Thread: American Politics
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09-30-22 07:09 #10418
Posts: 5917Is the NASDAQ 100 an Index?
Of course, the 100 stock NASDAQ is an Index. I have not seen anyone here argue otherwise. It is the 3rd most popularly quoted Index in the USA stock market.
But that one and the 30 stock Dow Jones Industrial Average are not the most often go-to Index for Wall Street to more accurately measure the state of the USA stock market. As I have posted many times here, that would be the S&P 500 Index, so named because it includes 500 of the biggest company stocks in America. It is market-weighted and represents 80% of the value of the USA stock market.
I think the overviews of those 3 Indexes here can help even a stock market investment novice, wannabe long term investor or short term speculators alike, understand why the S&P 500 Index and not the NASDAQ, many of which stocks are not even based in the USA, as that aforementioned go-to measure:
What is an Index
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/index.asp#text=An%20 index%20 is%20 a%20 method, certain%20 area%20 of%20 the%20 market.
As you see, they do make a compelling case that the Wilshire 5000 Index, sometimes referred to the Total Stock Market Index, might actually be a better measure for the USA stock market for reasons that I think are clear in its often referenced name.
As I have posted here more than once already, that is the Index I have had money earmarked for equities in for many years. Prior to that, going back to the early 1990's, I was in an S&P 500 Index Fund because the Wilshire 5000 Index Fund was not available to me in my company's 401 k investment options.
Again, as I have posted here more than once already, I generally maintain 80-90% of my equity holdings in that Total Stock Market Index Fund and the rest in a Global Equity Fund.
Again, as I have posted here more than once already, I have only sold out and bought back into the market a couple of times over the decades. And then only because I had identified what I felt was a set of circumstances that would lead to a deep Recession, which is quite often accompanied by a major Bear Market decline and, later, a major recovery.
For me, it was not the other way around. As a long term investor I had little interest in tracking yield curves, Fed Funds moves and so on in order to scramble around hourly, daily or weekly worrying about market tops, bottoms, shorts or longs and all that stuff. I was only looking for indicators of a major Recession and, later, a major recovery or expansion. The stock market move would mostly just be an accompanying factor.
I have been even less interested in tracking the the ups and downs of the stock market over the past decade or so. I have opened my Vanguard account only once in the past year. And that was only because I got an email from Vanguard suggesting I open it every now and then or they will think I have died and they will proceed with beneficiary distributions, taxes on withdrawals and so on. LOL.
Luckily, I made enough money in those great Clinton and Obama Bull Runs and managed to dodge or at least weather the various GW Bush and Trump Bear Market declines that I was able to bank and invest in sources of ongoing streams of income along the way such that I don't need to bother with the stock market game at all. Just not interested. It's there. I'm glad I have it. But I don't need it to enjoy the lifestyle I looked forward to enjoying decades ago exactly the way I am enjoying it today.
If anything, my current retirement lifestyle exceeds what I'd hoped for.
But the key word is "enough. " Unlike a twice Impeached defeated so-called potus, I have never bragged anywhere about being "wealthy" or "smart". But It turns out if you chose a no-brainer broadly diversified Index fund to invest in long term, rain or shine, good times and bad, since the early 1990's with only 1 or 2 judicious moves along the way, you would by now have indeed captured a 1000%+ return on those early dollars.
Oh, and again as I have posted here more than once already, my for the fun of it prognostication is that the S&P 500 Index, the USA stock market's most common measure on Wall Street, will be tickling around the area of 5,000 by the middle of next year if not the end of this year.
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09-30-22 05:52 #10417
Posts: 3640Originally Posted by Tiny12 [View Original Post]
The CEO of Landry's restaurants was on CNBC and he confirmed the obvious. The credit markets have dried up. Everyone is looking at credit markets these days versus money supply because the credit markets are so much bigger. And the reason everyone talks about the Fed is that they pretty much set the rates on the credit market.
But that is the demand side, and the Fed can control that by restricting the amount of credit there is out there. When you look at supply, we were already having issues just keeping up with the post-Covid world. Then you look at the war in Ukraine and there has been and will be tightness with fertilizer, oil, gas, and food as both Ukraine and Russia were huge wheat exporters.
Thing is if you look at all those things the only one the USA does not have is the potash type fertilizer but we rely on friendly Canada for 83% of our needs of it. The rest of it the USA has in abundance and in particular Texas. China, Europe, and Japan are hugely dependent on exports for all of those things. I do not see anyone coming up with solutions for the loss of Russian oil and gas for at least 3 to 5 years, and food and fertilizer have really not been hit to the extent they will be.
