Slashdot Mirror

It's a free trade / taxes / mass immigration issue.

Actually, according to many economists, it is a technology issue.

These would be the same economists that push free trade, so they are as objective as CNN or Fox News. These would be the same economists that banished *generations* of middle class and said opps (citation below). The same economists who watched world economies crash then bailed out banks and nobody else? Oh yeah, forgive me for not considering them much. 2 points I'd make, one common sense and the other more math based. The common sense approach is that you can't have billions of dollars flow to China and have tens of thousands of factories in the US close and say that the US wasn't impacted. For free trade all benefits flow to those importing (hint Wall Street not Main Street). The math aspect is that when you look at papers that study both technology and trade impact both are factors *but* technology tends to be more piecemeal add ons while free trade is whole factories closing.

Citation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

It's no problem. We can afford it by borrowing the $2billion from China, as part of the $700billion defense budget, piling it on the budget deficit and adding it to the national debt so we can blame the next Democratic president for the debt being too high. You don't need an AI to see where this is going.

Deficits don't matter when a Republican is president, but like night follows day, they will become a huge issue as soon as a Democrat takes office.

It's called the "Two Santa Claus Theory" and was created by a Republican "strategist" and pundit named Jude Wanninski in 1976.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

Ahhh... classical fear mongering - because you don't want to read statistics correctly

Moron!

Assuming that's even technologically possible and good enough to be used in a court of law. Not to mention the idea of trying to fly in bad weather or at night, and most digital cameras don't work very well at night, especially when your moving.

It's already been used in 2016, so it's technologically quite possible and effective.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/

That's when the original "outrage" shut it down... but now I guess some want it back.

The point is not so much to get a picture of someone's face while they committing a crime.. it's to be able to go back and forth in time to find the moving dot that came to the scene of the crime and then left... it's enough to get probably cause to search a place where the likely perp went or came from.

Apart from murder, crime has actually been moderately worse in England and Wales than in the U.S. for quite a while.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

You really need to get your news from a service that makes its living off of being accurate.

Perhaps we'll get hard data. There is a movement in Brazil to grant private individuals the right to keep and bear arms, based on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Forty-two percent of Brazilians believe gun ownership is a citizen’s right, according to a November survey by pollster Datafolha. That’s up from 30 percent four years earlier. And of the lower house lawmakers who have expressed opinions publicly, slightly more than half support the proposed legislation, according to a scoreboard maintained by Peninha’s staff.

Fellow lawmaker Bolsonaro, a former Army captain, has been preaching the gospel of gun rights as part of his law-and-order pitch to voters. In polls he trails only former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will likely be barred from running.

Brazil’s gun policy needs to change, Bolsonaro said at an event in Congress on March 7. He drew cheers from his supporters when he joked that the so-called “bullet caucus” of lawmakers united by their tough stance on crime should be renamed the “machine gun caucus."

“Dictatorships only take root after disarmament programs,” he said.

Here's an editorial piece from Bloomberg, since the NPR article doesn't reference the "leaking" of guns from the police to the criminal sector.

Guns don't cause violence, but they do escalate it once someone decides to go that route.

It is notable that Brazil has strict gun control laws, which it actually enforces, yet it has a murder rate per capita that is ten times that of the U.S. It also has a major problem with "leaked" guns -- many of which are coming from the police. Clearly the cause of their problem is systemic, but maybe ours is too.

Quite probably the WORST thing that is going to happen to America, is that the far LEFT (our Dems) will win congress and then focus on shutting down our nukes. Right now, nukes provide 20% of our electricity and they are CLEAN. The dems are the ones that I fear if they stop our nukes.

No, nuke operators are stopping your nukes. Probably because your nukes are fucking expensive? Or I don't know, maybe your nuke operators are Democrats. :-p.

Also, U.S. Democrats = "far left" - hahaha. :D They're a lot like our Civic Democratic Party, definitely a right-wing party. They're just not an ultra-right-wing party like the Republicans, is all.

I should expand, since due to some activity in my office this one got cut off:

Having observed the Obama years, the purchasing power of our currency fell off quite a bit. You might look along these lines:

* https://www.consumerreports.or...
* https://www.bostonglobe.com/li...
* https://montrealgazette.com/op...

It may have avoided the official indexes, but the loss of real-world value to our currency was a thing, which is about what one would expect from fast money policies.

Deregulation and corporate tax reform drive speculation that positively affects stocks. We are seeing juicy corporate profits, and the stock market has seen unusually strong growth since Trump came to office.

