A Fundamental Re$tructuring
Forced Labor Tran$formation
It's become more evident as the months pass by that evil, incredibly awful evil is afoot in our land with precious few defenders. Freedom and Liberty are a distance memory, never to be seen again.
On top of that egregious injury to the Republic comes this elti$t in$ult from the Bo$ton Globe bu$ine$$ pages:
"As US economy comes to a halt amid coronavirus, advertising industry reinvents itself; New ads try to strike a balance, resonating with anxious consumers without alienating them" by Janelle Nanos and Jon Chesto Globe Staff, May 9, 2020
Remember picnics, and parties, and parades? Remember shopping in stores? For things that weren’t essentials?
The advertising world does, and they’re here for you. Now, more than ever.
A recent Target ad encouraged customers to be "together at home,” while Toyota said its family is “stronger together” and other brands have followed suit — all with sweeping piano music and still photography of friends and gatherings to remind you of better times.
I didn't highlight anything leading to my commentary because 1) I have seen the insulting brainwashing on some of the television before quickly moving to something, anything else. I don't like consuming television; however, I view some of it as part of my "job." Dip a toe in now and then, but stay out of the water is my motto, and 2) the eliti$t, agenda-pu$hing Globe is becoming more unreadable by the day as its target audience are the elites and the $lave cla$$ that will serve them, nothing more.
As the US economy has come to a screeching halt amid the coronavirus pandemic, the advertising industry has undergone a massive self-reinvention campaign. Ad dollars are in jeopardy as businesses contemplate their own future.
“The compasses that people used to plan advertising are spinning. The game has completely changed,” said Sascha Lock, vice president of media at the AMP agency in Boston. “Fundamentally, people need things that are very different.”
The resulting ads must strike a balance: resonate with consumers who are anxious about the virus and remind them that a brand exists, without alienating them or completely bumming them out.
“Right now, messaging that misses the mark has more risk than ever, and messaging that hits that mark has more impact than ever,” said George Sargent, CEO of Arnold + Havas Media Boston. “People believe COVID-19 will permanently change their lives and the way brands do business, and brands are aiming for a hopeful and reassuring tone.”
I keep wanting to inject a comment, but each paragraph is more offensive than the last. These people are living in some sort of delusional bubble, are recruited liars, or simply represent the privileged $ociety after the Great Cull that is continuing and will continue into the summer.
Advertising typically hinges on implying certainty: Buy this product and you’ll be better, stronger, smarter, but there’s so much uncertainty in the world that it’s hard to get that message across, said Bruce Clark, a marketing professor at Northeastern University. This pandemic, as many ads point out, is unprecedented. Companies now have to do the calculus about whether to spend money on campaigns at all, he said, as consumers defer their purchases, but on the other hand, if they pull out, will they cede ground to a competitor?
“Previous recessions were demand driven, and customers stopped spending,” he said. “Here we have whole sections of the economy that are shut down. ... There’s no point in saying ‘buy now’ if you can’t actually sell,” and the ad messaging has begun to reflect that.
Take Forcepoint, a security-tech firm. As the US hunkered down, with a swath of the nation working from home on laptops and phones, Forcepoint executives wanted to capitalize on the potential demand for cybersecurity. So as they prepared a new digital campaign, they knew they would have to be creative. Filming a new ad, in the social-distancing era, could be challenging.
I couldn't help myself. You see the convergences there, the interests represented and so on. In a new era now.
The Texas company (owned by Raytheon) teamed up with its Newburyport-based ad agency, Mechanica, to rummage through their old footage. They discovered eerily perfect video of a lonely commuter heading to work in a big city — a big, empty city — and wrote up a new narrative, underscoring how people can work together, even when they’re not physically together.
Raytheon will make an appearance below so hold tight.
“We felt this was a really good moment in time to be positive, optimistic, to reassure people,” said Matt Preschern, Forcepoint’s chief marketing officer.
Ad agencies throughout the region have been using a similar playbook, and pulling together entire campaigns in less than three weeks. That’s about how long it took for Allen & Gerritsen, the Boston ad agency, to create a new initiative for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, from conception to execution.
A&G chief executive Andrew Graff said the agency combined new photography with some stock public footage as well as footage from “local partners” for the “We Are Mighty Massachusetts” campaign that launched last month — all while maintaining appropriate social distancing. In order to observe social distancing guidelines, Blue Cross Blue Shield's "We Are Mighty Massachusetts" campaign was produced using found footage through local partners, some original photography, and stock public footage. “We’re having to be nimble,” Graff said. “We can’t be out there, shooting big productions.”
Hill Holliday chief executive Karen Kaplan said her ad agency and its longtime clients are often turning to footage left over from shoots that took place before the pandemic, or encouraging user-generated video from smartphones. She doesn’t expect crews to be gathering on a film set again anytime soon. “We’re all learning that we can work more quickly, we can do more with less, we can figure out how to do great work,” Kaplan said. “We have disrupted ourselves in some really positive ways.”
I didn't highlight the last name of the CEO of that bu$ine$$ whose main goal is top deceive the con$umer into buying things they do not need for corporate greed, and her quote is $cary as $hit.
As for the crews and films, the world will be well served by being rid of Hollywood's filth and celebrity culture , and think of all the women who won't be preyed upon by directors, producers, and actors.
Kelly Fredrickson, president at ad agency MullenLowe, watched the shift in tone among ads from March to April. The first batch of ads used a lot of still footage, with updates from companies about what they were doing to stay safe, but that’s changed. “We’ve gone from not understanding, to beginning to comprehend," Fredrickson said, "and with that comes sadness.”
Oh, you got that right. Go all the way back to 2004 or so, when I finally realized 9/11 was not what we were told and later what we allegedly saw. Years later, many of my fellow citizens, as then, are unable or refuse to see what is going on in front of their eyes and that is indeed sad. It is how Freedom dies, to thunderous and clanking applause.
The resulting ads over the past several weeks have gotten softer, more thoughtful, more contemplative. It’s such a chorus of emotional support — you might think you wandered into a therapy session — that it has become a trope of sorts: “We’re here for you. We stand with you. You can trust us,” they say.
OMFG!
I gue$$ there are good "tropes" and bad "tropes"as the corporate codswallop provides a choru$ of emotional support while taking advantage of the crisis to offensively push their products.
Never mind that there are oodles of us who will unable to contribute to the rebound due to permanent job loss. Thanks! To be eliminated we are!
“Everybody is doing the same kind of stuff,” said Steve Connelly, who runs Connelly Partners in the South End, referring to the ubiquity of somber piano music. “Piano players are making a fortune.”
To stand out, Connelly said, he’s advising his clients to focus on upbeat messages: “We’re trying to talk about how awesome it’s going to be to get back together. ... Our job is to point at the potential of tomorrow."
Yeah, the era of mandatory vaccination, a culled population, and a global surveillance grid of the entire planet.
Marty Donohue, creative director at the Boston agency Full Contact, said the repetition among ads was understandable, but he expects to see more diversity in the next wave of work. The ads will still show restraint, but also focus on more optimistic themes. “Brands are going to start finding their unique tones and voices,” he said. “The brands that are the first to market when times are tough, if they do it the right way, are the first ones back out of the chute.”
Bill Gates will be branding you with a vaccine!
Already, some spots are looking a bit brighter: IBM has been touting how its Watson technology is serving retailers handling online orders and families streaming Zoom calls. Domino’s is serious about safety with touchless delivery. Even Match has been promoting dating while distancing for the truest of optimists among us.
No more romance means.... NO MORE CHILDREN!
What a band of evil fucking vipers (yes, where are the little ones?)!
Many clients are pivoting in their approach to business as well, something that will be reflected in their advertising. Don Martelli, chief operating officer at the Belfort Group, said architectural firms should focus more on redesigning interiors aimed at keeping workers separate, while universities should focus on promoting enrollment in ways that don’t rely on campus visits and in-person events.
See: The Future of Higher Edu¢ation
Turns out there is no future in it at all, and the $tudent debt $till mu$t be repaid despite the job "loss." (They stole it from you over a monstrous lie for sick psychopathic eugenicists)
Lisa Martinelli, director of brand marketing strategy at Stop & Shop, said the company immediately changed its messaging at the first sign of shutdowns, moving away from promotional campaigns to a more somber, supportive tone, but the company decided to change its approach, she said, after learning that shoppers were increasingly afraid to visit the stores. Its latest round of ads features customers asking other shoppers to wear masks to help everyone stay safe. Reacting to consumer sentiment means keeping a “constant pulse on your customers and reaching them in relevant ways quickly,” she said.
Yeah, muzzle yourself for food. That's the message amidst the increasingly slim pickings every time I go. Did you calculate the fear factor when you threw in with the globalists on this? The plans they showed you were so myopic they didn't mention it or they thought we would think of those who destroyed lives and livelihoods as heroes?
As the shutdown stretches on, overall ad spending has plunged: Figures tracked by Kantar indicate that spending on 30-second TV spots has fallen by double-digit percentages for at least five weeks since the pandemic hit the US; however, there are some signs of growth in certain categories, such as pharmaceuticals, insurance, and household products. Meanwhile, travel spending has all but completely dried up, and retail and automotive sectors have also taken a hit.
“We’re not seeing a lot of ads for vacations and Disney World right now,” said Mark O’Toole, who oversees marketing firm Mower’s Newton office. Instead, it’s “more traditional items ... food items, things we can get delivered."
