Global Stocks Plummet Again in Worst Week Since 2008 Financial Crisis (cnn.com) 272
Global stock markets plummeted for a seventh consecutive day on Friday as the coronavirus continued to spread, increasing fears that the epidemic will wipe out corporate profits and push some of the world's biggest economies into recession. From a report: China's Shanghai Composite closed down 3.7%, bringing losses for the week to 5.6%, the index's worst performance since April 2019. Japan's Nikkei ended down 3.7% and benchmark indexes in Australia and South Korea both shed 3.3%. European stocks suffered even greater losses, with Germany's DAX dropping as much as 5% in early trading and London's FTSE 100 shedding 4.4%. In Italy, where 17 people have now died as a result of the virus, the benchmark FTSE MIB index was down nearly 4%.
US stock futures were also sharply lower Friday, suggesting that the country's three main indexes will resume their plunge after a sharp sell-off on Thursday during which the Dow suffered its worst ever points loss, dropping 1,191 points, or 4.4%. The S&P 500 suffered a similar fall and has slid more than 10% from its recent peak. Taken together, global stocks are on track for their worst week since the global financial crisis. The MSCI index, which tracks shares in many of the world's biggest companies, has fallen 8.9% -- its worst percentage decline since October 2008.
US stock futures were also sharply lower Friday, suggesting that the country's three main indexes will resume their plunge after a sharp sell-off on Thursday during which the Dow suffered its worst ever points loss, dropping 1,191 points, or 4.4%. The S&P 500 suffered a similar fall and has slid more than 10% from its recent peak. Taken together, global stocks are on track for their worst week since the global financial crisis. The MSCI index, which tracks shares in many of the world's biggest companies, has fallen 8.9% -- its worst percentage decline since October 2008.
yahoo! finance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: yahoo! finance (Score:3)
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Re: yahoo! finance (Score:2)
Re:yahoo! finance (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Nothing like a 12% drop in a week (as of Thursday, 2/28) to make everybody think there's nothing to worry about. Not to mention that we have our very best stable genius on this issue.
Re:yahoo! finance (Score:5, Funny)
Your very best stable genius? Why the fuck are we working on a cure for horses?!
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Oh I see what you did there. That's actually refreshingly clever.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Nothing like a 12% drop in a week (as of Thursday, 2/28) to make everybody think there's nothing to worry about. Not to mention that we have our very best stable genius on this issue.
Stocks are crashing because of Coronavirus panic. Not because of junk bonds, or overinflated housing, or anything that's wrong with the economy outside overinflated stock prices that were due for a correction anyway. The panic will fade once the reality sets in that this isn't a Stephen King novel, just a nasty bug that doesn't even look like it's going to approach Spanish Flu levels of mortality. If there IS a structural problem with the American economy, it's that we rely too much on foreign factories. This is one of the things Trump ran on. So our Very Best Stable Genius was right about that.
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I think that the market is doing the sensible thing: it's pricing in some uncertainty because growth will definitely be limited over the short to medium term.
Apple isn't going to be able to sell as many phones this year. Why? Because they aren't able to MAKE as many phones this year. That's because the factories had to close for a bit, and production has been slowed. Additionally, nobody in China has been shopping, because they've been home sick, or trying not to get sick.
How bad will it be? Nobody knows. S
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If you don't fall into those categories, irrationally driven (in this case, fear) drops in stock value imply good buying opportunities. The smartest investors are going to start buying. Now of course that doesn't apply to all stocks, if you look at "stocks" as a monolithic entity that's a sure fire sign of lacking any investment knowledge. The thing to understand is that wholesale drops in a market affect great as
Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
Blown out of proportion? With a mortality rate of 2.5% and hundreds of millions of people at risk to be infected exactly what part of it is being blown out of proportion? You think millions of people possibly dying is no biggie?
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Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at those claims individually. The fact that there are a low number of coronavirus cases in the US does not tell us anything at all about how the virus will spread here. At one point, there were 14 cases in China. Now, there are quite a few more. That's how disease works. We are doing fuck-all to contain the virus here in the US, so if anything, expect it to be much worse here than in places with a realistic response and universal health care.
The flu is a well know virus, it is not new, we know how to deal with it and the effects of flu deaths are already baked into our financial predictions. You are trying to compare initial coronavirus cases at the beginning of its spread here, to a flu season that is already well underway.
In short, your analysis is so bad, I can only assume you have partisan reasons for downplaying the disease.
Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:5, Informative)
At the very least, and I must stress this, the VERY LEAST we should be providing health care workers who work directly with the infected with appropriate safety gear and training.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
Above this, we should be doing several things that other countries are doing. For example, South Korea has free drive through virus testing centers.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/27/... [nypost.com]
Here, a man who had been exposed and wanted to get tested ended up with over $3,000 in medical bills for the testing. And we can't even manage to create good tests for the virus.
https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
We are failing, badly, and people will die unnecessarily because of it.
Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, this is very wrong, provides no sources, and comes from an AC. Thinking any sane individual will believe you is the height of hubris.
First, this kills healthy adults. Death rate is AT LEAST ten times higher than the flu. It is more transmissible than the flu. People have at least a 5% chance of permanent lung damage. Asymptomatic cases are very rare.
Please, educate yourself and do not spread misinformation for political purposes. Your lies have real world consequences, up to and including death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Oh look everyone, the AC is now bad mouthing wiki as a means to poison the well. That's a logical fallacy. Wiki may be susceptible to bad edits on obscure things, but this is a developing story, it is edit protected, and everything is very well sourced.
You've got nothing. You can't refute a single claim made in the article. Pathetic.
Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if anyone in 1918 wrote off the Spanish Flu as insignificant when it had only killed a few people.
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I wonder if anyone in 1918 wrote off the Spanish Flu as insignificant when it had only killed a few people.
Yes, very likely. Especially considering that millions of men were still dying from bullets, mustard gas and dysentery in the WW1 trenches at the same time.
The government tried to BURY news of Spanish Flu (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if anyone in 1918 wrote off the Spanish Flu as insignificant when it had only killed a few people.
No need to wonder. They did.
There was a war on. (You might have heard of it: World War I, then known as "the war to end all wars".) The Wilson administration viewed the news of it and measures to restrict its spread as attempts to interfere with the war effort.
So news was suppressed, or buried in counter-propaganda. (Like the spread of the idea that flu mobidity was from being poisoned by intestinal bacteria by not defecating once a day, leading to the laxative craze that lasted through the '50s.)
Domestic military bases were required to NOT quarantine the infected or infected bases, but to keep the troops moving. (A cross-country train trip was longer than the incubation; Troop trains would start out with a couple cases and arrive with more than half the troops down sick.) Ditto but more so with cross-Atlantic troop ships delivering them to the front - until the ships acquired the nickname "floating coffins".
It was called the Spanish Flu because newspaper censorship would not permit stories about it in the war zone or the allied countries, but neutral Spain was fair game.
The prevailing estimate is that about a quarter of the world population got it, and with 2 to 3% mortality about 1.7% of the word population died. But some estimates of deaths go more than twice that high.
Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:4, Informative)
There have been at least two cases now without obvious path of transmission (ie. weren't a recent visitor to China or in contact with someone who had been infected). This suggests that the virus is now out in the wild, which raises the specter of a pandemic.
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""The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Albert Allen Bartlett
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Re: Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:3)
Are you kidding me? China responded faster than the U.S. is now.
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In other words, if humans weren't humans...
But considering the slow down in China that occurred so far this year, there are economic consequences, and, well, shareholders are always mindful of economic consequences.
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People get far too wound up in the day to day movements of the stock market. It's only just an estimate on th
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No, the fact is we are living in a time and place when great power is being wielded in an arbitrary manner. When one guy can decide "we should have tariffs" and announce it by tweet, and it is so
Nearly all stocks are affected, not just the nuts! (Score:3)
If the stock price for a company can fluctuate so wildly based on some idiotic post on social media than either most of the people holding the stock are idiots that weren't investing on any solid principles or the company's valuation wasn't based on anything more than hype or wishful thinking in the first place.
