Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IUTHX2kTagUUV88HUJCkp_P6iZgLCXXVHD9UeOwU_1w/mobilepresent?slide=id.g71b0a47020_30_486

by mrDmrTmrJ • 6 years ago

295 464 6 years ago

docs.google.com

lettergram3• 6 years ago

One thing that really horrified me was how quickly people threw away the economy.

Unfortunately, this virus is highly contagious (to the point that the vast majority of countries won’t contain it) and fairly lethal. We don’t actually know how lethal, but it appears 1%-3%, but without widespread testing we wouldn’t know.

At the moment, we just reduced our GDP by 30%-50% in regions under quarantine. Think about that for a second...

Now consider the fact that the supply chain is also all kinds of messed up and with the loss of jobs people have less money.

Finally, save this, but I don’t think the US quarantine is going to do much to lower the curve. Simply put, the west is not prepared. Our checkouts are run by people without masks or gloves. People still are closer than 2 meters (or 6 feet).

To lower the curve we’d need strict quarantine (no leaving the house) for a month or two. Even then we won’t have enough masks, hopefully we’d have enough ventilators and tests by then...

Point is, we are tanking our economy and mark my words — it won’t work. People voted, had spring break, celebrated st. Patrick’s day went out shopping in droves. It’s likely too late, one sick per household and they infect the whole house.

All this to say: we are losing our economy and probably this isn’t effective.

zaidf• 6 years ago

“one sick per household and they infect the whole house“

This happened repeatedly in China; in fact, the nature of a lockdown sort of encourages this. But an infected household of 5 ppl is significantly easier to contain than 1 infected person going on to infect 4 people from 4 different walks of life.

TwoNineFive• 6 years ago

The same-household infection rate in china was 10.5% last I read. I don't know if there's any data yet from other countries.

booleandilemma2• 6 years ago

New Yorker here. From what I see through my window, my fellow New Yorkers still don’t “get it”. I see clusters of people hanging out and families going for leisurely walks. If this keeps up the number of infections - and deaths - will only increase.

Last week my brother suggested instead of working from home I work from a Starbucks.

I feel like people don’t understand how serious this is and it’s really bothering me.

maxerickson5• 6 years ago

There's nothing wrong with people that are living together going for a walk together, it won't particularly increase their exposure.

People should cooperate and keep distance, but it's not a big deal to just be outside a reasonable distance from small numbers of other people.

jmull• 6 years ago

Leisurely family walks are fine.

Generally, clusters are OK for people that live together anyway.

danharaj8• 6 years ago

I'm more sanguine. I live on a busy Brooklyn street which is normally packed with people shoulder to shoulder during the day, and I will see maybe 5-10 people on the block at what should be the busiest time. I think it's like a 90%-95% reduction which is certainly substantial enough to quench the spread enough to reduce the shock hospitals are receiving.

Doing my part (I have asthma), I haven't left the apartment since Sunday :^)

artursapek2• 6 years ago

You obviously don't have young kids. Leaving your apartment and taking them for a walk is the bare minimum to the whole family not going crazy during something like this. You can't just sit at home and chill like a single adult can.

baal80spam• 6 years ago

Hmm, I think NY still 'gets it' much more than Tokyo, just see for yourself:

Shibuya Crossing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vishEDtgdw Times Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRe-514tGMg

war10252• 6 years ago

Well, only one way to find out, right?

maxerickson5• 6 years ago

Reasonable compliance with social distancing from 25% of the population has a huge impact on the slope of the curve.

Of course better compliance from larger numbers of people has even more impact, but it's not a binary condition.

That said, we probably aren't doing enough to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, or to even push that very far into the future.

lettergram3• 6 years ago

Not enough, all the simulations show we’d need to basically reduce our number of interactions a day by 75% and double the number of ventilators by 100% to “stay under the curve” that’s if we didn’t have a huge number of celebrations and people in lines, etc.

Projections are 500k dead by June. Maybe with the precautions we can slow the millions dead by the end of the year. It remains to be seen.

mirimir• 6 years ago

Sure, but if what you say is accurate, it wouldn't matter. Once people started dying by the thousand, even if they're all old, governments would be forced to lock stuff down. And even if they didn't, the economy would be hosed.

JMTQp8lwXL3• 6 years ago

So let's cancel any sort of response, as you propose. What do the next two weeks, two months, etc. look like? I think it's the human condition to least try, but I can entertain the reality that some Americans just aren't for social distancing and of that segment, some will become superspreaders.

hanniabu2• 6 years ago

They should be charged and prosecuted for putting others in danger.

faitswulff• 6 years ago

As a counterpoint, Illinois just ordered residents to shelter-in-place after closing schools and restaurants a week ago and our new cases of COVID-19 aren't accelerating upward as of today. This model also predicts far fewer deaths with shelter-in-place rules: https://covidactnow.org/state/IL

As governor Pritzker said: "I fully recognize I am choosing between saving people's lives and saving people's livelihoods, but ultimately you can't have a livelihood if you don't have a life."

toomuchtodo• 6 years ago

The problem will be how long the shelter in place can be maintained; as long as you have folks coming in infected from other states, once the mass quarantine is lifted, outbreaks will flare up.

This only ends with a vaccine and enough people recovered after infection we arrive near enough herd immunity. Until then this will have to burn through populations. Regardless, I can appreciate and support Pritzker’s response, and efforts to “flatten the curve”. It’s an unfortunate situation with no clear path to success.

mrfusion• 6 years ago

It should take quite a while (several weeks) to see the effects of any actions. Anyone who just caught it has a bit of time Before it gets severe.

hanniabu2• 6 years ago

If this was done from the start then we could have recovered from it much easier. We should have never waited when we saw this was the road every other country was clearly going down and they handling the situation better than the US before the shut downs.

ccktlmazeltov8• 6 years ago

Cases are lagging apparently, peaking at two weeks after the initiation of a lockdown.

empath752• 6 years ago

It takes two weeks for symptoms to show up.

syshum8• 6 years ago

I more or less agree with a temporary shut down however I see the quote all the time, and it is a stupid statement, because you equally can not have a life with out a livelihood

This the the doctors delima, that does not factor in quality of life in to the "life" equation, life with no quality is not much of a life.

Further I have big problems with the Governer or the government making that choice, it should not be the government choice of my livelihood over my life, in either direction. No only is it shocking how fast people willing toss the economy aside and expect government checks to save them, it is also shocking how fast people simply toss aside all civil liberties.

pbourke• 6 years ago

We don’t actually know how lethal, but it appears 1%-3%, but without widespread testing we wouldn’t know.

That’s the fatality rate within a functioning medical system. It’s safe to assume that if the virus is uncontrolled the rate will be substantially higher.

logicchains4• 6 years ago

Why? There wasn't enough testing/medical capacity for at least the first month in Wuhan, and the rate wasn't any higher.

tuna-piano• 6 years ago

Even if you take an extremely high estimate of the currently infected in the US, you're probably in the low 100s of thousands of people, approx <0.1% of the country. So to say it's "likely too late" is just crazy - 99.9% of the country is not yet infected.

tinyhouse2• 6 years ago

I wouldn't say it's lethal, at least not for everyone. The last report from Italy has stats on 2000 deaths. No deaths under age of 30 and only a few under 50, all with pre-existing health conditions. Women's median age close to 84. Men's 80. And vast majority of deaths are people with multiple pre-existing health conditions.

m_ke5• 6 years ago

42% of Americans are obese, this will hit us a lot harder than Europe.

maxden• 6 years ago

It could be because the application of medical care is skewed towards the young, such that they survive and those older or with less chance of surviving die. If you can reduce the demand on hospital services, then you might have enough resources to treat those high mortality cases, and under those circumstances they may survive.

toast02• 6 years ago

I don't think the options are have a lockdown vs have a functioning economy and a bunch of sick people. Once hospitals start overflowing with this, you're not going to have a functioning economy anyway.

If hospitals can get the supplies they need, and testing and health department capacity is there to do contact tracing, the lockdowns can loosen, and our economy can start back up. Bonus points if the warmer weather in the coming months helps fight the virus.

daenz• 6 years ago

Once hospitals start overflowing with this, you're not going to have a functioning economy anyway.

Is this true though? I'm not trying to be insensitive, but according to reports, ~15% of the infected need hospitalization, and the distribution of those people are mostly over 60[0]. Is having these people hospitalized on a large scale more detrimental to the economy than shutting everything down? Serious question.

0. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

sershe• 6 years ago

Why won't you have a functioning economy? How long did the effect of Spanish flu on the economy last? And that one mostly killed young people.

qqn• 6 years ago

People voted, had spring break, celebrated st. Patrick’s day

Sounds a lot like Philly' Spanish flu parade,[1] as compared to St. Louis' lockdown during the same.[2]

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chart-1918-spanish-flu-shows-...

[2] https://media.zenfs.com/en-US/quartz.com/df26ee36f79f85f57ad...

whb077• 6 years ago

Nowhere have you seen numbers that remotely approach 1-3%.

You’ve seen the critical, largely elderly population get tested and from that you get that number that’s freaking people out.

Stop spreading panic. With those kinds of numbers China alone would have 10M+ dead. In Japan, Singapore, surrounding nations more millions dead.

