Sept 23, 2022 5:16:15 GMT iNCY said:

Sept 23, 2022 2:55:45 GMT iron maiden said:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we don't have anything like that.  Sounds good, but is it overall? 

In the Aussie market, the issue with fixed rate mortgages is that you can't pay extra into them to release earlier.
When we have a flexible rate we are able to have an offset account, which is like a savings account but instead of paying you interest, the money in this account is calculated like it had been paid off your mortgage reducing your interest. This is what I do with my mortgage, it leaves the money available but eliminates interest.

We are allowed once a year to put up to a certain % on our mortgage.  We also pay bi-weekly instead of monthly so our 25 year mortgage is actually a 20 year now.  We put savings into a maintenance fund (which is pretty much depleted) and some into a savings fund and that account is what we use on our 'anniversary' date to pay the bank which also reduces our years in the end.  Ideally, we'd like it paid off in 10-15. 

Sept 23, 2022 2:55:45 GMT iron maiden said:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we don't have anything like that.  Sounds good, but is it overall? 

As you alluded to with your friend, long-term fixed rates are much better for planning a budget.

Sept 23, 2022 5:16:15 GMT iNCY said:

In the Aussie market, the issue with fixed rate mortgages is that you can't pay extra into them to release earlier.
When we have a flexible rate we are able to have an offset account, which is like a savings account but instead of paying you interest, the money in this account is calculated like it had been paid off your mortgage reducing your interest. This is what I do with my mortgage, it leaves the money available but eliminates interest.

I'm confused. If you still control the money in the account and pay less interest, what's the benefit to the lender? Can they lend out the money in the offset account to other loans?

For once, something in the US is less complicated than the rest of the world. Generally, you can pay as much extra towards principal as you like. You can get a 30-year mortgage and pay it off in full next week if you wanted.

Sept 23, 2022 16:28:07 GMT Gyro LC said:

Sept 23, 2022 2:55:45 GMT iron maiden said:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we don't have anything like that.  Sounds good, but is it overall? 

As you alluded to with your friend, long-term fixed rates are much better for planning a budget.

Sept 23, 2022 5:16:15 GMT iNCY said:

In the Aussie market, the issue with fixed rate mortgages is that you can't pay extra into them to release earlier.
When we have a flexible rate we are able to have an offset account, which is like a savings account but instead of paying you interest, the money in this account is calculated like it had been paid off your mortgage reducing your interest. This is what I do with my mortgage, it leaves the money available but eliminates interest.

I'm confused. If you still control the money in the account and pay less interest, what's the benefit to the lender? Can they lend out the money in the offset account to other loans?

For once, something in the US is less complicated than the rest of the world. Generally, you can pay as much extra towards principal as you like. You can get a 30-year mortgage and pay it off in full next week if you wanted.

There's no advantage to the bank with the offset account.
Much in the same way there's no advantage to the bank in credit cards that get paid off in full every month.
The idea of the offset account is that it forces you to have a variable rate account where the bank makes more in interest.

I loan money to myself from my holding company and put it in my offset account, meaning I don't pay bank interest on my mortgage, makes every dollar off the principal

FedEx increasing pricing citing lower demand forcing their hand. Free market economics at it's finest.

Our cable companies put up the price of copper because there's a copper mine strike in Chile (I think). They don't even get the coper from that mine. -_-

Sept 24, 2022 18:48:52 GMT iron maiden said:

Our cable companies put up the price of copper because there's a copper mine strike in Chile (I think). They don't even get the coper from that mine. -_-

In fairness though, scarcity drives up the spot price of copper.

Then when the strike ends and the scarcity is over the price remains the same.

People warning that oil suppliers are preparing to choke supply in the summer of 23. As countries invest in electric cars, oil suppliers are going to choke supply, claim record demand, and skyrocket the price. Most finance sites are predicting record prices next summer. The aftermath will be oil manipulated to be above $100 a barrel all the time, moving to $150 min in the American summers. This should mean gas prices from $4 to $6 in US on average.

Oil is not investing in new supply, and due to lack of maintaining their current shit, is slowly reducing output as the shocks are more profitable to them.  Also buying back stock is more important than having product to sell.

Sept 25, 2022 1:49:24 GMT c said:

Then when the strike ends and the scarcity is over the price remains the same.

The spot price of copper goes up and down like a yo-yo so do cable prices.

Sept 26, 2022 3:17:51 GMT c said:

People warning that oil suppliers are preparing to choke supply in the summer of 23. As countries invest in electric cars, oil suppliers are going to choke supply, claim record demand, and skyrocket the price. Most finance sites are predicting record prices next summer. The aftermath will be oil manipulated to be above $100 a barrel all the time, moving to $150 min in the American summers. This should mean gas prices from $4 to $6 in US on average.

Oil is not investing in new supply, and due to lack of maintaining their current shit, is slowly reducing output as the shocks are more profitable to them.  Also buying back stock is more important than having product to sell.

Electric cars becoming ubiquitous is such a joke, we don't have the lithium or rare earth metals to produce them at scale.

We use lithium ion now, but can also use aluminum ion. If needed can also use iron and sodium ions. Future tech will likely find a better battery as there are dozens of proposals.

And car companies are embracing EV with every major manufacturer offering a model. And they need to as within 10 years the nordic countries, parts of europe and the US and Asia will ban the sale of gas powered cars.

As for rare Earth material, when we actually see a limit to what we can mine on Earth, we will start to get more off the Earth. Shit is common in meteors and asteroids. We just have no reason to go fetch it yet. But people plan too which is why there is all this talk of lunar bases now. They plan to knock shit into lunar orbit to mine it.

Sept 26, 2022 8:29:07 GMT c said:

We use lithium ion now, but can also use aluminum ion. If needed can also use iron and sodium ions. Future tech will likely find a better battery as there are dozens of proposals.

And car companies are embracing EV with every major manufacturer offering a model. And they need to as within 10 years the nordic countries, parts of europe and the US and Asia will ban the sale of gas powered cars.

As for rare Earth material, when we actually see a limit to what we can mine on Earth, we will start to get more off the Earth. Shit is common in meteors and asteroids. We just have no reason to go fetch it yet. But people plan too which is why there is all this talk of lunar bases now. They plan to knock shit into lunar orbit to mine it.

Yes, I do not argue any of these points.
They do however fail to take into account the idea that governments expect most people to be driving an electrical vehicle by 2030 to hit targets.
There is little way to scale current technology in that timeframe.

They are not banning the cars from the road. They are banning the sale of new gas based cars. Not the first time we did something like this, and the objections are kind of the same as when we adopted the auto in the first place. People said we do not have the means to produce enough cars to replace horses, we do not have the infrastructure to fuel cars, cars do not have the range of horses and can run out of fuel, etc. Took 20 years for the US to adapt from laying roads, to having gas stations in all major areas, to building 20 million cars and half of Americans owning one. Figure we are about five years into this swap right now. The 2035 target many places have is not unrealistic. And manipulated oil prices will def push people to swap as soon as possible. Gas prices will rise at least 30% to 50% next year, with some projections saying they can go as high 200% if the Russian oil is disrupted.

The sole reason not to swap is because gasoline is the current way we do things, which is idiotic. Gasoline prices are super manipulated and constantly raising. Electric power we can make far cheaper from various sources, severing the need for the average person to reliant on Middle East oil and local refining and stopping one energy consortium from holding the world by the balls.

But that artificial gas crunch coming next year, will spike inflation globally. Everyone will use it to raise prices and raise them hard as shipping costs skyrocket. Gas hits $5 a galleon the US economy starts to strains. It hits $10, the economy breaks as people cannot afford to get to work. And I assume this is the goal. Shock oil prices for a year, starting this summer and Americans will elect someone people who will fight environmental regulation globally, potentially with punitive tariffs Texas style while oil gets to keep one of it's largest markets from committing to electric.

