Forget me if I sound way saltier than usual but there's been a... fuck it one of my loved ones died in front of me. 100% unrelated to corona. I doubt I should post today but I am thinking of posting a rant with my thoughts on emergency services. But... Honestly I shouldn't. Right now I don't think I remember how to function I should not be posting. But I do think I should express my thoughts on the matter... part of me thinks this is a cry for help. I really just can't remember how to live right now.
My condolences. Know that my thoughts are with you and all other Kiwis affected by the loss of a loved one.
Hate to think you are the first post of this category. I suspect about 2% of us will be saying something similar in the coming months.
A lot of factories in China that are even tangentially related to sewing or textiles have retooled very quickly and are making masks now. Mostly surgical masks, some n95 equivalents. Seriously, go on Alibaba and see how many general home goods factories are pumping these things out now. If the world really wants to divest from China, we'll have to compete with how damn fast their factories pivot to producing the next big thing. I'm having a hard time thinking that the dye sublimated t shirt shop down the street would drop fucking everything to sew surgical masks in a matter of weeks.
Yeah, if you have a central economy, you can do these kinds of things. Good short term solution.
But it's not very efficient. The people sewing those masks are not trained, the market for these products will recede, there's no guarantee the original market will come back. How much certainty is there these masks will actually work? The CCP is not known for quality assurance and the factory personnel sure as shit won't have any.
During WWI, factories throughout North America were taken over and converted to war production. Almost immediately after Germany surrendered, they were handed back over to their owners. This didn't have much to do with private ownership, it had to do with the loss of productivity. Centralized economies operate on quotas, not supply and demand, there's huge incentives not to overproduce or underproduce in favor of meeting your numbers. The War Department determined administering such an operation during peacetime would fail, as we saw evidence of in the Soviet Union.
Holy crap at the world markets being halted within minutes of opening this morning.
The virus scare was already making the market shaky, but the Russian/Saudi shitshow is going for the jugular.
Right now, the US is where China was in early February.
There's going to be a period of panic as people look for safe havens, followed by a period where people see some really good deals after the market bottoms out. The same thing is happening in Asian markets, political turmoil in Saudi Arabia and their beef with Russia over oil prices isn't helping. Mersck is reporting 50% reduction in exports from China - 80% of their hard goods being shipped overseas go out on boats. This means there's an excess of crude, it should result in at least one US energy company going under.
10 year bonds have been volatile for some time, I'm really not sure where to find a safe haven. Some doomsday economists are saying the DOW will drop to 20k by mid-April. There's good reasons for why that could happen. Try and remember, there's an upside to losses - keep some capital sitting around and seek profit when the market comes back. Right now, all I see is discounts on stocks I'd like to own, and I know they will get better before long.
Thank goodness for Global Warming. I was at the park over the weekend, it's unseasonably warm where I live. The flu recedes in the summer and comes back in the winter, the warmth of the sun is reassuring. Who wouldn't take a couple inch rise in sea levels over suffocating in an emergency room because there aren't enough respirators? Conora virus has raised my awareness of the ways I don't want to die.
@Null, we need the hazmat suits back on the avatars.
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