Mar 192020
 
 March 19, 2020  Posted by at 11:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


DPC Cab stand at Madison Square, NY c1900

 

‘A Generation Has Died’ (G.)
Scientists Say Mass Tests In Italian Town Have Halted COVID-19 (G.)
Japanese Flu Drug ‘Clearly Effective’ Against Coronavirus, But.. (G.)
UK Failures Over COVID-19 Will Increase Death Toll, Says Leading Doctor (G.)
Asian Nations Face Second Wave Of Imported Cases (BBC)
Dollar Resumes Ascent As Investors Panic, Scramble For Cash (R.)
Cash Is King As Emergency Stimulus Fails To Stop Market Panic (R.)
Misunderestimate: Banks Are Going To Drown In An Ocean Of Defaults (Black)
Airline Industry Turmoil Deepens As Coronavirus Pain Spreads (R.)
The COVID-19 Crisis Is A Chance To Do Capitalism Differently (Mazzucato)
Russia Coronavirus Disinformation Designed To Sow Panic In West – EU (R.)
‘Putin’s Chef’ Threatens To Sue US Over Charges Of 2016 Election Meddling (G.)
Ghislaine Maxwell Sues Jeffrey Epstein’s Estate Over Legal Fees (BBC)

 

 

 

Cases 221,934 (+ 19,664 from yesterday’s 202,270)

Deaths 8,999 (+ 987 from yesterday’s 8,012)

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening (before their day’s close)

 

 

From Worldometer -NOTE: mortality rate briefly touched 10% –

 

 

From SCMP: (Note: the SCMP graph was useful when China was the focal point; they are falling behind now)

 

 

From COVID2019.app: (New format lacks new cases and deaths)

 

 

I wanted to show you how widespread the virus has become. Worldometer keeps a constantly updated record of new cases and deaths every day. Here is the harvest of just the past 10 hours; I left out the sources, go to their site for those.

• 1 new case in Sweden
• 5 new cases in Sri Lanka
309 new cases and 7 new deaths in Belgium
• 12 new cases in Bahrain
• 35 new cases in Norway
756 new cases and 3 new deaths in Germany
• 10 new cases in Tunisia
• 245 new cases and 2 new deaths in Spain
• 10 new cases in Peru
• 22 new cases in Pakistan
• 12 new cases in Armenia
• 104 new cases and 2 new deaths in Switzerland
• 2 new cases in Lithuania:
• 28 new cases in Finland
• 3 new cases in Tanzania
• 3 new cases in the State of Palestine
• 4 new cases in Bangladesh
• 4 new cases in Guam
• 5 new cases in Brunei Darussalam
• 1 new death in Greece
• 13 new cases and 1 new death in Croatia
• 4 new cases in Morocco
• 6 new cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• 15 new cases in the Philippines
• 7 new cases and 1 new death in Algeria
75 new cases and 2 new deaths in Denmark
• 2 new cases in Ghana
113 new cases in Australia (NSW), including a 6-year-old child
• 6 new cases in Slovakia
• 7 new cases in the DR Congo
• 6 new cases in Lebanon
96 new cases in Israel
• 132 new cases and 2 new deaths in Luxembourg

• 15 new cases in Latvia
• 50 new cases in Czechia
1st death in Russia
• 110 new cases in Malaysia

• 14 new cases in Faeroe Islands
• 6 new cases in Kuwait
• 1 new case in Cuba: a Canadian citizen
60 new cases in Thailand
• 82 new cases and 6 new deaths in Indonesia

• 18 new cases in Poland
• 8 new cases in Kazakhstan
1st death in Mexico
• 197 new cases and 1 new death in Austria

• 3 new cases in Bangladesh
• 8 new cases in Serbia
• 2 new cases in Sri Lanka
• 5 new cases in India
• 15 new cases in Hungary
• 2 new cases in Georgia
• 8 new cases in Taiwan
• 2 new cases and 1 new death in Bulgaria
• 5 new cases in Uzbekistan
• 5 new cases in Armenia
205 new cases and 5 new deaths in the United States
• 9 new cases and 3 new deaths in Japan
• 3 new cases in Honduras
• 2 new cases in Trinidad and Tobago
• 1 new case in French Polynesia
• 1 new death in Argentina
1st case in Nicaragua
• 1st case in El Salvador
• 1st case in Fiji

• 1 new death in Curaçao.
• 9 new cases in Colombia
152 new cases and 7 new deaths in South Korea
• 8 new cases in New Zealand
• 34 new cases, 8 new deaths (all in Hubei) in China

 

 

Time to wonder about mental health as well.

‘A Generation Has Died’ (G.)

Coffins awaiting burial are lining up in churches and the corpses of those who died at home are being kept in sealed-off rooms for days as funeral services struggle to cope in Bergamo, the Italian province hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. As of Wednesday, Covid-19 had killed 2,978 across Italy, all buried or cremated without ceremony. Those who die in hospital do so alone, with their belongings left in bags beside coffins before being collected by funeral workers. In Bergamo, a province of 1.2 million people in the Lombardy region, where 1,640 of the total deaths in the country have taken place, 3,993 people had contracted the virus by Tuesday. The death toll across the province is unclear, but CFB, the area’s largest funeral director, has carried out almost 600 burials or cremations since 1 March.

“In a normal month we would do about 120,” said Antonio Ricciardi, the president of CFB. “A generation has died in just over two weeks. We’ve never seen anything like this and it just makes you cry.” There are about 80 funeral companies across Bergamo, each receiving dozens of calls an hour. A shortage of coffins as providers struggle to keep up with demand and funeral workers becoming infected with the virus are also hampering preparations. Hospitals have adopted more stringent rules regarding the handling of the dead, who need to be placed in a coffin straight away without being clothed due to the risk of infection posed by their bodies. “Families can’t see their loved ones or give them a proper funeral, this is a big problem on a psychological level,” said Ricciardi. “But also because many of our staff are ill, we don’t have as many people to transport and prepare the bodies.”

For those who die at home, the bureaucratic process is lengthier as deaths need to be certified by two doctors. The second is a specialist who would ordinarily have to certify the death no later than 30 hours after a person has passed away. “So you have to wait for both doctors to come and at this time, many of them are also ill,” added Ricciardi. Stella, a teacher in Bergamo, shared the story of one of the deceased with the Guardian. “Yesterday, an 88-year-old man died,” she said. “He’d had a fever for a few days. There was no way to call an ambulance because the line was always busy. He died alone in his room. The ambulance arrived an hour later. Obviously, nothing could be done. And since no coffins were available in Bergamo, they left him on the bed and sealed his room to keep his relatives from entering until a coffin could be found.”

