Weekend Edition
Week 12 of the stay at home experience.
Week 12 without a haircut, week 12 of social media,
week 12 of Sean Hannity and Don Lemon, week 12 of photo filtered Instagram
posts, week 12 of no pants, week 12 of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, week 12 of
Justin Trudeau and Mitch McConnell, week 12 of no sports, week 12 of binge
watching, week 12 of video chat sessions, week 12 of “what’s for dinner”.
As you can see yours truly is getting cynical with
each passing week and I left out a few (wait until Week 15).
HITS – Space X flight into space of American astronauts Robert Behnken and
Douglas Hurley. First manned mission from U.S. since 2011.
MISSES – 40 plus million unemployed Americans due to COVID-19 economic shutdown,
one in four working Americans.
HITS - The world is in a state of nearly unparalleled turmoil—except for
financial markets, which seem blithely unaware. The S&P 500 was up a
further 0.8% Tuesday, following a 0.4% gain Monday. That makes for a 10-day
gain of nearly 5%.
MISSES – Detroit Lions open as a 6.5 point underdog vs. Green Bay Packers on
September 10, 2020.
HITS – The class of 2020 is getting a crash course in job market uncertainty.
MISSES – Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)
HITS – NHL and NBA seem to have their act in gear about opening their remaining
2019-2020 season with playoff formats beginning in late July.
MISSES – Meanwhile Major League Baseball is on the verge of collapse, with the
state of the game in the balance. Players and management cannot even decide on
how many games to play in the 2020 season.
HITS – If you purchased 100 shares of Zoom Video Communications (ZM) on March 2, 2020 at $113.11/share and
sold those 100 shares on June 4, 2020 at $210.35. You would of made a gain of
$9,724 or 86%.
MISSES – Four-year colleges facing budget shortfalls stemming from the pandemic
are approaching an unwelcome milestone: The number of eliminated sports
programs is 100.
HITS - Even though I spend several hours a day a writing, I've never been a big
fan of the adage, The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword (I always picture the
sword lopping off the hand that holds the pen and saying, "OK, your
move.") But there's no denying the power of the pen in the hand of someone
who's spent a lifetime wielding a sword; which is a long way of saying that
James Mattis has finally broken his silence on Trump. Many wish he had done
this a lot sooner, but that only makes the fact that he's doing it now an
indicator of how dire the situation has become. And when his pen did hit paper,
it did so with the force of a bunker buster (hitting a bunker that was just
being inspected by the president). "When I joined the military, some 50
years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I
dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance
to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to
provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military
leadership standing alongside ... Donald Trump is the first president in my
lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend
to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of
three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of
three years without mature leadership."
MISSES - Advertising in newspapers, for example, remained surprisingly resilient
through the dot-com era, but took a deep dive during the financial crisis and
has never come back. Newspapers in the U.S. lost 70% of their advertising
revenues between 2006 and 2018, according to Pew Research Center. The rise of
smartphones and social media was one likely factor, but the recession was
another: Once spending on print advertising was cut, there were few reasons for
companies to bring it back.
Paper mail, as archaic a form of communication as
can be, tells a similar story. First-class mail volume handled by the U.S.
Postal Service dropped a modest 5% from 2000 to 2006, but has since fallen
another 44%.
Customers who got their first taste of digital
streaming during the lockdown may choose to stick with it instead of going back
to cable or broadcast television, accelerating changes in the entertainment
business. The looming recession also could force many viewers to count their
pennies and pay attention to all the channels they don’t watch in their cable
bundles. The pace of so-called cord-cutting may accelerate further if online
services start to eat into live sports—cable’s trump card. That will also mean
lower television advertising revenue, which has been holding up relatively well
compared with other forms of legacy media such as print and radio.
HITS - After 78 days without gambling, Las Vegas casinos began to reopen
yesterday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
At Caesars Palace, social distancing allows
"just three players at blackjack tables, four at roulette wheels and six
at craps tables."
Masks aren't mandatory for guests. But showgirls at
the Flamingo each "wore a matching orange mask and carried a sign thanking
guests for practicing social distancing when asking for photos. No side hugs
this time."
MISSES - My TV is completely and utterly exhausted. There’s nothing left to watch.
I even got to the end of Netflix. All it said was: My God, go outside already.
If I don’t get some sports soon, I may have to take Dr. Fauci hostage.
That’s why bringing back sports even without fans
sounds to me like a big swimming pool full of wonderful. Listen, speaking for
the fans: We don’t need to be in the stands, and we don’t need to see ourselves
in the stands. Carry on. We beg of you.
HITS - Like we saw in quarantine, app download patterns can be reshaped by major
global events. Now, it's the protests over police brutality and racial
inequality that are shaking up the App Store.
These apps are doing big numbers:
Citizen has been downloaded 234,000 times since May 25, according to App Annie.
What Citizen does: conveys location-based safety
alerts in real time by funneling 911 reports to users, who can also comment and
post footage. Protesters and others are probably using it to get immediate
updates on demonstrations.
