Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:03 am  

King Street Cat wrote:

If anything, I think people still in a job will be desperate to save. The last 15 years have been a pretty volatile period, and a lot of people living it up on the tick will get a massive foghorn-like wake up call during this current crisis.

There's an old saying about the Lebanese - "2 cars on the drive, no food in the fridge". That currently applies to plenty of Brits. There will be a lot of Range Rover Evoques getting handed back over the next few months as people reasses just what's important in their lives. Keep living up to the fantasy of capitalism, or save for the next inevitable rainy day?

One thing for sure is that they cant cut interest rates to stimulate the ecconomy.
The "high street" which already resembling the "marie celeste" is going to be deader than dead.
The only "shops" that were open were coffee bars, nail bars and hair dressers, all of which will be among the last places to be allowed to re open.

It really is fecking grim and that's for the lucky ones.

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:28 am  

Mild Rover wrote:

Obviously there’s some uncertainty around the numbers, but from a purely economic POV I suspect you’re right.

The government has to consider second order consequences too. If the NHS is overwhelmed or if civil society frays or even breaks down during a peak, that’d have a big impact. Really difficult judgement call. And politically, a ‘let’s send nan to dignitas’ type of platform would be a hard sell.

Numbers like £500 billion aren’t very relatable, imo. So, for context I looked up the UK’s national debt, which is currently over £1800 billion. £500 billion is about £7k per capita (which sounds fairly affordable with ‘repayments over several years’) or £28k for a family of four (which sounds less affordable to me, even though it is the same thing stated differently).

Bad times.

It is going to be very grim - there is no way of avoiding it. The country will be a very different place by September. The retail landscape will have changed beyond recognition - how many small retailers will return - we will all have got used to shopping on line and I include food in that so businesses will simply go why are we paying big rents huge BR when we change the model and save millions and bring prices down which will be important with so many unemployed. Same will go for offices.

How many Bars/restaurants will re-open etc. We have all got used to using Teams/Blue Jeans/Zoom so travel will be significantly down.

The strategy of lockdown was all wrong - isolate the vulnerable and let the rest of us get on with it - I ask again why is it working in Sweden?

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:29 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Perhaps you could answer why without a lockdown Sweden is managing to restrict the deaths to reasonable numbers?

Reasonable numbers? Over 11,000 confirmed cases and over 1,000 deaths for a country with a population of 10 million.

Compare that to their neighbours, Denmark (population 5.6 million) has seen 300 deaths and 6,500 cases, Norway (5.3 million) has seen a death toll of 140 with 6,600 cases, while Finland (5.5 million) has been relatively unscathed with 64 deaths and just 3,000 cases.

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:36 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

I ask again why is it working in Sweden?

But is it working?

Nevertheless, Sweden's cases are rising; the country has a population of approximately 10 million people, and there are now more than 10,000 cases and nearly 900 deaths. This means the death toll is higher than all other Nordic countries' combined.

From 1 day ago. The total deaths have now exceeded 1000. Read beyond the headlines.

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:43 am  

wrencat1873 wrote:

One thing for sure is that they cant cut interest rates to stimulate the ecconomy.
The "high street" which already resembling the "marie celeste" is going to be deader than dead.
The only "shops" that were open were coffee bars, nail bars and hair dressers, all of which will be among the last places to be allowed to re open.

It really is fecking grim and that's for the lucky ones.

You are correct, things are and will be grim for months to come. You don’t have to be an economist to see that dozens of companies will go bust. The government tax take will drop, plus personal bankruptcies will be widespread. All country’s will however be in the same predicament, obviously we can’t reduce reduce interest rates by much.
We do have one massive advantage over a raft of EU Nations we can and will print money. This has a some major risks, but will definitely solve the problem over the short term. Without wishing to return to the Brexit debate ,being unable to print money due to the euro will devastate Italy and Greece . The loans that Italy and Greece will have to take don’t address the major problems they have. The huge drop in oil prices has probably closed down any sensible debate on Scottish devolution, probably won’t shut up the snp as any shortcomings in Scotland will be blamed on the Westminster parliament.

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 12:15 pm  

King Street Cat wrote:

But is it working?

From 1 day ago. The total deaths have now exceeded 1000. Read beyond the headlines.

The population is one 6th of us but they have one twelfth the deaths - which system would you say is working better - we are getting a thousand a day they are getting a hundred?

Their economy whilst damaged will not take as long to recover as ours - so which is the better option?

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 12:54 pm  

With the economy in such dire straits I presume the government will request an extension to the transition period rather than dump businesses in to no deal when they have been unable to prepare for it?

Or will they decide that the extra hit to the economy will be worth it for their political purposes and just tell businesses and households that they have to suck up the extra costs and red tape.

[Mild Rover]

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 12:59 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

The population is one 6th of us but they have one twelfth the deaths - which system would you say is working better - we are getting a thousand a day they are getting a hundred?

Their economy whilst damaged will not take as long to recover as ours - so which is the better option?

Depends to some extent on where they are on their curve. We were doing a lot better than Italy and France in terms of absolute numbers/proportion of population until quite recently.

There may be demographic influences too.

Depends... may be...

Making evidence-based decisions with what is still a pretty sparse body of evidence is really tough.

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:03 pm  

Mild Rover wrote:

We were doing a lot better than Italy and France in terms of absolute numbers/proportion of population until quite recently.

It's important to remember that other countries, France chief among them, have been including care home deaths in their figures for some time - we haven't - which is why we compare 'favourably' to them, and probably why that has been a comparison the Govt has been keen to use.

Re: coronavirus and sport ? : Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:35 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

With the economy in such dire straits I presume the government will request an extension to the transition period rather than dump businesses in to no deal when they have been unable to prepare for it?

Or will they decide that the extra hit to the economy will be worth it for their political purposes and just tell businesses and households that they have to suck up the extra costs and red tape.

If you check out various news channels you can see that a series of meetings are taking place throughout the summer. Obviously by video link,it all seems a bit insignificant compared with the life and death situation some people are in at the moment.