Summer Fades

Happy Labor Day

Summer is over, really? The temperature hit 112 degrees in Clareville on Sunday afternoon.

How hot is it? It is so hot they installed a fan in the debt ceiling.

A reminder, it is always hot in September in this part of the country. But we always talk about like it is the first time. How about Denver, Colorado: 96 degrees Sunday, 93 degrees on Monday, snow and 37 degrees forecasted for Tuesday…. go figure.

At least 43 million Americans (including me) are baking under record temperatures. So grab a Slurpee and read: Extreme heat is here, and it's deadly. (More so for some than others...) "According to a study published this year in the journal Climate, the neighborhoods formed through segregation and redlining are often the poorest and hottest, with the least amount of shade and green spaces. Edison-Eastlake in central Phoenix, for example, is 79% Latino and has a median household income of around $10,000 — a fourth of the citywide average. Many residents cannot afford the high electricity bills that come with air conditioning, and heat-associated deaths are 20 times higher in Edison-Eastlake than in other parts of Maricopa County.

+ Most of the hottest areas will get some relief by Tuesday.

As summer fades, with Labor Day marking the traditional onset of the general election, back-to-school season and autumn, it’s worth asking: Do any of the assumptions about how this is supposed to work still hold?

Millions of Americans are working from home, forced to juggle Zoom calls with the office while essentially homeschooling their children. And those are just the parents who have the luxury of working remotely: For vast swaths of the country, the economic crisis has meant a daily battle to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads.

A protest movement that began over police brutality and systemic racism is struggling to gain traction on its core goals, with reform efforts stalling and frustration sometimes boiling over on the streets. Armed groups are provoking dangerous confrontations while frazzled and embattled police look on helplessly. Rioters and looters are taking advantage of the chaos.

Our voting system has come under attack from a president who sows doubts about voting by mail and claims, without evidence, that his opponents are trying to steal the election. Democrats seem frozen: Do they reassure Americans that their votes will count, or sound the alarm over what they see as a fiasco in the making? There’s a very real possibility that roughly half the country will reject the November results as illegitimate.

The truth is that few of us have any idea what the next few months will hold. Will the virus, which is still killing hundreds of Americans every day, come roaring back? Will the government identify a vaccine by Election Day, and would that change any votes? Can we even trust the polls when it’s hard to say who a “likely voter” is during a pandemic? When will our lives go back to normal?

It is still hot!

COVID-19 UPDATE – Week 26 (one-half year) begins of the COVID lockdown:

The U.S. reported nearly 44,500 new coronavirus cases, with Labor Day weekend’s large gatherings spurring concern about potential new outbreaks.

Cases in the U.S. rose by 44,452 on Saturday, and the total death toll surpassed 188,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The nation’s total number of confirmed cases is more than 6.2 million.

Though the rate of new daily cases has trended downward since a mid-July peak above 77,000, the U.S. daily rate remains above where it was in parts of May and June, when it ranged in the low 20,000s.

The coronavirus has forced innovations that have improved our lives, and are likely to stick around post-pandemic.

Remote work cuts out the commute, giving us back time, money, and satisfaction, while reducing fuel use.

More movies will be streamed.

Alcohol and grocery delivery.

Telehealth and teletherapy.

More Americans are venturing into the great outdoors, due to few socially distant vacation options and many countries barring U.S. travelers.

Outdoor dining and pedestrian-friendly streets let city dwellers escape the isolation of home. Eating al fresco is safer than mingling indoors.

Broadband is getting new investments to support remote learning and telemedicine.

Smaller classes, after big lectures made sub-par Zoom lessons. And teachers and parents are communicating more.

In the pandemic economy, nearly one in eight households doesn't have enough to eat. The lockdown, with its epic lines at food banks, has revealed what was hidden in plain sight: that the struggle to make food last long enough, and to get food that's healthful — what experts call ‘food insecurity' — is a persistent one for millions of Americans.

Earlier this summer, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee set about crunching data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples in an effort to better understand Covid-19. Summit is the second-fastest computer in the world, but the process — which involved analyzing 2.5 billion genetic combinations — still took more than a week.

 

COLLEGE CHRONICLES - Northeastern University has dismissed 11 first-year students after they were caught violating social distancing rules, the school announced Friday, the latest and most aggressive attempt to prevent the pandemic from disrupting plans to return to Boston's campuses this fall. The students were caught at the Westin Hotel, which is being used as a temporary dormitory this semester, on Wednesday night without masks and not social distancing." Northeastern dismisses 11 first-year students for partying. They won't get their $36,500 tuition back.

More than 6 percent of the nearly 3,000 colleges and universities Davidson College is tracking chose to start the semester entirely online. At historically black schools that are members of the United Negro College Fund, that figure rises to 38 percent.

