Comments by "" (@jmitterii2) on "Stoic Finance"
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You know, it's creepy when someone from Great Britain names the county and cities I live in and near in low obscure populated state.
And a local pluto-ratic home builder that builds hastily built shitty houses.
Just a few years back, about 2018, I had to giggle when my nephew remarked, while driving through a CBH subdivision to visit my cousin who bought (borrowed to buy) a house and lives with his in laws, wife, and kids to make ends meet,
"Hey look, these homes all look drab and falling apart, they look worse than an old Soviet style built housing project."
I smiled and answered at least the old soviet homes that look better than this shit was essentially "free". These poor renters or home buyers have to pay through the teeth for the privilege to live in these crumbling wrecks.
These CBH houses are horrible and age worse still.
These homes look like absolute trash, poorly built facade of phony stucco siding crumbling revealing wood framing and even insulation falling out, and poking out. Hot water heaters littering yards. Sheets of shingles dangling over the edge of the roof. And piles of shingles lay on the ground below. Home after home looking the same.
Concrete that looks like they hired Evergrande to pour the foundation, crumbling with moss bits from a leaking outside water spigot.
Some homes were fairly new 2 to 3 years old at the time, lots that were left empty by 2009 and just recently finally built just 2015-2017.
And the older subdivisions portions built in 2006-2009 just as the boom and bust came and went.
Unless you knew which portion was the new or the old, you wouldn't have a clue other than perhaps you ventured into a space-time warp and found yourself in the Russia circa 1995 or so.
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Inflation is and always is a monetary thing. That's all economics foundation since Ancient Greece.
There is no other inflation causes. It is always a result of too much money in the system.
Inflation is the rise in prices across all goods and services. Not just a shortage in one or two things. Or in this sector. That's not inflation.
We're getting inflation, that is rise in prices across the board of all sectors even the low demand currently service sectors; they're actively raising prices as their inputs have increased, even though service sector demand is still below that of pre-pandemic levels.
The only way you can reduce inflation like this is to raise interest rates. In a non-debt based money system, you would stop minting coins gold silver cheese cucumbers whatever the medium, you would halt minting more coinage.
And yes, this does cause a recession.
Welcome to the stupidity of capitalism and let it be fuck head markets.
You know some structural planning does fucking help. I mean we do have in the US social security so we don't have rampant bag ladies and tramps roaming the streets that was so frequent in the 1800's... we have fire service, police service, judiciary, etc.
Other nations don't have people going bust because of of affordability of healthcare because they have universal healthcare like we have universal fire services and police services so your home and place of work and business and groceries and other stuff don't go up in flames because they couldn't afford to pay the fire department or police when bands of gangsters came robbing their establishments.
But morons ate the plutocratic stupidity propaganda and we now suffer the consequences of a few. As usual throughout history until it becomes intolerable. Which is fast approaching.
The Fed is in a corner, there was not structural recourse to the problems we face. And throwing monetary policy at it is already burnt to a crisp, leveraged beyond repayment aka debt trap. No matter what we do will result in a depression.
The fact remains, if we do nothing we have a depression with stagflationary results where GDP is negative yet prices continue to go up... don't think that can happen... look at several nations in Europe and S. America. Happens there repeatedly just in the past 50 years.
If we raise interest rates, the economy as it is structured today, based on a pyramid of new money lent and borrowed and call that cluster mug house of cards growth pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme, we will enter a recession. The bad debts clear away, prices will be forced to come back as less money to chase goods and services, and goods that haven't the supply to keep up with current demand caused by fear that is induced by inflation (got to raise rates and buy now as prices will only go higher).
This would put pressure on stupid demand to stop being stupid and quit buying today and raising rates of their outputs.
It would allow over priced assets to reset as defaults would happen and you would get a true valuation of a home or this good or that good or for rent.
Without a planned system at all, this is the idiocy you have two choices:
1) Stagflation that lingers until it all comes undone.
2) Upping interest rates which will contribute to a recession and reset of prices to which a stronger foundation can be built. This one is shorter lived misery.
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I think everyone including myself should watch this video you just made twice.
It has every key point we all need to understand:
1) We don't know how this exactly plays out, but we know the potentials for longer term disaster
a) Could be long lasting where price of homes are high, rent is "lower" than payment on a house for a while then that shoots up when big money corners most of the housing stock.
b) 75% of homes are still mortgage purchased and the 25% big money cash purchases cannot cope and they realize losing rent prices along with equity prices is just impossible (particularly with rising inflation that must and will ultimately require and be met with higher interest rates). And even Big money decides to pull a Zillow and dump their market maker stupidity in real-state that never had margin enough to play housing as a fungible asset like stocks... but they're not... they're all extremely different in terms of construction, utilities, economic circumstances, depreciation/upkeep management, etc. Thus dumping their 25% of the recent several year purchasing spree onto the market to stop loss out of the stupidity. That was never wise for them or for renters or buyers/sellers or homeowners or smaller to mid size landlords alike.
c) Be cautious. Know that if you set on buying, that you're likely going to be upside down for a long time. Meaning you probably won't be able to refinance the mortgage. Secondly, if you sell in just a few to even 5 years time or even 10 years, you could still end up owing more than that future sell price you got. Meaning, you were worse off than just renting. You may have to enter into a short sell just to get out from under the upside down equity to debt ratio.
d) Thinking this is a great time to become a landlord with high rents... this could be also a costly mistake... not only will you be upside down on the equity, but rental income will only drop as recessions could hit and higher rates to tame stagflation could last for over half a decade to a decade.
e) A big recession means you are forced to sell. People don't tend to sell their life time retirement savings or stocks or even long term or mid term holdings because they're "scared". They do so because they've lost their job... and the new job can't be found and they've tapped any and all savings. And if they do find a job, it's insufficient for the debts they have currently.
And buyers simply aren't there, nobody has any extra cash to throw at the market... particularly at a market that just seems to be a great way to light your cash on fire.... throwing money at something that just keeps burning your money up gets very depressing. Just like we get fomo to the upside... we get very few buyers wanting to DCA into stuff for a while as it just keeps going down, and DCA near high levels and then grinding lower levels literally is like lighting money on fire... so you get smaller volume sides on the bids or taking on ask prices. No buyers and forced sellers.
So be cautious.
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In speculative mania periods like this, even art becomes over done. As the rich that got richer have incomprehensible amounts of money they're seeking to preserve anyway they can, and have exhausted typical means of stocks, government bonds, corporate bonds, CD's, simple savings, shell companies, real-estate, etc. so they go exotic with art... particularly when art becomes a pass time hobby for some of the super rich not seeking to really ever make a return on their art spending, but rather a trophy for themselves. Similar fomo hits some of the other big cats... so they too pile into art.
But just as fast as they all pile in, they all stop showing up suddenly too. Or they attempt to sell their art for stop loss. Some billionaires in the past gave up even trying to sell their art and just in some rage against their own stupidity take it out on the art and ruin the piece. As if it was the painting or antique or whatever object's fault for their decision to purchase the item well beyond the limits of even insanity would permit.
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Doesn't have to last long. We must learn economics. WE must realize it is a philosophy. An invention.
We can invent a better system that isn't based on the appendages of evolution from which our current economic thought comes from: feudalism which comes from slavery.
Our systems in place were designed to ensure an aristocracy took front and center stage. It is a bozo the clown model that most 1st world and even less prosperous nations have shunned as a form of monarchy absolute monarchy dictatorship and many other now viewed as tyrannical forms of government... via introducing democracy 1 vote for all citizens of their respective nations as to all operations on how the government ought function.
Same democratization of the work force via co-op model must be adopted.
And to learn the propaganda scapegoating and gas lighting (all is fine nothing to see here) are used.
Subtle but highly effective... worship the aristocrat as if they have a deserved place and requirement in society for prosperity to happen when in reality they have a parasitical nature if such aristocracy or any really take hold.
They are at variance to the interests of the typical worker or small business operator and worker.
