Gun Free Zone

I read some news this morning that put me in a bad mood.

CNN reports this:

NY Fed vows to pump in $1.5 trillion to fight coronavirus-linked ‘highly unusual disruptions’ on Wall Street

The New York Federal Reserve is taking out the big guns to calm panicky financial markets.

The NY Fed announced plans Thursday to inject vast amounts of money into the financial system, totaling at least $1.5 trillion. And the Fed promised to start purchasing a range of Treasuries — a step that effectively marks a return to the 2008 crisis-era bond buying program known as quantitative easing, or QE.

This was what both the GW Bush and Obama stimulus did.

“The market in a sense broke today. The Fed came out and fixed it,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group.

No, it didn’t.

The NY Fed said it would offer $500 billion in a three-month repo operation Thursday afternoon — and then will do the same thing the next day. Moreover, the Fed said it will offer a $500 billion one-month repo operation Friday and take additional steps as well.

The NY Fed’s moves briefly improved the mood on Wall Street, lifting US stocks off their lows during an historic selloff. Markets are still are track for their worst week since 2008.

It lifted the stock market.

Repeat after me: “the stock market is not the economy.”

CNBC reports this:

Fed to pump in more than $1 trillion in dramatic ramping up of market intervention amid coronavirus meltdown

The Federal Reserve stepped into financial markets Thursday for the second day in a row and the third time this week, this time dramatically ramping up asset purchases amid the turmoil created by the coronavirus.

However, questions remain whether the Fed can arrest the market’s issues on its own. Wall Street has been looking for an aggressive fiscal response and has yet to get it from Washington lawmakers.

“The virus was the catalyst but it’s not the cause,” said Christopher Whalen, founder of Whalen Global Advisors. “Both bonds and equities were inflated rather dramatically by our friends at the Fed. You’re seeing the end game for monetary policy here, which is at a certain point you have to stop. Otherwise you get grotesque asset bubbles like we saw, and the engine just runs out of fuel.”

Reading both of those articles, let me see if I get this straight.

The market is in a downturn because people are not going to work, people are not going out and spending money like they normally would, and there are shortages in supply from overseas.

The FED’s answer is to bump the stock market and the banks.

So the stockbrokers and hedge fund managers and C-suite executives will have the value of their stock inflated and get huge bonuses, but layoffs will continue as production and consumption dry up.

The FED is creating another bubble, that can only end poorly.

This thing is going to amount to another trillion-dollar golden parachute for Wall Street, the way that the Obama stimulus did.

The career bank executives at the FED only care about one group of people, the bank executives, and only know how to do one thing, dump money into what benefits the bank executives.

If someone is going to spend $1.5 trillion dollars, how about doing it in a way that is useful.

Order every federal worker a brand new pair of Berry compliant shoes.

Berry compliance means that they are made in America from American sourced materials.

Fuck, have the government order a whole new fleet of cars and trucks and use the Department of Agriculture to buy every farmer in America a new tractor.

Just make sure that they mandate that every car, truck, and tractor is made in America from American made materials, sourced through American owned companies.

Build a new federal office building and demand that American workers only use American made tools to do the job, and let the construction workers get reimbursed for buying made in American tools and equipment.

At least then we can guarantee that assembly line workers at Danner, Rocky Boots, DeWalt, Milwaukee, John Deere, Caterpillar, Ford, Chevy, and Goodyear will still be going into work and making things.

Making sure that tooling and raw materials are US-made means that the stimulus will filter down to Carpenter, Kennametal, Nucor, Alcoa, and all the other vendors, suppliers, and subcontractors.

Congress could pass a law mandating that Berry Compliance be extended to everything the US Federal government purchases.

Every toilet set in every federal office building should be injection molded in a plastics mill in Indiana or Ohio.

There is a way to make sure American workers are still clocking in and getting paid and having money to spend.

The FED won’t do that though, because they only give a fuck about the stock market, and as long as their banking buddies land safely from an economic crash with golden parachutes, all is well for them.  If you end up out of work and upside-down on your mortgage in Flyover country, they couldn’t give less of a fuck.

The FED needs to be added to your list.

I was supposed to go do my usual doctor’s visit next week, but I just got a call from his office assistant. I was asked if I was coming for anything else that the usual refill visit or did I have something else.  Since I have nothing really pending other than the same crap and that is according to the latest labs, I was offered the choice of having the doctor call me and do the appointment via phone due to Beer Virus precautions..

Oh. Hell. Yes!

That is the lazy in me doing a bit of a jig, but the common sense side of the brain also agrees. sick people go to doctor’s offices and leave their contagious crap behind, so why a non-sick people have to risk it? Another advantage is that it reduces personnel wear and tear who might be needed later if things do get way out of control. I am also sure that my nice doc, who is an old coot, wants to reduce as much as he can his exposure to sick people.

There might be some advantages to this virus thing after all.

/snorts Zicam nasal>

Eliana Plott is a reporter for the New York Time and Taco Stand. She tweeted her amazement on how Trump supporters do not trust media which apparently is the worse ever but only because of Trump. I am pretty sure we “disdained” you and your kind years before Trump ever thought about throwing his hat into the race. And of course, her tweet had some very nice responses including this:

And here is the whole litany:

You should no be surprised about people having so much derision for your trade when internet  memes tell a more accurate story than your professional labor.  Now that I think about it, the term “professional” applied to you, happens to match another type of labor which also comes with developing redness of the knees.

