Tesla Investor's General Macroeconomic / Market Discussion

[ValueAnalyst]

This morning interest rates are dropping and USD:EUR is increasing.

Both are positive for TSLA.

 

[Starno]

Macro economic paper : https://www.kansascityfed.org/~/med...s/2017/auerbach-gorodnichenko-paper.pdf?la=en

 

[kenliles]

 

[Intl Professor]

As a pseudo intellectual I am always interested in ideas. As a teacher about the old Soviet Union it was necessary to deal with ideas about history and cycles thereof. Thus I was intrigued by an interview of Joshua Green on NPR a day or so ago. I have not read his book but have decided to buy it.

Since our illustrious leader has no ideas of his own it is instructive to learn what Bannon who is truly an intellectual believes. Even more so since he is now unleashed, along with Gorka, to wreck more fuel on Trump supporters' fire and anger.

Green informs us about divisions in the Catholic Church, especially an historical perspective on them. Bannon is part of an ultra-right faction similar to Pope Pius' flirtation with fascism. He believes there are cycles of history and we are in a dark age when forces like the Enlightenment plagued Christendom in the fifteenth century. That helps me to understand contemporary Republicans' dislike of scientific evidence contradicting their faith in oil. (One must surely admire Pope Francis' good fight in this endeavor.)

I don't know if Green anticipates this but the "wave phenomenon" goes back even further to at least the Greeks and probably debates in other mythic systems as well, within Buddhist, Confucian, Islamic, other Abrahamic, and Hindu traditions. The generic conflict is between traditionalism and tradition. As in the famous quotation from Jaroslav Pelikan, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.” (Courtesy of Good Reads.) The Greeks going from animism to gods, from gods to reason, from rationalism to empiricism, and as one of my teachers said in his book, "The Enlightenment...put its faith in reason by pitting reason against faith." Yada, yada, like even the great debates between Einstein and the quantum magicians. "God does not play dice;" my ass.*

Trump's "truthiness" and electoral victory is surely in the pattern of a reaction to enlightenment whether our tradition as a country of immigrants, world leader, pioneer in pragmatic approaches to problem solving, and the list goes on. Oddly enough, this "moral outrage" against tradition is eminently immoral. But in any case isn't that always true in conflicts between greed and virtù?

On Green's book, enjoy: Joshua Green on the "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump & the Storming of the Presidency" | Democracy Now!

*Does God Play Dice

 

[AudubonB]

[Mod Mode OFF]

This is off-topic enough that maybe it will have to be moved...but maybe not....

Given a certain Recent Event, I thought many here would be rapt with interest to learn that....somebody......has started, umm, the following:

CROWD-FUNDING PLEA:

Calling all Alaskans:

PLEASE help us. Working together, if we all pitch in we can buy a pair of Xtratufs for Melania.

Don't you all think it's wonderful to be able to help the needy?

[/Mod Mode OFF]

 

[Lump]

Meanwhile in real news Q2 GDP revised higher at 3% & S&P500 is still 1% of ATH's.
US revised second-quarter GDP up 3.0% vs 2.7% rise expected

• The U.S. economy grew faster than initially thought in the second quarter, notching its quickest pace in more than two years.
• There are signs that the momentum was sustained at the start of the third quarter.
• Gross domestic product increased at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the April-June period, the Commerce Department said.

US second-quarter GDP growth revised up, fastest in over two years

 

[AlMc]

Adam Jonas just on CNBC:

Paraphrase: He feels that the Foxconn factory for LCDs is a 'Trojan Horse' for Apple making a car in the US.

 

[AudubonB]

I see I've garnered a "disagree" with my previous post.

Such frustratingly unhelpful additions, these "reviews". I cannot tell whether Lump disagrees that the post was Off Topic....or that he disagrees that it's wonderful to help the needy.

 

[Lump]

Maybe a link to the Red Cross for the people who are suffering would have been more appropriate instead of the juvenile comment about what shoes she wore boarding Air Force One.

 

[FluxCap]

Adam Jonas just on CNBC:

Paraphrase: He feels that the Foxconn factory for LCDs is a 'Trojan Horse' for Apple making a car in the US.

That seems less "forward-thinking AJ" and more "crazy train AJ" to me. LCD's made in the USA is good PR given Foxconn's overseas labor scandals, and possibly good economics, but making a component for their existing supply chain is several football fields away from making an entire car at scale.

Also, despite their cash hoards, there just isn't a credible threat from Apple until/unless they spend a massive amount of that cash over a sustained period of time (years), have gigafactory-scale battery supply, large manufacturing PP&E, a distribution network, and thousands of people on staff that know how to design, build and sell cars.

The Germans are impressing me much more these days - they "get it" and unlike their US competition, they are actually going through the soul-searching necessary to transform their entire industry so they can maintain and possibly increase their leadership position in transportation by going through the necessary steps to fully shift to BEV's. It helps that their government and culture are healthy, stable and forward-thinking as opposed to backward-looking, too.

 

[FluxCap]

View attachment 244688

This is indeed an interesting surprise, but actually fits with the narrative that I believe Ken and I share that there are fairly healthy standard short-term US economic indicators, while there are also some fairly unhealthy political and long-term indicators. A lot of economic growth lags policy decisions considerably, so there's a high probability that this is a continuation of the theme of the last few years of the recovery, rather than an immediate indicator of the last few months of policy.

 

[FluxCap]

He believes there are cycles of history and we are in a dark age when forces like the Enlightenment plagued Christendom in the fifteenth century. That helps me to understand contemporary Republicans' dislike of scientific evidence contradicting their faith in oil.

