Category: zerohedge

One week ago, we reported that starting exactly one month ago on March 5, an unprecedented wave of corporate revolver draws was unleashed, resulting in what JPMorgan calculated was a record $208BN in revolving credit facilities being fully drawn (for the full list of companies see here). A few days later, a report from Goldman Sachs observed that, contrary to JPM’s data of exponentially rising revolver draws, “the pace of revolver draws has slowed nearly 50% so far this week relative to last week, with only $40bn over the last 5 business days, relative to an average trailing 5 business days run rate last week of $75bn.”

In retrospect, there may be reason to be skeptical about Goldman’s data because in JPM’s latest weekly revolver update, the bank’s tracker of companies that have tapped banks for funding rose to $293 billion to date (remarkably, $125 bil or 43% of total borrowings, are by junk-rated firms) an increase of over $80 billion in just one week, although just like Goldman, JPM notes that “while growth has continued, the pace seems to have slowed in the past three days, both in terms of amounts borrowed and number of borrowers (see Figure 1).”

In total, the nearly $300BN in borrowings represent 77% of their credit facilities, but as JPM notes, “some firms with asset-backed facilities may not have enough borrowing base to borrow the full committed amount.” Another observation: we are still seeing large draws but fewer mega-sized draws, which makes sense as by now most mega companies have already drawn down on their revolver.

That said, JPM cautions that the actual amount of borrowing is likely significantly greater than $293 bil, as it only reflects publicly disclosed amounts, mostly from larger companies, and likely excludes many middle market firms and privately owned companies.

Some more details on the ongoing drawdown flurry:

• $143 bil (49%) of announced borrowings are by investment grade firms, of which $35 bil (12%) are BBB- rated, $125 bil (43%) are by noninvestment grade firms, and $25 bil (9%) did not have available ratings.

• The $293 bil total excludes $48 bil of ongoing deals, rumored loans, and new facilities that are not clear if drawn for Airbus, AT&T, Daimler, Fiat Chrysler, Honeywell, Mondelez, and Simon Property Group. If these facilities are finalized and/or fully drawn, the known total would be $340 bil.
• In aggregate, the borrowings represent 77% of their credit facilities, but note that some firms with asset-backed facilities may not have enough borrowing base to borrow the full committed amount.

So why the continued rush to fully drawdown available facilities? The trivial, politically correct explanation is simply that the Commercial Paper market, where companies have traditionally gone to meet short-term funding needs, remains broken, and even though the Fed has already announced the launch of a Commercial Paper and Money Market backstop facilities, the Commercial Paper 90 Day AA non-fin spread to 3M OIS remains at levels well beyond the wides reached during the financial crisis.

In short, the Fed has much more work to normalize the CP market.

But rational as it may be, that’s not the reason for the panicked scramble to drain nearly $300BN in liquidity from the banks. Instead, the real reason is also the one that may well result from this drawdown panic as the banks themseleves suddenly find without liquidity and are forced to put themselves in quarantine from future liquidity demands: companies are increasingly worried their banks may shut them down and reneg on revolver contracts, refusing to give them access to facilities they have opened… or worse, banks may shut down period.

For a very vivid example of just that look no further than online lender Kabbage (backed, predictably, by the god of all catastrophic money-losing startups, Japan’s SoftBank whose implosion will be this bubble’s Enron and Lehman moment combined) which last week unexpectedly and without warning cut off credit to its small-business clients in the past week.

The borrowers, who range from software consultants to heavy-equipment contractors, told Bloomberg that Kabbage didn’t give them any notice, and that they learned their credit lines had been suspended only upon logging into their accounts. Some said they were counting on the money to get through the tough times ahead.

“This is very bad business ethics,” said Joydeep Paul, who runs Medserv Healthcare Solutions LLC, an emergency-medical training company in Princeton, New Jersey. He says his line of credit was cut from $22,000 to $0. “You just turn it off without saying a word — not an email, not a phone call, nothing.”

The irony is that just like countless “genius” investors who rode the biggest fake bull market in history – all on the bank of trillions and trillions in central bank backstops as the latest flurry of Fed actions has confirmed – online lenders spent the past decade touting themselves as the opposite of banks; however as soon as a real downturn hit and the gates came down. As Bloomberg reports, as the coronavirus pandemic ravages cities across the U.S., these nonbank lenders turned to a playbook that banks used during the last financial crisis more than a decade ago: reducing access to credit when the economy is contracting. Other lenders, including On Deck Capital Inc. and Fundbox Inc., have also tightened their underwriting standards or limited lines of credit.

“They’ve left me high and dry when I needed them the most,” Rob Jacques, co-founder of theCodery, a software consulting company in Petaluma, California told Bloomberg. He said he was particularly galled to be cut off without notice because until recently – when times were good – Kabbage called him every day asking him to borrow more money.

Oops.

Atlanta-based Kabbage, which got its start on Shark Tank, said it has loaned more than $9 billion to thousands of small businesses since it was founded in 2009. Ironically, the company now needs to lend money to itself most of all, having furloughed hundreds of its workers this week as it contends with a slowdown in spending at small businesses, which have suffered as consumers nationwide have been ordered to stay inside to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

But wait, the idiocy get better: Kabbage – having failed at its primary mission of providing funding in times of need instead of cutting lines of credit – is now pivoting to becoming a middleman that will connect people with loans from the Small Business Administration. It has also started a website to help small businesses sell gift certificates to consumers.

One can only imagine just how the company will screw that up.

“Like many other fintechs, we have temporarily adjusted our lines of credit and are focused on supporting the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program,” Paul Bernardini, a spokesman for Kabbage, said in a statement.  By “adjusting” he meant “cut off.”

“Just as manufacturers have retooled their processes to build ventilators and masks, we’re doing the same to reallocate our resources to respond to the national emergency and provide financial products that small businesses need most.”

Rob Frohwein, Kabbage’s chief executive officer, was just a bit more honest in how he defined the company’s “pivot” in an email to employees on Friday, when he said the company would temporarily stop making loans: “As of last night, all lending has been turned off,” Frohwein wrote.

Hey Rob, while you are pivoting, here is an idea for Kabbage’s new motto: “we will give you money when you don’t need it, and cut you off when you need it most.” Catchy, right?

And then there is the old standby: Kantbage.

But wait, it gets better, because the company that gave the world the unbelievable pile of shit known as WeWork is also involved in… Kabbage. That’s right, in 2017 this pathetic excuse for a lender raised $250 million from SoftBank.

And the punchline: other SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio companies – including Indian startup Oyo Hotel, co-working giant WeWork and real estate brokerage Compass – have axed staff in recent weeks.

* * *

However none of this supreme irony is any comfort for those companies which naively entrusted this dog turd with their financial future, and as Bloomberg reports, the credit reductions come at a dire time for restaurants and shops across the country. In normal times, small businesses have about a month of cash on hand, according to a 2016 study by JPMorgan. That means they’re particularly vulnerable as major cities across the country continue to expand shelter-in-place orders.

On Deck began putting holds on customers’ ability to draw on their lines of credit if they hadn’t done so in the last 30 days. Customers affected by the holds have been asked to send the company recent bank statements to have the holds lifted. Jim Larkin, a spokesman for On Deck, said the firm will “continue to serve and support our existing customers and are selectively lending to new customers.”

Fundbox, a venture-capital backed small-business lender based in San Francisco, has also limited some customers’ ability to draw on their credit lines.

“Like many companies that serve small businesses, we’ve had to make changes that have affected some of our customers,” Tim Donovan, a spokesman for Fundbox, said in emailed statement. “While these decisions have not been easy, it will allow us to continue to serve the majority of our small-business customers now and in the future.”

Kabbage customers who called to ask what happened were told that their accounts were under review. An employee at Kabbage, who asked for anonymity to protect their job, said that customer-service agents were instructed not to tell borrowers that the company had suspended credit lines across the board.

Michael Figueroa, a security contractor in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said the representative he talked with was apologetic. “Hey, I don’t even know if I’m going to be working here tomorrow,” he recalled the agent saying.

