What goes up..... must fall:
"Unlike with the Great Recession, the sky’s the limit on Washington spending to save the economy from coronavirus. Here’s why" by Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, April 19, 2020
Congressional leaders and the Trump administration were closing in Sunday on another package of about $450 billion to replenish a small business loan fund while also allocating more federal money for hospitals and testing. There are forecasts of hundreds of billions dollars more in federal spending in the months ahead and that doesn’t even count an estimated $4 trillion in lending coming from the Federal Reserve.
I'm $urpri$ed he mentioned that other part.
Economists say the pandemic is a dramatically different crisis, a sudden and near-total shutdown of the economy that requires much more fiscal firepower to contain. Politics is also a factor, with Republicans holding the White House and President Trump’s reelection dependent on the state of the economy, but another major reason why the sky appears to be the limit on spending in this federal response is what happened — and what didn’t happen — after the then-unprecedented efforts by Congress and the Fed to pull the economy out of the Great Recession.
It’s acknowledged now that Washington didn’t do enough back then to propel the nation out of the recession, leading to a slow recovery. At the same time, hyperinflation never developed and interest rates never soared. That meant the costs to borrow to buy a car or a house, and in the bigger picture, fund the US government, remained low. The hope is that will be the case again.
Look at them rewrite the Obama years and the narrative that has flowed for over 11 years now! They flipped the $cript ju$t like that!
“There is a widespread realization in the Congress, across party lines, that this is the biggest public health catastrophe this country has seen in a century and ... it’s the biggest economic catastrophe we’ve seen in a century. Huge resources are going to be needed to fight it and we’ll worry about the national debt later,” said Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist and former vice chair of the Federal Reserve. He noted that despite “a lot of angst and some screaming" about inflationary pressures from the Great Recession bailouts and stimulus, the biggest inflation concern since then has been that it is too low.
Would you expect that cretin to $ay anything el$e?
Still, that doesn’t mean there are no potential negative consequences to the coronavirus response, which comes as the federal government has run huge budget deficits in recent years because of tax cuts and increased federal spending. At some point, the United States will have to address its soaring national debt, which at $23 trillion is approaching a level in relation to the entire economy not seen since World War II, or future spending could be hindered by massive annual interest payments on our borrowing.
“We were on an unsustainable level going into this crisis and that’s on us because we borrowed for many years during an economic expansion and that was pretty reckless,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group. “That shouldn’t constrain our spending today, but that means fixing the fiscal situation will be all that more challenging.”
Oh, the Obama economic legacy that Joe Biden was to run on just turned to $hit!
As Congress was considering the $2 trillion rescue package last month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emphasized that lawmakers shouldn’t be concerned about the deficit.
“Interest rates are incredibly low, so there is very little cost of borrowing this money,” he told reporters, “and as I’ve said, in different times we’ll fix the deficit. This is not the time to worry about it.”
That's the thing I like about Mnuchin: he is a very, VERY reassuring presence on the airwaves and seems to have a grasp and control over this that is very reassuring. Everything is going to be all right.
Unlike with the Great Recession, the response to the coronavirus isn’t hindered by concerns that a financial rescue is rewarding bad behavior. Many lawmakers and the public had problems bailing out bankers who made risky Wall Street bets that led to the 2008 financial crisis, as well as homebuyers who had over-extended themselves during the housing boom in the years before.
“Suspicions that somehow you were providing money to those who were causing the problem made people less generous then,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who was economic adviser to Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and served on the federal commission that investigated the financial crisis. “This is businesses that were well-run and doing fine and suddenly their customers are gone. It’s hard to wrap your head around what’s going on out there. It’s horrible,” he said.
Harvard economist Jason Furman was serving in the Obama White House in 2009 and remembers the pushback from some in Congress on the size of the stimulus package of tax cuts, aid to states, and infrastructure spending. The administration initially wanted $1 trillion but settled for $787 billion.
“I think it’s reasonably, widely understood that the fiscal response was too small,” said Furman, who went on to chair Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Amazing, isn't it?
The pre$$ narrative for the last 11 years has been that Obama rescued the economy and set it up for the greatest expansion it had ever known before handing it off to Trump so he could take the credit.
As for the previou$ $timuloot, that turned out to be money wa$ted.
