stevenkesslar

Finally finished the last episode last night. If the measure of great film is it makes you think and feel a lot, including lots of conflicted feelings, this was an LGBTQ masterpiece. But also a very hard watch. Even though both male leads are adorable eye candy. Do they have an award for eye candy that is nevertheless painful to watch? 🤔 Matt and Johnny deserve awards for that alone. As well as for their subtle performances. I ended up reading Reddit discussions of each of the last three episodes, since I was curious what others thought. Some thought Hawk was a selfish monster who never really loved anyone. Others thought he was madly in love, but it always came out sideways. Pretty much everyone loved Tim. Although several people got the memo that Hawk's actions in the 50's had a certain cruel logic to them. Given that government and society were breathing down the necks of men who loved men. I found the 60's and 70's episodes particularly frustrating. The world was literally on fire. And Nyswaner situated Tim and the supporting characters right in the middle of these freedom movements. But most of the plot was about how Hawk and his family were trapped, and lost, in a cage of Hawk's own creation. I kept wanting those episodes to be about Tim, and how he was changing. That actually could make a good sequel. But I understand why the focus was on how Hawk was stuck. In some alternative Gay universe, this movie will win a porn award for the most horrific three way ever. 🤢 Given that none of this was in the book, it was necessary to take the movie where it wanted to go. Which was a path to repentance and redemption for Hawk. That was very moving, even if Hawk was not easy to love. The film went to very emotionally searing places that the book didn't. I think it will stand as a masterpiece and memorial to all the lives and loves that were lost due to homophobia and hate. Including internalized homophobia, and self-hatred. So the ending fit quite well. Hate you, Roy. Love you, Tim. And I'm delighted that Matt Bomer gets to live the life the character he played never did. That - and all the lives and love and commitment that went into making it even possible - redeems everything.

If I had to name one thing that would drive a recession in the next year, it would be commercial lending. There was some recent report that up to 500 banks, mostly regional, are at risk. Because they have a lot of loans on their books to office buildings and retail that were negatively impacted by COVID. So far, that's a theory. As you said, I don't think any of these geniuses know what is going to cause a recession. They'll figure it out with 20/20 hindsight. The poster child for that is subprime. I thought it was obvious that there was a massive housing bubble that was going to burst. In part because they were really toxic loans, designed to blow up. But Alan Greenspan, for one, didn't see it coming. Something similar is not at all apparent to me on commercial loans. Yes, they are under stress. Yes, lots of those loans have to be refinanced in 2024 or 2025 at higher rates. But will it cause some big explosion like subprime? That's very murky. We'll know it when it happens. if it happens. Meanwhile, Glenn Neely's prediction six months ago that we'll be at S & P 5500 by Summer 2024 or so is looking more likely. We're now half way there. I don't buy all the pessimism about consumer debt and consumer financial stability. Yes, inflation sucks. Yes, I want my fucking Big Mac for 25 cents, like in the good old days. But, that said, 2 in 3 Americans own homes with low fixed rates. Middle America's average net worth went way up. Consumer debt balances were at all time lows during COVID, and have now simply returned to the low side of normal. Consumers are the ones who will drive prosperity, not a recession. Even if what a Big Mac costs does suck. I brought up the federal deficit because a lot of smart people - Druckenmiller, Dalio - argue that could cause a huge financial crisis. But they are not saying that is imminent, or anytime soon. We have time to get our shit together before anything like that hits, at least in their minds.

I agree with @BSR on this one. To put it in apolitical terms, it goes like this. It is a fact that my Dad was always a conservative. It is a fact that I have always been a liberal. We were both deficit hawks. In fact, since I got my values from him, he made me a deficit hawk. Neither one of us viewed it as being a particularly ideological or partisan thing. It was more the idea that you just don't do things that don't make financial sense. You don't bury yourself in debt so deep you can't get out. It is a very bad investment strategy. I think most Americans see it that way. NEW SURVEY: 9-IN-10 VOTERS CALL FOR BIPARTISAN FISCAL COMMISSION AS NEW SPEAKER TAKES HELM To paraphrase one of the poll results, 90 % of Americans agree that the huge national debt is a problem that needs to be addressed on a bipartisan basis. I think it would be better if we could all agree that it is not primarily a political problem. It is an investment problem. If all of us want a growing stock market or a stable and growing real estate market, this just doesn't help. Stated even more simply, 9 out of 10 Americans have basic financial common sense. We don't want to be buried in debt. So, like in the 1990's, we should focus on the fact that some type of compromise to do something about massive debt that creates a bad investment environment is doable. And, just like in the 1990's, it can be done if we all insist on it. A Surplus If You Can Keep It: How The Federal Budget Surplus Happened

The Absolute Worst Predictions of 2023 PREDICTED BY: A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE … CNBC, Oct. 10, 2022: “JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon warns U.S. likely to tip into recession in 6 to 9 months” Bloomberg, Oct. 17, 2022: “Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100% in Blow to Biden” The Economist, Nov. 18, 2022: “Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023” Bloomberg, Dec. 6, 2022: “Wall Street Chorus Grows Louder Warning That 2023 Will Be Ugly” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2, 2023: “Big Banks Predict Recession, Fed Pivot in 2023” Fox Business, Feb. 6, 2023: “Bank of America ‘still forecasting’ 2023 recession” POLITICO, April 4, 2023: “Jamie Dimon warns of new economic storms ahead” CNBC on April 12, 2023: “Fed expects banking crisis to cause a recession this year, minutes show”

Two different and interesting reactions. Both of which are right in their own way. I'll repeat what I said earlier in the thread. The director wanted to make a point about how queers had all this horrible shit thrown at them. And we survived, and still managed to love. Even if sometimes it came out sideways. Or, with AIDS, it sometimes killed us. We now have many more options, and freedoms, for how we treat each other. We won. These two kind of look like Matt and Jonathon.

