After the market crash of 1929, America had three more years of Republican administration inflicted on it. We don't have to go that long this time.

Don't Fear The Reaper.
Please.
We hope the Leftist Urban Shitholes will die with a little dignity....
and minimum whining

A lot of those residential luxury buildings are for Chinese investors, actually, so I wouldn't count on them. But most of the buildings in the U Dist will cost less to build, since they won't have to wait for the needed cranes.

@2 the US Constitution does not permit delays. If there is no election, it will become President Pelosi and VP McTurtle. Automatically.

@3Cowbells --

It's always great when a film reviewer who once took a few 100 and 200-level classes 30 years ago pens a treatise on macroeconomic theory. I love this slimmed-down, looney-tunes version edition of the Stranger. Before it was very dour and finger-wagging and such a drag. But now it's so bizarre you just have to laugh. Please don't hire back the 18!

@6 Almost. Assuming Nancy Pelosi, whose term of office ends on January 3, 2021, is reelected, and assuming the Democratic Party controls the House and she is reappointed as Speaker, and there was no Presidential election, then on 12:00PM Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 2021 she would then become President of the United States as Donald Trump and Mike Pence's terms expire.

As President, she would then appoint a new Vice President. Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment provides that, "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

So, Turtle-Boy would get nowhere near the Vice Presidency.

Click bait economics 101

Good Afternoon Charles,
I read your entire post and to be honest, I didn't understand all of it. You're more of an informed writer on economics than I or the average American for the matter.

That said IMHO, I am not surprised at all at the sudden economic downturn in America due to COVID-19. Obviously, there will be some pain. I think that is to be expected. I do believe the monetary relief that the federal and state (in kind) agencies are to provide will make a difference once we can spend freely. It's the mandatory closure of the service industry and its associated jobs that is the jarring hit.

Yes, the UR will rise probably 3-4% over what it is now (Feb. 3.6%?). There will be anxiety regarding rent and mortgage payments. But, I think some States will assist. We'll see.

Right now, we must wait for the rate of infection to diminish and care for the afflicted. That is paramount. I believe the infection rate will go down in about a month. Any economic management will take the back seat.

But, we will lick this devil, COVID-19 first then we will recover economically. Why? Because the euphoria of surviving it will be overwhelming.

"The noises of the town were still beating like waves at the foot of the long lines of terraces, but tonight they told not of revolt, but of deliverance. ...and the town acclaimed it with a long-drawn sigh of relief."

-Albert Camus

"The Plague"

@10, maybe “clickbait,” but still true. You think we had a homeless problem before? How are we going to pay police officers with $110M revenue shortfalls to keep crime down? You really think half the restaurants going out of business in your city won’t eventually effect your own paycheck, if not dial down the vibrancy of your own neighborhood? It’s so easy to make a dumb snarky 10 word comment in response to an actually well reasoned and thought out piece.

@11 Exactly! I cashed out some stock before the crash, stopped 401K and ROTH payments, and canceled vacation plans in Europe (luckily before we paid for tickets).

Hell, I'm even buying wine from the under $10 section (too sweet by my standards but delivers a faster and much needed buzz I suppose).

Batten down the hatches folks! Plan ahead. The future is for the brave and bold.

@15
(Heart emoji)

Charles, thank you for writing this. We are about to get our asses handed to us. This country will be a very different place in a year. If you have elderly or sick relatives enjoy the time you have with them as we are going to lose an entire generation of elders.

@3: Add getting a vaccine for MAGAvirus, along with a rabies shot to your to-do list, Freak of Nature's Son.
@6 Will in Seattle: Let's certainly hope so. May President Pelosi and her choice of VP prevail.The current criminally inept neofascist regime has done more than enough global damage, already, in only 3 years and two months.
@15 Garb Garbler & @18 spunkbutter: Amen and bless you both.

@19 Nurse Willy: I feel very humbled, indeed, inn my immediate surviving family to BE among the elders. This is serious shit coming down.

Everyone stay healthy, warm, safe, and sane. May common sense prevail.

@19 Nurse Willy: My oldest sister, age 66, just came home from the hospital recently after getting very sick. She found out she had appendicitis. Luckily she had surgery and is fine now. I wouldn't want to have to be hospitalized or in the ER right now. My heart goes out to you and all healthcare workers. Thank you and bless you for all you do, especially in these uncertain times.

