Objectively intelligent.

[Adder]

Elie Mystal channeling Thurgreed: black SC voters don't trust white people to vote for a progressive candidate.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I underestimated Joe Biden. But I think I'm going to vote for Warren, unless someone can talk me out of it.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I underestimated Joe Biden. But I think I'm going to vote for Warren, unless someone can talk me out of it.

I'm doing the same. With several polls indicating she is close to or passing the 15% threshold, I think there is a good argument that one should vote for her even if you like Biden more.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Tpm:

here’s a very important article from science. On february 28th, a who-organized mission to china published a detailed report about the situation in china. It was led by a canadian who epidemiologist named bruce aylward. The actual report is here. The article i’m recommending is an article summarizing the key findings of the report by two highly respected health policy and infectious disease journalists.

The report has taken some criticism for its tone toward the chinese government. Some have called it obsequious or fawning because china is one of the who’s top funders. Regardless, experts seem to buy the core findings.

The gist is that china’s draconian and really unprecedented clampdown largely worked and worked beyond the expectations of most members of the mission. New infections have been going down in china for some time and they remain overwhelmingly in wuhan where the outbreak started. Of 80,026 infections in mainland china, 67,103 are in hubei province, where the outbreak began. The problem is that they did so at the cost of bringing large sections of the national economy almost to a standstill. They can’t do that indefinitely. They’ve started to ease up now. So it’s a very live question whether the spread will just come roaring back.

Equally important, just what china did and how it did it would be unacceptable and unsustainable in most of the rest of the world. Certainly it would be in the united states. And it probably wouldn’t be possible in any case. China brought the full force of its state power and surveillance capacity to bear, which is vast.

So the operative questions are what can the rest of the world learn from what they did? Are there lessons we can learn that are adaptable to us law and civil liberties? And can the chinese reopen their economy without the virus roaring back. Again, critical questions. Must read article.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I underestimated Joe Biden. But I think I'm going to vote for Warren, unless someone can talk me out of it.

Seems like everyone I know is voting for her. Which is a sure sign she will under-perform.

I can make strategic arguments for voting for Biden, but I'm not ready to do that, in part because I'm not really opposed to Bernie as the nominee and because I really do think that Warren would be the best candidate and president.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Tpm:

You earlier stated that whatever recession we get out of this, it will be sui generis, as will be the response to it. I agree with you.

If everything comes to a standstill out of panic or valid fear (worst case scenario), the scene will be a lot like 2008 post-Lehman. Recall the ghost town feel of everything while the market was careening and layoffs were hitting amazing monthly highs?

Fed action won't act as much of a salve this time around in that circumstance. This won't be a mere asset devaluation following a bubble popping, which can be countered with reinflation. This would be an already tenuous Main Street economy pushed into widespread defaults of various kinds (supply chain, borrowing, leases, etc.). It would also imperil a lot of the biggest companies in terms of ability to carry large corporate debt loads they've acquired since 2008.

I think they'll need a Bad Bank in that instance. It'll have to absorb and workout/restructure a shit ton of debt, or bridge debtors through the trough.

In a better case scenario, the market drops like a stone for while, this thing turns out to be manageable, and there appears a buying opportunity for the 50% of Americans who missed the last rally to jump into another one.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Seems like everyone I know is voting for her.

Matt Yglesias has your number.

I can make strategic arguments for voting for Biden, but I'm not ready to do that, in part because I'm not really opposed to Bernie as the nominee and because I really do think that Warren would be the best candidate and president.

I don't mind Bernie's platform, but I think he is not a good politician, will not run well in the general, and would get fuck-all done if he were the President.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You earlier stated that whatever recession we get out of this, it will be sui generis, as will be the response to it. I agree with you.

If everything comes to a standstill out of panic or valid fear (worst case scenario), the scene will be a lot like 2008 post-Lehman. Recall the ghost town feel of everything while the market was careening and layoffs were hitting amazing monthly highs?

