rkbabang

Yes, the US would never threaten a state with force if it wanted to become independent. That would never happen/has never happened.

Bitcoin currently has 8 decimal places. The smallest possible unit, 0.00000001 BTC is called a Satoshi. So if it really were to get to 1BTC = $1B, the smallest unit, a Satoshi would be worth about $10. Long before you get to that point it would be required that bitcoin add a decimal place or two (or another 8), which can be done if 50+% of the mining power agrees to the change. At 1BTC = $1M a Satoshi would be $0.01, any substantial BTC increase in value from there it would probably be prudent to add decimal places to the protocol.

In other Big Mac McNews: http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/mcdonalds-launching-dispenser-big-macs/

I agree...in terms of business and the economy, so far so good. I just wish he would worry about that more than how he is portrayed, or crowd size, etc. I'm also terribly worried that this administration will take women's rights backwards a couple of decades. I don't have any children of my own, but I do have cousins and nieces in the U.S. We will watch and see! Cheers! I agree with your first statement above. He is obviously letting what people say get to him. He needs to get over it and rein in his ego a bit. As for women's' rights I know he said that he is against abortion, but that ship has sailed, he will never be able to ban abortion in the US. It isn't going to happen. What he can do is stop government funding, which is something I support. Government should stop funding a lot of things. We'll see, but I don't think he can do much damage to women's rights even if he wanted to, which is something I doubt. Just as he goes on and on about God all the time, I don't think he is really any more religious than I am. He talks about god and abortion because he thinks he has to. That is what his base of support expects. I doubt he really cares about it though. What concerns me most about him is three things: Military spending/war, protectionism/trade restrictions, and this stupid "build a wall" idea he has.

+1. Criticize the things he does, not the things you dream up in your imagination that he might do. I'm sure he's going to do a ton of things which I will absolutely hate, but on day two: so far so good. He's continuing the drone war which I am not happy about, but Hillary would have done that as well. He signed a few executive orders which I think don't go anywhere near far enough (defunding foreign aid for abortions, for example. I'd like to see all foreign aid eliminated), but small steps in the right direction are still steps in the right direction. I wouldn't expect to agree with almost anything Hillary did.

Exactly. There are also ways to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere if it comes to that. There are plenty of ways science, the market, technology, etc. will handle this problem, there is no need for luddite green earth goddess worshipers to get government to make us all poorer in the process. So Trump thinks it's a hoax? Good. He'll do the right thing (nothing) for the wrong reason. Much better than doing the wrong thing for the right reason, IMHO.

I personally think that the evidence is substantial that climate change is not a hoax. But since I don't think any government should do anything about it. I'd much rather have a president that thinks it's a hoax than otherwise.

The optimal solution for any problem is never found using aggressive offensive force. Markets may often arrive at optimal or near optimal solutions to problems, governments almost never will.

This is what I said back in May: "I won't be voting, but I do hope Trump wins. Hillary scares the hell out of me and Trump will be entertaining to watch." So far I have not been disappointed.

I didn't vote for him, but I think he was far superior to the alternative, so I'll answer your questions. 1) It's silly, but doesn't concern me. I do hope he starts doing something that matters soon. 2) I don't really care how much he makes or what he pays in taxes. I'm not sure why politicians are expected to release such personal financial information. We learned for instance in the 90s that Bill Clinton donated underwear to charity. Did we really need to know that? I still have no idea what this guy is going to do.

While the food is the same as the U.S., the Canadian locations are generally much cleaner and fresher/newer than their U.S. counterparts. I also agree that there are better places than McDonald's for burgers, but you have to admit that an Egg McMuffin is pretty tasty, cheap and quite healthy...the ham one with English muffin, not sausage, bacon, or biscuits. Cheers! Most of the McDonalds I see in Southern New Hampshire and Northern MA are recently re-modeled and clean. Pretty nice actually. I don't eat the food very often, but if I need a coffee it is cheaper than Dunkin' Donuts and just as good.

Or do this with a double quarter pounder with cheese and get a big mac with a lot more meat for not much more than the price of a regular big mac.

-9% I had a bad year. I had way too many BAC Jan2017 options and sold too early. I was down so much at one point in the year that I was happy to sell two days after the election when they went up a bit. I could have held on another month and had an excellent year. I think I'm done with options for good. I'll certainly never hold such a huge concentrated position in them again.

Since you say they were "evil" mind explaining why you selected these 3? Hopefully you have a valid reason to call someone "evil" beyond the usual libertarian nonsense. I really have to stop myself from commenting on these threads, it is a time sink. I'll just answer briefly for Wilson. Yes there is the usual libertarian "nonsense" about being concerned of the growth of centralized government power over individual freedom. The Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, the 17th amendment, etc. That all makes him a horrible president, but I don't use the term evil lightly. He conspired with Britain (and Wall Street who had lent a ton of money to the allies) to get the US involved in a war that was non of our business, at the expense of all of those lives on the Lusitania. Germany warned him that they knew the Lusitania was carrying arms and ammunition and was fair game. He did nothing. Germany tried to put ads in 50 US newspapers saying that the Lusitania was fair game, Wilson pressured them all not to run the ads, because he didn't want anyone to change their plans and not get aboard the ship. He wanted all those civilians to die including 100 US citizens, because it would help sway opinions against Germany. Once the US was in the war he reinstituted slavery in the US (most call it "conscription" or "the draft") and sent 17 million of them to their deaths, he jailed people for things they said or wrote, instituted price/wage controls and rationing, ... That is just what I can think of off the top of my head.

Yes, and I think that is quite an improvement. People think Trump is going to be the end of the world or something. I think that he's going to be no worse than any of the other presidents in my lifetime*, only far more entertaining. A solid win as far as I'm concerned. *I was born during the Nixon administration. You will have been alive for three of the worst presidents in the history of the nation-- Bush 2, the shrub-trillions spent on an unnecessary war, with the country in shambles, Iraq. Nixon, resigned in disgrace. and now Trump, with 85% probability he will be one of the worst, already one of the worst transitions. They were all pretty bad, but my list of the worst would be: 1) Woodrow Wilson 2) FDR 3) LBJ None of the presidents in my lifetime have even approached that kind of evil.

I use Seeking Alpha as well as google news alerts (https://www.google.com/alerts) which I setup to load automatically into my RSS reader Feedly which is similar to flipboard I think. You can also have the google alerts email you a list of stories instead of creating an RSS feed for you if you prefer. I agree Yahoo is worse than useless for anything at all now (I deleted my account as well). And I'm not willing to pay for FT.

Yes, and I think that is quite an improvement. People think Trump is going to be the end of the world or something. I think that he's going to be no worse than any of the other presidents in my lifetime*, only far more entertaining. A solid win as far as I'm concerned. *I was born during the Nixon administration.

Actually Trump's twitter account is just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. If he just spent the next four years on twitter and didn't do anything else he'd be a great president. Unfortunately he'll probably do some stuff as well as tweet

August 7, 2019 at 10:24 AM. Give or take a few years.

Heyyyyyy wait just a minute; you said Dow 30,000!?! He's trying to build-in plausible deniability. If it reaches 30K, he was right, but if it doesn't then the "3" was clearly a typo.

You didn't give the most important part of your prediction. When? If you are going to make a prediction you can't leave out the most important part of it. Short of a global catastrophe that permanently damages our civilization the DOW WILL hit 30K someday. Certainly before 2030. Are you saying 30K in 2017-2018?

Interesting comments thanks for posting them. It reminds me of something I read (and can't remember where or I'd post it). It was something to the effect that the election of Trump was a repudiation of the political machine in the U.S. federal government. A way of saying "enough!". The point of the article was that Trump doesn't represent the beginning of anything (populism, racism, nazism, etc) as the left is saying, but the end of something. What's next is change, and that could be good or bad depending on how it plays out.

I agree, tax decreases need to be accompanied by spending decreases or the piper will need to be paid in other ways. I hope he decreases both.

This is a report on an article, but the actual article is much better reading than this report. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reflections-trump-presidency-one-month-after-election-ray-dalio I think he sums up the hopes and fears of what a Trump foreign policy will look like well: "Regarding foreign policy, we should expect the Trump administration to be comparably aggressive. Notably, even before assuming the presidency, Trump is questioning the one-China policy which is a shocking move. Policies pertaining to Iran, Mexico, and most other countries will probably also be aggressive. The question is whether this administration will be a) aggressive and thoughtful or b) aggressive and reckless. The interactions between Trump, his heavy-weight advisors, and them with each other will likely determine the answer to this question. For example, on the foreign policy front, what Trump, Flynn, Tillerson, and Mattis (and others) are individually and collectively like will probably determine how much the new administration’s policies will be a) aggressive and thoughtful versus b) aggressive and reckless. We are pretty sure that it won’t take long to find out."

Or installation of a DC power grid to ship the energy around the globe from where the sun is shining to where it is not, http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-a-global-power-grid That makes the most sense out of anything else I've seen. Let the free market and the law of competitive advantage work its magic. Generate electricity wherever in the world it is cheapest and easiest to do so and move it to the places it is most needed. The one flaw is that people will worry about terrorism and/or acts of war cutting them off from the grid and money will still be wasted on local power generation even where it doesn't otherwise make much sense to have it. Technology, markets, and people are awesome. Politics, radical religion, and people suck.