The big short
-
Michael Burry, the doctor-turned-investor who famously bet against mortgage securities before the 2008 financial crisis, has taken to Twitter with a controversial message: lockdowns intended to contain the coronavirus pandemic are worse than the disease itself.
Government-directed shutdowns in the U.S., which led to millions of job losses and may trigger one of the country’s deepest-ever economic contractions, aren’t necessary to contain the epidemic and have disproportionately hurt low-income families and minorities, Burry argued in a series of tweets over the past two weeks. He also said some controversial treatments for Covid-19, such as the malaria drug hydroxycloroquine, should be made more widely available.
urry, Predictor Of Mortgage Collapse, Bets On Farmland, Gold
Michael BurryPhotographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg
Burry earned his M.D. at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, but decided to become a professional investor after making hugely profitable bets in the stock market. He shot to fame after his hedge fund’s bearish mortgage wagers were chronicled in “The Big Short,” an Oscar-winning movie based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis.Although Burry has mostly kept a low profile since then, he started sharing his views more widely last year to warn of a central-bank fueled “bubble” in passive investment products. He’s now focusing on the outbreak that has shuttered economies, killed almost 75,000 people worldwide and changed how millions of people live and work.
“Universal stay-at-home is the most devastating economic force in modern history,” Burry wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. “And it is man-made. It very suddenly reverses the gains of underprivileged groups, kills and creates drug addicts, beats and terrorizes women and children in violent now-jobless households, and more. It bleeds deep anguish and suicide.”
Burry, whose utterances are closely watched by the financial community, began tweeting on March 23, describing his handle as the “real personal account of the real weird one from the book and movie, etc.” He said he began speaking out because of how people were suffering from measures taken to contain the pandemic. “Unconscionable,” is how he described job losses in the U.S., which have caused a once-unthinkable 10 million people to apply for unemployment benefits in the past two weeks. He earlier confirmed the authenticity of his tweets in an email interview with BNN Bloomberg.
-
-
@George-K said in The big short:
lockdowns intended to contain the coronavirus pandemic are worse for him than the disease itself.
Fixed it for him.
-
@Copper said in The big short:
I'm not surprised somebody did the math and came up with this answer.
Link please?
-
I have a lifetime limit on my insurance. That's fine with me.
Someday maybe I'll get ambitious and try to figure out if that's enough.
From the tone of your question, I assume you feel like the government should give me something extra for coronavirus, just because there are lots of headlines.
I don't.
-
@jon-nyc said in The big short:
@Copper said in The big short:
I'm not surprised somebody did the math and came up with this answer.
Link please?
It's up there in GK's post.
-
Don’t see any math there. Nor any assumptions one would have to make in order to do the math.
-
@Copper No I'm just trying to get to the crux of your position. You're advocating for a valuation of life to determine how bad the economy should get before we favor it over human lives. You've mentioned that others have already made this calculation.
I'm straight up asking you how much you think your life is worth. If you get sick and are on a ventilator, how much should the hospital pay to keep you alive? Is $1 million too much? Is $10,000?
What's your number?
-
@jon-nyc said in The big short:
Don’t see any math there. Nor any assumptions one would have to make in order to do the math.
That's why I posted what I posted.
Which was, someone did the math and reached the conclusion.
I do not have any information about the math other than it was done. This is based on the quote "lockdowns intended to contain the coronavirus pandemic are worse than the disease itself"
I guess it's hard to say what sort of math he might have to back up that conclusion. There is no question in my mind that the longer the lockdowns continue the closer to the truth this quote becomes.
-
@Aqua-Letifer said in The big short:
@Copper No I'm just trying to get to the crux of your position. You're advocating for a valuation of life to determine how bad the economy should get before we favor it over human lives. You've mentioned that others have already made this calculation.
I'm straight up asking you how much you think your life is worth. If you get sick and are on a ventilator, how much should the hospital pay to keep you alive? Is $1 million too much? Is $10,000?
What's your number?
What am I willing to pay is a different than what it is worth.
But as a practical matter I guess the answer is the same.
What is anything worth? The answer is, whatever a willing buyer will pay.
In the case of trying to save my life as you describe the answer is simple, whatever my insurance will cover. I think that is a couple million lifetime maximum.
And that is the insurance company doing the paying.
I don't think the hospital should pay anything. Did you really mean to ask what should the hospital pay?
-
All safety-related action has a cost-benefit aspect to it. We don't make cars as safe as they can be, we make them as safe as we can and have them remain affordable.
However, listening to the very wealthy pontificate about this is a bit freaking much. They'd be happy for me to go back to work? Well, surprise surprise, I'd be happy for them to give all their money away to help support the less fortunate.
-
-
@Copper Well, yeah. The entire insurance system is based on a health situation that doesn't include a pandemic. It's really delusional to think they'll be able to cover all of your care in addition to everyone else's.
So you think the number is whatever the buyer is willing to pay. If they aren't willing or able to cover your hospital stay, then, you're okay with not going and dying?
-
@Horace Dead people can't work. That's why I think the best thing for the economy is to place public safety as paramount. But no I don't think that means shut things down.
Please love yourself.
-
@Aqua-Letifer Paramount, priceless, choose your word. The bottom line is how much unhappiness are you willing to sow in exchange for lives.
-
@Aqua-Letifer said in The big short:
@Copper Well, yeah. The entire insurance system is based on a health situation that doesn't include a pandemic. It's really delusional to think they'll be able to cover all of your care in addition to everyone else's.
So you think the number is whatever the buyer is willing to pay. If they aren't willing or able to cover your hospital stay, then, you're okay with not going and dying?
It's not really a matter of their willingness, they have committed to certain provisions.
I'm OK with them abiding by those conditions.
I am not OK with them not abiding by those conditions.
It is not delusional to expect them to pay to cover what they committed to cover.
I am not aware of insurance companies saying they won't honor commitments. Is this happening? I actually think I saw the opposite happening, I received an email from my insurance company saying they would cover expenses related to COVID. To be honest I didn't pay much attention to it. They may have been forced by the government to do this.
-
That’s right. But I don’t hold the view that lives can be infinitely valued by society. There are trade offs.
-
When you have two sides that are worlds apart, it leaves all kinds of room in the middle for reasonable solutions.
Rather than snipe at each other, why not discuss what would seem reasonable to you?
By the way, I wish they would start qualifying statements such as “government mandated shutdowns”. Not everything is shutdown, many of the businesses that are shuttered did so voluntarily without Government mandates, and the government mandated stay at home orders have come from the state level, not the Federal.
-
@Copper Still haven't shared your number.
