Quote (ofthevoid @ 1 Aug 2022 08:02)

Didn't read most of the thread.

I long believed we're heading for tougher times, even prior to the pandemic. You don't have to be Nostradamus to deduce that after years of shit-tier policies in which we spend and constantly run deficits and take on more debt then it will somehow be a net positive in the long term.

I'm not as pessimistic though tbh. The reason is because from a relative standpoint we're actually not that bad. Yeah, our lower and middle classes will get squeezed for sure, and it's already noticeable but its nothing compared to the rest of the world. The people who will really feel the pain are the 2-dollar a day people. Africa, Asia, South America even Europe look awful compared to us IMO.

Here we might have to spend a little more of our disposable income on food or maybe say no to a vacation or maybe switch to generic brands while in some of those places the situation is a lot more dire. The dollar has inflated massively because there's been a flight to safety and pretty much the whole world sees us as the safe-haven. I seen a statistic where it said something like that Europe has seen 28 consecutive weeks of money outflows (from their markets). Japan and China have their own internal behemoth issues.

Quote (Goomshill @ Jul 31 2022 04:54pm)

Quote (Goomshill @ Jul 31 2022 07:35pm)

2% is the fed's target interest rate over the long run. The feds cranked interest rates all the way down to 0% in order to artificially stimulate the economy during the pandemic. They are slowing the economy as we are in a recession by bringing it back to nominal rates. What we're seeing is the culmination of decades of federal mismanagement, whether gross negligence or malicious market engineering, which left our government with all the methods to save us from a recession already capped out before the recession hit in earnest. They can't stimulate job growth or consumer spending to jump start the economy and foster real growth, unemployment is already near-zero. They can't drop interest rates to 0% again to artificially stimulate growth, because inflation is already running out of control and the rates have been at 0% already. And they can't print money to bring inflation under control because printing money is what created inflation in the first place, but damned if they aren't going to try exactly that, hence the Democrat's latest economic package to print $739 billion in spending under an orwellian double-speak name of the Inflation Reduction Act, which not only will exacerbate the money oversupply crisis but again spends all kinds of money on bringing up energy costs that contribute to inflation. More electric vehicle credits and green subsidies, more taxes on fossil fuels and corporations. Which makes the bill a double-barreled hit to Americans already struggling under inflation.

So on one hand we've got a fed board that's spouting an almost comical level of denialism about the economic crisis we're in, still insisting its transitory even after that word made them a laughingstock, a fed board that has now expended all their tools to combat a recession. On the other hand we've got congress trying to make the underlying issues even worse in dramatic fashion, like firemen showing up to spray a hose of gasoline on a fire.

And that's what makes this recession far more dangerous than anything under Jimmy Carter or the 2008 financial crisis. We're taking a full plunge, and that's on top of like 50 other national crises going off the rails

Quote (EndlessSky @ Jul 31 2022 09:14pm)

Forest fires are necessary from time to time in order to clear out underbrush and start new growth.

The government was dumping kerosine everywhere for the past five years though.

Quote (Landmine @ Jul 31 2022 01:56pm)

Lockdowns brought to you by???????????????????

Quote (Goomshill @ Jul 31 2022 11:00pm)

And when land management services keep artificially staving off the healthy periodic wildfires that should clear and fertilize the soil, the result has become apocalyptic wildfires so destructive they kill off hundreds year old redwoods and old growth trees that rely upon being tall enough to survive normal fires that sweep the lesser trees. Its not really torturing our metaphor to point out what happens when the fed keeps an economy on artificial growth with a money supply growing faster than the real GDP.

Quote (Surfpunk @ Aug 1 2022 06:51am)

Joe Biden apparently, given how intellectually honest a poster Djunior is, and everything.

Quote (Djunior @ Aug 1 2022 08:31am)