meiroy

Watchmen, https://www.hbo.com/watchmen 54% audience score on RT. It's one of the best series I've watched in quite a while. Very good acting and everything just looks fine, overall. Psychological Science Fiction in a world where everything is almost exactly the same but those little changes make all the difference.

Wow, it even has 80%+ on rottentomatoes. Thanks! Will definitely watch it. Edit: Quite a good action movie. Knowing it was based on actual tragic events I can't say it was enjoyable to watch but it's definitely recommended.

I've tried to be more serious, trying to argue how the only thing certain is that we'll get volatility and we should just swing trade value stocks but then it seems that if the Fed injects assets with so much liquidity it can also go straight up. Can't figure it out.

However, the USD is also the global funding currency. For some time, it seems that the world has been looking for USD liquidity and last week, the IMF announced that they had received demands for USD by 80 (!) countries (mostly emerging) and the Fed (as the head of the virtual but global central bank) has recently expanded the swap lines to emerging partners (who happen to have a lot of debt denominated in the appreciating currency {ouch}), not to China however.. Above, Spekulatius suggested to consider buying at the periphery of damage, something I did when the housing bubble deflated (ie soundly financed manufacturers of carpets, building products, paints etc) but this strategy implies that one has to assume how easy (or hard) it may be to hide and to assess the degree and effectiveness of various bailouts. Linking back to the BP spill, there may have been ways to play that but a possible relevant exercise was to consider that the Deep Horizon disaster was first and foremost the result of an imbalance between expediency and caution. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/LearningEdge/CaseDocs/10%20110%20BP%20Deepwater%20Horizon%20Locke.Review.pdf I'm not sure why you wrote "however". If a currency is not something like a reserve currency and is not freely traded in large quantities it won't be the global "funding currency". There's no doubt there is risk avoidance and high demand for money, hence the FED's increase in liquidity. It happened in 2008 and QE was quite effective. So, what is the net economic benefit to the USA here exactly that everyone wants USD? As for your example, the known example is of selling shovels to miners on a gold rush. Buying beaten-down stocks when there's blood on the street, or just under their feet, and the risk: reward is good is indeed the way to go. Haven't we all been doing that lately. Specifically, about BP, my only experience with this sector is SD, which Gregmal was kind enough to remind me about.

This. I think it plays out like this. (Sound ON) https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1246961987994759168

Wine is being sold like it's Christmas.

Iceland data: https://www.covid.is/data

To be fair, it’s not just the US, 68 countries have banned exports of PPE.. https://globalnews.ca/news/6769162/canada-medical-supplies-coronavirus/ Germany blocks truck full of protective masks headed for Switzerland https://www.thelocal.com/20200309/germany-blocks-protective-masks-headed-for-switzerland More important question is not whether US will provide masks but why a so-called advanced nation like Canada cannot even produce enough masks for its own people.. What I was getting at is it's not that Canada can't produce. It's that Canada doesn't produce. It mostly buys from 3M. An N95 respirator while looking simple is actually a fairly sophisticated product. So it takes time to setup an operation and a supply chain to mass produce them. You can't just flip a switch. But Canada can produce them, and so can Germany, and France, and the UK, and Switzerland, and Austria, and Sweden, and etc. They all have the technology and engineering capacity to do it. So now once the decide to do it local (for a bit more money), cause you've decided to fuck with their supply, do you think that they'll task a foreign controlled company like 3M to do it for them? Or do you think they'll have one of their local companies do it? It'll probably cost a little bit more money since the local companies are not as good at it as 3M is, but now they've already committed to spending more on masks. Expand this thinking to other medical products. A lot of them come from American companies. They're not low margin products either. So lots of shareholder value destroyed there. And the logical next step is for Canada and Europe and Asia to do something about Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook (and every other US company with a monopoly type position in a vertical). If the US can no longer be trusted as a trading partner then it makes sense to me each Country/region needs local champions in all these verticals. Shades of Huawei. Perhaps similar to what China did (restricting these companies so local champions could grow). If the US is going to act like China then other countries had better get at making the transition. And this would be the ideal time to do it (when the economy is already a shit storm). The bottom line is everyone loses. Should be obvious but politics, just like in the 1930’s, will make a terrible situation much worse. I agree. Populism was on the rise before this. I think this will give it a much bigger push. Like, shouldn't we be manufacturing drugs in our country? Indeed we should only accept and manufacture drugs, drug components and supplement components in locations where there's good quality control and transparency and we can be certain of the outcome. Right now, it's not happening. It should be considered an essential industry just like agriculture and subsidized if necessary.

Deglobalization started well before this, just as Trump didn't start any trade war, it will simply accelerate. I'm all for it, we should have new tiered globalization where only countries that share our values get free access to our consumers. The rest would have only limited access or none. So, for example, you get a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran with the need of our consumers, services, technology, food etc. Want it? Join us. Don't like our values? Fuck off. Developing country? Show us how you are setting up a democratic system with the rule of law. Don't want to? Fuck off. A developing country going in the right direction? Get our full support. There are plenty of countries in South America and in Asia that are going in the right direction but we chose not to really support them just because something might cost a cent cheaper somewhere else, but then indirectly pay much more for it later.

This: https://identitytheft.gov/ Goodluck.

Freaks Surprisingly good.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-03/singapore-pm-says-more-steps-coming-on-virus-lee-speaks-at-4pm?utm_source=twitter&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business "Singapore to Close Schools, Most Workplaces With Rising Virus Cases" I find this to be extremely worrying.

I'm going to troll here now because why not. Still got coffee in the mug. So, you're saying that the USA is just one of the bunch? No exceptionalism, just a mediocre country like all those countries? That the days of glory are over? That we shouldn't expect much of it and just surrender to South Korea? Is that what you're saying?