But other schools, like University of North Carolina, tried their hand at teaching primarily in person. At least 180 colleges and universities have had to adjust their plans, with 78 moving to remote classes.

 

In-person college reopening plans had one fatal flaw: They relied too heavily on students to police their own behavior.

Instead of concrete plans to deal with the inevitable virus spread, school officials shifted responsibility to students, ordering them not to gather. Universities were surprisingly unprepared to deal with young adults’ irresistible need to socialize, especially after an extended hiatus where they were largely locked at home with their parents.

And that is exactly what happened: from fraternity and sorority rush parties to innocent games of Monopoly.

 

POTUS WEEK – On Tuesday, President Trump is due to travel to Jupiter, Fla., to give remarks on environmental accomplishments (that should be a short speech) for the people of Florida, then give a speech in Winston Salem, N.C.

Thursday POTUS is heading to Freeland, Mich., for a speech. I am from Michigan and I do not know where Freeland, Michigan is located?

Friday POTUS is expected to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pa. So, interestingly, is BIDEN. How is that gonna work?

 

CONVENTION VIEWERS - Biden: 23.6 million viewers

Kamala: 22.8 million viewers

Trump: 21.6 million viewers

 

MARKET WEEK – Jobs: The U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August and the unemployment rate fell to 8.4% from 10.2% in July. Employers are hiring back workers they recently let go at a steady clip, however many job losses are becoming permanent.

Your thoughts, Jerome? In an interview with NPR, Fed Chair Jerome Powell called the jobs report a “good one,” but stressed that the economy will need low interest rates for a long time in order to regain full strength.

Trump’s push to reopen the United States quickly this spring may have saved some short-term economic damage. But indicators both at home and from around the globe suggest that until the U.S. gets its coronavirus outbreak under control, its medium- and long-term economic prospects remain dicey.

As governments release their final figures for the second quarter of the year, it’s become clear that, more than anything else, a country’s success or failure combating the pandemic will drive economic performance.

Lockdown measures have taken a toll, which helps explain why parts of Europe and Asia performed far worse, economically, than the U.S. earlier this year. But the approach to reopening, including governments’ willingness to embrace measures like mask mandates, are more predictive of a country’s economic trajectory — whether that be a v-shape, swoosh, bird wing, or one of the many other monikers economists have come up with to describe the course of a recovery after a plunge in output.

The variation in countries’ second quarter GDP numbers — which cover the period between April 1 and June 30 — offer an illustration of how dependent national economies now are on the state of their public’s health. While doubts exist about China’s pandemic death toll and economic statistics, there’s no dispute that the country that was home to the original coronavirus outbreak is already back to growth. That’s thanks in part to the harsh regional lockdown in Wuhan, where the virus originated, quarantine systems that isolated victims from their families and co-workers, and mask mandates (now lifted) in at-risk cities like Beijing.

Every member of the G7, meanwhile, is now in a deep recession, ranging from Japan’s 7.6 percent contraction in Q2, compared to the previous quarter, to Britain’s 20.1 percent contraction since Q1. The U.S. is about average among the seven countries, contracting by 9.5 percent in the same period compared with the first quarter of 2020.

 

60/40 UNDER ATTACK - We could be entering the Late Cretaceous period for the 60/40 investment portfolio, with a wave of critics forming an asteroid to wipe it out.

The latest naysayer: Paul McCulley, the former chief economist at investment giant PIMCO. On Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast this week, he said that if the 60/40 portfolio keeps working, “then democracy has failed.”

Okay, maybe it’s time to back up. The 60/40 investment portfolio encourages financial planners to invest in 60% equities and 40% bonds to achieve long-term success. It’s been coded into Wall Street’s DNA for decades and provided solid returns for almost as long.

But increasingly, financial sages like McCulley argue that the Fed’s attempts to tamp down inflation have suppressed bond yields while inflating equity valuations—keeping the 60/40 split from working the way it’s supposed to. McCulley thinks this “disinflationary environment” that made the 60/40 mix an antique reflects larger systemic problems in the U.S. economy.

So what now? A whole lot of experimentation is underway, including expansion into alternative investments like real estate.

 

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Heidi Bravo …famous ULV graduate, David Letterman (68), Cindy Rarick (61), Raquel Welch (80).

 

THE STATE OF LABOR ON LABOR DAY - It’s become a symbol of the pandemic: The hedge fund manager escapes to the Hamptons while the Manhattan line cook, their restaurant empty, gets laid off.

That image reflects a consistent pattern in COVID-19’s impact on the labor market. Lockdown restrictions disproportionately affected low-wage workers in the U.S., the numbers show.

39% of employed people in households making less than $40k were furloughed or lost their job in March, the Fed calculated. In households making more than $100k...just 13% did.

What’s driving that trend?

