American Politics

[Tiny 12]

And on the USA Dollar tanking, well, no I have not seen it tanking in the sense that it has fallen significantly below the general 110 JPY to the Dollar that it has hovered around since the mid 1990's. Down from the earlier Bidenomics recovery level of 145 or so? Sure. But it has not been tanking as it did so steadily and deeply on GW Bush's watch and in the wake of his Great Repub Recession. Or even the slow but steady decline we saw under Trump:

If you're going to measure the strength of the dollar just against the JPY, the dollar was weakest in 2011 and 2012 during the Obama administration. The broader US Dollar index reached a record high during the Reagan administration. But that's coincidence. Like GDP growth, recessions, and the number of deaths of young Americans in foreign wars, the party of the President has little to do with forex rates.

[Tiny 12]

Nah, I think they are all distractions and PVM keeps buying into it. I care a lot more about economic issues, and I think most people do as well. FDA has been co-opted by drug companies. DOJ may as well be a wing of the Democratic party. The big Wall Street donors want all eyes not fixed on how much they are making for how little they are doing, and they want everyone distracted while they continue to play the game of private gains and public losses.

I think most Americans are willing to let the executive branch do whatever it wants as long as they get their check, their "free" health insurance ETC. At this point, Trump is a last gasp for an out of control executive branch. Desantis stands a much better chance of beating whatever Dem comes along. The problem is the Republicans / working people are so mad at how corrupt the executive branch has become and want to vote for Trump for that reason, a big middle finger to the neocons, the P4P government, and the insanely partisan DOJ. The problem with Trump is that he will get more votes for him that any other Republican candidate but he also is probably going to get more people than that to vote against him.

Another good post. I mostly agree.

Many Democrats and Democrat leaning independents are mad as hell at Trump, for trying to steal the 2020 election. They're going to be very motivated to go to the polls. Republicans won't be as motivated. Republican turnout will be further reduced because Trump convinced a lot of them not to vote by mail.

While I recognize that Trump's economic policies are better for the USA and for me than the Democrats', I won't vote for him. I'll vote for the Libertarian candidate instead, unless he or she is someone nutty like John McAfee (the runner up in 2016 Libertarian primary.) Many Republican leaning independents likewise won't vote for Trump.

If Trump makes it to the general election, he'll lose, unless the new outfit, No Labels, nominates a reasonable Democrat like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, who would split the Democratic vote. Then Trump wins.

As to the drug companies, I put the blame on the politicians more than the FDA. The big problem is that drug prices are out of control because of an absence of competition and too much patent protection. Congress should do something about that. And yes, the FDA and doctors, who prescribe more expensive drugs pushed by the drug companies, are at fault too.

[Elvis 2008]

That and Trump are the reasons the Republicans may become a permanent minority at the federal level.

Nah, I think they are all distractions and PVM keeps buying into it. I care a lot more about economic issues, and I think most people do as well. FDA has been co-opted by drug companies. DOJ may as well be a wing of the Democratic party. The big Wall Street donors want all eyes not fixed on how much they are making for how little they are doing, and they want everyone distracted while they continue to play the game of private gains and public losses.

I think most Americans are willing to let the executive branch do whatever it wants as long as they get their check, their "free" health insurance ETC. At this point, Trump is a last gasp for an out of control executive branch. Desantis stands a much better chance of beating whatever Dem comes along. The problem is the Republicans / working people are so mad at how corrupt the executive branch has become and want to vote for Trump for that reason, a big middle finger to the neocons, the P4P government, and the insanely partisan DOJ. The problem with Trump is that he will get more votes for him that any other Republican candidate but he also is probably going to get more people than that to vote against him.

[Tiny 12]

This just in.

That and Trump are the reasons the Republicans may become a permanent minority at the federal level.

[Tiny 12]

File this one under "Hey, No Kidding".

Larry Summers Was Wrong About Inflation.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023...inflation.html#text=It%20 is%20 now%20 clear%20 that, has%20 remained%20 near%20 historic%20 lows.

