Luke

I agree mostly, i doubt though the stimulus played a bigger role here but could have strenghtened the covid supply chain issue effect, imagine also how many people pushed that money into the stock market and how much of the stimulus money was lost to the funds that sold the tech stocks at all these high valuations to the massive bag holders everywhere now. The crypto market alone lost a trillion in value, lots of money redistributed. With all these geopolitical tension, capex boom to diversify the supply chain, i think the easy stability and relative peace we had the last 20 years are not for granted anymore. So yeah, ups and downs makes sense to me too

So if wages rise for a few precent for the american working class, this wont lead to a horrible wage-price spiral that will destroy the economy and blow us all up. It would actually be beneficial for the system. The inflation came from the disruption in the supply chain and then partly from the ukraine war, these supply chains are reorganizing themselves right now, as does the EU sort out their energy problem (i hope).

My point why this is bad for our economy is described in this study: https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-growth.htm As the Time put it: "The iron rule of market economies is that we all do better when we all do better: when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, and hire more workers. Seventy percent of our economy is dependent on consumer spending; the faster and broader real incomes grow, the stronger the demand for the products and services American businesses produce. This is the virtuous cycle through which workers and businesses prospered together in the decades immediately following World War II. But as wages stagnated after 1975, so too did consumer demand; and as demand slowed, so did the economy. A 2014 report from the OECD estimated that rising income inequality knocked as much 9 points off U.S. GDP growth over the previous two decades—a deficit that has surely grown over the past six years as inequality continued to climb. That’s about $2 trillion worth of GDP that’s being frittered away, year after year, through policy choices that intentionally constrain the earning power of American workers"

"“The average income growth for the top one percent was substantially higher,” write Price and Edwards, “at more than 300 percent of the real per capita GDP rate.” The higher your income, the larger your percentage gains. As a result, the top 1 percent’s share of total taxable income has more than doubled, from 9 percent in 1975, to 22 percent in 2018, while the bottom 90 percent have seen their income share fall, from 67 percent to 50 percent. This represents a direct transfer of income—and over time, wealth—from the vast majority of working Americans to a handful at the very top"

I should have specified, of course we have millionaires that live paycheck to paycheck. What i am talking about is that 1. 15% of the US population lives in poverty, this number didnt change since 1960 (bottom should see rising of living standards in a working capitalistic system) 2. Capital flows have been hugely distributed upwards since 1975 (https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html) Same counts for my homecountry germany btw, end of the 1980s the average DAX-30 Manager made 14x of the average worker, today it is 50x. These people are not as poor as someone in a Kenia Kibera Slum but the numbers do show that the average workers has been hugely disadvantaged compared to the capital the US generated over the last 50 years.

When in 2020/2021 the economy was shut down, a lot of money that was not spend went into the stock market combined with a bubble/euphoria because too many sat at home and saw crypto and tech stocks multiply. Supply chain issues and the ukraine war/energy prices pushed prices high, we see a profit price spiral now and the fed raising to slow the system down. For now i think this thing will slow down and as @gregmal said, the inflation will calm. What has to be done about the huge financial disadvantages is another story.

The US economy and more than half the population there runs on austerity and deficits, barely money left, 60% paycheck to paycheck, lots of things financed on credit card debt, huge loans etc. The problem is not that they arent saving enough, they dont earn enough. The capital flows go to little into the hands of these people and too much goes into financial engineering. Indices had a huge run since 2008 but the real economy looks different. Varoufakis put it nicely: "a majority of people in the majority of advanced countries are struggling to make ends meet,they work soul destroying jobs. They work plenty of hours and there is absolutely no connection anymore,the end of the American dream if you want to put it that way, there's no connection anymore between how hard you work and the probability that you will manage to rise up in their social mobility, however hard you work, you will never make it these days, at least for the median brit and median german. Huge inequality is the other side of the coin of high asset prices" We discussed this in another thread i think, about keynes theory of 15 hour work week by the end of the 20th century. Didnt happen, instead we have an overblown financial sector with more funds than stocks in the US... What needs to happen are real investments into the real economy by international capital, growing wages so that these investments can be absorbed, business has to offer good well paying jobs--> less debt for the average american, more political stability in the US, better quality of life, higher productivity etc reinforcing the cycle. Unfortunately, the capital currently is still too concentrated and then inactive/not increasing growth/multiplying.

There is also a profit price spiral which is a reinforcing driver here...the american worker had to live with bad wages for a long time and is not the one to be blamed.

5% growing wages are a real nothing burger, we dont see any productivity gains because when wages stagnate and human labor is too affordable, why innovate? Pressuring wages are an innovation driving factor. You also have to consider by how much wages did not grow over the last 40 years. Arguing for a wage price spiral here is just trying to keep people poor and maintaining or increasing corporate margins...imagine what would happen if the average american could afford some more toys, may it be a newer TV or another iPad for little Johnny. Growing wages would lead to higher demand, investments for Jobs and growing Sales. Its business that decides to increase prices more and more so we dont have any real rising standard of living while gushing out the dividends to people who are mostly well off and dont increase consumption in sectors that would really grow GDP...at some point the macro economy is important even for the micro shareholder investing perspective mindset.

I doubled my BN Position and sold some Micron and Amazon for it

Do you remember why they were shut down?

Well said, Noam Chomsky said something similiar in this YT Video. He says that these two global superpowers have their own ,,Party Lines" also regarding the ukraine war. The global south thinks the West is ridiculous with their moralization of russia, there have been plenty of brutal wars where US played a role and killed thousands. Why do we suddenly have to be so mad against Putin if the US is hypocritical? India buys more gas and doesnt see the points. Of course putins war is horrible but similiar acts have been done by the US in the past. As westerners, we just dont see it (manufactured consent, biased media, Western Party Line). China has their own criminal things going, human rights problems, trying to get access to key technology with patents etc. Its not innocent either but as you said, they are growing their own alliances pretty well and have satisfied customers. They copied the US imperial strategy and are now almost more successfull then the US.

As Munger said it: ,,I think its off the table for a long time,, Taiwan wont declare independence because they dont need to. Tsai Ing Wen said it herself, they ARE ALREADY independent. No need to announce anything here.

The question is, where does China benefit in an Invasion and will they act just to set a statement. China will lose access to high end chips as will the US (some will be able to come from samsung but its a small amount). Whole world will fall into a great depression for at least 5-10 years until semiconductor supply chains were able to be built elsewhere (if they can even run them as well as the TSMC team does and if they manage to pull enough talent into these foundries since taiwans engineers and workers could die in the war when the reserves are mobilized. China will likely not have access to ASML machines at all for the future, i doubt they can advance in EUV without the european supply chain. They will have killed ten thousands of their own soldiers, many depressed mothers, brothers, sisters and family members, questionable impact on their own political stability.

230109_Cancian_FirstBattle_NextWar (1).pdf From Center of strategic and international studies: https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargaming-chinese-invasion-taiwan They ran an interesting simulation and looked at different outcomes of invasion in Taiwan. 80 Pager research. I think its quite accurate, i will also post what Chris Miller, the Professor who wrote the Book Chip War said about a Taiwan Invasion.

A lot depends on interest rates here and how well they make their bets, past performance is quite decent already. Future has a lot of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, wouldnt surprise me if we go away from the peaceful 0% growth mode. How do you guys personally see interest rates developing?

Sorry, the US has how many people living in that country? If China attacks europe, obviously we will have problems just because of the population difference, its plain math. That germany went havoc on europe and then needed to be attacked by the whole World shows that europe is not some powerless US base, not that it was any good what happened in WW2. Fine, if you dont want have discussions where people have different viewpoints.

I think, and i can only speak for germany, that everybody here wants freedom. But we understand that in order to have freedom, you need regulation, otherwise corporations can take away your freedom with bad wages, bad products etc. We do defend our freedom and the system we have and we are getting more and more independent from the US (see germans extra funding for the military). Where did the US defend germany in WW2 exactly Sir?

Lol, he was down 50% in a marketcrash and so were his partners? Why would Munger care? This is literally all there is in this article: This sounds like a big nothing burger, where did he lose everything? Money and House? He did use a little bit of leverage and it was fine for DJCO? Berkshire owns chinese equity?

Spot on. And bad culture is everywhere in US politics...

Just to throw in some words from Chomsky: