Economic Shenanigans / Market Crisis

[Hooahguy]

This is the thing I worry the most about personally. I had two final interviews for new jobs indefinitely postponed and I am scheduled to leave my current job at the end of April (contracted position). So I really hope things calm down by then because while I have savings, I dont have much. Couple that with DC getting completely screwed when it comes to the Senate stimulus bill due to it being classified as a territory and not a state. The average amount that states are getting per resident is a bit over $2,000 while DC is getting about $700, despite paying more in federal taxes than many other states. Really shameful, and I hope that the House can fix this.

[Tuuvi]

I'm worried about the personal effects of this crisis too. After years of working full time and taking night classes I'm finally going to graduate with my Associate's at the end of this semester and I was planning on moving to a new city at the end of this year so I could get my Bachelor's at a school that has an Anthropology major. I think my current job is secure as long as it doesn't completely go out of business, but I don't know how I will be able to make the move if the economy is in recession and I can't find a job in the new city.

[Shaka_Khan]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dumped-mi...160839647.html

Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic

David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery
April 13, 2020, 1:08 AM GMT+9

In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil.

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell.

The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses.

The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and Meals on Wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand. But there is only so much perishable food that charities with limited numbers of refrigerators and volunteers can absorb.

And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear....

[edyzmedieval]

A significant economic rethink is required after this period because it's clearly a significant problem when we have a worldwide disruption leading to a complete economic crash.

Furthermore, the amount of money being printed right now is frightening. I really really hope this will not lead to significant inflation.

[Montmorency]

A significant economic rethink is required after this period because it's clearly a significant problem when we have a worldwide disruption leading to a complete economic crash.

Furthermore, the amount of money being printed right now is frightening. I really really hope this will not lead to significant inflation.

Don't both recessions and pandemics typically bring deflationary pressures? When has austerity not been an economically and socially-damaging mistake?

Print away.

[Hooahguy]

I think everyone can expect that the second this is over conservatives will be clamoring for austerity, having learned absolutely nothing from 2008.

[a completely inoffensive name]

A significant economic rethink is required after this period because it's clearly a significant problem when we have a worldwide disruption leading to a complete economic crash.

Furthermore, the amount of money being printed right now is frightening. I really really hope this will not lead to significant inflation.

When was the last time inflation was above 5%? How many times in the past 40 years was it above 5%?

I think everyone can expect that the second this is over conservatives will be clamoring for austerity, having learned absolutely nothing from 2008.

Purpose in pain. Pleasure in profit.

[a completely inoffensive name]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dumped-mi...160839647.html

The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.
- The Grapes of Wrath