by Patrick · August 28, 2012
Patrick
Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.
April 21, 2016
May 20, 2020
May 5, 2015
As local municipalities work towards implementing their respective governor's re-opening guidelines, Howard County, Maryland, raised some eyebrows with theirs, specifically the rather detailed orders for religious services:
Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held:
1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people.
2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use.
3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times.
4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service.
5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees.
6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups.
7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation.
8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available.
9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service.
10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.
Catholics, especially, cried foul immediately:
Comment →“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.
The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.
CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.
Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."
"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."
The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.
In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.
[caption id="attachment_330783" align="alignnone" width="720"]
Ball-and-stick model of a hydroxychloroquine molecule[/caption]
In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.
Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.
However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.
Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]
This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.
It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs
There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]
In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.
So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.
First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.
It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.
With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.
As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:
The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.
(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)
In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.
Comment →{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.
"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"
{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...
But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.
{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.
{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.
{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.
When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.
{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.
{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.
{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.
Comment →[caption id="attachment_330648" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
California State University, East Bay. Photo by Jennifer Williams via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]
The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:
1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.
This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.
2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.
There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.
3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.
Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.
4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.
This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?
5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.
I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?
I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."
Comment →Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.
So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.
Photo by Spirit-Fire 
The first arrest of the former Minneapolis Police Officers involved in the George Floyd killing has come.
Comment →Officer Derek Chauvin was arrested Friday afternoon on charges of third degree murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd, who Chauvin killed on Monday.
Floyd, who was arrested on suspicion of check forgery, died after Chauvin held his knee to the man's neck for nearly eight minutes while Floyd begged for mercy, repeatedly saying "I can't breathe." The incident was captured on video.
Chauvin has since been fired, along with the three other officers on scene. The U.S. Department of Justice has announced it will initiate a civil rights investigation into the killing.
Floyd's death has rightly prompted a lot of anger. That anger, in turn, has manifested itself both in peaceful protests and in rioting. Videos show a Target being looted, an Autozone set on fire, and several local businesses robbed and set ablaze. Rory Purnell rushed to his barber shop on Thursday night to let would-be looters know that it was run by an African American. He was too late, with one of his windows already smashed in.
A Minneapolis police building was also torched, with Mayor Jacob Frey eventually ordering officers to stand down from that precinct. "The symbolism of a building cannot outweigh the importance of life," he said at a press conference.
Rioting has broken out among protests in Minneapolis over the police killing of George Floyd.
Comment →Protests continued into Wednesday night in south Minneapolis, where Chopper 5 captured video of apparent looting at a nearby Target and other area businesses. Fires have sprung up around the area as well.
Gov. Tim Walz tweeted late Wednesday night, calling the situation near Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue an "extremely dangerous situation."
The protests are happening in response to the death of George Floyd, who was killed Monday night after an incident that involved Minneapolis Police officers. All four officers involved in the arrest were fired on Tuesday.
Protesters were seen on Chopper 5 footage throwing bottles and rocks at law enforcement, while officers responded with rubber bullets, flash bombs and tear gas to push them back.
Some looters at the East Lake Street Target location were seen walking out with televisions, rugs and other items from the store. Other looters were seen at a tobacco store, a Dollar Tree and a liquor store. Additionally, Cub Foods and an AutoZone is being looted as well.
The AutoZone was set on fire as of 9:30 p.m. It could be seen burning on Chopper 5 video.
A source has confirmed to KSTP that the city requested support from the National Guard late Wednesday night to combat the ongoing riots.
In a day-long virtual meeting, after four ballots, the 1,035 delegates assembled for the Libertarian Party's online convention selected Jo Jorgensen as their presidential candidate.
She won with slightly over 51 percent of the vote (not every delegate voted in every round) on that fourth ballot, with 524 votes. Jacob Hornberger came in second, with nearly 28 percent of the vote. Vermin Supreme came in third, with 20 percent of the final vote.
(Featured Image is Jo Jorgensen, taken from Wikipedia.)
Comment →The most passionate of all our political debates is about to get a whole new, ugly chapter in it's long history opened up.
Comment →When Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff in the landmark Roe vs. Wade case, came out against abortion in 1995, it stunned the world and represented a huge symbolic victory for abortion opponents: “Jane Roe” had gone to the other side. For the remainder of her life, McCorvey worked to overturn the law that bore her name.
But it was all a lie, McCorvey says in a documentary filmed in the months before her death in 2017, claiming she only did it because she was paid by antiabortion groups including Operation Rescue.
“I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That’s what I’d say,” she says in “AKA Jane Roe,” which premieres Friday on FX. “It was all an act. I did it well too. I am a good actress.”
In what she describes as a “deathbed confession,” a visibly ailing McCorvey restates her support for reproductive rights in colorful terms: “If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that’s no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it choice.”
