You and my dad were both right...
It feels like more when you're the one paying it.
Moderator: Global Moderator
You and my dad were both right...
I paid for every cent of the cost of the last 3 1/2 years of my college education - junior / senior years for undergraduate and then master degree. I was certainly a lot more motivated having my money on the line.
LOL Vinny. By nature I am an optimist through and through, though for whatever reasons it gets harder to be an optimist as you get older. I don't like it, but my brain does it. I read and listen to a TON of history so the above is my conclusion for sure as to what you need for a semi serious crap hits the fan event.vnatale wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2020 9:46 pm PAGING KBG!!!!!!!!!
Vinny
You need to own enough arable land outright to raise a subsistence level of crops, such as vegetables and fruit. You need sufficient livestock, such as chickens and goats, to provide protein and milk. You need the skills to successfully raise both crops and animals. You need a way to produce sufficient energy for your own needs without the trappings of modern civilization and distribution. You need guns and ammunition, because plenty of people will try to take your crops and livestock from you by force. Finally, you need neighbors who will protect and defend each other, because no matter how well armed you are, there is always someone with more and bigger guns, and everyone needs to sleep.
A couple of issues I see:vnatale wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2020 9:40 pm On the next page he is loudly singing to THIS choir (of one!)…
VInny
Chapter 5
The Folly of Avoidance
Normally in a book of this sort you would find a discussion of how you can shield yourself from the certain-to-occur disaster. Some authors would advise you to buy gold, others to invest in foreign currencies, and still others to engage in a diversified strategy involving common stocks, bonds, and currencies across the globe, along with various commodities.
You will find no such recommendations here, for the simple reason that none of these strategies will prove effective to protect your wealth if our society does not change course. If you are one of the few who has the ability to pull on the levers of power in government, you might be able to become a pick-and-shovel seller in a sea of ever-increasing and unstable pyramid schemes. But unless you can amass billions and disperse it all over the world—and have the means to get to any of those locations on a moment’s notice and abandon those assets in places inhospitable to you—it won’t matter.
The issues we face as a nation are not limited to the United States. Since the dollar is currently the world’s reserve currency, if we hit the wall in the United States, economic repercussions around the world will be extremely severe. Becoming an expatriate may appear alluring, but it is fraught with danger; foreign nations are likely to become extraordinarily hostile to Americans, should we cause their economies to collapse as a result of our foibles. Large amounts of money can buy security, but do you really wish to live behind a barbed-wire fence and 10-foot-high concrete wall for the rest of your life? Travel to Jamaica and drive a few kilometers away from the tourist traps where cruise lines come into port, and you will see exactly what sort of fortress-style structure you will have to construct to be reasonably secure.
Likewise, if you follow the advice of many to buy gold, and the dollar collapses, you might believe you have successfully sheltered your wealth. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the government is unlikely to again attempt confiscating gold as it did in the 1930s, it is trivial to slap a 95 percent capital gains tax on the metal and demand that you document your purchase price for tax purposes. If the government takes such an action, your stash of $10,000 per ounce of gold turns into $500 in your pocket. The choice to deal in the black market will exist, but the risk of going to prison for tax evasion is hardly an attractive option.
For this reason, what you will find here are policy paths forward for our nation. These suggestions will not be painless for anyone in the Unites States, and there are powerful financial interests that align against all of them. They are designed to return the financial markets to a place that functions as a means of clearing payments while matching buyers and sellers, stripping the ability of various interests to blow Ponzi-style bubbles. They will require recognition of the insolvency of major financial institutions and government programs that have in fact been bankrupt for years but are trading on the premise of ever-increasing amounts of debt.
The core of where our economy is today and where we have traveled from has come about due to the Wimpy syndrome. We began by eating a single hamburger today that we promised to pay for next Tuesday. But then next Tuesday came, and we didn’t have the money to pay for both the previously eaten hamburger and a new one for our empty belly. So we borrowed once again, and again.
All of this has pulled forward demand but has not led to actual prosperity. It has instead led to financial harm, as all borrowing comes with interest attached. The car we would have bought three years from now if we had saved was instead purchased today. Had we saved and waited the three years, our insurance bill would have been half of what it was, and there would have been no car payment. Yes, our car for those two or three years would have been scratched up and consumed a bit more gas, but it would have gotten us to work, and we would have spent the interest payments ourselves instead of giving that money to the banks.