Adding to the torment is the fact that relatives cannot visit their loved ones in hospital, or give them proper funerals. “Usually you would be able to dress them and they would stay one night in the family home. None of this is happening,” said Alessandro, whose 74-year-old uncle died in Codogno, the Lombardy town where the outbreak began. “You can’t even see them to say goodbye, this is the most devastating part.” The harrowing impact of the virus on Bergamo can be gleaned from the obituary section of the local newspaper L’Eco di Bergamo. On Friday, reader Giovanni Locatelli shared online footage comparing the newspaper’s obituary section on 9 February, when listings took up just one page, to a copy dated 13 March, when 10 pages were needed to commemorate the dead.

Read more …

Test? Where do I get one?

Scientists Say Mass Tests In Italian Town Have Halted COVID-19 (G.)

The small town of Vò, in northern Italy, where the first coronavirus death occurred in the country, has become a case study that demonstrates how scientists might neutralise the spread of Covid-19. A scientific study, rolled out by the University of Padua, with the help of the Veneto Region and the Red Cross, consisted of testing all 3,300 inhabitants of the town, including asymptomatic people. The goal was to study the natural history of the virus, the transmission dynamics and the categories at risk. The researchers explained they had tested the inhabitants twice and that the study led to the discovery of the decisive role in the spread of the coronavirus epidemic of asymptomatic people.

When the study began, on 6 March, there were at least 90 infected in Vò. For days now, there have been no new cases. “We were able to contain the outbreak here, because we identified and eliminated the ‘submerged’ infections and isolated them,” Andrea Crisanti, an infections expert at Imperial College London, who took part in the Vò project, told the Financial Times. “That is what makes the difference.” The research allowed for the identification of at least six asymptomatic people who tested positive for Covid-19. ‘‘If these people had not been discovered,” said the researchers, they would probably have unknowingly infected other inhabitants.

“The percentage of infected people, even if asymptomatic, in the population is very high,” wrote Sergio Romagnani, professor of clinical immunology at the University of Florence, in a letter to the authorities. “The isolation of asymptomatics is essential to be able to control the spread of the virus and the severity of the disease.” [..] the problems of mass tests are not only of an economic nature (each swab costs about 15 euros) but also at a organisational level. [..] Massimo Galli, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Milan and director of infectious diseases at the Luigi Sacco hospital in Milan, warned carrying out mass tests on the asymptomatic population could however prove to be useless. “The contagions are unfortunately constantly evolving,” Galli told the Guardian. “A man who tests negative today could contract the disease tomorrow.”

Read more …

Every day brings new stories of miracles. And then you read them.

Japanese Flu Drug ‘Clearly Effective’ Against Coronavirus, But.. (G.)

Medical authorities in China have said a drug used in Japan to treat new strains of influenza appeared to be effective in coronavirus patients, Japanese media said on Wednesday. Zhang Xinmin, an official at China’s science and technology ministry, said favipiravir, developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm, had produced encouraging outcomes in clinical trials in Wuhan and Shenzhen involving 340 patients. “It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment,” Zhang told reporters on Tuesday. Patients who were given the medicine in Shenzhen turned negative for the virus after a median of four days after becoming positive, compared with a median of 11 days for those who were not treated with the drug, public broadcaster NHK said.


In addition, X-rays confirmed improvements in lung condition in about 91% of the patients who were treated with favipiravir, compared to 62% or those without the drug. Fujifilm Toyama Chemical, which developed the drug – also known as Avigan – in 2014, has declined to comment on the claims. Shares in the firm surged on Wednesday following Zhang’s comments, closing the morning up 14.7% at 5,207 yen, having briefly hit their daily limit high of 5,238 yen. Doctors in Japan are using the same drug in clinical studies on coronavirus patients with mild to moderate symptoms, hoping it will prevent the virus from multiplying in patients. But a Japanese health ministry source suggested the drug was not as effective in people with more severe symptoms. “We’ve given Avigan to 70 to 80 people, but it doesn’t seem to work that well when the virus has already multiplied,” the source told the Mainichi Shimbun.

Read more …

Not the first time we mention Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet.

UK Failures Over COVID-19 Will Increase Death Toll, Says Leading Doctor (G.)

A “collective failure” to appreciate the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic and enact swift measures to protect the public will lead to unnecessary deaths, according to a leading doctor, who said the UK ignored clear warning signs from China. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet, rounded on politicians and their expert advisers for failing to act when Chinese researchers first warned about a devastating new virus that was killing people in Hubei eight weeks ago. The team from Wuhan and Beijing reported in January that “the number of deaths was rising quickly” as the virus spread in China. They urged the global community to launch “careful surveillance” in view of the pathogen’s “pandemic potential”.


But writing in the Guardian, Horton said the warning was met with complacency in Britain, where for unknown reasons, medical and scientific advisers watched and waited. At the time, scientists advising ministers appeared to believe it could be treated like influenza, and that a “controlled epidemic” would generate “herd immunity” that would help protect the most vulnerable against the infection. The scenario called for upwards of 60% of the population to contract the virus. The government’s strategy changed dramatically on Monday when the prime minister announced that new modelling from Imperial College London demonstrated that more draconian measures were needed to slash the estimated death toll from 260,000 to about 20,000. Without those measures, which have transformed society, the NHS would be overwhelmed, leading to a situation that has driven a brutal death toll in Italy.

Read more …

Excuse me, but why do they let it happen? Once you’ve been through Wave 1, shouldn’t you know better than to let people travel abroad and come back?

Asian Nations Face Second Wave Of Imported Cases (BBC)

South Korea, China and Singapore are among the Asian countries facing a second coronavirus wave, spurred by people importing it from outside. China, where the virus first emerged, reported no new domestic cases on Thursday for the first time since it started recording numbers in January. But it reported 34 new cases among people recently returned to China. South Korea saw a jump in new cases on Thursday with 152, though it is not clear how many were imported. A new cluster there is centred on a nursing home in Daegu, where 74 patients have tested positive. On Wednesday, Singapore reported 47 new infections – of which 33 were imported, including 30 residents who had been infected abroad and brought the infection back.


In China, there were eight more deaths, all in the central province of Hubei and most of them in Wuhan. All three countries had been showing success in controlling domestic cases, but there is concern that increases elsewhere could unravel their progress. Much of the focus has now shifted to Europe and the US, but the new numbers signal that the outbreak is far from over in Asia. Malaysia’s senior health office on Wednesday begged people to “stay at home and protect yourself and your family. Please”. The country has tallied 710 people with the virus, many of them linked to one religious event in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, in February. “We have a slim chance to break the chain of COVID-19 infections,” Noor Hisham Abdullah, director general of Health Malaysia, said on Facebook. “Failure is not an option here. If not, we may face a third wave of this virus, which would be greater than a tsunami, if we maintain a ‘so what’ attitude.”

