![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In Coronavirus news....
Mar. 12th, 2020 08:08 amNew Mexico had its first three cases confirmed yesterday, we're assuming all in Albuquerque, the northern part and highest population density of the state. We live in the SE part of the state.
The National Basketball Association has cancelled its season after a player tested positive. Mark Cuban, rich guy in the extreme, is formulating a plan so the Dallas Mavericks arena workers will get paid. Good on him!
The NCAA March Madness tournament apparently will go on, but without attendees.
Our Beloved Leader has decided that no flights from Europe will be allowed? That doesn't help where a friend of mine works here in Phoenix. He's a night guard at a retirement home in Scottsdale, and he's helping a guy in with his luggage who's returning from vacation. "So, where did you go?" "Italy!" "Really. What part?" "Northern Italy! Florence!" Apparently the guy was clueless about what was going on and I guess got out before the country went into lockdown. What's worse is he's a social gadfly, going around from table to table talking to people. So I expect that retirement home could be a major hotspot in 2-3 weeks.
More and more companies are doing work from home policies, the DOW is plunging. My university is developing plans for Teach From Home. I suppose I'll just be SOL if the campus shuts down, I can't do much with interlibrary loan from home if I can't access the library: can't mail books if I don't have access to books to mail.
Here's the thing that's going to hit hard, and why I expect we may be in a world-wide recession by the end of the year: there's no flex in interest rates possible as they're close to zero at the moment because Our Beloved Leader didn't want the Fed to raise the prime rate because he thinks that's bad for business. Guess what? Now that rates need to be cut, they can't be! You can't cut a zero rate! And a lot of countries around the world have the same problem.
He shouldn't have dismantled his predecessor's world-wide pandemic monitoring program. Gee, that can't be valuable, can it? And we don't need to spend all this money on the CDC.
It's going to be bad, and it's going to be a long time recovering. IMO.
The National Basketball Association has cancelled its season after a player tested positive. Mark Cuban, rich guy in the extreme, is formulating a plan so the Dallas Mavericks arena workers will get paid. Good on him!
The NCAA March Madness tournament apparently will go on, but without attendees.
Our Beloved Leader has decided that no flights from Europe will be allowed? That doesn't help where a friend of mine works here in Phoenix. He's a night guard at a retirement home in Scottsdale, and he's helping a guy in with his luggage who's returning from vacation. "So, where did you go?" "Italy!" "Really. What part?" "Northern Italy! Florence!" Apparently the guy was clueless about what was going on and I guess got out before the country went into lockdown. What's worse is he's a social gadfly, going around from table to table talking to people. So I expect that retirement home could be a major hotspot in 2-3 weeks.
More and more companies are doing work from home policies, the DOW is plunging. My university is developing plans for Teach From Home. I suppose I'll just be SOL if the campus shuts down, I can't do much with interlibrary loan from home if I can't access the library: can't mail books if I don't have access to books to mail.
Here's the thing that's going to hit hard, and why I expect we may be in a world-wide recession by the end of the year: there's no flex in interest rates possible as they're close to zero at the moment because Our Beloved Leader didn't want the Fed to raise the prime rate because he thinks that's bad for business. Guess what? Now that rates need to be cut, they can't be! You can't cut a zero rate! And a lot of countries around the world have the same problem.
He shouldn't have dismantled his predecessor's world-wide pandemic monitoring program. Gee, that can't be valuable, can it? And we don't need to spend all this money on the CDC.
It's going to be bad, and it's going to be a long time recovering. IMO.
