Stepping away from the actual pandemic, because I'm tired of disputing with morons on things that are grade school simple, we wander over to the crystal ball for a bit to look at some potential and probable casualties rather more important than even the 70K+ people (and counting) that'll never be going anywhere but the cemetery from here on out.
Are these casualties guaranteed? No.
Are they likely? O Hell, yes.
Are they permanent? If not, how long will they last? GOK. God Only Knows.
The Oil Industry
People ignore the fact that Russia and OPEC were getting into a throat-slitting contest before the pandemic became news outside China, but that shindig, coupled with .Gov ringing the alarm over Kung Flu, gave Wall Street the go-ahead to take the most massive fiscal shit on itself in recorded history.
Last week, the price of oil was down to "If you'll take this crap off my hands, I'll pay YOU $19/bbl to unload it for me." Imagine Macy's giving $50 bills away for taking suits and dresses - marked down to "FREE" - off their store racks, and you've got the idea.
Fracking? Drilling? Fuggedabowdit.
Short-term, OPEC countries are going to starve, first for cash, and then quite possibly for real. This is when "Arab Spring" from a couple of years ago turns into a Long, Hot Summer Of Discontent.
American drilling platforms, oil fields, and general operations? Probably taking a months-to-years long shit on themselves too. We may never see things like they were last December again, for years, to decades, to ever.
Airlines
F**ked. Like 9/11 f**ked. This year at least. Some of them won't be back, ever.
Airlines run on razor-thin margins, and some won't survive the next shake-out.
Which takes out everyone from pilots to baggage manglers.
(But still not those fat, stupid crotch-groping perverts and luggage thieves at TSA, dammit!)
Bonus: Less demand for aviation fuel kicks the oil bidness in the crotch again.
The Auto Industry
We were already sitting on a months-long glut of cars, because the "booming" economy wasn't trickling down from banks and board rooms to where people buy new cars. With unemployment where it is now, defaults on auto loans to come, and metric fucktons of repo cars, demand for new cars will probably hit 1930 levels. I.e. nada. If Detroit announced there would be no 2021 models or model year, it wouldn't surprise me at this point. So auto workers, and ancillary parts makers, dealerships, auto finance, banking, etc.
Bonus: Yet another crotch shot to the oil industry.
Travel and Tourism
Deader than airlines. Hotels, restaurants, tourist destinations, cabbies, cooks, maids, etc.
Deals will be had, to be sure, but it's going to be awhile before anyone wants them, and a yuuuuuge chunk of people on the dole won't be taking trips anywhere, including the grocery store. And since it's either "newlywed, or nearly dead" that make up most travel/trips, I wouldn't expect the AARP/AMAC crowd to be lining up in droves to see when and whether this pandemic has gone out, anytime soon.
Vegas? Short it, in every way.
Which all impacts not just direct staff, but also sales of supplies, linens, and oh yeah, food.
Food Production and Distribution
People hoarded, so week to week purchases will drop while they eat that. A lot of people are unemployed, so what they do buy, they'll buy less of. We've already seen crops plowed under, to keep from bottoming out prices. Next, herds that cost more to feed than they'll bring at market will soon go the same way.
Which such wild swings, it's a short step from glut to shortages, especially come winter.
Entertainment
Disney Inc. probably won't re-open any parks in 2020, by all accounts. They're posting 90% Q2 losses (on top of the epic flop that was their craptastic StarBores additions, which lost them billion$ already), and isn't getting better, as they look to do without any summer park revenue either. Add Six Flags, and every other theme and amusement park to that list, as what gets re-opened, and the whims of both the government and the public change like the wind daily.
The movie business is about to get the worst summer in history, in all likelihood. Pisser not just for Tom Cruise and Top Gun 2, but for the entire multi-billion $$ industry, from fat-cat producers and overpaid actors, all the way down to the folks who wash the cars, take the tickets, sell the popcorn, and those who provide everything from midnight meals for production crews, to props, wardrobe, equipment, and a gajillion rentals of everything known to man.
Concerts? Who's likely going to attend COVIDfest 2020? Is it even going to be an option in most places? I'm thinking it's unlikely at best, for some time.
