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The potential best case electoral scenario at this point for the long-term viability of a functional United States:
Elizabeth Warren gets the Democrat nomination and wins the general election. This is the ostensible catalyst for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago crashes onto the scene with a vengeance. Loan defaults skyrocket catastrophically, credit markets seize up, and the American economy goes through a downturn worse than the Great Depression.
The upside: Socialism–which in the contemporary American context is increasingly more fully described as racialized socialism–is perceived as having failed so massively that it marks the end of The Great Awokening. The military-industrial complex, shorn of the power of the now severely enfeebled dollar, folds. The Rescript of Fauxcahontas marks the end of the American Empire.
As the country begins rebuilding, an immigration moratorium is enacted–if not de jure then de facto, as the appeal that used to bring people to the US becomes a repellent that causes them to leave.
Parenthetically, I’m under no illusion that a crash is not on the horizon. European central banks are at zero or even negative interest rates. They are calling on the Federal Reserve to follow suit. Global money continues to flood into America on account of it being the only developed place to yield a positive return and they want that to stop. Donald Trump is echoing the Europeans’ calls to ensure air keeps being pumped into the market long enough to make it through next year’s election.
We are approaching the point where it will literally make more sense for people to stuff paper currency under their mattresses than to deposit money in banking institutions. There’s a problem, though–the physical money doesn’t exist. The global credit system operates on fractions of fractions of fractional reserve banking–and it’s courting the biggest bank run in history.
They don’t have a stress test for that. It’s going to break the system.
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I think Liz Warren is the pits.
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America’s best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her …and work with her…. with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy’s , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,…. without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.
Tulsi definitely has the best foreign policy. Warren is certainly more anti-bank.
I do think that Bernie Sanders is better suited for the situation AE describes than warren
They are also indistinguishable in the fact that it's not the democrats' turn, so whoever gets the nod is just a sacrificial goat.. The "two" parties take turns in the White House, in case you haven't been watching for the past 25 years.Replies: @alexander, @alexander
I think some folks are beginning to figure out the secret about economics–both free market approaches _and_ socialistic ones only work in high trust societies. Both approaches were designed by economists who just assumed that advanced western societies would not devolve into kleptocracies.
They were all wrong.
All economic approaches will fail miserably if elites and average folks focus their attention on gaming the system.
Since our demographics are relentlessly driving the US towards a low trust society, none of this stuff will matter–the economy will be a debacle regardless of what public policy is chosen.
In a low trust society everyone screams and points fingers at everyone else, and there are no adults at the table.
Sound familiar?
An aside, I was at a mall in Salem, New Hampshire today. Maybe 10% shoppers were white. And most of them white nationalists or characters out of Idiocracy. The rest of the shoppers were a camp of saints (Afro- Hispanics, Pakis, blacks, mulattos, Meztisos, et al.). Lots of head scarves. Very depressing. No way this country can survive as even a second-world country in a generation.Replies: @Justvisiting
A point about terminology: from a historical point of view all economic systems that are based on 'fiat money' are actually a form of communism. If you read early Marxists, they highlighted the 'creation of money' as a way to run an economy without the artificial constraints of gold, silver or other materially backed currencies. The introduction of make-believe money - based on the trust in the society at large - is what would be understood as 'communism' in most of our history. The only question is how the newly created 'money' is managed and distributed. Because it is effectively a manna from heaven.
If you look at the long-term developments of all societies after the introduction of fiat money they tend to fail or succeed based on the level of internal trust and on how many resources they have - arable land, minerals, smart people... Homogeneous and resources-rich societies - like US, Sweden, Australia tend to do very well. Messy, poor places are always sh..tholes - India has had a market economy for most of its history and the results speak for themselves - so much for 'free markets' solve everything mantra.
The distribution of the magical fiat money also tends to follow similar dynamics: an elite group connected to government monopolizes it, then tries to make it multi-generational, and predictably takes more and more as times goes by. Terminology changes, people focus on minutia and verbal descriptions, but the underlying reality is that once a society moves to 'creation of money' phase, it is in effect a quasi-communist society.
“the physical money doesn’t exist.”
No; the base money to M2 ratio has been elevated since the Great Recession. The system is not ideal, but it’s not close to broken (yet). The bigger problem is the government’s overly large budget deficit.
“his is the ostensible catalyst for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago crashes onto the scene with a vengeance. Loan defaults skyrocket catastrophically, credit markets seize up, and the American economy goes through a downturn worse than the Great Depression.”
Not happening. Trump will lose, and there will be a 2020 recession, but President Warren’s effect on the economy will be modest (due to courts overruling her worst decisions and Senate Dems being a bit wary of her ideas), and the recession will be similar to the 2001 recession. The midterms will be an R wave.
“The Rescript of Fauxcahontas marks the end of the American Empire.”
Nah. Not happening. The end of the American Empire happens probably sometime after 2040.
My biggest question wrt this: How does 'quantitative easing' (or whatever it's being called now) work when interest rates are nominally at zero (and negative in real terms)? There was a lot of room to cut in 2007/2008, when rates were at 6%. There's a lot less space and a lot more debt this time around.Replies: @Lot, @E. Harding, @Citizen of a Silly Country
What a bunch of crap.
There is always a crash coming. It’s called a Crisis of Overproduction. Or Business Cycle. This is how capitalism/corporatism/freemarket -libertarianism works. With business cycles. Everybody identified it: Marx, Ricardo, Smith. It happens over and over and over again, the next litter of “traders” just young enough not to remember the last crisis of overproduction.
Consider that the entire accumulated national debt...from 1776 up to the year 2000 was a modest and manageable 5.6 trillion.
Now LOOK at the debt created by Neocon war fraud . Look at it ! Our national debt has exploded to a monstrous 23 trillion in under 19 years....this is "insane".
This is not a normal "boom and Bust" cycle.
This is not the same old, same old.
Our national debt, due to neocon war fraud, has become an "existential threat" to the future and well being of our country...
They have defrauded us out of TOO MUCH MONEY....
Our situation is unprecedented in US History.
Not good, not good at all.
Things grow and grow, then collapse. Then start again. The idea of a "steady state" is the idea of conscious control - it is an illusion. Humans don't have that kind of power.
Might as well enjoy the ride and not worry. Things end up taking caring of themselves. When global warming ends, it will be because industry collapses. Not because we consciously took action lol. That's never gonna happen.
Our suffering comes from not understanding our position in the universe. There are all sorts of forces our of our control.
Why stop there, AE? Nuclear war would be even better: those who survive would be extremely fit and resilient, ready to rebuild the world on the foundations of “every man for himself”.
So… What’s your investment advice?
Buying gold?
Canned food?
Building a bunker?
But I suspect commodities will be a good place to be in the next couple of years.
There is always a crash coming. It's called a Crisis of Overproduction. Or Business Cycle. This is how capitalism/corporatism/freemarket -libertarianism works. With business cycles. Everybody identified it: Marx, Ricardo, Smith. It happens over and over and over again, the next litter of "traders" just young enough not to remember the last crisis of overproduction.Replies: @alexander, @AaronB, @Jay Fink
No, sorry, you are misinformed.
Consider that the entire accumulated national debt…from 1776 up to the year 2000 was a modest and manageable 5.6 trillion.
Now LOOK at the debt created by Neocon war fraud . Look at it ! Our national debt has exploded to a monstrous 23 trillion in under 19 years….this is “insane”.
This is not a normal “boom and Bust” cycle.
This is not the same old, same old.
Our national debt, due to neocon war fraud, has become an “existential threat” to the future and well being of our country…
They have defrauded us out of TOO MUCH MONEY….
Our situation is unprecedented in US History.
Not good, not good at all.
I doubt Warren will win the presidency, if the Democrats are mad enough to nominate her.
It would have to be Biden or Sanders to have a chance.
Trump will destroy Bernie on that
One thing I don't see discussed much re: Sanders is how he has virtually no support among those over the age of 50. That's going to be really hard to overcome since older people are more reliable voters than young people are. That said, I think Sanders/Gabbard would win by 5+ points.
Lol, this reminds me of some of the panic in 1998. “If … if … if … if …then boom!”.
Plus I can find articles written during the tech collapse of 20 years ago basically “This is it! This is the big one! It’s 1929 all over again!” except that, nope.
Too many ifs. We’ll see what happens next year, in 2020, when it’s next year. Until then fretting about this stuff just drives up your blood pressure. There’s no point doing that.
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
I like Tulsi and am supporting her (please donate $1 to her campaign as she is ~8,000 short of the 200k requirement for December debate)
Tulsi definitely has the best foreign policy. Warren is certainly more anti-bank.
I do think that Bernie Sanders is better suited for the situation AE describes than warren
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
I see it’s Delusional Day here at AE.
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
Al, please get a grip. You act as though the democrats are going to take the presidency without question. Gabbard = Warren, or Biden or Harris or Buttgigger, or whichever of the clowns spilling out of the car becomes the nominee. They are really indistinguishable in terms of policy. Presidents don’t set policy anyway.
They are also indistinguishable in the fact that it’s not the democrats’ turn, so whoever gets the nod is just a sacrificial goat.. The “two” parties take turns in the White House, in case you haven’t been watching for the past 25 years.
On DAY ONE of his administration Trump should have called in "the marines" and started seizing assets...up , down, left , right, of anyone, and EVERYONE who conspired to defraud us into these catastrophic wars.
Their deceptions have eviscerated 23 trillion dollars of US solvency...and they should be made to pay..
On DAY ONE, he should have done this....but he didn't.
My vote will go to the only candidate alive who holds out the potential for getting our country back in the green.
Right now, that's Tulsi Gabbard.
On DAY ONE of his administration, Trump should have called in "The Marines" and started seizing assets, ..up, down,... left, right,.. of any one, and EVERYONE who conspired to defraud us into these catastrophic wars.
Their deceptions have eviscerated 23 trillion dollars of our nations solvency....and they should be made to pay...
On DAY ONE he should have done this......but he didn't.
My vote will go to the only candidate alive who stands a chance of getting our country back in the green.
Right now, that's Tulsi Gabbard.Replies: @alexander, @Twodees Partain
There is always a crash coming. It's called a Crisis of Overproduction. Or Business Cycle. This is how capitalism/corporatism/freemarket -libertarianism works. With business cycles. Everybody identified it: Marx, Ricardo, Smith. It happens over and over and over again, the next litter of "traders" just young enough not to remember the last crisis of overproduction.Replies: @alexander, @AaronB, @Jay Fink
Everything works in cycles. The ideal of a “steady state” is an illusion.
Things grow and grow, then collapse. Then start again. The idea of a “steady state” is the idea of conscious control – it is an illusion. Humans don’t have that kind of power.
Might as well enjoy the ride and not worry. Things end up taking caring of themselves. When global warming ends, it will be because industry collapses. Not because we consciously took action lol. That’s never gonna happen.
Our suffering comes from not understanding our position in the universe. There are all sorts of forces our of our control.
This is stunningly incorrect. A drop in the stock market would cause deflation, since people feel poorer and are more risk-averse.
‘Inflation’ is not like water, as in if you squeeze a container with water the water goes elsewhere. Technology diffusing through the economy has cause deflation, and Federal Reserve printing is merely offseting that. Hence, there will never be high inflation again. The inflation-mongers are merely the ‘peak oil’ crowd of a few years ago. They have zero understanding of technology (or economics, for that matter).
Secondly, barring massive vote fraud, Trump is going to win the election, and thankfully we will survive against the leftist onslaught as a result.
It would have to be Biden or Sanders to have a chance.Replies: @houston 1992, @Audacious Epigone, @Paw
Sanders advocated for an open border with Mexico the same week that the LDS settlers were murdered and burned. So if the Cartel employees got singed by the flames they can cross the border and are entitled to Bernie-care.
Trump will destroy Bernie on that
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
As an aside, I do not think now nor did I at the height of her rally in the prediction markets that Warren will win the Democrat nomination.
Buying gold?
Canned food?
Building a bunker?Replies: @Audacious Epigone, @The Alarmist
Offering advice gets people in trouble so I won’t do it!
But I suspect commodities will be a good place to be in the next couple of years.
It would have to be Biden or Sanders to have a chance.Replies: @houston 1992, @Audacious Epigone, @Paw
I suspect the same.
One thing I don’t see discussed much re: Sanders is how he has virtually no support among those over the age of 50. That’s going to be really hard to overcome since older people are more reliable voters than young people are. That said, I think Sanders/Gabbard would win by 5+ points.
'Inflation' is not like water, as in if you squeeze a container with water the water goes elsewhere. Technology diffusing through the economy has cause deflation, and Federal Reserve printing is merely offseting that. Hence, there will never be high inflation again. The inflation-mongers are merely the 'peak oil' crowd of a few years ago. They have zero understanding of technology (or economics, for that matter).
Secondly, barring massive vote fraud, Trump is going to win the election, and thankfully we will survive against the leftist onslaught as a result.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
When the nominal money supply is increased–as it has been drastically over the last 11 years–nominal prices correspondingly increase all other things equal. We’ve seen prices go up enormously over that period of time, but it hasn’t shown up in standard inflation measures because it’s been in assets.
The crash will be extremely deflationary as great thunderheads of debt get written off. Interest rates, so long suppressed and pinned to the floor, will explode to the upside and cash will be king. However, consumer prices will still feel quite "dear" simply because so few people have any savings. The crux of the matter is that there will be a severe shortage of collateral as everybody tries to recapitalize at the same time.
Same thing in Japan but for 30 years. Still no inflation.
The Fed doesn’t just hand out cash, it replaces one financial asset with another in open market transactions.
People who work for a living and spend all their cash aren’t going to drive inflation unless there is an even tighter labor market that greatly raises their income, or else another housing bubble that greatly increases the value of the main asset of the working and middle middle class.
“ but it hasn’t shown up in standard inflation measures because it’s been in assets.”
That’s not what inflation is by any normal definition.
Did the weak stock and housing market of the 1970s mean that was really a period of deflation?
Go ahead man, take the Keynes pill. You can handle it, and it will help you make money in the market too.
https://www.singularityweblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/John-Maynard-Keynes.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @MarkinLA, @Audacious Epigone
Nobody talking about a wealth tax seems to understand the difference between wealth and income. A wealth tax has the same problem property taxes do – you don’t have 50,000 dollars in the bank (every year) to pay the property tax on your 2 million dollar house in Santa Monica you bought for 8,000 dollars 50 years ago when the beach was so smelly and rotten that only poor people lived there.
Gates has 100 billion dollars in Microsoft stock. I doubt he has a bank account with the 2 billion he needs to pay his taxes. He can sell some stock or borrow against it. Either way it makes for a serious problem.
No; the base money to M2 ratio has been elevated since the Great Recession. The system is not ideal, but it's not close to broken (yet). The bigger problem is the government's overly large budget deficit.
"his is the ostensible catalyst for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago crashes onto the scene with a vengeance. Loan defaults skyrocket catastrophically, credit markets seize up, and the American economy goes through a downturn worse than the Great Depression."
Not happening. Trump will lose, and there will be a 2020 recession, but President Warren's effect on the economy will be modest (due to courts overruling her worst decisions and Senate Dems being a bit wary of her ideas), and the recession will be similar to the 2001 recession. The midterms will be an R wave.
"The Rescript of Fauxcahontas marks the end of the American Empire."
Nah. Not happening. The end of the American Empire happens probably sometime after 2040.Replies: @Audacious Epigone, @LondonBob
That’s a take similar to Anatoly’s and I duly respect it.
My biggest question wrt this: How does ‘quantitative easing’ (or whatever it’s being called now) work when interest rates are nominally at zero (and negative in real terms)? There was a lot of room to cut in 2007/2008, when rates were at 6%. There’s a lot less space and a lot more debt this time around.
1. Nothing stops the ECB and Fed from buying government debt above its face value.
2. QE just means buying something other than short term gov and bank debt.
“ for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago”
1. “Inflation spike that should have happened”??? Lol goldbugs have been warning that hyperinflation is around the corner each and every year the past 30 years. “We weren’t right but shouda been!”
2. How does an asset crash cause inflation? Everyone at the same time saying, “Well my portfolio crashed, now that my net worth is down 40% and job security is precarious, it’s a great time to buy a new car and fridge.”
My prediction: bull market still has years left in it, and whoever is elected in 2020 will get little done due to our systems excessive veto points and gridlock.Replies: @Thomm, @E. Harding, @Audacious Epigone
But increasing taxes in a recession doesn't make sense so you borrow from investors (the wealthy). But what if investors don't want to buy treasury bonds earning zero percent or even negative? The Fed steps in, prints money and buys the treasury bonds so Congress can spend money on welfare, unemployment and jobs programs.
The danger here is that you cause inflation due to injecting money into the system. If that happens, many financial assets - particularly bonds - lose value, which, of course, hurts asset owners, i.e. the rich. The whole thing is essentially a wealth transfer from the rich (asset owners hurt by inflation) to the poor (those receiving the gov't spending money).
Ha, I don’t think there’s a soft landing at this point, but that doesn’t mean I want the plane to crash into the side of a mountain at full speed.
But all else is not equal. There is technological deflation that is pervasive (and rising) across the global economy.
That is asset growth through economic growth. Earnings have risen, the price-earnings ratio has not risen. This is not ‘inflation’.
There is no high inflation, and there will not be.
Plus, to think that a stock market crash would INCREASE inflation is just about the most incorrect prediction on the topic of inflation that one could make. Few things are more certain that the fact that a stock market crash will NOT cause inflation (quite the opposite, as explained before).
“Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.”
ohh gracious . . .
While I think of the democrats she actually makes some sense, well more than most other candidates —
She’s not anymore viable for my vote than any other democrat. Beyond regime change, there doesn’t appear to be anything that is viable to take the country where it needs to go.
They were all wrong.
All economic approaches will fail miserably if elites and average folks focus their attention on gaming the system.
Since our demographics are relentlessly driving the US towards a low trust society, none of this stuff will matter--the economy will be a debacle regardless of what public policy is chosen.
In a low trust society everyone screams and points fingers at everyone else, and there are no adults at the table.
Sound familiar?Replies: @Anon, @Beckow, @Charlesz Martel
I agree with your assessment. Do you know of any books that expand on this idea? I sure would like to read them.
An aside, I was at a mall in Salem, New Hampshire today. Maybe 10% shoppers were white. And most of them white nationalists or characters out of Idiocracy. The rest of the shoppers were a camp of saints (Afro- Hispanics, Pakis, blacks, mulattos, Meztisos, et al.). Lots of head scarves. Very depressing. No way this country can survive as even a second-world country in a generation.
It seems like every economist has an axe to grind (or a government grant to keep).
It is indeed the "dismal science". :-(
There can be price increases in some sectors of the economy while there are price decreases in others.
The P/E for the S&P 500 was ~15 in 2012. Now it’s in the low 20s. Additionally, companies have been doing a lot of stock buybacks since the Paul Ryan tax bill passed and that lowers P/E ratios.
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
Tulsi Gabbard is just another wacky Leftist. Check out the Policies section of her website. All the Leftist hobbyhorses are there.
And when asset prices crash from their bubblicious peak, all that notional value simply disappears. It isn’t going to flood into consumer prices.
The crash will be extremely deflationary as great thunderheads of debt get written off. Interest rates, so long suppressed and pinned to the floor, will explode to the upside and cash will be king. However, consumer prices will still feel quite “dear” simply because so few people have any savings. The crux of the matter is that there will be a severe shortage of collateral as everybody tries to recapitalize at the same time.
So? That does not make aggregate inflation rise for no reason. The combined inflation has been very low, despite all the money printing. This will not change, since the structural forces are net deflationary.
And it was 24 in 2017 vs. 20.0 today. Nothing was special about the 2012 period you chose. The 17%+ corrections in 2011, 2015, and late 2018 did not spike inflation, and in fact reduced it (as Econ 101 would lead us to expect).
But that has nothing to do with the extremely incorrect belief that a stock market fall, that makes everyone poorer and demand for things less, will somehow increase inflation. To believe that is analogous to believing that putting ice into water will make it hotter.
That's exactly what happened in the late 70s, though.Replies: @MarkinLA
Audacious Epigone says: “The Coming Crash”
“No one can consistently and accurately predict “big picture” future economic events and scenarios. No investment “expert” advisor, no banker, no money manager, no economist, no politician, no computer algorithm, no fortune teller- not even you 🙂 [although any one of these, including yourself, might get it right on occasion, purely by chance”- Onebornfree. http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/
“If it were possible to calculate the future structure of the market, the future would not be uncertain. There would be neither entrepreneurial loss nor profit. What people expect from the economists is beyond the power of any mortal man.” Ludwig Von Mises
Regards,onebornfree
““No one can consistently and accurately predict “big picture” future economic events and scenarios.”
If your economy exports more than it imports my prediction is you run a deficit.
Thats not a prediction, its a fact - or was that your point?
Regards, onebornfree
They are also indistinguishable in the fact that it's not the democrats' turn, so whoever gets the nod is just a sacrificial goat.. The "two" parties take turns in the White House, in case you haven't been watching for the past 25 years.Replies: @alexander, @alexander
Twodees,
On DAY ONE of his administration Trump should have called in “the marines” and started seizing assets…up , down, left , right, of anyone, and EVERYONE who conspired to defraud us into these catastrophic wars.
Their deceptions have eviscerated 23 trillion dollars of US solvency…and they should be made to pay..
On DAY ONE, he should have done this….but he didn’t.
My vote will go to the only candidate alive who holds out the potential for getting our country back in the green.
Right now, that’s Tulsi Gabbard.
They are also indistinguishable in the fact that it's not the democrats' turn, so whoever gets the nod is just a sacrificial goat.. The "two" parties take turns in the White House, in case you haven't been watching for the past 25 years.Replies: @alexander, @alexander
Twodees,
On DAY ONE of his administration, Trump should have called in “The Marines” and started seizing assets, ..up, down,… left, right,.. of any one, and EVERYONE who conspired to defraud us into these catastrophic wars.
Their deceptions have eviscerated 23 trillion dollars of our nations solvency….and they should be made to pay…
On DAY ONE he should have done this……but he didn’t.
My vote will go to the only candidate alive who stands a chance of getting our country back in the green.
Right now, that’s Tulsi Gabbard.
To understand the coming "crash". and not just take it as a "given", we have to understand where we are as a nation, policy wise, and solvency wise.We have to see that our neocon overlords(who we trusted with the stewardship of our nation) FUCKED US out of 23 trillion, by lying us into obscenely expensive illegal wars of aggression.....Wars that none of us "wanted" , and none of us can afford to PAY FOR.All we wanted, after 9-11, was to bring the perpetrators of that crime ,to justice....and that's IT,.. End of Story !None of us wanted to be defrauded into 18 years of stupid, solvency shattering, wars.Give me a break!Our nations balance sheet, which was "golden" a mere 18 years ago, is now in the tank, precisely because our overlords LIED US INTO WAR..Our DEBT to GDP ratio has (actually) been in the RED for over six years..This should NEVER have happened....never, never, never, ..But now we are here, stuck in this Neocon "solvency" holocaust,.... and what do we do ?What do we do ?Replies: @fish
Hillary Clinton was the most widely despised candidate in the primary. Guess who got the nod.Replies: @alexander
Negative and low interest rates deter banks from creating credit so QE has merely offset the collapse in credit creation by commercial banks. The Eurozone is the perfect example of this.
No; the base money to M2 ratio has been elevated since the Great Recession. The system is not ideal, but it's not close to broken (yet). The bigger problem is the government's overly large budget deficit.
"his is the ostensible catalyst for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago crashes onto the scene with a vengeance. Loan defaults skyrocket catastrophically, credit markets seize up, and the American economy goes through a downturn worse than the Great Depression."
Not happening. Trump will lose, and there will be a 2020 recession, but President Warren's effect on the economy will be modest (due to courts overruling her worst decisions and Senate Dems being a bit wary of her ideas), and the recession will be similar to the 2001 recession. The midterms will be an R wave.
"The Rescript of Fauxcahontas marks the end of the American Empire."
Nah. Not happening. The end of the American Empire happens probably sometime after 2040.Replies: @Audacious Epigone, @LondonBob
Gold rose in the noughties alongside a rising US stock market as there were justified concerns about the budget deficit. The budget deficit is manageable for another four years of Trump but when an economically incompetent Democrat becomes President in 2024, winning Georgia and Texas, things will change dramatically.
This does not count the SS, Medicare, and pension obligations that can't be covered at the FED-lowered interest rates. Some say is 5X to 10X that official national debt.
What happens if interest rates are let to rise to their natural values (the price of money)? Well, right now at just over 1% average, the interest on this debt is 6% of the national expenditures. What happens at a decent 7% rate, Bob? 40% of the budget expenditures will be interest! Now, that's more like over 50% of the income incoming going out to bondholders.
A.E. is right - this can't end well. President Trump's urging the FED to keep rates down is just kicking the can down the road. As Socialist and downright stupid economically as the Blue-squad is, it doesn't matter who's president. The hole is too deep.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
On DAY ONE of his administration, Trump should have called in "The Marines" and started seizing assets, ..up, down,... left, right,.. of any one, and EVERYONE who conspired to defraud us into these catastrophic wars.
Their deceptions have eviscerated 23 trillion dollars of our nations solvency....and they should be made to pay...
On DAY ONE he should have done this......but he didn't.
My vote will go to the only candidate alive who stands a chance of getting our country back in the green.
Right now, that's Tulsi Gabbard.Replies: @alexander, @Twodees Partain
Forgive the double blip,
I put in the first response to Twodees, and thought it got lost when I swept my computer.
To understand the coming “crash”. and not just take it as a “given”, we have to understand where we are as a nation, policy wise, and solvency wise.
We have to see that our neocon overlords(who we trusted with the stewardship of our nation) FUCKED US out of 23 trillion, by lying us into obscenely expensive illegal wars of aggression…..
Wars that none of us “wanted” , and none of us can afford to PAY FOR.
All we wanted, after 9-11, was to bring the perpetrators of that crime ,to justice….and that’s IT,.. End of Story !
None of us wanted to be defrauded into 18 years of stupid, solvency shattering, wars.
Give me a break!
Our nations balance sheet, which was “golden” a mere 18 years ago, is now in the tank, precisely because our overlords LIED US INTO WAR..
Our DEBT to GDP ratio has (actually) been in the RED for over six years..
This should NEVER have happened….never, never, never, ..
But now we are here, stuck in this Neocon “solvency” holocaust,…. and what do we do ?
What do we do ?
They were all wrong.
All economic approaches will fail miserably if elites and average folks focus their attention on gaming the system.
Since our demographics are relentlessly driving the US towards a low trust society, none of this stuff will matter--the economy will be a debacle regardless of what public policy is chosen.
In a low trust society everyone screams and points fingers at everyone else, and there are no adults at the table.
Sound familiar?Replies: @Anon, @Beckow, @Charlesz Martel
That is true. The societal trust and available material resources largely determine how a system performs, all else are slogans.
A point about terminology: from a historical point of view all economic systems that are based on ‘fiat money’ are actually a form of communism. If you read early Marxists, they highlighted the ‘creation of money‘ as a way to run an economy without the artificial constraints of gold, silver or other materially backed currencies. The introduction of make-believe money – based on the trust in the society at large – is what would be understood as ‘communism’ in most of our history. The only question is how the newly created ‘money‘ is managed and distributed. Because it is effectively a manna from heaven.
If you look at the long-term developments of all societies after the introduction of fiat money they tend to fail or succeed based on the level of internal trust and on how many resources they have – arable land, minerals, smart people… Homogeneous and resources-rich societies – like US, Sweden, Australia tend to do very well. Messy, poor places are always sh..tholes – India has had a market economy for most of its history and the results speak for themselves – so much for ‘free markets’ solve everything mantra.
The distribution of the magical fiat money also tends to follow similar dynamics: an elite group connected to government monopolizes it, then tries to make it multi-generational, and predictably takes more and more as times goes by. Terminology changes, people focus on minutia and verbal descriptions, but the underlying reality is that once a society moves to ‘creation of money’ phase, it is in effect a quasi-communist society.
I look for the crash to start sometime next summer, because I believe:
– The economy is in a precarious state, where a small nudge could tip it into a downward spiral. I don’t know what form this nudge would take, but. . .
– There are people who do know, and people who are in a position to provide that nudge. If they’re not the same people, there are others who can bring them together.
– Some of these people are bitter enemies of Trump.
– The economy will recover from the crash (it always does), but that will take time (it always does). Until it does recover, any sitting President up for re-election is dead meat.
If your economy exports more than it imports my prediction is you run a deficit.Replies: @onebornfree, @MarkU
EliteCommInc. says: “If your economy exports more than it imports my prediction is you run a deficit.”
Thats not a prediction, its a fact – or was that your point?
Regards, onebornfree
“Thats not a prediction, its a fact – or was that your point?”
Nothing is a fact in this matter until it happens.
The fact that you don’t get the point just reveals your shallow grasp data sets. Because in processes, having access to the correct data sets, trajectories of the same one can predict large scale economic events.
The key is to have the correct data and how they operate. The hurdles are having the correct data sets, understanding the process and that little understood factor of chaos —
Which is why those involved making predictions about tangibles will routinely caveat with the following phrase,
“barring any unforseen . . . ‘X’ will occur.”
So presumably you, [or maybe someone you know/trust- eg an investment advisor?], has these mysterious "correct" data sets and can therefor "predict large scale economic events".
Q1: Is that what you're claiming?
Q 2 : What/where are these "correct data sets", and who has them, in your opinion?
p.s. 2 minus 3 = minus 1, = a "deficit", a "negative" [ or whatever you wish to call it] .
In other words, a deficit is a simple mathematical/numerical fact, not a prediction :-)
regards, onebornfree
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
Nah, Tulsi would immediately pop the bubble on purpose. Better to have a painful retreat than go headfirst into extremely painful and gruesome death
“Our nations balance sheet, which was “golden” a mere 18 years ago, is now in the tank, precisely because our overlords LIED US INTO WAR..”
I would take some time to examine the balance sheets . . . balanced they were not. In fact, if one takes a look at the accounting large predictions were made based on false data about what the economy would do and didn’t.
Which is why Sec of the Treasury found himself/the country in a mess regarding the economy, 9/11 and what occurred subsequently only exacerbated it. And Enron was but a tip of a much deeper issue regarding business behavior.
There is a war make no mistake about it and it starts at our southern border.
Nothing is a fact in this matter until it happens.The fact that you don't get the point just reveals your shallow grasp data sets. Because in processes, having access to the correct data sets, trajectories of the same one can predict large scale economic events. The key is to have the correct data and how they operate. The hurdles are having the correct data sets, understanding the process and that little understood factor of chaos --- Which is why those involved making predictions about tangibles will routinely caveat with the following phrase,"barring any unforseen . . . 'X' will occur."Replies: @onebornfree
EliteCommInc. says: “Because in processes, having access to the correct data sets, trajectories of the same one can predict large scale economic events. “
So presumably you, [or maybe someone you know/trust- eg an investment advisor?], has these mysterious “correct” data sets and can therefor “predict large scale economic events”.
Q1: Is that what you’re claiming?
Q 2 : What/where are these “correct data sets”, and who has them, in your opinion?
p.s. 2 minus 3 = minus 1, = a “deficit”, a “negative” [ or whatever you wish to call it] .
In other words, a deficit is a simple mathematical/numerical fact, not a prediction 🙂
regards, onebornfree
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/
Come think about it, what’s happening in USA today is exact replay of what happened after the fall of USSR to Russia, loot of all it’s valuable by oligarchs. Just here it is being done in a more orderly fashion – Fed keeps printing money to keep interest rates artificially low, Pvt equity and big money types keep buying any business that generates steady cash (of which there still are a lot still left) with debt that is on the books of that same company, pay themselves billions in dividends, and move on. The company that was bought is now left paying the interest payments from cash that it could have used to improve its business, keep in reserves, or maybe…pay their people more. In the last decade, I have myself come across dozens of these instances (as a henchman for the big money types)…. this past week one of those companies had to do a reduction in force (RIF), which 100% is due to the cash crunch from having to pay all those interest payments. Sickening.
“Q1: Is that what you’re claiming?
Q 2 : What/where are these “correct data sets”, and who has them, in your opinion?
p.s. 2 minus 3 = minus 1, = a “deficit”, a “negative” [ or whatever you wish to call it] .
So having faltered in your analytical or comprehension of the basics of predictive metrics you want me to provide examples of what people making millions do every day
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/leading-economic-indicators.asp
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/nevins-where-confounded-recession
That some people actually make a successful living doing just that rebuts your generic complaint. I think the issue is that not all models work. And when they work, they may only work for that gven set and using them beyond a certain period minus shifts in data over time are incorrect and even disasterous.
Should one exercise caution in said predictions based on “Q” model — absolutely. But a blanket indictment as you press ignores the real time success that is possible. Are said analytics right all the time — no.
——————————-
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2009/03/16/economic-collapse-bailout-predicted-in-2002/
In the above the ponzi scheme would be the wide use of mbs’s deliberately bundled as one quality product when in fact they were not comprised of said quality products.
————————
“In other words, a deficit is a simple mathematical/numerical fact, not a prediction”
Knock knock . . . that’s how economic predictions are made the mathmatical calculations of money (financial) transactions (processes) and relation behaviors to some outcome based on that data to some point in time sometimes specific, sometimes general, sometimes generic.
Here’s an interesting article that is really a debate about which theorists model made accurate predictions regarding the 2007/08 financial matter. Long read and complex, but clearly it is possible to make predictions and do to time and space accuracy
https://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/12/austrians-predicted-housing-bubble-but.html
This would imply that ALL preditions no matter how "sciency" they seem are nothing more than a guess.Replies: @onebornfree
So presumably you are now religiously following the investment recommendations of one the people who "got it right" with regards to those events, right? If not,why not?[Surely, there's a lot of money to be made by following these people?]
FYI, I briefly covered the latest predictions of one such individual [Peter Schiff] , in the most recent post at my financial blog. He predicts an inflationary depression in the near future : http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/2019/11/financial-safety-services-special.html
Regards ,onebornfree
https://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/12/austrians-predicted-housing-bubble-but.htmlReplies: @MarkinLA, @onebornfree
There are a million predictions a day about the economy and the market – just like there are about this weekends football games. The only ones that get media attention are the ones that were correct which means nothing because if you follow that guy for a number of years he will be wrong more than right on all his other predictions.
This would imply that ALL preditions no matter how “sciency” they seem are nothing more than a guess.
Ludwig Von Mises- "Human Action- a Treatise On Economics" page 867 https://mises.org/files/human-actionpdf-0
Regards, onebornfree
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/
The Pewit Plan is better than the Marshall Tucker Plan.
Can’t you see that the Pewitt Plan to raise the federal funds rate to 20 percent will instantaneously implode the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate?
The Pewitt Plan for 20 percent federal funds rate is not radical and it won’t make you gain unsightly weight around your midsection.
The federal funds rate hit 20 percent in 1981 — lets do it again!
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in 1981. The Oakland Raiders won the Superbowl in 1981 following the 1980 NFL season. An extraordinarily dumb movie with no Joe Pesci in it named Ordinary People won the Oscar for best film in 1981. Christie Brinkley was on the cover of the 1981 swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Ain’t we all proud of Brinkley’s curvy hips and the patriotic way her beautiful legs and curvy hips make a nice picture? Yes, we are proud of our Christie!
RAISE THE FEDERAL FUNDS RATE TO 20 PERCENT AND IMPLODE THE ASSET BUBBLES IN STOCKS, BONDS AND REAL ESTATE! DO IT TEN MINUTES AGO — DAMMIT!
https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1193467415125999616?s=20
https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1193468485038432258?s=20
Took my family away from my Carolina home.
Had dreams about the West and started to roam.
Six long months on a dust covered trail.
They say heaven's at the end, but so far it's been hell,
and there's fire on the mountain, lightnin' in the air,
gold in them hills and it's waitin' for me there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uMWbZj-gWgReplies: @Charles Pewitt
Buying gold?
Canned food?
Building a bunker?Replies: @Audacious Epigone, @The Alarmist
I bought an old chateau with a large garden, an orchard, and plenty of room for a solar cell farm, but I’m not kidding myself that the old moat and drawbridge are going to spare us, so we’ve made sure to make friends with the neighbours with an eye to organising common defence.
Get yourself some ground, gold, guns, and a few chickens. Make good friends with your neighbours.
There is always a crash coming. It's called a Crisis of Overproduction. Or Business Cycle. This is how capitalism/corporatism/freemarket -libertarianism works. With business cycles. Everybody identified it: Marx, Ricardo, Smith. It happens over and over and over again, the next litter of "traders" just young enough not to remember the last crisis of overproduction.Replies: @alexander, @AaronB, @Jay Fink
A cycle is the natural order of things but the FED and government have blown up a massive “everything bubble” to avoid a down cycle. The chickens will come home to roost.
She will only win the nomination if the establishment elite, who have both failed and bankrupted the nation, hold sway over the next election process.
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is America's best chance at retaining our status as the world reserve currency.
The world will flock to her ...and work with her.... with an eagerness unseen in twenty years.
It is her policy's , not corrupt Liz Warrens, that will reignite the worlds interest in purchasing our treasury bonds .
This is the key to the US rebuilding,.... without collapsing .
Tulsi is our golden ticket,
She is the ONE !.Replies: @Gman, @Cloudbuster, @Twodees Partain, @Audacious Epigone, @MBlanc46, @Svevlad, @Jay Fink
I like Tulsi too but your enthusiasm for her is distorting reality. She doesn’t have a chance unfortunately.
Trump was polling around 1% on 6 /22/2016...Nobody even gave him the time of day .
And he ended up winning the presidency !
Tulsi has been "on point" on every key issue that is most important to Americans.
Tulsi is the ONLY elected representative, in the entire country, who is standing toe to toe with the families of the victims of 9-11 who are demanding justice...
Where is everyone else in the DNC ?
Where is everyone else in the GOP ?
Where is Trump ?
Nowhere....that's where.
That's why Tulsi is going to win...the whole thing...because she stands with the American people.
