The passing scene is hilarious, until it careens through the front yard and crashes into my living room.
Monday, May 6, 2024
Friday, March 22, 2024
I found the source for Trump's well-founded fear of an auto industry bloodbath
CNBC reports today:
Why a small China-made EV has global auto execs and politicians on edge :
There’s fear among global automakers that Chinese rivals like the Warren Buffett-backed BYD could flood their markets, undercutting domestic production and vehicle prices to the detriment of their own auto industries.
“The introduction of cheap Chinese autos — which are so inexpensive because they are backed with the power and funding of the Chinese government — to the American market could end up being an extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector,” the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a U.S. manufacturing advocacy group, said in a report last month.
BYD sold 1.57 million battery EVs last year, up from just 130,970 all-electric vehicles in 2020. That sales growth was enough to surpass Tesla to become the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles in late 2023.
The rise of BYD and other Chinese automakers led Tesla CEO Elon Musk in January to warn that Chinese automakers will “demolish” global rivals without trade barriers. ...
The company has quickly rolled out new and updated products. It’s also rapidly established manufacturing, as it has its eyes set on factories in Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Hungary, Uzbekistan and, potentially, Mexico. ...
Former President Donald Trump – the front-runner among Republicans in the 2024 presidential race – on Saturday suggested instituting a 100% tariff on cars made in Mexico by Chinese companies, should he be elected to a second term.
Saturday, July 29, 2023
It's been a terrible year so far for investors in US Treasury securities because of the rising rate environment, but great for stocks
UST yields rose a net 1.31% in the aggregate week over week on 7/28.
DFF rises to 5.33% after the latest FOMC rate hike.
Year to date Treasury, Total Bond, Cash, and Total Stock performance using popular Vanguard funds:
VFISX +0.75% VFITX 0.90% VUSTX 1.58% VBTLX 2.05% VMFXX 2.75% lol VTSAX 19.99%!
Stocks have been the place to be, and cash has beaten even the total bond market.
Meanwhile stocks are obscenely overvalued at 169 using the latest report of GDP out Thursday:
Saturday, July 1, 2023
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Saturday, October 8, 2022
The percentage holding full-time jobs through September 2022 held above 50%, disappointing the ubiquitous advocates of a Fed interest rate pivot
Full time as a percentage of civilian population in September was 50.3%, and for 2022 through September averaged 50.15%.
Not bad, considering.
The Fed will see little evidence in this figure that its interest rate increase policy is harming employment.
Stocks on Friday collapsed after a head fake to start the week to within 1.5% of the 52-week lows set a week ago.
Long term investment grade bonds and US Treasury securities also revisited lows from 9/27/22, coming within pennies of those benchmarks.
30-year yield for UST is back up to 3.86%. It was 3.87% on 9/27. At the beginning of 2022, yield was a paltry 2.01% by comparison.
UK gilts are experiencing the same action despite the Bank of England intervening to buy bonds.
The bond crisis is not over.
With yields soaring across the board no one wants to own the lower paying outstanding issues, which are legion, destroying their value.
But everything in the global economy is based on those, piled up in earnest after The Great Financial Crisis of 2008, and in orgiastic frenzy afterwards during the late pandemic.
Bond yields in 2022 are telling you that they are overvalued by 92%.
Stock market valuation is telling you a similar thing.
From 1938 through 2019 the median ratio of the S&P 500 to GDP is 81. In 2020 we averaged 154, or 90% overvalued.
This is the major deflationary headwind facing the world, the other side of the COVID-19 inflationary shock coin.
Push here, it comes out over there.
Modern central banking cannot escape this conundrum any more than the gold standard could.
The only thing the individual can do in this situation is to owe nothing and save everything, preferably in your hands.
Good luck.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Warren Buffett, the king of contraception funding, thinks women waste their brains having children
Two peas in a pod dedicated to deciding against life. |
Monday, June 30, 2014
Market cap to GDP ratios March 2009 vs. March 2014 flash valuation warning
Monday, June 23, 2014
Run away: Today's total market capitalization/GDP ratio is 1.46
------------------- = 1.46 (June 23, 2014: a really bad time to invest)
$17.101 trillion
$10.222 trillion
------------------- = 0.71 (April 6, 2009: a pretty good time to invest)
$14.381 trillion
h/t John Hussman, Warren Buffett
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Warren Buffett keeps the liberal wolves at bay by favoring higher taxes and now we learn abortion to the tune of $1.2 billion
Monday, December 30, 2013
North Dakota Railroad Involved In Accident Causing Oil Inferno Is Wholly Owned By Warren Buffett
Saturday, September 28, 2013
10-Year Treasury Rate Ends The Week At 2.64%
Friday, March 1, 2013
Warren Buffett, Amoral Crony Capitalist, Bought An Indulgence From The Left
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Harold Meyerson Thinks The Rich Got One Sweet Deal From The Democrats
"The tax deal Congress passed last week raised the top rate on wages and salaries from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The rate on income from capital gains and dividends, however, was raised to only 20 percent from 15 percent. There has been no rending of garments nor gnashing of teeth from our super-rich compatriots; they got one sweet deal."
Monday, December 31, 2012
Progressive Lefties At TNR Recognize Senate Deal Is "Crappy" For Them
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Rush Limbaugh Repeats The Rich Man's Lies: Middle Class Has "Bulk Of The Money"
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Rich Guy Prick Warren Buffett Votes For Suppressing The Middle Class
Sunday, April 22, 2012
The Atlantic's Lies About Tax Loss Expenditures
Here are the top ten tax loss expenditures for 2011, according to this committee of the US Congress:
But the more important point is that everyone in this bottom 66 percent of wage earners by definition makes less than $100,000 per year and by and large very few of them are playing around in the stock market, where fat cats like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney derive their unearned income, taxed at the non-permanent lower rates under the Bush tax legislation of 2001-2003. Were these rates permanent, however, this tax loss expenditure wouldn't even make the list.
Contrast that with something which is more or less permanent: the exclusion of income from Social Security taxation. The current income ceiling after which income is not so taxed is almost $107,000 per year. In 2010 just under $2 trillion in ordinary wages and salaries made by the rich escaped the Social Security tax. The tax loss expenditure of that? $125 billion, higher than anything in the Joint Commission's report. And it all went to the rich.