Oct 10, 2022 0:20:05 GMT c said:

I hear this every time a democrat is in office and the economic collapse that ends the world as we know it never happens. And I called this two years ago. The second anything happened to move the interest rates over 0 would be met with calls that world economy's was at stake.

If the capitalism state fails then we will talk, but until then, this is all chicken little to me.

And that is why Socialism always fails.
I have been watching a bit of the F1 lately and it is interesting, because the engineers could create engines that generate more power, but the issue is always one of traction.
You can have the power, but until that power is translated to the road, you have useless energy and you go nowhere with your wheels spinning.
Regardless of how efficient your engine is, (if everything else is compatible) winning or losing a race is a question of which tyres you choose.

The ideological arguments of right vs left are pointless if you have no mechanism of transferring the power to the road.
This is what makes or brakes economies, whether or not the policy translates into reality.
I don't even think I am an conservative or an economist, what I am is a realist...

Humans are what they are, governments are what they are.
Economic prosperity happens when the government policy (the engine) makes it's way down through the tyres (humans) to generate drive.
Any policy or ideology that ignores the nature of humans is destined to fail.

At the end of the day when you strip everything else away, all of human endeavor is linked to survival and providing for their families.
Any policy that goes against self interest will fail.

Hey zero down mortgages back. What a perfect time for these to return.

Probably only KING KID will know about this one.
The hero of the bull run was Cathie Wood, she ran an investment fund called AARK Innovation, it was seen as the new paradigm.
Investment was purely in emerging technology like Tesla and Meta.

Anyway, this is the kind of capitulation we may see across the market:



After climbing as high as US$ 137 a share, the price has given up all it's gains and crashed back to 2017 share price of $36.30.
Scary because more people bought on the way up that did at the bottom.
It seems some people forget that the stock market is a zero sum game.

But won't someone think of the investors? Where will they go now for the 40% return they expected? How will they feed their families? Also would have made more money investing in GME than AARK. GME still at $25 after a four way split. So the Apes were better stock pickers than she was.


So looks like retailers increased their margins from 10% pre-pandemic to 20% today, after costs. They also are starting the holiday season this week to make sure they get record profits again.

Oh shit, GOP fiscal policy falling apart. Looks like buyers for US debt are drying up. The US can still buy it's own debt, but under Biden we are unloading the debt we have not expanding it, to the dismay of many GOP people who feel having a large debt and low taxes is great fiscal policy.

But sooner or later gonna have to start actually taxes the rich if the US wants to keep spending trillions on corporate welfare.

Going into a split congress this does make a ton of sense as split congresses tend to default and the GOP does not seem to care if we miss debt payments or not. You know, only losers repay debt.

And end of the US economy is coming. Biden's Department of Labor is going to reclassify the relationship of being paid by someone for labor that works as a subordinate as being an employee. In the US many restaurant workers, healthcare workers, construction workers, professors, hair and beauty workers and other are not considered employees but independent contractors. And as independent contractors they are not subject to many labor laws. Most lack the actual independence of independent laborers but have all the downsides, and basically are just employees that companies do not wish to give benefits to or treat properly. Biden corrects the loopholes that people use to screw over people with misclassification of labour status and places say their costs will skyrockets.

For people not familiar with the fight, Fed-Ex workers are not actually employees of Fed-Ex for instance, despite being required to wear a uniform. Go to get your haircut at Supercuts, and no one actually is a Supercuts employee. Go to many restaurants and they are not employees of the restaurants but independent contracts waiting tables, cookings meals and washing tables. None of people have any control over when they work, for how much, or their behavior, but they are classified as if they do to avoid giving them the labor rights they should have.

Just another way though the US economy needs to screw people over to survive since it NEVER was intended to use free market for the labor side.

HHH better be sweating!

Yup, should hit pro-wrestling and invalidate post release non-competes.

