TMG (betaine) utilizes an alternate methylation pathway and for me was life changing.
948 karma · joined September 10, 2015
https://www.propublica.org/article/china-cartels-xizhi-li-mo...
Many clients bought homes or paid U.S. university tuition.
I can’t think of another universally available fallback method.
GDP growth is tied to working age populations growth and productivity growth which are very long term, predicable trends.
Long term returns on stocks will need to return to GDP (or less) but that could be tomorrow or 100 years from now. While I can be certain that it will happen if it happens and I’m right in 100 years is matters little as I’m dead and it does me no good.
In the long term however we’re all dead so being proven right in 80 years time is meaningless to any investor.
One of the benefits of allowing shorting of stocks is that it provides liquidity even in the worst of times.
Crypto isn’t so much a commodity as a collectible like a stamp or a beanie baby.
The only “out” is a miraculous increase in future productivity or an increasing percentage of working age adults that increase GDP to make it sustainable. Of course in the long run we are all dead.
Eventually though the benefit disappears as the demographic pyramid becomes a pipe and the share of working population shrinks again. The US demographic dividend was the era of the baby boomers who were a large cohort but had relatively few children.
A large amount of corporate profit growth since the 80s has been due to a declining share of labor compensation vs capital and declining effective tax rates. Productivity gains are the only real “free lunch” which is what capital investment is supposed to provide to justify the gains. Productivity growth has been stagnating for a couple of decades.
If this were not the case and the Federal Reserve were to lose money and be need to be bailed out the Federal Reserve would be making fiscal policy which is reserved to the US Congress by the constitution.
In other words the Federal Reserve would be able to bail out Ford Motors investors (if it wanted to) by simply buying unlimited amounts of Ford Motors bonds at below market rates. This would tend to piss off Congress who rightly believes that the Constitution grants them that authority.
In some cases Congress has granted the Federal Reserve some authority to purchase other assets such as during the 2008 financial crisis. I’m that case a specific amount of money was allocated by Congress. The Federal Reserve ended up leveraging up the allocated funds which ended up working out for the Taxpayer but didn’t make some in Congress happy.
The net-net of that rambling is that the Federal Reserve is fairly limited in what it can buy so it has very limited control over where they money it creates goes. It can flow into assets like stocks or real estate or into consumer loans to purchase groceries if there are people willing and able to assume more debt and banks able to lend it.
Congress and the Federal Reserve working together have more options. Congress can allocate $1 trillion dollars to fund a green energy program and then the Federal Reserve can buy all of the bonds necessary for the Treasury to fund it. The Treasury pays interest on those bonds and the Federal Reserve gives it back to Congress. As long as the Federal Reserve continues to roll the bonds it is essentially “free money”.
Of course nothing is ever really free as this free money transfers purchasing power from people holding cash as they are diluted. This is essentially what happened during covid.
Long term the bill still has to be paid either through taxes or increased inflation (like we’re seeing now) both with consequences for the economy.
If Congress wanted to provide more tools to the Federal Reserve it could provide them with tools to funnel money directly to households. For example creating an “America Saves” program where employers would be required to fund an employee savings account each year invested in US Treasuries which employees could borrow against and interest paid accumulated to the employee.
The Federal Reserve could create money by purchasing Treasuries from these accounts when consumers took out loans and remove money by increasing interest rates and limiting the percentage of assets that could be borrowed against.
Debt is a promise to return something if value tomorrow for something of value today. Too many promises have been made than will ever be able to be repaid and promises are going to be broken.
Regulators and politicians have three choices on how to deal with broken promises. The first is through bankruptcy courts where a judge allocates losses according to the law. The second is through taxes where politicians take money from one group to honor promises made to another. The third is to drive inflation and break promises by returning dollars that have less value then promised.
This choice that central banks made was the latter by trying to drive up inflation. The side effect of the policy choice however it has tended to favor speculators and the well connected versus other policy paths.
I’m not entirely sure those other paths would have been better. Broken promises tend to be what drives revolutions and the best path is to not make promises that you can’t keep.
Regulators however are less than thrilled if these imbalances persist long term because banks that rely heavily on hot funds tend to experience runs.
If the next day the homeowner moved all the money back and paid off the equity the dollars are destroyed. This is how a bank works.
The size of a banks balance sheet and the number of dollars it can create is constrained by the amount of shareholder equity (by regulation). Regulators typically require a 10 to 1 ratio of loans to capital which has potential for fraud.
Just imagine if you had 10 banks levered 10 to 1 and you took all the deposits and put them on black at the local casino. Half of your bets would yield a 10x return on capital and the others you’d lose all your capital (and all your depositors money) but on average you’d make 5x.
Because of the risk banks are highly regulated and regulators require that named individuals that can be held personally and criminally liable for fraud and auditors who also can be held personally and criminally liable as well.
The discount window is used when the bank is unable to access the interbank market which is usually an indicator the bank is expected to fail. The discount window provides liquidity for high quality assets at high costs (which is why it is called the discount window).
If the bank runs out of high quality assets and can’t raise capital it becomes insolvent (bankrupt) and the FDIC takes over the bank and winds it down.
Food has also gotten much cheaper relative to what it was in the 1970’s. Some would argue that it has also reduced in quality.
But if you add up all the plusses and minuses the two income family today has less disposable income then the single income family in the 1970’s when you exclude the cost of transportation, healthcare, childcare and housing.
It turns out one of the biggest drivers of home prices is school quality and income potential. So two cars for two jobs in a place you can find them and housing and childcare to ensure that children are safe.
The starter homes of the US Boomer generation are out of reach of the Millennials even though they are the same houses but now 50 years old.
