COVID-19 (Aka China Virus)

[Homestar]

1 minute ago, HU&W said:

It’s an additional credit, paid in advance. 

For now. 

[HU&W]

Just now, Homestar said:

For now. 

All the tax rules are written into the legislation for it.  They were pretty clear, and it would be politically untenable to directly reverse it. 

[Homestar]

The legislation also requires that the SBA grant me a $10,000 refundable advance on my EIDL loan within three days. I’m still waiting. I guess I just don’t trust the government to do what they said they’d do. 

[Scuba]

Speaking of SBA.  Have any small business owners, independent contractors or self-employed persons had success with the paycheck protection program?

[GrndPndr]

2 hours ago, Homestar said:

You’ll pay it back on your 2021 tax return. There’s no free lunch. 

I think the invoice to the taxpayer will likely be spread out over several years tax returns.

[Homestar]

1 hour ago, Scuba said:

Speaking of SBA.  Have any small business owners, independent contractors or self-employed persons had success with the paycheck protection program?

Speaking for my situation, not yet. My state has also not yet made unemployment insurance available to self employed, like the Act says they will. My guess is that the state is hoping that if they delay enough the crisis will pass before they have to pay out any benefits. But that’s probably overly cynical of me. 

[jonlbs]

2 hours ago, Homestar said:

The legislation also requires that the SBA grant me a $10,000 refundable advance on my EIDL loan within three days. I’m still waiting. I guess I just don’t trust the government to do what they said they’d do. 

SBA just sent out an update email this morning with a little more info but still muddy. It's $1000 per employee so only $1000 for the self employed. But I still haven't heard anything solid and honestly am not counting on it to come to fruition for me either.

Texas has made unemployment available for us contractors but it is so over tasked that it is nearly impossible to get a claim through (phone since online isn't equipped for contractors). Would love to get some help with the reduced hours but by the time I'm able to get my claim approved everything will be back to normal.

On the bright side, $1200 dropped into the account today 🤑

[Prozac]

12 hours ago, jazzdude said:

My (uneducated) takeaway of the economic impact this pandemic has had is that maybe our economy hasn't really been healthy for a while. Lots of businesses over leveraged and carrying too much debt at the expense of short term gains.

Really? Because they weren’t saving up for the rainy day that was an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy? Sure, this thing has shined a light on some questionable practices (stock buybacks anyone?), but now is not the time to go all Ayn Rand. No business or household could be reasonably expected to be fiscally prepared for what is currently transpiring. 

[Homestar]

2 hours ago, jonlbs said:

SBA just sent out an update email this morning with a little more info but still muddy. It's $1000 per employee so only $1000 for the self employed. But I still haven't heard anything solid and honestly am not counting on it to come to fruition for me either.

Texas has made unemployment available for us contractors but it is so over tasked that it is nearly impossible to get a claim through (phone since online isn't equipped for contractors). Would love to get some help with the reduced hours but by the time I'm able to get my claim approved everything will be back to normal.

On the bright side, $1200 dropped into the account today 🤑

Got the same from the SBA today.  $1,000 is about 7 days of work....  Better than nothing, but just barely.  

I'll be looking into PPP now.

[Homestar]

1 hour ago, Prozac said:

Really? Because they weren’t saving up for the rainy day that was an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy? Sure, this thing has shined a light on some questionable practices (stock buybacks anyone?), but now is not the time to go all Ayn Rand. No business or household could be reasonably expected to be fiscally prepared for what is currently transpiring. 

I don't think that the nature of business was unhealthy (like it was in 2008 in the mortgage industry).  It doesn't make sense (unless you're Apple) to carry billions of dollars in cash, and it certainly isn't feasible for small business to carry enough cash to weather a 2 month (or longer) government mandated shutdown.  That businesses are failing isn't the fault of the business....it's because the government made these business unable to operate.

[Seriously]

On 4/2/2020 at 4:48 PM, Seriously said:

These next 2-4 weeks will be interesting to watch (I hope I'm not saying that again next month). 

Some projections have the US topping out somewhere towards the end of April, but that assumes full social distancing.  I'm obviously an old man now because I want to kick all of the spring breakers in the ass who are ignoring the social distancing requirements. 

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

Looks like we're flattening it. Hoping we're done with this shit by the middle of May.

[FDNYOldGuy]

15 hours ago, jazzdude said:

My (uneducated) takeaway of the economic impact this pandemic has had is that maybe our economy hasn't really been healthy for a while. Lots of businesses over leveraged and carrying too much debt at the expense of short term gains.

Here's an excellent article (with super informational links and rabbit holes to run down) by Harvard Business Review (penned Jan 7th this year) that explains a huge part of exactly what your takeaway is.

