And Lusty Lad and WTF are arguing over whether GDP growth of 3% per annum is high

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I love the alchemy aspect! If this golden period of 40% growth lasts a long time, maybe 30 years, we'll increase GDP per capita from $63,000 per year to $1.5 billion/year! We can all buy a few superyachts every year and have plenty left over for vacation homes and the like! We'll live like Jho Low used to! Fuck MMT -- AOC and Professor Stephanie were thinking small!

If you got through that paper

(a) you're a lot more mathematically mature than I am, and

(b) you've got a much higher tolerance for boredom too.

Looking at all those integral symbols reminds me of a graduate class I took during night school after I'd gone to work full time. We were learning forecasting techniques in an discipline where if you're within 10% you're damn close. I came up with an elegant solution to a problem using integral calculus that the professor had solved using a much cruder method. I trotted up to his podium after class, proud of myself, to show him. He laughed me out of the place. And he was right to do that. I remember him saying something about "bull shit in, bull shit out." Meaning general knowledge, experience and common sense can trump math. Now that's not always true, but in this instance the professor was spot on.

Actually, I'm a bit low on boredom tolerance. If I were given a choice between spending part of may afternoon having a root canal procedure and slogging through the mathematics in the paper I linked in sufficient detail as to be able to cogently explain where the author was trying to go with all the "fancy math," I might have a hard time choosing. (No! On second thought, fix me up with the root canal appointment. My dentist's office offers nitrous oxide as a sedative, so at least you pleasantly relax and don't give a fuck about much during the appointment!)

Truth be told, I did little more than take a 30-second glance at most of this paper and then read the conclusion. The reason is that this work (along with several other papers) is what's been circulating around in the world of the "supergrowth" crowd. (Which includes Cathie Wood, her acolytes, and many other pie-in-the-sky fantasy world inhabitants.)

Your mention of the professor's "bullshit in, bullshit out" is reminiscent of the time decades ago when I first heard the initialism "GIGO" (garbage in, garbage out) from an IT guy.

I'm afraid to say that seeing all those integral symbols reminds me of something altogether different. That is, the discomfort I routinely experienced about a half-century ago when I saw so many of them within such a small space on a page. (Because that was a pretty clear sign that I was not going to get to be as lazy as I prefer during the ensuing couple of hours!)

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[WTF]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Mix a cocktail of wild exaggeration and hype, bizarro world narratives, and the ability to sling bullshit with consummate skill, and the sky's your limit.

That's a time-honored formula that's worked wonders for centuries!

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It ain't working for lustylad or bambino!

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Actually, I'm a bit low on boredom tolerance. If I were given a choice between spending part of may afternoon having a root canal procedure and slogging through the mathematics in the paper I linked in sufficient detail as to be able to cogently explain where the author was trying to go with all the "fancy math," I might have a hard time choosing. (No! On second thought, fix me up with the root canal appointment. My dentist's office offers nitrous oxide as a sedative, so at least you pleasantly relax and don't give a fuck about much during the appointment!)

Truth be told, I did little more than take a 30-second glance at most of this paper and then read the conclusion. The reason is that this work (along with several other papers) is what's been circulating around in the world of the "supergrowth" crowd. (Which includes Cathie Wood, her acolytes, and many other pie-in-the-sky fantasy world inhabitants.)

Your mention of the professor's "bullshit in, bullshit out" is reminiscent of the time decades ago when I first heard the initialism "GIGO" (garbage in, garbage out) from an IT guy.

I'm afraid to say that seeing all those integral symbols reminds me of something altogether different. That is, the discomfort I routinely experienced about a half-century ago when I saw so many of them within such a small space on a page. (Because that was a pretty clear sign that I was not going to get to be as lazy as I prefer during the ensuing couple of hours!)

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Well Cap'n, I spent about another 30 seconds scanning that paper, and came across this jewel of a paragraph,

To see how different the growth rates are, consider some conservative parameter values.Let the product shares be α = .25, β = .5, and γ = .02, let annual growth rates be 1.5% for
the human population H and 1% for general technology A, and let computer prices P halve every two years. Without machine intelligence, world product grows at a familiar rate of 4.3% per year, doubling every 16 years, with about 40% of technological progress coming from ordinary computers. With machine intelligence, the (instantaneous) annual growth rate would be 45%, ten times higher, making world product double every 18 months! If the product shares are raised by 20%, and general technology growth is lowered to preserve the 4.4% figure, the new doubling time falls to less than 6 months. Such rapid growth may seem so far from historical experience that it should be rejected out of hand. However, an empirical projection of historical trends in world economic growth makes a median prediction that the economy will transition to a doubling time of one to two years around 2025 (Hanson, 1998).

Robin Hanson, who wrote the paper we're talking about, predicted world GDP would double every one to two years by 2025 way back in 1998. Cathie Wood is late to the party!

I don't think we can afford Cathie Wood, but we need to hire Robin Hanson and start a public company and sell something, like stock. Robin can supply the hype.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Robin Hanson, who wrote the paper we're talking about, predicted world GDP would double every one to two years by 2025 way back in 1998. Cathie Wood is late to the party!

I don't think we can afford Cathie Wood, but we need to hire Robin Hanson and start a public company and sell something, like stock. Robin can supply the hype.

I think Trump needs to fire lustylad and bambino as his economic advisers and hire these two ladies!

Those two guru's could not even sell 3% GDP growth in the best economy ever!

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by WTF

I think Trump needs to fire lustylad and bambino as his economic advisers and hire these two ladies!

Those two guru's could not even sell 3% GDP growth in the best economy ever!

Damn it WTF, he's not employing them. How can he fire them? Trump's not president anymore. You should know that. Joe Biden is president.

I told you years ago that LustyLad is Steve Mnuchin in real life. And you should know by now that Bambino is Steve Bannon. Trump used to affectionately call them "my two Steve's" back before he fell out with Bambino.

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

But how does it work when the numbers are negative? Does one remove the negative and then add it back at the end? It's pretty straight forward with addition/subtraction, but gets a bit whack with multiplication/division. Anyway. Current GDP is running backwards. More so if you compare it to the "expected" value.


Courtesy of TrendingEconomics

The US economy contracted an annualized 1.5% on quarter in the first three months of 2022, slightly worse than initial estimates of a 1.4% decline, with the biggest drag coming from trade. Imports surged more than initially anticipated (18.3% vs 17.7% in the advance estimate), led by nonfood and nonautomotive consumer goods and exports dropped slightly less (-5.4% vs -5.9%), mainly due to nondurable goods. Also, private inventories subtracted 1.09 percentage points from the growth, the most in three quarters, led by decreases in wholesale trade (mainly motor vehicles) as well as mining, utilities, and construction (notably, utilities). Meanwhile, fixed investment growth was revised lower but remained robust while housing investment grew much less than initially forecasted (0.4% vs 2.1%). On the other hand, consumer spending rose more (3.1% vs 2.7%), led by housing and utilities and motor vehicles and parts while spending on gasoline and other energy goods decreased. source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

U.S. GDP fell at a 1.4% pace to start the year as pandemic recovery takes a hit

Key Points

• Gross domestic product in the U.S. declined at a 1.4% pace in the first quarter, below analyst expectations of a 1% gain.
• Declines in fixed investment, defense spending and the record trade imbalance weighed on growth.
• Consumer expenditures rose 2.7%, but that came amid a 7.8% increase in prices.
• “This is noise; not signal. The economy is not falling into recession,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

...

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Damn it WTF, he's not employing them. How can he fire them? Trump's not president anymore. You should know that. Joe Biden is president.

I told you years ago that LustyLad is Steve Mnuchin in real life. .

More like Stevie Wonder the way he see's the economic numbers!

bambam is Q....which stands for Queenie in his world.

Trump definitely does not need them for his 2024 run!

[Lucas McCain]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

She certainly does have the luxury of speculating! Far more than many realize, I suspect.

Because she pulls down some awfully rich fees compared to most other fund managers. Estimates of the fees she's pulled down over the last few years seem to run in the $200-300 million range, I have read. (No matter how many terrible investment decisions she makes from here on out, she ain't likely to ever be completely broke!)

Mix a cocktail of wild exaggeration and hype, bizarro world narratives, and the ability to sling bullshit with consummate skill, and the sky's your limit.

That's a time-honored formula that's worked wonders for centuries!

.

That made me think of that billionaire hedge fund manager (I believe his name is Bill Ackman or something like that) who completely divested in Netflix after their earnings call and took a $400MM loss after he put in a little over a Bln to purchase shares just a few months prior.

I bet he slept like a baby that night and probably just shrugged and said to himself, "Oh well, you win some and you lose some."

I wish I could read his letter to his clients after doing that. I'm sure that would be a quick and very entertaining read. LOL

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by Lucas McCain

That made me think of that billionaire hedge fund manager (I believe his name is Bill Ackman or something like that) who completely divested in Netflix after their earnings call and took a $400MM loss after he put in a little over a Bln to purchase shares just a few months prior.

I bet he slept like a baby that night and probably just shrugged and said to himself, "Oh well, you win some and you lose some."

I wish I could read his letter to his clients after doing that. I'm sure that would be a quick and very entertaining read. LOL

anyone who eats a 400 m loss even worth 3 billion is not happy about it.


i bought netflix recently too for the same reason Ackman did except i'm going to let it recover and then see. and no the loss if i sold now won't be taking any steak off my plate, i prefer not to lose money i don't have to lose.

[Chung Tran]

Originally Posted by Lucas McCain

That made me think of that billionaire hedge fund manager (I believe his name is Bill Ackman or something like that)

I saw him last week, on CNBC. He had a segment where he was defending Bitcoin. He ended up stumbling through the piece, concluding with ''anyone should be able to throw 1% of his portfolio into Bitcoin''.

Basically saying why not take a flyer in case bitcoin takes off? Could have said the same about the many beaten down Biotech stocks.

[Lucas McCain]

Sounds like he will be sending out another letter to his clients similar to the NFLX letter one soon. If he is invested in BTC, he is probably invested in ETH and SOL as well so maybe it will be up to an additional three more letters to everyone this time.

I play around with crypto but just with my money to lose and gamble with. I don't put my family members' money in there to lose. I have a fiduciary responsibility to them. I don't with myself. I'll be careless with my money, but I never will be with their money.

Plus, they're old. They understand mutual funds and CDs and other safe investments, but their heads would explode if I tried to explain crypto to them. Hell, I don't even understand it that well. I'm just gambling from a couch with that shit because I am too cash heavy IMO.

[VitaMan]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

i bought netflix recently too. i prefer not to lose money i don't have to lose.

Oops Wacko not happy

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by VitaMan

Oops Wacko not happy

TWK knows not to panic sell. what do you know?

[VitaMan]

Hello. I'm Johnny Cash.

[WTF]

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