There is one major hangup though. Democratic presidents may not be able to change labor policy legally. Courts ruled that Biden had to keep Trump's policy on this in place and could not reverse it. So no clue if it can becomes law or not since our court system is no longer a legitimate one. Also special interest groups can get carveouts for cash like they did in the Cali implementation of this law by having lawmakers write in that some groups are always independent contractors in the eyes of the law.

Oct 11, 2022 13:33:36 GMT c said:

Oh shit, GOP fiscal policy falling apart. Looks like buyers for US debt are drying up. The US can still buy it's own debt, but under Biden we are unloading the debt we have not expanding it, to the dismay of many GOP people who feel having a large debt and low taxes is great fiscal policy.

But sooner or later gonna have to start actually taxes the rich if the US wants to keep spending trillions on corporate welfare.

Going into a split congress this does make a ton of sense as split congresses tend to default and the GOP does not seem to care if we miss debt payments or not. You know, only losers repay debt.

I will ignore the partisan comments.
The issue with the government debt is the strength of the USD any treasury bond you sell today has a 3.8% return or whatever.




All currrencies have dipped against the USD. 
So if a British bank bought the Bonds today at 3.8% and the currency went back to where it was by the time the bond matured, It's actually a 30% loss.
The situation is worse for the Quantitative tightening, where the Fed is looking to offload the bonds it bought during Covid.



So the US bought Treasury bonds during the middle of the Pandemic, the only way to unload them today is at a loss.
Say the US bought a package of a million dollars worth of Bond sin the middle of 2020 where the Bond rate was 0.62%
Anyone buying bonds today can get new bonds with a 3.97% return, so the government has to discount the face price of the bonds to match, so the million dollars it bought is now only worth: $966,500
If you think about the holdings of the US treasury in QE being $8.8 Tr if the government was able to offload all of it's QE today (Which it can't for the reasons I described earlier (Re: Currency) it would cause a loss to the US of $300 Billion dollars.

The scary part is that the higher the rates rise, the bigger that number becomes.

It is the Bond market both Government and Corporate that will drive our economy into the ground.
I know nobody really reads what I write, but I do the research for my own interest.
This is the US deficit as it stands at the moment:



As it stands it looks to be about 2.8 trillion dollars in deficit.
To physically pay that money, the Fed has to issue Treasury Bonds at the current rate and somebody has to purchase them.
This is the big question now, is there a market for 2.8 Trillion dollars in new debt?
If the government can't find a buyer then the Fed has to buy them... If this happens, then it is Quantitive easing and the second it happens the Stock Market takes off and inflation goes even more nuts, I mean serious Hyperinflation territory, it's one thing to buy your own bonds to stimulate the market, it is another to do it because you can't afford to run the economy. This drives up the USA as a credit risk making it even harder to sell debt...

I am probably not being very clear in any of this.

TLDR: The Bond market is in the shitter, this is what drives all borrowings for governments and large corporations, without a market for this debt, these companies and governments grind to a literal halt.

To top it all off, they just gave Ben Benanke the Nobel Prize for Economics.... This is his turd.

Oct 12, 2022 0:34:53 GMT c said:

And end of the US economy is coming. Biden's Department of Labor is going to reclassify the relationship of being paid by someone for labor that works as a subordinate as being an employee. In the US many restaurant workers, healthcare workers, construction workers, professors, hair and beauty workers and other are not considered employees but independent contractors. And as independent contractors they are not subject to many labor laws. Most lack the actual independence of independent laborers but have all the downsides, and basically are just employees that companies do not wish to give benefits to or treat properly. Biden corrects the loopholes that people use to screw over people with misclassification of labour status and places say their costs will skyrockets.

For people not familiar with the fight, Fed-Ex workers are not actually employees of Fed-Ex for instance, despite being required to wear a uniform. Go to get your haircut at Supercuts, and no one actually is a Supercuts employee. Go to many restaurants and they are not employees of the restaurants but independent contracts waiting tables, cookings meals and washing tables. None of people have any control over when they work, for how much, or their behavior, but they are classified as if they do to avoid giving them the labor rights they should have.

Just another way though the US economy needs to screw people over to survive since it NEVER was intended to use free market for the labor side.