BTW, below is arguably what Transitory Inflation looks like. And note that the current rate of inflation is only a fraction of one percentage point higher than it was at the beginning of 2020, right before Trump's horrific classic Repub stewardship plunged the world into his Trump's Pandemic. Whereupon he and his Repub cult followers could and did crow about how low their brilliant policies and stewardship results place the rate of inflation. LOL.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-.../inflation-cpi

I can't read your link. But your post, about Democratic Party economist Larry Summers, may not age well. Core CPI was up 4. 8% YoY in June, and the core PCE, closely watched by the Fed, was up 4. 6% in May, the most recent month available. Two more interest rate hikes are anticipated. We're a long way from 2%. And some economists are still forecasting a recession for 2024. Barclays, Nomura, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, and Fannie Mae all forecast negative GDP growth for 2024.

Democratic-Party-Economist Summers may have the last laugh, just as he did after the Biden Administration's American Rescue Plan.

[Tiny 12]

I don't hate anyone. I am comfortable with myself and all others in the universe.

Jesus loved sinners. So the least I can do is love Democrats. And I do. All of them. Except for Elizabeth Warren and Paulie. Admittedly though I have a love-hate thing going with AOC. I want her to be the mother of my children, but otherwise can't stand her.

Spent more than a quick minute living in the (Dis) United Staes of America. Lived all over the country. Never made a single decision on where to live in the (Dis) United States based on politics. Now that is just me. But I am welcome to review any article presented as to why the population is moving from blue to red states.

Well, according to Marqui's and Tiny's links, one big reason is a basic Supply and Demand factor. Otherwise known as "affordability":

I already quoted from Marqui's link.

This is from Tiny's link:

It turns out housing prices are high and generally continue to grow higher in States that many people want to live and work in. Then it turns out people who can't cut it in those States have to move to States that rank high on the list of Worst States To Live And Work In.

Also from Tiny's link; they might have to move back to where their presumably better job but, naturally, higher housing cost is anyway when their better job employer demands they come back to the office to work and stop working online from their new Worst State's residence's neighborhood Dipsy-Doodle burger and ice cream joint.

True, no one moves based on whether a state is blue or red. They move for reasons like taxes, crime, schools, job opportunities, and as Tooms correctly says, because of cost of living considerations, including the cost of housing.

That's why you see people leaving highly-taxed, high-crime, high-cost blue states and / or blue cities, like Baltimore, Maryland and San Francisco, California. Now yes, many are moving to blue cities within red states, like Austin. And blue cities do have some good schools, although they often miserably fail poor children, in large part because of the Democratic Party's subservience to the teachers' unions. But on the whole, Republicans do better at state and local governance.

I live in a red city in a red state. Trump won by 57 percentage points in the 2020 election. (Aside: I didn't vote for him.) There's no state income tax. We have good schools and good city services. Crime is low. The GDP per capita is the highest in the USA. And lots of people are moving here. Now is that because they want to move to a red city in a red state? No, of course not. But Republican governance is part of the reason this is a desirable place to live and work. Given that the area is more dependent than most on carbon fuels, the Democratic Party platform would decimate the regional economy.

And yes Tooms, you're absolutely correct. When people were allowed to work from home, some must have fled higher-taxed blue states, and now are being called back to the office. In some cases though, the companies they work for have migrated to red states where they're more welcome. Better job opportunities in business-friendly red states may be the #1 reason for the migration out of blue states. And yes, too much regulation and taxation, zoning restrictions, and burdensome taxation have driven up the cost of housing in California. Of course the fact that they're not making any more land close to beaches is a big reason too.

[Tiny 12]

Quoting Jim Cramer? He got roasted for his banking calls in the 2008 melt down.

I actually talked to a childhood friend who is a broker because this market is a mess. I have never seen such conflicting signals. Also, the expert traders on CNBC who have been on target for so long have been way off on the market.

There is really bad news in manufacturing, horrible news about the consumer balance sheet, and a bond market still predicting recession. The concept was that it was gong to take a recession to tame inflation. It is under better control. Yes, airlines and hotels are better, but they could not have been much worse after the pandemic. People are going in debt to go on trips.

