Spekulatius

New York Presbyterian is the best hospital in the country. you probably dont know it. I know 3 MDs who admit/practice there who tell me that plaq/z-pack is very effective. not 100%, but extremely effective. ditto with my pulmonologist buddy in Jax. so what is your problem with a little truth, spek? does it upset your cosmology? give me an effing break I do understand that some people are using it, but it it isn’t Trumps job to decide. Soon enough idiots will start to take it because they hear about the wonder drug in Fox News. I don’t think it is smart for Trump to give medical advice.

I also wonder if the high stress environment that these doctors and nurses work under in and epidemic plays a role. Working with this protective equipment is tiring by itself and it is easy to get dehydrated because you may be sweating and it isn’t possible to drink, because you have to degown and gown up again (which can take 20 min) which you may not have. Details I know from talking to my wife who know has to deal with this as well now sometimes and believe me if you do this for weeks and work double shifts, it’s going to wear even healthy people out, which makes them more susceptible to the virus, I think. And yes, I think continued viral exposure may well be the main factor. Anyways, I hoarded quite a bit of Gatorade on last shopping trip, both for my wife but also if one of us should get infected as cheap insurance.

I think it is correct that WEB gets info from Bill Gates as well as lots of income ing data from his wholly owned business.I am sure he knows quite well the how the economy is doing right now almost to this day After all, if you own a railroad, huge utility’s , retail and manufacturing companies, insurance companies dealing with millions of co summers, you bet he has knows quite well that is going on right now, probably more so than most economic ist.

I don’t know that Trump is a Pharma salesman too. He is peddling chloroquine again now in today’s briefing “It’s a powerful drug!”. “What do you have a lose?”

Non Covid-19 related medical issues. Dentists work, hip replacement, pacemakers. Everything that a wait a little, but shouldn’t.

The problem is not just that we get the biggest depression like economy of our lifetime, the bigger problem is the equity valuations even based on pre-Covid-19 multiples are quite elevated. I concur that late 2018 was a way better buying opportunity because at that time, at least the economy was in a reasonable shape. Right now, who knows what we got.

Off the top of my head. Death is a terrible business, it is mostly small operators. And worst of all, it is NOT a high growth business. I remember looking up Japan, death numbers is increasing only about 1% / yr, and I don't think they can offer much more expensive services over time. Since you can’t really meet, there is no reason to do elaborate funerals. It’s turn and burn time ( cremation). More business potentially, but far less profitable.

1)We will rebound possibly 75% of The GDP quickly, but the rest will be much harder. A 25% gap will steel feel like an awful recession. 2) more intervention and higher taxes.

81k is on par with a model I posted here a few days ago. The model that Fauci presented with 100-240k dead was an outlier compared to anything else I have seen.

Can we go back to bitching about nasty viruses and the crappy economy, please, please!

Risk factors are any chronic cardio issues, any lung impairment (Asthma etc.), smoking, vaping, obesity , age >60, being male, any immune system issues and probably a few others. It almost seems to perfectly target republicans voters, especially if they try to get ahead themselves with the herd immunity and don’t take any precautions whatsoever. In any case, it’s not just “older people”. Of course older people tend to compound risk factors which also compounds the risk getting serious complications. My wife treated what seemed a perfect fly health patient in his thirties for CV-19 who most likely got it from vaping (with friends?). Purely anecdotal, I know.

^ Excellent listfrom Nocalledstrikes. I would also point out that many of BRK ownership (banks, airlines) as well as fully owned subs (retail, PCP Iscar) are affected by the current crisis to a significant extend. Their crisis is just barely 4 weeks old, even though it feels like a long time.

The WH briefing are an example on how not to run meetings. Endless blabber, off topic excursions (often fueled by off topic questions). How many times did Trump say, “we have got to go back to work”. Whats up with his medical advice telling the doctors to “try chloroquine! “. Add a in a lot of advertisement for himself. It’s quite something to watch. He really needs to be coached on this, because it is embarrassing (imo). It’s a rating hit for sure, but in a good way?

Capitalism on the upside, socialism on the downside sounds like a great company slogan. Personally, I absolute think we should save our crude, not the E&P industry for later. If the latter goes broke, the rocks with shale oil will still be there in the future. No reason to exploit them when crude is plentiful. But I am not running the country and I think Trump will do something. It’s just his nature to meddle in stuff.

The last one maybe the key sentence. Doing nothin is nothin Trump’s vein, good or bad he feels the urge to do something, whether it works or not is a different question.

