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The state of the economy at the street level

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jbocker said:
He had been waiting ages and was close to being called up when covid-19 stalled everything.
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I never really understood what the rationale was for stopping surgeries in hospitals?

Stopping them if the hospitals were needed to treat COVID-19 patients sure but not just for the sake of it. Presumably there was some reason?
 
Smurf1976 said:
I never really understood what the rationale was for stopping surgeries in hospitals?

Stopping them if the hospitals were needed to treat COVID-19 patients sure but not just for the sake of it. Presumably there was some reason?
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I think it was all about preparing for an onslaught of Covid-19 cases and all else were included in the lock down strategy. this also minimised potentially affected people entering hospitals or their visitors. All Emergencies excluded of course.
 
Although I haven't actively commented on this thread, I have been reading fellow posters and being on the sidelines one thing I noticed is there is slight improvement in the sentiment from the March period.

Although we are not out of the woods yet, with Schools and some businesses opening up with the easing there is a little bit of optimism. Market today was suggesting a bit more than a little bit of optimism.


Which gave me confidence to buy a couple of stocks for the Speculative Stock Portfolio.
 
I think it is pretty clear for anyone with common sense that we know now that even at its worst aka Italy Spain France, this is a relatively manageable biological issue.
Hospital are empty,and where is the argument of flattening the curve in Australia?
eradication more like it,however dumb that idea can be...
The scary headlines about the US do not change that fact
We did not know the threat 3 months ago.
Now the question people will and should have if why are we still inflicting ourself these economic damages?
Is that the way the governments have decided to bite the bullet,and start the reset which should have occured in 2007?
Expect many so called conspiracy theories coming into the open with widespread adoption..and there could be a lot of truth behind.
Is the virus used as a pretext, and this will be the street level question in everyone's mind in the coming months
 
I don't know if this is a brighter note, but we're getting back to normal. I've been called for Jury Duty. Must be quite a backlog, I've read.

The documentation provided outlining Covid safe operation is worthy of a public servant. Sanitiser, distancing, video.
 
Close family member has an upmarket escape/ getaway AirBnB located in a state that is opening up. Put it on for availability yesterday; 4 bookings within half an hour.
 
Dona Ferentes said:
A bit of stimulus, and voilà

But do you reckon cash is down a few percent in this tap n go era?
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That is going to be a very interesting stat, and my guess is this has accelerated the march toward a generally 'cashless' system.
 
Dona Ferentes said:
A bit of stimulus, and voilà
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Are you sure?

You can lead a horse to stimulus but you can't make it spend.

But do you reckon cash is down a few percent in this tap n go era?
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Who knows...I try and keep track of the credit card data because it's weekly, that's pretty much the fastest economic/macro proxy data you can get for Australia. It tracks pretty well for forecasting slower monthly/quarterly macro stuff.
 
sptrawler said:
my guess is this has accelerated the march toward a generally 'cashless' system.
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I could be wrong but my perception is that the broad overall effect of the pandemic has been to accelerate most trends. Things which were going to happen in due course have been brought forward and that seems to apply to just about everything. Change that was coming, was forced to happen far more quickly.
 
qldfrog said:
Is that the way the governments have decided to bite the bullet,and start the reset which should have occured in 2007?
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What will that look like if it eventually occur ?
Are we talking a debt reset, an economic reset or some form of fiat reset ?

Smurf1976 said:
Things which were going to happen in due course have been brought forward and that seems to apply to just about everything. Change that was coming, was forced to happen far more quickly.
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Are we referring to change at individual level, in terms of reducing spending and being frugal etc ? Or is it change at higher economy, market or company level ?
 
I would challenge the interpretation by Millennial Tim on this spending.

This is debt.

It is spending by muppets. The middle class and public servants are holding on to their savings.

Another reason cash is down is that all the drug affected people and dealers are in lockdown. Household break-ins are down. I could quite happily have lockdown for a few years.

The economy is rooted and will stay so for 3-5 years. China is gone. The Universities and tourism are wrecked. Even that much maligned cohort of grey nomads are only venturing as far as Aldi.

Remember the virus is still there. It has only settled because of lockdown and we are heading in to winter.

gg
 
Let's be honest none of Europe or US china Japan debt can be repaid and standard inflation.. the standard solution is not taking so we can change currency and decreed inflation /change rate new to old dollars, wipe the debt and plenty in between including sizing assets and compensating with new monopoly money
I have only one certitude the 99% will be the screwed 9nes.. probably more like the 99.9pc
Why else destroying purposely our economy?
Now that we know places like Spain etc got what :30k deaths probably at most 20k extra ones yet wr create an economic crisis which will definitively kill a factor of magnitude more
More at home, the flattening the curve is morphing into eradication..which is madness in concept unless we start a North Korea country wide isolation from the external world...
Makes no sense
 
aus_trader said:
Are we referring to change at individual level, in terms of reducing spending and being frugal etc ? Or is it change at higher economy, market or company level ?
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I'm thinking in terms of things being done, or at least tried, which under normal circumstances would have taken years if ever to occur.

Physical shopfront businesses that were forced to go online. They'd have slowly gone broke "business as usual" but the stark reality of people in lockdown forced change which will ultimately keep them in business or at least improve their chances.

Offices with a very traditional business approach which were forced to do away with excessive meetings and to have employees working from home. That might otherwise have taken a few more decades to occur in some places.

Older people who realised they needed to get their minds around the whole concept of shopping online and have now done so. Odds are they'd have gone to their grave never having done it if not for the pandemic.

Etc. It has forced not the invention of anything new but rather the adoption and use of things which already existed but weren't being used to their full potential. Some of that will stick around and be of longer term benefit. Not all, but some almost certainly will.
 
Initially I came across your posts as a systems trader only. But now I am awed at your level of thinking and knowledge in the wider scheme of things and they are very much aligned with my own views.

I was thinking about all this well before the virus, how unsustainable the sovereign debt growth of all the QE nations are and how and when it would unravel or resolve itself.

My thinking is, we are the 99%, unless there is a Central Bank financial elite in this forum or one of their investment bank buddies who gets all the QE benefits like JP Morgan etc. But I am also one of the least pessimistic. May sound , but if I can put it humbly: I am the sort of guy who can be buried in a sewer to drown but may still come out eating through all that . So despite what/who we might be up against, we will still fight for the best outcome.

I have thought about the debt issue and what a reset may look like quite a lot over the last few years actually. I was hopeful for a global debt forgiveness type of reset where the nations unable to pay back or even make interest payments on the debt may be forgiven or written off. But with the geopolitical tensions and trade wars with the super powers of the world I think such a dreamy fairytale is unlikely. So it may come down to what you described, which may include seizing of assets to repay the public debt. At what level I don't know:
  • At public company level, by slicing a portion of all public companies i.e. share market
  • At property level, by introducing new land and property taxes or hiking existing ones
  • At income level with even higher taxes
  • At Cash level by giving citizens a fraction of the purchasing power with a replacement currency or freeze the banks and take a % off all deposits as happened in some of the European nations that defaulted on their sovereign debt
  • At individual level of seizing personal assets like confiscating of all Gold privately held by the Government as has happened in the USA in the past
Whatever happens, we will have little control other than gambling on asset allocation hoping one asset may be favoured over another or protesting on the streets when it all happens etc. So my most optimistic answer is, we will carry on as usual and I'll join all you ASF buggers on the street when the protesting begins where our assets starts getting seized/confiscated one day...
 
qldfrog said:
More at home, the flattening the curve is morphing into eradication..which is madness in concept unless we start a North Korea country wide isolation from the external world...
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Yep that is the bit that spooks me. You know that when you open the door the big fat gorilla IS THERE waiting for you. How long can we keep the door shut waiting to develop the gun that blows it away.
Can we keep it shut for a couple of years? (genuine question)
 
But Is it the aim?
If the aim was flattening the curve, we should wish for more infections , treated properly in fully functioning hospitals..
The current policies and behaviour will ONLY work with a fully functioning vaccine,found very quickly.
my own view is that it will NEVER..well in the next 20y..happen

Seeing how Paluchet digs in, not to admit fault, our politicians will not admit being wrong and it could be a while before travel starts again.
We will brag about being virus free for years becoming the Amish of the world isolated on our island?
Getting obviously fully out of subject for the thread
 
aus_trader said:
Initially I came across your posts as a systems trader only. But now I am awed at your level of thinking and knowledge in the wider scheme of things and they are very much aligned with my own views.
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I am blushing, is that the start of a bromance?
You are too kind,i know too little on too many things to be an expert in any, unless you are interested in stockpile modelisation ;-)
But thanks
 
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