Use a bit more common sense. We know we haven’t tested enough in the US, yet we don’t have bodies piling up on the street. You don’t have families of 4 where 2 suddenly die. This has been going on for greater than 3 months now.

Stop spreading fear. The only thing to fear is the terrible consequences of those stuck inside the fear bubble

empath752• 6 years ago

China would have had those numbers if they didn’t quarantine a whole region for 3 months.

They may still have those numbers after they lift the quarantine.

m_ke5• 6 years ago

4 dead and 3 more in critical condition from a single family: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-shatters-ne...

26 dead at the washington nursing home, 50 tested positive: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-washingto...

Death rates by preexisting condition: https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2020-03/13/2...

America has 42% obesity rate and a huge population with diabetes and heart issues, the numbers for 30-60 year olds might end up looking a lot worse than in Asia and Europe.

alistproducer2• 6 years ago

The 1-3% is an average among all age groups. You clearly have not looked at the data. For example, in Italy the CFR is somewhere around 14% for elderly. Everyone else is lower such that the nominal death rate, being an average among all groups,.has been consistently running around 8%.

Obviously when this matures that rate will go lower because the denominator will grow but the denominator that people care about is the one we have now: who is sick enough to need a test because if I get sick, and thus become part of that denominator, the current rate gives me a good picture of my chances. Was the parent comment slightly hyperbolic, maybe. But you are way underselling the seriousness of this disease and the rationality of being scared of it.

danharaj8• 6 years ago

Fear now is better than horror when the healthcare system collapses.

hpcjoe2• 6 years ago

Its 1-3% of confirmed infected, not of the population as a whole or the quarantined area. That 1-3% varies in terms of age and other comorbid factors.

opportune• 6 years ago

Well, in California:

I got my groceries from people wearing masks. Everybody in the store kept 6 feet distance.

I've been working from home for 2 weeks and will continue to do so for at least 3 more. Company wide mandate.

Almost every business other than groceries/other essentials (where some are surprisingly "essential", granted) are closed so people have no reason to break quarantine except to perform essential tasks. So overall, I'd say we are doing exactly what we need to be doing. Hopefully the rest of the country follows suit

justanotherc4• 6 years ago

Masks and gloves are ineffective for people who don't know how to use them -- wearing a mask? Great. Now you just felt hot and pulled the mask down onto your chin. Congratulations, the outside of the mask is no longer sterile. You're wearing gloves? Fabulous. Now you're out shopping pushing a cart and you just scratched your nose with your gloves. Cart handle is now contaminated or visa versa and gloves didn't change anything. PPE is only effective under very controlled environments, and the general population doesn't understand this.

The economy will recover, especially since EVERY country is taking a hit, I don't think it will take very long for the capitalist engine to roar back to life. That's the beauty about capitalism -- you're turning the ingenuity of humans loose to be productive. As humans we're great at figuring out how to be productive.

oggy6• 6 years ago

The effectiveness doesn't need to be perfect. If I'm now only 50% less contagious to others with my no-longer-sterile mask, that's a huge win.

asdff10• 6 years ago

More can definitely be done with enforcing quarantine. In LA, meat is still prepared and served openly on the side of the road, so long as you have a relatively trivial permit. Even though the state is 'locked down,' you are still free to venture out at your leisure. Technically bars are supposed to be closed, but there is a pervasive speakeasy culture that hasn't slowed down.

The most vulnerable groups, the working class that pack like sardines in public transit every day, either continue work or are laid off. Tenement conditions still exist in Los Angeles, with multiple families cramming into a 1br apartment.

Quarantine is really only affecting the knowledge workers who make up a minority of the population, and who interact with a sliver of the population to begin with. Effective quarantine would include protections for the working class, but there isn't any political will.

I'm legitimately fearful of hitting the breaking point. Maybe some would call it overblown, or hysteria, but this is a city that endured three days of looting after a verdict, requiring the national guard to stabilize the situation. Men with rifles used to take positions on the roof of my grocery store. This isn't ancient history, unfortunately, it's who we are when pushed past our limits with nothing left to lose.

abootstrapper2• 6 years ago

You have a point. We should have been aggressively testing at the start. Imagine if we had thrown the same amount of effort and money into initial testing as we are economic relief now. We'd still be open for business! But our leadership failed. So, now we have to lock down, but we should be doing it 100%. Hard core. Lock down. This weak half measure of "recommended guidelines" and leaving it up to local governments to adopt them is undermining the entire effort. It's tanking the economy AND not going to work. Let's swallow the damn pill and get it over with! Why is our leadership intent on dragging this out as long as possible? We should have been in hardcore, national lock down mode last Monday.

We'll come around, once it's too late. "Americans will always do the right thing — after exhausting all the alternatives."

pdr2020• 6 years ago

"All this to say: I think we are losing our economy and I think probably this isn’t effective."

Fixed this for you.

(Additional comment: I will counter with I'm really amazed how quickly people threw away the economy in an effort to reduce lost lives. Normally, I expect people to be much more mercurial)

dijit• 6 years ago

The slides by themselves do not speak a compelling narrative to me, so I think I’m missing something fundamental or not understanding.

Small businesses (all, businesses) will suffer quite badly, but if your company cannot continue operating because its shut/slowed down for 2 weeks then it’s likely that your business was running on a knifes edge and /any/ shock would have killed it.

Arguing that many people have done this is not just cause to bail them out (speaking from a purely logical non-empathetic position)

EDIT: ok. Our entire economy is built with no buffers in place and people here seem to have no issue with that. From a personal finance perspective I ensure that I live beneath my means and have capacity for a couple of months lost revenue. (Shit happens) and I’m not “well paid”.

alexpetralia2• 6 years ago

This is like saying, if you are in credit card debt and not prepared for a disaster, you are on your own. While this is true, this logic simply doesn't work in aggregate because the status quo is millions of people are in debt. Similarly, most small businesses operate with very little operating cash flow, and that is simply how our economy operates.

buboard3• 6 years ago

i dont think that s fair. in an efficient market, profit margins are slim for the benefit of the consumer, which means businesses are not super profitable and need to invest continuously.

marta_morena_23• 6 years ago

" then it’s likely that your business was running on a knifes edge and /any/ shock would have killed it."

Welcome to... life? This is how America or even the world works. Most people live on knife's edge. One missed paycheck? Homelessness just got its greasy hands on you. Two missed paychecks? Go pack what you have left... Most business are not any different, especially those run by regular people.

In my family we have a quite successful business in the sense that the person running it, has quite a fancy lifestyle and can afford it. But you have to realize that most business have terrible margins. Our family business has maybe a margin of 10%. That means, for every 10.000$ you take home before taxes every month, your business has running expenses of about 100.000$ per month. Now restaurants are all closed... Nobody will buy your stuff anymore, but your employess still need to get paid. So now you have those 100.000$ monthly costs and not a single dime coming in... There is no reasonable expectation to save this much buffer.

In short, even business that run extremely well, will die within A MONTH, if all expenses continue and no income is generated. This is why I think what they are doing for this petty virus is quite insane. They are destroying the middle class for some "theoretical" projection that might not even play out the way they think. What is guaranteed though is that businesses will die in troves and the economy and middle class with it.

logicchains4• 6 years ago

They are destroying the middle class for some "theoretical" projection that might not even play out the way they think. What is guaranteed though is that businesses will die in troves and the economy and middle class with it.

Look at the age of the people making the decisions. If you were 60+, unhealthy, and had the option of minimising your own risk of catching the disease by stopping the economy, you sure you wouldn't take it, regardless of the long term damage it would do to the country?

AnthonyMouse2• 6 years ago

but if your company cannot continue operating because its shut/slowed down for 2 weeks then it’s likely that your business was running on a knifes edge and /any/ shock would have killed it.

Nearly all businesses in reasonably competitive markets have thin margins. You buy a widget and sell it for 30% more, but then most of that 30% goes to rent and utilities and salaries etc. Your actual net profit margin is more like 2%.

The result is that most businesses do fail if they're hit with any kind of major shock. Which happens all the time. It's supposed to. Mistakes have consequences. A business failing here and there is reasonable and expected.

But it's a completely different kind of problem when it happens to everybody all at once.

JMTQp8lwXL3• 6 years ago

Instead of hundreds of billions in loans to businesses, which have to be underwritten -- and as discussed on Slides 17/18, the SBA did an abysmal job administrating during Hurricane Sandy, helicopter money might be the better answer.

Give everyone money, no criteria. If we do impose income limits, and since viable proposals do -- we ought to discuss it. Give them a check now anyways. We cannot be worried people will be "annoyed" if they owe their check back come next tax season. Future annoyance is a small price to pay if these businesses can't stay afloat. We will be feeling the effects for far longer than a quarter. The helicopter money needs to be distributed as soon as possible.

lotsofpulp2• 6 years ago

Why income limits? Would it not be easier and faster to just adjust marginal tax rates and simply give everyone money right now?

dillondoyle2• 6 years ago

Yes. Way easier and way faster. call your representative and senator.

JoshuaDavid2• 6 years ago

That is the question -- it might legitimately be harder to adjust marginal tax rates than to add an income limit, even if the outcomes would be identical either way.

Anon10962• 6 years ago

Helicopter money won't help businesses in the service industry where people literally can't spend their newfound helicopter dollars. With the incompetence of the SBA I'm not sure what a total solution would look like, but helicopter money can only be part of a larger plan if we want to save America's small businesses.

um_ya• 6 years ago

The origin of the phrase "helicopter money" was from Milton Friedman, when he described the lunacy of the concept. Ironic it's used seriously today.