Arriving in an election year as the Supreme Court is considering a high-profile abortion case with the potential to undermine Roe vs. Wade and several states across the country have imposed so-called “heartbeat laws” effectively banning the procedure, “AKA Jane Roe” is likely to provoke strong emotions on both sides of this perennial front in the culture wars.
Director Nick Sweeney says his goal was not necessarily to stir controversy, but to create a fully realized portrait of a flawed, fascinating woman who changed the course of American history but felt she was used as a pawn by both sides in the debate.
Back in April, they officially started working with The News Guild of New York:
Since its founding 27 years ago, WIRED has prepared readers and viewers for the promises and upheavals of the future. Now it’s time to secure our own place in that future. We are proud to announce the @wired editorial staff has formed a union with @nyguild. 1/ pic.twitter.com/0TTwTHUMad
— WIRED Union (@wiredunion) April 22, 2020
And now, according to Anthony Lydgate, a sufficient number of staff has signed union cards:
An overwhelming number of @WIRED employees have signed union cards.
There are two ways this plays out:
1. Condé Nast recognizes us voluntarily
2. We take it to the NLRB and win in a landslideEither way, there will be a @wiredunion.
Let’s stop this nonsense and get to work. https://t.co/tNL6S0Oj7U
— Anthony Lydgate (@anthonylydgate) May 18, 2020
(Featured image is "In The Nick of Time" by tim ellis . Used under creative commons license.)
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Burt LikkoI feel just a bit of an obligation to comment, having been name-checked in the very title of the post.
While I see the OP's point of the similarity of the paths of corruption followed by (some) politicians and clerics, I think there's something to contrast.
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I like to think that TARP is a non-partisan issue, since both parties are bought and paid for by the monied class, and therefor a topic of discussion that can be argued on the merits.
So glad that we restructured banking debt rather than household debt.Report
Precisely. We live, as I’ve often said here, in a reverse socialist system: private profits, socialized risk, and since those in power benefit from that system, they have absolutely no incentive to change it unless we demand that they do so. And we’re not going to demand that they do so, of course, because we’re us.Report
When all of this was going on, this was the position I had from the get go. I argued a lot about it with a friend, and it went something like this…
“Why should we bail them out?”
“If we don’t, the world economy will collapse.”
“Oh. Still, they made bad decisions and the natural consequences of those decisions are to go belly up.”
“But what about the rest of us?”
“Well, we largely stood idly by while it went on and/or continued to vote in folks who allowed or encouraged this to happen. And, ya know, maybe everything *WON’T* collapse?”
“YOU’RE CRAZY!”
“Oh.”Report
It’s pretty easy for a country with half the population of Austin, Texas to go about refusing to bail out its banks. Especially when they have now essentially lost their ability to buy ANYTHING abroad (try using an Icelandic Krona to buy a latte in the Faro Islands) and possibly creating the potential for an enormous problem down the line.
This is not so easy when your trade reserves alone account for $3.4 trillion dollars and your GDP is worth about a quarter of the world’s. A default on that scale and a loss on US dollars on that level wouldn’t be the end of the US economy….it’d be the end of the world economy as we know it.Report
Nob is exactly correct hereReport
It’s certainly a fair point. And given that the U.S. dollar, in the aftermath of the financial blowup, has blown away any dreams that existed that the Euro might ever replace it as the fiat currency, it’s a compelling one.
I’m not entirely convinced that being the fiat currency is awesome, though. There’s no counterfactual to measure against.Report
Being the reserve currency is awesome. There’s plenty of counterfactuals to measure against. Including 1. the experience of just about everyone who doesn’t have a reserve currency suffering massive depreciation problems. (See: Argentina, Malaysia, Thailand, etc. etc. etc. this is a very long list)Report
Or for that matter, see what happened to the British economy in the 70s when the stirling ceased to be a viable reserve currency. The effects on their economy were ugly and helped usher in the Tories and Thatcher to dismantle the post-war consensus.Report
I love how the second comment at that article blames everything on the J-E-W-S
and one of the replies says (paraphrased) “no way, it’s the commies!”
*****
On the other hand, someone says:
“What these very smart people seem to be forgetting is that the losses that the banks passed on to the people where taken by foreign citizens. If in America you deposited money into a savings bank and it was unable to pay the FDIC would pay you so in essence the tax payer takes the loss either way. The European holders of Iceland bank accounts were covered by their local governments so Iceland essential forced foreigners to foot the bill.
So I’m really not surprised it worked out great for them. They even had a national referendum on whether they should payback the Europeans who made deposits and the people voted no. These people didn’t make risky investments they deposited into an Iceland Bank they thought had a good interest rate.” (emphasis added)
Any thoughts?Report
Yeah, unfortunately the US didn’t have the option of saying “Screw it, we’ll let the rest of the world deal with it”.Report
You wouldn’t (necessarily) be passing the (entire) loss on to the taxpayer either way, because FDIC as a limit, for one, and the banks still have assets, number two. I’m not certain that the bold faced claim is correct; is it? How did the Icelandic account holders fare, did they lose their shorts or where they treated differently from the other depositors?
