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kenneal - lagger
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 Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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From MoneyWeek
| Quote: | A couple of things to bear in mind in 2018
The new year is off to a roaring start. In the US, markets appear to be in the beginning of what analysts call a melt-up. The economy is close to booming: as analyst Ed Yardeni points out, GDP is rising at an annual rate of about 3% and the phrase “secular stagnation” has barely been mentioned since Donald Trump’s election. |
According to MoneyWeek "melt up" is the essential precursor to "melt down". No meltdown, or crash, has ever happened before without its preceding melt up, which could last for a year or more. So they could, or could not, be predicting an economic crash this year.
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kenneal - lagger
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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MoneyWeek is also saying that housing markets across the globe are stalling as cheap money runs out and many houses are unaffordable. Next banking crisis on the way??
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emordnilap
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
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Location: Houǝsʇlʎ' ᴉʇ,s ɹǝɐllʎ uoʇ ʍoɹʇɥ ʇɥǝ ǝɟɟoɹʇ' pou,ʇ ǝʌǝu qoʇɥǝɹ˙
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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Yus.
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vtsnowedin
Joined: 07 Jan 2011
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Location: New England ,Chelsea Vermont
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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I see "meltup" as an oxymoron having watched a lot of snow melt over the years.  In financial discussions I prefer " buildup" which is only worrisome if it is pushed by speculators based on "Irrational exuberance" . The current buildup in the US markets is based on the GOP control of congress and the recent tax code changes. The speculators will as usual take this good news too far and overshoot the real value of the underling shares and a correction will most likely follow perhaps on the order of ten to twenty percent. But even a twenty percent correction would leave the market higher then it was on election day. |
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kenneal - lagger
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not surprised that there is the beginnings of a melt up in the DOW given how Trump has screwed his supporter base and given his rich backers a massive tax break. A lot of commentators in the UK, including MoneyWeek, are taking about a 50% "adjustment".
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vtsnowedin
Joined: 07 Jan 2011
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Location: New England ,Chelsea Vermont
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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| kenneal - lagger wrote: | | I'm not surprised that there is the beginnings of a melt up in the DOW given how Trump has screwed his supporter base and given his rich backers a massive tax break. A lot of commentators in the UK, including MoneyWeek, are taking about a 50% "adjustment". |
There is a lot of misinformation about who benefits from the corporate tax cut. In fact about forty percent of Americans either own stock or have a 401k or other pension fund invested in the market. Some companies such as Microsoft and Google (Alphabet) have as much as seventy percent of their outstanding shares held by "institutions" which are the managers of these accounts. That forty percent covers most of Trumps base and they know it.
The Democratic base includes the forty four percent that pay no Federal "Income" tax" or even get a refund of money beyond what they paid in (average 2015 of $550) and included in that 44% are the 27% that don't pay "ANY federal taxes" because they don't have a job and are not paying into social security or medicare's fifteen percent flat tax adding employee and employer's share. It's hard to cut somebodies taxes if they are already paying zero and receiving government support paid for by real tax payers but they did increase the refundable portion of the child tax credit so that $550 figure will go up in 2018 about $38 / week for each eligible child, $27/week if there is no job paying into taxes. |
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emordnilap
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
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Location: Houǝsʇlʎ' ᴉʇ,s ɹǝɐllʎ uoʇ ʍoɹʇɥ ʇɥǝ ǝɟɟoɹʇ' pou,ʇ ǝʌǝu qoʇɥǝɹ˙
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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| emordnilap wrote: | | Half the world's wealth owned by 5 people. |
I predicted the above for 2018. According to this article, it was 8 people earlier this year. By now, it must be nearer 5.
| Quote: | In January 2016 only 62 people held as much wealth as one-half of the entire world, but within one year, by 2018, that figure narrowed to 8 people with as much wealth as one-half of the entire world. Stop and think about the implications. Is something about that awry, amiss, or maybe nonsensical?
Wealth concentration is happening so rapidly that it is feasible that someday soon one man* will hold more wealth than half the humans in the world. |
Ken, you won't like the title of the book. 
