There have been some price increases around supply disruptions, but on the whole I would categorize prices as relatively stable.  That is, of the ones that have increased, they reached a new equilibrium quickly and have not continued going up, and the increase is not so much that it is off-putting.  20% or 30% is very high, I haven't noticed anything that drastic.

Not getting married for the sake of being rich is stupid advice. Ignoring the whole emotional and mental aspect of it and focusing solely economics, there are far more benefits to having two incomes than one.  There are synergies and savings to cohabiting that will leave a couple with more savings than two people making the same amount apart and living apart- one house, less utilities in one house than two, etc. 

What's interesting about diamonds is that their status as "precious gems" is wholly concocted by the De Beers company and completely arbitrary.  Diamonds are not particularly rare and should not be particularly valuable, but they are considered so because of one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history where De Beers planted the seed in the public consciousness that all engagement rings should have a diamond in them, and that the diamonds should be expensive as a measure of love and commitment to the marriage.  De Beers controls 75-80% of the supply of diamonds worldwide, so they keep the supply scarce enough to be able to control the price, even though there is more than enough supply to send the prices through the floor.  Diamonds are a scam, but the public has bought into it, so they're "valuable."

Yeah, this is kind of my point. That if we are going by the technical definition of a recession, we will be showing the recession as having ended before (and possibly long before) we actually start to feel like the economy is getting back to firm ground.  After having fallen so far, any modest recovery would be enough to classify it as "not technically a recession" any longer even though what has been recovered leaves you far behind were you would have been without the set back.

I'm not sure I like the subjective nature of deciding what a recession is though.  The "you'll know it when you see it" argument is used for art and porn, sure. But I don't like it for qualifying a recession.  That one is too technical.

Trump is not an economist and hasn't done jack for the economy. He inherited a recovering economy that was already healthy and managed not to screw it up in spite of decimating tax revenues and pushing the deficit far past a trillion dollars a year when the economy was booming. That's debt that has to be paid back with interest so that the rich could get another tax cut they didn't need. He's running the finances of the country like he runs the finances of his businesses- straight into the ground. There's a reason he's declared bankruptcy so many times.

Ah fair point on the correction, my mistake on mistaking Daschle for a republican.  I was thinking of John Boener, who was anti-marijuana while he was Speaker and in Congress and now is a big advocate for legalization (surprise surprise, he's on the board of a MJ company) because he said he views have "evolved."  Read that as, he's now going to make a lot of money under legalization, whereas before he wasn't, and that's what we call "evolution."

Any crypto passive income is 99% likely to be a scam.  Passive income in general is the birthplace of many scams, as people want to believe that they can get paid for doing nothing, and this desire overrides whatever common sense they have.  The hype around bitcoin magnifies this and it seems to be much worse.  Short version of the rule:  don't believe any crypto passive income program.  The only people it's going to produce income for is those who run it, because they're going to take your coins.

People's unreasonable expectations of bitcoin have spilled out into everything. It borders on the absurd.  People who have a couple mBTC are hoping their exposure to bitcoin is going to make them rich, and so they're just blindly tacking the hype onto everything.  If bitcoin is the solution to world problems, then surely their small amount of bitcoin is going to make them rich!  So it's just the hope for this to come true that's causing people to propose bitcoin as the solution to every problem they see in the world, even though it's not a solution for almost any of them.

I'm interested in this, because this is contrary to what I've seen.  Desire for alcohol didn't drop after prohibition ended and it became legal again.  Similarly, Colorado has legalized cannabis since 2014, and demand hasn't dropped off there either.  July was the biggest month yet for sales in Colorado, and that's despite the Coronavirus restrictions:  https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/15/marijuana-sales-record-200-million/

Also, Oregon has also had legal cannabis since 2015, and set back to back sales records in March and April of this year, also despite Covid restrictions:  https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/oregon-sees-record-breaking-89-million-in-marijuana-sales-for-april/283-fae5cbc4-0d25-4936-b749-bf049a408270

I think initially there is a huge spike in demand that might wane immediately after, but I don't see demand dropping to before it was legal.  Colorado and Oregon are two particular instances that suggests otherwise.

Well the definition of a technical recession is two or more consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.  We hit that in the first and second quarters of the year with approximately -1.3% and -9% respectively (on a non-annualized basis).  Every major bank is expecting robust growth in third quarter around 7-9% (non-annualized) and a modest increase in the fourth quarter.  So on in this vein, we will no longer be in a technical recession as of the end of the third quarter.

A recession more generally (and not technically) can compare year-over-year quarterly results.  From this perspective, 3rd and 4th quarter of this year are very likely to be lower than 3rd and 4th quarter last year, which could qualify as a recession (even though the economy is technically growing quarter over quarter).  Barring a setback, we would expect this "recession" to have ended by the end of the first quarter of 2021, since (again barring a setback) Q1 2021 GDP will be higher than Q1 2020.

However, even if that were the case where no way you look at it is the economy in "recession," I think it will be clear that the economy is likely to be pretty poor at that point given where we were before Covid happened, so the classification of recession or not is missing the forest for the trees.

