Is That A Light?

So here comes a little relief - maybe. We can only wait, and hope it doesn't presage a recession.

Reuters:

U.S. consumer price growth unchanged for July

Aug 10 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices did not rise in July due to a sharp drop in the cost of gasoline, delivering the first notable sign of relief for Americans who have watched inflation climb over the past two years.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was unchanged last month after advancing 1.3% in June, the Labor Department said on Wednesday in a closely watched report that nevertheless showed underlying inflation pressures remain elevated as the Federal Reserve mulls whether to embrace another super-sized interest rate hike in September.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a 0.2% rise in monthly CPI in July on the heels of a roughly 20% drop in the cost of gasoline. Prices at the pump spiked in the first half of this year due to the war in Ukraine, hitting a record-high average of more than $5 per gallon in mid-June, according to motorist advocacy group AAA.

But the Fed has indicated that several monthly declines in CPI growth will be needed before it lets up on the increasingly aggressive monetary policy tightening it has delivered to tame inflation currently running at four-decade highs.

U.S. consumer prices have been surging due to a number of factors, including snarled global supply chains, massive government stimulus early in the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Food is one component of the CPI that remained elevated in July, rising 1.1% last month after climbing 1.0% in June.

In the 12 months through July, the CPI increased by a weaker-than-expected 8.5% following a 9.1% rise in June. Underlying inflation pressures, which exclude volatile food and energy components, also showed some encouraging signs.

The so-called core CPI rose 0.3% in July after climbing 0.7% in June, but increased 5.9% in the 12 months through July, the same pace as in June.

Inflation in the cost of rent and owners' equivalent rent of primary residence, which is what a homeowner would receive from renting a home, held almost steady last month. Shelter costs comprise about 40% of the core CPI measure.

Today's Manchin Malarky

Joe Manchin is not as stupid as he has seemed these last several months.

Joe Manchin is however feeling the heat, and starting to crumble under the pressure.

Which makes Joe Manchin look kinda stupid.

Business Insider:

New study blows a hole in Joe Manchin's argument that the revamped child tax credit discourages people from working

A new study released Tuesday indicated that the revamped child tax credit hasn't kept people from working, blowing a hole in an argument championed by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as Democrats grapple with extending the credit as a key part of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.

The analysis from researchers at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, Barnard College and Bocconi University found "very small, inconsistently signed, and statistically insignificant impacts of the CTC" on employment and participation and the workforce.

It relied on data from the monthly Current Population Survey from earlier this year as well as the Census Household Pulse surveys that were collected from April 2021 through August 2021, the second month that the child tax credit checks were sent.

The child tax credit was overhauled in Biden's stimulus law earlier this year. From July to December, families will get a $300 monthly benefit per child age 5 and under, amounting to $3,600 this year. The one-year measure provides $250 each month per kid age 6 and 17, totaling $3,000. Half of the benefit will come as a tax refund next year.

Families with little or no tax burden can also receive the federal cash now, a sharp change from how the credit was originally structured. The latest research challenges Manchin's assertion that federal aid will keep people from seeking work as he argues against the US economy slipping into an "entitlement mentality."

Some experts cautioned against drawing definitive conclusions early in the credit's rollout. Scott Winship, a poverty expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a tweet that "research finds that the labor supply response takes years to fully manifest, not days or months."

A strong majority of Congressional Democrats support making the changes permanent in their safety net package, citing research that it could cut child poverty by up to half and particularly among Black and Latino kids. Early research has indicated that it helped feed 2 million kids in its first month and kept 3 million out of poverty.

But Democrats are running into resistance from Manchin who wants people to work as a condition to receive the credit.

The West Virginia Democrat has been the chief advocate for imposing a work requirement on the expanded child tax credit. He argues the generous federal assistance would keep people from working.

"There's no work requirements whatsoever," he told CNN on September 12. "There's no education requirements whatsoever for better skill sets. Don't you think, if we're going to help the children, that the people should make some effort?"

He doubled down a few days later, telling Insider that "tax credits are based around people that have tax liabilities."

Some Senate Democrats shot back, including Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of the architects of the expansion. "I think raising children is work," he told HuffPost.

Brown's comeback was OK, but it's a little outdated and misses the point. The Child Tax Credit is what allows a huge majority of parents' the "luxury" of rejoining the workforce.

Which shows up Manchin's "argument" as the usual conservative double bind claptrap:

without the tax credit, I can't afford to go to work

without the work, I can't get the tax credit

all done - gotta go

On Joe's Plan

First: The national debt and the federal deficit are not IOUs that come due when our grandkids have kids and everybody goes bust trying to pay it all back.

Second: as Biden rolls out his plan to get us back in the game, we can expect the Republicans to rediscover their rabid convictions over fiscal conservancy - and who the fuck is anybody trying to kid on that one? Everybody knows that's what's coming and everybody knows they're still full of shit and everybody's still going to point at GOP hypocrisy like they've discovered something brand new about Republicans being assholes. 

