smoke and mirrors are essential parts of the economy― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, June 28, 2018 9:56 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, June 28, 2018 9:56 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
hah I feel the same way when people talk about 'waste' in the insurance and heathcare industries. if it was a totally efficient system there'd be hundreds of thousands of layoffs.
― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Thursday, 28 June 2018 22:14 (five years ago) link
yeah I mean everybody knows most of the white collar workforce doesn't do anything important
― devops mom (silby), Thursday, 28 June 2018 22:15 (five years ago) link
Don't tell that to the GOP, they'll try to shrink the size of government.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 28 June 2018 22:31 (five years ago) link
https://res.cloudinary.com/s8/image/fetch/c_scale,d_missing_imx2hb.png,f_auto,q_auto,w_350/https://cdn.waterstones.com/bookjackets/large/9780/2412/9780241263884.jpg
― mookieproof, Thursday, 28 June 2018 22:57 (five years ago) link
ayo Im a paralegal I resemble this remark. well my added value to this place is do things that people who charge $450-$800/hr shouldn't be doing.
yeah I mean everybody knows most of the white collar workforce doesn't do anything important― devops mom (silby), Thursday, June 28, 2018 10:15 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― devops mom (silby), Thursday, June 28, 2018 10:15 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Thursday, 28 June 2018 23:04 (five years ago) link
The big tax cut bill the R's rammed through now allows megacorporations to repatriate nearly a trillion in profits currently parked overseas at heavily discounted tax rates. The supposed idea was they'd invest it in US expansion and employees, but the open secret is that they'd be more likely to use it for massive stock buy-backs to inflate their stock prices -- and possibly absorb a lot of executives' stock options getting cashed out.
My imagination wonders if, after the big stock buybacks happen at bubble prices, the market will crash and all those corporate profits get turned into dust and ashes.
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 28 June 2018 23:45 (five years ago) link
If you look at the market for the time pre 09/2008 until now, yeah smoke and mirrors. Nothing drastically changed with the broader market after the election except that a criminal got elected and people decided to stop caring even more about fundamentals. Oddly enough gold has stayed really wishy washy this year.
― Yerac, Friday, 29 June 2018 07:56 (five years ago) link
I am dying for the market to crash. Sorry. But it's super inflated right now and it's not healthy for anyone longterm.
― Yerac, Friday, 29 June 2018 07:57 (five years ago) link
The current unemployment rate is 3.8! TRUST ME, we’re not having a recession any time soon. And we should all be very very thankful for that.
― Mr. Snrub, Friday, 29 June 2018 09:51 (five years ago) link
I’m certainly making no significant investments anytime soon.
― Jeff, Friday, 29 June 2018 10:04 (five years ago) link
From a strictly cut and dry investment perspective, market "corrections" are actually good for the portfolio if - and this is important - you're relatively young, or at least nowhere near retirement age. The market will (historically) eventually rise back up, and funds/401Ks and the like in particular will have snagged a whole bunch of stuff at fire sale (or, you know, recession) prices. The people who really get screwed are the ones the need their money *now*, people about to cash out or who have cash flow issues and suddenly learn their investments are worth half as much as they were. So yeah, obviously it's more important to have enough cash/liquidity to carry you through hard times, to pay the rent/bills/food. That's the first luxury. But on average investing long-term is still the best tried and true method of generating wealth, smoke and mirrors and all. Isn't that what they call the Rule of 72?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 29 June 2018 12:38 (five years ago) link
I mean it goes without saying that *if* you are worried about your 401k or IRA right now at these high levels you can always redistribute your 401k into something less equity heavy for the near term and if you have an IRA at a regular brokerage you could always start moving to cash. But if you don't care or need the money anytime soon, hey let it ride. But yeah a lot in in the market is expensive. I don't know how individual buyers feel safe buying up there. But besides the overnight crash when Trump got elected there really hasn't been any real pull back besides one off days. It's stupid. Nothing matters.
― Yerac, Friday, 29 June 2018 13:59 (five years ago) link
Yes, I mean I wouldn’t touch my current investments or stop normal contributions. Just nothing new and significant.
