around the web

The Payday Report website offers a COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map showing feisty labor actions (some of which might have been prevented if Pelosi and Schumer weren't busy assisting Republicans).

via Naked Capitalism

The finance blog Calculated Risk continues to publish its "unofficial problem bank list." The Fed money spigot may result in less failed banks this time around but if you have money in a bank it's worth watching. "The first unofficial problem bank list was published in August 2009 with 389 institutions. The number of unofficial problem banks grew quickly and peaked at 1,003 institutions in July, 2011 -- and has steadily declined to well below 100 institutions." [Calculated Risk]

The April 2020 list has 64 banks. [Calculated Risk]
Update: The August 2020 list has 66 banks. [Calculated Risk]

At the end of World War II, Federal troops seized Montgomery Ward (an Amazon of its day) and bodily carried its CEO out of its Chicago headquarters. Most Americans thought this was "going too far" at the time and in the "Orange Man Bad" era it seems even less likely we'll see Bezos being frogmarched to a khaki colored truck (pleasurable as that might be). [Lawfare]

Economist types don't seem to agree on the most basic approaches to solving the pandemic's financial fallout. Should we have war bonds or not?
Joe Weisenthal says no:

Nathan Tankus adds:

Maddeningly, the easiest problem to solve -- this financial one -- is likely the one that congress will have the most trouble with. The question of resourcing the pandemic one is a matter of supply chain and factory reconversion experts, not economics per-se. What careful economic analysis can tell us is that while we’re on a war-time footing, we’re not dealing with war time resource allocation problems. Any resource that can be safely mobilized, can and should be mobilized and responding to our protective equipment bottleneck will allow us to access a lot of idle resources that are easily available.

One of Weisenthal's Twitter commenters summarizes his remarks thusly:

"War Bonds" during WWII were used to incentivize the private sector to postpone "non-essential" purchases. This would enable the govt to crank up the War Machine to 11 without having to compete for resources.

This conception of WWII savings bonds isn't common knowledge -- it certainly hasn't found its way into the current administration's thinking.

Both Tankus and Weisenthal are Keynesians; in simplest terms they advocate using keystroke money to deal with a calamity. Trump is de facto using keystroke money but still stuck on the idea that bonds need to be used to "pay for" emergency relief.

via Jimmy Dore

Am girding for the criticism from friends and former friends re: mocking Biden. In 2016 I got emails like this one:

So the way I see it, your anti-Clinton posts during the campaign helped Trump. You helped Trump. That's how I see it. I could also not say this to you, but isn't it better if I say what I think. If I were in your shoes, I would have started posting lots of anti-Clinton stuff on the day after she won the election. And up until the day she won the nomination. Then I would have suspended it for 3 or 4 months. I know that you think you were not helping Trump, you were helping "neither Clinton nor Trump"... I think that's just not smart.

After I responded to this hectoring, the emailer apologized and said he "respected what I did." Then he quietly removed me from his blogroll. I wonder if I'll get the same garbage in defense of Sleepy Joe.

Afterthought: As for this blog "helping neither Clinton nor Trump," the emailer just made that statement up. It would be presumptuous (and boring) to speculate about who the writing here might be "helping." For the emailer everything is strategic; the truth (e.g., that Clinton is corrupt) can just be swatted aside, or rather, "suspended for 3 or 4 months."