Fed action won't act as much of a salve this time around in that circumstance. This won't be a mere asset devaluation following a bubble popping, which can be countered with reinflation. This would be an already tenuous Main Street economy pushed into widespread defaults of various kinds (supply chain, borrowing, leases, etc.). It would also imperil a lot of the biggest companies in terms of ability to carry large corporate debt loads they've acquired since 2008.

I think they'll need a Bad Bank in that instance. It'll have to absorb and workout/restructure a shit ton of debt, or bridge debtors through the trough.

In a better case scenario, the market drops like a stone for while, this thing turns out to be manageable, and there appears a buying opportunity for the 50% of Americans who missed the last rally to jump into another one.

Seems like the Fed action this morning is aimed at managing the stock market, not the economy. Cutting interest rates is not going to do anything to cure anyone, create a vaccine, or restore the economic activity that's not going to happen because of the virus. It's just about protecting traders from getting hurt, and that's not going to give traders the right incentives.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Seems like the Fed action this morning is aimed at managing the stock market, not the economy. Cutting interest rates is not going to do anything to cure anyone, create a vaccine, or restore the economic activity that's not going to happen because of the virus. It's just about protecting traders from getting hurt, and that's not going to give traders the right incentives.

2. It's also premature. The Fed doesn't have much runway. It should be more cautious.

But this should help to move the 10 year even lower, possibly making that refi even sweeter. So there's that?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Seems like the Fed action this morning is aimed at managing the stock market, not the economy. Cutting interest rates is not going to do anything to cure anyone, create a vaccine, or restore the economic activity that's not going to happen because of the virus. It's just about protecting traders from getting hurt, and that's not going to give traders the right incentives.

Well, it seems to have had an impact on the bond market.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Well, it seems to have had an impact on the bond market.

If we are all going to self-isolate in our homes, it's a good time to refinance.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I’m being wildly generous with that 30%. If you take a worldwide assumption of peak 500 mil, out of 7.7 billion people on Earth, roughly 1/15th (6.6%) of the world will be infected.

6.6% of 320 mil is 21,120,000. 2% of 21,120,000 is 422,400.

That’s much more than my earlier assumption. But it’s also based off a model which does not take into account where those 500 mil cases will be. They could be largely kept to China, India, etc. And the death rates may vary wildly by location. So we may enjoy a much lower rate while China and Iran are responsible for the higher scores driving the majority of that 2% worldwide average.

I totally agree this’ll be way worse than AIDS. Transmission differences render AIDS a million times more containable.

If you figure that this thing has a similar transmission rate as the 'flu (which it probably doesn't because a lot of us are getting 'flu shots and/or have other exposure based immunity to 'flu), it'll hit about 35.5 million people (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html) in the US based off of last year's 'flu numbers.

I'm pretty sure it's in this area by now given the flyers up looking for epidemiologists to head over to Ft. Bend County for surveillance. It's probably in a lot of other areas that haven't yet been reported. We will have a better sense in the next few weeks. But yeah, a lot of elderly people are going to die here, and a lot more are going to get really, really sick.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

If we are all going to self-isolate in our homes, it's a good time to refinance.

for someone so attracted to sewer based restaurants it is a bit weird you run from exposure to germs.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

for someone so attracted to sewer based restaurants it is a bit weird you run from exposure to germs.

Setting my children aside, even though I have no faith in their ability to wash their hands and I strongly suspect they go to school and plot how to trade germs with their pals, my wife works on a medical ICU at a teaching hospital. There are eleven reported cases of Covid-19 in this county so far, and it is an act of God that none of them are on Ms Slothrop's ICU so far. I have zero hope of avoiding exposure to the coronavirus.

And I'm not generally attracted to sewer-based restaurants, but that one seemed like a place you would like.

[LessinSF]

I should have bet on Biden. Bernie will not do weil in the remaining big delegate states in the Midwest. Fucking doddering Joe v. rambling Trump. We can look forward to 8 months of who can out incoherent whom.