See you around, Stop & Shop! After the second wave, lockdown will be permanent and the National Guard will deliver your rations, 'er, boxed provisions. Forget picking over the grapes and bananas or any dieratyr specifications, America. You will accept their gruel and applaud lest they take you away to a COVID camp (think of it as a hotel stay).
Funny things is, I have not seen any Total Liquor or Sands ads in the Globe since this Planned-emic. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing because liquor stores have indeed proven essential and are still doing a brisk business during the virus outbreak -- even though Anheuser-Busch InBev warned that its biggest three beer brands — Budweiser, Stella Artois, and Corona — are bearing the brunt of a collapse in sales caused by the coronavirus."
One wonders if the Globe has been drinking (no mention of possible alcoholism or its role in domestic violence, btw) given the contradictions; however, we do know they are not smoking anything.
Still, many clients recognize the importance of marketing during the pandemic, particularly given how easily consumers’ loyalty can be won or lost at this time.
“Brands are thinking about the reality that a lost customer today is potentially a lost customer forever,” said Fredrickson of MullenLowe.
I'm $peechle$$!
One silver lining in all this: Companies have become more willing to innovate on the fly, out of necessity.
“Brand experimenting is never going to go back to the way it used to be,” Fredrickson said. “That’s a fundamental shift.”
--more--"
I'm not seeing any silver ling in this monstrous fraud and trauma-inducing psyop spreading across the entire world due to government and industrial servitude to sick genocidal psychopaths, sorry.
(flipping above the fold one finds this $ickneing piece of sycophantic $hit)
"Why lower interest rates lack their usual economic punch in the coronavirus crisis" by Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, May 8, 2020
WASHINGTON — Call it smart strategy or just plain good luck, but the Federal Reserve’s failure over the past couple of years to take a standard step to prepare for a recession appears to have been a stroke of genius, given the unprecedented coronavirus economic collapse.
Normally, the Fed would have raised its benchmark interest rate during an economic expansion so the rate could be significantly lowered to generate stimulus when a downturn inevitably hit, but the Fed abandoned that strategy last year and lowered the rate instead, triggering concerns by some economists that the battle against the next recession would be hindered.
In retrospect, the Fed’s interest-rate decision worked out, because the pandemic has turned conventional monetary policy on its head. Analysts said the Fed put the economy in a better position to handle the unique coronavirus fallout and, at least so far, there’s been little downside because the central bank expanded its use of unconventional stimulus measures.
“Everyone had pretty much concluded that the Fed had very little wiggle room to handle the next crisis, and they’ve surprised and stunned us by coming up with a whole new arsenal,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting and advisory firm Grant Thornton and a close follower of the Fed.
They are a secretive auditing firm, and the endless war terminology has become disgusting even as it enlightens what the thinking is from elite minds and ma$ters.
The benchmark federal funds rate, which lenders use to determine interest rates for credit cards, car loans, home equity lines of credit, and small-business loans, was less than 2 percent before the pandemic hit the United States. That’s well below the 4 percent level economists agreed was optimal heading into a standard recession, so that there would be more room to lower the rate to make borrowing significantly cheaper, but, as it turns out, that low interest rate helped keep the nation’s unemployment rate at a five-decade low of 3.5 percent in February, before the massive layoffs began with cities and states shutting down businesses.
Yeah, it's good you had job until they pulled plug with their COVID COVER STORY, and now the Globe is out there hailing the very same "heroes" who mismanaged the economy to the point of collapse and are now looting the place -- while protecting you from something they themselves created to oppress you.
On Friday, the government reported the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7 percent in April. That’s by far the highest level since the Great Depression era, and April’s stunning number might understate the pandemic’s damage to the labor market. The unemployment rate was based on a survey taken in the middle of April, and more than 7 million people have filed for jobless benefits since then.
Related: US unemployment rate soars to 14.7%, worst since Depression era
Neverthele$$, the White House huckster "claimed in a Fox News interview Friday that there would be a quick rebound. ‘‘Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon,’’ Trump said."
Another delu$ional $oul or outright liar, $igh.
“The catastrophe hit at a 3.5 percent unemployment rate, and if the Fed had been tighter early, it would have been a 4 or 4.5 percent unemployment rate at the time the pandemic hit," said Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman. "In retrospect, it’s better that it was 3.5.”
What an appropriate name for a guy who says the $ky’s the limit, and why have no bankers tested positive for COVID-19?
He had concerns about the Fed’s decision to trim the rate by 0.75 percentage point last year in response to trade tensions with China, even as the recovery from the Great Recession continued, but now acknowledges "I was completely wrong. The economy would have been a bit weaker when the catastrophe hit, which would not have been a good thing,” Blinder said.
That guy is $hoveling $hit, nothing el$e.
