There should be a national dialogue in getting back to work

[Chef Jim]

42 minutes ago, Magox said:

Mortgage applications up 9%

 

FROM LAST YEAR!

 

 

Interesting little tidbit there at the end.

 

I would like to see some proof of that.  I don't doubt it, I do think that the virus will change some consumer and migratory behavior.  

 

I was thinking this yesterday. People will not be as willing to live on top of one another.  Progressives have been touting the urban plan when people packed closely is often not good. I wonder if they’re still going to push this?  I can’t tell you how often the wife and I got sick living in SF. She nearly died from some terrible respiratory ailment that was never diagnosed. 

[GG]

41 minutes ago, Magox said:

Mortgage applications up 9%

 

FROM LAST YEAR!

 

 

Interesting little tidbit there at the end.

 

I would like to see some proof of that.  I don't doubt it, I do think that the virus will change some consumer and migratory behavior.  

 

 

You'll see it when the realtors provide data.  My agent in Hudson Valley says this is the busiest he's been in years will all the inbound calls from NYC and they still can't do live showings w/ clients.   Other data shows that 40% of Manhattanites fled in April.

[dhg]

Not sure if this has been posted. Wonder how many that voted are having fun collecting their unemployment checks +$600 weekly, doing nothing, and have ZERO motivation getting back to work because they are making more on unemployment. 

[IDBillzFan]

8 minutes ago, GG said:

 

You'll see it when the realtors provide data.  My agent in Hudson Valley says this is the busiest he's been in years will all the inbound calls from NYC and they still can't do live showings w/ clients.   Other data shows that 40% of Manhattanites fled in April.

 

I'm in the process of a re-fi to a 15 year to take advantage of these ridiculous rates, and my money guy said the re-fi market is crazy busy for him, but he's got us in a holding pattern as rates tend do go down as we get closer to an election. I'm waiting to see what rates we're looking at this morning, as they have been all over the map and VERY difficult to lock down for any length of time. This is the first time I've ever had all my paperwork in and still haven't locked on a rate yet.

 

And yeah, I know, I'm not a money guy and I'm sure some money guys will tell me my money guy is wrong, but I don't give a schitt. There is little squabbling from me if I have to choose 2.8% or hold out for 2.5% mortgage. 

[shoshin]

18 hours ago, Magox said:

 

It's plausible.  I'm not going to lie, the recovery is starting offer more rapidly than I anticipated.  With that said, my biggest worries wasn't so much the takeoff of the recovery, that I thought would happen.  It's the follow through.  There will be many restaurants and small businesses that will permanently shudder as a result of the lock downs.  They will eventually be replaced but that doesn't happen overnight and in order for the economy to be made whole, that means all those businesses that shut down will have to be revived again in some shape or form.   

 

I know this is an unpopular position on this board, but with interest rates near 0%, it makes a lot of sense for the government to borrow to stimulate the economy.  I'm not a full Keynesian sort of guy, I disagreed with much of it under Obama because I thought the problems the economy had were structural which required structural policy prescriptions.

 

This is not structural, this is a matter of reopening and giving stimulus in targeted manners to get the economy more quickly back to whole.

 

The stock market will recover faster than unemployment will. The odds of us getting to single digit unemployment before next summer are low. Companies are going to rush back in at first but they will be slow to re-establish full employment and small businesses especially restaurants that still can't open at capacity will really struggle to move ahead. 

 

Saw a stat that since 1948, we have had 11 months total of double digit unemployment. We may get to that consecutively in 2020-21, although I sure hope not. 

 

47 minutes ago, Magox said:

 

Possibly.  Makes sense.   I do think that there will be more companies employing work-at-home models.

 

I know our company, we made the decision to have more of our employees work from home.  We had the luxury to first have seasonal 1099  contracted  workers sort of show their mettle first and it gave us the chance to observe their habits, ethics and results to give us an opportunity to pick the cream of the crop.   That's helped us greatly.

 

The thing about work-at-home jobs is that there are trade offs.  If you can only go by a resume and some referrals and you have a newly hired employee there are logistical challenges to getting the employee up-to-speed and you truly don't know their work habits in a somewhat unsupervised environment.  Clearly working in an office you have more control of these issues.

 

But the on the positive side of the ledger, it's less costly, you can attract better nationwide talent as opposed to being stuck with what is available in the region where the company resides and now with these sort of virus disaster issues you are less affected.

 

We actually opened up a call center this past year and now they are all working from home for now.  We are about to open up another office in Savannah GA. and Boca. Florida,  but most of our team works from home.   There are advantages and disadvantages to both models.

 

We've had work from wherever since I started. I would say the biggest tradeoff is quality of team-building and idea-exchange. You can do it virtually and we do but it's never as fulfilling. 

 

We still are doing it because that's what people want but I'm convinced we're less innovative and less of a tight team because of it. Still...people love it and no one wants to change. So. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by shoshin

[Magox]

2 minutes ago, shoshin said:

 

The stock market will recover faster than unemployment will. The odds of us getting to single digit unemployment before next summer are low. Companies are going to rush back in at first but they will be slow to re-establish full employment and small businesses especially restaurants that still can't open at capacity will really struggle to move ahead. 

 

Saw a stat that since 1948, we have had 11 months total of double digit unemployment. We may get to that consecutively in 2020-21, although I sure hope not. 

 

 

 

It depends on how deep the hole gets and the confidence of the American public to get back to a more normalized society.  

 

If you look at airline travel, hotel booking and google metrics, people are getting out.  A lot more so than anticipated at this juncture.  If there are no other media driven scares that play into the pscyhe of consumers from increased infections etc.  Then I happen to think that the recovery has a lot of low hanging fruit to recoup.

 

I could see the economy easily getting to 8% unemployment by next summer, provided the aforementioned happens.  And if we do get a vaccine that is available for over 100 million people in the US to use by the end of the year, then I fully expect that to happen.

 

The problem from my view isn't getting to 8%, it's what will happen afterwards.  This is where I think it gets a lot more difficult.  This is the recouping of those small businesses that permanently shuddered.  Those don't come back overnight.  Hopefully some additional lending legislation with some of it being forgivable can provide those that lost their businesses a second bite at the apple to attempt to make themselves whole again.

[IDBillzFan]

2 minutes ago, Magox said:

The problem from my view isn't getting to 8%, it's what will happen afterwards.  This is where I think it gets a lot more difficult.  This is the recouping of those small businesses that permanently shuddered.  Those don't come back overnight.  Hopefully some additional lending legislation with some of it being forgivable can provide those that lost their businesses a second bite at the apple to attempt to make themselves whole again.

 

What we don't hear discussed much, but is happening everywhere, is that many companies are using this opportunity to re-calibrate not just the number of employees, but their salaries. When this hit, the first things a lot of firms did was release employees that were borderline employees to begin with. Those jobs aren't coming back.

 

I have no idea how large that number is, but it happened everywhere and very few people discuss it.

[dubs]

Not sure if this was posted, but I’ve barely seen this covered in the news. Which is strange given the potential implications

 

https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-implies-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-below-0-3/

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by dubs

[B-Man]

Democrats Are Running Out of Arguments

by Conrad Black

 

Original Article

 

 

 

[Boatdrinks]

1 hour ago, dhg said:

Not sure if this has been posted. Wonder how many that voted are having fun collecting their unemployment checks +$600 weekly, doing nothing, and have ZERO motivation getting back to work because they are making more on unemployment. 

Most. The local news outlets are all pushing the results of this poll, as they know polls are used to shape public opinion. One local tv station also mentioned that “ only self identified conservatives” thought that waiting too long to reopen was a bigger problem. As if they don’t matter and are obviously being unreasonable. I’m not shocked at the results of the poll because most of those who are for staying closed down are all too willing to sacrifice their freedoms in exchange for a government check. The story also stated that a large percentage of those who said too early had lost a job. The correlation is pretty strong. They don’t care about their job, working, or if jobs return. The government will bail them out ! 

[B-Man]

 

 

Media botched the virus crisis and made it ‘worse’: Poll.

 

 

 

 

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

4 hours ago, Magox said:

 

Possibly.  Makes sense.   I do think that there will be more companies employing work-at-home models.

 

I know our company, we made the decision to have more of our employees work from home.  We had the luxury to first have seasonal 1099  contracted  workers sort of show their mettle first and it gave us the chance to observe their habits, ethics and results to give us an opportunity to pick the cream of the crop.   That's helped us greatly.

 

The thing about work-at-home jobs is that there are trade offs.  If you can only go by a resume and some referrals and you have a newly hired employee there are logistical challenges to getting the employee up-to-speed and you truly don't know their work habits in a somewhat unsupervised environment.  Clearly working in an office you have more control of these issues.

 

But the on the positive side of the ledger, it's less costly, you can attract better nationwide talent as opposed to being stuck with what is available in the region where the company resides and now with these sort of virus disaster issues you are less affected.

 

We actually opened up a call center this past year and now they are all working from home for now.  We are about to open up another office in Savannah GA. and Boca. Florida,  but most of our team works from home.   There are advantages and disadvantages to both models.

 

...that and the loss of face to face interaction with colleagues are my concerns (44 years in business, so I'm a dinosaur)…...I'm not convinced ( nor am my two c-execs) that I/we get the same employee productivity in a "work from home" environment as I do "in the office (they swear I do)"....that's just me though...…...

Edited May 27, 2020 by OldTimeAFLGuy

[dubs]

11 minutes ago, Boatdrinks said:

Most. The local news outlets are all pushing the results of this poll, as they know polls are used to shape public opinion. One local tv station also mentioned that “ only self identified conservatives” thought that waiting too long to reopen was a bigger problem. As if they don’t matter and are obviously being unreasonable. I’m not shocked at the results of the poll because most of those who are for staying closed down are all too willing to sacrifice their freedoms in exchange for a government check. The story also stated that a large percentage of those who said too early had lost a job. The correlation is pretty strong. They don’t care about their job, working, or if jobs return. The government will bail them out ! 

