Dow crashes 3000 points – Capitalism’s Black Swans are coming home to roost
Twitter in January: More people die of the flu, criticism is racist, you’re racist!
Twitter now: ‘The pandemic is coming, RUN’
2 months is a life time on Twitter.
The easiest way to create social distancing is to tell people that you are a Vegan Crossfit Cyclist who wears a MAGA hat, or that you are someone who reads the Spinoff daily.
As TDB has pointed out from the beginning, this had all the ingredients of an uncontrollable pandemic that would deeply damage the economy and create a public health nightmare.
Goodness, how much better prepared would we be if the twitter woke weren’t dominating the cacophony.
Those ingredients for uncontrollable pandemic TDB warned about, are now impossible to ignore.
Dow crashed down 3000 points, they plunged deeper while Trump was rambling at his hastily called news conference. The realisation that this narcissistic clown has got no idea what the hell to do is terrifying the traders.
Only Trump can congratulate himself for declaring a national emergency in response to his incompetent pandemic preparation.
He’s just so bewilderingly out of his fucking depth – it’s like Ronald MacDonald as the Captain of the Titanic.
Trump’s trick to slow things on Friday by announcing bullshit bought him 48 hours but the market won’t believe him today, especially after a slew of negative events.
Economic data from China shows worst results in 30yrs.
Markets are slumping globally in a new wave of stock meltdowns as public gatherings are banned.
Dow futures halted in pre trading this morning because an automatic 5% decline triggered it.
Warnings now in NZ that stretched global supply chains will snap and create shortages for medicines.
Warnings now this will be with us until next Christmas when there will hopefully be a vaccine.
Warnings now that the economic meltdown from the pandemic will be worse than 2008.
Jacinda has ratcheted up travel bans, pushed for group closures and the Reserve Bank slashed the OCR while tens of thousands of jobs are now about to be lost.
The entire capitalist system is designed on a market ‘flexibility’ that has no resilience.
We are now being told that thanks to a 30 year neoliberal experiment in underfunding health infrastructure and incredible migration over the last 5 years means we don’t have enough intensive care needs for a pandemic of this size…
…yay, what a charming legacy.
When this is over, there must be an enormous rethink of what State we want, a well funded one that has capacity for these events or a threadbare cheap one that can only create excuses.
This is going to get a lot worse before it can get better.
This is only the start of the first wave of pandemic, the second wave will be more dangerous and we aren’t sure that you even get a natural immunity from being infected.
A perfect storm of climate crisis, rotten global capitalism and a decade of growth built upon debt, snot and greed are culminating into a unique once in a generation event.
Capitalism’s Black Swans are coming home to roost.
China itself was dependant on overseas manufacturing of sunset consumer products.
In fact many commentators thought that the a significant reason for the Belt and Road, was an initiative to keep the Chinese economy going.
it is great that you continue posting Nigel Latta as it reminds people to take a breath do not panic and we will get over this .Unlike the GFC where money markets fell apart with no end in sight we know that there will be an end to this eventually.The hurt will be down to how it is handled by the governments around the World.It will be interesting how the COL pull together with the economic package today. The state services need to be turbo charged to help out those effected ASAP
Some of your commentators have critized the big 4 banks but at times like this we should be thankful they are so strong and can weather a storm without crashing. Likewise people will need to eat so our farmers will play a large part in keeping us afloat as they have before.
If airlines like Air NZ, go bankrupt, what a good time for the government to pick up the other 49% for a bargain of $1 (just like business did with our banks in the 1980’s).
Will government show any sense, get a bargain and use the crisis to pick up once sold off business for nothing and nationalise it?
Time to realise that the modern economy based on financial engineering just collapses every decade – likewise the Global financial crisis.
Remember when the democrats bailed out the banks without taking a stake and making them pay it back with big interest payments to the taxpayers to be redistributed back, Democrats lost credibility, and Trump got in!
The thing is we haven’t really had true capitalism for quite a while (as much as it might be disliked by many).
Rather we’ve had crony capitalism.
I’m not sure how old you are but I well remember the promised nirvana when the fish and chip club came to power.
Aside from all that greed is good kaka, we had the mantra of how good competition was.
What we got fed though was privatisation of natural monoplies; duopolies – sanctioned by bullshit artists in the administration; prices charged that bear no resemblance to the cost of production; co-operatives that were corrupted by masters-of-the-universe (Fonterra for example); a bullshit media – primarily fed by egotists and a culture of (frankly quite fugly) celeb.