At the same time, this economic catastrophe has taken a lot of the stimulus punch out of interest rate cuts. “Low interest rates are not going to help put food on the table for some of the [33] million people who have filed new claims for unemployment benefits," said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at the financial information website Bankrate.com.
Yeah, yup.
Unlike a normal recession, the steep coronavirus downturn isn’t about people needing to borrow more cheaply. It’s about people being afraid or unable to go out and spend much money at all. So a bigger interest rate cut wouldn’t have a substantial impact right now, said David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan research organization.
Yeah, it's a "nonparti$an" research organization, according to the Globe front man, with a board of directors that includes Stanley Fischer; Maurice R. Greenberg (of AIG fame); Paul H. O'Neill, Former Secretary of the Treasury (now dead); David Rockefeller (also dead, from swine flu); David M. Rubenstein (the $avior of us all); George Soros; Lawrence H. Summers (has crawled out from under his rock); Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman, Goldman Sachs International, and Paul Adolph Volcker, among others, with honorary directors being Alan J. Greenspan and George P. Shultz.
“The difference between that version of unimaginably bad and the version of unimaginably bad we’re living, I think, would be barely detectable, if at all detectable in the data,” said Wilcox, an economist and former top Fed staffer. “We still would have had an economic collapse without precedent.”
Yeah, cover is the cover for it so Americans won't filet those re$pon$ible.
Fed chairman Jerome Powell has acknowledged the limits of interest rate cuts, the usual way central banks have battled economic downturns. “Of course, lowering interest rates cannot stop the sharp drop in economic activity caused by closures and other forms of social distancing,” he told reporters in March, and low rates can’t even help consumers and businesses unless they have the ability to borrow through well-functioning credit markets, he said.
So WHO BENEFITED from the TRILLIONS in FED LOOT?
It certainly wasn't small business or the "non-e$$ential" working public.
So the Fed has focused on relaunching and expanding some of the innovative measures it deployed during the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. Fed officials last month committed to pumping $2.3 trillion into the economy to keep credit flowing, push down long-term interest rates, and, for the first time since the Great Depression, lend directly to small and medium-size businesses outside of the banking industry. That’s on top of the approximately $2 trillion it had injected starting in early March.
So now the PPP worked perfectly with no problems. That's how the Globe hack rewrote recent history, wow.
At least the city of Bo$ton is being taken care of:
"The city of Boston says it is awarding $7.5 million in small business grants, enabling the city to fulfill all eligible requests that were submitted during the brief application process in April for a new relief program to help business owners cope with the impact of the COVID-19 shutdown. City officials said they expect to help about 1,900 small businesses. The city is using $6.6 million from federal Community Development Block Grant funds (including $5 million in new money from the federal CARES Act), $300,000 from city operating funds, $200,000 from Citizens Bank, $100,000 from Eastern Bank, and $50,000 from the state attorney general’s office. The grants range in size from $2,500 to $10,000, depending on the size of the business."
Get your grant yet, and will it be enough?
“They moved with historic force and speed and creativity and aggressiveness to exercise the tools given to them by the Congress and the Treasury,” Wilcox said. “They unveiled programs that exceeded the total scope of what was done during the financial crisis.”
And a cheer went up from corporate AmeriKa!
When the Great Recession began in late 2007, the federal funds rate was at 4.25 percent. Over the next year, Fed officials chopped it down to a target range of between zero and 0.25 percent, but after the financial crisis that hit in the fall of 2008, the Fed needed to do more.
With financial markets seizing up, the Fed created new lending facilities and started purchasing bonds in a controversial effort known as quantitative easing to provide more stimulus to the economy. The amount of assets held by the Fed more than quadrupled, to $4.5 trillion, triggering concerns that it could need its own bailout at some point and that the staggering flow of money into the economy would lead to high inflation.
Neither happened. As the economy recovered, the Fed began inching its benchmark interest rate up, starting in late 2015, and about two years later began slowly reducing its asset holdings. Part of the reason was to put the Fed in a better position to fight the next recession.
“The Fed started reloading the interest rate cannon with the idea that if we keep this at zero forever not only might we provide too much stimulus, but when the next recession comes we might not have enough interest rate bullets to fire off,” Blinder said.
$ickening f**k, and the scenario that they described earlier, the one that didn't happen then, will be happening now. There is no avoiding it, but Blinder (and Mnuchin) says put blinders on because that's later.
The Fed moved deliberately and pushed the federal funds rate up to a target range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent by the end of 2018, but the Trump administration’s trade war with China began causing the US economy to slow, so last year the Fed not only scrapped plans for more rate increases but began lowering the rate again. “The Fed had hoped to get farther” with rate increases, Swonk said. “The trade war was a monkey wrench in that.”
