Excluding NYC, the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States, including the major cities, seems to be operating just fine.
All major roads are open and due to reduced traffic, commutes are easier than ever. The public transportation systems of all major cities are running with some minor reductions of services.
Gas stations are open and gasoline is being distributed by trucks as normal. Trucking is moving goods throughout the country. Amazon is delivering, as is Walmart.
The ports are open, shipping is still continuing. In fact, there are even some cruise lines, believe it or not.
Walmart warehouses, Costcos, and grocery stores are open. Even liquor stores are open. Gun stores are open.
Every morning at 5am, in all major Eastern seaboard cities, crews of construction workers are showing up at building sites and continuing to build buildings. Electricians, plumbers, and carpenters, if affected at all, are certainly still working.
Even the garbage is being collected.
No major internet shutdowns. No major electricity interruptions. Tap water is working fine.
The phone systems – landlines and mobile – are working as usual.
As far as I know, agriculture and mining are mostly unaffected. There is zero chance of any shortage of food.
Despite what the media is fear-mongering about, there really isn’t any shortage of toilet paper. It’s just that people bought a bunch in bulk. So now they aren’t going to need to buy toilet paper for a month or two or three, leaving plenty for everyone else.
White collar jobs that happen on computers can be done at home, which is what is happening (no interruption in internet service, notice.)
Despite the fear-mongering, no health system “has collapsed” and health care is running as usual, if busier, and some non-essential health care treatments are being postponed. There is no shortage of drugs, or at least not in the medium and long terms. Any pharma manufacturing can be brought on line quite quickly.
Auto manufacturing has been going on as usual, until the union demanded it shut down because they didn’t want to get sick. But apparently no major deaths in the auto industry due to Corona-virus.
Of course, extremely non-essential, “fluff” aspects of the economy are gone. Restaurants – a luxury in the best of times – are all out of business. So are bars and specialty retail (which has been being replaced by online shopping for years now.)
No professional sporstball or concerts, etc.
What this shutdown has actually shown us is how few people are actually needed in our modern high tech economy.
150 years ago 80% of people worked in agriculture, now it’s less than 5%. Buggy whip manufacturing went to zero a while ago. What crisis? There’s always been a difference between the real economy of goods and service as “finance.” “Finance” is a social construct and at 20% of the economy, it’s long due for a complete collapse down the to level of, maybe not buggy-whip manufacturing, but at least agriculture. There are too many bankers and not enough workers.
In fact, there is a world-wide savings glut and the US has spent 50 years blowing inflationary bubble after bubble chasing returns that don’t exist. What makes people think that they should get interest on their savings account? You should be paying the bank to keep your money in their safe, because it’s safer than keeping it under your pillow where a robber might get it. Savings is not “investment.”
If you have extra money and you want to invest in something? How about buying a sewing machine and making clothing? Sure, it’s not a profitable business because technology and globalization has made clothing so cheap they can’t give it away. There are plenty of clothes. So, maybe the world doesn’t need your clothing, and it doesn’t need your “investment” either?
It seems something is out of whack here.
You know, there’s the old racist joke about black people: “obsolete farm equipment.” It’s funny because it’s true. But, frankly, there are a lot of whites that are pretty much obsolete when it comes to the economy too.
If we had a real Free Market, if we had Real Capitalism, a HUGE amount of white boomers would find that:
Their houses are not worth $450,000, more like $30,000.
Their 401ks are actually worth about 10% of the nominal amount. It’s only due to the Socialist Federal Reserve inflating the Fortune 500 that they have the money they think they do. Did your 401k fund invest in Uber? Uber hasn’t made a dime in profit. Maybe that wasn’t such a good investment.
No one really needs their investments. No one needs their savings. There is nothing to “invest” in and, frankly, all of their “savings” are actually just fiat funny-money anyway.
In a free market health care system, it’s not really worth keeping old people alive. Cancer? Expensive to treat. You know what is cheap? A pillow and a Latina nurse with a strong arm.
Really, under what economic delusions did people expect that everyone gets their own limo driver? That’s what Uber is.
Under what delusions did old white people think they deserved their own private nurse? Or expensive cancer treatment?
The people who actually contribute to the economy of goods and services are doing just that – creating goods and providing services. If you are living off of “retirement” or “savings” or a 401k – well, no one really needs your funny money. We have a global savings glut, remember? That’s why there is all the “leverage” – chasing returns that don’t exist, and can’t exist, due to high-tech and deflation.
If you “own your own home with a mortgage” – well, you don’t really own your home. The bank does – and the bank is bankrupt. Your home is worth far, far less than what you owe on it. That means you are bankrupt.
Why should the young provide you with personal services, like pouring your drinks, bringing you food, and fluffing your pillow, or lugging your golf clubs? Don’t the young people have better things to do than personal service for old white boomers? There’s a whole world out there.
It’s funny, they always say “money doesn’t grow on trees” – but that’s not really true. Money is made of cotton – it grows on bushes, which is a type of tree. Of course, now money is just an entry in a database. Do we really need the boomer’s money?
What actual ASSETS do they have?
Stock in a Fortune 500 company? Are they even paying dividends? But wait, they don’t actually own stock. They own shares in a fund, which owns shares in another fund, that owns stock. But all the Fortune 500 companies are up to their eyeballs in debt, and bondholders get paid before equity holders.
So, the equity isn’t really worth all that much.
