How are we going to pay for all this shit?

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by WTF

Tiny you are turning into Chicken Little.

The Right has a grip on the SC.

There was a reason I spoke about the power of the SC vs WH vs Congress.

Gawd, are you an idiot! I'm tired of whooping your retarded ass every time you post something even stupider than your previous post. You're as hopeless as Donald Trump! Neither of you is capable of feeling embarrassment or regret over your moronic utterances, even after you have been thoroughly thrashed for them, so you just keep saying dumb & dumber things again & again.

Nobody is being a Chicken Little. Why don't you traipse your faggoty ass down to your local grocer or gas station and ask the shoppers if they are happy with the ever-upward-spiraling prices they are paying? If they bite your ear off with a stream of epithets, just scream back at them to stop being such a Chicken Little! See how popular it makes you.

And what the fuckity fuck does any of this have to do with the Supreme Court of the United States???

Our fiscal policy is charted by the POTUS (who proposes a budget) and Congress (who modifies it and appropriates the funding). Right now they are both controlled by reckless, spendthrift and irresponsible dim-retards.

Our monetary policy is in the hands of the Federal Reserve. As we've amply discussed in this thread, the Fed has badly bungled its primary role of keeping inflation in check.

And now you bring up the SCOTUS? Wtf is wrong with you? The Supreme Court has absolutely NOTHING to do with the horrendous ongoing damage being heaped on the US economy by the progressive idiots in charge of our fiscal policy and the timid doves at the Fed who are accommodating their lunatic misbehavior.

You really need to stfu. It's way, way, way past time for you to start heeding the old maxim:

"Better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I'm not as optimistic. Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe stayed popular for a long time, despite insane economic policies. Lopez Obrador would win re-election in Mexico if he could run again. (He can't.) I could come up with some less-extreme developed country examples too if I looked.

If Professor Stephanie's ideas go into practice, so that the government starts spending lots more money and running up even huger deficits, that could be very popular, for the people who are on the receiving end of government largesse anyway. It would be a while before the piper would have to be paid. Yeah, at that point the Progressives would be voted out. But how long would that take? How much damage would be done in the meantime?

I'm actually not as optimistic as you think. Yes, the pendulum will keep swinging back and forth, but the problem is the woke, progressive morons cited by you and CM keep trying to yank the midpoint further and further to the left. They do this by trying to make the economic policy damage they inflict permanent and irreversible. And by seeking to normalize their bad ideas, bad behavior, and bad economic policies.

I'm old enough to recall how controversial it was when the Federal Government bailed out Chrysler in 1979. That was a single company. Then in 2008/09 it "bailed out" the entire banking sector (even healthy banks were forced to take TARP money) and 2 of the Big Three automakers in the name of countering "systemic risk". Bad precedent, and one that is still being exploited by leftist class-warfare demagogues. Then the pandemic hit, and look how easy it was for the federal govt to plop free money into everyone's bank accounts (something we never would have countenanced in the past) and pour out PPP "loans" and unemployment checks to every fraudster in the country who applied for them.

I'm afraid the broader, long-term historic trend is not encouraging. Once you start down the road of bad behavior, it's hard to retrace your steps and go all the way back to that initial fork in the road, and easier to go further down the wrong path at the next hint of a crisis.

I will say, however, at this point I think your comparisons to Chavez and Mugabe are probably not instructive... yet. But God help us if the US ever winds up on Professor Steve Hanke's list!

https://www.cato.org/working-paper/w...yperinflations

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/...e-may-2013.pdf

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by lustylad

I will say, however, at this point I think your comparisons to Chavez and Mugabe are probably not instructive... yet. But God help us if the US ever winds up on Professor Steve Hanke's list!

https://www.cato.org/working-paper/w...yperinflations

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/...e-may-2013.pdf

Question, Say progressives install their people in the Treasury Department and on the Fed. They base fiscal and monetary policy on MMT. The progressives however do not raise taxes substantially on the middle class. If all that came to pass and were sustained for a long period, what do you think the prospects for hyperinflation would be?