Granted, you’d eat quite a bit of loss, but bankrupting the bank, paying off the account holders, and blowing the institution up would sort of render the current, “Well, the banks still want to keep their financial activities and investment activities mixed!” problem moot.Report
I’m only quoting, not verifying; if it doesn’t actually work the way the poster said it does, I’d be interested to know that.
Combining this post with the article (and assuming the post is correct), Iceland used its equivalent of FDIC to guarantee the investments of private citizens, and threw everything else in a volcano. Icelandic businesses went bankrupt, their assets were bought, their creditors ate the losses, and everyone moved on. International investors? In the Euro zone they had their own FDIC, and as for anyone else who cared? It’s not like anyone’s going to invade the place while the US Navy is still around.Report
They did indeed make risky investments by depositing their money in one of the Icelandic banks in search of the higher interest rates offered. It’s difficult to see why the Icelandic public should have to cover for their mistakes.
In any case, the argument usually made concerning the U.S. was that at least the bank bondholders should have shouldered the losses before the taxpayers. Whether depositors should have had any exposure is debatable, but the case for bailing out bondholders was very weak.Report
On balance it’s important to remember that Iceland didn’t get a free lunch on this deal either. The Krona is essentially monopoly money right now. The Icelandic government was seriously considering adopting the Canadian dollar. That’s a direct result of the bath that foreign investors took.
On balance Iceland and Ireland together represent both ends of the spectrum for reactions to this crisis. Iceland stuck it to the bankers and foreign creditors. In exchange they have significant economic growth, stable government finances, currency that you couldn’t buy a latte with outside the country and a nasty reputation as a bad place for foreigners to invest. Ireland on the other hand has a sterling reputation as a foreign investment location and a stable currency but their government finances are an absolute wreck, fat-cat bankers essentially cleaned out the national coffers, foreigners got off scott free and their government is loathed by their own populace.
Somewhere between those two poles is the ideal way to deal with these kind of fiascos.Report
Texas has the right idea, they just apply it to the wrong people.Report
In other words, the situation in Iceland is good for people who live there (provided they don’t want to travel overseas soon) and bad for people who invest there.
The situation in Ireland is good for people who invest there and bad for people who live there.
Iceland’s choice seems far preferable. A government’s first duty is to its citizens, not to foreign investors.Report
If Ireland were not part of the Eurozone, it’s likely they would’ve fared better. Given the extremely sharp drop in Icelandic consumption and a GDP contraction of about one tenth since their 2007 peak…well…yeah, the numbers are actually pretty bad, and are likely to look even worse over the long run as the krona remains a basically worthless currency and inflation is in the high teens.Report
I’d say to one degree you’re correct Katherine but it’s important to keep in mind that Iceland has to import a great deal of stuff so their currency getting flattened has been quite terrible for the welfare of the people who live there as well. Strict financial restrictions and skyrocketting costs for any products they have to import (aka everything except aluminum, energy and fish) are not fun for residents in Iceland.
But still, they at least have faith in their government. The Irish essentially bailed their wealthy bankers out and got little in return.Report
That doesn’t make much sense to me unless the European governments cobbled together something to bail out natives that had deposit accounts in the Icelandic banks. Our FDIC wouldn’t cover any American account-holders in those banks (since those banks wouldn’t have been members of FDIC and paying premiums into the system) so I don’t know why the Euro equivalents would do so. Especially since Iceland isn’t in the Euro zone or anything.
This seems to confuse bond-holders (creditors) with depositors. Granted, both groups are creditors in a sense, but there’s a difference between being holding a checking account in a bank (being a customer) and loaning a bank money by buying commercial paper.Report
I dunno. Iceland is 300,000 people surrounded by fish. They also got $2B from the IMF. Not sure if this is scalable.Report
TARP was ultimately just a cash flow boost, wasn’t it? My understanding is that it was pretty much entirely paid back, with most of the net cost coming from assistance to individual homeowners.Report
Not so much a boost to cash flow as shoring up the balance sheet. My understanding was that TARP was the Fed buying bad paper (MBS’s, CDS’s, etc.) from the commercial banks and taking on those potential losses. I’m not sure how you would “pay back” something like that since it wasn’t a loan. On the other hand, the programs to help individual homeowners have been notoriously ineffective since they depended on banks to work with the program–something they haven’t seemed eager to do, preferring to foreclose instead. Since very few banks actually participated I don’t think that program (HAMP? or something like that) has actually cost much–unfortunately.Report
HARP: Homeowners Asset Relief Program.Report
Thanks for this Patrick.
Trying to cure gamblers of gambling by throwing money at them always appeared misguided. Inflation will start eating its tail eventually, probably December maybe January.Report