veganhouseDJ

Hard to get excited for this with WTI Crude at $110 and nothing to stop oil prices and inflation besides demand destruction from a recession.

A .5 hike is already off the table for the March Fed meeting.

To me it feels like we are racing towards a miserable stagflation environment with our stimulus tools never reloaded.

Massively lagging data points look good though so we must be on the right path!

I think it was Stanley Druckenmiller that said he made most of his money by betting that the Fed is always wrong. The older I get the more brilliant this strategy seems.

Totally agree.

There are also these ridiculous dynamics to the system that a new incompetent manager can burn a department to the ground and then get another promotion for rebuilding the department to 25% of what it was before they burned it down.

What is missing is a type of null hypothesis to judge the manager against. Would the department actually be better off if we paid them to watch Netflix?

This is probably something deep in human nature though when it comes to money and business because it is almost the definition of Keynes animal spirits. A spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction. We just don't like the idea of inaction when it comes to business and money.

Time.

Crypto is a speculative digital commodity bubble. We haven't seen a real bear market yet. Gold took 7 years from 1973 when you could own gold again to the 1980 peak. All the increase in gold mining lead to a 20 year bear market.

The crypto narrative is fundamentally unsustainable. It doesn't just have to beat the S&P 500 returns, people need to believe they are going to get rich. That November 2021 peak is going to be tough to take out. That is looking like the peak of the everything bubble from COVID. The get rich narrative can only hold for so long until the reality that crypto is a set of volatile currency no one really uses and has been massively over mined for years now sets in.

Time will make crypto boring like every other currency/commodity. No one gets all excited about corn futures.

Time.

Crypto is a speculative digital commodity bubble. We haven't seen a real bear market yet. Gold took 7 years from 1973 when you could own gold again to the 1980 peak. All the increase in gold mining lead to a 20 year bear market.

The crypto narrative is fundamentally unsustainable. It doesn't just have to beat the S&P 500 returns, people need to believe they are going to get rich. That November 2021 peak is going to be tough to take out. That is looking like the peak of the everything bubble from COVID. The get rich narrative can only hold for so long until the reality that crypto is a set of volatile currency no one really uses and has been massively over mined for years now sets in.

I don't understand how anyone thinks this can work when the one opposition leader has been poisoned and put in jail.

We also should be considering that there will be this giant country with a giant military after Putin is gone.

We seem to have no concept right now that there is a level of suffering and alienation we can impose on the average Russian that will cause a large chunk to become highly radicalized going forward. Who are those people going to want as a leader then? It seems like so many right now are living in a fantasy world that the Russian people will have some kind of French Revolution because of sanctions, get rid of Putin and by magic some Western friendly Russian government will emerge.

It is like that same thinking that went into hitting Germans with crippling reparations for WW1. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the best idea..

This is exactly the logic of 1st strike lunacy that we avoided in the 60s by not listening to some military brass that wanted nuclear war.

You summed it up perfectly. If we had listened to these idiots in the 60s none of us would be here.

IMO we want to believe that the second best military on the planet is not competent because it is more comforting than the idea that the second best military actually planned out this assault on a sovereign country.

The DMV is an outdated example.

I remember decades ago standing in line literally for 3 hours to finally get to talk to the person at the desk only to be told I had the wrong form. Then back to the end of the line.

I honestly can't think of anything that has improved as much in my lifetime as the DMV.

Personally, I don't understand this point of view.

Most despotic leaders are not well liked by the people. There are so few examples of the people rising up to depose a despot. I actually can't even think of one that would apply in this situation.

He is probably insulated with layers of old Soviet/KGB true believers/cronies.

Somehow the common person is going to penetrate that? I just don't see it.

It makes me wonder if there is a Russian information campaign to try to get public opinion in the West for NATO to enter, knowing that the US is not going to enter and then fracture NATO or cause division within NATO.

All the sudden all these Curtis LeMay types are coming out of the woodwork trying to drum up nuclear war.

We know Russia has ran information campaigns on social media in the past so it seems pretty irrational to believe they aren't running campaigns when actually at war.

Everyone should take what they think they know about the situation with a huge grain of salt. It is totally irresponsible to read a news headline that may or may not be correct and then from that headline extrapolate that it is time to go to DEFCON 1.

IMO you have to consider there is an information war going on so to me the only rational thing to do is take everything you think you know with a grain of salt.

There probably is a tactical advantage from the Russian side to putting out the idea that Putin has gone crazy.

Or he really has gone crazy. We can't really know but the fog of war spreading to social media does not seem like a great development.

Some people are really talking insanity.

These insane people I think need to watch the Tsar bomba go off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwlNPhn64TA

We aren't talking about fatman and little boy. Talking about thousands of H bombs and literally the apocalypse for the human race.

No, freedom of the press means freedom of the press. It is really quite simple.

This is basically an argument against education in general.

No one learns anything useful. "Education" is just a set of credentials that prove your IQ test wasn't a fluke.

To me, that is just an absurd view of reality.

It is really strange to me that we can't figure this out.

I almost think it is because our entire view of education is conflated with a type of sporting event. You were one of the grand champions of this sporting event even though obviously it would have just made sense to learn more. Instead it is this weird sporting event race and the concept of learning more just isn't part of objective of the game.

I think this is exactly what is going to happen. The world order from 2 weeks ago is gone forever.

The Russian stock market still hasn't even opened this week. They are basically going to have to start over economically. They are not going to build back the same way as they did the past 20 years. We have basically left them no choice other than to build back with China.

I think history will view this decision to completely cut them off from the Western financial system as a huge mistake. A completely myopic decision.