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On August 01 2020 09:00 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2020 08:53 Nyxisto wrote:
tech stock rally in the US looks increasingly divorced from reality and honestly looks more like a general weakness in other sectors plus plenty of cheap capital is just flooding to the one place where investors still expect outsized returns. Not really sure how sustainable this is. Doesn't only apply to software giants but also stock like Tesla. Tesla basically has quadrupled its evaluation up from March based on... what? Tangentially having the most viable plan to escape earth? In other news the Unemployment Boost has lapsed and the Senate is celebrating with another vacation after having just returned from one for a ~week.
"Marxism in the Asteroid Belt" is a good paper title.
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There's a lot of money and not a lot of value floating around, which leads people to buy anything that looks even marginally enticing at absurd prices. Gold, tech, story stocks, you name it. Valuations of 1500 times earnings (let alone companies that have no chance of ever being profitable) are not uncommon.
There isn't much value to go around, so "value" stocks are in the shitter.
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It sounds like American industry is just implicitly held up by the "too big to fail doctrine." Anything that would cause a big collapse in a major employer will be bailed out by the federal government. So your investment has some protection against major loss, and indexes bake that into downside risk.
Stock market valuations are too high for all that's going on right now related to covid, particularly airline travel and tourism.
In a more humorous note, MSNBC really flubbed the "annualized" number for US GDP contraction. Anchor Brian Williams claimed the economy fell “a staggering 32.9 percent. Put another way, we’ve lost a third of the value of goods and services produced by our mighty country." Anchor Chris Cuomo said "Lots of countries are dealing with COVID, right? Why are we down almost a third of our GDP growth, and yet Germany was down 10 percent?"
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On August 01 2020 10:38 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2020 09:00 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 01 2020 08:53 Nyxisto wrote:
tech stock rally in the US looks increasingly divorced from reality and honestly looks more like a general weakness in other sectors plus plenty of cheap capital is just flooding to the one place where investors still expect outsized returns. Not really sure how sustainable this is. Doesn't only apply to software giants but also stock like Tesla. Tesla basically has quadrupled its evaluation up from March based on... what? Tangentially having the most viable plan to escape earth? In other news the Unemployment Boost has lapsed and the Senate is celebrating with another vacation after having just returned from one for a ~week. "Marxism in the Asteroid Belt" is a good paper title.
There are books written about that topic. Science fiction, but still, your paper would score low points for novelty if any of the reviewers had read The Expanse.
Anyway, horribly off topic, so I'll shut up now.
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On August 01 2020 10:38 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2020 09:00 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 01 2020 08:53 Nyxisto wrote:
tech stock rally in the US looks increasingly divorced from reality and honestly looks more like a general weakness in other sectors plus plenty of cheap capital is just flooding to the one place where investors still expect outsized returns. Not really sure how sustainable this is. Doesn't only apply to software giants but also stock like Tesla. Tesla basically has quadrupled its evaluation up from March based on... what? Tangentially having the most viable plan to escape earth? In other news the Unemployment Boost has lapsed and the Senate is celebrating with another vacation after having just returned from one for a ~week. "Marxism in the Asteroid Belt" is a good paper title.
If you ever intend to write it please do seek my permission as it’s the title of my hideously unlistenable jazz fusion band.
In other news Trump was again talking about shutting down TikTok via executive order. From what I’ve read there are serious privacy concerns over what it does under the hood that go beyond anti-Chinese hysteria or what have you.
That said I’d thought the course of action being proposed was a US company buying out their US operations to bring them into compliance?
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On August 01 2020 20:27 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2020 10:38 IgnE wrote:On August 01 2020 09:00 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 01 2020 08:53 Nyxisto wrote:
tech stock rally in the US looks increasingly divorced from reality and honestly looks more like a general weakness in other sectors plus plenty of cheap capital is just flooding to the one place where investors still expect outsized returns. Not really sure how sustainable this is. Doesn't only apply to software giants but also stock like Tesla. Tesla basically has quadrupled its evaluation up from March based on... what? Tangentially having the most viable plan to escape earth? In other news the Unemployment Boost has lapsed and the Senate is celebrating with another vacation after having just returned from one for a ~week. "Marxism in the Asteroid Belt" is a good paper title. If you ever intend to write it please do seek my permission as it’s the title of my hideously unlistenable jazz fusion band. In other news Trump was again talking about shutting down TikTok via executive order. From what I’ve read there are serious privacy concerns over what it does under the hood that go beyond anti-Chinese hysteria or what have you. That said I’d thought the course of action being proposed was a US company buying out their US operations to bring them into compliance?
That is still the expected course of action...
Trump bans the Chinese TikTok, MS buys the international portion of Tiktok and then everything is fine. Its mostly about what MS will pay for it, what exactly is in the deal for them and how to seperate it from their current operator, where Tiktok is deeply enrooted
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Trump's planning on banning TikTok. He gave a statement to a bunch of reporters.
I don't think banning TikTok is wrong, but I doubt he's going to do it correctly. Other countries are banning tiktok (Japan), which causes me to think some level of paranoia is justified.
