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U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

bloomberg.com

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Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#541

Post by TomVDB »

sudosysgen wrote: post #476
standardUser wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bernie Sanders was, as far as I can see, our last shot at reversing the trend from within the current system" If anything, Bernie Sanders was our first, worst shot at structural economic change. In fact, every candidate on stage during those Democratic debates was running far, far to the economic left of Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore or either Clinton. With some historical perspective, you might see that the tid…

In practice, none of them would actually have implemented it, except the only one with a history of going against party and lobby. Barack Obama ran far to the left of Barack Obama, but ended up compromising with Republicans for some absurd reason as he held both the house and senate, to the degree where he passed Mitt Romney's proposal while dragging his feet. None of them except for Bernie Sanders was willing to rec…

> but ended up compromising with Republicans for some absurd reason as he held both the house and senate

My memory is a bit fuzzy on this, but didn't he also have to compromise with the (relatively) right-leaning wing of the Democratic party?

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#542

Post by bhupy »

pc86 wrote: post #316
bhupy wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see. Facebook might do poorly in Q2, but Alphabet does way more than advertising now: it does cloud infrastructure (GCP) and productivity (Google Apps for Business), both of which have experienced sharp gains in this pandemic.

We'll see if the lion's share of the pandemic closures happened in Q2? That's an objective fact. We started feeling it in March but the vast majority of action happened in April. April is in Q2.

No, we'll see the degree to which Alphabet is exposed to the pandemic closures — which as you said, objectively happened.

A key detail from the Alphabet earnings: there appeared to be different performance trajectories for the brand and direct response components of their advertising. Direct response continued to have substantial year-on-year growth throughout the entire quarter — can be explained by brands now directly reaching people at home under quarantine. Brand advertising growth accelerated in the first 2 months of the quarter, but began to experience a headwind in mid-March. Snap's earnings call appeared to include the same observation, from Evan Spiegel: "In the short-term, we are shifting sales resources and pulling forward some investments in direct response to better serve the advertisers who are trying to reach our audience during this time…".

Additionally, Alphabet obviously also makes its money through Google Cloud Platform, whose compute usage will continue to pick up as more and more people consume online content at home. The net argument is that, even in Q2, Alphabet might come out looking stable because it is not as exposed to the downsides of COVID as, say, Twitter or Facebook.

THAT is what I mean when I say "we'll see".

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#543

Post by mc32 »

munificent wrote: post #535
mc32 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it starts when people have nothing left to lose. There’s no hope to lose, there’s no illusion left. On the other hand, some societies can descend quite a bit and be okay with going into more or less survival mode: witness Russia.

Not "nothing less", but just less to lose than to gain. People are willing to gamble on a roll of the dice when the upside is larger than the downside.

But the risks for that upside can be pretty large. You cannot predict how things turn out: Mensheviks vs bolsheviks.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#544

Post by BluePen7 »

scottLobster wrote: post #403
ChrisRR wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still surprises me that America has such a culture of leasing cars they can't afford for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month. Here in the UK if you said you were going to buy a car, most people would instantly assume you mean second hand. There's not much of a culture of buying or leasing new cars here, and even less of leasing cars that you really can't afford (outside of petrolheads anyway)

As an American it surprises me. I'm in the top 13% in terms of income/household and I've never bought or leased a new car in my life. It's well known (at least to people I know) that if you want to save money you buy used, ideally with cash, although you can sometimes save a little money with financing if you get lucky. The issue seems to be in previous generations cars were more of a status symbol for many (as well…

The other aspect is a lot of older luxury cars were also very well built, and older economy cars were some real bare-bones shitboxes.

My father enjoyed driving his Mercedes, so I figured I ought to enjoy a German luxury car as well. I expected to pay a certain premium on parts, and obviously for premium fuel and synthetic oil, but that I'd get a much more solid feeling car in return.

The problem is, the Mercedes he drove were from the 80s and 90s, so parts markup aside, they were basically Toyota reliable.

The German car I bought was from the mid-2000s, and nowhere near as well built or reliable as a 90s Mercedes, even in present day.

I'd even owned a 1986 Mercedes that was still reliable in 2010, I'd also owned a 1992 Mercedes that was also reliable, and continued to be so after I sold it to a friend who drove it for all of university (2010-2015).

