Spekulatius

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.

Bought GOOG with an L and a bit of RTX. GOOGL was a partial rebuy, as I sold most of my position a few days ago.

Yes, it varies by location. No Problems where we live which isn’t far from Jurgis’ location. My wife just bought groceries for $300 today and she got everything, even Toilet paper. I do think that supply chains are stretched in some parts. Shortages are most likely due to hoarding. TP seems to be over, but now grocery Stores restrict items like eggs (only one box/ person) and things like this. Everything they get low probably get bought up, just like it used to be behind the iron curtain like in the DDR back then. I don’t work in food distribution, but the struggle to keep things going are real. I support manufacturing as part of my job, which supplies components to medical equipment and also for military R&D and there is a lot of demand for medical right now, while military is normal. Furthermore, there are personal shortages in some areas, because you can find skilled labor quickly and some folks can’t come to work because they have small kids at home or perhaps are afraid of infection risk. The company I work for gave everyone supporting manufacturing a temporary pay raise of 10%, supposedly to mitigate this. Then there is the issue with essential vs. nonessential business. Our is considered essential, but some of our suppliers from other stated (with different rules) may not be so, if they shut down, it can affect us too. It’s a big mess. Then if you do get a COVID-19 case, probably part of the building needs to be shut down for cleaning, which causes downtime and probably doesn’t help with employee retention too. So I think the ability to keep running even for essential business will be impacted more and more as this drags on.

When facts change, You have got to change your opinion. These airlines are are likely zeros. They don’t last longer than few month without meaningful revenues and will go into prepackaged bankruptcy before thy run out of cash. By fall, they are done, imo.

It's mostly due to historic reasons (WWI -> WWII -> Bretton Woods) and the fact that at least so far the USA is willing to cover the costs of having a reserve currency (the benefits are mostly political). There is no alternative in sight. There's no other country that would accept this burden. Same with foreign countries buying USA debt. Having the dominant reserve currency is a blessing and a curse at the same time. In a time of Crisis, it is a huge blessing. I am quite concerned about a few countries defaulting if the liabilities form the COVID-19 crisis get too expensive ( Italy, Mexico? Brazil). We in the US can borrow almost as much as we want, without any problems, at least no in the short run.

I wonder if Singapore/HK are good examples to compare to: humid/tropical climates (likely reduce transmission) and city-states (easier to govern). I still think S Korea/Japan are the relevant examples for U.S. and Europe (relatively democratic nations). Maybe Taiwan too, but also warm & humid place. Germany seems to be proving the Western model nation but time will tell. Japan is pretty suspect. The numbers don’t add up relative to the action they have taken. Is it just just a barrel of gunpowder ready to explode? I have no idea. True, they are on an exponential trend now (just checked). Maybe they were just covering it up while they mulled over deciding what to do w the Olympics. That’s my suspicion too. We will find out. You can cover up 1000‘s of cases in a Country of this size, but when it goes to 10k or 100k cases, then Cover ups don’t work any more.

I am not in Architecture, but the outfits I was working for use Solidworks and sometimes Unigraphics.

Kasparov couldn't be more wrong. OPEC+ is a cartel. Everyone knows that OPEC+ is a cartel. Trump's tweet is nonsense and ill-advised, but there isn't anything criminal about the US President asking the largest OPEC+ members to reduce oil production in the face of a worldwide glut and historically weak demand. It‘s Ok to ask, but does anyone believe what Trump tweeted is actually real? He has duped the markets before...

I wonder if Singapore/HK are good examples to compare to: humid/tropical climates (likely reduce transmission) and city-states (easier to govern). I still think S Korea/Japan are the relevant examples for U.S. and Europe (relatively democratic nations). Maybe Taiwan too, but also warm & humid place. Germany seems to be proving the Western model nation but time will tell. Japan is pretty suspect. The numbers don’t add up relative to the action they have taken. Is it just just a barrel of gunpowder ready to explode? I have no idea.

Yea, Greg - Trump should have taken that Bill DeBlasio approach - keep Chinatown open and tell everyone to ride the subway WEEKS AFTER January 31st. Now THAT is real leadership saving thousands of lives in NYC! “The Facts Are Reassuring,” De Blasio Says on March 2 “The facts are reassuring,” the New York mayor said during a March 2 press conference alongside New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. De Blasio added: “We have a lot of information now, information that is actually showing us things that should give us more reason to stay calm and go about our lives” normally. “Since I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus,” de Blasio told his Twitter followers on March 3, no more than two weeks before likening the outbreak to a type of world war that required nationalizing industries. Nothing to worry about in NYC - but if it changes, we can blame it on the President De Blasio has been shown to be incompetent. Cuomo and Newsom and Inslee have acted competent. I am no fan of Newsom, but in this matter he has acted responsibly.

Quite frankly, that’s a third grade comment. throwing inventive means you dont have a clue Spek. I put you in the Dalal pile I am honored to be in his pile.

Quite frankly, that’s a third grade comment.

It is obvious that you have never worn a mask. Besides, a mask wouldn’t suffice , you would need to desanitize every touch surface and wear PPE. Think hospital setting and even that doesn’t work as many infections from healthcare workers show. Constant exposure is very hard to mitigate.