Re: Coronavirus
 

There’s no clear definition of “vulnerable” for the virus. Yes, there are higher at risk groups but there are also those outwith having severe health impacts, and ultimately deaths.

Shutting down the economy can easily be sustained, repeated and enforced if that’s the most cost effective way of dealing with the virus.

You can continue to stand by statements all you like however when they are flawed and against all known evidence then it simply discredits your arguments.

Again based on the flawed belief that human behaviour returns to normal or that businesses can survive on reduced demand in the economy. For many they cannot - and when they scale back and put people on the dole the outcome is inevitable. An entrenched long term recession that will be harder to get out of and cost the public purse more in the long run.

Unless the Government intends to stimulate demand in the economy - but that goes against your ideology and defeats your original intent which is to keep the state out of it.

How would the numbers be lower by “protecting the vulnerable”. We protected the vulnerable, and everyone else while we were at it, and still had devastating figures.

It’s a flawed logic, ignores reality and distracts from the steps that we, and all other countries, must take if there’s to be any meaningful return to normal for the foreseeable future.

---------- Post added at 12:50 ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 ----------

Which is why elimination should have been the obvious choice. While it’s a high short term cost, it has the greatest long term gains.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Who told you?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Can't say I'm too sympathetic with those who are simply scared. I do understand those who are vulnerable or related to someone who is or works in a "high risk" capacity. By now people should have a better understanding of risks and should be able to "work" within the frameworks in place.

It's all a hard thing to work out and I'm glad I don't have to make the choices needed at national levels. They can't look at individual cases and have to balance totals dead, load on services, cost to economy, reaction of the public. Look at the music festival in France - no social distancing, no masks regardless of what the law may be saying. If the public doesn't want to comply in a large enough way then it doesn't matter much what rules you bring in. Are there things to be learnt - certainly, can we change the past - nope? So rather than simply criticising we need all parties to work together so future responses are better. Learn from other nations successes and failures, work out what successes would work here.

Germany have "locked down" a tower block at centre of a flareup. It's this sort of response that seems sensible once some general control is present, yes the virus is still present but if there is a way to control such incidents we are able to relax things in other areas.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Just had a chat with my bro-in-law, who is a research SVP for a large* biosimilars company in the USA - they are, and I quote No matter what Governments are saying, he says most of the Pharma and biosimilar companies are expecting the 2nd wave September/October, and are planning for that - it’s not just following the science, it’s following the money behind the science.

The company he works for has already started human testing of an experimental Covid-19 antibody cocktail designed as a treatment for the disease, and they should know within a month whether the treatment is effective.



*market cap of $70 billion

Re: Coronavirus
 

You know, I had a fantastic JFman holiday, you have the auspicious accolade of being the only person I have used the ignore function on in my 17 year tenure to this site ( and I’m pretty sure it’s longer than that including previous incarnations)

So I take you off ignore and this is the first thing I read.

Complete bollocks.

Have you read the story on Sky news Today that earlier on In the pandemic the government couldn’t sell their bonds?

The money markets are just like banks, they look at your ability to pay, and any country that has no economy, no tax, or much reduced, tax income, and is shelling out free money to it’s citizens by the billion, would look like a tramp asking for a mortgage.

Anyway, when are you an Old Boy going to stop fooling yourselves and get a room already?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Feel free to continue to ignore reality as you wish, however you cannot simply be offensive and dismiss the post as “complete bollocks” without any evidence whatsoever.

Another subscriber to the fallacy that Government budgets are somehow equivalent to household budgets. You do realise that this money doesn’t physically exist - there’s no pot of gold you can walk into the Bank of England and claim? It’s created and introduced into the economy, and just as easily rremoved, by the touch of a button on spreadsheets.

You have ignored the important role of Central Banks in increasing money supply and underwriting the Government position as a lender of last resort. I can’t meaningfully say any more than that and if you want to dismiss that as “complete bollocks” instead of engage with the subject then I can’t help you.

