Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

I'd clarify "nationalize" as "state/locally mediated," stipulate preferential placement through affirmative action and make college a student opt-in right / continuation of public school in general; turn old malls and prisons into colleges.
next let's discuss my thoughts on gun control.

If you're talking about nationalization, the current federal government isn't really a consideration.

also having an endowment is v. nice but it's not like they're sitting on $41B in cash. much of that money is legally restricted to certain very specific purposes (that prop up our excellent current political/economic system, but hey)

it's not like they're sitting on $41B in cash

yup. there's equities, bonds, REITs, silent partnerships, and a wide variety of other negotiable assets, some of which are comparatively illiquid. I doubt they could raise more than, say, $10 billion in cash if they only had a couple of weeks of lead time to lay their hands on that much.

lol i'm curious just how many non-governmental institutions on earth could raise $10B in cash in two weeks

Welcome to Apple University

Boeing planning layoffs, expects air travel to take 2 to 3 years to return to 2019 levels

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-loses-641-million-in-first-quarter-announces-job-and-production-cuts/

That sounds about right to me.

(I don’t think business air travel will return to 2019 levels)

This morning somebody one one of the jibber-jabber shows said that air travel was likely to become much more expensive in the future, and I was thinking, "Are you sure you know how capitalism works? Airlines are gonna be fucking desperate to fill seats for probably half a decade - this time next year, you're gonna be able to get a plane ticket to California free with a delivery from Papa John's."

well they will run fewer flights presumably, supply can be constrained

Fewer flights and fewer seats on the flights one would presume

and fewer stroopwaffle, fuck

*stroopwafel, fuck

stroopwafels rule

This time next year, no-one is going to want to sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers even not counting the recycled air. If the seating limit drops to 20% of what it is currently, and the costs stay the same, it's hard to see how that works except for government subsidies and/or prices going way back up.

I would definitely fly again given either (a) a vaccine or (b) a positive antibody test result.

Time to start laying more train tracks.

Or just throw a couple of passenger cars on the end of freight trains, no service you have to bring your own food and water.

Taking a cruel pleasure in yahoo finance comments like "Time to load up on cruise ship stocks, they haven't been this cheap in years!" Yup folks, expired milk on sale!

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, April 9, 2020 1:10 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

not a good metaphor tbh, unless you believe no one will ever go on cruise ships ever again.

― sarahell, Thursday, April 9, 2020 1:13 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.businessinsider.com/norweigan-cruise-lines-warns-of-substantial-doubt-continue-operating-business-2020-5?fbclid=IwAR3ZLvANP49VMRWu30ewWsAkJjnYLWeSz6clogvBV6DNhk9kKGGWjYW4JHc

I've bad news about the current state of meat processing

•Tyson plant in Perry had 730 positive cases, which represents 58% of the employees tested

•The Tyson plant in Waterloo had 444 positive cases, which represents 17% of the employees tested

•Iowa Premium National beef in Tama had identified 258 positive cases, which represents 39% of the employees tested

•The Tyson plant in Columbus Junction identified 221 positive cases, which represents 26% of the employees tested

•TPI Composites in Newton had 131 positive cases, which represents 13% of its employees tested

not going to run the numbers or quibble about "employees tested" but something like an average 25% of meatpacking employees in what is apparently the largest region for that business are out. there are a lot of reasons, including hiring recent immigrants packed into tight housing, responsible beyond the actual plant conditions

undoubtedly meatpacking robots are the proposed solution

They’ve already put limits on fresh meat per customer at my local Safeway; this was like a couple weeks ago.

Restrictions here too

Feeling like tomorrow is a good day to just go buy a bunch of steaks and chicken cutlets from my locals

I can hit four grocery stores in walking distance pretty easily

Time to live like my ancestors, on boiled potatoes and hatred

the boiling might take some work though

There's a place called Fabulous Meat City in the next town over. Might go see just how fabulous this weekend.

stock up on tofu and seitan imo

Seems like a good time to have just ordered what I initially thought was massively too much chicken and hanger steak from a restaurant distributor that started selling to consumers. Scheduled to arrive today.

Related: full size freezers have been sold out everywhere since March.

This Axios piece is bizarre, and kinda gross, and can't possibly be an accurate reflection of reality:

The coronavirus-driven gold rush

Having been conditioned for years by financial pundits to see the next recession as their opportunity to get rich after largely missing out on 11 years of a surging bull market, young people are viewing the coronavirus-driven stock market crash as their golden ticket.

What's happening: Thanks to zero fees, easy access afforded by the internet, and an unexpected glut of free time on their hands, millennials and Gen Zers are opening online brokerage accounts at a record pace.

Finance apps have seen a 55% growth in usage time from the end of 2019 to the week ended April 18, according to new data from App Annie.

TD Ameritrade reported a record 608,000 new funded accounts in the first quarter and more than three times the number of users in March compared to March 2019.

Brokerages like Schwab, Fidelity and E*Trade also reported record new users.

"The way we can see that a lot of these people are newer to investing is because they are accessing our educational resources at a rate that is three to four times what we’d normally see," Steven Quirk, EVP of trading and education at TD Ameritrade, tells Axios.

