Is There a New Dotcom Bubble?

This is only on new debt.

He literally just paid the biggest tax bill in history.

 

Curious as to how much he paid, so I just Googled it.
11 billion to 15 billion dollars for federal and state 2021 taxes.

Tesla paid zero taxes for the same period.

 

Not relative to his income... relative to my income, I pay more than Elon, a lot more. And most citizens also pay more than him in % of their income.

 

Correct, but that is why their large deficits, year after year, and the QE since 2008 is now a massive problem. They fund the shortfalls in the revenue they receive by issuing treasury bonds of varying interest rates dictated by the federal funds rate at the time of issuance. This causes the price of bonds to fall as there is an inverse relationship between the interest rate and the value of a bond. The higher interest-paying bonds are obviously worth more.

The Fed has been buying US treasuries and mortgage-backed securities since 2008 taking their balance sheet from around $890b to $9t. They did this to artificially stimulate a dying economy, but in the long term, it would have been better to go through a depression and let things recover naturally. The Fed also has to pay interest on its liabilities which is classed as public debt, and this is also affected by the federal funds rate.

The US’s deficit in the last few years has been at its highest, and in the last fifty years there has only been one instance of a budget surplus (2001):



They have spent circa $6t more than they have received in revenue from just 2020-2022 alone. They cannot keep doing this with a debt of over $31t. Constantly raising the debt ceiling without balancing the books is a dangerous game to play with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 133%. It’s laughable to think that the confidence rate for creditworthiness is supposed to be a ratio of less than 77%. Ideally, a lot less.

History has taught us time and time again that printing money, or debasing a currency, doesn’t work. We never seem to learn, though, because in times of desperation, humans will do anything to stay afloat.

The problems we are facing today are the fault of various governments’ fiscal policies, and the monetary policies of central banks. It is difficult to tackle inflation on such weak foundations and this is the worst the US has been, financially speaking, in its history, and the same is true of many other countries.

 

What’s ridiculous to me is how countries buy each other’s bonds when none of them has any money. The US fills its deficit by issuing bonds and then countries and institutions that are also broke, buy them, lol. Then we end up in the absurd situation we are in now where countries owe each other vast amounts of money when none of them can pay each other back. So, they print more money. And they call crypto crazy, lol.

99% of the crypto market is useless and serves no purpose other than to act as a casino for degenerate gamblers, but the 1% that does serve a purpose will change everything, IMO.

 

Interest rates should be already at 10% or more.

Markets Briefing. US stocks fall as investors price in prospect of further interest rate rises

 

More lay-offs?

Meta delays setting team budgets as it plans fresh round of job cuts

 

The CPI is on Valentine’s Day. It will be interesting to see what we get.

 

If data were true to reality, I guess we can only expect a very high CPI.

In Spain no one believes government data anymore, as they are telling us unemployment is the lowest in like 15 years or more, and CPI is at 5,8% according to government "data", down from a 8,5% CPI average for last year. At the same time the Netherlands is reporting a 17.7% CPI, and Latvia a 25% CPI.

So clearly the Spanish government is cooking data. Our electricity bill has doubled, petrol prices are through the roof (at the pump), and food... well... that's just crazy. Olive oil in Spain (world's largest producer) is at 5.30 EUR per litre (and this is ordinary supermarket brand). A nicer brand stands at 8 EUR per 1 litre of olive oil. That's just crazy, utter nonsense.

 

Feds charge Dallas tech company’s ex-CEO in $67 million fraud (dallasnews.com)

Another scam...

 

These cars are not reliable:

Tesla to recall nearly 363,000 cars over self-driving software flaw

 

You will not believe it but it seems Theranos Chief Scammer, Elizabeth Holmes, is still free, and was expected to get into jail by April. In the meantime, she's living a luxury life after being convicted for fraud.

This chap is not in jail either. He is missing a terrific business oportunity that could "disrupt" world prisons: setting up a barber shop in jail.



US judge questions Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions

 

We in ‘Murica are trying to put less people in prisons.

America’s incarceration rate falls to lowest level since 1995

The U.S. incarceration rate fell in 2019 to its lowest level since 1995, according to recently published data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the statistical arm of the Department of Justice.

America’s incarceration rate falls to lowest level since 1995

 

I thought some prisons were privately run in the US, and the general interest was to put criminals behind bars.

 

Another turn of the screw on Chinese tech billionaires... and the shares of his company have plummeted.

Chinese billionaire tech banker Bao Fan goes missing | China | The Guardian

 

Quoth Bob Dylan: For the times, they are a-changin'

Maybe they will change again in the other direction, but right now you can see what is happening, the prisons are disgorging their residents. Quite a lot also were released during Covid, the reasoning being a measure to reduce infection transmission.

Many areas are decriminalizing certain behavior that formerly would have involved jail time, for example, in California, shoplifting up to $950 per instance is now de-facto legal, meaning it is now only a misdemeanor, and as a result police generally do not investigate, and if they do, prosecutors let it go. The criminals of course have figured this out, they fill up their shopping carts with just under the $950 limit, and nobody bothers them, they just walk out of the stores unhindered. It's a lucrative gig!

 

That will certainly contribute to inflation haha.

