"The worst case projection I saw last year is we might see negative four percent GDP in the world. But just this week the World Bank predicted the entire global economy - every single country on Earth collectively - is going into a negative 5.2 percent GDP. That's 5.2 percent of the wealth of the planet just shrinks. And in the midst of all that we have a pandemic and it's not just going to go away, And here in the United States we have no national policy, no consistent strategy across the nation, and no guidance coming to states in any coherent way from the CDC.
And the whole entire stock market has been hanging by its finger nails until today when reality started to set in. They were thinking 'Okay we gotta have a vaccine gotta have a vaccine and that's gonna get us out of this. Well what happens if one of the front line vaccines doesn't work properly - Well what does the market do? Stand back and watch the dust settle." - Laurie Garret, on Rachel Maddow, Thursday night
- There has been solid research that it makes a difference to have more women on boards and in grass-roots positions, but evidence that they make better presidents or prime ministers has been lacking — until Covid-19 came along. It’s not that the leaders who best managed the virus were all women. But those who bungled the response were all men, and mostly a particular type: authoritarian, vainglorious and blustering. - Nicholas Kristoff, NY Times, 'What The Pandemic Reveals About The Male Ego'
The headline on the front page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal screeched:
'DOW Falls 1,800 On Virus Worries'
Noting:
"Growing fears of a surge in coronavirus infections sent the stock market falling Thursday pulling the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 1,800 points or 6.9 %.....For months investors have been betting the U.S. and other countries will be able to reopen their economies without seeing an increase in coronavirus cases that might force them to backtrack... But in the past few days investors have gotten more signs that the smooth reopening they had been hoping for might be increasingly difficult to achieve- throwing into doubt their hopes for a nascent economic recovery..
'It was a wake up call' said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities, of Thursday's pullback"
Which begs the question of why these investor goobers didn't spot or attend to the growing exponential increases of Covid cases in states - exposed by Rachel Maddow Thursday night- states including; North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, South Carolina, Florida and others.
I mean, as Maddow pointed out (as well as her guest Laurie Garrett) the signals leading to this moment were hard to ignore, even for the most bullish of investors. Coronavirus infections are rising in 21 states. Congress is divided on extending more aid. And on Wednesday, even the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned that the depth of the downturn and pace of the recovery remained “extraordinarily uncertain.”
For investors, who often make buying and selling decisions by looking at the future, it was altogether too much, but as Ms. Garrett said, that's because their brains are full of too much irrational exuberance. Not enough common sense and attending to the data before them, opting to go with wishful thinking.
Stocks suffered their worst drop in nearly three months as the S&P 500 stock index fell 5.9 percent — just days after it had recouped its losses for the year oh and oil prices also cratered, reflecting the sudden unease that swept across financial markets. According to Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, an asset management firm:
“Chairman Powell threw a bucket of cold water on the thought that the economy is going to go back to where it was in 2019 any time soon,”
But is anyone paying attention? The biggest contribution of Maddow last night- apart from having pandemic writer Garrett on - was showing Christopher Wilson's chart - from Yahoo News - of how U.S. Covid cases are spiking precipitously (by 36.46%) and more than any other nation in the world, e.g.
This is god -awful and also exposes the WSJ editorial lies from yesterday ('The Second Wave Covid Scare', p. A 14) in which it was claimed "The numbers are better than the headlines" which the chart shows - as well as Maddow's exponential case curves- are flat out not true. As the Yahoo News document states:
"In a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document dated June 9, the U.S. had the highest spike of percentage change in daily cases, with a 36.5 percent jump in recent days. Of the top 10 countries in total cases, that is the biggest spike by a significant margin, compared with drops in cases in Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany and Iran and growths of under 5 percent in Russia, India and Peru. A June 9 Federal Emergency Management Agency document shows the same spike in cases. The rolling average of deaths in the U.S., per the FEMA document, is starting to trend up over 1,000 per day."
This is serious, folks, and as Maddow took pains to point out the 36% -plus increase was in THREE days. That is a freaking disaster no matter which way you cut it and all the WSJ editorial efforts at happy talk and spin (including misusing statistics) are going to fail. At least for those who've retained some gray matter during this pandemic and Trump's insane response to it. As Maddow put it:
"If' you've got the largest epidemic on Earth, and two million cases and 110,000 people dead and twenty -one states where cases are rising - and your case numbers are rising 36 percent in three days when you're already this bad, if that's your economy, that's your market that is your politics, then that is a national disaster. And it's not a national disaster we've been through and we're trying to get out of,, it's a national disaster right now."