I work at a large financial institution; we were told by upper mgmt that deregulation and corporate tax reform are the reasons for our increased spending and budgets.

Trump recently said the market would crash if he was impeached. Here's what analysts think.

which Kaspersky refers ...

Why are we reading anything originating from a KGB-controlled source again?

Musk lamented having barely enough time to savor the moment, with the newspaper reporting that he arrived two hours before the ceremony and returned to Tesla’s factory immediately after. (Bloomberg News pieced together the details of his trip from Musk’s tweets and flight data.)

So, Musk claims to have rushed in and out for the wedding only; but the data - tweets, locations, and flight data - show otherwise. I guess this is as reliable as the funding secured at $420, right? Less than 3 quarters of cash in the bank, time to enjoy the good life while you can!

Elon doesn’t sleep on that couch. He takes week long vacations then lies to the media saying he hasn’t had a vacation in years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Are you sure about that?

This [question of asset or not] is not related to the question of whether or how much you should invest. You can call cryptocurrencies an asset class and assign zero or even negative portfolio weight to them. Or you can decide they're not an asset class and still try to get positive or negative exposure to them via other asset classes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...

https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...

"Koch Brothers’ Budget of $889 Million for 2016 Is on Par With Both Parties’ Spending" D's spent about $1.5 billion R's spent about $1 billion Koch's spent and additional about $.9 billion. Republicans as always spent more particularly when you consider down ballot races. But in general yes. R's are far better at the "politics" part. Too bad they suck as governing.

Now that it's a day later, here's the link you'll be looking for:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

Here ya go:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

I tried to read it, but the author’s attention span seemed to wander somewhere along the way... plus he doesn’t do a very good job of developing his thesis even when he is on-topic. When he started pulling gmail into the story, I decided that was far enough.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

Where's the actual article? The link in the headline has nothing to do with the quoted text. All the articles listed are just about Chinese economic activity.

If you scroll down, the article under discussion is linked to here.

How about some actual moderation, slashdot...?

Yes, we all know that the NYT ran a hit piece on Friday containing false information (including a claim that Tesla was looking for COO which Bloomberg has since debunked), and whose author made a snarky brag on Twitter about lowering Tesla's stock price.

That's not why the stock fell and continues to fall. fElon musk is also trafficking illegal narcotics through the giga factory.

Having not produced an $35k car, fElon Musk is about to not produce $25k car. In three years.

1) Is your view that companies should offer lower-margin variants of their vehicles while they're still scaling production to meet the demand for their higher margin vehicles?
2) You do realize that most EV manufacturers are doing this right? I-Pace is doing this, Taycan is doing this, Kona is doing this, etc.
3) Nice distortion of Musk's statements on the interview. He was very careful to repeatedly express the caveats that 3 years would be in an ideal scenario only.

Having not secured funding, fElon Musk is desperate to find investors

Again, you keep using the word "investors" without clarifying what you mean. Tesla has investors holding all of their stock. And is not seeking further investment for fundraising. I think you're using vague terms while talking about privatization, but that's an entirely different story. Tesla has been quite clear that they're seeking a larger pool of investors to dilute the Saudi investment.

And while this is a bit of an aside, but as a retail investor, I'm very glad that Tesla saw fit to let all investors know about their privatization plans, rather than what many companies do which is only negotiate with their large retail investors behind the curtain, often leading to retail investors getting screwed over.

.) Having not fixed manufacturing problems,

Keep telling yourself that.

Tesla will most likely bankrupt by the beginning of next year.

And this is where a figurative LOL turns literal ;)

Right now, Tesla appears to be on track to beat, not simply meet, their Q3 projections (which were only for an average of 4k per week across the quarter). They have a very straightforward path to profitability ahead of them - production volumes are being sustained at far higher levels than in Q2, margins were already positive in Q2 without AWD and P, which are now 50% of the take, so even if you assume no process improvements whatsoever (which are the primary focus at present), that alone is going to generate sizeable margins.

But by all means - please short, short, short! Come on, how much interest will you pay on your credit cards or home mortgage versus how much you'd make when Tesla "goes bankrupt", right? Get those shorts in!

Yes, we all know that the NYT ran a hit piece on Friday containing false information (including a claim that Tesla was looking for COO which Bloomberg has since debunked), and whose author made a snarky brag on Twitter about lowering Tesla's stock price.