A high net worth individual may lose expected future income due to inflation but someone that is poor may not eat today because of inflation.
Eventually when inflation gets bad enough and real rates are negative producers will simply sit on commodities rather then distribute them. Leaving the oil in the ground maybe a better looking term wealth preservation strategy then pumping and selling the oil.
In Venezuela the government implemented exchange rates controls which were much more favorable then market based rates. Those with privilege and connections could purchase dollars at the official rate and then sell them at market rates at 10x what they paid for them. By this method an immense measure of the nations wealth could be expropriated.
Commodities can be siphoned from producers with price controls and then liquidated at market rates. Eventually asset owners can be forced to sell when they can’t produce what is demanded at below market prices.
Those that are close to decision makers can front run markets as the everything degenerates into a command economy.
While not all inflation is theft inflation can facilitate theft on an epic scale. At some point all economic and political power shifts to those that benefit from inflation and it becomes politically impossible to “fix” inflation as power derived from it.
Some of the well wishers would want an explanation for her passing, others wanted assurances that we would be okay, others studiously avoided us, others would unleash a torrent of grief and we’d end up comforting them.
I realized that in most cases these seemingly bizarre reactions were peoples attempts to manage their own emotions. Those looking for an explanation were mostly needing assurance that it could happen to them. Those wanting us to tell them we’d be okay that we’d be okay we’re looking to manage the pain they were feeling due to empathy.
I also realize that my community didn’t really know how to comfort someone in their grief or pain. They simply lacked the ability to emotionally regulate themselves enough to support someone in their grief. These were all good people but somehow most lacked the ability to feel empathy, feel the grief and pain while also being able regulate their own emotions enough to simply stand with the person going through it. It seems that this is a rare skill as valuable as gold.
Maybe it is because death these days is a rare event and our immense privilege means that we don’t learn those skills while we’re are young and when we’re older there is nobody left to model it for us. Maybe our natural wiring for empathy and mirroring others emotions isn’t the panacea that we’ve been told it is and people need to learn other skills, compassion maybe? I simply don’t know.
Logistics are the most likely culprit but my guess is the price has doubled because people are still buying it and they can.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31760/does-the-...
Except that the price of water varies based on the season and you are obligated to sell water at a fixed price when it is convenient for the buyer and buy water back at the same time when it is also convenient for the buyer (duck curve).
Over the course of a season the buyer has stated that his intention is to buy as much as he sells and be net-zero every season but refuses to store even a single bottle of water (e.g. batteries). The buyer would be very upset if water always be available at any time of the day or night in reasonable quantities. The buyer doesn't want to pay any costs for bottling (peaker plants, hydro), storage (batteries, pumped hydro) or water distribution (grid).
The buyer has a habit of buying water when there is a drought and it is expensive and sell it back to you when there is a flood and water is cheap. The buyer doesn't want to change his lifestyle so that his water usage was more in-line with with the seasons (e.g. smart thermostats, lifestyle changes). The buyer has zero incentive to reduce his overall usage below current levels.
You are expected to sell water on credit and track and collect from buyers every month (billing) but the buyer doesn't believe that he should have to pay for that for that because you have to do it anyway. Sometimes you don't get paid but the buyer wants to be guaranteed he will be paid even when you don't get paid (credit risk).
Your suppliers are being mandated to reduce the amount of waters being pulled from aquifers (fossil fuels) and are saying that the cost of water during droughts will likely rise over the next 20 years. In addition we'll likely see more floods and expect that prices of water during a flood may go negative so you expect based on his habits that your buyer will lose you more money then in the past.
The trucks you use to move water around are old and have caused accidents due to poor maintenance (fires) and need to be replaced with more expensive models (buried cable). Nobody wants you to build warehouses since the 50's (hydro) because they are ugly and all good land for warehouse has been used but you are running out of warehouse space. This is leading to scenarios where entire communities haven't been able to get water and people have died.
The relationship with this buyer is massively one-sided and a money losing proposition. You have been sued because of the accidents and have gone into bankruptcy. Your buyer is a middle-class home owner and when you talk to him about the challenges he doesn't want the relationship to change and he expects that he won't pay more over the next 20 years. Costs for other buyers have roughly doubled in the last 10 years and are on average poorer then your homeowner.
A rooftop solar owner under net metering has zero costs or risks outside of capital depreciation but still sells electricity to the grid at full retail price.
There is no obligation to provide the neighbor with power during high demand times when power is more expensive. No costs to build or maintain the grid. No costs to bill your neighbor. No risk if he doesn’t pay. No obligation to extend power to distant communities over rocky terrain.
These costs and risks are non-trivial and in California represent more than two-thirds of retail cost of electricity. Costs for solar installations are dropping while other cost are rising. What the grid needs now is not more solar installations but very capital intensive investments in energy storage and more robust distribution systems. Renewables aren’t going to decrease the cost of the grid but likely increase it as power will need to be able to be distributed across states to compensate for a rainy day in So-Cal. The rooftop solar installations in So-Cal with excess power doesn’t compensate for the more power demand from No-Cal is there is no way to move power between them.
Net-metering is paying a rooftop solar owner well in excess of the value of the electricity produced. No free agent in the market would ever buy power at retail rates. There is nothing special about the electrons coming from a rooftop solar installation versus a commercial solar installation a mile away but the rooftop solar owner gets paid 5x the price for those electrons. If there is anything special about them is it the commercial solar plant because it can distribute its power beyond the step down transformer at the end of the block which is as far as the rooftop solar owners power can be distributed.
Paying the rooftop solar owner in excess of market rates is a subsidy. Win for rooftop solar and lose for every other participant.