CFF Friday Night Special: State of Emergency
Greetings, friends and beloved readers! Happy Friday the Thirteenth! I write to you, tonight, from inside the bunker. Having sealed the ten-ton blast door and having concluded my evening Skype with Emperor Putin, I thought it a dandy idea to cap this week’s fascinating national events of note. (That, and MB dialed it up). Right to it, shall we?
The Coronavirus (no song tonight)
COVID-19. Novel Coronavirus-19. nCoV-19. Wuhan-400. The Bat Soup Crazy Bug. It’s here, there’s fear, and I have no use for it. Check the following for pandemic information:
CSSE MAP - Official World Tally
The New York Times - Alternative Tally
THE CDC - Dedicated Information
Earlier today, there was an intermittent reporting error at the CSSE site concerning a drop in total US infections. I was mildly concerned, though the issue of the total has been corrected. However, following the correction, the US has just shy of 2,000 cases - call it a ten-fold increase in a week or ten days. Not good. It’s also not good that Georgia and Florida are still blanked as of press time. I assume no ill intention behind that. The NYT has GA with 42 cases, none in TPC home territory - yet. Do not assume it will stay that way. Other countries are still seeing steep daily increases and I would expect the US to have 5,000 to 10,000 by this time next week. We’ll play math games with the economy in a second. COVID-19 is infectious and it is lethal. But! The odds of getting it are still low and the odds of dying from it are even lower. For now, health-wise, do me two favors. One, please do not worry excessively or live in fear. Two, take care of yourself. Do that for old Perrin, would ya?
Wash your hands. Avoid contact with people you suspect are ill (or at risk of becoming ill due to your visit). Heck, look at the CDC recommendations. For once, I can agree with the government about something. For hope, look at the numbers in China. Hardest hit so far, they are making a drastic recovery. We’ll do the same. It may be tough for a little while: so far, we’ve lost to cancelation or postponement: the NBA, the NCAA Madness, the NHL, MLB, Disney, Forrest Gump, and THE MASTERS. Yes, the tournament is on hold - huge for both golf and Georgia. But, gas hasn’t been this cheap in years. The supermarkets still have food (as they do in Italy and China). And, there’s no shortage of anything except hand sanitizer and idiotic punditry on television. Speaking of, this afternoon, our beloved leader declared a…
National State of Emergency
On the surface, this appears nothing more than a way to shuffle around disaster money to the states and cities. They need it. There are also loosened regulations and restrictions on things from testing to pharmaceuticals to loans. The door is open to the potential imposition of other measures, up to and including martial law. I doubt it will come to that. With apologies to the Q gang, my bones do not feel a Storm coming. Yet. No, for now, this is about outbreak management and the economy. Here, I do smell trouble. If you listen closely, you’ll hear some of the craziest, most desperate-sounding proposals and theories going around - from all quarters - about loans, taxes, direct payments, and more. I will have much more on that, perhaps in a fun Socratic format, next week. For now, there is…
Real Economic Danger
Last year, from September until the end of December, the Federal Reserve pumped an unbelievable amount of cheap, fake cash into the commercial banks. How much? I, nor anyone else, has any idea. Estimates range from $6 Trillion to $12 Trillion. A LOT. All week, the Fed was back to the nightly injections of $100 Billion+. Then, on Thursday night, they did something remarkable even by their own standards. They conjured up $1.5 Trillion. Instantly. Press of a button. Done. That, apparently, is the price of stabilizing the stock market for a one-day reset. Monday, we’ll know if it holds; I suspect it will not and that more and even larger sums will be required. This is Gresham’s Law in fulfillment. This is bad. Very bad. Now, the math games: $1,500,000,000,000 is:
- About what the government collects in income taxes in five or six months;
- About what the federal budget was during Bill Clinton’s tenure;
- The total amount of federal debt late in Reagan’s first term;
- The GDP of the entire US economy as recently as 1974;
- Enough money to pay off ALL students loans (right now, *poof*, gone);
- Enough to buy 100 new Ford Class aircraft carriers; and,
- If 1,500,000,000,000 6.14″ dollar bills were laid end-to-end, fashioned into a giant fiat ribbon, the ribbon would be almost long enough to stretch from the Earth to Mars, or from the Earth to Venus and back.
That last example was silly, but this is a ludicrous issue. And, this happened immediately after the Trumpster told the nation that the banks were well-capitalized and healthy. Healthy banks do not need the GDP of Spain overnight, especially coming off a period wherein they were given the equivalent of the GDP of Japan. The playbook and the games aren’t working anymore. Next week, I, through some expert commentary, will get into what this means. It is my theory that they are using the virus as a cover or a diversion from the pending collapse of an economy based on sorcery. If (or when) this insane money starts to leak into the economy at large, then the money itself will become the emergency issue. Think Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic.
For now, I’ll leave you on a happy set of notes. We could come out of this healthier as a People. Happier too. We could see a Jubilee, a total reset and a return to sound monetary practices. We might learn how to easily make our own hand sanitizer (⅔ rubbing alcohol, ⅓ aloe vera - you’re welcome). We might see a few waves from The Storm. We might even have a new baby boom. Hey! You two millennials! Go work on that one, right now!
Night, kids.