He estimates Congress will have to spend another $1 trillion this year to resupply the small business rescue program, further extend unemployment benefits and provide another round of checks to households, and another $1 trillion could be needed next year if unemployment remains high.
They are to$$ing the $tuff around like goddamn confetti!
That spending is OK for now because the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds, which help finance the US debt, are below 1 percent, Furman said. Despite the soaring US spending, investors aren’t demanding higher rates to fund this spending.
“In some sense, the market is telling us now loud and clear don’t worry about the debt,” Furman said.
“But?”
The deficit problems are ahead, economists said. Once the economy is stabilized, Congress and the White House will have to figure out the best ways to stimulate growth and develop a plan to eventually address the deficit. That will pit Democrats who prefer tax increases on the wealthy against Republicans, who advocate cuts in non-military spending.
Tax increases on top of social cuts?
Excuse me?
Where are the taxes going to come from as the social needs explode?
“As we go forward and we get to other priorities, you’re getting into things that have less unanimity and the politics will get tougher,” Holtz-Eakin said. “There’s going to be a recognition that while we spent the money we had to spend, we shouldn’t have started with a trillion dollar (annual) deficit and a high level of debt.”
Well, we did.
Good thing money appears to be no object.
Maybe we should just declare all the debt odious and eat the bankers.
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Gotta love that social distancing!
"White House and Democrats near deal on aid for small businesses" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Alan Rappeport New York Times, April 19, 2020
WASHINGTON — The White House and congressional Democrats on Sunday closed in on an agreement for a $450 billion economic relief package to replenish a depleted emergency fund for small businesses and to expand coronavirus testing around the country, with votes on the measure possible early this week.
Still doing Gates f***ing bidding.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin described the broad outlines of the package in an appearance on CNN on Sunday. The agreement would include $300 billion to replenish the emergency fund, called the Paycheck Protection Program; $50 billion for the Small Business Administration’s disaster relief fund; $75 billion for hospitals; and $25 billion for testing.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said in separate television appearances Sunday morning that a deal appeared to be in the offing.
“We’ve made very good progress, and I’m very hopeful we could come to an agreement tonight or early tomorrow morning,” Schumer said, appearing shortly after Mnuchin on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He said the White House was “going along with” some of the Democrats’ requests, “so we feel pretty good.”
UGH!
I feel so much better knowing they feel pretty good.
Mnuchin said President Trump approved of the framework, and he expressed hope that the Senate could vote on the bill as early as Monday and the House on Tuesday.
That timeline, however, could be optimistic, and the path ahead is complicated. With lawmakers scattered across the country, many in states that are restricting travel, House and Senate leaders will most likely try to approve any agreement during procedural sessions this week as opposed to bringing their rank and file back to the Capitol to vote, but during procedural sessions, any one lawmaker could object, delaying final passage.
Yeah, somehow I knew there would be $ome $ort of $nag.
The money for hospitals and testing in the package that Mnuchin outlined was a significant concession to Democrats, who were standing in the way of a quick and stand-alone infusion of cash to the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers forgivable loans to small businesses to create incentives for them to keep employees on their payroll.
When Republicans do that, the pre$$ calls them obstructionist!
Democrats had also wanted to couple an infusion for the small-business program with more money for states and cities, but Mnuchin said such funds would be included in a future relief package.
Yeah, states and cities got the big f*** you on that so they can then fail and the federal government can take them into receivership. National Guard will arrive to restore order and manage delivery of vital services as the stay-inside order is made permanent.
Partisan warfare has enveloped the talks since the start. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill had spent much of last week trading barbs.....
Oh, I see that at least $OME THINGS are BACK TO NORMAL!
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They could make a movie of it, or at least, they could have:
"Neither lights, camera, nor action" by Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling New York Times, April 19, 2020
LOS ANGELES — Just a few weeks ago, Hollywood’s global assembly lines were spinning at full speed, but that was another epoch. Film and television production has ground to a halt because of the pandemic — leaving stars, stylists, directors, studio chiefs, grips, writers, set builders, trailer cutters, agents, and scores of others at home and confronting the same question almost everyone has: Now what?
Who cares?
We are supposed to feel sorry for Hollywood and its culture of conceited, holier-than-thou, hypocrite celebrities? After all the filth they have portrayed?
