March 15th, The Ides of March for the Romans was a big day - religious observances were held and debts came due. But in 44 BC it was a bad day for Emperor Julius Caesar. Nineteen centuries later March 15th 1918 was also a bad day for Czar Nicholas II who was forced to abdicate. And now this year's 15thof March we found ourselves also in our own 'Ides of March'. Things are so bad that some believe it will never be same again. Very much like the days after September 11, 2001 when our vulnerability to asymmetric jihadist warfare became tragically obvious. Now a global pandemic is triggering a monumental reset of everything.
To make matters worse this crisis would be difficult enough under the best run Executive Branch one could imagine, but we have the extreme misfortune to have
it hit us under the worst run one imaginable. Fortunately the States are taking forceful initiatives on their own. But that will not be enough. We need strong, intelligent, decisive leadership.
We
in the Bay Area have been in 'shelter-in-place' since early last week. It
feels like it's been a month. When I go to the grocery store I now try to
envision others I encounter to be surrounded by an invisible cloud
of Covid-19 viral particles waiting to infect me and myself also surrounded by such a cloud waiting to infect them. And yet I can't. They all look like normal
healthy people.
We
are told one of the key means to lowering the soaring infection rate is
to drastically reduce human interaction. A radical reducing of
exposure means practically shutting the whole economy down, Nobody
politically right, left or center; religious or atheistic; PHD or
high school dropout really has a clue as to where the f**k we're
headed. Capitalism in one country much less globally can (painfully)
come back from world wars, revolutions, depressions and of course the
regular garden variety recession. But what does it mean to have to
idle a huge portion of much of the global work force almost
simultaneously? Remember, China although claiming 'recovery', still
has over 81,000 cases three months into this. As of last Friday
(3/20/20) stock markets around world were still in free fall. That
means bits and bytes on computers representing trillions and trillions
of dollars, euros, yens, whatever of wealth have vanished into
cyberspace. In addition to the speculative wealth of all sorts of one-percenters,
plungers and assorted fat cats who use the stock market as their
Great Casino having taken gotten serious
'haircuts' , the rest of us have also had eaten shit. All of our 'well performing' mutual funds or our
cautiously researched favorite stocks that seemed stable and might
someday even soar have been pulled into this black vortex.. But what about most
Americans who never have enough extra income for such amateur speculation and rely on their 401K stock portfolios managed by 'professionals' for their
retirement plans?. Add to that all the state, county and municipal civil servants with their
retirement plans with managers' who are charged with investing those massive funds in the 'the markets'. And of course there are the insurance companies, and so on.
We
are in a 'fine mess' and it wasn't Oliver Hardy's fault..
