RochesterRob

I wonder what we did to deserve that?

That is what many business people will have to do.

Not all landlords are fat cats like you see on television. Some have to have the rent to pay the mortgage, insurance, repairs not covered by a tenant, etc.. So much of the stock market is based on emotion. The DOW at 28,000 could have been overvalued and perhaps 17,000 could be equilibrium. A lot of people were banking on the gain from 18,000 to 28,000 and will be hard pressed when a recovery of the DOW does not come. I would agree with your notion if we were a nation of savers versus spenders. If we were savers the valuation of homes, properties, etc would have never appreciated during the last 40 years like it did. We took what our grandparents would have saved and through it into spending raising values.

Again, I would point out the complexity of the current economy. Many small businesses operate on razor thin margins. Being without income for several weeks would take a very long time to come out of and in the interim creates hardship and affects the ability to service debt. In my mind many in the government are far removed from what many experience in the economy. For quite a few of us it is not a matter of waiting for our office to open back up and collect unemployment plus other subsistence payments during the interim. A pizza shop operator may be able to pay the house mortgage and run the household on subsistence payments but that will not pay the rent on the shop, the utility bill (heat has to stay on so the pipes don't freeze), and the food supplier to name a few. That aside many were planning on taking the gain in the Dow the past few years and spending it. Many businesses most likely were depending on it. Not just retirement splurges but just buying a basic vehicle, an addition or garage on the home property, or a wedding gift for the kids so they can start their own life. Etc..

I doubt Bill is.

We don't know that a downturn will not last for years. There are so many more working parts to the economy than there were during the 1930's. Also, once employment recovers that does not automatically mean the Dow recovers to the pre-virus level. In the mean time quite a few Americans planned on using those pre-virus gains to fund an active retirement. Purchasing things such as vacation properties, campers, ATV's, etc. and those purchases may be suspended indefinitely. Businesses depend on making sales on these kinds of items and their income will be reduced. Our economic model for the past few decades has been the velocity of money which means greater economic activity when a dollar is passed more readily through the economy. People holding money lessens economic activity.

Local Wegman's update : very little in the meat dept. Milk 2 gallon limit per sale. Bread in surprisingly good availability. Fresh vegetables in good supply. Rice, pasta, and canned soup very little inventory. I grabbed a box of elbows and a box of rice. Probably 500 rolls of their toilet paper so I grabbed three rolls even though the limit was 6. Probably have 18 rolls total now with a few going to the in-laws. Heavy traffic even for a Friday. I did not get over into the freezer area. The plan for the week is involuntary vegetarian chili, mac salad, coleslaw all home made with a few bits of meat both bought today and from the freezer. No ground beef in the house at present. I might go see what the Mennonites have if I venture over to Yates County.

I worry about a jump in suicides. A lot of businesses will look to automation that use little or no automation now. People that did all the things "right" will be blindsided by the new way of doing things leaving them helpless long term. Just so much ahead of us that our politicians and business leaders will not see until it gets to be a huge problem.

Must be a fair number of these people are not in business for themselves. There are people in my own town political party and in my local church that I would not trust with a penny of my money. Now I am supposed to trust a country half way around the globe that prides itself in keeping most matters secret?

It could be US companies or it could be the Chinese government. Apple does have a vested interest to make sure their stocks and other assets do not crater workers be darned. The longer the problem lingers the more consumer confidence could be shaken. It could take decades for the Dow to recover to its pre-virus high. A lot of executives are literally banking on the market being at the highs it most recently was at to live the lavish life that they have known. Human history is filled with examples of people stepping over the bodies of other people in the name of wealth. We are not even 100 years past some serious abuses of the environment and people here in the US to produce wealth. What is actually going on over there is limited to guessing but I am definitely not going to rule out the possibility of people acting at their worst to gain wealth.

What's the Food nazi (Seinfeld) up to these days? I'll send Kramer by to pick up some soup.

In China you are trying to apply Western standards where they do not exist. Why would Apple reopen stores in China and in Wuhan? To make things look normal to the West and behind the scenes I would bet that it was a lot more than a simple request. Why does staffing in China appear to be heading back to normal? China has 4 times the labor pool to man its industries. It most likely pulled labor from areas that had a minimal problem. Many provinces are overmanned with peasant farmers so government would not mind addressing that problem with some relocating. This assumes that there is honesty in disclosure on all fronts China and USA. What is China's incentive to lie? Read up on the Cold War and the rise of communism after the Second World War. Just like many of us here do not want to admit that we are wrong on certain matters you have people around the globe who feel the same way about their politics. Further, I feel the US is vilified in part due to its alliance with Japan. Read up on that history. Japan was brutal on China during WWII and Japan has had an immense fear of Chinese invasion going back nearly 1000 years. The term Kamikaze means divine wind which is a reference to an event where the Japanese mainland was spared an invasion by China because the seas disrupted said invasion.

Food supply should be addressed as well. Not saying we should do things that we do not do well such as cane sugar but make sure things such as farm equipment parts can be readily sourced.

After bragging about his $1.7 trillion climate change plan, Biden doubled down and said there would be “no new fracking” when he’s president and “not another coal plant will be built” under his administration. Biden driving closer to the cliff.

I hope people take away from this that China will never be 100 percent trustworthy when it comes to outsiders.

How would we know? Hillary only sends updated score cards to her most devoted followers. Like those who work for liberal think tanks like the Soros Cubicle Farm.

My understanding is that Wende is the go-to facility for prisoners with health issues. Won't be there too along as California wants to try him as well. Probably will be back here as NY sentenced him first once done out there.

Reminder: But occasionally they slip up. The Shiller article does come up as it most likely requires a paid subscription to access. Anyways, my viewpoint is to take this event extremely serious. A much broader segment of the economy will be affected this time unlike 2008 and 1987. I have not read Forbes much since college but I don't know that many non-sunny day articles concerning stocks and the economy get published there.

There's still time. Tibs can provide his own whipping post courtesy of his dungeon.

And we can see that chaos and panic have taken hold at the Soros think tank.

..And the masks slip off.....

Ask your Soros overseer for a break because you have plum run out of fresh material.

Deek's point was get to work on green energy as entrepreneurs then watch the money flow to it versus arbitrary edicts by a clueless central government.

Your hammer and sickle underwear surely was.

Don't make either "G" in GG stand for gullible. China is a closed society with traditionally very minimal media freedom. I doubt that their leadership worries about covering up new cases as they don't expect it to reach the light of day in terms of the West finding out. We are talking about a nation where most problems are dealt with in terms of soldiers having orders to shoot resisters. I think that most of us can see a cascading effect through the economy. Let's make changes starting with getting rid of the usury provisions that were dealt to the credit card companies back in the early 1980's. For that matter let's punish any would be loan sharks by holding their legs under the lid of a garbage truck while the hydraulic rams make the lid crush down on the legs.