I think the weakness in my argument, if you can call it that, is that some of the more prominent progressives have been backtracking from MMT. But then on the other hand when you look at the deficits that would be generated from what Bernie Sanders was proposing last year, when he got the Build Back Better bill rolling, maybe not.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by lustylad

I'm actually not as optimistic as you think. Yes, the pendulum will keep swinging back and forth, but the problem is the woke, progressive morons cited by you and CM keep trying to yank the midpoint further and further to the left. They do this by trying to make the economic policy damage they inflict permanent and irreversible. And by seeking to normalize their bad ideas, bad behavior, and bad economic policies.

I'm old enough to recall how controversial it was when the Federal Government bailed out Chrysler in 1979. That was a single company. Then in 2008/09 it "bailed out" the entire banking sector (even healthy banks were forced to take TARP money) and 2 of the Big Three automakers in the name of countering "systemic risk". Bad precedent, and one that is still being exploited by leftist class-warfare demagogues. Then the pandemic hit, and look how easy it was for the federal govt to plop free money into everyone's bank accounts (something we never would have countenanced in the past) and pour out PPP "loans" and unemployment checks to every fraudster in the country who applied for them.

I'm afraid the broader, long-term historic trend is not encouraging. Once you start down the road of bad behavior, it's hard to retrace your steps and go all the way back to that initial fork in the road, and easier to go further down the wrong path at the next hint of a crisis.

I will say, however, at this point I think your comparisons to Chavez and Mugabe are probably not instructive... yet. But God help us if the US ever winds up on Professor Steve Hanke's list!

https://www.cato.org/working-paper/w...yperinflations

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/...e-may-2013.pdf

I'm not at all optimistic about the next several years, as I view this nation as I would a drunk who has to hit bottom before seeking help.

I just hope that wiser leadership eventually comes to the fore and that we do not instead pursue the "hair of the dog" cure.

Difficult as it may be, I do try to be optimistic about the intermediate-to-long term, mostly because I think we have a shot at seeing some fantastic new technologies come to fruition later this decade.

Here's hoping that Mark P. Mills (author of The Cloud Revolution) is right!

.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by lustylad

[B][SIZE="5"]I will charitably concede that Jimmy Carter was at least open-minded enough to be persuadable and change course.

(Circling back to a point that I was going to make a few weeks ago. Or maybe it was a few months ago; this is a long thread! I wrote about this in a finance blog in 2019.)

I mentioned that I have believed for about 40 years that the installation of (finally!) a real inflation-fighter at the Fed signaled bad news for the USSR.

Why is this relevant?

Then, as now, Russia (or the Soviet Union) was heavily dependent on oil exports. When the crude price was high and rising, as in the late 1970s, the Soviets felt emboldened and were hell-bent on encroaching all around the world.

Here's a narrative about which our clueless western media was blissfully ignorant. And it still remained largely unknown to the American public after the Soviet Union collapsed in a whimper.

Even as early as 1976-77, millions of Russians were becoming aware of how they were prevented from receiving all but the most propagandized information. Though this was long before the lightning-quick dissemination of information over the internet and social media, a growing portion of the public learned that their government was a fraud and lacked the ability and willingness to provide a decent standard of living to ordinary citizens.

One amusing way the propagandists' efforts backfired occurred when they showed footage from The Grapes of Wrath (1940 film). Their idea was to demonstrate that Americans faced hardship just as the Soviet workingman did. What they failed to consider was that Russian citizens' takeaway from the footage was that the Joad family was fleeing the area in which they faced hard times in a car! (Poor people in the Soviet Union typically didn't own a car, needless to say.)

By the late 1970s, many Russians assembled in friends' apartments for dinner and listening to shortwave broadcasts afterward.

