RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/23/use-the-defense-production-act/

President Trump last week invoked the Defense Production Act, a law enacted during the Korean War that allows the federal government to direct American industry to produce products required for the national defense. The president has since declined to use the rights given him under the DPA. He shouldn’t. It’s time to act.

While I appreciate governmental restraint and his hesitancy to use what Peter Navarro called, “the heavy hand of government” to direct private businesses, we are not currently in a period of limited government action.

Government has ordered something like a quarter of the country into lockdown, all “nonessential” businesses are closed in many states, travel is banned between the United States and more than 30 countries, the Congress is on the cusp of passing a $2 trillion emergency spending bill, and the Federal Reserve has committed to unlimited trillions of dollars of quantitative easing in the form of bond market purchases.

Yet, somehow speeding the production and acquisition of medical equipment has been deemed a bridge too far. This makes no sense.

At present there are shortages of critical equipment used by healthcare providers, including N95 respirators, surgical gowns, the ventilators required to keep critically ill COVID patients breathing, along with certain pharmaceuticals, including hydroxychloroquine. That drug has been used in apparently successful small trials in both France and the United States to treat coronavirus both alone and in combination with azithromycin.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/23/can-ron-desantis-bring-some-sanity

No one is speaking for the tens of millions of terrified Americans suffering mostly in silence over fears they will be shamed as uncompassionate or ignorant. It’s time for a real leader to emerge at the state level. Maybe DeSantis will be the one.

Considering its demographics and daily influx of tourists from around the world, Florida should be ground zero for the spread of COVID-19.

The Sunshine State is home to the highest percentage of senior citizens in the country, and that doesn’t include snowbirds from the Midwest and East Coast who seek temporary refuge during the winter months. Given what we know about the higher risk for people over age 65, hospitals in the state should be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

Further, as college campuses emptied out in early March and students headed to “Where the Boys Are,” these virus-carrying hedonists should have infected thousands of elderly Floridians. Florida also is a favorite destination for international tourists: Two of the top four U.S. cities visited each year by foreigners—Miami and Orlando—are in Florida. As the virus spread across the globe in the first two months of 2020, it undoubtedly made its way to the state unbeknownst to health officials.

But unlike New York City and a few other hotspots in the country, there is no evidence of a widespread, lethal outbreak of coronavirus in Florida. As of Monday morning, 90 percent of Floridians tested were negative for COVID-19. Only 217 people have been hospitalized and 14 total have died. (About eight people per day commit suicide in Florida according to 2017 statistics.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2020/03/21/a-coronavirus-end-game-that-avoids-a-depression/#9543e1f5798f

The federal government is playing tragic catchup with the Coronavirus, which is now quickly turning into economic and health Armageddon. Absent immediate articulation of a clear and effective national health and economic policy, our governors need to step in to guide federal policy with a clear and single voice.

Short of the Trump Administration immediately taking appropriate steps (discussed below) to control the spread of Coronavirus or the discovery of a miraculous cure, we’re heading toward a full-scale depression. Goldman Sachs is forecasting a 24% drop in second quarter GDP. To put this figure in perspective, the maximum GDP-decline in the Great Depression (GD) was 26% and this took three years, not three months. The unemployment rate peaked during the GD at 25%.

In today’s economy, unemployment at such a rate would entail 36 million people out of work. The process has started. Over the past week, claims for unemployment jumped 70,000 — the biggest increase since the Great Recession. Kevin Hassett, former Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisor, believes we could see 1 million people lose their jobs over the next month. Secretary Mnunchin recently raised the specter of a 20% unemployment rate if congress doesn’t pass a fiscal relief package. Since such a package will likely have very little impact on employment, he’s actually simply predicting one in five working Americans will be tossed to the street.