The Viral Economy

[LawBeefaroni]

Qui tam

I was thinking more something where lawyers and lawsuits aren't involved. At least not on the crowdsourced end.

"Here's the data, if you are the first to identify a valid claim via our reporting system, you get $X."

[malchior]

Basically the CFTC whistleblower program turned towards PPP or whatever. There is no requirement in the CFTC whistleblower program that the person be an actual whistleblower.

[Smoove_B]

Everything is fine.

REPORT Lufthansa group confirmed that 18,000 flights had been flown empty to keep airport slots

[Isgrimnur]

Before anyone goes all "freedom frankfurter":

EU rules require that airlines operate a certain percentage of scheduled flights to keep their slots at major airports.

Under these “use it or lose it” regulations, prior to the pandemic carriers had to utilise at least 80pc of their scheduled take-off and landing slots.

This was revised to 50pc as coronavirus saw travel become increasingly difficult – but airlines are still struggling to hit this target.

As a result of Lufthansa Group’s latest figures, the Belgian federal government has written to the European Commission, calling for a change to the rules on maintaining slots.

[Smoove_B]

Before anyone goes all "freedom frankfurter":

[Carpet_pissr]

Before anyone goes all "freedom frankfurter":

[/quote]
I'm trying to picture what that would even look like.

[Smoove_B]

Bosses are recommitting to their company offices — even as Omicron extends remote work for many employees.

...

Nearly three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey by international workforce consulting firm Korn Ferry said they would return to the office now if mandated to do so, but 27% said they would refuse to go back in, even part-time, or would simply quit.

While 64% said it would make them “happy” to socialize with their co-workers again and nearly half said a return to the office would be good for their mental health, 51% said coming back to the office would have a negative effect on their mental health.

[LawBeefaroni]

Commerical RE would be dead except for the efforts of owners and the cities (and thus politicians) that rely on their taxes.






My reports are 100% WFH, though they still have offices for the time being. I'm in the office every day but have the option of WFH whenever I want. If my son wasn't in school on campus I'd be in the office a lot less.

I suspect we will eventually be 40% or more WFH with co-work or hotel type arrangements. It does help with the problem hospitals and health systems often have with lack of clinical space.

[YellowKing]

Yeah working for a large hospital, they are doubling down on keeping non-clinical folks at home. They're not having to rent out large office buildings or take up precious clinical floor space, and being able to draw on tech talent from a larger geographical area to support niche apps is a total win. We had a call today in which it was made pretty clear to the tech folks that WFH was here to stay.

[Kraken]

Boston is busily converting office buildings to lab space as the biotechs can't get enough in Cambridge. Moderna and Pfizer both just doubled their footprints. Biotech startup money is flowing freely, and Cambridge is where those labs want to be for synergy with the universities and with each other. We're fortunate to be the hub for a booming industry that's spreading throughout the metro area.

Unfortunately, scientists and lab techs don't behave the same way office workers did (going out to lunch every day, getting meetings catered, socializing after hours, etc) and the many businesses that served them are noticing the difference. There are fewer workers overall, and they mostly keep to their big glass towers.

[Smoove_B]

Additional perspective on how another country is using economics to help drive response - Japan

One misconception about Japan's political response to COVID is that it is a lovey-dovey response that's all about caring for the people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Notice how in this government video, they keep talking about business and economic practicalities. That's all they really care about, in a way that is quite brutal. The people don't even get access to free RATs or PCR testing. The real difference in the JP govt response is that it is driven by a dominant neo-Keynesian macroeconomic paradigm, so unfashionable in the Anglosphere. It's a model that believes in nation-building through central investment in technologically based infrastructure. The end result is they give away thousands of free CO2 monitors to businesses and invest in clean-indoor air infrastructure as a business centred economic stimulus programme.

