WTF? (**NSFW**)

[HeyEng]

On 8/30/2023 at 5:48 PM, TreeA10 said:

There's crazy and then there is batshit crazy.  And about those online dating apps.......

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-woman-who-stabbed-online-date-sin-city-revenge-plot-blames-hollywood-actress

I expected that to be a Babylon Bee or Onion article!

[FourFans]

On 8/30/2023 at 10:27 PM, Biff_T said:

Normally, I'd understand if someone told me they did something stupid because of Salma Hayek.  

I'd do some crazy shit for her as well..

 

On 8/31/2023 at 9:19 PM, brabus said:

The sad part is that’s 100% accurate and not hyperbole in the slightest.

[Biff_T]

8 hours ago, FourFans said:

 

Salma Hayek is Salma Hayek lol.   

 

Break Break.   "Packers" as in Green Bay?  Lol

That makes sense now.

[herkbier]

Wtf

https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-court-rules-teen-rare-disorder-incapable-making-decisions-care-begging-live

19 yr old girl in UK is unable to pursue medical treatment she desires because UK court and her doctors think her death is inevitable/imminent. 

How the is this tolerated over there? And the gag order the hospital imposed on the family.. am I missing something obvious?

[brabus]

You’re not missing anything. When will all the jackasses in this country actually learn how incredible valuable our liberty and freedoms are, and how they do not exist anywhere else on earth. Why do we fight leftist bullshit? Because we don’t want to live in a country who tells someone they’re not allowed to make health decisions for themselves (spoiler, our society/gov has already demonstrated the desire to do exactly that).

[hindsight2020]

well 6 of yours, half a dozen of mine. I find for-profit incorporations (HMO/PPO/Medicare part C) exercising that same supposed level of life censorship, a rank distinction without difference. That, "leftist bullshit" does not make. 

[brabus]

When do insurance companies say you don’t have a right to try something? This situation is not the same as saying “we won’t pay for X.” This is straight up the government telling someone they don’t get a say in the matter of their own life. 

[HeloDude]

16 hours ago, hindsight2020 said:

well 6 of yours, half a dozen of mine. I find for-profit incorporations (HMO/PPO/Medicare part C) exercising that same supposed level of life censorship, a rank distinction without difference. That, "leftist bullshit" does not make. 

Then don’t voluntarily use those organizations/businesses.

[ClearedHot]

On 8/30/2023 at 10:27 PM, Biff_T said:

Normally, I'd understand if someone told me they did something stupid because of Salma Hayek.  

I'd do some crazy shit for her as well..

Can I get an amen...

 

[Biff_T]

37 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Can I get an amen...

 

Amen!!!

"Lead,  I'll take the FAT ONE".   

FAT ONE: Salma's right tit.  

Edited September 3, 2023 by Biff_T
Afterthought

[17D_guy]

15 hours ago, brabus said:

When do insurance companies say you don’t have a right to try something? This situation is not the same as saying “we won’t pay for X.” This is straight up the government telling someone they don’t get a say in the matter of their own life. 

They did exactly this to my Mom before she died. We got the denial letter after she was in the ground. It's been a year, I'm still pissed.

 

4 hours ago, HeloDude said:

Then don’t voluntarily use those organizations/businesses.

Employer of picks for almost all Americans.

Edited September 3, 2023 by 17D_guy

[brabus]

1 hour ago, 17D_guy said:

They did exactly this to my Mom before she died.

Sorry about your mom, but they did not prevent her from doing something. They didn’t approve financially covering that something. Completely invalid comparison to the UK situation.

[HeloDude]

1 hour ago, 17D_guy said:

Employer of picks for almost all Americans.

This is why healthcare/insurance needs to be removed from employment.  It was originally used as a way of bargaining with union employees as a way to avoid taxes, etc.  Just pay people their wage/salary and then allow them as people to find their own healthcare and insurance.
 

Also, we need to treat healthcare and health insurance as two totally different things.  Treat routing health care (the flu, basic bone breaks, strep, basic prescriptions, etc) like basic car needs (ie oil change, new battery, etc)—you pay out of pocket.   And treat health insurance for treatment that will not be used often, if ever (major surgeries, cancer treatments, costly disease prescriptions) like car insurance for when you have a bad accident/total your car…you have a high deductible that you can save for in case it’s needed but won’t go bankrupt as well. 
 

I’m sure I could have worded it better, but I think you get the idea.  Expecting great healthcare for a much less direct cost to you means that someone else is going to be picking up the tab.

[Lord Ratner]

On 9/2/2023 at 2:32 PM, herkbier said:

Wtf

https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-court-rules-teen-rare-disorder-incapable-making-decisions-care-begging-live

19 yr old girl in UK is unable to pursue medical treatment she desires because UK court and her doctors think her death is inevitable/imminent. 