Q: How much in tariffs would he have to add to "foreign oil" if U.S. already "~energy independent producer"? Just close off foreign imports altogether? Would it matter though as U.S. demand for oil has also cratered? Will WTI trade at a wide premium to Brent and will refiners get hosed? Or will refiners pass those costs to Americans who, though financially struggling, will willingly buy $3-4/gallon gasoline to fund the welfare for the oil industry so it helps DJT's reelection bid? US refineries right now export a lot of gasoline and other products and they would certainly get hosed. They probably would have to reduce throughput and certainly the increased input cost would be passed on the consumer for gasoline, diesel, heating oil as well as chemical products. To avoid influx of crude byproducts he would need to add tariffs for those as well or probably destroy these industries that use/produce them.

Who says we can’t drink? You gents are killing me! Our household right now - short version - consists of [2 x #metooCOVID-19?] - we bottomed out on Saturday March 14th 2020, both ill. Forced to switching to digital retailing [we chose nemlig.com] because of no access to testing as of now. She makes lists of what to order - I type them. At every order - if it's not already on the list - I add wine. Now she has started asking me : "Why are you ordering all that wine?" -I guess it's an unconscious mechanism. [ : - ) ] I hope you are doing OK with whatever bug you caught. It seems that the first line treatment is actually isotonic/sports drink, but I think adding a bit wine to the mix doesn’t hurt. One of the first thing I did was stocking on up wine, beer etc when the crisis got evident. I also have a subscription for a winery club that keeps the supplies coming. I have changed my signature accordingly a while ago. Yes, 200k is far above middle class Statistically, but depending on where you live, it doesn’t feel so. Median HH income in the town I live is ~140k and most towns around me are similar. Then there are other cities not so far where median HH income is 1/3 around ~50k. I would say that if the unemployment gets as bad as projected, this cohort could get hit badly too in terms of income loss and most probably haven’t 6 month of cash expenses, but that’s just my guess. We will probably see defaults in this group as well, because I don’t think this crisis is going to be over quickly.

That's interesting. From what i read a lot of lower-income people losing their jobs right now, will actually have more money coming in than before (combination of unemployment and the check from Mnuchin). How fast do you get an unemployment check after you file in the US. There might be some cash flow mismatch, but my impression was that for a couple of months most people will be able to scrape by. Supposedly (don't know how accurate it is) but 40% of Americans can't come up with $400 in an emergency. I guess they can try to scrape by on credit cards...but that seems kinda pointless long term. Hopefully with them spending less (can go out, cant drink, cant buy shit) for a month or two the extra money gets them through. Who says we can’t drink?

Yea. But shouldn't those people have some dough to tide them over though this? Plus calling 200k a year households middle class is quite a stretch. No matter the location. Isn't NYC median household income something like 60k? They should, but will they? It also depends how long this lasts. If it lasts 6 month, most of this cohort will be out of cash for sure. point being, they could be worse of then low income from a cash flow perspective for a long time.

Yeah his ramblings are something to watch. He clearly doesn’t not how to conduct a meeting. These WH meetings are a complete embarassement. He should just set the tone agenda for the day and let those experts (Fauci, Birx) do most of the talking. Kushner as a logistic czar is a joke too (besides the bad optics) ,why not get a qualified army corps General in charge who knows he is he is doing.

That's interesting. From what i read a lot of lower-income people losing their jobs right now, will actually have more money coming in than before (combination of unemployment and the check from Mnuchin). How fast do you get an unemployment check after you file in the US. There might be some cash flow mismatch, but my impression was that for a couple of months most people will be able to scrape by. It could be a other wrinkle they this crisis leads to a further destruction of the middle class. Let’s say you have a couple earning 200k/ year in 2019, you get zero Covid-19 check. 200k is a lot in some parts of the country but not they much in others. If now both lose their jobs, they could be worse off than a low income family actually.

The shortages are certainly regional and even depend on the store. Anecdotally there was TP at Costco, but other item seem to be on short supply. Strange enough, I never had problem to get the French cheese that I like like, Supermarket or generally the more gourmet stuff. It’s thee simple things they run soft as people go back to what they ate as kids apparently and stock up on Macaroni and Cheese, Kraft ultra processed crap, Spam etc.

Just taking a bit longer than expected to funnel stimulus money to them. Don't worry, they're good for it. "they were late on the payments for November, January and February" This thing didn't start impacting the US until at least late Jan. Why did they miss November and January? I suppose all of us peons can chip in and help them. ::) Yeah, they were rumored to be weak before this started, but the epidemic was probably the death knell. A lot of commercial RE players in NYC were already hurting before the crisis developed, especially those in retail (which got amazoned ).

Kushner Co defaults: https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/capital-markets/kushner-companies-mortgage-103550

It’s just a flesh wound, as are his huge bank positions, which are also impaired. Anyways, my guess is that BRK hasn’t really bought anything substantial yet. He is likely waiting for much better bargains. He probably bought back a little stock, but that’s is most likely it.