Travis69

Very nice!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very nice!!!!!!!!!!!!

Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center
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Huge profits announced today by Meta and also Amazon. The market surges.   Then there’s this piece by Axios. 
 
Just a moment...
WWW.AXIOS.COM The US clearly has performed better than the rest of the developed world since the onset of Covid. I’m actually concerned the economy is just too hot right now to consider interest rate cuts…even in March. Let’s see how things look once we get to March. 

FedEx also reported a decline in year-over-year package volume, down 2% in its fiscal Q2, the biggest decline being last June with 9%.  Given that Americans shop online more & more, these declines are a bad sign.

People went on an extended online spending orgy, which all transportation companies benefitted from. Plus there were supply chain issues causing a huge shortage of air freight space which meant people who would normally get delivery of orders by freight had to switch to express services.  UPS and FedEx had huge, but temporary, profits as a result. It was a supply-demand imbalance. 

Now that things are returning to normal, they have volumes coming down, year over year, but still have significantly more shipments than they did pre-covid. So the volume and profit windfalls are over. It’s back to normal (good, instead of very exceptional) growth now.
 
Yes they are bellwether companies. But the numbers don’t mean impending recession. They mean the results must be viewed in light of tough comps that are specific to the express transportation industry. 

The main dynamic at play for UPS in 2023 was them narrowly avoiding a strike by workers on August 1 over wages and other issues. Negotiations went on for months and many shipping customers started re-directing their shipments through other channels to ensure delivery. UPS lost customers during this period so revenue and profits fell substantially. They have since recovered some of, but not all, the lost business which explains the weak Q4 results  
 

UPS reported its earnings yesterday.  They are laying off 12,000 employees.  Their revenue was DOWN 7.8% from the same quarter last year.  This is most definitely bad news and a sign of an impending recession.  

I really don’t care what the Pope thinks, says or does. He’s only the Pope because people make him so. I don’t accept that he has any say whether a man can marry another man. The Church (any Church) only exists because some people want to exert control over others using things like threats, coercion, stories, social control and guilt. 

correct - American society, institutions, infrastructure, etc are in decline.
the broader economy as measured by traditional metrics is doing just fine.
there is no recession, there hasn't been a recession and recession is not in the foreseeable future 
the biggest threat to the American economy is political instability.  If something happens where the US is no longer regarded as the safe-haven for global investment & deposits, then all bets are off.  Be careful what you wish for.

So funny to see how some posters want to transition this thread discussion from a potential recession (that still hasn't happened) to being a discussion about personal and national debt.  I guess if you can't win the one argument then...presto chango...switch to a different topic.   
The national debt has been many decades in the making...under many administrations.  Neither the current nor the prior administration have been nor were concerned with the ever-burgeoning national debt. Shame on both of them.  I think the last time we had a balanced budget in the US was during the Clinton years.
In any case, let's stay on topic.  This thread is a discussion about if a recession is coming.

People have been getting screwed b the Senate for years, this one is just recorded for posterity 

Damn! This tour has been cancelled. I would have made a special trip for this. The drug markets are the best part; I'd probably bounce after that. 
 
One of the board's old timers, @Trixie, posted about meeting companions in the Tenderloin. 

You missed the point of my post.  I had no intention of starting a political discussion on immigration.  I was making a broader statement about how residents of failing cities treat their fellow Americans like shit.  When you defecate all over someone, like calling someone a racist simply because they disagree with you, don't expect hearts and flowers in return.

I would phrase it differently.  I think it's more that many Americans want big cities to deal with the consequences of their bad policies, for example, the millions of New Yorkers who (indirectly at least) voted in favor of open borders but are now angry that the city budget (especially in critical areas like police and education) is being slashed and native New Yorkers are being forced to make painful sacrifices because the city has had to divert so much $$ to care for migrants. 
When Texas and other border states said they were suffering from all the illegal immigration, sanctuary cities like NYC and Chicago didn't give a rat's ass.  Pardon the schadenfreude now that NYCers & Chicagoans are suffering due to the policies they voted for.
And as I mentioned before, residents of "enlightened" cities branded anyone who disagreed with their policies as racist.  Now that these so-called enlightened policies have turned these cities into shitholes, don't expect any sympathy from those you wrongly smeared.

Apparently you can't be bothered with context.  I was responding to @KeepItReal's claim that San Francisco was just fine and that he knew that because he had visited a few times.  I even concede later in my post that this was just one woman's experience. 
Funny how you had no problem with his anecdote.
PS:  have you gone on the Doom Loop Walking Tour yet?  It sounds like hella fun!
How can a city with a $14.6 billion annual budget be a model of urban decay? How can it spend $776.8 million per year on police and have no rule of law to show for it? How can it spend $690 million on homeless services and receive an official United Nations condemnation for its treatment of the homeless ("cruel and inhuman"; "violation of multiple human rights")?

Gotta love the entrepreneurial spirit!  From the NY Post:  ""A local guide now offers a “Downtown Doom Loop Walking Tour,” to “start at City Hall, and continue through Mid-Market, the Tenderloin, and Union Square. We will view the open-air drug markets, the abandoned tech offices, the outposts of the nonprofit industrial complex, and the deserted department stores."
I haven't visited San Francisco since 2010, but this really makes me want to go back!

I've been monitoring this thread, as I expect has @mike carey. It's definitely veering towards politics, and has been on a number of occasions. I'm OK with leaving it up as it has not become explicitly political, though I'll admit I'm tired of hearing the same old tropes over and over again. I'd be more inclined to lock it up just because everyone has already said their piece, and I'm not sure what more is to be said. That is the reason I've stopped engaging in this thread myself. 

And of course this isn't a broad overgeneralization about city and urban dwellers versus the rest of America.  The suburbs and rural areas are apparently shining examples of how Americans should treat each other.
@nate_sf and @mike carey - This thread has turned political.  Please lock it down.

These threads constantly attacking cities and their problems are ridiculous in their premise.  The real question, which is too political and really can't be debated - Why is America in decline?  
Unemployed, unhoused, many drug addicts, and people with a whole host of problems gravitate towards cities because cities are the only locations with a high level of concentrated services that support their needs - government support, addiction treatment, healthcare, shelters, food banks, numerous churches.   I wonder why these people aren't moving to small towns and the suburbs en masse?  Because there is little to no help for them there. 
My mother lives in Brunswick County, NC - a largely rural county in southern NC with large snowbird and vacation home population and one of the lower poverty rates in the state.  Low and behold poor people with problems still exist even there and shocker, Republicans run a large portion of county government.  Most 'services' are provided through churches.  Trust me.  If small towns offered everything a big city does in the way of support services, they too would have similar problems and be overwhelmed.  
So can we please stop with the veiled political discussions about the 'Decline of [[fill in the blank Democrat run city]]' masked as some genuine intellectual discussion about the decline of cities?  Its pathetic and this website has been so much better off with the removal of political trolling by a few people desperate to sound relevant.

Hmmm....Do you suppose it's changed in the last 60 years?🤔

Texas suffered from the cheap labor of folks who worked their asses off doing jobs Americans won't get their fat asses off the sofa to do? 
Don't excuse yourself about schadenfreude, we're accustomed and it's entertaining. 
In the meantime, Chicagoans and New Yorkers taxes keep funding the budgets of the "taker states". 
Possibly this forum, internet, PrEP and SO many other things we enjoy daily wouldn't exist if it wasn't for entrepreneurs, and freethinkers from San Francisco.

The Fed held rates steady again and the market is SOARING at the moment.  

Drunken, belligerent tourist 'sexually molested' manatee statue at Florida restaurant  
nope; no surprise