This is a sad move, I am all for putting my foot to the accelerator and fully transitioning to the gig economy.
I would like to see every job be a measure of performance and pay.

This move is done directly at the behest of the unions to topple companies like Uber.

We have record unemployment at the moment, the people working these jobs are doing so for the flexibility that they offer.
if they wanted a full time position, there are a heap around at the moment.
The idea that these people need benefits is weird.
I don't know about the USA but here if you work causal or as a contractor you get more per hour than if you were doing the same job as an employee. This is to factor for leave, sick pay etc.
We get a lot of people doing contract work part time and they do it for extra money, the relationship as a contractor is flexible from both sides, you work only when you want to work.
I do think that these companies should be required to provide insurance for any injury suffered by the contractor.

Oct 12, 2022 4:13:42 GMT iNCY said:

Oct 11, 2022 13:33:36 GMT c said:

Oh shit, GOP fiscal policy falling apart. Looks like buyers for US debt are drying up. The US can still buy it's own debt, but under Biden we are unloading the debt we have not expanding it, to the dismay of many GOP people who feel having a large debt and low taxes is great fiscal policy.

But sooner or later gonna have to start actually taxes the rich if the US wants to keep spending trillions on corporate welfare.

Going into a split congress this does make a ton of sense as split congresses tend to default and the GOP does not seem to care if we miss debt payments or not. You know, only losers repay debt.

I will ignore the partisan comments.
The issue with the government debt is the strength of the USD any treasury bond you sell today has a 3.8% return or whatever.




All currrencies have dipped against the USD. 
So if a British bank bought the Bonds today at 3.8% and the currency went back to where it was by the time the bond matured, It's actually a 30% loss.
The situation is worse for the Quantitative tightening, where the Fed is looking to offload the bonds it bought during Covid.



So the US bought Treasury bonds during the middle of the Pandemic, the only way to unload them today is at a loss.
Say the US bought a package of a million dollars worth of Bond sin the middle of 2020 where the Bond rate was 0.62%
Anyone buying bonds today can get new bonds with a 3.97% return, so the government has to discount the face price of the bonds to match, so the million dollars it bought is now only worth: $966,500
If you think about the holdings of the US treasury in QE being $8.8 Tr if the government was able to offload all of it's QE today (Which it can't for the reasons I described earlier (Re: Currency) it would cause a loss to the US of $300 Billion dollars.

The scary part is that the higher the rates rise, the bigger that number becomes.

It is the Bond market both Government and Corporate that will drive our economy into the ground.
I know nobody really reads what I write, but I do the research for my own interest.
This is the US deficit as it stands at the moment:



As it stands it looks to be about 2.8 trillion dollars in deficit.
To physically pay that money, the Fed has to issue Treasury Bonds at the current rate and somebody has to purchase them.
This is the big question now, is there a market for 2.8 Trillion dollars in new debt?
If the government can't find a buyer then the Fed has to buy them... If this happens, then it is Quantitive easing and the second it happens the Stock Market takes off and inflation goes even more nuts, I mean serious Hyperinflation territory, it's one thing to buy your own bonds to stimulate the market, it is another to do it because you can't afford to run the economy. This drives up the USA as a credit risk making it even harder to sell debt...

I am probably not being very clear in any of this.

TLDR: The Bond market is in the shitter, this is what drives all borrowings for governments and large corporations, without a market for this debt, these companies and governments grind to a literal halt.

To top it all off, they just gave Ben Benanke the Nobel Prize for Economics.... This is his turd.

I lost $600 on my initial conversion to USD and then was only getting 50 cents on the dollar down in Nashville.  I cried a little when I did the math. 

Oct 12, 2022 6:14:35 GMT iron maiden said:

I sell in USD, so it is up and down for me, people are less likely to buy with a strong USD, but I make more when we do.
It's especially nice for things we have already sold and awaiting progress payments on.

Normally I don't mind as it's good for many industries here, it just sucks when you lose so much on vacay. 

Also, my favorite clothing online experience is in USD.