But it was the 7 year old one that basically fell apart despite me buying one with full dealership service history, then sinking endless money in making sure all the repairs were done properly with OEM parts, on top of my religious maintenance as I'd believed German cars were only problematic due to neglectful owners.

So, it went about as poorly as you'd expect.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#545

Post by cpursley »

tacheiordache wrote: post #506
cpursley wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they though? In order to have socialism, you have to give more money and power to the state. Money and Power in state hands can go in dark directions "for the common good". The culture must be ready for it (like the Danes and Fins but unlike the Russians or Americans); it's really important.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. Can you explain what you mean?

Culture matters. The Nords are more oriented towards social harmony, are culturally homogeneous, have high transparency, low rates of corruption. This means everyone's one the same page more-or-less.

Vs the large diverse cultures of the US (where I'm from) and Russia (where I now live). After living in Russia, it's no surprise that socialism did not work here. Forcing socialism onto cultures when they're not mature enough won't work. Even worse, it leads/would lead to massive oppression and corruption.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#546

Post by vkou »

treis wrote: post #413
notfromhere wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a false choice between the economy and people’s lives. The problem is that while labor economy was shut down, the financial system was not, so that rents and debts had to flow out of people that could not generate income, and the government has been ignoring the issue with nominal support. Not freezing debts/rents across the entire economy is how this whole thing spins into a depression

Every expense is someone else's income. Freezing debts/rents doesn't solve anything. It just shifts the burden. Ultimately we are losing the wealth that we otherwise would have generated. We are poorer and there's no way around that.

Yes, it shifts the burden from people who work for a living, to people who's living is worked for by other people.

The former are far more important, and numerous than the latter. I eat butter, I don't eat dividends.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#547

Post by bluedino »

qppo wrote: post #325
Server6 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the long term 72-84 month loans. People are trading in used cars for close to the loan payoff amounts - which is still pretty high.

GM had 0% interest for 84 month loans on their trucks for awhile there. something is very wrong with the lending market when it makes sense to give people free money.

If you take the 0% financing, you miss out on the $4,500 "customer cash" discount. They're just moving numbers around.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#548

Post by mc32 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #537
mc32 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read if that way. What I see is them propping up business so that there are actual jobs to go back to once things stabilize. It does little good to send people thousands of dollars if when that dries up, and it would, there are no above board jobs to go back to.

How nice of the governments to help businesses afford to eat instead of people. There is no reason assistance to people has to go through business. The reason governments do that is because leaders own equity in the current hierarchy and definitely don’t want to disturb that by giving the lower classes leverage to demand better terms.

If businesses employed robots you’d have a point. But most today provide people gainful employment. No businesses left means no one to hire you.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#549

Post by fallingfrog »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #438
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 52% of americans own any stock whatsoever [0], and the richest 10% of americans own 84% of all stock. [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/190883/half-americans-own-stock... [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w24085

> and the richest 10% of americans own 84% of all stock. The top 20% of earners also handle close to 90% of the tax burden, while close to 50% of the population pay nothing in taxes.

They pay sales tax, social security tax, and they never make anywhere near as much in wages as the value of what they produce, which is the biggest tax of all but since it’s a hidden, implicit tax, you can’t see it.

Re: U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession

#550

Post by munificent »

amyjess wrote: post #296
aphextron wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No school means poor kids roam the street like packs of feral dogs asking for money for food around here. I think this is possibly the single biggest long term problem we're going to face as a result of all this. Economic recessions will come and go. But missing 5/8ths of a school year is going to be absolutely devastating for this generation of kids. They will be left permanently behind without a serious concerted…

When I was in third grade, we spent half the second semester learning about different kinds of whales. This is material I forgot pretty much as soon as it was over. When I graduated high school, my mom and I went through all my old elementary school material to see what we'd like to keep for sentimental value and what we're okay with throwing out to make room in the garage, and we were just overwhelmed by the sheer m…

> we spent half the second semester learning about different kinds of whales.

The point of most of that is not to teach you about whales (though whales are cool). It's to teach you:

* How to read and process written material.

* How to organize your thoughts and write grammatically correct sentences.

* The moral value that science is useful and nature is important to preserve.

It's the same reason they still teach cursive. Cursive matters fuck-all, but training fine motor skills in general is very useful and cursive is just a semi-arbitrary means to that end.

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