Financial topics

[aeden]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswgls

Higher tax zones will not even be a speed bump when these village idiots go broke and are left behind.
This insanity cannot be paid for without crushing taxes and cartel inflation since the consumer always pays.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02- ... ew-dealers
Illinois is moving to appropriation to bolster pension numbers like a Locusts cycle to be unleashed.
They are mindless locusts who cannot even begin to fathom the bottom will rot out under the feet
supplanted by the blue flags.
http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 130#p44152
as the watching Kommissars Handlers pull up the ladder as the Balkanized village idiots they will be
found as. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfTdzoO4ic

They are already screwed and they have no idea how bad the spy puts annihilated them as year end.

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-history-methods

thread:
http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... ion#p40810

[Higgenbotham]

Putin to U.S.: I'm ready for another Cuban Missile crisis if you want one

Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the United States is foolish enough to want one and that his country currently has the edge when it comes to a first nuclear strike.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russ ... SKCN1QA1A3

[John]

> My interpretation of what you're saying is that since nobody over
> 60 can get hired, that anyone over 60 is worthless.

I can't speak for all industries, but that's certainly true for
software engineering. It was partially true in the last decade, but
it's really accelerated in the last five years. Gen-Xers managing
software development claim that they value "passion" not experience,
and they consider Boomers to be almost completely worthless, no
matter what experience they have.

> I was in a retirement community recently and it was a little
> depressing because I got the feeling that people move there to
> die. In fact, that was stated in so many words. Houses are always
> coming up for sale, either because someone dies or has to go to an
> assisted care facility.

What you're feeling is absolutely true. Retired people are now
considered to be compleely worthless.

> But I never had that feeling in the distant past, maybe because
> retirement was thought of as a time to finally get an adequate,
> deserved pension and to smell the roses after a lifetime of
> diligent, useful work. But there's a cloud over that now. The
> future of all retirement as an end stage of life is uncertain. As
> you implied, it seems like the best most can look forward to is
> employment for as long as it holds out.

Once again, what you're feeling is absolutely true. You may recall in
the 1990s that McDonald's used to run TV ads where they bragged about
hiring retired people to do part time jobs selling hamburgers and
such. You would never see an ad anything like that today.

And I've told older people who are thinking of changing jobs: Whatever
you do, don't give up your job, because you'll never get another job
as long as you live. Older people today are literally completely
worthless.

You've seen what CH86 says about Boomers in this forum. He repeatedly
makes it clear how contemptuous he is about Boomers, and that he
considers them worthless. Well, CH86 is the mainstream view today.

This is why the suicide rate is going up. Why would anyone want to
stay alive if he feels worthless? Staying alive simply doesn't make
sense.

> My guess is that you have some social security, but not enough to
> maintain your present lifestyle. You would have to change your
> location and your lifestyle to a lower standard. One idea that
> comes to mind is, since you have a web presence and seem like a
> fairly diligent, reliable person, would be to be a caretaker for a
> property that someone lives in for part of the year. I think
> that's one type of job where an older person may have a leg up on
> candidates that are under the age of 60. There are probably other
> types of jobs where an older person would be considered an asset
> that other forum members could list. Maybe an organization like
> AARP could provide some assistance in that regard.

> When I was a kid, we would go out to my grandfather's farm. The
> farm had a small house with no indoor plumbing or electricity (my
> best recollection, anyway). The house was rented to a man who was
> about 90 years old and I think my grandfather charged him
> something like 50 bucks a month. He may have let him live there
> for free. With the large farming operations, that type of thing
> would be more rare, but I know it still exists. In fact, around
> 2012 I read about a Kansas rancher who lets a woman live in a
> house for free.

Well, that's an interesting suggestion, requiring several things
beyond my skill set. But if such a situation arose today, I'm sure
the owner of such a house would want to rent it out to a young married
couple, rather than to a worthless older person.

> I think you should try to hold out until the generation crisis
> hits with full force. I don't think it's too far off.

Unfortunately, "holding out" by not paying rent, food, electricity,
etc., can make your life much worse than useless. When you run
out of money, then you run out of money. Period.

> Taking advantage of others is entirely what the US capitalist
> system in its current form has degenerated to, in my view. Many US
> capitalists convince themselves that they are filling free market
> needs, but most of that convincing amounts to delusional thinking,
> again, in my view, and delusional thinking is not good for anyone
> who engages in it.

> For example, junk food is just the art of packaging up crap and
> making it look enticing, then convincing fools to buy it with a
> huge markup. To some extent, there's a market need due to the long
> hours and long commutes many folks have. But I could never
> convince myself that purveying fast food as it exists in the US
> and advertised night after night on television is doing anyone a
> favor.

Well, you're paying for "fast" service. You can walk into McDonald's,
choose from a menu of dozens of items, and get your order within
minutes. I know that I get annoyed if I have to wait more than five
minutes or so. Providing that quick service costs money in terms of
redundant equipment and labor.

As I said above, CH86's contemptuous view of Boomers is mainstream
today. Also mainstream today, thanks to the stupidest people around,
including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is that
everything should be free and everyone should receive an income even
if they're unwilling to work. Increasingly, the world is being run by
people who are obviously total idiots.

Oh, and McDonald's employees should receive $15/hr for a $5/hr job --
so that's what you're paying for at McDonald's. Once the bots take
over all the jobs at McDonald's, the prices should come down.

[Higgenbotham]

The stock market may have peaked last night (the e-mini S&P futures hit 2798 last evening) and turned over. It is currently trading 2774 with a low of 2769.

The story about Putin isn't making the rounds yet.

I'm still expecting an absolutely massive generational stock market crash. I expect it to be the biggest crash in the history of the world.

Last year I posted on the importance of 2800. The past 2 weeks I had expected the stock market to make a moonshot toward 2800 and not get there. But what I mean by that is to approach it in a more distant fashion, something like 2760 or 2770. The greed and tenacity of the bulls took me by surprise. In fact, it is really frightening to see the bulls so tenacious and that's an indication in my opinion that the crash will be very severe.

Americans are extremely deluded and a massive wakeup call is coming.

[John]

> I feel the screws are starting to turn in a hurry.

> Lately, I feel like I'm viewed as an ATM by virtually everyone I
> know, everyone from close relatives to people I've spent 2 days
> with my entire life. I'm expecting a distant relative or friend I
> haven't talked to in years to pop up at any moment and ask me for
> money.

> I don't think I posted it, but I read last week that a record
> number of Americans are more than 90 days late on their car loans,
> more than at the previous peak in 2010 after the "Great
> Recession".

> And I recently found out that a cousin died last year at age 63.

> There is poverty and death all around me.

> Not only that, but there are more and more retired people every
> day. I spent some time talking to the retired people in that
> community. There seemed to be a feeling of resignation. Property
> taxes are out of sight and other costs are escalating. The future
> doesn't look good for retired people. I was walking through the
> mall the other day and a retired man was loudly discussing with a
> stranger the fact that he cannot live on his retirement at this
> point.

What you're capturing here is more than a feeling of resignation.
It's a feeling of desperation. I know that I feel desperate,
and I know several other people who feel desperate.

And it's not just older people who feel desperate. The suicide
rate among 15-24 yo's is surging.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/01/12 ... -the-rise/

Why are young people committing suicide? According to the article,
"Most of the individuals have an underlying mental health condition
that has not been diagnosed."

That's funny.

The actual reasons are probably that if a young person's parents
have lost their jobs and will run out of money, the young person
doesn't want to be a burden -- or the cause of her father
committing suicide.

I've often mentioned in articles that people in the Silent generation
in the 1950s never complained about anything, were happy to have jobs,
and the women were happy to have a home and be supported by a husband.
These people had grown up in the 1930s, when they had to depend on
soup kitchens, and everyone knew friends who had to live under
bridges.

We're now seeing the same level of increasing desperation
affecting people like me and everyone else.

"There is poverty and death all around me." -- Me too.

[Higgenbotham]

This last run up in the stock market was desperation too.

I've said it repeatedly, but the Fed didn't do anyone any favors. The Fed's actions were long term destructive because what was needed was a lower cost structure. Those on fixed income can't afford to live and an average wage doesn't cover the escalating costs because the high cost structure does not allow for productive work.