People call inflation in housing stick but to me this is the most sticky of them all. Demand for food and energy is pretty much inelastic. Mankind will solve the problem, however the incentive for that solution will be higher prices.
So everyone thinks the dollar's move is due to its reserve currency status and the Fed raising rates, but I think a huge part of it is how much the world is going to have to buy our stuff and how much it is going to cost.
And Texas has it all: food, fertilizer, natural gas, gas pipelines, refineries, and oil.
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09-30-22 05:40 #10416
Posts: 11382020 Census Vastly Overcounted Democratic States, Undercounted GOP States
2020 Census Vastly Overcounted Democratic States, Undercounted GOP States.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...es/ar-AA12o1jd
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09-30-22 03:32 #10415
Posts: 5917Bothsiderism isn't necessarily a derogatory term or a pejorative
Originally Posted by Tiny12 [View Original Post]
Bothsiderism and False Equivalencies are generally meant to elevate the slackers, bring them up a notch or two, and denigrate the performers, bring them down a notch or two so as to suggest "both sides" are more or less "equally" responsible for good or bad outcomes. Sure, that can be a fun exercise. But it can be quite damaging when it comes to elections and who is handed the levers of control for serious matters like money, jobs, national security, etc.
For example, there is no reputable source of economic data or spin on it that can or has shown that over the past 100 years or so, right up to Trump, it was Repubs and not Dems who were better at producing prosperity, increasing GDP growth, creating jobs, putting money in pockets and businesses, paying down the debt and deficit, averting or avoiding major economic downturns, recovering us from major economic downturns and so on. None.
So by rights Repubs ought to by now have no more than, oh, maybe a 5% fluky chance of ever winning any election for any office ever.
However, thanks to the magic of "Bothsiderism" and "False Equivalency", their chances are often raised to as much 47-50%! That is quite an improvement for those folks. And if MSM and other "Bothsider, False Equivalency" practitioners do a bang up job of demonizing some relatively insignificant sucker social issue here and there, the Repubs' chances improve to as mush as 52% or so and, bingo, we're saddled with another Repub economic steward bent on finding whatever new and unprecedented way to crash the USA economy and wipe out millions of jobs is out there to be embraced by them.
See, it is only an insult if you think that is a bad thing for which to be a proponent.
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09-30-22 03:01 #10414
Posts: 5917Hey, me too
Originally Posted by Tiny12 [View Original Post]
Yes, that pattern began even before FDR. But it didn't stop there. It continued right through to Trump less than two years ago. Even Trump's pre-Trump's Pandemic years underperformed on "greater prosperity" if prosperity has anything to do with jobs creation, earned income and GDP growth and "smaller federal government" if by that you mean less government spending with virtually nothing to show for it. And, of course, by the end of Trump's disastrous four year economic stewardship it is certain more people and businesses did not find themselves with "more money in their pockets".
Now, I didn't live, work, invest, buy things and pay taxes in Switzerland, Singapore or any of those other countries. So while it is interesting to note how they did over time, what matters more to me in terms of those very 1 and 2 factors you mentioned as well as many others is what happened in the USA over time.
Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy?
G.D.P., jobs and other indicators have all risen faster under Democrats for nearly the past century.
Feb. 2, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/o...s-economy.html
Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans, according to a Times analysis. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades. If anything, that period (which is based on data availability) is too kind to Republicans, because it excludes the portion of the Great Depression that happened on Herbert Hoovers watch.
The six presidents who have presided over the fastest job growth have all been Democrats, as you can see above. The four presidents who have presided over the slowest growth have all been Republicans.
Why?
What, then, are the most plausible theories?
First, its worth rejecting a few unlikely possibilities. Congressional control is not the answer. The pattern holds regardless of which party is running Congress. Deficit spending also doesnt explain the gap: It is not the case that Democrats juice the economy by spending money and then leave Republicans to clean up the mess. Over the last four decades, in fact, Republican presidents have*run up larger deficits*than Democrats.
That leaves one broad possibility with a good amount of supporting evidence: Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic.
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09-30-22 00:09 #10413
Posts: 1975Originally Posted by JustTK [View Original Post]
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09-29-22 22:48 #10412
Posts: 1926Originally Posted by Tiny12 [View Original Post]
Don't worry, the protagonist has joined my shortlist of ignored folk. No doubt he will respond here with more drivel. He is like a dog w a bone. Hehe.
