From March 27th to April 8th of this year, a period of less than two weeks, the United States death toll from the Covid-19 virus experienced a 1000% increase. That’s right, it went from 1,399 to 13,000 in 12 days. All the while the idiot who predicted it would be over in a few days and who told us a couple of weeks ago that there were less than ten cases and that they would be down to zero in a week or so, is now telling us what drugs we should use to fight it. And amazingly there are idiots out there who believe him. There are still people in this country dumb enough to think that Donald Trump cares about anything other then his own well being. There are still morons who at Trump’s suggestion will drink the Kool Aid. When Trump declares that one should try this or that drug, all of which were developed for other purposes, he has no idea if it will help you or kill you. And he doesn’t care. He is willing to stake your life on a desperate shot at hyping the economy in a futile hope that it will improve his failing chances in the next election. This is a degenerate criminal who, if he thought it would benefit his career, would happily sell you bottled water from The Ganges River, Aberdeen Harbor or the Gowanus Canal.
But the problem going forward isn’t that Trump made the wrong moves or lied to the public to get us where we are now. The real problem is, he isn’t going to stop lying and acting on wrong impulses going forward.
He has been doing this since he was a kid and he was doing it again this week, telling the American public that we are doing more and better testing than anyone in the world. This is just an unconscionable lie. We are nowhere near the leader in testing. We are, in fact, far behind most of the world.
Trump wants to open up all businesses yesterday. He is literally chomping at the bit to get people back to work because he still thinks he can somehow save an economy he has done everything to destroy. Of course if he is successful at getting people back to work before we solve the pandemic it will undoubtedly mean a second wave of virus that will start killing people all over again. But Trump doesn’t care how many of us he kills. All he cares about is being able to cobble together a false picture of what he thinks people will buy, so at least the dumbest among them will vote for him.
And then on Thursday Bill Barr who has shown no ability to do intelligently, functionally or morally what he has been chosen to do; decided to cross the street and become an instant expert in a field that he knows nothing about. He blabbed out his dangerous opinion that we should be opening up the country far earlier than the scientists have declared is safe. Of course this is just another of the President’s sub-par clowns blabbering about stuff he knows nothing about.
Every doctor and scientist of stature has said that we can’t open the country until we have some functional knowledge of who has the virus, who may have had the virus without showing symptoms and all kinds of other information that must be known in order to safely allow people to mingle again. Of course we don’t know any of these things because the Trump administration first refused tests from the World Health Organization, then lied about the availability of tests and is now refusing to admit that the testing technology that the government is supposed to be supplying just doesn’t work.
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The pundits have been all over Trump for the time he spends each day babbling about his enemies and lying about what his flunkies have been doing to stop the plague. If Trump were a normal President, I would agree with them but Trump is a stupid, lazy egomaniac. It would stand the country in good stead if he spent all his time on the golf course and left the country’s business alone. So let’s leave him on the air as long as possible each day, because at least for those few hours, he’s distracted from further screwing up the county.
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Ray Dalio, the man at Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, has predicted that we are entering a depression equal to the big one in 1929. Ray is a lot better informed than this writer but, in my view, things may not always be what they seem. Then too, Ray may be looking for a future in which he can sell short.
Yes, I’m being facetious but there are definite differences between what is going on in the world today and what happened in 1929.
The Great Depression was caused, for the most part, by a financial world that was already on the brink of disaster. Before the pandemic, we were looking at a world that was largely in pretty good economic shape. Sure, individual countries were in financial trouble but that will always be true. The cause of this recession has nothing to do with that. This is all about an anomaly that came at the world from outside the financial systems. So once the anomaly is conquered the systems, despite in many cases being severely damaged, will have a much better chance of fighting their way back to something that resembles normal than did those that survived The Depression.
For example, once it is safe to return to work, the factories that have shut down will be in a position to bring back all their employees. There will still, because of the previous stability, be a market for their goods. This will be bolstered by the recently passed two trillion dollar recovery bill, and the potential of another one to follow. Contracts that have come to a sharp stop all over the country will finally have to be finished. That will take materials and labor. In ’29 those contracts were not outstanding so they did not represent a potential source of income or profit.
This is not to say that everything will pop back instantly. There will be serious loses and many small businesses simply will not recover. Another difference between now and ’29 can be seen in our delivery systems. In ’29 when businesses failed or shut down there was no work to replace those jobs. Now, even as companies are failing or temporarily shutting down, tens of thousands of jobs are instantly coming available in the industries that are able to adjust to the new marketplace and carry on. When the stores shut down or switched to selling only on a delivery basis thousands were out of work. But businesses like Amazon and Fresh Direct are filling the void; instantly hiring even more thousands to help them get up to speed to fill their burgeoning orders. Yes, there’s a lag. But as soon as the businesses that are hiring get up to speed, that gap in employment will shrink. Maybe not all the way to the 4% levels at the end of 2019 but certainly far from the 15-20% they are at now. That didn’t happen for 4 or 5 years after ’29. It should happen a lot faster this time.
None of this means we aren’t going to suffer. Some businesses will fold and never return, but with the lessons of this pandemic, maybe many businesses that were having a tough climb to recognition, but filled voids during the time of crisis, will flourish.