But the market rally is really based around like a dozen stocks and they all have one thing in common: AI. Keep in mind the AI hype is just as big as the dotcom hype was in 2000. You have Wall Street throwing money into a dozen names fueling the rally. The problem is these names are not the immature names in 2000 but fully mature companies and sustaining the kind of growth needed to justify the valuations is very, very hard.

We have had these talks like we did in 2000 before. He was all big on AOL, and I was super unimpressed with it. Yahoo had everything AOL did and was free. I was right there. He was into Amazon and how it sold books. I thought that was crazy but in that sense he was right for the wrong reasons as Amazon pivoted into more than books, and the rest is history. Google, the big winner, was not even around then, and Facebook was in its infancy. Apple was teetering on the edge.

So here we go again. He thinks and is being told AI is the shit, and I am skeptical. He said AI will take away his sister's job in medical industry research. What took her all day could be done in 5 minutes with AI. For me, the biggest break through was with my gal's daughter's homework. She had gone from 2 hours per night to 30 minutes per night. Apparently, a tutoring stock has crashed as people have been using chatGPT to do their homework. South Park did a hilarious episode on using chatGPT to respond to one's girl friend's texts.

The strike in Hollywood was the writers first. AI cannot replace them but the Hollywood execs were going to use AI to replace some actors, and the actors had a fit. The studios want the actors to sign away their likeness and then use AI and stick their faces on whatever they want, and the actors are not going for it. The writers are not worried about AI taking their jobs yet.

Still, the AI used with so many companies with services suck. The entire AI process is cumbersome and I can usually get what I want with a 30 second discussion with a human. TV does not equate to being at the big football game. No movie can replicate the energy of a great live musical.

Zero Hedge is a notoriously negative news site, and this was their headline today, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ts...labor-shortage.

Yes, Taiwan semiconductor, the largest chip maker in the world, is saying the AI boom in chips is not all it is being cracked up to be.

Do I expect the news to crater the market? Hell no. The NASDAQ is down 1% today but it will soon shirk off this news and go higher still. This is a full blown mania. And of course, this has jack shit to do with Biden. Hell, Biden's policies have been as pro-inflationary as any president in history.

I am sure you have noticed the dollar tanking lately, very pro-inflationary as well. I think this is in anticipation of interest rate cuts as inflation has come down. My response is so what. Shit is still too fucking expensive. Housing, health insurance, car insurance ETC costs more now in terms of hours of labor than it did in the 1980's. San Francisco just had two of its biggest hotel operators turn their keys back into the bankers. If San Francisco housing was marked to market, the whole economy would crash.

Yes, the yield curve still suggests recession, and the stock market does not. Up to now, Tooms, you have been right, but history shows the credit markets have historically been smarter than the stock markets. I concede you have won this round but the war is not over, and I repeat, Biden has had jack shit to do with this stock market runup.

Good post Elvis. There's lots of truth in what you wrote.

Cramer's picks have, from time to time, been so bad that the same people who brought us a contra Kathie Woods ETF followed up with a contra Cramer Fund. You can bet against Cramer by buying SJIM, the "Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF. ".

[EihTooms]

Quoting Jim Cramer? He got roasted for his banking calls in the 2008 melt down.

I actually talked to a childhood friend who is a broker because this market is a mess. I have never seen such conflicting signals. Also, the expert traders on CNBC who have been on target for so long have been way off on the market.

There is really bad news in manufacturing, horrible news about the consumer balance sheet, and a bond market still predicting recession. The concept was that it was gong to take a recession to tame inflation. It is under better control. Yes, airlines and hotels are better, but they could not have been much worse after the pandemic. People are going in debt to go on trips.

But the market rally is really based around like a dozen stocks and they all have one thing in common: AI. Keep in mind the AI hype is just as big as the dotcom hype was in 2000. You have Wall Street throwing money into a dozen names fueling the rally. The problem is these names are not the immature names in 2000 but fully mature companies and sustaining the kind of growth needed to justify the valuations is very, very hard.

