Soon it will be worthless, just like your dollar.
Related:
"India, the unmatched vaccine manufacturing power, is giving away millions of doses to neighbors friendly and estranged. It is trying to counter China, which has made doling out shots a central plank of its foreign relations, and the United Arab Emirates, drawing on its oil riches, is buying jabs on behalf of its allies. The coronavirus vaccine — one of the world’s most in-demand commodities — has become a new currency for international diplomacy. Countries with the means or the know-how are using the shots to find favor or thaw frosty relations. India sent them to Nepal, a country that has fallen increasingly under China’s influence. Sri Lanka, in the midst of a diplomatic tug of war between New Delhi and Beijing, is getting doses from both. The strategy carries risks. India and China, both of which are making vaccines for the rest of the world, have vast populations of their own that they need to inoculate. Though there are few signs of grumbling in either country, that could change as the public watches doses get sold or donated abroad. The donating countries are making their offerings at a time when the United States and other rich nations are scooping up the world’s supplies. Poorer countries are frantically trying to get their own, a disparity that the World Health Organization recently warned has put the world “on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.” With their health systems tested like never before, many countries are eager to take what they are offered — and the donors could reap some political good will in reward. China was one of the first countries to make a diplomatic vaccine push, promising to help developing countries last year even before the nation had mass produced a vaccine that was proved to be effective. Just this week, it said it would donate 300,000 vaccine doses to Egypt, but even as Chinese-made vaccines spread, India saw a chance to bolster its own image. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine factory, churns out the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine at a daily rate of about 2.5 million doses. That pace has allowed India to begin to dole out doses free of charge to neighbors. To much fanfare, planeloads have arrived in Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and Afghanistan. The Indian government has tried to score publicity points for doses shipped to places like Brazil and Morocco, though those countries purchased theirs. The Serum Institute has also pledged 200 million doses to a global W.H.O. pool called Covax that would go to poorer nations, while China recently pledged 10 million......"
Related:
Also see:
Nobody wants their $hit, hey.
"Unemployment claims remain high but decline for fourth straight week" by Nelson D. Schwartz New York Times, February 11, 2021
Even as layoffs remain extraordinarily high by historical standards, US unemployment claims continue to decline as coronavirus cases and restrictions on activity recede.
New claims for unemployment benefits declined last week for the fourth week in a row after a spike in late December and early January, the Labor Department reported Thursday morning.
New coronavirus cases nationwide have fallen by a third from the level two weeks ago, prompting states like California and New York to relax restrictions on indoor dining and other activities.
And now comes word that Rhode Island will allow bars to reopen this weekend, while in neighboring Massachusetts, bars and bar areas inside restaurants remain closed.
The improving pandemic situation has eased the strain on restaurants and bars, said Julia Pollak, a labor economist with ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. More generally, however, the leisure and hospitality industry is still under pressure.
Plenty of other signs of weakness remain.....
Related:
How many jobs are going to be eliminated?
"No one should have to go through this’: A fired employee sues Wayfair, accusing it of caregiving and age discrimination" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff, February 11, 2021
Not long after the pandemic shut down schools and offices around the country, Richard DiBona, a 53-year-old software manager at Wayfair, sent a message to his team letting them know he would probably be “getting bugged more” by his kids due to his wife’s new high-level job. A few weeks later, he sent another message noting that his wife’s workload had intensified and he would be taking on an even greater share of home-schooling and child-care duties.
His supervisor didn’t respond to either message, he said, or to others he sent about his growing role overseeing his sons, then ages 10 and 13, and in July, after several months trying — and largely failing — to get her to acknowledge his needs, he said, he was fired.
Adamant that he had been discriminated against because of his family responsibilities, as well as his age, and that his productivity had not declined, DiBona filed suit against Wayfair, which is based in Boston, in Suffolk Superior Court.
DiBona’s case is among an “explosion of litigation” involving caregiving during the pandemic, according to the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, which has identified at least 60 such lawsuits nationwide. One mother in California was fired from an insurance company after her boss complained that her children were too noisy during work calls, according to news reports. A number of employees sued after being denied paid leave to look after their children, or being fired or disciplined after taking it.