The cell phone we bought on credit would have been purchased six months later, and we would have less expensive cellular service as well. We would have paid $600 for our cellular service over the last year instead of $1,200.
The college our kids are attending today wouldn’t have come with a crushing cost that is impossible for any young adult to work their way through, consigning them to massive amounts of debt if they can’t get an academic scholarship. The dorms would still be cinder-block buildings, there’d be a TV down the hall in a common room, and the awful food would be served cafeteria-style. But our sons and daughters could flip pizzas part-time to attend school, and they would still be learning calculus, computer programming, physics, or the practice of law.
Our houses wouldn’t have ever cost $500,000 in a middle-class neighborhood. They would have cost $150,000 instead. Sure, they wouldn’t have fancy granite countertops, measure 2,500 square feet, and be adorned with Viking professional kitchen appliances, but you’d be able to afford to buy one on a common $50,000 household income with one parent staying home and raising the kids. We’d probably have fewer teen pregnancies, gangbangers, and other miscreants for good measure, simply because someone would be there when Junior got home from school to make sure he did his homework.
We wouldn’t have stolen the Social Security taxes in the 1980s and beyond. We could have decided in the 1980s to instead put each person’s earnings into an account with their name on it. A true trustee arrangement, which many people think we have for Social Security but in fact never existed, could have been put in place. To do that would have required an actual zero inflation target that was enforced, and when the first signs of the leverage explosion showed up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, along with deterioration in the GDP/debt imbalance, that was the time to do it.
But we did none of these things. We chose to promise to pay tomorrow for the hamburger we insisted on eating today. We elected people to Congress who sang a great song about balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. But as soon as they were elected, they did nothing but borrow and spend money we did not have. To make matters worse, they nodded pleasantly while the Federal Reserve and our banks abused the monetary authority vested in Congress by the Constitution.
Now the bill for more than 30 years of our economic, fiscal, and monetary foolishness is on the table, and the waiter is tapping his foot.
Our history is one of serially blowing bubbles in an attempt to evade the consequences of the previous collapse. In 1980, there was $4.4 trillion in total debt outstanding in the United States. In 1990, that figure reached $13 trillion, triple the 1980 figure. In 2000, systemic debt reached $25.8 trillion, double the 1990 amount. And in 2010, we reached $52 trillion, yet another double.1
Hmm, that looks familiar...We began by eating a single hamburger today that we promised to pay for next Tuesday. But then next Tuesday came, and we didn’t have the money to pay for both the previously eaten hamburger and a new one for our empty belly. So we borrowed once again, and again.
All of this has pulled forward demand but has not led to actual prosperity. It has instead led to financial harm, as all borrowing comes with interest attached. The car we would have bought three years from now if we had saved was instead purchased today. Had we saved and waited the three years, our insurance bill would have been half of what it was, and there would have been no car payment. . . .
But we did none of these things. We chose to promise to pay tomorrow for the hamburger we insisted on eating today. We elected people to Congress who sang a great song about balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. But as soon as they were elected, they did nothing but borrow and spend money we did not have. To make matters worse, they nodded pleasantly while the Federal Reserve and our banks abused the monetary authority vested in Congress by the Constitution.
Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2017 11:58 am If you look at the things that are inflating out of control, they're mostly financial technology (bonds, stocks, insurance, etc), or things that can be financed with debt (houses, college, cars, medical bills, transportation infrastructure).
It seems like at some point in the semi-near past, there was a realization that growth is not possible when living "within one's budget," and future production was increasingly pulled into the present (with debt). At first, it was physical things (the aforementioned houses, cars, boats, subdivisions). This required natural resources like timber, fossil fuels, minerals. In a non-full world, with vast resources and not many people, it was possible to mine/cut/dig enough raw materials to make things, and people were productive enough to trade whatever they were making for someone else's stuff.
