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Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

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431–440 of 499 posts

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#431

Pardon my cynicism, but it seems like many of the actions the administration is pushing are simply things they were pushing already and are using this health crisis as cudgel to help get what they want. What we need are lower interest rates! What we need is to limit immigration from Mexico (even though the US has a higher infection rate and there isn't any talk of limiting flights from, say, England). What we need to…

"Never let a good crisis go to waste." -- Rahm Emmanuel New gov, same as the old gov?

Rahm Emmanual was indeed initially in Obama's cabinet, but he didn't last a year. Perhaps his politics didn't fit with the tenor of that administration.

To use that quote to set up an equivalence between the two administrations is beyond the pale. I think neither Democrats nor Republicans would say the two administrations are alike.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My response was to /u/wpietri who asked for a clarification.

I was actually pointing out the contradiction between your supposed standard and your behavior. But fair enough, it was phrased as a question. Which, it turns out, you did not actually answer, so if you were trying to clarify things I don't think you succeeded.

[deleted]

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#433
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incubation period is not 25-30 days. The mean incubation period is 5-6 days, range 1-14 days. Source: Page 12, paragraph 2. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...

See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v... > The median incubation period was 3.0 days (range, 0 to 24.0 days) Edited my post to include that source

The most recent study I could find is here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20028068v...

"The mean incubation was 8.42(95% confidence interval [CI], 6.55-10.29) days... COVID-19 course was approximately 2 weeks."

Fairly small sample size of 55 patients, which means the reliability may be debatable, and giving figures to two decimal places is meaningless. (In fact any decimal places are meaningless, unless someone times the exact moment of exposure.)

That aside - it seems very unlikely that 24 day incubations will be common.

Broadly it seems most people who become symptomatic will show symptoms within 10 days and will recover within two weeks after the symptoms appear. A small percentage - mostly older and unwell - will become seriously ill, and an even smaller percentage will die.

Meanwhile the presence of untraceable infections strongly suggests that a significant number of people - possibly a majority - either don't develop symptoms at all, or don't consider them serious enough to require medical attention.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to say I'm 'bullish' about a situation where people will die, but the fact that 80% of cases are mild or asymptomatic bodes well for the working economy. conferences, travel, and tourism will take a huge hit, but I don't see other industries being significantly hurt. if this was more like SARS with a 10% IFR, with equally high mortality rates among young people, then I would be very worried. But this virus see…

"most factory workers fit in that cohort of people in that the virus effects the least so I don't see supply chains suffering." I think supply chains are more affected by government attempts to contain the virus (quarantines/social distancing/restrictions on travel and trade) than by the virus itself, no?

I don’t see why when Apple claimed their supply chain ops in China resumed as normal as of last week. And that’s probably the most authoritarian quarantine we’ve seen up to this point.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At which point rates are generally raised to cool things down.

Which should have happened along time ago in the current economy but haven’t, you can’t cut rates in bad times if you don’t raise them enough in good.

I'm an economic idiot, but the interest rates have started concern me. It's seemed like no one wants to cut them as that might put the brakes on "growth". There are also rumorings of a crash being around the corner. So if a crash does come about, what's the Fed going to do seeing as how rates are already bottomed out?

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#436
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes famously said you could hire people to dig ditches and it would stimulate the economy. However, if we were to take aggressive action on Climate Change, there’s a lot of potential jobs there. A massive potential stimulus. Also, you know, public funding of basic research which could explore, I don’t know, pandemic response, new therapeutics, etc. Like you said, ideological barriers are what’s keeping us stuck. B…

Climate Change is doing just fine with us doing no work, notice the recent news about the satellite-detectable pollution levels in China being at lows not seen in a long while. Of course, that means us not being as product- and services-rich as we are right now (farewell to cheap airplane rides, disposable clothes and easily replaceable electronics) but at the end of the day something will have to give.

That won't last. China will feel a need to dig itself out of a hole and ramp production beyond normal levels to make up for it.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to know how many of the 705 have recovered, how many are still ill, and how many were admitted to hospital. If 42 were critical, that doesn't necessarily mean they were the only ones who needed hospital treatment.

You can look at the counts by date. The majority are past the mean time till hospitalization, and the the number in critical condition hasn't increased in days. >If 42 were critical, that doesn't necessarily mean they were the only ones who needed hospital treatment. Percent hospitalized isn't the thing to look at. It's percentage of people who need intensive care or a ventilator that matters. Many people were hospit…

>You can look at the counts by date.

