Wheels and tires

On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 7:43:49 AM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/27/2020 8:59 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 8:27:06 PM UTC-7, news18 wrote:
On Thu, 26 Mar 2020 18:52:24 -0700, jbeattie wrote:

Tenant defaults are a huge problem with multi-family, and one that me
and my brothers are facing right now on several leveraged properties.

Been there and NOT done that. I've seen close to the current situation
many times in my life. A similarity is the business who slave to Just In
Time and never keep a spare of anything on site. Sooner and often
frequently production stops as they wait for spares to arrive.

We'll probably get $1M or so in financing to keep the properties afloat
until rents stabilize. This is a Black Swan event for a lot of
businesses -- and not because of poor planning.

Disagree. it is because of lack of planning and rose glass approach to
the possibilities.

Every business is leveraged
Most are. I try to avoid them as when they trip, I loose,

-- a retail business with no income will burn through even
robust savings if it has to pay months of rent on unproductive space,

That is a risk they entered into willingly.

and there is no rent holiday for commercial tenants.
That is a decision for your landlord.
I may soon face tha decision. i'm just waiting to see what the situation
is when GovCo finally stops dancing.

The response to COVID-19 has caused wages to plummet and may cause at
least some service businesses to disappear.
Remember the buggy whip makers and saddlers.?
What is different to normal?
Change isn't smooth.

Maybe that's needed to protect the population and maybe not.
If you want future customers, then you need to protect as many as
possible. Otherwise, the survivors might just return the non-assistnce by
buyng elsewhere.

Regardless of whether it is the
right choice, one cannot deny the serious consequences of shutting down
the economy and the effect on ordinary wage-earners and well-run small
businesses.
You are confonding three things.
Firstly the USA doesn't give a farthing about ordinary wage earners.

Secondly, a well run small business will survive by definition. From
what I've seen of small business here, Most are flimsy franchises that
are bleading money to franchisor and landlords and only survive when the
economy is booming. They wanted the dream so badly,they igrnored reality.

Also, many think they can be like "Henry Ford"; "you can have every
colour you want so long as you take black", in a world where the
competion offers every oter colour and black and delvers it for a lower
cost.

I think the public health should prevail, but that doesn't
mean we just ignore the economy,
At one stage, the economy was the people, then t became mamon.
If your business isn't about the people, then it deserves to crumble when
the economy hiccups.

The businesses that are most "about the people" are shuttered right now, and some are looking at permanent closure. I don't know what kind of business you are in, but I've never been in any business that is sitting on a pile of cash. Most business are not Apple.

The mom-and-pop bike shop which turns enough profit to support its owners and employees cannot weather zero cash flow for long. Same goes with the local coffee shop and restaurant. These are not poorly run businesses, they're just small businesses. Most businesses have access to credit, but if you're looking at permanent damage from the shut-down, you may not want to take on new debt -- particularly if you're just hanging on by a thread anyway because of Amazon and the internet. Even for small businesses that survive, the hit will be huge and will depress wages, defer maintenance, growth, etc., etc. There will be permanent work-force reductions to cover new debt and the inevitable tax hit from a $2T bail-out of the entire nation.

-- Jay Beattie.


+1
All that's true plus this problem is exponentially larger.

Consider the guy who owns a strip mall with 6 tenants not
paying rent. The quarterly insurance is due, the mortgage
meter is running. Cabbies, Lyft and jitneys aren't making
their payments because they're hardly working. With schools
closed, working mothers are unable to pick up newly opened
jobs, still have rent and grocery expense. I'm not much for
live theater but it was moving to read about the tens of
thousands of people from cleaners to stage hands to
electricians to marketing who are suddenly out of work. And
the rent is due. Some Bernie types have replied, 'just
suspend rents', which sounds cute except the landlord's
children also eat every day. Or would prefer to anyway. And
his meter is running too.

For the next hundr5ed years or more, economists will examine
all this in great detail, especially the wonderful 'natural
case studies':
https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/tim...oped-in-sweden

Much like the adjacent counties in Indiana with and without
annual time change.

One wonders how a society decides to ignore 12,500 dead:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html

And then commit national suicide 11 years later under
not-worse circumstances. That decision has been made but I
wonder what spurred this attitude change?