Read more …

Far as I can see, the dollar sold of a lot recently. But now people need dollars to pay off their losses.

Dollar Resumes Ascent As Investors Panic, Scramble For Cash (R.)

The dollar resumed its relentless climb against major currencies on Thursday as wild financial market volatility and worries over tightening liquidity triggered by the coronavirus pandemic sparked an investor flight into cash. Sterling teetered near the lowest since at least 1985 against the greenback. The Australian dollar skidded to a 17-year low, while the New Zealand dollar crashed to an 11-year low as investors dumped riskier assets. The euro briefly rose against the dollar and the pound after the European Central Bank announced a €750 billion asset-purchase programme in response to the coronavirus outbreak, but even this effort was overwhelmed by a stampede into the dollar.


Investors are selling what they can to keep their money in dollars due to the unprecedented amount of uncertainty caused by the virus epidemic, which threatens to paralyse large swaths of the global economy. “This is similar to what happened during the global financial crisis in that investors are even selling what are normally considered safe-haven assets,” said Junichi Ishikawa, senior foreign exchange strategist at IG Securities in Tokyo. “The logic is the biggest hedge against risk is holding your money in cash, so the dollar is being bought. Investor uncertainty is about as high as it can get.” [..] In some cases investors are unloading Treasuries and gold in order to keep their money in dollars. This has confounded many analysts because investors normally buy government debt and precious metals during times of uncertainty.

Read more …

Same as above. “We’re in this phase where investors are just looking to liquidate their positions..” We’re in the phase where they have to pay their gambling debts. “Investor” just sounds better than “gamblig addict”.

Cash Is King As Emergency Stimulus Fails To Stop Market Panic (R.)

The dollar surged and everything else was blown away on Thursday as emergency central bank measures in Europe, the United States and Australia failed to halt a fresh wave of panic selling. “There’s no buyers, there’s not much liquidity and everyone is just getting out,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Melbourne brokerage Pepperstone. Stocks, bonds, gold and commodities fell as the world struggles to contain coronavirus and investors and businesses scramble for hard cash. U.S. stock futures were a hair’s breadth from hitting session down limits. The growth-sensitive Australian dollar was crushed 4% to a more than 17-year low. Nearly every stock market in Asia was down and circuit breakers were hit in Seoul, Jakarta and Manila.

Traders reported huge strains in bond markets as distressed funds sold any liquid asset to cover losses in stocks and redemptions from investors. Benchmark 10-year sovereign bond yields in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Korea and Singapore and Thailand surged as prices tumbled. Gold fell 1% and copper hit its downlimit in Shanghai. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 5% to a four-year low, with Korea and Hong Kong leading losses. The Nikkei fell nearly 1%, the ASX 200 nearly 3%, while the Kospi lost 8% and the Hang Seng 5%. “We’re in this phase where investors are just looking to liquidate their positions,” said Prashant Newnaha, senior interest rate strategist at TD Securities in Singapore.

[..] J.P. Morgan economists forecast the U.S. economy to shrink 14% in the next quarter, and the Chinese economy to drop more than 40% in the current one, one of the most dire calls yet as to the scale of the fallout. “There is no longer doubt that the longest global expansion on record will end this quarter,” they said in a note. “The key outlook issue now is gauging the depth and the duration of the 2020 recession.”

Read more …

We could all write this by now.

Misunderestimate: Banks Are Going To Drown In An Ocean Of Defaults (Black)

On November 6, 2000, then US presidential candidate George W. Bush told a crowd of cheering supporters, “they misunderestimated me.” [..] ‘Misunderestimate’ seems to be a conflation of the words ‘misunderstand’ and ‘underestimate’. And while that was utterly hysterical 20 years ago when Bush first said it, ‘misunderestimate’ may be the most appropriate word of today. The entire world has completely ‘misunderestimated’ the Corona Virus. Banks are about to drown in an ocean of defaults. I’ll talk about this a lot more in the coming days, but briefly:

• There’s $250 TRILLION in global debt right now– mortgages, credit card debt, business loans, government debt, etc.
• And banks own a large portion of that debt.
• This virus crisis is going to trigger a wave of defaults from consumers, businesses, and even governments.
• Think about it: tourism alone makes up 10% of global GDP. Revenue in that entire sector– hotels, airlines, cruise ships, etc. has collapsed, and many of those companies aren’t going to survive.
• The crash in oil prices is going to wipe out countless oil companies.
• Many large retail chains, which were already struggling in the age of e-commerce, will likely declare bankruptcy.
• Countless businesses around the world have ‘temporarily’ closed due to public health policies, and many of them will go out of business entirely.
• MOST of these businesses owe lots of money to the banks, whether it’s a small business working line, or the $34 billion in debt that American Airlines owes. So the defaults are going to be massive.
• On top of that, millions of people are going to lose their jobs and be unable to make payments on their credit card debt, auto loans, and even mortgages.
• Again, there’s $250 trillion in global debt right now. Total bank capital worldwide is less than $10 trillion.
• So if the coming defaults trigger a mere 4% loss in total debt, it will exceed the entirety of global bank capital.
• And this doesn’t even take into consideration the impact of the $1 QUADRILLION derivatives exposure.

Misunderestimate? Absolutely.

Read more …

Why save something so bloated?

Airline Industry Turmoil Deepens As Coronavirus Pain Spreads (R.)

Airline industry turmoil deepened on Thursday as Qantas told most of its 30,000 employees to take leave and India prepared a rescue package of up to $1.6 billion to aid carriers battered by coronavirus, government sources said. The U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization called on governments to ensure cargo operations were not disrupted to maintain the availability of critical medicine and equipment such as ventilators, masks, and other health and hygiene items that will help reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Passenger operations have collapsed at an unprecedented rate as the virus spreads around the world, with Delta Air parking more than 600 jets, cutting corporate pay by as much as 50%, and scaling back its flying by more than 70% until demand begins to recover.

Shares in U.S. airlines fell sharply on Wednesday after Washington proposed a rescue package of $50 billion in loans, but no grants as the industry had requested, to help address the financial impact from the deepening coronavirus crisis. The Trump administration’s lending proposal would require airlines to maintain a certain amount of service and limit increases in executive compensation until the loans are repaid. American Airlines in a memo to staff rebuffed criticism that it had rewarded its shareholders with too many dividends and stock buybacks in better times, leaving it with less cash to manage the crisis. “Unfortunately, this is no ordinary rainy day,” said Nate Gatten, American’s senior vice president global government affairs. “These are extraordinary circumstances, and additional support is necessary to protect jobs and ensure that the flying public can continue to rely on our industry after the crisis ends.”

