Jurgis

I skipped everything as you requested. Just looked at the performance numbers. Aren't these just what you get if you expect low/zero/negative rates and you sit in the longest-end of treasury curve? This clearly has worked wonders for last 20-30 years. But will it really work going forward? (Of course, people wondered that for the last 20-30 years lol).

It's more that low income people are f&*cked ... again. John Oliver Coronavirus IV

Still not buying groceries on Amazon/WholeFoods-delivery. Apart from specific food items that I don't call groceries. Groceries are still too idiosyncratic to be bought online. I buy blueberries or raspberries or blackberries in the store. Which ones depend on price and on how they look. Can't explain that in online order. Grapes - I only buy grapes if I know they gonna be sweet. Can't do that online either. Same with pretty much all other fruits. Plus with the pandemic you have the shortages. They may claim to have toilet paper when you order, but it's not there when they prepare the delivery. Same with other items. You can do substitutions in some services, but that also becomes a game of whack-a-mole. You can't say "buy any gel dishwasher detergent, but cheapest preferred, and no powder or tablets". Edit: haven't started buying clothes on Amazon/online either, since people are talking Macy's etc. Can't buy clothes, shoes online. Yeah, I know you can return. Still sucks.

It depends. I've ordered masks that are sold by Amazon (not third party). Showed in stock 2 day delivery. Showed shipped. In reality was never shipped ( I had to go to UPS to check ), never delivered. I requested reshipping, got auto message that they don't have the product. So I requested refund. Ordered laundry stain remover, was shipped and delivered normally. I've ordered some stuff from Chinese 3rd party merchants. The real ones that operated long time - e.g. window shades - are still shipping normally from China. The ones that sell masks/disinfecting wipes/etc are a coin toss I think. My "subscribe and save" shipment was normal although Amazon changed UI to make it more difficult to pull items from future shipments. That sucks, but not big deal. I haven't really ordered anything that was not PPE and was on May delivery dates. But then most of my stuff was in "subscribe and save".

Some time ago there was a completely horrible article about the scam in the US retirement homes. People were scammed to move into the retirement facilities, lost their property, got drugged in the retirement home so they wouldn't raise issues. If you don't have relatives who care and fight for you, you are screwed. Even if you have relatives, the retirement home mafia got court orders from friendly judges to remove/restrict relative access to the seniors they were mistreating. Overall, I am not sure if this can be solved. Especially for people with no relatives. Doubly especially if a person has any cognitive slowdown. Even if there is a well intentioned government agency, how easy is it to figure out if someone with dementia is being abused/overmedicated/under-cared/etc? Oh yes, blockchain! Just what the doctor ordered.

What happened with "Live free or die"?

I haven't heard anyone thinking in this direction so far. I think it will depend a lot on how the pandemic progresses and ends. There are couple overlays that affect what you suggest: - Exurbs are cheaper and low density states have (generally) been cheaper. So older folks who don't have to live in cities could have migrated to exurbs and low density states already. Some have. But there's a lot of reasons why others haven't. Among these are community, services, and overall low geographical mobility (geographical mobility apparently is quite lower than people think). - Maine, Vermont and probably upstate NY have been losing people. This might not reverse the trend.

Thanks. Bought it.

We are still ordering for pickup or delivery. We went for pickup yesterday and my wife said something like "they are doing good business". I thought, "hmm it's 7-10 cars vs 60-100 patrons". But then I thought that the cars stay there for 5-10 minutes max and patrons stayed for hour+. So maybe they are doing OK. Depends on a restaurant clearly. Holes in the wall that mostly did delivery before pandemic are probably doing OK (maybe better? not sure). A lot of places just shut down. The ones that are trying to convert from (somewhat fancy) sit-down to delivery are probably not doing very well. But it does depend. Places that are doing half-a$$ job in trying to convert are very likely faring worse than the ones who are really making effort to show that they are there for customers and community. And pre-pandemic reputation also helps.

But that's the key point, isn't it? Sure, if (when) all is clear, we all happily go to 2019-normal. But what exactly is "all clear" and when is it going to happen? The economic impact will depend on the answer to this question. The effects are going to be very different if "all clear" is in June 2020 vs if it is in December 2021. Also Yes, and it took 2+ years. If Covid takes 2+ years to resolve, then the economic impact will be worse than Great Recession for sure. And yeah 5-10+ years into the future the economy will likely recover and grow. But if you think that 2 years of social isolation is not going to be bad for economy, then you are very overoptimistic. So really anyone expecting mild impact is just betting on "all clear" within couple months. For me the partial-tentative "reopening" without a vaccine and/or cure is not "all clear". JMHO.