The key point is that even when oil prices were historically high and rising rapidly in the late 1970s, the Soviet Economy was clearly a basketcase, and a rapidly growing number of people were beginning to realize it.

All of this is according to Igor Ivanov, who was in a position to know. In a scene worthy of a made-for-TV movie, he literally sprinted from the boarding steps of an airplane in Canada with two KGB handlers in hot pursuit. After rushing into an airport restroom, he scrambled out the back window to freedom, and eventually moved to the Phoenix area.

Enter the 1980s. New Fed policies were beginning to bring down inflation, after which oil prices began a multi-year slide of about 30%. Then in late 1985/early 1986, the Saudis opened the spigots and oil prices really took a cliff dive -- and the Soviet Union's treasury along with them, of course.

Enter Mikhail Gorbachev and rhetoric indicating the willingness to accept a dramatic reset. Glasnost, perestroika, and all that.

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
--Ronald Reagan, 1987

(What a great Cold War moment!)

Two years later, the Berlin Wall came down.

Two years after that, of course, the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered for the last time.

.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by lustylad

[SIZE="3"]Gawd, are you an idiot! I'm tired of whooping your retarded ass every time you post something even stupider than your previous post. You're as hopeless as Donald Trump! Neither of you is capable of feeling embarrassment or regret over your moronic utterances, even after you have been thoroughly thrashed for them, so you just keep saying dumb & dumber things again & again.

Nobody is being a Chicken Little. Why don't you traipse your faggoty ass down to your local grocer or gas station and ask the shoppers if they are happy with the ever-upward-spiraling prices they are paying? If they bite your ear off with a stream of epithets, just scream back at them to stop being such a Chicken Little! See how popular it makes you.

And what the fuckity fuck does any of this have to do with the Supreme Court of the United States???

Our fiscal policy is charted by the POTUS (who proposes a budget) and Congress (who modifies it and appropriates the funding). Right now they are both controlled by reckless, spendthrift and irresponsible dim-retards.

Our monetary policy is in the hands of the Federal Reserve. As we've amply discussed in this thread, the Fed has badly bungled its primary role of keeping inflation in check.

And now you bring up the SCOTUS? Wtf is wrong with you? The Supreme Court has absolutely NOTHING to do with the horrendous ongoing damage being heaped on the US economy by the progressive idiots in charge of our fiscal policy and the timid doves at the Fed who are accommodating their lunatic misbehavior.

I'm not looking to be popular.

The Fed to a degree is responsible for this inflation just as Covid and both Trump and Biden's race to see who could give away the most money. A Perfect Storm if you will. We'd be on the exact same predicament if Trump were President. The difference between the Fed and either Trump or Biden is that the Fed can do something about inflation and appear to be making steps in the right direction.


I brought up the Supreme Court because Chicken Little was wetting his pants!

It is important to understand because of new election laws that will translate to more Republicans winning office. I was trying to reassure Tiny the future is not as bleak as he seems to think.

Now do you have any tangible investing advice since you seem to think you know what is going to happen.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

The key point is that even when oil prices were historically high and rising rapidly in the late 1970s, the Soviet Economy was clearly a basketcase, and a rapidly growing number of people were beginning to realize it.

All of this is according to Igor Ivanov, who was in a position to know. In a scene worthy of a made-for-TV movie, he literally sprinted from the boarding steps of an airplane in Canada with two KGB handlers in hot pursuit. After rushing into an airport restroom, he scrambled out the back window to freedom, and eventually moved to the Phoenix area.

Enter the 1980s. New Fed policies were beginning to bring down inflation, after which oil prices began a multi-year slide of about 30%. Then in late 1985/early 1986, the Saudis opened the spigots and oil prices really took a cliff dive -- and the Soviet Union's treasury along with them, of course.



.

My question(s) are, are the Saudi's in our camp this go round. What about the Chinese? It sure appears the Fed is going to tame inflation the market be damned.