"And the courses they’re accessing are explainer video series about investing principles, investing basics, 'How do I buy a stock?'"

"Our investing courses are laid out as a journey and a lot of them are hitting the ones that are the first part of the journey."

Driving the news: Despite two separate embarrassing outages on critical trading days this year that could have sunk its business, millennial-focused trading app Robinhood has seen its valuation rise to $8.3 billion, while investing platform Stash got a new $112 million infusion that took its valuation to $800 million.

Yes, but: In their thirst for a piece of the expected market rebound, these new investors may be ignoring the economic reality of the moment.

The Fed, IMF and an army of the world's foremost economists predict the recession will be long lasting and many companies are expected to go bankrupt or dissolve entirely over the next year.

The last word: Those who have used their new accounts to buy the dip since late March have done quite well.

But if equity prices don't continue to defy gravity, the downturn could destroy already fragile savings gains for millennials who have largely been priced out of home ownership and are just starting to build wealth, wreaking further havoc on the broader economy.

Makes total sense to me. If you have excess income and can ride it out for 10 years...
Also, explains why the stock market itself doesn't reflect reality right now.

i know a few people who are kinda doing what that is saying; trying not to judge

Yeah, that's fair, I think. Personally I still fear that the under-counted and upcoming deaths will have a real effect that is being ignored, no matter how detached from reality the Dow might be.

i know a few people who are kinda doing what that is saying; trying not to judge

U.S. Unemployment Rate Hits 14.7%, Worst Since Great Depression

A Devastating 20.5 Million Jobs Were Lost in April

stocks are up, though!

"stocks up on hopes of coronavirus treatment"

there's always some headline like that on my stocks app, accompanying news of massive unemployment

Why can't they just come out and say "Stocks up on news that an increasingly desperate American population will have to work for whatever pittance their employers choose"

you know this but: the stock market is not a perfect image viewed in a mirror of present economic reality. it's the sum of peoples' perceptions from billions of such mirrors, some of which are magic fortunetelling mirrors existing only in peoples' minds and many which are badly distorted funhouse mirrors. people can also just ignore or misinterpret what they see in the mirror. some people looking at these mirrors can't see at all. you are only trying to guess what people perceive on average and how they will respond to it.

stocks up on fed printing money that is only going to big businesses and so Trump can get re-elected and we need to kick as many people off of unemployment as possible. Also, If you are dead you cannot be unemployed at the same time.

The stock thing continues to baffle me, despite clear explanations in this thread--I'm still operating in a parallel universe. My fund is one good week from being back to par, and then I'm going to try to get out of it (hoping I don't get talked back into it, and wary of what it'll cost to extricate myself--I seem to recall him assuring me it was as easy as could be but knowing that's never true).

definitely true that greed causes people in power to try and distort the mirrors and peoples perceptions, though. it's just weird when people post things that seem to say "i am outraged that i cannot predict what the stock market will do".

i swear i want to slap people through the internet for daring to say anyone is making more money being unemployed so they need to get back to work.

Mentally preparing for the arrival of Lord Humungus

i swear i want to slap people through the internet for daring to say anyone is making more money being unemployed so they need to get back to work.

― Yerac, Friday, May 8, 2020 11:59 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I got into an argument on fb with a guy like this in my neighborhood group who seemed to think that the real tragedy is that he can't find a good office manager for whatever his stupid business is because people are getting paid too much to stay home

which means he's a cheap motherfucker underpaying his staff.

i swear i want to slap people through the internet for daring to say anyone is making more money being unemployed so they need to get back to work.

― Yerac, Friday, May 8, 2020 11:59 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes, I've got in heated arguments about this with many people. like, we bail out corporations for doing nothing except "failing" time and time again. I feel like this is an opportunity for some people who've been through hell for 3-4 years to get caught up financially during a crisis if the amount they get on unemployment happens to be higher than what they were making.

my mother surprised me by telling me she made only $3,500 last year (in addition to the social security of her and my father). this is what they're living off of. and dad isn't working anymore (he was probably making 9k - 10k a year when he was). the reason she couldn't work more is because she was taking care of him and has chronic medical issues of her own, plus hours weren't always available.

she could make 3x what she made last year from unemployment the next few months, which she could use to not only pay bills, but permanently remove debt and emerge from this first quarter of this crisis at least better positioned to face the months going forward. Tons of other people I know are in that position too. Considering the uneven playing field that has materialized over the last 40 years, who the fuck cares? This unemployment isn't putting companies out of business. and it's perhaps discouraging businesses from opening to oearly and preventing sick people from going to work.

also all of the people arguing this are people who make no money themselves, at least in my circle. people who are probably getting the same unemployment.

the thing that’s not stated when people claim that some workers are making more by staying home is whether or not they’re living well. of course they aren’t, the bare minimum just got upped — maybe only notionally! — and the complainers never gave a shit about how their employees were living before. you don’t get to complain that people are able to scrape by slightly better if you didn’t notice they weren’t making it previously