Then the only, logical follow up question is...…..Have the two of you EVER been spotted in the SAME location at the SAME time??!!!Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 7:55 amHmm, that looks familiar...We began by eating a single hamburger today that we promised to pay for next Tuesday. But then next Tuesday came, and we didn’t have the money to pay for both the previously eaten hamburger and a new one for our empty belly. So we borrowed once again, and again.
All of this has pulled forward demand but has not led to actual prosperity. It has instead led to financial harm, as all borrowing comes with interest attached. The car we would have bought three years from now if we had saved was instead purchased today. Had we saved and waited the three years, our insurance bill would have been half of what it was, and there would have been no car payment. . . .
But we did none of these things. We chose to promise to pay tomorrow for the hamburger we insisted on eating today. We elected people to Congress who sang a great song about balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. But as soon as they were elected, they did nothing but borrow and spend money we did not have. To make matters worse, they nodded pleasantly while the Federal Reserve and our banks abused the monetary authority vested in Congress by the Constitution.
Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2017 11:58 am If you look at the things that are inflating out of control, they're mostly financial technology (bonds, stocks, insurance, etc), or things that can be financed with debt (houses, college, cars, medical bills, transportation infrastructure).
It seems like at some point in the semi-near past, there was a realization that growth is not possible when living "within one's budget," and future production was increasingly pulled into the present (with debt). At first, it was physical things (the aforementioned houses, cars, boats, subdivisions). This required natural resources like timber, fossil fuels, minerals. In a non-full world, with vast resources and not many people, it was possible to mine/cut/dig enough raw materials to make things, and people were productive enough to trade whatever they were making for someone else's stuff.
Or you could read this instead.flyingpylon wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:06 am Interesting post from Denninger this morning. I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but it's an interesting hypothesis about COVID-19 being an attenuated virus from an unfinished vaccine for SARS or MERS.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3524114
Of course it has that unmistakable "off the rails" quality of most of his posts.
Or I could read both things and not be any closer to knowing which is "right".mdwilson1991 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:21 amOr you could read this instead.flyingpylon wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:06 am Interesting post from Denninger this morning. I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but it's an interesting hypothesis about COVID-19 being an attenuated virus from an unfinished vaccine for SARS or MERS.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3524114
Of course it has that unmistakable "off the rails" quality of most of his posts.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 175442.htm
Conspiracy theorist or immunology Ph.Ds, who knows more about this?
And those are his good points!Maddy wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 11:06 am I've followed Denninger for well over a decade now, and although I personally find him to be an insufferable narcissist, his seemingly insatiable desire to be right makes him loath to engage in unfounded speculation. His penchant for banning anyone who offers an opinion without reasonable evidence is legendary.
He's also had some posts about the possibility that the coronavirus is being spread by hospital workers, which is something I've wondered about.Cortopassi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:28 pm I can't help myself and continue to read him, and even though I hate his style, the numbers keep on making sense.
But, you just can't come out and say we don't need those ventilators. Those people have a 95% chance of dying anyway. Can you? Can the government possibly, in the next few weeks get to the point where it can reverse course and flip to we need to get back to work, so for all you at risk, you stay home, everyone else, back at it?
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=238757
And his bare-metal HTML website with low-res animated smiley GIFs is straight out of Geocities circa 1995!flyingpylon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:05 pm But you know, he uses too much bold, italics, and all caps so...
No kidding.Tortoise wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:22 pmAnd his bare-metal HTML website with low-res animated smiley GIFs is straight out of Geocities circa 1995!flyingpylon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:05 pm But you know, he uses too much bold, italics, and all caps so...
Bare-metal HTML can be a valid minimalist design choice, but when combined with the various combinations of bold, italics, underlining, and all caps, it kind of makes it look like a chain email forwarded by my grandmother.
I don't disagree... a white background and a sans-serif font would go a long way over there. But obviously, he doesn't give sh*t about such things.Tortoise wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:22 pmAnd his bare-metal HTML website with low-res animated smiley GIFs is straight out of Geocities circa 1995!flyingpylon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:05 pm But you know, he uses too much bold, italics, and all caps so...
Bare-metal HTML can be a valid minimalist design choice, but when combined with the various combinations of bold, italics, underlining, and all caps, it kind of makes it look like a chain email forwarded by my grandmother.