Quarantine Diaries: Day 20

I walked through our downtown (legally a small city, but actually a town of 2,000+) today, as I’ve been doing most days. Each day, fewer and fewer businesses are open. More than three-quarters have signs in the door saying they’re closed until further notice. A few have curbside pickup available. The only ones with unlocked doors were a gas station/convenience store, the post office, and the expensive high-end grocery store at the south end of downtown (there’s a “regular” grocery store about two kilometers away).

I recently ordered a UVC wand from Amazon. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea.

The Federal Reserve Bank’s balance sheet has grown by more than a trillion dollars in just the last few weeks:

Have central banks made a Faustian bargain?

In Goethe’s 1831 drama Faust, the devil persuades a bankrupt emperor to print and spend vast quantities of paper money as a short-term fix for his country’s fiscal problems. As a consequence, the empire ultimately unravels and descends into chaos. Today, governments that have relied upon quantitative easing (QE) instead of undertaking necessary structural reforms have arguably entered into the grandest Faustian bargain in financial history.

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis are projecting that America’s unemployment rate could hit 32%, worse than it was in the depths of the Great Depression.

Thai king ‘isolates’ himself with harem of 20 women amid COVID-19 pandemic

Rama X’s actions, however, has not gone down well with the citizens of his country. Thousands of Thais have criticised him online, breaking Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, under which those who insult or criticise the monarchy could face jail for up to 15 years.

There are some unusual risks of being on the front line of the fight against coronavirus: ”Scientist Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose While Inventing Necklace to Stop People Touching Their Faces”

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