Grand total foreign holdings of US Treasury securities in May, 2000-2019

Demand slowed from 2013 as stocks once again got a bid (permanent adoption of Bush tax cuts by Obama and Boehner removed uncertainty), but a flight to safety reappeared in 2019 and 2020. Total was still $6.8 trillion in Mar 2020 even after a big drop from Feb amid currency turmoil, the latest report.

The bid for bonds shows the global economy was already weak last year.

The only thing Trump has accomplished at "warp speed" is ruining the US economy because he ignored a deadly virus until it was too late

Trump, the supposed savior of US manufacturing, has presided over the utter collapse of manufacturing capacity utilization to a level in April 2020 never experienced in the post-war. The president could lawfully and easily order this unused capacity to make masks which would in fact protect everyone, and other PPE for hospital workers and care-givers to protect our front line workers, but he has not. Were he serious about re-opening the country, he would have made this JOB 2 on Feb 1, after JOB 1, which was hard-stopping all passenger air travel, the primary vector for the pandemic. Trump didn't do JOB 1, either.

Industrial production generally has imploded to levels never seen since 1919. The so-called America first president has done nothing in three years to make America strong enough to prevent this from happening. Remember Ann Coulter said long ago already that Trump was a lazy ignoramus. 

Motor vehicle production annualized has tanked 11 million units in just two months to fewer than 72,000 annualized. That's the typical monthly sales figure for a single popular car. 

Oh, I've forgotten unemployment, which also is unprecedented, though understated, at 14.7%. It's actually closer to 20%. North of 33 million not-seasonally-adjusted have made first time claims for unemployment from March 19th inclusive.

Trump's numbers are truly great, as in "you great oaf!"

Yes the government has "bailed out" the workers and the businesses, but with a Rube Goldberg machine which has been completely unfair in its results, picking winners by virtue of their established access to bankers or savvy state systems of unemployment administration. Bank or live somewhere not up to speed? Dats tuff, Anwar. You're a loser anyway.

Meanwhile coronavirus infections are set to soar again because our president is throwing a tantrum to open the country but hasn't made it safe to do so. He's had two months for that but has produced BUPKIS. If you want people to go back to work, they need masks. Where are the masks? Oh well, you were on your last legs anyway.

How anyone can vote to re-elect this level of horrific incompetence and reptilian danger is beyond me.

Beyond parody: Delusional Rush Limbaugh says red states are paying for all this emergency spending

Here:

"The red states are gonna create capital and money to transfer to pay these people their stupid welfare costs (and whatever else they’re using to bleed this country dry), while their population sits home, doesn’t work, waits for the federal check to show up — and they sit around and they trash the supposedly reckless red states. I cannot tell you how this irritates me".

No one is "paying" for anything. It's all borrowed. And Limbaugh's personal portfolio is probably buying a bunch of it, as is every portfolio out there, from individual investors to institutional, to sovereigns, etc. The entire world craves the safety and security of US Treasury securities and can hardly get enough of them, but Limbaugh thinks Republican states are carrying the whole world on their shoulders.

Even as Limbaugh was yammering away spouting stupid, 10-year Treasury securities were flying out the door at record low rates at auction:

"The U.S. Treasury held an auction for $32 billion of 10-year notes in Tuesday afternoon, selling them at a record low yield of 0.70%". 

Federal debt has soared from $23.5 trillion on March 16th to $25.1 trillion on May 11th, and it'll keep soaring.

The Federal Reserve Bank's balance sheet has soared from $4.1 trillion on February 26th to $6.7 trillion on May 6th, and it will keep soaring.

And they are just getting started:

"The central bank had previously balked at direct aid to nonfinancial businesses, but is set to finance trillions in relief across nearly every sector of the economy amid a historic downturn".

Meanwhile Federal Reserve lending operations at ultra-low rates continue to keep businesses alive which should have died long ago. They were doing it before Trump came along, did it with Trump's assent after his election, and will keep doing it.

The Trump administration has signed off on this gargantuan repudiation of free market capitalism, but Rush Limbaugh thinks it's all paid for by Joe Sixpack.

Trump marks the end of Republicanism's "fiscal conservative" brand for at least a generation, and that's what really irritates Rush Limbaugh. He's hitched his wagon to a wayward horse and now it's in the ditch along with the rest of the country.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Don't catch a "cold" down there in that puddle.