We don't know if the situation is or is not worse. The mortality rate for the novel coronavirus is far higher than H1N1, which was fairly bening by even flu standards. A lot of old people had immunity, apparently because it resembled some old flus. BTW, retrospective studies of the Spanish Flu show that many deaths were caused by opportunistic bacterial lung infections that we could combat with antibiotics these days. That's not the case with SARS COVID-19. We are in uncharted territory, but again, that doesn't mean the current response is necessarily the right one. I don't have the training, experience or data to know that and defer to those who do. With the current administration, I'm sure that the people pulling the financial levers are given plenty of time to express their views, although not so much in the DPR Oregon.

-- Jay Beattie.

On 3/27/2020 10:43 AM, AMuzi wrote:

One wonders how a society decides to ignore 12,500 dead:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html

And then commit national suicide 11 years later under not-worse
circumstances. That decision has been made but I wonder what spurred
this attitude change?

The attitude changed because of the rate of change of infection cases.
The current rate of change indicates a likely overwhelming of our
emergency medical system, as has happened in Italy and is happening in
NYC. That was not true in 2009.

The extrapolation of current data isn't difficult. But it is scary.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 3/26/2020 9:20 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/26/2020 8:02 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/26/2020 3:28 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Mar 2020 02:03:30 -0000 (UTC), news18
wrote:

This was in the recent online offerings;
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020...o-much-to-ask-

for-an-actual-plan/

I say that you are a very nasty journalist who wants Donald Trump to
fail in the next election!

Expect the President and his Cabinet to do their jobs and save the lives
of Americans?Â* What are you, a socialist?Â* Save the money first, it
can't take care of itself unlike people.


I see no humor in the many working people with whom I associate who
are desperate. April rent is due...

Wrecking a nation is hardly the best way to save lives, You cannot
name a prior example that turned out well - it's never been done. Now
we're in midair after a huge dangerous leap.

We're in midair after being told it's fine to chop the pandemic response
team; that there are only a few U.S. cases; that this would end quickly;
that warm weather would stop its spread; that nobody knew this would be
a problem; that we don't need to use tests available through other
agencies; that anybody who needs a test can get a test... etc.

But it's OK. It will be over by Easter, right?



“Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?�

Jan. 22 – “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control.�

Jan. 24 – “It will all work out well.�

Jan. 30 – “We have it very well under control. We have very little
problem in this country at the moment – five. And those people are all
recuperating successfully.�

Feb. 10 – “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a
little warmer, it miraculously goes away.�

Feb. 19 – “I think the numbers are getting progressively better as we go.�

Feb. 20 – “…within a couple of days, is going to be down to close to zero.�

Feb. 22 – “We have it very much under control in this country.�

Feb. 25 – “…the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus… They tried
the impeachment hoax … and this is their new hoax.� (to Sean Hannity)

Feb. 26 – “We’re going down, not up.�

Feb. 27 – “It’s going to disappear. One day like a miracle – it will
disappear.�

Feb. 29 – “Everything is really under control.� (The vaccine will be
available) “very rapidly.�

March 2 – “It’s very mild.�

March 4 – “…we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.�

March 6 – (visiting the CDC) “I like this stuff. I really get it.
People are surprised I understand it. Every one of these doctors said,
‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.’
Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.� Maybe.

March 6: (same availability) “Anybody who wants a test can get a test.
That’s the bottom line.�

March 7: “I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.�

March 10 – “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.�

March 16 – (asked to rate his own performance) “I’d rate it a ten.�

March 17 – “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.�

--
- Frank Krygowski

Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/27/2020 10:43 AM, AMuzi wrote:

One wonders how a society decides to ignore 12,500 dead:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html

And then commit national suicide 11 years later under not-worse
circumstances. That decision has been made but I wonder what spurred
this attitude change?

The attitude changed because of the rate of change of infection cases.
The current rate of change indicates a likely overwhelming of our
emergency medical system, as has happened in Italy and is happening in
NYC. That was not true in 2009.

The extrapolation of current data isn't difficult. But it is scary.


There are two types of people right now. Those that are scared and those
who don’t understand math.

On 3/26/2020 9:44 PM, John B. wrote:
tOn Thu, 26 Mar 2020 20:10:31 -0500, AMuzi
wrote:

On 3/26/2020 7:40 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 26 Mar 2020 20:09:24 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

Radey Shouman wrote:
Ralph Barone writes:

John B. wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 19:26:32 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 3/25/2020 12:43 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:

[snip on-topic bicycle stuff]

On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 3:18:09 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:

I can't figure out what Newsome thinks he's doing saying that a couple
of weeks from now isn't long enough to keep businesses shut down. Its
been two weeks already and in another couple of weeks all of the
restaurants, the largest business sector, will be dead.


If your auntie was Nancy Pelosi, you could try your hand at
being Governor too!

Given that the virus "new case" rate in the U.S. is now the highest in
the world (as of March 26, 2020, 00:12 GMT) the question of whether
the restaurants go out of business because of a shutdown or whether
they go out of business because their customers catch the virus is
probably immaterial.
--
cheers,

John B.

It’s a tough call. Either way people are going to be uncomfortable or die,
but my guesses are with the shutdown being the better choice. Considering
that pandemics are just compound interest with a very high interest rate
and a very short compounding period (take out a loan at 250% interest per
week and tell me how that works out for you), I’m surprised at the lack of
serious response from the guy running things south of 49.

Interesting analogy. Going a bit further, it seems immunity and
bankruptcy are two sides of the same coin, while death works the same
for both compounded debts and pandemic illness. Looks like we elected
an experience-qualified guy after all.


I guess, except his “go-to” move is declaring bankruptcy and letting the
other people deal with the mess.

So, if you’re paying 250% a week interest on a loan, when is a good time to
start selling stuff on Craigslist for a two week repayment program? The
correct answer is As Soon As You Borrowed The Money. The second best answer
is Right ****ing Now!

Perhaps an even better solution is "don't borrow money at 250% a
week". That would be, 1100% over one year :-)
--
cheers,

John B.


Mr Slocumb-
You have many skills but this isn't one of them.
Taking a $100 loan at 250% per week for 52 weeks on a
regular amortization table sums to:

$1 397 688 109 531 440 000 000 000 000 000.00

Compound interest is a powerful thing, underestimated by
borrowers in every era, in every place.

Which demonstrates that, at least for me, my policy of never borrowing
money is the correct one :-)

But are you sure? I just calculated it and I get
$49,303,806,576,313,200,000,000.00 :-)

--
cheers,

John B.


Simple or compounded weekly?

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 3/26/2020 9:45 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Ralph Barone writes:

AMuzi wrote:
On 3/26/2020 11:20 AM, Sepp Ruf wrote:
AMuzi wrote:
On 3/25/2020 7:40 PM, John B. wrote:

Given that the virus "new case" rate in the U.S. is now the highest in
the world (as of March 26, 2020, 00:12 GMT) the question of whether
the restaurants go out of business because of a shutdown or whether
they go out of business because their customers catch the virus is
probably immaterial.

With about 60 million Italians, of whom about 7,000 deaths
are attributed to the Chinese Bioweapon virus, an equivalent
proportion of USAians would be just under 40,000 dead. As
of today it's roughly 1,000. A thousand dead people is a
real problem (to them, anyway) but it's not of the scale
Italy has suffered.

(I avoid repeating any of the lying lies spewed by the
Chinese propaganda machine. Make a guess yourself.)

Try F@løøn 6Øng's theepochtimes.com for China news.

Hear, hear, in Chicago lawyer geography, "outside is not for 5Ks"...
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chicago-officials-threaten-arrests-over-runs-bike-rides-basketball-amid-covid-19-pandemic_3286675.html
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot heavy-handedly threatens commuters with death
by prison infection: "Outside is for a brief respite, not for 5Ks. I can’t
emphasize enough that we abide [by] the rules."

Crook County reasoning, probably: When trails are fully closed, it's the
outlaws who will be safest from full trails...
https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/3/26/21195127/latest-coronavirus-news-for-march-26-2020-live-updates


Agreed, Epoch Times is a wonderful resource. If not for them
we would know nothing of China.
https://www.ejinsight.com/eji/articl...er-hk-autonomy

Meanwhile here's a vote of confidence on the near futu

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...virus-spreads/

http://www.rfi.fr/en/americas/202003...ears-and-chaos

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...being-rationed



I wonder how fast Mexico and Canada can build border walls :-(

Mexicans are protesting in Nogales about untested yanquis crossing the
border:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52053656


China just closed its borders.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 3/27/2020 11:34 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/27/2020 10:43 AM, AMuzi wrote:

One wonders how a society decides to ignore 12,500 dead:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html


And then commit national suicide 11 years later under
not-worse circumstances. That decision has been made but I
wonder what spurred this attitude change?

