CHICAGO | General Discussions

[marothisu]

https://markets.businessinsider.com/...0-3-1028986423

[emathias]

The biggest concern long term is the squeezing of global trade. Global trade improves average efficiency and productivity. If a bunch of countries, all at once, onshore things they used to import, there's the cost of the switch, the reduction in productivity, and the hit to the logistics industry, making all transportation less efficient.

In the mid to long term, that would dramatically harm economies. It might help low wage earners in the mid term as they start to see more domestic jobs, but the higher prices will just hurt their buying power.

This could be a perfect recipe for stagflation, where things cost more due to the loss of productivity, but wages remain low because the price people are willing to pay for things remains fairly sticky except for the most essential of goods. You can't increase wages if you can't charge more for your product.

I'm also concerned about diplomacy. Strong trade between two countries mitigates the chance of any given war between them.

The Great Depression was as deep and as long as it was primarily because of isolationism, and then we had World War II. I'm not saying a massive war is a sure thing, nor am I saying another Great Depression is a sure thing - part of the cause of the Great Depression was grossly overvalued real estate and fundamentally over priced stocks. The markets were probably somewhat overvalued recently, but not terribly so, compared to normal times, but compared to the current economy with the corona virus factored in, stocks may have been almost as overvalued as in early 1929 if accounting for the impact of the corona virus. Then you have the markets also realizing that the current Administration is clueless and corrupt and you have a recipe for another 20% decline in stock value. That impacts the silicon valley enormously and global trade crashing hits agriculture and oil greatly. Then you have recent populist movements and anti-immigrant movements and, wow, it's starting to look a little too much like the 1930s for my comfort.

If governments resist the temptation to become isolationist we may get away with just a lingering recession that recovers next year. Otherwise, if isolationism takes hold we should all plan for a Depression (capital D) and possible wars. If trade doesn't tie us to China, and China's hawkish military gain influence, we could be facing the tough choice of defending Taiwan and South Korea or, worst case, even Australia.

I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016's primaries, but I think a Bernie Presidency right now would have devastating results on a global scale. His isolationist bent would be very dangerous, almost as dangerous as Trump's. The only benefit is that Bennie is closer to a true pacifist than Trump is.

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

In our present case people are still confident about their jobs and the economy.

are you joking? in no way shape or form is this true, unless youre an ER nurse

layoffs have already started within hospitality, travel, and dining. its only going to spread with time

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

are you joking? in no way shape or form is this true, unless youre an ER nurse

layoffs have already started within hospitality, travel, and dining. its only going to spread with time

My org has been gearing up for a recession this year or next for the last 1.5 years. So I'm hopeful for myself, but we'll see.

[Via Chicago]

i mean thats the most delusional and in denial post i think ive ever seen

[Via Chicago]

More than half of American jobs are at risk because of coronavirus

Nearly 80 million jobs in the US economy are at high or moderate risk today, according to analysis in the last week from Moody's Analytics. That's more than half of the 153 million jobs in the economy overall.
That doesn't mean that all those jobs will be lost. But it's probable that as many as 10 million of those workers could see some impact to their paychecks -- either layoffs, furloughs, fewer hours or wage cuts, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.
Of those 80 million jobs, Moody's Analytics projects that 27 million are at high risk due to the virus, primarily in transportation and travel, leisure and hospitality, temporary help services and oil drilling and extraction. Maybe 20% of those workers, comprising about 5 million jobs, will be affected, Zandi said.
The other 52 million jobs are judged to face "moderate risk." They are in areas such as retail, manufacturing, construction and education. Some 5 million of those workers are could be unemployed or underemployed.
"People are going to be buying less of everything. The stock market is down and wiping out people's nest eggs," Zandi said. "They're worried 'Am I going to get sick? Are my parents going to get sick?' That's a prescription for people going into the bunker and for job losses."
The shock to the economy could come quickly. When the job changes in the coming week are counted it could show a loss of as many as 1 million jobs, according to Kevin Hassett, the former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors under President Donald Trump.
That would be significantly worse than the 800,000 jobs lost in March 2009, the worst month of the Great Recession. That was also one-month drop in jobs since the US economy shifted off a war footing the month after World War II.
"You're looking at one of the biggest negative job numbers you've ever seen," Hassett told CNN Monday. He said that even if there isn't a big increase in firings, the economy needs a certain level of hiring to balance out the normal number of people who are leaving jobs.
"The issue is we think next week....there will be no hires," he said.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

i mean thats the most delusional and in denial post i think ive ever seen

Let me clarify - I am not 100% confident for my own job and my post had nothing to do with anything but my own job. However, my org which I work for is so far potentially better prepared for what's been happening lately than maybe some others. I hope that makes more sense. And obviously things can change in an instant, but knowing the budgeting strategy for the entire year along with resourcing strategy I am not yet worried. That does not mean that I don't think that in a month everything could completely change.