Soon it will be a real war, yaaaaay!
The Chinese regime is just as odious as ours and is all-in on this whole thing, so no saviors there.
The controlled demolition of the economy is to be blamed on everything and anything in my pre$$ except where it really lies -- the damn bank$ters and Wall Street.
President Trump had been pushing for rate cuts for about a year, publicly criticizing Powell, his handpicked chairman, in a break with decades of a hands-off approach by the White House with the independent Fed. But Powell never took Trump’s bait and earned praise from many economists for raising rates only in response to economic conditions, not Trump’s haranguing.
Swonk said that approach has served Powell well in this crisis, with his actions widely viewed as again responding to economic conditions and not to helping Trump politically.
“There’s no way the Fed could have credibly done what it’s done if he wasn’t so hated by the president for so long,” she said of Powell. “He’s reacting to a crisis, not the president’s whim. It’s really important that the markets have faith in him, that that’s what he’s doing.”
Oh, at lea$t they have faith and are rea$$ured!
Still, the Fed is taking on additional risks in all its new lending, with the assets on its balance sheet skyrocketing to about $6.7 trillion over the past two months, but experts said Fed officials had no other option in the face of a historic economic disaster, and having a higher interest rate to lower, in this case, mattered less than having unemployment as low as possible when the collapse hit.
“As profoundly painful as the collapse will be for so many people, and especially for people of color and people with less than a college education and small biz owners . . . it would have been even more painful if the condition of the economy going into the economic collapse had not been as strong as it was,” Wilcox said.....
He has no way of proving that, of course, and aren't you grateful they f**ked up and allowed you to keep your job for a few more weeks before taking it from you over a bull$hit lie?
--more--"
Maybe Raytheon can help develop another rea$$uring ad:
"Raytheon Technologies cutting costs by $2 billion, furloughing workers; Aerospace and defense company cites coronavirus impact on business" by Anissa Gardizy Globe Correspondent, May 8, 2020
Raytheon Technologies Corp. said Thursday it has taken immediate actions to reduce costs by $2 billion and has furloughed an undisclosed number of workers, because of the coronavirus’s impact on the aerospace market.
“While many of these measures have been difficult, it is the right thing to do for the business,” chief executive Gregory J. Hayes said during a call with investors. “[The] pandemic has led to unprecedented economic uncertainty and of course a huge slowdown in commercial aerospace.”
The company’s chief financial officer said that the Waltham-based aerospace and defense company has instituted a hiring freeze, deferred merits, and furloughed staff across its corporate offices, its commercial business, and factories.
“I expect that there will be further reductions as we sort through all of these volumes,” CFO Toby O’Brien said. “The key is, we don’t want to cut the talent so deep that when recovery happens, we don’t have the right people.”
The company is also taking actions to conserve $4 billion in cash.
Raytheon Technologies does not plan to repurchase any shares this year and said it plans to return $18 billion to $20 billion to shareholders over a four-year period instead of three years as previously announced.
That means the stock price will lag, and they are feeding at the trough like everyone else, huh?
Boston-based aerospace rival General Electric Co. announced in early May that it was laying off 25 percent of its workforce at GE Aviation because of the pandemic’s impact on global travel. Hayes said Raytheon Technologies’ diversity will help it weather the headwinds hitting the airline industry. “Our portfolio is balanced and diversified against commercial aerospace and defense as well as across geographies,” Hayes said.
Yeah, the war machine is essential as GE’s demand for military business remains strong despite the drop in jet engine orders as the tourism industry seeks public funds for massive marketing push (regional councils are seeking $15 million in federal funds to pay for ad campaign)!
Raytheon Technologies was formed in April through the merger of Raytheon Co. and the United Technologies Corp. aerospace business. The company reported first-quarter sales of $18.2 billion, which reflects standalone results for United Technologies and two companies — Carrier and Otis — that have since spun off since the merger. United Technologies and Raytheon "began the year with a strong start,” Hayes said. “It’s clear the rest of the year is going to be under significant pressure as a result of the pandemic.”
Awww, poor Raytheon!
They in hot water, huh?
Raytheon Technologies employs about 195,000, and roughly half of its workforce is working from home because of the pandemic, Hayes said. The company is providing temperature checks for employees, enforcing social distancing measures, and offering personal protective equipment for those who can’t work from home.
Raytheon Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Not even from the Globe?
--more--"
Finally, a RAY of HOPE:
"Layoffs mount in Massachusetts, but pace of new jobless claims offers ray of hope; Nearly a million people in Mass. have sought unemployment benefits since the pandemic began" by Larry Edelman and Christina Prignano Globe Staff, May 7, 2020
“In this environment, a slowing pace of job losses is a positive sign,” said Michael Goodman, an economist and executive director of the Public Policy Center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “If the feds step up soon and the gradual reopening of a larger number of business as soon as later this month is able to occur, we should start to see some workers returning to work.”
