In the reporting period prior to the last one, new unemployment claims set a smashing, all-time record with something on the order of 3.3 million people filing. What happened during the most recent reporting period?
Cataclysm.
Unemployment claims soared to a record-smashing 6.6 million last week, the Labor Department reported, more than double the previous week, signaling more economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic.
The rush to claim unemployment benefits occurred as the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus rose above 200,000 and government measures to contain the epidemic shut down increasing swaths of the U.S. economy, with residents in 37 states now ordered to stay at home.
Cataclysm.
Unemployment claims soared to a record-smashing 6.6 million last week, the Labor Department reported, more than double the previous week, signaling more economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic.
The rush to claim unemployment benefits occurred as the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus rose above 200,000 and government measures to contain the epidemic shut down increasing swaths of the U.S. economy, with residents in 37 states now ordered to stay at home.
President Donald Trump, who built his record for the past three years in office around economic growth and job growth, has now seen gains from much of the past decade evaporate in a matter of weeks. An official U.S. jobless rate that sat at 3.5% in February is poised to top 10% in April alone, eclipsing the peak of the last recession.
“In one line: No words for this,” Pantheon Macroeconomics Chief Economist Ian Shepherdson wrote in reaction to the numbers.
All of which can be laid at the feet of China, a view that more and more people are coming around to. I'm seeing sentiments like this one all over the Web.
Nullify our debts to China, repatriate all our industries, slap a punitive tariff on all Chinese goods, cut off food sales to the Communists, blockade their ports for a century and tell them to have a nice day.
I'm not sure we can do all of that. Some of those suggestions are doable and ought to be given serious consideration. But a port blockade would inevitably result in the Chinese shooting at our ships which means we'd shoot back and I'm not sure how much sentiment there is in this country for a shooting war with the Reds.
At least right now. Down the road?
But the Congress is starting to come around to the viewpoint that our relationship with Beijing cannot possibly resume on the same basis as it was before the Chinese loosed the Chinese Flu on the world. Too many people have died and too much damage has been done.
But it starts right here. Before any sort of reconciliation is possible or even conceivable, China must publicly admit its sole responsibility for this pandemic.
2 comments:
Communism kills.
Over and over and over again.
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