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“Business has been pretty good this year despite everything. We’re pretty much back to normal, wouldn’t you say, dear?”
Frank Sinatra’s iconic song about “a very good year” will never apply to 2020, which is shaping up to be a very bad year indeed. We (in the mid-Atlantic United States) are like people on a small island, awash in a recent tsunami, facing incoming ranks of equally severe tsunamis, one after the other, as far as any eye can see.
We are, of course, still up to our asses in the first tsunami, the coronavirus pandemic, which has receded a little bit here but is still rising elsewhere in this very large country. America’s handling of this public-health crisis has been the worst in the world, with the possible exception of Brazil. It is the only country in the world whose leaders have encouraged the politicization of an infectious disease, with one party belittling it as inconsequential, even imaginary, while it has stricken three and a half million people and killed 140,000 (one-third the number of American service members killed in World War Two).
As a result of this pandemic, the largest economy in the world is stunned and on its knees. The know-nothings can pretend all they want that it’s simply taking a little rest, but if you look closely you can see its eyes are not focused, its pulse rapid and thready.
Not to pile on, but we who want to get to the other side of this thing really need to raise our eyes and look at not only what’s here but what’s coming, because it is not a quick return to “normal.” The monster waves about to wash over us include:
- The evictions tsunami. By the end of August, enforced forbearance for nonpayment of rent and mortgage payment will have ended — it already has in some states — and foreclosures and evictions will resume. Estimates are that 23 million American renters and at least that many homeowners will become homeless as a result.
- The second unemployment tsunami. As state, city and county governments (most of which just began their fiscal year on July 1) begin to reckon the cost of the coronavirus tsunami — monumental payouts for unemployment benefits, Medicaid, and associated expenses — as well as severely reduced tax collections, they will almost certainly have to resort to massive layoffs of public employees. Unlike the federal government, states cannot wave a magic wand and create money, and they are required to balance their budgets.
- The bankruptcy tsunami. Many businesses that have been forced to close for up to 90 days, then reopen with reduced business (restaurants, for example, that are limited to 50% capacity by social distancing) are not going to survive. Some studies predict that over 40 % of the businesses that closed temporarily will never reopen. Many landlords and mortgage holders, required to forgo all income for months, are not going to be able to go on.
- The debt tsunami. The amount of debt being carried by governments, corporations and individuals was already staggering before the coronavirus hit. And the pandemic has required unfettered borrowing on all fronts, with consequences that cannot be delayed for much longer. The federal budget deficit in June was $864 billion — more than 100 times the deficit posted in June one year ago.
- The weather tsunami. Chances are high that a major hurricane, or more than one, will strike the East or Gulf Coast this summer, while tornadoes swarm the Midwest and South and wildfires scour the West, exacting more casualties, helping to spread the virus and imposing many billions of dollars in new costs on the affected localities and the federal government.
- The second coronavirus tsunami. Public health officials expect a new surge in infections and deaths to strike across the country in the late fall and winter.
- The election tsunami. The conduct of a bitterly fought national election, made more difficult by each and every one of the tsunamis mentioned, whose outcome may be delayed, skewed, and contested, raises the distinct possibility, when combined with everything else, of widespread civil unrest.
Which gets us to 2021. Then things get really interesting….
Great post – ’bout sez it all. I’d add a mental illness wave and a crime wave; stats point to substantial increases in gun sales as well as violent crimes in the cities…not good.
Typo: public not pu*ic
It may be a very good year for “investors.”
Where? I don’t see it.
Ctrl-f or command-f Pubic” (without the quotes) will find it for you. ” have to resort to massive layoffs of pubic employees.”
A good list, alas.
Thank you. It was invisible! (How did you all know I didn’t mean sex workers?)
lol …
A good list. I would only add the markets. As often as I’ve written the Dow is going to be blasting thru 50,000 at the moment civilization collapses, I don’t really believe it.
It doesn’t matter that the Fed has unlimited amounts of hay to shovel to the ravenous beast. The beast has a terminal ailment, and tho thanks to its generous master, it won’t be succumbing to starvation, the beast will fall nonetheless.
I think we’re all about to become pu*ic workers…
I made this very mistake on a typed paper in 9th grade. Never forgot it.
I made it while studying for a Master of Public Administration.
Riots, looting, sickness, death, etc. all acknowledged, we’re holding up under difficult circumstances surprisingly well. But as the book title “Brace for Impact” warns, it won’t last forever. Any number of final straws could put us over the edge. My loose prediction is sudden loss of basic necessities other than toilet paper: public services (water, electricity, power for heating/cooling), banking services (everyone’s funds — what may still exist — become unobtainable), or food. Empty grocery shelves (failed harvest, failed delivery) will spell the end of civil society.
” … we’re holding up under difficult circumstances surprisingly well.”
Maybe. But perhaps it’s just because we’re at bat in the top half of the first inning.
The situation always seems manageable at that point.
Reality might set in though, early in the bottom half, when our used-up ex-softball pitcher has to contend with Cobb, Morgan, Murderer’s Row, and a roided-up Barry Bonds batting 6th.
Tom again a postcard from the edge. I guess years and years ago when I had digested the import(ance) of the ‘The Limits to Growth’ and even now looking at the graphs it took some time to see that is was not one thing but many things coming one after another it was then you could see that ‘management’of this situation was beyond the intellectual and epistemological capacity of humans.
Your list breaks down how the impacts come in waves which in turn reminds me of the very old nautical peril of what is called a crossed sea – that is multiple large destructive waves coming from multiple directions. What state the wreckage will be is unknown so many multiple fracture points, some of us will be lucky to be holding on to a bit that keeps afloat – as for rescue – hmmmm!
What does the White House mean by demanding that hospital coronavirus stats be sent to HHS instead of CDC? I don’t trust them worth two cents. Is this scary or what?
Gramma Windy
The White House means that it intends that the coronavirus reports should be telling us the same thing that the bogus jobs reports and GDP reports are already telling us: that everything is fine and we should all shut up, go home, and vote to re-elect Trump.
With all due respect, Tom, the virus itself is not a real threat to the US, or any other country, unless you consider all the other similar viral outbreaks over the last couple of decades real threats. They all came and went, leaving their dead to be mourned and buried. The engineers of the NWO have used their propaganda tools(MSM) to convince the sheep(unfortunately, a clear majority of folks) that this particular virus is much more dangerous than the previous epidemics. They have lied in order to bring us to our knees in fear of this obvious bugaboo.
Wake up! You don’t crush your economy, the very lifeblood of commerce to prevent a tiny percentage of your population from dying. You would not do that even if this particular strain was as potent as the 1918 Spanish Flu. The lockdown procedures will certainly kill much larger numbers before they finally cease.
Which brings me to my point; the lockdowns are engineered to kill the economy, bring commerce to a slow simmer, create real want among the common people, foster chaos and real fear for survival and subsequently start a civil war. Why? Because the NWO wants a meaningful reduction of the global population. The US is their poster child; what better way to eliminate the majority of deplorables in flyover America by pitting groups of its citizens against each other in a shooting war. This will simultaneously rid the government of a huge swath of useless feeders while expending the majority of the hordes of ammunition that people have been stockpiling for years. Many of the elderly will simply succumb to the stress of the situation.
The hullabaloo over the virus is a smoke screen, a phantom, a gargantuan lie. Reject it. Remove yourselves from the propaganda source— your TV.
With all due respect, Darrell, this is pure unadulterated Trumpian horseshit. I am going to leave this up as an example of the genre, but I will not allow this website to be turned into a pile of it. I’m sure there are places that will appreciate lurid, improbable conspiracy theories and counterfactual assertions — such as that a novel virus for which there is no vaccine, no prior exposure in humans, and no effective treatment “is not a real threat” — but this is not one of them. Please do not elaborate.
Then why invite comment at all, Tom? You have effectively eliminated any other commentary which might have been in agreement with my point of view. That is censorship in effect.
No need to boycott me; I will not comment in the future, you can be sure.
PS – I am not a Trumpian, and never have been.
