301–310 of 441 posts
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What I wonder is why a bunch of programmers seem to think they know economics and finance better than the fed
Because if the fed wrote software it wouldn't stay in business for long.
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> Schiff didn’t account for the economic ignorance of the masses in his prediction. Literally every economic misprediction can be blamed on not accounting for the way people actually behave in real-world economies, but…that’s not something that adds credibility for the next prediction by the same predictor.
1.decade of 0% apr >>> 2.high inflation >>> 3.gold price surge We have gotten 1 and 2 but we haven't gotten to 3 because traders believe that the FED can win the inflation fight. The FED abandoned the inflation fight with a soft pivot yet traders are still not buying gold. This is what Peter couldn't foresee...traders' unwillingness to go against the FED. This is not a misprediction because in any sane world, the pro…
Gold is not a store (or measure) of value. Nobody cares about gold. Sure, some people might like to have a gold ring or necklace, but that’s a tiny amount of material for a small number of people and it’s demand (like diamonds) is primarily marketing driven, and easily satisfied by a side effect of copper mining. Until the average Joe demands that his life savings be spent on a gold sarcophagus, it just won’t matter.
People tend to prefer fancy cars and houses and electronics and vacations and food and drink.
And you can see the cost of all those things has more than doubled in recent years, a clear indicator of inflation cause by (practically) zero percent interest rates.
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Actually the U.S. in 3rd place behind Switzerland and Luxembourg in terms of mean wealth per adult and Hong Kong is not far behind. But you are right that the other countries on the upper ranks are mostly smaller nations with large banking sectors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... While I agree that the U.S. has an enormous built-in advantage over other countries, I would really highlig…
This has all sorts of distorting effects. It turns out that one guy was paying a substantial fraction of New Jersey's budget, and he moved. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer... (then ended moving back again, because Florida)
The individual taxpayer was paying ~hundreds of millions per year into an $86 billion dollar budget. It's kind of wild that an individual would be paying a tenth of a percent (or so) of a state's income taxes, but it's maybe not a substantial fraction.
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And the definition of a recession was rescinded last year by the White House. Is inflation for you better now than it was in 2019?
> And the definition of a recession was rescinded last year by the White House. It what? Also if you predict a recession every year you'll eventually get one right, but that doesn't make you right about recession predictions in general. > Is inflation for you better now than it was in 2019? Did he predict "higher than 2019"? If "higher than 2019" wasn't his prediction then I don't see why it matters that "higher than…
Muddied the definition of a recession when the question came up.
> Also if you predict a recession every year you'll eventually get one right, but that doesn't make you right about recession predictions in general.
Yep. That's pretty much the game of predictions.
> 2019's inflation was below target.
Which target? The one the Fed determines? Consumer inflation at the moment (~7%) is rivalling rates witnessed back in the 80s. Add the new money the Fed has printed over time (since 2008) and now expected to continue (covid stimulus, bailouts for banks etc.), anyone can see where the trend for inflation is going. No predictions are even needed for that.
History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. We cannot have a decade of 0% interest rates and expect no consequences. Peter Schiff predicted this from the moment the fed bailouted the banks in 2008. There's nothing the fed can do to escape this one, it's either massive inflation or massive recession. The fed has avoided the latter by bailing out the banks again so expect double digit inflation for the next…
Someone doesn't understand how averages work...
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> The fucking owners of capital seem bound and determined to destroy their own system. Nah. These disruptions are a means to an ends. That is, shifting still more wealth to the top. Follow that graph. Everything else is a means to that ends or a distraction.
Specifically the recession talk seemed to be an attempt to destroy what little gains labor had made in the past couple years. A banking crisis is not exactly the same but would lead to the same public justifications. As a personal anecdote: In the wake of 2008 massive layoffs flooded the market driving down costs for... not necessarily skilled but educated labor. Target for instance suddenly decided that being an ETL…
"Remember the great resignation? Good! You shouldn't! Now damn you proles, don't you forget that you can't remember it."
As for your last paragraph, it's about control. Regardless of what's being "destroyed", they are creating more wealth and power, and the majority of that goes to the top. Again, this isn't opinion. It's the data.
The Public's fault is believing what they hear instead of watching what is happening. Actions speak louder than words. Or they should.
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I often hear the interest rates yielded this result of massive inflation or massive recession. But I'm not sure I believe that. I'm not convinced that the 0% interest rates lead to the massive inflation. So a non-mainstream economist Richard D. Wolff asked the elephant in the room question which no one seems to be asking which is to point out that we don't know how much of the price increases is simply due to compani…
That's a very good point. I don't have any data, but I feel like many industries have been consolidated into the hands of few companies since the crisis of 2008. Now they all can raise prices together using inflation as an excuse. See the big oil and its record profits last year for an example.
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> The fucking owners of capital seem bound and determined to destroy their own system. Nah. These disruptions are a means to an ends. That is, shifting still more wealth to the top. Follow that graph. Everything else is a means to that ends or a distraction.
I hate all these conspiracy theories. And you know why? It's because they imply hubris, arrogance, control. Let's just realize that we all have a lot less control over our environment than we think we do, and some things are just forces beyond anyone's control.
What happened after 2007/ 2008?
What happened during / after Covid?
There is zero reason to imply any of those things. The data speaks for itself.
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It's better to be wrong until you're right than right until you're wrong...because you will get the last laugh. The fundamental problem is that price controls never work and the interest rate is the price of money. If you understand this, then it's easy to predict the endgame, whether it takes 10 or 20 yrs to fail, you will still be right once you position yourself for the windfall.
Position yourself for the windfall how? Let's say Alice will be wrong several times and then right once, and Bob will be right several times and wrong once. Both of them start with $10k. To give Alice every advantage, let's say her bets pay out 10x or nothing, and Bob's bets pay out 4x or nothing. We'll also say Alice magically knows which time she'll be right, but Bob won't know which time he'll be wrong. Alice will…
Oh and Bob did not save 1/3 of his gains. To be fair, he spent it, living high on the irrational market all these years.
Meanwhile, Alice scrimped and saved and warned and was mocked.
She turned out to be right all along, and now she’s the queen of Barter town. Which isn’t a great place to be.
But the little guy who controls the resources and his muscle don’t need Alice, and want her wealth.
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I hate all these conspiracy theories. And you know why? It's because they imply hubris, arrogance, control. Let's just realize that we all have a lot less control over our environment than we think we do, and some things are just forces beyond anyone's control.
I hate the implication of coordination. I think it's more likely that every person at every link in the chain is following some incentive: financial experts within banks are saying whatever they think will get governments to stop putting up interest rates (we're in a banking crisis), journalists are repeating interesting and dramatic news from their sources (that we're in a banking crisis), their editors are careful…
I hate the implications of dated mental models.
Like entities with like goals are going to take like actions. There doesn't have to be back room top-secret coordination.
FFF starlings do it. Starlings!!!