Actually, it's not near a record high as percentage of GDP. As a percentage of disposal income it is closer to a record low. There's no question that some combination of "free money" (which means federal debt) and "enforced savings" (meaning I can't go to Paris or Disneyland) reduced pandemic consumer debt to a low, not a high, as a percentage of disposal income. So we are BELOW where we were at the beginning of a long boom in the 1990's. As a percentage of GDP, consumer debt is way below where it was during the Great Recession. Consumer spending is not the only thing that fuels the US economy. But it is the biggest thing. So this is a big reason why we have not had a recession, and we may not have one. Consumers are ready, willing, and able to spend. The virtuous cycle in the 1990's was that the economy grew, people made more money, people paid more taxes, and some of that money was used to pay down federal debt. Which helped the economy grow. Rinse, wash, repeat. So if we can somehow figure out how to do that again, we could create the same virtuous cycle. Carville was right about the bond market. Which is as good a symbol as any for the beating heart of American investors. If we want a good investment future, this is what we will somehow figure out. While consumers have lots of money to spend and taxes to pay. If we just party like it is 1999 and don't pay down debt, it will be much harder when we have the consumer debt levels we did in 1999. Or 2009.

That's just not true. We are actually closer to record lows. Please fact check. Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income You may or may not like the fact that two Presidents in a row sent most Americans free money. Factually, it did help drive consumer debt levels to record lows. Factually, we have recovered to average low levels of debt, rather than average high levels of debt. I'm talking about consumer debt, not federal government debt. So relatively low consumer debt and relatively high consumer net worth would all drive economic growth, not recession.

Thanks for confirming my point. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! I read @EZEtoGRU's point about staying on the topic of recession. So I will only focus on how the two things are related. I'm actually a bit surprised how pissed so many people are about inflation. I don't feel the sting. But I'm a Gay man with a decent income and high net worth. Which I think is the point. Everyone in my family and friends who is like me feels about the same. The people I know who bitch about inflation are people with lower incomes struggling to get by. My tenants are among them. They are working class families with kids, mostly, who are mostly one paycheck away from doom. The main way I have contributed to their fate is keeping all their rents way below market rate. It helps me, because they are stable tenants who don't move. But they don't have much net worth. And I'm pretty sure inflation in a family with kids hurts a lot more. I think what the polls say loud and clear is that young people are the most pissed. Because they are the least likely to own homes or stocks. Because they are young. And they are the most likely to be paying rents that have gone up a lot. So it probably feels like no gain, all pain. That is factually incorrect. Because as I noted above their net worth doubled. Prices did not double. But if what that means is you have some stocks that you don't touch, and meanwhile your rent goes up a lot, you might be pissed. Even if your income is going up as well. At some point, if you have to spend less, that could cause a recession. Now that student loans kicked back in, the best estimates seem to be it could shave a fraction of 1 % off GDP growth. So that won't kick an economy growing in the most recent quarter at 5 % into recession. But 40 % of borrowers missed their first payment. So it has to be causing some pain. Meanwhile, the two thirds of America that own homes, who tend to be older, are making out like bandits. I'll personalize it. My monthly housing cost is about $2000 a month, which includes a mortgage with taxes and insurance. How much has it gone up since 2019? Pretty much zero. And it is far and away my biggest monthly expense. Now my pool servicing has gone up. I'll guess maybe $25 a month. Life sure sucks, doesn't it? Meanwhile, my home equity is just not keeping pace. It only went up about $200,000 since 2019. Life sure sucks. doesn't it? Somehow, I can manage to pay the $25 more a month to service my pool. And the extra $30 or whatever it is that groceries may cost when I go to the store. If we have a recession, please don't blame it on me. I think the broader economic principle is that when people have higher net worth, they tend to spend more and save less. As I noted above, that is exactly what happened in the 1990's. And, by the way, we used some of that growth to pay down government debt. There's a thought! You can say that it is good or bad. But it is real. And it drives economic growth, not a recession.

fact-check verb investigate (an issue) in order to verify the facts. "I didn't fact-check the assertions in the editorial" Actually, Auggie, consumers are running on record net worth. The Average American’s Net Worth Jumped 37% in 3 Years You've done an awesome job of persuading me you are emotionally committed to the idea that the end is near, the sky is falling, and of course there is, was, and will be a recession - always and forever, until the management changes. That's the part that sucks. The not so sucky part is that homeownership is at a record high - two in three Americans own their homes - and home values are up. Most Americans have very stable and low fixed rate mortgages. Or just own their home free and clear. Most data I read suggest young Americans have it the worst, and are pissed. Like especially young families who want to buy homes at sky high interest rates. That said, the net worth of Americans under 35 doubled in three years, from $16,000 to $39,000. It can't suck that bad, can it? This is one of the main reasons median net worth increased from $141,100 in 2019 to $192,900 in 2022. Sucks, huh? I know from past posts that you'll now pivot from "The sky is falling!" to "It's a bubble!" Which one is it? While you are figuring that out, I calculated that the additional $51,800 in net worth for a typical American would buy 3,985 Big Mac meals at $13 a pop. Hungry, anyone? That should keep the economy going for a while. Consumer debt is lower than it has been for most of the last half century. It was even lower during the pandemic, thanks to lots of enforced savings because people couldn't go to Italy. So they just remodeled their home instead. And of course add in all that government money. If the question is, "what might keep us out of a recession?", the ability of consumers to spend more would be one good answer. To put it in relative terms, right now at 10 % of income consumer debt is LOWER than it was in the early 90's, at the start of the biggest bull market in our lifetimes. By the end of that bull market consumer debt rose to 13 % of income. Which of course partly helped fuel the boom. If the future is anything like the past half century, consumer debt is below average and is more likely to go up than down now - fueling economic growth, corporate profits, and higher stock prices. Now I'll put on my prognosticator hat. What might drive growth and keep us out of a recession? I have two answers, citing three people who are smarter than me. When Stanley Druckenmiller was actually predicting the sky was falling after the 1987 crash, some voodoo stock chart guy named Glenn Neely predicted the biggest bull market ever. Druckenmiller now admits he was wrong, but is also a lot richer. Neely admits he was right, and is also a lot richer. Sucks to be them, huh? Neely called a one year bull market last June, predicting the S & P would hit something like 5500 in 2024. So far he looks to be right. He is also predicting the bull market will keep going for years, with corrections along the way. His thesis is that capitalism and free markets are going to win. Frankly, right now, I'm a bit pessimistic. Vlad had a much better year than everyone thought he would. That said, China and the US both seem to want to keep the global economy chugging. So it's a scary and uncertain time. But Neely could be right. Druckenmiller could be, too. I think his call on the big federal debt bomb is correct. He said at a conference earlier this year that government can and probably will kick the can down the road until the 2030's, when the trust funds for things like Social Security run dry. Meanwhile, he is big on NVDA and AI. He said that booms like that can last for years. It's too soon to tell. But so far he is right. I'm personally skeptical about AI. I'm more worried about how it will shred jobs than how it will increase corporate profits. That said, this video is worth watching. It's the CEO of Nvidia. The thing that worries me is his seemingly guileless tone when asked repeatedly about all the havoc AI could wreak. He's more worried about his own company's survival than the impact of the technology on the world, or jobs. That said, if you watch nothing else watch the last four minutes or so. To quote him, he says "It's a big deal, because it's a complete reinvention of the computer industry." New networks, new switching, new computer design, new software, new data centers. All driven by us stupid passive investors, who are piling money into NVDA and SOXL and their ilk. It's capitalism, and it sucks, right? But I could see this driving a boom and a bull market, just like in the 90's. If we survive AI, things might be okay. It could actually drive prosperity. If that happens, like Druckenmiller, I hope the government spends some of the windfall capital gains taxes on reducing the deficit. It happened in the 1990's. It could happen again, if we could just agree. Think about that while you're munching on your 3,985 Big Macs, Auggie. 😉