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09-29-22 21:51 #10411
Posts: 2689Nor could Barry Hussein could ever survive w / o a telepromter
Originally Posted by CaliGuy [View Original Post]
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...for-joe-biden/
No one wants to invoke the 25th amend because Harris is even more brain dead than Joe LMAO.
He picked her as a firewall for this very reason LOL.
Barry Joe and Harris aka dumb dumber and dumbest LOL.
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09-29-22 21:19 #10410
Posts: 1975Originally Posted by Paulie97 [View Original Post]
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09-29-22 21:15 #10409
Posts: 1975Originally Posted by Elvis2008 [View Original Post]
One comment about the rest of your post. I'm privileged to know the smartest son of a bit**h, at least as far as economics is concerned, who posts on hooker boards. He used to go by Captain Midnight. He points out that the U.S. money supply, M1 and M2, have been flat since February. And commodity prices have been coming down. As such, he thinks high inflation may not last as long as many think. He still thinks we're in for a recession though. This makes sense to me for the USA. But I'm not so sure about other countries. If you look at M1 and M2 for most other countries, in their local currencies, they're still increasing at a rapid clip. And commodity prices haven't really fallen. If you live in Europe, you're looking at crazy prices for electricity and home heating. Why the difference between what's happening in the USA and other countries? Well a lot of it's the strength of the dollar. We in the USA are blessed to have the predominant reserve and trading currency.
Kudos for going short! You're right about interest rates and the stock market, but most people, including me, didn't take advantage of what we all knew was coming.
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09-29-22 21:06 #10408
Posts: 1604That's nothing, part II
Originally Posted by EihTooms [View Original Post]
Somehow, though, the Moron Brigade and the rest of MAGAt-nation gives him a pass on those things. And they wonder why I call him Donnie the Dumbass?
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09-29-22 21:01 #10407
Posts: 1975Originally Posted by EihTooms [View Original Post]
My reasons for favoring Republicans are two fold:
1. I believe more Republicans than Democrats favor smaller federal government. And clearly, IMO, smaller government is correlated with greater prosperity. When you leave more money in the pockets of the people and businesses, instead of channeling it off as directed by politicians in Washington D.C. to a massive federal bureaucracy, we're better off. Government doesn't grow the economy, the private sector does.
2. Republicans are less likely to levy extortionate taxes on me.
So how do I justify "1"? Well, as follows.
This table shows GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, by country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...P) _per_capita
When you kick out small places and petrostates, including Norway, the wealthiest countries per capita in the world are Singapore, Ireland, Switzerland, the United States, and Hong Kong.
This table shows government expenditure and government revenue as a % of GDP, by country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...centage_of_GDP
Sort this table by government revenue, in increasing order. Kick out developing countries, small places and petrostates. The countries with the lowest government revenue as a % of GDP are Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, the United States, and Switzerland.
You could also sort the same table by government expenditure as a % of GDP. But the ranking of the USA and other countries will be misleading because of the massive amounts dumped into economies for COVID stimulus in 2020. So, instead, look at the same table, with 2018 data, in the Wayback Machine. (Wikipedia never provided the 2019 data):
https://web.archive.org/web/20210224...centage_of_GDP
You'll need to copy and paste to Excel to Sort. Sort from smallest to largest by government expenditure. Again, kick out developing countries, small places and petrostates. The countries with the lowest government expenditure as a % of GDP are Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ireland, Switzerland, and the United States.
Do you see a pattern? The five wealthiest countries in the world, sans small places and petrostates, are Singapore, Ireland, Switzerland, the United States and Hong Kong. And the developed countries, excluding small places and petrostates, with the smallest governments are Singapore, Ireland, Switzerland, the United States, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. So they're the same, except for Taiwan! And Taiwan is no slouch.
An interesting observation IMO, the United States has the most progressive taxation system in the OECD. And Hong Kong, if it were a country, would have one of the most regressive tax systems among developed countries. In other words, the level of taxation and government expenditure, i.e. the size of government, is what matters most, not the progressivity of the tax system.
The majority of the Democratic Party wants to grow government so it's comparable in size, in relation to the economy, to European social welfare states. I figure over the long term this would perhaps result in a 15% to 25% hit to GDP per capita. That is, a reduction to levels comparable to Germany or France. And that's huge.
The left's response to what I've thrown out would be, so what. The GDP per capita for those countries is pumped up by the billionaires. What does that do for the workingman? And I suspect they'd have basis to say that for Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent for Ireland. But in terms of "median equivalent adult income" for OECD countries, which represents median disposable income per person including all forms of income and taxes and transfer payments from government, the USA is number 2 and Switzerland is number 4. The number 1 country, Luxembourg, is a small place (600,000 population) and number 3, Norway, is a petrostate. Please recall the definition of median. Median means the 50th percentile -- half of Americans make more than the median income and half make less. Here's a link to median equivalent adult income by country, for the OECD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
Note that median equivalent adult income for Germany is 27% less than the USA, and it's 33% less for France! We in the USA are blessed to have small (relatively speaking) government.
