stevenkesslar

That's okay. I'm grateful. It's nice to know for once it wasn't me! 😉 Anyhoo, the Fed and CBO just said the recession that was MIA actually won't be arriving in 2023 at all. Boo hoo! I added to some positions. Obviously at some point there will be a correction. But the idea that a recession is what drives a big correction, while possible, is looking less likely.

Wordsmithing and goal post moving are fun things. Your statement, and this whole issue, really lends itself to it. Auggie is correct in saying a certain member was "right all along." I can be a bitch about facts. Like I think it is clearly a fact that there was a global inflation surge due to COVID. Including in Japan and Switzerland. And including wildly inflationary spikes in energy and food prices in those nations. And now it is clearly receding. Those are facts. But then we can move goal posts and wordsmith and say truly an inflationary surge of even 20 % is nothing compared to the extinction of the human race. Most people would probably agree with that. On this issue, for a few years most people have said we are in a recession in poll after poll. It's not true. At least in the technical sense of a recession. But it is true that most people feel that way. I assume they are really referring to inflation, and saying it feels like a recession. Even if it ain't. Most people also say the jobs situation is good today. So I'll be curious to see what happens if we actually do have the shallow and brief recession some predict. The irony would be that people might kind of like it. If it helps bring down inflation, but they don't lose their job, it might actually be better than having an overheated economy with high inflation for most people. According to Harvard/Harris, one thing that has changed recently is that most people do not feel their personal financial situation is getting worse. That peaked in Summer 2022, when inflation peaked, and almost 2 in 3 Americans said their personal financial situation was getting worse. Right now 47 % of Americans feel their personal financial situation is getting worse. So if I want to move goal posts I could argue it is true that "there is really no inflation problem in the US right now." Because right now, for the first time in a few years, a majority say their personal financial situation is either improving, or staying the same. But that would be an exercise is wordsmithing, not explanation. If the goal is to understand, that is probably the single best explanation around. If people feel we've been in a recession for the last few years, that's probably why. Inflation has been particularly hard on low-income families. There's another chart in this Gallup study on inflation that measures financial confidence by income. For upper income people it is +28 right now. For lower income people it is -43. The time series goes back to 2004. So for 20 years upper income people have been mostly confident, and lower income people have mostly not been confident. It is always the best of times for one group, and the worst of times for the other. But the last few years have been even worse than the worst, to play word games. Americans’ buying power rose for first time since March 2021 amid falling inflation That headline from last month probably explains why a majority of Americans, for the first time since 2021, believe their personal financial situation is either improving, or staying the same. I've seen several different measures that basically all say the same thing. Some time this Spring or Summer we reached a pivot where personal incomes started to grow quicker than inflation. That is particularly true for people at the low end of the income scale. In large part precisely because the job market is tight. If that continues, we'll probably get back to where we were in Summer 2021, before the inflation surge, when there were more Americans who said their personal financial situation was better off rather than worse off. Another lesson we can take from all this is that it's human nature to focus on the immediate and obvious. And when we do that, we are probably right. Most people correctly sensed they were worse off when inflation surged. That said, my opinion is that the benefit of all the loose monetary policy and stimulus was that we avoided a very painful recession, or even depression. The danger now is the opposite. It would be nice if everybody could agree that if we don't focus on the long term debt problem, we are inviting inflation to come roaring back. But, as we know, it is always harder to focus on the long term.

I love your logic, Auggie. Let's run with it. You are 1000 % correct. In no way did Switzerland have an inflationary surge like the US. And in no way did the US have an inflationary surge like Argentina. Everything is relative. Problem solved. Unless you live in Argentina, inflation ain't a problem at all. Pan comido. People in Switzerland are basically confused in thinking that they had the highest inflation in 30 years. Equally, people in Japan are very confused in thinking they had the highest inflation in 40 years. 30 % increase in energy costs? That's not inflation. I think we finally have a plausible theory about why the Swiss and Japanese suck at finance and investment. They just kind of suck at math. 😉 Just to clear up any confusion, I did not argue that 3.5 % = 9 %. I argued that a 5 % surge in inflation in Switzerland and Japan was similar to an 8 % surge in inflation in the US. And that in all three cases it was caused by COVID, with the invisible hand of Vlad pushing it along. But I get your point. Calling a 5 % surge in prices that tops out at 3.5 % "inflation" is just silly. So you just solved America's inflation problem, too. First, by definition, 3 % inflation is not really inflation. So we don't have an inflation problem today in the US. Woo hoo! Nor did we last year, as I've come to learn. Inflation peaked in the US in 1947 at 20 %. In 2022 it peaked at 9 %. Everything is relative. The difference between peak inflation of 20 % versus 9 % is way bigger than the difference between peak inflation of 9 % and Switzerland's measly 3.5 %. So not only are the Japanese and Swiss bad at math. Turns out the Yanks are, too. Compared to 20 % inflation in 1947, in no way did the US have an "inflationary surge" in 2022 like the US in 1947. Why did we even worry? Really, when you get down to it, the only nation that has an inflation problem is Argentina. Oh, and maybe Turkey. Not to take away from your impressive contributions in Mathematics and Moving Goalposts, Auggie. But I'm still gonna go with the idea that COVID did cause huge inflation surges all over the world. And that brought inflation to 30 to 40 years highs, from Japan to Switzerland to South Dakota. Gas prices hitting new records daily in South Dakota There is some good news, though. If we could just agree to measure and move goal posts like you do, people in South Dakota were also very confused about this whole pain at the pump thing, too. They were ornery about inflation when gas prices supposedly "surged" to $4.59 a gallon last July. Meanwhile, in places that were not impacted by inflation, like Switzerland, gas prices in US gallons rose mildly, from $5.67 in 2020 to $9.12 a gallon at the peak in July 2022. So you were right about that, too. To paraphrase, in no way did Switzerland have an inflationary surge like South Dakota, or other places. And in no way did COVID have anything to do with it. It was those darn South Dakotans, and all their excessive money printing. 😉 So we agree on that. Plus the fact that excessive debt could slow down the US economy, and fuck up a record long bull stock market. I'm lovin it!