Yeah, there is less water coming into the Titanic, yaaaaay!
Still, the pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the state’s economy, and Goodman said “we’re not quite there yet” as far as reaching the bottom of the job losses.....
Always a but, still, even if, to be sure, etc, with the propaganda narrative pu$hers!
--more--"
Also see:
Laid-off MGM Springfield workers could lose their jobs permanently if coronavirus crisis persists
Consider them gone.
Moderna gets OK for second phase of testing on coronavirus vaccine
Va¢¢ines are big bu$ine$$, though, with plenty of government and Gates loot to back 'em up.
Cambridge biotech’s virus test using CRISPR gene editing OK’d for crisis
Now they are literally going to alter your DNA!
"Even with the economy in miserable shape, some investors are finding reasons to hope the worst of the plunge may have passed, and Wall Street rallied to its biggest gain in a week on Thursday. Other areas of the market were still showing much more pessimism....."
See: Trump at the Trough
At least UnitedHealth customers will see a discount on next month’s bill!
"Neiman Marcus on Thursday became the first major department store group to file for bankruptcy protection during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a stunning fall that follows the collapse of Barneys New York late last year and comes as shadows gather over chains such as Lord & Taylor and J.C. Penney. In a statement, the company said it received $675 million in financing from creditors to keep running the business, as well as $750 million it hopes will help it get out of bankruptcy by “early fall.” The creditors will become majority owners of the company, and Neiman Marcus expects to eliminate $4 billion in debt....."
Yes, even the "rarified markets are struggling during the pandemic."
"Mnuchin says unemployment will get worse before it gets better amid coronavirus pandemic" by Derek Hawkins Washington Post, May 10, 2020
Two of President Trump’s top economic advisers said Sunday that Americans face an economy that will worsen in the coming months, with predictions that the unemployment rate will jump to 20 percent from the 14.7 percent reported Thursday.
Speaking three days after the Labor Department reported its worst unemployment figures since the Great Depression, the advisers predicted that unemployment will continue to climb.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on CBS’ ‘‘Face the Nation’’ that he is afraid to go to work, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Chris Wallace on ‘‘Fox News Sunday’’ that ‘‘I think you’re going to have a very, very bad second quarter.’’
That was after he appeared at the start of the demolition in March on the same program and said we would V-shape it into a rocket recovery by September.
Still, Mnuchin expressed confidence in the fundamentals of the economy. He argued that the job market should begin to right itself by September as he echoed Trump’s calls for a phased reopening of the economy. This economic crisis ‘‘is no fault of American business, it is no fault of American workers, it is the fault of a virus,’’ Mnuchin said.
Yeah, don't blame those responsible, him and his ilk. Blame the invi$ible enemy, the viru$!
These people leading this nation are f**king contemptible.
As several states lifted quarantine measures this weekend, allowing businesses and public spaces to reopen, Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, warned that even a partial reopening of the country could pose life-threatening risks to 1 in 3 Americans.
Here we go, more lies, deceit, and deception from Event 201's JHU!
During an interview on ‘‘Fox News Sunday,’’ Inglesby noted that a third of Americans were either older than 65 or had underlying health conditions, making them vulnerable to severe infection from the coronavirus. With many states struggling to ramp up diagnostic capabilities, there was still no way to reopen the country without exposing that population, he said.
‘‘This disease moves quickly,’’ Inglesby told Wallace, ‘‘and it doesn’t respect city borders or state borders. I think we need a strategy that works for everyone,’’ he added. ‘‘I don’t think there can be a strategy that works for half the country, with an attempt to keep the other part of the country in some sort of large isolation. I don’t think it would work logistically or practically.’’
Didn't Pelosi once say don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
If we are going to wait for that strategy, we will be in lockdown for a long time if not forever -- or until Gates gets his vaccine ready!
These f**kers are SO GODDAMN EVIL it truly is BEYOND BELIEF!
Playing a clip of Trump’s assertion last week that the virus will dissipate on its own, without a vaccine, Wallace asked Inglesby whether the virus could go away soon.
‘‘I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests,’’ Trump said Friday. ‘‘This is going to go away without a vaccine. It’s going to go away, and we are not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.’’
There is some sort of Illuminati prediction out there that this virus -- if it even exists, which I now doubt -- will do exactly that. Disappear as quickly as it arrived, disappear for 10 years before resurfacing and disappearing forever.
I'm not buying it. The plan is NOW!
Inglesby pushed back on Trump’s claim, saying the United States is still in the early stages of the pandemic and would need a vaccine, in addition to improved diagnostic and tracing capabilities, to go back to normal.