The center’s COVID help line also has fielded more than 1,000 calls from working parents and other employees during the pandemic — seven times the center’s call volume compared to pre-pandemic calls.
In a statement, Wayfair said there was no wrongdoing in DiBona’s case. “We are highly focused on ensuring an inclusive and equitable workplace for all of our employees which has driven our thorough investigatory processes,” a spokeswoman wrote. “Upon conducting a comprehensive investigation, we did not find any merit to the allegations in this matter and intend to provide those details and findings in court.”
“We have been and continue to be strongly committed to providing all of our caregivers with the support and flexibility they need to help manage the additional responsibilities and challenges presented by the pandemic,” the statement added.
In addition to working parents seeking legal counsel, employers have been trying to figure out their legal obligation to employees with school-age children during the pandemic. One employer was reportedly considering cutting caregivers’ salaries by 20 percent to compensate for an anticipated drop in productivity, according to a Boston employment lawyer.
There’s nothing preventing a company from firing an underperforming parent, said Frank Gaeta, an employment lawyer at Rich Mayin Boston, but he advises against it. “It’s often in the employers’ best interest to provide employees with more flexibility than they’d have to provide,” he said.
More often than not, it’s mothers who bear the brunt of child-care responsibilities, and they are often punished in subtle but insidious ways, such as fewer bonuses, promotions, and plum job assignments, said Rebecca Pontikes, a Boston employment lawyer who handles many caregiving cases, but when it’s a man informing his employer that he has to make time for his kids, as is surely happening more often with an increasing number of dads working from home, the blowback can be especially harsh, employment experts say.
Men “are expected to perform as ideal workers who are available around the clock and put their company’s needs first,” said Liz Morris, deputy director of the Center for WorkLife Law. “They’re expected to be breadwinners for their family. . . . So they actually suffer a greater penalty when they request flexibility.”
When DiBona, who lives in Newton, was recruited to come back to work for Wayfair in September 2019 (following a stint between late 2010 and 2013), he found a “toxic age-biased environment,” according to the court filing. Disparaging references to “boomers” and “dinosaurs” were rampant in Slack messages between employees, including references to COVID-19 being a “boomer remover.” Of the 15 or so employees who reported to his supervisor, who is also named in the suit, DiBona was the only one over the age of 40 and the only one with children, according to the lawsuit.
DiBona had survived a layoff in February 2020 and said he received a good review later that month, followed by another positive assessment in late March — about a week after schools closed. And he always made up the time he spent helping his sons, he said.
Last spring, when the boys were still using old laptops that didn’t support video calls, DiBona had to help them manually enter Zoom meeting IDs and links on an iPad — and assist them when they got kicked off calls due to an overburdened Wi-Fi system, he said. DiBona also helped them scan and upload physical projects, monitored their autonomous work to make sure they weren’t just playing Fortnite, made meals, and took them to the park — all while being booked solid with meetings all day.
Having been in the tech world for more than 30 years, DiBona wasn’t surprised by the youthcentric culture at Wayfair. But his supervisor’s lack of regard for his extra child-care duties during the pandemic — especially considering messages from upper management noting that parents with school-aged children shouldn’t be penalized — left him dumbfounded.
Among some employers, a culture shift is starting to emerge as the pandemic continues to shine a glaring light on working parents’ needs, but there’s still a long way to go.....
Related:
The Globe hasn't gone anywhere near it.
Maybe he can find a job at Ensoma.
Also see:
The prices are fueled by the lowest mortgage rates in history and rose at the fastest pace on record, but what happens when the rates go up?
That's how he called Xi:
"Call between Biden and China’s Xi portends rocky road in post-Trump era" by Gerry Shih Washington Post Feb. 11, 2021
TAIPEI, Taiwan — After the first call between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the U.S. and Chinese governments released accounts that diverged sharply in tone and focus, but both sides signaled they would not yield on the thorny issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, foreshadowing the areas that could generate protracted tensions in the post-Trump era.
In the call Wednesday evening U.S. time, Xi spoke in conciliatory tones about the importance of a healthy bilateral relationship, according to the Chinese state broadcaster, but Xi pointedly warned Biden to “act prudently” in regard to the three regions, where China’s forceful policies have drawn U.S. condemnation. Biden took a harder tack, telling Xi he had “fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan,” according to the White House.