Education
Brick-and-mortar K-PhD died this year, even if they don't know it.
The secret's out: most school years could be knocked out in 3 months at home, for most K-12 kids. And unconstrained by waiting on the teacher to help the utter morons at the left edge of the IQ curve in every grade level, what kids can learn at home is fun, engaging, and interesting, when they're not being beaten over the head with Common Core stupidity, white guilt, privilege-shaming, tolerance for every perversion and every dubiously suspect fruit-loopy pile of rose fertilizer under the sun, except for orthodox Christianity and American cultural exceptionalism.
Not paying $50-$100K for degrees in underwater basket weaving and Victim Studies isn't going to hurt college students' feelings, when they realize they could do the whole four years in three, at home, in their PJs, with zero impacted classes, while holding down a paying job, and graduating with an actual marketable degree and no debt.
De-fund both public teachers unions, and liberal indoctrination gulags, in one swell foop?
Be still, my beating heart!
The only reason for 90% of colleges and universities by next year will be to pander to the alumni's sportsball fetishes. I'm spitballing here, but the brighter leagues will simply adopt them wholesale as minor-league feeder streams outright, put them on payroll, and end the charade.
The 10% of all schools who deliver educational bang for the buck, however, will have their pick of students from here on out.
Commercial Real Estate
Everyone on earth just got the memo that dragging people an hour's drive each way daily is silly and sooooo 19th century. When they realize how much they can streamline by cutting out buildings, 57-gender bathrooms, and 200 feet of regulatory oversight and compliance by leaving most employees the hell alone, and letting them crank out their work from home, most corporations from medium to huge will be dumping buildings like they were on fire and radioactive.
And when 2000 people a day don't all troop in and out and finger-bang the same elevator buttons and door handles, the plagues and pandemics of their children don't get shared around the office, cutting health care costs for the company too.
Win-win.
Bonus: Still another crotch kick, with both feet, to both the oil and automotive industries, and the travel industry.
And this is just for openers.
TL;DR?
As we warned you waaaaaaay back in Jan/Feb., multiple times, the deaths from a virus are relative small potatoes. The blowback from it, however, is going to shrink the economy, and put a lot of people who had jobs in December out on their ass, some of them for years to decades.
{We also told fucktards not to panic, but that the fucktards out there would miss that message, which is why they're fucktards. No really, we said exactly that:
"{Nota bene, random fucktards, no one, least of all this site, is ringing the panic bell. You'll ignore this obvious truth, but that's why you're fucktards.}"If you're keeping score in your programs, that's still a 1.000 batting average.}
The engine of the economy just had a huge bubble of water pumped into the fuel line, and one of the pistons just sheared off. What happens after that?
You ain't seen nothin' yet.
And this is just the everyday stuff, inside the country.
Wait until this rumbles through 150 other countries' economies. ;)
For a lot of people, barring miracles, a butter-smooth Sully landing in the Hudson isn't in the cards.
It's "just the flu, bro?"
Because this is what happens every year?
Sh'yeah. As if.
愿你生活在有趣的时代
Follow-on: Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man has some personal ideas in a riff off this OP. Please go read.
And now Forbes Magazine and Bill Whittle want to pile in on this:
Just a few thoughts on one of your topics, that of commercial real estate.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right, the concept of a company having a building, or floors rented in a building someone else owns, in the most expensive parts of the big city, is a thing of the past. Those buildings will be emptier than Nancy Pelosi's skull.
However, there will be opportunities too. Go out to the 'burbs, buy a empty strip mall (there are plenty), gut it, divide it up into 100-200 square foot offices, separated by actual solid walls (not stud and sheet-rock, too easy to break thru to rob), carpeted, furnished, and supplied with reliable internet and phone service. Let people rent them for a few hundred a month (in my case, less than it cost me to commute from NJ to NYC), bring in their own computer hardware (hence the solid walls) and work from there. People within a half-hour of that site will flock to it, and the adjoining areas will become awash with breakfast/lunch/coffee places.
Why?
Not all homes are equipped with office space for the full-time worker-at-home. Even if so equipped, if the kids are also schooled at home they're distracting. And if hubby and wife both work you need TWO offices.
Bonus points if the cost of such office space to the worker is tax-deductible, in full or part.
