LC

What the absolute hell is this nonsense: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-blocks-medical-aid-to-cuba-in-show-of-wild-west-brutality “Cuba denounces the fact that medical supplies from Alibaba Foundation to help combat Covid-19 have not arrived in the country due to the criminal US blockade against the island nation,” President Miguel Canel-Diaz blasted. More than two million masks, 400,000 rapid diagnostic kits and 104 ventilators have been donated by China’s Alibaba Foundation to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The supplies were destined for 24 countries in the region including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Peru. But they were blocked from the socialist island because of the crippling US embargo, in particular the Helms-Burton Act, according to Cuba’s ambassador to China, Miguel Pereira Hernandez.

I was looking at this (first I ever heard of it) and I was thinking, if I was president and this happened, how would I deal with it? Just from a pure federal resource-allocation perspective, how does DT communicate what he wants, and how does it get done? Well I'd imagine you have a circle of lieutenants, and they each over see a federal department, and under those departments you've got 5-10 units of which something like the Air Force or CDC is one of. So I'm thinking, OK if I'm president I would need people exploring treatment/vaccine solutions; I would need purchasing/manufacturing of PPE and test kits, I would need distribution for all this, I would need projections for the needs of the states in order to allocate, etc. etc. etc. And so I keep thinking (already my brain is hurting at this point), well if we've got this Air Mobility Command, I'm sure there are a bunch of these specialized groups within various departments who are best suited towards these tasks. So I don't expect the president to have all these answers, they depend on their own lieutenants to know these things. Whichever one of Trump's guys took over Department XYZ for example should know all the capabilities of that Department, so he would get the job of procuring PPE from overseas, as an example. And finally I remember reading that Michael Lewis article about a year ago, where he interviews the guys running the Dept of Energy. They were transitioning from Obama's administration to Trump's administration. And they were saying how they prepared entire dossiers for Trump's guy, as a primer to get to know the DOE. And I remember them just absolutely befuddled at how little Trump's lieutenant cared about any of it. They made a big deal about it, which at the time I was reading it I thought, "well OK that's pretty stupid, but as long as these guys are still running the DOE, at least they still know all this stuff and can keep the mission-critical stuff functioning, despite zero interest from the White House". Well now I realize that this same story probably happened all across the federal government. And I'm thinking, well if DT is sitting there in some situation room and trying to allocate tasks and resources - well the people he assigned to these various federal departments probably have zero clue what their own dept. is capable of. I guess it's a long-winded explanation of how unsurprising I am that there is a total lack of federal coordination. It's not just Trump - it's people like Trump all the way down in his administration, and that's kind of frightening.

Yea those are my thoughts too. Cheers ;D

NYC showing about 50% positive rates on testing https://media.nbcnewyork.com/assets/editorial/national/coronavirus/local-maps/nyc-zip.html

The market did come down the last few days, were you trading out prior to that? Essentially asking whether you are slowly accumulating or simply trading around the market volatility? For me I bought some WFC, T the last few days. Was planning on buying some more WFC today but was caught up and didn't have time. Hopefully further opportunity presents itself!

Wow, I remember you posted a thread asking advice on putting all your capital into a short position. I know you don't want to disclose the position, but I am interested in how are you structuring the short? Directly shorting shares? Or using some other instruments to take a synthetic short? Either way I hope it works out for you! (and if not, I hope you're on the younger-side of the equation where it's not a massive sum of capital in the absolute sense). Good luck!

Definitely freeze your credit, also check your credit report to see if any credit lines were opened in your name. I think google as well has some analysis of your email and whether it has been hacked or part of any data breaches. That may be how your information was taken.

Well, I won't turn down a compliment :D But I will reiterate that Italy vs USA are two different cases. Adjusted for age the results are not as dissimilar and Italy did not have an extra 2-3 weeks of time to prepare. In other words, if we threw Trump as PM of Italy a few months ago, I'd wager their situation would be even worse. Come on man - throw me a bone already. With a million "if"s, you could put Paris in a bottle - as my French wife would say.. You are smarter than me, I'll grant you that one.. Not smart enough to marry French. These Italian women are crazy ;D ;D

Yea but no different than any other day of the week. This is a shitstorm of conflicting everything that we live in and COVID is just another chapter, I suppose. Maybe the best move was to quarantine the 55+ population and let the rest of the wold function as normally. WHO knows? Truly the darkest timeline :D But we'll have to see I suppose. Not sure what power they are gaining from this - in fact we may see countries reduce their reliance on China as a result. But now we're all just talking out of our ass. Question going forward is what is the best way to (1) get a handle on the virus and then (2) reopen society.

Well, I won't turn down a compliment :D But I will reiterate that Italy vs USA are two different cases. Adjusted for age the results are not as dissimilar and Italy did not have an extra 2-3 weeks of time to prepare. In other words, if we threw Trump as PM of Italy a few months ago, I'd wager their situation would be even worse. To me, I value honesty of approach. So while I applaud their efforts internally, I will say screw the CPC if they indeed withheld information from the international community about a global pandemic. No different than Trump with the hoax nonsense. In fact to the folks criticizing Fauci et al. for their initial comments, who is to say Trump didn't instruct the NIH & CDC to publicly downplay the virus' potential back in Jan/Feb? His administration certainly has a history of silencing any dissenting information from within the Federal gov't.

Well, you seem to think Trump handled the disaster well. So on that basis, I'll assume that you'd be satisfied with the name of any leader who handled it better than Trump. I'm pretty bad at naming world leaders, but if I'm allowed to look them up, Italian Prime Minister Conte has handled this disaster better than Trump. Really, the hardest part of this game is naming the leaders, because almost every country's federal leadership did better than the USA. So let's add Trudeau, Ardern, Moon, Tsai, Obrador, Merkel, Frederiksen, Macron, Sanchez, Abe, Johnson.... Maybe that's a better game--who did worse than Trump? Perhaps Xi, but unlike most leaders, he didn't have 3 months warning about the effects of the virus before it attacked his country. Maybe Rouhani, but I'm not that sure about Iranian response. Really, if we're allowed to use the Internet to look up world leaders, I'm not sure why you think this is a challenge. If not, then it's pretty close to the challenge of "name world leaders who have bankrupted fewer casinos than Trump." oh yeah, right - they all did so well - ESPECIALLY Iran & Italy - now that is really funny! Oh and the Chinese REALLY did a masterful job - especially when they exported it all over the world! Gotta love the job Premier Xi did! Make some more excuses for Xi, given he had "no notice". Italy had drastically different circumstances - under which the Italian PM performed far better than Trump. Iran and China RG admittedly did not perform great. In other words, you asked the question and then cherry picked the answer. It is no wonder it took you begging before you got a response to your loaded question.

Well off the top of my head I'd put Polis and Cuomo ahead of Trump but those are the only 2 governors I know a bit of detail about their response. Still, imagining either of those two as President and I can't imagine them making as many errors as Trump did. Globally? South Korean and Singapore leadership seems more effective just going from the numbers. Australian and German leaders appear to have responded more urgently. Denmark and Norway as well. But look, I just googled it for ten minutes so maybe I'm totally wrong. In contrast, Trump tried to defer all responsibility from the start, only took it seriously when his back was up against the wall, and subsequently stumbled just about every step of the way from there. The fact that there is STILL a lack of federal coordination and communication for PPE and other medical supplies is mind boggling.

Medical staff levels in NYC is strained and cracking. All available personnel are asked to come to work. COVID positive medical staff are ordered to continue working as long as they are asymptomatic, with PPE, sanitizing standards, temp checks, and away from high-risk patients. Symptomatic staff are sent home and furloughed.

All the banks are doing it. When the gov't bails you out to the tune of billions, trillions, you need to earn it back.

Not my forte but take a look at MGM - insiders are buying.

I have also been looking at Paychex but the industry does have low-ish barriers to entry. It does not seem like a large value-add although I will admit there is stickiness.

Dipped the toe twice in WFC yesterday and today; Bought some T today as well. My assumption is the SP500 will eventually hit 2000. I am averaging my cash position down to that point, so that's the plan I guess ;D

Similar happened at an Amazon distribution warehouse near JFK. Worker was fired, he claims for protesting, Amazon claims for ignoring stay-at-home order.

Surgical masks are more effective at viral transmission compared to N95 makes, despite being not as effective against 1-3 micron particles. Why is that? Because they cover a larger portion of your face.

Doing ok. Wife and I WFH normally so not much changed for us. Biggest concern is my family & community. Back in NY & Italy many relatives are doctors and nurse, they are at risk and some have recently tested positive. They are in their 40s and 50s so I am hoping for a recovery, but preparing for the worst. Here in Denver I am worried for the community, college kids and mid-20s and such who work in bars, restaurants, cafes, etc. They are and will be out of work for what seems like quite a while and I am worried what will end up happening, whether they will have a place to sleep/eat at the end of all this. The small business owners I know, they are doing their best to keep people employed or at least pay their healthcare. So we are giving $$ for that and for meals. The question is how long they can keep it up for, every day it gets more difficult.

On his 74th birthday, an old man received a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on a nearby reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction. After being persuaded to go, he drove to the reservation, handed his ticket to the medicine man and wondered what he was in for. The old man handed a potion to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, "This is a powerful medicine. You take only a teaspoon and then say '1-2-3'." When you do, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life and you can perform as long as you want." The man was encouraged. As he walked away, he turned and asked, "How do I stop the medicine from working?" "Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,'" the medicine man responded, "but when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon." The man was very eager to see if it worked so he went home, showered, shaved, took a spoonful of the medicine and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom. When she came in, he quickly took off his clothes and said, "1-2-3!" Immediately, he was the manliest of men. His wife was excited and began throwing off her clothes as she asked "What was the 1-2-3 for?" And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition, because we could end up with a dangling participle.

Drink warm/hot liquids (tea, honey, maybe a pinch of salt!)

BG to Eric:

Same with Obama's 800B infrastructure plan of which like, 60B? was actually spent on projects. Same story, new decade.

If your assumption holds, then I would guess yes but only from the fallout of the virus itself. What happens if we see 30% unemployment, massive decrease in Q1 earnings numbers, and a slow Q2/Q3 of getting people back to work? I don't know the answer to that situation. But the market is forwards looking so maybe that is priced in?