View previous topic :: View next topic |
Author |
Message |
ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013 Posts: 14550
Back to top |
|
ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 11148
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 4:41 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
I think a lot of borderline operations in a lot of industries and business categories aren't going to make it to the other side. It's going to get worse -- maybe a lot worse -- before it gets better.
_________________ Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
|
|
linkster
Joined: 27 Jul 2012 Posts: 5423
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 6:18 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
Any economy that is based on corporations being able to borrow at zero rates in order to buy their own shares and enrich their corporate executives is doomed.
If they had put some of that money away they wouldn't be begging for welfare from the taxpayers but they counted on us bailing them out.
I say let a few of these too-big-to-fail corps go under. These folks are all "free market capitalists" until the shit hits the fan. Then they all become socialists.
|
|
ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013 Posts: 14550
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 6:19 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
ClayK wrote: |
I think a lot of borderline operations in a lot of industries and business categories aren't going to make it to the other side. It's going to get worse -- maybe a lot worse -- before it gets better. |
I have heard projections here in the DC area that 25% of restaurants will not reopen. That hits not only restaurant owners, but chefs, bartenders, waiters, kitchen help, landlords, food suppliers, etc. Enormous ripple effects.
I was talking to my dentist who has a large two-office practice with four dentists who was busy filling out paperwork for a loan under the stimulous package and negotiating deals with his landlords. But of course those commercial landlords owe property owners who owe mortgage holders who owe bondholders and on down the line. It's never simple.
|
|
ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013 Posts: 14550
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 6:22 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
linkster wrote: |
Any economy that is based on corporations being able to borrow at zero rates in order to buy their own shares and enrich their corporate executives is doomed.
If they had put some of that money away they wouldn't be begging for welfare from the taxpayers but they counted on us bailing them out.
I say let a few of these too-big-to-fail corps go under. These folks are all "free market capitalists" until the shit hits the fan. Then they all become socialists. |
That's really not the issue at all. It's small thinly capitalized businesses with no access to credit that will not make it.
Like restaurants, gyms, flower shops, etc.
|
|
linkster
Joined: 27 Jul 2012 Posts: 5423
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 6:54 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
I would guess that in normal times at least 25% of all restaurants fail in their 1st year. And 90% of all businesses fail, or so I've read. The US isn't going to fall because restaurants and beauty parlors are going under.
The level of debt in this country has been a bomb waiting for a match to light it off. If it wasn't a virus it would have been something else. Anyone who thinks a viable economy can exist when the fed just creates unlimited money from thin air and lends it out at zero rates is now learning the truth. This crisis started in 2008 and the fed has kept the party going for 12 years through massive debt. The US stopped making things when our industry was allowed to move their factories to countries that that don't have any annoying labor or environmental laws.
|
|
linkster
Joined: 27 Jul 2012 Posts: 5423
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 7:04 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
Quote: |
It's small thinly capitalized businesses with no access to credit that will not make it. |
Those businesses usually fail.
|
|
pilight
Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 66912 Location: Where the action is
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 7:20 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
Very few businesses have sufficient reserves to shut down for months at a time
_________________ I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home
|
|
ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013 Posts: 14550
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 7:32 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
pilight wrote: |
Very few businesses have sufficient reserves to shut down for months at a time |
But most substantial businesses aren't "shut down". It's primarily small service businesses and the hospitality industry.
Microsoft and Intel and 3M aren't "shut down". Banks and insurance companies aren't "shut down". Internet sellers aren't "shut down".
And small businesses churn, but they don't all fail at the same time on this scale leaving this many people unemployed.
|
|
pilight
Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 66912 Location: Where the action is
Back to top |
Posted: 04/07/20 7:46 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
ArtBest23 wrote: |
pilight wrote: |
Very few businesses have sufficient reserves to shut down for months at a time |
But most substantial businesses aren't "shut down". It's primarily small service businesses and the hospitality industry.
Microsoft and Intel and 3M aren't "shut down". Banks and insurance companies aren't "shut down". Internet sellers aren't "shut down".