Laurie Garrett also noted the insanity in the fact a number of states have never been in total lockdown yet now are planing to go into Phase III reopening,. Case in point, Tex-ASS, now plans to go to a 75 % allowed capacity for in house dining in restaurants despite exponential increases in case numbers.
As she put it, using another less noted facet, commerce and travel between states:
"Reopening across state lines? This is just irrational. Here in New York you're going to hear a hue and cry from people who've sacrificed so much being in lockdown for weeks and and now what? Travelers are going to come in from Florida where those restrictions have all been lifted? And they reintroduce Covid? You see here is where the insanity is, we don't have a national strategy. So what you're go to see is more animosity between states, more and more tension within states - between counties that have low levels and those with skyrocketing levels So the kind of solidarity that's essential to conquering disease is evaporating before our eyes.
Garrett then noted how - during the Swine flu pandemic - (by contrast with today), the CDC was "fully in charge" doing at least one press briefing per day - and without any presidential interference, spin, gaslighting and pill pushing. So back then we knew what supplies everyone needed, but 'we don't have any of that now."
What we do have is lots of lying and misrepresentation by the Rightist op-ed and FOX news zombies that all is A-ok and the left and media are just inflating the stats. In the words of the already cited WSJ editorial (ibid.)
"Liberals and the media demanded more testing before states could reopen, yet now are criticizing states because more testing has revealed more cases"
But they have it ass- backwards. What we said was the extent and aggression of reopening must be contingent on the test results. IF then more testing reveals more cases you have to apply more controls, more brakes, more precautionary measures to continue to open. You cannot just rush pell mell into reopening any way you want, devil take the hindmost. Hell, those states with spiking numbers aren't even initiating enough contact tracing. As Maddow put it, "hoping for things to get better is not a plan."
To which Ms. Garrett added, referencing the response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009: "The level of engagement was enormous" in contrast to now, where the head of the CDC - Redfield - has become another Trump lapdog. The result of the Obama plan and CDC was that "there was a consistent policy across all states and the territories". But what has Trump done? He's turned even the sane act of wearing a mask into a culture war - where his zombies instantly lose it when they see anyone walking while masked - taking them for a socialist, leftist Antifa thug or god forbid, Democrat.
As Dr. David Agus explained yesterday morning:
"People who go out in crowds should all wear a mask. They need to block the spread of droplets from one person to another We have a new way of life these next months until a vaccine comes. We need to behave differently Wearing a mask is different, it's not in our DNA to focus on others but we need to."
Indeed, this attention to mask -wearing, as Dr. Ashish Jha explained on 'All In' Thursday night, is one way to open up in a judicious - as opposed to reckless- manner- and hence to ensure a downturn in infections as opposed to the spikes we're seeing. It then becomes a practical alternative to extended lockdown, and a means to reopen the economy while still maintaining protections, precautions - in addition to social distancing and hand washing.
The problem is that Trump and the Right have incited their zombies into treating masks as political expressions and a part of identity politics. So all who wear them are "commies", "Nazis" or "leftist thugs", opposed to "our" liberty as "sovereign citizens". So the red state Trumpers refuse to comply with this simple precaution, taking it as a sign of being a "slave" or submission. Hence, even in their states where the case incidence is trending exponential they happily help the virus to spread further. The political backlash is so virulent now that we behold medical doctors like Dr. Nicole Quick being forced to resign in Orange County, CA after being called a Nazi and receiving a death threat over an order to wear masks. This, despite the fact that mask wearing is the key to staying safe in any large reopening. Oh, and definitely preferable to continuing in lockdown mode!
Last night on 'All In' Chris Hayes played clips of these fake liberty besotted nitwits decrying local health officials. I could scarcely believe my eyes and ears and Janice was apoplectic - ready to hurl a shoe at the TV. In the case of an Orange County council meet one heard the following eruptions from the assorted aggrieved nincompoops:
"I've been discriminated against five times in the last three days, unable to go into businesses without a mask!"
"I'm being told by these Nazis to breathe in CO2 when God...gave me the ability to extract that from my body! So now you want me to put it back into my body!"
"By continuing to keep people in masks without any legitimate cause you are kneeling on the necks of the people! You are continuing to act in a thuggish manner!"
"I mean like it's over! Are we still talking about this?"
To which Chris Hayes responded: "Yeah, we're still talking about this. People are still dying from it. But that's the view of the White House and these people imbibe it."
Hayes then referenced how this idiocy is happening in Ohio too, in similar venues - despite the fact the state has been a leader in containing the virus. But now the Trumpian peanut gallery is getting restless and has taken to sounding off and complaining, even leading to the resignation of Dr. Amy Acton who had advised Gov. Mike Dewine on the need for an early lockdown, Now the state's Reeptards and their minions are depicting her as the bad guy- even carrying guns and signs with anti-Semitic messages outside her home. As Chris Hayes noted, after playing the clip: "Dr. Amy Acton has guided Ohio through this pandemic and now has become the target of reactionary idiots."
This is what a good segment of the nation has descended to: degraded, regressed, non-toilet trained infants with serious mental issues. Look, if a second wave arrives (see: 'Get Ready for the Second Wave', WSJ today, p A13) and another lockdown has to be imposed, you can thank imbeciles such as the ones blowing brain farts out of their asses and forcing medical experts in the different states to resign or go into hiding.
As for Bill Maher's continued harping about "eating better" as the key to avoiding the virus ("It only takes 4 to 6 weeks to get healthier!") that is airy fairy opining which will not help us with the population we have here and now. (Only 12 percent metabolically healthy according to his latest nutrition guru guest doc.) Here's more concrete advice and one thousand times more practical: wear a damned mask when you go out and deliver the middle finger to any toads who object. Oh, and be sure to social distance! (My technique when I go into an establishment with a mask on and after a jaundiced look from non-mask wearers, is to commence my deepest, most spasmodic coughing - in response to which the Trumpies move away, slinking like shamed dogs. My unspoken message? "Hey, I am protecting you idiots!")
Against all this misfiring and deranged politicization in countering the pandemic we behold a cratering economy which is on the cusp of a full fledged depression, yet few seem to notice. If the core of a depression is collapsing economic output the writing is already on the wall. Commerce Dept data show ((WSJ today, p,A1, 'Global Economy Faces Steep Climb To Recover') Americans saved $6.15 trillion of income (much of it coming from the gov't in the CARES act) in April, but that savings rate increase of 33 % cratered consumption(which props up 70 % of GDP) and sent the economy into a tailspin --as Laurie Garrett described. To avoid a depression (a recession has already been evident since February) means much more money must be infused to increase demand, e.g. for goods and services. Americans, unless they see the government come through, will simply close their wallets to further spending so they can hold out against the debt headwinds. Which penny pinching will spell disaster. The Dems have offered $3 trillion in the HEROES act but the GOP is saying "No way!"
I mean, another 1.5 million (from the Friday unemployment report) are now seeking government support and yet most programs are set to terminate next month. For example, a moratorium on evictions will expire on July 23rd, and the unemployment bonus $$ that has propped up so many millions and helped the economy will follow on July 31st. Is anyone besides the House Democrats doing anything to help? Nope. McConnell and the pukes are still sitting on the House bill, convinced they can just wait it out and soon everyone will be back at work so...no problemo. "We don't need to shovel any more government dollars at the needy millions".
Well, guess not, so long as you're prepared to face a depression level economic contraction as Laurie Garrett pointed out with 5.2 percent of the world's wealth sucked out. She pointed also to a World Bank estimate of - 8.5 % in U.S. economic activity, compared to +1 % at the end of the great recession; The former is a depression warning, make no mistake.
See Also:
Hospitalizations climb, cases spike in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, N.C.
And:by Steven Harper | June 13, 2020 - 6:57am | permalink
Excerpt:
Medical professionals agree unanimously that wearing a mask in public prevents the spread of COVID-19. In violation of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control guidelines, Trump refuses to wear one.
Trump says that it’s because he is tested for COVID-19 regularly and so are those around him. That doesn’t explain why he mocks former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing one. Even apart from the FDA’s warning that the tests may return false negative results, ordinary Americans don’t have the luxury of weekly tests with immediate results.
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