And OMG, stop the presses, a few cars out of over 70000 turned out bad! Hint: the plural of "viral anecdote shared endlessly by short sellers who scour twitter and Tesla forums for any bad examples they can find" isn't "data". If it's data you're looking for...

1) Tesla is on a roll. Their production rates make everyone else look like they're missing a zero. They're well en route to being sustainably profitable starting this quarter.

2) I have no clue what you mean by "lack of investors". Obviously, all of Tesla's stock is owned. Actually in a way well more than "all of Tesla's stock", as people who've shorted the stock have put other people's borrowed stock back on the market, and people have bought *that* as well. If you mean "lack of interest in a capital round", Tesla has no interest whatsoever in another capital round; they plan to fund their expansion internally. If you mean for going private, however, they would like more to water down Saudi interests - although that means paying a premium over market prices.

3) SEC investigations are rarely fast, and can take years. By far the most likely result, if they find against Musk, would be a fine ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. Against him personally, not against Tesla (the SEC has generally taken on the view that it's not right to punish shareholders for an individual's actions that may have worked against them).

Meanwhile...
In other news...

PopeRatzo:

"Median income". Do you understand what "median income means"?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelli... [nymag.com]

Do you know the difference between median and average? Do you know how to respond to my crippling attack on your lame talking points? No, you don't.

Using average or mean to measure income is misleading due to outliers. Of course, the average is more convenient to the liberal narrative that wages have leveled or are down, when they are very much on the rise.

PopeRatzo:

Do you know what inflation is?

Do you know how to stay on topic? We were talking income over time, which has raised significantly under Trump, not inflation. If you want to talk inflation, it's probably being overestimated:

Stagnating Wages Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Not to mention, years of Obama's unnecessary and onerous regulations have no doubt taken a toll on prices.

At one point it was noted that Trump had $1.2 million on hand vs Hillary Clinton's had $42.4 million

While that may have been true at one point in the election, actual spending by both candidates (and super pacs) was $1.2 billion for Clinton and $650 million for Trump source.

If there is anything the 2016 election in the US taught us it is that political ads... aren't all that relevant.

What is probably should teach us is that paid political ads aren't all that relevant. Free advertising in social media and new channels are far more relevant. One marketing research firm estimates that Trump benefited from $4.96 billion in free advertising while Clinton benefited from $3.24 billion. Both of these figures are far higher than any money they directly spent. And when added together Trump received nearly $1.2 billion more pro-Trump advertising than Clinton did.

Who knows if that 26% higher advertising figure tipped the election towards Trump, but only about 1 in 200 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin essentially tipped the scales and declared Trump the winner. One thing is for sure, if an extra $1 billion in advertising (paid or free) cannot persuade an extra 0.5% of the electorate, then advertising truly is meaningless.

It's not common in the US. The whole medical bankruptcy is the most common reason for bankruptcy was a myth. There were slightly more bankruptcies in 2017 than in 2007, so obviously Obamacare didn't have some huge effect on reducing them, either. In terms of total bankruptcy, In 2001, 1.45 million households filed for bankruptcy. In 2007, that number was 727,167.

(Posting as AC as I already moderated in the discussion earlier).

That is quite some cherry picking of data used by you and that article, considering 2007 had a record low number of bankruptcy filings. To put it into context, 2006 had 1,085,209 non-business filings, 2007 had 775,344 filings, and 2008 had 1,004,171. 2007 was an aberration as the trend from 2005-2010 was an increase of over 100,000 more non-business bankruptcy filings per year. After it peaked in 2010, it has been reducing by about 125,000 filings per year from 2010-2016. 2017 potentially has shown an end to that trend, as filings only dropped by 13,400.

Just to be clear, non-business bankruptcies have been cut in half since Obamacare took effect. That is not just because of Obamacare, since the Great Recession was a large driver of bankruptcies in 2009/2010, but it is still a significant factor. Even if you compare today's bankruptcies to 2005-2007 (before the recession, it has been a nearly 20% drop in non-business bankruptcies. And considering the population is 10% higher today than in 2006, the drop is even more dramatic.

The fact the story you cited used such skewed and cherry picked data puts a cloud over everything else it states. Its obvious the author had an agenda, even if it was just to be provocative. Considering it goes against the strong consensus regarding the prevalence of medical bankruptcies, it isn't surprising the author needed to fudge the numbers to come to those conclusions.