Oct 12, 2022 6:25:23 GMT iron maiden said:

Normally I don't mind as it's good for many industries here, it just sucks when you lose so much on vacay. 

Also, my favorite clothing online experience is in USD.

Same here... Clothes you buy here are made for the Asian market, not for men with cartoonish barrel chest and shoulders

Ben Bernanke was against our debt Incy, and said in 2010 it was becoming uncontrollable. That was before we started to REALLY jack it up. He also warned that the feds were not the people who should be fixing this but Congress and the President should be working towards proper fiscal policy to avoid future disasters, which they gleefully ignored.

He got his nobel for his work on financial crises which he def is an expert on. The US should have totally crashed during the financial crises but we made it out. His policies however were meant to be short term. A demand based economy leads to inflation over time and should only be used to starve off depressions. But he was dead on, if we let demand die during the recession we very likely would have collapsed the US a second time, and just repeated the great depression again.

Oct 12, 2022 6:25:23 GMT iron maiden said:

clothing online experience

Is this Canadian for "store?"

Oct 12, 2022 16:42:20 GMT Gyro LC said:

Oct 12, 2022 6:25:23 GMT iron maiden said:

clothing online experience

Is this Canadian for "store?"

It's IM for 'where I get my muumuus'. 

Hey another GOP solution for all of America's fiscal problems. Alex Mooney put a bill on the House Floor to reintroduce the Gold Standard. Guessing he did not talk to his lobbyist contacts before doing so.

CPI Figures just dropped and they are piping hot and the market is not impressed.

Inflation is a free pass to raise prices. And that is what people are doing. 15% increase from the farm monopolies claiming the drought and hurricane destroyed all of the crops.

I am happy, all this inflation lead to me to get a 8.7 percent increase in SSI. Coupled with a 40% increase in food stamps last month.

Windfall taxes are the only thing that will stem this. As long as inflation is here, companies can just keep raising prices while claiming inflationary pressures. Year on year profits for companies are expected to be at record levels due to aggressive prices. But the US at least does not have the balls.

Gonna be fun next year when the GOP forces the US to default on debt payments unless we start to defund Social Security.

///

Also 2024 is looking like Trump will take the White House with a mandate so we will see how well crony capitalism works in a recession.  Sure funneling money from the poor to the rich is all we need to get the economy righted again.

They already have the 99%, one way or another they'll take that last 1%.

And then the economy will flourish again!!! All we need is to make sure people have no cash to spend!!!

Market up 1300 following the CPI report.  Who cares about risks when the taxpayer will pay for your losses?

Market says doomsayers be damned there is money to be made still. Forecasts for two years now have been another great depression is days away, and the now the market no longer cares. They crash, they will pay for a bailout again.  Sure it takes like 300 donations to reelection campaigns, but when the entire industry goes in together they all benefit and get several times what they put in back.  

US dollar is so strong now companies are complaining it is eating away at their international profit. Others are pushing for protective tariffs since it is so cheap to import goods into the US right now.

Meanwhile UK is getting rid of all planned tax cuts they promised weeks ago and China's housing market is collapsing. The US market is also collapsing but not really made news yet. Stocks related to the Us market are down 33 for the year though.

Also China is not releasing their economic report.

That 1% rate increase in the past year has been said by financial experts to price most of America out of owning a home resulting in a record decrease in home sales.

Sounds like this is the situation that most Americans who were priced out of buying a home by wall street actually been waiting for though. No more near 0 loans, no more free houses for wall street.

Half of the higher prices on goods, is simply corporate profit increases.

Prices will rise as long as people continue to pay them, then people will want payrises to pay for the items.
We went through the difference between push and pull inflation about 5 or 6 pages ago.

Oct 20, 2022 5:14:16 GMT iNCY said:

Prices will rise as long as people continue to pay them, then people will want payrises to pay for the items.
We went through the difference between push and pull inflation about 5 or 6 pages ago.

Who's supposed to blink first in this brinkmanship game though?

I wish it was easy to break the consumerist lifestyle that's overtaken the world.