What pisses me off, is they are not even trying to hide things, and pretty much are working in the open, astroturfing shit in the media already with OPEC saying they do not expect a significant increase in demand next year (3%), while the US media is reporting that they need to increase production 10% to 20% to prevent prices from skyrocketing. I hope this stunt promote windfall taxes in all major countries.

So that massive inflation spike that is Biden loan forgiveness turns out to only cost 400 billion. For comparison, the US gives the fossil fuel industries 650 billion a year in welfare aka subsidies that are near impossible to repeal as they are buried in tax codes and budget bills.

Sept 26, 2022 17:59:19 GMT c said:

They are not banning the cars from the road. They are banning the sale of new gas based cars. Not the first time we did something like this, and the objections are kind of the same as when we adopted the auto in the first place. People said we do not have the means to produce enough cars to replace horses, we do not have the infrastructure to fuel cars, cars do not have the range of horses and can run out of fuel, etc. Took 20 years for the US to adapt from laying roads, to having gas stations in all major areas, to building 20 million cars and half of Americans owning one. Figure we are about five years into this swap right now. The 2035 target many places have is not unrealistic. And manipulated oil prices will def push people to swap as soon as possible. Gas prices will rise at least 30% to 50% next year, with some projections saying they can go as high 200% if the Russian oil is disrupted.

The sole reason not to swap is because gasoline is the current way we do things, which is idiotic. Gasoline prices are super manipulated and constantly raising. Electric power we can make far cheaper from various sources, severing the need for the average person to reliant on Middle East oil and local refining and stopping one energy consortium from holding the world by the balls.

But that artificial gas crunch coming next year, will spike inflation globally. Everyone will use it to raise prices and raise them hard as shipping costs skyrocket. Gas hits $5 a galleon the US economy starts to strains. It hits $10, the economy breaks as people cannot afford to get to work. And I assume this is the goal. Shock oil prices for a year, starting this summer and Americans will elect someone people who will fight environmental regulation globally, potentially with punitive tariffs Texas style while oil gets to keep one of it's largest markets from committing to electric.

What pisses me off, is they are not even trying to hide things, and pretty much are working in the open, astroturfing shit in the media already with OPEC saying they do not expect a significant increase in demand next year (3%), while the US media is reporting that they need to increase production 10% to 20% to prevent prices from skyrocketing. I hope this stunt promote windfall taxes in all major countries.

The whole EV thing, you're missing the point.
In the USA there are roughly 15 million cars built and sold per year.
There were 650,000 EVs sold in the USA last year.
There were only 6 million produced and sold globally last year.

I'm not arguing the ideology, I'm just saying the idea that the manufacture of EVs can scale that rapidly is fanciful when we barely have the materials to meet production requirements today.

The US only sold 3.5 million new cars and trucks in 2021. The rest were used. The ramp up to EV is starting now with 445k new cars entering the market, and EVs already being 5% of the market.

And the only material bottleneck we have is theoretically lithium in the future. Not all EVs being made right now use lithium though, some still use iron, and they do not have to use lithium moving forward, or at the current rate they are. And as the unleaded gasoline transition showed us, if we no longer use lithium, people will sell adaptation kits to move on.

The argument we should abaddon moving to EVs entirely because of lithium is absurd. Moreso when we are also facing expecting oil shortages next year.

As for running out entirely of lithium, there are an estimated 80 million tonnes of lithium in the world, making it more common than lead, tin, silver, gallium and gold.

We do not lack the metal but the capacity because no one considers it profitable to mine in places where there is easy access to water to do so. US has up to 20 million tons we have no interest in mining. The Congo they believe holds a billion tons of it.

There is no shortage of the metal itself, only people to mine it. Unlike fossil fuels, the government is not paying people to mine it right now. Most government funding goes to paying for oil, gas and coal production (70%). Move more of that to lithium and production will increase. Way of the world, no one wants to pay for the means of their profits these days and rely on a government to pay for it.

Sept 26, 2022 21:58:33 GMT c said:

The US only sold 3.5 million new cars and trucks in 2021. The rest were used. The ramp up to EV is starting now with 445k new cars entering the market, and EVs already being 5% of the market.

And the only material bottleneck we have is theoretically lithium in the future. Not all EVs being made right now use lithium though, some still use iron, and they do not have to use lithium moving forward, or at the current rate they are. And as the unleaded gasoline transition showed us, if we no longer use lithium, people will sell adaptation kits to move on.

The argument we should abaddon moving to EVs entirely because of lithium is absurd. Moreso when we are also facing expecting oil shortages next year.

Again, not arguing with the ideology or the technology, just the scalability in the time frame required.

Sept 27, 2022 1:51:14 GMT iNCY said:

Sept 26, 2022 21:58:33 GMT c said:

The US only sold 3.5 million new cars and trucks in 2021. The rest were used. The ramp up to EV is starting now with 445k new cars entering the market, and EVs already being 5% of the market.

And the only material bottleneck we have is theoretically lithium in the future. Not all EVs being made right now use lithium though, some still use iron, and they do not have to use lithium moving forward, or at the current rate they are. And as the unleaded gasoline transition showed us, if we no longer use lithium, people will sell adaptation kits to move on.

The argument we should abaddon moving to EVs entirely because of lithium is absurd. Moreso when we are also facing expecting oil shortages next year.

Again, not arguing with the ideology or the technology, just the scalability in the time frame required.

What would be a more reasonable yet still aggressive time frame?

And to made it clear, the first target is 2035 for the end of the sale of NEW gas powered cars. The resale of existing gas powered cars will not be halted.

Sept 27, 2022 2:02:38 GMT 🤯 said:

Sept 27, 2022 1:51:14 GMT iNCY said:

Again, not arguing with the ideology or the technology, just the scalability in the time frame required.

What would be a more reasonable yet still aggressive time frame?

Growing the market by 5% per year seems almost doable.

In other news:

A new day, a new report the US enters recession. How many recessions have we had in the past two years 3 or 4 dozen? Rich people losing their investment cash does not make a recession. People just pissed that rates rose again and reacting. The market was overinflated for the past two years and we knew the never ending bull market is not sustainable.

Assuming a .05 rate of growth, the EV market will match the current new market by 2042 in the US. By 2035, 66 percent of all cars sold will be EV using that growth model. Assumes linear adaptation though which will never happen, as gas stations will close once a critical mass of EV are on the streets, reducing the need for a station on every corner. Same way the horse died out.  Also the current growth rate the private sector pushed for is 60% increase and rapidly rising as most companies already are planning to discontinue gas powered cars.

Hilarious fight starting. Business owners are realizing that asylum seekers can lawfully work in the US. Now they are asking why the hell is the cheap labor in border states being flown to liberal cities instead of being allowed to work for them.

GOP, rising their own labor costs to pwn the liberals.

Sept 27, 2022 5:22:19 GMT c said:

A new day, a new report the US enters recession. How many recessions have we had in the past two years 3 or 4 dozen? Rich people losing their investment cash does not make a recession. People just pissed that rates rose again and reacting. The market was overinflated for the past two years and we knew the never ending bull market is not sustainable.

Two quarters of negative growth is a recession, a recession is a technical measure and that is the technical definition.
Everything that has happened in the economy this year I have been forecasting since the top of the bull run last year.

We aren't near the real bottom yet though, I think the SPX has to hit 3020 to really break the spirits of the investors.
If we bounce up before we get there, then it just means that we will have to  a recession properly at some stage in the near future.

The Fed has to force the market capitulation and this isn't going happen 50-100 basis points at a time.
Powell needs to say there will be no interest rate cuts until mid-2024 at the earliest.
Then the bubble can empty in an orderly fashion.
It's the uncertainty that keeps spawning false hope at the moment.

