Kevin McCullough synopsized it in a Townhall piece, “Why Biden is Erasing America .”
He’s attempting to undo American accountability in elections through his support of HR1. He’s attempting to undo our economic foundations with massive printing (read that: devaluing) of our currency. He’s attempting to destroy free enterprise and job growth with coming massive tax increases. He’s attempting to take away individual liberties with proposed mask mandates, and desired lockdowns.
He supports any attempt to end the Senate filibuster—in order to push through horrific laws by the thinnest margins ever attempted. He’s attempting to overwhelm our security at our borders by encouraging 100’s of 1000’s of unverifiable persons of unknown origins to cross our borders without scrutiny nor penalty. He wants the police weakened. He is pledging to take guns away from law abiding owners. And he wants to pervert the justice system so dramatically that the Constitution becomes unrecognizable.
Biden and Democrats are trying any and all political maneuvers now to consolidate their power and block out Republicans in the future, and that’s what this is all about.
The RTO leads to high prices and rolling blackouts.
As Professor William Hogan of Harvard, one of the architects of the Texas system, said in a recent interview with the Harvard Crimson, the state’s electricity market had “worked as designed.” https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/2/26/hogan-texas-energy-prices/
Others were upset that rolling blackouts still happened when the auction price was below $9 per kWh. While I am not an economist, it is clear to me that market caps or not, RTOs lead to expensive, fragile grids. It’s not about those crazy people in the Lone State. It’s about the RTO structure. //
Texas didn’t have blackouts because it was unique. It had blackouts because its grid was built on the RTO system. The sooner people understand that fact, the sooner we can do something about the growing fragility of our grids.
Democrats want to use stimulus money to make you into the people populating Disney's cartoon 'Wall-E.' Instead, turn it into a weapon for antifragility.
By Joy Pullmann
Bitcoin's still anonymous inventor, who went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, figured out a completely new way for a decentralized network to reach a consensus about a shared transaction ledger. This innovation made possible the kind of fully decentralized electronic payment systems that cypherpunks had dreamed about for decades. //
One challenge is how to introduce new coins into the system. Obviously a viable payment network needs some way to create new coins, but if you let anyone create new coins whenever they want, the currency will quickly become worthless. //
The second challenge is known as the double-spending problem. The rules of bitcoin say that each transaction output can only be spent once. If someone tries to spend the same output twice, the bitcoin community needs some way to detect this double-spending attempt and reject the later transaction. //
bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to build a network that wasn't controlled up by any single organization.
So Nakamoto invented a shared ledger called the blockchain that is maintained by computers, called nodes, operating on a peer-to-peer network. Thousands of computers around the world keep separate copies of the entire blockchain, storing every transaction that has happened since the network was launched in 2009. The network rewards nodes who help to create the blockchain by allowing them to create new bitcoins—solving the coin-distribution problem while simultaneously creating an incentive to help solve the ledger-updating problem.
It’s attractive for politicians to keep taxes low and spending high. Each of our last four presidential administrations has benefited from this dynamic.
Wall Street and global business, which dominates Washington policymaking, have also benefited greatly. These corporate actors care about their next financial quarter a lot more than our country’s state of affairs 10 or more years down the road.
This period will be looked upon by historians as the saddest time in our history: a once great country behaving so selfishly and with such short-term interests that they sold their children’s futures away with barely any debate.
Most often, businesses are forced to cut jobs, which is why the Congressional Budget Office reports that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationwide would result in 1.4 million lost jobs in a few short years.
The policy would harm younger, less-educated, and otherwise marginalized workers the most—some of the same populations that have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
Wage mandates would also result in exploding costs for essential goods as employers pass new labor costs on through higher prices.
Under a $15 minimum wage, child care costs would rise by thousands of dollars—21% on average, and by more than 30% in 10 states.
Food prices would also increase, including an estimated 38% increase in fast-food prices.
Another unintended consequence is increased automation. Some companies, such as Amazon, have achieved a $15 minimum wage by automating jobs that produce less than $36,000 per year in value (the cost to employers, with taxes, of a $15-per-hour job).
Replacing more workers with self-ordering kiosks, automated customer service systems, and robots won’t produce more good-paying jobs for low-wage workers. //
Job losses of 1.4 million is only a starting point for the Democrats’ proposed tax on workers.
That’s because lawmakers can’t create good jobs or higher incomes simply by mandating them into existence. Opportunities and income growth come from workers achieving the education and experience necessary to help them produce more value.
Cutting off the bottom rungs on the career ladder through a $15 national hourly minimum wage and threatening employers with new taxes on entry-level and low-skilled jobs will do far more harm than good for workers and the American economy.