― Jeff, Friday, 29 June 2018 13:59 (five years ago) link
"what are these mysterious luxuries you call 'investments'" - the entire millennial generation
― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Friday, 29 June 2018 14:02 (five years ago) link
i would look at the quality of employment rolled into that rate mr. shrub before making any grand proclamations (and yes, i thought this throughout the obama years as well)
― maura, Friday, 29 June 2018 14:53 (five years ago) link
Flat market is just as worrying, sometimes, as downs. It's like being stuck at the top of a rollercoaster. Nobody knows anything.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 29 June 2018 15:06 (five years ago) link
The market could also just stagnate for years, it's happened before
― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Friday, 29 June 2018 15:13 (five years ago) link
. . . except mr. snrub xp
― mookieproof, Friday, 29 June 2018 15:14 (five years ago) link
Why the capitalist class does this is something of a mystery. Don't they love growth? Well, they do, but only under the right circumstances. They present themselves as concerned with growth, productivity, and output above all else, but it turns out they are in reality a lot more concerned with high profits and a politically quiescent working class. A big economic boom is fine, but a tight labor market requiring wage increases that come out of the capitalist share of the corporate surplus — or worse, workers confident that they can get another job organizing union drives — is horrifying to them. Our capitalist overlords think they deserve easy profits and beaten-down workers who will take crappy wages and bad benefits without a peep or protests, and mobilize politically to rig the economy to make that happen.
http://theweek.com/articles/783356/how-capitalist-class-strangling-american-economy
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 11 July 2018 20:34 (five years ago) link
Testifying before Congress in 1997, Greenspan attributed the “extraordinary’” and “exceptional” performance of the nineties economy to “a heightened sense of job insecurity” among workers “and, as a consequence, subdued wages.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/federal-reserve-interest-rate-increase-janet-yellen-inflation-unemployment
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 11 July 2018 21:19 (five years ago) link
janet-jackson-inflation-unemployment-control
― macropuente (map), Wednesday, 11 July 2018 21:34 (five years ago) link
Our Country was built on Tariffs, and Tariffs are now leading us to great new Trade Deals - as opposed to the horrible and unfair Trade Deals that I inherited as your President. Other Countries should not be allowed to come in and steal the wealth of our great U.S.A. No longer!
― reggie (qualmsley), Thursday, 16 August 2018 16:00 (five years ago) link
whenever I think a market correction is afoot it swings the other way immediately. I salute our algorithmic trading overlords.
dow down 1.17% yesterdaydow up 1.58% today
― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Thursday, 16 August 2018 20:53 (five years ago) link
afaics, there are no obvious signs the party is over, yet.
otoh, the economy is surfing on big waves of misallocated capital, so it's obvious the party will end whenever the Fed chooses to raise rates far or fast enough to subdue the enthusiasm and flip greed to fear. 2019 seems about right, but who knows, really?
― A is for (Aimless), Friday, 17 August 2018 02:41 (five years ago) link
The general rumblings seem to be that tariff impact is playing out in so-far invisible ways -- less big plans being made by a wide variety of businesses, general caution, an eating of costs so as not to pass anything along to consumers. But there have been a slew of closings and relocations regardless, and the general sense is that things are worsening in ways that will become more evident with time. Which, a couple of months out from the midterms, is not exactly good timing.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 17 August 2018 02:49 (five years ago) link
Without pretending to be able to fully appreciate this myself, I think sometimes we fail to appreciate how international most "American" corporations are today both in production and in sale of their goods and services, so that it can be really hard to predict what something like a tariff will do to "our economy," if by our economy you mean our corporations (the stock market) rather than the people who live in this country.
― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Friday, 17 August 2018 02:58 (five years ago) link
i'm not an expert economist but it does seem to me there could be some reasons why republicans are good for markets. market volatility is driven, by and large, by ignorance, as a wise investor isn't going to do a lot of trades. at the same time there's no reason for someone (who has the capital) to _not_ invest in the markets - either in the long term one's investment will increase or capitalism will collapse and fiat money will be worthless. so a political situation like the one america has now encourages stupid people to put their money in the markets while discouraging rational investors from taking their money out of the markets.
― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Friday, 17 August 2018 03:35 (five years ago) link
Republicans are shit for markets and have been for decades. Read your recent history before you stick your foot in your dick again
― El Tomboto, Friday, 17 August 2018 04:51 (five years ago) link
Love the classic internet category of “I don’t have a clue, but I think...”