They have an interest in scapegoating collective bargaining of unions as the blight of all ill in the world, as well as race, the very government itself pretending it is not democratic that it is a separate entity from them and from you when in reality a democratic government is one that is ran by all of us, that we ourselves are the government, but they will instill that government is bad, ripping apart any participation of democratic government and with both hands the mass of people who have been told to refrain from critical criticism of current economic systems with jingoism and threats that they're not a true Scotsman fallacy galore with mockery of well you're a "communist" or "socialist" all while hypocritically both in terms of government control you hand that democracy over to them, they become plutocratic oligarchy where you have absolutely no influence over law and future policy, and they pour social policy to their benefit to further entrench themselves into the marrow of society, a deep rooted fungal infection, they become the feudal lord and we all become feudal serfs with few abilities to effectively push for policies that would benefit everyone, as anything like this would sufficiently take too much political and economic power from the aristocracy. They'll gas light that all is better off now, so no need to critique the obvious and repetitive failures of our economic system over time, repealing laws that were put in place for solid reasons as to not allow such parasitically induced stupidity to happen again by robber barons.
Make people think they too are just robber barons in waiting.... until they realize that's a complete and utter scam. And in fact the system indeed seeks to entrap them in giving again with both hands their political and economic power to a few.
We can create a co-op reserve bank that works toward capital formation to enterprises that are indeed co-ops in which all persons have 1 vote no matter the share holding quantity in such a co-op firm.
That workers and other stake holders alike have 1 vote each as to all aspects of the operation of the corporation.
In such a democratized workforce similar effects would take place as it did in dispelling the stupidity of divine right by pigs aka monarchs or feudal lords, and instilled liberty in which allocation of resources and plans go to benefit all workers not just a few plutocrats at the exploitation of the very workers who made it all actually happen.
You would never have or rarely have a democratized work force:
1) Vote themselves out of a job to increase already profitable company by a few cents per share to outsource in some country who has a tyrannical form of government thus suppressed wages, a from of inauthentic comparative advantage.
2) Rarely or scarcely ever share productivity gains brought to us via technological advancements: they're not going to issuing stock buy backs that provide absolutely no long term value and actually can cause indebtedness for a short term buying spree pump in price on their stock, procure useless luxury stupidity for a few executives at the expense of needed capital expenditures to improve production and administration equipment and processes.
3) Formulate a wage/salary strategy that is not based on merit nor ability to pay, but on what one can get away with, exploitation. Wages and salaries wouldn't be placed under the rug, where nobody knows the true price of their work relative to others... imagine going to a store where the prices of each item you wanted to purchase was blank... and each time you came up you had to guess to the cashier on the price, and haggle blindly not knowing if the price the countered or started was really fair or not... perfect knowledge principle utterly violated. Such wages/salaries for each position would be clearly posted and regularly negotiated with considerations in context of the businesses ability to pay aka it's profitability or losses.
4) You would never have workers vote to have an unsafe work environment.
5) You would never have workers vote to have a threatening work environment in which employees are pitted against one another, when they're supposed to be collectively a team working to compete against the competition... not each other.
6) You would never have workers vote to ruin their own surrounding environment they all live and work in.
7) You would never have workers vote to forgo known quality problems for short term profits... short term because eventually those poor quality issues will surface and sales will plummet, reputation ruined.
8) You would never have workers vote to squander capital or in debt themselves that have no or limited impact on increasing productivity, safety, profitability not just for the coffers of the enterprise, but for the workers as a whole.
9) You would not see votes to perform scams for short term reward and long term pain; workers have a longer period of return requirement and therefore look for long term growth and sustainability in the operation of a firm, while many modern day so called entrepreneurs (really sacks of manures) have only short term interest in flipping the business either to a venture capitalist who then wants to flip it on to the open market in an IPO... no long term strategy that's real, but for short term dress up to make the business look pretty to some suckers, not really care if the company has any interest in ever becoming profitable, or make debt obligations, or really do anything at all in the long haul, so long as it can dress the pig up in lipstick and shiny jewelry enough to fool entities they're flipping the business on pays top dollars, they're in and out hello good bye.
Basically, the risks of a business are taken strongly on the workers even more so than the founders.... founders often playing several businesses at once, particularly in our modern time, often under a corporation to which debt is detached from their own personal holdings, they're not risking their own money, and of their own money they have comparably much more disposable amount than we the worker. $1,200 coach ticket for a flight on a $50K year worker is 2.4% of their income. Where as a first class cabin and shower ticket to the $50K year earner $12,000 is 24% of their income... the $12,000 ticket to $1 million a year earner is only 1.2%... in respect to their annual income, a $1 million a year income person is paying less disposable income compared to the 2.4% relatively much meager $1,200 ticket of a $50K a year worker.
It is cheaper for the million a year person to pay the $12K price tag, than for median household earner (2 income earners of $50K) to buy coach ticket.
Let that sink in.
Let it all sink in.
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That's one of the reasons US hasn't adopted a cheaper and more effective higher quality universal healthcare system.
Another big reasons, is that healthcare for the top 1% actually makes them a return... albeit a small 1%ish return... as a rich dynastic family or smallish business will simply make their own insurance company... they then load it with half a million to 1 million up to 4 million to even 10 million as collateral. This collateral then is used for investments and reserve for payments while collecting premiums from workers or using returns on collateral to feed the kitty to keep it at par plus about a 1% return after capital gains and dividends and payouts.
To avoid big hits to the kitty, they often take out insurance if draw downs become this amount, that insurance will pay to make them whole again. This premium is well below the return on their investments from the kitty.
Again, their net advance is about 1%.
So current US healthcare system pays them a 1% return.
Instead of it costing them anything it pays them a return instead.
Ta-da! And that's why they really really don't wanna give that up.
Hence why these disconnected nut jobs thought an HSA would be brilliant for the peon class. Why, that's what they effectively have, and they don't really pay anything, they make money from it instead. Why can't they just float a note to cover expenses as one disconnected billionaire lamented about a government shut down in 2016.
Float a note... you hear someone refer to taking out a loan like that you know they're disconnected to the nth degree from the financial affairs of the general population. That or they're a corporate financier or accountant.
Now this doesn't work with large or huge mega scale corporations with 100,000's or more employees... as the collateral becomes too big opportunity costs are outweighed to do so... example Amazon or Walmart or a cell phone company of 100K or more workers would require a billion or 2 billion or 3 billion to be put down as collateral. Their 1% return on such a huge collateral would be too little.
So in these instances it does cost them at that corporate level... but again its cheaper as the premiums with such a big giant group discount is small comparable to revenues the mammoth company makes.
And the collateral required to act as their own insurance that would be $1 billion or $3 billion, can be put to use making a bigger return expanding the company or in many instances as of the last decade, stock buy backs to pad the pockets of the owner class who have warrants turning them into stock as you pump the price, you sell into that and Voilà! Convert corporate profits in the banks of the corporate accounts into the personal accounts of the owner class. Voilà!
The cost to insure their millions of people only amounting to $100 million to $500 million or less a year on revenues of $3 billion or $10 billion or $100 billion... no problem.
The owners of the corporation of course with their family brood dynasty, they of course will make their own dynastic insurance company as mentioned above... sometimes if they're members of the board entitled to corporate benefits, they'll join that instead or on top of their family insurance company.
It's similar to why they really don't care that much about deficit spending, borrowing lead to government floating treasuries and bonds. Who buys these bonds 95% of the country doesn't. Instead its largely the banks on the T-Bills side and the rest are very wealthy 1% looking to preserve their wealth.
They've turned their tax costs into a loan with interest.... so not only do they not have to pay taxes, they get their money back with interest.
This is how plutocratic our systems in the US truly are.
And how hardwired they are.
Lots of freeloaders with lots of power to keep their freeloading powers intact.
And that's why they'll go down until the entire system just implodes. As late stage capitalism or plutocratic or just any economic system with too much concentration of power and economics into the hands of a few always does.
The weight of it always comes crashing down on them too as it collapses into unbearable untenable misery for the masses.
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That's why asset prices are so high... money printer go bur is debt binge go burr.
The idea of debt based money supply is that too much debt aka money into the system there's a string attached, they can pull the string to pull money/debt binging out of the system via increasing interest rates. Both lenders and borrowers tend to lend and borrow less as its more expensive and risky. And those sitting on cash free and clear of debt they owe, tend to save the money in cash, savings accounts as interest rates are better or other safer interest rate earning instruments like I-Series savings bonds which are essentially risk free and adjust to inflation here in the USA... now paying 9.62% annually and paid quarterly and compounded monthly... lock up period 12 months... and only penalty is forfeit 3 months of accrued interest if redeemed less than 5 years... no penalty after 5 years on redemption. Limit is $10K a year per person and tax ID entity. And these are non-trade-able bonds, always redeemed at par plus accumulative interest after the 1 year lock up period with tax exemptions on local and state income taxes.
