Inaction by the fed is better at this point because the reason there's an inflation crisis to begin with is due to the fed's inability to stay out of economic matters that do not pertain to them -- The global economy is dumping USD from their currency holdings so soon enough USD won't be the world's currency reserve anymore.


Your situation is not unique, unfortunately. You've been screwed over by the government's fiscal irresponsibility. I'd caution, the answer is never more government, more regulation, or more control.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/amazon-layoffs.html

Amazon is planning on laying off 10k employees, first sign a recession is inbound. Some employees are working on the devices division of Amazon, others are in the retail division. Retail sales peak during the end of the year so it's a bit unusual to see layoffs prior to this peak and before a recession has even been declared.

Generally, employees will be retained during recession for as long as possible for letting them go, oppose to presumptive firings. I suppose Amazon is projecting their revenue to really slump.

If it's true Elon's losing 4M USD a day, he might file for bankruptcy and the company will collapse within itself soon enough. Problem with twitter is that it couldn't monetize its users to the extent facebook can so he'll have to rely on Twitter blue revenue which is 8 USD/month. Entire company is dependent on whether Twitter blue can generate sufficient revenue. That is to say, twitter is doomed.

https://news.bitcoin.com/kevin-oleary-ftx-collapse-is-a-turning-point-for-the-industry-crypto-bottom-is-in/

Kevin O'Leary, Canadian VC/investor, FTX poster boy, is now calling on the U.S. to regulate crypto industry after his investment into FTX goes up in smoke.

I figured it was only a matter of time for industry regulations were amongst the horizon -- they'll be using a corrupt exchange as an excuse to target bitcoin as if FTX was any different than Lehman Brothers when it collapsed. And ironically, the government interference is what originally incentivized Lehman Brothers to have their mortgage backed securities inflate well beyond what they could handle.

Drug OD's, alcohol addiction, welcome to the post COVID lockdown depression syndrome that still plagues society.


Well, euthanasia isn't the solution to the problem, obviously. Euthanasia invites higher suicide rates by offering a permanent fix to a temporary problem. I wouldn't necessarily suggest SSRI's are the answer either, but give them anti-depressants before you offer euthanasia.

Binance, Coinbase, literally any of the major exchanges can topple over if at any moment user withdrawal demand exceeds the immediate liquidity these exchanges have.

People don't understand -- you deposit funds into these exchanges, they treat it as investment funds. These institutions will invest user funds into whatever project is deemed worthy independent on your consent. Very quickly, your trust extends beyond the exchange.



Crypto shouldn't be treated as a monolithic but unfortunately it is. I tend to use "crypto" as a blanket phrase when the reality is not every coin is created alike. Trash altcoins, their associated centralized exchanges and properties, should be in one category and Bitcoin should be in another.

The "van life" crowd fascinates me because how self sustaining they've become. They could stuff the entirety of their lives into the back of a van and survive the apocalypse.


High cost of living combined with unobtainable housing is what's driving this (no pun intended). The hippies from 20-30 years ago started the concept and lived in the back of vans for the novelty, not because they had to. Younger folks are doing it because it's more convenient than paying 2,000 USD in rent in a large city. I don't disagree.

"Hacker" was able to access source code and insert malicious code all unnoticed, then push an update to all users. I understand that's what these exchanges like to say for PR reasons while they escape with peoples' funds and evade authorities, but surely people have gotten wiser.

Anyways - Let this serve as a lesson for exchange users and traditional bank users. FTX began to collapse because they didn't have the billions in liquidity to deliver on their users' withdraw requests. They needed emergency funding that I believe they secured, of course that didn't matter in the end anyways, people lost confidence. Banking with fiat works the same - banks do not hold cash. If everyone, or enough people, lose confidence in the institution and flock to the banks to withdraw cash, the entire system collapses because they don't have enough cash on hand. All exchanges, banks, etc. work this way.

Centralized financial institutions do not responsibly hold your funds. Be your own bank.

It isn't a scam, per se. It's a perpetuation of a broken system that forces citizens to rely on the government for purchasing power. There wasn't really a better system pre-crypto, I'm not arguing that. I'm suggesting that a currency that is controlled by an entity which promises its participants that purchasing power will go down every year by inherent function of the system is all but a fraud.

If the average working man, lower income, has no alternative to its government's currency and the predations that come along with fiat, would you fault him for it? They don't have a choice. This is not even beginning to discuss countries that have limited the crypto industry by excessive taxes and regulation.

I suspect CBDC's will plague the financial industry like a malignant tumor, and there isn't a guarantee that it would be a 1:1 value pegged to whatever fiat currency the issuer chooses. It's arbitrary.

I doubt it. The recent fed increase of 75 basis points is the continuing trend with no economic data to support a pivot. USD inflation came down marginally because some items, like cars, went down in demand. Food, energy, all up: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

Fed took an incremental approach in controlling inflation by hardly increasing interest rates in an effort to avoid a recession. They've come to accept that there'll be a recession regardless of their actions, so they're slamming the breaks.

I'd note that the current state of the economy isn't terrible. The U.S. will experience a recession eventually and that will likely trigger turmoil on the global economic stage, but that isn't here yet. UK Q3 reports show a recession by 0.2%, could be possible things in Europe begin to fall quicker than they do in the western hemisphere. In any event, fed has no reason to change course.