[..] Air Canada said it was gradually suspending the majority of its international and U.S. transborder flights by March 31. India is poised to join a growing list of countries offering aid to its aviation industry. The Finance Ministry is considering a proposal worth up to $1.6 billion that includes temporary suspension of most taxes levied on the sector, according to two government sources who have direct knowledge of the matter. New Zealand on Thursday outlined the first tranche of a NZ$600 million ($344 million) aviation relief package, including financial support for airlines to pay government passenger charges and cover air traffic control fees.

Read more …

Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at University College London.

I understand the temptation to theorize and wax enthusiastically about underlying systems, but isn’t it more useful to talk about how we can have 1 million tests per day by tomorrow morning?

The COVID-19 Crisis Is A Chance To Do Capitalism Differently (Mazzucato)

Since the 1980s, governments have been told to take a back seat and let business steer and create wealth, intervening only for the purpose of fixing problems when they arise. The result is that governments are not always properly prepared and equipped to deal with crises such as Covid-19 or the climate emergency. By assuming that governments have to wait until the occurrence of a huge systemic shock before they resolve to take action, insufficient preparations are made along the way. In the process, critical institutions providing public services and public goods more widely – such as the NHS in the UK, where there have been cuts to public health totalling £1bn since 2015 – are left weakened.

The prominent role of business in public life has also led to a loss of confidence in what the government can achieve alone – leading in turn to the many problematic public-private partnerships, which prioritise the interests of business over the public good. For example, it has been well documented that public-private partnerships in research and development often favour “blockbusters” at the expense of less commercially appealing medicines that are hugely important to public health, including antibiotics and vaccines for a number of diseases with outbreak potential. On top of this, there is a lack of a safety net and protection for working people in societies with rising inequality, especially for those working in the gig economy with no social protection.

But we now have an opportunity to use this crisis as a way to understand how to do capitalism differently. This requires a rethink of what governments are for: rather than simply fixing market failures when they arise, they should move towards actively shaping and creating markets that deliver sustainable and inclusive growth. They should also ensure that partnerships with business involving government funds are driven by public interest, not profit. First of all, governments must invest in, and in some cases create, institutions that help to prevent crises, and make us more capable to handle them when they arise. The UK government’s emergency budget of £12bn for the NHS is a welcome move. But equally important is a focus on long-term investment to strengthen health systems, reversing the trends of recent years.

Second, governments need to better coordinate research and development activities, steering them towards public health goals. Discovery of vaccines will necessitate international coordination on a herculean scale, exemplified by the extraordinary work of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Read more …

Unbelievable. More harmful than the virus. Or rather a virus in itself, one that kills slowly.

Russia Coronavirus Disinformation Designed To Sow Panic In West – EU (R.)

Russian media have deployed a “significant disinformation campaign” against the West to worsen the impact of the coronavirus, generate panic and sow distrust, according to a European Union document seen by Reuters. The Kremlin denied the allegations on Wednesday, saying they were unfounded and lacked common sense. The EU document said the Russian campaign, pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, uses contradictory, confusing and malicious reports to make it harder for the EU to communicate its response to the pandemic. “A significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremlin outlets regarding COVID-19 is ongoing,” said the nine-page internal document, dated March 16…

“The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries…in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies,” the document produced by the EU’s foreign policy arm, the European External Action Service, said. An EU database has recorded almost 80 cases of disinformation about coronavirus since Jan. 22, it said, noting Russian efforts to amplify Iranian accusations online, cited without evidence, that coronavirus was a U.S. biological weapon. Most scientists believe the disease originated in bats in China before passing to humans. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed to what he said was the lack in the EU document of a specific example or link to a specific media outlet.

“We’re talking again about some unfounded allegations which in the current situation are probably the result of an anti-Russian obsession,” said Peskov. The EU document cited examples from Lithuania to Ukraine, including false claims that a U.S. soldier deployed to Lithuania was infected and hospitalized. It said that on social media, Russian state-funded, Spanish-language RT Spanish was the 12th most popular news source on coronavirus between January and mid-March, based on the amount of news shared on social media. The European Commission said it was in contact with Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. An EU spokesman accused Moscow of “playing with people’s lives” and appealed to EU citizens to “be very careful” and only use news sources they trust.

[..] Russian media in Europe have not been successful in reaching the broader public, but provide a platform for anti-EU populists and polarize debate, analysis by EU and non-governmental groups has shown. The EEAS report cited riots at the end of February in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic now seeking to join the EU and NATO, as an example of the consequences of such disinformation. It said a fake letter purporting to be from the Ukrainian health ministry falsely stated here were five coronavirus cases in the country. Ukrainian authorities say the letter was created outside Ukraine, the EU report said. “Pro-Kremlin disinformation messages advance a narrative that coronavirus is a human creation, weaponized by the West,” said the report, first cited by the Financial Times.

It quoted fake news created by Russia in Italy – which is suffering the world’s second most deadly outbreak of coronavirus – alleging that the 27-nation EU was unable to effectively deal with the pandemic, despite a series of collective measures taken by governments in recent days.

Read more …

$50 billion.

‘Putin’s Chef’ Threatens To Sue US Over Charges Of 2016 Election Meddling (G.)

A businessmen allied with Vladimir Putin has said he will sue the US for $50bn (£41bn) in damages after prosecutors dropped charges of meddling in the 2016 elections. Yevgeny Prigozhin, often dubbed “Putin’s chef,” claimed in a statement on Tuesday that he had been “wrongfully persecuted” by US prosecutors who said his company Concord had funded an internet troll factory that had promoted Donald Trump’s candidacy during the US elections. The charges, which were filed by special counsel Robert Mueller following his nearly two-year investigation into Russian meddling, were abruptly dropped on Monday, a month before trial. Prosecutors said the Russian company had “no exposure to meaningful punishment” and that the prosecution risked exposing investigative sources and methods.


A day later, Prigozhin went on the attack, saying the dropped charges showed that the US government “feared publicity and just court proceedings”. “This means that the allegations that ‘Prigozhin interfered in the US presidential election,’ ‘Concord interfered in the US presidential election,’ or ‘Russia interfered in the US presidential election’ are mendacious and false,” said Prigozhin, according to the statement released by his company. Prosecutors had previously complained that documents they had provided to the defence had ended up online, and had been hesitant to deliver more sensitive information to Concord’s defence team. It is not clear whether the plans to file a lawsuit are serious, where the lawsuit will be filed, and why Prigozhin values the damages against him at $50bn. The company’s press office declined to give any more information about Prigozhin’s plans on Tuesday.

Read more …

Threats on her life. But not from the FBI.