We live in a culture of death, which makes it an anti-culture, where a meaningless conservatism has sat still for millions upon millions of abortion deaths, and will sit still now for deaths from COVID-19

USA hits 80,239 COVID-19 deaths, 1,345,307 cases, according to Johns Hopkins data, mortality rate rises to 5.96%

Mr. 15-cases-going-to-zero:

Two months ago, on the morning of March 10, Michigan still had zero cases of SARS-CoV-2

Today, May 10, Michigan has 46,756 cases and 4,526 deaths.

The case fatality rate of 9.68% is the highest in the nation.

In my county of Kent, barely 21% of the cases are Caucasian. By far Hispanic or Latino people have the most infections at over 35%, with African Americans having fewer cases than whites at 19.5%. Asians have fewer than 8% of total infections.

Frankly when I began posting about this in late January after following the news in China quietly for a few weeks prior to that I never imagined we'd be in this situation.

I felt certain America's health care system was too robust to let it happen.

Boy was I wrong. 

15% of those tested in the US have turned up positive so far, and of those 5.9% have died. Mind you, the average flu season in the US sees 8% of the population estimated to have been infected, with just 0.1% dying.

South Korea, on which I had hung my hopes as the proper comparison, has had just 1.6% test positive so far, with just 2.3% dying.

It's infection rate came way down from the 4.7% which obtained in early March because it employed extensive testing, quarantining (using phone apps to track, and gps wrist bracelets where necessary for scofflaws) and contact tracing. In other words, South Korea acted like Big Brother if you are an American libertarian.

South Korea's mortality rate came up dramatically from the 0.6% which obtained in early March, but of course it was still early in the outbreak. Needless to say, America's current rate of death at 5.9% is still 156% higher than South Korea's, despite the massive rise from 0.6%.

Cases in South Korea stubbornly remain below 11,000 in a country of 52 million (.02/million) because it determined to stop the spread.

In the USA we have .4/million and climbing (1900% more) because we are not a serious country.

We are a country filled with and run by childish people whose disregard for the health care system resembles nothing so much as the disobedient child's interminable disregard for a parent who never disciplines it.

Guess what? SARS-CoV-2 is coming for you. The beating will continue until morale improves.

Case positivity rates for SARS-CoV-2 in countries with 1+million tests and in US states with the most tests

Ranked by most tests performed:

USA 15.1%

Germany 6.2%

Italy 8.7%

Spain 10.6%

UK 12.5%

France 12.8%

WHO says epidemic control is predicated on the case positivity rate falling to 10% and lower.

New York 29.8%

California 7.3%

Florida 7.6%
Texas 7.9%
Illinois 18.3%
New Jersey 45.6%
Pennsylvania 20.5%
Michigan 16.6%
Georgia 13.8%
Colorado 19.3%

It's the libertarian crazies among us who are clueless and spoiled, not the cooks, servers and dishwashers

"In other words, if they’re farming or working in a mine, they’re doing so by choice. This should be remembered the next time some spoiled or clueless American politician, economic thinker or worker yearns for a return of the jobs of the past. ... Increased devastation in the U.S. born of lockdowns will be cruel, and if not arrested through a cessation of lockdowns, will reduce Americans to work they previously wouldn’t have been caught dead doing".

-- John Tamny

How does 200,000 COVID-19 deaths by the 4th of July sound to you?

Trump did not keep us safe.

Trump will never understand how he could have stopped this outcome even after failing repeatedly from Feb 1.  Which means we're in for much worse after July 4th unless someone gets through to him.

Sad.

Chart.

Michigan falls to fourth for COVID-19 deaths, replaced in third by Massachusetts

This is the Reuters data.

NY Times is now behind a registration/pay wall.

The case mortality rate for the US has climbed to 5.96%.

New York's is 7.788%.

New Jersey's is 6.48%.

Massachusetts' is 6.13%.

Michigan's is 9.43% (worst in the nation).

USA hits 70,115 COVID-19 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data just six days after hitting 60,000, mortality rate rises to 5.88%

Donald Trump's 15-cases-going-to-zero now total:

1,192,119

COVID-19 in Australia: How did they succeed?