Tulsi stands with US!
May god bless her and keep her strong.
By “manageable” do you mean the can can be kicked down the road another few miles, or 4 years? You know that the total debt is going on up through $23,000,000,000,000 at a clip of 1/2 to 1 Trillion more a year, right? Calculate how much is owed per actually-tax-paying household (maybe 100,000,000) $230,000 CANNOT be made up.
This does not count the SS, Medicare, and pension obligations that can’t be covered at the FED-lowered interest rates. Some say is 5X to 10X that official national debt.
What happens if interest rates are let to rise to their natural values (the price of money)? Well, right now at just over 1% average, the interest on this debt is 6% of the national expenditures. What happens at a decent 7% rate, Bob? 40% of the budget expenditures will be interest! Now, that’s more like over 50% of the income incoming going out to bondholders.
A.E. is right – this can’t end well. President Trump’s urging the FED to keep rates down is just kicking the can down the road. As Socialist and downright stupid economically as the Blue-squad is, it doesn’t matter who’s president. The hole is too deep.
A much beloved fantasy of the alt right is that, very soon, there’s going to be an economic reckoning that will right all wrongs.
And some day, probably in our grandchildren’s time, this will definitely come to pass. But for the foreseeable future central banks will just keep printing money and debt will be allowed to accumulate.
Just keep racking up debt and thinking of ways to make yourself a burden on the system as much as possible. Or pull a Warren and claim to be part native and figure out a way to have your debts written off because of “past injustices” or something like that.
What's really amusing is that these are the same people who think liberals are deluded. Of course liberals are deluded, but no more so than the alt-right. It's like people who think that dragons are real making fun of people who think unicorns are real.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Can't you see that the Pewitt Plan to raise the federal funds rate to 20 percent will instantaneously implode the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate?
The Pewitt Plan for 20 percent federal funds rate is not radical and it won't make you gain unsightly weight around your midsection.
The federal funds rate hit 20 percent in 1981 -- lets do it again!
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in 1981. The Oakland Raiders won the Superbowl in 1981 following the 1980 NFL season. An extraordinarily dumb movie with no Joe Pesci in it named Ordinary People won the Oscar for best film in 1981. Christie Brinkley was on the cover of the 1981 swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Ain't we all proud of Brinkley's curvy hips and the patriotic way her beautiful legs and curvy hips make a nice picture? Yes, we are proud of our Christie!
RAISE THE FEDERAL FUNDS RATE TO 20 PERCENT AND IMPLODE THE ASSET BUBBLES IN STOCKS, BONDS AND REAL ESTATE! DO IT TEN MINUTES AGO -- DAMMIT!
https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1193467415125999616?s=20
https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1193468485038432258?s=20Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
Actually, Charles, the Marshall Tucker Plan does not involve the FED or artificially-low interest rates and relies on the original non-fiat money.
Took my family away from my Carolina home.
Had dreams about the West and started to roam.
Six long months on a dust covered trail.
They say heaven’s at the end, but so far it’s been hell,
and there’s fire on the mountain, lightnin’ in the air,
gold in them hills and it’s waitin’ for me there.
This Ol' Cowboy by the Marshall Tucker Band is an excellent display of musicianship and musical craft.
Don't forget Talking Heads and their two country and western songs -- People Like Us and The Big Country.
Hank Williams III live from Scotland is some damn good live music too.
I hate boring globalizer puke corporate country music, and upon assuming power in the USA, I will take righteous revenge upon the music business shyster bastards who force the bonehead deracinated White masses to listen to rancid corporate country.
This Ol' Cowboy -- Marshall Tucker Band:
https://youtu.be/GHq87F2fS-s
Maybe you are right.
Trump was polling around 1% on 6 /22/2016…Nobody even gave him the time of day .
And he ended up winning the presidency !
Tulsi has been “on point” on every key issue that is most important to Americans.
Tulsi is the ONLY elected representative, in the entire country, who is standing toe to toe with the families of the victims of 9-11 who are demanding justice…
Where is everyone else in the DNC ?
Where is everyone else in the GOP ?
Where is Trump ?
Nowhere….that’s where.
That’s why Tulsi is going to win…the whole thing…because she stands with the American people.
Tulsi stands with US!
May god bless her and keep her strong.
This would imply that ALL preditions no matter how "sciency" they seem are nothing more than a guess.Replies: @onebornfree
MarkinLA says: “There are a million predictions a day about the economy and the market – just like there are about this weekends football games. The only ones that get media attention are the ones that were correct which means nothing because if you follow that guy for a number of years he will be wrong more than right on all his other predictions.”
Thanks for that. Saved me the trouble :-).
“Hind sight is 20/20”, as they say. I’m waiting [with baited breath] for his claim of how he’s personally profited by consistently , faithfully following the advice of his favorite investment guru, or, at the very least, what that guru is now predicting [with absolute certainty, no less] to be the next guaranteed “big winner”due to said guru’s claimed unerringly correct reading of “predictive metrics”[or whatever].
“The very idea that the future is predictable, that some formulas could be substituted for the specific understanding which is the essence of entrepreneurial activity, and that familiarity with these formulas could make it possible for anybody to take over the conduct of business is, of course, an outgrowth of the whole complex of fallacies and misconceptions which are at the bottom of present-day anticapitalistic policies.”
Ludwig Von Mises- “Human Action- a Treatise On Economics” page 867 https://mises.org/files/human-actionpdf-0
Regards, onebornfree
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/
My biggest question wrt this: How does 'quantitative easing' (or whatever it's being called now) work when interest rates are nominally at zero (and negative in real terms)? There was a lot of room to cut in 2007/2008, when rates were at 6%. There's a lot less space and a lot more debt this time around.Replies: @Lot, @E. Harding, @Citizen of a Silly Country
“ My biggest question wrt this: How does ‘quantitative easing’ (or whatever it’s being called now) work when interest rates are nominally at zero (and negative in real terms)? ”
1. Nothing stops the ECB and Fed from buying government debt above its face value.
2. QE just means buying something other than short term gov and bank debt.
“ for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago”
1. “Inflation spike that should have happened”??? Lol goldbugs have been warning that hyperinflation is around the corner each and every year the past 30 years. “We weren’t right but shouda been!”
2. How does an asset crash cause inflation? Everyone at the same time saying, “Well my portfolio crashed, now that my net worth is down 40% and job security is precarious, it’s a great time to buy a new car and fridge.”
My prediction: bull market still has years left in it, and whoever is elected in 2020 will get little done due to our systems excessive veto points and gridlock.
I'm not one of them, though. Check the archives. That doesn't mean I'll be correct this time around, of course, but we're approaching an inflection point that the modern global credit system has never encountered until now.Replies: @Justvisiting
https://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/12/austrians-predicted-housing-bubble-but.htmlReplies: @MarkinLA, @onebornfree
“Here’s an interesting article that is really a debate about which theorists model made accurate predictions regarding the 2007/08 financial matter. “
So presumably you are now religiously following the investment recommendations of one the people who “got it right” with regards to those events, right? If not,why not?[Surely, there’s a lot of money to be made by following these people?]
FYI, I briefly covered the latest predictions of one such individual [Peter Schiff] , in the most recent post at my financial blog. He predicts an inflationary depression in the near future : http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/2019/11/financial-safety-services-special.html
Regards ,onebornfree
1. Nothing stops the ECB and Fed from buying government debt above its face value.
2. QE just means buying something other than short term gov and bank debt.
“ for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago”
1. “Inflation spike that should have happened”??? Lol goldbugs have been warning that hyperinflation is around the corner each and every year the past 30 years. “We weren’t right but shouda been!”
2. How does an asset crash cause inflation? Everyone at the same time saying, “Well my portfolio crashed, now that my net worth is down 40% and job security is precarious, it’s a great time to buy a new car and fridge.”
My prediction: bull market still has years left in it, and whoever is elected in 2020 will get little done due to our systems excessive veto points and gridlock.Replies: @Thomm, @E. Harding, @Audacious Epigone
Bingo. There is considerable evidence of the opposite, in fact, due to technological deflation. The inflation nuts of today are just the peak-oil nuts of a few years ago, or the ‘the Earth will be too hot by 2000’ nuts of 1973.
Fully agree. I am stunned that anyone (i.e. AE in this case) can think inflation is like water – that if it is displaced from somewhere, it has to show up elsewhere. He actually says that a crash, and the dampening effect it has on wealth, means people will spend more and create inflation.
Sadly, there are probably some eggheads working at the Fed that are just as clueless about what inflation actually is.
We got out of that by boosting rates. It was painful in the short term but not devastating because there was far less debt in the economy (public and private) 40 years ago than there is now. Rates of 20% would cause massive bankruptcies and forfeitures across the country, unlike anything that has ever come before.Replies: @Thomm
On DAY ONE of his administration, Trump should have called in "The Marines" and started seizing assets, ..up, down,... left, right,.. of any one, and EVERYONE who conspired to defraud us into these catastrophic wars.
Their deceptions have eviscerated 23 trillion dollars of our nations solvency....and they should be made to pay...
On DAY ONE he should have done this......but he didn't.
My vote will go to the only candidate alive who stands a chance of getting our country back in the green.
Right now, that's Tulsi Gabbard.Replies: @alexander, @Twodees Partain
You’re losing it, al. I think that your real trouble is that you still think that the votes are counted and the one with the most votes wins. Primaries simply aren’t conducted that way. Democrat primaries are openly rigged with super delegates and arm twisting of candidates before the convention.
Hillary Clinton was the most widely despised candidate in the primary. Guess who got the nod.
But just because you are right (that our elections are fixed and fraudulent).doesn't make it "okay".
If I take the time to go and vote, I want that vote to "count"...I don't want it "erased" by corrupt political committees who are gaming the system.
Erasing our votes, to sway the national election, is a felony under US law.
They may be doing it, but I don't have to like it, and neither do you!
But that has nothing to do with the extremely incorrect belief that a stock market fall, that makes everyone poorer and demand for things less, will somehow increase inflation. To believe that is analogous to believing that putting ice into water will make it hotter.
That’s exactly what happened in the late 70s, though.
In the first scenario wealth is seemingly transferred from one market to anoither in the second case it hust seems to disappear into thin air.
“This would imply that ALL preditions no matter how “sciency” they seem are nothing more than a guess.”
Usually a guess is considered making a prediction without considering data. But some references note even guesses as predictions. However,
when considering predictions about economic processes at any point in time would not merely ve considered a guess. The accuracy of said predictions do not change whether said process is a prediction or not. Nor do incorrect prediction rate as guesses. The best you get here ti guess if the term “educated guess” which again is based on data.
While the veracity of said prediction is based on its accuracy and more predictions are incorrect taking your view at face value. Your assessment that all are incorrect based on less than 100% would be by definition false. But again as there are people who make their living via these predictions accurately assessed — in real time and real life —
your “all” assessment guess or not based on accuracy as you claim is incorrect.
“ When the nominal money supply is increased–as it has been drastically over the last 11 years–nominal prices correspondingly increase all other things equal. ”
Same thing in Japan but for 30 years. Still no inflation.
The Fed doesn’t just hand out cash, it replaces one financial asset with another in open market transactions.
People who work for a living and spend all their cash aren’t going to drive inflation unless there is an even tighter labor market that greatly raises their income, or else another housing bubble that greatly increases the value of the main asset of the working and middle middle class.
“ but it hasn’t shown up in standard inflation measures because it’s been in assets.”
That’s not what inflation is by any normal definition.
Did the weak stock and housing market of the 1970s mean that was really a period of deflation?
Go ahead man, take the Keynes pill. You can handle it, and it will help you make money in the market too.
The difference then was the global economy wasn't debt financed so artificially taking rates up to 20% but the lid on inflation of any kind. A rate increase like that today would cause the economy to implode. Bankruptcies and defaults would be on a level never seen before.
“So presumably you are now religiously following the investment recommendations of one the people who “got it right” with regards to those events, right.”
Laughing . . . me religiously following anyone is so unsupported by my history here. The closest you get is my lean on the faith and practice of Christ and scripture.
Just admit you are wrong and move on. In each press i have responded., And I have done so regardless of how unreasoned the demand. The fact that some number of references include stock analysis is really beside the point. I provide that and more. The point is that it is possible to make predictions based on data and depending on what the prediction to time and space, those predictions about economic forces can be correct.
It never fails that upon making the point, the response becomes something about personhood — and having gone that route with you more than with patience and a refrain from taking your constant rhetorical dancing – nothing new.
I think it is safe to say based on the data presented. You are incorrect. And I stand where I came in.
