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The US government is only partially to blame here. Goldman Sachs apparently donated over 100k N95 masks to New York last week. As a personal critic, I did see
by omgJustTest 7y ago
The US government is only partially to blame here.
Goldman Sachs apparently donated over 100k N95 masks to New York last week.
As a personal critic, I did see some of this coming in my own finances and did divest. I should have done more to be outspoken about this risk, but I am daily surprised by how unprepared we were and how few people are speaking out in ways that matter.
Kudos to Cuomo.
EDIT: I do think the article is correct in the analysis that this _should_ be months of impact. This is likely from just considering the health impact, and not the correlated factors that
1. the stock market was damn high (inflated by stock by-backs)
2. there is currently a mess being made in federal reserve intervention in the pre-crash quantative easing measures, and the current precedents with 'unlimited liquidity' promised.
3. a lot of people are going to lose their jobs
4. a lot of people will lose their healthcare
5. soon to be bailed out corporations (ie Boeing) have flat rejected equity stake in the company, saying that they will seek private funding before they take a bail-out of that kind
An interesting observation on (1), if companies had taken Trump tax breaks and invested in their businesses or kept that cash, they would likely have reduced their bail-out burden substantially. Boeing voluntarily committed to 2bn$ in dividends before the crash. They have not revoked that as of yet.
- bradly 7y agoI’m curious... did GS already have those masks for some reason or did they purchase and then donate them? I thought the masks were is short supply so I’m surprised if a non-health care org was able to purchase 100k masks recently.
- omgJustTest 7y agoI will do some reading, but it is my thinking that they had stockpiled them, pre-crash. Will update. to be explicit, GS has no other purpose to stockpile other than they anticipated... better than hospitals. EDIT: There are a few stories saying the stockpiled pre-crash. Though some claim they had them since the swine-flu epidemic in 2009. Given the read I had on how the markets might respond, and how much information there was screaming that China's economy had stopped (for example I couldn't get circuit boards etc)... I would bet a lot of money they called this a few weeks before. [1] https://www.cbs58.com/news/donations-of-respirator-masks-and-other-medical-supplies-needed-at-american-hospitals-coming-from-unlikely-sources https://www.cbs58.com/news/donations-of-respirator-masks-and... [2] https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/goldman-gives-face-masks-to-london-employees-still-stuck-at-their-desks-20200320 https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/goldman-gives-face-masks-t... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-institutions-share-stockpiles-of-face-masks-with-nyc-hospitals-11584479352 https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-institutions-share-st...
- thoughtstheseus 7y agoIt seems doubtful GS anticipated this better than hospitals... more likley they had a budget that allowed them to prepare for a wider range of events.
- prawn 7y agoThere was a story yesterday about Facebook having 720,000 masks stockpiled. They'd bought them in case west coast fires were an ongoing issue.