Mother Jones:

On Thursday night, President-elect Joe Biden outlined the first portion of his administration’s two-step plan to contain the coronavirus and revive the struggling American economy. A key emphasis of his proposal is to give immediate, individual relief to Americans suffering in the pandemic-induced recession.

The so-called American Rescue Plan that Biden unveiled includes $1.9 trillion of relief spending. The proposal includes about a trillion dollars for extending unemployment benefits, rental aid, expanded child care assistance, direct payments of $1,400 to qualifying households, and more. It also includes $350 billion in aid to state and local governments whose budgets have been pummeled by the economic slowdown, and $20 billion to help distribute vaccines more quickly to Americans.

- snip -

Unemployment

Jobs numbers this month have shown, in more ways than one, that the labor market’s recovery is sputtering. The Labor Department announced last week that employers had cut 140,000 jobs in December, as COVID-19 surged around the country, leading to stricter shutdowns. On Thursday, Labor published data showing that 1.2 million people had applied for unemployment benefits last week, an increase of more than 300,000 over the week before.

Biden’s rescue plan seeks to ease the unemployment crisis with a number of immediate measures, including:

• Increasing the $300-per-week unemployment boost, passed by Congress last month, to $400
• Extending both regular unemployment and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which offered help to independent contractors and others who don’t normally qualify. Last month, Congress extended both of these programs through mid-March. Biden’s proposal would further extend them through September.

$1,400 checks

Biden’s plan will give stimulus checks of up to $1,400 per individual or $2,800 per household. This amount, plus the $600 checks Americans received from the $900 billion stimulus package that President Trump signed last month, adds up to the $2,000-per-person promise Biden made while stumping for the Senate candidates in Georgia. But some progressive lawmakers, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), are calling on Biden to include a full $2,000 in his plan. Ocasio-Cortez accuses him of stopping short of his pledge: “$2,000 means $2,000;” she told the Washington Post, “$2,000 does not mean $1,400.”

Child Care

The pandemic has perpetuated a child care crisis in America. Protective equipment and safety measures have increased operating costs for child care providers at the same time that their enrollment is declining because of contagion fears and the vast numbers of working parents who have lost jobs. Many providers face the prospect of closing permanently, which also could jeopardize parents’ ability to return to work as the economy improves.

Biden’s plan expands child care tax credits for one year, providing families up to $4,000 for one child and $8,000 for two or more, and adds another $15 billion to a child care block grant program to help families pay for care, prioritizing those who lost their jobs during the pandemic and are struggling to afford care. The plan also earmarks $25 billion in emergency funding to keep struggling child care centers afloat.

Evictions and rental assistance

Even as the pandemic has produced staggering job losses, it has also wrought a housing crisis, causing millions of tenants to fall behind on rent. Many such households have been able to stay put thanks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s moratorium on evictions. In December, Congress extended that moratorium through the end of January. It also allotted $25 billion in rental assistance for tenants, since the moratorium doesn’t wipe out any back rent owed to landlords. A relief proposal outline provided by senior Biden administration officials notes, “While the $25 billion allocated by Congress was an important down payment on the back rent accrued during this crisis, it is insufficient to meet the scale of the need”—and it calls on Congress to allocate another $25 billion in assistance.

Were Congress to pass Biden’s proposal, it’s possible this doubling of rental relief would still be insufficient: In December, Moody’s Analytics predicted that rental debt in the US will have climbed to $70 billion by year’s end.

Tax credits

Biden’s proposal includes additional relief in the form of a one-year expansion of two tax credits that target low-income households. The first, the Earned Income Tax Credit, lets families below a certain income threshold reduce their tax liability, and grows larger for households with children. Biden proposes more than doubling the credit for childless adults - to $1,500 - and raising the income threshold for eligibility.

He’s also proposing to raise the Child Tax Credit to $3,000 per kid—and more for children under six. Biden wants to make the full credit refundable—meaning that if it brings a household’s tax liability below zero, the family will get a tax refund.

One element notably absent from Biden’s rescue plan is student loan forgiveness or forbearance. This summer, the education department suspended student loan payments and the accrual of interest on federal student loans. That forbearance is slated to expire January 31.

Biden has previously promised to extend the forbearance in the first days after his swearing-in. In a call with reporters on Thursday, administration officials said forbearance was still a priority for the president-elect, and that Biden would address the issue directly in the next phase of his recovery plan. They also reiterated Biden’s desire to make good on his promise to forgive up to $10,000 in student debt. Transition officials have expressed hope that the package will garner bipartisan support, so it can pass the Senate with 60 votes.

The inevitable bullshit about "how ya gonna pay for all that, libtard?" is going to pop up, and we have to countervail it with something like "we'll pay for it with the yacht money we gave away to all those rich legacy pukes - they'll just have to postpone their gratification for a little while."