To understand the coming "crash". and not just take it as a "given", we have to understand where we are as a nation, policy wise, and solvency wise.We have to see that our neocon overlords(who we trusted with the stewardship of our nation) FUCKED US out of 23 trillion, by lying us into obscenely expensive illegal wars of aggression.....Wars that none of us "wanted" , and none of us can afford to PAY FOR.All we wanted, after 9-11, was to bring the perpetrators of that crime ,to justice....and that's IT,.. End of Story !None of us wanted to be defrauded into 18 years of stupid, solvency shattering, wars.Give me a break!Our nations balance sheet, which was "golden" a mere 18 years ago, is now in the tank, precisely because our overlords LIED US INTO WAR..Our DEBT to GDP ratio has (actually) been in the RED for over six years..This should NEVER have happened....never, never, never, ..But now we are here, stuck in this Neocon "solvency" holocaust,.... and what do we do ?What do we do ?Replies: @fish
We screw the baby boomers hard! They’ve earned it!
It never fails that upon making the point, the response becomes something about personhood --- and having gone that route with you more than with patience and a refrain from taking your constant rhetorical dancing - nothing new. I think it is safe to say based on the data presented. You are incorrect. And I stand where I came in.Replies: @onebornfree
EliteCommInc. says: “I think it is safe to say based on the data presented. You are incorrect. And I stand where I came in”
[Laughing] No, it’s not “safe to say” at all. But we’ll just have to agree to disagree . My original statement here was :
“No one can consistently and accurately predict “big picture” future economic events and scenarios. No investment “expert” advisor, no banker, no money manager, no economist, no politician, no computer algorithm, no fortune teller- not even you 🙂 [although any one of these, including yourself, might get it right on occasion, purely by chance”
You [like most others in the world, apparently ] assume/believe that economic environments [and therefor market movements], can be reliably/consistently predicted by “experts” reading the “right” charts etc. etc.
That assumption is based on a completely false understanding of what markets are, and how they work in the real world. But in the end, as they say:”It’s your funeral”, so believe/assume whatever you wish.
All I can really say to such a fiscally dangerous belief is: “so find the right”expert”, then ” put your money where your mouth is””, and “good luck “.[You’ll need it].
“Regards”, onebornfree
These two events don’t jibe. Debtors are bailed out by inflation.
Now, if debtors lose their jobs then maybe the inflation bailout won’t be sufficient.
It would have to be Biden or Sanders to have a chance.Replies: @houston 1992, @Audacious Epigone, @Paw
Huge everyday propaganda for some of no importance and no records ,some Jokeress ,while feminists so far showed to be disasters and nothing else and like men everywhere in the west, I can not see any progress , any direction anything …Except start with the Truth. To liberate with it..
My biggest question wrt this: How does 'quantitative easing' (or whatever it's being called now) work when interest rates are nominally at zero (and negative in real terms)? There was a lot of room to cut in 2007/2008, when rates were at 6%. There's a lot less space and a lot more debt this time around.Replies: @Lot, @E. Harding, @Citizen of a Silly Country
That’s the beauty of it. QE is (figuratively, but close to literally) money printing. Nothing more, nothing less. QE is just purchases of government debt. The only difference from literal money printing is that the process can be unwound by selling government debt (if, however, government debt loses its value on a large scale… that’s a big problem- thus the importance of the Federal budget deficit now). There’s no need for a multiplier effect, no need for cutting rates at all in order to raise nominal gross domestic product if QE is an available option. If QE is in a large enough quantity (this means many trillions of dollars), it actually raises long run nominal interest rates due to higher inflation expectations. I suggest reading Scott Sumner’s blog on economic matters (though several of his predictions I disagree with and his political takes are always dumb).
There are basically four types of recessions: real (e.g., 1973 recession -result from some kind of real shock, like natural disasters or OPEC deciding to spike oil prices), nominal (Great Depression -these result from falling inflation-unadjusted incomes), Austrian-style (post-Soviet depressions -these are a type of real shock), and ones resulting from lack of control over the currency used to make investments (1997 crisis -these have features of both real and nominal shocks). The Fed cannot avoid real recessions, it can avoid nominal recessions (but doesn’t, due to incompetence and institutional inertia), Austrian style recessions basically do not and will not exist in the United States due to it being a vibrant capitalist economy which can eat up a lot of waste without any problem (Austrian theory of the business cycle relies on the buildup of waste -e.g., useless housing, office buildings, obviously unprofitable companies- which disposes of itself through higher inflation and slower growth), and the dollar is the reserve currency, and will stay so pretty much forever, so the last type of recession is basically impossible for the United States. American energy independence has made it almost entirely safe from real recessions. There was widespread fear during the first half of 2008 that 2008 would turn out to be a real recession due to skyrocketing oil prices and rising rents; instead, the Fed overcorrected and we saw 2008 turn into a large nominal recession. The Fed will not make mistakes anywhere near as large as in 2008 this time around.
As I say, what’s really bad this time is the Federal budget deficit. The cyclically-adjusted Federal budget deficit is the highest it’s been in peacetime U.S. history, and it will probably be even larger than in 2009 during the next recession. This will result in Congress having to make some tough choices. Maybe not in 2020 -but definitely in future decades. Probably the Dems will raise taxes on the rich to resolve this issue. If they’re smart, they’ll do it wage income, since that’s better in all respects than alternatives.
Makes me want to invest in Libra!
1. Nothing stops the ECB and Fed from buying government debt above its face value.
2. QE just means buying something other than short term gov and bank debt.
“ for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago”
1. “Inflation spike that should have happened”??? Lol goldbugs have been warning that hyperinflation is around the corner each and every year the past 30 years. “We weren’t right but shouda been!”
2. How does an asset crash cause inflation? Everyone at the same time saying, “Well my portfolio crashed, now that my net worth is down 40% and job security is precarious, it’s a great time to buy a new car and fridge.”
My prediction: bull market still has years left in it, and whoever is elected in 2020 will get little done due to our systems excessive veto points and gridlock.Replies: @Thomm, @E. Harding, @Audacious Epigone
This is true, but it would be much wiser to buy at face value due to the need to maintain flexibility if an unwinding is necessary.
Probably through a bold Fed response. In practice, this rarely happens, and when it happens, it does so mostly outside the United States. The first half of 2008 saw both high-ish inflation and falling asset prices.
I don’t think so.
Wrong; Abenomics only started in 2013. Prior to this Japan did a series of dumb moves skyrocketing government debt (luckily it’s mostly held by Japanese).
Yes (which makes unwinding easier), but this does cause rising nominal incomes.
I would take some time to examine the balance sheets . . . balanced they were not. In fact, if one takes a look at the accounting large predictions were made based on false data about what the economy would do and didn't.Which is why Sec of the Treasury found himself/the country in a mess regarding the economy, 9/11 and what occurred subsequently only exacerbated it. And Enron was but a tip of a much deeper issue regarding business behavior.
There is a war make no mistake about it and it starts at our southern border.Replies: @alexander
lets examine then….
In the year 2000, we had a GDP of 9.8 Trillion and a national debt of 5.6 Trillion….that is just under a 2 to 1 ratio ( when compared to the neocon-ed “ratio” we have today, that’s a miracle)
Our government, at the time , was (actually) running a fiscal surplus of 180 billion per year (when compared to the neocon-ed deficits of 800 billion per year we have been running for the past 17 years, that was “heaven on earth” )
Our GDP, at the time, represented 24% of the worlds economy. Today it’s under 17%.
We also possessed the most powerful military on the planet (at a cost of 25o billion per year)
We had low inflation, a vibrant middle class, and a constitution we all believed in .
By nearly every metric, the USA was “on the top of the world” .
We had built the most robust, dynamic nation the world had ever seen.
Then, post 9-11, the Neocons took over the shop, and “everything” changed.
By defrauding us into illegal wars of aggression ,the Neocons “exploded ” our national debt to a “mind numbing ” 23 trillion dollars in a mere 17 years…..
Surpassing our GDP (21 trillion) for the first time in living memory.
Lets face it,the USA, under Neocon stewardship, has become a moral and fiscal “train wreck”.
By lying us into endless illegal wars , our neocons have all but exterminated our national solvency.
If we do not re-embrace our founding ethics, and our fidelity to the world treaties which we helped create (in the aftermath of WWII) the USA is, most probably, going right down the tubes.
It’s heartbreaking .
The Social Security
Scamerrr, Scheme (see also Part 2), would no longer run in the red on its own, and, as you detail nicely, the Feral budget is not even close with or without SS. (BTW, I don't care one way or the other whether SS should be "on budget". I think of it just as another 7% tax on my income and don't expect to see a lick of it back.) If you go back before that little trick, the Feral budget was in the red since the early '60s or earlier. The internet bubble 1.0 was also a big help in the late '90s, as that paper wealth in the form of stock options and sales thereof, provided quite a bit of income/capital gains taxes.The Neocons took over a full decade before 9/11, Alex. As soon as the Cold War ended, they first looted Russia (something I didn't know much about till recently), started up with the 1st Gulf War, still having great support then as the world's only superpower-for-good, then the Balkans war and so on ...
Yes, the US was probably "on top of the world" in most every measure in 2,000, but the trends had been down for a decade already. It's easy for me to see that in hindsight.
Why don't you compare now to 1975 or, better yet, 1955? That'd be a hell of a contrast!Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @alexander
Hillary Clinton was the most widely despised candidate in the primary. Guess who got the nod.Replies: @alexander
Yeah.
But just because you are right (that our elections are fixed and fraudulent).doesn’t make it “okay”.
If I take the time to go and vote, I want that vote to “count”…I don’t want it “erased” by corrupt political committees who are gaming the system.
Erasing our votes, to sway the national election, is a felony under US law.
They may be doing it, but I don’t have to like it, and neither do you!
And some day, probably in our grandchildren's time, this will definitely come to pass. But for the foreseeable future central banks will just keep printing money and debt will be allowed to accumulate.
Just keep racking up debt and thinking of ways to make yourself a burden on the system as much as possible. Or pull a Warren and claim to be part native and figure out a way to have your debts written off because of "past injustices" or something like that.Replies: @dfordoom
Almost all of the cherished beliefs of the alt-right are in fact fantasies. It’s a political ideology for people who think that the answer to unpleasant realities is to ignore them and live in a world of make-believe. Like Disneyland it’s a magical kingdom.
What’s really amusing is that these are the same people who think liberals are deluded. Of course liberals are deluded, but no more so than the alt-right. It’s like people who think that dragons are real making fun of people who think unicorns are real.
“Our government, at the time , was (actually) running a fiscal surplus of 180 billion per year (when compared to the neocon-ed deficits of 800 billion per year we have been running for the past 17 years, that was “heaven on earth” )
As I noted, that government surplus is base. Head to the government budget and measure the actual account. Go by the numbers oif the budget apply the analytics and you find that they engaged in some peculiar accounting methods to note a surplus, namely that little trick of accounting for a surplus based on budget projections an economy that did not materialize. Those surpluses were based on budget projections against an economy that did even occur.
Furthermore what we now know is that the the debt losses accounted in 2007 were not created in 20007, but were underlying faultlines that had been accruing for than yen years prior and the mbs and cdo products were counted as profits. That 1.34 plus balance is on paper, its not reality. i don’t know what the exact numbers are in the millions counted as surplus or profits resulting from the real estate and cdo accounting practices, but I am comfortable admitting that it was in the trillions. One source noted it was 2 trillion. I think that was the residential market alone. If one wanted to measure the value of the multiple variants of the MBS systems: MBTP, MBB, CMBS, tec. The level of risk exposure counted as profits . . .
Note using real GDP there is no surplus:
https://www.thebalance.com/real-gdp-per-capita-how-to-calculate-data-since-1946-3306028
And given your grasp of the data — that you consider GDP a valid measure of the economy, odd. but it is a mistake to use. Because what it counts are actually transfers (middleman sales) as part of the equation and not the terminal sales. In other words they count what is still on the lot yet to be sold. It’s a very misleading measure. It’s misleading even if you use the “real gdp” which is better indicator of economic health.
Note: You are contending that spending after became unbalanced after the Iraq-Afgahnaistan invasions I do not counter that argument. I am saying the economy was not in the shape claimed, including contentions about budget surpluses before 9/11.
I do believe the surplus was there, but it may not have sustained itself for very long, after the dot.com bubble burst.
Lets understand a few things , I don't think its wrong for our government to carry some debt.....I think it should...I think it's healthy.
Had our government only overspent (lets say) "100 billion" per year since 2001, we would be in good fiscal shape today.
Overspending is also okay if it generates positive GDP growth and helps the country.
I believe that "overspending" on "wars of choice" is a great evil, not only because wars of choice are a "crime" , but because the profits from the war making come directly out of the taxpayers pockets and return little to our GDP.
Even if Americans are not taxed, up front, to pay for the wars, those costs show up in our yearly deficits and our national debt.
Our illegal war making, over the past 17 years, has been catastrophic for our country.
The fact we are a nation whose establishment class is addicted to obscenely expensive , perpetual war making. is a terrible thing...
It is tragic.