Added bonus: people recognize NYFC and its ilk as the petri dishes they are, those who are actually WORKING move from the city to the burbs, where they can still work at their current jobs and not have a commute that makes you wonder what the f*ck you're working for (ask me how I know about THAT). The cities are left to the welfare recipients and politicians (considerable in common) until they collapse under their own weight. Outlying areas get a real-estate boom, especially those areas off the beaten path (you don't have to worry if public transportation or major roadways go near your home if you don't need to use them daily). Look at the real-estate prices in my former state of NJ, they're highest in those places near New Jersey Transit rail lines or major highways and considerably lower the further away you are from either.
All I'm really suggesting is de-centralizing office space geographically, letting people telecommute instead of actually-commuting.
As for some of your other points:
Travel: Assuming my prediction above comes to pass, AND the travel industry manages to clean up its act (literally, as long as I can recall it was a given that if you took a plane ride you were going to catch whatever anyone ELSE on the plane had), people will travel. Hell, that was the whole idea behind the Airborne supplements, something you could take to reduce your chance of getting the crud on an airplane. If you're spending all your time in your home or within a few miles of it, you need to get away fro relaxation.
Auto industry: Again, working with my assumption, people will still need cars. When I commuted into NYC by public transportation I could (and did) get away with a beater, it was a mile from house to train station, I walked it lots of times. There will be opportunities for cheap-but-reliable cars again, not every car needs to cost 40K.
I think a serious danger you missed though is that China and their puppets in North Korea are going to get hit HARD, and they may decide their best method of reducing their surplus population is to start a war. Neither has the logistics to reach the US, and I've little doubt that anything they shoot our way wouldn't make it here before we knocked it down. Still, for the closer areas (South Korea predominantly, Japan possibly because China hasn't forgotten or forgiven their past excesses) things may become sporty.
I'll put my crystal ball away now.
Mark D
People will still need cars, but not so much this year.
ReplyDeleteDitto for travel.
Neither is going away forever, but they also aren't going back to work next month.
I'm guessing we're lucky to crawl out of the current depression in an OrangeMan second term.
But Ruth Baader Meinhoff is sick in hospital again, so things aren't all doom and gloom.
Good article. Great time to by a car on the next couple of months.
ReplyDeleteA relative of mine passed away a week or so ago. He was fighting cancer and more for a couple of years. But since they surprisingly found the Chinese flu antibodies in him, they listed the cause of Death as 'covid-19'.
ReplyDeleteCorrupt bast*rds.
Additional thoughts on your comments:
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says there are about 47,000 TSA gropers. I too guess they're going to continue to get paid.
Restaurants seem to be one flash point in the lock down/open up conflict. My guess is that they'll get a boomlet that will be crushed by a second wave of infections. The smarter ones will continue to work hard on getting food to people without people having to spend any time inside their premises.
I was under the impression that the food getting outright destroyed right now was part of the food service supply chain. The more than gets redirected in various ways to consumers, the less will be lost. I'm inside the zone of meatpacking, that's a big theoretical pain point, lots of workers are getting the virus, as far as I can tell the vast majority with few or no symptoms. The usual suspects are treating this as an opportunity, but the workers of course want to continue getting money one way or another.
Which brings up some demographics US labor intensive, low automation meatpacking tend to hire, immigrants and migrants, legal and illegal. The Trump administration has not shown any interest in decreasing the supply of these people all the way to the H-1Bs, but things like not processing visas are getting in the way of the desires of the Chamber of Commerce and the Left. One wonders if the politics of immigration will change for real with tens of millions of Americans with all types of jobs being thrown out of work with no others to be found.
The one bright spot for entertainment is direct to home video, with Universal daring movie theaters to boycott them to the extent the latter reopen. "Hollywood accounting" notwithstanding, but the studios also take a much bigger cut through this route, it's inherently cheaper. On the other hand, getting a bunch of people together to make a movie or TV show ... maybe an opportunity for animation. And hopefully Japan's much less pozzed variety.
