It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
In a challenge to conventional views on modern monetary and fiscal policy, Professor Bill Mitchell of Newcastle University in Australia has emerged as one of the foremost exponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a heterodox challenge to the prevailing paradigms which dominate how mainstream economics is taught and economic policy implemented. In his works, and the interview below, Mitchell presents a coherent analysis of how money is created, how it functions in global exchange rate regimes, and how the mystification of the nature of money has constrained governments, and prevented states from acting in the public interest.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 19h 19m 41s
Review of various serology studies on COVID
Dr. John Campbell has been doing daily info vids reviewing statistics and discusses scientific papers and studies. Here he reviews serology studies (testing for antibodies) and using the sample to estimate the actual number of people who have contracted COVID.
The estimate is based on 3,330 blood samples that were taken from volunteers in Mountain View, Los Gatos and San Jose on April 3 and April 4 and tested for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 .
[SOURCE:Gennady Sheyner | Palo Alto Weekly | 17 April 2020]
This large sample is a voluntary response by people responding to an online survey who have means to donate the samples by driving and waiting in a car line to get a prick on their finger. Did these people receive the survey randomly? I would assume Stanford knows what they are doing here, but you have to careful because the people who respond might have larger percentages of people who feel vulnerable to exposure due to their occupation, or did get sick at some point in the past. Hence I'd be very careful directly applying the proportion of those with antibodies in the sample of 3,330 to the entire population of Santa Clara County(1.93 million).
However, I am absolutely sure Stanford took these issues into account when they made their estimates. Here's the next paragraph in the Palo Alto Weekly article:
When adjusted for Santa Clara County's population and demographics, the number of positive results suggests that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county's 1.93 million residents have had COVID-19.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 18h 12m 49s
Every villian needs an origin story
I love Beau and his home spun genuine wisdom.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 2h 18m 33s
Great explanation of realities and choices before us
Because the shutdown and social distancing is about the economy. If you deliberately let a virus proliferate, and "let it burn" through the population, the transport system of goods and services will get catastrophically disrupted and will break down. This includes commerce from airports, railroads, trucking and seaports. Furthermore -- and this is the big one -- there will be an increased probability that the virus mutates and we get a more virulent strain. That's what happened during the great Influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, which was more than 5 times as virulent during the second wave -- see the mortality per day graph that I posted 9 posts below.
Johns Hopkins is doing phenomenial work on the covidvirus data collection -- by city/town, county/parish, state, and nation. With other breakdowns and charts too. And something called "critical trends".
This is a regular series from Britain called Double Down News. It's favorable to Jeremy Corbin, and is akin to the media saavy non-corporate left in the United States like Robert Reich.
It came with a timestamp.
Talk of exit strategy premature? Can we trust numbers? What's happening in Prisons? Care workers dying, Trump vs WHO and more
00:00 Lockdown Exit Strategy
03:03 Testing
04:23: What's happening in Prisons?
05:12: Shielding at risk groups
08:04 Economy
10:01 Keir Starmer
13:32 German Response Vs British Response
14:35 Can we trust the Death toll?
16:27 Do Not Resuscitate
*Adults with Autism, a child with cancer and disabled patients
17:11 Heathcare workers dying
17:43 COVID-19 disproportionately effecting BAME communities and men
19:27 Trump vs World Health Organisation
21:41 Looking back at my own Coronavirus journey
So these fools who are "protesting" about the shutdown and wrapping themselves in liberty and the flag really don't have a clue, and are getting manipulated by their chosen twitter feeds from dishonest actors who are hired by organizations funded by the ultra-wealthy -- because they don't want to pay more taxes in order to handle this crisis effectively and think they can isolate themselves on their yachts, islands, mansions and gated communities while the viruse "burns out."
All you lower classes out there just have to die in order to keep the stock market from crashing just have to sacrifice for the greater good in order to accrue more profits for unenlightened ultra-wealthy people.
NOTE: I use the word unenlightened here to distinguish these ghouls from the enlightened, of which there exist plenty of honorable, patriotic examples.
Almost everyone is suffering financially from the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Nonessential businesses across the country are shuttered. More than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment claims over the past four weeks. Hotel rooms are empty as municipalities reliant on their taxes see holes blown in their budgets. Cuts to city services, furloughs, and layoffs of public employees are sure to follow. Weddings, church services, concerts, sporting events, and conferences are cancelled for months. There is great uncertainty about when and how the economy will reopen and trudge towards normalcy again.
Stocks sold off dramatically, and March was the most volatile month for US stock markets on record; a record that includes the Great Depression. Demand for oil plummeted as Americans stayed home, drove less, and cancelled all travel plans. Meanwhile, Russia and Saudi Arabia had a spat over oil production cuts and continued to pump unneeded oil out of the ground. The healthcare industry is not immune. Elective surgeries have been cancelled, and no one wants to visit their doctor’s office for a well visit. Dentists are at the most risk of contracting coronavirus and are closed except for emergencies.
Our economic system is so intricately connected that we have only just begun to see the ripple effects from these drastic moves. The food delivery system for restaurants is not equipped to sell products in grocery store sized packaging. Milk has been dumped and dairy cows slaughtered. The chicken industry prepared for seasonal chicken wing demand at March Madness, and now there’s a glut of spoiled chicken wings. Dutch tulips are going straight in to the garbage. It is a mess out there.