By simplistic analogy that’s like someone in the pub saying they can’t afford a round because they’ve got a fiver in their pocket forgetting they’ve got their bank card in their pocket and there’s a cash machine outside.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I’ll keep you off ignore for as long as I can stand it.

1. Governments raise capital by selling government bonds.

2. Investors buy the bonds expecting a return on their investment.

3. Governments need an income from taxation to repay those bonds.

4 in order to have an income from taxation they need to have a functioning economy with individuals and companies paying tax on the money they earn.

5. Printing money, quantitative easing, is an option available to central banks to inject into the economy or use to buy government bonds as a Lender of last resort.

6. Printing money can* cause inflation. * not always, in a global recession Like 2008 it is unlikely, however this isn’t 2008, and there is no knowing yet what the global reaction to this will be if we’re happily printing bank notes like confetti and no else is...............

7. Inflation can affect the value of Government bonds Making them less attractive and forcing the government to offer higher interest rates.

8. Blah blah hyper- inflation, currency devaluation and death.

Here are some simple explanations

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6...rinting-money/

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/8...and-inflation/

Your belief that Money is something intangible and can just be created without consequence is bizarre.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Nobody said “without consequence”. You are putting words into my mouth and have shifted the goalposts to a different point from that which you made originally which was summarised by “complete bollocks”.

You’ve at least acknowledged the role of Central Banks and that there are other ways of the Government raising money from the “money markets” and that in 2008 this was successful at increasing money supply WITHOUT causing the Venezuelan style hyper inflation that’s a cheap, lazy and ignorant dig at a reasonable macroeconomic policy.

Thanks for sharing with me some basic economics websites. I think you’ll probably find them useful reading given how much your knowledge has developed in a mere one hour and seven minutes I think you could grasp this economics lark fully within a couple of weeks if you dropped your ideological barrier at the state having a role in anything.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Oh no, I totally standby the Complete Bollocks statement whole heartedly.

OK, you didn’t put a time frame - so just how long can a shutdown of the economy be “easily” sustained?

Given that we’ve done it for three months and already predictions are that will cost £337B

Sorry I mis-interpreted “easily”, so you admit there will be consequences, potentially very harsh consequences that won’t be so Easy for people in the future.

Well I certainly think you needed them.

As you seem to be unable to get over the very simple premise that borrowed money need to be repaid, eventually.

Re: Coronavirus
 

What is "flawed" about the statement :confused:

Its most certainly too early to be making comparisons.
There is already evidence they are likely to be second waves.
Countries most certainly do count differently, unless you can prove otherwise.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Considering we didn’t fully pay off the debt to free slaves until 2015 it’s important to remember Government borrowing in context. We are already £2 trillion in debt, and nobody regrets the glory days of cheap council houses and selling off nationalised industry on the cheap. Nor is there any clamour to reform the tax system in order to repay that debt. The Government will always be in debt.

You are under the false belief that we won’t have a recession either way, with a long and protracted one costing far more in the long run and that a normal economy is an option on the table. That’s absolutely fanciful, or to use your terminology “complete bollocks”.

Under one scenario the Government has control, can protect the “normal” economy and under the other it does not.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Do you have a link for that?

It's OK I've found it.

Re: Coronavirus
 

How those second waves affect each country remains to be seen, so it’s speculative on Old Boys part to assume this ends up the same way for everyone, regardless of what measures or mechanisms they put on place. While countries are counting differently there will always be the excess deaths figures as an indicator.

I suspect you will disagree, so I’ll make that my last post on that for now so as to not go in circles as I’m sure we’ve already disagreed on it, probably more than once.

Re: Coronavirus
 

That's good. I'm looking to replace all my kitchen appliances anyway.

---------- Post added at 21:23 ---------- Previous post was at 21:21 ----------

They say that printing more money pushes up inflation, but I doubt that will be a problem for some time to come. I think that quantitative easing is a form of this.