Castanza

All of what you say sounds very familiar. My company uses NOW and also Splunk (which I’ve helped to deploy). Definitely can be a major pita. It’s a good product though, and certainly offers a lot of visibility and customization. My one grip, and I’m sure other companies are the same way, but it’s a lot to maintain. Our company decided to hire some dedicated Splunk resources since it became unmanageable for the typical IT teams. Definitely a sticky business though. Gives upper management more to bitch and moan about I wish I would have bought NOW a few years ago. I saw how engrained the software was to companies once implemented.

Cubs you used to work in software sales right? Small position in $FNMAS why not...perhaps the reckoning day has arrived?

You could also short treasuries and hold 3x Ultra Short Leverage 20 year t-bill ETF. I believe Burry took a position like this (they wrote a book about him ). But the SEC also made him shut his mouth a month ago and he had to delete his twitter

So where do you put your money? Gold? Property? Equities? Bitcoin?

Sounds like something unions and pension funds won’t like

Stumbled upon this article that was interesting. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fed-sanguine-inflation-view-recalls-arthur-burns-by-stephen-s-roach-2021-05 When Chinese and Mexican food are getting expensive you know there’s a problem. If Top Ramen goes up....well, better head for the hills

Interesting times for sure. Thanks for sharing that Twitter thread. But do we know it is transitory at this point? I was always under the assumption that this view needs to be held in hindsight? I think everyone is hoping it’s transitory while clutching their pearls. By no means am I well versed in anything macro, but perhaps someone could share examples of things that were alluded to being “transitory” in the past yet ended up simply staying inflated?

Just some anecdotal evidence of inflation I’ve seen in my personal life this past week. Groceries: Bought a bag of 6 green peppers, single red onion, spring mix lettuce, portabella mushroom sliders, bbq sauce, quart of raspberries $27....for vegetables.....the onion alone was 2.50.... McDonald’s: Grabbed two McDoubles (1.39 ea), small fry ($1.56). Came to like 4.70 after tax. Haven’t been in a while but that seemed significantly more. Lowes: Two 8ft red oak corner trim pieces, 1 8ft pine finger jointed cove trim, a single brass door hinge, two simple hooks for hanging tools in a garage, tube of white lightening caulk. $90..... Went out to dinner with the wife two a small brewery near us. For the usual pub food dinner and two drinks each we paid $100 before the tip...same food and drinks cost us $65 a little over a year ago. Ive also noticed that almost no stores seem to be having sales on clothing/goods. Could be two things....pent un demand so no need to lower prices or making up for lost revenue/increased costs behind the scenes. in general I’m seeing about a 50ish % increase in prices of pretty much everything. Now I’m not poor, I have no kids and I budget wisely so it’s not killing me. But for the folks who barely make ends meat, I’m sure it’s killing them. Especially the groceries. My area is not HCOL by any means so I can’t speak for those who live in NYC etc. My prices might be lower than your average costs

The issue is far bigger than the US too. A lot of it comes from globalization and cheaper labor elsewhere. We can raise the minimum wage all we want. That’s a temporary stimulus imo.

It was sent to people who were recently working and forced out of their job. I think that's close enough and even more insightful since it showed in the matter of a few months how individuals (who were working) can have their mindsets changed by free handouts. Humans are inherently lazy. If you hand out money people will simply find ways to scale down time spent working. Most people are not driven to work more. Anyone who has worked a minimum wage job can see this for themselves. I have worked a lot of jobs in which I intermingled with "low income" people. There were plenty of opportunities to pick up extra hours (getting close to 40), strive for promotions etc. The reality is most of these people were still looking for excuses to work less. I worked at a lumber yard one summer because they were offering a temp position of $11/hr. Over the course of a few weeks I had the best job in the plant while some other individuals who have been there 20+ years seemed content with their boring job of banding logs together (or some other monotonous task). This was the case everywhere I worked. I guarantee you that if these people got free money, they would be looking to reduce their work hours. I will argue that UBI will increase the wealth gap over the long term. The small amount individuals who are productive/task oriented/achieving in society will use the money to their advantage while the majority of individuals will use it to justify more laziness. 90% of people work unfulfilling jobs and do nothing but think of ways out. It gets worse the lower you go on the income scale, and the ability to get out of said job also becomes less likely the lower you go on the income scale. So the best solution for most would be to work less as it's the quickest way to ease the "dread" of working a shit job. It's much easier to buy cigarettes and booze or but a new fishing rod than it is to spend money on education or starting a business. If you had 10k of free money what would you do with it? Probably invest it or use it productively on your house, debt, etc. Now head down to your local trailer park and ask the same question.