Have you checked the market? I have a small portfolio, exclusively long-term investments...Apple, Shell, Stanley Black & Decker, Target, 3M...the main manufacturer of the masks everyone is price gouging for...the company you'd expect to profit off this most. All of them are down over 10% in the last week. I'm checking a few times a day, mostly out of amusement. I'm 25+ years from retirement, so this is a hobby and insurance policy. It doesn't yet affect me.
I chose those stocks and long-term inve
Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
Coronavirus at this point is just a convenient trigger. The bubble had been blown to huge proportions. We'll see if it just got deflated a bit or if this is really the start of a bust.
If Covid hadn't happened, we'd probably have some other event come down the road to start the bear market within a year or two, tops. The boom/bust cycles have in general been about 10 years apart.
Only problem this time around is that there is huge amounts of debt going around both on personal and national level. We'll see how this plays out. Heck, interest rates have been negative for many parts of the world for several years now...
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This isn't being "blown out of proportion". This is some serious shit and is likely to get much MUCH worse.
People like you who downplay the severity of this are doing more harm than good.
Yeah, maybe this will all blow over, but most if not all the experts who study this stuff are saying it's no longer a matter of if the US gets hit hard by it, but a matter of when.
But go ahead and keep whistling past the graveyard.
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Yeah, maybe this will all blow over, but most if not all the experts who study this stuff are saying it's no longer a matter of if the US gets hit hard by it, but a matter of when.
I've not seen any expert suggest that the US will be hit hard by this - by "hit hard" I mean Spanish Flu hard.
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The panic sparked by such an expert saying that would be worse than "Spanish Flu hard". Don't believe a word any authority tells you and take modest precautions. A few weeks of food, etc.
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Re:Stocks aren't what they used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
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it's no longer a matter of if the US gets hit hard by it, but a matter of when.
Nah ah. Just the other night Trump said "Well, I don't think it's inevitable" because "reasons". Even though HIS experts (the ones sitting next to him) literally just said it's inevitable. But what do they know, they are just experts in the field.
The best advice I've ever received: when you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk. And especially don't pretend like you do.
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They never were what they used to be. The efficient markets theory was based on rational investors, and investors have always been panicky sheep.
Funny you should mention that... (Score:2)
The media and social media influence on the market is astounding
Yes, almost like blowing a virus all out of proportion could cause the stock market to take a dive on command... very convenient for a lot of very rich people.
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The problem with the last 3 years is the level of volatility in stocks. It reminds me of stocks pre-great depression. Where many of the financial controls were not in place, so overall decade by decade you will see the same trending, but you have less highs and lows, but a steady growth.
these +1050 and -1000 point days isn't a sign of a good market, with a combination of a lot of fear, and uncertainty in the markets.
The stock market normally averages around 10% a year no matter who is in charge... However
Did they? (Score:2)
Watched prof. Richard Wolff the other day saying a stock market crash was well overdue considering it happens every 4-7 years on average.
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This is still only down half as much as the dip at the end of 2018. Just because it ended quickly doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Not real money (Score:2)
Sober economic analysis (Score:2)
"But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."
--John Maynard Keynes
I'm going with an alternative retirement plan.
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"But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." --John Maynard Keynes
Keynes was childless - and (as you can see) didn't care what disasters he was leaving for later generations.
Some of us - even some of us who are childless - happen to want later generations of humanity to do even better than we did.
Broken clock... (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds obvious, but prior to that, the best I'd been advised was to just put money in (IRAs) and leave it there/forget it. Maybe paying closer attention could sow some benefits. Yes, I know, "getting back in" is also impossible to time perfectly. As I said, I don't know what I'm doing, but at least I may miss some of the losses.
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That's good for you and I'm happy for you, but not everyone can do this. Meaning, for you to sell, someone has to be buying. If everyone is trying to sell, and no one is buying, it's going to be a lot worse.