Needs work, but you get the idea. 

"Paying for it" is a red herring to begin with, so maybe a better way of rebutting would be just to point out that paying for their 2nd or 3rd yacht shouldn't be up to pensioners and school kids.

On Stimulus

Trump isn't shy about holding us hostage to get what he wants.

IMHO, the only thing the Republicans are worried about is that he's saying the quiet part out loud again. His big mouth threatens to blow the GOP's cover - that they're using this "stimulus / COVID relief" thing as cover for handing their pals more power and more of our money.

But there are some decent things in the bill that (eg) move us towards actually addressing Climate Change problems, as well as some money for Schools, Vaccine Distribution, SNAP benefits, etc.

Better'n nuthin' , I reckon

WaPo: (pay wall)

Fresh signs emerged Wednesday of a stalling economic recovery, raising the stakes of President Trump’s surprise refusal to sign the $900 billion stimulus package unless changes are made.

The Labor Department reported that jobless claims remained high last week, with 803,000 people seeking new benefits. And the Commerce Department said U.S. household spending slipped in November for the first time in seven months. People’s incomes also fell 1.1 percent last month.

After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the relief package was supposed to spray a new round of stimulus into the economy to help households and businesses fighting to make it through the winter. The 5,593-page measure passed the House and Senate Monday night, and the President’s aides had signaled Trump supported it — before he announced he did not.

- snip -

Congress passed the $2.2 trillion Cares Act in March to rescue the economy as the pandemic began its first sustained wave. That law sent $1,200 stimulus checks to millions of Americans, provided new unemployment benefits, and directed billions of dollars to airlines and small businesses. The $900 billion agreement reached just days ago was supposed to renew some of those programs.

“What we did with Cares Act was we built a firewall around the covid-impacted parts of the economy,” said Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG. “We did a very good job of building the firewall, and what we saw in today’s data is that firewall is eroding."

So what's up with this thing anyway?

WaPo:

• Stimulus checks
• Jobless benefits
• Relief for businesses
• Emergency rental assistance and eviction moratoriums
• Money for vaccine distribution
• School funding
• Transportation

Out: Aid for state and local governments; corporate liability protections

The negotiations shit-canned the GOP's attempt to further fuck us out of our 1st amendment right to petition the government for redress, and it seems the cost of maintaining that right is that we'll see more erosion of the ability of state governments to carry the load of shit coming down from Washington.

Keep This In Mind

The truth about The Wall Street Supply Side Economy:

You are always 3 bad months away from becoming homeless.

You are never 3 good months away from becoming a millionaire.

COVID-19 Update

USA

• New Cases:   37,418
• New Deaths:       355

WaPo:

Economic relief talks between White House, Pelosi suddenly resume as House Democrats make new offer

Their $2.2 trillion plan would include stimulus checks and additional jobless aid

The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) resumed discussions over a possible economic relief bill as Democrats offered a $2.2 trillion package and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin immediately engaged in talks.

Pelosi and Mnuchin spoke Monday evening and agreed to talk again Tuesday morning, according to Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

The two have negotiated extensively this year on economic relief bills. They initially found success but have been at odds in recent months, and talks have repeatedly broken down. They are running out of time to reach an agreement before the November election, but their planned talks this week appear to be their most extensive engagement in more than a month.

Democrats described their new offer as an updated version of the $3.4 trillion Heroes Act the House passed in May, which the White House and Senate Republicans dismissed as far too costly. Senate Republicans and Mnuchin have also said $2.2 trillion is too much to spend, but Mnuchin has said he is open to negotiations. It was not immediately clear whether the talks would bear fruit or whether Democratic leaders would use the bill to provide political cover for moderate House Democrats, who have grown increasingly anxious over Congress’s recent inaction on pandemic relief legislation.

As the pandemic worsened earlier this year and many businesses shut down, Congress passed four bipartisan bills in March and April that pumped close to $3 trillion into the economy. But they have not passed an economic relief law since then. Talks involving Mnuchin and Pelosi collapsed in early August and, before now, had shown little sign of reviving.

Mnuchin has said his priorities in a new round of spending would be aid for small businesses and children, among others. He has also talked about providing more assistance to the airline industry and approving another round of stimulus checks. There is some overlap in the White House’s goals with the things Democrats included in their new bill.

For example, the Democrats’ bill would extend the $32 billion payroll support program for the airline industry, which is scheduled to expire on Sept. 30, threatening tens of thousands of jobs. It would include another round of $1,200 stimulus payments, as well as renew the expired unemployment benefits of $600 per week.

The bill would fund a range of other programs, including many that Republicans have supported. It would, for example, extend the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses and provide $182 billion for K-12 schools and $39 billion for postsecondary schools. An additional $57 billion would go toward other child-care costs.