In Spain it is politicians who are decriminalizing their corrupt practices. Now the misuse of public funds, and public money "lost" carries a much lower sentence.

Politicians are paving the way for legally stealing taxpayers money. Worst of all is no one goes out to demonstrate. People are being robbed and they do nothing about it. The most some people do is adapting to the new situation.

At the end of the day, law-abiding citizens are being robbed via corruption and crazy taxes and every day they are further cornered, lacking options.

And "technology" or, rather, distractions are taking everybody's attention from important matters and turning them into useless couch potatoes that cannot stand up for any values.

This is also, in a way, corruption disguised. Boris Johnson will get 2.5 million for "speaking" advances (for speeches, conferences etc.) All these things stink of re-payment of political favours.

Boris Johnson ‘agrees to buy’ £4m nine-bed Georgian manor house (with moat) | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

The world should pay these clowns known as "politicians" for NOT speaking anymore... they never solve anything. The only thing they do is stealing from everybody else.

 

And the chap is not in jail yet... and did not visit the hairdresser either!


Hedge fund Galois shuts down after half its assets trapped on FTX

 

More lay-offs.

Online fashion retailer Zalando to cut jobs as economic slowdown bites

 

Intel looks like a textbook case of value trap:

Intel slashes dividend as revenues plunge

 

Bankman-Fried hit with further criminal charges

If he looks at the judge like that... to jail for sure...

 

Could recent events like this below be contributing to it?

Violent Crime On The Rise Amid Bail Reform...

Lately it seems like there's been more crazy cases of people not being jailed even after murdering someone such as the Duck Sauce Killer in Queens, New York.

 

@Rockstar, I think the idea is that not jailing the criminals improves social justice (because people of color are jailed at higher rates than white people).

My opinion however is that it does the opposite. It increases crime dramatically in neighborhoods where people of color live. They then feel unsafe and they get victimized.

 

Dimon (JP Morgan) said inflation is "out of control".

Basically, Jay Powell is doing a shitty job and should be fired. And those useless "central bankers" from the ECB, politicians put in charge of the monetary policy, should be fired too... Lagarde first of all.

 

Carvana: -23% today.

It seems the time for what people call "technology" and the time for meme stocks is over.

 

I see that the SEC is as incompetent as our market regulator in Spain. It's hard to understand how a company can "conceal"... USD 32bn!

This is the funniest part: Ensign Peak has agreed to pay a $4mn penalty to settle the charges while the church will pay $1mn. Neither party admitted to any wrongdoing.

Mormon church and its investment adviser fined by US regulators | Financial Times (ft.com)

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has fined the Mormon church and a non-profit organisation that manages its $32bn equity portfolio over attempts to conceal the scale of its investments.

Ensign Peak Advisers, the investment firm owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), failed to file quarterly investment disclosures known as 13F forms and set up more than a dozen shell companies to help hide the size of the church’s equity portfolio, according to a statement released by the US regulator on Tuesday.​

 

Swedish telecom company Ericsson will lay off 8,500 workers as part of its cost-cutting measures, the company confirmed to CNBC on Friday. It will affect roughly 8% of Ericsson’s staff of 105,529 worldwide. A spokesperson said most of the layoffs would take effect in the first half of 2023 but could also extend into 2024.

 

He should have been arrested from the moment his fraudulent activities were uncovered, but it seems the billions he had given to people in high power protected him. He stole money in a similar manner to Bernie Madoff, and yet you wouldn’t have known at the time with the way it was being reported. It was unbelievable how many puff pieces were being written.

It was clearly him who hacked FTX when the rest of the money was stolen. It was beyond a shit show, but it was allowed to happen. Where was Gary Gensler during all of this? It’s one of the biggest farces in finance that I’ve ever witnessed, and he was implicit.

The rumours of the orgies at the headquarters, and the escape via a private jet, etc, was so wild that if it was in a Hollywood script, people would have said it’s too far-fetched.

Before any of this was reported, I was listening to various Twitter Spaces where high-profile people within the crypto industry were outing SBF by highlighting everything that he was doing. One such person was Hussein Faraj, an Australian blockchain entrepreneur who had invested with Alameda. He spoke candidly about how Sam was defrauding people and went into detail about how he was doing it; he blew the whistle on his operations, and yet, nothing was reported in the press following this. Many others came forward, and still, nothing was being reported. By the time it was mentioned in this thread, for example (after it finally reached the MSM), it was old news. This entire incident can only further highlight the extreme amount of corruption that occurs at this level.

SBF was reportedly sitting playing video games in his luxury home in the Bahamas during the aftermath (this went on for weeks/months). He even did a load of interviews where he was all cool and relaxed like nothing had happened (and you could hear his video games in the background)! It blows my mind. Bernie Madoff went to prison for life and was rightly condemned. SBF is still being treated like a saint in comparison.

 

Gary Gensler is utterly useless and serves no purpose. He talks about protecting people's money whilst allowing the FTX atrocity to happen. Also, what is his reasoning for continuously blocking all spot Bitcoin ETF proposals? There isn’t a valid legal reason as to why, and no credible arguments can be made against it because he has already approved a futures ETF. It’s ridiculous.