There are ways, however, that lawmakers can help workers achieve higher incomes without taking away others’ jobs and incomes or taxing employers who provide jobs.
Congress should reduce regulatory burdens on businesses, eliminate unnecessary licensing restrictions for employees, expand nontraditional education options, and keep taxes low on employers and employees alike.
Economist James K. Galbraith said policymakers failed Texas during the state's recent power outage.
Texas' deregulated electrical system incentivized the cheapest production without accounting for resilient machinery.
Galbraith says the only way to fix the system is to turn it into a public utility.
“I don’t believe in a stimulus check. Because if 600 dollars or 1400 dollars changes your life, you were pretty much screwed already. You’ve got other issues going on. You have a career problem, you have a debt problem, you have a relationship problem, you have a mental health problem, something else is going on if $600 changes your life.
“And that’s not talking down to folks. I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been broke, and I work with people every day who are hurting. I love people, I want people to be lifted up.
“But this is, again, it’s just political rhetoric, and it’s just throwing dollars out there. It’s peeing on a forest fire, it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
The GameStop-Robinhood stock-trading frenzy could take another bizarre turn thanks largely to some legislative “solutions” being weighed, allegedly to protect small investors.
But if any of this stuff makes it into law, it will be the “little guy” who gets screwed, and this time for real. The end of low-commission and free trading could be in the cards, and that will make stock investing less equitable for everyone.
If they want to try their hands at investing, your teens can turn to several games available.
Next Gen Personal Finance has a 20-minute stock market game that uses real market historical data at buildyourstax.com, and the SIFMA Foundation has one at stockmarketgame.org.
Meanwhile, Junior Achievement has JA Take Stock in Your Future, a curriculum that introduces high-school students to the stock market. It also has a competition event.
"Investing can be fun," Espinal said. "Let's learn it the right way."
Who Does a $15 Minimum Wage Help?
Andy Puzder
Aug 21, 2017
Would a nationwide $15 minimum wage help or hurt American workers? Andy Puzder, former CEO of the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., explains.
Sean Davis
@seanmdav
·
Jan 28, 2021
Wall Street’s war on reddit and Robinhood isn’t about free markets or price transparency or longs vs. shorts or anything like that.
Wall Street institutions have crushed retail shorts with impunity for decades, even and especially when the shorts were right. (1/x)
What’s happening right now is Wall Street realizing that retail investors, whom Wall Street mocks as nothing more than dumb commission factories for big brokerages, actually have some power that Wall Street believes it has a divine right to wield. That cannot be allowed. (2/x)
The war on reddit and Robinhood is about putting retail investors in their place. Retail investors are not allowed to move markets. Only Wall Street institutions move markets. Retailers are not allowed to squeeze shorts. Only Wall Streeters are allowed to crush shorts. (3/x)
Wall Street, you see, is allowed to make money no matter what. That was the lesson of 2008. Who cares that it’s Wall Street who destroyed the housing market/economy by lying about the risk of their garbage mortgage derivatives? They were entitled to bailouts. (4/x)
Sure, millions lost their jobs and countless people lost their homes. The bankers got paid...with your money. They got bailed out...with your money. Sure, you lost your savings and home. But that’s what you get for being a dumb rube instead of a New York City banker. (5/x)
So don’t get conned by those claiming hedge funds are just trying to protect the markets and price transparency and efficiency and blah blah blah. This is a war between corrupt institutions and normal people, and the institutions simply will not allow the normals to win. (6/6)
But today comes the announcement from Left that Citron will no longer be publishing its newsletter on targets for short investors. Citron will now be focusing on “long” investment opportunities — promoting the buying of shares of companies that Citron believes will go higher in the weeks and months ahead.
This is a bigger concession than one might imagine. A noted “short” investor is basically conceding that the “jig is up.” It is a recognition that a meaningful short position now has exposure to coordinated action by retail investors that will cost the short seller massive amounts of money over a very short period of time in circumstances where it is unlikely that the short investor can mitigate or avoid the loss. //
Now you have a prominent leader in the short-selling community on Wall Street waving a white flag of surrender to organized retail investors. This is a recognition that the GameStop maneuver can be replicated in the future, with the risk to short investors being immediate and potentially devasting.
Chalk this one up as a “W” for the Redditt buyers and an “L” for Wall Street.
The Hill’s Saagar Enjeti did an terrific breakdown of the story if you haven’t been following it or want to see a really good analysis of what happened and why people are mesmerized by it.
Hedge funds are not “mutual funds” or “money market funds.” They typically manage money only for “high net worth individuals” which is a term defined by the SEC. So the people who have money invested through hedge funds tend to be at the top of the market food chain. Investment amounts go from $1 million up to billions of dollars invested by a single person or family. These are not individuals trading stocks online with Charles Schwab or E*Trade.
