Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bob’s Drywall Supply has net 60 for a delivery of drywall. Constructor Bill now can’t pay. Bob’s Drywall is a creditor and is on the hook for a product he already shipped. Now Bob’s Drywall Supply can’t pay the company that provided him with Net 90 terms. So Bob and Bill are now insolvent. And they fire their employees. Suggesting that creditors somehow deserve “pain,” is just cruel. Creditors don’t “inflict pain” on…
The problem is when everybody takes a hit except the "too big to fail" banks. That's what happened in the last financial crisis, the government bailed out only the big banks by buying their toxic loans at face value. When Obama tried to also bail out individual homeowners it sparked the Tea Party backlash and he pretty much backed off on those plans.
Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
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Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#382This feels like a much worse outcome than just taking the virus on the chin and letting 40-70% of the population get sick. That may seem contrarian, but this panic feels worse than the actual virus. More people will die from economic hardship than from COVID.
(for perspective the normal moratlity rate is 0.77% in a normal population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate)
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN's culture against partisan political statements looks particularly like sticking one's head in the sand these days. Coronavirus is not a political thing, but our (partisan) elected leaders had an enormous amount of power over how prepared we were, and their agendas shape the on-going response. It's impossible to talk accurately about the problem or solution without mentioning parties and politicians by name.
Are we going to blame politics on the Italian or other European countries’ responses too? What’s Italy’s excuse for being so unprepared? The simple fact is that partisanship is relevant: Democrats claimed travel bans were xenophobic however Taiwan issued one on Dec 31 and have very few cases. Denmark and Poland closed their borders. When Trump does it, it’s automatically “bad,” when Europe does it, it’s automatically…
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is when everybody takes a hit except the "too big to fail" banks. That's what happened in the last financial crisis, the government bailed out only the big banks by buying their toxic loans at face value. When Obama tried to also bail out individual homeowners it sparked the Tea Party backlash and he pretty much backed off on those plans.
You're twisting history. The tea party backlash was to the bailing out of banks.
“Yesterday Rick Santelli, who reports from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade the for CNBC, unleashed a rant against Obama’s newly announced housing bailout plan, intended to help some homeowners refinance mortgages and avoid foreclosure.”
1: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/rick-santel...
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is when everybody takes a hit except the "too big to fail" banks. That's what happened in the last financial crisis, the government bailed out only the big banks by buying their toxic loans at face value. When Obama tried to also bail out individual homeowners it sparked the Tea Party backlash and he pretty much backed off on those plans.
You're twisting history. The tea party backlash was to the bailing out of banks.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Current total deaths are 6,000 with China already saying the worst is behind them. Why the US would have 4M deaths?
I agree that "millions will die" is just pure panic. But I'd like to point out that China is most definitely _not_ out of the woods yet. And won't be until there's a cure. This merry-go-round could start again there at a moment's notice.
So real mortality, once health systems will crumble from the load (we will see in 1 week here in Europe), might be more around 10%. Not many seem to like to accept this simple fact, happy to hear where my conclusion is wrong. I mean if you have water/mucus in your lungs, that's it, very little can be done.
If we take >50% of earth population would eventually take it (which seems more realistic, since we have no vaccine, and no effective treatment and those won't work very well in many places like India or most of Africa), we're talking about 80 million - 400 million of dead (2-10% of 4 billions). I don't see how we can avoid this - we can't shutdown whole global economy for even 6 months, whole system didn't evolve with this safeguard in mind. People will have to start working again. Producing food, goods, services etc.
Now lets be skeptical and have only 10% of those horrible numbers coming true - still talking about 8-40 millions of dead.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess people would rather lower the gdp than have their parents die.
Destroying the economy at this rate will bring much more death than Corona. 10s of thousands of businesses are being crippled. The government will do nothing aside from bailing out institutions they’ve bailed out countless times before. Leaving the lower and middle class absolutely gutted.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't even seem to be a real index on economic activity anymore either... In my personal view 'The Market's purely reflect consumer confidence. They appear divorced from actual reality, aside from how that affects the mindset of easily panicked lemmings.
Money purely reflects consumer confidence, and as long as the economy is based on money, so does the entire economy.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#389Still like comments about original restrictions of larger gatherings, many grocery stores and big box stores can have more people in them than a restaurant and touching more items too
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creditors can experience some of the pain that they normally inflict on others. They are not sacrosanct and are the least important parties in economic relations during an emergency. As normality is restored, they will have new opportunities during the ensuing large scale financial restructuring.
Bob’s Drywall Supply has net 60 for a delivery of drywall. Constructor Bill now can’t pay. Bob’s Drywall is a creditor and is on the hook for a product he already shipped. Now Bob’s Drywall Supply can’t pay the company that provided him with Net 90 terms. So Bob and Bill are now insolvent. And they fire their employees. Suggesting that creditors somehow deserve “pain,” is just cruel. Creditors don’t “inflict pain” on…