Category: Coronavirus Depression
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Thursday, May 13, 2021
India Covid Apocalypse Heralds Catastrophe for Pakistan and Bangladesh / Politics / Coronavirus Depression
India's covid-19 double mutant B.1.617 apocalypse continues with the actual numbers of deaths and infections many times the official numbers of 400,000 infected and 3,500 deaths per day as we witness the collapse of India's healthcare system. that could see the number of total number of deaths exceed 2 million before the end of May, with the peak seeing as many as 100,000 deaths per day. Meanwhile indian politicians live in an alternative universe, making announcements that all indians over the age of 18 now being eligible for the vaccines, despite the fact that most of the vaccination centres have closed due to lack of vaccines which means only 10% of Indians (higher castes) have had 1 dose and 1.5% 2 doses. If those in charge of India had any sense of intelligence then they would be focused on vaccinating the most vulnerable i.e. the over 45's and not opening up vaccinations to all adults (higher castes)! Instead of which India's government is primarily focused on peddling misinformation in trying to hide the magnitude of the catastrophe underway which includes instructing twitter to delete tweets critical of their mismanagement of the pandemic.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 12, 2021
Bubblicious Asset Prices, Debt Dependency, Economic Collapse / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The words bubbly and delicious might be more descriptively accurate when talking about champagne. However, it is not too difficult to imagine giddy salivation among the owners of Bitcoin, or Tesla stock.
And, while some might be more stringent in their terms of definition and applicability, investors in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. – pretty much anything with a $ sign in front of it – might want to rethink the current state of affairs as it pertains to valuation of their financial assets.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 11, 2021
The Gripping Hand Holds Inflation / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The question people ask me most often is when the US will see inflation.
Not to be a two-handed economist ("on the one/other hand"), but it's really the third hand—the gripping hand, which has the least dexterity and the most strength—that holds the answer.
The thing is, you cannot predict inflation or deflation until you know what happens with COVID-19 this summer.
The good news is that US vaccinations are accelerating. States and the federal government are working out bugs in the process. Supply constraints are easing a bit. It is still going much too slowly, but was always going to be an ordeal. The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be approved soon and will help give everyone a chance to be vaccinated by this summer.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Captain Biden now Piloting MMT Adventure / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
Gold may have come off the boil after rising above $1,900 an ounce in the aftermath of the US election, but the precious metal, and its sister silver, will do very well under a Biden presidency, an Ahead of the Herd analysis has found.
The main factors are drastically increased government spending, leading to even more unsustainable US debt levels than currently, along with rising inflation; dovish monetary policy as the Federal Reserve continues to advocate near 0% interest rates; and a sinking US dollar. Gold prices and the USD generally move in opposite directions.
Covid spending ‘out the wazoo’
Within the current structural bull market for gold, the antecedents of the next phase are in the spending promises of President-elect Joe Biden.
Biden, despite claiming otherwise, believes strongly in the power of the state to tax and spend, and will face overwhelming pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party – supporters of hard-left progressives like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders – to toe the party line. A long wish list waits to be filled, with little to no concern regarding the already out of control $28 billion national debt, courtesy of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
4 Economic Challenges for 2021 / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
This year will bring several economic challenges in the U.S.—some we may not yet foresee. But I can already identify at least four.
First, the coronavirus pandemic is permanently changing certain parts of the economy.
I’ll start with the one most familiar to me: business travel. It came to a screeching halt last spring. Airlines, hotels, and so on since recovered a little but are nowhere near normal, nor are most profitable. They’re just holding on.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 25, 2021
Economic Stimulus Doesn’t Always Stimulate – Pushing On A String / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The word stimulus has become an oft-repeated term, sometimes overused. We are referring to the non-biological meaning below.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, January 24, 2021
4 Reasons for Coronavirus 2021 Hope / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
2021 may feel more like an extension of 2020 rather than a fresh start. But take heart—there is plenty of good news out there.
Here are four things to be hopeful about today:
First, we now have weapons against the coronavirus. The US has two approved vaccines. England, China and Russia have developed their own. Additional vaccines are under development and will likely be available later this year.
These will be game-changers if we manage to deploy them widely and quickly. Which, I admit, is a big “if.”
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, January 22, 2021
2021: The Year of the Gripping Hand / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
Harry Truman famously asked for a one-handed economist so he could stop hearing, “On the one hand, but then on the other hand.”
But what if we had three hands?
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's 1974 book, "The Mote in God’s Eye," features an alien species with three arms. It has two “normal” hands and a stronger, but less dexterous one called the “gripping hand.”
Monday, January 04, 2021
Building America Back After a Dark Covid Winter / Politics / Coronavirus Depression
In Part One of this article I laid out the case the “dark winter” narrative and how an experimental vaccine marketed like a tech product by Big Pharma and their cronies are part of a globalist scheme to reset the world and force us into subservience.
Now we get to Biden’s campaign slogan, which began to be adopted in August 2020, and was beaten like a dead horse just before and after the rigged election. “Build back better” must have played well among the useless eater, mouth breather demographic, when tested by Biden’s handlers. Biden would pop his head out of the basement periodically to stumble through a teleprompter speech where he was instructed to utter “build back better” three or four times.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 04, 2021
America's Dark Covid Winter Ahead / Politics / Coronavirus Depression
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
With all the talk about dark winters from Biden, Harris, Fauci, tyrannical Democrat governors, pandemic hysteria medical “experts”, and the corporate media paid to propagate the vital narrative, my mind was naturally drawn to the words of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is a story of good versus evil, with a foreboding mood of darkness and doom.
