There Will Be Blood...

... if the coronavirus lockdowns continue and the economy crashes. The biggest difference is that while news of protests and social unrest was largely covered up by the media during the Great Depression, it will be broadly disseminated in the modern setting.

     Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is all but taunting protesters to turn to violence. According to Breitbart, Whitmer appeared on today's (Wednesday) ABC’s “The View,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and "declared the 'racist and misogynistic' lockdown protesters opposing her order were 'calling for violence.'" Obviously she doesn't believe that, or those "calling for violence" would have been arrested under various anti-rioting and/or anti-terrorism charges. But what protesters are trying to tell her, including by carrying weapons, is that she is not listening to them. They want her to take the protests and their complaints seriously. But she is coming across as a petty tyrant, and she will eventually force violence in some manner or another, even if it is siccing police dogs on 77-year old barbers and other fed up with her lockdown.

     In related news, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike "Monkey Dance" Shirkey has said that anyone brandishing weapons in an intimidating way in the state Capitol will be arrested as he puffs out his chest and thrusts his face forward. Brandishing a weapon in an intimidating manner is already illegal in most jurisdictions, so is he suggesting that police were incompetent in not making arrests previously, trying to scare off the protesters carrying weapons, or just misusing language to paint the protesters in a bad light? Again, they are carrying the weapons because the politicians are not listening. By the way, Shirkey is ostensibly a Republican, and is serious about proving that Republicans can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory every time.

     Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was also making the rounds, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America" to announce a partial lift of restrictions, but also stating, "we’ll never be completely open until we have a cure." Good luck with that! Similarly minded Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has stated that the lockdown will continue through August. I see a future where the Federal government says "no" to continued provision of aid to cities and states that refuse to re-open and the less inhibited inhabitants expressing their displeasure once the money starts to run out. Oh, and this will just accelerate the race to the exits by the California middle-class. Question, if California's response to a cut-off of federal aid is to secede, do we let them or send in the Army?

     New York City is on the same path. The New York Post reports that "New York officials fear that half the city’s smallest businesses are going to fail. Restaurants, bars, shops and salons will become boarded-up storefronts," and adds, "It’s a grim prospect, yet officials seem ready to let it happen." Of course--economic crisis are for the little people. It may already be too late for New York City in any event. A New York Times article by Matthew Haag warns that after being forced to have employees work from home, some of the largest corporate presences in Manhattan are looking to make it permanent. From the article:

       Manhattan has the largest business district in the country, and its office towers have long been a symbol of the city’s global dominance. With hundreds of thousands of office workers, the commercial tenants have given rise to a vast ecosystem, from public transit to restaurants to shops. They have also funneled huge amounts of taxes into state and city coffers.

       But now, as the pandemic eases its grip, companies are considering not just how to safely bring back employees, but whether all of them need to come back at all. They were forced by the crisis to figure out how to function productively with workers operating from home — and realized unexpectedly that it was not all bad.

      If that’s the case, they are now wondering whether it’s worth continuing to spend as much money on Manhattan’s exorbitant commercial rents. They are also mindful that public health considerations might make the packed workplaces of the recent past less viable.

Specific large companies mentioned in the article as looking to reduce their share of office-space are three major banks, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, the research firm Nielsen, and the real estate company Halstead. The article mentions that Twitter has already told its 300 Manhattan employees that they can continue to work from home indefinitely if they want to. And, of course, all the businesses that have been built up to service the workers that come into Manhattan every day will disappear with the workers. Am I saying that Manhattan will become a ghost-town or be turned into a federal penal colony? No. But I think New York will be in more dire straits than it was in the 1970s.

      And, since many states are having problems with processing unemployment claims, I found this article darkly humorous: "Unemployment Chaos in Four States Tied to H-1B Program." We know how using cheap Indian programmers helped scuttle Boeing's 737 business, but in addition to crashing planes, apparently cheap Indian programmers can crash unemployment filing systems:

       Americans in many states — including Florida — were left without unemployment payments for weeks when the software programs supplied to state governments by a company, which relies on Indian H-1Bs, could not handle the crush of new applicants.

       The failures in Ohio, Maryland, D.C., and South Carolina were all connected to one Minnesota company, Sagitec Solutions, which uses an imported workforce of H-1B workers.

Nice (sarc.).

     The worst part of this is that when we actually do face a serious pandemic, both the public and the politicians are not going to take it as seriously as they would have otherwise.