US Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession (bloomberg.com) 345
The record-long U.S. economic expansion is over after almost 11 years, with what's likely to be the deepest recession in at least eight decades now under way. The world's largest economy shrank at a 4.8% annualized pace in the first quarter, the biggest slide since 2008 and the first contraction since 2014, as the need to fight the coronavirus forced businesses to close and consumers to stay home. From a report: The current quarter is likely to be far worse, with analysts expecting the economy to tumble by a record amount in data going back to the 1940s. Bloomberg Economics has projected a 37% annualized contraction, but UniCredit is the most bearish with a 65% estimate. The first-quarter downturn, reported Wednesday by the Commerce Department, was led by the steepest drop in consumer spending since 1980 and the fastest decline in business investment in almost 11 years. The worse-than-expected report reveals the wide-scale hit to U.S. output from Covid-19 and the subsequent freezing of economic activity. "It's kind of incredible when you think about the fact that the economy was running pretty much on a normal footing for over 80% of the first quarter," Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities LLC, said on Bloomberg Radio. U.S. stocks gained amid renewed hopes for a drug to fight the coronavirus, helping investors shrug off the GDP data. The dollar slipped and Treasury yields were lower.
Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
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former New York village idiot
That's no way to talk about Paul "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never [nytimes.com]" Krugman.
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He took that back literally only a couple days later and explained that it was a bad call based on his emotions.
It's disingenuous to ignore the fact that he admitted this was a bad call and is actually thinking about this stuff in good faith, unlike the Republican establishment who insist that deficits are the problem right up until the moment that they want to give a tax cut to big corporations. The deficit is only a problem to them when there's a Democrat in the White House.
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
The Trump administrations have been active for the past 3+ years disabling all those so-called Liberal Safety nets and regulations meant to increase the economy.
Which isn't too surprising considering Trump's background in real estate. Buy a building, put on some window dressing and cover up the problems and sell it for 20% more. While the new owner has to deal with the problems that were never fixed.
The new Tax Bill, which had increased US Debt before this. Playing hardball with Trade, causing many countries to rush to get what they can before it gets worse. Removing financial regulations, environmental regulations. Reducing our influence around the world. This does allow for the economy to grow, however, it also makes it more fragile for when something goes wrong.
Tump gambled on the US economy on this. If this didn't happen he may have gotten away with this, and tout honestly about the great economy he made for the past 4 years. However something did happen, and all the safety procedures are broken.
A low unemployment number while is nice to know people are working, isn't always a strong economic standard. This means businesses may not be investing in efficiencies, So many businesses closed down, because a lot of staffing cannot work, and they didn't have a method of keeping the business running from remote locations. Or in machinery that allows people to be further apart.
With a different leader including any of the other 2016 GOP candidates probably would have handled this much better. The more astute politicians may have actually taken this as their time to shine. Much like how Bush did after 9/11. We will probably still have a recession, however it wouldn't feel as sharp as it does now.
Also, Trump has shown no signs about actually caring about other Americans just himself. And will only support those who suck up to him. Note that Washington state and New York were Blue states. I am only guessing Trump didn't care much about these States or their problems, as they didn't like him on the whole. So Federal support to where the virus started spreading could have been managed much quicker too.
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Also, Trump has shown no signs about actually caring about other Americans just himself.
Except for the hostages he's brought home. And the executive order that allows veterans to seek treatment from private hospitals rather than just the VA. And also the "right to try" bill Trump championed that allows terminally ill people access to experimental drugs not approved by the FDA.
Such an easily disprovable lie either means someone has limited themselves to a complete anti-Trump echo chamber, or they are intentionally being dishonest usually for some partisan tribalist reason. Either way, it create
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Re:Predictions are hard (Score:5, Informative)
I'll assume you live in the hinterlands, because around me, people weren't going out much before the lockdowns. The economy was going to be in trouble as soon as that started happening, and that process would have accelerated as larger numbers of people died--I mean larger as in "without lockdowns" larger (with each infected person infecting two more).
A competent president would have preferred the information coming from his intelligence sources rather than the Chinese government https://www.vox.com/policy-and... [vox.com]
A competent president would have listened to his experts https://www.vanityfair.com/new... [vanityfair.com]
A competent administration would have enough testing. https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
A competent administration could probably put together a credible roadmap out of lockdown with objective benchmarks (eg: new cases per day) and enough testing to know whether distancing should be elevated or relaxed. Right now there are about 20k new Covid-19 cases per day with the crap testing regime we have.
