yadayada
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Posts posted by yadayada
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The hour glass. They sell watches in mostly singapore and some other locations in asia. If you want some insights on that industry + luxury industry over there. Very smart guy, and operating metrics of his business has been great compared to peers.
And peyto:
If you w ant to know more about natural gas industry in Canada, and maybe get some intelligent insights. He releases them monthly!
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Yeah from watching cosmos I got that there were early human like creatures that would make tools and would be more advanced then chimps. But they were very focused and specialized in certain things and could not adapt quickly. They had an edge on early humans that were like us (that were not very specialized). Then conditions on earth became more harsh (or just harsh enough?) and only the creatures that would constantly adapt to new climates and environments could survive (us). And the very fixed creatures who specialized but could not change their ways quickly did not survive.
So you have to wonder how much more harsh could things have been before we would have died out? What does that bell curve look like? Where a certain type of harshness produces us? A bit less harsh and you get bad adjusters that take way too long to change their ways and a bit too harsh and you get more extreme humans that are more violent (because of the lack of resources + hostile nature), or a quick extinction altogether?
So you might need a white star like us (only 10-20% in the universe?). You need a planet circling it in stable orbit for at least 1-2 billion years or so. It would have to be in a relative quiet area in the universe without gamma rays (that would rule out a lot of sun like stars).
And then you would need all kinds of natural selection filters that last just long enough and are just extreme enough to produce the kind of intelligence that can figure out how to cross to other star systems.
Finally you would need a certain amount of resources like metals and fossil fuels. What if there are too many fossil fuels? There might not be enough pressure to find alternatives. Too little and you might run out too soon and it could destroy civilization.
It would have to have the right amount of gravity. Who says that you could get enough info to advance tech without the info our hubble telescope provided about the universe?
Or how about this, without satellites the cold war might have went different? As that provided a big break through in intelligence for the allies. So you would have to avoid an extinction event there.
And we are scared of nukes now, but what if we invent a new energy source that is even more powerful and can use anything as fuel? It might become suddenly much easier to build powerful bombs.
And finally you would have to assume faster then light travel is possible in theory. Our galaxy is about 100k light years across. So 50k light years from us there might exist a massive advanced multiplanetary civilization that possibly knows of our existence (that would be very hard though, since they cannot see us yet)? But they think we are too far away to bother visiting if they would have powerful enough telescopes.
So if there are a 100 billion habitable planets with intelligent life in our universe that is only one planet per galaxy on average. So odds are very low of meeting in that case, despite having a 100 billion planets with inteligent life!
Even if there were 10 or 20 in our galaxy, on average they could be too far away to practically meet.
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yeah that is true, time would contract a lot, and it would take a lot less time. The problem is it would shred everything inside the space ship because you would have to speed up so fast. At least as far as I understand it. And even a tiny little object in the way would completely destroy it at those speeds.
Also not ruling out that life could exist on a red dwarf, just think they could not be intelligent. It would be very simple life, since they would either have to have a super dense atmosphere or they will have no atmosphere at all. And temperature variations would be huge. They would not have the luxury to have their offspring develop their brain for that long like we have. Gravity would be a lot stronger, so space exploration would only be possible if they would get super advanced tech. And would looking at the stars be possible?
It does seem that if the enviroment is extremely harsh, you also get tougher but more hostile people. So it would be interesting if intelligent life actually did develop on a planet like that. They must be so different then us!
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Or that radio waves only have a tiny tiny reach in our galaxy. As they tend to spread out as they travel longer. And there are 100 billion galaxies. So the signal becomes lost in the back ground noise rather quickly.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.html?
It could be that faster then light travel is not possible, so alien civilizations have given up on space travel. For us it is still exciting, but maybe if a civilization progresses another thousand years, they stop caring about it. Possibly they terraform a nearby planet, but that is about it. Since the universe is really really empty. There was a planet discovered 1200 light years from here recently, almost exactly like earth, with very similar sun, that had been orbiting for a billion years longer then us. Could be that they are super advanced, but don't see the point in travelling several thousand years to us? Even at 30% light speed, which would be ridicilous, it woudl take 3600 years. And then there is risk our planet might be destroyed by that time. Maybe they are watching us, except ofcourse they are watching us in the middle ages now with super powerful telescopes.
