3/20-21/20: President Trump continues to flail away as
the coronavirus spreads and the U.S. economy tanks. He can’t lie his way out of
this mess because the damage is clear and omnipresent.
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President Herbert Hoover. |
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The
ghost of Herbert Hoover is rattling his chains.
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As
of 11:43 a.m. on Saturday, the U.S. has 19,931 confirmed cases of COVID-19, exactly
19,916 more than Dr. Zero predicted on February 26. We don’t have a “pretty
close to airtight” grip on the disease as Larry Kudlow, White House economic
adviser said the same day. We don’t have much of a grip at all. And this
disease isn’t like a common cold, as Rush Limbaugh claimed. Nor is it something
that “should be compared to the flu. Because at worst, at
worst, worst case scenario it could be the flu,” as a guest on Sean
Hannity’s show said fifteen days ago.
Dr.
Zero can’t blame Obama this time – although he’s tried. He can’t brag about how
the stock market is going up because of him, and if we elect Democrats, the
market will tank. The market has tanked. And he’s in charge. The ghost
of Herbert Hoover is now rattling his chains.
Dr.
Zero can’t blame the media for his problems – although he tries – because the
media folks don’t determine how soon, or how aggressively the government starts
testing for COVID-19. The president fumbled the ball weeks ago. Reporters
didn’t rip the ball from his grip. The media doesn’t control how many
ventilators hospitals have or whether doctors and nurses have the safety
equipment they need. The free press doesn’t decide how much financial aid to
get to waves of workers who are suddenly unemployed. Trump can determine all of
that; and, to this point, he has failed.
Let’s
start with the last. The U.S. Senate, under the guidance of Majority Leader
Sen. Mitch McConnell is trying to get a vote on a rescue package – that, as of
now, has a price tag of $1 trillion. Kudlow – he of “pretty close to airtight control” fame – now says the
package may need to be much larger, perhaps $2 trillion.
The
problem is clear.
The
projected federal deficit for this year was $1 trillion before the crisis. That
was assuming solid three percent growth. The budget was already been blown.
And
may we take a moment to mention the incredible hypocrisy of those on the right?
When it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to be the Democratic nominee for
president, we heard the howling from Tucker Carlson, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and the
rest of that zany Fox News crew. The U.S. was going to end up like Venezuela! Socialism
would rot our children’s brains. Socialists are homicidal maniacs. Only Mitch and
Donald and the GOP could save us from a terrible fate.
Now,
McConnell thinks we need to pass out checks to most
Americans – “socialism” by any other name. The plan is still in the works, and
to say that fiscal conservatives are having trouble swallowing the medicine
McConnell wants them to take, is a fantastic understatement. Most adult
taxpayers would get checks for $1,200. Married couples, filing jointly, would
get $2,400. Some adults would get only $600. A family of six, with four
children, aged 17 or younger, would get an extra $2,000 ($500 per child). But
not so fast. If you made more than $75,000 last year and you’re single, or more
than $150,000, and you’re married, you’ll get less – and at some
point, depending on how much you made, you’ll get zero.
Plus,
the McConnell plan is to bail out all kinds of businesses that find themselves
in trouble. That goes double for businesses that can afford high-priced
lobbyists to roam the halls of Congress (at least when social distancing is not
in play) and fight for what they need.
*
TO
BE FAIR, Dr. Zero is not to blame for a large percentage of this mess – although we
know if Hillary had won the election, and this happened on her watch, he’d be
blasting her at every chance.
So
far, what are the damages? First, the coronavirus caseload: worldwide, as of 3:43
a.m. on Saturday morning, there were 275,452 confirmed cases. Less than ten hours
later, that number has grown to 287,239. China, if
Chinese communist officials can be believed (they can’t), has nearly halted the
spread. Italy has 47,021 confirmed cases and 4,032 deaths. Spain has 25,374 and
1,375. Iran has 20,610 and 1,566. And those mortality rates are what rattle
healthcare experts. By comparison, Germany, with 21,652 confirmed cases,
reports only 73 deaths. The United States is in sixth place: 19,931 cases, with
roughly 190 dead (if we use the figure from Johns Hopkins).
Worldometers,
has higher totals but the websites are usually more or less in sync, the only
real difference being when they update. According to the latter the U.S. now has
22,132 cases, with 282 dead.
*
WITH
EACH PASSING HOUR, the damage increases. Worst-case predictions one day prove
rosy the next. A headline Saturday, from Newsweek, sums it up: GOVERNORS
LOCKDOWN A QUARTER OF THE U.S. ECONOMY AS AMERICA HURTLES TOWARD RECESSION.
Some experts fear the U.S. has lost two million jobs in the last week.
“Recession is now unavoidable,” analysts at ING Bank warned Friday. “Our
current best guess,” they said, “is for the economy to contract by around 10
percent in the second quarter although even this figure is looking increasingly
too optimistic.”
The
bad news piles up. As Newsweek notes, California, New York, and Illinois
are locked down. If they were nations, they would represent the fifth, twelfth
and twenty-second largest economies in the world. Florida, where tourism brings
in $40 billion annually, is in store for a massive hit. The governor has ordered “all beaches,
movie theaters, concert houses, auditoriums, playhouses, bowling alleys,
arcades, gymnasiums and fitness studios to close in Palm Beach County and
neighboring Broward County.” Here in Hamilton County, Ohio, jury trials have been halted.
The Kentucky Derby is likely to be postponed or run without spectators. That
would put a huge dent in the “Big, Weird Hats for Ladies industry.” Home sales,
which hit a 13-year high in February, have been slowed by, among other
problems, a bottleneck in the supply of marble for countertops, which come from
Italy. Walmart if handing out small cash bonuses to employees, and the company
that runs Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse restaurants has promised to pay
all 190,000 hourly employees two week’s wages if they are laid off. Abercrombie
& Fitch has closed all its stores for the week.
The
Trump Organization itself has laid off workers at hotels in
Washington and New York City and at golf courses across the land. In Washington
D.C., where occupancy had tumbled to only 5%, 160 workers were handed pink
slips. In New York, the carnage was not as severe, but 51 workers were let go. In
fact, with Trump so heavily invested in tourism-related hotels and golf
resorts, and many of his properties carrying significant mortgage debt, it’s
possible that he will be in a position to order the federal government he runs
to bail himself out.
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Occupancy drops - employees laid out of work. |
POSTSCRIPT: South Korea seems to have slowed the spread
of COVID-19 by means of aggressive testing: 300,000 tests so far.
The
U.S., with six times the population has apparently tested only 170,000 individuals to
this point.
Asked
yesterday, if the U.S. had the needed testing capacity in this crisis, Dr. Anthony
Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
admitted, “We are not there yet.”
