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Just weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover assured the country that things were already “back to normal,” Liaquat Ahamed writes in Lords of Finance World Of Finance |
Five months later, in March 1930, Hoover said the worst would be over “during the next 60 days.”
When that period ended, he said, “We have passed the worst.”
Eventually, Ahamed writes, “when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.”
Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Officials resigned rather than do so, including the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And we all know how that turned out: The Great Depression.
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They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. #COVID19 Market Crashes / Panic |
In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.
A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.
But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.
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The Athenian Plague, a Cautionary Tale of Democracy’s Fragility @NewYorker Market Crashes / Panic |
In 430–429 B.C.E., Athens was devastated by a mysterious epidemic, which reared its head again a few years later. Tens of thousands of people died, perhaps as many as one-third of Athenians.
Society was ravaged, and the military, which was in the early stages of a brutal twenty-seven-year war against Sparta, was debilitated for many years.
The catastrophe contributed to Athens’s shattering defeat, in 404 B.C.E., by the loutish Spartans, who tore down the city’s walls and imposed a short-lived but murderous oligarchy.
Among those who died from this plague were Pericles and two of his sons.
Millennia later, the plague reminds us that the legacy of the eternal “wonder” of Athens contains within it a cautionary tale: the failure of democratic society to cope with a lethal epidemic.
The model of how democracy began is also a study in how it can founder and fall.
Most of what we know about the plague comes from the brilliant Athenian historian Thucydides, widely viewed by classicists as the single best source on Athens in the age of Pericles.
He would not be surprised to find his book being read today, during the coronavirus lockdown. “My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public,” he wrote, with zero modesty, “but was done to last forever.”
The book, although unfinished, established him as the founder of the systematic study of international relations.
It was translated into English in 1628 by Thomas Hobbes, and has since been cited by heads of state from Woodrow Wilson to Xi Jinping.
A 1994 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology rejected that diagnosis, proposing, instead, typhus, anthrax, or perhaps “a potentially explosive respiratory agent.”
Whatever it was, it was a horror. As Thucydides recorded with clinical detail, people suddenly felt their heads begin to burn, their eyes redden, their tongues and mouths bleed. Next came coughing, stomach pain, diarrhea, and “vomiting of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession.”
The skin turned reddish with pustules and ulcers, while the stricken plunged into the city’s water tanks trying to slake an unquenchable thirst—possibly contaminating the water supply. Most died after about a week. The city was blanketed with corpses.
Athenians were already packed into the city as a wartime measure, and frightened people fleeing the countryside crowded it even further, creating conditions we now know are ripe for contagion.
Orderly Athenians, no longer expecting to live long enough to face punishment for crimes, plunged into “a state of unprecedented lawlessness.”
They could not even bother to lay their dead to rest respectably. Instead, survivors looked for already burning funeral pyres, adding friends and relatives to the blaze.
And with the spectre of mortality looming at all times, they lived only for “the pleasure of the moment and everything that might conceivably contribute to that pleasure. No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence.”
Many Athenians blamed the calamity on their Spartan enemies, spreading dark rumors of poisoned reservoirs. Yet Thucydides swiftly dismissed such speculation.
After all, Athens was a naval power, an imperial capital, and a trading city whose fleets ranged across the ancient world; the contagion, he wrote, probably spread from Ethiopia to Libya to Persia before finally reaching Greece, where Athens—a global port for commercial ships—was its first stop.
And, once it arrived, its damage knew no bounds, doing terrible harm to democracy itself.
In Plato’s “Republic,” written several decades after the plague, Socrates warned that democracy would decay into tyranny; Thucydides recorded it sliding into discord, folly, and demagoguery.
Only someone of Pericles’ intelligence and integrity, Thucydides wrote, “could respect the liberty of the people and at the same time hold them in check.”
His death left Athenian democracy in the hands of self-serving scoundrels such as Alcibiades, who later promoted an oligarchic coup, and bellicose demagogues such as Cleon, whom Thucydides scorned as “remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character.”
Politicians in search of scapegoats would be wise to recall Pericles, who said, before the plague, “What I fear is not the enemy’s strength, but our own mistakes.”His ancient empirical analysis of catastrophe offers a jot of hope, if not wonder: for as long as there have been plagues, there have been people, scared but tenacious, using reason to try to learn from them. |
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward the ‘’Slaves’’ are now in revolt. World Of Finance |
A metastatic expansion of this Protest
Will they have that moment of Epiphany? Well There certainly has not been a more ‘’conducive’’ moment.