I invite comments that cite facts, and arguments that have factual content, including ones that contradict mine. But I will not be a party to the spreading of disinformation, such as the assertion that, with 3.5 million Americans sick and 140,000 dead and hospitals throughout the South being overwhelmed, the virus is “not a real threat.” That is simply ridiculous. You may not be a Trumpian — I did not call you one — but your comment was and is a perfect distillation of the Trumpian message that seeks to undermine the entire world’s public health system for the purpose of assuring his re-election. His effort is corrupt, anti-American, and anti-intellectual, and no part of it will pass this way without challenge.
Would also add it does not stand up to two simple logical questions: Quo bono, and which minor percentage?
First, who benefits? Whether population reduction, or more control over the population, how do they ultimately control it? That is not going too well at the moment. And, should they be (hypothetically) successful, what are the smoldering and destroyed ruins going to be worth? One does not improve the value of their automobile by participating in a demolition derby.
That “small percentage” getting gravely ill. Here is mental experiment: I have a bottle of 100 pills. 99 are multivitamin and 1 is poison. The poison may make you ill, gravely ill, or even kill you. Are you going to take a pill from that bottle? I didn’t think so. Possibility runs up against Probability. One is an abstract, and the other is conditioned survival instinct.
For this conspiracy theory to be workable the outcomes have to be predictable and controllable; or otherwise what is the point. That is the logical test.
“And yes, I still vote for a brutal resizing of the human population, not extinction.”
“There are lots of ways to reduce the number of humans without discrimination — famine, plague, wildfire, hurricane, things like that.”
Tom Lewis’s responses to comments 13 June 2020.
So is the virus bad or good?
Very good question.
The virus is the virus – no need to make value judgements. It’s been a long time coming, and America, due to its unique social, cultural, political, economic, demographic and geographical configurations, has been an ‘exceptionally’ juicy host.
If I come off a bit glib, it’s because I came down with the virus back in late March. It kicked my ass for several days, but it was never fully debilitating; it was not like influenza – at least not for me. I recovered for a while, but it came back from time to time in odd ways: night sweats accompanied by loss of breath, fevers, fatigue and occasional digestive problems. I tell you, it’s been a little scary…I don’t believe it’s finished with me yet.
I’m not sure I deserve this shit. But then I remember what Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) said in ‘The Unforgiven’, “deserve ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.” Jesus put it this way, “the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”…So be it!
Homicide rates in Louisville, KY are way up. Our cousin is now working 80 hrs a week as a homicide detective there. The grocery stockers look worn out. It feels like supply shortages will continue to erode. Our neighbors are scurrying to grow produce in pandemic gardens here in the mountain.
Re the virus – there seems to be a line of thought that the virus is not dangerous and that the economy was put into lock down to benefit an elite, the Illuminati, NWO or whatever you want to call it. I have seen this argument made on websites that I used to previously rely upon for reporting the sane truth.
This argument is bogey for the following, very simple reason – The Pre Coronavirus economy was still very much a consumer economy which relied upon huge swathes of the population buying things so as to sustain the whole house of cards post 2008. What drug dealer would want to kill his customers? As population control – its just not very effective is it now? The birth rate is still outdoing the death rate many times – so the population control motive doesn’t stand scrutiny.
Moreover, in assigning such oblique motives and planning, the conspiracy theory crowd forgets that humans as a whole are not capable of such planning and as a species we are still very much focused on the low hanging fruit and get rich anyway you can schemes.
Well said. But just because a proposition is illogical doesn’t mean it won’t be embraced by 25% of Americans.
I have come to view “covidiocy” as the most reliable tell that someone is a booger-eating right-wing crackpot.
And also, Just say “pubes”!
It seems to me that this year is seen by the Trump crowd as a
good year because this pandemic gives them a double edge
sword. One, the voter turnout will be suppressed thru fear and
screwing around with the post office to harm mail-in voting, and
two, the administration will let the virus run wild because it will
thin the ranks of the minority vote since it is killing them at a much
higher percentage than other groups.
They did not plan this or create it, but it appears they are trying to
take advantage of this horrible situation.
A good read: American death cult: Why has the Republican response to the pandemic been so mind-bogglingly disastrous?