Tom Cotton called for investigation almost immediately and got laughed out of the building as a conspiracy nut. View the twitter thread to see the difference in headlines. Hell even FB just lifted a ban (today) on posts that say Covid was potentially man made. I mean, you have a global pandemic arise from a major pharma hub in a country that is pretty damn shady and the next logical conclusion of the big brain intellects is "bat soup"?! I mean the two proceeding "coincidences" should be enough to at least have a bipartisan effort to investigate. Common sense in my opinion.

A lot of the local restaurants where I live are struggling because they cannot get people to work. Many of them have gone to reduced hours and reduced days despite everything being open with virtually no restrictions. Incentives matter

Does it need to be relevant? I think it’s pretty interesting. @wabuffoand others certainly put effort into these discussions. It’s quite hard to say how much of an affect any macro changes have on individual investors. Regardless, Id rather have some speculation, insight, and discussion to mull over than none.

You can hold both views simultaneously. I think the idea of crypto is great. But I think it’s highly likely the govt cracks down on it hard. Criminals always find a way, sure crypto provided a new avenue but really it’s a litmus test for how secure and anonymous it actually is. Hell the Taliban has been using Monero for quite some time.

Cherry on the top is Jordan Belfort (yes that one) interviewing the Tether founder Booze is encouraged

Tether said it was 100% backed by US currency and is still avoiding being audited. I think it's semantics. 80% is not a small number, and many of the other top cryptos also have similar flows. This just has Ponzi Scheme written all over it.

- 80% of Bitcoin purchases are with Tether. https://coinlib.io/coin/BTC/Bitcoin - Tether headquarters in the Virgin Islands. - 3.87% cash on hand with a market cap of almost 60B?! https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/tether-march-31-2021-reserves-breakdown.pdf - Where are the reserves? What happens if people withdraw for fiat? Further info: - Tether is BANNED in New York by the attorney general because they misrepresented their 1 to 1 claim of tether to USD. https://financefeeds.com/new-york-crypto-either-play-rules-will-shut/#:~:text=The Attorney General Office has,in reserve at all times. - Here is some insight into the structure of Tether. http://media.kalzumeus.com/tether-docs/bitfinex-response-to-nyag.pdf Point 31 "In February 2019, well before the line of credit transaction closed, Tether updated the disclosures on its website to specify that its reserves “may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities.” (Ex. B, at 6 (Item 1.1.32).) The website also made clear that that risks in buying tether included risks associated with the reserves: “Assets backing digital assets such as Tether Tokens, including loan receivables owed to Tether, are subject to the risk of default, insolvency, inability to collect, and illiquidity.” (Ex. C, at 2 (Item 7).)" Tether tried to avoid being audited and "dissolved" their relationship. https://www.coindesk.com/tether-confirms-relationship-auditor-dissolved Quite a few people covering this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp86n7QCf0 On Ransomware:

In a way this sort of legitimized crypto from a governmental standpoint though. As Spek pointed out this is alrady a thing with cash. And technically it's only Businesses that need to report these transactions over 10k. Just playing devils advocate

Like a tip jar?

Are there risks to bitcoin due to not knowing who created it? Or is this risk somehow limited due to its characteristics? I can't imagine investing in a company if you had no idea who founded it and who the management team is.

Binance refusing withdraws of Ethereum due to "congestion" Coinbase is having issues and reporting outages

Added a little MSGS today (Knicks finally made the playoff)

They wouldn’t have to completely kill it to all but destroy the market for it. Executive Order 6102 was basically a ban on gold. Pretty much all production of gold coins and bullion owned by average folks ceased immediately. It had heavy fines and prison time if it wasn’t turned in. I think with crypto the exchanges would be targeted. How many people are going to go out of their way to buy crypto if the exchanges are not allowed to sell it? My guess is not many. And even fewer would take the risk of going to some sketchy website. Banks and financial institutions could also prevent payments on specific platforms. That’s kind of the crux with crypto right now. You can’t pay cash for it in any efficient manner. Are crypto ATMs still a thing? Cryptos entire thesis hinges on mass adoption and an expansive network. Yeah, no prohibition has ever truly worked.

What is your best bear thesis for crypto? Personally I think it's government. I don't think there is a chance in Hell that they stand by and watch their currency erode due to some "decentralized" currency.