BLUF: companies have been taking on massive amounts of "cheap" debt in the low interest rate environment we've lived in to buy their own stocks back and pay out dividends over reinvesting in R&D, paying higher wages, expanding workforces/manufacturing, etc.

Little true "value" has been created, but prices have been driven up as capital flocks to the stock markets to chase returns. Which feeds back to the cycle of PE ratios, debt, and stock prices all increasing without there being much true growth. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The emperor has no pants, IMHO, and COVID was a catalyst to help show that. Which it did...until the Fed stepped in (and WAYYYY overstepped their mandate) by buying...everything...to prop prices up.  

[Bigred]

Control yourself before you try to control others. If you have a disease or have an immunodeficiency, it’s on you to avoid situations that puts you at risk.

Case in point, saying it’s irresponsible for 200 boaters to be on the water while ignoring the hundreds of people at Wal-Mart sorta defeats the argument. I’m more at risk being near the fat fvck hacking in the cereal aisle than I would be if I was on my Bassmaster 3000. Hell, if you’ve never been fishing on a lake before, boaters typically get pissed if you’re closer than a 100 yards from their fishing hole. 
 

My bigger point, I can get behind barring gatherings in a place like a movie theatre, or sporting events. When you start telling people they can’t go hiking, by themselves, or can only exercise within a few hundred yards of their house, we’ve officially reached Ludicrous Speed. 

[FLEA]

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/germany/a-post-from-germany/

I'm living in Germany right now. I thought some people would be interested to know the civil Rights discussion is not exclusive to the US right now. 

I would like to accept that isolating the immuno compromised is a doable strategy but the more I run it through in my head, it really isn't. If my wife is immunocompromised, I would still have to go to work, buy groceries, take the kids to school, etc... Her chance of catching the virus is the exact same as mine now. If my probability goes way up because we open the flood gates than so does hers. Furthermore, because normally healthy people will flood the hospitals with what is still a very severe sickness for many younger people, when she does get sick, she will possibly be denied care on the basis of resource availability, all but ensuring her fate.

I like many others on here find the erosion of civil rights concerning but as I eluded to earlier, we live in a country that cares more about how that bitch Carol Baskins hid her husband's body than pathogenic precautions. I'm not saying I have a right or wrong moral answer to this, it's a plague. Anyone who is naieve to think we can get through something like this with minimal suffering is wrong. People are going to suffer. Our only choice as a society is who will bear that suffering and how. 

 

[skybert]

11 hours ago, Scuba said:

Speaking of SBA.  Have any small business owners, independent contractors or self-employed persons had success with the paycheck protection program?

Not me.

[billy pilgrim]

12 hours ago, Homestar said:

You’ll pay it back on your 2021 tax return. There’s no free lunch. 

The next generation(s) will pay it back.  Whether they want to or not.

The panic in the media feels orchestrated, over reaching and unnecessary.

The social media reaction to all of this is what scares me the most.  The acceptance of curfews, ridiculous restrictions and just general “the government knows best” attitude.

That’s what is truly scary, and I have immediate family in the high risk category for this.

[HU&W]

5 hours ago, Bigred said:

When you start telling people they can’t go hiking, by themselves, or can only exercise within a few hundred yards of their house, we’ve officially reached Ludicrous Speed. 

And when you start arresting people for peaceable assembly for the redress of grievances to the government, we’ve gone from safety to power.  

According to the Raleigh NC police department, “Protesting is a non-essential activity.”  The protesters were requesting that the their state decriminalize their ability to work and provide for their families  

https://mobile.twitter.com/raleighpolice/status/1250111779574894594

[BashiChuni]

Wow

[ThreeHoler]

SECDEF announced the STOP MOVE would be extended to an as yet undecided date.


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[FLEA]

Yeah, Goldfein made some comments the other day that he saw it going until at least August. I immagine he wouldn have been in many of those talks determining the guidance before he said that. I have 2 married friends on seperate remote tours who are being absolutely screwed by this. A lot of lives being upset by this. 

[gearhog]

17 hours ago, FDNYOldGuy said:

Here's an excellent article (with super informational links and rabbit holes to run down) by Harvard Business Review (penned Jan 7th this year) that explains a huge part of exactly what your takeaway is.

BLUF: companies have been taking on massive amounts of "cheap" debt in the low interest rate environment we've lived in to buy their own stocks back and pay out dividends over reinvesting in R&D, paying higher wages, expanding workforces/manufacturing, etc.

