Objectively intelligent.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

"Thank God the President did something last night! It was necessary!"

- no one this morning

Fucking speech cost us (via the Fed) $1.5 Trillion today, and that's just the beginning.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

"Thank God the President did something last night! It was necessary!"

- no one this morning

He had to do something politically. He was getting killed for ignoring the situation.

There are no good options here. The market is taking all info as negative. Now, of course, cutting off travel is always bad for business. But any worse than continuing to blow this off?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Fucking speech cost us (via the Fed) $1.5 Trillion today, and that's just the beginning.

Now is when you forgive all student loans. Go for the jubilee. Fuck it. If we can blow 1.5 trillion via fed, we can write off that shit.

What the hell? It can’t hurt.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Expect him to be a big beneficiary of the bailout. What good is being president if you leave and there is still money in the Treasury? I mean, do we think his buddy Putin is going to leave a crumb in the cupboard when he goes? Did the Shah leave Iran without a few nice wires going first?

A bailout of Main St? How? This isn’t a banking crisis. You can’t create consumption by offering cheap money. All you can do is what Italy has done. Debt moratorium. I say why let a good crisis go to waste? Cancel the millennials’ debts.

Money’s already cheap. This is a street level demand crisis arising from a health crisis.

[Hank Chinaski]

Things that I understand but really suck-

until last week- Louis CK cant be on TV anymore
now- No college bball tournament.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Fucking speech cost us (via the Fed) $1.5 Trillion today, and that's just the beginning.

There is a silver lining - Trump's odds to be reelected have dropped from -160 to even money.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

There is a silver lining - Trump's odds to be reelected have dropped from -160 to even money.

Best $1.5 Trillion ever spent in the history of spending. And before that.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

He had to do something politically. He was getting killed for ignoring the situation.

There are no good options here. The market is taking all info as negative. Now, of course, cutting off travel is always bad for business. But any worse than continuing to blow this off?

I no longer understand what the point of your posts about him and last night might be, except that you have an odd sympathy for the predicament he has put himself in by being incompetent, addled and obtuse during a crisis.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

He had to do something politically. He was getting killed for ignoring the situation.

There are no good options here. The market is taking all info as negative. Now, of course, cutting off travel is always bad for business. But any worse than continuing to blow this off?

There are a hundred things he could have done differently to allevieate concern.

He could have expressed some empathy and frustration in the availability of testing with assurances we're working on getting it more widespread.

He could have announced enhanced screenings at airports. That infrastructure is already in place. Just give the TSA a longer script. Much less likely to cause a market drop than (erroneously, WTF?!?) stating we're banning goods from Europe.

He could have acknowledged that we're beyond worrying about people from specific countries and that it has become community based in a lot of places.

He could have deferred to experts at the CDC who have much more expertise on such matters than fucking Jarad Kushner or Stephen Miller.

He could have acted fucking presidential and shown some leadership rather than making this chaotic thing even worse.

I realize that social distancing, cancellations, closings are all disruptive to the bottom line of most industries. I understand this is a massive hit to the economy. But he's pretending that it's all going to go back to normal, leaving millions of Americans either ill prepared (because they believe his dumb ass) or feeling like they're all on their own (because, well, we are).

Fucking closing Europe because "he had to do something to look strong" is bullshit. It's a desperate attempt by a desperate man that never bothered to understand that disaster response is part of his job description. He's treating this like a campaign event. And the idiots that show up to his rallies might gladly swallow his bullshit, but it's fucking insulting as hell to the rest of us who know what's going on.

I have been working on nothing else but this thing all week. And it's going to be a long time before things get back to normal. We have 13 confirmed cases in an area with six million people. There's no way it's that low. But there's not enough testing. So we have dozens, probably hundreds of people out there giving it to other people. And some of them will die.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Fucking speech cost us (via the Fed) $1.5 Trillion today, and that's just the beginning.

What I am saying to Trumpers:

[Oliver_Wendell_Ramone]

I will be sorely disappointed if there is not already a metal band calling itself COVID-666.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Oliver_Wendell_Ramone

I will be sorely disappointed if there is not already a metal band calling itself COVID-666.

Or a reggae band calling itself Community Spread.

[Hank Chinaski]

Breaking News!!!! There is a cure just invented. Called trinohbatsatall!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

There are a hundred things he could have done differently to allevieate concern.

He could have expressed some empathy and frustration in the availability of testing with assurances we're working on getting it more widespread.

