Keeping in mind that we’re early; the stock market isn’t the underlying economy, just linked to it; and there’s room to fall further.
And keeping in mind that the Wuhan Virus situation will abate in the not too distant future, and the economy will rebound strongly, and so will that linked stock market.
A buying opportunity is developing, but paraphrasing Rothschild, there’s no blood in the streets yet.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has discovered that there is quite a bit of medical equipment (ventilators, for instance) scattered around the State that is going unused. He intends to…take control of…that equipment and “reallocate” it and is issuing an Executive Order to facilitate the process.
A reporter asked him whether he was serious about the matter and really was going to seize the equipment. Cuomo objected.
“First of all, don’t use the word ‘seize.’ I didn’t use that word. It’s a harsh kind of word,” Cuomo said….
“It’s a sharing of resources[.]”
Right. And Willy Sutton was only insisting that the banks share resources.
In truth, though, the State does have, under our Constitution’s Takings Clause of and Supreme Court rulings, authority to take the property, given just compensation is made. Cuomo intends that, although what he’ll offer is an open question.
Within all of that, it’s just stupid to quibble over the label applied to the taking. Government snatches, often for an agreed good cause; pays something for it; and it’s done. The quibble is just Cuomo’s CYA effort, made the more silly by the lack of need for it in the present circumstance.
Daniel Henninger worries about the next Wuhan Virus war (he refers to it with the more press’ saccharine, more politically correct label, “coronavirus” war). This is a political war between the American Left and the rest of our American nation.
In the course of his piece, though, he had a couple of remarks that I’m not sure he really understood.
A federally led policy is appropriate in a national crisis like this.
Indeed, but federally led, not centrally led.
But once it passes, the issue will be whether to revert to the freest private economy we had in a generation or whether deeper, explicit social direction and economic protections by the national government are justified.
This depends entirely on whether Americans in general understand the difference between “federal government” and “central government.” That’s a distinction Progressives, Progressive-Democrats, and their “education” divisions of teachers unions have been working so hard for so long to muddy.
We’ll need to turn out in force in the coming election to prevent Progressive-Democrat destruction. Yes, that’s part of the war which worries Henninger—but the answer to Progressive-Democrats’ divisiveness and destruction cannot be, at this crossroads for our nation, simply to turn the other cheek or otherwise ignore attacks on our freedoms and our personal responsibilities.
Oregon’s public schools are closed down due to the Wuhan Virus situation, as are most of our nation’s school systems. As a result of that, parents started flocking their children to online charter schools so as to continue their education. The Oregon Education Association, among others, object to that, though. They’d rather the kids sit around at home (because Oregon, like many States, has instituted a stay-home policy for all the State’s citizens and others living there) twiddling their thumbs, making pests of themselves, and otherwise being bored out of their minds rather than continue their schooling. So:
Under pressure from the unions, the Oregon Department of Education stopped allowing transfers on March 27. At Oregon Connections Academy, this means some 1,600 students who had sought to transfer won’t be able to….
Whatever happened to “It’s for the children?”
Oh, wait–these are teachers unions.
The current version of the Federal assistance to American airlines contemplates the government taking stakes—in the form of warrants convertible to (voting) common stock—in return for sending money to the airlines to help tide them over the disruptions resulting from the current Wuhan Virus situation. There are a number of objections to such a condition, most of them valid. Flight attendant unions have their own objection. They’ve
urged federal officials not to make grants to airlines contingent on government stakes, saying they believe executives would refuse—costing jobs in an industry hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
I have a couple of thoughts on the flight attendants’ objection; I’ve already expressed my objections to the government taking stakes in private business.
One thought is that the jobs supposedly to be lost would be, primarily, union jobs, and that can only be good for the airlines’ bottom lines as labor costs come down, especially if replacement hires on the turn-around are not from unions, and that would be terrific for the traveling public.
The other thought is that it’s not a foregone conclusion that the airlines, or very many of them, actually need government assistance, for all that airline management would like to have such bailouts. Recall the Panic of 2008, wherein three auto companies of the American auto industry, supposedly needed government bailouts. GM and Chrysler jumped on those bailouts with both feet. Ford, though, despite pressure to take the bailout, refused to take the money; it said it would stand on its own feet (it did take a credit line against a potential need, but it never did tap even that). Ford is thriving today, even playing a leading role in producing badly needed medical equipment.
So it will be for competently managed airlines centered in the US.