[SOURCE:Blair DuQuesnay | TheBelleCurve | 16 April 2020]
Friday, 17 April 2020 at 5h 18m 23s
Accounting Identity
Click here for a discussion of the sectorial balances in an economy.
(S-I)+(T-G)=(X-M)
Or ...
S = I + G - T + (X-M)
which implies that deficits at home (private and government) result in current account or trade deficits, and thus borrowing from abroad.
The sectoral balances equation above says that total private savings S minus private investment I has to equal the public deficit G minus taxes T plus net exports X minus imports M where net exports represent the net savings of non-residents.
Another way of saying this is that total private savings S is equal to private investment I plus the public deficit G minus taxes T plus net exports X minus imports M, where net exports represent the net savings of non-residents.
All these relationships (equations) hold as a matter of accounting and not matters of opinion.
@ timestamp 3:40
It is impossible for the private sector and the US government to both run a surplus. It can't happen
This week was the week the crazy showed up on various state legislature buildings and touted freedom with guns on their shoulders. Oh joy.
As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan faces harsh criticism from Republicans for her stringent stay-at-home order, hundreds of protesters on Wednesday lined streets in Lansing, the state capital, with some chanting, “Recall Whitmer.”
The protest, called “Operation Gridlock,” was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, a DeVos family-linked conservative group. The Facebook event called on attendees to “TAKE ACTION IN LANSING“ but “Not on foot — STAY in your VEHICLES!“
But many of the demonstrators, some waving Trump campaign flags, ignored the organizers‘ pleas and flooded the streets, according to NBC news. Protesters chanted, “Open up Michigan,“ and at one point erupted into a “Lock her up“ refrain in reference to Whitmer
A member of the President's cabinet is part of a plutocratic fund that sponsors and pays for political reactions against the opposition party. Hmm.
What happens when the workers who go back to work get sick, which disrupts the supply chain? Various processing plants across the country are already shutting down due to the contagion because hundreds of workers are getting sick at once. What will happen with foreign trade and airplane travel when other nations know the United States isn't controlling the spread of the virus? What will happen when we "open" the economy and small businesses go bankrupt because their customers aren't showing up because of the fear of the virus. You can't just wave a magic wand.
However, these Rethuglicans are all about manipulating the lower classes into righteous uprisings. All of them sponsored by an organization funded by wealthy donors to pay people to get on buses that bring them to state capitals so they can stand around holding signs (and guns) .
I really hope that none of these sad fools don't contract the virus. Despite their ignorance, this shit is for real, and I wouldn't wish this on anyone. The death rate you see is an under count. A lot of people are dying in their homes, or die from a heart attack or kidney failure. A better measure is to measure the current number of deaths against the average expected deaths over the last 5 years. When people do that, in Spain, England, and the Netherlands, they get anywhere between 37% and 57% of deaths being accounted for by the official COVID-19 deaths.
That's anywhere between a multiple of 2.7 and 1.75 more deaths than are being listed as official deaths due to COVID-19. So if we have officially 34,000 deaths, that means there is a high degree of probability that the actual number of deaths is in between 91,800 & 59,500.
First, the United Kingdom has released provisional data through the 14 week of the year – March 30 through April 5th. For England and Wales, the excess mortality over the five year average was 6,082 whereas the total COVID19 death toll was 3,475. In this case, the official toll accounts for only 57% of the recorded excess mortality. A bit higher than the rule of thumb but close. (Oddly the UK dataset refers to this as the week ending April 3rd, despite Week 14 ending on April 5th. Regardless, the numbers and percentages are the same whichever seven days are being counted.)
Second, the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has produced this report which notes that excess mortality in the country from March 26th through April 1st was “approximately twice as high as the COVID-19 deaths reported to RIVM in the same week.”
Third, I’ve previously noted some data from Spain. Here I noted data from Madrid in the second half of March, that was roughly double. But there’s also data from March 10th-16th. In that case the 192 official COVID19 fatalities account for only 37% of the full excess mortality during the period (524). A comparable look at the Castilla la Mancha from March 15th-24th shows official COVID19 deaths accounting for 51% of the total excess mortality. (See this March 28th article in El Pais.)
Finally, The Economist notes more extensive data which L’Eco di Bergamo compiled of 82 localities in Bergamo province. In March, they logged a total excess mortality of 2,420 deaths of which only 1,140 were officially attributed to COVID19. Here the percentage captured is 47%.
These are different countries, different epidemics, different record keeping systems, all taking place in one of the most turbulent run of weeks since the Second World War. For all that chaos and variety, the consistency of this simple pattern is remarkable.
[SOURCE:Josh Marshall | TakingPointsMemo | 15 April 2020]
Friday, 17 April 2020 at 0h 9m 19s
An example of how to educate the public
Here is the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, giving an example of leadership during a crisis. Educate the public. Be honest with the public.
I have disagreements with some of Mr. Cuomo's actions as governor in the past, BUT he is doing the nation a great service by providing these daily info sessions to a country that is starving for leadership.