How the is this tolerated over there? And the gag order the hospital imposed on the family.. am I missing something obvious?

You are looking at the natural result of government-run healthcare. Decisions must be made to control costs. But it's the government, so the decisions will be idiotic.

 

Instead of doing the obvious thing, and the only one that will actually control costs (limit care to the elderly as they age into an actual inevitable death), they will use stupid cases like this because there's no massive voting block of sick 19 year olds to be afraid of.

 

The boomers created this fucked up system, and now for their final act they will bankrupt it.

[HeloDude]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

The boomers created this fucked up system, and now for their final act they will bankrupt it.

If you’re referring to Medicare, those who created it are pretty much long gone.

[Biff_T]

What happened to the Salma tit talk?  

[Lord Ratner]

11 hours ago, HeloDude said:

If you’re referring to Medicare, those who created it are pretty much long gone.

No, that was never the problem. 

 

The problem is creating a spending pattern of deficits that the government can only sustain in an environment of zero interest rates (ZIRP). 

 

If you want a real laugh, look at what the government expense for interest has done over the last 2 years, and look at the projections if interest rates aren't very quickly reset to zero.

 

Anyone who thinks the federal reserve is going to keep interest rates high in perpetuity has another thing coming. We have now spent ourself to a point where the government can literally not afford any meaningful interest rate on the short end. This will end poorly.

[HuggyU2]

5 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Anyone who thinks the federal reserve is going to keep interest rates high in perpetuity has another thing coming. 

I have no idea how this works... but my friends that seem savvy like you say just the opposite about newest rates. 
FWIW, I hope you are right and they are wrong. 

[Lord Ratner]

8 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

I have no idea how this works... but my friends that seem savvy like you say just the opposite about newest rates. 
FWIW, I hope you are right and they are wrong. 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

Sadly, the true best-case scenario would be for rates to stay just high enough to exert such extreme pressure on the global financial system that the world is forced into a very painful, but survivable, bad-debt detox. Laughably, that rate would probably only be about 3%. 

 

Looking at the chart above, it took from the founding until 1981 to get to $1T of debt. $1T in 2023 dollars is $3.4T. But remember, a debt gets cheaper due to inflation. This fact will matter in the years ahead. 

It took from 1981 to 2008 to get from $1T to $10T. 27 years for $9T increase

From 2008 - 2018 it went from ~$10T to ~$20T. 10 years for a 10T increase

From 2018 to now it went from #20T to $33T, with an additional $1.9T of additional debt planned for the second half of 2023, so lets say ~$15T of additional debt in 6 years

The trajectory is parabolic. And keep in mind, we have never had such a high deficit-to-GDP ratio outside of wartime. If the government is taking on this type with record-low unemployment and record-high tax receipts (from 2021 and 2022), what do you think it will look like when the economy just slows down a little?

So, the debt is spread out over a range of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (just called "bonds" for now) ranging from a few weeks to maturity to 30 years. Because we only exist in a deficit now, when a bond matures, the government must issue another to cover the payout of the maturing bond. In the corporate world this is called rolling over the debt. When you do this, the new bond must be issued at whatever the prevailing interest rate is. 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30

Click "max" on the chart to see the full series. You'll see that the yield on bonds has been steadily dropping for just under 40 years. That means every time the government had to pay out a bond, they were able to cover it with a cheaper bond. Imagine if every month your car payment went down through no effort of your own. You'd probably use the extra money each month to buy something else. So too did the government. 

The problem with a normal yield curve (the chart that shows the various interest rates of the increasing bond durations, click here) is that its usually cheaper to give out shorter-term bonds than longer term bonds. So in 2019-2020 when the government could have been issuing 30 year bonds at less than 2% to fund the government, they instead chose a whole lot of < 2year bonds yielding less than .25% (a quarter of a percent!), because lower is better, right?

 

Well now the best rate they can get is 4%, which is devastating when you have to roll over trillions in debt from .25% to 4%. This article explains it well, but I'll include a couple highlights:

"Net interest payments on the national debt rose from $352 billion in 2021 to $475 billion in 2022 — the highest nominal dollar amount in recorded history."

"Much of that increase was due to higher interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities. Although borrowing rose sharply over the past few years to address the COVID-19 pandemic, interest costs were muted as a result of low interest rates."

"Interest costs represented about 8 percent of total federal outlays in 2022. By 2033, that share will rise to 14 percent and will exceed programs such as defense and Medicaid."

Keep in mind, the article uses CBO estimates which are grossly optimistic, and always wrong. Always.

 

So basically, with interests rates anywhere above 1%, we have an unsustainable debt spiral. It's not just us. The EU was using negative interest rates to support their insane deficit spending. China plowed trillions into worthless ghost cities. 