And we still get fed shit such as how in a global market place – we have to pay international prices.
The trouble is that when those international prices fall, in theory they should also fall here. NO! What happens is that we pay the same or higher in order to keep the producers afloat.
And the sad thing is that Jacinda, as good as she is, and the best thing that’s happened in a while, and grown up and only ever experienced this sort of crap in a lifetime.
Not long ago, I learned what NZ pork producers were getting at the farm gate for pork. You could have put a bloody slaughtered pig in a limosine and delivered it to the local New World, had it embalmed with the latest sauce some international TV Star chef dreamed up and had it rolled out to the refrigerator on the shop floor for the price they were charging
There’s no magical device that will fix shit even though we are trying to use The Corona Virus to sneak past everyone all the shit we couldn’t if it had of just been Labour Greens. Just got to grind it out and swing the bat a little when we can.
Clearly disruption of imports is not bad for local businesses that actually make or sell stuff that people actually use and need in NZ.
The difference is if the government uses the money wisely for the future to renationalise former state owned assets cheaply, or just blow their chances and NZ’s future as a wealthy country by propping up polluters, retail, liquor stores, gambling, tourism, restaurants…that have become the growth industry here but have little or negative social benefits and are discretionary spending.
There are none so blind as those who cannot see. The counter to these arguments is that we haven’t applied enough neo-liberalism and to double down on it. Overall we still have less hospital beds in New Zealand than we did in the 1970’s to serve a much larger population. Some of this can be put down to some efficiencies in modern care, centralizing some services and privatizing elderly care. However much of it can be laid at the feet of tinkering with structures and cost savings. Lack of resourcing is reflected in the budget deficits being run by all DHBs. Naturally harsh economic medicine will again be applied to rein in this deficit which adds to a shocking total of well under 1% of the health budget. It is clear from the past two years that the government of the left we supposedly have does not associate the social and economic problems we have with the economic model we have followed. Thus we see it trying to deal with the symptoms in isolation of the causes or in many cases not proposing the correct solutions because of the threat of another winter of discontent from business and MSM. So maybe it is Realpolitik? It is to be hoped this crisis may prompt a reevaluation of where we are in NZ in terms of overseas dependence and returning to a more self sufficient economy that provides a better spread of positive outcomes to more of the population in general.
Yep SaveNZ – perhaps a good opportunity to take back public assets that were flogged off over the years.
Watch the opportunists though try in on. Already I noticed a couple of supermarket items creep up in price yet again (such as that pre-packaged salad mix stuff off the top of my head).
And also watch the blame game get worse – Anjum Rahman (apologies to her – I keep getting her name wrong conflating her with another brave person) alerting us to the rise in white supremacy and racism.
Earth is a Dance of Life.
“When this is over, there must be an enormous rethink of what State we want……”
Nothing will and can really “be over”.
Human (over-)populations are increasingly experiencing the Earth’s attempt of global and local re-balancing the ecological systems as many of these are exploited and destroyed by capitalistic modes of production and consumption.
Change this and natural systems will more easily re-configure.
What do you want to wait for?
System Change. NOW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlmTLvHMg-g
There are some great comments here, truly good ideas with a sprinkling of hope that some corrections will be forthcoming due to the coming economic crisis. It’s too much to hope for IMHO. Nothing will change the Neo-lib mantra, the same shit will keep happening. Not one single politician will stand against the world order. Ol Bernies having a crack but he will probably go down in flames. I’m not holding my breath that’s for sure, although I will enjoy watching many a crap business burn.
Ring-A-Ring-O’-Roses- Activity Song with Singalong Lyrics
https://youtu.be/uRsuanAdmsg?t=1
Is Ring Around the Rosie about death?
The fatalism of the rhyme is brutal: the roses are a euphemism for deadly rashes, the posies a supposed preventative measure; the a-tishoos pertain to sneezing symptoms, and the implication of everyone falling down is, well, death.
Nice.
Must be why all the suits usually used to wear carnations in their breast pockets,.. these days its a fake paper ‘ flower’ or even a pocket protector…
A – tishhoo !
Excuse me.
Sci-fi comes to life as we are tested, profiled and canned like muzak
I’m just hoping that the economic stimulus package has something in it for sub contractors…
Yeah, nah… nothing.