If there is a benefit to citizens, it is indirect and structurally mediated. Keynesian macroeconomics is “demand-side economics”. That means you don't want to kill, maim, sicken and furlough workers and consumers in the economy by the millions. They are not considered disposable as they consume goods and services. The difference between the COVID outcomes in the UK vs JP can thus be regarded as a difference in their respective dominant macroeconomic paradigms. The Anglosphere has been dominated by Classical supply-side macroeconomics for some decades—never mind that Keynes was a Briton. Cracks in the Classical paradigm first appeared with the GFC, which forced governments to intervene with corporate bailouts, stimulus packages, and the adoption of the Japanese practice of quantitative easing. COVID represents a big double whammy to rock that paradigm.

There's more and even a link to book about how COVID impacted the world economy.

And of course the last notable comment:

As a post-script, there's an “I told you so” aspect to this story. The Omicron wave caused business and consumer confidence to crash, crushing the “animal spirits of the market”—to paraphrase a famous quote from Keynes. The effect was worse than a lockdown

[malchior]

I love this break down. This dovetails with themes I've been wrestling with for years. We're 40 years into a supply-side regime that has progressed to the point that it is breaking our society. COVID insanity looks like everything else that is failing because it shares some of the important root causes. Our populism issues lies in there as well. That said, the Japanese approach to economics hasn't been working well either at large scale even if in the case of COVID it worked out.

[Kraken]

Da hell is up with cat food, anyway? Both nearby grocers' shelves have looked like this for weeks.



I lucked into a new shipment at PetSmart and bought a case when the clerk said it would be sold out by tomorrow afternoon.

[Smoove_B]

Da hell is up with cat food, anyway? Both nearby grocers' shelves have looked like this for weeks.

It's all part of the return to normal. Didn't you get the memo?

“We would expect more supply challenges over the next four to six weeks,” he said on a conference call with Wall Street analysts after Albertsons reported earnings. “As a business we’ve all learned to manage it, we’ve all learned to make sure that the stores are still very presentable—give the consumers as much choice as we can get.”

Omicron is exacerbating disruptions in food supply chains that are already stressed. Rising U.S. infections mean more workers are getting sick at farms, factories, distributors and retailers, crimping the flow of goods to shoppers just as the variant prompts people to eat at home more. Port congestion and winter weather in parts of the country aren’t helping, either.

Online searches are surging for basic products, reflecting consumer anxiety over supplies. As of Tuesday afternoon, the list includes chicken, potatoes, spinach, pasta, meat, lettuce, eggs, cream cheese, and cat food.

That was 1/12/22, so everything is fine now, right?

[Kraken]

Why is there ample dog food?

One story said the main bottleneck is aluminum cat food cans. Maybe dog food comes in steel cans? Also, dogs will eat anything so their food is of much lower quality. The same story said shortages will persist through at least May. Besides the now-familiar supply chain woes, demand is way up because of people adding new pets.

When we got Bowie, Warren decided to start eating canned food again, so demand in the Kraken household is up dramatically. If the pantry goes bare my cats will surely flip Republican.

[malchior]

The cat food shortages extend to dry food as well. We noticed this began in late Fall/early Winter. We could get one 6 lb bag instead of one 20. Why? It was blamed on a plastic shortage/backup due to the Texas power grid failure last year.

In other news, despite our oligarch overlords (board rename? ) sacrificing lives to the shrine of the dollar it is beginning to appear we might have seen the economy essentially squashed flat by omicron. There was plenty of evidence of significant disruptions so we might get the rare treat of negative growth without the typical price retreats as supply/demand imbalances worsened. Time will tell in the coming weeks and months though it looks like our policy response was heartless and cruel while also being counterproductive. Super. Let's do it again in 6 months.

Bank of America slashed its first-quarter economic outlook for the United States on Friday because of disruptions caused by the Omicron coronavirus variant.

Economists at Bank of America (BAC) said in a report to clients they now expect US gross domestic product to increase at an annual rate of just 1% during the first three months of this year.

That's a sharp downgrade from the bank's prior call for 4% growth in the quarter. And yet it could prove to be optimistic.

That would break a streak of six consecutive quarters of growth that began in the summer of 2020.

