Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

Surely the traditional "downtown high rise" is more easily converted and more attractive for occupants, I'd be most interested to see creative solutions to turn sprawling suburban office complexes into walkable mini neighborhoods that are truly affordable and push those ring areas ever further away from car dependence.

Yeah, agreed. A crappy 70s office park inside the Beltway in Montgomery County MD turned a long vacant lot into townhouses. There’s no Metro access but decent bus service and you can actually walk to some shopping.

every stock in the S&P 500 is red right now pic.twitter.com/vhrfVc1NIz

— Katie Greifeld (@kgreifeld) June 13, 2022

🐦[every stock in the S&P 500 is red right now pic.twitter.com/vhrfVc1NIz🕸
— Katie Greifeld (@kgreifeld) June 13, 2022🕸]🐦

Holy shit, forget the S&P -- I looked at biggest gainers on Yahoo Finance:

https://finance.yahoo.com/gainers

There is literally one stock there. Can that be right? Only one stock went up today?

I guess that's with certain filters set and not literally everything, but still crazy to have one stock show up in "gainers"

i guess the used car bubble is winding down

Down 92% YTD is just insane to see pic.twitter.com/9S93zP0lp5

— Bucco “Buyback” Capital (@buccocapital) June 13, 2022

I *think* Carvana has other issues at work, since the used car market has most definitely *not* cooled down yet. Cars are still in super short supply. In fact, I recently heard that insurance companies have started OKing repairs they in the past would have passed on, because people have been forced to hold on to their damaged cars.

carvana's business model was fucked from jump iirc

yeah prices are still high, but seem to have peaked in april or may, and the stock in a company like this would be a leading indicator.

of course carvana is also a tech company, and tech is down like 50% on the year, which probably doesn't help. but if you're down more than *coinbase* on the year then you're in a tough line of business.

eh, flipping cars is a good business model while prices are rising.

https://www.motorious.com/articles/features-3/carvana-vroom-serious-trouble/

"An industry source told us “Carvana is no longer allowed to sell in some states because of their title issues.” That’s backed up by multiple reports across the country. For example, Illinois recently suspended Carvana’s dealership license after an investigation concluded the company has been failing to transfer vehicle titles to customers while abusing out-of-state temporary registration permits. Carvana reportedly will have to correct these problems before the suspension will be lifted.

Carvana has had hundreds if not thousands of complaints filed against it in states like Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. Chalk it up to logistical problems as the company has set up dealership locations all over the nation, but many customers have complained that after months of waiting, they still didn’t receive their vehicle title and couldn’t register their new ride in their state."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2022/05/21/carvanas-chaotic-zoom-firing-ernie-garciacaps-companys-struggles-amid-market-downturn/?sh=9e0890c4c1ac

"Indeed, Carvana’s mass firing was a sign of much bigger problems at the company, according to 10 former employees (most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity) and several industry analysts. They describe a spendthrift business, whose growth-at-all-costs mentality undermined business operations and sowed the seeds of its recent layoffs.

“It always seemed like no one ever had a real game plan or reasoning behind the decisions they made when it came to policy changes or additional training,” said one former call center worker. “It was always just someone’s quick idea and that would be put into place with no additional planning.”"

Fwiw, iirc the Carvana suspension in Illinois was only for two weeks, and I think has already long passed. Def. a logistics/organization issue.

I recently heard that insurance companies have started OKing repairs they in the past would have passed on, because people have been forced to hold on to their damaged cars.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, June 13, 2022 11:38 AM

aaay this is how my ‘09 pontiac got saved from the scrapyard after my batshit neighbor did $5k+ damage to it

Bitcoin, Ethereum crash over 70% from peaks; crypto investors lose over $2 trillion in 8 months

how could they lose two trillion when the shit wasn't worth anything anyway

if you set your money on fire you lost some money

Duh, now is the time to buy!

This time is different, you guys, really.

Just got an e-mail from Robinhood (where I've had one penny stuck for ~four years) blaming the bear market on the dastardly STIMULUS.

interesting... I would've blamed it on investors dumping stocks in a rabid frenzy, but what do I know

Hmmm. Lemme see. So it turns out that rescuing tens of millions of mainly poor and vulnerable people from unemployment and eviction, while keeping hundreds of thousands of small businesses afloat during the worst public health emergency in a century was, uh, bad for stock market! Wow! I guess crashing the economy into a brick wall was the right option then.

On Sunday, the cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network announced that it was pausing all withdrawals and transfers between accounts in order to “honor, over time, withdrawal obligations.”

Straight-up Ponzi shit right there

how could they lose two trillion when the shit wasn't worth anything anyway

Among the True Believers, cryptocurrency X was worth Y per unit. IT'S STILL REAL TO THEM, DAMMIT!

I'd be amused if this wasn't having broader effects on the market. And while no cryptocurrency investors should be eligible for Federal relief, I'll eat my words if the government completely refuses any such requests.

But crypto true believers wouldn’t want any of that made up fiat money, right????

