The Covid Economy

[Alan Klein]

Add to it factors such as that there were too many restaurants to start with, they are really not that essential for most people, many restaurants were operating even before with a very small margin, some older restaurant owners will use this situation to retire for good, and many employees will be reluctant to return to their old jobs.
Poor prognosis for restaurants and other businesses in the service industry.

Around here in mid-New Jersey, I would go into a pizza store or bagel place during lunch hour.  And there would be a few people buying.  I couldn't figure out how they stayed in business.  Didn't make sense.  Bakeries, Chinese restaurants, barbers, etc.  Just too many.  Even larger stores.  There would be a huge CVS and huge Walgreen pharmacy store right across the street from one another.  Then two more a couple of miles away.  How much aspirin do people need?  How much film are people developing there? You're going to see a huge shakeout when hundred of these stores start closing across the country with thousands of more unemployed. 

I think the problem was money was too cheap to borrow and build.  Now when they have to pay it back, and stores are closing, they'll be asking the government to step in and bail them out too.  And the government will adding to the debt the middle class schnooks will have to pay for with their life's savings.

[Alan Klein]

Here in the Okanagan many of the traditional fruit orchards are being converted over to vineyards to feed the growing wine industry. More money in wine than fruit.

We'll need all that wine to forget about the recession and the virus. 

[chez]

We'll need all that wine to forget about the recession and the virus.

I have no problem with the recession...happily retired with enough money to keep me going. Don't owe anyone anything. Medical all taken care of. Grow majority of my own food. Bring it on.

The virus will work its way through...it's just another way of Mother Nature letting us humans know where we stand on the ladder. I'm just glad I won't be around for when climate change rears its ugly head. This virus will seem tame compared to what's coming because we fucked things up.

[Rob C]

With so many established wines around, why do folks want to buy local stuff instead?

Surely it doesn't come down to price - which that said, in Mallorca can work the other way around: some loal stuff is priced much higher than mainland stuff of established name. Strange world, wrapped in mystique and bullshit...

[Rob C]

I have no problem with the recession...happily retired with enough money to keep me going. Don't owe anyone anything. Medical all taken care of. Grow majority of my own food. Bring it on.

The virus will work its way through...it's just another way of Mother Nature letting us humans know where we stand on the ladder. I'm just glad I won't be around for when climate change rears its ugly head. This virus will seem tame compared to what's coming because we fucked things up.

Yep; starvation, bankruptcies, drowned coastal towns, salty drinking water, seas too hot for many fish types to breed or even survive celibate... Desertification is already hitting parts of farming Spain.

[John Camp]

You seem to have forgotten but I haven't.  It was Obama who authorized and the US taxpayer in the 2008 recession who bailed out the auto workers union pension fund at GM and Chrysler (but not Ford) to the tune of billions of dollars.  It was broke. That was President Obama's payback to the union for their support in the election.  So please don't cry for the unions and make it seem like they were some innocent bystanders.  To argue management agreed to pensions is a two way street.  After all, the union signed also.  So both sides are responsible.  Yet, the American taxpayer would up paying for their mistakes.  Why?

The American auto industries a scam since at least the middle 80s. The deal was pretty explicit -- pay the unsustainable wages, we'll make a cheaper car, the execs get their bonuses, and by the time the shit hits the fan, we'll be retired. What the union leaders and the execs didn't tell the employees was that they made certain assumptions about returns -- say, 8% per year forever, to afford the negotiated pensions -- and when they only got 4% for twenty years, the pension fund was screwed. But the bailout of the auto union funds is nothing  compared to when Calpers hits the rocks in a few years. 

[Craig Lamson]

They still grow large crops of strong smelling onions and carrots there. But also other vegetables on smaller lots.

Drive through Gilroy California in season and get a whiff of garlic like you have never smelled it before

[LesPalenik]

Drive through Gilroy California in season and get a whiff of garlic like you have never smelled it before

How about some lavender or roses?

[Craig Lamson]

The American auto industries a scam since at least the middle 80s. The deal was pretty explicit -- pay the unsustainable wages, we'll make a cheaper car, the execs get their bonuses, and by the time the shit hits the fan, we'll be retired. What the union leaders and the execs didn't tell the employees was that they made certain assumptions about returns -- say, 8% per year forever, to afford the negotiated pensions -- and when they only got 4% for twenty years, the pension fund was screwed. But the bailout of the auto union funds is nothing  compared to when Calpers hits the rocks in a few years.

My dad lived for years in California.  His neighbor ( both husband and wife ) were retired police.  Both retired early and took other jobs. Then retired again.  The police pension paid them both more than their base wages at their time of retirement.  Seems the gig is to work all the overtime you can in your last three years and then your pension is based on the average of those years.  So with SS, police pensions and the pensions they recieved from thier second careers they were making out far better than if they would have been working.

I surely don't fault them for using what was granted to them to the fullest.  But geez what were those city mayors and managers thinking?

[LesPalenik]

US Census Buraau just released an interesting and insightful chart about US consumer spending.
Quite logically, the decline in restaurant segment is almost the same as the increase in grocery shopping.

“The economy is literally in free fall with consumers unable to get out to the shops and malls in March, and about the only retailers smiling are grocery stores with consumers stockpiling food for the coming economic apocalypse,” MUFG Chief Financial Economist Chris Rupkey said in an email Wednesday. “This report today breaks all modern-day records for the consumer who has dealt the economy a body blow from which it will be difficult to recover.”

JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli writing in a note Wednesday, “all the toilet paper in the world can’t clean up this [retail sales] report.”

[Alan Klein]

US Census Buraau just released an interesting and insightful chart about US consumer spending.
Quite logically, the decline in restaurant segment is almost the same as the increase in grocery shopping.

The main thing to do at home is eat.