Category Archives: Pandemic

Great! If COVID-19 Doesn’t Get Me, Perhaps the Mercury Will: Trump EPA Rejects Justification for Pollution Rule

EPA rejects previous cost benefit analysis of mercury rule; meanwhile power industry has spent to comply with rule and opposes backsliding.

Tend Your Own Garden: Personal Food Security During the Age of COVID-19

Worries about food security have led me to send vegetable plants to Mom and a sister; this is a good year to plant a victory garden.

Wolf Richter: Coronavirus Drives Barrage of New Lobbying Activity

Follow the money – Congressional lobbying activity and who wins and who loses from coronavirus relief.

Oil, Gas, Petrochemical Financial Woes Predate Pandemic — And Will Continue After, Despite Bailouts, Report Finds

Problems with the oil, gas, and petrchemical industries predate the COVID-19 pandemic – and now will be even more difficult to rseolve.

How COVID-19 Showed America’s Dependence on Blue-Collar Workers

The outbreak of “hero” talk is a long-overdue admission that blue-collar workers are the backbone of the US economy. Time to pay them more.

Taleb Questions CalPERS Ben Meng’s Competence and Honesty in Defending Missed $1 Billion Hedge Gain; Taleb Estimates CalPERS Net Loss on Meng’s “Alternative Mitigation” Over Two Years at $19 Billion

Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls out one of CalPERS CIO Ben Meng’s Big Lies, and unearths an even bigger one.

A Payments Holiday is More Realistic Than You Think

It may be simpler to enact a payments holiday than to try to get money to the hands of individuals who desperately need it.

DemocracyWatch: Global Pandemic Power Grabs

Yet another pandemic downside….

Lockdown Rebelliousness: Denying that Coronavirus Is in Charge

The supposed irresistable force of the economy is losing out to the immovable object of the coronavirus.

Taleb: The Only Man Who Has A Clue

A recap of what Taleb and his fellow complex systems analysts have been saying about coronavirus. Not pretty.

The New Fault Lines in a Post-Globalized World

Coronavirus is smashing up the economic and political order. What sort of world comes next?

“Something Has Gone Wrong”: UK Government, Banks Screw Up Coronavirus Loans, Small Firms Near Collapse. Better Results in Other Countries

Quelle surprise! Big banks in the UK don’t like making small business loans, especially not at 1.5%.

The Really Really Yucky Airlines Bailout

The airlines are at the trough. It’s not quite as unseemly as the 2008 bank bailouts, but that’s an awfully low bar.