The economic elements of the George Floyd protests

[gwendally]

There's a NY Times video showing the timeline of what went down on the evening George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. It's illuminating because it starts with a complaint from a corner convenience store clerk. Apparently Floyd had just been in there and used a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Floyd was drunk or altered in some way and when he

Comments

[eyelid]

I was with you till the stock market. The stock market is only as smart as the people in it, and reacts often with limited logic and no crystal ball. I wouldn't give it that much credit.

The stock market was going up before Floyd's murder, because the value of the market fell in the first place not because of overinflation in the market, but because of coronavirus and the attendant economic destruction/uncertainty. Once the market felt that things were headed back to stability, it went up again.

[billijean]

Is it possible that George Floyd did not know the bill was counterfeit? I was head teller at a bank a zillion years ago, and once when I was on my lunch break, the assistant manager accepted 200$ in American bills and exchanged them for Canadian. When I came back and opened the drawer, I recognized right away there were counterfeit bills there because the words in the ribbon at the top were missing. Just a blank spot. I closed and locked the drawer, called the manager, who called the police. The man who brought the bills in wasn’t a customer and no id had been taken. 🙄

I think counterfeits tend to better quality than that, but either way, isn’t it possible he didnt know?

[crazyburro]

of course it's possible.

I don't know for sure about anyone else but I don't look at each $20 bill to ascertain whether it's counterfeit or not. I don't hold it up to the light to look for the stripe, or the watermark, nor do I even look to see whether the bill even has two sides printed.

Frankly, I don't see anyone else inspecting their bills either (except at the bank, but only $50s and $100s).

That includes convenience stores.

When I read the original report one of my initial thoughts was "did they really check?" or was there some other agenda.

[billijean]

Exactly. That’s where my thoughts went too.

[gwendally]

The video shows the two clerks running out to his SUV to ask for the cigarettes back. They were unsatisfied enough with his answer to call the police.

As I write this I note that George Floyd died for less than $20 worth of cigarettes.

[eyelid]

Note: the stock market is crashing super hard. We’ve just erased a month of gains. Did it rethink the wisdom of racial equality?

[gwendally]

The stock market hates uncertainty. Watching the economy stutter towards another shutdown makes it unhappy. Once the edges are clear it'll recover. It's a good time to be buying the dip.

The other thing the stock market hates is war. Trump seems interested in fighting another Civil War. (taking the same side as was already defeated, interestingly enough.) War is very very bad for the stock market (as well as every living thing on the planet.)