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Parker Haffey's avatar

Found this on my Notes feed. Wasn't really paying attention. Based on the general format I figured this was just a finance-schizo doom account. Scrolled through it. The Dan Rasmussen section caught my eye and I read it. Went back to the start and read the entire piece.

Ended up being a great roundup, thank you. Subscribed.

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dara childs's avatar

Its ludicrous to use the word stagflation in an environment with 2% inflation and 4.5% unemployment. Its just nonsense.

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Rudy Havenstein's avatar

Lol. The official CPI MODEL s 2.9%, almost 50% higher than their made-up 2% target. Their mandate is 0. The cost of living is up much more than that. 102 million adults aren’t even part of the labor force, and you’re popping off?

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dara childs's avatar

Inflation is 2.25% according to Truflation; a better measuring stick. The FED is tasked with 2%. 0% is not a target never has been and they are terrified of deflation. Brush up on the last 50 years of economic history. 102 million.......no one counts retirees, etc. Stagflation does not exist. Please be serious

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Blue eyed squint's avatar

Great work, Rudy.

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andy's avatar

INT. ELEVATOR - NIGHT

Carl steps into the elevator, Bud follows.

CARL

He's got your prick in his back

pocket, son, and you're standing

naked in the display window of

Macy's. He's using you. Only you're

too blind to see it.

BUD

No, what I see is a jealous old

machinist who can't stand that his

son's become more successful than

himself.

CARL

What you see, son, is a man who

never measured success by the size

of a man's wallet.

BUD

That's because you never had the

guts to go out into the world and

stake your claim.

CARL

(lamentably)

Boy, if that's what you think, I

must've really screwed up my job as

a father.

I saw the recently released Charlie Sheen thing. Charlie explaining himself.

I saw the tattoo inside one of his wrists, “Winning.”

And I saw someone who did win. Lotto ticket after lotto ticket.

And I saw someone who couldn’t handle winning. Used the proceeds to proceed full speed to self-destruction.

Funny how common knowledge winning-phobia is even as that is not much discussed, or curatives much explored, but “winning is everything” is more or less continuously emphasized, & taken for granted by many.

Can father, or parental, trauma set that snowball rolling downhill? Not a given, but yes.

Reading Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s The Assault on Truth. It’s about Freud strong out of the blocks with his “Seduction theory” faltering to back of the pack — & the comfort zone that made his product, Psychoanalysis, “viable” — with his recanting of his theory.

Seduction theory exposed sexual abuse of children in families, usually girls, usually by their fathers, as being a much more common cause of neuroses than anybody wanted to know, or hear about.

And the peers froze Freud out when he informed them of his findings.

But Freud was conflicted, not strong, even before that.

What he & his bromantic surgeon buddy Wilhelm Fliess did to Emma Eckstein, & then rationalized away, scapegoating & blaming the victim, too, should have removed both of them from the race, then & there, 1895.

Stand alone interesting but how Masson’s book fits current events revelations re trafficking, Epstein, dirty secrets/societies, blackmail, etc adds to the interest. Context. Old, not a new, story; horror story.

So. America. North American continent. Has it all. “Winning” is tattooed inside one of its wrists. Can’t get rid of those winning lotto tix fast enough.

And the American parents too started a karmic snowball downhill when & how they conquered the place.

Bud didn’t stake a claim. He jumped a claim. Big difference.

And the facts don’t change even if he was claim-jumped in his youth.

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patrick.net/memes's avatar

"large numbers of human beings whose existence may well prove an unequivocal liability to the owners of any ground on which they would reside"

When doing genealogical research of my Irish side, I used to wonder how people near starvation could afford boat tickets to America.

The answer is that the English landlords paid for the tickets, because the removal of the native Irish improved the value of the land more than the cost of the ticket.

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William Jackson's avatar

IMHO the actuary study is almost certainly an Urban Legend. It failed my personal sniff test. Does anyone really believe that 65 YO retirees only live an average of only 18 months? A quick search found no information about the supposed researcher, any published studies or any supporting data.

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William Jackson's avatar

Loved your interview on "know your risk" podcast and thanks for taking the time to reply. There are several red flags -

Date of article - 2002. Very difficult to verify much. This is an article; nothing close to an academic study.

The only data shown in the article are the table and graph which are attributed to "Dr. Ephrem (Siao Chung) Cheng". Who is he? I can't find any paper or support for this data anywhere. Did he really have adequate access to Boeing retiree database? Did anyone review his methodology? The only reference I can find to him is associated with this table and associated editorial.