I'm curious as to how many of these crashes altcoin users are going to need to go through before recognizing the entire altcoin industry is a high risk, low reward, gambling sector that will undoubtedly collapse in flames with a lot of people out of funds. There isn't technology behind, there isn't an ecosystem, mere buzzwords to attract newbie investors.

It's concerning -- regulators are looking at these crashes and looking for any excuse they can to hammer down the crypto industry with regulations that will limit crypto's growth.

As long as the government chooses to have paper currency, there will be paper currency. If, on a whim, they choose to no longer deem paper currency as legal tender, then it will no longer be in circulation. It's really that simple -- when you choose to have the government be the sole fiduciary of the currency, they can dictate what form the currency exists in without any recourse from anyone.


I disagree entirely. The government might tell you this, don't buy it. They're an institution that is motivated by self preservation. CBDC's will replace paper currency eventually. It'll most likely be used as a cudgel against BTC users.

To be fair to Amazon, if they're a corporation that is large enough to be one of the biggest polluters, it's on them to aim to limit their pollutions. It's not ncessarily an advantage yet because the investment required to go green probably has a negative ROI. If private corporations want to take their own green initiatives, I'm fine with it. I just don't think the government should be in the businesses of telling companies that sort of stringent green regulations they need to adhere to. Most can't afford it, Amazon clearly can.

A lot of the Trumplicans lost their seats or didn't win, at least. Hopefully that's a message to the ones still in congress that he's a sinking ship and they should abandon ship immediately. MAGA is dead.

Neo-cons probably won't sign onto more Ukraine support. Their constituents won't like it.

Right wing media is done with Trump:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/with-midterm-election-blunders-trump-vindicated-never-trumpers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-is-the-gops-biggest-loser-midterm-elections-senate-house-congress-republicans-11668034869

https://www.dailywire.com/news/gops-midterm-losses-were-100-trumps-fault

I'd like to see the actual numbers on how much consumers spend rather that polling data but in any event -- the economy is "down" in the sense that inflation is high, but the GDP numbers don't *yet* indicate a recession. Consumers generally won't presumptively react to a poor economy until it's already already has reached fruition, the market is reactionary with immediate proximity to economic events (you could tell people the economy is geared towards recession by Q2 2023 and they wouldn't adjust accordingly until Q2 2023).

Companies react the same way - they will usually wait until the economy is in such dire shape that they can't retain employees.

The world doesn't stop spending money during economic downturns, they only stop spending as much.

It's both. Nearly all the giant tech companies in the U.S. reported low earnings and lower userbase for Q3. These layoffs were inevitable considering the financial sectors throughout all of Q3 were all but certain a recession was coming. U.S. GDP for Q3 did not show recession, but my expectation is within the next 6 months there will be so it makes sense that Meta is laying off employees. Not that I would have expected the utter garbage of the "Metaverse" to be resounding success, regardless of the economy.

Side note - Musk also said that Twitter was losing 4M USD per day which contributed to his decision to fire half of Twitter's staff. Seems like we might be moving past the tech bubble that's existed for some number of years.

I understand why 3% interest rates would raise concerns for a recession but a 6.4% unemployment rate seems a bit lower than I would have anticipated. I'm sure their models are accounting for the inflation induced by the interest rates and energy price increases but I believe the energy price increases will leave the UK worse off long term because operating costs of businesses will eventually become unsustainable.

Energy costs introduce a domino effect if the cost rise disproportionately relative to other sectors. Anecdotally, I'm seeing plenty of stories of small businesses that've been operating for years in Europe that only recently had to shut down because they couldn't afford the monthly energy/rent bills. Where will those employees go?


These economic forecasts and models are only as good as the data you feed into it. I would have expected more doom and gloom than a 6.4% unemployment rate for the UK. That seems optimistic.

Some reports I'm seeing of long lines and voting machines down. Media reports also say that with the number of mail-in ballots floating around, some results won't be known for days. Country emblematic of the freest democracy still having trouble figuring out elections, I see.

https://twitter.com/yvonnewingett/status/1589996311348400128

Well if the poll asks people if they want free money, should we really be surprised at the results?

Milton Freidman would also say that stimulus money spending would have favorable effects until people realized they've been fooled. I thought with USD inflation being 8.3% we're at the stage of acceptance that Americans had been robbed of their purchasing power, but seemingly they want to double down. The COVID spending caused the inflation crisis and it isn't unique to USD that it's happening either -- nearly every currency that saw mass amounts of COVID related printing is experience high inflation. And people expect the economic impacts of inflation to resolve itself by even more spending, unbelievable.

Once you introduce people to the drug that is social welfare without any strings attached (UBI, essentially), they don't want to let off. It's why money printing's dangerous. It takes no effort for a politician to promise free stimulus if the ramifications of said stimulus will impact people years after they left office through inflation. They don't have to deal with the political blowback, just reap the rewards of giving people free money.

It's similar to slavery but I wouldn't call it slavery only because there is some factor of free will and decision making attached (albeit a forced decision). Either serve, or go to prison. The proverbial slave doesn't have a choice.

The way I understand forced military service works is that it's for those eligible and most places don't mandate their soldiers commit suicide in an unwinnable war either. The U.S. in Vietnam was a bit of an exception.

It's not like it would be difficult to excuse yourself of military service if you were so inclined. Most countries will strike you for just cause and that bar is low. The Russians don't have a chance.