Coronavirus: Worst Economic Crisis Since 1930s Depression, IMF Says (bbc.com) 277
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The coronavirus pandemic will turn global economic growth "sharply negative" this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. Kristalina Georgieva said the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. She forecast that 2021 would only see a partial recovery. Ms Georgieva, the IMF's managing director, made her bleak assessment in remarks ahead of next week's IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings. Emerging markets and developing countries would be the hardest hit, she said, requiring hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid. "Just three months ago, we expected positive per capita income growth in over 160 of our member countries in 2020," she said. "Today, that number has been turned on its head: we now project that over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year." She added: "In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression."
Ms Georgieva said that if the pandemic eased in the second half of 2020, the IMF expected to see a partial recovery next year. But she cautioned that the situation could also worsen. "I stress there is tremendous uncertainty about the outlook. It could get worse depending on many variable factors, including the duration of the pandemic," she said.
Ms Georgieva's comments came as the U.S. reported t hat the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits had surged for the third week by 6.6 million, bringing the total over that period to more than 16 million Americans. "If you compare those claims to the 151 million people on payrolls in the last monthly employment report, that means the U.S. has lost 10% of the workforce in three weeks," reports NBC News.
The U.S. Federal Reserve said Thursday it will invest up to $2.3 trillion in loans to aid small and mid-sized businesses and state and local governments as well as fund the purchases of some types of high-yield bonds, collateralized loan obligations and commercial mortgage-backed securities. "The money comes on top of the massive stimulus that the Fed had already announced and it thrusts the institution into the sort of speculative lending activities it had shunned in the past -- underscoring the risks that Chairman Jerome Powell is willing to take to shore up the economy," adds Bloomberg.
Ms Georgieva said that if the pandemic eased in the second half of 2020, the IMF expected to see a partial recovery next year. But she cautioned that the situation could also worsen. "I stress there is tremendous uncertainty about the outlook. It could get worse depending on many variable factors, including the duration of the pandemic," she said.
Ms Georgieva's comments came as the U.S. reported t hat the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits had surged for the third week by 6.6 million, bringing the total over that period to more than 16 million Americans. "If you compare those claims to the 151 million people on payrolls in the last monthly employment report, that means the U.S. has lost 10% of the workforce in three weeks," reports NBC News.
The U.S. Federal Reserve said Thursday it will invest up to $2.3 trillion in loans to aid small and mid-sized businesses and state and local governments as well as fund the purchases of some types of high-yield bonds, collateralized loan obligations and commercial mortgage-backed securities. "The money comes on top of the massive stimulus that the Fed had already announced and it thrusts the institution into the sort of speculative lending activities it had shunned in the past -- underscoring the risks that Chairman Jerome Powell is willing to take to shore up the economy," adds Bloomberg.
counterpoint (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It depends what governments do. If your government is willing to put in the cash to keep people afloat so they don't default on loans or get made homeless or lose their job/healthcare, and if they are willing to prop up businesses that are normally viable but can't survive this blip then your country can recover fast.
Unfortunately the UK's current Tory government has a history of using stuff like this as an excuse to trash the economy and public services so we are probably in for another decade of poverty a
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if there are any serious studies of central bank money printing during a crisis like this, tied to the idea that it might not even be inflationary to do so.
It's not like it's creating demand-pull inflation or trying to patch over an economy that's broken for other fundamental reasons. In fact, significant parts of the economy are still functioning.
It feels like some big chunk of the economy could be propped up for six months this way, which when combined with extended social distancing, would cut
Re: (Score:2)
Do they? I think that's highly unlikely when many high street shops will have gone bust and millions of people have been made unemployed. All those unemployed people will have less money to spend = a bit ongoing knock to the economy.
Explain how I am wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
What Goldman Sachs analysts say and what they actually expect are not necessarily the same thing. Of course they say that they expect quick recovery, the market works not on reality but on expectations. If people expect continuing failure the market will continue to fall and their own investments will continue to lose value. They're attempting to manipulate the market.
A lot of businesses have closed. Those jobs have been lost. It will take time for the interlocking web of dependencies to be restored, and ma
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:counterpoint (Score:4, Insightful)
Plagues happen fairly often in the bible, so that point is moot...
Re: (Score:2)
Or in your case, factual history doesn't exist. [wikipedia.org]
Re:counterpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not so sure I'd agree. For example, despite the deeply entrenched social stigma attached to wearing masks in public here in the US, the first time I went grocery shopping after the CDC recommended wearing them in public, I saw about half the people in the store wearing them, where the week before almost no one was. I'd imagine a good number of them were NOT wearing them simply because they didn't have any (I had to resort to choosing between a dust mask and a bandana). That's a good sign to me that people are listening seriously to government advice, contradictory and confusing as it may be at times.