There are several potential vaccines by now, some already under testing with human subjects. Real news would be if they find a way to determine the efficacy and safety within two months... Exactly. I would wager bigly, that we have something ready to go by September/October. +1 I'm wagering the vaccine is going to come out of China sooner then we expect. They simply HAVE to save the world.

There are several potential vaccines by now, some already under testing with human subjects. Real news would be if they find a way to determine the efficacy and safety within two months...

China should get credit where it is due. They had to make quick decisions while a lot of that we know now was unknown then and of course what we're able to do now as far as testing and treatment. This just makes the USA reaction far, far worse. My guess is that they were so effective simply by having everyone wear masks from the beginning and enforcing it. Iran is something completely different, it's a semi-failed state for years now, so who knows what's going to happen there, it surely is already out of control. My subjective opinion about Italy is that it's a country caught in a high level of debt for a long time and they simply cannot grow out of it or deal with due to the chains imposed by the union. The system is also highly corrupt. It's not a country you'd want the USA to follow...

+1 Yes, indeed he gets the timing wrong, just like Soros did about the big bubble popping. Both he and Soros were also wrong about the timing for China to hit its debt ceiling, but the underlying reasoning seems correct. And, funnily, just how Soros got the European outcome wrong because of the human factor (reaction to immigrants) so did Pettis about China and the USA (see his article about Trump, a rare opinion about politics). Both, however, had their day of reckoning and have adjusted their point of view about the world. Something a lot of economists with a big-hammer are unable to do. I'd like to point out that a lot of what Pettis is saying when it comes to imbalances is based on simple accounting identities. As it's unintuitive it might be hard for people to comprehend especially as these days the imbalances are mostly due to the flow of capital and less due to the actual export/import of goods (e.g. the futility of goods tariffs as a fix for the trade deficit, also because it simply moves through a third country). You can see how on this thread people mix the idea of reserve currency with something else. Mind you, The Great Rebalancing is mostly about China.

I would highly recommend reading (because I find it fascinating): https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/56856 "The role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s global reserve currency has been regarded as a great advantage to the United States but actually it is a destabilizing burden rather than an “exorbitant privilege.” and https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/79641 "Taxing capital inflows is a far better way to balance trade than imposing tariffs. This would address the root causes of trade imbalances, improve the productive investment process, and shift most of the adjustment costs onto banks and speculators." and https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/77009 "A recent article by Joseph Stiglitz suggests that the United States runs a current account deficit because its people save too little to fund domestic investment. In fact, he may have it backwards: Americans may save too little precisely because the United States runs a current account deficit." IMHO, Michael Pettis is one of the very few that is able to have a systemic view on the level of Soros and Druckenmiller. "Michael began his career in 1987, joining Manufacturers Hanover (now JP Morgan) as a trader in the Sovereign Debt group. From 1996 to 2001, he was at Bear Stearns as a managing director-principal in Latin American capital markets. Pettis also served as an advisor to sovereign governments on topics regarding financial management, including Mexico, North Macedonia and South Korea" What's great about him, is that he is able to simplify complex issues with the use of logic and accounting identities while avoiding political biases so many economists have.

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.

https://www.amcham-shanghai.org/en/article/ppe-procurement-guide-and-contact-list The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai has a PPE Procurement Guide and Contact List including a list of law firms that will review contracts pro bono basis. There is plenty of supply in China right now.

Worried about the extended family, some at their 70+... I started to like having the kids home all the time and will probably miss it when they go back.

"When Trump says 100K deaths will prove he did a great job, it's part of a broader strategy that WH has openly deployed. The new Big Lie is: No one could have seen coronavirus coming, and Trump's only role has been in limiting what could have been worse" "The virus was biblical. There could have been over two million dead [and here the experts and their data will be deployed]. But Donald Trump reduced that horrific number by 90%.”

"An ounce of prevention..." or another useless saying (for those who will now end up spending pounds and pounds on the cure). Unfortunately a lot of innocent people (restaurant workers, etc) will end up paying for much of the cost, let alone those who lose family members/themselves to this tragic pandemic. Another useless data point for the "nothing could be done anyway" and "we can't blame our leaders" (a.k.a. "keep politics out of this discussion please") crowd. Carry on. They're constantly trying out new narratives to shift the blame elsewhere. We've seen the "blame the governors" and "blame china", and I've seen that recently they've been thinking of trying "the impeachment distracted Trump from focusing on the virus". Just making stuff up to pass the buck, holding the president to the standards of a child rather than someone who should be a competent executive able to deal with multiple complex problems, which is the whole job in the first place.. It's so depressing to watch, this propaganda is clearly quite effective, all over people just gulp it up, spewing this nonsense in response to data. Someone mentioned that perhaps Fox News would be sued for their part. Unlikely to succeed but it might change something...

1. Friends lost jobs. At home, unsure if they will have these jobs back once everything is over. For some, it's unlikely. 2. Some subscriptions of YouTubers that I follow went up by a lot 3. An artist friend had all his shows canceled so he fired his manager. The manager has no other clients. 4. A relocation company that deals with the relocation of Europeans coming to the USA has 0 business now. 5. Everyone using Zoom. 6. A few companies started to use Microsoft tools to coordinate work from home.

Simple. 1. Everyone in these countries wore masks, and I mean EVERYONE -- the best form of social distancing that actually works. + 2. testing + 3. due to SARS they had a system in place + 4. pro-science functioning governments. What about the USA? 1. nope. 2. only starting 3. had a system but it was ignored and the responsible team fired 4. None of that. Goodluck.