Paul Constant

Category: Uncategorized

  • The coronavirus pandemic shows that the trickle-down theory of economic growth is a fabrication

    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that the American economy would “bounce back” from the coronavirus shutdown by this summer. “As businesses begin to open,” Mnuchin promised, the “demand side of the economy” will “rebound.”

    Mnuchin was reiterating President Donald Trump’s line on the economy — the idea that when social distancing ends, the economy will miraculously renew itself to pre-virus levels. “We’re going to rebuild” the economy, Trump promised reporters last week, “and we’re going to rebuild it better, and it’s going to go faster than people think.”

    Trump and Mnuchin aren’t the only ones predicting a strong recovery. Ross Walker, the chief UK economist at NatWest Markets, envisioned a V-shaped recovery. Carsten Brzeski, the chief economist at ING Research, believes the recovery will be more U-shaped, with a slight trough at the bottom before the economy bounces back to normal. At the end of March, Goldman Sachs economists predicted what CNBC’s Jeff Cox characterized as “the fastest recovery in history.” (Goldman has since tempered its rosiest expectations for the rest of the year, but its economists are still predicting an “unprecedented” recovery.)

    But the longer this crisis goes on, the less likely a V- or U-shaped recovery becomes…

    (Read more at Business Insider.)

  • Reopening the economy isn’t going to work if no one shows up

    How many people want to walk into something like this right now?

    Seattle is one of America’s nerdiest cities — home to cartoonists, the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, and a whole slew of video game developers. It’s also a city that profits greatly from the business of nerd culture, particularly through a full, year-round slate of large conventions in the downtown retail core ranging from Emerald City Comicon in March to the anime-focused Sakura-con in April to the September gaming convention Pax West.

    These aren’t just hobbies or weekend pursuits — they’re big business. Pax West, in particular, is the biggest annual convention in Washington state, driving $35 million through the local economy over one weekend in 2015.

    Seattle was also America’s first coronavirus hotspot, and slowly we’ve seen these annual pillars of the local nerd culture collapse, one after the other. After a number of exhibitors, cartoonists, and attendees canceled their appearances, Emerald City Comicon pulled the plug on the convention right before it was supposed to begin. Then, as officials rolled out social distancing orders, the other conventions started to fall: Sakura-Con canceled, as did the popular sci-fi convention Norwescon.

    Last week, though, Pax organizers refused to join the parade of shuttered conventions. They tweeted that, “as of right now we still plan on welcoming everyone home to PAX West on Labor Day weekend (September 4th – 7th) in 2020!” 

    The response from Pax’s typically rabid fanbase was decidedly chilly….

    (Continue reading on Business Insider.)

  • Closed by coronavirus, this Wallingford poetry bookstore found a way to open online

    It’s a tiny storefront — just 500 square feet — but Wallingford bookstore Open Books has always been an especially inviting space. Its owner, Billie Swift, has watched people fall in love with the shop again and again.

    “We are across the street from a physical therapy center,” Swift explains, and patients who are early for their appointments often wander into the shop. Swift says that she’s used to seeing the customers panic when they walk several feet inside and start browsing, only to realize that Open Books is a poetry bookstore — in fact, one of only two or three poetry-only bookshops in the country.

    At first, “they’re terrified,” Swift laughs. But it doesn’t take very long for Swift or one of Open Books’ other two booksellers to strike up a conversation and make recommendations. They guide customers to the back of the shop, toward “what I believe to be the perfect reading chair,” Swift says. “We have a little table by it, and we love nothing more than sitting someone down and piling up a stack of books next to them.”

    Swift says those accidental Open Books customers quickly learn that “their love of books in general means that they are perfectly at home in a poetry bookstore.”

    Teensy Wallingford bookstore Open Books has made the big move online, taking its expansive poetry collection entirely digital to adapt to the coronavirus pandemic. (Courtesy of Open Books)

    But like every other bookstore in Washington in the time of social distancing, Open Books has been closed to the reading public for about a month…

    (Continue reading at the Seattle Times.)