It is not in Trump’s interest to suspend the election.

1) the vast majority of states do not allow vote by mail, except in rare circumstances such as absentee ballots.
2) the people most likely to shelter-in-place are non-Republicans.
3) Republican voters are more likely to believe COVID-19 is a hoax
Therefore,
If Trump does not suspend the election, he will win re-election, as only a GOP voter would be dumb enough to risk their life by going to the crowded polling station on Election Day.

@9 - Assuming the Repubs keep the Senate, I don't see any way both houses will agree to the same VP candidate by majority vote. In that case, we would not have one. And the new Speaker of the House would be next in line. In this scenario, Pelosi or another Dem.

By the same token, if Pence croaks from the virus or other well-deserved cause (a guy can hope), I can't see Pelosi allowing Trump to appoint a new Veep, meaning that if Trump gets the big fat viral infection he deserves, she'd be next in line, followed by whoever becomes Speaker after her. Could be worse.

I'm kinda rooting for a couple of infections in the White House.

@ Auntie Grizelda thank you. Glad your sis is OK. Likewise stay safe and don't touch your face!!

The streets are mostly empty of vehicles in my neighborhood now while everyone stays home. 90% of what's left? Delivery trucks. I don't think Amazon's in any danger

Steal shit from your employer now because we don’t do severance anymore.

After a decade of development, the “Crane City” is now a place where few people will want to move to. There are many who will want to move away, once the quarantine lifts and they can find a place to move to.

Coronavirus will decline in the summer, when our long days will expose the virus to ultraviolet light, which deactivates the virus by distrusting it’s genetic material. Barring some major medical miracle, such as a vaccine or an effective treatment bing discovered before the fall, autumn and winter will bring a resurgence in the disease.

Even if Inslee issues a lockdown order to flatten the curve, this state is not an island. All it takes is some Midwestern idiot or Southern moron to drive across the state line and we’re right back where we started. This virus does not induce immunity the same way the flu does. Whatever Boris Johnson’s delusions of herd immunity might be, people are gonna die, and until we develop an effective means of dealing with this, they’ll die seasonally.

The cranes are gonna stop, soon. The trains and planes will stop as well. Grocery stores, druggists and delivery services will prosper in the short term, until the summer when numbers go down. And once the jobs disappear, the tourist industry jobs, the restaurant jobs, the music industry jobs, everything that depends on large crowds of people coming here- ain’t nobody coming back.

Seattle is dying. It’s not because of socialism or homeless people or drugs. It’s because of capitalism. It’s dying from a disjointed, uncoordinated national response. It’s dying because we deregulated everything so much, a nursing home in Kirkland became a Petrie dish. It’s dying because hospitals in the epicenter of the plague have no masks. Every nurse is now Typhoid Mary. It’s dying because Fox News said the kids could go on spring break and the seniors should go to church. It’s dying because you dumbasses voted for a candidate who says he will veto healthcare reform in the midst of a pandemic.

Y’all thought what killed Seattle was the Left. Bullshit, it was the Right, in the kitchen, with the candlestick.

The virus is a shaking of the Etch-a-Sketch that is our culture.
The idea of back-to-normal is repulsive.
This is an opportunity.
I don't want to piss on anyones parade, but that there are actual business models of things like cupcake delivery and battery-powered aircraft that will bring you a pair of Chinese-made socks is mental illness.
It is intentional malfeasance of the common good.
We really have a cadre of people who drive their cars to Burger King and then take that shit to people in their apartments?
My own industry is not better.
If people had any sense of the waste, the torrent of money, talent, and material that goes down the rat-hole of my job, of weapons and vehicles to deliver them, they'd puke blood from their eyes.
We have to make this thing better.
The virus is a metaphysical event.
It is a reckoning.
I know it helps no one to breathe when I say it, and people hate alchemy and psychology, but it is the only true thing in this whole Mardi Gras.
The gods have sent us a text message and it says - "Want to reconsider?"
There is plenty of wealth to go around.
There is enough food and housing and shoes and jeans and books and beans to take care of everyone.
But it is all locked up.
All hoarded.
And we drool over the hoarders.
Musk.
Gates.
Bezos.
Bryant.
Meanwhile, we don't know where the food comes from or how the lights work.
We seek guidance from Trump.
We wait to be told what to do, to get permission.
We have let the Alien into the ship.
Now we have to get it out without being consumed or carrying it back to Earth.
But - what then?
Same old same old?
Or do we listen and learn?e do not know what we are.
Almost no one knows what a human being IS.
What are you?!?!
Do you know?
It's all there.
It's all free.
It's aways been there.
You know how to get it.
Every Teacher has told us.
It is always the same message.
Try it out.
You'll be amazed.
Love is the answer.
It is what will carry us through the Fire Swamp.
And it will carry us forward.
But if we go back - we get more of what we already got.
More.
Yeeks.
This is such an opportunity.
This is it.
This is our moment.
What do we make of it?