The Atlanta Federal Reserve's GDPNow forecasting model, released on Friday, is calling for 0.1% growth in the first quarter. That would be a rapid slowdown from the 6.9% annual rate of growth during the final quarter of 2021.[/url]

[noxiousdog]

It's the universe saying dogs > cats.

[LawBeefaroni]

We've had spotty availability of cat food here for a year so I've been buying in bulk. If we run out we just do boneless chicken breast.

I think he likes it when we run out.

[Carpet_pissr]

I buy Fancy Feast (cans) in bulk from Sam’s Club. Over the summer, there were several months when they were completely out (which I had not seen…ever?).

During that outage, I just switched to buying from Amazon using ‘subscribe and save’ (cost was practically the same as Sam’s), and now noticed recently Sam’s has it back in stock.

I’m sure Costco has something similar.

[LawBeefaroni]

We do Amazon sometimes too but their supply has been spotty. Target delivery has actually been the best source for us lately.

And our guy is very specific, Fancy Feast w/ the gravy. No seafood varieties. Given that he's almost 18 years on the stuff so far, we're not going to switch up.

[coopasonic]

Chewy has yet to let us down on either cat food (canned) or dog food (25-50lb bags).

[Kraken]

I might have to resort to buying it online. I hate to generate extra packaging, but my boys gotta eat. Back when Warren decided he was a vegetarian I tried boiling and shredding some chicken thighs, but he wasn't tempted. So I made chicken salad.

[coopasonic]

I might have to resort to buying it online. I hate to generate extra packaging, but my boys gotta eat. Back when Warren decided he was a vegetarian I tried boiling and shredding some chicken thighs, but he wasn't tempted. So I made chicken salad.

If you buy it by the pallet, just like the store does, there isn't any extra packaging!

[Jaymann]

Why don't they make mouse flavored cat food?

[Alefroth]

We shop at I guess what you'd call a boutique pet store, and they are occasionally out of a urinary formula kibble we use, but otherwise the shelves have been fully stocked all through this.

[LawBeefaroni]

Why don't they make mouse flavored cat food?

Mice are fun to play with but they aren't good eating.


But the real reason is that people buy cat food, not cats. The flavors are marketed to people.

[Kraken]

Why don't they make mouse flavored cat food?

Mice are fun to play with but they aren't good eating.


But the real reason is that people buy cat food, not cats. The flavors are marketed to people.

Plus, pet food is made from human food byproducts. There's no reason for Purina to start a mouse ranch.

[Jaymon]

One of our cats is on prescription food, so we have been quite concerned about the shortages, its been spotty being able to get that in.

[Jaymann]

Why don't they make mouse flavored cat food?

Mice are fun to play with but they aren't good eating.


But the real reason is that people buy cat food, not cats. The flavors are marketed to people.

Plus, pet food is made from human food byproducts. There's no reason for Purina to start a mouse ranch.

Couldn't they just synthesize the flavor? I think it is more a case that humans find mice disgusting, but don't seem to have a problem slaughtering farm animals.

[Blackhawk]

Shopping has gotten to the point that it's a huge hassle. I go in with a list, and come out with 1/2 to 2/3 of the list. And luxuries don't go on the list - the list is just the necessities.

We're on a very tight budget right now after some unavoidables. I grew up poor. I've lived poor. I know how to eat cheap without eating crap. But I've been to a different store every week for the past three weekly shopping trips, and not one item in my 'toolbox' of low-budget foods has been available in any of them. Not one.

I'm getting really, really tired of ramen and peanut butter.

[Kraken]

Why don't they make mouse flavored cat food?

Mice are fun to play with but they aren't good eating.


But the real reason is that people buy cat food, not cats. The flavors are marketed to people.

Plus, pet food is made from human food byproducts. There's no reason for Purina to start a mouse ranch.

Couldn't they just synthesize the flavor? I think it is more a case that humans find mice disgusting, but don't seem to have a problem slaughtering farm animals.

Uhh...just what do mice taste like? Do four out of five cats prefer mice over, say, sparrows?

[Kraken]

Shopping has gotten to the point that it's a huge hassle. I go in with a list, and come out with 1/2 to 2/3 of the list. And luxuries don't go on the list - the list is just the necessities.

We're on a very tight budget right now after some unavoidables. I grew up poor. I've lived poor. I know how to eat cheap without eating crap. But I've been to a different store every week for the past three weekly shopping trips, and not one item in my 'toolbox' of low-budget foods has been available in any of them. Not one.

I'm getting really, really tired of ramen and peanut butter.

Well, from the privileged side of the ledger, last week I was looking for oyster sauce for a new recipe that I want to try. I've never bought oyster sauce and wasn't even sure what kind of package I was looking for, much less where it would be. Unsurprisingly, I didn't find it. But the Asian ethnic aisle was pretty empty. Granted, Asians are the largest minority in my town, and their supermarket section isn't very large (it's actually very small sections of Thai, Chinese, and Japanese, while the dominant ethnicity here is Vietnamese), but I was surprised to find it picked clean.

I don't even know if I like oyster sauce so I'm not going to buy it online for a recipe that I might make only once.

[Blackhawk]

I keep oyster sauce around, but I buy it at the local Asian market.

[malchior]

I keep oyster sauce around, but I buy it at the local Asian market.

Same - I've only consistently ever found it at Asian markets.

[Carpet_pissr]

Huh, that’s interesting. I’ve seen it (and bought it, recently in fact) at places like Kroger, Publix and even Lowe’s (foods).

I have noticed that at least at Publix, they cannot keep the Asian section stocked worth a damn in the past…year? Might be true for the other two as well.

The Kroger app has a pop up banner that warns about low inventory and potentially long lines.

[Smoove_B]

Apparently Tyson is fighting inflation:

Tyson said it raised meat prices to offset higher costs for labor, transportation and grains used for animal feed. Its cost of goods rose by 18% in the quarter, and King told reporters he expects grain prices will continue to rise.

To respond, Tyson restructured its chicken pricing strategy to make it more flexible and has asked customers to pay for freight rates that jumped 32%, King said.

"They're dealing with a very inflationary environment across kind of all their businesses," said Adam Samuelson, lead agribusiness analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Record profits, btw. I don't understand the economy.

[malchior]

The profits are a margin of the increase. They could have absorbed it but the environment is not competitive. Everyone is allowed to blame all price rises on inflation and they can safely capture rents. That's a nice trade off for the losses the oligarchs will see as the Fed raises rates. The oligarchs always win.

Edit: Though the logistics price problem is real. It was predicted to happen years ago. It arrived in force at the worst time and has just melded into and bolstered all these other issues.

[LawBeefaroni]

CPI coming out today, 7% is expected.

[Kraken]

Biden is trying to spur competition in the meatpacking industry, so of course they are going to fight back. The absence of competition is why they can pass their higher prices through to consumers without dinging their profit margins. In a competitive market, they'd have to absorb some of the pain.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

Canadian truckers protesting coronavirus restrictions and vaccine mandates on Tuesday partially severed a key trade artery between the U.S. and Canada, threatening to further disrupt new car and truck production that already has been hampered by a prolonged shortage of computer chips.

After blocking streets in the capital Ottawa for 10 days, the truckers brought their anti-government blockade to the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor, Ontario, with the city of Detroit.

Each day, $300 million worth of car and truck parts, agricultural products, steel and other raw materials flows across the bridge, according to Flavio Volpe, president of the Auto Parts Manufacturers Association in Toronto.

U.S. manufacturers rely on daily or near-daily shipments to and from their Canadian partners. Just one or two more days of interrupted deliveries could lead to temporary layoffs or plant closures, Volpe said.

“We work in 24-48 hour contingencies. Everybody is thinking about what that means for tomorrow’s production,” he said. “A few dozen people are getting in the way of the American economy."