the panic's on

"But now the fury of the distemper increased to such a degree that even the markets were but very thinly furnished with provisions or frequented with buyers compared to what they were before; and the Lord Mayor caused the country people who brought provisions to be stopped in the streets leading into the town, and to sit down there with their goods, where they sold what they brought, and went immediately away." daniel defoe. a journal of the plague year

an early morning run to a reasonably crowded "open 24 hrs." big box store ( not walmart, just to be expressly clear about my biases ) tells me that while milk and toilet paper have returned to the shelves, at least for the nonce, thise in search of bread bread...

and cleaning products will just have to wait until the stores are less "thinly furnished"...panic buying has become a cultural norm...however it is not the only panic in town...

the fed cut interest rates to the bone...

and in response investors panicked...greed and fear are the drivers in capitalism and the herd mentality is strong and inflexible as it bounces from one to the other in the bi-polar disorder that is an extractive economy based solely on exchange value...and before this devolves into a rant fit for a different blog let me say the markets could and probably will recover...but they will never really be stable...fear is always there because greed hates loss like the plague...

fear is everywhere you go these days and, frankly, i am weary of the panic and whining and bitching and irrational behaviors...my weariness means nothing to the panicked however...they will continue until exhausted or someone who "knows" tells them it's "all clear"...how they would "know" when, per their web site, my state has tested a grand total of 139 people out of an estimated population of 6,750,000 is beyond the scope of my cognition..."they" must know something i don't..or, perhaps, their algorithms do...i foresee a fourteen day period of being mostly housebound in the offing...this displeases me mightily...they better let me go out in the back yard...it is almost spring and the plants and the beds do not care about covid-19.