Under real capitalism, we would have bankruptcies. The companies would be stripped of their assets, which would be sold to the highest bidder – and the real value is far, far, FAR less than the paper value. “Mark to model” was always a lie, a scam. Boomers are obsolete equipment. Frankly, they may have been more useful if they could farm.
Banned Hipster 
Apparently, Z-Man’s fans are just as economically illiterate as he is:
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=20136#comment-155839
Does this guy have any idea how money is created? It’s created as credit/debt through the financial system. He clearly missed the point of the Tyrone story – that is Z-Man’s “economic logic” not mine. That analogy is exactly the one used by Z-Man to object to UBI.
I’m PRO-DEFLATION – it’s Z-Man that is desperate to re-inflate the bubble, to save his 401k.
The guys who don’t understand that are Vizzini and the Z-Man, who seem to believe that constant money-printing via ‘private-sector’ credit/debt is the same as wealth.
Under what funny-money system is a claim on future earnings that does not even exist yet an asset?
Under the so-called “free market system” that Z-Man and Vizzini support. That is why they want to keep the money-printing inflation going and they are TERRIFIED of DEFAULT AND DEFLATION.
Yes – they are that stupid. For every $1 in mortgage defaults, there were like $1,000 is leverage, derivatives, and default swaps.
Without the financialization, the mortgages would have defaulted, the houses would be resold, and that would be it.
But it wasn’t black people defaulting on their mortgages, it was the leverage and the funny-money magic of calling a “loan” to a poor black guy for an overpriced mini-mansion an “asset” that could then be leveraged 1k times.
Did this guy even READ the point about Venezuela? It’s Z-Man and Vizzini that thinks they can just “print money” via more leverage, more loans, and more bailouts.
The easier and simplest way would be UBI – no debt overhang on direct money.
The guy can’t even read, yet knows a handful of boomer-con slogans, like “Venezuela!”
No, Fredo, it’s YOU and Z-MAN that thinks your so-called “investments” are magic. The reality is all your so-called “assets” are simply non-performing loans.
Which is why the Fed has spent the last 10 years bailing your old boomer-con asses out via printing money.
Remember, these are the people who think they are smarter than everyone else.
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Restaurants empty, parks full.
Cases here are something you hear about, deaths unheard of, unlike the flu which still grabs the occasional soul.
Analysis of what is probably best described as the rat race, but is euphemistically called “the economy” is correct. It is anti-man.
We would be healthier and happier than we have been in a long time if it were substantially rolled back.
Q: And to wonder why anyone would endorse such a system?
A: Human lifespans measured in decades. Only by putting the economy on full throttle would some folks have a chance to live long enough for significant life extension technologies.
I’m talking about the higher ups at monarch and titan of industry level. The clock is ticking on them and they don’t give a care what is needed to buy more time.
Massively extended life, replacement robotic labor, space colonization. What have we to offer as an alternative? “Truth”? “Freedom”? “Righteousness”? Survival of the rest of mankind and its “God”?
Hah! And you can see why this won’t end well.
* by the way kudos for being on target over a span of time which many of your detractors cannot claim likewise
** I also like Paul Ramsey in this panic as an avuncular non threatening figure who would make a great figure head (yes, this is far from over, though many think so because the alt right is over)
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@Afterthought
The “rat race” is caused by “usury” – i.e., chasing returns on money. The amount of GDP growth it would take to actually pay off the private – not public – debt is impossible. The only option is default, which has already led to deflation.
The boomers are dying and we have a smaller population (without immigration) – so OF COURSE we need to contract the economy. We don’t need more houses, we need fewer houses.
We don’t need more commercial real estate – malls are closing everywhere and offices are sitting empty. Not just because of demographics, but also technology (like online shopping, etc.)
These conservative idiots are worried about inflation at a time when the entire economy is deflating faster than the Fed can print money.
What just happened? They have just nationalized the Fed. To prevent default they have “socialized” the entire financial system.
Idiots like ZMan are cheering Trump for inflating the economy and blowing another bubble. Then, these morons whine about inflation and screech about UBI. They claim to be for free markets, yet they praise Trump for instituting more socialism than Barack Hussein Obama ever dreamed of.
They are economic illiterates. How can you even argue with such people?
Frankly, we NEED an economic contraction. But defaults will cause the richest people in NYC to lose their shirts, while regional mini-oligarchs – like the banks in North Carolina – will be able to buy up the assets for pennies on the dollar.
Hence, it won’t happen, because NYC owns the government, and North Carolina does not.
You would think people who call themselves “conservatives” would understand this. A financial default would cause a MASSIVE shift in wealth from the “globalists” in NYC and San Francisco to more regional and more rural businesses.
You would think “conservatives” would welcome such a power shift – but no.
Hence, conservatives are the enemy. More than the Jews – the Jews are outsiders. These conservatives are our people, thus, they are traitors.
I’d rather have an honest enemy than a traitor on the inside.
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Deflation favors the little guy, the cash-under-the-mattress type. The biggest debtors are governments and corporations and it’s them that deflation hits hardest. So inflation, ie. swelling the money supply will always be de facto policy. Hyperinflation will destroy the currency and usher in a regime change, not something that the PTB desire. I’m guessing they’ll try a combo of high inflation and selective default, always with the bias against majority interests. Eventually the System will be brought down by monetary failure, but that’s potentially generations away.
The Fed will print up as much money as necessary to refloat financial assets and save the banks. I expect to see a rise in real stuff later this year as commodities start to rise after this deflation scare. Wages to stagnate, cost of living to soar, a return to the seventies but now with zombies thrown in for good measure.
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