Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

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.

https://railfan.com/freight-rail-strike-looms-as-biden-mulls-emergency-board/

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden established an emergency board on Friday to prevent a nationwide railroad strike on Monday.

The establishment of the board will prevent a strike for at least two months. During that time, the emergency board will come up with non-binding suggestions in hopes of helping the unions and the railroads find common ground. The two sides have been negotiating for three years and earlier this summer the National Mediation Board announced that talks had fallen apart.

dumb economic question:
Will these Fed interest rate hikes affect my savings account interest rate? Because it's been shit.0% for years it seems like

Oh good lord no

Interest rates on savings accounts do tend to go up with a fed hike, but you may need to shop around to get the highest rates. Highest I’ve seen recently is 1.4% to 1.5%. Today’s rate hike should push them up more.

fwiw the best rates have gone from about 0.5 to 1.5% this year. still behind the fed rate, and well behind inflation.

2%! https://www.lendingclub.com/personal-banking/savings

yeah I should probably move that money somewhere but I don't think it's a good time to enter the market via a money market or something

i wouldn't do lending club tbh. it's FDIC insured, but they seem like the kind of fintech firm where you might actually need that. point is you can do slightly better than shit%. shit and a bit%, and that will go up tomorrow/next week.

I bonds are paying around 10%.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkbg7/chick-fil-a-is-asking-for-volunteers-to-work-for-5-chicken-sandwiches-per-hour

xpost yeah, I Bonds are currently 9.62% which is not half bad

I already have a Treasury Direct account from buying some bonds back in the early oughts... I don't look very often but every time I check, the balance only goes up - which is more that I can say for my depressing 401(k)... maybe I'll drop a couple grand in there and forget about it for another decade

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ibonds/res_ibonds.htm

Wealthfront just raise the rate on my cash account to 2%. Thanks.

do we have a stonks/wsb thread?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/shares-of-a-chinese-tech-firm-are-up-more-than-15000-25-since-its-july-ipo-and-even-the-company-has-no-idea-why/ar-AA10enoq

this shitco ipo'd a couple weeks ago and is now one of the ten most valuable companies on planet earth by market cap.

It's a safe bet that somebody is manipulating the shit out of that stock.

interesting

it's a meme stock that has a super low float...any attempt by the company to take advantage of the situation by selling a significant block into the demand would probably tank the stock price, unless they did something like an at the market offering like AMC did back when AMC was meme-y

Market cap is not even that meaningful when less than 10% of a Company’s stock trades. This is basically a penny stock style pump and dump but on a larger scale, maybe using more sophisticated means of manipulation.

Also it’s already way down

There is no recession. In fact, there's apparently an insanely strong recovery. A thread:

Put that recession talk away, and change the subject. A vibecession ain't no recession:

July payrolls came in at a huge +528k, and unemployment is down to 3.5%.

A whap-bop-a-loopa-a-whap-bam-boo!

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) August 5, 2022

Oh shit, recession inflation! RIP Biden.

Oh yeah? If the economy is so great how come I see “Help Wanted” signs everywhere?

Jobs don't kill people, people kill jobs

before

This is from Fox Business yesterday: Former Trump economic advisers Larry Kudlow and Kevin Hassett dismissed Wall Street expectations of a 250K jobs report for July, insisting in this recession it would be “closer to 100 … way on the downside.”

Numbers just came out: 528K. pic.twitter.com/CH511twjYr

— Eric Kleefeld (@EricKleefeld) August 5, 2022

Here’s ⁦@ABC⁩ NEWS …accidentally releasing a pre written jobs report story with “XYZ” filling in for the coming numbers.. read the text… it is Amazingly wrong. pic.twitter.com/mROXiGB9if

— Hal Sparks (@HalSparks) August 5, 2022

after

July’s job’s report defied expectations of an economic slowdown, will make it harder for the Fed to dial back the brisk pace of rate increases and suggests a period of “higher for longer” rates is becoming more likely https://t.co/Yc7ljPFWur

— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) August 5, 2022

before: "there's a recession"
after: "there's not a recession but there's a democrat in the whitehouse so we better induce one"

Note Biden labeled as "Biden":

my read of the current economic situation and why the corporate media reports strong job reports as bad news: pic.twitter.com/ilrK4D4wbo

— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw) August 5, 2022

I really do feel like the newspapers are in a cycle of "job growth is bad, unless there's not job growth, in which case lack of job growth is bad"

As I learned long ago from H. L. Mencken, newspaper editors view their job in regard to any events having a political dimension as either to 'point with alarm' or 'view with satisfaction'. On the whole, I find that 'point with alarm' outpaces 'view with satisfaction' at about a 10:1 ratio.

oof!

(except $TWTR haha)

looks like the rail strike discussed above is ... picking up steam again

Might be happening!

I had the same thought today. Hoping we are both wrong. Are you keeping notes for a sequel to your book? https://t.co/s4ftPFKP92

— David Wessel (@davidmwessel) September 24, 2022

lot of rumors that credit suisse might be going under this week

Traditionally October is the scariest month in financial markets.

Hedge funds:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/427/549/b9d.gif

Or rather!

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/427/549/b9d.gif

This is pretty fascinating. People who bought GameStop for fun have now developed a whole economic belief system around it.

I've been digging into the communities surrounding meme stocks and, like, it's weird man. Somehow a short squeeze opportunity back in 2020 has mutated into a straight up apocalypse cult trying to trigger the end of the world.

— Dan Olson (@FoldableHuman) October 10, 2022

just feels like this has a Lehman Bros in 2007 flavor to it, idk. Monitoring.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 10 March 2021 06:54 (one year ago) link

The second biggest position in the Greenhill-backed Credit Suisse funds is a "smart window" company called View that's also a SoftBank company (surprise!). It just went public a couple days ago via a SPAC.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 10 March 2021 07:00 (one year ago) link

Course that was before the Archegos thing also blew up

(smart window company not really significant, just for context that it was CS-related)

this thread has been calling the next financial crisis as just around the corner for over a decade. one day it will be right

it’s here

wanna put some money on it?

Can I pay in Damian Hirst NFTs?

pay me in broken clocks ;)

Do you think the fed is slowing things down too much? That seems like the proximate danger at this point (along with whatever the fuck the uk does to the bond market)

As LA goes, the rest of the country follows.

The LA trucking market is a leading indicator of activity across the rest of the US, providing a 2+ week advanced look at the rest of the market. Vols out of LA have now dipped below 19 levels (note: this is “peak” season). pic.twitter.com/gAUV2e6cLU

— Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🚂⚓️ (@FreightAlley) October 11, 2022

Housing market seizing up because no one can afford to buy, and no one in their right mind would sell, also seems bad.