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Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

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Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#131

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

_bxg1 wrote: post #129
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #113

The Big One is coming. This is just gonna be a recession, no one is going to lose their retirement or social security this time. Still, big banks like American Savings and Chase are going to be buying up lots of property ("seizing" is probably a better word for it). When The Big One comes, we will all have to forfeit our property to the Federal Reserve, and they will start the cycle all over again. I think the cycles…

Specifics about how to make the military more efficient are probably out of scope (and out of depth for anyone here), but I agree we should spend less on it (and I think we could, without making any other changes, and still remain the dominant power by a wide margin)

I think there are a lot of ex-military, active duty, and military contractors using HN at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#132

Post by contravariant »

smitty1e wrote: post #8
sfusato wrote: post #4

We are in uncharted territory. At this point it's just guesses (educated or not).

Either this thing is "The End of the World As We Know It", or it is not. Give it another week or so.

The one thing I'm confident in predicting is that things won't be as they were.

To what extent is impossible to say right now.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#133

Post by user5994461 »

biolurker1 wrote: post #130
filleokus wrote: post #69

I have no expertise in any area, but I would like to put down my thoughts for posterity (and feedback). I think we will see governments in the coming week or two start doing broad randomised samples of the population for antibodies and realise that many many more people have been infected than previously thought. Meanwhile fears for the economic consequences will grow larger. Also (hopefully) countries like Germany a…

How can UK see less numbers than Italy when they imposed a cuarantine much later at the exponential curve? It's just impossible mathematically

These are very different cultures. London allows to work from home, or to be off work when sick, and does not force employees to shake hand or hug as a matter of courtesy.

Besides, the UK didn't quarantine officially much later than Italy. Not to mention that the the larger corporations instructed employees to work from home week(s) before the official lockdown.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#134

Post by guru4consulting »

alexpetralia wrote: post #77

Hopefully everyone will keep in mind that bailouts should go to the citizenry at large to resurrect demand, not to large multinationals which need to pay off debt they should have never incurred in the first place (and which was spent on high-risk growth projects or shareholder buybacks). "Take Boeing. The aerospace giant of course wants a $60 billion bailout. Financial problems for this corporation predated the cris…

someone should start an online petition that prevents any bailouts to Boeing. Is there any official government online portal similar to change.org? hopefully, the politicians may limit the bailout amount if lots of people raise their voice.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#135

Post by Yeroc »

qubex wrote: post #58
nopinsight wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enormous liquidity injected into the system along with lower production suggests high inflation in the future after the crisis is over. Do you think that will likely happen? Note: Above is not a value judgement. The measure is necessary to prevent the system from completely breaking down.

To be honest, it seems that the basic tenants of inflation have been violated since the 2007/8 crisis and the subsequent massive influxes of liquidity (primarily through the various quantitative easing programmes), so I really cannot say with any certainty. There’s an enormous amount of money already sloshing around in the systems, and it seems to be pooling at the top (hence all the inequality). On one level, somebo…

I read an interesting article a while back that posited that we have seen inflation but it's been masked in the regular basket of consumer goods by cheap imports from China. Meanwhile we have seen significant inflation in housting but it's not really recognized as such.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#136

Post by dillondoyle »

qubex wrote: post #13

I’m an economist and I wish I had some guidance to offer, but unfortunately I have none. I’m struggling to get a grip on this situation. Firstly, though I have not worked there for six months or so, I am Italian (from Milan, in the north, the worst-hit area). The economy there has basically shut down. Consumer spending has collapsed, production has collapsed, and logistics are increasingly untenable. What can we expe…

Hopefully taxpayers and business wont be on the hook for the loans - it's up to negotiation now. Personally I hope the large corporations getting 'bailouts' would be required to pay back with interest and or government ownership but any company under a reasonable yearly revenue would be forgiven. I don't know but I would guess they call it a loan is so treasury can leverage an appropriation into a much larger loan amount.

One of the things being negotiated right now is a loan in the amount of current payroll to smb's that would be 100% forgiven if they retain 90% employees. They're completely fucking it up right now but that would be great - if the timelines are good (e.g. keep loaning until this is over, the 90% requirement is so long as $ is loaned).

I am hoping - slight optimistic but scared nonetheless - that passes and we could use. It would remove a lot of stress and given we have low overhead (digital services) even if the worst happened it could keep us afloat almost indefinitely.

BUT fucked up partisan delay + Republicans demanding scary terms are create huge uncertainty which will likely hit markets hard tomorrow.

As written it looks like Mnuchin would have full discretion on who gets loans. Who knows what timeframe or bureaucracy needed to get loan. Even the most optimistic estimate of the individual checks is 2-4 weeks which is not quick enough. Doing a SBA loan is a huge process that takes a long time.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#138

Post by RandomBacon »

dawnerd wrote: post #121
yulaow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add that even after the crisis is more under control, people will still avoid any not necessary spending for a very long time and this will keep the economy to restart. Also most of them will have depleated all savings at that point and will want to rebuild them aggressively, further reducing spending

Anecdotal but my eBay sales have been way up this last week. Although honestly I suspect it’s Amazon having problems shipping things. I’m better a lot of other online sellers are seeing the same as people stay indoors and change how they spend. Of the items I’ve sold they were all hobby items.

If people plan to not go out fora while, maybe a hobby would be wise investment to keep their sanity.

Yesterday, I was looking at eBay for lockpicking trainers.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#139

Post by danaris »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #99
User23 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why fiscal stimulus in the form of checks to every citizen is a brilliant idea. It doesn’t matter if they “need the money” it matters if they spend it and productive capacity can meet the demand.

The Fed could drop a bag with a million freshly-printed FRNs in it on my doorstep, and I'd simply take the bag and put it in my bedroom. A significant number of people aren't going to spend the money no matter how much it is.

Just due to being on HN, you're statistically likely to be someone who has plenty of savings already.

Most of America does not.

If people are getting laid off en-masse, the majority of those people will, within a few weeks, not have enough money to afford basic necessities. Giving each of them $1k/month would soften the blow considerably.

Giving them $3k/month would, for most of them, get them back close to where they were before the layoff, and keep the economy functioning.

Re: Ask HN: How bad will the 2020 economic crisis be?

#140

Post by danaris »

nopinsight wrote: post #81
qubex wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, it seems that the basic tenants of inflation have been violated since the 2007/8 crisis and the subsequent massive influxes of liquidity (primarily through the various quantitative easing programmes), so I really cannot say with any certainty. There’s an enormous amount of money already sloshing around in the systems, and it seems to be pooling at the top (hence all the inequality). On one level, somebo…

A key reason why this time might be different: A call for helicopter money even among some fiscal conservatives. Before this, such as in the 2008 crisis, much of the liquidity injection didn’t flow down the bottom part of economic hierarchy. Thus, they haven’t had much increased spending power. So, no inflation of common items. The prices of trophy and other assets preferred by the wealthy did rise up greatly in the…

...Can you clarify "helicopter money"? That's not a term I've heard before.
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