― El Tomboto, Friday, 17 August 2018 04:52 (five years ago) link
v specific but i pay attention because of work: rumors of four local(seattle) shipyards laying off because of tariffs, 400+ living wage jobs, but counter stories about ongoing federal contracts blunting that. nothing has happened yet, but first of this kind of rumor going around in 4+ years of watching closely
― alomar lines, Friday, 17 August 2018 05:23 (five years ago) link
https://blogs-images.forbes.com/peterlazaroff/files/2016/07/2016-07-20-President-Market-Data.jpg
― Roomba with an attitude (Sanpaku), Friday, 17 August 2018 16:31 (five years ago) link
I should say that having known about DJ Trump as an investor since the late 90s, the prudent choice is to short any institution he's affiliated with, particularly after an early term run up to a management payday.
― Roomba with an attitude (Sanpaku), Friday, 17 August 2018 16:43 (five years ago) link
There’s still way too many people taking the long position on US debt to make money shorting it I would think
― faculty w1fe (silby), Friday, 17 August 2018 16:44 (five years ago) link
The implication of this really is incredible: regular people working 40 hours a week are essentially working one day per week for free, with all their pay for that day going to the top 1% https://t.co/q0O3mpZvke— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) August 20, 2018
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 August 2018 19:33 (five years ago) link
this has always been a (the?) goal for foreign-government support of trump and the GOP, no?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/100966
This month, officials from France, Germany, and the UK have begun planning with China and Russia a special payments channel that would allow these countries to defy new American sanctions against any company doing business with Iran. This payment channel would bypass the American-dominated international banking system and the dollar.
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 17 September 2018 16:40 (five years ago) link
no, that's a specific response to Trump backing out of the Iran deal
― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Monday, 17 September 2018 16:44 (five years ago) link
'help put trump in office and egg him on to do stupid own-goal isolationist BS' is what i was getting at
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 17 September 2018 17:24 (five years ago) link
hi
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 11 October 2018 02:27 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH476CxJxfg
― 21st savagery fox (m bison), Thursday, 11 October 2018 02:30 (five years ago) link
also lol at the last 2 hours https://www.coinbase.com/charts
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 11 October 2018 02:35 (five years ago) link
Probably for the best all things considered
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Thursday, 11 October 2018 02:44 (five years ago) link
Until things turn down by roughly 10% from the recent high water mark, this doesn't even qualify as a "correction". This could be due to traders tea-leaf reading, based on Trump's trade wars and uneasiness about the midterms, but without more data solidly showing retrenchment, this is just a round of profit-taking.
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 11 October 2018 03:03 (five years ago) link
Tbh I care more about interest rates continuing to go up than the stock market doing anything in particular, cheap debt has a lot of societal fuckery to answer for
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Thursday, 11 October 2018 03:17 (five years ago) link
the NYT article says the markets will be back up on friday when several banks report Q3 results, which is going to show that sweet tax cut that will trickle down to the rest of us in Q4.
silby otm. the markets are not the economy but interest rates (and therefore housing and debt) are a big deal practically and electorally (which presumably is why trump is openly criticizing fed policy).
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 11 October 2018 03:55 (five years ago) link
At this point in the cycle, those interest rates need to be creeping up.
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 11 October 2018 04:01 (five years ago) link
totally. trump is wrong.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 11 October 2018 04:06 (five years ago) link
Trump was bloviating about how the Fed was keeping rates too low, what, a year ago?
― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Thursday, 11 October 2018 05:02 (five years ago) link
I put it on another thread, but the general market needs to pull back at least by 30%. I hope it tanks the rest of the quarter. I've been waiting for it. It's like watching only the beginning of The Big Short over and over. The housing market is already mushy. And all this new money in the market from from people who haven't had to weather a downturn before..
― Yerac, Thursday, 11 October 2018 11:00 (five years ago) link
it's difficult, i mean, i _could_ pull back but at this point it's, you know, either the markets will recover or capitalism will collapse, and either way i don't have an incentive to not invest.
― dub pilates (rushomancy), Thursday, 11 October 2018 14:01 (five years ago) link
Yeah, the only reason not to invest is if you need money *right now* or very soon, like retirement. Otherwise, my understanding is that invested wealth doubles every 7-10 years or something, unless yeah, the economy collapses and never recovers.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 11 October 2018 15:14 (five years ago) link