COVID-19 notes:
The engines of
SARS-CoV-2 spread.
What
We Know So Far about How COVID Affects the Nervous System
Cognitive
deficits in recovered COVID patients are significant—even for mild cases &
increase w/disease severity.
Regular Related Fare:
Tankus: "Fiscal
Cliffication" Continues As The Election Looms. We Could Go Months Without Further Fiscal Support to Households
Long time readers will remember that I’ve been an
aggressive advocate of large fiscal support to the economy so that there
weren't major income and financial impacts from having to quarantine. As the
prospects of a new deal become more remote, I added my voice to the larger calls for a new package. I’ve outlined the damage that
could be inflicted by not having a deal. I ended this run of articles with a piece
in the Guardian warning against the terrible prospect of congress passing another
fiscal deal. And especially not extending the supplemental unemployment
insurance.
When it became clear we weren’t getting a fiscal
package, I stepped back to analyze the “Fiscal Cliffication” of our economic
policy. As I explained in that article, the Republican party
has many political incentives not to pass a fiscal package. These hold
especially if they strongly suspect Donald Trump will lose in November.
Meanwhile, Democrats also have political incentives not to engage in a deal. I
think that the political analysis in that piece holds up, and explains what has
been going on for the past two and a half months.
… Clearly, however, the politics of a new fiscal
package have now evolved. It is beyond the scope of this piece to assess all
the complex twists and turns of the negotiations. For that, you should be
reading the excellent coverage by Jeff Stein at the Washington Post. The most important thing to understand is that the negotiations have
not moved onto the main hurdle — Senate Republicans. While Democrats have been
able to get the Trump administration to improve it’s offer in terms of dollar
amounts, it’s not clear how meaningful that is without Senate Republicans
participating. Negotiations have stalled at a back-and-forth between Trump, and
House Democrats. House Speaker Pelosi’s stated position as of this writing is that she is not willing to accept the Trump
administration’s proposed 1.8 trillion dollar offer. This offer includes
another round of stimulus checks to every American, expanded unemployment
insurance, and 300 billion for state and local governments.
… Which brings me to the major concern we face today. With each passing
day, it becomes increasingly likely that there will not be any bill passed before the
election in two weeks. This would be an unqualified disaster.
Without any passed legislation before the election, Democrats lose all leverage
to push Senate Republicans to the table and the Trump administration will lose
all interest in passing anything- especially if Trump loses.
This means we could possibly go until February 2021
before seeing another economic package. Worse, that package may even require a
Democratic senate to become law. It’s possible that even that scenario is
optimistic — it could then take
a significant amount of time for Democrats to agree on a package among
themselves. What happens to millions upon millions of people in that agonizing
waiting period?
No V here: Paychex/IHS Market Small Business Jobs Index at 94.4
How
much office space CEOs say they’ll need in the future
Brian Romanchuk: Falling
R* is No Accident
The figure
above shows the real Fed Funds rate and the r* estimate. As can be seen, r*
fell to a negative level in the past decade, making it allegedly impossible to
stimulate the economy with interest rate policy (since the nominal rate was
stuck at the zero lower bound).
One
eye-catching observation is that the r* estimate plunges at the latest data
point -- the COVID recession.
In order to
believe the model, we need to accept one of the two possibilities:
1.
the recession in 2020 was caused by a plunge in r*, or
2.
r* falls because we had a recession.
Since
neither possibility appears plausible, new versions of the models have been
released on the N.Y. Fed webpage, with a dummy variable used to notch out the
2020 recession.