Shooting is not expected to resume till August, in part because of the time it will take to reassemble casts and crews. That leaves a vast number of people without work. Hollywood supports 2.5 million jobs, according to the Motion Picture Association of America; many workers are freelancers, getting paid project to project.
“I keep telling myself, ‘Panicking is not going to help,’ ” said Muffett Brinkman, an associate casting director who has been unemployed for more than a month. “Hopefully things restart before I’m completely financially ruined.” She is a member of Teamsters Local 399, where the hourly minimum for her job is $18.45.
Oh, poor Muffett!
Others in Hollywood, especially those on the upper end of moviedom’s caste system, are still working, albeit remotely.
David Oyelowo should be in Baltimore shooting a Showtime pilot. Instead, he has been trying — from home in Los Angeles — to finish his directorial debut, “The Water Man,” a tender family drama that counts Oprah Winfrey as an executive producer......
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One pre$umes Hollywood will get a bailout, although that may not go over well with the American people.
You know, Mnuchin was in the movie biz for a while:
"The holiest day of the year for Orthodox Christians was reserved and glum in many countries where churches were closed to worshipers for Easter services because of restrictions aimed at suppressing the spread of COVID-19. From Moscow to Addis Ababa, believers were either banned from attending Sunday services or urged to stay home and watch them on national television broadcasts. In Georgia, where some churches remained open, some worshipers went through a long ordeal to attend services that began late Saturday night in order to conform with a nationwide curfew — arriving at churches before 9 p.m. and required to stay until 6 a.m. Serbia’s curfew was even more strict, lasting 84 hours from Friday afternoon until Tuesday morning. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Irinej, held the Easter liturgy at midnight without believers, but there were reports that some people entered churches to attend services. Most churches in Russia were closed, including Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, where the leader of the world’s largest Orthodox denomination, Patriarch Kirill, conducted the nighttime service in the presence only of other clerics, a choir, and some church workers. Neighboring Belarus, which has imposed no restrictions on movement, was an exception to the muted Easter celebrations in other Orthodox countries. Hundreds of thousands attended services at churches throughout the country, including authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. Services were broadcast live in Ethiopia, which has the largest Orthodox population outside Europe estimated at 46 million. Attendance at services was restricted and security was deployed at churches in the capital, Addis Ababa, to prevent gatherings. However, some churches in outside the capital held services. The Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania also broadcast midnight Mass from the Resurrection Cathedral in Tirana, the capital."
"The Church of God in Christ, the country’s biggest African American Pentecostal denomination, has taken a deep and painful leadership hit with reports of at least a dozen to up to 30 bishops and prominent clergy dying of COVID-19. Officials from the denomination did not return requests for comment, but media reports and interviews with specialists who study the denomination show the deaths of leaders in states including Michigan, New York, and Mississippi. Those are regions where the Church of God in Christ is prominent, and the coronavirus has hit hard.
"A federal judge signaled that he believes there’s a good chance that Kansas is violating religious freedom and free-speech rights with a coronavirus-inspired 10-person limit on in-person attendance at religious services or activities, and he blocked its enforcement against two churches that sued over it. The ruling Saturday from US District Judge John Broomes in Wichita prevents the enforcement of an order issued by Governor Laura Kelly against a church in western Kansas and one in northeast Kansas."
"The Navajo Nation is ordering all people on the tribe’s reservation to wear protective masks when out in public to help fight the spread of the coronavirus. The Navajo Department of Health issued the emergency health order for the reservation, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The Navajo Nation has been hit harder by the coronavirus than any other Native American tribe."