I don't know how you got it in your head that competent leadership doesn't help when bad things are unavoidable, but I'm amazed that you haven't learned better the in the past month .
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I'll assume you live in the hinterlands
I live in one of the largest metro areas in the US
around me, people weren't going out much before the lockdowns. The economy was going to be in trouble as soon as that started happening
Around me, the economy was booming. So what?
A competent president would have preferred the information coming from his intelligence sources rather than the Chinese government https://www.vox.com/policy-and... [vox.com]
A competent president would have listened to his experts https://www.vanityfair.com/new... [vanityfair.com]
A competent administration would have enough testing. https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
None of that proves lockdowns wouldn't be necessary, so the economy was going to take a hit anyway no matter who was in charge.
A competent administration could probably put together a credible roadmap out of lockdown with objective benchmarks (eg: new cases per day) and enough testing to know whether distancing should be elevated or relaxed.
Trump put out guidelines for re-opening two weeks ago, and he was roundly criticized for doing so. In any event, the governors of the states that are opening up have in fact developed roadmaps. It's the state governors who are in charge of these things, not the White House.
I don't know how you got it in your head that competent leadership doesn't help when bad things are unavoidable, but I'm amazed that you haven't learned better the in the past month .
I don't know h
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
And without the lockdowns, there would be many more victims, the hospitals would swamped, and businesses would have shut down anyway because their workers are sick...some never to return.
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Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Interesting)
By "one of the highest rates of testing in the world" you mean "below the world average", right?
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's fair to say that this is Trump's economy at this point.
Trump will certainly be blamed for whatever happens. But that is different from it being his fault in any practical sense. Trump said a lot of stupid stuff, but that had little effect on policy since the governors mostly ignored him, and even the federal bureaucracy doesn't look to the White House for leadership.
When Trump took decisive action, such as the travel bans, his opponents criticized him for overreacting. When he was more cautious, they criticized him for not "doing something". The only thing that has clearly made a difference is the lockdowns and social distancing, and that is not a federal issue.
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The federal government stole PPE shipments from states.
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Interesting)
False. The shipments were taken and distributed in a way that gave states that didn't need them more, and states that did less. Florida was stockpiling while New York was suffering from lack. Vermont and Texas got the same number of respirators. What does that tell you?
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Except that leadership makes it a federal issue. When you have 360 million people whose behavior you want to affect, clear and concise explanations of what we're trying to do and why, reality-based references to objective facts, and driving all the cats in the same direction will all help the situation, and a president is in a unique position to accomplish all those things. Instead, we got wishful thinking, ignorance, quack cures, and a load of bullshit out of what we ought to
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump will certainly be blamed for whatever happens.
I wouldn't blame Trump. Except that he takes credit for an economy that was good thanks to past decisions outside of his control. As such he's more than happy to also claim credit for the current slump which is outside of his control.
All those people saying "you people insisted it wasn't Trump's economy in the past" fail to realise they are the ones shouting that it is. Well they can own it.
When Trump took decisive action, such as the travel bans, his opponents criticized him for overreacting.
No they did not. They criticised him for fucking up something simple like a travel ban, making it not apply to whole classes of travels, not implementing quarantines, and ultimately letting half a million people travel from infected countries to the USA without so much is a "how do you feel?" when they arrived.
Stop trying to re-write history. There was no travel ban, there were just travel restrictions addressing specific groups of people. It was braindead when he did it to China, and despite all the criticism he repeated the same brain dead policy against the EU, oh but only the Shenzhen zone, somehow one country in the very middle of the EU was still allowed to travel to the USA. One day a long time ago I wouldn't have believe myself because such crap is too stupid to be true, but pushing the bar of expectations ever lower is the world we live in now.
Anyway it was all the WHO's fault anyway right?
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Any other president in my lifetime would have not only said a lot less stupid stuff, but would have promulgated policy that actually had an effect on the governors and the federal bureaucracy and would have reduced the growth of the epidemic, maybe enough so it wouldn't have gotten to the point where locking everybody up seemed like a good idea to the epidemiologists.
Also, if you think the federal bureaucracy doesn't look to the White House for leadership under normal presidents, you're just drinking the Kool-Aid.
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Starting a massive programme is his only real hope.
Congress controls the budget. Any spending bill has to be initiated by the HoR. Nancy Pelosi has more influence than Trump.
Trump will just sign whatever Pelosi sends him. With an election coming in November, he would be a fool to reject any stimulus.
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Interesting)
Dumping all that deficit spending into the economy does tend to make it look good. Think of it as borrowing if not stealing the economy of the future.
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And you insisted that it was Trump's economy, so your point is? BTW, ordinarily a leader is responsible for changes to the status quo and credited with their subsequent effects, not with merely assuming power and sitting back for the ride.
Ooo! A distraction that has nothing to do with the economy or its downturn. No thank you. Try again.
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So when he was pushing for lower interest rates, lowering taxes, cutting regulations, and spending ever more taxpayer money - none of that counts as "doing something" because Obama also did (somewhat) similar things at some points in his presidency?
But when a global pandemic shows up, that's what counts as him "doing something"? Se
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It was a rebuttal to "BTW, ordinarily a leader is responsible for changes to the status quo and credited with their subsequent effects, not with merely assuming power and sitting back for the ride." and the implication that this applied to Trump. That's why I quoted it - so it was clear what I re
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Ask any none-American NATO personal what they think of America right now and our leadership. Trump has caused a GREAT deal of damage to America and probably the world. About the only thing that he got right, was about CHina and that was BEFORE covid. His attempts to blame CHina for his own ineptness is a joke. And his cutting a HORRIBLE economic deal with china just before starting his campaig
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:5, Interesting)
Europeans despise American "leadership", calling it bullying and worse. Have you seen their opinions? It's pretty bad. They think we're their biggest threat. Not Russia, not China, but our own USA. Funny you should mention non-American NATO countries (I deliberately avoid using the loaded word "allies") because they are the worst offenders.
"Only 34 percent of Germans and 41 percent of the French would want their country to intervene militarily if another NATO member was attacked by Russia. By contrast, 63 percent of Germans and 57 percent of the French would want to see U.S. troops to become active in such a situation." Citation [politico.eu]
"NATO is too much linked to US interests. European countries should abandon it and replace it with regional security agreements and structures"
"As an American officer living in Germany, I'm surprised by how closely Germans follow U.S. politics, and I often end up listening to polemics on the follies of American foreign policy. These run the gamut from American responsibility for the current instability in the Middle East, to the trade conflict with China, to current tensions with Russia, to others that date back to well before I put a uniform on. Left unsaid by my interlocutors is how Germany can contribute to improving any of these challenges." Citation [warontherocks.com]
We should get out of NATO and Europe in any event. They're no help in fighting Russians which I don't want to do anyway. And I sure don't want to fight for France again much less Latvia et al.
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No, we insisted the economy is not really under the control of the president, even this alleged one. Although we do note that he took credit for it even though it was the result of deficit spending. Now that it has gone south, the refrain is "is no my fault, mon!!".
Part of the reason it tanked is because he's so inept. Three months in and still no valid testing program which is required in order to give people confidence to go back to work. The states are left to fend for themselves and resorted to regional
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He's a moron....AND....he beat your candidate to get elected President of the United States.
Quick question, how many wars has Trump started?
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Quick question, how many allies has Trump sold down the river?
Re: Predictions are hard (Score:2)
Given the current political animosity in Congress, what is the minimum vote needed to pass any bills advocating fiscal responsibility?
Re: Predictions are hard (Score:5, Insightful)
He had all three branches of government. Why didn't he do anything then?
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Actually, the Republicans growing the deficit faster than the Democrats has gone back to at least the early 1980s.
Re: Predictions are hard (Score:5, Insightful)
"If he had spent the political capital to role back expenditures, the press would have beaten him to death over it"
So? If the little snowflake is scared of the press, then that's even worse.
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Where?!
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I like how the only thing you could bring up to bash Trump wasn't even a problem. Theres been no shortage of ventilators that actually materialized anywhere in the country except maybe in the NY area.
He has mismanaged resources such as ventilators and PPEs.
Michigan has a SERIOUS lack of ventilators. They are overwhelmed, and have been for some time. My cousin caught it and was turned away from hospital because she only had an elephant on chest. Then when going through a heart attack, they treated her for a couple of hours and sent her home. WHy? NO ROOM in the hospital. And that was in traverse city, which is way north and should have had plenty of resources.
And we hear DAILY about the lack of PPEs for medical ppl, let alone for the average person on the street.
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States HAVE to request help from the Feds, that's their job. Talk to your idiot governor who believes banning people from buying seeds at big box store is more important. Do you even understand how the separation of powers work in a republic?
Re:Predictions are hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, ALL OF THE STATES have made numerous request for resources. Trump/Jared fucked up badly. The only states that got what was needed were the red states. The ones that really needed them, did not. In fact, it was so bad that some of the state transferred ventilators to NYC, Mi and several other states.
And you DO understand what FEMA and CDC are all about. Yes? Do you understand how they are supposed to work in America? Likewise, do you understand what Trump's job is? To PROTECT America and our Constitution? He breaks the constitution constantly ( Trump has the highest rejection rate of challenges of any president going, though not sure if that was just last century or all times; Even FDR had fewer than Trump ).
Likewise, it is obvious that he does not give a crap about America.
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Re:Predictions are hard (Score:4, Informative)
IThats all small potatoes compared to Drumpf who committed the warcrime of asking whether a therapy can be developed ie telling people to inject themselves with household bleach according to the media.
The woman who fed her husband fish tank cleaner because Trump, turns out was trying to murder him intentionally. Probably not going to hear the rest of the story in the news.
Re: Predictions are hard (Score:5, Informative)
Right, because someone who vehemently hates Trump, has confessed to violent thoughts, uncontrollable emotions, and wanting to divorce her husband just accidentally mixed a lethal dose of poison into her husband's soda during a lunch comprised of her husband's favorite foods while mixing in significantly less into her own drink so she was only mildly afflicted. Pull the other one.
Re: Predictions are hard (Score:3, Informative)
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True, but it's reasonable to predict that going into a crisis like this with the former New York village idiot in charge is going to be way worse than if the US was governed by somebody competent.
Hey, de Blasio is still running NYC, and Andrew "Send the coronavirus sick to nursing homes!" Cuomo still runs NY. You know, the State and metropolitan area that accounts for HALF of the cases and deaths in the US...
For the rest of the US it's really not much of an issue. For example, where I live (Ventura County - right between Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara County), we have 1/10th the population of New York City (846K people versus 8.4M people) - and about 1/800th the number of coronavirus deaths
Taking that prediction to the bank? (Score:2)
Or at least taking it to the stock market and "making" money on the crashing economy. As usual, the stock market is just a timing game of shorts and futures and more esoteric "financial instruments". Producing nothing, not even sound and fury, as the computers silently catch and throw billions of transactions...
Exactly what is the Wall Street casino accomplishing now?
The only risk factor that matters now is Covid-19. So the stock market is reduced to gambling on who dies and how the deaths affect which comp
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Re: Predictions are hard (Score:3, Interesting)
Only her accountant and her Chinese spy driver would know.
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As to her financial status, here:
Roll Call said Pelosi's earnings are connected to her husband's heavy investments in stocks that include Apple, Disney, Comcast, and Facebook. Roll Call reported that the Pelosis have $13.46 million in liabilities including mortgages on seven properties. According to Roll Call, Pelosi and her husband hold properties "worth at least $14.65 million, including a St. Helena vineyard [wikipedia.org]
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You people made me give up my peanut farm before I got to be president [theonion.com]
Not only that (Score:3)
People are expecting more socialist payouts to companies added onto the back of the taxpayers.
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Big surprize (Score:2)
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You're an idiot.
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"disappeared so quickly"? Really? Half the economy has been shut down by government fiat, and you're claiming that any economic gains before that were an illusion?
Trump was right (Score:5, Funny)
Trump was right. I'm tired of all this winning.
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Trump was right. I'm tired of all this winning.
Odd how he never boasts about that prediction anymore -- not even "sarcastically".
Not quite the same. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that this is a 'bear' market - but I don't think this is the same as a 'normal' recession.
I'd call this a 'hibernation', in the bear sense. The stock market did flop at the initial stages of the Covid-19 onset, because it didn't know what to do. But every third day, it popped back up a lot, because people didn't know what else to do with their money to maximize their outcome, so they picked something to reinvest in.
Eventually, that stabilized, and we're still at a very high market compared to the start of the Trump era.
Not that ANY of this is good - in fact, I'd call it all kind of a stupid way to judge the 'economy' - because we're really measuring the global pool of money's trading card value with all this, rather than real health of our world.
But - because we are all kind of crazy and stupid, and rely on these silly numbers to describe the 'economy' - those numbers are most likely going to kind of sleep until the crisis resolves.
Again - because there's really not any other place for that money to go, for the entities compiled to manage and maximize that money.
Even if a mini-mad-max scenario happened when real important things broke down for a long while, the 'economy' would likely still 'look' good.
Because the modern version of 'economy' is a very, very broken metric mostly used for the comfort of the comfortable, and gamed and judged exactly to those ends.