Also worth noting that most stars in the universe are red dwarfs (70% of them). And red dwarfs dont support life very well. Planets tend to be tidally locked if they are in a spot to reach enough sun light (meaning only one side to the sun all the time). And solar winds tend to blow off the atmosphere because they have to be closer to the sun, plus huge variations in temperature.
We are also relatively early in the age of our universe at 14 billion years. It took at least 6-7 billiion years for planets to form. And then it takes several billion years longer to actually form life. It could be that chances of intelligent life over the next few billion years increases rapidly?
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https://hacked.com/scientists-confirm-impossible-em-drive-propulsion/
Very very exciting! the almost ancient law of physics about to be broken. Who knows what will come out of this. we might be able to travel into space with significant % of light speed if this is true. It would also take a lot of the cost for satellites out of it if true.
The way i heard this explained was that it would be like rowing through the electromagnetic field. or like a submarine through water. Light is basically a disturbance in the EM field (waves in a invisible field that stretches through the universe). And by shoot lightbeams in a closed tube in a certain way, supposedly you would then get thrust, if this is not a measuring error. Without an actual action reaction between mass. would be interesting if this was true, and how far they could stretch this.
And ofcourse it was discovered by accident lol.
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Not jsut that, but also the fact that Greece public spending is probably lower. Since gov spending as % of GDP is only barely higher then in other EU countries, but a much larger % of GDP actually goes unreported (20-30% i think is the estimate?). So if anything they are not spending that much now. A lot of the wasteful spending was cut in 2011-12. So the problem here is tax collection.
And it seems if you squeeze the government, it will only cause populists to get more power. Which is bad for the country.
So essentially you are squeezing the government, and causing instability there by demanding austerity, while claiming to try and help solve the problem by demanding reforms? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. What happens is likely another government change, more instability and more chaos. And more unwillingless to pay taxes.
It really seems like Europe is using Greece as an example. Because the exact same thing is happening elsewhere in southern Europe. Except they can get the ponzi scheme going for a while still because they have not ran out of lenders.
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wonder when they will introduce GAAP profit mode.
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Other then that, what is the upside?
Imo if we want a union, the stronger should govern, but should also take care of the weaker. That's what a union is all about! And that's why a central government is necessary.
Imo either we proceed towards a central government, or we go back to what we were. Because anything in between, what we are right now, simply doesn't work.
Cheers,
Gio
I agree with your last statement. But my problem with your first statement is that there often is a big difference between what should be and what is actually going to happen :) . In practice, giving one party large amounts of power in a system gives problems. It would basically be Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium ruling over Europe. Now Im Dutch, but I still have a problem with that. And probably a large amount of southern EU voters will vote for the guy that promises them free stuff (that the north will have to pay for ofcourse). So how do you solve that? I just see so many problems with this that I prefer going back to what it was before the Euro. Or possibly have like several EU currencies.
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After reading Parkinsons law im not so sure if a very powerful government is a good idea. Somewhat powerful local governments seem a better idea. There needs to be easy free trade though. And it shoudl be easy to set up companies across borders. Other then that, what is the upside?
A central EU government that will have power over local country governments would be a nightmare. Enourmous corruption probably, with little upside. Im not even sure how you would do elections with all the different languages (and large % of southern EU barely speaking english). And there is no way the richer countries are willingly going to bleed for the poorer countries (like paying tax that will dissapear in corrupt italian/spanish/greek etc bureacrats pockets and funding southern welfare states etc). Local governments would have to give up serious power, and that central governemnt would be enourmously powerful, and probably controlled by corporations to fund election campaigns. It is sort of depressing to read about US elections where basically best funded guy likely wins (no matter how terrible he is). Lobbying is not that much of a problem now in EU vs US, but it would become a bigger problem if this would happen.
