Richie the Rally Goat

agreed w/ 3/4 and also human trials are typically 14 months minimum

Printing money (the Fed) does not increase the deficit (congress). Printing money eventually raises inflation (how much your currency buys) but we haven’t seen this in practice since 2008. There’s debate on why this is, and may be attributed to the relative stability of the USD on translation (trading currencies on money markets of other nations currencies) or may be that we don’t have a good basket of goods and services on the inflation index. Of course Groceries are difficult to track and what consumers directly spend on services like healthcare is hard to measure at the consumer level. That and childcare/mortgage is a huge chunk of my spend! The other power of the Fed is quantitative easing as we’ve seen the Fed buy up debt to inject cash into constrained markets. They do this by giving US Treasury bonds, of course that requires buyers of US government debt, but there is no safer haven than American treasury bills for your cash, so in a crisis it’s no problem selling Treasuries. Now the FEMA is buying PPE like N95 masks by the million and that is budgeted by Congress and does drive up the deficit. The Fed can’t quantitative ease (monetary policy) us out of this crisis as it isn’t (right now) an institutional debt crisis, it’s a consumer spending and supply crisis. This will require a Fiscal spend like the New Deal to put Americans back to work, which will drive up the national debt. With interest rates at zero, this becomes an issue when buyers of the debt lose their confidence in the US Governments ability to pay its debts. At some point that does become an issue, when we get repeats of interest rates skyrocket in order to entice new buyers of debt, AND inflation skyrockets because we have to print money to keep banks liquid. I don’t think we’re there, and probably won’t get there because everywhere else has the same Coronavirus issues we do and they don’t have the economy size the US has.

Kind of, the players union agreed not to sue for full salaries if the season is cancelled, but service time and salaries will be prorated based on the numbers of games played. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28960271/sources-mlb-mlbpa-agree-deal-stoppage https://mobile.twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1243339849773572096 Players will get an advance on their major league salary of 3-4% during the season-delay.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00

An interesting historical perspective on US epidemics being catalysts for change. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-epidemics-past-forced-americans-promote-health-ended-up-improving-life-this-country-180974555/?utm_campaign=MMS_Newsletter_20200403&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_The%20safety%20net%20stretches&utm_content=&utm_term=101718923

I’m so sorry

but you can’t bypass the federal governments either. Massachusetts didn’t buy them from “China” they bought them from a private company that makes them such as 3M (here in the US) in accordance with the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 (SOX). The challenge isn’t the Purchase, it’s manufacturing capacity, inventory supply, and in this case Chinese and US customs clearance. China is a notoriously difficult customs process plus they currently limit the export of COVID PPE, and the US Customs and Border Protection Agency is under the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch of the Federal government, who still enforces Tariffs and controls the speed of the import process. Companies like 3M can make their masks in China, but are limited in their ability to get them out. I assume that is why 3M specifically is ramping up their mask production in the US. It’s way more expensive to produce in the US, but easier to export or move around inside the US, plus no Duties to pay to import your own goods. Massachusetts needed help from the federal government to get their masks through customs. If they already have control of them, as the plane departed Tuesday, they got immense help. Oh, and Kraft bought a half a million masks to donate to NY. The plane carried 1.7 mil total.

Agreed, but for clarity, WI has had the stay at home order since IL spiked and longer than MN by about a week...

Make Me Smile moment: Of course WSJ is a subscription service, but the NE Patriots lent their plane to the Mass. Governor to pick up 1.2 million N95 respirators in China. Weeks of negotiations between the Governor and Embassies became a need to actually collect, which is how the Kraft Family became involved. The Patriots plane was allowed to land for 3 hours maximum and the crew had to stay on board. The ground crew in China loaded the plane in 2 hours 57 minutes. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-million-n95-masks-are-coming-from-chinaon-board-the-new-england-patriots-plane-11585821600?mod=hp_lead_pos4

https://www.twincities.com/2020/03/30/twins-early-june-start-appears-out-of-picture-for-mlb-with-florida-orders/

I think there's some logic getting lost in the algorithms, additional to glunn's post, the big institutional investors are buying/or selling, just to stay ahead of each other, not to hold an investment as a growth opportunity. Behind every Algo is a human, but time is a great equalizer in that kind of trading. That's part of the difficulty in trying to find the bottom - there may be multiple dead cat bounces (there frequently are) but these feel more pronounced than '08 or '02 partially because of the Algos seem to feed off of each other, just like my favorite clip from the big short regarding the hot hand fallacy.

yeah, I was going to.... then thought better of it...

More on the economics and policy of shelter in place, linked below is a poll of economists, many rockstars in the field, including my favorite Richard Thaler. The gist of it, is lockdowns will hurt, but ending them will hurt worse. http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/

I think this article puts some good perspective on the data circulation. https://www.popsci.com/story/health/misleading-covid-coronavirus-graphs-charts/?utm_campaign=MMS_Newsletter_20200327&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Dialing%20in%20...&utm_content=&utm_term=101718923

We don't have to choose between the economy and saving lives. https://newrepublic.com/article/157040/can-save-lives-economy-time

https://www.twincities.com/2020/03/25/mayo-clinic-doctors-comfort-a-nation-with-their-rendition-of-imagine/

Among seniors, hospitalization rate is something like 30%, mortality rate is 10%. Seniors comprise 13% of the US population. That’s putting 12 million people in hospitals where there are only a million beds. Allowing 4 million people to suffer and die. Plus however many who would die from normal day to day things but couldn’t get treatment... Seniors also comprise the vast majority of healthcare spending in this economy. Healthcare is 18% of GDP. What happens to our economy when 4 million people stop renewing their prescriptions and stop paying their supplemental Medicare insurance? Plus all those people who died from simple medical issues but couldn’t get treatment? It no longer is a temporary economic issue, it’s a permanent one. One way, or another, the toll on our economy is going to be paid.

I'm 5 episodes into Counterpart on Prime (I believe also Stars). I really enjoy it so far, JK Simmons is awesome!

Not done by the end of summer, per U of MN https://www.twincities.com/2020/03/19/coronavirus-umn-infectious-disease-expert-coronavirus-not-going-to-be-over-with-by-the-end-of-the-summer/

good luck Mike, and good advice. Flexibility is key for all of us, including Rocco

Seth has a really good Pod w/ Bremer on the book http://twinsdaily.com/topic/36595-get-to-know-dick-bremer-twins-broadcaster-author/?do=findComment&comment=960993

I’m not sure why, will follow up with the other mods. It could be a technical issue. You can still post about that article via the forums. Happy to help navigate there

Mod note: I haven’t checked in on this thread, but it’s gone too far away from the OP. Time to lock it.

you could keep the inter league rules if each division is evenly split AL/NL