JMTQp8lwXL3• 6 years ago

Much has changed since Friedman was in vogue. The application of such economic theories has left a solid portion of Americans in the dust. Fully free markets are a great idea when houses cost 2x median annual income, a single family income can support a spouse and ~2 children, etc.

codingslave5• 6 years ago

The stock market is largely collapsing because:

1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market.

2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit markets to collapse, the stock market to collapse, and the rest with it. They can buy 50B worth of their own stock, but cant pay employees for a month without revenue.

This whole mess is in part due to financial engineering taken down by a black swan event. CEOs should be in jail and so should finance professionals. Laws need to be passed so that finance individuals cannot ruin the market for their own financial gain.

alexpetralia2• 6 years ago

Did you miss the part about small businesses?

codingslave5• 6 years ago

Everything is related. Imagine if the market only dropped a bit, large companies could support their employees, the credit markets wouldnt require massive trillion dollar spending. Supporting small businesses would be a walk in the park.

Narkov• 6 years ago

I'm not disagreeing with you but is it illegal for a CEO to be bad at their job?

Skunkleton• 6 years ago

It’s illegal to be bad at many jobs in certain ways. Companies need more regulation that results in personal accountability.

slyfocks• 6 years ago

One could argue that the airline CEOs acted rationally and strategically—they know the airline industry’s importance to the US economy gives them great odds of a bailout if a black swan event were to occur, so there was more value to shareholders generated by stock buybacks than reserving cash for a worst-case event.

gregshap• 6 years ago

1) the stock market is collapsing because business cashflows are collapsing 2) the collapse has barely begun

jdminhbg2• 6 years ago

The stock market is largely collapsing because:

I'm gonna go with:

0) A pandemic has caused the government to shut down a double-digit percentage of the economy.

codingslave5• 6 years ago

People are completely underestimating how much leverage and pumping there was on those companies, and how thats effecting us now. Companies dropping 75% because they might lose 3 months of revenue is not an expected outcome.

majormajor• 6 years ago

The collapsing started before the lockdown, and while the federal government was stating things were under control and this would never be necessary.

Uncertainty and desire to cash out alone was enough. The stock market is based on opinions and emotion.

senordevnyc7• 6 years ago

1) Hedge funds didn’t crash the market. There’s just no evidence for that. The market crashed because there’s enormous uncertainty and people would rather be liquid while they wait to see what happens vs losing a huge percentage of their wealth.

2) Businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders. Yes, they should have some retained earnings as a rainy day fund, but some of these companies are losing 75-100% of their revenue (airlines, cruises) and it doesn’t make sense to try and self-insure for the most extreme tail risk ever. So they return profit to shareholders. And for various reasons, buybacks are often preferred to dividends.

Would you be this up in arms if they had never done a buyback but had been paying a regular dividend to return those profits?

dwaltrip• 6 years ago

Businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders.

It is an insidious and morally bankrupt myth that this is the only purpose of a company.

ramraj07• 6 years ago

Wasn't buybacks banned for a longtime in the century? Perhaps you consider this to be socialism and that's why it was unbanned, but given the perverse incentives politicians seemed to have had for the past few decades, I don't see an unbiased argument why it was in the interest of the public to unban stock buyback.

Clearly the past year has proven why it should have stayed banned.

digitaltrees10• 6 years ago

Business does not have to be structured as a Corporation with limited liability. That is a privilege allowed by the sovereign power of the people through an elected government. If companies don’t behave responsibly they should lose that privilege and the owners could be held liable for debt and these kinds of mistakes personally. The fetishized obligation to shareholders and ONLY shareholders is not some holy pronouncement from on high. It was made up by a professor at University of Chicago and ran contrary to the history of business and limited liability company structures. If we, as a society, determine that such a practice is harmful based on the evidence we can and should end it.

preommr• 6 years ago

I really think we should stop conflating bad economic decisions with the current pandemic. Yes, maybe stock buybacks are bad.

But even if they were banned, these companies wouldn't just have piles of cash reserves sitting around. To remain competitive, they would've had it invested in resources like additional personnel that would've gotten the axe either way when the belt has to be tightened.

There needs to be better financial planning and regulations - a lot of them.

But the best thing that could've helped here is better planning for national emergencies like a pandemic. Bill Gates and others have been clamoring for a long time about these dangers and we should've taken them more seriously.

digitaltrees10• 6 years ago

They would unquestionably have more cash on hand though. That matters. There is also a lot of research showing that management does buy backs at exactly the wrong time. How wasteful is it in retrospect that companies did buy backs over the last two years at the peak of the market. Now they might have to sell stock to raise money at the bottom (assuming we find it soon). Mean while warren buffet was sitting on cash and building his reserves. Watch him swoop in now and just pick up businesses for pennies on the dollar.

asdff10• 6 years ago

Some companies are famous for their piles of cash reserves. Apple, for instance. Other companies are definitely focused on the pump at the expense of their brand, product, and long term prospects. No C level executive sheds a tear when their company folds and they are handed their golden parachute to invest at market lows.

miketery3• 6 years ago

While I mostly agree with #1 and #2 - not sure what this has to do with the crises we're in.

The core of the current financial crisis is that demand has evaporated over the course of a week or two and / or businesses can't operate; both due to COVID-19. As a result many small business won't survive. By extension many people are impacted, won't make rent, won't make lease payments, won't make credit card payments.

The stock market dropping is reflecting the above reality unwinding. And yes prices were inflated, and still are (QE is trying to hold them, we'll see how long that lasts...).

Unlike the 2008 crises that had synthetic derivatives, and shitty rating agencies to blame - this isn't the case here.

Though don't get me wrong I still think there are many sketchy things that go on, and many people who need to answer for them. Let's starts with the politicians that sold their shares given insider information, followed by others who curry favor with wall st.

wardnath• 6 years ago

Businesses that rely on walk-in customers will have to go for what looks like more than a month with little to no income. Same thing with travel related industries, surely over-leveraged portfolios exacerbated the problem but there are many other factors at play.

SamReidHughes6• 6 years ago

Should companies not return profits to their shareholders? CEO's should be in jail for doing so? Be serious.

mywittyname2• 6 years ago

I'm not sure how you got to this post after reading the OP.

Company leadership should focus on returning capital when appropriate. They should not be repurchasing shares at obviously inflated prices as a last-ditch effort to further raise share prices so they can cash out their bonuses. They should be using that money to improve the business.

Basically, leadership needs to think about long-term health, instead of making poor business decisions to improve executive bonuses.

ivalm14• 6 years ago

They definitely should return profits, they shouldn't take on additional debts to increase share price.

TheSpiceIsLife2• 6 years ago

Why should anyone be punished for failing to plan for a black swan event?

Black swan events are unpredictable and outside of what is normally expected.

ip265• 6 years ago

I think we're learning that while the manifestation & exact timing is unpredictable, looking at the big picture one black swan or another seems to show up with surprising regularity. 1973, 1987, 2001, 2008, 2020...

kingaillas• 6 years ago

I'm not even that old and this is the 3rd black swan event in the last 2 decades: terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, financial meltdown in 2008-2009, and this 2020 global pandemic.

There were also 3 other localized outbreaks (SARS in 2003, Swine Flu in 2009, MERS in 2012) so that to me sounds like we were 3 viral mutations away from this being the 4th global pandemic in 20 years.

If we're structuring business and our economies such that they fall over or require ~1 trillion dollars for bailouts, every 4-7 years on average, then something is vastly, massively, completely, extremely wrong with our approach.

I don't care how many economics nobel prizes are racked up by theorists; or about efficient market theory and blah blah blah. These systems are failing in the real world and that's the only existence proof needed.

Running a just-in-time razor-thin-margins all-profits-reinvested-no-savings business is great in theory but apparently the wind blowing from the wrong direction destroys it all. It has the feeling of the economics/finance version of a physicist assuming a spherical car in a perfect vacuum with a point source of gravity when designing a system that has to survive actual usage.

digitaltrees10• 6 years ago

The nature of a black swan event, what and when, is unpredictable. That one will happen is not. Any prudent leader must prepare to weather a financial downturn, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a war. The list goes on and preparation for one is likely the same as for all.

The point is, unprepared leaders will see their firms go out of business, but based on the number of firms that seem to never be prepared, it seems the standard incentive isn’t enough. Thus it warrants discussion on how to align leadership incentives to prepare in advance. If we had businesses that could weather 3 months of crisis, whatever the crisis without triggering a depression the entire economy would be better off. Yet here we are.

kjksf2• 6 years ago

This particular mutation of a virus is black swan even, as it never happened before.

A recession is not.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...:

1969, 1973, 1981, 1990, 2000, 2007 - a recession of US economy at least every 10 years, like a clockwork.

So, if you're a CEO of an airline and you're giving away 90% of your cash to shareholders instead of saving it to last few months when business declines, then it's an obvious failure of planning.

Or, more accurately, it's yet another case of "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It."

CEO salaries and bonuses are tied to performance of the stock (because they are set by board of directors, who are there to represent shareholders). So they spend the money to buy back the shares which increases the share price and their bonuses.