Then this makes goofy stupidity growth stocks that make no money look less attractive as the risk reward becomes better balanced when interest rates go up. Actually makes sense to preserve your money in savings rather than wild eyed pie in the sky speculative stupidity like NFT's and farts in a jar.
Anyway, the idea of debt forgiveness becomes difficult for a debt based monetary system to stomach as this cuts the string to pull out too much money chasing too few goods in the system to halt inflation.
Certain debts are dumb and destructive overall. Infrastructure, utilities (power, water, sewer), Student loan and medical debt are absurd when simple non-debt taxation can take care of those items without the cost of interest and the mediators servicing the debts.
Any debt forgiveness though must go hand in hand with restructuring of prices.
What should have happened during the banks going bankrupt in 2008 was that they all should have been nationalized.
And under this nationalization, the prices pumped due to the debt binge of the Fed Reserve lower interest rates and the banks playing their goofy games to keep pumping out more debt/loans, the prices of all mortgages taken should have been remarked to the new market prices... you took out mortgage for $250K or $180K for a property now going for $150K to $110K... okay that's what the actual non-debt inflated price really was... your entire principle from origination would be remarked to that lower principle amount, all payments made would reflect on that principle amount, interest would be marked at a fixed term of about 5% to 4% (at that time a low rate).
This would have allowed the debt collapse along with prices to become stable... lowering prices to real money supply that got zapped by defaults... and kept people in their homes and kept developers who build homes in business of building the supply of homes a net positive population growth requires to keep housing affordable.
At some point, the nationalized banks would be spun back to becoming private banks, most of them turned into credit unions with the sole ownership democratically voted by their depositors as all enterprises really should be owned and operated.
And laws that halted this same stupidity, in the US it was the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933 that circumvented the same stupidity that lead up to the great depression of 1929. It placed fire walls between commercial speculative banking and deposit banking that dealt only in collateral loans such as vehicle loans or mortgages and some signature loans in installments.
And stock and junk bond nonsense was done away from normal deposit checking and savings for the wealthier able to risk more commercial bank customers.
It also barred most stock buybacks that just short term sugar rush stocks pumping and then when done dumping stock prices so that a few insiders and owners holding the stocks can sell all over everyone's little heads. This revenue from the company going to no future value is gone poof... just used to pump stock price for a very short period so that these ass holes could cash out on the top. Leaving the company with no cash to improve, grow, or otherwise operate their business better. And the stupidity of junk bonds... many companies not only took out installment loans, but floated junk bonds (they continue to this day playing this horrible stupid game) to buy back stock. Adding absolutely no value, and in fact leaving behind a zombie company that has so much money it can never repay back on any future prospects and unable to even compete into the future to grow or make better their products.
That alas did not happen. Instead we reward banks for doing horrible stupidity debt binge dispensing. Gave them bonuses and cheap consolidations to make even more money. And allowed productive supply of home developers to go bust, those left standing terrified only building enough supply of housing to promise them sales. Making housing un-affordable both in terms of rent on multi-dwelling units and on home ownership on single dwelling units.
And it forced a debt domino collapse among all the working class and some non-working class who found themselves jobless and/or under employed for several years to a decade, leading to the "Great recession".
And instead, even worse things were passed in law: Frank-Dodd Act which made it more easy for the Fed to just bypass congressional approval on TARP like programs whereby the Fed Reserve can just start buying up bank loans and other hobbled together junk instruments that allow banks to lend into an oblivion undermining the entire banking system's purpose.
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The major crypto are part of a huge pump and dump scam via USDT 80% of it's liquidity is poker chips of this "stable coin".
Then there's the other "stable coins" that are more Ponzi than pyramid scheme than Tether:
USDC is a Ponzi more than pyramid in that it is a savings scheme using other savers to pay 7% return or higher on that savings... but when a run happens... USDC finally admitted several months ago that they only have 60% of the cash in their savings as dollars, prior they promised/lied that each USDC is backed by $1 USD. Like tether... tether lied and revealed several months ago that they only have 3% of their poker chips backed by $1 USD.
Terra is completely a mystery what their actual holdings are. And they too are a mix of pyramid scheme that they trade with casinos aka margin exchanges trading other crypto currency. As well as doing the Circle USDC thing promising big return 7% or higher but that return is paid out in the poker chips that and only redeemed in other savers money; and if they're using those funds for speculative investments to make a return themselves, an unknown potentially huge risk they down play pretending you're just sitting in digital dollars in crypto when really you just bought an investment poker chip that could (if you cash out before everyone else does) make the stated return, or if there is a run on their Ponzi scheme, lose most if not all of your holdings.
Tether is a bit more sinister in that they sell their USDT (tethers) poker chips to casinos aka margin exchanges at a discount. These casinos know that tether poker chips are thus likely insolvent and if too many of those poker chips get sold (yes you have to sell these poker chips on spot exchanges to some other sucker or wait for a frequent wash order that buys up the order book on a regular basis probably Tether and other affiliates to maintain the peg 1 tether for 1 USD).
So the casinos have lots of their own double dealings reserving their own amount of tether and purchased other crypto to pump and dump the market, breaking people out of their stop losses or in many instances forcing traders to liquidate their position gambling on ETH or BTC or DOGE or ADA or EOS or whatever underlying crypto with the margin based in tether.
Some major protocol was implemented several years back to link spot exchanges with these margin futures contracts to provide liquidity to spot exchanges.
That liquidity can easily vanish should tether become insolvent; unable to buy up the ask order book at spot exchanges trading tether for USD; maintain the peg.
Whenever Circle or Tether fails to maintain their peg or circle no longer has the backing to redeem circle for dollars via Coinbase (presently USDC's only partner spot exchange where one can redeem circle for no commission and actually redeem aka swap exact 1 USDC for 1 USD. No need to place a limit order and wait to see if the trading price will reach your limit sell order of tether for USD to get your fiat money so you can actually spend the stuff on everyday needs or reallocate to other gambling or investments or savings.
One thing is for certain... when this speculative mania ends... lots of horrible movies will be made about it all. And crypto will likely inspire many of them.
And don't get started on the NFT stupidity.
The stuff does seem to be unwinding. At least in real money in flows... persistent money outflows seems to be happening looking at reliable sources.
Yet, in a major red flag way, the stable coins of USDT as well as USDC and Terra seem to have minted more and more of their poker chips.
Tether minted about 7 billion more USDT in November. As the price of BTC and rest of crypto started to fall again to the 2021 summer lows. Tether seems to be sitting on much of those poker chips... or the affiliate exchanges are sitting on them... or a mix of the same. My best guess following Summer 2021 tether started minting a lot of poker chips then billions... then suddenly we saw while outflows of real USD or other fiat continued to pour out of crypto, the poker chip margin exchanges had HUGE order sizes quickly reaching over 1 billion in tether in an hour period of time buying up order books on many of the margin exchanges ask order book pumping the price back up.
The recent fall was likely the casinos and possibly even tether or under direction of tether to quickly sell short the market to dump the price to force liquidate and wreck real gamblers at these margin exchanges to keep their poker chips from hitting spot exchanges to sell for fiat.
Just be careful... these types of scams, when they end, they end fast and furiously. And usually out of nowhere. 80% of liquidity that tether represents in crypto means prices can easily fall nearly 99% as holders just want whatever cash they can get back. Traders buying the dips realize it just keeps dipping hitting their stop losses or just continuing to dip they give up and realize things are falling apart and stop trading reducing the other 20% of the liquidity... and nobody is home to trade with.
A sample of who crypto trades without influence of tether is to look at coins that don't trade on these margin exchanges like SC coin or many other coins on spot exchanges that are not on these margin exchanges. There is no liquidity driving the prices up or down. Just actual fiat money inflows and outflows. And these non-stable coin manipulated coins are looking very much in a deep winter freeze. That's similar to how the current larger market cap coins will trade whenever these stable coins fall apart... particularly if tether goes bust.
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Kim Manufacturing is already very automated here in the US.
Most are already mostly machine driven.
Of machines you still need operators of those machines, quality techs (you can couple those depending in the complexity of operation of the machines), fork lift drivers even if you couple that with automated forklifts which aren't useful for most heavy pallet loads, and order fulfillment teams... you can literally run a shift on about 10 to 20 people per line in operation.