Not only have we murdered and maimed millions of innocent people who never attacked us on 9-11,we have have left a humongous debt burden for future Americans to grapple with.
This is doubly evil, because our future generations had absolutely no say in how THEIR tax dollars were spent.
I believe the correct solution to this problem is to make the individuals who lied us into these wars pay for their costs.
Once the burden of the costs falls directly on their shoulders, then starting obscenely expensive wars would be the last thing on earth they would ever want to do.
Right ?Replies: @MarkinLA
And i do not dispute that the removal of Glass-Steagall opened up the flood gates on all of the above in 1999.
As I noted, that government surplus is base. Head to the government budget and measure the actual account. Go by the numbers oif the budget apply the analytics and you find that they engaged in some peculiar accounting methods to note a surplus, namely that little trick of accounting for a surplus based on budget projections an economy that did not materialize. Those surpluses were based on budget projections against an economy that did even occur.
Furthermore what we now know is that the the debt losses accounted in 2007 were not created in 20007, but were underlying faultlines that had been accruing for than yen years prior and the mbs and cdo products were counted as profits. That 1.34 plus balance is on paper, its not reality. i don't know what the exact numbers are in the millions counted as surplus or profits resulting from the real estate and cdo accounting practices, but I am comfortable admitting that it was in the trillions. One source noted it was 2 trillion. I think that was the residential market alone. If one wanted to measure the value of the multiple variants of the MBS systems: MBTP, MBB, CMBS, tec. The level of risk exposure counted as profits . . .
Note using real GDP there is no surplus:
https://www.thebalance.com/real-gdp-per-capita-how-to-calculate-data-since-1946-3306028
And given your grasp of the data -- that you consider GDP a valid measure of the economy, odd. but it is a mistake to use. Because what it counts are actually transfers (middleman sales) as part of the equation and not the terminal sales. In other words they count what is still on the lot yet to be sold. It's a very misleading measure. It's misleading even if you use the "real gdp" which is better indicator of economic health.
Note: You are contending that spending after became unbalanced after the Iraq-Afgahnaistan invasions I do not counter that argument. I am saying the economy was not in the shape claimed, including contentions about budget surpluses before 9/11.Replies: @alexander
I attribute the budget surplus at the turn of the century to the tax revenues generated by the “dot. com” explosion between 1997-2000..rather than an extraordinarily efficient federal government, but I could be wrong on that attribution.
I do believe the surplus was there, but it may not have sustained itself for very long, after the dot.com bubble burst.
Lets understand a few things , I don’t think its wrong for our government to carry some debt…..I think it should…I think it’s healthy.
Had our government only overspent (lets say) “100 billion” per year since 2001, we would be in good fiscal shape today.
Overspending is also okay if it generates positive GDP growth and helps the country.
I believe that “overspending” on “wars of choice” is a great evil, not only because wars of choice are a “crime” , but because the profits from the war making come directly out of the taxpayers pockets and return little to our GDP.
Even if Americans are not taxed, up front, to pay for the wars, those costs show up in our yearly deficits and our national debt.
Our illegal war making, over the past 17 years, has been catastrophic for our country.
The fact we are a nation whose establishment class is addicted to obscenely expensive , perpetual war making. is a terrible thing…
It is tragic.
Not only have we murdered and maimed millions of innocent people who never attacked us on 9-11,we have have left a humongous debt burden for future Americans to grapple with.
This is doubly evil, because our future generations had absolutely no say in how THEIR tax dollars were spent.
I believe the correct solution to this problem is to make the individuals who lied us into these wars pay for their costs.
Once the burden of the costs falls directly on their shoulders, then starting obscenely expensive wars would be the last thing on earth they would ever want to do.
Right ?
Audacious Epigone says: “That’s exactly what happened in the late 70s, though.”
Have you considered the reverse- that persistent inflation had caused the end of the stock market bull market, which had peaked in the late 60’s, if I recall correctly?
Regards, onebornfree
Inflation is just like water, turn the taps and it increases, it also flows from one asset class to another. Dr Marc Faber, Dr Doom, explained that concept.
Bob, I had meant to add in my last comment to you that all the simple numbers I gave are directly off the IRS's 1040 income tax instruction booklet as nice little pie charts. That's where I got em, and I am thankful for at least that bit of honesty from the Feds.
As Lot also explained, a crash in equities would cause the opposite effect of inflation.
If your economy exports more than it imports my prediction is you run a deficit.Replies: @onebornfree, @MarkU
Don’t you have that the wrong way around? Surely if you export more value than you import then you have a trade surplus. If you import more value than you export you have a deficit.
Alexander, I agree with your assessment of the economic downfall of the US but not the timeline. Maybe you are young enough to where the US seemed to have a healthy economy in the year 2,000. I disagree – on this first:
The US Feral Gov. showed a surplus for couple of years in the late 1990’s because Congress had jammed the Social Security budget into the regular budget. At that time, with fewer taking money out, and more wage-earners putting money in, SS was running a big enough surplus to put the total budget in the black – note: FOR A CHANGE.
The Social Security
Scamerrr, Scheme (see also Part 2), would no longer run in the red on its own, and, as you detail nicely, the Feral budget is not even close with or without SS. (BTW, I don’t care one way or the other whether SS should be “on budget”. I think of it just as another 7% tax on my income and don’t expect to see a lick of it back.) If you go back before that little trick, the Feral budget was in the red since the early ’60s or earlier. The internet bubble 1.0 was also a big help in the late ’90s, as that paper wealth in the form of stock options and sales thereof, provided quite a bit of income/capital gains taxes.The Neocons took over a full decade before 9/11, Alex. As soon as the Cold War ended, they first looted Russia (something I didn’t know much about till recently), started up with the 1st Gulf War, still having great support then as the world’s only superpower-for-good, then the Balkans war and so on …
Yes, the US was probably “on top of the world” in most every measure in 2,000, but the trends had been down for a decade already. It’s easy for me to see that in hindsight.
Why don’t you compare now to 1975 or, better yet, 1955? That’d be a hell of a contrast!
But lets understand my position, we are still an extremely wealthy nation, we are running a GDP of 21 trillion dollars, and the nation as a whole, has assets valued somewhere around 170 trillion dollars. Most of our consumer debt is in home mortgages and car loans...which seems like reasonable debts for people to have (in most cases).
The warning sign for me was when our DEBT to GDP ratio turned from green to red , about five and a half years ago.
This caused me to sit up and take notice.
I believe the country has overspent its wad by ten trillion over the last 17 years.
If our "overspending" amounted to seven trillion spread over the last two decades our Debt to GDP ratio would be something like 12.6 trillion/ 21 trillion...which would be okay over the long run.(its still a lot of debt, mind you, but it would be a much better ratio than what we have today)
When I speak of Neocons, I am referring to individuals who believe in using "war of aggression" as a tool of state craft.
I see the rise of the Neocons coming after the gulf war in 1991, not so much before it. The reason for their rise was due to our spectacular success in removing Saddam's forces from Kuwait.
I do not perceive 1991 as a Neocon war, the sanctions which came after, might have been Neocon sanctions, but the war had complete international legitimacy in its undertaking.
We all witnessed a kinetic action which was so efficient and so thoroughly dominant...I believe it ignited the idea in the minds of our neocons, that we could now use our ability to wage war as a tool, with maximum impact, and minimum casualties....
The price of that success in 91, ... led to our spectacular failure.... in 03.
This is my take on it, anyhow.
So tragic now.... for everyone.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
I really like that Dr. Faber. He is a Swiss man posing as an Austrian (get it?). Thanks for the reminder.
Bob, I had meant to add in my last comment to you that all the simple numbers I gave are directly off the IRS’s 1040 income tax instruction booklet as nice little pie charts. That’s where I got em, and I am thankful for at least that bit of honesty from the Feds.
Same thing in Japan but for 30 years. Still no inflation.
The Fed doesn’t just hand out cash, it replaces one financial asset with another in open market transactions.
People who work for a living and spend all their cash aren’t going to drive inflation unless there is an even tighter labor market that greatly raises their income, or else another housing bubble that greatly increases the value of the main asset of the working and middle middle class.
“ but it hasn’t shown up in standard inflation measures because it’s been in assets.”
That’s not what inflation is by any normal definition.
Did the weak stock and housing market of the 1970s mean that was really a period of deflation?
Go ahead man, take the Keynes pill. You can handle it, and it will help you make money in the market too.
https://www.singularityweblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/John-Maynard-Keynes.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @MarkinLA, @Audacious Epigone
“In the short run, spending OPM to goose the economy can help the numbers. In the long run, Keynes is dead and buried with not enough room on his headstone to explain his stupidity.”
Achmed E. Newman says: “The US Feral Gov. showed a surplus for couple of years in the late 1990’s because Congress had jammed the Social Security budget into the regular budget. “
You beat me to it.
Yes,the late, great US budget surplus was [yet another] total lie fabricated by government accountants,in order to obfuscate the fact that the deficit was actually still increasing year to year.
A good, very clear summary of the unvarnished truth can be read here:
“Arguing over Non-Existent Budget Surpluses”:
https://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/BudgetSurpluses.htm
Regards, onebornfree
The Social Security
Scamerrr, Scheme (see also Part 2), would no longer run in the red on its own, and, as you detail nicely, the Feral budget is not even close with or without SS. (BTW, I don't care one way or the other whether SS should be "on budget". I think of it just as another 7% tax on my income and don't expect to see a lick of it back.) If you go back before that little trick, the Feral budget was in the red since the early '60s or earlier. The internet bubble 1.0 was also a big help in the late '90s, as that paper wealth in the form of stock options and sales thereof, provided quite a bit of income/capital gains taxes.The Neocons took over a full decade before 9/11, Alex. As soon as the Cold War ended, they first looted Russia (something I didn't know much about till recently), started up with the 1st Gulf War, still having great support then as the world's only superpower-for-good, then the Balkans war and so on ...
Yes, the US was probably "on top of the world" in most every measure in 2,000, but the trends had been down for a decade already. It's easy for me to see that in hindsight.
Why don't you compare now to 1975 or, better yet, 1955? That'd be a hell of a contrast!Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @alexander
Aaah, crap. “… would no longer run in the red on its own, …”
S/B: “… would no longer run in the black on its own…”
FIFM
The Social Security
Scamerrr, Scheme (see also Part 2), would no longer run in the red on its own, and, as you detail nicely, the Feral budget is not even close with or without SS. (BTW, I don't care one way or the other whether SS should be "on budget". I think of it just as another 7% tax on my income and don't expect to see a lick of it back.) If you go back before that little trick, the Feral budget was in the red since the early '60s or earlier. The internet bubble 1.0 was also a big help in the late '90s, as that paper wealth in the form of stock options and sales thereof, provided quite a bit of income/capital gains taxes.The Neocons took over a full decade before 9/11, Alex. As soon as the Cold War ended, they first looted Russia (something I didn't know much about till recently), started up with the 1st Gulf War, still having great support then as the world's only superpower-for-good, then the Balkans war and so on ...
Yes, the US was probably "on top of the world" in most every measure in 2,000, but the trends had been down for a decade already. It's easy for me to see that in hindsight.
Why don't you compare now to 1975 or, better yet, 1955? That'd be a hell of a contrast!Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @alexander
Right.
But lets understand my position, we are still an extremely wealthy nation, we are running a GDP of 21 trillion dollars, and the nation as a whole, has assets valued somewhere around 170 trillion dollars. Most of our consumer debt is in home mortgages and car loans…which seems like reasonable debts for people to have (in most cases).
The warning sign for me was when our DEBT to GDP ratio turned from green to red , about five and a half years ago.
This caused me to sit up and take notice.
I believe the country has overspent its wad by ten trillion over the last 17 years.
If our “overspending” amounted to seven trillion spread over the last two decades our Debt to GDP ratio would be something like 12.6 trillion/ 21 trillion…which would be okay over the long run.(its still a lot of debt, mind you, but it would be a much better ratio than what we have today)
When I speak of Neocons, I am referring to individuals who believe in using “war of aggression” as a tool of state craft.
I see the rise of the Neocons coming after the gulf war in 1991, not so much before it. The reason for their rise was due to our spectacular success in removing Saddam’s forces from Kuwait.
I do not perceive 1991 as a Neocon war, the sanctions which came after, might have been Neocon sanctions, but the war had complete international legitimacy in its undertaking.
We all witnessed a kinetic action which was so efficient and so thoroughly dominant…I believe it ignited the idea in the minds of our neocons, that we could now use our ability to wage war as a tool, with maximum impact, and minimum casualties….
The price of that success in 91, … led to our spectacular failure…. in 03.
This is my take on it, anyhow.
So tragic now…. for everyone.