I do not think the Saudi's will pump down the price of oil even if they could...and there are questions if they have that capability anymore.

So what will happen to the price of oil?

With the added emphasis on energy security. it appears that it will hold strong until the next Black Swan.

So lustylad if you're reading this I'd go into that grocery store and tell those folks to buy energy stocks!

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

I'm not at all optimistic about the next several years, as I view this nation as I would a drunk who has to hit bottom before seeking help.

I just hope that wiser leadership eventually comes to the fore and that we do not instead pursue the "hair of the dog" cure.



.

I'm sure you are a fan of Adam Smith and will be on the righ side of more trades than not no matter who our leaders!

In other words....if I had to bet, I bet your short term future is better than most!

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Question, Say progressives install their people in the Treasury Department and on the Fed. They base fiscal and monetary policy on MMT. The progressives however do not raise taxes substantially on the middle class. If all that came to pass and were sustained for a long period, what do you think the prospects for hyperinflation would be?

I think the weakness in my argument, if you can call it that, is that some of the more prominent progressives have been backtracking from MMT. But then on the other hand when you look at the deficits that would be generated from what Bernie Sanders was proposing last year, when he got the Build Back Better bill rolling, maybe not.

I had almost forgotten about this post, but it came to mind when one of my nephews brought up the question of whether hyperinflation in the US is possible just a couple of days ago.

It's always seemed like fun to muse about possibilities, even if they seem pretty far-fetched at the time.

But what if a worst case scenario does come to pass one of these years? What if a panicked electorate puts a Bernie acolyte in the White House and somehow manages to fill the House and Senate with rabid progressives hell-bent on shoving through many trillions of dollars of UBI, green new deal stuff, and all manner of other elements of a "social utopia?"

Although hyperinflation is certainly possible in small nations that don't matter all that much in the overall scheme of things, I don't think it's possible in the U.S.

Here's my take on why not:

Unlike currencies in states like Venezuela, the US dollar is the world's primary reserve currency and most global trade is dollar-denominated. We have far and away the deepest and most liquid capital markets. If the dollar collapses, everything collapses. All over the world.

Many trillions of dollars of CRE as well as residential mortgages are denominated in dollars, mostly in the US but in some other countries as well.

If inflation started becoming high enough to devalue trillions of dollars of loan portfolios by 10 or 20 percentage points, cascading financial institution failures would make the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Depression look like minor inconveniences by comparison.

Trillions of dollars of bond market capitalization would go up in smoke as well.

Collapses of this sort tend to be violently contractionary, as well as disinflationary or deflationary.

That's the macro reason why I think even relatively high inflation, let alone hyperinflation, would be "self-limiting."

.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

I had almost forgotten about this post, but it came to mind when one of my nephews brought up the question of whether hyperinflation in the US is possible just a couple of days ago.

Good post, makes sense, thanks for taking the time to write that. I think the assumptions I'd made were pretty far fetched.

[texassapper]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

That's the macro reason why I think even relatively high inflation, let alone hyperinflation, would be "self-limiting."

Self limiting because when the whole house of cards collapses, no one id going to worry about paying their mortgage?

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I think the assumptions I'd made were pretty far fetched.

I been trying to tell you that ever since you been wetting your pants over Build Back Better!

The funny thing is that Manchin would have went early on for a scaled down version but the Progressive got greedy and got nothing! Or as the Judge in Caddyshack would say to Spalding..."You'll get nothing and like it!"

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by WTF

I been trying to tell you that ever since you been wetting your pants over Build Back Better!

The funny thing is that Manchin would have went early on for a scaled down version but the Progressive got greedy and got nothing! Or as the Judge in Caddyshack would say to Spalding..."You'll get nothing and like it!"

Only the paranoid survive.

[eccieuser9500]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Only the paranoid survive.

But only the strong live.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Only the paranoid survive.

Then bambino's fat ass should live forever!