"Residents of Georgia will be allowed Friday to return to the gym and get haircuts, pedicures, massages and tattoos. Next Monday, they can dine again in restaurants and go to the movies. With that announcement, Governor Brian Kemp on Monday joined officials in other states who are moving ahead with plans to relax restrictions intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus, despite signs that the outbreak is just beginning to strike some parts of the country. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee said Monday that he was not extending his “safer-at-home” order that is set to expire April 30. According to his office, “the vast majority of businesses in 89 counties” will be allowed to reopen May 1. Businesses in Ohio are expected to reopen on that date too. “We’re going to do what we think is right — what I think is right — and that is try to open this economy,” Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “but do it very, very carefully so we don’t get a lot of people killed.” In South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, said Monday that department stores and some other retail businesses that had previously been deemed nonessential would be allowed to reopen Tuesday, but they must abide by social distancing guidelines. People will be able to gain access to public beaches Tuesday. Parts of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a string of barrier islands whose beaches are popular with tourists, are also moving forward with lifting restrictions for entry, officials said. In Ohio, even as plans were being put in place to reopen, a state prison about an hour’s drive north of the capital became the largest-known source of coronavirus infections in the United States, continuing a trend of fast-moving outbreaks in crowded, confined spaces."
Open up and the deep $tate pre$$ will suddenly find a "hotspot," and have you noticed that all the "hotspots" are captive populations? Military, nursing homes, prisons, undocumented immigrants, etc. Then there are the collaborators in politics, law enforcement, and the health industry that are going along with this fraud under penalty of job loss, prison, or death. Finally, there is the one sector that has remained untouched and untainted by COVID-19.
"President Trump said on Sunday that the federal government is stepping up efforts to obtain vital supplies for coronavirus testing, hours after several governors from both parties faulted his administration for not doing enough to help states. Public health experts say testing on a larger scale is a crucial step before resuming normal social and economic activity in the country, but Trump defended the administration’s approach of leaving testing largely to states. ‘‘Testing is a local thing,’’ Trump said at a White House briefing. He said too many governors were relying on state government labs and should turn to commercial labs to help them process more tests. He didn’t name any particular states or officials, but earlier Sunday, Republican and Democratic governors were unanimous in putting the onus on the federal government to help secure vital testing components, including swabs and reagents, the chemical solutions required to run the tests, which the governors said have been in short supply. ‘‘To try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing, and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is just absolutely false,’’ Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, told CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union.’’ ‘‘Every governor in America has been pushing and fighting and clawing to get more tests, not only from the federal government, but from every private lab in America and from all across the world.’’ Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia, which is working closely with officials in neighboring Maryland and the District of Columbia, called Trump administration claims of sufficient testing ‘‘delusional.’’ ‘‘We’ve been fighting for testing,’’ Northam, a Democrat, told CNN. ‘‘It’s not a straightforward test. We don’t even have enough swabs, believe it or not, and we’re ramping that up.’’ Trump, displaying a nasal swab to reporters, said the federal government was procuring millions more swabs, and then claimed some states had lost the ones they were already sent. ‘‘We also are going to be using, and we’re preparing to use the Defense Production Act to increase swab production in one US facility by over 20 million additional swabs per month,’’ Trump said. ‘‘We’ve had a little difficulty with one. So we’re going to call in — as we have in the past, as you know, we’re calling in the Defense Production Act, and we’ll be getting swabs very easily. Swabs are easy.’’ White House officials did not respond to requests for details about how the measure would be implemented. As of Sunday evening, there were no official documents released showing that the Defense Production Act had been invoked for swabs. The pushback from governors came on a day that the total number of confirmed deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, passed 35,000. Although some states have reported a leveling off in the number of deaths and new infections, nationally those figures are still rising. More than 749,000 confirmed infections have been reported as of Sunday night."
I don't want that f***ing thing stuffed up my nose!
One wonders why Northam is still governor after the blackface incident, and Hogan just signed an order to release hundreds of inmates.
That is front-page New York Times stuff.
The Great American Rescue is leaving minority businesses behind
I'm sorry, I am longer interested in nor do I read the Globe columnist Shirley Leung, and they at least got a pancake breakfast even if the water is no longer a concern.
White House and Democrats near deal on aid for small businesses
That was by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Alan Rappeport of the New York Times and mine was AP, so..... still ain't got it done yet, huh?
"Late-stage negotiations on $450 billion virus aid program drag on" by Andrew Taylorand Lisa Mascaro Associated Press, April 20, 2020
WASHINGTON — Late-stage negotiations in Washington on additional funding for a small business rescue program dragged Monday past a hoped-for deadline, though both the Trump administration and key lawmakers insisted they are close to a final pact.
The contours of the fourth coronavirus response bill appear largely set. It would provide more than $450 billion, with most of the funding going to boost a small business loan program that’s out of money. Additional help would be given to hospitals, and billions more would be spent to boost testing for the virus, a key step in building the confidence required to reopen state economies.
