Rob72 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 10, 2020 10:48 am
There are manymanymanymany people, who have very little knowledge, trying to get facetime on this. It is (tongue in cheek) nothing to sneeze at, neither is it likely to be the end of the Free World, as we know it.
Rob72 gets my vote for "internet win of the day."
My completely uninformed opinion is that the economic ripple effects are going to be worse than the virus itself, and take us much longer to recover from. It isn't just the knee-jerk stock market reaction, but the very real impact on the T&E sector and all the places it touches (as well as other sectors like retail supply chains and shipping/fulfillment services). Like a rock being dropped into a pond. Huge conferences and sporting and entertainment events are being canceled and those ripples extend to everything from airlines to hotel chains, to ad agencies to printing companies, to small restaurants and operator-owned cabs and Uber drivers. I have a feeling the US economy has already seen billions in losses, and that's going to be reflected in publicly reported earnings next quarter and rounds of layoffs in companies large and small.
I personally think the OPEC situation was a move aimed at Iran and taking advantage of their economic shambles and crumbling infrastructure. Only China and a couple of other nations are bucking the sanctions and still buying from Iran, but immediate demand has plummeted in China, will slowly come back, and if non-sanctioned oil is cheap it makes buying from Iran less attractive...especially if they're still fighting COVID-19 and their supply chain is weakened. I think the argument with Russia about pricing crude was about Iran, not the rest of the world. But it still gut-punched the Texas oil-based economy, especially the large number of small and midsize service operators all over the Gulf Coast. These folks aren't Exxon. They can't weather a few months of severely restricted cash flow without cutting jobs. And the parts and component manufacturers will see orders drop, and a lot of those are niche manufacturers and not big public companies. The big annual Offshore Technology Conference starts in just about 7 weeks, and they'll need to make a decision quick about cancelation. As international as the conference is, my bet is that it'll be canceled.
Just saw that
Cuomo sent the National Guard to NYC burb New Rochelle in Westchester County to establish a "containment center," whatever that means. On the actual virus front, anybody but me think that the out-of-control homeless populations in dark blue cities like San Francisco and Seattle will end up being big-time problematic? These people don't go to doctors, and have hygiene that viruses call "paradise." If those populations become hold-out hotspots of the virus, how will Dem govs/mayors handle it? Will they risk the screams of socialist snowflakes and try to forcibly quarantine big sections of cities where the homeless populations are?
