April 07, 2020

Doesn't Everybody "Need" A Bailout?

April 07, 2020/ Francis Menton

Do you “need” a government bailout right now? How do you tell?
I know that I “need” a bailout. Here’s how I know: I’m a lot less well off than I was a couple of months ago. Meanwhile, the landlord still expects to be paid the same amount; the credit card company still expects to be paid, the cell phone company still expects to be paid, the internet provider still expects to be paid, the health insurance company still expects to be paid, the property tax bill is the same, the groceries cost the same, etc., etc. etc.
Obviously I cannot be expected to support the same collection of expenses with reduced resources. The federal government needs to step up and bail me out!
Does my logic there appear to you to be sound — or, does it perhaps appear a bit deficient? . . .

April 05, 2020

China's Ongoing Atrocious Conduct In Virus Propaganda

April 05, 2020/ Francis Menton

Just a week ago I asserted that China had made itself a “laughingstock” by its conduct in the virus situation, particularly by trying to create a ridiculous narrative of heroic victory over the infection through issuing completely fake data as to numbers of infections and deaths.
Things were bad then, and they’ve gotten even worse since. Today, in an important article published by the Gatestone Institute titled “Coronavirus: China’s Great Cover-up,” Giulio Meotti has a very thorough roundup of China’s atrocious conduct on this subject.
Reading the whole thing, it becomes apparent that the efforts at narrative control are so all-pervasive and so iron-fisted that you can’t help suspecting that there must be some very dirty secret that has to be hidden no matter what. . . .

April 02, 2020

April 02, 2020/ Francis Menton

The so-called “CARES Act” is now under our belts, and some $2+ trillion will thus shortly fly out the government’s door, with no offsetting revenue.
But at least we now have a good handle on the gross amount of fiscal damage to the government from the current virus crisis. Right?
Actually, not at all. No sooner did the CARES Act hit the statute books than the talk in Washington immediately shifted to the next “stimulus” bill, with a price tag in the range of yet another $2 trillion.
This time the buzz word is “infrastructure.” . . .

March 31, 2020

March 31, 2020/ Francis Menton

The Covid-19 virus is upon us, and the deaths are mounting relentlessly. At this writing on March 31, the Worldometers site has the number of deaths in the U.S. at 3,882.
Over the past couple of weeks, governments (both federal and most states) have imposed varying degrees of “lockdown” on American communities, and some millions of workers have been furloughed from their jobs. On Friday Congress completed passage of the so-called CARES Act, providing some $2.2 trillion of “relief” and “stimulus” to help the U.S.. economy through the emergency. The Act passed on unrecorded voice vote in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate. $2.2 trillion had seemed like real money as recently as a month ago.
So can we all now just agree that it’s a fundamental job of the federal government to make sure that no one suffers any downside loss from this pandemic or any other natural disaster, and that the whole idea of budget constraints is no longer applicable in anything fairly characterized as a national emergency? To put it another way, can we all just agree that the federal government has infinite resources?

March 28, 2020

March 28, 2020/ Francis Menton

China is a country that cares more than any other what outsiders think of it. And then in November there comes along this whole Wuhan coronavirus thing. How humiliating.
At first they tried to pretend that it did not exist. By December that wasn’t working any more; the word of a new disease was out. The next move was reporting to The WHO that the virus was a local phenomenon related to the Wuhan seafood market, but would not spread from person to person. Here is a WHO report from January 12. Key quote:
The government [of China] reports that there is no clear evidence that the virus passes easily from person to person.
That line also didn’t last long.

March 26, 2020

March 26, 2020/ Francis Menton

At this writing (Thursday evening), Worldometers is reporting that the U.S. death toll from the Covid-19 virus has reached 1293.
That number has been climbing rapidly in percentage terms (266 new deaths today is 20.6% of all U.S. deaths to date), but still is a small fraction of the 20,000 to 60,000 annual deaths from the regular seasonal flu.
Every death is a tragedy, but then, we’re all going to die. Nobody regards the regular seasonal flu as any kind of major crisis, let alone a reason to shut down the economy or have the federal government go on a special $2 trillion spending blowout.
So will the death toll from this virus ultimately reach or substantially exceed the toll from the regular annual seasonal flu?