* * *

So far it’s only the non-banks that have taken the axe their existing loan commitments. The good news: the banks have so far been resilient and not a single prominent bank has left its clients in the cold. However, with the US economy entering a depression, hundreds of US companies have drawn $300BN just in case it’s only a matter of time before the banks go where the non-banks have so boldly gone in the past few days.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided to declare a coronavirus emergency, according to the Nikkei, as new cases in the capital surged at a record pace. And while the Japanese publication notes that the government will hold an unofficial meeting of a panel of experts and start preparing for the declaration, Kyodo reported moments ago that Japan will declare a state of emergency on April 7, which would take effect on April 8.

An emergency declaration gives governors in the areas covered formal powers, such as issuing requests that people stay home; Tokyo and surrounding areas, as well as Osaka, are expected to be affected by the declaration.

Abe has been criticized for not having already declared an emergency – a hesitance thought by many to stem from a strong desire to hold the Olympics this summer in Tokyo as originally planned. The International Olympic Committee decided in late March to postpone the games to 2021 after consulting with the prime minister and others.

And yet, a conflict is set to emerge almost instantly because Japan’s constitution does not permit the government to demand that individuals stay home, owing to civil liberties concerns. Is Japan – which already buys billions in stocks just to avoid a market crash and preserve social order – about to also have a constituational crisis?

In any case, we find it strange that there were almost “no cases” in the weeks leading up to Japan’s reluctant decision to postpone this year’s Olympics, only to see a sudden record surge afterwards as Japan’s cases “mysteriously” soared, demonstrating once again that the coronavirus – or rather the tracking of its case and death toll – is first and foremost a political priority.

Abe met with parties including Health Minister Katsunobu Kato and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the economic and fiscal policy minister, on Sunday to discuss the spread of infections.
“If necessary, we will decide [to declare an emergency] without hesitation,” said Nishimura, who heads the government’s coronavirus response, on a show of public broadcaster NHK on Sunday. “We are looking for signs of an overshoot,” he said, referring to an explosion in cases, and noted that the atmosphere has grown extremely tense. On the same program, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike called on the central government to issue an emergency declaration promptly.

The U.S. now has the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, and modelling predicts that the country could see about 100,000 to 200,000 total deaths. Unfortunately, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross details below, adults aged 65 or older – about 16% of the U.S. population – are at much higher risk of both severe illness and death.

Today’s chart uses U.S. Census Bureau data to map the percentage of the population that is 65 years or older by state. It also outlines the urban areas that are most heavily skewed towards this older age group.

Proportion of Seniors by State

Below is the full breakdown of the U.S. senior population by state, using the latest available data from 2018.

Maine tops the list with 20.6% of its population comprising adults age 65 or older. At the other end of the scale, Utah’s seniors make up only 11.1% of its population.

Notably, Florida has the second highest percentage and number of seniors nationwide. Its governor just announced the state’s stay-at-home order on April 1st, after taking criticism for refusing to do so earlier.

New York, the current global hot spot of COVID-19, is close to the national average with 16.4% of its population aged 65 or older. However, with over 3.2 million seniors, the sheer volume of individuals needing hospitalization has already put a strain on the state’s healthcare system. Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state will run out of its current supply of ventilators in less than a week.

The Most Vulnerable Urban Areas

On a local level, which places have the highest proportion of seniors? Based on all urban areas* with a population of 250,000 or more, here’s how the top 50 looks:

*Urban areas consist of a downtown core and adjacent territories

With 6 areas in the top 10, Florida is quite vulnerable at the local level as well. Other states with multiple areas on the list include Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

The Senior Population of Current U.S. Hotspots

To determine the vulnerability of current COVID-19 hotspots, we compared U.S. counties with a high number of cases per capita against their percentage of seniors.

Counties at the bottom left have low readings on both metrics. Conversely, counties in the top right have a dangerous combination: a high concentration of cases and vulnerable seniors.

Multiple counties in New York occupy the top right quadrant, with Yonkers being the worst off. Los Angeles county, which has a similar population to all counties in New York City, has fewer cases and a smaller proportion of seniors.

To date, outbreaks have been mostly focused in urban areas where populations tend to be younger. However, as COVID-19 begins infiltrating rural areas, healthcare systems will need to contend with both older age groups and fewer resources.

America is crashing into a depression. In just two weeks, 10 million people have claimed unemployment benefits. This has put unprecedented stress on food bank networks across the country, a new investigation via The Guardian shows. 

The US labor market is in free fall – the increasing lockdowns across major US metropolitan areas have forced millions of people out of work and into a hunger crisis. 

The Guardian shows demand for food aid in some regions of the country has surged eightfold in recent weeks as RealInvestmentAdvice.com’s Lance Roberts warns the unemployment rates in the US could spike to levels not seen since the “Great Depression,” or about 15-20% in the second quarter. 

The National Guard has been deployed for a variety of reasons: One is to support local area hospital systems, another is to maintain social order, and now soldiers in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Phoenix have supported food banks to ensure shortages do not materialize, mostly because that would trigger social unrest among the working poor. 

“I’ve been in this business over 30 years, and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now. Not even when the steel mills closed down did we see increased demand like this,” said Sheila Christopher, director of Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, which represents 18 food banks across 67 counties.

The Guardian provides a snapshot of the unprecedented demand hitting food banks: 

• In Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts’ largest campus, the pantry distributed 849% more food in March compared with the previous year. The second-largest increase in western Massachusetts was 748% at the Pittsfield Salvation Army pantry.
• The Grace Klein community food pantry in Jefferson county, which has the largest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Alabama, provided 5,076 individuals with food boxes last week – a 90% increase on the previous week.
• In southern Arizona, demand has doubled, with pantries supplying groceries to 4,000 households every day – double the number supplied in March 2019. “We saw an increase during the federal government shutdown but nothing as rapid, massive or overwhelming as this,” said Michael McDonald, CEO of the Community Food Bank of South Arizona.
• A helpline set up by the Greater Pittsburgh community food bank has received more than a thousand calls in the past two weeks, 90% of which came from newly unemployed people. Here, pantries ordered 50% to 60% more food for March and April than usual.
• The Lakeview pantry in Chicago is on track to provide food for as many as 2,000 individuals this week – compared with 1,100 before the coronavirus crisis.
• The north Florida food bank, which relied heavily on contributions from retailers, has seen donations drop by 85% to 90% as shoppers bulk-buy, leaving shelves empty. But donations from restaurants, golf tournaments and even Disney World have increased, so the food bank is switching to ready meals, paying furloughed chefs to cook for thousands of senior citizens in housing facilities.
• In Las Vegas, the Three Square food bank has increased weekly food distribution by 30%, from 1m to 1.3m lbs of food. New drive-thru distribution centres have been set up across the valley as 170 of its 180 distribution outlets have been forced to temporarily close due to CDC social distancing guidelines. “Every line at every distribution centre exceeds the amount of food in our trucks,” said chief operating officer Larry Scott.
• The Kansas City-based Harvesters food bank, which serves 16 counties in north-east Kansas and 10 in north-west Missouri, sent out 12,000 boxes to pantries on Monday 23 March – a 140% rise on the 5,000 boxes typically ordered. “It was the largest distribution day in our 40-year history,” said its communications manager, Gene Hallinan.

Feeding America spokesperson Zuani Villarreal said the surge in job losses “is a perfect storm impacting food banks.” 

The evolution of the virus crisis could be social destabilization across low-income areas of inner cities. As we’ve been warning for a while, many adults have no emergency savings and insurmountable debts. Most people don’t have enough funds to bridge their finances for three months, which brings us to our piece from last week that shows cars lined up to receive food from a food bank in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.

Hundreds of cars wait to receive food from the Greater Community Food Bank in Duquesne. Collection begins at noon. @PghFoodBank @PittsburghPG pic.twitter.com/94YFaO7dqX

— Andrew Rush (@andrewrush) March 30, 2020

“First, we saw people who lived paycheck to paycheck, got laid off and didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, followed by those who had a couple of weeks of savings. Now, people who knew about us because they donated or volunteered are coming in for food,” said Jerry Brown, media spokesman for St Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. “The 2008 recession doesn’t touch this. It’s a different ballgame.”