It's really simple if you know the incentives.

ivalm14• 6 years ago

Companies should be most definitely punished for not being robust to black swans. You can't predict a particular black swan, but you can definitely predict that black swans happen regularly. There is a reason why options have the "volatility smile" -- the risk tails are fat!

asdff10• 6 years ago

Failing to predict the business cycle should require retaking business school...

The big problem is that companies are focused on the quarter rather than the decade. Imagine the innovation we would have in technology if companies were willing to take a loss for years on worthy inventions, rather than only putting forward readily profitable projects.

ravenstine• 6 years ago

CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock,

Not only that, but they also use borrowed money with corporate debt to buy back stocks.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-08/companies...

nerfhammer• 6 years ago

The stock market is collapsing because the population is increasingly unable to go anywhere or do anything. As a result whole sectors of the economy are almost completely unable to function. They're predicting 25% GDP contraction and 25% unemployment which about the same as the peak of the Great Depression in 1933. And we don't know when that's going to end and it will probably take most of a year at least.

hyperion20104• 6 years ago

This is not a black swan event. How many times are we going to have to go over this?

smallgovt2• 6 years ago

1) Pretty sure you're misinformed on this point. The hedge fund sector that has gotten attention and partial blame for this meltdown is the risk-parity segment of hedge funds. These funds target a specific range of volatility, so when the market becomes wildly volatile they are forced to reduce their overall holdings. The entire risk-parity segment of the market is at most $400bn and they are levered 2-3x on average. In the grand scheme of things, this is pennies when compared to broader money flow.

2) Stock buybacks are simply a more tax-efficient way of distributing profits to shareholders. Redistribution of profit to shareholders is a fundamental trait of capitalism, so you can't really blame the CEO for doing this. You seem to be blaming CEO's for not preparing for a black swan event. If CEO's are forced to prepare for every possible black swan event, their companies would go nowhere.

ccktlmazeltov8• 6 years ago

Stock buybacks are simply a more tax-efficient way of distributing profits to shareholders

This is:

1. irresponsible, due to so called black swan events

2. price manipulation, don't forget this

OGWhales3• 6 years ago

As for your last point, there appears to be a black swan event quite regularly. It seems logical to prepare for this. Secondly, stock buy backs are often performed at horrible times simply because CEOs want to boost their own salary. This has repeatedly bitten them in the ass. This is what happens when short term gains are prioritized over long term strategy.

So my question is, when do we learn?

ivalm14• 6 years ago

I can accept viewpoint only if we ALSO allow all unprepared companies to fail. This will then inform the next generation of CEOs to prepare more. If we socialize losses while privatizing gains we create wrong incentives.

I think the general sentiment is that we cannot just organically let most companies fail, so we are forced to bail out. But if we are breaking capitalism by bailing companies out, we should at least try to incetivize them to learn from mistakes rather than learn that they can do whatever when the times are good and get bailed out when the times are bad.

hpcjoe2• 6 years ago

I agree, CEOs that bought back stock should not have the option of a bailout. That was a self-enrichment strategy built upon cheap debt, and now it is time to pay the bill.

Generally speaking, Boeing and others should not be bailed out. Capital should flow to the small businesses to keep their doors open, their people employed.

I'd also argue strongly against bailing out companies that shifted their work overseas. There needs to be a price to their actions. This is a just price IMO.

AnthonyMouse2• 6 years ago

All of the things you're saying are the direct result of the market incentives created by low interest rates. Companies borrowed money and used it to buy their own shares for the same reason everybody was borrowing money to buy shares with it -- it's what people do when it's cheap to borrow money.

If your competitors are all borrowing money at low interest, you do the same or you're not competitive.

The problem is we lowered interest rates in response to the housing crisis and then left them there. Because doing so inflated (really reinflated) such a ginormous credit bubble that it would take more than an entire market cycle for real economic growth to catch up to it, and (absent printing money) you can only raise interest rates to the extent that borrowing demand from real economic growth exceeds the reduction in credit caused by the higher interest rates, or you cause deflation and an economic downturn.

This is also why the rate of inflation has been below historic norms since the housing crisis -- reduced to that level just by raising rates the tiny bit that they did. And now even that's gone and interest rates are at zero.

This is what the fallout of long-term low interest rates looks like. The only way out of it within our lifetimes would be mass defaults (which would cause a depression) or enough inflation to devalue the outstanding debts.

Considering that we're also now facing deflationary forces from these quarantines, maybe it's time to start printing some money. Certainly countering the deflation by encouraging even more borrowing would just be trying to dig our way out of a hole.

raincom• 6 years ago

Low interest rates are the biggest culprit in this. Low interest rates have given these CEOs to borrow money to pump their stocks. Had interest rates been higher, say 6 percent, (a) these CEOs wouldn't have borrowed money to pump their stock, and (b) many investors would not have invested 60 to 90 percent of their portfolio in stocks. Another consequence of these low interest rates is (c) the inflation of real estate in many markets. That means, the middle class (say, employees of FAANG types) have loved this gravy train. Politicians, as a class, have benefited from this: inflated equities; inflated real estate. Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell and the political class (both Democrats and Republicans) have all contributed to this.

People who invested in index funds fared better than hedge funds. And there was no real price discovery thanks to Fed put; even many small hedge funds closed their shops when they couldn't beat ETFs based on indices like SPY, VOO, QQQ, etc.

Now both bonds and stocks are crashing, as the commercial paper becomes junk.

somewhereoutth• 6 years ago

Absolutely this. Someday we need to have interest rates somewhat sticky at ~5% (or whatever the sensible figure is), and lean more on fiscal policy to control the economy. Whether there is a viable path to that point is unclear. Perhaps the money printing required to cushion the economy will spike inflation, and once we get back on our feet we hike rates to control it?

titzer• 6 years ago

CEOs should be in jail

Will. Never. Happen.

Banks committed outright fraud in 2009, by the dozens, by the hundreds. Thousands of people should have gone to jail. Not a single. Goddamn. One. Did.

eunos• 6 years ago

used cash to buy back their stock

So in this case, the cash ends up with the stock owner, isn't it? What are the differences between cash in the hand of company vs cash in the hand of stock owners?

edanm3• 6 years ago

No. It's because of everything in the posted presentation - 50% of companies are SMBs (in the States), and they understandably don't keep enough reserves to weather 3 months of losses.

The stock market is reflecting that the damage this will do on the economy is real, and currently unknown but expected to be pretty bad.

danieltillett4• 6 years ago

It is time to declare war. We need to move to a war economy and get on with what needs to be done.

maxerickson5• 6 years ago

What does that even mean?

danieltillett4• 6 years ago

Congress declares war. Think WWII.

Edit. Thanks to the wonders of HC I can’t reply to you so I have edited this post. The declaration of war is symbolic in one way, but it captures what needs to be done. The entire economy needs to be swung around to getting this pandemic under control as quickly as possible.

Once war is declared we can start conscripting people to do the things that need to be done like enforce curfews, do door to door testing, build hospitals, keep people fed, etc, etc.

We are going to end up at this point anyway, so we might as well do it now and save lives and the economy.

CamperBob2• 6 years ago

Traditionally it implies sacrifice, on both the individual and collective levels, to achieve a larger goal or to fight an existential threat. But American civilians haven't really been called upon to sacrifice anything in wartime since WWII.

It won't be long before there's no one left alive who remembers mandatory rationing, price and wage controls, and production mandates.

fl4bfl4b• 6 years ago

Better solution: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YbtJGn7ida2IYNgwCFk3Sjhs...

We can shelter-in-place as long as needed. And no businesses go under, and no one loses their home.

ccktlmazeltov8• 6 years ago

First, we pause all fixed financial obligations, which are what’s crushing our economy right now. Right now, we’re in a crunch: people can’t work, and so they can’t make payments on mortgages and rents.

Totally agree, it is insane that some families are under the threat of eviction because they live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to pay rent now. Same for small businesses who cannot afford to pay rent.

I'm sure some landlords will do the right thing, but we can't trust all landlords to do the right thing. Something has to be done at the federal level, and it's now or never.

UBI would be another way to get around this BTW.

ip265• 6 years ago

It isn't about landlords doing the "right thing". Landlords have debt to pay, generally aren't sitting on mountains of free cash, and foreclosure of the property you are renting is functionally similar to eviction.

nnx• 6 years ago

Pausing all financial obligations seems so obvious, why hasn't it been done and barely in the public discourse yet?

vsareto• 6 years ago

It's essentially a nuke. It's pausing revenue in a lot of situations. Some of that revenue then goes on to pay other workers.

vagab0nd• 6 years ago

We should pause the payment terms on all contracts by 90 days (and more later if needed). This plan, in effect, extends the Fed’s zero percent interest bailout to everyone and not just the banks.

This sounds like a very interesting solution. Although from a technical point of view, it seems impossible to implement.

glass_of_water• 6 years ago

This appears to be an appeal by Womply to direct a ton of stimulus money toward them, so that they can make loans to small businesses (instead of the Small Business Administration), and then they can take a cut of that.

danieltillett4• 6 years ago

This appears to be a very ungenerous reading of the slide deck. This is a time everyone needs to pitch in and do what needs to be done.

jellicle• 6 years ago

Yeah, this is no time to criticize grifting.

