Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Congress and the Fed Could Ensure Universal Protection During the Pandemic

No matter how well or poorly the federal government addresses the overall economic crisis, millions of vulnerable people will be left unprotected.  Homeless people, incarcerated people, immigrants, people in fringe, off-the-books employment like day labor—unless steps are taken that specifically target them, they are staring into the abyss.

This is fundamentally a local problem.  States, counties and cities know where the needs are.  They have existing ties through social service agencies and their connections to nonprofits.  This is where the expertise lies, but their budgets, lean in good times, are in free-fall right now.

The solution is straightforward.  Congress should authorize the Federal Reserve to purchase specially designated state and municipal bonds floated for the specific purpose of serving the health, housing, food and other essential needs of vulnerable populations.  There should be no limit to the amount that can be borrowed.  And the Fed should purchase these bonds with the intention of retiring them.  Effectively, the Fed would be using its money-creating power to finance social protection at the local level.

This facility can be created immediately, with auditing to follow when practicable.  There should be no delay in meeting the urgent human needs that will otherwise go unaddressed by more conventional policies.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

The solution is straightforward. Congress should authorize the Federal Reserve to purchase specially designated state and municipal bonds floated for the specific purpose of serving the health, housing, food and other essential needs of vulnerable populations. There should be no limit to the amount that can be borrowed. And the Fed should purchase these bonds with the intention of retiring them. Effectively, the Fed would be using its money-creating power to finance social protection at the local level....

[ Perfect, simple and completely necessary.

Just perfect. ]

Unknown said...

Great idea! Send it to Jeff Berkeley!

Unknown said...

Oops, it auto-corrected Jeff Merkeley. Mary King

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Looks good to me. Roll it.

Anonymous said...

A question that seems important:

Why are Americans not being urged or told to wear cloth masks? Indeed, in a number of hospitals and in Kaiser nurses are expressly being told not to wear masks and literally being threatened over their jobs if they do. Masks may have been an important protection against the spread of COVID-19 infections in countries such as Japan. What makes us different in approach to masks?

Anonymous said...

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-26/COVID-19-WHO-urges-countries-to-use-a-second-window-of-opportunity--PagRw94TQs/index.html

March 26, 2020

WHO urges countries to use 'a second window of opportunity' to stop COVID-19 transmission

Calling it "a second window of opportunity", the chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday urged countries to use this critical window to suppress and stop transmission of COVID-19.

This window of opportunity was created by those countries and regions which introduced unprecedented "lockdown" measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted at a daily briefing, reminding that these measures will not extinguish epidemics on their own.

Tedros recommended six key actions to enable the more precise and targeted measures.

Specifically, he called on countries to expand, train and deploy health care and public health workforce, implement a system to find every suspected case at community level, and ramp up the production, capacity and availability of testing.

He also suggested identifying, adapting and equipping facilities for treating and isolating patients, developing a clear plan and process to quarantine contacts, as well as refocusing the whole of government on containing COVID-19.

"These measures are the best way to suppress and stop transmission, so that when restrictions are lifted, the virus doesn't resurge," said Tedros.

A total of 416,686 cases of COVID-19 were reported worldwide as of 18:00 CET (1700 GMT) Wednesday, as the virus spread to 196 countries and regions.

The global death toll from COVID-19 has climbed to 18,589.

Outside China, the number of confirmed cases has risen to 334,817, among which over 190,000 were reported by the four hard-hit countries with over 30,000 cases each – Italy, the United States, Spain, and Germany.

Anonymous said...

The solution is straightforward. Congress should authorize the Federal Reserve to purchase specially designated state and municipal bonds floated for the specific purpose of serving the health, housing, food and other essential needs of vulnerable populations. There should be no limit to the amount that can be borrowed. And the Fed should purchase these bonds with the intention of retiring them. Effectively, the Fed would be using its money-creating power to finance social protection at the local level....

[ By the way, Nancy Pelosi made what I consider the awful decision to allow the members of the House to leave for home. No provision was made for electronic voting. Assembling the House might be difficult and the Senate of course has an anti-social leader and majority. This suggestion however would be splendid to enact. ]

Anonymous said...