Ghislaine Maxwell Sues Jeffrey Epstein’s Estate Over Legal Fees (BBC)

Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, is suing the late US financier’s estate seeking reimbursement for legal fees and security costs, court documents say. Ms Maxwell’s complaint states that she “had no involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s alleged misconduct” and that he had promised to cover her costs. She also “receives regular threats to her life and safety”, it adds. [..] Ms Maxwell, a long-time friend of Epstein, has not been accused by the authorities of wrongdoing. Ms Maxwell’s lawsuit, which is dated 12 March but was made public on Wednesday, claims that “extensive global coverage” of the investigation resulted in her having to “hire personal security and find safe accommodation”. It adds that she “formed a legal and special relationship” with Epstein that obligated the estate to compensate her, and that “assurances” were made but later ignored after she filed a reimbursement claim in November.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

If you read us, please support us. Help the Automatic Earth survive.

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle March 19 2020

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 52 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #55559

    DPC Cab stand at Madison Square, NY c1900   • ‘A Generation Has Died’ (G.) • Scientists Say Mass Tests In Italian Town Have Halted COVID-19 (G.)
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 19 2020]

    #55560

    In the past few minutes:

    4,414 new cases. 277 more deaths. Many in Iran.

    #55561
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Next important thing I realized:

    When everybody’s thinking the same thing, nobody’s thinking.

    So Cuomo, deBlasio, MSNBC, DNC stars, now all demand Trump be given Stalinist dictatorial powers with no parameters and no end date?

    Liberals lost in “Save me Daddy government”, government, authoritarianism is always the answer to everything, let’s give power, responsibility, work, to anyone but me, therefore to Orange Hitler. I guess because according to them he’s done wonderfully so far.

    Conservatives lost in Trump having the power to clean things up, make arrests, cover story, etc., although no visible actions toward justice have taken place in 3 years running.

    He did this for 100 dead nursing home residents and 10,000 Dow points that weren’t there when he started, to take possession of the entire United States, all its businesses, resources, and military, with the approval of every man, woman, and child, clearly the best deal since the Manhattan Indians.

    You can vote yourself into slavery, but ask yourself: what unpleasant actions you would have to take to get back out? So is Liberty and the American experiment worth a million lives? 300,000? 3,000, as last time? No, we would sell our entire heritage, our freedoms and our children’s slavery for less than 100 men, over 70. The shrieking demand for that sale of pottage is deafening.

    I’m all for saving people over 70 on general principles, but that price is too high.

    Luckily, I am a human. That means my rights and abilities are inalienable. Their power depends exclusively on whether I feel like complying.

    #55562
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Lost for words.

    Nope found some….
    This liquidity crunch and the virus is some dark stuff from ye olde human perspective.
    I’d hate to own a dating app right now.
    Gotta get work when you can and keep whatever money coming in as there is now a whole world of purse strings tightening like a noose.

    Thank God I paid attention (and took action) to those bloody TAE primers all those years ago.

    #55563
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Yeah Dr D. I noticed on the news tonight that Trump says Banks will not foreclose till the end of April. Is that because with staff layoffs and job cuts they would rather just boot people out in one go rather than bit by bit? Or is it so the Trumpster can organise the muscle first?

    #55564
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr.D Rich
    Yesterday you wrote that you had been given medical orders about care by 2 administrative nurses, after they came out of a secret meeting. Whitney Webb says this classified COVID response is being run by CIA and alphabet soup agency friends. Sounds like it… https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-intel-agencies-played-unsettling-role-classified-coronavirus-response-plan/5706435
    It was posted here yesterday by Boscohorowitz, the new Pepe Escobar WW-3 hybrid war piece

    China Locked in Hybrid War with US


    This article from 3/4/20 by Romanoff, presents the case that this family of coronavirus weapons needed to originate in US labs https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-coronavirus-shocking-update/5705196

    #55565
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Scientists Say Mass Tests in Italian Town Have Halted COVID-19 (G.)”

    Tests halt disease? Do tell, this will save us a bunch of time and money.

    This contradicts the article above, so they want to see the deceased? Dress the body? Without a space suit? I’m guessing that is not quarantine-ready procedure, and the testing will be of no help if the whole family toddles in to say goodbye, and the apartment, and the lorry, and building…

    They’re missing that testing is basically useless since the only thing that matters is whether they need immediate medical care. With airborne infections, 40 day non-symptom quarantine and 9 days on surfaces, you’re not going to stop anything. But they’re mad the UK doesn’t want to join us in wrecking the economy and running around with our hair on fire.

    UK Failures Over COVID-19 Will Increase Death Toll, Says Leading Doctor (G.)”

    Certainly. As always. However shutting down the economy will kill far more. Horton’s focus is medical deaths, not non-medical deaths or the continuation of the British people and state.

    “failing to act when Chinese researchers first warned about a devastating new virus”

    Funny, back then you were telling me it was an unhinged conspiracy theory to listen to some random researchers on YouTube. How times change. Now they were NOT just random noise but we all should have listened to them. Over your screeching objections. And if we moved our whole societies on such light evidence every time, what would become of us? Ah, but there’s always time for complaining and criticizing, re-writing history, and never any time for work. So, Mr. Lancet, what have you been doing with yourself during the 80 years since biological weapons of WWII and the 20 years since SARS? Goofing off figuring out which bathroom 0.001% of the population should use. Top priority while 30,000 a year die of opioids and 79,535 deaths per year from Diabetes.

    “The dollar resumed its relentless climb against major currencies”

    Ideal, as now we can keep dropping new $2T initiatives without lowering the price at all. Yet. We’re still in a monetary reset and it’s all going away shortly. Markets will be shut for the reboot, and big machines take pony engines and a team to start. This one’s never been stopped and started before, so should be entertaining.

    “Misunderestimate: Banks Are Going to Drown in an Ocean of Defaults (Black)”

    Banks are going to go bankrupt and close their doors. They are not going to foreclose anything for the near future. So should you pay them? It will disappear anyway. Everyone on earth is making the same calculation now. Are they going to come down here and make me, or are they too busy? No change for most: they weren’t paying before now anyway.

    “governments have been told to take a back seat”

    Haven’t seen this in my lifetime. It’s non-stop protected monopolies, insider contracts, payoffs, and bailouts. I have yet to see this “competition” we read about, and I’m not as young anymore. Certainly not since GM took out the Tucker with the government’s full support and approval, but probably since Carnegie and Mellon while Abe Lincoln was still warm and Astor was still a thing.

    #55566
    neoh
    Participant

    “Liberals lost in “Save me Daddy government”, government, authoritarianism is always the answer to everything, let’s give power, responsibility, work, to anyone but me, therefore to Orange Hitler. I guess because according to them he’s done wonderfully so far.”