Following weeks of tough comments from senior U.S. officials, Biden’s exchange with Xi underscored the deep differences between the two leading world powers that will define their contests in trade, technology, military prowess and a range of other areas for years to come.
China’s stern warning about Taiwan, a U.S.-backed, self-ruled democracy that China claims as its territory, has been a consistent message going back to the latter months of the Trump administration, when bilateral relations entered a free fall, according to Chinese analysts and U.S. scholars and business executives who speak with Chinese officials. Aside from seeking assurances that U.S. policy toward Taiwan would not change dramatically, these people say, China has low expectations that the new president will quickly adopt a much softer approach to China and offer changes that Beijing seeks, such as dropping President Donald Trump’s tariffs or his technology sanctions.
Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated China’s crackdown on the region’s mostly Muslim population in Xinjiang as “genocide” in the final days of the Trump administration, enraging Beijing, and lifted State Department restrictions on interactions with Taiwanese officials. His successor, Antony Blinken, concurred with the genocide designation and has spoken forcefully in favor of supporting Taiwan. Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan has also publicly recommended the United States be prepared to “impose costs” on China for its crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang and for its “bellicosity and threats” toward Taiwan.
Aside from the three regions that China considers core national interests, Xi urged a restoration in relations — the “most important” in the world — and proposed a resumption of dialogue between the governments. Communication had all but broken down toward the end of Trump’s term, with only the countries’ trade representatives still talking.
Most Chinese state media framed the call, which came shortly before the Lunar New Year, a success.
That is when the printed copy hung up.
“The significance of the phone call today not only lies in that it has further promoted the personal communication between the two leaders, but also provided a sense of ritual to China-US relations and expresses mutual respect,” wrote Hu Xijin, the influential editor of China’s Global Times tabloid. “Doing so on this special day for Chinese, I think is of considerable positive significance for realizing the goals of managing differences.”
China has been eager to restart dialogue and has waited for a call since the Jan. 20 inauguration. Officials had informally floated the idea of sending China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, to Washington even earlier to meet with Biden officials, according to people with knowledge of the discussions, but the U.S. response was chilly as Biden and senior officials such as Blinken first spoke to U.S. allies and friends, including Canada, Britain, Japan, Australia and India, on calls that often touched on the Indo-Pacific region and China.
The optics wouldn't have looked good, either, with Biden in their back pocket.
Unable to quickly secure meetings, Yang delivered a public address via videoconference to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, while Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai similarly addressed the Carter Center. In both cases the officials dug in firmly on territorial issues and accused the United States of single-handedly driving the downturn in relations, but they also have offered to cooperate on fighting the coronavirus and climate change, which they see as Biden priorities.
In recent months, particularly since the inauguration, comments from the Biden administration have cemented the belief in Beijing that its relationship with the United States has changed fundamentally into one of competition.
Senior Biden administration officials on Wednesday outlined a U.S. strategy that would borrow some elements of Trump’s adversarial approach to China while rejecting his unilateral tactics.
The officials said Biden would also hold back on rolling back tariffs “right out of the gate” and would weigh new prohibitions on sensitive technology exports. Biden also announced a Defense Department review on China-related military strategies on Wednesday, the same day a senior State Department official met with Taiwan’s envoy to Washington.
Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said her ministry thanked the Biden administration for “continually demonstrating support for our country” since the inauguration and pledged Taiwan would continue to closely collaborate with Washington.
Inside China, most state media coverage of the call was heavily and selectively edited, and social media users seemed pleased that Biden sent Lunar New Year greetings to the Chinese people. A few posters who accessed foreign websites, presumably using virtual networking software to circumvent domestic censorship, expressed surprise to see the White House version of the readout and to find Biden in fact “lectured” China on sensitive issues about its periphery.
Policy thinkers in Beijing took a more realist view.
“The Biden administration does not have much interest and space to actively ease Sino-U.S. relations,” Fu Suixin, research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies wrote in a syndicated piece lamenting Washington’s positions on Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang. “Instead, it hopes to use a tough stance to seek psychological advantages and bargaining chips in its interactions with China.”