And a strong army is not necessairy. Globalization has increased a lot since the last big wars. And with nukes, the incentive to wage war is very very low. I think people have become more rational about how bad it is economically to fight a war (especially for common people). Unless your talking about Russia ofcourse :D. So maybe have an army big enough to crush Russia.
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Well in a few months the chinese market went from 20x earnings to 45x earnings, and now they are back at 20x earnings. Corrected itself really fast lol.
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Saw this in the yahoo comments (yeah I know), if true that is interesting:
Greece has the highest population in the world of people reporting an age of 110 years. The deaths are often not registered and pensions continue to be received. The European Union has found that there are families receiving 4-5 pensions, which they are not supposed to get. There are still pensions paid to persons who died in 1953. 40,000 girls receive monthly life pensions of 1,000 euros for the simple fact that they are unmarried daughters of deceased civil servants and it costs the state coffers #$%$ 550 million euros per year. Now they will receive only up to the age of 18.The pacemakers in Greek hospitals were acquired at a price 400 times higher than in British hospitals. In Greece, many workers have benefited from early retirement, set at 50 years for women and 55 for men who belong to one of the 600 job categories identified as particularly painful, and among which are included hairdressers (because of dyes that may be considered harmful), the musicians of wind instruments (blowing into a flute is exhausting) or TV presenters (the microphones are supposed to cause damage to health). (This law was adopted by the Socialist government of 1978).
In the last decade, it has created over 300 new public companies. Tax evasion is massive, over 25% of Greeks do not pay a cent on personal income. In addition, the weight of the public sector on the economy is overwhelming. There are about one million officials to 4,000,000 active people. On Greek public railways the average salary of employees exceeds #$%$ 66.000.- per year. And this includes the cleaners and the low skilled. The (almost free) Athens Metro delivers about 90 million tickets a year, while the total cost of this public company exceeds 500 million.
The French retirees receive on average 51% of the last salary, the Germans 40%, North Americans 41% and Japanese 34%. Meanwhile, Greek pensioners receive 96% of their earlier salary.
Greece has four times more teachers than Finland, the best educated country according to the last PISA report, while the student performance in Greece is the lowest among many European countries by comparison.
yeah so at least the 96% is not true, was cut to 54%.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/06/greek-pensions
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Chinese tourists are notorious. I think there was a problem a while ago with people taking shits in the halls of museums in Egypt if there was a line in front of the toilets. There are lot's of amusing horror stories if you search for them. A lot of them behave like complete uncivilized pigs. Chinese government had to issue a press statement that this behavior was unacceptable. Straight from the countryside and Mao's era. And a lot of these idiots just discovered the stock market! still buying stocks at 100x earnings lol. And to think that a lot of these stocks are frauds. At least the dotcom bubble had somewhat of a legit reason behind it (an exciting new technology).
But if you look at the stats, you see this will not have much of an impact, since stocks are a smaller % of household networths. And household leverage is low, and total value of Chinese stock market is much lower as a % of GDP then western countries (like 35% vs 100% of developed?). And like Liberty said, stocks are still higher then before.
Still think that because labor is more then 5x cheaper then in the west, there is room to grow. They are improving in a lot of area's that will boost economy (rule of law, corruption, infrastructure, education). Jinping gets it. If you think they are like Japan, Japan's workers were more expensive then the US when it crashed! GDP per capita higher etc. China's labor more then 5x cheaper then US. And more then twice as cheap then South korea I think. Chinese GDP can easily grow another 50% in the next 10 years.
Macroeconomics between countries seems to be a lot like valueinvesting in some ways.
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The key is to look at hong kong stocks. It spreads out to HK, but the other stuff doesn't. I wouldn't touch (or even know) how to buy those Chinese listed stocks.
Economist take on it:
The plunge of nearly one third over the past four weeks has left the dream in tatters. Although the market is still up by 75% over the past year, many mom-and-pop investors were late to the party. Less than a fifth of respondents to a large online survey by Sina, a web portal, reported making any money off stocks this year.For the government, the fall is damaging. Officials are seen to have promised the population a bull market, only to lure them into a bear trap. A flourishing of gallows humour in mobile-phone chat groups captures the sentiment. “Friends, don’t run, we’re here to save you,” cry the valiant soldiers in one joke, representing the state coming to the aid of the beleaguered market. Their refrain soon turns to, “Friends, don’t run, or we’ll shoot you.”
The warning signs had been flashing for some time. ChiNext, a board for high-growth companies, reached a price-to-earnings multiple of more than 150 at its height in early June, in the same region as American tech stocks during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. When share prices started falling, many assumed that regulators would stay on the sidelines and let the necessary correction unfold. But they lost their nerve after the market fell nearly 20% and negative headlines started to pile up, even in the domestic press.
Attempts to steady the market have been frantic and futile. Interest-rates have been cut; short-selling capped; IPOs halted; share-buying schemes, backed by central-bank cash, hatched. “We have the conditions, the ability and the confidence to preserve stockmarket stability,” blared the People’s Daily. Still the rout has continued.
The CSI 300, an index of China’s biggest-listed companies, fell 18% in the eight trading days after the rate cut. Some $3.5 trillion was erased from China’s stockmarkets, more than the entire value of all listed firms in India. By the end of July 7th trading in over 90% of Chinese stocks had been suspended, either at the request of the firms concerned, or because they had tumbled by the daily limit of 10%. “The government won’t let us take our money out of the market, and we don’t have the confidence to put any more into it,” said Wei Xinguo, a chef at a noodle restaurant in Shanghai and one of the country’s 90m stockmarket investors.
The sharpness of the slide has raised worries that Chinese growth itself is about to fall off a cliff. Mercifully, the stockmarket appears to be as disconnected from economic fundamentals on the way down as it was on the way up. At the same time as shares nearly tripled from the middle of 2014 until early June, China slouched to its slowest year of growth in more than two decades. In the past couple of months, the economy has actually started to improve. A burst of fiscal spending on infrastructure looks to have stabilised the industrial sector, while property prices, long in the doldrums, have started to tick up again.
The stockmarket is still just a small part of the Chinese economy. The value of freely floating shares is about 40% of GDP, compared with more than 100% in most rich countries. Stocks account for just 15% of household assets, so their slump should have a limited impact on consumption. The systemic consequences of the margin debt are also limited. The funding has come from brokers, not banks, and equates to less than 1.5% of total bank assets.
There will undoubtedly be some spillover from the panic. Futures contracts for raw materials from lead to eggs fell by their daily limit on July 8th as investors rushed to get their hands on cash. On international markets, the price of iron ore, which China consumes the bulk of, slid. Yet risks of a systemic nature remain remote.
The longer-term consequences could be severe, however. Like any big, sophisticated economy, China needs a healthy, functioning equity market. For investors from households to pension funds, stocks should, in theory, provide a better return over time than low-yielding bank deposits. For companies, equity financing would be an alternative to borrowing from banks, helping reduce their reliance on debt. The scrutiny and rules that come with a share listings should also help improve corporate governance.
Before the crash, China was inching towards reforms that would fix at least some of the distortions in its market. A programme launched last year connected markets in Hong Kong and the mainland markets. Though subject to strict quotas, it promised to introduce more of an institutional presence on China’s exchanges. Regulators had stepped up supervision of insider trading and had also planned to change the way initial public offerings work, giving companies more control over the timing and size of their listings. But as the government’s all-out, if ineffective, response to the crash shows, it is reluctant to cede control.
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FWIW, these assets supported $600M market cap in early 2011
During that period of time, Asian companies were targeting domestic Met Coal companies. (Fording, Western Coal Corp, Grande Cache etc...) There was a quite a bit of talk at the time that Cline was next on the list and the premiums being paid were quite large. I believe part of the increase in Cline was based on comps but I'm not sure we'll see that type of market again any time soon.
what are costs like of getting it out the ground? You could have a billion$ worth of coal, but if it costs a billion$ to get it out, not much worth. They don't go into much detail.
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That is anecdotal evidence, statistical evidence suggests otherwise. My grandmother smoked cigarettes everyday and she became a 100 years old!
Logic also says otherwise. The more freely information can flow, the more wealth a country will have. Language barriers = obstacle to information flow. Especially since just english will not cut it in a lot of places in a lot of EU countries. There is a reason the prime minister of Singapore pushed really hard to make English the first language.
You can like the US and still consider that there is some aweful mismanagement there that you don't see in most EU countries (the rich ones at least). A large (probably mostly unsupervised) and powerful EU government, just seems like asking for trouble. The whole 2 party system is just god aweful. American politics just seems like one big joke. The alternative is many many parties with opposing interests, which also does not seem like a good idea with the big differences you have in the EU. It would paralize decision making.
Not that it will happen anyway, as there is no way these governments will give up power to a central entity.
How would you do elections anyway? What language would they speak in? Would a Spanish person vote for a German or Latvian EU president that will not even speak their language? Since cultural differences are stronger, won't a German president be biased in favor of germans? It will cost enourmous amounts of money to run campaigns probably = lobbying = corporations getting more influence then they should (the atrocities i was talking about).
Edit: Here is a paper on it:
Conslusion is that language barriers affect the economic situation significantly.
Factor movements is basically how efficient labor is transferred. Since significant parts of southern Europe barely know english, or not at all, this really affects their economies.
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I dont understand how they literally pissed away 100's of millions and did not have a drop of revenue in all those years, even when coal was high?
some kind of fraud going on there?
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I really would not like a united states of Europe. You would get the same atrocities as in the US. You avoid that now by keeping things small. It would just be an inneficient mess. Youd get a lot of power abuse. It would mean another big layer of government, not sure what that would really add.
There is another thing people often miss when they compare US vs Europe, and that is different languages. It is just difficult to do business in France if you dont know it's language. So information does not flow as freely as in the US. A person from missisipi can easily move to New york or california, but a German person cannot easily move to France. The language barrier is real. And I think that also creates bigger cultural differences in turn. So harder to sort of roll your business out throughout Europe if your succesful in one or two countries.
@Jurgis: Then why are Denmark and Sweden doing so well? There is a difference between the euro and the EU. The EU will not fall apart if the euro falls apart.
And I think the euro will survive in some form. For example between a few rich countries. Or possibly a different currency for some of the poorer countries?
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What I meant by Varoufakis being not full of shit, is that those macro numbers are likely true. And the proposed reforms are also true. And the fact that Europe has not come towards greece in negotiations also seems to be true.
And yes he was forced out. Similar case with Bill Erbey I think. He left to please EU politicians, because he pissed a lot of them off by lecturing them and sometimes acting like an ass. He is not a good politician. Does not mean he is not right about certain things. Just because someone is a clown in a certain aspect does not immediately make everything they say untrue.
There are serious problems in greece, but you don't solve them by basically destroying the country imo. If I was greek id be scared by the next government if this one doesn't work out, they will be serious nutjob populists. Like those crazies you had elected in Argentina.
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They are in a hairy situation (tsipras). Because if you give in, you will be kicked out by your own people, but if you stick to your guns, and it goes south your career is over in every way possible. I guess that is why he did the referendum.
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Im in the school of thought that letting Greece bleed further when a somewhat rational government is in place now would do enourmous damage to the country. At this point the country could fall apart and become dysfunctional for the next 50 years as every drop of talent flees the country and becomes a second Argentina.
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I'm Greek American and both sides of my family are from Greece and got the heck out of there for better opportunity. The talent drain has been going on for decades already.
While I think they need a debt haircut, there are structural problems with their economy and government that can not be worked through quickly. The reasons they got to these unsustainable levels of debt are the primary forces at work here more so then any pension cuts or such. It shouldn't be a surprise that things have not improved quickly when you're dealing with decades of government mismanagement, tax avoidance and sweeping the problems under the rug.
Wouldn't you say though that giving the current government a chance would be a good thing for Greece. With their finance minister saying very rational things like this:
-We need to adjust to a new culture of paying taxes, not to higher VAT rates that strengthen the incentive to cheat and drive law-abiding citizens into greater poverty-We need to make the pension system sustainable by eradicating unpaid labour, minimising early retirements, eliminating pension fund fraud, boosting employment – not by eradicating the solidarity tranche from the lowest of the low of pensions, as the institutions have demanded, thus pushing the poorest of the poor into greater poverty and conjuring up massive popular hostility against another set of so called reforms
-An extensive (but optimised) privatisation agenda spanning the period 2015-2025
-The creation of a fully independent Tax and Customs Authority (under the aegis and supervision of Parliament)
-A Fiscal Council that oversees the state budget
-A short-term program for limiting foreclosures and managing non-performing loans
-Judicial and civil procedure code reforms
-Liberalising several product markets and services (with protections for middle class values and professions that are part and parcel of society’s fabric)
-Elimination of many nuisance charges
-Public administration reforms (introducing proper staff evaluation systems, reducing non-wage costs, modernising and unifying public sector payrolls).
-A major Anti-corruption Drive and relevant institutions to support it – especially in the area of procurement
-Liberalising the construction sector, including the market and standards of construction materials
-Wholesale trade liberalisation
-Media – electronic and press code of practice
-One-Stop Business Centres that eradicate the bureaucratic impediments to doing business in Greece
-Pension System Reform – where the emphasis is on a proper, long-term, actuarial study, the phasing out of early retirements, the reduction in the operating costs of the pensions funds, pension fund consolidation – rather than mere pension cuts.
Seems like a good list of things to put through. I have a feeling the EU wants to make an example out of Greece at this point, to scare of socialists in other PIIGS countries.
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Varoufakis blog sums it up nicely. It seems EU doesn't really budge and pensions would have to be cut further (beyond lowering pension age). It seems Greece has come quite a long way towards EU (unless Varoufakis is full of shit).
I dont think this means they will not pay anything. It just means they come short for the next payment, so they would cut debt by some %. This is purely for extensions to not technically default on loans.
Honestly their government spending as a % of GDP is not that much out of control at a little over 50% . If you consider the fact that over a 100 billion euro's was pulled out of their banks. A lot of their economy is not registered on official GDP numbers because of a cash black economy.
So if you consider that, their government spending as a % of GDP is the same as rest of Europe (around 40-45%)
This is also funny for the EMH believers. An entire country voted against this deal! that must mean it is a shit deal!
Im in the school of thought that letting Greece bleed further when a somewhat rational government is in place now would do enourmous damage to the country. At this point the country could fall apart and become dysfunctional for the next 50 years as every drop of talent flees the country and becomes a second Argentina.
Here is the most hypocrite thing, Greece would have to run a surplus to start paying off that debt. But when will Italy do that? Or France? Or the US for that matter? They have similar massive debts. Just looking at the numbers, and being rational, you would have to see that you need either massive inflation (money printing) which is not happening, or you would have to cut into those loans. So why would Greece suddenly have to start paying a lot of those loans back (at the worst possible time), when other countries still go on running their deficits? Im probably biased a littled bit for Greece, since I like rooting for the underdog, but it all seems a bit off to me. Especially looking at the numbers.
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hrrrnggggghh
he is prepared!
http://i.imgur.com/4lfrAO7.jpg
Trump and the american politics sideshow
in General Discussion
Posted
Im not american, but i must say your elections are usually very entertaining. Tonight is the first debate with Trump in it. Wonder what kinds of crazy shit he will say now! What would be the odds of that guy becoming president?
Honestly all the other candidates have the charisma of a bag of sand. And Trump is very popular right now. I think people are more fed up with empty shill politicians (or that is the image bush and clinton portray) then most of the elite expected. The funny thing is, after his remarks, apparently he has pretty decent approval from the latino's. Which kind of surprises me. Latino vote usually decides the elections right?
some have compared him to roosevelt as well. He was rich too, big ego and kind of known as an asshole and bully before being elected.