Bard

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Play it again Sam

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Fun fact: that's never said in the movie. The closest it gets is Ingrid Bergman saying at one point "play it, Sam".

I think it may get confused with the Woody Allen movie and play "Play it again, Sam".

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Isn't increasing profit margins what private companies are... supposed to do?

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Yes, but you don't then turn around and lie about how you're having to increase prices because your profits are taking a hit.

Translation: defrauding the state is okay, as long as you only do it in chunks under $25k/yr. :lol:

Guess what video won't be played on the network news this evening.

I admit, I was skeptical but it really did remove the cringe factor by placing it in the proper context. :lol:

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$70-$90k vehicles all over the road. $15 beers at events and everyone’s got one in their hand. Kids riding $10k golf carts to the neighborhood pool. People paying someone to cut their grass. Car wash subscriptions. I can list 100 more things.

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This is the problem. There's a term since COVID called "hate spending," it refers to the act of spending money out of frustration or defiance despite rising prices, often accompanied by anger or resentment toward having to pay more for goods or services that were previously less expensive. As more consumers have continued to "hate spend" they've been offsetting those marginal costs by putting them on their credit cards. Credit card interest averages somewhere over 22% right now.

What we're starting to see is more credit card delinquencies (90+ days) and more vehicle repossessions (even while new vehicles have continued to sell well). If you were to run the economic clock backwards toward the economic shitshow of 2008, we would be somewhere between 2014 and 2011 (depending on the category).

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We are a long way from hurting.

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Not as far as you think. Consumer debt is and credit card interest rates are at historic highs while personal spending stupidity seems to be running rampant as well. Once consumers start defaulting on their debt, they will lose access to credit. Losing that access means GDP starts going down, meaning a rise in Unemployment. Rising unemployment will feed more defaults, thus creating a snowball throwing us into a recession.

Those in an industry fairly recession-proof or with strong enough job security to weather the storm will make out well, the rest will need to do varying levels of rebuilding their lifestyles.

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This is more a reflection of people making dumb financial decisions rather than some meta signal about the economy.

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I think it's both.

The inflation since COVID created a new spending pattern called "hate spending". The term refers to the act of spending money out of frustration or defiance despite rising prices and is often accompanied by anger or resentment toward having to pay more for goods or services that were previously less expensive. This "hate spending" has driven consumers to create historically high debt even while interest rates are also at or near historic highs.

The recent news about Doordash creating a layaway plan should have been chilling to anyone watching the economy. When consumers are so deeply in debt and/or are so financially illiterate that they are putting a basic staple (food) on payment plans, that's a warning sign of structural economic problems.

Diversity is their strength and nothing is more diverse than allowing homeless addicts and drug dealers to take over your streets.

Only 92%? Trump must be slowly winning over some network execs. :lol:

No, my wife and I have a tremendous relationship so we're doing something like that together or not at all. Once we retire, we're definitely moving to an area with a smaller population.