.* I should put it this way: The NOMINAL amounts may be paid, but after inflation has made a Happy Meal cost 87 bucks, in reality, the money won't be paid.Replies: @Pheasant
That's exactly what happened in the late 70s, though.Replies: @MarkinLA
It all depends on how it plays out. If the market goes down in an orderly slow fashion like what happened to the “nifty fifty”s market of the 60s, there is money available. If it is a wholesale collapse like 1929 or 2008 then the wealth just seems to disappear. You wake up and your hundred dollar a share stock can only get a 60 dollar bid but nowhere near the number shares were traded compared to the run up from 60 to 100.
In the first scenario wealth is seemingly transferred from one market to anoither in the second case it hust seems to disappear into thin air.
But lets understand my position, we are still an extremely wealthy nation, we are running a GDP of 21 trillion dollars, and the nation as a whole, has assets valued somewhere around 170 trillion dollars. Most of our consumer debt is in home mortgages and car loans...which seems like reasonable debts for people to have (in most cases).
The warning sign for me was when our DEBT to GDP ratio turned from green to red , about five and a half years ago.
This caused me to sit up and take notice.
I believe the country has overspent its wad by ten trillion over the last 17 years.
If our "overspending" amounted to seven trillion spread over the last two decades our Debt to GDP ratio would be something like 12.6 trillion/ 21 trillion...which would be okay over the long run.(its still a lot of debt, mind you, but it would be a much better ratio than what we have today)
When I speak of Neocons, I am referring to individuals who believe in using "war of aggression" as a tool of state craft.
I see the rise of the Neocons coming after the gulf war in 1991, not so much before it. The reason for their rise was due to our spectacular success in removing Saddam's forces from Kuwait.
I do not perceive 1991 as a Neocon war, the sanctions which came after, might have been Neocon sanctions, but the war had complete international legitimacy in its undertaking.
We all witnessed a kinetic action which was so efficient and so thoroughly dominant...I believe it ignited the idea in the minds of our neocons, that we could now use our ability to wage war as a tool, with maximum impact, and minimum casualties....
The price of that success in 91, ... led to our spectacular failure.... in 03.
This is my take on it, anyhow.
So tragic now.... for everyone.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
On the financial stuff. I agree, but keep in mind what that $21 Trillion GDP includes. The “P” is on longer just for “product”. 10,000 lawyers representing environmental groups suing organizations with 10,000 other lawyers, at $500/hr, are all part of that GD”P”, Alex. From what I’ve seen in China, their GDP would represent a whole lot more of REAL STUFF being manufactured or erected (in the case of the amazing infrastructure there). That matters a lot.
There’s no doubt the (beyond-)wasted trillions from the Neocon’s wars add up to an amount as you say. However, the bulk of the US budget is still transfer payments from one group of Americans to another (often the same people). This Socialism is busting the budget too, as remember what I wrote about unfunded obligations. This is not stuff that can be seen as part of a yearly deficit or the total debt NOW. However, it is money that has been promised and can’t be paid*
About the Neocons(scroll down) and Gulf War I:
That’s about right and a good way to put it. It emboldened the Neocons who felt that the only superpower, with that overwhelming military, could do whatever they wanted around the globe… regime change? You got it! Assassination? Name a date! To me, George H.W. Bush was, if not A neocon, was an enabler of them.
All that huge amount of goodwill and potential economic bonus created by the end of the Cold War, thanks to Ronnie, Maggie, Lec, J.P.II, Konrad, Helmut, and millions of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and technicians and engineers, was blown all to hell over the next 3 decades!
.
* I should put it this way: The NOMINAL amounts may be paid, but after inflation has made a Happy Meal cost 87 bucks, in reality, the money won’t be paid.
Same thing in Japan but for 30 years. Still no inflation.
The Fed doesn’t just hand out cash, it replaces one financial asset with another in open market transactions.
People who work for a living and spend all their cash aren’t going to drive inflation unless there is an even tighter labor market that greatly raises their income, or else another housing bubble that greatly increases the value of the main asset of the working and middle middle class.
“ but it hasn’t shown up in standard inflation measures because it’s been in assets.”
That’s not what inflation is by any normal definition.
Did the weak stock and housing market of the 1970s mean that was really a period of deflation?
Go ahead man, take the Keynes pill. You can handle it, and it will help you make money in the market too.
https://www.singularityweblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/John-Maynard-Keynes.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @MarkinLA, @Audacious Epigone
Residentail real estate was inflating in the 70s. That is the main reason whhy all the geezers are doing so well. The fixed interest loans they took out in the 60s meant they paid pennies on the dollar for their house that were worth many times their yearly salary in the 80s.
Given a growing economy and population, a 0.4% annual real return over a decade is pretty crappy.
The main reason the 70s were a good time to buy was positive real returns after 1980, as well as locking in a low property tax base if you are in California.
Completely false. You didn’t understand what Dr. Faber explained.
As Lot also explained, a crash in equities would cause the opposite effect of inflation.
I do believe the surplus was there, but it may not have sustained itself for very long, after the dot.com bubble burst.
Lets understand a few things , I don't think its wrong for our government to carry some debt.....I think it should...I think it's healthy.
Had our government only overspent (lets say) "100 billion" per year since 2001, we would be in good fiscal shape today.
Overspending is also okay if it generates positive GDP growth and helps the country.
I believe that "overspending" on "wars of choice" is a great evil, not only because wars of choice are a "crime" , but because the profits from the war making come directly out of the taxpayers pockets and return little to our GDP.
Even if Americans are not taxed, up front, to pay for the wars, those costs show up in our yearly deficits and our national debt.
Our illegal war making, over the past 17 years, has been catastrophic for our country.
The fact we are a nation whose establishment class is addicted to obscenely expensive , perpetual war making. is a terrible thing...
It is tragic.
Not only have we murdered and maimed millions of innocent people who never attacked us on 9-11,we have have left a humongous debt burden for future Americans to grapple with.
This is doubly evil, because our future generations had absolutely no say in how THEIR tax dollars were spent.
I believe the correct solution to this problem is to make the individuals who lied us into these wars pay for their costs.
Once the burden of the costs falls directly on their shoulders, then starting obscenely expensive wars would be the last thing on earth they would ever want to do.
Right ?Replies: @MarkinLA
I attribute the budget surplus at the turn of the century to the tax revenues generated by the “dot. com” explosion between 1997-2000..rather than an extraordinarily efficient federal government, but I could be wrong on that attribution.
According to official Treasury Department statistics, the national debt never went down during the dot com era. However, there was a technical yearly surplus due to excess Social Security and Medicare taxes. The problem is that excess SS taxes are used to “buy” special government bonds so don’t really count toward reducing the debt.
This was due to the very high level of stock option exercises. Most low level schlubs with stock options utilize what is called a cashless transaction where the option is exercised and the stock sold all in one operation. This result is ordinary income that is subject to both income and SS taxes.
Even if the optionee buys the stock and holds it for awhile he would still have capital gains taxes but are at a much lower level.
Because of the way capital gains and losses are handled, a lot of tech employees got screwed. They exercised their options and were forced to pay capital gains taxes on the difference when they exercised but when the prices collapsed could not take the full loss in the same year.
I don’t know about LA specifically, but national prices in the 1970s went up almost lockstep with inflation. Over the decade inflation was 106% total and Case-Shiller’s index about 110%.
Given a growing economy and population, a 0.4% annual real return over a decade is pretty crappy.
The main reason the 70s were a good time to buy was positive real returns after 1980, as well as locking in a low property tax base if you are in California.
“I attribute the budget surplus at the turn of the century to the tax revenues generated by the “dot. com” explosion between 1997-2000..rather than an extraordinarily efficient federal government, but I could be wrong on that attribution.”
There was no surplus.
___________________________________
“Don’t you have that the wrong way around? Surely if you export more value than you import then you have a trade surplus. If you import more value than you export you have a deficit.”
That is correct. Appreciate you pointing that out. Imports more than exports.
absolutely is the deficit process.
My biggest question wrt this: How does 'quantitative easing' (or whatever it's being called now) work when interest rates are nominally at zero (and negative in real terms)? There was a lot of room to cut in 2007/2008, when rates were at 6%. There's a lot less space and a lot more debt this time around.Replies: @Lot, @E. Harding, @Citizen of a Silly Country
Dropping rates this low likely will be like pushing on a string. Therefore, monetary policy is ineffective. So, you turn to fiscal policy, i.e. increased gov’t spending to stimulate the economy.
But increasing taxes in a recession doesn’t make sense so you borrow from investors (the wealthy). But what if investors don’t want to buy treasury bonds earning zero percent or even negative? The Fed steps in, prints money and buys the treasury bonds so Congress can spend money on welfare, unemployment and jobs programs.
The danger here is that you cause inflation due to injecting money into the system. If that happens, many financial assets – particularly bonds – lose value, which, of course, hurts asset owners, i.e. the rich. The whole thing is essentially a wealth transfer from the rich (asset owners hurt by inflation) to the poor (those receiving the gov’t spending money).
An aside, I was at a mall in Salem, New Hampshire today. Maybe 10% shoppers were white. And most of them white nationalists or characters out of Idiocracy. The rest of the shoppers were a camp of saints (Afro- Hispanics, Pakis, blacks, mulattos, Meztisos, et al.). Lots of head scarves. Very depressing. No way this country can survive as even a second-world country in a generation.Replies: @Justvisiting
I didn’t respond to your question. I do not know of such a book–hopefully one of the folks here will write one!
It seems like every economist has an axe to grind (or a government grant to keep).
It is indeed the “dismal science”. 🙁
This does not count the SS, Medicare, and pension obligations that can't be covered at the FED-lowered interest rates. Some say is 5X to 10X that official national debt.
What happens if interest rates are let to rise to their natural values (the price of money)? Well, right now at just over 1% average, the interest on this debt is 6% of the national expenditures. What happens at a decent 7% rate, Bob? 40% of the budget expenditures will be interest! Now, that's more like over 50% of the income incoming going out to bondholders.
A.E. is right - this can't end well. President Trump's urging the FED to keep rates down is just kicking the can down the road. As Socialist and downright stupid economically as the Blue-squad is, it doesn't matter who's president. The hole is too deep.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
This is a crucial point. If rates go up, the asset bubble pops. Interest on debts, public and private, become unpayable.
To keep pumping air into the bubble, rates have to continue dropping. But negative rates are not sustainable because holding hard currency provides a better return than a negative interest rate does. That means people start pulling cash out of the institutions. Open market operations stop working because institutions have to simultaneously buy up more government debt while their clients simultaneously withdraw.
There’s no way out of this. The Fed is going to try to land somewhere just above 0% but it’s not going to work. As soon as rate cuts stop, the air is going to start coming out again.
1. Nothing stops the ECB and Fed from buying government debt above its face value.
2. QE just means buying something other than short term gov and bank debt.
“ for a catastrophic drop in US markets as a decade’s worth of inflation into assets spills out of them and washes over the consumer market. The CPI-measured inflation spike that should have happened several years ago”
1. “Inflation spike that should have happened”??? Lol goldbugs have been warning that hyperinflation is around the corner each and every year the past 30 years. “We weren’t right but shouda been!”
2. How does an asset crash cause inflation? Everyone at the same time saying, “Well my portfolio crashed, now that my net worth is down 40% and job security is precarious, it’s a great time to buy a new car and fridge.”
My prediction: bull market still has years left in it, and whoever is elected in 2020 will get little done due to our systems excessive veto points and gridlock.Replies: @Thomm, @E. Harding, @Audacious Epigone
Yes, there are people who have been predicting inflation for years.
I’m not one of them, though. Check the archives. That doesn’t mean I’ll be correct this time around, of course, but we’re approaching an inflection point that the modern global credit system has never encountered until now.
So, everyone either "believes" or they don't.
If they "believe" then major inflation is unlikely.
But if large numbers of people stop believing, watch out below....
That is chaos theory in action.
Except this is what happened in the late seventies, as noted earlier.
We got out of that by boosting rates. It was painful in the short term but not devastating because there was far less debt in the economy (public and private) 40 years ago than there is now. Rates of 20% would cause massive bankruptcies and forfeitures across the country, unlike anything that has ever come before.
Plus, there was no technological deflation then.
Again, there is nothing less likely in this day and age than a stock market crash causing inflation (when in fact the opposite would happen).
The Fed Funds rate will be 0% long term.
Same thing in Japan but for 30 years. Still no inflation.
The Fed doesn’t just hand out cash, it replaces one financial asset with another in open market transactions.
People who work for a living and spend all their cash aren’t going to drive inflation unless there is an even tighter labor market that greatly raises their income, or else another housing bubble that greatly increases the value of the main asset of the working and middle middle class.
“ but it hasn’t shown up in standard inflation measures because it’s been in assets.”
That’s not what inflation is by any normal definition.
Did the weak stock and housing market of the 1970s mean that was really a period of deflation?