1.  This is the view I hold.  The Japanese companies he bought a piece of represent a good return for the risk.  Berkshire Hathaway is a public company with a fiduciary duty to shareholders, so they're not going to just stop trying to create wealth because Warren Buffet is old.  Logically it doesn't make sense, and legally they couldn't do that.  The company will continue on after Warren Buffet is gone, and Buffet himself doesn't even make all the calls.  He has hand-picked successors who are currently running billions of dollars of investments without input from Buffet and who will continue the the operation of the company in the same vein as it has been run since Buffet took it over (back when it was a textile manufacturer).

2.  Yeah, my fault.  I guess I just expect people are decent enough to allow open discussion, even in a self-moderated thread.  I rolled with it all right... right into a new unmoderated thread.

It's downright amazing how all these republicans who used to extol the dangers of cannabis have now come around and are advocating for legalization now that they stand to profit from it.  To be clear, Daschle is on the advisory board of Clever Leaves, a cannabis company.  He stands to profit personally from legalization.  So to recap, before he could profit off legalization, it was bad.  Now that he can profit off legalization, it's good.  This guy's a hypocrite specifically because the arguments that legalizing cannabis would help the economy and boost tax revenues was not persuasive to republicans before they all started getting on the boards of these companies, and now they're using those same arguments they used to not believe because it will enrich them personally.

Shutting down businesses and money flowing through stocks, gold and bitcoin aren't related.  These two things are actually in contradiction to each other and there is a specific set of circumstances that have created this scenario.  When economic activity shuts down, there is less wealth in aggregate in the economy.  Excess wealth is what boosts asset prices of things like stocks, gold and bitcoin.  However, stocks have inherent value as they represent a legal ownership of the share of profits of the underlying business, so theoretically even with decreased aggregate wealth in the economy there is a floor under which you would not expect stocks to sink, or at least not sink below and stay for very long.  Neither gold nor bitcoin generate cash flow or profit, and have no inherent value; they are only valuable because large groups of people agree they are.  Since there is decreased aggregate wealth in the economy due to the economic shutdowns associated with the pandemic, we should reasonably expect to see asset prices decline, save for the offsetting of people fleeing riskier assets (like stocks) and into perceived safety assets (like gold).  And no, bitcoin is not a safe haven.  The reason we're seeing the stock market make all time highs with such a depressed economy is that the Fed is forcing tremendous amounts of new liquidity into the market, and that's depressing yields on bonds and treasuries.  Now money has to chase yield by moving into riskier assets, like equities.  This is what is boosting stock prices.  Because this is artificial and not driven by underlying improvements in the economy, I don't see anyway this ends well down the line. 

I usually don't mess with people's quotes so I can't accused of creating a strawman to argue against or selectively framing someone else's argument.  I find it's best to allow the full context to be presented.  People are smart enough to know how to be able to differentiate between the quoted part of the post and the response.  And if they want the full context of what is being responded to, it's right there at the ready instead of having to go back and hunt for the preceding post to get the proper context.  Further, the OP post I quoted in your thread isn't even that long.  Your excuse on the removal is nonsense.

Yeah, that's because it's not safe to go out and do things like there is no pandemic.  We're technically in a "recession" because we've had two straight quarters of negative GDP growth, but again, not because the economy has faltered on its own, but because of a health crisis forcing everyone to reduce economic activity.  The recession will be "over" in that GDP is going to surge in the third quarter, but we'll still be far far below where we would have been without the pandemic.  Characterizing the economy as being in "recovery" hides how bad things still are.

For some reason, user Lucius deletes comments from a thread he started.  My guess is he doesn't like being corrected on his wildly inaccurate posts.  So here's a proper discussion that is not moderated. 



The response that was deleted:

Berkshire has how many hundreds of billions invested in the US market and US companies? And you think $6 billion in Japan demonstrates he’s bearish on the US market?  Buffet likes investing on favorable terms, and the five biggest trading houses that dominate the Japanese market represent exactly that- a chance to put capital to work in a group of businesses that dominate a market with few outside competitors. It’s not an indication of what he thinks of the US economy at all.


You can argue back or ignore it, but one thing you can't do here is delete the message because you disagree with it.  Maybe grow up a bit.

Human nature is the root of evil, money is just a representation of everything of value. If money didn't exist, humans would still desire to have more than they do.  This greed is not because of money, money is just one way to measure it.  Greed for objects we don't already have is human nature.  Vouchers are just a substitute for money in this case.  And centralizing the authority to distribute money/vouchers would create far more destructive tendencies and trying to keep everyone equal would require suppression of the masses. 

No, it's not a good idea.

Venezuela was in trouble long before oil pries fell and it's because the government looted the wealth of the country by sacking everyone who knew what they were doing and installing cronies and corrupt politicians who would kick the money back to the political leaders. The infrastructure that produces oil is literally breaking down and the purge of intellectuals in the country has left them with scarcely anyone who knows how to fix it.  The drop in oil prices is just the icing on the cake since what they can still produce is worth so much less than it used to be.

Real estate represents ownership in something tangible and real. Long term, the price tends to outpace inflation, so it’s a good investment for this reason alone, but it also produces income on top of that. Bitcoin does not, and on top of that, is extremely volatile. I’ll take real estate over bitcoin as an asset class any day.

What fundamentals does any crypto have? It’s just a stationary asset, doesn’t produce income, doesn’t generate cash flow on its own... when you’re talking about the fundamentals of a stock, you’re talking about cash flow or other metrics of performance to measure the stock price against the profitability of the underlying business. Crypto doesn’t have fundamentals because it doesn’t do anything.