Quote:
Originally Posted by Katie the heartbreaker
This will be a very simple public poll. Where will the United States be in January 2022?
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I voted wrong, because I misread your poll. Expansion January 2022, but recession January 2021.
What you will see is a recession due to Capital reallocation.
Where is Capital going to be reallocated?
To the, um, "COVID-19 Industry."
I just coined a phrase.
I talked to a client this morning. Previously, I had asked her what her long-term plan was, because if you have a restaurant and no long-term plan, you're as good as closed. She spent the week talking to architect friends who came up with interesting plans to remodel the restaurant to maintain the same seating, only spaced for safety measures. She mentioned a colleague redoing their kitchen to allow for the dining room to be expanded, and another who is basically screwed, but he does his last seating at 9:00 PM and thinks if he extends that 2 hours he can make up the losses (I just hope he factored in the increased labor costs).
Anyway, next 2 years or so you'll see a lot of remodeling, expansion and construction related to COVID-19, which is good, because that will probably make up the lost revenues from States, counties and cities and their lack of spending on construction due to no money.
A lot of businesses, almost exclusively in the service sector, are going to close leaving large numbers of unemployed. The good news is, the COVID-19 Industry will pick up the slack.
That's mostly manufacturing and services, if not producing masks or other PPE, then medical equipment and medical supplies, or manufacturing safety equipment, and then installing it and other related services.
They've already started redesigning passenger aircraft and there's plexiglass barriers, shields and other items for services in the service sector.
Unfortunately, safety is not free. That stuff costs money and we'll all pay for it.
I don't expect massive price increases, but modest price increases aren't out of the question and most businesses will try to spread that out over a couple of years.
COVID-19 isn't going away. It's just fading. It will spread all Summer long. You'll continue to have cases though not like April and then comes October.
Weather cools and people start doing indoor activities and it will spike and so will the legislation.
States, counties and cities that haven't already will be enacting laws and ordinances related to cleaning and sanitation.
Gyms, restaurants, bars, and the like will have to sanitize to remain open. That's gonna increase operating costs, which will increase prices, but it will also result in expansion of the cleaning and sanitation service sectors. That's were some Capital will be reallocated.
I don't know what you'll do about plexiglass and plastics.
You'll only have 16 out of 167 oil refineries producing gasoline. And some of those don't produce domestic gasoline. Most US oils are high Sulfur and it's cost-prohibitive to remove it to meet EPA Tier III Standards, of course, I'm assuming you don't wanna pay $3.50/gallon.
So, you export gasoline. Do you reduce gasoline supply to produce more plastics and resins, or do you just trade gasoline earmarked for export to import petro-chemicals? I don't know. You don't have to necessarily trade for petro-chemicals. You can just buy them. You already do for a lot of them anyway.
We'll see.
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