h/t Instapundit
[L'Ombre de l'Olivier] - Will the current Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic be worse than SARS? And if so what does that do to the world and particularly the world economy?
Quick answer is yes, but not a massive pandemic and it’ll be bad but not disastrous for most of the globe. The PRC, however is probably in a world of hurt.
...Working on the assumption that the current spread of cases is accurate (60%+ Hubei, 30% rest of PRC, under 10% everywhere else) and that the mortality rate remains at or below the current 2-4% and going on a WAG infection rate of less than 10% of those exposed I think we could be looking at a worst case global death rate in the low millions (say 2 million or so) of which all but a few tens of thousands will be in the PRC and 60% in Hubei. Quite likely the body count will be in the thousands (or possibly tens of thousands) with just hundreds in the rest of the world and if the various quarantine measures work we could see just thousands in the PRC and only a few dozen outside. All in all I would guess the death rate outside the PRC (and probably within the PRC but outside Hubei) is going to be an infinitesimal blip on the regular mortality figures.
So what does this do to the global economy?
I’m doing this analysis based on the theory that we won’t see a global pandemic and that even within China actual infections and fatalities will be relatively low ‐ albeit higher than currently reported because, as everyone knows, the Chicoms will definitely be lying a bit (so a total of thousands of Chinese deaths, possibly 100 outside the PRC). If we’re in global pandemic mode (millions of deaths worldwide) then the simple answer to "what does this do to the economy?" is simple ‐ it causes a depression to make 2008 seem like a minor blip.
...there’s a big question of what idling Chinese factories for several weeks will do to the general economy. Right now we have Chinese companies reneging on contracts to purchase raw materials, which isn’t good for the exporting nations if this continues, but overall isn’t a huge global economic hit.
...Over at his blog, Peter Grant has a link filled article
(https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/02/coronavirus-spiraling-economic-impact.html)
pointing to potential supply chain problems and there are a number of other pieces worrying about the automotive industry in particular as Wuhan is the Detroit of the PRC and home not just to Chinese vehicle factories (both domestic and foreign) but also to component suppliers who export a significant fraction of their production. Undoubtedly other industries will also discover that parts of their supply chain are in the PRC and that they don’t have a non-Chinese second source. However, assuming we’re looking at a month or two of disruptions to the PRC manufacturing sector, this is going to be a quick hit and a major incentive for every manufacturer in the rest of the world to second source components from somewhere else and also to look at storing two or three weeks capacity of components etc. Thanks to Trump and his trade war this was in process to an extent so the virus is likely to accelerate deals that were already under evaluation. Longer term that’s going to be bad for the PRC but it seems to me it can only be a good thing for the global economy as a whole which will become significantly more resilient to future shocks.
[Rudaw] The United States’ suspension of a hitherto unreported joint covert intelligence-gathering drone operation with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is yet another indication of strained ties between the two NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... alliance members. It’s unclear, however, whether this will have any adverse effects on the ongoing Ottoman Turkish operations against the group.
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Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/10/2020 00:00 ||
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IT HAS become an unchecked assumption about the Democratic presidential race: The candidates are fighting an ideological war between "left" and "center." This narrative is false, and it is hardly benign. It minimizes the bold policy ambitions of those in the mislabeled "centrist" lane and falsely characterizes those on the left flank as braver or more committed to reform.... practically all Democrats agree on: giving legal safe harbor to the young immigrants known as "dreamers"; reviving and expanding President Barack Obama's climate regulations; reengaging with Iran; raising the minimum wage; keeping abortion legal; cracking down on guns.
In fact, every major Democratic candidate is running on an agenda to the left of Mr. Obama's.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/10/2020 10:17 ||
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Kurt at Town Hall
With Democrat dreams of a soft coup now a heap of smoldering wreckage, and no need to play Mr. Nice Guy to please prissy softcons on Capitol Hill, President Trump is finally free to channel his inner Michael Corleone. It’s about time to re-christen Don Jr., and use that opportunity to take out the heads of the five families.
Trump already tossed mealy-mouthed ambassador Gordon Sondland out on his Nadler. Then military Twitter started buzzing with delight ‐ well, not Blue Falcon Twitter but the one with vets who aren’t half-stepping weasels ‐ at the news of That’s Lieutenant Colonel to You Bratwurst and his brother Other That’s Lieutenant Colonel to You Bratwurst being marched out of the West Wing with their all stuff, probably mostly Doritos and Mounds bars, in bankers’ boxes. About time ‐ these doofuses may fool the establishment civilians but not the vets. We all served with their likes, and the fact these guys get celebrated by our feckless elite is not unrelated to the fact that our military has not decisively won a war in 30 years.
[AmGreatness] The outcome of 2020 is not yet settled, obviously, but these two presidential election contests taken together already tell an amazing story.
The Democrat-Republican establishment had 2016 all planned out. According to the plan, 2016 would be another Clinton-Bush election, this time Jeb(!) versus Hillary. Hillary would win of course, and politics would return to normal. The majority party Democrats would keep pushing for bigger and more unaffordable government, the minority party Republicans would continue their project of steadily losing the fight, and the establishmentarians on both sides would continue feathering their nests.
But back to normal was not to be. Obama changed the game in ways the political establishment did not quite understand. What Obama did was the American political equivalent of walking on water; he had quite openly rejected America, and yet he was rewarded with a two-term presidency! As a result, it was not clear that politics in America was ever going to return to normal‐and in any case, there was no chance 2016 was going to be a return to normal.
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#5
IMO, Obama was just the icing on the cake. His strongest effect on Donks is "If we can elect, and reelect, somebody like this - we can do anything!"