The biggest budget item in the package would be $436 billion in aid to states, cities, and territorial and tribal governments that have experienced a major budget crunch this year. That’s about half as much as the amount for cities and states that was included in the original Heroes Act because the time period for funding state and local budgets was reduced. The White House has mostly opposed more funding for states and cities, and Trump has said that was one of the biggest sticking points in past discussions.

The bill would support an assortment of other programs, including $75 billion for coronavirus testing and tracing.

“Democrats are making good on our promise to compromise with this updated bill, which is necessary to address the immediate health and economic crisis facing America’s working families right now,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to House Democrats. “We have been able to make critical additions and reduce the cost of the bill by shortening the time covered for now.”

Pelosi had been under growing pressure from moderates in her caucus to take new action on economic relief, with millions still out of work and growing signs that the economic recovery could be stalling as the unprecedented stimulus Congress agreed to at the start of the pandemic dwindles.

Mnuchin has suggested the White House would be open to spending as much as $1.5 trillion on a pandemic relief bill — leading some lawmakers on both sides to believe that a deal could be in reach somewhere between that figure and the $2.2 trillion Pelosi has embraced for months. Publicly, at least, Pelosi has not budged from the higher number — except to suggest last week that she might unveil a new bill costing even more than that.

A number of moderate House Democrats, including freshman lawmakers running in tough reelection races, have been urging Pelosi to compromise on a lower number.

“I cannot sit by and watch if we let standing by our number prevent anything from happening, and that happens too often here,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), part of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that unveiled an approximately $1.5 trillion proposal earlier this month that was partially endorsed by Trump.

But some Senate Republicans oppose spending any more money at all. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) struggled to get his conference united behind a bill to spend only around $300 billion in new money. Democrats opposed it when McConnell tried to bring it up for a vote earlier this month.

It’s unclear how that dynamic — coupled with the Senate’s focus on filling the Supreme Court vacancy — could affect the chances for a deal.

In addition to reducing the time frames of some provisions in the original Heroes Act, the new bill excludes some items from that proposal, including hazard pay for essential workers.

It's in everybody's interest to get this moving forward, even a little. Cynical Mike wonders about how the negotiations are affected by election year politics, but it's good to see somebody taking steps to help millions of people who're in some real trouble right now.

It'd also be nice if we could depend on the money going to regular folk instead of asshole company bosses who used a lot of the last round of stimulus for stock buybacks and executive bonuses.

COVID-19 Update

There's that damned uptick again. 200,000 dead Americans by late August.

Meanwhile, Congress (ie: dog ass Republicans) can't get the fuck outa the way and let the adults run the show.

WaPo:

Roughly 30 million Americans will see their incomes plunge dramatically, worsening a coronavirus-induced recession that has already led to the steepest drop in U.S. economic output on record. The Senate adjourned for the weekend on Thursday without reaching an agreement on a new aid bill, meaning that most out-of-work Americans will go from receiving $930 a week to $330 as emergency unemployment benefits expire.

The House passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief plan in May that Senate GOP leaders have rejected. The Senate’s inaction comes as new jobless claims are once again rising, business closures are becoming permanent and tens of millions of Americans say they didn’t have enough to eat in the past week.

On Friday, three of the Trump administration’s top health officials are expected to be pressed by a Democratic-led House panel on whether there is a national plan to address the crisis. In joint testimony submitted in advance of the hearing, the officials — including infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci — renew a warning about the difficulties ahead if the virus is still spreading during flu season.

Here are some significant developments:

• Thursday marked the fourth consecutive day that the United States reported more than 1,000 coronavirus-related fatalities, bringing the nationwide death toll closer to 150,000. New infections have started to level off in some of the hardest-hit states, but there were still nearly 70,000 new cases reported nationwide.
• The United States announced a $2.1 billion vaccine deal with two European drugmakers on Friday — the government’s largest contract yet as part of Operation Warp Speed.
• Days-long backlogs of mail caused by new cost-cutting efforts are prompting fears that the U.S. Postal Service may not be able to deliver ballots on time for the November election. Meanwhile, President Trump suggested Thursday that the election should be delayed, drawing outrage from across the political spectrum.
• Despite experiencing milder symptoms, children may carry as much of the coronavirus in their respiratory systems as adults, according to a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
• The head of the largest retail-workers’ union says U.S. businesses have unfairly placed the burden of enforcing mask mandates on low-paid employees, who are increasingly facing violence, abuse and threats.
• Two staff members of the Philadelphia Phillies tested positive for the virus, in yet another blow to Major League Baseball’s attempt to hold a regular season. The team’s weekend series has been postponed.

COVID-19 Update

Reuters:

U.S. economy likely suffered historic plunge in second quarter; outlook murky as COVID-19 cases surge

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy likely contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed consumer and business spending, potentially wiping out more than five years of growth.

What're we betting that Cult45 doesn't tell us exactly what's going on later today when they're supposed to roll out the report at a press briefing?