For K-12, I'm not sure about the loss of the free babysitting aspect, which of course is less of an issue if one parent is out of work, or there are other out of work parents available. Might not be following the right sources, but I haven't been hearing this has turned out to be a big problem yet. This could result in some massive social changes, reversing in some sorts of weird ways what was lost in the era of at least one stay at home parent (my parents grew up on farms...).
Above 12th grade, I think it was Spandrel who noted colleges are the only way in the US "anyone" can buy status. I'm very unsure a non-resident Ivy League degree will have anywhere the same value as the old, and the disease population density problems for colleges are insurmountable. On the other hand, most of STEM requires some serious on hands work. Some of this can be mitigated, some I think not, like chemistry labs. Continuing to do STEM graduate lab work, non-COVID-19 research ... that could get interesting.
Colleges which kicked their students out are facing impolite demands for partial refunds, and some are so screwed they couldn't easily afford pro-rated refunds for room and board. The sexual marketplace for this age bracket will change, especially with a lot of students having to stay at their parents' homes.
How much will manager incentives change when they don't have people to directly look at, choke the throats of, etc.? A lot will have to step up their games, a lot won't be able to do that, and I wonder about your optimism about companies keeping with this paradigm shift. Still, the open office fad is going to take a big hit, which will slightly improve the commercial real estate market situation.
How much of "the gig economy" will survive?
My guess is that for the next few years the entire economy or whatever is left of it will be debt servicing from people living off credit cards during the emergency , back rent/utility bills. increased tax rates (though not revenue) and prepping for the next round.
ReplyDeleteBills, beans, bandaids and bullets if you were.
For example California went from a nominal 20 billion surplus to 20 billion debt in a few months, bad enough that even Gov Nuisance is hustling to get the economy open faster.
On top of that the Federal Reserve's plan is basically to try and inflate or hyperinflate our way out of the debt trap.
Good times ahead.
And in case anyone is wondering what an actual solution would be is economic nationalism with a focus on increasing wages and/or a debt jubilee. The later won't happen as its easier for a crackhead to stop than our cheap labor junkies to raise wages and the later would take out the rich and we can't have that.
Couldn't help but comment on this one.
ReplyDeleteI have the exact opposite opinion about where K-12 education is going. Everyone I know with kids seems to value "brick-and-mortar" even more now. First, if you're a family that's dual-income, you need somewhere for school-aged children to go because home-schooling is not an option (unless you're part of the 0.01% rich enough to afford a daily, private teacher). Second, parents often don't have the time to teach, especially if working a day-job from home. Third, a lot of people are finding out that, although they are good parents, they are not exactly good teachers (e.g., aren't good at explaining / teaching generally, lack subject matter specific knowledge, etc.). The solution to all of these problems is sending children to schools, although whether it's private, public, religious, etc. is a different discussion.
College and graduate level education is a different beast entirely. A lot of people are questioning the expense of their tuition now that they are completing classes online / from home and facing the prospect that on-campus classes will not reopen in the fall. I think a lot of people will see just how much of their tuition is funding things other than professor salaries and similar expenses needed for learning.
Just two unsolicited cents.
Best,
5stonegames: I've read that at least some banks are really tightening their requirements for borrowers, even ending offering HELOCs. The Fed, I don't want to look, but I'll note that a whole lot of deflation is going on right now as a lot of paper value goes poof, like airline stocks, and no doubt bonds to follow.
ReplyDeleteSome fraction of state and local bonds are also going to default soon enough. Interesting that Governor Nuisance, I'll have to remember that, is perforce getting serious about reopening. Of course, it probably helps to have been the first to shut down.
TW: there's the remote/distance learning option for K-12, it's what my school district is doing. Doesn't address the babysitting issue we both noted.
Another wrinkle on meatpacking capacity, from the AP:
ReplyDeletethe Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Wednesday that more than 300 federal meatpacking inspectors are either sick from the coronavirus or in self-quarantine after exposure. Citing a USDA spokesman, the newspaper said through Tuesday, 197 inspectors had tested positive; the Food Safety and Inspection Service has about 8,000 employees....
Aesop, all of what you have written is my biggest fear. We have a college senior next year. I told The Ravishing Mrs. TB that we really need to help her think outside of the box as she will be competing with the newly graduated from this year that did not find a job and all who have been laid off.
