What We’re Reading
It follows that we should—as incomprehensible as this may sound — hope for a deep, short recession, caused by a cliff dive in many forms of economic activity. That would be a clear signal that people have gone home and that the face-to-face economy has been shut down to limit the spread of disease.
“I tell my father’s story of the gambler who lost regularly. One day he hears about a race with only one horse in it, so he bet the rent money. Halfway around the track, the horse jumped over the fence and ran away.”
In short, the toilet paper industry is split into two, largely separate markets: commercial and consumer. The pandemic has shifted the lion’s share of demand to the latter. People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home. With some 75% of the U.S. population under stay-at-home orders, Americans are no longer using the restrooms at their workplace, in schools, at restaurants, at hotels, or in airports.
A 101-year-old man, identified as ‘Mr. P’ has been released from isolation after recovering from COVID-19 in the Italian city of Rimini. Mr. P., a WWII and Spanish Flu survivor was admitted last week to a hospital in northeast Italy after he was tested positive for the Coronavirus.
Is this a winter like we’ve faced before? … Each one was hard and painful, but each was followed by a normal spring and summer on the other side. Or is this an ice age? A period more like the Great Depression or other long periods of decline and stagnation? James Bullard at the St. Louis Fed warned recently of the potential for 30% unemployment and a 50% decline in GDP—both significantly worse than the extreme levels of the Great Depression.
With more than two-thirds of the U.S. population ordered to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic, it’s tougher for burglars to find an empty house to target. But the cooped-up residents seem more likely to fight each other.
That’s what crime statistics show in major U.S. cities where residents are spending almost all their time inside.
Have a good weekend, stay safe.