The emerging draft measure — originally designed by Republicans as a $250 billion stopgap to replenish the payroll subsidies for smaller businesses — has grown into the second-largest of the four coronavirus response bills so far. Democratic demands have caused the measure to balloon, though they will be denied the money they want to help struggling state and local governments.
How many more are planned?
The $ky's the limit?
The Senate met for a brief pro forma session Monday afternoon that could have provided a window to act on the upcoming measure under fast-track procedures requiring unanimous consent to advance legislation, but it wasn’t ready in time.
Majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky, set up another Senate session for Tuesday in the hope that an agreement will be finished by then. The House has said it could meet as soon as Wednesday for a vote on the pending package, according to a schedule update from majority leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat from Maryland. The chamber is likely to have to call lawmakers back to Washington for a vote, which will present logistical challenges.
They need to $corn that proce$$!
With small business owners reeling during a coronavirus outbreak that has shuttered much economic activity, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — the administration’s point man in the talks with Democrats — said he was hopeful of a deal that could pass Congress quickly and get the Small Business Administration program back up by midweek, but optimism regarding an immediate deal was tempered.
I can't imagine a more capable hand on the tiller. Of all the Trump administration officials, he seems to be the one not covered by a fleck of $hit.
The emerging accord links the administration’s effort to replenish the small business fund with Democrats’ demands for more money for hospitals and virus testing.....
Oh, I see that at least $OME THINGS are BACK TO NORMAL!
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Related:
"A chorus of governors from both parties pushed back hard Monday after President Trump accused Democrats of playing “a very dangerous political game” by insisting there is a shortage of tests for the coronavirus. The governors countered that the White House must do more to help states do the testing that’s needed before they can ease up on stay-at-home orders. The plea for stepped-up coordination came on the latest day when the Trump administration provided discordant messaging: Trump blasted state leaders for being too dependent on federal government and said later that some governors just didn’t understand what they had, while Vice President Mike Pence assured governors the government was working around-the-clock to help them ramp up testing. Pence sought to soften the administration’s message amid growing clamor from governors of both parties for a national testing strategy to help secure in-demand supplies like testing swabs and chemical reagents. “When it comes to testing, we’re here to help,” Pence told governors during a videoconference from the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Pence said the administration sent an e-mail to officials on Monday detailing current testing capacity by state, but Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan said much of the unused lab machinery listed for his state by the administration was in federal labs that the state does not have access to. Pence agreed to open up federal labs to help states. Hogan announced Monday the state received 500,000 tests from South Korea — a “game-changing” deal that was negotiated by his wife, Yumi Hogan, who grew up outside Seoul. As Pence spoke with the governors, Trump took to Twitter with a more combative tone, complaining that the “radical left” and “Do Nothing Democrats” were playing politics with their complaints about a lack of tests."
That should send a chill up your spine.
"Trump, head of government, leans into antigovernment message" by Maggie Haberman New York Times, April 20, 2020
First he was the self-described “wartime president.” Then he trumpeted the “total” authority of the federal government, but in the past few days, President Trump has nurtured protests against state-issued stay-at-home orders aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus.
Hurtling from one position to another is consistent with Trump’s approach to the presidency over the past three years. Even when external pressures and stresses appear to change the dynamics that the country is facing, Trump remains unbowed, altering his approach for a day or two, only to return to nursing grievances.
Not even the president’s reelection campaign can harness him: His team is often reactive to his moods and whims, trying but not always succeeding in steering him in a particular direction. Now, with Trump’s poll numbers falling after a rally-around-the-leader bump, he is road-testing a new turn on a familiar theme — veering into messages aimed at appealing to Americans whose lives have been disrupted by the legally enforceable stay-at-home orders.
Whether his latest theme will be effective for him is an open question: In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday, just 36 percent of voters said they generally trusted what Trump says about the coronavirus, but the president, who ran as an insurgent in 2016, is most comfortable raging against the machine of government, even when he is the one running the country, and while the coronavirus is in every state in the union, it is heavily affecting minority and low-income communities, so.....
So what, NYT?
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The Bo$ton Globe editorial staff says the president has failed his own test.