Previous commenter has nailed it directly: opportunists see a mountain of money heading out from government to the public and they want to insert themselves in the middle and grab a big chunk of it.

I mean, these businesses file tax returns and the government has an address and even a bank account on file for them. Government could... write them a check. I've just provided all the value Womply provides in getting money to small businesses, pay me.

Womply• 6 years ago

No, that's not the goal. We aren't trying to monetize this. We are trying to be good corporate citizens and to help our customers, the country, and our market. We have unique data, expertise, and resources so we feel obligated to help out.

dredmorbius• 6 years ago

Is there a PDF of this deck?

forkexec• 6 years ago

I was just talking to my mechanic by text at middlefield & n shoreline at the Arco on the southwest corner, just across 101 from the Googleplex. He may have to permanently close his business and get a regular job because his landlord will demand rent when there are no customers.

A similar situation is happening to Louis Rossmann who doesn't have business interruption insurance because they require flood insurance and weasel out of covering disasters.

Another situation is Michael Moore's nonprofit movie theaters won't be reimbursed to pay or govt pay their employees' salaries, and building lease/rent.

Also, tip-based workers are screwed too.

Only 20% of workers are getting some money, with a little promise of temporary UBI to some people.

And then the government has the gall to offer interest-bearing loans instead of no interest loans and grants? WTF!

The situation is there will be people working to put food on the table sick or not, and riots if people aren't made whole. The US economy will crash and burn for decades if this isn't handled correctly by clawing back some of the tens of trillions the MIC, corporations, and the rich stole from the little guys and regular folks.

anigbrowl2• 6 years ago

Residential landlords are looking at a rent freeze until June: https://caanet.org/caa-unveils-safe-at-home-guidelines-in-re...

Commercial landlords are likely thinking about it. the solution is to figure out who else rents from the same landlord/other small businesses in proximity, team up in solidarity and demand a rent freeze. The alternative is owning capital in either a ghost town or Bartertown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_Beyond_Thunderdome).

For the skeptical, think back to the Occupy movement of around 2011, which mostly took over public space. With so much private space sitting empty, the outcome would be very very different this time.

zaroth6• 6 years ago

“Freeze rent” as in not increasing the monthly payment?

Waive late fees as in, expect to be paid for all months back rent in the first place?

Gosh, that’s cute. Small businesses forced to shut down aren’t going to be gritting their teeth and paying back rent when the government decides they’re allowed to re-open.

I would guess most businesses forced to close at least 6 weeks will be write-offs. Walk away from the debt and start again if you can / dare. Unless someone else (govt) is picking up the tab.

s3cur3• 6 years ago

I have to think that as a society, we’re going to be introducing a lot of slack that never existed before. Consider commercial real estate: there are going to be loads of small businesses that can’t make rent in the next 3 months... but from a landlord’s perspective, it probably doesn’t make sense to terminate the lease (or hound the business into bankruptcy or something), because who the hell else are they going to get to rent the place?

Rapzid2• 6 years ago

If more banks follow suite with deferring mortgage/loan payments... All the stops are being pulled. If the governments can get their shit together over the next 2-3 months we could actually hit play after this pause and have a real shot at rebounding.

Other countries, and developing countries, may.. Will not be so lucky.

testfoobar• 6 years ago

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out.

1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. Test everybody coming into work every morning. 4. Isolate and quarantine the positive ones. 5. Elderly and immunocompromised self-quarantine.

Lets find the actual contours of this infection within the population. And then squeeze it down.

- Want to get into a theme park? You need a negative test result on your phone from this morning.

- You got tested at one of the thousands of mobile test stations. You received a code with your test.

- 15 minutes later, you get a test result on your phone - also sent to a national database in real time.

- The theme park worker scans your phone and validates the result.

This is not a fool-proof system. But it or something like it will instantly reduce anxiety of people trying to work.

If you knew that everyone at your coffee house, at your gym, in your lecture hall, etc. tested negative in the morning. You'd feel safer and we'd all be able to move forward.

SpicyLemonZest3• 6 years ago

I agree with the spirit, but theme parks specifically should probably stay cancelled until the virus is completely and universally suppressed. Temperature checks in smaller public accommodations, absolutely.

kingbirdy• 6 years ago

It would likely take longer to develop and roll out a system like that than for social distancing to run its course

throwaway9980• 6 years ago

Unfortunately the tests can’t be replicated and distributed at anywhere near the rate that the virus can be.

609venezia• 6 years ago

Can we make millions of the tests rapidly available? I am still reading about test shortages on both coasts, even under the restricted testing regime we have been in so far.

Maybe the no-contact thermometers could be a scalable approach. Go to the bank? Forehead scan to get in. Go to the grocery store? Same. At least until--and maybe even after--we can scale the RNA testing.

hyperion20104• 6 years ago

Get IDT or (other nucleotide synthesis company) to start mass producing the detection primers, and ship them to their whole active customer catalog, they all have thermal cyclers. Then figure out the other reagents needed to locally produce tests that trade off false positive rate for the lowest false negative rate you can get. How to get swabs to the closest lab with a thermal cycler, no idea, but we have phones with gps. Rate limiting step here is probably the step from swab to sample ready for amplification. I kind of wonder if it makes sense to tell people to start swabbing now and keep the swabs in the freezer until testing comes online so that we can start filling in the missing data.

Aperocky• 6 years ago

Maybe the no-contact thermometers could be a scalable approach. Go to the bank? Forehead scan to get in. Go to the grocery store? Same.

This is the reality in China. Literally every single public place have a remote thermometer they scan on your forehead. supermarket? scanned. subway? scanned. restaurant? scanned. If you have a fever you'll go into quarantine in no time.

closeparen• 6 years ago

Asymptomatic transmission is the key here. It's why "stay home if you're sick" or denying entry to detectably sick people isn't enough.

donw4• 6 years ago

The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out.

I disagree, and strongly.

This would be a knee-jerk, hyberbolic, and woefully ineffective over-response.

Typical for the times.

The only thing this might achieve is creating an even greater climate of fear and loathing.

There will be false positives. And false negatives.

There are with every medical test.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation: Assuming we "test everybody", and assuming both a 5% rate for both false positives and false negatives -- which is better than we currently do with influenza testing![1] -- we would needlessly quarantine 12.5 million people, and fail to quarantine an equal number of infected carriers.

Not to mention, the data about COVID-19 is all over the map. We still know very, very little about this disease. Understanding it well enough to calculate the appropriate response will take time.

Testing is part of the solution, yes. But the economic and social impact of "test everybody, every day" would be catastrophic.

Until then, in the short term, there are things we can, and should, be doing, as individuals:

(1) Limit your physical contact with others.

(1a) Especially at-risk individuals. The elderly, young children, etc.

(2) Support your local businesses through delivery, online ordering, and gift certificates.

(3) DON'T HOARD SUPPLIES! You do not need a decade's worth of toilet paper. Three months' worth is fine.

(4) Related to the above, maybe use this as an opportunity to live a bit more sustainably.

I'm down to four sheets per wipe -- certainly fascinating, relevant, and not at all disgusting to all of our readers -- which means that a single CostCo-sized pack of TP might keep my household going for well over six months.

On that note, I'm learning to garden. Let's see if I can manage to actually grow a fucking potato this year, all I got last year was a big leafy plant with zero tubers.

A discussion on government policy in response to this is a big ball of... things that require four sheets of Kirkland Signature, so I'm so not going there.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/diagnosis/rapidlab.htm

kalleboo• 6 years ago

we would needlessly quarantine 12.5 million people

As opposed to needlessly quarantining 300 million people?

hyperion20104• 6 years ago

Your logic is off. In the absence of data there is more fear because you have no idea who might possibly be sick. Once you start testing you can bring epidemiological tools online and alert people to possible exposures. If you don't do that the only sure thing is to quarantine everyone because you have no data, that will tank the economy for sure.

zaroth6• 6 years ago

...we would needlessly quarantine 12.5 million people, and fail to quarantine an equal number of infected carriers.

Well, the failure the quarantine would be the false negative rate times the infection prevalence. A significantly smaller number than the false quarantine rate, until the whole gadonkun no longer matters.

koheripbal• 6 years ago

The alternative is total economic destruction.

cma• 6 years ago

. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

We need to develop that capability. Imagine the next pandemic was worse, spread more asymptomatically and/or required a longer isolation time to get over without spreading combined with higher fatality rate, or fatalities in a younger demographic.

This could also help us learn how to deal with more tangentially related things like grid disruptions (hopefully we don't eliminate cash in response though as that might hurt in that scenario).

aaron_m042• 6 years ago

It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

Is that actually true though? What resource are we low on? Do we not have enough nonperishable goods or public funds to pay for utilities and basic infrastructure?

ip265• 6 years ago

We might have enough food etc stockpiled, but the servicing of debt (upon which everything is built) drives a certain modest urgency through the whole system.

hogFeast• 6 years ago

Yep, I am not totally sure what you do about it (stuff like testing people at work is going to be tricky legally) but I came to this conclusion the other day too.

The issue really isn't the virus but the fact that people who end up spreading it, don't know they have it. Shutting down the economy is a backwards way of solving this...it is assuming that everyone has it.