Please, please, please examine the matter of not urging every American to wear a mask. This seems to have worked to a notable degree all through Asia. Americans have needed and need now to be wearing masks.

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/DeanBaker13/status/1243149722451185665

Dean Baker @DeanBaker13

This is a big deal. I'm sure there are many other factors, but the East Asian countries have been incredibly successful in containing the virus. (Besides, think how much easier it would be to look at Donald Trump, if he were wearing a mask.)

matt @fjordsfjords

please use your influence to persuade Americans to wear masks during this epidemic. we need to fill the gap trump has left! there is a reason they wear them in asia.

8:16 AM · Mar 26, 2020

Anonymous said...

As unemployment increases immediately, I wonder how many people will lose health insurance. Will Cobra, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid be an immediate and reasonable cushion?

Anonymous said...

Fabulous article:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/

March 26, 2020

Inside the Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic
By DAN SOLOMON and PAULA FORBES

The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the country in just a handful of weeks. As Americans focus on the essentials—feeding our families and ensuring we have the necessary supplies to keep our households clean and safe—grocery stores and pharmacies have demonstrated just how crucial they are to a functioning society.

We’ve seen chains struggle with the challenges the current crisis presents. Some stores are instituting policies limiting the numbers of shoppers allowed in at a time, creating long waits to enter. Perhaps even worse, other stores are not, leaving their shops a free-for-all without adequate social distancing measures. Staples like flour and yeast, to say nothing of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, are proving difficult to find on shelves. Supply chains are taxed. And the conditions faced by employees vary wildly by chain, with stores developing new (sometimes controversial) policies around sick leave for the workers who have proved themselves essential, and often doing so on the fly.

San Antonio-based H-E-B has been a steady presence amid the crisis. The company began limiting the amounts of certain products customers were able to purchase in early March; extended its sick leave policy and implemented social distancing measures quickly; limited its hours to keep up with the needs of its stockers; added a coronavirus hotline for employees in need of assistance or information; and gave employees a $2 an hour raise on March 16, as those workers, many of whom are interacting with the public daily during this pandemic, began agitating for hazard pay.

This isn’t the first time H-E-B has done a good job of managing a disaster—it played an important role in helping the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane Harvey in the immediate aftermath of the storm—which led us to ask: How did a regional supermarket chain develop systems that allow it to stay ahead of a crisis as big as this one? We spoke with nearly a dozen employees, executives, and customers to better understand—in their words—how H-E-B has taken on its unique role in shaping its business around the needs of Texans in the midst of trying circumstances.

Before the Outbreak ...

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1243181930041896962

Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 @RealSexyCyborg

Fantastic thread- more mask citations and a look at how effectively the Czech Republic has been able to achieve the high rate of mask compliance that has limited community spread and brought the virus under control elsewhere.

Jeremy Howard @jeremyphoward

The Czech Republic went from zero mask usage to 100% in 10 days, and in the process they halted the growth of new covid-19 cases. 

How? They made their own! They didn't need government help; they did it themselves. 

It's time for #masks4all. See why: 

https://youtu.be/BoDwXwZXsDI

10:24 AM · Mar 26, 2020 from Guangdong, People's Republic of China

Anonymous said...

A question that seems important:

Why are Americans not being urged or told to wear cloth masks? Indeed, in a number of hospitals and in Kaiser nurses are expressly being told not to wear masks and literally being threatened over their jobs if they do. Masks may have been an important protection against the spread of COVID-19 infections in countries such as Japan. What makes us different in approach to masks?

[ I asked this seemingly important question several times on this blog, but surprisingly there was no response. Today, however, the New York Times tells us that American "experts" are now saying we should have been wearing masks. What sadness. ]

Anonymous said...

So, the CDC is going to ask Americans to wear masks in a few days after how many American cases of COVID-19 infection, while I suggested this to students in January but what the heck do could we have known simply by paying respectful attention to people in China or Japan or Korea or Singapore or Israel...?