Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Cool Breeze wrote: Fri Oct 20, 2023 3:56 pm Added to TLT, dude keeps getting crushed.

I like aeden in general, he just makes no sense. Admits here he's chasing again, too. teehee

Friday, the 16th was an option expiration day. There was a very bad storm in London and that market closed, which forced more people to seek liquidity in New York. Stocks faced a steady wave of selling. As the close neared, rumors spread that the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, the President’s right hand, might be admitted to the hospital with cancer. The selling intensified and the Dow closed down 108 points, on the low and a new record point drop.

The weekend was a rumormonger’s delight. Nancy was admitted to the hospital. Japan was considering a confiscatory 96% tax on real estate speculation. Germany proposed a change in taxes on some interest rates, which would make U.S. Treasuries unattractive to Germans. Rep. Gephardt was talking about a trade bill that would freeze imports. Treasury Secretary Baker went on a Sunday talk show and openly challenged the Germans on currency. There were even rumors of U.S. planes engaging Iran.

At the time, I was running the floor for PaineWebber. Monday morning I got up well before dawn and saw that Hong Kong was down about 10% and other markets were looking equally weak before their openings. I headed for the NYSE to check on our systems and staffing. I reached out asking the team to get in early.

In late morning there were signs that the markets might begin to stabilize. Then the newly appointed Chairman of the SEC, David Ruder, was intercepted by reporters leaving a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Whatever they asked and whatever he said, it somehow was reported that the markets might have to be halted. Later, he would swear it was a typo but you can’t un-ring a bell. The fear of a halt sent buyers scurrying away. Stocks went into virtual freefall.

The interaction with the futures saw prices melt away. The Dow closed down 508 points. One specialist, who made too good a market, ran out of funds and the firm was sold to Merrill Lynch that very night. At watering hole after watering hole, traders and specialists reported again and again how strained their resources were. Wall Street could not survive another day like this. Luckily, innkeepers, like Harry let them put the drinks on a tab.

What is often lost in the retelling is that the next day, Tuesday, was far more dangerous. It was the day that the wheels almost did come off the locomotive.

The Dow opened up about 200 points Tuesday to a round of cheers on the floor. But, stocks quickly turned lower. The 200 point gain was erased and the Dow went negative, accompanied by an audible gasp on the floor. Soon it was nearing -100 and trading was being halted in several of the Blue Chips that make up the Dow.

Then we learned that several key banks were shutting down the credit lines of market makers and NYSE specialists. The banks feared exposure to an apparently collapsing stock market.

NYSE Chairman Phelan reached out to the recently appointed head of the Fed, Alan Greenspan. Unfortunately, Greenspan was on a plane. Desperate, Phelan called the President of the New York Fed, Gerry Corrigan. He sensed the danger immediately and began calling the banks to reopen the credit lines. They were reluctant but Corrigan ultimately cajoled them. The credit lines were reopened and the halted stocks were reopened. Best of all, the market started to rally and closed higher on the day.

It was an incredible time and the financial system was within hours (and a few phone calls) of an absolute collapse. It was a time I’ll never forget.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 3:03 pm For the Lottery Economy files.

But the impact of the rise of the subscription model on the media has been staggering. It has changed the way that people do business — not just the businesses themselves, but the would-be employees and contractors. Just look at this quote from British journalist Emma Gannon, given to Press Gazette, who has 26,000 subscribers to her lucrative Substack: “One of my passions really is talking about writers being paid fairly — and not just that, but even thriving and making a really good living from writing and creativity — because I think in the past people have often viewed it as a hobby or just a nice to have”.

She credits Substack with offering that — a nice idea, and one, perhaps, that’s easy to imagine at 26,000 subscribers. Certainly, Gannon is not alone in having this experience with Substack, and I imagine it feels liberating for journalists who have previously been constrained by things like “contracts” and “editors”. In its early days, Substack was aggressive in providing its top — partner — writers with economic security: anecdotally I heard that they were offering 1.5x the salary of the magazines/newspapers that they were poaching columnists from.

The question is not “can you make money with Substack?” or “can you find an audience with Substack?” but what the averages are. Substack’s CEO, Hamish McKenzie, has been quoted as putting the number of Substack subscribers at “millions”, which is not hugely helpful. Globally, the figure was pitched at about 500,000 paying subscribers in 2021, according to Nieman Lab. According to Axios there are more than 17,0000 writers running paying Substacks (including mine) and the Top 10 publishers earned more than $25m last year.

Very good, I’m sure. Substack’s own figures also refer to $300m paid out to writers, though that doesn’t claim to be an “annual” figure (as the $25m is). But let’s assume it is, for simplicity’s sake. That leaves $275m to be disbursed between 16,975 writers, which, if shared equally, would be $16,200 a piece. A nice side hustle, if not a living.

But if the Top 10 publishers are making roughly $2.5m a piece, let’s also assume that the rest of the Top 100 (the top 0.59% of Substack paid writers) are making $500,000 on average. Then we lose another $45m and $230m is left to be shared between 16,000 (suddenly the average earning, if distributed equitably, is down to $13,609). You can repeat this exercise as many times as it takes you to realise that the average writer of a paid Substack is earning next to nothing. And probably that means that they’re broadcasting to next to nobody.

While these thoughts were floating around about Substack — which is currently running a fundraising round encouraging writers to invest in the platform — OnlyFans, the UK based membership service for *cough* fans, released its 2022 financials. The headlines were a $5.6bn spend on-site last year, of which the site takes a 20% cut before distributing to creators. Which means roughly $4.5bn was disbursed by OnlyFans to its 3.2m creators (a figure that’s up a staggering 47% from 2021).

Distributed equally across all creators, this would be a mere $1,406 per person. But, like Substack, OnlyFans is, of course, not divided equally. In fact, the inequalities are even more stark. Top earners on OnlyFans can make almost as much as the Top 10 earners on Substack combined. Blac Chyna, rumoured to be the top earner, was said to have made $20m, annually, from the platform. (Other publications claim she makes $20m a month which seems like crazy money, even for softcore pornography).

Again, the point here is that the subscriber side of the creator economy can be hugely lucrative, but the average earnings are almost certainly prohibitively minute. And unlike Substack, unsuccessful creators on OnlyFans don’t just have an archive of inane ramblings to show as evidence of their failed project. Likely, they have, instead, an archive of material which may create personal or professional issues in the future. All for gas money.

https://nickfthilton.medium.com/the-end ... 197f252c6a

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 9:12 pm The author of the report is thinking about the Lottery Economy correctly in my opinion. Substack and OnlyFans are extreme examples of wide income distribution, but the entire economy has devolved to a Lottery Economy. There is the example on a previous page of the engineering student who was doing everything right in the conventional sense but was unable to get hired for an internship. It appeared he was surprised by this, but he shouldn't have been. The correct way to think about getting a college degree in the Lottery Economy is, with elite overproduction, there will not be enough available seats for all degree holders, even for engineers, and the process for who gets those seats will be more random than people would like to think (a pandemic hits the year you graduate, for example). Engineering schools and others will publicize the average starting salary for an engineer at about $80,000 currently. That is not the true average; it is the average for those who fill the available seats. Still, I think the premium for obtaining the degree and getting a seat at the table is enough that placement rates would have to fall below about 30% before kids who are capable would consider not playing the STEM lottery based on monetary considerations alone.

Woman Claims Sleeping With 300 People In 365 Days Is ‘Empowering’

Kay Smythe
News and Commentary Writer
October 17, 2023 12:06 PM ET


A young Australian woman claims she’s slept with 300 people in the space of a single year, according to an article published Tuesday.

Annie Knight is only 26 and has bedded at least 300 different people, according to an interview she did with Australia’s “The Kyle And Jackie O Show.” Knight sleeps with both men and women and meets most of her sexual partners on dating apps. She also has a roster of people she calls when she wants to have messy sex.

“I felt empowered afterward,” she claimed. “Sex makes me feel good. It’s meant to make you feel good.” Knight runs an OnlyFans account, and was fired from her career in marketing after her bosses caught wind of her activities, a lot of which is apparently filmed for fans to view at their leisure.

“The last thing I wanted to do was to get fired if someone found my OnlyFans,” she told another outlet. “There was a list of three reasons why I was fired basically … They said I falsely advised that I had a side business, didn’t ask for permission from the company to run the side business and that I had online pornographic images of myself and crude language that was against company rules,” she stated.