rkbabang

:) This is a great venting your frustrations about the election thread. It goes from being therapeutic to I can't read it anymore, so I stop reading it for a few days and come back later. This has got to be the craziest US presidential election in history. I'm not a fan of any politicians, but I've never been so utterly disgusted about an election as I am this year. It is a new low for sure.

Yeah, god forbid you be able to use the knowledge you have to make sound financial decisions. Because it's like wack-a-mole with you guys which turns into a waste of time. You come with some ridiculous proposition. Then someone spends a lot of time crafting an intelligent post as to why you're wrong. Then you dismiss what that person said based on your feelings and move to another ridiculous proposition. If you've done so much research why don't you present your findings based on hard data (not something you read in some book) that supports your proposition? I'd love to see respected research that show that when a firm gets monopoly power the result is higher output and lower prices. Because that isn't the case. No firm gets monopoly power without government's help (regulations, licensing, subsidies, outright grant of monopoly power such as with patents). And if they ever did, how could they stop a competitors from undercutting their prices? The answer is that they couldn't so this "monopoly power" wouldn't last very long.

Yeah, god forbid you be able to use the knowledge you have to make sound financial decisions.

+1. Exactly. There is certainly no need for antitrust laws enforced by governments. The only real consumer harming monopolies are those created and protected by governments. The taxi cartels in cities which require medallions and ban Uber for instance or the Bell system, the cable companies. All the time and money spent in the 90's (by both sides) on the Microsoft antitrust case which technology just made irrelevant a few years later. Government itself is a violently enforced monopoly. Try to call up city hall and say "You know what? I'm not happy with the police in this city, I'm going to cancel my subscription." See what they tell you.

Just shows how little you know about China. Why do people who know nothing insist on showing off their ignorance on the internet? I know, right? Everyone knows the Chinese were much better off in the 1960s.

That is exactly true. How many times do people panic and cash out at or near the bottom, then wait until the almost the top to decide that they should start investing again. It doesn't matter what type of funds you choose if this is your "strategy". There's another thread somewhere on here about frugality & contentment. "Success is having what you want & happiness is wanting what you have" Restless minds grasping for happiness lead to impatience & poor returns... It isn't always impatience. I think for many people it is just loss aversion and fear of what they don't understand. They don't want to know anything about investing, so they put their money in funds where they can just set it and forget it. This seems like a great idea to them when stocks are going up, they glance at their statements every quarter and don't think much of it. But after a crash they decide that maybe stocks are just way too risky for them and they pull everything out. A few years later when they see stocks have been doing well again for a while they think that the set it and forget it stock investing method is just what they should be doing again. I've struggled with this with my parents for years. For example during the financial crisis crash I got panicked calls from them wondering if they should sell all of their stocks. I got them to stay invested and even invest more and they eventually thanked me, but they were skeptical and scared. I was trying to convince a co-worker of the same, but I had less influence over him and he got out of the market. He said I was crazy. This was an engineer, not a dumb guy. The question of when to invest is far more important than what to invest in for the average person I think.

That is exactly true. How many times do people panic and cash out at or near the bottom, then wait until the almost the top to decide that they should start investing again. It doesn't matter what type of funds you choose if this is your "strategy".

Stats? Although, yeah, I also love how rightwingers are now against Hillary as war-monger. Aren't they the party of military strength and American power extension over the world? What you said is true for both sides, no? :P This doesn't count you, you are consistent. I'm pointing a finger at some others ;) Absolutely! In 2008 I was arguing constantly with my conservative friends/relatives. Their view was that Obama was going to be too weak, pull our troops home and the terrorists were going to multiply and "win". They acted as if the terrorists could take over the US and create a muslim state or something. Obama turned out to be everything they wanted in a President, from a foreign policy standpoint anyway, yet they don't like him.

Oh, please. You don't even know the real left. Let me tell you a secret: all my real left friends completely agree with you on Obama/Hillary/Bush/etc. wars. I never said I was real left. You just want to engage in tribalism and paint left with single brush, don't you? I have no doubt that there are a small group of hard core principle leftists in the United States who really are anti-war. I am talking about the mainstream left, the Democratic Party mostly. There are far fewer of what you call "real left"ists in the US than there are hard core libertarians (and that is saying something).

What is so tiring about these discussions is the tribalism involved. If this was 2008 every left winger on this board would be agreeing with me about how awful Bush's wars are. They simply can't entertain those views now that their team has had the Oval Office for 8 years. If Trump were to win by some unfortunate miracle the lefties will go back to analysing every bomb that drops again. Which would be a good thing, don't get me wrong, I just wish their principals didn't change everytime the Oval Office changes sides.

