COVID Economy

At the end of last month, Forbes published an article by Adam Andrzejewski, Why Are U.S.

Nike's attempt to prove they care about the poor (screenshot from this ad).

South Dakota is a mostly rural, sparsely populated state that has drifted far to the right in recent decades, far from a once proud populist history. Today, both U.S. senators and the state's lone member of Congress are supine Trumpist Republicans. The governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer and every other member of the state's executive branch are Republicans.

Pre-Covid GDP for the first quarter of 2020. Q2 loss will be five to seven times greater than the Q1 loss.Post-Covid Fed funds rates.

Next month is my friend's birthday. His wife called me today to ask me to come over for a little birthday party. "How little," I asked. She named about a dozen people. "This year?" I asked to confirm my suspicion. I told hold all my plans are being made by the pandemic, not by arbitrary dates and wishes. She did not want to hear that.

Earlier this week, the National Bureau of Economic Research. declared that the U.S. is officially in a recession-- a GDP decline in back-to-back quarters. The stock market reacted by continuing a climb unhinged from any kind of economic reality.

"Large populations of educated under-employed people are very very dangerous to the social order" while "Jeff Bezos is having a very good crisis" —  Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti and Joel Kotkin discuss how screwed people will be, especially young people, when the active coronavirus era ends.by Thomas Neuburger"What will we break if the next thing that breaks is us?" —Yours trulyAs regular readers know, I've been concerned about the "coronavirus endgam

America 2020 by Nancy OhanianYesterday, as states and cities rush to re-open, some carefully, others not, the Washington Post ran a piece by Joel Achenbach, Shutdowns prevented 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds.

In written Chinese, the word “crisis” is represented by two characters. One of these, taken alone, means “danger”. The other, by itself, means “opportunity”. A crisis nearly always leads to great change. There is a danger that this will be a change for the worse. But there also is the opportunity to change society for the better – to reform[Read More...]

The US case curve (logarithmic scale) shows a steady 20,000 cases per day for more than 65 days straight, compared with the five worst-hit countries in Europe.