The bulk of the historic plunge in gross domestic product expected to be reported by the Commerce Department on Thursday occurred in April when activity almost ground to an abrupt halt after restaurants, bars and factories among others were shuttered in mid-March to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Though activity picked up starting in May, momentum has slowed amid a resurgence in new cases of the illness, especially in the densely populated South and West regions where authorities in hard-hit areas are closing businesses again or pausing reopenings. That has tempered hopes of a sharp rebound in growth in the third quarter.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday acknowledged the slowdown in activity. The U.S. central bank kept interest rates near zero and pledged to continue pumping money into the economy.

“The bottom fell out of the economy in the second quarter,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “The outlook is not very good. Americans are not behaving well in terms of social distancing, the infection rate is unacceptably high and that means economic growth cannot gain any traction.”
Gross domestic product probably collapsed at a 34.1% annualized rate last quarter, according to a Reuters survey of economists. That would be the deepest decline in output since the government started keeping records in 1947.

The drop in GDP would be more than triple the previous all-time decline of 10% in the second quarter of 1958. On a non-annualized basis, GDP likely tumbled 10.6%. The economy contracted 5% in the first quarter.

“The forecast implies that the level of real GDP actually fell by roughly 11% in the first two quarters of 2020,” said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP in Jersey City. “If so, that would wipe out more than five years of growth, and pull real GDP back to its levels last seen in the middle of 2014, at least as currently reported.”

With the second-quarter GDP report, the government will publish revisions to data going back five years. The economy slipped into recession in February.

The plunge in GDP and faltering recovery could put pressure on the White House and Congress to agree on a second stimulus package. President Donald Trump, whose opinion poll numbers have tanked as he struggles to manage the pandemic, economic crisis and protests over racial injustice three months before the Nov. 3 election, said on Wednesday he was in no hurry.

Republicans are thinking they have no particular incentive to get anything done on the new COVID Relief package, and I think they're playing their usual shitty little game with us.

ie: They've put up a few different proposals, and now they're waiting to see if the polling shows they can get away with it.

Undoubtedly, the government spin will be that this is all China's fault because they sent this plague to us - which is bullshit. 45*'s bungling in response to the outbreak in China was (and remains) the main problem.

trumpdeathclock.com

And remember, we were tipping into recession in February, when there was a grand total of about 50 cases here in USAmerica Inc, and President Stoopid was telling us it was no big deal and to just go about our bidness.

Today's "No Shit, Sherlock"

Making it stunningly clear she's got a stranglehold on the obvious, the IMF Director says the global economy "isn't out of the woods yet", even though the big debt-ballooning efforts of central banks to put a floor under the markets seem to be working pretty well - for now.

Which, BTW, also makes it stunningly clear just how out of touch these finance pimps are.

Liquidity injections (imho) will prove to be a false bottom, and when people see what these assholes have been doing to make even more money off the further immiseration of the people who've been taking it the shorts for decades to begin with - there could be quite the little backlash.

We can hope anyway.

Reuters:

Global economic activity is picking up after an unprecedented decline this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but a second major wave of infections could trigger more disruptions, the International Monetary Fund’s top official said.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the fiscal costs of actions aimed at containing the pandemic and mitigating its economic fallout were driving up already high debt levels, but it was premature to start withdrawing needed safety nets.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” she said in a blog posting ahead of Saturday’s virtual meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 major economies.

The IMF last month further slashed its 2020 global output forecasts, predicting a 4.9% contraction and weaker-than-expected recovery in 2021.

Georgieva said $11 trillion in fiscal measures by G20 members and other countries, as well as massive central bank liquidity injections, have put a floor under the global economy.

Even so, dangers lurked, she said, including a major new wave of infections, stretched asset valuations, volatile commodity prices, rising protectionism and political instability.

Some countries lost more jobs in March and April than had been created since the end of the 2008 global financial crisis, and many of those jobs will never return, Georgieva said.

Job losses, bankruptcies and industry restructuring could pose significant challenges for the financial sector, including credit losses to financial institutions and investors, she said.

And the kicker:

To ensure stability, continued coordination across central banks and support from international financial institutions was essential, she said. Regulation should also support the flexible use of capital to keep credit lines open for businesses.

Yeah, no problemo - cuz Trump is so fuckin' good at being the kinda team guy the world needs.

We're fucked.

Today's Commentary

Imagine the levels (and the various types) of desperation necessary to motivate someone enough to put his life on the line (and the lives of his family and friends) to get back to a 20-dollar-an-hour job that barely gets him by.

Michelle Goldberg (NYT), on how we're getting it upside and backwards:

Lately some commentators have suggested that the coronavirus lockdowns pit an affluent professional class comfortable staying home indefinitely against a working class more willing to take risks to do their jobs.