Yes, there are idiots out there, religious or secular. Some churches refusing to suspend services is an example of the former, and the 5G conspiracy theory is an example of the latter. But I think vastly more people are trying to do the correct thing as best they can, with the best information they can get their hands on.
Re: (Score:2)
"Don't be Communist or eat bats"?
Re: (Score:3)
To note in slightly more depth, the very nature and problem of sin is that it hurts other people. If only the wrongdoer was harmed, we've have simple immediate cause-and-effect, rather than ethics.
And, generally speaking, care to argue people are blameless, particularly, even from a secular viewpoint, in having fulfilled the responsibility to be prepared to prevent or mitigate this pandemic?
No (Score:2)
To note in slightly more depth, the very nature and problem of sin is that it hurts other people.
Well that's just not true, here's the definition of sin for you.
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
I mean, it's not like envy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] hurts other people.
Re: (Score:2)
Definition and implications have very different meanings.
You can look up the definition of, say, Quantum Mechanics, but no dictionary will give you all aspects of it.
And the supposed "Seven Deadly Sins" are not scriptural. Not that you're concerned about nuances.
Re: (Score:2)
no one eats bats ... and definitely not the Chinese in the outbreak areas ...
Re: (Score:3)
What? The Chinese certainly do, along with a number of other things uncommon in the West, and this is the current primary accepted scientific hypothesis for the origin of the virus. [reuters.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get how Americans get grossed out when other cultures eat bats, dogs, frogs, or whatever. It's not like live chickens, pigs, or cows are clean or look tasty. And if you've ever been to a farm, the smell alone would turn many stomachs.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say I was "grossed out", I said it was the source of COVID-19.
The association with dietary practices I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Re: (Score:2)
If only cheeseburgers were specific to Americans, or your statement wasn't clearly just a pointless projection, there's be more to say.
Alas.
But since you can't seem to help confessing your belief in "American Exceptionalism", consider Hong Kong's views. [hongkongfp.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Even assuming your facts are correct, which they aren't, this has nothing to do with anything productive.
China made mistakes, the U.S. made mistakes, and you benefit nobody.
Re: (Score:2)
We'll be fine, right up until evolution, unquestionably, eliminates you.
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad... you have nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
When people say "Everybody knows X", that's the first sign they are guessing.
Re: (Score:2)
You continue to imagine this matters to me. Still doesn't.
She'll let you know what matters in terms of that kind of selection mechanism. Oh wait, you'll be gone. Never mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they may have better disease containment, but my money is on them having better information containment.
Re: counterpoint (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't have to be a conspiracy nutter, there are independent journalists with pictures.
You don't need thousands of urns per day per funeral home or reinstate lockdowns if all is fine.
You can also look at the graphs and compare, biology isn't racist, it's not because you're a white Italian you're somehow worse off. They contained the virus and stopped growing the day after they threw out foreign journalists.
Re: (Score:2)
The content of the creek. Twittter is the creek.
Re:counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
American culture allowed the virus to take hold in the US, catapulting the US to the number two position in COVID19 deaths, behind Italy. The US is set to overtake Italy by the end of the Easter weekend.
The US banned entry by non-citizens who had been in China within the past fourteen days, but failed to implement any quarantine measures for citizens who arrived from hotspots. The European travel ban was similarly useless. It barred entry for Schengen Area citizens, but didn't implement quarantine measures for US citizens arriving from the Schengen area. It almost appears Trump believed the virus only infected foreign citizens and US citizens wouldn't spread it. The US failed to implement quarantine measures for cruise ship passengers, despite it cruise ships being the ideal spreading ground for the virus.
The US refused to use Chinese or Korean SARS-CoV-2 tests, instead waiting for the CDC to develop their own tests. Problems putting the tests into production and rolling out across the country meant available tests were severely limited, and turnaround times could be as long as five days. At the same time, the typical turnaround time in the rest of the world was three hours. The US turnaround time was forty times as long.
The states were slow to implement restrictions on internal movement and social distancing requirements. This allowed the virus to rapidly take hold and spread through communities. Note that the states that moved faster have fewer cases: California is doing a lot better than New York.
Trump and the US are now looking to blame anyone other than themselves, because this cascading failure and incompetence flies in the face of the narrative of American Exceptionalism.
