Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

If the economy is so great how come I see “Help Wanted” signs everywhere, answer me that smart guy?

The economy is so great, people need help with it!

the redundancy of that tweet’s last sentence is sublime

That is more than 1.49 percentage points, even!!!

As I read that chart, "the most optimistic forecast" was from the FOMC, who predicted 4.2% growth. That's in contrast to "most forecasters", who were slightly less optimistic.

this is funny

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dg5qz/what-you-learn-from-a-year-of-watching-bad-financial-advice-on-tiktok

but not as funny if you chase it with

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-ticking-bomb-of-crypto-fascism

Here's a really wild chart.

Shares of Hilton have now matched the performance of Zoom since February 19, 2020, the market right before the pandemic.

Just incredible reversal of the "COVID winners" trade. The hotel business is booming. https://t.co/ZnyYdIut2Q $HLT $ZM pic.twitter.com/qz1eYqx3bv

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) February 15, 2022

Hotel rooms got crazy expensive

Honestly surprising given the cancellations of conferences and weddings, the kinds of things that sell ballroom space and blocks of rooms.

they've also stopped cleaning/refilling everything automatically every day

Isn't the story more than Zoom's insane hype has died down while Hilton basically coasted back to where it was (factoring in the general performance and inflation of the market)?

I should add: crazy expensive and (for the last 5-6 months or so) more popular than you’d think

hey things are kind of expensive in general now

Yeah

This tracks with our local hotel market, I was just talking to someone in the industry last week. She said their business travel is still substantially down, but it's been more than compensated for by a boom in leisure travel. And also what they call "B-leisure," which is a combo thing where people on a business trip bring their families and stay a few extra days, turning it into a working vacation. This has been greatly abetted by remote work, people aren't pressured to come back home to the office.

Software CEOs need to delete Headspace and watch this clip every morning pic.twitter.com/gXC2dtGxce

— E-BIT-dee-AY Exit Multi🅿️le.usd (💵,💵) (@ExitMultiple) February 17, 2022

legally

yikes, needed a tw tbh

he must be right, because he yells and swears and calls me a moron, just like my daddy used to**

**not actually true

what is he actually talking about

And who is he?

what is he actually talking about

considering the profile of E-BIT-dee-AY Exit Multi🅿️le.usd, he's yelling about cryptocurrency

it's kind of sweet that he proudly announces that he's the financial equivalent of a rapist, then expects you to give full credence to his financial advice. he might as well have told his audience he'll absolutely, 100% guaranteed pull it out before he cums.

It’s a crypto thing

never trust a man wearing red socks

I look forwar to the days when I can rent a car again at less than it would cost to buy th ecar

We just booked a car from Hertz for June, even with the “manager’s special” — you take whatever they have abaila

Lol just noticed the end of that post got chopped off. Was saying, even with taking whatever they have on the lot, it’s $500 for 6 days.

That's honestly pretty good from what I went through last summer. o_O

Right before the pandemic, I booked one for 6 days in California. A Nissan Altima or something. 225$.

Yeah, I don’t rent cars very often, so I still have in my head that it’s like $30-$40 a day.

It was my first time, and I ended up having to get a refund because of the pandemic!

Oh no you're absolutely right, that's what I paid in summer 2020. But summer 2021 was remarkable--at one point last August I was quoted prices of several hundred dollars PER DAY.

I rented a car just ONCE, a few years ago, for work travel. (And had no choice but to rent it for logistical reasons.) The cost might have been $200-$300 for 3-4 days and I was ultimately reimbursed, but this was a crazy new, super tech car I’d never have had a chance to drive otherwise- a Dodge Charger or something - and I was constantly terrified about car accidents, thefts, dents. Just paranoid as hell and relieved when I turned it in at the airport.

This stuff is part of why when I travel for pleasure it’s cabs and Uber. $500 for 6 days? Yikes.

my car insurance has a clause to cover rentals too so I dont worry to much about that - more about spills on th einterior!

When I lived in Queens my trick was always just to rent from LaGuardia -- even if I had to take an Uber there it worked out very reasonable, like $40-50/day and NYC rental prices were always outrageous otherwise. I'm sure it's much worse now though.