Writing in The Post, Fareed Zakaria tried to make sense of the partisan split over coronavirus restrictions, describing a “class divide” with pro-lockdown experts on one side and those who work with their hands on the other. On Fox News, Steve Hilton decried a “37 percent work from home elite” punishing “real people” trying to earn a living. In a column titled “Scenes From the Class Struggle in Lockdown,” The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan wrote: “Here’s a generalization based on a lifetime of experience and observation. The working-class people who are pushing back have had harder lives than those now determining their fate.”

The assumptions underlying this generalization, however, are not based on even a cursory look at actual data. In a recent Washington Post/Ipsos survey, 74 percent of respondents agreed that the “U.S. should keep trying to slow the spread of the coronavirus, even if that means keeping many businesses closed.” Agreement was slightly higher — 79 percent — among respondents who’d been laid off or furloughed.

The rubes are being fooled again. A tiny fraction of well-heeled and well-connected Rube Wranglers have a big double-digit percentage of Americans convinced that it's the "liberal elites" who're fucking them over by keeping them out of work, and not the Rent-Collectors who're fucking them over by goading them into putting their lives on the line in service to a closed-loop Wall Street business universe that they'll never be allowed to participate in at any meaningful level, if at all.

It's the new variation on poor dumb white farm boys getting suckered into fighting and bleeding and dying to support the southern slave-holders' right to own people as property - property those farm boys would never own, and never get the chance to own.

I may get sick - and I may get my mom sick - and we may both die in a gruesome and agonizing way, and if I don't die, I may be saddled with the hospital bills for the rest of my life, and my kids may never get a decent start in life because we can't afford schooling, and there will never be more than an extreme outside chance that I'll be able to retire on anything but an ever-decreasing Social Security benefit - but at least Steve Mnuchin will always have millions of patriots just like me to put a few pennies in his pocket. And that's what's really important to me.

Fallout

It's not all 45*'s fault. He didn't personally bring COVID-19 to us, and he didn't spread this contagion across the country all by himself. Don't be daft.

But he failed to recognize the emergency, and it's possible that part of the failure was deliberate - because he wanted desperately not to have it reflect badly on him.

And then he fucked up the response by trying to monetize the thing, and let his radical Shock Doctrine devotees take a crack at demonstrating how much more efficient and effective "the private sector" is when compared with dumb ol' gubmint.

(Remember, dear - Karma's only a bitch when you are)

So, it's not unreasonable to say that the worst of the pandemic - and the worst of the fallout resulting from the pandemic - are, in fact, his fucking fault.

WaPo:

The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as most businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to try and limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The jobless rate was pushed higher because 20.5 million people lost their jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, wiping out a decade of job gains in a single month. The staggering losses are roughly double what the nation experienced during the 2007-09 crisis, which used to be described as the harshest economic contraction most people ever endured. Now that has been quickly dwarfed by the fallout from the global pandemic.

- and -

“This is pretty scary,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel. “I’m fearful many of these jobs are not going to come back and we are going to have an unemployment rate well into 2021 of near 10 percent.”

The sudden economic contraction has forced millions of Americans to turn to food banks and seek government aid for the first time or stop paying rent and other bills. As they go without paychecks for weeks, some have also lost health insurance and even put their homes up for sale.

Also WaPo:

Louise Lara apologized for crying as she told her story. The 54-year-old single mom had just listed her home in the Florida Panhandle as “for sale by owner,” the latest sign that her middle-class life is slipping away amid the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Lara’s saga, like that of so many other Americans, began March 20 when she was furloughed from her longtime job at a spa. The furlough was supposed to be temporary, but it doesn’t look that way now. The resort she worked for just notified her that her health insurance will terminate at the end of the month. She has spent hours on Florida’s deeply flawed unemployment website. She hasn’t received any money despite six weeks of calls and daily log-ins. She even mailed in a paper application. With money running short, she’s putting her home on the market and applying for food stamps.

“It’s a terrifying, terrifying situation,” said Lara, who tried to get a grocery store job but was told there’s a hiring freeze. “I am at the end of my finances.”

Millions of us have been sliding down the ladder into "the lower classes" for a very long time.

Up until now, that descent for most folks has been slow enough that they've been able to adapt fairly well.

This is the big drop - sudden and precipitous.

Maybe now we get an idea of how bad we've been getting fucked - and for how long.

But maybe now is not the time to start feeling the burdens of it all. Because that's what the Daddy State wants. They slam us in the head until we're dazed and confused, and then they "lead" us into the worst fucking aspects of plutocracy and dictatorship anyone can imagine.

Maybe now we get up on our hind legs and really start fighting back.

The Slump Has Begun

We're entering into an era of what promises to be a shit storm of really bad news - one that dwarfs the daily shit storm generated by Cult45 these last few years.

NYT: (pay wall)

America’s growth streak is over: The economy shrank 4.8 percent, and the worst is yet to come.

The coronavirus pandemic has officially snapped the United States’ economic growth streak.

The questions now are how extensive the damage will be — and how long the country will take to recover.

U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the economy, fell at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is the first decline since 2014, and the worst quarterly contraction since 2008, when the country was in a deep recession.