The NBA backed China to the hilt, or perhaps to the balls, against the United States.  The NBA, which criticized America with alacrity, covered for and even defended China’s political repression because the Chinese basketball market is larger than the total number of Americans.

Now, because of the Coronavirus, the NBA had to cancel its season and is refunding tickets.

I hope that there are contract provisions with vendors that obligate the NBA to pay them if the NBA chooses to cancel events.

The NBA decided to be a mouthpiece for the Chinese because of the money, and now the Chinese mishandling of the Coronavirus has cost the NBA their 2020 season.

Good.

This time from The Intercept:

Why I’d Rather Be in Italy for the Coronavirus Pandemic

Please, do tell me why.  I would love to know.

Wait.  Let me guess… Trump?

I HAVE SPENT the last week looking for flights from New York to Italy — not because of coronavirus-inspired flash sales, but because I would rather go home to a country that’s currently in the grip of one of the worst outbreaks in the world than stay in the United States, where life is about to get infinitely worse.

How is it going to get infinitely worse?  Italy can’t handle body disposal right now.

More than 15,000 people have tested positive for the new coronavirus in Italy, more than 1,000 have died, and hospitals are at a breaking point. Hundreds of medical staff have been infected, and overwhelmed doctors are reporting having to choose which patients to treat.

Suddenly that socialized healthcare doesn’t seem all that great.

Even as the death toll back home continues to climb and the lockdown gets stricter by the day, I would much rather weather this pandemic in Italy than here. I just can’t shake the terror that the United States, my adopted country, is fundamentally unequipped to handle what lies ahead.

I’m still waiting for the “T” word…

In the U.S., despite weeks of notice, officials are scrambling to get a grip on a quickly approaching disaster. Trump’s press conference last night was the most terrifying public statement I have ever heard, even from him. Days ago, as the number of infections rose at home, I began hearing about friends of friends here in New York who were struggling to get tested despite worsening symptoms. And yet as cases multiply in the U.S., the number of people tested here remains abysmally low. No one knows what’s coming, but we know far less here in the U.S. than people do back home.

It is a tragic irony that a public health emergency unlike anything we have seen in generations would come as Americans are constantly told that the idea of health care as a fundamental right is entitled, radical, crazy talk. What is crazy, to anyone outside the United States, is that it’s even a question.

Does she read what she wrote?  “[O]verwhelmed doctors are reporting having to choose which patients to treat” means that the Italian national healthcare system was totally unprepared too and is over max capacity.  The Italian system is now at the point where some government-appointed doctor decides who he can try to save and who is more likely to die.

That might work in Europe but not in the US.

The Italian government has tentatively approved a $28 billion plan to help Italians through the crisis, and mortgage payments and bills are on hold. The U.S. government will have to step in to mitigate the crisis too, but some politicians are already balking at the prospect, and I can’t blame my fellow Americans for going into this with low expectations. If the 2008 financial crisis is any indication, regular people won’t see much of any future bailout. Italians know that they’ll get through looming hard times because their government will do its part — not because it is a particularly good, generous, or even functional government, but because that is what governments are supposed to do. 

Um… you are welcome Italy.  I guess.  Also, thank the English and the Germans while you are at it.

I wonder how many Britons are happy for Brexit at the moment because Italy may bail out its citizens but it’s going to be the rest of Europe and the US that bails out Italy.

And in some ways, the responses to the virus in my two countries have been similar: late and misleadingly reassuring. But for all of Italy’s flaws, I would still rather be there than here. I have no confidence that the U.S. will do what is right during and after this pandemic. This country is structurally incapable and fundamentally unwilling to put people over money, and all people over just some.

Yeah… Americans are just the worst.

Whatever myths my family in Italy held about the United States, they have largely come undone over the years I have lived here. I have found myself explaining countless times how everything from the U.S. criminal justice system to health care regularly fails to do what Italians expect of their institutions, no matter how much they criticize them. I have explained to incredulous friends used to complaining about Italy’s crippling bureaucracy just how unjust and racist U.S. bureaucracy can be.

Please go back to Italy, I’ve heard enough.

And yet even with people locked up in their homes away from family and neighbors, a strong sense of solidarity has emerged. Italians know they’ll get through this because they have each other’s back. I am not sure we Americans can say that.

I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong.  I thought this would be another example of TDS.  This is much worse than that, this is full Woke anti-Americanism.

There is a website howmanygovernmentshasitalyhad.com and it is at 66.

The Economist published an article titled Why is it so hard to form a government in Italy?  They designed it that way.

Euronews has an article titled Why do governments in Italy change so often?

This is an article from the Washington Post: Why do Italian governments so often end in collapse?

Mark my words, the end result of this virus outbreak in Italy will be government collapse and moving onto government number 67.

But the author here doesn’t care about that, because in her mind what makes Italy great is that it is prepared to make the entire country take a sick day, and the government will pay for everything while people stay home.

America isn’t rushing to cover the mortgage payments and rent checks for people with Coronavirus, so it must be an evil, racist, greedy nation.

This woman would rather risk dying of Coronavirus in European hotspot of a global pandemic because the current incompetent Italian government is handing out free money.

If that is her metric, she is welcome to go to Italy.  I wish her the best.

When her corpse is finally removed from her hotel five days after she’s died, I hope it is consolation to her family that the Italian government will foot the bill for the hotel room.

Unsurprisingly.

Important Update: @NRA Annual Meeting pic.twitter.com/3NeDOELRrk

— NRA (@NRA) March 12, 2020