431–440 of 514 posts
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Debt cycles would be one. https://youtu.be/SoKr0QVCLPA?si=kKcXNetb-kAPr1S8
That is a bad thing. It doesn't mean there aren't other contributors to our economic challenges.
If unemployment continues to rise, and the one-time impact on prices of tariffs leads to self-reinforcing high inflation, we'll have stagflation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation I sure hope not , because stagflation would be extremely unpleasant for everyone. Central banks like the Federal Reserve would be forced to raise interest rates, to put stress on businesses and consumers, so businesses find themsel…
The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).
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My point is that it should be more granular. I only ever hear it described in one of three things in tension with each other: markets, jobs, inflation. Do you think you can just watch those three things and guide a country/world into a prosperous one or could there be pitfalls?
Why are you saying only those three metrics are tracked by policymakers?
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A lot of current conservative grousing about the deficit is priming the electorate for destroying social security. That's why they always highlight it as the main cause of the deficit, even though it has a totally separate income stream from the rest of the budget. Republicans have done the exact opposite of balancing the budget at least since Reagan (inclusive) non-stop, zero R presidents have even done as well as d…
No party's platform is based on ending or destroying social security, especially not the GOP who gets a broad base of support from retirees. That being said, I've never had much faith in it being around for myself, though I'm 30 years from eligibility). It's possible that productivity boosts from automation and AI could overtime make SS actually sustainable in spite of overwhelming boomer population to support. The f…
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Hmm. What else was going on around that time that might confound any conclusions? Also, a 'crash' that recovers in 90 days isn't much of a 'crash', but the fact that people consider it a 'crash' is admittedly kind of scary.
Not sure where you got 90 days from. Turns out there's a Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_stock_market_decline Perhaps you would have preferred if I said "bear market" rather than crash. At any rate the first sentence of that Buffet article you hated didn't deserve your ire.
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That gives context, but lacks the final ~900K downward revision the article is about. If it had been shown, it would be the largest revision on the chart.
Nate Silver has a previous analysis of this data https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont... The monthly revisions are historically all over the place, up and down. My 2024 count says six months were revised up and six were revised down.
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Not sure where you got 90 days from. Turns out there's a Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_stock_market_decline Perhaps you would have preferred if I said "bear market" rather than crash. At any rate the first sentence of that Buffet article you hated didn't deserve your ire.
Bear market, temporary downturn, whatever. It was not a "crash" by any sane definition of the word, and it had little or nothing to do with inflation. Otherwise we'd see the same correlation at other times when inflation has spiked.
People often get hyper-focused on a single cause, but there is a whole range of forces driving a sharp decline in jobs. All of this is visible, yet we are marching toward an economic crisis of our own making. I believe the best term for this is "gray rhino". * Tariffs and Trade Uncertainty – Elevated tariffs and rapidly shifting trade policies are raising costs for manufacturers and discouraging hiring and investment…
"highly probable, high-impact, yet neglected threat that is obvious to many but often ignored until it causes significant damage."
"event that is known and possible, but which is assumed to be unlikely."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Wucker#Gray_rhinos
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Luckily, fiscally responsible Trump is coming in to stop all this deficit spending... oh wait.
I was going to make a glib comment that Trump is plugging the "deficit spending" of billionaire's having to pay taxes. But given Trump policies in toto, I am having trouble coming up with what a winner looks like here. Big oil I suppose. But that's a damn narrow demographic if everything else is hurting. And overall economic malaise won't juice oil demand. If anyone can characterize the class of economic winners ...…