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If you are one of the dummies who think the economy is going to be great again as soon as Texas Roadhouse reopens…
…peek at this graph through your fingers.
Song of the Day 5/10: Little Richard, “Tutti Frutti”
Many critics consider this song, released in 1955, as the first rock ‘n’ roll record, and while Richard Penniman rarely got as much credit as Chuck Berry or Bill Haley, “Tutti Frutti” embodied the raucous spirit of the new music better than any of them. It earned Little Richard a spot in the Rock and […]
DL Open Thread: Sun., May 10, 2020
Everything Falls Apart, Ctd. US. Global. The latest carnage: 1,309,541 confirmed cases and 78,794 deaths in the United States. At this rate, we’ll hit 100,000 deaths about two weeks from now. And now we’re reopening. I am not optimistic. How Trump Administration Blew The Chance To Get Millions Of Masks Made In The USA. Utter […]
Song of the Day 5/9: Trout Fishing in America, “The Window”
There’s an apocryphal story about the Russian space program. The United States, according to the legend, spent millions of dollars trying to invent a ball-point pen that would work in the zero-gravity environment of space. The Russians, faced with the same situation, spent nothing. They just used pencils. So while the CIA came up with […]
RIP: Little Richard
He really was one-of-a-kind. As described in this NYTimes obit: Rock ’n’ roll was an unabashedly macho music in its early days, but Little Richard, who had performed in drag as a teenager, presented a very different picture onstage: gaudily dressed, his hair piled six inches high, his face aglow with cinematic makeup. He was […]
DL Open Thread: Sat., May 9, 2020
Judge Laster Drops The Big One. Holds that the way property taxes as assessed is unconstitutional. I think he’s absolutely right. This has been the Third Rail of Delaware Politics for some time. Like, um, 40 years. Alby will be writing up a piece on this, but big changes are afoot, and it stands to […]
America Doesn’t Apologize, It Just Embarrasses Itself
Anyone who reads tweets or comments from Trumpists can come away with the impression that someone’s sense of reality is seriously askew. Read enough of them and you might become unsure if it’s you or them. Trump himself emits a firehose of alternate reality daily, and his acolytes, if less prolific, follow suit. Just yesterday, […]
Gunman Found Dead In Woods After Killing Elderly Woman, Wounding Husband At Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery
Automatic rifle heard in Brennan Estates. Stay safe everyone. Shit is fucked up.
DL Open Thread: Friday, May 8, 2020
Sussex County Poultry Workers Are Merely ‘Canaries In The Coal Mine’. Chicken is more important than people. BTW, not a single state official is quoted in the article. Reporter misfeasance? Definitely. State malfeasance? Almost certainly. This is going on all over the country. Governors leaving testing policy to the plants themselves, meaning virtually no testing. […]
Song of the Day 5/8: Bob Dylan, “False Prophet”
Bob Dylan dropped another new song last night, this time with an announcement that it’s a cut from a new album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” set for release June 19. This one’s a slow bluesy number. Lyrics below. Another day that don’t end Another ship goin’ out Another day of anger, bitterness, and doubt I […]
The Fed can’t hold back the stock market collapse forever
Read this from Atrios, then join be below for a chat:
I got nothin’
I suppose I really don’t. It’s a horrible situation and even the supposed “good guys” at the federal level, who don’t run things entirely but who aren’t entirely powerless, have shown no signs of having any sense of the catastrophe that is unfolding. “No one” panics unless stonks are tanking, and the Fed is making sure that doesn’t happen.As long as “the market” is happy, rich people are happy, “everybody” is happy.
Ok, up to a point.
The Fed has a couple of tools in its toolbox. It can slash interest rates down to zero thereby allowing companies to borrow money for free (and use that money for (a) building factories and employing people…or (b) dividends!! Huzzah!). The Fed could also print money. Thereby forcing Jeff Bezos to build a bigger money warehouse.
Anyway, the Fed’s hocus-pocus can only keep the DJIA happy for so long because eventually the listed companies will have to sell something of value to actual customers who are both (a) not dead, and (b) not broke. Both “a” and “b” need to be in place for any actual value to be built in the markets. Everything else is just accounting.
It is just a matter of time until we get to see Larry Kudlow have an on screen, spastic, frothing at the mouth, breakdown.
Why don’t we have enough PPE supplies?
The short answer is that we don’t have PPE supplies (N95 Masks, Face Shields, Booties, Gloves, Gowns, Disinfectant Wipes, Thermometers) because we don’t make them in America anymore.
The slightly longer is that we don’t have them because in the 1970’s and 1980’s American manufactures decided they could increase their company’s share price by closing factories in Ohio and Michigan and offshoring manufacturing to Mexico, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and wherever labor protections don’t exist and child labor is a fact of life.
Song of the Day 5/7: The Rolling Stones, “Paint It, Black”
As both puck and El Somnambulo have noted, the Orange Offal in the Oval, in yet another fumbling attempt to change the subject from his staggering ineptitude, has decreed, apparently on official stationery with a Sharpie, that his mostly-imaginary border wall Shall Hereby Be Painted Black. Hence today’s song. Dotards and psychotics often obsess over […]
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