ReplyDeleteIf you are willing, I would be interested to see what industries you think will do well.
So I have had to endure people pointing out that if we shut the economy down, everyone would be starving, jobless, and homeless. (My position was the lockdown was to try and prevent the healthcare system from collapsing but many people I had to deal with seemed to think hospitals and their employees could be thrown under the bus - we had to reopen the economy RIGHT NOW.) From your perspective, Aesop,
ReplyDelete1. Was locking down to prevent a widespread infection rate a good idea?
2. Can anything be done at this point to help these industries (by the consumer, not the government)?
~Rhea
Since no one else has said it: Thanks for the musical accompaniment. Loves me some BTO
ReplyDelete100% on target.
ReplyDeleteFire for effect.
I'm 100 percent in agreement with this post as well. The ripple effects of this from twatmonster in Michigan saying you can't buy gardening supplies in the Walmarts to oil feilds shutting down is going to flatten this nation for years to come. I will say the heavy handed .gov's handling is going to likely further the rift of things in this nation. You have the folks (Which emperically anyway are getting unemployment checks or govrenment assistance) crowing to keep everything shut down as what do they care, they get paid anyway to the others that say open everything up full throttle that are going to be at odds because no one seems to be able to use reason. I don't see why with scaled back openings businesses can't make their own decision anyway but hey goosesteps as states are gonna get bailed out by the feds so what do they care if 50% of small businesses go under in the next six months
ReplyDeleteWant to know what happens then? Banks who have made the loans to all these businesses that are not getting bailed out will. Even more cheap real estate. (I'm tied in with craft breweries in a big way though a lot of friendships. I right now expect 50% or more accross the nation to evaporate by Labor day as well as anything else food or drink related. Even more in smaller cities and towns)
And as mentioned repeat this world wide.
My tin foil hat theory? China knew alllllll about this and knew exactly what would happen and that they would never recover if they did the right thing. So the Kung Flu for the world was exported faster than any of their cheap ripped off goods were ever cranked out. Everyone is on the same page now, yay! The release of the virus may not have been intentional from the lab but the rest of this sure was.
Nota Bene. California and Illinois are in the news for federal bailouts. I sent emails to my senators and congressmen, "I do not live in those states my tax money better not be going there due to their fiscal insanity. Any bill comes up for a bailout for any state better be a no vote". No offense Aesop. All you keyboard warriors reading the blog need to do the same and spread the word to do the same. Yes we are all busy and or worried but dammit this shit has got to stop. ps Aesop some other posts have not appeared, not sure googlheim is not messing with me as my sign in is thru them.
ReplyDelete@Unknown (Rhea),
ReplyDelete1. Was locking down to prevent a widespread infection rate a good idea?
You mean compared to not doing that?
NYFC did virtually nothing - until this blew up in their faces.
It has a pop. of 9M. They are at over 19K dead, with an infection rate (generously) estimated to be ±20%.(I suspect it's vastly less than 20%, but we'll set that quibble aside for the moment.) If the country at large had done what NYFC did - nothing - we'd currently have buried not 73K people (today's nominal tally), but something close to 700K. Now. Not by the end of the year. Already.
That's assuming the same 20% infection rate, and the same percentage who would have died, nationwide. Other than controlling for horrid things like Yankee fans, and the impossibility of comparing city results to results in Cheyenne, Prudhoe Bay, or BFE, a population comprising nearly 3% of the country is about as representative a sample as you're going to get.
I'll go out on a limb and say that having about 37 times as many people dead as we do, already, would have been far worse, short- and long-term, than where we are even with the economic havoc we've wrought, and which we will continue to suffer.
For starters, because we still have a health care system as such.
With 700K dead instead of 73K, in only about two months' time, and 80% of the country still vulnerable to the virus, we'd probably be in the middle of either a civil war, or a biblical apocalypse too horrible to contemplate.
FTR, that 700K would be nearly twice as many dead as what we suffered in combat in WWII, and more dead than the US military has suffered in total from 1866-yesterday. Which is kind of a lot, IMHO, despite the protestations of the Flu Bros.
