From Dimensional.  A good chart of the ten largest US stocks over the decades.

Large and In Charge? Giant Firms atop Market Is Nothing New.

Well, this blog wasn’t meant to be a COVID-19 blog.  But that is what is happening right now.   The top of the news from the BBC.  How did this happen Governor Abbott (hint: see recent postings below)?  Someone needs to be held responsible.  Photo from Austin is embarrassing.

BBC News – Coronavirus: ‘Swift and dangerous turn’ in Texas cases, says governor

Always liked Mimi Swartz’s writing.  I think she is most famous for exposing the Enron scandal.  From the New York Times.

McSweeney’s keeps track of our President’s illegal, immoral and unethical lapses.  I suppose this is on top of tens of thousands dead and a wrecked economy.

LEST WE FORGET THE HORRORS: A CATALOG OF TRUMP’S WORST CRUELTIES, COLLUSIONS, CORRUPTIONS, AND CRIMES

From oilprice.com

U.S. Shale Has Lost $300 Billion In 15 Years

“The U.S. shale industry peaked without ever making money. Over the past decade and a half, the shale industry totaled $300 billion in net negative cash flow, wrote down another $450 billion in invested capital, and saw more than 190 bankruptcies since 2010, according to a new report from Deloitte.”

Rino looking large.

Again I have to go to the foreign press to get a straight look at what is going on locally.  This is just getting started.  I see people around me who still think is is all a hoax of some sort.  Of course, they get this idea from right wing media, which has always had a strange aversion to scientific and mathematical truths, or perhaps just truths they don’t like in general.

‘We opened too quickly’: Texas becomes a model for inadequate Covid-19 response

State shuts down again after seven weeks with coronavirus cases skyrocketing, after ignoring inconvenient data and fighting party-political turf wars

Another from the Collaborative Fund.

Same As It Ever Was

From the Collaborative Fund blog:

Never The Same

Lifelong Republican Steve Schmidt pulls no punches in this one.  From CNN:

Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.

When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.