COVID-19 notes:

The Debate Over Covid-19 Distancing: How Far Is Far Enough?

The CDC recommends 6 feet or more, the WHO about half that distance. But experts say the science is far from settled.

environmental scientists, physicists, engineers, epidemiologists, and others have become increasingly vocal with concerns that the virus might be transmitted through smaller droplets that can reach as far as 26 feet on violent exhalations like coughs and sneezes.

~~Regular~~ Related Fare:

Double-Dip? The Number of Small Businesses Open Re-Plunges

Global Dividends Plunge The Most Since 2009

Regular Fare:

Demographics is Destiny

Seriously, This Isn’t Difficult

Crescat Capital: A New Bull Market for Precious Metals

Central banks are facing a serious predicament. After decades of ongoing accommodative monetary policy, the world is now sitting at record levels of debt relative to global GDP. In our view, there has never been a bigger gulf between underlying economic fundamentals and security prices. We are in a global recession, but equity and credit markets still trading at outrageous valuations. Markets are trading on a perverse combination of Fed life support and rabid speculative mania. Meanwhile, demand for gold and silver, which is fundamentally cheap, is starting to take off as central banks are engaged in new record easy monetary policies. Ongoing easy monetary policies in the face of today’s asset bubbles in stocks and fixed income securities has a high probability of leading to a self-reinforcing cycle that drives investors out of these over-valued asset classes and into under-valued precious metals. Here are just some of the reasons Crescat is selling richly valued stocks at large and buying undervalued gold and silver including mining companies today: …..

Bubble Fare:

Mises Stationarity Index. (aka Tobin’s Q ratio)

Ultra-Rich Investor Group Panic Hoards Cash Ahead Of Potential Growth Scare

Time for Some Context Again

Other Fare:

Cory Doctorow: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism.

Capital as Power. A Study of Order and Creorder. Nitzan, Jonathan and Bichler, Shimshon (2009). Free e-pub or PDF available from authors

(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Growing underwater heat blob speeds demise of Arctic sea ice.

Arctic Climate Interventions.

Abstract

The melting of the Arctic poses enormous risks both to the Arctic itself and to the global climate system. Conventional climate change policies operate too slowly to save the Arctic, so unconventional approaches need to be considered, including technologies to refreeze Arctic ice and slow the melting of glaciers. Even if one believes that global climate interventions, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to scatter sunlight, pose unacceptable risks and should be disqualified from consideration, Arctic interventions differ in important respects. They are closer in kind to conventional mitigation and adaptation and should be evaluated in similar terms. It is unclear whether they are feasible and would be effective in saving the Arctic. But given the importance of the Arctic, they should be investigated fully.

Quote of the Week:

Jeffrey Snider: over in Jackson Hole, the central bankers are gathered once again for their latest annual conclave whereby they console one another into believing, yes, by God, QE 25 and the nineteenth year of ZIRP will do the trick!... It’s perfectly evident that they are really putting in the time and effort to show you how much time and effort they have put into this. Policymakers really want you to buy in to this fairy tale, which isn’t even a different story. I mean, look at that major, impressive stuff behind what that’s gone into…the same failed policy they created two years and almost four months ago…. Monetary policy in this day and age is a ridiculous sales job, not the purview of an actual central banker working at an actual central bank. The policy itself no longer matters; the packaging it comes in does.

Tweet of the Week:

Brew Dog Street Dogs

Extra Fare:

Socio-Political Fare:

Kunstler: Bill of Particulars

The Money Says Kenosha Is Helping Trump

Prediction markets show people are betting the disorder will help the president, even though he is the incumbent…. Neither prediction markets nor polls are perfect. They were both wrong four years ago. But it’s hard to get a better grasp on perceived probabilities than from a prediction market, where people are betting actual money. Over history their results have tended to be uncannily accurate. And polls tend at least to be directionally right.

Glenn Greenwald: The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling

Why, in the world’s richest country, is every metric of mental health pathology rapidly worsening?

Never Biden? How to resolve the vexing dilemma for many left voters

The U.S. presidential election has so far involved and will undoubtedly continue to involve a clash over voting strategy for the left. A significant array of left commentators, for example, Cornel West, AOC, Angela Davis, and Noam Chomsky have been and will likely continue urging all progressives to vote for Biden at least in swing states, even if they can’t stand his personal history and his stated and implied policies. Another array of left commentators, for example Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Krystal Ball, and Howie Hawkins, has been and will likely continue asserting that instead all progressives should vote their true preferences, for example for the Green candidate, or not vote, but in any event not vote for someone they despise, like Joe Biden.

While the two groups often seem too contrary to take each other seriously, they in fact each have a variety of claims they make in support of their favored approach. What are the claims made by each side? How well do they hold up when taken seriously on their own terms? Is the dispute about clashing principles or only about clashing perceptions? Since all involved desire a better future, is there some common ground that can be built upon?

Critics of voting for Biden hold that the United States is essentially a one-party state, the business party, with two factions, Democrats and Republicans. Those who urge voting for Biden in swing states agree that this characterization of the two parties has long been true, but argue that the situation has significantly changed.

… the Never Biden group argues that over a period of many years the Democrats have been moving steadily to the right. One reason they do this is that they know they can pick up voters to their right without risking the loss of voters to their left, because for too long the left has been duped into promising the Democrats their votes no matter how awful they are—since there’s always someone worse.

… the dump Trump group asks how is the danger of Trump exaggerated? To mention only the most obvious danger, Trump’s dedicated assault on the environment may lead to irreversible tipping points within four years, and at the very least will make it far more difficult to deal with the huge challenge of environmental catastrophe within the brief period that remains for us to do so. In contrast, a Biden presidency (and Congress) would be susceptible to influence by real politics, organizing, and resistance, which could even lead to the implementation of some form of Green New Deal against Biden’s opposition, a prerequisite for survival.

… the Never Biden group contends that Trump has no ideology—calling him fascist, for example, misses that he is just a self-seeking fool. Movements can curb his excesses, perhaps easier than they can curb those of more genteel Democrats. The Dump Trumpers reply: Trump is no fool. He is a skillful con man. He has a simple and clear ideology: amass as much power as possible in his own hands, serve his corporate masters abjectly, and keep control over the popular voting base that he is shafting at every turn, throwing them enough scraps of seeming support to keep them in line. So far, he’s been doing it quite skillfully. It’s certainly true that movements might pose limited barriers to some of his machinations, but it would mostly be defense instead of grasping and exploiting new opportunities as could be possible fighting a Biden administration. Some who won’t vote Biden answer that while it’s true in many ways that Trump is awful, on some issues the Democrats are worse. Trump is less of a warmonger. He’s less committed to free trade deals.

… Maybe the two camps can come together behind a new slogan, “Dump Trump, then Combat Biden?” where the Never Biden camp acknowledges the need to take the ten minutes to vote for Biden in contested states and the Defeat Trump camp acknowledges the need to realize that a lesser evil is still evil.

Corporate Dems Want You To Shut Up While They Get Loud