2. Can anything be done at this point to help these industries (by the consumer, not the government)?
Re-elect Orangeman. Work. Save. Consume. Buy American. Vote communist politicians (in both parties) into the unemployment line. If you're ever on a jury, and given the opportunity, vote the worst of them into prison. And put away food, guns and ammo, etc., for the next Problem that comes up. Like they will.
Capitalism is its own salve. The less the govt. meddles, the better for everyone.
It's pure hell for those who weren't prepared, but those living paycheck to paycheck in the former economy, and those businesses with no rainy day contingency funds, are going to get the big sh*t sandwich on this, and economic Darwinism says they've got it coming. It was a pisser for the people involved in companies back in the day that we no longer use whale oil and buggy whips either, but that's the way things bounce.
I think crossing the country by rail or the ocean by passenger steamship was far more dignified, interesting, and enjoyable (other than the time cost) than current travel is too, but doing it in 5 days lost out to doing it in 5 hours some decades hence, and no one's crying for conductors and porters these days, are they?
The economy is what it is, and it eats, digests, and craps out the smaller and weaker fish with a relentless appetite. A lot of businesses will now be buzzard stool. No one forced anyone to run too lean to survive this outbreak; they gambled on their own nickel that it would never happen. Companies that are cash-fat will be thinner afterwards, but if they're fundamentally sound, they'll recover and pick up where they left off in due course. Anything government does to meddle in that always compounds the pain, and worsens the recovery, every time it's tried.
@BCCL,
ReplyDelete"California and Illinois are in the news for federal bailouts. I sent emails to my senators and congressmen, "I do not live in those states my tax money better not be going there due to their fiscal insanity. Any bill comes up for a bailout for any state better be a no vote". No offense Aesop."
Offense?!?
Any sumbitch votes to bailout Califrutopia with federal funds from any other state, I'll shoot at the bastard myself.
I want this bitch to crash, hard. Hear me, God! A 1989 Soviet Union-style come-to-Jesus financial reckoning is the only way I ever get my state back, and the only way we get to pull down the statues of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin in this part of the country for good.
If it were within my power, I'd cut off all federal funds completely to CA, until they balance the budget, co-operate with federal law enforcement, and lower their tax rates - personal, business, gasoline, etc.) to the balls-on exact US average. And I'd sue the state in federal court for damages to the country for failing to comply to date, and criminally prosecute in federal court the governor, AG, and every mayor, county supervisor, city council member, and sheriff who refuses to deal with illegal aliens as such.
If any state goes bankrupt, I'd want the Congress to un-admit them from the union, revert the entire state back to the status of a U.S. territory with a presidentially-appointed governor, and require them to submit for re-admission only when they had gotten their fiscal and legal house(s) back in order, with no congressional nor senatorial representation whatsoever, other than one non-voting observer in Congress in the house of Representatives, for all that time. If they couldn't get their sh*t back in a bag within a year's time, the number of stars on the US flag would be altered downwards accordingly. And beginning in Year Two, 50% of all CA state revenues would go to construction of a border wall until it was complete all the way from the Pacific Ocean to Yuma, and all territorial offshore land formerly under state control from San Ysidro to the Oregon state border would be open for oil drilling, and administered by the BOEM and BSEE under the Department of the Interior. When gasoline was back down to $1/gallon, we'd talk about any future moves.
Bonus: Any state reverted to territorial status would then be free to be re-admitted piecemeal, as any number of independent states. I suspect all of IL outside of Cook County would be ready for readmission as Illinois in about a month, be politically redder than a sunburned pig, and shift electoral balance of power discussions for a century. The permanently feeble District of Chicago would enjoy a status not unlike the District of Criminals, pretty much in perpetuity.
What would happen to a broke and territorial Califrutopia under that regimen would be a singular work of art, but 80-20 Barack Kenyan Obozo would be the last president with a [D] after his name until pigs grow wings and fly.
Follow up. Reply from U.S. Rep. Hern (R) was verbiage from the H.R. 266 (PPP law) no specifics as to borrowing money for state bailout. I sent reply specifically asking that. Will report when I hear.
ReplyDeleteI think crossing the country by rail or the ocean by passenger steamship was far more dignified, interesting, and enjoyable (other than the time cost) than current travel is too, but doing it in 5 days lost out to doing it in 5 hours some decades hence, and no one's crying for conductors and porters these days, are they?