That's the problem with our economy and the way we do retirement planning. But given that we accept this model, most people really are better just putting it in an IRA and forgetting about it except at key milestones where they reset their risk percentage because the risk of mistiming sells and purchases
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To elaborate a little on "the risk of mistiming sells and purchases is just too high", what I mean is that the stock market always goes back up because of the way the economy is designed and most people would very likely end up selling after the drop (often a sudden drop) has begun and then shame-facedly buying back in only after the recovery either begins or is over, meaning they will experience the loss and miss the recovery.
If the stock market ever doesn't go back up again, your cash is probably also no
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The internet was a, uh, different place 20 years ago. You should have seen some of my email addresses. It was the wild west of nicknames. :D
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Don't worry (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't worry, Dear Leader has put Mike Pence in charge. He's a science-denying bible-thumper without a shred of experience, so I'm sure we'll all be perfectly fine.
According to Pence, "plagues are god's punishment for wickedness", so I guess we deserves it (although he didn't specify what kind of wickedness).
Trust in Dear Leader and all will be well!
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You'll die regardless of what Pence does.
And don't change the subject to "I meant right now".
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Informative)
Also, you should cite Pence's supposed position on "God's punishment". Googling your phrase turns up nothing from him.
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According to Pence, "plagues are god's punishment for wickedness", so I guess we deserves it (although he didn't specify what kind of wickedness).
Having secular democratic governments that allow abortions and consensual gay buttsex in place rather than brutal fundamentalist Christian theocracies, duh.
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1. God directly says (and publishes) "don't do this, it's bad for you and society".
2. People ignore that and do it anyway.
3. 32 million people then die, because it was in fact bad for you and society.
4. People then blame God.
Maybe people do deserve this coronavirus.
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Yes, we've all gone down hill since we started wearing linen and wool together.
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No doubt.
Sometimes when I make travel plans, I look at the countries' flags, just to be aware of them. I'm not foolish enough to think an arbitrary pattern of colors on some fabric maintains a group identity, or has any actual effect on history.
Right?
Re: Don't worry (Score:2)
I'd say it was the seafood industry that really did us in. Just imagine how pissed off god must be when he looks at the USA and sees Red Lobster everywhere ....
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Maybe have another shelled animal. Like a Pangolin.
There is little point to getting into the subtleties of religious dietary practices with you. All of that information is a google away, and you have personal time until evolution eliminates you.
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Don't forget the bacon cheeseburgers, which are tasty enough to risk divine retribution for.
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Well, debatable, but since you're advocating I can do whatever I want with an animal as sentient as you, I'll keep that mind long term.
-Very- long term.
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Well first of all, it's a disease that was transferred to humanity because someone ate a monkey, does it say not to eat monkeys anywhere in the Bible? And then it can also be transmitted via heterosexual sex - people would still get infected with HIV/AIDS if every gay being that was ever born remained 100% abstinent. And then apparently God waited a few thousand years to visit this poorly targeted punishment at people He chose to make gay in just the last few decades. Odd choice, seems kinda random doesn't
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Monkeys aren't kosher. And from your worldview, suggesting it is acceptable is even stranger. You're basically advocating eating yourself, hominid.
Yes, there's promiscuous heterosexual sex, too. And intravenous drug use. Both of which are also warned against.
And no, there's been "punishment" (in terms of STD's) throughout history, not just since immorality reached the recent truly massive and unrepentant scale. You were warned then, warned at every point of history through direct empirical experience,
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As for "chose to make gay", perhaps. That does not specify you must then engage in widespread, disease-propagating promiscuity.
Not acceptable for me either, and me then complaining about how you are "oppressing my heterosexuality" would equally be nonsense.
One's "sexuality" is not, or should not be, one's defining characteristic. Einstein is Einstein because of his skill with science, not his sexual orientation. Making that the first thing we consider about a person is, in itself, philosophically pervers
And it's all Trumps fault! (Score:2)
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The President of the United States, doesn't have too much impact on the market.
