StrangeSox

There's a $17B provision that seems to have been written specifically to bail out Boeing, who has spent >75% of their free cash flow in recent years on stock buybacks and recently said they didn't actually need a bailout if it came with strings attached. The UI expansion, especially the parts to cover self-employed, contractors, and people quitting jobs for COVID-related illness or caregiving is really really good (and should be made permanent).

The government can borrow more for free right now. The cost of federal stimulus overreaction is, what, inflation up around 4 or 5% for a year? After a decade+ of very low inflation? Not that big of a risk. The cost of federal stimulus underreaction is massive economic privation and unnecessary suffering and death. eta: some initial details on the one-time payments in the Senate bill that will possibly pass today: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/politics/senate-deal-stimulus-checks-coronavirus/index.html Lawmakers struck a $2 trillion stimulus deal early Wednesday that includes sending checks directly to individuals amid the coronavirus crisis -- but it will likely take until at least May before the money goes out. Under the plan as it was being negotiated, single Americans would receive $1,200, married couples would get $2,400, and parents would see $500 for each child under age 17. However, the payments would start to phase out for individuals with adjusted gross incomes of more than $75,000, and those making more than $99,000 would not qualify at all. The thresholds are doubled for couples. About 90% of Americans would be eligible to receive full or partial payments, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center. Lawmakers set aside $250 billion for the so-called recovery rebates. checks not going out until May seems pretty far from ideal.

No, just that we should probably expect subsequent periods of restrictive measures at least on a state or local level until vaccines are broadly available even if we do get this thing under control and ramp up testing. But also it doesn't look like we're doing nearly enough to get this thing under control, even to Italy levels, and are instead openly musing about "well really, is a few million dead Americans too high a price to pay to make the stock market go back up?" In global news, Modi has announced at all of India, 1.4B people, are going on hard lockdown starting in a matter of hours. India has been reporting few cases thus far.

Singapore and Hong Kong are now re-instituting restrictive measures as a second wave hits. Also aren't asymptomatic people spreading the disease like crazy? And China and Italy have temporarily "won" with measures far more restrictive than anything we've seen in this country. If our hope for curbing US deaths and suffering is what they did, we need to lock down much more tightly across the entire country starting last week.

what is this curve going to do if we open everything back up in a few days or even a few weeks? Italy is bending the curve, but they've been much more restrictive than even the most restricted places in the US are right now. edit: another reasonable statement from a prominent GOP rep. The retweeted thread from Gottlieb is worth a read as well to truly understand the massive risk for little or even no possible rewards of "going back to normal" far too quickly.

Cruise lines get around a whole bunch of labor laws that way too, I think. Apple may park their profits offshore, but they still ostensibly have to comply with federal, state and local labor laws for domestic employees.

For whatever it's worth, the woman who took the aquarium cleaner with her now-dead husband blames Trump's messaging on it. Anyway, here's a thread full of stunning pictures of shutdowns around the world. some randomly chosen ones, there are a few dozen

If that Imperial College study out of the UK is right, this is probably what we can expect around the globe until a vaccine is widely available. Clamp downs to stop surges in infections/hospitalizations followed by more relaxed periods followed by more clamp downs.

They really are gearing up for the "hundreds of thousands of dead Americans to save the economy*" plan *Six or seven figure deaths with a completely overwhelmed medical system coupled with enormous widespread medical debt will not actually save the economy

Can't reason someone out of a position they didn't use reason to come to

Oh yeah having dedicated "Work space" is key. Even if you're in a small studio apartment and you can only dedicate a corner of your table or a specific seat on the couch, do it. Make that your "work area" and don't do work in other places, or do other things in the work place. My kids are 9 months and 2-1/2 and it's still winter in Chicago so we're all already going a little stir-crazy. But on the positive side, my son took his first step this morning and my daughter just five minutes ago read her first book and my wife and I were here for both of these milestones.

Potentially good news from Italy, so long as we see this through and don't listen to the increasing chatter about "just open everything back up" As for the wisdom of the people saying we should just open everything back up, Lindsey Graham has a solid point: The idea that we can trade a few hundred thousand lives just to get the economy back quickly doesn't really make sense. You aren't going to have a functional economy alongside a raging pandemic.

Actual experts seem to be estimating tens of thousands in each state last week. Tens of millions is way way way out of range and doesn't correlate with accelerating hospitalizations and deaths at all.

Sen. Klobuchar's husband is in the hospital on supplemental oxygen. He went to the ER after coughing up blood.

It's that or millions die so

Gonna need to slam the FULL SOCIALISM NOW button, imo

Hell yeah gonna remote into a number of now dormant servers at work this weekend to set this up

That big Imperial College study in the UK that finally got them to abandon their herd immunity "plan" had an outline of what they expect. Roughly eighteen months until vaccines are widely available. Waves of shelter in place interspersed with periods of relaxed restrictions until infections pop up locally or regionally again. How sustainable that really is, how well it'll would really adhere to that until the fall of 2021, is a big question mark obviously. The alternative is accepting mass death across most ages but skewed towards the elderly. Edit: hopefully the initial indications of success with hcq treatments holds. That would be a substantial treatment measure while a vaccine is developed, but it needs early intervention. Testing testing testing. We should have been building out massive infrastructure for that and medical care for months already rather than insisting it was all a "hoax"

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee

His office's response was "no no this was totally legitimate, he traded before the market volatility!" Uhhhhhh, yeah. That's the point. He was also recently revealed giving dire warnings to friends/donors while making rosey public statements. The insider trading is a bipartisan issue, too.

This probably shouldn't be legal, but it is!

Have no idea how JP Morgan is predicted only 6.5% unemployment later this year with 8% recovery starting in Q3

Year-over-year unemployment claims are looking absolutely dire already Illinois unemployment: "Over the last two days, IDES has received over 41,000 unemployment benefit claims, compared to the same two days during the corresponding week last year, when IDES received 4,445 unemployment benefit claims."

Got a chuckle out of this