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U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

bloomberg.com

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Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#61

Post by Twixes »

samsonradu wrote: post #22
onetimemanytime wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark (I think) said that they'll freeze the economy, meaning that the state covers everything. Once over, it starts as if nothing happens. People will have no time to look for new jobs, they'll go to old ones and hopefully every company starts spending to support each other

Sorry but I just can’t see this play out. Consumption will suffer. When foreign tourists stop booking rooms in Copenhagen hotels, how/why keep people on the payroll? Also, isn’t it dangerous to distort the market to such a level? Maybe there are more productive activities for those employees to engage. There will be dislocations of the workforce. Considering the ongoing crisis I would take official statements with a…

There's no good solution to this crisis. But "pausing" the economy, even at a huge cost, is a better option than letting everything fall apart.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#62

Post by thedudeabides5 »

lordnacho wrote: post #14

Here's something I've been thinking about for a few days. Suppose the government does a massive bailout of everyone. They guarantee jobs, they give everyone money so they don't run out. And it works. In a few months from now, the economy turns out to have just hit a speed bump and everything is back to how it was. What does that say about the economy? I mean if we can stop working and basically just lend ourselves mo…

Inflation.

That’s the consequence. But it’s been so long, everyone who fought the last war is dead or retired.

If we keep demand the same, by paying a quarter of GDP, but supply contracts....same dollars of demand for less quantity.

Like the cost of face masks or paper towels, but for all the other stuff that doesn’t get made.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#63

Post by Twixes »

andrekandre wrote: post #19
hprotagonist wrote: post #13

January 23rd, 2021: President Biden has signed into law the COVID-19 Works Progress Act as the first act of his presidency. It was passed easily in the democratically controlled house and senate the day following his inauguration. Calling for an immediate federal hiring surge at all levels of the newly implemented public health services, President Biden said “This act will restore salaries, dignity, and comprehensive…

please correct me if i am wrong, but i haven’t seen any evidence that joe biden would do such a thing he’s been pretty against medicare for all on grounds it “costs too much” just as one example, and just recently called for companies to stop stock buy-backs during covid-19 [0] but nothing like that ↑ afaik... [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/biden-cal...

He's for some public option, but nothing mandatory. Generally nothing that would hurt big business too much, although he has shifted a bit to the left in recent years (and even weeks) as the Democratic Party has been doing so (Bernie's influence being significant also now).

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#64

Post by nostrademons »

Twixes wrote: post #59
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different crises have different effects on the economy. Or, to paraphrase Anna Karenina, "All healthy economies are alike. Each depressed economy is depressed in its own way." What we need to do with coronavirus lockdowns is essentially to pause the economy. Cut all social contact off, let the virus run its course, develop a treatment or vaccine, and then reboot the economy. If the economy was healthy before (and mos…

Poverty is a consequence of a specific type of liberty: economic liberalism. Few poor people are where they are because of simply having made bad deals. Mostly they were just dealt a bad hand in life and are being exploited by those who were dealt a much better one.

In a liberal economy, pretty much all poor people are where they are from having made bad deals. That does not mean that they had good deals available to them. One of the other (unfortunate) consequences of liberalism is that people are free to setup the deals they offer to other people such that all deals available are bad deals.

My comment is not intended to be a value judgment on either poor people or rich people, just a description of why things are the way they are.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#65

Post by hakfoo »

samsonradu wrote: post #22
onetimemanytime wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark (I think) said that they'll freeze the economy, meaning that the state covers everything. Once over, it starts as if nothing happens. People will have no time to look for new jobs, they'll go to old ones and hopefully every company starts spending to support each other

Sorry but I just can’t see this play out. Consumption will suffer. When foreign tourists stop booking rooms in Copenhagen hotels, how/why keep people on the payroll? Also, isn’t it dangerous to distort the market to such a level? Maybe there are more productive activities for those employees to engage. There will be dislocations of the workforce. Considering the ongoing crisis I would take official statements with a…

If they're pausing the nonessential economy, I don't see where it stops "I have a biology degree and experience, I'll transition from a paused job into a research team working on Covid-19".

What it stops is "I need to perform some trivial make-work job because the hotel/bar/unessential retail I used to work at shut down, and otherwise I starve and get evicted, so I'm going to traipse around and weaken quarentine procedures."