    They won’t listen Dr.D. You’ll get the same answer “I don’t want my family to suffocate from coronavirus” take away everything. just save me. They are willing to be quarantined for ever, aka a martial law curfew. They will get there wish! As noted by this type of comment:

    “Excuse me, but why do they let it happen? Once you’ve been through Wave 1, shouldn’t you know better than to let people travel abroad and come back?”

    and what about wave 3-4-5-6… quick hide in the caves

    A great example of how soft the west has become.

    #55567
    Dr. D
    Participant

    For Who do Voodoo, Archdruid (sidebar link) astrology:

    “the coronavirus outbreak will sicken a lot of people and cause a significant death toll, but run its course fairly quickly and leave few lasting impacts.”

    An Astrological Interlude: Aries Ingress 2020

    Exactly what I expect and also Cheeto — with his inside information from Ft. Deitrick — put his neck on. How many? Remember a million deaths is nothing, forgotten (See Hong Kong Flu) but I’d doubt 50k. So…logic is that we take 250,000 – 1,000,000 million illegal immigrants a year and barely notice, but the loss of 3,000 will be catastrophic and break us? Logic please. We just took 20 (30?) years of minimum 250k/year or 5,000,000 illegals, yet reducing by 100 people is The Final Hale-Bopp Burn it All Down I Surrender End of Everything. But it’s always a good time to surrender to anyone who barely asks. That’s #Winning!

    Again, not saying some number won’t die, just that even losing 10% worldwide had hardly any effect on the 1920s. You may be a snowflake, but most people are pretty tough.

    #55568
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    Hey Docs, thanks for all your work (on all fronts). I’m just trying to stay sane and connect the dots for positioning. Like Oxymoron, I luckily crashed my own life a decade ago – as John Michael Greer wrote:

    “Crash now and avoid the rush”

    When I read Dr Rich’s piece yesterday I knew something was wrong, the “administrative nurses” had the wrong tone for the situation, but I couldn’t tease it out.

    The bigwigs so vocal about the empty concept of “free market” have pivoted after destroying any redundancy and resiliency, and are going for full-on extortion: : “Your money or your life (job)!”

    I like an interesting life, but, geeeezzz…

    How many days out till it REALLY hits? 5? 7?

    #55569
    John Day
    Participant

    I’ve got to go see how we are doing outdoor tent clinics for virus today, but I got this posted:
    http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/03/hybrid-war-hypothesis.html
    It seems like a core of links about coronavirus pandemic being military, probably US military, comes through Global Research website, which is Russia-friendly. That seems bold on the part of this Canadian website, and also bold of the authors, like Whitney Webb and Pepe Escobar. My last broad overview included a summary to that date by Professor Anthony Hall, and information indicating that L-strain and S-strain coronaviruses were quite different in some parts of their genome, so one could not be a “parent” of the other. It appears that there are more strains than that. Iran and Italy have sequenced viral strains that are hitting them hard.
    Look back at the excellent summary article from early this month, by Professor Anthony Hall, and related links here:
    http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/03/researching-facts-and-relationships.html

    China Locked In Hybrid War With US (but who in China and who in the US?) Pepe Escobar
    ​ ​Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronovirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. Xi’s terminology is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a “people’s war” had to be launched.
    ​ ​Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means “white devils” or “foreign devils”: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code.
    ​ ​When Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan” – the first blast to this effect to come from a top official – Beijing was sending up a trial balloon signaliing that the gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 US military.
    ​ ​He directly quoted US CDC director Robert Redfield who, when asked last week whether some deaths by coronavirus had been discovered posthumously in the US, replied that “some cases have actually been diagnosed this way in the US today.”
    ​ ​Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that Covid-19 was already in effect in the US before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of US to test and verify differences compared with the flu.
    ​ ​Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan.

    China Locked in Hybrid War with US

    ​Larry Romanoff presents the case that coronavirus was killing in America before it popped up in Wuhan, and that it may have gotten out of the oldest US bioweapons facility, Ft Detrick, Maryland, about the time that facility was shut down last year. Chinese, Japanese and Tiawanese researchers have been joined by Iranian virologists in this conclusion.
    (I will add that a patient of mine was admitted to the hospital last November in cardiopulmonary distress, needed mechanical ventilation, survived, and was found to have had “coronavirus” as the cause, back before that was scary.)
    ​Taiwan ran a TV news program on February,27,(click here to access video (Chinese), that presented diagrams and flow charts suggesting the coronavirus originated in the US.

    China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

    US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified Coronavirus Response Plan​, Whitney Webb
    ​ ​As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases…
    …the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.
    ​ ​Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.

    US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified Coronavirus Response Plan

    #55570
    zerosum
    Participant

    Go look at the chart at the end of the link.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/covid-19-deaths-italy-track-surpass-china-more-countries-close-borders-confirmed-cases
    It shows China and Italy with a lock down. We don’t have an example, with no lockdown, of pushing down the curve and extending the infection longer to save the overload on hospital.
    China and Italy were overloaded.
    • Scientists Say Mass Tests In Italian Town Have Halted COVID-19 (G.)
    The time frame is 52 days, and China is still getting infected people.
    If you don’t have a lockdown, how much longer will you get cases of infected people?
    I expect that the USA will supply the data if there is no lockdown.

    ——–
    Those two medical ships are capable on handling trama patients not infected patients.
    I guess that when they are ready, they could be used to transfer ordinary patient needing hospital care.
    —–
    From Worldometer -NOTE: mortality rate briefly touched 10%

    I think that the possibility of having access to MMT is starting to motivate the reporting of increased covd 19 numbers .
    Congress is facing request from many businesses for financial aid.
    —–
    @ John Day
    “biowarfare or chemical attacks.”

    Its going to be, “He said she said” just like all past disasters

    #55571
    neoh
    Participant

    “• Scientists Say Mass Tests In Italian Town Have Halted COVID-19 (G.)
    The time frame is 52 days, and China is still getting infected people.
    If you don’t have a lockdown, how much longer will you get cases of infected people?”

    People will never have to be worried about contracting any disease that is spread only by human contact as long as they hide in a cave for the rest of their life.
    However, they will have to shoot and kill any hikers that happen to wander too close.

    #55572
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Banks are going to go bankrupt and close their doors. They are not going to foreclose anything for the near future. So should you pay them? It will disappear anyway. Everyone on earth is making the same calculation now. Are they going to come down here and make me, or are they too busy? No change for most: they weren’t paying before now anyway.”

    I’ve been looking at a mountain of recent medical bills through this very lens.

    You know: “Come and get me, coppers!”

    #55573

    Of 1,551 new cases in the US, 1,238 are in New York. A lockdown is the only option.

    #55574

    Trump talked about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in his press-op just now. That’s, what, 5 weeks after we talked about it here? It’s gone mainstream.