It's not common in the US. The whole medical bankruptcy is the most common reason for bankruptcy was a myth. There were slightly more bankruptcies in 2017 than in 2007, so obviously Obamacare didn't have some huge effect on reducing them, either. In terms of total bankruptcy, In 2001, 1.45 million households filed for bankruptcy. In 2007, that number was 727,167.

(Posting as AC as I already moderated in the discussion earlier).

Bloomberg ran an article titled Elon Musk's Funding for Tesla Wasn't So Secure where they pointed out when Musk said "funding is secured" there was no actual agreement in place. His statement being factually untrue risked causing this SEC investigation.

Per recent discussion concerning fake news, I'd mention that the article linked is an opinion pice by Matt Levine as noted in the headline and it comes with a disclaimer at the end. Imho it's a worthwhile read.

Bloomberg ran an article titled Elon Musk's Funding for Tesla Wasn't So Secure where they pointed out when Musk said "funding is secured" there was no actual agreement in place. His statement being factually untrue risked causing this SEC investigation.

Really you dumb fuk? You haven't heard about this before? You haven't heard of Tommy Robinson who was put into prison? If you really haven't heard about this ish before you need to take your head out of your a$$.

Government agencies from San Francisco to Stockholm to Berlin to London have had issues and have covered it up. Not all the rape and crime issues are the same. It's the silencing of reporting that counts.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal....
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
http://wjla.com/news/inside-yo...

I haven't vetted these articles. It just shows that if you were at all paying attention you would have seen this.

What's as disturbing as the physical violence is the coordinated news blackout. This is horrible. Not discussing a problem doesn't make it go away.

Musk also had talk with Softbank last year.

But failed because

The talks touched on taking Tesla private, but failed to progress due to disagreements over ownership. Musk proposed a structure that would have given him disproportionate control over the company through stock with supervoting rights, one person said.

We shall see about the Saudis. They have different investing criteria than private investors.

Never the less, this announcement probably gets Musk out of any hot water with the SEC and that lawsuit from the short selling firms may end up as nothing.

1) That wasn't me (but again, nice of you to assume I'm omnipresent. Am I all powerful too?)
2) Reuters was wrong.

Actually, the situation has been reversed. The Saudis are in negotiations to take part in buying Tesla.

Careful.
Look at the link above you from some AC. Basically, banks knew nothing about it until AFTER musk claimed he secured money. If he secured from Saudi Arabia and is just now trying to get a better deal, then he is fine. BUT, if he claimed he had financing when he had nothing, he will likely be in trouble.

You act like the NRA is some sort of boogy man out there operating against the will of the US public.

Yeah, about that.

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/01...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

I love how I'm apparently everyone, everywhere. It's neat being omnipresent. ;)

BTW, did you mix up your short theses? The short thesis that's in vogue today is "there's no demand", not "Tesla can't produce". ;) So you should be assuming I got my VIN and that there's nobody left on the list. Despite them not having opened up anywhere outside the US, and with no signs of them doing so any time soon.

Or I guess you could buck the trend and keep insisting on the "Tesla can't produce" short-selling hypothesis. I guess Bloomberg is in on the scam.

Maybe you could push your own hypotheses? Beat the curve and go straight to the competition hypothesis - "They can produce and there is demand, but soon they'll be drown in a wave of competition!" That one comes into vogue every few years and is usually quite stylish. Or you could go all Alex Jones and become a margin-denier.

There's so many ways for a short to dress!

I agree that Musk was probably just teasing the shorts. But Musk can say he's considering any thing he wants.

Maybe. But what he can't say is "funding secured" if it isn't.

Also no mention of reduced wind energy production from the heat wave. It doesn't take much to find news articles on European wind output dropping, especially in UK and Germany that made large investments in wind power recently.

Here's one example of such a news report:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

When temperatures rise every electrical generation system we have in common use is affected. Thermal plants that boil water will often have to reduce output or shutdown because the cooling water exceeds minimums of safety and/or environmental impact. Wind sees lowered output due to weather patterns that come with a heat wave. Solar PV output is reduced since the panels get less efficient in heat. Hydro sees lowered output from evaporation out of reservoirs.

The least effected is natural gas turbines, because they operate at such high temperatures that the hot air doesn't mean much on the heat sink side. If we saw similar high temperatures in nuclear, which fourth generation designs can reach, then we'd see nuclear still operating in the heat.