Related:
"In 2020, Holland America Line said a cruise ship, the MS Westerdam, which had been barred from docking by four governments because of fears of the coronavirus, would arrive the next day in Cambodia. In Japan, officials confirmed 39 new cases on a cruise ship that had been quarantined at Yokohama, bringing the total number of cases on the Diamond Princess to 174. A second case of coronavirus was confirmed in the US among evacuees from China; the person had been aboard a flight from Wuhan that arrived the previous week at a military base in Southern California. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, the last remaining African American candidate in the Democratic presidential field, ended his campaign after his late bid failed to catch fire."
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Biden thinks impeachment video may have swayed `some minds’" by Jonathan Lemire and Alexandra Jaffe Associated Press Feb. 11, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday he had watched coverage of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and thought “some minds may have been changed” after prosecutors showed gripping and graphic video of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol.
Biden told reporters in the Oval Office that while he did not view any of the Senate trial live, he had seen the morning news. “I think the Senate has a very important job to complete,” the president said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said later that “the footage was just a reminder of how shocked and saddened” Biden was on the day rioters stormed the Capitol.
It was a notable shift in tone after the new president spent much of the week doing his best to avoid the issue, and it came after House prosecutors aired never-before-seen footage from the violent insurrection that showed police officers being beaten by the rioters and presented a fuller picture of the precarious situation at the Capitol on the day when Congress was meeting to affirm Biden’s victory.
Biden had insisted previously that he would not watch the proceedings, and for much of this week, Psaki dodged questions about the trial. She had declined to offer Biden’s opinion on whether the trial was constitutional or about the outcome because, as she said, the president is “not a pundit.”
While expanding on Biden’s views about the trial, she refused on Thursday to weigh in on Trump’s culpability. Biden’s calendar this week was meant as counterprogramming to the trial, with events on pandemic aid and vaccine distribution.
Related:
"President Biden announced Thursday afternoon that his administration has secured deals for another 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccine as promised last month. The president toured the National Institutes of Health on Thursday afternoon and delivered remarks to staff there. He had indicated last month his administration was seeking another 200 million doses of the two vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States to be available this summer — 100 million of the product developed by Pfizer and German company BioNTech, and 100 million of the product developed by Moderna. The schedule for delivery of the additional doses was not immediately clear. The new deals are unlikely to make vaccine widely available much sooner than originally anticipated, but they would prevent a shortfall later in the year. The administration was exercising options built into existing contracts with the two companies, making timing a central question....."
Preciou$ Gold, 'eh?
Privately, White House aides said Biden would gain little politically from weighing in on the trial and that any comment he makes would draw the focus away from his predecessor’s misconduct and onto Biden’s own views.
They said that staying above the fray would allow Biden to focus on his COVID-19 relief package and remain on cordial terms with Republicans as he tries to steer the $1.9 trillion bill through Congress.
Among some Biden aides, there is a sense he will need to weigh in at the end of the trial, particularly if an expected acquittal prompts Trump to break his silence and further inflame a deeply divided nation.
Until now, the White House’s public approach to the proceedings has been: Impeachment? What impeachment?
Psaki at times has all but twisted herself in knots at the White House podium to dodge saying much of anything about the trial. On Wednesday, she insisted that Biden would “not be a commentator” and would instead focus on the pandemic.
The president met with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and business leaders on Tuesday to push for his economic recovery package. On Wednesday, he announced sanctions on Myanmar’s military rulers in the wake of a coup and then he visited the Pentagon. On Thursday, he planned a trip to the National Institutes of Health to discuss the nation’s vaccination program.
It’s all in keeping with Biden’s overall approach to Trump throughout the 2020 campaign: avoid getting bogged down in each new attack or controversy from Trump and focused on his own overarching message about a return to competent leadership in the White House. It also reflects a belief among White House aides that the chattering classes in Washington and on Twitter are often far removed from the realities of everyday Americans.
Actually, it is complicated.
“I think the biggest news story for most Americans is getting the virus under control, and President Biden has shown, both on the campaign trail and in the White House, that his focus is what the American people are waking up thinking about every day,” said Ben LaBolt, a former Obama campaign press secretary.