Re:counterpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
American culture allowed the virus to take hold in the US, catapulting the US to the number two position in COVID19 deaths, behind Italy. The US is set to overtake Italy by the end of the Easter weekend.
Why do you blame American culture instead of the fact the US has 5x the population of Italy? (325 million vs. 60 million)
Deaths per million for Italy is 302. For the US it is only 50. Is Trump to blame for Italy's higher numbers? Or for Spain's at 339? Or France's at 187? It's not cases per million, so please don't claim it's due to a lack of testing.
Also, before you say the U.S. just got hit later, they have leveled off in deaths the last few days - which makes sense since it lags the leveling off of new cases by a few days. (~30k new cases per day for the last week; 2k deaths per day for the last 3 days.)
Perhaps the U.S. - despite all of the negative press around its response - is doing a better job than a lot of other countries. Was it a perfect response? No, it wasn't. However, it definitely isn't the worst response in the world.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll admit I'm not an epidemiologist or a statistician, but as far as I can tell, deaths per capita are not relevant until the virus is endemic in the population of a country. As this disease emerges, the growth appears to be exponential, and not particularly dependent on the population size. See here [ourworldindata.org], where the number of deaths has more to do with how long the disease has been present than with the size of the country.
Having a lower per-capita death rate could mean you've had a good response, but it coul
Re:counterpoint (Score:4)
Ha, yeah right. I give that less than a year before people go back to buying what's cheap.
There's a reason why the "Made in America" advertising campaign in the 80's failed to keep American manufacturing in this country.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, companies like Walmart, who were advertising "Made In America" while simultaneously contracting with Chinese suppliers.
Re: (Score:2)
So I guess I'd fit right in.
What? It's not nearly that bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Money isn't lost forever for not performing some kinds of trades at the same rate.
The same money still exists - it just hasn't generated taxes or paid rents at quite the same level.
The same for the stock market - values went down during uncertainty, but then they went back up - because folks don't really have any better place for that same money in the end.
The trillions given away were a cost to government budgets- and there's definitely millions who dipped into savings or worse - but this is nowhere near the impact of the great depression, percentage wise.
The only way you get that is by refusing to account for inflation, or pretending that every deferred bit of spending is somehow money that doensn't still exist in the economy.
The better description for this time is 'hibernation' - that is, trades not going on, and some resources spend just passing time - but most folks are hunkered down to prevent loss.
Compared to the alternative, where far more people die, while even greater resources are fully lost in even worse forms of chaos - it's not great, but compared to other pandemics, we're coming out reasonably in most nations other than the USA.
The US response has been pitiful - but that's kind of to be expected.
What would be worse though, is if we decide to stop working to minimize the damage, and give up on even minimal public health concerns as we think we're approaching the peak of the disease. THEN it could approach great depression levels of true economic loss.
Ryan Fenton
Re:What? It's not nearly that bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Capital isn't destroyed (at least not much), but there is a real loss in productivity. People pay money (interest) to have used of capital (factories, airplanes etc). and when those things sit idle, that value really is lost.
I"m not saying that we should trade lives for money, I'm in favor of the shutdown, but it does have a real and very large cost
Re:What? It's not nearly that bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Money isn't useful when it's sitting still. The whole idea of an economy is to create things or provide services.
Look at it from the production side. If nobody is producing food, it doesn't do you any good that the money still exists. You need someone to sell you food! The money isn't useful until it moves.
Scale that thought way, way up. If everyone stops producing everything, there will be less stuff and services. Maybe we don't need as much stuff as we have now and we can weather a drop in production for a while, but that still hurts us: we'll end up paying more to have less. Most industries can't just make up for several months of lost production.
I believe the lost productivity is justified in this case. It's something we have to do, to prevent a much worse cost to our society. But the economic cost is still something we have to pay attention to.
Re: (Score:2)
Understood - but food production and groceries are actually given exemptions from shutdown everywhere - they're just operating with some extra caveats.
I believe you meant to say everywhere *in the US*. There is a whole big world outside of the US too.
Re: (Score:2)
In South Florida, farmers are plowing most of their crops under (tomatoes and green beans). They sell to a mix of restaurants and grocery stores. Restaurants are closed and grocery sales of produce is way down.
Re:What? It's not nearly that bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
That is not correct. Capital and economic value is being destroyed constantly, and therefore money is being lost if we're not generating economic value at at least replacement rate.
People are burning otherwise potentially productive days/weeks/months of their all-to finite lives doing nothing productive. Other, less fortunate people are outright dying earlier than they otherwise would have for various reasons (not just the virus itself, but also to otherwise-treatable medical issues that overwhelmed healthcare systems cannot now address).