So, what happens when tens of millions of jobless Americans become hangry? Is social unrest next? 

Officials in New York and Italy reported notable declines in new cases and deaths on Sunday, helping to inspire the most positive reaction in futures to kick off a new trading week since the ‘rona rout.

Futures surged out the gate as President Trump struck an upbeat tone during Sunday evening’s press conference (even as his critics continued to urge the mainstream press to drop coverage of the president’s briefings). Riffing off the data reported out of New York and Italy, Trump and Pence noted what appears to be the first “glimmers of progress.”

“We are beginning to see the glimmers of progress,” Pence said at a White House news conference on Sunday. “The experts will tell me not to jump to any conclusions, and I’m not, but like your president I’m an optimistic person and I’m hopeful.”

After three straight days of “pain”, “hell” and more gloom and doom from Trump, his decision to rapidly embrace some of the first encouraging signs of progress in months was apparently exactly what traders needed to hear, considering that they completely ignored another record jump in new cases reported out of Tokyo (Japan’s nationwide death toll just broke above 100) and an NYT report claiming 1000s of deaths in the US may have gone uncounted.

Trump bundled this with the typical rundown of various federal government plans, partnerships and deployments, as expressing that “we hope we’re seeing a leveling off” in the coming days.

“We’ll see what happens,” he added.

pic.twitter.com/j8fKN49P1o

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2020

ES was up more than 3% at one point, and Japan’s benchmarks climbed more than 2%, snapping a five-day losing streak even as PM Shinzo Abe reportedly prepares for an emergency declaration.  The yen dropped along with Treasuries as haven demand receded. Crude oil prices slumped as uncertainty remains over a proposed meeting of supplier nations that is planned for April 9.

And an old favorite gif made a resurgence on twitter to mark the occasion.

Live look at Dow futures pic.twitter.com/kLWZySZUu0

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) April 6, 2020

Authored by John Gray via The New Statesman,

The era of peak globalisation is over. For those of us not on the front line, clearing the mind and thinking how to live in an altered world is the task at hand…

The deserted streets will fill again, and we will leave our screen-lit burrows blinking with relief. But the world will be different from how we imagined it in what we thought were normal times. This is not a temporary rupture in an otherwise stable equilibrium: the crisis through which we are living is a turning point in history. 

The era of peak globalisation is over. An economic system that relied on worldwide production and long supply chains is morphing into one that will be less interconnected. A way of life driven by unceasing mobility is shuddering to a stop. Our lives are going to be more physically constrained and more virtual than they were. A more fragmented world is coming into being that in some ways may be more resilient. 

The once formidable British state is being rapidly reinvented, and on a scale not seen before. Acting with emergency powers authorised by parliament, the government has tossed economic orthodoxy to the winds. Savaged by years of imbecilic austerity, the NHS – like the armed forces, police, prisons, fire service, care workers and cleaners – has its back to the wall. But with the noble dedication of its workers, the virus will be held at bay. Our political system will survive intact. Not many countries will be so fortunate. Governments everywhere are struggling through the narrow passage between suppressing the virus and crashing the economy. Many will stumble and fall. 

In the view of the future to which progressive thinkers cling, the future is an embellished version of the recent past. No doubt this helps them preserve some semblance of sanity. It also undermines what is now our most vital attribute: the ability to adapt and fashion different ways of life. The task ahead is to build economies and societies that are more durable, and more humanly habitable, than those that were exposed to the anarchy of the global market.

It does not mean a shift to small-scale localism. Human numbers are too large for local self-sufficiency to be viable, and most of humankind is not willing to return to the small, closed communities of a more distant past. But the hyperglobalisation of the last few decades is not coming back either. The virus has exposed fatal weaknesses in the economic system that was patched up after the 2008 financial crisis. Liberal capitalism is bust. 

With all its talk of freedom and choice, liberalism was in practice the experiment of dissolving traditional sources of social cohesion and political legitimacy and replacing them with the promise of rising material living standards. This experiment has now run its course. Suppressing the virus necessitates an economic shutdown that can only be temporary, but when the economy restarts, it will be in a world where governments act to curb the global market.

A situation in which so many of the world’s essential medical supplies originate in China – or any other single country – will not be tolerated. Production in these and other sensitive areas will be re-shored as a matter of national security. The notion that a country such as Britain could phase out farming and depend on imports for food will be dismissed as the nonsense it always has been. The airline industry will shrink as people travel less. Harder borders are going to be an enduring feature of the global landscape. A narrow goal of economic efficiency will no longer be practicable for governments.

The question is, what will replace rising material living standards as the basis of society? One answer green thinkers have given is what John Stuart Mill in his Principles of Political Economy (1848) called a “stationary-state economy”. Expanding production and consumption would no longer be an overriding goal, and the increase in human numbers curbed. Unlike most liberals today, Mill recognised the danger of overpopulation. A world filled with human beings, he wrote, would be one without “flowery wastes” and wildlife. He also understood the dangers of central planning. The stationary state would be a market economy in which competition is encouraged. Technological innovation would continue, along with improvements in the art of living.

In many ways this is an appealing vision, but it is also unreal. There is no world authority to enforce an end to growth, just as there is none to fight the virus. Contrary to the progressive mantra, recently repeated by Gordon Brown, global problems do not always have global solutions. Geopolitical divisions preclude anything like world government. If one existed, existing states would compete to control it. The belief that this crisis can be solved by an unprecedented outbreak of international cooperation is magical thinking in its purest form.

Of course economic expansion is not indefinitely sustainable. For one thing, it can only worsen climate change and turn the planet into a garbage dump. But with highly uneven living standards, still rising human numbers and intensifying geopolitical rivalries, zero growth is also unsustainable. If the limits of growth are eventually accepted, it will be because governments make the protection of their citizens their most important objective. Whether democratic or authoritarian, states that do not meet this Hobbesian test will fail. 

*  *  *

The pandemic has abruptly accelerated geopolitical change. Combined with the collapse in oil prices, the uncontrolled spread of the virus in Iran could destabilise its theocratic regime. With revenues plunging, Saudi Arabia is also at risk. No doubt many will wish both of them good riddance. But there can be no assurance that a meltdown in the Gulf will produce anything other than a long period of chaos. Despite years of talk about diversifying, these regimes are still hostages of oil and even if the price recovers somewhat, the economic hit of the global shutdown will be devastating.

In contrast, the advance of East Asia will surely continue. The most successful responses to the epidemic thus far have been in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. It is hard to believe their cultural traditions, which focus on collective well-being more than personal autonomy, have not played a role in their success. They have also resisted the cult of the minimal state. It will not be surprising if they adjust to de-globalisation better than many Western countries.

China’s position is more complex. Given its record of cover-ups and opaque statistics, its performance during the pandemic is hard to assess. Certainly it is not a model any democracy could or should emulate. As the new NHS Nightingale shows, it is not only authoritarian regimes that can build hospitals in two weeks. No one knows the full human costs of the Chinese shutdown. Even so, Xi Jinping’s regime looks to have benefited from the pandemic. The virus has provided a rationale for expanding the surveillance state and introducing even stronger political control. Instead of wasting the crisis, Xi is using it to expand the country’s influence. China is inserting itself in place of the EU by assisting distressed national governments, such as Italy. Many of the masks and testing kits it has supplied have proved to be faulty, but the fact seems not to have dented Beijing’s propaganda campaign.

The EU has responded to the crisis by revealing its essential weakness. Few ideas are so scorned by higher minds than sovereignty. In practice it signifies the capacity to execute a comprehensive, coordinated and flexible emergency plan of the kind being implemented in the UK and other countries. The measures that have already been taken are larger than any implemented in the Second World War. In their most important respects they are also the opposite of what was done then, when the British population was mobilised as never before, and unemployment fell dramatically. Today, aside from those in essential services, Britain’s workers have been demobilised. If it goes on for many months, the shutdown will demand an even larger socialisation of the economy.

Whether the desiccated neoliberal structures of the EU can do anything like this is doubtful. Hitherto sacrosanct rules have been torn up by the European Central Bank’s bond buying programme and relaxing limits on state aid to industry. But the resistance to fiscal burden-sharing of northern European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands may block the way to rescuing Italy – a country too big to be crushed like Greece, but possibly also too costly to save. As the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte said in March:

“If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, the whole European structure loses its raison d’être for the people.”

The Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic has been blunter and more realistic:

“European solidarity does not exist… that was a fairy tale. The only country that can help us in this hard situation is the People’s Republic of China. To the rest of them, thanks for nothing.” 

The EU’s fundamental flaw is that it is incapable of discharging the protective functions of a state. The break-up of the eurozone has been predicted so often that it may seem unthinkable. Yet under the stresses they face today, the disintegration of European institutions is not unrealistic. Free movement has already been shut down. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent blackmailing of the EU by threatening to allow migrants to pass through his borders, and the endgame in Syria’s Idlib province, could lead to hundreds of thousands, even millions, of refugees fleeing to Europe. (It is hard to see what social distancing might mean in huge, overcrowded and insanitary refugee camps.) Another migrant crisis in conjunction with pressure on the dysfunctional euro could prove fatal.

If the EU survives, it may be as something like the Holy Roman empire in its later years, a phantom that lingers on for generations while power is exercised elsewhere. Vitally necessary decisions are already being taken by nation states. Since the political centre is no longer a leading force and with much of the left wedded to the failed European project, many governments will be dominated by the far right. 

An increasing influence on the EU will come from Russia. In the struggle with the Saudis that triggered the oil price collapse in March 2020, Putin has played the stronger hand. Whereas for the Saudis the fiscal break-even level – the price needed to pay for public services and keep the state solvent – is around $80 a barrel, for Russia it may be less than half that. At the same time Putin is consolidating Russia’s position as an energy power. The Nord Stream offshore pipelines that run through the Baltics secure reliable supplies of natural gas to Europe. By the same token they lock Europe into dependency on Russia and enable it to use energy as a political weapon. With Europe balkanised, Russia, too, looks set to expand its sphere of influence. Like China it is stepping in to replace the faltering EU, flying in doctors and equipment to Italy.

In the US, Donald Trump plainly considers refloating the economy more important than containing the virus. A 1929-style stock market slide and unemployment levels worse than those in the 1930s could pose an existential threat to his presidency. James Bullard, the CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, has suggested the American jobless rate could reach 30 per cent – higher than in the Great Depression. On the other hand, with the US’s decentralised system of government; a ruinously expensive healthcare system and tens of millions uninsured; a colossal prison population, of which many are old and infirm; and cities with sizeable numbers of homeless people and an already large opioid epidemic; curtailing the shutdown could mean the virus spreading uncontrollably, with devastating effects. (Trump is not alone in taking this risk. Sweden has not so far imposed anything like the lockdown in force in other countries.) 

Unlike the British programme, Trump’s $2trn stimulus plan is mostly another corporate bailout. Yet if polls are to be believed increasing numbers of Americans approve of his handling of the epidemic. What if Trump emerges from this catastrophe with the support of an American majority?

Whether or not he retains his hold on power, the US’s position in the world has changed irreversibly. What is fast unravelling is not only the hyperglobalisation of recent decades but the global order set in place at the end of the Second World War. Puncturing an imaginary equilibrium, the virus has hastened a process of disintegration that has been under way for many years.

In his seminal Plagues and Peoples the Chicago historian William H McNeill wrote:

It is always possible that some hitherto obscure parasitic organism may escape its accustomed ecological niche and expose the dense human populations that have become so conspicuous a feature of the Earth to some fresh and perchance devastating mortality.

It is not yet known how Covid-19 escaped its niche, though there is a suspicion that Wuhan’s “wet markets”, where wildlife is sold, may have played a role. In 1976, when McNeill’s book was first published, the destruction of the habitats of exotic species was nowhere near as far gone as it is today. As globalisation has advanced, so has the risk of infectious diseases spreading. The Spanish Flu of 1918-20 became a global pandemic in a world without mass air transportation. Commenting on how plagues have been understood by historians, McNeill observed: “For them as for others, occasional disastrous outbreaks of infectious disease remained sudden and unpredictable interruptions of the norm, essentially beyond historical explanation.” Many later studies have come to similar conclusions. 

Yet the notion persists that pandemics are blips rather than an integral part of history. Lying behind this is the belief that humans are no longer part of the natural world and can create an autonomous ecosystem, separate from the rest of the biosphere. Covid-19 is telling them they cannot. It is only by using science that we can defend ourselves against this pestilence. Mass antibody tests and a vaccine will be crucial. But permanent changes in how we live will have to be made if we are to be less vulnerable in future. 

The texture of everyday life is already altered. A sense of fragility is everywhere. It is not only society that feels shaky. So does the human position in the world. Viral images reveal human absence in different ways. Wild boars are roaming in the towns of northern Italy, while in Lopburi in Thailand gangs of monkeys no longer fed by tourists are fighting in the streets. Inhuman beauty and a fierce struggle for life have sprung up in cities emptied by the virus.

As a number of commentators have noted, a post-apocalyptic future of the kind projected in the fiction of JG Ballard has become our present reality. But it is important to understand what this “apocalypse” reveals. For Ballard, human societies were stage props that could be knocked over at any moment. Norms that seemed built into human nature vanished when you left the theatre. The most harrowing of Ballard’s experiences as a child in 1940s Shanghai were not in the prison camp, where many inmates were steadfast and kindly in their treatment of others. A resourceful and venturesome boy, Ballard enjoyed much of his time there. It was when the camp collapsed as the war drew to a close, he told me, that he witnessed the worst examples of ruthless selfishness and motiveless cruelty. 

The lesson he learnt was that these were not world-ending events. What is commonly described as an apocalypse is the normal course of history. Many are left with lasting traumas. But the human animal is too sturdy and too versatile to be broken by these upheavals. Life goes on, if differently than before. Those who talk of this as a Ballardian moment have not noticed how human beings adjust, and even find fulfilment, in the extreme situations he portrays.

Technology will help us adapt in our present extremity. Physical mobility can be reduced by shifting many of our activities into cyberspace. Offices, schools, universities, GP surgeries and other work centres are likely to change permanently. Virtual communities set up during the epidemic have enabled people to get to know one another better than they ever did before. 

There will be celebrations as the pandemic recedes, but there may be no clear point when the threat of infection is over. Many people may migrate to online environments like those in Second Life, a virtual world where people meet, trade and interact in bodies and worlds of their choosing. Other adaptations may be uncomfortable for moralists. Online pornography will likely boom, and much internet dating may consist of erotic exchanges that never end in a meeting of bodies. Augmented reality technology may be used to simulate fleshly encounters and virtual sex could soon be normalised. Whether this is a move towards the good life may not be the most useful question to ask. Cyberspace relies on an infrastructure that can be damaged or destroyed by war or natural disaster. The internet allows us to avoid the isolation that plagues have brought in the past. It cannot enable human beings to escape their mortal flesh, or avoid the ironies of progress. 

*  *  *

What the virus is telling us is not only that progress is reversible – a fact even progressives seem to have grasped­ – but that it can be self-undermining. To take the most obvious example, globalisation produced some major benefits – millions have been lifted out of poverty. This achievement is now under threat. Globalisation begat the de-globalisation that is now under way. 

As the prospect of ever-rising living standards fades, other sources of authority and legitimacy are re-emerging. Liberal or socialist, the progressive mind detests national identity with passionate intensity. There is plenty in history to show how it can be misused. But the nation state is increasingly the most powerful force driving large-scale action. Dealing with the virus requires a collective effort that will not be mobilised for the sake of universal humanity. 

Altruism has limits just as much as growth. There will be examples of extraordinary selflessness before the worst of the crisis is over. In Britain an over half-million strong volunteer army has signed up to assist the NHS. But it would be unwise to rely on human sympathy alone to get us through. Kindness to strangers is so precious that it must be rationed. 

This is where the protective state comes in. At its core, the British state has always been Hobbesian. Peace and strong government have been the overriding priorities. At the same time this Hobbesian state has mostly rested on consent, particularly in times of national emergency. Being shielded from danger has trumped freedom from interference by government. 