Just depends on what's being done, what is being manufactured.
Manufacturing doesn't employ that many people even now, but it does pay better than most other occupations as it produces massive amounts of wealth; takes in very cheap inputs and makes it into mass quantities of finished goods worth much more than the inputs.
And then you mentioned engineers... often most manufacturing outfits may only employee 1 or 2 or a handful of engineers per company or set of factories, other factories are cheap and just source engineering out as they're not needed that frequently, only when making specific updates, changes to product lines, installing new machinery, etc. Then their job is over. Mechanics, operators, QC, etc. all take over from there.
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He was playing on a protest... as if pushing money onto rich people holding stock is some kind of protest... but meet idiocracy in the full. It's pure unadulterated stupidity.
The morons he cultivated and gave a safe haven, feel rightfully or wrongfully (the entire thing is stupidity mixed with more stupidity just as fake magical internet money is fucking apex of stupidity) he's a salesman... watched Meet Kevin several other times way prior to the pandemic.
His real-estate hype to me anyway, sounded like a big debt trap he was pushing himself into... he has lots of liabilities. He's probably in debt to his eye balls. And I think he saw 2020 and some of the stupidity during the 2021 on meme stocks, that it was a get out of debt quick scheme. A really rich person doesn't bother doing youtube.
He is a grifter... he swaps between real-estate to crypto to stocks.
He sets examples as if he knows what he's doing... when really he's setting people up to failure.
He got what he was coming. He was utilizing the morons protesting throwing money at the rich via buying up meme stocks thinking somehow this was going to make the rich hurt hard, the hedgies the imaginary scapegoats... little brainlets don't understand short sellers are all over the place small and large... and in generally shorting stock is expensive and done quick and fast; literally day trades... swing trades on shorts last about a week at the most or for the period of a dump that happens. And it usually is accompanied by hedging long positions along with shorts. Hence the term hedge funds... it's a contrary to the longs that are much larger than the hedge to the short side.
I think too many movies scrambled the mindless rubes minds seeing the long period Big Short movie has many of them holding onto a short position for a long period of time... that's not normal... holding those shorts wasn't normal... they had to hold them for so long because they literally had to create an entire scheme custom made to short the CDO's of real-estate. And they couldn't just offload them super quick because being newly custom creations, the very people who sold them these instruments weren't valuing them appropriately... of course... was a bit of a fraud... that's why they dumped finally when they did all involved in the big short of real-estate.
That's not a typical short. Neither is the prolonged stupidity of GME... they're looking at outliers and expecting them to be the norm. The norm is that shorts are in for a week or two at the most... most often it's a day trade.
They're hardly never in longer than a month... try shorting anything for longer than that, even if the trade goes your way, interest on the borrowing of the stock and potential hitting your stop loss or getting a margin call can ruin your risk reward ratio.
So basically... Kevin is a grifter... I watched back in 2017 and/or 2019 somewhere around then all his real-estate dealings... he would sort of go over all his holdings and how he would use equity loans to purchase more and more real-estate and think its fine and dandy to have a few homes or apartments paid off with the rest borrowed and borrow more for another property... basically confusing that no matter what on the aggregate he's in debt, expecting and assuming renters are a dime a dozen, and no problem, just get a renter no matter what price for rent they pay... ignoring the fact you could get rental prices that do not pay the mortgage or the several other mortgages and the property taxes on ALL of the properties.
He's grifter.
Was he smart to dump his stuff... yeah... he was losing his ass. And I suspect the grifter is still in debt to his eye balls... if not... he just salvaged the gambling in real-estate leverage he did in the mid 2000's to preserve what he's got. Perhaps he's upside a few million or a million.
I personally think he owes more than he has in net.
So you can blame him.. but the morons following youtubers like this need to blame their own laziness of due diligence. Their absurd dumbness not to investigate this stuff to the max. I mean you're gambling your hard earned money... even your stimi money wasn't "free" particularly if your were or continued to work, it's just a tax rebate... some of your tax money you got back to keep you afloat.
So if you're suddenly like myself interested in crypto to see what all the fuss is about, and also finally want to dabbl in stocks and options because the commissions are way low or completely gone... you do research. Lots of it.
My nephew... an ape who got me to buy AMC (Glad he did) but I sold it at $73 a share... learning what was really going on... a gamma squeeze to the highest strike call option at the time $73. And once price got there, market makers would be fully covered on the calls they sold, and would no longer be buying the stock up to cover their calls. So I sold it pre-market, texted my nephew to sell. He didn't. I explained he could get in at a lower price and buy even more stocks... but nope... all about the conspiracies that they didn't even research themselves... just group think... no scouring and playing devils advocate to find out the realness of what was going on.
Past month, I figured he had been selling covered calls on his AMC shares he has over 100 shares... He didn't even know you could sell covered calls or cash secured puts.
He was upset... as he "knew" AMC would go thru a bearish phase. You could literally have sold a few week expiration calls for $300 to $600 bucks repeatedly... making lots of money.
I was doing that with cash secured puts all summer long on AMC. I told him that at the time in the summer... thinking he understood what I was talking about... obviously he didn't.
I referred him to youtube to learn about covered calls and cash secured puts and appropriate strategies at managing them because they're nuanced... and at the time he didn't seem to believe me.
Which is funny. Over and over I sold BTC right at the correct time... I talked him out of shorting Dogecoin just before it popped to 70ish cents... would have liquidated his position... told him to sell at the top of AMC...
But you can't trust your uncle... he hasn't a clue what he's talking about.
Kids these days LOL!
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If you didn't buy this last dip a little, having a plan buying carefully, this is take profit time... on a rip your face off dead cat pump that will crash hard core once again very soon.
This isn't a good market to trade (especially swing trade) maybe day trade, but don't day trade breakouts in this market. They'll fail more often than they'll succeed to go up. This is far from 2020 and 2021. You have to place your bets carefully and with some sort of thesis.
TNX couple weeks ago dipped to 1.6% this was stupid considering the inflation and Fed about to raise rates albeit only 0.25 basis point, but ending their bond buying QE program. So buying banks on the dips made sense considering TNX would rise... well it did... 2.3% already... and my bank stock purchase and roll of covered calls and dividend from the bank I bought was good trade.
Dip in energy and food trade was good to buy... but it's a bounce over a small period of time from the rip to the upside and rip back down. XLE is topping back out and will dip... that dip in XLE which includes food stocks including fertilizer companies will be back up... but right now you sell into this rip... and prep limit orders and alerts to sell cash secured puts to acquire these as the dip will be bought again.
TNX will probably dip, TLT over sold, will pump reducing TNX and XLF financials will dip again... for a short period of time... buy that dip.
Seasonality... we will dip one last time, SPY 400 to 390 maybe 360 (but doubt it dips that far). Then Seasonality we will have Sell in May and go away... buy the dip in June or July and sell again in August/September.
SO far that's the strategy to play. But don't fomo into rip your face off bear market rallies... or you'll be holding bags for a while. And stay away from same week or short dated option contracts lotto plays. You're more likely to lose your entire gambling in those... its better to sell upside calls... and cash secured puts in ways of selling and acquiring the underlying. And of the underlying, develop a thesis that makes sense. Don't go after growth stocks, and be reluctant to buy discretionary XLY stuff. Go after XLP, XLU (albeit make XLU a small size these don't move much and they're over valued already), XLP is good... and look for XLE and play the dips in XLF getting good banks aka boring banks that do most of their business in the most stable countries and have a good record of not getting to mixed up in commercial banking activities selling CDO's and the like... that stuff is still the trash legacy of 2008 that never was prohibited and corrected... it's still absolute trash.
And stay away from money losers zombies of the IWM small caps, look for money makers specific to energy, food, fertilizer, consumer stable like stuff for now going into the entire year of 2022.
And flip XLF financials here and there. Buy on the dips and sell into those rallies produced by treasury bond yields popping up and dipping again only to pop up again as inflation will continue all of this year into next. But don't get to heavy on financials... when we start to get bad earnings, marking an imminent recession... XLF will tank and so will QQQ and the rest of the market ending this bull market completely.