Productive capacity is being lost. An empty seat on an airplane, or a flight not made at all, are examples of economic value that is lost forever. The same is largely true for services not rendered. Other things like a lost season of college basketball represent value irrevocably lost as well.
Manufacturing facilities that otherwise run at output capacity lose whatever production capacity they had for the duration they're shut down--this is especially true in industries where technological obsolescence is rapid. Each day the California Tesla plant is down represents a number of cars that will now never be made.
All of the above represents money being destroyed/consumed without the typical value/money-creating activities creating replacement/replacement+ value. The examples above are not just theoretical thought exercises--actual hard currency is effectively destroyed in all of the above processes. Central banks can paper over the problem by issuing more currency, but the more they do that without a commensurate increase in real value in the economy represents a devaluation of all of the currency in circulation.
All of the above is not meant to discount the need to take dramatic steps to deal with the pandemic, and I'm not trying to argue that the steps being taken are not worth it (or that they are necessarily sufficient). As you note, letting the virus run rampant results in an entirely different sequence of destruction. Really, a global pandemic is like the economic equivalent of a hot nuclear war and subsequent nuclear winter. The choice for society and policymakers is which tradeoffs you want to make while dealing the situation.
Re: (Score:2)
The only resource we don't lack in this economy is manpower, so people dying and hence becoming unproductive is no big deal for the economy. Since it's mostly poor people dying it's also no big deal that we lose them as consumers since without money they couldn't consume much anyway.
On the plus side, this is a disease that mostly affects old people, and with the boomers croaking younger people will have money and they are more likely to spend it, if only to cover debts so they can use their credit cards aga
Re: (Score:2)
The same money still exists - it just hasn't generated taxes or paid rents at quite the same level.
The economy is not a tally of money which exists. It's a tally of trade and productivity. The same money can still exist while people are unemployed and while manufacturing stops, that doesn't mean that those latter two aren't BAD.
There's a reason we count GDP and not money.
I would like to see (Score:2)
I would like to see the correlation data as a percentage of the population from back then to now.
because the more I look, the more it reminds me of 1972-1974 and the early 80's
I can see it taking a little while to recover, and I can see the beating and the creation
of a new rust belt of sorts. If the internet was good for anything, it was perfect to remove all
the spreads and increase across the board all efficiencies it could find. Which is Darwinism
at it's ultimate best.
so 2 years of real steady recovery is
Re: (Score:2)
and I can see the beating and the creation of a new rust belt of sorts.
A rust belt, where?
Not surprising and likely toget worse (Score:5, Insightful)
The great depression wasn't really triggered by some externally caused drop in productivity, it was at its core a failure of the banking and financial systems.
This problem is in a sense more *real*. Many millions of people are actually not working because they can't. 90% of the world's students are not being educated. This is more like the destructive effects of a large war, but without the economic benefits increasing productive capability that often happens in wars.
This is also likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. We are no where near herd immunity (which would require around 50% of people to be infected), so until there is a vaccine or effective treatment (could be over a year off) if areas try to return to normal, the virus is very likely to grow rapidly and force another shutdown within a month.
We can accept the losses - but they will be huge - something like a 7% hospitalization and 0.5-2% death of the entire population. (Millions of deaths in the US). There seem to be many cases of long term damage as well.
Its possible to lock down hard and then track, but so far only China and S. Korea have managed that (if you believe the China numbers - but they are probably not far from right). The rest of the world has only slowed or slightly decreased the virus, and doesn't yet have the testing / tracking needed.
We could be in this state for another 6 months or even more, and the economic cost will be horrifying. Or we can give up and start digging mass graves, and hope that when the dying starts for real, the panic doesn't bring everything down in ruins.
We need a plan and leadership. Things are not completely hopeless, but without a carefully planned effort, things may get extremely grim
Re:Not surprising and likely toget worse (Score:5, Insightful)
America is in dire straights and not only does our leadership need to guide us through this, but they need to acknowledge that we, as a nation and as a world, need to change. Capitalism has failed us in this pandemic and I shudder to think what a Libertarian circle-jerk capitalist system would have looked like (seriously dangerous price gouging no doubt). We need to have lots of little conversations now, but a much larger one about the role of Conservative economic ideology and the massive economic gap. The countries that are handling this well have socialized medicine, strong centralized government, and they provide for their people and their people do not have a "ME ME ME ME ME" attitude. The ones doing poorly have for-profit healthcare, "durr states rights" and if you're not rich you're fucked.
