Our financial system is crumbling this week.

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IMADreamer
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by IMADreamer »

Superorganism wrote:
January 19 22, 6:12 pm
I will gladly pay more for items if they were made by fellow Americans and employing them with decent wages. I’d buy a lot less stuff, but it would hopefully be a lot nicer stuff.

And you’re right AWvCB. I used to love Amazon reviews. They’ve been worthless for years. It’s either 1* reviews crapping on the poor shipping of the products. Or 5* reviews that are obvious shilling. It’s a hellscape.

Everyone says that, but when the rubber hits the road they rarely do and usually go for the cheaper alternative.

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G. Keenan
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by G. Keenan »

TGantz wrote:
January 20 22, 11:17 am
G. Keenan wrote:
January 20 22, 10:24 am
I quit Amazon Prime a year ago, maybe more, and my e-commerce life is just fine. Don't miss it at all, and I discovered you can still get all the benefits of Prime (except streaming video) without subscribing. Everything I've ordered since quitting Prime still ships free as 5-day shipping, and I can plan my life well enough in advance that there's nothing I need to buy online that I can't wait 5 days to receive. And what I've discovered is that the stuff still arrives in 2 days anyway, for free. So I get Prime 2-day shipping by default. Now I'm in a big city with multiple Amazon warehouses and whatnot, so more rural or exurban areas might not get stuff as quickly.
I really want to quit using Amazon, but the wife does not. The streaming service is just as bad as the shopping. Half of the stuff listed is only for rental. I can't imagine how many people have been tricked into renting things they thought were free. It gives a prompt before purchasing, but I'm sure my mom would click right through it.
I got really pissed at Amazon back in November when I was buying something with free 5 day shipping on my phone. After I completed the purchase and had selected the shipping (5 day), I got a pop up asking if I wanted to receive it in 2 days instead for free. So I clicked yes. There was no fine print with this, no use of the word Prime at all, but saying yes to this pop up offer of free 2 day shipping on this specific order automatically enrolled me in Prime again. The mofos. I was able to cancel it before being charged, but still I resent the trickery.

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by GeddyWrox »

I could be remembered wrong but I thought there was a "free for me" filter in the Amazon streaming service.

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ghostrunner
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by ghostrunner »

If it weren’t for the streaming service I’d dump it. I watch it pretty regularly. Netflix is probably our least used service now, though it kind of comes and goes depending on what show is out.

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ghostrunner
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

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I don’t know if there’s a better thread for this. Seems pretty bad. Sounds like people have a lot of trouble using this service and it’ll be the only way to login to the IRS.

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AdmiralKird
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by AdmiralKird »

Superorganism wrote:
January 19 22, 6:12 pm
I will gladly pay more for items if they were made by fellow Americans and employing them with decent wages. I’d buy a lot less stuff, but it would hopefully be a lot nicer stuff.

And you’re right AWvCB. I used to love Amazon reviews. They’ve been worthless for years. It’s either 1* reviews crapping on the poor shipping of the products. Or 5* reviews that are obvious shilling. It’s a hellscape.
Amazon reviews are still helpful if you click on the 3 star ratings. Usually you'll be able to figure out whether or not a product will work for you there. A lot of the three stars will point out critical flaws that you can't see in the product description, and that's all you really need to know.

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TGantz
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by TGantz »

ghostrunner wrote:
January 20 22, 10:04 pm
I don’t know if there’s a better thread for this. Seems pretty bad. Sounds like people have a lot of trouble using this service and it’ll be the only way to login to the IRS.
So if I'm reading correctly, you need to have a relatively modern computer with a web cam to be able to receive those benefits? So they expect people with no money to spend money on technology so that they can get money. Seems dumb.

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IMADreamer
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by IMADreamer »

I thought now might be a good time to bump this thread since the whole world is on fire. Surprisingly I have not seen a slow down in business yet but it's gotta be coming. The high fuel prices will hit the farm world hard. We are increasing fuel storage capacity so we can keep more on farm because our suppliers are saying costs are going to continue to increase.

What is everyone's thoughts? Is this another bump in the road ala 2008? Something much bigger like a depression? or is it something way worse than that? It seems like we are rocketing right towards a cliff since we've fixed none of our problems in the last few decades. Just curious what others think?

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AdmiralKird
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by AdmiralKird »

The thing I've noticed most in just shopping for food over the past six months is there is no 7% inflation. There has been a rather sudden, overall increase in food prices by 30-50%. I think future's contracts for the supply chain have been pricing in an awkward crop season since Ukraine - even though prices should have fallen as we emerged from a pandemic economy. There's also a lot of fuel problems pricing in what it might take to bail Europe out of a Russian gas shutoff in the winter. In some ways the immediate recession should be encouraging a post-pandemic return to work rather than the great retirements of the pandemic - so at least there's that.

It's all dependent on how long it takes the energy situation in the world to stabilize and how rough it gets. I don't know what you mean when you say "fuel prices will hit the farm world hard." Without taking steps to curtail your variable expenditures for the year over what is normally spent, and factoring in an increase in harvest market prices, what sort of profit reduction do you think you're currently looking at percentage wise versus last year?

Also the stupid decade-long drug of near 0% fed interest rates is at least finally over. Our financial system shouldn't have seen those rates as financially healthy. In some ways you can tie what we're going through back to finally getting a correction to the financial measures taken after 2008. It's just not possible to sustain a high debt while giving out free loans indefinitely.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Our financial system is crumbling this week.

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Here's my very limited, very pessimistic opinion.

On a macro scale, it seems to very much make sense that inflation is going to hit hard. Market flooded with stimulus money and people getting back to work, so demand increases. Supply lines hit with covid and now somewhat permanently altered, so supply decreases. Plus whatever China's zero covid policy means. And, in particular, oil/gas production is lower now than pre-covid levels; not just OPEC but also independent producers in America.* More demand, less supply, both lead to higher prices. We have both. Oh, and the Russia Ukraine war. So, not only do we have inflation on energy prices, which will ripple through everything, we also have inflation beyond that.

Also, the govt has borrowed so much [expletive] money, what are we at now, $31T in debt. Yep. That's it. And, Americans are so in debt. That the Fed can't really balloon interest rates to what it would take to slow inflation (if inflation is 10%, I think rates needed are somewhere around 12% to slow it down). But, bump rates up to 12%, home prices fall overnight, land prices fall overnight, car prices fall, the value of anything people need to borrow money to buy falls. But, don't worry, the real reason it won't happen is because the govt won't be able to afford its debt obligations on that $31T. So...you know, bad.

Instead of trying to actually fix inflation, and taking the hit, and correcting the federal government budget to account for an increased debt obligation, they'll let inflation run rampant because it only really hurts the lower and middle classes. What do billionaires/millionaires care if gas is $7/gallon or eggs are $10/dozen or bread is $8/loaf? No skin off their ass.

*I also don't know much about energy production, but I've seen a lot of sentiment with the worldwide push towards clean energy, there is a hesitation for energy companies to really ramp up production again and invest all the overhead to ramp up, when the future of the market is uncertain. Instead they may be content to just maintain production at current levels and live with increased prices for the time being. No idea if this is true, though it does somewhat make sense. Albeit not entirely convincing.

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