With the Senate occupied by impeachment, White House legislative affairs staffers were working with House committee members on the COVID-19 legislation, but while the administration’s outward focus was on the pandemic, the trial was inescapable within the West Wing. Televisions were tuned to the proceedings. Aides kept one another updated and briefed the president. Preliminary work was underway for Biden to weigh in at the end of the trial in an effort to lower the temperature of a divided nation.
Every time he appears and opens his mouth he further divides the nation by reminding us he is an election-stealer and illegitimate president.
Trump’s Twitter account has been suspended and he so far has followed aides’ advice to keep a low profile for fear of endangering an acquittal. In Trump’s previous impeachment, a year ago, he relentlessly weighed in on the trial on Twitter and mixed in a variety of events. The prior president to be impeached, Bill Clinton, also made a show of focusing on his day job, scheduling a flurry of events opposite the 1999 trial that ended up improving his approval ratings.
Related:
"The coronavirus has been used as an excuse to restrict free speech in dozens of countries, according to a report released Thursday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy organization. Pointing to cases of censorship, arbitrary arrest and physical assault, the report found that at least 83 governments around the world have used the pandemic to justify silencing critics or preventing peaceful assembly. It found that in at least 18 countries, military or police forces assaulted journalists, bloggers or critics of the government’s response to the pandemic, and that in at least 10 countries, officials used social distancing concerns to prevent or disband protests, even while allowing other large gatherings. The findings expose a tension at the heart of coronavirus restrictions: Some of the same tools officials have used to save lives and slow the spread of Covid-19 — such as restricting large gatherings, countering misinformation or instituting lockdowns — can also be used by authoritarian governments as a pretext to monitor citizens or quash dissent. China, Cuba, India, Egypt and Russia are among the countries where the restrictions on free speech have been felt most broadly, according to Human Rights Watch......"
The U.S. didn't make the list?
Also see:
"Instagram took down the account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and prominent antivaccine activist, on Wednesday over false information related to the coronavirus. “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement. Kennedy, the son of the former senator and US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, worked for decades as an environmental lawyer but is now better known as an antivaccine crusader. A 2019 study found that two groups including his nonprofit, now called Children’s Health Defense, had funded more than half of Facebook advertisements spreading misinformation about vaccines. He has found an even broader audience during the pandemic on platforms like Instagram, where he had 800,000 followers. Though Kennedy has said he is not opposed to vaccines as long as they are safe, he regularly endorses discredited links between vaccines and autism and has argued that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to be inoculated against it."
Where is the ACJJU when you really need them, huh?
The clearest historical precedent for the moment in which Biden finds himself may be that of President Gerald Ford seeking to unify the nation after the damaging Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation. Like Biden, Ford sought to move the country past his predecessor in part by ignoring him and focusing on his own agenda. In a move that was controversial at the time but one that presidential historian Jeff Engel said was ultimately seen as beneficial for the national mood, Ford pardoned Nixon.
Engel suggested that Biden continue to focus his message on Americans, rather than wade into fights on Capitol Hill.....
He thinks Joe Biden is the “balm” we need!
Related:
That is because they aren't going to get a conviction, and the historical view will be the exact opposite of Nixon's pardon.
Also see:
There are some Proud Girls, too.
They wanted to leave the the decision to the incoming Biden administration, people familiar with the matter said, because it is a new day in D.C. (zzzzzzzzzz) full of love and HUDS:
"U.S. federal debt to exceed size of economy even before Biden stimulus is approved, CBO says; CBO’s deficit projections come the day after the Federal Reserve chair warned that unemployment remains very high" by Jeff Stein Washington Post February 11, 2021
America’s federal debt is set to exceed the size of the entire U.S. economy this year for only the second time since the end of World War II, a reflection of the extraordinary emergency measures approved by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.
Then IT IS OVER!
This COUNTRY is FINISHED!
Nations that have had this happen to them have turned into FAILED STATES, and that is what we are looking at here thanks to CV-19!