Which could leave to more deaths (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not 1930s USA, More like 1990s Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, we're in a situation more like Japan has been experiencing--an economy that wants to deflate, with a central bank fighting the deflation while the debt to GDP ratio steadily climbs. If this is true, then we can look towards Japan as an approximate model for our own economic future. A lot of people think it has to end with the central bank finally defeating deflation with a dramatic overshoot into inflation or perhaps even hyperinflation. Japan has been in this situation for about 30 years, with no sign of inflation yet. A lot of goldbugs have dramatically underperformed in their portfolios, waiting for hyperinflation, which is why they tend to be perpetually pissed off--but they may get to say "I told you so" on their deathbeds some day.
Why not just call it "Fast Economic Hybernation"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Or something like that? If nothing is really broken and we're all just taking a break because 'Pandemic' I don't see how this has to take massive effect beyond the timespan it happens in. The one effect I *do* see happening is that people here in Germany finally realise how 'important for the system' nurses are. And yes, VW and others lose a few billion in market cap. Boo-hoo. The only thing we need to do is buy stocks so foreign holdings don't buy and fleece those corporations.
Other than that I easyly see a massive rise in economic activity once this pandemic is officially over.
My 2 eurocents.
Re: (Score:2)
Troll? Mmm, delicious conservacuck tears
Three letter institutions (Score:2)
I am quite frankly done with listending to any three-letter-institutions...
It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:3, Insightful)
None of their projections proved to be true.
ALL of the numbers they have been spitting out, are now spitting out, and will be spitting out in the future, consist of nothing but coordinated Psychological Warfare campaigns designed to rattle the poor goyische idiots into such a fragile psychological condition that each goyische heifer will dutifully take its place in the line at the Kosher slaughterhous
Re:It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I hate to say it, can't really disagree too much with your view... :(
And remember, rights taken away very rarely are given back after the "emergency"...
Re:It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:5, Funny)
As much as I hate to say it, can't really disagree too much with your view... :(
And remember, rights taken away very rarely are given back after the "emergency"...
What do you mean? As I remember it, the PATRIOT act was allowed to expire right after we destroyed the WMDs of those miscreants in Iraq that attacked us on 9/11. Mission Accomplished!
Re: (Score:2)
And remember, rights taken away very rarely are given back after the "emergency"...
I'm sure you'll be eating those words shortly. Or do you really think the parks and restaurants will remain closed indefinitely and the police will forever more separate people who don't stand 6ft apart.
Seriously that's a great catchphrase to tinfoil hat convention but stupidly unrealistic given what we're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
And here in the USA ... "The government is not coming after your guns!"
And yet ... every left-leaning Democrat running for office has come out and stated, clearly, plainly, that they are, indeed, coming after your guns.
How's that PATRIOT act's expiration coming along?
How's the effectiveness of the TSA?
Should we blame Congress of gross incompetence or unbridled malevolence?
Re:It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:5, Funny)
It seems to be going up already which surprises me...I'd have thought it would continue to be at the lower levels it hit, or at least close to that for awhile longer before going up.
I see major investment opportunity if you can time it right.
What do ya'll think?
Re:It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see major investment opportunity if you can time it right.
What do ya'll think?
I think you are misguided if you believe you can make money by timing the market using only public information.
The gamblers' fallacy (Score:2)
Variation of the gamblers' fallacy. If you think the game is honest, then you know the house is going to win and all the players are going to lose. If you think the game is crooked, then you can't beat the game without shutting down the house, so you still lose.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
Re: (Score:2)
A strange game. It seems the only winning move is not to play it.
Re: (Score:3)
I think you are misguided if you believe you can make money by timing the market using only public information.
Of course you can. The thing you forget is that people are dumb. Like DUMB. You don't need a crystal ball, you don't need to outsmart those in the know. You just need to outsmart the dumb idiots to make a profit. A large portion of a market is driven by FOMO and ignorance, the former from people who are told what to believe, the latter from those who refuse to actually look at and analyse public information.
Re: (Score:3)
I think you are misguided if you believe you can make money by timing the market using only public information.
Of course you can. The thing you forget is that people are dumb. Like DUMB. You don't need a crystal ball, you don't need to outsmart those in the know. You just need to outsmart the dumb idiots to make a profit. A large portion of a market is driven by FOMO and ignorance, the former from people who are told what to believe, the latter from those who refuse to actually look at and analyse public information.
The simple fact is the vast majority of people whose job is to beat the market cannot do it. Every single person who isn't devoting their life to investing should assume they are incapable of beating the market. Without exception. If you have been beating the market, you are lucky not good. And even if you happen to be that good, you will never be able to know that with reasonable confidence.
If you really want to beat the market, start a company. The work you do to provide value has a significant chance of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course you can. You can't do so with a short term investment, which depends heavily on timing. The insiders are going to make 30% over six months to a year. You can't do that. You *can* make 30% over the next two or three years.
Which is more important, life or money? (Score:3)
I think you shouldn't be worrying about stock market speculations just now. Right now the #1 priority should be on saving lives. Somewhere below that is stuff like keeping the food coming and sustaining emergency services like ambulances and police.
The only reason anyone is playing these money games is because we were REALLY lucky this time. Covid-19 is just a nasty bio-accident. Imagine instead that this was caused by a serious bio-weapon. You'd only need to tweak a few parameters and we would be facing a
Re: (Score:2)
I thought we settled that question no later than with climate change.
The answer is obviously money.
Re: (Score:2)
". Under each "success story" there is a mountain of losers who had similar or better ideas, "
It's a zero sum game. The only time profit is made or lost is upon a trade, except if you're a broker, specialist or market maker who make an inordinate amount on just the spread and order flow.
Re: (Score:2)
we were REALLY lucky this time. Covid-19 is just a nasty bio-accident. Imagine instead that this was caused by a serious bio-weapon.
It doesn't take a serious bio-weapon to be far worse than Covid-19. Although I do agree we are lucky we were hit with this virus first and not something far worse. If we actually learn any leasons from this pandemic it will help when the actual big one finally comes. What I mean by that is a virus with both high transmission rate and high mortality rate. Think Covid-19 but with 10x the mortality rate, which is not uncommon for many of our history's worst pandemics. We would already be looking at 10s of thou
Re: (Score:2)
If you closed the markets how would retirees sell shares to provide needed income?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
'm just trying to figure out when to start putting money into the market.
Tree weeks ago, sorry. Worked for me. Now you'd only be chasing. Longer term, though, the market may go a lot lower, if all this doom and gloom is something other that Orange Man Bad propaganda. If it's lower in December than today, it's not a buying opportunity.
Don't believe any economic new you hear between now and the election, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Tree weeks ago, sorry. Worked for me. Now you'd only be chasing. Longer term, though, the market may go a lot lowe
Agreed. Three weeks ago, it might have been hard to see if the market overall was going to go lower, linger in a dip, or go up again. But it seemed clear to me that a couple of stocks were undervalued. I mentioned Shell here around 3 weeks ago, and I bought that plus a few others, which hasn't hurt... but that's hindsight (or I would have doubled down), and right now it's only a short turn gain. As for another downturn in the long term, that;s hard to predict as well, just like we were "way overdue for
Re: It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:2)
Because there is a massive transfer from the public sector to the private sector with the bailout schemes of the advanced economies. The EU is about to approve its scheme, hence the rise in the markets this week.
In the medium to long term, things don't look too good.
Re: (Score:2)
"I see major investment opportunity if you can time it right."
Isn't that true every day of the year?
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's going up because of the announcement of the stimulus package. When the news that things are going to be closed for several more months, it'll go back down again.
Definitely an opportunity though. The stock market is having a 30% off sale.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's all Psychological Warfare now... (Score:4, Insightful)
None of their projections proved to be true.
Of course not. Because they specifically implemented measures to prevent them from coming true.
Re: (Score:2)
Many projections were "if we did nothing". Well, we did something, thereby altering those projections. Case closed.
Re:Fuck the Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
In progress.
I hate to say this, but those who say the economic hit could be worse than the virus itself in terms of lives may turn out right if we get stuck in a deep recession. Poverty and joblessness kill also. It also triggers wars as desperate young men with no jobs and money turn to mass violence around the world. WWII was a direct result of economic desperation.
It's an ugly choice, but death by virus may be more sane than death by war, crime, and starvation.
Re: (Score:3)
... if we get stuck in a deep recession.
I don't think we will. It might take some time to get it right, but S. Korea has gotten it under control and is starting to open things up. People are going to work, and even daycares are open now.
They have testing, facemasks for everyone, and thermometers at entrances to many stores or restaurants to get an extra layer of testing. That seems like a combination that could work here, too.
Re:Fuck the Economy (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to say this, but those who say the economic hit could be worse than the virus itself in terms of lives may turn out right if we get stuck in a deep recession.
Ideally, the lives lost due to economic factors would be approximately equal to those lost to the virus. This would probably represent the optimized overall minimum fatalities as a function of how much economic disruption is applied to fighting off the virus.
Clearly, if we did absolutely nothing to try to stop the virus, the exponential growth of cases would not stop until most people were infected, and we would probably have a couple of million deaths. Right now, it looks like we might hold that down to more like 60,000 virus deaths.
I could believe that the current level of economic disruption could result in a similar number of deaths over time, but I really doubt that the current level of economic stress would cause anywhere near millions of deaths in the US. So we might very well be applying somewhere near the optimum intervention effort (although obviously if we had applied appropriate efforts earlier, we could have had orders of magnitude less expense and death). Also, this should be a rather short-term economic shock with a well-defined, time-limited reason, not the full decade of hopelessness and resentment that helped to trigger WWII.
Re:Fuck the Economy (Score:4, Informative)
Poverty and joblessness killing people is a choice. It doesn't have to happen, you can have a welfare system that protects them and a government backed jobs programme that puts them to work on massive infrastructure projects.
Or you can choose to do less and accept their deaths.
Also WW2 was a direct result of the victors of WW1 making sure that Germany was not a viable country and continuing to humiliate it. After WW2 the mistake was not repeated, Germany was rehabilitated and eventually thrived as part of what became the EU, and another war became impossible.
Re: (Score:3)
Economy made any further wars in central Europe impossible. After Germany and France intertwined their economies so much that either of them would lose more from a war with the other than they could possibly gain from one, it became virtually impossible to wage war in Europe anymore because the two nations that were the source for conflict in the past 150 years in the planet were simply no longer capable of waging a war against each other without committing economic suicide in the process.
Re: (Score:2)
That's what I said.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Come on, now, I can't stand the orange idiot either, but it's a world-wide problem and a world-wide recession. It's a mess even too big for the orange toddler to make on his own.
Re: (Score:2)
No it won't. Look back through history, all it takes is make people crap their pants in fear (and right now there ain't even toilet paper to take care of that problem) to make them hand over any and all liberties they might still have.
Let this take a few more months and you can even repeal the second without any resistance.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I consider them crystal ball readers, detached from reality. Where do I fit in your dichotomy?
Re: (Score:3)
".. unless Trump really F's it up "
Regardless of all the politics and lack of eloquence, I think years down the road that his performance here will be thought of as the highlight of his Presidency. Especially the performance of the Fed. The last time they dealt with as serious an issue was 2008. The bailout was criticized by many as a waste of taxpayer money and paid to the street without consideration of taxpayers. In the long run funds were repaid with interest strengthening (yet again) the value of the
Re: (Score:2)
This time the Fed's participation directly benefits taxpayers and businesses that directly support them. Their aggressive action is directly due to their manager (POTUS).
Well that's not true. Trump demands all sorts of ridiculous things of the Fed that they don't do. I mean, just this Summer (and this was certainly not the only time he did something like this) Trump was calling the Fed "Boneheads" https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/1... [cnbc.com] for not dropping interest rates to zero. This would be zero percent interest rates during a period of fairly strong economic prosperity. Obviously the Fed ignored him because that's just stupid.
In other words, if the fed listed to Trump on interes
Re: (Score:2)
I'd have more mask and glove wearing and selective quarantines and less blind flailing panic measures
I generally agree, but happily in the U.S. the state system has worked to some degree - some of the least populated states are not locking anything down, and as a result you have some interesting results like Tennessee (open state) having fewer deaths per million than a closed state (Kentucky).
Being open also means Tennessee has tested a lot more than Kentucky, which is what you'd want to see if you left th
Why are you sprouting this false shit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are you copy&pasting this kind of mumble jumble bullshit?
Can't you think logical for yourself, just one time?
1.) Is ventilation bad - only if you have NONE of your own which will happen when you have ARDS and your alveoli slowing fill up with water.
MEANING: without ventilation with ARDS you will DIE with nearly 100% chance because breathing will get harder and harder and your oxygene saturation will drop to levels where you can inhale 100% oxygene in your non-ventilated ARDS lung and your organs will still start dying from not getting enough oxygene.
This is why simple oxygene will not HELP anymore.
People are not placed on ventilation for fun or to control the aersols but just for their CHANCE OF survival - VENTILATION is a highly invasive technique with a chance of lasting damages.
If there aren't enough ventilators then triage will kick in, like in Italy, when you are "old enough" you will not get ventilation you will be left dying - at best drugged, at worst you will experience being drowned without the watery grave around you.
2.)
.. overall lethality rate of Covid19 is in the per mille range and thus in the range of a severe influenza (flu) epidemic.
EXCEPT when this "per mille" (german study from heavily infected county DR~ 0.37% btw.) hits the health care system at once (which it does and did).