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Watch out for USDC too... because they have lied as well firstly stating like tether that $1 for 1 tether or $1 for 1 USDC backing, when finally they admitted USDC has 60% in cash. The other in various other "investments". And like tether, Circle has constantly made and broke promises that they were going to do a full independent audit. Still not happening. And they've promised this all of last year. Nothing. Crickets. The other problem, Circle stated they would (they meaning really one guy show here) that he was going to get a banking license and become a bank. Nothing. Crickets. And like Terra and even many Tether based exchanges, they offer staking these poker chips for high interest rates.
Entire stable coin idiocy is why crypto pumped so high... it was a fractional reserve banking nonsense that always, always ends on a run on the bank. Still does in our current fractional banking system, but we have FDIC insurance covering $250K per bank and deposits in that bank per person. And SIPC covering a little over $500K on all assets stocks, options, and cash in an account.
Look at all stable coin minting... the minting of these coins correspond with the insane price increases in BTC, ETH, and many other crypto.
It's a pyramid scheme with moments of Ponzi when various exchanges and stable coin makers themselves offer high interest rate returns if you lock your poker chips up.
Stay away from crypto. It's garbage. Complete and utter trash. One that will haunt you after you lose all your money by way of the many bad movies, that will no doubt be made from this $2 trillion dollar epic potpourri of scams. At the heart of the crypto is the stable coin scams. And they're all bogus.
Good luck.
Cash out now... or I suppose you can find the mental support group of Terra holders :(
And let's just end this garbage now... this shit will have ruined more people than turned into real money millionaires and billionaires.
There is a reason regulating bodies like the SEC was founded.
I know the indoctrination of stupidity "markets" know best... when markets know nothing... they're dumb efficient at one thing squandering through something you want to sell or buy at whatever the market will bear or you can bear. That's it. You can swap something for something else.
It doesn't tell you if it was wise, dumb, beneficial, good deal, bad deal, what might happen later, what you might need later... nothing.
Rules of markets just as in planning are a necessity to have a prosperous decent fair bountiful economy.
The mindset that markets all by themselves unfettered will magically form a prosperous economy... has always, always resulted in quite the opposite... usually famine as in no planning on food storage for potential bad crop yield, or putting too many food suppliers out of business on a high yield season causing the next year to have to few of suppliers and rendering the population... starving mad.
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You can thank the Fed Reserve for making it go completely stupid.
But even prior to the Pandemic era stupidity of the Fed Reserve Cartel Banking system, you can thank Zillow and their ilk for pump and dumping the market similar to that of tether... turning it, if you they would, into an untenable insolvent pump scheme, whereby they would use debt as their form of tethers, to pump prices buying properties on the ask and above the ask, using "cash offers" as their debts were cash advances to speed purchases as well as foregoing the due diligence requirements of having inspectors evaluate and using those evaluations having appraisal analysts to provide a fair actual price.
This speculative bubble was prior to the 2020's.
Homes are like vehicles... they depreciate, they require constant expenditures as they deteriorate over time. Therefore the only thing you can substantiate is the scarcity of the ground the dirt the home sits upon based on the local availability of land. In no nation is there a growing population to substantiate the value of land. Especially non-productive land for the use of residential housing.
There is plenty of land. Like many objects aka assets, prices have gone upwards due to speculative stupidity. Since 2011 many homes were being purchased with a bottom by speculators from around the world, figuring at least a dead cat bounce perhaps would take place thus opportunity to profit on change in pricing. This rush to home purchases both single and multi dwelling units caused instead of a dead cat bounce, but a ballooning extreme wave 5 like blow off top.
This caused both rents and home prices to go beyond affordability based on pay. Extremely faulty governmental inflation reports, particularly in the US, played down those figures. Other countries encountering larger than normal homelessness and widening periods of homelessness saw some nations seek to end the speculative bubble that was causing a feedback loop, homes sitting vacant as to become an easier medium of selling for profit when the time struck the new fomo owner.
Which only added to the burden of less supply of homes available to actually live in. Demand remained essentially constant, but the supply cut even shorter... so Toronto for instance, placed a tariff tax on speculation to help reduce this miss-allocation of resources into empty apartments that only suck supply out despite no shift increase in demand (the speculative bubble feedback loop).
Major flaw in many nations in housing was that many dropped the necessary measures in ensuring homes built both individual and multidwelling units would at least cope with population growth even when population growth isn't as large as it was 40 years ago. They instead focused on the massive bail outs of banks and financial companies. The real rulers at the moment of all nations.
What governments failed to do in many nations (some exceptions exist like Vienna Austria with their housing program which even very affluent sign up for to live in these dwellings), was to assist developers in the poor purchasing of land at the stupidity high prices of the 2000's. These developers fearing a dead cat bounce, many went bust with no assistance than no longer existed, the survivors of these developers just went slower... only building homes when a purchase was already completed and fully funded by a bank; thus supply was slow on the uptake.
It was never a housing supply surplus over the 2000's to the 2008 great recession.
It was an un-affordability crisis caused by massive leveraging and speculation.
It was treated as if there was just too many homes available. Which was quite wrong. Supply was always insufficient.
Market manipulation via over leveraging caused by decreasing interest rates and the entire CBO and selling tranches of these mortgages encouraged ever more lending and borrowing at higher and higher principle amounts of loans banks loved it as this was the filler to pad their bottom line as interest rates went down: financial and banking had a vested interest in pumping the prices of real-estate to offset the persistent lowering of interest rates.
Real-estate prices rose to high, and the quality of the borrowers ability to pay under the terms of variable interest rate loans, requirement of an ARM just for the down payment (aka no down payment but a loan for a down payment; a loan for a loan), holders were paying 2 mortgages: the ARM and the primary mortgage... then top that with variable rates, when the Fed decided to raise interest rates to cool an over heating speculative economy, this hit those poor credit worthy people ability to pay the new monthly payments at the higher interest rates. The entire economy slowing, made even decent credit worth people to become jobless and require them to relocate for new jobs and to sell their homes flooding the market with sellers. During this time people moved back with relatives and/or found roommates or even family mates to shack up in 1 or 2 bedroom homes/apartments as employment became a problem.
At no time was sufficient homes available in many of countries, in particular the US. US and many other nations abandoned the much needed basic good requirements of shelter to ensure the AFFORDABILITY and QUALITY of CONSTANT supply of housing to meet the requirements of a constantly growing population. No nation is really negative in population besides a few.
What we need are housing programs. At no point point in time did a speculative market provide quality and affordable housing to an economy. Such a thing has never happened... in fact laissez faire allow to do markets in basic goods like food, but also housing, literally turns out with horrible consequences, as the term suggests of laissez fair or allow to do... such markets laissez fair allow to the food or housing market to become a speculative bubble miss-allocating basic goods causing abrupt shortages and demand. Cause of many riots, civil wars, and wars alike; an entire collapse of economies.
Markets aren't new, they're not smart, they're just a method of transacting goods and services. Laissez fair is a stupid propaganda nonsense that we now suffer from in the housing market. Similar to banking and financial. These markets are allowed to do all sorts of stupidity things that ultimately ruin everyone. Perhaps a few scammers make out like bandits and luck people in early on the asset and selling at the right time to get in and get out.
But on the whole, such stupidity unstructured and nurtured regulated markets are a butt hole for everyone else. And have been the reason for the rise of many tyrants and riots and civil wars and wars alike a complete chaotic collapse of nations.
It's pure stupidity.
Forget your Ayn Rand stupidity rants of dumbness. She forgets the gangsters that came to rule her home country came about because of the economy prior... similar in its scope of stupidity. Double downing on that would only do more harm.
So we need housing programs. Otherwise the only way housing really becomes affordable in most places in the US is when we hit recession and everyone is broke as they're under employed or flat out jobless aka little to no income... at that point lower prices aren't low enough.
So you'll likely get your lower prices on homes at some point... but you may not have a sufficient income for those homes at that lower prices.
Hence we need a housing program. We had them for most of the 1900's after the great depression. But were faded to the point of none-existence since the 1990's.
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@sukhmaidickoff
Last year I experimented with crypto... mostly trading it... but I also mined a little of it, and moved BTC and USDT and USDC and a few other coins from one wallet to another.
My conclusions:
1) It cannot scale. Times when the nodes were busy moving money from one wallet to another (for me it was moving BTC or USDT or USDC from one exchange to another like Coinbase to Bittrex.
The "gas" fees to send the money just to yourself could become as high as $100 to as low as a $2 to $3... some exchanges charged a flat rate of $20 to move your tethers or other coins to your own wallet or to another exchange account you have.