* 2019
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kenneal - lagger
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| Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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| emordnilap wrote: | | ......Ken, you won't like the title of the book. |
You're right there Em! There is nothing elite about a bunch of stupid, but canny, I will admit, kleptomaniacs who can't see that their behaviour is killing the system that supports their wealth.
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vtsnowedin
Joined: 07 Jan 2011
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Location: New England ,Chelsea Vermont
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| Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| kenneal - lagger wrote: | | emordnilap wrote: | | ......Ken, you won't like the title of the book. |
You're right there Em! There is nothing elite about a bunch of stupid, but canny, I will admit, kleptomaniacs who can't see that their behaviour is killing the system that supports their wealth. |
You appear to make the mistake of thinking the amount of wealth in the world is a fixed figure when it is in fact growing rapidly. The fact that the Googles and Microsoft's of the world sell millions of units of product to millions of customers at prices they gladly pay dose not mean the holders of Google and Microsoft stock are kleptomaniacs or that they have stolen any wealth from anyone. |
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RenewableCandy
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
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Location: York
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| Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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Most people only buy their stuff b/c they're monopolies, though, and keep changing their systems while 'no longer supporting' older versions.
Though they may've been started by bright, inventive people, they've become (as a friend of Marvellous Other 1/2 puts it about certain middle-aged folk he knows) 'morally fat'.
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emordnilap
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
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Location: Houǝsʇlʎ' ᴉʇ,s ɹǝɐllʎ uoʇ ʍoɹʇɥ ʇɥǝ ǝɟɟoɹʇ' pou,ʇ ǝʌǝu qoʇɥǝɹ˙
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| Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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Never confuse the words 'popular' and 'good'.
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RenewableCandy
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| Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:54 pm Post subject: |
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Quite. I've often found it to be quite the reverse.
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kenneal - lagger
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| Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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| vtsnowedin wrote: | | .... You appear to make the mistake of thinking the amount of wealth in the world is a fixed figure when it is in fact growing rapidly. ....... |
"Inflating" would be a more apt word than "growing", especially when wealth is defined through money owned rather than capital goods.
If the amount of wealth in the world is defined by the amount of resources consumed then there is a finite limit as there is a finite limit to those resources, after all we only have one world. The amount of growth in the use of resources is being constrained at the moment by the amount of energy that we can use to manipulate those resources, whether newly mined or recycled, without overheating the world.
The amount of newly mined resources is also being constrained by the EROEI of those resources, especially oil. It has been estimated (Hall & Klittegard: Energy and the Wealth of Nations) that the EROEI of oil cannot drop below 5 for there to be an actual surplus of energy for us to use in non productive ways, such as government, art and medical provision. So our whole civilisation and the amount of civilisation, if you can define government, art and medical provision by an amount, depends on how far above 5 the current EROEI of our fuels stands.
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emordnilap
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
Posts: 14597
Location: Houǝsʇlʎ' ᴉʇ,s ɹǝɐllʎ uoʇ ʍoɹʇɥ ʇɥǝ ǝɟɟoɹʇ' pou,ʇ ǝʌǝu qoʇɥǝɹ˙
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| Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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| kenneal - lagger wrote: | | non productive ways, such as government, art and medical provision |
....and most travel.
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I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker |
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emordnilap
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Location: Houǝsʇlʎ' ᴉʇ,s ɹǝɐllʎ uoʇ ʍoɹʇɥ ʇɥǝ ǝɟɟoɹʇ' pou,ʇ ǝʌǝu qoʇɥǝɹ˙
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| Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2018 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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Kenn Orphan nails it.
| Quote: | | This is the “indispensable nation” where more of its citizens are locked behind bars than elsewhere in the world and usually for non-violent offenses. Where police murder unarmed people in stairwells, or hotel hallways, or for routine traffic stops and almost always get away with it. Where domestic violence often spills over to mass shootings which have become an almost daily occurrence. Where life expectancy is rapidly declining in a trend not seen since World War I. Where investment in military weaponry that terrorize the poor in other nations is exponential, but investment in veterans assistance is nil. |
Some nicely illustrative figures near the top of the article. 
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I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker |
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