We have had these talks like we did in 2000 before. He was all big on AOL, and I was super unimpressed with it. Yahoo had everything AOL did and was free. I was right there. He was into Amazon and how it sold books. I thought that was crazy but in that sense he was right for the wrong reasons as Amazon pivoted into more than books, and the rest is history. Google, the big winner, was not even around then, and Facebook was in its infancy. Apple was teetering on the edge.

So here we go again. He thinks and is being told AI is the shit, and I am skeptical. He said AI will take away his sister's job in medical industry research. What took her all day could be done in 5 minutes with AI. For me, the biggest break through was with my gal's daughter's homework. She had gone from 2 hours per night to 30 minutes per night. Apparently, a tutoring stock has crashed as people have been using chatGPT to do their homework. South Park did a hilarious episode on using chatGPT to respond to one's girl friend's texts.

The strike in Hollywood was the writers first. AI cannot replace them but the Hollywood execs were going to use AI to replace some actors, and the actors had a fit. The studios want the actors to sign away their likeness and then use AI and stick their faces on whatever they want, and the actors are not going for it. The writers are not worried about AI taking their jobs yet.

Still, the AI used with so many companies with services suck. The entire AI process is cumbersome and I can usually get what I want with a 30 second discussion with a human. TV does not equate to being at the big football game. No movie can replicate the energy of a great live musical.

Zero Hedge is a notoriously negative news site, and this was their headline today, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ts...labor-shortage.

Yes, Taiwan semiconductor, the largest chip maker in the world, is saying the AI boom in chips is not all it is being cracked up to be.

Do I expect the news to crater the market? Hell no. The NASDAQ is down 1% today but it will soon shirk off this news and go higher still. This is a full blown mania. And of course, this has jack shit to do with Biden. Hell, Biden's policies have been as pro-inflationary as any president in history.

I am sure you have noticed the dollar tanking lately, very pro-inflationary as well. I think this is in anticipation of interest rate cuts as inflation has come down. My response is so what. Shit is still too fucking expensive. Housing, health insurance, car insurance ETC costs more now in terms of hours of labor than it did in the 1980's. San Francisco just had two of its biggest hotel operators turn their keys back into the bankers. If San Francisco housing was marked to market, the whole economy would crash.

Yes, the yield curve still suggests recession, and the stock market does not. Up to now, Tooms, you have been right, but history shows the credit markets have historically been smarter than the stock markets. I concede you have won this round but the war is not over, and I repeat, Biden has had jack shit to do with this stock market runup.

I think we are in agreement that I would not use any stock market prognostication by Jim Cramer as the basis for a strong stock market bet, up, down or indifferent. I was only interested in his overview of what has happened and is happening, not what might happen, with regard to recessionary conditions. And, really, only his because his are easily available to link online, quote and be read without a subscription. LOL. Otherwise, his is just another voice expressing the same unavoidable observations about that.

Thank you for the concession. But the expectation that we would not as yet have seen the Great Recession or the Massive Jobs Destruction or even the Major Bear Market on this Dem POTUS' watch that we see so typically on a Repub's watch was an easy one to call.

Not sure I would say the gains of late in the broad USA stock market as measured by the S&P 500 Index is mostly about AI. Yes, Amazon, Microsoft and others are tech / chip-related industries. But they are gainers because the consumer is buying stuff again, not exactly because Paramount Studios can make Harrison Ford look 40 again. And buying stuff again has to begin somewhere and for some reason. Enter Bidenomics. Inflationary? Yes, as inflationary as any recovery from a 2-year worldwide economic coma and resulting supply-chain destruction would reasonably produce.

And on the USA Dollar tanking, well, no I have not seen it tanking in the sense that it has fallen significantly below the general 110 JPY to the Dollar that it has hovered around since the mid 1990's. Down from the earlier Bidenomics recovery level of 145 or so? Sure. But it has not been tanking as it did so steadily and deeply on GW Bush's watch and in the wake of his Great Repub Recession. Or even the slow but steady decline we saw under Trump:

[Elvis 2008]

I guess all those expert Repub economists who handle the economy so much better than Dems got it all polar opposite wrong again. For the umpteenth time.