ReplyDeleteNone of the above, though, are safe with a respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2 on the loose. Fortunately we have an alternative, the one my family always used to vacation to almost every part of the country while I was growing up, the personal automobile.
Clueless management who thought they were in the railroad business, and rapacious unions, who can trivially sabotage rail lines, also had a big role in mostly ending their form of transportation. Just one of many examples, a strike in New England caused a large fraction of the Maine potato harvest to be lost one year. The following year, it was all transported by trucks, which are much harder to stop.
This is a good time to have a small homestead and basic living in the country life skills. We're all gonna relearn the lessons our grandparents learned during the thirties. I'm glad I listened when the old people were yapping on the porch.
ReplyDeleteFTR, I'll give even odds that Uncle Sucker bails out the states and cities in some fashion. TPTB will bury it in the back of the next stimulus bill. It won't get any play time in the MSM or it'll get played down but it'll be there. Too many corruptocrats in DC for it to not happen. It's business as usual.
ReplyDelete>>>Work. Save. Consume. Buy American.
ReplyDeleteOne was missed big time. Build american, we shipped all our production
across the Pacific and we pay for it now. Learn how to make it here again!
No more cheap shit, build it to last and people will respect and pay for
that. If we create companies here and do it intelligently we create jobs
and that creates supporting industry.
Also poison the vulture capital firms, they sucked the profit out of a lot of industries that are now collapsing.
>>Vote communist politicians (in both parties) into the unemployment line
Also the fascist and radical whatevers too. Cut the bullshit, do the job.
And fire the %*^&en TSA, they are security theater. They are useless snot.
Reality is we will need travel, not the party travel of before, but all those techreps, specialists, and the like still need to get there. Who knows
the old see the USA in your Chevy (and others) will make a comeback.
Eck!
Here's one way for Governor Nuisance to run up a budget deficit: wire 350 million dollars to a Chinese company for masks which don't work. He's now claiming he'll get a 247 million refund now, with the rest to be refunded if the company can't make masks to specifications by the end of the month. The total contract was supposed to be for a billion dollars, was certainly supposed to signal he could get things done.
ReplyDeleteFrom Michigan:
ReplyDeleteBeen enjoying cool spring weather here--riding horses and doing barn projects so much I often forget there is a pandemic. Unless I'm working on the expanded vegetable garden and chicken coop...
The majority of my family and many friends are so far to the left of me they are often hidden by the curvature of the Earth. When they mention the protests at the state capitol all they can talk about is the rifles some of the participants were toting. Any legitimate grievances the protesters had are out the window.
The babysitting aspect of K-12 cannot be underestimated. All of the parents I've spoken with are going nuts having the kids at home with no possibility of shipping them off to any kind of "camp." They say they want the schools open ASAP but always adding "as long as it's safe," which makes me laugh. They honestly don't seem to care what the kids are being taught as long as they're out of their hair. Then again, many of the parents I know actually agree with 57 genders, white privilege and all that other manure.
OTOH, our largest state university has announced it will do online only classes next fall. The amount of dorms and classrooms there that have just been written off is mind boggling. Of course, they were possibly facing financial ruin paying off lawsuits because of "Dr. Finger-Diddle the Gymnasts."
The last couple of musical theater productions I've seen were largely attended by boomer-aged people of pallor. I don't see those venues coming back for years.
The state park trails hereabouts have seen an enormous increase of traffic--many of which are new users on bikes or walking dogs which have never seen a horse. Those of us on horses are doing some educating. It's sometimes hard to keep smiling when they then complain about horse poop on the trails or (gasp!) people with guns!(turkey hunters). Ah, cidiots...
I'm enjoying while I can. Hope you're able to do the same. For all the reason's Aesop mentions and more--Shit times ahead!
Cutting off California is easy for you to say Hoss. You still have your 6 figure job.
ReplyDeleteIn any case given the trillions being given to cronies by Trump's Fed why shouldn't the rest get a handout?
No one can or will stop that. So way I figure it so the only way to actual fix the economic issues is to put money in peoples hands lots of it say 5k a month per adult (minus other benefits of course) for as many months as the duration of the lockdown
All the back bills will get paid off, preps get done and the rest goes right into businesses hands.
