The S&P 500 closed tonight at 2,488.65

That's down only 23% year to date.

Pretty remarkable, that. I mean, look at these first time claims for unemployment over the last two weeks: 8.7 million not-seasonally-adjusted, 9.9 million seasonally-adjusted.

The market in the past has often risen on bad jobs numbers, but this is ridiculous. It's a total disconnect. These are apocalyptic numbers, yet the market is holding on just 23% down.

There's trillion$ of aid in the pipeline to bail out businesses and individuals, but how long can that last? And to what effect? At some point the laws of supply and demand and inflation will have their say, and it isn't going to be pretty, especially if a 4th bill is passed in the Congress, which now seems likely. Had economics ever been susceptible of replacement by passing bills, we would have done it long ago and enjoyed prosperity without work all this time!

Yeah, right.  

The coronavirus infection is a momentous turning point for America. 

Coronavirus in Wuhan is like unemployment in the US

If you're not counted, you're not dead.

The death yesterday of British conservative Roger Scruton reminds us why conservatism in America is such a fraught enterprise

Scruton was what American conservative and fellow Burkean Russell Kirk might have styled a conservative of enjoyment, a person wedded to the vicissitudes of a local history come what may, with all the comforts, misfortunes, oddities and delights bound up in it, to whom it would never occur to be separated from it.

To be sure many Americans have been and still are people of such places, lovers of their new! ancestral homes, their communities, their churches and all the other institutions which over time they have come to make and make their own. This has been true especially in rural America, the bastion of Republicanism.

But this has always been in conflict with the idea and the reality of immigrant and industrial America, whose people are traitors to their birthplaces, homes and communities not just whence they came, but also here. Coincident with modernity's forces, these Americans willingly and happily move frequently for employment and new experiences, and abandon old places, old laws, old books, old boots and old friends whenever the winds of change blow strong enough in whatever direction. The great problem now is most never even bother to learn the old ways before they abandon them.

These libertarians now have the upper hand in America, making a sorry spectacle of the cause once known as conservatism. Most know nothing of what conservatism even means. Reading Scruton could teach them, but they would recoil in horror.

 

Fake jobs boom: Core working age employment in 2019 finally and just barely overcame the average level from 2007

Up just 0.53% after 12 years.