Permanently
remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity: survey
Regular Fare:
Nomura’s Charlie McElligott wonders if it might be prudent to hedge the
tail risks associated with “alternative facts,” if you will. “I am beginning to
believe that as what feels like the majority… is now approaching ‘priced-in’
status on a shared view of [an] ‘imminent’ stimulus deal [and] ‘Blue Wave’
thereafter, this may mean that perhaps the best trade might be to look at
expressions of Duration outperformance as hedges,” …
BMO’s Ian Lyngen, Ben Jeffery, and Jon Hill: “While we’re certainly on board
with a repricing toward higher yields into year-end… our bearishness is in the
confines of the realities of an overarching low rate environment, easy monetary
policy stance, and a global pandemic,”
Pettis: Why Foreign Debt
Forgiveness Would Cost Americans Very Little
Stephanie
Kelton Explains Taxes, Debunks National Debt Myth, Talks Dollar Depreciation
MMT is more
a description of how government finance works in advanced, currency-issuing
economies than it is a “theory.” Much of it is not debatable. … MMT is, in many respects, tautological. … Nobody can deny a tautology. It’s impossible. The
Deficit Myth is full of statements that are true because they have to be. And
yet, most of them run counter to conventional “wisdom” on government finances
The world is “awash” in debt. It’s not “sustainable.” “Something’s gotta
give.” Familiar refrains, all. But in many cases, wholly misleading.
2020 has not been defined by good news, that’s for sure. But in a year almost totally devoid of silver linings, one positive
development is that thanks to the proximity of monetary and fiscal policy
reactions to the pandemic, the public now has a better understanding of how
money works. In the same vein, voters in advanced, developed
economies are beginning to come to terms with the fact that discussions around
government debt and deficits have, for years, been defined by misleading
narratives.
Stephen King of HSBC, however, sees things differently:
MMT: The
case against Modern Monetary Theory: The deficit
reality is that we are in effect borrowing from our collective economic futures
Thanks to
Covid-19, government debt is rising rapidly and, for that matter,
appropriately. In the face of recurring lockdowns, we are better off allowing
companies and workers to enter a period of economic “hibernation” in the hope
that, once the virus is under control, they can thaw out. The alternative of
multiple business failures and mass unemployment is of no use to anyone. In the
process, however, we are in effect borrowing from our collective economic
futures. At some point, some of us will be presented with a bill which, if
hibernation policies succeed, we will be in a reasonable position to pay. The
political process will decide whether that bill comes in the form of higher
taxes, more austerity, rising inflation or eventual default. That, I’m afraid,
is the deficit reality.
Bubble Fare:
Value
Investing Legend Sees Bubble "Like No Other" Bursting In "Weeks
Or Months"
Election Ruminations Nostrums Musings:
JPMorgan's
Kolanovic Has Another Warning For Those Expecting A Crushing Biden Victory
The implications are profound: if, as Kolanovic suggests, social media
sentiment (as biased against Trump as it may be) is a leading indicator to
polling, then Trump's is already ahead of Biden in such key battleground states
as Arizona, Florida, and Georgia (with the polls expected to catch up in the
coming days), which combine for a total of 56 electoral votes, and could well
end up being the swing factor deciding the outcome of the election.
A Trump
'surprise' victory is in the offing -- here are the 10 tea leaves pointing to
it
The Pollster Who
Thinks Trump Is Ahead
Trump vs. Biden
on the Economy, Fed, and Markets
The age of passive investing is upon us. Passive investors do not assess
earnings or economic factors. They buy and sell based on cash on hand or cash
needs. They are price insensitive. It is a brain-dead strategy. It is tempting
to conclude that the election will not matter in this environment. That might
be true, but this current bit of investor irrationality will end. When it does,
we would be well-served to understand the economic underpinnings of
corporations. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to review the candidates and
consider how they might affect the economy, Fed, and, ultimately, the financial
markets. The following sections provide our unbiased opinions on how Donald
Trump and Joe Biden are likely to approach critical economic matters if
elected.
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
The
Corporatization of Nursing Homes: A tragic
history of how we’ve treated elderly citizens, for profit
Capitalism
is double-billing us: we pay from our wallets only for our future to be stolen
from us
Here is a
word that risks deterring you from reading on much further, even though it may
hold the key to understanding why we are in such a terrible political, economic
and social mess. That word is “externalities”.
It sounds
like a piece of economic jargon. It is a piece of economic jargon. But it is
also the foundation stone on which the west’s current economic and ideological
system has been built. Focusing on how externalities work and how they have
come to dominate every sphere of our lives is to understand how we are
destroying our planet – and offer at the same time the waypost to a better future.