Meaning ICU beds, ventilators and nurses and doctors resources are eaten up.
THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE WITH THE FLU, there are also some other things - like many have immunity to flu and so on - but the mass of cases is basically what can make your health care resources used up in an instant.
Missing resources will lead rationing of resources (TRIAGE) BUT when your resources are rationed your DEATH COUNT will logically be much higher because you will have let many people die. So please compare the "let-go" with picture from italy where this mass of cases exhausted the health care resources that at some point people over 60 were NOT put on ventilators anymore.
3.) "Exponential Curve" - doesn't look so exponential?
PERHAPS when political leaders realized that their health care system might collapse they have taken steps to suppress it.
SWEDEN BTW. has not engaged in lock downs till a few days AGO - because they were recognizing that their "mild" approach lead to a starting run-away situation.
4.) The per month death rate in italy comparing now and a year ago is about five to six times higher.
"Strongly increased death rates, as in northern Italy, can be influenced by additional risk factors such as very high air pollution and legionella contamination, ..
Yeah like there is a virus and elderly people in Italy just drop dead in masses, and in Spain, and in the UK, and in France.
5.) "Go, read the references and decide. Time will tell."
No, time HAS TOLD and is currently TELLING that those lunatics sprouting false shit are wrong.
Please, START thinking fucking straight and start thinking logical and that past decisions have an effect on the current situation.
And please take a blue pen and paint a blue circle on your forehead. Just in case doctors might want to place you on ventilation in case you need ICU care - because you say ventilation is bad so please leave the ventilator to someone who appreciates it.
Re: (Score:3)
While I agree with your entire post, I do want to note that if you get put on a respirator, there's about an 80% chance you'll be leaving the ICU in a body bag. I know a 20% chance is better than 0%, but it probably isn't going to bump up the death totals that much -- if every death is someone who, in the best case, gets a ventilator, the worst case (where nobody gets a ventilator) would only result in a 25% higher body count.
Re: (Score:2)
I know a 20% chance is better than 0%, but it probably isn't going to bump up the death totals that much
Actually by the very nature of how percentages work it will bump up the totals that much.
Re: (Score:2)
And I explained it -- if 80% of a population dies or 100% dies -- that's certainly significant TO THAT POPULATION (extinction-level event), but it's "only" a 25% blip in the statistics. Given that the numbers are all fuzzy at this point anyhow (it will take probably a year or two after the crisis ends before cases swept under the rug can be brought to light as likely to be COVID-19) and massaged to benefit certain political angles, it's not difficult to conceal a blip like that. In other words, the blatant
Re: (Score:2)
"The often shown exponential curves of 'corona cases' are misleading, since the number of tests also increases exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to total tests either remains constant between 5% to 15% or increases only very slowly."
Chart 6 here shows that is completely false. [medium.com]
Spain had 45% positive cases, Germany less than 5%. Clearly Spain just wasn't doing enough testing to find all the cases.
Germany are doing twice as many tests per person than America. They had 5% positive vs America's 15%.
The next chart also shows a comparison between different US states.
How do you explain the curves of deaths? Are you going to claim they are also a result of testing?
Re:Is ventilation bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Good lord, do people really know so little that any of this sounds sensible?
1) Ventilation is a LAST resort option when there is no other way to keep a patient alive. You actually cannot put a person on ventilation that isn't cooperating (e.g. by being unconscious), the alternative to putting someone on a ventilator is that person dying. It is a well known problem that ventilation usually is an entry point for all sorts of side effects and nobody wants to put a person on a ventilator if there's any chance not to, but the alternative is literally to let the person die from asphyxiation.
2) Of course more tests mean more cases get detected, but it's by far not at the rate of "100% more tests == 100% more cases". Because in countries where you have a relatively high number of tests (say, Iceland), yes, you see more cases. Because in countries where they only have few tests, guess who they test? Exactly, the people who are already coughing their lungs out. Iceland has ~100,000 tests per million citizens and ~5,000 cases, with Spain having ~7,500 tests per million and ~3,000 cases per million. So yes, higher test rates mean higher detection rates, but by no means even remotely in the same magnitude.
What IS different, though, is the death rates, with Iceland having 18 and Spain 330 deaths per million. Because not only does Iceland also have a lot of detected very mild cases that survive easily, they also get to detect the virus early and can start treatment earlier which increases survival chances.
Re: (Score:2)
Boris Johnson also received oxygen support.
Pretty much everyone receives oxygen support. It's a step before ventilation. It's often a step before you even get to the fucking hospital.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as we can keep people believing that paying living wages would make the inflation spike, we should be safe.