We need deflation. Deflation is good, or at least the best choice out of the hard choices available.

But if we get the deflation now, it will be very quick and acute and people won't have as as much time to adjust as if it was allowed to happen it back in 2000 or 2008 when it was due.

The Fed's thinking and actions were 97th percentile, in my opinion.

[Higgenbotham]

From 2009 and 2010. It took a lot longer than I thought for the chickens to come home to roost, but it appears they are coming soon.

I changed what I wrote above to "Cutting Consumption" because that's the first step in the process of reducing the trade deficit. The second step will be to produce and sell more of our own products. While harder than cutting consumption, that shouldn't be too difficult once the deflationary jolt hits and the cost structure comes down. In the not too distant past, Americans were very good at producing high quality goods, much better than the junk we import from overseas nowadays. Once the cost structure comes down, producing in America and buying American will be a no brainer. We just need the idiots in New York and Washington to get with the program. If they don't get with the program, my guess is that they will soon face serious consequences.

Fundamentally, this economy is a mess, in my opinion, because the cost structure has been too high due to its parasitic nature and a 10% or even 20% cut in costs is not enough to be worth talking about. They have to be drastically reduced if the US is to pull out of this and maintain leadership. It's too hard to start a business without getting eaten alive by taxes, bureaucrats, lawyers, and other parasites who don't produce anything. There are plenty of opportunities that are ready to emerge and plenty of entrepreneurs waiting on the sidelines to take advantage of them if the government and the Fed will give it up and let the economy crash so as to starve out the parasites and wring the excess costs out of the system. Of course, doing so would put the clamp down on the government and the Fed itself and what is happening is a desperate attempt to mantain "business as usual". In the meantime, stocks are being bid up because there is nothing to compete with them as it is too expensive to start a new business in this environment, so no bank capital gets deployed into lending for new business or expansion of existing business and the reserves just sit.

The cost structure in the US is too high for it to be competitive in most industries. Instead of taking measures to reduce the cost structure, the US used debt to fill the gap. That only increased costs because now there is a debt load to carry. The (incremental) debt is no longer buying enough (incremental) tax revenue to support the interest cost. At best, the government is presently trying to maintain the debt load and grow its way out. This is what I hear the "conservative" politicians saying. Doing this will only cause more industrial base to leave the US and oil prices to rise (to lower peaks), maintaining a vicious boom/bust cycle that leads to the collapse of the US economy. In my opinion, the US has zero ability to grow its way out of this mess. Aging demographics, debt, declining oil production, average to low educational standards, and efficient competitors will make it impossible. The US economy was powerful but it was never efficient. Americans can't seem to comprehend the concepts of cost savings and efficiency. They think they understand these concepts but they don't at all.

[Higgenbotham]

Tariffs aren't the answer. The answer is to start by "Cutting Consumption". That will reduce the trade deficit. Once consumption is cut, deflation starts. Then the next step is to "Get Productive".

All of the focus on the US-China trade talks is irrelevant, except for the part about them stealing our technology. But talking about that won't solve the problem. So all of the talk is noise.

[Higgenbotham]

There's been recent news about both sides of the aisle wanting to stop "stock buybacks". The reason corporations are buying back stock is there is nothing better to invest in. There is nothing better to invest in because the cost structure is too high and capital therefore can't be deployed to start or expand new business. But rather than creating an environment where business can deploy capital, politicians want to prevent them from deploying any capital at all.

[John]

The S&P 500 price/earnings ratio is now at 20.05:

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2 ... yield.html

This is astronomically high, since the historic average is
14 (using trailing earnings, or around 8 using mythical
forward earnings).

And yet, the "experts" on cnbc and bloomberg tv say that
p/e ratios are lower than they've been in years -- which is
true since they used to be around 25 two years ago.

I guess you could ascribe this attitude to "desperation."
I break these "experts" down into two groups.

• The experts in one group understand what's going on, but
  are simply lying, and know that they're lying.
• The experts in the second group are too stupid to know what's
  going on, so they don't believe they're lying.

I haven't decided which is worse: Being a crook, or being so stupid
that you don't know you're a crook.