This will not happen of course and given any opportunity, wages will be pushed down, you an assume there will be a recovery some time after hell freezes over, doubly so as the two hardest hit states are the two most important economically and the 3rd largest (Illinois ) is insolvent too.
Enjoy the permanent recession and after Trump, the Cortes (or someone just like her) administration.
Now if somehow you can force FedGov to balance a budget at all times and to not bail out anything that isn't directly national security, well get back to me about fiscal prudence.
The Founding Fathers usually couldn't do this and there have been a bare handful, Two I think in the many years I've been on this planet. Its basically impossible for cultural reasons and because of policy differences
Given that , might as well bail out everyone and to hell with fiscal prudence.
A lot more about the 1 billion dollars PRC mask deal Governor Nuisance announced to the world on The Rachel Maddow Show, "Federal agency delays medical mask shipments in California’s $1 billion contract with Chinese company":
ReplyDeletehas been delayed because a federal agency has yet to certify they meet safety standards, according to documents released Wednesday night.
The situation led California to seek repayment of half the $495 million that it paid upfront to manufacturer BYD for N95 particulate-filtering respirators intended to protect medical workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
NIOSH, which previously has been criticized for devoting its regulatory resources to existing manufacturers, stiffing companies which want to enter the market. And a lot of that sort of effort would be entirely wasted, so many ways for a venture to fail, more non-technical ones than technical. For N95 masks, there's also a strict limit to the supply of the special filtering material they use, unless someone can come up with an alternative, which would need a great deal of testing.
And you can smell the modern day Bay Area on the PRC company, "BYD, or Build Your Dreams, mainly manufactured electric buses until the coronavirus pandemic struck."
And here's the critical bit, which was completely missed by the AP and other sources I looked at:
Under the contract with California, BYD was supposed to obtain safety certification for the N95 masks by April 30. California has renegotiated part of the contract to give the company until May 31. If BYD cannot obtain certification, the company must refund the other half of the state’s $495 million prepayment.
Of course, BYD is at the total mercy of NIOSH. And if NIOSH plays ball, they're still going look at BYD's masks and manufacturing carefully, PRC PPE and other things medical have been getting a bit of a bad reputation as of late.
The most fun anecdote: Tanzania has discovered that "foreign" source SARS-CoV-2 tests reported positives from a goat and a pawpaw fruit. So distrustful, "security forces" sent blinded samples from those and a sheep to the Tanzanian lab, labeled with human names and ages. Of course, it's possible those samples got contaminated by a COVID-19 positive worker somewhere in the process, but it's good to see such widespread skepticism of what have got to be PRC origin test kits.
Late to the party, per the standard. Hate not being able to post from the phone... Anyway, I digress.
ReplyDeleteIntel update from deep within the restaurant industry: major shit-storm in the making is occurring, time now.
Restaurants are closing at the cyclic rate. Shocker there . Within the segment of the industry that I work in, I have about 8050 individual restaurants that are touch-points. Since 3/16, I've seen between 50-60 restaurant closures (too lazy to count right now). My peers (double digits of us) are all seeing similar things. One of my peers reported today that a 10-restaurant chain out of Indy just filed for bankruptcy (not sure if Chapter 7 or 13, the conversation didn't get that far). We represent about 1/3 of the U.S. coverage of the restaurant industry, for the record. I also deal with the Hospitality sector. Can't even begin to count the number of resorts that just decided that they weren't going to open for an entire season. What that does to some of the small towns that thrive on tourism has yet to be realized, although the full shut down of their economies have all but sealed their fate. Lastly, I have a couple of Casinos in the portfolio as well. Thanks to the shut-down, the parent org reported losing about $3 million/day. Mind you, this was back in late March/Early April. God only knows what that number is up to at this point.
Living in H-Town, the Oil & Gas situation is apparent and blatant. Suffice to say, layoffs abound. I'm generally unplugged from cable and lamestream media, I'm wondering what is happening down in Corpus with the new mega processing port/plant. I'm guessing that it's on-hold, "indefinitely," yet another kick to the jimmy for the Oil & Gas industry.
Sarin