And small businesses churn, but they don't all fail at the same time on this scale leaving this many people unemployed. |
If we try to shelter in place another month, the unemployment numbers will skyrocket. The "substantial businesses" will feel it because people won't have money to spend, which means they'll lay people off, which digs the hole deeper. We can't put a hold on rents and mortgages forever, that probably won't make it into May, which is going to leave a lot of people choosing between having a roof over their head or eating.
_________________ I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home
|
|
PUmatty
Joined: 10 Nov 2004 Posts: 16358 Location: Chicago
Back to top |
Posted: 04/08/20 9:35 am ::: Re: We're going to lose some entire universities, not just |
Reply |
|
It will be worse for colleges when state budgets shrink. Most aren't funding higher ed at anything close to where they were before 2008, but, in many states, higher ed will be the thing that is most significantly cut during a new budget crisis. I would expect the same to be true of state financial aid programs, especially in Republican-controlled states.
|
|
FrozenLVFan
Joined: 08 Jul 2014 Posts: 3515
Back to top |
Posted: 04/08/20 10:35 am ::: |
Reply |
|
Whether the business is large or small, some of them were so marginally successful that we shouldn't be bailing them out. The money should go towards retraining their employees, particularly anyone who wants to go into nursing or respiratory therapy, etc. Not only are we losing people in those fields to the pandemic, I'd bet a lot of them will be wanting to get out when this is over, and we'll be even more vulnerable the next time. Colleges that successfully revamp their curricula may survive as well. JMO.
|
|
ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013 Posts: 14550
Back to top |
Posted: 04/08/20 2:06 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
FrozenLVFan wrote: |
Whether the business is large or small, some of them were so marginally successful that we shouldn't be bailing them out. The money should go towards retraining their employees, particularly anyone who wants to go into nursing or respiratory therapy, etc. Not only are we losing people in those fields to the pandemic, I'd bet a lot of them will be wanting to get out when this is over, and we'll be even more vulnerable the next time. Colleges that successfully revamp their curricula may survive as well. JMO. |
Fifteen years ago I would have agreed with your first sentence. But the 2008 TARP bailouts of GM and Chrysler (neither of whom seemed to me at the time "worthy" of bailouts) worked out well enough that I think I'm far more willing to try today. The program saved hundreds of thousands of jobs at those companies, suppliers and communities, and even made a profit for the Treasury in the end.
We've spent gazillions on "retraining" for various reasons over many decades, and it never really seems to work out.
|
|
ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005 Posts: 11148
Back to top |
Posted: 04/08/20 4:16 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
ArtBest23 wrote: |
FrozenLVFan wrote: |
Whether the business is large or small, some of them were so marginally successful that we shouldn't be bailing them out. The money should go towards retraining their employees, particularly anyone who wants to go into nursing or respiratory therapy, etc. Not only are we losing people in those fields to the pandemic, I'd bet a lot of them will be wanting to get out when this is over, and we'll be even more vulnerable the next time. Colleges that successfully revamp their curricula may survive as well. JMO. |
Fifteen years ago I would have agreed with your first sentence. But the 2008 TARP bailouts of GM and Chrysler (neither of whom seemed to me at the time "worthy" of bailouts) worked out well enough that I think I'm far more willing to try today. The program saved hundreds of thousands of jobs at those companies, suppliers and communities, and even made a profit for the Treasury in the end.
We've spent gazillions on "retraining" for various reasons over many decades, and it never really seems to work out. |
"Retraining" seems like a fantasy to me, sort of like "vocational education."
It takes a long time to become a nurse, for example, and requires some aptitude and some specific personality traits. (I would not be good at that job.)
Let's say, in a true fantasy, that all of a sudden there was a need for many more journalists and there was a sudden dropoff in the need for dental hygienists (don't ask me why that popped into my head). Both are skilled labor, but training dental hygienists to be journalists, or vice versa, would take a lot of time and the success rate would not be that high.
_________________ Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
|
|
|
|