Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Health, War Commentary

It Begins

4 Comments

Germany just sent a £130B bill for ‘coronavirus damages’ – sparks fury in Beijing.

[Monday-morning update]

I don’t know if that original story is valid, but apparently Israel and U.S. law firms are suing the CCP for trillions. Even if they have no mechanism to force payment, this will certainly diminish China in the eyes of the world, and it could provide a legitimate excuse for defaulting on the money we owe them.

Business, Economics, Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Great Depression

The media continues to peddle BS history about it (unfortunately, because it was what they were taught in government schools).

It was sad to see Emily Compagno the other day on The Five say that FDR was elected to deal with Hoover’s “inaction.” So even conservatives believe this nonsense.

Hoover’s policies were disastrous, but they were the very opposite of inaction, and he was the furthest thing from laissez faire. If Coolidge had had a third term, likely the economy would have recovered within a year. Hoover created the depressions, but FDR made it great.

[Update a few minutes later]

Our garbage media.

[Update a while later]

A review of Amity Schlaes’s new book on how poverty won the war on poverty, including some of the history of the Depression.

[Late-morning update]

In reading that history, I had not known that Walter Reuther had sponsored the Port Huron Statement (I lived sixty miles west, in Flint) at the time. It reminded me of a post I wrote early in my blogging career, almost two decades ago now (where did the years go?) about my brief period as a junior-high campus radical.

Business, Health, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Remdesivir

14 Comments

…seems to be at least somewhat effective.

If we can find what works for treatment, and only isolate the most vulnerable, that’s the best path forward to re-open the economy in the absence of a vaccine.

[Update a while later]

Time to dump epidemic models? All models are wrong, some are useful, but it’s not clear that these have been, though they’ve certainly been used to implement policies that a lot of people wanted to implement before the pandemic.

[Bumped]