To those of us of a conspiratorial nature, according to those who conspired to overthrow a duly elected president for four years and are currently conspiring to steal the presidency through blatant election rigging and mail-in ballot fraud, we believe the darkness engulfing our nation has been initiated by the billionaire globalist evildoers marshaling dark forces in their Mordor on the Potomac.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, December 11, 2020
We Can’t Wait Any Longer for More Coronavirus Relief / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The Federal Reserve acted quickly last March, cutting rates and launching a massive asset purchase program. Congress helped with a giant fiscal aid package.
Together, these jolted the economy back to life. The jolt wasn’t permanent, however.
The economic patient is now wavering again. This time, despite pleas from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell that monetary policy has reached its limits, the fiscal part of the cure is not forthcoming.
Ah, but “limits” don’t really apply to central bankers. Not the central bank of the world’s largest economy and issuer of the global reserve currency.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Look at These 2 Big Warning Signs for the U.S. Economy / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
Interestingly, this economic measure's "retracement of the decline from February is a Fibonacci 61%"
The 7.4% GDP growth in Q3 notwithstanding, the evidence shows that the U.S. economy remains fragile.
Let's start off with this chart and commentary from the November Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, a monthly publication which provides analysis of major U.S. financial markets:
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 19, 2020
From Recession to an Ever-Deeper One / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
Economists who expected a quick recovery from this recession have been revising their forecasts. Mounting evidence suggests the May/June bounce was just that—a bounce, and not a return to prior trends.
I’ve been following Homebase, a payroll/HR data provider for small businesses, whose data gives us high-frequency and nearly real-time information. This is from their September report:
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, October 10, 2020
What Happens When the Stumble-Through Economy Stalls / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
Our economic prospects looked bleak back in March and April. Much of the economy was closed down, we didn’t know how bad the virus would get, and it was hard to see a good outcome.
Now the outlook is relatively better. Unemployment, GDP, and other indicators aren’t great but they’ve improved. Yet a “better” outlook isn’t necessarily a good one. It’s just “not as bad.”
Today’s numbers would be considered terrible if we weren’t comparing them to truly disastrous numbers from last spring. We avoided the worst because fiscal income replacement and business lifelines maintained consumer spending, and in some cases increased it.
If you fly a lot as I do (or used to), you’ve heard the term “stall speed.” An airplane needs to go a certain speed in order to stay aloft.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, October 09, 2020
Q2 Was Disastrous. But What’s Next for the US Economy – and Gold? / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The real US GDP plunged with a 31.4 percent annual rate in Q2 of 2020. In that regard, what’s next for the American economy and the gold market?We all know that the second quarter was disastrous for the US economy. And now, it’s official. Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis published the third real GDP estimate in the Q2. According to the report, the real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 31.4 percent (slightly better than the second estimate of 31.7-percent plunge), or 9 percent more from the previous quarter and the second quarter of 2019, as the chart below shows. In other words, the US economy has suffered the sharpest contraction since the government started keeping records in 1947.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, September 20, 2020
A Warning of Economic Collapse / Politics / Coronavirus Depression
Traditional Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson’s latest missive should be a wake- up call for those who naively believe that the worst is behind for the US and Western economies after the March financial sell off and the long-anticipated implosion of the bubble economy. His Excellency asserts that the US and much of the world are on a financial precipice:
At this moment the United States has been brought to the brink of a tremendous
economic crisis, and with the USA, the rest of the world.*
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, September 19, 2020
A Greater Economic Depression For The 21st Century / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
Some are calling it the “Greater Depression” but that still makes last century’s Depression of the 1930’s the point of reference. The Great Depression of the 1930s was bad, but what we are facing now is worse.
The Depression Of The 21st Century will likely end up being the new singular event of discussion and comparison for all financial and economic catastrophes. Questions of how much worse and how long it will last are difficult to answer. Predictions about the type and strength of potential recovery could be premature.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 28, 2020
The US Economy Needs More Than a Vaccine / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The hype and hope being promulgated by Wall Street and D.C. is that the imminent and well-advertised approval of vaccines will bring the economy back to what they characterize as its pre-pandemic state of health. However, even if these prophylactics are very efficient in controlling the pandemic and lead the economy back to “normal”, the state of the economy was anything but normal and healthy prior to the Wuhan outbreak.
The year over year change in GDP in the fourth quarter of 2020 from the trailing 12 months was just 2.3%. Admittedly, this wasn’t indicative of a terrible economy; but it also was very far from what many have portrayed as the best economy anyone has ever seen on the planet. Most importantly, to even get to that rather pedestrian level of just trend GDP growth for the year, the Fed had to slash interest rates three times in the five months prior to the start of 2020. And, please also remember that the Fed felt it necessary to return to Quantitative Easing (QE) in order to re-liquify the entire banking system and save the markets from crashing.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, August 27, 2020
What the Covid-19 Economic Recovery Really Looks Like / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
The media and politicians like to talk about "the economy" as a general term. These days, there is a lot of talk about it having V- or U-shaped recovery.
But within the economy right now are several different economies, and they won't see recovery at the same time or rate. So if we have to choose a letter for what the recovery will look like, maybe it should be a “K.”
That's because some will go up while others go down. This is already happening and apparent, as Heather Long illustrates for The Washington Post:
"This dichotomy is evident in many facets of the economy, especially in employment. Jobs are fully back for the highest wage earners, but fewer than half the jobs lost this spring have returned for those making less than $20 an hour, according to a new labor data analysis by John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown University and co-director of Opportunity Insights."
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
We Have an Economic Eight-Body Problem / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
If you have three large objects that have gravitational impact on each other, you can determine where they have been in the past.
However, you cannot predict where they will be in the future. At least, not without great difficulty.
In physics, this is called the three-body problem.
In economics, we are well beyond the three-body problem. I think it is more like an eight-body problem. See if you agree:
Read full article... Read full article...