April 14, 2020

Time To Get Serious -- Or Time To Go Completely Crazy?

April 14, 2020/ Francis Menton

An actual national and international crisis has a way of focusing the mind on what is truly important.
Our recent coronavirus pandemic may or may not rise on its own to the level of bona fide “crisis” — more on that in a subsequent post — but certainly when you add in the response of governments at all levels, it’s hard to dispute that the current unpleasantness is a crisis for large numbers of Americans involuntarily thrown out of work, as well as for many businesses, and for the economy.
And sure enough, the national conversation has turned almost exclusively to the virus and its consequences, to the exclusion of most everything else.
Do you even remember the issues that our thought leaders were all obsessing over in unison a short couple of months ago? . . .

April 12, 2020

Easter, Greenwich Village, In The Time Of The Chinese Virus

April 12, 2020/ Francis Menton

Today, Easter Sunday, I made my first excursion into Manhattan in more than a month.
After collecting a few needed items (the mail, some clothes, etc.) we turned around and left almost as soon as we had arrived. But I took the occasion to take a few pictures to record the strange situation for posterity.
You may think of Manhattan as the site of nothing but sterile concrete canyons; and there are some of those.
But in the residential districts like Greenwich Village, there are also plenty of trees and beautiful gardens. At this time of year the gardens are just coming into full flower, but right now there are few people around to enjoy them.

April 09, 2020

April 09, 2020/ Francis Menton

The American progressive or “Democratic Socialist” — think Bernie Sanders — typically holds up some or all of Europe as the model for the U.S. to follow.
Now the Chinese virus has hit. Many countries in Europe — starting with Italy and Spain, but also France and others — have it far worse than we do in terms of number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths per capita. Economic shutdowns similar to ours have swept the continent. Many businesses have shut, GDP has cratered, unemployment is spiking, and millions suddenly can’t pay their bills.
Over there, they don’t blink an eye before spending as much of the infinite pile of taxpayer cash as it takes to make everything perfectly fair and just. Surely then, Europe has much to teach us benighted Americans about how to use the beneficent powers of government to deal with this new kind of crisis.
Or do they?
In fact, it turns out the the EU governing model didn’t anticipate this one. . . .

April 07, 2020

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

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.” . . .