I would argue that Civil unrest levels are now globally at unprecedented levels that COVID19 was a circuit breaker and that ‘’Risk’’ is now blinking amber and that there remains a remarkable complacency around this risk which Paul Virilio described thus
Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’’
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Self Assured Destruction @EpsilonTheory World Of Finance |
In the 1960s, our Cold War strategy evolved into Mutual Assured Destruction, a dangerous but stable relationship with the Soviet Union.In 2020, our Covid-19 War strategy devolved into Self Assured Destruction, a dangerous and utterly unstable relationship with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.Our arsenal is gone.
There will never be another coordinated national effort to control the spread of Covid-19. Not with this President, at least.
But that’s the problem with spasmatic policy and the blowhard leaders who administer it. You end up with neither a war-preventing strategy nor a war-fighting strategy. You end up neither containing the enemy nor defeating the enemy.Our leaders have botched this war, and we are defenseless against a still potent and now endemic enemy, left only with the deus ex machina hope of a truly effective vaccine.Frankly, I think 15,000 to 20,000 Americans officially sick and 500 to 1,000 Americans officially dead every day is a pretty optimistic scenario for an endemic Covid-19 in the months ahead.
Other countries, allies even, countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Germany, have waged their war against the virus much more effectively than the United States, so that a nationally coordinated policy of testing and contact tracing to manage an endemic virus without suffering ruinous daily casualties is at least possible.
But if it’s a bridge to nowhere …The free world does not easily survive a globally endemic Covid-19.
By 2027, Britain is the one civilized nation remaining, although it has transformed itself into a brutal police state to manage not just a fin de siècle, but a fin to … humanity.If it’s NOT true, if there is not in fact a vaccine that can eliminate Covid-19 as a globally endemic illness, then I think we’re in a full-bore Children of Men scenario. It’s a fetishization of the State and its provision of order, such that all economic and political behavior is funneled exclusively through the State and its crony capitalist “Yay, military!” and “Yay, stock market!” narratives. It’s smiley-face fascism. And not-so smiley-face fascism.Forget about the United States for a minute. Let’s say you live in India. Do you trust the Modi government to administer whatever vaccine stock they acquire with justice and fairness? Now do Brazil. Now do Egypt. Now do Mexico. Now do Indonesia. Now do Iran. Now do Russia. Now do China. Now do the United States....
how incompetent and/or pseudo-fascist leaders ALWAYS respond to this sort of domestic unrest and threat to the maintenance of their incompetent and/or pseudo-fascist regimes.
They start a war.
Not an allegorical “war” against a virus, but a real war against an Other. Sometimes that Other is a group or region inside their country. Sometimes that Other is another country. But it’s ALWAYS a war.
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward World Of Finance |
However, what I am noticing is a metastatic expansion of this Protest
And therefore, The Control Machine which is obsessing with the Stock Market
And bailed out Humans to the tune of $1,200.00 for every $25,000.00 per Capita [and this is not unique to the US but is merely an example of a Worldwide Phenomenon].
Simply fails to comprehend that the ‘’Slaves’’ are now in revolt.
It is about the Haves and the Have Nots. Its about the moment of Epiphany when the Have Nots appreciate the predicament in which they have been placed and identify with each other rather than a ‘’boogaloo’’ structure that has been placed upon them.
Will they have that moment of Epiphany? Well There certainly has not been a more ‘’conducive’’ moment.
I would argue that Civil unrest levels are now globally at unprecedented levels that COVID19 was a circuit breaker and that ‘’Risk’’ is now blinking amber and that there remains a remarkable complacency around this risk which Paul Virilio described thus
Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’’
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10-MAY-2020 :: ―Brazil is the global epicenter of the coronavirus. Emerging Markets |
In Brazil we have a toxic mix of a „‟Voodoo‟‟ President @jairbolsonaro and a runaway #COVID19
Brazilians aren‘t infected by anything, even when they fall into a sewer
“It‟s tragic surrealism ... I can‟t stop thinking about Gabriel García Márquez when I think about the situation Manaus is facing.” Guardian
Viruses are in essence non linear exponential and multiplicative and COVID19 has „‟escape velocity‟‟ in Brazil.