That said, the Trump Administration pushed to supercharge the economy at the expense of a lot of safety nets, and cutting a lot of long term and emergency systems.
If the CDC had better leadership. As this virus was known as a threat for a while, a solid plan could had been in place to deal with it, and people knowing there is a policy and procedure around protecting people, giving honest non-conflicting information. Markets pr
Its indirect (Score:5, Insightful)
The market isn't reacting because it thinks the wutang virus will kill everyone. Its going down because Chinese factories have been closed for two months and just about every company that has manufacturing in China has had to revise down their sales forcasts due to limited supply.
Also its not that big of a drop. We are still well above the most recent low point of Dec 2018. That hit 22,445.
I'm hopeful this may actually help things in the long run. After the year long trade dispute which caused some companies to shift manufacturing out of china, COVID may be just the extra push needed to help redistribute global manufacturing to something more sustainable. The reasons being 2 fold. 1: Companies now can't rely on it being easy to do business with China. I'd reckon things will only get more difficult as they try to throw their weight around in politics and kleptocorps like Tencent and Huawei continue to eat their lunch with their own inventions. And 2: China's public services are clearly in no way capable of dealing with a health emergency. Compare how COVID has gone to the Ebola and Zika scares a few years back in the US. How stable can your business operations be when the region has a pandemic every decade or so and everything gets shut down? China's institutions are geared more towards suppressing information than they are in actually solving the problem.
Re:Its indirect (Score:4, Interesting)
The market isn't reacting because it thinks the wutang virus will kill everyone. Its going down because Chinese factories have been closed for two months and just about every company that has manufacturing in China has had to revise down their sales forcasts due to limited supply.
Not quite. Every company who relies on a supply chain to China has had to revise down their sales forecasts. This is far more than just the ones that get everything done in China. If you want depressing, guess where the worlds medical supplies and medication come from?
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If you want depressing, guess where the worlds medical supplies and medication come from?
I give up, please tell me. And include a link. I'm doing various Google searches, but the engine keeps giving me medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical manufacturers, not medical supply manufacturers. But so far, China hasn't even appeared on the list.
This article here might help, but it is paywalled. [marketwatch.com]
This article says that China produces medical stuff for their domestic market [euromonitor.com]. I think a lot of medical companies don't want China manufacturing for them due to quality and IP issues.
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Every company who relies on a supply chain to China has had to revise down their sales forecasts.
Well yes of course but I thought that was obvious enough to not require explaining.
If you want depressing, guess where the worlds medical supplies and medication come from?
At least for the US, not China. But I guess that depends on what you consider medical supplies
*COUGH*??? (Score:2, Informative)
Number of COVID-19 deaths to this point: ~2900 (Globally)
Number of Flu deaths in the 2018-2019 season to this point: 57,000 (In the US alone)
Re:*COUGH*??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No serious person believes China's numbers. Now that it's broken out to western countries we'll know the truth in a couple weeks.
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Number of people with acute kidney damage from Coronavirus is estimated at 10% of all cases so at least 8 thousand. Tl;dr this isn’t the flu. China is testing male fertility of patients as well because the virus also may attack the testis. Still want to get sick?
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Re:BREAKING NEWS (Score:4, Funny)
I"m holding cash reservers to jump in with after it does.....
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It will bottom out at some point.....
I"m holding cash reservers to jump in with after it does.....
I don't why you got tagged as "funny". I'm doing the exact same thing. I have about $40k in cash earmarked in a SEP for new investments and now is not the time to be buying.
Re:BREAKING NEWS (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you were smart and realized that the run-up was unsustainable even without COVID-19 being priced in and got the hell out.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS (Score:2)
*Don't suppose that would include you??
*snicker*
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Can I get a handle of the Tesla hate, I have been seeing in the Trolls lately?
From looking at the cars, they seems like decent cars, with prices on par with ICE Cars with the same standards of build and quality.
Sure Musk is a bit out there, but so are most CEO's.
Perhaps now that we all have fancy smartphones, and there isn't any big difference owning an Android vs iOS phone. People want to lash out on the next "Prestige" device
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Troll posts that look like ignorant hatred are some of the best because they not only provoke an emotional response, but they also tend to be simplistic and easy
Re:Actually no... (Score:5, Informative)
"Long" implies they bought some time ago.
No. It doesn't mean anything of the sort. It's just the opposite of a 'short' position.
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This is why every other President has been very apprehensive to take credit for the swings of the market - if you take credit when it goes up, you also take blame when it takes a steaming double-flusher all over your lawn.
Re:And Twitler is trying to blame Dems (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why every other President has been very apprehensive to take credit for the swings of the market
I'm not sure whether you're being ironic here.
I'll tell what may come to haunt the president, was his claim that the number of coronavirus cases was going down and would soon be only 5. While I appreciate that he's trying to keep people from panicking, if things get more challenging and he keeps doing this, he's going to find it harder and harder to quell panic.
The normal way a president handles this is making a confident, but carefully measured statement. What people like about Trump is that he's so *unfiltered*, but there are times when a filter is a good thing.
Re:And Twitler is trying to blame Dems (Score:5, Insightful)
It's largely because Trump is, for lack of a better term, a fucking moron. He doesn't understand economics, he doesn't understand government, he doesn't understand science. He's a one trick pony who is so stunningly stupid that he has surrounded himself with yes men. Reagan was not the brightest bulb, but he knew how to take advice. That skill is probably the single most important skill a leader can have.
Re: And Twitler is trying to blame Dems (Score:2)
This is why every other President has been very apprehensive to take credit for the swings of the market
Have they, now.
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This is why every other President has been very apprehensive to take credit for the swings of the market
You mean like Obama did only a few days ago? Well, you could say he was apprehensive. He waited until he was out of office for three years to take credit.
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This is a huge gift for Trump. The market was already in a historical bubble and he's been foolish for taking credit for it. Now the crash can't be blamed on him but he CAN take credit for its rebound before the election.
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Assuming the market rebounds long enough before the election to make a difference. The runway is shortening on our "stable genius" and the uncertainty of the election still isn't baked in. If this is a correction (which is likely), rather than a shock, it's unlikely that the market will recover in time, and, even if it is simply a shock, past shocks resolving into positive returns within six months has been a very mixed bag. If I were Trump, I'd be sweating at this point. Oh he is? That'll help things.
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My point is that Trump won't be blamed for the long overdue market correction now. He's also got cover for another massive 2008-style bailout. This virus panic was a huge gift.
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All those scientists standing around him at the national briefing were extras actors. They just learned their lines well when they sounded authoritative and have in-depth scientific background. Their official positions within the epidemiological community were just actors' lies on their resumes.
One of us is being duped, that's for sure.
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Re:We're doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Here you can see a play-by-play of Trump systematically demolishing the US' capability to respond effectively to a pandemic:
https://www.vox.com/2020/2/25/... [vox.com]
A big part of it is that Trump exactly copies one of the worst and most disastrous parts of Chavismo: Firing competent officials who called out, or would call out his lies and/or idiotic policy blunders, and replacing them with incompetent loyalists who will nod and smile and mismanage things into the ground, or at best manage to keep things limping along until there's an actual problem. I'm surprised Trump's leftist opponents don't respond to his attacks by comparison to Chavez by pointing out that fact.
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The difference is that all the facts in that article are correct, and no amount of butthurt you can muster will change that! LOL XD
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Well, in usual Vox fashion, it's a wonderful mix of idiocy and falsehoods, tied up with opinions portrayed as facts.
For example, it refers to White House staffers - political appointees, not doctors - as "pandemic experts". Firing people whose job is collating reports is NOT destroying the CDC.
The article can't tell the difference between proposed budget cuts to programs that have nothing to do with disease response and actual budget increases to programs that DO handle public health.
In a different place,
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Just remember that microwaves and Mountain Dew kill everything. Keep it real downstairs for the win.