‘‘No, this virus is not going to go away,’’ he said. ‘‘Hopefully, over time, we will learn to live with it, and we will be able to reduce the risk of transmission, but it’s going to stay as a background problem to the country, and around the world, until we have a vaccine.’’
EVIL, EVIL, EVIL!
In Washington state, residents who complained about businesses violating Governor Jay Inslee’s coronavirus restrictions have faced harassment and threats of violence after their contact information was posted on Facebook pages of conservative groups, the Seattle Times reports.
One woman said she received a voice mail from someone telling her, ‘‘You got 48 hours to get the (expletive) out of Washington, or I am coming for you, and your loved ones,’’ according to the Times. Another caller reportedly told the woman, ‘‘I hope you choke on the (expletive) virus.’’
I must admit, I hope it runs rampant in the White House.
The residents’ names, e-mails, and phone numbers appeared in a spreadsheet shared last week by groups called Washington Three Percenters and Reopen Washington State, both of which have promoted recent protests over restrictions intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the Times reported. A spokeswoman for the state’s pandemic response office told the newspaper that the groups probably got the information through public records requests for complaints that have been filed.
Obviously, this is a targeted smear campaign against anyone who dissents against lockdown or any other part of this dastardly globalist plan. It has all the hallmarks and stench of a false flag operation with the intent to take down certain pages and groups of people.
The state’s response to the coronavirus outbreak has been held up by public health specialists as one of the pandemic’s success stories. Despite being one of the earliest states to report deadly disease clusters, the state has maintained relatively low rates of infection and death — a flattening of the curve that specialists have attributed to quick and aggressive action from state officials, but the ongoing stay-at-home order from Inslee, a Democrat, has drawn ire from some groups, which argue that the economic costs are outweighing the public health benefits of keeping residents indoors. For the second time in three weeks, hundreds of people rallied in the state capital on Saturday to protest the restrictions.
Similar protests have unfolded nationwide, buoyed by Trump’s push for a swift reopening of the US economy.
As if he had any power and as if it would matter.
--more--"
Mail call!
"A fight over the post office’s future breaks down along familiar lines" by Nicholas Fandos and Reid J. Epstein New York Times, May 10, 2020
WASHINGTON — Americans consistently rate it their favorite federal agency, and with a workforce of more than half a million scattered across the country, it employs more people than any government entity outside of the military, but as Washington begins to battle over the next round of coronavirus relief funding, the Postal Service, for many the most familiar face of the federal government, has landed improbably at the center of one of the most bitter political disputes over who should be rescued, and at what cost. The future of the mail may hang in the balance.
Soon there will be no Post Offices; you will leave outgoing mail on your stoop and when the mailman drops off your letters he will take the packages. No human contact needed.
After nearly reaching a bipartisan deal for a multibillion-dollar bailout in the last coronavirus rescue package, in late March, Republicans and Democrats have sharply diverged over whether to provide a lifeline. Now, the fight over the future of the Postal Service has spilled onto the campaign trail.
F**K THI$!
Every time it is something that serves the American citizen, these f**kers start parti$an bickering!
On one side is Trump and his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who have largely looked at the agency’s worsening bottom line as a problem of its own making. “The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump declared recently, announcing he would not back any additional financial support for the agency unless it raised package rates by 400 percent. The drastic increase, which most independent analysts say would ultimately hurt the Postal Service, appears to be aimed chiefly at Amazon, whose chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, and whom Trump regards as a nemesis.
Trump's tax policies and lockdown have made him billions, so f**k off New York Times (Epstein!).
Democrats have positioned themselves as protectors of the agency, joined by large retailers like Amazon and CVS that rely on the Postal Service to deliver millions of packages a year at low rates. In the House, they are preparing to introduce a massive relief bill that would give the agency much of what it has asked for, including $25 billion in direct funding plus additional debt relief.
“We have to fight for the post office,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Thursday.
“Their goal has always been to privatize, to make a profit off the Postal Service for private purposes,” Pelosi added, referring to Republicans. “We are for the public having the Postal Service meet the public interest, not some special interest.”
She is without a doubt a $ickening piece of $hit.
In many ways, the position is a natural one for Democrats. The Postal Service has been an engine of growth for the black middle class and is one of the last strongholds of organized labor in the country, both critical constituencies for the modern Democratic Party. A functioning Postal Service is also a prerequisite for establishing a national vote-by-mail program for the elections in the fall, a priority for Democrats that some Republicans oppose, but the issue has not always broken down neatly along partisan lines. Congressional Republicans who represent rural areas where the daily mail is an economic and medical lifeline have been some of the agency’s biggest supporters, and they could face political consequences for embracing the president’s position.