The remarkable surge in federal borrowing is due largely to the more than $4 trillion in spending approved by the federal government to fight the pandemic since March. As a result, the federal government’s debt burden will in 2021 be larger than the size of the total U.S. gross domestic product — a measure of all the goods and services in the economy, according to the CBO. 2020 was the first time this had occurred since 1946, when the country was fresh out of the Second World War.
Democratic lawmakers and many economists say another spending blitz is necessary to stabilize an economy that has stalled out and a job market that faces the prospect of permanent scarring. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said the unemployment rate for January should be considered closer to 10 percent, rather than the official number of 6.3 percent, due to misclassification errors and workers permanently leaving the labor force, but Republican lawmakers and deficit hawks warn that such unprecedented levels of peacetime spending threaten a risk to the economy. A sudden surge in inflation — not currently considered likely or imminent — could force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, which would in turn dramatically increase the costs of U.S. borrowing. The central bank has vowed to keep interest rates low.
The CBO’s debt estimates are based on current policy and do not account for the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Democrats are expected to pass in a matter of weeks.
Democrats are expected to press forward with their relief package despite the federal debt. America’s economic recovery from the coronavirus has sputtered as the pandemic rages across the country this winter. Alarmingly, job growth in the United States has all but stalled out, even as about half of the 22 million jobs lost during the crisis have returned.
Yes, they must seize this once-in-a-generation chance to address child poverty(!?!) even if it leads to massive poverty and no future, and that is NOT the impression I got back in the BU$INE$$ $ECTION!
Related:
"Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would significantly reduce poverty and increase earnings for millions of low-wage workers, while adding to the federal deficit and cutting overall employment, according to a new study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The report is sure to animate the already heated debate whether to include raising the federal minimum wage in a budget resolution to help the sputtering economic recovery and aid vaccine distribution amid the pressures of the pandemic....."
Not to worry, I'm sure Marty Walsh will make things all right (page B2, Globe?)
President Biden’s relief package would devote hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. response to the public health crisis, including vaccine distribution; another round of stimulus payments for millions of American households; extended unemployment benefits through August; and spending for schools and local governments. Biden has frequently downplayed the potential danger of spending too much, and White House officials have pointed to a range of Wall Street analysts who have said more spending is necessary.
While they play up the seasonal cold and flu renamed CV-19, and if Wall Street is for it I'm against it. They will be receiving most of the money, but the pre$$ downplays that.
Fuck thi$!
Additionally, inflation has remained firmly in check, and the central bank has signaled it would not hike rates even with modest price increases. Powell noted on Wednesday that inflation “has been much lower and more stable over the past three decades” than it had before. “The biggest risk is not going too big, if we go — it’s if we go too small,” Biden said last week at the White House.
Yeah, just run the printing pre$$es forever!
Some economists say more deficit spending could be the help the economy needs. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, said a significant gap remains between the nation’s actual economic output and its potential economic output. Lawmakers should be focused on closing that gap to reduce unemployment and expand the economy, he said, yet, just last week, former Obama administration economic adviser Larry Summers penned a column in The Washington Post warning that another big stimulus package would bring some risk of setting off inflation.
When asked about Summers’s column, White House senior economist Jared Bernstein denied that the administration was dismissing inflationary risks but said: “This is risk management. This is balancing risks, and in our view, the risks of doing too little are far greater than the risks of doing too much.”
Your livelihood and life is in the hands of Biden's risk managers!!
See:
"Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s highest-ranking infectious-disease expert, struck a hopeful tone about vaccine availability in the coming months, predicting Thursday that there could be an “open season” on doses by April. “By the time we get to April, that will be what I would call, for better wording, ‘open season,’ namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” he said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. From there, he said, it could take “several more months” logistically to continue getting shots in arms. He predicted that by the end of the summer, “we could have accomplished the goal of what we’re talking about — namely, the overwhelming majority of people in this country having gotten vaccinated.”
F**k off, Fraudci, you f**king mass-murdering criminal!
To be sure, even the CBO has warned about the challenges in their projections. Its debt and deficit projections could worsen significantly if the pandemic or new coronavirus variants continue to wreak havoc on the American economy. The CBO projects that higher levels of vaccinations will dramatically reduce the number of coronavirus cases, with economic growth quickly returning to pre-pandemic levels by as soon as the middle of 2021.
