Society's Child
One month ago we reported that "China Faces Financial Armageddon With 85% Of Businesses Set To Run Out Of Cash In 3 Months", in which we explained that while China's giant state-owned SOEs will likely have enough of a liquidity lifeblood to last them for 2-3 quarters, it is the country's small businesses that are facing a head on collision with an iceberg, because according to the Nikkei, over 85% of small businesses - which employ 80% of China's population - expect to run out of cash within three months, and a third expect the cash to be all gone within a month.
To be sure, the stakes could not be higher: These smaller employers account for 99.8% of registered companies in China and employ 79.4% of workers. They contribute more than 60% of gross domestic product and, for the government, more than 50% of tax revenue. In short: they are the beating heart of China's economy.
In short, should this default tsunami start, not only will China's economy collapse, but China's $40 trillion financial system will disintegrate, as it is suddenly flooded with trillions in bad loans.
© Pixabay / enriquelopezgarre
I feel like the man in the following cartoon.
Comment: See also:
- Coronavirus - Things you CANNOT say about it
- First, Do No Harm: If Primary Healthcare Remains Shut Down, Toll on Elderly Will be Worse Than COVID-19
- 12 Experts Question The Need For a Global Coronavirus Lockdown
- Planetary Hysteria: Manufactured COVID-19 'Health Crisis' Pushes Humanity, Global Society to Total Shutdown
© Sputnik / Denis Grishkin
At least 1,014 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the Russian capital as of Sunday, and only 15 percent of those are over 65, the authorities said.
Over 33 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus fell between the ages of 18 and 34, while 46 percent were between 35 and 64, the official data said.
But what's worse, the serious cases requiring artificial lung ventilation units, commonly known as ventilators, did not favor the younger patients, according to the statement.
Comment: There are almost 12 million people who live in Moscow. Out of that, there's just over 1,500 cases. Is that worth shutting an entire city down? Looks like the hysteria has reached Russian leaders. Trump has extended the social distancing guidelines until April 30th, as he said he expects the peak to hit in the next 2 weeks. In Germany, the finance minister in the German state of Hesse, Thomas Schaefer, has committed suicide 'over coronavirus worries'. As we've been pointing out over and over on SOTT, those worries are entirely overhyped by the media. They are responsible for getting people so worked up that they are killing themselves.
CBS News, CNN, and other mainstream outlets are fearmongering again. Alarmism is nothing new in the media world, but this time, it's not about triggering panic buying or even pushing a political agenda.
The war on cash is about imposing a new meta-narrative. As economist Joseph Salerno explains, the cashless society forces all payments to be made through the financial system. It doesn't end with monopoly control over transactions, though.
© Global Look Press / Scherl
Earlier this week, a US Federal Reserve official predicted that the outbreak will leave 30 percent of Americans jobless while the country's gross domestic product (GDP) will fall by 50 percent. According to James Bullard, president of the St. Louis branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank, that could happen quite soon - in the second quarter of this year.
"If that turns out to be correct it will be the highest ever recorded. The peak unemployment rate in the US was 24 percent in the depth of the Great Depression," Professor Farmer told RT.
Going down in flames
In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I'm not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.
But I'd like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I'm a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science - fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.
The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month?
Consider this. On Thursday March 26, Cuomo dared question the orthodoxy that has wrecked countless businesses and lives. He revealed what actual experts are saying quietly all over the world but had yet not been discussed openly in the endless public-relations spin broadcast all day and night.
He said the following:
If you rethought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don't know that you would say quarantine everyone. I don't even know that that was the best public health policy. Young people then quarantined with older people was probably not the best public health strategy because the younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.
Comment: See also:
- Will the coronavirus result in martial law? 'Americans have a tipping point!'
- Coronavirus - Things you CANNOT say about it
- British globalist Gordon Brown calls for 'global government' to 'fix coronavirus pandemic'
- The numbers just don't add up: Nearly 500,000 went to hospital in 2018-19 flu season but today there are not enough hospital beds for coronavirus patients?
- Mainstream media starting to ask questions - Laura Ingraham reports on faulty WHO coronavirus mortality rates
- 12 Experts Question The Need For a Global Coronavirus Lockdown
- Hysteria rouser Dr. Anthony Fauci now concedes the coronavirus mortality rate may be much closer to a very bad flu
- A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
In Peru, this has resulted in locals attempting to fight CoViD-19 by attacking communities of bats despite the fact that the novel virus still hasn't been decisively proven to have originated from the winged creature.
On Wednesday, the Peruvian government issued a statement warning residents to stop killing bats after authorities were forced to intervene when roughly half a thousand of the flying mammals came under attack by gangs of peasants hoping to exterminate what they believed were carriers of the disease, reports Peruvian network América Noticias.
Roughly 300 of the creatures were killed in the arson attacks that took place in the small village of Culden, which lies in the Cajamarca region, after mobs attacked the caves where the bat communities dwelled, Peru's National Service of Wild Forests and Fauna (SERFOR) announced.
However, amid the crisis people have gone out on a limb not only to help each other but also to help homeless pets find temporary housing as animal shelters feel the impact of lockdown orders throughout the country.
Organizations like the Asheville Humane Society in North Carolina have had to suspend volunteer care jobs, forcing them to find alternatives to their traditional methods of finding foster parents for homeless cats and dogs.
However, after launching an online appeal to recruit temporary foster families, the humane organization found that their community was more than willing to step up and help take care of foster pets in need.
© Walmart
While people rushed to stock up on toilet paper and other supplies as the coronavirus crisis escalated, some countries decided to enforce protectionist measures, including export bans for certain products, to satisfy growing domestic demand.
"The worst that can happen is that governments restrict the flow of food," Maximo Torero, chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told the Guardian, adding that we may face the consequences of these steps soon.
For example, Russia halted exports of buckwheat and other grains for 10 days starting from March 20. Neighboring Kazakhstan followed suit and introduced restrictions on shipments of wheat flour, buckwheat, sugar, several types of vegetables, and sunflower oil.
The UN official warns that protectionist measures and trade barriers only make the situation worse, creating "extreme volatility." Another problem is that some countries now lack the workforce to harvest the crops due in part to border closures and domestic lockdowns.
Comment: While the coronavirus has been designated and treated as a pandemic of global proportions, the looming crisis is 'what is not in the pan'! Global food shortages are already here and on the rise, harbingers of the approaching ice age. Lessons on the surface remind us to look for deeper lessons underneath - and do it quickly!
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