Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[WingsFan]

Pence’s strategy, while smart for his 2020 hopes, was neither particularly loyal nor particularly sycophantic. The result may be that Pence won the debate only to lose influence with Trump — and the conservatives celebrating tonight’s win might be experiencing a Pyrrhic victory.

Trump is unhappy with Pence upstaging him. Will Trump fly off the handle tomorrow? Trump doesn’t like to be upstaged. He prizes loyalty above all else. His political style is almost entirely based on asserting dominance over other men.

[Wild Hoss]

Pence doesn't stand a chance in 2020, unless something catastrophic happens to the economy. He will get massacred on his stances on social issues.

[WingsFan]

I dont think ill see a republican win the White House again in my lifetime. Still, Pence was so effective last night that he gives the party a sense of long-term optimism, see this morning’s Wall Street Journal editorial.

[Wild Hoss]

They're desperate for any hope to hang onto relative to where they are, so that doesn't go real far as a selling point IMO. Pence is more of the same formula that's failed them badly the last two elections, and barely worked for the two cycles before that, when their guy had a strong economy and the nation was substantially more conservative socially than it is now.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Good piece from Nate Silver on the differences between PA and OH and why the gap seems very big this year. The two states are almost identical racially but the white population of PA is more Catholic, less Evangelical, and more college-educated.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-maybe-its-time-for-ohio-and-pennsylvania-to-part-ways/

[hack]

It's gonna be interesting in the future -- both sides may or may be hungry for outsiders. We'll see. Maybe not this cycle, but the next one. Assumptions and debate points are changing. We'll see which party figures out first how to adapt.

[hack]

Good piece from Nate Silver on the differences between PA and OH and why the gap seems very big this year. The two states are almost identical racially but the white population of PA is more Catholic, less Evangelical, and more college-educated.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...-to-part-ways/

Furthermore the majority of those who went to a university in Ohio didn't get much out of it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[hack]

Looks like a giant paisley. Prince's revenge.

[CGVT]

This made me laugh

[WingsFan]

Seen that, so much for that vegan diet. Bill needs to go back to McDonalds and eat a few Big Macs,

and David Lee Roth is much younger than both and has turned into Larry King.

[edindetroit]

Seen that, so much for that vegan diet. Bill needs to go back to McDonalds and eat a few Big Macs,

and David Lee Roth is much younger than both and has turned into Larry King.

To many years of being a gigolo.

[Wild Hoss]

...everywhere he goes.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

[hack]

hack said:


And it is the role of a banking system to spread the money around. Money that is "...in the hands of too few..." is actually in a bank or in a financial instrument if there are positive real interest rates. The bank then "spreads" it to those who need money for productive ventures. Financial instruments just eliminate the middleman.

And how do we determine who gets the loan? Well, consider a project with a 15% rate of return, and one a 6% ROR. If the bank is charging 5% for the money, it is unclear who will get it. But if the bank is charging 8%, then only the first project gets funded. Could the bank charge a higher rate? Sure, but money is totally fungible, so there is a lot of competition to make the loan to the first project. This is both a democratic and a merit-based way of allocating capital.

Now, imagine a negative real rate, or more pertinently to the US, an artificially low rate created by the printing of $ 10 Trillion by the government. First, there is no incentive to use banks: no interest. Second, money flows to paper assets that provide some return (causing a stock bubble). Third, and IMO most important, there is no way to determine the most productive uses of capital, so we get low growth. Fourth, the main risk to the owners of capital is a political risk, and not an economic risk.

I think what's important for me here is that you're talking about a scenario that doesn't happen very much anymore. People with that kind of excess capital don't give it to banks, and they aren't seeking out a <2% return from a savings account. Furthermore what we call a ``bank'' these days isn't that. A bank now is far more than a conduit of capital and it doesn't make money primarily on net interest margins. They are now investment funds that also provide deposit-banking services. They make money through fees, their own proprietary trading desks, and arbitrage opportunities.

[entropy]

This made me laugh

LOL