Signal is an encrypted
messaging, calling, and video app; users are drawn to its extra layer of
security. It was downloaded a record 37,000 times last weekend, and on Tuesday
it became one of the top 10 most downloaded social apps on iOS for the very
first time.
Not only is Signal end-to-end encrypted, it can’t
turn over user data to law enforcement...because it doesn’t collect user data.
Yesterday, Signal announced a new tool that allows
users to blur faces in the photos they post. Though it doesn’t completely
anonymize photo subjects, the feature boosts the app’s privacy-first brand.
Twitter overtook rivals Facebook and Instagram, which it usually lags, in
downloads earlier this week. On Wednesday, it smashed its previous records for
both downloads (677,000) and daily active users (40 million). Why? There may be
no better place to get instantaneous news updates.
MISSES - The White House is now so heavily fortified that it resembles the
monarchical palaces or authoritarian compounds of regimes in faraway lands —
strikingly incongruous with the historic role of the executive mansion at 1600
Pennsylvania Ave. NW, which since its cornerstone was laid in 1792 has been
known as the People’s House and celebrated as an accessible symbol of American
democracy.
BIRTHDAYS
THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Brooke Fletcher (28);
Etta Lucero ….famous writer, Mom, and entrepreneur; Sula Vanderplank …famous
botanist; Stevie Wonder (70).
COLLEGE
CHRONICLES – Division
III athletics will face a $7.6M deficit for FY19-20 due to the cancelation of
the remaining spring and winter championships. Revenue allocation will be
reduced from $33M to $10.7M, and DIII had already spent $7.6M more than that
amount on fall championships, a portion of winter championships and most
non-championships initiatives. DIII's mandated reserve policy (50% of annual
revenue allocation) in addition to a surplus above the reserve, will help
address the shortfall. DIII Strategic Planning and Finance Committee Chair and
Hamline Prez Miller: "The financial loss for Division III will be
significant, but money should never take precedence over life. We value people
above all else. The losses will impact money available for students and
programming now and in the future, but Division III has done an incredible job
in managing our resources and is uniquely prepared to weather the financial
storm we face.”
After making the decision
to go remote, colleges have had to figure out what to do about hiring for open
positions. Some have opted for freezes, but at others the hiring process
continues. Yes, Zoom interviews are involved. Hiring managers are also getting
creative in devising the best ways to bring their campus to remote candidates.
Even without the coronavirus, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Striking a
balance between maintaining normalcy and being cautious about the future of
institutions and their job openings isn’t easy.
Many institutions have
canceled in-person summer classes. At some colleges, the canceled or altered
summer programs will force the institutions to take another financial hit. Last
week, Boston University floated the idea of reopening its campus in January
2021, keeping fall-semester courses online to ensure a safe return to the
campus along the Charles. At Beloit College, in Wisconsin, the fall semester
will start at a later date, and two seven-week modules will replace a full
semester. That way, if courses have to move online again, the campus can transition
with little disruption.
Beloit administrators have
spent weeks figuring out the new fall calendar. Many institutions are in the
middle of similar discussions. Public-health experts say that the coronavirus
is likely to resurface once large groups of people start meeting again. A
college campus –– especially a residential one –– is at risk. This week, a
working paper for a Cornell University study showed how vulnerable a college
classroom can be to the coronavirus. Suddenly, higher education has turned into
an episode of Chopped, the competitive cooking show where chefs are given
random, unknown ingredients to make a seemingly normal three-course meal. Every
institution has been dealt the same amount of risk and the unknown. Now they
have to get to work.
The fall semester could
take shape in so many different ways. Colleges could partner with other
institutions, keep courses entirely online, have students come to campus less
often, and meet in smaller groups. Or colleges could push the fall semester to
start in the spring of 2021. Whatever option an institution takes, it must also
consider the transformed landscape of a post-pandemic world. State-budget cuts
could force public colleges to scale back their course offerings. And who knows
what accreditors and the federal government will let fly in the fall?
The only certainty is that
college administrators only have a few weeks left to make their decisions.
College lawyers, brace
yourselves.
Colleges' legal counsel
will have their hands full this fall as campus life resumes. Start with the
mind-boggling public-health logistics of academic and residential life, as well
as athletics programs and other extracurriculars. Add the ebb and flow of
off-campus students, visitors, and personnel in dining halls and elsewhere.
Stir in the decision-making processes of administrators, faculty members,
trustees, and union officials. Pressure-cook your plans with public-health
recommendations that are still evolving. Then get the word out before everyone
arrives on campus. It's a recipe for big problems in terms of legal liability.
THE VIRTUAL LIFE - The ubiquity of
technology makes it far more tolerable to pull back from real life for a while.
That made me feel better. A little.
But many of us are finding
that it’s easy to overload on the virtual professional and social obligations.
Trust me, online activities can feel less fulfilling and more exhausting than
interacting in real life.
We need to set limits and
give each other a break. If you need to, blame your brain for choosing to watch
a garbage movie alone instead of stuffing your calendar with another social
activity. And employers — but not my employer, which IS PERFECT — should stop
expecting workers to be hyper-connected all the time.
