251–260 of 356 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America will fall before the banks let the government regulate them in any meaningful way.
Banks are some of the most highly regulated entities in our entire economy. They can't do really anything without asking for permission or following exact steps spelled out in FDIC/OCC/Fed rules.
SoFi is offering 1.25% but Vanguard's short term treasury fund (VGSH) is at 2.35% if you're ok with mild capital risk.
Founder's sexual misconduct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Cagney
It is a known sales tactic to hook in customers betting that the hassle to switch later will keep them loyal. The 1.25% rate is if you set up direct deposit, with a $300 bonus.
Don't be surprised if they lower the rate after the promotion time. Happened with HSBC w/ 5% APY before 2009 crisis, Robinhood and Marcus before covid.
Bitcoin fixes this.
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I think it is pretty common knowledge that money has diminishing returns. What I find absurd is that people actually bought the trickle-down nonsense. It's almost on the same level as flat earth. It's sooo obvious that this isn't how the economy works. If you want to give money away, give it to those who actually need it not those who need it least.
Trickle down worked extremely well for those who controlled the rate of trickle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trickle down worked extremely well for those who controlled the rate of trickle.
“trickle” doesn’t even sound good, I don’t think anyone could possibly be fooled by this, it was always a sham
Ditto “voodoo economics”, except the critic wasn't a comedian, but a politician (of the party that rejected the criticism and went whole hog on the policy, but still later nominated him as, and got him elected, President.)
There are two major catches: you have to wait at least 1 year before you cash them out, and a person can only buy 10k in I-bonds per year.
After the first year is over, selling I-bonds and getting access to the cash takes a few business days.
I've been tiering my emergency savings based on how many redeemable I-bonds I have. I have enough money in the bank to cover emergencies I might need to pay for very quickly -- things like plumbing problems, car repair, etc. The rest of my emergency fund is going into I-bonds. If I have a longer-term need for savings, like losing my job, I don't need all of my savings right away and I can wait for the amount of time it takes to cash out I-bonds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is pretty common knowledge that money has diminishing returns. What I find absurd is that people actually bought the trickle-down nonsense. It's almost on the same level as flat earth. It's sooo obvious that this isn't how the economy works. If you want to give money away, give it to those who actually need it not those who need it least.
Trickle down worked extremely well for those who controlled the rate of trickle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americas anual GDP was $21t in 2020. Federal COVID relief funds were 4.6t over the span of 2 years according to https://www.usaspending.gov/disaster/covid-19?publicLaw=all That's just over 10% of the GDP. Not a small amount by any measure but our numbers are rather different. What am I missing?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
>In late February and early March of 2020, the Fed cut its policy interest rate dramatically to help ease credit conditions during the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting acceleration in the supply of M1 can be understood largely as banks accommodating an increase in people’s demand for money.
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/01/whats-behind-the-rec...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America will fall before the banks let the government regulate them in any meaningful way.
Banks are some of the most highly regulated entities in our entire economy. They can't do really anything without asking for permission or following exact steps spelled out in FDIC/OCC/Fed rules.
The US government was very quick to save the banks who caused the problem, and today they're even bigger. While people who were conned by the lenders were left on the hook.
This is why I said "meaningful regulation". Having lots of petty laws you have to comply with isn't meaningful regulation. Preventing them from being arbiters of the economy would be meaningful. Breaking them up such that even half of them failing wouldn't tank the economy would be meaningful.
>They can't do really anything without asking for permission or following exact steps spelled out in FDIC/OCC/Fed rules.
If that's true, how were they able to invent "financial instruments" on the fly to contain whole tranches of sub prime mortages, which their pet rating agencies then gave AAA ratings? How were they able to bet against their clients? And insure these things they knew to be garbage, and then profit from that too? Why did Eric Holder declare them "Too Big to Prosecute" (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eric-holder-banks-too-big_n_2...)?
That whole debacle proves that "can't do really anything without asking for permission or following exact steps spelled out in FDIC/OCC/Fed rules" is flatly false.
We're worse off in terms of Too Big to Fail / Prosecute today than we were in 2007 too.
Hence "no meaningful regulation".