If you defined recession based on how it affected the average person - we've been in a recession for over 40 years.
Ryan Fenton
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The stock market doesn't really reflect current earnings, it seem obvious to me that the market expects a vaccine in the near future.
To put the 4.8% current and the 37% or 65% projected gdp drop in perspective, the 2008 recession had gdp drop of less than 1% (US), during the great depression -15% (ww) Greece during debt crisis -25%. (sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
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Actually there is someplace for that money to go. An awful lot of the money on corporate books is ultimately debt owed by someone else. When the economy contracts and companies start going bankrupt, a lot of money simply vaporizes due to debts that will never be repaid.
If that seems strange, remember that most money doesn't physically exist. There isn't a dollar bill somewhere for each dollar on some company's balance sheet. Not even close.
Personally, I hope this is just a pause, but I doubt it. I think
Re: Not quite the same. (Score:3)
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I agree that this is a 'bear' market - but I don't think this is the same as a 'normal' recession. I'd call this a 'hibernation', in the bear sense.
Yeah, the normal problem is people don't have money. But whenever they talk about all the canceled tourism and events and whatnot, the people who would have gone still have their money. More money than usual actually, because they sat at home doing nothing rather than spending or worked 12 hour shifts at the hospital. So what happens when the restrictions lift and they're allowed to spend again, is there a ketchup effect coming? I don't know and I don't think anyone else does either, we're in rather unchart
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I would add that as far as the impetus for a recession goes, a disease that (presumably) will ultimately be under control is a relatively more straightforward phenomenon to respond to economically than typical recession.
In a typical recession, the way back is pretty nebulous. For some set of convoluted circumstances and sentiment, suddenly a critical mass of the population decide the numbers aren't right somehow and then things fall apart. In those circumstances there isn't a clear 'recovery' event to ins
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Investors look at money, but if you're a government your goal is to maximize productivity of your labor force. It's typical for us to think about productivity in terms of the only metric available (money) but the real thing you want to maximize is total "value" in both a qualitative and quantitative sense produced by your economy. In that sense, the money traded for things is a convenient placeholder for how much relative value people put on things. We know a cow is worth more than a sheep because people
And Europe's? How about the rest of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
However, while WHO and worldometer record relatively low numbers of covid deaths in many nations, It appears that many nations are either inept or lying about the real number of covid deaths. [ft.com] If they are lying about covid deaths, then the implication is that they will lie about their economy as well.
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The US now has one of the highest per capita testing in the world. Notice how everybody in the media is now either completely uninterested in testing or is still parroting the claim that the US is still failing in this regard compared to the rest of the world.
Source?
CDC at ~518k tests and census.gov places population at 380m means we've tested 0.13% of the population.
Barely above one in a thousand. How come we, as the United States, with the highest GDP by nearly 150%, can't manage to keep up with other countries? I would regard this as "still failing".
But that is "compar[ing] to the rest of the world". Why should we be comparing ourselves to other countries? Should we not be saying the health of our citizens is of high priority? Why only a test per thousand pe
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I am guessing that just about every northern nation has taken a major hit.
However, while WHO and worldometer record relatively low numbers of covid deaths in many nations, It appears that many nations are either inept or lying about the real number of covid deaths. [ft.com] If they are lying about covid deaths, then the implication is that they will lie about their economy as well.
That's not really what the article says. To put the figures of excess deaths in relation to the reported covid deaths I posted this list yesterday based on the FT article (notice how some countries reports covid deaths way above excess deaths, Denmark 334%, Sweden 81%, France 41%, Italy 25%):
The FT article was published 26 april compared to John Hopkins covid-19 death figures from today[yesterday]. FT listed England and Wales JHU only has UK so excluded.
Country; death toll above average; reported covid-19 d
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The real hurt will be from the rest of the world that relies on exporting to America
I challenge you to find another country that has a projection of 37 or 65 percent projected decline in gdp (that isn't nearly wholly dependent on oil production). The US is largely a service economy where services are produced and consumed domestically, Sure exporting countries will be hit, but right now the lock downs are killing the US economy and the rest is secondary effects.
Annualized numbers a bit misleading (Score:2)
A 4.8% annualized contraction over a quarter means it shrank by 1.2%. A 37% contraction this quarter would mean shrinking by 9.25%. But it seems like right now we've shut down everything that we're going to shut down, and by next quarter, come hell or high water, the people pressuring the politicians to open the economy by definition have more pull on them than health experts (I'm quite sure health experts can't match them in campaign donations) so it's going to start opening back up even if that means lo
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"You sure we've learned?"