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#66

Post by nkurz »

m0zg wrote: post #56

I would like to see the exact, unedited quote if you expect me to believe this. Right now this looks like fake news, like reports of Mnuchin saying "we're gonna have 20% unemployment" the other day, which Mnuchin himself denied. There's simply no way someone in Bullard's (or Mnuchin's) position would say anything as dramatic as the article implies as categorically as the article implies. There is no corroboration tha…

Yes, a unedited quote would be useful. But I did find one corroboration that I think elevates this above "fake news" status. On the St Louis Fed's website, there's a list of James Bullard's media interviews. At the top is this article with the "30%" figure in the title: https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-president/media-intervie.... While it's possible that was just an intern who scans the news and adds things, this certainly makes it seem like Bullard officially endorses the 30% number.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#67

Post by m0zg »

nkurz wrote: post #66
m0zg wrote: post #56

I would like to see the exact, unedited quote if you expect me to believe this. Right now this looks like fake news, like reports of Mnuchin saying "we're gonna have 20% unemployment" the other day, which Mnuchin himself denied. There's simply no way someone in Bullard's (or Mnuchin's) position would say anything as dramatic as the article implies as categorically as the article implies. There is no corroboration tha…

Yes, a unedited quote would be useful. But I did find one corroboration that I think elevates this above "fake news" status. On the St Louis Fed's website, there's a list of James Bullard's media interviews. At the top is this article with the "30%" figure in the title: https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-president/media-intervie... . While it's possible that was just an intern who scans the news and adds things, thi…

It's a link to the same Bloomberg article. :-) It doesn't make it any less fake.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#68

Post by m0zg »

raincom wrote: post #58
m0zg wrote: post #56

I would like to see the exact, unedited quote if you expect me to believe this. Right now this looks like fake news, like reports of Mnuchin saying "we're gonna have 20% unemployment" the other day, which Mnuchin himself denied. There's simply no way someone in Bullard's (or Mnuchin's) position would say anything as dramatic as the article implies as categorically as the article implies. There is no corroboration tha…

Basically, Mnuchin and the Fed gang want more power and much more discretion, so that they can help their cronies. Fed loves to buy ETFs like BoJ does, in order to help banks and the rich, if they are given powers. Democrats should focus more on the fiscal policy than giving more powers to the Federal reserve.

Be that as it may, my message to the media would be: if you want to retain any remaining shred of credibility you still have, stick to reporting corroborated first hand accounts, not rumors or opinions, at least for a while. Get on the ground, figure out what's going on, report it, in full and with evidence, good and bad. Don't just sit there and suck clickbait out of your thumb like you've been doing for the last decade.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#69

Post by epicureanideal »

stubish wrote: post #60
epicureanideal wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if they start a Great War Against Disease, and spend as many trillions as needed so no one ever gets the flu, any cold, or any other disease ever again. People keep saying "that's not possible" but there are already a lot of companies working on it. Show me a place I can make $300,000 working on curing diseases and I'd happily spend my life working on it. At the moment making websites pays better.

Meaningless jobs will always pay better. If IT jobs in disease eradication paid $300,000, Silicon Valley would be paying $500,000 to keep the bright minds keeping consumerism alive. You have to pay a lot to get people who want to contribute to society to spend their time not contributing to society. cf. Big Tobacco & Oil.

I think it's more that something in the economic system is just mismanaged or broken.

If I could take a pill and get an extra year of healthy life, I would pay a lot for that pill.

If I could take a pill (or vaccine, or whatever) and never get sick again, I would pay a lot for that pill.

If you could make 7.5 billion people never get sick, I assume that would make you far richer than Jeff Bezos.

Surely these solutions and others are worth more than a lot of the other things we buy. But our system isn't set up to develop them, it seems. We're set up to pursue quarterly earnings statements, rather than 10 or 20 year goals that would dramatically improve our lives.

Also, I'm not sure that our current meaningless software jobs are actually completely meaningless. We are actually making tasks easier and faster, which in some way does contribute to society advancing faster and maybe someday being better able to pursue other goals.

Life is significantly different and at least in some ways better thanks to Amazon (get anything anywhere), Google (search everything), Wikipedia (basic knowledge about almost anything), the internet (communicate with anyone), Coursera (learn basic skills on many topics), and so on. And even the simple e-commerce websites for some family business, made by a "web developer" for $500 in 1998, helped push us a little bit toward a more discoverable and efficient economy. Which does help us get a little bit more efficient overall, for goals we might pursue later.

Or at least that's how I convince myself to keep doing what I'm doing.

Re: U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says

#70

Post by cultus »

tomcam wrote: post #17
lordnacho wrote: post #14

Here's something I've been thinking about for a few days. Suppose the government does a massive bailout of everyone. They guarantee jobs, they give everyone money so they don't run out. And it works. In a few months from now, the economy turns out to have just hit a speed bump and everything is back to how it was. What does that say about the economy? I mean if we can stop working and basically just lend ourselves mo…

It would all be put on the credit card, like the $23 trillion we owe at the moment. Might be another, let’s say, $4 trillion. The only ways to get out of that number are defaulting on the debts, which would greatly harm pension plans and other countries, or inflate our way out it, which could easily lead to hyperinflation, which would ruin pension plans and the world economy.

The government can print money, and buy back the debt. Excessive inflation only occurs when the combination of private and public spending is chasing after too few goods. We've been deficit spending like crazy for years and the inflation rate has been too low if anything.
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