31–40 of 47 posts
> Salesforce let go of fewer than 1,000 employees Monday, according to a person familiar with the move. > At the end of January it employed 73,541 people. “…employees Monday”, “…January” Is this grammatical? Is it coherent? Or was this generated with GPT-3?
I'm not picking up on what you're implying is the confusing part.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although it will be endlessly debated, it doesn't matter that much how a recession got started, nor who deserves the most blame. Once the spending-slowdown spiral gets going, it can become self-sustaining on its own, beyond anyone's control, affecting both the guilty and the innocent.
Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. Food prices are inflating, so if we get enough people unable to afford food, prices go down. “Victory” I think you can apportion blame for stuff like that. And the guilty are insulated from the consequences of their…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although it will be endlessly debated, it doesn't matter that much how a recession got started, nor who deserves the most blame. Once the spending-slowdown spiral gets going, it can become self-sustaining on its own, beyond anyone's control, affecting both the guilty and the innocent.
Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. Food prices are inflating, so if we get enough people unable to afford food, prices go down. “Victory” I think you can apportion blame for stuff like that. And the guilty are insulated from the consequences of their…
The fed isn't doing this because they want cheaper shit from china. They're doing it to keep inflation under control. A result of making money more expensive is lower shipping container rates, but that's not the primary goal. Do you have any better ideas for stopping inflation?
Every company wants to cut spending on people, services, and facilities, because revenues are slowing down, costs are rising, and there's more uncertainty about the near term future. The people who lose their jobs, in turn, are forced to cut their spending, contributing even more to the ongoing revenue slowdown at companies that sell to consumers. The service providers who see their billing examined with a microscope…
> many consumers without savings are at risk of financial ruin Yes. This is the reason for having a better social safety net. There's no reason a normal business cycle should "ruin" normal people that did not take excessive risks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In theory sure, but in practice a great deal of this is driven by earlier over investments by tech companies who saw a huge surge in profits during COVID lockdowns. It wasn’t just online companies that benefited by changing consumer habits as people where stuck at home with little to do browsed social media and ordered food delivery etc. Setting up remote options across many industries had many similarities with the…
Although it will be endlessly debated, it doesn't matter that much how a recession got started, nor who deserves the most blame. Once the spending-slowdown spiral gets going, it can become self-sustaining on its own, beyond anyone's control, affecting both the guilty and the innocent.
The overall economy is doing quite well right now and it’s not obvious if things will improve or tank over the next few months. Despite officially low unemployment rate the actually important employment rate is only ~60% demonstrating a reasonable but not excessive amount of slack in the labor market.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. Food prices are inflating, so if we get enough people unable to afford food, prices go down. “Victory” I think you can apportion blame for stuff like that. And the guilty are insulated from the consequences of their…
> Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. The fed isn't doing this because they want cheaper shit from china. They're doing it to keep inflation under control. A result of making money more expensive is lower shipping container rates, but that's not the p…
Not only be concerned with it when it begins to impact wages.
Every company wants to cut spending on people, services, and facilities, because revenues are slowing down, costs are rising, and there's more uncertainty about the near term future. The people who lose their jobs, in turn, are forced to cut their spending, contributing even more to the ongoing revenue slowdown at companies that sell to consumers. The service providers who see their billing examined with a microscope…
Can anyone smarter than me explain why this is happening two years after the entire world shutdown? Is this completely unrelated to COVID?
As a response to the pandemic, the US Treasury spent ~$6T more than it collected in taxes: ~$3.2T during the Trump administration and ~$2.8T during the Biden administration,[a] and the US Federal Reserve reduced short-term rates and purchased $5T of treasury and agency bonds, flooding the market with liquidity and lowering long-term interest rates to their lowest level since WWII.[b]
As always and as ever, investors flooded with treasury checks and ultra-cheap money engaged in an orgy of speculation that would make even the most shameless drunken sailor blush. Crypto is perhaps the most prominent example of it. Trading in meme stonks would be another example. Pokemon Pikachu cards trading for $5M may be the silliest example. Or maybe the silliest example was all those smart people who came up with clever narratives to justify stock market valuations that otherwise look... unjustifiable.[c]
As the speculators threw money around while we all muddled through the pandemic, the world's supply chain system was hit with two massive shocks: (1) the pandemic, which is still limiting the availability of many items (e.g., iPhones made in China), and (2) Russia's war in Ukraine, which triggered a global food and energy crisis (e.g., there isn't enough grain being exported to feed the entire planet).
Both shocks are fueling inflation, prompting the US Treasury to cut spending and the Fed to increase rates and withdraw liquidity from financial markets. Increasing rates and withdrawing liquidity are very painful methods for reducing inflation, but they are the only methods that have been shown to work. As money started becoming less cheap to borrow and less easy to find, businesses and consumers started spending less -- first gradually, then "suddenly."
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[a] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=WdPZ
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. Food prices are inflating, so if we get enough people unable to afford food, prices go down. “Victory” I think you can apportion blame for stuff like that. And the guilty are insulated from the consequences of their…
> Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. The fed isn't doing this because they want cheaper shit from china. They're doing it to keep inflation under control. A result of making money more expensive is lower shipping container rates, but that's not the p…
Increasing the cost of borrowing decreases economic activity by essentially making everything more expensive on credit. Many businesses use credit facilities to finance ongoing operations throughout the year and their ability to afford to operate their business will go down, requiring them to employ less and attempt less business. This reduces inflation by pulling capital back from growth and investment as well as into savings facilities. But the other side is it induces a recession, increases unemployment, and decreases wages. This is worse than inflation IMO - if you make less money how is that different than things costing more? The supply of money might change the nominal price of something and hurts fixed income folks, but as wages are elastic as well as prices unless inflation is coupled with decreased wages and employment whats the relative difference? Further consumption based economies burn money supply down quickly if the economy is able to meet demand.
By reducing the cost of shipping and improving shipping capacities any excess cash would be consumed by having supply meet demand. That can be achieved by lowering interest rates which stimulates capital investment in supply side expansion and facilitated demand by lowering the marginal cost of credit facilities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people poorer so they can’t afford to buy things as a way of reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty ass backwards way to run a society. Food prices are inflating, so if we get enough people unable to afford food, prices go down. “Victory” I think you can apportion blame for stuff like that. And the guilty are insulated from the consequences of their…
Artificially inducing and propping up an economy with cheap cash led to this. Now we have no choice. Inflation hurts the poor just as much as this does.
Note I’m not saying don’t deal with inflation. I’m saying inflation is caused by bottlenecks in supply meeting demand. Stimulus increased demand, and that increased demand can be met by suppliers but the cost of shipping in all dimensions is very high historically. Removing bottlenecks and expanding economic throughput also solves the inflation we see without everyone being miserable.