Oh, TO BE SURE!
That is the kind of think you say to admit everything that came before was BS as they hold more fal$e hope out in front of you.
Even under this relatively rosy scenario, the CBO projects the national debt is now on pace to grow to 107 percent of the GDP by 2031 — which would be an all-time high in American history, but the rollout of vaccines has proven uneven at times, and fears have mounted about new variants of the virus and their effect on the nation’s pandemic response and economic recovery more generally. The CBO said in July that its projections reflect an “average of possible outcomes,” noting the unusually high uncertainty surrounding the pandemic.
“There are so many uncertainties: about the vaccine; about when people come back to work; about what this looks like on the other side — and the standard way of CBO presenting their thinking does not have a framework for quantifying those risks,” said Claudia Sahm, an economist who worked at the Federal Reserve, “and that’s a big problem right now because people are basing their policy advice on these numbers.”
Other budget experts point out that tackling the federal deficit requires more structural reforms to the nation’s economy, such as its low federal tax rates and projected increases in spending on Medicare and Social Security.
Yup, they are going to RAISE TAXES and CUT SERVICES!
Is THAT what you VOTED FOR?
Imagine the reaction if TRUMP had gone after Medicare and Social Security.
The United States is projected to hold about $21 trillion in debt in 2021, and that number is expected to increase to $32 trillion by 2030. A $1.9 trillion stimulus bill represents a fraction of that increase, although the CBO projections also assume the expiration of numerous provisions of the 2017 GOP tax law aimed at the lower and middle class by the middle of this decade.
Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which pushes for deficit reduction, said lawmakers face a long-term challenge in getting spending and deficit levels to balance. That is not something that hinges on the precise size of Biden’s stimulus package, Goldwein said.....
We are never going to be able to pay that back, and all the odious debts that were piled on citizens by corrupt governments should be wiped clean.
FUCK the BANKS!
Time to form a New Party:
"Dozens of former GOP officials reportedly met last week to discuss mounting a new anti-Trump party" by Andrea Salcedo Washington Post, February 11, 2021
Days before former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial began, more than 100 former GOP officials reportedly hopped on a Zoom call. The topic: how to best rally whatever anti-Trump momentum is left in the party.
The talk on Friday, which Reuters reported included former elected Republicans and officials from the last four GOP administrations, touched on whether to launch a new center-right party, said Evan McMullin, the former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, who co-hosted the call.
“Some people at the summit strongly favor starting a new party,” McMullin, who ran as an independent presidential candidate in 2016, told The Washington Post on Wednesday. “They think the GOP is irredeemable. They understand how difficult it is to form a new party, but they understand that there is no other choice.”
The call came as Trump maintains an enduring grip on the GOP even after his loss in November and incitement of an attempted insurrection last month. A recent Post-ABC News poll found 56 percent of Republicans said Trump bears no responsibility for the Capitol attack, and a majority of Republicans said GOP leaders did not go far enough to back his baseless claims of fraud. Most GOP senators backed Trump by voting against moving forward with the trial, but the talks are another sign of the deep divisions in the party, which has been split apart by power struggles after Trump’s defeat.
Trump’s lasting influence in the party helped spark the meeting last week, McMullin said. Roughly 120 former officials called in, McMullin said. Reuters reported that it confirmed those figures with three others who participated in the call, and said that the group included John Mitnick, Trump’s general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security; former Pennsylvania congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff at DHS under Trump; and Miles Taylor, who also worked at DHS under Trump.
At least we know who some the criminal traitors are.
While the call included discussion of forming a new party, only about 40 percent of those on the call appeared to support that course of action, McMullin said. The rest argued they could have more impact by nurturing the anti-Trump faction within the GOP.
He said the former officials were split between those who wanted to keep operating strictly under the GOP, and those wanting to back independent Republicans "willing to support Democrats [and Independents] when facing extremist Republicans in general elections."
McMullin said the meeting left him convinced that the anti-Trump wing of the party was motivated to address "extremists."