[Kenmore]

the impending crash and collapse will be life changing for just about all

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Let me clarify - I am not 100% confident for my own job and my post had nothing to do with anything but my own job. However, my org which I work for is so far potentially better prepared for what's been happening lately than maybe some others. I hope that makes more sense. And obviously things can change in an instant, but knowing the budgeting strategy for the entire year along with resourcing strategy I am not yet worried. That does not mean that I don't think that in a month everything could completely change.

sorry, was referring to TUP's post specifically. but yeah if things contiune on this route (no reason to say they wont), theres no way this isnt a depression. and theres no way we get through this without a historic New Deal type piece of legislation which is equally as transformative to American society. there wont be any other option. all the stuff being proposed right now is laughable.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

sorry, was referring to TUP's post specifically. but yeah if things contiune on this route (no reason to say they wont), theres no way this isnt a depression. and theres no way we get through this without a historic New Deal type piece of legislation which is equally as transformative to American society. there wont be any other option. all the stuff being proposed right now is laughable.

Most everyone agrees this is the start of a recession. I do not agree on depression. A depression lasts multiple years and simply there's no way of telling right now that it's going to last more than a few quarters.

This is due to a virus and an oil price war. While a lot of the stock market was being propped up by some artificial things the last few years, it's not something that is wrong in the underlying financial system itself per se. Right now this has more to do with consumers for the most part holding onto their money. Our economy is 70% from consumer spending. So obviously it's a big impact, but if this thing blows over in 2 months, and as long as jobs can be kept or those temp workers can get money with other means of aid, then a lot of people will start spending again. The $1.5T measure to what I know is meant to enable businesses in the tough times right now be able to take out certain type of loan from banks easier so they can not have to lay people off. I think the biggest gap here is the workers at restaurants/bars. They need aid and the restaurants/bars have to be able to weather this for the next few weeks at least to stay open. If that does not happen then it won't be good at all.

With my own team, the whole thing kind of sucks. In NYC they closed schools so someone on my team as a result cannot work this week at all due to other factors. So our commitments were already in place meaning now everyone on my team has to work a little harder to make sure things get done. It is what it is but it's crazy. A lot of companies who run pandemic simulations once a year are still not totally prepared.

I do agree that this will have a big impact on everyone whether their job is in jeopardy or not. As someone who has a responsibility for bringing work into teams, how much things cost to do, how long they should take to complete, etc it will change the way I think about how I even estimate these things at certain times of the year.

[SIGSEGV]

Working at a University has its perks at times like these. My experiment in Greenland this summer is all but certainly going to be delayed a year, but... now I can work on writing some crazy papers or something instead? I'm trying to order takeout as much as I can afford in case that helps someone.

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by marothisu

So obviously it's a big impact, but if this thing blows over in 2 months, and as long as jobs can be kept or those temp workers can get money with other means of aid, then a lot of people will start spending again.

id love to know what gives you any reason at all to believe this has any potential whatsoever to "blow over" in a period of 2 months. nothing changes until theres a vaccine, period. and thats in absolute best case scenario a year away. short of a vaccine, it will take herd immunity which would require the entire globe catching the virus over a period of several years and tens of millions of deaths with even more cases of permanent lifelong organ damage.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

id love to know what gives you any reason at all to believe this has any potential whatsoever to "blow over" in a period of 2 months. nothing changes until theres a vaccine, period. and thats in absolute best case scenario a year away. short of a vaccine, it will take herd immunity which would require the entire globe catching the virus over a period of several years and tens of millions of deaths with even more cases of permanent lifelong organ damage.

I actually don't, but if we are lucky and everyone wakes up then maybe. I was in China for the beginning 2 weeks of this thing (when regular public found out). I can compare with you based on my own first hand experience with peoples' (not government) actions there versus here and why I think if we actually follow the "social distancing" thing very well that we can overcome this in a few months as far as cases go. The funny thing is that in China, the sequence of events around this thing actually caused many people to call BS on the government without actually stating it aloud. That was right before the government started being honest about what they had known for the last month or two. They did it with other actions in the beginning - luckily I saw that first hand. Here, it seems as if some people don't want to believe anything but they don't understand the repercussions economically this will have if it stays around longer than just a few months.

But based on what I've seen, I am not optimistic *at all* regarding when it boils over. There's a reason why such draconian measures are taking place in cities in the US with not a lot of confirmed cases yet. In China where I was, I was never prevented from going outside to even just take a walk around for a mile. Anyway, investors will start investing again once we have leveled off with new cases and the rate of change in new cases starts decreasing, at least they have said that.

[emathias]

Obviously a vaccine is needed long-term to really make people confident. But an effective drug treatment would also have the ability to instill enough confidence in people to stop the current freefall.