We mostly agree on the factual points. The "printing money" part is simply a fact. I posted the CFR charts that said, in effect, the whole world was an ocean of printing money in Spring 2020. Now, here's an opinion. The alternative was a deep recession, or even depression, in 2020. I'd say the same about going into debt. We were fighting a global war against a virus. Some would argue, with good facts on their side, that we erred on the side of too much debt. That's debatable. And the points are all related. The reason we might avoid the recession is that we stimulated the economy enough to pull it past what would have been a recession if we stimulated it less. As one example, in 1966 and 1967 we had all the classic signs of a recession, including an inverted yield curve. And yet the recession went missing. I would not bet on it. But I would not bet on the opposite, either. There is a Goldilocks analogy here. People might not like that we went from too hot to just right. But the alternative could have been that we went from just right pre-COVID to way too cold. Then again, you are right that just because we were too hot doesn't mean we can't end up too cold. In the real world, running an economy is just harder than making porridge. 😉 But my opinion now is that, having won the war, we should be pivoting to the idea of gradually lowering and paying off the debt. To not do so invites more inflation, I believe. That is an opinion, too. But an informed one. He doesn't. But I did. Here ya go again. Here's the website on long-term inflation in Switzerland. As I said above, just posting the JPG cuts off the labels. But Japan had a 40 year high in inflation. In the case of Switzerland, it was more like a 30 year high. So the idea that somehow Japan and Switzerland escaped the inflation that gripped most of the planet is simply not a factual statement. ESPECIALLY if you want to break out food and energy. The difference in those two countries is that they started from deflation and went to inflation a bit above 3 %. In both cases it was an inflationary surge of about 5 % from valley to peak. Worse than they'd experienced in 30 to 40 years. Those are simply facts. The surprising thing is that the overall inflation spike in Switzerland was "only" 5 %, given that oil prices spiked something like 30 %, as the green part of the chart above clearly shows. Food prices, the red part, also spiked. But not by as much. That's the statement you were attempting to refute by bringing up Switzerland and Japan, Auggie. But the facts are not on your side. Switzerland and Japan clearly experienced 30 to 40 year highs in inflation, like most of the industrialized world. Now that some of the global factors @EZEtoGRU correctly identified are abating, we might be in a better position to distinguish between national or regional factors. Since you want to make national distinctions, Auggie, would you like to speculate about why inflation in the UK is 7.9 % today, versus 3 % in the US? What is the US doing right, compared to the UK? Since most of us live in the US, my main point is from an investment perspective. As Druckenmiller says in that video I posted above, long term too much debt kills the goose laying the golden egg. He did say, as a counterpoint, that regardless of anything, including a recession, stocks like NVDA will likely flourish. But I agree with him that if we want to talk about long-term inflationary pressures that could derail a bull market, we should be focusing on the debt. I think you and I agree on that.

Inquiring minds want to know. What did they say? That is, of course. the trillion dollar question. I posted above that video of Bruckenmiller, who knows about these things. He pointed out that even in bad times (like recessions) certain things flourish. As that headline indicated, he's long on AI and companies like NVDA. That said, he wasn't really making any predictions regarding market timing. Even if he is right and these companies like NVDA will be worth more two or three years from now, we're going to have peaks and valleys along the way.

On the second quote, I can't resist saying it. Alan Greenspan, Hank Greenberg, and Angelo Mozilo didn't become crazy rich and respected by being stupid about the economy. Or being stupid about making or packaging mortgages. (I think AIG's Greenberg was a billionaire, Countrywide's Mozilo maybe close?) That said, somehow, they literally did completely destroy the empires or reputations they built, by being stupid. Or perhaps by being egotistical. And believing that their shit (and derivates of it) didn't stink. My nephew would love you. He's kind of a libertarian at heart. We have these long email exchanges where he will send me articles by investor types who think there is nothing good about America that the Fed can't and won't completely fuck up. The easy go to place for me is Alan "Deer, Meet Headlights" Greenspan. In the world that soft and doe-like Alan lived in, Greenberg and Mozilo could not have destroyed everything they built, including their reputations. Because capitalism - like Daddy - knows best. And therefore regulates itself. Until it doesn't (See Global Financial Crisis and Subprime Mortgage Crisis for additional detail.) My argument is simple, and close to factual. If poor Alan stopped jacking off to Ayn Rand and paid attention to what was actually happening, like Michael Burry did, maybe he could have stopped it Or at least made it less awful. Regardless, Burry made a lot of money. And Christian Bale had fun playing him. And I had fun watching Christian Bale play him. So nothing awful really happened, maybe. 😉 But I digress. So, yeah, things take time. But as of July 2023, I don't see the case that Powell's Fed crashed the plane. If anything, it seems like we missed the hard landing. And maybe even the soft landing. Because we barely had to land to refuel the plane at all. Wall Street, correctly or not, seems to think the plane is climbing into clear blue skies. Regardless, best to keep your seat belt buckled. To extend the plane analogy one stop further, I'd argue the problem is not how the plane is flying now. The real problem is the destination. Debt Valley, anyone? You can check out anytime you like. But you can never leave. And I am being serious. Here's two geeky and fun videos my nephew and I exchanged recently: Druckenmiller on How AI is Dominating His Long Portfolio The End Game For Central Banks Inflation Fight | Lyn Alden That's a bit more than an hour of viewing. Which I personally find more satisfying than Ayn Rand. Spoiler alert: they talk about politics, too. But there is a common investing/inflation theme in there from two really smart people. One of whom is known for consistently making gigantic shit loads of money. Yes, Virginia, we have a debt problem. And whether we have a recession or not, as Druckenmiller says, the real problem is not now. It's probably about a decade from now. Assuming we just enjoy the ride, and forget about the hell we are going to. Cocktails, if not cocks, are free. Why not? I'll summarize what I like about both arguments, with an emphasis on Lyn Alden's language. This is more like the 1940's than the 1970's. Banks are not lending too much. And, yeah, we could have a mild recession as soon as this Fall for that reason alone. (Or instead of not lending enough, some more regional banks might fail.) But this is more like the 1940's in that we just won a world war. Instead of beating a bad ass Nazi, we beat a bad ass virus. And we racked up a huge mountain of debt doing so, that was already a huge hill of debt anyway. So now we'd best focus on paying it off. And - bad news - few or none of us are randy Straight guys in their 20's seeding a Baby Boom. Which turns out to help grow an economy and pay off debt. We're older Gay guys who are the reason (Social Security and Medicare) it will only get harder to avoid deficits. So we can enjoy our cocktails and blue skies now, even if we have some mild bumps on the flight. But we might almost want to have a heart attack enroute. Because if we don't change our course, we may not have much fun where we are going. That's what Lyn and Stanley are saying. And I emphatically agree with both. If I went much further, I'd venture into political terrain and get in trouble. But simply from the perspective of guys like Stanley who like being smart and rich, it makes sense to think about how to keep the investment engine going. Or, to paraphrase somebody, if I do die enroute I want to be reincarnated as the bond market. 🤑 So if we want to think about investment stuff that take a while to play out, I agree with S & L that the proper focus is how to avoid fucking ourselves by arriving in Debt Valley. With only shitty options for how to get out. Because that will make a little bit of 9 % inflation look mild by comparison.

General comment. I like this new and improved idea that we just stick to the facts. I take Auggie's two statements to be pretty much unrelated. The first statement is a theoretical explanation of inflation. The second statement is about two specific countries. I am a data whore, so I checked. I think Japan and Switzerland provide excellent examples of why @EZEtoGRU's statement is true. Both countries were hit hard by the same global forces COVID and Putin unleashed: big spikes in food prices and even bigger spikes in energy prices. Especially in Europe, which has brought it close to recession. Helpfully, we know that food and energy were the worst culprits in Japan. Now check out Switzerland: Those charts make more sense if you click on the hyperlink above, since when I cut and pasted the JPG image it loses the titles. But the first chart is overall inflation on consumer goods in Switzerland. The second chart is specific inflation in food (red) and energy (green). As you can see, the spike in energy prices in Switzerland was massive. I doubt that the printing of money had much to do with those spikes. That said, a lot of economists were arguing when COVID first hit that absent any type of intervention we could have a depression. I tend to agree with them. True, in both Japan and Switzerland inflation topped out in the 3's. But also in both cases they started the COVID experience with deflationary pressures. In both cases the inflation surge, from trough to peak, was above 5 %. In the US it was more like 8 %. But the COVID and Ukraine factors had exactly the same impact on inflation all over the world. Including Japan and Switzerland. No surprise, now that food and energy prices are hopefully getting back under control (no thanks to Vlad) global inflation is waning. In the case of the US, putting my landlord hat on, one thing I think may be different is housing. Housing makes up about one third of the CPI. I was stunned by how much rents and home prices increased during COVID. Talk about greedflation. I became a hero to all my tenants by actually lowering rents 5 %. When I raised them back in 2022, in almost every case it was to what they were before the COVID discount. My prize is I get to keep good tenants who will never move. But when I look at how much rent went up for comparable homes since 2020, it's insane. I suspect housing, and the prevalence of adjustable rate loans, is a big part of why UK inflation is now 8.7 %. As opposed to 3 % in the US, home of the low fixed rate mortgage. At least for anyone who bought before 2022. As far as broad ideological bumper stickers go, I'm with you on that one, Auggie. CFR Global Monetary Policy Tracker I think that makes your case better than Japan and Switzerland. Notice the toggle at the top of the chart of the world where you can change the month. So if you go to June 2019, the Summer before COVID when the economy was humming along, you'll see the world is a mix of red, blue, and grey. Meaning monetary policy was all over the map. By March 2020, when COVID entered with a bang stage left, the whole world is blue. Meaning global monetary easing in every single nation. Geez, could that possibly have anything to do with global inflation? Now, June 2023, most of the world, including almost all of Europe and North and South America, is red. Meaning monetary tightening. Cause and effect? Probably. We could have a debate about what some other planet might have done in Spring 2020. But we know how that would go. The fact is that pretty much every nation on the planet we actually live on did the same thing when COVID made its grand entrance. They printed money. The undeniable good news is that many of the specific COVID drivers - huge spikes in energy, food, and housing prices - seem to be gradually getting back in balance. As the Wall Street Journal argued, we can thank capitalism for that.

I thought this was an amusing take on inflation, coming from The Wall Street Journal Companies and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Earnings Season Apparently it's not inflation. It's greedflation, stupid! That's not me saying it. That's The Wall Street Journal. And I agree with them. Capitalism is riding to the rescue. Woo hoo! Maybe if I'm lucky when the invisible hand is done with inflation, it will come be my Daddy and spank me or something. 😉 I mentioned Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson above. He's been saying for a long time that an earnings recession is coming. Lately he's been saying he was correct, but premature. As recently as April he's still calling for 3900, or a range of 3600 to 4200, as his year end S & P price target. Whether he gets his price target or not, it looks like he may get his earnings recession. And consumers will love it, probably. If it means inflation is being tamed. While he hasn't exactly been spot on recently, even though Wilson has been insisting an earnings recession is coming he thinks whether we get an actual recession is a coin toss. That's the way I'm playing it. Or, as one person commented on Wilson's YouTube interview, "He's being rational. Markets aren't." 😉

If we're talking about COVID, inflation, and investing, there's another aspect of inflation that should be noted. And the verdict is out on that, too. Something important happened in January 2021 that changed the inflation game. And, no, it's not what you're thinking. That's the month that S & P 500 earnings rebounded from under $100, and took off like a space ship for a year. Anyone who owned stocks, and especially tech stocks, knows the relationship between rising inflation and big capital gains in 2021. S&P 500 Earnings The numbers in that website are clear. And the same point is expressed in the chart above. S & P 500 earnings were at about $140 end of 2019. Thanks to COVID, by the end of 2020 they tanked to a low of $94.13 in December. Then starting January 2021 it was off to infinity and beyond for a year, peaking at $197.88 in January 2022. It correlates to the huge S & P 500 rally, of course. So inflation may have been miserable for people going to the gas station. But it wasn't miserable for corporate America, and people investing in their stocks. Now the question is how much of the sugar high is sustainable, and whether a recession will put a dent in it. At least for now it looks like S & P 500 earnings are stabilizing at around $175. Way higher than right before COVID, but way lower than the sugar high of January 2022. Breaks my heart, but I don't feel all that bad for corporate America. I'll take the 3 % inflation, thank you. 😀 Add Mike Wilson of Morgan Stanley to your list. (This is him six months ago. Compare the S & P then to what it is today.) Last year he was saying the S & P slide would continue into the first half of 2023, due to an "earnings recession." He was sure wrong about that. At least to the extent that he was predicting the S & P might revisit 3500, or lower. Oops! Now he's saying it will happen in the second half of 2023. We'll see. Gloom springs eternal. 😉 I've been having a fierce debate with one of my geeky nephews for about a year. And he is winning, both factually and financially. Partly because I listened too much to guys like Wilson. I figured we were in a secular bear market like 2000 and 2008. And it sure looked that way by the end of 2022. So the idea that the S & P would keep going down to 3500 or lower made sense. I bought a lot of tech stocks last October and November, and sold most of them in January and February thinking I'd make some nice but modest bear market rally profits. My nephew argued that we're still in a secular bull market, but we just had this COVID sugar high. I can't find an exact online version of it. But he sent me a chart of the S & P 500 starting around 2011, where he just blocked out the years 2021 and 2022. If you do that, it looks like the same bull market trend line, with this zig zag distortion way down and then way up and then down again. That chart I did post above, which is about a year old, makes the point about the long term trend. At least for now, we're right back into the bull market trend that started after the GFC. My nephew bought SOXL (semiconductors/AI) last Fall as low as $7 a share, and just kept buying. As of today his cheapest shares have quadrupled. My epiphany came a few months ago. I was thinking we are just having a long bear market rally, and surely it will be sell in May and go away. Instead, May was when you were supposed to buy NVDA and AVGO. Oops! I bought a bunch of AMD late last year and sold it at like a 20 % profit in February, because I listened to Mike Wilson. Oops! Happily, my nephew has kicked my ass and is laughing his way to the bank. Except he hasn't sold yet. Who knows how high it will go? Mostly, inflation and the resulting corporate profit sugar high has been good to stock investors. I still think the verdict is out on a recession, though. Again, gloom springs eternal.

The thing that is also interesting, and somewhat inexplicable, is that when it comes to inflation the US is doing so much better than (name a country on the planet Earth.) Right now escaping the misery of inflation is increasingly a good reason to live in America. Current inflation rate: United Kingdom 8. 7 % Australia 7 % Germany 6.4 % Euro Area 5.5 % Mexico 5.1 % India 4.8 % France 4.5 % Canada 3.4 % Russia 3.2 % United States 3 % This does suggest that the causes of the post-COVID global inflation spike are ............. well ............ global. Last year when inflation was peaking the US was in the middle of that list of major nations. Pretty much everybody was sharing the misery. Now the US appears to be recovering from the spike quicker than most of the rest of the planet. The good news on inflation probably helps explain why the looming US recession has been MIA for about a year now. Europe is on the brink of recession. And high energy prices seem like a logical thing to blame that on. While US gas prices are still relatively high, they are down from a national peak of almost $5 last Summer to $3.57 now. That's one thing that could be fueling an apparent soft landing. This is all good news. The stock market sure seems to think so. We may be climbing a wall of worry. But we still have to climb out of an inverted yield curve, which almost always ends in a recession. (In 1966 it didn't, so there is hope.)

Then again, the opposite can happen. Baxter spun off Edward Lifesciences in 2000. All Baxter owners got a share of EW for every five they owned of BAX. I don't know all the details about possible splits. But looking at the charts EW was worth a bit over $1 a share back in 2000 when the spin off happened. And it peaked at about $130 a share at the top of the bubble in 2022. A 2015 spinoff, Baxalta, didn't do anywhere near as well. But it did okay. Our mutual friend Epigonos was kind enough to invite my Mom for dinner years ago, back when they were both living. I told him the story I love telling about how Mom was the smartest investor in our family. She bought $1000 of Baxter shares around 1984. And didn't touch them other than reinvesting dividends. EW split off in 2000. So she ended up with shares of that, too. That was pretty much it for Mom and stocks. My Dad and I sold most of her shares in the late 2010's to pay for her nursing home care. The rest we decided should go to her grandchildren. By my calculations she ended up earning about $75,000 out of a single $1,000 stock investment. I think the spin off EW alone brought in something like $20,000 when we sold it, off stock that was kinda sorta free. I calculated it ended up being something like a 15 % a year return on investment. Not as good as Apple. But not bad. Turns out she was the smartest investor of all of us. For sure better than my Dad, and his low interest CDs. Blame it on the Fed, I guess. Eppy and Mom laughed when I told it that way. And she loved his lasagna. 😍 I never heard of LH before reading this. But it sounds in the ballpark of BAX and EW. Hope you do as well as my Mom. To me her experience is a great story about buy and hold investing. But also about investing in solid American innovation. Which is why one of my Dad's business buddies advised her to buy the stock in the first place. Here's Baxter's own PR about their innovation. They actually had a bad year last year, which they blamed in part on an acquisition. Regardless, I bought a bunch of it recently at $40 a share in my Mom's honor.

Kudos to Lemon for being a good sport about it. Of course, it's a good guess that the other recently fired host is also going to have the summer of a 12-year-old, too. He'll just do it differently. By becoming the last vestige of hope and perhaps the only remaining source of truth in 'Murika. Before it went to the dogs.

Love ya @Lookin. 💗💗💗 And you are so right. It has been a real pleasure. And thanks for all the years of great discussions. Although I imagine I'll see some of you over at gayguides. Thank you @RadioRob first and foremost for everything you did to keep this entire website alive. But also for the forum. You have been a godsend. I know you referenced the last few years, since that's your shelf life as someone running this place. But I would like to add a few things from a historical perspective. I've been active here about 20 years. For most of that I was intentionally quiet about potentially divisive political issues. Since it's not good for escort business. So it's not like the past two years is really anything new. I knew Bill personally for most of that time, and got to know him pretty well when I was leading a fundraising drive for him and the site. He told me "racism" was the issue he hated coming up most on the site. And having a place to put that stuff was what the politics forum was for. So in some ways it's always been where unwelcome things go to die - or not. Several people have said it already, and it's true. It's hard to split politics out of life. Racism in escorting was an issue that kept coming up, for example - on the part of both providers and clients. Before I was a loudmouth lib, I posted a ton about organizing for same sex marriage. Which was a very unifying issue here, mostly. And Bill and I were partners in crime in ranting and organizing against the Rentboy raid. That's politics, specific to our community. So you'll have to figure out what people can say, if anything, about same sex marriage or the politics of escorting. Those may be the kinds of things @Orin mentioned that are near and dear to me, and many in this community. Notwithstanding that politics is almost the oldest profession around, there was a marked change in tenor here about 2016, for obvious reasons. I always found it amusing when Bill posted his Miss Manners/decorum logo. And wanted us all to be polite. Even as there was a massive and deepening culture war everywhere across America. It was of course inevitably going to get in. The Gays are very political. And proudly so, when you think of everything our politics has won for us. So I take this as very much a sign of the times. And in many ways a positive one. People are just getting sick of it. I always told Bill, "Your website. Your rules." I think there is also something to be said for temperament. Oz at his site always lets everything fly, because he mostly enjoys it and hates to set rules. And it seems to work well at least in that forum. The temperament here has always been different, for whatever reason. My own view of this period is that the toxicity and poison has to be allowed to run its course. Which it will, in its own time. Like I said. This is in some ways an encouraging sign. But it was clearly very annoying to moderators here. So now you get a well deserved break from the nonsense. You deserve it. Thanks again, guys! I'll miss you.

The thing I will add that hasn't fully been mentioned yet is his courage and heart. Epigonos grew up in a time, place, and career where it was not okay to be out. So in addition to what others have said about his reservoirs of kindness and love for family, friends, and neighbors, there is his courage. And heart. I got a front row seat to watching him live out, and love out, all the things he might have wished to do when he was younger - if the world were different back then. He was the world's biggest realist. As well as in many ways the world's sweetest man, in disguise. This forum and the friendships he made, both with fellow connoisseurs like him, and with the escorts he became close to, meant the world to him. When I first met him a few decades ago I sometimes described him as a kid in a candy store. He was. And he loved it. That took a sense of joy and a willingness to experiment. But it also took courage to be willing to explore different facets of who he was. And to make deep friendships that have now left many of us sad or heartbroken. He built a Gay community of his own the same way he had built communities of family and friends and teachers and students. One Christmas dinner and one plate of delicious bacon wrapped dates or deviled eggs at a time. And no one will ever know about the time we hired a bar hooker and had to go to a sex hotel with an armed guard to play for an hour in Acapulco. Oops! I just said it. I always admired the man's balls, heart, courage, and appetite for adventure. One of the many sweetnesses about the sometimes gruff man we knew was the framed letter from Santa he kept on display under one of his many lavish Christmas trees. Back in his childhood his Mommy had apparently written a letter to Santa, who I guess worked at some big LA department store at the time. Santa typed back to young Eppy (it was decades before Santa got online, I guess) to inform him that he had been a good boy. And so good things would be forthcoming. He was a good boy, a devoted son, a loving brother, a gifted teacher, and a kind friend. Many good things came forth, for decades. I loved the letter in part because it exposed the tender heart and inner spirit that drove it all. The man had courage, and lived his life with richness and love.

Of course. Although I like orgies. So I have men from every decade on my hard drive. It's more fun that way. 90s porn is probably what got me into escorting. I actually can recall jacking off to an an escort ad of Steve Fox. No picture of him, although I of course thought he was gorgeous. Just text. Like I said in my post, the allure was almost irresistible. I bring up Steve Fox, who committed suicide in 1997, for a reason. The only truly sad thing about giving in to whims and fantasies is if you don't make it through to the other side. If you live and learn, like the OP, I obviously feel you have nothing to regret. Speaking of films, I'll add a story about the film Maurice. The male leads were not in a porn movie. But they should have been. I took these comments out of my earlier post because I was afraid of the brevity police. And if you haven't seen the film and don't want a spoiler, don't read the rest of this post. I had a poignant discussion about the film years ago with someone who has already posted on this thread. He was talking about how sad it was at the end of the film when Hugh Grant's closeted Gay man was symbolically closing the shutters in his bedroom. Right after he told his never-had-real-sex-with college platonic love, Maurice, that it was disgusting that he was running off to Italy or somewhere with the man of his dreams. Poor Hugh never even got his first Gay blowjob. Even if that is all you got from an escort, there's something to be said for that. I said I didn't find the ending sad at all. The character Grant played was a rich man living in a huge mansion. And inside the bedroom he was shuttering up was a beautiful woman - his wife - who loved him. What's sad about that? Two men made different choices. Both of which caused deep emotional turmoil. Both did what they felt they needed to do. As long as there are situations like this, escorts will be in business. To end with the airport analogy, there's no way to go through the journey without experiencing turbulence. Hopefully, at a minimum, you got memorable blowjobs and were well fucked along the way. For more information on that, consult my hard drive. Or ask Darius and Mario. (There's a great line in there. "Why don't we go outside so I can fuck you properly?") https://www.playvids.com/de/v/GjEjnO8xipI (Sorry. I could only find airplane porn from this century.)

Roll with it Benjamin. He's announcing a significant change in itinerary. Surely you've had one of those encounters with personnel at an airport where you needed to change a flight. We're supposed to be the nice guys who are accommodating and supportive. Not the assholes who say, "Sorry, sir. You'll have to pay a penalty." Although, you being the sweet and sexy guy that you are, you could play the role of the dashing flight attendant who gives the OP a few free cocktails to feel better. And then takes him into the bathroom and fucks him. Which might actually be a nice way for a guy to say bon voyage to the world of hiring. 😉 Wheels up!

I agree with @maninsoma. There's no reason to regret what you did. There is reason, I'd say, to feel good that you learned things about yourself and don't feel a need to do something that doesn't work anymore. I read what you wrote as a sort of declaration of independence. If I am reading it correctly, congratulations. That's the short version. The longer version will be a few stories about what it feels like from the other side of the looking glass. Which basically revolves around not feeling regret about doing what you did in order to grow. Or even just to have fun. There was a client who hired me for a handful of overnights who was an enigma. Handsome, nice body, great sex, I'm guessing in his 30's, smart as a whip, beautiful house, professional career he loved. He was driving me to an airport after our first "date" and I told him I had a great time. But I was curious why he hired me. Meaning why hire any escort? Whatever he said was brief and may have been "I don't know." A few days later I got a long email pouring his heart out. I don't remember the content but I remember the feelings. Something about judgmental parents. Something about shame. Something about low self esteem about his body before he came out and set about to being a Gay gym rat. Maybe six months later he was dating some guy who looked gorgeous in a photo he showed me. A few years later, long after he'd stopped hiring me or anyone, he sent me a wedding photo of him and his hubby. As happy endings go, it was a good one. I'm not a psychologist. But I know he did what he did in order to grow. And he grew. And you are correct @Andie40 that sticking to your gym routine helps. It worked for him. Based on my own relationships it works both ways. I think most if not all escorts feel some version of regret. Often in terms of trade offs that were made. This past week I had a really fun walk with a friend in town who I was very close to in my 30's. Both from organizing work together, before I turned to escorting, and very bad Greek dancing on weekends. I would have dated her and maybe fallen in love if she wasn't one of the first people I came out to. So we spent hours exchanging this cascade of stories. My friend's version of your first paragraph is she felt enormous frustration after being in the center of maybe 10 years of organizing on same sex marriage, rather than 10 years of escorts. I remember the California version of that as one of her volunteers. We lost badly. Again and again. That kind of rejection sucks, too. But who knew? Fucking up is how you learn. To make a very long story short, the happy ending is that after fuck up after fuck up after fuck up, she and others like her figured out how to do better. When I regret not being some alternative version of myself, it's not the sex - good or bad. It's that I would have spent my escort career running around the US like she did organizing for same sex marriage. And beating my head against the wall. Which turns out to be less satisfying than beating off. I'm okay with just being able to thank her for what she did instead. From reading the OP's comment and reactions about photos and Grindr, I think it largely works the same way on both sides of the looking glass. From my perspective, the allure was almost irresistible - being an escort, or hiring one. Why not touch bright shiny objects? Or get hired because someone sees you as one? And is it a shocker things are never quite as shiny or dazzling as you thought they might be? When you feel that way, you move on. I have a simple and happy and Gay go-to place on the subject of regret. Another aging escort buddy and I love watching Dancing With The Stars together. One week several years ago Cher was a guest judge. She was asked if she could turn back time, where would she go? She said hands down back to her 40's. She said she had so much fun. Almost too much fun. I thought, "OMG. I'm like Cher." My 40's were a Gay romp. Ok. But let's get real. In order to get there Cher had to go through dumping one husband who she met when she was 16. And then what seemed like a train wreck of a second marriage to Greg Allman. If an escort you hired did not shoot up heroin on your first date, arguably you had better luck than Cher. What's worse? A bad 10 hour overnight or a bad 10 day marriage? You get my point. Cher did what she needed to do in order to grow. Hell, she even won an Oscar for it. My advice, @Andie40, is don't regret what you did in order to get where you are today. You're not in your 40's yet. I hope you enjoy your next decade as much as Cher did. You earned it. If you find a man you want to marry, now you can. That is because a lot of people like my friend fucked things up for a long time, and learned from it. Here's to being willing to learn and grow by fucking up.