I’m still struggling to
figure out social niceties in our mostly virtual lives. When to turn off and on
your video, am I allowed not to pay attention to the ZOOM meeting, do I need to
have the proper attire?
I suspect we’ll learn how
to navigate the constraints of virtual life. And sometimes, old-school
technologies like phone calls are better than virtual video hangouts. But in
fact, personally, phone calls are more of a pain.
Despite the serious
drawbacks of the online-everything life and economy, I’m grateful I am able to
write this blog away in my little office, get some essentials delivered at the
touch of an app (Jersey Mikes last week), read escapist e-books and feel
relatively connected to friends and family.
I used most of these
technologies in our pre-pandemic days. The difference is I no longer take them
for granted.
RINK RATS POLL – 44% of
Republicans think Bill Gates is working on a coronavirus vaccine so he can
plant a microchip in them.
50% of those in the poll
cite Fox News as their primary source for television news.
MARKET
WEEK - The U.S. is being rocked by
protests of a scale not seen for half a century and Washington and Beijing are
facing off over Hong Kong, all amid a raging pandemic. But even the riskiest
corners of markets are ticking away from distressed levels. The spread between
safe U.S. Treasury bonds and U.S. high-yield bonds, excluding energy, metals
and mining, is down to around 5.5 percentage points. It reached a high of 9.7
percentage points in late March.
Markets
have often shrugged off geopolitical stress—North Korean missile strikes,
clashes in the Middle East—but the gap between what’s happening in the world
and in the market seems extreme even by those standards. Analysts note that a
year’s earnings doesn’t matter much to a company’s valuation under a discounted
cash flow model. As long as earnings bounce back next year—or even the year
after—a likely lower-for-longer interest rate is enough to justify
gravity-defying stock markets.
So
it matters a great deal, to the exclusion of almost everything else, that the rebound
is indeed relatively quick. If the first stage of the rebound was about the
realization that central banks would take extraordinary measures to prevent
market distress and widespread defaults, the second hinges on the ability of
policy makers to engineer a rapid rebound within a year or so, largely with
fiscal policy.
The
May U.S. jobless rate fell to 13.3% and employers added 2.5 million jobs, early
signs the labor market is mending after the coronavirus pandemic shut down
parts of the economy nearly three months ago.
“These
improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic
activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it,” the Labor Department said
Friday in a release.
The
jobless rate fell from 14.7% a month earlier, which was the highest on records
dating from 1948. A broader measure of unemployment—which includes part-time
workers and those who gave up looking for jobs—fell to 21.2% from 22.8% a month
earlier.
ON THIS DATE
– June 4, 1910, the stone making the birthplace of the Republican Party in
Jackson, Michigan is dedicated.
June 5, 1927 after nineteen years Ford Motor Company
stops producing the Model T. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build some 15
million Model T cars. It was the longest production run of any automobile model
in history until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972. Before the Model
T, cars were a luxury item: At the beginning of 1908, there were fewer than
200,000 on the road.
SWAMI’S WEEK
TOP PICKS
– No more sports for a while, The Swami tries his skills elsewhere:
1). Over and
under when we can go back to the workplace – August 1, The Swami likes the
overs.
2). Over and under when I can get a haircut – July 1, The Swami picks
the overs.
3). The Swami predicts the Detroit Lions season: Chicago (W), at GB
(L), at Ariz. (L), N.O. (W), at Jax (W), at Atl. (L), Indy (W), at Minn (L),
Wash. (W), at Car. (W), Hou (L), at Chi. (L), GB (L), at Tenn. (L), Tom B. (L),
Minn (W). Lions start 6-4, finish 7-9.
4). Australian Rules Football
Game of the Week (Yes, it has come to this): Saturday June 13, 2:40 am (PDT),
Sky Sports. Gold Coast Suns (0-1) vs. West Coast Eagles (1-0). They will be
rocking at Metricon Stadium in Carrara, Australia on Saturday. We like the
Coach Adam Simpson’s West Coast club, the final 90 – 62. On with the
footy.
2020 Season
to Date (3-4)
Next Blog: “You can’t make this stuff up”
Until
Monday June 15, 2020 Adios.
Claremont,
California
June
5, 2020
#XI-3-409
3,018
words, nine minute read
CARTOON OF THE
WEEK – The New Yorker, Revilo
RINK RATS
POLL – Things I hate: (check all that apply)
______ racism
______ COVID-19
______ police
brutality
______ the
Ohio State Buckeyes
______ liver
and onions
______ reply
all emails
______ Clarkson
University Golden Knights
QUOTE OF THE
MONTH
– “The rights of every man and woman are diminished when the rights of one
man and woman are threatened.”
—
President
John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
Rink Rats is a blog
of weekly observations, predictions and commentary. We welcome your comments
and questions. Also participate in our monthly poll. Rink Rats is now viewed in
Europe, Canada, South America and the United States.
Posted at Rink Rats The Blog: First Published – May 3, 2010
Our Eleventh Year.
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