Care to provide stats? Please do count Ukraine, Georgia and Syria from Russian side. But yeah, if I was living in a country run by a repressive regime, I would support USA invading my country to get rid of said regime. Even accounting for collateral damage. The real problem is not USA. The real problem is that the new regime is usually not much better and that most of damage comes from internal infighting. I don't have the stats, that wasn't a rhetorical question. I don't know. My point in asking is that the question can even be asked at all. If the number on the Obama side is > 0 (which it is almost certainly in the thousands, even if less than Putin), he is a murderer and your tax money went to finance his war crimes. I would never dream of trying to justify Putin's military actions outside of Russia the way you justify the US's actions. "Collateral Damage" when talking about human lives is one of the most sickening terms I can imagine. Again, these are human beings whose lives you are so callously dismissing. And thinking that the US has any interest in "liberating" people from repressive regimes, who is the delusional one? There is no such goal in any of the military actions at least in my lifetime. The goal is to secure the flow of oil and to spend money on war. Even if it means killing innocent people to cause blowback to have an excuse to spend even more. War is the health of the state. I don't think I am the naive one here. Let me guess: They hate us because of our freedoms?

Since you haven't lived under Russian occupation for 20+ years, I'm gonna go with you and that rightwing poster being naive rather than me. Putin is evil nutcase. And anyone believing otherwise is just someone living in their pink cuddly shell which is very far away from Russia. Or bought by Putin ... like certain presidential candidate. I'm talking about foreign policy not domestic. I am certainly glad that I do not live inside of Russia. But who has slaughtered more people outside of their own countries in the last 8 years Putin or Obama? It is easy to think of Obama and the US in general as being noble and good when you are comfortably living in your pink cuddly little shell which is very far away from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, or Yemen.

Yes. If Russia invades Lithuania (note it hasn't happened yet) it will undoubtedly be to serve Russian interests. This is not the same (or even close) to being equivalent with "noble". If anyone has the view that the US and its allies are these noble shining white knights come to bring order to the world with their noble intentions while every other country are demons intent on evil, you might consider that you may have been influenced just a little bit by your county's propaganda. The Pentagon Accounts for More Than Half of the Federal Government’s $1 Billion PR Budget Meet The 2nd Largest PR Firm In The World: The U.S. Government I'm sure if the US does go to war with Russia after Hillary is elected, most Americans will be properly "educated" by the media on what an evil nutcase Putin is and why he needs to be stopped, and they will support Hillary's actions 100%. Support the troops! God bless America. USA, USA, USA!#1!!!

Yeah, I guess that is where we disagree.

Talking about empathy. I am biased. But if Russia decides to invade Lithuania, I'd rather NATO retaliated. And I'd rather NATO kept retaliation options strong (which in your mind is new nuclear Cold War). Yeah, my most emphatic choice would be that Russia woke up from living under nationalist dictator, became a modern democracy with less corruption and all Russians and the rest of the world lived in peace. But that's not an option right now and it's unlikely to be an option the things are going for quite a while. So my second best option is something that might lead to WW3. OTOH, assume we disarm NATO and do nothing when Russia invades Lithuania. Don't you think that would lead to the same or even larger scale conflict later? I don't know. Maybe appeasing aggressors and hoping they will come to their minds at some point is the solution... especially if you're USA and don't care much that parts of Europe get trampled. Tough to say. I think we are closer regarding Middle East: the issue there is that there are pretty much no good actors involved and IMO there are no solutions at this point. So probably no action is better than involvement. Even though it breaks my heart when people die there. And I'm sure some of the fighters/rebels/etc. feel that they are doing the right thing for better future of their families, citizens, countries. Edit: BTW, most Lithuanians believe that NATO will do nothing if Russia invades. So looking from that side appeasement and no-WW3 is probably more likely no matter who gets elected in USA. Which may or may not comfort you. Should someone have stopped the US when we invaded/bombed Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Somalia? Pakistan? Yemen? Why your empathy for Lithuanians, but not Iraqis? Skin color? Religion? Politics (Hillary wants those other countries bombed, but doesn't want Lithuania bombed)? Pretty selective empathy. Are not they all humans? I have nothing to do with who Russia invades, just as I have nothing to do with who some organized crime group murders, but the US kills people in my name with money taken from me. What possible moral standing does the US have to tell any country that it shouldn't invade another? "Do what we say not what we do?" We are now the policemen of the world? What kind of policeman murders whoever he wants for whatever reason he wants with impunity, yet tries to stop others from doing the same? Oh wait, I guess that kind of is the American version of policing isn't it? I might agree with you if the US kept its military at home without a single foreign base and no ships further than 100 miles from our coasts, that we might have some standing to tell other countries that they shouldn't be aggressive. But as it is, we are setting the example, and a bad one at that. We just come off as hypocrites and murderous bullies. Get your own house in order before telling others what they should do.

+1. I voted in every election from 92-08 and even though I always voted 3rd party, I always had one of the major party candidates in mind that I hoped would win. Clinton in 1992, Dole in 1996, Bush in 2000, Kerry in 2004, Obama in 2008, Romney in 2012 (I didn't vote at all, but I hoped he would win). I really don't have a preference this time. They are just both so awful in different ways. I just can't imagine anyone going to the polls and voting for either one of them. I really can't. The most frightening, and sad, thing about this election is that someone is going to win.

And this is how you describe Clinton's likely outcomes: So McCain was worse than this, and you seem pretty confident with each election cycle that we're teetering on the edge of a nuclear apocalypse. It makes sense to me now why you're a such a devout libertarian, viewing government as nothing but a problem, if you assess the probabilities of the end of civilization this way. Have you ever considered that you're particular sensitive on this war issue, and might not be so good at estimating the odds of an apocalypse? It sounds really stressful living in your head. It is stressful. I can't imagine what the inside of someone who doesn't care about war's head is like. We may be evolved from apes, but that doesn't mean we have to behave like them. We supposedly have rational faculties which can override our primal instincts. I listen to the "support-the-military-conservatives" sometimes and it just makes me almost sick to my stomach. If you look at the industry that has sprung up around death and destruction and you realize that most of the politicians are bought and paid for by it, it is overwhelming to think about. It baffles me that most people just don't care. Is it tribalism? Racism? Xenophobia? Or just plain old lack of empathy? We've come a long way as far as cultural evolution goes, but we still have a long, long, way to go.

Some friends from SciFi club/writing group talked about scenario where you get transported to human-uninhabited Earth (pick your own scenario why there are plants/animals, but no people: maybe it's prehistoric, maybe there was apocalypse, etc.). It's spring, you have clothes, maybe a knife (maybe not - depending on scenario). What would you do? I'd just die. Well, maybe with knife I wouldn't. For couple days. It depends, do I have books to read? If not, yeah I just die.

Ever heard the phrase "Better to be roughly right than precisely wrong" . I suspect its the latter in your case. I could be, maybe Hillary will surprise me. I've been wrong before. I was certainly wrong about Obama. I thought he was going to end all of Bush's wars. I was silly enough to believe he actually meant what he said, but so did the Nobel Peace Prize committee, so I wasn't the only one. I was actually thrilled when he was elected in 2008 as I thought McCain was a warmongering lunatic. As it turns out Obama was worse than Bush, but still probably not as bad as McCain would have been. McCain scared me even more than Hillary does now.

Great juxtaposition. You couldn't make this stuff up. I do hate Hillary, but I hate Trump as well. Looking on this election without a horse in the race I see much more hate directed at Trump, by the very people who feel morally superior to Trump supporters and accuse them of being filled with hate. It is a wonderful display of hypocrisy to sit back and watch. Yes, Trump supporters are a pretty ignorant lot, but they have nothing on the left when it comes to hate.

Not really. Like some people predict, he will likely start TV station/show/whatever for the following that he has. It's likely generate tons of money too, since people love this crap. I agree. I am one of the people who thinks he started this run for president as a publicity stunt and never dreamed he'd win the primaries. He'll never admit that, so we will never know for sure, but even if/when he loses the election his little stunt worked out much better than he could ever have imagined. He'll write a book, do more reality shows, etc. He'll make out nicely.

But will you feel any accountability for spreading doom and gloom if it doesn't happen? I don't exactly have a large enough following to move the needle. Considering what is going on with this election (the press spreading Trump=Hitler fears, the hate a lot of people other than me have for Hillary, etc), me spreading doom and gloom is like a drop of water in an ocean. Also, I do hope I'm wrong.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Do you have any compunctions in investing in oil? No, none at all. I just doubt my ability to do so successfully. If you mean directly in the commodity, definitely no, I've never considered commodities to be within my circle of competence. I have been thinking about looking into some of the larger players like XOM as a relatively safe way to park some money in oil with a fair amount of downside protection. Again, I think this will play out over years so there is some time. I actually expect a post election rally after she wins, people are afraid of Trump and will be celebrating his defeat. That is when I plan to raise some more cash.

Is there any evidence that he has that much humility? If only he had Hillary's sense of humility, empathy, and selflessness. Her kindness and love of peace and humanity.

Out of curiosity, do you actually live and invest based on this forecast? Considering that Hillary Clinton has a 90% (+/- 10%) chance of winning the election, are you choosing to spend your savings because death is imminent or scoping out for a fallout shelter to survive the post-apocalyptic wasteland? No I don't choose to live in a post nuclear wasteland. I live in the North Eastern United States about 60miles from Boston. I won't survive the first nuclear strike. I'm obviously hoping for the best case scenario, which still isn't good with Hillary, but we all survived the first Cold War. Ok. I think that you would agree that the market isn't currently pricing in "all out war in the middle east." Are you actually positioning your portfolio for that scenario? I have been moving to cash over the last few months. I've been fully invested for 25 years (on average I've held less than 1% cash), I now have about 20% cash and I plan to increase that over the coming months. I've also been increasing my Fairfax position as I think they are well prepared for a down turn. I won't invest in the military industrial complex (defense contractors, etc..). Nothing is going to happen for a while, hell if this poll at the top of this page is any indication, not only are investors not going to panic after election day most of them are voting for her. I expect increased tensions with Russia, especially after she takes office. I expect in her first year she will increase the bombings, and the number of countries being bombed, in the Middle East, more troops on the ground, more violence and death in general. She's going to try to get as much kindling together as she can and pour a bunch of kerosene on it, whether or not someone throws a spark into it and sets it alight is anyone's guess.