The Frankish Reich

And suddenly those clever Latin phrases that you apparently don't understand vanish, to be replaced by "whiny"

Non-sequitur? A quick logic lesson: - Persons who have done vile acts in their adulthood, even if they have completed criminal sentences, should not be invited to hobnob with current employees at their workplace - Mike Vick did vile acts in his adulthood - ergo, Mike Vick should not be invited to hobnob at the Buffalo Bills place of business

True. And under the new collective bargaining agreement, you can't start as a driver. You start in the warehouse sorting packages. Then, you know, work your way up. And if you show up on time, sober, and ready to work, you get promoted to driver. Or you can drop out of school at 17, work sporadically for a bit, start drinking to excess, buy a nice guitar, and turn your failure to launch into a kind of 2023 stardom by blaming someone else. Your choice. It's a free country. Not that complicated. He's saying (and I agree) that Oliver Anthony seems like a man of modest talent, not nearly as accomplished as many of the great bluegrass pickers or even many of the undiscovered amateurs. That's fine. A lot of our highest paid acts are far from the best musicians or songwriters. But his Rich Men is pretty unremarkable as a song and as a performance. It wouldn't be a hit if it didn't say the things certain people want to hear.

Yeah, and I'm a chiseled 6'3" 215.

What Mike Vick did was evil. Not some kind of regulatory offense. I see no reason why any respectable business would invite him to hang out with its employees. But I don't have a dog in this fight.

I like how you gave that avatar strawberry blonde hair.

Attitudes toward women are also quite different in different cultures. I think actual Super Bowl champion Ray Rice could also show the Bills a thing or two about making it to the next level.

You sound like his neighbor "Smeared" suggests a poor schmuck who didn't do anything wrong who was falsely accused. That is not exactly the case here.

Sorry. I'll just sign-off with this very, very hetero image.

And as usual people are seeing what they are predisposed to see. One of my kids just sent me a bunch of memes - everything is about Trump's weight comparing him to various 6'3" 215 athletes. Meanwhile my dad is telling me how Trump's mugshot shows he is a fighter.

Those homoerotic images of Trump should be banned. Children could be here!

Haha ... former small town mayor to former governor to former VP candidate to failed Dancing with the Stars contestant to failed congressional candidate to ... ... NEWSMAX commentator. Not even Fox, or minor league Fox Business. NEWSMAX. Kind of like the NFL first-round pick who winds up playing in the XFL.

The first part is true. Returns under Biden have not been "stellar." More "normal" overall. But take a look at this chart - particularly the Bush 43 years and the Obama years: https://www.investopedia.com/presidents-and-their-impact-on-the-stock-market-4587369 The second part is not true if we talk about the post-COVID shutdowns economy. Overall, the markets have seen huge gains, followed by a rapid uptick in inflation. I think it's fair to say that the investor class* has done extremely well while the middle class has borne the brunt of price increases. *perhaps more accurate to compare "those with investable savings" vs. "those with significant debt." And right now, with rising interest rates, the first class is still doing just fine (what's so bad about 5% interest rates on safe fixed income investments?) and the latter class is going to feel the pain (rising rates on credit card debt, consumer loans, mortgages). This is life in a capitalist economy.

Ugh. I can do this all morning (well, for another 15 minutes or so till I have a meeting): S&P 500 is up about 14% since Biden was inaugurated. No, that's not the doubling that greedy equity investors somehow think is sustainable. But it's 14% up over the course of 31 months, even as the Fed has embarked on its longest sustained interest rate increase program in over 40 years. So that's on average about 5.5% per year annualized, which is right within the normal long term range. And it means that at that sustained rate an investment of, say, $100,000 would double in 13 years. The "investor class" (again, I dispute the Bernie Sanders-ish terminology, since that includes everyone with a 401k) has nothing to whine about.

And if they'd had more guns they could've shot the fire dead.

I would like to see more money spent on geoengineering research. It is a critical issue. But if people believe it truly is a threat to the continued existence of human life on the planet, we ought to be thinking outside the box here instead of just taking prudent incremental steps to reduce emissions over decades.

And I wonder where Black Rock and Vanguard get all that money to buy stock in S&P 500 companies? Could it be that they get it from institutional (think "pension funds") and individual (think: you and me and our 401ks) investors? If I were as childish as some here, I would have just responded "commie!" After all, you are blaming "the capitalists."

I will grant you this - the media ask questions like the "raise your hand if" one that don't really allow for a sensible answer. If I were up there, I would have tried to answer three different questions, something no one has time for: 1. Is the climate changing? Answer: yes. Clearly. The world as a whole is warming. 2. Is this explained in whole or in part by greenhouse gas emissions? Answer: Yes, at least in part. But we do not know whether 80% of the warming is attributable to human action or whether its as low as 50% or 20%. 3. Is it prudent to take steps as a country and as a world to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Answer: yes. On a U.S. level, it is prudent to take such steps. But (as Vivek noted) it is critical to also work with other huge contributors (China, India, others) if such steps are to have an appreciable impact. Of course, country (USA) level interventions will have to be balanced against economic and other costs (mining of rare earth metals, etc) in developing sound policies. I would guess that 90% of informed voters would agree with me on these 3 propositions. Good luck giving any candidate time to explain. And good luck getting any candidate to answer in anything other than political talking points ("mass extinction!" "hoax!")

Well, yeah! The investor class was pretty damn happy with stock market returns in 2020-21. It was, in retrospect, pretty absurd (we paid the price with inflation later). "15 days to stop the spread" was announced by the White House on March 16, 2020. The S%P closed at 2425. On December 30, 2021, it closed at 4778. Doubled during the course of 20.5 months, which of course included a time in which huge parts of the economy were shut down. This is what the government can do when it takes unprecedented interventions in the economy. But there was no free lunch ...

WTF was that Vivek hand doing? That's just weird. This makes sense: Vivek as Trump's stalking horse, aimed squarely at Ron. Vivek is going to be the subject of a whole lot of oppo research now, and he deserves it. There's a lot of pretty unsavory things in his pharma bro past.

Damn media, conspiring to frame poor Sirhan.

The investor class has had it easy. Agreed. The powers that be, both elected (Congress/White House) and "deep state" (the Fed) did not want to see the kind of market collapse that probably should have accompanied a pandemic that caused a severe fall in output. So all those interventions protected - overprotected in my mind - the investors, in an attempt to avoid the harm of an actual depression. We can and should debate whether it was too much and whether the spoils of those interventions were equitably distributed. But the bottom line is we did emerge in relatively good shape economically. That doesn't mean we just say everything is awesome and stop worrying about deficits and inflation and interest rates. But still: relatively good shape.

Says a lot about the composition of this forum.

It's a good, solid return for people with a medium to long-range time horizon. The problem, of course, is that the markets were on a sugar high during peak COVID as the Fed held interest rates near zero, continued to pump the money supply, and Congress and the White House (both occupants of it) went on a spending spree, dumping huge amounts of money into the economy. Without those interventions we would have seen a significant market decline in 2020 and 2021, no doubt followed by a bigger rebound in 2022 and 2023. I guess it's good to make money, although you seem a bit unsure of that ... Where's the eyeroll emoji you use all the time?

S&P 500 up 14.7% since Biden was inaugurated. More proof that perceptions are out of step with reality.