It depends how Covid pandemic ends. The best case: THE PILL! Antiviral that treats the disease is found. You get symptoms, you take the pill, you are cured. Everyone goes back to 2019 behavior. We win. The next best case: Near 100% (think measles) preventative vaccine is created. Same as above though probably takes longer than above. The not so good case: 70-80% (think flu) vaccine is created. People may go back to 2019 behavior but who knows. The bad case: No vaccine. Wait for herd immunity. Drawn out process, tons of deaths, people may go back to 2019 behavior, but not very likely. The very bad case: No vaccine or 70-80% vaccine, but virus mutates like flu virus does. Social distancing forever or a risk of dying through social contact every year. This is probably very unlikely case. IMO, we will end up with "not so good case" (although I am not a vaccine expert - perhaps "the next best case" is also likely). IMO it's very hard to predict how people will deal with this. Quite possibly economic outcome will be bad. Apparently Bill Gates is somewhat optimistic about THE PILL. So maybe it's gonna be better than I think. Edit: I did not cover the case of "no vaccine, no cure, just track and test". IMO that's not a sustainable solution long term. I might be wrong though.

- Yesterday parking lot in Fells dog-walking meadow was closed and police car was parked outside likely to discourage illegal parking on the highway. I guess someone decided that a ton of people coming to dog walk in meadow/forest is creating transmission risk. Of course the unintended consequence is that other parking lots that are even less equipped to handle the dog walker/casual walker traffic were swamped. If you prevent people from walking in one part of the forest, they go elsewhere and you might end up with even more people density. ::) - We are watching movies and our reaction is "wow people are not socially distancing, what kind of crazies are they". Now, this is mostly a joke so far, but there is some cognitive effect. I hope we don't end with social-distancing-forever and looking nostalgically at movies/documentaries where people shook hands, kissed, etc.

OT. I just love the price history of this book: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/0316343692?context=search (mark 3rd Party New and 3rd Party Used for additional fun).

On what budget? Once this pandemic is over I wonder how much money any city/state in the US will have to do anything new and non-essential.

::)

Def this. Boris Johnson did this. Following his lead is the highest honor. We will appreciate your sacrifice. KK THX OK.

Liberty, i am not sure where you find all of these sources :-) Please keep them coming... If anyone wants to understand exactly where the US is at today, and what it will take to re-open, watch this interview. - re-opening: perhaps early June, in limited way - key enabler to reopening: nationally coordinated testing capability able to prioritize tests so high priority people get results back within 24 hours and contract tracing can happen immediately. - Today testing results are not coordinated or prioritized at a national level; sounds like a helter skelter approach (he also inferred if you pay $ you can get a very quick result and be tested every day if you want). - Gates was pretty emphatic that what is done with testing in the next 7 weeks will determine how comprehensive and successful the re-opening phase will be. - very confident a treatment will be found in the next couple of months, which will help. - vaccine is likely 18 months away (perhaps a little sooner if all goes well). My guesses about reopening, etc.: - Reopening will be patchwork as were closures - There will be no fast national prioritized testing or contact tracing - It's gonna be muddle through with flare-ups and drops and a lot of continued acrimony across the country. In the best case flare-ups will not be huge and will be followed with local lockdowns immediately. - If there's treatment in next couple months, then we win. GAME OVER.

No, I'd say just kill them all. They gonna die anyway. A lot of problems solved. The risk group is probably 1/3 of the population depending on how it is defined. Maybe we should exclude guests at Mar-a-Lago then. ::)

Amazon is suspending the service not because it cannot compete with FedEx but because they need all the infra (trucks/drivers/etc) for their own deliveries that are skyrocketing. You could argue that the skyrocketing deliveries are good for FexEx/UPS (they are), but I don't think you can make any conclusions about (long term) moat of FedEx/UPS from this news item.

No, I'd say just kill them all. They gonna die anyway. A lot of problems solved.

Yeah, the Gamestop that refused to close stores in states with shelter-in-place arguing that it's an "essential" business... until evil government agents closed the stores. Maybe it was Galileo's idea... ::)

Likely it went up just because all market was going up and merger spreads were closing too. Now explain today's move down to me ;) I should be paid for this. :P 8)

Likely it went up just because all market was going up and merger spreads were closing too.

LOL I can see him in isolation at home, unable to get his FaceTime to work. Or maybe his router needs to be reset, and nobody there to help him. Big Co CEO: "Why is Buffett not answering our offer? Should we raise pref rate from 9 to 10%? Should we add warrants? He said he'll answer in 10 minutes and it's been an hour already..." <meanwhile> Buffett: "Why is my computer not working? I need to answer that Big Co CEO and get my elephant! I think I need to do something to restart this computer! Maybe Bill knows! Where is my iPhone? Can anyone find my iPhone? Oh, nobody's here, I'm in self isolation... Where is my iPhone? Maybe Tim knows where it is."

Tencent says hi from a tropical island. 8)