+ Vegas_Millennial Posted November 18, 2023 Share Posted November 18, 2023 @stevenkesslar I don't disagree with you. Just wanted to point out that a lot of people don't own homes and don't own stocks, so they are going to feel different about this inflation cycle than the typical client on this site who already has a nest egg. Being a millennial and in the middle to younger end of the working age, my view is skewed towards the average working person. The age group that benefited the most wealth growth in the last 10 years were people over 60. And because of the aging Baby Boomers, there are more and more people over 60 compared to the number of people working. So the data will continue to show average people getting wealthier, but what it's really saying is the average person is getting older. Ask a 30 year old who is trying to move out of his parents house how they are doing, and it will be a different story. + stevenkesslar and Shoedog112 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ stevenkesslar Posted November 18, 2023 Share Posted November 18, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, augustus said: You seem to think this asset bubble in real estate is permanent. It is not!! Prices are already crashing in SF, Austin and Phoenix. . 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. 2 hours ago, augustus said: You seem to think this asset bubble in real estate is permanent 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. Edited November 18, 2023 by stevenkesslar mike carey, Marc in Calif and Shoedog112 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ stevenkesslar Posted November 19, 2023 Share Posted November 19, 2023 59 minutes ago, Vegas_Millennial said: @stevenkesslar I don't disagree with you. Just wanted to point out that a lot of people don't own homes and don't own stocks, so they are going to feel different about this inflation cycle than the typical client on this site who already has a nest egg. 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: Quote In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Gill said he "wasn't a rabble-rouser out to take on the establishment, just someone who believes investors can find value in unloved stocks." 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. + FrankR 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ keroscenefire Posted November 23, 2023 Share Posted November 23, 2023 U.S. gas prices are falling and could hit the cheapest Thanksgiving day price since 2020 WWW.CNBC.COM Gas prices have fallen for nine weeks now on a seasonal weakening of demand and a drop in crude oil prices. Gas prices are falling. We're having our lowest Thanksgiving gas prices since 2020. All good news for inflation since gas prices are built into other costs including transportation, air fare, etc. In Colorado, you can find gas below $3.00 a gallon. Definitely helping me save money. EZEtoGRU, + Vegas_Millennial, + FrankR and 1 other 1 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 On 11/22/2023 at 8:51 PM, keroscenefire said: Gas prices are falling. We're having our lowest Thanksgiving gas prices since 2020. All good news for inflation since gas prices are built into other costs including transportation, air fare, etc. In Colorado, you can find gas below $3.00 a gallon. Definitely helping me save money. Most consumer essentials like food have doubled or close to it since 2020. A loaf of generic white bread is $1.89, it used to be $1.09. A can of soup is $2.99, they used to be $1.49...cheap spaghetti sauce used to be $1.25/jar...it was 2 for $5 at my supermarket! The basic essentials of life have skyrocketed. Rents have soared and millions of people have been evicted and living in shelters, in their cars and on the streets. The elderly are the fastest growing group of homeless now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 I wish someone would tell the supermarkets that inflation is licked. pubic_assistance 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 On 11/17/2023 at 2:46 PM, EZEtoGRU said: Gasoline prices falling is good news: Gas prices are tumbling, just in time for Thanksgiving | CNN Business WWW.CNN.COM Slug: oil refinery 08282023 Whistling by the graveyard. Gas is still at least a dollar more a gallon than it was in 2020. The cost of everyday living is still way up. People are starting to pull back. Its already showing in the hospitality industry. Sharing orders. Only ordering appetizers. The seasonal resort workers aren't making any money. And taxes? House taxes are skyrocketing everywhere. pubic_assistance 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSR Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 55 minutes ago, augustus said: Most consumer essentials like food have doubled or close to it since 2020. A loaf of generic white bread is $1.89, it used to be $1.09. A can of soup is $2.99, they used to be $1.49...cheap spaghetti sauce used to be $1.25/jar...it was 2 for $5 at my supermarket! The basic essentials of life have skyrocketed. Rents have soared and millions of people have been evicted and living in shelters, in their cars and on the streets. The elderly are the fastest growing group of homeless now. That's what I don't understand about all this sis-boom-bah over inflation coming down. Sure, it's nice that prices have stopped rising (more or less), but everything at the supermarket is still a LOT more expensive than it was 2 years ago. + augustus and pubic_assistance 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ Vegas_Millennial Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 2 hours ago, augustus said: The elderly are the fastest growing group of homeless now. Yes, they are. But, the elderly are also the fastest growing group of millionaires. We have to remember that the baby boomer generation is going to skew all figures and show large increases in everything for the elderly. By and large, the baby boomers are more wealthy than previous elderly generations. Yes, there are going to be more homeless among them, but on average they are doing better than the silent and greatest generations in retirement. Stats that show average or median wealth increasing are really just showing that the population has gotten older, and older people generally have more wealthy than younger people. pubic_assistance 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ keroscenefire Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, augustus said: Whistling by the graveyard. Gas is still at least a dollar more a gallon than it was in 2020. The cost of everyday living is still way up. People are starting to pull back. Its already showing in the hospitality industry. Sharing orders. Only ordering appetizers. The seasonal resort workers aren't making any money. And taxes? House taxes are skyrocketing everywhere. Yes gas is more expensive now than it was in then in 2020 at the height of lockdowns when nobody drove anywhere. But actually gas is lower now than it was for much of the period from 2011-2014 (Arab Spring related oil disruptions) as well. Weekly U.S. Regular All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices (Dollars per Gallon) WWW.EIA.GOV Edited December 11, 2023 by keroscenefire EZEtoGRU and + Vegas_Millennial 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 Inflation is accelerating again! Inflation Is Already Back on the Rise. Will the Fed Raise Rates Again? (msn.com) EZEtoGRU, BSR, marylander1940 and 1 other 1 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ FrankR Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 1 hour ago, augustus said: Inflation is accelerating again! Inflation Is Already Back on the Rise. Will the Fed Raise Rates Again? (msn.com) The article doesnt dive very deep. It appears the increase is driven by rent and housing costs based on analysis I reviewed. That being said, most of the people I talk to are feeling better about the economy and the progress made in keeping inflation in check…but they do expect another increase in Fed rates. 🤷♂️ pubic_assistance, Walt, marylander1940 and 1 other 2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pubic_assistance Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 (edited) 8 hours ago, FrankR said: everyone who understands the math is warning of a rough year for the US economy. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Warns Inflation Could Be 'Stickier' and Rates Higher Than Markets Expect WWW.BARRONS.COM JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is sounding a warning about inflation, saying it could be “stickier” and... Edited January 12 by Kevin Slater EZEtoGRU and + augustus 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EZEtoGRU Posted January 12 Author Share Posted January 12 😂😂😂. The prior post is laughable. Jamie Dimon has been predicting a recession since November 2020. Citing him as evidence of anything is such a joke. Walt and + augustus 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pubic_assistance Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 1 minute ago, EZEtoGRU said: 😂😂😂. The prior post is laughable. Jamie Dimon has been predicting a recession since November 2020. Citing him as evidence of anything is such a joke. Fair enough. You don't have to agree with one person. Who are YOU believing ? + augustus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marylander1940 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 5 hours ago, augustus said: Inflation is accelerating again! Inflation Is Already Back on the Rise. Will the Fed Raise Rates Again? (msn.com) Because of Christmas shopping/spending prices and demand go up in December and readjust in January when people spend less and things go for sale. + augustus and Marc in Calif 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 My personal cost of living seems to be always higher than the BLS' CPI or Core Inflation. What am I doing wrong? pubic_assistance, BSR, Marc in Calif and 1 other 1 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 The prices of necessities like food, housing, insurance, taxes keep going up. Where you're seeing prices soften is in more discretionary areas such as furniture or sporting goods, but that's little consolation to people who are really strapped and have already cut out the extras. Credit card debt is up 40% in just 2 years as people borrow at 23% to pay for necessities! pubic_assistance 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pubic_assistance Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 2 minutes ago, augustus said: Where you're seeing prices soften is in more discretionary areas such as furniture or sporting goods, but that's little consolation to people who are really strapped and have already cut out the extras. Exactly. This idea that they keep spinning in our dystopian propaganda feeds that we used to call "The News" try to fool people into believing that just because the RATE OF INFLATION is slowing, that prices are returning to "NORMAL". But "normal" means it's not moving up every month, not going back to what you paid in 2019. It's astounding how many people buy into this nonsense. Just look at your grocery bill or a restaurant check. In 2019 I could take my whole family out to dinner for $ 120, now my wife and I spend $ 120 just for the two of us without the kids. Literally DOUBLE what we used to spend. It's really out of control and no silly news report is going to make me feel good about it. + augustus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 (edited) 2 out of 3 voters who respond to pollsters say the economy is not good and disapprove of the handling of the economy. Inflation is NOT under control and prices at the grocery store and gas pump are still going up rapidly, along with prices for services. And all these "record" job numbers are fraudulent too!!! For eleven of the past twelve months, job numbers have been revised down. Not sometimes revised up and sometimes revised down. No. ALWAYS REVISED DOWN. 440,000 jobs in 2023 were revised away. And most of these "new" jobs are part time jobs. Edited January 12 by augustus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 4 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said: But "normal" means it's not moving up every month, not going back to what you paid in 2019. It's astounding how many people buy into this nonsense. Exactly!! People fall for this nonsense, this deliberate propaganda. The standard of living has dropped permanently and may take years to recover. pubic_assistance 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ augustus Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 Food banks are swamped all over the country because of inflation. It's all over the news. marylander1940 and pubic_assistance 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pubic_assistance Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 2 minutes ago, augustus said: Food banks are swamped all over the country because of inflation There are a number of churches in my neighborhood who run food banks. I've never seen the lines so long in all my nearly 30 years in NYC. Loads of perfectly "normal" people standing there waiting in the cold for a bag of groceries. Used to be a population of characters who obviously lived on the margins. Scruffy, jittering from their last bump of meth. Now you see your neighbors in line embarrassed that they have hit rock bottom and are living on the scraps of their paycheck marylander1940, BSR and + augustus 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EZEtoGRU Posted February 13 Author Share Posted February 13 January inflation numbers have been released today. They show continued improvement but came in a tad higher than expected. The market is down as a result. We were due for a sell-off as stocks have been quite frothy so far this year. Overall, the trend is still in the right direction. Annualized January inflation numbers are less than half of what they were one year ago. I continue to believe there will be no interest rate cut in March. US consumer inflation cooled down in January, but less than expected | CNN Business WWW.CNN.COM Price hikes eased off less than expected in January, but still offered a hint of relief for Americans who have suffered through some of the steepest price hikes in four decades. + BOZO T CLOWN and Marc in Calif 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSR Posted February 13 Share Posted February 13 (edited) On 1/12/2024 at 10:14 AM, EZEtoGRU said: 😂😂😂. The prior post is laughable. Jamie Dimon has been predicting a recession since November 2020. Citing him as evidence of anything is such a joke. Recessions are a long time in the making. Some investors started sounding alarms about the economy way back in 2003, 5 long years before the Sep 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Dimon argues that recession is likely because "the consumer is in good shape. But the extra money that they got during COVID, trillions of dollars, that's kind of running out… It runs out this year. The government has a huge deficit which will affect the markets." Some disagree with Dimon because they don't see the government debt as that dire and are confident that the Fed can manage a soft landing. Edited February 13 by Kevin Slater EZEtoGRU, + augustus and Marc in Calif 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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