#6
Agreed. Obama was a nullity, a cipher, a hollow man in a slim-cut suit. Everyone saw what he wanted to see in that empty vessel.
His real legacy wasn't what he did but what, through his laziness neglect and sheer ignorance, this Zero enabled: Grifting on a global scale, not least by his two Secretaries of State and their coteries.
Also by market-manipulating firms on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.
No responsible, honest and competent US administration of any political orientation would have allowed Google to acquire Doubleclick, as Zero's GOOG-infested crony administration did. The Zero admin was a fat piñata for Google and Goldman Sachs.
"Fundamentally transform" = swap one group of (petty) thieves for another i.e. Global Grifters: Clintons & Giustra, C. Slim et al; Kerry and his Persian pal & Persian in-laws; the Bidens; ValJar and Big Mike; Shalala at United Health; etc etc etc
#11
If a party had folks who Washington elites approved of but the voters had to hold their noses because the guys were better than the Democrats... if that party suddenly elected someone they actually liked would it be fair to say the party had transformed? Or that it was perverted for years and finally came back to its roots.
A new historical era began in 2016, or 2920 if you prefer. That marked the end of virtue-signaling Globalism, the bankruptcy its soaring and absurd pretensions and its corrupt underside.
After the 2008 meltdown there was no way that either of our Globalist parties could maintain the fiction any longer - i.e. the fairytale that building up China, shipping our manufacturing base and wealth and jobs over to China, exporting jobs to Mexico and importing unemployment and shit-wage helots in return, and incompetently waging land wars in Asia - no one could pretend any longer that these colossal own goals were somehow in America's national interest.
The Uniparty was finished. Zero's farcical admin was its death rattle.
There is no going back to country-club, free trade, finance-driven Global Grifter GOP capitalism of the sort that enriches the Bush-Romney-Bloomberg GOPpers and nobody else.
Opinion: #Lebanon’s leaked policy platform lacks original ideas, simply copying and pasting requests from the World Bank and other international agencies, writes @makramrabah.https://t.co/euVEY8PzEC
Bookworm Room via Instapundit
Over the years, there have been two constant themes in my posts: First, that public K-12 schools are awful and, second, that we should withdraw every penny of taxpayer money from colleges and universities (including private schools in the forms of grants and government back student loans) because they too are awful.
At the K-12 level, education is lousy for several reasons.
First, the education model is the worst way to teach children. Few students learn by sitting down, being lectured to, and then going home and struggling with homework. I highly recommend the Montessori approach, for Maria Montessori looked at how children learn, rather than how adults think they ought to be taught.
Second, K-12 education is bedeviled by every stupid leftist trend, from the "whole word" approach to reading that left a generation illiterate to the insistence on bringing transgender sexuality to kindergarteners.
Third ‐ and there are wonderful and notable exceptions to this problem ‐ women’s lib meant that women at the top of their class were no longer limited to teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. They went on to become high-paying professionals. Most teachers are now drawn from the bottom third of any college class. I've seen the same phenomena in Israeli schools when I was migratory labor (sub teacher) in the system. The teachers simply don't understand the stuff they're supposed to teach.
At the college and university level, the problem is that these institutions are leftist indoctrination classes. They have little time to teach reasoning and knowledge. They’re too busy shaping little Marxists to go out into the world and support Bernie Sanders.
Which gets me to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom Don Surber calls the face of the Democrat Party. According to Wikipedia, Ocasio-Cortez attended public school, did well, and then became involved in race-based activities:
...She then attended Boston University College [d’oh!], a private college that once had a reputation for excellence. On paper, Ocasio-Cortez was at the top of her graduating class:
...Clearly, this girl is a brainiac, right? Or maybe not:
"AOC: "It’s a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap, by your shoelaces? It’s physically impossible."
...Any education system that can produce someone as staggeringly stupid as Ocasio-Cortez is doing something wrong. Taxpayers are paying good money and getting dismal results. I know at least one TAU professor, of theoretical biology no less, who makes AOC look like Albert Einstein
#1
Currently in my area of industry we have recurring problems. Women are hired for management positions with no background in real world management of subordinate staff. Yes, that question is asked and in most cases not a bit of experience is offered. So things are done as they direct. You suggest a change they will listen but not apply. A seasoned employee of over twenty years comments that her change will not work. The Engineer and the manager both women are correct. You are not. So the employee a male bets $200 dollars it will not work. Response go back to work. Within an hours time the assembly line shuts down. Perhaps a suggestion that the line needs maintenance. No, that is maintenance sourced out. Problem is it is never serviced. Round and round it goes. Entire leed transfers. One company has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to product orders lost or never delivered. New computer programmers-techs from India can't make the system work. CEO is male but all other down line management are female. This is replayed over and over in our local industries.
It is indeed scary that this retarded child was admitted to and graduated from a selective university.
She got good grades because everyone, intelligent or not, gets A's now in liberal arts programs at private colleges: the administrators insist that the profs pander to the college's "consumers."
It's actually the case now that a bright and motivated student is likely to learn more at one of the better flagship state universities than at any of the non-STEM elite private institutions.
#5
Dale, I can't entirely follow your long comment but think I get the gist of it; cannot disagree in general, though I don't think it is a female thing. My experience is it is a background thing - elite schools vs. tech schools, 'high flyers' vs. experience. Etc.
#6
I incorporated three different large manufacturers.Condensed as best I could. From what I can see in my area, cell phones companies, loan companies are dominated by women. Then restaurants also and turnover is horrendous.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[AmGreatness] The outcome of 2020 is not yet settled, obviously, but these two presidential election contests taken together already tell an amazing story.