I think it's the right action being done for the wrong reasons (someone probably convinced him that they ruined his Tulsa rally).
Via CNN correspondent (had the most detail):
edit: woops, didn't read the last two posts. Here's some additional detail anyways : Trump seems to say he'll ban it even if MS buys it
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On August 01 2020 23:31 JimmiC wrote:
How does banning it in the US work? Can people just not download new versions and updates or will it remove the app from all phone registered in the Us?
Don't know how Trump will do it.
I believe in the past when an app has been banned it has been done like this : force google/apple to remove it from their appstores, and then force ISPs to block the app's traffic. The economic part could be banning US banks/companies from sending money to TikTok for ads or purchases.
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Anyone else troubled by the fact that, as the virus situation in the US looks about as bad as it's ever been, it doesn't look like there's any real push to do anything about it? Recording very high infection and death rates, we just stepped off the unemployment cliff, and as far as I can tell the general national mood is pretty much just business as usual. I'm just waiting to hear something akin to "Americans are just going to have to learn to live with the coronavirus" from some high-ranking political figure or other.
As nice as this facade might be, it can only end in disaster. And however bad things may look right now, there's absolutely room for it to get much worse.
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On August 02 2020 02:43 LegalLord wrote:
Anyone else troubled by the fact that, as the virus situation in the US looks about as bad as it's ever been, it doesn't look like there's any real push to do anything about it? Recording very high infection and death rates, we just stepped off the unemployment cliff, and as far as I can tell the general national mood is pretty much just business as usual. I'm just waiting to hear something akin to "Americans are just going to have to learn to live with the coronavirus" from some high-ranking political figure or other.
As nice as this facade might be, it can only end in disaster. And however bad things may look right now, there's absolutely room for it to get much worse. I'm 99% sure that "just live with it" has already been said.
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On August 01 2020 03:39 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2020 23:49 RvB wrote:On July 31 2020 15:30 LegalLord wrote:On July 31 2020 14:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 31 2020 12:58 LegalLord wrote:
Question for someone more attentive to the report than I am: that >30% drop in GDP in the US, does that lowered GDP include the money spent by the government as stimulus on checks, unemployment, etc? Fed loan money? I know "government spending" is generally considered to be a portion of GDP but in practice the calculation has been really tricky for me to parse. That would be really bad if it was counted and still that bad right? I mean it's really unfathomably bad already but worse? Indeed. And I admit that my understanding of GDP is a little bit fuzzy since it's fairly complex to calculate and not something I've looked at in a while, but my expectation would be that we'd see GDP include: 1. The stimulus check 2. Unemployment, including the boosted one 3. Salaries bankrolled by the paycheck protection programs 4. Probably NOT the giant stack of loans handed out by Congress and the Fed, but maybe some portion of this is a contributor? The numbers basically say, this quarter we only had $4 trillion of economy instead of $6 trillion. Maybe the reality is that we have a trillion less than that, but we just borrowed the difference. And yeah, right there is at least one data point to suggest GDP as an imperfect measure of "the economy." But it's far more real than other measures, such as the stock market, that have often been used to claim economic health. GDP only measures market prices of all final goods and services. Transfers such as unemployment benefits aren't (directly) included into GDP. Only when the recipient spends the transfers it's included (as consumption). Loans and financial transactions aren't included as well since they don't represent production but are the way to finance said production. While not untrue, this isn't particularly helpful. Some amount of the stimulus will spill into GDP, but I'm less interested in a waffling "some parts of this will affect GDP, some won't" non-answer than a ballpark of how much it actually might do so. Mechanically, it looks like they'd calculate it via the expenditure approach, so there would be parts of consumption, maybe investment, probably government expenditure that come from the stimulus, and pump the GDP. Those four items above, plus contracts awarded in a very "jobs program" fashion in the course of the pandemic, would have "some" impact. But I'm less interested in knowing merely that it's "some" impact and more concerned with what that impact actually is. Probably in the hundreds of billions juicing the GDP, when all is said and done, as a result of trillions in stimulus. Looking to try to get a better sense of the story than that, though.
Oh and I did find at least one answer on this. No real source for the math, but a tidbit in this Forbes piece mentions a GDP number from stimulus:
As much as the economy has been weak, economic stimulus has been rapid and vast. Consumers have received stimulus checks. The unemployed have received larger payments. The Fed has supplied liquidity to the market in spades, and corporations have been able to raise debt. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has provided support to smaller businesses. That all amounts to around 14% of GDP. That’s a big number.
Someone might want to check my US-only GDP math, but I believe that if we were to exclude that stimulus from GDP, we'd be looking at an unprecedented "65% GDP drop on an annualized basis." Good stuff.
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Is this a perfect storm in your eyes for the inevitable collapse of the system LL? Incompetent administration, financial instability teetering on collapse, and pandemic removing the veil of civil/social injustice?
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Remarkable:cnn covering "operation legend" and even trump from a neutral/positive angle.
Quoting some statistics about the increased crime rates in chicago during the past 2 months and a short video of trump saying chicago is a mess. Not a single negative comment about the operation or trump which is highly unusual, It was a short and factual item.