He could have announced enhanced screenings at airports. That infrastructure is already in place. Just give the TSA a longer script. Much less likely to cause a market drop than (erroneously, WTF?!?) stating we're banning goods from Europe.

He could have acknowledged that we're beyond worrying about people from specific countries and that it has become community based in a lot of places.

He could have deferred to experts at the CDC who have much more expertise on such matters than fucking Jarad Kushner or Stephen Miller.

He could have acted fucking presidential and shown some leadership rather than making this chaotic thing even worse.

I realize that social distancing, cancellations, closings are all disruptive to the bottom line of most industries. I understand this is a massive hit to the economy. But he's pretending that it's all going to go back to normal, leaving millions of Americans either ill prepared (because they believe his dumb ass) or feeling like they're all on their own (because, well, we are).

Fucking closing Europe because "he had to do something to look strong" is bullshit. It's a desperate attempt by a desperate man that never bothered to understand that disaster response is part of his job description. He's treating this like a campaign event. And the idiots that show up to his rallies might gladly swallow his bullshit, but it's fucking insulting as hell to the rest of us who know what's going on.

I have been working on nothing else but this thing all week. And it's going to be a long time before things get back to normal. We have 13 confirmed cases in an area with six million people. There's no way it's that low. But there's not enough testing. So we have dozens, probably hundreds of people out there giving it to other people. And some of them will die.

Most of the things he could have done right were neglected weeks ago. He fucked up by not taking this seriously, then trying to blow it off, and then focusing only on the economic impacts, as thought it were a financial crisis rather than a health crisis with potential dire economic impacts.

The ship sailed. He missed his opportunity.

But still, the people demanded he do something. Prior to the speech, his economic advisors told him not to implement a travel ban on Europe. His medical advisors demanded the ban. He listened to the medical people: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-virus-speech

But like everything else he's done in this crisis, he bungled it. The speech was bad. The policy scared the shit out of the market. And so it reacted by dropping like a stone.

But the point I was making is that, politically he had to do so something. He had to look decisive. That's me imparting the most cynical reasoning to Trump, which I think is a fair assumption. One can also argue that he did exactly the right thing, for the right reasons, but far too late. Experts in epidemiology will debate that for some time.

What we've got is a manager proving the Peter Principle, far outside his pay grade. We've also got a cowboy who's willing to take dangerous chances because he does not understand science or statistics at the level needed, and only listens to advisors when forced to do so. And on top of all of this we have a largely low information, instant-gratification, instant solution demanding population who insist something, anything, be done. These people are in panic, and many of them are fools. Trump caters to fools, and so instead of doing what he should have done weeks ago (actually learn about the disease and allow a cadre of experts to make policy decisions and inform the public), he gave the common voter something he thought would look decisive, and in so appearing, calm them.

It didn't work. But in the spot in which Trump had been cornered, he had to do something, and something big.

ETA: And now we will try to paper over the economic fallout of this health crisis. Good on the Germans to announce a stimulus. But the question remains: How do liquidity injections compel a person hunkered in his house, fearing acquisition of a virus he believes, in most cases out of delusion and ignorance, has a high likelihood of killing him, go shopping, or to the movies, or to his gym, or his doctor, or to his office?

The reasoning remains a belief that if this is handled like a banking crisis, or an economic crisis, the economy can be saved.

Economically, this is a lack of consumption crisis. It is a business interruption. There are two ways you handle a business interruption. First, you tap your business interruption coverage. That will not work here as this is not the type of an event covered by such coverage. (Nor is their BI coverage for an entire economy.) The other way to handle it is forbearance. We should simply grant all debts forbearance for a federally mandated period of 60-90 days. And rather than recognize the precipitous drop in GDP, we should consider it a sort of force majeure event - something removed from the official economic calculations. Just omit it, the way we arbitrarily remove energy from core inflation calculation.

Courts did this in the mortgage crisis. In many states, they simply placed mandatory freezes on all cases and compelled lenders to renegotiate loans. The govt could do this on a national basis and simply say:

All loan and lease obligations are frozen. Nothing is owed for 90 days. At the end of this period, payments will be due as previously scheduled, and the duration of any contract shall be extended by 90 days.

A lot of ghouls will howl that this is the time where survivors should be allowed to eat the weak. I don't think they'll get much traction.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

What I am saying to Trumpers:

Bingo.