Yes, I expect they do prefer Biden, in a distanced way. They didn't get their preference last time, however. Sure, Trump is a rival [or even more of a liability, as WRex commented below], but the game remains the same. He's a rival like the Red Sox are to the Yankees, but nothing like barbarians knocking over the ticket booths and grabbing their own seats in the stadium.
Very unusual times. Clearly they feel they have won this thing either way, since Sanders has been declared the loser. (Funny how Sanders hasn't shared that view just yet. Yeah, yeah, "math," I know.) It's not like they don't understand the weaknesses and implosive potentials of Biden, and they were definitely trying on different models. But once the crunch came and he was the only option left against Bernie, they all fell in line.
But back to topic: PE. What a monstrous thing. Largest accumulations of disposable capital on earth, on the sidelines, always ready. They wait for literally this to happen, a crash, so they can burn and pillage. What a world, what a world.
Crossposting an ancient analysis of mine from the Rona Thread. Let's see how many things I got wrong (plenty) in my first stab at drawing the economic picture of Corona Capitalism. I wrote this four or five dog-years ago (March 6, 2020).
JackRiddler » Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:22 pm wrote:.
(Who here has seen Gattaca? I'd guess everyone at RI, maybe not?)
This has enormous disaster capitalism potentials. Did you guys see how it went down in France? The PM claimed he could pass the long-protested pension package into law all by himself, by decree. So he decreed it. On the same day, he banned public gatherings due to Covid-19. The next day the workers started upping the ante, demanding closure of the Louvre on the same basis. With their contagion containment order the government has authorized the backfire of a general strike! I have no idea whether the "decree" in the meantime has been found to apply. But why not? As Mr. Jeff Wells said on Facebook, the ruling class has gone YOLO!
Once the precedents are established they cannot be forgotten. The liability fears alone will suffice to drive future panics about any developing outbreak. The insurance companies will start demanding all kinds of new coverage. It may become an annual thing, to go through the precaution program any time something novel might break out. They'd say it would be irresponsible not to, potentially thousands of deaths, etc. Infrastructure will be built. They will try to present it as a great case of international cooperation. In effect, this will contribute to what we might call the globalization of national lockdowns and aggressive, increasingly identical regimes in border, customs, travel surveillance, enforcement, etc.
I'm not in anyway arguing against responding to minimize spread and casualties from outbreaks of novel diseases, of course. The smartest measures in terms of lasting prevention would look like needed components in a strong program of ecological enlightenment and sustainability. (Examples: stop hunting and consuming the remaining wildlife to extinction. Clean drinking water for all.) I'm just telling you how the response never going to be separated from disaster capitalist exploitations of the crisis and statist-authoritarian growth. Not as long as the present global economic and political orders dominate.
For all cash-rich players on the market, the current crash or correction means now is the time to start up the next generation of bubbles. They'll be looking at related biotech and I expect especially at highly granular data/tracking applications, supposed prevention equipment, measures to secure enclaves from contagion, crowd control... plenty more I'm not thinking of directly.
Ha, how forward looking of me! According to FT and Prospect, what I wasn't thinking of directly was their usual business model. Like who doesn't see that this is the time to buy up insolvent restaurant chains, break'em up into unviable profit centers, load'em up with debt from some earlier failure, and launch torpedoes at'em.
Insurance is going to go nuts on this and basically act as a parallel body to the state for regulation, development and planing, as we've seen with many sectors.
538 or Ladbroke's should run a dystopia odds tracker, i.e., for people to bet on which of all our favorite dystopias will actually come true. The odds on Gattaca just shot up!
In Washington state (50,000 students) they canceled in-person classes through at least spring break, and replaced them with online classes. However that's going to work, on the fly. This may be a wet dream for a lot of higher education "reformers" who want to move in that direction anyway. Completing the casualization of adjunctification process. Laying off superfluous campus workers without impacting the all-important top 3% of administrators who get 20% of the salary pie. Hiring more of those, since this situation calls for a lot more control than we've had. Again, departments for insurance/liability compliance will mushroom.
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Meanwhile this has hit every other university.
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