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said the Postal Service’s ubiquity, particularly in rural America, means both parties have traditionally had a vested interest in maintaining its financial stability. “The Postal Service is like Social Security — it’s beloved by everybody,” Trumka said. “If the president or anyone else is seen as trying to debilitate or eliminate the Postal Service, they’ll pay a huge political price.”
Wait until Trump privatizes Social Security after reelection!
Trumka, btw, is the only labor voice Trump hears and he has been coopted by corporations.
Mnuchin has begun preliminary conversations with the Postal Service’s leaders about the terms of a loan of up to $10 billion that the Treasury Department is authorized to extend. Few details have become public, but a task force led by Mnuchin in 2018 proposed that the Postal Service raise its rates, begin diverting more work to nonunionized outside contractors, and essentially lease space in the nation’s mailboxes to private delivery services.
Democrats and union leaders have argued those changes would put the agency on a road to privatization. David C. Williams, vice chairman of the Trump-appointed board of governors and a former postal inspector general, was so uncomfortable about the talks with the Treasury Department that he resigned last month, concerned about the politicization of an organization that is normally unaffected by partisanship, said people familiar with his thinking, and last week, the board of governors announced it had selected a North Carolina businessman and major Republican donor to be the next postmaster general, replacing a career employee with someone who is expected to be more sympathetic to the administration’s views.
The White House position has increasingly vocal allies in Congress. Armed with a new report from the Government Accountability Office on the Postal Service’s long-term structural challenges, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, accused Democrats of trying to let the agency off the hook for mistakes that had nothing to do with the coronavirus crisis. “Simply throwing more of taxpayers’ hard-earned money at them won’t fix their problems,” Jordan said.
No, you guys caused them by forcing them to fund health and pensions for 75 years into the future -- something no corporation or other government agency is required to do. These bastards set them up to fail so they could privati$e!
EVIL!
--more--"
That's all the Globe mail for today, sorry.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Tech stocks keep rallying, help keep Wall Street steady
The Covid-19 pandemic is taking a harsh toll on small biotech companies even as the Tesla parking lot nearly full, indicating the factory is up and running.
Encore guests, employees must wear masks when casino reopens
I bet attendance will be way down:
"Older gamblers, a mainstay of casinos across the United States, are skittish about heading back to slots and blackjack tables. Only 40 percent percent of gamblers over age 60 said they would immediately return to casinos once stay-at-home orders are lifted, a survey found. That’s much different than what gamblers under 29 are saying, nearly two-thirds of whom would return when they can. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that adults 65 and older are of higher risk of severe illness if they’re infected with the coronavirus. Another bad omen for casinos: About a third of those surveyed said they plan to spend less when they go back, and only 22 percent said they’ll consider visiting a casino that required air travel."
I guess that means the trip to Disneyland is out:
"Visitors in face masks streamed into Shanghai Disneyland as the theme park reopened Monday in a high-profile step toward reviving tourism that was shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. The House of Mouse’s experience in Shanghai, the first of its parks to reopen, foreshadows hurdles global entertainment industries might face. Disney is limiting visitor numbers, requiring masks and checking for the virus’s telltale fever. China, where the pandemic began in December, was the first country to reopen factories and other businesses after declaring the disease under control in March even as infections rise and controls are tightened in many other countries. Tourism has been hit especially hard by controls imposed worldwide that shut down airline and cruise ship travel, theme parks, and cinemas. Shanghai Disneyland and Disney’s park in Hong Kong closed on Jan. 25 as China isolated cities with 60 million people to try to contain the outbreak. Tokyo Disneyland closed the following month and parks in the United States and Europe in March. Disney is opening Shanghai cautiously as it evaluates reopening other parks around the world."
The Globe's bu$ine$$ $ection story went shotgun with the New York Times, and looks like the vacancy signs are up at the hotels:
"The worst month in hotel industry history is finally over. Marriott International Inc. saw revenue per available room, which measures room prices and occupancy, decrease 90 percent in April, the company said in a statement Monday. That mirrored Hilton’s April performance, making the impact from the Covid-19 pandemic more severe than wars, terrorist attacks, and previous economic downturns."
I hate to be the one to break the news, and I mean that sincerely, your indu$try is finished and those places are to be repurposed as COVID concentration camps (at least you will have Wi-Fi with the cot).
"The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting remote work boom is accelerating a “Great Migration” from expensive and tax-heavy coastal regions and major cities into more affordable states in the US South and West, according to Susquehanna Financial Group. The “forced transition” to remote work among white-collar firms will lead employers to reevaluate their approach to real estate and workforce location more broadly, analyst Jack Micenko wrote in a note published Monday. As evidence, he pointed to data from real estate companies that showed less interest in California, New York, and New Jersey as well as slowing searches for homes in larger cities. Micenko identified states including Nevada, Colorado, Florida, and the Carolinas as frequent destinations for migrating city residents."