Jim Cramer says he doesn't see a recession on the horizon.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/18/jim-...ndroidappshare

But but but that Yield Curve thingy happened over two years ago!

And Bidenomics was supposed to plunge us into Repub-style economic disaster!

Aw. Even a wrong headed Larry Summers pronouncement can't deliver the results Repubs and pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiders crave.

Quoting Jim Cramer? He got roasted for his banking calls in the 2008 melt down.

I actually talked to a childhood friend who is a broker because this market is a mess. I have never seen such conflicting signals. Also, the expert traders on CNBC who have been on target for so long have been way off on the market.

There is really bad news in manufacturing, horrible news about the consumer balance sheet, and a bond market still predicting recession. The concept was that it was gong to take a recession to tame inflation. It is under better control. Yes, airlines and hotels are better, but they could not have been much worse after the pandemic. People are going in debt to go on trips.

But the market rally is really based around like a dozen stocks and they all have one thing in common: AI. Keep in mind the AI hype is just as big as the dotcom hype was in 2000. You have Wall Street throwing money into a dozen names fueling the rally. The problem is these names are not the immature names in 2000 but fully mature companies and sustaining the kind of growth needed to justify the valuations is very, very hard.

We have had these talks like we did in 2000 before. He was all big on AOL, and I was super unimpressed with it. Yahoo had everything AOL did and was free. I was right there. He was into Amazon and how it sold books. I thought that was crazy but in that sense he was right for the wrong reasons as Amazon pivoted into more than books, and the rest is history. Google, the big winner, was not even around then, and Facebook was in its infancy. Apple was teetering on the edge.

So here we go again. He thinks and is being told AI is the shit, and I am skeptical. He said AI will take away his sister's job in medical industry research. What took her all day could be done in 5 minutes with AI. For me, the biggest break through was with my gal's daughter's homework. She had gone from 2 hours per night to 30 minutes per night. Apparently, a tutoring stock has crashed as people have been using chatGPT to do their homework. South Park did a hilarious episode on using chatGPT to respond to one's girl friend's texts.

The strike in Hollywood was the writers first. AI cannot replace them but the Hollywood execs were going to use AI to replace some actors, and the actors had a fit. The studios want the actors to sign away their likeness and then use AI and stick their faces on whatever they want, and the actors are not going for it. The writers are not worried about AI taking their jobs yet.

Still, the AI used with so many companies with services suck. The entire AI process is cumbersome and I can usually get what I want with a 30 second discussion with a human. TV does not equate to being at the big football game. No movie can replicate the energy of a great live musical.

Zero Hedge is a notoriously negative news site, and this was their headline today, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ts...labor-shortage.

Yes, Taiwan semiconductor, the largest chip maker in the world, is saying the AI boom in chips is not all it is being cracked up to be.

Do I expect the news to crater the market? Hell no. The NASDAQ is down 1% today but it will soon shirk off this news and go higher still. This is a full blown mania. And of course, this has jack shit to do with Biden. Hell, Biden's policies have been as pro-inflationary as any president in history.

I am sure you have noticed the dollar tanking lately, very pro-inflationary as well. I think this is in anticipation of interest rate cuts as inflation has come down. My response is so what. Shit is still too fucking expensive. Housing, health insurance, car insurance ETC costs more now in terms of hours of labor than it did in the 1980's. San Francisco just had two of its biggest hotel operators turn their keys back into the bankers. If San Francisco housing was marked to market, the whole economy would crash.

Yes, the yield curve still suggests recession, and the stock market does not. Up to now, Tooms, you have been right, but history shows the credit markets have historically been smarter than the stock markets. I concede you have won this round but the war is not over, and I repeat, Biden has had jack shit to do with this stock market runup.

