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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#169576: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:13:14 PM

No, we wandered back into it. We didn't stay there in the least. You missed discussion of nukes, a site for finding out who your congressmen and the links to their sites so you can contact them, and a whole bunch more.

fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#169578: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:17:58 PM

[up][up]Speaking of both nukes and contacting your congressman, if there's one thing we need to talk to them about, it's passing that damn 'Stop Trump From Using Nukes' bill. As important as everything else is, screw everything else; that needs top fucking priority.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:18:13 PM by kkhohoho

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#169579: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:20:15 PM

Also a political expert weighed in and said that we're headed toward a regime collapse by 2018

Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#169580: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:22:50 PM

[up][up]You're right. At this point, we can't trust anybody to do it on their own without a push.

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#169581: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:23:12 PM

[up][up]WOW. I honestly thought that a societal collapse of some sort might be on the way, but I didn't think it would be that fucking soon. Maybe I should start working out more and getting some self defense classes in the next year or so...

edited 25th Jan '17 5:23:23 PM by kkhohoho

DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#169582: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:23:17 PM

[up][up][up] I'm expecting a Recession in 2018, but I'm no economist: I just know that the sudden loss of Globalism will utterly cripple several Industries, and the rise in Costs from "Made in USA" will make people less likely to buy stuff (without an increase in Wages).

edited 25th Jan '17 5:23:39 PM by DingoWalley1

FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
#169583: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:24:04 PM

Los Angeles Times: Dow bursts through 20,000, extending a rally that looked unlikely a year ago

John Bogle, the 87-year-old founder of investment giant Vanguard Group Inc., likes to recall the early advice he received about the stock market: “Nobody knows nothing.”

The point was that predicting market moves is mostly fruitless. That advice was proved right again Wednesday when the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 20,000 for the first time and broader indexes also set record highs.

The widely followed Dow average of 30 blue chip stocks hit that big, historic number to extend a months-long rally on Wall Street that few saw coming because it looked so implausible a year ago when stock prices were plunging.

Bogle’s axiom will hold true again in the coming months with the onset of the Trump administration, whose business-friendly policy proposals already have bolstered the markets but whose outcomes — and effect on the U.S. economy — remain in question.

The Dow closed at 20,068.51, up 155.80 points, its best daily point gain since Dec. 7.

The bellwether Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 18.30 points to a record 2,298.37 and another broader measure, the Nasdaq composite index, rose 55.38 points to an all-time high of 5,656.34.

The market already was rising in the final months of the Obama administration, but the rally gained added steam with Trump’s election Nov. 8 and forecasts that corporate profits, always a key driver of share prices, would improve in 2017.

The Dow has jumped 9.5% since Trump was elected.

It appeared the Dow would eclipse 20,000 points last month — the previous closing high of 19,974.62 was set Dec. 20 — but the market then moved largely sideways for the next four weeks before resuming its advance.

Trump’s call for tax cuts, jobs growth, less regulation, more infrastructure building and a tougher U.S. stance on trade is a key reason for investors’ optimism because those steps augur well for many companies’ earnings.

During a White House meeting with top executives of major automakers Tuesday, Trump reiterated that “we’re reducing [corporate] taxes very substantially, and we’re reducing unnecessary regulations.”

Trump also formally pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade agreement negotiated by the Obama administration that Trump long has called detrimental to U.S. economic interests.

Trump benefited from arriving at the White House on Friday with the U.S. and global economies already showing improvement, and the Dow’s ability to punch through the 20,000-point mark adds more positive sentiment, said Brad Mc Millan, chief investment officer of Commonwealth Financial Network.

“Investors see we just cleared a big milestone, and psychology is a big part of what drives the market,” Mc Millan said.

After the Dow opened above 20,000 points Wednesday, some traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange celebrated by wearing baseball caps emblazoned with “Dow 20,000.” The day ended with a round of cheers.

Trump responded with a simple tweet: “Great!”

