Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#241

Post by pjmorris » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #52

HashThis wrote: post #5

The surprise that is coming is that the working class won't tolerate being robbed in the next financial crisis. Working American's had to financially absorb the 2008 Mortgage crisis. 2008 was a direct robbery because Mortgage Orginators KNEW the mortgages would blow up, because their own Underwriting equations said they would. That is why they did fraud on the customer's income levels or worked with politicians to al…

If you're hinting at a revolution, a.k.a. what used to be a check against the upper classes, you can't really have one of those when every police department has a tank, a swat team, and carte blanc access to all social media and mobile data/communications.

They also have mortgages, medical bills, and friends with mortgages and medical bills.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#242

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #207

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that nuts? Honestly it seems kind of nuts that someone would expect another person to pick up their tab

I honestly feel like it’s nuts that we don’t collectively fund healthcare, precisely because I don’t want to live in a world where I may be ruined by an illness and I am willing to pay to make sure others don’t have to live in that world. However I am specifically a proponent of voluntary collectives for things, as government forced cooperation seems suboptimal and fragile to me.

> I honestly feel like it’s nuts that we don’t collectively fund healthcare, precisely because I don’t want to live in a world where I may be ruined by an illness and I am willing to pay to make sure others don’t have to live in that world.

Isn't this the exact thing insurance solves, in particular catastrophic coverage insurance? Nobody really gets "ruined" by paying out of pocket for one X-ray and two aspirin.

The problem is that the insurance is so expensive some people can't afford it. But the only sense in which single payer would "fix" the high cost/overhead/waste problem is by de facto regulating prices, which can be done even without it but which has a lot of obvious problems -- if the regulator chooses too high a price then it's still wasteful/unaffordable but too low and there will be no providers (or the providers will sacrifice quality to hit the regulated price).

What we need is a real solution to cost disease, which probably has something to do with reducing the regulatory compliance costs so there will be less overhead and more viable competing providers, requiring price transparency from providers, and then having people pay out of pocket for all non-catastrophic care so the patient has the incentive to decline treatment or find a less expensive provider when the treatment is unnecessary or overpriced.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#243

Post by camjohnson26 » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #236

camjohnson26 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Famous for taking big risks that sometimes pay out and sometimes fail dramatically.

Taking big risks is only laudable if you win. https://assets.pershingsquareholdings.com/media/2014/09/1712... Oof. Up 1% over a time period where the S&P is up 118%. Brutal.

Active funds generally underperform during periods of economic growth and we're in the longest running bull market of all time right now. Ackman makes mistakes but he is still very insightful and backs his opinions with dollars. No one who deals with risk is going to have a perfect track record, and even though his Valeant and Herbalife bets didn't pay off the opportunities/flaws he saw were real, other factors just happened to be more important such as Icahn propping up the price of Herbalife and Valeant's accounting problems.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#244

Post by leetcrew » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

Brybry wrote: post #155

noobermin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distance between the average and the median is staggering. This should be why you always should be suspicious when someone uses an average as a good statistic for wealth or income in the US.

I assume you intend "mean" instead of "average". Mean, median, and mode are all averages and a lot of statistics actually refer to median when they say "average".

really? in my experience, people who even know the difference between "mean" and "median" always use "average" in the sense of "mean".

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#245

Post by ACow_Adonis » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:46 AM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #130

crazynick4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

"take the hit for 7 years" This is the advice I've heard given to people who are severely underwater on a mortgage, but the idea that you can get sick one time and be financially ruined is still astonishing to me. I guess everywhere has some legislation that is just bonkers, though. I only just recently found out from a friend that you can't legally walk away from a mortgage here (UK) without declaring bankruptcy lik…

It's almost as though both you and the lender should think deeply, be conservative, and do your homework before taking out something as large as a mortgage!

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#246

Post by smidgeoncoup » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #239

smidgeoncoup wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any consumer rights attorney will take debt collector abuse cases on contingency - 40% cut. Abuse is so rampant (at least it was after the last financial crisis) it literally is like playing whack-a-mole for $1k/pop for every violation. A collector that repeatedly called my place of employment after being told I couldn't accept calls there, and threatened jail time, was forced to pay me $10k to me for their violation…

Very interesting indeed, have you written about this anywhere I can read more?

No - at the time I used forums (think creditboards or something like that and others) which have very helpful "armchair experts" that give excellent advice. Lots of form letters/response letters can be found and modified to suit your specifics. Many good strategies can be found and adapted down to the specific collection agency, etc. One of those things all the info is easily 'googled' and just gotta put in the hours reading and understanding how it all works, then use it to your advantage.

It's basically trying to get them to trip up and make a mistake - and it blew my mind how often and unabashedly these collection agencies would! Hell even BofA and Chase violated before they sold the debt off and I got an immediate removal from my report and the debt wiped away / no more collections (I was happy just to make things 'disappear' in these instances..didn't put money in my pocket but at the time is was a huge win, as one can imagine).

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#247

Post by adiusmus » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

adiusmus wrote: post #210

dc_gregory wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what money?

Does Saul do “no win no fee”?

Tough crowd. No sense of humour.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#248

Post by betterunix2 » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:14 AM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #133

izacus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with < 6000$ on their savings account? Most of the population? Very very unlikely.

I'm pretty sure "most of the population" has at least seen advertisements for ETrade. Probably too complicated for them though. That's why they'll be working until 85 or eating cat food in retirement...

In case you are wondering why you're comment is being downvoted, the issue is not that investing is too complicated for most of the population, it's that most of the population lacks the money to invest in the first place. When you add up the cost of keeping yourself fed, clothed, and sheltered, along with the cost of kids, and maybe also a stay-at-home-spouse as a dependent, and deducting contributions to retirement accounts, health insurance, and other good ideas, there is not much left over for most working Americans. That is assuming you even get all the way down that list, which many cannot -- a scary number of people have far less in their retirement accounts than they would need to live on in their final years.

The fact is that it has never been easier or cheaper for individuals to invest in a reasonably diverse portfolio and grow their wealth. The problem is that the average American has no wealth to grow:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#249

Post by i_feel_great » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #115

crazynick4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

It's not just the 7 years on your credit score, it's having collection agencies hound you incessantly. It's having people constantly trying to scam your bank to drain your account. It is legal threats against you, your family, your friends, your employer, etc... You're basically dropping you bloody name to a pool of sharks who have little respect for what is legal or ethical.

Your mighty President kept doing it for years multiple times. And he seems to be doing fine (the wealth part, not the politics part).

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#250

Post by megaremote » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:29 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #36

acconrad wrote: post #2

One of the few times Bettridge's Law of Headlines doesn't apply. "Survive" is an extreme word here, but I do see a big issue w/ index funds. Perhaps an unpopular opinion - but I believe index funds will be the next major bubble that cripples the financial system. It's one massive way to persist the same inequality status quo. You know what made Bezos so rich in spite of a company that doesn't make much accounting sen…

This is a real misunderstanding of how markets work. An index fund invests in everything, market-cap weighted (usually). This means that your investment merely reinforces the prices already determined by the other participants in the market . There are still huge numbers of active managers, not to mention quants and others. They, collectively, determine the prices of assets. When you invest in an index fund, you're j…

This is true, but it also means that they don't fall as much. No matter what the results, the index funds will not sell, so it means the market doesn't change as much.