Painting on side of Concord stage coach at the Wells Fargo museum in San Diego. Photo by James Ulvog.
It has been a long time since I did an update on the money wasted by major banks in violating sundry laws and regulations. Last update was all the way back in February.
Today’s news about JPMorgan throwing away another billion cangot me to thinking about what other biggies have been in the news.
View directly underneath Coronado Bridge shows the arches in the support towers. Photo by James Ulvog.
It is sad to personally observe the economic devastation from the shutdown.
We spent a few days in San Diego last week. Stayed at a hotel downtown near the harbor. Saw several things showing the severity of the economic damage.
Air travel
For quite a long time airplanes have not been allowed to leave San Diego International Airport until 6:30. It is funny to hear the first engine rev up a few seconds after 6:30 a.m.
I have noticed on previous vacations that there is a string of airplanes lined up ready to leave right at the stroke at 6:30. The planes take off approximately 1 minute apart.
We have been locked down long enough for the volume of statistics to build up to the point of allowing deeper analysis. As is always the case, the statistics can also be manipulated to give whatever answer you want. Deeper, honest analysis is starting to show surprising results, for example, the lack of correlation between infection rates and lockdown policies.
Surprising results on the low correlation will be mentioned after some game playing is described.
The annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota routinely draws huge numbers of people to the town, whose population is only 7,000 people. Attendance at the 10-day event this year was lower than usual with an estimated 460,000 motorcycle enthusiasts hanging around.
Frightening news reports at the time said this would cause massive numbers of Covid infections leading to massive numbers of deaths.
May be a beautiful sanctuary, but in California the government won’t let you use it. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
In news over the last few days, Rev. Dr. John MacArthur said he would start a jail ministry if County officials toss him in the slammer, the Archbishop of San Francisco stands up to de facto shutdown of Masses, and one church concedes to the severe pressures from Santa Clara County.
Growing indications point towards ongoing damage to learning at all educational levels due to the shut down. From kindergartners to college students there will be losses of learning time and knowledge.
Older students will be able to catch up. Motivated students will get through. I fear youngsters in particular and unmotivated students in general will suffer permanent damage from the lockdown.
Consider all the damage described in the following articles is a result of a public policy choice made by a host of state and local officials.
The Dispatch – 9/10/20 – The sad realities of virtual learning. – Looks like kindergartners are disappearing from schools. Enrollment in Los Angeles Unified School District is down 14% from a year ago.
The comment that shutting down the economy represents a trade-off of lives versus jobs is an invalid comparison.
The real trade-off from a shutdown is lives versus lives.
People are dying because of the shutdown. The shutdown is killing people.
It is time to open the economy.
I don’t have time to summarize all the articles I have read making this point. Here are just three examples.
The pandemic is killing dementia patients
Washington Post – 9/16/20 –Pandemic isolation has killed thousands of Alzheimer’s patients while families watch from afar – The Washington Post, the Post, studied data from CDC to identify there have been 13,200 excess deaths from Alzheimer’s and dementia since the shutdown started. Excess deaths are the extra deaths over the number that would otherwise be expected because of some particular situation.
The number of new claims for unemployment for week ending 9/12/20 dropped a little, with “only” 860,000 people losing their jobs, down from an upwardly revised 893,000 the previous week. For contrast, before the government induced shutdown of the economy new claims averaged about 220,000 per week.
Better news in the data is the number of continuing claims for unemployment dropped about twice as much as the new claims, to 12.6M for the week ending 9/5/20. That is the lowest since the shutdown started.
As I continue to sort out for myself what this means, will continue listing the stats I’m tracking.
The number of new claims for unemployment and number drawing unemployment is provided by Department of Labor. I calculated the net change, which I assume represents the number of new jobs, although it could also be that people dropping out of the job market wash into the new jobs number:
Check out the lengthy list of specific requirements imposed by the County of Los Angeles before a church can worship on campus. Pastor John MacArthur describes the requirements placed on Grace Community Church.
After I go through the requirements ponder how you would summarize these restrictions.
Ponder whether the net effect is to strangle worship.
Then ponder whether the net effect is an intentional strategy.
He mentioned a few of the requirements placed on the church in order to hold any worship services. The following comments aren’t exact quotes, but are close:
For the third time since start of the recession, the number of new claims for unemployment for the week ending 9/5/20 was below the 1,000,000 mark. For contrast, before the government induced shutdown of the economy, new claims averaged about 220,000 per week.
On the other hand, the number of new claims was flat for the week – the damage from the shutdown in terms of new claims did not go down.
As I continue to sort out for myself what this means, will keep listing the stats I’m tracking.