“Shorting” a stock means literally “borrowing” a stock that belongs to someone else, selling that stock on the open market, and then waiting to see if the price of that stock will fall. If/when it does, the “short seller” can purchase shares in that stock at the lower market price, “cover” the open position by returning shares to the owners from whom they were borrowed, and keep the difference between the “sale” and “repurchase” prices as profit.
Problems are created for “short sellers” when the price does not fall. As the price of the stock goes higher, the “short seller” must come up with the difference between the price it sold the borrowed shares at, and the price at which it needs to purchase shares to return to the original owner. If a short seller shorts a stock at $100 a share, and the stock goes up to $120, the short seller must come out of pocket with the extra $20 to buy the share to return it to the owner from which it was borrowed. That is how a “short seller” loses money.
When you buy a stock, you know it can only go to $0 so you are able to quantify your total risk from the purchase.
When you short a stock you cannot, in all cases, predict how high that stock might go — you cannot quantify your total risk from the short. That’s why shorting is different — and riskier.
We’ve been following the amazing story of what some Redditors over at the forum Wall Street Bets have been doing to hedge funds.
The Hill’s Saagar Enjeti did an terrific breakdown of the story if you haven’t been following it or want to see a really good analysis of what happened and why people are mesmerized by it.
“Wall Street is shook b/c multi-billionaires who reckless gambled are getting screwed…they cant stand that someone other than them is making money…it reveals how much of a sham this all is,” Enjeti said.
It’s pretty hard not to see the story in little guys sticking it to folks who have tried to work over the system to their own advantage and there are some amazing stories already about what they are doing with the money.
Red West VL
2 hours ago
Hedge Fund pools the funds of large numbers of millionaires and billionaires to allow them to manipulate market prices by moving huge volume as a collective push. It's called high finance.
Reddit pools the funds of large numbers of every day people to allow them to counter the manipulation of market prices by Hedge Fund by moving huge volume as collective push. It's called a crime.
That's how this works. My kid got into this with a couple of his friends in college. Knew full well what it was... knew there were ZERO fundamentals to support any of it and he decided to put a few hundred bucks into it for the hell of it. Bought in again the other day. He's now made as much as he spent on his first car and ready to get out. Where'd the money come from? Redistribution of wealth. They BROKE a hedge fund... $13 billion dollar hedge fund... gone.
This is what happens when the smart kids "occupy wall street", instead of a bunch of meth addict freaks living in public parks and setting up rape tents whining that they can't find a job with their gender studies degree. Is it smart? YEP. Is it wise? NOPE. But I completely get it... and I love it.
Mediaite
@Mediaite
Nasdaq CEO Suggests Halt to Trading to Allow Big Investors to 'Recalibrate Their Positions' to Combat Reddit Users //
Such manipulation of stock prices would be highly illegal if attempted by a typical investor in any manner, yet our elites seem to believe they can do whatever they want to benefit their fellow elites. And who could blame them for believing that? The SEC certainly isn’t going to stop them. In fact, the SEC is “assessing” the Reddit users, not the fact that market leaders may move to manipulate matters to save themselves. The full weight of the federal government isn’t going to come down on those trying to game the system. Instead, it’s going to come down on those who simply saw a legal opening and made money off the “wrong” people, i.e. the hedge funders. //
Austin Petersen 🇺🇲
@AP4Liberty
When Wall Street billionaires get rich that's the free market. When regular people get rich at Wall Street's expense, they say we need regulation. //
Spike Cohen
@RealSpikeCohen
Seeing NASDAQ, banks, & regulators begin to halt trading over the Reddit WSB $GME stock rally proves that we don't have a free market.
We have a controlled market that is gamed to benefit banks and hedge funds, and if you don't invest the way they tell you to, they'll ruin you. //
Republicans need to get with the program on this. People are sick and tired of seeing a select class of people game the system while everyone else plays by a different set of rules. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be a billionaire. It does mean that there should be no shortcuts. Markets shouldn’t be shut down to help the privileged when that courtesy is never extended to normal people. You want a free market? Let’s have a free market, not the crony capitalist garbage the GOP has so long defended.
trading on some stocks was suspended, and there were rumblings of an SEC investigation of private individuals who had the temerity to wear neck-beards and soiled undies instead of Brioni suits while playing shenanigans on the stock market. They were not impressed. //
PoliMath
@politicalmath
it really is quite a remarkable coincidence that WallStreetBets just happened to have just enough "hate speech" to get shut down by Discord at exactly the moment when Wall Street would have preferred to have it shut down
marque2 Vote Generic
an hour ago
“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. [...]
"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying on ship's peanut." [...]
"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy