Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

Lol y’all talking about investment accounts and retirement funds, I have 3 grand til mid-September and that’s all I’ve got absent a job falling into my lap.
1500 of that eaten up by the mortgage.

yeah COST was already down all month and in pm due to target, retail shitting in general.

If we are entering a recession (as the stock traders fear), this will be a weird one: unemployment is about as low as it can get.
Supply chain issues obviously a factor in the slowdown, fear about the Ukraine conflict spreading, slowing Chinese economy, etc. But the ultra low unemployment and strong US dollar are not historically good indicators of a looming recession

it's a self-imposed recession that the fed and GOP will allow to end once the GOP regain power.

(so yeah, i'm not expecting a big one)

although all this shit is over

Since the tides do indeed seem to be turning, Let’s hear it:

What’s your favorite/funniest memory of the free-money, loss-making, VC-subsidized consumer start up era?

— Bucco “Buyback” Capital (@buccocapital) May 20, 2022

Yeah those companies leaving unregulated dockless bikes at the dead of night scattered randomly around cities were the bane of city governments for like a year.

Then they were all stolen or vandalized or dumped in creeks for city crews to clean up.

I think they pulled a dozen scooters out of Lake Merritt in Oakland in a single month

But the real benefit is for the homeless who break the locks and then have a free bicycle to ride around

I think a lot of the stock market right now is just the helium that's been pumped into it over a number of years finally being let out. But certainly massive increases in basic cost of living expenses are not going to be helpful for a consumer-driven economy.

thinking about this snippet from target's earnings report

Target:

"Many guests are sharing their uncertainty of the overall state of the economy, but are feeling more positive about their personal finances."

— modest proposal (@modestproposal1) May 18, 2022

I feel like I've seen economists describing that phenomenon before, where stuff like inflation just generally makes everyone uneasy even if they are personally ok

I heard yesterday that Target shoppers come in for the microwave popcorn, but not the microwave ovens... i.e. the higher margin appliance stuff is what's slowing down

it's a self-imposed recession that the fed and GOP will allow to end once the GOP regain power.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, May 20, 2022 1:20 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

recession--if there is one (seems likely to be a soft landing to me)--won't last until 2024 imho

From the Federal Reserve's annual report on households:

"self-reported financial well-being reached its highest level" since 2013.

"In the fourth quarter of 2021, 78 percent of adults reported either doing okay or living comfortably financially." https://t.co/VChSwhUGBR

— Arthur Delaney 🇺🇸 (@ArthurDelaneyHP) May 23, 2022

it's (voters' wildly warped perception of) the economy, stupid

"The report draws from the Board's ninth annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, or SHED, which was conducted in October and November of last year before the increase in COVID-19 cases from the Omicron variant and other changes to the economic landscape in recent months."

i think some things have changed since then idk

"other changes" -- like the cessation of the increased, paid-monthly child tax credits? defunding SNAP? knocking the added supports out of unemployment insurance?

I just signed a new electricity contract and my rates doubled vs. last summer. Not sure voters perceptions are warped much less wildly so.

yeah but that's texas, right?

everyone i know talks about struggling compared to last year? the signs are everywhere, numbers of homeless people increasing, lots of messaging about "cutting your spending" etc. i see facebook reels about "savings challenges" and so forth a lot lately. for some reason this federal reserve report doesn't strike me as accurate, though it does serve the useful purpose of being more fodder for the people invested in pushing harder in class warfare.

when netflix stopped adding subscribers i knew shit was real

Xxxp - for sure deregulation and climate fed into a worst case scenario for me but prices are spiking to a lesser extent everywhere because of natural gas AFAICT and a lot of those places already had higher energy prices than we do.

I think that Fed report might be technically accurate for seven months ago but seven months ago might as well be three years.

Electric rates are supposed to spike here, too.

What I’m dreading is finding out our new property tax rates— apparently they’re up between 16% and 65% throughout the city. All the motherfuckers who moved here from NYC during the first two years of Covid are sure doing their best to turn this city into a yuppie shithole

A clerk tried to charge me $4.50 plus tax & CRV for a 24 oz can of Coors last week (Total: $5.21), I almost had a heart attack

I found the same can for $2.99 out the door at another shop, but still.. it was a wake-up call

oh i'm sure my electricity bills for the next four months are going to be extremely painful, but at least it's not ercot

Hey, at least perpetually on the verge of collapse ERCOT is also generating power for almost half of all bitcoin mining in the US!

The fed's attached fact sheet is a little less rosy than Delaney's pull quote

first the thing that no longer exists

The majority of parents received additional income in 2021 through the monthly Child Tax
Credit (CTC). Most higher-income parents primarily saved this money, while most lowerincome parents primarily spent it on housing, items for their children, or food.
• Three in 10 CTC recipients with income less than $50,000 used the largest portion of
their credit on housing expenses, just over 2 in 10 spent the largest portion on their child,
and 15 percent spent the largest portion on food.
• Fifteen percent of adults with income less than $50,000 struggled to pay their bills
because of varying monthly income. Among parents in this income range, 27 percent
struggled to pay their bills because of income variability.

Rents were up 10+% Jan 22 vs Jan 21, and have continued climbing since

Low mortgage rates resulted in a continuation of the wave of refinancing in 2021, although high
income borrowers were primarily the beneficiaries of this opportunity. The share of renters who
had been behind on their rent in the prior 12 months was higher than before the pandemic.
• Nearly one-fourth of all homeowners with a mortgage refinanced their mortgage in 2021.
Nearly 30 percent of mortgage holders with an income of at least $100,000 and 16
percent of those with income under $50,000 refinanced during the year.
• Seventeen percent of renters were behind on their rent at some point in 2021, including 8
percent who were behind at the time of the survey in late 2021.

the crypto crash hits middle-income people pretty hard

The survey asked about cryptocurrency for the first time in 2021. Differences exist between
those holding cryptocurrency as an investment versus those using it for financial transactions.
• In 2021, 12 percent of adults used or held cryptocurrency in the past 12 months, although
a far smaller 3 percent used it for financial transactions, like buying something, making a
payment, or sending money to family of friends.
• Forty-six percent of adults holding cryptocurrency only for investment had an income of
$100,000 or more, while 29 percent had an income under $50,000. Additionally, 99
percent of these cryptocurrency investors had a bank account.
• Nearly 6 in 10 transactional users of cryptocurrencies had an income of less than $50,000
and 13 percent did not have a bank account.

Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange founded (and, up until recently, based) in San Francisco, is now rescinding job offers that were already accepted as headwinds continue to impact the tech and crypto industries at large.

In a letter sent to employees and made public Thursday, Coinbase’s chief people officer L.J. Brock said that the company would take back “a number of accepted offers” and “outstanding offers” — just weeks after the company announced that it would be pausing hiring. (That halt will continue “for the foreseeable future,” he added.)

like a sand castle dissolving into the tide

...so are the days of our lives

finally, some good news

New study: Pandemic and remote work could obliterate half a trillion dollars of office value:

“We find a 32% decline in office values in 2020 and 28% in the longer-run, the latter representing a $500 billion value destruction.” https://t.co/VFh6CXBnW8

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) June 4, 2022

aka 'the cubicle glut'

TURN IT INTO HOUSING

i'm sorry, we're currently only accepting solutions that enrich a select few at the expense of the many

they would rather raze the buildings

mookieproof otm, there’ll be a few years of stories about developers and owners having done feasibility studies that “prove” it to be “impossible” to convert these buildings into anything other than cubicle farms, with the “impossible” being read as “not as profitable as tearing them down to put up another shopping complex or ‘luxury’ condos”

no more cake in the breakroom

I don’t care if they are new condos at least it’ll add to the supply of housing. All private new housing is “ luxury” when it’s built I’m sure my thoroughly middle-middle class condo community was considered luxury when they were new.

Would love massive public investment in new housing that normal people can afford though!!!

Yeah I'm just so skeptical that any of it would turn into truly affordable housing stock. All of the business parks I've worked in or experienced around here are already in predominantly white, upper middle class suburbs that sure as fuck are filled with NIMBYs and zoning laws that will make sure they aren't filled up with the "undesirables".

I remember reading that office properties are not the easiest to retrofit into housing. IDK if they're harder than converting warehouses into loft apts or anything.

I guess so long as it's easier/cheaper than tearing down the building and building new housing, there's a case for doing it.

Oh I'm sure they aren't "easy", they condensing of toilets and utility chases in the center of the building (as one example) would probably mean lots of extra plumbing and utility expansion, but I would imagine there must be ways to do it that don't require wholesale razing.

interesting part of this dynamic - I'm guessing here - is that the most expensive cities (LA, SF, NYC etc) are probably the ones with the most empty office space, just due to the more privileged workforce that can play hardball with work-at-home demands

And of course these expensive areas are the places most acutely in need of housing stock

But boardrooms to bedrooms? I seriously doubt this will be attempted on any meaningful scale

All I keep coming back to is that architects, developers and landlords have spent decades figuring out how to convert any structure imaginable - barns, gas stations, abandoned theaters, garages, etc. - into profit generating retail spaces. Let's use some of that ingenuity to reverse engineer wasteful office space into affordable housing.

Cleveland has been losing office space even before the pandemic because lol Cleveland. In almost every case the buildings have been converted to apartments (but not necessarily low cost ones) or condos or in some cases, little hotels. It’s happened so often that I just expect a building that’s having trouble renting office space to just start converting to apartments.

Cleveland has been losing office space even before the pandemic because lol Cleveland. In almost every case the buildings have been converted to apartments (but not necessarily low cost ones) or condos or in some cases, little hotels. It’s happened so often that I just expect a building that’s having trouble renting office space to just start converting to apartments.

Sorry for double post there.

I was going to say that hotels or apartments would probably totally work in an office setting.