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“There is systemic undercounting of deaths,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, a think-tank @FT. Market Crashes / Panic |
“This may be seem like a good idea to manage public perceptions in the short run, but it is going to cost in the long term.”
The government has also banned the collection of coronavirus samples from untested dead bodies.
Doctors said the scale of the problem was terrifying.
“It is a scary feeling, the disease is rapidly going out of control,” said Kush Sharma, a doctor working at Lok Nayak Hospital, a designated coronavirus facility in New Delhi.
“In [intensive care units], we are used to mortalities. It is always painful but it is never been like this, where you lose three, four patients every day.”
During a normal week, they would lose two or three patients, Dr Sharma said. “It is absolutely traumatising.”
“[Officials] are recording just one-fourth of the deaths,” said an executive at a private hospital in New Delhi, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the government. “It is very clear, no one wants to know the numbers.”
India has the world’s fifth highest number of coronavirus cases — more than 276,000 infections and more than 8,000 deaths — despite a harsh lockdown that lasted months.
In New Delhi, graveyards and crematoriums are struggling to handle the number of bodies.
At Nigambodh Ghat, the capital’s biggest crematorium, supervisor Avdesh Sharma said they had received 15 to 30 bodies every day for the past two weeks who had died from Covid-19, in addition to their normal intake of 50.
“We are unable to cope with such a large number,” he said.
Haji Faiyajuddin, the head of the Ahle Islam cemetery, said he was burying four Covid-19 positive bodies a day, double the normal average.
“If these numbers continue, we will run out of burial space in this public graveyard in just a month, perhaps even sooner if there is a major spike,” said Mr Faiyajuddin.
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Africa's confirmed coronavirus cases reached the 100,000-mark in 98 days, then reached 200,000 only 18 days later, the World Health Organization has said @AFP Africa |
"It took 98 days to reach the first 100,000 cases, and only 18 days to move to 200,000 cases," Doctor Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's regional director for Africa, told a video briefing hosted by the UN press association in Geneva.
"Even though these cases in Africa account for less than three percent of the global total, it's clear that the pandemic is accelerating."
The novel coronavirus has infected nearly 7.4 million people worldwide and killed at least 416,000 since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
Africa has reached 5,635 deaths from 210,519 confirmed cases, according to AFP's count at 1100 GMT on Thursday.
In Africa, "the pandemic is still concentrated in and around capital cities but we are seeing more and more cases spread out into the provinces," Moeti said.
She said that in most countries on the continent, the virus entered capitals through international flights from Europe.
- South Africa worst affected -
"Ten of the 54 countries in Africa are currently driving the numbers," Moeti explained, with those states accounting for 80 percent of cases.
South Africa accounts for nearly 25 percent of the continent's total cases.
"The majority of countries still have fewer than 1,000 reported cases," said Moeti.
"There is community transmission in more than 50 percent of countries, however."
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02-MAR-2020 :: The #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word Africa |
We Know that the #Coronavirus is exponential, non linear and multiplicative.
what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world. Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing ... then cluster, cluster, cluster ... then BOOM!
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Africa's coronavirus "hotspots" in S. Africa, Algeria, Cameroon: @WHO #COVID19 Africa |
Africa will have a “steady increase” in COVID-19 cases until a vaccine is developed and strong public health measures are needed in current “hotspots” in South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
“Until such time as we have access to an effective vaccine, I’m afraid we’ll probably have to live with a steady increase in the region, with some hotspots having to be managed in a number of countries, as is happening now in South Africa, Algeria, Cameroon for example, which require very strong public health measures, social distancing measures to take place,” Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa regional director, told a Geneva briefing.
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Tanzania now expects its economy to grow by 5.5% in 2020 compared with a previous estimate of 4%, finance minister Philip Mpango said on Thursday @ReutersAfrica East Africa |
Mpango said measures taken by President John Magufuli’s administration, especially its insistence that people should get back to work while taking health precautions, plus expectations about a regional and global recovery, will buoy growth.
The latest projection is more optimistic than the 4% estimate Mpango gave last month, but lower than an initial forecast of 6.9% due to the impact of the coronavirus on key sectors such as tourism.
“Real GDP growth is expected to slightly slow from the initial estimates of 6.9%, to 5.5%,” Mpango told parliament. “This is due to the impact of the COVID-19 which has spread in many countries which are our major trade partners.”