The Dow industrials were led Wednesday by aerospace giant Boeing Co., which jumped 4.2% after reporting strong fourth-quarter results. Caterpillar Inc., the maker of earth-moving equipment, rose 2%, and Apple Inc. gained 1.6%.

There is a concern that the market’s gains mean some stocks are now too rich compared with the underlying companies’ earnings, which could portend a pullback if investors decide to take profits. But if earnings keep growing, that would be less of a problem.

“We’ve seen corporate earnings start to rise” and that means “there isn’t a sign of an immediate risk,” Mc Millan said.

There’s also the threat of higher inflation and interest rates as the economy gathers strength, which is why prices of Treasury securities and other bonds have dropped and their yields have risen in recent months. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note has climbed to 2.52% from 1.85% on Nov. 8.

A year ago, few saw the stock market chalking up big gains anytime soon.

Prices plummeted in early 2016 in response to financial woes in China, low oil prices and an uncertain outlook for corporate profits.

But as those trends largely stabilized, stocks turned back up and steadily moved higher again except for a brief setback June 24 to 27 after the British vote to leave the European Union, or “Brexit.” The fact that the Brexit-related drop was brief instilled the market with even more optimism.

The Dow industrials have shot up 26% since Jan. 25, 2016.

The Dow surpassing 20,000 is a historic moment and catchy sound bite, but in the context of the stock market’s years-long bull run it’s not stupendously impressive.

The achievement came 17 years after the Dow first closed above 10,000 in late March 1999. And as simple math shows, as the average has continued to climb, each of its 1,000-point advances represented less of a percentage gain from the previous one.

For instance, when the Dow rose to 12,000 in 2006 from 11,000, it was a 9.1% gain. But in rising to 20,000 from the 19,000-point mark reached last November, the gain is only 5.3%.

Now that 20,000 is in the record books, some analysts suggested that investors generally make no changes to their market strategies.

“We are telling our clients you can’t time the market,” Todd Morgan, chairman of Bel Air Investment Advisors in Los Angeles, said in a statement. “Think long term. Stay the course.

“Unlike really historic events, no one is going to remember where they were when the Dow hit 20,000.”

Better-than-expected earnings helped several companies, including Seagate Technology, up 14% to $42.67 a share; Rockwell Automation, up 7.7% to $153.01; and Logitech International, up 13% to $29.

Germany's DAX gained 1.8%, and France’s CAC-40 rose 1%. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares rose 0.2%.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 surged 1.4% after Japan's government said that the nation had a trade surplus in 2016, its first in six years. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.4%.

Benchmark U.S. crude fell 43 cents to $52.75 a barrel. International benchmark Brent crude slipped 36 cents to $55.08.

The dollar fell to 113.60 yen from 113.89 on Tuesday. The euro rose to $1.0743 from $1.0723.

Gold slid 1.1% to $1,197.80 an ounce. Silver fell 21 cents to $16.98 an ounce. Copper was little changed at $2.71 a pound.

Stockbrokers fall in line too apparently.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:24:14 PM by FluffyMcChicken

AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#169584: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:27:14 PM

@Mad Skillz: What exactly is meant by regime collapse? Like, the Republican party gets voted or something disastrous happens to the US? What post?

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#169585: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:28:14 PM

@kkhohoho: I'm not really sure who this person is, though one polyscience professor who made surprisingly prescient predictions about the collapse of the Soviet Union predicts the collapse of American global power and a return to a mutlipolar world by 2020.

[up] Bad, as in breakup of the Soviet Union bad for the United States, which is to say Calexit actually happening and triggering a chain reaction where the USA goes the way of the USSR.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:34:52 PM by CaptainCapsase

Bat178 Since: May, 2011
#169586: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:29:33 PM

[up][up] Basically a US Great Politics Mess-Up.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:35:09 PM by Bat178

IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#169587: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:32:49 PM

If California declares independence, can the make this the national anthem.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
Bat178 Since: May, 2011
#169588: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:41:53 PM

And Trump is going to try to limit the US's power in the UN. Not outright leave (yet), but still...

henry42 [REDACTED] from Western Hemisphere Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: It's not my fault I'm not popular!
[REDACTED]
#169589: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:42:37 PM

[up][up] That would be pretty ironic, considering that it's about Gov. Jerry Brown supposedly being a crypto-fascist.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:43:07 PM by henry42

One does not shake the box containing the sticky notes of doom!
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#169590: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:47:34 PM

Again, secession is highly unfucking likely to happen, guys, and I kind of wish we'd stop treating it seriously. That last poll I recall about it only had five hundred people surveyed.

