When I think about a country with testing issues, I think about Mexico, which has had a very high positivity ratio for its COVID testing through the entire pandemic (around 50%). But many US states are now seeing positivity rates really spike too, not far behind Mexico...
The trend higher in positivity rates / hit ratios (blue lines) are partly a function of less testing over the holidays. But it is still telling:
Arizona: >40% hit rate / positivity
Idaho >50% hit rate / positivity
Missouri >40% hit rate / posivitity
Pennsylvania >40% hit rate/ positivity
Utah, approaching 40% hit ratio / positivity
Testing will catch up in coming days, and in early 2021 especially, and that may bring positivity rates down a touch, but will push case counts much higher in some states in the process likely also.
It is not a uniform story across the US. But in some states, testing continues to lag the outbreak, even if we are 10 months into the pandemic. END
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Ok, we are ready to officially launch our blog/substack called Money: Inside and Out. We have tested it and populated with 3 initial posts, and you can subscribe here:
One post, called "The Big Myth about Money and Inflation" touched on the conceptual misunderstandings around the link, and how the future may again shake things up, if monetary and fiscal expansion are (aggressively) combined.
Another post (from today) touched on the possibility of a liquidity crisis within the Eurosystem (written by our Advisor Chris Marsh aka @GeneralTheorist)
First, If one macro policy operates in isolation, it can be contradicted by ‘the other’ policy. This is especially relevant with monetary policy. In the past, expansive fiscal policy was often associated with monetary tightening (=not good, if you have spare capacity, low inf.)
Policy coordination, which ensures that monetary policy, and market rates, are not ‘fighting’ the fiscal policy can help solve this problem. =>coordination is good.
(apologies to my friends at Bloomberg news, including the ones involved in my interview earlier today, but.....)
Why have you changed all my menus to Spanish language while I was sleeping today?
[this was the language thing that broke the camels back...so now I will do a vent-thread]
why does the fingerprinting device on the keyboard only work 20% of the time, so that I have to fingerprint on the mobile B-unit another handful of time to simply get going, every day. I pay for the service, you can at least let me use it, hassle-free?!
The large majority of European countries have 'negative' momentum on covid cases now. But lockdown lite vs lockdown full makes a difference. We have big descents in France and the UK, vs mostly stabilization (but no strong descent) in Germany.
Also, we are still waiting for improvement (decline) in Germany's positivity ratio (hit ratio). We would expect Germany to eventually get on the path of Netherlands, with a clearer descent. But it is taking somewhat longer than expected.
The lockdown lite started 3 weeks ago, and it normally takes 2-3 weeks before results are visible. But the fact that policy makers are talking about extending the measures also shows that the descent has been surprisingly slow.
Second, it is not very helpful to have the Treasury and the Fed in open disagreement about this type of issue. This probably explains why markets reacted negatively.