I don't know why you are asking about pedophiles and sex trafficing - The Dow is over 50,000 right now, the S&P is at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq is smashing records. Americans' 401(k) savings are booming, thats what we should be talking about.
It's a quite baffling argument on Bondi's part regardless. As if I wouldn't care about prosecuting sex offenders merely because my 401k was doing well.
U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
191–200 of 254 posts
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stupidity - the most destructive force in the world. Evil at least benefits someone .
Trump net worth is $3 billion more than it was before he become a president. Likely more money was made via insider trading by his friends and family. So it's not like no one did benefit. Net loss for the country and the world is orders of magnitude higher though.
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume you mean low cost broad market index funds when you write 401k, but what other mechanism has offered financial security to so many other than having lots of productive and well networked kids that believe in helping you when you are old? There is, of course, taxpayer funded retirement benefits, but that is just taking from others’ kids.
Unions + Pensions
https://apnews.com/article/biden-business-united-states-gove...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-b...
If federal taxpayers are going to bail out old people, might as well be the whole stock market so it’s not just a few politically influential unions that get bailed out.
Union members not in an insufficiently influential union can have their benefits cut:
https://www.pbgc.gov/employers-practitioners/multiemployer/i...
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you mean to post this comment in 2021?
Did you mean to take that course on human sarcasm? I can understand how a one or two sentence comment that is wholly sarcastic is readily misinterpreted, ala Poe's Law. But my context should have been pretty clear.
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#195Bad quarter for certain, but to keep things in perspective, the S&P is still up 13% over the past 12 months (likely 14% as soon as the market opens in 20 minutes). There's nothing magical about a "quarter". Had Q1 2025 ended 4 days later, it would have been significantly worse than this, but then the market went on to have a huge rally after that.
“S&P had its worst X since Y”
Worst quarter in four years. Worst week since 2018. Worst 3 days since 2008.
It’s all kind of silly.
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#196It certainly is interesting living in a declining empire.
This is a common refrain you hear a lot. I get why people say it, because it feels good to say when you feel bad. But the decline of the Roman empire took nearly 500 years. Even the bronze age collapse, which you might say happened fast, took more than 100. A thought I have every time someone parrots this is, "what is reasonable to expect?". Would you have heard people saying the same thing during the civil war? Duri…
Rome is an extreme outlier. Its size peaked in 117. The beginning of the decline is up for debate but you could probably say it was somewhere in the 3rd century. The empire still managed to last until 1453. That decline is far, far longer than almost every other empire in history lasted from start to finish.
The British Empire reached its greatest territorial extent in 1920. The height of its power was around this time as well. It was the largest and most powerful empire in history at that point. By the 1950s, it was already a bit player in geopolitics, and by the 1980s it was effectively gone.
The USSR was the #2 (or maybe #1) most powerful empire in the world for a time. It felt like it evaporated practically overnight, although I'd say the decline took a couple of decades.
In any case, I don't expect to see the end of the American empire in my lifetime. I do think we've peaked. I don't say this because of the obvious crises, but because our leadership has become useless and stupid and the people fail to demand better. This is not just about Trump, although he's the most obvious example of it. Think about the upcoming midterm elections. Do we expect the new Congress to actually be useful? Regardless of which party wins power, I don't expect much. Think about 2028. What are the odds we get a good President? Just about zero, I'd say. There's a decent chance we won't get one who is so actively idiotic and malevolent, but good? No chance.
All of the major issues we face can be fixed, except that one, and that makes it all unfixable. We have a looming debt crisis that nobody in power will acknowledge in any real way. We're losing allies. Trade is disrupted. We have a large population of people who aren't legally allowed to be here and nobody in power wants to do anything about it (whether removing them or convincing them to leave or giving them a path to legitimacy, there's nothing being proposed but idiotic showboating). Our tech edge is rapidly fading.
So yes, I look at inmates running the asylum, I look at empty storefronts in my wealthy neighborhood, I look at the joke "high speed" trains running between our political capital and financial capital, I look at massive uncertainty in air travel because our government decided to stop paying critical personnel, and so much more, and I think that we're in decline.
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#197It certainly is interesting living in a declining empire.
The US is still strong as ever. commercially, economically and technologically. It just has a political system that is broken. A mad presidenta and a congress unwilling to constraining him.
I'm not so sure about that, in any case. We design the best computer chips but we don't make them. The best fabrication technology doesn't come from us. The best airliners don't come from American companies anymore. We're rapidly falling behind on energy. We're strong where the puck is, but not where it's going.
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So desperate to be valued and liked, that he desperately grabs at anything and everything to get the acclaim Like all billionaires, he is an empty void that can never be filled. To borrow a phrase, he is a hungry ghost. After his first million he needed more, then after a billion he saw that it was not enough, then after becoming president... he is, was, and always will be an empty hole of a person who can never fe…
It's time we take seriously the pathology behind billionaires. You can't become one as a person with basic empathy. To do so is a moral failing.
Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#199Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing that one reason we got Trump is that the Democrats presented two poor alternatives in a row. It was clear that Biden was mentally slipping. Even if you were a fan of his general politics, 4 additional years of mental decline while in office was a scary prospect. And then Kamala Harris was given very little time to sell herself to the voters. I'm wondering if Trump would have won had the Democrats present…
"I'm guessing that one reason we got Trump is that the Democrats presented two poor alternatives in a row." Women candidates? Because I am sad to admit that is my takeaway: a significant part of the U.S. appears to be sexist (and plenty of women voters included).
What I meant was Biden and then Harris.
I'm not a politico, but IMHO Harris didn't have enough time to clarify her positions, and to address the points raised by her opposition.
Also, I wonder if the way she was chosen by the Democratic Party rubbed some people the wrong way enough for them to abstain from voting as a form of protest.