Now you might ask, why doesn't the Fed (and other central banks) just lower interest rates if they are so devastating?

Inflation. The great destroyer. Inflation is great for governments. It turns big debts into small debts. Ever wonder why the Fed targets 2% inflation instead of 0%? It's because they long ago realized that governments operating under fiat currency will never pay down their debts. But if you let inflation slowly erode the value of a dollar, you can keep the debts manageable, if you manage to keep the growth of the debt under the growth of the economy. We haven't.

Unchecked inflation is the quickest way to social upheaval. Not just because people see their purchasing power decline, but because government money-printing always disproportionately goes to the already-rich and connected. Take a look here. 

Pay close attention to the differing slopes. Also notice that the runaway increase at the top coincides with the Fed interventions in 2002 (tech bubble popping), 2008 (quantitative easing from the Global Financial Crisis) and 2020 (Covid crash). 

So when inflation really comes to eat our lunch, and it hasn't yet, a 50% decrease in purchasing power is going to hit the bottom lines a lot harder than the top lines. You want a civil war? This is how you get a civil war. 

 

And overwhelmingly, all of this madness was brought to you by a federal reserve that decided that artificially-low interest rates would help government spending spur economic growth, and a congress that was all too happy to increase their spending ability through the roof, while telling the American people that it was actually good for the economy for the government to spend this way. Keynesian economics reaching it's only logical conclusion: collapse. 

 

Buckle up, kids. It's going to be an interesting decade or two. 

[FlyingWolf]

8 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Wisdom

Well layed out thoughts here, you largely supported my intuited fears.

What is a middle class man to do in such a world?

Best I can figure, its buy arable land and ammo, but more practical advice would be appreciate.

[Clark Griswold]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
Sadly, the true best-case scenario would be for rates to stay just high enough to exert such extreme pressure on the global financial system that the world is forced into a very painful, but survivable, bad-debt detox. Laughably, that rate would probably only be about 3%. 
 
Looking at the chart above, it took from the founding until 1981 to get to $1T of debt. $1T in 2023 dollars is $3.4T. But remember, a debt gets cheaper due to inflation. This fact will matter in the years ahead. 
It took from 1981 to 2008 to get from $1T to $10T. 27 years for $9T increase
From 2008 - 2018 it went from ~$10T to ~$20T. 10 years for a 10T increase
From 2018 to now it went from #20T to $33T, with an additional $1.9T of additional debt planned for the second half of 2023, so lets say ~$15T of additional debt in 6 years
The trajectory is parabolic. And keep in mind, we have never had such a high deficit-to-GDP ratio outside of wartime. If the government is taking on this type with record-low unemployment and record-high tax receipts (from 2021 and 2022), what do you think it will look like when the economy just slows down a little?
So, the debt is spread out over a range of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (just called "bonds" for now) ranging from a few weeks to maturity to 30 years. Because we only exist in a deficit now, when a bond matures, the government must issue another to cover the payout of the maturing bond. In the corporate world this is called rolling over the debt. When you do this, the new bond must be issued at whatever the prevailing interest rate is. 
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30
Click "max" on the chart to see the full series. You'll see that the yield on bonds has been steadily dropping for just under 40 years. That means every time the government had to pay out a bond, they were able to cover it with a cheaper bond. Imagine if every month your car payment went down through no effort of your own. You'd probably use the extra money each month to buy something else. So too did the government. 
The problem with a normal yield curve (the chart that shows the various interest rates of the increasing bond durations, click here) is that its usually cheaper to give out shorter-term bonds than longer term bonds. So in 2019-2020 when the government could have been issuing 30 year bonds at less than 2% to fund the government, they instead chose a whole lot of < 2year bonds yielding less than .25% (a quarter of a percent!), because lower is better, right?
 
Well now the best rate they can get is 4%, which is devastating when you have to roll over trillions in debt from .25% to 4%. This article explains it well, but I'll include a couple highlights:
"Net interest payments on the national debt rose from $352 billion in 2021 to $475 billion in 2022 — the highest nominal dollar amount in recorded history."
"Much of that increase was due to higher interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities. Although borrowing rose sharply over the past few years to address the COVID-19 pandemic, interest costs were muted as a result of low interest rates."
"Interest costs represented about 8 percent of total federal outlays in 2022. By 2033, that share will rise to 14 percent and will exceed programs such as defense and Medicaid."
Keep in mind, the article uses CBO estimates which are grossly optimistic, and always wrong. Always.
 
