3. HOWEVER, THERE IS STILL SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE ECONOMY

The Shutdown began with the NBA

According to the bleacherreport.com Timeline of Coronavirus' Impact on Sports, on 11 March 2020, the NBA suspended the 2019-20 season "until further notice."

The NBA opened the floodgates. The next day, the timeline shows, there were suspensions or cancellations by the International Tennis Federation, Major League Soccer, the Big Ten, U.S. Soccer, the NHL, the NFL, MLB, Minor League Baseball, the NCAA, Formula 1, and the PGA Tour, among others.

I have a question: The Trump Administration played no part in this?


Wikipedia offers a Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Here is a sampler for January:

On December 31, 2019, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) became aware of cases in China and began developing reports for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on January 1.

On January 3, CDC Director Robert Redfield was notified by a counterpart in China that a "mysterious respiratory illness was spreading in Wuhan [China]"; he notified HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who shared the report with the National Security Council (NSC). According to The Washington Post, warnings about the virus were included in the President's Daily Brief in early January, an indicator of the emphasis placed on the virus by the intelligence community.

On January 8, the CDC issued its first public alert about the coronavirus.

On January 9, the WHO issued a statement naming the disease as a new coronavirus in Wuhan.

On January 10, the WHO issued a comprehensive package of guidance to countries on how to test for potential cases. By this date, the WHO warned of the risk of human-to-human transmission.

On January 14, the WHO held a press briefing stating that their information suggested a possibility of limited, but not sustained, human-to-human transmission...

On January 18, HHS Secretary Azar discussed the coronavirus outbreak with President Donald Trump, who criticized Azar for being "alarmist".

On January 20, both the WHO and Chinese authorities announced the confirmation that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus had already occurred.

On January 20, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping and State Council premier Li Keqiang issued the first public warning about the coronavirus to Chinese citizens.

On January 22, Trump received his first public question from a reporter regarding whether he was concerned about the coronavirus. Trump responded: "No, not at all. And we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China ... It's going to be just fine."

On January 23, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a statement on the coronavirus, indicating that: "Human-to-human transmission is occurring and a preliminary R0 estimate of 1.4–2.5 was presented..."

On January 27, the WHO assessed the risk of the coronavirus to be "high at the global level".

On January 29, the U.S. government evacuated 195 State Department employees from Wuhan...

The New York Times reported that President Trump was told "at the time" of a January 29 memo by trade adviser Peter Navarro that the coronavirus could cause as many as half a million deaths and trillions in economic damage. Further, on January 30, HHS Secretary Azar warned President Trump about the "possibility of a pandemic".

On January 29, WHO Health Emergencies program leader Dr. Mike Ryan said in a press briefing: "The whole world needs to be on alert now ... and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter ..." At the time, 68 cases had been confirmed outside China, affecting persons in 15 countries.

On January 30, the WHO named the coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, warning that "all countries should be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread"... The WHO also released a statement that included: "The Committee believes that it is still possible to interrupt virus spread, provided that countries put in place strong measures to detect disease early, isolate and treat cases, trace contacts, and promote social distancing measures commensurate with the risk." However, the federal government and individual states did not direct their populations to practice social distancing (e.g., stay at home except for essential travel) until March 19. Further, as late as April 8, five states had no social distancing rules and three others had rules for only parts of the state.

On January 31, the Trump Administration, through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, declared a public health emergency, and imposed a mandatory 14-day quarantine for any U.S. citizens who has visited Hubei Province in China within the preceding two weeks. It also began denying entry of non-U.S. nationals who had traveled to China within the preceding two weeks. This was the first such travel restriction by the U.S. in more than 50 years.

President Trump repeatedly claimed credit for acting early with the travel ban. However, The Washington Post reported that 300,000 people traveled to the U.S. from China during the month prior to the ban. The New York Times reported that more than 40,000 persons traveled from China to the U.S. after the January 31 partial ban, and around 430,000 total between the December 31 disclosure of the outbreak by China and April 4. The Washington Post reported that six other countries had restricted travel from China before January 30, six did so on January 31, and by the time U.S. travel restrictions became effective on February 2, 38 other countries had taken action before or at the same time as the U.S. restrictions. The earliest action was Singapore on January 23. Flights from Europe were not banned until March 11, with hundreds of thousands crossing the Atlantic into the U.S., due to disputes about the impact on the U.S. economy among Trump Administration officials.

• On 11 March 2020, the NBA suspended the 2019-20 season.
• However, the federal government and individual states did not direct their populations to practice social distancing (e.g., stay at home except for essential travel) until March 19.

I guess that answers my question.

Donald Trump

From Trump asks: ‘Why don’t I have a high approval’ on the coronavirus when Fauci does? at CNBC:

“We could have gotten other people, we could have gotten somebody else, it didn’t have to be Dr. Fauci,” Trump said at the presser on Tuesday evening. “He’s working with our administration, and for the most part, we’ve done pretty much what he and others, Dr. [Deborah] Birx and others, who are terrific, recommended.”

“It sort of is curious. A man works for us, with us, very closely, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, also highly thought of, and yet they’re highly thought of but nobody likes me,” Trump said.

Anthony Fauci

From an interview with Anthony Fauci at Wired:

Do you think the president understands how science works?

Yeah, I believe so. I believe so.

But what goes through your mind when you hear the argument he makes that the high numbers of infections are a result of testing?

It’s not going to be helpful or productive for what I need to do in my role as a public health official, and a scientist and a physician, to try and get our arms around this outbreak and to do the kinds of things and the kind of work that we do, if I start going one-on-one and contradicting what the president said...

Herman Cain

From AP News

"The difference is not in the policy itself..."

A fragment from Raising Keynes: A General Theory for the 21st century by Stephen A. Marglin, at ScienceDirect:

Take Jacob Viner, the great Chicago (and later Princeton) economist, who had written in 1933 (Viner, 1933, p. 130)

If the government were to employ men to dig ditches and fill them up again, there would be nothing to show afterwards. But, nevertheless, even these expenditures would be an indirect contribution to business recovery. Their major importance would not be in the public works or the unemployment relief which immediately resulted, but in the possibility of hope that a substantial expenditure would act as a priming of the business pump, would encourage business men by increased sales, make them more optimistic, lead them to increase the number of their employees, and so on.

Compare this with what Keynes wrote in the General Theory:

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it private enterprise on well tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is (General Theory, p. 129).

The difference is not in the policy itself, but in the fact that for Viner the policy relies on the imperfections and rigidities that characterized the American economy in 1933, whereas for Keynes, the policy is the logical extension of his theory of employment.

I'm not sure I see the difference Marglin points out. But I found his remark most interesting.

Averages distort reality

The problem with averages is that averages distort reality. For example, the average household has a net worth of approximately $710,000. You and I know that this is impossible based on common sense. But simple math doesn’t lie.

Take the total household wealth in the US of $81.8 trillion (according to the Fed) and divide by 115,226,802 US households (according to the Census Bureau) and you get $710,000.

From The Average Saving Rate By Income (Wealth Class), by Financial Samurai.