Sour Mash

Rubbish - as with any strange weather event it's clearly, according to the media, 'The Climate Crisis (TM)'. The World is Burning ... give up your freedoms and prosperity!

Yes - the masses are finally starting to catch on to the 'uniparty' aspect of our supposed 'democracies'. The elites pick a couple of options (one 'left' and one 'right') and the public get the final say over how they would like to be screwed. When the scam goes wrong - someone not under full establishment control manages to become the leader of one of the main parties - then the media lie machine goes into full action against them, with the establishment escalating to abusing their hold over the judicial/legal system if that doesn't work.

As if they care 😆 Inflation expectations are deliberately understated - the whole point is to come up with figures that say there's going to be low inflation so no need to do anything that might upset the economy, like rate cuts.

It's not even if they do nothing - if there's an FSCS-breaking event and the government decide to cover everything, then it will take an unspecified amount of time for you to be able to access your funds and by the time you do get them, the actual buying power of the money is likely to be greatly reduced due to the measures taken by the government to make the bank's debts 'good'. Note that 'bail ins' are a thing now, and big busts in the future are likely to see some of your funds (in excess of FSCS limit) being taken to try to keep the bank afloat. IMO For the small extra interest rate on cash savings (vs average 'winnings' on PBs), it makes little sense to loan it to a bank when you could just lend it directly to the government at substantially less risk. If the differential was bigger then it might be a different story.

FSCS doesn't have nearly enough funding to cover a large bank bust. With a bank you hold the bank's promises to pay a sum denominated in the government's promises to pay. With bonds you just have the government's promises to pay and they can print their own money. Typical payouts on winnings over a year are just below a decent savings account interest rate. There's a small chance you do a bit worse, an equally small chance you do a bit better and a very small chance you win a really large amount. IMO the perfect place to park cash.

I'm sure a word in the ear of the right corrupt politicians can make sure we get some more regulations brought in to put a stop to that - it's usually the way when a large business or cartel of business wants to corner the market.

That's because it's a random draw. On average over the course of say a year, you'll get something slightly below a typical 'decent' annual bank savings rate but crucially, no counter party risk except that maybe the state - which can ultimately print its own money - can't pay its promised amount .. Unlike a bank which promises to pay you aforementioned state money which it may or may not have at time of repayment. You're basically sacrificing some 'interest' in return for much less risk.

I think it's brilliant - hats off to Amazon for having the chutzpah to try it. Ironically, AI is at the point now where it conceivably could do the job using actually computational technology.

I was thinking more of the UK - which sell2rent appeared to be talking about. (the BoE). IMO the BoE will be quite willing to burn the pound to (try to) save the general UK economy. Yep, the USA might be more concerned about keeping the status of the dollar than most countries are about their own currenies but a strengthening dollar is typically bad news for third party countries.. .. For the USA and dollar strength, to a degree it doesn't really matter how debt they issue - when your currency is the global reserve you become the ones providing liquidity to the World. That means you must be taking on more debt constantly so long as the global demand is increasing, because more and more dollars are needed. So the USA taking on more and more debt is not a problem to third parties so long as they can swap that debt with each other. It only becomes a problem when it makes the US system unworkable. Or, if the US starts to monetarily tighten and restrict dollar supply that is also a massive problem. The greatest threat to the dollar and US hegemony is something else becoming the global reserve. Why would that happen - IMO principally because they have clearly weaponised the dollar and make no bones about bullying the various countries of the World through access to the US financial system for dollar clearing.

They will ALWAYS sacrifice the currency. Just like they always choose inflation over deflation - it benefits those at the top (who hold their wealth as assets and have large amounts of debt) far more.

They tried to change the story afterwards by claiming that they'd never said the 'vaccine' would stop you getting COVID. Of many disgraceful things and lies that were pushed by the authorities and their mainstream media lackeys, was the whole 'herd immunity' thing where they tried to pretend that the vax would provide better protection than natural antibodies acquired by being one of the 99.8% of infected who survived, and hence would bring about 'herd immunity' in a way that just letting the virus run its course wouldn't. Total lie and we are now looking at a virus that won't go away and is constantly being pushed down a mutating, evolutionary path by 'leaky' so-called vaccines. Still, the whole deceitful saga of COVID and the measures introduced by politicians using it as an excuse has made the pharma companies immense profits, helped the large corporate businesses wipe out the small fry competition, shifted power towards global organisations and fragmented and disenfranchised the public so it has been extremely 'useful' in that respect.

If you are young and looking for a career path to take, then probably the best jobs are in the trades. eg. It will be very hard to replace plumbers or electricians.

People get distracted by whether or not AI is sentient (it isn't) ... the point is that it can produce good enough output to replace the amount of humans needed to do a whole range of desk/office/thinking type work and the sorts of jobs it replaces are typically highly paid. Basically, lots of people who thought that their jobs could never in their lifetime be replaced by automation are now seeing their jobs replaced by automation .. and all happening in a very short timeframe. Likely it will have played out in less than five more years. It's going to be like the impact of mechanised agriculture on farm work.

Yes, it's pretty telling that even with massive, often illegal, immigration being permitted ('we just can't do anything about it, honest!') they still can't get the heavily doctored GDP figures to be positive. On the other hand, the Globalist 'Utopia' that motivates the elite classes moves ever closer. It's not like they will feel the economic pain or see their standard of living become intolerable.

It's not just that things had to get to a certain level of bad before they did something - for years they pushed policies, hard, that actively worsened energy security and cost the economy dear.