Before the pandemic, an increasing number of American workers were in the business of “feeding, pampering, and caring for other Americans, especially wealthy ones. And it’s those same jobs—Uber drivers, building cleaning/security, hotel workers—that were most harmed by social distancing restrictions.

When higher-income people stop traveling, going to offices, or eating out, it creates a disastrous ripple effect for the workers employed in those services.

And there are a lot of people doing this kind of work. 9.2% of U.S. employment was in food preparation and serving occupations in May 2019, according to a recent MIT paper by David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds. 8.5% work in transportation.

Compounding the issue is telework. It’s well documented that higher-paying “knowledge” workers are able to transition to WFH (work from home) far more easily than lower-paying services employees, meaning it’s easier to preserve knowledge economy jobs.

Is any of this a good thing?

After all, eliminating low-paying, vulnerable jobs might theoretically be a positive development because it could push people into more stable employment situations. I argue that it’s not.

For one, less demand for low-paying jobs does not mean a rise in demand for better-paying jobs that would employ the same people.

There are also high costs associated with losing your job, forcing you to train and gain experience in another field.

Looking ahead...if the pandemic subsides and people start moving around again, lower-wage workers could return to the gains they’d been making pre-pandemic. But if growing trends like remote work and reduced business travel become permanent, it could shake up the labor market picture for decades.

 

LABOR DAY TRIVIA - Labor Day is one of nine days on the calendar when the stock exchanges close in the U.S. Can you name the other eight?

 

ON THIS DATE - September 2 in history:

In 1752, Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar, which means people went to sleep on September 2 and woke up on September 14.

In 1945, Japan signed its unconditional surrender on a U.S. battleship, formally ending WWII.

In 1969, the first ATM in the U.S. debuted in Long Island, NY.

 

THE HOCKEY NEWS - The hockey news for this week is the announcement of Jacques Martin (St. Lawrence) ‘75 joining the New York Rangers as their assistant coach.  Jacques has had a tremendous amount of success in the NHL for many years as a Head Coach, Assistant Coach, and General Manager. He won back-to-back Stanley Cups (2016 and 2017) with the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Congratulations Jacques!

 

NFL Football Preseason Rink Rats Picks:

AFC East - New England Patriots                 AFC North – Baltimore Ravens

AFC South – Houston Texans                       AFC West – Kansas City Chiefs

AFC Wildcards – Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills

AFC Champs – Baltimore Ravens

 

NFC East – Dallas Cowboys                          NFC North – Detroit Lions

NFC South – New Orleans Saints                  NFC West – San Francisco 49ers

NFC Wildcards – Los Angeles Rams, Atlanta Falcons

NFC Champs – New Orleans Saints

Super Bowl Champs – Baltimore Ravens

 

SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS –

NFL Football Pick of the Week – Thursday 9/10, 8:20 PM (ET), NBC: Houston Texans at Kansas City Chiefs. Because of COVID-19 the season is a week late. Should be a good opening game, we like KC, 24 – 17. (Season to Date 0-0)

College Football Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/12, 7:30 PM (ET), ABC: #1 Clemson Tigers at Wake Forest. Big question: where is the Big Ten???? Opening week of what should be a very strange college football season; Clemson in a rout (big surprise) 48 – 17. (Season to Date 0-0)

NHL Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/12, 8:00 PM (ET) NBC:  Las Vegas Golden Knights vs. Dallas Stars, the Western Final. It is a simple case of color blindness: you pass the puck to the same sweater color, if you do not, trouble (thank you Howie Meeker). RR likes Dallas in the series and this game; 5 – 4. (Season to Date 2-3)

MLB Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/12, 5:15 PM (PT) Fox:  Houston Astros (21-19) at Los Angeles Dodgers (30-11), if only their were fans at this game. Good thing, no fights in the parking lots. Dodgers win 4 – 3. (Season to Date 1-0)

English Premier League Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/12, 9:30 AM (PT) NBCSN: Liverpool at Leeds United; a new English Premier League season begins, defending champs Liverpool begins anew; 4 – 1 win.  (Season to Date 0-0)

2020 Season to Date (12 - 7)

 

LABOR DAY TRIVIA ANSWER - New Years Day, MLK Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Independence Day (July 4), Thanksgiving, Christmas.

 

Next Blog: Zoom vs. WebEx vs. Google Meets vs Skype

Until Monday September 14, 2020 Adios.

Claremont, California

September 7, 2020

#XI-9-415

2,761 words, eight minute read

 

CARTOON OF THE WEEK – Amy Hhang

 

 

RINK RATS POLL – If the 2020 Presidential election were to be today, I would vote for President?

___ Joseph Biden

___ Donald Trump

___ Other

 

QUOTE OF THE MONTH – "The future is real; the past is made up." – Logan Roy

 

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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