And, again, the USSR was also very differently organized from the US, as I understand it.

AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#169591: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:49:29 PM

This is pretty much my reaction on Trump trying to limit the US influence in the UN.

Not only the US is a member of the Security Council but also one of its most influential members, limiting its role and influence in the UN only means that...oh of course Russia and China get the most of it...

Stooges gonna stooge.

Inter arma enim silent leges
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#169592: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:49:38 PM

[up][up] Yes, but there's some absolutely massive and growing regional differences of opinion within the united states, to the extent that it may not be possible for the country to remain united and a democracy. In this scenario either an oligarchy or autocracy centralizes power and uses force to ensure dissenting regions comply or the country breaks apart. I really hope it doesn't come to that.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:49:48 PM by CaptainCapsase

CenturyEye Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? from I don't know where the Yith sent me this time... Since: Jan, 2017 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
#169593: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:52:28 PM

Well, stockbrokers are not the economy, nor even a good measure of social health. Stock traders are people who, by definition have capital to trade. Yes, stock-market crashes (or commodity crashes) preceded downturns, but that's because of linkages. (Not an economist, just stayed awake in class. Someone else can give out the technical terms).
Similarly, being pro-business is meaningless, like law-and-order. The closest meaning to pro-business is a f***-you-got-mine policy, but both essentially mean boot to face.

Also, if the Midwest and the South lose the rest of the country, their tax revenue drops to minuscule (from both policy and economics), the former becomes a dustbowl and the latter will quickly begin to resemble Iran. (Not the the West and the Northeast will get off easy).

edited 25th Jan '17 5:56:24 PM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#169594: Jan 25th 2017 at 5:54:03 PM

Well, here's an amusing thing.

Go to Twitter and try searching for any of the following: "fascist, bigot, asshole, racist."

Guess whose account is the first result. Go on, guess.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
henry42 [REDACTED] from Western Hemisphere Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: It's not my fault I'm not popular!
[REDACTED]
#169595: Jan 25th 2017 at 6:02:09 PM

You weren't kidding! (archive in case the search results change)

One does not shake the box containing the sticky notes of doom!
IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#169596: Jan 25th 2017 at 6:02:20 PM

[up][up]Don't forget "worst president".

edited 25th Jan '17 6:02:39 PM by IFwanderer

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#169597: Jan 25th 2017 at 6:04:59 PM

And if you search for "jackass," the first result is a story about Steve Bannon being registered to vote in two states.

THE RESISTANCE GROWS

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
#169598: Jan 25th 2017 at 6:05:26 PM

I wonder if Jack Dorsey is either amazed or horrified that his website is now arguably the most politically powerful social media outlet on the web. All thanks to one particularly dedicated user.

RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#169599: Jan 25th 2017 at 6:07:43 PM

Hmm. On a more serious note, this account claims to be from an anonymous White House staffer, determined to tell the world what's happening behind those walls.

Now, we have no way of knowing whether they're really who they say they are, or some random prick in Idaho who's trying to screw with everybody. The latter seems likely - but then again, the former is perfectly plausible as well.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#169600: Jan 25th 2017 at 6:10:28 PM

Of all the things wrong in this election, the use of a dying social media made for people to express themselves by either using as few words as possible or mangling grammar if not both, has to be one of the the bits that add insult to injury.

But it suits Trump, not only he gets to make an ass out of himself but I don't think that he can express himself using more than 140 characters.

Inter arma enim silent leges

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