So basically, with interests rates anywhere above 1%, we have an unsustainable debt spiral. It's not just us. The EU was using negative interest rates to support their insane deficit spending. China plowed trillions into worthless ghost cities. 
Now you might ask, why doesn't the Fed (and other central banks) just lower interest rates if they are so devastating?
Inflation. The great destroyer. Inflation is great for governments. It turns big debts into small debts. Ever wonder why the Fed targets 2% inflation instead of 0%? It's because they long ago realized that governments operating under fiat currency will never pay down their debts. But if you let inflation slowly erode the value of a dollar, you can keep the debts manageable, if you manage to keep the growth of the debt under the growth of the economy. We haven't.
Unchecked inflation is the quickest way to social upheaval. Not just because people see their purchasing power decline, but because government money-printing always disproportionately goes to the already-rich and connected. Take a look here. 

Pay close attention to the differing slopes. Also notice that the runaway increase at the top coincides with the Fed interventions in 2002 (tech bubble popping), 2008 (quantitative easing from the Global Financial Crisis) and 2020 (Covid crash). 
So when inflation really comes to eat our lunch, and it hasn't yet, a 50% decrease in purchasing power is going to hit the bottom lines a lot harder than the top lines. You want a civil war? This is how you get a civil war. 
 
And overwhelmingly, all of this madness was brought to you by a federal reserve that decided that artificially-low interest rates would help government spending spur economic growth, and a congress that was all too happy to increase their spending ability through the roof, while telling the American people that it was actually good for the economy for the government to spend this way. Keynesian economics reaching it's only logical conclusion: collapse. 
 
Buckle up, kids. It's going to be an interesting decade or two. 

They’ve hedged their bet they can ride this out with an unending media driven narrative, tech monopolies, surveillance state, two tier legal system, cancel culture, promotion / legalization of vices, a Brownshirt army (Antifa, BLM) & distracting social perversions

I doubt that will work, it’s not an American Civil War 2 I worry about but an American Insurgency when things fall apart


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Lord Ratner]

8 hours ago, FlyingWolf said:

Well layed out thoughts here, you largely supported my intuited fears.

What is a middle class man to do in such a world?

Best I can figure, its buy arable land and ammo, but more practical advice would be appreciate.

Investing in the possibility of a societal collapse is a losing game. Even though it's possible. Think about what happens between now and a collapse, and invest in that. 

 

Inflation will be the name of the game going forward. Not immediately, but once "something breaks" and the Fed is forced to drop rates (from political pressure), the inflation fire will be reignited.

 

The West has been at war with fossil fuels for 20 years now, and failed to produce an alternative. The lack of investment in exploration and extraction will come back to bite us. Fossil fuels and nuclear (the only viable alternative) will probably see huge gains as constricted supply and an inflated dollar collide.

If the narrative shifts to entrenched inflation, gold probably does very well. 

The last time tech was this elevated, it fell 80%. Real estate looks ugly too.

Healthcare is hard to bet against when the largest voting block is too old to survive without medical intervention.

Edited September 8, 2023 by Lord Ratner

[Milton]

10 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Keynesian economics reaching it's only logical conclusion: collapse. 

I'm by no means an expert on monetary policy, but it is fascinating that the same people who bemoan "trickle down economics" are generally the same types that support Keynesian principles like central banking, manipulating the business cycle, and fiat currency which generally follows a path from the Federal Reserve, to national banks, to large corporations and smaller banks, investors, smaller banks, and then on to the working class. It almost sounds like...wait, no that can't be.

I think your graph summed that up pretty well; quantitative easing (aka money printing) lined up pretty nicely with spikes in wealth amongst the top 0.1%.

But I'm sure the "Inflation Reduction Act" will reduce inflation...

[Khruangbin33]

https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/fiscal-dominance-banking-syste-us-deficit-charles-calomiris/

"How the U.S. Government Will Force Banks to Fund the Deficit"

This podcast leaves the juicy bits for the premium second hour and I'm not a paying subscriber, so I don't know the specifics, but the propositions in the first hour do track with what's being discussed here.

The guest's paper:  https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/2023/06/02/fiscal-dominance-and-the-return-of-zero-interest-bank-reserve-requirements.pdf

[Lord Ratner]

7 hours ago, Khruangbin33 said:

https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/fiscal-dominance-banking-syste-us-deficit-charles-calomiris/

"How the U.S. Government Will Force Banks to Fund the Deficit"

This podcast leaves the juicy bits for the premium second hour and I'm not a paying subscriber, so I don't know the specifics, but the propositions in the first hour do track with what's being discussed here.

The guest's paper:  https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/2023/06/02/fiscal-dominance-and-the-return-of-zero-interest-bank-reserve-requirements.pdf

Maybe the best summation I've read so far of what I think will happen. The concept of "expected and unexpected inflation tax" is a bit difficult to grok, but the basic idea is that inflation will be the chosen solution eventually.