Robert Ariail for March 17, 2020

Republicans will do everything except for the right thing.

The virus does not care about rate cuts or tax cuts,

it does not respond to Republican bullying or lies.

And the right thing is?

Maybe this is not a case for monetary measures but for fiscal measures?

Wait until he’s thrown the kitchen sink. After that we would have to Nuke it. (KIDDING!)

GOP/Trump Action Plan1. Press Fed to to cut interest rates three times during an expansion and then cut rates twice again before there is a monetary problem, thus emptying your gun of bullets before the enemy appears [check]

2. Pass an extravagant tax cut act to stimulate an already booming economy, thus removing a large stimulus tool when a tax cut would help in a recession [check]

3. Stop FICA collections now, when demand will not be helped, which does not help laid-off workers, and put no actual restrictions that employers must use the windfall to help employees [in process]

Well, that is what happens when you acquiesce to Trump’s pressure to not raise rates during a good and accelerating economy, you have nothing to fall back on.

And how is that working out for them?

And now GOP Senators are complaining the Democratic led bipartisan House relief bill cost too much but they want to pass a separate bailout bill for the corporate industries being hurt during this health crisis. Our government is a disaster.

Covid19 don’t care about your silly financial crisis. Covid19 only wants to reproduce as widely and quickly as possible.

I just heard the president say they are sending money to every worker and bailing out industries. That’ll be great for the already massive annual deficit. One more time; what ever happened to the tea party?

I haven’t heard how he’s going to pay for this… will he throw in the money he was planning for his stupid wall?

You forgot the kitchen sink. Gotta throw that too…

It’s almost time for the Republican “Nice little War” to stimulate the defense industry(aks: Boeing, GM, UTI etc.

It’s perfectly true that our economy (including everyday wage earners) is going to take a hit from this. It’s also perfectly true that dealing with that is important. It is NOT true that dealing with it is as urgent as dealing with the pandemic. I don’t really mind “both”, and I’m seeing some of that. But with an exponential curve, “early” is WAY more important than it seems to the non-mathematical. For instance, if R₀ is 3, then the number of ‘has been infected" grows like: 1; 3; 9; 27; 243; 729; 2,187; 6,561; 19,683; 59,049; 177,147; 531,441 and by 12 rounds you’re up above a million.

But if R₀ can be held to 2.5 (if half of the infected manage to share with only 2 others), then the numbers look like 1; 2.5; 6; 16; 39; 98; 244; 610; 1,526; 3,815; 9,537; 23,842; 59,605 which puts round 12 at about THREE PERCENT of the first case.

Now, I’m making up numbers, but the point is that exponential curves start slow: In the first 3 rounds, the bad case is 9 and the "good case is 6. No big whoop. But then it starts to get big and it gets big REALLY FAST. And holding down R₀ by immediately quarantining sick people… which requires us to have a test… is really REALLY important. Bailing out Wall Street? Important but NOT as urgent!

I say let Covid-19 worry about it’s own financial crisis! The rest of us have enough to worry about!

Am I the only one, who thinks, it’s starting to sound like: “The United States of Argentina”?

Another $Trillion to buy 1000 points on the stock market. I think that makes a total of about $3T thrown at COVID-19 with a net loss of 9K points. but it’s all about the fiscal responsibility. At least some of it will actually go to the people, maybe.

I don’t ever want to hear about the Republican Party being the party of fiscal responsibility. That has never happened. It’s Democrats that have to bail out the Republican deficits.

Get rid of trump and the Republicans!