“There is an extremist wing of the GOP party that has taken the party over,” McMullin said. “Certainly, former president Trump is the leader of the extremist wing of the Republican Party, but he’s not the only one. There are plenty who have joined him in Congress or elsewhere and there are many more who are silently going along.”
How interesting that the CIA's newspaper omitted the fact that McMullin is "former" CIA.
Related:
The New York Times could no longer cover for John Weaver, a longtime G.O.P. operative who advised John McCain and John Kasich and who made sexual overtures to young men, one as young as 14!
EVERYONE KNEW HE LIKED LITTLE BOYS even as they DISOWN HIM, and that is the GREAT GROUP dedicated to Trump's destruction, huh?
Yet they have the nerve to say Trump lacks a moral foundation and his supporters are mentally ill (!?!)!
Also see:
"Then-President Donald Trump was sicker with COVID-19 in October than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, according to four people familiar with his condition. His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator, two of the people familiar with his condition said. The people familiar with Trump’s health said he was found to have lung infiltrates, which occur when the lungs are inflamed and contain substances such as fluid or bacteria. Their presence, especially when a patient is exhibiting other symptoms, can be a sign of an acute case of the disease. They can be easily spotted on an X-ray or scan, when parts of the lungs appear opaque, or white. Trump’s blood oxygen level alone was cause for extreme concern, dipping into the 80s, according to the people familiar with his evaluation. The disease is considered severe when the blood oxygen level falls to the low 90s. It has been previously reported that Trump had trouble breathing and a fever on Oct. 2, the day he was taken to the hospital, and the types of treatment he received indicated that his condition was serious, but the new details about his condition and about the effort inside the White House to get him special access to an unapproved drug to fight the virus help to flesh out one of the most dire episodes of Trump’s presidency. The new revelations about Trump’s struggle with the virus also underscore the limited and sometimes misleading nature of the information disclosed at the time about his condition. The former president resisted being taken from the White House to Walter Reed, relenting when aides told him that he could walk out on his own, or risk waiting until the US Secret Service was forced to carry him out if he got sicker, two people familiar with the events said. While Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed, his medical team sought to downplay the severity of the situation, saying that he was on an upswing. At 74 and overweight, he was at risk for severe disease, and was prescribed an aggressive course of treatments. He left the hospital after three days in which he at one point staged a brief ride in his armored sport-utility vehicle to wave at the crowd of supporters outside the building."
Related:
I felt that was something you needed to know, and by floating the use of a ventilator it shows they WANTED TO KILL HIM!
Looks like Don Jr's political career is over before it began.
Also see:
"Attorney General Maura Healey has concluded that Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins committed no civil rights violations or crimes in a Christmas Eve incident in which she allegedly threatened another driver. Healey referred the matter to the state ethics commission, which investigates possible violations of the state’s conflict of interest and ethics laws. First Assistant Attorney General Mary Strother acknowledged, in her letter closing the investigation, that video footage that might have captured the incident was not available: “The cameras focused on the area where this incident occurred were either poor quality, far away, or were not functioning.” Rollins, who is a leading contender to become US Attorney for Massachusetts, responded to the decision through her lawyer, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. Katie Lawson, who filed the complaint with the Boston Police and then the attorney general’s office in late December, said she was disappointed by Healey’s decision, and angry that Rollins all but called her a liar on Howie Carr’s radio show and elsewhere....."
What did she expect?
The corrupt criminals of this state always close ranks!
Related:
"Former state representative David M. Nangle, who was arrested on more than two dozen federal fraud charges a year ago, is expected to plead guilty later this month, according to court filings. Nangle, 60, is scheduled to appear in federal court on Feb. 24 to change his plea in the case. After his arrest in February 2020, federal prosecutors said Nangle had raided his campaign account of more than $70,000 to sustain his gambling habit, bilked a local bank out of more than $300,000 in loan money he wasn’t qualified to receive, and cheated the Internal Revenue Service out of tens of thousands of dollars in what US Attorney Andrew Lelling called a “systematic pattern of theft and fraud.” Attorneys had not filed a plea agreement as of Wednesday, and Nangle’s attorney, Carmine P. Lepore, said he did not expect one, adding that Nangle had no deal with prosecutors....."
He has been under fire from law enforcement for a long time.
