[laplata]

blam, thanks for posting.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Perhaps that will motivate us to start manufacturing things in the USA again, especially critical components.

[eartick]

I ain't no economist, but this looks bad.

I hope PDJT can stay ahead of it. If anyone can, he can IMO

[datura]

Rapid decoupling from China is a good thing!

[null and void]

Just a flu, nothing to see here...

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[EBH]

Oh-Oh...this isn’t good.

[Zhang Fei]

Not entirely surprising, given the fact that more than half the workforce was furloughed for the better part of a month. I’m beginning to think that the Chinese leadership’s panic was possibly triggered by the effects of the swine flu on swine herds. Maybe they thought this coronavirus would have a similar impact on humans.

What they probably missed was that pigs bred for meat are monocultures - they are (incestuously) bred for a high meat to bone ratio, feed to meat ratio, etc, etc. Disease resistance for a good number of plants and animals bred for human consumption is very low. Whereas humans aren’t monocultures. It’s generally natural selection that decides what humans get to pass on their genes. And a good chunk of that natural selection consists of resistance to diseases that Mother Nature throws up randomly.

[bigbob]

Speeding up the decoupling of the US from China will definitely be the silver lining.

[Dave Wright]

The concern here is not so much that China has been significantly impacted but that there will be “knock on” effects that ripple into the US economy. The shipping containers coming into our ports are only one third full indicating that a lot of products and manufacturing goods that US companies need to make and sell their own products are delayed.

If they sell out of their inventory quickly it could mean they will not have anything to sell this summer and their revenues will slump. If this happens they would have to lay off people which then cuts into the consumer confidence levels and people pull back on spending. This becomes a self fulfilling spiral that can lead to a recession.

If US consumers panic because they think there will be shortages it could suck up the inventory very quickly just like people do with gasoline when they think the supply is at risk because of natural disasters.

The lesson from this is exactly what President Trump was trying to do with the China Trade Deal. The underlying message to US manufacturers is that we can’t risk being so dependent on China to feed our economic pipeline. We fixed this problem with oil supplies by expanding our fracking so that now disruptions to the Middle East supply no longer panic our financial markets and risk armed conflict.

We need to bring back our own manufacturing to this country so that we limit our vulnerability to foreign disruptions for whatever reason. If China gets back on line quickly none of this will necessarily happen but our markets are predicting they won’t make it at this point.

[Freedom56v2]

Interesting that I was debating someone here last night who said China is fine all the concern is overblown, etc...

Of course, they had no facts and they accused me of being paid to post concerns??

Anyway, thank YOU for posting actual data!

[grey_whiskers]

ZeroHedge had this yesterday, don’t know which source is original, or if they both got it from somewhere else.

[jonascord]

The major cause of the problem is that the Democrats have spent 50 years installing blocks and "environmental regulations" that ban manufacturing and construction in the United States.

50% of the costs and 80% of time spent in new construction is wasted gaining "permissions" and "inspections", from local, county, state and national bureaucracies.

Native manufacturing was killed, simply by incremental and progressive infliction of more onerous government controls.

And now, everyone stands, innocently blinking, in the wreckage, and whines that, "It's the greedy corporations!"

[353FMG]

During WW2, the japanese tried to firebomb the US west coast by floating incendiary balloons across the Pacific. The Chinese can try the same by virus bombing the West coast.

[jdsteel]

As someone that has been saying the wheels WILL fall off of the Chinese economy someday, and at the same time saying it will be a big economic blow to the rest of the world, let me say this won’t make that happen tomorrow or the next day.

This is an opportunity for Trump to quickly negotiate part 2 of a trade deal AND for companies to start diversifying from China.

[Wuli]

O.K. fine.

But things will recover. The Cov-19 crisis is not a long term crisis caused by unsolvable events that are permanently fixed as to their results. The crisis is real, but temporary. Things will recover. The sky is not falling.

My investment managers have been selling some bonds and buying some stocks depressed by the panic. Before year end the portfolio will be showing greater than average returns.

[Pelham]

A longshoreman I know works at LA and Long Beach, two very high volume ports for China trade.

He has had his hours cut down to two shifts a week. Traffic from China is down that dramatically.

[Gen.Blather]

The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) is an index of the prevailing direction of economic trends in the manufacturing and service sectors. It consists of a diffusion index that summarizes whether market conditions, as viewed by purchasing managers, are expanding, staying the same, or contracting.

[ifinnegan]

More good news.

China’s economy tanking.

Islamists dying from it.

The bad Pope may even have it.

[RasterMaster]

Trump was WAY AHEAD of the curve on moving companies within the supply chain out of China and back to the US...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/01/trump-ordered-us-firms-to-ditch-china-but-many-already-have.html

[FlipWilson]

The irony here is that decoupling from China had already begun to some extent due to the trade war.