People are getting sick of the corporate media. 55% of the public doesn’t like how the media is reporting this virus outbreak. 60% of the public likes how Trump is handling the problem.
I think the corporate media is overblowing this ‘crisis.’
Why? It’s hard to say. We know that 120 years ago, journalists in New York hyped-up a questionable attack on a battleship to go to war with Spain.
We called them yellow journalists, and I think a lot of that is happening today as well.
The Coronavirus has been bad this year, but in no way does it compare to the flu.
By April 3, the CDC was reporting that 39 million Americans got the flu, 400,000 had to be hospitalized for it, and 24,000 died.
Children aged 5-17 are being hospitalized at a greater rate for the flu this year, and 162 children have died from it.
98% of the people getting Coronavirus recover from it.
I heard yesterday that 49% of the American economy was now shut down, but couldn’t find any articles with that number.
Economists figure we’ll still have a 9% unemployment rate at the end of 2021...which is 20 months from now.
39% of Americans think the economy is slowing down, with 37% saying we’re in a recession.
I thought Don K did quite the job slamming Bullock for getting into the Senate race.
“He doesn’t even want the job,” the chairman of the Montana GOP said on the radio yesterday. “When you deep down really don’t want the job, then you know he’s not going to win the election.”
There’s a lot more in that article, and you can tell how the GOP is going to conduct this campaign.
Anheuser-Busch Inbev is the parent company of Grupo Modelo, which is the company that manufactures Corona beer.
Well, was the company.
Mexico shut down the production of beer as nonessential, but Grupo Modelo says they have ample supply and there will be no short-term shortages.
That didn’t stop me from going out and buying several of those 24 oz. cans of Corona and stashing them in the garage.
Perhaps this will become a reserve currency one day. Yeah...right. Cigarettes would be much better for that, as they’re more addictive and you can eventually trade them by the cigarette, not just the pack.
No, I imagine I’ll drink that Corona over the next few weeks.
The company’s stock is trading around $43 right now, down from about $75 before the crisis. Might sound bad, but the fall of 2016 it was trading at $130.
A member of the UN Development Program for Africa said that the whole African continent is facing “a complete collapse” of its economy. I imagine the virus will kill thousands there; poverty and the resulting conflicts will kill millions.
It’s figured 30 million jobs have been lost continent-wide, with 270,000 of them gone in South Africa. The slums on the outskirts of that nation’s cities are going to turn into hell holes, with murder and rape and probably worse.
Job loss numbers are beginning to trickle-in for certain demographics.
A survey done through March 30 figures that 31% of 18-to-34 year-olds have been laid-off; 22% of those 35-to-49 are gone; and 15% of those aged 50-to-64.
Chances are good that many in the older range will never get their jobs back, and may never work again. Forced, early-retirement.
Chances are also good that most of the jobs the younger demographic had, well...those aren’t going to come back. Half the restaurants that closed simply won’t reopen again. Many small retail businesses are gone for good.
I heard someone mention that we’ll have three retailers in America soon: Walmart, Costco and Amazon. I think that’s a good prediction.
The 35-to-49 age group is in the best shape. These are the Gen Xers, and they were already a very small demographic group compared to the Boomers and the Millennials. These people were already moving into the managerial roles vacated by retiring Boomers, and that will accelerate now.
Just think about it: a business closes down for half a year, reopens, and then starts hiring again. Chances are good, when push comes to shove, they’ll get a younger person into that role as opposed to rehiring the guy that was a few years away from retirement.
It’s cold and it hurts, but it’s the truth. Companies are going to be cutting costs and looking at the profit margin. There’s no room for older workers that typically get paid more.
Most of them are now out of the workforce for good, just like happened in 2008.
Mortgages will be fine for 90 days, but after that the floodgates of defaults and foreclosures will begin.
The CARES Act said that borrowers with government-backed mortgages will get 90 days where they don’t need to make payments. These types of mortgages make up 62% of all mortgages in America today.
The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency figures we’ll have 2 million borrowers seeking forbearance by May.
What this means is we’ll have 2 million homeowners tell their bank they simply do not have the money to make a payment, and they’re asking the bank to come up with a plan that allows them to keep their house with some kind of new payment plan.
They want to forbear a foreclosure, which is just down the road for these poor households.
Remember, most Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and those checks are now gone. The $1,200 the feds promised is nowhere in sight, and many won’t get it until August. State unemployment checks haven’t come, despite people being out of work for over three weeks now.
I feel sorry for people in Missoula paying $350,000 for a house right now. A year from now prices will be $100,000 less or more.
Why? Because the housing bubble is about to burst and it’s going to make one helluva mess that will cascade and reverberate across the economy and then around the world.
Already the second largest Swiss bank is asking its top account holders to lend them money. Interest rates in Switzerland are already negative 0.75%, meaning you have to pay to keep your money in a bank. The bank offered its top account holders an annual interest rate of 2% to help bail them out.
If the Swiss banks are running out of money, how do you think your family is going to fare six months or a year from now?
Nearly all the American Gold Eagle coins have sold-out. Many mints around the world are no longer producing gold and silver coins.
The price for a coin is about $1,800...and I think we’ll look back on that price a year from now as a great deal.
I got a dozen silver American Eagle coins in the mail yesterday. Now I’m just going to put those in a safe place and sit on them, hoping I’ll never need them.
Thanks for reading. Let’s take it one day at a time. Eventually we’ll be done with this.