How much of their freedom people will want back when the pandemic has peaked is an open question. They show little taste for the enforced solidarity of socialism, but they may happily accept a regime of bio-surveillance for the sake of better protection of their health. Digging ourselves out of the pit will demand more state intervention not less, and of a highly inventive kind. Governments will have to do a lot more in underwriting scientific research and technological innovation. Though the state may not always be larger its influence will be pervasive, and by old-world standards more intrusive. Post-liberal government will be the norm for the foreseeable future.

It is only by recognising the frailties of liberal societies that their most essential values can be preserved. Along with fairness they include individual liberty, which as well as being worthwhile in itself is a necessary check on government. But those who believe personal autonomy is the innermost human need betray an ignorance of psychology, not least their own. For practically everyone, security and belonging are as important, often more so. Liberalism was, in effect, a systematic denial of this fact.

An advantage of quarantine is that it can be used to think afresh. Clearing the mind of clutter and thinking how to live in an altered world is the task at hand. For those of us who are not serving on the front line, this should be enough for the duration.

President Trump reiterated warnings from the last several press briefings on Saturday, indicating that the country should brace for the “toughest week” yet, as confirmed cases and deaths continue to rise on an exponential curve.

And despite the more than 308,000 cases and 8,407 deaths, Americans continue to defy the stay-at-home government enforced orders that cover 90% of the country. 

Traffic analytics firm INRIX transportation told The Washington Post that daily traffic nationwide remains around 60% of normal levels. The highways are still filled with vehicles as many resist public health lockdown orders:

“In California, where a stay-at-home order took effect March 19, daily trips statewide remain at 58% of normal levels, according to Wejo, a British company that collects data from sensors in some passenger vehicles.

On Wednesday – two days after the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland enacted stay-at-home orders – daily car trips in the region remained at 51% of normal in D.C., 53% in Maryland and 59% in Virginia, according to Wejo, which does not include trucks or other commercial vehicles.

Washington state officials announced a stay-at-home order March 23. More than a week later, distances traveled on Seattle roads remained at about 55% of normal, according to INRIX, a Kirkland, Washington-based traffic analytics firm that crunches data from vehicle navigation systems, cellphones and other devices,” reported The Post. 

With traffic halved across major metros and along many highways is unprecedented – it’s becoming evident that plenty of Americans are still on the roads despite strict stay-at-home public health orders across the country. 

“Some of the remaining traffic, experts say, stems from motorists heading to and from the many worksites that have been deemed “essential”: health-care facilities, supermarkets and liquor stores, construction sites, banks, dry cleaners, hardware stores, pet stores, government facilities, and auto and bicycle repair shops, among others. The Washington region’s orders also exempt plumbers, electricians and others needed for home repairs,” said The Post.

The resistance to shutdown states and or even certain geographical regions has been evident by lawmakers in the Southern US and Rust Belt.

Kay Ivey, the Republican Gov. of Alabama, said now is “not the time to order people to shelter in place.” 

“Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,” Ivey said, suggesting that Alabama would not be a hard-hit area of the country. 

In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Parson has been late to the game in issuing a stay-at-home order, that will go into effect on Monday. Parson was recently heard stating that he will not “make a blanket policy,” adding, “It’s going to come down to individual responsibilities.”

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has also been late in issuing a stay-at-home order, which was finally put forth last week amid rising deaths and cases across the state. 

Tampa-area megachurch Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne defied a local order on banning of mass gatherings last weekend by holding a church service – was arrested by authorities on Monday. 

Over the last month, President Trump has shifted his rhetoric on the virus from calling it “hysteria” and a Democratic hoax, to now announcing the outbreak as a national emergency and urging all Americans to work from home and avoid public spaces. However, a large swath of Americans still believes the virus is “fake news,” and are not letting the virus affect their daily lives, which suggests containing the virus might be even more difficult than expected for government agencies, and why stricter lockdowns could be next. 

As for more stringent lockdowns that could be ahead, take note of what happened in Panama last week, as the government issued a gender-based lockdown limiting male and female from traveling to the supermarket on certain days. There’s even rumor in Mid-Atlantic/ Northeast states, that tighter lockdowns could be ahead as National Guard troops position around major metros. 

And with many Americans resisting lockdowns, we noted last week that “intermittent” lockdowns and “widespread surveillance” to mitigate the virus spread could be the norm through 2022. 

Authored by Richard Ebeling via The American Institute for Economic Education,

The coronavirus crisis that has enveloped the world has brought about calls for society and economy-wide action on the part of governments that has been matched by the imposing of radical shutdowns and compulsory mass quarantining as tens of millions of people are told to not to go to work and to stay at home instead.

Governments have also been redirecting essential medical and related supplies in some places. In the United States, direct governmental commands for companies and industries to change what and how they produce has been declared to be in the executive hands of the president of the United States, when it is deemed necessary to meet the needs of the health crisis.

President Donald Trump’s recent order for the automobile manufacturer, General Motors, to shift its production potentials to the manufacturing of ventilators for those stricken severely by the virus, under the authority of a Korean-war era piece of legislation, is merely an especially high-profile example of the central planning powers that governments have been asserting the right to implement.

Fundamental to everything that governments have been doing is the presumption that the crisis can only be handled and solved through a comprehensive system of political command and control. The chorus of voices making this case, along with their own proposals as to what should be the ingredients of “the plan,” has been deafening.

The Deafening Chorus of Voices for Central Planning

John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker (March 28, 2020), insists that “the most effective stimulus policy is doing whatever it takes to get some control over the virus’s trajectory.” He praised the bipartisanship of the Democrats and Republicans in successfully passing the $2 trillion spending package to “stabilize” the economy in the face of various levels of government ordering people to stop working and, therefore, to slow down or stop the flow of various goods and services from which come the streams of income dependent upon supplies being produced to meet market demands.

Over at “Project Syndicate,” Harvard University professor Carmen M. Reinhart says “the lockdown and distancing policies that are saving lives also carry an enormous economic cost,” and insists, “Clearly, this is a ‘whatever-it-takes’ moment for large-scale outside-the-box fiscal and monetary policies.”

Also writing for “Project Syndicate,” economists Roman Frydman (New York University) and Edmund S. Phelps (Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner) declare that, “the possibility of millions dying as the economy is crippled justifies substantially scaling up the extent and the scope of government action . . . citizens and governments should be prepared to pay what might appear an extravagantly high premium.”

Among the government actions that Frydman and Phelps propose are the government redirecting the existing productive capacity to meet health care equipment shortages; financially supporting business firms to supply “essential” goods and services; supplying the needed quantities of money so people have the financial means to continue buying the goods and services they need; and a program to cover home and other mortgages of those no longer able to meet their regular financial obligations.

They want government “helicopter money” to be ongoing rather than a one or two-shot affair to meet the financial requirements of virtually everyone’s buying needs. To meet the needed production requirements to manage health demands from the virus, they say that the private sector cannot be trusted to do the job on its own; thus, the government must determine and direct what firms produce, for which purposes, in what quantities, and with government funding to make sure the job gets done.

To prevent price gouging for such products and failure to pay reasonable salaries to the workers doing these jobs, they also basically calling for price and wage controls to assure “reasonable wages” and prices for the products at “pre-crisis levels.” If we can get it all just right, the coronavirus will be defeated, they are saying, and the world will be saved from disaster. We just need the right central plan designed in its details just the right way.

Planning Political Paternalism in the Post-Coronavirus Era

Of course, others are already looking beyond the coronavirus crisis to what lessons will have been learned for enlightened and “rational” intervention to guide human conduct away from its just-too-human follies and foibles. James Kirkup, the director of the London-based Social Market Foundation, therefore, asks, “Will the Pandemic Kill Off Libertarianism?” (March 25, 2020).

He criticizes rational choice theory in economics because it assumes that human beings are “rational” calculating machines who dispassionately weigh the implied costs and benefits from their actions, including the knowable and objective probabilities of the risks from following one course of action instead of another. Then each of the social and market agents makes the more or less “correct” decision concerning what to do and in what directions.

But when James Kirkup looks around, he finds that real human beings operate very far from such a benchmark of rational conduct and decision-making. Every reasonable person, fairly early on once the implications of the coronavirus were publicly known, should have stopped going to pubs or their local gym; they should have no longer socialized in common areas like public parks or in the shoulder-to-shoulder everyday marketplace.