Little true "value" has been created, but prices have been driven up as capital flocks to the stock markets to chase returns. Which feeds back to the cycle of PE ratios, debt, and stock prices all increasing without there being much true growth. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The emperor has no pants, IMHO, and COVID was a catalyst to help show that. Which it did...until the Fed stepped in (and WAYYYY overstepped their mandate) by buying...everything...to prop prices up.  

Great post. Most people don't understand the magnitude of the fallout occurring behind the scenes (and I don't pretend to fully understand it myself). This pandemic occurred when global markets and asset prices where the most over-valued and over-bought, probably ever. In a real economy, a unit of currency represents a unit of production. In our economy, our currency is manipulated through debt and complex financial derivatives, giving us more purchasing power than the real value of goods and services we are producing. The economy is not the market and the market is not the economy.

Banking and Finance is a global competitive environment. As in any business industry, there is a  jockeying for position, a desire to harm competitors (which may sometimes require cooperation with other competitors), and a need to gain competitive advantages to become the largest and most profitable. Government involvement is a massive competitive advantage. Everyone wants to be too big to fail.

Enter COVID-19. This pandemic has created the greatest economic upheaval in history. As the cliche goes: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." It has created some opportunities to make changes to fiscal, monetary, and economic policies that would have taken a decade otherwise. It has also created opportunities that would have otherwise never occurred. Imagine being able to shutdown the country, and then pick and choose which business entities survive. Which ones are willing to become more indebted, pay a higher price, remain more loyal? Imagine being able to buy the stock market. Imagine the majority of a population encouraging you to assume more power to keep them safe. But how much to keep them quiet? $1200. Who doesn't like free money? And while you're printing that $560 billion dollars in stimulus checks, why not print another $1.640 Trillion to dole out at your discretion? Why not more?

So we're making the best of a bad situation. We're gaining a competitive advantage, we're seizing control, picking winners and losers, setting new monetary policy, acquiring debts, acquiring shares in the market, and we have a population obediently sitting at home up to their eyeballs in debt forever, over the moon with their $1200. We've also doubled our balance sheet and reduced the value of our debts by half. However, soon we'll have $Trillions of new dollars out there circulating doing God knows what. Is it being hoarded, spent under the table, funding terrorists?

Wouldn't it be nice if we had accountability for every one of "our" dollars circulating out there in the wild? Is it in a bank account, under a couch cushion, in someone's wallet? Where is the wallet? I sure hope no one is out there is handling dirty COVID infected cash, spending their stimulus checks on non-pharmaceutical drugs, making private party purchases of assets without paying the appropriate amount of tax, or buying more than their allocated amount of masks and toilet paper before making a debt payment.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/digital-dollars-amid-covid-19-crisis-support-us-digital-currency-emerges

https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SIL20449.pdf

Edited April 15, 2020 by torqued

[war007afa]

5 hours ago, ThreeHoler said:

SECDEF announced the STOP MOVE would be extended to an as yet undecided date.


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Draft shows 30 June.

[GKinnear]

Here's the Stripes article on it:

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/stop-movement-orders-for-troops-civilians-to-extend-past-may-11-esper-says-1.626069

Money quotes:

"However, the defense secretary said travel restrictions and other measures implemented to mitigate the virus’ impacts would be reviewed every 15 days.
That will allow him “to see if we can curtail it sooner or if we need to extend it further,” he said."

“June seems to be about where we’re going to level, and then July and August look to be — potentially — recovery months,” Goldfein said April 6. “I could be totally off, but that’s what we’re planning for right now.”

We're all trying to pace ourselves at my location...I've got an Airmen who's single luckily caught up in his PCS to a NATO assignment. All his goods were shipped the day before the STOP MOVEMNT order dropped. At least we're in a small housing market so his house hasn't sold yet and he's banking per diem. 

[war007afa]

7 minutes ago, GKinnear said:

We're all trying to pace ourselves at my location...I've got an Airmen who's single luckily caught up in his PCS to a NATO assignment. All his goods were shipped the day before the STOP MOVEMNT order dropped. At least we're in a small housing market so his house hasn't sold yet and he's banking per diem. 

This is my hell, right now (literally the exact same situation with HHG).  We're rolling in an AirBnB until it we're cleared to go.  Demand is down for lodging at the moment, so that's a positive we have going for us right now.

[Pooter]

8 minutes ago, war007afa said:

This is my hell, right now (literally the exact same situation with HHG).  We're rolling in an AirBnB until it we're cleared to go.  Demand is down for lodging at the moment, so that's a positive we have going for us right now.

That suckssss.  If it's any consolation I'm "essential personnel" enroute to more training so I'm still cleared to PCS.  All I have to do is figure out how to make that happen when no one answers their phones because every base agency is working from home.  

Edited April 15, 2020 by Pooter