Limited
liability: Profit without responsibility
The
Time Bomb at the Top of the World
(co-authored by the recently-departed Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
discovering the threat that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) posed to the
stratospheric ozone layer)
sea ice is
not only covering less area; it is also thinner than ever. The oldest sea ice
(more than four years old), which is more resistant to melting, now comprises
less than 1% of all sea ice cover. First-year ice now dominates, leaving the
sea cover more fragile and quicker to melt.
When
the Good is the Enemy of the Sufficient: Biden’s Climate Plan
Quote of the Week:
Mike
Shedlock: ”Before you can have a double-dip recession, the
current one has to end first. And that largely depends on how one measures it.”
Fun Fare:
Tweet Vid of the Week: bear playing with hay
Preferred Tweet Pic of the Week:
Pic1?
Or Pic2?
EXTRA FARE:
Socio-political Fare:
What’s truly scandalous about this whole Hunter thing is that it shows
how normalized elite corruption is in our imperial society and how little
anyone at the top cares.
The
Art of the Steal and China Deal
Joe Biden may not be the brightest light bulb in the
tanning bed, he he knows how to work the Washington incest and looting system,
which operates under the guise of lobbying but is really about selling access.
Joe Biden sold out his country so that he could enrich himself and his family.
If you are a Biden supporter you will not like the
facts presented below. But denial does not erase the emails, the text messages
and the videos that confirm that Joe Biden used his son as a cut out to scoop
up tens of millions of dollars.
Matt Taibbi: With
the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story
Unprecedented efforts to squelch information about a
New York Post story may prove to be more dangerous corruption than whatever
Hunter Biden did with a crooked Ukrainian energy company
Censorship and
America’s Culture of Treachery
Censorship by the media has
increased dramatically in recent years, whether it be by Facebook, Twitter, or
the mainstream media. In this case, Twitter and Facebook initially worked to
limit the Biden corruption story; other mainstream outlets ignored it or
dismissed it as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. This is more than
censorship: it is election interference — in a word, cheating.
…
So where is the source of
the treachery in our society? Often the media focuses on Donald Trump and his
circle, but we need look no further than who is doing the censoring. Big Tech,
the mainstream media, academia, and Hollywood. But why? These groups have
several things in common. They all lean left, they all deal in power, and they
all believe they have the answers. So here is the rub: Treachery arises here
because liberals are just as likely to act unethically than conservatives to
gain or preserve power. … Far too often, it is Fox News and other conservative
outlets that are condemned for malfeasance and malpractice when it’s liberal
sites and power centers that are the true masters of manipulation.
The
Mainstream Press Is Desperate To Help Joe Biden, Even If It Means A Media
Blackout
The Hunter Biden story isn’t going away, it’s becoming a story about Joe
Biden — despite the media’s best efforts to make it go away.
It’s hard to imagine a media establishment more corrupt and insular than
the American political press, which refuses to cover one of the biggest political stories of the 2020
presidential election unfolding just weeks before Election Day. Despite the
best efforts of the corporate media and Big Tech, the story of Hunter Biden’s
emails keeps getting out there, and with each passing day it gets worse for
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Of course, the story is not just
about the younger Biden’s emails anymore. It’s about the extent of Joe Biden’s role in what can
only be described as a massive foreign corruption scheme worth tens of millions
of dollars.
The Rise of The
Corporate Censors: How America Is Drifting Toward The Chinese Model Of Media
The Damage
Russiagate Has Done: Authoritarian liberals have unleashed a censorious syndrome
peculiar to our national character
At this point we are amid a
frenzy of what Hannah Arendt called “defactualization” in a 1971 essay she
titled “Lying in Politics.” Facts are fragile, Arendt astutely observed,
because they can so easily be manipulated to produce a desired image. “It is
this fragility,” she wrote, “that makes deception so very easy up to a point,
and so tempting.” The latest example of this phenom concerns the emails of
Hunter Biden, candidate Joe’s errant son, which persuasively incriminate both
in very profitable influence-peddling schemes when Papa was Barack Obama’s
veep.
… Anything goes if
implicating Russia solves a political problem for the Democrats and keeps the
war machine going for the Pentagon and the national security state. It defers
the moment — at some point it will come — when the press is exposed for its
radically stupid overinvestment in the Russiagate nonsense. The price America
has already begun to pay is very high.
…. The worst consequence of
Russiagate, in my view, is the swoon of hysteria it has sent many Americans
into, a syndrome peculiar to our national character dating to the Quaker
hangings in Boston during the early 1660s and repeated many times since. We are
divided once again between the paranoid and the rational.
Branko Milanovic: What's
at stake? A short text on US elections
What are the stakes in the
forthcoming US presidential election? I would put them in one word: “normalcy”.
…
The United States prior to
Trump could hardly be described as having been in a desirable state of affairs.
Not only that: it is that very “normalcy” that brought Trump to power in the first
place. It is useful to refresh one’s memories. Under George W Bush, the US created endless wars that destabilized the
Middle East and killed, according to some estimates, half a million people. Under the same president, it also
produced the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. And then under
the next president it bailed out those responsible for the crisis, sowed chaos
in Libya, and ignored the decimation of the
American middle class. So, what was “normal” then?
…
But what will “normalcy”
bring in “positive” terms--not only what the Biden administration will “not”
do? One cannot be very optimistic. Not
only because of Biden’s half-a-century lack-luster record, but because of a
narrative that the liberal establishment, which now includes both centrist
Democrats and many Republicans, has
become comfortable with. It is a narrative where everything prior to Trump was
excellent, and then fell into pieces. That narrative is not only wrong (for the
reasons I mentioned above) but would lead to inaction. The United States needs
major changes in its distribution of wealth, elitist education system,
dysfunctional health care, plutocratic-ruled political system, crumbling
infrastructure, declining middle class, unleashed monopolies. Who is going to
make all these changes?
Quotes of the Week:
Former
Vice President Joe Biden suffered from either a senior moment or a Freudian
slip on
Saturday, when he told Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer - a longtime Obama
aide - that his campaign has assembled the "most extensive and inclusive voter
fraud organization in the history of American politics."
“Joe Biden:
Nothing will fundamentally change.
Liberals:
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF ALL TIME”
Kunstler,
quoting Trump…: “The
difference between you and me,” Mr. Trump said to the ever more ghostly Joe
Biden, fading mentally late in the action on the debate stage, “is that I’m not
a politician and you are, and you’re a crooked politician.” Millions watching
this spectacle might not have noticed, due to the media’s near-complete
blackout of news detailing the Biden family’s adventures in systematic global
moneygrubbing, but the Democratic candidate for president has political Ebola,
a hemorrhagic fever of credibility, now gushing out of every pore and orifice.
Twitter and
Facebook may try to squelch the story, but the evidence is all over the
Internet now, like blood on a crime scene, in verifiable emails, texts,
Snapchats, memoranda, and bank records that Ol’ White Joe Biden is at the
center of a decades-long influence-peddling spree, selling his personal
services to China, Russia, Ukraine, and any other country seeking favors in US
government policy, and that this slime-trail of grift disqualifies him from
holding high office as much as the irreversible rot of his cognitive abilities.
Via Edward
Curtin: The
columnist Russell Baker once said the purpose of such political entertainment
is to “provide a manageably small cast for a national sitcom, or soap opera, or
docudrama, making it easy for media people to persuade themselves they are
covering the news while mostly just entertaining us.”
Chris
Hedges: “Only
one thing matters to the corporate state. It is not democracy. It is not truth.
It is not the consent of the governed. It is not income inequality. It is not
the surveillance state. It is not endless war. It is not jobs. It is not the
climate crisis. It is the primacy of corporate power — which has extinguished
our democracy, taken from us our most basic civil liberties and left most of
the working class in misery — and the increase and consolidation of its wealth
and power.”
Tweets of the Week:
Lou
Dobbs: Important
Film: Amanda Milius explains how @PATPmovie exposes the greatest political scandal in our
country’s history and why it is important for all Americans. Watch it at https://patpmovie.com/.
R.I.P. Fare:
Farewell James Randi, prince of reason. Now who’ll mock the quacks and anti-vaxxers?
Satirical Fare:
Health Experts Now Recommend Maximizing Social Distance By Attending A Biden Rally
The
Official Babylon Bee Voters' Guide
Pics of the Week:
