Down goes the Dow

To LRC,

You obviously know who I am as our professional relationship has spanned many years. Like others here, I have an interest in personal finance and investment. It is not my job though, as you know.

I had been part of LRC for quite a while when I first posted in this thread. I purposely chose a new name in order to maintain a bit of anonymity compared with my posts on other threads where I was better known. My first posts here were greeted warmly and I found myself posting more often as the discussions were quite stimulating. It wasn’t long, however, before one regular thread poster began hurling unwarranted insults at me. Upon further review, this type of behavior seemed to be a regular part of that poster’s routine.

I decided to fight back. Perhaps I just should have ignored him as has been suggested, but I do not easily tolerate bullying. So any “harassment” that I have initiated has been solely in response to the unseemly behavior of another. Yes, I have removed posts that violated our terms of service and I will continue to do so. I will also continue to push for a permanent ban for this individual based on his continuing unsavory behavior.

Finally I have obviously seen no threatening posts. You would know, if I had. I am unfamiliar with the names of the poster’s family members, so I cannot speak to that accusation. Given his history, I would not be surprised to learn those accusations were unfounded.

As you know, I believe this thread, and the message board in general, would be better without him. I respect the opinions of those who feel otherwise.

J.

ach people just do the right thing. Don't be too mean. Don't be too aggressive. A little is ok, but not too much.

Anyway.

The Fed again notched up its estimate of 1Q GDP. Far from a recession - this economy is accelerating. Which is not great for the inflation fight.

but it does show that the fed is not an all-powerful beast. It has been trying to slow the economy for a while now, with no success.

Although I suppose the fed works with a lag so maybe it's too early.

forgot the paste:

Latest estimate: 2.7 percent — February 24, 2023

Earnings Scorecard: For Q4 2022 (with 94% of S&P 500 companies reporting actual results), 68% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise and 66% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive revenue surprise.

S+P 500 down for February.

Hey agip, I know you're a political junkie; nerd. Came across this in Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach.

A fascinating area where hierarchies tangle is government-particularly in the courts.
Ordinarily, you think of two disputants arguing their cases in court, and the court
adjudicating the matter. The court is on a different level from the disputants. But strange
things can start to happen when the courts themselves get entangled in legal cases.
Usually there is a higher court which is outside the dispute. Even if two lower courts get
involved in some sort of strange fight, with each one claiming jurisdiction over the other,
some higher court is outside, and in some sense it is analogous to the inviolate
interpretation conventions which we discussed in the warped version of chess.
But what happens when there is no higher court, and the Supreme Court itself gets
all tangled up in legal troubles? This sort of snarl nearly happened in the Watergate era.
The President threatened to obey only a "definitive ruling" of the Supreme Court-then
claimed he had the right to decide what is "definitive". Now that threat never was made
good; but if it had been, it would have touched off a monumental confrontation between
two levels of government, each of which, in some ways, can validly claim to be "above"
the other-and to whom is there recourse to decide which one is right? To say "Congress"
is not to settle the matter, for Congress might command the President to obey the
Supreme Court, yet the President might still refuse, claiming that he has the legal right to
disobey the Supreme Court (and Congress!) under certain circumstances. This would
create a new court case, and would throw the whole system into disarray, because it
would be so unexpected, so Tangled-so Strange!
The irony is that once you hit your head against the ceiling like this, where you
are prevented from jumping out of the system to a yet higher authority, the only recourse
is to forces which seem less well defined by

Strange Loops, Or Tangled Hierarchies688
rules, but which are the only source of higher-level rules anyway: the lower-level rules,
which in this case means the general reaction of society. It is well to remember that in a
society like ours, the legal system is, in a sense, a polite gesture granted collectively by
millions of people-and it can be overridden just as easily as a river can overflow its
banks. Then a seeming anarchy takes over; but anarchy has its own kinds of rules, no less
than does civilized society: it is just that they operate from the bottom up, not from the
top down. A student of anarchy could try to discover rules according to which anarchic
situations develop in time, and very likely there are some such rules.
An analogy from physics is useful here. As was mentioned earlier in the book,
gases in equilibrium obey simple laws connecting their temperature, pressure, and
volume. However, a gas can violate those laws (as a President can violate laws)-provided
it is not in a state of equilibrium. In nonequilibrium situations, to describe what happens,
a physicist has recourse only to statistical mechanics-that is, to a level of description
which is not macroscopic, for the ultimate explanation of a gas's behavior always lies on
the molecular level, just as the ultimate explanation of a society's political behavior
always lies at the "grass roots level". The field of nonequilibrium thermodynamics
attempts to find macroscopic laws to describe the behavior of gases (and other systems)
which are out of equilibrium. It is the analogue to the branch of political science which
would search for laws governing anarchical societies.
Other curious tangles which arise in government include the FBI investigating its
own wrongdoings, a sheriff going to jail while in office, the self-application of the
parliamentary rules of procedure, and so on. One of the most curious legal cases I ever
heard of involved a person who claimed to have psychic powers. In fact, he claimed to be
able to use his psychic powers to detect personality traits, and thereby to aid lawyers in
picking juries. Now what if this "psychic" has to stand trial himself one day? What effect
might this have on a jury member who believes staunchly in ESP? How much will he feel
affected by the psychic (whether or not the psychic is genuine)? The territory is ripe for
exploitation-a great area for selffulfilling prophecies.

Anyone here ever read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Finally got around to it last year. There's a great article in Wired commemorating it's 50th anniversary.

wired.com

We’re All Living Under Gravity’s Rainbow

John Semley

Looming apocalypse. Paranoid conspiracies. Rocket-obsessed oligarchs. As Thomas Pynchon’s novel turns 50, its world feels unnervingly present.

Link:www.wired.com/story/living-under-gravi...

I'll get back to you later on Pynchon but for now let's grieve a little...

looks like we lost Igy and Sally. Bummer.

i used to kind of get a kick out of the background quarreling and nastiness that was constantly percolating up. I didn't read it too often but it added a certain grittiness. I even felt a little cheated when I logged on and see several posts had been deleted by the mods, and wondered what i missed. Oh, well.

Oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh-oh ( Remember the thread, songs about states )

Also, what happened to Sally Vix ?

Any expectations about impacts to tech, and more specifically chip makers tomorrow when Biden administration releases details about companies application requirement for subsidies/investment in US Semiconductor industry? I mean, the cat is already out of the bag, but one would think this would be big.

hard to see guverment policy affecting stock prices over more than a day or week...usually government just isn't powerful enough to move big stocks that much.

Yeah, I thought it was going to be a speech about the investment in the sector, which already was announced back in July (CHIPS Act). But upon closer examination, it is hitting the news now because the administration is going to announce tomorrow how companies can apply for some of the money, and how the administration is tying a lot of conditions to the money, like providing childcare for the workers of the plants, not investing in overseas plants, sharing unforeseen profits with the govt., not using it for stock buybacks or dividends, and statements about how they intend to use the funds. It's a NY Times article today. You would love the implications, and it is a real reach.

I had to spend a couple of days in hospital for irregular heartbeat. Actually, I do a lot of boxing, tae kwon do, weightlifting, and running and have had the irregular heartbeat for 2 years and it never really affected me. Now, will just do all that while taking heard medication.

S+P 500 down @ 5% since Ground Hog's Day.

Hope all is well with your heart and the medication works.

The US economy continues to accelerate.

GDP Now ticked up another nick yesterday.

No recession happening anytime soon. Starting to look like a bit of a boom. Wild stuff, as the Fed flails at the economy trying to shut it down. Imagine how strong stocks will be when the fed stops.

Latest estimate: 2.8 percent — February 27, 2023