Sending money to one wallet to another is same as spending the money.
Also, at times when the particular crypto's network you were moving was busy, it could take as long as a week to get the required 7 or more confirmations to where the exchange would agree you truly did put this much BTC or ETH or whatever on your account, and credit you with the money.
Tokens like USDT and USDC were faster, as they just simply ride the network of another coin like ETH or Tron... usually completing in a few hours instead of 9 hours to several weeks for the accredited period to say you truly have the money available to sell or withdraw or otherwise move again.
The cost and the time make this stuff impossible for any actual use for real money needs.
And there is no security. If you move USDT that's on TRON coin to an ETH coin wallet... you have a strong chance of losing those funds forever. It's gone.
Somehow you get compromised on your wallets, that money is gone. So no security.
Therefore it solves nothing that traditional transaction methods haven't already provided. Crypto is more expensive, time costing, and less secure than all other transaction types from ACH which is free typically, to AMEX or Western Union or major card companies, Paypal, Venmo, etc.
Really, crypto solves no other problems, but only introduces new ones: Scalability, security, timeliness, affordability, value discernment, etc.
I researched deeper into the MT Gox era and then Tether and Terra and Circle stable Coin eras... and discovered the liquidity of this stuff is one giant gambling pyramid and ponzi scheme farce... hence why tens of billions seem to trade every 24 hours.... it's tens of billions of tether that is trading, not fiat money. Only a fraction of this poker chip like fiat derivatives hit the exit to fiat at any given time. Keeping this going for a long period of time, just waiting for a period of time when a run on these things happen.
And these sorts of pyramid and ponzi schemes always have their insolvency events. As they add no real money inflow via some production value... they're using inflows of other people piling in, to pay out those piling out.
I then checked to see if my USD fiat holdings in Coinbase and Bittrex were FDIC insured... thought they would be. Nope.
So even my cash on the sidelines while I wasn't in any trade on the stuff, was at risk.
I took my money and what profits I made off these "exchanges"... currently US law classifies them not as exchanges, but as payment processors.
Hence why they're not SIPC insured and not a member of FINRA. These crypto exchanges go at lengths to distort their backings too.
Instead of being straight forward about the fact that your account is not FDIC insured... they'll (Bittrex) will mention how they took out over a hundred million dollars of insurance against any losses they may get due to security issues. Coinbase goes to the extent of stating the banks Coinbase uses to do business, that those banks are FDIC insured... which falsely gives someone the impression you get pass through protection... you don't; Coinbase's accounts on that bank are FDIC only for that limit of protection for their account and nothing more, your accounts with Coinbase mean nothing to the banks that Coinbase is banking with.
And worse, they speak about FINRA as if they're a member without directly lying and saying so, instead they go on about how "they're governed" by FINRA. Basically, they report their dealings with FINRA and FINRA just monitors them. But there is no membership between these payment processors... they're not exchanges currently in the eyes of the law as of the time writing this. They're payment processors.
And they're just silent on the fact that they're not SIPC insured.
Lots of legal issues open up whenever crypto gets flagged as a securities. Basically, all the crypto on the market becomes illegally traded non-originated pseudo securities breaching many tests of a securities... and in fact probably aren't a security at all.. at least not the decentralized crypto... they're more of a commodity.
Really, crypto just presents more problems to finance while solving nothing.
So... I'm kind of out of the thing. Will watch the tulip market from a distance.
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And the music hasn't stopped yet... get ready for the most ridiculous scams... many are obvious for us slightly older folks. The many scams of Musk. But then there's the crypto stupidity tulip idiocy an open scam whereby one can see the numbers of USDC, Terra, Tether, etc. goofy fractional reserve pyramid scheme right in front of our eyes.
People look at market cap as if it has any real meaning at all... as it doesn't. If I invent a good or crypto coin or some other item and have so much of that thing supply... say I make a billion of those things... and immediately one person buys one for $1... that now has a market cap of $1 billion dollars. Doesn't mean that much money ever was exchanged or went into the stupidity... literally only $1 dollar... on person bought my thing of 1 billion things outstanding. Suddenly... market cap $1 last transaction times 1 billion things total... $1 billion market cap. Useless notation.
Every idiocy bubble in the last century going wild: robber baron collapse of the 1924 to 1929... to the moronic stagflation induced by idiot monetary policy from 1968 to 1978.... dot com bust... real-estate bust... bankster bust... all at once in the biggest bubble ever... get ready to find out some of these firms were cooking the books... profits reported if they even bothered to report profits as many didn't even need to show they were making money... will be similar to the phony numbers of Enron, Qwest and Global Crossings, Worldcom, etc.
This one, while big in comparison to the exposed frauds now... will be just a tiny footnote in a cornucopia of frauds that are still playing out.
Every idiot scam put in place in the last 400 years is being used upon lots of rubes in the last decade. Lots of shitty movies describing how we were so dumb and unwarranted of ignorance (all these scams have been done repeated since recorded history but nobody bothered to google it, or they just thought they'd scam it up themselves knowing merit driven income and wealth reward is gone and has been for almost half a century only the liars and cheaters make it at all and the productive worker makes absolutely nothing but a mountain of debt they'll never get out of or if they played it safe and saved,just simply a savings that won't amount to anything, so they jumped into the fomo of scams upon scams on scam mountain).
Get ready for some seriously interesting stupidity to come to their eventuality.
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Quit calling retail investors buying the dip... all retail can do is buy some calls and stocks... they make up only 10% of the stocks.
90% is various big money: banks, hedge funds, large trading desks, pensions, really rich persons portfolio allocations, foreign allocations, etc.
Those are dip buyers. Retail... retail is largely upside down. Particularly the reddit and Ape and the like. They don't have that much money to do much, and most of their stampede in meme stocks and other stocks is rather over.
The so called dumb money is already rekt.
This is a battle between big trading desks who was helping pump meme stocks and currently the mega cap stocks in a game of chicken. The dumb money at the top.
We only call it dumb money because we suspect the poorer you are the dumber you are. A bad cultural stupidity pretending we really have meritocracy... frankly we don't.
We have idiocracy. The dumbest stupidity so called assets aka junk and shit and vomit was sold and pumped by con jobbers to big money and small money. The chicanery of the hucksters cashed out at various times and highest prices to lock in profits selling all over all our little retail heads.
The remaining is big money playing a game of chicken with each other. Some using options as a manipulative method to buy up same week expiration contracts to force gamma squeezes, the big money dumps these call options as premium pump. This pumps implied volatility over a few weeks of mechanical manipulation, causing this gaming the call contracts sightly out of the money same week expiration, those calls become so expensive in premium, that actual underlying stock price reaches in the money on the calls they bought, there is little premium increase if any, so they stop.
And when bunch of entities persons or trading desks dump call options and forced a gamma squeeze, the dumping of the calls generally means market makers closed out open interest and no longer have any reason to keep the underlying stock the market makers bought that forced the pump up... so they dump those shares.. price dumps sometimes violently.
Hence the pump and dump in memes... as well as some small cap stocks that were yet to be "meme's" think the phony IWM pump that had the epic break out only to dump back down. It was all part of this options mechanical manipulation.
Since about October in to November these big money options manipulators moved on to mega caps rotating first to TSLA than to AAPL and then trying a stab at MSFT and GOOG and others. They sometimes return to them if IV has come down... but generally it can take couple months or more for the IV to come down to normal again to allow this gaming option market makers to be profitable.
Basically, the markets are broken. An exploit that SoftBank was found to exploit in 2020... buying calls same week expiration and occasionally assisting in pumping the stock price via buying the underlying just a bit, causing market makers of options to buy the underlying forcing gamma squeezes, the profits to SoftBank was then selling the call contracts for the bloated premiums on those OTM now near or ITM contracts... not keeping them open to purchase the stock.
Market makers then dump the stock as open interest remains low... underlying purchases no longer needed.
Sometimes they'll institute put walls to encourage market makers to same week to support the stock price so puts OTM don't go ITM. So long as calls same week are not quite as big as the puts. This put wall manipulation is very expensive and risky... the primary one saw done with this was TSLA with OTM same week puts up to $4 million every week money just going down the toilet... but they were also buying a spread of calls not to create a call wall above to at least break even on that... then once they got a certain price they were targeting the abandon the put wall, and just do call OTM huge volume buying and dumping to force the gamma squeeze they were seeking.