I am not sure how exactly we get to that point and you are kind of hoping that people who have it isolate...but testing really should be priority. My govt is ramping up but the numbers they are talking about are still ludicrously small...total tested is 0.1% of population, and they are saying it is a resource issue (whilst they are spending literally hundreds of billions on stuff that is being caused by their testing strategy).

maxaf• 6 years ago

Are you writing a “Black Mirror” episode?

senordevnyc7• 6 years ago

Worth discussing, but it would take months to deploy the level of testing required. You’d need to test a significant fraction of the entire US population every day. Say 30%, which is probably too low. So we need 100 million tests per day? That’s many months away, as is the miraculous (and privacy issue laden) database you’re talking about. By then, this will all be over and millions dead if we just let it run unchecked. We’re buying time to be able to actually implement something like that. It can’t happen in a matter of days or weeks.

im3w1l• 6 years ago

Test everyone at onset of cold symptoms or a fever. Taking hypochondria into account it should come out to once a month. So 10 million tests per day.

AntonStratiev2• 6 years ago

Focusing on positive or negative is the wrong focus, we need to test for immunity. Those who are immune can contract the virus again in a year, but will do so without symptoms, according to older studies for similar viruses.

And most importantly, those with immunity can go on to lead a normal life and participate in the economy.

https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1240689935557865472

zouhair5• 6 years ago

It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

Why not? This is a matter of survival. If the economic system breaks because of one pandemic that will last less than a year maybe that economic system needs to die and be replaced by something more solid and useful for most.

zaroth6• 6 years ago

“If the economic system breaks...”

No, this is people breaking. Peoples lives and livelihoods break due to this kind of economic and social strain.

And the quarantine effects everyone severely, not just 14% of people.

JoshuaDavid2• 6 years ago

If the economic system breaks because of one pandemic that will last less than a year maybe that economic system needs to die and be replaced by something more solid and useful for most.

Out of curiosity, why do you think it's likely that something more solid and useful to most is likely to come out of an economic collapse? Economic collapses have happened before - are there any instances of a solid and useful system coming out of them (maybe the new deal after the great depression? That one is arguable though).

buboard3• 6 years ago

this assumes the existence of magical economic systems with infinite reserves in other planets. The economy is people, its a dynamic system, it doesn't actually have reserves

kjksf2• 6 years ago

It's not about abstract "economic system".

Let me put it in simple word: you'll loose your job. Your friends and family will loose their jobs.

As a result, when your savings run out, you'll loose your appartement. And so will your friends and family.

You won't be able to afford food without government assistance.

And even if shutdown lasts only 30 days, it'll wreck the economy for a long time. Once a restaurant defaults and closes, it won't just re-open. Those jobs will be lost for a long time.

Now, maybe you're one of the lucky ones with enough savings to ride this out and this won't affect you. But it'll affect millions of others.

giantDinosaur5• 6 years ago

The 'economic system' is based on fundamentally one thing: people doing stuff. If people can't do stuff, literally, like go out of their houses, then no new economic model can work. It's like, the one requirement for everything.

cortesoft2• 6 years ago

Ok, you can pay them money, but what are they going to BUY with that money? If people aren't working to produce things, there isn't going to be anything to buy with the money we pay people. That is how you get runaway inflation.

ringshall• 6 years ago

Well worth noting:

If everyone is tested, the disease can be controlled:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/scientists-say...

buboard3• 6 years ago

the test kits would be positive when it's too late to stop this highly contagious virus. PCR tests are needed, which means, every day submitting a spit sample in some collection space, and get the result at night. It's not impossible, with a lot of automation and scaling of PCR machines and huge mobilization. It could become a routine for a long time if automated.

Abishek_Muthian2• 6 years ago

China's Red Cross supposedly advised Italy yesterday that 'total economic shutdown'[1] is the only way to contain the COVID-19 situation in the country now.

It all comes to what part of the curve the country is now, the choice being total lockdown incl. economic shutdown vs aggressive testing.

Considering US lapsed on aggressive measures in the beginning and that proper test kits are just being flown in from Italy[2]; total economic shutdown seems to be the only option left.

P.S. There are still high-risk countries which hasn't gone into lockdown neither doing aggressive testing as of now, claiming the number of cases are low although the day-to-day delta is increasing exponentially.

[1]Italy correspondent of Aljazeera gave this information multiple times on live, couldn't find static link to it as of writing.

[2]https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/air-force-flew-500000-coro...

nostromo2• 6 years ago

total economic shutdown seems to be the only option left

That's quite the overreaction.

Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man).

99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...

To put it another way: most of the folks dying from COVID-19 were already dying. This disease is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Should we just give up on them? No! But instead of quarantining everyone, and sending us back to the stone age, we should work to quarantine these folks while the rest of us return to normalcy and build up our antibodies and herd immunity.

ccktlmazeltov8• 6 years ago

Considering that people generally go to work even when they're sick in the US, and that people are scared to go to the doctor because of the hidden cost, I don't think your solution is valid.

On the other hand, we cannot pause the economy for too long. The damages are already done but what is going to happen if we wait too much?

I cannot imagine the level of stress the people working at the government must be under now... Whatever solution they come up with could be the collapse of the US as we know of now.

syshum8• 6 years ago

>Whatever solution they come up with could be the collapse of the US as we know of now.

Pretty sure that ship already sailed.

asdff10• 6 years ago

It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

Thinking abstractly, why not? If the businesses are open, the money is there to pay everyone. If you send everyone in the economy home, where has that money that would have been used for salary gone?

Someone is holding it rather than distributing it, that's the only reason. So, take a look at who is hoarding money like a dragon sleeping on a pile of gold, tax it, and pay everyone else enough for a roof and food.

gnicholas2• 6 years ago

Huh? An idle business can only distribute cash for so long before it runs out.

sokoloff4• 6 years ago

You can easily find the person who is holding rather than distributing the money. In fact, you looked at them in the mirror this morning.

I am voluntarily (10% family-preservation, 90% community service) staying in my house. I’m now “hoarding” (to use your hyperbolic term) all the money that would normally go to fuel, eating out, and entertainment.

The restaurant, movie theater, and gas station owner would, circumstances permitting, surely prefer to be able to serve me and I likewise.

Why don’t I just mail checks to people that I’d normally buy from? Because I don’t know what my own economic future looks like. Will I have a job in 6 months? What will my retirement savings look like then? Plus, I can’t just send the money where it would have gone and also send it to the people who are now selling me more at-home food or new goods/services that I need to be productive at home.

I’m fortunate to work as a W-2 office worker/spreadsheet miner, at least for now. If I were a bar, movie theater, or auto repair shop owner or worker, I’d be in a lot worse shape.

This is not a Bezos, Gates, Musk driven problem. This is driven by the inability of the consumer to consume normally.

airstrike9• 6 years ago

Leave it to HN to come up with an oversimplifying app-on-your-phone-solution to any of the world's problems.

By the time you're done developing the app, deploying "thousands of mobile test stations", figuring out a way to get test results in 15 minutes (!!!) and implementing security checkpoints at each establishment from gyms to workplaces, we'll all be infected.

Want to get into a theme park?

Nobody cares about theme parks right now. We care about getting infected at the supermarket, or bringing infected bags home. You're missing the forest for the trees.

cjslep• 6 years ago

It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

The Swiss Federal Council is setting aside billions of CHF (I think the total is currently at 32 billion) for exactly this: some relief for small and medium sized businesses. They've recently announced a process to have 80% of your salary insured up to a certain high cap, between 150k and 200k CHF.

There might be vastly different political and scale differences between the USA and Switzerland that make this infeasible for the USA. But Switzerland is showing that in principle it can be done. Making your blanket statement for the whole world, false.

lucasverra• 6 years ago

France is having same stategy. “Chomage partiel”

danvet• 6 years ago

42 billions total now, the 32 billions just announced is on top of the 10 billions already put aside last week.

And yes with these measures essentially any income is now assured: Salaries, salaries of SMB owners (normally excluded from unemployement benefits for obvious reasons), hourly workers, limited contracts, internships/apprenticeships, self-employed (i.e. without being employed by an LLC or something else like that) business like artists. Also daily stop-gap money if you have to stay home for more than a few days to figure out how to take care of your homeschooled kids.

Plus like 20 billions in credit guarantees for small businesses to avoid a cash flow squeeze.

All measures use existing infrastructure for paymenet (commandeering the banks for the cash flow squeeze credits) to guarantee the money has arrived by end of the month, latest. And that it will continue to flow, like regular pay check.

lend000• 6 years ago

Not to mention it isn't really solving the virus situation in most implementations. For example, everybody is packed into the local supermarkets at the same time in my area. Not only is there higher density due to closed restaurants, but also due to reduced hours (somebody thought curfews were a good idea).

In their panic, people want "something" to be done. In a couple years, we will be talking about how 90% of policies enacted during this crisis were a net negative, and 50% of them directly made the problem worse. Not to mention the ethical concerns of legal overreach.

* Disclaimer: It's a serious situation and I do not endorse a hands-off approach. That doesn't mean we can't have a civil debate about the complexities of trying to mitigate it, though.

syshum8• 6 years ago

Thank you, I thought I was the only that see these government measures as not only being destructive to the economy but actively make the situation worse

They are shutting down many businesses, and more or less forcing people in to situation where the virus will spread further.

the Panic in society currently right now will do more to spread this virus than anything.