Go ahead man, take the Keynes pill. You can handle it, and it will help you make money in the market too.
https://www.singularityweblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/John-Maynard-Keynes.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @MarkinLA, @Audacious Epigone
In the vernacular, inflation corresponds to increases in prices of consumer goods–food, clothes, appliances, etc. But inflation can also occur in asset classes like houses or stocks. In the mid and late 70s, there was inflation in the former and deflation in the latter.
The difference then was the global economy wasn’t debt financed so artificially taking rates up to 20% but the lid on inflation of any kind. A rate increase like that today would cause the economy to implode. Bankruptcies and defaults would be on a level never seen before.
I'm not one of them, though. Check the archives. That doesn't mean I'll be correct this time around, of course, but we're approaching an inflection point that the modern global credit system has never encountered until now.Replies: @Justvisiting
Keep in mind that the currency is based on “full faith and credit” since we went off the gold standard.
So, everyone either “believes” or they don’t.
If they “believe” then major inflation is unlikely.
But if large numbers of people stop believing, watch out below….
That is chaos theory in action.
Now, if debtors lose their jobs then maybe the inflation bailout won't be sufficient.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Not if the rise in prices shows up primarily in short-term consumer goods. If your grocery bill goes up 10% but your wages only go up 3%, you’re in trouble.
So we’ll flirt with a rate of zero and then QE4, the mother of all QEs, will force long-term rates up and shorter yields will eventually follow? And the dollar will survive all that because it’s the only game in (global) town?
Makes me want to invest in Libra!
What's really amusing is that these are the same people who think liberals are deluded. Of course liberals are deluded, but no more so than the alt-right. It's like people who think that dragons are real making fun of people who think unicorns are real.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Is this directed at your humble proprietor? This analysis is neither beloved in its contours nor do I expect the outcome to be anything like the righting of all wrongs. Racialized socialism is bad, though, and I hope we’re able to avoid it.
But non-racialised socialism would be awesome.
On the other hand the alt-right/dissident right/white nationalist obsession with race might end up destroying the Right completely. That would be a good thing on balance.Replies: @iffen, @Audacious Epigone
That seems consistent with the idea being made to sound fantastical that consumer prices can go one way while market prices go another.
We got out of that by boosting rates. It was painful in the short term but not devastating because there was far less debt in the economy (public and private) 40 years ago than there is now. Rates of 20% would cause massive bankruptcies and forfeitures across the country, unlike anything that has ever come before.Replies: @Thomm
No. At that time, inflation was high because boomers entered the workforce for the first time, and oil prices were spiking due to Middle East conflicts.
Plus, there was no technological deflation then.
Again, there is nothing less likely in this day and age than a stock market crash causing inflation (when in fact the opposite would happen).
The Fed Funds rate will be 0% long term.
Took my family away from my Carolina home.
Had dreams about the West and started to roam.
Six long months on a dust covered trail.
They say heaven's at the end, but so far it's been hell,
and there's fire on the mountain, lightnin' in the air,
gold in them hills and it's waitin' for me there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uMWbZj-gWgReplies: @Charles Pewitt
Fire On The Mountain by the Marshall Tucker Band is perhaps the best country and western song ever written or performed or created.
This Ol‘ Cowboy by the Marshall Tucker Band is an excellent display of musicianship and musical craft.
Don’t forget Talking Heads and their two country and western songs — People Like Us and The Big Country.
Hank Williams III live from Scotland is some damn good live music too.
I hate boring globalizer puke corporate country music, and upon assuming power in the USA, I will take righteous revenge upon the music business shyster bastards who force the bonehead deracinated White masses to listen to rancid corporate country.
This Ol‘ Cowboy — Marshall Tucker Band:
AGREED! I’m a single-issue voter, and you’ve got my vote now.
Country music has mostly sucked since the early 1980’s. The Marshall Tucker Band, from the upstate, S. Carolina, Spartanburg to be exact, had that steel guitar and all, but how many rock bands had a flute player? Name one more for me as a test of your rock knowledge, Charles. NOBODY else chime in – LET CHARLES DO THIS!)
Yes, they could rock too. Great long instrumental ending here – Marshall Tucker’s best:
Not sure of your point there, but anyhoo:
Do you believe that the future state of the economy can be reliably and consistently predicted/projected by “investment advisors” and similar [or yourself], by using charts,graphs,figures etc. etc.?
If so, why?
Regards,onebornfree
My cop out: Sure, they can be reliably predicted--but nobody knows how to!Replies: @Onebornfree, @Achmed E. Newman
No, not really. But if you hang out on some of the really loony alt-right blogs (like Vox Day’s) you’ll find that the economic collapse that will fix everything is an absolute article of faith, along with the Civil War 2.0 and Reconquisata 2.0 delusions. You’ll find those delusions among many commenters here on UR as well.
Racialised anything is bad. That’s why I dislike the alt-right/dissident right/white nationalist obsession with race. It’s unhealthy and destructive.
But non-racialised socialism would be awesome.
On the other hand the alt-right/dissident right/white nationalist obsession with race might end up destroying the Right completely. That would be a good thing on balance.
Without regard to race, government ownership of the economic structures would be a very bad thing.
If you're hanging around at UR and Vox Popoli, race will indeed feature heavily in what you read, posts and comments. But in the corporate media it is absolutely never addressed in anything more than a cartoonish who? whom? way.Replies: @iffen
“But non-racialised socialism would be awesome.”:
“Regards”oneonfree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxzJGgox_E
"Regards"oneonfreeReplies: @dfordoom
As long as libertarians disagree with me I know I’m on the right track!
“As long as libertarians disagree with me I know I’m on the right track!”
Laugh.
They will however string the process along as far as they can until they can hook some nibble to reinvigorate their claims, no matter times or in how many ways you answer their press . . . in their minds you never answered the question. One can pile a mountain of data to support your answers to their presses . . .
they simply blink and and claim your avoiding the issue, have some blinded loyalty, don’t understand their point of view, your not listening, your deliberately distorting their question . . . and like a freight train without breaks they will miss turns and asides that might be areas of partial agreement – because grasping nuance upends their agenda.
Country music has mostly sucked since the early 1980's. The Marshall Tucker Band, from the upstate, S. Carolina, Spartanburg to be exact, had that steel guitar and all, but how many rock bands had a flute player? Name one more for me as a test of your rock knowledge, Charles. NOBODY else chime in - LET CHARLES DO THIS!)
Yes, they could rock too. Great long instrumental ending here - Marshall Tucker's best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li-7vCagtxwReplies: @Charles Pewitt
Jethro Tull?
But non-racialised socialism would be awesome.
On the other hand the alt-right/dissident right/white nationalist obsession with race might end up destroying the Right completely. That would be a good thing on balance.Replies: @iffen, @Audacious Epigone
But non-racialised socialism would be awesome.
Without regard to race, government ownership of the economic structures would be a very bad thing.
.* I should put it this way: The NOMINAL amounts may be paid, but after inflation has made a Happy Meal cost 87 bucks, in reality, the money won't be paid.Replies: @Pheasant
Thank you for these exchanges of comments. You guys have some good insights.
As in are technicals useful or are fundamentals the only things that really matter? My answer is pretty standard–the shorter the time horizon, the more important the former is and viceversa.
My cop out: Sure, they can be reliably predicted–but nobody knows how to!
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/Replies: @Audacious Epigone
But non-racialised socialism would be awesome.
On the other hand the alt-right/dissident right/white nationalist obsession with race might end up destroying the Right completely. That would be a good thing on balance.Replies: @iffen, @Audacious Epigone
Agree emphatically with the celebration of these things, like Joker or Kefka fantasizing about watching the world burn. I do thing a real paradigm shift is coming, though. The neo-liberal can’t go on forever.
If you’re hanging around at UR and Vox Popoli, race will indeed feature heavily in what you read, posts and comments. But in the corporate media it is absolutely never addressed in anything more than a cartoonish who? whom? way.
That was supposed to skip to 4:49 in, sorry.
If you're hanging around at UR and Vox Popoli, race will indeed feature heavily in what you read, posts and comments. But in the corporate media it is absolutely never addressed in anything more than a cartoonish who? whom? way.Replies: @iffen
But in the corporate media it is absolutely never addressed in anything more than a cartoonish who? whom? way.
Many are sincere blank slatists.
Some have doubts in the back of their mind, but like doom, they just push it back and refuse to actually “think about it” because the possibility that it’s true is just too defeating and horrible to think about.
Most are pure SJWs which means they are good and we are evil; no need to think about much other than how to win.
My cop out: Sure, they can be reliably predicted--but nobody knows how to!Replies: @Onebornfree, @Achmed E. Newman
“Sure, they can be reliably predicted–but nobody knows how to!”
So wouldn’t it be more accurate for you to have said:”A Crash Might Be Coming- But Then Again,It Might Not”, [or Similar] 🤪
Regards,onebornfree
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/
My cop out: Sure, they can be reliably predicted--but nobody knows how to!Replies: @Onebornfree, @Achmed E. Newman
As Peak Stupidity discussed in “Technical” Trading – The stupid you’ll always have with you., the term “technical” as used by money people means just about the opposite of what it means when actual technical people (scientists/engineers) use it. An excerpt:
Notice that the financial people will always explain VERY WELL the reasons for the rises and falls of prices of this, that, and the other. Unfortunately, they never tell you those nice explanations in the morning, or anytime BEFORE the damn market closes! It’s because they are making it up as they go along.
In the short run, you make money via inside information. In the long run, if you are wise, I guess you MAY have an idea of what will happen. A financial crash due to America’s finances being worse than that of a low-class hooker on a Rodeo Drive shopping spree, is a given. I don’t need an MBA for that one.
Thank you, Pheasant. I spent a lot of time reading Zerohedge back in the day and also Ron Paul stuff and I ended up learning something. It helps that the threads under this particular blogger’s posts are fairly civil.
They were all wrong.
All economic approaches will fail miserably if elites and average folks focus their attention on gaming the system.
Since our demographics are relentlessly driving the US towards a low trust society, none of this stuff will matter--the economy will be a debacle regardless of what public policy is chosen.
In a low trust society everyone screams and points fingers at everyone else, and there are no adults at the table.
Sound familiar?Replies: @Anon, @Beckow, @Charlesz Martel
I have been interested in the link between race and economics for over 40 years. Very little has been written about it.
I use “race”, in this instance, as a proxy for culture, as there is considerable overlap. But there is very little published about a numerical rating system that grades different groups on high-trust vs low-trust societies, and our current mantra insists any differences are cultural, not genetic. We extrapolate from our experiences with European immigration from 100-140 years ago, and assume tbis will be true of all racial groups, despite an ever-growing body of evidence that it won’t be, and already isn’t.
“Hispanics are natural conservatives!” claims the ever-dwindling G.O.P., foolishly conflating a Catholic primarily rural culture with an economically conservative New England Yankee culture.
Good luck with that.
There was an article in Wilmot Robertson’s magazine, Instauration, in1975 on economics and race. One of the issues raised was an example from Adam Smith’s pin factory in “The Wealth of Nations”.
Basically, if specialization of labor doubles output, and society therefore is enriched with twice the number of pins at the same labor cost, it’s a win-win for all concerned.
But tbe equations also show another option, which was not much tbought about in an early industrializing society.
Why not work half the hours for the same pay and have twice the leisure time?
Society will have tbe same amount of pins, but everyone gets to go fishing a lot more.
There are lots of apocryphal stories about this idea. In Desi Arnaz’s autobiography, “A Book”, at the end he recounts a story about how he loved to go fishing in Baja on a boat, and lamented to the Captain that he had to go back to work tomorrow. The Captain asks “why?”, and Desi explains he has to earn money to afford this annual vacation treat. The Captain comments at the end that he (the Captain) does this (fishing) full time.
There are many versions of this story, sometimes the questioner asks what’s the point of time-saving technology -“What does he do with the time he saves?”
Increasingly, the answer in the West is Internet Porn and Video Games.
Way to go, guys.
Anyway, worth considering is that the modern U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending- wants not needs. And the U.S. is the greatest marketing economy by far- we invented modern marketing.
And the whole point of marketing is to make the consumer unhappy, unless he goes out and buys more stuff. And a bigger house to put it in.
Think about this. One of our greatest achievements as a culture is to make our people unhappy workaholics.
We laugh at “shiftless blacks”, with sneakers, weed, and Malt Liquor, lots of free and easy sex, fancy rims and basketball.
Yet we work ourselves into an early grave to provide tbese things for them.
Do they appear unhappy to you?
How much of this difference is racial, how much is cultural?
And in a country of increasingly competitive racial groups, we are surprised at the breaking down of trust and our economic system that requires it? If my neighbor is not like me, why shouldn’t I game the system? He’s certainly doing tbe same to me!
I had my first food-stamp paid-for steak last night, at a friend’s house.
It tasted just like the ones I pay for at the same grocery store.
Why not?
Food for tbought (pardon the pun).
http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyreports.blogspot.com/Replies: @Audacious Epigone
… yes.