(Those tragic and scary stories are ones that were generated in just the past day or two.)
The real economic impacts - and the loss of livelihoods and the despair and desperation that it will create within tens of thousands of families - is still to come.
As an related aside, in recent years - because I have found publicly-listed equity being somewhat excessively priced, I some two years ago I started looking at investing in privately-owned companies. To that end I had mandated a small business broker/merchant bank to present opportunities to me.
Last week, I received a call from one of the senior staffers at that institution; the number of businesses she had on her books had quadrupled over the past 6 weeks!
And some of the distressing stories she related to me - stories of businesses in which families had invested all their savings - businesses that employed other family members and people with dependants and financial obligations - that were shuttered in and where the owners felt they would not be able to afford to re-open. These businesses were being offered for sale in the hope that the owners could salvage just a bit of their equity.
Ditto for people in my community.... the local coffee shop owner, the gym owner, the local physiotherapist, the electrician who lives a few doors from me, the young married couple with the newborn and their two-year old.
I have to say, I think it takes a pretty low-class human being to suggest that long-term damage to the economy is a "profits first" consideration
There is real human unhappiness and anxiety already in evidence due to financial insecurity, which is only going to get worse, and which will lead to domestic problems, substance abuse, increasing crime, and broken families, depression, despair and suicide.