Since we're being totally blunt, my Beloved Sister In Cock, can we just admit that you have nightmares because you know I have better fashion sense than you do? But being Beloved Sisters In Cock is all about unconditional love. You've never made an issue of my inadequate and rather small penis, for example. Why would I make an issue about your shoes? Besides, since Sister Carrie Bradshaw is back, I now have much bigger fish to fry. Happy New Year, Sis. We love you. 💘

I love it. For whatever reason, Bill had a bug up his butt about the word. I never bothered to ask him why, mostly because I didn't particularly give a shit. But I've always used the word as a statement of pride. I've never thought much about whether other escorts use it a lot, or counted how many times it came up in conversations. But I'm quite sure the word was used a lot in conversations I had, mostly in playful ways. E.g. "You are such a whore!" One of my favorite lines was when I told a fellow escort/fuck buddy/workout partner that I'd stupidly backed my car into a guard rail and dented the fender, which would cost something like $200 to repair. His response was, "Well, that's not very much in whore money." We both just laughed. He was correct. It's not very much in whore money. There's another aspect of it which I will try as hard as possible to say in a way that doesn't get this kicked to the politics section. The sort of spirit of this thought is, "Can't we all just get along?" For me, the word "whoring" reflects that kind of spirit. Think about three phrases that get used a lot: 1) "He is a political whore." 2) "Politics makes strange bedfellows" 3) "Politics is the second oldest profession in the world." All these phrases imply a relationship between prostitution and politics. I'd say that fits very well with my lived experience. My entire life before escorting was spent as a community organizer/political activist/low-income lobbyist. Whatever the job title, I was always involved with elected officials at the national, or state, or local level. So one of my lines when I became an escort is that after spending much of my life being a political whore, I decided to become a real whore. As far as political whoring goes, to me that's a fantastic thing we actually need a lot more of right now. Let's just find ways to make deals and get along. I won't go into specifics because I don't want to make this about politics. But good political whoring is being able to make good deals with good people to do good things, even though you happen to disagree about most things. As far as actual whoring goes, it accomplishes the same thing. I can't tell you how many conservatives I know and have known where in a real way I'm one of the few people on the planet who know who they really are. As in what they really do in bed, which involves a member of the same sex, and what their sexual fantasies are. So when you are whoring you can get along with anybody. It's so much easier to get along when you just want to suck cock and make each other cum, isn't it? If there were more whoring in the world, meaning both political whoring and real whoring, it would be a much better place, I think.

First let me say this. It is not my intention to get this kicked to the politics forum. It is simply to say that this past year has been a particularly challenging year to be an international whore. If we put this in the "Ask An Escort" section, the answer would simply be, "No. Don't do it." A Quickie: How an International Prostitute Caused a Mass Outbreak of #COVID19 in Cambodia Truth is, speaking as an international whore, our type get to have a lot of fun. A wonderful client who sadly passed away recently took me to Siem Reap once. RIP. Maybe this year we should call it International Prudence Day. Since us international whores get all the fortune and glory, it seems only fair that Prudence should get to shine once in a century or so. This is actually meant as a tribute to so-called "Zero COVID" countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Singapore that have mostly managed to show a remarkable sense of restraint and community-mindedness. And went with the flow on lockdowns and quarantines, thus preventing exactly the kind of situation above. Cambodia It took until March 2021, over a year after the international pandemic got started, for Cambodia to have their first death. Now they've had 230. Personally, ala Randy Rainbow, I think the international whores of the world should unite to provide administration of COVID vaccine shots, as well as certain other personal services which could be offered as a reward. Who else could possibly do a better job when it comes to saying, "Stick it in me."

My dearest and most beloved and yet substantially younger and more graceful Sister In Cock: I just love you. I mean, I wish I could be you. But you've been hearing that forever. Well, I've been saying it forever, I guess. You're still fresh and nimble, especially in the throat. What would I do if I didn't have you for my shining light? Thank you for adding the grace and education that every ignorant whore needs. And for at least trying to help me with my fashion challenges. And gag reflex. Yours forever, dear Sister SK

I'd never argue he is my favorite pollster. But I thought his messages were good. I hope at this point it just becomes about keeping people healthy and alive. That's what his messages speak to. I can believe that. Like I said above, it was not clear from what I read whether the no deaths outcome was simply for the J & J vaccinated control group, or the control groups for all the vaccines. Assuming you are correct, it confirms what the CDC says, which is that some vaccinated people will still get sick and die. My assumption is it would be people in the high risk groups. It underlines even more the point that vaccinated people will be able to spread the virus, even if they are asymptomatic. So Luntz's messages to the unvaccinated make sense, whether or not they have been adequately polled or whether or not he's the right guy to be spreading them.

This is all a giant science experiment. But one way to look at it is that we are going to arrive at herd immunity. The real question is HOW we get there. So you can get it artificially, through a vaccine. The goal now is for at least 70 % of adults to get immunity that way. Or you can get it naturally, through an infection. There will definitely be some people who get it both ways. Although for them all the best science - so far - is that their actual health risks are much lower thanks to the vaccines. I read somewhere that in the control groups some of the unvaccinated people who got COVID did die. Nobody vaccinated in a control group who became symptomatic died. I'm not sure if that was for one of the vaccines, or all of them. Buy as we learned with the J & J blood clots things will probably show up that didn't in the control groups. So it's probably only a matter of time until somebody who was fully vaccinated but has underlying health conditions dies. If you read that whole CDC thing above it does say that even if you are vaccinated and become symptomatic your risks of serious illness are lower than if you hadn't been vaccinated.