Rather than blather further, a couple of links -

https://archive.org/details/boeing-lets-retire-the-rumor-about-life-expectancy-7.30.2004

https://stump.marypat.org/article/1233/mortality-with-meep-no-retiring-later-doesn-t-make-you-die-sooner-or-later

Statistics don't lie, but they are easily twisted.

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Rudy Havenstein's avatar

Both those articles say "the article" - they give a variety of different links - is wrong, but I don't think either is any more "scientific" than what I sent you. I'm not gonna die on this hill, but I still think there's something to the point of the original piece. If you disagree (as clearly others do), that's fine.

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Thomas Devoughan Day's avatar

I would like to see a Congressional oversight committee and annual audit of the Fed published annually for Public consumption and education. The Treasury may be the borrower and the Fed the Lender but we need the Lender to have a “ Boss “ which is btw, constitutionally speaking actually Congress. Congress needs to re-establish control by bringing light back to the dark room.

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Ian's avatar
Oct 6Edited

The retirement thing opening this post, IMO, misses the two big points- there's arguably less than half a sentence on the one.

- Commonly, guys who work to 65 do it because they have blinders on. They go through life with tunnel vision. BTDT. It sucks. Someone said.... if you don't feel loved, you want to feel useful, ... something like that. There are otherwise together guys who want to work past retirement. I hate to diss them given the insights I allude to above, but it is not a healthy way to live, OK?

Then there are those who can't manage money (or their own impulses)

Then impulses can mean junkfood, smoking, substance use or impulsively seeking sex. Did you know car accident rate among smokers is strikingly higher than non?

Anyway, then those impulses can mean divorces. Expensive divorces. That have you work another decade.

Oh, and that whole basket of psychology and cumulative inability to make good choices was just the one thing that got missed.

The other was the implied acceptance by sociologists and actuarilasts (is that word?) that disease has stress origination. The majority of those of use with life experience "know" that, but what is the medical field's official stance on that, mmmh....?

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Ian's avatar
Oct 6Edited

Then further down the jbulltard X post. He's right.

Someone posted on a forum (ZH comments of all places!):

"Funny how the rich are willing to say all of the following:

- "sorry, the government stole your social security"

- "yeah, we got super rich while the government stole your social security"

- "the government went totally broke after they stole your social security."

But as soon as someone says "We know where all that money went - the rich have it. Let's take it back", they're a damn communist parasite. "

What that poster is "seeing" is not wrong. But, I feel smarter than he, largely because of what Rudy here has posted, - that focusing and making suggestions of how to adjust the downstream effects isn't the right way. Try instead to go up near the headwaters/fountainhead.

And bell the cat. yeah. I know.

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andy's avatar

"What is Howard Roark's defense for dynamiting Cortlandt Homes in The Fountainhead?"

https://www.enotes.com/topics/fountainhead/questions/dynamiting-cortland-homes-howard-roark-breaks-law-248469

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bigfatpop's avatar

I often wonder why everyone seems so angry when I’m wandering through life. Then, I’m reminded from time to time that 7 of 10 people I encounter are living in relative desperate times.

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the long warred's avatar

F - the Markets. The Masque of the Red Death.

We 🇺🇸 have to build factories and energy and train our workforce, Look and see DOW formerly DOD is taking point on this along with VC like a16z.

Meanwhile speaking of BOTH Trump has created a gendarmerie in ICE, and is carving a real military out of the Old with the young. The old were informed Tuesday 9/30.

The young are the ranks who ❤️❤️❤️ this along with young Officers. Veterans ❤️ it because we’ve been waiting for this for 30 years.

At Quantico the enemy and mission were named, Quantico was ORDERS.

Plain old Orders.

Named the enemy.

So while yes the 💩 Ball of Finance is waltzing over a cliff - the right pieces are moved into place.

No it won’t suddenly be alright, it will get much worse in the right direction to get better.

Survival is ugly.

Victory is uglier.

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Jim Miller's avatar

Perhaps we need a constitutional amendment freezing all government pay and benefits (including congress and its staff) at current dollar amounts.

Willing to bet inflation would be gone in a hurry.

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Mitch's avatar

That assumes their above-board pay is a significant share of their overall income and I don't think it is. Money laundered book deals, speaking gigs, post government sinecures are a much bigger part of their income.

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Jim Davidson's avatar

Nobody in congress is unhappy with higher monetary inflation from the Feral Reserveless scam because nobody in congress makes less than $174,000 per year. Some readers may not know, but the average American makes $63,795 which means that a great many make even less.

The stock market is not at its real all time high, it is at its inflationary dollars all time high.

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