Ok calling it, where has the National Bureau of Economic Research, the group first defined what a recession was, ever used two quarters of negative growth as a definition. You are using the European Union definition for America, which does not apply here and never has since the NBER first introduced the term recession.  Even IMF does not use that definition as it excludes the majority of the 70's recession.

Given they literally define what a recession is in the US, and has for almost 100 years without dispute, I will use their definition.

Q: What is a recession? What is an expansion?

A: The NBER's traditional definition of a recession is that it is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months. The committee's view is that while each of the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, we concluded that the drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that the downturn should be classified as a recession even if it proved to be quite brief. The committee subsequently determined that the trough occurred two months after the peak, in April 2020. An expansion is a period when the economy is not in a recession. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief. However, the time that it takes for the economy to return to its previous peak level of activity may be quite extended.



Q: If the most recent trough was in April 2020, is it correct to say the expansion started in April or in May?



A: The NBER chronology does not identify the precise moment that the economy entered a recession or expansion. In the NBER’s convention for measuring the duration of a recession, the first month of the recession is the month following the peak and the last month is the month of the trough. Because the most recent trough was in April 2020, the last month of the recession was April 2020 and the first month of the subsequent expansion was May 2020.

This is crazy, you can't expect the markets to get the message from the Fed if they are not all on the same page.

www.cnbc.com/2022/09/27/feds-evans-nervous-about-going-too-far-too-fast-with-rate-hikes.html

This is why the market opened with a big rally today, because it seemed like the Fed was not set on the higher rates, then they had to clarify they were and the market collapsed again.

US announcing grants for EV charging stations every 50 miles on the highway for all 50 states. Texas will likely reject it, but this is massive. Also provides money to swap everything over to 1 hour fast chargers. This is akin to the original highway project.

Feds confirmed prior they will go as high as they need to until inflation drops, recession fears be damned. Idiots like Evans is how we got into this mess as he advocated for near 0 interest rates.

Sept 28, 2022 3:41:25 GMT c said:

US announcing grants for EV charging stations every 50 miles on the highway for all 50 states. Texas will likely reject it, but this is massive. Also provides money to swap everything over to 1 hour fast chargers. This is akin to the original highway project.

Feds confirmed prior they will go as high as they need to until inflation drops, recession fears be damned. Idiots like Evans is how we got into this mess as he advocated for near 0 interest rates.

Yes, but the Fed can accomplish more through talking tough than they can through raising the rates, but if they can't stay on message it counts for nothing.
The plan seems clear to drive the USA into a deep recession to cool inflation, it is the only way... Whether you think they are there already or not.

As for the EV thing, good I guess, though I doubt it has been well thought out.
It is going to take extraordinary infrastructure to put that amount of power in place.

It takes 350kW for an ultra-rapid charge unit
Most homes are wired for about 24kw total power draw.


www.whichcar.com.au/car-advice/ev-charging-guide-home#level2

Evans does not work for the main branch though, so he is not involved in the conversation.

Most people with EVs now install phase 2 charges, which are more than enough. My aunt full charges her Tesla back to full after 3 to 4 hours on it. Regulation will allow phase 3 charges in homes in the near future most likely in blue states at least where we do infrastructure.

Sept 28, 2022 4:41:29 GMT c said:

Evans does not work for the main branch though, so he is not involved in the conversation.

Most people with EVs now install phase 2 charges, which are more than enough. My aunt full charges her Tesla back to full after 3 to 4 hours on it. Regulation will allow phase 3 charges in homes in the near future most likely in blue states at least where we do infrastructure.

Yes, but you are talking about more than one Ultra rapid charger every 50 miles on the highway, I am just saying that is a way bigger job than most people might think it is from floating it as an idea.


On the topic of climate, we had this hilarious own goal by one of the Greta Thunberg acolytes on the radio today: www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/mum-of-climate-activist-furious-after-teen-daughter-mocked-in-radio-interview/news-story/b51ead92aecbf557041fe87e5f5f83a1
Her Mom, of course is outraged.