An effective drug treatment is probably more likely in the near term than a vaccine, and there have been some hopeful stories about that. It'll still take a couple months to really prove out any treatment, but if that happens, and if those treatments bring the morality rate down to within spitting distance of the regular flu, things can start to get back to normal. 30 years ago there wouldn't have been hope of effective drug treatment, at least not without significant, risky side effects, but drug treatment of viruses has made some stunning progress the past two decades - drugs have revolutionized the HIV epidemic without a vaccine, for example - so it is now a plausible possibility. We would still need to take precautions, but something that reduces hospitalizations to the point that a health system collapse is averted would enable people to go back to work, etc, and be the start of a recovery.

[bnk]

IMO the antiviral drugs are already FDA approved but have not given the chance to trial them yet. We created tons of HIV antivirals and other antivirals over the last 20 years. Some of them in combination one way or another will likely be useful this year. Not even mentioning anything in the pipeline yet.

I know they are not similar but the mechanism to stop a virus from replicating doesn't vary much per species. A virus is technically not even alive.

So there are only so many pathways to address the spread of such things.

[moorhosj1]

From AP:

In Ohio, more than 48,000 people applied for jobless benefits during the first two days of this week. The tally during the same period the prior week: just 1,825.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, about 70,000 people sought unemployment aid in a single day — six times the total for the entire previous week.

From Capitol Fax:

Over the last two days, IDES has received over 41,000 unemployment benefit claims, compared to the same two days during the corresponding week last year, when IDES received 4,445 unemployment benefit claims.

[rgolch]

Originally Posted by emathias

Obviously a vaccine is needed long-term to really make people confident. But an effective drug treatment would also have the ability to instill enough confidence in people to stop the current freefall.

An effective drug treatment is probably more likely in the near term than a vaccine, and there have been some hopeful stories about that. It'll still take a couple months to really prove out any treatment, but if that happens, and if those treatments bring the morality rate down to within spitting distance of the regular flu, things can start to get back to normal. 30 years ago there wouldn't have been hope of effective drug treatment, at least not without significant, risky side effects, but drug treatment of viruses has made some stunning progress the past two decades - drugs have revolutionized the HIV epidemic without a vaccine, for example - so it is now a plausible possibility. We would still need to take precautions, but something that reduces hospitalizations to the point that a health system collapse is averted would enable people to go back to work, etc, and be the start of a recovery.

The potential shortage of ventilators is also a choke point. I don't think they're going to start encouraging people to be in public gatherings for a long while yet, because they can't manufacture another 100,000 ventilators overnight.

And a potential drug? Don't forget that the common cold is also a corona virus, and there's never been a know effective treatment for that. I wouldn't hold my breath. Buckle up, because we're in for a long ride.

My question to those with a background in economics is, is this market downturn short lived? Or is it years in the making? And will we continue this free-fall for the rest on the year? I know it sounds insensitive to say this, as many people are losing their jobs and businesses. But it's very frustrating to watch my net worth hemorrhage away.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

sorry, was referring to TUP's post specifically. but yeah if things contiune on this route (no reason to say they wont), theres no way this isnt a depression. and theres no way we get through this without a historic New Deal type piece of legislation which is equally as transformative to American society. there wont be any other option. all the stuff being proposed right now is laughable.

To be honest, if dealing with this means a depression, I say we don't do what we are currently doing. This is going to sound really heartless, but if we need to lose some old people to this in order to protect the majority of people from living in hell, it might be the only option. The government doesn't have 250 billion dollars a month to give everyone 1,000 dollars a month for long. So what do you want?

A 3 trillion dollar plan? That would give Americans 1,000 a month for one year. Is that enough?

[rgolch]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

To be honest, if dealing with this means a depression, I say we don't do what we are currently doing. This is going to sound really heartless, but if we need to lose some old people to this in order to protect the majority of people from living in hell, it might be the only option. The government doesn't have 250 billion dollars a month to give everyone 1,000 dollars a month for long. So what do you want?

A 3 trillion dollar plan? That would give Americans 1,000 a month for one year. Is that enough?

You’re talking about something possibly happening that’s never been seen in modern history. The health care system would be completely overwhelmed. Doctors would essentially have to choose who lives and dies as patients rush the hospital. And every cancer patient and transplant patient that’s immunosuppressed would also be at tremendous risk. Those aren’t all elderly people. Not counting the few that have diseases like cystic fibrosis. And then there will be the random young person who would also die.

I don’t think the American people have the stomach for that. In the end, life is more important than money. But yes, it’s super frustrating.

[tjp]

I think the national economy will bounce back pretty quickly. What I'm really worried about are Illinois and Chicago's finances... We were barely getting by during a good economy - how are we going to survive this?