But hey lets destroy our economy as well, that will do wonders to stop the panic

chewz• 6 years ago

For example, everybody is packed into the local supermarkets at the same time in my area.

Well in my country (Poland) with all the noise and confusion some rational procedures get implemented. Supermarkets limit strictly the number of customers inside. Cashiers get physical protection from customers. Contactless payment limits have been doubled. Etc.

So we are getting time for implementing changes and the life can start returning to 'new normal'.

vkou5• 6 years ago

90% of policies enacted during this crisis were a net negative

Compared to what? An exponential explosion, like what we saw in Italy, prior to the measures, but ten times worse, because you don't even do anything to check it?

polskibus• 6 years ago

It is a good idea, however it is too late to execute it well at this moment. As a society we should put incentives differently, so that things like adtech and cheap imports from China get less incentives, but health and solving social problems get more than today and can attract and retain more talent.

sjg0075• 6 years ago

There are not enough tests and it will take months and months to make them.

Also HIPPA laws prevent what you propose.

oggy6• 6 years ago

What do you base the months and months estimate on?

bufferoverflow• 6 years ago

No, that will not work. This virus is so infectious, one person can infect a whole bus by just coughing a few times, or the whole elevator by just breathing in an elevator. By the time he tests positive, he had infected dozens of people.

That's what happened in South Korea, as far as I understand. They missed just one guy out of 31, and he started a massive infection.

Yes, massive testing is indeed better than what we do now, but if you let people to just walk around, it will do absolutely nothing.

stjohnswarts• 6 years ago

I suspect after 1 or 2 months people will say enough is enough and force their reps to call off the quarantine. We can't do this for 18 months.

vkou5• 6 years ago

And then 3 weeks later, they'll say enough is enough, and beg for it back.

ken3• 6 years ago

Interesting that almost all of your examples of "contours of infection" are places that people don't need to go to, and the last one can be replaced by teleconferencing. That makes it sound easy: if you don't want to be tested, or it's too much hassle, just don't go there!

I assume in your system that everyone would need to be tested before going to work every day, because that's the most common in-person gathering for most people. The USA has run fewer than 50,000 tests in the months since this began. Your plan would require 100,000,000 tests in the USA every day.

No need to make the test stations "mobile". You could put 1,000 in every city, and they'd never have time to be moved. Every sidewalk downtown would be lines of people waiting for a test -- which itself would be a bigger gathering for me than just going to work.

tathougies• 6 years ago

I don't think this solution is sustainable either. It takes one bad apple to restart the exponential growth rate. Look at south Korea and patient 31.

ghthor• 6 years ago

Yeah, sorry buddy, I'm not going to get tested like that.

iamleppert2• 6 years ago

I’m honestly looking forward to a new economy served by large corporations. Large companies are more consistent in their user experience across multiple locations, and are better buyers of tech. They are always looking for new ways to automate their operations and frequently turn to tech companies to solve their problems at scale.

So in a way, it’s good for the valley if more of the economy becomes more corporate.

chance_state• 6 years ago

/s ?

mywittyname2• 6 years ago

Doubtful.

People often romanticize the "mom & pop" places, but there's a reason that most consumer-facing companies are very large, and those reasons were enumerated by the OP.

Also, there's a good deal of selection bias going on. If you had a successful business, why wouldn't you look to expand it to multiple locations? Running a single store makes your business vulnerable and usually requires a lot of time.

whichquestion• 6 years ago

A lot of people won’t like this. I personally really enjoy some of the local restaurants in my area. The uniqueness of their food and aesthetic is something you can’t get anywhere else. Even close approximations aren’t the same.

So, with loss of small business, we lose access to certain unique perspectives of how those kinds of businesses should be run. We lose the character that those businesses add to our cities and towns. Furthermore, there is an economic cost to the loss of those businesses for our cities and towns.

If it’s better for tech, it doesn’t mean that it’s better for humanity.

jdbernard• 6 years ago

Right, great consistency in customer experience from companies like Comcast, Google, United Airlines, Bank of America, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.

haecceity• 6 years ago

How long do we expect shelter in place to last?

jborichevskiy• 6 years ago

At least weeks, at most years?

yibg4• 6 years ago

Most countries can't survive months let alone years on lockdown. Most people can't work remotely, so in extended lockdown people lose their jobs and small businesses fold.

ccktlmazeltov8• 6 years ago

if we can trust the imperial college of london, the next 12-18 months will have 2/3rd of their time in lockdown.

Gibbon1• 6 years ago

I think that model assumes everyone goes right back to 'normal' as soon as lockdown is lifted. China and South Korea are both using regulations and surveillance to try to keep r0 below 1 while out of lockdown.

tinyhouse2• 6 years ago

Regarding restaurants. I live in Massachusetts where sit in is not allowed as of last week. I'm sure many restaurants are hit hard. But I also see many cafes and restaurants that adjusted quickly to take out and delivery and seem pretty busy. Some adjusted their menus and selling soup in bulk etc. Bars got hit harder.

Many sport studios quickly moved to online classes. Not everyone can of course. The climbing gym near my house is closed and who knows if they ever reopen. I'm not saying that we're not in a middle of a small businesses catastrophe, just that many small businesses find ways to survive. But obv they won't be able to for too long.

unexaminedlife2• 6 years ago

It's articles like this that really make me facepalm, shake my head and say "this isn't about whether America could survive this". America is the last of our concern. Almost ALL of the other countries on planet Earth have orders of magnitude LESS resources (in every sense of the word) than we do. Think about how likely those countries aren't going to fall into chaos. Their governments aren't equipped to deal with this sort of thing.

captain_crabs2• 6 years ago

Part of the benefit of living in America is the fact America will put it's citizens first, no? I fail to see how putting the rest of the world before our own countrymen could at all work. To many, that would be viewed as betraying countrymen if we didn't handle it here first. I'd even posit that an America that's contained and controlled COVID-19 is better for the world than one that's not.

I'm _not_ saying we shouldn't help the rest of the world. That's the very next thing. I'm saying, let's make sure we're not drowning before trying to help others not drown.

This is a really weird line of reasoning because I don't think it even holds in the case of a broader unity.

captain_crabs2• 6 years ago

I'll drop into this more, because we might not be connecting on what layers we're talking about. I'm talking about immediate medical survival. If by "resources" you're talking about financial/economic support, then I could very much agree with an "everyone right away" approach.

I see the immediate health layer as subject to physical limitation, the economic layer subject to informational limitation. If by resources you mean money, then yes, I very much agree.

unexaminedlife2• 6 years ago

I guess, subtly, my point was less about making suggestions about how to proceed, and more about just imagining how the small businesses (mentioned in the article) will do if/when the rest of the world is in disarray.

Sure, I have no gripe with the author(s) of the article, but reading it makes me feel like they just don't get the big picture.

ccktlmazeltov8• 6 years ago

Here are the issues from my paper napkin analysis:

* large businesses not being able to pay for maintenance of tools.

* small businesses not being able to pay employees, rent, services, etc.

* people not being able to pay for rent and food.

What are possible solutions for a long-term lockdown?

* for large businesses: bail out.

* for small businesses: rent should be free.

* for people: rent should be free, food should be distributed like in times of war.

ip265• 6 years ago

I am not sure you're going to successfully nationalize all commercial property, but temporarily freezing interest on debt & suspending payments is interesting to ponder. For example, most mortgages are held by the Fed, so they have the ability to do that. Similarly for t-bills. I'm sure a real economist can tell me why it wouldn't work, of course. But in general, rent must be collected because debt must be paid, so if debt were frozen then rents actually could be deferred.

asdff10• 6 years ago

I wonder if the hit from freezing debt is less than the gain from having the vast majority of the working economy get a de facto 2x raise. Lots of people are rent burdened which only hurts an economy driven by consumer spending.

donatj• 6 years ago

rent should be free

What about property maintenance?

georgeburdell• 6 years ago

If you are rich enough, you should be thinking about which small businesses you rely on and pull-in your purchases. My car mechanic just sent me an e-mail out of the blue advertising that they were still open. I will definitely be getting my car serviced early next week, even though it's a few months early. At work, I'm pulling in some of my "nice to have" projects to keep my favorite vendors (who haven't been shut down) busy.

DoreenMichele• 6 years ago

I can't access the article at the moment. I tried. I'm on my phone. It didn't open for me.

I'm not sure I care.

The world is suddenly embracing a lot of practices I've pursued for years because of my medical condition. I've spent a lot of years trying to develop alternate mental models and an alternate lifestyle to avoid germs so I can stay off all the drugs doctors think I should take.

I run r/GigWorks and r/ClothingStartups. Neither has much traction.

I have long wanted to actively foster the development of small independent business. The founding fathers of the US believed small business and entrepreneurship was critical to a healthy democracy. You can't speak your mind or vote your heart if you have to live in terror of being fired for it and unable to get a new job.

I can run my big fat mouth as much as I do in part because I work for an online writing service. If everyone absolutely hated me on every forum and in the small town where I live, I can keep earning an income anonymously online through the writing service.

I am only one person. I've long been a loser and social outcast. As such, I've been failing to get traction.

But you are all invited to check out GigWorks and ClothingStartups and try to be part of the solution.

The old guard never goes quietly. They go kicking and screaming. Things usually don't really change until a bunch of people die.

We've been here before. We survived as a species.

I think the most important question right now is "What kind of future would you like to see rise from the ashes?"