The number of new claims for unemployment and number drawing unemployment is provided by Department of Labor. I calculated the net change, which I assume represents the number of new jobs, although could also be that people dropping out of the job market could wash into that number:
Circumstances are now to the point in the state of California, and three counties in particular, where we can say that the government is now persecuting the Church. This presents itself as counties going after three specific congregations, but when you look at the details you see a broader pattern in play.
A few updates to previous posts before getting to the main discussion.
The County of Los Angeles has unilaterally canceled the lease on land which provides something in the range of 40% or 50% of parking capacity for Grace Community Church. Oh, the lease has been in place for 45 years.
North Valley Baptist Church is now facing $52,000 in fines for the heinous offense of worshiping indoors. Keep in mind this is the church which was visited by spies from the county. It certainly appears that Santa Clara is acting like the Stasi back in about old days of East Germany. The pastor declared “We Are Not Closing down This Church” – California Pastor Warns Officials.
The article also provides the biblical explanation for standing up to unbiblical government rules.
These efforts will ultimately fail.
There may be short-term successes for the government.
There may be intermediate-term successes.
These efforts will fail.
Standing up for constitutional rights in court.
Los Angeles County doesn’t realize they have taken on a church that will not back down. I will make an easy guess that Grace Community Church will put whatever effort in time and dollars that it takes to stand up in court even if it involves going to state appeal court, then federal appeal, then US Supreme Court.
After shooting from 3.4% in February to 14.7% in April, the headline unemployment rate has dropped to 8.4% in August.
You will interpret the statistics as you wish.
Looks to me like people are slowing getting back to work after the shock of the pandemic and follow-on government-ordered shutdown of the economy.
There are six different measures of unemployment, each providing a slightly different perspective. Put them all together for a more complex picture the economy.
At the top is a graph since 2007 of U-3, the headline statistic, along with U-6, the broadest stat which includes discouraged workers, marginally attached, and those working part time because they can’t find full time work.
For a closer picture, focus in on the stats since January 2019:
What the California economy might look like by the time it is allowed to reopen. Photo of abandoned farm in North Dakota by James Ulvog.
This is the third in a series of posts describing the damage caused by shutting down the economy. First post discussed recent news on economic damage. Second post described ongoing health damage.
Some things are *not* going wrong
Just under half a million people attended the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota from August 7 through 16.
Check out any of the pictures from the rally and you will notice a distinct lack of masks and social distancing.
Expectations in most media sources were for this event to produce massive amounts of infection.
Half a million people. In one town.
The tracking results are in from the massive numbers of people who were infected and the resulting fatalities from this massive event.
It is shocking. Amazing. Head-shaking. Astounding.
Best info available is that:
196 people tested positive for COVID with results linked to attending Sturgis.
4 people died.
To put that in context, 5 people died of motorcycle accidents in Sturgis during the rally.
Growing awareness something is wrong with lockdowns
8/24/20 – Wall Street Journal – New Thinking on COVID Lockdowns: They are Overly Blunt and Costly – Article has a massive amount of information on the course of the pandemic, wide range of strategies by national and state governments, and large volume of statistics. The story is told basically scrambled egg style with no pattern or trends or storylines that I can easily summarize.
Study by the British organization compared data from July 2019 to June 2020.
They found 19.2% of adults were experiencing depression in June 2020 compared to 9.7% in July 2019. That is a doubling as a result of the pandemic.
Severity of the rise can be seen by 6.2% of the population that had ongoing depression, 12.9% developed moderate to severe depression during the pandemic, and 3.5% some improvement during that time.
Is there any doubt that the overwhelming portion of that increase is due to the isolation and economic damage caused by the government ordered shutdowns?
An interesting exercise is to put that data into table as follows:
What the California economy might look like by the time it is allowed to reopen. Photo of abandoned farm in North Dakota by James Ulvog.
Over the last several weeks I have accumulated a number of articles describing the economic and health damage caused by the government ordered shutdown of the economy.
I’ve been wanting to post these for a while. In light of the California government imposing more severe constraints on when the economy will be allowed to start functioning again, it is now time to publish.
Economic damage
7/30/20 – Wall Street Journal – US Economy Contracted at Record Rate last Quarter; Jobless Claims Rise to 1.43 million – The preliminary estimate of the collapse in the US economy for the second quarter came in at an annualized 32.9% drop. Again, that is annualized. In addition, it will be revised in each of the next two months as additional data is gathered by the feds.
That follows an annualized drop of 5% in the first quarter.
I was going to extend this two-part series to three, adding on an upbeat explanation that when counties go after the Church the government is destined to fail. Reference to Church with an upper case C refers to the worldwide church, the universal, invisible body of Christ instead of meaning one particular local congregation.
Planned for the next post to give a small illustration expanding out to wider examples in history and then going back to New Testament illustrations.
Then a news report yesterday about petty retaliation from Los Angeles County interrupted, showing I need a different post as the next discussion.
So, for your daily dose of shake-my-head amazement, consider…