Things will get much worse. Widespread layoffs and business closings didn’t happen until late March, or the very end of the last quarter, in most of the country. Economists expect figures from the current quarter, which will capture the shutdown’s impact more fully, to show that G.D.P. contracted at an annual rate of 30 percent or more.

Coupla things:

We're already hearing the externalizing excuses, ie: "COVID-19 caused all the problems, and China caused COVID-19".

I think the real story has everything to do with the bubble effect caused by the GOP's TaxScam17® - which drove hyper-inflation of Wall Street stock values because the companies spent their tax cut windfall on buybacks in order to boost their portfolios and capture more of the growth at the top of the earnings pyramid.

There was in fact some trickle-down (always is - that's what keeps that particularly monstrous "theory" alive), but for the most part, the bubble effect caused more immiseration of everybody earning below about $75K, and we're seeing what happens when the Consumer Demand which is the engine of the world economy, dries up.

COVID-19 has contributed to the downturn, and it's very likely to make things worse. But let's be clear - 45*'s failure to act quickly and decisively is what put us so deep in this fucking hole.

Irony is what happens when you make a desperate play to keep the economy propped up because that's the only thing that saves your re-election chances, but that play is precisely why you're about to get stomped on a scale of monumental proportions - even tho the GOP is working very very very hard to make sure it looks like a close one.

Don't get fooled - polling may show there's still some pretty strong support for 45*, but it's smoke and mirrors.

There's just no way it's real. You can't get a 45% overall approval rate for the guy when his numbers on handling of COVID-19 are in the shitter.

Storm Warnings

Simon Whistler - TopTenzNet

• Housing Market 
• Income Inequality 
• Auto Loan Defaults 
• Gold Prices 
• Declining Truck Sales 
• Manufacturing Recession 
• Municipal Revenue Decline 
• Global Slowdown 
• Declining Heavy Industrial Sales 
• Retail Problems

In The Face Of It All

Avery Anapol, The Hill:

The U.S. Coast Guard acknowledged the partial government shutdown and its impact on Coast Guard families as a cutter and crew departed for a multi-month deployment on Sunday.

The Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf and 170 crew members left Alameda, Calif. to support military operations in the Indo-Pacific region.

In a video about the deployment, Coast Guard officials noted that due to the lapse in funding, there has been increased “tension and anxiety” among crew members.

“Our [U.S. Coast Guard] members sail across the world to protect U.S. national interests while their loved ones cope w/ financial challenges & no pay at home,” Coast Guard commandant Adm. Karl Schultz tweeted.

Fire Ready Aim

Americans can always be counted on to do what's right - once they've tried everything else.

WaPo, Erica Werner and Kevin Seiff:

When a Mexican company bought Mid Continent Nail Corp. in 2012, workers at the factory here feared it was the beginning of the end. Their jobs, they suspected, would be given to lower-paid workers in Mexico, more casualties of the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing driven in part by an embrace of global trade. 

Instead, Mid Continent’s factory has doubled in size since Deacero’s purchase. The company, facing fewer restrictions on steel exports after the North American Free Trade Agreement, shipped steel into Missouri, willing to pay skilled workers more to take advantage of cheaper energy costs in the United States and a location that allowed swift delivery to U.S. customers.

But President Trump has put 25 percent tariffs on steel imports, bumping production costs and prompting Deacero to reconsider this arrangement. With Mid Continent charging more for nails, orders are down 70 percent from this time a year ago despite a booming construction industry. Company officials say that without relief, the Missouri plant could be out of business by Labor Day — or that remaining production could move to Mexico or another country.


- and -

Philip Bennett, 37, a machine repairman at Mid Continent, appeared close to tears as he talked about his 5-year-old daughter, Aubree, who has a congenital heart condition that has required multiple surgeries. He has health insurance through Mid Continent that covers her.

- the money quote:

“There’s a lot of good things that he is doing. But he’s affecting me now, and I don’t appreciate it,” Bennett, a Trump supporter, said of the president.


It bothers me that Mr Bennet couldn't figure out how to be aware of the shitty things he was willing for other people to endure until those shitty things started to happen to him and his family.  

And I may be giving him more credit than he deserves - he didn't say anything about how maybe he's been wrong, so now he's going rethink his political values.

Which brings me to the notion - according to the Let's-All-Sing-Along Lefties - that I'm supposed to coddle Mr Bennet, and soothe him; and pet him; and tell him it's OK that he and millions like him have spent the last 30 years snickering at the pain and suffering being visited on the whole fucking world because of the shitty policies of shitty politicians he's been rabidly supporting, which is why we're in this fucking mess in the first fucking place.

Here's what I have a truly difficult time not saying to guys like Philip Bennet: 

"Take a flyin' fuck at a rollin' donut, you skeevy prick. This is exactly what you've been voting for. I hope you end up livin' in a refrigerator box down by the junkyard."

