That’s what us Nutmeggers call Fairfield County which is reliably one of the Top Five wealthiest in the United States. As I’ve said before I have a passing familiarity (worked for a long time within a mile of Sandy Hook Elementary).

Unlike what you might think, and despite the statistics, there are many areas that are not so wonderful- Bridgeport for instance, largest City in Connecticut. It has it’s highlights (only Zoo, Barnum Museum, Research AND Circulating Libraries) but from the highway it’s mostly a dump (to be fair it has Tall Buildings so you can practice leaping them in a single bound) of burned out Factories and dilapidated 3 Family Walkups that used to be the Worker’s homes.

It’s not bad, it’s a City. There are places I’ll only go by invitation but I glow in the dark, I’ve never felt unsafe and I worked there for a long time too.

But it ain’t Westport. Just so you know, Westport is not even the swankiest Town/City in Fairfield County, those would be Greenwich and Darien, but Martha Stuart lives there so everyone thinks it’s all that.

I seldom visit. They have a bunch of quirky Shops but none of them are bargains.

Party Zero: How a Soirée in Connecticut Became a ‘Super Spreader’
By Elizabeth Williamson and Kristin Hussey, The New York Times
March 23, 2020

About 50 guests gathered on March 5 at a home in the stately suburb of Westport, Conn., to toast the hostess on her 40th birthday and greet old friends, including one visiting from South Africa. They shared reminiscences, a lavish buffet and, unknown to anyone, the coronavirus.

Then they scattered.

The Westport soirée — Party Zero in southwestern Connecticut and beyond — is a story of how, in the Gilded Age of money, social connectedness and air travel, a pandemic has spread at lightning speed. The partygoers — more than half of whom are now infected — left that evening for Johannesburg, New York City and other parts of Connecticut and the United States, all seeding infections on the way.

Westport, a town of 28,000 on the Long Island Sound, did not have a single known case of the coronavirus on the day of the party. It had 85 on Monday, up more than 40-fold in 11 days.

At a news conference on Monday afternoon, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said that 415 people in the state were infected, up from 327 on Sunday night. Ten people have died. Westport, with less than 1 percent of the state’s population, now makes up more than one-fifth of its Covid-19 infections, with 85 cases. Fairfield County, where Westport is, has 270 cases, 65 percent of the state’s total.
…
The visitor from Johannesburg — a 43-year-old businessman, according to a report from South Africa — fell ill on his flight home, spreading the virus not only in the country but possibly to fellow passengers. The party guests attended other gatherings. They went to work at jobs throughout the New York metropolitan area. Their children went to school and day care, soccer games and after-school sports.
…
A South African businessman who had stopped in Westport for a party had fallen ill on the plane home to Johannesburg.

“I thought it was good old man flu,” the businessman told The Sunday Times in South Africa, speaking anonymously in a March 15 article. Unlike in the United States, where tests remain in short supply and results come slowly, the man was tested and received word in a day. He was positive.
…
The number of sick people in Fairfield County then soared. On March 16, Governor Lamont closed restaurants and public buildings statewide. Even in a well-connected, affluent town like Westport, contact tracing quickly overwhelmed health officials. Beyond the 50 attendees, “there were another 120 on our dance list,” some of whom probably were not at the party, Mr. Cooper said. One of the party guests later acknowledged attending an event with 420 other people, he said. The officials gave up.

“They think at least 100 times as many people are infected as what the tests are showing,” Arpad Krizsan, who owns a financial advisory firm in Westport and lives in the community, said on Saturday. “And everybody goes to the same four shops.”

Worry, rumors and recriminations engulfed the town. Political leaders fielded hundreds of emails and phone calls from residents terrified that their children or vulnerable family members had been exposed. Who threw the party, and who attended? They wanted to know. Rumors flew that some residents were telling health officials they had attended the party so they could obtain a scarce test.
…
As the disease spread, many residents kept mum, worried about being ostracized by their neighbors and that their children would be kicked off coveted sports teams or miss school events.

One local woman compared going public with a Covid-19 diagnosis to “having an S.T.D.”

“I don’t think that’s a crazy comparison,” said Will Haskell, the state senator who represents Westport. He has been fielding frantic phone calls from constituents.

Most residents were exercising recommended vigilance, Mr. Haskell said, but one call that stuck out to him was from a woman awaiting test results whose entire family had been exposed to the virus. “She wanted to know whether or not to tell her friends and social network,” he said, because she was worried about “social stigma.”

Mr. Haskell, who has been delivering his grandparents’ medication to their Westport doorstep and leaving it outside, was incredulous. “This is life or death,” he said in an interview. “Westport really is a cautionary tale of what we’re soon to see.”

In “Classical” Economics it’s sometimes called “Animal Spirits” though I prefer the simpler and more direct “Greed”.

Hope you’re enjoying your Dead Cat. The Fundamentals haven’t changed a bit (well, except to get worse from both an Epidemiological and Economic standpoint) and Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio may have queered the
incipient deal on Stimulus (which even in draft doesn’t look all that attractive).

I dunno, I’m a mere student of Clio, perhaps you would like to listen to a Nobel Laureate Economist instead.

The COVID-19 stimulus can’t be a corporate bail-out. We need a new playbook for relief
by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Salon
March 24, 2020

Three years ago, in an ugly display of pigs feeding at the trough, there was a rush of special interests to take advantage of a secretive tax bill moving quickly through the Senate, with tens of billions of dollars going to certain industries, like real estate. We saw what happened: a short burst of economic growth that turned out to be remarkably weak, given the size of the deficit that it brought about. This year, growth was expected to decline to anemic levels—lower than 2 percent. While the predicted 1 trillion dollar deficits quickly emerged, the promised increases in investment and wages did not, as corporations paid out almost a trillion dollars in share buybacks.

This is all prelude to the current debate over responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Had big business not treated itself so well, it would have had an ample cushion to weather the storm. Had it lived up to its promises of greater investment and higher wages, Americans would have placed greater trust in it; likewise, if it hadn’t resisted giving workers a measly 10 days of sick leave even limited to the crisis itself. Our democracy and economy is at great risk if we respond to COVID-19 by giving money to the loudest and most powerful corporate voices rather than thinking through where funds are most needed. Our fiscal position is at risk if we don’t work out the best way to provide the money. America is a rich country able to run large deficits, but that doesn’t mean that resources are unlimited. Inevitably more money in corporate largesse means less money for those who need it, and more inequality. The well-being of Americans today is at risk if we don’t think carefully about how best to deliver money to those who need it now.

Businesses— like many American airlines— that squandered the opportunity to build up cash reserves should be held accountable. But the costs should be borne by their shareholders, who have already been amply rewarded. Bankruptcy is not the end of the world. Chapter 11 maintains the company but forces the shareholders to pay the price for their mismanagement.

Capital markets won’t be functioning as they normally do, so there is a role for government— to provide funds, convertible bonds and/or loans with warrants, so the government doesn’t just bear the downside risk of the loans not being repaid but participates in some of the upside. There should be no gifts to corporations. And like IMF and World Bank loans, any government bailouts should come with “conditionalities,” such as no buybacks, limited dividends and CEO pay, a promise to keep workers on the job, and better treatment of stakeholders other than shareholders and management—including workers and the environment.

But states are limited by their constitutions from deficit financing. The issue here is not just access to loans, but the very ability to borrow. It is only the federal government that can borrow. The states and localities will need money urgently as their revenues plummet. Without this money, they will be forced to cut back essential programs in education, health, and welfare. There needs to be a massive temporary revenue-sharing program.

The non-profit sector—schools, universities, research institutions, welfare agencies, etc.—are another important part of our economy, no less important because they aren’t organized for the kind of lobbying that big business does. Their endowments have shrunk by a third and contributions will almost surely be down as donors’ incomes dwindle. Universities will be especially hard hit as foreign enrollment steeply declines.

This sector is central to caring for the vulnerable. And where would we be without their insight and research into understanding the virus that is causing such havoc! We can’t jeopardize our future simply because these institutions and organizations make fewer campaign contributions than big corporations.

Fortunately, everybody seems to agree that small businesses and the most vulnerable citizens need extensive help. The loan program for small businesses seems a reasonable way to get money to them quickly— if the Trump administration has the capacity to deliver. But the question of administrative capacity is even more central to delivering money quickly to the tens of millions of Americans who live on the edge.