How many of the big crypto whales are true believers? How many are Wall Street fat cats who were chasing this shiny new thing, and have well-established hotlines to the Fed and zero shame about demanding bailouts?

TBH I think there have to be a good number of true believers. My impression is that the wall street fatcats were latecomers. It's a little too elaborate to have been planned out all along as a ponzi.

then I want a bailout for my beanie babies losses

sure, but the venture capitalists were on it early, and they love a good ponzi scheme

I don't necessarily think it was intended as a pyramid scheme - there was some wide-eyed utopian naivete going on there. It just went in that direction, and the ones who cashed out early came out on top, while the hold-steady folks and late comers were left holding the bag

As has been pointed out previously, stocks have intrinsic value, gold/silver, pork bellies, whatever... even U.S. greenbacks - all have something backing them. Ethereum is just a shared delusion of value, there's nothing there but ether

xp were they? I didn't get the impression that venture capitalists got into crypto that early, am I wrong?

guess it depends what "early" is

I'm kind of surprised there isn't also more news about the SPAC crash and burn. Another inevitable crash, perhaps even more inevitable than crypto, but still.

My perception was that it started with libertarian techies getting all enthused and evangelistic over bitcoin and blockchain freeing the world from the tyranny of central banks and fiat money, then was latched onto by the "dark web" as a way of anonymizing payments for illegal activities.

When authorities cracked down hard on the dark web crypto languished for a time, then revived when a wave of admiring stories got planted in the media about crypto's promise and how small timers were striking it rich. That was probably the work of a few wealthy opportunists like Thiel, who saw it as a market they could dominate and exploit. So they did and it worked.

stocks have intrinsic value, gold/silver, pork bellies, whatever...

The things you have listed are commodities, and are traded on a whole different exchange. (At one point I considered becoming a commodities broker, which was what my dad did, until he realized his bosses were scammers and ratted them out to the government and became a witness in a class action lawsuit brought by the clients they'd ripped off systematically for years. Anyway, every time I tried to study for the certification exam my retinas would detach out of sheer boredom, so I gave up. But trading commodities is slightly less driven by casino-esque bullshit than the stock market. I can't imagine it's much fun doing it these days, what with looming climate disasters and wars fucking up everyone's crops and distribution thereof...)

The commodity futures market is even more tethered to reality than stocks because it's in large part used by people who are actually in those industries or related industries in order to mitigate price swings.

also, a pork bellies contract literally means you agree to take delivery of a certain number of pork bellies, so it is literally tied to a tangible thing.

contract literally means you agree to take delivery

Which is why, when the pandemic halted most global economic activity for about a month and every means of storing crude oil had been filled to capacity, oil futures entered negative values, where, if you had no place to put the oil you'd contracted for and were desperate to sell it, you had to pay the other party to take it off your hands!

It got depressing in 2020 to start seeing "Buy Bitcoin" machines at truck stops in Rust Belt and Great Plains middle of nowheresville.

Manufacturing Recessions

I was seeing some of those bitcoin ATMs a few years before 2020 and thought it was weird. Many of them would be convenience stores selling a lot of CBT and other assorted 'semi-regulated' chemicals besides tallboys and wraps.

But hey, Lot Lizards and weed dealers gets to be part of the new economy too.

Yeah, when darknet markets were booming Bitcoin ATMs were the best way to buy BTC anonymously but you had to pay a premium over Coinbase/etc. assuming you could even find one that was working.

An astonishing sentence: “Every $100 increase in median rent is associated with a 9 percent increase in the estimated homelessness rate, according to a 2020 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.” https://t.co/s6nffeyST8

— Brian Goldstone (@brian_goldstone) July 3, 2022

calling my broker

New filing for the "God Bless America ETF (YALL)" another addition to the anti-ESG wave. This one tracks US stocks but "screens out cos that have emphasized political activism, social agendas or make public statements about political hot button items unrelated to their business." pic.twitter.com/BMt96ZmuUv

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 12, 2022

this could be spicy https://www.freightwaves.com/news/americas-freight-railroads-are-incredibly-chaotic-right-now

ESG always struck me as bullshit anyway, xp

yeah, it kinda frankly is, at least most ESG ETFs I've ever looked at have included massive S&P500 corporations that are very questionable

this could be spicy https://www.freightwaves.com/news/americas-freight-railroads-are-incredibly-chaotic-right-now🕸

To address low staff, Berkshire Hathaway’s BNSF took one particularly unpopular approach. In February, BNSF began to penalize employees who took time off for fatigue, family emergencies or illness. Union officials said 700 rail crew left as a result of the policy. The $23.3 billion railroader nixed the policy in June.

Last I heard the BNSF workers were still not allowed to strike by a judge, the article doesn't mention it but I guess the order was lifted?

President Joe Biden is being charged with appointing a “Presidential Emergency Board” to nail down a new contract. If he doesn’t do so by Monday, railroad crews could legally have their first nationwide strike since 1992.