I assume that's a Futurama reference. Farnsworth's real, thoughâ"a real Floridian con-man with schemes in multilevel marketing of vitamins, psychic phone networks, an energy drink and another antioxidant drink apparently modeled on "purple drank."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/man-behind-1-151-stock-rally-has-overseen-99-wipeouts-in-past

The previous CEO, Mitch Lowe, got busted by the SEC for bogus transactions designed to make his marijuana vending machine company look profitable to investors.

I suspect they're but amateurs compared to the Indians involved, though, especially Muralikrishna Gadiyaram (CEO of the former H&M Information Technology, the Indian company from which Analytics was formed, and sitting on the board of Analytics and receiving payout as an exorbitant "consultancy fee"), Parthasarathy Krishnan (currently "chief innovation officer"), Prathap Singh, and the rest who came over to the new Helios & Matheson from the old one.

There need to be prosecutions. Shit like this undermines so much trust that corporate types will be calling for prosecutions just to restore some confidence in the system.

I can make it seem like I'm successful even if I'm not as well, at least for a short time. I simply mortgage my house and go on a credit fueled spending spree, which is exactly what the Federal government is doing. And you'd have to be living under a rock miss the fact that the North Korea "peace deal" is not really going anywhere. The "demolition" of the nuclear testing site was likely a PR stunt and whenever anyone talks about actions instead of loose promises the North Koreans feign outrage.

Bloomberg
Al Jazeera

Ok, lets do that check.
Sweden - https://www.thelocal.se/201702...
Norway - https://www.tnp.no/norway/econ...
Japan - https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...
Korea - http://english.hani.co.kr/arti...
China - https://www.scmp.com/news/chin...

Any more specious arguments you'd like to make?

Companies could set arbitrary prices on goods, charging whatever they wanted. ... Turns out they weren't that great of an idea after all.

Maybe I'm older than I think. Don't y'all remember this phrase? Link "I owe my soul to the company store" at 0:51

Sixteen Tons" is a song ... based on life in coal mines The line, "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt," came from a letter ... Another ... from their father, a coal miner, who would say, "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store."

I'm sure, just like Wal*Mart, they've always got the lowest price.

Link: Regulators forced "Mr. Sam" [Walton] to modify his slogan of "Always the lowest price" to the hedged "Always low prices!"

They run a highly profitable trade surplus with the USA

Wrong. US is +12B/yr in the balance of trade.

Sales are sales. Trade is not limited solely to things measured by the ton. Welcome, traveler from the 19th century, to the 21st.

Yes, that would be totally meaningful if it wasn't nonsense.

Model 3 margins are now positive - without any AWD and P in the mix. Now expected to be 15% this quarter. Much of the cost this quarter was from a restructuring (incl. severance from layoffs), which turns from an expense into a cost savings from Q3 onward. 11k cars were stockpiled in Q2 to avoid the 200k limit - aka, Tesla had to pay for them but got no money from them (but will this quarter). Model 3 production rates dramatically accelerated over Q2 and continue to accelerate; Q3 Model 3 deliveries will be 3x higher than Q2, and Q3 model 3 revenue growth even more than that due to the higher-optioned mix (half of all new sales are now AWD or P, which weren't even available in Q2).

Are you in Egypt? Because it appears that you're writing your post from de' Nile.

This is the free market at work. Exactly as intended by the corporations in charge.

This is the free market at work. It's ripe for unionization.

Good luck with that ... Sentiment from several sources (Google: Kavanaugh anti-union), quoting from the first:

Judge Kavanaugh routinely rules against workers and their families and regularly sides with employers against employees seeking justice in the workplace, including CWA members.

• CWA Opposes the Nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
• Trump Unites Unions Against ‘Anti-Worker’ Kavanaugh for Court
• Kavanaugh Sided With Trump Casino in 2012 to Thwart Union Drive
• Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did
• Brett Kavanaugh Once Sided With an Anti-Union Company That Scapegoated Undocumented Workers

This is the free market at work. Exactly as intended by the corporations in charge.

This is the free market at work. It's ripe for unionization.

Good luck with that ... Sentiment from several sources (Google: Kavanaugh anti-union), quoting from the first:

Judge Kavanaugh routinely rules against workers and their families and regularly sides with employers against employees seeking justice in the workplace, including CWA members.

• CWA Opposes the Nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
• Trump Unites Unions Against ‘Anti-Worker’ Kavanaugh for Court
• Kavanaugh Sided With Trump Casino in 2012 to Thwart Union Drive
• Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did
• Brett Kavanaugh Once Sided With an Anti-Union Company That Scapegoated Undocumented Workers