They didnt report much on the deployment of federal troops thus far and when they did it was mostly from the angle of the mayors who didnt agree with it and said it made things worse. Now they have changed their tone and it seems they are supportive of the whole operation.
Maybe in the runup towards the election the extremes on both sides are moving a bit towards the centre again,realizing the extreme positions dont do well in a general election. Trump in relation to the epidemic and the "left" in relation to law and order (i do realize cnn isnt really left wing btw,but in the mainstream us media they are one of the more liberal channels)
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
I’m curious why certain forms of crime wouldn’t be increasing in recent times. How far can people stretch the combo of a stimulus cheque and no rent protections?
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On August 02 2020 03:42 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Is this a perfect storm in your eyes for the inevitable collapse of the system LL? Incompetent administration, financial instability teetering on collapse, and pandemic removing the veil of civil/social injustice?
Very much a loaded question, but I'll bite.
It's very vague what "collapse of the system" means in practical terms, so I'd rather talk to something more concrete. In this case I think said concrete concept would be "systemic failure of the US economic system" - which, yes, I'd say seems to be playing out in front of us and has seen an impressive number of things go wrong all at once. There's been a very powerful effort to bury the problem over the past decade plus on the part of the US and its most important international vassals, but the coronavirus presented a shock so severe that it becomes impossible to use finance games to bury the true depth of economic and political illness in the system. It might be a once in a lifetime event, but those do happen every lifetime, and as it just so happened the US is so badly positioned to handle the problem that disaster is inevitable.
An effective response to the pandemic isn't something that just happens or doesn't; competence or lack thereof is generally a very systemic issue. While I'm not exactly certain how Obama would have handled it, the Trump response was about as American as it could be: "oh no, we have to save the economy!" The core of which has been decaying for a long time now, but which has benefited greatly from the unique advantage of being based on the dollar and has masked systemic collapse with decades of stimulus. But it's not even remotely just one person making a bad choice, it's an entire country collectively misreading the situation because their priorities were wrong.
The current situation certainly gives a lot more teeth and specificity to the general feeling (largely entirely justified) over the past many years that the alleged economic triumph is largely illusory. Looking back at the situation since 2008, there has been a lot of times where it looked like things could collapse but they didn't; it's becoming clear that that's not because that was the wrong assessment of the situation, but because there's always a bailout. Now, there doesn't seem to be enough bailout to go around anymore, since everything went wrong at once.
In short, I'd say a "coronavirus depression" seems quite likely, as this virus seems to be as effective at killing off economies with preexisting conditions as humans with the same.
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Well, Obama had an organized pandemic response team set up, and warned Trump that we were probably due to encounter one during his term. He literally called it. Trump's response was to disband this organization. There are significant material differences in how the two approached this situation, and Trump's allergy-like aversion to anything Obama did has and is costing thousands of American lives, and threatening to destroy America as we know it. All without imaginary caravans!
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On August 01 2020 23:10 Nevuk wrote:Trump's planning on banning TikTok. He gave a statement to a bunch of reporters. I don't think banning TikTok is wrong, but I doubt he's going to do it correctly. Other countries are banning tiktok (Japan), which causes me to think some level of paranoia is justified. I think it's the right action being done for the wrong reasons (someone probably convinced him that they ruined his Tulsa rally). Via CNN correspondent (had the most detail): https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/1289389354947710976edit: woops, didn't read the last two posts. Here's some additional detail anyways : Trump seems to say he'll ban it even if MS buys it
Gotta stick it to the "millenials".
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Obama's response would have been better, that is pretty much just a fact. But even with a good response the US economy was going to get hit with a big hammer. If anything with a proper response the economic damage might have been bigger with a real lockdown across large parts of the US rather then the half-arsed measures that were taken now.
I'd be very hesitant to say this will cause a collapse of the US economy tho simply because so much of the world depends on it, its the ultimate case of 'to big to fail'.
What this will do it further destroy the lower and middle classes. A group that still hadn't really recovered from 2008 and is now getting hammered again.
Unemployment is through the roof and if another 'jobless recovery' happens what is going to happen to all those people with the lack of safety nets in the US?
And if its such a big fight to get a renewal of unemployment benefits now, while the US is in full viral bloom what is going to happen when case numbers start to trend down (eventually)? Millions and millions will still be unemployed and I highly suspect they will be left without government support. If Republicans can't decide on how to help people while they are in charge and will carry the blame, how bad is this going to go when they can freely blame the Democrats in January? (if Trump wins re-election the Corona aftermath will be the least of the US's issues).
So while the economy might recover with stockmarkets putting value on hot air and big corporations profiting off of a glut of workers desperate for any sort of job no matter how ridiculously low the pay, the working and middle class might aswell end up living in a 2nd world country.
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Biden delayed his VP pick announcement until at least next week but many have pointed out that his VP will be assumed to be the next front runner for president in 2024.
I assume Warren would be satisfactory to most but are there others he's considering that Democrats would rally behind and not campaign on stopping Ted Cruz or whatever?
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EPT
