331–340 of 345 posts
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> is entirely attributable to the Fed's pumping of soft assets like stocks The fed only stopped buying MBS a month ago. (Also, they hold like $2T+ of them on their balance sheet. Im sure the 'experts' over at the fed will say this has no effect on the current market)
I can't find any source that says Fed stopped buying MBS.
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It is a common mistake, but stocks don't have a positive return because GDP increases over time. They have a positive expected return over time because they have a risk premium. That is, to invest and take on risk, an investor will demand a return above and beyond the expected value of the cash flows the business generates. Whatever path of GDP and/or population is expected to be is already factored into the discount…
agree. GDP does not mean stock market gains. In fact, you can have strong shareholder returns even if the economy is not growing at all. If $1 billion company generates $100 million in net profit annually, this is $ that must go to shareholders regardless of GDP. This is the situation right now with the US...major companies are generating huge profits annually even if real GDP, productivity, and population growth is…
A large amount of corporate profit growth since the 80s has been due to a declining share of labor compensation vs capital and declining effective tax rates. Productivity gains are the only real “free lunch” which is what capital investment is supposed to provide to justify the gains. Productivity growth has been stagnating for a couple of decades.
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I haven't been able to comment on HN since my controversial post which mentions civil unrest. No doubt your comment is related? I'll eventually be able to post this response. >Always wondering exactly what people mean when they talk of "civil unrest", and who and how will it start. Do the various riots in 2020 America or the Jan 6 storming of the capitol count? For sure those count. Racial civil unrest, riots, and in…
> Something we should seriously be looking into is massive seeding effort for lakes. Get tons of fish growing this year. Get fishing boats out into the oceans pulling fish in. Major culling and harvesting of sharks. Accelerate the destruction of the fish ecosystem? It's already being run at capacity, ditching quotas will give you more in year 1 and a total disaster in subsequent years. Most sharks are endangered spec…
I know the great lakes very well. We are maybe around 5% capacity there, possibly far less. I believe your confusion might be that you misunderstood when I said massive seeding effort.
Oceans are less than 1% capacity. I couldn't even fathom to tell you how many zeros are in that small fraction of 1 percent.
In terms of sharks, great whites, tigers, bulls, hammerheads. All are 'vulnerable' or less but certainly not endangered. Yes there's a handful of endangered shark species but none of those would be your typically targeted types.
It’s always good to remind people that: GDP ~= Population * Productivity If your population growth flat-lines (which it did last year), productivity has to compensate. Can productivity compensate if the average age is getting older (people tend to be less productive after a certain median age)? One reason investing in index funds makes sense is the underlying assumption that global population growth keeps increasing…
I feel like you're using that equation in a bit backwards way. If suddenly, everyone between the ages of 0 and 5 vanished, it would have a huge effect on the population, but at first take, zero effect on the GDP since presumably that age group is not involved in production. With a second approximation, you might say that GDP would increase since parental childcare is not part of the GDP and those parents could instea…
Eventually though the benefit disappears as the demographic pyramid becomes a pipe and the share of working population shrinks again. The US demographic dividend was the era of the baby boomers who were a large cohort but had relatively few children.
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The vast majority of "services" in the US are healthcare, food services, technology, and financial services. Aside from cloud hardware, the impact on the rest due to supply constraints from China has been extremely minimal. Very little food comes from China. Almost 0 energy. And financing costs are 100% set by the Fed. China plays a very small part in the US inflation story.
> "services" in the US are healthcare, food services, technology, and financial services. with the exception of financial services, all of the other services you listed require commodity materials to work - things like food services require utensils, plates, napkins, not to mention the food. Healthcare has a lot of materials (not just the direct, but indirect materials like reagents for labs and diagnostics) which of…
It’s always good to remind people that: GDP ~= Population * Productivity If your population growth flat-lines (which it did last year), productivity has to compensate. Can productivity compensate if the average age is getting older (people tend to be less productive after a certain median age)? One reason investing in index funds makes sense is the underlying assumption that global population growth keeps increasing…
It’s always good to remind people that: GDP ~= Population * Productivity If your population growth flat-lines (which it did last year), productivity has to compensate. Can productivity compensate if the average age is getting older (people tend to be less productive after a certain median age)? One reason investing in index funds makes sense is the underlying assumption that global population growth keeps increasing…
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A country with a declining population can keep a growing economy or low immigration, but not both. Some countries (the Anglophone countries, France, and Germany) are magnets for labor given their relatively high wages, standard of living, and multi-culturalism (racism and anti-immigrant politics are problems, but still). But others, like Japan (with low immigration) or Bulgaria (with low immigrant interest) can't rea…
Or you can have lots of immigration and a per capita contracting economy like France. France population 1990: 58 million | France population today: 67 million France GDP 1990: $1.2 trillion | France GDP today: $2.9 trillion ($1.2t inflation adjusted forward 32 years is $2.7 trillion) They gained 15-16% in population, and gained 6-7% in GDP. A big net drop per capita over such a duration, particularly for a major affl…
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...
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i’m not asking about the executives or the board. Why does a company benefit financially if it stock goes up other than being able to issue stock more easily?
I think you are confused about the causation. Shares of stock represent ownership in a company. If the company performs well and earns increasing amounts of money over time, that means the company is more valuable. If the number of shares remain static, increasing earnings means the value of the company is higher on a per share basis and justifies a higher price per share. The company performance drives the stock pri…
It’s always good to remind people that: GDP ~= Population * Productivity If your population growth flat-lines (which it did last year), productivity has to compensate. Can productivity compensate if the average age is getting older (people tend to be less productive after a certain median age)? One reason investing in index funds makes sense is the underlying assumption that global population growth keeps increasing…
We should remember that GDP doesn't reflect the totality of the economic reality on its own. It was popularized at a time of high population growth and the acceleration of mass production, presenting a perfect measure for encapsulating that time's idea of progress. As environmental threats are forcing us to reconsider our consumption habits with future products possibly created with less parts/materials/inputs, peopl…