I love reading Charles, he is great for a laugh and so are the ridiculous comments like "Seattle is dying because of Capitalism"... or blaming the "evils" of Capitalism for expensive high rise apartment construction in Seattle when it is nanny-state environmental zoning restrictions that distort the market by effectively banning condo construction, banning cheap apartment construction and incentivizing small, expensive ugly shit.
Capitalism will never end or fail, because if you or I work or produce something we should be paid for it not the government. This is reality. This is how the world works. Stop living in some fantasy world where this or any crisis will mean "the end" of Capitalism when before a novel coronavirus emerged was booming like gangbusters and will be again soon.

@11 - "It is not the strongest or smartest that survive; it's those most responsive to change."
In biology/ecology... the same idea is expressed as: In a changing environment, the 'generalists' survive, not the 'niche inhabitants'. Specialized flora and fauna get squeezed out due to diminishing food or shelter, and generalists (like Japanese Knot Weed, Kudzu, rats, and invasive Blackberries) flourish. Able to deal with change through broad skill-sets and an open mind.

@24 - ""If Trump does not suspend [...], he will win re-election"
You're forgetting the minor detail that we've gone from 1 case of Covid-19 to probably between 1.25 - 2.5 MILLION cases around the world, in approximately 4 months. Four Months.
The election isn't for another 8 months. With our current trajectory (a) EVERYONE will be scared to gather in election halls, and (b) a goodly portion of those brave, unafraid of "the flu", MAGA Republicants will be dead. Never mind the trouncing he'll take by the "markets" for fucking this up, they may want him "out" too, in which case our votes won't even matter. Again.

@25 - We ALREADY have a "couple infections" in the WH. I mean, really. Gross! They should stop picking at the lesions, they're goopy enough. .....Oooh, I get what you mean... oops. haha

@33 - "ultraviolet light, [...] deactivates the virus by distrusting it’s genetic material."
Are you high right now? No shame if you are, most of us are. But you're not making a lot of sense, FYI.

OK, PROPOSALS:
(1).. TAX STRIKE -- this cornyvirus situation is going to be bad, keep any money you would be "expected" to give to the Feds. Since they aren't going to bail YOU out to the tune of $2.2 BILLION dollars (wtf? where did that cash come from, btw? They just printed it, right?), you might as well bail yourSELF out. With your tax money the Feds were just going to evaporate into nothingness anyway.

(2).. OCCUPY! All abandoned or otherwise unlived-in residences. You know, the ones that foreign nationals have been sinking cash into as safety deposit boxes. Nope. Not anymore. Ours. Get everyone sheltered, ASAP.

(3).. VICTORY GARDENS. Grow all the food you can. Backyards, 5-gal buckets, P-Patches, empty lots. Hell, might as well rip up a few streets to make some larger community garden plots.

(4).. START WASHINGTON'S OWN (mutual-credit) CURRENCY. Now is the time. Did you remember reading that after the Great Depressions the Fed.Govt actually had to PLEAD with people to "Please stop using those 'emergency currencies'..." and trust the Almighty-but-slightly-dented Dollar once again. WHAT WERE THOSE 'EMERGENCY CURRENCIES'? you wonder? Well my friends, look into 'mutual-credit' and 'time-based' currencies. We don't need "dollars" to trade amongst ourselves. Why not create an economic "safe harbor" against the tidal wave crashes of the Global Economy? Use a different TYPE of currency that isn't 'positive-interest', tied to their speculative system, or sucked away into their off-shore investment accounts. GO LOCAL! We need our own Sasquatch Bucks right away. Make them worth Food and Rent, and we'll help our neighbors get through this.