Stewart Airport in Orange County is about to restart a bus service to and from NYC because I guess they're hoping their investment in a new terminal and a new European budget airline partnership will pay off. There's a car rental office at the airport, I'd definitely try that if I were looking for better pricing once that bus service starts.

trains wou ld be better if you could have your own private bubble

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/cpi-inflation-february-2022-.html

Inflation rose 7.9% in February, as food and energy costs push prices to highest in more than 40 years

we are making significant changes to our budget that was already on life support before this. really feeling this at the grocery store the last few trips.

We are very lucky to be able to weather this fine, but any budget we made has pretty much gone out the window. Hard to see how anyone can deal with it if they don’t have slack to begin with.

Time to write another big check to the food bank.

yeah, I have a monthly contribution to a few different food banks and it's time to up it

was just thinking about some of the progress made on child poverty rates last year with the child tax credit. Now with that gone and the current inflation rate these kids will suffer the most.

“OIL BALL”

H/T @AdsoOfBelk @_Jason_Dean_ @pacpaxpam https://t.co/T9KrTBLSVO pic.twitter.com/caKbbvhWdX

— MOAR Drilling (@MOAR_Drilling) March 10, 2022

Calling this now: Omicron breaking through in China will be a double whammy for global trade and therefore inflation.

China just declared a 7-day lockdown in Shenzhen -- home of one of the world's largest ports.https://t.co/5KhOESgbbi

— Christopher Mims 🤌 (@mims) March 13, 2022

hell yeah

Wayne Pankratz of @Applebees says that higher gas prices are great for business because most employees live check to check and hopefully they can start lowering wages. pic.twitter.com/BiRfeSmsYX

— Rob Gill 🇨🇦❤️🇺🇦 (@vote4robgill) March 23, 2022

weird, PUA ended almost 7 months ago

I mean, isn’t that just how labor markets work in capitalism? I’d be surprised if 90-95% of service industry/low wage employers aren’t having the exact same conversation behind closed doors.

it's the quiet part out loud, of course. bless the rat who leaked the email

it's an interesting statement but i'm skeptical that some podunk applebees exec has the correct model of the labour market. the rule of thumb that [anything happens] -> bad for workers under capitalism is a good approximation 99% of the time, but it's still worth thinking through the mechanism. and we're in weird times; the bottom 20% low wage workers have had high sustained real wage growth for the last 2 years, the first time that's happened in decades. no one knows exactly why, but something in this economy is working out to the advantage of low-wage workers

Updated figure on annualized nominal wage growth and CPI inflation (through Feb 2022), adjusting for composition.

Workers in the bottom 40% saw pay growth exceed inflation over past 24 months; share fell to 20% for past 12 or 6 months when inflation was higher.
1/ https://t.co/CzQoRCP14H pic.twitter.com/cp2sEDcMvB

— Arindrajit Dube (@arindube) March 25, 2022

usually inflation is associated with a tight labor market. the fed isn't planning on raising rates high enough to cut into inflation any time soon (they're hiking but will still be below "neutral" rates for another year or two). and people have been entering the labour force in record numbers which shows no sign of slowing

this logic can break down under cost-push inflation (rather than demand driven inflation from loose fiscal/monetary policy). i.e., if the rise in gas prices results in 1970s style stagflation where both unemployment and inflation are high. maybe unemployment will start to increase, but i'm not so sure. the shift back to consumption of services (after the historic shift away from services to goods during the pandemic) is a large secular force pushing the demand for labor up. and despite what pankratz says, the end of PUA/PEUC didn't seem to make much difference in labor supply

if gas prices cut into disposable incomes, that would also mean less demand for applebee's. and as high gas prices raise costs, that would also cut into applebees' profits. whether these are offset by lower labor costs is unclear.

also, everything depends on the fed. if the fed is accomodative, high prices can get pumped back into wages (wage-price spiral). if the fed goes full volcker and causes a recession, both prices and wages will fall and unemployment will increase

what's interesting to me in the statement is the part about mom and pops. his mechanism goes (1) rising oil prices will raise costs for applebees' small competitors, (2) they'll either cut hours, raise prices, or go out of business, (3) those that cut hours or go under will lower competition applebees faces.

this is kinda nerdy, but a key implicit assumption he's making is that mom and pops will have a harder time than big businesses passing the increase in costs onto prices. he's saying that the demand faced by small businesses is more elastic. i'm not sure if that's true