[SubCmdr]

People make decisions on where to live based on personal preferences that are driven by their economic situation. Has nothing to do with politics.

I have a box of crayons. It has both a red and a blue crayon in it. When I was in school, I was not limited to just using red and blue to color. I always preferred the brown crayon.

Well, according to Marqui's and Tiny's links, one big reason is a basic Supply and Demand factor. Otherwise known as "affordability"

Inflation numbers are gamed by the policy makers. The real rate of inflation is the increase in prices that individuals who want to buy something experience. If you don't buy things in the "basket of goods" then you don't experience inflation measured by the "basket of goods" used.

[PVMonger]

This just in.

[EihTooms]

Spent more than a quick minute living in the (Dis) United Staes of America. Lived all over the country. Never made a single decision on where to live in the (Dis) United States based on politics. Now that is just me. But I am welcome to review any article presented as to why the population is moving from blue to red states.

I don't hate anyone. I am comfortable with myself and all others in the universe.

Well, according to Marqui's and Tiny's links, one big reason is a basic Supply and Demand factor. Otherwise known as "affordability":

I already quoted from Marqui's link.

This is from Tiny's link:

But this is not a new trend. Millions of people moved during the pandemic, driven by the opportunity to work remotely, the desire for more space, and better affordability.

It turns out housing prices are high and generally continue to grow higher in States that many people want to live and work in. Then it turns out people who can't cut it in those States have to move to States that rank high on the list of Worst States To Live And Work In.

Also from Tiny's link; they might have to move back to where their presumably better job but, naturally, higher housing cost is anyway when their better job employer demands they come back to the office to work and stop working online from their new Worst State's residence's neighborhood Dipsy-Doodle burger and ice cream joint.

[EihTooms]

File this one under "Hey, No Kidding".

Larry Summers Was Wrong About Inflation.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023...inflation.html#text=It%20 is%20 now%20 clear%20 that, has%20 remained%20 near%20 historic%20 lows.

From his newly elevated platform in June 2022, Summers delivered another prophecy of woe. During remarks before the London School of Economics, Summers declared that we need five years of unemployment above 5 percent to contain inflation in other words, we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or five years of 6 percent unemployment or one year of 10 percent unemployment. In the Harvard professors estimation, U.S. policymakers had no choice but to deliberately throw millions of Americans out of work or else accept a steadily deepening inflationary crisis.

It is now clear Summers was wrong.

BTW, below is arguably what Transitory Inflation looks like. And note that the current rate of inflation is only a fraction of one percentage point higher than it was at the beginning of 2020, right before Trump's horrific classic Repub stewardship plunged the world into his Trump's Pandemic. Whereupon he and his Repub cult followers could and did crow about how low their brilliant policies and stewardship results place the rate of inflation. LOL.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-.../inflation-cpi

[SubCmdr]

Spent more than a quick minute living in the (Dis) United Staes of America. Lived all over the country. Never made a single decision on where to live in the (Dis) United States based on politics. Now that is just me. But I am welcome to review any article presented as to why the population is moving from blue to red states.

I don't hate anyone. I am comfortable with myself and all others in the universe.

[EihTooms]

I guess all those expert Repub economists who handle the economy so much better than Dems got it all polar opposite wrong again. For the umpteenth time.

Jim Cramer says he doesn't see a recession on the horizon.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/18/jim-...ndroidappshare

Cramer said homebuilders should have been hit hardest by the Federal Reserves tightening, but instead performed well due to the housing shortage. He then pointed to airlines, which he called part of a roaring bull market, as another indicator that the recession might not come. Cramer also noted that PepsiCo hasnt seen a trade-down even as it has raised its prices.

Suffice it to say, youre not supposed to get this kind of action at this point in a rate hike cycle, Cramer said. When the Fed tightens, we expect it to crush the commerce and that just hasnt really happened.

But but but that Yield Curve thingy happened over two years ago!

And Bidenomics was supposed to plunge us into Repub-style economic disaster!

Aw. Even a wrong headed Larry Summers pronouncement can't deliver the results Repubs and pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiders crave.