That's what's been going on over the past couple years. Retail is largely useful idiots assisting in price floors, occasionally causing a stampede in lower (under $20 a share) stocks, and big purpose is to put full blame of the manipulation on retail traders as what some of the big money is doing is probably illegal in the amount of options thus potential shares would require intent to hold over 10% of a company requirements... also this exploit will probably end as market makers are probably losing a lot of money; their automated market maker programs may start to cause premiums to pump faster than in the past making this options manipulation no longer profitable.
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@patrangela Government checks are done long ago. And those tax credit give away is just a tax return advance.
None of the money provided thus far really does anything to avoid the higher rent and mortgage prices and other prices.
At first, there was the unemployment that potentially could pay out equal wage for loss wage if laid off work. And some employers paying such shit wages that it was more than their actual wages.
That only lasted for a few months last year. It quickly was reduced last year to $300 Fed plus whatever your state contributed to unemployment which in most states is not enough to pay the bills, it just helps draw downs on savings to be not as severe.
Most people I know leaving is as follows by majority situation:
1)They got another job. And it pays more. And aligns with better career ambitions and desires.
2) They were in and out... job hopping... this one was probably a jump at quickly getting the first offer out there, but a better offer quickly came.
Hello goodbye. Employee Churn baby churn!
We can't keep anybody LOL! Not even temps via a temp service.
3) I had pent up plans due to the pandemic. Now I can do those... going back to school, or moving to this region here. Housing market made it easy her in Idaho because it got to goof ball lotto prices and now can move back home across the country and buy a home outright and still have cash left over.
4) I'm near retirement... or well passed it. I'm done. My 401K and all other investments are up, and I can sell my house in this shit stink town and rent for a while and by another from much cheaper already, and soon even cheaper elsewhere.
5) Various infliction: car accident, stroke, heart attack, etc. Cant' work anymore. All elderly workers thus far in this boat.
6) I have sick parents and/or other family elsewhere and have to take care of them. I'm going to cut my hours I work if I go back to work, do part time... but my working wasn't necessary, hubby makes enough money.
7) I have a kid now. We made enough without my work. I'm out to take care of kid and be a stay at home parent for a while until my kids a toddler perhaps.
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It was forced gamma squeezes after gamma squeeze.
Buying options same week close to the money, and often also buying the underlying to pump the price to make those calls go closer to the money.
This forces the market makers who wrote the shares who didn't sell covered calls, but naked calls.. having to cover to get the shares.
A call option is a right for the option holder to buy the stock at the strike 100 shares from the call writer.
So the call writer must have the stock in order to sell it to the option holder.
These call writers often write them and sell them without actually owning much of if any of the stock.
So they're forced to cover their position by buying the stock, and each contract is 100 shares... so huge volume on contracts mean suddenly the writer must buy a bunch of stuck in case the option holder exercises their option.
Key is that this idiocy happens last week of expiration when options tend to be exercised.
Until that point, traders of option contracts don't tend to exercise early because of extrinsic value that comes with potential of getting closer or further into the money.
Same week means call writers are unlikely to be holding much of the stock to cover their call writes if it's far out of the money... the chances are so little, covering is considered not that necessary.
Suddenly price gets closer and especially at the money or in the money, market makers start buying the stock quickly which pumps the price.
These buyers of the call options are only in it for the premium increase not to hold it to expiration and if in the money to necessarily exercise their options to hold the stock.
And some big trading desk or desks have been doing this all year long with meme stocks then onto small caps then recently every large cap stock has had it's party including Amazon, TSLA, and AAPL.
The problem is that this is phony pump and dump scheme... as soon as the options buyers sell their options at a higher premium, open interest remains relatively low to the volume, and the market makers dump their shares as there is no need to cover their calls.
Nobody really is buying here for long term purchase and investing. It's all a pump an dump.
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GME is very different. It was outright shorted... many of these others were to a lesser degree... GME was heavily shorted. Shorting is different than this options stupidity.
In this case, even big whales like Michael Bury and the Kitty guy who is actually a licensed broker, he knew what he was doing... notice shortages sitting on GME and not closing their shorts out when the stock was about $1 a share. So they went to town with their big capital. Kitty guy got retail in on it to help buy up the stock causing the price to get higher and higher past the stop loss or stop take profits of these shorters... shorting is borrowing the stock to sell it on the market, to complete the short you must buy back the stock at a lower price, you keep the difference as profit.
A big hedge fund was very greedy waiting to never have to buy back the stock to close the short, hoping GME would go bankrupt thus share price would become $0. Lenders wouldn't even want the stock back because the stock is worthless. Always dangerous because even in bankruptcy if it's Chapter 11 reorganization, stock holders can be redeemed and returned to trading once again once their bankruptcy proceedings are done, and successful re-emergence from bankruptcy happens. Chapter 7 liquidation means the company no longer exists, and shares will always be $0 forever.
The big hedge fund remained in the stock despite going way past the point they shorted... and remained in the position as the stock price went higher and higher. They even doubled down on the short at these higher and higher prices battling the whales of Bury and retail fomoed on by Kitty guy.
Price just kept going higher.
Now options comes in here with GME: Playing the options call gamma squeeze thing also incited market makers to have to buy the stock to cover their options calls they wrote, making the stock price go higher and higher.
Capitulation with lots of these hedge funds doubling down battling the longers, they finally had a margin call... there wasn't enough stock to short with, and they had to simply close their positions by buy the stock back at any price. And then we have the master class boom up in price.
Gamma squeezes can only go as high as the highest available strike price on the chart for that week expiration or possibly a future week expiration. Because that's the only call option writes have outstanding they sold naked. Once they buy the stock, they're covered and don't need to buy anymore.
Additionally, demand for the option contracts begin to cause the premiums to increase less related to the price of the stock... so it becomes more expensive for the gamma squeeze game to happen in following weeks.
Until it's not profitable at all... as the market makers will demand a higher premium for out of the money call contracts... this is called implied volatility. So these big trading desks causing gamma squeezes eventually move on to another stock to pump and dump.
This is what's been going on all year long with meme stocks and even normal stocks and most recently lots of large cap tech stocks. And one can tell this is not just done by retail buying up same week expiration contract calls out of the money/ near the money call contracts... Amazon and Google for instance these premiums for near the money or just slightly out of the same week expiration are $1,000 to $2,000 in premium for just one contract, for a contract that will expire that Friday. This is too expensive to load up on by retail when the volume easily exceeds 75,000 to 250,000 contracts traded. And the bid ask spreads tend to be hundreds of dollars... very risky to know if you're buying at a good premium or bad one based on the pump that's in commencement.
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CCP made these oligarchs granting them monopolies... these oligarchs debt binged. And now they're concerned.
The entire global financial system is... at the breaking point.
Race to the bottom my dear boy.
An idiot with the brain the size of a walnut could explain:
Oh, you're going to "globalization" or whatever new or recycle term you want to describe this... recycled term in the 1920's... prior it was called colonialism recycled throughout the 1600 thru 1875. Until a new term was made.
But it just means exploitation the most destitute nations and if you can't find that many find the destitute AND tyrannized nations... inauthentic comparative advantage of slave/serf/destitute/tyrannized labor.
Other nations' labor that's better off... fall in wages and thus so does aggregate demand.
In financial periods where bankers run the roost, this nonsense carries on well beyond its natural inevitable collapse via debt binge... and oh have we debt binged since the 1970's globally.
But that only kicks the aggregate demand decline down the road until the debt just simply cannot be repaid.
Ding dong. The witch is dead. Again and again and again and again.
Results... collapse economically, malaise, outright misery (US has both with millions living in tents, cars, and RV's instead of actual homes and those numbers are increasing at parabolic rates), then there is famine in food scarce areas particularly harsh should harvests not be decent due to climate and weather... then add the civil and boarder unrest with war... Arab spring with famine all through the not that "fertile" crescent region... famine in Sudan and Somalia and Yemen... war continuing with the oppressive Saudi Kingdom of pure unadulterated evil, Syria disaster, Libya disaster with open slave markets.
Now we move forward, Turkey falling apart with hyper inflation. Russia invading the remaining former Russian Empire regions like Georgia and Ukraine... now back at it to finish the job I guess.
S. America is nothing but a basket case, only made worse with US attempting it's own "globalization" attempts of installing various ridiculous murderous dictators so that our oligarchs have access to resources and cheap cheap cheap labor... with the cherry on top that they're tyrannized... must work or else....