For decades, there has been an attempt to defenestrate government, to weaken its capacities, and never more so than in the past three years. Do we have any confidence that the government could deliver checks in two weeks, as Trump has said it should? Argentina announced a program for helping every child on Tuesday of last week, and by Friday, every family had the money. I doubt that we could do that. A suspension of evictions, foreclosure, and interest on all debts is a necessary interim measure. Otherwise, with so many credit cards charging usurious interest rates of 20% or more, debts will accumulate rapidly, creating a hole from which the poor may never be able to dig their way out, made all the worse by the 2005 bank-friendly bankruptcy act that makes it so hard for workers to discharge their debts in personal bankruptcy. Other countries, like Denmark, with far more administrative capacity than we, have chosen another route: asking employers to continue paying (a large part) of wages and salaries for employees not to show up at work, to be reimbursed by the government. In effect, the companies are temporarily managing the unemployment insurance program, recognizing scaling up existing programs in the manner required is not feasible— let alone creating an entirely new program.

This economic crisis is different from any other. We can’t use the same playbook. Today, it’s not about stimulus— the problem is not lack of aggregate demand. New problems require new solutions and new priorities. Still, we should learn some lessons from the past: corporate give-aways almost never work.

I’ve worked events like this and it costs an enormous amount of money to postpone them.

At the same time who would want to go or participate? I’ll admit getting to hit on Gymnasts is an attraction.

Japanese prime minister says IOC has agreed to postpone Tokyo Olympics
By Adam Kilgore, Rick Maese, and Simon Denyer, Washington Post
March 24, 2020

Facing heavy global pressure and rising athlete dissent, the International Olympic Committee sharply reversed course Tuesday and agreed with Japanese officials that the Olympics and Paralympics will not take place this summer in Tokyo in the wake of the growing novel coronavirus pandemic. Organizers say they now hope to stage the Games by the summer of 2021.
…
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday proposed a one-year postponement to IOC leadership, including President Thomas Bach. The IOC quickly agreed the Games would be held about one year after the previously scheduled start date, July 24.

“I have made a proposal of about a year,” Abe said. “President Bach said he agreed 100 percent and we agreed to hold the Olympics by summer 2021.”

Abe said he and Bach had agreed “to cooperate in order to hold the Olympics in the complete form, as a testament to victory over the infection.”

In a joint statement, the IOC and Japan’s Olympic organizing committee said they made the decision “to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.” Athletes across the world had been calling for the Olympics to be postponed, saying the lack of a decision forced them to continue training at risk to their physical and mental well-being.
…
“In light of the current conditions and for all the athletes, we made a proposal of a postponement of about a year, to hold them securely and safely,” Abe said Tuesday.

Postponing the Games carries massive political, financial and competitive implications. Abe, who had staked extensive political fortune to the success of the Games, said he expects Japan will pull them off.

“As the host country, Japan would like to serve our responsibility thoroughly,” Abe said.

Sunday, IOC President Thomas Bach said it “would still be premature” to decide the fate the Tokyo Games, and as other major sports events and leagues have suspended operations and canceled play, Olympic officials had resisted the call to alter its schedule. They spent the past several weeks weighing options, as athletes and sports federations began voicing their concerns. The chorus only grew after Bach sent a letter to Olympic athletes Sunday, acknowledging for the first time that postponement was a possibility but refusing to make a decision for the next four weeks.

The Canadian Olympic Committee said Sunday it would not send its athletes to compete in Tokyo this summer, delivering a devastating blow to the IOC’s hopes to stick to its schedule. Australia’s national committee also urged its athletes to begin preparing for an Olympics in 2021, and Sebastian Coe, the influential head of World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field, called on the IOC to delay the Summer Games by a year. The national Olympic committees of Brazil and Slovenia had called for a one-year postponement, and Norway had balked at sending its athletes to Japan with the current state of the pandemic.
…
The IOC’s stunning decision is without precedent. While an Olympics has never been postponed, several have taken place later on the calendar, including the 2000 Sydney and 1988 Seoul Games, which both took place in late September, and the 1964 Tokyo and the 1968 Mexico City Games, which took place in October. The modern Olympics, which date to 1896, have been canceled three times (1916, 1940 and 1944) because of world wars.

The bulk of the rest of the piece is a discussion of how much money is involved with a bit of insight into the decision making process.

You know, sometimes I get the impression that people don’t appreciate the punniness of my titles, not that this one is particularly deep.

It is of course a play on “Opportunity Cost” which is the price you pay for wrong or in action, as opposed to Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Cody Johnston