COVID-19 in Australia

cases 6801

deaths 95

case-fatality rate 1.4%

tests 633,107

test-case rate 1.07%

WHO indicates that it is essential to get the test-case rate below 10% in order to control any epidemic. Australia's rate of 1.07% shows that they've done that admirably well. By contrast, the USA's rate is still in the double digits at 16.5%. America didn't test for weeks and weeks at the critical beginning of the pandemic because of a faulty test, and still isn't testing nearly enough. Losing that early jump on the outbreak has put America way behind.

Australia has already tested 2.5% of its population. The US is still at 2.1%.

But other things need to be done, too, to control the virus and Australia has done them, whereas America looks ready to give up on most of them:

Australia’s response to the pandemic has largely centred on shutting its borders, limiting public gatherings and conducting large-scale testing and contact tracing.

Travelling overseas is banned, foreigners aren’t allowed to enter the country, and Australians who return from other countries are kept in mandatory quarantine at specially designated hotels for two weeks.

Social gatherings of more than two people are also forbidden and leaving the house is permitted only for essential reasons like buying food and exercising. ...

When someone tests positive, their close contacts are tracked down and ordered to self-isolate for two weeks.

The main reason for Australia’s success is probably its strict travel restrictions, says Adam Kamradt-Scott at the University of Sydney. About 70 per cent of Australians who have tested positive for covid-19 picked it up while they were overseas, making it important to stem this flow, he says, and being an island nation has made it easier for Australia to rapidly shut its borders.

Social distancing, testing and contact tracing have added to the success of travel bans, says Kamradt-Scott. Plus, there may be cultural factors that have limited the spread of the virus, like the fact that most Australians choose to live in separate dwellings rather than apartment buildings and older people who require care tend to live in care homes rather than with their families, he says.

Unlike many other countries, Australia has kept schools open, but they don’t appear to have been drivers of virus spread so far, says Kathryn Snow at the University of Melbourne.

Despite these successes, Australia has also committed some major blunders. For example, it allowed 2700 passengers to disembark from the Ruby Princess cruise ship on 19 March, even though many were showing covid-19-like symptoms. More than 600 cases have now been linked back to the ship. Some Australians have also ignored social distancing recommendations and crammed into beaches and parks. 

Australia has taken a big hit to GDP just like the US because it basically shut down business to help cope with the spread.

But Australia is in much better shape than we are in America because it is controlling the virus whereas in America the virus is still controlling us.

South Korea today has 0.0002 confirmed coronavirus cases per million population, America has 0.0033, 16.5x as many

South Korea's first coronavirus infection was reported on the same day as America's first infection, but South Korea practiced strict quarantine of infected people, contact tracing, widespread testing, mask-wearing and social distancing, without locking down its economy.

America did only the social distancing part after it was already too late, and then a hodge-podge of lockdowns with that.

As a result, South Korea has almost 11,000 confirmed cases today, but America has almost 1.1 million, 100x as many.

As for deaths, South Korea has 0.0000047 per million, the US 0.0001935 per million, 41x as many.

Year over year in 1Q2020, South Korean GDP actually grew by 1.3% vs. just 0.3% for GDP in the United States (BEA Table 6), 4.3x better.

South Korea has had far fewer cases of the disease, far fewer deaths and a much better economic outcome than in the United States because it wisely understood that what it had to do wasn't an existential threat to liberty.

We're not going to have 100,000 dead of COVID-19 in the US "by the end of summer": It'll be by the end of May

Here's the latest US data from The Straits Times in Singapore:

+2,810 new cases

1,067,382 confirmed cases

147,480 recovered

61,849 deaths

The mortality rate is 5.79%.

The active cases is 858,053.

So, an additional 49,681 deaths within the next four weeks or so, or about 1,602 per day for the 31 days of May.

That's 111,530 total deaths by then.

And after that, who knows?

But probably a lot more deaths than 111,530 because our fools insist on opening up the country instead of quarantining the infected and tracing their contacts and testing, testing, testing.

It's the only way.

And Americans need N95 masks by the billions to get back to anything like normal work and school.

USA hits 60,853 COVID-19 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data, mortality rate rises to 5.86%

That's double what flu kills on an average basis in one season, but in just three months. The mortality rate is nearly 59x worse than for flu, and that but for stay-at-home orders.

Donald Trump's 15-cases-going-to-zero now total:

Sad to listen to Mark Steyn give know-nothings the golden EIB microphone today to blanket the country with bilge

We had a lawyer call in from Michigan, where I live, to complain about the governor's tyranny, failing to mention the 1905 Supreme Court precedent her lawyer cites which permits her actions to protect the citizenry. The lawyer must have gone to the same school as convicted Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Then we had a caller from Georgia tell us coronavirus infections are much more widespread according to results from several states using antibody tests, never mentioning that all of these antibody tests are unreliable and NONE of them are approved by the FDA.

That caller also said everything was improving in Sweden when the truth is quite the opposite. Sweden embarked on herd immunity early and is now reaping the whirlwind with 2,355 deaths and a mortality rate of 12%, more than twice that of the United States.

But yeah, let Georgia be Sweden.

I guess the Rush Limbaugh supporters in Georgia must know coronavirus will ravage the black enclaves of Atlanta, decreasing the surplus population.

Massachusetts' coronavirus deaths are catching up to Michigan's deaths

How the US acquired so much gold in the first place

Immediately following passage of the [Gold Reserve] Act [of January 30, 1934], the President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the statutory price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. This price change incentivized gold miners globally to expand production and foreigners to export their gold to the United States, while simultaneously by devaluing the U.S. dollar it reduced deflation. The increase in gold reserves due to the price change resulted in a large accumulation of gold in the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, much of which was stored in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The increase in gold reserves increased the money supply, lowering real interest rates which in turn increased investment in durable goods.

Coronavirus data update for Sun Apr 26, 2020

Johns Hopkins reports right now 5,184,635 tests completed in the US with 940,797 confirmed cases of infection.

That's an infection rate of 18.1%, after stay-at-home has been observed more or less nationwide since mid-March. Average flu infection in the US, without stay-at-home, is 8%. So imagine how bad this could have been, and still might be.

Reports of infection rates as high as 31.5% in Chelsea, MA, are problematic. These are antibody tests, and so far have high false positive rates, meaning all the positives could be false, test populations which are much too small, and test populations which are not representative. People on the streets right now and people in grocery stores right now are not representative of the whole population. What's more, the antibodies detected by these tests could well be for non-COVID-19 coronaviruses, which means you've learned nothing about exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

There have been 54,001 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data right now, for a mortality rate of 5.74%.

Flu mortality averages 0.1%.

Therefore we are dealing with something at least 2.3 times more infectious than flu, and 57 times more deadly.

Global data indicates as of 0730 hours a mortality rate of 6.98%. Test data is too uneven globally to draw firm general conclusions. Mortality data from places like Iran at 6.31%, China at 5.53% and Russia at 0.92% just looks like lies in comparison to open, free societies, as follows.

The European big five, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK have an average mortality rate of 11%, 1.9 times worse than for the US. Germany remains a standout with mortality of only 3.75%, however, which is 35% lower than in the US. Belgium has the most liberal counts of deaths, and so a very high mortality rate of 15.38%.

Norway is at 2.68%, Sweden 12.06% (oops, they followed herd immunity, and are now paying the price), Finland 4.15%, and Denmark 4.84%.

Switzerland 5.56% and Austria 3.56% really stand out relative to Hungary at 10.88%.

Canada reports in at 5.6% with Mexico at 9.43%.

Japan and South Korea come in at 2.72% and 2.26% respectively.

It's obvious to me right now that if America wants to return to some sense of normalcy after this debacle has been allowed to reach the stage that it has, the only plausible way forward is to ramp up testing for the disease massively, and provide masks to the general population which protect it while in public. Instead our president and lawmakers have been busy with other things, like bailing out businesses. They are not serious people, anymore than the people they represent, a minority of which is clamoring for herd immunity, and therefore massive casualties.

The pro-life anti-abortion party is infected with a pro-death coronavirus party. The real division in the Republican Party between the actual conservatives and the libertarian ideologues has been laid bare by SARS-CoV-2. The former want to save you, as do many liberals. The latter believe only in survival of the fittest.  

The idea that immunity will be built up for this disease in the US population so that this will be over once and for all strikes me as completely speculative at this point.

America has to prepare to live with this disease indefinitely.  

More winning from Trump: USA tops for coronavirus deaths and first to reach 50,000, twice as many as nearest competitor Italy

Whoopee!