The attitude changed because of the rate of change of
infection cases. The current rate of change indicates a
likely overwhelming of our emergency medical system, as has
happened in Italy and is happening in NYC. That was not true
in 2009.

The extrapolation of current data isn't difficult. But it is
scary.


It is indeed difficult.
Trees grow, but trees do not grow to heaven (Charles Ponzi
notwithstanding).

This is not an ideal parabola of infinite height. It's a
normal curve of unknown height, unknown shape and unknown
duration. We do not know where we are on that unknown path
either. But it surely is not an infinite progression.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 4:54:28 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/26/2020 3:16 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 20:45:42 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/25/2020 7:40 PM, John B. wrote:

Given that the virus "new case" rate in the U.S. is now the highest
in the world (as of March 26, 2020, 00:12 GMT) the question of
whether the restaurants go out of business because of a shutdown or
whether they go out of business because their customers catch the
virus is probably immaterial.


Sure of that?

We're a large nation so having a large number may not be a large rate
(as compared with, say, 60 million Italians).

Updated hourly:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

You can look at cumulative confirmed cases globally and by nation, some
data broken down to the county level, as well as by daily increase. The
US's current daily increase is very steep- about 20% daily in the past
few days and accelerating as expected. Thus far we are not "flattening
the curve" significantly since many of those people were infected before
the advent of social distancing, etc. If the measures are successful,
they will start to show up visibly in the trend curves in another 1-2
weeks. By then we'll be at about 200,000 infected Americans at the
current rate. Hopefully the rate of infection slows soon!

Had Trump been more on the ball and willing to listen to people who are
actually competent, there might have been a more effective response
sooner. But like so many Republicans, he values money more than lives.

The good news for Americans thus far is that the case fatality rate in
the US seems to be about 1/3 that of the world at large. That may
change as folks get into what seems to tend to be the worst parts of the
illness (days 7-10). And mst hospitals are not yet overwhelmed in the
US, except I would imagine in New York and the northeastern seaboard
they are seeing that.


Tim, since you have some geriatric practice experience IIRC,
you might find the Wall Street Journal of 24 March with a
very detailed article on the Kirkland WA snafu - a regular
tragedy of errors.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

I designed microtitration devices for testing things like this corona virus test and turning on the TV I see them doing this by hand. So not only are they doing this all in slow motion but they are endangering the people that are handling these samples for test.

We have people screaming about the rapid increase in "infections" despite the majority of these are nothing more than a rapid increase in confirmation of infections via the new testing.

At what point do you suppose it is going to get through to them that when you only test people that are showing symptoms of any sort you are going to miss the 4 out of 5 that do not have symptoms or very mild such as me and perhaps Jay? Then when you increase testing suddenly you are going to find that another 4 times the confirmed rates are infected. These people will not stress the hospital systems and despite New York's governor and the City's Mayor you're not going to need 15 times the number of ventilators you now have.

My symptoms are obviously abating so why should I get tested? Do you suppose this would be some sort of badge of courage?

I did 23 miles yesterday and returned before there was a thunderstorm. Short but a lot of rain. Today I did 25 and despite wearing warm clothing was just at the edge of being cold despite riding fairly hard for half the distance into a 30 mph+ headwind. Since there was no break the return trip with the tailwind wasn't much easier. Strava says 13.3 mph despite 21 lights and perhaps the same number of stop signs and everything was against me today. But I don't think I'll have any problems sleeping tonight.

I am beginning to get the hang of the Di2 shifting since I was wearing heavy gloves and could barely feel the levers and had little problems shifting.

On 3/27/2020 2:45 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 4:54:28 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/26/2020 3:16 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 20:45:42 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/25/2020 7:40 PM, John B. wrote:

Given that the virus "new case" rate in the U.S. is now the highest
in the world (as of March 26, 2020, 00:12 GMT) the question of
whether the restaurants go out of business because of a shutdown or
whether they go out of business because their customers catch the
virus is probably immaterial.


Sure of that?

We're a large nation so having a large number may not be a large rate
(as compared with, say, 60 million Italians).

Updated hourly:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

You can look at cumulative confirmed cases globally and by nation, some
data broken down to the county level, as well as by daily increase. The
US's current daily increase is very steep- about 20% daily in the past
few days and accelerating as expected. Thus far we are not "flattening
the curve" significantly since many of those people were infected before
the advent of social distancing, etc. If the measures are successful,
they will start to show up visibly in the trend curves in another 1-2
weeks. By then we'll be at about 200,000 infected Americans at the
current rate. Hopefully the rate of infection slows soon!

Had Trump been more on the ball and willing to listen to people who are
actually competent, there might have been a more effective response
sooner. But like so many Republicans, he values money more than lives.

The good news for Americans thus far is that the case fatality rate in
the US seems to be about 1/3 that of the world at large. That may
change as folks get into what seems to tend to be the worst parts of the
illness (days 7-10). And mst hospitals are not yet overwhelmed in the
US, except I would imagine in New York and the northeastern seaboard
they are seeing that.


Tim, since you have some geriatric practice experience IIRC,
you might find the Wall Street Journal of 24 March with a
very detailed article on the Kirkland WA snafu - a regular
tragedy of errors.


I designed microtitration devices for testing things like this corona virus test and turning on the TV I see them doing this by hand. So not only are they doing this all in slow motion but they are endangering the people that are handling these samples for test.

We have people screaming about the rapid increase in "infections" despite the majority of these are nothing more than a rapid increase in confirmation of infections via the new testing.

At what point do you suppose it is going to get through to them that when you only test people that are showing symptoms of any sort you are going to miss the 4 out of 5 that do not have symptoms or very mild such as me and perhaps Jay? Then when you increase testing suddenly you are going to find that another 4 times the confirmed rates are infected. These people will not stress the hospital systems and despite New York's governor and the City's Mayor you're not going to need 15 times the number of ventilators you now have.

My symptoms are obviously abating so why should I get tested? Do you suppose this would be some sort of badge of courage?

I did 23 miles yesterday and returned before there was a thunderstorm. Short but a lot of rain. Today I did 25 and despite wearing warm clothing was just at the edge of being cold despite riding fairly hard for half the distance into a 30 mph+ headwind. Since there was no break the return trip with the tailwind wasn't much easier. Strava says 13.3 mph despite 21 lights and perhaps the same number of stop signs and everything was against me today. But I don't think I'll have any problems sleeping tonight.

I am beginning to get the hang of the Di2 shifting since I was wearing heavy gloves and could barely feel the levers and had little problems shifting.


Better analysis will come with larger test populations:

https://www.icelandreview.com/societ...et-widespread/

Don't expect that sort of test rate in large countries any
time soon.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 6:21:05 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/26/2020 7:48 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 4:12:48 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/26/2020 6:43 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 1:28:56 PM UTC-7, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Mar 2020 02:03:30 -0000 (UTC), news18
wrote:

This was in the recent online offerings;
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020...o-much-to-ask-
for-an-actual-plan/

I say that you are a very nasty journalist who wants Donald Trump to
fail in the next election!

Expect the President and his Cabinet to do their jobs and save the lives
of Americans? What are you, a socialist? Save the money first, it
can't take care of itself unlike people.

Tell us all what the President is going to do against a disease. This ought to be interesting to listen to a moron run on about just how ignorant about the world around him he is.

Many public health professionals can tell you what the president
_should_ have done against a disease. It's hardly a secret.


--
- Frank Krygowski

It isn't a secret but you don't know what it is?

Wrong.


--
- Frank Krygowski

And again, you have no answers. You grow tiresome trying to convince anything that somehow the government is a knight in shining armor that can stand in between you and an illness. Trump got private industry involved and we now have testing methods that went from 2 weeks to 45 minutes and that doesn't in the least my you or your wonderful "medical" friends happy. They have found three different methods that all seem to work well when properly applied but most doctors do not wish to use because it is without FDA approval for that use and they open themselves up for massive lawsuit.

There is already at least one vaccine but it will take the FDA between a year and a year and a half to approve it for human use. At least one of those vaccines is made by a method that is known to produce reliable and safe vaccination.

That isn't enough for you though is it Frank? You want that knight to transpose himself between you and a disease because you are pretty slow.