The projections are rosier than the World Bank’s, which said it expected GDP growth to drop to 2.5% in 2020 from 6.9% last year, citing the impact of the pandemic.
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Tanzania’s approach has been different. Rather than putting people on lockdown, we have put data on lockdown. @aeyakuze Market Crashes / Panic |
Data, meanwhile, is under tighter control than ever before.
No data has been released on the numbers of Covid-19 cases or deaths since April 29, 2020.
The number of tests reported as having been carried out is just 652, compared to over 100,000 in neighbouring Uganda, 95,000 in Kenya and 75,000 in Rwanda by June 5, 2020.
Tanzania’s president Magufuli has spoken of the fear-inducing effects of data and the harm that this can do, and has cast doubt on the reliability of testing done at the national laboratory.
Night burials have stopped (or been stopped) and quarantine locations and hospitals are empty (or have been emptied).
On May 27, the Medical Association of Tanzania noted a significant reduction in Covid-19 cases, but did not provide any data to support their assertion.
When the data is on lockdown, such statements can be neither verified nor contradicted.
We seem to be pursuing a strategy of herd immunity. And we are doing it in data darkness.
An erosion of trust is a serious risk for a government looking for re-election in October, as is the case for president Magufuli’s administration.
More scientifically, modelling done by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London was published on May 26, 2020.
Using official death data – from when Tanzania was still reporting such data – as a starting point, the model estimated the true number of infections in Tanzania during the 4 weeks between April 29 and May 26, 2020 to be 24,869.
If true, Tanzania would have replaced South Africa (with 23,615 cases) as Africa’s coronavirus epicentre.
The model’s estimates of daily deaths make for less alarming reading, suggesting that “if current levels of interventions are maintained”, by June 8, coronavirus related deaths would fall somewhere between four and 27 fatalities per day.
That is a small fraction of the average number of daily deaths experienced in pre-Covid19 Tanzania of 1,011.
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Health Alert: U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam @usembassytz East Africa |
The Tanzanian government has not released aggregate numbers on COVID-19 cases or deaths since April 29. Consequently, we are unable to provide specific guidance for U.S. citizens in Tanzania.
The Department of State has issued a Global Level 4 Health Advisory for COVID-19. For emergency American Citizen Services, including emergency passports, please visit our website for additional information.
Given the presumed ongoing community transmission in Dar es Salaam and other locations in Tanzania, the risk of contracting COVID-19 remains high.
The Embassy has recommended that U.S. government personnel and their families reduce movement outside of their home except for essential activities and limit the number of visitors entering their home.
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How Three East Africa Nations Will Free Up Cash for Stimulus @economics East Africa |
Governments in East Africa will ask for debt relief and implement new tax measures to free up money to help their economies cope with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Finance ministers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania on Thursday presented their budgets for the fiscal year that starts July 1, and while these three economies will continue to expand, growth will slow due to the pandemic and global and domestic measures to curb its spread.
Even with revenue under pressure, spending will increase for all three countries.
Kenya
The region’s largest economy has lowered tax rates for corporate and personal income, turnover tax, value-added tax and provided tax relief to low income earners and employees.
These measures will cost the government 172 billion shillings ($1.62 billion) in lost revenue, Treasury Secretary Ukur Yatani said. To recoup some of that, Yatani announced proposals to lower the level of exemptions.
“Whereas these tax incentives are well intended, they have limited the capacity of government to fund critical expenditures,” he said.
The International Monetary Fund last month approved $739 million from its Rapid Credit Facility for Kenya.
Uganda
Uganda will clamp down on tax compliance and raise some levies to collect more revenue for the economy and also to boost local industries and protect them against cheap imports, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said.
The government expects economic growth of 4.5% in 2020-21 from an estimated 3.1% in the year ending June.
As Africa’s second-biggest coffee grower, agriculture makes up about a quarter of gross domestic product in the country that also produces tea and sugar.
The government has decided to raise import duties on farming products to 60% and exempt the supply of agricultural products and processed milk from value-added tax.
The IMF approved $491.5 million for Uganda from its Rapid Credit Facility for its response to the pandemic last month.
Tanzania
Tanzania is seeking as much as $272 million from the IMF’s Rapid Credit Facility and is in talks with bilateral creditors for debt relief, according to Finance Minister Philip Mpango.
The government, whose leader President John Magufuli has declared the country free of Covid-19, is also awaiting another $50 million from the African Development Bank.
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