Somewhat, and we're still learning. Our market is significantly better at handling order-flow and understanding the current price. Additional safe breakers add significant stability.
The depression was caused by an inability to maintain an orderly market due to too much order flow.
Even if we haven't learned, our systems are designed to prevent the cause of the crash in '29
Capitulation? (Score:2)
"The record-long U.S. economic expansion is over"
That's a rather bold statement. Currently, it's obvious that a catastrophe has halted our economy. But the difference in this financial problem is it's not one that was created by poor economic policy, poor banking products, or mismanagement.
Before the necessary halt, our economy was healthy. Historically when the US is faced with this type of calamity (think war) we do very well financially.
You can't just halt trade for 60 days and expect there not to be iss
scapegoating (Score:3, Informative)
China knew what they were dealing with, lied and downplayed it so that they could strip foreign markets of their PPE. Meanwhile the WHO gave them cover, not even declaring an epidemic until march 11.
Now they can rely on useful idiots to act as apologists. What a system.
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Yes, Trump should have perfectly anticipated what no other leader did, all while handling being impeached. You must think very highly of him.
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WHO declared the coronavirus epidemic a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" on 30 January 2020, days after China started implementing lock-downs. At that time it was obviously not considered a pandemic because there was no known community spread outside of China. The PHEIC declaration was a signal for the rest of the world that they needed to get to work and try to stop it from becoming a pandemic. Instead, our president chose to spend the next month golfing and hosting campaign rallies.
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You have the argument backwards.
You're blaming a US president for a global pandemic that started in another country. That's how we know you're being unfair to Trump.
Assuming that you have a severe dislike of him is the only explanation we have for making a statement that absurd.
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The funny thing about Trump, and the thing that makes people like you furious and frustrated, is you can't even pull the "derrr the media is trying to sabotage him."
Every press conference and every tweet is evidence that he is stupid, immoral, incompetent, and probably suffering from dementia. And you know it. And you pull up the idiotic "derr herr TDS" defense but it doesn't actually make the profoundly stupid things he says less stupid.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
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Re: Time for a NEW (Score:2)
Control of Congress requires 60 Senate votes ever since the Democrats fucked with the filibuster. So no, they've never controlled Congress, they've had a simple majority.
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They could have ended the filibuster easily.
Re:Time for a NEW (Score:5, Informative)
In point of fact, you will find that the GOP has been heavily associated [wikipedia.org] with creating the top recessions/depressions in American history. [thebalance.com]
That does not mean that the dems deserve no blame. Nor does it mean that they have been all that bright about things. Probably the BRIGHTEST dem to pull America out of a recession/depression was Carter, who appointed a Fed that would kill inflation so as to stop stagflation that Nixon/Ford's policies had brought on. And he paid heavily for doing what was right.
Re: Time for a NEW (Score:2)
Re: Time for a NEW (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Time for a NEW (Score:2)
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Carter inherited stagflation from nixon/ford GOP policies [wikipedia.org].
What carter did was appoint a federal chairman that PURPOSELY raised interest rate [wikipedia.org] to kill inflation. [usinflatio...ulator.com] It was Carter that de-regulated Airlines as well as O&G so as to re-start our economy, which did so in March 1981.
Re: (Score:3)
...and then turned south in '82 again in a big recession that cost millions of jobs (my father included). It was bad. Only when interest rates came back down (to reverse the damage done by the Nixon admin's federal reserve's easy money policy and fiat currency, IIRC) - AND Reagan starting with supply side economics (which ultimately just turned into selling our future gov't into permanent debt service by politicians in both parties ever since then), did the problems go away.
Both parties played a key role in
Re:Time for a NEW (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If Obama had done a tenth of the things Trump had done you would be screaming for him to be impeached, and you're a liar if you say otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be an interesting time travel experiment. If Obama had faced a hostile press, FISA spying, a $40M+ lawfare campaign equipped with a general warrant, plus also impeachment proceedings, would he have survived?
It isn't just that I don't think any of the democrat leadership could survive that kind of treatment, I just wonder who could.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Reverse Obama's increase in racial tension [cnn.com] across the country.
Re:So what's left on the list? (Score:4, Informative)
A couple of wars and wildly expensive health insurance?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Obama crushed the economy for 8 years. Democrats screeching about the flu managed to crush it again. Takeaway, don't listen to democrats.