Or maybe the dialogue went over Emerald Fennell's head. I often like to read Metacritic reviews after I watch a movie that was interesting or, in this case, just weird. This is one that reviewers either love or hate. I hated it. So I read more reviews than usual wondering why some people might love it. This was the best description of the message, if you can call it that: Actually, Jacob Elordi is all it really needs. In terms of why some people might actually like it, I thought the BBC nailed it: Speaking of fantasies, and penetration, I figured out about 30 minutes into the film that the only reason to keep watching it was Jacob Elordi. I wouldn't mind a sequel, or just a porn movie, featuring Elordi dancing around naked. Or just being penetrating, in a particular way that the film was not. What do you say, Jacob?

Great points. This should be factored in, too. I have this running debate with my investment pen pal nephew about passive investing. He tends to think that it sucks, and is damaging the market. Because we are now all mindless investors, funneling oodles of money into whatever some algorithm thinks will make us the most money. I tend to disagree. There are worse capital allocation methods out there. Xi Whiz castrated Jack Ma, even though the Chinese love him. Just because he viewed Ma as a threat. Passive investors are bankrolling the Jack Ma's of America and the West. Forgive me for my bias, but this is why I'd bet on America and the West to win the tech race. You could say we put our money where our mouth is. I got kicked over to Schwab earlier this year due to an Ameritrade merger. So it is interesting to see what is winning and losing since that happened. Most of the tech stocks or indexes I hold are doing great: SOXL, FNGU, AAPL, OLED. Because they are mostly the big winners. And I imagine tons of passive funds go into them, and make them even bigger winners. I bought some other profitable tech stocks a few months ago that I thought were good buy on the dip opportunities, like ALGM and INTT. They both have relatively low PE's, that are less than half their 3 to 5 year average PE. But so far they've just gone down more. So even within tech my impression is it's a narrow winner's market. As that first chart above suggests, this is building a big bubble, just like in the 90's. At some point it will crash. Meanwhile, enjoy the ride. Like sex, it's always fun while it lasts.

That's fine. But how about the S & P at 5,500 by next Summer? Give me that and I'll love you even more. 💗

So I'm going to put a long-winded and Gay, Gay, Gay spin on this. Before I do, some comments on The American Dream in general. It seems like the consensus from those who posted so far is that the American Dream is alive and well. At least for people who are willing to work at it. Hooray! That is certainly true in my family. For the most part, my parents' children, including me, are all at least as well off, or in most cases better off, than my parents. Who themselves ended their lives in the suburban middle class. And my nieces and nephews are all mostly better off than my siblings were. If there's a dividing line, I'd say it tends to be that the more educated someone in my family is, the more likely they are to be financially successful. That said, there are big exceptions to the rule. I'm the most well off of the six kids my parents had, even though two of my siblings are way better educated than me. That must mean it pays to graduate from Escort U, I guess? 😒 Actually, it pays to own a home ........ or more. Objectively speaking, the American Dream is alive and well, overall, it seems. As I posted in the inflation thread, the Fed recently reported that median net worth grew 37 % from 2018 to 2022. Median net worth actually grew more than mean net worth - meaning, as the Fed notes, that there was a slight decrease in wealth inequality. I just read the full report, which notes that median housing net worth (home value minus mortgage debt, for the 2 in 3 Americans who own homes) went from $139,100 in 2018 to $201,000 in 2022. That's more like a 50 % increase. And those numbers relate very much to an average middle class family. Not the extremes like Bill Gates or some welfare Mom who rents. There are no secrets or surprises here. Many people think of The American Dream as owning a home. We have a higher home ownership rate than ever. And middle class homeowners are doing better than ever. Again, hooray! One last comment on The American Dream, in general. The Fed notes that the percentage of families who spend over 40 % of their income on debt was 6.5 % - the lowest ever recorded. I suspect that's why a perpetually imminent recession, unlike children, has been heard of, but not seen. Americans are, according to the Fed, less "financially vulnerable" than ever. So now here's the Gay spin. I think if we are talking about Gay men, it's almost self evident that The American Dream is not only alive and well. It is way better than ever. Marriage discrimination is gone. Job discrimination is gone. If The American Dream is all about going to school, getting a good job, finding the right boy, marrying, buying a home, and raising a family, Gay men are now pretty much equal in their ability to do that as Straight men, it seems. I was thinking about you last night, @Charlie after watching another episode of Fellow Travelers. Arguably the rest of this post could go in that arts thread. But my point and my question is not about the series. It's about how Gays have fared in the past in achieving economic and social success, or The American Dream. I find the series both uplifting and depressing. In the thread on the series, I posted an interview of the director. He stresses that part of his point is that Gay men lived through the Pink Scare of the 50's and the AIDS tragedy of the 80's. And we survived. We not only survived. We eventually prospered. Again, I don't think times have ever been better in America or the world for Gay men. So if I go by the series, the 1950's was a decidedly shitty time to come of age as a young Gay man in America. It was not The American Dream. It was The American Nightmare. Forget about marrying. You had to worry about keeping your job. If there is a moral to the story, it is arguably that it was better to pretend you're Straight so you could get married, buy a home, get and keep a job, and build wealth. The reason I thought of you, @Charlie, is you're one of many examples of people I met as an escort who I view as role models and trail blazers. So it's interesting that you say that being Gay was actually a plus, not a minus. When I was thinking about this based on Fellow Travelers, I had to do the math in my head. Because when I think of Gay men I've met who were able to build emotionally and financially successful worlds with their male partners long before same sex marriage was legal, I think they are mostly people who would be in their 70s or 80's today. If I use Stonewall as an inflection point, a Gay man who turned 20 the year of Stonewall would be roughly 75 today. So the conclusion I reached after thinking about it is the there must have been a world of difference between being Gay and 20 in the 1950's, versus the 1970's. At least after Stonewall Gay Lib was a thing. And based on real Gay couples I met and real stories they told, that seems to have created the possibility that two Gay men could try to achieve The American Dream, together. At least with some degree of openness and less risk of being crushed. If I go by my experiences as an escort and as a volunteer on the same sex marriage fight, it was Gay men who came of age in the 60's and 70's that really started to chart a path of how Gay men (and anyone LGBTQ) could achieve The American Dream. To anyone who lived through it, is that true? Did Gay men even have a shot at The American Dream, as openly Gay men, before Stonewall and Gay Lib? “Loving” features around 300 photos that offer an intimate look at gay relationships between the 1850s and 1950s Me being me, I tried to Google it. And I've read plenty of books and articles on the subject, as well. I think that article, which is about photographs, probably answers my question better than anything else I've read. The years The Smithsonian picked are interesting. Since they span from the age of photographs to the age of Gay Lib. The conclusion it reinforces to me is that you could be Gay and have romance in the 1950's. But only in a photo booth, or secretly, or among a few trusted friends. Which apparently is not the secret to how you achieve The American Dream. Anyways, end of rant. But I've always felt grateful to Gay men like you, @Charlie, who I think were the first generation in America that really started the long haul effort for Gay men to be able to achieve the American Dream as Gay men. It worked! Or, to quote the two cuties from the much more cheerful and optimistic Red White & Royal Blue, "We won."