    #55575
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-covid-pandemic-response-scientists-1.5502423
    Link in which two expert epidemiologists take opposing positions on government response to the virus.

    #55577
    zerosum
    Participant

    Bright idea
    Is this a desire for MMT speaking or stupidity.
    Carnival offered cruise ships for infected people.
    We already know what will be the infection rate and the death rate from other ships.
    You all know what will happen.
    Stupid.
    How about taking up the offer of using a hotel.
    Stupid.

    Would you chose your home,, cruise ship, or hotel.

    #55578
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Tulsi Gabbard endorses Biden. Military taught her how to follow orders, apparently? I’m not much surprized.

    Wife and I begin sewing homemade face masks tonight. Our intent is more semiotic than antispetic: someone has t lead the way in showing that you have to take your own measures. Not everything must be purchased from a store. Last time I went out, yesterday morning, to make a few purchases. I almost wore a pair of my wife’s undies on my head for funzies. But too much fun can get you into trouble, and even old and frail, I bite when cornered. So I did without that pleasure. *sigh* Always wanted to wear my wife’s undies in public.

    Raul, that postal address for checks still works, right? Bonus finally came through, albeit diminished due to c-virus.

    #55579
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    P.S. Raul, I know checking is way different in the EU. WOuld you prefer a money order? Or…? Sorry, I don’t do paypal. Not paranoia, just deep loathing of filling out forms online.

    #55580

    Boscohorowitz- I sure hope it still works.

    #55581
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    50% of influenza virus carriers are asymptomatic, no symptoms.
    Influenza virus “survives”, stays intact, on surfaces for 48 hours.
    What reward, incentive were those two administrative nurses given to confront a 6ft 5in 230 pound Irishman physician who has 30+ years experience, many in just these situations and in front of similar opportunists? Would my reaction matter more than their reporting of it?

    My response in 2003 alongside a like-minded Army physician (absent hospital leadership sequestered for a week long huddle) was to take care of the patients prioritized by threat to their health/survival UNTIL relieved by competent authority. We were not perfect then and our occasionally raised voices offended a few tender souls. I’d like to think we were firm and insistent, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

    Of course I agree with Dr. D and I appreciate his/her analogies. Watching a colleague or charge nurse sprint around “hair on fire” has no place in naval aviation or a hospital ward full of sick people, but Kryste almighty it is a sight to behold and entertaining as hell. However, at the end of the evolution and the crisis has passed, you can imagine what they the pant-shitters will do, if they’re left in charge, to the clear thinkers who carried the group, institution, or society through the turmoil. Hint: there won’t be any medals, bonuses or promotions for the sane, firm and insistent.

    And I agree, we are at war and its been obvious months before the COVID-19 crisis hit critical mass as a reason to destroy the world’s monetary/financial system. No reason to think preppers prep any different from the elite who are armed with insider information.

    Term: Acquisitive Projective Identification

    #55582

    bosco, yes, the postal address works, though I think Danny may have hunkered down in Florida for the time being. it’ll work out in the end. thank you

    oh, and my parents, I now see, thank you too

    #55583
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “oh, and my parents, I now see, thank you too”

    I think I know what this means but I’ll take the magical version: yes, my superpowers let people see their parents anytime anywhere. It’s a gift from the beyond. 😉

    #55584
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    What about derivatives?

    There is an estimated 1.5 quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives, dozens of times bigger than the whole global economy!

    Gold and silver have been crashing for over a week but the price is mainly set by the COMEX derivatives where non-existent metal is traded. The selling can be many things : margin calls elsewhere; to stem losses; fear of counterparty risk and simply the bullion banks relieving punters of their money! Seems cheap unless you actually want to buy physical metal where there could be problems!

    One popular derivative is insurance agianst a fall in share prices. I wonder what the damage is on these!?

    Usually some security is given for derivatives so they are regarded as senior debt, which means derivatives must be paid even if it means using customers savings. Any money you give to a bank is the property of the bank.

    Many banks have over 40 trillion dollars worth of derivatives and even the smallest problem could cause a cascading failure of the global banking system.

    I feel that if this is at all likely then ALL derivatives should be declared null and void.

    #55585
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    No one else has posted this chestnut, that I can tell, so I’ll grab the pleasure of sharing:

    Bring Out Your Dead!

    Meanwhile, here’s a bit of high fighting spirit, the kind that carries some cheer with its gravitas:

    Geronimo’s Cadillac

    #55586
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    Raul,
    I cut and pasted earlier talk about the anti-malarials from these comments. Passed it along to a friend in a WV pharmacy several days ago and she just told me the docs have been investigating and are bringing it in…
    Hat tip John Day…?

    #55587
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    Public health isn’t rocket science. What works is medieval, keeping healthy and isolated away from the contagion. Finally, in the Victorian Era, the germ theory of disease convinced the aristocracy that not getting sick from the riff raff was in their best interests and money was spent to bring sanitation to city living. When electron microscopes were invented In 1940s, they prove that virus of encased genetic material exist. Note failed states with no government like Somalia are not known for their sanitary infrastructure.

    Proof that Western governments have been brought to their knees by the global oligarchy is months after the Coronavirus appear in Wuhan, screening at airports consists of travel restrictions and measuring temperatures. The quarantine period remains at 14 days. The fact is that this virus sheds asymptomatic for reportedly up to 27 days. Current public health measures are failing. That is why the numbers are rising exponentially in Europe and North America. The virus will continue to spread by super spreaders like the NY lawyer from New Rochelle. The only way to contain the Novel Coronavirus and someday allow the uninfected to leave their shelters in place, is universal virus testing (Steve Keen’s pay them to be tested), contact tracing and quarantine of the infected, asymptomatic and ill, until 2 tests show they are virus free. Everything else is Boris Johnson’s let them get sick and gain herd immunity scheme. Unless anti-virals or effective countermeasures and finally a vaccine are developed, human contact within six feet of others is similar to the dangers as unprotected sex since HIV became a global pandemic.

    #55588
    zerosum
    Participant

    Insider info ….

    Banks are giving 90 day mortgage deferment
    The bank are good at calculating risks.
    Let’s see if I can follow that logic.
    From China and Italy we can see that people will not be going back to their work routines for 52 day.
    Then it will take another 30 days for the paycheck to come. That makes roughly 3 month, 90 days, before the bank will start sending out the collectors.
    Of course that would be an optimistic calculation.
    Personally, I think that MMT will last longer and the banks will once again be bailed out.
    What I’m seeing around me is inventories, paid with loans, that the banks will not be able to sell. As a result the bank bailouts.
    The virus will take the blame for the banks having made bad loan decisions.
    MMT money will flow to the elites.

