Coronavirus:

[chuck]

We'll have to see how long this lasts. The manufacturing vrs importing argument overlooks the basic fact that these companies are actually trying to make money, not stuff. If they can make MORE money by having stuff made somewhere else that is what they are going to do. This isn't about them not making money at all, its about the insane profit levels being demanded by investors and owners. It used to be a "good year" was any year you made a profit. Then it shifted to 5%, 10%, ... Investors would look at last years profit and set that as the ground floor. If you didn't beat that then you had a "bad year" even if you did actually make 15% profit.

[HONDO74]

An illustration of the error of moving manufacturing out of the US for cheap overseas labor driven by plain old GREED. Made in the USA NO MAS.

Another way of looking at that greed is that the American worker wants top dollar and benefits for the work that they do but when it comes to buying consumer products they only want to pay for cheap slave labor....

It was manufacturing after WW2 that built the middle class in this country that is now disappearing due to high wages and benefits that drove it to other countries. Pensions are not longer sustainable. Unless you work for the government. You have the taxpayers to pay for it.

Many pension funds have been invested in the stock market as a way to sustain their value or you can put them in a savings account at maybe 1% interest and watch them go bankrupt.

[Neil]

The USA has one of the greatest disparities in wealth between the upper 5-10% and the middle 25% or any other segment for which we calculate it. This is a conscious policy that has been mainly the result of the Republican party's opposition to taxing the wealthy, as well as avoiding government support of healthcare and education.

We live in a plutocracy now, and the lack of manufacturing jobs has little to do with it. Manufacturing has never accounted for more than 20-40% of the jobs in any era. The destruction and corruption of labor unions has played a role of course. But irresponsible government sucking up to the needs of the 1% and corporate welfare play roles to a significant extent.

Middle class and working class people are being impoverished by health care expenses covered by insurance/taxation in almost all other Western societies and Japan/Korea. Now the bastards and traitors loyal to Russia and only Americans who are truly wealthy are trying to remove 23 million people from the health insurance pool by having the Supreme Court declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Hopefully Coronavirus Don and Moscow McConnell will be gone in November and we can get back as a society to providing for the health and well being of the population and stop acting like apparatchiks of Vladimir Putin and other dictators worldwide. Trump may not be a Russian agent, but he sure behaves like one, which is the same thing for the well being of the Republic.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Pensions are not longer sustainable. Unless you work for the government. You have the taxpayers to pay for it.

That ceased to be a true statement in 1984.

Many pension funds have been invested in the stock market as a way to sustain their value or you can put them in a savings account at maybe 1% interest and watch them go bankrupt.

Gov. pensions since 1984 have been effectively 401k systems invested in several funds in the stock market.

If you can get 1% from a bank, run and grab it now before things go negative

[healey36]

I think the thought that 5%, even 15% net income is exhorbitant, is greatly misplaced. Remember, a corporation's ability to make capital investments comes from its ability to generate net income. No company can survive for any stretch of time at 5% unless they have aligned themselves with financing partners willing to sustain larger and larger levels of debt. Companies have to have money to spend on their plant and equipment (unless everything is manufactured offshore, in which case they cannot be classified as "manufacturers").

A sampling of a few US "manufacturers":



Looking at Net income (certainly not Net Profit) is never a good financial indicator of corporate health. Most analysts worth their salt will tell you to pay attention to the Cash Flow statement, as that will give a much better sense of how much money the company is generating and where the money is being spent.

If you want to be outraged by something, look at the companies "investing" in stock buy-backs rather than capital improvements. That's purely a play to improve their earnings-per-share numbers and jack their stock prices in the eyes of their investors and the investing public in general. Done purely for perception purposes...it has little-to-no positive effect on the company downstream.

The other thing to remember is that if you have a company or public pension, or a 401K or similar deferred retirement plan, you are one of the investors demanding a return of substantially more than 5%. You can't fund 20 years of retirement after 30-40 years of investing at 5%. The math doesn't work, at least not in this day and age where everyone expects to live in retirement at 75% of the income level they had when they were working (some expect higher).

Saw that the case numbers leveled off and even started to rise slightly in Maryland the last two days...maybe we're heading back up.

[HONDO74]

The USA has one of the greatest disparities in wealth between the upper 5-10% and the middle 25% or any other segment for which we calculate it. This is a conscious policy that has been mainly the result of the Republican party's opposition to taxing the wealthy, as well as avoiding government support of healthcare and education.

1 million millionaires
New York City is home to nearly 1 million millionaires, more than any other city in the world. New York City is a hot spot for the rich. According a new report from data firm Wealth-X, it is home to nearly 1 million wealthy people, more than any other city in the world.Jan 18, 2019
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/new-yor ... world.html

During the 2016 election 80% of the money that Wall Street donated went to Hillary Clinton.

