This thread is about what is, and what the current policies are leading to. Not what should be.
The world set a new daily record yesterday.
2/6
Leading this record is the parabolic spike by Europe.
7-day quarantines are mandatory for positive cases.
3/6
And leading Europe to new records is the UK, Italy and Spain.
4/6
Many pointing to South Africa peaking. Remember this was after a 100x increase in 30 days. Maybe they hit testing limits after this massive rise? Consider:
The last two days SA cases are heading up again.
The rest of Africa is going vertical and also setting new records.
5/6
Asia, and especially China, has zero COVID, one case and everything closes.
Xi'an, a city of 13 million (>than NYC) is closed, because of 127 cases over one week!
6/6
Positive tests
US 10-day quarantine
Euro 7-days quarantine
Asia, zero policy (lockdowns!)
You think the global supply chain is "challenged" now, let's remove billions and billions of workdays from global production in the coming weeks and see what happens to it?
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It turns out that the biggest soap opera in Trump's nominations is the Treasury Secretary. As the graphic below shows, it is as close to 50/50 as it gets.
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My Take
The Treasury Secretary gets to sit in the room and opine on policy. And their voice will be taken seriously.
But they do not set the policy; the President does. When the president says what they will do, they expect the Treasury Secretary to sell that policy as if it were theirs.
The second part, selling something they don't believe in but are told to do, is something Jamie Dimon will never do, so he will never be the Treasury Secretary. (Dimon wants to tell everyone else what they should sell).
Lutnick will sell whatever you tell him and do it with gusto! Bessert will do so too, but he does not command the room like Lutnick.
In other words, the Treasury Secretary is the administration's chief spokesman. This is a sales job, and it needs a salesperson.
The problem with Yellen was that she needed to be a better salesperson. Yes, she is an outstanding economist, but she was never a good spokesperson for the Biden Agenda.
She would have been a better National Economic Council head, the "smart person in the shadows advising the President."
If I had to guess ....
Lutnick = Treasury Secretary
Bessert = National Economic Council head
A good way to measure the perceived health of the US economy is to measure the public's ability to spend on things they want but do not need, aka discretionary spending.
🧵
2/5
The Conference Board's survey of 3,000 Households asking whether they are planning a foreign vacation in the next six months.
This month, the survey hit another all-time high: 22% of US households say they will vacation overseas in the next six months.
3/5
A foreign vacation is something that absolutely nobody needs but absolutely everybody wants.
You only agree to potentially spend several thousand dollars if you are confident about your job,
investments, and the overall state of the economy.