People just would not do the reasonable and rational things to assure their own health and safety as well as all those around them, including friends and family members. The critics of traditional economic theory were, once more, shown to be right – people are not rational calculators of the reasonable courses of action to follow. They are shortsighted in their thinking, they are illogical estimators of dangers and risks to themselves and others, and, therefore, they follow misguided notions of their self-interest that not only harms themselves but the rest of society as well.

Or as Kirkup suggests, “If people aren’t rational about a situation that risks tens of thousands of lives and deep damage to our society and economy, how much weight should we put on the idea of rational actors in future? . . . Put it another way: once you’ve closed pubs and banned people from going outside, imposing, say, a tax to deter people from consuming sugary drinks is going to seem like a very small thing indeed.”

Critics of Personal Choice, Old and New

So here we have a very interesting intellectual and ideological twist of fate. For more than 150 years, critics of the market disdained the economist’s emphasis on individual choice and pursuit of personal gain, especially reflected in the businessman’s quest for profit.

These critics insisted that there was more to life than self-interest and material betterment; that man was a social animal connected with others outside of just himself that transcended personal profit and loss. There were the deeper attachments and senses of shared belonging of “blood and soil” and the transcendent community into which one was born. In addition, the “rational economic man” model in economics was also condemned by these earlier critics for assuming such rationality when, “clearly,” man is guided in reality by illogical and irrational views, values, and visions of what is good or bad, and reasonable or reckless.

Now we find among the latest generation of critics of the free market the argument turned around, with it being said that precisely because humans are not these rational economic calculators of costs and benefits, and of personal and social gains and harms, the government must radically intervene in various and sundry ways to make people’s actions consistent with conduct that would reflect such rational economic calculations, if only human beings could be trusted with the freedom to act in such ways!

The post-coronavirus world, according to Kirkup, will have to be one of extended and extensive political paternalism to reduce the impact of human imperfection in people’s thinking processes and actions, in both great and small ways, that do not represent the “right choices” for themselves or others in society.

In other words:

“I’m with the government, and I am here to make you live your life and act in ways you should and would want to, if only you were as reasonable, rational, and logical as those in government who have been assigned the task of designing policies that will ‘nudge’ you in the directions that you will or should be thankful for, regardless if you realize it right now or in the future.”

The Hubris of the Political Paternalism

Herein lies both arrogance and hubris. There is the presumption of having found and distilled the correct and objective standards of judging and weighing alternatives on the basis of which the most rational choice would be made, when properly and accurately considering the relevant costs and benefits and degree and forms of risk facing each and every individual.

Who knows the logically correct and factually accurate data in the context of which a person should be making his decisions and choices? Clearly, the implied social engineer, the political paternalist, the economic “nudger” who will either directly command by requiring or prohibiting forms of conduct, or who will influence the terms of trade-offs “indirectly” through taxation, subsidy or regulation to move people into the proper courses of action.

This implies two ideas:

first, that the planner and nudger knows the optimal or more desirable social outcome as a whole to which all the actions of the particular individuals should be moving the society; and,

second, that the actions commanded or influenced by such government interventions are really “right” for the individual.

Behind this type of thinking, whether admitted to or not, is the belief that the social nudger assumes himself to be so far above and superior to others in his theoretical understanding, factual information, and valuational understanding of what is good for mankind and for all the individuals who make up humanity that he freely takes upon himself the authority and power to mold the shape of society and the destinies of all in it into the form that he considers the best.

Unintended Consequences of Human Action and History

Over 250 years after the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) published his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), is it necessary to remind people of the reality of the limits to our knowledge and understanding of ourselves, others, and all the unanticipated and unknowable outcomes from the multitudes of mankind’s members interacting? Or that attempts to direct people in ways that they find undesirable only sets the stage for various forms of social conflict? Said Ferguson:

Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to remove inconveniences, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages, arrives at ends to which their imagination could not anticipate . . . He who first said, ‘I will appropriate this field: I will leave it to my heirs’; did not perceive, that he was laying the foundation of civil law and political establishments . . .

Men, in general, are sufficiently disposed to occupy themselves in forming projects and schemes; but he who would scheme and project for others, will find an opponent in every person who is disposed to scheme for himself . . .The crowd of mankind, are directed in their establishments and measures, by the circumstances in which they are placed; and seldom turned from their way, to follow the plan of any single projector.

Every step and every movement of the multitudes, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments [institutions], which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design . . .It may with more reason be affirmed of communities, that they admit of the greatest revolutions where no change is intended, and that the most refined politicians do not always know whither they are leading the state by their projects. (p. 122)

Or as Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) concisely expressed it in Theory and History (1957):

The historical process is not designed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of the intentional actions of all the individuals. No man can plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim Fathers did not plan to found the United States. (p. 196)

These presumptuous political paternalists, claiming to know what is best for every individual and optimally good for the society as a whole, show an indefensible hubris in asserting that they can step out of the very society and historical processes of which they are a single participant and know with necessary and sufficient certainty how the destiny of humankind should be directed, to be nudged into the best of all worlds?

This was emphasized by another Austrian economist, Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926) in Social Economics (1914):

The economy is full of social institutions which serve the entire economy and are so harmonious in structure as to suggest that they are the creation of an organized social will . . . Such a social institution is illustrated by money, by the economic market, by the division of labor . . . finally by the economy [as a whole] itself, which is the greatest of these institutions, and includes all the others . . .

How could any general contractual agreement be reached as to institutions whose being is still hidden in the mists of the future, and is only conceived in an incomplete manner by a few far-seeing persons, while the great mass can never clearly appreciate the nature of such an institution until it has actually attained it full form and is generally operative? (p. 162)

Imperfect Would-be Paternalists are Closet Despots

Do these would-be nudging paternalists not get up each morning and put on their pants one leg at a time like the rest of us? Do they not sometimes give into everyday temptations and desires that their social scientific objectivity tells them is not always in their best interest? Are they not subject to the same imperfections and limits of knowledge like you and I are in often having retrospective thoughts on the errors and mistakes we have made? In other words, are they demigods to be trusted with the future of each and every one of us and the general society in which we all live? I will go out on a limb and suggest, probably not!

If they are correct that human foibles are too serious to be left up to the free choices of the individuals who make them, then how can those same imperfect and irrational individuals be trusted with the democratic right to vote for those who will be elected to government office? Not always knowing where their true interests lie, might they not elect wrong-thinking politicians who fail to appoint these very political paternalists to the policy making positions, without whose help society and the individuals in it could be doomed to disastrous consequences?

Is there, here, the faint scent of ideological and political despotism? Do these paternalists not have an inkling that as would-be government policy nudgers they are really societal noodges, political pests, irritatingly telling people how they should live, when those poor, irrational people – yes, you and me – would rather decide this for themselves?

And this gets us around to the earlier writers who we mentioned, above, those who consider a free, competitive, decentralized marketplace of supply and demand the wrong place to place trust in to solve the problems of a societal plague such as the coronavirus.

Comparing the Market to How Government Really Works

A good number of years ago, UCLA economist Harold Demsetz (1930-2019) pointed out the not infrequent tendency of critics of the market economy to compare markets as they work in the real world with a hypothetical ideal of a perfectly informed and only public interest-minded government, the latter being what he called the “the nirvana viewpoint.” It is then deduced that there are “market failures” all around us in contrast to a world in which that ideal government, manned by all-knowing, and perfectly “rational” politicians and bureaucrats, were put in charge instead.

Demsetz said that the working of real markets should be compared to how real governments operate. It would soon be seen that the society suffers from an abundant quantity of “government failures” in contrast to a vibrant and highly successful market economy.

When these critics who doubt the effectiveness of the market economy in a crisis such as the coronavirus suggest turning to the government to manage the problem, they suffer from the nirvana viewpoint that Demsetz challenged. The media has been full of stories about the failures of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in both thoughtfully preparing for such a dangerous health risk before it arrived, and then their bureaucratic rigidity and attempts at protecting their monopoly turf in failing to allow developments of private testing techniques for the virus, or the operation of independent labs performing the tests to speed up results, or in not permitting the manufacturing and supplying of essential medical equipment by private producers not completely under their regulatory thumbs.