But no - can't do that - that's not good for any of us.

So hey - kumbaya, motherfucker.

Today's Chart

From Pew Research:

Events unique to the history of individual countries cannot be ignored when considering why publics are more positive or negative about how the present compares with 50 years ago. However, our analysis also indicates that views of the current economy are a strong indicator of whether people say life for people like them is better today than it was 50 years ago, even when controlling for the demographic factors of income, education, gender and age. Indeed, across the countries analyzed, people with positive views of the current economy are 30 percentage points more likely than those with negative views to say life has improved for people like them.1

In general, countries that are more upbeat about their national economy are more likely to say life today is better compared with the past. For example, in Vietnam, where 91% say economic conditions are good, a corresponding 88% say life is better for people like them compared with 50 years ago. And in Venezuela, where only 20% say conditions are good, 10% say life is better for people like them. Overall, the correlation between economic assessments and views of the past is quite strong (+0.68).

I got ridiculously lucky, but almost 50 years ago, my high school diploma was enough to start me on a 40-year trip thru a career that put me in the top 3% of income-earners.

My kids will probably never know such things firsthand.

I don't know how to fix it. And there's never a guarantee that it can be fixed. But the one thing that will never fix it is allowing government to remain in the hands of people who are determined to keep us from even trying to fix it.

All About The Garbage

Laura Henry, The Conversation:

A steady stream of garbage-laden trucks moves the waste of Russia’s capital to landfills in the surrounding region. The resulting mountains of refuse emit noxious fumes and leach pollutants into nearby waters, endangering the residents of the region around Moscow.

Citizens living near these landfills have had enough.

Protests against garbage dumps have erupted in at least eight towns and villages around Moscow in the last six months. As a scholar who studies contemporary Russian politics, I believe these garbage protests reveal a crisis of basic governance that potentially poses a greater challenge to Putin’s government than pro-democracy activism.

'Scuse me, ma'am - not to get too nit-picky - but I'm thinking that when you turn people out for a public protest, that's what "Pro-Democracy Activism" actually is.

But, please continue.

Russian activists have come under increasing pressure since Putin returned to office in 2012. Protests have been relatively scarce after the 2011-2012 Bolotnaya demonstrations in response to election fraud. Long-standing nongovernmental groups working on environmental and human rights issues, which relied in part on funding from abroad, have been labeled “foreign agents” by Russia’s Ministry of Justice.


- and -

Since 2010, under the leadership of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow has transformed into a dynamic global city, fueled by oil wealth and urban redevelopment. Moscow’s growing population and unfettered consumption mean increased waste. A report by the environmental group Greenpeace calculates that Moscow is responsible for 11 million tons of trash annually, approximately one-fifth of all waste in Russia. Only 4 percent of Moscow’s waste is recycled.

To preserve quality of life in the capital, the Moscow’s government sends streams of municipal waste into the surrounding regions. Greenpeace reports that 90 percent of Moscow’s waste goes to landfills in Moscow’s suburban region. Landfills created in the Soviet and early post-Soviet period, when there was little consumer waste, have been expanded, often with no community notification and despite being in close proximity to homes and schools. Air quality suffers as the dumps release fumes from decomposing waste.

In addition to established landfills, 52 illegal dumps were identified in the Moscow region in the first half of 2017.

As the stench rises and the public health risks – such as respiratory diseases that most acutely affect children – mount, citizen appeals to regional and national government officials have had little effect.

Local people are left with few options but protest. Demonstrations of more than 1,000 people occurred in at least eight towns and villages near Moscow. Citizens also have organized groups on VKontakte, a Russian social media platform, to coordinate petitions, block roads and even mount hunger strikes.

There' s always a link between individual commercial interests and the destruction of the commons, which is always brings the erosion of people's political and civil rights, so it always ends up having something to do with a small group of power-drunk people rationalizing the use of government force against its own citizens.

If an Unfettered Free Market System is great and beautiful and fair, then you don't need a large militarized police force to keep people in line.

As the USSR was falling apart, Poppy Bush sent Robert Strauss to Moscow to help them with "democratization", and whole platoons of Free Market True Believers went with him - to teach those silly Commies about good ol' western capitalism.

All the state-owned entities were sold off, which gave us Russian Oligarchs, which eventually gave us a "term-limited Russian presidency" that's been held by Vladimir Putin for 20 fuckin' years.

Some of the big problems we have with Russia now are at least partly due to our own meddling, as well-intentioned as it may have been.

(I'm not saying we had it coming, and I'm not saying our fiddling with the Russian economy is the same as Russian rat-fucking in the 2016 elections. Don't be daft.)

The point here is that when it's obvious that privatizing government leads to extremely bad outcomes, we need to call it out. Unfettered Free Market economic policies hurt people, and they lead us to the Daddy State.

Let's also be sure to remind ourselves that it didn't get all fucked up yesterday, and we're not going to get unfucked by tomorrow.