Agreed. I'll respond first with a personal comment, about one of those people I know. Probably 50 % of the writing I do is emails to one of my nephews, who I have always had a weird intellectual relationship with. He is cursed to have scored in the top 1 % on the ACT test for scientific reasoning. The bad news for me is we are both cursed with being interested in really boring shit. And he is smarter than me, to boot. His Mom nailed it when I just spent a week in Chicago with them. She said, "I didn't understand half of what you guys were talking about. But it was cute." This is why most of the boring shit we say is in boring emails to each other. It gets boring. So the emails this week started with Dumb Money. Which is a very good new movie that is kind of like The Big Short, about the GameStop short squeeze. Most of the emails that movie generated have been about politics. And how Millennials (my nephew is one) and Gen Z tend to view the world. What the movie does a very good job of portraying is this TikTok meme that jumps out in the trailer above: that a few older rich White male fat cats (Seth Rogen???!!!) have it all. And the rest of us are fucked. Totally fucked! To the degree that is true (spoiler alert: young STEM degree workers in Silicon Valley, who may live in the most Asian American House district in America, are not totally fucked) it is most true because, like my nephew, there are a lot of Millennials and Gen Z who would like to own homes. But can't. At least based on my family and people I know, I don't think the basic problem is income. The basic problem is that in places like Portland, Oregon people with working class incomes (me, in the 90s) used to be able to buy affordable homes. And now they can't. That is slightly less of a problem in Texas. Which is why lots of young people move there. I have another nephew who lives there, who recently did buy a home. Although Austin ain't cheap. All of this is because - wait for it - a huge number of people have a shitload of money to buy homes with. If we were all poor and broke, this would not be happening. (See Depression, The Great.) So, again, I agree with you. This site is mostly older and more affluent people who hire escorts. Dumb Money, which was written in part by a Millennial woman who is a former WSJ financial reporter, does a better job of channeling the "we're fucked!" vibe. With more than enough annoying TikToks and rap songs and needle drops to prove it. That said, I'll close with a few paragraphs trashing the "we're fucked!" premise. I know nothing about Hollywood. But Sony, a global conglomerate, probably figured you can't make a successful film about investment people who are all assholes. And boring ones to boot. So they infused the movie with moralism. Just like The Big Short kinda sorta tried to make Brad Pitt and Christian Bale not be complete assholes. At the end of Dumb Money there is a line that claims that Keith Gill, the father of the GameStop short squeeze, started a "movement" that is growing. Presumably of young people taking on the rich fat cats at hedge funds who short companies like GameStop. I think it's almost all total bullshit. Like a lot of "sky is falling" headlines today. Probably in part designed to sell movies and newspapers with populist themes and hysterical claims. Keith Gill himself said this: My opinion is he is no Warren Buffet. GameStop was losing like $7 a share in 2020 and 2021, when this happened. So if there was a "movement", it was definitely not young people being Young Warren Buffets, and starting a movement for true value investing. Arguably, it was a social media movement. More TikTok than Wall Street Journal in nature. But if that's true, what it mostly said is that Millennials and Gen Z want in. Meaning they want in on capitalism. And Robin Hood was one of their tools to do it. They also want in on homes. One of the reasons home values probably won't crash is I have way too many nieces and nephews who want to own a home. Or, in some cases, a second home. The sky is not falling. The American Dream is alive and well.

. Here's the positive thing about what you are doing, Auggie. It's always good for someone to see the downside of everything. You're good at it, Auggie. Mike Wilson at Morgan Stanley is better. He probably predicted about 1,010 of the 3,830 recessions predicted in the last year. Wall Street’s biggest bear Mike Wilson is now predicting an end-of-year stock rally is ‘more likely than not’ The only scary thing to me is that the guy who has been wrong the most for the longest is now saying it is blue skies ahead. Hope he is right for once! But let's put voodoo prognostications aside and channel our inner Warren Buffets. It's all about long term value. It's all about gradual wealth accumulation. I'll say this two different ways. One down to earth, and one snobby. My Dad, a conservative who ran his own small business as an architect, instilled in me the value of investing, and owning a home. When my Mom and him died, both almost 100, about half their net worth was in their home. That is true for most working class and middle class Americans who own homes. It is why owning a home is, was, and will be part of the American Dream. And a huge stabilizer in the US and global economy. Now here's the elitist part. You're not a very good conservative, Auggie. If you want to talk the CEO of GE Capital into starting multi-billion dollar home lending programs for working class and minority home buyers, it helps to have that whole conservative schtick down. You know. About climbing the ladder through hard work. Investing. Buying a home. Building wealth gradually. A few other things that help are having a boss known as the mother of the anti-redlining movement, and having the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee on your side. It also helps when the CEO, Greg Barmore, is a capitalist who believes in capitalism. And the ability of his company to help middle class and working class America build wealth gradually. All of this was my reality. And it is why in the 1990's we had this sweet spot where working class and minority net worth went up gradually and significantly. Thanks in large part to people being able to buy homes. You are right about asset bubbles, which is a whole story in itself. But, basically, the subprime lenders spent roughly 2003 to 2006 figuring out how to royally fuck up lending concepts that had worked well for about 15 years, by being greedy and stupid. Don't blame working class families for that. Blame AIG, Countrywide, and Bear Stearns. I've always been curious how Washington Mutual and GE Capital morphed from the sane lenders I knew in the 80's and 90's to the subprime lenders of 2005. But I think it was mostly about greed and ego. That's what former WSJ reporter Bethany McLean argued in All The Devils Are Here, the Bible of the subprime/Wall Street greed debacle. I have a friend in SF who is kind of the poster child for what you describe. A bit over a decade ago he bought a condo in SF at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. The value of his condo went up like a rocket ship. Then, in 2020, thanks mostly to COVID and people wanting to move to the burbs or Sacramento, his condo was exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. Was it a bubble? Maybe, maybe not. This much is true, though. Even after a huge drop in value, like six figures, the condo is worth way more than he bought it for. Had he kept renting, which he did for the first decade I knew him, he would be far, far, far worse off financially today. Especially in SF, where rent is insane. I was a renter in SF for a decade, while I escorted and bought homes in places where they were mostly affordable. So you're not wrong about asset bubbles. But I'm not wrong about homeownership. The big regret of my life is that the subprime lenders were allowed to fuck up the American Dream for a while. We could talk about who ran the Banking Committees and regulatory agencies from 2003 to 2006, which is precisely when that happened. But that would sound too partisan. Thankfully, even the subprime lenders and derivatives traders failed to fuck up homeownership permanently. So we are back in business. People do have money. Home equity is not cash in pocket. Which is actually a good thing. That is what my conservative Dad taught me. Don't treat your home like a piggy bank. Are we in a home asset bubble now? Maybe, maybe not. You're (supposedly) a conservative capitalist. So surely you understand supply and demand. Am I wrong to think that the demand for homes is strong, and we have a lack of supply? And that, even if mortgage rates went down to 4 %, that would only drive demand higher without fixing the supply problem? That is partly because, thank God, the majority of Americans - not just a few old rich people - own their homes. And they mostly own them with low fixed rate mortgages. Which is a huge bedrock of financial stability. So even if some of the value in homes is a "bubble" it is a small percentage of the value. Especially for anyone who has owned their home for years or decades. My best guess is we may replay the 1990's, and not the Great Recession. Meaning from 1990 to 2000 the average price of a home in LA went up a little bit, in dollar terms. But it went down something like 20 %, adjusted for inflation. I think demand is too strong and supply is too weak to drive the kind of foreclosure crisis we had in 2008, which tanked home values. Most important, nobody allowed the subprime lenders back in the market. Very few Americans have mortgages that were designed to explode. That article you posted above about how most Americans have "less savings" is also a great example of how to write a "the sky is falling" headline. I've worked with a lot of reporters in my life. Including one who won a Pulitzer based in part on data that a college professor and I helped him put together on bank redlining. I know a bit about how it's done. The article notes correctly that net worth is at a "record high" based on the Fed report I cited above. It states that the driver - homes and stocks - tend to be forms of wealth that are "more prevalent among wealthier households." I'm okay with that definition. But, by that standard, 2 in 3 Americans own homes. So 2 in 3 Americans are "wealthier households" whose net worth is at a "record high". Explain to me again why the sky is falling? 🤔 I'm betting on Glenn Neely being right, and the stock market reaching all time highs. Maybe some of his schtick is voodoo. But it also makes sense to me based on the chart above. It's true that we have just seen a huge run up in consumer debt, And that consumers have "less savings". It is also true that this is because for a while people were encouraged to stay home. And getting on a plane was a pain in the ass. So they were forced to save, and got government checks to boot. For some strange reason, savings went up and consumer debt went to record lows. So now what we have is people spending money and going into debt at the same rate they were before the pandemic, when the economy and stock market were growing. Explain to me again how this tells me the sky is falling? Because it seems like the economy is growing - 5 % GDP growth last quarter. And even the bears like Wilson are now bulls.

I know this is three in a row for me. But I thought I'd post this as a rebuttal to myself. I assume people who say we're in a recession and they are worse off financially are not just making it up. So this is an extremely data geeky post. And part of the point is that when talking about the "average" American, there really is no average. The big conclusion the data tells me, as I already said earlier, is that if you own a home and stocks you are probably a lot better off. Even if prices have gone up. If you don't own a home and stocks, and especially if you live in a city where rents have soared, you are probably worse off. @Vegas_Millennial, you just said this: 2 in 3 Americans own homes. More people own homes since COVID started. Anyone with basic math skills would put that together and realize that if home values have gone up a lot, the average American's net worth has gone up a lot. So that chart suggests there is a "there" there. The article I got it from, which is a right-of-center rant, says that inflation-adjusted wages have dropped 3.7 % since 2020. What I like about City Journal is that even though they have their own ideology, which I usually disagree with, they do not have their own facts. So something clearly happened in 2021 and 2022. And inflation clearly had something to do with it. That said, once you get beyond that, it's very hard to talk about the "average" American. As that article notes, part of the reason average wages peaked in 2020 is lots of low-income workers with shitty wages lost their jobs. So for that part of the pandemic, you can argue @pubic_assistance had a good point above. Low end workers got screwed. As in, they got FIRED. When low wage workers lose their job, the average wage goes up. Is it good news that lots of people lost their jobs in 2020 during a pandemic that killed over 1 million Americans? You can decide that for yourself. As City Journal also notes, in addition to inflation taking its toll on wages, the other thing that happened in 2021 and 2022 is low wage workers were being hired back in droves. That drove average wages down, of course. And that in itself is complicated. Because we also know that people who made the shittiest wages also got the biggest wage increases, because of demand for their labor. But the math is still pretty basic. If your wage goes from $8 to $10, that's a big increase. But if you use $10 in an average with people who make $50, it still pulls the average down. Is it bad news that lots of low wage workers went back to work, with higher wages, in 2021 and 2022? Would it have been better if the government had just sent them checks, and run up the deficit? You can decide that for yourself. But to the point @Vegas_Millennial just made about wealth inequality, let me repeat what the data says. Income inequality actually narrowed a little bit, thanks to the fact that wages at the low end went up the most. I understand that is NOT the same as wealth inequality. If it were up to me, we'd go back to the 1990's and design sound programs that help working class families buy homes. Which is how most middle class and working class people build wealth. But that's a different post. The other thing I said above that I will repeat is that the people who moved jobs during the pandemic tended to get the best wage increases. The reason the pandemic helped a lot of workers who makes the lowest wages, and actually reduced income inequality a little bit, is that the jobs they went back to tended to pay more. That statistic is a very well documented fact. Workers at the bottom, not the top, had the biggest percentage wage increases. Is that bad? One more fact, which is also a repeat. Just about 2 in 3 Americans own their homes. Many, probably most, of them locked in low fixed interest rates in 30 year mortgages. So I agree with City Journal that it particularly sucks for the minority of Americans who want to buy homes right now, and can't. Both because home prices are too high, and mortgage rates are too high. But tell my Republican niece who lives in a nice home in Kentucky, and who just bought a second vacation home for cash, that her homes are worth "too much". And that's why my nephew who lives in a Chicago suburb can't afford to buy a home, even though he and his wife work hard. Anyone want to try a conversation like that at Thanksgiving dinner? I won't be talking about it. How many of you who own homes think your home is worth "too much"? Don't all raise your hands at once. 😉 And since I'm being particularly data geeky, no one should feel sorry for my data geek nephew. We exchange extremely verbose and chart-laden emails constantly. So I'll say this in a Geek-O-Rama paragraph. The guy we're both following closely now is Glenn Neely. His claim to fame as a sort of voodoo stock prognosticator with his own proprietary system is that when smart rich guys like Stanley Druckenmiller said in 1987 that we were headed into a depression, Neely said we are headed into the biggest bull market ever. He was right. In 2000 he predicted we're headed into a long secular bear market. He was right. In early 2008, when the S & P had already started to fall apart, his voodoo wave theory told him there were two versions of a crash imminent. Fast crash meant 1500 to about 650 soon. Slow crash meant it would take longer, and not go quite as low. His "fast crash" prediction was pretty much exactly on target. So maybe it's voodoo. But like Allan Lichtman, who has predicted every POTUS race in advance since 1984, he is a guy who use relatively objective pattern recognition techniques. And he ends up being right about the big things. Neely has been wrong about many of the details. But the big picture movements, he tends to be right. Why is this relevant? Neely predicted in mid-June 2023 that the 2022 bear market/correction was over, and we were headed into a one year bull market that would take the indexes to new highs. That looked right on the money for months. And then it looked kind of dicey a few weeks ago. Thanks in part to Hamas, Neely says. So last week he came out and said the next phase of the bull market is on, and we're headed to new highs. Is this voodoo? Is it science? Decide for yourself. But the guy's been right about most of the big things in the stock market for decades. If he is right again, it means average American net worth - already at an all time high - is about to go higher. Boo hoo! Doesn't it just suck???!!! Ain't life awful! Again, there is no average, I think. On a personal level, my intelligence is below average, and my nephew's is above average, perhaps. I did sell a lot of stock last Fall, when I should have been buying. Why? Because I had a conservative reaction to all these Wall Street guys like Mike Wilson (they are almost all men) screaming "Recession! Recession! Recession!" I have beat the S & P by a lot since 2020. But I would have beat it more had I ignored the fat cat whiners and pessimists. Sensing a bottom, my nephew instead loaded up on SOXL- a leveraged tech index fund - last Fall, starting at about $7 a share, which went to $28 by this Summer. It tanked to $14 last month, lower than either of us thought it would go. It's now recovered to $23. If Neely is right, my nephew is going to have a massive capital gain and increase in net worth. Happily, all this took over a year, meaning long term capital gains tax rates. If he were really a genius, he would have sold it at $28 and bought it back at $14 and paid short term gains taxes. But that is exactly what real geniuses like Warren Buffet advise us NOT to do. So somebody tell my nephew (or niece) how much things suck. And how people can't afford to buy homes. He's sitting on a big down payment, at least. And probably being able to buy a house for cash, if he wants. Boo hoo! Life sucks! The market sucks! Capitalism sucks! 😉

I emphatically agree with you. My Dad, a Reagan Republican, was a deficit hawk. I'm a liberal Democrat, and a deficit hawk. There is a word for this. It's not ideology. Or politics. It is compromise. And doing things that create a sound investment environment. We did it in the 1990's, when we ended up with a surplus. We can do it again. Carville commented on this, saying at the time that if he is reincarnated he wants to come back as the bond market. I respect the bond market, too. Because they like fiscal sanity. A huge deficit is not good for the bond market, or interest rates. If I am reincarnated, I want to come back as the 1990's. People could compromise and get important shit done then.

Damn straight Auggie. It's all over the news! Net worth surged 37% in pandemic era for the typical family, Fed finds — the most on record I feel miserable. America sucks. Inflation sucks. My life is a nightmare. My house is worth 42 % more than on March 2020, when COVID started, according to Zillow. I hate this inflation. How the fuck am I supposed to survive? And it's even worse. The S & P 500 is up about 40 % or so since COVID started. They are fucking killing us with this economy. And if that wasn't bad enough, my stock portfolio is up 60 % since 2020. I hate everything I see. It is all going downhill. I really can not tolerate this abject misery. There are a few very small things that I find comfort in. According to my ice cream inflation calculator, the Haagen Daaz that cost $3 in 2020 has only gone up to $4 today. So, despite the torment of what has happened to my home and my stocks, which has left me in a deep depression, I am able to scrape together just enough pennies to buy some Dulce De Leche. At least I have some small reason to live. Other than that, this economy sucks and everybody knows that their life is miserable. It is all over the news! There you have it. Assholes. "Households have a lot of money." And they say it with smiles on their faces, even. I'm sure these idiots have college degrees. But they have no human empathy for our misfortune. Note: That video is a few years old. I could not find a recent one from a credible business network like CNBC about this recent 2023 net worth report. But all the numbers - net worth, home values, the S & P 500 - are even higher than the good news story above. Since that video, economists have forecasted 3,830 recessions. Since that video, the actual number of recessions has been zero.

Do you have any data to back that up? As a general comment, what I've been reading consistently for the last few years is more like the opposite. Wages are going up the most, percentage-wise, at the bottom. A quick Google check immediately produced articles that confirm this. Although I think we both may have a good argument to make, and it simply depends on the specific circumstances. Lower-income earners’ wages have grown faster than others Here's a second article that was at the top of the list Google gave me that says the same thing, mostly for the same reasons. One consistent fact I've read again and again is that the people who changed jobs during the pandemic got much better wage increases than people who did not. That may be the case most of the time, anyway. Since one big reason people change jobs is to make more money. But it was certainly true during the pandemic. Without data, I might guess that white collar workers might be the ones who could take the most advantage of this. But, during the pandemic, apparently not. And I think both articles suggests why. When all those lower wage employers needed to hire people back, they had a hard time finding workers. And they had to pay them more. None of this really says whether any group of people got wage increases that matched or exceeded inflation. Especially last year, when inflation was spiking. But my impression from many articles, including these two, is that people who changed jobs probably had much better luck beating inflation with wage increases. And many of them were lower income workers. That said, the basic picture I have is that if you have assets, you won during COVID. If you don't have assets, you lost. The key statistic is that from 2019 to 2022 average net worth went up 37 % after inflation. That is huge. Net worth is not cash in your pocket to buy gas with, of course. But anyone I know who owns homes or stocks, or both, are better off since before COVID. The people who don't own homes or stocks are the ones who got the joy of inflation without getting the pain of your home value going way up, or the value of your stock portfolio soaring. 🤔

The good news is that in 2023, wages are outpacing inflation. The black line is inflation and the blue line is wages. Here's the website if you want to see the details. It really is a bit of a mystery why almost half of Americans think we are in a recession. Did I mention the Nasdaq went up 2 % today, because the market thinks things are better than the Fed, apparently? There are people who deserve to bitch and moan. If you are someone who hires escorts, you are almost certainly not one of them. Average net worth went up 37 % during COVID. If you own a) a home or b) stocks, you are like the majority of Americans. And your net worth probably went up a lot. Granted, inflation-adjusted gas prices in the US are only a little LOWER than they were in 2008. Making it seem impossible that the US can survive, let alone prosper. And, yet, we seem to be prospering. And I get that you can't use big increases in home equity to fill your tank with gas. But you are still better off. The people who are not better off, or maybe a little worse off, are people who don't own homes and stocks, don't have STEM jobs, live in big cities with high rent, and did not change jobs recently. They are a minority of Americans, who actually do tend to be minorities as well. The other thing we know is that thanks to things like all the COVID relief, consumer debt levels actually went to about as low as they get. So when the media goes off about how consumer debt is soaring, they basically mean it is coming off lows and going back to the normal place it has been, on average, for like half a century. Much like inflation is coming off highs and going back to normal. In fact, if the past is a guide, there are three times consumer debt levels hit a low of about 5 %: during the early 90's recession, during the Great Recession, and during COVID. All three times involved things being tight. All three times, tight times were followed by years of expansion. So if we follow the past trend, it's as likely as not that we'll have more consumer-debt fueled expansion, not less. The combined effect of it all of this is that most people are better off economically since COVID started, as an objective fact. Even if they don't feel that way when they buy bread or fill their gas tank. If the economy is growing at a 5 % annual rate, average net worth is up 37 %, and even people who don't own assets are now making more in wage gains than inflation, that is all good news for consumers. Could that possibly be why the stock market is flirting with all time highs, not lows?

We've come a long way from Philadelphia. This interview with writer/creator Ron Nyswamer, which doesn't contain any spoilers, was helpful to me in terms of understanding why the characters may have been developed the way they are. This part in particular jumped off the page: I find Bomer's character to be morally ambiguous, at best. But I think that may be the point. Nyswamer was nominated for an Oscar way back in 1994 for writing Philadelphia. That was clearly an effort to bring The Gays into the mainstream and create sympathy. How could anyone not open their heart to Tom Hanks, with AIDS? And it worked. But my point is that it was also kind of one-dimensional. We were moving victims. Not the guys with the adorable boyfriends in romcoms. What I am loving about LGBTQ cinema now is that we can be multi-dimensional, and all kinds of things. Heroes, and assholes, and morally ambiguous people just trying to get by. I loved Red White and Royal Blue because it was a sweet, if shallow, fairy tale about what the future for young Gay and Bi men can now be. Fellow Travelers is anything but. More like the opposite. I think part of the statement Nyswamer was trying to make, which is okay to say now, is "Here's the shit we had to put up with. Here's how it kind of warped people. And yet, we were not beaten down. We survived." If that is part of his message, I find it noble in a very realistic way. It's an emotionally piercing exploration of what McCarthyite homophobia and hypocrisy, and AIDS, did to our past. And, proudly, we survived. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. Even if it is not as easy on the heart as Bomer and Bailey are on the eyes. 😉

I'm a deficit hawk, and I agree with you. I think most Americans are, based on the polls. Of course, it gets complicated when we start to talk about cutting the things YOU like that cause government debt. But the 1990's was an affluent period when people could mostly put politics aside, and worship the bond market. 😉 I don't see what's wrong with making the bond market happy. Net worth surged 37% in pandemic era for the typical family, Fed finds — the most on record Regardless, that article came as a little bit of an upside surprise. And probably helps explain why we just had a quarter with 5 % growth, rather than a recession. Or, stated differently, if inflation leads to recessions like this, can we have more recessions? It makes sense to me as a landlord who owns stocks that anyone who owns homes or stocks is probably better off. As many here keep pointing out, wealth and income are not the same thing. But it seems like all the wealth is helping keep the economy going. One other piece of good news. The people who don't own homes or stocks seem to be not only seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but out of the tunnel completely. This is one good explanation for why the economy grew as fast as it did last quarter:

A footnote about Down Low. I'm liking what I will call Gage's "necrophilia standard". Or maybe it should be called the "is it too over the top?" standard. The buddy I watch a lot of TV with reacted to the (Gage) butt eating scene in The White Lotus by exclaiming, "Oh my God! HBO has finally gone too far!" Apparently not. Gage got funding for something even raunchier. I thought of this a few nights ago when I watched the 1998 coming out film Get Real, which Wikipedia describes as an LGBTQ cult classic. I liked the film a lot. That said, as I watched it I felt annoyed by all the Gay denial, and the Gay shame, and the embarrassment about kissing, and the embarrassment about cruising, and the embarrassment about ......... you know, just being Gay. It was 1998, after all. I could name just about any other good LGBTQ film made around them, or for years after. Which was groundbreaking at the time. So I'm all for the idea of The Gays being fashion forward and fucking dead hotties. Or munching on Gage's butt while we are cracked up. It is just fantasy, after all. And cheaper to rent than a porno. And perhaps having films like this is moving the Overton window, and hopefully making cinema less shameful about ................ well, being Gay.

True. I thought the current reviews of Down Low on Metacritic nailed it. I appreciated it for raunchy laughs. And as a corrective. Like this line from the Hollywood Reporter: Although even that is a bit out of date. These days, Gay suicide and psychodrama is old school. Being Gay or Bi and in love is all about being Red, White, and Royally PC. People loved Heartstoppers. And it already had a season two. RR & RB was adored by our Straight allies, and is one of Amazon's Top 10 streamed movies this year. It will likely have a sequel. Straight people won't love Down Low. And don't hold your breath for a sequel. That could kill you. Which would just make you necro bait. Which I guess means there could be a sequel, with you in it. 🤔 In the spirit of Bottoms and Down Low, let's spell out the limitations of being Red White & Royally PC. Look. I am Gay. Did I mention Gay is spelled with a "G"? Look. I am a Bisexual. I am not Gay. Being Bisexual is NOT being Gay, okay? Did I mention the "B" in LGBTQ stands for Bisexual? Look. We are holding hands. That's NOT because we want to fuck each other. That's because we are deeply in love. Oh. Did I mention we are deeply committed? Not to having sex. To marriage. We don't like to talk about Gay sex. We don't want you to think of us as having Gay sex. All we need to explain to you is that when we are having something that may seem like Gay sex to you, off camera - which does not involve mess, sweat, passion, or anal douching - our eyes twinkle. Did I mention that is because we are deeply in love? Okay. I get it. I get it. That may be how we won a propaganda campaign for same sex marriage. And tolerance for LGBTQ people, or whatever the fuck alphabet soup the whole queer thing is about this month. But it is basically really fucking boring. Okay? Can't we just skip the love shit and put Taylor and Nick in a porn movie? And somebody send Nick to a Gay Gold's Gym for a month first. Where he hopefully gets fucked in the showers a lot. He's Straight, so I think he needs the experience. I think the message of Down Low is that, these days, The Gays can have our cock and eat it, too. I can be deeply committed to Taylor, and marry him. (He is Gay after all.) And meanwhile I can run Nick over with a truck and fuck his dead body. (He is Straight, after all. So if he ever has been fucked he was probably face down and lifeless, anyway. 😒 We've all been there and done that.) The other on target comment one reviewer made about Down Low is that, unlike in Red White & Royally PC, The Gays do not have to explain ourselves to Straight people. Or seek their acceptance. That actually fits with my real life experience - both ways. I know some of the best Straight female political activists in the country, who fought hard for same sex marriage. They completely got why I wanted to volunteer for the cause of marriage equality. They completely could not get why I wanted to be a Gay escort. Such is life. I just accept it. Needless to say, I don't tell my Straight friends about how many hot dead guys I've fucked. Hopefully they won't see Down Low, and catch on. 😉

Me being me, I can't resist putting anecdotal information on gas prices into long term context. Silly idea, I know. 😉 The 2008 shit show actually set up what has mostly held as a price range for gas ever since. In Spring 2008, when the stock market was near all time highs and times were good, you could fill your tank for $4 a gallon. Then by Fall 2008, when your retirement fund had partly vaporized, at least you had the consolation prize of $2 a gallon gas. If we're going to bitch about inflation we should apply inflation calculations to what things cost. So $2 in 2008 is $2.86 today, and $4 in 2008 is $5.72 today, according to a handy inflation calculator. So, basically, when national gas prices briefly peaked over $5 a gallon last Summer it was not quite as bad as the Spring 2008 peak. But I have it on good word that most people thought $5 a gallon gas pretty much sucked, anyway. Of course, we could have our $2 a gallon gas from Fall 2008 back. All it would require is pushing the global economy off the cliff again and nuking your retirement accounts. Everybody good with that? I thought not. 😉 Then again, a clever clown could point out that in the blissful days of Spring 2020, you could fill your tank for under $2 a gallon. Because nobody wanted to drive or fly. We could have that back. All it would require is about 3000 dead Americans a day, mostly seniors. Everybody good with that? I thought not. ☠️ I think a better comparison is that in the years before COVID gas was normally as cheap as the $2 low in 2008, adjusted for inflation. Again, that would be $2.86 today. Don't hold your breath, except maybe at Costco in Detroit. 😉 From an investment perspective, what strikes me is the years from roughly 2011 to 2014. Back then the world was climbing out of the hole caused by a global crisis. Sound familiar? Gas prices bobbed under a $4 ceiling for years. Which is a bit more than gas costs today, adjusted for inflation. And yet, for some strange reason, the stock market did just fine. And the global economy recovered nicely. If I had to bet, I'd overweight Murderous Vlad and Xi Whiz and say if we're gonna be stuck with a certain mass murdering asshole and a war of attrition for a few years (that's just a fact, not politics), we might also be stuck with $4 a gallon gas. We had a growing economy and stock market the last time that happened in the early 10's. I don't see why it can't happen again now.