The democrats, not the republicans control New York & New York City.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The other thing to remember is that if you have a company or public pension, or a 401K or similar deferred retirement plan, you are one of the investors demanding a return of substantially more than 5%.

If you are only getting 5% then you are doing something very wrong.

You can't fund 20 years of retirement after 30-40 years of investing at 5%.

That may or not be 100% accurate - it does depend somewhat on the amount invested and the diligence of that action; I max'd out every possible available amount off the top of my pay as did my spouse. But, I also have always done well better than 5%

Saw that the case numbers leveled off and even started to rise slightly in Maryland the last two days...maybe we're heading back up.

Hopefully just a statistical anomaly, but given the track record across the country, not a good sign.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

During the 2016 election 80% of the money that Wall Street donated went to Hillary Clinton.

Even Wall Street recognizes a flim-flam man when they see one.

[Neil]

"The democrats, not the republicans control New York & New York City."

The Republicans, now the American Trumpist Party, largely have dictated the tax laws, the expenditures on health and education and our foreign policy for most of my adult lifetime. Now they are led by an oligarch who favors preserving the rights of white supremacists, keeping sacred the memory of the traitors and racists of the Confederacy, self-dealing in business and illegal emoluments, and sympathy for the devil (Vladimir Putin and similar anti-democratic monsters abroad). We have become a plutocracy as much as a democracy. A major platform of the Republican party is the repression of women's rights to control their own bodies and the suppression of voting by anyone who is poor, black, Latino and/or not in favor of government by the rich people, for the rich people and the preservation of the patriarchy and white privilege. And the mistreatment of children, whether domestic or foreign. Not to mention denying the importance of clean air, water and soil, and coming to terms with climate change, the major technical challenge of the next 50-100 years. Did I mention the Republican party is the party of anti--science and faith based belief in all sorts of crackpot ideas?

[robert.]

During the 2016 election 80% of the money that Wall Street donated went to Hillary Clinton.

Even Wall Street recognizes a flim-flam man when they see one.

Mr flim flam donated to Hilary!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Did I mention the Republican party is the party of anti--science and faith based belief in all sorts of crackpot ideas?

You mean that Fred & Barney were not alive when the dinosaurs roamed the planet? Shocking!

[Roy]

I've got a word or two
to say about the things that you do.
You're telling all those lies
about the good things that we can have
if we close our eyes.

Do what you want to do,
and go where you're going to.
Think for yourself
'cause I won't be there with you.

I left you far behind
the ruins of the life that you had in mind.
And, though you still can't see,
I know your mind's made up.
You're gonna cause more misery.

Do what you want to do,
and go where you're going to.
Think for yourself
'cause I won't be there with you.

Although your mind's opaque,
try thinking more, if just for your own sake.
The future still looks good.
And, you've got time to rectify
all the things that you should.

Do what you want to do,
and go where you're going to.
Think for yourself
'cause I won't be there with you.

Do what you want to do,
and go where you're going to.
Think for yourself
'cause I won't be there with you.
Think for yourself
'cause I won't be there with you.

The Beatles

[robert.]

They should look into how Ford screwed Hertz rental. Ford bought hertz as a pawn. Hertz then bought mostly ford automobiles. Pumping up fords stock price. Then they dumped hertz with 900 million in debt. Hertz blames it on covid.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

They should look into how Ford screwed Hertz rental. Ford bought hertz as a pawn. Hertz then bought mostly ford automobiles. Pumping up fords stock price. Then they dumped hertz with 900 million in debt. Hertz blames it on covid.

I'd wager that the rental car markets have dropped to round about zero rentals or very close to it with next to zero travel. Hertz was running at a manageable margin vs. debt but with near zero income........they fail. Then I see the stock manipulators buying Hertz to prop up its stock to it's got more value as a company to make it salable.

Guess what. This sort of stuff happens all the time and no one is going to look into it or bother since as long as no one actually breaks any laws heinously, this is what's called capitalism. Pure capitalism is a Darwinian economic system.........except when everyone sticks their snouts into the bail out money trough........and the little guys get shoved to the back of the line. But we need to save capitalism; is that what's really being saved? Not likely.

[Chris Webster]

Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden:

Scary math on Arizona. 500 new cases per million people per day. Test positivity more than 25%. Likely 3-10 cases undiagnosed for every diagnosed. Each person with Covid infectious for about a week = At least 1 in every 70 and possibly 1 of 20 people in Arizona likely infectious.

Link to Twitter Post