money is going to billionaires, Compsnies going bankrupt,reorganizing,other companies picking up the assets, all those things cause some pain to billionaires, but much more pain fo the dislocated employees and thousands of 401k shareholders.

That's what your saying is ok if you dont like that part of this package.

[CharlesWT]

So, the government will be picking corporate winners and losers. Since the politicians feel compelled to toss a lot of money into the wind, directing to individuals and let them pick the winners and losers would likely be a better approach.

[russell]

That's what your saying is ok if you dont like that part of this package.

How about this: if you take the money, you don't lay anybody off.

If that means you pay them to sit at home, then you pay them to sit at home.

Seem fair to you?

[Marty]

Well, that's what it says. If you take the money and dont reduce payroll for the term the money you spent on payroll and a few other expenses gets forgiven.

Seem fair?

[russell]

An analysis of the corporate lending part of the relief bill. Dayen clearly has a point of view, but he seems to have his facts straight.

$425B of the $500B total helps capitalize a $4.25T - four point two five trillion dollar - lending facility at the Fed. In brief:

So it’s not a $2 trillion bill, it’s closer to $6 trillion, and $4.3 trillion of it comes in the form of a bazooka aimed at CEOs and shareholders, with almost no conditions attached. At the moment nobody’s seen language, but there’s apparently only a buyback ban for the term of the loan. The money cannon can therefore go to executive compensation or mergers or wholesale purchases of distressed businesses or whatever other financial engineering the accounting department can muster. And once the company returns to health, it can leak out cash to investors (and during the loan too, in dividends). There’s no requirement to keep workers hired; in fact, the (necessary) provision to boost unemployment insurance for four months to 100 percent of median salary (including furloughed workers, gig workers and freelancers) means that these companies can fire with relative impunity. Members of Trump’s family can’t get bailout funds, so, yay.

A pretty fncking sweet deal.

Note that this money trough is not for the small businesses that actually employ most of the people who work for a living. Small business gets a separate, significantly smaller pile of dough.

The (R) Senators who were holding up the bill were doing so because they thought a $600 a week bump in unemployment benefits might persuade people to leave their jobs and stay home.

[russell]

If you take the money and dont reduce payroll for the term the money you spent on payroll and a few other expenses gets forgiven.

That's the small business program. The big pile of money, administered through the Fed, does not have that requirement.

[Marty]

Well he hasnt seen the language, no dividends, cuts in management pay, np.o buybacks until the loans repaid.

I will read the employment section again, because I thought there was one in both. Its 1100 pages, but it is my current gig to know exactly what it says. So I'll take a day

[liberal japonicus]

it is my current gig to know exactly what it says

Share where you are reading it. I hate to say this, but I'm not trusting any sources that you may have in your reading list, and I don't put it past them to do what Jimmy McGill did to his brother.

[russell]

cool. I'll be interested to know what you find.

[nous]

Grist for the mill - of course the Kochs are involved in the sausage making and in the pushback against restrictions to non-essential businesses:

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/26/americans-for-prosperity-cdc-coronavirus/

This in the moment when, according to the Johns Hopkins site, the US has passed China and is #1 on the world list with 82,404 confirmed cases and a curve that is still trending sharply upward.

Meanwhile, I soldier onward with my efforts to move my entire curriculum online and to ensure that all of my students can actually access it from wherever they have landed to weather this storm.

[russell]

Share where you are reading it.

If I'm not mistaken, what Marty is saying here is that he is reviewing the bill itself, as part of his current professional responsibilities. So, not secondary sources.

[liberal japonicus]

Marty seems to be saying that. From the Reagan era, Доверяй, но проверяй...

Meanwhile, here in Japan, German citizens got this letter
https://japan.diplo.de/ja-de/aktuelles/-/2327752

Gesundheit!!

[Priest]

"the US has passed China"

We're #1! We're #1! Bring out your foam fingers.

[russell]

From the Reagan era, Доверяй, но проверяй...

LOL

[liberal japonicus]

Priest, I knew we'd be able to beat those heathen commie Chinese. And we did it while still believing in the germ theory! Take that, Xi Jinping!!!

[bc]

Why anyone is even thinking about when to "reopen" anything

You asked for a name, Thullen. And I give you HSH. (Sorry HSH).

And some hope from Neil Ferguson of Imperial College. From 510,000 UK deaths and 2.2M U.S. (worst case scenario) to 20,000 in the UK (UK flu is 17k annual) is really good news I think. I wonder what his modeling says (or wait, he's in the UK, his "modelling" right?) about the U.S. now. The report also says R0 is estimated to be just over 3 based on the new data from Europe, further supporting SIP.

It is unclear to me how much of the revised estimate is due to SIP vs. the data coming out of Europe.

[Marty]

I am reading the actual bill. One of the partners downloaded it to our shared drive so I'm not sure what gov site he got it from. I have been skimming waiting to see if the House changes it so I dont have to read the whole thing twice.

We also have a list of sections we decided was most important to our clients so we have been discussing them first.