I think this hits the nail on the head. Human beings are uncomfortable with large-scale cultural changes, especially when they are suffering because of a lack of basic necessities and good job opportunities that fit their skill sets. The fact that there are less manual labor jobs requiring little education and a narrower concentration of rich people with more and more share of global wealth is a terrifying problem that historically has not changed without some form of conflict. The fact that there are battery-powered cars driving themselves around with levels of AI that people have only seen in Sci Fi movies before, sharing data with each other wirelessly to make their robot brains more powerful, powered in many cases by the sun -- this just makes many people even more terrified, angry and spiteful. It's too far outside their worldview and comfort zone, and serves to reinforce the fact that they don't have the skills, money, or access to things like this, so they lash out and resist it. Which happens to align perfectly with the interests of those powerful men who profit from prolonging the unhealthy old ways (oil). There are indeed many remarkably similar patterns to the Enlightenment period. We have to have a serious global conversation about what the "new world" looks like as AI and climate change march relentlessly forward, and that conversation has to include how we ensure people have basic necessities and jobs as well as the chance to better themselves and earn more by contributing more. Combined, I believe these are the forces that will shape generations to come.

P.S. I donated to the Houston Food Bank, which has a great track record of providing many healthy meals for every few dollars they receive. It's easy, fast, and a great way to "do something" immediate to help from afar.

 

[Intl Professor]

P.S. I donated to the Houston Food Bank, which has a great track record of providing many healthy meals for every few dollars they receive. It's easy, fast, and a great way to "do something" immediate to help from afar.

Thanks for this and for the wisdom of the rest of your post.

Why don't you start a new thread dedicated to exploring such thinking? Your post neatly identifies the problems which is the basis for a start on solutions.

Given my bias as a teacher, I think the key is education, both about the future through media for the general public, and for an over-hauled approach to public education. Some trends locally are already happening, cf. industry's interest in a better educated and hands on experience for high school students. We should also take Elon Musk's approach to solving problems--looking at the long-term desirable goal and then finding ways to achieve them. Also, IMHO, we should look everywhere around the world to discover best practices and begin, here, to implement them. (Finland, for example, seems to have the best K-12 education. What do they do better than we?) For years I have preached my form of patriotism in the face of global competition is to pick and choose what is best and do it here! Learning from Bezos, we should strive for excellence at all levels and in all things. (Musk believes this too.)

Also, every catastrophe should be analyzed for what we do wrong. Not just in responding to it, but analyzing why we contribute to the problem. People in Houston, and Sacramento as well, need to re-examine land use regulations. (Antithetical to Trumpists and other "developers.") There is reason to take pride in our major research universities but their model for success and reward system is often antithetical to good teaching. I felt that keenly as an undergraduate at MIT in the fifties. We are already getting some more attention to the community college systems where "publish or perish" is less debilitating. And the list could go on and on.

We took a wrong turn in the Reagan years. He said he wanted an America where anyone could get rich. The focus should have been in the direction of equality of access to greater wealth, we already were slipping compared, say, to Sweden even then. His policies were in reality designed to make the rich richer, and now look where we are.

Another key turning point, culturally, was when we changed the motto of the U.S. from e pluribus unum to In God We Trust, doubtless to please the religious right. Has that led to dogmatism in our politics?

God won't save us. God (the universe, in my theology) gives us an opportunity to save ourselves and we must not avoid the challenge by retreating into faith that spiritual forces will save us if we only follow the preachings of self-styled prophets. We should focus on life, not the after-life. Anyone can make promises about the after-life, but show me someone who can speak from experience about it, aside from Shirley MacLaine.

Don't focus on the negative, but prepare for it. I think it was Shaw who said "the nation's morals are like its teeth, the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them."

 

[kenliles]

Study on effect of Universal min income as Elon and others suggest

A $1,000 per month cash handout would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion, new study says

 

[AlMc]

Study on effect of Universal min income as Elon and others suggest

A $1,000 per month cash handout would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion, new study says

Off topic: My senior year in high school, many, Many moons ago I wrote a paper that I entitled 'reverse social security' where people between 18-24 were given $500/month but had to attend either a trade school or college and maintain a C or better average to collect.
My teacher thought I was crazy and gave me a B-, mostly for 'effort'. She was correct about the crazy part but it was an 'A' paper.

 

[kenliles]

Off topic: My senior year in high school, many, Many moons ago I wrote a paper that I entitled 'reverse social security' where people between 18-24 were given $500/month but had to attend either a trade school or college and maintain a C or better average to collect.
My teacher thought I was crazy and gave me a B-, mostly for 'effort'. She was correct about the crazy part but it was an 'A' paper.

Damn straight- you were too far ahead of her time!
Nice work--

 

[dmunjal]

Study on effect of Universal min income as Elon and others suggest

A $1,000 per month cash handout would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion, new study says

If this were true, why doesn't every country do it?

I like the idea of a UBI but only to replace all the existing entitlements to minimize the bureaucracy involved. It also puts individuals in control of their buying decisions.

 

[Intl Professor]

Damn straight- you were too far ahead of her time!
Nice work--

Aren't college students in Denmark paid a salary in addition to free tuition, books, subsidized housing, and universal health care? If not, should be everywhere.

 

[Intl Professor]

See Washington Post:

Why Danish students are paid to go to college

 

[ValueAnalyst]

This morning's employment report surprised to the downside, which will likely keep a lid on interest rates for the next few weeks.

This is positive for TSLA and company valuations in general.