    You are also an Insider what do you see

    #55589
    neoh
    Participant

    Vet, I’m not disputing quarantines when warranted. A death count of ~10,000 over a 4 month period does not warrant a planet wide lock down.
    The damage caused by excessive action may already be permanent. The loss of civil liberties may last generations.
    Yes quarantines make sense sometimes. When my parents were children, it was common to hang a sign that read “scarlet fever” in your window. They didn’t shut down the world.
    Please note that the same politicos that are advocating these draconian measures were pretty much ignored by TAE members a mere 60 days ago. Why believe them now? We’ve been fooled again.
    I’ve read TAE daily for a long time. I remember Raul suggesting that we we say twenty-ten when 2010 was arriving instead of saying two thousand ten. Ive agreed with the philosophy of this board for over eleven years and rarely commented. This is the first time I disagree entirely so I voice my opinion.

    #55590
    oxymoron
    Participant

    I also think the planet wide lock down is going to cause such huge amounts of misery and death and global social and cultural resets of unknown outcome. Like I’ve said earlier it makes no sense for humanity to mobilise like this in the face of 5.6 million child deaths preventable each year…

    Just number crunching is keeping me awake. Back of the envelope is now a terrifying place to look.

    Oh yeah and money as debt is now not much of a thing so what is the new thing… Work of real and tangible value which means the Impossible burger and tells are about to become memories of a childish time.

    The Party is Over

    #55591
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/19/coronavirus-travel-advisory-level-four-137227
    State Department warns Americans: Don’t travel abroad, come home if overseas

    According to several people familiar with the situation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo approved raising the advisory from its previous status of Level 3. That earlier advisory merely encouraged Americans to reconsider travel abroad.

    Airlines are shutting down their service.
    Airlines are looking for MMT
    Borders gates are shutting down.
    The WALL is going up.
    Travel is being monitored and restricted.
    Next
    I expect canes and walkers to be seized so that the inmates in care home cannot run away
    Next
    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will remember to bring the troops home to enforce the quarantine

    #55592

    Bosco: He’s referring to me- I sent him a check as well. But I like the way you think.

    #55593
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Yes quarantines make sense sometimes. When my parents were children, it was common to hang a sign that read “scarlet fever” in your window. They didn’t shut down the world.”

    They didn’t drive 30-60mph30-60 miles per day miles all over everywhere. THey didn’t fly 300mph — Mach 2 at a daily population of 102 ,000 passenger airplanes. THewy didn’t hive in populations where a millions is a small city anymore, and 20 40 million is standard.

    Bugs get around more than before by several orders of magnitude. Fear of government lockdown is misplaced. Fear of governmental collapse leading to wild lawless years during times of no plenty except plenty of less and less and less, seems more sound these days.

    Sure, the governments will fuck it up. The people, I guarantee you, will fuck it up far more cuz they’ll practice that rarity: real egalitarian democracy, i.e., every person for themself.

    P.S. Nothing will stop those other statistically larger death counts from happening. In fact, they will worsen due to med system incapacity by overload. It’s not the virus nor proper epidemiological pre\vention/treatment that it’s happening to a world that decided we’re supposed to spend all our time going everywhere eating everything, in which p[rocess we’ve blown an economic bubble/real resource depletion levels that only take a few weeks of in effect massive workers’ strike to collapse the thing.

    Rotten is rotten, the system will fall now or later, and gubmints will go all out draconian while they can/while it works. Meanwhile, we can at least learn how to cooperate a bit. The 21st century Euromerican Way: alone in our little bubble cells. Hey, it’s a start.

    btw, people with scarlet fever signs in their wondows KNEW they had scarlet fever. Most corona carriers don’t.

    #55594
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “It’s not the virus nor proper epidemiological pre\vention/treatment”S FAULT that it’s happening to a world… blah blah”

    #55595
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Democracy’s worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.”
    ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger in a Strange Land

    But it’s a two-way reflection, and over time, we constituents resemble our parasitic leaders much more than we realize or, most of us, want to. We’ve voted, for the most part, when we bothered, for at best some cursorily inspected well-meaning dickhead, and at worst, the Lesser Evil. Like the wag said how you keep tossing millions and billions of dollars around, eventually you’re talking serious money, you keep for Lesser and Lesser Evil, it piles up to some serious evil by tacking back and forth across the partisan harbor (I should be sued for that metaphor) until it sinks of all that Lesser Evil.

    Whereupon Worse Evil runs rampant.

    #55596
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will remember to bring the troops home to enforce the quarantine”

    They already are. We’re getting our asses kicked out. We have no airpower security over there any more. And we suck at ground war.

    #55597
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    TO clarify my rushed bad syntax: “THey didn’t fly 300mph — Mach 2 at a daily population of 102 ,000 passenger airplanes.” means 102K passenger airplane flights every day, not 102K passengers.

    “Depending on source, about 500,000 people are estimated to be up in the air at any given time. If the average length of a flight is two hours, that means six million people fly somewhere everyday. Nearly 0.1% of the entire world’s population.”

    That 0.1% is still six million vectors carrying germs from here to there every day. If my UNcle Magnanimous offered me 0.1% of his 7.5 billion dollar fortune, I’d be delighted to receive six million dollars, especially if I got it every day. That would be 2 billion and 190 million dollars a year. Just to remind us that a little of an enormous lot is still a lot.

    THe bug will spread regardless under such circumstances. Retarding the rate of spread is the goal of lockdown. Give the local med system’s time to deal with it, give research time to discern effective therapies… cuz if you vlet it spike of its own, you will indeed see horrific death counts as the med system breaks into pieces.

    #55598
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I’m sitting here in silent rage, waves of feeling impotent, as I watch a manufactured death machine march across the globe.
    Government incompetence exhibited by the majority in dealing with this monstrosity of human experimentation.
    I’m relatively confident this CV-19 was a weapon gone very, very wrong.

    On another note; Tulsi Gabbard just slapped the face of any decent American citizen.
    She’s proved to be just another tool, in the box of political deceit. Her betrayal can not be forgiven…
    Curse the whole bloody system…

    #55599
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Please be forewarned. Follows is self-congratulatory. But it is also something like morally/spiritually uplifting in a manner reflecting on karma, so I’m covered.;)

    Our bonus didn’t happen, or so my wife was convinced. All other corp depts. had been bonused out, now this virus thing was ahmmering, and he’s leveraged out pretty far growing his business.

    So I made myself send Raul money before I could chicken out. Made myself send half again as much as I’d planned, cuz I enjoy excess, as some may have noticed. Put it in the mail around lunch. Around that time my wife was pleasantly surprised by a healthy bonus.

    So, uh, what a good boy I am, eh?

    Just call me Daddy Goodun and quote whatever karma/eye on the sparrow/there are no accidents New Age woo what pleases ye:

    Oh, Daddy!

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 52 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.