Again... a moron with a brain the size of a walnut could figure this mess out.
To be serious, though... just a somewhat comprehensive understanding of recorded history would suffice to figure out where we were all headed... what cycle we were in.
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The only thing we know is that this pandemic only killed elderly and those with chronic issues and the brunt was mostly on the same category who were mostly poorest of the poor.
Should we ever have a pandemic that is less discriminating... we know the panic would be severe.
The gambling on stocks, joke stocks, and fake money for real money and the extension of NFT's and other hair brain stupidity would never have happened... the concept of quick recovery because "I wasn't effected because I have no chronic problems, I'm younger than 59, and I'm not poorest of the poor." Instead, it'd be fuck I'm sick as shit... and already been to the hospital twice... the hospitals are full and they sent me to an old folks home and make shift hospitals in now many dormant vacant retail outlets, and several friends, family members, and former coworkers (former coworkers because they just laid us all off) recently died.
With even bigger deaths, a general worldwide population reduction would correspond with a huge demand hit along with loss in 95% who must work not being able to work and needing savings not to gamble in stupidity, but to ensure they can buy necessities. In the US, those necessities include medical costs because unlike essentially all other countries, we lack a healthcare system... instead forced to play the hustle under a bridge and confront even with so called insurance, bankruptcy, should the prognostic be prolonged and expensive... no job, huge medical bills, little to no savings, and economy falling apart with bad prospects on finding another job, inflation due to supply drastically going down without rationing of essentials a run on more than just toilet paper (we kind of got a little run on other foods... recall partially empty shelves at grocery stores on foods particularly canned foods).
The way this was handled was moronic... and we can only be glad it wasn't a indiscriminate and with a much higher fatality rate.
We get a "real" pandemic... at least one that's more vicious... we're looking at the chaos that happened during the Justinian plague 541-549AD which lasted 8 years or the Black Death 1346-1353 which lasted for 6 years plagues.
Just like then, we'd enter into a great depression and mimic similar famine and insanity that happened around the world in 1929.
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This isn't about Biden. Biden's an absurd ass hole and caught way too frequently being a liar pants on fire.
This has to do with your dogmatic view on "how simple the answer is"
You stated:
"Allowing more companies to enter the market, reducing the barriers to entry, let the entrepreneurial spirit and capitalism take hold and actually drive prices down because that is what capitalism ultimately does."
Funny you say this: let's compare US vs UK healthcare system vs our US healthcare hustle stands as great testimony to your falsehood that magical capitalism will resolve anything.
Firstly:
1) Price mechanisms for many sectors of the economy simply doesn't work.
a) Judicial
b) Police
c) Fire service
d) Natural monopolies like utilities: water, sewer, trash collection and placement, electrical distribution and generation, transportation infrastructure, etc.
e) Education
f) Healthcare
2) Why does "magical capitalism no work for these sectors and some others as well?
a) Inelastic demand curve such as that in healthcare... no matter the amount of quantity supplied (suppliers), and those able or not able to afford the prices (demand) people will pay any price to not suffer or die.
b) Economy of scale: utilities like sewer, water, electricity, transportation infrastructure has a barrier to entry in that the expense to duplicate water systems or electrical grids or provide more airports or more and more ship yards cost even more money per user with no added margin. It requires a large number of customers to use these items to just break even, and duplicating this would make that break even cost even higher thus raising prices per each new supplier added... doubling tripling quadrupling water works or electrical grids or adding 10 airports or flooding 5 or 6 areas along a coast of a city with ports and more ports makes each break even cost that much more expensive raising just the break even margin price per customer. Not reducing the price.
It's why even in the US, most cities have mostly city owned and operated water and sewer and garbage and even power systems and where there are a few private owned utilities in operations they are required to provide services when and where it might not be "profitable" in the immediate term or ever just off those few additional add ons into their service area, they cannot just increase whatever price to the point that people are going bankrupt (okay certain parts of Texas does with electricity and well we saw that stupidity play out, several deaths due to inability to pay for electricity and keep their power on thus no heat and well they died of hypothermia). For the few for profit utilities (in the US most private utilities are electric distribution companies... water and sewer is largely a city ran enterprise), most states, even good red state of Idaho, has a Public Utility Commission regulatory body that also takes on public petitions and determines rate cases on lowering or increasing the utility bills.
Since there is essentially no actual competition on these grids: water, sewer, trash, etc. they get margins no matter what. That margin is established to ensure enough money is provided to run the operation as well as grow as needed. And still leave left over for owners of the power company to have a cash cow (as they often call them)... because they're always profitable. They're just not allowed to ever mark prices to whatever the market will bear... because the market can bear death. Literally, take a peak at Texas. Was horrible.
But don't stop there: take a peak at our mostly non-regulated no universal healthcare system in the US. Medicare isn't allowed to negotiate prices, instead medicare can only take prices that were negotiated via private insurance companies... and well the insurance companies are often extensions to the very pharma and large health conglomerates of clinics and hospitals around the country.
c)spill over costs like those if one person can afford fire service or police service for protection... well there goes the fire blazing out of control and the entire area burns down and some deaths along side. Some one is burgling, can't pay the police bill... well looks like you're about to be robbed.
Let's determine guilt or innocence in court to the highest bidder to the jury! Enough said here.
Price mechanism doesn't always work in certain periods (times of war or natural disaster like earthquake, hurricane, tornado, etc. etc.) as prices will not provide more supply into the market to bring prices back down when goods are needed. So a period of rationing is often used to prevent an complete breakdown in society from looting to rioting... a hungry, desperate populace unable to get at least what they need to not be hungry, not to be un-sheltered, etc. will not provide you with any civilization to let your magical dogmatic entrepreneurial spirit take flight... well it might turn it into a spirit as it kills it in the flood of violence.
Price mechanism as mentioned prior does not work in many sectors of the economy. Healthcare chief among many others. Due to the inelastic demand curve and economies of scale required in these sectors... competitive market principles simply don't exist and if forced to exist don't provide the benefit rather they become an unnecessary burden and cost in providing the natural monopoly good and/or service.
You above all people living in the UK, with a medical system that is the envy of the world with the NHS, should know the utter bullshit you're propounding.
NHS gets its funding via the UK income tax.
Not as we do it in the states with a payroll tax that taxes ALL gross income of 1.49% for medicare/medicaid.
Their version of Federal income tax actually pays for something they all need... and not a ridiculous useless military industrial complex.
On top of our taxes being more, and we in the US getting less for those taxes, we also spend another $2,400 per person per year on employee sponsored health insurance that still doesn't provide essential coverage... out of pocket expenses can still even with so called insurance exceed $7,000.
No sir, your living in dogma stupidity.
And that must end. Or we will never address the real problems we have.
Inflation we are suffering today won't be solved by magical blood sucking entrepreneurial spirit of exploiting whatever the market can bear fairy dust.
Inflation is and always is a monetary phenomenon. The Fed Reserve must raise their overnight funding fee to exceed the inflation rate to end inflation. They additionally must end any other monetary loosening policies.
Otherwise inflation will continue, because low interest rates and other loose monetary policy literally expand the money supply. The money supply is too much... too much money is chasing to few of goods.
And the shortages we face is brought to you by imperialism, colonialism, globalism, name it whatever you wish, they're the same thing, different name to buzz the masses with magical thoughts of "entrepreneurial spirit" and other nonsense... causing supply chains that were never rational, always costing more resources in terms of transportation resources including energy, etc. into a pretzel. Inefficiencies covered up via reliable servitude labor often under tyranny of a despotic regime, but sometimes just facing a weak and destitute region of the world... and often spurred on by subsidies by those nations (no pollution controls, no labor protection requirements, no wage/salary rules, etc. etc.)
I mean this structure of the economy isn't new, keeps popping up since the late bronze age collapse... and since then this moronic economic structure always comes down in a bust.
So the monetary system must get tightened. Or the inflation will continue.
Additionally, the race to the bottom imperialism, colonialism, globalism whatever you want to call it, must end. Genuine authentic comparative advantage supply changes must be established. Not ones wildly distorted via exploitation of a tyrannized people of one nation or another, and subsidies of the same.
And some actual planning on economic necessities. No planning... let it be to the market... well it'll fall apart faster than Terra did when it lost it's peg.
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