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09-29-22 20:47 #10406
Posts: 5917Originally Posted by Tiny12 [View Original Post]
I agree with you that tax cuts are often associated with higher GDP. I'll go further to state that tax cuts are also often associated with jobs creation and paying down the debt and deficit. But only when Dem Presidents propose tax cuts and get their way. Not when Repub Presidents propose tax cuts and get their way.
Where Repubs love to cut taxes disproportionately high is on the top margins. That is their signature Supply-Side / Trickle-Down tax policy move. Which does very little or nothing to produce the positive results you and I both cited above.
Where it leads to exacerbating economic downturns rather than averting them is the Repub generally has to cut taxes at a markedly lower percentage, if at all, for the middle and lower income earners in order to "pay for" those beloved disproportionately high tax cuts for "the wealthy. " That 70% to 50% cut you mentioned regarding the 1981 act.
I think you will find that the 1981 act you referred to did cut taxes disproportionately high on the top, as you already mentioned, but at a much smaller percentage on the middle and lower margins, if at all. So what you got was a huge tax cut for a relatively tiny number of people, many of whom barely noticed it in terms of food on their table and cars in their garage, and meager tax cuts, if any, on a relatively gigantic number of people.
And, as that NYT article pointed out, there seemed to be an expectation that those Supply-Side tax cuts alone would avert a recession or at least diminish it without having to combine it with pro-acrive Demand-Side stimulus. Those auto rebates that were ended.
BTW, on that point, the NYT article didn't make the case that anyone expected the 1981 act to end the Recession "three months later". It was about how businesses had lost faith in Reagan's tax cuts to prevent a Recession in the first place, literally at his signing of it. And they were right to have lost faith in that. Maybe by then they did a little more due diligence on that 1929 Repub Crash and Depression.
And remember, in November 1981 nobody knew for sure we were officially in a Recession by then. So the tax bill was simply about stimulating and growing the economy, not to "recover" us from a Recession exactly. What was known was there was little to no positive sentiment and anticipation about the economy at the signing of the act.
I love tax cuts. One of the main reasons I vote for Dems is because of their tax cuts. Repub tax cuts have proven not to be worth shit for the general economy. But Dem tax cuts greatly improve the lives of most Americans. It's all about where, when and how the tax cuts are applied. You know, details.
So why did Dems vote for Reagan's ultimately practically useless except for racking up huge debt and deficits Supply-Side / Trickle-Down tax cuts in 1981? Three big reasons:
We had not yet seen that style of favorite Repub tax cuts demonstrate the disastrous pattern we are all familiar with now and learned more about from Reagan.
Dems believe in elections, Reagan ran on that nonsense, Reagan won, the electorate who voted for him should get what they wished for.
And most of all, Reagan had earlier that year taken a bullet from a nut with a gun trying to impress a lesbian actress. It would have been politically impossible to deny him his dream tax policy during his big comeback and recovery.
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09-29-22 18:09 #10405
Posts: 5917Originally Posted by Elvis2008 [View Original Post]
Now I will generously give you some free advice; Stop lying about what I post just to make you feel better about your apparently pathetic life. Try living well instead. I guarantee that will make you a happier fellow.
You're welcome.
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09-29-22 17:59 #10404
Posts: 5917Biden's historic economic recovery might be too strong for Powell
It just got a lot harder for the National Bureau of Economic Research to officially declare what is currently happening a "recession":
Jobless claims hit five-month low despite Fed's efforts to slow labor market
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/29/jobl...ndroidappshare
Initial filings for unemployment claims fell last week to their lowest level in five months last week.
The drop to 193,000 was below the estimate of 215,000.
A separate report showed inflation running hotter than previously reported in the second quarter.
But falling jobless claims, a Full Employment unemployment rate under 4% and monthly jobs creation in the hundreds of thousands do not typically spell "recession."
Powell probably should have led his board to increase the Fed Funds Rate to 5%+ months ago.
Yes, that would have thrown hand-wringing, crybaby Wall Street into a tizzy. But that's nothing new. Hand-wringing, crybaby Wall Street is always in a tizzy. Bad economic news, good economic news, no economic news, pending economic news, Wall Street is always in a hand-wringing, crybaby tizzy.