[CharlesWT]

This in the moment when, according to the Johns Hopkins site, the US has passed China and is #1 on the world list with 82,404 confirmed cases and a curve that is still trending sharply upward.

The real numbers in China may be a magnitude more or greater than the numbers coming out of China. And there're strange facts like, in the last couple of months, the Chinese telecoms having a net loss of 21 million accounts.

[sapient]

The real numbers in China may be a magnitude more or greater than the numbers coming out of China. And there're strange facts like, in the last couple of months, the Chinese telecoms having a net loss of 21 million accounts.

Could you provide a link for this? I know someone in China, and I'm worried about what happens there. But from what I've heard, things are returning to normal. He lives in Shanghai, so not the epicenter. They're still practicing vigilant temperature testing and social distancing, but he's going to his office several days a week. He doesn't personally know anyone who got the virus (except for a former colleague who now lives in the UK and got it there).

I don't trust the Chinese government either, but if it were rampant, one would think it would have become obvious by now to people who are living there.

[nous]

The real numbers in China may be a magnitude more or greater than the numbers coming out of China.

Also likely true of our own numbers, versteh? At least until there is more testing.

It's not like Trump's numbers reduction strategy hasn't been in public sight the whole time. He cannot contain his own id.

[sapient]

Good point, nous. Too bad we've become a banana republic. It used to be that we might have had a better clue.

[Priest]

So it goes:

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/atheism-secularism/virginia-pastor-who-said-coronavirus-was-anti-trump-hysteria-dies-from-virus-6OlmIzj2eUe-5X39utr-cw?fbclid=IwAR06HN_7tEwoSNqXXCFln5gPPseuWbi9Zs2jvmO8PXoTeh-qF-NOG3MZd_k

[bc]

My 15-year-old is obsessed with design. Tesla. Apple. Dyson. He is constantly telling me what I need to buy and it gets annoying. Did I say he is obsessive?

Anyway, I haven't been that impressed with Dyson until this. Not much to go on, and maybe they won't be all they are cracked up to be, but color me impressed that they designed it in ten days and are planning to deliver in early April.

Maybe I should listen to that kid more.

[nous]

Also, per sapient's point about his contacts in China, I haven't heard anything about widespread virus deaths from my former colleagues who are working and living in Hong Kong (who had a few things to say about the strikes there while they were going on).

Hong Kong has been slowly opening back up, again with temperature monitoring and limited contact.

[Girl from the North Country]

Instant karma's gonna get you.....

[Girl from the North Country]

That related to the dead pastor, of course.

It is unclear to me how much of the revised estimate is due to SIP vs. the data coming out of Europe.

I saw him talking about this on Channel 4 news last night. He said (I mentioned this in the other thread, I think) that his projection relies on people pretty strictly observing the lockdown.

[CharlesWT]

Could you provide a link for this?

I'm having trouble finding news sources that are doing much more than reporting China's numbers at face value. But some people who have lived in and studied China are very skeptical of the numbers being reported. They think the CCP may be lowballing the number of deaths by at least a factor of ten.

Italy had several strikes against it even before it was hit with COVID-19. It has one of the highest average age populations in the World and its medical system was already stretched thin. But China's population is about 23 times larger than Italy's. The outbreak started there and the government dragged its feet for about two months before locking down the country. So it's a bit difficult to believe that Italy has had more deaths than China.

Math is hard: :)

"As of Thursday, China’s total death toll from the coronavirus was 3,245. But the total number of people infected by the virus in China is more than twice the number in Italy and China’s population is nearly 25 orders of magnitude larger than Italy’s population of 61 million people."
Grim milestone: Italy’s coronavirus deaths surpass China’s

[CharlesWT]

I don't know enough about The Epoch Times to know how crediable it is.

"A comparison with the situation in Italy also suggests the Chinese death toll is significantly underreported. Italy adopted similar measures to those used by the Chinese regime. The CCP virus death toll in Italy of 4,825 translates to a death rate of 9 percent. In China, where a much larger population was exposed to the virus, the reported death toll of 3,265 translated to a death rate of only 4 percent, less than half that reported in Italy.

Activities in the outbreak epicenter of Hubei Province seem to contradict the reported death toll in China. The seven funeral homes in the city of Wuhan were reported to be burning bodies 24 hours a day, seven days a week in late January. Hubei Province has used 40 mobile cremators, each capable of burning five tons of medical waste and bodies a day, since Feb. 16."
21 Million Fewer Cellphone Users in China May Suggest a High CCP Virus Death Toll: The number of Chinese cellphone users dropped by 21 million in the past three months, Beijing authorities announced on March 19.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

So it's a bit difficult to believe that Italy has had more deaths than China.

Math is hard: :)

Now might not be a very good time to take a stroll down Via Fibonacci in Pisa.

And yet, so very very apropos.

[JanieM]

China’s population is nearly 25 orders of magnitude larger than Italy’s population of 61 million people

Math is hard: :)

Especially for someone who doesn't have the faintest shred of a clue what an order of magnitude is.