What could be better examples of government failure, failures that are inherent in the way bureaucracies operate in top-down central planning structures of regulatory control and command. Information has to be collected and digested at various local points, then passed on up through the bureaucratic control chain to different levels of evaluation and summary until it reaches a high enough level of policy decision-making that an actual plan concerning a course of action may be designed and ordered to be implemented.

At each level is the “human element,” not just in the sense that people may make mistakes and poor judgments. But, also, in that the people at each level have their own implicit motives and agendas relating to their department’s authority and budget that influences how those responsible for evaluating and passing on information to the next higher level consider what is or is not “important” and relevant and consistent with the procedures and rationales for what each in the bureaucratic hierarchy is doing. This is the real world of government, not some hypothetical utopia of magical, wand-waving government that is ready, willing and able to solve all the problems of the world.

Allowing People to Use Localized Knowledge of Time and Place

In the meantime, people “on the ground” often are limited or restricted in their ability to use their own knowledge and judgments, based on their own skills, experiences, and abilities, to solve part of the problem, if they only had the liberty to try.

To give just one instance, Wales Online recently told the story of a Welshmen who devised a way to design and quickly construct a ventilator that can serve as a highly workable device in place of the more scarce and more costly traditional ventilators used in hospital ICUs. Dr. Rys Thomas designed it in three days drawing upon his military and civilian experience with the use of anesthetics and resuscitation; he began manufacturing in partnership with a small private enterprise. It was allowed to be produced with little red tape, fortunately, by the Welsh government. But if Dr. Thomas had had to submit documentation, proof of testing and trials, and a lengthy approval process according to the usual FDA procedures here in the United States, people might have died that are being helped to breathe right now in Wales.

This is the type of discovery and adaptation to changing circumstances that Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), had in mind, I would suggest, when in his famous article on “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945), he referred to the special and local knowledge of time and place possessed by individuals “on the spot.” By people having the latitude and liberty to not only see an opportunity but the discretion and freedom to try to use it in advantageous ways, we all benefit from what other individuals, whom we know nothing about, may do that will end up benefiting us in ways we could not have originally imagined.

This all highlights, in my view, why the emphasis upon and calls for the concentration of centralized decision-making and planning by government in meeting the challenge of the coronavirus is completely wrong-headed. It should be exactly the reverse. We should not want to restrict what people are able and could do to one overarching and imposed leadership team meant to guide and coordinate all that is going on in society to overcome the health crisis through which we are all passing.

The whole purpose of competitive markets and the price system is to have an institutional setting in which each individual in his own corner of society and the social system of division of labor may freely utilize what he comes up with and sees as possible answers to various aspects of the problems constantly popping up in different places, in different ways, with different features and requirements, given the way the virus is spreading and impacting different areas and communities.

The continuous changeability and adaptability of a competitive price system serves to indicate to any and all interested or potentially relevant fellow members of society where demand is greatest for various items and services, and what supplies are available in which quantities to meet those shifting needs in different parts of the country, and, indeed, around the world. Prices and wages are the best rationing guide for people to economize “here” as best they can, until some supplies relatively more abundant and less urgently needed “there” can be transported and transferred from one part of the country to another.

Don’t Short-Circuit the Price System with Controls

That very much ridiculed and condemned profit motive acts as a wonderful incentive mechanism for people to more accurately anticipate the patterns of future market demands for these health-related products and to adjust to changes when they have not had perfect forethought in a world in which the future can never be perfectly known.

The last thing that should be imposed are price and wage controls, like Roman Frydman and Edmund Phelps and others have been calling for. This short-circuits the institutional mechanism that enables the coordination of more people who know far more than any one or handful of minds can ever know to best utilize what everyone can contribute to solving any one problem and those other problems that are in competition for the scarce resources and labor services of the society.

Through the price system, we all contribute through our demands and our abilities to supply to compositely determine what should be produced, where and how it should be produced, and for whom at any moment of time and over periods of time in changing circumstances. No other economic and social system of human association and cooperation has ever been found to better improve the condition of humankind, both in sickness and in health, and in “normal times” as well as in serious emergencies and crises, as the competitive, price-guiding market economy. (See my article, “Price Controls Attack the Freedom of Speech”.)

Finally, this also brings us back to James Kirkup’s presumption on the claimed irrationality of real human beings and the need to paternalistically nudge us all into the direction of choice-making based upon a postulated model of “rational economic man.” It is not a secret that we all, in hindsight, make numerous mistakes and misjudgments in our choices. I know this certainly applies to me; just ask my wife, who never tires of reminding me of my follies and foibles!

But I would suggest that often what the political paternalist, with his model of supposedly objective, rational behavior, is missing is the fact that much of what is criticized and condemned as illogical or irrational conduct needing “nudged” correction are often reasonable and rational choices, if only looked at in the context of the local knowledge and circumstances that only that individual may possess and fully appreciate concerning the situation, opportunities, and costs as he sees them during and over any given period of time.

What we need, in general, concerning our fellow human beings is a humility that we do not and cannot really know enough to tell others how they should live and for what purposes. Furthermore, none of us, even the self-appointed social engineers, know enough to plan the direction and destiny of human society.

As Ferguson and Mises and Wieser reminded us, social and historical processes are far too complex, multifaceted and unknowable to plan the destination of mankind. This all is no less true when needing to call upon and coordinate the knowledge and abilities of millions to confront a health crisis like the coronavirus. Liberty remains the best means of saving and bettering mankind.

What is the underlying premise behind all of these arguments, whether focused on the immediate coronavirus crisis or looking beyond to the world after the crisis is behind us?

It is that freedom does not work or does not work as effectively as the critic thinks it should if this health crisis is to be successfully grappled with. It is once again considered to represent a “failure of the market” that can only be compensated and corrected for by turning command and control over to the government and to the guiding judgments and decisions of those holding high political office and the presumed “experts” manning the bureaus, agencies and departments that make up the government.

Even if they aren’t exactly certain how the business model works, Twitter blue checks and the rest of the mainstream media – having been whipped into an anti-banker fervor by Bernie Sanders and the last glowing embers of Occupy – never pass up an opportunity to kick private equity in the nuts.

And if there’s one industry where private equity has done the most to directly harm American public, it’s health care.

Envision’s Colorado headquarters

During the latter part of the Democratic primary campaign, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren primed the pump by extolling the evils of private equity to the public every chance they got, helping impress the term into the memory banks of legions of twentysomethings how the industry had contributed to America’s health-care crisis, along with a multitude of other societal ills. Now, with the world in the grip of an unprecedented crisis, the industry is about to get pilloried once again – but this, much, much bigger than before, we suspect – as private equity-backed health-care companies, loaded down from their LBO debt binges, are forced to make cutbacks including slashing pay for doctors and nurses in the middle of a pandemic that has already killed nearly 9,500 Americans.

And now the KKR-backed Envision Healthcare Corp., one of the biggest medical providers backed by private equity, is poised to become the poster-child for Wall Street greed as it informs hundreds of doctors in its employ will not be receiving the bonus checks they had been expecting in April. Though we suspect this isn’t a complete surprise, the cuts will deprive hundreds of doctors of roughly one-third of their total comp during an already extremely difficult time for them and their families. The company has promised to repay them at a later date once their financial situation has improved.

The move risks igniting a blowback that could make KKR one of “the most hated companies in the world. Just ask Martin Shkreli.

But the reason the company’s financial position is so poor in the first place is because Envision carries more than $7 billion of debt. This debt was amassed during what was, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, the third-largest health-care LBO ever.

In a statement, Envision said it’s “100% focused” on saving lives during this crisis, even though its business (ambulatory surgical centers and medical staffing) shrank more than 75% in two weeks, Bloomberg said. With so many Americans hiding at home and fearful of entering hospitals and doctor’s offices, people are delaying elective and non-emergency care at unprecedented rates.

