Economy on fire update

It slowed down last year - it’s shit this year.

People are finally starting to tighten up their wallets. This is a good thing, and a strong indicator that the economy is and has been shit for the past few years.

HuskyBuck has been talking up the stock market, so he must be pissed that consumers are engaging in behavior that will help reduce inflation.

Gaza is recurring revenue stream.

Build shitty pier. Works for a week breaks up. Build new shitty pier, gets bombed or breaks up. Rinse repeat.

I hear MMT and universal basic income is the answer.

Same. Out Saturday night and the place was maybe 30% full. If that.

Cheaper to eat/drink at home. Barely.

GDP alone is a bad measurement. If you look at what I believe people call net GDP, which is the spread between GDP growth and national debt growth, it’s much worse. We’ve been essentially growing the national debt at more than double the clip of the growth rate of GDP. And that has been happening since 2021. I also think the debt is getting so bad that the government is intentionally trying to keep inflation up because it makes it easier to pay the debt back when bills come due.

But with slowing growth, it’s going to end up being a huge miscalculation by the fed. Tough times are coming. I see a SPY pullback of 30-40% starting in the next 6-18 months. FANG and Nvidia are the only things keeping the market green right now.

I moved my brokerage funds to cash collecting 5% APR. it’s below inflation but I won’t be going red either, which is the direction I think we are headed.

Cascadia Brewing was jam packed when we were there last Thursday for girls softball pizza party. Economic downturn affects Bellevue a little less than it does Vancouver, I guess.

Historically, the US was a territorial acquirer through the Manifest Destiny period in which we had US states running from the original 13 colonies on the east coast to Washington's state hood on the West Coast in 1889. The last real territorial conquest is some Spanish colonies we picked up after the Spanish-American War in 1898. Pretty much since then the American people have been generally isolationist. We won World War I and then left. We won World War II and picked up no territory. We had areas of political influence but no where near colony status. All military actions since then were pretty much fighting communist expansion. Some people made a lot of money over Vietnam, but not the American people. Sort of like all the US money sent to the Ukrainian oligarchs. NATO expansion to surround Russia was never an American priority for the working private sector American. Our elite open border policy has nothing to do with being a great empire and is clearly not America First.

The border crisis is a result of a lot of bad actors across the board, including many American businesses. But like it or not many industries depend on cheap laborers from Mexico and Central America.

I personally am in favor of making the border more secure while making it easier for folks to get visas to come work here, while the government actually prosecutes businesses for using illegal labor. I'm not holding my breath that will happen but it would be nice.

I also think the left is in for a rude awakening if they expect Catholic immigrants to become staunch liberal voters.

you are so dumb. Of course it’s good if America is emperor.

So was Rome and then it wasn't. Roman Senate tried to pull some lawfare shit on Caesar and he took it badly.