Answer that question and then actually do it. Don't just leave it as a mental exercise.

For me, that means continuing to try to find ways to foster small and micro business success via the Internet to give stability to a top heavy economy that is sucking the air out of the room politically for reasons foreseen by our founding fathers.

carapace• 6 years ago

Distinguish between wealth and paperwork. As Bucky Fuller pointed out, if all the paperwork disappeared overnight we would have a hellofa fight over who owns what, but no one would (necessarily) starve. If the wealth itself disappeared: the factories, the distribution networks, and so on, we would be screwed.

In the situation today the physical basis of wealth is not under attack, the "human capital" is.

As long as the food and water keep coming we'll eventually be all right, keep your head, and keep your eye on the fundamentals: In approximate rank order from most important to lesser-but-still-very important, the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs:

+Water (also soap!)

+Food Production & Distribution & Waste Management.

+Communications (under which I include governance)

+Electric Power

Pervading and fundamental to all these are keeping a level head and a civil society.

"It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency." ~Camus

m_ke5• 6 years ago

This wouldn't be such an economic disaster if the government had their shit together and acted fast. All they had to do:

1. Freeze mortgages, rents and interest for 90 days.

2. Send everyone checks for around $2,000 a month, let people choose to cash them if they need to, correct for it on 2021 tax returns based on your income.

Avoid having small businesses shut down and lay everyone off, call it a vacation and give people homework for the next 2-3 months while we focus on fighting this pandemic.

wegs2• 6 years ago

This would cause hyperinflation and a massive redistribution of wealth. Coastal people can't live on $2000. Airlines still go under.

Plan B: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YbtJGn7ida2IYNgwCFk3Sjhs...

devit• 6 years ago

The problem is that businesses have been setup in such a way that they can't just stop spending money when they aren't earning any money.

But this can mostly be fixed by law, with a law that retroactively changes all rent, leasing, mortgage, employment contracts and in general any contract that involves periodic or future payments to be stopped at will, subject to no longer enjoying the service or product.

Then they can just stop paying rent and paying employees and cancel all supply deliveries, since they no longer need those, and they will not lose any money.

Then add a temporary UBI and a ban on actually evicting from rented spaces (since the economy is shut down, and thus there would be no other tenants) so that people can still have a home and food.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

Sad to see museums are among the hardest hit institutions, next to gym club.

namelosw• 6 years ago

It's worth to take a look at Karl Marx again. I'm not referring to any existed entities, but the model of pure capitalism is so problematic as he pointed out.

The usual reason against shutdown is because people have mouths to feed, mortgages to pay. But seriously, most of the products and services people are selling not really important or even any useful - that's why people have to advertise them so hard - it's not as straightforward as advertising cars, houses, and Coke. But those jobs are very important to those individual employees because it's their only source of income if their business were shut down, they wouldn't have roofs over their heads.

So the capital is the way to let people claim their part of the economy. It's so vulnerable that it's not even doomsday yet and people start to lose their source of income, and even without shutting down things. If we're going to shut down non-mandatory industries, people from those industries would get broke immediately - it's so deeply coupled so effective measures could not be taken.

In a perfect world, less than 10% of people working, or everyone working one day per week could feed everyone effectively. As automation goes on, the percent could keep shrinking. As a comparison, at the end of the day of a capitalist world, most of the "meaningful" jobs would done by very few persons because of the automation, and the rest of the world can only earn money at their mercy by doing "barely meaningful" jobs. Other than that, those who can't even get "barely meaningful" jobs have to working hard on futuristic versions of TikTok trying to become superstars - it's their only way of claiming their part of the economy.

Furthermore, the well-connected people get tested first as Trump suggested (or naturally happens in the US) is also a capitalist way of doing things. If we take Asian countries as an example, the testing kit is soon promoted as strategic resource mostly instructed by the government, which should eventually come from health care institutions, they have ideas to allocate those test kits in order to make maximum use of it, instead of blindly testing people back and forth.

If Karl Marx is not for you, it's always worth taking a look at Singapore where they did most things correctly most of the time. It's perfectly balanced in economics, politics and many, many other aspects (Though usually bashed by Western media as an authoritarian country). People can afford to buy houses, education is excellent and at a reasonable price, eating outside is cheap and easy, health care is affordable, and people are relatively free. Everything is carefully planned and designed by the government.

As a comparison, at a first glance, Hong Kong seems to be similar to Singapore to those people who haven't been there, but Hong Kong is a more western-style democratic society compared to its neighbors (at before 97 if you protest). But the rent is out of control, things are messier, there's no specific plan for things.

Again, I'm not evangelizing communism but those problems Karl pointed out have been overlooked largely nowadays.

anovikov• 6 years ago

Soviet approach to solving the problem would be: don't tell anyone.

There was a major flu epidemic that killed 100K+ in the Soviet Union in 1977-78 (long after gulags and all the scary Soviet stuff, when living standards were among the world's top, comparable to poorer Western European countries like Italy and Spain). None of my older relatives ever heard of it. just some old people died, that's it. Absolute zero of economic or social consequences. I think kids didn't go to school for some weeks and maybe streets were cleaned bit better than usual, nothing worse.

antaviana• 6 years ago

I wonder if the strict lockdown measures that are needed to try to contain the covid-19 virus perhaps will not be enough to contain the covid-19 virus, but as a side effect will extinguish all other virures with lower Rs transmitted among humans, such as the flu, etc.

That is, that after 3 months of strict lockdown and 9 months of pervasive social distancing, the only virus you will be able to catch is the covid-19 virus, until new viruses coming from animals appear.

marvin3• 6 years ago

There is a risk that the response to this epidemic will tear some parts of American society apart. Some of the rhetoric in this thread is both representative and frightening in that regard.

People of low means do not like getting told that they must go back to work and accept the risk of losing their parents and getting permanent lung injury. They will also not like getting told to stay at home and default on their rent and mortgage.

People in a situation like that can take desperate measures, especially when there’s many millions of them.

You guys really need to step up the political measures to take care of these folks. Emergency bailout style. The time has never been more ripe to test out basic income.

jriley• 6 years ago

The SBA statistics are sobering. 46 days for application, 24% approval per slides. In my experience, asking for $50k was harder than $350k and a large distraction. Vendor financing and credit cards filled the gaps.

IME if you needed capital, you weren’t approved for capital. If you were cash flow positive with solid income and 2 years of operating history and tax returns, you could put up collateral and refinance at a lower rate.

Over ~5 years I was denied ~5 times, discouraged from applying ~3 times. I was approved once after several years of track record with a co-signer pledging a property with 100% collateral.

That small business (exited 2019) would have really struggled to survive right now. It would also be a difficult time to ask friends, family or spouse to help.

I wish I had a better policy suggestion to offer; it's a hard problem. Good luck to all small businesses out there, I’m pulling for you.

LeoTinnitus• 6 years ago

I worked with commercial loans and SBA stuff is difficult to get simply because it's hedged on risk. If you need an SBA loan to expand being a landlord and you have a year experience, yeah you might get it. If you just bought a new business and you have no experience with it, you may get denied.

They look for essentially a business plan that has been thoroughly thought out. It sucked for us because we had to report EVERY DAY someone missed their payment until it was paid. The SBA gives a decent rate for what it risks, but they are an unmovable force. You cannot explain to the the situation or what. Follow the terms to a t or get yanked.

gdubs• 6 years ago

Like a plane crash, there's a moment where the error is realized. Someone says 'oh sh!t' on the flight recorder when they realize the error, and that there's no time left to correct. Yet enough time remains to wait.

That's what this month has felt like. The grave error, in my opinion, was refusing to take dramatic action early on. We couldn't tolerate any economic slowdown, so dice were rolled, and here we are. Add in the (criminal) failure of testing in the United States...

It's been a week and you see plenty of calls to 'think of the economy', and put an end to the shelter-in-place. One week. But like I keep saying, this isn't a binary choice. It's not clear that we could just 'chose the economy' at this point, because of the path that was chosen weeks ago – which is a narrower, far more dangerous path, to both the global health, and the economy. Short-term thinking at its worst.

But this is not a literal plane crash. The majority of us will live. It's about the kind of world we want on the other side of this. What we need now is global cooperation to share knowledge and resources. We need people to come to their senses so we can make smart decisions and make sure we don't throw out our constitutional rights in the process. We need as much urgency in bailing out the millions of people who are already losing their jobs, as there is for the airlines that spent the vast majority of profits on buying back their stock.

There's cognitive dissonance at play. "This can't really be the situation we're in?" Well, it is. This path was chosen. Now we need to buckle-up and learn rapidly from the mistakes we've made.

Fjolsvith3• 6 years ago

In 6 days, Chloroquine combined with Z-Paks will have nipped this pandemic in the bud.

joe_the_user• 6 years ago

Yeah, this sort of bogus claim can do real damage.

segmondy• 6 years ago

Just a money grab by a special interest group - folks in the payment industry. Everyone is trying to figure out how to get their fingers on the $1 trillion that the Fed is handing out. This is saying, the SBA can't give out the money fast! Trust us acquirers/processors to do so! Give us the money and responsibility instead!

MidnightRaver• 6 years ago

Some people feel for dying Italians, some fear going outside so much their hands are shaking. But this really wrenches my gut : O

Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

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