“We are on the front lines caring for patients during this unprecedented public health and economic crisis,” the Nashville, Tennessee-based company said. “Envision Healthcare is 100 percent focused on saving lives and sustaining the nation’s fragile health-care system. The safety net we provide for millions of patients must remain fully intact for when we get to the other side of this national crisis.”

Like many companies, Envision completely drew down its two credit lines to provide financial flexibility in recent weeks (apparently it didn’t listen to Larry Kudlow and Mnuchin). The company spends about $1.5 billion on compensation for physicians quarterly, an insider reportedly told BBG. The company has about $140 million to $150 million in debt payments due in the next two weeks, according to Mike Holland of Bloomberg Intelligence, and has $650 million of cash on its balance sheet. It has warned investors that it might need to raise more financing if circumstances continue to deteriorate.

The biggest problem for KKR, is that some of the physician groups are planning to sue the company; litigation could draw unwanted attention to KKR at a time when public anger is dangerously high.

But as the ‘cockroach’ theory suggests, Envision isn’t alone: The boom in LBOs (part of the binge on corporate debt that also fueled the surge in buybacks) left many companies, especially in the health-care space, where many companies were built via a series of costly mergers and acquisitions.

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In my recent paper Why Assume There Will Be a 2020 Election?, I took the opportunity of today’s multifaceted crisis in order to revisit an important Wall Street funded coup d’état effort of 1933-34.

As I explained in that location, this bankers’ coup was luckily exposed by a patriotic general named Smedley Darlington Butler during one of the darkest moments of America and profoundly changed the course of history.

The Deep State Plot Against JFK

The danger of World War and a military coup arose again during the short lived administration of John F. Kennedy who found himself locked in a life or death struggle not with Russia, but with the Military Industrial Complex that had become dominated by the many Dr. Strangeloves of the Joint Chief of Staff and CIA who fanatically believed that America could win a nuclear war with Russia.

Kennedy’s valiant efforts to achieve dialogue with his Soviet counterparts, move towards peace in Vietnam, support of colonial liberation, promotion of space exploration and advocacy of a Nuclear Test Ban treaty made him a target of the Deep State of his time. During this period, this effort was led from the top by JFK’s two most powerful American opponents: Allan Dulles (director of the CIA) and General Lyman Lemnitzer (head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), both of whom were proponents of pre-emptive nuclear war, architects of the Bay of Pigs regime change trap and advocates of Operation Northwoods (an ultimate “inside job” precursor to 9/11 which JFK subverted).

As historian Anton Chaitkin recently reported:

“Lemnitzer had displayed what his faction viewed as his qualifications for this role back in August 1960, when, as Army chief of staff, he announced that the Army was all ready to “restore order” in the United States after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union—to bring back normalcy just as the military does after a flood or a riot”

This plot was detailed in a quasi-fictional book written by investigative journalists Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey published in 1962 entitled Seven Days in May and swiftly made into a famous film with unprecedented support by JFK himself who gave the film crew and director John Frankenheimer full access to the White House, advisors and materials for the film which he believed every American should see.

In the story, a patriotic lieutenant discovers the plans for the coup which is scheduled to take place during a vast military drill whereby a President who is close to finalizing a de-armament treaty with Russia will be incapacitated in a bunker while a military regime takes over America.

Tragically, where the lieutenant is able to expose the plot and save the nation in the story, by the time of the film’s 1964 release, JFK had been deposed by other means.

Now 56 years later, history has begun to repeat itself with distinctly 21st century characteristics… and a viral twist.

 

The Stage is Again Set for Martial Law

Another President resistant to regime change and nuclear confrontation with Russia and China finds himself today in the White House in the form of Donald Trump.

As in 1933, today’s financial collapse threatens to rip the social and economic fabric of America to shreds, and just as in 1963 a powerful military industrial complex and private banking system manages a web of power which is devoted to overturning the 2016 election (and 1776 revolution) by any means.

The biggest difference today is that a global coronavirus pandemic threatens to be the catalyzer used to justify military dictatorship in America and broader nuclear confrontation with Russia and China.

Instead of names like “Dulles”, or “Lemnitzer”, today’s coup directors feature such names as “Pompeo” and “O’Shawnessy”… both Deep State assets highly positioned in 3rd and 4th place to take over the Presidency at the drop of a hat.

Terrence O’Shawnessy: The Man Who Could Be President

Having slipped silently under the radar four weeks ago, the American Government passed a new emergency protocol into law which vastly expands powers and procedures of Martial Law under “Continuity of Government” which must be taken very seriously.

These new protocols deal at length with the triggering of Martial Law should the nation become ungovernable through a variety of foreseeable scenarios that COVID-19 has unleashed, such as “unwanted violence” caused by “food shortage, financial chaos” or also if the President, Vice President and Secretary of State all become incapacitated for any reason.

Even though this act was classified “Above Top Secret” a surprisingly in depth March 18 Newsweek report by William Arkin documented how the “Combat Commander” of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) will immediately take power as a part of the “Continuity of Government” procedures which took on monstrous dimensions under the control of Dick Cheney in the wake of 9/11. According to Newsweek, the new regulation drafted by the Joint Chiefs states that the military may take control where “duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation” even when “authorization by the President is impossible”. Arkin describes the new protocols for “devolving” leadership to second-tier officials in remote and quarantined locations.

General O’Shawnessy, (former Deputy of UN Command in Korea) currently doubles as the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and has devoted his past 14 months to the promotion of a military confrontation over the Arctic which he has described as “the new frontline of our homeland defense” against Russia and China who are “determined to exploit the region’s economic and strategic potential”.

NORTHCOM went operational on October 1, 2002 as part of the Neocon takeover of America. This neocon coup which came to full fruition with 9/11 was governed by a manifesto entitled the Project for a New American Century  which laid out a Pax Americana of police state measures at home, regime change abroad and containment of a rising China and Russia under a religious belief in a unipolar world order.

This continental organization interfaces closely with both FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, and was given a wide jurisdiction embracing not only the USA but also Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, acting as “primary defender of an invasion of America”. NORTHCOM interfaces closely with the deep state by hosting personnel from the FBI, CIA, NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency in its headquarters and is responsible for the protection of the President, Vice President and Secretary of State.

Most recently, RT has reported on March 28 that O’Shawnessy has ordered teams of “essential staff” deep into vast bunkers 650 meters below the surface in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado to “wait out the COVID-19 crisis”. Announcing this secretive mission, the General tweeted “Our dedicated professionals of the NORAD and NORTHCOM Command and control watch have left their homes, said goodbye to their families and are isolated from everyone to ensure they can stand watch each and every day to defend our homeland.”

Other military personnel have been banned from travelling and commanded to stay near their bases ready for action and as of March 30, over 14 600 National Guard forces have been deployed to all 50 states. Although they cannot currently engage in policing due to the 1878 US Posse Comitatus Act, Martial Law would render that provision null and void.

It is also noteworthy that only one day after the Coronavirus was labelled an “international public health emergency” by the World Health Organization on January 30, Defense Secretary Mark Esper approved nationwide pandemic plans and warned NORTHCOM to “prepare to deploy”.

This author doesn’t believe it to be a coincidence that patriotic voices who would typically be opposed to such a Martial Law agenda have been taken out of public life due to chaos emerging from the Coronavirus with Senator Ron Paul’s March 22 COVID-19 diagnosis forcing him into quarantine and the politically naive Tulsi Gabbard’s dropping out of the presidential race in order “to be prepared for the national guard duties”. It isn’t very hard to imagine a COVID-19 diagnosis, real or fabricated to take the President and other members of the government out of office at a moment’s notice.

Time is running out for America and only bold, decisive action taken courageously and swiftly can change the course of self-annihilation upon which the republic now finds itself.

Presidents Xi Jinping and Putin have opened their arms to welcome America and other western nations into their new multipolar system which is built not upon a worship of money or militarism, but rather cooperation and creative mutual growth. Project Airbridge collaboration between China and the USA has begun as a part of the Health Silk Road bringing millions of medical supplies to America.

Meanwhile a brilliant coalition of former Latin American heads of State called for the creation of a new just economic order and debt jubilee as a response to the failure of the neoliberal system which shines a principled light out of the current threefold danger of economic collapse, war and Martial Law.