Are you having that Monday feeling?
Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!
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Are you having that Monday feeling?
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
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So that's most of us not having to worry then...tough on all you tories though
Disgruntledgoat
Player Valuation: £50m
I'd really hate a stock market/real estate crash. I might even to be able to afford to buy a modest house if that happened and that would never do.
They might even squeeze interest rates even lower and you might be able to pay it back too...always assuming the banks pass them on.
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
The 2008 crisis was caused by a banking liquidity crisis in response to the systematic overvaluation and corruption of the American real estate market.
Did that affect you, or only just rich Tories?
Anyhow, Covid-19 represents a shock to both the speculative AND real economies, which is why the party will last until morning and is only just getting started.
They are certainly mashing the keys on the familiar lower interest rates/print money buttons, which explains the reflexive rise of the FTSE this morning, but it doesn't actually address the underlying issue - a supply shock rather than a demand shock. There is not much the Fed or any Central Bank can do here, and in any case, pulling hard on the emergency lever has been standard operating procedure for the last ten years, thanks mostly to the catastrophic inability of Davos/The Economist types to see past a rapid ideological obsession with balanced budgets, and to accept basic time-tested counter-cyclical fiscal policy (ie productive government investment in schools, roads, mass transit, flood defences, hospitals, middle-class wages, or renewable energy, to grow rather than deliberately contract the economy).
Amen. Though presumably not if we lose our jobs as a result.
bullybeef
Player Valuation: £50m
I’m sorry to say that with all the medical professionals now recommending aggressive action to combat corona it’s time schools, work places and any large gatherings to be closed indefinitely... including airports.
I also think hospitals should cancel non urgent operations and appointments, ditto with doctors surgeries.
This thing will be rife if we continue to do nothing but wash our hands and sneeze into tissues!
I hope today’s cobra meeting will be positive but I fear it will be nothing but sound bites about how prepared we are... which we’re evidently not!
I also think hospitals should cancel non urgent operations and appointments, ditto with doctors surgeries.
This thing will be rife if we continue to do nothing but wash our hands and sneeze into tissues!
I hope today’s cobra meeting will be positive but I fear it will be nothing but sound bites about how prepared we are... which we’re evidently not!
Disgruntledgoat
Player Valuation: £50m
As long as I got a couple months salary in settlement, I'd lose my job tomorrow quite merrily.
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
Good for you, if you can manage it.
But most of the West is up to its eyeballs in personal debt and barely coping as it is - a direct correlation to government spending cuts and another Coalition gift that keeps on giving.
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
To be fair, Man City seem to be ahead of the curve on this. Fair play like.
Even though I got the sack in 2009 due to it, gave me the kick up the bum to move on to greener pastures, so short term pain gave me Iong term gain.
Can't speak for you Tories with your portfolios though, best ask @peteblue
Behave man. Good grief.
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
As a disease, Covid-19 is probably not nearly serious enough to merit that kind of response. It's not nothing, but it's not the Black Death either. Anyhow, now that the quarantine in China has clearly failed, what you suggest would serve mostly as symbolic gesture at this point, to make people feel that somebody somewhere is doing something. The window for containment has likely already passed, and while putting all of society on lockdown would slow the spread of the virus, the costs probably outweigh the benefits. Most likely this is something we're all just going to have to contend with from now on.
The impact is likely to be twofold: first, because state-engineered precarity has pushed citizens and public institutions to the breaking point, the social and economic impact will be much worse in Britain and America than would be the case in healthy societies. On current form, Britain and especially America will respond to this like slobbering toddlers relative to South Korea or even Vietnam. Due to its reliance on private insurance and finance, and Trump-administration cuts to the CDC, the United States lacks the medical infrastructure necessary to test never mind treat its affected citizens, and the government is already signalling that they are content to more or less sit back and let nature run its course. The UK will at least try to address the crisis, but the NHS is barely coping as it is, and also probably lacks the capacity to deal with thousands of people suddenly turning up violently ill. In both cases, the political fallout is anyone's guess, but given how (rightfully) disillusioned and cynical most voters have become, it seems naive and risky to assume it all fades with a whimper.
Second, the extent of the economic damage is still uncertain, but there's no shortage of indications that what's coming in the medium term could be serious indeed, again because ordinary people have been systematically pushed to the breaking point via dreadful fiscal policy; because US/UK/Eurozone austerity has made the West even more dependent on Chinese growth - the epicentre of the manufacturing crisis; because equities and real estate markets are well-known to be significantly overvalued; and because the Central Banks have pretty much exhausted all monetary options just to keep the whole mess afloat.
And, as John Authers (who is always very wise on such matters) notes, we are only just now beginning to get a sense of what this might mean in the medium term. It might prove the proverbial straw and it might not - but the mountains of corporate/household debt and obvious QE-driven stock and real estate bubbles are not indefinitely sustainable, and when the music stops, the geniuses who brought us austerity at the height of the worst recession in 80 years will have done just about everything they can to maximise the damage.
Some follow-up reading (If I may be so bold)
The Fall of Wuhan
Containment has failed. And so now we must fight. That means doing everything possible to bolster our healthcare systems BEFORE the need overwhelms the capacity. That means calling out our leaders for their corrupt political responses to date, and forcing them through our outcry to adopt an...
www.epsilontheory.com
Don't Test, Don't Tell
The CDC's Don’t Test, Don’t Tell policy came crashing down last night. So did Trump’s “buh, buh the flu” and "Yay, Containment!" narratives. Now let's get to work preparing for the fight to come. Not in panic. Not in fear. But with resolve, sacrifice and righteous anger for those who would use...
www.epsilontheory.com
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bullybeef
Player Valuation: £50m
So what are we saying...
Carry on regardless.
If you get mild Corona... happy days.
If you’re old and already suffering from disease and die... tough luck!
Every man for himself... bugger it.
So long as the economy is ok and everyone gets to watch the football and go on their crappy package holidays it’s all good.
Carry on regardless.
If you get mild Corona... happy days.
If you’re old and already suffering from disease and die... tough luck!
Every man for himself... bugger it.
So long as the economy is ok and everyone gets to watch the football and go on their crappy package holidays it’s all good.
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
I hope you haven't concluded that that's what I was saying...
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