Aftershock: America Are You Ready? (One)

This book continues to track and document the American tragedy of Covid-19 and its prolongation of the largest financial calamity since 1930/37, as the mantra of: “We are in this Together” has become the battle cry for survival.Other than sparse Author-comments, most pages contain articles from national publications and Networks with full credit given to the writers, commentators and editors of the respective publications, without edit.*** We pick up on the day my first book in this project was published: April 21, 2020 which coincides with the largest drop in oil prices in the History of America as prices go below zero because storage is at full capacity as consumption has been so drastically reduced as millions of trucks and cars sit idle, due to nationwide restrictions on travel and interactions of ther population.The impact on the Stock Market was immediate:Top oil ETF plunges as crude dropped below zeroBy Paul R. La Monica, CNN Business Updated 11:36 AM ET, Tue April 21, 2020 Some experts have argued that big oil ETFs like the USO are exacerbating the problem because they invest primarily in futures contracts for the next month.The USO ETF currently has more than $4 billion in assets under management, which makes it the largest oil fund -- allowing it to have an outsized impact on the energy markets.But the company that runs the USO ETF, USCF Investments, has made some recent changes to how it manages the fund to lessen the pain from falling near-term crude prices.USCF disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday that it will temporarily stop issuing so-called "creation baskets" -- new shares that own the oil contracts. That move, in theory, could slow the bleeding a bit for existing shares. But USO prices will probably continue to fall as long as oil prices plunge.President Ronald Reagan on the Economy—October 14, 1982"A President's greatest responsibility is to protect all our people from enemies, foreign and domestic. Here at home the worst enemy we face is economic -- the creeping erosion of the American way of life and the American dream that has resulted in today's tragedy of economic stagnation and unemployment."My fellow Americans, in recent days all of us have been swamped by a sea of economic statistics, some good, some bad, and some just plain confusing. There are times when I think that the paper traffic that crosses my desk in a week could fill a big city phone book, and then some.The value of the dollar is up around the world. Interest rates are down by 40 percent. The stock and bond markets surge upward. Inflation is down 59 percent. Buying power is going up. Some economic indicators are down. Others are up. But the dark cloud of unemployment hangs over the lives of 11 million of our friends, neighbors and family.At times, the sheer weight of all these facts and figures makes them hard for anyone to understand. What do they really mean, and what can we do to make them better?Well, the first step is to understand what they mean in human terms, how they're affecting the everyday lives of our people. Because behind every one of those numbers are millions of individual lives: young couples struggling to make ends meet, teen-agers looking for work, older Americans threatened by inflation, small-business men fighting for survival, and parents working for a better future for their children. 'Want to Make It a Better Place'