Are these numbers still updated now that many (or all?) have left the ship? Where can I see those numbers?

>Many people were hospitalized for observation

Yes, but if fewer people had been under close observation in a hospital more might have died. Admitting only precisely those who turn critical is not realistic in my (lay person's) opinion.

I agree with you about the age distribution on the cruise ship though. This is very important to note.

Still, I have to wonder what share of the population can get hospital/ICU treatment at any given time.

I don't know about other places, but here in the UK hospital bed occupancy rates are dangerously high at the best of times. I don't know how many beds/ICUs can be freed up in an emergency. But I doubt it's anywhere near enough if everyone gets sick at the same time.

I hope someone is doing some modelling to find out how aggressively we have to slow down the rate of infection so that hospitals are not overwhelmed.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#438
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetary policy is about increasing or decreasing the money supply. The argument is that it cannot have long-term real effects because if it did we would all be incredibly rich, since it costs nothing to increase the money supply by whatever amount. Every underdeveloped nation would simply increase their money supply and poverty would be a thing of the past.

> The argument is that it cannot have long-term real effects because if it did we would all be incredibly rich, since it costs nothing to increase the money supply by whatever amount. Increasing the money supply is effectively a transfer of wealth from people who own/lend currency to people who owe/borrow it. It doesn't come without cost. It's effectively taxing one group and giving the money to another. As for stimu…

> What it does is increase borrowing.

But only in the short term, since lenders will catch on and increase their interest rates to offset the inflation. As you said, you're transferring wealth from lenders to borrowers, which means a larger incentive will be needed to induce anyone (other than the Fed) to lend money. To maintain the effect you would not only need to maintain the inflation but also continually increase the rate of inflation to exceed expectations. That's a quick route to hyperinflation and worthless currency.

The Fed can keep lending at arbitrarily low rates long after every other lender has been driven from the market because they're "lending" newly minted currency at essentially zero cost, and moreover don't particularly care whether they make a profit. However, even they can't sustain ever-increasing rates of inflation without destroying all confidence in their own currency, and it's pretty hard on the other lenders. ("Lenders" including anyone with a savings account, or with a significant fraction of their net worth in currency rather than inflation-proof assets and other investments; the poor are thus hit harder than the rich.)

> ... the people who want to build new factories need money to do it ...

That's an over-simplification. The people who want to build new factories need materials and labor to do it, not money. Giving them more money doesn't increase the amount of material or labor available, though it may allow them to claim a larger share of the available goods provided they do so before the inflation becomes generally known and devaluation takes effect. Naturally, if they're getting a larger share then others are making do with less. It only works out to a net benefit under the assumption that you know how those goods should be put to work better than the people directly involved—despite apparently being unable to persuade people that your plan is better rather than resorting to underhanded tricks.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is when you have what currently is the top comment for this article, written in a manner which implies that the writer knows what they are talking about (i.e. /u/airstrike using terminology like "after spending more time than I'm willing to admit listening to every finance talking head out there"). I'm calling into question /u/airstrike's legitimacy due to not being able to differentiate between monetary an…

I think there's an enormous difference between "I have some polite questions about your level of expertise" and "I will repeatedly jump on a possibly-innocent error". I will note that airstrike is not "unable to differentiate the two". They have quite clearly gone on to demonstrate that ability. It is important to make sure false information doesn't circulate. But I don't think that excuses being "harsh".

Ahh, I see. I think I understand the confusion now. I believe our primary disagreement here lies in the fact that you don't see /u/airstrike not differentiating between fiscal and monetary policy in his/her original comment, as a major red flag, whereas from my perspective I do.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's all okay. China has the biggest cities of the world and they censored it for 2 months, while the virus was spreading. This isn't happening in the rest of the world. ( Except some dictatorships) Some minor outliers like you mentioned, eg. Italy. But these are getting handled. It will not spread anymore like it did in China. It's possible that some parts will need extra handling, but sharing information is…

I like your optimism and I hope you're right. I don't think Italy, South Korea, Iran are outliers in the sense that there is something fundamentally different going on there though - I think they are just ahead in terms of time. Overall the spread in different countries seems to follow very similar patterns but with different starting dates. Yes, China did some weird stuff with information in the beginning, but it se…

While the rest of the world is following, we already had the example of quarantine.

We will see what the best strategy will be, the hardest work is now for China, South Korea, Iran and Italy.

The rest will learn from them.

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