 

The longer this goes on and the more we know (and the less we hear from the media) the more apparent this whole thing was in fact, somewhat of a "hoax".  Not that it exists or is deadly, but the extent to which this has been pushed as a game-changer is a hoax.

 

Think about it.  We have seen a complete shutdown of the economy, a citizenry that has been scared into submission, a government that has been all too willing to become more and more authoritarian (especially at the state and local level) and a media all too eager to push a narrative that it's either submit or die.  For what reason?  Is it really to prevent exposure to a disease that according the CDC models will have a death rate of 0.29% for all citizens?  That number doesn't even account for the fact that there is a possibility that the numerator in this percentage is likely too high given the financial incentives in the CARES Act to quantify every death as "Covid Related".

 

People need to wake up.

[B-Man]

 

LOOKS THAT WAY: Trump wins the lockdown wars.

 

President Trump has won the lockdown wars as coronavirus-related restrictions on businesses are eased across the country, so far with few signs of dire health consequences for the population.

 

Just weeks ago, the question was whether to reopen, with the first states to press ahead accused of engaging in human sacrifice and killing their residents to appease the “Trump death cult.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked, “How many will die for the Dow?” as recently as Thursday.

 

Now, the debate is primarily over how quickly and to what extent reopening should take place, with the stragglers mainly blue states. Anthony Fauci, considered by many the public face of stay-at-home policies, now says the country can’t stay locked down forever. When Trump’s Easter target date was deemed unrealistic, Memorial Day weekend was floated as another possibility — and the grand opening is beginning.

 

Whether Trump wins reelection now depends substantially on how the reopening is perceived. Voters are still nervous about returning to normal too quickly, including key Trump demographics such as senior citizens, who have been trending Democratic during the pandemic, and religious voters, among whom there has been some slippage in favorability for Trump. But a Harvard/Politico poll found that 60% of Republicans now want nonessential businesses to open up in their states, following the president’s lead. Trump is betting heavily that reopening will lead to an economic rebound without deepening the public health crisis.

 

 

I think that’s a good bet, but not a sure thing, because nothing is.

 

 

 

[B-Man]

IT’S OVER: Disney World Is Reopening in July.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEFTISTS ACT THIS WAY BECAUSE THE MEDIA SANCTIFY THEIR RAGE AND THEY SELDOM EXPERIENCE ANY CONSEQUENCES:

 

 

 Lockdown Derangement Syndrome: College Professor Snaps And Attacks NY Talk Show Host At Rally.

 

[shoshin]

48 minutes ago, B-Man said:

IT’S OVER: Disney World Is Reopening in July.

 

 

 

If WDW is opening, they might as well open everything. I love WDW but you're about as safe french kissing a bat in a wet market as avoiding germs there.

 

I bet the farm they will have rapid tests to gain entry. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by shoshin

[RiotAct]

imagine wearing a mask all day at Disney World.

[shoshin]

1 minute ago, RiotAct said:

imagine wearing a mask all day at Disney World.

 

They'd be goofy to require that. 

[Magox]

Another sign the economy is opening up.  Still a ways off but improving...I would expect to see this sort of incremental improvement to accelerate over the coming months.  I wouldn't be surprised if by September we are at 75%+ of last year's numbers.

 

 

[Chef Jim]

5 hours ago, IDBillzFan said:

 

I'm in the process of a re-fi to a 15 year to take advantage of these ridiculous rates, and my money guy said the re-fi market is crazy busy for him, but he's got us in a holding pattern as rates tend do go down as we get closer to an election. I'm waiting to see what rates we're looking at this morning, as they have been all over the map and VERY difficult to lock down for any length of time. This is the first time I've ever had all my paperwork in and still haven't locked on a rate yet.

 

And yeah, I know, I'm not a money guy and I'm sure some money guys will tell me my money guy is wrong, but I don't give a schitt. There is little squabbling from me if I have to choose 2.8% or hold out for 2.5% mortgage. 

 

When you amortize it over 15 years the difference between 2.8% and 2.5% is likely "pennies".  I say let's look at the big picture.  If you're going from say 25 years left on a 30 year down to 15 let's see how those last 10 years of no mortgage will effect your plan that far down the road.  When money planning it's not so much how your decisions effect your plan month to month as it is how will your decisions you make today effect your plan down the road.  Now I understanding your talking about 6 months but you have no idea what rates will be then. 

 

***The above remarks were for entertainment value and do not constitute a recommendation. Your results may vary.**

1 hour ago, shoshin said:

 

They'd be goofy to require that. 

 

Why did Mickey Mouse want to divorce Minnie Mouse?

 

She was ***** Goofy.