Contact me (at the gee-mails) if you have the time &/or skills &/or resources to do this last one.

(Treacle Corrosion is mah formal name.)

@38 - RNA is well-known to be devious and untrustworthy.

@33 I can see current situation has left you in despair, without hope, and drowning in self-pity. Perhaps you should move to Olympia and become a lobbyist.

What drivel you write. It's hilarious.

@38 "Gold is money. Everything else is credit." - JP Morgan

Wandering Star, time to man up and stop running around like a chicken with his head cut off, you're scaring the women and children.

Even Swiftress has bigger balls.

Mudede is far too near-sighted (and still fervently anti-American in his soul).

We will be very lucky indeed, if the world doesn't slip into a second GLOBAL Great Depression.

It's a proud populist tradition in Seattle to prophesize the downfall of the haves. If you listen to prophets like Charles, Microsoft has been on the precipice of disaster for 25 years with all those coders soon to become baristas.

I'm with @34. This is an opportunity. A wake up call.

What's happening now is a voluntary economic shutdown. That's very different from a bubble or other financial failure. If anything it shows the strength of the people (consumers). The corporate elite Democrat and Republican are doing everything they can to get money into the hands of the people. When this is over I wonder if people will find a way to use a general boycott like our great grandparents used the general srike.

@50 -- even the illiterates?
How 'bout the semi-literates?
And then there's the Ignoranti
and those Willfully so. What about
them? What will They all read, SS?

@50, 51 headlines grab eyeballs. Capitalism runs happily amok at the editor's desk. :)

All we need are individual hazmat suits. In this case, we would need only helmets to protect the virus entry points on our heads. Oh I know some are laughing but consider this: 50+ years ago we would have laughed at the thought of powerful computers in our pockets. Go back even farther - having your own refridgerator was something only restaurants would have. It isn't rocket science. That what we need to do when this is over - hazmat suits for everyone. Consider the technology that goes into the modern car to protect us - hazmat suits/helmets can't be more sophisticated than that. Or at least cover enough of the population with hazmat to keep the economy going.

And where is the phone/fitbit/apple watch "social distance" app? You know, something that starts beeping or says "You're too close" when it senses another human has gotten closer than 6 feet?

@6 - That's not how it works. In December, Congress will convene to tabulate the votes of the electors. If fewer than 270 votes have been received, the House elects the President on the basis of one vote per state cast by each state's congressional delegation. Republicans currently have a majority of state congressional delegations, albeit a minority of members of Congress. If this were true after January (as it almost certainly will be) then Trump will be reelected president and the Senate would then proceed to reelect Pence as Vice-President.

More likely, if a state found itself unable to hold a public election, it would simply amend its electoral law to authorize its legislature to elect its electors, or its governor to appoint them. No state is obligated to have a public election for President. (In Washington's first election, less than half of states held elections.) Such a situation would also probably result in Trump's reelection as the legislatures of battleground states (e.g. Florida, Pennsylvania, etc.) are all controlled by Republicans.

America is like the parable 'The Ant and the Grasshopper'. Most people are Grasshoppers. A few of us are Ants.

When Charles writes about stocks crashing and houses losing 50% of their value, I see buying opportunities. This is what being an Ant allows for. You defer your pleasure, defer your consumption, save for a rainy day. It's a lesson that all Americans used to know, now, it's a lost art.

Well, I wish it were the mother of all economic crashes, because then it wouldn't be an actual economic crash (although I guess she's probably a bad parent, or maybe just unlucky).

Kindness and solidarity to all of you in King County from California (yes, I know you hate us, and I was an "invader" once, but I promise I left before it got pricey, and in any event would've been fired from my customer service job at Amazon before long anyhow because we were trying to unionize [okay I secretly wish that someday they have to rebury Bezos' body in a very private location because of all the people p*ssing on his grave]).

And yes: Democratic governors are mostly less horrible than Trump, but where were they in January on testing and more specifically pressuring the federal government to test people returning from hot zones overseas? Where were they in January in surveying inventory of respirators and ventilators, and ramping up production? This is not crisis leadership - it's crap leadership.

Even the third stimulus, with all its formulas and wonkyness, will only serve to help obscure all the people (ie working poor people who in many cases can't now work) it will leave behind. This is that moment when the progressives, Sanders and the squad, are right: send checks to every f*cking American, and tax the rich.